“Wit” revels in the inevitability of death

“How are you feeling today?” asks Vivian Bearing in the opening monologue of “Wit.” “I have been asked as I was emerging from a four-hour operation with a tube in every orifice, ‘How are you feeling today?’” The pain and indifference Vivian must undergo are foregrounded from these first lines.

Margaret Edson’s “Wit,” directed by Craig Quintero, Theatre and Dance, brings a grim tale to Flanagan Studio Theatre this weekend. The one-act, one-set play displays a struggle with the inevitable, as the protagonist, who is battling cancer, is forced to confront the entirety of her life now that death is approaching.

The cast features Kate Loftur-Thun ’14 as Vivian Bearing, Samuel Palca ’16 as Jason Posner, Milton D. Garcia ’14 as Dr. Kelekian/Mr Bearing, Michelle Risacher ’17 as Susie Monahan, Lauren Sheely ’14 as E.M. Ashford, and Destini Powell ’17, Halley Freger ’17, Sandy Barnard ’17 and Mollie Jo Blahunka ’17 as ensemble.

The play centers on Vivian, a harsh English professor and dedicated scholar who has been diagnosed with ovarian cancer. The story alternates between interactions with Vivian and her doctors, who are more absorbed with the research possibilities of their new treatment methods than they are with their patient and Vivian’s own intellectual ruminations as she examines her life, relationships and, most importantly, her obsession with the work of John Donne, a late 16th-early 17th century English poet.

Donne’s “Holy Sonnets” play a critical role in the play—as Vivian explains, the sonnets concern life, death and God, and are defined by the most important human faculty: “wit.” As her own death nears, however, Vivian’s preoccupation with the mind struggles to fight back her fear about what is happening to her body.

“Wit” is a starkly realistic work. In order to capture the details of life experienced by cancer patients, a number of community members were consulted. Assistant Director of Service Learning and Engagement Susan Sanning organized visits by hospice workers and a tour of the Grinnell Regional Medical Center’s radiology unit. James Lee, English, gave a short talk about the writings of John Donne. Karla Erickson, Sociology, provided a list of readings about end-of-life care. There is a sense of precision and detail evoked by the set created by Justin Thomas, Theatre and Dance: a bone-white hospital room, with IV tubes and charts brought in and out as Vivian finds herself at the center of a medical circus. The ensemble effectively portrays the various doctors and nurses, employing the play’s dense medical language to create a credible air of anatomical coldness surrounding Vivian’s decline.

“In rehearsals, we focused a lot on ‘not acting,’” Quintero said. “Although this might seem like odd instructions to give an actor, I believe this perspective is essential. Our intention is not to stage a show as much as it is to share an honest experience. I am interested in theatre that pulls you under and holds you there, that leaves you gasping for air.”

Vivian, played by Loftur-Thun, is naturally the emotional core of the play. In order to capture the distress of her character’s imminent death, Loftur-Thun prepared extensively for the role.

“I used a combination of character exercises in rehearsal, independent research and a lot of time spent thinking about dying alone. It wasn’t always a very pleasant process,” Loftur-Thun said. “There was one rehearsal in particular that involved thinking about dying and then watching videos of cancer patients. It was really rough.”

Loftur-Thun’s dedication—she even went as far as shaving her head for the role—drives the play every second she is on stage. She plays Vivian with steely anxiety as she alternates between grandiose rants and snarky metafictional asides, always glimpsing the knowledge of what is happening to her without ever fully confronting it.

Vivian’s tragedy is that, while she can understand poetry quite well, she can never fully understand death. Unlike poetry, death has no drama, resolution or agency. It simply is, without ceremony or prejudice; it is utterly indifferent.

The horror of this realization is only lessened by the way the supporting characters are written. They appear to have no existence independent of Vivian—mostly coming on stage through improbable coincidences to give closure to Vivian’s scenes, or, when she is unconscious, simply repeating the mind-body dualisms that torment her. As a result, the play slightly flounders towards the end, when Vivian is in the final grips of her illness.

Despite these shaky moments, “Wit” overall is a powerful, haunting drama. Vivian’s overly-intellectual character transcends mere stereotype and verges on profundity. In showing Vivian’s passions and obsessions from a young age, the play suggests that Vivian’s search to find meaning in poetry has always been about fleeing the answers rather than confronting them and that with death she has finally been cornered with no chance of escape.

There will be performances of “Wit” tonight and Saturday at 7:30 p.m. and on Sunday at 2 p.m. Shadman asif Doctors disinterestedly surround protagonist Vivian (Kate Loftur-Thun ’14) on her death bed. Photo by Shadman Asif.

Rising stars light up gardner

On Wednesday night, Gardner Lounge had one of the biggest weeknight concerts of the year, featuring three artists playing a mostly chilled out set perfect for the middle of the week. Sincjack, Mister Lies and Young Galaxy all brought their own unique vibes, but had enough similarities in their sounds for a cohesive show.

The show began with Sincjack, the alias of Will Jackson ’13, known both for his musical talents and his enormous ginger afro. Although his lack of the latter resulted in some well- natured jabs from the audience, the teasing subsided when he began his funky DJ set. Starting with smooth, bass-heavy tunes with a late-night urban feel, Jackson moved on to his own music, chill yet glitchy hip-hop beats that clearly draw inspiration from the instrumental aesthetics of producers like 40 and J Dilla. The end of Jackson’s set was marked with a thunderous rendition of A$AP Ferg’s newest hit, “Shabba,” which had the audience jumping and yelling along to the provocative lyrics.

