Life After Dead Air: A Love Letter to Taos
PermalinkA reflection on our recent gallery exhibition at the Taos Center for the Arts, and the community that made it possible.
If you've been keeping tabs on Dust Wave lately, you probably caught wind of Life After Dead Air -- our gallery exhibition that ran April 23-26, 2026 at the Taos Center for the Arts, hosted with the support of the PASEO Project and in partnership with the Taos Film Festival.
I'm writing this almost a month later, still a little dazed, a bit sunburnt (spiritually if not physically), and very grateful. So bear with me -- this one's actually a thank-you note.
The Show
Life After Dead Air gathered a group of artists working with moving images to wrestle with corporeal reality in a digital age -- what carries on after a system collapses, what we keep to ourselves, what survives in the static. The piece Becca Elbrecht and I created, Tower of Cower III, was a stacked sculpture of CRT and LED televisions, playing films created by Dust Wave members and local colleagues, ringed by e-waste, asking what filmmaking looks like once the old infrastructure crumbles and what's left is the human stuff: care, resourcefulness, mutual aid.
The rest of the artists in the show -- Dusty Deen, Jacklyn Le, R. Barela, Julianne Aguilar, Adrian Pijoan, Helen Atkins, and Will Geusz -- absolutely floored me. Walking the gallery once it was all installed and Taos Film Festival attendees started filing in, well, it was a beautiful moment that I won't soon forget.
The People Who Made It Possible
This is the part I want to get right.
Matt, Nina, and everyone at the PASEO Project -- you all are the reason any of this happened. From sponsoring the show to lining up comfortable places for us to stay during our time in Taos, you handled every detail with so much warmth that it felt like coming home. Thank you. Really.
Sarah at the Taos Center for the Arts -- installing a show is never not stressful, and you somehow made it enjoyable. You were a gracious host, a sharp problem-solver, and the kind of supporter artists pray for. The TCA is lucky to have you.
The Taos Film Festival -- what a first-class operation. Great films, sharp panels, generous events, and parties that ran late into the night for all the right reasons. You set the bar.
The Taos Ecosystem
A festival is only as good as the town that holds it, and Taos showed up.
- Ricky's Restaurant -- meal after meal of New Mexico diner deliciousness. If you're ever in Taos, go. For real.
- Hotel Willa -- for hosting some of the best parties of the week. You know the ones.
- The Taos Abstract Artist Collective -- for a stunning exhibit at Atelier 111. A real treat.
- Tomorrow and Tomorrow -- our official coffee and pastry outpost, and host of one hell of a party.
- 7K Studios -- for hosting a killer film event and reminding me what a special little corner of the world this is.
This is what a healthy arts ecosystem looks like -- businesses, nonprofits, artists, patrons, and audiences all rowing in the same direction.
Same direction is really relevant here. As much as I love my fair Burque, we are often far too provincial to see the bigger picture. I blame ourselves a little bit, but I blame our leaders a lot more. I'd love to see more visionaries build consensus and actually lead. But that's a whole other article ...
It Matters
Here's the thing.
Being part of a collective like Dust Wave means a lot of time with your head down. Fundraising. Shooting. Editing. Schlepping gear. Cutting checks. Updating spreadsheets. Filing GRT. Answering emails at midnight. And then doing it all again next week.
Somewhere in there, it's easy to lose the plot. You forget why you started doing this in the first place.
What Taos reminded me -- and what Life After Dead Air reminded me -- is that the whole point is connection. It's the moment a stranger wanders into a gallery, stands in front of a tower of dead televisions (for example), and their face changes. It's the conversation that comes after. It's the artist across the room who saw something in your work you didn't know was there. It's the kid who can't stop asking how the CRTs were wired. It's the sheer wonder.
That's what it's for. All of it. Crowdfunding, cardboard miniatures, making big swords (more on that soon), the late nights, the second-hand equipment, the homemade catering -- all of it -- so that a real human being can stand in front of something you made and feel something real.
I needed that reminder. I think a lot of us did.
So, to Matt, Nina, Sarah, the PASEO Project, the TCA, the Taos Film Festival, the Taos Abstract Art Collective, Atelier 111, 7K Studios, Taos at large -- and to every single person who walked through our show and gave us a few minutes of your attention -- thank you.
It was all for you.
Onward.