Learning to See Los Angeles

When I first moved to Los Angeles in 2016 I was completely overwhelmed. It is such a vast, complex city and the more I tried to get to know it, the more it resisted being known. Los Angeles doesn’t reveal itself quickly and it doesn’t give up its secrets easily. 

Eventually I realized I was approaching the whole thing from the wrong perspective, trying to apprehend the totality of the city rather than its component parts. I was trying to understand and interpret Los Angeles from what I already knew, rather than see the city with new eyes.

Philip Glass once said of Einstein on the Beach, “It’s auto-didactic. You learn how to see it by seeing it. The piece teaches you how to watch it. The piece teaches you how to hear it. It’s a state of attention.”  Los Angeles is kind of like that.

Los Angeles has a “downtown”, but really it has no geographic center; it is rhizomatic, perpetually unfolding. Los Angeles is a “distributed city” in the sense that it is a vast, interconnected, distributed network of micro communities. 

To get to know Los Angeles, you have to get to know the micro communities, and when you begin to do that, you soon realize that the whole world is in Los Angeles for you to discover, literally. There are at least 224 languages spoken in Los Angeles. Every culture, nationality, faith, race, ethnicity, anyone and everything you are curious about or could possibly imagine, it’s all here, usually just a car ride away.

At the same time, there are 88 cities in Los Angeles County, not counting unincorporated areas. The City of Los Angeles itself surrounds other independent cities like Culver City, Beverly Hills and Santa Monica. With its massive sprawl, decentralization and historically intermittent attention to public space, it is not easy to “tell the story” of Los Angeles as a single, coherent narrative. It actually requires a multi-vocal narrative and completely different narrative structure, a different dramaturgy. Which is both a challenge and an opportunity.

Ultimately Los Angeles’s biggest challenge is that because of its complexity and sprawl, the reality of Los Angeles doesn’t adhere to conventional narrative structures, and the story of the city is mostly obscured by a dominant narrative portrayed in the media – so much of which is created here. (See Thom Anderson’s fantastic documentary from 2003 “Los Angeles Plays Itself”). 

The opportunity is that we are in a moment where, largely due to new technology, we have begun to redefine and reinvent narrative structures. Given that, how does Los Angeles make itself legible? How does it create innovative narrative structures to tell a multi-vocal, complex non-linear narrative of the distributed city? What is the story to be told?

I have worked in the cultural sector for over 20 years, I have been fortunate to have traveled around the country, and even around the world a little bit, meeting artists and other culture workers, learning over time  the many different ways that culture operates. Even among all of the world’s great cultural cities, Los Angeles stands out in a few meaningful ways:

• Hybridity and intercultural mashups. Roy Choi and his Kogi BBQ Taco Truck is just one very vivid example of the kind of mashup that feels very Los Angeles. Los Angeles is a vibrant, dynamic, polyglot city. Children of immigrants create new styles across cultures and art forms and disciplines, Korean BBQ meets tacos, traditional music meets jazz, a group like Kinnara Taiko in South L.A. takes the traditional Japanese form and interpolates the rhythms and styles of the surrounding cultures. This creative experimentation, hybridization and openness to possibility is central to the L.A. aesthetic. 
• Art happens outdoors. Sure, there are theaters and cinemas and opera houses and dance halls and music clubs, and great stuff happens indoors. But because of the sprawl and a subsequent turn towards the hyper-local, so much happens in back yards, in local parks, on the streets, on the beach, in the mountains. Every wall has a mural and all year round – pretty much – there are free outdoor concerts, screenings, performances, dances, festivals and celebrations.
• Art happens in community. The richness and vibrancy of Los Angeles’ community-centered arts scene is unparalleled. The Irvine Foundation’s 2015 report on the Cultural Lives of Californians greatly expanded the definition and understanding of arts  participation, and when we look at Los Angeles through this expanded lens, the sheer numbers and diversity of cultural activity in the city is astonishing. But also the sheer quantity and quality of “formal’ arts organizations and artists that center community is astounding. St Elmo Village, Self Help Graphics, Piece by Piece, Cornerstone Theater Company, LA Commons, L.A. Poverty Department, Lula Washington Dance Theater, Contra-Tiempo, Clockshop, The LA Phil’s YOLA program. The list is pretty much endless. But even more than specific arts organizations or artists, Los Angeles has a community-minded ethos that undergirds much of the creative energy of the city.

But once again, how do we make this legible not only to the rest of the world but to other Angelenos who, because of the distributed nature of the city, may not even know what is happening in their neighborhood, much less another part of town?

One strategy is cultural asset mapping. Last spring I wrote about a community-based cultural asset mapping initiative in South Los Angeles (Cultural Treasures of South LA) that I think is a good prototype. On June 21, 2024 there was a Cultural Treasures of South LA concert called Pulsations LA that was a global live-stream rhythmic relay as part of the Paris 2024 Cultural Olympiad. This hyper-local event lifted up artists from the community and put them on a virtual global stage, connecting hyper-local culture with artists and audiences around the world in real time.

