The Lazarus Effect at Goat Gallery, along with the satellite installation, Far Out in the Moon Cocoon, is part of the 2025 Joshua Triennial, Desert Futures. It includes three installations exploring the theme of regeneration, where degraded land, abandoned architecture, and discarded images and media are restored and reimagined.
Corner Window: Planting Rain, Building Soil - A Regenerative Earthwork
Using only materials from the site, this earthwork demonstrates a scalable, regenerative approach to land management that solves near and long-term human and ecological problems simultaneously. Berms and channels slow, spread and sink rainwater from the roof, and mulch basins retain water and build soil. Existing and emerging vegetation is supported and nourished within the form. After the initial intervention, minimal maintenance is required, but ongoing, knowledge-driven human interaction will improve the site and continually advance an increasingly productive ecosystem. Nitrogen-fixing trees can be planted to provide shade, add soil fertility, promote biodiversity, and increase biomass. Food and resources can be produced to increase resilience and reduce the impact of our food systems. It also extends and enhances the site as a place for community and contemplation, and is built upon an appreciation of both indigenous and modern knowledge and practice.
Far Out in the Moon Cocoon - A satellite installation in a partially restored SuperAdobe dome at a remote desert location
This installation leverages the opportunity created by the 2-artist exhibition. It re-situates Farout Collective’s sculptures within a previously abandoned, partially-restored “SuperAdobe” dome (titled Moon Cocoon by Nadir Khalili, founder of Cal Earth). Familiar to the high desert, this type of sustainable architecture is well-adapted to dry, extreme climates, and is constructed primarily from locally-sourced materials. Originally based on a solution for refugees with little or no access to building material, the SuperAdobe buildings had for years been permitted in San Bernardino county.
The Moon Cocoon concept was partially funded by NASA to develop in-situ structures on the Lunar surface, eliminating the need for building materials transported from Earth. The reference to sustainable, extra-terrestrial architecture is a suitable home for Farout Collective’s sci-fi themed, up-cycled sculptures. It also resonates with the local claims of UFO contact by George van Tassel and themes portrayed in the novel The Lazarus Effect by Frank Herbert and Bill Ransom.
Cutouts
A series of permutations (reassembling, documentation, digital interpolation, re-printing, cutting) transform discarded photographic prints into vital forms that include a recognizable, naturalistic index of the original image. They hover visually and figuratively among a tangle of associations, between media, and in reference to human and architectural scale.
