* THE MALIBU PROJECT *
> jenny price & david kipen >
* THE MALIBU PROJECT: “PRIVATE PROPERTY” SIGNS FOR A PUBLIC BEACH *
'Do not trespass. Private property line begins 25 feet toward the ocean from this sign' - sign on Broad Beach, western Malibu “The Malibu Project” will suggest 20 alternative ways to say “Keep the hell away from this beach.” In a city notorious for its failures of public space, homeowners’ efforts in Malibu to block public access to more than 20 miles of an essential public space - the beach - counts as one of the most egregious violations of public space in L.A. County. And the most egregious efforts take place on Broad Beach, where the homeowners have posted signs of questionable accuracy and legal authority to mark the exact location of the line between public and private (technically the “mean high tide line”), and have hired security guards to motor the beach on ATVs and enforce these signs.
We believe that beachfront homeowners who wish to treat public land as a private riviera can at least be more creative and / or accurate. We propose to erect signs that range in perspective from Sensitive (“If I were to want anyone on this beach, it would be you”) to Legalistic (“Since 1/3 of us actually have designated our dry sand as a public easement in exchange for permits to develop, there is a 66% chance you are trespassing on my property) to Marxist (“Private property is theft, and I stole this”). We propose to erect 7 signposts atop a layer of sand. One will show a photo of an existing Broad Beach sign. Five will display 4 signs apiece to flip through. And one will provide paper and pens so that visitors can create their own signs to flip through.
> bios >
jennifer price is a freelance writer and environmental historian, is the author of Flight Maps: Adventures with Nature in Modern America (1999). She has published in the anthologies Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature and The Nature of Nature: New Essays from America's Finest Writers on Nature, and in the L.A. Weekly, Los Angeles Times, American Scholar, and New York Times. She has a Ph.D. in history from Yale University, and is currently living on Venice Beach and writing a new book about nature in Los Angeles.
David
Kipen is the book critic for KCRW's 'Overbooked,' NPR's 'Day to Day,' KQED's
'California Report' and Hearst's San Francisco Chronicle (hey mister, let somebody
else play for a change!)
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