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Plot 田

@plooooooot

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a pond for thinkers + doers 🫧
in chinatown los angeles
✍️ mailto: [email protected]

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Come hang out with us! Plot 田 is starting to host weekly coworking sessions as an agenda-less ritual for the community to connect 🤝

Invite only, knock at app.plot.place 📲 taken in Plot 田 by @plooooooot

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3 months ago

New books (and some vinyls) 🖨️🩶

Plot 田 will be open this Friday 1-4pm for casual browsing & rounds of Go taken in Plot 田 by @plooooooot

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8 months ago

introducing a digital ecosystem of our own! custom-built + self-hosted with as much intention as our physical space. stay in touch with the plot community via chat, archives, event streaming and other experiments to come

(🚪invite only )

ask a member or join the waitlist

https://app.plot.place/join taken in Plot 田 by @plooooooot

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5 months ago

Mother of artist Chang Yuchen, Jin Mei began making art at the age of fifty. In 2016, surgery confined her to drawing on paper. Over the following eight years, Yuchen compiled her dazzling, energetic, and ever-evolving drawings into a book, published in 2024 under her imprint How Many Books. Since then, Jin Mei has continued her persistent mark-making practice, while her imagery keeps finding new forms, exploring the endless possibilities of small, intimate scales and humble materials such as crayons.

On Friday, October 23, Jin Mei will give a talk at Plot about her life and her practice, and the unexpected turn of becoming an artist in her sixties. Her talk will be interpreted live from Mandarin into English by her daughter, Chang Yuchen, followed by a Q&A and book signing. A selection of her new drawings will also be on view and available.

RSVP link in bio 🔗

Jin Mei was born in Shanxi in 1961 and attended the School of Art at Shanxi University in 1982. After graduation, she worked as an art editor for a magazine. In 1993, she opened her own business, Jin Mei Flower Shop, through which she supported the artistic practice of her family. Jin Mei picked up a paintbrush again at the age of fifty.

Chang Yuchen works in an interdisciplinary manner — writing as weaving, drawing as translation, teaching as hospitality, commerce as social experiment (see Use Value, 2016–2026) and publishing as a dandelion spreading its seeds. Her ongoing project Coral Dictionary (2019–) is a writing system based on coral debris. Through translating visually, associatively, and emotively, a feral literacy takes shape. Yuchen is also an advocate for the art of her mother, Jin Mei. taken in Plot 田 by @plooooooot

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17 hours ago

Recently at 937 Sun Mun Way 💿🎵 taken in Plot 田 by @plooooooot

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2 days ago

What if our whole idea of humanism is backwards?

After all, the invention of technology, of culture, of language and abstraction, marked most of our journey as exceptional Earth inhabitants. For centuries (in multiple traditions) Humanism was a project to be achieved, something cultivated through cultural production. Yet in today's debates about generative AI and other technologies, the reflex is to drag the human back into the pit of the "natural"; posing Humanism as the opposition to technology and change. Somewhere along the way the meaningful goals for a Human project dissolved in the face of regressive ideas about an idyllic past or fears about a future that feels inevitable.

But maybe we just forgot that humanism is a project of struggle and of work and not a fantasy about touching grass.

𝗛𝘂𝗺𝗮𝗻𝗶𝘀𝗺: 𝘄𝗮𝗿 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸
𝗔 𝘁𝗮𝗹𝗸 𝗯𝘆 𝗡𝗶𝗰𝗸 𝗛𝗼𝘂𝗱𝗲
Thu Oct 22, 7pm
Free (thanks to @fwb.help!)
RSVP link in bio

This talk attempts to be more constructive and purposeful about where we are going with technological development as practitioners, developers, artists, and citizens. It reframes Humanism as we enter into this strange new terrain with generative AI as a way of fighting for what we want, together, and how to work to make it possible.

Photo: "Let There Be Light" (1954) by Wynn Bullock, from the 1955 exhibition "The Family of Man" curated by Edward Steichen at MOMA NY.

Nick Houde (@nilkhood) is a visiting researcher from Berlin who has worked for cultural institutions and organizations such HKW, Other Internet, co-matter, Trust and co-founded Substrate.

Friends With Benefits (@fwb.help) is a community of artists, technologists, and organizers exploring new possibilities for culture and technology. Through festivals, gatherings, and creative collaborations, we get people out of their feeds and into shared experiences that spark new ideas, friendships, and ways of creating together.

This event will be streamed and recorded in Plot's community web app. Please DM if you are interested in tuning in remotely 🌐 taken in Plot 田 by @plooooooot

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4 days ago

Connections is a personals list for people on Are.na built by the Are.na community.

For this special evening at Plot, come meet others through what you collect and create. Whether you’re looking for conversation, friendship, creative partnership, romance, or just someone new to meet, there is connection in the air. Together we will set our preferences, answer some prompts, and pair up for a few rounds of conversation.

