Marfa Lights - The Film (playing at The Tate Modern in August)

I'm all aflutter. UFO's? Or spacerock? Daddy? Or chips?

Spacerock! And UFOs!

(FYI, Secret Machines are not actually British - they are from Texas so they do kind of have some geographical connection to Marfa.)

TSM, though, clearly went there because of the UFOs.

http://www.envasion.net/2003/pix/marfa1.jpg

http://www.crummy.com/articles/travelogues/1998/texas/marfa_4_light.jpg

Apparently everyone says they look like headlights going down a hill, which is the usual "explanation" - totally disregarding the fact that they have been spotted for over a hundred years, since before automobiles and indeed even headlights were invented.

They sort've look like headlights except for one bounced into our car which is very un-headlight-like.

TSM has played at the Marfa Open House for a couple years now (except for last year when Yo La Tengo played)

http://www.pradamarfa.com/ for the info

Marfa... Joshua Tree... Bisbee...

Ha! Yeah, I'm that predictable... Marfa? Secret Machines? *poof - here I am!* There was another Marfa thread here that Gareth started, but it seems to have disappeared. Anyway, as of last year the Yuppie invasion of Marfa wasn't nearly as total as I was fearing. I'm guessing that it's *so* far out there in distance that it self-weeds out the undetermined. Driving in Texas just does that to you.

I'm just annoyed that it's going to take forever for this movie to make it all the way over here...

Last time I was up there it wasn't choked, but according to the NY Times, call it Marfa, California.

Set roughly 125 miles east of Los Angeles and 35 northeast of Palm Springs, the high-desert towns off Route 62, including Pioneertown, Twentynine Palms and Wonder Valley as well as Joshua Tree, have long been a haven for rock climbers who pilgrimage for the weirdly shaped boulders at Joshua Tree National Park. But over the last few years established artists, architects and musicians in search of lower mortgage payments and wide open space have been trickling out and setting up studios in old ranch houses, shipping containers and geodesic domes left over from the 1970's.

Now it has become a weekend destination for cultural foragers, whose idea of a fun getaway is exploring outdoor sculpture gardens, artists' studios and experimental architecture — like an igloo made of sandbags.

"Joshua Tree is like the art world's Palm Springs," said Lisa Overduin, the director of Regen Projects, the Los Angeles gallery that represents Ms. Zittel and Mr. Pierson. "It's funny to see collectors in spiked Manolo's teetering around the desert looking for art."

Ms. Zittel's "High Desert Test Sites," an annual art happening (this year on May 6 and 7), is the best opportunity to experience Joshua Tree's contemporary-art scene. Ms. Zittel, the conceptual artist who helped kick-start the Joshua Tree migration when she expanded her studio here from Brooklyn six years ago, invites artists to trek out to the desert and install large-scale site-specific works among the boulders, caves and cactus. (Some of this year's participants include Katie Grinnan, Amy Yao and Ryan McGinley.) Onlookers and revelers are given booklets with maps so they can track the whimsical creations in a sort of zany scavenger hunt that includes extracurricular activities like stopping for hamburgers at local cafes and dancing the electric slide at Pappy & Harriet's, a local honky tonk.

The artist Ed Ruscha, the musicians Eric Burdon and Victoria Williams, the performance artist Ann Magnuson and a cross section of Los Angeles screenwriters and set designers have all bought homes in Joshua Tree in recent years, perhaps drawn by its openness — both in attitude and in space. With its sweeping plateaus, car-chase roads and big wandering skies, it's sort of like that other desert art outpost, Marfa, Tex., where the elemental landscape and slow-motion pace are themselves like a surreal artwork.

http://www.alloverme.co.uk/film.jpg
http://www.alloverme.co.uk/film.jpg
http://www.alloverme.co.uk/film.jpg

Though those lights look suspiciously like they are held up on STICKS and not floating mystery lights at all. Chiz!

Oh god, and I've just been reading an interview where they've been going on about Contrails. Weren't we just talking about them on another thread, Chris? Fortean freaks, a band after my own heart, I love them so much.

Ah! I see, it's three images in one. D'oh.

only when it's doofuses like brad pitt who read the fountainhead and suddenly decide that they're experts in architecture (and before you know it, they're narrating documentaries on LEED construction).

Why can't clebs who get into weird cults and philosophies get into, like, Heavens Gate or something, and go join their mates on another dimension?

(Schmucks like Brad Spitt, that is, and anyone who starts spouting about Kaballah, not poor little spacerock boys who obsess about contrails and Jupiter's red spots...)

There were not enough UFOs. OK, there weren't ANY UFOs at all, just some spooky local characters talking about the UFOs. And local Young People bitching about the gentrification of marfa.

High points:
-Secret Machines, Secret Machines, Secret Machines
-It was really cool getting to see how they work from the inside, seeing them assemble an spacerock epic, one layer at a time.
-Benjamin, endlessly fiddling with with his laboratory of sound
-Spotting random objects they turned into bongs

Not so high points:
-Less postcards of Texas, please. Just because you make art films, there is no reason to pretend to be Wim Wenders. There was no need for the endless shots of highway intersections
-Technical problems for the band (though this was actually an excuse to have Brandon spout technogobshite about magnetic fields and stuff)
-No actual art. Though the debate about why they weren't allowed to use the art as background for their own art was very interesting
-Brandon's teeth. They have struck the fear of god into me, and I'm going to a dentist for the first time in 20 years. Honest.

All in all, I wanted there to be MORE of it, which is usually a good sign. I wish there were more of the "24 hour version of Daddy's In The Doldrums" which sounded ace. That bit was very Live At Pompei.

And god, Benjamin's freckles. I dream of freckles. Swoon.

If you're Randy Quaid and on the lam for stiffing a luxury hotel in Santa Barbara 10Gs, why not hide out in Marfa?