Restored / Access
Keko Jackson
May 21 – June 18, 2022
Restored / Access
Keko Jackson
w/Sming Sming Books
May 21 – June 18, 2022
Opening May 21, 2022 6-9p
Book Available Here or at the gallery
Keko Jackson
w/Sming Sming Books
May 21 – June 18, 2022
Opening May 21, 2022 6-9p
Book Available Here or at the gallery
Allensworth is the first town in California to be founded, financed, and governed exclusively by Black people.
Established in 1908 as a symbol of freedom in the West, it is part of a long legacy of independent and autonomous
communities created by revolutionaries and people who escaped enslavement. The town was started by Allen
Allensworth, who was himself born into enslavement, and saw the land as an opportunity to live out his dreams and
redistribute resources. In its early years, Allensworth achieved success and became self-sufficient, establishing a free
public library and a cooperative economy among other initiatives. However, by 1915, a variety of causes including
severe drought, racially motivated attacks, and the discovery of arsenic in the ground water ultimately led to the
town's decline.
Restored/Access is a project that surveys this former settlement, which was slowly abandoned and left to collect dust before becoming a California State Park in 1974. With this approach in mind, we might compare the photographic excavation of Allensworth to the journey that the time-traveling Data Thief embarks upon in John Akomfrah’s film The Last Angel of History (1996). The film opens with the narrator standing on the edge of a flooded ruin that looks like the Salton Sea. He explains the Data Thief’s mission: “200 years into the future, the Data Thief is told a story. If you can find the crossroads, a crossroads, this crossroads—if you can make an archeological dig into this crossroads, you’ll find fragments, techno-fossils. And if you can put those elements, those fragments together, you’ll find the code. Crack that code, and you’ll have the keys to your future. You got one clue and it’s a phrase: mothership connection.” By collecting fragments and recovering the history of Allensworth, this project also seeks to crack the code and explore how the traces of an ambiguous utopia can inform present struggles and build futures.
Restored/Access is a project that surveys this former settlement, which was slowly abandoned and left to collect dust before becoming a California State Park in 1974. With this approach in mind, we might compare the photographic excavation of Allensworth to the journey that the time-traveling Data Thief embarks upon in John Akomfrah’s film The Last Angel of History (1996). The film opens with the narrator standing on the edge of a flooded ruin that looks like the Salton Sea. He explains the Data Thief’s mission: “200 years into the future, the Data Thief is told a story. If you can find the crossroads, a crossroads, this crossroads—if you can make an archeological dig into this crossroads, you’ll find fragments, techno-fossils. And if you can put those elements, those fragments together, you’ll find the code. Crack that code, and you’ll have the keys to your future. You got one clue and it’s a phrase: mothership connection.” By collecting fragments and recovering the history of Allensworth, this project also seeks to crack the code and explore how the traces of an ambiguous utopia can inform present struggles and build futures.
Theories about Edges
Megan Mueller
April 2 – May 2, 2022
Theories about Edges
Megan Mueller
April 2 – May 2, 2022
Opening April 2, 2022 6-9p
Megan Mueller
April 2 – May 2, 2022
Opening April 2, 2022 6-9p
The Fulcrum Press is proud to present Theories about Edges, a solo project by Megan Mueller. Using a scanner to make images, Mueller captures visual information in the 8 1/2 x 11 inch format using the terrazzo sidewalks of Los Angeles as subjects. Fragmented sections are then printed at a 1 to 1 scale and tiled together recreating the sidewalks in inkjet prints. The process and resulting images reflect Mueller’s interest in blurriness and losing one’s self in one’s environment for survival and pleasure.
Jorge Luis Borges, Collected Fictions, translated by Andrew Hurley.
...In that Empire, the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that the map of a single province occupied the entirety of the city, and the map of the Empire, the entirety of a Province. In time, those Unconscionable Maps no longer satisfied, and the Cartographers Guilds struck a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, and which coincided point for point with it.
Jorge Luis Borges, Collected Fictions, translated by Andrew Hurley.
...In that Empire, the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that the map of a single province occupied the entirety of the city, and the map of the Empire, the entirety of a Province. In time, those Unconscionable Maps no longer satisfied, and the Cartographers Guilds struck a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, and which coincided point for point with it.
