turkish skiffy and freeform jaaaazzz

Last night I went off to an empty shop to see an art thing, after Elly Snare's market-bombing earlier in the week started persuading people to turn up.

I've mentioned Art in Unusual Spaces before; last night was The Man Who Saved The World. This was very odd. TK Maxx in a shopping arcade has been empty for about six months or so, and completely stripped out. So AIUS took over the space for an evening, fitted it out with dodgy lighting, ten back-projection screens and projectors, and a jazz band, and looped a bunch of clips from Dünyayı Kurtaran Adam (a Turkish piece of skiffy that is widely regarded as one of the worst films ever made, ever). Seriously, read the wiki article.



Ok, it was very, very odd. And quite well attended, although that may have been the free wine (I was driving). And oddly enough, I sort of enjoyed it. The jazz band were very good, which helped. The filmclips themselves were hilariously poor, and probably only made the film slightly more comprehensible.







So; in a disused shop with little lighting, dodgy Turkish scifi, freeform jaaazzz and a bunch of drunk arty types. That was my evening. I'm not saying I didn't enjoy it, but it was a very odd way of spending an hour. There was probably some serious commentary on the state of society being played out there, or it was the background to a long-running story arc being performed in disused mercantile meccas, but you know what? I think I would be happy just knowing that it was the result of a bunch of drunken ramblings one evening in a shared house in Hyde Park. Someone said "dudes, you've gotta see this DVD I picked up, it's awful" and from that - no long-winded coffee-fuelled ranting by beatniks about Maoism and counterculturalism involved - someone thought that for kicks and giggles this would be a funny thing to do. I really do hope that this was the case; any other - more serious - reason could probably be subject to mockery.

If the space exists, use it. But trying to shoehorn worthy reasons into ridiculous projects is - to a certain extent - self delusional. I enjoyed last night, I really did, and I just want to keep it in mind as just being a daft project that made people laugh.