Hear in the City: Recent Episodes
Sara Harris
MyEveryDayRadio is a daily time-mapping exercise asking you to stop and listen, at least once every day. Hear in the City: Radio Realities from the Urban Landscape is a sound-mapping endeavor launched in 2010 on KPFK, 90.7FM in Los Angeles by Sara Harris.
This is a prototype for a 12-unit audio-based curriculum with a coloring book field guide about the ecology and flora and fauna of the Mojave Desert in Southern California. Copyright pending. (hearinthecity.org)
We offer you this original submission to the KCRW 24 Hour Radio Race 2020 "Time Warp", with gratitude, for the opportunity!
After nearly three months of bickering while quarantining together, this mother-daughter team finds peace while making radio together about a person whom they both loved very much and eventually lost to Alzheimers disease. With original poetry by Minerva Lerner and original song by Edward Harris. Produced and edited by Sara Harris.
Hear in the City’s Sara Harris and Minerva Lerner delve into old audio recordings documenting the voice of Sara's father and the fluidity of time over 10 years living with -and through- Alzheimers in a multi-generational household. This, in honour of Edward Samuel Harris (02/18/1930-03/30/2018).
(Featuring Minerva Lerner, Sara Harris, Amanda Harris, Edward Harris, and the sounds of homes they have lived in.)
Human excrement, overgrown undergrowth, general disregard for the landscape in the Shadow of Dodgers Stadium.
Installment #4: What if we all took a moment out of each day to think about and talk about and perhaps even thank- or decide to delete- the long list of contacts in our cellphone?
With the intention of creating a masterfully-crafted, self-contained, internally edited and smooth musing, this entry of MyEveryDayRadio documents nothing more than two dogs barking behind a fence and a homeless man searching for a plastic bag in the weeds on a hillside.
Welcome to day one of an experiment in daily decompression from wherever my mind takes me.
December 21st, 2012- the winter solstice- was thought by many to portend the end of the world, and by others as the moment of spiritual and cosmological transformation as it represented the end and new beginning of the Long Count Aztec and Maya calendars. On this New Years Day, 2013 episode, Hear in the The City goes out the the wasteland spaces of California's Salton Sea to find out if the Apocalypse happened... or if it is still on the horizon. (Originally broadcast on KPFK, 90.7FM, Los Angeles, 1/01/2013
This episode, we take a trip to one of the largest on-site rain/storm water catchment systems in Los Angeles. On an unusually rainy May day, in a year, when rain has been scarce, Andy Lipkis and Jim Hardie of Tree People walk us through the basics of the past, present, and future of the relationship between trees and water in a time of climate change in Los Angeles.
This week's radio outside of the studio: we celebrate Earth Day with a crew of people who think every day is Earth Day--we visit Northeast Trees on planting mission in the Mar Vista Gardens Housing Projects and ride a bike to power a dj party with Movable Parts at Ciclavia.
This episode, we visit with Afro-futurist filmmaker Cauleen Smith as she brings her slide-show performance drawn from archives of and admiration for Sun-Ra to Los Angeles. It's national poetry month, and we have some choice recordings of Mr. Ra/Mystery, the cosmic polymath, composer, and poet.
This week, we take a walk with the "old man of water", Waterkeeper's Conner Everts to find concrete solutions to problem of a concrete city that pours most of its water right back into the ocean instead of saving it for a non-rainy day.
On this episode, we spend the show loitering at City Hall with artist Chris Cuellar who is part of a gallery show at Los Angeles City College called "Come in; We're Open" --a collection of conversations about social practice and a project of Performing Public Space. Also on the show: the day-after the dislocation of Occupy L.A.
This episode: "When you are at kilometer 30...that's when the pain and the absurdity of the marathon come into focus." "Ever since starting to work on this guide, whenever I see a plain, industrial building, I just have to wonder: who's being screwed behind those frosted, black windows?"
This week's Hear in the City wraps up our series on natural elements in the the urban space with "Water" by Radiosonideros collective featuring the poetry of Lewis McAdams, co-founder of Friends of the Los Angeles River. We also offer you a guide to a proposed landmark urban plan on the L.A. River and a meditation on the multiplicity of love.
Next in our series of audio art honoring natural elements in the urban space: Earth. We spend most of the program exploring the fundamental issues that arise when a piece of land is set aside for public park use at a time when disinvestment in open and un-exploited spaces has become the norm in the State of California.
This week, we visit Mexico City--once the dirtiest metropolitan area in the Americas-- now the recipient of a prize for clean air and sustainable transport. Plus, audio poetry by Clare Fox and responses from our Pit Bull show.
The number one dog breed euthanized in shelters in cities in the U.S. is the Pit Bull Terrier. On this episode, we travel to two spaces in the City to visit extraordinary people who are committed to difficult dogs and helping society to deal with them. Featuring Larry Hill of Puppy Imprinters and Lori Weise of the Downtown Dog Rescue.
The 2012 U.S. presidential election had been decided. California saw record turn-out. Some Angelinos went beyond the call of voter duty and hit the pavement in Las Vegas to make sure to get out the vote in our neighboring swing-state. Listen to the show to hear how it went.
