BRICK AND MORTAR : STARS AND STRIPES
PART 2: JOHN FERRARO BUILDING

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.

Brick and Mortar : Stars and Stripes continues through Downtown Los Angeles to the John Ferraro Building, home of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. Pescador examines the intertwining facts and myths of water and the city’s development. This building, a significant example of the Corporate International style, anchors one end of the mile-long Civic Center that, since the 1950s, has steadily overtaken Grand Avenue, consuming and reconstituting and displacing communities like the historically working class Bunker Hill. After all, in Los Angeles as much as anywhere, water has always been power.

Pau 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.