Untitled

This project, which has been presented directly by the artist with an e-mail, consists of just an idea: to pull one of the old trolly car of Los Angeles out of the ocean where they had been dumped, after the closure of this transport system. Reflecting on his native city, today completely dedicated to cars, on its past and on the processes of forgetting, Horvitz wants to brings back to light an episode – the throwing of the trollies into the ocean – that clearly becomes a metaphor.
The Los Angeles Railway was a system of streetcars that operated in Central Los Angeles and surrounding neighborhoods between 1901 and 1963 and there are several articles and photos that can confirm that during the Fifties a few of the discarded streetcars from the Los Angeles Transit Lines, created in 1945, were thrown into the ocean: in particular the July, 1959 issue of “Mass Transportation” magazine[1] featured an informative article about six ‘old’ Los Angeles Transit Lines streetcars being placed off the coast at Redondo Beach to create an artificial reef.
This work by David Horvitz can also be considered part of a wider reflection from the artist on the concept of water and time, which considers conceptual practices and applies “the fluid and impermanent dimension of the Fluxus movement and of Oriental culture”[2]. The search and recovery of a dumped trolly car then also become a poetic and surreal performative gesture, an ephemeral action that should have left several different traces, just like David Horvitz postal artworks, his stamps or his attempts to mimic the sound of the ocean using the human voice.
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[1] Metro Digital Resources Librarian, Before “Subway To The Sea,” There Was “Streetcar In The Sea”: Creating Artificial Reefs Off The Los Angeles Coast In 1959,  Metro's Primary Resources, Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, May 18, 2011, Available at: https://metroprimaryresources.info/before-subway-to-the-sea-there-was-streetcar-in-the-sea-creating-artificial-reefs-off-the-los-angeles-coast-in-1959/1324/

[2] M. Vecellio, The Water in you, in David Horvitz, nuvola, nuvola, oceano, nuvola, foschia, tu, Loom Gallery, Milano, 2018, s.p.