I COULD GO ON SINGING

"One of two winners of this year’s Autopsy Award – which seeks to carry on the work and the spirit of Glasgow’s late Arches venue – (I Could Go On Singing) Over The Rainbow is a piece of theatre designed to confront and make complicit, and it’s hugely powerful when approached in the right frame of mind. Informed before we enter the bare, darkened basement room that standing on the taped-off “x” in the centre of the floor will signal an individual’s desire to engage, we are faced with FK Alexander, the creator of the work. She’s flanked by the two members of noise band Okishima Island Tourist Association, their eyes shielded by sunglasses, the equipment before them spewing out a dark, pulsing throb of electronic noise music. The first volunteer is greeted with a smile by Alexander, then she places on herself a sequinned jacket, high heels, a new layer of red lipstick. She takes the hand of her audience of one and begins to sing along with Judy Garland’s Over The Rainbow; a recording of the singer’s last public performance of the song before she died of a drug overdose at 47, her voice hopeful but recognisably weathered under the fog of noise. For each willing audience member, Alexander repeats the process; every gesture, every warm smile, every slow tap on her heart. As a spectator, the experience is somewhere between intrigue and boredom. Once you’ve seen it done a few times, the appreciation is not for the way an artist performs, but the way they repeat the performance night after night, riding the same crests of emotion. Then you step up yourself, hand held and included, invited in by the fact eye contact is unbroken for the duration. It’s a deeply vulnerable, humbling position to be in, to be regarded by another for so long. Tears, apparently, are not uncommon." DAVID POLLOK, THE SCOTSMAN, 10TH AUGUST 2016

"On March 25, 1969, Judy Garland took to the stage at the Falkoner Centre in Copenhagen to deliver what would become her final performance, culminating in an impassioned, staccato Over the Rainbow that was a million miles away from the Wizard of Oz recording that had made her a star. Now, 47 years later, Glasgow-based artist FK Alexander is recreating that performance, over and over again, setting it in a kind of aspic made of pure white noise and feedback, that’s as powerful a show about labour, celebrity and performance-as-artefact this side of the Emerald City. It takes place in a tiny room, which feels smaller thanks to the dense wall of distorted, analogue sound generated by noise band Okishima Island Tourist Association, standing like a true industrial legend, stationary and leather-clad, at the back of the stage. One by one, the audience filters to Alexander, who each time dresses meticulously in sequins and ruby slippers, each time takes their hand, each time delivers the same emanation of that doomed Garland track. It’s like one of William Basinski’s Disintegration Loops that refuses to disintegrate. A museum piece, or a memory, taking one last, defiant bow. " STEWART PRINGLE, THE STAGE, AUGUST 22ND, 2016

"...It was a definite highlight, as was F/K/Alexander's durational performance, I Could Go On Singing with its clever evocation of Judy Garland and how her life became a hostage to one song, Over the Rainbow. Every time a punter hands her a ticket, Alexander's 'Judy' - in trademark sequin tuxedo, long legs and sparkly red shoes - has to sing "that song" to them. By the nth reprise, it smacks of 'ten cents a dance' slavery, and how fame can shackle talent. All kinds of ramifications emerge, not least a sense of how the public can be tyrannical in adulation." MARY BRENNAN, HERALD SCOTLAND, 17TH JANUARY 2014