Utopian Dreams

Chris Burden's Metropolis II installation at LACMA is a mesmerizing, intoxicating vision of a fast-paced city.

Artist Chris Burden sees the future of mobility as standardized and mechanized, an urban vision of mechanization, much like the Case Study House Program launched in Southern California in the 1940s through the 1960s. Instead of mass production and standardized parts, Burden sees California's future through motorized and automated roadways, as visualized in Metropolis II (2010). Burden's kinetic sculpture modeled after a fast-paced modern city at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) boasts "a very hopeful future," according to the artist.

Chris Burden, <em>Metropolis II</em>, installation view — Chris Burden, *Metropolis II*, installation view

And indeed it is. In development for the past four years, Burden's Metropolis II – II referring to the second iteration of a similar idea already produced in smaller scale for a Japanese museum in 2004 – is demonstrative of fast-paced modern cities, such as Los Angeles and the changes that these cities will face in the coming years. Referencing the production of the work as what it might have been like to make a model of New York City at the turn of the century (pre-automobiles), Burden declared – "something else is about to arrive." What that is we can't exactly be sure, but from the artist's perspective it is a mechanized city, one in which the people become secondary to the cars they inhabit.

Metropolis II refers specifically to an idealized version of Los Angeles in the future when traffic will flow at ten times the rate it currently does. Industrialized modes of transport such as motorized cars – both automated and controlled by satellites, with the ability to travel speeds between 200 and 300 miles per hour, will decrease the length of time to get from Point A to Point B. In the course of an hour, 1,100 customized Hot Wheels cars zoom around the 18-lane track at speeds of 240 miles per hour. This is equivalent to approximately 100,000 cars circulating through the sculpture in an hour. In a city like Los Angeles, with heavy traffic and automobile congestion, such changes in speed and shorter destination times would appear to be welcome.

Chris Burden, <em>Metropolis II</em>, installation detail — Chris Burden, *Metropolis II*, installation detail

The vehicles that populate Burden's utopic Los Angeles are mostly private modes of transportation, i.e. the automobile (though some forms of public transport do exist, yet move at much slower speeds). Cars become the heart or the pulse of the city. Movement, in the form of automobile traffic, is what informs the landscape of the city and the relationship between the individual and the built environment. One can imagine the passengers in the car, moving at such a rapid pace, not being able to actually see the city that surrounds them.

This relationship between the observer (us), the passenger, the automobile and the city is what is most compelling. Looking into this fictitious city, we are able to see the desensitization to what it is that is exactly around us. For example, a miniature version of the Eiffel tower, modeled with erector set pieces, somehow finds its way into the landscape. To the observer it is recognizable, however to a passenger in the vehicle that is whipping around the track at approximately 240 miles per hour, it just becomes another object in the landscape that is unreadable. Consequently, the roadways become the landscape.

Cars become the heart or the pulse of the city. Movement, in the form of automobile traffic, is what informs the landscape of the city and the relationship between the individual and the built environment.

Moreover, Burden leaves us to believe that the sounds, and not the sights, are the main attractions of the new city. The very sound the sculpture produces is intoxicating and, according to Burden, "produces a level of tension too." This tension not only exists in terms of noise but also in regards to how the individual is seen in relation to this mechanized way of living. The cars and the traffic create the noise, no longer the individuals who make up the city. It is also interesting to note how the buildings are positioned in relation to the roadways – visually taking a backseat, allowing the maze of steel-constructed roadways that zig and zag throughout this utopian city to shine.

The 20x30-ft sculpture occupies the room, constructed with steel beams forming an electric grid interwoven with an elaborate system of eighteen roadways, including a six-lane freeway (perhaps a reference to Los Angeles' infamous highways), train tracks, and hundreds of buildings made from various common childhood building materials such as Lego's, Lincoln Logs, wooden blocks, Erector Sets, as well as the Eames Office's House of Cards.

Reminiscent of many childhood memories, the nostalgic installation also brings to mind artist Tom Sach's Nutsy's (2003). In Nutsy's, Sach's creates a large-scale self-contained environment composed of various known built works such as Le Corbusier's Unité d'Habitation and Villa Savoye, as well as a McDonald's, a modernist art park and an inner-city ghetto, in which a series of remote-controlled race cars are "driven" throughout the raceway. Burden's large-scale miniaturized city with its bustling sounds evokes a different sensation altogether. Whereas the car for Sach's becomes secondary to the built environment, it is the vehicle in Burden's iteration that dominates.

For Burden, the installation was not about trying to make a full-scale model of the city but instead "evoking the energy of the modern city." By conveying that energy through transport he minimalizes the buildings and the people that make up a city. Yet, he does make it impossible to ignore the human being standing in the middle of this massive sculpture operating the device, as well as managing potential pile-ups of automobiles as they whip around the track. Perhaps, the human component is not lost and can never be – even in this utopian reality that Burden creates.

Chris Burden's Metropolis II (2010) is on long-term loan to LACMA, and is currently on view during the Museum's operating hours (only operative Friday through Sunday) on the first floor of the Broad Contemporary Art Museum. Danielle Rago

Metropolis II
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Ongoing

Utopian Dreams

Chris Burden's Metropolis II installation at LACMA is a mesmerizing, intoxicating vision of a fast-paced city.

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