Project Descriptions:
HDTS
4
Pentti Monkkonen "Beach House #3"
Beach House #3 is a geodesic egg shape with five wooden legs.
Pentti will perform a cockroach performance at the Palms, and
his
commemorative tshirts and roach medallions will be for sale at
Amy Yao's art swapmeet.
Feral Childe (Alice Wu +
Moriah Carlson) "Dingo Derby"
Feral Childe presents Dingo Derby, a confectionery caucus
race. Participants jockey and joust for the lead with effigies
clad in Baby Dingo. From the inner ring, the Kung Fu Shek Dance-Pak
cheers them on. Feral Childe is no mere spectator sport: rabid
fans and casual passersby alike are welcome to join in the fray.
Prepare to get dusty.
Stephanie Smith/Eco ShackEcoshack (with Strawn/Sierralta(2)
and Mark Soden/SCOW) "Green Tent Competition"
Ecoshack (www.ecoshack.com) is a green design laboratory
that recently sponsored an international competition to design
an environmentally sustainable camping shelter - a "green"
tent (www.greententcompetition.com) - for use in the Mojave Desert
in and around Joshua Tree National Park. 30 entries (drawings,
models, boards) will be installed in Ecoshack's homesteader cabin.
Ecoshack will also be prototyping the first of three winning tents
the weekend of Oct 23 - 24. HDTS visitors are encouraged to visit
our site and participate.
Eames Demetrios "The
Krblin Jihn Cabin"
The Krblin Jihn Cabin is the first official Kymaerica
historical site. It was originally used to house defeated heretics.
Jihn Wranglicans (a sect of Church of the California Christ) had
their lives spared, but only on condition of a form of sectarian
house arrest, where they could never leave their cabin and surrounding
grounds. In his isolation, Krblin (an honorific similar to “Brother”)
Jihn himself became an important Biblical translator and commentator.
Site includes the remnants of its remarkable nine point compass
wheel. More background and lore about Kymaerica are found at www.kymaerica.com.
The
Cake Society "desserts
in the desert"
"the
cake society presents an installation of all things cake. Experience
the stuffy english formality of afternoon tea in the surreal location
of the desert. We invite you to join us for strangely polite conversation,
pots of tea and plenty of cake : bring manners and sunblock.
In conjunction with this experiment, the cake society will present
'100 cakes see art' and other cake propaganda at the strange
animal exhibition opening at LACE.
John Brinton Hogan "Portraits of the Missing"
Part of a long-term project examining the
nature of identity and human recognition through the use of “missing”
posters placed in remote locations throughout the American Southwest.
This specific body of work stems from an attempt to re-contextualize
the traditional notion of portraiture by replacing the sitters
with facsimiles, then positioning (and re-photographing) those
facsimiles in landscape settings which, in theory, would not normally
associated with a thriving human presence.
Chris James "Interpretive Taxonomy for the California
Oriente in the
Vicinity of Joshua Tree"
This is a fold out brochure
available to HDTS visitors over the weekend of the event. For
your own copy of the original brochure email Chris here.
Mungo Thomson "Black Chime"
Black Chime will provide metaphysical atmosphere
for the event.
Ted
Quinn
'peacenik
at the beatnik' streaming 'live' from the beatnik cafe, joshua
tree, will be dedicated to high desert test site on friday, october
22. 9pm - 12 midnight PST at www.beatnikradio.com anyone interested
in sending cd's for possible inclusion in the webcast is welcome:
ted quinn, po box 912, joshua tree,ca 92252 (tedquinn@nomadhouse.com)
or call toll free (866) 374-4236 or at the rancho(760)366-3498.
Thom Merrick
"Surprise, Terror, Superstition, Silence, Melancholy,
Power, Strength" This work is seen with an
interpretive map and website
of Wonder Valley. Highlighted on the map is a twisted, jagged
rock formation that I see daily on the way to my studio. The shape
of the mountain looks like a beast, a dinosaur, or a great lizard.