Research casual attire
Limited Are.na merch shop
Treats by @lovening.agent
Pls RSVP & arrive on time ◡̈ taken in Plot 田 by @plooooooot

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9 days ago

A moment of appreciation for these custom banquettes designed and built by Carlos from @studio_el_leon ⭐️ comfy, practical, mobile, chic and perfect!! taken in Plot 田 by @plooooooot

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7 days ago

Next Thursday is our very first 𝗚𝗢 𝗡𝗜𝗚𝗛𝗧! 🏁 This series has been in talks for so long and we’re finally making it happen so come show your love for the game if you want more 🙂‍↕️

𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗶𝘀 𝗚𝗼? Also known as weiqi or baduk, Go is an abstract strategy board game for two players in which the aim is to fence off more territory than the opponent. First invented in China more than 2,500 years ago, it is believed to be the oldest continuously played board game to present day.

Our guide for the night is @oliverpolzinart, naturalist, writer, and artist working across media. Founding member of Meow Wolf and recent graduate of SCI-Arc's Synthetic Landscapes program, he brings insights from the forefront of the immersive movement to cultural and water-centric strategies to regenerate the living world. Oliver has been a devoted Go player since a chance encounter in a Michigan game shop in 1996.

Oliver will give a brief overview of the ancient board game Go, from its legendary 4000-year-old origins alongside the I Ching and Feng Shui to its modern significance in the era of AI (see Lee Sedol's famous 4-1 defeat by AlphaGo in 2016, Shin Jin-seo's recent victory against KataGo).

Then we will play some Go together. Beginners welcome. Bring your board if you have one. Bring a friend!

RSVP link in bio 🔗 $10+ PWYW by @plooooooot

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8 days ago

Plot 田(@plooooooot) is a community space and bookshop in Los Angeles’ Chinatown founded by artist Alice Yuan Zhang. Alice has also described it variously as a “rec room,” “living room,” and a “pond” for thinking and making. It is a physical storefront as well as an app, both of which are run locally by Alice, and directed by the community they serve.

At Are.na, we’re fans of projects that can’t be described succinctly, and with this interview series I’ve been particularly interested in physical and community spaces that are defined by who uses them and what happens inside of them. This usually involves a person or group of people who generously do the work of setting up an environment that is structured enough to be inviting, while also open enough for things to unfold somewhat organically within them. I think Plot is exemplary of this type of space. Admittedly, I’ve viewed it mostly from across the country (the app has made it easier to do this), but there’s a collectivity and flexibility to Plot and its programming that make it feel genuinely warm, focused on knowledge-sharing, and built by many hands.

— Meg Miller(@meggmillerr) in our latest interview with Alice Yuan Zhang(@aliceyuanzhang @plooooooot), on Building Things into Being

Read more on are.na/editorial (link in bio) by @plooooooot

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9 days ago

“Silicon Valley is not simply a geographical location. It is a state of mind.” – Reyner Banham, ‘Silicon Style’, Architectural Review (May 1981)

The tech campuses of Google, Apple, and Meta testify to their status and influence on public life – yet the buildings remain largely inaccessible to the general public. This research investigates how architecture and power converge in these three companies through the concept of the “proprietary polis” an architectural form premised on the exclusion of the civic realm, after the term “proprietary technologies” – software, tools and systems locked to a single company or device.

🏢🔒
𝙄𝙣𝙫𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙜𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙋𝙧𝙤𝙥𝙧𝙞𝙚𝙩𝙖𝙧𝙮 𝙋𝙤𝙡𝙞𝙨
𝘈 𝘛𝘢𝘭𝘬 𝘣𝘺 𝘊𝘭𝘢𝘶𝘥𝘦 𝘋𝘶𝘵𝘴𝘰𝘯

Thu Sep 17, 7pm
IRL at Plot 田 + online at app.plot.place
🔗 $15, RSVP link in bio

This talk is a narrative of the parallel proprietary condition which faces the researcher writing an architectural history of Silicon Valley, and a skill-share of methods to investigate the closed corporate entities that have such broad access to our own private worlds. From inverting the surveillant gaze of social media to investigate Meta, to create a digital copy of Frank Gehry’s MPK20 as a videogame, to navigating multiple layers of privacy to uncover stories about Apple’s lesser-known architectural history through cross-referencing planning portals, land deeds, online archives, satellite maps, corporate biographies, patent records, and field visits.

Claude Dutson is an Assistant Professor at the Bartlett School of Architecture and the Royal College of Art, London. Trained as an architect, she uses forensic architectural reconstruction, media archaeology and videogames to investigate the corporate architecture of tech. taken in Plot 田 by @plooooooot

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a month ago

Better late than never…! Come experience our new and improved temperature taken in Plot 田 by @plooooooot

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2 months ago