GRIST ON-LINE #5 USE COURIER 10 CPI FOR YOUR FONT GGGGGGG GGGGGGGGGGG GGGGGG GGGGGG GGGGG GGGGGG GGGG GGGG GGGG GGGG GGGGG GRIST GGGGGGG GRIST GGGGGGGG GRIST GGGGGGGGGGGGGGRIST GGGGGGGGGGGGGGRISTGRISTGRIST GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGRISTGRISTGRISTGRISTGRIST ONLINEONLINEONLINEONLINEONLINEONLINEONLINEONLINEONLINE S k y B l u e I r i s E y e B l o s s o m ######################################## GRIST On-Line, #5 February, 1994 John Fowler, Editor and Publisher Copyright 1994 by John E. Fowler. All individual works Copyright 1994 by their respective authors. All further rights to works belong to the authors and revert to the authors on publication. GRIST On-Line is published electronically on a monthly schedule. Reproduction of any complete issue of the magazine is permitted for nonprofit distribution as long as the source is cited, i.e., GRIST On-Line, plus the Network, BBS or other carrier, and the author are clearly and prominently identified. Complete issues of GRIST On-Line may be downloaded, duplicated and distributed free of charge. Authors hold a presumptive copyright and they should be contacted directly or through GRIST On-Line for permission to reprint individual pieces. The views represented herein do not necessarily represent the views of the editor, the magazine or the electronic carrier. GRIST On-Line contributors assume all re- sponsibility for ensuring that articles and any other works submitted do not violate copyright protection. Subscriptions via INTERNET e-mail are available -- Authors may submit works for publication to the editor at Grist@phantom.com. Hardcopy or diskette submissions in ASCII should be sent by U.S. Postal Service to GRIST ON-LINE, John Fowler, editor, Columbus Circle Sta., P.O. Box 20805, New York, NY 10023-1496. Include SASE with all submissions if a response is desired. Please inquire concerning special publishing or distribution projects including electronic chapbook/book upload or distribution on diskette. Ideas or collections of work for special issues or topics will be considered. Contributions, grants, computer equipment, network time, or other forms of support are welcome. GRIST On-Line Magazine is not for profit. GRIST On-Line is available for anonymous ftp and by gopher from etext.archive.umich.edu/pub/Poetry/Grist which is the preferred form of distribution. ######################################## EDITOR'S PAGE Some months you just can't quite seem to get it together, he said from the shambles of crashes, bugs, fixes, transfixes, uploads, downloads, trashed files, lost drivers, corrupted exe's, lost sys's, DOS down the drain, incompatibles, re- copied to wrong name, lost carriers, busy signals, snow storms, slipped discs, lost sleep and drugless days without end. Oh well, she sighed, maybe another time. He zipped up the limp thing and cried. I tried, he sobbed, I tried. There should be many things to announce and announced they shall be. There should be many things to denounce and denounced they shall be. Here in heaven, known as NYC, we pronounce all announcements announced and all denouncements denounced. Carry on; they shall be. Other than that, things are most like they seem to be; always searching the gutter for new things; always snipping cutouts of the old ways; never sure, never far behind; looking for great things, even if only the glimmer of an eye. We pass on and pass on and turn to one another saying, bye; been here before? Gone there aforetime? Now bye fore shore; hello hind dog, bringin' up the pack; hangin' out back. Look out! here they come:::::::::) or og (:::::::::: : ; : ; : ######################################## TABLE OF THE CONTENTS TWO POEMS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Forrest Richey. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 CUT OFF THE CRAP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Wes Chapman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Masses Manifesto . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Jean A. Heriot. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE PROPHET TALKS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Jim Esch. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 TWO POEMS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Larissa Shmailo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 ONG'S HAT: GATEWAY TO THE DIMENSIONS!. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Joseph Matheny. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 MAUNDER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Carol Berge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 19s A PLAY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 Ellen Zweig & Lou Robinson. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 THE PERFECT CARD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 Keith Dawson. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 I am sure... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 Tadeusz Kantor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 LETMETELL (contd from #3). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 ezra. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 AMPLIFIED ART. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 Paolo Barrile . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 CYANOBACTERIA INTERNATIONAL - A DISCUSSION . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 ezra & j.lehmus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 VIRPO. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 FOUR POEMS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 j.lehmas. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 an interesting story . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 (Huth). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 Zappa lives on.... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 Michael Bloom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 A REVIEW of _BEN'S EXIT_ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 A definition of "Networker". . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 Andrea Ovcinnicoff. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 ON THE INTERNATIONAL SHADOWS PROJECT: 1990 . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 Karl Young. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 HIROSHIMA. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 j.lehmas. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 EVENTS - ANNOUNCEMENTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 children . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 Karl Young. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 Creative Writing on MU*. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 Tom Meyer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 SIG Overview statement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 DEANNA MORSE. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 new edition of e-zine-list out . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 John Labovitz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 ISEA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 FineArt Forum. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72 EVENTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 E-MAIL ARTISTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 FLOPPYBACK PUBLISHING INTERNATIONAL. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 CONTRIBUTOR NOTES. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84 ######################################## TWO POEMS Forrest Richey my phone rings and when lifted exhales a grainy hiss... it's the network looking for me. /////////////////////////////////////// INVOCATION Forrest Richey Oh, VOID, by thine ovoid thighs' shine, by thy shins too, too by thy toes... by KUPFERBERG and ATOM ANT by all that's wholly discrepant, bless this, our holey endeavor! Amen. F.s. 13 Jan 94 on the occasion of the LastBook birthing ######################################## CUT OFF THE CRAP Wes Chapman c r a p n c o r _ a b p o cdr i a eps cra p c rap nco rap c r a pcr a pcr a p c r ape cmr o a t p i c o r n a s p : ######################################## Subject: Masses Manifesto From: Jean A. Heriot The manifesto of an early American anarchist journal, beautifully typset, which can only be approximated in ascii. The Masses Manifesto, 1913 A FREE MAGAZINE THIS MAGAZINE IS OWNED AND PUBLISHED CO-OPERATIVELY BY ITS EDITORS. IT HAS NO DIVIDENDS TO PAY, AND NOBODY IS TRYING TO MAKE MONEY OUT OF IT. A REVOLUTIONARY AND NOT A REFORM MAGAZINE; A MAGAZINE WITH A SENSE OF HUMOR AND NO RESPECT FOR THE RESPECTABLE; FRANK, ARROGANT, IMPERTINENT, SEARCHING FOR THE TRUE CAUSES; A MAGAZINE DIRECTED AGAINST RIGIDITY AND DOGMA WHEREVER IT IS FOUND; PRINTING WHAT IS TOO NAKED OR TRUE FOR A MONEY-MAKING PRESS; A MAGAZINE WHOSE FINAL POLICY IS TO DO AS IT PLEASES AND CONCILIATE NOBODY, NOT EVEN ITS READERS--THERE IS A FIELD FOR THIS PUBLICATION IN AMERICA. HELP US TO FIND IT. SEND YOUR NAME AND ADDRESS WITH ONE DOLLAR FOR AN ANNUAL SUBSCRIPTION. PASS US ALONG TO YOUR FRIENDS. TALK ABOUT US. PRAISE US. CRITICISE US. DAMN US PUBLICLY. WE MUST HAVE A LITTLE CONSIDERATION. ######################################## WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE PROPHET TALKS Jim Esch He talks about leaving his one room house. The house where he was conceived, born, bred, and which he now occupies. No door. No windows. Walls of changing colors. Yes, he talks about the walls changing colors. Purples, deep red, forest green, sandy rock, painted sky, flesh. Colors he can touch and fondle. With no door to exit from, he talks himself out of his room. Talking to the walls, which he assumes have listened without protest for a lifetime. He talks about the climbs up mountains of rock. Higher than any building. Stones slip beneath him. He has no time to think, grabbing for secure holds to place his hands and lift his feet. He little remembers the colors of things. All is instinct and the touch of the rock and the texture of his palms, and how the rock rubs off on skin, leaving a mark, and how his skin scapes on the rock, leaving a trace, however fine, of his presence. He talks about how one man is less than the wake he leaves, the debris left in his name. Whose force is this? Tramping the ages, whose echo bounces through this valley? One of infinite possibilities, is it the accumulation of mouths talking, picking up on something he may have said, for which there is no proof he said it? Only more voices talking -- a tree to hang their words on. One thing strikes him as true: it is foolish to reattach leaves fallen off the branches. When he talks, things happen. No questions asked. Only within...without...you can't really talk about that because it can't be included. Even this talk doesn't include it. It just probes the edges of his talking. He talks about losing his foothold. How when once three limbs held fast to the rock, now only two hold on. He talks to the rock and asks it to rescue him, to allow him a foothold, to allow him to climb again. But the rock doesn't hear. It is objective, inanimate. He wonders whether it is the same for algebra, calculus, musical notation. How the language of numbers or sounds excludes more than it includes. How they ask more questions than they seem to ask, how they lose meaning while fixing it. "Rock. Rock. Rock," he says. He says he knows and expects no resolution. He talks about running, how it sounds to be running over dirt, over gravel, over smooth asphalt, over tiled hallways. What is he running from? "Too much God destroys," he says. ######################################## TWO POEMS Larissa Shmailo Lager NYC You, volunteer: Reichsgeboren. You, Herren Doktoren und Geschaftsmanne Profesoren und Burokrafte You You choose to be here Select. You, volunteer: Jugend Profesionell You know the difference Between cause and effect: The people on the street Are too stupid to have homes Too filthy to wash See them root through the garbage Nicht essen aber fressen Ni yest' a zhryat' They deserve to be there They deserve to be there Select. Concentrate: See the dark people Sitting in the cells They deserve to be there They deserve to be there And the women of the Frauenblock The Fraulein triple X Control her, detain her Pick her up Select. Cause and effect: You know which is which. You, volunteer: Geschaftleute, Burokrafte: We see you On the job where you whisper Half of what you think And none of what you feel Watch the watch, see the clock The digital tatoo says run: Rush to the train the transport Who cares who gets in Who cares who gets out Push into the car the transport Who cares who gets home Who cares who gets shot Arbeit macht frei. You choose this You choose: Select. Hey, you, volunteer You, Herren Profesoren und Burokrafte We find ourselves together in the subway The Grand Ka-Ze Zentral: Here in Ka-Ze Your face is not a face Ni litso, a morda: Your face is not a face But a snout We don't eat here, we devour Nicht essen aber fressen Ni yest' a zhriat We don't give an inch And we don't give a damn Only weaklings fall to the tracks God knows the difference Between cause and effect The selection is over: Look how it happened that you fell. You choose this You choose Select. //////////////////////////////////////// HOW MY FAMILY SURVIVED THE CAMPS Larissa Shmailo Was micht nicht umbringt, macht mich starker: What does not kill me makes me stronger Nietzsche said this about other things Not this. How did my family survive the camps? Were they smarter, stronger than the rest? Were they lucky? Did luck exist in Dora-Nordhausen, Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen? How did my family survive? They were young, my mother and father, in 1943 Twenty years old when taken as slaves. No one knew my father was a soldier, a communist So he was not shot Or taken to be gassed. My grandmother said quickly to the Germans He is a mechanic; they needed mechanics My grandmother, Soviet businesswoman Begged and bribed the Ukrainian kapos Begged and bribed the Germans, not SS They took my father, son of a commissar And shot the other men. How did my family survive? They offered no resistance Did they collaborate? Is complicity possible without choice? They marched to Germany, working Following the German army Following the front Digging trenches, carrying metal These were the good camps, Kalinovka, Peremeshl There was still food: My mother recalls eating an entire vat of potatoes Fouled by kerosene, discarded by the Germans, not SS The treatment was not cruel, comparatively, not cruel: In 1944, the Germans Were as afraid of the Russian front As the prisoners were of Germany And of the other camps. Where they went nonetheless Where they were sent nonetheless. How did they survive Erfurt, the selection? My mother spoke good German I see her now at the staging camp Her keen anticipating wit dancing aroung the SS Like her young slavic feet She was young and goodlooking Filthy and thin But smart and goodlooking And the SS liked the Ukrainian Frauen. On the cattlecar to Dora The extermination camp My mother rode with her family, intact Smaller but intact And ready for work. How did my family survive Was it luck? In Dora-Nordhausen Where the air smelled of gas and diarrhea Where the sun rose but never shone Was there luck? The boxcar stopped At the Nordhausen factory The way out through the crematorum chimney In Dora Here, my grandmother learned languages Wstavach, Stoi, Ren, schwein, Halt. In Dora, where not to understand an order meant death My grandmother learned six languages; after six months My family could work, hide and ask for bread In all the languages of Europe. They learned English the same way. How did my family survive? I see my mother in Dora Running from the allied bombs, running to steal food Lying in the trenches made by the screaming shells Looking at the dark sky, chewing a stolen turnip Watching the bombs fall, a diversion like a movie, Her first in years. When the Americans came, with chocolate and blankets My father, six foot one Was one hundred and twenty pounds And still we were rich, my mother interjects, rich compared to the Jews. A few months longer, though, we would not have been We would not have been alive. How did my family survive? My grandfather, a teacher Told this story: When the Americans came and saw the camp They invited the people to loot the nearby towns Take anything, the well-fed soldiers said My grandfather stood and spoke: We are not animals, he said But we were, my father interrupts, we were. How did my family survive? Survive is not the right word. I'm alive, my father would say, alive Alive because I did not die; others died. Keep breathing, he encouraged me in difficult times Keep breathing. ######################################## ONG'S HAT: GATEWAY TO THE DIMENSIONS! Joseph Matheny A full color brochure for the Institute of Chaos Studies and the Moorish Science Ashram in Ong's Hat, New Jersey. Introductions ------------ You would not be reading this brochure if you had not already penetrated half-way to the ICS.You have been searching for us without knowing it, following oblique references in crudely xeroxed marginal 'samsidat" publications,crackpot mystical pamphlets,mailorder courses in "Kaos Magick"-a paper trail and a coded series of rumors spread at street level through circles involved in the illicit distribution of certain controlled substances and the propagation of certain acts of insurrection against the Planetary Work Machine and the Consensus Reality-or perhaps through various obscure mimeographed technical papers on the edges of "chaos science"-through pirate computer networks-or even through pure syncronicity and the pursuit of dreams. In any case we know something about you, your interests, deeds and desires,works and days-and we know your address. Otherwise...you would not be reading this brochure. Background ---------- During the 1970s and '80s, "chaos" began to emerge as a new scientific paradigm,on a level of importance with Relativity and Quantum Mechanics. It was born out of the mixing of many different sciences-weather prediction, Catastrophe Theory,fractal geometry, and the rapid development of computer graphics capable of plunging into the depths of fractals and "strange attractors; "hydraulics and fluid turbulence,evolutionary biology, mind/brain studies and psychopharmacology also played major roles in forming the new paradigm. The slogan "order out of chaos" summed up the gist of this science, whether it studied the weird fractional-dimensional