FINAL PRESENTATIONS

LANDSCAPE AS DEMOCRATIC COMMUNITY SPACE FOR MEMORIAL + PROTEST = CULTURAL MEMORY + MONUMENT

Slauson Connect, a brand-new, transformational community jewel slated for District 9. The project will provide South LA with cutting-edge education, training, access to information, and the resources needed to help neighbors grow and thrive. Following the students’ exploration of the current shifts from traditional death practices to the re-contextualized rituals of urban and virtual memorials in the age of pandemic; as we all mourn victims of Covid-19 and violent killings of BIPOC; with investigations on mediated death, funeral ritual, sacred space, and monuments and their spatial transcendence to sites for public grieving; in revisiting the value of public space in a democratic society….students implement site analysis conclusions, resulting in landscapes for participatory mourning and activism – public spaces of safety to secure gathering, ceremony, dissent and free expression. Proposals illustrate how landscape is the element of memory – honoring the struggles and victories of the past, while acknowledging the continuing resistance and resilience of our present. Students received mid-term and final presentation input from Sherilyn Correa, Director of Planning & Economic Development, Office of Councilman Curren D. Price, Jr.