Theater

The Bombay Beach Biennale is an art festival that doesn’t so much take over the small town of Bombay Beach as it does grow from it, a series of art works, performances, and installations that is both sweet and surreal.

Above photo by Nicole Saari

Let’s start with the town. It’s a small community nestled against the shores of the Salton Sea. Just as the sea itself has been shrinking from lack of water, so has the town been shrinking; with its neat pre-fab homes and small cottages sharing street space with abandoned, broken properties. There is one bar, the Ski Inn, with dollar-bill-covered walls,  burgers and fries, and generous drinks; a small convenience store; and an American Legion Post. And the wind swept, dusty, fish-bone sand of the sea.

Above photo by Nicole Saari

The sea itself is like an art installation. It wasn’t put there by nature, but by an accidental flood. It’s brilliant waters – smelly in the summer  months from agricultural run-off – reflect the harshly beautiful desert landscape, the more distant mountains, the sky and clouds. It is a mirror of nature, an anomaly of nature, beauty that is being let to die. The sea needs water.

And yet. There is life in the sea and in the town yet. And the art festival plays upon that life, helping to revive, drawing attention to the plight of the sea, the not-quite-forgotten town, and the wonder and awe of something magnificent yet out of place.

That is what the sea itself is, of course, but it is also the Bombay Beach Biennale. Who put a cool art show in such a remote spot? Who limited attendance to 500 so as not to overwhelm the town or its limited services? Who decided what seemingly random collection of exhibitions, lectures, dance, and music fit together?

The BBB rotates dates each year, but functions as an annual version of a true Biennale, a gypsy-caravan, a mini-Burning Man, an outsider art fest, a tribute to the land, its strangeness, its beauty.

Above, Ashkenazy, left; Haberny, right

The Bombay Beach Biennale, which started late on a March Friday this year and ran to 1 p.m. on Sunday, was once a wild dream. Now, it’s an immersive art experience founded by experiential artist and Petit Ermitage Hotel co-owner Stefan Ashkenazy along with Tao Ruspoli, and Lily Johnson White. Underground New York-based artist Greg Haberny first created and exhibited here at an abandoned property that he turned into The Hermitage Museum in Bombay Beach, and has lived off and on here for the last two years.

“The project in Bombay Beach is highly euphoric, and very supportive to the needs of the area,” Haberny says, noting that the region around the sea is already home to the art community of East Jesus in nearby Slab City, and the folk art masterpiece of Salvation Mountain.

And Ashkenazy adds that he knew Bombay Beach was the right place for his event “the moment I set foot there. The idea came to me to convert it, using it as a canvas, and turning the town into an immersive installation of Gonzo art.”

In other words: strange and beautiful art to match a strange and beautiful place. And somehow merge with it, so that it was not so much a taking over of the town but a revelatory look at another dimension of it.

Here are a few highlights for me:

Olivia Steele’s simply awe-inspiring ruby red neon sculpture, suspended on posts in the sea and connected with a generator. “Save Me” — meaning both the sea, the town, and every viewer in need of saving which is every one of us, of course. Likewise,  her “Trust the Process” a work in purple inside a shell of a house in Bombay Beach Estates, the most derelict section of town, hits the heart as well as the eye.

Above night photo by Sarah DeRemer

Also on the beach: The Tesseract, a small-house sized representation of a 4 dimensional hypercube by S. Shigley aka Shig, with glowing, other-worldly lighting design by Jessica Steiner and Ashley Hillis.

Above photo by Anya Kaats

The Bombay Beach Opera House – A dilapidated house that has been transformed into a permanent structure, a state-of-the-art performing arts space masterminded by artist James Ostrer housed a variety of performances. The theater walls are covered with flip flops abandoned by refugees, many from Nigeria. Surrealist paintings are hung as a backdrop against the sky blue/aqua painted stage. 

Saturday evening,  San Francisco Ballet prima ballerina Maria Kotchekova and her partner Sebastian Kloberg were followed by a Clown Opera by Kate Feld.

Above photo, Sarah DeRemer

Greg Haberny’s Hermitage Museum, offered a new exhibition Why Do I Destroy Everything I Love?  featuring works by Haberny and  artists Camille Schefter, Thomas Linder, Jon Pylypchuk, Bill Saylor, and Theodore Boyer. The Museum, like the opera house, is a permanent gift to the town. Tours are available upon request – post-festival, visitors can ask Steve at the Ski Inn. Giant cloth sculptures of cigarettes; twigs suspended from the ceiling painted to resemble cigarettes, terrific assemblage works throughout the museum and patio. 

Above photo by Nicole Saari

Another permanent installation is the Bombay Beach Drive-In, a wonderful conceit featuring car shells and other vehicles parked before an outdoor screen. For the festival, screenings were of films dedicated to the theme of Sea of Love: Monsters in the Water. The glittery drive-in sign, fires in big iron drum trash cans made a pretty terrific scene after dark.

The Bombay Beach Institute of Particle Physics, Metaphysics & International Relations is part museum/gallery, part performance space and home to a new Community Garden. Here, we visited a gallery with ghostly images, enjoyed statues such as the Venus of Salton in the garden, and listened to a pretty cool lecture – and lectures aren’t my thing – about God, music, and silence by Oxford University philosopher Mark Wrathall, Columbia University professor and activist Christia Mercer, and author Christopher Ryan among others.

Possibly my favorite off-the-beach installation was Angler Grove, a silver and mirrored disco/bachelor pad created by artist Randy Polumbo. So shiny. From the glittering foam steps to the silvery sink-in couches, this was a wonderful, alien planet. Hoping that this, too, is a permanent structure – the detail was incredible.

Above photo by Amanda Vandenberg

There were a wide range of individual pieces that stood out:  “Nine” at the Bombay Beach Botanical Gardens, a giant porcelain flower by artist Yassi Mazandi; Jennifer Korsen’s giant hearts and gold-painted cracks in her “Home is Where the Heart Is”  installation, the exotic coffee bar of Cafe Bosna, Sean Guerrero’s haunting skeletal “Death Ship” on the sand, light sculptures dancing in the wind along Ave. E; a street parade; the final event of the festival on Sunday, a dance party surrounded by wonderful wooden cut outs that highlighted the desolation and wonder of the sea, and yes, again, its surrealism.

Photo above by Tao Ruspoli

Photo above by Sarah DeRemer

Can you go next year? Maybe you can, if you look closely and follow us here at DiversionsLA. And – if most importantly of all, you look to the sea, consider joining a fight for its survival, and think of art as your weapon, your shield, and perhaps even your savior.

Next up, a first person account of the event by a photographer and musician who has loved the Salton Sea for years and written music inspired by it.

• Genie Davis; photos: Genie Davis, additional photos individually credited