Confronted by increasingly extreme conditions-from raging fire hurricanes to restrictive legislation impacting our border walls, from a fight to protect our reproductive and gender rights to our ability or equitable representation—we have stepped into an era of polycrisis that needs the careful consideration of SURVIVAL STRATEGIES. How do we exercise within us and cultivate within our collective body resilient, adaptive, collaborative and regenerative approaches needed to build systems of resistance? Now, more than ever, we must expand our imagination and deepen our relationships with alternative forms of intelligence and technology latent in natural, social, and speculative worlds. Through queering connections with plant life, returning to indigenous knowledge, deepening practices of listening, care, and radical joy, and decentralizing power in favor of collaboration, SURVIVAL STRATEGIES becomes both a provocation and an invitation to collectively imagine new and generative relationships rooted in mutual exchange. 

In response to the 2025 Altadena and Palisades wildfires, West of Here teamed up with a large network of L.A.-based artists to raise relief funds for two start up organizations (GRIEFxHOPE and LAyuda) responding to the crisis.

As LA took its next step towards fire relief and recovery, this one-night only fundraiser during Frieze LA brought together artists and community organizers for an evening of song, poetry, movement, funk, tea, dance, joy, solidarity and community. It was a moment to exhale the grief and to inhale serenity, to be in the inspiring light that performance can uplift our spirits as we show up for each other, as our own unique selves, to re-build our future, together.