Mark Ruwedel at Gallery Luisotti (Los Angeles):

"Crossings" (Photographs from the US/Mexico border.)

"Dissipation and Disintegration" at the Center for Land Use Interpretation (Los Angeles):

Dissipation: The antenna sites depicted here form a line along the southernmost ridges and peaks of the San Gabriels. From this elevation, more than a mile above the Los Angeles basin, and within proximity to the city, these sites allow for line-of-sight communications, and for the exposure of the maximum urban area to the electromagnetic emissions of industry, entertainment, and government. The Forest Service, which owns and manages most of the San Gabriels, has set aside twenty-seven areas in the Angeles Forest for "Designated Communications Sites." The most congested of these sites, at Mount Wilson, is one of the densest "RF jungles" in North America. Thousands of feet separate these antenna sites from the debris basins below.


Disintegration: Debris basins can be found at the base of many of the vertiginous washes and canyons in the San Gabriels. The function of the debris basin is to separate debris, including rocks, mud and vegetation, from the storm water that flows down the mountains during the winter rainy season and thereby prevent damage to property and downstream flood control structures. A debris basin usually consists of an earthen dam, an excavated pit, and a spillway to channel water past the dam. Pipe spillways, as seen in the video, are vertical pipes with perforations to allow water to be separated from debris. Debris basins require constant maintenance--once they reach about 25% full the debris needs to be removed, trucked off, and disposed of. Due to encroaching development, disposal sites for the debris are getting further away, adding to their expense.

"The Most Beautiful Brides of B.C." (Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego):

"Vyonne Venegas' work is a critical examination of the "picture-perfect" world her photographer-father creates in his images of Tijuana's wealthy families and their social events. Her photographs of weddings, showers and birthday parties document the insularity and artificiality of the city's upper class."

Mike Davis

"I hate the wall and the empire of fear that hides behind it."

The Center For Land Use Interpretation

Robert Irwin:

"There are such sophisticated systems of orthodoxy, and they're so beautifully developed--not just the orthodoxies of painting and sculpture but the super-structures of the museums, galleries, collecting, criticism, and so forth--that when you try and operate outside of those systems you really have a problem, because everything is set up to induct that which is already within the paradigm or within the orthodoxy."

"Genius is the capacity for productive reaction against one's training."
--Berenson

"Many a man fails as an original thinker simply because his memory is too good."
--Nietzsche

Gloom and Doom (SIMPARCH with Steve Rowell) at the Contemporary Arts Center (Cincinnati):

The Sonic Boom Simulator: The audio recordings featured in this structure are from Steve Rowell's on-going Sonic Boom Archive Project, where he has installed autonomous microphones beneath the super-sonic corridor known as the "R-2508 Special Use Airspace Complex" in California's Mojave desert. His audio composition "Tactile Air" is a constant, high decibel playback of sonic booms inside the chamber, and is designed to replicate the actual volume levels experienced by residents living beneath military-controlled supersonic airspace. Please Note: earplugs are provided as a courtesy. Volume levels in this installation, while very loud, will not cause permanent hearing loss or other bodily harm.

"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage."
--Anais Nin

The Temple of the Sun at Teotihuacan, Mexico City:

(The Real Deal)

Gonzalez/Russom at Peres Projects (Los Angeles):

"Exploring the forces of magic on earth via simple modular forms made in Formica."

Miles Coolidge at ACME (Los Angeles):

"Fire Hazards"

LAXART

Jorge Damian Ontiveros Ramirez at the Palacio de la Autonomia (México City):

"Drawings Made by Policemen of Their Own Guns"

Francis Alÿs at the Antiguo Colegio De San Ildefonso (México City):

Zocalo May 22, 1999

"People following the shade throughout the day create a detour in the functional/spatial logic of the place. A place of political protest is transformed into a cosmological space."

México: