Tanya Brodsky’s temporary, site-specific piece 1601 Park opened on July 21st as part of Materials & Applications’ (M&A) Privacies Infrastructure Program Series. Privacies Infrastructure investigates the residential landscape of fences, hedges, window gratings and security gates through temporary installations, workshops, performance and public programming. Brodsky, along with other artists and architects, were asked to interrogate the physical structures of privacy and privatization in Los Angeles through temporary projects in Council District 13. Their commissioned projects form Privacies Infrastructure, which is organized by guest curator Aurora Tang and Materials & Applications director Jia Gu. 

Tell us about your site-specific work 1601 Park. 

This piece started out as a meditation on the ways in which space is divided in the densely populated East side of Los Angeles, and how these divisions function within physical, social, and cultural boundaries. Architectural structures like fences or security bars serve both as practical impediments, and as markers that project the nature of both those inside and outside the house. So, I wanted to build a structure that could only be navigated through transgression, and that allowed viewers to simultaneously occupy its interior and exterior. The resulting work is an outline of a house in space, punctuated by references to different types of home, with a focus on those commonly seen in Echo Park. the door at the front of the sculpture is padlocked shut, so that the only way to enter the interior is by passing through an imaginary wall. Window security bars hang behind the outline of a window, further scrambling the relationship between the interior and exterior of the sculpture. It is meant to hover somewhere between a house that’s being built, one that’s being demolished or repossessed, and a 3D architectural rendering.

What is the significance of the site — and maybe the larger site of L.A. — how did that shape the piece? 

The piece came out of thinking about the neighborhood of Echo Park, and, by extension much of L.A., as a site. The history of the actual lot that it occupies emerged as I was working on the project. There had been an apartment building there, which collapsed in 2000, killing one person, injuring thirty-six other, and leaving mostly low-income residents suddenly homeless. The lot with the rubble changed ownership more than once, and then remained vacant for some years after it was cleared. Learning this history transformed how I thought about the site, which I had initially approached as just an empty lot. It made me reconsider the idea of neutrality, and the transitory nature of something as seemingly stationary as an address. In my work, I want to be conscious of, and honor, the history of the site and its previous existence.

What surprised you in the process of designing or building the piece, or in the reception of it on-site? 

Coming across the complex and tragic history of the site was surprising and powerful. While much of my information came from archival articles, I learned additional bits and pieces from long-time neighborhood residents as I was working on the site. Hearing difference experiences of the same narrative helped me to think of the site as a series of perspectives and memories, existing simultaneously in the minds of numerous people.

Image courtesy of the artist, photo: Josh Schaedel.