Degenerate Art Ensemble pulls fairy tales into the darkness at the Frye Art Museum

In 1992 a young Asian- American man was murdered in Olympia by neo-Nazis. In 1993 the Young Composer's Collective, an experimental orchestra, visual and performance art group, was founded in response to the tragic murder. The group would go on to explore good and evil and the rawness of human darkness through their work.

Six years later, the group changed its name to the Degenerate Art Ensemble. The inspiration for the name change was a 1937 art exhibition put on by the Nazis in which more that 650 works of art were purged from German museums. The Degenerate Art Exhibit celebrated the removal of work by dozens of mostly Jewish artists, including Kirchner, Kandinsky, and Chagall. Ironically the work of the "degenerate" artists was so appealing to the German public that the exhibition attracted a large audience, not for its National Socialist propogandist content, but for the exciting, challenging and unparalleled work of the artists.

Today the Degenerate Art Ensemble (DAE) creates similarly innovative art inspired by awareness of and sensitivity to issues of racial hatred, cruelty and human suffering. The group is showcasing its work this month at the Frye Art Museum. The showcase features installations, footage of performance pieces, soundscapes and photographs.

The DAE's dark subject matter is rendered more nuanced through their choice of medium and subject matter: the DAE uses fairy tales as a jumping off point for their highly discursive art. Little Red Riding Hood, Hans Christian Anderson's "Red Shoes," and the lesser known Frankensteinesque "Cuckoo Crow" lay the foundation for the experimental and highly ornamental work of the DAE.

Curator Robin Held calls the use of fairy tales "a rich drama of dreams, appetites, discipline, desire, transformation and reinvention, danced through mountains and forests, across rivers and through time."

Indeed a stroll through the Frye's DAE exhibit feels not unlike a dark, surreal dream. A maze of conical papier-mâché structures hang from the ceiling, each structure containing a small speaker which emits chirping, whirring, buzzing, creaking or squeaking noises to create an eerie, ethereal effect. In another room a giant Little Red Riding Hood effigy lifts her skirts to reveal a screen showing a montage of some of the DAE's "Little Red Riding Hood" performance art. Another exhibit features the story of a little bird who falls out of her nest and is trapped by overzealous surgeons who amputate her wings and surgically attach deer hooves to her.

"It's a story exploring the struggle to follow one's creative path," said co-artistic director, founder and performer Haruko Nishimura. "It has become a very visual thing to us, reading with our eyes as a book."

And the DAE is a highly visual group, what started out as an orchestra now involves elaborate, labor intensive and cumbersome costumes. Indeed, the film footage that documents their performance work in the exhibit looks more like a moving painting than a movie. The slow, ataxic, shuddering movements of the artists, along with the opaque hue of the scene, set and costumes make the performance seem more like a storyboard of a series of Degas' or better yet, Chagalls'.

No DAE piece is complete, however, without a meticulously designed soundscape.

"We would like to explore how the sounds, the melodies, vocals, movement and all of that embodiment— how that can tell the stories. How can we viscerally convey the rawness of the telling of the tales through abstraction, through a surreal soup of soundscapes," Hishimura said.

The ever-evolving nature of the DAE ensures that this incarnation of the DAE won't last forever. DAE's art is the work of dozens of artists, dancers, musicians, textile artists, actors, cinematographers, set designers and concept artists. Given the collaborative nature of the DAE's work, it's impossible to say what its next show, installation or exhibit will look like, but this one is definitely worth the visit.

Emma may be reached at emcaleavy@su-spectator.com