Join us this Saturday, June 27th, from 2-4pm, at White Point Nature Preserve for a very special site-specific performance and public presentation of new collectively-developed work created through my Deep Attunement workshop series this Spring. The event will include a participatory deep listening walk through a reclaimed coastal wilderness landscape leading to an empty bunker overlooking a stretch of Pacific Ocean where the bird rescue releases recovered birds back to the wild. Inside the bunker, we will share time-based work created by workshop participants through our shared experiences of attuning deeply with this region's vividly post-natural ecosystem.

This time-based presentation will include new site-responsive video, sound, sculpture, and improvisational movement, music, and light from:

Marco Schindelman - presenting original composition "Far'Fallen" derived from local field recordings, caterpillar microscopy, and fluttering guzheng, with improvisational voice

Besty Lohrer Hall - performing improvisational, site-specific movement and light

Henry Krusoe - performing live collage and site-responsive video projection

Ashton Phillips - performing experimental violin and haptic transducer composition with field recordings of hummingbird moth and canyon wren

Yadira Dockstader - presenting original video of runoff from Lineage fire entering watershed and performing glass vessels sealed with locally sampled contaminated water transformed into lenses through projected light

Where: 

White Point Nature Preserve 1600 W Paseo Del Mar, San Pedro, CA. Parking available beside Visitor Center with overflow street parking. (We will meet at White Point Nature Center Visitor Center and set out on our deep attunement walk from there. If you arrive after 2:15 or so, the park rangers should be able to direct you up to the bunker for the performances).

When: 2-4pm, Saturday, June 27th

Free RSVP: www.ashtonsphillips.com/deep-attunement

Access and Preparation Info:

The Nature Education Center is located immediately adjacent to the parking lot at 1600 W Paseo Del Mar. To reach the bunker, we will take the Vista Trail. The hike is a short, easy walk spanning about 0.5 miles with a gentle 150-foot elevation gain. The Trail has a firm surface and is wide enough for wheelchair users. Bathrooms will be available at the Visitor Center, but not at the bunker. 

Please prepare for the sun and the walk. Come with comfortable walking shoes, water, snacks, hats, sunscreen, and sunglasses. I will have a few floor cushions and stools to help folks get comfortable inside the bunker, but feel free to bring your own picnic blanket, meditation cushion, camping pad, or portable chair. I will also have blue butterfly tea in the bunker and water will be available at the visitor center.

Acknowledgments: 

This presentation and workshop series has been made possible by Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs NEAR Grant program, The International Bird Rescue, and White Point Nature Preserve. With gratitude to these partners for all of their support.

Join us for our final site visit at White Point Nature Preserve (1600 W. Paseo del Mar, San Pedro, CA 90731) in anticipation of our final presentation and performance. We will connect with White Point naturalists and learn more about their work restoring this habitat and caring for the birds, butterflies, and endemic plants that are returning to this site of rewilding. We will also run through our collective site-responsive performance offerings with plenty of time for reflection and further development.

Join us at Point Fermin Park (807 W Paseo Del Mar, San Pedro, CA 90731) for wearable seed ball making, using the seeds of local wildflowers and pollution-remediating plants, sycamore/willow propagation demonstration, and foraged wildflower crafting with guest artist Mathilda Lazelle Moore 🌼

This week, I had three vivid conversations in three different places that all turned my attention toward the Palos Verdes Blue Butterfly. On Sunday, I spoke with artist curator Katie Murphy and artist Vanessa Mayoraz about our upcoming show at Persons Unknown Gallery (opening June 6th). Katie evoked the late poet Andrea Gibson's heartbreaking and beautiful poetry collection - The Lord of the Butterflies - as a ground for thinking and feeling with our work. On Saturday, I met anthropologist and filmmaker Devlin Gandly at MOCA Geffen's Plant Sale through co-tablist Emma Kemp.  He responded to my story about working with the ecosystem in and around Angels Gate Cultural Center with his own story about re-introducing the endangered Palos Verdes Blue Butterfly into a abandoned bunkers in the nearby White Point Nature Preserve. On Monday, I ran into artist and deep attunement collaborator Marco Schindelman, who shared his long-term dream of creating an opera within the White Point Nature Preserve inspired by the Palos Verdes Blue Butterfly and this incredibly relevant and early "cine-poetry" film The Life of Butterflies (1911). 

So for this week, we will gather and walk to the bunkers where Devlin released Palos Verdes Blue Butteflies. I will read a poem from Andrea Gibson's The Lord of the Butterflies inside the bunkers. And, then, I will screen The Life of Butterflies. We will close the session by performing the third score from Pauline Oliveros' environmental dialogue suite together.

We will meet at 1pm, Friday May 22nd at 1478 W Paseo Del Mar, San Pedro, CA 90731 (at White Point trailhead: https://maps.app.goo.gl/rrsBzBBCsq7zSWTZ6) for those traveling by foot. 

Access information: the bunker we are heading to is wheelchair accessible through via the Vista Trail with parking immediately in front of the Nature Center. We will travel about 0.5 miles on this path from the visitor center up to the bunker.

For this week's workshop, we will meet between 10 and 1pm at White Point Beach in San Pedro, CA: 1799 W Paseo Del Mar, San Pedro, CA 90732, USA. Feel free to come for all or part of this time. 

White Point Beach is one of the sites where the Bird Rescue releases recovered birds. It is also home to large stretch of living tide pools with exposed geological strata, landslide mud, and rich rock and mineral diversity. White Point also has a visible/palpable history of ecological, colonial, extractive, and military disturbance, including the annihilation of abalone populations by colonial settlers over a 8 year period in the early 1900s and the eradication and disappearance of first indigenous and then Japanese culture from this site in the 1800s and 1940s. More on the park, including a somewhat sanitized history of the place here:  https://beaches.lacounty.gov/white-point-royal-palms-beach/

There is paid parking at the water level. I will set up near the tide pools on the southern end of the park. (You could also park for free at the top of the cliff and walk down - then turn left when you reach the water.) I will be at the end of the parking lot beside the tide pools.

