mtcaz

[mtcaz]

Mt Caz trailheads

Mt Caz the house no longer exists. But the ripple effects and descendants of the Mt Caz community can still be found and felt throughout both the MidWillamette Valley and around the world.

Here are a few trailheads:

Get updates from The Common Canary (an 8-person, 3-cat, half-a-dozen chicken co-op household in North Albany) -- especially if you are interested in manifesting or being a part of a network of collective housing projects in the area (projects and houses TBD).

Albert started a pizza band called Crustworthy. Instagram here; mailing list here.

Jen opened up a studio space (JH Arts and Crafts Studio) in that weird/amazing outdoors-indoors mall plaza downtown. She and Aranea often table at local art markets curated by Janique Crenshaw.

The noise and trash scene are still going strong. Have you been to chxrch lately? Follow @CorvallisExperimentsIn Noise. Check out shows at @Bunker.Bunker.Bunker.

Christina is writing about place and race and Oregon on her Wandering Grace substack.

There are probably even more rabbitholes to follow from the Heart of the Valley Anti-capitalist Bookfair.

The remainder of the map, showing even more trailheads, charting even more terrain, is torn and missing, yet to be (re)created by intrepid explorers. Let us know if you find new/old ones. <3

[mtcaz]

Goblins perform at Avery Park (8/7/21)

The Greater Northwest Hollering Crane, created by the Goblin Theatrical Arts Cartel.

with: Bryan Smith as David Nickel Thornback-Ebenezer III Jen Hernandez as Dr. Bibbity PhD Christina Tran as Dr. Bobbity PhD Albert Kong as a man’s legs walking backwards Created as an opening act for Up Up Up’s touring circus show, Corvallis edition.

I wanted to share this project we put together earlier this month, because it really feels like one of those rare moments when you get to expand what you think you are capable of. In Joyful Militancy, carla bergman and Nick Montgomery call this the Spinozan concept of “joy,” the feeling of emergent possibility and increase capacity for collective action. As rare as it is, it is something that we have historically at Mt Caz strived for over and over -- can we pull this off? I guess we can! (See Dispatches from Mt Caz episode, probably “Amateur Hour.”) Bryan’s a puppeteer, but he hasn’t made a puppet this large before. The rest of us have barely worked in puppetry, but once we had the idea to create a crane puppet (because the circus show had a crane truck, get it?) with the backwards legs, we decided it’d be worth figuring it out.

This was one of those projects where the collaboration really felt like it paid off -- each of us bringing different particular skills into a combined effort that none of us could have done ourselves.

The Goblin Theatre Troupe isn’t exactly a Mt Caz project, but we’re all part of the Mt Caz community, and it’s the kind of thing that probably wouldn’t have happened without us having come together to play and create together for the past few years. As well, the attempts to extend the community network brought us to Marika, who was the impetus of conversations about performance projects, and Chris, who has given us several opportunities to invent and perform our experiments as a key figure in organizing noise and experimental performance in town!

I’m musing on the fact that Mt Caz has always been a zine house. Not in the sense that we house zines (though we do), but that we operate with the spirit of zine-making. Now and again, without practiced craft, as it were, coming together to explore what kind of things are possible for a flash of a moment when we throw the goal of “quality” to the wind, and gather whatever resources we have at our disposal to demonstrate the possibilities of “togetherness.” The art that arises from that may just be the core of Mt Caz.

[mtcaz]

Ten Tiny Dances Watch Party (1/23, 7:30p)

This year’s Ten Tiny Dances features several folks who are part of or adjacent to the Mt Caz community: Albert Kong, El Wells, Hezz Franklin, Teiya Inokuma and 6 other dancers from Corvallis and Portland came to the Majestic, the local community theatre, to choreograph performances with a 4′x4′ stage, filmed and edited together for online viewing.

If you’d like to join the Mt Caz watch party, get a ticket and join us on Saturday, January 23rd, 7:30 at the Mt Caz Observatory zoom channel. We’ll chat for a second then hit play at the same time while leaving the chat window open so we can “whisper” together during the show with no one to stop us! Then we’ll gab together afterwards. See the listing from the Yodel below.

‘Ten Tiny Dances’ watch party // Sat Jan 23rd at 7:30 pm // Mt Caz Observatory (zoom link with RSVP to mountcaz@gmail.com)

El, Teiya, Albert, and Hezz are among the community members performing movement or music in this year’s show. Purchase your tickets from the Majestic ahead of time! For the watch party, we will probably do some combo of live-Slack-chatter, bookended with Zoom hello’s before and after. Ping us if you’d like to join, so we can be sure to let you know if plans change. (If you can’t make it to the watch party, you can still stream the show at your convenience between 1/23 - 2/6!)

