Good/Bad Art Collective is a Denton, Texas-based group of artists who created more than 250 events in Texas and New York from 1993-2001. For the Nasher XChange exhibition, the Good/Bad Art Collective created a project entitled CURTAINS that was part one-night event, part exhibition and part television broadcast. The Collective’s XChange project was its first major project in more than 10 years, coinciding with the 20th anniversary of the group.

In the months leading up to the opening of XChange, the Collective worked to produce a 28-minute infomercial, which was filmed in a newly created television studio on an empty floor of Bryan Tower, a downtown Dallas high-rise managed by Spire Realty Group LP. On Saturday, October 19, 2013, attendees were given the opportunity to participate in the filming of the infomercial. From November 4 through February 16, visitors were able to walk through the space in which the infomercial was filmed and see sculptural elements used as props during the filming and in the finished infomercial, as well as selected segments of video documenting the one-night event.

The finished infomercial was broadcast on late-night and early-morning television time slots in local, regional, and national markets. The experience of each aspect of the project was distinct—the fun and excitement of participating in the filming; the uncanny experience of the installation with its static surrogates from the filming animated only by clips of the opening event; and the bemused surprise of insomniac viewers who happen to catch a work of art masquerading as a late-night infomercial. At turns humorous and interactive, dark and thought-provoking, CURTAINS used the dying medium of the infomercial to highlight the transience and ephemeral nature of the human experience.