After giving the crowd a few minutes to calm down, Mister Lies took the stage with his unique brand of downtempo electronica, which he coupled with a projector playing kaleidoscopic visuals. Mister Lies—legal name Nick Zanca—hails from New Canaan, Conn. and records all his music in Ludlow, Vt.

“It’s my parents’ vacation house on the lake in Vermont and I just occupy it,” Zanca said shortly before his performance. “There are days where I’m in the studio and I’m working until the wee hours of the morning, and there are also other days where I’ll just sit in my underwear watching Netflix or go for a hike.”

The moderate tempo and relaxed, polyrhythmic feel to Zanca’s music meant that not too much was physically happening onstage—something he hopes to change with future work.

“I’m kind of bored with the idea of going up there and being behind a screen,” Zanca said. “I’m treating [my next album] with a live band in mind.”

However, Mister Lies still deeply engaged the audience, who swayed, practically hypnotized, through his entire set. The projections played a large part in this, and the pairing of psychedelic visuals and music were reminiscent of Fantasia, which Zanca cites as one of his greatest motivations to begin making music.

“I guess it really started when I was seven or eight, and Fantasia 2000 just came out on IMAX. There was something about the visuals, because I’m a very visual learner. I stick with images, especially when I’m sitting down to work on music, I think of images first. So, seeing the way certain images there coincided with the music, it was right then and there—this is what I want to do with my life,” Zanca said.

After Mister Lies’ set, Young Galaxy’s gear was brought onstage and the Technicolor projections were replaced with deep blue lights, a visual reference to their newest album, “Ultramarine.”

Young Galaxy is a Vancouver-based five piece dream pop band and first met Zanca at the South by Southwest music film interactive in March 2013. They feature four singers and one drummer, which allows the group to have alternating male- female vocals at some points and sweeping four-person choruses at others, giving them a lot of sonic range. Their music was faster but still peaceful and sounded much brighter than the artists who came before. The high point of the set was Pretty Boy, a poppy track with a lovely summery vibe and almost constant synthesizer arpeggios. This synth heavy sound combined with their mainly female vocals are what makes Young Galaxy a unique band in the somewhat cluttered dream pop scene. Young Galaxy provided a feel-good end to the concert, playing well past midnight as the crowd slowly filtered out and went to bed.

Grinnellians refuse to grow up

The Neverland Players, Grinnell’s own theater group that acts out skits created from short stories written by children, is ready to put on a show this weekend. Typically, the Players solely accept stories from kids at Davis Elementary School, but this year they have included stories from children at the Grinnell Area Arts Council program, Free Imagination. The unique theme of the theater group gives the Players a chance to enjoy some childish fun.

“I feel like I get to be seven years old again,” said Isabel Cooke ’16, a Neverland member. “I think it’s one of the best ways at Grinnell to just really let your creativity loose. Anything goes as long as it’s appropriate for kids.”

During rehearsals, the group starts with one story and works with it, improvising and polishing until it becomes a skit that they like.

“We try to stick to the essence of what the kid wrote and celebrate the child’s vision,” said Meghan McDermott ’16, another Neverland member.

Part of the program’s goal is community outreach. The children who wrote the stories and their families are invited to come to the performance, and the kids get recognized for their work after the performance.

“A lot of our audience is College kids, but we do it for the kids to see their stories come to life,” said Phoebe Mogharei ’16, co-director of the Neverland Players this semester.

“There have been a few [kids] that asked for autographs after the show,” Cooke added. “That was the highlight of everything for me.”

In addition to engaging with the larger Grinnell community, the Players form a community of their own through rehearsals. At the beginning of the rehearsal process, they play many improvisational theater games and tell stories to get to know one another better.

“One of my favorite parts of Neverland is the relationships we build with each other,” said co-director Julianne Thompson ’15.

This semester’s production includes five new cast members, all of whom are first-years.

“It’s wonderful. Everyone is supporting each other and we are all being crazy,” Mogharei said. “It literally takes over your life while you’re in it, but it’s a welcome thing. You come to Neverland and it’s like a different world.”

The skits will include a Peter Pan story with a machine that turns people into babies, a skit modeled after a sitcom and one about a child who creates robots. Some skits also parody popular songs. One song, set to the tune of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air theme song, goes:

“Now this is a story all about how the future got flipped turned upside down/And I’d like to take a year (time is different now)/I’ll tell you how creativity is against the law.”

At the end of the show, there will be an “epic” skit created by the cast, which features several different songs, including Daft Punk’s “Get Lucky,” parodied as “Get Artsy,” which McDermott described as a “battle cry for artistic genius.”

The Players are very excited for their upcoming performance.

“You’re always crossing your fingers that the audience will like what everyone in Neverland thinks is funny,” McDermott said. “It’s not really scripted, so there’s always that element of excitement.”

The show is packed full of interesting characters such as a grandma, a loofah and a Scottish person.

“Be prepared to be terrified at some points, in an overwhelmingly positive way,” Cooke said.

“Everything works out in the end,” McDermott added. “It’s a happy, happy place.”

The Neverland Players performance will take place in the Wall Performance Lab in Bucksbaum this Friday at 7 p.m., Saturday at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m., and Sunday at 2 p.m.

The Neverland cast in costume, getting excited for this weekend’s performances. Photo by Sarah Trop.

Grinnelevance with Tyler, Harris and Schake

Sunday afternoons can be gloomy—classes lurk just around the corner and the burden of homework weighs down the final hours of the weekend. Graciously, Ben Tyler, Connor Schake, and Joe Harris (all ’14) dedicate an hour of their time each Sunday to bring some spice to an otherwise dark time.

