In the scene

16 Aug, 2026

Went to The Button Factory to watch Meaning 1, a performance art show hosted by Sandy Loam. Honestly, I was really confused for most of it—from the poster I thought it was going to be a fine art performance, but halfway through it felt like a house party that then turned into a moshpit of 5 people. But I had a lot of fun in the end so here's how the night went.

The fine art performance

OK so first of all, I only decided to go to this event was that I saw a high school classmate's name on the poster and wanted to know what he had been up to in fine arts school. As I edge out of commercial art interests, I've been starting to regret not going to fine arts school myself because I have no way of entering the scene except to be an observer or a prospective buyer. And I do not have the money for that!

I show up when doors open. There's a while before the show starts, so I start planning some webdev stuff in my sketchbook.¹ A guy comes up to ask about it and we get on the topic of HTML and web hosting and crap. Imagine talking about Neocities within the first 10 minutes of meeting someone. Christ, that's the reality I live in.² But—and this is relevant later on—this convinced me we need a better way of introducing website creation to people who aren't in the scene online.

The performance, Meaning 1 itself, took place on a large tarp in the center of the room, on which there was a pillar topped with a block of clay. Sandy, wearing nothing but his underwear and a beanie, viciously worked the clay while becoming more and more frustrated at his inability to work it into something. His visceral movements were accompanied by the increasingly intense music of gOMMEhOMME, and by the end audience members were invited to participate in handling the clay.

I was particularly impressed by this audience participation element because it had such a perfectly exponential quality that I felt like I was watching a movie. Here you've got 50+ Gen Zers watching a naked guy huff and groan while molding a block of clay for 10 minutes, and when the call for participation is announced, no one makes the move until one man does, then another and another—more and more each time—until everyone has their hands in there, and the once silent audience is enjoying themselves, playing and creating their own fun with the crowd. The size of the venue helped its sense of intimacy and so I suppose it felt like watching him form a community out of clay in real-time.³

I do not know shit about performance art outside of John Lennon so I can't judge on the quality, but I at least think the artist conveyed his message well. There was a manifesto of sorts supplied on entry, though I think it's the kind of concept art where you can quite easily draw your own conclusions from it.

But let me engage with the artist's intended meaning regardless: first, I did literally go by the screen name 'Clay' for over half a decade, and by the end I as retroactively giving it the meaning of being able to form my own identity as a man/artist/etc. So the 'transformative quality' of clay—and the fact that it is only given meaning by humanity who forms it—is one I feel especially connected towards.

It reminds me of a similar concept I've been trying to talk about: the impact of a name, or the idea that just giving something a name makes it different and special even though it's fundamentally the same thing. That is partially why I go by different names for creating artwork (milaza) and writing (wulfpaper) and hosting team projects (3630); the name is what solidifies it as its own silo, even though it's all just me at the end of the day. Of course 'Clay' is literally a name to me too, and its own silo of cringe bullshit I don't want to think about.

I'm glad that there are people with the tact to represent their feelings through art itself rather than just writing about it in a blog post though. I kinda feel more emotional about the earnestness than anything. Hearing him talk about how much effort he put into running the event made me very happy that there are people who just do this much work for the sake of it.

After that piece wrapped up, I was interested to see what absurd performance piece my classmate would do, but it turned out he was one of the visual artists whose work was on the wall. I'm going to be honest, I assumed those were just the venue's decor until an hour into the event.

I liked reading about the bios and intent of the other artists, but he didn't have one so I assume his piece was something about the dualism of culture and consumption in society through contrasting textile image. Guys, I don't think I'm cut out for fine arts school after all.⁴

The house party

Following the performance art, the venue cleared for cleanup for an hour or so. I didn't really know what was going on but I was hungry so I went and got a yummy mint chocolate ice cream. Sunshine Suprette is the only dairy on K Road that doesn't charge extortionate prices for Cornettos.

When I came back there were a few rap and DJ performances. Everyone somehow had a drink and cigarettes in hand but it wasn't really crowded like a bar so I just felt like I was at a house party, especially as I was starting to learn that everyone else knew each other. Some guy came over and he asked if I was holding a cig. It was a coloring pencil. This did not seem to be the right place for me.

I was feeling downright geriatric so I went to the reception and talked to the guys there to get an idea of what was even happening to begin with—what the event is about, is everyone here just university friends, how did people find out about this, etc.

I'm genuinely sorry for being like this IRL.

The guys were very nice and chill and it was interesting to hear from Sandy too. Apparently most people know each other through the scene, but what scene that is I had no idea. His DJ set was next so I went back to the main floor to watch.

The moshpit of 5 people

I FORGOT I LOVE HARDCORE!!!!! I mean IDK if his set counted as that but I enjoyed it a lot anyway YAY! Sandy was DJing for the rapper Will Shine who was a pretty funny guy, great energy and looked like a gyaruo ripped straight out of the 00s.

I feel like I missed this atmosphere desperately. I love music events where people just get into it and jump up and down without trying to take photos every 5 seconds but unfortunately that's how all concerts are. I can't handle clubs, but I may have to start going to more small venues where people want to dance but don't want to film. Chris Schluz, thank me later.

