LACMA

52 As historian Eric Avila describes it, the Pacific Electric trolley system that origi- nally connected the greater Los Angeles area became the target of policymakers at the time, who were concerned with reinforcing distinct geographies for the haves and have-nots. For them, the streetcar "sanctioned the kind of social mixing that conflicted with their ideals of suburban domesticity." 24 Fast forward ninety years, and rhetoric about gentrification and the sanctioned uses of public space still permeated policy debates. The site served as an unusual multiethnic domain that brought together recent immigrants from Mexico and Central America playing tarasca, a Pre-Columbian game similar to handball taken up by Central American and Mexican immigrants in the yard, as well as graffiti crews from all over Los Angeles—at times from all over the world. Toluca Yard—or the Belmont Ruins—became part of a land struggle when it was targeted by developers known for building condominium complexes with baroque monikers such as the Medici, the Orsini, and the Piero. Several residents in the area attempted to convince local politicians and the Cultural Heritage Commission that the dynamic use of this area (as improvised art park and recre- ational facility) should be considered as a determining factor in the case for its historical landmark status. Unfortunately, only sections of the tunnel and an adjacent station were designated with landmark status—the graffiti yard and sports field were razed. Ybarra sees the tunnel as an "orifice of the city…spewing out a hidden history" 25 of economic spatial realignments and the local resistance to such gentrification. Ybarra's orificial monument echoes Asco's Asshole Mural (1975), in which the artists claimed a storm drain as a countermonument. In these counter- monuments, Ybarra and Asco engage in what art historian C. Ondine Chavoya has described as "a project of cultural invention emanating from neither the fragment nor the ruin, but from the absence." 26 Ybarra's Belmont Ruins installation took the form of a miniature museum within the larger exhibition, using the visual displays common to cultural heritage and transportation museums and also provided a foosball table and a media station. The project synthesized the communal uses of Belmont, as Ybarra involved local historians, parkland activists, taggers, and users of the site in the planning of the installation, which would serve as a platform for a dialogue on cultural memory and civic history. Furthermore, the documentary video and artifacts (contributed by his collaborators)—such as paint chips from the graffitied wall and transporta- tion memorabilia displayed in the rotunda pavilion, as well as the art objects borrowed from lacma's permanent collection—posed provocative questions. What if we considered the Belmont Ruins as a monument in flux, a constantly mutating staging ground for ephemeral cultural productions? How can we historicize or monumentalize that which is in a constant state of transformation, especially when activated by communities who are usually invisible? • Asco, Asshole Mural, 1975 Space Invaders 13 (Juan Capistran and Mario Ybarra Jr.), Sub/Lime, 1998, photo documentation of urban intervention, Los Angeles

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