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Drawing on our own terms: on doodles without borders in L.A.
Հայկ / Hayk Makhmuryan and Anna Cho-Son
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In Spring of 2026, friends and co-conspirators Anna Cho-Son, an artist and assistant editor of ungovernable study, and Hayk Makhmuryan, an artist and organizer of doodles without borders, gathered to discuss the strategies and frameworks that ground their work. Hayk and Anna first met at ungovernable study’s Publishers Working Group, a series of online gatherings for independent publishers to share resources and insights toward sustaining their practices beyond the non-profit industrial complex. [1] There, Hayk prompted the group, “I want to be governed, but the question is, to be governed by whom?” This potent line of questioning continues to anchor the conversation that follows, as Anna and Hayk discuss the origins of doodles without borders, tenants rights organizing in Los Angeles, the importance of language-work toward political education, pushing against the presumed inevitability of the Olympics, and “becoming neighborly with (un)governance.” [2] Together, Anna and Hayk ground “on the land … in the poem” in our team’s beloved city of Los Angeles, the place where anarchists, likely for the first time anywhere in so-called united states, held up banners painted with the phrase “become ungovernable,” in protests against the Democratic National Convention of 2000. [3]
Anna: First, I want to ask about your drawing practice, as we are both drawers!
Hayk: I am trained as an illustrator, but had not actively done illustration for over a decade. Just really enjoying doodling, or rather, keeping a sketchbook. Then, slowly, I started making inroads back into visual art my own way, into what I really feel is my interest.
Anna: My drawing practice became historic research, and has offered useful models for my organizing work. I started researching these anatomical drawings authored by Japanese medical institutions, some of which were from bodily experiments on Korean subjects during the colonial period (1910-45). The documents became an entry point into thinking about the bodily mapping of this colonial cut. I started making my own anatomical drawings as a practice for re-imagining and re-iterating “I” along the push and pull of forced and chosen intimacies.
Hayk: I love that you're modeling and underscoring love, this real love for certain things in our lives, like the love for drawing, for exploring what happens when you make marks on the surface, you know?
“Wordplay allows reimagining political meanings, opening up conversation for a different way to look at one or other idea or concept. And of course, thinking who the audiences are, from the perspective of someone who has been participating in finding or cultivating an Armenian diasporan political group.”
Anna: I would love to hear about doodles without borders and how that project started. I would also love to hear if and how that ties into your experience of coming to and living in LA.
Hayk: doodles without borders helped me re-establish that relationship with drawing as a conduit of my relationship with the world. A component of what I do these days, web presence for instance, are these wordplays between Armenian and English. Wordplay allows reimagining political meanings, opening up conversation for a different way to look at one or other idea or concept. And of course, thinking who the audiences are, from the perspective of someone who has been participating in finding or cultivating an Armenian diasporan political group. As a first generation migrant–I was born and raised in Armenia, moving to LA region in 1999–the Armenian language becomes this place of tension: various levels of diasporic language fluency and confidence, puzzle solving for english speakers, and layered meanings for those who speak both English and Armenian. And then also endless possibilities with drawings of letters, letters as images. That's a more personal and recent branch of doodles work.
On the genesis of
doodles without borders
Hayk: But you were asking about the genesis of the doodles project. The short, necessarily incomplete version is... I ran a community art space from 2008 to 2022, a small shoestring-budget arts and cultural center in the Skid Row neighborhood. Sometime around 2013, it took on the name Studio 526, and it still exists today under that name. It was a time of political growth for me in terms of how I relate to LA, how I relate to groups and alignments around me, and what politics I am interested in, including what can be broadly called social justice outside of electoral politics. A lot of the time, learning looked like going from "I don't know about these things," to "I have my own questions about these things." I got connected through my work, through acquaintances and friends, and–though at the time I wouldn't have used the word–comrades. Through Skid Row, I got introduced to tenants union work which I didn't really know much about. It was when the Los Angeles Tenants Union (LATU) was only one year old. I ended up going to an action at a public housing project that's half a mile from Union de Vecinos' main gathering place in Boyle Heights. It was one of the early larger actions organized by the Los Angeles Tenants Union that I would describe as modeling a type of conversation with the city that the city doesn't like. Where they [LA local government] wanted one “community” representative, but they would come and see there were a hundred of us.
This was also not long before the wave of actions against artwashing in Boyle Heights, which included articulating the political position of artists against artwashing, artists against gentrification. [4] Somewhere within a year of that action, I learned that the Glendale Tenants Union had formed and as a tenant in Glendale I joined a few months later. Participation in the Union, in turn, informed my continued involvement in Skid Row and the Skid Row Neighborhood Council.
