[Seven by Nine Squares homepage]
[tENTATIVELY]
[ Neoist Path]
A Mere Outline for One Aspect of a Book on
Mystery Catalysts, Guerrilla Playfare, booed usic, Mad Scientist
Didactions, Acts of As-Beenism, So-Called Whatevers, Psychopathfinding, Uncerts, etc..
{3rd Edition - July '95 Version of Text Only}
- tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE
c/o the Funny Farm
RR 4,
Markdale,
Ontario, N0C 1H0,
Caca-Nada
or Box 382, Baltimore, Maryland,
21203,
us@
Extroverted behavior of a calculatedly complex &
politically/socially
theoretically backed nature has constituted a significant part of my
activities
throughout most of my life. To many people, such behaviour is
so-called
"performance art". Not wishing to
be "pigeon-holed", thusly enabling
entities
perceiving my actions to superimpose their stereotypes to
oversimplify me, I've
been substantially occupied with public self-contextualization
resistant to
previously existing categories. Failing that, I've often opted in
favor of
unpopular categories to attempt to give an "edge" to my activities -
hence,
I've preferred being labeled "criminally insane", for example, to
being an
"artist".
Since much of my life has centered around manifesting my imagination
with
"bizarre" appearance & behavior in everyday life, I've frequently
encountered people trying to explain me. As such, I've been called
"Hippie",
"Jesus", "Charlie Manson", "Faggot", "Weirdo", "Hare Krishna",
"Punk", "Clown",
"Satanist", "Cult Leader", & "Skinhead" - to name some of the
main ones
that I've heard most often - "Weirdo" & "Clown" being, perhaps,
the 2 most
accurate. Given that even many of my friends find it difficult to
even adjust
to calling me "tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE", it can accurately be said
that my
struggle for self-definition has a long way to go.
Terms that I've used to describe some of my activities are:
Mystery Catalysts: activities meant to stimulate people's
curiosity -
usually by creating an unusual situation with no obvious source or
explanation
- see #s 14, 15,
16, 25,
49, 82,
178, 179,
& 182
Guerrilla Playfare: unusual
interactions &/or interventions in
environments where such incidents are unexpected - see #s
12, 18,
21,
22, 24,
26, 27,
39, 40,
41, 43,
44, 49,
50, 51,
52, 53,
55, 57,
59, 63,
65,
66, 67,
99,
103, 108,
109, 113,
114, 135,
142, & 143
booed usic: an unpopular use of something (usually, if not
always,
sound) - see #s 62, 71,
72, 73,
74, 75,
76, 79,
80, 99,
100, 101,
103, 104,
105, 106,
107, 108,
109, 110,
111, 113,
#outline114, 116,
117, 118,
122, 123,
124, 125,
& 127
Mad Scientist Didactions: lecture type
situations generally
with a
perverse message & audio-visual aids - see #s
2, 8,
37, 38,
39,
47, 54,
56,
60, 64,
69, 70,
72, 73,
74, 75,
76, 77,
78, 79,
80, 81,
101, 105,
106, 107,
110, 111,
115, 118,
120, 122,
123, 127,
& 190
Acts of As-Beenism: these acts can be
anything in which
there's supposedly a demonstration of or reference to the
possibility that
roles are
flexible - while in many ways this description might apply to almost
anything
I've presented, I've usually only applied this term in connection
with "Generic As-Beenism" - see #s
101, 118,
122, 123, &
127
So-Called Whatevers: a very open term to describe just about
anything
that I might not want to label otherwise - see #s
177, 180,
181, & 185
Psychopathfinding: finding an outlet for psychopathic energy
other than
the violent ones usually associated with this explosive state of
being - this
usually involves some element of risk, confrontation, or
role-reversal - see #s
12, 18,
24, 26,
35, 37,
39, 40,
41, 42,
43, 48,
50, 51,
52, 57,
59,
60, 65,
69,
77, 99,
102, 108,
113, 114,
120, 142,
& 143
Uncerts my most recent term for audio focussed events - see #s
174, 176,
183, 188,
& 189
etc..: can include aspects that I somewhat accept previously
existing
terms for - such as "Reading" {see #s 2, 4, 5, 19, 35, 37, 47, 68,
120, 130,
& 173}; "Concert" {see #s 1, 3, 27, 28, 29, 33, 34, 71,
102, 117, 119, 121,
126, 128, 129, 132, 134, 138, 139, 145, 147, 150, 151, 172, 175,
& 187};
& "Audience Participatory" {4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 12, 20,
21, 22,
25, 37,
39, 40,
42, 43,
52, 60,
109, 120,
104, 141,
142, 163,
164, 165,
166, 167,
168, 169,
170, 171,
180, 181,
183, & 185}
- those actions in which I
consider the
conventional contexts of "Reading" &"Concert" to adequately
describe their
primary substance are isolated by being in brackets: [.....]
{The following list doesn't include "shows" in which I mainly
participated by contributing 1 or more object(s) but at which I
either wasn't
present & at which no action oriented instructions of mine were
being
followed or "shows" at which I was present but at which my presence
added
little more than simple explanations (such as my Retrospective of 14
Films at
the Empire Salon in Baltimore on May 30, 1982 & many, many other
such
events).}
- the Evergreen House, Baltimore, us@
- 1959 or 1960 or 1961
- A duet performance with my
sister of a very simple piano piece that was
probably originally intended for 2 hands. Our participation in this
recital was a very minor outcome of my being forced to take piano
lessons.]
- charity benefit (for people with Muscular Dystrophy ) in the
backyard of my parents' home in the suburbs of Baltimore, us@
- summer, 1963?
- Wearing a full-body antique bathing suit meant for an adult
male (&, hence, very large on me) & a long black hair wig, I read
satirical poetry that I'd written about my sister.
- a Brooklyn, Baltimore, us@ coffee-house
- summer, 1971
- Playing 12-string acoustic guitar,
upright piano, & singing I performed covers of
music by the Incredible String Band,
Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie, & whorehouse blues
songs, etc..]
- Apathy Project, Baltimore, us@
- September, 1977
- The Audience was handed a folded 8&1/2 X 11" piece of
paper with 2
pages from my book: t he book t he referent 4 wch consists of t he
non-materialized transparent punch-outs from a letter/whatever
stencil printed
on it. Page 31 was on the front: this consisted of a grid of 15 X 15
1st 4
letters of words with each vertical column having every fragment
begin with the
same letter. The grid arrangement, the vertical organization, the
non-referentialness, & the fragmentation were all meant to
stimulate the
reader to extrapolate & explore the text creatively. Page 89 was
on the
inside: this consisted of a fragment from a longer text in which all
"e"s were
substituted with "(v)"s. This fragmentation & substitution were
meant to
disrupt the otherwise linear narrative so that the reader's attention
would
drift off. The audience was then asked to read simultaneously from
these texts
in whatever way they wanted to which they proceeded to do.
- Dave Kotofski's apartment, Baltimore, us@
- 1977
- This was a "private" reading with little or no audience other
than Dave.
Reza Barahani (sp?), Iranian poet & political activist (author of
"Crowned
Cannibals" - a critique of the Shah's regime) then in exile, read
"linear,
referential" poetry in English & Persian - & Marshall Reese,
Kirby
Malone, & I read, or otherwise presented, mainly "non-linear,
non-referential" texts. I presented various "spatially expanded"
writings which
included hiding words & phrases in Dave's place for him to find
later.
- various simultaneous locations, Baltimore, us@
- early 1978
- A group of perhaps 8 people were organized into every
possible duo. Each
duo chose a time of day when each of them would perform an unusual
(or usual)
daily activity specified for them by the other. As such, each person
had (if
the number of 8 people is correct) 7 times of the day when they knew
they were
performing something at the same time as 1 of the other members of
the group. I
remember, for example, taking out the fortunes from fortune cookies
(preferably
without breaking the cookie) & the pimiento from stuffed olives
(preferably
without ripping them) & causing them to switch places as my
instruction
from Beth Downey. These simultaneities were performed for at least 1
week &
were deliberately undocumented so that the emphasis would stay on the
experience itself rather than any object produced by it. A later
version for
vaudeo documentation was started but unfinished.
- (originally written as:.."a thing involving audio tap(hh),
tap(hh) playing
machin(hh), 2 cushion(hh)d s(hh)at sp(hh)ak(hh)r cabin(hh)ts, 2 paid
book-(hh)nds, mt(hh)d pock(hh)ts & pock(hh)t-books, books, a
book-sh(hh)lv(hh), & an audi(hh)nc(hh)?") more simply &/or
commonly
known as "the human book-ends thing"
- Red Door Hall, Baltimore, us@
- fall, 1978
- Two long planks joined & supported at the middle &
held up at
either end by sturdy speaker cabinets on their sides formed the
"bookshelves".
Boxes filled with books were scattered about on either side of the
planks on
the floor. The "human book-ends", Laurie Stepp & Beth Downey,
emptied their
purses onto the speaker cabinets so that they could rattle when
sounds would
come from them & took their places on the cabinets facing each
other across
the planks. During this action they only communicated thru gesture.
What was
originally a 3 hour 4 track reel-to-reel tape with only 35 very
narrow range
sounds on it was played in stereo so that 2 of the tracks were heard
forwards
during the 1st 3 hours & the other 2 tracks were heard backwards
during the
last 3 hours. When the tape was being flipped the "human book-ends"
were
permitted a break. The audience was encouraged to pay in "ob(hh)ron +
gold"
& to react to the situation in some creative way. One friend,
Augusta Leigh
McDonald, went so far as to find a goldfish pond & capture a
goldfish that
she named "Oberon" to pay with. Bonnie Bonnell imitated the central
tableau by
making a miniature version of it in a corner. Gayle Hanson tied up
Steve
Brookes & read from the masochistic book "Venus in Furs". Most
people,
myself included, placed & arranged the books on the bookshelves
&
attempted to communicate gesturally with the book-ends. Richard
Ellsberry typed
a typewriter portrait of me. The essentialness of the materials &
their
unusual restrictiveness were meant to function as (& did function
as) a
catalyst to the audience to draw their inspiration from.
A-Muse-ing.
8. GHOST FILM presentation with Ghost Writing Booklets
- Community College of Baltimore, Harbor Campus, Baltimore, us@
- fall, 1978
- Members of the audience were given note-pads with invisible
ink writing
&/or drawing on them (i.e.: "Ghost" writing &/or drawing)
& were
given pens to "take notes" about the film they were about to see or
"doodle".
The pens that they were given were the "developer pens" for the
"ghost" writing
& their ink was invisible except where something was already
marked by the
ink that they were to develop. Thus, the resultant notes or doodles
& the
original preparations were only visible where they intersected -
producing a
collaboration. An attempt to show my film "GHOST FILM, A Nightmare
for
Projectionists" was then made. Given that the film is deliberately a
poorly
spliced mess, this attempt was only partially successful &, once
again, the
deterioration of the film was contributed to so that it could
continue to
progress as a nightmare for projectionists.
- Balto Media Edition Fashion Show, Red Door Hall, Baltimore,
us@
- January?, 1979
- Volunteers from the audience were linked together by &
enclosed in
giant paper dolls which they then paraded on the fashion show runway
in a
disoriented manner.
- Balto Media Edition Fashion Show, Red Door Hall, Baltimore,
us@
- January?, 1979
- A video camera was aimed at me in the dressing room which was
connected
closed-circuit to a tv for the audience to watch at the end of the
runway. I
was naked except for a flexible metal mesh dress form. The dress form
was
gradually covered by (an) assistant(s) who hung all of my more
eccentric
clothing onto the mesh until I was substantially covered by it. In
the
meantime, various other people, such as Susan Lowe & her
children, moved
about in the dressing room.
- Balto Media Edition Fashion Show, Red Door Hall, Baltimore,
us@
- January?, 1979
- Charlie Brohawn & I cut leg holes in the bottoms of
plastic wardrobes
& arm holes in the upper sides & stuffed the wardrobes with
specially
made xerox "decode" collages & paraded on the runway as
"twins".
- Corner Theater, Baltimore, us@
- March, 1979
- The Baltimore Oblivion Marching Band (B.O.M.B.) - variously
called a
roving band of defiant youths (in "newspaperese") by myself & No
Name
Interaction/Reaction Group by Sumu Pretzler (a.k.a. Doug Retzler) -
was a
loosely knit group with variable membership that got together, mainly
on
weekends, to crash various events - usually with the intention of
stirring up
some action & catalyzing greater interaction between all those
involved.
This usually involved eccentric dress, toy instruments, &
aggressive
"socializing" (or "anti-socializing") with strangers.
- B.O.M.B.'s premier crashing was at an improvisation class
where our
crashing was meant to be a critique of how silly we thought the class
was. We
snaked thru the students & teacher(s) alike trying to get them to
spontaneously react to our unexpected presence & then left before
they had
too much of a chance to integrate us into their perception of the
class.
- Lancaster Institute of Fine Arts benefit, Lancaster,
Pennsylvania, us@
- March, 1979
- This was the last section of B.O.M.B.'s premier. We "partied"
at the
benefit while I got volunteers to dance while wearing the same giant
paper
dolls used in the Balto Media Edition Fashion Show.
- Penn Station Photo Booth, Baltimore, us@
- spring, 1979
- The 1st part of a 3 part action in which I subtly altered my
face &
had a black & white picture taken of it in the photo booth which
I then put
on display in the place allotted for such on the outside of the
booth. The poor
fidelity of the photos made the slanted moustache appear possibly
real despite
its well-nigh impossible "shaveability".
- Penn Station Photo Booth, Baltimore, us@
- spring, 1979
- Following the same procedure described in the preceding
entry, but with
the face alteration being the addition of dots, these photos
eventually
returned to me in a convoluted way 2 years later! A friend of a
friend was
telling me that he'd found & stolen a display photo on a photo
booth of a
guy who looked like he had bullet holes in his face! Of course, the
photos that
he'd stolen & saved were of me & the circle was completed
& the
mystery solved.
- Penn Station Photo Booth, Baltimore, us@
- spring, 1979
- Once again, following the same procedure as in the preceding
2 entries, I
smeared crunchy peanut butter on my face in the photo booth during
rush hour at
the train station. Given that the sides of the booth were open to
prevent any
"hanky-panky" in there, my action was totally visible to the
commuters. A
couple of weeks later, a friend of mine told me at a party about
going to the
photo booth & seeing a picture of a guy with "a horrible skin
disease"
which she then stole. It wasn't until later that she realized it was
me.
- I'm still waiting, 16 years later, for the slanted pencil
moustache photo
to return to me.
- a construction site in Maryland, us@
- late March, 1979
- In fall of 1978, I started working as a hard-wood floor
finisher. This job
involved stooping over a bucket of lacquer & brushing the lacquer
on the
floors as a part of the finishing process. Inhalation of the fumes
caused
intoxication. Co-workers Brian Wolle (a.k.a. "Brain" &/or "Herr
Brain Storm
Drain") & Doug Retzler (a.k.a. "Sumu Pretzler") & I exploited
this high
& tried to have fun at work by improvising vocally while
lacquering. These
improvs centered around creating a mythology about the living
conditions in
"Lacquerland" - our name for the state of mind & body gotten into
from the
fumes. Our audience, when there was one, were our fellow construction
workers -
who were apparently entertained but who made jokes about our being
"crazy".
There were a fair amount of these sessions but, for the purposes of
this
history, I've restricted myself to only listing the 3 that we audio
recorded.
- Pennsylvania, us@
- April 3, 1979
- In violation of curfew, we went to the 3 Mile Island
Visitor's Center
during the peak of its nuclear crisis. Doug Retzler/Sumu Pretzler
wore a mylar
suit & pretended to be a nuclear scientist who had "everything
under
control" while his "protective garb" got increasingly tattered. A
photo of Sumu
was much printed in various papers with captions made up to "fit it"
by the
"newspapers" with little regard for trying to find out what the photo
actually
depicted. Supposedly, an article was eventually written for a
reporters'
magazine about the resultant ridiculous disparities.
- the Maryland Institute of Art, Baltimore, us@
- spring, 1979
- A woman (the potential "date": Claudia Behrman) was separated
from the
contestants (me & 2 others) by a partition. She asked questions
of each of
the contestants such as "Are you more like Johnny "the Wad" Holmes or
Sherlock
Holmes?". Whenever I was asked a question I read an excerpt from: t
he book t
he referent 4 wch consists of t he non-materialized transparent
punch-outs from
a letter/whatever stencil making no attempt to have my answers be
"relevant" to
her questions. The "winner" was a guy playing the role of an "army
man" -
complete with military helmet.
- Festival of Disappearing Art(s), Red Door Hall, Baltimore,
us@
- Sunday, April 29, 1979, 10PM
- The chairs were arranged very close together so that the
audience was
seated in uncomfortable proximity. The audience faced a hanging
blanket which
functioned as a "theater curtain" to hide "where the show would be".
The
recessed window nooks were covered with billboard paper with rips in
them. Each
nook had a sign labelling it "John Wilkes' Booth". Unknown to the
audience,
John Ellsberry (who was "obsessed" at the time with the Lincoln
assassination)
was hidden in 1 of the nooks with a black & white reel-to-reel
video camera
& deck. While Marshall Reese introduced me, I navigated thru the
cramped
audience - increasing their discomfort & forcing them to interact
with me -
while John videoed my actions & their reactions. The curtain was
then
removed, John ripped his way out of his hiding place, & the "real
show" of
the audience watching themselves on video began. After the audience
had watched
the tape & realized that they were the "performers", John
returned to his
no longer secret camera position & the intitial process of me
moving thru
the crowd while John videoed was repeated. This 2nd time, the
audience's
participation was more enthusiastic as they tried to remove my
clothes &
otherwise impeded my progress.
- Johns Hopkins University Campus, Baltimore, us@
- spring, 1979
- The most memorable portions of this action are Charlie
Brohawn & I
wearing each other's clothes as a continuation of our "twins" routine
& our
running thru the crowd tying them together with string. The
"documenter" of all
this filmed almost all of his footage of the tits & asses of
dancing girls
rather than of us.
- Charles Street, Baltimore, us@
- spring or summer, 1979
- This was primarily distinguished by Sumu Pretzler/Doug
Retzler convincing
a parading bunch of boy scouts to lie down in the streets for him so
that he
could draw their body outlines in chalk while they "played
dead".
- another construction site in Maryland, us@
- date uncertain, possibly mid 1979
- Another mythology-spewing plunge into derangement by myself
& fellow
denizen of Industrial High Society Herr Brain (see #17).
- the "Artists Support the Mayor's Ball", the Maryland
Institute College of
Art, Station Building, Baltimore, us@
- summer or fall, 1979
- As a publicity event, this event was organized to give the
appearance that
artists supported the Mayor in his running for re-election (or some
such). I
was hand-delivered an invitation to this by person(s) unknown. The
main event
was inside but outside on the parking lot a punk band ("Da Moronics")
was being
paid to play. I entered the building carrying a "picket sign"
emblazoned with
the words that form the title for this action. The sign was meant to
request
that those present help me escape from the machinations of
politicians &
government. Everyone present inside seemed to be very rich. I
didn't
recognize any of them as artists. There were tv crews &
reporters
everywhere. I was almost immediately confronted by a security guard
& told
to leave. As I was being ushered out, an apparently rich woman that I
passed
sneered something like "OH! Get that awful thing out of here!"
(meaning
me).
- Corpus Christi Church, Baltimore, us@
- November 21, 1979, 2 - 8PM
- Tables were set up in the basement of the church where people
ordinarily
played basketball. The tables were "set" with xerox "place mats" with
pictures
of tuning forks & crab mallets as the "utensils" & a
transistor radio
was set in the middle & tuned to a "top 40" station & left on
as the
"Crab Feast". I returned periodically, providing no explanation, to
photograph
whatever was happening in the room as response to it.
- Security Square Shopping Mall, Baltimore suburbs, us@
- December 22, 1979
- Under the instigation of Gayle Hanson, crabs with baby doll
parts tied to
them were taken to the shopping mall on the last saturday before
Christmas in
hat boxes & released by Gayle & me on the floor of the mall
near
"Santa's" stand. A mesmerized crowd quickly formed while Gayle
"explained". One
of "Santa's helpers" came along to try to put a stop to this bizarre
behaviour
by sweeping up the crabs which made it even more bizarre for me. We
were
eventually kicked out of the mall by security people & we
returned what
crabs were left alive to the harbor where they swam sluggishly
off.
- Baltimore, us@
- winter, 1979/1980
- Cris Cheek (clarinet), Chris Mason (bass clarinet), Gayle
Hanson
(clarinet?), Patty Karl? (clarinet?), & I (alto sax) improvised
while
wandering the streets & alleys. We were joined by a guy named
John(?)
playing recorder who heard us passing by.
- Baltimore, us@
- winter, early 1980
- With an unknown line-up that consisted of at least Chris
Mason &
myself, more wandering improvising on wind instruments. Again we were
joined by
John(?), this time on alto sax, when we unwittingly passed behind his
apartment.
