December 5, 2019 {120 College Street} Reframing contemporary art history: On the work of Sara and Stan VanDerBeek. Author and art historian Gloria Sutton examines Sara VanDerBeek’s recent photographic work in relationship to the Expanded Cinema experiments of her father, BMC alum, Stan VanDerBeek (1927-1984). Gloria Sutton is Associate Professor of Contemporary Art History at Northeastern University and author of The Experience Machine: Stan VanDerBeek’s Movie-Drome and Expanded Cinema (MIT Press, 2015), and editor of Sara VanDerBeek (Hatje Cantz, 2016).
September 20, 2019 (120 College Street) This exhibition explores the work of contemporary artist Sara VanDerBeek and that of her father, pioneering film artist and Black Mountain College (BMC) alumnus Stan VanDerBeek. An innovator in animation and expanded cinema, VanDerBeek often collaborated with dancers to create films that captured the dynamic movement of modern dance. Included in the exhibition are a number of recently preserved dance films as well as other works made by Stan VanDerBeek and his peers at BMC. New photographs and sculptures on view by Sara VanDerBeek employ cinematic layering and montage to explore the simultaneity of contemporary human experience. The artworks on view, including select archival materials related to Stan’s studies at BMC, taken as a whole suggest varied ways of perceiving the resonance between past and present.
August 28, 2019 {120 College Street} Explore our Materials, Sounds, and Black Mountain College exhibition along with an artist, historian, or scholar who will give perspective and context to the work from their particular point of view. Guest Speaker: Josh Copus, contributing artist in the exhibition.
August 24th, 2019 – Transfigurations III, Celebrating 15 Years of Harvest Records presents Flaherty/Corsano Duo at BMCM+AC. Saxophonist Paul Flaherty and drummer Chris Corsano are New England-based musicians dedicated to the promise and purpose of free improvisation. Paul has released over 35 recordings since the late 70’s.
June 7, 2019 {120 College Street} Originally exhibited at MAMA Albury (Australia) Materials, Sounds + Black Mountain College draws from innovative Australian artists working in new frontiers of sound and interaction in the gallery space, contextualized at BMCM+AC within the legacy of experimentation at Black Mountain College. Meanwhile, in our lower level gallery, we will celebrate the Bauhaus Centennial with Bauhaus designs and artworks, newly gifted to the BMCM+AC Permanent Collection. BAUHAUS 100 will explore the impact of the school in design, art, and education and the ways in which it shaped the structure and ethos of Black Mountain College.
August 24, 2019 {120 College Street} “Flyer in a Dark Chamber,” a reimagining of the mythology of Lilith, told through spoken-word, dance and music. Ten vignettes explore the stories of Lilith as the first wife of Adam, an empowered and emancipated woman, an outcast from Eden, the original vampire, the black madonna, along with contemporary figures such as Chikesia Clemons and Cyntoia Brown. Words by Alli Marshall, music by Elizabeth Lang/Auracene, movement by Sharon Cooper and Coco Palmer with special guests.
Wednesday, August 14 – 12-1pm PERSPECTIVES Lunchtime Conversations @ BMCM+AC Explore our BAUHAUS 100 exhibition along with an artist, historian, or scholar who will give perspective and context to the work from their particular point of view. Guest Speaker: Eva...
August 8, 2019 {120 College Street} Poet Jeffery Beam discusses, reads, and sings from Spectral Pegasus/Dark Movements. The book, an intense “marvelous and fateful game” and the result of a six-month collaboration with Welsh painter Clive Hicks-Jenkins, details a Hero’s journey through death, resurrection, psychological and spiritual trials, and revelations into redemptive vision. Co-sponsored by The Captain’s Bookshelf.
August 1, 2019 | BMCM+AC {120 College Street} – performed Sonatas and Interludes, John Cage’s groundbreaking cycle for prepared piano. The work was composed in 1946–48, shortly after Cage’s introduction to Indian philosophy and the teachings of art historian Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, both of which became major influences on the composer’s later work. Sonatas and Interludes is generally recognized as one of Cage’s most important compositions.
