los_angeles_mapping_project_by_antonio_jose_guzman_at_wearevoid_amsterdam
OPENING FRIDAY 31 MAY
H 6 – 10 PM
Earlier this year the multidisciplinary artist Antonio Jose Guzman was part of the Windward School Art Residency in Los Angeles, California. During the residency the artist created a collaborative site-specific installation with a grant from the Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation. The project was one of the most intricate undertakings in the history of the program, created with contributions from more than a hundred participating students.
Over the course of the residency, the artist works with Windward students to create a site-specific installation at the Held & Bordy Family Gallery. The artist also share his working processes and ideas with teachers, artists, and community members from the greater Los Angeles area. Guzman’s creation incorporates work from Windward students in different classes and grade levels. Through a variety of assignments, Guzman challenged students to create a mapping of their identities, encouraging them to explore and aesthetically reimagine what it means to be a global citizen by documenting the physical and mental geographies they traverse in their everyday lives. The completed installation deploys a variety of media to represent an analysis of psychogeographic social interaction and spatial mobility.
The workshops and lectures that Guzman give during the residency were thematically developed for the students of the Windward School, the project maps with photography and drawings the critical topographies of Los Angeles from the 70′s to now, by focusing on the cultural politics of space, time, and segregated neighborhoods. Inspired by Guy Debord “unitary urbanism” the research is a study of the population demographics, unified environment and transit of Los Angeles. The research is a data visualization that generates an idea of the way the city is forming itself towards the future, the maps demonstrate areas of transculturalism or homogeneous cultures, incomes and preference.
Source: The Windward School, Los Angeles California