2020 Artist Lineup

Important Announcement:

After much consideration, BMCM+AC has made the decision to indefinitely postpone this year’s {Re}HAPPENING as well as all upcoming programs through the end of April. Learn More

The Philip Glass Ensemble Unplugged – Michael Riesman (keyboard, music director), Mick Rossi (keyboard), Lisa Bielawa (voice), Peter Hess (woodwinds),  Ryan Kelly (sound)

36 Views of Black Mountain RE HAP PEN I CH ING – Ted Pope

A tribute to the late Black Mountain College alumnus Michael Rumaker. Pick up the phone and get lost in landscapes, honoring the memories that Rumaker documented of his time at BMC.

Above, Below and In-between – Gene A. Felice II and Kimathi Moore

This performance will explore video projected light patterns and imagery that illuminates the lake floor, its surface, and the surrounding landscape. The light will be balanced by a four-channel, immersive audio installation centered in the same area on the lower deck.

Amend x 19 – Kathy Leiner and Misti Galvan

The interactive installation/movement piece is a response to the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment and explores the history, the challenges, and the innovative spirit of women who keep moving and persevere. Audience members are invited to amend the ongoing installation and engage with the 19-minute performance every hour on the hour in a collaborative effort with dancers, Kathy Leiner (Asheville) and Misti Galvan (Austin).

Anni Albers, De-Dematerialized – Christopher Catanese & Julia Gartrell

A participatory workshop in which individuals use hand looms and local materials to create an Anni Albers-inspired piece of fiber art. Accompanied by a sound installation in which chance operations are used to generate an audio “lesson” in craft and design by combining pre-recorded and live, performed readings from Albers’s writings.

Bales of Waste – The Different Wrld Team (Honey Simone, Kat Tillman, and Sara Melosh)

An interactive installation & conversation about textile waste & solutions.

Biophilia Asheville – Emmalee Hunnicutt, Donnie Rex Bishop

Asheville artists met throughout the seasons of 2019 to create something together in the moment in a local green space, and now present ‘Biophilia Asheville’: an exploration of connection to place and time through the lens of movement, sound, and video.

Bury the Pennies and Hoard the Rain – Alli Marshall and OKAPI (Lindsey Miller, and Scott Gorski)

A collaboration of experimental music and spoken word exploring themes of environmental decline and climate change. The performance asks what it means to interact with the mundane tasks of daily life while also faced with the possibility that it’s the end of the world as we know it. OKAPI and Alli will intertwine sonic and literary ideas so that the cello and upright bass compositions score the poetry while the poetry reflects motifs within the music.

Cagevent 2{020}: Sometimes it works, Sometimes it doesn’t Redux – Callous Physical Theatre (Joséphine A. Garibaldi & Paul Zmolek)

Callous Physical Theatre presents four 12 minute playful events inspired by John Cage’s theatre works. The performers follow scores utilizing chance operations to provide precise timings for sound, movement, and visual events to occur. The first iteration of Cagevent: Sometimes it works, Sometimes it doesn’t (2012) was performed in a converted shipping container placed in a busy shopping district for the Kontaining Festival in Helsinki, Finland.

Cake by the Lake – Julie Thomson and Friends

Cake by the Lake is an invitation to taste Johanna Jalowetz’s Hazelnut Torte (the cake) next to Lake Eden (the lake). Johanna Jalowetz came to Black Mountain College in Fall 1939 with her husband Heinrich Jalowetz. She taught bookbinding and voice at Black Mountain College and lived at the college for fourteen years, through the Spring of 1953. This gesture, offered by Julie J. Thomson—and made possible with the help of many friends—offers one answer to these questions:
• What did Black Mountain College taste like?
• Who was Johanna Jalowetz?
• What do you do with something small that you discover while doing Black Mountain College research that you can’t forget?

Chance Operations – Gene A. Felice II, Andi Steele, faculty and students of UNCW

A group of faculty and undergraduate students from UNC Wilmington will be led by Gene A. Felice II to create chance operations themed projects.

Cooking and Cleaning in the Shadows: The (Speculative) Work of BMC cook Cornelia Williams – Anna Helgeson and Lori Horvitz

As a way to honor the creative labor done by all women working in the shadows of men, behind the (metaphorical) kitchen door we will speculate/recreate Cornelia’s kitchen, a vibrant and inspiring place where creativity thrived not in spite of, but because of its darkness.

encomia abstraction – Jenni Cockrell

“encomia abstraction” is a 3 hour Butoh dance solo performance/improvisation exploring and celebrating the lives and works of various female artists who followed their own visions, pushed boundaries and experimented in their chosen mediums. The audience may come and go, watching for as long as they would like, with the option to draw an image card for dance inspiration and may select costume changes as well.

Environmental Engagement #2 – Lisa Blackburn and Mark Boyd

In the spirit of Theatre Piece No. 1, this unscripted participatory installation will include poetry, sound, video projection, and bio-generated drawings continuously happening in real-time. The sound (both ambient and electronic) and drawings will be environmentally triggered and random. They will combine with audience-driven poetry readings using excerpts from poems associated primarily with Black Mountain College.

John Cage Room – Curated by Harvest Records

Hosting interdisciplinary performances and installations from local artists and performers.

Just Intonation Songs – Vinesines (Ben Hjertmann and Emmalee Hunnicutt)

New songs in Just Intonation, composed by Ben Hjertmann and performed by Vinesines (Ben Hjertmann and Emmalee Hunnicutt). Open your ears to beautiful new harmonies and melodies not possible on standard-tuned instruments; performed with voices, guitars, cello, zither, pedal steel guitar, and bowed psaltery. They include original surreal lyrics, grungy Country-esque slide guitar, microtonal quasi-Medieval zither canons, Augmented “magic” tuning on pedal steel, fretless electric warped-Blues, improvised solos in alternate scales, and lush two-part vocal harmonies throughout.

Málning – Madeline Yahr, Jamie Cuomo, Quincy Southerland, Tyler Thomas – Rivera , Celia Cioffi

Málning is a free space for the audience to create their own story, giving plenty of opportunities to wonder and wander mentally and physically. Málning is a meditative experience meant for both the movers and the viewers alike created by paint, translucent – sheer wrap and bodies.

Movement + Monoprint – Jamie Karolich

This performance will use human movement and pressure to create large scale monoprints. Each print pulled will be a record of time and movement-translated through marks on the page.

Musical Table – Martha Skinner

The drawing takes its form on a large table through the impromptu participation of visitors to the stop and go of music. The participants draw each other’s faces from across the table, and much like the game of Musical Chairs, shift positions when interrupted by the gaps in sound. We continue each other’s drawings, start new ones, creating a cacophony of faces on top of faces and gestures, a palimpsest of people and process, a community made : community portrait and a drawing by all of us of all of us.

Open Form – Joachim Gawryolek

Open Form is a gathering space in an open environment that invites participants to informal encounters. The installation takes the form of an inflatable torus that fluctuates based on the participation. Each person, therefore, has an effect on how others interact with the form, allows the participants to form relationships with one another, and brings spatial awareness. The goal is to complete a series of case studies as experiments to understand how public space can be used and what the intervention could be. This is the second case study of the project. 

Perfectly Imperfect Union – Susan Smith, Owen Smith, and students from the University of Maine

“Perfectly Imperfect Union” is a participatory project aimed at creating a collective borderless union within the ReHappening. Passport distribution, flag making, and manifesto proclamation bring us together as one.

Re:Visions – Ant M. Lobo

“Re:Visions” is an exhibition of works that were created in the vein of the legacies of both chance operation and photography at Black Mountain College. It looks at experimental photographs made on Lake Eden’s Campus by artist and curator, Ant M Lobo, during the ReViewing Conference in September 2019. They will also be facilitating a collaborative sun printing project throughout the day.

Road Signs – Daniel Abide, Bear Brown, Byron Browne, Kaylee Dunn, Ethan Gibbs, Sather Waters, Christopher O’Leary, Katrina Ohstrom, Madalyn Wofford, Carley Dergins

“Road Signs” is an interactive experiment that explores the ways in which we search for messages and meaning in the romantic notion of a road trip. Using imagery and sounds, from symbolism to the non-sequitur, and transforming space through art, light, video, and movement, we will emulate the poetry in roadside culture and leave the participants in a state of wanderlust.

Smoke & Mirrors – Geo Lynx, Cilla Vee, pax

“Smoke & Mirrors” is an intimate and immersive environment of projected imagery, movement and sound that conjures into being multi-faceted layers – quite literally with the use of smoke and mirrors!

Sound-Nature-Resonance – Two-Way Street

“Sound-Nature-Resonance” explores the inextricable link between nature and music and the nature of music. This concept is explored through several different musical processes and focuses on its presence in the environment, our instruments, and in performance/collaboration. Featuring music by John Cage, John Luther Adams, James Tenney, Catherine Lamb, and Pauline Oliveros, each of these composers explore a related idea: how can we as artists speak to the complexities of the natural world?

String Theory – Zach Aliotta

Explore and listen to new sound worlds with this collection of altered and prepared violins. Zach Aliotta will showcase works by composers from Black Mountain College as well as others from the past and present.

Sweet Border Line – Asheville Contemporary Dance Theater (Sharon Cooper, Sara Derting, Adeline Cleveland, Giles Collard and Liz Lang)

“Sweet Border Line” is an interdisciplinary work about border bureaucracy, repression, hope, success and failure. This work features dance, theatre, sculptural installation created by a Mexican artist Gildo Gonzalez, live music and voice.