Below, a few of the traffic islands that make up the Islands of LA, a "national park" as installation piece.
Islands of LA creator Ari Kletzky points out that that while the effort may appear tongue-in-cheek, its underpinnings are serious. What's being promoted is the possibility of the public realm:
...[T]he sign is not a movie ad. Nor part of a clever labeling scheme for city districts. Nor is it a joke. Provocative and whimsical, it’s a prompt meant to take the mind down a side road that’s often as invisible as the traffic island itself. It’s an invitation: ” ‘Come travel here in this idea,’ ” says artist and activist Kletzky, who since last fall has been placing signs across greater Los Angeles – both “Islands of LA” and another, “Shift: Do Art Any Time,” that mimics the city’s ubiquitous “No Parking/Tow Away” placards but done up in an arresting shade of canary.
Kletzky’s aim is as multilayered and unconventional as the city it
embroiders, drawing attention to islands of every shape, size and
intention....We speed by them – our traffic island
archipelagoes – rendering them a blur; or have become so inured to them
along our well-worn paths that we tend to stare beyond them. Trapped on
them as pedestrians, we find them an annoying interruption between
intention and goal, departure and destination. But traffic islands,
Kletzky suggests, are “inquisitive places.” They are the pause in the
city’s long, rambling monologue to itself.
Kletzky sees opportunity in the oft-overlooked traffic islands of what's likely one of the world's most autocentric cities. They are at once both ubiquitous and individual, a conflation of basic needs and unique circumstances:
Though it’s still early, a cacophony of responses has let Kletzky know
he’s onto something. For someone who was feeling isolated, set apart
from the city, it has evolved into a way to stitch together community
despite the region’s growing congestion and unwieldy expanses. It’s
building community out of an idea. “It’s made working in public much
more interesting because the public exists,” in it he says. “The project is about using this vehicle of art – slap some wheels on
it and see where it goes.” It’s Kletzky’s message in a bottle. “The
collaboration is really essential – the repetition of it. It’s in that
process that something takes form.”
(thanks, Jason)
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Posted by: Custom Essays | 01/29/2009 at 05:55
good blog
Posted by: danial | 07/06/2009 at 08:14