UPDATE: You can now watch Albert’s performance here!

[mtcaz]

Telepoem

Just here for the resources? Download Print & Play on Itch.io || Play online using Tele-Telepoem Download Draft Sheets: 4x per page || 8x per page Download the Prompts

Telepoem is a poetry game by Christina and Albert. We designed it for the Poetry Open House event in January 2020, hosted by the Poet Laureate of the City of Olympia, Sady Sparks.

Players take turns writing new drafts of a text, guided by a number of poetic prompts, creating poems that dip in and out of brilliance and word salad.

Uncontrollable giggles during our playtests made it clear that we had something special. Like the game of Telephone, content and meaning get garbled over the course of many exchanges; unlike Telephone, the garbling is deliberate, prompted, and occasionally results in some really profound shit. When you go back and look through the stack of poems that were made, you see a journey that no one intended and no one could have planned.

We think, like our own lives and experiences, we can only control it now and again, but when we surrender to our friends to shape things, they can lead us to deep beauty. And sometimes complete bafflement.

[photo of printed zine]

Thanks for playing! You can get Telepoem at the Mt Caz Press Itch.io page, pay-what-you-want-including-free. If you’d like us to bind, sign, and send a zine to you, hit us up at mountcaz@gmail.com!

[mtcaz]

Zine Drive Thru, September 16th, 5-7 pm

NOTE: We rescheduled our zine drive to 9/16, and are adding an online zinemaking space on 9/7. Here is updated info for both events below!

~*~*~*~

Zine Drive-Thru Wednesday, September 16, 5-7 pm Garfield Park (look for signs!)

Like a zine fest but for covid-times. Cool writing, art, stickers, stationary and more from local makers. Start by browsing online. Get a sense for what you want. Then come to the drive-thru to order, pay, and pick up your goodies!

We will also accept pre-orders for curbside pick-up at the drive-thru. Email mountcaz@gmail.com with the zines you want to come grab on Sep 16th! We will try our best, esp with the items in limited supply.

~*~*~*~

AND, in preparation:

Online Zinemaking Open Space Monday, September 7, 1-3 pm on Zoom at the “Mt Caz Observatory”

Come work on an existing project, or make something new to mail to friends, or create something tradeable for the drive-thru. We’ll provide inspiration, links, and resources if you are new to zinemaking, and can also answer questions as they arise.

We can try and show off some of the zines that will be available at the drive-thru. If you are a contributor, come by and say hi and show n tell your wares!

Zoom link here. (Meeting ID: 962 1600 3743 Passcode: zines) Drop-in whenever during that time!

~*~*~*~

Flyer design by Jen Hernandez. See more of her work and buy stickers here!

[mtcaz]

Events and community in a time of pandemic

During this time of pandemic:

We value physical health and safety

We value community resilience and mutual aid

We value individual boundaries and collective discernment

We value communications, trust, and trying

We value multiple ways of gathering and connecting

We are continuing to find ways to connect with each other, while practicing social dis-dancing and spacious solidarity, and centering access and care, so...

Below are some general COVID safety guidelines for hosting and attending events in corvallis and surrounding areas.

These ideas have been put together by the Mt Caz Rangers collective, a group of small-scale DIY/DIT event producers. 

This is a living document because we are still learning about the virus and are all trying to figure it out.

Last updated Sep 5, 2020 (this google doc will contain the latest)

In general, stay home if you’re feeling sick:

We agree to stay home from communal events if we have been exposed or suspect exposure to the virus in the last 14 days. 

We agree to stay home from communal events if we’re feeling sick or have a fever -- or if anyone in our household is sick or has a fever.

We aspire to treat cancellations with care, humor, and acceptance -- knowing that things will change (even if change sucks sometimes), we know that we can always regroup and try again.

We will adapt or cancel our events, and update these guidelines if cases surge in our area. (Here is a tracker of COVID cases Ari created from NYT data set, and here is the Benton County dashboard)

Participant agreements:

We bring and wear a mask (esp. if we cannot reliably remain 6 ft away from others)

We practice pandemic-aware social distancing -- 6 ft apart from people who are not a part of our household/pods.

We come with clean hands and B.Y.O.Hand Sanitizer.

We practice regular consent check-in’s, and are understanding and respectful of others’ safety needs and requests. e.g. we check in with how people are feeling about our distance/mask wearing

Other things to ask about, knowing different people will have different boundaries: entering someone’s indoor space, petting other’s animals, sharing food or passing objects, removing masks to talk in outdoor spaces, etc.

