MYSTERIUM | 36-hour durational art and music event

Artwork by Craig Dongoski. Image courtesy of the artist.

2023 Visiting Artist Craig Dongoski leads a 36-hour durational art and music event inspired by the unfinished work MYSTERIUM by Russian musician Alexander Scriabin. Dozens of artists and performers will create an extended art project in the Studio Foundation Project Space at the Lamar Dodd School of Art that will be subsequently on view as a collective artwork with audiovisual documentation of the MYSTERIUM event. The reception for the exhibition will take place at the Studio Project Foundation Gallery in room N105 on Thursday June 22 at 6 pm and is free and open to the public.

About MYSTERIUM

Artist Craig 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.

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.”

Learn more here.

The Ciat-Lonbarde analog synthesizer will be one of many electronic and acoustic musical instruments performed at MYSTERIUM. Image courtesy of Craig Dongoski.

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