The colors flashing across a screen in LACMA’s courtyard were hypnotic and unsettling. A pink Croc morphed into a glossy shade of black. Other sandals shifted between liquid shades of iridescent blue, lavender and bronze, as if vintage Urban Decay bottles had spilled across the art, leaving globs of Oil Slick, Smog and Asphyxia nail polish to ripple across the screen. So prismatic! So toxic! I couldn’t turn away.
Spirits is a series of digital sculptures mades by the Irish artist john gerrard using photoscans of 96 plastic sandals that he collected along beaches across the globe and a gaussian splatting technique that allows viewers to stream the images onto their devices and alter them with the touch of a finger. Batches of Spirits have been dropped via LACMA’s website since last December, their release dates coinciding solstices and equinoxes. The third installment of Spirits, all tied to the Mediterranean Sea, was unveiled on June 22, an in-person component, the Spirits Summer Solstice Dance, headlined by Richie Hawtin.
A somewhat inevitable coincidence is that the release of the third installment of Spirits, art that addresses subjects like plastics pollution and overconsumption, coincided with a local environmental emergency. Sunday was also the fifth day of the Lineage Logistics storage facility fire in Boyle Heights, which resulted in clouds of who-knows-what hanging over multiple neighborhoods in and around L.A., including my own.
The previous Wednesday, on a half-filled bus heading from Chinatown to Lincoln Heights, I glanced out the window at an ominous, darkening sky. Was a thunderstorm was heading towards Los Angeles State Historic Park? “¡Mira!” I heard a woman say to two small children while pointing towards the bus window. I looked again. That’s not a storm, I thought upon seeing billowing, coal-colored plumes of smoke.
Off the bus, I stood outside of a taco joint and investigated the skyline. Plumes gathered around General Hospital (you might recognize it from such shows as, um, General Hospital). But, as I found out later, the actual fire was burning some five miles away. At the time of writing this, the fire is still burning, so I’ll link the most recent update I read. The most heavily impacted areas have been Boyle Heights and East L.A.. (For resources and volunteer opportunities in the area, see L.A. Public Press.) On the northeast end of downtown, where I live, things have been functionally apocalyptic. There have been times when the air was thick and pungent, but those times passed pretty quickly. Still, I had been wearing a COVID-era mask outside throughout the weekend to try to mitigate outside funk and finally took it off when I reached Miracle Mile, where the air seemed normal.
I sipped on a yerba mate concoction from a reusable, metal cup tucked into a crocheted cup-holder – useful swag from Sunday’s event – and stared at the images on the screen, thinking about how environmentalism goes in and out of fashion with the whims of the algorithm. For the past few years, it’s been out. IDK why, maybe because influencers found a way to convince people that fast fashion isn’t that bad or because news outlets decided Americans were really more worried about the price of eggs and then Trump came in and created such a clusterfuck that no one knows what deserves our collective attention anymore and, meanwhile, tech bros are betting there’s more money in wrecking the planet than saving it. But, even when pollution and climate change and environmental justice aren’t trending, we’re still impacted by these things. We literally are in Los Angeles on this particular summer solstice.
The opening DJs, Jelani and Anastasia Giovani, played proper warehouse party warmup sets. It’s a very specific vibe- abstract techno with beats that appear, disappear and reappear again- that slowly introduces you to the dance floor. Sometime around dusk, the beat kicked in and the crowd roared. The courtyard was think with bodies and, soon, fog. I danced around, finally finding an angle where I could see Richie Hawtin’s head in the mass of people surrounding the DJ booth. I ran into a friend and we danced until I realized I had to catch my train home.
On the dance floor, I kept flashing to Sirât, the movie that would have been my favorite of 2025 if I had seen it last year. The movie has impeccable sound design that makes you feel like you’re partying at the end of the world. It’s a heavy movie, but in those moments when the beats pulse through the sandy, desert rave speakers, there’s a levity that cuts through the darkness. That’s how it felt out on the courtyard at LACMA. As dark and aggressive as techno can be, the rhythm still leaves you feeling a little lighter.
Liz O. is an L.A.-based writer and DJ. Follow on Instagram or sign up for the weekly, Beatique newsletter for updates on new stories and gigs.
Listen to the Beatique Mix for June, 2026, featuring music from Yoko Ono, Scott Walker, Slayyyter, Purple Disco Machine , Madonna and more.
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