Party Studies: Home Gatherings, Flat Events, Festive Pedagogy and Refiguring the Hangover, Vol. 1

by Brandon LaBelle (Editor), Octavio Camargo (Contributor), Miguel Ballarín (Contributor)

The party as a model for new forms of togetherness, with examples from communist Hungary and Spain From social get-together to scenes of delirium, this publication aims to unpack the party as a complex, vertiginous construct that provides a dynamic view onto questions of community. If the party functions as an intensification of togetherness, what lessons might it provide in negotiating a given social order?

This first volume on the topic considers the house party, and in what ways domestic space is reworked in support of an extension of the family unit. Including a series of interviews with those active in flat events in Budapest during the communist regime and today, essays on hospitality, the politics of rest, and erotic knowledge, and documentation on Sala 603, an informal house-theater in Curitiba. The publication is the first in a new Errant Bodies series developed in parallel to a set of party-workshops initiated by the artist Brandon LaBelle held in different locations in Madrid, each of which performatively investigates states of partying, posing the party as a scene of study.

139 pages, Paperback

Published August 10, 2021

About the author

Brandon LaBelle is Professor in New Media in the Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design at the University of Bergen. He is the author of Lexicon of the Mouth: Poetics and Politics of Voice and the Oral Imaginary, Diary of an Imaginary Egyptian, Acoustic Territories: Sound Culture and Everyday Life, and Background Noise: Perspectives on Sound Art.

Reviews

[Fraser Siu · Rating 1 out of 5]

some white fella get together book 😭😭😭😭😭 and it’s philosophy? 🤧🤧🤧

[Anita Joven · Rating 1 out of 5]

Really liked the last essay by Julia. The rest felt super white.