A Desert Time Capsule
C-Print
30"x40"

A Desert Time Capsule
Carrie Foster and Trevor Paglen

Calipatria State Prison (est. 1992) covers almost 1,300 acres of desert land in Southern California’s Imperial Valley, about 100 miles east of San Diego. At an elevation of 184 feet below sea level, Calipatria is at the lowest elevation of any prison in the Western Hemisphere.

Because Calipatria State Prison is in such a hot and dry climate, it is not subject to the same kinds of erosion and chemical weathering that buildings in other environments are. As a result, the structures at Calipatria might last for centuries or even millennia relatively intact. The site at Calipatria is ideal for a large-scale time capsule, designed to preserve artifacts from the present for future archaeological and historical interpretation.

The Desert Time Capsule (DTC) is a giant archive designed to function as a catalog of the present. The DTC includes both natural and cultural artifacts and ephemera, organized along a conceptual continuum from “nature” to “culture and society.” Each building houses a collection of artifacts and objects associated with different areas along this continuum.

The DTC organizes and preserves specimens of the geological, biological, chemical, and cultural materials that make up contemporary society. By doing this, it provides a lasting image of both the raw materials of contemporary society, and a blueprint of the ways that humans have conceptualized, organized, altered, and documented the world around them.