We state our needs if we feel like our boundaries are broken or if someone is violating these collective agreements for hygiene and safety; compassionately if possible.

We try: we know it’s okay to show up, assess the situation, and leave if we are feeling uncomfortable.

We reach out to the hosts if we have additional questions/needs we cannot resolve.

Host responsibilities:

Make sure the outdoor space has enough room for pods to spatially distance from each other.

If it is a smaller space, limit the number of participants by requesting RSVPs.

Communicate bathroom options (or lack thereof), so participants can come prepared.

Communicate safety baselines for the event you’re hosting, so people can be on the same page.

Cancel events if organizers or volunteers have had risk of COVID exposure or are showing signs of illness, and clearly communicate with participants if there are changes.

Inviting in Creativity:

We get creative about ways to host in-person events in safe ways and in ways that increase access.

Drive-thru’s / drive-in’s / drive-by’s...

Coordinated pick-up’s and deliveries

Play with asynchronicity and/or asympatry 

Hybrid digital+physical events

Backyard events with limited attendance and room to spread out

etc

We continue to explore hosting events in digital spaces in ways that bring in humanity and context.

Reminder that folks can book and use the Mt Caz Observatory zoom room for online events (we are trying to treat it like a commons): more info here. calendly for booking here.

Experiment with other platforms: Jitsi, Online Town, &chill for watch parties, discord/twitch, etc.

Play with technology (such as breakout rooms, participatory slidedecks, chat features, roulettes, etc) that allow for intimacy, serendipity, and small-group interactions

etc

[mtcaz]

Goblin Town Microplays

During this pandemic, we started making digital microplays, inspired by the Neofuturists!

The Neos are a network of performance ensembles that practice “non-illusory theatre”: performance that does not ask the audience to suspend any disbelief. Performers do what they say they are doing, they tend to write from personal experience, and they are playing themselves in the real context of the performance.

We’ve been drawn to this idea for a long time now. Christina even auditioned for the SF troupe when she lived there! Their flagship show, The Infinite Wrench, consists of mainly very short plays, 2 minutes on average, that are funny, poetic, absurd, political, personal, experimental, dumb, etc. As zinesters, professional amateurs, goblins, and life artists, this format speaks to us. What we do at Mt Caz is inspired by that kind of prolific practice, to experiment generously with our ideas and present our process as the art itself.

So, as the pandemic changed our lives and the Neos started creating work to share online, and we’ve been able to follow along, we got off our butts and started making some of our own.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vSZmemb4UL8p0tfVNfEUlCA_aMRsry99RApXtPKhdAaeDGXipJc-SolwFaAW2S2hE4P39l36lZxcWAE/pub

You can click here to watch our rotating slate of microplays. They will be smart, somber, powerful, boring, strange, poetic, etc. Hopefully not all at once. They’ll expire regularly, so check back every few weeks and we should have a completely new set! And if you’re interested in joining our ensemble, get in touch!

The Neofuturists make amazing beautiful work and we are so grateful they are continuing to share it during the pandemic. Learn more about them, watch the plays they’re making right now, and support them materially if you can.

Chicago Neos SF Neos NYC Neos

[mtcaz]

Booking The Observatory

Mt Caz is opening the doors to The Observatory, a little known space at the top of the mount where we go to access the telescopes and portals into each other’s worlds.

Having access to a paid Zoom account (a reliable video conferencing platform), we have decided to turn our privilege into a commons for our community in a time of need. If you need a video conferencing space to gather, organize, or play, we invite you to use our account for free and share in our excess. See below for details on how to schedule, or go directly to Calendly.

UPDATE: Thanks to generous community members, our Zoom room has been sponsored and paid for, for the duration of 2021, as a collective resource.

WHY WE ARE OPENING THE OBSERVATORY

In March of 2020, we came to realize the seriousness of keeping physical distance between ourselves in an attempt to suppress the transmission of COVID19. This will be a situation we are riding out for the long haul, but depriving ourselves of relationship between us is as harmful as depriving ourselves of food, medicine, or poetry. Connection is essential.

The same way we’ve been hosting folks in our physical spaces like the Grove and Meadow (and the same way we will throw those doors open again once it is responsible to do so), we now want to open the doors to an online space for folks to gather in our community.

While it is not a complete solution, teleconferencing software at least puts us in a virtual room together, to share in contemplation, celebration, learning, and presence, until we can come into embodied community again. Mt Caz has a professional level account on the Zoom platform, which we prefer to most other video call formats. It can support many people meeting at once, and has some nice features like breakout rooms and gallery views of participants. Another bonus is that folks can call into the same meeting via phone if their audio or internet connection isn’t working for any reason.

