Accidents to Happen, Perchance

Chris Kraus has written and directed an independent feature film, a comedy about flying saucers called “Gravity & Grace,” that will open at Laemmle’s Grande on Dec. 6. But this story has nothing to do with that.

At least it doesn’t seem to.

It has to do, instead, with French philosopher Jean Baudrillard, the darling of university critical studies departments. It has to do with what’s billed as the world’s tallest and scariest roller coaster. It has to do with butoh, avant-garde Japanese dance. It has to do with gambling. It has to do with the I Ching, the ancient Chinese book of oracles. It has to do with chaos and Wall Street. It has to do with experimental rock, New Age philosophy, nuclear waste and ecology.

It has to do with chance, and an event this weekend called Chance that Kraus is producing at Whiskey Pete’s, the casino in Primm, Nev., a stone’s throw over the California-Nevada border on Interstate 15.

So what exactly is this event? Is it a conference or a happening?

“It started as a conference,” Kraus says, “but it has turned into a festival.”

Before moving from New York to Pasadena last year to assume a teaching post in fine arts at Art Center College of Design (which, along with the French Cultural Services, is sponsoring Chance), Kraus, an experimental filmmaker and writer, had worked as an editor for Semiotext(e), a hip, postmodern imprint that grew out of the cultural studies curriculum at Columbia University. Semiotext(e) is one of Baudrillard’s American publishers. And Kraus wanted to bring Baudrillard to the West, to the desert.

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Few can actually explain Baudrillard’s abstruse apocalyptic concepts about the way capitalism and modern culture (one and the same, but that’s a long story) have “murdered” reality. But many in the academy and the art world are under the spell of his thinking. He is a cult figure, in constant demand for interviews and conferences. One search engine on the Internet, for instance, listed 2,587 sites when fed his name.

Kraus, however, thought she would try something a little different. Baudrillard happens to be infatuated with America, the tackier the better. So knowing of Baudrillard’s particular fascination with Las Vegas and being, herself, multifaceted in her enthusiasms, she thought the subject of chance was a good way to bring those enthusiasms and Baudrillard together.

It also turns out that the whole notion of chance is in the air. When she approached Baudrillard, she says, he told her that, by chance, chance is just what he had been writing about for the past year.

There is an orthodoxy of chance theory. It is one that extends back, in music at least, to experiments in medieval and renaissance times. A couple of centuries later Mozart fooled around with making music using dice throws.

In our century, the discovery that the universe is not deterministic has been said to be the defining concept of modern physics. French visual artist Marcel Duchamp created a whole aesthetic around chance occurrences in art. Following his example, composer John Cage and choreographer Merce Cunningham have built major oeuvres using chance operations. So, too, have poets from Mallarme to John Ashbury.

Kraus takes note of all that, but times, she says, have changed. “We now have a less innocent take on chance. Now we talk about how to live with chaos theory in the world. A rock group like the Chance Band, which is coming together for this occasion, uses chance elements in a less precious way. Take DJ Spooky, do you know who he is? He is this young DJ who is also the great multicultural theorist Paul D. Miller in his other life. All of this shows how chance can be reborn with a harder edge.”

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So, with a “keynote address” that consists of sampling by DJ Spooky on Friday afternoon, chance’s rebirthing will occur in Whiskey Pete’s 500-seat black-box theater, nestled somewhere between gaming tables and the famous roller coaster. On hand will be Marcella Greening (whose specialties include chaos theory, semiotics, roller-blading and massage therapy) and Allucquere Rosanne Stone (a well-known postmodernist concerned with cyberspace and gender identity and performance). Baudrillard will speak on chance and butoh (a surprising passion of his, it seems) and the Japan-trained, Los Angeles-based butoh dancer Oguri will perform with his troupe, Renzoku.

There will be appearances by the seven-woman rock band Homer Erotic, and Baudrillard will make a special guest appearance as vocalist with the Chance Band. The diverse list of participants also includes Nick Kallos (of the Las Vegas Gaming Academy), Douglas Hepworth (a stockbroker who trades based on chaos theory), Hong Kong performance artist Shirley Tse (who, according to her biographical material, is “currently advancing aquatic material technology for the Chinese”), Diane di Prima (the Beat poet who will lead a workshop in chance writing) and Calvin Meyers (a representative of the Moapa Band of the Paiute Indians who will guide an early-morning desert tour of nuclear waste sites).

And there will be, of course, the chance encounters of the audience. Word of the event has circulated on the Internet and people have been snapping up tickets from all over the world. They’re coming not just from Los Angeles or New York, but also from France, Germany and Holland, Kraus claims.

Oh, yes, about that new movie of Kraus’. Is it--shades of DJ Spooky--something from another life? Kraus answers that it is and it isn’t. It is her first attempt at a narrative film, her first commercial film, her first comedy.

But, she says, “I see producing an event like Chance to be just like making a living movie.”

* Chance, Whiskey Pete’s, Primm, Nev., starts at 3 p.m. on Friday and runs through Sunday. $80 (accommodations not included). (818) 568-4805. Internet: https://www.artcenter.edu/events/chance.html