Urban Rangers
Posted by ben on 18 Aug 2009 at 12:32 pm | Tagged as: adventure day, art + bikes, arts organizations, performance art, public art, renegade performances
A Los Angeles Urban Ranger explaining something
The LA Times has a story up about the Los Angeles Urban Rangers, a group of “geographers, environmental and art historians, artists, curators, architects, and others” who dress up like park rangers and teach people how to enjoy public urban space responsibly. They lead urban safaris, such as a “guided hike of Hollywood Boulevard that deconstructed the famous street as if it were a natural park.” They teach people how to (legally) enjoy Malibu beach fronts where the homeowners have often (illegally) posted “Private Beach” signs.
San Antonio's Bike Gang Summit, 2008 (photo: Justin Parr)
This is what performance art should be: seductively entertaining while challenging implicit assumptions about what constitutes public space and how it should be used. In their own way, the Final Friday bike rides (and Bike Gang Summits) in San Antonio encourage this kind of urban exploration, albeit with less explicitly pedagogical goals. Mark Jones and the rides’ other organizers lead bikers through obscure urban environments on the edges of downtown, descending on unlikely VFW halls and pocket parks. It’s a social sculpture if there ever was one.
La noche oscura del alma)
gather all the turquoise shirts you can and get some urbanamigos on the streets, leading tourists to these edges.
風吹けば おきつ白波 龍田山 夜半にや君が 一人越ゆらん
In episode 5371 of US soap series The Bold and the Beautiful, Bridget Forrester (Ashley Jones) and Brooke Logan (Katherine Kelly Lang) discuss spirituality and the purpose of human existence through reference and direct quotation of “Dark Night of the Soul”.
[...] Angeles Urban Rangers (via Emvergeoning) – according to the LA Times, is a group of “geographers, environmental and art historians, [...]