Back in the day I used to put on a few events and have a say as to who played what records and when. We did invite DJs that played known crowd pleasers even if I (and my housemate) were snobbish about what they played. There were two reasons for this, we wished for an inclusive crowd and sometimes a few crowd favourites help with getting people on the dancefloor. We also wished to attract the following of the crowd-pleasing DJ. As the night progressed we could steer the mood into the musical journey we wanted with decent slots for the DJs we really did want to hear. There were times when we had to rescue the decks (due to emptying dance floor) but generally we were hands-off and certainly were not going to dent the egos of our DJs, we would be just playing a 'special request for a birthday girl' or something.

My problem with people that played crowd pleasers was that there was an aspect of them being 'poseurs'. Rather than having a confident idea of what a set should be and putting together something amazing for that night and that crowd, it was almost as if the poseur-DJs were second-guessing things and overly concerned with BPM values, all very mechanical, if skilled. They also were not challenging the audience or creating new music for them. Nonetheless at least they tried, at least they were there in front of a crowd for their mistakes to be heard by all, at least they invested in vinyl (as it was then) and they were able to keep our inclusive crowd happy (if not challenged).

Our scene was 50-50 as far as gender but when it came to organisational nounce and DJing it was mostly male. I do not think that we created an impenetrable male-only clique, plenty of ladies around, just not hitting the decks or having money at stake.

The poseurs did earn acceptance over time in some cases, we gave them the space to get some confidence or whatever it was that was lacking and they earned their place on the scene.

How would I have felt if this 'art project' had infiltrated itself into our events? Probably pretty rotten but times really have changed. Back in the day you could not have 30000 tunez on an mp3 player and have the computer mix things for you. You had to take a choice 150 or so 12" records, all of which had to be bought when they came out as limited pressings with white labels and what not. So to have enough in the bag to cover all eventualities during an hour or so of a DJ slot one would have to have £1000 of vinyl with you, fresh vinyl with sensible back catalog. This was a convenient barrier to entry and probably would have been too high a bar for 'art projects' like this.

You can take the piss out of any medium and any art form and call it an 'art project'. You could even go along to a Trump rally and chant the usual chants and call it an 'art project'. You could wear a football shirt and go to football matches for the first time, posing as a fan and calling it an 'art project'. You could fool people int thinking your graffiti was a 'banksy' and call it an 'art project'.

Beyond the blog post, where are the fruits of this 'art project'? What is being truly created? I don't see any creation of note, just cynicism and assumptions, fakery and nothing really proven.