If Terence McKenna were alive today, and he was visiting the east coast, he would dip into his well-versed pharmacological stash. Spark a few bombers and head for Black Mountain College to immerse himself into the slippery wet trip of clattering skins. Or he might venture into the dryer moon-lit crazed tree dwellings of the pillow-headed midgets announcing their presence to the vast universe thru DMT-induced word elves. The birthplace of the geodesic dome by Buckminster Fuller. Where else best to leap off of and into the unknown?
Damn the Torpedoes, Full Speed Ahead to Mountain College Museum & Arts Center.
In short, McKenna would have loved the 4th {Re}Happening produced by the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center (BMCM+AC) and the Media Arts Project (MAP). A resurrection to the poignant spirit embodied by this short-lived progressive arts school which closed in 1957. An existence of a mere 24 years but nonetheless ushered the 20th century American art dream team. Future art icons like abstract minimalist painter Kenneth Noland that one could argue, set the tone for modern Adobe Illustrator enthusiast and their symbol enriched modern aesthetics throughout indie propaganda collateral.
Perhaps sculptor Ruth Asawa and her meta-nurbs wireframe pieces defined organic interlocking structures of the macrocosms and microcosms along with quantum-art-bound and pioneering graphic artist Robert Rauschenberg and his analogue-induced digital Photoshop filtering on overlaying images. Medium medleys of paint, backdrop textile, scraps off newspapers on 2D canvases or absurdism 3D creations. My parents are proud owners of one of Robert’s signed pieces. A profound and masterly subliminal influence on my artistic career. Hard lights. Screen. Overlay. Luminosity virtuoso-decades ahead of his time. The {Re} Happening reminds us of this short but bright spark that resonated throughout the entire country’s artistic central nervous system over 50 years. Talk about flashback.
Not more than a 100 yards from my parking spot, I am greeted by a woman possessed by seasons (and caged by bars with electronic drone tones); an interactive installation that lashes and dances and collapses and relapses back in a synatpic-dynamic rapture of larger-than- proportions. (Performed by Amy Hamilton and collaborators Vincent Palomino and Drew Miller.) Welcome fellow arriving guests. This is Butoh. A style unto itself of dance-fused mania that favors rejecting both Eastern and Western dance conventions and then slowing all gestures down to an eerie subconscious moment engorged with dissimilar déja vu. Doused in Southern comfort ghosts under cover of darkness in a crossbreed pageantry of “Dia De Los Muertos” outfits that are evenly spiced with Santeria-white robes of Caribbean milieu. This is the Angler by Sara Baird with the Anemone Dance Theater. (Costumes designed by Amanda-Ray Danko and the overture set produced by Kimathi Moore. The Sound Room, produced by Kimathi Moore & Will Isenogle, set the stage for some of the brightest up and comings in the Asheville indie music scene.
Asheville’s Music Injects The New Music, The New Dance
Apothecary’s own David Grubba, Andrew Williams, Ryan A. Watson, Dash Lewis, Alec Sturgis, Nick Scavo, Alex Cummings, Meghan Mulhearn, David J. Lynch, Chandra Shukla, Elisa Faires, Zach Smith, Shane Perlowin, Earth Concrete (Joseph Matthew Swope and Mimi Christensen), Abe Leonard & Nathanael Markham, Luciann Waldrup and Will Isenogle.
Natural to the point of animosity. A collective tribunal into shamanistic carpet-edge pulling. Getting a glimpse as to what the hell is keeping the floor at our feet and the planet surging with tonality. A tearing at a screaming and a healing of ecstatic dance rubbed with murky overtones of no-malice sexuality, child-like innocence and a large scale frolic through the clear star sky night around Lake Eden. If there ever was a Garden of the same name it could only have existed without the light of day. Genesis endless night, endless experimentation across the spectrum of language, color, sound, noise, dance, and bodily celebration of senses. A rewriting moment. A chance to feel life and possibility as clay in your hands. Easy to shape. Easy to destroy. But intent to remain.
A human-kind extended recess period with all the toys one could need. New friends and party allies established. A pulse in the Timewave Zero software across McKenna’s endless blank screen of post-Mayan human history. It’s at least an inkling to the vastness of when embarking on the enterprise of fuck-it-all-fun. You get tiny and sometimes not-so-tiny moments of epiphany and revelatory definitions about freedoms. With Lake Eden as a home to this wondrous late-hour enchantment, the wild animals are not the coyotes one is accustomed to. But to the sound of the homo-sapiens as predator and the creative winds as prey. Such vibrance in a relatively young tradition, the {Re}Happening grows stronger.