Carlie Norma Germs
Boorloo (Perth), Western Australia.
10/04/2022_Art_Thoughts
seeing yourself seeing yourself seeing yourself seeing yourself seeing yourself seeing yourself seeing yourself seeing yourself seeing yourself seeing yourself
Fading images of a warehouse soaked in revenant serotonin
The overwhelming sensory experience of the commercial unit we sometimes spend Saturday nights in is an incremental buildup of sound, sight and atmosphere. A culture re-performed, a space made for optimistic self - expression, shielded from the gaze of the status quo, inherited from 1970’s Detroit. Black pioneer artists, manipulating and stretching technology, a harmony between human and machine, marked as intergalactic wizardry.
There is a gradual increase in heat and humidity as bodies arrive around me, the beginnings of an exponential curve growing with rhythmic energy as people imbibe and acclimate to the audio. We move in the space, asses the emergent vibes and exchange greetings with familiar strangers and strange familiars. During the early energetic hours the space doesn’t feel truly full, bodies are ferrous fluid, cutting shapes and making movements, filling and reforming the negative space. Movement and energy levels constantly rotate as the DJ strives to stay ahead of the dancers, selecting tracks responsive to their movements. Pacing the dancers riotous flow, circulating between the haze of the dance-floor and the cigarette pocked couches in the car park.
Half aware hands dangle lit cigs, orange coals peaking out, burning meandering lines through my vision and the smokey soupy crowd. At some point in the evening - depending on the dose, my style ratio between practicality and cool, the skill and will of the DJ line up, and the general availability of stimulants - the dance-floor becomes a balance of euphoria and endurance.
From prolonged exposure to the machine-song emerges a flow state. A unified experience of clearheaded-thoughtlessness, mind and body working in unison with the dance-floor around me, flexing and contracting, cutting shapes with the dancers around me. The voyager sound system displaces me, entangling me in the computers erratic pulse, I am the terminal in the machines rhythmic circuit electrons assimilating my stream of consciousness. Sensation saturates, buffer overflowing, all possibility of thought lost, adrift and unconcerned with the meta of it all.
After eons of oonce lost in the voyagers transmission, the sting of the acrid air in my eyes sends me seeking the relief and relative freshness of the cloudy car park couches, joining the other waning revellers, their bodies paused as their mouths pour gluggy tangential tendrils while dew forms on their oversized outerwear.
In the pleasant clarity of mind that follows the dance-floor ritual it’s comfortable to listen, steeping in the conversations of others, not getting deeply involved in the kaleidoscope of solutions to a question nobody can remember asking.
Of course from time to time I get swept up into telling my own story.
Slowly the overwhelming sensory experience fades, the incremental buildup of sound, sight and atmosphere clears as you float out to the road. The interminable pulse fades as the uber turns onto Alexander drive, and Malaga fades into the sunrise.
It's a privilege to visit this mystical space inside the commercial unit. My soul waits for a time thats immune to the pandemic, when we can gather safely again.
