Something is Happening :: December 4, 2008; 7:45 pm to December 6, 2008 at 8:00 pm ::various locations in the San Diego, CA area.

Something is Happening is a 3-day event that focuses on the dynamics of sensation and the nature of gatherings. Rather than experiencing a single, formal presentation, audiences can freely gather and disband at a collection of different sites in the San Diego area including the UC campus, the Salk Institute, Torrey Pines State Reserve, and the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego. At these meeting points, audiences are immersed in sensory and atmospheric experiences through which concepts are not only elaborated but enacted.

Something is Happening is a collage of verbal and performative presentations that encourages the cultivation of moods, atmospheres, and various forms of bodily apprehension and awareness. By addressing the audience as a sensing body — whether as individuals or collectively as a group — the presenters seek to not only share ideas but also to activate multiple sensory connections with the spectators. In this way we are not taking a reductive approach so much as an excessive one — opening up conceptual flows and sensorial intensities that always carry with them the possibility of extension and amplification.

By emphasizing forms of sensory experience, social interaction and assembly, SOMETHING is HAPPENING aims to generate commonalities beyond what can be conveyed in dialogue — allowing participants who come from different backgrounds to cross linguistic boundaries and familiar perspectives, however temporarily, and enter into new social composites.

Presentations by BENJAMIN BRATTON, NORMAN BRYSON, TEDDY CRUZ, RICARDO DOMINGUEZ, LOUIS HOCK, ADRIENE JENIK, NIKLAUS LARGIER, ALPHONSO LINGIS, KYONG PARK, HAIM STEINBACH, LESLEY STERN, MICHAEL TAUSSIG, MICHAEL TRIGILIO, CALEB WALDORF/THE PUBLIC SCHOOL, SYBIL WENDLER, and graduate students of the UCSD Visual Arts program: GEORGE BOLSTER, RICH BOTT, CRYSTAL CAMPBELL, MICHA CARDENAS, MAURICIO CHERNOVETZKY, LILI CHIN, MICKI DAVIS, NOAH DOELY, ROB DUARTE, ANNA LAVATELLI, ELLE MEHRMAND, ZAC MONDAY, ZAC MONTANARO, SHERYL ORING, BRIANNA RIGG, LESHA RODRIGUEZ, JERRY TROUNG, NINA WAISMAN, DAVID WHITE, ANDREW WILSON (in collaboration with TODD MARGOLIS), and SUZANNE WRIGHT.

SOMETHING is HAPPENING is produced by the Department of Visual Arts at the University of California, San Diego, as part of its new Public Culture program, in collaboration with the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (MCASD). The event is organized by Jordan Crandall with Sybil Wendler and the graduate students of the UCSD Visual Arts program. Based on an original concept developed by Jordan Crandall, Steve Fagin, and Lesley Stern. Additional support provided by the UCSD Department of Anthropology and Department of Ethnic Studies.