The Hidden Agenda

A subterranean conference center

Conceived 2004

The Hidden Agenda is a fully-functional corporate conference room submerged seven feet into the desert floor. The roof of the piece can be opened to the desert sky while a conference is in session, and closed when the piece is not in use, rendering it nearly indistinguishable from its desert surroundings.

In both form and function, the Hidden Agenda references a Great Kiva - a subterranean structure that served as a gathering place and a center of religious and political life for a number of indigenous peoples of the ancient Southwest. Chaco Anasazi kiva ruins have been found throughout New Mexico, particularly in the "four corners" region of the state. Kivas were generally entered through a ladder in the roof/ceiling that led down into the central chamber. The Hidden Agenda will also be accessed in this manner.

The Hidden Agenda also references particular contemporary corporate, military and industrial facilities which are hidden in secret locations throughout the deserts of the American Southwest; and whether secret or not, the proceedings of powerful governing bodies that occur in the average corporate American conference room are generally hidden from view.

In these senses, the Hidden Agenda - despite its silly name and other absurd attributes - is situated in the social, political and historical contexts of the American Southwest. It is also, however, radically dislocated and decontextualized. It is, after all, a corporate conference room set into the floor of an expansive desert.

The Hidden Agenda is a fully-functional facility. And as with the Cabinet National Library, the Hidden Agenda is being developed in collaboration with Cabinet magazine, a non-profit arts and culture quarterly based in Brooklyn. The project will be built in Cabinetlandia, Cabinet's 1/2 acre tract of desert, outside Deming, New Mexico.