Hear in the City | radio realities from the urban landscape

translations in Mexican art

Posted on April 24, 2012 by hitc

Listen to this show and be treated to a sonic journey into translations between languages, media, and landscapes as we map an eclectic sampling of Mexican artists whose work is currently featured around Los Angeles…. We’ll hear from a conjurer of 19th century images who brings a magic lantern to Los Angeles, and, we’ll enter into a space of living poetic interpretations of painting, photo and sculpture by surrealist women artists that are from or have come through Mexico. We wrap up the program with a trip to Oaxaca through video and a narco-corridos with an artist who challenges prevailing depictions of Mexican landscapes by infusing them with local mythologies and new histories.

These are images of the Velaslavasay Panorama‘s Artic view above the theater where Dr. Goio will be presenting the Axolote de Fuego and Magic Lantern show April 27th.

Edgardo Aragón’s “Effectos de Familia” and other video works are now at Cal State L.A.’s Luckman Fine Arts Gallery.

Jen Hofer’s translation of Mexican Women poets, Sin Puertas Visibles, can be found at Amazon. On May 5th and 6th, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art will present Alice Rahon’s performance piece, “Orion, the Great Man of the Sky.”

Posted in arts, film, and music, City Terrace, film, near-obsolete technologies, photography, poetry, theater, video | Tagged Dolores Dorantes, Dr. Goio, Edgardo Aragon, Effectos De Familia, Fire Axolote, Gregorio Rocha, Hear in the City, Jen Hofer, Jesse Lerner, Kay Sage, LACMA, Los Angeles, Magic Lantern, Monica Nepote, Oaxaca, Sara Harris, Surrealist Adventures | Leave a comment

Two events: one tragic, one joyous

Posted on April 18, 2012 by hitc

On this episode, we take you to the 10 miles of streets where countless thousands of Angelinos had the rare pleasure of walking, cycling, skating, and otherwise propelling themselves on human power, exclusively, for a day during this April’s Ciclavia event. We also spend time with three Chinese students at the University of Southern California in the wake of a tragic killing of two Chinese graduate students in front of their guest home in South Los Angeles. Sara also talks with Jacqueline Hamilton, the host mother of one the students, about the neighborhood where the shooting took place.

On Wednesday, April 11th, at 1am, Qu Ming and Wu Ying, two Chinese graduate students at the University of Southern California were shot by an unidentified assailant while they waited out the rain in a car in front of one of their residences after a late-night study session. Neither one of them survived.

“It could have been any of us” writes fellow student, Mingshi Di, in the Alhambra Source. We interview Mingshi on this week’s show. This photo is from her article. USC has the largest international student body in the United States, 2,500 of those students are from China. The University has offered a $125,000 reward for information leading to a conviction in the killings. A memorial service is held on April 18th at the Shrine Auditorium. You can connect with USC’s Chinese Students and Scholars Association here.

A ride through Ciclavia is full of unusual juxtapositions. At the piñata stretch of East Olympic Blvd., Sunday’s boast an amazing Mexican outdoor tianguis with huaraches, quesadillas, and pollos rostisados in abundance. But this Sunday, you see two-layer bike frames with girls in leopard pants, big buff shirtless men from West Hollywood with shiny strand cruisers, and fuzzy bunnies riding past the bodegas and oil-drums roasting chicken.

Posted in bicycling, Boyle Heights, Chinese culture, City of Los Angeles, community redevelopment, culture in the city, Downtown, East Hollywood, economy and equality, infrastructure, marginalize communities, Neighborhood/Area, public health, public radio, street art, street parades, sustainability, transportation, Two Wheels and a Mic, Uncategorized, urban environment, USC | Tagged "Hear In The City" "Sara Harris" "Chinese Student Scholars Association" "USC" "Ciclavia" "Jacqueline Hamilton" "Mingshi Di" "Jia Silu" "Owen Zheng" "Ming Qu" "Ying Wu" "Urban Cycling" "Real Ridaz" "Ea | Leave a comment

the Coyote show

Posted on April 11, 2012 by hitc

This episode is about co-existence. Coyotes live all over the continent of North America, in all sorts of landscapes. But nowhere –across the 50 states– are coyotes as comfortable in an urban setting as they are in Los Angeles. By some counts, 5000 coyotes in live in Southern California. Hear in the City host Sara Harris feels lucky each time she sees a coyote, but arguably most people would feel disconcerted. So, we decided to dedicate a whole episode to the coyote.