The rock stands as a reminder that creativity, a natural resource,
and raw material, is best served by rude rock and the horrid graces
of wilderness itself. "Where do these images come from that
haunt the mind?" Do they burn in from nature, contrasting
the sun, or drain away, outward to the land from social conditioning,
or further back, our heritage. "And if this seems unintelligible,
think of petrified dinosaurs, vast, frightening, prehistoric,
but somehow ancestrally connected to our world."
Roxanne
Bartlett "50'x50'"
A 50'x50' space maintained as a garden, for 8 days culminating
in the weekend of the HDTS4 event. Part of the inspiration for
this proposal is that I did not want to import any actual objects
or materials into the desert landscape and yet still leave the
mark of methodical action. A garden is necessarily the execution
of aesthetic decisions in the landscape. The space will be marked
by a subtle but certainly domesticated appearance.
Andreas
Reiter Raabe "Natural Monochrome"
A set of silkscreen prints in the color monochrome heritage
green with the announcement: "natural monochrome joshua tree
CA 92252". The prints, the size ofa real estate sign, are
stuck in the ground around Joshua Tree, Palm Springs and Yacca
Valley. The project is of course related to painting and to every
day life. 100% natural as a fantasy. Green - usualy the first
association with nature, is the only colour that can`t be extracted
from nature. Green as a fantasy in the desert, announcing a monochrome
a oasis that doesn`t exist. Painting as an idea and as an extension.
Marie
Lorenz
"The History of the Last 5 Minutes"
I will be recording my experience of the HDTS weekend
in the form of small comic books. The books will be left at a
desk outside, where participants can read about events as they
unfold. I plan on visiting the sites of my previous HDTS projects,
chronicling their absorption into the environment, and describing
my encounter with the High Desert.
Shannon
Ebner "Water & Chemo"
For
HDTS4, Shannon Ebner has generated a second newsprint edition
from her ongoing photographic series Dead Democracy Letters titled
Water & Chemo. Ebner will be distributing the edition at the
HDTS Headquarters and as part of HDTS4’s satellite show
Strange Animal at LACE in Los Angeles. The piece is a diptych
-One of the images was photographed on the salt flats outside
Joshua Tree last spring. The other image was taken in Los Angeles.
Skylar
Haskard and Joel Kyack "Lost Desert Stage"
In the spirit of unresolved, excessive process, the Lost
Desert Stage will provide a 24-hour constructed environment where
matter is made, unmade, and remade. Constant activity will incorporate
exaggerated practical and absurd methods of desert survival to
create a new and continuously evolving code of subsistence. The
Moisture Tent, Dew Field, Mirage Stations, Foliage Liquid Extraction
System, Pulping Den, Giant Solar Still(s), Generator Tower, and
the Dessert Kitchen will serve as co-dependent elements of an
elaborately efficient system of production and consumption. All
matter made during the HDTS days will be promoted by sale or trade
and the needs and desires of the public weaken chances of efficient
survival or support a more excessive existence.
Cristian
Alexa
"Lost",
October 22, 2004
I drove from LAX to Yucca Valley. I got lost somewhere in the
Mojave Desert driving without a map and following the most desolated
dirt roads that I came upon. I slept in my car and had a dream.
"Target", October 23, 2004
I picked up a bunch of shopping bags from a Target store. I went
to Andy?s Gamma Gulch Site in Yucca Valley and wrapped up a Joshua
Tree in Target bags. The target tree stayed there for the duration
of HDTS 4.
"Home", October 23, 2004
While driving from high to the low desert between Yucca Valley
and Wonder Valley I noticed a lot of abandoned houses and cars
along the road. I stopped to take a closer look at these modern
ruins. One of them was of particular interest to me. I placed
my video camera on a tripod at a significant distance from the
house and let it roll. I climbed on the skeleton of a roof and
crawled in all direction like an ant in an ant hill.
"Always", October 24, 2004
I went to see a performance at Coyote Dry Lake. While waiting
for the performers to begin their act, I took a couple of water
bottles from my car and wrote the word Always on the ground. Always
remained visible for about 30 seconds before vanishing in the
dry land.
"Swing Station", October 24,
2004
While driving on the Iron Age Road toward Site # 13 I was listening
to a swing station on the radio. I stopped the car, opened all
doors, turned up the volume, and started dancing in front of my
video camera slowly fading away into the horizon.
