High voltage

Super-charged Electric Arts Alliance bristles with energy



Something about Atlanta’s sprawling landscape seems to also create a case of cultural sprawl. The city’s residents and varied arts venues are flung across the landscape like a game of 52 Pick-up.

In response to that buckshot spray of the land, a number of local art institutions have been striving to bring a variety of interests together. These venues are like hipster versions of Super Wal-Mart, offering an astounding variety of options under one roof. Groups like bluemilk, NoNo, Eyedrum, Art Spot and Ballroom Studios have at various times combined visual arts, performance, musical events, poetry readings, film, video and dance. Add to that trend the Electric Arts Alliance of Atlanta, a monthly forum formed last January by local sound designer/composer/musician Adam Overton.

EAAA is a loose conglomeration of about 50 artists, musicians, video artists, techie nerds, DJs, producers, advocates of noise and disciples of the beat that organizes events at local venues, promoting enlightenment channeled through mixing boards and computer monitors.

“I got the idea that it might be cool to sort of do a self-help group meeting for people to get together and talk,” says Overton, who calls himself the group’s “initiator.”

“I’m very interested in trying to make it something that embraces music, performance art, video, even stuff that doesn’t necessarily require electronics,” says the 23-year-old recent Georgia State graduate, who is himself electrified with enthusiasm.

Upcoming is an All Small music show in conjunction with Eyedrum’s All Small art exhibition curated by Richard Gess, Lisa Alembik and Rachael Buffington (opening June 15), featuring small artworks — six inches/60 seconds and under — in all media.

All Small by the EAAA will feature modified children’s toys and “amplified inaudible sounds.” In his performance of the inaudible, Overton says, “I think we’re probably going to explore the sound of the breath ...” among other tiny tones.

Past EAAA events have been many things: educational, hip and unconsciously amusing. The EAAA “Meet the Artist” event at Eyedrum last month featured local video artist Dan Walsh and visiting Los Angeles composer and inter-media artist Richard Zvonar. Zvonar, whose resume boasts of accomplishments in “electro-acoustic improvisation and multi-channel spatialization,” took a break to go, as he put it, “deep tech” and regale a variously blank-faced and enraptured crowd with tales of sound design and technical gobbledygook.

“I definitely want the event to be something that will stimulate people not only to think about how they can improve their programming chops, but to try to do something artistically interesting or life enhancing.” says Overton.

One of the most controversial art events of last year occurred far from galleries and museums, and just recently arrived on American shores. The cause celebre hit the Paris art world when Art Press founder and editor Catherine Millet’s memoir The Sexual Life of Catherine M. was released by the avant-garde publisher Editions du Seuil. In the book, this highly respected 54-year-old art critic, who has penned eight books of art criticism, details her very active avocation as a “swinger” on the Paris group sex circuit. The book was a best seller in Europe and generated an often-hilarious burst of outrage from the French intellectual community, which would seem to be beyond bourgeois notions of propriety and sexual restraint. The arts community likes to think it has seen it all, but the sight of a smart woman championing promiscuous sex was apparently too much for some to bear. Response to the book seems to have fallen along gender lines, with more female critics applauding Millet’s moxie and male critics more likely to shake their heads in disgust.

Although Millet reveals the ornate details of her sex life, she cleverly never really reveals herself. One mask is taken off, but another is assumed in this analytical, reasoned account of orgies and anonymous public sex that at every turn bears the measured mark of an art critic and intellectual’s point of view. The Sexual Life of Catherine M. is a revolutionary art event that has challenged taboos, inspired rage and fuel-injected an at-times moribund intellectual life with some cathartic bad behavior.

Atlanta’s own tour guide to the secrets of the flesh, photographer Jill Larson, ventures into territory that seems almost inevitable for an artist who has tackled death, decay, cellulite, wrinkles, fat and other bodily Others. Revealing a secret world is the central concern in Cycle at the Woodruff Art Center’s tiny Gallery 100. Larson documents menstruation — that ruby-red defiler of white jeans and despoiler of pool parties — in often queasy terms, envisioning cellular clusters and rivulets of blood in her own taboo- breaking way.

Electric Arts Alliance of Atlanta’s All Small event is June 17 at 8 p.m. at Eyedrum. 404-522-0655. www.eyedrum.org. Cycle runs through June 22 at Gallery 100 at the Atlanta College of Art. 404-733-5050. The Sexual Life of Catherine M. by Catherine Millet, Grove Press, New York, $23, 209 pages.

For Art’s Sake is a biweekly column covering Atlanta’s visual arts scene.??