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Chapter I
Dispatches from
the Alternative
March 6th, 2025
To Our Friends,
If society at large came to an end, those of us saddled up next to the Salton Sea likely wouldn’t notice.
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Somewhere down the long, lone road that is California State Route 111, the frequencies change and the plane of reality shifts. Those of us who have graced the shores of Bombay Beach have experienced the way time slows down, how the air changes texture, and the way our mind fills with a strange sense of possibility.
Photos by RJ Swanek
Before the year kicked off with wildfires and the erosion of constitutional democracy, the citizens of Bombay Beach gathered for New Years Eve around a rotating effigy of the globe. Our fishbone-strewn beach was filled with hundreds of residents, veterans, artists, and travelers. At the stroke of midnight the globe was set ablaze, and under a barrage of fireworks, the world in front of us burned to ash. So began the 2025 season…Acéphale á¼€κÎφαλος: a man without a head. ​​
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Our work at the Institute is born out of this return, year after year, to re-imagine society in a place abandoned by capital, and defined by environmental disaster. The Institute has always been a staple of our seaside community, and as it has grown over the years, so has our understanding of what it means to be a facilitator of Bombay Beach’s development. As stewards of this co-created, decentralized reality of madmen, we are formally launching The Bombay Beach Institute for Industrial Espionage & Post-Apocalyptic Studies as a cultural laboratory and think tank dedicated to experiments in social terraforming, creative world building, and alternative governance.
It’s been more than a decade since our artist-led movement initiated the experimental occupation of a mostly forgotten town in the Sonoran Desert. Since then, thousands of artists, thinkers and dreamers have traveled far and wide to engage with Bombay Beach as a living canvas.
The real artwork in Bombay Beach is not limited to the sculptures on the beach, nor the houses adorned with paintings, nor to the performances staged in abandoned trailers. Those of us who reside here are curators of a living, breathing artwork that is a social sculpture. You cannot touch the social sculpture, nor can you take a picture of it. You can only experience it, and those who have felt the call of the Sea have been blessed to wade in the warm, lapping waters of our alternate reality. ​
What happens when artists use a town as their medium?
How do social relations evolve in the absence of traditional authority?
What conditions enable Bombay Beach to exist as a temporary autonomous zone?
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These are the types of questions the Institute seeks to answer.
When asked why so many interesting people gather yearly in a strange shanty town an hour away from civilization, we explain that Bombay Beach is a microcosm. Every societal problem that could happen, has happened here, but at a comprehensible scale. If something’s broken, you can see its source, and are more able to enact a solution. These experiments, we hope, will inform the greater society to which some of us return.
In a time when global problems seem insurmountable, the collective laboratory of Bombay Beach reignites our agency and autonomy in the act of creating the world we want to live in.
Thinking back to the stroke of midnight that ushered us into 2025, it was a prophetic act to set the effigy of our globe ablaze. State, federal, and global systems are atrophying, and the impacts of this destruction will be felt for decades to come.
But Bombay Beach was abandoned by these corrupt structures long before this current administration took power. Our community is an embodied example of composting and terraforming - practices that build hope and resilience.
Who better than artists, philosophers, and madmen
to rebirth communities from what was once discarded?
During 2025, the Institute has and will host salons, lectures, performances, and gatherings throughout Bombay Beach. In the coming years, we will launch residencies, fellowships, and expanded programming. If you think of yourself as a conspirator, if these questions resonate with you, if you are wrapped in the chaos of despair and confusion and desire to find your way out - join us in the construction of a new world. If you are interested in contributing to this season, Acéphale, click here. If you are interested in coming for a facilitated visit, click here. If you want to follow from afar, here is our Instagram.
This is an invitation to exit consensual reality and join us in a world of our own making.
We hope to see you soon.
-The Bombay Beach Institute for Industrial Espionage and Post Apocalyptic Studies
