Month-Long Festival:
Under the Influence: Celebrating the Legacy of Black Mountain College
A collaborative festival on the 50th anniversary of John Cage’s multi-media “Theatre Piece No. 1”.
September 19-22, 2002
Asheville, Black Mountain and Cullowhee, NC
In the summer of 1952 amid the creative ferment of Black Mountain College in North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains, John Cage created an unscripted presentation incorporating music, dance, spoken word, visual art and projections. Later titled “Theatre Piece No. 1”, the event achieved renown as the very first multi-media “Happening”. On the 50th anniversary of this historic event, the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center and its collaborators are presenting Under the Influence: Celebrating the Legacy of Black Mountain College.
Revolutionizing the American arts and sciences in the first half of twentieth century, the influence of Black Mountain College faculty and alums such as Josef and Anni Albers, John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Buckminster Fuller, Walter Gropius, M.C. Richards, Alfred Kazin, Willem and Elaine de Kooning, Jacob Lawrence, Robert Motherwell, Charles Olson, Robert Rauschenberg, Stan VanDerBeek, Robert Creeley, Jonathan Williams, and many others continues to be felt to this day.
From September 19 through 22, the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center sponsored a four-day regional festival called Under the Influence: Celebrating the Legacy of Black Mountain College. The festival was planned to coincide with the 50th Anniversary of John Cage’s multi-media Theatre Piece No. 1, believed by many to be the first Happening. Filled with music, dance, poetry, visual art, and film, the festival was an exhilarating series of events exploring the leading edge of contemporary culture. Musicians Tony Conrad, Pauline Oliveros, and John Cobb, poets Lisa Jarnot, Lee Ann Brown, Michael Boughn, and John Landry, dancer Ray Eliot Schwartz and many others gave outstanding performances of their work to appreciative audiences. Film screenings of the new documentary, How to Draw a Bunny about artist and BMC alumnus Ray Johnson, rare short films by BMC alumnus Stan VanderBeek, and a raucous late-night screening of Negativland: Our Favorite Things were popular festival attractions.
Because of the enormous scope of Under the Influence, BMCM+AC needed to collaborate with many community partners in order to make it happen, and we are indebted to the following collaborators for their support, participation and good cheer: Asheville Area Arts Council, Asheville Arts Museum, Asheville Contemporary Dance Theater, The Big Idea, Black Box Studio, Black Mountain Artspace Charter School, Black Mountain Center for the Arts, Camp Rockmont, Fine Arts Theater, Hart Distributing, Malaprop’s Bookstore, The Reader’s Corner, Semi Public, A space for Contemporary Art, Table of the Elements, UNCA Cultural and Special Events Committee, UNCA Mass Communication Department, UNCA Music Department, Vincent’s Ear, Warren Wilson College, Western Carolina University Art Department, Western Carolina University English Department, Western Carolina Music Department, and Western Carolina University Women’s Center.
