User:Davburns1970/Sandbox

Fallen Fruit
Fallen Fruit
	Fallen Fruit, Elysian Park, 2005
Nationality	United States
Notable work	Public Fruit Jams (2005-present), Neighborhood Infusions (2008-present)
Awards	Rhizome.org, Eye Opener Award, ArtMatters, GoodWorks Foundation
Website	fallenfruit.org

About Fallen Fruit

Fallen Fruit is an ongoing artists' collaboration, based in Los Angeles, whose three members are David Burns, Matias Viegener and Austin Young. Using a variety of media, from photography, video, and performance to installation, Fallen Fruit investigates urban space, ideas of neighborhood and new forms of located citizenship and community. All their work touches on, works through or works with fruit in some manner. They have stated that fruit is the "lens" by which they look at the world.

Overview

Fallen Fruit began in 2004 as a response to a call by The Journal of Aesthetics and Protest for artist's projects that addressed social or political issues but did so in the form of proposing some kind of solution rather than raising a critique. Burns, Viegener and Young created a map of what they call "Public Fruit," fruit growing in or over public property such as streets and sidewalks in the neighborhood of Silver Lake in Los Angeles. In addition to creating an ongoing set of public fruit maps, the group has become known for their colorful photographs, which originally featured the three collaborators in various costumes which suggest characters either exploring the city's neighborhoods or engaging in public fruit tree planting or even protesting fruit issues in front of Los Angeles City Hall. These are part of an ongoing series of narrative photographs and video works that explore the social and political implications of people's relationship to fruit and the world around them.

The trio's projects also include Public Fruit Jams in which they invite the citizens to bring homegrown or public fruit and join in communal jam-making; Nocturnal Fruit Forages, nighttime neighborhood fruit tours; Public Fruit Tree Adoptions that enjoin the public to plant trees on the margins of private property; Public Fruit Park proposals in Hollywood, Los Feliz and downtown LA; and Neighborhood Infusions, which takes the fruit found on one street or neighborhood and infuses it in alcohol to capture the "spirit" of the place.

In recent years the group's goal of imagining a city which behaved more responsibly with its residents both human and horticultural has expanded to take on more global and historical concerns. In 2008, as part of their participation in "The Gatherers" show at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, the group embarked on a new long-term project called "The Colonial History of Fruit." Using a variety of media, this work examines both the objective or factual history of fruit – how the fruit we eat travelled through time and space to arrive in our daily life – and the subjective or anecdotal history: how and when an individual first tasted a fruit, or how a certain tree was tended by one family, or remembered by immigrants.

All of Fallen Fruit's work moves from, through or into fruit in some manner. They have said that fruit "as a media" is interesting to them because it is trans-historical and crosses all classes, ages and ethnic groups. It is seen as a symbol of goodness, bounty and generosity, and it is the food that appears most often in art. This is in part because of its symbolic values, but also its aesthetic qualities of form, color and depth. In addition fruit is the most commonly exchanged gift of food, and thus can serve as an allegory for many social relationships formed or characterized by exchange. Fruit both represents both something ordinary or everyday and something special.

Public Fruit

Fallen Fruit first coined the term "public fruit" in 2004 in order to explore the concept of fruit found growing in or overhanging public space, especially after noticing how people were reticent to pick or eat fruit found this way. They were struck not only by how few people eat this fruit, but by how few people walk on neighborhood streets at all; Los Angeles is a city of cars. Much of their work around public fruit is around the issue of public and private property, and the question of what public space might be used for, i.e. the question of the commons. This expands into an investigation of public art by creating forms of art that might exist with and in the public that are not in the traditional forms of public art, such as a sculpture in a park. Among their work has been several Public Fruit Park proposals which aim to create large public spaces which serve much like traditional parks with the added bonus of growing only fruit trees which are tended and shared by the public, and also harvested to be shared by all. These may be seen as environmental sculpture or site-specific art. They have said that "we believe that fruit planted on the border of private and public property is an opportunity for new kinds of social interactions as well as a site for asking new questions about property, community, the city and the environment."

Collaboration

While Fallen Fruit is a three-person collaborative, their interest is in extending collaboration into the public realm. The Public Fruit Jam is perhaps the best example of the artists' investment in new forms of collaboration. Held several times a year and every summer at Machine Project in Los Angeles, the Public Fruit Jam is an open invitation to the "citizens" of the city to bring their home-grown or publicly picked fruit and join together in a communal jam-making session, using the term "jam" as a riff on both the food and the idea of musical improvisation. Working without recipes (but with basic guidelines for jam-making) small groups are asked to negotiate on which fruits go into the mix of the jam. The finished jars are then exchanged among participants and visitors so that almost everyone leaves with jam. For Fallen Fruit, the "art" involved here is less the jam itself than the social encounters and exchanges that the jam occasions. Fallen Fruit has held Public Fruit Jams in Los Angeles, Santa Monica, San Francisco and San Diego, as well as in Linz, Austria, as part of the Ars Electronica Festival.

Public Art

Fallen Fruit's work can be seen in relation to a growing movement in public art that focusses less on creating monuments than finding new forms of public interventions that create new publics. This movement is especially strong in Los Angeles, with artists and collectives such as the Center for Land Use Interpretation (CLUI), Los Angeles Urban Rangers, Farmlab, Fritz Haeg and Islands of LA. Other related artists and collectives include: REBAR, FutureFarmers, Amityworks and Temporary Services.

In addition to redefining the scope of public art, much of this work is also focused on ecology, the environment, land use issues and the urban fabric. It has been discussed in relation to social practice, Relational Aesthetics and Joseph Beuys' concept of Social Sculpture.

Quotes

"Who does the sun belong to, and rainwater? Why is this lemon in public space? Is this my banana?" ^[1]

"Using fruit as our lens, Fallen Fruit investigates urban space, ideas of neighborhood and new forms of located citizenship and community. From protests to proposals for new urban green spaces, we aim to reconfigure the relation between those who have resources and those who do not, to examine nature in & the nature of the city, and to investigate new, shared forms of land use and property. We seek to generate new rituals, events and formats to express these ideas in kinetic and nomadic ways." ^[2]

"If you own property, plant food on your perimeter. Share with the world and the world will share with you. Barter, don't buy! Give things away! You have nothing to lose but your hunger!" ^[3]

Images

Elysian Park, giclee print, 40” x 60”, 2005
City Hall / Fruit Protest, giclee print on wood panel, 96” x 120”, 2005
Public Fruit Map, Ars Electronica, Linz, Austria, PDF, dimensions variable, 2008
Public Fruit Map, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, PDF, dimensions variable, 2008
Public Fruit Map, Silver Lake, California, PDF, dimensions variable, 2004
Public Fruit Map Mural, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, ink, text panel, foliage, 2005
Nocturnal Fruit Forage, Silver Lake, California, Public Intervention, documentation, 2005
Nocturnal Fruit Forage, Silver Lake, California, Public Intervention, documentation/detail, 2005
Street Bananas, giclee print, 16”x20”, 2004
Fallen Fruit Tree Adoption, Machine Project, Public Intervention, documentation, 2009
Public Fruit Jam, Machine Project, Public Demonstration, documentation, 2006-2009
Public Fruit Jam Jar, Machine Project, Public Demonstration, documentation, 2006-2009