We will find some time near the beginning to listen deeply to this place and resonate its frequencies with each other, performing Pauline Oliveros' Environmental Dialogue Then, if we have enough folks, we will expose the cyanotyped textile with our bodies and gathered materials from the site and the Bird Rescue. 

We will use the clay to make site-specific bowls that can hold water for the upcoming performance.

For this session, we will open up our kelp-dyed fabrics and coating them in cyanotype chemistry. Then, we’ll be back at Cabrillo Beach, 3800 Stephen M White Dr, San Pedro, CA 90731 with the plan to expose at least some of these cyanotype-on-kelp-dyed textiles and hang out with friends and family (including you, if you are free). I'll bring the cyanotyped textiles in a light-safe bag and either my seafood pot to cook for everyone, including all the mothers of all kinds who can join us. Do RSVP (just reply to this email is fine) and let me know if you can be there and if you have any dietary restrictions. I will also steep a little bit of wild kelp for us to eat along with the rest of the food. Feel free to bring kids and/or whatever you need to get into the water and attune with the sea itself.

For those who couldn’t make our first kelp-dying workshop, join us this Saturday for a second round of site-specific dying and printmaking.

(1) Location: We will meet at 11am at Cabrillo Beach Bathhouse, 3800 Stephen M White Dr, San Pedro, CA 90731. (See attached map of Cabrillo Beach, showing bath house and adjacent parking.) 

(2) Parking: Parking is metered and costs $1 per hour. There is usually an attendant at the entrance who will take your card, ask you how many hours you are staying, and run it for you. You can park right in front of the bathhouse, or if those spots are full, there will be plenty in front of the aquarium, a short distance away.) 

(3) Weather: We will be meeting outside beside the Pacific Ocean. The weather should be incredibly beautiful, but do come prepared for the elements. I recommend a sun hat, sun glasses, sunscreen, water, and comfortable walking shoes. There are picnic tables where we can sit, but also feel free to bring a blanket or towel for seating. 

(4) Agenda: Kelp dying, botanical printmaking, and site-specific cyanotyping

We will begin our session gathering site-specific materials (seaweed, rust, shells, rope, palm fronds, leaves, rocks, etc), which we will sound together in a short material-driven improvisation. Then, we will bind these materials up in provided textiles and dropping them into the dye pot. After that, we will use additional gathered materials and participant-provided objects and bodies to expose imagery over the kelp dyed textile with ocean-developed cyanotype.

(1) Location: We will meet at 2pm Cabrillo Beach Bathhouse, 3800 Stephen M White Dr, San Pedro, CA 90731. (See attached map of Cabrillo Beach, showing bath house and adjacent parking.) If you arrive after 2:10, look for us on the beach just to the right of the bathhouse. Or, feel free to call or text me to connect: 215.490.3064. 

(2) Parking: Parking is metered and costs $1 per hour. There is usually an attendant at the entrance who will take your card, ask you how many hours you are staying, and run it for you. You can park right in front of the bathhouse, or if those spots are full, there will be plenty in front of the aquarium, a short distance away.) 

(3) Weather: We will be meeting outside beside the Pacific Ocean. The weather should be incredibly beautiful tomorrow (sunny with a high of 67 degrees), but do come prepared for the elements. I recommend a sun hat, sun glasses, sunscreen, water, and comfortable walking shoes. There are picnic tables where we can sit, but also feel free to bring a blanket or towel for seating. 

(4) Agenda: Kelp dying/printing, environmental dialogue scores, and movement 

When you arrive, the kelp dye pot should already be cooking (feel free to come out a little early, if you'd like to participate in gathering the kelp for the pot. I'm planning to get there around 1pm.)

We will begin our 2pm session with a sequence of Pauline Oliveros' environmental dialogue scores. (See below score agenda).

Then, we will revisit our movement score in progress from last week and artist Claudia Henandez Romero will share an ecologically-attuned afro-cuban dance practice with us. (Thank you, Claudia!)

We will close out our session gathering site-specific materials (seaweed, rust, shells, rope, palm fronds, leaves, rocks, etc), which we will sound together in a short material-driven improvisation. Then, we will bind these materials up in provided textiles and dropping them into the dye pot. (I'm bringing a propane-fueled burner, some string, a big dyepot, and (10) 5 x 6', pre-mordanted cotton textiles for us to use on site). We will have the option to apply cyanotype as an additional layer over these kelp-dyed textiles next week. 

Attuning with sick and injured marine birds - Direct Observation of emaciated pelicans and orphaned ducklings, followed by movement workshop and experimental material score with cyanotype as graphic scores and deep listening walk through Fort MacArthur

Come learn about humanity’s impact on marine life, including the Bird Rescue’s patients. Review x-rays showing plastic entanglement, ingested fishing hooks, imbedded bbs. Then, create your own light-exposed cyanotype images, using similar materials gathered from Cabrillo Beach and the Bird Rescue.

Meets at International Bird Rescue, Classroom 2.

Come learn about the relationship between native plants, healthy soil, and healthy marine birds. Then, mix up your own plant-able seed bomb sculptures using local clay, soil, sand, beneficial fungi, kelp, and wildflower seeds. Help improve watershed health and increase awareness about the impact of coastal soil management on marine ecosystems with your living sculptures. All materials and tools will be provided, including a variety of press molds and stamps to help participants shape and mark their plant-able sculptures.