Their KDIC show, Grinnelevance, airs on Sundays from 5 to 6 p.m., and offers a variety of genres, topics and guests that appeal to all listeners.

“We’re creating novelty with the show. It’s a chance to make what would be a Sunday, for us and those who choose to listen … something other than sitting in Burling doing homework and waiting to go to dinner,” Schake said.

Schake and Harris made their KDIC debut their first semester at Grinnell announcing football games. Later in the year, they signed on with their own show under a different name, were joined by Tyler, and thus, Grinnelevance was born.

Each DJ differs in his level of radio experience, but they all offer a laid-back charm and, together, a chemistry conducive to quality radio.

The greatest appeal of their show comes from the variety it offers. Grinnelevance has boasted a number of high-profile guests including Dean Bakopoulos, English, and the co-creator of Found Magazine, Davy Rothbart. Interview topics have included the decline of Detroit and the transition from Grinnell-Newburg High School to Grinnell College.

“We oscillate between having more serious shows and more laid back shows, but we’ve trended more towards playing music as of late,” Harris said.

The music played on the show also varies greatly.

“We all have pretty different tastes in music, and we had trouble coming to a consensus on how to transition between songs, so each of us puts together five or six songs in little segments, we each do our own, and we just talk in between,” Tyler said.

Harris described Tyler and Schake’s musical preferences as “fairly intricate, [favoring] really good indie music,” and described his own taste as “less refined [and] more mainstream.” The music played on the show mostly consists of whatever the three have been listening to that week.

“I’ve played stuff like slow-mo … 1940’s blues music and also like dream glitch hip-hop,” Harris, who was described as the “wildcard” of the group, said.

Past topics of Grinnelevance have included a history of apple cider, an Aaron Carter special and even a live reading of excerpts from Nicholas Sparks’ “The Notebook.”

“[What most people will like about the show is] the fact that they never know what they’re going to get, yet, it’s always relevant somehow in their lives, hence the name Grinnelevance,” Tyler said.

The creativity of Grinnelevance isn’t limited to the airwaves. Schake, Harris and Tyler have been known to advertise their show in innovative ways. In the past, Grinnelevance posters have been plastered on loggia ceilings, the ground and even suspended on the guard rails of bike racks using excessive amounts of duct tape. They have shown a specialty in obscurity.

All three hosts are excited to be back on the air this year, looking forward to the chance to hang out with friends and take a break from homework to bring quality content to Grinnellians.

Schake expressed how grateful he was for the opportunity to host the show.

“I think we forget, being sort of steeped in opportunities to do things creatively at Grinnell and ways to spend our time … [that] it’s useful to have a venue to really take advantage of the chance to … say anything you want and have people listen to it,” he said. “It’s not that many people listening, its not that big of an antennae. It’s usually just our friends live streaming the show. It’s just the chance to say something on the radio. I would never do that if I were not at Grinnell. It’s very liberating.”

All expressed the desire to increase listenership this year. “One thing we’ve said time and time again is that it’s just kind of a rough period in the week, so just relax, and take it easy with us,” Harris said.

Harris, Schake and Tyler live in the studio. Photo by Parker Van Nostrand.

“Prisoners” examines morality, captivity

The trailer for the movie “Prisoners” features a panicked Terrence Howard questioning Hugh Jackman, “What in the world did you do?” Throughout the film, questions like this arise as both characters and audience alike wonder about the sanctity of morals during desperate times. The movie—directed by Canadian Denis Villeneuve and featuring Jake Gyllenhaal, Jackman, Howard and Melissa Leo—keeps its viewers entertained for all of its thrilling 153 minutes with a carefully crafted plot and a storyline that keeps the audience guessing.

Anna Dover and Joy Birch are two elementary school-aged girls who go missing on Thanksgiving Day in their Pennsylvania suburb. All evidence points towards an RV driven by a man named Alex Jones who has the IQ of a 10-year-old. Detective Loki—played by Gyllenhaal—arrests Jones, only to discover he has seemingly no ties to the girls and will not or cannot talk. Jackman’s Keller Dover is a desperate father who surpasses the line of extremity in working with and against Loki to save his daughter. Dover does not take his responsibility of protecting his family lightly as he works to save his daughter before it is too late. The girls’ parents wonder how far is too far while they worry for their loved ones and slowly lose grip on their lives.

The audience meets Loki as he eats Thanksgiving dinner alone in a diner, flirting with the only other person in the restaurant, the waitress. In this brief scene, viewers are introduced to Loki, a determined and puzzling man, whose role in the film involves handling Jackman’s strange behavior, a pedophiliac priest and an uncooperative police captain. Gyllenhaal manages the mysterious role well, even donning fake tattoos (at his request) that are never mentioned.

“Prisoners” is a more local and less action-oriented “Taken,” that focuses on the psychological difficulty of dealing with an abduction. Throughout the film, Loki and the parents must work to keep their emotions in check through an emotionally charged situation.

Although over two and a half hours long, the movie does not feel like an arduous marathon. A thriller true to its genre, the plot of “Prisoners” was devastatingly real, making it easy to get lost in the conflict.

One qualm with the film is that, likely in a weak effort to keep the movie as brief as possible, the first 20 minutes are incredibly hurried. Howard goes from apathetic toward the girls not being home to downright petrified in less than a minute and the girls’ older siblings are not convincing in immediately suggesting that the girls were taken by the RV. However, the movie keeps a consistent pace from then on as the plot develops more and more tension with each scene. Despite the rough beginning, the remaining two hours of the movie make up for it with sweat-inducing drama and a nail- biting plot. This thrilling movie does more than simply feed off the tension. It uses questions of morality and an intricate storyline to maintain the attention of the audience. In many ways, the title of the film is also fascinating, as the audience realizes, you don’t have to be abducted or incarcerated to be a prisoner.

