HDTS 2017
CURATED BY ARAM MOSHAYEDI AND SOHRAB MOHEBBI
http://www.highdeserttestsites.com/news/hdts-2017-curated-aram-moshayedi-and-sohrab-mohebbi
Saturday, October 21. 2017
3 - 5 p.m.
Edie Fake with the Glass Outhouse
Location:
Glass Outhouse Art Gallery
77575 Twentynine Palms Highway
Wonder Valley, CA 92277
5:45 p.m.
Chill Out: Oliver Payne
Location:
Iron Age Road
Wonder Valley, CA 92277
The Palm Talks
Location:
Palms Restaurant
831831 Amboy Road
Wonder Valley, CA 92277
The Palm Talks
Community has become a buzzword for everything from right-wing fraternities, ecological collectives, and Silicon Valley burners to gentrification activists. The very notion of the term brings people together as much as it divides them; it creates a sense of belonging and a case for segregation, shared sets of beliefs and prejudices. More than likely, we are all voluntary and involuntary members of different communities, with contradictory values and conflicting agendas. Therefore, it might be more relevant to think of a non-community, where each and every one of us can be left alone together. But is this possible in today’s political climate? Is there anything left of the social infrastructure that supports operations of the self?
The Palm Talks wants to know what the future of our non-community looks like. How can we not belong to a group that would likely take us as a member? How can there be the acceptance of difference without otherness? These are some basic ideas. The Palm Talks affords an opportunity to think about the groups to which we belong. Particularly in the context of the High Desert and the convergent ideologies represented there, it becomes ever more important to address the notion of community—as well as non-community—through personal anecdotes and oral histories, as well as critical methodologies. There is perhaps no better place to ask these questions than Wonder Valley, where some come to create communities, others to escape them, some a combination of both, and where all rely on the land, water, trees, animals, and everything else that is seemingly common to all.
The Palm Talks includes both local and non-local contemporary thinkers, historians, writers, and artists, whose contributions culminate in a momentary glimpse into our collective state. Set within the context of the legendary Palms Restaurant in Twentynine Palms and presented with live musical accompaniment by M. Cay Castagnetto and The
Renderers, there will be a negotiation between language and sound, noise and meaning, music and speech. Participants in The Palm Talks include Fiona Connor, Trinie Dalton, Gary Dauphin, Steve Kado, Alexander Keefe, Nancy Klein, Annelies Kuiper, Cailin O'Connor, Litia Perta, Linda Sibio, Laura Sibley, Bobby Jesus and Frances Stark, Sam Thorne, James Owen Weatherall, and others.
