G.H.O.S.T. Ride

G.H.O.S.T. Ride / (Generative Habitation Operating System Technology)

G.H.O.S.T. Ride expands Luger’s Future Ancestral Technologies (FAT) series, which uses speculative fiction to envision sustainable, land-based futures. The series imagines Indigenous communities utilizing innovative technologies to live in attunement with land and water, challenging colonial paradigms of extraction and exploitation.

For Desert X 2025, Luger reimagines his iconic artwork, Repurposed Archaic Technology vehicle (aka RAT Rod), into a nomadic public art installation traversing through the Coachella Valley over the nine weeks of Desert X, stopping at various sites.

Camouflaged in reflective vinyl, the vehicle merges with the environment, acting as both a mirror and an extension of the landscape. It incorporates industrial detritus, ceramics, and a tipi made from used construction materials, and is equipped with speculative water and light gathering systems inspired by Luger’s vision of an adaptive future.

Grounded in the ethos of Future Ancestral Technologies, Luger’s approach positions technology as a vessel for transmitting ideas across time and space. G.H.O.S.T. Ride invites viewers to radically reimagine coexistence among human and nonhuman realms, encouraging reflection on the enduring significance of land over the fleeting nature of human infrastructure. According to the artist, “This project reverses how the desert survives with unimaginable deep time evolutions and asks us to consider what we may learn from the desert, if we focus on its knowledge.”

Cannupa Hanska Luger’s created a short narrative film and three billboards to accompany the G.H.O.S.T. Ride installation. The storyline surrounding this work subtly unfolds through accompanying performance and video work. This time-jumping caravan that traverses through the Coachella Valley, expanding the desert’s space-time continuum.

The sequential billboards feature poetry written by Luger and depict the vehicle’s occupants—a family from an undefined future—offering insights into possible modes of adaptation and survival.