Hidden in plain sight, Sunset Boulevard once had arguably the highest concentration of cruising spots in Los Angeles. Circus of Books, at 4001 Sunset Boulevard, for instance, was both a haven for hookups as well as a refuge during the HIV/AIDS crisis. Elysian Park is another historic, popular anonymous gay sex hookup spot in Chinatown.
Sunset Boulevard beamed until the early 2000s, when LAPD cracked down, pushing queer Los Angelenos even further to margins. Silver Lake may now be the “alternative gay mecca of Los Angeles” but the strip, between Hollywood and West Hollywood, still has vestiges of its former glory—a persistent hotbed of gay bars, spaces for intimate encounters, and counter culture more broadly, despite gentrification.
All of this makes Materials & Applications (M&A)—a Los Angeles nonprofit located at 1313 Sunset Boulevard—an ideal venue for exploring the past, present, and future of cruising on the strip. Such is the point of departure for an ongoing exhibition there by designers Adam Miller and Strat Coffman, titled Trade Safe Chastity Box.
“Elysian Park is within walking distance from [M&A], from the stretch of Sunset Boulevard where cruising happens, that I participate in,” Coffman told AN. “This means I have this kind of different way of reading spaces in Los Angeles. There’s a whole different geography that exists here.”
“We were really interested in not just conveying an aesthetic, or inverting various spatial devices,” Miller added, in describing the artwork, “but rather making a spatial experience that’s dynamic, and also very interactive and engaging.”
“A Dollhouse of the Contemporary Smart City”
Today, M&A is a staple in the Los Angeles architecture, design, and art scenes, led by director Kate Yeh Chiu, who took the helm in 2021. Chiu simultaneously teaches at USC and edits The Avery Review.
Trade Safe Chastity Box can be understood as an evolution of past works by Miller and Coffman. The pair met as teaching fellows at the University of Michigan (UM) in 2022. Now, they teach at UC Berkeley and USC respectively.
Miller completed a UM Taubman fellowship in 2023. The next year, in 2024, Coffman participated in a group show with other UM Taubman fellows, where they took conventional home appliances like push plates, door jambs, door knobs, and handrails to challenge visitors to rethink the way they engage with architecture.
Trade Safe Chastity Box is visually and conceptually similar.
The designers had previously staged an installation in the same vein as Trade Safe Chastity Box as part of M&A’s courtyard competition. Chiu subsequently invited Miller and Coffman to build a spin-off exhibition in the storefront space on Sunset Boulevard, culminating in the show’s opening this past August.
At M&A, Miller and Coffman repurposed quotidian urban defensive technologies—CCTV cameras, safety mirrors, floodlights, and other devices—into an inhabitable instrument of performance, reflection, and glitch; or what the designers call an “interactive architectural device that translates architectures of surveillance into architectures of desire,” they said in an artist statement.
On October 4, artist Kemo Burns conducted a live art performance using the device, Binds for Letting Go.
From outside, the installation appears propped on wheels. An air conditioning unit and sand-blast glove pop out of the volume.
A fisheye mirror, counter-trash lid, a police spotlight, a security camera, projector, trash chute, a solar panel, and speakers abound; mattresses are tucked inside. Silicone entry doors enclose the inner chamber with charm key locks.
All of this comes together to create what the designers call “a dollhouse of the contemporary smart city.”
“Historically, [the city of Los Angeles] regulated itinerant driving practices that would happen on the strip. Like at cruising grounds, people would pull over and go cruising, or stall and pick up people,” Coffman added.
“There were signs that said you can’t pull over for more than 30 seconds, or you’d be fined,” Coffman continued. “Loitering in public space was treated as a criminal activity. It was only recently this signage was taken down.”
The repackaging of surveillance technology is indicative of how LAPD historically monitored Sunset Boulevard, through a variety of draconian means; but also how home- and business-owners fortify their properties on the strip with bars on windows, screens, fences, safety mirrors, spot lights, anti-homeless benches, and other defensive architectures of the Foucauldian variety.
Trade Safe Chastity Box is on view through November 13.
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