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Overview
We're living on borrowed time. If it's not the climate that wipes humans out, it'll be our over-inflated desire for financial growth. Given that almost every nation in the world runs on a bloated economy of debt and speculative trading — the prayers of a banker religion — imagine the horror when it all falls apart. How is life, both the barest form of it, not to mention the healthy quality of it, able to flourish in the dusty aftermath?
This is the question asked by Perth's tactical media art renegades pvi collective in their new work, blackmarket, presented by Performance Space, which premieres in May at Alaska Projects. Audiences are invited to a future version of Kings Cross, a postcode scorched by riots and the eating of the rich, where a grassroots, underground economy has sprung up based on ancient traditions of barter and gifts. It seems a bleak setting, but there is scope for great humanity in this raw marketplace.
Playing the role of post-apocalyptic survivors, known as “hustlers”, audiences arrive at the blackmarket with objects to trade in order to flourish. It may not require dollars, but some sense will help hustlers go far, so we spoke with pvi collective's Kelli McCluskey for her advice on how to thrive in a world after the banks come crashing down.
BE OPEN TO LEARNING NEW SKILLS
pvi collective is working with local Sydney artists who will take on the role of “traders” in blackmarket. Each trader has trained in specific services that they will teach you if you trade an object with them. These services range from useful urban scouting skills to holding your own in a riot and spiritual acts of compassion.
“We let our traders loose in the city for a day and they had to survive without money,” recalls McCluskey. “We set them challenges — you need to be able to make a coffee, or find a shower, and all they had were these services that they'd been workshopping with us. And they came back after six hours on the street and you'd be surprised how it shifts everyone's thinking — 'I've gone out without my wallet and I've been fed, had a shower, I've experienced generosity from strangers, I've had companionship, I've had hugs from people'. It becomes this addictive thing.”
BE PREPARED TO GIVE EVERYTHING AWAY
As a hustler, you'll bring five objects that might be of value in the blackmarket economy. McCluskey encourages hustlers to “let go of the things they've placed a certain value on, and replace them with an experience or some knowledge that may help in this doomsday scenario.”
While hustlers can trade any object, a philosophical reward comes if you push yourself to give away objects that you consider highly valuable. “Are we physically able to let go of the things that we consider important in our lives?” McCluskey asks. Doing so may lead to a powerful reassessment of your values, with revelations such as: “I have companionship in my life, and if that were to be lost, it would be more significant than if I lost my jewellery, or a pair of shoes.”
“At the end an audience member may come back absolutely empty-handed, but what they do have is this knowledge, these experiences, that will stay with them,” says McCluskey.
BE READY TO TEACH OTHERS
Winning and losing are common when playing games or trading, but such capitalist ideas fade away in blackmarket. “I think that people are naturally competitive,” says McCluskey, “but here there is this level playing field where you are in control. It's completely up to you what you choose to do, what services you do, what trades you choose, so it really is your own adventure.”
While not necessarily competing with other hustlers, you might “level up” during the course of the game. “There is this weird twist in the work where you've been trading and giving away your stuff, and then there is this internal calibration inside the app, which looks at all the choices you've made and assigns you a service [to teach] — okay, now you are a trader, who's going to want your services?”
So, there may not be one winner, but resourceful hustlers could start teaching other hustlers and take over from the traders.
BE ACCEPTING OF FAILURE AS A RESULT OF EXPERIMENTATION
This is blackmarket's first public performance. “It's on the cusp of being part social experiment, part performance work, so we don't know how audience members are going to behave,” admits McCluskey. With the open-ended, experimental and audience-driven nature of blackmarket, the traders face the possibility of the game experience going off-road.
This will not stop the show, however. Even if hustlers ignored the services offered by traders and directly exchanged goods with one another — swapping clothes for shoes, electronics for artwork, for example — it's an equally fascinating prospect for McCluskey and her team, as it “says something about who we are”.
WELCOME A POSSIBLY UNCERTAIN FUTURE
While blackmarket occurs in a fantasy world of hustlers and traders, you'd do well to hold onto some of those survival skills picked up during the game.
“I really do feel like there is something brewing,” warns McCluskey, “we've seen the effect austerity measures have had in Europe, we've seen financial crisis in America, in Greece, we've seen violent uprisings. As for Australia, it's not a question of if, it totally is when – maybe not in our lifetime, but it's there hovering over our heads.”
Though sobering to know that a violent social collapse is on its way in the future, hustlers can still take hope from this. “Humans have a desire to want to see things fall apart,” says McCluskey, “even though it's terrifying, it's also kind of liberating. blackmarket is about learning to let go of this current system and see the potential of something else emerge.”
Blackmarket is on from May 27 to June 6 at Alaska Projects, Kings Cross. Presented by Performance Space.