By the end it was just the same bunch of guys dancing in the crowd and on stage but it felt fun, really fun. You can't help but get caught up in the excitement and the music was good regardless.

Sidenote: I liked that the event took place so early. Being a 25 year old man with a job makes it very difficult to go out to events that start at 11 pm.

After a while, I went back to the reception room and hung out with the guys there. I asked one dude what the scene referred to and he said it was like indie... alternative... compared to the more popular rappers at places like Ding Dong Lounge. First of all, DDL is a rock bar so I didn't even know they had rappers. Secondly, the popular rapper in question had a total of 35 monthly listeners on Spotify.

But overall talking to the guys was very fun, dude I love being nosy as fuck. With the hobbies I have, I pretty much only end up meeting women or otaku males so it was a great change of pace to be able to chat with other men who are, I guess, living in a different world to me.

It's great when everyone is drunk except for me so I can do this.

But I was still trying to understand what the scene is in regards to a show that combines abstract painting and performance art with hardcore EDM and rapping and hyperpop and trance. What do you call that? What is the scene that everyone knows each other from, that isn't the regular club joint (and what is the regular club joint anyway? K Road has some places described as underground, but what does that mean when we barely have a mainstream culture at this point)?

I wanted to get clarification from the organizer but he was busy and I felt bad overhearing him discuss the finances so I left. But I'll pay attention to upcoming events if you don't mind me being so bothersome again.

Uncovering the scene

Realizing that I was the only one who discovered the event through The Button Factory's Instagram post had me a bit frustrated with myself for the stupidest reason.

Now, I've been trying to get my 52 year old boss to go watch pro wrestling with me since 2025 but he's never been able to fully commit to an event on time so I eventually gave up and just started pestering my 29 year old coworker instead. But just earlier this week, he brought up the upcoming World Series Wrestling event to me first because he learned about it through a marketing email. ⁵ After all that time, it was seriously a conventional marketing channel that brought attention to his ears!?

We got to talking about Australia's social media ban the other day and he said it's great. As a father, so he doesn't want his kids to get caught up in the doomscrolling loop, and as an advertiser, he knows it's all designed for maximizing ad revenue—which is why it's so frustrating that social media is the only way I can discover local events like these!

Instagram is just ubiquitous is New Zealand. I say I don't use social media online, but there's a tiny exception for following local accounts for updates on upcoming shows and events. And while Instagram is significantly better for the fact that you can disable like counts and most people post through stories anyway—it's still designed for the same purposes of maximizing retention and ad revenue. Fucking non-chronological feeds, random accounts I never asked for, autoplaying reels, get me out of here please. It sucks because Insta is genuinely so good for what I want to use it for, but it comes with so much of the ailments that make social media ultimately impossible for me to use.⁶

Can there even be an alternative? Look, in my perfect world, every group or organization would have their own website that they actually owned and make their updates through an RSS feed that I can follow. But in this world, making a website is somehow still a massive investment in time and money.

You have to actually commit to the cost of paying for hosting and a domain name! And while I love HTML/CSS, most people cannot be expected to learn that just to make a website, even if it is the easiest form of coding out there. So people who aren't software devs or indieweb-type hobbyists are also paying for the cost of a CMS—probably Squarespace or Wix—and that all adds up to extra money you wouldn't have to spend if you just made a social media account.⁷

RSS readers cost money too. I never experienced Google Reader when it was around but—when you consider that the best alternative nowadays is to self-host or use an app that costs $15 a month if you want to follow more than 100 feeds—you can understand exactly why its discontinuation was "one of the defining moments in the shift from a more distributed, independent web to one that is controlled by a few large companies."

Unfortunately it's pay with your wallet or pay with your time and mental health.

That's all discussing discovery that comes to you but, on a side note, Google's recently introduced Google Search Console Platform Properties, a feature that affects discovery that you look for.

I recently wrote about this feature on my work's corporate blog. The rundown is that you can now see how your social media content performs on Google Search, e.g. how many clicks your Twitter post gets from Google, or what people are searching to reach your Instagram page.

I honestly think this is a major gamechanger for small businesses and individual artists who don't want to commit to making a website—it essentially opens up the possibility of SEO marketing to everyone. The example I gave was that at the moment, people who sell thrift bundles don't put that in their Instagram name because there is no point—but if they could see the data and know that doing so would bring searchers to their page, maybe they would.

...But even though I say that, ahhh, I think that the SEOification of social media would remove people's individuality even more.

Anyway, after all that I said, I'm still stuck with using Instagram as my means of discovering local events—and I guess that's the underground scene—the stuff that exists outside of the moderation and curation of event sites and council event guides and so on.

It's so frustrating. I don't want to use social media if I can help it so it's so so frustrating this is the price I have to pay to meet people in real life. But maybe if I meet enough people IRL I'll get some friends who'll tell me when things are going on and I'll never have to touch socmed again.⁸

#2026 #art #internet #marketing #new zealand #rant #review