Fallen Fruit
Fallen Fruit Proposal # 2 ( December 17th, 2005)
1. a. Shopping Cart Tour of Downtown Los Angeles (alternately this could be Hollywood) on one of the first days of Civic Matters. In the absence of seasonal fruit over the winter, we want to gather found material and detritus from the downtown alleys, which will also provide a view of the underside of waste disposal in L.A. b. Back at LACE later in the evening (the shopping cart tour would be in the late afternoon/ early evening), we’d like to a Group Craft Event with the found material. We’d like to make God’s Eyes, a supposedly Native American tradition in which two sticks are woven together with yarn (or any flexible material) and feathers. The Huichol call their God’s eyes Sikuli, which means “the power to see and understand things unknown.” Because they resemble a wrapped cross, they were called “god’s eyes” by the early ethnologist Carl Lumholtz, but anthropologist Peter Furst considers that to be a misnomer and calls it a “four-directional protective prayer object.” We see them as markers of human intentions and a call for the attentiveness of outside powers. At the end of Civic Matters, we intend to place the God’s Eyes in neighborhood urban fruit trees, both to mark particularly bountiful trees on public land, and to invoke a spirit of protection over the trees themselves.
2.a. We also propose a Nighttime Fruit Forage in Silver Lake on either the first or the second Wednesday night. Perhaps we can do this in conjunction with the Bicycle Kitchen. We expect to find some Avocados and many Lemons, which we will harvest and take along to: b. Craft Night at Akbar (on Sunset in Silver Lake, http://crafthead.com) which is an ongoing weekly event. The bar will make drinks with our found lemons and Craft Night organizer J.P. will design a fruit-related craft for our amusement.
Also, both Thom Andersen and Norman Klein are willing to do presentations. Thom’s film Los Angeles Plays Itself is a Brechtian documentary on how Los Angeles has been depicted and mythologized in the movies & has gotten great critical reception. Norman could either do his famous Anti-Tour of the city, which shows us some of the sites of disappearance, the sites of significance that the city has torn down and erased. Alternately he could present his DVD-ROM, Bleeding Through, which is an interactive crime novella that uses the cityscape as its framework, with innovative graphic representations of the layering of Los Angeles’sendless self-reinvention (seehttp://www.annenberg.edu/labyrinth/klein/klein.html). These would each take up time in the evenings though, and perhaps the curators might want to give priority to collaborative events over these sort of direct (but still rather traditional) presentations. Thom & Norman could just as effectively come to Stockholm to do the presentations, for example.
Fallen Fruit Proposal # 1 ( December 5th, 2005)
What FallenFruit might propose to do, and the direction we're headed in
is mostly event-based. Is assume that is generally what you were you
looking for, yes? One of the things we'd normally propose is a Nighttime
Fruit Forage, but the only thing available in late Jan is lemons and citrus,
so we are thinking about a When Life Gives You Lemons event, in
which we serve an assortment of public fruit lemon dishes. We want
to make t-shirts, and we might just do them at this event (or if not, at
another). Since there is so little fruit available, we're also
thinking about a potluck & grab-bag event, which should have a some kind
of barter component (we're looking into barter & barter systems for future
fallenfruit projects). We also want to build an International Human
Pyramid with the Americans & Swedes.
I talked to Norman Klein and he is willing to do his Anti-tour of LA for Civic
Matters - but we should schedule it as soon as we can, since he's always busy. Do
you know Norman's DVD-ROM, Bleeding Through: Layers of Los Angeles? It
is pretty amazing. Maybe it is something you should consider taking with
you to the Swedes. It certainly gives you a more realistic feel of LA than
the H'wd films they're watching, plus it is so technically well-done it flirts
with the depth or time/space feeling of film. We might be able to get Norman
to do a presentation of that as well. Some alternative films I can think
of that capture the feel of the LA I know are Allison Ander's Mi Vida Loca,
Stand and Deliver, and Echo Park. Chinatown is
a classic, of course, and I guess LA Confidential & Mulholland
Drive, but I think it's better to send them more current things less focussed
on the mythology of LA than the sense we have of living here. Laurel
Canyon does that, like Robert Altman's Short Cuts, and so does Traffic. Oh,
what about Thom Andersen's Los Angeles Plays Itself? It may
not even be out yet in DVD... I bet we can get him to screen it and talk about
it. I only saw a segment of it but it is great -- and it also critiques
many of the classic LA films. Oh, also Billy Woodberry's Bless Their
Little Hearts and Charles Burnett's To Sleep With Anger.
David told me he already talked with you & sent you FallenFruit materials
to take with you, so I'll assume that is taken care of. Will we all get
to meet before you go to Sweden or should we just talk via email?
All best,
Matias (with Dave & Austin)