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USC Islands Project

The undergrad public art class at USC (aka “Art In the Public Realm: Contemporary Issues”) is working on a project with Ari and Islands of LA.
The aim is to develop an island-based action that let’s our group tease out – or butt into – ideas about public space/s in L.A. It could be a didactic intervention that articulates theoretical perspectives or it could be keyed for fun. Most likely we think it’ll be some delightful mix of the two.

We’re going to be talking about the project and exchanging ideas on the  (arguably) public space  that is this blog. So please join in with your comments and suggestions, we look forward to hearing from you – and class…..dive in >>>

First Interaction with Law Enforcement – Island Dinner

On January 24th, Michael Hebb was joined by 3 other people for a 32 mile trek to the 5 freeway as part of the Corridor Project.  The trek concluded on an asphalt, triangular island in the city of Orange.  There we met Michael’s group for a dinner prepared using ingredients forged and purchased along their trek.  The island is located at the intersection of the 5 freeway exit and N. State College Blvd.

Michael compares the 5 freeway to the Mississippi, saying they are both great channels for moving people and goods but the river has a plethora of narrative in the form of story and art that it has inspired while he claims the 5 freeway has almost nothing of the sort.  Michael’s project, thus, serves as a symbolic gesture to create narratives around the 5 freeway.

The Corridor project overlaps with Islands of LA, which is exploring the use and availability of traffic islands for peacefully assembly and expressive content, as protected under the First Amendment and the Public Forum doctrine.   Through these uses, Islands of LA is mapping islands of public space where people can legally, peacefully assemble at any time without a permit or a fee.

Michael’s group arrived before us and began setting up on a traffic island at the exit of the 5 freeway when an CHP officer pulled up.  This activity is the first time since the project began in 2007 that there was an interaction with a police officer.

Islands of LA Field Guide

ISLANDS OF LA is an evolving art-research experiment that began exploring traffic islands in September of 2007.  The focus at this time is on the use and availability of islands of public space where people can safely and legally assemble at any time without a special permit or fee to foster discussion and interaction.

In short, this project promotes the use of islands as a vehicle for creative, legal and self-reflective activities. The intention is to learn about and impact how we interact with each other and the urban environment.

The project is also mapping these interstitial or “in-between” public spaces by collecting and sharing information about the legal and creative use of them.

Together these islands of public space comprise the Islands of LA National Park. This online Field Guide is a work in process and welcome’s your suggestions and comments. 

ISLANDS OF PUBLIC SPACE

• Exist in different places throughout our cities, in relation to the urban environment and neighborhoods that surround them.  In other words, these are not just generic spaces, they are places with histories, people, movements, etc.
• They are highly visible and are surrounded by the everyday happening of the city, often creating an oddly intimate space.
• As unusual artifacts of our urban environment, using them provides a unique experience and perspective on the urban landscape.
• The intention of the activities is to re-imagine how these spaces can be used in ways that don’t interfere with other usages and that are sensitive to the dynamics of the space.
• They range in size; some can safely hold one person while others could have 50 or more people gathering safely.
• Activities are small, limited by the size of the island.  The emphasis is on repetition, temporary gestures and evolution rather than the spectacular, mega event or the creation of permanent, self-contained objects.
• Activities range from convivial and playful interactions such as playing tether ball or having a picnic to ones that explore or invite constructive difference and dissonance as important elements to a healthy community or society.
• Activities are created by different people.  Sometimes there are brief collaborations or collective actions, other times they are longer.  Interaction is essential. Through this evolving process something takes form.
• The use of these islands of public space is meant to create discussion and community but what is community?  Islands of LA views community as an evolving element of society, created by the interrelationship of challenges, conflicts, differences, opportunities and similarities rather than as something static and utopic.  Additionally, community is not a single community or public, but multiple publics.
  

TRAFFIC ISLAND BACKGROUND

• Islands have been created for different reasons.  Some are the result of the removal of streetcars.  Others are for traffic calming, pedestrian safety and/or beautification.
• Two typical, official usages include war memorials and placemarkers (i.e. signs with the name of the city or neighborhood)
• These islands are also filled with local histories and stories

ISLANDS OF LA CRITERIA FOR USAGE

Islands of LA focuses on temporary, non-oppositional usages that are legal. While it is an open question of the law, for activities to remain legal and be protected under the First Amendment, these spaces must at least meet the following criteria:

• Each island must have pedestrian access (i.e. there is a crosswalk or sidewalk).
• Usage cannot interfere with any substantial government interest such as traffic and public safety.  In other words, activities can’t block pedestrian access, be dangerous to vehicles or block the line of sight from one side of the street to the other side.
• Does not interfere with other expressive and non-expressive usages of the island
• A permit is not needed, just use your common sense.  (Note: Islands of LA is researching whether varies by city and/or size of group.)

