In a message dated 9/30/1999 6:54:43 AM Pacific Daylight Time, k_aegis@mindspring.com writes:
<< dingy basement with a drain in the middle of a
concrete floor, the penthouse level of a high-rise, a pleasant back room in
a coffee house. Artists hung their art on the walls, poets scribbled onto
the bathroom walls, performance artists took over a stage area and did
their thing. Fashion devotees spent hours devising and creating new
outfits, with the help of local fashion designers. The leather folk did
demonstrations. 'Freak performers' like contortionists and fire eaters
roamed the rooms hoping to shock and delight. Every week, a different
place, and new activities based on who actually showed up. Along the way,
people bonded, forming friendships that last to this day.
>>
uh. Sounds like the hipster scene, the underground scene, the hot-rod-betty-page-rockabilly-robert-williams-leather-coller-get-yer-red-hot-f reaks-here scene, whatever you want to call it, & it's a scene that I've been a part of, since I was sixteen years old and had my first art show, read my first robert crumb comix, etc.
It's part of the reason I was attracted to Natasha and her Extropic Art movement, that Underculture culture has it's own rigid set of rules, even though it's supposed non-conformist!!
It has a code of certain things that are hip, and most of them dark and
seamy..
I was brought up on it, so the positivity of Extropic art made me feel relief
(an escape from the tattooed, pierced, died to just the right shade hipsters)
.
I've also been re-exploring progressive rock, which went out of fashion with
grunge and the cowboy junkies.
I like to get away from that stuff sometimes and come to the optimistic, progressive motion of ascension that Extropic Art promises, but I must admit, I am still entrenched in the cool culture, and would I buy a hotrod car today if I had money, and I still wear vintage clothes & flames on my shoes...
I still buy into all that crap -- ya gotta love yer low-grow culture ...."fuzzy dice& bongos" (as Frank Zappa said way back in the sixties...)
BUT:
As cool and nega-hip as it makes you sound, Kathryn ; - ) , I don't see it as being an answer to his question, so I will give my considered imagina.
(even though with that heading I am not sure I should post to it)
If an unlimited money I'd hire a surly organic futuristic architect to make
some kind of texture-block structure (like remember Frank Lloyd Wright's
Ennis house in Blade Runner? That kind of style) except I would use a DNA
image to create the texture block, instead of a plant theme like FLW used for
his....
Probably I'd make it a studio not a club. Or a complex for artists WITH a
club, that's better. A colony.
But back to the club
Lots of rooms, so we could have themes...
I'd have a lot of running pipes everywhere, plastic and metal, walls filled with iridescent fluids backlit with colored lights. I'd project films onto screens, have a lot of speakers and acoustic tricks so the music went different ways, and kaleidoscopic images and have a few little holos tucked in here and there that winked at you.
I'd do the same thing FLW did, which is have the entrance portal be small and dark, and the inside be expansive and illuminated, to give one the sense of awe when you walk in!
I'd have some of the rooms lighty and airy-fairie, awash with color and
brilliance, and some of them giger-like horror rooms. I'd have A Tokyo room.
An Indian Room.
I'd include dancers and live performance into the design, making small areas
available for impromptu performing. I'd have a video-drome room. A mad Max
room.
I'd have a bio-room, a genetic "DNA breakout" Room (designed by NV More of
course) - dont forget fuzzydice&bongoroom and I love Anders ideas about
seeing them change. But I'd not want them to change while we were in them,
especially changing floors too quickly...
; )