Yasmine Ostendorf-Rodríguez: Fungal Teachings

Spend an afternoon with Yasmine Ostendorf-Rodríguez to uncover the wisdom of fungi and how to incorporate them into our daily lives. Through interactive activities prompted by the Let's Become Fungal! Oracle Cards, we will delve into the world of fungi and discover how these organisms can teach us about symbiotic relationships, cyclical calendars, and more. Each card offers insights, questions, meditations, and exercises to help us connect with these unmissable agents in our shared ecosystem. 

The intimate workshop, led by Yasmine, will include three exercises drawn from the oracle cards. By examining mycelium as a model for collaboration, the workshop offers a playful approach to exploring profound questions and lessons for social and environmental justice. By the end of the session, each participant will have created a unique card for their own deck to take home.

Over a two year period, Yasmine partners with Active Cultures to develop workshops, gatherings, and conversations in Los Angeles to explore the interconnectedness of ecological systems and integrate fungal wisdom into creative practices and everyday life.

Yasmine Ostendorf-Rodríguez is a curator, writer, and researcher working at the intersection of art and ecology. She is the founder and director of the Green Art Lab Alliance (established in 2012); a network comprising seventy art organizations across Europe, Latin America, the United States, Canada and Asia and of the Future Materials Bank; a crowd-sourced database of sustainable materials for artists, designers and architects. The mission of both is to foster relationships and knowledge exchange that contributes to social and environmental justice, akin to the interconnected nature of mycelium. She is a self-proclaimed mycophile, interested in exploring the application of a mycological lens in defining fair models of collaboration and (self) organization. Her debut book, Let's Become Fungal! Mycelium Teachings and the Arts, came out in 2023 and is being translated in over five languages. After a year long of conducting workshops based on the book, all the learnings and further thoughts were brought together in a deck of Oracle Cards, weaving together Yasmine’s many encounters from fungi-enthusiasts in Asia, Latin-America, Europe and the Caribbean.

The Audubon Center at Debs Park is an environmental education and conservation center for the communities of Northeast Los Angeles and the region. The Audubon Center is wheelchair accessible, from street level. Only service dogs are allowed at the Audubon Center, so please leave your furry friends at home. Parking is limited, so if the small lot is full please park along Griffin Avenue and use the dirt walking path up to the Center. Further information can be found at https://debspark.audubon.org/visit