Interior architect and artist Maike Statz’s The Eternal Party explores the recurring trope of vampire-owned clubs in film and popular culture. 

From the nightclubs Club Blood in Blade (1998) and Club Hel in The Matrix Revolutions (2003), to the strip clubs After Dark in Vamp! (1986) and Titty Twister in From Dusk till Dawn (1996), hedonistic vampires are everywhere. Entering the vampire club scene, or more specifically Club Blood in Blade, Maike Statz reflects on what social, material, and technological structures lie behind the affinity of vampires to club spaces. What might we learn from the eternal party about our own mortal-dominant attitudes to pleasure? 

The Eternal Party was published in Party Planner, Vol. 3, Party Trick, edited and published by Office Party in December 2023. Maike also presented it as a work-in-progress reading during her residency at Aerial in Bergen in October 2023.

About Maike Statz

Maike Statz is a Bergen-based interior architect and artist with a practice spanning curation, writing, installation, and design. Interested in the relationship between bodies and space, she reflects on how architecture influences emotions, behaviour, and identities, and vice versa. Inspired by feminist and queer spatial practices, she aims to open discussions around the inequalities that exist in space and space-making, offering alternate tools or methods. In her work, Maike often refers to fictional spaces and imaginary architectures built in the genres of science fiction and fantasy.

Background Information

This event is part of Residency 27, Party as Form, which is convened with Shannon Stratton, a curator and writer based in Chicago who taught the first session of Party as Form at Ox-Bow School of Art in 2012, and Kelly Lloyd, a transdisciplinary artist and educator working out of London who inherited the delivery of Party as Form at Ox-Bow. The participating residents are: Fergus Tibbs, an artist, DJ, and cultural producer originally from Scotland, now based in Bergen, Norway. 'Tope Ajayi, a Nigerian multi-disciplinary artist and a cultural curator. Banu Çiçek Tülü, a sound artist, music producer, DJ and researcher from Turkey based in Berlin. Tor Lukasik-Foss, an artist, songwriter and storyteller living in Hamilton, Ontario. Matilda Moors, a London-based artist and educator. Sara Clugage, an artist, writer and editor, living and working in the United States. Åste Amundsen, an artist and researcher creating live interactive experiences, born in Oslo currently working from Germany. Lexie Owen, an Oslo-based interdisciplinary artist from Canada.

Party as Form is supported by KORO (Public Art Norway)