Mapping the Desert/Deserting the Map
Dry-Immersion Roving Symposium
October 22-25, 2009

CALL FOR APPLICATIONS
The University of California, Riverside Sweeney Art Gallery, (http://sweeney.ucr.edu) is pleased to announce the launch of MAPPING THE DESERT/DESERTING THE MAP, an arts-centered investigation of California's upper (Mojave) and lower (Colorado) deserts and the new, not-so-new and downright ancient technologies that make such mapping possible. This 4-day gathering, along with a year-long series of events focused on California’s deserts, is partially funded by a grant from the University of California Institute for Research in the Arts in association with its new Social Ecologies: California-centric embedded arts research program. Applications are due by Thursday, October1st for those wishing to participate in the marine base tour. All other applications are due by October 9th to Shane Shukis, UCR Sweeney Art Gallery Assistant Director (sshukis@ucr.edu).

SCHEDULE OF EVENTS / ABOUT THE DRY-IMMERSION ROVING SYMPOSIUM

The following schedule is tentative:

October 22nd  4-9 pm:  Meet at Dick Hebdige’s house in Joshua Tree, CA  
October 23rd   8:30 am-3 pm:  Tour of 29 Palms Marine Base
3-5 pm: rest
5-9 pm: evening events at Wonder Valley/Palms/JT Getaway location
October 24th Presentations/tours/discussions focused on Desert issues at Palms
October 25th 11-11:30 am: Lecture at UCR Palm Desert Graduate Center
12-2pm: tour of the lower Colorado desert oasis/dune systems

Participants can choose to stay in nearby hotels (a list will be provided) at their own expense, opt to stay at Hebdige’s house and/or camping in the desert. The organizers encourage an engagement with “roughing it” since this event is meant to be immersive within the desert region. Food and drink will be provided by event organizers.

Through a range of media and across a variety of platforms, the Dry-Immersion symposium will explore California's ultra-arid regions up close and from a distance at a time when widespread concern over environmental, economic and cultural sustainability is fast pushing the desert from the margins to the center of attention in debates on the future of our planet.

Presenters will work to focus group discussion, help articulate research questions and elicit suggestions for possible arts projects to be completed by participating symposium members either individually or in teams by early Spring 2010. Possible tropes to be explored about the 21st Century desert could include: paleontology/the Origin and End Game/Armageddon; dumping ground vs. ultra- sacred site; `next frontier of leisure' and refuge of last resort; unspoiled wilderness and irradiated hinterland; precious irreplaceable resource and dirt-cheap real estate development opportunity.

Successful project proposals emerging from this process are potentially eligible for follow up/follow through funding from UCR Sweeney Art Gallery and UCIRA. The results of this experiment in arts-based Desert Studies, action research, and “process curating” will be documented over the coming fall and winter and presented in late-winter and spring 2010 (February to June).

HOW TO APPLY
A limited number of spaces is available for UC faculty, staff and students to participate in the Dry-Immersion roving symposium, a weekend of tours, concentrated talks, and events. The cost is $50 for faculty/staff and $20 for students. Lodging is at the expense of the participant, but meals are included in the cost. A select number of scholarships is available to qualified students. Please contact Shane Shukis, UCR Sweeney Art Gallery Assistant Director, for further information (sshukis@ucr.edu), but preferably provide a brief summary of your research interests, and to provide proof of financial need if applying for the graduate student scholarship.

Download application here.

About UCIRA’s new Social Ecologies: California-centric embedded arts research program
With an eye to California’s diverse landscape and the often embattled relationship between its natural and developed spaces, in the 2009-2014 period, UCIRA will provide opportunities for artists to investigate the radically diverse terrains of the state. Embedding artists within various California institutions and field contexts provides support for arts researchers interested in topics as diverse as agriculture, land and water use, emergent technologies and new forms of knowledge production and practice. New modes of visual and material translation are encouraged, such as experimental cartography (which provides a critical foundation for an area of work that bridges art/design, cartography/geography and activism), eco-literacy (understanding the principles of ecosystems and using those principles for creating sustainable human communities), and urban pedagogy (bringing together art and design professionals with community-based advocates, organizers, government officials, service-providers and policymakers to create projects that present the possibility for new forms of knowledge production).

Mapping the Desert/Deserting the Map is a continuation of a dedicated interest in exploring the place of the desert environment in the future of the social imagination and landscape begun in 2008 with the UCIRA/UCR Palm Desert Graduate Center LUMINOUS GREEN DESERT RESEARCH OPEN SPACE gathering. The program took place at the UC Riverside Palm Desert Research Center and the Boyd Deep Canyon Desert Research Center in Palm Desert and explored among other topics future desert ecologies; native desert knowledge systems; sustainable design strategies for a world without water; desert soundscapes; desert navigation; the new desert social order; desert food and waste cycles. For more information on these and other UCIRA programs, please visit our website at www.ucira.ucsb.edu