PST ART Weekend: Downtown LA @ Emergence: ARt from life

Saturday, Dec. 7
12-4pm

Japanese American Cultural & Community Center

Media changing room (lab), Emergence: Art from Life, 2024. Image credit: Carson Davis Brown

The Lab behind the Artworks

Celebrate PST ART Weekend: DTLA with Emergence: Art From Life at the Japanese American Cultural & Community Center! Emergence is singular among PST ART exhibitions for its presentation of living biological artworks and projects created in collaboration with a global cohort of synthetic biologists and medical researchers. Visitors will encounter human bones grown from synthetic mother-of-pearl; objects dyed with bioengineered indigo pigment; and living, microscopic human tear glands that cry. 

For PST ART Weekend, join Fathomers for a behind-the-scenes look at the making of Emergence. Take a special tour with curator Stacy Switzer of the biology lab built expressly for the exhibition. Learn about the daily choreographies of maintenance required to sustain the microorganism life behind the artworks from the technicians extending these acts of care. Close out the day with a musical hour curated by dublab in response to the provocations of Emergence as you walk through the galleries. 

For accessibility needs and accommodations, please contact us at aqz@fathomers.org. Advance notice of 10 business days is requested. Our small team will make every reasonable effort to accommodate requests received after that time.

ABOUT EMERGENCE

The expansive field of synthetic biology, or SynBio, has the power to transform our lives. As we redesign organisms to new ends and construct novel life forms, we confront deep questions about homo sapiens— the “wise human”— and our capacities for creation, destruction, recklessness, renewal, and hope. What forms of life are we choosing to cultivate? What will we nurture, and what might we leave behind? Who has agency in this moment of making, learning, and living with? Emergence invites the public to explore these questions together while being inspired by iconic bio artworks, lab-based discoveries and design solutions, and the provocations of a range of wildly creative thinkers. Emergence probes changing definitions of what is natural, synthetic, conscious, and essential to existence.

Emergence is on exhibition at the Japanese American Cultural & Community Center and is among more than 70 exhibitions and programs to be presented as part of PST ART. Having returned in September 2024 with its latest edition, PST ART: Art & Science Collide, this landmark regional event explores the intersections of art and science, both past and present. PST ART is presented by Getty.

Thank you PST ART; JACCC; The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts; and The Japan Foundation, Los Angeles for your support of Emergence.

FAQ

Is there parking or public transportation? Paid parking is available nearby at Joe's Auto Parks/Sho Tokyo for $15 (rates may vary). Joe’s Auto Parks/Sho Tokyo Garage: 350 E. 2nd Street, L.A. 90012. Additionally, the Japanese American Cultural & Community Center is a 6 min. walk from the Little Tokyo / Arts District Metro Rail station.

Is this event ADA accessible? For accessibility needs and accommodations, please contact us at aqz@fathomers.org. Advance notice of 10 business days is requested. Our small team will make every reasonable effort to accommodate requests received after that time.