Anyone looking for symbolic meaning to the orgy will be disappointed to learn the truth about that scene. You see, the producer had a habit of promising someone a role in his next film in exchange for sex. But when the time came to cast Zabriskie Point, the producer realized he had promised roles to
dozens
of people, both men and women. He didn't want to deal with the problem so he just told Antonioni to fit them in any way he could.
Antonioni was none too happy about having to work all these people into his film. As he tried to figure out how to use a bunch of "actors" whose only talent was sleeping with the producer it occurred to him that if they got their roles by having sex then their roles should be to have sex, and he could get it all over with quickly by making them have the sex with each other in one big orgy scene.
Now that I've told the story behind this scene it occurs to me that there is, in fact, a certain symbolism to Antonioni's problem and his solution

Death Valley is HOT!
Who in their right mind will roll around in VERY HOT sand?
Very HOT SAND in various body crevasses does not make for a pleasant experience.
Gives new meaning to an expression I heard from an elderly New York couple back in the 60s.
"POUND SAND!" The sand we see in this movie will make that experiences very unpleasant!!

Zabriskie Point is one of seven Antonioni films I have seen, and agree with the notion that the scene in question was probably not intended to have one interpretation and one only be possible.
I agree also it is logical to view it as Daria's dream (more accurately her "daydream", or imagining), but then you merely remove it one step to attempt interpreting why SHE would have such a dream, and what it means for her to be having it.
At the same time we must remember that Antonioni often moves from the concerns of his characters to if you will a more general perspective. Often the camera alerts us to this shift by moving from the close focus on the characters to a long shot of them in a large landscape shot. The Passenger was filled with this sort of approach, but think in particular in l'Eclisse where Vittoria and Piero are shown walking in relatively close perspective, before they walk down to where an older couple are sitting outside, near a soda machine, but before doing do are shown in long view, as "merely" another part of the landscape.
Combining these two notions, I think part of the interpretation is that Daria is imagining how their sexual encounter "fits" in with the nature of the sexual encounter as an existential element of human experience and history.
Now what to make of such an imagining, and what such nature is, is where it gets more open ended.
As someone else noted, Antonioni has a common theme of viewing sex in the context of our modern, consumer culture and having its issues. Zabriskie's couple are in one sense of the modern world, but in this particular moment are as removed from it as can practically be considered, physically to be sure, but also politically, intentionally, and even economically. Does this mean that they actually are closer to a more authentic, and not consumer-based, human interaction? Or are we to understand that such is instead merely Daria's imagining? Or by imagining, does she see a glimpse, have a vision, of more authentic interaction?
I am not sure. But I think those are the basics of understanding this scene.

As we've seen just here on these boards I don't think the scene has one definite interpretation, but is open to many. What I thought about the scene may not be the "right" answer, but it's what I thought. I saw the scene with the other couples (and triples - did anyone else notice?) as showing that this couple could be any couple in the youth movement, any couple going back to the earth and becoming free, playful, sexual people with each other without the trappings of Society. When the camera panned back to show other couples appearing all around them and then even farther back to show that on any place on any hill in the whole desert another young couple would appear until there were hundreds it was like saying this couple is not unique in itself, but rather a symbol of young, free sexuality being replicated all over the world.

Thanks for the perspective, if it indeed is accurate. Is Julian Beck actually in the scene? He was an extremely memorable performer, best known for his chillingly good work in "Poltergeist II" (which was released after he died).

I believe that the actors in this scene were members of The Living Theatre, an avant-garde troupe headed by Julian Beck and Judith Malina. If you watch it again, you'll see that it's quite a playful scene, highly aestheticized by the actors as well as by Antonioni, full of non-discursive communication using physical signs and gestures. It's also the first of Daria's "visions", the second being the explosion of the corporate conference center near Phoenix.
I think.

Wow, you have the most inflated sense of self-importance of anyone I've ever encountered here. How many other movies are you mad at because they don't include you? I'm gay too, and I thought it was a beautiful scene.
The sexual revolution was mostly about the birth control pill becoming available. Most straight people in favor of "free love" did not care about gay rights and would have distanced themselves from it.

Hmmm you seem glaringly infantile for the very reasons you've described. Really grasping at straws here. Antonioni didn't give a rat's arse about Gay and Lesbian political activism, and it had beep all to do with the Sexual Revolution of the 1960s, so that's why it didn't make it into the film.

Remarkable that everyone who has posted here has seen the movie - and thus, obviously, the world - through rosy heterosexual spectacles. It just doesn't occur to anyone that the world is energized by multivarious sexual spectra, does it ? And for all its "revolutionary" intentions and designs, the "orgy" in the desert is relentlessly heterosexual. Given that the Sexual Revolution of the 1960s (and I was a part of it) was in considerable measure the result of Gay and Lesbian political activism, it does leave one thinking that at heart Antonioni was nothing but an old wanker, and mainstream audiences, congratulating themselves on their liberal credentials, still don't include Gay, or Bi, or Lesbian, or Transgendered people in their awareness. Funny thing is, when I saw this movie (three times) in my late teens/early twenties, the "orgy" sequence seemed to me glaringly infantile for the very reasons I've described.

What language is that?

