ForYourArt™ | KNOW | FINDING AN OTHER L.A.

KNOW	INTERVIEWS

Finding an Other L.A.

A view of the city beneath the traffic lanes

Last November the Llano Del Rio collective asked Angelenos to help it map the existence of another Los Angeles. The colorful map produced through participants’ suggestions illustrates locations that support, imagine, act and aid in the creation of a city outside the freeway systems. The list includes, among other things, beekeepers, greywater operators, hacker spaces, cooperatives, collectives, art spaces, gardens, swimming holes, cooking collectives and think tanks. The map is available at some of its most popular locations, including Machine Project, Farmlab and Sea and Space Explorations. If you can't find one in your neighborhood, e-mail llanodelrio@gmail.com, and the collective will mail you a copy.

ForYourArt’s Sarah Williams conducted the interview with Robby Herbst and Katie Bachler, two spokespeople for the Llano Del Rio Collective.

1. What inspired you to create an alternative map of Los Angeles?

It came through two major inspirations. ...The first, through critical theory: This summer we read Chris Carlsson's Nowtopia, Semiotext(e)’s Autonomia and Gramsci Is Dead by Richard J.F. Day. All three books take very seriously what is usually just regarded as DIY activities. All three books, are trying to make sense of the Anarchist trends toward self-organization and productivity in exception to hierarchical power. Carlsson's book in particular is interesting because he is writing from California—and while his perspective is directly gazing at the Bay Area cultural scene, he spends time interviewing Angelenos who are doing some of the most interesting cultural organizing in our city. L.A. does not contain writ large the utopian bent of our northern neighbors, so it was refreshing to see this. Carlsson's book is based in an analysis of "class composition"—a neo-Marxist position that looks at how people compose themselves as groups beyond the broadly conceived (and, many would say, out-of-date) notions of working, middle and ruling classes. He does this in order to try to retheorize the possibility for emerging power in groups not formally recognized in traditional Marxist/capitalist dialectics. The book got us wondering if the architecture of "nowtopia" that he lays out so well in his book can be visualized for L.A.

Simultaneous to this, we were really struck by the convergence/simultaneity of social/cultural trends in L.A.; the explosion of bike culture, the ongoing wars in the Middle East and the concurrent rise in craft, the "end of oil" and the quest for bioregional local solutions, etc. In art discourses, this is played out, very roughly, through relational or social practices; which is itself playing out in many (many) projects and experimental "art" spaces here in town (we recognize that our map—though rich—is certainly incomplete), that themselves are pushing the border of what "art" is. Further, the influence of "platform"-based projects, done by some social practitioners, which are able to make a footprint in the city and then are endlessly reproduced by other folks ... either as pleasure, play, representation, survival or in experimental living.

2. What was the most unexpected discovery made while working on this?

It's always super exciting to hear about any activity that is experimenting with something different. We can think about one particular geographic location, for instance a half-mile stretch of Glendale Boulevard, let's say. ... The Echo Park Ornithological Club meets here to do urban bird-watching, a group of cyclists circumvented City Hall and painted their own bike lanes here and some oddball space called Dan Graham opened up recently. This kind of creative use and gathering happens all the time throughout the city, by people of all backgrounds. While we could point to one [project] and say, "That's an unexpected discovery," I think we are more interested in trying to frame (in a similar manner as ForYourArt) a wider cultural context in which other things are going on. Much DIY practice is short lived or, more commonly, it is not sited and only has a presence online (which is a kind of contradiction).

With this project, A Map for an Other L.A., we are trying to capture a moment of time where many unexpected discoveries are occurring at once, for the express purpose of normalizing the experience of the unexpected. Wouldn't that be different? To discover that L.A., with all its normalized dysfunctions, has become something truly unexpected? What would that look like?

3. Do you have any theories about why there has been a surge in this type of activity, or at least in the attention paid to it?

As you suggest, there’s always been DIY in L.A., whether it’s street vending, unpermitted additions to homes, gardening, unlawful gatherings, underground citizens. The L.A. riots spurred on the South Central Farm and the Peace and Justice Center. The 2000 Democratic National Convention spurred on L.A. Indymedia, KILLRADIO and the Arts and Action Space. LACE has been around for decades. Unmet needs, chaos, hunger, poverty, lack of opportunities, all seek outlets, solutions, answers. For many people in L.A., capitalism has always been in crisis. It didn’t take two wars, a bankrupted state, a “Great Recession” and the threat of climate change to get all these projects going. However, all of this unrest certainly expands the pool of folks who are receptive to hearing about these different ways of being. In the art world you’ve got the trend toward relational practices (among many terms for it), which provides a discursive frame, and institutional legitimacy, for activities that in the past lay far beyond the discipline of “art.”

4. How do you hope this map and a larger awareness of "An Other L.A." will affect people who are already participating in this landscape? What about those who are not yet?

For those participating in the landscape we imagine a greater sense of self-awareness. That is, an understanding of how many different practitioners are operating along remarkably similar terms of creativity. We hope that this map will help individuals imagine themselves more as a spatially diverse yet similar class of people exploring many of the same questions from diverse perspectives. Ultimately, we hope that this kind of awareness may occasionally manifest itself in acts of solidarity, mutual aid and collective utopian actions and dreaming.

For those who aren't aware of this landscape, we hope that they become aware and participate.

5. Are there more mapping projects in the future for Llano Del Rio collective? Would you take this model to other cities?

This kind of alternative mapping of spaces has been going on for decades, if not more, by various groups in various forms. The Llana Del Rio Collective has just done this using contemporary discourse and glasses for L.A. Area Magazine in Chicago, for instance, regularly does a similar thing for that city's infrastructures. We wouldn't be interested in reproducing this model in other cities exactly as we did it here. ... L.A. has its own "art" climate, activist climate, its own geography. It would be akin to moving an agave to Alaska and having it speak about the significance of snowmen. However, the hope for this project is to present a model that can be reproduced by others and retooled for another space's context … .

For our next project, maybe we’ll look at survivalist tendencies in the L.A. region, as it is a testing ground for self-determination and neoliberal attitudes.