Foreign Investment at FACT

The city centre is completely packed with people wearing red shirts advertising a brand of lager and queueing to get into pubs showing a football match taking place in Istanbul.
But more strange than that was this short event at FACT by the artist collective known as Foreign Investment. It says here…

‘internationally renowned for their elaborate and uncompromising performative interventions into festivals, art institutions and the wider urban environment’

so I was worried it would be a bit scarey but it was quite tame really. Three of them sat at the front while short films of their performances were shown on the screen. Every so often they broke in with short speeches using megaphones or handed out cigarettes (stamped with the ‘foreign investment’ logo) and sweets to the audience.
There’s a lot of humour in the work and one unplanned piece when we were watching a film shot during the Biennial of Lewis Biggs and others at a meeting looking bored and trying to ignore the artist next to him painting her toe nails red ,blue and yellow, when who should walk into the Box but the man himself! Excellent timing.
Its a shame it didn’t go on longer but we were all in a hurry to take our places in front of the tv screens for the big match.