- Baltimore, us@
- winter, early 1980
- Again with an unknown line-up beyond Chris Mason, myself,
& Doug
Retzler pulling a wagon with some sort of large cardboard horn,
meandering
improvising thru the streets. A black guy told me I played like John
Coltrane
which I found strange but flattering considering that I could barely
play the
thing - especially in the cold weather.
- the Telectropheremanniversary, the Proposal Gallery,
Baltimore, us@
- January 24, 1980
- With exposed knees & genitals, we (Gayle Hanson - Voice
& Electric
Organ, John Ellsberry - alto sax, Lee Warren - Electric Bass Guitar,
&
myself - Voice, Electric Guitar, & Electric Organ) played 2 sets:
1st:
trying to somehow play along with recordings of incoming phone calls
to the
"telephone stations" that the event was a celebration of the 1st
anniversary
of, & 2nd: playing original songs about such relevant topics as
the
transmission of "(telectro)pheremones" & venereal diseases.
Thruout, phone
calls to our premiering 3rd phone station were forwarded to multiple
phones in
the gallery to be answered by anyone present who felt so
inclined.
- the Balti-Media Edition & Science Fair Benefit, Corpus
Christi Church,
Baltimore, us@
- March 1, 1980
- I'd made a 4' X 4' X 7' replica of a transistor radio called
AS RADIO
which was supposed to be pushed around on a wheeled model's stand
while
musician's played from scores inside of it. As an unpopular weirdo
act this was
shoved off 'til last by the organizer, Doug Retzler, while the "real"
musicians
- the rock "stars" - milked their prima donna time for all it was
worth. By the
time it was our turn, the audience was largely gone - as were some of
the
players - & some of the players were asleep. A Flop.
- the Balti-Media Edition & Science Fair, Johns Hopkins
University Glass
Pavilion, Baltimore, us@
- March 30, 1980
- The same thing Flopping because of the breaking of the stand
wheels.
- Baltimore, us@
- summer?, 1980
- A conference call improvisation by Doug Retzler, Richard
Ellsberry, &
myself broadcast live over the radio using phone sounds, etc, to
promote our
"telephone station" of the time: (301)962-0210.
- Red Door Hall, Baltimore, us@
- October 19, 1980
- The only big band performance by The Tinklers. This show
consisted of
their usual mix of "childish" charts & explanations, sign
language, &
songs. I played alto sax & function generator - this latter with
my
toes.
- Grand Open Reading, Red Door Hall, Baltimore, us@
- January 4, 1981
- I was invited by Tom DiVenti to participate in a large
reading. We
misunderstood each other - I misunderstood his invitation & he
misunderstood me to have consented. Usually I avoid such readings
because I
don't like conventional readings at all, because I rarely consent to
read
unless I have something special in mind, & because I find most
readings to
be little more than Mutual Admiration Society Group Therapy Sessions
in which
little or no critical standards are present. Disgruntled that my name
was on
the poster & knowing that everybody would ultimately just be sick
of each
other at the end of such a long reading & glad for it to be over,
I asked
Richard Ellsberry to be my proxy & to simply be the last person
to read
& to read the list of everyone who had read before him. Sure
enough, the
crowd roared with disapproval with Keith Worz (usually creative in
his
heckling) going so far as to try to cut apart Richard's names list
with
scissors while Richard attempted to read it.
- next 2 t he keswick home 4 t he incurables across from t he
rotunda,
Baltimore, us@
- Monday, February 2 (Groundhog's Day), 1981
- While embedded between 2 floors of a building I listened to a
"hypnotic"
tape that I'd made which attempted to convince me that I could walk
thru walls
& perform other extraordinary defiances of "consensus reality".
The
audience was kept at a distance from this action by 2 "bodyguards".
(Kirby Malone & Richard Elsberry). The
"attempt" was either witnessed thru doorways or on 2 monitors which
were
stacked vertically - the top monitor showing the top half of my body
in 1 room
& the bottom monitor showing the bottom half of my body in
another. Because
none of my flesh showed, it was unclear to those who had arrived late
whether
there was even a body in the clothes. This was sponsored by Desire
Productions.
- APT 81, Peking Poolroom, Montréal, CaNada
- Mercredi, 18 Février, 1981
- First, I explained to the audience that I was going to kiss
everyone there
while I said the word "Pleasure" in 26 different languages. Each
audience
member was to rate which word they thought was most pleasurable to be
kissed
during the saying of. This explanation was translated into French
from English
by Kiki Bonbon. I proceeded to do as explained while a tape of mine
played as
"background usic". Most of the audience was male, 1 of the women
refused to be
kissed, & there was general extreme discomfort with such an
intimacy from a
"stranger".
- Second, the audience was led to the bathroom where they were
asked, again
with Kiki translating, to write the names of all of the objects in
the room on
those objects. The purpose of this was to make everyone more
conscious of how
much language surrounds us. This deteriorated into a more ordinary,
but still
"spirited", graffiti session.
- Finally, having moved to the bedroom, it was explained, Kiki
translating,
that I was going to read from the "Arabian Nights" removing all
vowels - as I
had heard is done in Arabic writing. This was, of course, a
deliberate absurd
misinterpretation of "scholarly" information meant to reduce a
narrative text
to gibberish & to provide a ridiculous challenge for the
translator.
- APT 81, Peking Poolroom & the streets, Montréal,
CaNada
- Samedi, 21 Février?, 1981
- In the kitchen, the oven door was open with a turntable on
it. The
turntable had a record on it which I had painted with
glow-in-the-dark paint.
The main lighting in the room was from a clamp lamp over the
turntable &
from lasers which were set up to reflect off steam irons (a neoist
symbol of
severity) held by Kiki Bonbon & Zbigniew Brotgehirn. While the
turntable
turned, I blotted out the record's light by spray-painting black on
it &
Richard Ellsberry (then known as Richard X) gave a lecture
accompanied by chalk
writing on the walls about the Krononautic Organism (the time travel
"society"
that those of us from Baltimore at this festival represented). Ruth
Turner did
something out on the roof adjacent to the kitchen. Doug Retzler
wandered the
streets of Montréal, under the influence of LSD, aiming a
low-intensity
portable laser into windows & doorways of bars & other
buildings
periodically calling the Peking Poolroom to interupt the lecture
& report
on his activities. The action more or less ended when Kiki asked
Zbigniew " Do
you really want to do this?" (i.e.: hold the steam irons to reflect
the lasers)
to which Zbigniew replied "No" & they stopped doing so.
- School 33, Baltimore, us@
- summer, 1981
- Two groups of "child-size" paper dolls were given to the
students to wear
& they were encouraged to write & draw on each other. Most of
the
students were uncomfortable in the restrictive "costumes" & 1 of
the girls
ripped her way out. After this, all of the students were encouraged
to do the
same - which they did with great gusto making a total mess &
throwing the
paper scraps around enthusiastically. I thought of this as my sly way
of
providing them with confining role models to break.
- Experimental High School -> the streets, Baltimore, us@
- fall, 1981
- Asked to co-teach a class at the Experimental High School, I
named the
class the No No Class & centered it around the teaching of
guerrilla
activities. At the 1st class I told the students that no matter how
well they'd
do in the class I planned to give them all "D"s (the lowest passing
grade)
since grades were aspects of a different political system than what
the class
represented. Some students dropped out immediately. They were then
shown 2
vaudeos of quasi-documentation of 2 "guerrilla theater" type actions.
At the
end of the 1st class, they were asked to bring umbrellas to the next
class.
- The 2nd class consisted of my having the students walk down
the sidewalks,
tightly clustered together, with umbrellas over their heads - despite
its not
being rainy or sunny. The purpose of this was to force other
pedestrians to
have to navigate under the moving variable height ceiling that the
clumped
umbrellas created. As the finalé, we blocked the entrance of a
supermarket until a guard chased us away.
- Public Works Festival, Toronto, CaNada
- October, 1981
- Eugenie Vincent & I were tied to the roof of a rented car
to attract
attention to us while we drove around the city with signs advertising
the
festival we were to participate in & "HOMEX" - the magazine that
1 of the
drivers, Ricki Kilreagan, was editor of. After 20 minutes or so, we
were
stopped by a cop, who was eventually joined by 2 others. The cops
tried to
figure out what they could charge us with & eventually decided on
"seatbelt
violation" - much to the general amusement.
- YYZ Gallery, Toronto, CaNada
- October 10, 1981
- As an impromptu contribution to the "Neoist" night at the
Gallery, Eugenie
Vincent stripped, with her face wrapped with toilet paper (so that no
photographs could be used to incriminate her in case she were to run
for
political office later), & lay on the floor. Unwanted left-overs
from a
very authentic Chinese meal we'd had earlier (cow's lung or some
such) was
spread out on her chest & abdomen. The audience was told that
whoever ate
the most food off of Genie without using their hands would win a free
Chinese
dinner. Of course, we knew that it was unlikely that anyone would
want to eat
any more chinese food after undergoing this experience but we figured
that at
least a few people in the audience would want to eat this slop off of
the
naked girl. I, most likely, conceived of all this & acted as
judge.
Ricki Kilreagan attempted to play some sort of kitsch tv music.
Sin-Dee Heidel
probably assisted in some way or another. 2 or more guys from the
audience
tried to eat the food off of Eugenie. I think everybody but 1 guy
dropped out
repulsed by the food. The remaining one who would've won pulled out a
pocket
knife in a frenzy of sexual aggressiveness & started scooping up
the food
with it. He was disqualified as a result & no-one won. To top it
off, a
sleazy Yugoslavian Photographer chased Genie around, still naked with
toilet
paper wrapped around her face, photographing in an "artistic" frenzy.
This same
photographer documented Skin Transfer (#46) - telling us "I believe
in you" but
refusing to give us copies of the photos. Hhmmm..
- APT 4, Montréal, CaNada
- October, 1981
- Wearing sandwich boards that said in English & French:
"Neoist Parking
Meter Action - Pay Me to Go Away" & wearing a parking meter hood
over my
face, I stood at empty parking places & waited for cars to park
there. Then
I followed the drivers when they left their cars with an impassive
face &
my hand out-stretched mechanically. The drivers all avoided me by
walking
somewhere where I wasn't - after which I left a Neoist Parking Ticket
under
their windshield wiper. Finally disgusted by what I thought was a
mediocre
response to my imaginative begging, I started to walk back to the LOW
theatre.
En route, 2 guys stopped me & asked me what I was doing. When I
explained,
they thought it was so funny that they pretended to get out of a car
& gave
me money.
- APT 4, Montréal, CaNada
- October, 1981
- Wearing my Tim Ore clothes, I set up an easel with a canvas on it in a
park across from the Mont Royal Cathedral. Going thru painterly gestures such
as extending my thumb to "check perspective", I proceeded to paint a very crude
depiction of a house that wasn't intended to look like the cathedral. Keeping a
straight face, I knew that people would look over my shoulder & look at the
painting & think that I was some sort of "poor crazy man" & give me
wide berth after seeing my "crazy" picture. It amused me that a simple child's
painting of a house with a smoking chimney (or some such) when placed in this
context could become a catalyst for fear. Eventually, 2 people had the nerve to
ask me if I was attempting to paint the cathedral. I laughed & explained
what I was doing - after which they were relieved & explained that, sure
enough, they'd been afraid to talk to me because they thought I was crazy.
Things aren't always what they seem, eh?
- APT 4, LOW Theatre, Montréal, CaNada
- October 15?, 1981
- Wanting to only perform street actions during this festival
but wanting to make money off of them by charging entry to the LOW theatre (a
basement apartment with a bay window in the front) I decided to charge
admittance to the theatre & then perform my actions outside so that the audience
would be watching thru the bay window what they could have watched for free
from outside. With a tv outside facing in (or inside facing out with the
reflection visible inside?) showing video of the previous 2 street actions, I
stood outside trying to sell "Neoist Passports" (large, elaborately folded
& rubber stamped "blackprints" made from passports of Istvan Kantor's
that he'd had altered by various friends & aquaintances in his travels)
which I was trying to sell for some ridiculously LOW price - something like
$3.00. Probably few people, if anyone, paid to enter the theatre. No-one would buy a
passport off this "deranged-looking" character. As usual, I didn't make any
money - but I'm sure that whatever free meal I got that day courtesy of Gordon W.
Zealot & Monty Cantsin was delicious!
- APT 4, Vehicule Art & someone's home, Montréal, CaNada
- October, 1981
- Announcing our intention to launch the money-making activity to be known
as "American Manoeuvres" at Vehicule Art, Monty Cantsin/Istvan
Kantor, Gordon W. Zealot, & I presented a ceremony primarily steered by Monty.
Monty later got us some home repair work where I fixed a doorbell successfully
& poorly caulked a bath-tub & where the 3 of us tried to fix the roof.
Monty & Gordon may've painted a room. I was paid enough money for this to
take a train back to Baltimore. So much for American Manoeuvres.
- EAR INN, New York City, us@
- January 9, 1982
- Eight file folders were put on various tables in the bar in
front of where
I was going to read. Each of the folders had staples showing on the
outside
implying something stapled into the inside. Each folder had a string
attached
to it with a paper clip on it holding the folder shut. Inside each
folder was a
place-mat with a cartoonish listing of various fears. In 1 of the
folders the
place-mat was presented unaltered. In the 2nd 1, the word
"verbophobia" (fear
of words) was cut out fairly small in the center, in the next 5
folders the cut
out "verbophobia" got progressively larger until, in the last folder,
there was
no longer a place-mat or any words in or on the folder. I had 61 file
cards cut
into a personally symbolic shape that I call the
"frame-of-reference". Each
card had 1 sentence on it that I anticipated needing to say. E.G.:
"No.", "Hi,
Charles.", "R u mad at me?, "Did u 'v a good drug influenced writing
session
last nite?", "Yeah, I was pleezed when I noticed Ear as d rived from
Bar.",
"Monty, I didn't xpect u 2 come!", "A cuarento Y Tres, 43, &
Vodka,
pleez.", "Did u like my reading sufficiently?", "Yeah, I like t he
humor of t
he restrictions of my anticipations & of t he pauses while I try
2 find an
approximately appropriate sentence on t he cards.", "Once, I wrote t
he word:
BOLD on a piece of paper just large enough 2 accomodate it
& put it
on t he floor & I watched how it moved X noting where I saw it
daily - Then
I wrote t he word TENSION on a piece of paper & did t he same -
BOLD
moved frequently around my apt & I assume it eventually left thru
t he door
- but TENSION stayed word-side up X my typewriter t he ntire time I
resided
there, so I suggest u write on pieces of paper & leave them
around t he Ear
Inn & watch their progress." (when I read this latter, Jackson
MacLow
protested that it was more than 1 sentence), etc, etc.. I restricted
what I
could say to people while in the Ear Inn to either readings from the
cards or
from other prepared texts. Thus all of my interactions were readings.
In
keeping with my interest in expanding the body of text, I repeated
the actions
of all of my previous audience participatory "readings" & added
such things
as pulling down my pants to reveal a slightly larger than life size
photo of my
own naked crotch with a braille writing of "HSV-2" (Herpes Simplex
Virus - Type
2 - which manifests itself as clusters of white blisters similar to
braille) on
the penis & having a piece of water-soluble paper with "Read
Underwater"
written on it dissolve in front of the audience while I swished it in
a pan of
water. Other visual props such as my complex Heinrich Welz piece were
used.
- APT 5, New York City, us@
- March 15 - 21, 1982
- Throughout this festival, at various locations - including
"Des Refusés", the loft of 1 of the festival organizers, a gallery,
& a cable tv studio where we were part of a "pre-nuclear war party
scene", HannaH AvivA (a.k.a. Casandra von Rinteln) & I shaved off all of each
other's hair from the waist down (which we had pre-dyed red & green). Our
pubic hair was then exhibited in a "Shit Show" at the Kwok Gallery. After we'd
shaved off each other's hair, we painted layer after layer of latex on each other's
skins in order to make 2nd skins that we could then peel off. The original
idea was to enable us to "wear each other's skins" (or "get under each other's
skins"). Apparently, some garbage collectors peeped into the window of Des
Refusés & saw HannaH & I "performing" & reported us to the
vice squad. From then on, someone that we assumed was a vice squad cop sat a
few feet away from us & watched us intently with a grim face. We weren't
arrested. This process was done so ineptly by us that it wasn't satisfactorily
finished by the end of the festival. When we returned to Baltimore we continued
it - finally exchanging skins & making a film of us fucking while wearing
them. This film was supposedly stolen while still in the camera in Chicago at
the 2nd
SubGenius Convention a few months later. If Casandra wasn't
lying to me, it may be in circulation as "porn" somewhere. If this latter is
true, it probably looks like some sort of Ed Gein home movie.
- 2nd Church & Foundation of the SubGenius Convention,
Chicago, us@
- September 4, 1982
- Displaying myself around town looking bizarre, as usual,
& wearing
sandwich boards that read KILL NORMALITY B4 IT KILLS U! on the front
&
DON'T KILL ME! I'M A SubGenius! on the back.
- 2nd Church & Foundation of the SubGenius Convention,
Radisson Hotel,
Chicago, us@
- September 4, 1982
- Having been invited to play "anti-music" with "Drz 4 "Bob"" I
came
prepared with timers & flashers as my instruments. While the good
Drz tried
to play, I plugged all of their equipment into my devices causing
them to
either have pulsing power or no power at all. Apparently I blew at
least 1 of
their amps which wasn't my intention. I was simply trying to disrupt
anything
"musical" that they might try to do. 1 of the band leaders, Reverend
Sterno,
got increasingly irate & followed me around unplugging my
devices. The
climax of all this was when I got so frustrated by Sterno's
interference with
my interference that I clubbed him over the head with 1 of my
timers. I
wasn't very popular with the Church of the SubGenius for awhile after
that but
Sterno seems to have forgiven me.
- Bal Tim Ore Underground Club, Baltimore, us@
- December 31 (New Year's Eve), 1982
- With the help of friends, I moved the 4' X 4' X 7' replica of
a transistor
radio called AS RADIO (previously mentioned in connection with the 2
last Crab
Feast flops) into an abandoned set of rooms in the approximately 3
mile long
train tunnel between (what had been) the Mount Royal Station &
the Camden
Station. This space, & another, newer, set of rooms in a new
extention of
the old tunnel, were further decorated with elaborate graffiti
(mostly made
with stencils) made by myself, Dave Bakker, Randy Hoffman, &
Laure Drogoul
(&, possibly, others). An 8 track cartridge player & an
amplifier &
some speakers were installed in the AS RADIO & connected to the
power in
the tunnel & the Club was ready to open! Having stuck a marker up
thru a
manhole cover at the top of a shaft leading from the club, we located
what was
to become the "V.I.P." entrance on a conveniently unused lane on
Howard Street.
On New Year's Eve, Randy, Dave, & I (as Tim Ore) placed highway
cones
around the manhole & used a meathook (which bent) to lift the
heavy,
concrete coated, manhole cover. Dave & Randy were dressed as
construction
workers with hard-hats & shirts that had ID tags on them that
read "Balto
Co". Friends were invited down into the hole & down into the club
&
beer was provided. 2 truck drivers who stopped to ask for directions
were
invited down the manhole. They were dubious at 1st until they saw the
spandex
wrapped Sin-Dee Heidel emerge at which point they decided to descend.
Eventually a reporter & a photographer came & did their do.
When they
left, they called train authorities to ask them what they thought of
this &
2 of them stopped by at street level to visit. When they arrived,
Randy &
Dave, still manning the manhole, kept a straight face & asked
them if
"they'd like to see the boss". They did & I popped to the surface
looking
very "un-boss-like". I chattered away merrily & explanatorily for
awhile
& promised to close the "V.I.P." entrance when we left & the
railroad
officials were sensible enough to leave us in peace.
- the Sixth International Apartment Festival, the streets to
Phillips
Square, Montréal, CaNada
- Lundi, 21 Février, 1983
- Boris Wanowitch drove his car with the steam irons painted on
it thru
Montréal. Mounted on top was a P.A. system connected to a tape
player
& a microphone on the inside. Monty Cantsin/Istvan Kantor played
a tape of
some of his dramatic electro-pop music with sirens & such-like
Apopolyptic
sound effects & provided a voice-over of neoist slogans provided
mainly by
him & myself such as "We Are Not Subject to the Lies of Science"
&
"Neoism Now & Then!". We were stopped by the police & given a
ticket
within 20 minutes for some sort of noise violation. When we reached
Phillips
Square, we continued with our broadcasting & got out of the car
to display
the usual neoist eye-grabbers: flaming steam irons, etc & to
promote the
festival.