Hear in the City went to Vegas this weekend to map the city with volunteers for Obama and Romney who traveled all the way from Los Angeles to get out the vote in this swing state where the President won in 2008 by a 537 vote margin. Listen tomorrow on KPFK, 90.7FM at 2:30 PDT.
With one week left until the U.S. presidential election, Sara visits Men's Central Jail in downtown Los Angeles where a group of faith-based volunteers teams up with the county sheriff's department to register eligible voters in jails. It's the first effort of its kind, and while most former felons and non-violent inmates serving misdemeanors are unaware of the fact, they do have the right to vote in California. At the end of the show we celebrate el Día de los Muertos with the Los Angeles Theater Academy's children's choir.
On this episode of Hear in the City, we enter a collection drawn from old boxes recently found in a house sold after the 1985 earthquake in Mexico City. The boxes belonged to the hard-working and versatile photographer, Lola Alvarez Bravo. Inside, was a treasure of documents and unedited photos and correspondence from a half century of travel and changing times. The Museum of Latin American Art in Long Beach, California is showing the collection to the public for the first time. Plus, we dive into the underground warehouse electronica scene with music correspondent, Alvaro "el Barbaro" Parra.
On this episode, we visit a humble house on a winding road in the hills of Los Angeles where a group of artists turn one family's mortgage default and foreclosure story into a lens for looking at a larger problem. With "A Notorious Possession", artist Olga Koumoundouros squats the abandoned house across the street, paints it gold, and holds economic justice parties. We wrap up the show with a tribute to Igor Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring".
We are cruising down a European highway through the wooded hills of Belgium. We are 30 kilometers from the border with the southern tip of Holland. We are on a detour to an abandoned coal-mine-turned-into-art-space-commentary on the state of capitalism.
Where can kids who've been pushed to the margins of the learning experience in life find a place to reach their potential? This week's Hear in the City takes you to two spaces where dignity, integrity, and discipline guide the path to learning success for high-schoolers on two ends of Los Angeles: at a juvenile probation camp in the San Gabriel Mountains and with emerging hip-hop artists and DJ's at an after-school program in Watts. Featuring Rob Thelusma of Affirmative Athletics and Brian Mora at Inner Circle Youth with original music by DJ Nozer and Jahli. Reporting by Sara Harris and Alvaro Parra of High Life Radio.
This episode, Hear in the City runs into the only 24-hour, 7-day-a-week, animal rescue team of its kind...and, we sit in on a tiny puppet show of epic poetic proportions. SMART in Los Angeles and Automata in Chinatown.
On this episode, we meet a coyo-dog, Sara chases a coyote up into the hills in the broad daylight, and we revisit the animal's predicament in the urban space.
While most media are regurgitating Calderón and the PRI's assertions that Mexico has a president-elect, today on Hear in the City, Sara interviews investigative journalist and Enfoque Latino contributor Dolores Dorantes about what she calls "A Coup d' Etat, Mexican Style." We do a simultaneous translation, and we have a visit to the anti-Walmart protest this weekend as well.
On this episode of Hear in the City we attend the unveiling of a 340 ton rock that crossed 22 cities and 4 counties from a quarry in Hurupah Valley, Riverside, California to land in Los Angeles as the latest object to be added to the list of land art in the world...and we preview Radio Ambulante, a new show that brings the best of radio story-telling to a pan-American audience, en español.
We start this episode of Hear in the City at Los Angeles' historic Echo Park Lake, the site of a $65 million water quality project that has temporarily displaced dozens of birds and turned the ponds of lotus flower into a giant construction site. From there, we follow the ducks and geese to their new home in Mac Arthur Park where we catch catfish in the middle of the city and finally find a free lunch at Langer's Deli in honor of their 65th anniversary.
On this episode of Hear in the City we visit with two extraordinary people who dedicate their lives to caring for pets who would otherwise fall through the cracks of the urban economic crisis. One, a veterinarian and self-proclaimed "bleeding heart", is owed $40,000 by the City of Los Angeles Department of Animal Services. The other, a computer scientist who feed feral cats by night, is an unusual creature on the streets of L.A.: a walker, a veritable flaneur.
On today’s Hear in the City, in honor of Mothers’ Day, we offer you two stories of motherhood during difficult times... The first is an audio postcard from a group of teen moms who are finishing their high school degrees at a small school in Los Angeles’s San Fernando Valley. The second story is an inquiry into a mother’s journey across landscapes of occupation as she tries to keep her children safe across changing borders at a time of war.
It's our May Day show. Studs Terkel, Lenin's Head by the Gao Brothers, Pete Seeger, The East is Red, and the connections between the immigrant rights movement and the 99%. From Los Angeles as the marches get underway. (photo credit, LA Times).
Martha White interviewed her friend Jessica Chapin at Santa Monica's Step Up on Second, a psychosocial rehabilitation and support program for people affected by severe and persistent mental illness. Jessica is a resident in the organization's permanent supportive housing and Martha is a member in the supportive services programs. Martha and Jessica sat down to interview each other about what the program has helped them accomplish in life. Their interview was produced by Will Coley and Sara Harris in Los Angeles.
This week's Hear in the City offers you 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.