shapes underlying sworls of cigarette smoke or the dis- tribution of colors in marbled paper-or else dealt with "harder" matters such as heart fibrillation, particle beams or population vectors. However, by the late '80s it began to appear as if this "chaos movement" had split apart into two opposite and hostile world-views, one placing emphasis on chaos itself, the other on *order*. According to the latter sect--the Determinists--chaos was the enemy,randomness a force to be overcome or denied. They experienced the new science as a final vindication of Classical Newtonian physics,and as a weapon to be used *against* chaos, a tool to map and predict reality itself. For them, chaos was death and disorder, entropy and waste. The opposing faction however experienced chaos as something benevolent, the necessary matrix out of which arises spontaneously an infinity of variegated forms-- a pleroma rather than an abyss-a principle of continual creation, unstructured, fecund, beautiful, spirit of wildness. These scientists saw chaos theory as vindication of Quantum indeterminacy and Godel's Proof, promise of an open-ended universe, Cantorian infinities of potential... chaos as *health*. Easy to predict which of these two schools of thought would recieve vast funding and support from goverments, multi- nationals and intelligence agencies. By the end of the decade, "Quantum/Chaos" had been forced underground, virtually censored by prestigious scientific journals-which published only papers by Determinists. The dissidents were reduced to the level of the *margin*- and there they found themselves part of yet another branch of the paradigm,the underground of cultural chaos--the "magicians"--and of political chaos-extremist anti- authoritarian "mutants". Unlike Relativity, which deals with the Macrocosm of outer space,and Quantum, which deals with the Microcosm of particle physics, chaos science takes place largely within the Mesosphere-the world as we experience it in "everyday life".,from dripping faucets to banners flapping in the autumn breezes. Precisely for this reason useful experimental work in chaos can be carried on without the hideous expense of cyclotrons and orbital observatories. So even when the leading theoreticians of Quantum/Chaos began to be fired from university and corporate positions, they were still able to pursue certain goals. Even when they began to suffer political pressures as well, and sought refuge and space among the mutants and marginals, still they perservered. By a paradox of history, their poverty and obscurity forced them to narrow the scope of their research to precisely those areas which would ultimately produce concrete results--pure math, and the mind-simply because these areas were relatively inexpensive. Up until the crash of '87, the "alternative network" amounted to little more than a nebulous weave of pen-pals and computer enthusiasts,Whole Earth nostalgists, futurologists, anarchists, food cranks, neo-pagans and cultists, self-publishing punk poets, armchair schizo- phrenics, survivalists and mail artists. The Crash however opened vast but hard-to-see cracks in the social and economic control structures of America. Gradually the marginals and mutants began to fill up those fissures with the wegs of their own networking. Bit by bit they created a genuine black economy, as well as a shifting insubstantial "autonomous zone", impossible to map but real enough in its various manifestations. The orphaned scientists of Q/C theory fell into this in- visible anti-empire like a catalyst-or perhaps it was the other way around. In either case, something crystallized. To explain the precipitation of this jewel, we must move on to the specific cases, people and stories. History ------- The Moorish Orthodox Church of America is an offshoot of the Moorish Science Temple, the New World's first Islamic heretical sect, founded by a black circus magicain named Noble Drew Ali in Newark, New jersey in 1913. In the 1950s some white jazz musicians and poets who held "passports" in the M.S.T. founded the Moorish Orthodox Church, which also traced its spiritual ancestry to various "Wandering Bishops" loosely affiliated with the Old Catholic Church and schisms of Syrian Orthodoxy. In the '60s the church acquired a new direction from the Psychedelic Movement, and for a while maintained a presence at T. Leary's commune in Millbrook, New York. At the same time the discovery of sufism led certain of its members to undertake journeys to the East. One of these Americans, known by the Moorish name Wali Fard, travelled for years in India, Persia, and Afghanistan, where he collected an impressive assortment of exotic initiations:Tantra in Calcutta,from an old member of the Bengali Terrorist Party; sufism from the Ovayssi Order in Shiraz, which rejects all human masters and insists on visionary experience; and finally, in the remote Badakhshan Province of Afghanistan, he converted to an archaic form of Ismailism (the so-called Assassins) blended out of Buddhist Yab-Yum teachings, indigenous shamanic sorcery and extremist Shiite revolutionary philosophy-worshippers of the *Umm al-kitab*, the "Matrix Book." Up until the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the reactionary orthodox "revolution" in Iran,Fard carried on trade in carpets and other well-known Afghan exports. When history forced him to return to America in 1978, he was able to launder his savings by purchasing about 200 acres of land in the New Jersey Pine Barrens. Around the turn of the decade he moved into an old rod & gun club on the property along with several runaway boys from Paramus, New Jersey, and an anarchist lesbian couple from Brooklyn, and founded the Moorish Science Ashram. Through the early-to-mid-'80s the commune's fortunes fluctuated (sometimes nearly flickering out). Fard self-published a series of xeroxed "Visionary Recitals" in which he attempted a synthesis of heretical and antinomian spirituality, post-Situationist politics, and chaos science. After the Crash, a number of destitute Moors and synpathizers began turning up at the Ashram seeking refuge. Among them were two young chaos scientists recently fired from Princeton (on a charge of "seditious nonesense"), a brother and sister, Frank and Althea Dobbs. The Dobbs twins spent their early childhood on a UFO-cult commune in rural Texas,founded by their father, a retired insurance salesman who was murdered by rogue disciples during a revival in California. One might say that the siblings had a head start in chaos-and the Ashram's modus vivendi suited them admirably. (The Pine Barrens have often been called "a perfect place for a UFO landing.") They settled into an old Airstream trailer and constructed a crude laboratory in a rebuilt barn hidden deep in the Pines. Illegal sources of income were available from agricultural projects, and the amorphous community took shape around the startling breakthroughs made by the Dobbs twins during the years around the end of the decade. As undergraduates at the University of Texas the siblings had produced a series of equations which, they felt certain, contained the seeds of a new science they called "cognitive chaos." Their dimissal from Princeton followed their attempt to submit these theorems, along with a theoretical/philosophical system built upon them, as a joint PhD thesis. On the assumption that brain activity can be modeled as a "fractal universe," an outre' topology interfacing with both random and determined forces, the twins' theorems showed that consciousness itself could be presented as a set of "strange attractors" (or "patterns of chaos") around which specific neuronal activity would organize itself. By a bizzare synthesis of mandelbrot and Cantor, they "solved the problem" of n-dimensional attractors, many of which they were able to generate on Princeton's powerful computers before their hasty departure. While realizing the ultimately indeterminate nature of these "mind maps", they felt that by attaining a thorough (non-intuitive and intuitive) grasp of the actual *shapes* of the attractors, one could "ride with chaos" somewhat as--a "lucid dreamer" learns to contain and direct the process of REM sleep. Their aborted thesis suggested a boggling array of benefits which might accrue from such from such links between cybernetic processes and awareness itself, including the exploration of the brain's unused capacities, awareness of the morphogentic field and thus conscious control of autonomic functions, mind-directed repair of tissue at the cellular/genetic level (control over most diseases and the aging process), and even a direct perception of the Heisenbergian behavior of matter (a process they called "surfing the wave function"). Their thesis advisor told them that even the most modest of these proposals would suffice for their expungement from the Graduate Faculty-and if the whole concept(including theorems) were not such obvious lunacy, he would have reported them to the FBI as well. Two more scientists-- already residents of Ong's Hat--joined with Fard and the twins in founding the Institute of Chaos studies. By sheer "chance" their work provided the perfect counterparts to the Dobbs' research. Harold Acton, an expatriate British computer-(and reality) hacker, had already linked 64 second-hand personal computers into a vast ad-hoc system based on his own _I_Ching_ oriented speculations. And Martine Kallikak, a native of the Barrens from nearby Chatsworth, had set up a machine shop. Ironically, Martine's ancestors once provided guinea pigs for a notorious studt in eugenics carried out in the 1920s at the Vineland NJ State Home for the Insane. Published as a study in "heredity and feeblemindness," the work proclaimed poverty, non-ordinary sexuality, reluctance to hold a steady job, and enjoyment of intoxicants as *proofs* of genetic decay-and thus made a lasting contribution to the legend of bizarre and lovecraftian Piney backwoodspeople, incestuous hermits of the bogs. Martine had long since proven herself a *bricoleuse*, electronics buff and back-lot inventor of great genius and artistry. With the arrival of the Dobbs twins, she discovered her tre metier' in the realization of various devices for the implementation of their proposed experiments. The synergy level at the ICS exceeded all expectations. Contacts with other underground experts in various related fields were maintained by "black modem" as well as personal visits to the Ashram. The spiritual rhythms permeating the place proved ideal: periods of dazed lazy contemplation and applied hedonics alternating with "peak" bursts of self- overcoming activity and focused attention. The hodgepodge of "Moorish Science" (Tantra, sufism, Ismaili esotericism, alchemy and psychopharmacology, bio-feedback and "brain machine" meditation techniques, etc.) seemed to harmonize in unexpectedly fruitful ways with the "pure" science of the ICS. Under these conditions progress proved amazingly swift, stunning even the Institutes founders. Within a year major advances had been made in all the fields predicted by the equations. Somewhat more than three years after founding there occurred *the* breakthrough, the discovery which served to re-orient our entire project in a new direction: the Gate. But to explain the Gate we must retrace some steps, and reveal exactly the purposes and goals of the ICS and Moorish Science Ashram--the curriculum upon which our activities are based, and which constitutes our *raison d'etre.* The Curriculum -------------- The original and still ultimate concern of our community is the enhancement of consciousness and consequent enlargement of mental, emotional and psychic activities. When the Ashram was founded by W.Fard the only means available for this work were the bagful of oriental and occultist meditational techniques he had learned in Central Asia, the first- generation "mind machines" developed during the '80s, and the resources of exotic pharmacology. With the first successes of the Dobbs twin's research, it became obvious to us that the spiritual knowledge of the Ashramites could be re-organized into a sort of prearatory course of training for workers in "Cognitive Chaos." This does not mean we surrendered our original purpose-attainment of non-ordinary consciousness-but simply that ICS work could be viewed as a prolongation and practical application of the Ashram work. The theorems allow us to re-define "self liberation" to include physical self-renewal and life-extension as well as the exploration of material reality which (we maintain) remains *one* with the reality of consciousness. In this project, the kind of awareness fostered by meditational techniques plays a part just as vital as the *techne'* of machines and the pure mentation of mathematics. In this scenario, the theorems-or at least a philosophical under- standing of them-serve the purpose of an abstract *icon* for contemplation.Thus the theorems camn be absorbed or englobed to the point where they become part of the inner structure (or "deep grammar") of the mind itself. In the first stage, intellectual comprehension of the theorems parallels spiritual work aimed at refining the faculty of *attention*. At the same time a kind of psychic anchor is constructed, a firm grounding in celebratory body-aware-ness. The erotic and sensual for us cannot be spirit-ualized and aimed at anything "higher" than themselves--rather, they constitute the very *ground* on which our dance is performed, and the atmosphere or *taste* which permeates or whole endeavor. We symbolize this first course of work by the tripartite Sanskrit term *satchitananda*,"Being/consciousness/bliss"-- the ontological level symbolized by the theorems, the psychological level by the meditation, the level of joy by our "tantrik" activity. The second course (which can begin at any time during or after the first) involves practiacl instruction in a variety of "hard sciences", especially evolutionary biology and genetics, brain physiology, Quantum Mechanics and computer hacking. We have no need for these disciplines in any academic sense-in fact our work has already overturned many existing paradigms in these fields and rendered the textbooks useless for our purposes-so we have tailored these courses specifically for relevance to our central concern, and jettisoned everything extraneous. At this point a Fellow of the ICS is prepared for woork with the device we call the "egg. "This consists of a modified sensory-deprivation chamber in which attention can be focused on a computer terminal and screen. Electrodes are taped to various body parts to provide physiological data which is fed into the computer.The explorere now dons a peculiar helmet, a highly sophisticated fourth-generation version of the early "brain machines," which can sonically stimulate brain cells either globally or locally and in various combinations, thus directing not only "brain waves" but also highly specific menatl-physical functions. The helmet is also plugged into the computer and provides feedback in various programmed ways. The explorer now undertakes a series of exercises in which the theorems are used to generate graphic animations of the "strange attractors" which map various states of consciousness, setting up feedback loops between this "iconography" and the actual states themselves, which are in turn generated through the helmet simultaneously with their representation on the screen. Certain of these exercises involve the "alchemical" use of mind-active drugs, including new vasopressin derivatives, beta-endorphins and hallucinogens (usually in "threshold" dosages). Some of these tinctures are simply to provide active-relaxation and focused- attention states, others are specifically linked to the requirments of "Cognitive Chaos" research. Even in the earliest and crudest stages of the egg's development the ICS founders quickly realized that many of the Dobbs twins' PhD thesis predictions might be considered cautious or con- servative. Enhanced control of autonomous body functions was attained even in the second-generation version, and the third provided a kind of bathysphere capable of "diving "down even to the cellular level. Certain unexpected side-effects included phenomena usually classified as paranormal. We knew we were not hallucinating all this, quite bluntly, because we obtained concrete and measurable results, not only in terms of "yogic powers" (such as suspended animation, "inner hear, "lucid dreaming and the like) but also in observable benefits to health: rapid healing, remission of chronic conditions, *absence of disease*. At this point in development of the egg (third generation) the researchers attempted to "descend" (like SciFi micronauts) to the Quantum level. Perhaps the thorniest of all Quantum paradoxes involves the "collapse of the wave function"--the state of Schrodinger's famous cat. When does a wave "become" a particle? At the moment of observation? If so does this implicate human consciousness in the actual Q-structure of reality itself? By observing do we in effect "create? "The ICS team's ultimate dream was to "ride the wave" and actually experience (rather than merely observe) the function-collapse. Through "participation" in Q-events, it was hoped that the observer/observed duality could be overcome or evaded. This hope was based on rather "orthodox" Copenhagian interpetations of Quantum reality. After some months of intensive work, however, no one had experienced the sought-for and expected "moment"...each wave seemed to flow as far as one cared to ride it, like some perfect surfer's curl extending to infinity. We began to ssuspect that the answer to the question"when?" might be "never!" This contingency had been described rigorously in only one interpretation of Q-reality, that of J.Wheeler-who proved that the wave function need never collapse provided that every Q-event gives rise to an "alternating world"(the Cat is both alive and dead). To settle this question a fourth generation of the egg was evolved and tested, while simultaneously a burst of research was carried out in the abstruse areas of "Hillbert space" and the topology of n-dimensional geometry, on the intuituve assumptions that new "attractors" could thereby be generated and used to visualize or "grok" the transitions between alternate universes. Again the ICS triumphed...although the immediate success of the fourth-generation egg provoked a moment of fear and panic unmatched in the whole history of "Cognitive Chaos." The first run-through of the "Cat" program was undertaken by a young