[Andrea Zittel: High Desert Test Sites]
[REPORTER] For thirty years, Curtis Springer operated his Zzyzx Mineral Springs,
selling health, religion, and the Springer specialty,
Antediluvian herb tea.
But then, the troubles with the government over who owned the land
finally caught up with him in 1974,
and he was evicted.
[Boulevard of Dreams]
[ROB FULTON] Oh, I never did explain Zzyzx, did I?
Curtis invented it to be phonetically or alphabetically the last word--
nothing more than that.
But then he incorporated that in his advertising,
both in literature and on radio.
He'd say things like,
"Come to Zzyzx Mineral Springs, the last word in health."
[ANCHORMAN] Well, according to the bureau of land management,
legally, Hell has frozen over,
and Springer will never get Zzyzx back.
[CSU Desert Studies Center]
[AURORA TANG] Zzyzx is currently this desert studies center,
which is about three hours from both Joshua Tree and L.A.
So, it's just far enough out to be a trip.
One of the reasons to do High Desert Test Sites programming here
was to continue to keep that sense of exploration
and that feeling of discovery and learning.
[Aurora Tang, Managing Director, High Desert Test Sites]
And also, it keeps things interesting for both Andrea and I.
[FULTON] We've salvaged some of the old resort signs and everything.
I brought this out of mothballs today so you could see it.
This would have been posted here at the building.
To kind of underscore the religious underpinnings of his ministry here--
and his foundation and his mission here--
he developed the pool in the shape of a cross.
And then, if you wanted to sun yourself on the slabs out here,
these pipes sticking up would provide cool water
to flood the surface and cool it down.
[ANDREA ZITTEL] So, it's always a little hard to explain
what High Desert Test Sites is,
[Andrea Zittel, Co-Founder, High Desert Test Sites]
because we're, sort of, deliberately not trying to make an institution.
But it's a non-profit entity that...
It's a support entity for work that sort of lives in the world at large.
So this weekend, High Desert Test Sites is being curated by Aurora Tang.
It's all about water in the sense that
being in the desert is only possible because of water.
And so water takes on a special...
I mean, I would probably call it like a "life force".
We have a mix of different artists that we work with,
and some are local--
like, people that we discover out here
who we think are like really amazing and inspirational,
and we sort of want to bring more attention to them.
[ALYSE EMDUR] The desert, I think, is a place of escaping civilization.
My film really looks at this attempt to escape the aging bodies of retirees
[Alyse Emdur, Artist]
in the healing mineral spring in Florida.
They travel there every year
in hopes that the water will alleviate illness
and restore health.
[ZITTEL] We do a lot of different things,
but the sort of trademark things are these big events that we create.
[MATT COOLIDGE] Well, hello everybody.
My name is Matt Coolidge.
I'll be talking about lakes of the Mojave!
[ZITTEL] Like, we have an audience here
that's not necessarily an art audience,
but people who are really interested
and willing to support art that inserts itself
directly into the world.
I don't know...
I like working with Aurora so much,
and we talk, like, at length
about what it is and what it isn't,
and what it should be,
and what there's a necessity for,
and how art functions.
[SANT KHALSA] I thought,
"It's absurd that people are going to water stores to buy water"
"when their tap water is perfectly safe."
[Sant Khalsa, Artist]
But, realize, that they didn't think that their water was safe.
The primary consumer of this water was immigrant populations
who had come from countries where their tap water wasn't safe.
I realized they had some really interesting names,
and that's actually what drew me to them.
The process of photographing the water stores
was really more about the idea of taking this pilgrimage,
looking for, in a sense, the sacred springs.
[TANG] Sometimes we'll send people off to these remote sites
to look for projects,
and they won't find it, with our little primitive driving maps.
But the thing is,
they're never usually that upset about it,
because they found something else equally amazing
that they might not otherwise have found.
[ZITTEL] We bought a hundred acres of land to use
that we let artists do projects on.
And we wanted to find parcels where
you wouldn't ever necessarily see two artworks at the same time.
We've always tried to help artists find situations
to make their work,
where it can retain that, kind of, quality of unknowableness.
If you're, sort of, out somewhere,
and you see some weird, amazing, inexplicable object,
you can wonder about it for days.
It's been this constant discussion about how to remain a support entity
without becoming another institution that's commissioning people to do works.
And that's a very very fine line to walk.
[FULTON] So, I believe, in about fifteen minutes,
there is a lecture scheduled in the main hall down there.
You might want to go up and use the restroom, if needed,
and, thank you very much for attending!
[APPLAUSE]