Active Cultures

Active Cultures is a nonprofit cultural organization that explores the convergence of food and art in

05/05/2026

The third and final film in our Seeds series is Agnès Varda’s The Gleaners and I (2000), selected by artist Clarissa Tossin. The screening will be followed by a conversation with Clarissa on seeds toward the end of their cycle, touching on food waste, and what industrial agriculture considers unfit for display.

Thursday, May 28, 2026
7 PM (Doors 6:30 PM)
at

Please note: seating is limited! Doors open thirty minutes prior to the listed showtime. Your RSVP does not guarantee you a seat. Seating is first-come, first-served.

🌱 RSVP at the link in bio!

This series is made possible in part by a grant from the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs.

04/14/2026

Active Cultures and KCRW present Compost After Writing — a reflective writing program by compost artist and writer Cass Marketos ( )

🪱 LA Times Festival of Books, USC, April 18–19, 2026.
🪱 at KCRW Booth #031 (Cardinal Zone).

Visitors are invited to pause, sit, and respond to a set of reflective writing prompts Cass has created, exploring ideas of transformation, memory, and what we leave behind. You’ll write on seed paper that you can take home to plant or compost.

🪱 On Sunday, April 19 at 2 PM Cass will join us for a short reading and to lead the writing activity. Copies of her book will be available at the booth!

Cass’s new book, Compost After Reading, is a practical manifesto for purposeful decomposition. It’s also compostable.

Come say hi!

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Slide 1: Courtesy of Cass Marketos
Slides 3 and 4: Summer Solstice, 2025, at the Audubon Center at Debs Park. Photos by John Jay (.img )

04/01/2026

Book Club returns this weekend!

Join us on Saturday, April 4 for our fourth session, where we’ll be discussing ‘Intimate Eating: Racialized Spaces and Radical Futures’ by Anita Mannur.

📚 Sign up via the link in bio to receive full details ahead of each session.

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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.

03/11/2026

Join the Active Cultures Book Club for our fourth session, where we’ll be discussing Intimate Eating: Racialized Spaces and Radical Futures by Anita Mannur.

Saturday, April 4
at The Garden at Bakers Bench
1027 Alpine St., Los Angeles

In Intimate Eating, Mannur examines how cooking and eating shape intimacy, belonging, and political life. Drawing on critical ethnic studies and q***r theory, she introduces the concept of “intimate eating publics,” spaces where marginalized subjects gather through food, blurring the lines between public and private life. Moving across film, literature, television, and performance art, she traces how racialized South Asian and Arab bodies become visible within culinary cultures, and how shared acts of cooking and eating produce new forms of kinship and community. The book rethinks food as a site where race, migration, gender, and social connection are negotiated, and where alternative futures of collective life can emerge.

The Book Club is free and open to all.

Sign up at the link in bio to receive our Book Club communications, which include full location details prior to each session.

03/05/2026

We are hiring for a Getty Marrow Curatorial Intern to support our artistic program in 2026! ⁠Full job description and link to apply in our bio.

The Getty Marrow Curatorial Internship is a ten-week, full time position beginning in June 2026. The intern will assist in the research, planning, and implementation of AC’s programs —across our performances, events, and public art initiatives—while gaining curatorial experience and close work with our team, artists, and cultural partners in Los Angeles and beyond.
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We’re looking forward to hearing from you!

Image:
Cocina CoLaboratorio: Migratory Table, February 6, 2026. Presented by Active Cultures and LagoAlgo. Photo by Rubèn Garay.

02/24/2026

Early this month, Cocina CoLaboratorio’s ‘Migratory Table’ gathered participants in Mexico City around a mobile, participatory kitchen moving between Santo Domingo Tomaltepec (Oaxaca), Mexico City, and Los Angeles.

The gathering grew out of conversations with cooks and families in Oaxaca about food that travels: ingredients sent across borders, techniques adapted to new kitchens, and the ways memory and territory persists through taste. In Mexico City, participants shared their own experiences of movement, loss, and adaptation. From these conversations we reflected on the silent networks that sustain and care for the local biodiversity.

Each workshop contributes to a collectively authored cookbook, printed on site and shaped by the geographies, relationships, and foodways present in the room.

Deep gratitude and thanks to Cocina CoLaboratorio, to LagoAlgo for hosting, and to everyone who joined and contributed their knowledge.

Migratory Table will travel to Los Angeles in September 2026.

Slides 1-6: Photos by Rubén Garay ( )
Slides 7-11: Photos by Markus Martínez Burman (.burman )

02/19/2026

Last night we gathered for a screening of Tending the Wild (2016), selected by Andrea Jimenez of Herb Club LA.

In conversation with Joel Garcia of Meztli Projects, we reflected on tending land, tending community, and what’s shifted in the decade since the film was made. A special thanks to Joel and Andrea for bringing packets of California poppy seeds, white sage, as well as nettle salt popcorn for the audience to enjoy and take home.

This screening was part of Seeds — a three-part cinematic meditation on new beginnings, hidden power, and pivotal transformation at Now Instant.

Thank you to everyone who joined. We hope to see you at the next (and final screening of Seeds) in May!

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This series is made possible in part by a grant from the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs.

02/16/2026

We’ll see you this Wednesday for a screening of Tending the Wild at Now Instant!

We’ll be joined by Andrea Jimenez of Herb Club LA and Joel Garcia of Meztli Projects for conversation following the screening. Together, they will discuss the film’s themes in relation to their work with people and plants in the local community, as well as reflections on the past ten years since the film was made.

Please note: seating is limited! Doors open at 6:30pm, and the screening starts at 7pm. Your RSVP does not guarantee you a seat. Seating is first-come, first-served.

02/05/2026

Book Club returns next week!

Join us on Saturday, February 14 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.

You don’t have to finish the book to take part — our Book Club newsletter shares articles, podcasts, and prompts around the themes of the book so everyone can join the conversation.

📚 Sign up via the link in bio for full details ahead of each session.

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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.

01/29/2026

AC will be observing the national shutdown tomorrow, January 30, in response to the ongoing state violence toward immigrants, undocumented people, and all who stand in solidarity with them in Minneapolis, our home in LA, and across the country.

See our link in bio for more information, and to find ways to join an action in your city.

In solidarity,
Active Cultures Team

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Image: The Bootleg Orchestra performs at Dapat Bawiin (We Shall Reclaim), a community celebration. Part of Enzo Camacho and Ami Lien: Langit Lupa (Heaven and Earth), November 9, 2024. Photo by Jessica Howes.

01/28/2026

Continuing Seeds, our three-part cinematic meditation on new beginnings, hidden power, and transformation with .

For the second film in the series, Tending the Wild (Dir. Christine Yuan, 2016), selected by Andrea Jimenez of , we’ll gather for a screening followed by a conversation with Andrea and Joel Garcia of . Together, they’ll reflect on the film’s themes through their ongoing work with people and plants in local communities, and on how the film resonates nearly a decade after it was made.

Co-produced by PBS SoCal ( )and the Autry Museum ( ), Tending the Wild centers Indigenous environmental knowledge across California, illuminating how land has been actively shaped and tended for millennia—and what these practices offer us now.

Please note: seating is limited! Doors open thirty minutes prior to the listed showtime. Your RSVP does not guarantee you a seat. Seating is first-come, first-served.

🌱 RSVP at the link in bio!

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Los Angeles, CA

Website

http://www.active-cultures.org/

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