staff-member of great brilliance (one of the original Paramus runaways) whose nickname happened to be Kit-and it happened to take place on the Spring Equinox. At the precise moment the heavens changed gears, so to speak, the entire egg vanished from the laboratory. Consternation would be a mild term for what ensued. For about seven minutes the entire ICS lost its collective cool. At that point however the egg reappeared with its passenger intact and beaming...like Alice's Chesire Cat rather than Schrodinger's poor victim. He had succeeded in riding the wave to its "destination"--an alternate universe. He had observed it and--in his words--"memorized its address." Instinctively he felt that certain dimensional universes must act as "starnge attractors" in their own right, and are thus far easier to access (more "probable") than others. In practical terms, he had not been dissolved but had found the way to a "universe next door." The Gateway had been opened. Where is Ong's Hat? ----------------- According to Piney legend, the village of Ong's Hat was founded sometime in the 19th century whena man named Ong threw his hat up in the air, landed it in a tree and was unable to retrieve it (we like to think it vanished into another world). By the 1920s all traces of settlement other than a few crumbling chimneys had faded away. But the name appealed so much to cartographers that some of them retained it-a dot representing nothing in the midst of the most isolated flat dark scrub-pines and sandy creeks in all the vast, empty and perhaps haunted Barrens. W. Fard's acreage lies in the invisible suburbs of this invisible town, of which we are the sole inhabitants. You can find it easily on old survey maps,even trace out the the old dirt road leading into the bogs where a little square represents the decrepit "Ong's Hat Rod & Gun Club," original residence. However, you might discover that finding the ICS itself is not so simple. If you compare your old survey map with the very latest, you will note that our area lies perilously close to the region infamous in recent years, the South Jersey Nuclear Waste Dump near Fort Dix. The "accident" that occurred there has made the Barrens even more mepty and unpopular, as any hard-core Pineys fled the pollution melting into the state's last untouched wilderness. The electrified fence shutting off the deadly zone runs less than a mile above our enclave. The Accident occurred while we were in the first stages of developing the fourth-generation egg,the Gate. At the time we had no idea of its full potential. However all of us, except for the very youngest (who were evacuated), had by then been trained in elementary self-directed generation. A few tests proved that with care and effort we could resist at least the initial onslaught of radiation sickness. We decided to stick it out, at least until "the authorities" (rather than the dump) proved too hot to endure. Once the Gate was discovered, we realized the situation had been saved. The opening and actual interdimensional travel, can only be effected by a fully trained "cognitive chaote;" so the first priority was to complete the course for all our members. A technique for "carrying" young children was developed (it seems not to work for adult "non-initiates"), and it was discovered that all inanimate matter within the egg is also carried across with the operator. Little by little we carted our entire establishment (including most of the buildings) across the topological abyss. Unlike Baudelaire who pleaded, "Anywhere!-so long as out of this world!" we knew where we were going. Ong's Hat has indeed vanished from New Jersey, except for the hidden laboratory deep in the backwoods where the gate "exists." On the other side of the Gate we found a Pine Barrens similar to ours but in a world which apparently never developed human life. Of course we have since visited a number of other worlds, but we decided to colonize this one, our first newfoundland. We still live in the same scattering of weather-gray shacks, Airstream trailers, recycled chicken coops, and mail-order yurts, only a bit more spread out-and considerably more relaxed. We're still dependent on your world for many things-from coffee to books to computers-and in fact we have no inclination of cutting ourselves off like anchorites and merely scampering into a dreamworld. We intend to spread the word. The colonization of new worlds-even an infinity of them--can never act as a panacea for the ills of Consensus Reality--only as a palliative. We have always taken our diseases with us to each new frontier...everywhere we go we exterminate aborigines and battle with our weapons of law and order against the chaos of reality. But this time, we believe, the affair will go differently--because this time the journey outward can only be made simultaneously with the journey inward-and because this bootstrap-trick can only be attained by a consciousness which, to a significant degree, has overcome itself, liberated itself from self-sickness-and "realized itself." Not that we think ourselves saints, or try to behave morally, or imagine ourselves a super-race, absolved from good and evil. Simply, we like to consider ourselves awake when we're awake, sleeping when we sleep. We enjoy good health. We have learned that desire demands the *other* just as it demands the self. We see no end to growth while life lasts, no cessation of unfolding, of continual outpouring of form from chaos. We're moving on, nomads or monads of the dimensions. Sometimes we feel almost satisfied ...at other times, terrified. Meanwhile our agents of chaos remain behind to set up ICS courses, distribute Moorish Orthodox literature (a major mask for our propaganda) to subvert and evade our enemies... We haven't spoken yet of our enemies. Indeed there remains much we have not said. This text, diguised as a sort of New Age vacation brochure, must fall silent at this point, satisfied that it has embedded within itself enough clues for its intended readers (who are already halfway to Ong's hat in any case) but not enough for those with little faith to follow. CHAOS NEVER DIED! ######################################## MAUNDER A Restoration Fragment (from GRIST #11) Carol Berge Scene: Dinner Table. Time of the Restoration (or Minuet Music, a Gavotte, like that.) Or Bronx Modern, pale furniture, doilies. The first would be Rhoda and Zelda. Brenda. You know. Or any Chateau. Or the Club, velvet curtains, crystal everything. Old men. J. Scott, to crony and his own wife: `I've just discovered it. It will revolutionize everything, I tell you. Nylon, I will call it, after my aunt. Shaped like a paper clip.' Japanese Man comes in stand ready to shoot him, but does not. Mother of J. Scott, to the audience, who sits about on mock toilet seats: `O, I tell you, that boy is smart. Smart as a whip. If there's one thing I know, in fact have always known, it is that that boy there is smart. Only one of the brood to amount to something, always knew it would be like that.' Japanese Man turns and fires point blank at Mother of J. Scott, but they are blanks, so she lives on. Chinese Man enters: `I am enraged at your new invention because it will put all of the silkworm people out of business and they will starve. I cannot see all of my people starve. So you must give me royalty options on this product you will call Nylon, and I too will grow rich, and will put my people on the dole.' Rhoda, from her end of a long trestle-table, leaning on her elbows: `Goddam these political-minded people. I wish they would keep the shit their ideas to their goddam selves and stop confusing the issues. Money is money and all this rot about the poor is just ridiculous. I am now going up to Alexander's to buy myself a new thing of that Nylon stuff. And to hell with who gets what, as long as I get mine.' Swiss Man enters, smiles, always smiling, very untidy, very very untidy indeed, pockets full of cheese which gushes out as he walks, shoes, everything. In his mouth is a gun and out of the gun comes silk-liquid, so labelled. `Ho, ho, ho, think you're so smart, I figured a way to convert spit of _people_ into silk-liquid, & that will earn the Swiss banks a lot of moola.' J. Scott, to own wife: `Okay Jez, you swinger, level him. Them.' Own Wife does so. Levels the Japanese Man, Chinese Man, Swiss Ma. Levels Rhoda with a glitter of dislike. Pauses and titters then levels Mother of J. Scott. But it does not stop there. Own Wife reaches across table in center of Club room near where beautiful fire is burning. Snatches up recipe for new paper-clip-shaped Nylon item. Throws same into fire. J. Scott, to self: `Wonder hell did that fer.' Own Wife: `Big Dummy he is, doesn't know that doesn't get invented till long years away, yeah Mr. Tantalus always thinking yer a bigshot, you and yr oriental concubines.' ######################################## 19s A PLAY Ellen Zweig & Lou Robinson ACT I, SCENE I Blanche Wittman (a plump and dimpled blond girl): He de- veloped the habit of ripping in half deities he has just finished decorating. Louis: If more is needed, we'll make more difficulty walking and standing. The person who is gazing expectantly won't ever lie. Blanche: Let him stop living in the basement, looking at the living optic nerve. Louis: Sugar overstimulated her, peculiar twists and turns, bizarre and grotesque feats of dexterity were performed. The development of modern science can hold back sobs. Blanche: Leaving Dorrians, male or female, you've got claws to capture the split second commotion. All the musicians were there: battered thirty-five millimeter jugglers, court bards, actors, dancers, athletes, wrestlers, tambourine players, buffoons. Louis: Those who play with ropes won't let me do service. Blanche: The devotee who made the call referred to them by their diseased body parts. Louis: See what you can do to resolve the perceiver into that which was perceived. Get him something decent, pure in eye. Blanche: Some ecstatic children were rolling it down the hall when the fictive mother made those marks herself. A man grown suddenly old may be a physiognomist or picture- explainer. Louis: Many married women will always be in your footsteps. Blanche: He had his history there, too, walking on tiptoes. Louis: Her arms shot out numb and rigid. Blanche: The more I work on these plants the more the fascination of them grows upon me. /////////////////////////////////////// ACT I, SCENE II (Third character enters: Gabrielle Russier--30 yr old french schoolteacher who had an affair with 16 yr old male student of hers. Police, govt., family drove her to imprisonment, madness, suicide.) Set: (loose stones lying on the ground are generally white but otherwise dark) Blanche: collecting seaweed during a seaside holiday relaxes in the long run. Louis: those long lines of gentle puppets. Continued her plant experiments. Lombroso's skull collection. Blanche: In whose shadow such alternative relationships had always been conducted. Louis: Knows how to deserve her--flash, flit, shine, look like, adorn who amuse others by uttering the same thing in two or three. Blanche: Not after she told those two dreams but later. Like those who depict infernoes. Might have simply fallen back. Louis: Very different arms receive him. Blanche: That's why he associates with us, using a picture of a skeleton. Louis: To bring the machine into perfect timing. Blanche: We want him alive and we want him agile. Balancing on her heels and head like an acrobat. Stage direction: (the runaway should suddenly decide to talk) Gabrielle: I wasn't there. Blanche: Fathers who encouraged daughters, every kind of caution. Try to have more presence of mind. Gabrielle: I thought it would be safe to see you again. Blanche: Could not drive in poor light. Gabrielle: The charges against me may be reduced. Louis: The opportunity to study birds. I really must settle down to drawing horses. Stage direction: (his angels haul him off to the stall) Blanche: Who make drawings on paper of such things as men, birds, beasts, eagles, or insects. The erection of a palace set with jewels. Objects or images by which you may earn a living. really meant tottering. Gabrielle: I didn't waste too much time. Stage direction: (she hands her a sheet of paper typed on both sides) Blanche: We whisper, we go over the same ground again, again. Texts confiscated and destroyed. Gabrielle: Look for chinks. /////////////////////////////////////// ACT I, SCENE III In a circular chamber, quite dark Blanche: Her grief spreads throughout her body: hybridism, artificial breeding, rudimentary organs. She looked for a victim, anyone who had dissected the hand, the viscera, or even a feather. Louis: Who dare say whether it is or it isn't more beautiful than nature? One or two small shrouded lamps placed on the floor serve dimly to light the way to a few descending steps. He, who is beginning to suffer under her domination, becomes conscious that the scene before him is slowly moving away. This room in reddish-blue, ruined windows, half choked with ivy. Gabrielle: Here is clearly seen what's left of me from before: bits of stone that happen to look like organic forms. Blanche: Have you really experienced all that? The wish to capture evanescent reflections? Gabrielle: Instead of staring at an ancient photograph, he resorted to a peculiar technique. Blanche: If you want to study seriously, right after the first woman you mention in your book, go out into the open air. Gabrielle: The whole night with her, threatened by a revolver, kept alive by rumors... Blanche: Systematically to construct the head, the sensitive condition of the eye, I mean, your head, which unites the shape of the landscape as we know it with this apparent mirage. Louis: Concept and execution reveal a touching effort, occasionally obscured. His striving for extreme naturalism also holds good for hues and broken colors. Blanche: The eye soon became sufficiently accumstomed to the priviledged case of a parallel projection, the various ways it can be disturbed or made to look strange as a process of degeneration. Gabrielle: When speaking parts are forbidden, the ear has no direction. Louis: The same sentence has three meanings: they were consumed with curiosity as to how it was done. And now something strange happened to our Charlotte: the desire for newsreels and travel films. /////////////////////////////////////// ACT II SCENE I A long, very brightly lit room, where there are several long tables on which you can see, standing side by side in wooden supports, test tubes containing powders of the same dazzling colour as the streams in the courtyard . . . liquids of the same colour are being heated in retorts suspended above little flames. Blanche: What is he talking to you about? Louis: The son of an itinerant miniature painter found it fun to make his entry upside down. Lost all judgment of time and place. Joined believers. Finally found the marginal. In exploration lies disillusionment. Blanche: Has she forgotten you for casting colored shadows on the floor? Louis: Effects that had to be achieved with oil lamps. Each time she took a photograph, they insisted these gaps serve to remind us--images are hardier. My brain burns under a kind of writing table. Blanche: Where did you steal it? Louis: I can't understand why you scientific people feverishly examine his clothes. Rarity and distance permit oddly beautiful disregard. Better to shun science altogether. All we need for process to appear as plot-- shoot a sudden . . . Blanche: Why are we doing this? Louis: To perform extraordinary feats of endurance, haphazard visions dumped allowing anyone wild locusts and miraculous relics. The discovery that an actual thunderstorm was going on at the same time spread like wildfire all over Europe . . . Blanche: Up to his neck in water, a seam opened and he followed her foolishly up. As are as we are sane, lumpen, stranded, witness of the invisible world, placed in sudden darkness, barely trace her scowl. /////////////////////////////////////// ACT II, SCENE II Louis: Past a certain degree, the old show business premise persisted. (The grotesque object, witnessed at all times, in squalid, cramped quarters) Gabrielle: Mediums can be physical: in a kind of silent transparency. Julian: Deprived of memory and understanding, balance helps to orient us in mental space. (The only space we experience assumes the terrible appearance of a desert.) Gabrielle: A skateboard-sized device reveals this secret like a rebus. One person and not another entered his memory as a disconnected sequence of optical displays. Louis: You must stop moving away from us, threatening to shake the whole building down. Blanche: All the drifters on earth provide cases and covers for their possessions. Louis: Such feelings were exaggerated for the mere gratification of gazers. Blanche: The end of any alliance with them: the random gestures and words. Julian: Lavish all these considerations on a broken brain? Gabrielle: Continue the journey, proud, vindictive; slip into this excess. Blanche: Monstrous and alive, quite close, the face is removed like a mask. Gabrielle: You thought you held someone, the apparent dryness and coolness of the skin. (His memory is suddenly flooded with her shoes, in the final flash) Louis: Words were threadbare; the tin cascade was done away with. Gabrielle: Why do you try so desperately to explain everything in abnormally cautious language? Blanche: Swimming back and forth across the river without stopping in the serene world. /////////////////////////////////////// ACT II, SCENE III Set: ottomans and sofas are dispersed around awkwardly shaped rooms and niches. magnifying glasses mounted around the platform to provide maximum display. Gabrielle: I lay on the backseat. Julian: The scene of secret and hidden experiments. Stricken on the road, both repulsed and grateful. Gabrielle: The doctor gave me Stelazine. Peril followed by beauty. Then, invasion, sickness, whiteness. . . Julian: The many shapes of the agony of imprisonment decompose into images . . . Gabrielle: Not into narrations, all those stammered, imperfect words. Julian, there were people who couldn't move. There I was, kindling their spirits. Julian: Whoever looks on this from outside, some culpability, even complicity. Gabrielle: With the addition of Julian and his monstrous music inserted mysteriously into the background, as he lies embedded in the 19th century, with chains still on his feet. Julian, the mind is luminous. From the running, I like to brag. Julian: No denial however vehement, with