The first Whitman Percussion Ensemble concert in 11 years took place on Sunday, April 15 at Chism Recital Hall. There has not been a percussion ensemble on campus for more than a decade, and a renewed interest in percussion among Whitman students has pushed for the re-formation of the group that now consists of eight musicians.

The student director of the ensemble, junior Nathan Krebs, explained the history of the group.

“Whitman had percussion ensembles in the past,” Krebs said. “This is the first time they’re back in the music building in 11 years. The last one was in 2007.”

Illustration by Haley King

Krebs also spoke about what he believes the ensemble brings to campus that other groups might not offer.

“I think we’re, in a lot of ways, a spontaneous group,” Krebs said. “We might do things that take our performers out of their comfort zones, and I think that leads to a lot of exciting possibilities. We played using cups, brooms – we had performers playing on the heads of other performers wearing Nike helmets – it’s funny. We loved it, the crowd loved it, and it’s just a whole lot of fun.”

A member of the ensemble, senior Nicki Day-Lucore, feels that the percussion ensemble fit well in the Whitman music performance scene.

“I think it’s just really fun, and interesting, and different,” Day-Lucore said. “It’s definitely nice to have, and nice to have it back after all this time.”

As the ensemble is fairly new, in that there has not been a percussion ensemble on campus in over a decade, there are still elements that can be improved.

“We didn’t start performing until this semester, and normally it’s a year-long thing with one performance,” Day-Lucore said. “So firstly [an ideal performance] would be longer. So we would have more songs, especially the songs we wrote  –the ones we improved – would be longer.”

The element of improvisation is important to the performance of the ensemble. More than anything, though, the group aims to have fun in making music both for themselves and for the audience. First-year Koby Haigerty, a percussionist in the ensemble, spoke to this aspect.

“It’s a little more happy go lucky than a lot of the other ensembles on campus,” Haigerty said. “So there are goofs and gags and what have you. We have a piece called ‘Brooms’ where we each have a broom and we’re making music with those things. It’s almost more performance than it is technical music, although there definitely is a lot of that as well.”

The first Whitman Percussion Ensemble concert in 11 years took place on Sunday, April 15 at Chism Recital Hall. There has not been a percussion ensemble on campus for more than a decade, and a renewed interest in percussion among Whitman students has pushed for the re-formation of the group that now consists of eight musicians.

The student director of the ensemble, junior Nathan Krebs, explained the history of the group.

“Whitman had percussion ensembles in the past,” Krebs said. “This is the first time they’re back in the music building in 11 years. The last one was in 2007.”

Illustration by Haley King

Krebs also spoke about what he believes the ensemble brings to campus that other groups might not offer.

“I think we’re, in a lot of ways, a spontaneous group,” Krebs said. “We might do things that take our performers out of their comfort zones, and I think that leads to a lot of exciting possibilities. We played using cups, brooms – we had performers playing on the heads of other performers wearing Nike helmets – it’s funny. We loved it, the crowd loved it, and it’s just a whole lot of fun.”

A member of the ensemble, senior Nicki Day-Lucore, feels that the percussion ensemble fit well in the Whitman music performance scene.

“I think it’s just really fun, and interesting, and different,” Day-Lucore said. “It’s definitely nice to have, and nice to have it back after all this time.”

As the ensemble is fairly new, in that there has not been a percussion ensemble on campus in over a decade, there are still elements that can be improved.

“We didn’t start performing until this semester, and normally it’s a year-long thing with one performance,” Day-Lucore said. “So firstly [an ideal performance] would be longer. So we would have more songs, especially the songs we wrote  –the ones we improved – would be longer.”

The element of improvisation is important to the performance of the ensemble. More than anything, though, the group aims to have fun in making music both for themselves and for the audience. First-year Koby Haigerty, a percussionist in the ensemble, spoke to this aspect.

“It’s a little more happy go lucky than a lot of the other ensembles on campus,” Haigerty said. “So there are goofs and gags and what have you. We have a piece called ‘Brooms’ where we each have a broom and we’re making music with those things. It’s almost more performance than it is technical music, although there definitely is a lot of that as well.”

The Spring Studio Dance Series at Harper Joy Theatre has seen a plurality of visiting artists perform. Ranging in theme and subject, the annual series is rapidly becoming a venue for experimental dance and performance. This year, the dance series saw three performances by two solo artists and one collaboration, with one featured on each day of the series running from April 4 through April 7, followed by a faculty-led discussion sessions concerning the dances’ themes and effects.

Slideshow • 6 Photos

Contributed by Nhi Cao

Assistant Professor of Art History Lisa Uddin, who led a post-performance discussion, had much to say about the importance of the Spring Studio Dance Series.

“I have not experienced art on campus in a way that the Spring Studio Dance Series offered it to me and the Whitman community,” Uddin said. “We have lots of amazing art on campus, but there’s something about the format of the Spring Studio Dance Series that’s unique and makes it a joy.”

Brooklyn-based performance artist Kristopher Pourzal, one of the guest artists who came to Whitman for the dance series, spoke about the central characteristics of his performances.

“My work is interdisciplinary,” Pourzal said. “I feel like people would say that my work has elements of dance and elements of theater, musical elements. There’s definitely a visual art component, as I use a lot of objects. There’s a lot of objects spread around the stage and rearranged.”

Pourzal’s performance, that took place on April 4, was a performance that largely concerned questions of identity. Pourzal hoped that the performance would remind students of the importance of face-to-face interactions.

“At the risk of sounding cliché, in the age of Netflix and social media, more of our days are spent interacting with screens than with other people,” Pourzal said. “Performance is a really powerful and vital return to being together physically, and I think a reminder of how important face to face interaction is. There’s something about the immediacy of performance.”

Pourzal detailed what themes and motifs characterized his work.

“What I would say for my piece here, as well as for my greater work, there’s a real undergirding theme of identities as things that are both concealed and visible,” Pourzal said. “I feel like I’m constantly oscillating between what it is to perform and identity, and live in an identity that’s less visible to the outside world.”

Inspiration for Pourzal’s work can be seen in non-performance art. He listed three artists whose work he cited as inspirational.

“The films and writings of Miranda July,” Pourzal said. “It’s something about how she’s crafting awkwardness, and the bizarreness of mundane and banal human interaction. That really speaks to me. Another person I’ll say is a musician named Anohni. She makes music that’s intensely political, but to pop beats. So it’s this incredible bumping up against of gnarly, political truths and saccharine feel-good bop-your-head beats, that to me is exciting in the way it can trick you into enjoying it despite the brutal truths it’s literally speaking in the lyrics. Kara Walker, a multidisciplinary visual artist. I think this is kind of aspirational for me; she’s very overtly in her work using stereotypes of black people to point to the brutality that is white supremacy throughout history. There are some pretty intense images of violence through her work, pointing to historical violence against women.”

Collaborating artists Heather Kravas, a choreographer, and Victoria Haven, a visual artist, and guests at the Spring Dance Series, were featured on April 7, bringing a unique performance to Whitman with a blending of choreography and visual art.

Haven spoke of the value of bringing their dance to Whitman.

“I feel like they’re [Whitman students] getting the chance to see something that’s very experimental; that in itself has value,” Haven said.

Kravas and Haven also spoke about their unique collaboration and how that has shaped their work.

“We’ve been calling it a durational drawing, somewhere between dance and drawing, that kind of sets the boundaries we’re working within,” Haven said. “We’ve come to this collaboration through years of talking and sharing our practices with each other, and we have certain overlaps in both of our works. For me, with materials, like painting and tape to construct lines, and Heather comes to those ideas with creating lines with bodies in her choreography, and with time.”

“There’s something in this iteration, of overlapping activities, that is of interest currently; a layering,” Kravas said. “Sometimes I think of it like these activities are two worlds coexisting in space at the same time.”

The product of their collaboration was a graphically engaging look at identity.

“I think it’s [the performance is] open to interpretation, as I work with time in a very deliberate way, that is to provide an opportunity for people to have more space in time than they generally get in their daily lives,” Kravas said. “I don’t want people to feel a specific thing, but I hope they would understand that there’s an invitation for them to think about things or feel things at all. I want to provide people with openness, but also to show them that they do have openness.”

All in all, this year’s Spring Studio Dance Series presented Whitman with an opportunity to further its understanding of dance as an art form.

While August 9, 2020, the seventy-fifth anniversary of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, Japan, may seem far in the future, Whitman College is already preparing its own contribution to the dialogue on the legacy of Nagasaki, in the form of the Hanford-Nagasaki project. An examination of the connection between the plutonium refining in Hanford that yielded the bomb dropped on Nagasaki and the bombing itself, the Hanford-Nagasaki project is a series of events including talks, film screenings and art installations happening throughout the week of March 6 that aim to promote dialogue on the legacy of Nagasaki and those affected by it today.

One element of the Hanford-Nagasaki project is the Hanford Reach project, created by San Francisco-based multimedia artist Glenna Cole Allee with the assistance of video artist Michael Paulus and sound editor Bruce Bennett. A combination of photography, sculpture and audio of interviews with those affected by nuclear material, Hanford Reach is cohesive multimedia installation currently displayed in the Maxey Museum. Allee expressed a personal connection with Hanford.

“I went to college in Portland, and I drove past Hanford when there were eight leaking reactors.” At Reed College, Allee met a downwinder, a person affected by nuclear material. “I couldn’t believe I’d never heard of it,” Allee said.

