What Water Wants: Tour 2 - Fast and Slow

Join artist Rosten Woo and Clockshop for a multi-day tour series, tracing the pathways of water in Los Angeles. What does water want, and what do we want from water? We'll look at the ways that water is captured and released and the ways that humans degrade and improve water and land. 

This series will take us to rarely seen sites of water treatment, water modeling, and habitat creation in the company of scientists, policymakers, water scholars, and holders of cultural knowledge. These public programs are designed to foster group learning in preparation for a long-term artwork by Rosten Woo at the Bowtie parcel along the Los Angeles river to accompany a new 4-acre wetlands demonstration project with The Nature Conservancy.

Tour 2 - Fast and Slow
Saturday, March 2, 2024
1:00 - 4:00 PM
LA-RIDL (Los Angeles River Integrated Design Lab)
2400 Altman Street, Los Angeles, CA 90031

Join us for a walking tour along the river bike path in Northeast LA to examine how our LA watershed interacts with the cultural and ecological histories of these neighborhoods, and the future of the LA River. Explore future scenarios for human/nature/river interaction through an 80’ interactive model of the Glendale Narrows section of the river with the LA River Integrated Design Lab housed in Elysian Valley, and visit sites of ongoing experimentation around nature-based solutions to soil mitigation and stormwater filtration.

At the Los Angeles Integrated Design Lab, visitors can expect to interact with our large-scale model and augmented reality interface depicting the Los Angeles River—a section of the Glendale Narrows that should be quite familiar after their walking tour. Groups will orient themselves to the model in comparison with the actual river, identifying where they are, pointing out important landmarks, and even their favorite coffee shop. In several demonstrations of this model as a design and education tool, visitors will see simulations of flow levels from historic flood events, they’ll learn how vegetation placement impacts flows, and they’ll re-live peak flows from our recent storms. The experience will be highly hands-on, with visitors experimenting with their own placement of vegetation and interacting with our augmented reality interface.

This is a limited capacity event, and a waitlist will be available. If you are unable to attend after registration, please cancel your ticket or email us at info@clockshop.org so we can invite a waitlisted guest. This event is free and open to the public. RSVP to reserve your spot.

ABOUT THE ARTIST
Rosten Woo is a designer, writer, and educator living in Los Angeles. He produces civic-scale artworks and works as a collaborator and consultant to a variety of grassroots and non-profit organizations. His work has been exhibited at the Cooper-Hewitt Design Triennial, the Venice Architecture Biennale, Netherlands Architectural Institute, Storefront for Art and Architecture, Lower East Side Tenement Museum, and various piers, public housing developments, tugboats, shopping malls, and parks in New York and Los Angeles. He is co-founder and former executive director of the Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP), a New York Based non-profit organization dedicated to using art and design to foster civic participation. His book, "Street Value," about race and retail urban development, was published by Princeton Architectural Press in 2010. He teaches art and design at the California Institute of the Arts, Pomona College, and Art Center College of Design and has lectured internationally. 

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS
Kelsey Jessup is the Urban Conservation Project Director at The Nature Conservancy where she leads the urban conservation work for the CA Chapter. Her work is focused on implementing nature-based solutions in Los Angeles through policy, market solutions, science, and on-the-ground demonstration projects. Previously, she worked as a project manager and the Urban Greening Initiative lead at the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation. Kelsey worked on a range of issues including Los Angeles’ turf replacement program, LA River revitalization, technology use in parks, and stormwater finance and management practices. 

Hannah Flynn is a designer, researcher, and urban ecology educator in Los Angeles. She received her BA in Environmental Studies from the University of Chicago and her Master of Landscape Architecture and Master of Urban Planning from the University of Southern California. Her research interests include California native plant ecology and restoration, the Los Angeles River, livability and equity in urban design, access to green space, critical cartography, and urban heat adaptation and mitigation. 

Danielle Stevenson is an applied scientist, mycologist and environmental problem-solver who works with soils, fungi, plants and people to address wastes and pollution in creative and circular ways. She has a PhD in Environmental Toxicology from the University of California Riverside's Soil Biogeochemistry Group. Her dissertation research focused on bioremediation of brownfields with fungi and plants in Los Angeles. She also founded and runs D.I.Y. Fungi (est. 2012) for research, education and action around fungal food, medicine, waste management and remediation, and Healing City Soils (est. 2015) with the Compost Education Centre to provide soil metal testing, resources, and community bioremediation for people growing food. She currently serves on the Department of Toxic Substances Control's Equitable Community Revitalization Grant (ECRG) Treatment Technology Council (TTC) and the Board of Corenewal. Learn more about her work here: https://www.danielle-stevenson.com/

LOCATION
The second What Water Wants tour will begin at the LA_RIDL site in Elysian Valley at 2400 Altman Street, Los Angeles, CA 90031. Depending on the tour size, we will split up into two groups due to capacity constraints at the site, from there we will continue on to the other locations on the tour. 

Parking options: There is free street parking along Altman St. and other side streets directly next to the LA_RIDL site, please give yourself time to park and walk over to our meeting spot.

Restrooms: There are NO public restrooms on site.

SUPPORT

The WHAT WATER WANTS tour series is generously funded by the National Endowment for the Arts Our Town Program. 

Take Me to Your River, and related programs, is additionally supported through generous funding from the Mellon Foundation, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the California Arts Council, The Nature Conservancy, and Clockshop’s generous community of individual donors.