A room full of ghosts

Becoming the bonds that tie us together

Absent space filling the air between

An empty building

Cascading sound

Collapsing debris

Screeching

Seeking more

Than an overcrowded space

Full of no one you want to talk to

An ache

Rattling off

A cigarette

From an empty pack

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Collapse the distinction between life and art. Or, at least that’s the injunction. Becoming part of the process through which other artists emerge. An ephemeral economy post-scarcity. On the rooftop, my eyes are fireflies blinking in a bulbous toad’s chin. The car ignition ignites past the melted skin steering wheel. A car crash in the swampy muck where rabbits ripple through water becoming mud. Rubber wrapped around the trees, their roots nourished by scratches, whirls, and creaks. Each noise enfolding an ecosystem, nutrient rich but resource poor. “You can’t stay, a window is not a door, a roof is not a mattress swaddled in plastic sheets, concrete cracks under the weight of our dreams,” they yelled, caught in the shattered glass of a spidering life. Or is it the sublime difference of a broken mirror, where every fracture betrays a new face.

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I stand in the crowd inhaling the sawdust kicked up from a buzz saw undoing the work of a moment before. An instant and an expanse explore in the sound of a screw breaking in half.

Performances are catalogs of anticipation. They index the organizers and the artists’ hopes of sharing art, of cultivating collective experience, of making sense of a life lived among others in a haphazard, unplanned way. They pulsate with the spectators’ racing hearts, the immediacy of a fragile connection between performer and audience, held together by attention and feeling.

Watching $5000 perform, I feel the many folds of performance. The work involved in building a space for others to share their art lingers in each performance. A stage, a bench, a DJ booth, a PA, a toilet—every object requires design, maintenance, and care. An ensemble of bodies extends from the people to the people absent connected by the objects that make a place livable. This is where the singular artist, the noble individualist, or the self-centered autor collapses in on itself. Lacking the supports of those who hold together the world, no one person can exist.

As the contact mic amplifies the drill, as the pieces of wood clench closer in closer, locked in a lovers’ embrace, the drill haunts this moment of connection. The work of undoing, the falling away from each other after the music stops, the post-coital separation where ecstasy is rebalanced by a moment to oneself—all part of the process of making art. When spaces are building not through capital or contract, when maintenance isn’t the injunction of the boss but the call to lend a hand, the ephemeral rains. The momentary ability to be together runs through our hair.

Snap. Metal breaks apart. Two pieces of wood separated. Everyone yells, “One More Song.” But instead things go in a different direction.

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I’m huddled on a crowded bench in the smoking room. Cigarettes bounce between hands. Rations distributed. People group with those they know, but the beauty of the space was that any gathering gave way to a larger conversation. Every direction points to another path, and, in a moment like this, all the wanderers stumble at the same rhythm.

I’d spent many nights fumbling between schemes and reflections in this room. How do you bring people together? A question that traces the tangent line between the personal and the collection. Emotions give way to relationships, the pull towards others folding back into community. Everyone moving together through the inhale/exhale of a cigarette. Everyone writhing to the pulse of a dance beat.

There was a beauty to the two spaces being so close. Sweat drips down the nose, taste the intense respite of clean air slinking in through the window. Energy moves back and forth, exciting thoughts and desires. My thinking and chatting would race between the two spaces. As if a performer lit a fire of thoughts, as if thoughts called me to feel a performance differently.

So often, we’re called to have fun, but not to hang. To enjoy ourselves but absent the depth of sinking into a splitting couch.

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“always coming into being, noise is necessarily immanent; intrinsic or inherent, to its instantiations in assemblages of machines, air, body, or building, it provides a way of exploring sound as such” ~ marina peterson

Moving through sound, shifting genre and style, the curation of the last night of chaos computer felt like a life work. to bring together artists, to know how to attract people welcoming of experimentation, and to have it all be so fun is not (only) a work of curation. The idea of curation can reduce what conscientious organizers accomplish when creating a bill. Curation assumes taste, concept, or vision to be the overriding concern when presenting art. In its worst iterations, curation is a form of gatekeeping wherein the curator is presumed to have preordained knowledge concerning what “good” art is.

Organization as life work emphasizes the importance of relationship building. People who organize spaces like cc commit themselves to creative worlds. An artist is someone’s friend. Everyone is entangled in each other’s visions. Values are shared and debated. The life work of organizing is the extension of conversation, gathering, and fun across time. It crisscrosses every empty show, financial ruinous tour, rager, artistic triumph, moment of self-doubt, and expression of self. Art as life work is the mosaic of relationships between artist, organizers, and audiences. What we witnessed at the final night of cc wasn’t (just) good curation; it was people sharing their lives.

A good diy venue embodies artwork as life work. It is a place where the organizers’ life works breathe and intermingling with others. To share one’s life work is to inspire others to live differently, to undertake the task of figuring life as a creative endeavor. Artists and organizers bloom in these spaces not only because they offer accessible spaces for experimentation, but also because they guide fledging creatives in finding their own voices. They offer examples of myriad of paths to take. They encourage people to take the risk of following artistic passion.

diy venues give gifts. the recipients must figure out what to do with them. like a thoughtful gift, the meaning of this gesture takes time to be understood. it lingers, inciting a generous spirit.

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