"Wham City' is a multi-faceted term, but its primary connotation refers to the collective of artists in Baltimore, founded in 2003 when several graduates from SUNY Purchase relocated from New York. Dan Deacon first gave the name Wham City to a dormitory at SUNY Purchase. The name was accepted by many of the students since school officials were slow to release their choice of name for the new dorm which was Outback.
After becoming established in Baltimore, the first public performance by Wham City was a musical revue of Walt Disney's Beauty and the Beast in January 2005. Since then, the collective has hosted countless performances by the likes of Need New Body, Coughs, Pit er Pat, USAISAMONSTER, Matt & Kim, Paper Rad, Lucky Dragons, Cex, Landed, Japanther, SpankRock, XBXRX, and many others, including musical, theatrical, and artistic performances by the collective members. The majority of the performances between 2005-2007 were held in the collective's living/working space, which comprised several units in the Copycat Building, a former-bottlecap-factory-turned-artist-loft in central Baltimore's Station North Arts District. The name "Wham City" became attached to these physical spaces; however, its status as a moniker for an increasingly diverse range of artistic activity also grew. Press organizations, from reputed newspapers to tiny blogs, added to the confusion as to what the term "Wham City" actually meant. No one can be quite sure to date. Due to the dubious legality of holding performances in the Copycat Building, the collective was gently evicted in May 2007, scattering its members into smaller living groups around Baltimore and elsewhere in the US. Membership in the collective has always been in flux; it is not strictly defined as those who have lived within the walls of the physical Wham City. A general heuristic seems to exist: Those with a decent work ethic and an ability to function in the presence of various degrees of neurosis and psychosis can attain lasting membership.
As each wave of the future breaks onto the island shore of the present, Wham City's genes are constantly being modified by its resident and guest scientists. Arguably, it has become more defined as members have steadily increased the output of their own media, in order to counter the rising tide of mass media that threatens to overwhelm and confuse its audience to death.
In 2006 the Baltimore City Paper named Wham City "Best Local Hive" in the Best of Baltimore 2006.
The Baltimore City Paper also had a cover feature on Wham City entitled "Crazy Diamonds: Wham City Doesn't Want To Take Over The World--But It Just Might Anyway" in which the history and aesthetic of the group was described in detail. In the on-line edition links to several of the groups videos.