HOW TO RESERVE THE OBSERVATORY FOR YOUR NEXT GATHERING We've set up a scheduling system that we will manage. Please follow this link to calendly, where you can request a 90-minute block of time to use for a zoom session. Afterwards, we'll email you a unique meeting link alongside access instructions, which you can forward along to all guests to do a video gathering.

We are treating this booking a meeting room at your local branch library. Please try and book between 2 - 14 days in advance, but we will try to be flexible with it. Email us at mountcaz at gmail dot com if you have questions or special requests (e.g. booking the room for a longer period of time.)

WHAT KINDS OF THINGS HAPPEN AT THE OBSERVATORY As the Observatory is part of Mt Caz, we’d love to see this space put to creative use. Use it to play games together, host a book club, host a poetry reading, have a virtual dinner party, teach an online workshop or skillshare. If it's something you'd like to share with the Mt Caz community as an open event, let us know and we'll post it on the Yodel (our monthly events newsletter).

Some of the early Mt Caz community might remember the online zine reading featuring artists Donna Chan and Jessie Alsop that we hosted in 2018 -- let's experiment with things like that again!

WHERE ELSE TO PLAY We will prioritize reservations for gatherings intended for small or large groups. We will also prioritize hosts from our local communities in Corvallis residing on ancestral Kalapuya lands.

We encourage you to experiment on your own with ways to connect 1-on-1 that include more voice and more face during times when text doesn’t seem quite enough:

Jitsi is free a low-touch, open-source videoconferencing software accessible via web browsers.

Marco Polo is a mobile app that lets you send video messages to groups of friends.

Phone calls while taking walks in your respective neighborhoods is a nice way to catch up.

Free Zoom accounts allow 1-on-1 calls, and time-limited calls for small groups.

Consider visiting a friend and having a phone call through the window: higher-definition than any videoconferencing software, while still safe from disease transmission.

We also encourage you to share your own resources as a kind of commons, and network with us to create a wider resource.

Let's share with each other what we learn in our experiments and play!

AS EVER, A CO-CREATED WORK-IN-PROGRESS This will be an evolving process, so bear with us. We'll update this page with ideas, tutorials, and other tips to gather with your friends during the global pandemic. Stay in each others' lives, and don't touch each others' faces.

(( illustration of people looking through telescopes at screenpeople in the sky by albert kong ))

[mtcaz]

Bring-Thing Dinners

Mt Caz has been hosting a monthly series of dinners, initiated by Christina’s desire for casual gatherings that are easy to attend and open to the community. Christina has always had a penchant for regular meal gatherings, having had a tradition of Sunday dinners with her parents’ group of friends and their kids, immigrants who found families in each other after fleeing their home country. 

In a conversation with Avery Alder at Big Bad Con 2019, she mentioned that she does community dinners in her small. But they aren’t potlucks -- the organizers provide basic food and childcare for everyone, so it the barrier of entry is really low. This idea sparked something in us, and we started a format for a monthly community dinner in November 2019.

These are the suggestions we offer people:

Bring something to share! This can be anything: You could bring flowers, or extra dishware (sometimes we run out), or be the DJ for the night, or read a poem, or hang a painting on the wall, or hand out party favors. You can bring a friend we've never met, or bring your fantastic presence. It can also be food We all contribute in different ways.

We will provide some vegetarian dishes, and if it turns out we need more, we'll make more, or order something, or eat more of staples this time and adjust the recipes later.

We'll make time during the evening to acknowledge the land, make announcements, share performances, and celebrate or commiserate as necessary. Let us know if you want some of that space.

We try to do this once a month, possibly rotating locations. Maybe you'll want to host next time! But if you're out of town or can’t make it, there'll be another. Hope to see you there.

You are invited, and we want you to come even if you have nothing to bring materially. Let us make space for each other.

Sometimes we include an additional mini-events on top of it, like a pantry swap where we bring items from the back of our cabinets that haven’t gotten used for a long time, and folks can share them with each other to inspire new meals!

In my vision of it, these can become gatherings where a community of friends, and their friends, and also the neighbors, and maybe a stranger or two, can walk into a warm place, find some nourishment, and treat a place like what my cooperative house felt like in college after dinners -- a comfortable space to spread out and do your thing, which could be reading zines on the couch, or setting up a board game, or discussing direct action, or starting a collaborative art project. This may be a cornerstone event of the distributed coop village.

If you want to see when the next one is happening, send us a message or sign up for the Yodel, our monthly email announcement.

