A ‘weird dream’ of an arts festival began 10 years ago in the California desert – can it survive its growing popularity?

The Bombay Beach Biennale started as an intimate event and has grown dramatically – but some question whether it sustain its DIY atmosphereIt is hard to imagine a stranger place for a large outdoor art festival than Bombay Beach – a tiny, visibly impoverished California desert town over 150 miles east of Los Angeles and 235ft below sea level. The heat is scorching even in March, and the smell of decay wafts over from the nearby Salton Sea; a dying inland lake created by an irrigation engineering...