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The entire history of the fight to form a Skid Row Neighborhood Council–a nod to General Jeff, [5] who spearheaded that effort–was a case study of the city and the developers feeling threatened by a bunch of Skid Row residents, because god forbid there is any kind of municipal legitimacy given to Skid Row. The developers and real estate that have bought the city out fought tooth and nail to prevent Skid Row from having its own neighborhood council, even though neighborhood councils are this toothless thing that can get easily co-opted. They were so threatened that they poured millions of dollars to make sure that effort gets defeated: from forming a misleading bogus entity, to misinformation campaigns, and blatantly suffocating Skid Row access to voting, to making online voting for "downtown stakeholders" who never stepped in Skid Row exceedingly easy. This was in 2017, I was seeing the violence and inhumanity of gentrification unfold before my eyes.
Increasingly, what I wanted to prioritize at Studio 526–art space as a political space, as an organizing space, etc.–I couldn't do within the confines of the housing and social services organization it is part of. These types of large social services nonprofits are mostly beholden to the city and other funding interests, and are deeply unthreatening and actually beneficial to the very systems–like capitalism or landlordship–that produce the violence of housing precarity, homelessness, the normalization of profiting from the basic need for housing. If you are working within a large social services nonprofit, at best, the individual above you in the org chart is supportive.
I made my exit in 2021-2022. But I knew that there were certain things that I wanted to continue. I wanted to keep a consistent presence in the Skid Row neighborhood. And you know, I was like, if there is anything that I'm learning from all of this, it's that I want presence to be on my own terms. Which is exactly the strength of a project that is autonomous, that is unpaid, where you're not worried about anyone cutting your paycheck.
“…if there is anything that I'm learning from all of this, it's that I want presence to be on my own terms.”
These ideas were not completely new for me. doodles without borders started as a newsletter in May of 2020, reviving a largely dormant website that I created back in 2016. And in the summer of 2021 doodles without borders kicked off what eventually became a weekly arts table at General Jeff Park (one of the two public parks in the Skid Row neighborhood), where–between coffee, greetings, and catching up on neighborhood gossip–we also create collaborative banners. Although there are other components, the banners have really become the throughline. The first ones got started back in 2021. Banners that are based on topics pitched by some of the regulars, there are Mothers Day and Fathers Day banners that were created. Banners uplifting relevant themes and topics, like "Community Means," defining this overused, often depoliticized word, or "Skid Row neighborhood is part of the Working Class." Also banners that are tied to annual events like Black History Celebration, Festival for All Skid Row Artists, and Jamaican Independence Day. The banners are now a "mini-series," spanning 4-5 years for each of those events, and they build a timeline, visual evidence of this consistent neighborhood presence.
I think about what it means for doodles to be adding to the sense of neighborhood identity in Skid Row hyper-locally. More broadly, what neighborhood-entrenched function a project like doodles can serve, when it produces visual art that has some form of collaborative component and necessarily spans at least some period of time.
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As a critical view of what could be considered with projects like doodles in mind, it helps to parse out the different ways a project is collaborative or not. Early on, I was envisioning a much more collective effort, but this requires nurturing, it does not just happen "naturally." Although there are regulars and repeat collaborators, doodles is currently a project largely hinged on one person–me, even as I talk endlessly about the harms of individualism. I don't lose sleep over it, but I think about it, and what can be learned.
Anna: I appreciate such a precise reflection of how this project came to be, and how you still give so much room for this thing to continue organically developing. Which I think is really important for a project like this whereas a non-profit or city focuses on an agenda and is "strategic" and has its five year plan, the 10-year plan.
Governed by whom?
Hayk: I am curious about this question you posed earlier, what have been some of your experiences with neighborhood identity? And community defense-related work and strategies?
Anna: Well, I feel similarly that I am not an expert on a neighborhood. I’ve moved around a lot and lived in lots of different neighborhoods like many transplants here do. In terms of organizing in Koreatown as a Korean person, I think about what is energizing for people and wanting a neighborhood identity that turns around that.
I want more of that space to access emotions and part of that is being louder. Right now, I crave a lot of that in city structure that tries to dampen and atomize our most critical relationships, our thoughts, and our struggles. I want us to have a big sense of ownership and authorship in our neighborhoods, and shift ownership to stewardship rather than taking for oneself.
“Governed by whom can be a matter of interrogating, ‘who am I accountable to?’ In that sense, I am influenced by my neighbors, but they don’t hold power over me the same way our standard government does.”
Hayk: Makes me think of stewardship in relation to governing, to (un)governability. If we allow space for stewardability, for governability, then there is the question of being governed by whom? It opens the possibility to explore how consistency and familiarity comes from a certain level of governance or how governance can be subverted by these tactics we’ve been talking about. Governed by whom can be a matter of interrogating, “who am I accountable to?” In that sense, I am influenced by my neighbors, but they don’t hold power over me the same way our standard government does. It’s a question of what is relevant for addressing our needs.
Anna: I really like the desire, the really earnest and human desire, to want to be governed in these terms. That’s a really important question especially within many community organizing efforts where the approach relies on a certain level or order to translate into movement building. There’s a level of accountability that exceeds what we’re used to in our day-to-day, I’ve experienced the way expectations around accountability can guide one to work with a little more precision. You’re ungovernable to the everyday order, but I think we’re also finding both the desire and seeking out the possibility of being beholden to one another as a mode of governance.
