MAK Center for Art and Architecture at the Schindler House

Please join us at the Schindler House on Wednesday, September 9th for A Walk in the City, the seventh and final UFI Public Forum in the 2008/2009 cycle. UFI Fellows Alaa Khaled and Salwa Rashad will present images and ideas culled from their current research project that draws upon conversations and experiences the two had with immigrants from numerous Arabic-speaking communities in Los Angeles and Orange County.

Of especial interest to the UFI Fellows are the personal journeys of Arab immigrants as they traverse between their original country and Los Angeles. Khaled and Rashad wish to understand the equivalent journey that immigrants have taken in order to ground themselves in the new place. In particular, the two are curious about whether there is conflict, struggle, or collision between the two memories and the two identities immigrants always carry throughout their journey—being the memory of their place of origin versus the new memory they have acquired in their lives in Los Angeles.

The multitude of cultural roots in Los Angeles allows language to exist and expand without any resultant feeling of threat to any other language, experience, or other particular memory. Do these circumstances result in a new identity that combines identities and memories? Further, in choosing to live on the peripheries of the urban center—places like Covina, Pasadena, and Glendale (in the north) and Anaheim (in the south)—do Arab immigrants create fertile conditions through which origin-based memory becomes the “mother” that assists in the creation of space for the birth of new memories?

About Alaa Khaled and Salwa Rashad

Alaa Khaled, a poet and essayist, and Salwa Rashad, a visual artist, are from Alexandria, Egypt. They have collaborated extensively on a wide range of projects, contemplating the city through Rashad’s images and Khaled’s prose. Since 1999, they have published the literary magazine Amkenah, dedicated to the “poetry of place.”  With Amkenah, they explore the relationship between people and place, and attempt to find new possibilities for investigating the problematic existence of the urban individual.

Alaa Khaled and Salwa Rashad are the final Fellows hosted during the 2009/2009 cycle of the MAK Center's Urban Future Initiative.

About the MAK Urban Future Initiative

The mission of the Urban Future Initiative Fellowship is to promote meaningful exchanges between cultural thinkers from diverse nations in order to cultivate visionary conceptions of the urban future. UFI Fellows are invited to Los Angeles for two months, where they are hosted by the MAK Center in the Fitzpatrick-Leland House, an exemplary LA Modern home designed by architect R. M. Schindler in 1936.

Responding to the challenges of urban environment both locally and globally, the MAK Center seeks out Fellows who engage in interdisciplinary practice and who are committed to forward-thinking approaches to urban issues. During their time in Los Angeles, Fellows pursue a research topic related to urban phenomena. The MAK Center works closely with Fellows, helping to connect them to the city through its architecture. Fellows are introduced to members of the many creative, scholarly, and educational communities throughout southern California and encouraged to develop dialogue with these individuals and institutions. During this focused period of deep inquiry, Fellows are challenged to consider the complexity of "the city" in its relationship to the built environment, growth and migration, economics, politics, gender, and the natural environment.