Just Deserts
4 HD Video Projections; 8-channel audio; 34 minute 30 second loop
Commissioned for Sikka Art Fair by Dubai Culture. It was installed first in the Al Fahidi Historic Neighborhood in Dubai during March and April 2016 and later in the Tashkent Biennale VIII.
The desert has played across our imagination for millennia. It has been continually represented in media from paintings to film. It piqued my attention in college when I was able to visit the Southwestern US.
The video installation has narrative elements but is not a straight linear narrative. Parts of the video is pulled from my own library of videos that I’ve recorded over the last couple of decades throughout the world; parts were filmed specifically for the project. Finally, I sourced video from public archives. The parts will be woven together into a story of the desert, its allure, the dread that it can draw.
Obviously, much art found in Dubai deals with the desert, and this is for good reason: we are surrounded by it, the city arose from it. While this project aims to take a complex and layered approach to this environment, it is mostly told through my perspective from growing up in the United States.
Playlist for this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Additional music
Blue Desert by Skatter
Desert Space by King County1
The Edge between the Desert and the Green by Space Slab Go
Ayahuasca Cowboy in the SciFi Desert by Periodic Fable
Desert Earthworks by Acrilic Colors
Video is by artist and sourced from Public Domain (archive.org)
Atomic Bomb Blast Effects
The Lone Ranger
Five Hundred Million Years a Desert
Arizona: Its Mineral Resources and Scenic Wonders
Oil Paths of Progress
America:5 Gone West
Cabea Prieta National Wildlife Refuge
Camp Desert Rock Nevada
Camp Life at Camp Desert Rock
Constellation: Desert Research and Technologies Studies
Desert Escape
Desert Gold
Desert Phantom
Desert Victory
Desert Empire
Desert Venture
Show ‘Em the Road
Devil of the Desert against the Son of Hercules
Drums of the Desert
Excavation at the Site of Seneferu’s Pyramid
Fighting Renegade
Freedom Highway
Frontier Horizon
In Search of the Miraculous
Irrigation in the Heart of the Sahara
Operation 1955
Roads to Romance: The Santa Cruz Trail and the Land of the Giant Cactus
Sunset in the Desert
The Desert Fox
Land and Live in the Desert
The Desert Trail
The Painted Desert
Toll of the Desert
Tomorrow we Live
View from Space