- the Sixth International Apartment Festival, Consulat Neoiste,
Montréal, CaNada
- Vendredi, 25 Février?, 1983
- I explained my purpose in English. After each of my sentences
or phrases,
Monty Cantsin/Istvan Kantor translated them into Hungarian &
Mario Campo
translated them into French. As the difficulty of translating my
calculatedly
fractured English became too ridiculous, Istvan's translation became
more &
more his own free-flowing (&, probably, self-promotional)
statement &
Mario took the liberty of changing "tentatively, a convenience" into
"tentatively, an inconvenience". I explained that one could perform
Blo-Dart
Acupuncture &/or Ear-Piercing on a potential assailant by
astutely
diagnosing whatever problem was behind their hostile aggressiveness
&
healing them before they could get to you. I provided a life-size
acupuncture
chart which Alan Lord then proceeded to blow a dart at by way of
demonstration.
Given that the chart was meant to be of a man but was lacking a
penis, it was
decided that this potential assailant's problem was fairly
obvious &
he was thusly given a PRICK.
- Best of Baltimore Ceremony, Pier 6, Baltimore, us@
- Thursday, August 11, 1983, 6:30PM
- Having been nominated as 1 of "BalTimOre's Best" by Dave
Bakker, I was
awarded, while wearing my Tim Ore clothes, at a mayoral ceremony. The
mayor
remembered me for years after this & presumably wondered what
exactly I'd
received the nomination for.
- That Frame Place, Baltimore, us@
- Sunday, August 28, 1983
- Surrounded by the environment of my Tim Ore exhibit, I sang a
19th century
american song about the wonderful socio-sexual advantages of having a
moustache
(ever notice how almost all the guys in porno movies have them?)
while wearing
the Tim Ore clothes I projected a slide show on general Tim Ore lore
& the
history of Famous Moustaches - including such figures as Groucho
Marx, Hitler,
Dali, John Waters, & Frank Zappa.
- 14BX Sub-Par/Con (The 3rd Church & Foundation of the
SubGenius
Convention), a Baltimore Train Tunnel, us@
- September 18, 1983, very early morning
- A wire was stretched across the train tunnel thru an eye hook
& 2
partially truncated & mummified dog corpses that I'd found there
that had
apparently been run over by trains were hung from the wire on either
side of
the tracks. A metal sheet with instructions for using Black &
Decker power
tools with a No Copyright symbol spray-painted on it was suspended
between the
dogs. The dogs were painted white with the words "Poop" painted on 1
of them
& "Pee" painted on the other & glowing cyalume light sticks
were placed
between their rear legs. The walls of the tunnel were spray-painted
with
non-intersecting (except for, perhaps, the occasional accident)
squiggly lines
which I associated somehow with native Australian dreamtime culture.
A strobe
light flashed, someone made the dogs dance by tugging on the wire,
& Ron
Cummings manipulated & played tapes that he'd made of him beating
on the
dead dogs. I was naked except for my shoes & socks & I had
white
squiggly lines painted on me. I danced & gyrated wildly &
beat the dogs
& the thunder sheet with a club. The dogs were on fire &
exuded what
one might call a "foul" smell. I had been entrusted with the sacred
head of
Arnold Palmer by a representative of the Bloody Head Launcher's
Society which I
had set on fire & which I was also beating about the tunnel. The
title of
this ceremony was a reference to "Pee-Dog" comix by Jay Condum &
Gary
Panter & "Poop-Dog" comix (which was a friendly rip-off of
"Pee-Dog") by
the Reverends Ivan Stang & Sterno Keckhaver. Eventually a large
quantity of
police came (from the railroad cops, the city police, & the
nearby federal
reserve bank guards) because 1 of the attendees reported having
witnessed
something "horrible & immoral" & I was arrested. When the
"news" found
out about this (it was done partially as a publicity stunt anyway)
they
"reported" that I was a "Cult Leader" who was "praying to the dogs"
etc. Very
little attempt was made to actually find out who I really was or what
I
actually was doing & when I was interviewed what I actually had
to say was
considered too weird to quote. I was quoted both in the newspapers
& on tv
as saying things that I hadn't said by people who hadn't even been
present at
the time when I'd supposedly said them. The cop who'd arrested me
bought a
photo of this ceremony from me. Another cop who'd allegedly been on
the "force"
for 26 years was quoted as saying in the newspapers "I'd rather run
up against
a man with a gun than a situation like that!" The beat goes
on..
- That Frame Place, APT 7, Baltimore, us@
- Thursday, September 22, 1983
- At Dave Bakker's suggestion he & I combined some of our
generic motifs
into 1 "performance". This took place in the space of the Tim Ore
show. I was
dressed in the Tim Ore clothes & Dave was dressed in an austere
black suit.
We began by dragging our way across the floor to each other from
opposite ends
of a rope that had strings attached to it that were attached to
various objects
in the room such as an approximately 3 foot tall inflatable
"cave-man" & a
table & chair, etc. Hence, when we pulled on the rope the objects
attached
to it moved. Dave was under a transparent plastic sheet. A tape
played of muzak
from an "easy-listening" radio station that ended with a news report
about the
Inauguration of the Bal Tim Ore Underground Club. When Dave & I
met at the
middle of the rope & the middle of the room, Dave came out from
under the
plastic & we toasted to each other with rum & coke. Dave
stood on a
table at 1 end of the space while a tape played with a simple Casio
music-track
& a voice-over of Dave's that began with "Sitting alone in an
empty
hospital room.." & included "Sitting & thinking about
thinking about
nothing..". The voice-over stopped & the music picked up speed.
Dave
removed his suit to reveal pajama bottoms with rappelling gear
surrounding the
crotch that may've seemed like some specialty sexual apparatus to the
audience.
His chest was wrapped tightly with wide clear plastic tape with some
sort of
medical device in the center. He started to rapidly wrap his face
very tightly
with more of the same tape so that his face became very distorted. He
sat &
pulled on strings that were strung thru the ceiling & down to
inverted
mannequin legs that were sticking up from the floor. His manipulation
caused
the legs to clack open & closed. I, as Tim Ore, performed the
same "If
You've Only Got a Moustache" presentation described in a previous
entry. Dave
laid down on a stretcher that he'd made that had a large, stitched
wound in the
middle of it. This stretcher was tied to the same rope used earlier.
I dragged
the stretcher & Dave across the room by pulling on the rope -
knocking over
all the objects that the rope was attached to in the process &
various
other objects in the way. When Dave reached a window, he attached a
rope to his
rappelling gear & climbed out the window still wrapped in tape
& in his
pajama pants. I jumped out another window which, unbeknownst to the
audience,
led to another room rather than to the outside. Dave's exit was so
spectacular
that no-one except Monty Cantsin/Istvan Kantor noticed me
leave.
- Baltimore, us@
- Saturday, November 19, 1983
- A large group of people were organized by R.U.T.S/L.E.R.
(Random Universe
Tours & Services (Doug Retzler) & the League for Esthetic
Research (Dan
Carney & Alec Bernstein)) to add the unusual to the traditional
Thanksgiving Parade. Many, many people participated. Some of the
people like
Laure Drogoul, Nancy Andrews, Liz Downing, & Gabrielle
Hourticulon made
floats relevant to Thanksgiving traditions. Gabrielle pulled a live
turkey in a
cage. This was considered to be so offensive that she was thrown out.
Many of
the floats were parodies of the military with camouflage &
dancing
missiles. I was wearing camouflage coveralls & a Reagan Mask.
Strapped to
my feet were baby dolls that made some sort of crying noise when they
were
squeezed (or walked on). I had a friend, Matty, wear another Reagan
mask &
we tied a long banner between us by attaching it to our necks. The
banner had
this "Thanksgiving Prayer" on it: "Give Us Today A Conquered Nation
So Many
More May Suffer Starvation". With substantial difficulty we walked
the full 3
or more miles of the parade & with our arms outstretched "like
Zombies" -
much to the enthusiastic response of the crowds lining the streets.
Our group
was so large that the parade officials made us split up into 3
different
segments to diffuse our potency. 1 of these segments (2 floats &
miscellaneous other things) were thrown out of the parade for
"getting out of
order".
- Emergency Show, M.A.P., Baltimore, us@
- Friday, December 9, 1983
- I had gotten to know drunks that were squatting in the
building next to
where I was residing. Their form of squatting had an unhygenic
destructiveness
reflective of their alcoholic/economic hopelessness. They used their
2nd floor
as a toilet/dump. The floor was covered with Thunderbird bottles,
piss,
diarrhea, & cigarette butts. They drank & fought & passed
out on
the 3rd floor. Their difficulties in many ways paralleled my own
& their
proximate despair helped increase my own. Having been threatened by 1
of the
more psychotic of the winos, I was totally paranoid 1 night that he
intended to
force me into a confrontation in which 1 of us might kill the other.
I decided
to use this crisis as creative fuel & conducted a "live" radio
show via the
telephone in which I gave a "blow-by-blow" description of the
accumulating fear
& my way of dealing with it - with music & effects mixed in
by the WJHU
"DJ" Ron Cummings. Eventually the situation calmed down & the
drunks &
I established a fairly stable & friendly relationship. Having
been invited
to participate in the "Emergency" show I decided to transplant the
misery of my
neighbor's & my life to the gallery. I partitioned off a 2 room
space &
covered the floor with T-Bird bottles. I offerred to pay the winos to
participate in the "performance" simply by attending it & talking
to
people. On the day of the "show", there was a larger group than usual
of
alcoholics waiting to help me. Some of them I'd never met before.
They had
misunderstood me & thought that I needed to assemble a gang for
some sort
of rumble. When they finally figured out that they weren't there to
fight some
of them dropped out. By the time the "Alternatives.." started there
were only 3
of them left. The space was crowded, the bottles were being kicked
around, my
"paranoia" tapes were playing, & there was an open mike that
people were
encouraged to use. The drunks were being very vocal - in some cases
being
political & talking about alcoholism & in 1 case just being
"out-of-control". The atmosphere was intense & claustrophobic. I
was
passing around joints the contents of which I wouldn't identify (it
was oregano
with perfume) to try to increase the paranoia. After enough "joints"
had
circulated & the claustrophobia seemed strong enough, I had my
father come
in (none of my friends knew him), wearing a policeman's uniform with
a german
shepherd on a leash, & just walk thru the crowd. He's had a
tracheotomy, so
I didn't have him say anything to break the paranoid illusion of his
being a
"real" cop until he left the 2 rooms where the "Alternatives.." was
happening.
I'd originally tried to get the railroad cop who'd arrested me for
the "Poop
& Pee Dog Copyright Violation Ceremony" to do this but his
commanding
sargeant wouldn't permit it. My intention in creating this situation
was to
simultaneously make the gallery attendees more aware of the
oppressive misery
of the drunks' lives & to give the drunks a paid vacation
from it
where what they had to say was of primary importance.
- a house in Baltimore, us@
- December 25, 1983
- Deciding that it would be more fun to work than to spend
Christmas with
our relatives, Doug "Sumu Pretzler" Retzler & I once again
recorded a visit
to "Lacquerland" (see #s 17 & 23). It was decided that every day
is
February 29th there & that the pterodactyl seems to be the most
common
bird.
- t he telectropheremoanin'quinquennial, Galaxy Ballroom,
Baltimore, us@ -
Tuesday, January 24, 1984
- This was the occasion of the 5th anniversary of the Baltimore
Underground
Telephone Network. The word "telectropheremoanin'" being a pun that
combined
"telectro" (as in having to do with telephone communications) with
"pheremones"
(lust inducing biological signals) with "moanin'" (as in moaning with
pleasure). This pun was the theme of the night. I had paid a phone
sex
prostitute by mail to be called by me that night. In case there was
any problem
with that I'd asked my friend Lisa "Wet-Legs" (as she became known
after this
night) to act as a back-up. The basic idea was that I'd call the
prostitute
& broadcast our conversation to the bar's audience - gradually
making it
more & more perverse. As my conversation was to get stranger, the
booed
usicians were to gradually start playing until their sounds would
drown out the
conversation. The booed usicians were: Mark Harp (tapes & radio),
Craig
Considine (trombone), Ron Cummings (tapes, records, & mixing
board), Leroy
Keltner (trombone), & myself (tapes). There was "trouble on the
line" at
the phone sex prostitute's so Lisa substituted. Lisa had gotten
mysteriously
sick earlier, had vomited & passed out - my call awoke her. This
added to
the general feeling of it all. Suggestions from the audience were
taken &
someone's friend was called too. I was too drunk &/or inhibited
to carry on
a very good conversation so the extremely able Buddy Johnson was
called in to
relieve me. The highlight of his conversation with Lisa for me was
their
reminiscing about school-days they never had together when he pulled
out his
"short fat pancake" & she "covered it with Mrs. Butterworth's".
Throughout
the "phone sex" & the booed usic that encroached on it, an hour
long
analysis projector transfer to video of the 16mm version of my film
"Subtitles"
was shown on a large video projection screen.
- Madrid, Spain
- May 1984
- Erecting a banner reading "Eso Es Una Quimera Colectivo"
(intended to mean
"We Are A Figment of The Collective Imagination") a group of 6 or
more of us
(including Ricki Kilreagan & Gail Litfin) made alotof noise while
kids
romped around us wearing cylindrical boxes around their feet &
lower legs
that we'd originally brought as drums. This was late at night in a
public
square with a central statue & was brought to a halt when an old
woman from
a near-by apartment building came out & chastised us for
disturbing the old
& infirm.
- the Neoist Network's 8th Apartment Festival, London Musicians
Collective, London, UK
- Wednesday, May 23, 1984
- Pete Horobin/Monty Cantsin had drawn a brain on my mostly
shaved head. My haircut at the time was a circle that went around 1 ear in the front
& the other ear in the back. There was an upside-down & backwards
question mark on the back. This was before I had my brain tattoo. For the "Chapati
Circus" I wore a green clown wig hiding it all & a clear plastic "normal"
face mask. My clothes were a jump suit made by & given to me by Nancy
Andrews that had "Discover a Lovelier You" written neatly on it with pictures of
plastic surgery - including "nose jobs" & "tummy tucks". Continuing the tradition
of free neoist haircuts, I had Monty/Pete cut my wig & lather my mask. To
climax this grotesque farce, I eventually ripped my transparent mask apart
in the process of shaving it & Pete pulled off my wig to reveal my
"brain" & the spectacle of my head underneath.
- the Neoist Network's 8th Apartment Festival, London, UK
- late May, 1984
- My lover/travelling companion of the time, Gail Litfin, was
diabetic. She'd had laser surgery on her left eye which had left that eye
blind. Her right eye had hemorrhaged so that all she could see was the red blur
of the pool of blood there. She was legally blind. Since I was leading her
around, we joked about me being her "seeing-eye dog". We bought a dog mask from
a store specializing in animal masks (where Gail almost got caught
shoplifting) & added a leash to my outfit for "completeness". The Festival's
organizer, Monty Cantsin/Pete Horobin, shot a film of Gail leaving our fest HQ with me
on all fours as her "guide dog" (as they say in England), boarding a bus
(where guide dogs ride for free, of course, & the driver didn't question the
unusualness of this particular dog), & shopping in a mall (where we were
kicked out of 1 store).
- Paris, France
- late May?, 1984
- I was periodically visiting my friends Reinhardt U. Sevol
& Via Vidorae in Paris. Reinhardt was an avid at the time &
wasn't planning to participate in the London Apartment Festival so we
decided to form another group to perpetrate actions. Those present at this founding
were Eugenie Vincent, Via, Reinhardt, Gail Litfin, & myself. The name
of the group, Ton Tocock Schisme, was a mesostic made from the names of
previous groups that we'd been involved with. Reinhardt made a flier
announcing "La Fondation d'une Clinique d'une Réalité Cyniquement Inversive". Later,
Reinhardt, Via, & I made a film of the only series of actions made in the
name of this group that I know of. My main part in it was wearing chef's
coveralls that R.U.S. had swiped from his hotel kitchen job which had the title
& credit for the film on it while laying on my back on the longest
pedestrian conveyor belt in the Paris subway. Reinhardt filmed while people
navigated their way past my obstacle.
- near the White House, Washington DC, us@
- October 31 (Halloween Day), 1984, 10:30AM - 1PM
- In an action conceived of & co-ordinated by Doug Retzler,
people wore
cardboard "Halloween" masks with Reagan faces on them with null signs
over them
& distributed anti-Reagan literature to convince voters to vote
for anyone
but him. The gist of the message was "If You're Not Scared, You Ought
To Be." I
was photographed by the secret service while wearing mine. If only
Reagan could
have been arrested as a result in a case of mistaken identity,
eh?
- the Severn Institute, Annapolis, us@
- December 8, 1984
- I made a form love letter which had the dual function of
exploiting the
aphrodisiacal qualities of romanticism & making fun of the
absurdity of it.
I often filled in the name of a person that I was sincerely attracted
to &
gave the letter to them in places where the lighting was so low it
wasn't
obvious it was a xerox. Even though the letter was written in a
deliberately
"poetic" overkill style, I found most women to be surprisingly
responsive to
it. My intention hadn't been to "humiliate" anyone but just to have a
mutual
laugh over the ridiculousness of my own extreme romanticism &
that of
anyone who might share it. Sometimes it backfired somewhat. For this
reading, I
addressed the letter to 2 different women & had them read it
simultaneously.
- The Saint Mark's Poetry Project, New York City, us@
- Monday, May 27, 1985
- This was meant to be a fairly straight-forward presentation
of some of my
films with my presence adding little more to it than the possible
giving out of
MIKE FILM DISTRIBUTION FORMS (forms containing some of the
approximately 46,800
super-8 frames of film that I'd cut up for the purpose of having them
put in
odd places around the world + information about what other people had
done with
theirs) & my cutting a "double negative" symbol into my leg with
an exacto
knife while my film "A Double Negative As Not A Positive" (a
quasi-document
made with HannaH AvivA / Casandra vonRinteln of us cutting into each
other's
skin with exacto knives). Much to my surprise though, the audience
called me a
psychopath (which I sometimes think of myself as) & tried to stop
the
showing of "Neoist Guide Dog" (see the entry about this) because they
thought I
was exploiting the "poor blind woman". Much to the
projectionist/organizer Mark
Nasdor's credit he resisted them & the short "show" went to its
conclusion.
- Cafe Anthrax, Stamford, Connecticut, us@
- May 30, 1985, 8PM
- I don't remember much of what I did for this other than the
usual
presentation of films & vaudios but I do remember not having any
pants on
when the cops arrived there. Much to my surprise I wasn't arrested -
despite
the fact that the majority of my audience were probably
teenagers.
- t he No Business as Usual Benefit, St Johns Church,
Baltimore, us@
- June 29, 1985
- More video simultaneous with booed usic in which the main
other visual
element was me frantically trying to save the borrowed stereo
amplifier that I
was blowing. The booed usicians: Beef Jerky (guitar), Herr Brain
Storm Drain
(percussion), myself (tapes, records, radio, ring modulator,
voice).
- Galaxy Ballroom, Baltimore, us@
- Monday, January 27, 1986, 9 - 11:30PM
- Attendees were given a paper entitled "19 Preposterous Lies
About What
Will & Will Not Happen" & a Mike Film Form Letter (see a
previous entry
for a superficial explanation of this 1) & a "bruise"
rubber-stamping to indicate that they paid when they entered. I wore
shoes made
from loaves of bread; presented films, slides, & vaudeos; cut a
"double
negative" shape in my leg; I read Tony Lowe's "Universal Famine
Appeal" while
launching his balloons with slogans on them like "Thoughts Can Fly";
the
audience was prompted to "sing along" to the "graphic notation" of my
film
"Sound Along W/ t he Bounding Ball(s)"; & the booed usicians
played. For
this occasion they were: Herr Brain Storm Drain (percussion, cornet),
Beef
Jerky (small instruments, etc..), Mark Harp (tapes), Norman Yeh
(violin &
piano), & myself (tapes, records, & radios). Projectionist:
Joan
Lobell. To quote from the "19 Lies" flier "The average person prefers
to only
experience the consonant - by which I mean experience which they fool
themselves into thinking that they are comfortably familiar with. I
do not want
the average person near me. I prefer the dissonant vowels. That's a
thought to
take into consideration when you wonder why I might lie when
publicizing public
it shows (mad scientist didactions) that I instigate &
participate
in."
- Tufts University, Massachussetts, us@
- Thursday, April 17, 1986, 9 - 11PM
- This didaction had the usual mix of films, vaudeos,
anecdotes, slides,
& booed usic - with the addition (which became a staple thruout
the "6
Fingers Crossed Country T.Ore/Tour" that this was the 1st installment
of) of
mechanical "lewd" dancing during the projection of the peep show
movie "Balling
Tim Ore is Best" (that I co-made as Tim Ore with Dick Hertz). I was
naked
except for a sweatshirt with a model of 6 tits on it, ankle bells,
& a
plastic ball & chain that had "work" painted on it during this
latter. The
booed usicians were: Michael Bloom (guitar), Norman Yeh (violin &
lyre),
Jake Dillon (amplified electric football game - unfortunately most of
his
equipment had been recently stolen so this didn't work very well),
& myself
(tapes, records, & radios). Projectionist: Joan Lobell.
