Archive L.A. Stories: Engaging the City

Images from the Exhibition | Kim Abeles | Harry Adams Nancy Buchanan | Collage Ensemble | Mallory Cremin Don Normark | Public Works Administration | May Sun Stephen Callis, Leslie Ernst and Rubén Ortiz Torres L.A. Stories: Engaging the City Home Page | Archive - Fall 1998 Home

L.A. Stories: Public Works Administration
Elizabeth Blaney, Leonardo Vilchis, Dont Rhine, Karina Combs, Valerie Tevere and Cecilia Wendt

"Your Place, Our Home" (A Realty Tour)

A Reality Tour maps out a history of low-income and public housing in the downtown vicinity of Los Angeles. Using original video, city maps, archival materials and audio collage, the tour dramatizes the role of development in the history of Los Angeles' Housing Authority in contrast to the current struggle of public housing residents to save their community in the face of demolition. The tour crisscrosses downtown, providing a history of public housing policy from a point of view committed to economic justice and grass-roots empowerment.

Public Works Administration (PWA) is a Los Angeles based inter-media art group. PWA develops projects around strategic partnerships with local grass-roots organizations, mobilizing communities for economic justice and combating neoliberal economic policies. Public Works Administration works in collaboration with the Union de Vecinos de Pico-Aliso (Boyle Heights), a group of 100 public housing residents organizing to change the political, economic, and social conditions of their community. PWA joins with the members of the Union de Vecinos de Pico-Aliso in fighting for just and affordable public housing in the wake of privatization schemes coming out of HUD and the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles (HACLA).

Increasingly, artists are compelled to engage the disciplines of urban planning and architecture as a way of understanding our culture. The danger with this is that artists may adopt the bureaucratic tendencies of urban planners, specifically, the tendency to exact neoliberal economic development upon poor and working communities. PWA believes the intentions of many urban planners are revealed in discussions of public housing where plans such as structural adjustments, austerity measures and privatization are prioritized. By employing the full range of artistic media - installation, photography, video, sculpture, sound, graphic art, performance, and writing, PWA is currently developing projects to assist the Union de Vecinos de Pico-Aliso in their organizational efforts and their creation of public awareness of the devastating impact of HACLA's mismanagement of public housing in East Los Angeles.

"A Realty Tour" maps out a history of low-income and public housing in the downtown vicintiy of Los Angeles. Using original video, city maps, archival materials and audio collage, the tour dramatizes the role of development in the history of Los Angeles' Housing Authority, in contrast to the current struggle of public housing residents to save their community in the face of demolition. The tour criss-crosses downtown providing a history of public housing policy from a point-of-view committed to economic justice and grass-roots empowerment.

"A Realty Tour" as part of the "L.A. Stories: Engaging the City" exhibition, works in tandem with PWA's video-bus tours (as part of the L.A. Freewaves festival on September 26, 1998.)

For more information about the work of PWA and the issues surrounding it, please visit the following websites:

• LA Culture Net, Neighborhood Views, Built L.A., Series Editor - Leda Ramos - (PWA included in this series)
• The Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles (HACLA) Included in the site is an email directory and a comments and questions section. Please inundate HACLA with comments and questions.
• Arroyo Arts Collective Check out the "Without Alarm II" exhibition and catalogue (PWA included in exhibition)