photo from The Center for Land Use Interpretation
Join us alongside the miracle healing waters of historic Zzyzx for an afternoon of talks, zines, musical performances, and a guided tour of this legendary desert town.
Founded in 1944 by “Doctor” Curtis Springer on the edge of the Mojave National Preserve, the former site of Zzyzx Mineral Springs claimed to offer miracle cures. Now, Zzyzx is a unique desert oasis that provides crucial respite for numerous species, and is home to the CSU Desert Studies Center for research and education.
We’ll learn more about Zzyzx through talks from Claire Vaye Watkins & Aurora Tang, a guided tour from our onsite steward Rhay Flores, tap into the musical current with performances from The Growth Eternal & Noah Klein, and share time with the zine collection of Queer Spa Network.
This gathering is presented in friendship & collaboration with the incredible Place Settings, a site-specific lecture series based in and around Los Angeles that invites scholars, artists, and other creative practitioners to give brief experimental talks, lectures, and presentations prompted by different unique locations.
This afternoon does have very limited capacity & we ask that you rsvp by October 7th to confirm your spot! We’ll close tickets on the 8th and share more information and resources for this trip.
If you’d like to make a weekend out of it with us - we’re planning an informal stay afterwards at the nearby Tecopa Mud Baths if you’d like to share dinner, mud, and conversation through the night! Recommendations on lodging coming soon.
Claire Vaye Watkins is the author of two novels: I Love You but I’ve Chosen Darkness and Gold Fame Citrus, as well as the short story collection Battleborn, winner of the Story Prize, the Dylan Thomas Prize, and the Silver Pen Award from the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame. A recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Claire is a professor in the Programs in Writing at the University of California, Irvine. Her next novel, Yellow Pine, is forthcoming summer of 2026. She lives in Orange County and the Mojave Desert.
Aurora Tang is a curator and researcher based in Los Angeles. She has worked with the Center for Land Use Interpretation since 2009, and currently serves as its program director.
As an independent curator Aurora has organized recent exhibitions at the MAK Center for Art and Architecture, MOCA Tucson, and Armory Center for the Arts. Aurora was managing director of High Desert Test Sites from 2011–15, where she organized public programming, including Taking the Waters (2014), a two-day program at Zzyzx, Tecopa Hot Springs, Devils Hole, and China Ranch Date Farm.
Aurora has taught at schools including Otis College of Art and Design and the University of Southern California. She is the recipient of an Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts Curatorial Research Fellowship.
photo by Elon Schoenholz
Rhay Flores (she/her) joined the Desert Studies Center in 2025 as the Assistant Operations Manager. In this role, Rhay supports the daily operations of the site from welcoming guests to monitoring utilities.
Prior to working at the center, she managed natural history collections at the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area and the California Botanic Garden. She earned her B.S. in Ecology, Behavior, and Evolution from UCLA and studied invasive plant dynamics in coastal sage scrub plant communities as well as the role of large-scale community science datasets in understanding urban tolerance of native species in Los Angeles.
The Growth Eternal is a spiritual, afro-surrealist bass & vocoder music project. Tulsa, Oklahoma native ghalani started the project in 2018, disillusioned with academia while trying to connect with their ancestral lineage through a Jazz Bass degree.
Their music textures take you on an emotional and geographic journey, using sound as medicine and their unique solar powered trunk rig as a method for bringing music to the landscapes that inspire.
Noah Klein is an arts organizer, flautist and California naturalist, and dublab dj born and raised in the Los Angeles Basin. They live for exploring the relationships between soundscape and landscape, histories of interdependent music + arts movements, philosophies of ecomusicology, practices of emancipatory world building, deep time, decentralization, ecological resistance, autonomous zones, and understanding music as a vehicle for paradigmatic change.
They've performed extensively throughout the United States and Europe, from punk squats to National Parks & from Arcosanti to The Getty, MoMA, and Czech Museum of Fine Arts. You can listen to their music on Moon Glyph and Leaving Records.
Queer Spa Network (QSN) is a group of autonomous Queer artists and healers invested in rest, healing, and pleasure for our communities. We are brought together to exchange knowledge and collaborate on projects that serve our values and build empathetic communal relationships with our body, the land and waters, and one another.
Queer Spa Network meets on a monthly basis to discuss topics centered around care, disability, bathing; organize regular bathing outings; and organize public community wellness projects. Queer Spa Network’s core team consists of Leo Alas, Carol Zou, Xixi Edelsbrunner, Ada Runge, Lindsey Morris, and Mel Liu.
Located on the edge of a large dry lake, Zzyzx, also known as Soda Springs, is the site of a former health resort established in 1944 by an evangelist named Curtis Springer, who advocated physical as well as spiritual fitness, and sold health products using the soda from the lake. The resort was popular until 1974, when Springer was removed bodily from the site by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), which claimed that he had never received official title to the land. In 1976, the California State University system took over the resort, turning it into a desert ecology study center called The Desert Studies Center (DSC).
photo from The Center for Land Use Interpretation
National Park Service Website • PBS article (by Aurora Tang)