{Re}HAPPENING 14 Schedule

The {Re}HAPPENING is open to visitors from 3pm-10pm on April 25th, 2026. Food & Drink will be available on-site all day. You can find the detailed schedule for the {Re}HAPPENING 14 projects and performances below. (MAP LOCATION refers to the event map which will be included in the printed program when you enter the event).

ONGOING INSTALLATIONS

Creatures From a Door to Perception
Artists: Fred Merrill + The Electric Cabbage Ensemble
LOCATION: ARCHERY RANGE (MAP #1)
(Ongoing with workshops at 3:15PM and 6:30PM)
Come play among giant wooden birds, butterflies, and horses – collaborate with strangers on homemade instruments. In a wooden wonderland of repurposed objects, we study the idea of “at hand” together. Creatures From a Door to Perception is on view all day inviting you to compose with the stranger next to you. This installation is created by Fred Merrill with workshops led by The Electric Cabbage Ensemble (Carolyn Zaldivar + Matthew Carey).

la/do
Artists: Deisha Oliver + Luciana Arias
LOCATION: ROAMING
la/do is a short performance combining sound and movement in small, unconventional spaces. Audience members stand close and experience the work alongside the performers. Each piece lasts 10–15 minutes and leaves no physical trace, existing only in the shared moment of listening and attention. We invite you to discover la/do throughout the day at different, surprising  locations throughout the grounds.

Catch and Release
Artists: Carson Whitmore + Jason Lord
LOCATION: SOUTH LODGE PORCH (MAP #2)
(Ongoing 3:00-7:00PM)
Calling upon the element of desire and chance in the act of fishing, our collaborative, participatory installation invites participants to respond (catch) and make (release) a small creative act.

Passing By
Artist: Hesam Salehbeig
LOCATION: SOUTH LODGE LOBBY (MAP #2)
Passing By is a durational performance in which light, sound, and movement come together to create the presence of a river without water. Projected reflections ripple across stones and a moving body, accompanied by a meditative soundscape inspired by dripping water. Visitors are welcome to encounter the work at any moment, staying briefly or returning over time to experience its slow, shifting rhythms.

REDACTED
Artist: R Stein Wexler
LOCATION: SOUTH LODGE UPPER LEFT (MAP #2)
What would you think, say, or do if it weren’t taboo? REDACTED is a participatory installation inviting you to anonymously share what you keep to yourself—and to then watch as responses are partially obscured and projected in real time. Each iteration of REDACTED becomes a living portrait of its political moment and cultural context shaped by those who take part, the presenting institution, and shifting definitions of freedom.

35mm Multi-Image Slideshow
Artist: Alexandria Jarvis
LOCATION: SOUTH LODGE UPPER RIGHT (MAP #2)
(Ongoing with slide-making workshops, located on the lodge porch, at 3:45PM and 7PM)
An analog projection installation that combines mixed media slides—scratched, painted, and collaged—alongside archival photographs inside a luminous head. In this work, four slide projectors run continuously on auto-loop, randomizing the 320 symbols, marks, and graphic images. These haptic images and the audible firing of projectors mirror our psyche’s drive to surface unconscious material. The work rebels against digital isolation by gathering friends and strangers to cultivate collective presence.

Portrait
Artist: Carlos Rigau
LOCATION: SOUTH LODGE BREEZEWAY (MAP #3)
Every day sounds. Everyday Violence. Everyday.

Empath II
Artist: Ben Hjertmann
LOCATION: NORTH LODGE PORCH (MAP #4)
(Ongoing 3:00-8:00PM)
Explore the deep resonances of Empath II, an invented string instrument in Nature’s Scale (the harmonic series), tuned to the 60Hz electric hum. Participants are invited to speak or sing into this one-of-a-kind instrument, or relax into the art of listening as 72 microtonal strings sympathetically resonate with the surrounding sounds. Other performances on the event will also be telephoned into the instrument for empathetic resonance.

A Room for Dreaming and Memory
Artists: Matthew Boman (Xor) + Mica Rutkowski
LOCATION: NORTH LODGE UPPER LEFT (MAP #4)
A participatory installation of sound and color. An unfamiliar world of ambiguous rules. A collective exercise in the memory of space.

FABRIC RESONANCE
Artists: Eric “Rodent” Cheslak + Mark Crowley
LOCATION: NORTH LODGE UPPER RIGHT (MAP #4)
A reactive installation: a web of kinetic fabrics animated by fans trigger and propel an evolving quadraphonic modular synthesizer soundscape.

