Woman: Hey, Antoine.

Antoine: Yeah?

Woman: Did you see the image that Nish made?

So I was thinking that probably it should go right here.

The architecture, yeah, the modularity.

Antoine: But, yeah, if you want... Bon: Metabolic Studio is a practice that has emerged from the work I do as an environmental artist.

We try and think about what we can do in the way of reparation, thinking about how did the place we live get to be like it is, and what can we do to help it function better as a living system?

♪ ♪ "Concrete is Fluid" is a solo show dealing with the materials that have come into my hands as a result of "Bending the L.A.

River."

♪ [Train horn blowing] The project that helped me understand the L.A.

River was the trainyard that's actually right at the L.A.

River right next to Metabolic Studio.

That trainyard was placed there in the 19th century, and it only worked as a trainyard 9 months out of the year.

The rest of the time it was flooded, so they decided to move the trainyard to higher ground, but they left all of the dirty stuff that trains bring in in the ground, and it really compromised the health of that space.

That property had become a property of the California State Parks, and they were interested in cleaning it up.

I proposed that we start by growing corn on this site because corn can cleanse soil, so they said, "OK, we'll give you one agricultural cycle," and I said, "Great.

Where am I gonna get the water?"

And then I remembered all of those great parties from high school where people would go down to the L.A.

River because no one was ever down there, so I thought, "I'm gonna go down to the river "with a water truck, and I'll be able to grow corn, and I won't have to pay for it."

♪ And then I got caught.

The LADWP came down while I was filling up the water truck, said, "Uh, what are you doing?

"You do know that's illegal, right?

You can't just take water out of the L.A.

River."

And I'm like, "Why not?

Isn't it just going out to sea?"

And they say, "Yes, but it's not clean."

And I said, "Oh, don't worry about it "because we're testing it, and corn is a hyperaccumulator, "so not only can it clean the water, it can clean the soil"... and they said, "Well, you know, we can't let you "do this because even though it's a nice story, "we're still responsible for everybody's health, so we're gonna have to ask you to stop."

I thought, "Well, that's really silly, "and we should change that.

"We should make it so this water that's going out to sea can be used to clean up spaces that are dirty."

♪ What if you could keep the L.A.

River full of concrete for now because it's preventing floods and it's done it really well, but what if instead you could just punch a few holes into the side of that concrete and redirect the flow of the river so it could go back into those basins and let it reconnect with, say, the park?

♪ And they said, "Well, that's an interesting idea."

So they called the state park, and they said, "What's your annual water bill?"

And they said, "We're putting about $100,000 into irrigation," and they said, "Well, would it be good if you had free water instead?"

And they said, "Are you kidding?

That would be a deal changer."

So...they let me do it.

♪ And, lo and behold, you had 32 acres of tiny, little corn sprouts growing on what was, for 75 years, just a greasy old yard.

♪