After two years of COVID, and a renegade, DIY Biennale in 2022, the 2023 edition of the Bombay Beach Biennale was a big step towards fully returning to our beloved home on the Salton Sea. Our primary goals this year were to re-engage our roots with the community, shift our focus beyond a single weekend to a more seasonal engagement, expand our network to include a more diverse range of participants, and reimagine what the Biennale’s present and future looks like. 

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We began by asking ourselves: what is the Biennale? It's been called a festival, a gathering, an event, a season, a movement... In more expansive terms, the Biennale is also a: 

• Social sculpture

• Site for radical re-imaginings

• Petri-dish for politics and play

• Toxic wasteland that we are [trying to] terraform to build the future of our dreams

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Ultimately, the Biennale is, and always has been, a community effort, and its future is to be co-created by us all. 

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In that vein, hundreds of artists, thinkers, builders, and conspirators gathered in the spring of 2023 to embody the 6th iteration of the Bombay Beach Biennale to life. We asked our participants to muse on the following theme: Chaos Theory. A buzz word for some, poetry for others, meaningless nonsense to a small minority. The dictionary defines Chaos Theory as "an interdisciplinary area of scientific study and branch of mathematics focused on underlying patterns and deterministic laws of dynamical systems that are highly sensitive to initial conditions, and were once thought to have completely random states of disorder and irregularities."

 

In reflecting on its growth over the years, this theme felt fitting for the absurd, irregular, and entirely unique occurrence that is the Bombay Beach Biennale - one birthed from the raw inspiration and creativity that this strange and beautiful town elicits; a town only a half-mile by a half-mile, far from the edges of whatever we might call "consensus reality," where art and community grows out of the dust, taking over abandoned trailers, invading the receding shoreline, and breathing new life into a place that was once nearly forgotten. 

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In addition to the staples of art, music, and philosophy, new developments this year included a community-led kitchen initiative dubbed the "BBBBistro," the simultaneous launch and centennial celebration of the 100th Annual Bombay Beach International Film Festival, a new nightlife venue called the "Sub Club," and a literary festival. 

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A massive thank you to every single person who participated this year. This includes not only the phenomenal artists who contributed their work, but the Org Team members who worked tirelessly to produce the event, the satellite project leads who extended our activations into the disciplines of film, cuisine, philosophy, and music, the volunteers who donated their time to help build, cook, clean, and organize, the supporters who contributed to our fundraising campaign, and the residents of Bombay Beach who welcomed us and our guests into our strange home by the sea to host our collective gathering of creativity and community. 

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The gears for 2024 are already in motion, so follow us on Instagram, subscribe to our newsletter on the contact page, and keep an eye out for ways to participate. We are also currently rebuilding our archive from years' past, and are excited to to finalize that in the coming months.  

 

We hope to see you by the sea sometime soon, and until then, keep conspiring…

- BBB