Professors who create together, teach together

Last February, professors John Rommereim, Music, Dean Bakopoulos, English and Lee Running, Art, put together an innovation fund proposal for a team-taught course for Spring 2013. The proposal was accepted and this course, separated into a MUS 325 Composition Seminar: Vocal Composition, ENG 385 Writing Seminar: Fiction and ART 320 Advanced Studio: Site Specific, with 12 students in each, will bring musicians, fiction writers and visual artists together to collaborate to combine the three mediums into complete works. The course will include three main projects and many smaller exercises, with each project giving primacy to one of the art forms, led by the respective professor. The class will meet together often, but will also meet in separate seminars at times.

The professors spent time over the summer designing the syllabus, and in order to do so, they decided they needed personal experience working with the types of collaborative projects and smaller assignment prompts they would be giving to the students in the spring. Experimenting with collaboration and these types of prompts generated a lot of interesting text, music and imagery, and the professors all felt they created work through efforts very different from their typical creative processes.

“I wouldn’t think of trying to write ‘Iowan Noir,’ as Dean came up with the idea. You bounce off that possibility and it takes you to places you wouldn’t have gone,” Rommereim said. “The other person’s sensibilities help you start at a different place and then get somewhere. … You’re able to really innovate and do some new things, or at least start some new threads.”

Through these experiments, the biggest success was their completed piece, “A Field Guide to Summer,” performed last Saturday at the Grinnell Singers and Oratorio Society concert. This work began with a writing assignment from which Bakopoulos came up with four poems surrounding the theme of nostalgia. Rommereim then made short piano pieces that reflected these poems, and Lee took the text and music and interpreted them in video.

“One of the things I think we learned is that one natural path to pursue in these collaborations is sequential, passing the baton to one another, rather than crafting something completely at once with equal leadership constantly,” Rommereim said.

The video created by Running included haunting, poignant, yet docile images. What stood out most strongly, in an almost overwhelmingly emotional way, was a shot of a dead butterfly torn in half, with two hands manipulating the halves. The halves are arranged in different ways, bringing in a third half and then fourth. Finally, all the pieces are arranged to create two butterflies laying on top of one another. In the end, you cannot tell that the halves do not match up; the butterflies look whole again. Seeing something so beautiful and fragile torn and manipulated in such a way felt irreverent and, at points, almost violent, despite the gentleness of the hands.

Running later explained that one of the butterflies flew into her car windshield over the summer and she had taken it, put it into a box and kept track of it because the body fascinated her.

“I was thinking about repair. It was broken, but I was thinking about what it would be for a set of hands to repair something like that. It’s dead, it’s not going to be reanimated, but there was something interesting about the idea of re-assembling something, even in a flawed way, that is so symmetrical and beautiful; but also it is so difficult because the pieces are so small and fragile,” Running said.

Along with feelings of nostalgia, the text by Bakopoulos included ideas of insomnia, which lent itself to dream imagery.

“The narrative we were working with for the piece was really evocative. I was working inside these dream images—that state between things, between waking and sleeping. Dream fragments are like that [irreparable butterfly],” Running said. “You can’t hang onto them, you can’t reconstruct the space, but they’re these floating pieces you’re trying to hang on to.”

The only acoustic instrument involved in the piece was a piano, but Rommereim used music technology to do more with the sound the piano could make. Creating all the loops and changes live, with his laptop up on the music stand of the piano, Rommereim used the computer program, Max, to take sections of the piano line, then play them backward at three-quarters of the speed, which translates the pitches to a lower key, while also playing the original version on the piano over the loop.

“I wanted to do something that broke out of exclusively piano music, and I tried to at least step out of normal piano playing by using muted sounds and playing on the string to get the different overtones. With the idea of nostalgia, looking back, there’s an obvious reference that can be made with electronic music, in that it’s easy to create backwards sounds. The idea of looking back in time, I played with that a little bit,” he said.

Bakopoulos felt that the creation of “A Field Guide to Summer” and its performance generated many exciting ideas for future work.

“It’s very satisfying to see how one artistic impulse has a ripple effect on other artists, and then to see, once they’ve had a chance to wrestle with and respond to your own vision, how much your vision changes. I actually was very anxious about the whole performance—before, during and after—simply because I could already see where I wanted to go next, how I wanted to push things to a new level the next time,” he wrote in an email to the S&B. “I understood what I was trying to say in a way I never would have without working alongside two talented artists from different disciplines.”

The professors all really enjoyed the collaborative experience over the summer and plan to do more collaborative work in the future. They hope to perform “A Field Guide to Summer” again at some point in time.

Running believes students will find, when collaborating, that they create work very different from their usual style.

“I think students make riskier work when they’re collaborating than when they’re working on their own and the core of being involved in a creative life is putting yourself in a position of risk, where it is unfamiliar and you’re treading in territory that feels brand new. There’s always new discovery that happens at the periphery of every process,” Running said.

Another very exciting aspect of the team-taught course is the invitation of guest artists that will be brought to campus, including the a cappella group, Roomful of Teeth. On their website, they describe themselves as “a vocal project dedicated to mining the expressive potential of the human voice.” The ensemble uses extended technique—things that can be done with the voice other than sing such as yodeling and overtone, or throat singing.

