Last Thursday, August 6th, a friend pulled me out to Little Mountain Studios to show me a side of Vancouver that I havn't had much experience with - the expermental art world. Beyond attending the Cheaper Show last year the more formal presentation of art has a terribly tendency to scare me away. I'm not sure whether it is the clean white walls or the airyness that comes with walking into a room with only one other person there (usually situated behind a destressed desk and wearing some carefully thought out array of vintage clothing), art can be a little overwhelming for the non-native. It turns out though that a breed of kids in this city have been involved in a work of love and self expression that doesn't have the pretentious bells attached.

Off Main and 26th, Little Mountain Studios is a relativly non-descript bulding that is pleasntly close to a convienance market. Twizzlers and Orange Crush are close at hand, not to mention thoes giant cans of Arizona Iced Tea that run you 99c and will case several trips to the washroom in one night. Having been there once before for a concert I knew that relativly not matter what the show would bring, I would leave a happy girl, exhausted and ready for bed.

The first room of the Studio is an art space rather like no other. I'm not sure how long it is running but on Thursday there was a silent auction running for a fundraiser for prostate cancer with a bicycle theme. It's scuffed floors and home-caught in the middle of remodeling-feel make you automatically comfortable. The fact that the bathroom door doesn't have a door handle, doesn't lock, isn't lighted, has minimal toilet paper all add to the ambiance that forces hillarious friendly moments with strangers.

Once we passed through the main gallery space the multi-use space was filled with chairs and a precariously teetery old movie projector that brought me back to my elementary school days. After about 20 minutes of chatting with friends and admitting the fact that I was so niave about experimental art that I wasn't sure if the ambient music playing in the background was part of the show, a boy took to the front of the room with his card table, record player, mixing board and reverb peddels to begin the show. Using the Eagles Hotel California, or rather the sound of the record needle scratching against that, Empress looped and tweaked the sounds into a drone noise that was simultaniously confusing and beautiful. I have honestly never heard anything like it.

Having been denied entrance at the boarder, the film was introduced to us over speaker phone co-curator Benjamin Schultz-Figueroa (Co-curator Brel Frobe was denied as well but didn't take part in the call). Reading to us a little off the program we knew that we would be in for some fun. "The Speculative Frontier is a distinction between the known and the unknonw. It can exist as a wall, seemingly inpenetrable, as a veil which can be lfited, as a problem, waiting to be solve,d or as the threshold to a path, which, once discovered, demands to be followed. We find this frontier though different access points".

I won't go into great detail in lieu of spoiling the fun for the few who may read this and then want to watch the show, but highlights include; watching a man jackoff against a fence in public (using two fingers and his thumb - later soluting the cameraman with the same fingers), a blind woman staring a moving object, a cloud bicycle and an Apollo 8 Radio Address that garnered a few scoffs from the audience at the first mention of "God" from the austronaut.

All in all the night was a success. I heard and saw some stuff that was unlike much of anything that I had experienced before.


Lessons learned;
1. Art is subjective.
2. Art nerds are of a different breed.
3. Little Mountain Studios has my heart.



http://www.littlemountainstudios.ca/