Projecting the future of a port requires us to reflect on its past and present, reacting to that reality to build what comes next. The Port of Los Angeles is storied far beyond the complexities of urban growth and maritime industry. Rumors, cinema, poetry, military might, fortunes, tragedies, science, and technology are all inextricably linked to this complex beast of a landscape. Max Brooks’ dystopian book The Zombie Survival Guide: Recorded Attacks even chronicles an urban Zombie outbreak at the port in March of 1994. Contemplating the future of the port within this surreal context is heady.

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The visual aesthetics of the port are equally monumental. Standing on a dock, looking up at mammoth ships, gantry cranes, towering stacks of cargo containers, grids of imported cars, mysterious piles of powdery yellow sulfur, trains, trucks, and the harsh, lacy silhouettes of industrial infrastructure creates a nearly unmanageable, chaotic collaboration.

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All this visual stimulus sits above a heaving and receding tide. The port waters conceal an entire hidden world. Guided by memories of old National Geographic submarine documentaries, my imagination takes over beneath the opaque, murky surface. It is easy to envision the sea life and historical debris resting quietly on the silty floor: old dock pilings, ghost nets, sunken vessels, abandoned cars, and lost shipping containers.

 

Live Through This acknowledges the history littered along the port’s bottom, as well as its self-aware strides toward a greener, more thoughtful present. The port actively works to diminish environmental distress even as it evolves to accommodate the future. Yet, with all this progress, how do we envision what lies ahead? Processing this data to postulate a "Future Port" remains a messy endeavor. While current initiatives are positive, sustaining them over the long term is a daunting challenge.

 

When considering ocean conservation, I view a supportive culture as a series of meaningful gestures. Society is capable of great achievements, yet despite our high ideals, some systems are simply beyond our capacity to sustain. In imagining the future, I anticipate mixed results—welcoming positive breakthroughs while bracing for compromised standards.

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Ultimately, I like to think Mother Nature will take control. She will Live Through This by developing her own modifications to clean and protect the port. My imagined adaptation is inspired by mollusks—primarily oysters—which naturally produce pearls as an immune response to foreign irritants. This installation amplifies that organic act of self-preservation.

 

In this reimagined future, a feminist Mother Nature sews, staples, and animates the shells, skins, and debris of marine organisms to create a hybrid filtration system. These mutated creatures purposefully inhale silt and pollution, expelling pearls in return.

 

The resulting artwork is simultaneously abject and decadent in both coloration and materiality. Keloid, scabby, caramel-rust splotches of crystallized salt cling to creamy, milky wedding-dress satins, silks, and laces sourced from secondhand stores, all blanketed in craft-store pearls. This soft, off-white palette evokes the tragic bleaching of coral reefs while serving as a neutral screen for Going Fishing, the aquatic video overlay by Jennifer Gunlock. The secondhand wedding dresses recall discarded oaths and the fragile renewal of promises. The craft-store pearls are aggressively opalescent and overdone; though they nod to an optimistic future, these plastic baubles ultimately have no place in an ecologically conscious world.

 

Live Through This is a gritty, determined commitment to survival against all odds.

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