The University Art Museum, on campus at CSULB, is in the midst of exhibiting three shows. The largest, Chockablock, focuses on what curator Kristina Newhouse describes as the “digital activities of surfing, sampling, and aggregating.”
Nothing exemplifies this better than Anthony Carfello’s work, “Located in Long Beach.” Over the course of the exhibition, which started on January 26th and runs through April 14, Carfello intends to visit every chain store in the city. You can track his progress via Google.
Anthony: My work is about individuals and their critical engagement with their surroundings, which tends toward site-specific art projects, about cities and urban space. Taking that to Long Beach, though, made an opportunity to challenge my own previous methods.
Rather than coming to Long Beach as a total outsider and choosing to highlight some specific part of the city for discussion, in advance of really knowing much about the city, my idea was to explore Long Beach street-by-street through the places that were not inherently specific to the city, i.e. the national & multinational chain stores. The hypothesis was that, by doing so, I would be able to gain knowledge of the city’s specifics in a more organic way, and not as something I preconceived from my apartment.
Sander: In looking at something that is, for all intents and purposes, the same regardless of where you are, how do you see the city’s unique character?
Anthony: A reflexive answer I both gave and heard during conversations about this was that it’s the people that assert that uniqueness. Of course that’s true, but that’s also true for the chain stores of Omaha, NE.
The thing that I’m finding strikingly unique about Long Beach’s character is the exciting use of the spaces, buildings, streets, etc. between the chains – the small businesses, bike culture, the places and qualities that are emphasized when not having to compete in a landscape of big chains, or in places where chains are present but not dominant. Last Saturday, I went all up and down E. 4th St, and then to City Place. The juxtaposition was really fascinating, because 4th was so much of a neighborhood. From first impressions, it was a place that belonged to its residents, compared to City Place which gave no such feeling.
Sander: When you visit a site, what kinds of documentation do you make? What are the data sets you’re compiling?
Anthony: First, photos from the outside, trying to locate the space in its environment; then I’ll spend time inside eating, drinking, browsing, etc. and observing the interactions amongst people in the stores.
More importantly, I start talking to people – not so much in a “Hi, I’m Anthony and I’m doing a project…” but more in a casual everyday way. I tend to ask questions and directions. Any conversation I have with someone I’m just meeting, I try to record (with notes afterward). My focus now is inviting people in Long Beach – that I look up or to whom I’m referred – to join me on a visit. With these, I’ll actually record the conversation with a little digital recorder.
FInally, I’ll sort of go back outside, observing people coming and going, and start looking at everything adjacent to the store – old buildings, train stops, buses.
Sander: In the process of conducting this research, how do neighborhoods like 4th Street’s Retro Row fit in, as they are lacking any chains at all? In fact, there are huge swaths of the City that are served by small local chains, and independent stores. These areas are often in areas populated by Asians, Hispanics, and African Americans. Can you truly grasp the cultural and ethnic diversity of the city if you don’t include these areas in your data?
Anthony: I think the easiest way to cover a place a big as Long Beach in the short time of the exhibition is to go up and down every major street – which is what I’m doing. To get from one chain store to another, I have to navigate through places that don’t have chains. I have to go through those large or small sections of the city in between the big businesses, which was part of my hope for the project. That the self-assigned task of going from this Del Taco to that Vons would no doubt involve movement through and experience of the truer character of the city, that the chains are squares on a checkerboard, of sorts, and that the observation and interaction would not be limited to them.
For example, I was at a McDonald’s, got a coffee, looked around a bit, then went outside. Across the street was a Book Swap / dealer of 1950s range stoves – a combo I’d never seen. I went inside and talked with the owner, who’s family had had the building for generations, about her store and her books, the area, and what I was doing. I don’t know when, as a non-local, I would have even found that store without seeking out the McDonald’s. Obviously, it’s possible, but I liked that this felt somewhat serendipitous.
Another example is Pacific Ave in the Wrigley area. I had stopped at Arco, then started heading south. No chains for blocks and blocks. Then two more gas stations at PCH, then more blocks with no chains, all the way to 10th St (I believe). It was like what you described. So, I parked near 10th and walked way back up the street, just to really see the area, and it was great. The art-task of getting to the next Starbucks would be mindless if I hadn’t.
Again, it’s exactly these areas between the chains (individual stores or shopping centers) where localness is asserted. I try to seek out writing about this whenever I can, but also wanted to learn more with my feet. This is also part of my hope with inviting any willing people to join me on visits – to meet more people who do some of these exciting things that build the character of the city, in opposition to placeless businesses.
Sander: For people outside the art world, for consumers or experiencers (?) of art, art is connected strongly to object making. Can you talk a bit about how, or why, what you’re doing is art, rather than social science or cultural anthropology?