The ensemble has eight members, including Caroline Shaw, who won this year’s Pulitzer Prize for Music for her original a cappella composition “Partita for 8 Voices.” Shaw, age 30, is the youngest recipient of the music Pulitzer Prize in history, and this is the first time the prize was awarded to a composition for unaccompanied voices.

Roomful of Teeth will be devoting their entire performance at Grinnell to student-generated work. The class will spend time in February Skyping with the ensemble to get to know the singers and their capabilities, in order to write pieces that will work well for the group. The ensemble will then learn the music for the student pieces, which will also include student- written text and accompanying imagery, and in April, the ensemble will come to campus to perform all the students’ works. The three professors also plan to create a work that the ensemble will premiere.

Bakopoulos believes students will develop many important skills from these collaborative creative projects.

“So often, fine arts classes focus on product, but it’s in the process where students gain those things so essential to a career in the arts: a willingness to listen to other ideas, to merge diverse aesthetic visions, to use form and technology and innovative ways,” he said. “We’re looking at this as a course in creativity and problem solving and collaboration.”

This ability to collaborate and bridge mediums that students will develop during the course will prove very valuable should they choose to pursue an artistic career.

“Increasingly, after graduation, the current needs of the marketplace are such that artists are required to have team- based work and to be able to work across media: visual, aural and textual. It makes sense for us to design courses that bridge across those divides,” Rommereim said. “I think it can be a very promising thing to be intentional and explicit in building bridges across the arts. We have the opportunity at a liberal arts college to offer that fertile, cross- disciplinary, team-based work.”

Faulconer fills with wondrous works

On Thursday, Oct. 3, Faulconer Gallery opened a new exhibition, “From Wunderkammer to the Modern Museum, 1606-1884.”

A “Wunderkammer” is a German word to refer to a room of wonder, filled with natural or artificial items known for their beauty, rarity or scholarly importance.

Ninety-three rare books, catalogs and prints—some more than 400 years old—will be on display, documenting the stories of these cabinets of curiosities. According to a statement released by the Faulconer Gallery, this exhibition “documents the fascinating intersection of science and art in these spaces, tracing the shift from private rooms of wonder (or ‘Wunderkammers’) to public institutions.”

These 93 items from the 17th to 19th centuries were drawn from the private collection of Florence Fearrington, a former Board of Trustees member for Grinnell College, and carefully selected by Lesley Wright, the director of the Faulconer Gallery. Grinnell was chosen to exhibit these works after Trustee Dr. M. Anne Spence ’66 first suggested Grinnell display Fearrington’s collection. Dr. Spence had seen an exhibition about Wunderkammers showcased at the Houghton Library of Harvard University two years ago and brought it to the attention of President Kington.

“President Kington and Dr. Spence came back and asked if I might consider exhibiting these materials at Faulconer Gallery. I was personally interested because I teach a class on museum studies and we spent time looking at this material,” Wright said.

The books on display in Faulconer Gallery are only a small part of Fearrington’s collection. She had previously lent out books documenting Wunderkammers in the Harvard exhibition and in the New York Grolier Club’s exhibition just last year.

“My husband and I originally began collecting these books about Wunderkammers because we were interested in their documentation of sea shells, but over time we just continued to collect them and have been for over 20 years,” Fearrington said.

The books on display will illustrate how diverse the collections in these Wunderkammers were. Several classes, ranging from biology to philosophy, already have plans to use this exhibition as part of their coursework this semester.

“Anything that could elicit wonder was included in these Wunderkammers, because wonder at the time was thought as a cognitive emotion. If you felt wonder, that would have inspired you to learn. Anything that could inspire wonder was mixed together in these spaces,” Wright said.

These rooms, which originated in the private collections of 16th century Europeans, were the origins of our modern museums and galleries. “These cabinets of curiosities came about because all the explorers were bringing these amazing things back from the ‘New World.’ People didn’t know what to do with them or how to interpret them. So, these objects were placed for observation in these Wunderkammers; science-bent and curiosity-bent individuals eventually began comparing collections to further our scientific knowledge,” Wright said.

The books that will be on display were written by priests and scholars, who meticulously documented the objects in 17th to 19th century Wunderkammers. Through the exhibition, visitors can follow the history of Wunderkammers and see the evolution of how private Wunderkammer collections became public modern museums.

“As we get into the 18th century, cabinets of curiosities became more and more specialized, and turned into what we now know as museums,” Wright said.

Wright believes that Grinnell’s student body will appreciate the study of Wunderkammers and their connections to contemporary museology. Wunderkammers reflected the quest for knowledge of scholars alive centuries ago, and Grinnell’s exhibition is designed to inspire a similar quest in the student body.

“I hope people will think about coming in often,” Wright said. “Some of the books on display are very specialized. I hope students might come in one day to look at one case, enjoy it, but then leave and come back the next day to observe a second case.” Texts displayed in the newly opening exhibit. Photo by Tela Ebersole.

Hoks & Reeves: poignant, interrogating and weird poetry

This Wednesday marked the second Writers@Grinnell event of the semester. The reading, which featured poets Nathan Hoks and Roger Reeves, was held in the Faulconer Gallery against the backdrop of the current exhibit, “Stocked: Contemporary Art from the Grocery Aisles.”

Hoks, a part-time instructor at Columbia College, Chicago and the publisher and editor of the micro-press Convulsive Editions, won the Crashaw Prize in 2009 for his first book, “Reveilles” and, more recently, was named by Dean Young as the winner of the 2012 National Poetry Series for his second book, “The Narrow Circle.”