Anne Marie Ruff who recently published her first novel, Through These Veins, explores the question “if we had a cure for AIDS, would it ever make it to market?:” She spent a lot of time at the Los Angeles Central Library while writing and offers us this audio post-card to the Central Library. All profits from the sale of her book 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. Visit our website, Hearinthecity.org for details.
On this week's episode: Walmart makes inroads to Los Angeles via Chinatown and the Los Angeles Central Library is a home away from home, with author Anne Marie Ruff.
Before this week's show, Hear in the City host Sara Harris will be presenting her work at the Center for Non-profit Management and talking about the ins-and-outs of independent radio/audio production. One of Sara's all-time-favorite stories she's worked on is this collaboration with Street Poet Jorge Nuñez. After growing up his whole life in Los Angeles, Jorge was deported to Tijuana, Mexico and tells this story about his experience. This piece was produced for Youth Radio and originally aired on All Things Considered.
This is an excerpt from an audiopostcard Hear in the City host Sara Harris produced with Haitian students at Toussaint L'ouverture High School in Del Rey Beach, Florida after President Jean Bertrand Aristide was pushed out of power. An English teacher at the High School invited Sara to her poetry class. Her students wanted to challenge the pervasive impression that their country and their culture is one of misery, suffering, and disaster. So, together, they recorded their poetry and their choir practice. This piece was produced for Youth Radio aired on NPR's All Things Considered.
"Our vibrations reach Japan today." Spoken by Mineo Hoshi of the South Coast Interfaith Council in Los Angeles's Little Tokyo on the moment of ringing the bell at Nishi Hongwanji Buddhist Temple, 2:46PM, PDT, in honor of what was lost in the Tsunami one year ago.
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 unusual architectural landscape of courtrooms and social services dedicated to children who have become wards of the foster care system.
At the beginning of the year, Hear in the City was selected by the national youth radio network --Generation PRX-- to participate in a one-hour radio special about bullying. This episode of Hear in the City features two wonderfully talented students at Roosevelt High School, Oscar Rodriguez and René Ayala, reporting about how bullying is not as easily defined as you might think. Also features music by EMA and They Live, Midnight Ridazz, #99!
We spend this week's show at a one-time musical happening that takes space in a motel on Colorado Boulevard where the rooms are converted into experimental music stages and installation spaces for an afternoon. Arts editor Jesse Lerner condenses a 6 hour sound fest by the Society for the Activation of Social Space through Art and Sound into our half-hour radio show. If you like Ornette Coleman, Kamou Daaood, and John Cage, you don't want to miss this episode of Hear in the City!
On this episode, we take an eclectic tour of Los Angeles-based music. First, we go to a private collection that is open to the public...and houses the king of keyboards. After that, we’ll check in with Los Angeles Film forum about upcoming screenings of works that served as visual sisters to the punk rock scene in the city. At the end of the show, we go to Venice Beach with a Mariachi odd couple from Boyle Heights as they try to expand their territory.
It’s our first show of the new year! We’ll go to the Rose Parade to hear the first Occupy Los Angeles march of the year...and we’ll go up above Hollywood Boulevard at the Barnsdall Art Park for "Civic Virtue", an exhibition that deals with the ambivalent relationship between city government and the arts.
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 work of a yellow press stalwart from 1940’s New York and L.A. Plus, a coda from the Baldwin Hills.
“It’s really hard for someone to get their head around what the Inglewood Oil Field is.” On this week’s Hear in the City we offer you part two in our series about oil extraction in the Baldwin Hills, and we help L.A. local-global micro cinema, the Echo Park Film Center, celebrate it’s 10th anniversary. Listen to KPFK, 90.7FM, Tuesday's at 3:30pm.
Here's a little taste of what we'll be delving into next week on Hear in the City for part 2 of our Air Check series from Baldwin Hills. Listen on Tuesday, December 13th at 3:30pm in Los Angeles on 90.7fm or at www.kpfk.org to hear the whole story about the oil fields in the middle of the city and what dangers they pose to people.
Hear in the City will spend then next few shows in the Baldwin Hills at the Inglewood Oilfield. This place is perched on the summit overlooking the past and the future. On one side, the oil discoveries that drew wealth and intrigue and prospectors to L.A. at the turn of the last century and on the other side, the future of Los Angeles parkland at a moment when public access to the great outdoors may well trump the desire for traditional industrial jobs and big real estate developments. To a degree, both spaces on this summit are imaginary. To a degree, both spaces are very real. Listen to the voices from the oilfield: Part One of our Series sponsored by Newsdesk.org and Spot.us.
This month, we’ll be launching our new series on oil exploration and drilling right in the middle of residential Los Angeles. It’s called Air Check: pollution and petroleum from a community perspective. It’s complicated. It involves oil rigs in the middle of the city, and it involves multiple agencies. You are welcome you to visit our website, www.hearinthecity.org to get a taste of who we’ll be hearing from in our reporting. Today, we wanted to follow up on an international story we've been covering from L.A. Liberians went to the polls on Tuesday, for a second round of voting in a run-off election for the country’s president. We bring you an interview with three leaders in the Liberian community in L.A. to talk about the recent Nobel Peace shared by activist Leyma Gbowee and President Sirleaf Johnson with a young Yemeni journalist: all women.
