Megawords is hosting What Belongs in a City?,  an exciting and provocative panel discussion at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Led by Diana Lind, editor in chief of Next American City magazine, panelists will address questions of how we can improve our cities and make them thriving, cultural centers in which people want to live. The discussion will center around the built environment as well as ongoing changes and possible improvements to the economy and society.

Sunday, April 1, 2012
2:30 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.
Perelman Media Room (located in the Perelman building, across from main building)
FREE – Tickets required! Get them here: http://tinyurl.com/7c4olht
Directions: www.philamuseum.org/perelman

Click more to read about our invited panelists!

Here’s a bit about our invited panelists:

Toni Griffin is Professor of Architecture and Director, J. Max Bond Center, Spitzer School of Architecture, City College of New York, CUNY. She is currently creating a long-range development plan for the City of Detroit through its “Detroit Works” program. Among other positions, Toni has been Director for the Division of Planning and Community Development for the City of Newark, New Jersey; Vice President and Director of Design for the Anacostia Waterfront Corporation in Washington, DC; and a Loeb Fellow at the Graduate School of Design, Harvard University.

Quilian Riano is an architect and writer based in Brooklyn, New York. He the architecture firm, DSGN AGNC and is collaborating on a variety of architectural design and research projects with other groups, including the non-profit Architecture 2030, Estudio Teddy Cruz, Archinect, Places Journal, #lgnlg and Harvard University. He currently teaches at Parsons The New School for Design.

Anthony Smyrski is a creative director, artist, and cultural producer. He is co-founder of the experimental media project Megawords, and the owner of the eponymous design firm Smyrski Creative. He works in both the cultural and commercial spheres with clients and artists around the world. Smyrski recently participated in the One is the Loneliest Number at the Philadelphia Institute of Contemporary Art, and Creative Time’s Living As Form exhibition held in the historic Essex Street Market in Manhattan. The Megawords project currently calls the Philadelphia Museum of Art home, where they have created an installation that is equal parts gathering space, event venue, artist studio, and store.

Zoe Strauss is an installation artist and photographer. Strauss recently completed “Under I-95,” a 10 year long project that culminated in an installation of photographs under interstate 95 in South Philadelphia. She has exhibited in the 2006 Whitney Biennial, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Philadelphia ICA and had two solo shows at Bruce Silverstein Gallery. In 2005, Ms. Strauss was awarded a Pew Fellowship in the Arts and in 2007 she was awarded a USA Gund Fellowship. Her first monograph, America, was published in 2008. Ms. Strauss is the Executive Director of the Philadelphia Public Art Project.

Dre Urhahn works with creative partner Jeroen Koolhaas under the title Haas&Hahn. The duo started working together in 2005, when they filmed a documentary about hip hop in the favelas of Rio and São Paolo for MTV. Inspired by this visit, they embarked on a journey to bring outrageous works of art to unexpected places, starting with painting enormous murals in the slums of Brazil together with the local youth.

Camilo José Vergara is a Chilean-born, New York-based writer, photographer and documentarian. He has published seven books including New American Ghetto, How the Other Half Worships and Subway Memories. In 2002, he was awarded a MacArthur Foundation “genius grant” and his work has been exhibited in the Cooper-Hewitt Museum, Smithsonian Institution, National Building Museum and other venues.

Temple University Libraries’ Urban Archives and Megawords Magazine are partnering for a screening as part of the Zoe Strauss: Ten Years exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. All films are drawn from our television news collection and are loosely inspired by the work of Zoe Strauss, Megawords and the PMA itself. All footage where the gaze of the news camera puts you in touch with the rituals, traditions, places and challenges of Philadelphia and its residents over three decades. Some material has screened at previous UA screenings and some is new.

Advance tickets are free (but with a $3.50 service charge) here:

http://bit.ly/yS1RTH

You could also come to the PMA earlier to reserve a seat with no charge.

For more info and a full listing, read more.

