MEDIA RELEASE
Performance Space
245 Wilson St, Eveleigh 2015
P: 02 8572 9111
@pspace #pspace
performancespace.com.au
Image: pvi collective, black market, adhocracy festival 2014
Performance Space and Alaska Projects present
PVI COLLECTIVE: BLACKMARKET
27 MAY – 6 JUNE 2015
MEDIA ENQUIRIES: Monique Rothstein, Positive Feedback Ph. 0423 655 091 e- monique@positive-feedback.com.au
A bold and playful intervention into the discourse around the failure of market economics. –
Ben Brooker, RealTime
At the heart of pvi’s artistic activities is a belief that through play people will feel more ease to
act outside of social norms. – Rebecca O’Brien and Rachel Robinson, ABC Arts
Performance Space is delighted to partner with Perth’s tactical media art renegades, pvi
collective, return to Sydney this May for BLACKMARKET, a participatory site-specific work that
takes place on the streets of our city at night. Part roaming artwork, part real-life video game,
BLACKMARKET invites you into a dark underworld of unlicensed street selling and
entrepreneurial trading.
In the fictional world of pvi’s urban role-playing game, the global financial crisis has arrived. As
a player you are forced to fight for survival within a black market economy. Infiltrating Kings
Cross, pvi collective invite you to join the experience as a BLACKMARKET “hustler”. Exposed to
an underground economic structure where goods and services are available but the hustlers
are without cash, instead, you will trade your possessions in order to survive the night. You are
joined on the streets by pvi traders who are encouraging you to barter for experiences that
you might value more after the crisis hits. From psychological coping mechanisms to physical
training, urban survival skills to weaponising garbage, pvi’s BLACKMARKET is highly immersive,
instruction based and perversely fun.
Running from Wednesday 27 May to Saturday 6 June, four BLACKMARKET sessions will
happen nightly from 6:30PM in Kings Cross, Sydney. Up to ten participants per session will
meet at Alaska Projects each night, where they will be handed a phone, asked to register their
tradeable belongings, and inducted into the game. The players are set loose in the city,
arranging rendezvous points, hustling with shadowy figures down darkened alleyways, and
peddling their wares in order to receive skills that will equip them mentally and physically for
the future. Each hustler is instructed to perform a series of located tasks – the further the
game progresses, the more difficult the tasks become. Some tasks will need to be unlocked, at
which point the ‘hustler’ (that’s you) meets a ‘trader’ at a generated location to perform an
exchange of goods i.e. Shelter (hustlers are taught to build temporary homes out of cardboard
structures) for Tenacity (trader and hustler face off whilst enduring a physical stress position).
MEDIA ENQUIRIES: Monique Rothstein, Positive Feedback Ph. 0423 655 091 e- monique@positive-feedback.com.au
Exploring our true worth and what we are capable of without economic growth,
BLACKMARKET is an interactive experience of live art that ensures – to borrow from the rightwing American economist Milton Freidman – “there is no such thing as a free lunch”.
pvi collective’s BLACKMARKET is part of PERFORMANCE SPACE: STREETWORKS, a range of sitespecific interventions from Performance Space that take place around NSW. Performance Space
is embracing site-specificity and the public realm through the large-scale, city wide role-play of
pvi collective, to soccer inspired dance work SDS1 in Western Sydney, and specially curated
projects SOAPBOX and NIGHTTIME that go urban in 2015.
EVENT INFORMATION: BLACKMARKET
Dates:
WED 27 – SAT 30 MAY 2015
TUES 2 – SAT 6 MAY 2015
Session Times:
6:30PM, 6:45PM, 7PM, 7:15PM
Capacity:
10 members per session
Venue:
Alaska Projects, Kings Cross
Tickets:
performancespace.com.au or call 1300 723 038
Info:
performancespace.com.au/pviblackmarket
Social media:
@pspace #pviblackmarket #pspace
Video:
TBC
ABOUT PERFORMANCE SPACE:
Performance Space is a cultural agency that facilitates new artistic projects and connects them
with audiences across many different sites and venues: from theatres and galleries to nontraditional spaces and site-specific projects. The company champions work that takes creative
risks, experiments with art forms and creates transformative and captivating new experiences
for audiences. Performance Space is a resident company at Carriageworks, Sydney’s home for
contemporary arts.
MEDIA ENQUIRIES: Monique Rothstein, Positive Feedback Ph. 0423 655 091 e- monique@positive-feedback.com.au
ABOUT PVI COLLECTIVE:
Led by Kelly McCluskey and Steve Bull, pvi collective are a tactical media arts group who
produce interdisciplinary artworks that are intent on the creative disruption of everyday life.
Every artwork aims to affect audiences on a personal and political level and is geared towards
instigating tiny revolutions.
As a collective, they make performances, exhibit in galleries and stage interventions in public
and corporate spaces. Works are often participatory, physically demanding, site responsive and
politically charged.
MEDIA ENQUIRIES: Monique Rothstein, Positive Feedback Ph. 0423 655 091 e- monique@positive-feedback.com.au