2016

Future Development

Community program

Published in Emergency Index, Volume 6.

Alt-D is a supper club that asks a rotating staff of women to host a dinner in absentia

Why are the only men’s communities imaginable frat clubs or police forces? How does the misogyny we’ve been experiencing over the past few weeks differ from that which we’ve been subject to for most of our lives? More allies?

Sex and politics don’t belong at the dinner table. Maybe we don’t either. Billed as a potluck and documented as a reality television fiasco, Alt-D took place in the wake of the 2016 election as a standard-fare relational aesthetics performance dinner— save for the conspicuous absence of women at the table.

Campbell Carolan created eight customized JENGA sets labeled with conversational icebreakers to sustain participation for the duration of the event. Meanwhile, the menu was an open letter that accompanied press copy. The accompanying collateral hinted at the political dynamics of the event, without explicitly stating the social dynamic participants would be walking into.

Questions like— “How do you apologize?” “How do you ask for consent?” “What’s your preferred pick-up line?” “Do you notice when a woman orders short?” “When was the last time you felt humiliated?” “What don’t you deserve?” The game solved the problem of a participatory framework, while the objects themselves presented a metaphor for contemporary masculinity.

We rigged Future Development— an artist’s run space based in a former morgue— with nanny cams in order to watch the tension unfold as a dry event with no apparent leadership, meanwhile enjoying a bottle of wine in the women’s bathroom.