Umbrella City: LA perspectives

Nicole Friend, + Davina Mashian+ Fortino Reyes + Tuoya Wulan

Los Angeles, a single sprawling metropolis is not your conventional city. Home to a number of “micro-cities”, LA cannot be summed up by a single image or description. The city is home to a wide variety of neighborhoods, separated by a range of cultures, geographies, boundaries, and microclimates. An "umbrella city", Los Angeles is a network of communities, with each community defined by its distinctive lifestyle and perspective.

The covenants of the mid-1900s, and the shifting of the port of Los Angeles from Santa Monica to the lower southern region of Long Beach is an example of the factors that completely overrode the traditional development of this city. The result was the diffusion of different people and cultures to specific regions throughout the city. The exhibition will reflect on the aftermath of such factors by introducing historical data and demographic information followed by the recording of eight people living in different parts of Los Angeles. The aim is to identify the unique and distinctive variation of a city that at first glance appears to be a homogenous network of streets and freeways. Critical aspects from cultures, income, transportation, to amenities (such as malls, parks etc) will indicate how these features and experiences define radical differences not otherwise perceptible.South Central, Hollywood, Brentwood/Pacific Palisades, Venice and Downtown will be among the areas explored all in contemporary views.

The individual lives and experiences of people living in the city are portrayed through photomontages, film and maps. Visitors will follow the experiences with “situationalist” style mappings on the floor, images, video and other media surrounding them. Visitors are emerged in collage of images that spread through the space, free to make their way through the exhibition either following the maps on the floor or walls, which are guides for the exhibition. Visitors are therefore not only looking at Los Angeles through the perspective of its many local inhabitants but are free to make their own decision about the city. At the exit visitors can participate in an interactive mapping of LA by writing or drawing their “LA perspective” contributing to the overall richness of the exhibition.

By providing these narratives visitors will observe something new about the city that they have never experienced. What will be discovered is unknown for all who participate. This exhibition is more than tracing people through LA; maps, images and videos show the city through the eyes, ears and minds of local Angelinos.