Brian O'Neill

Beach Boulevard | This project is a meditation on the constitution of the local and its effects. For example, the prioritization of economic production and consumption at “the local scale” is known as fiscal localism. As a normative political philosophy, constitutional localism is posited as the solution to political polarization and social unrest, shifting governance to “the local level.” Beyond/beneath/within (it’s all a matter of context) federalism, we can have different forms of localism. Furthermore, one’s views might be cast aside for being “localist,” due to preference for a place, a space, that limits the vision of possibilities of engagement with the wider world.

All of these things make “the local.” In considering these localisms and cognates, localism can also correspond to a site of reflection and analysis connecting fragments of experience that bind people, capital, and technology.

Southern California is a particularly apposite laboratory for building such vernacular connections. Tracts of homes, of trailers, the grid of streets and highways extending into the horizon, oil fields, industrial plants, strip malls, and personalities can all be precisely photographed. On my “minimal adventures” along the capillary avenues of Huntington Beach, California, Beach Boulevard served as my orientational axis. This project, culled from tens of thousands of photographs, archives, and observations, is therefore a multimedia meditation on place, but also a societal condition. www.brianfoneill.net