Silverlake and Hancock Park neighborhood Poster project focusing on the economic reality of these communities.
Using street-by-street US Census data and Urban Planning policy reports, this site-specific poster project operates in the voice a Freaky and Depressing (but fact-based) FORTUNE TELLER. It was made trying to address why this US system continues- based in what I see an irrational idea that we will all die rich and alienated.
Text from one poster (placed on Talmadge Street in Silverlake, Los Angeles:
Chances are that you are around 30 years old, maybe a little older. I am sensing that you don't make much money- In fact, I see that you may make less then the national average of around $23,000 a year (1). You may have a good quality of life, but if things continue the way they are going, I feel that you are in for a fall. (2)
1. Age and income data based on this here census track; Block Group 2, census track 1953 LAC-CA. US Census Bureau, 2000 Cenus/ 90027 ZCTA.
2. Southern California Association of Governments, Annual Report, 2004.
Using strategies originating in conceptual art, tactical media and folk forms, this project operates on several levels. It aims to directly educate specific neighborhoods about what experts view as their resident's economic prospects . Perhaps viewers might wonder why a government that claims it has no role in social planning collects such detailed data on them. Additionally the work speaks in poetic tone to both connect contemporary progressive rhetoric with (imagined) earlier forms of shamanic planning and to operate as a back-handed statement on how the American entertainment-mind has never had any future (ie. cheap and easy hollywood critique).
A note on the specificity of each poster: each contains a photograph of a house on the street where it is posted. Each poster contains census, policy and planning data particular to the posted street. Finally, each poster contains a cut-paper image and hand-written text.
To make your own data-specific posters, use the US Census website at
http://factfinder.census.gov/home/saff/main.html?_lang=en 