Uncommon threads: the role of oral and archival testimony in the shaping of urban public art

Abstract

Los Angeles is a city of many narratives, one of which is historic amnesia related to its ethnic history. Like many American cities, Los Angeles has been undergoing a lengthy process of revitalizing its city centre. Since the early 1990s, this process has heavily incorporated public art works. Late 20th century public art attempts to deal with the concepts of social and historical responsibility, as well as with questions of permanence and temporality. In the urban landscape of downtown Los Angeles, certain public art works use oral testimony to bring forth forgotten strands of the city's ethnic history. Other works re-use language and images from archival collections for the same purpose. What is the role of such "testimony" and its placement in interpreting the city's urban history?At first glance, the urban revitalization process takes as its departing point the idea that the public realm is democratic and neutral. However, contemporary discussions of public art recognize that complete consensus on public space and art in public places is impossible, because the concept of the "public" relies on a series of layered historic, social, economic, and political representations. Instead of building consensus, the role of public art is to give voice to public discussions about these representations.The weaving of oral testimony in public art works in Los Angeles, particularly that chronicling the experience of various ethnic and labor groups, conceives of public space as an intersection between the consensual and the layered. Some public art works are so integral to every-day life that they are hardly visible, allowing pedestrians to exist in what appears to be neutral space. Other works control public space in specific ways. This paper examines the use of oral and archival testimony in public art as a narrative device that provides for a certain kind of historic fixity in what is otherwise often fluid public space in the city.