The program begins on Saturday September 29 at 5PM at the north east corner of Echo Park Lake, and continues with a procession through the vicinities. The public is invited to join at any time, and can check the map below for the processional route.
About the Program
Untitled: a procession on the borders of something that has already shifted uses fences to explore questions around privacy, private property, privilege, displacement, and belonging. Our project examines what it means to pass through a neighborhood, lingering in the histories, communities, materials, textures, and memories that make up such spaces. Taking the form of a procession through private and public spaces in Echo Park, Untitled features the voices of invited collaborators, who include a landscape architect, an academic expert on residential zoning laws and the history of racial dispossession in Echo Park, a Chicanx artist whose drawing practice includes portraits of East Los Angeles’ residential landscape, and Echo Park residents who explore their memories and connections to the neighborhood. The performance culminates in an empty lot marked for residential development, a space we understand as nascent with potentiality and conflicting desires. An open space, an unbuilt—for now—space for speculation.
Following will be the premiere of passing through the bars and over, a dance film devised and directed by Shanks.
About the Participants
Sarah Lewis-Cappellari is a cultural producer and Ph.D. student at UCLA. Combining her artistic practices both as a pedagogue and performance maker, she has concentrated on projects that focus on knowledge dissemination through theatrical forms.
Gwyneth Shanks is the Helena Rubinstein Curatorial Fellow at the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the past Interdisciplinary Arts Postdoctoral Fellow at the Walker Art Center. A scholar, curator, and performance-maker, Shanks holds a PhD in performance studies from UCLA.
Devised by Sarah Lewis-Cappellari and Gwyneth Shanks
Text by Sarah Lewis-Cappellari and Gwyneth Shanks
Performance Guides Dorit Cypis and Loren Fenton
Recorded speakers and additional text by Dana Cuff, David Godshall, Vincent H., Grace Lara, Manuel Lopez, Jesenia R., and Gabriela R.
Additional Performances by Vincent H., Grace Lara, Jesenia R., and Gabriela R.
In order of appearance:
--------------Beginning at Echo Park:
Our Guides:
Dorit Cypis is an artist, educator, and mediator. Her work explores history, identity, and social relations by balancing aesthetics with social action. She aims to create openings in which critical thinking, connection, and transformation can occur.
Loren Fenton has been an actor and movement-theater artist for many years. She studied Psychology at Harvard, then moved to California to attend Cal Arts, where she received her MFA in Acting. She lived in Fresno from 2014-2017, working with neighborhood artist-activists and local government. Now, she is expanding her art practice to include writing. Loren returned to Los Angeles in 2017, and is a recent homeowner in Echo Park.
--------------Along Laguna Ave:
If a Building is a Novel, a Fence is a Haiku
David Godshall, landscape architect and co-owner of Terremoto, creates landscape architectural work that explores the relationship between built and natural forms through conversations, research, and observation.
--------------At 826 LA:
La’s Haunting Heat Roams on Leather Seats
Since the second grade, Jesenia R. has participated in 826LA programs, and has lived in Echo Park for many years. She is currently a freshman at Woodbury University where she is majoring in Public Safety and is especially interested in criminal justice and civil rights. In her free time, she enjoys scary movies, especially those with paranormal activity.
Memories Don’t Show The Present
Gabriela R. is a resident of Echo Park and enjoys activities that fill her with a sense of accomplishment, such as reading, running, and writing. When she is not running track or doing homework, Gabriela spends her time hiking and volunteering at 826LA. Writing allows Gabriela to imagine and construct new worlds and volunteering at the tutoring center is especially gratifying for her, as it’s an opportunity to support a place and people that have supported her.
Selfish Machines and a Mint Green Ipod
Vincent H. is currently a senior at Ramon C. Cortines High School, a member of 826LA since 2011, and an aspiring actor. His interests include acting, video games, reading, and writing...on occasion.
826LA is a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting students ages 6 to 18 with their creative and expository writing skills, and to helping teachers inspire their students to write. The presenters belong to 826LA Youth Advisory Board, a group of high school students who want to help their peers and their neighborhood. By helping to plan educational and fun events, and assisting with tutoring and helping younger students, the YAB is the student voice of 826LA.
--------------On The Front Porch:
The House I Grew Up In
Grace Lara is a permanent makeup artist, a past LAPD Cadet, a member of the Northeast Youth Council, and a former resident of Echo Park. Her family lived and were homeowners in the neighborhood for over 60 years — and in the general Northeast LA area for almost a century — before relocating in 2016.
--------------In and Around The Empty Lot:
Historical Speculations: and they imagined…
Dana Cuff is an architecture theorist and the founding director of cityLAB at UCLA, where she is also a full professor in the Department of Architecture. At UCLA, she leads the multidisciplinary program called the Urban Humanities Initiative. Her writing and research focuses on postwar LA, affordable housing, and the histories of residential communities; her books include Architecture: the Story of Practice and The Provisional City: Los Angeles Stories of Architecture and Urbanism. Cuff’s proudest achievement is her recent coauthoring of California legislation (AB 2299) based on a decade of work by cityLAB, that legalizes second dwelling units for the 8.1M single-family homes in the state.
Tracing Precarities
Manuel Lopez is an artist whose work is informed by his immediate surroundings. His black-and-white drawings are inspired by cluster of homes, storefronts, iron gates, utility poles, palm trees and other elements common to the landscape of East LA neighborhoods.
--------------Epilogue:
passing through the bars and over
This project is supported in part by the Department of Cultural Affairs, Graham Foundation, Pasadena Arts Alliance, LA County Arts Commission, Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant and by Lori and Alan Shanks.
Special thanks to Joshua Olaoniye, Miranda Tsang, the UCLA Urban Salon and Jacqueline Barrios, Ciro Cappellari, Natalie Bowers, Lars Deutsch and Lori and Alan Shanks.