[mtcaz]

Reflections from Lulu Cheng

Over the holidays, we welcomed Lulu Cheng to Terra Incognita for a short residency. Lulu came with a cautious energy toward creative practice, as many of us have. When the culture and language around artmaking is trending towards the expectation of measurable value for the consumer society, it is all too easy to forget that our best work comes from following joyful energy and curiosity.

On many days, I came home from work to find Lulu on the couch, reading from the Mt Caz library, and ready to have a conversation about whatever she or I had been thinking about throughout the day. You can hear some of these thoughts in her episode of Dispatches from Mt Caz that she recorded with Christina and Aranea.

Lulu makes illustrations, poetry, and essays. You can learn more about her and find her work on her website.

After the jump, read her reflections about her time as an artist-in-residence at Mt Caz, also posted on her newsletter.

i’m reading again.

since christmas i’ve read eight books, almost equal to the number i read in the rest of 2019.

~this is where i tell you this post is sponsored by the san francisco public library~

but really, don’t be a dumdum like me and wait until you’ve lived somewhere for six years before you get a library card.

giving all the credit to the library card (while a _magical_ piece of plastic) would also be an incomplete story.

chapter one would open 572 miles north of san francisco, in corvallis, oregon.

that’s where i met these two:

christina and albert are the caretakers of mt caz, a renegade community art and cultural space.

they hosted me for ten days in december, an artist residency of sorts.

what does one do as an artist-in-residence?

i drew.

i discovered massage balls (up there with library cards as far as Really Excellent Ideas).

i rediscovered luxurious stretches of reading time.

i did morning pages with albert, tapping away on my ipad while he penned small, neat letters in a large hardbound book with unlined pages.

i went on muddy walks with christina where we talked about what happens when you try to introduce chinese parents to your white therapist’s recommendation to ‘set boundaries.’

all the while, i was swimming in a murky, gray headspace. i had just come off of an intense few months at work. creative stuff wasn’t feeling as fun or satisfying as it used to. i knew i was tired but i couldn’t get my brain to shift into a lower gear, to surrender to rest.

i kept waiting for some moment of insight to clear the funk. it never came.

it wasn’t until i got back to sf that it occurred to me that maybe there was no new epiphany to be had. just a lesson i needed to relearn, to feel the contours of again.

christina works part-time at the library, and one of her favorite tasks is shelving books. it’s a good example of an atelic activity, something that can’t be ‘finished,’ which i’ve written about before. she likes it especially because there’s no point in trying to do the thing faster or better or any synonym of ‘efficient.’ in fact, if she does her job too well, she leaves her coworkers in the afternoon shifts with nothing to do.

i love this reminder that maintenance work, rather than being something you tolerate so you can get on with the Important Stuff, can be a source of satisfaction on its own.

because most of being an artist is maintenance work. it’s taking care of yourself by setting boundaries on your time and energy. it’s showing up at the page even when you feel adrift and aimless. it’s finding the conviction to take yourself and your craft seriously.

being an artist is being in an ongoing relationship with art, as christina puts it. you have to keep getting back in the river.

over the break the universe offered me one more sign of this truth —  

a few years ago i had the opportunity to take an improv class with alice wu. at the time, i only knew of alice’s reputation as a teacher; she was everyone’s favorite and it quickly became clear why. the attention to craft that she brought was incredible. she was the kind of teacher who would send you an 800 word email with notes on your scene work (i just went back and reread one she sent me and yeah, still amazed).  

it was only later that i learned more about her story. her first job was as an engineer at microsoft. she wrote a movie script in her free time before leaving corporata (doesn’t that sound like it should be a word?) to try and take her idea from page to screen.

saving face premiered at sundance and was eventually picked up and released by sony. the film’s protagonist is chinese-american and a lesbian, either of which on their own would be rare in hollywood today, let alone the combination and back in 2004.

given its subject, the film was never going to be a mainstream success. in the years after, alice kept writing and teaching improv. netflix recently announced they’re releasing her second movie as a writer/director. she turns 50 this year.

the most inspiring part of her story for me isn’t the ostensible peaks, but the unglamorous grind implied in the in-between. which i realize is not going to be true for everyone. and that’s kinda the point: do you love the thing enough to keep getting back in the river.

lulu

[mtcaz]

Edit: These links are broken because they all link to our previous host Simplecast, but you can still search for the podcast on Spotify, Apple, etc. -- and follow the curiosity to these episode titles!

***

Our podcast Dispatches from Mt. Caz is currently on a biannual break but we will have new episodes up in January. In the mean time here is a guide for all your listening questions!

Which episode should I listen to first?

Contrary to popular belief, our first episode, while a fun discussion, is not the best marker for what Mt. Caz or this podcast is all about. We jumped headfirst into this project and found our feet afterwards.

