san fernando road concert.

On Sunday I curated the San Fernando Road Concert, an all day arts event organized to re-imagine unused urban space along all twenty-three miles of San Fernando Road from Sylmar to Lincoln Heights with experimental music performances, art installations, readings, discussions and carpool happenings by twenty LA-based artists. The event was organized as a drive officially starting at 5 PM in Sylmar at the northern end of San Fernando Road at its intersection with the Sierra Highway, and ending in Lincoln Heights at its intersection with Pasadena Avenue before turning into Avenue 20 at 9 PM. Starting the day before, a map and program of the event became available at http://stephenvandyck.com/sanfernando.htm along with various downloadable art for audience members' car rides.

Since moving to LA seven years ago I've been interested in the way this whole metropolis grew, the massive in-between and negative spaces it left behind as it spored and sprouted, and how one street could go over twenty miles and through so many kinds of neighborhoods. Valley Boulevard originally went from downtown LA all the way east of San Bernardino, twisting through seventy miles of orange groves, mountain passes and small towns. Sunset Boulevard is perhaps the most infamous of the remaining endless streets, starting downtown and passing through an ironic/iconic combination of the most densely populated and wealthiest suburban parts of the city. Whenever I try to sell LA to a friend, I explain how living here is customizable, that we can get in our cars and skip all the places we don't want to see, unlike New York where it's inevitable that you will walk every block and encounter every kind of person, not that this is a good or bad thing. In Los Angeles there are massive amounts of land that everyone skips, some spaces even as desolate and hidden from the populace as a rural mountain road. What if those places became the destinations, to skip our usual IKEAs, 405s and Elephant Bars, to generate a new kind of LA experience, bringing meaning and attention to a collection of these less obvious spots.

Why San Fernando Road? Los Angeles has some of the longest municipal streets in the world, Sepulveda Boulevard being the longest at 43 miles. Sepulveda is just too long and too monotonous for this concert though. San Fernando is basically the drive between CalArts and downtown LA, so I figure for the majority of us it would be easier and feel more native. It offers a lot of unused urban public space with a diverse array of potential spots. It has relatively few lights. It used to be US highway 99 but was decommissioned when I-5 was built. What remains is an hour-and-a-half-long journey beside metrolink tracks, below overpasses, past warehouse lots, endless residential neighborhoods and an occasional outdoor mall.

For the event, each participating artist was invited to find an outdoor spot along San Fernando Road—the one in LA, not Santa Clarita—that San Fernando Road was recent renamed as Main Street, Newhall Avenue and Railroad Avenue—and to make a site-specific work for their chosen spots. Spots could be between dumpsters, along railroad tracks, on the double yellow lines, on a bench, on the steps of a Christian bookstore, at the top of a 20-foot high street lamp, on the curb, on the sidewalk—anything as long as it's along San Fernando. Work could be a performance, installation, a fleeting interaction, reading of a piece of writing, large scale video projection, a sneeze, self-immolation—anything they'd wanna do. Work could relate to its spot directly or tangentially, so long as the spot was necessary to the work. Additionally, artists were invited to make site-specific performances or installations (or text scores or conversations or multimedia-what-have-yous) for cars as they'd go the length of San Fernando Road.

On the day of the event, the audience was asked to drive the length of San Fernando on a loose schedule between 5 and 9 PM, stopping at 12 sites and experiencing 8 pieces in their cars between sites. The event was unapologetically LA; performance times were loose and overlapped so the audience could be on their own schedule: to find parking, to spend longer amounts of time at favorite spots, to skip spots, to drive at different speeds between them, to stop at Carls Jr. for a Spicy BBQ Six Dollar Burger, to drive off-track for anonymous wandering through the shadowy depths of the Valley, to daydream or just to spend some good quality time with their cars. One friend described the format of the event as being like an inverted parade. The audience was asked to bring cameras, notepads, cell phones, tape recorders—any method of documentation they'd like—and to post all documentation of the concert on http://sanfernandoroad.blogspot.com. Some events started before 5 and were already in progress when the official concert-drive began. I gave audience members my phone number in case they'd get lost.

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SAN FERNANDO ROAD CONCERT PROGRAM:
(with added-in photos and commentary)

STOP #1 San Fernando Road/Sierra Highway 4:45 to 5:15
Stephen van Dyck “tub.” / introductory conversation
—GET DIRECTIONS HERE

Turns out my car has the best speakers to blast the sounds and conversations of baths past.

