StarGate festivals were hosted at Gateway Ranch in the Northern Arizona desert in 2016, 2018 and 2019 with 300-500 attendees. Working with an Arizona-wide team, Malena developed the StarGate ReUnion festival concept as a 48-hr curated flow. She wanted to create a party that invited participants to build up momentum toward sunrise on Sunday morning. She observed that people often have asynchronous energy flows at festivals and wanted to see if that energy could be guided towards a progressive build-up to a shared celebratory crescendo.

Opening Ceremonies were held before sunset on Friday, bringing everyone together to connect, learn about the property and set intentions for the weekend. Friday night music ended by 2am, inviting participants to rest for the next day.

Saturday began early with workshops across the property, followed by open DJ decks, art projects and a community “clothing swap” at the dome in the afternoon. Because people got to rest on Friday night, more people were up and engaging with workshops and activities on Saturday. Curated music and performances kicked off again before sunset and throughout the night into sunrise on Sunday morning. As a tradition to greet the sunrise, StarGate gifted a mimosa, fruit and juice bar experience.

Leave it Better Event.
Gateway Ranch is an off-grid property that has been built up by the Arizona community, with decades of art projects and infrastructure invested. Before StarGate, the property was cluttered with scrap wood and materials, with several areas needing repair or completion. For several months before each StarGate, Malena organized volunteer weekends at Gateway ranch to clean up, prepare and improve the property. Projects included patching the roof of the traditional hogan, adding drywall and final touches to the Temple of Four Directions, building a bank of 6 outhouses, and doing general clean up on the property. The festival progressively improved the property with a lasting impact each year.

From 2014—2017, Malena produced immersive nightlife events which featured curated performances with regional house music DJs bi-monthly in Flagstaff, AZ (200-500 attendees). Malena founded the project with DJ partner, Jeremiah Green, later bringing in Samuel Raymond to lead performances and Emmett White to support music and booking. After experiencing Burning Man and Day Zero festival in 2012, Malena wanted to bring more creative parties (and house music) to her own community. She worked with a rotation of talent for each event to curate an immersive environment and theatrical performances that were catered to esoteric themes such as Illusions, Reflections, Dreams and Shadows.

Sample concept:
Light and Shadow (Feb 2014): For the live electronic duo BLK LNTRNS, we conceptualized a human shadow puppet performance using cardboard masks designed by Cameron Zarabzadeh to tell the story of their three-part album series:

An astronomer falls in love with a woman who lives on the otherside of the Earth, so he turns his eyes from the heavens towards the ground and starts digging through the center of our planet to reach her. When he reaches the center of the earth, he encounters strange creatures and has to fight for his survival… Does he reach the other side? Or is this all merely a hallucination before death?

In June of 2014 and 2015, the InnerSpace crew collaborated with Santa Fe-based artist collective LightLab to produce a music stage, workshop area and lounge spaces for Arizona-based festival Firefly Gathering.

Utilizing a shoestring budget and bringing together the talents of dozens of collaborators, they created a fully immersive environment in the high elevation forest near Flagstaff.