I went to a multi-disciplinary experimental performance art thing last night with two relatively new friends of mine (though I suppose all my friends here are relatively new). I've had good luck so far with things I've gone to here being pretty good and so I forgot that "experimental" can really just mean "trying things out" and that "trying things out" can really just mean "throwing shit at a wall and seeing if it sticks" and, well, that's what I felt it was last night.
There were five pieces of this show last night. The first was a live music thing I couldn't tell you the genre of, then two films, then an ambient music and live painting thing, then an electronic-ish music thing with poetry readings, then an improvisational clarinet piece.
The first piece made me think "just because you're weird and European doesn't make you Björk." Two people on stage, black and white video being projected onto them, kind of ambient-ish music and singing in a language I didn't recognize. Definitely not exciting enough to be Björk.
The second piece (first film) wasn't bad, but I was a bit confused and it felt kind of unoriginal. Two beautiful, toned, naked women being weird on a stage while they, dressed in a prudish manner, watched themselves on the stage. At one point they became aware of the cameraperson and went crazy.
The third piece (second film) was also not bad but it wasn't something I would say took much artistic talent or thought. It was just a montage of old home videos of a family from the 1950s with ambient music playing in the background. We kept waiting for something to happen.
The fourth piece was a woman making ambient music while also doing a live painting, which seems like it could be interesting but wasn't. Neither the music nor the painting was very good and because she was going so slowly, it wasn't even impressive that she was doing both at once. The painting was one of those fluid paintings where they just pour paint onto the canvas and let it dribble around.
The fifth piece was recordings of poetry readings which the guy then performed music with/over. He seems like he'd be a talented musician in the regular way (his trumpet playing was very good, I could imagine him in a big band) but it felt like midlife crisis art. The sound didn't match the poems well and was dissonant, not in a particularly interesting way.
The sixth piece was another sort of ambient music piece, an improvised clarinet piece the guy played and put through a looper and other things (I don't know much about these sorts of things, but he was using some sort of electronics). I thought this was actually the best piece of the night but, unfortunately, I was so tired by then and kind of ready to go home and sort of started dozing off during it.
All this is not to say I didn't enjoy myself because I did. I thoroughly enjoyed myself. My friends and I critiqued each piece thoughtfully but, you know, critically. I'd more often like to sit with friends and pick things apart like we did last night. It was lovely! And it made me think a lot about what I think makes art "good" and "worthwhile" and I'll surely write about that at some point in the future. I'll also write about all the ideas we came up with for performance art pieces.
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