Video: Artist Alice Bucknell on Water Politics and Speculative Futures in Los Angeles

Neale Stokes, Senior Librarian, Digital Content Team,
A computer-generated image of the Los Angeles River flowing through a concrete channel and passing under a bridge.

Alice Bucknell's video work, The Alluvials, was born of research in the Los Angeles Public Library. Now playing on the Library's immersive Central Library Video Wall, The Alluvials explores the politics of drought and water scarcity in a near-future version of Los Angeles. The story is told through a variety of nonhuman and elemental perspectives, including the Los Angeles River, wildfire, a 400-year-old sycamore called El Aliso, and the ghost of the city's celebrity mountain lion, P-22.

In this video, Bucknell discusses the origins of Los Angeles' water crises, the rare texts that informed The Alluvials, and why the Library is an apt venue for this work.


Alice Bucknell is a Los Angeles-based artist, writer, and educator with a particular interest in game engines and speculative fiction. Their recent work has focused on creating cinematic universes within game worlds, exploring the affective dimensions of video games as interfaces for understanding complex systems, relations and forms of knowledge.


Related Reading: The Alluvials


Book cover of Something new under the sun : a novel
Something New Under the Sun
Kleeman, Alexandra

Book cover of Open throat
Open Throat
Hoke, Henry

Book cover of Everything now : lessons from the city-state of Los Angeles
Everything Now: Lessons From the City-state of Los Angeles
Baldwin, Rosecrans

Book cover for Parable of the Sower
Parable of the Sower
Butler, Octavia E.

Book cover for Parable of the Sower: A Graphic Novel Adaptation
Parable of the Sower: A Graphic Novel Adaptation
Butler, Octavia E., Duffy, Damian

A gifted woman tries to find family and community in post-apocalyptic California.


Book cover of Speculative Los Angeles
Speculative Los Angeles

Book cover for Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster
Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster
Davis, Mike

Book cover of City of quartz : excavating the future in Los Angeles
City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles
Davis, Mike

Book cover of Video green : [Los Angeles art and the triumph of nothingness]
Video Green: Los Angeles Art and the Triumph of Nothingness
Kraus, Chris

Book cover of Cadillac desert : the American West and its disappearing water
Cadillac Desert: The American West and its Disappearing Water
Reisner, Marc

Book cover of Eden by design : the 1930 Olmsted-Bartholomew plan for the Los Angeles region
Eden by Design: The 1930 Olmsted-Bartholomew Plan for the Los Angeles Region


 

 

 

Top