Martijn Hendriks’ contribution to Los Angeles Works focuses on the most recent Los Angeles riots on 1 May 2007. Through a series of visual reconstructions of television news footage and a number of video portraits of Los Angeles residents, he looks at how on that day, moments of crisis played out as a battle over images and scenarios.
Educated both as a visual artist and theorist, Martijn Hendriks has been using texts, photography, video and installation to develop an art practice that at its core is about the power of the imaginary over the real. A returning theme in his work is how we often refer to history, events, urban places and ourselves through media images, stories and fictions, upending strict relations between fiction and reality. His work is an attempt to investigate those relations, how to understand them, manipulate them, appropriate them, and re-enact them to explore and challenge their role in how we make sense of reality.
In his contribution to Los Angeles Works, Hendriks takes as his starting point the recent events that are now publicly referred to as the Los Angeles May Day mêlée. On 1 May 2007, a peaceful rally for immigration reform in Los Angeles’ famous MacArthur Park ended in disaster when the protestors were violently broken up by 600 heavily armed officers of the Los Angeles Police Department in riot gear. In an attempt to clear MacArthur Park and its surroundings of protesters, they shot with rubber bullets at close range, used tear gas and beat people with sticks. There were many casualties, including numerous members of the press, who were not allowed to film anymore. The LAPD’s actions led to great public controversy and one government official after another hurried to condemn the officers’ indiscriminate use of force. Most official readings of the events trace the LAPD’s actions to the provocations of a small group of protestors. These protestors were cited to have ‘taken over a street corner’ and to have thrown plastic bottles, sticks an oranges. LAPD chief William J. Bratton gave a press conference that same day, blaming the unfortunate events on ‘a command and control breakdown’ and promising to investigate whether there was any ‘inappropriate use of force.’ For anyone who watched the videos that soon began appearing on the Internet, it could seem as if what was really under attack here was the right to use and make images in public space. Although the Los Angeles May Day mêlée geographically took place in a public park, which had now become a contested place to be in, it also took place in the realm of images. As news reporters pointed out, some people waved upside down American flags. Others brought big dark sculptures on wheels that represented the United States as, respectively, a sinking Titanic and the Poseidon ship. Still others brought their own video cameras and filmed the gradually approaching lines of police. Signs were shown that declared President George W. Bush a liar. The presence of a large immigrant group of protestors in a historically famous park, showing their respective ethnic roots with national flags along with the American flag, was in itself a powerful image of immigrant confidence. The LAPD, in their turn, seemed to enact scenarios that were strangely familiar and scripted in their effort to install fear in the protestors. It was as if their takeover of the park was staged to displace the protestors’ images with theirs. Their riot gear functioned as menacing costumes. The officers moved forward in a kind of chorus line, 50 feet at a time. They struck poses and moved in blocks through the park, slowing down and speeding up together. It was possible to see the events as an unfolding of a series of enacted images and scenarios presenting competing fantasies, fears, references to other events, quotes, echoes, and narratives.
In his project, Martijn Hendriks will attempt to revisit the events in MacArthur Park through the images and scenarios that were played out and fought over that day. To do this, he plans to use different strategies, such as reconstructing news videos of the events using only footage from Hollywood films, and conducting a series of video interviews with protestors (ideally those who produced the upside down flags and sinking ships), police officers, park managers and aspiring movie directors. As a way of exploring forms of presentation in a city that is known all over the world for the glamour of its film industry, Hendriks will build and organize a low budget cinema screening space, a kiosk where he will present the results of his search. The cinema kiosk can be disassembled so that it can be installed at different locations. If in any way possible, it should be accessible from public space. As part of his project, he will also produce a text and image essay about his search, starting out from the first video images and following the project’s development through to the final instalment and opening of the cinema space.