Justin
Beal "wood
tower (gets the job done)"
wood tower. good and sturdy. new paint job. original
hardware. gets the job done. some assembly required (power tools).
one of a kind. radio w/ hand crank/solar + bottle opener. sandbags
not included. water use is an issue. serious offers only please.
you haul. best view on 62.
Kathleen
Johnson and Linda Taalman "Grotto"
The Grotto is an ongoing design experiment at a large
rock outcropping at Site 2 that we are imagining as a stylized
grotto, an oasis capable of harboring mysterious artesian sources.
The related shelter is made of ephemeral materials, ones that
could offer little protection from the sun, heat, wind or rain
of the desert. Rather than provide any practical respite from
the elements, the shelter becomes a three dimensional sketch in
the landscape, offering an interpretive framework for the existing
topography.
Jim
Skuldt "Road Sign, Air Pocket"
Implanted along an isolated stretch of highway, "Road Sign,
Air Pocket" acts as a rupture in normal sensory consumption
in the form of a discrete transmitted bubble. This interference
pokes at redundant, forgotten fixtures by a reverse-engineering
of standard aesthetics. A related piece "40 Hits, Converging
upon an Air Pocket" is showing concurrently at Los Angeles
Contemporary Exhibitions. This work was made possible through
the generosity of the Art School Visiting Committee of CalArts.
Karen
Lofgren
"Party
of One" is a self-powered nighttime desert
rave unit for just one person.
"Believer" is a glowing sculpture
for night wanderers.
AUDC,
"Site : Nonsite : Quartzsite,"
Quartzsite, Arizona is a town of 5,000 residents in the
summer, located 180 miles from this site. Every winter Quartzsite
swells with an influx of snowbirds, campers from across North
America, generally escaping the cold northern climate in search
of sunshine, the solitude of the desert, and the company of like-minded
individuals. Up to 1.5 million inhabitants settle in town every
winter, bringing their lodgings with them in the form of recreational
vehicles or RVs. At any one time in January and February, hundreds
of thousands of residents make this remote desert town into a
substantial urban center. AUDC’s installation reproduces
Quartzsite through an interpretive display. Visit http://www.audc.org/quartzsite
to view the installation's web component.
The AUDC project team on "Site : Nonsite : Quartzsite"
is composed of Steve Rowell, Robert Sumrell, and Kazys Varnelis.
AUDC's goal is to investigate the contemporary city using the
tools of the architect, the historian, and the designer. AUDC
blurs traditional divisions between media by working simultaneously
in print, web, video, photography, drawings, models, dioramas,
and installations while addressing the particularities of each
medium. Likewise, AUDC breaks down the boundaries between theory
and practice by uniting both scholarship and design research.
David
Dodge "Dust Farming"
A
dust sculpture lofted airbourne by spinning tires. Marking the
land and for a moment marking the sky. Dust to dust. Dust bowl.
A car on a dry lakebed starts from a stop and begins to spin wildly.
The resulting dust twister completely envelopes the car. The performance
continues for several minutes after which time the car exits the
dust cloud in the opposite direction that it entered. Dust
farming.
Tracy
Lea Hensley "Anthropomorphic Pictograph"
The work consists of a blown charcoal outline of the
artist?s entire body on a mammoth rock face. The work is a negotiation
of the human form in nature. It is a continuation from the past
of human pictographic representations and a reacquisition of these
terms today to create a new myth and connection to the natural
landscape.
Jonas
Hauptman "AZ Wagon Station Rekit Project"
"ReKit", Jonas Hauptman’s reinterpretation
and modification of one of Andrea Zittel’s A-Z Wagon Station
(WS) will debut this month at HDTS. Elaborating on the original,
reKit is expressed as a transportable, post-apocalyptic
dwelling inspired by Mad Max, Thoreau’s Walden, and a fascination
with compactable carnival ride construction. Honoring Zittel's
initial intentions each of the original components performs the
same function in the new design, though its location in space
has been pushed outward. The new design expresses itself diagrammatically
as an exploded axonometric of the original, with new fabrications
linking the original set of parts. Ultimately the reKit collaboration
yields a “super sizing” of the original WS this offers
the opportunity for more complex functionality and a lot more
living space.
