Our allies in Asheville, NC threw a party this Saturday that was unlike anything I'd ever encountered before.  Graham Hackett of Catalyst Productions organized the event as a fundraiser for an ongoing project sharing poetry workshops with at risk youth and juveniles in the prison system, and included a number of positively sick elements. Video is reportedly forthcoming….

Kim Kubicke, who first introduced us to Graham a year ago, bottomlined speaker liaising for a series of lectures on sustainable culture, and was a hospitable and fun host.  I traipsed around with her the day of the event, watching various pieces come together at The Wedge Gallery — which featured some insane pieces of industrial metal work art — and chatting up the small army involved in the production.

Dustin's heavily stencil-influenced visual art graced the walls; Raymond and others rocked out a video projection sequence from two ceiling-mounted projecters; poets spat during 3-4 separate sets from as many different places in the room, each spotlit while standing on a raised platform, appearing as if apparations hovering in the dark; and various DJs from the Evoke Community tribe played in between the poetry sets and then raged (with meat-beat sets worthy of any dance floor anywhere) until 3 or 4 in the morning.

I closed the lecture series with a 15 minute address about executive aggrandizement and fascism, dropped "The Baghdad Blues" and "Bumpin in My SUV" during the poetry set, and got down on the dance floor with enough gusto to leave me barely able to walk by 2am.  Jinx gave me an extended tour of a bio-diesel production facility next door, as well as his gallery of incredible metal sculpture, and I was especially happy to re-connect with Emily, an Asheville hip-hop wonder who's been rocking rhymes with the SF Collaborative Arts Insurgency (on which the DC GPI was originally modeled) over the past year. 

Guerrillas who were with us in Asheville in fall 2005 (Nik, Cherie, Laurie, Jeff, and others) may recall Emily — she let us into the space for our Sunday workshop, which doubled as her living room.  She's got a funny story recollecting that morning, incidentally, involving rolling out of bed with a hangover and finding 5-6 figures huddling in the rain with coffee outside her front door.

To sum it up, I drooled over myself at the overwhelming consciousness in that town.  If you're ever feeling down, check out Asheville and the incredible creative scene cultivated by our allies down south! 

This entry was posted on Friday, July 21st, 2006 at 11:02 am and is filed under Reportbacks-Actions & Shows. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.