Ten years ago, the City of Los Angeles became so overwhelmed with calls about sightings of coyotes in residential neighborhoods that it created a new position: Wildlife Specialist. On this episode Sara interviews Officer Gregory Randall about what we can do to prevent coyotes from coming into backyards and about why it’s people who might pose a bigger problem than it is the animals themselves. In the first half of the show, we visit the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area to talk to one of the authors of Urban Carnivores, and an expert in fragmentation of wildlife ecologies in the urban space, Seth Riley.

Click here for a link to advice on what to do if you are experiencing worrisome wildlife in your immediate area and wonder what you should do. And remember: we are encroaching into the wild landscape with our living spaces, but we do wild animals a favor by dissuading them from entering residential spaces. Don’t leave food where wild animals can reach it, be brash in your interactions with wild carnivores: it’s better they fear you than you fear them, but trapping and shooting is illegal for the average resident.

Posted in animal services, Anza Borrego Desert, public health, public radio, Santa Monica Mountains, sustainability, Uncategorized, urban environment, urban wildlife | Tagged City Of Los Angeles, co-existence, Coyotes, Gregory Randall, Hear in the City, Los Angeles Wildlife, Sara Harris, Seth Riley, Southern California wildlife, Urban Landscape, urban wildlife, Wildlife Expert | Leave a comment

Love for the Central Library and a Walmart in Chinatown?

Posted on March 28, 2012 by hitc

On this episode of Hear in the City, we go to Chinatown in Los Angeles to hear voices from two sides of the battle over a opening a Walmart Neighborhood Store. We also share an audio postcard to the Los Angeles Central Library from author Anne Marie Ruff. Her new book, Through These Veins, is now part of the permanent collection she has frequented during the course of a career.

Profits from Anne Marie Ruff’s novel, Through These Veins, benefit Doctors Without Borders and the Ethiopian Institute for the Conservation of Biodiversity. Her commentary was originally published in the Downtown News. Anne Marie will be at Stories Bookstore reading from her novel on Thursday, April 5th.

Here is the original motion approved unanimously by the Los Angeles City Council asking for a moratorium protecting Chinatown from “new formula retail uses” like the proposed Walmart store.

City Council Chinatown Formula Retail Motion 3-16-12

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

bells for Japan and advocates for foster children

Posted on March 13, 2012 by hitc

On this week’s episode, we ring the big bell at the Nishi Honganji Buddhist Temple in Little Tokyo, Los Angeles at 2:46pm in recognition and solidarity with the people of Japan who were hit by the earthquake and Tsunami last year. We also visit an a ground-breaking, primary social service center in unusual architectural landscape of courtrooms and spaces dedicated to children who have become wards of the foster care system, CASA/LA.

“Japan will hear our vibrations today.” That’s what the man standing behind Sara tells her as they wend their way through the line toward the huge brass bell on platform with a hundred or so other congregants this past Sunday. Mineo Hoshi of the South Coast Interfaith Council explains how to rock the rope so that the log hits the bell hard enough to make a sound. He has plenty more to say about fear and knowledge among humans in the world, so we’ll add this short clip of that moment in the city.

Listen next week at 2:30 PDT on www.kpfk.org.

Posted in City Government, culture in the city, economy and equality, education, foster care, Little Tokyo, nuclear energy, public health, public radio, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Bullied?

Posted on March 6, 2012 by hitc

On this week’s show, we are thrilled to announce that Hear in the City has been selected to be part of a national one-hour radio series: Generation PRX’s Bullied Project. Student producers René Ayala and Oscar Rodriguez share their story from Roosevelt High School about the subtle differences in how people perceive bullying, and our host, Sara Harris interviews bullying prevention and intervention specialist Holly Priebe-Díaz from the Los Angeles Unified School District.

We kick off the show with artist, activist, and intrepid cyclist, Patrick Miller talking about Midnight Ridazz #99 Ride, inspired by John Carpenter’s cult thriller, “They Live”.

The show wraps up with a “Coda” track from independent rocker, EMA. She came through town this weekend and performed at the Natural History Museum’s First Fridays in the great mammal hall among the taxidermed bisons, wolves, and big-horn sheep.

