Active Cultures and X-TRA present TOTAL LANDSCAPING, a gathering space and series of programs inspired by an ongoing reading group facilitated by the two Los Angeles-based organizations. From a survey of land use to work with living documents as sites, TOTAL LANDSCAPING explores the spatial politics of LA. Each day of the fair gathers around a theme, supported by research, records, and conversations as exercises in landscaping without end. TOTAL LANDSCAPING grounds itself in the potential of collective investigation and study. Through collaborative artistic research, we map structures and sites of power across the city.
Opening Reception and Artists, Reading
with Ariana Reines
Thursday, 7-8:00 PM
Welcome to TOTAL LANDSCAPING! We open with an iteration of Artists, Reading with widely-acclaimed poet Ariana Reines. Artists, Reading invites poets, writers, and artists to read from texts-in-progress, texts that inspire their practice, and artists’ writings. The series was originally conceived in partnership between LA-based Poetic Research Bureau and X-TRA.
Ariana Reines is a poet, Obie-winning playwright, & performing artist from Salem, Massachusetts. A SAND BOOK (2019) won the Kingsley Tufts Prize & was longlisted for the National Book Award. She has created performances for Performance Space NY, The Whitney Museum of American Art, Stuart Shave / Modern Art, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, & many others, sculpture & performance collaborations with Oscar Tuazon & Jim Fletcher, taught poetry at UC Berkeley, Columbia, & NYU, & been a Visiting Critic at Yale Sculpture. In 2020 Ariana founded Invisible College, a study hall for ancient & sacred texts and poetry: invisiblecollege.art. Her next book is THE ROSE.
The Classroom: Total Landscaping with No Canyon Hills
Friday, 3-4:00 PM
Hosted by The Classroom, this panel introduces No Canyon Hills, a group of land stewards, plant wildlife activists, and residents mobilizing against the development of the Verdugo Mountains. Led and moderated by TOTAL LANDSCAPING curators Anna Cho-Son and Nora Khan, the conversation will explore organizing tactics, the need for living documents, and the future of housing in Los Angeles.
No Canyon Hills (NCH) is a community coalition forged in solidarity with the plant and animal communities of the Verdugo Mountains in Los Angeles, ancestral land and unceded territory of the Fernandeño Tataviam Band of Mission Indians, and the Gabrieleno (Tongva) Band of Mission Indians. Catalyzed by a proposal to build a luxury gated development on 300+ acres of intact native habitat in the Verdugos, NCH deploys cooperative actions and interventionist strategies across social, political, educational, and legislative registers. NCH works as a multiform entity to conceive and realize urgent anti-colonial land conservation solutions.
Workshop: Publishing as an Organizing Tool: Tactics for Becoming Ungovernable facilitated by Kimi Hanauer
Saturday, 2-4:00 PM
Publishing as an Organizing Tool: Tactics for Becoming Ungovernable gathers participants around a collection of materials that engage publishing practices as forms of resistance to state power. Through an intentional process of personal reflection and group discussion, participants will co-create a shared manifesto, Tactics for Becoming Ungovernable. By sharing multiple works of theory, strategies, personal accounts, and publishing projects simultaneously, this workshop acts as an invitation into nonlinear collective learning and conversation around abolitionist anarchist perspectives on media-based organizing.
Kimi Hanauer (they/them) is an artist, media-based organizer, facilitator, and writer. Kimi is a founding collective member of interdisciplinary publishing initiative, Press Press (est. 2014), and the founding steward of nomadic political education school, Center for Liberatory Practice & Poetry (est. 2021). In their practice, Kimi co-develops pragmatic-poetic initiatives as scaffolds for collective autonomies. Their interdisciplinary projects take various responsive forms, including installations, performances, videos, texts, programs, and printed matter. Informed by anarchist and abolitionist frameworks, their work as a facilitator and educator aims to deepen our collective capacities for self-governance, belonging, solidarity, and care.
Talk: Revisiting Charles Jencks’ Daydream Houses of Los Angeles with Aurora Tang
Sunday, 12-1:00 PM
In the 1970s, architectural historian and cultural theorist Charles Jencks began photographing the exaggerated houses that he encountered driving around Los Angeles. At a time when residential architecture in America was becoming increasingly standardized, Jencks called attention to these fantasy houses that had been modified or built to exude personal character and variation. Daydream Houses of Los Angeles, published by Rizzoli in 1978, includes Jencks’ snapshots of about 60 of these expressive and excessive houses, paired with witty captions and oftentimes, an address, so readers could embark on their own house tours. In this illustrated presentation, Aurora Tang will discuss her ongoing rephotography project revisiting Daydream Houses of Los Angeles, the changing appearance of our city’s residential neighborhoods, and the significance of Jencks’ book today, 45 years after its release.
Aurora Tang is a curator and researcher based in Los Angeles. She has worked with the Center for Land Use Interpretation since 2009, and currently serves as its program director. As an independent curator, Aurora has organized recent exhibitions at the MAK Center for Art and Architecture, MOCA Tucson, and Armory Center for the Arts. She is the recipient of an Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts Curatorial Research Fellowship.