Riding on an Idea

Christopher Knight’s commentary [“How L.A. Missed the Train,” June 25] and Maya Emsden’s response [“Critic of Metro Rail vs. Reality,” July 24] inspired me to think through my own take on why MTA artists might not be reflecting our “plunge” into the ‘digital world.”

Many artists, myself included, are interested in welcoming the speed and illusion of cyberspace into the physical realm of real time and space. But we find the Internet to be an engaging supplement to (not replacement for) the multiple ways in which knowledge is acquired and community is experienced.

In other words, we believe that change and stasis coexist in reality--therefore, a richer, more authentic art for our time might occasionally be a reminder of what our culture is seduced through the immateriality of media into forgetting--that our physical selves in our physical surroundings face a mortal existence with a beginning and an end.

For me, the artistic choices to use materials like stone, mosaic tile, concrete, etc. were to be seen as a deliberate juxtaposition to the speed and transience of the moving trains. A slowing down, a “relapse” into stillness.

So I get to use someone else’s writing about contemporary art to generate some of my own thinking. In addition to deriving diverse and inexplicable pleasures from the stuff people make, isn’t this what the whole cultural enterprise is about?

LYNN ALDRICH

Artist, Artesia Station

Metro Blue Line

For more on Metro Rail art, see Counterpunch Annex, Page F6.