In this reported essay at The Believer, Ash Sanders recounts her time in Bombay Beach, a community on the edge of the Salton Sea, during its annual Biennale, a multi-day festival during which eclectic artists converge and transform the small town into performance art. Sanders’s account is a study of water in the West, a portrait of environmental ruin, and an exploration of what it looks like to create freely in the face of devastation.
I’ll admit it: I liked Tao. But as the trip went on, I couldn’t stop thinking of how he spoke about the town. As a blank canvas. A philosophical experiment. A sort of fait accompli about commiserating with collapse. I wondered how this felt to the residents who lived here year-round, who’d had these philosophies and this party sprung on them. When the artists leave and the sun really gets going, these people don’t have the luxury of other options. They’ve lived here in the fat times and the lean, the floods and the droughts. They would live here regardless of sculptures or manifestos, whether by choice or by fate.
More picks about California
Futures From Ruins
Bombay Beach was once a vibrant resort town on the Salton Sea until agricultural pollution, drought, and toxic air led to its demise. Today, an art movement and emerging community hope to bring it back. In this Noema essay, writer Johanna Hoffman and photographer Tao Ruspoli show how a town in ruins is experiencing a…
The Case of the Missing Chacmools
“Geoffrey Gray investigates the writer’s bizarre cult and finds himself entangled in a web of murky financial dealings, sex, possible foul play—and one death-defying supernatural being.”
Joshua Tree’s Celebrity Rattlesnake Wrangler Wants to Change How You See Reptiles
“Danielle Wall’s first encounter with a rattlesnake “wasn’t that scary,” she said. Now the reptiles are her passion.”
Huge in Palm Springs
“An unlikely statue has become a rich-person controversy for the ages. In the California desert, I found out why.”
‘This Place Belongs to You’
“Joshua Tree National Park is synonymous with the desert. Yet record numbers of guests threaten to overwhelm its beauty, wildlife, and small staff.”
The Last Glimpses of California’s Vanishing Hippie Utopias
“Half a century ago, a legion of idealists dropped out of society and went back to the land, creating a patchwork of utopian communes across Northern California. Here, the last of those rogue souls offer a glimpse of their otherworldly residences—and the tail end of a grand social experiment.”
