Anthony Auerbach proposes a series of speculations on the city of Los Angeles from a point of intersection between the sky and the city, between cosmography and entertainment. The Griffith Observatory, the institution claims, “is woven from the same cloth as that of Los Angeles itself”. The building, located on the southern slope of Mount Hollywood in Griffith Park, is dedicated to both observation and simulation, with its public telescopes and planetarium, providing archaic spectacles narrated by science-fiction stars. Auerbach allows his investigations of urban geography, what he calls ‘abyssal surfaces’ and the apparatus of knowledge to collide there.
Anthony Auerbach’s work applies a variety of techniques such as aerial photography, photo-interpretation, mapping and map-reading, to investigating urban geographies and unpicking the techniques of representation.
The Griffith Observatory, located on the southern slope of Mount Hollywood and dedicated to observing the stars, is as much an icon as an institution of Los Angeles. This status has earned it memorable bit-parts in numerous local movies, for example: Nicholas Ray’s Rebel Without a Cause (1955), James Cameron’s Terminator (1984), and Wim Wenders’ The End of Violence (1997). In the last example, the observatory concealed the control room of a sinister surveillance system covering the whole city with innumerable cameras. In ‘real life’ the observatory is a popular attraction offering public telescopes, planetarium shows narrated by science-fiction stars and an impressive view of the city. The Griffith Observatory, the institution claims, ‘is woven from the same cloth as that of Los Angeles itself’.
Such a site, where enlightened dreams of higher knowledge and popular education converge with sensational entertainment and simulation, bound together by the technological apparatus of the telescopes and planetarium projectors and by the symbolic apparatus of architecture — such a site is the complex where Auerbach starts out. Using confusion as a method, Auerbach proposes an expedition among, as he puts it, ‘the stand-ins for stand-ins for knowledge and experience. I would turn an astronomical gaze on the city and render the sky a hazy abyss. This at least, is how I imagine the fieldwork.’
In short, Auerbach proposes to interrogate the observatory and use its vantage point for what it has to say about the city of Los Angeles, rather than the sky above.
