* LOS ANGELES URBAN RANGERS *
A brew of local artists, geographers, environmental historians, curators, architects, and others – are here to serve you, visitors to the gardenLAb experiment. We aim, with both wit and a healthy dose of sincerity, to facilitate creative, critical, head-on, oblique, and crisscrossed investigations into our sprawling metropolis and its various ecologies.
In the tradition of the National Park Service and other land management agencies, we will offer a series of (simulated) campfire programs and guided hikes within the Wind Tunnel over the course of the gardenLAb experiment, on the following Saturdays between 2-4pm: September 18, September 25, October 2, October 9, and October 16. For specific program descriptions, please see the schedule below.
Like all good park rangers, we will be identifiable via our uniform, including our official Los Angeles Urban Rangers patch. (Unlike most park rangers you may have encountered, however, our intention is to blur or subvert conventional assumptions about the natural versus cultural, the wild versus urban, by treating both the city and exhibition as found ecologies.) Although we will be a mobile force throughout the Wind Tunnel, please look for us at our installation space, the Campfire Circle, in its southeast corner. Also be sure to grab your own copy of the Los Angeles Urban Rangers Official Map and Guide, a free publication orienting you to our project and, more importantly, to Los Angeles at large.
Project Organizers: Emily Scott, Sara Daleiden, Therese Kelly, Jenny Price
Schedule for Campfire Talks and Guided Hikes (2-4pm at the Campfire Circle / Wind Tunnel)
Saturday,
September 18:
Thoreau Goes to Los Angeles
How can we write about nature in L.A.? Why have nature writers shunned this
megalopolis? Why should L.A. in fact be a mecca for nature writing? Why would
an interest in cities save nature writing from being so terribly boring? Ranger
Jenny Price explores these questions and more as she surveys a wide range of
urban nature stories that this literary genre has entirely ignored. Join her
as she describes our connections to nature in L.A. through such topics as mango
body whips, murdered chihuahuas, the social geography of L.A.’s air, and
the saga of the L.A. River – which is arguably the most important L.A.
nature story of all.
[Jenny Price, 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.]
End Landscaping: Los Angeles Freeway Gardens
Everyday, countless Angelenos whiz along the freeway at many miles per hour
without noticing the landscaping at their side. Join Ranger Emily Scott to learn
more about who manages these edgy green spaces, which plants cover the more
than 8,000 acres of sinewy freeway “gardens” in Los Angeles and
Ventura counties, why various flora are chosen for their ornamental value and/or
abilities to endure drought, buffer sound, control erosion, resist weeds, and
even counterbalance auto emissions. Discover, also, the wonderful world of “transportation
art,” intended for maximum community pleasure and minimum driver distraction.
Finally, consider how and why these areas – first pitched as ideal picnic
stops for leisurely Sunday afternoon excursions – are now almost entirely
access controlled, or off-limits to embodied exploration and occupation.
[Emily Scott is an art historian and park ranger/naturalist. In both academia
and national parks, her work addresses visual culture and nature, with an emphasis
on post-1945 art, media, and architecture practices that critically engage landscape
and/or ecology. She is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in contemporary art and theory
at UCLA, with plans to begin a dissertation next year on land art and wasteland
aesthetics.]
Following these campfire talks, Sara Daleiden will lead a guided hike through
the Wind Tunnel.
[Sara Daleiden is an artist, curator and administrator who focuses on viewer
experience through the creation of installations, exhibition systems and interventions
within the city. Previous projects include Rust Spot, Wearable Sculpture Fashion
Show and Travelling Wearables. She is a recent addition to Los Angeles and works
with Cliff Garten Studio, which generates public art/space projects throughout
the United States, including the Los Angeles MTA Exposition Line and the Walnut
Creek Veterans Memorial.]
Saturday,
September 25:
Los Angeles and the Nature of Time
How we experience time in Los Angeles is structured by everything from cell-phones,
which seek to minimize it, to movies featuring natural disasters in town, which
seek to maximize it. Both are examples, however, of living only in the present.
