East Yard Community Event and Public Video Art Projection with Aire Libre

This project proposes a community-centered public art event built around Aire Libre, a multimedia film that exposes the environmental injustices embedded in the infrastructure of Los Angeles’ logistics economy. Focusing on communities along the I-710 corridor—predominantly Black and Latino neighborhoods disproportionately burdened by pollution from ports, freeways, warehouses, and industrial sites—the project highlights how systemic racism in urban planning has concentrated environmental harm in specific areas. Through collaboration with East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice, CONTRA-TIEMPO Activist Dance Company, and local artists, Aire Libre combines dance, oral histories, and poetry to document lived experiences of toxic air and soil, while challenging dominant narratives that render these communities invisible.

The proposed event at Riverfront Park in Maywood will bring this work directly back to the community through a public screening, oral history collection, and large-scale outdoor video projection onto nearby industrial landscapes. Designed as both a celebration and a form of collective healing, the event invites residents to share their stories, engage with environmental health resources, and witness their experiences reflected in powerful visual form. By reclaiming historically contaminated and marginalized spaces through art and community gathering, the project fosters environmental awareness, cultural resilience, and grassroots empowerment, while also building long-term capacity for East Yard to use public projection as a tool for advocacy and self-determined storytelling.