Cross Pollination

Bucky Fuller, Elaine de Kooning, Josef Albers, students, and a thing that would become, a year later, the first geodesic dome

“The summer sessions permitted an extraordinary form of cross-pollination.”

“Almost none of the summer faculty was paid a salary but received instead room and board and some relaxing time in the country.”

Helen Molesworth (Leap Before You Look, p. 42)

“The summer sessions modeled a form of artistic community, one that de Kooning took with him to New York in 1950, when he helped to found the Artists' Club, a gathering dedicated to the presentation of avant-garde ideas.“

“Black Mountain helped to establish the idea that an art school is a place of competing and diverse ideas, where the task of the faculty is to commit to a sense of rigor instead of personal taste, and the job of the students is to navigate the complexity of the options, in the hope of finding their own paths through what John Cage called "the big question," namely, "What are you going to do with your time?"

Helen Molesworth (Leap Before You Look, p. 45)

“the relation is not so much of teacher to student as of one member of the community to another.”

Black Mountain College Catalogue, (Leap Before You Look, p. 80)

“In essence there exists the utmost freedom for people to be what they please. There is simply no pattern of behavior, no criteria to live up to. People study what they please, as long as they want to, idle if they want to, graduate whenever they are willing to stand on examination, even after only a month here, or a year, or whatever, or they can waive all examinations, and graduations. They can attend classes, or stay away. They can work entirely by themselves, or they need not work whatever. They can be male, female, or fairy, married, single, or live in illicit love.”

Jack Tworkov (Leap Before You Look, p. 42)

*John Cage question from interview with Richard Kostelanetz (1968) in John Cage: An Anthology (1991) on pg 28

Leap Before You Look

When I started my deep dive on Black Mountain College I came across this book, Leap Before You Look by Helen Molesworth.

I haven’t bought a book that cost this much since university, but it is a beauty.

(If you’re interested in reading I’d suggest checking out an interlibrary loan or trying library at your nearest art museum.)

But compared to going back to school for a Ph.D., which I briefly considered this Spring, this book is basically a steal. 😉

Here are my notes from my first reading session.

There are a lot of threads to pull on here.

The first is a useful guidepost whilst considering the mission and direction of Neurokind.

“the aspirations of Black Mountain College: namely to inspire us in an expansive notion of the arts and creativity through close observation, physical engagement, service, and play…” Jill Medvedow

Keeping an expansive view of art and what it can do and be. It also feels important that creativity can both be of service and play which so often seem at odds with one another.

This quote took me back to my conversation with Morgan Harper Nichols and this idea that art is a form of communication.

It feels very relevant to Neurokind as platform to share experiences that may transcend or defy language.

Learning by Doing

And then I found this video which linked Dewey and Freire in the progressive education movement.

Which ties nicely to this short video about handwork vs brain work.

And another Black Mountain College documentary. This one is dated, but has an interview from an actual student (Jonathan Williams), “What appealed to me immediately was that everyone was available to each other and time seemed to be no problem. I had left Princeton because time was very much a problem. It seemed almost impossible to reach the faculty who were set up to do their one lecture or two lectures a week. And then suddenly they disappeared.”

Johnathan Williams founded Jargon Press which is “predicated on this idea that there are voices and poetry being ignored which deserve to be heard.”

On his process editing / curating, “You have to do the doing.” “Being self initiating. I don’t sit around waiting for these people to materialize. I mean I go out and find them.” He ties this to walking and hiking and Black Mountain College.