Reeves, who is an Assistant Professor of Poetry at the University of Illinois, Chicago, has had one of his poems featured in the “Best New Poets 2009” anthology and has been awarded a 2013 National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Fellowship, a 2013 Pushcart Prize, a Ruth Lilly Fellowship, two Bread Loaf scholarships, two Cave Canem scholarships and an Alberta H. Walker Scholarship. He read from his just- published first book, a decade-long project titled “King Me.”

The poets were introduced by Professor Hai-Dang Phan, English, who invited the two to read at Grinnell. Phan is drawn to the novelty of the poets’ work, and, as their contemporary, is inspired by their craft.

“I just love their work. I think it’s sort of different to see poets with one or two books out; so, I think we often read poets who are pretty well-established … and these guys are pretty young so they have this sort of infectious energy and they’re writing new things so they have these new voices,” he said.

Reeves’ poems, described by Phan as “shapeshift[ing] into and out of different personae,” were consistently rich in metaphor, but varied in tone, style and subject. His reading, which he dedicated to Trayvon Martin, featured poems that had strong elements of social justice and engaged with historical phenomena. One of his poems was based on a racist encounter he had in college in Texas, and another was titled, “Self- Portrait as Ernestine ‘Tiny’ Davis,” after the publicly gay African-American jazz musician who, with her partner, opened one of the first gay bars in Chicago in the 1950’s, Tiny and Ruby’s Gay Spot.

The very fact that Reeves worked with these issues was likely one of the reasons that his poetry was so appealing, especially given that the audience consisted mostly of Grinnell students. The energy and youthfulness with which he engaged with both his work and the audience rendered his poetry all the more effective and relatable.

“Writing … is for me a way of dispelling and witnessing against the way culture, society, time and racism would like to make me be unbeautiful,” Reeves said, when asked why he wrote. “The space of a poem is the space of a question. A poem is the space of adventure.”

Hoks, who spoke of writing as “a compulsion … an obsession,” possessed a similarly engaging energy. He read from “Narrow Circles,” a book divided into two sections: “the interior” and “the exterior.” His poetry, too, varied drastically in tone, ranging from the conversational and slangy to what he described as more “stilted.”

Phan, while introducing Hoks, noted the ways in which his poetry caused readers to engage in a process of thinking and rethinking—of transporting them from the realm of the familiar to a different place altogether.

“[His poems] make you weird. They estrange you from your habits of thought and perception through enticingly bizarre metaphors, they shock you into another worldly awareness of the world by reminding you that at the root of the surreal is the real,” Phan said.

The crowning moment of the reading, perhaps, was the question and answer session at the end, where the audience had the chance to personally interact with the poets. Hoks and Reeves responded to questions about why they wrote and how they determined style, among others. Speaking about their style, both poets acknowledged that theirs was constantly evolving, that their style was, at least in part, a reflection of external influences. It is this fluidity, perhaps, that renders their poetry so appealing—their stylistic exploration a manifestation of a larger willingness to be influenced by outside stimuli and, in the process, to create poetry that is current, and evocative of both emotion and thought. Nathan Hoks reading from his book, “The Narrow Circle.” Photo by Aniqa Rahman.

Grinnell: A novel setting

There is no denying that setting is a crucial feature of any work of literature. In fact, setting is so omnipresent that the thought of reading a novel set in our own college town has probably meandered into our literary minds from time to time. For Grinnellians, this fantasy will soon become a reality.

Professor Dean Bakopoulos, English, is coming out with a new novel, titled “Summerlong,” set in Grinnell. After selling his book to Ecco Press (from HarperCollins publishers) this past summer, he is currently working with an editor and speculates the novel will be released sometime during the next academic year.

Bakopoulos began writing “Summerlong” when he arrived at Grinnell in Fall of 2011, but admits that the novel was not set in Grinnell initially. The change in setting from rural Wisconsin to Grinnell was attributed to sleepless nights and long walks around campus.

“I just kept getting ideas by taking walks. I tend to walk when I’m not sleeping or writing, and the landscape here, especially in the middle of night, is really quiet,” Bakopoulos said. “On a Monday night at 3 a.m., you just start to see the characters walking around at night. The novel begins with people who can’t sleep, who are up all night in a tiny town, so there are some connections there.”

According to Bakopoulos, another inspiration for “Summerlong” was a former student of his. The book is dedicated to the memory of the late Armando Montaño ’12—a former editor of the Scarlet & Black—who passed away in Mexico City last summer while working as a reporter, soon after graduating from Grinnell.

“Some of the grief that some of the characters are feeling about other events in the novel, I think definitely came out of that sad news. The whole campus was grieving,” Bakopoulos said.

“Summerlong” deals with five main characters, all of whom are connected to the College in some shape or form and share perspectives and narration within the novel. The book concerns human relationships, with characters constantly running into each other around the snug small-town setting. Considering that Bakopoulos wanted to write a novel set in an isolated place, for some, Grinnell might seem like an obvious setting, but others might wonder, “Why Grinnell?”

“I write very often about the place I’m living in simply because I think about it all the time. Writing is very much a meditation on my current life,” he said.

Bakopoulos also explained that the settings of his novels reflect recurring themes in his work: isolation and abandonment. His first book, “Please Don’t Come Back from the Moon,” was set in a forgotten working-class neighborhood outside of Detroit and his second, “My American Unhappiness,” in Madison, Wisconsin.

“I’m really always interested in the idea of being stuck … and the self-defeating rhetoric that comes out when you start to tell yourself you’re stuck,” he explained. “So, I think a lot about that in characters, where things didn’t work out and they kind of give up.”

Fans of Bakopoulos’s writing are most likely familiar with his previous novels, but Bakopoulos considers his upcoming novel quite different in comparison.