In the Spring of 2024 I wrote a six-part series of essays on the transformative power of small group experiences. I have been thinking a lot about this and how it relates to the “distributed city” and the cultural life of Los Angeles. What happens when we reframe our understanding of scale and, instead of trying to solve for millions of people, we design a cultural ecosystem of interconnected small (to midsize) group events rather than focusing solely on large scale mega events?

I spend A LOT of time thinking about this stuff. Especially as Los Angeles has these major international events coming in 2026 (FIFA World Cup) and 2028 (Olympics) the question is what story are we going to tell? Or more significantly, what story can we, as citizen of Los Angeles, co-create and tell together? What platforms, structures and strategies will we use to tell this multi-vocal story?

I’m biased. In this uncertain national and global political moment where hate, divisiveness and isolation seem to be rising, where mega events and the Society of the Spectacle incentivize anonymity, uniformity and consumerism, it seems more urgent than ever to invest in human interaction. It feels like an opportunity to not only tell a story but actually demonstrate how a huge, complex, sprawling metropolis is actually an interconnected network of micro communities – villages – where people look out for each other, share food and culture, connect and care and lift each other up. It seems like an opportunity for Los Angeles to really be a place of welcome and point to new, positive, better, prosperous futures not only for the City itself, but prototype new futures in conversation with other cities around the world.

A few months ago I was wandering around talking to myself about this and recorded a rambling voice memo on my phone. I was dreading trying to transcribe the recording, make sense of it and structure it. So I decided to upload it to Otter AI and see what happened. It was amazing!!!! It saved me HOURS of work. I’m now a convert to AI at least in limited use cases. Below is a lightly edited transcript generated by Otter AI from my voice memo.

Summary

The discussion focused on the design and impact of integrating art and culture into the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles, emphasizing community-driven, hyper-local activities. Key strategies include using cultural asset mapping to create interactive databases and apps, fostering local business growth, and developing apprenticeship and mentorship programs for community producers. The conversation highlighted the importance of small, transformative group experiences over large-scale events, advocating for a holistic approach to cultural ecosystem design. The goal is to showcase Los Angeles’ cultural diversity and promote collaboration, aiming to create a unified, inclusive narrative that celebrates global connections and local engagement.

Action Items

• Start organizing community-based cultural asset mapping initiatives immediately.
• Explore partnerships with technology companies like Niantic, Meta, Snap, Google, or Microsoft to optimize cultural asset mapping, data gathering and management, and to support the digital and geolocation aspects of the cultural programming.
• Develop apprenticeship and mentorship programs to build a pipeline of community-based cultural producers and event organizers.
• Curate a multi-tiered festival model with open participatory events, established institutional programming, and specially commissioned high-profile works.
• Identify ways to foster porousness and cross-pollination between the different tiers of the festival programming
• Develop community-centered content through cultural asset mapping process to be developed and distributed on multiple platforms driving narrative change
• Explore opportunities to leverage arts, cultural, programming and content to showcase the cultural diversity and interconnectedness of Los Angeles.

Outline

Distribution and Community Engagement in Los Angeles

• The goal is to create intersecting nodes of public spaces for encounters across differences, ensuring participation where people are.
• A car-free Olympics is mentioned, but the program design should avoid making people travel extensively, aligning with Los Angeles’ hyper-local approach.
• Art participation is highlighted as vast and integrated into every community, using a cultural asset mapping model to map and support local arts.

Cultural Asset Mapping and Global Reach

• Speaker 1 discusses the use of a database and interactive map to reflect cultural treasures and programming in communities, potentially supported by tech companies.
• An event called “Pulsations LA” is mentioned, part of the Paris Cultural Olympiad 2024, showcasing local artists to a global audience.
• The importance of both local impact and global reach is emphasized, with cultural programs that benefit both the community and a broader audience.
• Economic opportunities for local businesses and workforce development through apprenticeship and mentorship programs are highlighted.

Concentric Circles of Programming

• Speaker 1 describes a concentric circles model for programming, starting with a wide, open, participatory track, moving to established institutions, and ending with high-profile commissioned work.
• The model allows for porousness between circles, with open participatory events potentially gaining high profile and attracting attention.
• The transformative power of small group experiences in small venues is emphasized, with these experiences forming a vast network of interconnected events.
• Public and digital spaces for discussion and word-of-mouth promotion are crucial for creating a dynamic and engaging environment.

Holistic Approach to Cultural Ecosystems

• Speaker 1 advocates for a holistic approach to designing cultural ecosystems, moving away from binary thinking and towards a more complex and accurate understanding of the situation.
• The importance of starting local cultural asset mapping projects immediately, regardless of available tools, is stressed.
• Los Angeles’ unique cultural diversity is highlighted, with the potential to tell a powerful story of unity and collaboration to the world.
• The focus is on creating spaces for connection and collaboration within the city, modeling solutions to common challenges faced globally.

Collaborative Uplift and Social Experiences

• Speaker 1 emphasizes the importance of collaborative uplift, where thriving is not a zero-sum game but a collective effort.
• The potential for community-generated content to reflect the complex narrative of Los Angeles is discussed, with broadcasters and media companies using this content.
• The kaleidoscopic nature of Los Angeles, with its diverse communities, is highlighted as a unique strength.
• The conversation concludes with a call to action for starting local cultural asset mapping and organizing for the future, emphasizing the importance of community-driven initiatives.