Friends! Join us at the heroic Metabolic Studio this Earth Month for an evening of multi-disciplinary art convening around themes of eco-consciousness, air equity, and what we can do to confront histories of environmental racism in our communities.
We’ll begin with Ashton Phillip's Crucible (an interspecies (de)composition) as a sonic exploration of metamorphosis, plastic(ity), and interspecies (de)composition with live contributions from a colony of plastic-metabolising mealworm/beetles and the post-plastic ecosystem they make possible.
Following, Nina Sarnelle's Breath Work (a film screening) is a 40-min experimental opera that explores breath as resistance. Part documentary, part performative ritual, it was created by a group of 13 local community members aged 11-65 in Long Beach, CA. This area is home to massive oil production as well as one of the largest ports in the world, where 25% of imported goods enter the US by sea. In the film, shipping infrastructure, railyards, freeways and oil refineries provide a striking backdrop for scenes of solidarity and grief, weaving together personal stories of respiratory disease and environmental racism with collective acts of defiance.
A Quiet Scream is a short program of readings and performance organized by the Scream Team with invited guests, including a visual score by Cat Mahatta, texts by K. Bradford, Ana Iwataki, Kourtney Jackson Smith, and Laura Steenberge.
This gathering is free and ADA accessible.
Park & enter on Baker Street.
See you here.
🍃
This evening is curated by Nina Sarnelle. Breath Work is created in collaboration with Long Beach Forward, with support from the California Arts Council, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Anonymous Was a Woman Environmental Art Fund.
Nina Sarnelle (they/them) is an artist who makes research projects, participatory performances, music composition, video, and many experiments in pedagogy and collectivity. They facilitate improvisational somatic & vocal workshops, often exploring conditions of neocolonialism, environmental injustice and labor exploitation in strange and intimate ways.
They’ve received major awards from the California Arts Council, the Heinz Endowments and Pittsburgh Foundation, the Anonymous Was a Woman Environmental Art Grant, and a fellowship at Metabolic Studio.
Jheanelle Brown is a film curator/programmer, educator, and arts administrator based in Los Angeles whose curatorial practice creates frameworks to explore the boundlessness of Black life in experimental and non-fiction film and video.
Ashton Phillips is a socially and ecologically-engaged artist and writer focused on the plasticity of bodies, the transness of matter, and the poetics of impurity, mutual contamination, and mass extinction/survival. He grew up in “Chemical Valley” West Virginia, sharing water, ground, and sky with legions of forever chemicals.
Today, he cares for a colony of polystyrene-metabolizing mealworm/beetles and a plastic-fertilized garden as trans ecological praxis. His most recent work experiments with modes of collective listening and interspecies voice as methods for resisting erasure, intimidation, and isolation in dystopian times. Ashton’s multi-sensory installation and performances have been shown across the US and abroad, including recent exhibitions at MaryTwo Gallery, Switzerland; Human Resources, LA; the Audobon Center at Debs Park; 2220 Art + Archives, LA; Tiger Strikes Asteroid, LA; and Ely Center for Contemporary Arts, CT.
His creative and critical writing have been published by Trans Studies Quarterly; Antennae - The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture; and Contemporary Art Review Los Angeles.
Website • Instagram
Scream Team is a collective research project focused on the queer/trans scream initiated by Emji Saint Spero. The team includes jeremy kennedy, Serena Kolodin, Cat Mahatta, Joseph Mosconi, Pau S. Pescador, Ashton Phillips, Nina Sarnelle & Kourtney Jackson Smith. Their first collective scream took place at 2220 Arts + Archives, with more events forthcoming.
Image caption: Scream Score I by Cat Mahatta.
Metabolic Studio is an interdisciplinary art and research hub based in Los Angeles, California. Directed by artist Lauren Bon, the studio operates with a mission to explore and address critical social and environmental issues through art interventions and innovative projects aimed at reparation.
“Artists Need to Create On the Same Scale that Society Has the Capacity to Destroy.” Sherrie Rabinowitz coined the phrase "We must create at the same scale that we can destroy", which connects deeply to the formation and goals of Metabolic Studio.
Their brilliant work often revolves around themes of water, land use, energy and seeking to reimagine and redefine the relationships between humans, non-humans, and living systems. Over the years they’ve bridged the gap between art, science, and activism, offering creative solutions and alternative perspectives on pressing social and environmental challenges.