Posted in arts, film, and music, bicycling, Boyle Heights, Crisis in Education, culture in the city, Downtown, economy and equality, education, infrastructure, LAUSD, marginalize communities, music, public radio, street art, Two Wheels and a Mic, Uncategorized | 1 Comment

A night at the Welcome Inn

Posted on February 5, 2012 by hitc

We spend this week’s show at a one-time musical happening in a motel on Colorado Boulevard in Los Angeles. The Society for the Activation of Social Space through Art and Sound converts a block of rooms into experimental music stages and installation spaces for an afternoon. Arts editor Jesse Lerner went to the January 29th Welcome Inn Time Machine; a 6 hour sound fest; and condenses it for our half-hour show. (Image: Los Angeles Free Music Society Pyramid Headphones.)

The performance features David Ornette Cherry live and Kamou Daaood, co-founder of Leimert Park’s World Stage. This collection of L.A.-based works in sound performance and installation and riffs on John Cage’s Variations IV, a 1963 six-hour-long performance at UCLA that incorporated actual sound and invited the audience to add to the layers of ambient sound by doing other activities while the performance was in session. You can read the L.A. Times coverage of the performance here: http://articles.latimes.com/2009/sep/10/entertainment/et-guidefeature10

Posted in arts, film, and music, culture in the city, Eagle Rock, music, public radio, Uncategorized | Tagged art, Hear in the City, Jesse Lerner, John Cage, Kamou Daaoud, LAFMS, Los Angeles, performance art, Sara Harris, SASSAS, sound, space, Welcome Inn | Leave a comment

Occupy Rose Parade and “Civic Virtue” Los Angeles

Posted on January 4, 2012 by hitc

It’s our first show of the new year! We go to the Rose Parade to hear the first Occupy Los Angeles march of the year… and we’ll go up above Hollywood Boulevard to the Barnsdall Art Park for an exhibition at the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery that deals with the ambivalent relationship between city government and the arts.

The 99% was in a festive mood this January 2nd. Young, old, cycling with television on head, rolling in wheel chairs with ten slogans in arms, and walking with those V for Vendetta masks on. The march reminded a lot of the anti-war rallies in Hollywood and Downtown L.A. back in 2003 when the U.S. invaded Iraq. Marchers were there from all along the pacific coast. In the second half of the show, arts editor Jesse Lerner interview the curator of Civic Virtue, Pilar Tompkins Rivas.

Posted in arts, film, and music, censorship, community arts, culture in the city, East Hollywood, economy and equality, Neighborhood/Area, Pasadena, public radio, street art, work | Tagged Barnsdall Art Park, Civic Virtue, Municipal Art Gallery, Occupy L.A., Rose Parade | 1 Comment

Echo Park Film Center at 10 and Weegee at MOCA

Posted on December 23, 2011 by hitc

On this week’s episode, we hang out with founders and fans of independent film gem, the Echo Park Film Center on the occasion of their 10th anniversary, and we review some lesser known and more campy work of Arthur Felig, AKA Weegee in the Naked Hollywood show at Los Angeles’s Museum of Contemporary Art. Plus, a coda from our series on oil extraction in the Baldwin Hills.

Happy holidays to all!

Posted in arts, film, and music, Baldwin Hills, community arts, culture in the city, Echo Park, film, local oil production, MOCA, photography, urban environment | Leave a comment

Air Check: the problem beneath the park

Posted on December 13, 2011 by hitc

On our last episode, we heard from residents about the history of oil fields and parkland in the Baldwin Hills, Ladera Heights, Windsor Hills, and Culver City Crest in South Los Angeles. On this week’s show, we hear about two competing visions for living alongside oil extraction in the Baldwin Hills, and we help L.A. local-global nomadic micro cinema, The Echo Park Film Center, celebrate it’s 10th anniversary.

Some 1,600 rigs perch above the baseball and soccer fields of Kenneth Hahn State recreation area in South Los Angeles. They have been here since 1924. They were not contested until five years ago when Plains Exploration and Production Company was granted access by the county to drill one thousand news oil wells here after a period of very slow output.

Next week, we’ll look wrap up our series with a look at the toxic impacts and public policy implications of a legal settlement negotiated between the Citizen’s Coalition, the oil company, and the county of Los Angeles.