On February 21, 2012 the Clocktower Gallery held an event for Taraka Larson's The Now Age, which manifest on this occasion as a multi-media dissection of contemporary conceptions of time in the context of music and its relationship to symbology, particularly in the transference from metaphor to kitsch. Taraka's tone variates between an academic analysis to a tongue in cheek nod to rigidly ideological manifestos.
Nimai joined Taraka onstage as part of her lecture on the Now Age, though there was none of the meditative song the two create together. Instead, Nimai played slight percussion and was one of about ten dancers who appeared in a maddening, glittered group of spritely females intended to provoke the crowd. At their best, they incited a mosh-pit during Taraka's Black Sabbath air-guitar-with-a-guitar karaoke thrash jam; at their most intrusive, they pulled the stoned from their seats. But this exercise helped underscore a point Larson made relating art space to concert space–it was an iteration of liberty for people to thrash like that for so long in a gallery. - excerpt from harekrischna.tv
The presentation was followed by a panel of artists discussing these themes and their relationship to pop culture and American history. The panel consisted of moderator Jon Kessler, small press publisher Jesse Hlebo, and Hunter Hunt-Hendrix of the band Liturgy. Clocktower Gallery curator Joe Ahearn provides the introduction and our station manager Jeannie Hopper hosted the broadcast.
To see more photos read more about the event, check out the Clocktower Event page and our Facebook page. To learn more about The Now Age we recommend the book of the same name, available through the arts book publisher Swill Children.
"In the Now Age, the music concert should serve as a bridge between worlds. This is not limited to an elite group of bands. Any band can participate in activating this potential. The concert utilizes many ancient religious strategies of icon worship, call and response chanting, group mentality, martyrdom, out-of- body experiences, and transformation of the physical environment to create a metaphysical liminal space filled with shock and awe. It is a mass concentration of simultaneous chaos and ecstasy, a ritual sacrifice in which the performer and audience both give their lives." - excerpt from Now-Age.org
Taraka Larson, along with her sister Nimai, perform as Prince Rama, a group that very much subscribes to the key points of The Now Age.
