The Platform Stockholm "Evening Standard Series" promotes the party as a form of social engagement analogous to the exhibition. These events are successful as parties if they are successful as exhibitions, and vice versa. Events in the series interrogate the social, they are focused on what happens between people. The artwork is inseparable from the event, and the event is inseparable from the people attending it.
Unfortunately it doesn't work. I came at 22 pm (Would all have been dfferent if I was there earlier?) and I couldn't see the art. When the room is dark, a bright light by the bar, when people are moving about in the shadows with glasses in their hands and the music is loud enough to dance, the art turns into peripheral decoration.
Is this something I need to defend? I could say that some art fits better in party contexts than other, for example, certain types of spectacular noisy performance. One of those would have made this event more lively, for sure. But such a statement refers to something so obvious that I cant help wondering if that is really something that needs arguing. So then, was it the point that the art should be pushed into the background? Or did they just fuck up? Or do the just want to throw a party and pretend its about art? Did they feel it was about the art?
I read on FB that some people thought this an awesome party. Good for them.
I hated it, I was half bored to death (like the last time I went to a party there), but not only do I feel like it was a waste of time and expectation, but, it was like the opposite of a great party. It left behind a feeling of great emptyness. Like, loss. Like a personal insult.
Like, a little piece of me has been replaced with something banal and generic.
It does sound very melodramatic, its just a party after all (not an exhibition). Its just so strange to walk out of the party and see how much people wait to get in (Why?). Again, the Emperor's New Clothes, my loss is not one of a good party, but the loss of hope that I can ever understand the motivations/reality of others... hows that for dramatic....
And I am really sorry to not have seen Tamara Hendersons work. I hope I will get a chance another time.
Stockholm
12-09-04
