The Southern California landscape has always been in question. It has served the purpose of different narratives and provided the backdrop for numerous conflicts, both real and imagined. Artists, explorers, speculators, even military strategists have used our polyglot landscape to voice and define our relationship to place, history and memory.
Conceived by artist Hillary Mushkin, "Incendiary Traces" is a conceptually driven, community-generated art project that explores the political act of representing the Southern California landscape by creating a series of "draw-in" events in different locations across the region, from the border between U.S. and Mexico to San Clemente Island and beyond.
The project, which is developing an archive of images, uses our real and symbolic affiliations with the subtropics as a starting point to bring home connections between Southern California and political "hot spots" in the Middle East, North Africa, Latin America and beyond. The archive includes drawings, ephemera, public events, sounds, and other forms of expression that reach beyond mainstream representations of these geographies. Through engaged and embodied acts of image and sound-making, "Incendiary Traces" aims to bring us closer to seemingly remote international conflicts. We are seeking collaborators in its development.
Follow along with Incendiary Traces at their website and on Facebook.