Peace and equality activists of all stripes have been on the lawn and sidewalks of Los Angeles City Hall since the beginning of October as part of a larger sit-in movement in the United States demanding a restoration of sanity in economic and social systems in this country. It's peaceful, it's messy, it's full of ideas and dreams and conversations. Hear in the City listens in live, for the record. Listen up to the second half of the show. We'll have more as time goes by.
Peace and equality activists of all stripes have been on the lawn and sidewalks of Los Angeles City Hall since the beginning of October as part of a larger sit-in movement in the United States demanding a restoration of sanity in economic and social systems in this country. It's peaceful, it's messy, it's full of ideas and dreams and conversations. Hear in the City listens in live, for the record. Listen up. We'll have more as time goes by.
In honor of our one-year anniversary on Hear in the City, we bring you a show about protest, performance, and prayer in the public space. Our show is dedicated to mapping the city through conversations with people working toward creative social change in and around Los Angeles, and in that spirit, we are checking in with Occupy L.A., the Asco show at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the World Festival of Sacred Music.
On this week's episode, we offer a mixed bag of art and culture happening around Los Angeles. Luis Sierra Campos visits a community garden in Highland Park that serves as a model for urban sustainability and food security in a depressed real estate market, Jesse Lerner reviews the Cuban photography show at the Getty, and Patrick Miller invites us to preview a group of musicians who will use their bicycles as improvisational instrument sin the upcoming Tour da Arts festival.
From our recent grocery shopping show on Hear in the City, we bring you contributor Will Coley's audio essay on why he likes Costco so much, "warts and all". The warehouse store chain has proven to weather the recession well, perhaps by not accepting credit cards other than American Express, but Will asked recently, "Can I take back my Costco love?" when he read about the company's agreement with Immigration and Customs Enforcement to screen employees with the E-verify system for legal immigration status. The voluntary social security data scanning system has drawn criticism for its intrusion of privacy and because one in 25 entries are flawed or misspelled, resulting in termination of employment or declining to hire qualified job applicants.
On past episodes of Hear in the City, we’ve covered the rich history of muralism in Los Angeles from the censorship angle to recent museum shows on the topic. This week, senior producer Luis Sierra Campos takes us on a walk along the cement channels that serve as the canvas for Los Angeles’s Great Mural on the Tujunga Wash of the L.A. River. The mural, painted in 1976 by more than 400 high school students and artists, is being restored this year under the guidance of SPARC (social and public art resource center) founder and well-known muralist Judy Baca...plus, we hear from listeners about bad interactions with drivers on the road.
On this episode of Hear in the City, we get down to the nitty gritty of a brand new city ordinance protecting bicyclists from harassment by drivers in Los Angeles with Sergeant David Krumer, the bicycle liason at the LAPD, and we preview the quirky animations of independent filmmaker Jodie Mack before the screening at L.A. Film Forum this Sunday.
On this episode of Hear in the City, we go to the market. We sit down at the kitchen table with a 32 year veteran employee of the largest grocery chain the U.S. at a moment when the United Food and Commercial Workers union has approved a walk out if workers' demands are not met...and we hear confessions of a Costco cardholder about why he loves the sense of community that comes from being part of an elite club of deal-gatherers who frequent one of the few recession-proof companies.
Last month, on a Wednesday night at eight, the Million Dollar Theater on Broadway in downtown Los Angeles was packed for the 30th anniversary screening of a now classic film, Zoot Suit. On this episode of Hear in the City, we sit in on the panel discussion with iconic playwright and director, Luis Valdez, academy-award-nominee Edward James Olmos, and long-time film and television actor, Rose Portillo as they screen the film that changed all of their careers when it made its way -as a play- to Broadway in New York City in 1978.
On this week's Hear in the City, we check in with artist, educator, and bicycle activist Patrick Miller about an incident in Los Angeles that made international news last week when 11 cyclists were injured by an alleged drunk driver. And arts editor Jesse Lerner reviews James Benning's newest film titled, simpley "RR" (for railroad). Benning is a long-time figure in Los Angeles experimental film, best known for meticulous timing of 10-minute-long shots --the length of an unedited 16mm film reel-- and striking landscapes of California.
It's the first day of summer, the longest day of the year in the northern hemisphere. We take the opportunity to look at how budget cuts in California are affecting summer course offerings at community colleges while philanthropy allows a new art museum to flourish in East Los Angeles. We visit a nearly one-hundred-year-old music school in Boyle Heights, and we sit down for a special reading of the "Infection Monologues" in honor of the 30th anniversary of the first AIDS diagnosis, here in Los Angeles.
On this week's show, we enter the space of a meticulous 24-hour-long video documentation of one entire day in Christian Marclay’s new work, The Clock, we consider the expanded day of June 16th, 1904, as Bloomsday and James Joyce's Ulysses are recognized by readers around the world, and we start the show with news of the early release of convicted Bay Area Transit cop Johannes Mehserle, less than one year after his sentencing for the killing of a young, unarmed black man on a train platform in Oakland, 22-year-old Oscar Grant.
