Planetary Stories Project

"To Act Globally, Think Locally – Through Stories"

Black Earth Institute

Place: Los Angeles, CA, USA

WALKING LA: The Urban Camper and Her Faithful Hippie Guide
By Linda Weintraub and Skip Schuckmann

View Larger Map

"Where am I?"
 
Numbered buildings on named streets announce place.
 
Signs orient consciousness, activate attention, conjure desire, establish destination.
 
East/west. North/south. The earth is marked.  Check it out. 
Over there is a sign announcing "Figueroa Street". 
Perpendicular to it is "Eighth Street".
 
The curb delineates the walking path on one side. The wall of the building establishes the other. There is a breeze.  Across the street, Nike in pink shines in the shadow.  As the hippie walks toward the intersection, sun warms his face.
 
"Please tell me how to get to the Museum of Contemporary Art."
 
The hippie responds, "Leave the stream bed and walk with the sun on your back until the distant mountains come into view.  Turn up hill.  At the peak is the Museum.  I will walk with you."
           
                        The sun
                                    The north star
                                                Lichens
                                                            Prevailing winds.

Addresses

Street signs

Centers.
First a construct. Later a concept. 
Main Streets. Broadways. Park Avenues.
This is where trails first intersected, beside springs, where travelers gathered to refresh themselves.  
Then someone would erect a shelter. An inn opened.
This is where the first traffic light was located.
 
A refreshing point on the trail establishes a power position. It shows the geophysical importance of place. 
Power diminishes as distance increases from the Center.
This paradigm applies to many forms of growth
Value is measured in concentric rings.
But contour and porosity determine land utilization, setting the conditions of development of centrist cultures. 
Then as now, settlements spread slowly up hills and accelerate through the valleys, rapidly on dry land and slowly on wet. 
Human habitation, like water, follows the dictates of these contrasting features of the land/air interface.
 
The hippie artist tells the urban camper, "Water is the active element within the primal triad: land, air, water. 
In sacrament, smoke signals the release of water from organic matter through combustion.  It carries prayer to the sky.
 
"We emulate the hydrological cycle by giving thanks. Oscillatory rhythms are the tide of life and the beat of the heart."
 
In the sidewalk concrete they discover three circular signs.  The first is a metal disk two feet in diameter set within a well-crafted metal ring.  A hole just large enough to service a finger or an iron bar penetrates the surface of the metal disk.
 
The words embossed on its surface say "City of Los Angeles."  It is a trap door that leads to the life source of the city, confined and concealed and remote.  
 
The other sidewalk markings proclaim the existence of these material blessings.
 
                        "NO DUMPING.  THIS DRAINS TO OCEAN."
 
Blue                                
            Ripples
                        Fish
                                    Canoe
                                                Rushes
                                                            An onshore breeze
 
Two blue stencils in the concrete depict concentric circles, each surrounds a ripple pattern and a fish.
 
In one, the fish appears full-bodied and happily submerged beneath a trio of double ripples that capture the continuity and grandeur of the ocean
On the other, skeletal remains of a fish lie moldering under a ripple design that is angular and broken. 
 
What might have interrupted the surging regularity of the ocean's meter and cadence?
            Antifreeze?
                        Cleaning fluid?
                                    Toxic overflow deposited upon the beaches?
 
Who plotted this tactic of visual opposition in sidewalk pictographs?
                        The Department of Sanitation?
                                    The Transportation Authority?
                                               
 
Deterioration of the paint reveals that these fish have long laid upon this sidewalk. Have people heeded the ‘no dumping’ rule?  Despite this reminder of the dreaded consequences of carelessness and neglect, toxins flow in the outwash from the city, deposited there by the habitants of this drainage. 
 
Further down the road:

Wet and dry stand pipes

                        Sprinkler spickets
                                    "W.B."
                                                Yellow shrines marked "L. A. F. D."
           
The wild waters are tamed by the city bureaucracy and its vast infrastructure of miens and valves.
 
Seeking the actuality of moisture, flow, coolness and freshness, the artist and the curator stoop until our heads are aligned with the curb.  Prostrated, as if to pay homage, they peer into the cavity in the concrete structure.  A sturdy, steel ladder comes into view.  Eight rungs are visible, but they guess its length exceeds this height.  They drop a stone.  There is a silent pause, and then, amidst the drone of the traffic circulating around their heads, the blessed sound of a splash. 
 
 
"We are water beings."
 
They turn up Eighth Street, walk into their shadows, observe indicators of neglect
            wild chamomile
                        solanasee
                                    aloe
                                                heron's bill
                                                            spotted sperge
                                                                        forrest lust
                                                                                    grasses
                                                                                                nicotiniana
                                                                                                            palm tree seedlings sprout in vacant lots and in the city's cracks and crevices.
 
A black widow spider and her web encircle a brass six-outlet testing spicket beside three large bronze plaques.
 
                                    PRIVATE PROPERTY
                                    RIGHT TO PASS BY PERMISSION AND
                                    SUBJECT TO CONTROL OF OWNER
                                    SECT. 1008 CALIFORNIA CIVIL CODE
 
 
 
                                    PRIVATE PROPERTY.
                                    UNAUTHORIZED PARKED
                                    VEHICLES WILL BE TOWED
                                    AWAY AT OWNERS EXPENSE
                                    22658 C.V.C.
                                    L.A.P.D. 485-3294
                                    BILTMORE SECURITY DEPT.
                                    612-1584
 
 
                                    DO NOT ENTER
 
"We are people of the land."
 
 
 
Postscript: The Urban Camper (the curator): Linda Weintraub
 
I, the urban camper, am the curator. He, the hippie guide, is the artist. The artist left the studio and took to the streets with the curator hot on his heels.  Formerly disparate parts of the art bureaucracy overlap. My curatorial task seethes with the fervor of the primal creative moment.  Ecosystem dynamics pervade our professional encounters. Segmented processes within the formal operations coincide.  Options and conclusions become indistinguishable.  They expand to include integrated, eye-witness accounts of the artist, the process, the artwork, the public presentation, and the audience, all sharing and contributing to the vitality of the creative endeavor.  The first encounter between the artist and his site includes curator. The curator engages the artist, commenting, inquiring, participating, observing. The audience approaches the artist. The curator retreats to observe, or comes forward to activate an encounter. 
The curator’s work is as site-specific as the artist’s - encourage the artist, observe the creation, affect the impulse, review the strategy, witness the witnesses, celebrate the outcome. I activate my authority within the checks and balances imposed by the artist and the audience and the site. There is no time delay. Transmissions are channeled to a mute and anonymous audience as the artist is proclaiming, soothing, inspiring, instructing. All parts of the art system coalesce. Systems dynamics enter the arena of art.
 
 
The Faithful Hippied Guide (the artist): Skip Schuckmann
 
I am not interested in fettering myself to a medium or a category.  Site specific art is changing all the time. Consequently, since there are never two sites that are alike, all the variables impinging on all my sensibilities, the sounds, sights, smells, are always different. Either experience has changed or the site has changed.  Nothing can ever be repeated. I am a wild man.  Every experience is always the first time. This is pure wildness, which is not crazed madness.  It is living in the state of pure intuition.  The wildness of the unconscious wants to learn, it wants to taste. The wild man's investigation is to sample and then pull back.  Art is creative freedom. Now I am engaged in an exploration with a curator.  Our efforts are unannounced and extemporaneous.  I take the curator on the road and we become art.

Contact Linda Weintraub: Linda@artnowpublications.com