her mechanical smile, fugitive and waning. Expresses on the ground, rotten field, ideas only rendered partially visible by plays on the surface of things. Does not remain loyal to the spectacle of the skeleton. Gabrielle: But when I kneel, certainty vanishes. Julian: The wish to be twisted. Gabrielle: These are no angels. An implicit conspiracy or something when they give me money. It is very important that you pay for what you brought. /////////////////////////////////////// ACT II, SCENE IV Louis: Did you sleep with everyday objects and profane texts? Blanche: The brain can see desire drawing a curtain. Eau de nile, the name of a color, an unbounded fragment of a world open to everything that lives, but not admonitions. Gabrielle: Take white pillowcases to the ocean to scatter the guts out on the ground. Different surfaces on panels, colored or not, a woman reading a letter. Blanche: Didn't you feel it didn't you hear it, a piece of white satin? Gabrielle: Why have you come back to their monotonous nights? Blanche: The skies are scanned with pity from close up a decline, a breath to the pride, a trust to devices, thing devoid of hope which opened intimate links to the world of shadows, phantom content unfolding, like that of the eye itself. Gabrielle: You cannot tell what is causing unfolding shadows. Blanche: Something is happening that is going to happen in caves or in rooms without windows. Gabrielle: Only oblivion can suppress unceasing interplay of sound and sense. Blanche: An arm dangling in the bus aisle, the world staining the surface as if it were an outside force, a certain disposition of the heart. Louis: They become them without my permission, monsters - that is, etymologically, beings or things to be shown. Gabrielle: The task of healing these broken vessels projects itself out of me. /////////////////////////////////////// ACT III, SCENE I Blanche: You can't just walk in here you know, with the same gestures to set them apart. Gabrielle: In the geography of haunted places she would walk him to the water. Louis: Prudence, about to put his foot in a puddle, blasts apart. Gabrielle: He seldom omitted to introduce Mem, a woman, a being in unlimited space. Blanche: (With a firm, apparently brutal grasp) You didn't try hard enough. Louis: The phenomena, curiosities, and philosophy of the sense of sight, they warned me not to get inflated ideas Gabrielle: He's getting weaker every day. Blanche: Has actually married his gallery of statues. Shadows from the stag antlers on the wall. To think such nights will never return. Louis: We live in the picture, we were all great pretenders. Gabrielle: To conceal and reveal, that's not a lot, is it? Blanche: Do not speak in a human voice. Speak as if they were true. Gabrielle: Everyone knew I was writing something about that night--faces torn by bites. But an animal with strange mechanisms. Doing the work of a machine. Louis: Every second was the narrow portal become special and set apart. The bleak world of beasts and things, of my magical prowess. Gabrielle: So perfectly solid. Leaves little space for aberration. Louis: An arguable relationship to the knowledge of cadavers. Time itself moves slowly, if at all. Gabrielle: He has color, he is calm, he speaks of the prior world. This wedge of light, would you wander around in it? /////////////////////////////////////// ACT III, SCENE II (Lit by two sad white neon shells of sea-green light.) Blanche: I did not know in what vague manner I would see myself on some pages, what counts as evidence: strange, forgotten, lovely things. Gabrielle: The ramparts of his solitude deep in our genes feel safe now with me, locked within the theater of his body. There were these candles and he was moaning through intricate, recurrent sequences. Louis: To be able to see clearly distant things inside the usual Parisian thunderstorms, select four sentences which you think are keys; scribble, breathing hard. If you don't like the words or gestures, revisualize the opulent flesh which once covered these bones, amoeba-like fissioning wherein the word exudes an erotic aura. Julian: What really matters is that she was a foreigner without ever being at a loss for words, a condition acquired in a green chair in the park in the afternoon. (Scattering various sheets of paper and maps over the reeking carnage of the furniture with their legs, the angels straddle corridors of quaint and amusing things.) Blanche: Revelations are unclear: I pacify the bloody- minded. (Huge thorns or soldiers in uniform quiver, extend, grow small) Gabrielle: All these pretended peddlers of the future are susceptible to the ceremony of her hands. ######################################## THE PERFECT CARD Keith Dawson "Conrad," Louis says. The clerk looks up from the box of cards he has been sorting into neat piles. It is an 800-count box of 1979 common cards. All the stars have been removed to sell separately. Conrad is sorting the mass into team sets and placing them in hinged plastic boxes. "Here comes an important customer. Show him whatever he wants to see." "Right. Will do." Conrad has a way of speaking that makes him seem slow, even though he is not. He is deliberate. His words tend to emerge with distinct stops between them, as if he is waiting until just the last second to decide which word to use. Conrad is of medium height, with coarse reddish-brown hair and gray eyes. He has a tendency to look away when speaking to people, and to cover his mouth or pull at his beard when he is nervous. He has never sold anything before this. He is at this job for just two weeks, and in that time he has helped precious few customers. Louis doesn't trust him yet. Louis unlocks the display case in front of Conrad. "He'll want to see the good stuff," he says. "He's picky, but he buys big." Frank Kissell, about forty-five or fifty, stands about five-eight, slightly stocky for that height. His suit is italian cut and very sharply tailored. There is a silk handkerchief in his breast pocket that matches the lapis floral print of the tie. His shoes are soft, buttery and narrow to a point. They shine as brightly as his gel-slicked hair. His face is round, not fat, but a little fleshy around the neck and jowls. He smiles often, and his teeth are white and straight. There is a fat, jeweled ring on each of his hands. Conrad cannot help but notice them. Neither one is a wedding ring. Kissell is the last person you'd take for a baseball card collector, Conrad thinks. Yet here he is. "You're new here, aren't you?" Kissell says to Conrad, who gets a whiff of his cologne. It smells fruity, like oranges, Conrad thinks. "That's right." "Frank Kissell. I knew I'd never seen you here before." Kissell sticks out a hand. Conrad notices that his fingernails are well manicured, with a touch of polish. His grip is firm, and his hand dry. Conrad's own is chapped and hairy. His nails are bitten down into the corners. "Conrad. What can I do for you, Mr. Kissell?" "Please call me Frank." He pulls a small red leather notebook from his jacket pocket, along with a half-sized gold pencil. He flips up the lid of the notebook and leafs through the pages, licking the point of the pencil. "Let's start with Cracker Jack, 1915." These are among the best cards in the store. In any store. An opportunity to take the old cards out of the display case is rare. Cracker Jack cards from the early part of the century are notoriously hard to find in perfect condition. The cards were added to boxes of candy, so the majority of them are stained yellow or brown with the remains of caramel. Conrad has noticed that most people, kids especially, don't appreciate the old. He favors the pastoral cards of an earlier era. He has admired them since long before he started working here. Conrad hands Kissell a tray of cards, each one sealed into a thin lucite screw-down block. The lucite block is not opened, even for a customer like Kissell. No one handles the cards with fingers. Kissell peers through a jeweler's loupe. He takes his time, looking at both sides of each card and at the painted face of the player. He flips through the drawer looking for particular players, until he comes to a Joe Jackson card. He gives it special attention with his eyepiece. Conrad admires it upside down from his side of the counter. Jackson looks vaguely cross-eyed in the portrait, he thinks. The ballplayer is wearing a floppy, baggy flannel gray uniform, with a C on his cap. He's caught mid-swing against a sharp red background. The Cracker Jack logo is still the same after seventy years. The card looks sharp and new to Conrad. The last time he had Cracker Jacks was at a ballgame; his prize was not a beautiful card, but a tiny booklet of lick-on tattoos. He thinks he was born seventy years too late. "This card has tweezer damage and corner wear," Kissell says. "It's the nicest we have," Conrad says. "There were only twelve Shoeless Joe cards issued before he was thrown out." "I have all of them," Kissell says without looking up from his loupe. "I even have one of these." He holds the card under the light. "But I'd like a better specimen. This isn't it." Kissell takes Conrad on a leisurely trip through the store's most valued inventory. He consistently finds blemishes that Conrad's eye misses. Conrad would give his right arm to own the cards Kissell toys with buying, but they are far, far out of his reach, no matter the condition. The Cracker Jack card Kissell rejects costs more than he makes in half a year. He takes home $320 a week, without health insurance. First Kissell calls the year and the set, sending Conrad back to the display for the drawer. Then Kissell goes through it, pulling all the cards he's interested in and making a stack on the counter. He works his way through the pile, scouring each card with his loupe, turning the card this way and that under the florescent lights. Like undersized fish, most get thrown back into the pool. To Conrad, there does not appear to be a logic to Kissell's search. He skitters from year to year, set to set, player to player, all over the map. From Cracker Jack they wend their way to the 1950s, where Kissell finds a Phil Rizzuto card made by Tip Top, a long-defunct bread company. Then back to the thirties, where they spend a long time searching for a Goudey 1933 Mel Ott. There are three in the case. Kissell immediately dismisses two; one is creased slightly and the other is very off- center. Conrad just shrugs; he knows this card well. Ott is young in the picture, a painting. He holds a bat behind his shoulder, hands choked up, brow wrinkled and lip twisted into a menacing snarl. He looks as though he's about to bash you on the head, Conrad thinks. Pitchers must have hated to face him. "I've always wondered why they put the first names in quotes," Kissell says. Conrad looked closely, and sure enough, the name was printed as "Mel" Ott. Many of the other cards in the set have the same feature, he sees. "Maybe because it's not a Christian name," he says. Kissell takes the loupe off and lifts his eye from the card's border to scrutinize Conrad more closely. Conrad tugs at his beard and turns away with an embarrassed half-smile. "See, Mel is like a nickname, for Melvin." "Yeah, I guess that might be right." Kissell turns the lucite block over in his hands, then places it face up in the pile of chosen cards. Kissell pulls three cards from Topps 1965: Lou Brock, Steve Carlton, and Willie Mays. He declares himself finished. There is a pile of seven cards on the counter between them. Conrad puts the last drawer away and locks the case. As he does, Kissell spreads his cards out in a row to see them all at the same time. "Quite an impressive collection you have there," Conrad says. "This is nothing," Kissell says. "I've got rooms filled with stuff. My collection is worth almost a hundred grand." "That's an awful lot of money." Conrad frowns a little at this. "Is there a theme to it, or something?" "A theme?" "I mean, is there something special you collect, like a favorite team, or player?" "Value," Kissell says. "I collect what's worth collecting." Kissell looks at him with what Conrad thinks is a patronizing smile. Conrad says nothing. He just rolls up the sleeves on his faded shirt, checks the time on his digital watch, and goes on about the business of helping the customer. He rings up Kissell's cards and the total comes to more than $1,400. He thinks about his own collection, painstakingly assembled over almost twenty years time. Many cards are dented from flipping with the boys on his block in the when he was young. It is worth maybe one thousand dollars, if that. He looks at Kissell out of the corner of his eye. Kissell is wandering down the display, poking his stubby fingers at hologram cards and whistling a blank tune. Conrad sees Kissell's little red notebook and smells his robust perfume and knows he'll never have a collection worth anything to anyone but himself. These cards will leave the store and sit in Kissell's vault until they appreciate, Conrad thinks. He is sorry to see them go. "Hey, who is the hottest rookie this year?" "I don't know, I don't really collect rookies." "Well, who sells the best?" Conrad names a player who's cards have been flying out of the store. "Let me have ten of them," Kissell says. "Ten?" "It's an investment." Conrad dully collects ten cards and adds fifty dollars on the cash register. "Enjoy them," Conrad says sullenly. "What kind of stuff are you interested in?" Kissell says as he pulls hundreds off a large money clip. "Ryan, Gwynn, and the '75 Reds," Conrad says, the words tightening in his throat, as if parting with them is offering up a precious jewel. "A pitcher, a hitter and a team." "The best." "Well, that ought to keep you busy for a while." "A lifetime, I think." Conrad says in his slow, guarded way. "Do you have the '75 Bench in your Reds set yet?" "No, that's a little too expensive for me." It is a $25 card. Even so, it represents a week's worth of groceries, Conrad thinks. "Can I see it?" Conrad, more than annoyed, fetches it from a different case, one not kept locked. He thinks Kissell is rubbing his nose in it. The card is in pretty good condition. Kissell has already put away his loupe and notebook, but he gives it a good eyeballing front and back. "How much?" Conrad quotes him the price and Kissell pulls two loose twenties from his pants pocket. Conrad picks up the card, admires it, and starts to put it in the plastic bag with Kissell's other cards. Kissell's hand on the bag stops him. "No, it's for you," he says. "For your help. Add it to your collection." "Seriously?" Conrad doesn't know what to think. "Thanks, thanks a lot," he says. "Forget it, it's no big deal." Conrad sticks out his hand and Kissell pumps it. "Nice tip," he says. He slides Johnny Bench into a clear plastic envelope, holding it gingerly by the sides as if he doesn't trust his own coarse hands. Johnny is leaning into a crouch, ready to catch a ball between his legs. "I don't think of it as a tip," Kissell says with a sly smirk. Turning to go, he looks back at Conrad over his shoulder. "I think of it as an investment." ######################################## I am sure... Tadeusz Kantor from FLORA + ANTHROPOPHOBICA 1993 I am sure that INCREASED PSYCHIC ACTIVITIES AND THE INTENSITY OF THE THOUGHT PROCESS PRODUCE A FREE NETWORK OF IMAGES, ASSOCIATIONS, ALLOW US TO MOVE AWAY FROM RATIONAL UTILITARIAN CONNECTIONS BETWEEN REAL ELEMENTS. A sewing machine, an umbrella, and a dissecting table could not possibly have been merged together in the Comte de Lautreamont's dream. Of this I am sure. It must have been done by a newly liberated freedom of thought. The Surrealists maintained that the PSYCHE IS A STATE THAT SHOULD BE RESEARCHED, AND THE RESULTS SHOULD BE USED IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF CONSCIOUSNESS. I am full of doubts here. These doubts, however, allow us to hear clearly "the inner voice." ART IS NOT PSYCHOLOGY. THE CREATIVE PROCESS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH. THE PSYCHE SHOULD BE ACCEPTED RATHER THAN RESEARCHED IN ART! IT SHOULD BE ACCEPTED AS A SUPERSENSUOUS CONCEPT. THE PSYCHE--THIS IMMATERIAL "ORGAN," WHICH WAS "PLANTED" IN A PHYSICAL BODY, NATURE'S OR GOD'S GIFT--INDICATES ITS OWN DESIRE NOT TO GO "BEYOND MATERIAL REALITY" BUT TO SEPARATE ITSELF FROM IT. THE PSYCHE CONTRADICTS MATERIAL REALITY. IT ONLY TOUCHES IT. IT CREATES ITS OWN CLOSED REALITY WHICH MAKES ONE FEEL THE PRESENCE OF THE OTHER WORLD. IT IS THE PSYCHE THAT EMANATES THE FORCE CALLED IMAGINATION. IT IS THE PSYCHE THAT GAVE BIRTH TO GODS, ANGELS, HEAVEN AND HELL, FEARS... And now I can enter my little room of imagination and say: IT IS THE PSYCHE WHICH CREATES AND EXHIBITS REALITY AS IF WE WERE SEEING IT FOR THE FIRST TIME. And this is all. My last advice: "remember everything and forget everything..." TADEUSZ KANTOR From IRONS BULLETIN No5, August 1993 Edited by Raphael Nadolny, ul. Krancowa 2, 62050 Mosina, Poland ######################################## LETMETELL (contd from #3) ezra IV Brown eye full of mud, green eye full of sea, he lifted injured lips from her bruised thigh and took another draught of air. Poised on the brink of bristling conceptual transformation he sang once more the song of his fathers. Humping, humping, goat-skinned, TN Blue Ridge Satyr. Removing his microscope the Doctor lost no time in pulling off his garter. "Scientifically speaking..." he mumbled as he plunged through KY, "There's no relation...between,,,(on) ...again...and, and (off)...again...Bizarre publication awaits us all in...." Shamed, of course, beyond abuse, tiny person loosed from ball-headed retainers took instant tube to Clevis' elbow. Chagrined Nurse--or was it, Angel--took reverse shots in navel and Nips dug trenches through gravel. Instant by instant war became clear. No trench on Ellis Island, no bomb in Hiroshima Bay, only mallows roasting over beach fires and silent rutting in the sand. You think three radios report the whole attack?! Burning shreds of canvas flak emerged from his eyes and Bo Tree Boy wins a kiddy prize for seeing with no eyes. "Couldn't wait, couldn't wait," he said. "Savages, savages," the Doctor cried, "with this bare stick I'll cure them all!" Whereupon he fell to incantation, bitter spells and knowledge driven reign of constant uplifting: "YTEOSDTAEYRDAY" PYREOSGTREERSDSAY YPERSOTGERREDSASY TYOEDSATYERDAY PFRROEGERZEESSS FPRREOEGZREESSS" The black sap of festered wound ran down hairless arm. Tiny sternum, plumed with ermine fawns, pale in pus-light wax candle, rib-cage exposed beneath