Los Angeles Road Concerts presents a free showing of site-specific projects from Los Angeles artists in unused public outdoor spaces along a loop made of Spring St, 9th St, Main St and 1st St. from 11am to 5pm. For one day participating artists display installations, perform works, host spontaneous readings, and make music in unexpected spaces, such as on the sidewalk, between dumpsters, along streetlamps, as well as inside the audience’s earbuds as they traverse the path of the road concert. Audience members can walk, bike, skateboard, carpool or take public transit. They can time it to see it all, go it unplanned, or carefully curate their day. An official map of the day’s events along with project descriptions and other downloadable information will be available to the public starting two days before the event on the event website (laroadconcerts.com).
LA Road Concerts seeks to investigate the possibilities of LA’s streets as sites for artistic exploration while offering a street-level window onto the city’s diversity of people, buildings and landscapes, how the metropolis grew and cars came to dominate, and the in-between and negative spaces the city left behind as it expanded. Through a wide open call process, LA Road Concerts brings together art school graduates, working artists, local residents and other artists, writers, musicians, performers, to realize a broad array of kinds of interactions with the sites.
This particular road concert is part of the annual World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims (http://worlddayofremembrance.
Over 600 people on foot were hit by cars in Downtown LA over 12 years, averaging a person a week. This road concert asks participating artists of any medium to make works that bring awareness to traffic casualties, ponder solutions and utopias, remember the victims, investigate car culture, and explore the complexity of the problem, such as what causes people to make dangerous decisions like texting or drinking while driving, or how our transit systems reflect America’s race and class inequalities and privilege the able bodied.
This year’s participating artists include Alan Nakagawa, Alex Khost & Amy Bauer, Alexia Lewis, Anna Wittenberg, April Guthrie, Avenue 50 Studios & DSTL Arts, Benjamin Desvallées, Beth Fiedorek, Cynthia Lujan, Dr. Brian Griffeath-Loeb, Gegham Sargsyan, Horse of Arabia, IHUG, Jonathan Gomez, L.A.P. (Love, Art, Participation) Dancers, Linda Ravenswood, Los Angeles Walks, Marco DiDomenico, Matt MacFarland, Max Markowitz & Joe Potts & Stuart Rapeport & Sybil McMiller & Rebecca Guerro, Michael Rippens, Niko Solorio, Pauline Gloss, Robert Frashure & Miggie Wong, Scott Froschauer, Siluspress, Simone Gad, Sir Oliver, Skip Snow, Sophie Goldstein, Susan Joseph, Suzanne Joskow & Henderson Blumer, Taleen Kali, Tucker Neel, Victoria Goring, Vitamin Wig C, Zeina Baltagi, and more!
Works of the day include a keyhole listening garden, ambient protest music, a house made of art to create a conversation about the homeless, a Mt. Rushmore lawn chair to reflect on how the patriarchy lives in our culture, a delivering of the historical autopsy at Wells Fargo, a human size pizza box, live manipulations of sounds in response to the site as is expressed in public grieving rituals, a celebration and commemoration of the lives of victims of automobile fatalities through the traditional Mexican celebration of altar making, a temporary crosswalk using only the artist’s footprints, a spoken word performance about the travails of a pedestrian, a magic photo booth, a station to craft memorials for people killed while walking in Los Angeles to be later posted at crash sites throughout the city, a funeral procession discussing the history of protest apparel and new designs, and many more works!
