Field Set

On Saturday, May 23 and Sunday, May 24, 2026, Los Angeles Nomadic Division presents Field Set, a new sound installation and series of sculptural interventions using recordings and materials from the site of artist Kelly Akashi’s former home and studio in Altadena, California.

The project features a collaboration between Akashi and Phil Peters. Using subterranean microphones, Peters has been continuously recording Akashi’s property since May 2025, capturing the sounds of demolition and nearby rebuilding. Presented for the first time, these field recordings focus on the debris removal and excavation period and are arranged into a three-hour durational soundscape. Played through large-scale subwoofers constructed by Peters, the work unfolds across the ground and through low-frequency sound, using the site as a physical surface and a field of resonance.

Following the soundscape, each day will conclude with a live musical performance by an artist with ties to the neighborhood. On Saturday, experience a live performance by Celia Hollander; Sunday will feature a live performance by Paul McCarthy, Alex Stevens, and John Wiese.

In addition to the sound installation, visitors are encouraged to wander the site to experience new sculptures by Akashi using materials sourced from her property following the Eaton Fire, as well as her chimney sculpture, Witness (Altadena), and community garden.

Details for visiting Field Set, including the location and parking instructions, will be provided via email to all visitors who RSVP.

You can RSVP here.

Please note that Field Set is on private property and not accessible outside of the of weekend of May 23 and 24. The map on LAND’s website is not the exact location of the project within Altadena.

Kelly Akashi (b. 1983, Los Angeles) is a sculptor whose practice examines impermanence, temporality, and the material traces of human experience. Executed with rigorous conceptual intent and a deep reverence for process, her work spans glass, bronze, stone, and cast materials, and often uses the hand as a recurring motif. Akashi’s sculptures, which range from glass-blown flowers and towering weeds to cast hands, bodies, and extinct shells, offer a poetic reflection on mortality and transience.

She holds a BFA from Otis College of Art & Design and an MFA from the University of Southern California, studied at the Städelschule in Frankfurt. Most recently, Akashi exhibited Monument (Altadena), a 13-foot recreation of her Altadena chimney and walkway constructed in glass brick at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City.

Akashi’s work can be found in the permanent collections of the Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, NY, USA; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA, USA; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA, USA; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA, USA; Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, CA, USA; Sifang Museum, Nanjing, China, The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; and X Museum, Beijing, China, among others.

Phil Peters makes sound installations that render audible the geological substrates of built space. Working with custom-built microphones and infrasonic subwoofers that he designs and fabricates himself, Peters records forces traveling through the earth — beneath oil fields, fault lines, shipping ports, and mountains — at frequencies that extend below the threshold of hearing. Played back through speakers that shake walls and resonate in the chest, these recordings find continuity between the geological and the biological, making legible large systems too vast or too slow to apprehend directly.

Peters received an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BA from Carleton College. Recent exhibitions include "The Storm" and "The Port of Long Beach Recordings" at The Canary Test, Los Angeles; "Outside/In" at LAXART, Los Angeles; and "The Permian Recordings" at Co-Lab Projects, Austin, TX. He lives and works in Los Angeles.

Celia Hollander is a Los Angeles based composer, producer and performer. Combining acoustic and digital elements, her work focuses on themes such as shaping time through composition, surrendering to improvisation, and music as a natural phenomenon of dynamic systems.

Her discography features releases on Leaving Records, Longform Editions, and Recital and she has performed at venues including 2220 Arts & Archives (LA), Public Records (NYC), Grace Cathedral (SF), Basilica Hudson (NY) and Bond Chapel (CHI). She has composed original music for feature films including Union County (Sundance 2026), Humboldt USA (Visions Du Réel 2026), and Good One (Sundance 2024), as well as for short films, television, theater, dance, art installations, and VR projects. She has taught acoustics and composition at the Herb Alpert School of Music at California Institute of the Arts, where she completed her MFA in Music Composition and Experimental Sound Practices.

Paul McCarthy is widely considered to be one of the most influential and groundbreaking contemporary American artists. Born in 1945, and raised in Salt Lake City, Utah, he first established a multi-faceted artistic practice, which sought to break the limitations of painting by using unorthodox materials such as bodily fluids and food. He has since become known for visceral, often hauntingly humorous work in a variety of mediums—from performance, photography, film and video, to sculpture, drawing and painting.

McCarthy earned a BFA in painting from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1969, and an MFA in multimedia, film and art from USC in 1973. For 18 years, he taught performance, video, installation, and art history in the New Genres Department at UCLA, where he influenced future generations of west coast artists and he has exhibited extensively worldwide.

John Wiese is a Los Angeles based artist and composer whose work has played a significant role in contemporary experimental music for more than two decades. Emerging from the Southern California underground, his practice reflects an anti-institutional and formally open spirit where improvisation, collage, and disruption become methods for rethinking sound and performance. Through recordings, installations, solo works, and collaborations, Wiese has developed a highly recognizable approach built from electronic textures, compressed sonic intensity, and abrupt structural shifts that challenge distinctions between composition and raw sensory experience. His performances create immersive environments that move between precision and instability, drawing connections between noise, contemporary art, and expanded forms of improvisation.

Field Set is commissioned by Los Angeles Nomadic Division (LAND) and organized by Christopher Mangum-James, LAND deputy director.

This project is made possible with lead support provided by Angeles Art Fund and generous support provided by Ben Weyerhaeuser.

LAND’s 2026 projects are supported by the LAND Artist Fund with lead support from the Offield Family Foundation and Karyn Kohl. Generous support is provided by the Fran and Ray Stark Foundation, Ben Weyerhaeuser, and the Patrick and Aimee Butler Family Foundation. Additional support is provided by Berry Stein, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Department of Arts and Culture, Pamela and Jarl Mohn, Brenda Potter, The Goodman Family Foundation, the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, the San Francisco Foundation, and LAND’s Nomadic Council.

LAND is a member of and supported by the Los Angeles Visual Arts (LAVA) Coalition.

LAND is a member-supported organization. Keep LAND programs free for all by becoming a member today.

If you are interested in directly supporting another Altadena artist, Kelly Akashi recommends artist Sunny Mills’s upcoming book project. Mills is a resident of Altadena who lost her home and art studio in the Eaton Fire. She is currently working on a photography book that she hopes will serve as a collective memorial and a permanent record of what the community of Altadena experienced. The book will pair portraits with fragments of testimony.

More details can be found here.