- the Bunker of
La Société de Conservation du
Présent,
Montréal, CaNada
- Samedi, 19 Avril, 1986
- John Berndt & I built a maze out of muslin (brought
especially for
this purpose) at the entrance of this space. While people were
filtering in,
Steve Estes' 1/2 hour student video "Drinking & Smoking" was
shown. This
tape is a close-cropped shot showing Steve from the neck down to
mid-torso
& his arms opening a bottle of whiskey & a pack of cigarettes
on a
table in front of him. He then drinks the bottle of whiskey (a pint
if I
remember correctly) in its entirety during the course of the tape
until he
slumps forward onto the table. The booed usic gradually came in
during this. I
was wearing my "Hair Suit" (a pair of coveralls covered with wigs -
an obvious
pun on "hirsute") & the usual combination of booed usic, slide
show, films,
skin cutting, "robotic" lewd dancing with "6 tits" + "ball &
chain" + ankle
bells, vaudeos, attempts to get the audience to "sound along", &
anecdotes
was presented. Representatives of the S.C.P. typed in a description
of the
(did)action while it was happening into a computer which displayed
their typing
on a screen to the audience. This is the "show" that led to 1 idiot
labelling
me a "pornographer disguising himself as an artist". The booed
usicians: John
Berndt (organ), Norman Yeh (violin & lyre), Guy Boulanger
(sound-board
& effects), & myself (tapes, records, radios). Projectionist:
Joan
Lobell.
- Transmission Gallery, Glasgow, Scotland, UK
- Friday, June 17, 1988
- See the previous entry for a description of the beginning.
When I'd
entered with the busking unit, Laura Trussell plugged in the PXL
camcorder to
the tv showing in the front of the suitcase to show the audience
itself &
to create feedback. Then I introduced the night by saying "Hello,
welcome to
the unpopular, but non-elitist, cobbley world of user-friendly
spectacle..
[more specific blither about the Philosopher's Union, etc..] ..&
please
keep in mind that Laura & I are the audience & you're the
performers -
which isn't, by the way, a role-reversal, since performers we will
never be.. -
ANYWAY, enjoy yourself & MIND THE GAP!!" At some
point I'd
congratulate them for having known the password - explaining that
we'd had to
turn away 157 (or whatever) people who hadn't known it (that got a
few laughs).
Then there was 2 hours of "Philosopher's Mouthpieces" - during the
ones that
were non-lingual (particularly Valerie Dearing's) I probably added
busking unit
audio.
- Transmission Gallery, Glasgow, Scotland, UK
- Saturday, June 18, 1988
- See the previous 2 entries. This basically combined the
"best" of both of
these nights in the most linear & didactic way.
- Glasgow Suburban Branch - Bal Tim Ore Undergound Club,
Glasgow, Scotland,
UK
- Wednesday, June 29, 1988
- Glasgow is 2nd only to London as the railroad capitol of the
UK. It had
had (& still has?) various competing railroads & had some
abandoned
lines as a result. Laura Trussell & various new friends of ours
& I
explored Glasgow trying to find a suitable underground location to
found a
"club". We finally picked an abandoned subway station underneath a
botanical
garden. Decorating the club with two 5 foot long papier maché
"boats"
from the Transmission basement & various other things, we
inaugurated the
club with about 17 people. We provided free booze, badges (buttons)
made by
Mark Pawson that identified the club somehow but were printed
black-on-black in
honor of the subterranean darkness, & set up the busking unit
& let
them play with it. The station had large air vents that vented in the
botanical
gardens park but they were surrounded by bushes & most people
probably
didn't even know they were there. So when the busking unit was
playing, people
walking by in the park would hear strange sounds coming from the
bushes.
Eventually, someone must've alerted the cops to these sounds because
they
forced their way thru the bushes & shone flashlights down into
the pit to
try to see what was going on. Threatening to flush us out with dogs
if we
didn't come out, we finally left. Fortunately, by then, the party had
already
basically climaxed. There were no arrests.
- Tentsmuir Park, Scotland, UK
- July 11, 1988
- Laura A. Trueseal, Pete Horobin, & I lugged about 120
pounds or more
of equipment for several miles at my not-very-enthusiastically
received
suggestion so that I could play with the booed usic busking unit (see
previous
entries for explanation) in front of seals in their natural habitat.
I'd wanted
to wear a seal mask while doing so to "attempt to blend in" (more to
observe
their reaction) but Dundee's modest costume shop only had Donald Duck
representing the aquatic world so I reluctantly rented the duck mask.
In order
to reach where the seals were, we had to ford a narrow point of an
arm of the
North Sea to reach a sand bar & walk further out on it. When we
arrived,
most of the seals slithered into the water to watch from greater
safety. Their
heads bobbed up & down - continuously looking in our direction.
Only a
couple of younger seals stayed ashore. 1 older 1 stayed briefly but
finally
left somewhat sluggishly. I stripped & put on the Donald Duck
mask &
set up the busking unit to play it. The seals were too far away to
have much of
an experience of that, especially considering that it wasn't very
loud in
contrast to the sea & the wind, so I nervously decided to get in
the rather
cold water to give them a closer look at me at least. Knowing nothing
about
seals, & not being able to see very well with the mask on, I was
afraid the
seals might try to bite me thinking I was threatening their children.
Back
ashore again, I was squatting by the water-line when 1 of the younger
seals
approached from a few feet away curiously coming directly toward me.
Still
awkward as an inter-species diplomat (despite that being my partial
purpose for
being there) I started to stand to back away. This body language was
apparently
interpreted as an act of hostility & the seal hunched its back
& hissed
at me. So for those likely to "follow in my footsteps", don't hunch
your back
at a seal if you want to "break the ice".
- Festival of Non-Participation, VAUDIO Weekend, Dundee
Resource Center for
the Unemployed, Dundee, Scotland, UK
- Friday, July 22, 1988
- The space had an intricate Graham Harwood xerox mural on the
wall behind
me. Given that this was the Resource Center for the Unemployed &
that
Graham had lived on the dole for something like 8 years by this
point, this was
remarkably appropriate. There was a 4 foot screen tv in the middle
with a film
projection screen above & behind it. The booed usic busking unit
was on top
of the tv. Starting off wearing my "leper-skin suit" (a tattered
white linen
suit with color xerox heat transfers of pictures of lepers &
rotting skin
of lepers & an obvious take-off of the leopard-skin clothes that
were
popular when I made the suit), I eventually stripped off a layer to
reveal my
zipper clothes (pants & a jacket made entirely from zippers)
& during
the "Balling Tim Ore is Best" section unzipped the front of my jacket
to reveal
my "6 tits" sweatshirt. Following the usual procedure of showing
films &/or
vaudeos with anecdotal prefaces in between, by midway thru I'd added
the moving
around of a safety lamp to complicate the lighting, reveal the mural
when the
lights were otherwise off to enhance the projection situation, &
to enable
me to use the busking unit. For the last half of the show, I played
the busking
unit & presented Philosopher's Union Member's Mouthpieces on its
tv. For
the last 3rd of the night, I had "You Haven't Heard the Record, You
Haven't
Read the Book, NOW! Don't See the Movie!" projecting at a slow
speed
while a couple of other vaudeos preceeded its presentation on the tv
at a
faster speed - enabling the 2 versions to be out-of-sync, in-sync,
&
out-of-sync with each other again.
- the Collective Gallery, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK
- Saturday, July 30, 1988
- This was the pinnacle of my UK didactions in inside,
scheduled
circumstances. In an attempt to make my presence more exciting &
the films
& vaudeos less gruelingly long, I pared down the length of the
program
& added more planned action. Tired of the miniscule audiences, I
made a
poster on which I called myself a "FAMOUS NEW YORK PERFORMANCE ARTIST
&
CLOSE PERSONAL FRIEND OF GENESIS P. ORRIDGE". I did attract a
slightly
larger crowd but whether it had anything to do with my misleadingness
I don't
know. Amongst the new elements added to the usual simultaneous film,
vaudeo,
story-telling, & booed usic busking unit were my taking my vital
signs data
(as participation in Pete Horobin's decade-long data project). I had
drunk
alotof water beforehand so that I was wriggling with a desperate need
to pee
thruout. When I began to show my piss-in-the-mouth
SubGenius movie,
"Pee on
"Bob"'s Head", I finally allowed myself to pee
- thusly beginning the data section. I pissed thru a cored
banana - thusly
using the old extended dick in a banana joke. I was pissing into a
pint jar but
I'd had to piss so bad that it overflowed onto the floor. Then I used
a
urinalysis test strip, took my blood pressure & pulse,
etc..
- Festival of Non-Participation, Glasgow Green, Glasgow,
Scotland, UK
- Monday, August 8, 1988, 8PM
- Organized by Kenny Murphy-Roud (sp?), this part of the fest
was a burning
of art works on a garbage pile in a section of a park used for
sports. As Tim
Ore, I made a "gallery" painting with this text on it "The Artist
Does Not
Grant The Purchaser of This Painting the Right to Guard It in Any
Way". With
Laura A. Trueseal acting as my "agent" we made a show of selling the
painting
to Kenny for 1 pence. It was then burnt.
- Murraygate Shopping Mall, Dundee, Scotland, UK
- Saturday, August 13, 1988
- Busking is legal in Scotland. Therefore, buskers are a
regular feature of
shopping areas in Dundee. On the day that we decided to busk at
Murraygate,
there was a guy playing acoustic guitar & playing such things as
Simon
& Garfunkel songs. The only other busker there that day was doing
representational chalk drawing on the sidewalk. No-one seemed to pay
much
attention to them but they would throw them coins. We set up the
booed usic
busking unit in front of a John Menzies store. I was wearing my
zipper clothes
& had an infinity symbol shaped hair-do (it looked more like ring
worm
ouroborous). Vex (Mike Kane) played his guitar amplified thru the
busking unit.
L.A.W. (Laura Ann Walker) made more original & personalized chalk
drawings
than the usual fare. Laura A. Trueseal & I alternated between
shooting PXL
footage & "concrete mixing" with the busking unit. The mixers
allowed us to
move both our sounds & Vex's guitar playing thru the 4 speakers.
We put a
white shirt on the ground that had "Yes, This Is Busking!" written on
it &
I made an attempt to get people to give us money. We attracted a
fairly large
crowd of curious & baffled people, unlike the other buskers, who
actually
stayed & watched. However, again unlike the other buskers, only a
few
people would give us money. Eventually, the John Menzies employees
complained
to the police about the noise & about the crowd blocking their
store
without coming in & the police chased us away. We made
approximately 2
pounds. Pete Horobin shot a vaudeo quasi-document of all
this.
- during the Edinburgh International Theatre Festival (or
whatever it's
called), Edinburgh, Scotland, UK
- Saturday, August 20, 1988
- Setting up with the busking unit on a field of stones 40 feet
or so across
from a woman selling extremely generic water-color landscapes as a
part of some
sort of outdoor crafts fair. Playing the busking unit with dense
gusto, I
attracted a crowd who turned their backs on her water-colors. Georg
Ladanyi
shot a super-8 film of this (I'd like to see it some day Georg!).
However,
perhaps being intimidated by my zipper clothes, my shaved head with
brain
tattoo, the stone field I was in the middle of, & the
conceptually perverse
aggressiveness of my sound output, people kept a "safe" distance of
at least 20
feet or more from me. Before long, the woman trying to sell her
landscape
paintings came over & screamed at me to stop because I was
distracting her
customers! I just screamed back & continued until I was bored
with it
all.
- First International Anathema Party Takeover (the One
Millionth Neoist Apartment Festival), Chameleon Bar, Lower East Side / NYC
Akademgorod, us@
- Flaming Wednesday, November 23, 1988
- Having been scheduled to present projected vaudeos in a bar I
knew that it
was highly unlikely that anyone would pay attention to them. Given
that people
will usually notice the wail of a baby in almost any environment, I
invited an
acquaintance of mine, Debbie Montgomery, to help me with the show by
being on
the stage in front of the screen with her 11 month old baby. The
organizational
conditions at the bar being almost completely indifferent to whether
anything
was arranged for me before the show, I found myself competing with
"Star Trek"
when it came time for me to do a sound-check. "Star Trek" was far
more
important to the patrons of the bar so my "sound-check" was cursory.
Debbie
& I taped contact mikes to the baby & she was encouraged to
play with
the baby in a way that would make her vocal (without hurting her).
The contact
mikes were plugged into the house sound system. It was hoped that if
the baby
were making alotof noise in front of the screen that people might
occassionally
look down the tunnel space next to the bar & see some of the
movies. I had
been assured by the organizer of the festival, Monty Cantsin/Istvan
Kantor,
that the whole night was mine & that I could present movies for 3
hours if
I wanted to. Nonetheless, when the time came for me to present the 90
minutes
that I'd planned, Monty tried to convince me to stop halfway thru so
that other
people that he'd told could do something could start. I refused -
hence Monty's
organizing left me looking like an egomaniac. Another fine
contentious time was
had by all. Eventually, for the last 1/2 hour or so, I invited some
of the more
vocal people on stage to liven things up & people shouted
revolutionarily
to their near-content.
- First International Anathema Party Takeover (the One
Millionth Apartment Festival), Stockwell Galero, Lower East Side / NYC Akademgorod
- Steam Power Friday, November 25, 1988
- Another contentious evening in which the cops came to stop a
scrap-metal
concert from occurring as a result of a noise complaint (or some
such).
D.J.Steve (of the scrap metal contingent) was angry because he'd
carried all
that heavy metal to the gallery & saw no good reason why he
should stop
playing just because the cops had once again interfered. Pamela, from
the
gallery, & Monty argued with him that the gallery couldn't afford
the
trouble. Both D.J.Steve & Monty/
Istvan are very energetic &
argumentative. Their face-off reached monumental proportions during
which Steve raised a lead pipe as if to strike
Istvan on the head. Meanwhile,
John Berndt
wandered around blindfolded. Being rather bemused by it all rather
than emotionally involved (for a change), I suggested to Steve that
hitting Monty on
the head with a lead pipe might be overkill. A friend of Steve's
later told me that Steve had told him that I had prevented Steve from killing
Monty.
Somewhere in the midst of all this, Peter Pan (a.k.a. Peter Zahorecz)
& I gave a brief & unobtrusive demonstration of the busking
unit.
- The Attic, Baltimore, us@
- November 30, 1988
- This was originally scheduled to be the cLosing of Karen Eliot's
"Para cultural Exhibition" but it coincidentally turned into the
aftermath of the Losing of my bookstore job (weelll.., I didn't actually
lose it, I
was fired). This presentation was from Karen Eliot (John
Berndt), Karen Eliot (Peter Pan), & Karen Eliot (myself) - all playing various
tapes & electronics. I played the busking unit/blatnerphone w/ Philosopher's
Mouthpieces. Given that I was a bit angry about the circumstances of
"losing" "my" job, my penultimate participation was spent ranting about money
etc.. - followed by a spirited playing of a pan of meat. The other Karens
contributed such things as rewritten Hardy Boys material & Muson
playing.]
- D.C. Space, Washington DC, us@
- Wednesday, February 8, 1989
- This was much the same as the premier of "Generic As-Beenism"
already described with the same personnel. The main difference was the
addition of the booed usic busking unit with which I ended the "spectacle" by
wheeling it, still showing a "P.U.M.M.", thru the audience & out the door to
the streets.
- Art Strike Attic, Baltimore, us@
- April 16, 1989
- I've fantasized about a group to be called the "Vengeful Clowns" which
would consist of all the most abused outcasts that I know taking
revenge in creative ways. The initials for this group being "V.C." would be
reminiscent of the "Viet Cong". John Berndt kept these initials & proposed the
"Volunteers Collective" as "a loose ensemble of changing "membership", focused on
goals by their individual enthusiasm at each point, on projects which suggest
the participation of a defined group but for which no suitable context
exists here". Most, or all, of our manifestations so far have been as a
social group in which people get to "know" each other thru audio improvisation.
Only those "V.C."s which had an audience & which I participated in are in
this list.
This manifestation included: Neil Feather (former or bendy guitar),
Alan Barysh (alto & soprano sax), John Berndt (oddly-strung guitar,
percussion, SPX-90), Caroline Armstrong (floor percussion & drum-set), Elyce
Semenec (floor percussion), Miekal And (alto sax, voice, computer manipulated
recordings?), myself (drum-set, floor percussion, guitar, alto &
soprano sax), Scott Larson (radio?, small electronics?, animal recordings?,
etc?), Liz Was (drum-set).]
- Apathy Press Benefit, SoWeBohemian Festival, Baltimore, us@
- Memorial Day Weekend, 1989
- Tom DiVenti, the founder & primary publisher of Apathy
Press, rented a dunking booth & asked people published by him to volunteer in it
to try to make money for the press. I've always found the psychology of dunking
booths to be fascinating & repulsive. Usually, the person in the booth
viciously taunts passers-by in an attempt to get them angry enough to try to
dunk them. The exaggerated formalization of what I find to be an all-too-normal
social relation of hateful baiting interests me but I still dislike the
basic oppressive competitiveness of it. Given that this was a benefit for a
press & that the usual dunking booth biz involves talking to the
audience, I decided to give a political reading that both addressed my own
relationship with violence & the potential for social change thru an expanded
sense of non-sadistic humor. Furthermore, knowing that plenty of enemies of
mine would be present at this very popular fest, I thought of this as an
opportunity for them to express their dislike for me in a formalized way which I
could subvert for my own purposes. Sure enough, Tom Dantoni, someone who hates me
more than most in Baltimore, took advantage of the opportunity to walk up to
the target & simply press it to dunk me. Given that this both fulfilled my
expectations (thusly making me feel "wise"), & that I got it on
vaudeo, I was satisfied.
- Neil Feather & Valerie Dearing's Garage, Baltimore, us@
- June 11, 1989
- More audio improvisation from: Neil Feather (nondo, bendy
guitar, vibulum,
etc..), John Kennedy (a.k.a.: John Berndt - oddly-strung guitar,
SPX-90,
percussion, etc..), Caroline Armstrong (nondo, percussion), Elyce
Semenec
(percussion), Clark Snell (?), & myself (percussion, oddly strung
guitar,
nondo, etc..).]
- Kombat Vaudeville, Edge of the Lookingglass, Chicago, us@
- Wednesday, July 12, 1989
- Basically the same "Generic As-Beenism" as before with the
personnel
changed to being Jake T. Unclean wearing the mechanical wings &
giving the
haircut & Peter Pan playing 2 digital delays & tapes. The
busking unit
was used & the "3-D" glasses were thrown to the audience before I
went
amongst them to show off my head. Thanks to Jason for his
help.
- Gallery X, Phoenix, us@
- Sunday, July 16, 1989
- Same line-up as in the previous entry. This 1 ended as the
Washington DC 1
did with me wheeling the busking unit, still showing a P.U.M.M. thru
the
audience & out onto the street. Thanks to Chris Winkler for
projecting the
slides.
- Without Borders @n@rchist G@thering, San Francisco, us@
- July, 1989
- Another outdoor "concert" with the busking unit. Peter Pan,
dressed as a
"chaos scout" (a boy scout with a "chaos" flag), plugged in his
digital delays
to it. 1 kid came up to us & asked if he could rap with us. We
tried miking
him with a contact mike but it didn't work too well.
- JAVA, Athens, Georgia, us@
- late July or early August, 1989, 1AM
- This was most interesting for its location: an ex-gas-station
turned into
a combination bicycle repair place & late-night coffee shop -
very cramped.
I projected films & Peter Pan & I played with the busking
unit &
the 2 digital delays - all squished into the general
mish-mash.
- Displace, Baltimore, us@
- November 4, 1989, 9PM - 1AM
- The 2nd & final public presentation by this group. Neil
Feather &
I spent 20 hours installing our equipment in this room. John Berndt
put in
alotof time too. John Sheehan pulled his usual "difficult" routine by
refusing
to say whether he'd participate or not & then showing up at the
"last"
minute after Neil & I had set up his equipment for him. Neil's
set-up was
the most extreme: he had bowling balls hanging from a metal frame
from piano
wire which swung as pendulums against moveable bridges on necks - the
resultant
sound of the strings hitting the bridges was processed thru a 16
second digital
delay. His other instruments included: Bendy Guitar, Nondo, &
Contraption.
