Thursday October 22, 2009

4:00 PM - 9:00 PM Reception/Mixer
Dick Hebdige's House
Giving participants signed up for the Twentynine Palms Marine Base Tour on Friday, 23rd October an opportuity to meet and get to know one another.

Thursday October 23, 2009

9:00 AM - 3:00 PM Tour of Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center
Twentynine Palms, CA.
Tour included faux Iraq/Afghanistan towns training facilities, IED detection/disarmament center, and barracks facilities. (http://www.29palms.usmc.mil/)

3:00 PM - 6:00 PM Registration/Arrival at Joshua Tree Getaway Ranch in Wonder Valley area.
85212 Woilmer Rd , Wonder Valley, CA 92277
Introduction to Team Leaders and other participants; introduction to area, sites, landscape

6:30 PM Gathering at the Palms Bar and Restaurant
73527 29 Palms Hwy, Twentynine Palms, CA 92277

Note: The Palms is the eclectic hang-out for Wonder Valley's community. Artists regularly mix with locals on the weekends during musical performances. The Palms has a bar and two stages - one outside, one inside- both of which are available to us for meetings, seminars and (in the evening) open mic. presentations / performances etc. Bring your courage, your imagination and an instrument or an idea you are prepared to stand up for and alongside and DO It, as the Nike people say.

Thursday October 24, 2009

Dry-Immersion Symposium center, Woilmer Rd, JT Getaway Ranch

10:30 AM - 11:30 AM Presentation by Claude Willey
US desert aficionado/writer- H20: Deserts and Water Manipulation in California

11:30 AM - 1:30 PM Presentations by Team Leaders

1. Brett Stallbaum (Visual Arts, UC San Diego) Land-based digital art and cell phone mapping project. Tracing current GPS and GIS-based radical cartography work back to 20th century surrealism, Situationism and 1970's land art, Brett will introduce the open source HiperGps platform to produce individual and/or collaborative audio and geo-annotations and route-based narratives using dirt cheap cell mobile hand-sets on various sites during the weekend.

2. Lisa Tucker (formerly Art dept, UC Irvine and Artsblock, UC Riverside) and Deena Capparelli ( Art Dept, Pasadena City College) : Living Laboratory Lisa and Deena are researching alternative irrigation systems, desert flora, medicinal and edible plants and indigenous tribal plant lore and are interested in integrating pedagogy and research in on-site demonstration projects.

3. Ken Ehrlich (Art Dept, UC Riverside/California Institute of the Arts): Ken Ehrlich will present research on the re-purposing of artifacts, detritus and media in the context of the desert and lead a discussion on strategies to develop a site-specific art project based primarily on re-purposed military hardware from the Marine base in 29 Palms. Engaging theorists Murray Bookchin and Brian Holmes, we will consider the legacy of the homesteader cabin in the high desert, "off the grid" technologies and art practices that complicate the space between utility and uselessness.

NOTE: The team leaders' role is to present collaborative project proposals, facilitate discussion and solicit suggestions for possible art/research projects. The Saturday morning presentations can be regarded as alternate conceptual frameworks for arts-centered Desert Studies research proposals , as prompts to action, and as recruitment opportunities for those who wish to work collaboratively. Many individual participants will also be coming with prior research interests/agendas and fully envisaged projects. The immersion is designed to facilitate knowledge, resource and project sharing in all contexts and at every level.

2:00 PM - 6:00 PM Field Trips
Participants can sign up on registering for one of the following field trips.

1. Stephanie Smith's Eco-Shack improvisational architecture/ commune building workshop, Joshua Tree. http://www.ecoshack.com/

2. Benjamin Bottoms' 29 Palms Neon Sign Museum/Desert Labyrinth Complex (over the last decade, Benjamin Bottoms has created a unique site for experiencing the variety of desert life. He has crafted an elaborate water-catch system that feeds an impressive garden; installed dozens of vintage American highway signs; and hosted artists)

3. Wonder Valley walkabout/Micro-Data Mining http://www.mydesert.com/apps/pbcs.dll/gallery?Avis=J1&Dato=20090731&Kategori

4. Noah Purifoy's Sculpture Garden, Joshua Tree.
African American artist, Purifroy, a former art teacher and founder of the Watts Tower Arts Center in LA moved to the desert in 1989 acquiring 10 acres which he proceeded to fill over the ensuing 13 years with his compulsive assemblages made of scavenged and recycled materials.

5. Pioneertown still has the original wooden stage set buildings, many of them now permanently occupied. The town serves as a gathering point for locals from Morongo to 29 Palms, for survivalists who live off the grid in the adjacent mountains and for tourists and hipsters from LA who come to see the staged gun fights, check out the faux-authentic cowgirl/boy ambience and meet colorful `characters'

6. Open Container installation, Desert Hot Springs

7. The Integratron, an all wood geodesic dome built in 1953 by retired aerospace engineer, George Van Tassel who allegedly based the design on Moses' Tabernacle, the writings of Nikola Tesla and instructions he claimed to have received from Venusians who contacted him during meditation sessions conducted in the subterranean apartment built before WW2 under Giant Rock, 5.2 miles northwest of the Integraton by émigré German miner, George Critzer.

8. Giant Rock, the world's largest single boulder (5,800 sq feet, 7 stories high) is 5.2 miles northwest of the Integraton. Considered sacred for centuries by local Native American tribes, the rock was home in the 1930's to Frank Critzer, a German miner who excavated the base and made a subterranean apartment for himself. Critzer died in mysterious explosive circumstances on site during WW2.http://www.lucernevalley.net/giantrock/

6:00 PM The Palms: Wet Immersion Mixer/Decompression Session

Thursday October 25, 2009

11:00 AM Plenary Session with Dick Hebdige and team leaders (catered brunch)
UCR Palm Desert Campus, Building B, 75-080 Frank Sinatra Drive, Palm Desert, CA 92211

12:00 PM - 3:00 PM Tour of the Lower Desert Dunes and Oasis with Cameron Barrows UC Riverside Palm Desert Center for Conservation Biology