Photo by Lucy Parakhina for PVI Collective

In this work there is no audience/performer separation, to experience the work you must fully participate in the black market.

The global financial collapse has arrived. Your survival is predicated on the trading of your possessions on the black market. In this new economy your items will take on a new value as the trades are in direct exchange for goods and services. Enter the Kings Cross Parking garage to access this new market place.

This is the premise of Blackmarket, a new participatory performance/interactive role-playing game from PVI Collective, which is presented by Performance Space, in association with Alaska Projects.

The work functions like this: after meeting at the stock exchange located at Alaska Projects, you will be given details of the various locations around Kings Cross where you, the ‘hustler,’ will meet with ‘traders’ to access the goods and services you will need for your continued survival. These can range from housing and medicine, to stimulants and porn. Once you meet your trader who will perform, you will be provided with the service you require.

The entire experience is wonderfully grimy and shadowy.

To locate the various achievements in the game you will need to trek through the backstreets and empty stairwells of Kings Cross; it’s a tour of concrete, abandoned construction and wire fencing.

But don’t be fooled into thinking Blackmarket is just a game, the work will have real ramifications on your life. The possessions you trade in this fictional black market really do get totally swallowed up by it. You see, because the trades you make result in real goods and services, the trade of your possessions have to be real too.

PVI Collective really have found the perfect collaboration of organisations with Performance Space and Alaska Projects. As an audience experiencing a fictional world so closely tethered to our every day, Blackmarket has been very successfully executed. It is an incredibly immersive experience. You really do get swept up in sneaking around and all the shady behaviour.

WHAT :: Blackmarket by PVI Collective
WHERE :: Alaska Projects, Kings Cross
WHEN :: Wed 27 – Sat 30 May 2 and Tues 2 – Sat 6 June 2015 (Session Times: 6:30PM, 6:45PM, 7PM, 7:15PM)
HOW MUCH :: $15/$10 + BF – exhibition info here.