The one form of transience the art industry depends on is the transience of memory.

--Holland Cotter

How do we construct a cultural dialog that values, and connects in productive ways, both poetics and utility?

--Chris Taylor

The Velaslavasay Panorama

Persona by Tom LaDuke. Go see this lovely and sensitive show at the Angles Gallery in Culver City right now.

My current show at the Center for Land Use Interpretation:

Some slides from my forthcoming slide-show at the CLUI Los Angeles, Friday January 22 @ 8:00:





Come if you're in LA!

In the end, a judgment upholding any of Mexico’s water claims would increase international attention and give Mexico greater leverage in its relationship with the United States over border management decisions. Given the significance that these decisions have for lives and livelihoods in the border region, it may be worth it for Mexico to take a more oppositional stance and assert its right to equitable treatment at the international level.

--Alfonso Cortez Lara

4. To complete the drain referred to in point 3, Mexico, through the Commission and at the expense of the United States, shall construct, operate and maintain an extension of the concrete-lined bypass drain from the Arizona-Sonora international boundary to the Santa Clara Slough of a capacity of 353 cubic feet (10 cubic meters) per second. Mexico shall permit the United States to discharge through this drain to the Santa Clara Slough all or a portion of the Wellton-Mohawk drainage waters, the volumes of brine from such desalting operations in the United States as are carried out to implement the Resolution of this Minute, and any other volumes of brine which Mexico may agree to accept. It is understood that no radioactive material or nuclear wastes shall be discharged through this drain, and that the United States shall acquire no right to navigation, servitude or easement by reason of the existence of the drain, nor other legal rights, except as expressly provided in this point. (Article 4 of Minute 242 of the International Boundary and Water Commission, United States and Mexico, August 30, 1973.)

These green onions growing in the Mexicali Valley are amongst the most salt-sensitive of crops, and also provide the largest need for labor in the area. Green onions will likely be amongst the first to be fallowed as a result of the lining of the All American Canal.

This MODE (Main Outlet Drain Extension) canal channels brackish irrigation run-off from Arizona's Mohawk-Wellton agricultural district all the way to the Cienega de Santa Clara in the Gulf of California. If Arizona gets its way and fires up a disused desalination plant in order to recoup the yearly 130,000 acre feet that flows through this canal, critical Mexican wetlands will be destroyed.

As artists, we are in the business of being suspicious.

--Peter Fend

Irrigation infrastructure in the Mexicali Valley: