An Evening Hosted By Elaine Kordys & Bob Levene
at Arnolfini, Bristol
08 / 07 / 07

‘Bring a record, tape or CD. It can be anything… music, sound, spoken word …something you have seen live or something you would love to see. Talk about it, perform it, or have it performed for you. How would you evoke those lost live moments? Alternatively, you can come and simply listen over a glass of wine and some hula hoops. The evening is dedicated to all things live and lost’. Arnolfini

Ah, nibbles. Where would the art event be without free nibbles? The lure of the maize-based snack, the siren call of the twiglet. I’m sure you could do a rigorous (and vaguely scientific) survey of gallery-goers’ fluctuating reactions to art based upon whether you served up marinated olives, hula hoops or those weird sweet chilli shapes you can sometimes pick up at M&S. I mean, myself, I know I’m a whore for anything carbohydrate-based; but even if it was the opening of seventeen great lost works by Picasso I’d probably slouch off mumbling grumpily if you only handed me a breadstick.

Of course, there’s also the alcohol; the free booze that pumps at the schmoozing gland, allowing you to unashamedly badger Sir Nicholas Serota about whatever it is he’s currently not doing for the art world. But truth be told, more often that not I associate the free glass of plonk with standing stock still in some gallery or what have you, listening to some director or other waffle orn and orn about “investing” in this and the “value” of that, clutching the stem of the wine glass with ever-tightening fingers and wondering when the hell I can get back to the serious business of ploughing through the snacks.

The Darkside is a semi-social, semi-curated event hosted by Theatre Bristol, Arnolfini and the Spaghetti Club (the latter an itinerant, eclectic bunch of live artists specialising in “anything goes” events of this kind.) A diverse crowd of artists and art-interested types mills about a completely black studio studded with comfy sofas, table lamps and – yes! – a variety of nibbles. The open nature of the evening extends to most people not really knowing what is due to happen; but naturally the promise of some nice olives and maybe even a wee cake draws them in, of course it does.

As it turns out, the potentially peripheral work, ‘Recorded Live’, proves a major distraction from the general banter, socialising, and eating of crisps; a small sound studio is assembled in an adjoining room and attendees are invited to introduce the playback of tracks that mean something personal to them, be it a song, a field recording, a random noise, anything that speaks of a moment past, otherwise irretrievable. This is then fed to a PA in the main room and as the voices come and go, people stop yakking or munching on the macadamia nuts, keen to hear the next story. Sometimes funny, sometimes poetic, maybe an introduction to someone’s pet project or maybe just a feeling, these tales are sparked by recordings of monastery bells, deathpunk bands, traffic noise, an open-air samba band rehearsal, the Ramones and U2. Each proves a talking point and as a result I end up chatting to people about campanology, microphones, samba, Ron Athey, translations of Dante’s Inferno and the links between live art and stand-up comedy, all the while munching on these sort of cheese stick things that taste worryingly as if they’ve been double deep-fried in copious amounts of vegetable oil and will probably make my heart stop beating in approximately three day’s time.

Yeah, you can find out a lot about people from their choice of nibbles. Are you a bombay mix or an assorted salted nuts? I can tell you from first-hand experience that Alan Yentob, for instance, likes a handful of prawn cocktail Skips. No joke. In the play ‘Krapp’s Last Tape’, Samuel Beckett has his protagonist listening to the musings of his lost youth on a collection of reel-to-reel spools whilst munching on bananas: just bananas, you’ll note, not garnishing the mood with kettle chips or scampi flavoured fries or some shit like that.

There’s the element of the obsessive in those routines of Krapp’s, carefully numbering tapes, everything annotated and in its correct drawer, even logging the amount of fruit consumed daily. But in contrast what we have at Recorded Live is scattershot extracts from the ill-kept personal archives of random folk, lifted from unalphabeticised CD collections, from badly recorded tapes gathering dust in the attic; one of the offerings is a gritty little impromptu mp3 captured on a mobile phone. The low background hum of nostalgia is present throughout, like the hiss on a cassette. When the last track has been played, the wine drunk and only a few scattered little poppadom things left on the table, I’m surprised to find that it’s still light outside.

Written by Tim Atack

The Darkside is a series of regular social events, hosted in Arnolfini’s Dark Studio by different artists in collaboration with Associate Artists ‘The Spaghetti Club’. It’s a chance to meet, talk and be part of a number of special events which will include The Performance Re-Enactment Society, The Anthony Roberts All-Stars and the z-lab disco hour. For more information about the Darkside project go to Financially supported by Arts Council England. In partnership with Arnolfini. www.darksidelive.co.uk

Elaine Kordys is an artist who makes installation and performance, she lives and works in Glasgow and is one of The Spaghetti Club.

Bob Levene is an artist and programmer, she lives and works in Hull.www.boblevene.co.uk or www.resoundprojects.org