Hear in the City is back in the ether after a break. On this week's show, we hear about two very different urban places that are well worth visiting. Nearly two years after the Station Fire blazed through more than 160,000 acres of cottonwood, pine, and willow trees in the Angeles National Forest, architect and urban forester Holly Harper takes us on a tour of the slopes hit by the biggest fire in Los Angeles County's recorded history, which are surprisingly green now. Access to the forest is open for the first time since the fires-- in selected areas. And vanguard moving image arts organization L.A. Freewaves is on the move on MTA buses all across Los Angeles County. We talk to executive director, Anne Bray, about the collaboration between Public Matters, The Echo Park Film Center, UCLA REMAP, and L.A. Freewaves to take over the Transit T.V. screens on 2,200 buses for the week of June 13th-June 19th with original place-based video and film projects made by youth in Los Angeles.
We tour curb-side green interventions by activists, students, and community groups at Parking Day L.A., we check in with immigrants’ rights protesters arraigned by the city attorney, and we take a walk into the water with leopard sharks swimming around our ankles.
Humans have written about, talked about, sang about broken hearts and first loves and all the clichés that go with them, through the ages. But, we do not so often hear about the moment of awakening that comes with a positive, self-affirming romantic encounter -one that propels us further down the path of self love. We hear from writer Steven Reigns with a tribute to gay love and acceptance and from writer/performer Gabriela Garcia Medina with a poem about empowerment over pervasive pop music messages that try to keep a woman down. We also speak with anthropologist, Dr. Ysamur Flores-Peña about the origins of the St. Valentine’s Day and about love from romantic to divine.
This week, we go to the opening of an exhibition by a Mexican photographer whose project is documenting women who are most ignored by dominant Mexican society, and we learn more about how Chinese New Year is traditionally celebrated, and, we have an update from Luis Sierra Campos at City Hall about a proposal that would reduce the length of bus-only lanes on Wilshire Blvd.
On this week’s show we visit with a psychologist who is committed to providing access to services for traumatized soldiers returning from Afghanistan, and we preview a new one-woman about switching gender in search of a greater understanding of the life of men.
On this week’s Hear in the City, we take a look at censorship in the arts from the perspective of three exhibitions taking place in Los Angeles.
In this episode, we talk to community members in Mac Arthur Park about the LAPD killing of Guatemalan day laborer, Manuel Ramirez (Jaminez), we visit Al Salam Pollería -a Halal poultry shop- on Whittier Blvd., and we look forward to jazz- vanguardist Ornette Coleman’s Los Angeles performance. And Host Sara Harris gets headphones thrown across the table at her live in the studio.
Hear in the City's arts editor, Jesse Lerner, breaks down some of the contradictions of MOCA's ultra-popular Art in the Streets exhibition at the Geffen Temporary Contemporary in downtown Los Angeles.
On this week's Hear in the City, we experience the Native American tradition of council in a non-traditional setting: a high school classroom just east of the Greyhound station in L.A.'s oldest schoolhouse, Metropolitan High where student build a theater piece inspired by on Dave Eggers non-fiction relating of Hurrica Katrina Zeitoun. And arts editor Jesse Lerner critiques the new Art in the Streets show at the Geffen Temporary Contemporary art museum in Little Tokyo.
Hear in the City host Sara Harris talks with Asiya Wadud -founder of Forage Oakland, a fruit and vegetable barter system-- about building community and equality in the city around food justice and about her mobile app collaboration with Youth Radio's Mobile Action Lab, a winner of the 2010 Mac Arthur Digital Media and Learning competition.
On Wednesday, February the City Council met to hear a proposal that would reduce by half the length of a 9-mile bus only lane funded principally by the federal government and in part by the city. The lane would encourage bus ridership and reduce car traffic from downtown to Santa Monica along the historic Wilshire Corridor. Engineers, advocates, environmental groups, and bus riders filled the hall to hear 11th district councilman Bill Rosendahl explain why the residents in his district--which includes Brentwood and runs adjacent to Beverly Hills and Santa Monica– think a dedicated bus lane is not necessary. Hear in the City’s Luis Sierra Campos went to City Hall to find how the council voted.
(c) Hear In The City. 2011. www.hearinthecity.org Airs Mondays in Los Angeles at 2:00PM on 90.7FM KPFK or www.kpfk.org
This past Saturday evening, Mexican photographer Maya Goded inaugurated a solo exhibition called Las Olvidadas at the California Museum of Photography in Riverside. Goded is a documentarian associated with the Magnum cooperative and known for her work in marginalized and stigmatized communities. She’s been honored with prestigious fellowships and prizes, including a Guggenheim fellowship, the Netherland’s Prince Claus prize, and the Eugene Smith award. Our arts editor, Jesse Lerner, talked with the artist at the opening.
(c) Hear In The City. 2011. www.hearinthecity.org Airs on Mondays at 2:00pm in Los Angeles on 90.7FM KPFK or www.kpfk.org
(c) Hear In The City. 2011. www.hearinthecity.org Airs Mondays at 2:00PM in Los Angeles on 90.7FM KPFK or www.kpfk.org
The Homeless count in Los Angeles County is done every two years and is headed by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA), the lead agency in the county’s Continuum of Care. Two years ago when the count estimated that 42,694 people were homeless in Los Angeles County. The numbers from last week’s count are not in yet, but Hear in the City’s Luis Sierra Campos takes us on a journey with volunteers in the City Covina whose assignment it is to take a census of how many people are living with out permanent shelter.
