2023 Visiting Artist Craig Dongoski presents MYSTERIUM during the Summer Solstice

By: Francis Oliver

36-hour immersive art and experimental music event involves dozens of artists and performers

“MYSTERIUM is titled and inspired by the 19th century Russian mystic/musician Alexander Scriabin’s (unfinished) durational work intended to last seven days. Scriabin was one of the first to articulate the experience of synesthesia and the performance I am proposing is aimed at exploring these attributes as a matrix for producing multi-sensory/multi-disciplinary art.”

-Craig Dongoski

Craig Dongoski’s arts practice evades traditional categorization. The Atlanta-based artist is interested in probing the innate origins of human expression through experiments in layering basic marks (both graphical — in two-dimensional works — and sonic — through electronic and acoustic instrumentation). The Lamar Dodd School of Art welcomes Dongoski next week through the school’s Visiting Artist and Scholar program for MYSTERIUM, a 36-hour durational art and music event involving dozens of artists and performers.

Spanning the 2023 Summer Solstice, MYSTERIUM begins at 6 pm on June 20th and wraps up at 6 am on June 22nd. The public is invited to attend a free reception of the resulting exhibition, which features an artwork on paper produced collectively over the 36 hours and varied audiovisual documentation of the MYSTERIUM event, on Thursday June 22nd at 6 PM in the Studio Foundation Project Space in room N105 of the Main Building of the Lamar Dodd School of Art on 270 River Road.

In anticipation of MYSTERIUM, Dongoski delivered a lecture this past semester to students and faculty that explored the inspiration behind the event. Dongoski explains, “MYSTERIUM will last 36 hours. The time frame will be divided into six 6-hour sections and demarcated by the colors yellow, red, orange, blue, green, and violet. Artists involved will be restricted to making a prescribed number of dots, dashes, and circles on a large collective paper in the respective color of that 6-hour period while the project space is flooded in the light of that color.”

Beyond a kaleidoscopic environment of changing ambient colors and a meditative practice of drawing over an extended period of time, Dongoski seeks to induce a unique trance-like state in the artists with a dynamic roster of accompanying live music. In addition, onsite food will draw out a relationship with taste and a selection of vials with natural scents curated by a collaborator of Dongoski’s will stimulate olfactory responses.

Dongoski’s project is inspired by the unfinished early twentieth-century work of Russian mystic and musician Alexander Scriabin, who envisioned a concert hall of audience members experiencing sound, colored lights, and changing fragrances over a seven-day period. The altered consciousness that is induced in participants in this environment disrupts conventional experiences of time and space. Dongoski, who previously held a 24-hour iteration of MYSTERIUM at Columbus State University titled TRANCE OPERATIONS, is working incrementally toward honoring Scriabin’s seven-day project.

Athens-based collaborator Michael Pierce shared his enthusiasm in assisting Dongoski in soliciting musicians for the performance, “I’m very excited to be participating in the project. I was initially drawn to engage through my interactions with Craig over modular synthesizers. When he told me about his plan for MYSTERIUM, I knew it would be a rare opportunity to explore durational music while opening a feedback loop between real time visual and audio art creation.”

Inviting artists such as In a Kythe, Ohmu, Other Voices, Other Rooms, Call, and Wet Garden, among others, Pierce plans to conduct “evocative soundscapes with a focus on texture and atmosphere.” Pierce elaborates, “The musicians participating are all part of Atlanta and Athens’ thriving DIY experimental music communities. They represent a very diverse range of approaches and instrumentation. There will be lots of experimental electronic and electroacoustic music, modular synthesizers and outlandish sonic experimentation. Additionally, there will be portions of completely acoustic music, jazz, Indian classical music, ambient, techno, hip hop, and sounds that can’t be categorized. Most if not all of the music will be instrumental. The schedule is very loose and will have plenty of room for spontaneous collaborations and experiments.”

Organizers

Craig Dongoski (art direction)

Aaron Artrip (music direction)

Michael Pierce (music direction)

arianna khmelniuk / zapah lab (scent direction)

Performers

In a Kythe

Ohmu

Other Voices, Other Rooms

Call

Wet Garden

sweetearthflying

Free Rain

Naan Violence

Doom Ribbons

Michael Potter

Jay Domingo

Marcel Sletten

John Fernandes

Space Brother

Aaron Artrip

Danny Bailey

Neill Prewitt

Artists

Nathan Crafts

Hayley Wright

Tim Flowers

Matthew Sugarman

Adam Sprague

Masha Kouznetsova

Harrison Farina

Claire Paul

About the Visiting Artist and Scholar Lecture Series

The Visiting Artist and Scholar Lecture Series has brought over 80 distinguished guests to the Lamar Dodd School of Art at the University of Georgia since 2002. Visiting Artists and Scholars spend three days on campus interacting with students and faculty, the culmination of which is a public lecture on the subject of the artist’s or scholar’s work.

Artist bio

Craig Dongoski is a Full Professor at Georgia State University in Atlanta, Georgia USA. Dongoski’s has been exploring and articulating the mark in its most basic form (both graphically and aurally) for much of his career. The intention is that through varied interpretations of the marks that a contribution is made to the art historical dialogue within the origin of human expression. Professor Dongoski has performed and produced work each year on the island of Kefalonia, Greece since 2011. He also has a considerable body of work. Most recently a one-artist exhibition he presented The Primates NoteBook, employing his drawing-sound experiments and innovations in tandem with chimpanzees through the Language Research Center in Atlanta, Georgia. Dongoski was Invited Lecturer, Dolphinity: International Symposium on Dolphin Consciousness • Dolphin Embassy • Tenerife, Canary Islands. And in 2016 Invited Lecturer, CAIROTRONICA; International Symposium on Electronic Arts (in cooperation with The Planetary Collegium); Palace of the Arts • Cairo, Egypt. Most recently he was included in the Timeless Fragments Group Exhibition in Brindisi, Italy. And The Pulled Edition at Tong-In Gallery in Seoul, Korea. He was also selected to participate in the GATHERED Exhibition at The Museum of Contemporary Art-Georgia.

He was twice nominated for a Ford/Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship in New Media. Dongoski also has released CD’s on Hydra Head Records and Aucourant Records. In 2015 he directed an important improvisation collaboration with filmmaker Larry Clark resulting in a limited press LP entitled Drawing Through. He is represented by WhiteSpace Gallery in Atlanta, Georgia and James Gallery Pittsburgh, PA.