FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 20
1:00 pm
REGISTRATION OPENS — UNC Asheville’s Reuter Center Lobby
1:30 – 3:00 pm
PANEL — Room 206 — Moderator: Nancy Ruppert
Mary Emma Harris: The Bauhaus and Black Mountain College: Envisioning an Education for a New Kind of World
Thomas Edward Frank: How Not to Start a College: Black Mountain Among the Experimental Colleges
PANEL — Room 205 — Moderator: Sharmin Hasan
Elliot Inman: Natasha Goldowski: Science, Cybernetics, and High Speed Computing at Black Mountain College
Dave Peifer: The Life and Works of Max Dehn
PERFORMANCE — Manheimer Room
Identity in the Post-Digital Age: Lei Han with UNC Asheville students Lucy Ackerman, Alondra Arias, Sarah Chao, Sophia Chirico, Kendell Ely, Alexander Ernteman, Sam Farrar, Jeffrey Fulcher, Eli Helms, Nay Chi Hlaing, Kem Ra Skhert Joseph-Achikeobi-Jess, Micajah McCurry, Maryanne Morgan, Miles Neyen, Jetsun Peangmeth, Kevin Phillips, Chloe Sanders, Myles Thomas, Sarah Tomczak, Clara Tucker and Taylor Wilson.
3:15 – 4:45 pm
PANEL — Room 206 — Moderator: Jay Miller
Michael Beggs: Color and Weltanschauung: General Education in Josef Albers’s Color Course
Julie Levin Caro: Bauhaus to Black Mountain: Josef and Anni Albers Works on Paper: A Virtual Exhibition Tour
Andreas Luescher: Josef Albers Homage and the Transformation of Self
PANEL — Room 205 — Moderator: Kate Averett
Jeff Davis: Nothing Doesn’t Happen Except As Succession: Charles Olson’s Later Poetics
Heidi Kelley and Ken Betsalel: For Love: Projected Verse and the Teaching of Ethnographic Poetry
PERFORMANCE — Manheimer Room
Aparna Keshaviah: Mātrika
WORKSHOP — Room 230
Joséphine A. Garibaldi & Paul Zmolek: Laptop Performance Laboratory: Meaningful Work with Meaningless Devices
5:00 – 6:00 pm — Manheimer Room
Welcome by BMCM+AC Executive Director Jeff Arnal
KEYNOTE PRESENTATION — Manheimer Room
Sara VanDerBeek, artist and daughter of BMC alumnus Stan VanDerBeek, and Chelsea Spengemann, Director of the Stan VanDerBeek Archive. Translating the Archive and Transposing the Studio: Collaboration as a practice and as theme in the work of Stan and Sara VanDerBeek
6:30 – 8:30pm — BMC Museum + Arts Center, 120 College St., downtown Asheville
CONFERENCE and EXHIBITION RECEPTION — VanDerBeek + VanDerBeek curated by Sara VanderBeek and Chelsea Spengemann
7:00pm PERFORMANCE: Max VanDerBeek, percussion artist and son of Stan VanDerBeek, will perform a live percussion response to the recently digitized footage Stan VanDerBeek created with Merce Cunningham as part of their larger collaborative work entitled Variations V.
Food Truck on Site
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 21
8:00 – 9:00 am
MEET + GREET THE PRESENTERS — Reuter Center Lobby
9:00 — 10:30 am
PANEL — Room 207 — Moderator: Alvis Dunn
Aaron VanSteinberg: “Superspace is Looming”: Robert Creeley’s Daybook of A Virtual Poet and the Reprogramming of Poetic Experientialism
Jeff Gardiner: A Poetics of Primary Materials: from Bauhaus to Black Mountain, from Albers to Olson
PRESENTATION — Room 206
David Silver: When the College was Female
WORKSHOP — Julie J. Thomson: Environmental Humanities at Black Mountain College : Ray Johnson + Rivers, Hazel Larsen Archer + Trees, Jonathan Williams + Bluets, Stan VanDerBeek + Willow Reeds + Making John Cage’s Mud Pies
10:45 – 12:15 pm
PANEL — Room 206 — Moderator: Seth Rouser
Seth Rouser – Just By Chance: A Commemorative Performance for the Merce Cunningham Centennial Celebration
Kelly Ozust – Van Dyke and Chance Operations
Julianna Hane – Chance Operations in Aerial Dance
PANEL — Room 205 — Moderator: Jeff Davis
The Further Range: Extending Black Mountain Poetics
Michael Seth Stewart – “Fey” Projective Poetics: John Wieners, Robert Duncan, Michael Rumaker and Charles Olson
Joshua Hoeynck – Process Philosophy and Pedagogy: Charles Olson’s Reading and Teaching of Alfred North Whitehead at Black Mountain College.
