Knock, Knock – Whose Home

Does it all boil down to real estate? It sure seems to in California, and artists — always the unwitting tool of gentrification — tend to be sensitive to this cruel fact. “Knock, Knock — Whose Home?” rounds up commentary in various forms on the personal and political passions of those just trying to live their lives — or trying to recapture the lives they lived as kids. Memories of el barrio de Southgate color Francisco Romero’s photographs, while Catherine Hollander recounts actual dreams of going home again as her camera pans through what must be the now-empty house she grew up in. William Franco and Miki Seifert’s altar memorializes Mexican migrants who apparently did not survive the trek north by recounting their places of origin, and Evelyn Serrano goofs archly with (and invites us to alter) frontera markings. Laura Silagi and David Ewing’s documentary gets even more pointed in its history of Venice’s doomed Lincoln Place middle-income housing, about to kiss the wrecking ball. Frustrated with zoning affronts, Eve Luckring writes to City Hall and fills out bureaucratic forms with poetry. Daphne Lapidot, Jacqueline Dreager and Karl Jean Petion also contribute, but Coolest Piece in Show has to go to Amar Ravva’s to-scale reconstruction of his folks’ Bay Area house — which they arranged according to the principles, spelled out visually and verbally, of vastu shastra, the Vedic version of feng shui. At Acorn, 135 N. Avenue 50, Highland Park; Sat.-Sun., noon-4 p.m.; thru Sept. 23. Video screening and discussion of recent development issues in northeast L.A. on Sat., Sept. 23, 7:30 p.m. (323) 258-1435.

—Peter Frank