Michael Workman

An annual outdoor exhibition canny in its departure from other summer festivals, street fairs and block parties, "Thrill III: The Party" is anxious to astound.

If anxiety is partly defined by a temptation to give into negative emotions, then the carnival atmosphere of "Thrill III: The Party" makes it sound like the opposite. Or maybe the more pressing question is: What's so thrilling about an art show in a vacant lot?

Organized by Melissa Schubeck of Joymore (previously a gallery space at 2701 West Augusta, these days a spaceless curatorial project), "Thrill" is in its third incarnation, evolved from a show in Schubeck's backyard to an exhibition in a vacant lot on Humboldt Boulevard. This year's go-round will showcase the work of more than forty artists, with promised visual treats including "a message in the sky, piano drop, swimming pools, giant birdie num num piñatas, fireworks, fireworks, fireworks, dancing girls, celebrity fountains, clay angel mud baths, an inflatable romp room, bubble fields, video screenings, creepy ice cream treats, tiny clouds, paint by numbers flower garden" and on and on.

Meant to invoke the vertiginous atmosphere of something between an assembly of the Society for Creative Anachronism and a conceptual art gala with all the understated surliness of a carny family reunion, it succeeds marvelously. All it needs to complete the Riverview Amusement Park aesthetic is an actual, mechanical behemoth of a thrill ride rising high above the fray. In place of a stomach-churning Pair-O-Chutes or The Bobs Roller Coaster, however, Schubeck has opted for a touch of Hollywood madcap. According to press materials, "Thrill III: The Party" will incorporate an attempt to recreate the decidedly under-examined Hollywood film, "The Party." Directed by Blake Edwards and starring Peter Sellers as an Indian actor named Hrundi V. Bakshi, the film is slapstick in the "Pink Panther" vein. After being fired from an acting job for sheer ineptitude, Bakshi is accidentally invited to a swank Hollywood party that he then proceeds farcically to destroy.

By adding Edwards' movie to the soup, "Thrill" gropes after the intermedial and aleatory elements that betray an affinity with Fluxus performances, a contention supported by the inclusion of practical jokes, sight gags and heaping portions of enchanting flummery common to Fluxus. More important, however, is the relevance of "The Party" as a work of comedy. The theatrical conventions for effective slapstick involve equal parts intrigue and social disturbance. Cleverly suspended as Sellers' portrayals were between humor and self-destruction, his slapstick was always weighted with generous doses of sadness and melancholy. Such performances make a point about social mores and conventions, with slapstick giving vent to a hostile neglect towards anything that becomes an obstacle.

Such elements of make-believe violence permit anxiety to flower, repackaged as a fear of humiliation. But hey, should such a depiction prove too much of a buzzkill, it's easily written off as mere ineptitude. As a group exhibition, "Thrill" offers the chance to ride along with a constructed community in flight, a "social sculpture" as the organizers call it, where mass and volume find rough equivalence in the breathtaking sensual qualities, say, of the aforementioned crashing piano.

But, what does any of this have to do with anxiety? Precisely that visual art, at least since Plato, has been conceived of as somehow basically deceptive--and of what we come to know through our visual experience as somehow less true than what we learn through logos, or through the word. Appearances are deceiving, remember? In this respect, the sheer caprice of the event is what makes the connection, the simple acceptance of delicate illusions, the thrill that how things appear in art are not inherently false, but are works of the imagination. And accessing a work of art, in addition to feelings of pleasure and joy, can also require a tolerant readiness to experience fear or revulsion. There's a too-often-unacknowledged healing power to the creative embrace of our anxieties and to facing down the emotional bugbears that such a so-called "sleep of reason" engenders, especially in a culture where actions that determine life and death are taken based on a clownish drive for absolute security. In a space that encourages us to experiment with hysterical freedoms, we may discover that to overcome our fears, we must learn to accept them first.

And what better way to challenge the control of fear over our lives than in a festival environment? Try to come prepared: in the "Thrill" recreation of Edwards' film, patrons not dressed for the party will be provided with appropriate clothes, but if you want to take a dip in the pool, you'll need to bring your own swimwear.

"Thrill III: The Party" starts at 3pm on August 2 and ends at 5pm on Aug 3, 1723 Humboldt Blvd, (773)278-3375. Free, donations accepted. For more info visit www.joymore.org.

(2003-07-30)

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