Various artists, No.9 Karaoke. Thursday 30 April 2026.

 

Open Space Contemporary Arts (OSCA) is an Adelaide based organisation presenting site-specific events in metropolitan and regional areas. It is a small organisation that does not run a space and is entirely focused on working with artists to develop and deliver contemporary community-based art projects.

 

OSCA seeks out unusual spaces to present work, such as car parks, front yards, beaches, community halls and parklands. Nearly all events are free and invite audience participation and engagement. Their most recent project was On-Site at No.9 Karaoke, part of a statewide commissioning initiative called Projects of the Everyday. On-Site was staged for one night only (Thursday 30 April) in one of Adelaide’s most popular karaoke bars.

 

With three guest curators—Kim Munro, Yusuf Ali Hayat and Alice McCool—the project re-imagines the familiar interiors of private karaoke rooms as intimate, site-specific art environments. Commissioned artists are invited to respond to the layered histories embedded within place and collective memory.

 

Arriving at the front door on Wright St at 7pm, a crowd is gathering on the footpath. Even though it is a free event, it is at capacity with 200 audience members booked in advance. There is an air of excitement and expectation heading up the stairs to waiting staff, who hand out programs and welcome the audience to grab a drink at the bar. Some of the rooms aren’t quite ready, so the crowd moves down a hallway, past closed doors, to the end rooms.

 

Border Crossers, Ben-Hur Winter & Valerie Berry. Photo Sia Duff.

 

There is a queue forming for Room No 9 and a sense of excitement at what might be happening beyond the door. On entering there are two performers Ben-Hur Winter and Valerie Berry, dressed in black and perfectly still as the audience move around them to find a space to sit or stand. Strewn around the karaoke room are racks with clothing, scarves, beads, hats and every available table surface brims with decorative objects and knick-knacks. The work is called Border Crossers with the audience invited to dress the performers, to layer clothing, jewellery, and adornments on their still bodies.

 

The audience shape the narrative as they create characters from the detritus in the room. As these characters develop, the performers start to move slowly, then more actively around the space. The themes of the work refer to uncertain futures where wars are erasing borders and identity is no longer fixed. Whilst the themes have an urgency, the stronger sense is that it is playful and joyous – a celebration of people connecting with each other and collectively creating emerging identities.

 

My Way, Ellen Steele, Astrid Pill and Jason Sweeney. Photo Sia Duff.

 

Next door in Room No. 8 the mood is heavier, with Ellen Steele, Astrid Pill and Jason Sweeney performing darkly comic responses to the theme of My Way. They are guided by a set of projected instructions, which change rapidly and all riff on the song My Way. At each scene change, the performers bark orders at one another and take on different personas. The Sid Vicious version of the song invokes a punk-like mosh pit in the room, with an almost uncomfortable aggression towards each other and the audience. The work feels improvised and responsive, using the karaoke format to explore current cultural anxieties and uncertainties. But like all good karaoke nights, the performance ends on a feel-good note, with a group rendition of the classic Frank Sinatra version of My Way.

 

Back in the corridors, the audience are talking about the different rooms, what they have seen and what to see next. What is happening in these in-between spaces becomes an event in itself, with recommendations and responses discussed, as people pass each other going from room to room.

 

In Room No. 7, the Naarm/Melbourne based Filipino-Australian Saluhan Collective are presenting from the microphone and into the gloss. With a practice deeply rooted in Filipinx concepts of kinship and reciprocity, this work revisits the satirical son Magellan written in 1972 by Yoyoy Villame. The song is a comedic, parodic account of Ferdinand Magellan's arrival in the Philippines in 1521 and his subsequent defeat by Lapu-Lapu in Mactan. Presented as an interactive karaoke performance, the audience are invited to sing-along with the artists in the room, who are also performing in the video.

 

This work is one of the strongest of the On-Site program. It utilises the karaoke space to engage the audience with Filipinox culture, its settler history and the resistance of Indigenous people to colonisation. It brings this narrative into a contemporary pop culture setting, introducing “…New Wave influences, and the queering of Catholic rituals and iconography.”

 

from the microphone and into the gloss, Saluhan Collective. Photo Sia Duff.

 

Heading back down the corridor, Room No. 6 is now ready for the audience. This is one of the smaller karaoke rooms, with an installation by Jazmine Deng and Helium. The space is crowded with found objects, small sculptures and mechanical contraptions. The artists appear to be still installing and on the screen is a couple, who also seem to be in a distant karaoke space. It turns out that these are the artist’s parents in China, who are waiting to connect and talk with Jazmine.

 

Next door in Room No. 6, Jesse Budel’s Crepuscule: Karaoke Edition is also connecting the audience across distance. Incorporating a video projection, but predominantly an ecological sound art installation, the piece brings together livestreams of dusk soundscapes from around the globe into a centralised space. With microphones set up in locations across Japan, utilising Locus Sonus (a global open microphone network), the audience can use the karaoke microphone and distort live images. The louder the audience sing and wail into the mike, the more distorted the images become.

 

In other rooms there is a screening program curated by the Documentary Film Society and games room રમત / Ramat curated by Yusuf Ali Hayat. These are spaces that invite the audience to drop in over the course of the evening. To either sit quietly and watch a selection of seven films or to actively participate and generate their own experience of playing Carrom, Backgammon, or Gyan Caupar.

 

On-site was an enjoyable and engaging performance and installation event, highlighting a range of practices, curatorial and artistic approaches. It did require participation and at times audience members seemed a little reticent to get behind the karaoke microphone. It was disappointing that some rooms opened later than others, which caused some audience dissipation. This was due to a lack of time available for installation and preparation, with the venue only providing a limited time for set up. Even though No. 9 Karaoke was a unique performance venue, it did highlight how working with a public space with prescribed opening hours can limit time for preparation and rehearsal.

 

This was the first iteration of the On-Site program and was a successful event to kick-start the initiative. OSCA continues to be an organisation that fosters artistic and creative experimentation, supporting curators and artists to develop new work in unusual spaces. It will be interesting to see where the next version of On-Site will be held and to again experience participatory works in an unconventional setting.

 

Julianne Pierce

 

When: Thursday 30 April 2026

Where: No. 9 Karaoke Bar

Exhibition page: osca.org.au/project/onsite/

 

Editor’s note: Julianne Pierce is an independent writer/reviewer and is a Board member of OSCA.