Remain Human: The Slatter’s Court Project

Remain Human: The Slatter’s Court Project

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Richard L. Nelson Gallery at the University California, Davis

Slatter’s Court started life as a motel serving the old Lincoln Highway. The auto camp closed and a community emerged even though (make that because) this remained a place of transition.

Slatter’s probably qualifies as a “heterotopia”—a counter-arrangement within the “normal” organization of a studiously normal town. Slatter’s accommodates people who don’t match the norms of college-town living; Slatter’s residents are pretty typical Californians.

Slatter’s Court casts a little shade in California’s sunny expanse of property development. Californians bypassed by the Equity Rush have to live somewhere, and some are comfortable with this. As the Slatter’s Court documentary project asks what criteria are employed when somewhere is officially designated “blight,” it gently levers the lid on the conservatism of a liberal town (liberal ordinariness is an exclusive commodity in California). Compassion shouldn’t come into a discussion of Slatter’s fate: cut Slatter’s, and the City of Davis cuts itself.

All representations are artificial, but I think the Slatter’s project does the most honest job possible. It avoids the “heroism” that besets many artistic adventures into urban activism. The organizers collected the pictures, thoughts and biographies of other residents as though they were postcards to send to the rest of town. Then they edged them into the public realm by opening a show (no guest list, lots of Slatter’s people) at a disused Slatter’s bike shop, co-opted for the occasion as a gallery.

To a great extent places exist through their representation. Looking at this show, even the residents of Slatter’s Court might have been startled to witness Slatter’s existence. This documentation affirms that Slatter’s Court is a close neighbor, physically and figuratively, to the center of town.

Simon Sadler is Associate Professor of Architectural and Urban History, University of California, Davis.

Richard L. Nelson Gallery