Der Vortrag schlägt eine Brücke zwischen der künstlerischen Arbeit Ed Ruschas, dessen Archiv „Streets of Los Angeles" zur Sammlung des Getty Research Instituts zählt, und einer kritisch informierten Beschäftigung mit Weißen Privilegien und der Sichtbarkeit von Machtstrukturen in (Stadt)Räumen.

Der Vortrag findet im Rahmen der CUDE Project Week im Kontext der einwöchigen Veranstaltung „Kritisches Weißsein, Weiße Vorherrschaft und Weiße Privilegien" statt.

Der Vortrag ist offen für alle Interessierten, unabhängig von einer Teilnahme an der CUDE Project Week. Um Anmeldung bis zum 04.05. (per Mail an katrin.glinka@htw-berlin.de) wird gebeten.

Ed Ruscha's „Streets of Los Angeles" archive and discussions of equity and urban space

In 1965, Los Angeles-based artist Ed Ruscha began a project to photograph both sides of Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles, eventually publishing those images in his 1996 book “Every Building on the Sunset Strip”. This was only the beginning of a project that would continue to unfold over the next six decades and beyond, as Ruscha photographed the entirety of Sunset but also Hollywood, Melrose, Santa Monica and many other of the city's major thoroughfares. The resulting "Streets of Los Angeles" archive, now in the collections of the Getty Research Institute (GRI), constitutes an unparalleled visual chronicle of both iconic and everyday sites in the city, including popular music venues, neighborhood restaurants, and billboards promoting Hollywood's latest blockbusters.  

In this talk, Emily Pugh will discuss how Ruscha's archive intersects with discussions of equity and urban space that were taking place around the time of the project's inception in the 1960s and continue to this day. Of particular interest will be how the archive's representation as data provides an opportunity to explore the various power dynamics that have played out in Los Angeles's streets through the 2010s. 

Emily Pugh is a Principal Research Specialist at the Getty Research Institute, specializing in architectural history and technologies of cultural heritage. Her publications include the 2014 book “Architecture, Politics, and Identity in Divided Berlin, essays for photographies and Debates in the Digital Humanities” (2023), and the co-edited book “Ed Ruscha's Streets of Los Angeles: Artist, Image, Archive, City”(2025). Her work has been supported by the Center for Architecture Theory Criticism History at the University of Queensland and by the Humboldt University in Berlin where she served as the 2022–23 Rudolf Arnheim Visiting Professor.