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.