Electroclash and Bad Art: Is this, how do you say, Williamsburg?
Okay, so I know that Williamsburg is this season's chosen whipping boy, and I hate to be just another voice in the crowd of hipster haters, but a recent trip to the land of Hip forces me to chime in.
The occasion was one of the "FS Salon/Excellent Workshop" series at Deitch Project's North 1st street space. Here's what they were going for, from the Deitch Projects website:
"This Salon project was created to encourage participation and experimentation in the creative process that surrounds Fischerspooner, and has been a breeding ground of ideas and references for their new bodies of work in music and art."
That's right, Fischerspooner, they're still around.
So the particular night that I went, in early April, was one of the CD release parties for their new album. How does Williamsburg celebrate one of its biggest success stories? Well, the way they celebrate pretty much everything: free beer and cheap alcohol, smoking indoors, and a vast crowd of people who have no idea as to why they're there. It is well known that whenever you offer free booze to the Brooklyn public, a whisper campaign inevitably starts and all of a sudden you have 200 people ready with their one line memorized for this well rehearsed play. "Is this the line for beer?"
It doesn't matter whether it's a gallery opening, a film festival, a loft party thrown by bankers trying to prove that they're more than just number crunchers...if you offer it free, they wil come.
And come they did, in such large numbers that the bathroom line grew so long that some of hipsters chose to buck the system by peeing into their cups of beer. Yes, in plain sight of pretty much anyone. They're anti-establishment, if you haven't heard.
So now, the thing about Fischerspponer...are they performance art or are they music? If they started as performance art, but then got taken seriously as music, but then challenged it all by continuing the performance, and are now holding formal record release parties which seems like a token music industry effort, but call them salons which implies that it's art...just what is going on here? The layers of irony here are simply baffling...I haven't been this confused since I saw Donnie Darko for the first time.
Oh Williamsburg, at times like this I wish I could say "It's not you, it's me." But Williamsburg, I can not tell a lie.
The occasion was one of the "FS Salon/Excellent Workshop" series at Deitch Project's North 1st street space. Here's what they were going for, from the Deitch Projects website:
"This Salon project was created to encourage participation and experimentation in the creative process that surrounds Fischerspooner, and has been a breeding ground of ideas and references for their new bodies of work in music and art."
That's right, Fischerspooner, they're still around.
So the particular night that I went, in early April, was one of the CD release parties for their new album. How does Williamsburg celebrate one of its biggest success stories? Well, the way they celebrate pretty much everything: free beer and cheap alcohol, smoking indoors, and a vast crowd of people who have no idea as to why they're there. It is well known that whenever you offer free booze to the Brooklyn public, a whisper campaign inevitably starts and all of a sudden you have 200 people ready with their one line memorized for this well rehearsed play. "Is this the line for beer?"
It doesn't matter whether it's a gallery opening, a film festival, a loft party thrown by bankers trying to prove that they're more than just number crunchers...if you offer it free, they wil come.
And come they did, in such large numbers that the bathroom line grew so long that some of hipsters chose to buck the system by peeing into their cups of beer. Yes, in plain sight of pretty much anyone. They're anti-establishment, if you haven't heard.
So now, the thing about Fischerspponer...are they performance art or are they music? If they started as performance art, but then got taken seriously as music, but then challenged it all by continuing the performance, and are now holding formal record release parties which seems like a token music industry effort, but call them salons which implies that it's art...just what is going on here? The layers of irony here are simply baffling...I haven't been this confused since I saw Donnie Darko for the first time.
Oh Williamsburg, at times like this I wish I could say "It's not you, it's me." But Williamsburg, I can not tell a lie.
posted by Phil at
10:15 AM
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