Amara Garibyan
“Hanford Reach” is a multimedia installation in Maxey Museum addressing the connection between the Hanford plutonium production and the bombing on Nagasaki during WWII.

The process of creating the multimedia installation was a long process.

“I started by making cold calls to get into the sites,” Allee said. “The more I looked, the more I saw.”

Allee chose to present the material in a multimedia medium to convey the widest range of experience through her installation.

“I’m a bit impatient with the photographic medium of a series of still images,” Allee said. “The sound is at the core of it. The sound carries the experiences and world views. It’s also the most changing, the most undefined.”

Allee and Bennet continue to modify and edit the sound clips used. As it stands, Hanford Reach is an ongoing project. Allee spoke about her hopes for what visitors will take away from the exhibit.

“I hope that these archives and sound bites can give a sense of the complexity of Hanford,” Allee said. “I hope it broadens the discussion around Hanford. I came to see everyone involved as people who could be victims. I want people to have an experience comparable to what I had [in realizing the complexity of Hanford].”

Paul Garrett Professor of Political Science Shampa Biswas offered an academic look at the wider Nagasaki-Hanford Bridge Project. Biswas has been highly involved with the facilitation of the project, and explained the value of it.  

“It’s an educational opportunity,” Biswas said. “All of our first year students now read Kate Brown’s ‘Plutopia,’ so they learn about the history and politics of Hanford. And that book in itself is a comparative history of Hanford and another site in the Soviet Union, but another way to think about comparative history is to  link the bomb whose plutonium was produced in Hanford, to where that bomb was dropped, which was at Nagasaki.”

The Hanford site is already an established presence in Whitman academia, which makes the project especially relevant on campus.

“This is our community. This is where we live. This is part of our local history,” Biswas said.

Biswas described the potential for dialogue created by those affected by radiation that this project brings.

“The purpose of the project is really to begin building bridges between victims of radioactive contamination,” Biswas said. “The idea is that nuclear bomb production and use affects communities across boundaries.”

Along with faculty such as Biswas, Whitman students have also expressed an interest in greater understanding of the connection between Hanford and Nagasaki. Yann Dardonville ’20 vocalized an interest in the topic.

“I think it’s tremendously important for our community to know and understand,” Dardonville said.

Hanford Reach is one of many aspects making up the great Nagasaki-Hanford Bridge Project. Nagasaki nuclear bombing survivor Mitsugi Moriguchi arrived earlier this week in Walla Walla on a mission for peace, on behalf of the city of Nagasaki. He, along with Hanford “downwinders,” spoke on March 7 in Maxey Auditorium. A film screening of “Hibakusha at the End of the World” (2003) took place the day before. Remaining upcoming components of the project on the lingering legacy of Nagasaki include a field trip to the Tri-Cities on March 8, and a conference, film screening and address by Moriguchi on March 9 in the Tri-Cities.

Slideshow • 4 Photos

Amara Garibyan

Alex Garland’s “Annihilation” is a film as captivating as it is disturbing. Set in a national forest following an unexplained biological disaster, the film focuses on the fate of a team of scientists sent in to investigate the paranormal event, dubbed “The Shimmer.”

Illustration by Catalina Burch

The central premise of “Annihilation” is that an unexplained, and in fact unexplainable, event has created a mysterious area from which none return. Natalie Portman stars as Lena, a Johns-Hopkins cellular biologist who joins an investigative expedition into the event after her husband, a member of a previous expedition, returns in a critical state. This uber-cliché premise is given new, and subversive, life by the execution and genre of the film. “Annihilation” follows in the footsteps of other psychedelic sci-fi and horror films such as “2001: a Space Odyssey,” “Beyond the Black Rainbow” and “Under the Skin,” where the event and circumstances the characters face is so beyond human perception that the audience knows as little as the characters do. The Shimmer itself is never truly explained; characters imply that it is either extraterrestrial or from a higher plane of existence, but nothing is made concrete.

What is concrete, however, is that the film is beautiful and terrifying. Portman especially sells wonderfully the idea that her perception of reality is changing, while also showing a gradual loss of identity and uncertainty. The visual effects look like they’ve all been taken from surrealists and New Age psychedelic art. Images of dividing cells and floating rainbow tesseracts all create unease and fear within the viewer. Beside the more cerebral and meditative concepts is a grotesque, David Cronenberg-esque, body horror. The violence in the film is jarring and revolting in equal measure. The film’s juxtaposition of existential dread about the place of man in the universe with immediate personal gross danger makes for a constantly engaging film.

