Desert Humanities, D.A.R.E with FoAM

This D.A.R.E (Desert Attunement Research Efforts) project is an extension of Desert Humanities

By addressing the mythical and experiential underpinnings of contemporary life in the desert, we invite emotional engagement with abstract concepts, such as desertification, climate weirding, and attunements. We design participatory experiences and experimental publications, as evocative propositions for re-alignment of urban and desert ecosystems.

A collaborative exploration with Maja Kuzmanovic and Nik Gaffney of FoAM as part of Desert Humanities (@asu) and the Center for Philosophical Technologies with Adam Nocek and Stacy Moran. We explore American mythologies imported to the desert and reconfigure them for a more sustainable and nonhuman-centered world.

The complete project is documented by FoAM.

Sound recordings of the desert Southwest are layered to make palpably present our ecological surrounds.

The 12” vinyl album recordings (listen here) become part of an audio walk for the Museum of Walking.

The project maps cultural myths and leverages material artifacts to realize in this world new myths so that another world is possible. Indeed, other worlds are among us.

FoAM’s Field notes
Reader #1 by FoAM
Reader #2 compendium of essays designed & edited by FoAM

"I dream of a hard and brutal mysticism in which the naked self merges with a nonhuman world and yet somehow survives still intact, individual, separate, paradox and bedrock."

--Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire