Closing performance, February 2, 2019, 3–5pm
Lauren Bon, an Ecological artist, holds Los Angeles’ first and only private water right—Permit #21342—which allows her to annually divert 106 acre feet of water from the Los Angeles River. This river water is redirected under railway tracks to Bon’s riverfront interdisciplinary atelier of collaborators, The Metabolic Studio. Here the water enters the ongoing project Bending the River Back Into the City, lifted by a waterwheel into an artificial treatment wetland comprised of native plants. The resulting regenerated water will then be redistributed to adjacent state and municipal parks on both banks of the river.
Echoing the Ecological Art legacy of The Harrisons (Helen and Newton Harrison), Portable Wetland for Southern California, exhibited in the courtyard of Various Small Fires, and based on Bending the River Back Into the City, is both an experimental proposal to remediate specific ecological dysfunction and a conceptual artwork, in the form of a sculptural modular system mounted on steel supports, composed of an array of artificial wetlands tubs, water tanks, a live audio amplifier, and other components.
As a waste water river, the Los Angeles River requires treatment before it can be safely used for irrigation. In place of the energy-hungry chemical treatments typically employed by utilities to treat the river water, Portable Wetland for Southern California mimics the means by which wetland streambeds naturally cleanse water. Each tub in the array is filled with scoria, crushed volcanic rock (sourced from the Owens Valley, the source of much of Los Angeles’ water supply), which has been planted with native plants from Southern California’s rivers and streams. Additionally, the tonal frequencies continuously emitted from the installation’s audio system acts as both antibacterial agent and plant growth catalyst.
