Friday Nights at Guitar Center

Excerpt, Looped Video Projection, TRT: 4 min, 2012

“Friday Nights at Guitar Center” explores the predominantly male customers of guitar stores via their impromptu in-store performances. It is an examination into the loneliness that is somehow abated and accentuated by spending time in American chain stores, the seductive, yet staged, packaging and stereotyping of identities that these stores perpetuate, the fantasy of rock stardom, and the simultaneity of exhibitionism and vulnerability. There is beauty and sadness in the revelation of our dreams and alter egos, in our desire to be seen and recognized.

“Unlike the ubiquitous bedroom confessionals sung for anonymous views on YouTube, the strength of Kaufman’s sequenced clips is that they are performed in public as an honest trial for no one but the potential buyers—for themselves. Is the instrument worth it? Are they worthy of the instruments?” - Curator Jen Mergel, catalog essay for “Allison Kaufman: Amplified Stages”