Works In Progress

Students at the UCLA Department of Architecture and Urban Design are proposing a hypothetical center where principles of AEDI – anti-racism, equity, diversity, and inclusion – are put into action.

"I think what we're trying to do is a paradigm shift away from a distant, automated, estranging kind of environment where people are bureaucratized, into something way more engaging,” said Mohamed Sharif, the faculty member who is heading the design studio for the master of architecture program students.

In this episode, Sharif and several students talk about putting AEDI principles, as well as sustainability and accessibility, at the forefront of building design.

Verlena Johnson is a student affairs officer in the Department of Architecture and Urban Design at UCLA. But she’s also a multi-media visual artist with a published children’s book and a series of paintings that pay homage to LGBTQ African American icons.

She talks to the UCLA Arts podcast "Works In Progress" about the themes of race, gender, sexuality, and divinity in her paintings; how she maintains her creative practice during the pandemic; and how to promote diversity in academia.

Photographer Janna Ireland is known for portraits of family and friends that explore domesticity and Black life. But she has devoted the last four years to driving the streets of Los Angeles, seeking out some of the more than 3,000 projects designed by barrier-breaking Los Angeles architect Paul Revere Williams.

The result: her critically praised collection of photographs “Regarding Paul R. Williams: A Photographer’s View” (Angel City Press). The book features 280 of Ireland’s black-and-white images that evoke moody interiors and exterior landscapes, with long shadows stretching over curving staircases and archways, showing the architect’s mastery of proportion and composition and his lasting impact on Los Angeles.

Ireland spoke to the UCLA Arts podcast "Works In Progress" about the project and the unique details that she found in the architect's work.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, a handful of galleries in downtown LA’s Chinatown neighborhood opened amid souvenir shops and restaurants. With names adopted from previous businesses, China Art Objects and Black Dragon Society showed work by UCLA art students and became hubs of a burgeoning art scene. A DIY-inspired community of artists threw parties and staged concerts while selling their work at dirt-cheap prices, with some finding unexpected success.

The salon-style exhibition "Via Café" relives that heady time, bringing together work from about three-dozen old friends and UCLA alumni in a gallery in a small town outside Athens, Georgia.

Internet art is a broad term for the work of artists who use the internet as their canvas. Think of Flash animation, psychedelic glitch art, computer-generated art, GIFs, and many other examples. The internet has been around for five decades now, and internet art is falling victim to broken links, expired domains, and unsupported file types.

"I believe we're in a crisis right now, where so much work is disappearing and will never be seen again. We want to be in communication with these artists while they're still with us,” said Casey Reas, co-founder of the UCLA Arts Conditional Studio with Lauren Lee McCarthy and Chandler McWilliams, all professors in the Department of Design Media Arts.

The UCLA Arts Conditional Studio is launching an initiative to collect internet art made by LA-based artists and preserve it for future generations. “Art and the Internet in LA 1969+” will explore the history of artists in Los Angeles who have worked with, responded to, and transformed the internet.

Their beginning point is November 21, 1969, when UCLA professor Leonard Kleinrock established the first permanent ARPANET link from his laboratory to Stanford University. It continues through the emergence of the World Wide Web to the ubiquitous influence of the internet today.

UCLA Department of Art Professor Rodney McMillian's practice embodies a wide range of media and technique, and often confronts racial and socioeconomic injustice. McMillian’s most recent show at Vielmetter Los Angeles, "Body Politic," explores the body’s symbolic meaning and the relationship between politics and aesthetics.

It included sculptural works depicting body parts made of chicken wire and black fabric. Vividly-colored drawings used mixed media and text to narrate a history of the violence against Black bodies in the names of science and slavery.

“There needs to be a deep rooting out – of the racism, of the inequalities, of the brutality – that is plaguing this land," McMillian said.

In this interview with the UCLA Arts podcast Works In Progress, McMillian discusses this nation's racial reckoning, his use of color and materials, and how music and science fiction inspire his work. 

This week, pro-Trump supporters marched through Washington D.C. and stormed the Capitol building, just as Congress was meeting to formally certify the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. The insurrection left five people dead and a world in shock. Many are asking, is this what America has become?

The attack also comes the same week that Tucson, Arizona is marking the ten-year anniversary of a shooting rampage outside a supermarket that killed six people and injured thirteen, including then-U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. The attack took place at a “Congress on the Corner” event, days after Rep. Giffords had won a contentious re-election race.

Today, a permanent memorial to honor the victims and survivors of the Jan. 8, 2011 attack was dedicated in a small ceremony. Rebeca Méndez, professor and chair of the UCLA Department of Design Media Arts, worked with the architecture firm Chee Salette to design that memorial.

The memorial, called "The Embrace," includes a series of symbols that Méndez and a team of UCLA students created to depict the victims, survivors and first responders, and to tell a larger history of Tucson and southern Arizona.

How does one create a more equitable learning environment? Anna Spain Bradley, UCLA’s new vice chancellor for equity, diversity and inclusion, has been thinking a lot about this question. Despite the political polarization of our time, Spain Bradley – a scholar of international law, global racism and human rights – says it’s imperative that we sit down and have conversations with people we disagree with. 

"If people communicate and we look at each other and see each other and value each other, it's not easy, but it's worthwhile, and it can lead to creating solutions that didn't exist before," she said.

Spain Bradley sat down with the host of UCLA Arts’ podcast “Works In Progress” for a broad ranging conversation that touched on the events in her own life that led her to the field of international dispute resolution, and how she’s applying those experiences at UCLA. She’ll also be a panelist for the final session in this year’s “10 Questions: Reckoning” discussion series, on Monday, Dec. 7 at 7 pm PST, responding to the question “What Matters?”

Sharon Hayes makes video, performance and installation art that tackles complex questions about history, politics and speech. Her work is staged on the street, in living rooms, and in museums and galleries. She incorporates historical texts and her own writing into her work. She might involve strangers, activists, and fellow artists as performers. 

Hayes was born in Baltimore and came of age in a community of queer artists and activists in New York's East Village in the early '90s, where she drew inspiration from feminism and AIDS activism. She received her MFA from UCLA and now teaches in the University of Pennsylvania’s Department of Fine Arts. 

In this episode of the UCLA Arts podcast "Works In Progress," Hayes discusses the form love takes in the personal, private, public and political spheres. She’ll also explore that theme on Monday, Nov. 30 in the UCLA Arts-led “10 Questions” public discussion "What Is Love?”  

Jenna Caravello makes mind-bending video games, interactive installations and animated short films that use symbolism and metaphor to ask profound questions about memory, loss, and meaning.

Caravello is an assistant professor in the Department of Design Media Arts. And she'll respond to the question “What Is Loss?” as part of the UCLA Arts series “10 Questions: Reckoning,” which brings UCLA faculty from across campus together to examine ten essential questions.

In this episode of the UCLA Arts podcast “Works In Progress,” Caravello talks about creating digital avatars, storytelling in virtual spaces, and what inspires her, from ‘90s video games and “Akira” to European and Soviet animators.