Come [Perform]

Sixth in a line of zany spectacle and improvised presentation, Come [Perform] provides its cult following with the fundamental agenda of art school mayhem and underground cool that underpins every one of their events. For Come’s cameo at the Bongo Club these consistent premises revolve around the axis of performance art and its namesake is as much an invitation to perform as it is to attend. The atmosphere is loaded with artistic energy, emanating from the group’s founders, Callum Monteith and Steven Morrison, who take centre stage on the decks and trickling through their make-shift plastic dance floor installation, to the face-painted, boiler-suit clad audience.

Whether it is through smashing a giant piñata or sophisticated finger-painting inspired by the heavy reverberations of the music accompanying it, the passive spectator fluidly morphs into the protagonist of proceedings. A sense of expectation, verging on apprehension as to whether the person adjacent to you will suddenly spark into an expressionistic feat of artistic performance commits the viewer to concentration, whilst the numerous disjointed video projections drive them to distraction.

These jarring artistic elements are held together by the blaring music, pausing at intervals to emphasise fragments of narrative and momentarily exchanging the more familiar electro for Walt Disney to suit the images on screen. Its absolutely experimental nature demands that the outcome of proceedings cannot be known in advance; and this deliberate uncertainty is what shapes the events, transforming what could be perceived as simply a raucous club scene to the elite artistic category of the avant-garde - fortunately lacking the alienating white-cube space and inaccessible spiel.

Morrison describes his events as a challenge to the "stale and static" environment of the gallery. Rather than being isolated in silent contemplation, people scramble on the floor to get the sticky humbugs fallen from the piñata and admire their newly whitened teeth in the UV light. Events like Come [Perform] challenge and question every element of artistic practice and Monteith and Morrison’s ‘anything goes’ attitude to artistic experimentation is what makes them the edgiest element of Edinburgh’s art scene.