Mission
High Desert Test Sites , cofounded and directed by Andrea Zittel, is a nonprofit arts organization based in Joshua Tree, California. Started in 2002 by a loosely knit group of collaborators (Andrea Zittel, Andy Stillpass, John Connelly, Shaun Regen and Lisa Anne Auerbach), HDTS has since hosted the work of more than 450 artists, 11 expansive site-specific programs, and 25 solo projects.
As a conceptual entity HDTS is dedicated to “learning from what we are not” and the belief that intimately engaging with our high desert community can offer new insights and perspectives, often challenging art to take on new areas of relevancy.
The Experiment
To challenge traditional conventions of ownership, property, and patronage. Most projects will ultimately belong to no one and are intended to melt back into the landscape as new ones emerge.
To insert art directly into a life, a landscape, or a community where it will sink or swim based on a set of criteria beyond that of art world institutions and galleries.
To encourage art that remains in the context for which it was created - work will be born, live, and die in the same spot.
To initiate an organism in its own right-one that is bigger and richer than the vision of any single artist, architect, designer, or curator.
To create a center outside of any preexisting centers. We are inspired by individuals and groups working outside of existing cultural capitals, who are able to make intellectually rigorous and culturally relevant work in whatever location they happen to be in.
To find common ground between contemporary art and localized art issues.
To contribute to a community in which art can truly make a difference. HDTS exists in a series of communities that edge one of the largest suburban sprawls in the nation. Many of the artists who settle in this area are from larger cities, but want to live in a place where they can shape the development of their own community. For the time being, there is still a feeling in the air that if we join together we can still hold back the salmon stucco housing tracts and big box retail centers. Well maybe.
Who We Are
ORIGINAL FOUNDERS
Andrea Zittel
Andy Stillpass
John Connelly
Lisa Anne Auerbach
Shaun Caley Regen
CURRENTLY ADMINISTERED BY
Andrea Zittel - Founder/director
Vanesa Zendejas - Administrative Director
Elena Yu - Administrative Assistant
HDTS HQ
Kristy Campbell, Aimee Buyea, Emily Endo, Sarah Greenlee, Eloise Hess, and Tayler Straziuso. Thanks to Bob Carr, Elizabeth Carr, and Zena Bender at the Sky Village Swap Meet!
WEBSITE
Neil Doshi
SUPPORT
High Desert Test Sites is grateful to The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Tides Foundation, The James Irvine Foundation - Arts Regranting Program/Inland Empire at The Community Foundation, Strengthening Inland Southern California through Philanthropy, The Foundation for Contemporary Arts, The Ranch Projects, Sky Village Swap Meet, and our generous donors for their support.
support
When HDTS was founded in 2002, part of the original mission was to run on zero budget and generate relevant and rigorous programming through the most efficient means. Fourteen years later, the socio-economic climate has changed—Joshua Tree has changed—and the world has changed. HDTS artists have always been resourceful, but we are increasingly aware that an important part of showcasing and supporting their work is compensating them for their time, efforts, and ideas.
Bringing our audience such programming also wouldn’t be possible without the small, paid staff who we rely on. Each event that we host requires hours of planning, managing, and communicating—from finding the right site for an artist, to sourcing volunteers, to updating our website and managing the books.
Together, along with countless dedicated volunteers, we’ve managed over the years to:
- Showcase the work of over 450 artists and presenters
- Host 11 large, site-specific programs
- Support over 25 solo projects
- Produce 10 publications
- Host a monthly book club
- Maintain a local presence with our HQ
- Host workshops and community events
- Pass out hundreds of maps to HDTS sites
- Build a Desert Archive
- Provide an online resource for those interested in local sites and projects
As a small arts organization, in a rural community, we heavily rely on the support of our donors both from the High Desert region and beyond. Every contribution, large and small, helps support the staff and artists in continuing to offer more immersive and intimate experiences and exchanges between critical thinkers from many different walks of life.
(Please use the "add special instructions to the seller" box in PayPal to let us know if would like your contribution to directly support a specific upcoming project.) You can also mail a check to High Desert Test Sites at P.O. Box 1058, Joshua Tree, CA 92252.
Thank you so much for your support - any amount helps!
Visit
Visiting artworks
Although many of our projects are only temporarily sited, some are permanent and are located throughout the Joshua Tree region. The best way to find these works is to follow the directions on our current HDTS driving map.
