Visual art review: Buzzcut, Old Hairdressers, Glasgow

WHEN Glasgow’s New Territories festival collapsed last year – amid the kind of full-on financial disaster that is every artistic director’s worst nightmare – it left a gaping hole in the city’s creative calendar.

If an art form is alive, though, it takes more than the odd financial catastrophe to keep it down; and so here comes a new, informal pop-up mini-festival – run by young artists themselves – that seeks to keep the spirit of experimental live art alive in Glasgow, in all its mind-blowing variety.

Staged over four nights at the Old Hairdressers in Renfield Lane, with a final day at the Maryhill Glue Factory on Sunday – Buzzcut is curated by young artists Rosana Cade and Nick Anderson and features almost 60 performances, events, installations and exhibitions. The work ranges from the near-nonsensical to the brilliant; but a glance round the bar on the opening night offers a glimpse of how rich and strange the Buzzcut experience is set to be.

So at a romantic table for two on the mezzanine, one solo audience member is reading to the next an intense piece of prose by artist Chris Hall about how we don’t say “sorry” and “I love you” enough. In another corner, people are playing Thom Scullion’s dinosaur video game, while earnestly debating with him the ethics and aesthetics of the video-game world.

All across the bar, beautiful young people are debating the first two shows, involving artist Julia Scott exploring the erotic power and limitations of live computer messaging, and two ladies from London – Foxy and Husk – offering meditations on friendship and loneliness, as live accompaniment to some terrific video material that conjures up the animal in each of us.

It’s out of this kind of ferment of invention that groundbreaking work has a chance to emerge; and it’s a fine thing to see Glasgow’s young performance artists seizing their moment, and making it happen, for themselves.

Rating: ****