Giving directions in the desert often involves instructing the traveler to turn right or left at a given marker—-a small grouping of palm trees, a statue of a chicken, a pile of rocks. If you’re heading east on the 29 Palms Highway, just past the town of Joshua Tree, you’ll find Able 2 Help Bail Bonds on your right. It’s unclear at first glance whether it’s an operating business or an abandoned one. Such an unknown is not uncommon out here, where businesses, buildings, and homes seem to float in such a liminal space of existence. Often, those that look abandoned aren’t and those that look relatively well kept haven’t seen visitors in years. Able 2 Help Bail Bonds, though, is indeed in operation.

To visit the High Desert Test Sites artworks here, turn right onto the dirt road just before Able 2 Help Bail Bonds, and then immediately left towards a dead end. At the dead end, visitors can explore the artworks among the rocks. Two of these artworks are more readily visible, while the third has rusted into a color much like the rocks around it.

The first visible artwork is Julia Scher’s Surveillant Architectures. Three white signs read initially as warnings against trespassing, and subsequently denounce their authenticity. One reads, “Contamination Field High Energy Microwave Field No Tresspassing Strictly Enforced” in large text, followed by “Security By Julia” in small text.

The second visible artwork is Sarah Vanderlip’s CA Truck Heads. Two aluminum truck heads welded together sit struck between the boulders. The aluminum truck heads reflect blurry, imprecise images of the surrounding landscape and your body as it interrupts it. As the sky changes, so does the artwork.

The third less visible artwork is a metal mesh structure built between two days in April 2011 by Nathan Lieb. Nathan spent eight hours each day building the structure around his person, caught between the crevasses of two boulders. The shell remains around the ghost of his performance, Morongo.

To learn more about the artworks on this parcel, visit http://www.highdeserttestsites.com/sites/behind-bail-bonds