Artists often tend to find their concerns and goals intertwined with those of activists thanks to the function–or, or more frequently, the dysfunction–of geography. Sharing the same cities and the same neighborhoods, artists and urban advocates have long occupied overlapping spaces, and a globe-spanning, but LA-centered, show at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE) brings together several projects that explore contemporary injustices written onto that common landscape through November 18th. Linking academic research, education, artistic practice, and activism, Just Space(s) is divided into six more or less distinct themes, such as ‘Prisons and the Prison Industrial Complex’ and ‘Borders, Labor, Migration.’ Several standout projects featured in the exhibition are feats of creative data visualization, including ‘Million Dollar Blocks,’ a project by the Spatial Information Design Lab that examines city blocks where the U.S. government spends in excess of $1 million to incarcerate its residents, and Teddy Cruz’s ‘Political Equator,’ which created a legible representation of the global divide between north and south. Other works hinge on personal narratives rather than data, such as Ursula Biemann’s series of video interviews with oil workers, farmers, refugees, and prostitutes impacted by a new oil pipeline under development in the Black Sea.

More than simply chronicling spatial injustice throughout the world, the exhibition aims to function as a center of education and a jumping-off point for action. To that end, several symposia have been scheduled throughout its run, a library has been set up at the front of the exhibition space, and a ‘Mobile Planning Lab’ has been dispatched to neighborhoods throughout South LA to collect residents’ feedback on their local geography and ground-up plans for overcoming spatial injustice. [Posted by William Hanley on Rhizome.org]