Streets on Fire
Artist talk with Harry Gamboa Jr., Marc Bertel & Rudolph Drayton Jr.
Artists Harry Gamboa Jr., Marc Bertel and Rudolph Drayton Jr. will have a conversation about their different practices in public space in general and the streets of Los Angeles in particular.
Harry Gamboa Jr. has been active as an essayist, photographer and performance artist in the urban spaces of Los Angeles since the late 60s, surrounded by the activism of the Chicano Movement and the political turmoil of that time. In 1968 he helped organize a student walkout as part of the East LA Blowouts, which were part of a larger series of protests in which 15,000 students walked out of their classrooms demanding educational reform. Something that seems very relevant again in today’s American society, where (art) education is being cancelled out. Harry Gamboa Jr.’s artistic practice has taken numerous forms, from his collaborative performances as part of the Asco collective (1972–1987) to his individual projects where he takes CalArts students to perform in the streets of Los Angeles.
Following a chance meeting ten years ago that quickly blossomed into a close friendship, Marc Bertel and Rudy Drayton Jr. have been developing a series of artworks aimed at transcending the reductionist rhetoric of race and class and challenging the all too common negative representations of life in South Central Los Angeles. Having been welcomed into the midst of the Drayton family and being accepted as one of their own was the fertile ground for the various long-term projects which continue to permeate their shared lives. At their core lies the belief in art as a creative device to foster and activate communal bonds and to embrace and build upon our differences, unimpaired by the specter of race and class.
After the talk, Drayton Jr. will serve some street food to the audience.
(image: The Sixth Expanse, 2015 ©2015, Harry Gamboa Jr., Virtual Vérité (l-r): Loan Nguyen, Steven La Pansie, Carolina Maki Kitagawa, Francesco X. Siqueiros, Joseemar Coreas, Nebras Hoveizavi, Vincent Ramos, Vilma Villela)
>> This talk is part of the research festival ARTICULATE 2025