… dust trails / transit / Nov 02017 by FoAM.Earth

We spent two weeks at the ASU campus, inquiring about existing and potential relationships between people and the desert. We interrogated existing myths underlying contemporary lifestyles and re-imagined counter-myths that could be more attuned to the desert environment. From these myths we created a series of propositions to prototype as embodied experiences and publications in 2018.

This field trip was an immersion in the academic life in Phoenix, specifically ASU's Lab for Critical Technics and Synthesis Center. Our primary modes of exploring the field were structured and unstructured conversations and futuring. We developed concepts, propositions, and plans for publications. In an experimental open space workshop we explored the concepts using different modalities; a collective alchemical reading (of Quickening), energetic fields in a systemic constellation; embodied listening of diverse soundscapes; historiography in docufiction (The Last Angel of History), intimate writing about sacred objects, attunement to desert totems, hearing about The Imperative while drinking tequila after sunset…

Occasionally we would venture beyond campus, guided by our very own 'artists' sherpa'. We explored the Superstitions; Papago and Moeur Parks; the Superstition Mountain Museum and the Pueblo Grande ruins. We experienced a silent Full Moon Walk with the Museum of Walking and found a site for FoAM's audio-walk. Attuning to the academic environment inevitably involved paperwork, meetings with students and faculty. We gave a lecture (adapted from In anticipation) and treated the visitors to a clandestine FoAM Apero.

Amidst the various activities on campus, we were temporarily adopted into our collaborators' family life, which allowed us to experience (among many other things) our first Thanksgiving feast with the Moran-Nocek clans.

Further notes on: concepts | futuring | propositions | publications | resonances

Guests: Nik Gaffney and Maja Kuzmanovic (FoAM)
Hosts: Ron Broglio, Adam Nocek, Stacey Moran, Sha Xin Wei (ASU)