Robert Smithson: “A park can no longer be seen as ‘a thing-in-itself,’ but rather as a process of ongoing relationships existing in a physical region—the park becomes a ‘thing-for-us.’”

I enter MacArthur Park at West 6th Street and Alvarado.

I imagine myself living here one million years ago... dirt, dirt, dust, dirt, dust, dirt, then dusty dirt, then bubbles in dusty dirt; then perhaps, shoots of water taking over from mud, yielding a brown pond triumphant—frogs (typical primordially loud frogs), and thick, pond-wading, black branched, down swooping trees...

I enter MacArthur Park at West 6th Street and Alvarado.

A typical drinking fountain is stuck, still on, thirty feet inside MacArthur Park, October 30, 2009. I press, then jab at the drinking fountain button with my pointer finger—no change—splash, splash, splash of a little rope-water stream overshooting a stone-cobbled basin. The lake on the other side of the park is significant. I am taken by this small, indifferent fountain.

In his article: “Frederick Law Olmsted and the Dialectical Landscape,” Robert Smithson burrows through Central Park, New York, 1973... I have just moved to a place near MacArthur Park, Los Angeles. Inspired by Smithson’s non-site writing in this article, I have started a habit: walking the park, this thing for us.

In the park, I play Buster Keaton, in Hard Luck, 1921. Fired from his job, down on his luck, Keaton wavers alone, hungry, and penniless, pursued by police for destruction of property in Eastlake Park Zoo—vandalism, the result of a botched suicide attempt.

Between Eastlake and Westlake, My Love, Keaton’s love, is sympathetic, but... er... charmed more with money than by my baggy pants. The streetcar always takes a narrowly unexpected turnabout just as I lie down on the tracks.

As Keaton, I want to die, but I don’t want the police to get me. To Wilshire, mid-MacArthur Park, panting left, right, left, right; the police—also panting, follow me right, left. In an attempt to escape notice, I pose with the statue there of General Harrison Gray Otis, newspaper magnate at-all-costs, limousine scion of Los Angeles, a dialectic with pigeons. I freeze, I point, I freeze. The police look at me, there, with the statue, but the police don’t see me. The police look at me as part of the sculpture, accept me as a bronze... A fleshy Otis would have slapped the back of my head, I think.

--Marcus Civin

(Images courtesy of the artists)