Three nights of immersive art and music at the Rhinoceropolis / Glob / Club Scum block (3553 Brighton Boulevard area), September 9–11, 2016. Per Tom Murphy’s Westword preview, this was the fifth installment of the Fantasia series (counting: 2010, 2011, 2012, 2014, 2016).
Co-organizers: Colin Ward and Madeline Johnston (a Rhinoceropolis cohort; her project is Sister Grotto, and she records as Midwife — see Madeline Johnston). The Madeline Johnston co-organization is the first vault-confirmed Fantasia co-curator credit outside of Stephan Herrera.
Theme: nature. Per the co-organizer statement quoted in Westword: “The theme of Fantasia has always been nature. And nature doesn’t and won’t necessarily have one or any theme. Rather then drawing inspiration from the art worlds of museums and/or basic music festivals, Fantasia 2016 aims to inspire a core group of artists to collectively install sculptural multi-media exhibits and performances. Much of Fantasia relies on contributing artists’ aspiring to awaken the inner-[creator] and to submit, act out, build and perform work and ideas which they themselves haven’t quite pulled off yet in their art and/or sound practice.”
End-of-series context: Fantasia 2016 was the last Fantasia. Three months later, on December 2, 2016, the Ghost Ship warehouse fire in Oakland killed 36 people; six days after that, on December 8, 2016, a Denver Fire Department inspection shut down Rhinoceropolis and Glob (see Rhinoceropolis shutdown). The Fantasia series ended with the venue’s closure, not on its own terms.
Funded in part by Cave Rave 2016 — a July 9, 2016 dance-music + installation-art benefit at Rhinoceropolis raised proceeds toward Fantasia 2016’s production budget. See Cave Rave (Fantasia 2016 fundraiser) (created Session 19).
Schedule
Friday, September 9 — 9 p.m. — $5 suggested donation
Installation + market night.
- Chimes & chandeliers, sculpture garden, murals, video art, environmental soundscapes, installation-based performances
- Doom Posi Shop — vendors selling T-shirts, prints, stickers, zines
- Don’t Be So Cuticle — nail salon
- Alice Winter (Drawblood) — hand-poked tattoos
- Music: Alien Abduct, DJ Don’tGoJasonWaterFalls
Saturday, September 10 — 9 p.m. — $10 — entry at Club Scum or Rhinoceropolis
Main music night.
- Main Stage at Club Scum: Guerilla Toss (NYC experimental rock), Body Meat, DJ Pop CTRL
- Rhinoceropolis Club Zebra Rave: DJ Catdog, DJ Drop Shadow, Tucans, DJ Roku Roku, 2kwateva, Drawblood
Sunday, September 11 — 7 p.m. — $5 suggested donation
Video-art + multi-media performance night.
- Video artists: The Vid Kidz, Stephan Herrera, Colin Ward, Laura Conway, Anna Winter, Coleman Mummery, David Winkler, Kim Shively
- Multi-media performances at Glob (9 p.m.): Kevin Greenspon, Dugout Canoe + Paper Bark, Sister Grotto (Madeline Johnston) with accompanying visuals by Kevin Greenspon, Anton Krueger, Curt Heiner
- Kim Shively’s contribution: a collage video commenting on RiNo neighborhood development’s effect on Rhinoceropolis. Per Shively: “It combines imagery from websites advertising new development in the [RiNo] area along with material from fashion mags and ‘fake’ nature imagery.”
Notable specifics
- The Westword preview address typo: Tom Murphy’s piece lists Rhinoceropolis as “3551 Bright Boulevard” — the canonical address is 3553 Brighton Boulevard. The typo is preserved here as historical-record context.
- Curt Heiner: long-associated with the defunct Denver band Kevin Costner Suicide Pact; collaborated with Madeline Johnston on her album You Don’t Have To Be A House To Be Haunted. His 2016 Fantasia contribution was a unique Sister Grotto + projection-loop performance.
- The “fifth installment” framing locks in the series count (2010, 2011, 2012, 2014, 2016) and resolves the multi-session question of whether 2013 and 2015 events occurred. They did not.
Photo documentation
- Photographed across all three nights by Ken Hamblin III; the Westword photo essay “Music, Lights, Fantasia! Fantasia 2016 Celebrates DIY” (2016-09-14) collects the canonical shots of the event.
- Per the 2018 Westword Rhinoceropolis-reopen feature, the photo set includes a much-circulated image captioned “Colin Ward and friends welcoming people to Rhinoceropolis for the 2016 edition of Fantasia.”
Press
- Westword — Fantasia Returns to Rhinoceropolis This Weekend (Tom Murphy, 2016-09-09) — full preview with schedule
- Westword — Cave Rave Sets a Sweaty Stage on the Path to Fantasia (Tom Murphy, 2016-07-09) — the fundraiser-for-Fantasia-2016 preview, previously mis-attributed to Fantasia 2014 in the vault (corrected Session 19)
- Westword — Photos: Music, Lights, Fantasia! Fantasia 2016 Celebrates DIY (Westword Staff, 2016-09-14) — Ken Hamblin III photo essay
Carry-forward stubs surfaced this session (deferred per Session 18 anti-stub-burst pattern)
- organizations/sister-grotto — Madeline Johnston’s project; cross-cuts with midwife (her current alias)
- people/curt-heiner — visual artist; Kevin Costner Suicide Pact alum
- people/anna-winter, people/alice-winter (Drawblood), people/coleman-mummery, people/david-winkler (Julien) — Fantasia 2016 contributors
- organizations/guerilla-toss — NYC experimental rock; Fantasia 2016 headliner Saturday
- organizations/kevin-costner-suicide-pact — Curt Heiner’s defunct band