Seeds and a dish with chicken and berries on a decorative table

David Horvitz performs at Soup & Tart: Los Angeles, June 8, 2023.

Active Cultures is a public arts organization in Los Angeles exploring the confluence of food and art through public projects, programs, and publishing.

Upcoming Projects

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ECOTONES

A program series with Life on Earth

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Enzo Camacho & Ami Lien: Langit Lupa (Heaven and Earth)

An ongoing artist residency

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Paige Emery: The Banana Leaf is a Container Technology

A Kamayan Feast

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FEATURED PROJECT

Let’s Become Fungal in David Horvitz’s 7th Avenue Garden

For her first visit to Los Angeles, Yasmine Ostendorf-Rodríguez joined Active Cultures, David Horvitz, shanhuan manton, and many friends, collaborators, and the public for a regenerative community barbeque in David’s 7th Avenue Garden. Together we cooked mushrooms in the ground oven, ate tacos, fed the garden with food scraps, and talked fungi and crows.

We’re looking for a Project Manager to join the

We’re looking for a Project Manager to join the team in support of Ami Lien and Enzo Camacho’s Langit Lupa—the artist duo’s first major project in Los Angeles and California—with a focus on their work with Filipinx migrant and activist grassroots groups in our city.

Working closely with AC and the lead artists, the Project Manager will be responsible for supporting the project with a focus on community engagement, artist support, and facilitating our work with local partners.

Full job description and link to apply in our bio!⁠

Image: Enzo Camacho and Ami Lien, Langit Lupa (Heaven and Earth), 2023. Film still. Courtesy of the artists.

Announcing ECOTONES Presented alongside the exhibi

Announcing ECOTONES
Presented alongside the exhibition Life on Earth: Art and Ecofeminism at The Brick

This fall we are thrilled to partner with @thebrick_la to present a collaboratively organized series: four public programs will be led by an artist or artist-collective to explore local agriculture, foraging, food and herbalism as ritual, and biodiversity.

September | ritual paintings and a kamayan feast with Paige Emery
October | film screening and foraged food with Meech Boakye
November | SPROUTIME kids workshop with Leslie Labowitz-Starus
December | gathering with Mexico-based colectivo amasijo

Taking place in conjunction with the Getty Foundation’s ambitious initiative PST ART: Art & Science Collide, ECOTONES will be part of a region-spanning cultural moment, reaching vast audiences interested in the intersection of art, food, feminism, and sustainability. For more info visit the-brick.org and active-cultures.org

@thebrick_la @cat.taft.cat @paigeemery_ @arlingtonpasadena @ghostyboi @leslieartlab @colectivo_amasijo @pstinla

Active Cultures’ programs this year are made possible through the generous support of its Board of Directors; the Gatherers Annual Fund; the Los Angeles Visual Arts (LAVA) Coalition; the Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture as part of Creative Recovery LA, an initiative funded by the American Rescue Plan; the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Department of Arts and Culture; and the California Arts Council.

Images courtesy of Paige Emery, Meech Boakye, Leslie Labowitz Starus, and colectivo amasijo

Our summer Secret Supper was awash in color as dus

Our summer Secret Supper was awash in color as dusk fell over the Burns House as @personal_pan_pizza_ convened us around friends and collaborators last week. @daniel.aged played an improvised score on the Baroque pipe organ, designed by Jürgen Ahrend, and @__san_cha__ gathered us around the chamber for her haunting rancheras.

We are so grateful to the Charles Moore Foundation and director Kevin Keim for their hospitality. Their vision to open the house to musicians and creatives to rest, to work, to experiment, is a gift.

AC hosts the secret suppers to share our gratitude for our closest supporters; to uplift the practice of artists in our city; and to feed our year-round public art programming. we would love you to join us for the upcoming season and support our work—more info in the link above.

Happy summer, friends!

The 2024 Secret Suppers are generously sponsored by William Grant & Sons. Thanks to their enduring support, the entirety of our members’ annual giving goes to supporting Active Cultures artists and public programs. @silentpoolgin @williamgrantusa

Photos by @jessicahowes_
@activeculturesla @placenotes @personal_pan_pizza_ @daniel.aged @__san_cha__

Announcing a Solstice Story Residency with Paige E

Announcing a Solstice Story Residency with Paige Emery! Follow us here June 17–22.

Soon we will share more about Paige's new project coming this fall, in partnership with @thebrick_la at @arlingtonpasadena 🌿

@paigeemery_'s practice with plants engages ritual as a communal language with the Earth. She has been crafting plant remedies that work with ancestral knowledge to aid in transforming between worlds, and sculptural paintings made just the same, with plants of folk medicine and ceremonial food traditional to her Filipino ancestry. As she shares her practice of tuning in with Earthly cycles, her residency revolves around the Summer Solstice.

Photo by @pomonadoobie for @contemporaryartreview.la. Courtesy of the artist.

Welcome Camille Levy, Active Culture’s Getty Mar

Welcome Camille Levy, Active Culture’s Getty Marrow Curatorial Intern!

Camille (she/her) is an artist, born and raised in Los Angeles, and currently studying at the Cooper Union School for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York City. As an incoming senior majoring in fine art, Camille is currently exploring how her interests in play, baking, light, performance, and sound can foster community and common ground. Her previous experience includes assistant to Charlie James Gallery and Noon Projects, as well as founding and developing the inaugural Cooper Radio Collective (CRC).

She is excited to learn, engage and contribute towards a range of projects and research this summer alongside the AC Team! We are so thrilled to spend the summer together.

@camillesarahlevy

#gettymarrowundergraduateinternship

We spent the past week with visiting curator Yasmi

We spent the past week with visiting curator Yasmine Ostendorf-Rodríguez as the beginning of our work together to germinate a mycelial network between different ecological art practices in Los Angeles and beyond. It was wonderful to see some of you across the city for many gatherings—hosted by us and our friends—for what became a splendid rhizome of conversations sprouted by her visit.

Our programs began with artist David Horvitz, who hosted us all in conversation, digging, gardening, cooking, reading, and an impromptu performance in his 7th Avenue Garden. We wanted to thank our many friends for making this time so generative:

Exploring the Mycoverse and community
Arlington Gardens
The Natural Resources Defense Council and NeueHouse
Metabolic Studio
Terremoto
David Horvitz
Shanhuan Manton
Artbook at Hauser & Wirth LA
Māhealani Farms
Oscar Ochoa, El Machete
Fatima Juarez and Conrado Rivera, Komal

Long invested in fungi and mycelium as a material––the ever-branching connecting threads of the fungal world––Ostendorf-Rodríguez invests in the potential in these networks to function as a potent metaphor for potential new systems, ways of thinking and behaviors. Inspired by the worlds of art and mycology, her work emphasizes multispecies collaboration, symbiosis, alliances, non-monetary resource exchange, decentralization, bottom-up methods and mutual dependency—all in line with the behavior of the mycelium.

We will share more of our work with Yasmine this year, and in the meantime we encourage you to find her book, Let’s Become Fungal! Mycelium Teachings and the Arts at Artbook and Reparations Club here in LA.

Thank you!

AC x

@myceliumasmethodology @mycoverse_ @arlingtonpasadena @lauramfried @nrdc_org @neuehouse @metabolicstudio @davidhorvitz @terremoto_landscape @hpymntn @artbookhwla @mahealanifarms @elmachete1924 @komal.molino @pinchefatima_ @holboxlosangeles @reparations.club

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