The Elationists: Seizing the day afterBy Benedict Sinclair
The Foundation for the Preservation of Fantastic Possibilities lies behind black double doors, like any you’d happen upon in a SOMA alley. They stand without a grandiose poster or sign to mark the entrance. Unexpected, for a crew bearing such a title. A simple white “444” points the way. Inside a sign reads “Behold! Behind every calamity lies possibility!” It is the mythological starting point, in the shot heard ‘round the world sense, once spoken aloud by VeryVery Morley in that transitional breath between the Victorian Era and World War I. A table waited nearby with two warm pots of melted chocolate. The Elationists, a spiritualist-art movement that followed on the heels of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, are said to have used an exotic mix of spices in their cocoa elixir, a mix I couldn’t well find distinctions within as the thick drink made tracks across my palette.
Archival film, displayed on video screens, was layered with a suspicious digital static. Actors attempted the earliest of film methods to document their all-night parties, garbed in mythological outfits and those of relatively decadent, imperial civilizations like Ancient Greece and Egypt. Sync sound film hadn’t yet matured but the Elationists, in a rationale for the phenomenon, carried a reputation for experimenting. Music replicating the Edison phonograph tunes they’d spin during screenings was heard alongside.
Photo by Lisbeth Ortega
Their scene’s “Buzz” music is pastiche, though far less wild than advertised, “embracing eccentricity and high culture in the same swift grasp for gold.” The attempt was to present an argument for their omniscient effect on 20th Century music, from jazz and composers to “rockabilly, funk and world fusion.” As far as composition and fusion go, the Foundation fetched a little far. Though artist Bob Larkin commented that going overboard was the very zeitgeist of the Elationists.
But what comes of our fantasizing that here, in North-Central California, cultural worldwide fusion on the aesthetic front was birthed? Larkin’s intentions were most interesting within the bounds of “Sponteneity, examining influence, questioning authorship, prioritizing fun,” and manifesting fantasy. As far as throwing the term “experimental” around, I’m less inclined to than he, as there’s nothing “new” about the instruments used aside from their decoration. I was reminded of now-popular ‘old timey’ and jug band music at their dance-inspiring performance, where they premiered the goofy Earth Shake like it was a cousin of Texas swing or the bunny hop.
Photo by Lisbeth Ortega
The groups, the Foundation and their subjects, embody a dichotomy between an obsession with the past — with history as calamity or series of calamities — and the desire to experiment with the future. Which makes some dream-logic brand of historical sense, if you view Victorians as morally reactionist, grasping back amidst industrial momentum, and see the dada, futurist and fascist movements that came about during and after the Great War as headlong trailblazers. If the Elationists add anything to my imaginings of their period, it’s the gesture—the reminder—that nostalgia can be used for artistic craft, rather than just being over proliferated and factory-manufactured. Which speaks pretty loudly to our time, when consumer decisions hinge on that teency point between functionality and novelty. I left considering their painting “Dove”, where a single vanishing point alludes to a depth of perception that, because the piece is only composed of flat single-colored lines shooting out of its center, isn’t really there.
Photo by Lisbeth Ortega
Check out more about the Elationists and the exhibition, which continues through Dec. 15, here
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