Collective Artist's DIY Soapbox 25.11.10

The soap box was an interesting event run by the collective. They invited 7 artist run initiatives to talk about their work and what they hoped to achieve with each of their organisations some were pretty samey and some were very enguaging and creative. First up line magazine, produced by alumini and current students from ECA. The general idea seemed to be to create a magazine that was not just a editorial or a collection of reviews but to create an art work in itself. They seem to have Line into some quite well established institutiobs across scotland and the north of England, however, they seemed to be still quite young in their development and progress. Each batch of magazines was in the hundreds and by any stretch didnt seem to be a large successful project at the moment. It could go horribly wrong or very well in my opinion, there is no mid ground in these sort of pulications. They could be one to watch in the future.

Next up was Hidden door, presented by David Martin which I bang on about far too much to talk about again.

Contemporary art exchange was a curator run initiative that was founded in melbourne by Kate Martin, the idea was to invite artists from all over the world to talk about their work and get advise. A good idea in theory, yet again a relitively young organisation. 85A Collective was up next and they had the most passion and exciting soap box, they work with films and try to make us think differently about how we see the moving image. They take the 3d experience to a whole new level by recreating film sets playing on all the senses, for instance they recreated the interior of a submarine, dressed up as the crew and played the film, the experience was so intense one girl actually passed out. There child like enthusiasm was quite captivating, and are one to deffinately watch out for in the future. David Dale Gallery and Jaaliceklarr were not really that exhilerating demonstrations and I spent most of the time trying to stop my stomach groaning. Last up was the Finn Collective, the group that were responsible for bringing abandoned industrial bulidings in Glasgow (like the glue factory) to prominance. They brought along some interesting artifacts from their various projects in these buildings, most notably a dead cat. It was interesting to see how they went about getting hold of the various buildings and the problems they encountered.