Here is a full listing of the films:

**“Assignment: 1747 Randolph Street” (Part 1) WPVI Public Affairs- 1966 (25:00)- The first half of a sometimes challenging 1966 documentary about poverty in North Philadelphia. The documentary focuses specifically on the Ludlow neighborhood, the scene of a brutal crime a year before and eventual target for reform by civic organizations and politicians. Vivid shots of neighborhood conditions are combined with interviews with a cross section of community leaders, politicians and residents.

** “North Philadelphia Slums” KYW News- March 15, 1967 (2:24)- A camera sits in a car driving through North Philadelphia gazing at its bars and residents. Sometimes they look back, sometimes they hide their faces.

** “Chinese New Year” KYW News- 1965 (5:37)- Black and white silent footage of the performers and audience in Chinatown’s 1965 New Year celebration.

** “Ninth Street Merchants” KYW News- April 7, 1966 (5:28)- Black and white silent footage of the vendors and shoppers that made up Ninth Street in 1966.

**“Graffiti and Wall Mural” WPVI Public Affairs- 1972 (12:00)- Vintage shots of a graffiti covered El ride, artist Sam Maitin debating with South Philadelphia neighbors as he paints a mural on the Fleisher Art Memorial, and street interviews with Philadelphians about art and graffiti. A quirky, fun piece about the politics and opinions on graffiti and murals in the city.

**“Last game at Connie Mack stadium” KYW News- October 2, 1970 (8:48)- Color footage of the Phillies-Expos game morphs into footage of the confusion, chaos and detritus surrounding the last game at Connie Mack Stadium (Shibe Park). Philadelphians “celebrate” the end of the institution in their own unique way.

** “Mummers (1953) & Mummers (1966)” KYW News (5:40)- Black and white silent footage of one of Philadelphia’s most distinct celebrations. Well composed, beautiful shots of audiences and performers just south of City Hall, 13 years apart.

** “Be-In” (excerpts) KYW News- April 17, 1967 (2:30)- Black and white silent footage of now infamous Ira Einhorn’s first “Be-In” in Fairmount Park in 1967. Footage of some of the estimated 2,000 people gathered near Strawberry Mansion as they mill about and play music.

** “Hippies” KYW News- April 12, 1968 (4:37)- A news story on hippies in one of their most popular spaces to congregate in the 1960s, Rittenhouse Square. Hippies and residents alike perform for the camera and make the anchor’s job difficult as he tries to report on their future in the park.

** “Sit-In” (excerpts) KYW News- March 11, 1965 (3:00)- Students from Temple University and University of Pennsylvania stage a sit-in, inside and outside the offices of U.S. Attorney General Drew J. T. O’Keefe in the Ninth and Market federal building. They were doing so to protest the “treatment of African-Americans conducting right-to-vote demonstrations in Selma, Alabama.”

** “Art Museum” KYW News- September 15, 1967 (6:00)- Silent black and white footage of some of the pieces and reactions at the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s popular but polarizing “American Sculpture of the Sixties”. A few of the 130 pieces from 80 artists in the playful 1967 exhibition.

** “Blimp Visits City” WFIL News- November 23, 1948 (1:18)- Very short but distinct vantage of Philadelphia through a 1948 Goodyear Blimp visit to our city. The camera treats the forms of the city below as abstractions.

** “City Snow” KYW News- November 30, 1967 (1:30) – Short black and white footage of center city braving its way through a 1967 snow storm.

** “Visions of A New Day: Bodegas ‘Mom and Pop Stores’” WPVI Public Affairs- March 18, 1976 (10:00)- Visions of a New Day highlights an integral part of Philadelphia’s Puerto Rican neighborhoods, the bodega (corner store). We’re taken through the streets and inside homes and stores during interviews with bodega owners and shoppers.

** “Puerto Rican Drill Team” (excerpts) WPVI Public Affairs- 1970s (5:28) Documentary on the Puerto Rican Drill Team “Los Conquistadors” based around El Centro De Oro in North Philadelphia. The children of the drill team take over a small North Philadelphia Street when practicing their drills.

Homemade Rocket Stove By Jacques and Dece of Megawords issue #4 fame

Page from The Confrontation, vol.1 #1 of Master of Mystics Comic Book

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