Brick by bricolage: Adobe Punk's decolonial remapping of Los Angeles

Abstract

This essay offers a case study on the Los Angeles, California-focused “theaterwork.” It is framed by the idea that conversations around sustainability—as a concept that stresses “intergenerational equity” in terms of economic, societal, and environmental community endurance—demand that (1) we reflect on ongoing historical injustices to remediate (e.g., settler colonial) exploitation and environmental abuses and (2) we critically dialogue punk DIY (do it yourself) with other communities’ DIY practices rooted in radical anticapitalist, anticolonial sustenance models. Reading punk futurities through bricolage aesthetics, I share how the theaterwork complicates depictions of spectacular violence in canonic representations of 1980s Los Angeles punk. Ultimately, I contend that Adobe Punk makes an important intervention in conversations concerning punk and claims to urban space.