the skin; shaven, forlorn, hospice-bound, terminal without a word, black eye-to-eye, filled with oil, scariated flesh shrinking on shrill beak of horned owl framed in fireplace light; writing on the wooden floor, splintered fingers in every ear, nose-ringed, "No- thing but narrative; nothing but narrative," slumped asleep across the dead child's hump. //////////////////////////////////////// "Who was this little creep, anyway?" the Sergeant asked as he dragged the body toward the door. "Anybody know?" "A Doctor," the plebe muttered. "Doctor a what?" "Things. Just things." "Huh. Don't look like he cured hisself, does it? Haar, haar, haar." //////////////////////////////////////// V today is yesterday progress freezes spray drips across no measure in the morning pain reaches up is progress across no morning pain today freezes drips measure in the reaches yesterday spray across the morning is progress pain yesterday reaches across up in spray across today in measure spray freezes drips today in pain morning no measure today is pain yesterday is in the morning reaches, freezes no progress yesterday is today //////////////////////////////////////// VI "Wednesday, only Wednesday...and just LA. Oh my, what's that shit in the trees? Where's my jar of Y-K? How many times can a poor girl die?" Who rides hogs? Who fucks dogs? Where does this cum-line lead, cunnilingus? "Shores! Lead me to the shore. Gimme pink shrimp for my red dip. Maybe corn bread." "Kosher?" Back of the bus mad dog lies, tail tellin', bare, thin sailor's back flexed mutual array, blades scraped-- stretched white scars of Hiroshima flesh annals of neurotic sex bound lingering salvation saliva to stone. On deck Gulf Coast flounder flop ten shrimp limp. Slurps Gulf Coast mop sorghum-brown pail of anal glop. Up, up the Hasid danced, eyes putrid from strained glazed front-seat staring. Pronouncing hyphenated holy names he circles bus and climbs aboard. "To CA by way of LA! Onward electronic flag! My father from Sofia taught me not to drink too early." //////////////////////////////////////// VII Bottles of alcohol, grain for the brain, drained the insights of table legs, smooth-grained as sculpted mares' withers food for the race track as blind angels' rivers. Naked nuns rejoiced in corporate policy eating apples of a ripe old age leaving slobbers of dung up chimney plums. Nearby, Race Horse Mary slung in hammock sifters makes goal of April saying, "So you think it's easy? This being nifty, all in polka dots? Not so easily remaindered as over- printed tomes on mundane woodworking. Pests, I'd call them pests on a needle incapable of extraneous work and highly over-valued poised like success on the verge of table tops lost to excess in scrambled chairs and lace." "Ah yes," the Doctor sighed once more, "crossed legs in haste spare no time for stethoscopes. I'd pine away 'twere it not for time and mares' legs fine as any fall weather." "Seasons part in seamed reunion," Eunice responded, "leaves gather in lost parks peaked caps appear amidst the cabs hail and hail blade-ers slip on livery, silk green and flashing gold racers' colors, pacers trotters: raceway clutter. If only Grace were here now, what conversations we'd have." "But Paris passed only days ago; now Miami's upon us. No hope for the Jersey Shore besieged by Mediterranean strains of Asian flu. Poor girl, poor girl, my Doctor; dress up, it'll do you good; you'll see what food's in the closet. `No loss in arrears; no sand in gears', I always say." "My dear, you're past Paris yourself, many days ago. If we could only get over tomorrow today would seem so famous. Yet here we are, stuck in bottles of alcohol with no brains left, only sour food and empty blades, swords of hunger down our throat and "A's" and "B's" embossed on office doors." "Too true, jaundiced thing. Here, take a ring on this Cherry Bell; not much else to do having already set records for notoriety paled in comparison to the courthouse ninnies that scream, `Justice, justice for all the juices.' No end, pet, of what's not yet occurred; no hope of reaching yesterday when today's already upon us." She paused, "But you'll see," one hand on wrinkled bosom, "life's not too late to take you yet." The Doctor rose from Suzy's face. "No, Eunice, you're NOT right there. In fact you're wrong to assume the catsup's all in place. Too soon your bony arms will flap their flesh; tombs will rise among your guests and this old houseboat will glide once more to sea." Up from her statue, full stature tuned to beleaguered nonsense Suzy slapped her knee and color rising chose her muse's early siren. "Out!" she cried, "all of you out or I'll have this horse dyed green." But Doc and Eunice, arm-in-arm, skipped town in time aboard the next, flying artibus. //////////////////////////////////////// VIII Video cameras hum, padded mics protrude "Only one without a viewfinder; but, such a bargain!" Gangplank raised, the barge flapped down harbor as sailors' tipped the bride's bouquet. "Home, home," they sang, "we'll sup well once home," and jigged on down the hall past Mazie's room. Decked and curled, magenta microns, steeled icons of early electric undergrounds, the obese girl ducked the balcony rail and fell toward whirling roulette wheels. Pink chunks of ripe punk and red liver came up the coast claiming righteous stanchions of memorabilia. Now in a circle, now in a square, Mazie cantaloped, left nothing bare. "I saw her," the small boy called as he looked toward the left. "Not there my son," the squat priest moaned, "oh please, not there." "I'm sure, I'm sure, " the small boy squeaked, "Mazie, Mazie, on a spoon!" Is there no room for the practice of science? Is there no room for plebiscites? Take presidents for example; is there no room for spite? On tabular grains of envy; on spiknards of growing cankers, take a dance and bless the cars. Yellow, yellow grow the answers; blooming, blooming in.... But, but..... //////////////////////////////////////// IX "None of this singing," the pietist screamed, "we'll have preaching, or no hide inside." Stared down, looked up, table coiffed and stirred. "Here, take this piece of wafer, thin as silk, pure as a micro- processor chip, zero insertion force required, pass, blessed to past, repast of noble lips. Kiss tender champs, chomp on mendicant poseurs or lozenges." "Peace at last. No frenzied walking chairs or caped coffins plying elmwood stairs. I'll sleep tonight." Pups on the table peed in Billy's tea; Polyps of deep seaweed waved "Envy, envy." Traded up one rung higher don't take a calf for granted, don't take a thigh to dinner; all's lost, but none are thinner. Sinner's attention attracted delicious bricks in red cement. In tents the Arab sits, decked in harmonious incense. "It's what you see crossing the plain," he said. "The plain sees what you are as you cross," the other replied. "No gettin' around it." (to be contd) ######################################## AMPLIFIED ART Paolo Barrile Milan, March 1992 - (via j.lehmus) from FLORA + ANTHROPOPHOBICA 1993 The new artists are born. They are the artists who express themselves through the actions, behaviour, participation and works of other artists. The "new" artist conceives a project, announces it, "proposes" it, explaining to other artists its meaning and aims. If they are tuned in to the new artist's thought and objectives, the other artists act. The "new" work of art--which will be exhibited, criticized and commercialized--is the whole project, consisting of dozens or hundreds of works and/or actions of dozens or hundreds of artists. Amplified art is--or can be--"global art" because artists from the remotest countries can participate in any project. This is made possible by mail-art. Apart from the technical ability and adequate competence of participants, a successful project requires the artists to be deeply involved from the point of view of ideology and of the new artist's pivotal idea. The idea must be valid, it must be able to kindle enthusiasm and to motivate artists to participate. In the past, the artist expressed himself by means of colors, clay, marble. Today, the "new" artist's media are the other artists. In conclusion, amplified art enables the "new" artists to abandon their traditional working tools and adopt other means of expression. The "new" artist conceives a project and, in order to carry it out, stimulates and involves hundred of other artists. Amplified art is very often global art. PAOLO BARRILE Messaggio Terra, via G. Milani, 9, 20133 Milano, Italy ######################################## CYANOBACTERIA INTERNATIONAL - A DISCUSSION ezra & j.lehmus "To Mr. j.lehmus with all due respect and with true comradely intention the following critique is submitted for mutual edification and forwarding of the laudable goals and refining of the methodologies of research, discovery and realization of the indelibly inscribed transmissions that rest too often hidden in inner depths of all souls wandering outside unification as raised this evening of 20 october, 1993 after creation 5754 by ezra in search of truth. JL: C.I. >>JL: REFLUX / REWIND : IN ORDER TO DIRECT A MOVEMENT (The physical laws of movement can also be under- stood as attempts to define an artistic movement. Energy theories, wave theories. Interstellar radio flux. Waves emanating from Lesbos : ethereal, electromagnetic waves echoing through the Time / Space. Yeats dreamed of converging gyres, in- terference, the angels who emit.) is an unstructured body... >EZ: How can a body not have structure--do you mean a particular kind of structure is lacking, e.g., a hierarchical structure? How can it be totally devoid of structure and still stand up? >>JL: I. Structure. True, it is impossible to devise a functional entity devoid of structure. On denying the structure of CI, I thought more specifically of a rigid, organized hierarchical structure. I think that "structure" in the classic sense of "order" can be seen as an accidental state of chaos. Organized structure pertains inseparably to civilization. Thus, we should adopt a new name to address our state of altering, mutating structure : d e s t r c t u r e, tumult. Undefined viral growth flux movement in- fecting hosts via changing media. JL: of Artists. >EZ: Why a capital "A"?. JL: C.I. perceives and exalts the true aesthetic quality... >EZ: How defined? this `true aesthetic quality'? JL: as the highest value and meaning of all information. >EZ: The aesthetics of `information', an interesting idea- -beautiful information. >>JL: AESTHETIC QUALITY. Chimaerae perceived through the language system of Beauty (as opposed to Knowledge informative quality). Information is a memory bank of perceptions. The highest value of in- formation is the access to Beauty. We absorb the information of the civilization for our own ex- periments. JL: This sublime quality is the hidden spirit seed of information : the veiled Meaning through which it is possible to find a contact with the sphere of Ideas. The Art of information is the science of change : Art Magic. Primordial Ideas : poetical translations of the Book of Changes... >EZ: is this not an `order' of sorts? JL: stellar mechanics, dreamwebs of the Sephirothic correspondency. >EZ: Zohar, Tree of Life, Jewish Kabbalah, Yetzirah? How deep is our experience in these areas? JL: The purport of C.I. is to experiment with new mediums and languages for propagation of the poetical message. >EZ: Of information?. >>JL: LANGUAGE. Living language growing out of dead, rigid systems ; language through entropy, de- struction ; chaos language, dream language. Language = terrain vague. JL: This study is extended to embrace forgotten, neglected, abandoned or otherwise unknown territories of expression and logic. C.I. is a research for Alchemistic connection, correspondence, transmutation and dislocation. >EZ: Synergy, synchronisity [Jung]. >>JL: SYNERGY. Our dream entitled : Negative Entropy. New meaning emanating from an uncontrollable interference of two or more interconnected factors. Virtual poetry. JL: Flux transmit : shadow Idea, dream image, confluent analogy. C.I. stays away from all scientific and religious orders. >EZ: But from where comes information? Have not the `orders' also been sources? JL: C.I. is a quest for implicit freedom in thought and expression. >EZ: Certainly, but not at the expense of ignoring the sources. The fear of authority should only be appropriate in the face of those who have no claim to authority. >>JL: SOURCES. CI stays outside of all scientific and religious orders. Our creativity should not be be enclosed within, or hindered by, any dogma ; including definitions offered herein. We do accept and appreciate already existing systems of symbols as key-boards. We employ these systems as devices for our expression, indeed like the biologists base their study on various systems of fossils. But our practice is more of an intuitional quality. JL: C.I. is an oscillating, transreal ectoplasm, its nucleus centered in creative chaos : change, vitality, instability, C.I. is a living germ, mental disease seeking continuously new forms of expression : new symptoms, new hosts, new surfaces to infect, C.I. is an uncontrollable revolt against the rigidified form. C.I. is a see embryo for new aesthetic perception. This revolt delves its rudimentary roots into the works of the Symbolists and the Decadents, the experiments and methods of the Dadaists,... >EZ: And surely also the surrealists, Ernst, Breton, Eluard, et al. JL: and the vital correspondence and interference of the worldwide Network >EZ: online electronic and offline. JL: New members are invited to enter the collective. All members receive information about the proceedings of the collective. No membership fees are set : the only requisite demanded from a member of the Cyanobacteria International is activity. Upon all requests for information and contact, please address the Archivist j. lehmus. ************************************************** j lehmus to collective creativity 7 vi 1993 l e m n a p i s t i a JL: "lemna pistia" is documenting a gyrovague experiment operating upon the chromosomes of beauty and perception : muses and daemons of beauty and information : chaotic information : chaotic evolution , mutation : rebirth through destruction. >>JL: DOCUMENTATION. "lemna pistia" and other publi- cations are documents of the process, fragments published in order to communicate outside the collective. The process itself is in many aspects similar to processes executed in cyberspace, but our "material" exchange and dissemination of (mostly) visual ideas rarely attains the level of interactivity pertaining to cyberculture. JL: "lemna pistia" is a salamander, omniplasm protean chaos diffluens, striving to live in the streaming flux of continual creation and destruction, in the fiery ether of irrationalism, in the sphere of lucid inspiration. lemna pistia is a procession of muses constantly altering their glistering robes, veiled, veiled, shifting through burning chambers of fevered logic : dancing, dancing, matrix-step and hallucin. The Artist is invited to participate in this uncoordinated project. Please submit, a) visual material for publication, no restrictions of size ; or, b) 100 copies in size of 149 x 209 mm. lemna pistia is published upon an irregular basis, three numbers composing one volume of approximately 200 pages. All collaborators receive a copy of the journal. >EZ: Here begins what interests me most-- JL: The C.I. invites distortion of the published data. All methods of alienation, association, destruction, dislocation and duplication are accepted. The published work serves as source material for future experimentation ; every number of the journal will thus be a depiction of a successive generation in one continuous mutational line. >EZ: If this is true then the material contained in issue #11 will be the same material as contained in #1, having, perhaps, but not necessarily moved through a series of mutations. But what are the mutational rules? How is change limited to mutation, i.e., how is the introduction of (totally)new material avoided or disallowed? And by whom? Is this in fact actually happening? Is text being passed about and being used as source material by others? How is this being accomplished? What are the results? Are F+F examples/results of that process? Is lemna pistia? There is a sublime agony involved in giving up the fruits of one's own torment to the hands of another, granting them full freedom to "do with it what you will"--an agony that no previous generation has been noted for. Rather the fixing of the concept, idea, or aesthetic information has been the goal; the form released from the material but, once expressed, never changed, or only replicated/repeated precisely, with, perhaps, some leeway for interpretation in the case of music. Once printed on paper the text/image is fixed. How can it continue to mutate or evolve? Rather it assumes successive states. Within the electronic media the text can evolve, for the previous state is lost or displaced. Already this text I am writing now has evolved through many states and stages, none of which you have seen. You are reading only the results. In a cyberspace there need be no final state. A text/image could/can be accessible to many, even simultaneously, to be "worked on" in real time. If one stops even for a moment, a part of it may be lost. For what is being "created" is the process itself; the work is the process, not the results of the process. On paper there is nothing to watch--only something to look at. JL: Within this publication, the C.I. attempts to banish all forms of copyright in order to reverse the fundamental concept of "originality". >EZ: All is material; nothing is not material; all creativity is nothing but the manipulation or refiguring of pre-existing material; no new material is created, only a new arrangement or configuration of the material. But is not the new configuration itself new, and, therefore created? The question hinges on material, not on originality. Originality is a prerequisite. If it is not new it is not interesting; if it is not "original" it is old, i.e., boring. What has been done with the material, what material has been chosen and how it has been manipulated is what attracts our attention--it is the drawing out of the aesthetic quality from the informational material that piques our interest and produces an insight. I present to you these words as materials I have selected out and which I have arranged in this order which projects a set of meanings and contents