For discussions that explore the question “What is Mt. Caz all about?” Listen to:

Episode 2: The Power of Naming Something Makes It Real

Episode 13: Plenitude and Abundance

But that’s not to say the rest are all duds! Check out our Staff Picks!

Episode 10: Quotidian Poetry

Episode 3: Your mileage may vary

Episode 15: Question-driven and Learner-Directed

Episode 12: Grassroots Event Productions - An Open Debrief

Episode 9: Is it Real? Does it Matter?

[mtcaz]

Reflections from Will Rogers

This summer, artist-in-residence Will Rogers brought his infectious energy to Mt Caz. His projects and creative ambitions took Will out into the community via Quaker meetings and garage sales and zine fests. AND Will brought new community and collaborators into Mt Caz via the science and art showcase called Microbes in Space.

Hear more of Will’s poetry and voice on our podcast Dispatches for Mt Caz, or read on for reflections in his own words about his residency experiences.

What was your residency like?

My time at Mt. Caz breaks neatly into two chunks: before Microbes in Space and after Microbes in Space. 

The before included 

a podcast interview with Dispatches from Mt Caz

a fourth-of-july visit to the house Albert is building

a garage sale art walk

a visit to the library where I checked out ~50 microbiology books and space books

a visit from Lea Redmond, an artist I have admired for years

setup for Microbes in Space

For the event, five amazing artists gathered in a transformed version of Mt Caz, with four different rooms and an outside area buzzing with conversations about art and science between artists and scientists and art-scientists and science-artists, and I read four poems from my upcoming collection of poems about microbiology. Also it was my birthday, and I danced around the house in shoes that slide on the floor.

After Microbes in Space included

writing

zine-making

a visit from Danielle Baskin, an artist I now admire

eating and drinking leftovers from Microbes in Space

Portland Zine Symposium

good goodbyes

What were you working on during your residency?

"Creatures in Creatures in Creatures" is a zine that gathers together some poems that stretch one's mind from the smallest and oldest life on the planet to the largest and newest life on-and-off the planet, including humans. Before coming to Mt. Caz, I'd planned on revising these poems, and I was surprised, challenged, and delighted when that work involved revising the entire format of how people will encounter these things.

Where can people find your work?

Anybody who wants the zine can paypal me $5.55 with their address, and anybody who wants to read emails I send every new moon can subscribe by clicking here <--this link doesn't work as well on tablets/phones, sorry! I'm also on twitter & instagram as "spozbo" (slurred for "it's possible"), and I love being in touch.

I have so much gratitude for Albert and Christina opening up their space and their lives for me to come work on this project. In these wild times, microbes have grounded me in the past and given me hope for the future, and it means so much to start sharing that groundedness+hope to others.

[mtcaz]

The Public Domain Variety Show Recap

Beautiful things happen when we can explore art created by others. We can make things that are both homages and yet completely new.

On August 10th Mt. Caz hosted a Public Domain Variety Show curated by Aranea Push. We turned the grove into a performance space and collected work from over ten artists - each one inspired by a piece that came into the public domain this year (any work created in 1923).

What emerged was a collection of faithful readings, re-contextualized speeches, musical expression and brand new stories. The sheer variety was inspiring all on its own.

In doing research for this event, we discovered a lot of interesting - if disheartening - facts about the state of copyright in America. Christina created a visual representation we could look at in the meadow. Each paper link represented a year.

The 1998 copyright act is the reason we hadn’t seen any new public domain works for 20 years. 

The chain went to the floor.

We saw dances, heard stories and listened to thoughtful speeches.

Christina taught everyone how to dance the Charleston.

Some people made zines of their work!

Albert led a story-building game using screenshots from a Felix the Cat cartoon.

My favorite part was hearing how everyone came to make their piece and what inspired them about the public domain work they used.

Did you know that Reese’s were invented in 1923? What a perfect excuse to eat them!

The road to be able to do an event like this has been long, but however muddled the path, we know that this is not the end of creating new works from old.

See lots more photos here. You can also check out Sqri’s interpretation of “What The Moon Brings” here and Spencer’s parody of “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” here!

[mtcaz]

Reflections from Matteo Uguzzoni

In June, we had the great pleasure of having Matteo Uguzzoni in Terra Incognita as a resident artist! We learned so much from Matteo, about radical organizations, about literature, about games, breadmaking, and planting flags on top of houses when the roof is complete... But here’s his account of his time here in his own style of storytelling. Learn more about our AIR program here: https://mtcaz.tumblr.com/air.

1.