Stephen Williams – A Poet in the Clouds: Jack Sharpless.
WORKSHOP — Room 230
Candace Buck: Repurposing Fallen Woods of UNCA: Weaving on Miniature Looms.
PERFORMANCE — Manheimer Room
Ann Dunn, choreographer, with seven members of The Asheville Ballet: Contours in Space: for Ruth Asawa
12:15 – 1:15pm
CATERED LUNCH
1:30 – 2:30 pm
Manheimer Room —
A Celebration of Michael Rumaker
This year we said goodbye to Michael Rumaker, BMC alumnus, writer and LGBTQ+ advocate. Those who knew Michael or who were influenced by his work are invited to speak, read, recite, dance, sing or otherwise perform in his memory. This is in keeping with his wishes that he and his work be remembered through a “joyous and gay occasion and a celebration” of his life. All are welcome to attend, with no conference ticket required. If you would like to participate in the celebration or if you have any questions, please respond to Alice Sebrell at alice@blackmountaincollege.org by Sept. 16.
2:45 – 4:15 pm
PANEL — Room 205 — Moderator: Carissa Pfeiffer
Manuel Beltrán Alcántara: Black Mountain College: Architecture to Teach to See
Charlott Greub: Interdisciplinary Lessons from the Idea and Process of Drawing Notations in Music and Architecture
PANEL — Room 206 — Moderator: Greg Lyon
Eric Baden: Moving Pictures: Photographs, Intervals, and Edges
Quynh Lam: Using Photography to Address the Lost and Forgotten History
Ariadna Lorenzo Sunyer: Opening Eyes and Opening Minds: The Uses of Slides at Black Mountain College
PANEL — Room 207 — Moderator: Casey Watkins
Nick Boone: The Black Mountain Poets are Dead. Long Live the Black Mountain Poets!
Ant Lobo: Talking in Code: Queer Sensibility At and After Black Mountain College
Joseph Pisa: Black Mountain and the Black Arts Movement
PERFORMANCE — Room 230
Joseph Bathanti: Poetry Reading
Thom Young: Poetry Reading
4:30 – 6:00 pm
PANEL — Room 206 — Moderator: Candace Buck
Adam Blair: Creative Perception as Embodied: A Multi-layered Experience of Art
Craig Fischer: Chance and Multimedia Aesthetics in Barbara Rubin’s Christmas on Earth (1963-5)
Alexis Zanghi: Willing Buyer, Willing Seller: Robert Rauschenberg’s Canyon and the Commodity Form
PANEL — Manheimer Room — Moderator: Curt Cloninger
Hyemin Kim: Second life of B.M.C. Poetry in Computational Cinema: Bifurcating Materiality of Words in Stan VanDerBeek’s Poemfield Series
Thom Young: The Black Mountain Rhizome in the Experimental Vein of American Verse
PERFORMANCE — Room 120
Ted Pope: Swannanoa Song River Information Network Tributaries
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 22
9:00 am
COFFEE + CONVERSATION — Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center, 120 College St., downtown Asheville
10:00 am
DEPART FOR LAKE EDEN BMC CAMPUS TOUR
Carpools depart from BMCM+AC for Black Mountain College’s Lake Eden Campus Tour led by David Silver and Julie Thomson — $15 per person
In order to continue offering our annual Black Mountain College Lake Eden Campus Tour, we have instated mandatory carpooling. Please arrive at BMCM+AC at 120 College Street for Coffee + Conversation between 10am – 11am to pick up your parking pass and follow us to designated tour parking.