While the film is visually engaging, the auditory experience it provides is equally captivating. Ben Salisbury, who created the soundtrack of Garland’s previous film “Ex-Machina,” has written a fascinating and alien score that blends acoustic and electronic music. The soundtrack is, in itself, a work of art. Far from being a clichéd mess of electronic music, Salisbury’s score adds extra atmosphere to an already brilliant film.

The human themes of identity, guilt and grief give the all-female cast plenty of material with which to work, and there’s not a single wasted actress among them. Each character is flawed and interesting in their own respect. Portman steals the show as both a woman driven by a desire for knowledge and accountability, as well as an overall badass who fights mutated animals with a machine gun.

“Annihilation” is, while not a landmark of either science fiction or horror, an exceptional film and one destined to become a classic. Movie tickets are anything but cheap, but fans of science fiction and horror will not regret the expense.

The French American Cultural Exchange foundation (FACE) has brought French cultural films to universities and colleges across the United States with the Tournées Film Festival since 1995. With cultural plurality as its central mission, the Tournées Film Festival now finds itself at Whitman College, bringing their mission to Walla Walla.

The films shown are products not only of France, but of Tunisia as well. Ranging from animation to documentary to drama, the films shown are all selected as good examples of French culture.

The film series started out with the animated film “Louise en hiver (Louise by the Shore),” that follows the story of an elderly woman who finds herself stranded in a seaside town, then takes the time to reflect on her life. The most recent film, “Derniers nouvelles du cosmos (Latest News from the Cosmos)” explores the life of a severely autistic and talented poet. Two more films remain to be shown.

A six week event, the Tournées festival has found ardent support at Whitman. French Literature professor Jack Iverson spoke to the value of bringing this French cultural program to Whitman.

“The idea of the sponsors [FACE] is to heighten the awareness of French culture, specifically French filmmaking, which has historically been an important part of French cultural production,” Iverson said.

Iverson spoke about how the Tournées Film Festival is in part a response to American dominance of the film industry.Afton Weaver

“If you look at box office numbers, and just the number of people who are seeing American films as opposed to European films of any nationality, the US [film] industry is so dominant in the world today that the French really do feel the need to promote their product to the world,” Iverson said.

The festival is popular among students, as well as faculty. Yann Dardonville, RA of La Maison Français (the French interest house), spoke about what he believes the value of the film festival is.

“Simply put, it’s a cool way to expose campus to another sphere of cinema,” Dardonville said. “When we think of movies we think of Hollywood; we don’t always have foreign films in mind. I think that French films offer a great platform for thinking about French culture and the values the French have.”

French major Megan Gleason shared Dardonville’s views on the importance of French cultural presentation.

“Before you start learning French you have this idea of what French culture is like,” Gleason said. “I think there is a real need to see what French culture is really like. It’s so easy to stereotype different cultures, I think it’s important to dig deeper and not be satisfied with that surface level understanding.”

French cultural presentations such as the Tournées Film Festival also serve as a resource to the Whitman community. Dardonville spoke to this aspect.

“I don’t want to pit it against other cultures at Whitman,” Dardonville said. “I think that the fact that it was put on by the French department shows that it was what the department chose to do with its resources. I welcome more representation in general.”

The Tournées Film Festival will show films in Kimball Auditorium every Sunday at 7:30 p.m. until February 25.

Slideshow • 5 Photos

Carson Jones

Writer and former Whitman Professor, Jaun Martinez, reads exceprts of his book “Best Worst American” and shares advice on witing stories.

New and experienced writers alike had much to learn from the latest Visiting Writers Reading Series talk, featuring fiction writer Juan Martinez in Kimball Theatre on Thursday, Feb. 1. Martinez, the author of award-winning short fiction collections and an upcoming novel, read selections from his short story collection “The Best Worst American.” Between selections, he shared what he deemed his “dirty tricks” for writing good beginnings, middles and endings in fiction. The audience received his talk, which he delivered with humor and good-naturedness, enthusiastically.

Some of Martinez’s advice pertaining to beginnings, middles and endings seemed simple but proved effective in the selections he read that night. For beginnings, Martinez advised giving characters a job, and making more introspective characters get out and do things, aided by more proactive supporting characters. His advice for story middles included giving a character a supposed solution to their problem, then turning that the solution into a new problem (something he deemed the Romantic Comedy problem). As Martinez read his short story “The Best Worst American,” he demonstrated his last “dirty trick” for endings: closing the story with characters in close proximity, as “The Best Worst American” ends with a hug.

Before the talk, The Wire sat down with Martinez to get an idea of his writing influences and how he began writing. Martinez cited Steven King, along with comic books, as major influences. He also mentioned Columbian novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who impacted many of the authors who now inspire Martinez. He characterizes his work as a mix of horror and humor, and there is much fluidity in the way many of his stories blend genres. This uniqueness adds to the compelling nature of his short stories, and kept the audience captivated the entire evening.