Meow Wolf: Origin Story

Santa Fe, New Mexico, a small town of 80,000, is notable for its many art galleries. But apparently, that doesn’t mean it’s inviting of all artistic voices. The guerrilla artists in the new documentary Meow Wolf: Origin Story describe it as restrictive, discriminating, touristy and safe.

Feeling marginalized, this ragtag bunch got together in 2008 to subvert the order and create their own scene. They rented a quadroplex of four houses and split the $900 rent 15 ways.

“We could throw shows, we could do really weird things,” says co-founder Vince Kadlubek. “We could have sleepovers.”

They could, and do, have parties, avant-garde music shows, drinks and cigs, costume performances, and all manner of DIY art happenings. They describe themselves and their tribe as outsiders, but they’re also full of ideas, and they obsessively and impulsively make things. Evenutally, they get around to naming themselves Meow Wolf.

Today, they’re best known for applying their eclectic (non)sensibilities to an interactive art funhouse in Santa Fe called “House of Eternal Return,” which has launched their group aesthetic into an alternative art model. The documentary film, by Morgan Capps and Jilann Spitzmiller, reconstructs their first decade, thanks to the group’s copious photographic and video documentation of their own work.

The filmmakers fill the screen with quick shots of Meow Wolf’s day-glo mutant monsters, crazy costumes, trash assemblages, neon and LED sculptures, paintings, marionette puppets, crazy plays and films. The live/work space looks like a Mardi Gras parade ended up at Burning Man on Halloween. Their first real show finds success, excitement and admirers.

“We would just text each other ‘Meow now,’” says co-founder Caity Kennedy. “Meaning, I’m going to go to this miserable, freezing warehouse and paint shit. Do you want to glue shit to the walls?”

It’s cheeky, colorful and ironic stuff. But their ambition, their shows, their reputations – driven by a maximalist ethic – grows and grows.

The first big test of their newfound stature comes when an established local gallerist invites them into her vast gallery to build “The Due Return” a 70-foot-long, intergalactic pirate ship with multiple rooms and levels that people go into and move about in, with various rooms decorated in their over-the-top style, held together by a twisty storyline. It’s a premonition of things to come.

“The Due Return” is a hit. People flock to it. Some members suggest this group of anarchists might have a sustainable business on their hands. With that realization comes business meetings, ego clashes and arguments over direction. People burn out as money comes in. This naturally cranks up the film’s mounting (albeit bubbly) tension.

Not everyone will be enamored with this group of young, capable, merry people finding success faster than they imagined. But the filmmakers skate that precipice between winning and failing, chaos and order, maturity and idealism, like this thing could careen off the rails or collapse under its own weight.

When Meow Wolf decide to embark on the ambitious “House of Eternal Return,” they hit up a famous patron of local arts for money – lots of money – to buy a large space. And the leap to that level feels as daunting and improbable as it must have felt to the collective.

The film livens up the steady succession of interviews with punchy visuals and dynamic sound design. The soundtrack is smack dead in hipsterville, with uptempo music from Le Tigre, Kevin Morby, TV on the Radio (“Wolf Like Me,” of course), Black Lips and Beach House.

It’s not all roses. A big point of contention is if their success will contaminate the purity of their original mission. One of the members reveals that they’ve been dismissed as doing entertainment or “big, fun art,” which sounds like a diss fail, but the subtext is that so many people – including kids – like their work so much that it can’t be serious art. And one more: for a group that claims “radical inclusion,” so far Meow Wolf seems to be mostly a white thing. No judgement.

But their earnestness is contagious, and the film feels like a rollercoaster in the same amusement park as that other doc about young artists subverting the art establishment, Exit Through the Gift Shop. The Meow Wolf brand is expanding, so the timing of this film is savvy, and the message is auspicious: a society of underdogs tenaciously chase their dreams, and then eclipse them.

MEOW WOLF: ORIGIN STORY ( 3 ) • Directed by Morgan Capps and Milann Spitzmiller • Not Rated • 88 min. • 7:30pm Thursday, Nov. 29, at Northridge Cinemas in Salinas and Century Cinemas Del Monte in Monterey • meowwolf.com/doc, fathomevents.com.