Against The Flow

Emerson's face is lined and tan as dry clay, his eyes the color of a cold mountain spring. As the two talk, it becomes clear that Emerson is an actor who has fallen on hard times. He tells Kletzky how he was rousted from his squat just a few blocks north of here, and now he's back to less than nothing: "People don't really start giving money until after 10:30 a.m.," Emerson explains. "Before that they're all angry. Late for work. Can't be bothered. Even to let the window down."

Kletzky inquires about his wife, his health, and when Emerson asks for money "for my methadone treatment," Kletzky unzips the pack, pulls out a plastic bag with bagels and hands them to him. There is tension on the island, Kletzky has noticed over a period of months, between Emerson and another drifter and a group of Latino vendors, some of whom are working to pay off coyotes who brought them over. The vendors often make more than the homeless can panhandle, and each wants the other to stick to their own side of the island, a trenchant metaphor for some of the city's rumbling hive of tensions.

As Kletzky sees it, visiting the islands is a way to plug into what's going on at ground zero -- and shape a discussion of the problems that come into focus there.

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Temporary status

How PUBLIC is the public space Kletzky has his eye on? He got one answer recently at an event in Santa Monica near Highways Performance Space and Gallery, where he hosted half a dozen or so writers, urban planners, students and artists to discuss the islands project and mount a public art piece that reflected the discussion. They built paper mailboxes and quotes hung from trees that went up on a busy island on Olympic Boulevard. Only a few hours later, the display was gone, as if it had never existed. (Subsequently, the City of Santa Monica cited Highways, which was fined $150 for the removal of six signs "unlawfully posted on a public right of way.")

"In some ways they are saying: 'You don't own the city.' But I think it compels the participants to deal with the issue of temporariness. This is about the disposable moment. I know the limitations of the traffic island," he says.

He's aware that the islands are temporary "stages" -- and Kletzky has been careful to make sure in mounting the signs that they don't harm property. "One of the things that keeps coming up is, 'Is this guerrilla art?' Do I have authority or approval?" There is no tape or glue or paint. "It's why I don't like graffiti. It's marking territory by changing something irrevocably. I prefer not to damage property." Because in the end, says Kletzky, "It's not about the product but the ideas generated."

Though it's still early, a cacophony of responses has let Kletzky know he's onto something. For someone who was feeling isolated, set apart from the city, it has evolved into a way to stitch together community despite the region's growing congestion and unwieldy expanses. It's building community out of an idea. "It's made working in public much more interesting because the public exists," in it he says. "The project is about using this vehicle of art -- slap some wheels on it and see where it goes." It's Kletzky's message in a bottle. "The collaboration is really essential -- the repetition of it. It's in that process that something takes form."

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lynell.george@latimes.com