DesertSexyPreview1.0

By most accounts, the desert is not sexy. It is desolate, rough, dry, dusty and disconnected. Unpaved roads and abandoned shacks are sometimes the only faint signs of civilization under the scorching sun or the frigid moonlight. Cracked knuckles and chapped lips are aesthetically disastrous prospects to those who are accustomed to urban luxuries such as gentrification, 3G networks and the ‘curated' weekend.

Besides our beloved pornography, the internet's largest contribution to society is its existence as a platform for the cultivation of software that connects disparate cultures across the globe. New technologies offer luxuries for the most base and simple desires to larger systemic sociopolitical causes, most recently evidenced in Iran and Honduras. This cultural communication not only allows for the untraveled to 'travel' but, more importantly, it also allows usually unconsidered voices to wander across the many manipulated, manmade boundaries of governments, corporations and mainstream media target markets.

No matter how attractive a flamboyant, creatively drugged out lifestyle of debauchery may be, an even more delicious prospect for the art world lies in the concept of utilizing the mind, resources, conscience and style for the betterment of both oneself and the unheard.

John Maynard Keynes wrote, "I do not know which makes a man more conservative--to know nothing but the present, or nothing but the past." Ironically, despite much of the art world's jet-setting reputation, art seems to have a perennial love affair especially with the past and the present. Trite or imagined efforts hanging in galleries that try to emulate an aura of prestige and condescension do little to elevate--or even communicate--anything worth anybody's time in the bustling existence we live in. Constant references to issues and methods irrelevant to the past, present or future waste precious hours and resources. During all of this, millions consume the unnecessary to make a few thousand unimaginably wealthy and powerful.

Desert Sexy is not just about art, music, drugs or dirt. It is about a once underground cultural subsystem that is taking a brutal journey through open minds, closed minds, environment and technology. It elevates the once dismissed and peripheral to an actual playing field. This is only one journey out of countless developments occurring at this very moment. Desert Sexy is only one of the many platforms in which these journeys can thrive, but one of a very few that attempts to reject the vapid and inconsequential trends and trajectories of this tiny thing called 'the art world.'

Despite the dominant and self centered Western perspective many consider to be the pinnacle of modernity, being one of the faceless followers in this materialistic and provincial existence is the least impressive attribute of Western civilization. When one sheds their pervasive, egotistical notions of status, things clarify quickly: efficiency and resourcefulness are the most beguiling topics for the global mind today. Third world states now dominate seaways with piracy, fund large scale infrastructure via opium cultivation and even attempt cyber warfare against 'hegemons'. It is our moment to indulge out of our privileged and deluded 'affluence,' and induce global progress--unapologetically--by revealing the subtle appeal and lure of providence and adaptability.