LA River in Poster Format

With its 51-miles of channels paved for the most part with concrete, the Los Angeles River is surprisingly “invisible” in the cultural, physical, and psychological landscape of the city. To inquire about the reasons for this invisibility, various aspects of the river were examined, from its cultural and hydrologic history to its engineering. The initial results of this ongoing research are presented as posters that attempt to “market” a highly complex hydrologic system.

Marking

The urge to create places of commemoration is a universal phenomenon, expressing the fundamental human need to honor and remember a momentous collective experience. We often think of memorials as commemorating ordinary people, but this only occurred following WWI. Prior to this, commemorative sites were often monuments, sculptural pieces that were erected to glorify nationhood and valorize wars, heroic acts, and notable people. They often justified tragic events and even redeemed them historically. James E. Young writes, "We erect monuments so that we shall always remember and build memorials so that we shall never forget. Thus, we have the Washington Monument but the Lincoln Memorial. Monuments commemorate the memorable and embody the myths of beginnings. Memorials ritualize remembrance and mark the reality of ends...Monuments makes heroes and triumphs, victories and conquests, perpetually present and part of life. The memorial is a special precinct, extruded from life, a segregated enclave where we honor the dead. With monuments, we honor ourselves."

We, at Orange Street Studio, are very much alive and today we mark the launching of our blog.