The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts
Apr
28

PROJECT CONNECT: Confuse-a-tron Seeks Venues

The above video is from LA’s Machine Project and documents their recent event, Confuse-a-tron at the Berkeley Art Museum. In its Berkeley incarnation, the event included workshops in multiple, distinct, and previously unrelated areas of practice: Tranimal Makeup, Plant Cloning, Music from Melons, and Kimchi production.

As this represents an infinitely adaptable model, Machine is seeking partner organizations to host new iterations of the Confuse-a-tron project around the country. If interested in presenting Confuse-a-tron at your space please contact Machine’s director, Mark Allen to learn more.

Project Connect | 2 Comments
Share This
  • Helen Kauder, Artspace

    Mark: Did you feel that having 4 independent, seemingly unrelated, strands of activities, led to useful juxtapositions or dialogue? Did the projects have a connection to the exhibitions on view at the Museum? Curious about the curatorial direction of Confuse a Tron and to hear more about the collaborative process with a (somewhat)  more mainstream institution.

    • Mark Allen

      Hi Helen, 

      One of my goals with this project was to use the workshop format to bring different audiences together in a way that would encourage informal dialogue. Kimchi, Plant Cloning, Electronics, and Tranimal Makeovers all attract different audiences, so the thought was participants would be all doing something that was familiar to them, and something that was unfamiliar. The hands on format creates space for people to interact in ways they might not as a more traditional audience. I was also interested in juxtaposing workshops that might seem traditionally “useful” like electronics with a practice like Tranimal drag. The workshops are independent in that they are each a different topic, but they overlap in space, time and audience, so it’s an interesting way to think about how they might related to each other in unexpected ways.

      The projects were not connected to the exhibition on view (although I often work in that way as well), but were part of an ongoing series at BAM called L@te, which happens every friday in that open area you see in the video. 

      Thanks for the question, I’m happy to talk more at the convening if you want to get together :)