“I think it’s a little more subtle; my second book was pretty over the top as a comic novel—it was directly political. This one, I think it’s still political, but the politics are much more buried in it,” Bakopoulos said. “[‘Summerlong’] is a celebratory novel; it’s less dark in some ways than the other things I’ve written, and more honest, too.”

As a lover of fiction, Bakopoulos appreciates the moments in stories when the author establishes a kinship with the reader and believes that readers will appreciate this familiar sentiment in “Summerlong.”

“Once you start to fall in love with a story, I think you always find new things you’re drawn to. What I tend to be drawn to are those moments of clarity—moments when I feel that the author has come through with something so distilled of all the tumultuous experience that’s come before it, and given something sense and meaning.”

Although he has not finished with the editing process for “Summerlong,” Bakopoulos is already working on a few television and film scripts, and is in the early stages of a new work of fiction—this time, a mystery novel. Grinnell also seems to be the permanent setting for Bakopoulos in the near future, as he plans to continue teaching here while contributing his work to the literary world. “I think I’m doing exactly what I want to do. I’ve got 10-20 years of teaching and writing books at Grinnell ahead of me,” Bakopoulos said. “If I can keep on writing a book every few years and keep teaching, then it’s all working together. I don’t think I can have higher hopes than just making good work.”

Weekend arts preview

“A Part From Us”

Smith Gallery – 4:15 p.m.

There will be a reception for the new exhibit opening in Smith Gallery: a collaborative effort between Rosie O’Brien ’16, Becky Garner ’15 and Hannah Kelley ’16, entitled “A Part From Us.” Unlike many collaborative exhibits that compile original pieces, each created by one artist, the centerfold piece of this exhibit is a composite drawing made by all three artists together.

The drawing is based on a woman from a 70s magazine, and the level of shading of different parts of the woman’s body reflects the number of responses each body part received when the artists asked females on-campus, “What is your favorite part of your body?” The exhibit also includes other interactive elements that focus on feminist themes.

“It’s basically an exhibit that is a way for us to visually represent the answers we got,” Garner said. “We want the exhibit to be a self-reflection for the females on campus to think about self-image in comparison to media images, particularly pornographic images, and what society might be telling us versus what we think we like about our bodies the most.”

Kenny Garrett Quintet

Herrick Chapel – 7:30 p.m.

The Kenny Garrett Quintet will be performing in Herrick Chapel on Friday night—their only North American performance on their otherwise European tour this fall. The quintet is composed of Grammy Award-winning bandleader and saxophonist Kenny Garrett; acoustic bassist Corcoran Holt; pianist Vernell Brown; percussionist Rudy Bird and drummer McClenty Hunter. Garrett’s saxophone career found its start when he began playing with the Duke Ellington Orchestra in 1978, and he is now best known for the five years he spent playing with Miles Davis. The quintet plays high energy post-bop/jazz fusion that is very distinctive in the way it mixes jazz with elements of bop, rock and world music. A limited number of tickets have been made available for this event at the box office in Bucksbaum or at the Pioneer Bookshop downtown. The event is free.

Upright Citizens Brigade

Harris Concert Hall – 8:30 p.m.

Members of the Upright Citizens Brigade will be performing a 70-minute improv comedy show in the Harris Concert Hall, sponsored by ACE. The Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre is dedicated to cultivating arts appreciation and education through exceptional, affordable comedic performances and classes. Since the opening of its first theater in 1999, Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre has spread across the country, developing many more successful comedy clubs and comedy educational centers.

[Freesound] Outdoor Music Festival

Central Campus Stage – 12:00 p.m.

Freesound is hosting an outdoor concert for Family Weekend comprised of more than 11 student and staff acts, including The Rock ‘Em Poppers — Aaltan Ahmad ’14, Adriana Walsh ’15 and Leah Meyer ’15, and The Veins — Hannah Condon ’16, Vincent Kelley ’16 and Tom Earnest ’16.

“Having it outside during the day with parents there, there isn’t a lot of pressure, as compared to indoor, dark room concerts,” said Freesound member Micah Nelson ’14. “It’s a good chance for people to start playing early on [in the semester]. I’m looking forward to it, personally—it’s always fun to watch and fun to play.”

Grinnell Symphony Orchestra

Sebring-Lewis Hall – 2:00 p.m.

The orchestra performance will include “Peer Gynt Suite No. 1” by Edvard Grieg, “Swan Lake” by Tchaikovsky and Liadov’s Eight Russian Folk Songs. Alexander Fokkens, the artistic director of the Free State Symphony Orchestra in Cape Town, South Africa, will guest conduct.

“Singers, Composers, Writers, Artists! Storied Music”

Herrick Chapel – 7:30 p.m.

The Grinnell Singers and the Grinnell Oratorio Society will perform “Aesop’s Fables” by Bob Chilcott, a work well-suited to the storytelling theme of this choral concert.

The concert will also be the premiere of “Piano Miniatures,” a piece created by John Rommereim (composer), Music; Dean Bakopoulos (writer), English and Lee Running (artist), Art, as a collaborative work. The piece was created over the summer as the three professors prepared for the course they will team- teach for Spring semester 2014. Grammy Award-winning saxophonist Kenny Garrett will perform in Herrick Chapel tonight. Photo contributed.

Nite Jewel finds the jewel of the prairie

Performing tonight in Gardner Lounge will be low-fi, alt-dance musician Nite Jewel. Nite Jewel is the alias of the 29-year- old, LA-based musician, Ramona Gonzalez. An Occidental College graduate with a degree in philosophy, she sings and writes songs using a somewhat pop-y syncopation that seems to draw from 80s freestyle and electronic disco. Born in Oakland and raised in New York, she has continued to make music throughout her journey to LA, playing in a variety of rock bands with her husband, Cole M. Greif-Neill.

