Mussel Beach starts
here
and is accessible 24/7 with your own phone and headset.
The extended performative programme took place in October-November 2019. You might still find some traces.
Mussel Beach navigates the past, present, and future of Muscle Beach by looking at mussels. Conceived by Cooking Sections for Current:LA Food 2019 as a series of site-specific interventions, performances and a guided audio walk, Mussel Beach delves into a holistic health model for the human body, the body of mussels, and the body of the city of Los Angeles.
Shifting between Muscles and Mussels, the project tells lesser known coastal episodes, taking mussels as the main protagonists: filter feeders that clean seawater by breathing. Active ‘digestive machines’ that capture and break down pollutants, they are used in Mussel Beach to explore the diverse ecologies of Venice Beach and how to improve the state of life – human and other-than-human – in the city at large. These visions call us to pay attention to mussels, but also to grow your mussels. To be shellfish!
Mussel Beach is a site-specific project by Cooking Sections (Daniel Fernández Pascual & Alon Schwabe), 2019. Cooking Sections studio team: Matthew Darmour-Paul, Charlotte Grace, Madeleine Planeix-Crocker, Rosa Whiteley / Production: Jia Gu, Sage Roebuck / Graphic Design: An Endless Supply / Costume Design: MOB / Text editing: Jesse Connuck / Sound: Dublab / Voice: Liz Warner / Skaters: Hudson Caceres, Sean Imes, Ethan Loy, Amos Trujillo, Marissa Martinez and Christiana Smith / Terrazzo fabrication: Renovo Stone
Cooking Sections (Daniel Fernández Pascual & Alon Schwabe) is a duo based out of London, UK. It was born to explore the systems that organise the WORLD through FOOD. Using installation and performance, their research-based practice explores the overlapping boundaries between visual arts, architecture and geopolitics. Since 2015, they are working on multiple iterations of the long-term site-specific CLIMAVORE, a project exploring how to eat as humans change climates. Cooking Sections was part of the exhibition at the U.S. Pavilion, 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale. Their work has also been exhibited at the 13th Sharjah Biennial; Manifesta12, Palermo; Serpentine Galleries, London; Storefront for Art & Architecture, New York and Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice.
Tim Rudnick (Venice Oceanarium) / Mussel Eateries: Fish Taco, Muscle Beach Nutrition / Mussel Beach merchandise vendors: An’s Sportswear, Venice Beach T’s, Muscle Beach T’s / Katie Nichols (OC Coast Keeper) / For their invaluable knowledge: ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives at the USC Libraries, Natural History Museum of LA, Jon Ball, Markus Buehler, Joe Castillo, Soraya de Chadarevian, Mark Denny, Julien Emile-Geay, John D. Fair, Juliette Finzi Hart, Christina Frieder, Harvey Green, Phyllis Grifman, David Helvarg, Geraldine Knatz, Dimitris Liokaftos, Sophie McCoy, Phillip Messersmith, Zhao Qin, Niall Richardson, Claudia Schippert, Anna Sklar, Eric Stein, Ruud Stokvis, Alexandra Stern, E. Gary Stickel, Jan Todd, Regina Wetzer, Christine Whitcraft / Special thanks to: Sarah Hearne, Asuka Hisa, Christopher Kelty, Hannah Landecker, Diana Nawi, Paul Pescador, Becky Snodgrass, and all the collaborators on Mussel Beach.