I surrounded myself by 15 drums & cymbals & other metal
things, a
guitar, & a VCR & monitor playing a fairly complex feedback
vaudeo I'd
made. John Berndt was using some sort of home-made oscillator &
Oddly-Strung Guitar - amongst other things. John Sheehan played a
bass that
he'd made from a kit. The agreement that we'd had before-hand was
that we'd
play for about 5 hours - with any of us taking breaks whenever we
felt like it
- but with at least 1 of us playing at all times. There were a few
other
agreed-upon things (few, if any of which, would John Sheehan commit
to
cooperating with) such as playing for an hour straight without any of
us
dropping out & with all of us playing as intensely as we could
stand. When
the time came for this latter, I had been drinking alcohol
& taking
oral morphine & was a bit worried that I might have overdone it
so I played
frenetically to try to work it out of my system. After John Sheehan
dropped
out, the rest us entered a nudist phase. The way the equipment was
set up was
basically so that it filled the large room we were in but so that
people could
walk anywhere around us. In the meantime, Brad Hwang & his
room-mate Matt
were having large mobile machine battles in an adjacent room. In 1
highlight
& neoist reference, John Sheehan donned a sortof hockey face
mask, lit a
steam iron on fire that had a pick-up attached to its bottom, &
played the
pick-up by banging a piano wire against it that was mounted between 2
boards
that he held between 1 foot & 1 very begloved hand.
- Displace, Baltimore, us@
- Saturday, December 16, 1989
- The final version of "Generic As-Beenism" had projection
problems but was
distinguished by having Laura A. Trueseal back, John Berndt playing
synthesizer
from the back of the space, & Jake T. Unclean performing a
shadow-puppet
show with giblets on the side from behind a parachute or some other
large drop.
This audience-surround aspect, the over-all funkiness of it, &
the wacky
visceral irrelevance of the giblets' squishy presence made this a
particularly
memorable moment in "Cobbley World History".
- VEX, Swann Park, Baltimore, us@
- March, 1990
- This Krononautic Organism's Vernal Equinox party took place
at a
particularly toxic waste dump type environment in Baltimore City.
Dick Turner's
contribution was to premier his piece scored for car horns (&
lights). I
participated as 1 of the car players.]
- Blockbuster, Baltimore, us@
- May 5, 1990
- This was the premier of the group that Neil Feather & I
founded that
we decided to call the "official group for any occasion". Given that
36 of the
next 42 entries were done under the umbrella of this project, it's
probably a
good idea to restrict the information of "official" entries in some
way to
avoid too much redundancy. Therefore, I won't list our
instrumentation, I'll
try to give a coherent general outline of our approach in this entry
only,
& I'll stick to concise participant info at the end of each. We
worked with
what we call CAMUs - an acronymn for "Cue Activated Modular Units".
This means
parameters for playing that can be activated by any player at almost
any time
by cueing with previously agreed upon signals. The rules for these
parameters
could be anywhere in the range between simple to convoluted with
players having
to make quick mathematical calculations in order to play accents in
sync with
the other players, etc.. The CAMUs included guidelines for behaviour.
The "John
Trubee Squee-Gee Blivet" (named by John Berndt partially in honor of
the
"reality" undermining confrontationalness of John Trubee' s infamous
prank
phone calls) was performed by suddenly confronting an audience member
as if you
were a "schizophrenic" street person (perhaps with Tourette's
Syndrome) &
screaming emotionally charged gibberish in their face
as if it were
"all their
fault". This early show was fairly simple but the later shows got to
be so
complicated that it amazed all of us that we could remember so many
parameter
guidelines & follow them so quickly. Personnel: Herr Brain Storm
Drain,
Courtney McCullough, Neil Feather, myself.]
- Anti-Racist-Skinheads Rally, Baltimore, us@
- spring, 1990
- At the suggestion of Professor "Footlong" Franks (David
Franks), we
collaborated on founding this bogus support group. Given that to most
people I
was a "skinhead" at the time because I had a shaved head that's
tattooed &
"looked tough" & wore a flight jacket & steel-toe boots, I
was pretty
sick of "skinhead" stereotyping. It seems that outside agitators came
to town
& tried to stir up "skinheads" as white-supremacists. Then the
"skinheads"
tried to get a parade permit to walk thru a notoriously racist white
neighborhood. Anti-racist & pacifist forces in the neighborhood
fought the
granting of the permit & the city officials agreed to let the
parade happen
in front of city hall (where there are Jewish history plaques). The
media
jumped on this with relish. Hot Dog! Their stupid oversimplifications
&
sensationalizing reduced "skinheads" to being only white & only
racist -
completely not noticing that Baltimore had black skinheads, that
black &
white skinheads hung out with each other, & that an anti-racist
skinhead
group existed. Thus every white male with a shaved head became a
target for
volatile blacks too stupid to see thru the media hype. All this
increased
racial tension rather than decreased it thusly playing right into the
same old
"divide & conquer" scenario that's kept the poor fighting each
other for
who knows how long.. At any rate, "Footlong" & I co-made a
pamphlet (my
portion was done under the name of "Moms" Brutus) parodying the whole
thing
meant to be handed out at the white supremacist rally. Anti-racists
planned a
counter-rally but the racists cancelled saying that they only wanted
to rally
in the all-white neighborhood. The counter-rally happened anyway
&
"Footlong" & I & some other cohorts attended to hand out our
pamphlets.
Jake T. Unclean handed out a flier from "Girls Shave in Solidarity".
"Footlong"
sported a rainbow-afro wig & I wore my "Hair Suit" (covered with
wigs)
& a wig on my head. When I pulled off my wig, people gasped "a
skinhead!"
Most of the "leftists" were as knee-jerkingly predictable & dumb
as ever -
afraid to "let us" speak because they were afraid of the language
we'd use
& not too sure we'd be politically correct. In the end they
nervously gave
us the platform. "Footlong" & I read from our pamphlet while Jake
shaved
her legs. The media so misrepresented this anti-racist rally as being
some big
defeat of the "skinheads" rather than the rag-tag affair it really
was that,
even as a participant in it, I couldn't stomach it all.
- Patapsco Park, Maryland, us@
- June 23, 1990
- Our 2nd "official" gig this was actually for some friends'
wedding! During
1 part when we started rhythmically describing the trees around us 1
friend got
so excited that she started jumping up & down. To her
embarrassment, she
was wearing a dress with nothing underneath that was tied loosely
behind her
neck & the dress fell off. At another point, after a plant in the
audience
cued us with "Just show us your bathing suits & eat your
pretzels!" we
stripped off our outer clothes to reveal 1 piece "girl's"
bathingsuits. Other
highlights, other than the greatness of our playing, were the wedding
guests
trying to convince us that the state police had come to the park
because of
complaints & that we really should stop. Personnel: Jake
T. Unclean,
Laura A. Trueseal, Courtney McCullough, Neil Feather, &
myself.
- Baltimore, us@
- July 10, 1990
- Two sets with the same line-up as the previous entry (our
briefly
stabilized quintet - notice that the # of players indicated by our
name never
coincides with the actual # of players).]
- Baltimore, us@
- July 21, 1990
- More & more CAMUs coupled, for this show, with my
"Wallpaper Video" of
a loop of an initially intact set of windows being wrecked by a
wrecking-ball
with the loop causing its reconstitution playing over & over
& over..
In the spirit of wrecking, I accidentally smashed my watch during the
"Wreck"
CAMU. Personnel: the same quintet as the previous 2 entries.
- Displace, Baltimore, us@
- August 17, 1990
- More & more & more CAMUs with the introduction
of my
explaining that we play "Aleatoric "Fortean" Novelty MYTHO-GOSSIP
Usi(al
Service Industry So-Called Whatevers".]
- Ringing Rocks State Park, Pennsylvania, us@
- August 26, 1990
- Ringing Rocks State Park is a park in N.E. Pennsylvania with
a boulder
field with rocks that ring with substantial resonance when struck.
Prepared
with hammers to strike the rocks & other small sound-makers
(slide-whistles, deer grunt, salsa, etc..) we played 5 "sets" of
"free-form"
& CAMUs. The 1 listed here was the 1 that attracted a small
audience. On
all but this 1, Alfred Merchlinsky played with us. Personnel: the
stabilized
quintet minus Courtney McCullough.
- Baltimore, us@
- August 28, 1990
- More & more & more & more CAMUs. This time
coupled with an
explanatory "Official Business" booklet & my "One Word per Person
Party"
vaudeo. By now, we'd probably started playing with fire - so, during
the
"Wreck" section we lit pieces of flash paper that we'd taped around
&
carried off the "injured". I introduced us wearing a Gorbachov mask
&
clothes that were all black on 1 side & all white on the other.
My hair was
dyed to match. Personnel: the afore-mentioned quintet.
- BAUhouse, Baltimore, us@
- September 14, 1990
- Even more CAMUs. This may've been the beginning of our
snake-charming
music bit. The quintet.
- Baltimore, us@
- October 12, 1990
- Even even more CAMUs. Snake-charming had become "Worm
Charming". The
quintet.]
- Baltimore, us@
- October 13, 1990
- A different show from the night before given that almost
every show
involved new CAMUs in a new modular relationship that became more
& more
complicated. Both these Cabaret shows involved at least video &
probably
film. The quintet.]
- BAUhouse, Baltimore, us@
- October 25, 1990
- Courtney McCullough preferred to be bar-tender this night.
Another
action-packed night full of drastically shifting structure with
unusual
instrumentation & even a little bit of "3rd World" "rip-off". The
quintet
minus C.
- Masonic Temple rental space, Baltimore, us@
- December 31 (New Year's Eve), 1990
- Neil Feather was in Mexico during this 1. Flaming kitchen
sink, flashlight
on a turntable, a Spike Jones cover, Brad-A-Lon, a pre-programmed
electric
piano deserted by Courtney's Zanex (sp?) addled lounge lizard
dad.
- Washington Monument, Baltimore, us@
- January 18, 1991
- A local paper had run an article about how the US government
was planning
to launch a satellite so explosive that if it were to blow up in the
biosphere
most humans & other such big biological things would be killed.
Jake T.
Unclean organized this quasi-nihilistic quasi-millenarian ranting
session. With
John Eaton & Erica Freudenberger we used a megaphone to ask
everyone around
us what they would do if they really thought they were going
to die
tommorow. Despite our prompting, we were the only ones who expressed
any ideas
along these lines. 1 black skinhead did harass me for "knowing" that
I "looked
slick".
- Washington Monument, Baltimore, us@
- February?, 1991
- John Eaton, co-editor of the magazine "Reality Sandwich"
& I basically
thought of this 1. As response to the Gulf War we made 4 large picket
signs.
The 1st read: "Honk Once if You Love Jesus!" (a common christian
bumper-sticker), the 2nd: "Honk Twice if You Love Allah!" (you've
heard of
him haven't you?), the 3rd: "Honk 3 Times if You Love
Jehovah!" (is it
all beginning to blur together?), the 4th: "Honk As Much As You Like
If You
Just Want Them All To Leave You Alone!" (this pretty much summed up
our
position). Most people passing by in cars only had time to read the
1st 1 or 2
if they read from left to right & thought we were religious
fanatics. Jake
T. Unclean & Erica Freudenberger added their usual zest &
zeal.
- Washington DC, us@
- February?, 1991
- Same as the preceeding presented at a more conventionally
organized
protest. Jake may've come up with her "War Causes Rampant
civilian Yeast
Infections" - "Don't Do Anything Rash Advise World Leaders" by
then.
- Neil Feather & Valerie Dearing's Garage, Baltimore, us@
- May 18, 1991, 3PM
- The "official" project had shrunk to its founding duet. This
marked the
premier of the "78" CAMU - a sequence of 78 beats that was to
generate many a
groan of anxiety from "official" players to encounter it. Personnel:
Neil
Feather, myself.]
- Neil Feather & Valerie Dearing's Garage, Baltimore, us@
- May 19, 1991, 3PM
- See the previous entry.]
- an alley in the SoWeBohemian Festival, Baltimore, us@
- Memorial Day Weekend, 1991
- Laughingtree was a "performance" group that based their
themes around
extrapolated hypothetical insect culture. They wore elaborate insect
costumes
& did things like dragged around huge clumps of cutlery while
playing
tightly worked out rock'n'roll medleys. Toward their demise, they
started
concentrating more on improvising rather than r'n'r. I had a cameo
appearance
playing piezo miked small percussion. The other main personnel were:
Clark
Snell (insektar), Peter Williams (bass), Lyle Kissack (drums), Carol
Shuford
(cutlery clump), & probably others..
- BAUhouse, Baltimore, us@
- August 13, 1991
- The premier of Neil Feather's new instrument: the "Apex Roto
Zither". This
is a 24 string semi-automatic music machine made using such things as
a
steering wheel, a fishing rod, a sewing machine, a door-knob,
multiple pick-ups
- some moving, etc, etc.. It can be played by "remote-control". For
this show
we started out in a different room from the audience & the
instruments.
Thru a mike with a long cord we instructed members of the audience to
go to the
instruments & do certain things to get them started on their
semi-automatic
course. "Blaster" Al Ackerman was asked to turn on the vibrators of
Neil's
"Vibulum", Laura A. Trueseal was asked to turn the Roto Zither's
steering
wheel, Carol Shuford was asked to step on the bowling ball fragment
which
activated the 16 second digital delay. Eventually Neil, John Berndt,
& I
came out wearing red clown noses & proceeded to play for another
80 minutes
- trying to highlight Neil's instruments. This was probably the 1st
time that
we'd used foot-pedal controlled lights for "atmospheric" lighting
effects.]
- 'Patanational PXL-2000 Movie Festival, BAUhouse, Baltimore,
us@
- October 28, 1991
- Leading to the intermission in the PXL fest, Neil Feather
& I played
such things as small & demi Nondos while Valerie Dearing's
Philosopher's
Union Member's Mouthpiece played. I played my Nondo with wind-up toys
&
played vibraphone in public for the 1st time.
- Baltimore, us@
- December 13, 1991
- The premier of the "Big Band" version of the "official"
project. "Medium
Band" might be a better way to describe us since we'd started out
with 20
members & shrunk to 10 by this time. Fortunately, we'd already
recorded the
1st side of our record when there were still 15 members left. Our 1st
2 shows,
other than a "Beach Party" tv show, had been cancelled. 1st we'd been
scheduled
to play at an elementary school under a joint arts department /
science
department sponsorship. Then we were scheduled to play at a prison
where they
hadn't been able to get any "entertainment" for months. Supposedly a
convict
committee had listened to our tape & rejected us! By this point
we had a
complex repetoire more tightly challenging than what the founding
quintet had
played with if only because of the doubling of membership. This was
at our
warehouse practice space & we played in a circle, as was our
typical
rehearsal practice. Personnel: Jake T. Unclean, Neil Feather,
Courtney
McCullough, Dawn Culbertson, John Berndt, Peter Williams, Scott
Larson, Chris
Astier, John Eaton, & myself.]
- Baltimore, us@
- December 14, 1991
- The 2nd set of our premier - distinguished from the 1st set
because Peter
Williams didn't play with us on this 1 (&, besides, we had a
different
name!).]
- Baltimore, us@
- January 18, 1992
- 1 of my favorite aspects of the "official" structure is that
it's a
conceptual approach that doesn't always require the use of specific
instruments
& props. Given my usual interest in penetrating "ordinary"
situations, I
tried to co-ordinate participants in the project to structure their
interactions in social situations around CAMUs - as always, keeping a
straight
face in the interest of making it difficult for any unwitting
audience to be
"sure" about what was going on. E.g.: 1 player would start telling a
wild story
that would lead to something that the listener would presumably want
to hear
the outcome of & then digress - continuing this pattern to
prevent any
story climaxes from being reached. Other players would respond by
either
talking simultaneously or sequentially using the same structure. This
is
called, predictably enough, the "Digression" CAMU. Or a player could
cue the
"Ill-timed Preparation for an Encore" by suddenly leaving a room
& doing
something furtive somewhere - with the other players also leaving
& doing
something furtive. Our 1st attempt at this was at a party at Alan
Barysh's. It
wasn't very successful partially because the other partiers (our
un-witting
"straight" "men") were too few. Realizing that there wasn't much
likelihood of
arranging & (quasi-)documenting a more successful version of
this, I
decided to throw a "Fake Party" to do this in so that I could vaudeo
it more
easily. This was accomplished with the assistance of the late, great
John
"Santa Claus" Fonda, the ever-humorous Al "Blaster" Ackerman, Mora
Majorowitz,
the ever-enthusiastic Megan Hamilton, Tim Sheehan, & the
ever-overkill John
Sheehan as the fake partiers. John & Tim made enormous quantities
of
samozas. The "official" fake partiers were Scott Larson, Neil
Feather, John
Eaton, & John Berndt. Chris Astier crossed the line back &
forth
between the 2 categories - usually helping with the food preparation
&
ignoring the "official" procedures. I was the cameraperson &
"director".
Since most of the unofficial fake partiers had never witnessed an
"official"
presentation before, they were reasonably good "dead
weight".
- 14 Karat Cabaret, Baltimore, us@
- March 21, 1992
- Being on a double bill with John Duncan I decided against
using any
"sexual" film &/or vaudeo material & chose to present the
more subtly
conceptual "official" material instead. With Neil Feather surrounded
by his
inventions on the front of the stage to the audience's frontal left
& me
surrounded by my "erector set" percussion & many other devices
behind him,
the visual emphasis was overwhelmingly on construction. To the
audience's
frontal right was a movie screen on which I premiered an
approximately 1/2 hour
version of my 16mm film (still in progress as of this writing)
entitled "John
Lennon's Erection As Blocking Our View Homage & Cheese Sandwich"
- a
technically diverse, "non-linear", multi-mood extravanganza that
parallels the
"official" project in its genre reference juxtapositioning. Neil
& I played
largely in the dark occasionally flashing our foot-pedal controlled
lights like
lightning flashes to give the audience fleeting glimpses of the
elaborateness
of our gear. Much of the film contains construction footage so the
feeling was
of something elaborate being built inexorably in front of you too
quickly to be
able to grasp it all.
- "Progressions" Series, University of Maryland, Baltimore
County Campus, us@
- April 29, 1992
- I had been invited to present films as a part of this
"interdisciplinary"
required course for the supposedly more sophisticated arts students.
Wanting to
present the "official" "Big Band" that had been practicing for almost
a year
with no place to play outside our practice space, I plugged a "show"
with both
my movies & the band. The result was probably 1 of the biggest
extravaganzas of "reality" undermining the students are ever likely
to be
subjected to. They hated me. They hated US. They wrote
papers
about it which the teacher was kind enough to give to me. I published
them,
unedited (i.e.: replete with spelling errors) in a book called
"Reactionary
Muddle America". Don't expect to get much of an idea about the
presentation
from their papers though. More inaccurate accounts could hardly be
generated. 1
woman wrote that after she left the show she could hardly find her
way out of
the building. I'm surprised any of them ever found their way
in in the
1st place. A large poster with computer graphics greeted them at the
entrance.
A tad-pole on the poster became a "sperm" in 1 of the students
papers. 14 page
carefully computer typeset booklets were available at the door as
hand-outs.
These contained a list of the movies to be shown, a
political-philosophical
text, my complete movieography (with 114 listings), graphics, a list
of band
members & their instruments, a table of the CAMUs that we planned
to use in
the presentation, a brief explanation of our playing, a brief
description of a
complex sample CAMU, an article advertising the "show", & the 3
posters
made for the show. All of this was made especially for this night. In
other
words, we gave them something more carefully made than any of them
were ever
likely to make in order to get their diplomas! I presented 8 vaudeo
projected
movies - a total of 67 minutes + the time of my prefaces. 1 woman
walked out
after 15 minutes & cried for the next 45. Then it was time for
the band. A
55 minute version of "John Lennon's Erection As Blocking Our View
Homage &
Cheese Sandwich" was projected with a black rectangle blocking its
middle so
that there would be a blank space that the vaudeo could be projected
into. I
was on stage & the rest of the band were spaced about in the
audience. In a
carefully pre-planned sequence, I improvised a meandering "Neuro
Linguistic
Introduction" in which, by using hand signals, the band was cued to
anticipatorily call out words in unison that fit my "narrative".
These words
collectively formed a stretched out sentence introducing our band
name. Then we
segued into a "Simon" in which each band member said the word or
words that the
previous band member had said & added a word to the sequence
until every
band member had added something twice. Then we segued into a
simultaneous reading of a text in which our simultaneous accenting of
35 out of
78 beats was an example of what the text was about. Then John
Berndt
came on stage from the audience wearing a turban-like head piece
& led the
group in an "Imitative Unison" after which the whole band came on
stage playing
screamers. To kick off our stage set, we played an instrumental
version of "78"
in perfect coordination. This was what 1 brilliant young scholar
called
"everybody doing their own thing all at once". Gee, I'm sure glad we
got
recognition for our 10 months of practice. I had 4 videos playing
simultaneously with the ability to have 1 of the 4 projected into the
middle of
the 16mm projection & 1 to appear on the 2 monitors on either
side of the
stage. The 4 tapes were: "Teaser" - a continually repeated shot of a
penis
trying to penetrate a vagina & popping out before getting a
chance to fully
enter; "Wallpaper Video" - the previously described wrecking ball
wrecking of a
building that had once housed 1 of Baltimore's biggest newspapers
(now defunct)
"The News American", "Concrete Mixing Usical Material Vaudeo #1" - an
hour long
sequence of carefully excerpted portions of some of my more
sensationalist or
strikingly imagistic vaudeos, "Concrete Mixing Usical Material Vaudeo
#2" - an
extremely fast moving summary of most of my movies from 1979 to 1989
- the
slowest shot being a quarter second long. Most of the band
members had
foot-pedal controlled lights which they flashed periodically. For the
penultimate section, the "Worm Charming" part (meant to charm the
worms
in the audience with its simple-minded steady beat) we set various
things on
fire. We had our favorite flaming sink, flaming Brad-A-Lon, flaming
cymbals,
etc.. John Eaton came out playing an alto sax that he'd liberally
dosed the
inside of the bell with the flame-paste that we used to make things
flammable.
