PARTAY!! Arts B-day

PARTAY!!!
Arts B-day on Södra Teatern in Stockholm
Notes for music - 
in-brackets-text is from Södra Teaterns website.... 

Byetone

From Södra teaterns webpage (where the English version prooved to be somewhat incomplete)
"den tyska electronica-stjärnan Olaf Bender som är en av grundarna till en av 00-talets mest inflytelserika etiketter inom den elektroniska musiken – Raster-Noton. Byetone live är en hypnotisk upplevelse där musiken i första hand ska trigga lusten att dansa. Det visuella är en viktig del av framträdandet och avsett att via näthinnan fördjupa den fysiska upplevelsen med rytmiska impulser av ljus och mörker."
I must say though that its awkward to listen to a hypnotic experience where the music in the first place is meant to make people want to dance (and that I think succeeded) in a room  where everybody is sitting. It feels like the sitting gesture somehow frames this as "art" rather than "music" or "performance" and it gave me the feeling that dancing or treating this as awesome music would come across as ...simpleminded. The containment - the being above the physical body and existing purely in the mind? - becomes an indicator of understanding this hypnotic experience intellectually, not physically.

Tentakel 
"är kosmisk elektronisk krautdisco med ambienta element. Tentakel utgår från ett trumset och lägger sedan till samplers, loop-pedaler och synthar. Pontus Torstensson spelar till vardags trummor i Echodeck, Uran, Sork och Surreal Lovers."

I missed crazy many performances that I would have wanted to see - somewhere between negotiating the whole thing as a party, multiple spaces and simultaneous performances as well as the obvious  distractions of beer drinking and talking to friends instead of plotting and planning in regards to the programming. Well, well. In the end I cant have it all. 

this picture has nothing to do with the Tentakel himself, BUT he had an orange t-shirt and there were green lights

Stockholm, 
the day after....
13-01-13




 

Rikke Benborg (DK) - Opening Candyland 7/9

Electric Palace
Rikke Benborg (DK) - Opening Candyland 7/9
http://www.rikkebenborg.dk/

This on the other hand is an example how party and exhibition can function together, mutually supporting. Well. 

A tinge of alcohol - no - a tinge of intoxication - can deepen the effect of good art? When in the right setting?

The exhibition space walls (floor is dark) are covered in ..black glittery wallpaper? Like rough sandpaper but so glittery (maybe it is sandpaper). Amazing. If anything I would be disturbed by how amazed I am by the wallpaper alone...Cut out screens (very nicely installed room in a room with all round projections from the backside) flatscreens and other. Beautiful videos in black and white, animation, mixed poetry. I guess I fall for the semifairytalish ( here mixed pantomime) darkness, sadness. Like a sad clownsface. The ego, the other, the I falling to pieces, cutouts and puppetmasters becoming puppets white strings against black background. 

Very nice.

Stockholm
12-09-08

NIGHT TIME - Party/Exhibition at Platform Sthlm, Sep 1st‏

The flyer/invitation says:

EVENING STANDARD SERIES

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