#alaska projects

[blwm]

Now on show at Alaska Projects as part of Samuel Hodges' downstairs gallery 👏👏👏

[fjmolteni]

[artcritickid]

Healthy Debate

For The Love Of God

Is Contemporary Art a Joke?

Alaska Projects

I've arrived just on time to an art event at an art gallery set in a car park in Kings Cross. Music is pumping, people chatting, milk crates turned into seating. I feel like I'm at a party.

Strangely enough its not an unfamiliar feeling when it comes to attending art events,  depending on the event the crowd and the mood varies and yet somehow I find myself feeling quite the outsider, occasionally seeing a vaguely familiar face here or there, but not anyone I really know in any depth.

This crowd seems to be a mix of those  who are young and funky and those who are much older and much funkier than I am.

I am the young introvert quietly typing away on my notebook and secretly enjoying the 90's pop, feeling like an intruder, trying to discern whether or not this is the crowd I belong in or want to belong to. And fighting the urge to get up and "bust a move" and imagining that I am not the only one.

Feeling reassured that I am enjoying the "right" music.

Do I want to belong in any crowd? Do the people here feel as out of sorts as I do? Are they "in".

Any moment now this talk on contemporary art is going to turn into a disco...

Not sure when the actual talking will begin.

Is contemporary art nothing more than a popularity contest of sorts?

By the time the talking begins my arse is begining to pay the price of my choice in seating.

Damn milk crates!

The speakers are charismatic, funny, brilliant.

The debate is hilarious! Timed and structured.

The speakers support their arguments with relevant examples of art and artists and shred the opposition.

The "clap-o-metre" decides the winner. Contemporary Art Is Not A Joke.

Now for the immediate exit to avoid social awkwardness.

[artcard-blog]

It doesn't get much more underground than this.

Alaska Projects are at it again with SEX TAPE - The Musical.

12:00pm August 21 - 12:00pm August 22 Situated on ground level, Kings Cross car park (Level 5) Sex Tape - The Musical is a fiery new twenty-four hour drama about powerful union, devastating betrayal and the terrible truth about the quality of it's subjects. Jim Shirlaw plays Character 1, 3 and their mutual and ultimately ill-fated friend Character 2, collectively composing a wall of opinionated savagery weaved into the sonic wail of self-made synthesizers and modified Fender Telecasters. Truths intimate and personal as well as grandiose and universal will be leaked hour after hour with no sympathy to the art in question..

Alaska Projects

Kings Cross Car Park, Level 5 (ground floor, on the right)

[ohbethany-blog-blog]

So the words "that intimate moment of sharing music" gives me the cold chills of being awkward about actually engaging in/with things via participation rather than observation (and then judgement) and furthermore most kinds of exchange about music are part of the recipe for my personal eyerolling hell, but, you guys like music, right? And it actually is really good and important for people to participate in things, so long as they are not people with my creepy experiential intimacy parameters.