33.2579427,-115.4623814
Slab City, in Cupertino, Californiia, is known as the only free city in the world being without any form of governance; whether that be in terms of education, police force or medical facilities.
One of the more interesting aspects of the art to be found in Slab City is that all the art seems a blend between native American art along with some light dashes of Incan or Mayan motifs with some of the latter being very particular to Mexico. For that purpose we have assembled two galleries for comparison, one of them being composed of native American art and the other being images from Slab City.
The art reminds one of "Lord of the Flies" or any other Robinsonade, as well as depicting a post-apocalyptic scene, similar to Fallout, the games, particularly 1 or 2, which, in reality have the same idea in mind but in a different setting. We'd argue that there is a lot of native art encoded in all the works, with the whole park, for example, resembling the same time of "ensemble" or "collage" of pointillist elements that are arranged together in very similar patterns. Where native Americans perhaps used river-stones to fashion a meticulous mandala, the Slab City artists use various technological components in place of stones, yet the same artistic effect is achieved to an observer.
One of the pieces, namely that of a frozen Hans Solo, from Star Wars, improvises a little on the actual movie scene by fabricating a mandala around Hans Solo out of smaller technological components, with more references to, say, The Borg from Star Trek than to Star Wars. One could also perhaps draw a connection to H.R. Giger art-style from Alien evoking a merge between the technological an biological. With that said, it seems interesting that the latter mentioned references to "futuristic" art-styles could connect all the way back to Inca, Mayan and then later native American motifs, in particular when looking at the pointillist arrangement of components resulting in mandalas. Perhaps the weld between romance and abstraction in native American art is what makes the adoption of technological components palatable to the eye - namely, the perfect geometry or abstract shapes adopted by native American art is the actual touch of "technology" or realism that seems to tame the more romanced themes such as that of animals, vultures, the fur of animals or tusks. On the other hand, the reference to native American art styles can be seen from the usage of circle patterns, totems and dream-catchers, all of these elements appearing in all the arrangements displayed in Slab City. Slab City also contains a more Latin touch, for example a statue of the Virgin Mary, with a typical coloring or skulls that would allude to The Day of the Dead in Mexico, however these pieces are singular or rate with the predominant art-style being a mix of the former.
Uncanny as it might seem, it would be interesting to ponder whether the similarity to native American art is intentional or just a purely organic development as an expression of the artists that created them resulting from the culture itself.