The journey to reach Mt Caz started in Santa Rosa, CA. The plan was to get on a bus to Oakland, then catch a night-train (known between locals as the Coast Starlight) and arrive in Albany the day after, around noon. Maybe the journey started before that, on Google Maps, trying to understand why is not possible to go up (Oregon is above California) just going up. Instead you have to go down (to Oakland) and then go up.

What is in the middle; is nature so wild; are roads that bad?

In Santa Rosa I’ve accepted this strange concept, going south to go north, but I’ve learned another thing: the bus station was on the opposite side of a Multiplex (a movie theater with a lot of screens) and my bus was 2 hours late. Waiting and late buses are not always a bad thing!

You can enjoy almost an entire movie with Willie Smith as a genius (how does Aladdin end by the way? It is still paternalistic?) while you’re waiting for your late bus--

You have to go south to go north, and waiting is a good thing.

Yes, there was a giant mountain in the middle..it made totally sense to go south first.

MtCaz was also a place to learn things and put the new lessons in to practice.

I arrived with a lot of things to do. It is always like that--I mean not always but often… But I was really happy that one of the things that I had to do was actually just walking around. So waiting and taking wrong turns to reach places seemed like pretty good advice to me considering my plan. I pictured myself lost for days in the mountains around Corvallis. A great residency was about to begin!

My residency at Mt Caz was actually a residency squared, a residency inside another residency. I’m in the States because I’m doing a year-long residency teaching in an art school in Baltimore (MICA); part of the residency is to create a personal project, and the Mt Caz residency was perfect for that. I think now it is time to talk about my work--otherwise it will be hard to understand why I came to Corvallis for walking?

Maybe not yet, let’s talk about walking.

2.

I like walking because it’s natural (and I’m living a life where there is a lot of artifice); I like walking because is slow (and I’m living a life where everything is freakin fast); I like walking because my body is all in movement (and I’m usually sitting); and I like walking because you can listen a lot and discover stuff (and I’m living a life where I talk a lot). 

By the way, I’m not alone, a lot of people like to walk, especially in nature. Some people don’t like the idea, but when they are there, they like it. We have proof about it--during our walking project a participant said that they were in a very bad mood and then thanks to walking they were good (see? Science!).

My dream job is to be a ranger (and I’m almost 40 so it’s time to go there) and my passion is birds. So you can understand why I like walking so much. But right now I’m a game designer, or an artist, if you will, so I have to cover up my secret plan to become a ranger.

My ideal workstation

Mt Caz helped me with that: neither Albert nor Christina knew about my secret plans, so I suppose it made sense to them that I wanted to organize a prototype for a new conference format: a walking conference.

Conference are booooooring, I mean 90% of them are. I mean 80%. Actually sometimes they are great, but it’s really tricky because it’s almost all on the shoulders of the speakers; if they are great than the conference is good, if they are mediocre…then you have the feeling that someone is stealing time from your life or that you’re locked in a room and you want to escape.

- Intermission -

A good idea for an escape room? A supermarket with bulk goods, nuts, chocolate chips, cereals, pasta, rice, honey, sweet ginger, and organic fruit and vegetables. You have just one hour to leave the place.

Good luck!

- End Intermission -

And I have to say that the 10% interesting part of conferences is the people in the audience and the conversations that you have with them over a coffee or during a break. So, a walking conference: a new format where there are no speakers, or keynotes, or powerpoint presentations, but just people walking together and talking.

“A new format, ahahahah,” says Plato.

“Original, indeed,” says Socrates.

“We use to do that everyday back in the days. I founded a school about it: the Peripatetic school, where peripatetic means walking around,” says Aristotle.

“OK fellas, sometimes you need to apply some new flashy paint over ‘solid’ ideas in order to get people involved, you know? And by the way I don’t care about it, I want to become a ranger!”

Albert and Christina were not present during this dialogue (from Greek: in between knowledge), so they thought, cool! They are really positive people!

The date? The last day of my residency. The trail that we were walking? Unknown.

3.

Books!

At Mt Caz there are a lot of books: some of them belong to Mt Caz, others are just passing by, the majority are amazing. If your artistic practice is all about reading others people books, then come here. You will have a great time.

Among these books there were some about Corvallis and the surrounding areas, forests and trails. The names on the trails are funny and not particularly evocative, but we set our eyes on Dan’s Trail. 

The trail of Dan, Dan’s line, Dan and his walking path. I didn’t know anything about Dan but I wanted to know everything about his path. Also because there was a Lower and a Upper Dan’s Trail. And a Horse Dan’s Trail.

Finally I had an excuse to walk. And I walked. Dan was not there, but his trail was.

The high one? Too high.

