Metabolic Studio

05/22/2026

05/21/2026

On this date sixteen years ago, Metabolic Studio opened the IOU Garden on Main Street in Lone Pine, California.

The “IOU” emerged from a simple but unresolved premise: Los Angeles owes Owens Valley.

What began as a garden quickly expanded into a larger public inquiry around extraction, reciprocity, water, soil, food production, transmission, and collective memory in Payahuunadü / Owens Valley.

That same weekend, the project Pipeline unfolded across the silos near Owens Lake with workshops, sound recordings, handmade film experiments, and performances directed by Walter Asmus, Samuel Beckett’s longtime collaborator from Berlin. Residents of Owens Valley and Los Angeles formed the Waiting for Godot Community Chorus together on the dry lakebed.

Many of the ideas that continue through Bending the River, Moving Mountains, the Milpa, and the cyborg watershed of the Intermountain West were already germinating here.

05/14/2026

On May 1, under the full moon, we gathered in Tovaangar for a conversation with PEN America. Amy Cordalis Bowers, author of “The Water Remembers,” shared the Klamath River’s journey back to freedom, while Emma Robbins, Navajo water warrior and founder of The Chapter House, led the conversation with fluency and grace. As we prepare to cleanse the LA River with Bending the River, we acknowledge the Tongva land and its original caretakers. Restoring water is restoring life. How do you see the water remembering, in your world and in ours?

05/09/2026

Visit us tomorrow, Saturday, at in Pasadena.

will be at the table from 11 AM–1 PM discussing her zine Protocols of Repair.
will be there from 1–3 PM to share Teachings That Have Taken Root.
From 3–7 PM, Lauren Bon will be at the table discussing Artists Must Behave Like Rivers.

We’re excited to share Farmlab’s growing series of zines exploring ecological art, watershed repair, soil, infrastructure, collective learning, and the living systems beneath Los Angeles and the Intermountain West.

You can also pick up an apron or ceramic tile featuring our mission statement:
“Artists need to create on the same scale that society has the capacity to destroy.”
We have a guest curator, with us all day tomorrow to discuss her publications too!
We look forward to seeing you there.

05/08/2026

Farmlab Zines 01–10
Metabolic Studio / Printed Matter Art Book Fair
Table D9

We’re excited to share a new set of Farmlab zines produced especially for this year’s Printed Matter Art Book Fair.

Emerging from Metabolic Studio’s Farmlab, these publications move through ecological art, watershed repair, soil remediation, floodplains, compost, insects, Indigenous knowledge, clay, flowers, urban infrastructure, and the living systems that persist beneath the city.

One of us will be at the table throughout the fair and would love to talk with you about the work, the watershed, and the ongoing experiments, collaborations, and questions that shaped these publications.

Featuring:

• All The Pretty Little Bugs — Michel Bréard
• What the Soil Keeps — Bella Escobar
• Protocols of Repair — Maru García
• Touching The Past: Clay as a Medium of Connection — Alex Tanasi
• Teachings That Took Root — Milli Macen-Moore
• Unseen Un-Development: How Big Is Here? — Diego Zapata
• Compostmortem — Michel Bréard
• Compostpartum — Michel Bréard
• Artists Must Behave Like Rivers — Lauren Bon
• Speed Dating with Flowers on a Cloudy Day — Michel Bréard

To gather, form, and release.

Come visit us at Table D9.

04/28/2026

Crisis is no longer episodic.
It has become the ground we share.

Between 2016–2020, we began building a crisis archive—
from the streets to the studio,
from protest to print.

What emerged was not just documentation,
but a commons:
images, language, tools—held collectively.

These works by Red Rotkopf, alongside screens made in our open maker space, mark a shift:
from witnessing to making,
from reaction to infrastructure.

We’re continuing this work.

Join us Monday, May 4
5–8 PM
(link in bio)

04/19/2026

An archive launched by Prof. Rana Dajani to honor Palestinian scholars killed in Gaza and challenge the silence on "scholasticide."

04/16/2026

Earth Day at Metabolic Studio.

We’ll gather before the film for food, local vendors, and conversations that begin at the level of everyday economies.

Then a screening of Earth’s Greatest Enemy—a look at the environmental cost of war.

Followed by a public discussion.

Food, film, and organizing—held together in one place.

April 22
4:30–9pm
RSVP at link in bio

03/25/2026

what an honor to give a tour of bending the river to our recently graduated cohort from inclusive action. Thank you at home Vegeta and Nina Sarnelle for making the video.. Metabolic Studio is proud to collaborate with inclusive action by participating in the higher of vendor program. We think this particular cohort for last summer's studio project where together we made a refuge with food with plants with games and with each other.