In 2012 I revisited the ruins of a burned down house in the Angeles National Forest that I was first shown four years earlier. Then, it was in a fresh state of collapse, empty and unvandalized. Upon return, I found the site in a new state of limbo, layered with graffiti, murals and destructive acts. Locals call the place Scary House.

That summer, Evans Wittenberg and I formed Terrible Times, an artists initiative and a group show at the site. We invited four additional artists, (Anna Wittenberg, Charles Long, Marie Elena Johnston and Anne Guro Larsmon), to present work designed to interact with the site’s conditions.

I initiated my participation at the site with a photo mural of a lavender and peach-colored Hawaiian sunset; an everyday image pointing to paradise. I installed it on a free-standing wall and lifted the title from a spray-painted slogan nearby. Three months later I returned to find what was left of the print- residue coated, mangled pieces scattered about. I collected them as material evidence of the spirit of the place.

Dressed as a carnival clown at our opening, I emerged from the man-made cave behind the house’s empty swimming pool. I ascended the dusty hillside to the symphony of William Wagner and proceeded to launch water balloons from a giant slingshot onto a crowd, (our guests), below.

Half-a-century ago, Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin wrote of the Carnivalesque, his term to poeticize and resist the malaise and depravity of society. With Bakhtin's thesis, the world becomes a spectacle in which hierarchies are reversed and suppressed desires are realized. It is uncertain whether the site is owned by the government or private parties; an unregulated autonomous zone. Like the carnival, it exists outside our own social and psychological jurisdictions.