Flames were shooting 2 or 3 feet out of the bell &
shooting out the
lower finger holes. When John finally put the sax down in the sink,
all the
welds came apart & the sax fell into its components! 1 student
complained
in his paper that we hadn't properly miked the flaming sax. Too bad
we didn't
just hand it to him so that he could've played it himself. Personnel:
John
Eaton (alto sax, voice), Scott Larson (medium accordion, voice, sink,
abomination), John Berndt (DX7 synthesizer, voice, VSS-30 sampler,
soprano sax,
stephanie palmer apologetica), Peter Williams (bass, voice, pots
& pans,
pipe xylophone), Sarmad Brody (voice, Ensoniq VFX synthesizer),
Courtney
McCullough (voice, tenor sax, bass clarinet), Eric Myers (voice,
cello), John
Dierker (voice, clarinet, bass clarinet, alto sax), Dawn Culbertson
(voice,
bass, brad-a-lon), Neil Feather (former guitar, voice, R.E.SK1
sampler, bell
tree, apex roto zither), myself (voice, "erector set" percussion,
[thwarted]
"terrence dougherty" electronics, trumpet, vibraphone), & Chris
Astier
(voice, fretless bass, tom).
- the Parish Hall, First Unitarian/Universalist Church of
Baltimore, us@
- June 11, 1992
- This 15 minute piece coordinated by Sarmad Brody under the
direction of
the composer involved a "Narrator-Translator", 2 "Players", a "Thread
Man"
& a "Stain Lady", & 6 "choric Depots" - each with 4 members.
This was
an elaborate performance in which the 2 "players" played a game in
stylized
dancer slow motion while the "Narrator-Translator" recited a text
partially
about non-competitiveness, the "choric Depots" vocalized -
occasionally ringing
hand-bells, the "Thread Man" had to weave certain color clothes thru
a fabric
prepared with slits from the back to produce certain symbols &
the "Stain
Lady" had to place certain colored stains from the back of the same
fabric.
Both had to react quickly to signals from the "Narrator-Translator".
I was the
"Thread Man".
- 14 Karat Cabaret, Baltimore, us@
- July 25, 1992
- This was the last "Medium Band" show before a smaller version
of the group
left to go on tour. It was also the only time we performed our
"Ersatz Buddhist
Intro" - followed by a great puppet routine from John Berndt in which
a
punching puppet played a monofilament string held taught by a
circular saw
blade & miked with a piezo transducer. The players lined the side
walls
& the front of the space to partially surround the audience so
that they
could get a clearer perception & sensation of the speed &
complexity of
the player interaction. Many of our CAMUs build &/or move from
player to
player in a circular direction. The more the audience is surrounded,
the more
they can be aware of this. E.g.: in the "Off Beat Off", the cueing
player plays
a pulse, the player to their left plays triplets off the pulse, the
player to
the 2nd player's left plays in sync with the note durations of the
triplets but
shifts the accent to the 1st of every 4 beats rather than the
1st of
every 3. The next player plays a pulse again but in sync with the
accented beat
of the preceeding player rather than that of the initial pulse
provider - this
results in 2 pulses - the 2nd being slower than the 1st. The process
continues.
To the inattentive, it seems that people aren't "playing together"
when in
actuality this playing in different tempos requires strict
discipline. This
performance involved our 1st use of foot-pedal controlled lights in a
systematic rhythm. In a CAMU called the "2 Note - Atomizing Split",
the cuer
starts alternating in a steady rhythm between 2 notes, the rest of
the band
joins in rhythmic sync, half of the band "splits" from the other half
by
playing another 2 note in a different rhythm, then the half from
which they'd
split splits into 2 smaller halves - the splinter group again playing
a
different 2 note, this process continues bouncing back & forth
between the
2 sides until every player is playing only 2 notes but in different
rhythms.
Then the process is reversed until all the players are in sync again.
With the
lighting, each player flashed their light on the 1st of their 2
notes. Thus, it
starts with all lights flashing on & off in sync & gradually
becomes
much more complex - creating elaborate flashes & shadows - &
eventually
reunifies. Very disorienting if 1 isn't following the rhythmic
progression.
This was also the 1st time that we partially used a new element of
the
projection/playing relationship. The final 10 minute reel of my film
"John
Lennon's Erection As Blocking Our View Homage & Cheese Sandwich"
was shown.
New footage in the film was of various people "cueing" CAMUs. At the
end of the
reel shown, the "Wreck" was cued in the film & the players
responded in
kind. Personnel: John Dierker, Scott Larson, John Berndt, Dawn
Culbertson, Eric
Myers, Neil Feather, Courtney McCullough, John Eaton, &
myself.
- Portland School of Art, Portland, Maine, us@
- August 4, 1992
- This marked the beginning of our "official" Tour/Ture. The
group for this
was: Peter Williams (bass, I.V. stand percussion, voice, etc), John
Eaton (alto
sax, stephanie palmer apologetica, voice, percussion, etc), Neil
Feather (bendy
guitar, bell tree, recombinant electronics SK1 sampler, SK1 sampler,
16 second
digital delay, demi nondo, portable vibulum, trombone, voice, etc),
myself
("erector set" percussion, "terrence dougherty" electronics, trumpet,
lap
guitar, voice, etc), & Rebecca Barten (projectionist, voice,
etc). The
usual array of much modular interaction, "2 Note - Atomizing Split"
foot-pedal
lights, flaming metal objects during the "Worm Charming", &
silliness. 1 of
our CAMUs, "Normality", is performed by stopping whatever 1 is in the
midst of
& performing some "normal" activity like combing one's hair or
some such.
In our usual "anti-normal" interpretation of this it could be more
accurately
called the "Argument" because we'd usually pretend to be completely
disgusted
with each other & start yelling criticisms. It's best when the
audience
isn't sure whether we're serious or not. This proves to be very
successful as a
silly cognitive dissonance trick. This was the only stop of the tour
where we
projected 4 16mm films simultaneously: 3 ten minute reels of
the
"Official..Sandwich" & the 10 minute "OUR" - this latter being a
collaborative film made by Rebecca Barten & myself especially to
be shown
in an "official" context. Both the "Official..Sandwich" & "OUR"
have the
same footage of people cueing CAMUs in them. The difference between
them, of
course, is how they're edited & what their other footage is. When
they're
shown simultaneously, they cross-reference each other. In "OUR" a
diversity of
"found" spectacle footage is used. Hurricanes, clowns, earthquakes,
musclemen,
floods, demolition derbys, etc.. During the "ture" we mainly played
"Atavistic
Electronics" during the showing of the films. This was our more
"atmospheric"
genre section. This CAMU is cued by a player playing a sine-wave at
approximately 300 c.p.s. Then another player plays a pitch very close
(often
generated by a looping of Neil's playing his bull's horn) to create a
beating
pattern in the space. The way this can fill a room is very potent.
Then players
with pitch-specific instruments (bass, alto sax, & keyboard were
used on
this tour) play a whole tone scale that includes 300 c.p.s. Thus a
simultaneous
tonality & non-tonality is established. The "tonality" being the
result of
there being the central tone & the "non-tonality" being the
result of there
being no hierarchy of relations between the pitches. The common
associative
effect of the whole-tone scale being the feeling of "floating" or
"drowning"
(as 1 friend put it). This was further developed by the "free"
playing of less
pitch specific recordings, sound effects, & electronics. I often
used the
sounds of loons, african animals, boat horns, explosions, sirens,
mutated
speech, etc, etc as evocations. The combination of the floating
imaging of the
sounds & the visuals as well as the link between the screened
cueing &
the cueing seen amongst the players during other times of the
performance
created strong mutual reinforcement.
- Montréal, CaNada
- August 7, 1992
- Our 1st promotional radio show of the tour. Such situations
were good
opportunities for interaction similar to that of the "Fake Party"
described
earlier. Under the guise of an interview we could follow our
"official" rules
& gradually "abstract" the language. E.g.: the "Mime Pathos
Verbally
Articulated" - 1 of us could suddenly cry out "Ohh, Noooooo.." &
start
describing an imaginary grossly exaggerated mime situation. In this
instance it
was "..I'm a mime & my arms have been cut off. I'm on the radio
& I'm
miming & I'm miming & no-onnnne is paying
attention to
anything that I'm doing.." etc.. Further complicating things were our
inclination to perform these CAMUs simultaneously as well as the same
1 in
sync. Thus Neil was "Explaining" our "Social Security #s" CAMU in a
"normal"
tone of voice when I began wailing the "Mime Pathos". "Conceptual"
rather than
"melodic" counterpoint. Personnel: John Eaton, Neil Feather,
myself.
- CKUT, Montréal, CaNada
- August 7, 1992
- See the previous entry. Personnel: John Berndt, Scott Larson,
Neil
Feather?, John Eaton?, myself.
- Foufounes Electriques, Montréal, Canada
- August 7, 1992
- Hey! A show in a big rock club / disco. Arranged by Jean-Luc
Bonspiel
(formerly known as Kiki Bonbon). The usual array of lighting,
simultaneous dual
projections of a reel of the "Official..Sandwich" & "OUR",
flashlight on a
turntable, disorienting vocal routines, complex rhythms, unusual
instrumentation, etc, etc.. This was the premier of the CAMU CAMU in
which
players pretended to cue & respond to CAMUs that don't exist. We
confused
the audience of this 1 by wandering off stage in a diffused way to
end the show
in such a way so that people would, once again, not "be sure" of what
was
happening. Additional "official" tourists came to Montréal
especially
for this show partially because we thought we might make some money
in the
big rock club. As usual, the joke was on us. Personnel: Eric
Myers, Scott
Larson, John Berndt, Neil Feather, John Eaton, Peter Williams,
myself, &
Rebecca Barten.
- Toronto, CaNada
- August, 1992
- See the previous "official" radio show entries. Personnel:
Peter Williams,
Neil Feather, myself.
- Zerowork Jubilee, the Monastery, Toronto, CaNada
- August 12, 1992
- Dedicated to John Cage, whose music I love & who had just
recently
died. Our already huge repetoire of CAMUs was added to with the
premiers of the
"Ersatz Manicini", the "Ersatz Orientalism", & "78 Set". Back to
the
touring quintet with the usual array already described with the
addition of the
"Baghdad object" (a large metal object with holes in for having a
candle inside
which gave off flickering grid shadows particularly effective during
our "Worm
Charming" section) & a great intro from our beloved friend Monty
Cantsin/Istvan Kantor/AMEN.
- Zerowork Jubilee, the Monastery, Toronto, CaNada
- August 15, 1992
- Having been approached by Katrine Maroukis after the
preceding so-called
whatever & asked whether we'd like to work with dancers, I worked
out an
interactive proposal usually referred to as the "Dancer Conducting".
The
dancers had 4 cues with which they could conduct the "official"
players whose
playing they could then respond to in their dancing & further
cueing (which
were all part of the same thing): 1 for silence, 1 for a Mexican Hat
Dance, 1
for a "See-Saw" alternating between textures, & 1 for an "Ersatz
Arabic"
theme. As usual, these possibilities were modular & could be
played
simultaneously in any combination. Katrine co-ordinated 2 other
dancers &
this was premiered for some "prime-time" national tv show (which I
never saw).
The other new element was the introduction of the "'Patamorphic
Institute
Seminar(s)". While we'd been in Montréal we'd collaborated
with Richard
Brandow on making some Morphing movies in which the image of 1 thing
could be
shown transforming into another thing. The movie that we worked into
the
"seminar(s)" was of the face of Rebecca Barten transforming into the
face of
John Eaton & back again. While this tape would show, Rebecca
& John
would stand on either side of the monitor with their faces "frozen"
into the
same expression that their faces have in the video & they would
foot-pedal-control lights to alternately show their faces at
approximely the
same rate that their faces were showing on the screen. Simultaneous
with this,
I would give a sortof "self-help" lecture on the psychological
advantages of
Morphing throwing in jargon of our invention or, in the case of
"gravipause",
borrowed from astronomy. Personnel: the touring quartet + the 3
dancers.
- Dreamtime Corroboree, Dreamtime Village, West Lima,
Wisconsin, us@
- August 22, 1992
- Dreamtime Village is a very special HyperMedia
Perma Culture
Hometown. As
such, we were happy to have the opportunity to participate in its
annual
Corroboree (those Australian Aboriginals keep popping up). The space
was a
booming big gym. This so-called whatever included the premier of
"Big", 1 of
Neil's new CAMUs, & fire-breathing to begin the "Worm-Charming"
bit. The
"Dancer Conducting" became another audience participatory element.
Only "OUR"
was projected at this show. The audience was deliriously
responsive.
- Mercury Café Theater, Denver, us@
- August 27, 1992
- As usual, what this show actually consisted of is far too
complex to
describe in detail here. It began with us opening a theater prop door
(i.e.: a
door in a frame on wheels) & popping out our heads in a vertical
arrangement "singing" a "Barbershop Quartet Intro". Personnel: the
touring
quintet.
- Mercury Café Theater, Denver, us@
- August 28, 1992
- More of our full-blown so-called whatevering here. This
performance will
probably be most remembered as "The One Where Neil Set His Face On
Fire." Yes,
in our fledgling fire-breathing, Neil set his "Fu Manchu" face-hair
on fire
& melted a bit of flesh. This put an end to his fire-breathing
career but
the rest of us still continued to risk it. Films, video, spieling,
tonal &
rhythmic genre evocations, whirling flashlights, audience
participation, fire,
silliness, mindfucking, structuralism. Personnel: the touring
quintet.
- Kansas City Art Institute, Photography Studio, Kansas City,
Missouri, us@
- September 2, 1992
- By now Neil had a siren. There were no new CAMUs for the rest
of the ture.
This show had 1 of my favorite Nondo/Stephanie Palmer Apologetica
duets
followed by a "Normality" argument. We actually didn't have any
technical
trouble with the dual projection during this 1! Personnel: the
touring
quintet.
- Union Bar & Grill, Athens, Ohio, us@
- September 5, 1992
- Perhaps the finest of our so-called whatevers on the tour.
Action-packed
stimulation for the desperate pervert anarchist intellectual.
Personnel: the
touring quintet.
- W.P.A., Washington DC, us@
- October 17, 1992
- Perhaps the finest of all of the "official" so-called
whatevers. The
players were arranged in an oval in such a way that the audience
could be
inside the oval or witnessing it from either end. Our playing with
fire had
extended to my setting my thumb on fire & lighting John Eaton's
cigarette
& John setting his chest & hands & arms on fire - not
always the
safest thing to do. The combination of all the new CAMUs from the
tour/ture
& the reinvigoration from having the group be a "Medium Band"
again made
this extremely convoluted & pleasurable. For an idea of some
elements of
this presentation, read most of the preceeding 40 entries. Personnel:
Sarmad
Brody, John Berndt, Neil Feather, John Eaton, Dawn Culbertson, Peter
Williams,
Courtney McCullough, myself, & Rebecca Barten.
170. the Official, March 12th, 1993ev, Medium-Sized Band Who Have Just Put
Out Their
First Record & Who Will Be Selling Them At the 14 Karat Cabaret
for a
Fabulously Reasonable Price as well as at Normal's Music Store at 429
E. 31st
st. & Who are more Wonderful, Original, & Imaginative Than
Even the
Most Overblown Hyperbole Could Possibly Even Begin to Praise &
who have a
Penchant for Very Long Hard to Remember Band Names That Even They
Find Hard to
Remember but how else can they Make Laure Drogoul, Baby MaDenney,
& the
Ever-Lovin' Pamela Purdy Laugh Otherwise? - &, Besides, This is
Probably
Their Last Show So Why Not indulge them a Little, Eh? Incredibly
Rapidly
Shrinking Big Band Orchestra OOMPH!!
- 14 Karat Cabaret, Baltimore, us@
- March 12, 1993
- The 1st of the last(?) "official" so-called whatevers.
Simultaneous with a
snow storm, we went ahead with these 2 shows anyway. This included
the premier
of Dawn's variation on Neil's "Roto-Debacle" entitled the "Roto-Moe"
in which
the "Roto-Debacle" was "performed" using only 3 Stooges jokes. Also
the premier
of the "John Trubee Squee-Gee Blivet" described in the 1st of the
"official"
entries & Sarmad's tribute to Ruth Crawford Seeger entitled the
"Seeger".
Personnel: Neil Feather, Eric Myers, Scott Larson, John Berndt, John
Eaton,
Sarmad Brody, Dawn Culbertson, Peter Williams, myself, & Rebecca
Barten.
171. the Official, March 13th, 1993ev, Medium-Sized Band Who Have Just Put
Out Their
First Record & Who Will Be Selling Them At the 14 Karat Cabaret
for a
Fabulously Reasonable Price as well as at Normal's Music Store at 429
E. 31st
st. & Who are more Wonderful, Original, & Imaginative Than
Even the
Most Overblown Hyperbole Could Possibly Even Begin to Praise &
who have a
Penchant for Very Long Hard to Remember Band Names That Even They
Find Hard to
Remember but how else can they Make Laure Drogoul, Baby MaDenney,
& the
Ever-Lovin' Pamela Purdy Laugh Otherwise? - &, Besides, This is
Probably
Their Last Show So Why Not indulge them a Little, Eh? Incredibly
Rapidly
Shrinking Big Band Orchestra OOMPH!!
- 14 Karat Cabaret, Baltimore, us@
- March 13, 1993
- The last of the last(?) "official" so-called whatevers, it's
a fitting
memory of this dedicated group that they played despite public
transportation's
having been shut down by the "blizzard" & there being little
audience. It's
a fitting memory of the audience that there was 1 at
all
considering that some of them had to walk for miles under difficult
conditions
(being drunk probably didn't help their slipperiness coordination
much either).
John Eaton wore a damn cute cat suit. On both nights we tested the
audience's
patience by having them introduce the show by reading off of
papers that
John E handed out that went thru our entire (& tiring)
band
name. We even played the rarely performed "Hillbilly" - a
muthafuckin'
crowd-pleaser if there ever was 1. Personnel: same as the preceeding
night
minus Dawn Culbertson who couldn't make it because she lived in the
county
where the snow was too bad. Alas, our band name for this occasion
doesn't say
it all..
- Church of Saint Michael & All Angels, Baltimore, us@
- Sunday, October 10, 1993, 3:00PM
- A performance of the 1956 Cage piece as part of the Baltimore
Composers
Forum's tribute to him. The other players were: Sarmad Brody, Dawn
Culbertson,
Scott Larson, Mark Longaker, John Eaton, Leroy Keltner, &
William-John
Tudor.]
- 14 Karat Cabaret, Baltimore, us@
- mid November, 1993
- Two "performance poems" (perhaps) by Franz Kamin. Angerds
engMudsroodn had Leroy Keltner playing trombone, Kirk-Evan Billet
playing
flute, & Sarmad Brody playing keyboard. Its narrators were
myself, Dawn
Culbertson, Franz Kamin, Sara Epple, Jeanine Farrall, David Yaffe,
& Neil
Feather. Our texts were in a nonsense (?) language invented by
Franz.
- Church of Saint Michael & All Angels, Baltimore, us@
- Sunday, November 21, 1993, 7:30PM
- She Turns Alone was another "performance poem"
(perhaps). The
"Choir" consisted of myself, John Berndt, John Eaton, Leroy Keltner,
&
Sarmad Brody. We lined the walls spread out on 2 sides of the
audience. Franz
read while we extrapolated off his text with scored vocal sounds.
Jeanine
Farrall stood on the stage & performed scored motions as the
"Gesturalist".
The term "Behavioral Drift" is derived from a side-effect warning on
a mood
control pill packaging (see also #155). Unknowing Games at the
Hut was a
sortof perverse subversion of Freudian Psychology & cyclical
epics
performed in the style of a mental institution talent show or high
school play
with "20th Century" "performance poetry" as the text-style basis.