Anthony: I like to think of art viewing and making as something done for the sake of heightened awareness. Image makers ask a viewer to observe and interact within the “focus” of the frame, art object makers ask one to “study” the form being presented. I guess I kind of think of art viewing like going to the library. It’s designed for both discovery/knowledge and focus. Museums (art and otherwise) are places of contemplation that, hopefully, encourage continued contemplation once you’re outside and back moving about town. That’s actually the place where I try to locate my projects.
There are definitely some social sciences and some urban studies intentions mixed in with the art in my work – like a lot of the art that I look to for my own study. And while the project (and others of mine) certainly has its place outside of the traditional art media, I do think it functions in that museum-style setting and that’s why, even though so much of the activity is out and around, there is a computer set up in the gallery with a map that shows the activity of the project.
Sander: I know that your research is far from complete, but have you been able to draw any conclusions from what you’ve observed so far?
Anthony: The areas between the placeless big chains are where localness can be, is, and should continue to be asserted, where that ‘investment’ in localness happens. It was the thought I’d had in beginning the project, but Long Beach is already presenting me with a detailed, richer, and more complicated example of that idea than I could have conceptualized. And, as an American city, Long Beach’s example is worth study for all American cities – because, who wants to live in a city where all the ‘investment’ is from a corporate headquarters?
One thing that got me thinking of this project was a blog – Jeremiah’s Vanishing New York. This author chronicles the closing of family-owned and historic businesses around NYC and asks some hard questions about real estate there. He’ll also keep track of what replaces these businesses and laments that it’s more and more 7-Elevens and big frozen yogurt chains.
Also, just about Long Beach in general, and maybe just anecdotally – as a cityscape, it really does seem to have everything, as if it has every element from each type of built environment across California in a dense city where you can quickly move from one through the other.
Sander: There is a movement afoot now about “place making.” Do you have any insights into what may have worked, here, and what hasn’t?
Anthony: That’s definitely one of the things I’m hoping to observe – the general spirit of the movement is exciting. This, to align it with the previous question, is something I’m on the lookout for with the project, but feel like I’ve just seen the beginning of. Parklets and the city’s bike culture have been the two placemaking activities I’ve initially experienced in Long Beach, but I’d like to get more intimate and more detailed knowledge of both, and the motivations behind them.
As to things that haven’t worked, I don’t know of any failed placemaking effort – but, I would really like to know more about issues with development projects and gentrification that have come up as results of “reinvestments” in the city with different motivations. This is part of my homework.
Sander: Can you speak to what it means for you, as an artist, to be connected to the community via UAM? How has that relationship shaped your work?
Anthony: My favorite artworks are ones that redirect your attention from the museum/gallery to the city outside, so trying to do that with UAM feels totally appropriate. The curator, Kristina Newhouse, and her staff have also been extremely generous with their time and knowledge to help get things rolling. Also, the exhibition format, having the project within the terms of the Chockablock show (dates, etc.) has helped give things structure.
Sander: You said, earlier, that this project has been an opportunity to challenges your own previous methods. Can you explain how this effort differs from what you’ve done before?
Anthony: I’ve often honed in on some ‘specific’ to highlight, discuss, and critique in the places where I’ve presented work – I’ve always followed the general method of contemporary artists and sought to start with something unique to the situation (in my case, it’s usually something banal), whether it’s been a local sandwich, a park, a bike path, or just a particularity of an exhibition.
While seeking out the chains is obviously a specific activity, it came up partly in resistance to the idea of looking at the whole city of Long Beach (a much more dynamic subject matter than I’ve ever worked with) and picking some uniquely Long Beach element to then make work about. I moved to Los Angeles 6 years ago from Chicago, and though I’ve done things in Long Beach plenty of times I’ve never lived, worked, or studied there. My engagement with the city was prompted by the art exhibition (because of the way I work – they didn’t ask me for a project about Long Beach, but I knew it would go that way).
Too often, when prompted by an exhibition, artists will reflexively pick a specific from some place they’re showing and make work about it – almost like a misinterpretation of ‘site-specific.’ Making site-specific art should be generative of some critical discussion, but the word ‘specific’ doesn’t have to mean that I make a project about, um, Long Beach Polytechnic or the 1933 earthquake, or some Long Beach feature or history with which I have no connection prior to the art exhibition.
So, my thought was to approach the city through places that were not unique to Long Beach, but were part of the American landscape and relevant to issues of American cities. I’m from American cities, and I live in an American city – so does everyone in Long Beach, and that somehow felt like a more comfortable place to start from.
Anything uniquely Long Beach I learned of and discussed in my project would have to first be discovered by being in the city, often, and not by flipping through books beforehand and then trying to make work about something I didn’t really comprehend. It’s tricky, but feels like the right way to proceed when treating the complexities of someone else’s city as a subject.
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Learn more about events and exhibitions at the University Art Museum.
Follow Anthony’s progress on his facebook page.
Check out Anthony’s Google Map.
Check out my interview with the curators of Significant Ordinaries, also part of the UAM’s current exhibitions.
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