Seeing the unseen

I picked Sunset Blvd. I wasn’t going to, I was going to avoid any obvious Los Angeles location and pick something completely unknown, even unexpected. But I have been thinking a lot about different readings of things and places lately and how something like Pepe The Frog can be co-opted and its meaning completely changed by the audience. Sunset Blvd. triggers a response in most people regardless if they have been to Los Angeles, or live there. It stands for something. but it is 23 miles long running from Chinatown in Downtown to the beach at Pacific Coast Highway, it passes through every income level and many ethnicities

A timelapse is good to see things that move slowly. In this instance, if anything it is less clear what is going on, Little Armenia, Thaitown, Hollywood, WeHo, Beverly Hills, Brentwood, Pacific Palisades all are all a blur. The sky is kind of nice to look at though.

I was going to collect garbage from the pavements of Sunset Blvd. a contemporaneous archaeological dig, with homages to Kurt Schwitters and Marc Bradford I was going to create a collage..one man’s garbage and all that and call it ‘Not Every Piece of Trash on The Sunset Strip, as a wink to Ed Ruscha’s book that I got to take a look at this week.

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The thing is, when you are looking for garbage and litter, you tend to look differently. I was scanning the pavement for ‘good’ finds, but something else happens, you notice the structure of the pavement, the way the water has flown, the street number markings on the curb, and in Echo Park, the ‘sidewalk art’ or graphics, or protests, or..I am not sure what to call them. Not unique to Los Angeles, they are actually quite beautiful. I don’t know if they are the works of PR agencies, or designers, or just locals who have something to say, or feel they have something to say. Modern-day Hobo markings.

While looking for the discarded items of strangers on Sunset, I came across a stretch where Sunset crosses the 110 freeway where – perhaps the previous night – every car had had its window smashed leaving tiny pieces of glass. I collected a bunch of it in the hopes of using them as quasi-pixels and printing them in some or other.

So to the responses – a couple different ones

The frame seemed fine, I still like it. It will be great in 40 years when all the graphics will seem quint and nostalgic. – but I wanted to transform the trash some more, so I tried some collagraphy.

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I also tried printing with the found safety glass with mixed results. If you can bear another timelapse

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Finally, a digital reponse. A bit like the pavement artists, I changed my neighbourhood but not physically, instead, I digitally removed all the cars, wondering if that would change the way the space looks, then by using sound I wanted to see in what way viewers might respond to the narrative in the video. Daire thought it was relaxing…ok

Lastly, the three.words.that I have been using are from what3words, a system of precise addresses using a unique combination of three words to specify a specific 3m x 3m square