Ranger Bill Fox will help us rediscover time across a longer spectrum in Los
Angeles – from the La Brea Tar Pits to the Forest Lawn Memorial Parks
to the Mt. Wilson Observatory. Along the way we’ll detour into the human
neurophysiology of time, how to make lava for Hollywood, and why Los Angeles
has the largest collection of faux classical Italian sculpture in its gardens.
[Bill Fox has written books on cognition and landscapes that range from the
Great Basin to the Antarctic, Los Angeles and Las Vegas to the Arctic. He has
received fellowships from the Guggenheim, National Science Foundation, and National
Endowment for the Humanities, and has been in residence at the Getty and with
the Lannan Foundation.]
Hunting and Gathering in the Big City
Often when we think of hunting and gathering, ancient or “traditional”
cultures come to mind. In many of America’s greatest cities, however,
the urban poor still forage for wild and domestic food simply to meet their
daily caloric needs. These resources are not just limited to discarded trash,
but include wild and feral urban animals such as birds, cats and dogs, fish,
and rodents. In cities like Los Angeles, those without daily food security may
also be forced to trespass onto private property in order to collect fruits,
nuts, and other edible plants. Join Ranger Pete Alagona as he explores L.A.’s
networks for finding, collecting, sharing, and preparing these urban foods.
How do these foraging activities change traditional notions of human ecology,
hunting and gathering, and ecological resources? And what do these practices
– and our reactions to them – say about urban America today?
[Pete Alagona has masters degrees in history and geography, and is currently
a doctoral student at UCLA. His research examines the historical relationships
between science and politics in endangered species conservation. Pete has worked
as a National Park Service Wilderness Ranger in the North Cascades and as an
Interpretive Naturalist on the Channel Islands. These days he splits his time
between research in LA, teaching in the High Sierra, and home in Berkeley.]
Following these campfire talks, gardenLAb experiment curators Fritz Haeg and
Francois Perrin will lead a guided hike through the Wind Tunnel.
Saturday,
October 2:
Toxic Tourism in Los Angeles
Ranger Donna Houston explores the toxic history of Los Angeles from the perspective
of environmental justice. Participants will learn about the history and politics
of environmental justice activism in Los Angeles as well as become acquainted
with some important sites of environmental struggle via a virtual toxic tour
of the city. Toxic touring is a way of reclaiming landscapes blighted by industrial
pollutants and wastes as places of community and cultural memory. Toxic touring
involves developing different strategies for ‘walking in the city’
in order to recover histories suppressed through the often violent reorderings
of L.A.’s urban and industrial landscape.
[Originally from Perth, Western Australia, Donna Houston is a graduate student
in Geography at USC. Her research interests include radical perspectives on
landscape, history and environmental politics. She is currently completing her
dissertation, "Topographies of Memory and Power: Environmental Justice
in the 'New' Nuclear West."]
Alley CAT (a special guided hike, departing from and returning
to the Wind Tunnel):
Led by Ranger Chris Kahle, the alleyCAT tour will explore several alley sites
located between Art Center’s Wind Tunnel exhibition space and downtown
Los Angeles. This is both a driving and walking tour with multiple stops, so
be prepared to carpool/caravan and hit the alley trails. We will encounter illegally
dumped trash, graffiti and tagging, as well as sublime views and wildlife. Your
ranger will lead you on an encounter of these urban landscapes to spark discussion
on their current state and provide a forum for participants to share their own
reactions and visions. Alleys are a world away right behind our homes, a lesser-explored
touch-point between public and private urban space.
[A cultural geographer, Chris Kahle researches urban open spaces, especially
"vague terrains" ignored for their potential to become activated play
or green places. His current work explores the science-fair display method –
typical in secondary schools, county fairs, and exhibition booths – to
visualize social scientific data and sublime urban landscapes.]
Saturday,
October 9:
End Landscaping: Los Angeles Freeway Gardens
Everyday, countless Angelenos whiz along the freeway at many miles per hour
without noticing the landscaping at their side. Join Ranger Emily Scott to learn
more about who manages these edgy green spaces, which plants cover the more
than 8,000 acres of sinewy freeway “gardens” in Los Angeles and
Ventura counties, why various flora are chosen for their ornamental value and/or
abilities to endure drought, buffer sound, control erosion, resist weeds, and
even counterbalance auto emissions. Discover, also, the wonderful world of “transportation
art,” intended for maximum community pleasure and minimum driver distraction.