Every
performer played most of the roles at one or more times during the
approximately 22 minutes of its duration. There were the old
woman/women, the
sexy girl(s), the wood chopper(s), the tree(s), the card players,
& the
angel(s). Sarmad Brody provided a repeating narration throughout. The
gist of
it was that an old woman lived alone in a hut & fucked a tree,
giving birth
to a child who grew up to be a wood-chopper & chopped the tree
down without
knowing it was his father, then leaving for the city to meet a sexy
girl who he
takes back to the hut only to get himself killed by a vengeful tree,
the sexy
girl then becomes an old woman at the hut only to repeat the cycle
all over
again. In the meantime, the 3 card-players each personify 3
archetypes of
attitude: the winner, the loser, & the person whose problems are
always
"somebody else's fault". Each performer changes costume to change
roles. The
sexy girl costume consisted of a grotesquely stuffed bra, a black
wig, & a
decorative waist chain; the old woman's was a wig & a shawl, the
angels
wore sheets & yellow wigs. The wigs were made from mops. The tree
was
represented by a person standing in "crucified" position in front of
some
branches on a ladder. The card players wore hats & held big
cards. The wood
chopper wore a hunting vest & a sortof mining light. Each
character had a
way of acting. The old woman walked with a shaky stoop & talked
with a
wavery voice. These ways of acting were cartoon archetypes. Each
performer
drifted into other characters than the ones whose costumes they wore
at times.
As such, this was a "true" "Behavioral Drift". There were variations
in the
cycle which such as having more than one sexy girl & old woman
etc.. at the
same time. Everyone ends as an angel. The sets & costumes were
created by
Leroy Keltner, Sarmad Brody & members of the New York crew who
had
performed this piece's last presentation (Pixie Alexander, Steve
Clay, Mitch
Highfill, & Peggy Young). The performers were myself, Martha
Colburn, Dawn
Culbertson, Sara Epple, Jeanine Farrall, John Berndt, John Eaton,
& Leroy
Keltner. "Back-stage" assistance (performance expiditing) was
provided by Peggy
Young. Franz directed it.
- 14 Karat Cabaret, Baltimore, us@
- Friday, December 3, 1993
- Yet another audio improvisation from: Jack Wright (Alto,
Tenor, &
Soprano Saxes), Neil Feather (NuGuitar, Effects), John Berndt (1
String
Stand-Up Zither with Spring & Bridges, Electronics, Stephanie
Palmer
Apologetica, Soprano Sax, & Guitar), myself (DX27S Synthesizer,
K1m
Synthesizer, Mirage 8 bit Sampler, Multi-Verb Processor, Small
Instruments,
Voice), & John Eaton (Alto Sax & Mouthpiece, Stage). Further
visuals
were provided by my "Color Bars" video.]
- 14 Karat Cabaret, Baltimore, us@
- February 11 or 12, 1994
- Theatre Piece (to quote from the previous
performance's program
notes):
- "(1960), generated by Cage using the same set of
transparent
overlays that gave rise to the electronic work Fontana Mix
(1958), is
for eight performers. Each performer is asked to make a deck of cards
containing nouns or verbs, one to a card. One then undergoes a
card-dealing
process, specified by Cage, which creates a unique part from one's
own set of
18 pages containing time lines and numbers (the numbers indicate
choices of
actions during the dealing process and modifications of those
actions).
The performer, meant to appear as her-or-himself, prepares a
thirty-minute
part withour consulting the other performers. Rehearsals, as Cage
says in the
instructions, are for avoding dangerous collisions. A committed
performer in
Theatre Piece acts almost as composer, and will spend
as much
time creating and learning to execute a part as a performer in a more
traditional piece of music. (The word more is used in the
sense that
Theatre Piece, now 33 years old, was a seminal work in
a whole
generation of performance art which has itself gained the status of
tradition
in the experimental atmosphere of the late 20th century.)"
- The result, in this case, was fairly intricate. An
interweaving of actions
conceived of independently by each performer. To describe it all
would take a
long time & severely tax my memory of it at the moment. Alas, no
vaudeo
quasi-documentation of this performance exists (thanks to the
videographer
erasing over it). There is, however, a vaudeo from the performance of
it with
almost the same cast presented as part of the tribute to John Cage
mentioned in
#172. The performers were the same except that Neal Woodson performed
instead
of me. The other difference was that, due to snow, Sara Epple was
unable to
perform in this presentation. The cast were: myself, Kirk-Evan
Billet, Sarmad
Brody, Dawn Culbertson, L.J.Schollenberger, John Eaton, & Leroy
Keltner.
Sarmad & I (at Sarmad's suggestion) resorted to each listening
through
headphones to a our own prepared tapes to tell us precisely when to
do
what.
- Blau-Milch Kanal/Kaffee Sendeschluß, TV Hospital - X94:
junge kunst
+ kultur, Akademie der Künste, Berlin, Germany
- March 1?, 1994
- Herr Stiletto Studios initiated this incredible "Design
Hospital" project
as a part of the (what I consider) rather ridiculously named "X94:
junge kunst
+ kultur" (which might be translated as: Exhibition 1994: Young Art
&
Culture). This
exhibition was an ambitious presentation of a fairly
broad array
which was open to the public from March 4th to April 30th, 1994 - "50
days to
blow your mind" - as the publicity material put it. The whole
contextualizing
of the event seems to've been done by people in their 40s or older
who used
slang that was fresh when they were the age that the exhibition
purported to,
& partially did, represent. Alas, the slang, being no longer
representative
of current youth culture,
made the context seem more like wishful
thinking on
the part of the organizers to seem "youthful" themselves. Despite
this, much of
the exhibition was (to me) truly extraordinary - ironically (?), I
tended to
prefer the "work" of the older participants. I was fortunate enough
to be flown
to Berlin by Stiletto Studios to participate. The main other
collaborators on
this "TV Hospital" were Ügszel Yazmen of "It's a Bollerman's
World" &
Kerstin Kitsch. Other input was provided by "The international Funny
Farm"
(Laura Kikauka & Gordon Monahan) & the "Stressjets" (Hans
Otto Richter
& Kay Itting) as well as a slew of such helpful people as Mica
Witt, Edi
Tschiesche, Richard Millar, & many, many "apprentices". The "TV
Hospital"
is rather complex to describe. It was set up in one of the
café areas
where we'd installed 6 glass topped tables with tvs visible/audible
facing
upward underneath them. The tables had microphones hanging over them
-
partially disguised by lamp-shades. Five black & white
surveillance cameras
were placed at various strategic locations & a 6th color "studio"
camera
was also in use. All of this was fed into a "Kommunikations-Confusor"
which
enabled us at the "Blau-Milch-Kontroll" to scramble & channel the
video
signals in diverse combinations. E.g.: a camera placed over table 2
could have
its signal sent to table 4 & vice-versa - with the sound coming
from a
previously recorded tape on table 4 & from the mike at table 6
for table 2,
etc, etc.. Six VCRs & a video mixer were also used. With this
latter,
practical jokes using video wipes were popular. This vaudeo
installation was
the "Kaffee Sendeschluß". Fifteen or more hours of the day (a
minimum of
from 0:00 to 15:00 every day) the mix from the "Blau-Milch
Kontroll" was
transmitted by Picture Telephone to the Open Channel of Berlin Cable
TV &
sent from there to their audience. This audience was welcome to
participate in
person, or to phone in, 24 hours a day. The mischievous use of
technology can
be partially summarized by this quote from me in one of our
"menus":
-
"Gordian (K)notworking" as both the profusion of cables &
other
assorted hard & soft -ware used for this configuration & the
method of
Sozio-Psychische Chirurgie (Socio-Psychic Surgery) used in this
proving ground
of Psychological Playfair. Some may be irritained, some may (k)not."
One of the earliest experiments that we tried was a
collaboration between
Gordon Monahan & myself provisionally entitled "Frank Monster"
for reasons
that will become obvious. Gordon & I each provided a few words
(perhaps 3
apiece?) for our mutual vocabulary. One of us was then vaudeoed
improvising a
monologue involving heavy use of this vocabulary. Then the other of
us got into
approximately the same position as the preceding & was vaudeoed
improvising
a similar monologue. The tape of the 1st monologue was vaudeo mixed
with a
fixed "soft wipe" & fade-intermixed sound with this 2nd
monologue. E.g.:
the bottom half of the 1st person was mixed with the top half of the
2nd person
while their 2 monologues were faded in & out together to create a
hybrid
monologue with the same vocabulary. This was repeated for 5
generations so that
the end result was a hybrid of 5 shoots - perhaps a head from one, an
arm from
another, etc.. If I recall correctly, this may've been enacted before
the
exhibition opened &/or perhaps before we started our cable tv
transmission.
The "TV Hospital" entries are written as a continuous story of sorts
to avoid
repetition of information from entry to entry.
- Blau-Milch Kanal/Kaffee Sendeschluß, TV Hospital - X94:
junge kunst
+ kultur, Akademie der Künste, Berlin, Germany
- March & April, 1994
- Two of the surveillance cameras were placed to give matching
views of
tables 2 & 4. This enabled us to show a soft-wipe mix of the 2
tables on
each of their tvs. That way we could make it seem that a person
seated at table
4 was sitting with 3 people at table 2, etc.. We could also shoot
footage from
the vantage point of any of the cameras & then soft-wipe mix that
footage
into a later view from the same camera in such a way that watchers of
the tvs
couldn't tell without looking around that there was a mix happening.
This was
very perplexing to those visiting who had no idea of the techniques
being used.
When we wanted people at the tables to notice something on their tvs
we would
make the tvs flash by remote control. Then they might notice that an
overhead
view was showing them but that there was an additional person (or 2
or 3..)
sitting at their table who "wasn't really there". At this point
they'd get
confused - often looking around to see whether someone was standing
behind them
or some such. Through skilled manipulation at the Blau-Milch
Kontroll, this
confusion could be heightened in a large variety of ways. The
soft-wipe could
be made to suddenly shift position while they were loooking around so
that when
they'd look at the tv again the original "phantom" person would no
longer be
there & one of their own party would be replaced by
an empty
seat. Sometimes they would extend their hands into the space where
the
"phantom" person had been or where their friend was still sitting
& no
longer shown & discover that the image of their hands would
disappear.
Sometimes we would simply mix together the same view twice but
have one
of the views processed so that anything occurring in its field would
"strobe".
The speed of this strobe being fairly variable, we could make it so
that if,
e.g., a person reached to the middle of the table to stub out their
cigarette,
their hand would not appear to enter the center of the image until
suddenly it
would appear & "freeze" there - staying there briefly while
they'd
otherwise withdraw their hand "in reality". One of the pranks that I
played
using table 2 involved my shooting footage of me sitting at the table
with some
potato salad. At 1st, I ate the potato salad "normally" but,
gradually, I
started playing with the food by throwing it on the table &
writing "Hello"
(or some such) with it. Eventually, I stood on the seat so that my
shaved head
would be very close to the camera & started smearing the salad on
my brain
tattoo. This tape was then mixed in when people would sit at the
table. On one
occasion, after watching the confused & dismayed looks of 2
people trying
to figure out where this "demented" person was who seemed to be
sitting at
their table, I wiped out the recording & walked over to the table
in person
while they were still excitedly discussing this event. In german, I
asked them
if they'd like some potato salad - making sure that they'd recognize
me &
then walked away without any further explanation.
- Blau-Milch Kanal/Kaffee Sendeschluß, TV Hospital - X94:
junge kunst
+ kultur, Akademie der Künste, Berlin, Germany
- March or April, 1994
- Another time, I was asked by a woman if she could interview
me. I agreed,
& requested that she wait for me at table 2. I then secretly
asked one of
the waitresses, Birgit Krah, to help me. I held some "fake blood"
(perhaps
nothing more than cranberry juice) in my mouth & went to sit at
the table
with the interviewer. Shortly after I sat down, while the person was
in the
midst of explaining her purpose, Birgit came over & pretended to
strangle
me to
*death* - during which I spat out the " blood". Then Birgit
explained calmly
that she could continue the interview in my stead. I lay there with
my head on
the table, "dead", until they were finished talking - at which point
Birgit
dragged me away. This was also videoed for later mixing use.
- Blau-Milch Kanal/Kaffee Sendeschluß, TV Hospital - X94:
junge kunst
+ kultur, Akademie der Künste, Berlin, Germany
- April 1, 1994, 0:00 - 3:00AM
- A project I've wanted to realize for many years is a
"Talkathon". This was
inspired by several Baltimore aquaintances. These people (3 or 4 in
particular)
are inclined to talking, almost without pauses, indefinitely -
basically until
their audience escapes from them (&, perhaps, even continuing
after
that..). I'd imagined a competition between them in which they'd all
be before
an audience talking for as long as they could. The audience would
then bet on
who they thought could talk the longest. The idea was not to
have any
"meaningful" dialogue between the contestants. They'd simply be
venting their
manic energies. Since the Blau-Milch Kanal had one or more regular
callers who
seemed of similar personality bent, I decided to try to realize this
"Talkathon" as a TV Hospital event. One of the callers that this was
most
targetted at was a woman named "Sylvie" who had a breath-takingly
fast way of
talking that involved many tangents & a few languages. For this
promo, I
told the "Rarie" joke for 3 hours. I'm particularly fond of long,
digressing
jokes. This joke has a completely idiotic punch-line so I found it
especially
amusing to stretch it out for 3 hours only to have spent such a long
time
building to the anti-climax of a "clunker". Whether anyone in the tv
audience
made it through the entire joke I don't "know", but it's doubtful.
Several
people called & expressed interest in participating.
- Blau-Milch Kanal/Kaffee Sendeschluß, TV Hospital - X94:
junge kunst
+ kultur, Akademie der Künste, Berlin, Germany
- April 3, 1994, 12:30 - 8:30AM
- Two days later the night of the actual "Talkathon" arrived
&, much to
my disappointment, none of the callers who'd expressed interest
appeared.
Fortunately, a guy named "Peer" apeered. I had wanted to be a
spectator to this
event rather than a participant but I found myself in the position of
being the
only other contestant so I was stuck. It was explained to Peer that
the idea
was for each of us to talk continuously. If either of us paused for
more than
10 seconds that was cause for disqualification. Kerstin Kitsch sat
facing us
(with her back to the camera) & acted as judge to time our
pauses. Peer
wasn't happy with my emphasis on the "psycho-babble" end of things.
He'd come
to participate in a more conventional talk-a-thon in which the people
present
in the studio (the TV PERSONALITIES) would be available to talk to
callers. He
was a bit angry, & I got the impression that he didn't like me
very much,
but he was cooperative enough to go along with it anyway. I
compromised
somewhat by occasionally entering into dialogue with him - never,
however,
pausing for more than the regulation 10 seconds (he never paused
longer than
that either). At 1st, he'd ask me a question & I'd respond with
an
extremely long-winded & detailed answer which he'd have to
talk
along with. He eventually said something very irritable like "Why is
it that I
don't care about what you have to say to me anymore!" I guess
he was
irritained. Since he wanted dialogue & since he spoke german, I
proposed
that he answer all the phone calls. To his dismay, the same people
kept calling
over & over again. These people were apparently more into the
"psycho-babble" aspect than he was. Every time the phone would ring,
Peer would
pick it up - hoping for a caller to have a somewhat coherent
conversation with.
Instead, the same group (apparently affiliated with something called
the
"Ladengalerie"?) kept calling again & again & playing "noise"
tapes
that they were apparently making "live" off the tv. Peer got more
& more
frustrated & would hang up on them but they'd just call back
& few
other people were calling in. Peer persevered for about 5 hours &
then
quit. Not content to just "win" at a measley 5 hours, I persevered
for another
3 - sitting in the control booth at the end & acting as my own
camera-person etc since the crew had long since left in exhaustion.
Shortly
before I quit, a British guy called & told me that he wanted to
suck my
cock. I declined his proposal & he got defensive & said that
my cock
was probably too small to be worth it anyway. I may've retorted with
something
to the effect that my cock is so small you'd have to find it with a
microscope.
He later said something like "Don't you think it's weird that we're
talking
about something like this on television?" to which I replied by
explaining that
I'm against censorship. This pleased him & we parted on friendly
terms.
- Blau-Milch Kanal/Kaffee Sendeschluß, TV Hospital - X94:
junge kunst
+ kultur, Akademie der Künste, Berlin, Germany
- April 9?, 1994
- In the spirit of undermining usual perceptual presumptions, I
presented
the tv viewers one seemingly "boring" static scene that would
eventually
radically disrupt their perception of it if they happened to
be watching
during those very few minutes when "what's wrong with this
picture"
would be revealed. I placed the studio couch (where much of the
"Blau-Milch
Kanal" action took place) on its side & placed the camera that
was aimed at
it also on its side. The shot was cropped so that nothing too
obvious
would reveal this unusual perspective. Regular viewers were expected
to take
for granted that the couch was in its usual position. I sat at one
end of the
couch - seemingly sitting on it in the ordinary way that the
perspective
implied. I was actually laying on my side with my legs bent
as if
they were
positioned in the "normal" way in relation to the couch. The floor
was cropped
out so that this couldn't be perceived. I was shown sitting there
reading
Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow - a book that I was
thoroughly
enjoying. Some of the action in the book was taking place in the
English
Tiergarten which was right next to the Akademie where the "TV
Hospital" was
centered. For 45 minutes or so at a time, "nothing" would be shown
happening
other than my shifting my legs & turning the pages, etc.. This
was actually
a bit uncomfortable for me so I had to "act"
as if I was comfortable
to not
disrupt the illusion. Since the couch cushions weren't in their usual
more
stable positions, every once in a while the cushions would appear to
fly up
into the air & "attack" me. They were "actually" just falling
down. If
someone had been watching me sitting there for 45 minutes prior to
this sudden
abnormal behaviour of the cushions they would have, presumably, been
astonished! A few times I would seem to toss the book down on the
couch next to
me as if
I were tired of reading & the book would "spring back
into my
hands" & I would resume reading
as if I "couldn't put it down".
At times I
would stand up & walk behind or away from the couch at right
angles to it -
taking my clothes off at some point. This may've been what Herr
Studios
would've called "interpassive" TV.
- Blau-Milch Kanal/Kaffee Sendeschluß, TV Hospital - X94:
junge kunst
+ kultur, Akademie der Künste, Berlin, Germany
- April 17, 1994
- In preparation for " Das Offizielle, 21 Mai 1994 Era Vulgari
Hypothetisches Tagediebetage Mittel-Band/Landesjugendorchester" I had
scheduled
the 1st public appearance of the Berlin "Official" Project to be a
"Blau-Milch
Kanal" audience-participation event for a Saturday night. The
audience was to
have the option to call in & give instructions to specific band
members. At
this point the band had one additional member, an accordion player
named Eric,
who dropped out before the May 21st "show" (for the rest of the
personnel see entry #185). I think we were scheduled to start around 22:00
(10:00PM). The
band arrived almost uniformly rip-roaring drunk around 21:30. There
was a big
party happening in the Akademie that night that I hadn't anticipated
& the
"Kaffee Sendeschluß" was unusually packed. The band members
were
none-too-confident of their abilities to perform the material &
were
dismayed to see this crowd. Yvonne was particularly drunk
& was in a
reckless mood because her boyfriend had "broken up" with her that
day. She was
angry because she had wanted to be the one that broke up with him
& felt
"one-upped". Since I was lusting for Yvonne, I humored her request
that we wait
to play until later after a friend of hers was scheduled to perform
so that she
wouldn't miss it. At 1st, this wasn't supposed to be any later than
midnight.
We didn't finally start until 1:30. In the meantime, Florian,
usually a
pretty sober guy, was also pretty drunk (although he sobered up as
the night progressed). He decided to "drive away" the
unwanted audience by playing very loud & redundant "italo-disco
chords"
that he knew I hated while he & Björn played a very loud
boat horn
(or some such) of the sort used to warn other boats of one's presence
in fog.
This went on for hours while I tagged after Yvonne's pussy -
largely
ignoring what was happening with the band. I figured that in their
condition
most of them wouldn't be able to play worth shit so I wasn't in any
hurry to
start either. In the meantime, the "Blau-Milch Kontroll" staff
(Ügzel,
Nicola, Kerstin, & Herr Studios) had been very helpful & were
waiting
patiently to assist with the "show" - which they knew that I'd been
eagerly
rehearsing for. But, they were getting increasingly annoyed
with
Florian's "obnoxious" behaviour. The waitresses kept going to Florian
& begging him to stop because they couldn't stand working in those conditions.
Stiletto was furious because he felt that my friends were ruining
one of the only nights when we had a chance to seduce a large studio audience.
Since I had encouraged Florian to drive away the audience & since
I was more preoccupied with my sex drive, I was fairly amused by the whole
ridiculousness of the situation.
The Kontroll staff left in disgust before we
even played. A few extraordinary people actually stayed &
danced when we finally did play! One of them, whose name I never did
learn, gave a fantastic late night performance there
within the next couple of weeks. Very few people called in to participate - I
think we'd driven away the tv audience too. It was a mess.
