Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center host 7th annual {Re}HAPPENING

Press release:

Please join Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center (BMCM+AC), for the 7th Annual {Re}HAPPENING, on Saturday March 25, 3-10 pm at Camp Rockmont, 375 Lake Eden Rd, Black Mountain, NC 28711.

Since 2010, Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center (BMCM+AC) has hosted the {Re}HAPPENING inspired by John Cage’s 1952 Theatre Piece No. 1, an unscripted performance at Black Mountain College considered by many to be the first Happening. The 7th annual {Re}HAPPENING will reshape one of Asheville’s most anticipated yearly art events by offering two international projects alongside a roster of 18 local installation, new media, music, and performance projects with environmental lighting by students of the Odyssey Community School.

The {Re}HAPPENING is a day long event at the historic campus of Black Mountain College – 15 minutes from Asheville. It is part art event, part fundraiser, and part community instigator, providing a platform for contemporary artists to share their response to the vital legacy of Black Mountain College by returning to its original site in the present day.

Tickets will be on-sale starting Wednesday Jan. 25th. $20 for Advance Adult Admission, $25 – Regular Adult Admission, $15 – Youth (10+) / Student (w/ID), Children under the age of 10 are FREE with a ticket holding adult, $10 – Parking Pass, $5 – Round Trip Shuttle Pass from downtown Asheville. Food trucks will be available on site. More info: rehappening.com or email: rehappening@blackmountaincollege.org

Founded in 2005, Third Coast Percussion has performed hundreds of concerts across the country, presents an annual concert season at home in Chicago, teaches musicians of all ages and experience levels, and has commissioned dozens of new works by composers including Glenn Kotche, Chris Cerrone, Donnacha Dennehy, Timo Andres, David T. Little, Ted Hearne, and Augusta Read Thomas. Third Coast Percussion is the Ensemble-in-Residence at the University of Notre Dame.

This performance will include classic works by John Cage, Steve Reich and Lou Harrison, as well as more recent works by Glenn Kotche, Augusta Read Thomas, Danny Clay and Peter Martin. Both Cage and Harrison were teachers at Black Mountain College and are widely considered two of the most significant composers of the 20th century.

Dance Heginbotham is a New York-based contemporary dance company committed to supporting, producing, and sustaining the work of choreographer John Heginbotham. With an emphasis on collaboration, DH enriches national and international communities with its unique blend of inventive, thoughtful, and rigorous dance theater works. Founded in 2011, DH has quickly established itself as one of the most adventurous and exciting new companies on the contemporary dance scene, and is celebrated for its vibrant athleticism, humor, as well as its commitment to collaboration. DH has shared the stage with music icons including Alarm Will Sound, Brooklyn Rider, Gabriel Kahane and Shara Worden, and is currently working on a new evening-length work with beloved author and illustrator Maira Kalman.

Using Black Mountain College’s historical setting as the catalyst, John Heginbotham will premiere a new site-specific work at the the {Re}HAPPENING featuring dancer Lindsey Jones and pianist George Shevstov.

(Re)Construction by Corrina Mehiel is a participatory performance of the cutting up, then re-stitching of the American flag. In this collective action of separating and mending, participants will collaborate on a piece that represents the bringing together of a divided country, through a physical expression of the right to free speech.

Between the Sheets by Ethan Gibbs, Kaylee Dunn, Byron Browne, Brett Wyatt, Madalyn Wofford and Michael Lauch is an interactive dreamscape where the viewers will explore the psychology of lying down while standing up. Using imagery and sound from subtle realism to the non-sequitur, and transforming space through art, light, video, and movement, they will create dream scenarios that have a common thread and experience.

Canoe by Thomas Dixon, Asa Jackson, Dathan Kane, Alx Mchl, and Mohari Chabwera is an exploration of the life and five artistic styles of Virginia native, and Black Mountain College alumnus, Cy Twombly and his contemporaries. “Canoe” symbolizes the connections between nature and the arts and Cy Twombly’s love of both. Artists from Virginia’s Contemporary Arts Network and California’s Chouinard Foundation links the stories of Native Americans and early settlers of Virginia and North Carolina and their geography and ecosystems to the evolutionary processes of art and the artist. “Canoe” interacts with its audience through painting five canoes in the artistic style of Cy Twombly.

Chance Operations Gene A. Felice II, Owen Smith, Susan Smith, and students from The University of Maine, Intermedia MFA program and the Coaction Lab for Interdisciplinary collaboration will follow the “chance operations” theme of past {Re}HAPPENINGs, facilitating the students to create ephemeral and site specific works of art on location, specifically around the grounds of Lake Eden. This work will range from performance art, to installation, to light and sound based digital storytelling / immersive / interactive media.

Drum as Telephone by Zach Cooper, Victor Dimotsis and Jason Moore is a recurrent sound installation, a trio performance that explores geography as acoustic space. The Lake Eden Campus terrain is transformed into an effects processor and the players’ shifting locations become compositional devices. Spontaneous sonic punctuation and footnote to the prose-at-large.

