Monuments and the Future of Memory: Remembering Willowbrook

This project, in its third year of Arts in Action support, builds on the ongoing collaboration with LA Commons and the Willowbrook Inclusion Network (WIN) aimed at developing a series of Willowbrook community monuments that challenge the traditional memorial as an inert monument dedicated to hegemonic and often oppressive narratives of the past. The original project sought to engage current debates on monuments and cultural memory, with the overall aim of bringing presence to places whose stories have been erased or overlooked. More specifically, it aimed to challenge the what and who is represented and the methodology (how) of developing memorials and public monuments as adaptable, accruing, and participatory community histories. In its first year, USC School of Architecture Professors Aroussiak Gabrielian and Alison Hirschhad USC students from the School of Architecture, Price School of Public Policy, and School of Cinematic Arts collaborate with LA Commons and WIN to develop strategies through which to gather, elevate and physicalize the stories residents of Willowbrook want to tell (culminating in a report “Remembering Willowbrook: A Five-Part Strategy). While the process started in excavating trauma experienced by the historically Black community, it has progressed to narratives of resistance, resilience, healing, liberation, and joy. In the second year, Gabrielian and Hirsch with LA Commons and WIN will work to realize the memorial strategies with Willowbrook youth and senior artists: the community archive, physical monuments, and AR experiences – all as means through which Willowbrook can tell its own story.