FUTURISM AIN’T SHIT TO ME
I spent the weekend volunteering for the New Forms Festival’s LOW ART performances at the Open Studios gallery. Basically it was electro sounds accompanied by video art projected onto huge screens. In other words, it was a high-concept dance party.
I got to Open Studios at 7:00pm on Friday to help set up the venue. I was scheduled to to tech support, but the great thing about working with the tribes is they do all their own tech. Good thing too, because they generally have the most idiosyncratic, frankenstein setups you can imagine.
I ended up setting up the bar and bartending for a little while. After that I was free to enjoy the party, which was phenomenal. The performances were awesome, the beer was free, and the dope was plentiful. The highlight of the Friday show was definitely Gold Chains and Sue Cie, a duo from San Francisco. They played a super high-energy set of strange, new-waveish hiphop. Sort of a combination of Goldfrapp and Atari Teenage Riot.
Saturday night was even bigger and better, with an absolutely mindblowing performance by the ADHD-afflicted Pittsburgh cut-up artist, Girl Talk. This show cannot be described adequately in words. His show was like freebasing the pure white essence of the most rocking parties of the last decade. It was the audio equivalent of doing speedballs with David Lee Roth and Puff Daddy, and then trashing a hotel room while making highly inappropriate sexual advances on the staff. His cover of Scentless Apprentice was very possibly the highlight of my life. A++++++ WOULD SEE AGAIN
Sunday afternoon was the downtempo/ambient performance was also good, in an incense-and-candles way. Everybody was very relaxed, except for the one guy who was tripping hard on acid, pacing around in this absurd Hunter S. Thompson gait, occasionally exploding into fits of high-tension giggling. It was very distracting. Handle your hallucinogens, people.