With this scene since he has said well before some companion of the forum represents in my opinion the sexual revolution of the 60, and an attack to the social conservative of the time, and another example we familiarly have it reflected to the final part of the film with the explosions of identified elements so much as the refrigerator, a furniture with the television set, and others
I do not believe that there are enough indications to affirm that they are imaginations of some of the protagonists, if not it to shape of the message (or some of them) that the director wants to transmit with the film.

Jacob Singer
Jacob's Ladder

I apologize for the length of this but well i think its necessary.
I agree somewhat with most of whats been said so far, however i feel Antonioni is actually making a pretty heavy statement whilst analyzing sixties culture. So the scene has many different layers.
The scene:

1. Shows the importance of the sexual revolution and sex - in general - to the culture, as well as the two characters.
2. Shows a kind of purity or tribalism in the act of sex that removes the cares of the world in a state of civil unrest, and shows an almost divine like bliss of escaping the world through sex.
3. The showing of multiple people, multiple orgies, all in the same frame attempts to show the feeling of connection the two main characters have with the world of the counter-culture or hippies.
   These are just the surface however, the scene goes even deeper as some of those points have a two pronged effect.
4. The existence of the other people in the frame shows that the sex/love that the mains partake in is not unique and perhaps not as pure as the culture thinks it is.
5. The fact they are in a desert where little life grows and is in fact described as dead, shows that this ideal of free love is ultimately a dead or fruitless way of thinking. I could be reaching a little here however I think if you recall Antonioni's works like Laventura, The Eclipse and so on you find a common element of questioning love/sex with an overall view of "The god of Eros being sick", and I think if you look at the way the characters relate to the desert and mirror the deserts curves on numerous occasions you find the mirroring of death or of lifelessness in the orgy scene - it could be a lifelessness inside the characters, but I feel its more to do with the futility of this particular kind of love.
   That's how i read the scene anyway, its quite an amazing movie and my interpretation of the movies overall point at the end was the idea that all the revolutionary ideals, the cultures values, the wanting to dismantle the system/corporations and be free, this whole beautiful ideal of trying to become at one with nature was at the end of the day just wishful thinking. A beautiful, lyrical, dream, but a dream all the same.
   Ticketiboo.

Not to get all hippie and overly intellectual here, but the nature of the movie doesn't leave much choice.
I think it has to do with the idea of returning to ground zero, of humans existing in their most essential state. There's a tribalism and an animalism that you see the others (as opposed to the romantic leads) demonstrate in their lovemaking (though it's barely lovemaking at all) and in the build-up to it. If Antonioni had shown the leads alone, what you would have been left with is, simply, two gorgeous people having a poetic, picturesque, loving interlude. They illustrate Antonioni's more idealistic views. The others underscore what they don't or can't, and bring out the idea that this isn't about two characters alone but something larger. The whole movie, it seems to me, is about the corruption and ugliness of civilization and revolutionary ideas of how to better it ideas I think Antonioni found sympathetic but ultimately didn't feel went far enough.
It's definitely not a hallucination the part of Daria, just as I don't think the ending is either. It's not meant to be taken that literally.

No, it's just Antonioni's usual artsy-fartsy visual blather in between his boring scenes of boring people. I've been to Zabriskie Point several times, including earlier this year. It's an inhospitable place to have sex. Forget about sunstroke or heatstroke when it's 115 F. Just consider coupling on steep hard slopes abrading genitals to a bloody mess full of coarse sand. Filthy and choking on silica dust. How deliciously dreamy! NOT. A nice interlude between Grand Theft Aero and attempting murder of a police officer.
As to a profitable restaurant, there's a remote but very nice one at Panamint Springs by itself in the middle of nowhere 60 miles from Zabriskie Point. The Furnace Creek Resort, a mere 5 miles from Zabriskie Point, contains many hotel rooms, multiple eateries, a huge pool, a campground, .
The Inn at Furnace Creek, featuring an elegant hotel and fine dining, is 3 miles from Zabriskie Point.

another random dreams of the girl i think. she imagined how it could be or how it was, when people not just having sex but playing without the fake faces.
like ZP is the place where they could be as they really are.
so as i said it like a dreams and the reality represents that average family that stops and thinkin how the restraunt will be proffitable here

There is life in the dessert? I've never seen anyone eating (multi-cellular) life at the end of a meal.
Life in the desert? Yes. Lots of creosote bushes near Zabriskie Point.
Obviously you never learned the simple mnemonic to distinguish which of the words contain one S (a single helping) and which contains two (a double helping) of the letter S.
Desert One arid place at a time is enough for anyone.
Dessert A double helping of ice cream/pie/cake to close a meal is satisfying.

There is life in the dessert. Earlier the girl said the dessert was beutyfull, the man then said it was dead. The dessert is ofcouse symbolysm of the coldhearted world they are living in.

Just another aspect of the movie's theme of doing things that were (are, in come cases) socially disapproved of.

This message has been deleted.

I don't think it really had a purpose, I think this was a pretty confused movie and they basically stuck a lot of things in there that they thought would be visually interesting.
Did I not love him, Cooch? MY OWN FLESH I DIDN'T LOVE BETTER!!! But he had to say 'Nooooooooo'

i thnik they were playing not having sex
todas las palabras son robadas

Perhaps it is meant to represent the feeling of timelessness or universality that the 'real' couple may have been feeling - the sense that they were every couple that ever had and ever would have had sex there.