Just Another 3704558 [asshole]
MetroColorCollision's project for the Conflux Festival
The phone booth was once an imperative fixture in the modern city where one could communicate in private for a few cents. These large and unequivocally recognizable structures were once at almost every corner. Now, they are proxy garbage cans, walls for graffiti, small alcoves to light anything you can smoke or even semi-private dens of ill repute. The phone booth has been uprooted, re-configured, disqualified, overlooked and even eliminated. This once important tool for rapidly and effectively conveying information – whether urgent or whimsical – is now devoid of utility or necessity. We wanted to reinstate the important of the phone booth as a chamber of communication linking one person to another in one, private enclosed space through a different use. For today’s cell phone/ pda/ blackberry enabled world, we propose re-contextualizing the phone booth as a place of different communication: instead of directly passing information through a handset and a wire, our phone booths relay creative information to the observer.
In
other words, we asked artists to create small, ephemeral projects for a
phone booth of their choice. We then created a map to direct people to
each phone booth, thereby not only reminding people that they do, in
fact, still exist but creating a proposed path to find them along one’s
usual route. This special map outlines the art and the phone booth
itself, thus allowing the visitor to stop and notice the elements of
change and variety in a visual field so visited and common that they
would otherwise be overlooked. Suddenly, we redefine the aging relic
that the phone booth has recently become. We reinstate it with
importance as a place of convergence, communication and equality, with
one small difference: no change is needed.
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Metro Color Collision and Lumi Tan of the Zach Feuer Gallery present LET'S BOLT - a group art show.
How sweet was the first all ages show you went to? You saw the cool older kids, and most importantly, they saw that you too were into awesome bands. High school sucked, sure, but at least you were into the coolest music and your style reflected how alienated and ‘deep’ you really were. Quoting Morrissey for your school papers and recounting Ian Curtis’ tragic fate to your apathetic classmates… Music enabled you to prove to everyone else who you were and what social category you belonged to; it dictated personal style, the only thing you have going as a teenager. The worst was when you missed on out on what was sure to be the best show ever because your parents were being too uptight or you were just too young. Let's Bolt – the legendary party that Angela, Rayanne and Rickie were denied entrance to – sums up a paramount experience in growing up, listening to music and discovering subculture through its tacit rules.
This exhibition is about our formative years and how our musical upbringing taught us about love, devotion, rejection and self-discovery. The memory of your first show is tantamount to your first sexual experience, a scary and amazing time of pursuit and attainment. For this exhibition, we asked every artist to design a flyer for the ultimate concert they never went to but so passionately wish they did. Forced to scan their memory of good times, regretted moments and immature decisions, they came up with a visual archive of some really fun nights they wish they didn’t miss. Let’s Bolt is about music and the bands we love; it is also a testament to past decades that spawned life changing moments. If we put every show we ever missed together for one night, we are guaranteed another fucking great time!
Reception: Saturday, August 11th, 6-8pm art preview, 8-12am dance party
On View: August 13 – August 31
Hours: Mon. – Fri. 4pm – 9:30pm