Remediating our Futures: a Dinner + Panel Discussion to
Benefit the Mycelium Underground
and the continuation of the New Moon Mycology Summit!
Join us for a Sunday family dinner!
Menu will feature mushrooms in most course offerings and shared in ways you may have never had them prepared before.
This meal will consist of different plates of tastings, mezes (tapas), and other nourishing large plates.
We will try our best to accommodate everyone's dietary needs.
Proceeds from the dinner tickets go toward supporting the New Moon Mycology Summit, a volunteer run, non-profit gathering for communal learning around environmental + social justice through the lens of fungi. The collective behind the organizing is fueled by the passion for alternative spaces within mycology, ecological + societal justice and education. You will be supporting the future mycelial growth of the New Moon Mycology Summit.
We are asking a sliding scale donation of $60-200 for joining our benefit dinner. You will go home nourished in body and mind. Space is limited and exact location is given upon registration.
Presentation & Panel Description
The presentation of the evening will be about the colonial history of taxonomic classification–the primary mode of categorization used to name, identify, and describe organisms. We will discuss how this system of classification emerged in relation to capitalist and colonial interests in the 17th and 18th centuries, and how it was used to make claims about biological categories of race. Then we will invite our panelists to talk about their work as community scientists in Kumeyaay Territory, and how they navigate Western scientific norms and systems of knowledge. We will open up the discussion to share about alternative ways to talk about and get to know our more than human relatives.
Our lovely group of speakers + contributors for the evening:
Doğa Tekin
is an artist, musician, and teacher who creates and builds her work around her relationships with fungi. She is a temporary inhabitant of Tovaangar (so-called Los Angeles), unceded homelands of Tongva peoples, doing a PhD in linguistic anthropology at UCLA where she focuses on interspecies meaning-making and the circulation of colonial ideologies about land and nature relations. Carried out in collaboration with POC Fungi Community (POCFC), Doğa’s research focuses on the ideological systems and linguistic processes through which Huitlacoche comes to take on different identities, and the decolonizing mechanisms in POCFC’s work toward regenerating ancestral food systems. She has also helped organize the New Moon Mycology Summit since 2018, along with other events hosted by The Mycelium Underground.
Shanhuan Manton
Shanhuan is an interspecies inquirer and filmmaker composting established methods of cinematic storytelling to alchemize extractive methods of production into regenerative rituals, while making real the possibilities of speculative worlds by utilizing collective storytelling as a transformative cultural practice. Their collaborations have woven community globally, ranging from documentaries about queer musicians to spontaneous tea service nourishing land remediation projects. In 2023 Shanhuan was a fellow in Emergence Magazine’s Seeds of Radical Renewal Spiritual Ecology leadership program, hosted workshops on Interspecies Collaboration and Attunement at New Moon Mycology Summit as well as through Exploring the Mycoverse and Sympoetic Ecofabulatory in so called Los Angeles.
Bianca Bonilla
Radicle Botanical
Bianca is a mother, farmer, and botánica passionate about collaborating with plants, people, and our ecologies. She is the founder and executive director of the non-profit Botanical Community Development Initiatives.
Jiapsi Gomez
Jiapsi Gomez is an indigenous artist, citizen scientist, and environmentalist from Logan Heights. He is one of the founding board members of Tierras Indigenas Community Land Trust, and his contributions to his community are focused around health, safety, advocacy for urban agriculture, and ecological sustainability. Jiapsi is an educator with the POC Fungi Community, teaching youth and adults about fungal networks, concepts of bioremediation, and how to use microscope equipment. He formerly served on a statewide Youth Mental Health Committee that analyzed the multifaceted principles of mental health for BIPOC youth and our needs. His main goal is to generate gardens for community to cultivate foods and medicines, prevent overdevelopment and gentrification, encourage healthy ecosystems, and reduce pollution within BIPOC communities.
Christian Schwarz
Christian Schwarz is an itinerant naturalist from California. He is co-author of "Mushrooms of the Redwood Coast” as well as the upcoming "Mushrooms of Cascadia". Fungi satisfy his curiosity with their endless forms – from the grotesque to the bizarre to the sublime – and provide a rich lens through which to learn about the bigger pictures of ecology and evolution. He loves fish, plants, nudibranchs, moths, and dragonflies, and is passionate about community science.
& more TBA soon!
ABOUT THE MEAL + CHEF SOON!!
