LA DIARY May 31st - June 26th 2005
Nicola Atkinson.Davidson writes, for the MAPMagazine Issue 3/Autumn 2005, from Los Angeles as she open the final install of her"Black Suitcase from Karachi "
May 30th
Arrived in Los Angeles a few days before Memorial Day.
May 31st
Joined the Santa Monica YMCA and began a new healthy, Californian
diet with lots of blueberries. Spent the following five days recovering
from jet-lag, relaxing and getting back to my old self. Los Angeles
is not a strange place to me. It’s where I have lived a significant
and formative part of my life. I went to Junior and High School
there. I can point out bushes where I hid to avoid classes. It’s
also where I spent my 20s, living only two blocks from Santa Monica
Beach. So, like a pigeon I return every year, to make work and to
see friends and re-kindle past memories. Alan, my husband, sometimes
says that he cannot believe I left here to be in Glasgow. However,
the more you stay in any one place, the more you can understand
wanting to leave it. This brings me to the idea of the Black Suitcase
from Karachi. It seems like a perfect piece to end the physical
and mental journey of my NESTA (National Endowment for Science,
Technology and the Arts) fellowship. Los Angeles is, for me, part
of my past, possibly my future and, at this moment, my present.
It’s a place where, for a price, one can find temporary comfort.
Rather like a Motel Room. . . a slice of fleeting fantasy, in which
one can rent a part of America. The idea of showing here started
in September 2004, when I was in discussion with Cindy Ojeda, a
friend, who’s a writer and independent curator. She works
at a gallery called Track 16 in Bergamot Station, Santa Monica.
She supported me in developing the idea.
Since this is public art, I should put it into context in terms of time and place. During my time here, Michael Jackson was found not guilty. There have been at least four earthquakes. People have lost their homes due to mud slides and brush fires and the super market workers went on strike. On a personal note, several of my close friends had life changing events and losses.
June 2nd – 6th
It is becoming a real challenge to find a motel room to rent. Over
the last few evenings I went to ten, essentially sex, motels to
ask to rent a room. Each one rejected me, giving different reasons….
e.g. too much traffic (people coming and going)… it’s
only for sleeping … no business allowed. Since I don’t
have a car, I try a place around the corner from where I’m
staying, the Wilshire Motel. It’s run by a small woman with
big hair, who chain smokes, alongside her husband. But without missing
a beat, she says no. I’m tempted, through sheer frustration,
to lie about my purpose in renting a room but, as most Motels seem
to be run by people from the Indian sub-continent, I figure they
would be quickly alerted by my signs that mention a black suitcase
from Karachi. At this point, I felt it was not going to happen.
It seemed strange, after travelling all over the world from Havana
from Bosnia, that Los Angeles, my former home, would be the place
that stopped me in my tracks.
June 7th – 9th
Spent the following days thinking of new approaches. I started to
wonder if it was me. Is it because I’ve lost touch with this
place and no longer understand it? Maybe I need help, so I enlist
some friends to help to find a place by trading my skills…I
design a web front page and offer haircuts. In return for one haircut,
I receive a loan of a white Volvo for three weeks from Nancy, my
friend’s room mate who’s leaving town to work on a low
budget feature in Barbados. Still no luck with locating a room,
but having wheels will widen my options.
June 10th
Cindy calls. She’s found a place called the Welcome Inn in
Eagle Rock… a place named after a rock shaped like an eagle.
It’s 30 miles from Brentwood, where I’m staying. Ray,
the owner, wants to meet us on Sunday. Cindy and I discuss details
and decide to include an additional piece in the bathroom by Los
Angeles artist, Laurie Steelink.June 11th – 12th I spent the
night at Cindy’s since I won’t get the Volvo for a few
days yet. She lives with her Jack Russell terrier, Dixie, on the
side of Mount Washington. We’re awakened at 8:30 am by an
earthquake. We call Ray, but he can’t meet us until the afternoon.
Cindy is going to see a play, so she drops me off on Sunset &
Vine to go to see Crash, a film about communal loneliness in LA.
We meet back at 4pm, call Ray and he cannot meet us after all and
is having some doubts about the whole idea as he’s worried
about people suing him in the event of some accident at the opening,
or something. He’ll call us back tomorrow. Both Cindy and
I are depressed… She drops me off on Santa Monica Boulevard
and N. Edgemont Street. As she pulls away, a passing car clips and
kills a pigeon. It lies on the road twitching its last. I take the
long bus ride home. It costs $1.25 for 30 miles. Here I am on the
bus, alongside the poor and the elderly of LA. In this city, the
SUV rules the road and no one will trust you unless you are fully
insured.
June 13th
I’m starting to believe it’s not going to happen. In
the afternoon, I go to the airport to pick up Alan, who has come
on vacation. Ray doesn’t call. I feel like a teenager, waiting
for the boy who will never call… but I need to know…so
I wait to call on Tuesday, to confirm the bad news.
June 14th
Just like that he says, OK… The room will cost $5.00 per night
extra to cover the insurance. I rent the room for 5 nights. The
opening is in a week’s time… I go to the local printers
to produce a black and gold calling card.
June 23rd
The Private View starts at 7pm and I rent the adjacent room to serve
drinks and allow people to hang around and chat. People start to
show up right away, which is comforting, as this place is relatively
remote, rush hour traffic doesn’t calm down until around 8
pm, it’s graduation day and also, the final of the basketball
playoff. A steady stream of people come and go, about sixty in all,
until about 9.30, then a dozen of us go to Columbo’s, across
the street, for a martini and dinner.
June 24th – 25th
l feel like a call girl waiting for business….as people drop
by every hour or so.
June 26th( last day of show)
The maid came in to clean the room. She starts to engage me in a
conversation, during which she says that she has noticed I am different
from the other people who normally occupy the motel’s rooms.
She says that most people use them for drug taking and/or casual
sex. She states that she thinks that my piece is beautiful and that
seeing the work in the setting of the motel room has opened her
mind to the idea of other possibilities in her life. She doesn’t
always want to be a cleaner and is only doing so to support herself
and her child. She is inspired by it. This leads me to think about
the notion of encountering the unexpected and that one cannot ask
for anything more than someone saying that they see the familiar
with a different perspective, as a result of viewing one’s
work. This is where a black suitcase becomes more than a black suitcase.
Nicola Atkinson. Davidson July 3rd 2005