Duo 2 by Eric Mullis and Kent O’Doherty is an investigation of composition and improvisation within an ongoing dialogue with a dancer and a musician’s shared histories as performers and individuals.

Genome9/creation species: [1enter-act] by Caprice Hamlin-Krout is a nine-part project to be created and installed through multi-venues and medias. [1enter-act] is the first part in the series beginning as an interactive collage with the intention to give an “experience” of creation in species through time/space. The work will begin with an online invitation for public participation through Instagram and Tumbler blog posts beginning in January. Submissions will be collected and posted online in addition to being used in creating the installation piece for the 2017 Re- Happening.

Immersion by George Sims (video artist) & Kirta Shuckstes (electronic musician) is a perception of being physically present in a non-physical world. The perception is created by surrounding the viewer in evolving images and sound that provide an engrossing total environment.

Jank Tank 01, 02, and 03 by Justin Evans, Annabelle Prince, Tom Vinson, Em Willey, Aaron Dawson is three womb like and sound insulated dioramas which provide immersive and personal listening experiences for your head, each distinct from the environment where they are installed. Each Jank Tank includes the sounds of Mystery Meat, a chance operated sound collage podcast from Charlotte, Asheville, and New Orleans.

Mountain Muzak by Matthew O’Connell, Joe O’Connell, Zeke Graves. In early 2017, a hacked synthesizer emerges from a pile of electronic waste in Raleigh, NC. Nicknamed “The Mutant,” this lo-fi modal instrument finds itself an outcast of modern electronica, and embarks on a retreat to the mountains of Western North Carolina. Musicians Ezekiel Graves, Matthew O’Connell, and Joe O’Connell will provide musical accompaniment as this bizarre instrument attempts to find its sound among the old-time music of the region.

Prepared Improvisation: A Sound Sanctuary by artists Samuel Paradise and Kavalactones collaborate to create a “sound sanctuary,” in which the viewer can relax, recharge, and actively participate in manipulating the audio-visual experience. Post-rock drip noise band Kavalactones perform “prepared improvisation,” spawned in part from the innovations of John Cage. Electronic music composer Samuel Paradise provides frequencies designed to stimulate theta and delta brainwaves, incorporating geodesics and the golden ratio to inspire a meditative state within the viewer.

The Resonating Forest by River Guerguerian is an interactive sound installation on the edge of the woods by Lake Eden where people can partake in making spontaneous sounds that fit into the natural environment. Participants will be encouraged to create sounds using gongs, singing bowls, chimes, found objects, and sounds of the forest.

Ruptures by Susan Alta Martin is an immersive installation of photo-based sculptures and dioramas that deals with how the mental images we have of rural Western North Carolina are translated into physical reality. A delicate balance is struck between an attraction to the intricate, construction of the models and the crassness of the content.
Skirting Color : Stitching Code by Victoria Bradbury. A performer alternates between live coding a Josef Albers color study website and manually machine embroidering the same HTML code onto her billowing skirt. As a colorful projection fills the space and as the text of the code begins to trace the hem of the skirt, the performer repeatedly stands up and turns the skirt around her waist to continue sewing. The connection between code and fabric links to the evolution of computer programming from the Jacquard loom; the female live-coder onstage links the performance to women as the first ‘Computers’.

The Burro Project: Horti-Counterculture by Susan Smith and Derek Thomas Smith. Toward the open: the radicality of rootedness. An interactive print and “crankie” participatory installation focused on the radical act of staying put. Through an interactive print process, The Burro Project works with the etymology of the word “radical,” reminding us that what is “at root” and “rooted” is the truly radical. Through garden imagery, we explore the “horti-counter-cultural,” inviting others to participate in creating printworks that will then be wheat-pasted onto a portable wall. There will also be a performance, using a “crankie”, a narrative tool which has seen a revival in urban areas recently, to offer a narrative of “the radical act of staying put” in a time of uncertainty.

The Witness by Anagnorisis: Sean Rogers, Gabriel Baldasare, Zach Aliotta, Porter Witsell, Silvia Sheffield & Eli Albiston. Anagnorisis aims to explore the body as landscape, canvas, tool, and container, searching within it for the means of public and private transformation. In homage to the late queer composer Pauline Oliveros, Anagnorisis will present an interpretation of her score “The Witness” in a durational improvisation exploring the interplay between individual and collective voices and simultaneous narratives.

Withdrawal by Severn Eaton. Located at the archery range, “Withdrawal” consists of a large-scale target, based on Buckminster Fuller’s Dymaxion Map, a reimagining of the shapes and sizes of land masses on the world map. An array of labeled darts/arrows are placed into soft areas, where there is current military involvement. The audience is invited to pull these out, to keep as part of the piece.

Sponsors include: Asheville Convention and Visitors Bureau, Wedge Brewing Company, d&b audiotechnik, 828design, Henco Reprographics, WNC Magazine, Champagne Events, Arbitrary Forms Studio, Fine Arts Theatre and Samsel Architects.

The Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center (BMCM+AC) preserves and continues the legacy of educational and artistic innovation of Black Mountain College. We achieve our mission through collection, conservation, and educational activities including exhibitions, publications, and public programs. blackmountaincollege.org.