46,800 people live in this small city in the San Gabriel Valley, two dozen of them without permanent housing. That may not seem like a lot, especially by Los Angeles County standards, but what may make Covina unique is that the Community Redevelopment Agency of this former orange orchard town is investing tax dollars in preventing homelessness for those two dozen people, especially families. The city has made permanent housing for families a priority. Whether or not this is a factor in that social mandate, by my count, there are at least a dozen churches in Covina.
Let’s go, via phone, to the corner of Wilshire and Western to the headquarters of the Bus Rider’s Union where Sunyoung Yang joins us to talk about recent opposition by West side residents to an ambitious Bus Only Lane that will change the commute on Wilshire and encourage more people to get out of their cars and onto the MTA. Sunyoung, in classic Bus Riders Union style, Super Pasajera and other super heroes were in costume this past Friday downtown at the County Supervisors building.
(c) Hear In The City.2011. www.hearinthecity.org Airs Mondays on KPFK 90.7FM in Los Angeles at 2:00pm or www.kpfk.org
(c) Hear In The City. 2011. www.hearinthecity.org Airs Mondays on 90.7FM KPFK in Los Angeles at 2:00pm or www.kpfk.org
As the U.S. approaches a decade of warfare and occupation in Afghanistan, more and more service men and women are coming back from deployment with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or PTSD. Many of those with the condition go undiagnosed. According to the department of Veterans’ Affairs, those more likely to develop PTSD are service women and soldiers of color, service men and women with existing mental health problems, and returning soldiers who have little support from family and friends.
Hear In The City Producer Luis Sierra Campos spoke to Dr. Broder who leads The Soldiers Project, who has made it her work to offer better mental health outreach and services to soldiers returning from combat Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
If you would like more information please visit: www.thesoldiersproject.org
(c) Hear In The City. 2011. www.hearinthecity.org Airs Mondays on KPFK 90.7FM at 2:00pm or www.kpfk.org
Hear In The City's Host Sara Harris spoke with Los Angeles based author Helie Lee. Lee's 1.5 generation Korean American who several years ago spent two harrowing years in China and in Seoul planning to help her mother’s family defect from North Korea. She wrote a best-selling book about the experience called “In the Absence of Sun” and a memoir of her family’s life during the Korean War called “Still Life with Rice.” Helie’s latest undertaking is a one-woman theater performance that mixes documentary and fiction video about her journey to present herself as a man. Macho Like Me opens world wide on January 14th 2011, in Los Angeles California.
For more information please visit: www.macholikeme.com
(c) Hear In The City. 2011. www.hearinthecity.org Airs Mondays on KPFK 90.7FM at 2:00pm or www.kpfk.org
Los Angeles has had an unusual amount of precipitation in resent weeks yet, the watershed of the city loses 70% of that water because it is channeled directly to the ocean. This is a fundamental part of city history. The reason for it dates back to decisions made in the 1930’s to channel the Los Angeles River in order to avoid floods. But, the L.A. River is a meandering body of water that can be powerful in times of generous rain and anemic in the summer.
Now, almost 85% of the water we use in the City of Los Angeles is imported from the Colorado River and from Northern California. But, what if we could capture and save the water that falls from the sky in quantity as it has in the past few weeks so as not to take water from other places that need it, too?
The Los Angeles Department of Public Works has been working hard on that question. In collaboration with dozens of national and local non-profits ranging from the Natural Resources Defense Council and Heal the Bay, the City of Los Angeles has been changing the landscape and helping Los Angeles residents to collect rain water from heavy rains so that it can be stored for use during dry months.
Hear in the City's host, Sara Harris spoke with Department of Public Works Director of Stormwater Management, Shahram Kharaghani--She asked him the following question: what do could we ideally do with all that rain water?
(c) Hear In The City. 2011 . www.hearinthecity.org
Airs Mondays on KPFK 90.7FM in Los Angeles at 2:00pm or www.kpfk.org
In December of last year, Republican Congressmen John Boehner and Eric Cantor ordered the removal of an artwork from the National Portrait Gallery’s Hide/Seek exhibit at the Smithsonian claiming that it was "an outrageous use of taxpayer money and an obvious attempt to offend Christians during the Christmas season."
Major museum funders threatened to pull their money out in protest. The director of the National Portrait Gallery resigned.
The piece in question is “A Fire in My Belly”, a short film meditation on the ravages of HIV and AIDS made in 1986 by artist David Wojnarowicz.
Hear in the City Art and Film Contributor, Jesse Lerner has this take on how other museums are protesting the censorship by the Smithsonian.
(c) Hear In The City. 2011 . www.hearinthecity.org
Airs Mondays on KPFK 90.7FM in Los Angeles at 2:00pm or www.kpfk.org
David Alfaro Siquieros is known as one of “Los Tres Grandes” the three major Mexican muralists who depicted and helped define national and international images of post-revolutionary Mexico. In 1932, after having served prison time for his political views, Siquieros came to Los Angeles to work.