Finally, consider how and why these areas – first pitched as ideal picnic
stops for leisurely Sunday afternoon excursions – are now almost entirely
access controlled, or off-limits to embodied exploration and occupation.
[Emily Scott is an art historian and park ranger/naturalist. In both academia
and national parks, her work addresses visual culture and nature, with an emphasis
on post-1945 art, media, and architecture practices that critically engage landscape
and/or ecology. She is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in contemporary art and theory
at UCLA, with plans to begin a dissertation next year on land art and wasteland
aesthetics.]
Industrial Habitat: The Baldwin Hills
Did you know that the only canine that can climb trees lives in the very heart
of Los Angeles? Ranger Therese Kelly will share the story of the rare Gray Fox
whose crazy feats also include living amongst 400 bobbing oil derricks in a
massively degraded habitat. The Baldwin Hills – heavily industrial yet
ecologically fragile – is set to become the largest urban park in state
history. Rising 500 feet above the L.A. basin, the Baldwin Hills command impressive
views to the Santa Monica Bay, the San Gabriel Mountains, the whole of developed
Los Angeles, and even Point Dume. Come learn about this fascinating brownfield
site in the middle of the city, which supports a rich array of native plants,
insects, and animals.
[Therese Kelly is an architect, author, and editor. Her work explores the intersection
of our natural and urban environments, conceptions of nature, and public space.
She has edited numerous books and articles on architecture and design for ANY
Magazine and Princeton Architectural Press, written for several design publications,
and serves on the board of the Los Angeles Forum for Architecture and Urban
Design. Therese holds degrees in architecture from Princeton University and
UCLA, and is currently practicing architecture in Santa Monica.]
Following these campfire talks, project organizers Sara Daleiden and Emily Scott
will lead a guided hike through the Wind Tunnel.
Saturday,
October 16:
Sustainability vs. Sprawl: Revisiting Banham’s Four Ecologies
Long maligned as the poster child of smog, sprawl and unsustainable development,
Los Angeles has in the past few years surprisingly emerged as a leader in “green”
urbanism. The three “greenest” buildings in the U.S. are located
in Los Angeles, pioneering efforts in integrated watershed management throughout
the L.A. River basin, locally-based efforts to reclaim abandoned industrial
lands for parks, gardens and open space, and innovations in transit planning
in the L.A. region are just a few of the growing number of important “green”
designs, plans and policies shaping the city. Join Ranger Alan Loomis as he
explores the beaches, the foothills, the freeways, and the flatlands of Green
L.A.
[Alan Loomis is a senior urban designer at Moule & Polyzoides Architects
and Urbanists, were he has directed planning projects for Pomona College, the
University of California Santa Barbara, and various cities in the Inland Empire
and Central California, in addition to participating in other urban design and
research projects throughout California, New Mexico and New Jersey. He has taught
urban design at Woodbury University, and written for ArcCA and loudpaper, among
other journals. He is a board member of the Los Angeles Forum for Architecture
and Urban Design, where he directs web-publications, and the creator/editor
of www.DeliriousLA.net, a comprehensive weekly listing of architecture events
in Southern California.]
Toxic
Tourism in Los Angeles
Ranger Donna Houston explores the toxic history of Los Angeles from the perspective
of environmental justice. Participants will learn about the history and politics
of environmental justice activism in Los Angeles as well as become acquainted
with some important sites of environmental struggle via a virtual toxic tour
of the city. Toxic touring is a way of reclaiming landscapes blighted by industrial
pollutants and wastes as places of community and cultural memory. Toxic touring
involves developing different strategies for ‘walking in the city’
in order to recover histories suppressed through the often violent reorderings
of L.A.’s urban and industrial landscape.
[Originally from Perth, Western Australia, Donna Houston is a graduate student
in Geography at USC. Her research interests include radical perspectives on
landscape, history and environmental politics. She is currently completing her
dissertation, "Topographies of Memory and Power: Environmental Justice
in the 'New' Nuclear West."]
A guided hike through the Wind Tunnel will follow these campfire talks.