Nite Jewel’s music has aptly been described as liquid cool, integrating sounds of the electronic organ.

An especially great track, “One Second of Love,” starts with a beat that sounds like it was pulled right out of the 80s. In this track, she harmonizes well and integrates her classic ambient style with more pronounced drum and bass lines than in most of her other songs. Her vocals have a classic, somewhat jazzy sound, complimented by her drifting style of ambient melodies.

Starting the night will be 555, legal name Chris Farstad, whose music displays a very psychedelic feel, utilizing sounds ranging from what sounds like a didgeridoo to wind chimes and birds.

“We live our lives in transition. The constant flux of time, energy and progress,” stated 555’s Bandcamp page. “Exploring the tension between new age escapism and kinetic momentum, wielding psychic armor of pure laughter to disarm power and usher in new stories, the results are an album of dynamic exploration manifested as a synthesized fantasy of ambient environments, colliding percussion and time-based electronic composition.”

This attempts to define the creative motivation behind 555’s album. With a myriad of bubbles, repetitive and transient noise, their recent album “Solar Express” incorporates a powerful mix of psychedelic sounds. This music is not a first pick for those feeling “dance fever,” but would be choice while stargazing on Mac Field.

“Sound, once created, exists as a data cycle forever, fossilized. The execution of audio sequences creates the track. It’s kind of like it’s re-engineered, dinosaur-DNA- style,” said Farstad in an interview with Gimme Noise. “555 is more about ideas of intuition, spiritual attainment, the edge of chaos, a kind of new age punk rock or something.”

Both these artists have a complimentary fluidity and ambient, sometimes hypnotic, electronic sound. On listening to Nite Jewel and 555’s music, some students had mixed opinions. These two artists together will be an excellent listen for those looking for a relaxed night with talented musicians. While it may not be the most upbeat music to grace Gardner’s speakers, the sound is created with skill and passion, and it will be interesting to see what Nite Jewel and 555 bring to Grinnell on a Friday night.

KDIC Showcase: Electronic Potpourri with Evan Bruns ’16

As the electronic music movement progresses, more and more unique, niche-based sub-genres develop, each with its own distinctive feel. KDIC DJ Evan Bruns ’16 wants to expose Grinnell to all his favorites. His radio show, Electric Potpourri, focuses on electronic music and its various sub- genres.

“I play electronic music, but I use a broad definition of that term,” Bruns said. “I play EDM [Electronic Dance Music], IDM [Intelligent Dance Music] or even Animal Collective—freak folk with lots of electronic elements. Anything with synthesizers, I’ll play.”

EDM currently has a huge following. Festivals like Ultra in Florida attract thousands upon thousands of people from around the country. IDM is a more heavy-handed, avant-garde approach to music that uses various instruments to create or deconstruct electronic music.

“IDM is really hit or miss. Some of the better IDM songs sound like EDM songs. At a certain point, it’s so experimental that it’s experimental for its own sake. Sometimes it doesn’t even make good music,” Bruns said. Out of these various sub-genres, Bruns most likes witch house.

“It’s a fun genre. I’m a little sad because it’s something that has died out a bit. It’s slowed down hip-hop with ominous synth. I don’t play a lot of it now because it’s too nice outside for music like that, but I’ll play a lot of it in the winter,” Bruns said.

Grimes is often classified as witch house, but for this genre, Bruns prefers the band CRIM3S.

“Grimes, her earliest stuff is witch house, but I don’t think it’s true witch house. I would definitely mention CRIM3S. They’re an up-and-coming British act and got an MTV spotlight. They’re pretty much the last people doing good witch house,” Bruns said.

Bruns’ knowledge of electronic music comes from a strong interest in artists that spark his imagination through their exploration of what music can be. He started listening to electronic music in high school and came to appreciate the technical nuances of the genre.

“I had this physics class with this kid who sat next to me and would talk about Deadmau5 all the time. I didn’t know who he was, so I listened to some Deadmau5, and I really liked it. I branched out from there. There’s a wider sound palette—there’s a lot of stuff you can do with a guitar, but you’re a little more limited,” Bruns said.

Bruns demonstrates this ability himself, adding his own touch to the music he plays during his show. His inspiration comes from all the possibilities for rearranging elements of a song—something electronic musicians do so skillfully themselves.

“I play songs I know and love, and I mix live on air. The other day I was playing a Pendulum song, and I noticed that the bass line was similar to a bass line in another song. Halfway through the song I switched over to the Blank Banshee song, and I was playing them on top of each other and it sounded pretty good,” Bruns said.

Electronic music is a genre that relies on combining different types of music or noises to create new sounds. For Bruns, this offers room to achieve a synergy between form and content. The way he mixes demonstrates a dedication to the organic and versatile nature of the genre.

“A song on pop radio is going to sound the same as the last time that station played it. When I mix something, I fool around—more than just blending tracks. I can loop different sections, pitch shift, mess around with the speed. I can do a bunch of things that can make it sound different from what you’re used to. I wouldn’t call it a remix, but I would call it a twist,” Bruns said.

To explore a cornucopia of electronic music and pay witness to Bruns’ mad DJ skills, tune in to Electronic Potpourri, broadcast on 88.5 FM or KDIC online, Fridays from 5 to 6 p.m.

Bruns live in the studio. Photo by Jacob Salzman.