Alia Malley : Projection for Two Stations

About

Multi-media artist, Alia Malley, presents a week-long, large-scale, nightly video installation made possible with an Our Town Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts in cooperation with the City of Santa Monica Cultural Affairs Department. The artist will project her short video, Christmas Eve in Panorama City onto the D Building in the central parking lot of Bergamot Station, transforming the art complex into a classic Southern California drive-in and unifying the experience between the thriving arts community and rail passengers of the new Expo Line. 

Projection for Two Stations reinvents the classic Southern California drive-in experience for cars and train passengers. So often in contemporary urban life—especially while commuting on mass transit—we are self-sequestered in our own worlds, focused on the tiny screens of our handheld devices. Malley’s work disrupts this expectation, even if momentarily, as the train passes through Bergamot Station, groups of passengers will be drawn to look up and experience the unexpected, together.

The featured short film loop, Christmas Eve in Panorama City, creates a sense of place and displacement within the framework of California landscapes and the historical context of film and media. Following a helicopter as it circles in silhouette endlessly against a glossy, hyperreal sunset with its color cues taken from the poster of Bruce Brown’s classic 1966 surf documentary, The Endless Summer, the piece questions our expectations of—and relationship to— filmed representations of Southern California, including iconic beach communities like Santa Monica.

This is the first time the artist has received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.