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Bombay Beach is an oddity, starting with its exotic name, its lakeside dying location and the post-apocalyptic landscape that greets visitors.
The desert city, once a thriving seaside resort on the Salton Sea, is one of the poorest communities in California, with some 250 residents seemingly forgotten by the rest of the world.
Most homes have been abandoned for decades and their yards are filled with rickety trailers and rusted cars.
But the small hamlet is reborn as a group of well-heeled artists and sponsors have settled in, buying properties at great prices and organizing a three-day annual festival called the Bombay Beach Biennial.
Launched in 2016, the festival being held this weekend was designed by three Los Angeles-based friends: Tao Ruspoli, filmmaker and artist, Stefan Ashkenazy, art collector and hotelier, and Lily Johnson White, philanthropist. and a member of the Johnson & Johnson family.
Ruspoli said he had learned of the city 's existence about ten years ago after discovering a book on the Salton Sea, the largest lake in California created in 1905 as a result of. a technical error and shrinking. He was fascinated by a first visit.
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& # 39; Mystic & weird & # 39;
"It's mysterious, wonderful and strange," said Ruspoli, 43, son of an Italian prince and married to actress Olivia Wilde.
"It's so far removed from the kind of homogeneity that exists in the rest of America where you have a Denny's and a gas station on every street corner," he said. he told AFP during a recent tour of the city.
Ruspoli said that he had spent $ 20,000 for his first house in Bombay Beach in 2011 – right after his divorce with Wilde – and that the idea of a quirky festival had taken shape when he A weekend with Ashkenazy and White.
The small town – one square kilometer – today houses a museum called "Hermitage", a movie theater with movie cars full of vintage cars and an opera decorated with disused flip-flops recovered from the beaches of Lagos, Nigeria.
Eccentric works of art – a discarded metal dome, an aircraft fuselage depicting a fish, a slide made of twisted iron rods and two cross-shaped shipping containers with l & # 39; Inside, depicting religious figures representing "persecuted scientists" – make some of the exhibits at this year's festival.
"If Andy Warhol was here today, that would be his business," said Kathy Suder, one of the participating artists whose work features 100 white tents set on empty land representing homeless people and displaced people.
"A little Peter Panism"
The Bombay Beach draw, said White, was a space in which artists could be creative outside the boundaries of accepted conventions.
"There is such an unsuitable spirit here and a bit of Peter Panism," she said. "We invite people to create and manifest their dreams that they are not able to achieve in the world of commercial art."
For Belgian photographer Kirsten Thys Van Den Audenaerde, who participates in this year's festival, there is no better place to let her imagination fly away.
"It's as if a bomb had been dropped here and we were the last to stay standing," she told AFP while she was examining the surreal landscape. "Mad Max would feel at home here."
Much of the artwork for the festival was subsequently donated to the city, a welcome distraction for most locals, as well as for the growing number of perplexing tourists.
To avoid hordes of people descending into the city during the festival, the dates of the event are kept secret. Participation is by invitation only, with only about 500 tickets distributed to local residents, artists and financial sponsors.
"We do not have a financial program, no merchandising, we do not get a dollar," said Ashkenazy, who sponsors many artists at the festival. "It's more like a neighborhood party, it's not a spectator event."
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Return to life
He said the ultimate goal was for artists and sponsors to help the city get back on its feet and recover some of its faded glory.
"It is important to note that the" we and them "component is virtually dissolved," he said. "We are all locals and actively participate in the community."
This message seems to resonate among long-time residents who claim that the festival breathes life into a ghost town that once housed Frank Sinatra and the Beach Boys, but which had become a backdrop for zombie movies and fashion shows. .
"I've been here since the 1960s, when we could not even find a place to park and the marina was full of boats," said Debi Cagle, 67, who owns a house in Bombay Beach. "It was absolutely amazing, the fishing was absolutely excellent and there were six bars in town."
Dean McAfee, 77, who started coming to Bombay Beach while he was a kid and who has now retired, said that he might not connect to all the works of art. Original art, but the festival is a welcome change.
"It brings the city back to life," he said. "And it's good for me."
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