Brick and Mortar : Stars and Stripes
Part 1: Union Station

For X-TRA Online, Pau S. Pescador has produced a four-part video essay in which they examine four Los Angeles government buildings: Union Station, the Department of Water and Power John Ferraro Building, City Hall, and the former Los Angeles Police Department Parker Center Headquarters. Through an idiosyncratic mix of interviews, live action, and hand-drawn animation, Pescador delves into these buildings as sites of public use, examining both their history and their continued operation. These videos are portraits of what each building symbolizes—what they were built to represent, and what they represent today.

Throughout this research, Pescador explores their own experience working both as an artist and as a government employee of the City of Los Angeles, and what it means to perform these roles simultaneously. He addresses his own experience learning how local government operates, as well as the disconnection between how locals view their government departments and how these departments view themselves. If government is merely a set of individuals, what does it mean to be critical of a system, while also being one of its members? As Pescador puts it: “He is government. She is government. I am government.”

Brick and Mortar : Stars and Stripes begins with the arrival of the railroad at River Station in 1876. Thus begins the land boom that turns Los Angeles from a sleepy town into a megalopolis. Pescador explores how the development of transportation leads to the city’s population growth, while also feeding its racial tensions. Union Station, opened in 1939, is America’s last great train station. It also ushered in an era of wide displacement and, ironically, heralded the rise of the freeway.

Paul S.Pescador is an artist, filmmaker, performer and writer. They graduated with an MFA from University of California, Irvine and a BA from the University of Southern California. Select exhibitions and screenings include: Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA); The Pit, Glendale; 18th Street Art Center, Santa Monica; UV Estudios, Buenos Aires; gallery1993, Los Angeles; Coastal/Borders, Getty Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA at Angels Gate Cultural Center; Ashes/Ashes, Park View, The Main Museum, and gallery1993, all Los Angeles. Their first collection of writing, CRUSHES: A NOVELLA, was published by Econo Textual Objects in Spring 2017.