>> audience watching No Chick is an Island by Emily Eddy 2013 at Walnut Place Laundromat

 

Byproduct: The Laundromat, is a project organized by Sean Starowitz, which will cultivate a deeper understanding of socially-engaged art practice in Kansas City. Through small-scale tutorials (classes), invited conversations, and site-specific projects (during which program attendees actually do their laundry), Byproduct will connect audiences that are interested in art that involves the community in unexpected ways: art goers, supporters, artists, and the immediate community.  The majority of programming will take place at Walnut Place Laundromat, an unusual venue for such an event, but one that Starowitz hopes will challenge the notion of traditional art spaces.

Eric Fleischauer: Relax + Watch 
Walnut Place Laundromat, Kansas City, MO 
Friday, April 26th at 7:00 pm

 

Relax + Watch is a curatorial response to the laundromat environment, celebrating the atmosphere and unique viewing environment that emerges in this warm, fragrant, and dynamic space.

Soap operas and their melodrama, news anchors and their newsflashes, infomercials and their products, all playing on those always-on televisions with their off-color images and broadcast glitches.  These familiar characteristics are taken as the inspiration for a site-specific program of videos by artists who embrace, critique, and analyze this set of themes in various ways.

At the laundromat an ad hoc congregation engages in a particular mode of viewing, one that is more working than watching.  Lacking autonomy, this captive audience is subject to the prescribed stream of banal tv programming piped in to occupy  their splintered attentions. As the launderers wait, they share a durational experience, watching moving pictures in a communal space.  It is here that the laundromat becomes a sort of impromptu-cinema.

Prima facia this comparison might seem askew because many of the cinema’s distinguishing features are inverted:  dark––bright; big screen––small screen; escapism––drudgery.  However, one of the cinema’s most organic elements, the communal viewing environment, is not only still in tact but is expanded in nature.

-Eric Fleischauer

>> viewers working, loading their laundry before the screening

 

>> program notes for RELAX + WATCH

 

///////LINKS TO VIDEOS///////

No Chick is an Island by Emily Eddy, 2013 (7:00)  
Branded by Darst by Theo Darst (0:30)  
The Invisible World by Jesse McLean, 2013  (~20:00)
Ahh by Bora Kim 2012, (2:00)
Broken New 1(Disaster) by Lori Felker, 2013 (5:00)  
[[[ I'll Show You HD ]]] by Jennifer Chan, 2018 (3:13)
QTzrk_loop by jon satrom, 2011 (3:30) 
Apple Computers by Nick Briz, 2013 (30:00) 

 

>> intermission: viewers loading wash into the dryer

 

>> friendly faces in the audience, check out the hand painted sign in the bg by Eric May