SELECTED ISLAND ACTIVITIES

• Island archipelago
• Who Owns Public Space?
• Tether ball
• Picnic
• Art traffic signs
• Islands of LA National Park

Island Tetherball

If you like tetherball, you will be happy to know that on Saturday, January 24 from 12:00 Noon to 2:00 PM, you will be able to play tetherball without breaking into a school yard. I’ll be rolling out my portable tetherball assembly to the Island at East 4^th Street and Central Avenue. Please stop by.

There will be time for a formal tournament, as well as unstructured free play. Tournament participants will pay a sliding scale donation of up to two dollars. Free play is cost-free and unstructured.

Attendees are invited to compare this experience to a recreation experience in a formal public space designated for recreation in any way they like, for example:

• Calories burned
• People met
• Fees charged
• Number of new concepts unrelated to tetherball discussed

About the area:

Known to many as Skid Row, Central City east is called ‘The Largest Recovery Community’ in the world. This particular island is also one of the archipelago of islands that Ari, Rosa, and I have identified as islands that lie above running waste-water in our City’s storm drain system.

No-one really knows if tetherball on an Island is a good idea yet, but it seems like it’s worth a shot. Tetherball may be a good fit for Islands because the ball will not roll into traffic, and activities are focused at or near the center of the court at all times, unlike other games, such as baseball.

View Larger Map

Island disclaimer:

Islands are: unprogrammed space and free space.

Islands are and are not parks, lecture space, commercial space, recreation space, discussion space, gathering space, passing-through space, beautification space, blighted space, and memorial space.

The playing of tetherball on an Island in no way dictates that Island’s future or past use.

Island picnic

Last week I meet with a couple of lawyers on an island just on the other side of the 110 freeway in downtown.   Zac, one of the lawyers, and I have been working together for several months.  We were joined by Derek, a bankruptcy lawyer in his firm.  Derek and I have talked previously about the financial crisis.

We discussed issues of free association (the right to assemble or gather in public) related to traffic islands.  In particular, we talked about the uses of public spaces at night.  Traffic islands and other interstitial or in-between spaces exists throughout the city.  These are unique spaces where free association appears to be protected under the first amendment as long as you can access them legally (i.e. with a crosswalk) and you don’t interfere with any substantial government interest like traffic safety.

What would happen if the issue of evening usage of public space for gathering was brought before the court?  It is unclear but Zac suggested that the city would raise the issue of public safety (i.e. potential crime) that could come with the use of these spaces.   Safety is important but how much of our rights should we compromise?  Do we live in a place where the only gathering that we can tolerate at night, that we can believe is safe, is on private property or for special events?  What does this say, not only about our ability to exercise our rights in pursuit of life, liberty and happines…but what does it say about our city that we don’t believe we can be trusted to gather safely at night?  Are we that dangerous?  If so, why?  Could creative and provocative activities at night, in public, reduce this problem rather than exacerbate or merely reveal it?

Are we sure there is even this problem?  At the moment, it is probably legal.  Islands of LA is not trying to challenge the city or the court.  Instead, the intention is to safely utilize these spaces and, in doing so, reveal that these unique spaces and places can be utilized to foster discussion and creative engagements.

We also had a confab about the financial crisis.  What does it mean that we allow some private enterprises to get so big that we cannot let them fail?  If a group of private investors had to create a bail-out package for the banks, would they have gotten better terms (we believe so)?  Why is there such a lack of oversight about so much money?  Will this eventually subside to the point where it is repeated?  Given the situation, can we do something about it?

Expedition in Dallas

When: Saturday, January 24, 1:00pm

Where: University Gallery, University of Dallas, TX

Registration/cost: this is a free event, no registration required

Join us for an excursion…an expedition into public space about land use. We will visit a parcel of interstitial land where we can legally assemble at any time of day or night for a group art-making activity. In large, car-centric urban cities, most of the public land where you can legally assemble at any time of day or night are traffic islands. This is part of an ongoing project called Islands of LA that has been exploring the use of traffic islands as public space to foster discussion and create community.

On January 24th, we will take the DART to a traffic island in Dallas.
After a confab about the use of public space and the history of the island we will visit, we will engage in a group art-making activity that combines phenomenological experiences of the interstitial piece of land we will visit with critical dialogue and creative expression. The result of our activity will be installed in the gallery the following week. Everyone will be invited to participate in the installation.

The activity is a collaboration between LA-based Ari Kletzky, founder of Islands of LA, and Dallas-based Lydia Regalado, founder of Skirt Project, aka TRIKS.

WHEN: 1/24 from 1pm – 5pm or so
WHERE: Meet at the university gallery
WHAT TO BRING: Money to ride DART, a chair or blanket for sitting, snacks/water

Note: If the weather is bad, the event will be postponed for February 7th.

Expedition in Eagle Rock

When: Saturday 1/24, ~9pm

Where: Center for the Arts, Eagle Rock

Registration/cost: this is a free event, no registration required

This Friday, as part of an exhibition at the Center for the Arts, Eagle Rock called Needle In A Haystack curated by Nate Garcia, Islands of LA will lead an expedition in search of public space where we can legally assemble at any time of day or night.  the activity challenges us to consider why we don’t fathom  going out at night in public to hang out and freely associate without being required to spend money (i.e. at a restaurant or bar).  while we sometimes hang out in public during the day (i.e. at parks and beaches), we don’t think of doing the same at night.  Why is this?  should our society allow us to do this?  additionally,  participants will be invited to use or activate the spaces we find and to consider the challenges (i.e. ethical, social and aesthetic) of doing this.  finally, along the way, people can take pictures, draw, etc and contribute them to the gallery for a collage.

