<nettime> Networks, Semiotics, Art

[Curt Hagenlocher <curth@motek.com>]

The freeways of Southern California are a network whose influence on
the residents of the region is, in 2002, still considerably greater
than that of the otherwise-almighty Internet.  And, unlike its
electronic cousin, this network's bandwidth has seen little increase
in the past few years even as the number of packets it carries
continues to grow.

When artist Richard Ankrom's car was misrouted, he decided to issue
a patch to the network software...

--

http://www.laweekly.com/ink/02/25/a.shtml

Passing north through downtown on the 110 freeway toward Pasadena,
between the Third and Fourth Street overpasses, artist Richard Ankrom
found himself suddenly confused by the lack of official signage for
the 5 North exit. Not clearly labeled overhead like signs for I-5
South, those for the 5 North, which occur two miles later, are
haphazardly stuck on a roadside traffic pole, an afterthought at best.
Ankrom could have called Caltrans and officially complained, further
burdening the beleaguered civic bureaucracy. But being an artist, he
did the next best thing:

He fixed it. 

That is to say, following explicit specifications he found on the
Internet and verified in the field, he crafted a red-white-and-blue
"5 shield" and green "North" sign out of 0.080 mm 5053 aluminum,
covered it with zinc chromate primer and Pantene colors, added an
"age patina" of gray paint, and even special-ordered button reflectors,
which are discontinued and stockpiled in a warehouse in Tacoma,
Washington. (He had to tell the pesky warehouse clerk it was for a
movie -- not altogether untrue, as it turns out.) 

After stashing the sign and a ladder in the roadside shrubbery -- and
stenciling the side of his truck with the logo "Aesthetic De-Construction"
-- he parked on the Third Street bridge just north of the existing
sign, set out two orange traffic cones, donned an orange safety vest
and hardhat, and physically mounted his homemade handiwork (taking
care to sign the back first). He even mocked up a phony invoice, in
the event that anyone objected. Yet despite legitimate road crews
working the same stretch of freeway, no one seemed to notice. 

Nor, in all probability, would they ever have, the sign having functioned
perfectly fine since August 5, 2001, when he first erected it. Except
that, being an artist, Ankrom felt compelled to document and display his
actions in the form of a 10-minute installation video, which was shown
at small gallery events and his own Brewery loft during the Art Walk
two weeks ago, and has been posted on Netbroad caster.com since November.
Opening on a GPS view of L.A.'s 527 miles of freeway, the video documents
the entire artistic process from start to finish, culminating in the
installation itself, which was witnessed by 11 observers (including the
woman who once rescued the Chicken Boy statue from a downtown diner),
three of whom were armed with video cameras. It also lists his accomplices
by name, including the guy who gave him the haircut that made him look
passably respectable, begging the question whether "criminal barberage"
is a crime. 

And then, against a backdrop of Martin Denny cocktail jazz and Jerry
Goldsmith's theme from In Like Flint, there is Ankrom himself, eyes
glowing pink in the pre-dawn light, looking like Satan, proclaiming:
"I have taken it upon myself to manufacture and install these missing
guide signs to ease the confusion and traffic congestion at this section
of the 110 freeway." 

Like the best art, almost nothing about this action was arbitrary.
Interstate 5 links Los Angeles to the Pacific Northwest, where as a child
in Washington state, Ankrom used to dream of the pulsing megalopolis
which lay Oz-like at the other end of it. Disillusioned with two months
of junior college, he hitchhiked to California, where he has been self-
employed for the past 20 years -- as a commercial sign painter. (His
work can be seen at Ross Dress for Less, in the Moulin Rouge section atop
the parking garage at the Universal CityWalk and in several hundred feet
of relief-wall lettering at the Santa Anita Racetrack, which he completed
while on the end of a 90-foot snorkel lift.) As antecedents, he cites
performance artists like Chris Burden, who once had himself nailed to the
top of his Volkswagen, as well as De Stijl, a Dutch magazine and group co-
founded by Mondrian, which advocated an art which would invisibly blend
into its surroundings. 

"Essentially it's a conceptual piece," says Ankrom today from the imagined
safety of his downtown loft. "It's such a broad swath -- it overlaps into
performance and installation and public art and all these other things. I
think the most interesting things are controversial. And I'm out on a limb
too, because I don't know where I'm going to go with this now. But this is
my idea of art. Art should be incorporated more into the government's
system of design and concept." 

He christens this new utilitarian commando aesthetic "Guerrilla Public
Service." 

Ankrom's past work generally incorporates the element of social critique.
He has fashioned a series of acrylic hatchets, axes and medieval broad-
swords featuring flower petals suspended in the transparent blades. In
response to the L.A. riots, he created a number of neon Taser guns, many
with S/M overtones, which used active electric arcs. And long before the
recent power crisis, he envisioned an art completely autonomous from the
power grid, in the form of a satellite which would collect solar energy
and microwave it back to a sculpture installation on Earth. (He plans to
discuss the project with an upcoming delegation from the French consulate.) 

But it's his recent additions to the 110 freeway, once known as the Grand
Army of the Republic Highway between here and Long Beach, which currently
preoccupy him -- in no small part due to the legal ramifications which
still remain largely unexplored. 

"I think the worst thing they could charge me with would be trespassing
and defacing property, which I believe are still misdemeanors," he says.
"But whatever the consequences are, they are. And that would again be
part of the documentation of this thing. Even if I went to court, I'd get
a public attorney, get a video-friendly judge, and videotape that. I
wouldn't be able to pay the fine, so I'd have to do public service, which
is sort of what I'm doing anyway. So it all comes full circle. But I would
think if they were smart they wouldn't touch it, because it would only
make them look worse. 

"I really wasn't trying to give Caltrans a black eye," he insists. "It's
too easy." 

--
Curt Hagenlocher
curth@motek.com

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