Just Space(s) - September 26th 2007

On September 26th at Lace Gallery in Hollywood, the 'Just Space(s)' exhibition will open, running until November 18th. It is being organized by Ava Bromberg and Nick Brown, who are doing some incredibly interesting and amazing work in geography and urban planning. I have also contributed a small piece on behalf of No More Deaths.

More information, including the schedule of events, can be found at the following site, and from the information posted
below

http://www.walkinginplace.org/justspaces/

You can also check out the special issue of 'Critical Planning' on spatial justice and the Just Space(s) exhibition at

http://criticalspatialpractice.blogspot.com/ (also an amazing resource for all things spatial)



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CALENDAR OF EVENTS:
All events are at LACE unless otherwise noted
Details on program participants are on www.justspaces.org/symposia.htm

Wednesday 09.26.07 – Opening Reception
7:00 – 9:00 pm

Saturday 10.06.07 – Intersection Repair workshop with members of Portland’s City Repair
1:30 – 5:30 pm

Sunday 10.07.07 – Symposia Session #1 – Prisons and the Prison Industrial Complex
1:30 – 5:30 pm

Sunday 10.28.07 – Symposia Session #2 – Environmental Justice and Public Health
1:30 – 5:30 pm

Saturday 11.03.07 – Malibu Public Beaches Safari w/ the Los Angeles Urban Rangers
11:00 am – 2:30 pm (Meets in Malibu)

Saturday 11.10.07 – Symposia Session #3 – Economic Justice and the Right to the City
1:30 – 5:30 pm

Sunday 11.11.07 – Performance: LATWIDNO – Land Access to Which Is Denied No One
1:30 – 5:30 pm

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Just Space(s)
September 26 – November 18, 2007
LACE (Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions)
Organized by Ava Bromberg and Nicholas Brown

OPENING RECEPTION: Wednesday, September 26, 7-9pm

/// INTRODUCTION ///

Everyday we confront spaces that don't work - from our neighborhoods and parks, to our prisons, pipelines and borders.
In this exhibition and programming series, artists, scholars and activists reveal how these spaces function - and
dysfunction - making way for thought and action to create just societies and spaces.

The projects in this exhibition reflect the renewed recognition that space matters to cutting edge activist practices and to
artists and scholars whose work pursues similar goals of social justice. A spatial frame offers new insights into
understanding not only how injustices are produced, but also how spatial consciousness can advance the pursuit of
social justice, informing concrete claims and the practices that make these claims visible. Understanding that space - like
justice - is never simply handed out or given, that both are socially produced, differentiated, experienced and contested
on constantly shifting social, political, economic, and geographical terrains, means that justice - if it is to be concretely
achieved, experienced, and reproduced - must be engaged on spatial as well as social terms.

By transforming LACE, in part, into an active learning environment, Just Space(s) seeks to provide visitors with tools to
consider alternatives to reactionary and essentializing political discourse that tends to dominate and frame our
conceptions of justice - and constrain our abilities to imagine and implement it. The exhibition presents some of the most
innovative and efficacious contemporary artistic, activist, and scholarly work engaging social and spatial analyses. In
addition, a library/infoshop and symposia and event series extend the scope and scale of the main exhibition. Taken in
whole or in part, Just Space(s) aims not merely to show what is unjust about our world, but to inspire visitors to consider
what the active production of just space(s) might look like. It asks a crucial question: How do we move from injustice to
justice exactly where we stand - in our neighborhoods and our institutions, at the level of the body, the home, the street
corner, the city, the region, the network, the supranational trade agreement and every space within, between, and
beyond? While much theorizing about - and active experimentation with - the role and potential of a spatial justice
framework remains undone, this exhibition and its public programming contribute to the articulation of a powerful
concept/tool that links critical theory and ethical practice.

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THEME#1 >>> (IM)MOBILITY / PRISONS AND THE PRISON INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX >>> The Corrections Documentary Project (Ashley Hunt) /// Million Dollar Blocks (Spatial Information Design Lab) /// Up the Ridge (Appalshop's Holler to the Hood)

THEME#2 >>> (IM)MOBILITY / BORDERS, LABOR, MIGRATION >>> The Black Sea Files (Ursula Biemann) /// Political Equator (Teddy Cruz) /// disOrientation Guide (Counter-Cartographies Collective) /// Spatial Justice for Ayn Hawd (Sabine Horlitz and Oliver Clemens) /// Searching for Our Destination (Ayreen Anastas and Rene Gabri ) /// Water Station Maps and Warning Posters (Humane Borders and No More Deaths) /// Host Not Found: A Traveling Monument of the Suppression of Search (Markus Miessen and Patricia Reed)

THEME#3 >>> ECONOMIC JUSTICE / THE RIGHT TO THE CITY >>> The Figueroa Corridor Coalition for Economic Justice (Strategic Actions for a Just Economy) /// Listening, Collaboration, Solidarity (CampBaltimore) /// UTOPIA-dystopia (Los Angeles Poverty Department) /// Principles of Unity (Right to the City Alliance) /// RFK in EKY (Appalshop and John Malpede) /// Spatializing Labor Campaigns (Service Employees International Union)

THEME#4 >>> ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE / PUBLIC HEALTH >>> Syracuse City Hunger Project Maps (Syracuse Community Geography) /// LATWIDNO - Land access to which is denied no one (Sarah Lewison and Erin McGonigle) /// Invisible5 (Amy Balkin, Tim Halbur, and Kim Stringfellow) /// Public Green (Lize Mogel) /// Public Access 101 - Malibu Public Beaches (Los Angeles Urban Rangers) /// Best Not to Be Here? (Marie Cieri)

THEME#5 >>> RACIALIZATION OF SPACE / SPATIALIZATION OF RACE >>> However Unspectacular: A New Suburbanism (The Center for Urban Pedagogy) /// Detroit's Underdevelopment (Adrian Blackwell) /// The New Yorkers' Guide to Military Recruitment in the 5 Boroughs (Friends of William Blake) /// A People's Guide to Los Angeles (Laura Pulido)

THEME#6 >>> LAND / INDIGENOUS EPISTEMOLOGIES, LAND CLAIMS & TREATY RIGHTS >>> A Century of Genocide in the Americas: The Residential School Experience (Rosemary Gibbons and Dax Thomas - Boarding School Healing Project) /// Dakota Commemorative March (Waziyatawin Angela Wilson and David Miller) /// Secret Military Landscapes and the Pentagon's "Black World" (Trevor Paglen) /// Spiral Lands (Andrea Geyer)