There are 2.3 million Americans in prison, nine million American children without health insurance in 2007, and more than 33 million people living with HIV. While we comprehend these numbers as astonishing, they’re cold statistics, which feel abstract and anesthetizing, making it difficult to find relevance on a personal level. In the recently opened exhibition, ‘Of All the People in All the World’ at the Skirball Cultural Center, six performers from Stan’s Caf’ (pronounced kaff) try to flesh out the numbers by measuring out statistics in grains of rice. Mounds of rice, large and small, stand in for the individuals in the aggregate. A pile representing the population of California is about the same size as the pile representing the people living in the United States who were born elsewhere. Another mound educates the viewer on what 100,000 looks like, then a series of smaller piles offers a ratio of the number of doctors per 100,000 individuals in countries around the world. Over the course of the month, the show, which occupies three galleries, will evolve. Performers will dismantle old piles and measure out new ones, at times in response to suggestions from visitors. The experience is heightened by the juxtapositions of one pile of rice to another. One sizable pyramid, representing the number of people living in gated communities in the United States is compared to a grotesquely similarly sized pile that shows the number of prisoners worldwide (9 million v. 8 million). Four years ago, Stan’s Caf’ Artistic Director James Yarker, who early on had a penchant for math and science, began to think about visualizing the increasingly enormous, incomprehensive and overwhelming society we live in. ‘I began to think about how many people I share this planet with, a number alone that makes no sense,’ Yarker told the Palisadian-Post. ‘I realized I needed something discreet, uniformly sized and cheap.’ Yarker says that his Indonesian neighborhood in Birmingham, England prompted the idea of using rice. Rice filled all the criteria, and ‘it’s tall and thin, like me,’ he added. ‘Of All The People In All The World’ was originally conceived as a gallery piece, Yarker said. ‘But we were persuaded by the director of Warwick Arts Center that it would be better suited to their foyer space where hundreds of people each day would pass it. In a kind of cheat of the usual site specific procedure, this show arrives in kit form ready to go and then adapts itself to the architectural, historical and social setting it finds itself in.’ The exhibit has returned to the Skirball for a second time–this year for a month. Along with choosing statistics unique to Los Angeles’the size of Dodger Stadium filled to capacity; L. A.’s population in 1890, 1940 and 2007, Yarker and his troupe have emphasized historical themes’the birth of the U.S.A., and Jewish themes’the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust, the number saved by Oskar Schindler, and the number of Jews living in Jerusalem compared to the number of Muslims living in Jerusalem–or the number of Civil War soldiers who were killed in action, as compared to those who died from disease. The exhibition spaces are serenely powerful as the viewer walks among piles of long-grain rice, scattered across the gallery floor like miniature pyramids of Giza. ‘It’s very important to be here, walking among the piles,’ Yarker said. ‘It’s a powerful resonance not only seeing yourself in the show and in relation with other people, but the existential thing, ‘What’s my place in the world? ‘Where do I belong? ” The exhibition will be on view at the Skirball, 2701 Sepulveda Blvd., through December 30. Exhibition hours are Tuesday through Friday, noon to 5 p.m.; Saturday and Sunday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. For more information, call (310) 440-4500.
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