that is derived from the denotations and connotations of the words and their arrangement. You may take these words as material for the construction of another set, just as if I offered you a particular palette and set of brushes and a canvas on which to exercise them. May I watch? Will you show me what you have done when you are finished? May you use additional, different materials? I don't know, ask j.lehmus. >>JL: MATERIAL. All material is available for mutation. It is impossible to "protect" the sources. ----- (end of discussion) ######################################## FOUR POEMS j.lehmas IN SITU - IN VITRO As most important mosaics in contrast connection study by representation background environment for causing a man whose development galling fetter VII who is of nature (blank) inthe course Io Pan ! witness the Rosi- cruzians truest esteem frontispiece graphics as being the structure patient duplications Turner's syndrome backbone nationally accepted further Pan falls in love expecting Nature to conform You cannot illustrate the phenomena as information to hue his works which alrady characterises to break through between an artist their sensitive plastic originality we must start looms the figure suggestions coming from the magnificent Titans furs dyed from natural position with short round castor blanc theory eliminate conditions course to pursue implicit enough to sum here that their will principles firmly fixed outline patients with types of deletions however with allowed intent to oppose every man impersonal failed passive voice j.lehmas //////////////////////////////////////// KINGS' SITE Tombeau. Cloister church lichen buried beneath shrieking stones gaping virgin tears, ethereal milk white projection across obscure space. Sundials tarnished ancient pewter lead framed pale stream descending misty Western lands decanters offered, two candles and waxen hands : ectoplasm apparitions, miss King dancing solemnly curv'd eyes washing gore incubi incubi incubi - De Sinistrari, he is reading : old transcript faint ink on parchment. We are surrounded by the heathen. j.lehmas //////////////////////////////////////// SPUTNIK 2 Lean bitch moving in her sleep eyes brown amber parted lids low voice running through a dark shore passage nightly autumn arch white moon upon these black waters, frost laying herself white gravemirror rais'd against to meet the countenance. Constellations revolving statellites orbit more ellipsoid bright lines across photographic plates : perigeum / apogeum. I switch play-back radi voices echoes of dream generations from the distant stars GEMINI canine remains frozen inside the capsule (chromosomes colloidion print). Fancy crossing the Atlantic. Aviation pioneers, opium seers. Mine wings white pinion'd piercing the foil metal film azure glistering silver starry canopy. Lucifer unanime telegraph spark ozone. j.lehmas //////////////////////////////////////// Betwixt dream and reverie we sail, our ship descending blind captain, feeling colours through his body : many-coloured moire fields white eyes, coral, slumb'ring Sappho all in blossoming magnesium photographs "do you feel pain?" old man this is how th emuses dance, antediluvian Spring j.lehmas ######################################## an interesting story (Huth) from FLORA + ANTHROPOPHOBICA 1993 [to j.lehmus] -- Here is an interesting story. Not being a botanist or biologist, I had never run into the term "cyanobacteria" before I heard from you. But one day a few weeks after first hearing from you, I was on the campus of a nearby university. I was examining the campus for a conference of archivists to be held there in June. (That is my profession: archivist.) One of the rooms I needed to check had a class in session, so I stood at the back of the room staying out of the way and checking the room. Suddenly, I realized the professor was giving a lecture about cyanobacteria. Then I left. dbqp :: Ge(of Huth), Prop. 317 Princetown Rd. Schenectady, NY 12406 1 May 1993 ######################################## Subject: Zappa lives on... (and so does Bloomdido) From ALLMUSIC list From: nighean donn bhoidheach Posted with encouragement and permission from the write dishonorable Michael Bloom, music critic and bearded-guy extraordinaire *and* celibate author of the enclosed obituary. (He also promised to flash me his hairy breasts next time I'm in Bean Town if I posted this to the list for him :) Enjoy, Libby Doe =========================================================== FRANK ZAPPA, 1940-1993 Frank Vincent Zappa was an American original, a highly improbable successor to Charles Ives. A self-taught composer and guitarist, he released in a 28-year recording career over 60 albums of wildly diverse music that could fairly be described as threatening. Because of his uncompromising approach to his craft, he was better known as a symbol of non-conformism and all-around weirdness than for any specific achievement. But he has contributed substantially to just about every musical form in the Western tradition, and smatterings of the other arts and letters as well. His records with the original Mothers of Invention helped bring about the '60s revolution in rock music, from disposable popular culture to high art-- not that he drew such distinctions himself. His songs on such albums as _Freak Out_ and _Absolutely Free_ were as likely to mongrelize street-corner doo-wop with Charlie Mingus-style swinging improv and themes from Stravinsky ballets as to invoke the rigorous statistical density of his hero, Edgard Varese. He voraciously absorbed all the music he could get his hands on, and rearranged it all into a kaleidoscopic dada stew that not only gave his characteristic melodies the most unprecedented settings in rock, but forecasted the current experience of information overload. At the same time, he was one of the most observant commentators of the psychedelic era. He was also the most clear-headed, being neither ideologically blinkered nor stoned (he disliked drugs). When the summer of love devolved into a marketing scheme to swindle the youth of America, he didn't hesitate to say so explicitly, in _We're Only In It For the Money_. If his work has had any consistent theme, it has been to encourage his listeners to make up their own minds about things, and neither follow trends nor take anything on faith. Such landmark albums as _Uncle Meat_, _Hot Rats_, and _The Grand Wazoo_ anticipated, and heavily influenced, jazz-rock fusion. The technical demands of his music spurred the evolution of rock performance practices, i.e. "chops," and pieces that the Mothers had to mess around with the tape speed to realize are now well within the reach of your average Berklee grad, who will now find "Peaches En Regalia" in his fake books. Incidentally, Zappa himself was simply a monster as a guitar soloist, with a highly inventive melodic and rhythmic facility. As producer or talent scout, he helped foster the careers of numerous ground-breaking artists, including Alice Cooper, Tim Buckley, and Captain Beefheart, as well as documenting such unique urban characters as street wacko Wild Man Fischer. He has founded no less than four record companies in his career, often in response to double-dealing on the part of a major label or industry functionary. He wrote, scored, co-directed, and appeared in a feature film, _200 Motels_, about the misadventures of a rock group on tour. Much of the footage was shot in videotape and transferred to film, using innovative techniques that MTV has adopted--even if the subject matter and sarcastic tone of the movie itself have proven too provocative for television. His orchestral compositions, for this movie and elsewhere, are magnificent. While they don't adhere to any given school or discipline-- he had no use for minimalism or neo-classicism, and his most "modernist" Webernian works aren't even properly serialist-- the writing itself is intensely disciplined; he knew exactly what he wanted to hear, and his ear was excellent. He didn't often get to hear precisely what he wrote, as his scores were punishingly difficult, especially rhythmically, and required more rehearsal than was ever feasible. (For that reason, none of it will probably enter the symphonic repertoire either.) His most recent release, _The Yellow Shark_, consists of compositions played by the European chamber orchestra Ensemble Modern, which Zappa painstakingly edited from the tapes of all the performances, and while it still wasn't perfect, he professed to be pleased with it. He had a wicked sense of humor and a deep appreciation of absurdity, which served him well as a social critic. His songs were often considered-- damned with faint praise-- as rock comedy, despite that their content was often literal truth. One of his songs, "Valley Girl," about the curious culture and speech patterns of well-to-do southern California teenagers, became a fluke hit, and nearly spawned a TV series. In the '80s he was dragged into the political arena when "Washington wives" Tipper Gore and Susan Baker founded the PMRC, crusading against obscenity in rock music. In testimony before a Senate committee including Tipper's husband Al (now the vice president), Zappa was articulate and forceful in his defense of the First Amendment, and appropriately scathing about the probable motives of the major participants. He also pointed out the impossibility of balanced enforcement of any legal stricture, mentioning for example that country music was not being considered for sanctions and noting that "These guys have been to prison, and are proud of it!" His view of the whole affair is captured on the CD _Frank Zappa Meets the Mothers of Prevention_. With the onset of perestroika, however, he was heartened to discover that his music had inspired a generation of freedom fighters behind the Iron Curtain. He travelled to Czechoslovakia to advise Vaclav Havel on how to nurture his fledgling democracy and promote industry. Back in America, he began lecturing on civics and democracy, presented his philosophy of "practical conservatism" in his sort-of autobiography, _The Real Frank Zappa Book_, and, on his last concert tour in 1988, invited the League of Women Voters to set up voter registration tables at the concerts. He also wrote a sheaf of uproarious music skewering the religious right, which can be heard on such records as _Broadway the Hard Way_, _You Are What You Is_, and _Thing-Fish_, which was written as a Broadway musical. He very nearly ran for president in 1992, more to stimulate discussion of what he considered the real issues than because he had any real hope of winning-- although he certainly would have had my vote. Was this weird? Zappa rejected the charge absolutely-- although, if pressed, he would acknowledge that drawing dots on manuscript paper was possibly an odd occupation for a 20th century American. He described himself as a composer first and foremost: "give me some _stuff_," he said, "and I'll organize it for you." The domains where he was effective were by no means limited to music; his intuitive sense of structure would lead him to new ideas for running a record company or proposing cellular telephone technology for Czechoslovakia just as readily as they might spawn a composition for string quartet, trumpet, bass clarinet, and rock band. Back in the '60s, Grace Slick called Zappa "the most intelligent asshole I ever met." Both parts were valid: Zappa could be arrogant, fractious, or rude, although seldom to anyone who didn't deserve it. He was stingy about sharing the credit for his art; the list of his influences from the _Freak Out_ liner notes was removed from the CD version. Worst, he consistently underestimated his audience's intelligence, foisting upon us music that was often insultingly crude--albeit a satire of the crap on the radio. We didn't wanna hear it; we listened to Zappa because he was the only alternative in earshot. And yet his penetrating insight was generally obvious even to his adversaries, except to a certain poltroon senator from Washington state--Tipper Gore had allegedly sent him a get-well card. This quality had nothing to do with book learning, where Zappa was admittedly weak. Zappa was blessed with a built-in bullshit detector, an unerring sense of enlightened self-interest that alerted him to snow jobs, both in the fine print and in the greater cultural arena. And his unromantic deflating of this windbaggery is the second greatest thing he had ever done for society. But the greatest thing was the vast body of music he left behind him. Horribly inconsistent as it was, the best of it is unequalled by any living composer. Even a prolific eclectic like John Zorn never approaches Zappa's peculiar symmetry-- not to mention that his working methods would be unthinkable without Zappa's example. (Not that I'm carping; thinking about it now, I real- ize how much of my personal style I've appropriated from Zappa too.) And certainly, in the overly corporate music industry of the '90s-- where an original opinion is even rarer than an original sound, and certain prescribed "dangerous" thoughts are even marketed as commodities-- a popular phenomenon like Frank Zappa can never happen again. For this alone, he will be sorely missed. ######################################## ANNOUNCEMENT GLEANINGS by David Ignatow GRIST On-Line is pleased to announce the publication of GLEANINGS: Uncollected Poems of the Fifties by David Ignatow. As the first author in the Grist Electronic Publishing Program, Mr. Ignatow, our senior American master poet, remains in the forefront as always. GLEANINGS, available March 1st on diskette for IBM personal computers and online from the Grist On-Line Book Store, is a collection of more than one hundred and twenty poems written between 1950 and 1960. Many are published here for the first time, others have appeared in a variety of magazines, but none have been published in book form. I first met David in the mid-60s in Lawrence, Kansas when he was visiting professor at the University of Kansas and I was publishing Grist magazine and operating the Abington Book Shop. Several of his poems appeared in Grist in those days and now in the 90s others are appearing in the revived Grist, now on-line on Internet. My admiration and respect for his work is evidenced by this desire to see it presented over this span of time. I know you will recognize the significance of the publication of this group of poems and the significance of the fact that Mr. Ignatow has chosen to present them in this innovative format. I urge you to read these poems which reveal a man already mature in his vision and manner, presenting, as he says in his Brief Preface, "...poetry [that] stood apart from the thing itself. It was a reality of its own kind. From it, I could look out upon my immediate world with a lens of my own making and feel free, at least for the moment, and with a sense of mastery. I wish all my readers the pleasure and relief I felt in writing these poems, but for my readers to experience this pleasure and relief in the poems themselves." Amen. John Fowler fowler@phantom.com Gleanings: Uncollected Poems of the Fifties by David Ignatow on diskette will be $25.00 including shipping & handling. The toolbook edition will be released March 1st, 1994 and requires an IBM PC or compatible with Windows and VGA. The ASCII edition will be available April 1st, 1994 and is suitable for any IBM PC or compatible. Information regarding the Apple Macintosh version; the GRIST On-Line Publishing Program for authors; the GRIST On-Line Book Store(BBS)for small press poetry publishers and information regarding the GRIST On-Line Poetry Bulletin Board for poets is available via e-mail from fowler@phantom.com. ######################################## HORMONES, ASTRAL BODIES, SURFERS, SERIAL KILLERS, ACADEMICS, AND DISNEYLAND:A REVIEW of _BEN'S EXIT_ by PAUL TRACHTENBERG "Are hormones qualitative aspects of a pure spirit?" "That's the basis of my research." -- from _BEN'S EXIT_, p.106 As a sucker for novels interweaving art/humanities and science I loved reading Paul Trachtenberg's BEN'S EXIT. Metaphysics is the catalyst, enzyme, unifier of his main themes, and his spate of kooky characters (including a novice novelist, a couple of professor-researcher scientists, a sociologist with feminist leanings devoted to mass murder, and a hunky surfer-plumber) keep you turning the pages wondering what the next party or next outing will provide. The setting is Orange county, where Trachtenberg has lived all of his life. He's thoroughly entertaining and familiar with the rich plethora of coastal and inland settings, the right-wing politics, the gay, beach, and academic cultures, and the local histories of farms and orange groves, the rich plethora of beach and inland settings, KKK groups, the reactionary politicians and congressmen, and movie star mansions. The book is an impressively original fusion of art, science, spirituality, and humanity. The characters' preoccupation with a gruesome serial murder case works an evil, dark magic on the humorous, airy metaphysics, creating a unique tone, an awful depth that makes the humor and love int he novel all the more vital. There is much fascinating material from fresh scientific discoveries interlaced with the business of the hero's getting on with his novel, in which his idiosyncratic friends are thinly disguised protagonists. The idea of the novel transpiring within the novel works as a bright example of what these days is called meta-fiction. Aficionados of Tom Disch's _On Wings of Song_, Thomas Pynchon's _Gravity's Rainbow_, and Dom DeLilo's _Ratner's Star_ will love _Ben's Exit_. In the midst of the big ideas, topics and words there are wonderfully earthy things: scrumptious cheesecakes, curry omelets, Christmas nog, bloody marys, excursions to the beach and Will Rogers' Park, visits to Disneyland (a central motif), and surfing. There's even a might temblor during a Christmas get-together. The surfing world is wonderfully evoked through surfer banter (the most authentic I've read) so generic to Huntington Beach, California, and other area surfing towns. Impressive too are descriptions of Santa Monica wild lands and the presence of the vigorous, attractive Randy, a surfing plumber with a lion-like body: "Randy," Trachtenberg writes, walks like a mountain lion. The guy's fatless body straw-colored hair are due to his daily surfing... Sara has said how much Randy worships the sea. Ben also notices his slightly sagging lip; it seems baked by the sun; and he is intrigued by a coldness in