Samizdat Sundays

As featured in the Los Angeles Times, join us for Samizdat Sundays, hands‑on textile workshops inspired by the spirit of creative resistance and DIY culture found in samizdat traditions. Each session offers a different project, connecting archival stories of subversion with contemporary making. Each session is free, open to all skill levels, and guided by artists who delight in subversion and play. Come for one or come for all, and together we’ll stitch, alter, repair, and imagine new forms of expression. November 15: What Is Above Is Below At the second-to-last regular season game at Dodgers Stadium this year, a wayward eared grebe flew into the game, landing on their belly in the center of the outfield. The grebe, it seemed, had mistaken the shiny green grass of the field for the aqueous plants on a placid lake, fooled by the day-for-night lights of the stadium, perhaps, as they made their migratory way to another part of the state. Fortunately, the poor fowl found their way out of the false pond and flew out of the stadium, presumably not much worse for their unfortunate belly flop. I thought of this when I was thinking of project ideas around the new “Competing Cosmologies” exhibition, which explores the intersection of art and science during the Cold War. This global competition has led to countless satellites being sent into outer space, our constellations cluttered with competing, unmanned space contraptions, some pointing down spying eyes, others sending down internet signals to bring access to the most remote regions of the earth. There are companies that want to send tens of thousands of satellite mirrors into space that would turn day to night anywhere (with precision, they claim) by reflecting the sun’s light onto the earth. How confused will we all be once the sky is filled with satellites and mirrors, when one is not wishing on a star but a satellite, and when there is no longer any “night” at all to hold the night sky? We truly can see that…