The artist had mastered an outdoor mural technique with a workers’ rights painting at the Choinard Art School. That piece, called “Street Meeting” was painted over, white washed for its socialist content.
Shortly thereafter, Siquieros was commissioned by patron of the arts F.K Firenz and wealthy city booster Christine Sterling to paint a mural on a beer garden wall above the Italian Hall at Olvera Street. That mural -titled America Tropical- figures prominently in Los Angeles art history, in no small part because it was whitewashed shortly after it was completed.
America Tropical sits at the center of an exhibition currently on display at the Autry Musuem called Siquieros in Los Angeles: Censorship Defied. Hear in the City host, Sara Harris took a tour with the curators of the show, Lynn Labate and Luis C. Garza to talk about the circumstances around the creating and subsequent covering up of that mural.
(c) Hear In The City. 2011 . www.hearinthecity.org
Airs Mondays on KPFK 90.7FM in Los Angeles at 2:00pm or www.kpfk.org
“Art in the Streets” is set to debut in April of this year at the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles (MOCA). This show is planned to be a comprehensive statement on international street art, cholo graffiti art, tattoo art, and skater art from the 1970’s to the present moment. The exhibition has already drawn attention in artists’ circles and in international press prior to the scheduled opening, primarily because of the whitewashing of one of its commissioned works.
As part of the “Art in the Streets” exhibition, the Italian street artist known as BLU was hired by MOCA to paint a mural on the north wall of the Geffen Temporary Contemporary in Little Tokyo. The images of coffins draped in dollar bills- a direct commentary on the U.S. Defense Department’s refusal to allow photography of soldiers’ coffins returning from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The museum had the mural was removed just after its completion. New museum director Jeffrey Deitch explained to the Los Angeles Times that the work could be seen as offensive by other members of the Little Tokyo community that is home to a Japanese-American veterans war memorial and to the Veterans Affairs hospital. We wanted to get a sense of how street art and white-washing continue to affect local artists in Los Angeles.
Hear In The City Producer Luis Sierra Campos, spoke with Alex Poli, who goes by the name of MANONE, and who directs CREWEST Gallery in Downtown LA. MANONE was instrumental in organizing a permitted 10,000 square foot graffiti mural on the Los Angeles River in 2008. The mural was later ordered whitewashed by county supervisor Gloria Molina.
(c) Hear In The City. 2011 . www.hearinthecity.org. Airs Mondays on KPFK 90.7FM in Los Angeles at 2:00pm or www.kpfk.org
On today’s show we want to wrap up the year with a review of what our dedicated producers felt were the most impactful stories we have covered since we launched Hear in the City in September. If you listen regularly (we thank you) and you’ve probably noticed that our show focuses on environment, arts, education, and culture in and around Los Angeles. Most of the stories you’ll hear today, as we wrap up the year, have to do with the economy--Why?
Well, we’ve been thinking a lot about what this show should do. What do we need in Southern California that a little radio show with a lot of voices can provide? We landed on this: community and equality in the urban environment.
Our goal with Hear in the City is to map the city through sound-rich profiles of people living and working toward creative social change and solutions. One way we do that, as journalists and producers, is working with community stakeholders who have important stories to tell.
Hear in the City: Radio Realities from the Urban Landscape hosted by Sara Harris http://www.hearinthecity.org
New York and San Francisco-based sound artist Brenda Hutchinson recorded people living on the streets of Manhattan in the early 80's when she was dealing with homelessness and struggling as an artist.
As she puts it, “ A very clear picture of the number and extent of marginalized and disenfranchised people had emerged. It was heartbreaking, and I was angry and bitter. I was also very moved by the strength, resourcefulness and resilient spirit of many of the people struggling to survive in whatever ways they could. So I asked everyone I met to sing "America the Beautiful" because it was a song I loved and seemed to represent all that was unattainable and long, long forgotten for the people I was meeting.”
(c) Hear in the City. 2010. www.hearinthecity.org. Airs on Mondays on KPFK 90.7FM in Los Angeles or www.kpkf.org
KingAnyi brings us this audio journey of a long walk he took one night to host a comedy show in Chatsworth, California.
(c) Hear in the City. 2010. www.hearinthecity.org. Airs on Mondays on KPFK 90.7FM in Los Angeles or www.kpkf.org
Hear in the City Art and Film Contributor Jesse Lerner reviews a show of South American avant garde work Suprasensorial: Experiments in Light, Color, and Space, is the first museum exhibition to situate pioneering Latin American artists among the international canon of those working with light and space at MOCA: Geffen Contemporary in Little Tokyo.
(c) Hear in the City. 2010. www.hearinthecity.org. Airs on Mondays on KPFK 90.7FM in Los Angeles or www.kpkf.org
Mexico has also brought in the results of its 2010 census. Preliminary data suggest he country grew by nine million people since the last count and is now home to 112 million people. Nearly a quarter of those people live in the metropolitan area of Mexico City, el Distrito Federal- one of the largest cities in the world.
The geography is sprawling, and as in New York or Los Angeles, a large percentage of the people who live in Mexico City have come there from somewhere else, mostly from farming towns across the country.
