Exhibitions

Big City Forum (BCF) is currently occupying the Armory's Mezzanine Galleries during Phase II of its 15-month residency, entitled City of Hope, City of Resistance: Research and Actions on the Urban Level. With the Armory as a host venue, BCF has designed and built a dynamic reading room/library in the Armory's Mezzanine Galleries. The reading room/library serves as a site to present three exhibitions, conduct film screenings, and hold a series of conversations, workshops, and other discursive public events.

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A central element of BCF’s residency, the reading room/library—a dynamic, interactive platform for diverse, shared creativity—was designed by Los Angeles-based artist Jeff Cain to frame and facilitate conversations and engagement around key questions raised during the residency . The reading room/library also contains a "recommended reading shelf," comprised of books contributed by past BCF contributors. Each book includes a small biography and statement from each contributor.

About City of Hope, City of Resistance: Research and Actions at the Urban Level
Los Angeles is at a pivotal moment of transition and transformation. Social fragmentation and isolation is giving way to a celebration of plurality and difference. Identities and communities are coalescing around collective, design-based solutions. BCF's residency brings together the creative forces of participants across the fields of architecture, urban design, contemporary art, new media, and social and community activism. BCF's residency explores, discusses, and produces various forms of social space from community-based initiatives; new physical and social architectures; individual and collective actions that have affected public civic engagement; and ideas and actions that will influence life in the region in constructive, positive ways.

BCF's residency is organized in three separate phases. Phase I focused on research. Phase II is the actual "occupation" of the Armory. Phase III (January – March 2015) will consolidate the ideas generated throughout the residency into a publication, to be released in Spring 2015.

City of Hope, City of Resistance: Research and Actions at the Urban Level builds upon an existing collaboration between the Armory's Exhibitions Department and BCF. Since Spring 2012, BCF has programmed two seasons of lively, discursive events at the Armory (Mapping LA in 2012 and Transforming the Social in 2013). These events were comprised of a series panels featuring leading architects, theorists, and planners who, along with a room of engaged participants, explored current creative practices that inform the landscape, culture, and geography of Los Angeles. City of Hope, City of Resistance: Research and Actions at the Urban Level serves as an incubation period for Big City Forum as it develops plans to launch future programmatic platforms. Big City Forum’s residency at the Armory is supported with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts and is facilitated by the Armory’s Gallery Director and Chief Curator Irene Tsatsos.  

 • See Exhibition Pics on Flickr

About Big City Forum
Big City Forum (BCF), founded in 2008 by Los Angeles-based artist, educator, and activist Leonardo Bravo and co-directed with artist/graphic designer River Jukes-Hudson since 2013, is an independent, interdisciplinary project that explores the intersection between design-based creative disciplines within the context of public space, the built environment, and social change.

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