Time: the opening starts at 6pm.  A small group of us will leave around 9 or 10pm.

What to bring: whatever creative art-making tools you like (paper/pen, sketchpad, camera, video), warm clothing, water.

Note: this activity continues with an excursion/expedition on 2/7 about the use and availability of overlooked public space.

MiWon Kwon and Steven Wright

ILA is an experiment. One of the ideas it experiments with is the place of “cultural theory” in the practical sphere. Along these lines, some posts on this blog will highlight questions, thinkers, challenges, artists, projects, theories that relate to the way ILA is approaching this.

Here are two:

MIWON KWON (from One Place After Another)
“Certainly, site-specific art can lead to the unearthing of repressed histories, help provide greater visibility to maginalized groups and issues, and initiate the re(dis)covery of “minor” places so far ignored by the dominant culture. But inasmuch as the current socioeconomic order thrives on the (artificial) production and (mas) consumption of difference (for difference sake), the siting of art in “real” places can also be a means to extract the social and historical dimensions of these places in order to variously serve the thematic drive of an artist, satisfy institutional demographic profiles, or fulfill the fiscal needs of a city. “

STEVEN WRIGHT
Beyond contemplative value: operative value

[There exist] art practices with low coefficients of artistic visibility, raising the possibility of a new status for art ­ in the absence of artworks, authorship or spectatorship. Envisaging art in terms of competence rather than performance, process rather than outcome, poses a distinct challenge for the art world because in losing its visibility as such, art has only its history to fall back on. For practices whose self-understanding
stems from the visual arts tradition, not to mention for the normative institutions that govern it, the problem cannot be merely wished away for if it is not visible, art eludes all control, all prescription, in short, all ³policing². If ever more artists seem prepared to deliberately impair their work¹s coefficient of artistic visibility, is it not in order to give teeth to the sort of consensus-busting power to which art often lays claim?

In contexts often far removed from art-specific spaces and time, the past few years have witnessed the emergence of a broad range of such practices, which, in spite of certain affinities and indeed, in some cases, of undeniable kinship, can only be described as art-related rather than art-specific activities, often laying no particular claim to art status. In many cases, these forms of symbolic production, implicitly questioning and even shattering the borders of art, live up to art¹s promises far more effectively than those practices upheld and underwritten by current artistic conventions. Yet the status of these art-related activities, has never been the object of sustained scrutiny (they are usually written off as conceptual leftovers of the seventies). Even contemporary aesthetic philosophy tends to invoke them as evidence only insofar as they are predefined as not art, in a hasty endeavor to again secure the borderlines of what is conventionally known as art. (Note: I’m looking for the source for the above excerpt, meanwhile, here are Here is an other essay he has wrote: Users and Usership of Art: Challenging Expert Culture)

Party at Main and Alameda

Artist, writer and curator Janet Owen Driggs is a guest contributor to the Islands of LA blog.

Until recently the intersection opposite Philippe’s didn’t have a proper traffic island and crossing the street was a take-your-life-in-your-hands experience. Now though there’s a sizable island at the triangular space where Main and Alameda converge. Landscaped with young trees, lawn, pathways and a couple of benches, it’s made walking down Main to get a dipped sandwich a whole lot safer and far more pleasant.

I love that island! But never more so than on Sunday when, inspired by Ari and Islands of LA, I had a birthday party there.

We first cooked up the idea at the opening of the Good Space in December, when Ari brought together people who are pretty compelled by issues related to public space and I mentioned my love of picnics. One thing led to another as it does and a few weeks later there we were, thanks to Matt Driggs’ organizational skills, with a 10″ chocolate fudge cake, an undisclosed number of candles, some lovely friends, and Theo.

He (Theo Peter Owen Driggs) is a sunny toddler who, refusing the label, strides with fascinated intent toward moving vehicles. So, we also brought along a very large baby corral (aka ‘cage’).

We’d estimated that a lunchtime party would take about 2 hours but, what with the sunshine, good company, a happy baby, and Ari’s comfy chairs, we stayed over 4.

We were hardly at the still quiet eye of a storm – the intersection’s pretty quiet on a Sunday after all – but there was definitely a calm-amid-action thing going on. Best of all, we weren’t going anywhere, we’d already arrived. And, while it seems small when you’re focused on getting to the other side, the island  gets larger when you’re just sitting.

Like the jungle in Max’s Wild Thing bedroom, while we were noticing seed balls on the young sycamores and eating cake, the island grew up all around.

Thanks Matt, Ari, Lev, Stefan, Jeremy, Julie, Max, LaLena, Bill, Theo – and this particular island of LA – for a wonderful birthday afternoon.