by Emily Hall

This week's In Arts News brings you a shitstorm of crappy, crappy, heinous goings-on in the art world.

CCHG-O #1: In the wee hours of Thursday, September 5, between 2 am and 7 am, some jackass let him/herself into Consolidated Works and stole Executive Director Matthew Richter's laptop, i.e., command central for the whole of the organization, which at that point was at T-minus nine days until opening (see "Resistance and Heat," page 17). There was no sign of forced entry; in fact, it almost seemed as if someone had taken great care to re-lock and re-bolt all the doors. In addition, the laptop was the only thing stolen. A nearby DVD player, VCR, Discman, and several cash boxes were left untouched.

What this looks like is most certainly what it is--a precise and direct hit, something thrown on the tracks to keep the organization from opening, and possibly an inside job. "I almost wished there were signs of a break-in," Richter said, "a broken window, something. As it is, it feels like a surgical, specific fuck-you." I don't know if this is some kind of deranged, delusional competitive maneuver; at any rate, Consolidated Works is moving forward in spite of it.

CCHG-O #2: On two successive nights, Sand Point's Building 18, the future site of artists' studios and a gallery and current site of Project 18, was set on fire. The first fire, on the evening of Thursday, August 22, started in a storage bay when someone threw a lit cigarette onto a plastic bag. The result was a lot of smoke damage, and might have passed into history as an accident if the building (which, ironists take note, is Sand Point's former firehouse) hadn't suffered what was clearly arson the next night. Someone set six different fires throughout the building, including part of Katy Stone's Project 18 installation, the part consisting of the words "burn" and "learn" in the building's upstairs windows (in a creepy side note, the word "return" was left intact). Again, no sign of forced entry.

Project 18 is still up and open for viewing, although the exhibition's artists have chosen not to respond specifically, through art, to the fires. In a bout of crazy inspiration, SPACE's Executive Director Katie Kurtz took on the subject herself, writing a novella over the course of a weekend as part of Anvil Press's three-day novel-writing contest. It's called Who the Arsonist Loves.

Bravo.

emily@thestranger.com