Urban Birds: The Plasticene

This year’s festival centers the voices of the staff and patients of the International Bird Rescue – a San Pedro-based wildlife clinic employing over 15 staff members and volunteers to provide direct care for thousands of sick, injured and orphaned marine birds every year. The festival will bring attention to this clinic’s vital work rescuing, rehabilitating, and releasing these animals, while inviting human attendees of all ages into a deeper, more entangled relationship with these wild birds. Together, we confront the oil spills, plastic pollution, habitat loss, and population collapse that threaten both bird and human inhabitants of this interspecies ecosystem we call Los Angeles.

Alongside the performances, the festival will also feature hands-on activities for families and children, including craft stations and interactive educational exhibits designed to foster curiosity, connection, and care for our avian neighbors.

Developed through months of close engagement with the staff and patients of the clinic, the festival will debut a new interspecies opera with a libretto and score sourced from conversations with the Bird Rescue staff and patients along with choreography from Jasmine Albuquerque developed from direct observation of the bird patients.

Urban Birds: The Plasticene takes its name from the current geological epoch, defined by the role of petroleum and petroleum-based plastic in the unfolding Sixth Age of Mass Extinction. The debut performance will be set within Angels Gate Cultural Center – a decommissioned military base on a precipice of land overlooking the Port of Los Angeles, the Pacific Ocean, and the International Bird Rescue clinic.

The work is comprised of four acts beginning with the end of the last age of mass extinction (the event that created the world’s petroleum reserves), moving through the reemergence of animals, especially birds, and into the Anthropocene and the unfolding Sixth Age of Mass Extinction. The Bird Rescue will be staged as a field hospital inside a military battery, where three vocalists will perform Anuj Bhutani’s score alongside three dancers performing as bird.patients, accompanied by the Isaura String Quartet. This interspecies opera will conclude with a speculative posthuman performance overlooking the Korean Friendship Bell and the Pacific Ocean by Yozmit the Dogstar with speculative bird song and experimental bells from MA Harms.

This four-part performance will include an eclectic mix of musical genres and influences from mass extinction death metal and experimental jazz with Sadie Greyduck and Anuj Bhutani, to walking interspecies migratory bird calls, to underground electronic dance music with live text-based vocal meditations by Nina Sarnelle, to a scored opera with libretto, vocals, string quartet, and vibraphone, to Korean Opera with experimental percussion.

In a world fixated on silencing the voices of the vulnerable, the sick, the refugee, and the orphan (both bird and human), Urban Birds: The Plasticene invites visitors to listen and connect across species and differences. Where there was once only silence or indifference, we offer interspecies songs built through collaboration, experimentation, and care. Where we once spoke only for ourselves and our kin, we hope this work will inspire others to speak up for the vulnerable and silenced around them: to “Be Their Voice,” as the Bird Rescue says.

Note: our May 10th event is in conjunction with the International Bird Rescue Open House, taking place next door to Angels Gate Cultural Center. Both events will be accessible to visitors on that day.