CAR PIECES WILL BE GIVEN OUT AT STOP #1
Sara Roberts “San Fernando Start Stop an' Go”
Kyoung Kim “Terra Incognita”—DOWNLOADABLE HERE
Eric Lindley “Untitled Set of Performance Instructions”
Robin Myrick “The Murgatroid Cycle”—DOWNLOADABLE HERE
David P Earle “The Strip: An audio guide to the San Fernando Veldt.”
Laura Vena “Cartographies of Water and Dust: Traversing historic Route 99”
Josh Forbes, Anna Magnuson, Tucker Neel “Untitled (A Dinner)”


Me and Katie playing Sara Roberts' game, “San Fernando Start Stop an' Go.” We spotted a woman in a wheelchair wearing a cheetah pattern outfit, yelled at pedestrians, stopped at random places, and sang along to Patty Loveless' "You Can Feel Bad" which I videotaped while driving. We won nuttybutties (Is that what they're called?) for carrying out five of these certain tasks from a list. I also videotaped us performing two of Robin Myrick's plays while driving, but I had it zoomed in, so you can only see our noses and ears. I'll upload it.

STOP #2 just south of 12723 San Fernando Road 3:00 to 5:45
Mark So
Don Lalo | Magic [2 open rooms]
2008
SCORE DOWNLOADABLE HERE


Four performing Mark So's score by standing in front of the north lot and facing away from it, both ears unmodified, sustaining simple activity (reading). See score here: http://stephenvandyck.com/don lalo magic.pdf

Katie and I arriving at Mark So's stop, or more likely departing, trying to catch future stops in advance just in case...

STOP #3 east side of San Fernando between Polk and Astoria 5:00 to 5:45
Jade Thacker “sun bathing”

Jade sunbathing on the side of a biking path. She told me she met a lot of people and got honked at quite a bit.

LOOK OUT FOR
Phil Stearns "on the political economics of resource motivated warfare"
(biking from the north to south end of San Fernando Road and back from 2:30 to 7:00)

As far as I know, no one spotted him, but he did get back to me that he successfully biked from one end to the other and back and up to Saugus where he resides.

BEGIN “The Strip: An audio guide to the San Fernando Veldt.” at San Fernando Road and San Fernando Mission Boulevard

STOP #4
bodycity (On San Fernando Road)
San Fernando Road/beneath 118 Freeway overpass 5:45 to 6:00


Experimental dance troupe bodycity performs just below the 118 freeway and later leaves chalk outlines of their bodies along with the words "bodycity was here."

STOP #5 San Fernando Road/beneath 5 Freeway overpass near Tuxford Street 6:00 to 6:30
Danielle Adair “FOR SALE”


In his review of the event, Eric Lindley described Danielle's performance best: "that amphetamine-rich man jackknifing on the corner is someone else with no-advertisement." Katie and I later climbed onto that Simpsons billboard. Photos soon.

STOP #6 south/west side of SFR between Alameda and Brand all day
Tucker Neel “Untitled (American Flags along approximately 4 miles of the South side of San Fernando Blvd.)”


Tucker Neel photo installation on San Fernando Road near Grandview Avenue.

STOP #7 San Fernando Road/Grandview Avenue 6:15 to 7:15
Daiana Feuer “clownin’”

The audience got so delayed by the plentiful art-stops and car-doings, we all missed Daiana's “clownin’.” But quite a few random passersby did get to indulge in her clowning glory and receive one of many beautiful nipple paintings.

STOP #8
Allison Carter “Play It As It Lays” 2425 N. San Fernando Road 6:45 to 7:15

We all ended up having a picnic with Joan Didion and revising her work on the parking lot of an Out of the Closet. David P. Earle's revision was most clever.

STOP #9 San Fernando Road/Future Street 8:42 to 8:43
Tucker Neel “I've Learned To Stop Worrying.”

Anachronistic, and thus, I was too busy playing ball with Carlin to remember to go to it.

STOP #10 San Fernando Road/Avenue 26 5:00 to 8:00
Fallen Fruit and Islands of LA “LOVE APPLES”


Fallen Fruit members Matias Viegener and David Burns plus Islands of LA member Ari Kletzky explaining their collaboration LOVE APPLES to early arrivers. Video coming soon. As part of a larger project, Islands of LA declared the traffic islands of LA a national park. Fallen Fruit is an activist art group that encourages harvesting, planting and sampling public fruit.

STOP #11 San Fernando Road/Humboldt Street 7:45 to 8:30
Carlin Wing "Hitting Walls (v. iv)"

I sent two balls onto a roof; I don't know my own strength. Video coming soon. A man came up to Carlin just to say that he had never seen anyone using the empty outdoor space like that in his neighborhood.

STOP #12 San Fernando Road/Pasadena Avenue 8:15 to 9:00
Jade Thacker “Dedicated to those whose sole source of indignation is a messed up trifle”

Daiana Feuer still clownin', Sara Roberts preparing to give away prizes and Jade Thacker serving bananas and cucumbers.