Randy's eyes, possibly a misreading, for at that moment he seems to purr as he walks with Sara. What a lion tamer she is, Ben thinks, loving the chemistry. Their path through the Santa Monica mountains is surrounded with a thick chaparral of native scrub oaks and wild oleanders. The rocky hills of feldspar, gypsum, potash, and quartz crystal are a microcosm of mineral-rich California. A prehistoric ghost enshrouds this area. Among indigenous wild flowers are matilija, poppies, and Indian paint brush. The hiker's ears twitch for sounds of mountain lions, bob-cats, foxes, and coyotes, though these creatures are usually nocturnal. Any shrub rustlings are from hopping and scampering rabbits and native birds. Though the central friendship is a gay one, females are sharply and sympathetically drawn, and the novel should please all readers male, female; hetero, gay. It's a sign of our cultural conditioning, I suppose, that most people these days who feel comfortable reading/seeing hetero sex still feel edgy about gay sex. In any case, that's been my experience. Like most heterosexuals I have far less trouble with lesbian love than I do with male love. Countless "Penthouse" pictorials show sexy women going at it, and the Deneuve Sarandon film _The Hunger_ upset no one. Moreover, in my own classes in Michigan and here in Japan none of my students, male or female, has any trouble with lesbian sex, whereas almost all find it hard to accept even the harmless man to man kisses in David Leavitt's fiction and in much gay poetry. Reading these passages, though is salutary; the more varieties of human experience we can know the better. The over-all brio of affection, banter, and lyrical writing alleviates the quirky twist when Ben, fascinated with mystical out-of-body experience, through a detailed inter-racial wedding scene, the motif of an angelic orderly spotted at a trendy shopping mall and at the health spa, and his solicitous friends, find himself transported. This reader was not dismayed. The book, in plain Dutch Boy blue with white and black lettering,might have been more invitingly produced, and the typesetter had problems by not always completing lines to the right margin. These caveats are, though, minor, and do not detract from the originality and beauty of the novel itself. -- Jefferson M. Peters Paul Trachtenberg, _BEN'S EXIT_, Cherry Valley Editions, Box 303, Cherry Valley, New York 13320, 1994, 125pp., paper, $7.00 + $1.50 shipping & handling + 8.25% NY Sales Tax of New York residents. ######################################## A definition of "Networker" Andrea Ovcinnicoff Genova, April 1992 (via j.lehmus) from FLORA + ANTHROPOPHOBICA 1993 "If--as Ulises Carrion said--"mail art is the perfect model of how art can be converted from productivity of objects into organization of communication systems", the Networker, operating inside one or more networks of higher or lower independent international micro- contact, daily and in contemporaneousness with others scattered in the world, through International Mail System as in Telematic, is ideally who in consciousness acts as an accumulator and as a converter, in the Maximum Circuit of all networks, of expressive and intellectual Indeterminate and Indeterminating creative Fluxes towards Planetary Organizations, through Perpetual Change of Substance, according to ethic proceedings preferred against Mass communication projects, drawing out, preserving and diffusing Antientropical Energy." ANDREA OVCINNICOFF since July 1989 writing the monthly mail art and alternative correspondence newsletter, "Arte Atre". Andrea Ovcinnicoff, Vico di Coccagna, 1/3, 16128 Genova, Italy. ######################################## ON THE INTERNATIONAL SHADOWS PROJECT: 1990 Karl Young This is a revision of an essay that first appeared in WORLD'S EDGE, and English language Japanese publication. I updated it for the book of my essays coming out from Minnesota Center for the Book Arts this spring, but decided to save it for PROVINCIAL ANARCHISM, a book that's still incomplete and hasn't found a publisher.) When the first atomic bomb detonated over Hiroshima at 8:15 a.m. August 6, 1945, people within 300 meters of ground zero were vaporized by the intense heat. They left faint marks on nearby surfaces. These have been called shadows, and these shadows have been growing in importance as symbols, ex- amples, and icons during the 45 years since. During the early to mid '80's the maniacal nuclear stratagems of the Reagan administration gave great impetus to the global anti-nuclear movement and artists, poets, and composers responded with an upwelling of oppositional work. A resurgence of the guerrilla theater of the '60's emerged as performance art. Anti-nuclear mail-art flourished. Ruggero Maggi in Italy and John Held, Jr. in the U.S. united mail-art and performance and sponsored many events at home and abroad. Perhaps the most important of the mail-art shows was held in 1988 in Hiroshima itself, under inter-national sponsorship with the active guidance of Shozo Simamoto, Mayumi Handa and others. Work from this show was passed on to form the nucleus of a 1989 show in Calexico, a city on the U.S.-Mexico border, curated by Harry Polkinhorn. This material was passed on to me after the Calexico show closed. Polkinhorn and I discussed turning it into a DNA show, one that divided and replicated itself, with part sent this year to Clemente Padin in Montevideo who wanted to do a show. Invitations started going out in late winter. One of my concerns was to bring in work from artists outside the mail-art genre. I hope future curators of similar shows will continue along these lines, making the project as open and uncliquish as possible. In the invitations I said the show would be "lightly juried." I would have liked to have left it completely unjuried, but wanted to be able to exclude work that would harm or get in the way of other pieces. One piece was set up so it made a continuous c ycle of loud sounds that would have distracted attention from other works and would have been a sort of water-drip torture for people who worked in the bookstore or read in the gallery. This was the only piece excluded from the show. The openness of the show drew some criticism: Some thought that without a jury the show would be made up of nothing but junk from amateurs, fanatics, and lunatics. This may have discouraged a few people from sending work, but predictions of a cascade of trash were not born out by the show. A number of con- tributors fall into the amateur category but they didn't contribute insincere or irrelevant art. The lone rejectee was gracious enough to send a less harmful piece in place of the rejected one. That's hardly irrational behavior -- I'd like to see more people act as well in juried shows. The lack of a jury gets at one of the main goals of the show. The atomic age has been one of secrecy, exclusion, and elitism. It seems particularly appropriate to oppose this with complete openness, universal enfranchisement, and inclusion. Jerome Rothenberg's notion of the Critic as Angel of Death, as the officer at Auschwitz who decided who would live and who would go to the crematorium, seems appropriate here. We opened the show to everyone who wanted to par- ticipate, not deciding which works should " live" and which should "die." The nuclear age has been based in distrust, not only of foreign nations but also of people at home. The obsession with secret plots and domestic spies and saboteurs characteristic of the McCarthy witch hunt is alive and well in the current movement for g reater censorship. A basic assumption of the Shadows Project is that artists can be trusted. Some contributors sent work that questioned or made fun of the concerns of the show, but none were guilty of bad faith. In this context, it is interesting to not e that although the moral majority gestapo regularly patrolled the show, they found nothing that could be used to attack the gallery or close the exhibition. The show included about 600 pieces from some 300 con- tributors living in 38 countries. Work included paintings ranging from Memling-like miniatures to large abstractions; elaborate collages and found art; video and audio tapes; poetry and musical scores; photos of everything from Hiroshima wreckage to children's faces to previous Shadows performances. Any inventory would be incomplete -- the show included many anonymous pieces, and even provenience is problematic: I sent invitations to artists in East Germany, and received responses from some of them at new addresses in West Germany, and the two Germanies ceased to be divided shortly after the show closed. About half the work was new. Of work from previous shows, some pieces are dated as early as 1982. It would be interesting to track their progression from show to show around the world over the years. Going by dates, some artists apparently had contributed to shows nearly every year throughout the decade. That many pieces were anonymous brings out several important things about mail art. It is not an art form from which artists expect to make money or achieve fame. It is a form that is not intended to be a commodity to be bought or owned but to go out in the world with a message that is more important than the identity or fortunes of the artist. Hence it should not be surprising that a large number of contributors were from eastern Europe and the Fascist dictatorships of Latin America; that is, places where artists' commitments have been put to a severe test. That little work came from Asian countries other than Japan or from Africa is a strong reminder that many people in the world cannot participate in shows like this because they cannot afford postage. Perhaps it is a shortcoming of these shows that none of their curators has found a way of getting around this. Though we don't have any numbers to back this up, the show apparently drew a larger number of viewers than any other mounted in the summer at Woodland Pattern during its ten years at the present location. The show formally ended on August 6, Hiroshima Day, with a poetry reading. Despite the official closing, the show was left up for an additional two weeks. This not only gave more people a chance to see it, it also suggested a reprieve of sorts: it's hard not to think that the human race put a gun to it s head and pulled the trigger on August 6, 1945 and is only waiting helplessly for the hammer to detonate the cap. Maybe we can keep that from happening. 1990 was a torch bearer year for the International Shadows Project. When the show opened on June 17, concern about nuclear weapons was probably at its lowest point in forty five years. A lot of the careless euphoria of the preceding year was still in the air. By the time the show ended in mid August, the world seemed to have changed. Troops were massing in Iraq and Saudi Arabia, ready for a war that could go nuclear. Of the two giants that had been terrorizing the world with their threats of nuclear armageddon for half a century, one was in effect bankrupt and drowning in debt, while the other was rapidly disintegrating. In their place, their former client states were arming themselves with nuclear weapons made from materials the superpowers had given them. A world in which two bullies bluff each other now seemed safer than one in which many impoverished countries had nuclear devices and little to lose in using them. At the same time, many people in the U.S. began to advocate the use of nuclear weapons to rid themselves of the Iraqi nuisance. By springtime, many of those who had advocated nuking Baghdad were expressing sincere and heartfelt sympathy with the Kurds and other victims of the Iraq war. Clearly these people didn't have the slightest understanding of the indiscriminate destructive power of even a small nuclear bomb. One of the purposes of these shows should be educational. Serious consideration of the devastation caused by the bomb detonated over Hiroshima (little more than a firecracker by contemporary standards) apparently must be encouraged; and the images of human suffering, with human faces, must be kept before those who advocate the use of nuclear weapons. This is particularly important after a war that seemed to many people in the industrial nations like a video game. By the following winter, the Soviet Union had become the world's first empire to disassemble itself. Through some sort of mass psychosis that is completely beyond my comprehension many people came to believe that the nuclear nightmare was over. This folly continued despite a hellish civil war in Yugoslavia that could easily be a rehearsal for civil wars in the former Soviet Republics, or more massive wars between the half dozen nuclear states that covered the center of Eurasia. The possibilities of nuclear weapons being used by China, India, the Koreas and other Asian countries became more apparent. None of the polyannas seemed concerned with the possible uses of material and tech- nological ability that would be looking for some practical application if they were not used in such conflicts. The people who spoke of the end of the nuclear era had forgotten how ready people in the U.S. had been to use nuclear weapons on Iraq. Those who sponsor Shadows Shows in the future will have a more difficult job than mine. Of course, no matter how many shows are generated, not even if their number grows to thousands per annum, these shows can not be expected to put an end to the existence of nuclear weapons. But they may augment the many other anti-nuclear activities launched by responsible people all over the world. An unfortunate problem that any anti-nuke group faces is the speed with which images and ideas become passe. My hope is that the changing of future locations and curators will keep the shows themselves changing fast enough to stay ahead of the ennui and trendyness that are the strongest allies nuclear weapons have. I can see large scale changes in the aesthetics and the approaches of these shows. I hope this will be magnified in coming years when I'm no longer involved in setting them up. Since Clemente Padin stopped answering my letters before the Milwaukee show opened, I assumed that there would not be one in Uruguay, and feared that he might have become one of The Disappeared -- particularly since much of his work has dealt with the su bject of Disappeared Persons, and he had been one himself for several years, until an Amnesty Inter- national style letter writing campaign initiated by mail- artists forced his release. A letter from Padin arrived in mid October saying that the Montevideo show was mounted along with an Africa show. In this case, the crazy optimism characteristic of these endeavors was completely justified. ######################################## HIROSHIMA j.lehmas I meet my shadow on the stairs. All the incandescent quarks the celestial toadstool sun descended upon the earth, meet the burning brother Prometheus fire silver golden energy burning aurora red glass shards shining insects in spectral clouds coming down pest. I see you in a panorama theater : aerial views, sound off. Lumiere-white, subconscious messages mental images pictures channelled through the flichering screen. Hypnosis miracles. -20 dB noise. We are walking on a frozen pale gree moss soil covering, promenade. Black toadstools grow in clusters on grey roots, branches limbs wrest'd of leaves, we collect these. Some powdery species of fungi, germs in dark clouds. I tear a page from a fashion magazine, perplexed by an advetisement : khaki-coloured air filter for asthma breathing apparatus, "AFRAID OF FLOWERS". A round shape, made of paper, with black stains. ######################################## EVENTS - ANNOUNCEMENTS children Karl Young Here are the specs on Amos Kennedy's project as he has it set up now. I think he'll want to change things as he goes along. I think, for instance, that he might be interested in a mail art project of some sort to go with it. CHILDREN DON'T COUNT Join us in this project! A memorial book to children 14 years old or younger murdered in the U.S. in 1993. HOW TO PARTICIPATE: Create a book with the following information for each child murdered in your state in 1993: Child's Name Date of Birth Date of Murder Place of Murder Method of Murder Murder Number (The sequential number of the child's murder during the year. If the child is the fifteenth child murdered in 1993, the Murder Number is 15.) One Page for each child murdered Have a loose leaf of your book exhibited in a public place in your state during 1994. Supply one copy of your book to one of the project coordinators, Caren Heft or Amos Kennedy, Jr. Register with either: Caren Heft 5508 Short Road Racine, WI 53402 or Amos Paul Kennedy, Jr. 543 North Harvey Ave. Oak Park, IL 60302-2338 for more information on line, contact karlyoung@Delphi.com. More than one book can be created per state. Artists working in all media welcome. Books so far underway: Caren Heft, Wisconsin. Emily Mills, North Carolina. The IU POSSE, Indiana. Jubilee Press, Illinois. PEACE TO ALL IN 1994 ######################################## Subject: Re: Creative Writing on MU* From: Tom Meyer, twm@cs.brown.edu Has anyone worked on or know of any MU* enviroments that are directly related to creative writing in a class? Yeah, I'm building a MOO intended for hypertext creative writing. It's not officially open, since I'll be making a lot of changes next week some time, but most of the infrastructure is there. It provides some simple tools for the creation of hypertexts, and I can import Storyspace webs into the MOO fairly easily. At least one, and probably several classes will be taught using this MOO as a writing tool, next semester. I'll be officially announcing it here next week or so, but in the meantime, people can check it out and take a look around. It's at: count.cs.brown.edu 8888 Tom ######################################## Subject: SIG Overview statement: Art and Design show From: DEANNA MORSE morsed@GVSU.EDU Art and Design Show: SIGGRAPH '94 The SIGGRAPH '94 Art and Design Show will be a juried, media inclusive show, exhibited at the Orlando Convention Center July 24 - 29, 1994. The Art and Design show presents the world's leading exhibit of creativity inspired by the interaction of technology and esthetic expression. The show explores the limits and opportunities of the human-machine relationship, sparks discussion, and generates controversy as it extends the boundaries of imagination in a broad range of formats: performance, animation, interactive media, 2D and 3D display, design, and other emerging areas. The jury is especially interested in works that: o Approach artistic creation and design in original ways o Use computing as language and a means of discovery rather than a production tool o Could not have been created without the use of a computer o Are critically related to computer graphics technology and possess strong esthetic value o Comment on the role of technology in society, (for example works that consider implications for the artist or the user, the culture, the present or future) The accepted entries will be exhibited at SIGGRAPH '94, documented in the Visual Proceedings, and on a CD Rom. Selected works will be included on a slide set. To receive a Call for Participation: Conference Management: SIGGRAPH '94 Smith Bucklin and Associates 401 North Michigan Avenue Chicago, IL 60611 USA tel. 312.321.6830 Categories and Deadlines 5 January 1994 (enter with The Edge) o Alternate media and performance Computer graphics technology must be a significant part of these entries, which may include one or more of the following categories: Multimedia Performance Audience participation Interactive New media 12 January 1994 o Critical essays Essays that address the role of the computer in art and design and the effect or impact of computer generated or computer delivered imagery on society. o Interactive installations Visual, spatial, and temporal works requiring user interaction and a live computer graphics system. 