The Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach make up the largest port complex in the United States; they are also the busiest ports in North and South America. Each year, they handle more than 15 million cargo containers, representing over $400 billion worth of goods.
When one considers what that means for the San Pedro Bay, it can be overwhelming. The spectacle of these daily operations is both fascinating and troubling. On one hand, the scale of commerce, the efficiency of logistics and the technological systems that enable the movement of goods are captivating. On the other hand, the environmental and social-economic consequences of the globalized supply chains these ports sustain are troubling.
A new contemporary exhibition, Built on Water, showing at Angels Gate Cultural Center or AGCC through Aug. 22, maps the human forces that have shaped — and continue to reshape — the economy and ecology of the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.
Built on Water presents past, present and future visions of the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, featuring Los Angeles-based artists Flora Kao, Kaya & Blank, Jennifer Gunlock, Hilary Norcliffe and Katie E. Stubblefield. Built on Water is curated by AGCC’s director of exhibitions, Cecelia Caro.
Angels Gate Cultural Center is a resonant vantage point, on a hill overlooking the bay, from which to examine the ports’ industrial present and layered histories beneath. The campus was originally established as Fort MacArthur in the early 20th century, serving as a coastal defense installation for the Los Angeles Harbor. Living in the Harbor Area and looking out to the bay, one registers — even internalizes — a canvas of muscular port infrastructure. Monumental stacks of containers, towering cranes, and endless lines of cargo ships compress a dense network of global commerce into an abstract grid of steel, color and mechanized movement.
Conversely, the region’s industrial present and layered histories hold present-day parallels. The forced internment of Japanese Americans from the Terminal Island fishing village echoes the erasure of the original Gabrieleño Tongva peoples. The ports are machines for transpacific exchange, yet their industrial reach has permanently altered the ecology of the natural coastline and the marine life once sustained.
A surprising feature of this exhibition is that it offers viewers an answer to the unforeseen inquiry of how to comprehend all of this — panorama, history, industry, absorption and ecology. Built on Water examines the ports’ layered industrial landscape to postulate a visionary future — where memories surface, nature reclaims and humanity progresses in harmony with the natural world.
Flora Kao’s work in Built on Water excavates layered histories beneath the port, exploring meaning through place and memory. Kao’s evocative installation of cyanotype and rubbing, 100 Views of Fish Harbor, Terminal Island, investigates the historic significance of San Pedro for Southern California’s Japanese-American community. More than 100 Prussian blue images mark the historical context of a thriving Terminal Island fishing village; its inhabitants, culture, and dress fill the walls of the lower gallery. A fine netting pattern on the surface of each blueprint reflects fish netting, Japanese embroidery designs and textile patterns. Residents in their best clothes pose in front of businesses that fortified the region; cyanotype prints of the day’s fresh catch, fishermen working, and family and school photograms populate the gallery walls, recalling an abundant life.
Artist duo Kaya & Blank focus on the intersections between infrastructure, ecology and systems of power. In their body of work, Intermodal, the monumental scale of port operations loops and distorts global commerce into an abstract environment of steel and color, underscoring the enmeshed relationship we have to global exchange. The extended video triggers hypnotic focus, providing a bird’s-eye view of intermodal mechanisms. It’s a bit like watching toy Tonka trucks moving about, juxtaposed with the aid of automated stacking machinery and other mechanisms, amidst ambient sounds of machinery constantly, rhythmically pushing forward, as it audio-hypnotizes.
Accompanying the video is a series of gold-toned salted paper prints, containing saltwater from the ports of LA and Long Beach. This printing process, developed in the 19th century, is used to sensitize the paper. The seawater is brushed onto the paper surface and coated with silver nitrate, forming light-sensitive silver salts. After exposure, the prints undergo a developing and washing sequence that incorporates additional seawater collected from the site, resulting in the material conditions of the ports becoming physically embedded within each image. Presented in bare wooden frames, five striking images each present a quiet horizon around the port. Three display vessels in the distance, almost like whales skimming the waters’ surface. A beautiful, vertical triptych depicts a full moon over water in the first frame, bordered by a thin veil of clouds. Lunar light is framed by a darkened sky at the top that precedes the satellite, replicating the shadowiness of still waters in the successive frames below. Each of the print’s archival aesthetic depicts peaceful scenes amid foregrounded natural elements, such as waves crashing at Cabrillo Beach and birds in flight above the waters and mountains in view.
Looking toward a visionary future, Future Port is a collaboration between Jennifer Gunlock, Katie Stubblefield and Hilary Norcliffe, who create an immersive installation that imagines a reclaimed coastal marine environment. Stubblefield has created an ocean floor landscape in Live Through This, created from second-hand wedding dresses and pearl-producing mollusks. The exhibition text notes, “Mother Nature creates a hybrid filtration system that regenerates despite environmental upheaval.” The installation is contrasted with an overlaid video titled Gone Fishing by Gunlock, whose projected video works convey the collision between the coastline and built infrastructure. Human detritus flow through crashing tides, emphasizing the anthropogenic time humans reside in. Heavily rusted mooring chains are visible underwater while cranes sit at the top of the projection, populating a bright blue, cloud-filled sky. At the horizon, the ocean surface shines, mirage-like, above murky waters. Norcliffe’s Alpha Frequency installation envisions a radically optimistic future of ocean-attuned shipping and port systems. Shimmering, dynamic, fish-like forms swim disarmingly with an invisible tide, transporting goods from upcycled port to upcycled port, channeling the alpha frequency — the brain’s state of calm, grounded consciousness. A small video “billboard” of Going Fishing is embedded into one of these ports, reminding future folk of how past humans disrespected their precious waters.
Together, Future Port imagines the conditions under which regeneration is possible and global exchange operates in harmony with the natural world.
Built on Water is made possible with support from the Department of Cultural Affairs, City of Los Angeles, the Port of Los Angeles, the Port of Long Beach and the Los Angeles County Department of Art and Culture.
~ In conjunction with Built on Water, join a paint & sip cyanotype printing, hands-on sun print workshop. The free event includes a social and an artist talk with artist Flora Kao, from 2 to 4 p.m., Aug. 1.
Details: https://tinyurl.com/Cyanotype-printing-workshop
Built on Water
Time: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, through Aug. 15
Cost: Free
Details: https://angelsgateart.org
Venue: Angels Gate Cultural Center, 3601 S. Gaffey St., San Pedro