The HQ at the Sky Village Swap Meet
The HDTS HQ is temporarily closed. We hope you'll visit us when we reopen (as soon as it's safe to do so)
The HDTS HQ is a visitor's center and creative hub where artists, craftsmen, visionaries, and friends engage with the high desert community through creative projects and performances. You can pick up a copy of our driving map to HDTS projects and other local sites of interest at the HQ every Saturday from 9 am–1 pm—and please check our website regularly to see what special events we have on the calendar.
The HQ is collectively run by a small group of volunteers who review and accept proposals several times a year. We are open to a wide variety of projects to present at the HQ, but are particularly interested in work that engages with our local community (who have a strong presence at the Swap Meet), encouraging their participation in a contemporary practice. Proposals are accepted via email and are reviewed about once every three months.
Directions: 7028 Theater Road (just off Hwy 247, right behind Barr Lumber), Yucca Valley, CA 92286; 760-365-2104
*Email us if you'd like to get involved with the HDTS HQ at Sky Village Swap Meet!
FAQ
Ok. So I'm excited about the next HDTS event. What should I bring with me to the desert?
You are awesome. We love your enthusiasm. Bring plenty of drinking water and snacks. Bring sunscreen and a wacky wide-brimmed hat for extra protection in the bright sun. Bring a sweater or jacket, as it can get chilly at night. Bring lots of cash.
Cell phones and mapping apps don't always work out here, so be sure to look up directions and print out driving maps ahead of time (many addresses in the desert don't register properly on cell phone mapping applications, and service can be spotty).
Please remember this is a fragile desert environment. Leave no trace! Be prepared to haul out everything that you haul in.
I am coming to the desert this weekend, is there anything up to see?
Most of our current HDTS projects are short term or temporary, but you can download the current HDTS driving map for directions to ongoing HDTS projects and points of interest.
When is the next HDTS event?
Check our website as we do list all upcoming events well before they happen and you can also sign up for the HDTS mailing list to stay abreast of HDTS updates, events, and projects.
Does HDTS have a physical space? Where are you located, and what is your operational structure like?
HDTS is a conceptual project as much as a physical one – so while we have a full schedule, almost two hundred acres of land at our disposal, and a (small, part-time) staff - we do not have a physical roof over our heads. Because our mission supports work that actively engages the world at large, we like to spend as much time as possible out in that world.
We have a small core team who all work part-time on the project. We do lots of work remotely on our computers, or driving around out in the desert, and then tend to meet up in Andrea’s studio when we need a big table and things like envelopes, scotch tape, and a stapler.
You are welcome to visit the HDTS HQ at the Sky Village Swap Meet in Yucca Valley, open Saturdays 9–1PM.
How can I get involved?
We periodically need help assisting artists with their installations. This may include hard labor, sweat, and blisters, but installations are generally a lot of fun, and a good way to meet people. If you are sturdy, reliable, and up for the task, please email us, and we will let you know about upcoming installtions.
You can share information with us about a destination that we should check out, or an inspirational figure who we might be interested in researching.
I'm interested in proposing a project - are you accepting proposals, and what kind of proposals are you looking for?
We are not taking project proposals at this time, except for projects done at the HDTS HQ at Sky Village Swap Meet in Yucca Valley. Programming at this site is geared towards a diverse local audience, and due to its unique swap meet context we ask all artists to visit the swap meet at least once before sending in a proposal.
OK - I’m confused... What's the difference between A-Z West and HDTS?
A-Z West is Andrea Zittel’s home and land in Joshua Tree, dedicated to her life practice and special programs. It includes her home, studio, A-Z Wagon Station Encampment, and the Institute of Investigative Living. The activities that go on at A-Z West are primarily related to Andrea's practice and are separate from HDTS, but at certain times A-Z West will expand by hosting HDTS programs/installations/artists.
High Desert Test Sites is a non-profit support entity for artists whose practices explore the intersection between contemporary art and life at large. The HDTS sites include many different pieces of land used for projects and programming. These include A-Z West, as well as other parcels scatted throughout Pioneertown, Joshua Tree, and Wonder Valley.
I love what you are doing and can see that you are a small program desperately in need of resources - how can I help support HDTS?
HDTS runs on a shoestring budget, and any outside support goes a long way. To keep our program running, please consider making a tax deductible donation or making a purchase from our online shop!
How do I contact a High Desert Test Sites representative?
Send us an email at info@highdeserttestsites.com. Sign up for the HDTS mailing list to stay abreast of HDTS updates, events, and projects.
