Along the LA River — Rachel Lee

Graphic Design

DAW Graphics (digital) | Along the LA River (lecture) | C2Vision (print) | KSP Book Series (print)

Down the LA River
2026

Illustrator, Photography, Are.na, HTML, CSS.

The LA River is one of the most vital, mismanaged, and telling artifacts of the American landscape. With extensive and expansive information surrounding the river and LADWP, this is a micro-history of a macroproblem and an attempt to deconstruct an overwhelming civic apparatus via bicycle... In the spirit of Guy Debord.

For seven short (but compact) days, I rode my bike along different parts of the LA River for 1- 2 hours. Using an Are.na block flow, the research is structured as a digital and physical index that draws on poetry, crowdsourcing, archival texts, environmental data, and personal geography, forming a network of connected ideas to map the complex dialogue among institutions, subcultural resilience, and a particular kind of collective memory.

Presented as a lecture for DESMA 145.
Recordings will be available shortly.