Rainer
Ganahl "naft - oil"
Rainer's contribution was the 'vandalization' of a bill
board for a local Ford dealership:He simply applied a green venyl
letter sign with the Arabic word "Naft" = OIL
Jasmine
Little“Desert Faux Pas”
As a resident of the high desert for the last six years
Jasmine has come to know the desert well, and now regards it as
an ordinary place like any other. Through conversations
with people less familiar with the area she has come across the
common misconception that only extraordinarily bizarre events
happen in this environment. For the HDTS Jasmine has constructed
characters out of recycled trash to represent people interacting
in a social setting in a residential backyard here in the desert.
This project will try to convey a completely ordinary event that
takes place here, but is commonplace everywhere, in an attempt
to demystify this environment.
Chuck
Moffit and Ingram Ober "Sightplan"
"Sightplan"
will consist of a twelve foot tall obsevation deck at the apex
of a seminomatic tent structure which will explore concepts of
sububan desert expansion.
Bettina
Hubby “Wearer-Wanderers”
You may want to rub your eyes and make sure you’re not hallucinating
but keepthem open to spot wearer-wanderers at dusk in Bettina’s
black and white sculptural capes made from men’s suits and
women’s lingerie. The desert is the perfect backdrop for
a surreal dress code--think Mad Max meets Groucho Marx meets Madonna’s
underwear drawer.
Alex
Slade,
"Blind As A Bat Version 1 – Pallid Bat Antrozous
pallidus:Possible Trajectory"
The
Blind As A Bat sculptures trace possible trajectories of bats
and model their use of sound waves for echo location. Version
1 – Pallid Bat Antrozous pallidu finds it’s source
in the typical home of the Pallid Bat in crevices between large
boulders. A set of large boulders has such a crevice and inspired
the sculpture. Pallid Bats usually leave their cave late at night
and fly for several hours while foraging for their prey of scorpions,
crickets, and other insects. I took just the initial segment of
the night’s feeding journey and projected what would be
a logical trajectory towards and down the wash. The yellow tubing
represents the flight trajectory with the red lines representing
the ray tracing of sound waves caused by the bat’s high
pitched chirping. Two points along this one trajectory are modeled
for sound. Given the formlessness of the desert, the trajectory
of an animal that locates its position in the world and that of
its prey without the use of sight seemed appropriate.
Lisa Anne Auerbach
Fabienne
Lasserre and Christy Gast
Amy
Yao (Art Swap meet)
Noah Purifoy
Foundation
Kristen Botshekan
Justin Samson and Muffy Brandt
Christy Gast
Eddie
Ruscha
Collaborating
Venues:
Los
Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions
In the group exhibition at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions
"Strange Animal," past and present participants of the
High Desert Test Sites, an independent open-format art event hosted
annually in Joshua Tree, CA, have agreed to work within the confines
of a specific gallery space in which a single parameter is set.
In the experimental and social spirit of HDTS, each participant
must somehow interact or intervene in the presentation of another
participant. This manner of working provides a catalyst
for people to gather in what amounts to an arbitrary place to
discuss each other’s work, in the process of putting it
together. The expectation is that participants will inevitably
end up helping each other, discussing and sometimes altering their
projects. Therefore what is proposed, versus what is manifested,
may not always equate. HDTS, then, becomes not as much "place"
specific as much as it is "social event" specific.
One can think of HDTS as a kind of computer with a variety of
interfaces which people can plug into, play their media, unplug,
and depart. Sometimes the media are interactive, sometimes
not. Sometimes the computer works, sometimes it does not.
With this in mind, twelve emerging, Los Angeles-based artists
have been invited to participate in "Strange Animal,"
the LA satellite of HDTS: Justin Beal, Jedediah Caesar, the cake
society, Kate Costello, Shannon Ebner, Fabienne Lasserre and Christy
Gast, Marie Lorenz, Matt Lorenz, Jennifer Nocon, Jim Skuldt, and
Dick Slessig. "Strange Animal" is organized by
Los Angeles-based artist Giovanni Jance.
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