Hayk: Liberatory work is not an inconvenient detour from our otherwise “everyday lives.” It’s a complete and radical shift.
Anna: What I always want to say is how much my soul is helped when I am reminded of how important art and our artistic community is. Why do powerful people invest in art? I think many of us learned how much so-called israel and the united states were tied to leveraging art and culture, from censorship to funding and beyond. Their investment is not driven by just money-value, but because culture is integral to power-building.
Hayk: Because art gets used every day by power to exploit and oppress and do all kinds of horrible things, you know? Art, artists, artists as a group, artists as individuals, art spaces, there is a reason that art washing is a part of how gentrification operates. I think we can either be more clear in defining how we are engaging with art and cultural work independently and with comrades, or be governed by the definition of the art of the mainstream, which is anything but what I wanna be defined by.
For the full article, please pick up a handmade risograph-printed and newsprint pamphlet from ungovernable study at Printed Matter’s NY Art Book Fair or order one online with Justseeds Artists’ Cooperative this October. All proceeds go toward the Los Angeles Koreatown Tenants Union brick-and-mortar community space. Please join us in making a direct donation at this link.
This excerpted conversation was published in September 2026. It corresponds with a workshop, hosted by Anna Cho-Son and Hayk Makhmuryan, at the L.A. Koreatown Tenants Union on September 20th, from 6pm – 8pm.
To read the full conversation in-print, please come by the workshop, visit ungovernable study at booth A36 at Printed Matter’s NY Art Book Fair, or get a copy online with Justseeds Artists’ Cooperative this November.
All proceeds go toward the Los Angeles Koreatown Tenants Union brick-and-mortar community space. Please join us in making a direct donation at this link.
About the co-authors
Հայկ / Hayk Makhmuryan (he/him) is an Armenian artist, arts worker and translator / interpreter. He coordinates two projects–Community Arts Depot and doodles without borders–that are rooted in Black LA’s Skid Row neighborhood, where he has worked since 2008. Regionally, Hayk contributes to collective tenant power building, to language justice, and to working-class and oppressed peoples' led liberation bound work. He was born and grew up in Yerevan, Armenia.
Anna Cho-Son is an artist and writer based in LA. Her work works to chart physical, psychological, and metaphysical immanence arising from shared global histories and fates. She is an assistant editor for ungovernable study. She holds a B.A. in Fine Arts and minor in Food Studies from the University of California, Los Angeles (2021) and is a graduate of the Alternative Food and Art M.A. program by The Gramounce.
Footnotes
[1] Publishers Working Group emerged as a program of ungovernable, an exhibition by kimi malka hanauer at Printed Matter’s bookstore project space in New York, where ungovernable study facilitated a humble xerox-operated publication studio and reading room. Through iterations on this approach, ungovernable study aims to redirect institutional resources reserved for art and culture toward building collective capacity for autonomous modes of gathering and organizing that evade institutional control: link.
[2] In the shared editorial process, Hayk Makhmuryan described this segment of his conversation with Anna Cho-Son as “becoming neighborly with (un)governance.”
[3] In her article, Becoming Ungovernable: A Reassessment, scholar Nikia Shepard writes, “Anarchists in the United States foisted banners with the term ungovernable, possibly for the first time, in 2000 at protests against the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles. In the context of the broad anti-authoritarian “movement of movements” that analyzed capitalism and state control within a global context, the imperative to become ungovernable in the United States connected to a broader project of destabilizing the institutions of extraction and impoverishment that transferred wealth from periphery to core nations while consolidating it in elites.” Critique & Praxis: What Is To Be Done? 13/13, Columbia Center for Contemporary Critical Thought, October 29, 2018: link.
[4] For more context on the wave of actions against artwashing in Boyle Heights referenced in the conversation, see: “A Boyle Heights Alliance Challenges Charles Gaines and Other Artists for Ignoring Local Voices, an open letter sent to Hyperallergic by Boyle Heights Alliance Against Artwashing and Displacement (B.H.A.A.A.D.), Hyperallergic, 2017: link.
[5] General Jeff, a proud Skid Row resident and loved community organizer, passed away in 2021. Readers are encouraged to get to know him in his own words, by listening to his 2014 interview in the Walk the Talk archive, a project stewarded by the Los Angeles Poverty Department that archives a wide-ranging repository of Skid Row histories. See: Los Angeles Poverty Department, Walk the Talk, 2014, General Jeff: link.
[6] “Revolutionary movements do not spread by contamination but by resonance. Something that is constituted here resonates with the shock wave emitted by something constituted over there.… An insurrection is not like a plague or a forest fire — a linear process which spreads from place to place after an initial spark. It rather takes the shape of a music, whose focal points, though dispersed in time and space, succeed in imposing the rhythms of their own vibrations, always taking on more density.” The Invisible Committee, The Coming Insurrection (Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), 2009).