The low one? Too low

The horse one? Just perfect, flat, even, equal, equine.

Wander Conference Trail (aka Dan’s)

There was one issue, maybe two (and then we discovered that there were three). Poison Oak, (if it’s three let it be), so we had to be aware of were we were walking, forbidden to leave Dan’s Trail.

I walked home also, it was good. I walked to a 7-Eleven, it was closed.

Naaa joking, 7 Eleven is always open.

I walked in a swamp and later I managed to see a sunset there, glorious. We walked on the street and the moon came out, glorious. We chanted at her and then we bought Ice Cream. We add balsamic vinegar and coarse salt to the Ice Cream.

We enjoyed ourselves. It was sweet and bitter.

4.

“You’ve charged my crystal,” Dylan said.

Best. Project. Ever

Dylan charging

5.

Last night at Terra Incognita.

clouds over Corvallis

I love bread.

I made a lot of bread at Mt Caz, I experimented with seeds, olive oil, chocolate, butter, peanut butter and different kinds of flour. The way it works is that you prepare everything at night, before going to bed, and in the morning you have the bread ready, perfect for my carb heavy breakfasts.

I decided to do a very festive bread: I thought that it would be nice, a farewell bread. A chocolate bread, with nuts and chocolate chips, perfect to have a nice evening delight with ice cream and microwaved banana.

Here is the recipe.

Oh no wait, Albert and Christina are not allowed to know the recipe, is a secret recipe that is sacredly handed down between artists-in-residence (or undercover wannabe rangers).

So if you want to know, it’s in an envelope, on the shelves of Terra Incognita.

Apparently is really good.

6.

Epilogue

On reading other accounts I’ve noted that right now Mt Caz tumblr (http://mtcaz.tumblr.com) has a description that says Ranger Clubhouse. I don’t remember if that description was there in May when first we started having conversations…

If so, then my subconscious is a scary place to go. Or maybe Albert and Christina know more than we believe, they know something about you also if you don’t say that to them.

Or maybe I’m the only one that can see that description on the top of the website? I don’t know, I feel like I’m already a ranger.

Matteo Uguzzoni www.urbangames-factory.it

[mtcaz]

Public Domain Variety Show (August 10)

Our current copyright system is very long and very odd. After a piece’s copyright is up it falls into the Public Domain. But because of a decision by Congress in 1998, we haven’t seen any new works enter the public domain for the last 20 years. That is until this year! At the beginning of 2019, hundreds of works have entered the public domain. Before they’re buried under the sands of time, these works deserve to be explored, appreciated, copied, imitated, altered. They deserve to be inspiration and jumping off points to new work. This show is meant to illustrate what we can share and create when we are allowed to explore our inspirations.

We’ll be showing performances from a bunch of performers, local and remote! See remixes, reinterpretations, and derived works from: SQRIations, Elena Landis, Lish Wang Savson, Brian Poucher, Chris Durnin, Spencer Wolfe, Addison Heeren, Codie Milford, Amy Ashley, Sara Bishop, and Hezekiah Franklin. 

Doors open at 6:30, and show starts at 7PM at Mt Caz. If you haven’t been to Mt Caz before, please email us at mountcaz@gmail.com to RSVP and get a map.

[mtcaz]

Poncili Creación (August 1)

On Thursday, August 1, we will be treated to a performance by Poncili Creación, the work of two twin puppeteers/costume makers/punks from Puerto Rico. Their work wildly challenges our sensibilities and sense of possibility with trash, craft, and humor.

Join us starting at 7:30PM on 8/1, at Interzone Cafe (1563 NW Monroe Ave, Corvallis), where Poncili’s pieces will be accompanied by entertainer Karla Mi Lugo.

See more from Poncili Creación on their instagram and read about them on ArtPapers. Check out Karla Mi Lugo’s work on her website. See more sound/video mashups from local artist Hezekiah on Youtube.

Click here for the Facebook event page.

[mtcaz]

Microbes in Space (July 11)

On July 11th, Mt Caz’s July artist-in-residence, Will Rogers, is creating a science and art showcase. What kind of art do scientists make, and what do artists make when they’re inspired by science? 

We’ll have four works displayed over the evening, as well as light refreshments for your enjoyment from 7-9pm, doors at 6:30.

- Poetry about microbiology from Will Rogers - Video work from Body Habitat Project - A gallery of illustrations from Maria Johnson - Collection of skulls from Tessa Barker

Readings, discussions, and performances will be scattered through the night, and DJ Nails will be providing beats afterwards, until 11pm for the soundtrack to more lovely conversations.

This event is free, donations accepted. RSVP appreciated at this form, address will be sent to attendees!