The Country Dwellers
Artist: Stefani Byrd
LOCATION: NORTH LODGE LOBBY (MAP #4)
The Country Dwellers is an immersive video installation which traces the connections between Appalachian folk magic and the rise of Neo-Paganism. The title of the work derives from the Latin root of the word pagan, paganus, meaning “rural person” or “country dweller,” a term that gestures toward the deep spiritual relationship these communities maintained with the land and how that connection shaped their sense of self.

Quack! An interactive carnival chance poem and polyphonic waterfowl discourse on Black Mountain College history
Artists: Wendell M. Kling + Ben Miller
LOCATION: FIELD BELOW GYM (MAP #13)
(Ongoing 3-6PM and 7-10PM)
Waddle on up! Pluck a Duckie off the pond! Open your beak! Recite that text published on Duckie’s bottom! Flap your wings! Prizes galore! Win “Quack Mountain College” coasters and tank tops! Feathered bibliographies! Geodesic quote orbs! Go home with a Duckie of your own! Birds of a feather quack together! Event transcribed live on an Olivetti typewriter until the machine busts!

Thank You Water
Artists: NiDaDa
LOCATION: LAKE EDEN (MAP #14)
(Ongoing with performance at 8:30PM)
Thank You Water is a prayer of gratitude to the waters of our land. The lake as an instrument is created from the 6 strings of woven prayers from you, the community, gathered over time, and recited on high from 5 community elders and ongoing contributions from you, along with a water song at the heart of Lake Eden.

The Star Loom
Artist: elliot (eLm) moonstone
LOCATION: DINING HALL COVERED PORCH (MAP #7)
Come sit with The Star Loom, a community weaving project, created out of a reclaimed Black Walnut Tree, fallen during Hurricane Helene. Together we will weave, feel held, and share unexpected connections. Thread by thread we will fill the loom with our heart shapes and soul textures. 

Radio Infrequencies: Time Tape Space
Artists: Christopher Hamilton + Steve Pescatore
LOCATION: QUIET HOUSE (MAP #11)
Re-experience the {Re}HAPPENING while experiencing it happening. Immerse yourself in a non-linear tape loop collage of the event in progress and bring John Cage to multi-dimensional life with an interactive display of magnetic audio tape. Listen as time and space wows, flutters, and crinkles.

Expanded Drawing Quartet
Artists: Martha Skinner, CillaVee, Liz Lang + Rebecca MacNeice
LOCATION: BOAT HOUSE (MAP #15)
(Ongoing 3:00-7:00PM)
Join us in a visual, kinesthetic, and auditory experience. Enter an Inhabitable Drawing as it emerges through the weaving of string, space, wind, water, refractions and reflections. A “string quartet” (architect, dancer, sound artist + photographer) will lead a 4-hour durational performance that sets the stage for us to expand space and connection. This poetic, ephemeral, abstract construct references climate change, natural disasters, and displacement while being uplifting and transcendent.

Opening the Field: Return to the Meadow
Artists: Barbara Roether + Linda Larsen
LOCATION: FIELD BY STUDIES BUILDING (MAP #16)
(Ongoing 3:00-7:00PM)
Return to the meadow of your imagination with a collaborative writing celebration based on the poem “Often I am Permitted to Return to a Meadow” by Black Mountain poet Robert Duncan. Participants will create new lines of poetry that will be posted/planted in the meadow as we create a collective and blooming new poem. 

Matière: Improvised Typography from the Bauhaus to Black Mountain
Artist: Drew Sisk
LOCATION: BELOW STUDIES BUILDING (MAP #17)
Through matière exercises, students in the preliminary art and design course at Black Mountain College explored the creative possibilities for mundane and unconventional materials like trash and fallen leaves. Inspired by legendary BMC professor Josef Albers’s matière exercises and the modular alphabet he created at the Bauhaus, the artist will gather materials on-site to construct a series of functional fonts, which will be projected live throughout the day.