July 18, 2019 | {120 College Street} -Cage Shuffle is a 50 minute dance/theater solo performance by Paul Lazar featuring a series of one-minute stories by John Cage from his 1963 score Indeterminacy, while simultaneously performing a complex choreographic score by Annie-B Parson. Cage’s humor, intellect and iconoclasm find ideal expression in this work which adds dance to his original performance instructions: Read stories aloud, paced so that each story takes one minute, using chance procedures or not.
July 10, 2019 {120 College Street} Explore our Materials, Sounds, and Black Mountain College exhibition along with an artist, historian, or scholar who will give perspective and context to the work from their particular point of view. Guest Speaker: Cade Hollomon-Cook, Design Studio Manager at East Fork Pottery.
June 28, 2019 – Currently in residence at the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College, Gamelan Yowana Sari has recently returned from a tour in Indonesia, performing in Pengosekan, Bali, at the home of the composer I Dewa Ketut Alit. They perform Alit’s work, traditional Balinese arrangements, and a new arrangement of Double Music by BMC composers Lou Harrison and John Cage.
Saturday, June 22, 2019 (120 College Street) – Vonnie Quest, filmmaker, curator, and founder of the Afro+ProjectionLAB, presents the cinema art program Reclamations of Blackness in which filmmakers use experimental modes of image-making to challenge cinematic notions of blackness. The program includes a post-film discussion led by Vonnie Quest. The film program includes: Under Bone by Dana Washington, The Water Will Carry Us Home by Gabrielle Tesfaye, Dappled Moira by Jamal Currie, Clean Water by Kamau Wainaina, Remnants of a Room by Vonnie Quest, and Decadent Asylum, by Amir George.
June 18 – August 6, 2019 {Weile Studio} Regi Weile, architect and longtime educator, teaches this 8 session drawing workshop synthesizing the Foundation Courses of the Werkbund Movement, the DeStijl Movement, and the Bauhaus. Workshop sessions’ focus will be progressive in series from drawing tools and materials, to light as formgiver in space, composition, proportions, and color…all in service to the lyrical role of the line.
June 8, 2019 – Original performances by Pia van Gelder, Peter Blamey, Nathan Thompson, and Jenn Grossman. Performances will utilize processes that explore the material nature of the instruments employed – handmade electronics, solar power, feedback systems, and contained sound.
June 8, 2019 {120 College Street} Caleb Kelly will discuss the approach behind the exhibition, addressing the works in the show and the links to Black Mountain College. Kelly is a New Zealand born academic and curator working from Sydney Australia. Focusing on sound in the arts, he has most recently published Gallery Sound (Bloomsbury 2017) and previously the influential edited volume SOUND (Whitechappel Gallery and MIT Press, 2011). In 2018 he curated Material Sound at MAMA Albury Australia, an exhibition that will tour Australian regional galleries from 2020 to 2022. Kelly is a senior academic at the UNSW Art & Design Australia.
June 7 + June 8, 2019 {120 College Street} Playing with Sound Kids Workshop with Vicky Browne. Astound your friends and family by making simple yet annoyingly affecting noise machines. In this workshop we will create a range of noise machines and sound experiments that will make even the most uninterested and bored student tune in!
Arooj Aftab, Anjna Swaminathan & Rafiq Bhatia TrioFeatured performers, {Re}HAPPENING 9Historic Black Mountain College campus at Lake EdenMarch 30, 2019 Arooj Aftab is a neo-sufi and minimalist composer/singer who gracefully experiments and bends the lines between...
South Indian Classical MusicKiranavali Vidyasankar (Vocals), Sandhya Anand (Violin), Vinod Seetharaman (Mrdangam)Featured performers, {Re}HAPPENING 9Historic Black Mountain College campus at Lake EdenMarch 30, 2019 Award winning Carnatic musician Kiranavali...
January 25, 2020 | {120 College Street} – In this Fringe Festival interactive performance, Derr casts the viewers as painters in a playful investigation of Kenneth Noland’s painting New Day, 1967. Viewers apply the 41 color stripes in New Day to a transparent canvas while Derr films from the other side.
