Gringostroica in Los Angeles

Gringostroica in Los Angeles MeadHunter THE LOS ANGELES FESTIVAL and its multivalent, omnicultural, megadisciplinary revels are ended. Seventeen days have sped by in a lurid streak of color and now the question is: what happened? Not accidentally, as it turned out, it depended on where you were looking. For the performing arts, three concentric rings operated under the Sellars Big Top. Two of these were of curated work: one of extant, imported pieces, and another of original ones, most of which were commissioned for the Festival from local advance guard artists. The third extravaganza was the uncurated Open Festival, L.A.'s answer to Edinburgh's Fringe. Because each subfest had its own raison d'dtre, the festival often looked like an immense party going in three directions at once. Yet among their interrelation was the real integument of the Los Angeles Festival, and possibly its future as well. Foreign works, of course, had been the sine qua non back when the Festival was little more than a logo. Anything transmarine was an easy sell, since no one has a bigger cultural inferiority complex than Angelenos. As with the two festivals before it, city kulturmeisters saw the 1990 version as an endless coming out party-a notice of arrival, to be sure, but also a display of belated good taste and breeding. It had therefore seemed providential when Peter Sellars agreed to assume the festival directorship. Like Los Angeles, he was young, brash, garrulous; and most endearing of all was that despite several splashy successes and failures in the United States, he was still better known in Europe, where his commissions seemed waitlisted into the next millennium. He was getting more On The Map by the minute; and he could just as well position Los Angeles there while he was at it. 111 But the city soon discovered that Sellars was not reputed to be daring for nothing. Mutual congratulations stopped in mid-delivery when his first directive as festival czar was to postpone the thing for three years. The whole concept behind the city-wide celebration needed rethinking, said Sellars, who seemed a bit embarrassed by his new role as impresario; and so began months of riding city buses, inspecting established enclaves of High Art as well as scouting for alternatives, and attending L.A.'s numberless ethnic fairs. What he noticed was that for all the social variegation of the place, it was still blatantly segregated. Poor whites and affluent whites had their respective strongholds; east belonged to Latinos, and south to blacks, while Asians and other minorities snuggled in wherever they could. How could this be a megalopolis where whites would be in the minority by 1994? Shortly thereafter Sellars broke the news that Los Angeles, and indeed the United States, was on the brink of "the Pacific Century." Anyone can catalogue Europe's latest art, he said; why not take a look at our real heritage-the cultures of the people who actually live here? In characteristically apocalyptic fashion, Sellars proclaimed that NOW was the time for Angelenos to embrace their cultural diversity, whether they liked it or not. They didn't. After all, with previous festivals, at least you knew you were getting what you paid for. Mnouchkine's RichardII, now thatwas bona fide art. And fun in the bargain. With Korean shamans and Polynesian drummers, who can tell? As a result, troubled funding efforts put the festival into curatorial limbo. Only at the last minute, when it was apparent that the festival could be spectacular with L.A's support, or look more like a local World's Fair without it, did many of the major grants come through. Total immersion was Peter Sellars's modus operandi;his avowed intention was "to take over the city." Skeptics criticized his comin'-at-ya approach to the festival; but there is no way to be heard in L.A. without making a splash. And certainly the sheer breadth of it enhanced the sense of adventuredesperate dashes through cross-town traffic to make it to another event, traipsing up and down Santa Monica side streets in search of storefront window art, discovering unsavory corners of this city...