Upcoming

Book Club: Session 3

Event Details

DATE: February 14, 2026 TIME: 11am - 12pm

LOCATION: Audubon Center at Debs Park

Registration

TICKET PRICE: Free

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The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins (2015) by Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing.

Join the Active Cultures Book Club for our third session, where we’ll be discussing The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins (2015) by Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing.

In The Mushroom at the End of the World, Anna Tsing uses the matsutake mushroom—both a prized delicacy and a resilient weed—to explore what survives amid environmental and economic ruin. Tracing matsutake across disturbed forests and global commodity chains, from Japanese gourmet markets to Hmong foragers, industrial forests, and Finnish nature guides, Tsing connects ecology, capitalism, labor, and multispecies life. Through these worlds, the book examines how collaboration, precarity, and coexistence emerge within landscapes shaped by humans. 

The Book Club is free and open to all. Sign up below to receive our Book Club communications, which include full location details prior to each session.

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About the Book Club

The Active Cultures Book Club invites our community to engage with texts that delve into the interconnectedness of art, food, and ecologies through collective reading and conversation. The series explores the aesthetics of food, culinary resilience and kinship, alternative foodways, land rights and stewardship, and the intersection of agriculture and technology. 

Credits

Active Cultures is sustained through the generous support of the Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture; the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs; the Getty Foundation; the Jerry & Terri Kohl Family Foundation; the Maurice Marciano Family Foundation; the Offield Family Foundation; Teiger Foundation; James Cohan Gallery; Who Wants To Be A Millionaire/ABC; William Grant & Sons; Active Cultures’ Board of Directors; the Members Circle Annual Fund; Green Art Lab Alliance (GALA); and the Los Angeles Visual Arts (LAVA) Coalition.