2019 Summer Institute Thick Maps and Fotonovelas

Through thick mapping students immersed themselves in the cultural, social and spatial context of the Westlake area, with a special focus on MacArthur Park and its surrounding neighborhood. Thick Mapping-as-methodology served as the framework for ethnographic spatial analysis of the Westlake/MacArthur Park area, and is the first of several core Urban Humanities methodologies through which we will investigate this year’s overarching and transnational theme of Borders and Commons. These hybrid strategies help create a layered, multi-dimensional and nuanced portrait of the Westlake/MacArthur Park area that can be used to generate future speculative Engaged Public Art and Architectural and Urban Design projects.

Students augmented their thick maps using both found and newly created narratives of the park. Using the medium of the fotonovela—a series of captioned photographs that tell a story—students created a kind of speculative fiction that provided another means of communicating their spatial justice issue. Students attended a fotonovela workshop led by Chicana/o scholar and UHI alum Leighanna Hidalgo, whose research makes use of the fotonovela not only as a critical storytelling methodology but also as a way to make knowledge more accessible to the public and to provoke dialogue on salient economic and immigration issues. Leighanna’s workshop took students through the history of the fotonovela, highlighting its far-reaching impact within the Latinx and Chicanx communities in the U.S, and concluded with a “how to” session on making a fotonovela.

Memory

Fengyun Zhang

Adam Boggs

Cassie Hoeprich

Christina Monzer

Juan Albertos

Sanitation

Wesley Lin

Roya Chagnon

Cristina Vazquez

Clayton McKee

Suzanne Caflisch