As part of the BUILT-IN series, NAVEL Collective Resident Nicolas Grenier facilitates a think tank on long-term solutions for living and working in LA.

Most artists cannot afford to buy real estate in Los Angeles – so they rent cheap spaces, move when the rent goes up, find new places and eventually get forced to move again. The cycle continues, while, in the process, real estate speculation renders more and more spaces inaccessible. Individual artists often devise personal solutions to this ongoing problem, but rarely do artists coordinate their actions on a larger scale.

This think tank session will explore long term solutions for artists living and working in LA. Do most artists have similar needs? Are systemic, collective solutions possible? Are there paths to non-profit real estate ownership by (and for) artists that we just don’t know about yet?

Join artists, concerned citizens and professionals alike to discuss these topics and more. Cultural workers, architects, urban planners, real estate agents and activists welcome.

Nicolas Grenier is a Montreal- and Los Angeles-based artist who works with the politics of systems — from visual representation to experiments that test socio-economic dynamics. Grenier holds an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. His work has been exhibited at the Power Plant (Toronto), the Musée Nationale des Beaux-Arts du Québec, Gallery Luis De Jesus Los Angeles, Galerie Antoine Ertaskiran (Montréal), Gagosian Gallery (Athens), the Bruges Triennial of Art and Architecture (Belgium), the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal and Commonwealth & Council (Los Angeles).

Image courtesy Nicolas Grenier and Google Earth