Mapping The Desert, Deserting The Map

An intensive, low-residency course including participation in a dry-immersion roving symposium scheduled for October 22-25, 2009 in Joshua Tree/29 Palms and the Coachella Valley. The symposium included tours of the 29 Palms Marine Base, Joshua Tree National Park, and the lower desert dune and oasis systems. Mapping the Desert, Deserting the Map formed part of a larger project entitled Mapping the Californian Desert organized and jointly coordinated by UCIRA, UC Riverside’s Sweeney Gallery and the UCR Palm Desert Graduate Center. Mapping the Californian Desert will include temporary installations, talks, performances, film screenings and desert excursions/’dry immersions’ scheduled throughout the 2009-2010 academic year. The course was also designed to provide an academic/course-related link to one of UCIRA’s new areas of interest – Social Ecologies: California-centric embedded arts research, as well as UCHRI’s new California Studies Initiative.