- The Zap Club, Brighton, UK
- Wednesday, May 11, 1994, 6PM to Thursday, May 12, 1994, dawn
- "The Impacted Nectarine Vexations of QUITE VILLAGE -
Bauhütte
Klangzeit - Tableaux of Ersatz Exoticism. Mouldy Reincarnations of
the
Delerious Pleasures of Orchid Rot" read the poster for the 1st of
these "ersatz
exotica" events which took place in Toronto. This project was
masterminded by
Gordon W. (see #s 45, 46,
75 & 76), Laura Kikauka, & Gordon
Monahan
(see #177). The language used was largely purloined from the late,
lamented
Jack Smith. In the spirit of Erik Satie's "musique d'ameublement"
("furniture
music") piano piece "Vexations" (meant to be played 840 times back to
back) as
filtered through the "Exotica" "background music" that was popular in
the US
around the time of the declaration of Hawaii as the 50th state
(largely as fuel
for island "paradise" fantasies that most US citizens were too poor
to
realize), Bauhütte Klangzeit played 3 "classics" of "Ersatz
Exotica" in
marathon concerts. These 3 songs are: "Quiet Village" (by Les Baxter
- with
lyrics later added by Don Ho), "Taboo" (music credited to Margarita
Lecuona
with english lyric by S.K.Russell), & "Caravan" (by Duke
Ellington, Irving
Mills, & Juan Tizol). The name "Bauhütte Klangzeit 2000"
("Build-A-Hut
Sound-Time 2000"?) was lifted verbatim from a festival/conference
that Gordon
Monahan had participated in. By the time of this manifestation (the
3rd or 4th)
the name had permutated to "Klauhütte Bangzeit 2000"
("Steal-A-Hut
Anxiety-Time 2000"?). This appearance involved an international crew
of people
from Toronto, Berlin, England, Baltimore (me), &, perhaps, other
countries
as well. The extravaganza was slated to be part of the annual
Brighton Festival
& one of their brochures described it
thusly:
- "International
performance group KBZ 2000 present a dusk to dawn collision of kitsch
and the
Avante Garde. Look out for plastic palm trees, Mai-Tai cocktails,
dancers,
films, 3D projections, and a dawn ritual on the beach."
- Unfortunately, the venue, the "Zap Club" didn't seem to have
the slightest
interest in what we were doing. For a group in excess of 15 people we
had no
budget & there was no advertising at the club. Our accomodations
were on
air mattresses on the floor of one of the organizer's homes
accessible to town
mainly by a train that some of us couldn't even afford to take. Given
that many
of us were broke (such as me), our presence there was characterized
by our
begging for a few pounds a day to buy "chips" with. The group was too
large to
get free drinks (which the bar might've been too stingy to provide
anyway). On
the night of the show, there was only one sound man for the whole
night - which
meant that he set the levels & then went about his other
business. The
sound was abysmally garbled. The audience was small &
dissatisfaction was
rampant. Since I've written about this event elsewhere & since
the
München event (#186) was a far better example of the KBZ
potential, I'll
refrain from further description.
- Milchhof, Berlin, Germany
- May 21, 1994
- This manifestation of the "Official" project involved the
very generous
sacrifice of unpaid time by 2 friends, a very temporary girlfriend,
& 2
friends of my 2 friends who hadn't previously known me. The
combination of the
language barrier (although all involved spoke English) & the
unfamiliarness
of playing this type of material made this quite a challenge. The
only
significant new addition of material was provided by the
"sabotaging-sex-partner-who-refused-to-learn-the-material-&
(hence)
-mainly-pretended-to-play-it". My thanks to her for this innovation.
The
personnel were: myself (DX27S Synthesizer, Mirage 8 bit
Sampler/Sequencer,
& Tone Generators), Brad Hwang (Alto Sax), Yvonne Harder
([pretend]
Stand-Up Acoustic Bass [the Bass was "real" - Yvonne's playing of it
was
largely simulated] & Voice), Florian Cramer (Alto Sax, Small
Keyboard,
Flute), Björn Balcke (Guitar), Dr. Meyrink (Trumpet). The
evening started
with a few of my videos projected. During the projection of "Les
Promenades
Hysteriques", the band came on stage & started playing the
"Atavistic
Electronics". The drone pitches were provided by Gordon Monahan's
generously
loaned sound generator built for his "Speaker Swinging". We played
until my 220
to 110 transformer started to cut off my power supply. During this
breakdown,
Yvonne (an excellent multi-linguist {as is Florian}) provided a
German
explanation of our audience participatory section. The session ended
on another
"Atavistic Electronics" sequeing into my "Bob Cobbing (fish-eye
transfer)"
being projected.
- Marstall, München, Germany
- May 27, 1994, 6PM to May 28, 1994, 8PM
- KBZ 2000 became KBZ 200 for this. All of the intended
elements of Ersatz
Exoticism were present. Robin Lybecher (from Denmark by way of
Berlin) &
Bastiaan Maris (from the Netherlands by way of Berlin) made a large
metal tiki
head with flaming eyes & a "volcano" for the large wok to sit on
that
Gordon W. would cook his fabulous Thai noodles on as part of the
event. Both of
these were outside at the entrance. The music there was provided by
Plastikville Studios' 8-track cartridge release of the 3 Ersatz
Exotica
standards. This 8-track was ceremonially hot-glued into the player by
Laura
Kikauka on stage during the evening as a traditional favorite. Laura
effervesced in frequent costume changes. Further outside sound was
provided by
a primitive "fire organ" made for the event & primarily played by
Bastiaan.
Inside, there was a bar in the foyer & one in the square theatre
space
where the majority of the action was. They served Mai-Tais &
other drinks.
DJ Sir Spinner Fine Vinyl (from Toronto) had painted an island scene
backdrop
behind his DJ stand & another large tiki head placed at the back
of the
main stage. This stage was copiously lavished with props from
the
theatre's props department. Fortunately for us, the head of this
department
hadn't been there the day we raided it or we would never have been
able to
accomplish such OVERKILL without his resistance. Egnekn (from
NYC) made
lamination rituals available in order to make documents from the
event more
OFFICIAL. He has since published a 7 inch record with one side from
this event.
This record presents the sound of Larry Seven fixing Egnekn's
laminator while
John Henry Nyenhuis plays piano in the background. Fabio & Larry
Seven
(from NYC) presented 2 stereo slide shows on a special screen
especially for
this purpose & showed other film projections. The stereo slides
were
provided both by Fabio & Larry & by Herr Stiletto Studios
(from
Berlin). MEDIAMORPH (Hans Otto Richter from Berlin) set up a "blue
box" so that
people could be keyed into Exotica videos that he provided. The
resultant mix
was projected. Edi Tschiesche (from Berlin) undertook the Herculean
task of
trying to vaudeo it all. There was even an "EXCAVATED JEWELS OF
ERSATZ
EXOTICISM OFFICIAL CONTROL FREAK SCHEDULE" that was meant to help
prevent
some of the messes that happened in Brighton. The following is an
[almost]
complete quote:
- "20:00 FLAMING TIKI GOD CEREMONY outside Marstall. Repeated
performances
of Tabu, Caravan, and Quiet Village in Vexations format begins in
Marstall and
environs, to continue until at least 8 am the next morning. An
anthology of
Opaque Music Record Jackets slide show begins in the Les Baxter
Corner.
Mediamorph blue box projections with DJ Sir Spinner Fine Vinyl.
- 21:00 Opaque lounge organ versions with Gordon Monahan.
Screening of
holiday movies and travelogue films begins.
- 21:30 Excavations continue.. Official lamination rituals by
egenekn.. Food
preparations begin by VEB Om Taka Taka at Volcano Wok.
- 22:15 tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE: Official orchestrations.
- 22:30 John Henry Nyenhuis "13 finger" pyrotechnic piano
solos.
- 23:00 Stereoscopy of pointless imagery..
- 23:15 Eric Mango & the Nectarines: shameless desecrations
before the
temple of Exotic Trilogy.
- 24:00 The Nectarine Impactions of Forbidden Spice Islands at
Volcano Wok
featuring Coconut Bra injections of Taboo Sauce. Gordon W. and Laura
Kikauka
perform final food preparation rituals.
- 0:45 Anton Webern encounters Webley Edwards beneath the
tattoo-tented
scapular.
- 1:00 Pädagogische Ausgrabungen der Exotischen
Theoretischen
Zusammenpressung: Lecture illustrated with opaque projections and
mouldy vinyl
references.
- 1:20 Geezer whistling, Nose flute, and ocarina vacillations.
- 1:25 Eric Mango travels the deep blue space as the Nectarines
continue
their taboo caravan across the desert of artcrust.
- 2:00 Re-enter the 3rd dimension with Plastikville Stereonauts
Larry 7
& Jim Sharpe.
- 2:15 The rudderless caravan collapses into the Village of
Vextacy. With
special guests Hacke, Wolf, & Zastrow.
- 3:45 Grand orchestral impactions by the entire retinue of KBZ
acolytes.
- 4:33 4'33" (Very Quiet Village) etc.."
- The personnel for the stage presence were usually broken up into various
smaller groups with specific performance approaches. These people were: Rob
Johnston (Toronto): MC, Stage Director, Keyboards, & Vocals; Laura Kikauka
(Canada/NYC/Berlin): Geezer Whistling; Bastiaan Maris: Keyboards, Ocarina,
& Schalmei (?); Eric Dolphy Mingus (aka: Eric Mango) (New York by way of
London): Main Vocals, Percussion; Gordon Monahan (Canada/NYC/Berlin): Main
Organ, Synthesizer/Sampler, MC, Lecturer, Theorist; John Henry Nyenhuis
(Toronto): Main Pianist, Other Keyboards; Bee Plotye (NYC): Main
Percussionist; Larry 7: Hawaiian Guitar; tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE (Baltimore by
way of Berlin): Sound Thinker, Synthesizers/Sampler/Sequencer, Vocal,
Percussion; Gordon W. (Toronto): Tablas, Lecturer; Roland Wolf (Berlin): Hawaiian
Guitar, Piano, Organ, Percussion; Maria Zastrow (Berlin): Bass.
- the Normill, Durham, CaNada
- September 2, 1994
- A stop on Neil's motorcycle tour. My new, improved playing
(DX27S
Synthesizer, 2 K1m Synthesizers, Mirage 8 bit Sampler/Sequencer, 2
4-Channel
Mixers, Multi-Verb Processor) + Neil's motorcyle portable rig
(NuGuitar,
Portable Vibulum, Effects) & small nondo. The audience seating
was
partially church pews which had been sawn in half so that the
inclined at an
angle (since there was no vertical support at one end). Two audience
members
(Norman White & Dan) provided spirited accompaniment by lifting
&
dropping the pews.]
- 50 Wabash Ave (formerly known as the "Monastery" - see #s 162
& 163),
Toronto, CaNada
- Saturday, December 3, 1994, 11:30PM to Sunday, December 4,
1994, 4:30AM
- Sitting in an unobtrusive place on the 2nd floor of this 2
story building,
I played 3 synthesizers, 1 sampler/sequencer, an effects unit, &
a CD
player. I also presented vaudeo simultaneously - with the
sound-tracks
occasionally added to the mix. The visuals were fed to one tv on each
floor
& the sound was fed to stereo PA speakers on each floor. The
vaudeos/videos
used were the same as those described in entry #154 + "F.R.E.D. S.
L.I.S.B.E.R.G.E.R." (a 2 hour long macro shot tour through my
Baltimore
warehouse) & a compilation vaudeo of some of my more complex
& recent
movies. In the beginning, I played CDs by Martin Denny & Esquival
- subtly
mutating them with my effects unit & gradually eclipsing them
more &
more with my own material. The only vaudeo device that I was using
was a crude
switcher that enabled me to change back & forth between the
outputs from 2
VCRs. This switching was often done in sync with the rhythms in order
to make
the content of the visuals seem more coordinated with the sound than
it would
have seemed otherwise. Given that the space is primarily known for
its
"speak-easy" (or "speak") dance & lounge music "after-hours"
parties,
people's expectations were predictably geared in those directions. As
such, I
had people drearily asking me for "dance music". Arguments broke out
between
people over what I was playing. Despite the fact that one girl was
standing
there & watching me play the keyboard, she asked me whether what
I was
playing was "Kraftwerk" & seemed unable to comprehend that I
wasn't a DJ -
even after I explained that I was playing my own original material
"live" in
front of her. Considering that this was my most complex solo UNCERT
presented
yet, the almost complete lack of audience comprehension/appreciation
was, once
again, discouraging. My thanks to those who were supportive.
- the Silver Eye, Pittsburgh, us@
- Thursday, January 12, 1995
- The 1st of 2 presentations sponsored by Orgone Cinema. This
was a concrete
mixing so-called whatever in which I manipulated a video mixer into
which 2
VCRs were fed & played 3 synthesizers, 1 sampler/sequencer, &
an
effects unit. The vaudeo tapes used were the same as for "Broken Mood
Elevator
Uzak" minus the compilation. The video mixer enabled me to combine
the images
in more sophisticated ways than those ordinarily available to me. The
vaudeos
were projected.
- the Silver Eye, Pittsburgh, us@
- Saturday, January 14, 1995
- The 2nd of 2 presentations sponsored by Orgone Cinema. The audience, upon entering, was greeted by myself &/or Orgone Cinema people (Michael Johnsen, Alisa Dix, Greg Pierce). We were behind a small table that had some peeled "100 year old eggs" - ie: fermented duck eggs which have turned black (both the "whites" & the yolk) - with the yolk having a jelly-like consistency. A common description of the smell of these eggs is "like dirty gym socks". Anyone willing to eat one of these was entitled to a reduction in admission cost. Also displayed were a raw fertilized duck egg broken open so that the duck fetus could be seen & a boiled fertilized duck egg which we offerred to pay any willing audience member $10.00 to eat - in addition to refunding their admission. Perhaps 2 people attempted to eat the fermented eggs. If I recall correctly, neither ate the whole thing - but they were probably both rewarded with an admission discount anyway. Each person was also given a bumper sticker & a 6 sheet (ie: 12 pages) hand-out made especially for the occasion. The hand-out included the listing of movies to be shown, my most updated "Movieography" (162 entries), a scrap sheet from "Mike Film Distribution Form #7", & some Mike Film to be (hopefully) used by the audience. The presentation of films &/or vaudeos was basically straight-forward. At the end of the evening, one audience member ate 1/2 of the boiled fertilized duck egg for which he received his door money back & $5.00.
- WRCT, 88.3FM, Radop Carnegie Tech, Pittsburgh, us@
- Thursday, May 4th, 1995, 11:00PMish to Friday, May 5th, 1995, 3:00AMish
- 2 audio improvisations catalyzed/produced/recorded/mixed/edited by
Ed Um-Bucholtz broadcast live & recorded to be remixed & submitted to
the cassette publication entitled "Chocolate Monk" in Edinburgh,
Scotland. Sharyn Lee Frederick: bass, vocals, bass clarinet, tom;
Michael Johnsen: bass clarinet, 3 string guitar, amplified water, sine
wave generator, Ho Shim guitar; Giuglia Loli: electric violin, alesis
drum machine; Dave W(ho)le Shim: guitar, effects, sine wave generator,
Johnsen 3 string guitar; tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE: "Usic - √-1" test
pressing (its public premier), electric violin, bass. During the 2nd
(last) set Edwin Houghton played records/turntable & Patrick Meagher
briefly played tom.]
- WFMU, 91.1FM, East Orange, us@
- Sunday, August 13th, 1995, 9:00 to 11:00PM
- A radio presentation beginning with fake station IDs interspersed with static & other radio station signals. Fabio suggested feasible call letters & I created simple slogans for them. These were:
Fabio & I pre-recorded my intoning of these IDs while he mixed in other
radio signals. This deliberately somewhat confusing beginning was followed
by a playing of my "tENTATIVELY Microtonal" K7 + excerpts from the
"Official Wafer Face Record" & my "Usic - √-1 = a Plethora of No Longer
Neglected Audio/Conceptual Obstacle Courses" LP (used to mark the
quarter hours). I plugged my upcoming
film/vaudeo presentation at Segue in
NYC & Russ Forster of "8-Track Mind" magazine plugged his
film so wrong they're right & discussed
other 8-track related matters.]
- Music Gallery, Toronto, CaNada
- Friday, September 8th, 1995, 8:00PM
- This was divided into 4 parts:
1st, the "Total Mobile Home Suitcase" (named after the
micro-cinema run by Rebecca Barten &
David Sherman in San Francisco that the suitcase was semi-inspired
by) was placed on the lap of each audience member & opened. With
each opening a different short audio piece was heard & the suitcase
was then closed. When the suitcase reached a friend that I hadn't
seen for 8 years (Alan Lord), it greeted him with "Hey, Baby".
Another audience member pulled out a pouch of tobacco & pointed
to it when the suitcase played a coughing sound for him. The
2nd part consisted of Colin Hinz & myself playing the double groove
sides of "Usic - √-1". Colin played on a turntable that he'd made
that has a wider variety of speeds than normal. Colin dropped
fishplates on the record while playing it - just as he had during
1 part of the same record (on which he's represented remaking
the "Official Wafer Face Record"). The 3rd part began with a
straight presentation of my film "Diszey Spots" & was followed
by my film "Funny Farm Summit Meeting". This latter is a film
of a nudist mask party at the Funny Farm - a 19 room farm house
in Ontario covered from floor to ceiling with kitsch & novelty
items (etc..) collected, created, & organized thematically by
the humorous "mastermind" of Laura Kikauka. This was where
I'd been residing for the previous year. The film's sound-track
was accompanied by John Henry Nyenhuis's playing grand piano
whilst naked wearing the same mask that he was shown wearing in
the film (whilst also playing piano) & by myself playing
synthesizers & sampler while also naked & wearing the same mask
as in the film. The 4th part was the fabulous world premier of my "A
Year & a Day at the Funny Farm Bogus Piano Concerto - in 2 Rapid Bowel
Movements". This involved John Henry playing keyboard while I played
synthesizer modules, sampler, sequencer, midi-patcher, multi-verb,
etc.. The relationship between our 2 parts was a sort of intricate
mutual subversion in which John played with an almost super-human
virtuosity & I mutated & immersed his pianistic linearity. The
structure was such that John Henry began by playing furiously (in the
"Left Wing Movement") & gradually slowed down. He began the 2nd, &
last movement (the "Chicken Wing Movement"), playing minimally but
triggering more notes than he touched. As this last movement
progressed he gradually returned to furious playing but his pitch
output was drastically reduced by my controlling. As such, the
audience was presented with a variety of relationships between what his
fingers were actually doing & what they actually heard as a result.
Simultaneously with this was the projection of an extreme slow-motion
film of mine (collaboratively made with the loveable Orgone Cinema
folks) entitled "How Orgone Cinema Treats Its Visiting Filmmakers".
This film, at 24fps, is only 5:40 long - but in this projection it was
extended to 45:00 by having the projectionist play bits of it in both
forward & reverse. The film features, amongst other things, fertilized
duck eggs being thrown at the back of my head.
194. [w/ CCMC
- Music Gallery, Toronto, CaNada
- Tuesday, September 12th, 1995, 9:00PM
To quote from the advertising, "Beginning the twentieth season
of collectively created, freely formed music, the core members, MICHAEL
SNOW (piano, synth), JOHN OSWALD (sax), [&] PAUL DUTTON
(soundsinging) [..] are true "sonic swashbucklers"".
CCMC play regularly at the Music Gallery on Tuesdays for free &
encourage the fertilization of such new-comers as myself. I played
synthesizers, sampler, sequencer, etc.. at a barely audible volume -
sampling them live without pre-warning &, thusly, confusing their
perception a bit.]
This list unfortunately doesn't include actions that I don't remember
dates for such as the Fearless United Christian Knights (initiated by
Alan Barysh) action at the Premier of Godard's "Hail Mary" at
the Charles Theater in Baltimore.
For more accurately
contextualized & detailed accounts of some of the above, read my
books "How to Write A Resumé - Volume II: Making a Good
First Impression" - especially the 2nd edition (edition of 200) -
&/or "Yet Another Slow-Burning Feast of a Few Month's Mischief
in the U.K., Maybe (A Partially Epistolary Account of Non-Non &
Non-Participation,
Maybe)" (edition of 100). Both books are
out-of-print so GOOD LUCK in finding a copy!
The list of people who
helped make these so-called whatevers possible would be enormous. The
list of people who made sure things were miserable is much smaller. I
want to thank the former. I want to refrain from mentioning the
latter. Special thanks go to John Berndt who, despite our almost
continually volatile friendship, has been very cooperative, generous,
& supportive for much longer than most people would have tolerance
for. Thanks also to Florian Cramer for making this & other texts
of mine available on the Internet & for taking the time &
having the dedication to make such a large effort.
tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE
c/o the Funny Farm,
RR 4, Markdale, Ontario, N0C 1H0, Caca-Nada
or - Box 382, Baltimore, Maryland, 21203, us@