LOS ANGELES — Michael Heizer’s "Levitated Mass" was not conceived of as performance art. Once installed on the grassy north side of the Los Angeles County Museum’s 20-acre campus, this 340-ton boulder suspended over a 456-foot long, concrete-lined slot cut into the ground will fall squarely in line with the tradition of Earthworks: big, heavy, monumental, immovable. Creeping through Los Angeles on its 196-wheel transporter, however, flanked by a block-long convoy of trucks and an army of support staff over the course of 11 slow nights, the boulder caused a scene on a scale rarely witnessed even here, in a city that’s known its share of spectacle. Crowds appeared at nearly every juncture of the 105 mile journey — as many as 20,000 at one stop — and hundreds awaited its arrival at the museum at 4am on Saturday morning.
The brilliance of the event, when viewed as performance, had little to do with the rock itself and even less to do with Heizer, who was absent throughout. What drew onlookers to this odd parade at every hour of the day and night was its clear demonstration of human ingenuity, the palpable sense of the cumulative efforts of hundreds of anonymous individuals — quarry workers, truckers, engineers, electricians, city planners, transportation officials, police officers — directed toward a seemingly impossible end. In reality, such spectacles of labor are fairely common: think of the building of skyscrapers, freeway interchanges, hydroelectric plants. But, then again, such structures, however monumental, don't get drawn through the streets to a breathless stream of L.A. Times reportage, and "Levitated Mass" refracted all this human effort through a particularly iconic form — a big, mysterious, plastic-wrapped object suspended by chains three feet over the street.
And the particular street that it passed through was important too. What has been scarcely discussed in coverage of the journey is the nature of the neighborhoods the rock was treversing: suburban and semi-industrial regions in the east and south of Los Angeles County with names that few outsiders would recognize and most LACMA patrons would know only from traffic reports (Diamond Bar, Roland Heights, Buena Park, Carson). Primarily black and Latino and most of a low-income bracket, these are neighborhoods that don’t tend to receive much attention, except when something bad happens. Contemporary art, at least in this institutionally sanctioned form, is rarely seen in these parts of L.A.
For me, it was visiting the rock in a handful of these locations en route that was the highlight of the entire civic spectacle: finding it in Carson one balmy afternoon, sitting in the center lane of a wide residential boulevard, with picture-snapping drivers passing by on either side; following it on foot through south L.A. at midnight on Friday and watching it pass safely across the 10 freeway overpass, a point widely perceived as a symbolic divide between the wealthy, generally white region of central Los Angeles and the poorer south. Everywhere I stopped, the sidewalks were crowded with people — not a frequent occurrence anywhere in L.A. — of every conceivable demographic, some in from elsewhere, some from down the block, some shuffling out of doorways in slippers and pajamas. The police presence was surprisingly minimal and hearteningly unnecessary: when the men in hard hats waved their hands, the people simply gave them room. A climate of respect and friendly admiration predominated.
There were several hundred people at LACMA through the night, milling about Chris Burden’s blazing "Urban Light," the installation of vintage light poles at the museum’s front entrance. In a makeshift VIP lounge on a terrace above, well-dressed waiters served coffee, champagne, and thin crust pizza to a crowd notably older and more racially homogenous (which is to say, white) than any the procession would have encountered hitherto. I will admit to accepting a glass of champagne when the opportunity presented itself, but was glad to soon descend again — it was a far duller scene up there than below, where young parents carried on their shoulders children who’d probably never been out so late, a man inexplicably dressed like Jesus floated around snapping pictures, and nameless clusters of ordinary people, few of whom I recognized as art-world regulars, chatted and laughed and enjoyed the novelty of coming together on the streets of L.A. at 3:00 in the morning. No doubt "Levitated Mass" will be quite stunning when completed, but this is the image that I will remember.
To see images from the journey of Michael Heizer's "Levitated Mass" to LACMA, click on the slide show.