SCHEDULED EVENTS

3:15PM and 5:30PM
(45 minute performances)
The Spiral Worker
Artist: Matt Robidoux
LOCATION: GYM (MAP #12)
Experience spiral worker, a rhizome-like happening where touch-controlled aluminum corn ears generate sound through a hybrid modular synthesizer inspired by the 1963 Buchla 158. Performers on electronics, percussion, violin, euphonium, and saxophone merge with audience members in a non-hierarchical sculptural world. Drawing from disability-centered design and Pauline Oliveros’ AUMI project, this multi-sensory event transforms everyone into spiral workers—gathering, transferring, and co-creating material in real time within an experimental system that rejects imposed order for collective spontaneity.

3:30PM
(90 minute workshop)
Bodies Written in Smoke: A Butoh Fu Workshop
Artists: Sarah Bernstein + Eunoia Jean Close
LOCATION: DINING HALL (MAP #5)
Join us for a participatory workshop exploring the intersection of American and Japanese avant-garde performance. Through the lens of Butoh dance, participants will explore the dialogue between Black Mountain College and Japan’s post-war artistic movements. Learn about Butoh Fu—a distinctive notation system—develop your own choreographic scores, and practice embodying these scores through movement. No prior dance experience necessary.

4:00PM
(Ongoing for 2 hours 6 minutes and 30 seconds)
Pace Investigations No. 14
Artist: Sandrine Schaefer
LOCATION: FIELD BELOW GYM (MAP #13)
A live performance that experiments with the rhythms of movement and time. Repeating and stretching actions in unexpected ways, the work invites audiences to notice how moments accelerate, merge, or dissolve, creating a dynamic tension between measured and felt time. The piece unfolds in real time, shaped by attention, environment, and shared experience.

4:00PM and 6:00PM
(30 minute performances)
Lost Voyage Lake Eden
Artists: Alystyre Julian, Miriam Parker, Jo Wood Brown + Jean-Carla Rodea
LOCATION: ROUND HOUSE (MAP #6)
Lost Voyage Collective multimedia artists engage in a journey, activating choreographed spaces and transportable objects that uphold personal creative agency. By relinquishing control of outcomes, they invite viewers to navigate their own stories, emphasizing process and the connection between self and surroundings. This interactivity brings forth a focus on process and an interpersonal navigation of the relationship between oneself and their surrounding environment.

4:30PM and 6:45PM
(30 minute performances)
Soul Bell
Artists: Charlie Boss Orchestra
LOCATION: GYM (MAP #12)
What rings your Soul Bell? As your mind plays at the wispy tendrils of our question, tend the rising feelings and keep them close as you ring the Bell. As its vibrations pass through sweet spring air, over fresh fields and lucid lakes, singing strings and resonant reeds join you and the Bell. Whatever it is that rings true to you will ring true to all. Revel in the sounds you send into collective catharsis!

5:30PM, 6:30PM, and 8:00PM
(20 minute performances)
Vermilion | 10 (Black Mountain)
Artists: Elisabeth Condon, Ava Desiderio, Minami Ando + Lucia Betelu
LOCATION: DINING HALL (MAP #5)
Vermilion | 10 explores a relationship in a duet. Intertwined bodies and colloquial gestures unfold within the landscape, accompanied by polymer props. Dancers move athletically, interlocking limbs and lifting each other, exploring the light and dark in human dynamics.

7:15 and 8:45PM
Sphere
(15 minute performances)
Artists: Ivana Larrosa + Lee Tusman (ExquisiteCorp)
LOCATION: DINING HALL (MAP #5)
A live expanded cinema performance that integrates moving image, choreography, and sound. Inspired by Merce Cunningham’s Beach Birds, parallel choreographies of avian and aquatic systems—migratory patterns, collective movements, and sensory perception—become metaphors for attention and coexistence.

7:30PM and 9:00PM
(30 minute performances)
Solidarity March and Crankie Sing-A-long
Artists: Leslie Rosenberg + Brass Your Heart
LOCATION: ROAMING
Solidarity March and Crankie Sing-A-long is an interactive performance by the marching band Brass Your Heart with the addition of a wearable mobile crankie which helps the audience learn the words to Saro Lynch’s song “More Waters Rising” with scrolling text, featuring illustrations by Forest Gamble. The crankie will be paraded with the marching band, playing international solidarity songs, through the Lake Eden campus.

8:00PM and 9:30PM
(30 minute performances)
How to build a boat
Artist: Jake Parker Scott
LOCATION: GYM (MAP #12)
In 2020, Jake Parker Scott built a boat in the form of nine aluminum gongs. In this immersive expanded cinema performance they will ride their “boat” through a storm of 16mm film projections towards the light of the moon (and other angels).