Certain sounds permeate Mexico City everyday. They are part of the common social fabric in a city with extreme economic disparities. Whether you live in the high-rent, boutique-clad Condesa, or in the cinder-block checkered outskirts of Ciudad Neza, the sounds of the city make walking a universal experience. Hear in the City host Sara Harris has recorded the sounds of Mexico City’s streets while walking the city over the past several years, she offer this Audiopostal or Audio postcard.
(c) Hear In The City. 2010. www.hearinthecity.org Airs on Mondays on KPFK 90.7FM in Los Angeles at 2:00pm or www.kpfk.org
Arts, film, and music correspondent Jesse Lerner for a visit with creator of Pixel This!, the premier Pixel Vision alternative film festival in Venice, CA. Visit Pixel This! website: laughtears.com. Hear in the City: Radio Realities from the Urban Landscape A Monday magazine on KPFK, 90.7FM, airs at 2pm, in Los Angeles with Sara Harris www.hearinthecity.org
The housing and construction bubble that fueled the U.S. economy during the first decade of this century has officially burst. According to U.S bureau of labor statistics, the number of people employed in construction has dropped from 11 million in 2007 to 9 million today.
Of those 9 million construction workers, nearly 2 million of them are self-employed, meaning they are not insured by an employer, they usually have to provide their own equipment, and they do not have a steady, guaranteed source of income.
Kevin Riley is an organizer and researcher at the UCLA Labor and Occupational Safety and Hazards program. I sat down with Kevin to talk about independent and undocumented construction workers’ rights in an unstable economy. On top those considerations, construction workers have less immediate, but very real circumstance that is inherent to the jobs they do.
Hear in the City: Radio Realities from the Urban Landscape A Monday magazine on KPFK, 90.7FM, airs at 2pm, in Los Angeles with Sara Harris www.hearinthecity.org
By Luis Sierra Campos
The City of Los Angeles has had a long and sometimes troubled history of commissioning murals by famous artists. Many of those murals have been defaced over the years by taggers and by graffiti artists. As a result graffiti has a pretty bad name in the city. Each year, 34 million tax dollars go toward eradicating grafitti. A new show opening at the Social and Public Art Resource Center in Venice this weekend takes a look at the criminalization of grafitti and the spaces allowed for it to be considered public art.
Illusions of Grime, The Confinement of Street Art opens this coming Saturday, December 11th at 7pm at SPARC in Venice. For details on location and the artists featured in the show, you can go to sparcmurals.org.
Hear in the City: Radio Realities from the Urban Landscape A Monday magazine on KPFK, 90.7FM, airs at 2pm, in Los Angeles with Sara Harris www.hearinthecity.org
Construction work is one of those professions that is the distinct domain of men, for the most part and in most places in the world. Now that the housing and building bubble has burst, we’re going to visit with a couple of organizations that are thinking about how to make the construction workforce more diverse, more dynamic, and more equal in terms of who is trained and who is protected by the laws and the traditionally exclusive unions of the building trades.
WINTER is an independent nonprofit organization founded by a group of tradeswomen who wanted to extend job opportunities to women in communities with less access to employment training and education. WINTER stands for Women In Non Traditional Employment Roles. Hear in the City producer Luis Sierra Campos visited a workshop where nineteen women of from the ages of 18 to 40 years are learning engineering and construction jobs.
Hear in the City: Radio Realities from the Urban Landscape A Monday magazine on KPFK, 90.7FM, airs at 2:00pm, in Los Angeles with Sara Harris www.hearinthecity.org
Reporter Esperanza Barajas has this preview of Casa 0101 and their upcoming original Christmas comedy by the Pinche Mentirosas Sisters, or Those Damn Lying Sisters, the resident troupe at the theater.
Hear in the City: Radio Realities from the Urban Landscape A Monday magazine on KPFK, 90.7FM, airs at 2pm, in Los Angeles with Sara Harris www.hearinthecity.org
Film Forum will be bringing a touring program of independent and experimental Spanish cinema to L.A. called “New Landscapes for the New World” to the American Cinemateque at the Egyptian Theater on Hollywood Blvd. Our music, film, and arts commentator Jesse Lerner sat down with the programmer of the “New Landscapes for the New World, Garbiña Ortega to talk about the upcoming screenings.
Hear in the City: Radio Realities from the Urban Landscape A Monday magazine on KPFK, 90.7FM, airs at 2pm, in Los Angeles with Sara Harris www.hearinthecity.org
World AIDS Day is being observed around the globe this Wednesday, December 1st. According to the United Nations program on AIDS, 33.3 million people --including 2.5 million children--- are living with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. The most recent data show that last year, close to 2.6 million people became newly infected with HIV. An international non-profit dedicated to spreading awareness about HIV and AIDS, called AVERT estimates that 1.8 million people died from the disease last year.
The focus of World AIDS Day in 2010 is Universal Access and Human Rights
In Los Angeles County, the largest number of HIV and AIDS cases are in the Latino community. Hear in the City producer Luis Sierra Campos, brings us a unique story about two communities that have come together with one goal in mind: educating the Latino community on HIV and AIDS.
Hear in the City: Radio Realities from the Urban Landscape A Monday magazine on KPFK, 90.7FM, airs at 2pm, in Los Angeles with Sara Harris. www.hearinthecity.org