Till Los Angeles Islands projektet
     

To Los Angeles Islands project

LOS ANGELES ISLANDS (Main Lobby, Grünewald Hall)

Los Angeles Islands is a research project on architectonic americanisms in a Swedish region. Los Angeles is juxtaposed with Malmö. At Art+Science the project distributes a series of postcards in the main lobby to the Grünewald Hall. Los Angeles and the US West Coast region have turned into a kind of superprojection of the conceptions held by the rest of the world of North America. This westward orientation is reflected within the US. New York has been challenged by the West Coast as a cultural center and the west has been the birth place for many alternative movements. Los Angeles’ multicultural nature is often presented as an argument for its particular urbanism. Other voices contradict this view, and argue that segregation and other typical metropolitan problems rather reflect the dystopia of Los Angeles. When Los Angeles’ conditions are projected onto Swedish urban planning and architecture we are thrown into a double game. Critical voices see american-isms in the tendency to allow private capital increasing influence, the emphasis on iconic heroic architecture, and that the city is allowed to sprawl out of control over pastoral fields. Those who finance these projects have, on the other hand a rather naïve confidence in the potential of monumental architectural gestures, not the least in the Malmö region. The latest example is the idea to have a hotel at the bridge abutment designed by Frank O Gehry. What are the mechanisms at work in that which appears as a conglomerate of America-dreams? How are American utopias and dystopias – Los Angeles Islands – sur-facing in south west Skåne? Los Angeles Islands is a project which by means of artistic interpretation aims at confronting the influences and expressions of American architecture in Sweden. The results are shown at exhibitions. It aspires in addition to generate built projects in the Malmö region.

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