[Hum_Calendar_Events] Watts Towers Conference, Genova, Italy - April 2-5, 2009

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Art and Migration:
 
Sabato (Simon) Rodia and the Watts Towers of Los Angeles

  

 

 
International Conference 

University of Genova, Italy
 
April 2-5, 2009


Sponsored by:

Università di Genova, European Union, UCLA International Institute


 
P R O G R A M
 

 
Introductions
 
Art and Migrations:  Starting from Sabato Rodia's Watts Towers
         Alessandro Dal Lago, Università di Genova, Italy
 
Sabato Rodia's Watts Towers Between Continents:  In Search of Common Ground
         Luisa Del Giudice, Independent Scholar, Los Angeles, USA
 
Art Without Knowledge, Knowledge Without Art
         Thomas Harrison, Dept. of Italian, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA USA
 
 

Assessing the Watts Towers Today
 
Triage:  The Challenge of Conserving the Watts Towers
         Zuleyma Aguirre, Fine Arts Conservation, Lancaster, CA, USA
 
 

The Community of Watts and its Monument: Socio-Economic and Political Realities
 
The Watts Towers Art Center:  The Heart of Watts
         Rosie Lee Hooks, Director, The Watts Towers Art Center, Watts, CA, USA
 
A Custody Case: Ownership of Rodia's Towers
         Jeffrey Herr, Curator, Hollyhock House, Department of Cultural Affairs, Los Angeles, CA, USA
 
The Watts Towers:  Simon Rodia Fights Back
         Shirmel Hayden, Watts Labor Community Action Committee, Watts, CA, USA
 
 

Art Environments, Vernacular Traditions, and their Imaginaries
 
Out of Frame:  Sam Rodia and Outsider Art
         Serena Giordano, Artist, Genova, Italy
 
Sam Rodia and Fantastic Architecture
         Guglielmo Bilancioni, Università di Genova, Italy
 
The Watts Towers of Rodia:  Outsider Art, Vernacular Traditions, Trauma, and Creativity
         Daniel Wojcik, Director, Folklore Studies Program, University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon, USA
 
Art Environments:  Vernacular Voices, Personal Views
        Jo Farb Hernandez, Director, SPACES (Saving and Preserving Arts and Cultural Environments), Los Angeles; Director, Natalie and James Thompson Art
        Gallery, School of Art and Design, San Jose State University, San Jose, CA, USA
 
Local Monument to a Global Imaginary:  Rodia's Watts Towers, Marco Polo, and Italo Calvino
         Paul A. Harris, Department of English, Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, CA, USA
 
 

Italian Migrations:  Literary, Artistic, and Visual Legacies
 
Italians in Los Angeles at the Time of Sabato Rodia
         Gloria Ricci Lothrop, Whitsett Chair in California History (Emerita), California State University, Northridge, CA, USA
 
California and the Italian Immigrant Experience: The Artistic and Literary Contexts of Simon Rodia's Watts Towers
         Kenneth Scambray, Department of English, University of La Verne, CA, USA
 
"Why a Man Make the Shoes?":  Southern Italian Material Culture, Folk Aesthetics, and the Philosophy of "Work Done Well" in Rodia's Watts Towers
         Joseph Sciorra, John D. Calandra Italian American Institute, Queens College, New York, USA
 
Parallel Expression:  Revealing the Artistic Contributions of Italian Immigrants in South America During the Era of Simon Rodia
         George Epolito, Senior Lecturer, Manchester School of Architecture, Faculty of Art and Design, Manchester, UK
 
 

Reproducing Nola
 
La Festa dei Gigli di Nola e la sua fortuna nel XX  secolo
         Felice Ceparano, Director, Museo etnomusicale " I Gigli di Nola," Nola, Italy
 
La Festa Migrante: da Nola a Williamsburg.  La tradizione del giglio:  da cultura materiale a patrimonio immateriale
         Katia Ballacchino, C. Phil., Università degli Studi "La Sapienza," Rome, Italy
 
 

Film
 
"I Build the Tower" (2005), 87 min.
Documentary film on the Watts Towers by filmmakers, Edward Landler and Brad Byer.

 
 
Conference Description:  As the work of an unlettered Italian immigrant, Sabato (Simon or Sam) Rodia (1879-1965), the Watts Towers­-a masterpiece of intuitive engineering­-still defy artistic or architectural definition.  Rodia built them alone from 1921-54 and named them Nuestro Pueblo, and they continue to stand as a powerful yet controversial monument in Los Angeles.  The conference will place Rodia's Towers within the contexts of art, architecture, film, literature, ethnography, and social politics.  It will also address the Watts Towers within the framework of art and migration, in a sustained way, for the first time.  While the Watts monument is unique (yet invites comparison with works of artists such as Antoni Gaudì and recalls the Giglio tradition of Nola), Rodia's life story, instead, parallels that of millions of Italians who left Italy during the 19th- and 20th-C.  The majority lived lives of manual labor, and Rodia in fact, identified himself as a worker, signing his Towers by impressions of his humble hand tools in mortar plaques throughout the site.  Rodia's Towers have been embraced as a symbol of creative resistance and individualism; they have sustained local African and Latino communities in Watts; and for over half a century of social upheaval, they have continued to inspire literary, artistic, musical and cinematic expressions, creating a rich symbolic density over time.  This international conference will address this complexity of forms and meanings.


Conference Organizers:  Alessandro Dal Lago (Chair, Univ. di Genova, Italy); Luisa Del Giudice (Los Angeles); Thomas Harrison (UCLA)


Under the Auspices of the Consulate General of Italy and the Istituto Italiano di Cultura, Los Angeles 

Special thanks to Clara Celati, Istituto Italiano di Cultura.

 
 

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