Now, a Farewell, an Always Beginning
I sit here now in a coffee shop, in a city, in a space that is old brick with new scones inside, along a light rail, and people are clumped close. I left the desert in the beginning of this year, to return to a city that is changing so quickly. I left the desert because I thought I was missing something, that everything was too hard. I left the desert because I really felt like I might be going crazy, that I had lost sight of a certain part of myself and my relationship to the world. I was struggling to figure out a space for myself, feeling the unraveling of one of the reasons I was out here- to move into a house that my partner was building in the boulders. The circumstances for being here had changed- we were working under the assumption of a linear goal, and it became more and more apparent that a project is a story too, and in language we can make anything true, and bounded, and monumental, and full of power. But like our histories, like any place, the shared subjective reality is much more complex. So I had to step away, to return, though a return to anything is not actually possible.
This question: Do we come to the desert, to any Wilderness, Thoreau to his Walden, as a rejection of an urban condition? To create an experience based on what it is not? Are we antagonistic, sometimes even violent in our rejection of other ways of living? I hear people say “F*ck the city, I don’t need those people” in the desert sometimes, as they become intrigued by idea of a simple life for ones-self.
I think about this all the time in my practice as an artist, and place-maker- how to create an inclusive space that shifts and is not rigid, that is both responsive to and inclusive of the grander social organism that we are all in the process of constantly creating. A space that can hold the I and the We simultaneously.
The desert exists in a mythical space to people in the city, perhaps fits into a box, and allows for a release. Life became complicated in the fall for me, with habitation and patterns of life, as the idea of the desert, and the reality of the desert began to rub up against each other more and more. I believe that my life became hard as the space of the desert was out of my control, as I moved away from my initial, new-feeling time here, when reality was full of possibilities. The platform of being a Scout, and curating certain experiences in relation to myself, allowed me to retain a simultaneous subjective and objective experience of this expanding place, which was safe.
We tell stories that go on and on, there is a spontaneity to human interaction, a willing ness to let go because of the sheer vastness of the landscape. To let stories inter-weave, and let go of certain conceptions of what a friendship is supposed to look like, what we are supposed to do together, what we should be talking about. The infrastructure of the city and technology limits bodies and minds to certain topics and patterns of movement. I feel like my actual experiences are extensions of email conversations.
People let go in the desert, are open, even come out planning to have expansive experiences.
believe in the desert, and the roughness and truth it allows for, the trust in a togetherness of all who choose to reside by these boulders and dry washes, the leap into a self exposed, defining its own rhythms and paths, in every moment. I met people and they left in their vans, and left on foot, and others who moved into another mode of reality that I was not as kindred with- there is an allowance of ebbs, friendships are not monuments, failure is a part of how time happens in the conflation of the dreamed reality and the lived reality. J-topia, 2-mile-topia (Two utopian projects that were being discussed early in my time in the desert) even transition town, and my friend Stephanie Smith’s plan for a one square mile sustainable village space in North Joshua Tree: how we want to live, how we want to live better. The situation that encompasses the question changes, but there is always a striving for the horizon, a desire to keep building towards something better, even if we do not know what it is yet.
My next adventure takes me to Baltimore, to work with the Baltimore Museum of Art to create a space of comfort in the institution, and help to figure out ways for the museum to expand its energies into the public sphere. We will be working on creating a sense of home in the museum, exploring ideas of movement, place, memory, why things matter, and the power of together! I am from the east, and looking forward to a return to the deciduous, to a sense of history embedded in the landscape, to my family, to bricks and snowstorms, and again, a sense of the unknown.
Here there are sunsets too, in LA, the horizon is blocked by roads and bridges and artificial light, but when I look at the sky, I still feel everything.
Please keep in touch with me, I am katiebachler@gmail.com! Stay tuned for a map of this time in the desert!
-Katie
Katie Bachler
Katie Bachler was our first HDTS Scout, and was in residence from 2012-2013.
The HDTS Scout Residency is dedicated to learning more about the people and places that make up our diverse and ever evolving community.
During Katie's residency, visitors were invited to drop into the HDTS HQ, the Scout's home base, to meet Katie, who could be found making maps, hosting conversations, and baking bread – in between her off-site adventures around town and out in the field.
Katie had a lot in store during her time here, including:
- a series of talks featuring local experts
- joining together to create a web of knowledge
- a research library and archive documenting the many spaces, places, plants, and people that make up this special region
- casual conversations with drop in visitors over tea
- site visits and field trips around town
Katie engaged the community by instigating map-making and rag-rug braiding workshops, the Scout’s Book Club, Art in the Environment classes for desert kids, casual conversations, site visits and field trips—all shared in her Scout’s blog, which serves as the foundation for her book.
