Project by Jana Marinovic @jana__marinovic
SPECTACLE OF DISASTER: SYSTEMS, MEDIA & REDISTRIBUTION Pacific Palisades, California, USA
investigates the Palisades Fire (2025) as a spatial system shaped by environmental damage, infrastructural collapse, and media visibility. It maps the failure of evacuation routes, communication systems, emergency response infrastructures, and remediation methods, while also tracing how the disaster was constructed through broadcast media and public image circulation.
Beginning with the fire’s material aftermath, the project breaks down the domestic interior as a toxic system in which chemical compounds are sorted, redistributed, and displaced through existing manual and inefficient cleanup methods to dedicated landfill networks across the California ecosystem.
In response, the project uses the framework of the upcoming Los Angeles 2028 Olympic Games to reimagine the Olympic apparatus as a system of “damage control,” in which remediation, rebuilding, and redistribution are publicly staged at the center of a global spectacle. The masterplan transforms Pacific Palisades into the final segment of the torch relay: a corridor of remediation testing grounds, hazardous material redistribution, fire-responsive domestic units, and infrastructural display. The project culminates in a stadium/waste-incinerator where toxic residue is processed into fuel for the Olympic flame at the opening ceremony.