2 March 1994 o 2D works Flat art and design pieces. o 3D works Sculpture, installation environments or static art. 20 April 1994 (enter with Electronic Theater) o Film and video Fine art animation intended for gallery viewing. //////////////////////////////////////// Call for Proposals: Site Specific Artworks The Art and Design show of SIGGRAPH '94 has broadened the call for proposals to include works that could be shown outside of a gallery setting. These works may be designed to respond to certain designated areas of the Orlando Convention Center. Examples of works in this category could include: -works designed to be viewed from a long distance - performance works for captive audiences waiting in lines - an installation of work which takes advantage of the visual and spatial changes of an escalator, and considers the walls directly ahead of the top and foot of the excalator - an installation including audio designed to influence a hallway The jury is especially interested in works that: o Approach artistic creation and design in original ways o Use computing as language and a means of discovery rather than a production tool o Could not have been created without the use of a computer o Are critically related to computer graphics technology and possess strong esthetic value o Comment on the role of technology in society, (for example works that consider implications for the artist or the user, the culture, the present or future) Please indicate on the entry form that you would like your work to be considered for alternate exhibition spaces. To receive a Call for Participation: Conference Management: SIGGRAPH '94 Smith Bucklin and Associates 401 North Michigan Avenue Chicago, IL 60611 USA tel. 312.321.6830 e mail: siggraph94 @ siggraph.org To receive more information about designing for specific sites in the Orlando Convention Center: Deanna Morse Art and Design Show 268 Lake Superior Hall Grand Valley State University Allendale, MI 49401 USA tel. 616.895.3101 email: morse@siggraph.org ######################################## Subject: new edition of e-zine-list out (public release) Wed, 26 Jan 94 From: John Labovitz This is to announce a new edition of my e-zine-list, a guide to zines on the net. There have been many, many changes in the last couple of months since the last edition of the list. Probably the biggest change is that there is now a hypertext version of this list, available over the World Wide Web using a suitable browser. All FTP, Gopher, USENET, WWW, and WAIS links should connect to the appropriate place. There are probably a few mistakes; if you find a link that doesn't work, please let me know. The other change, hopefully invisible, is that all versions are generated from a format-independent source, and run through a program that creates either the ASCII text or HTML versions. This may still be buggy; again, let me know if you find any problems. The newest edition of the list can be obtained in the following ways: anonymous FTP: netcom.com: /pub/johnl/zines/e-zine-list (ASCII text version) e-zine-list.html (HTML version) World Wide Web: file://netcom.com/pub/johnl/zines/e-zine- list.html email: johnl@netcom.com If you would like to receive future editions by email as they come out, please let me know, and I will add you to a special distribution list. john [Thanks to all your e-zine editors for producing such great stuff! And thanks for your patience; I know this latest edition has been a while coming out.] ######################################## From: fowler@mindvox.phantom.com (john fowler) to play it safe fill out the form below and pass it along to MEMBERSHIP INFORMATION In a world that needs more convergence talk and travel through graphic space please a literary-critical sophistica-society for HYPERTEXT Intersections: Viewing Bodies, Constructing Whiteness, Dislocating Knowledge, Being Multiple, Making Physical Objects and Handles, Tools, and Fetishes While configuring-- configuring can also be visual.... form follows: .................................... .................................... .................................... three times a year please provide all possible information GRIST ON-LINE, JOURNAL OF NETWORK LANGUAGE ARTS etext.archive.umich.edu/pub/Poetry/Grist fowler@phantom.com, Editor & Publisher ######################################## From ISEA@MBR.FRG.EUR.NL Tue Jan 11 16:07:37 1994 Date: Wed, 22 Dec 1993 01:13:22 +0100 (MET) THE INTER-SOCIETY FOR THE ELECTRONIC ARTS: PUBLICATIONS ON ALL ISEA SYMPOSIA AVAILABLE FISEA The First International Symposium on Electronic Art 1988, Utrecht, Holland Proceedings appeared as Leonardo Special: ELECTRONIC ART (ed. Wim van der Plas) Available from Leonardo (MIT Press) 672 Sth. Van Ness Ave., San Francisco, CA 94110, USA Fax: 1-415-4315737, Email: ISAST@GARNET.BERKELEY.EDU SISEA The Second International Symposium on Electronic Art 1990, Groningen, Holland Proceedings published by Groningen Polytechnic SISEA PROCEEDINGS (ed. Wim van der Plas) 236 pages Available from ISEA, see address below Price: US$15 plus mailing costs. TISEA The Third International Symposium on Electronic Art 1992, Sydney, Australia. Selected Papers published by the Australian Film, Television & Radio School as MIA #69 (ed. Ross Harley), 140 pages. Available from ISEA, see address below. Price: US$ 15 plus mailing costs FISEA93 The Fourth International Symposium on Electronic Art 1993, Minneapolis, USA 1. Catalogue, very well designed, full colour, 44 extra large pages. Published by the Minneapolis College of Art & Design (ed. Susan Hanna-Bibus) Available from ISEA, see address below. Price: US$ 25 plus mailing costs (very limited availability) 2. Papers Published by the Minneapolis College of Art & Design (ed. Susan Hanna-Bibus) 190 pages, xeroxed. Available from ISEA, see address below Price US$ 20 plus mailing costs Also available through ISEA: IDEA, the International Directory of Electronic Arts Organizations, institutes, people, magazines etc in electronic art, all over the world. Published by Chaos Edition (ed. Annick Bureaud), 500 pages Price 250 FF or US$43 ORDER FROM: ISEA, POB 8656, 3009 AR Rotterdam, Holland Fax: 31-10-2668705, Email: ISEA@MBR.FRG.EUR.NL MasterCard & VISA accepted (and preferred for int. orders) //////////////////////////////////////// FineArt Forum Volume 8, Number 2 February 15, 1994 ________________________________________________________ ___] | \ | ____] \ ____ ______] | | | \ | | / \ | | | __] | | \ | ___] ____ \ __ / | | | | \ | | / \ | \ | _| _| _| __| ______] _/ _\ _| _\ _| :::::: .::::. :::::. :: :: ::. .:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :::. .::: :::: :: :: :::::' :: :: :: ::: :: :: :: :: :: ':. :: :: :: ' :: :: '::::' :: ':. '::::' :: :: A R T + T E C H N O L O G Y N E T N E W S _________________________________________________________ Distributed by Leonardo-ISAST on behalf of the Art, Science,Technology Network ____________________________________________________________ Contents: FineArt Forum growing fast! Arts Research Institute New Name at FineArt Forum The Role of 3D CG in Fine Art 4Cyberconf The Art and Virtual Environments Symposium 6270 Technologies LEGO Catalog Art & Technology course Bay Area Art/Science Exhibition Chaos and Graphics cfp Chaos in Wonderland - book discount 1st BRAZILIAN SYMPOSIUM ON COMPUTER MUSIC - cfp "Cyberia" Program Guide, Jan 1994 DEF CON ][ EIT's World-Wide Web Server Drink Machines Online! Interactive Media Festival - cfp Pirate O'Radio Israeli Computer Art - cfp Leonardo Call for Papers Making Money on the Internet "Mazes for the Mind" in paperback Sources of Multimedia information Beyond Fast Forward - cfp DEAD-ARTIST DESERT TRAILER-PARK Digital Libraries: Current Issues - cfp New Voices, New Visions - cfp PANIC - cfp Perforations 5 Stolen Moments SYNERGY:CORPSE - cfp Palm Tree Garden - cfp MAC GRAPHICS TECH POSITION (Los Angeles) SIGGRAPH 94 special call for Music SIGGRAPH ART SHOW -Call for Site Specific Works Spanish VR Company - Art Futura cfp TeleEyes Brazil - cfp New Russia-American World Wide Web Server AAIM '94 - cfp Visions of the Future - cfp WOMEN'S WIRE Announces On-line Grand Opening New on FineArt Online: How to get to FineArt_OnliNE ____________________________________________________________ How to get to FineArt_Online By WWW browser - our URL is: http://www.msstate.edu/Fineart_Online/home.html By Gopher our link is: Host=gopher.msstate.edu Path=1/Online_services/fineart_online Port=70 By anonymous ftp: ftp.msstate.edu in the directory: pub/archives/fineart_online or incoming stuff can put in the directory: incoming/fineart_online/ ***write only*** ___________________________________________________________ Executive Editor: Paul Brown Associate Editor: Hudson Oliver Online Database Moderator: Reed Altemus Distribution: Gene Cooper ASTN President: Annick Bureaud ASTN, 57 Rue Falguiere, Paris, France ASTN Advisory Board Chair: Roger Malina, Leonardo-ISAST Correspondents: Canada - Jeff Mann Italy - Francesco Giomi Japan - Hiroshi Okuno USA - Susan Kirchman ISEA - Wim van der Plas Mail: Paul Brown, PO Box 1292, Mississippi State, MS 39762-1292, USA. Voice 601 325 3053, fax 601 325 3850 Support also provided by: The Inter-Society for the Electronic Arts San Francisco State University Institute for Studies in the Arts, Arizona State University ____________________________________________________________ Send requests for subscription to FineArt Forum to: or: with the message: SUB FINE-ART your Email address, first-name, last-name, and postal address. Paper copies available for USD $65 per year subscription. Payment is to ISAST, 672 South Van Ness, San Francisco, CA 94110, USA. Send submissions of items to be published in FineArt Forum to pgb2@ra.msstate.edu ____________________________________________________________ ************************************************************ ######################################## EVENTS 30 April, 1994 GRIST On-Line - special Anarchist Poetry issue - send your own poems or public domain work of others for inclusion in special GOL issue to grist@phantom.com. After publication and distribution in GRIST the works will go to the Poetry archive of Spunk Press, Internet Anarchist publishers at: etext.archive.ummich.edu/pub/politics/Spunk Check there for a growing collection of anarchist poetry, prose and political writings. BRAIN CELL - regularly published graphic work, send your artwork for inclusion c/o Ryosuke Cohen 3-76-1-A-613 Yagumokitacho, Moriguchi City, Osaka 570 Japan. 30 April, 1994 ENDLESS PROJECT - c/o Deedra Ludwig/The Sanctary 51-55 Brunswick St E. Hove, East Sussex BN3 1AU England 31 January, 1994 - EXPOITATION/EXPLOITED c/o Coyote Gallery, Butte College 3536 Butte Campus Dr., Oroville, CA 95965- 8399 MANI ART - ongoing compilation magazine that consistently produces excellent images. Send 60 copies of your works 21x15 cm max. to Pascal Lenior, 11 Ruelle De Champagne, 60680 Grandfresnoy France TEMPLE POST'S WINDOW GALLERY because there are no forums for Jose VandBroucke to exhit mail in his town, he has designated his home's windows as a gallery. Send him your works, not greater that 90cm. to be shown. He will return a photo of this "Street Exhibition" Pikkelstraat 49, 8540 Deerlijk, Belgium FIRST INTERNATIONAL COLLECTION OF NETWORKERS IN PANAMA is organizing a mail art exhibition for The Nation Museum of Mail Service. The theme is open, mail to Ruben Contreras, Dewa-Estafeta Universitaria, Universidad de Panama, Panama, Rep. of Panama No deadline, but hurry. "DON'T TOUCH YOURSELF THERE" - c/o 1961 Cedar St, N. Merrick, NY 11566. Stop the sexual abuse of yourself at the price of others. 3-11-21, A.I.M. AIDS INTERNATIONAL MAIL ART PROJECT CW Poste 4308 Greenwood Ave., N. Seattle, WA 98103 USA or BUCKWHEAT TORNADO, O.O. Box 31792, Seattle, WA USA. No Deadline, Visualizing Chaos Project, N-Eurovision, Enrico Ciceri, Via Mascagne 22, 20034 Giussano (MI) Italy. No Deadline, The Mouth, Visual Poetry, Alberto Rizzi, Via Trento 51e, 45100 Rovigo, Italy. No Deadline, Peacedream Project, Art project about visual and experimental poetry, 100 copies, 21x14.8 cm (A-5). Uni+verse(e), Guillermo Deisler, Riebeckplatz 12, 4020 Halle/Saale Germany. Ongoing, Tensetendoned, Send 56 originals or 120 stickers 5"x9" or smaller and receive an assembled collection of submitting artists' work. P.O. Box 155, Preston Park, PA 18455 No Deadline, Art Against Fascism, ongoing MailArt Project. We need your contributions now to show the German public international reaction against racism, neo-fascism, and violence toward foreigners in this, our country. Good images influence the attitudes of the indifferent silent masses. Black and white simple drawings and writings to be reduced in size to make 4x7 cm artistamps in PortoEdition Sheets. Angel and Peter NetMail (Kuestermann) PB 2644 D 495 Minden, Germany. 95-10-1, About Face - Cross Gender Issue(s), 1. are you cross about how your gender is treated in the network? 2. face feminism in mail art and tell us your vision, 3. please send a self portrait as a person of the opposite sex; no PC restrictions, honoria@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu 95-10-1, Ars Nova Guild, A video/electronic music/performance group at New Mexico State Univ. looking for co-conspirators, fellow travelers, and solicitations for submissions....email, MIDI, vid, fax et cetera ad nauseum. Contact Eric Iverson, iverson@nmsu.edu 95-10-1, Face Zine, FaGaGaGa interested in Email about Mail Art and Networking for a zine chock full of Net news and rants, ae705@yfn.ysu.edu 95-10-1, Global Mail, Send email numbers, art projects, mail art shows, tape, fax, audio, anarchist projects, and whatever, Ashley Parker Owens, at soapbox@well.sf.ca.us, or 72162.1573@compuserve.com 95-10-1, Herd - the girls & mailart zine, Contributions welcome on the theme of women and mail OR anything by women in the mail. , Next issue is 1994: Celebrate the Femail Artist Campaign, Jennifer Huebert c/o Lewis & Hubener, 72630.2465@compuserve.com 95-10-1, Permeable Press, We are accepting submissions for our upcoming issues on Science Fiction and Sexuality. We are also looking for contributions for our tape compilation project PRESS PLAY, We love to receive email and mail art, and will reply, Brian Clark, bcclark@igc.apc.org 95-10-1, Practical Anarchy Online, Send articles and bits of new from everywhere to this electronic zine concerning anarchy from a practical point of view, Mikael Cardell at Internet, cardell@lysator.liu.se and Fidonet Mikael Cardell, 2:205/223 95-10-1, PURPS, We'd love contributions of art, articles, essays, or whatever. We reprint most everything we like, Publishes the OTISian Directory, which will review just ABOUT ANYTHING (except fecal matter- we're touchy in that respect), Jeffrey Stevens, jstevens@world.std.com, OR Purps, HailOtis@socpsy.sci.fau.edu, OR Intergalactic House of Fruitcakes, 955 Massachusetts Ave, #209, Cambridge, MA 02139-9183 USA 95-10-1, We Press, We can send you WE Magazine, issue 17 over the internet, Chris Funkhouser, CF2785@ALBNYVMS.BITNET 95-10-1, Please send me news of computer animation/animation video festivals. Susan Van Baerle, Visualization Laboratory, Texas A & M University, College Station, TX 77843-3137, sue@archone.tamu.edu 95-10-1, I enjoy any mail on the arts, weirdness in our world, the occult, ancient history, and anarchy, Don Webb, 0004200716@mcimail.com 95-10-1, Send anything- everything, esp. cyberpunk, techno, zines, and hacking, sprother@nyx.cs.du.edu 95-10-1, Send me listings of mail art shows and whatever else you would like, Reid Wood (State of Being), zwood@ocvaxa.cc.oberlin.edu 95-10-1, Send anything- everything, esp. news of mail art shows and general contact, Linda Hedges, lindah@ssecmail.ssec.wisc.ed 94-10-1, I am interested in receiving general information about art shows, events, animation, film/video. I am the chair of the SIGGRAPH Art Show for '94, deana morse, morsed@GVSU.EDU ######################################## M E D I A K A O S mediak@well.sf.ca.us (415)241-1568 JOSEPH MATHENY Cultural Provocateur O, gentlemen, the time of life is short! And if we live, we live to tread on kings! -Shakespeare, Henry IV %%%%%%%%%%%%% % MediaKaos % %%%%%%%%%%%%% presents Books, CDs, Tapes, Records, and Videos from the MediaKaos collection. (415)241-1568 ______________________________________ Videos _______________________________________ T.A.Z.: The Temporary Autonomous Zone, A Night of Ontological Anarchy and Poetic Terrorism. Featuring: Hakim Bey, Robert Anton Wilson, Nick Herbert, Joseph Matheny, Rob Breszny of World Entertainment War, the artwork of James Koehnline and more! A great quality tape produced by Sound Photo Synthesis, documenting the T.A.Z. night, February 6th, 1993, at Komotion International in San Francisco.A one of a kind and not available anywhere else. Includes original "Chaos" poster and handbill from show. Order # MK0001 2 Hour Video $35.00 _______________________________________ Zone of Calm - by Xian Atrocity In the eye of the storm is the Zone of Calm. Using brute force recording techniques, Xian presents us with this transcendental, post-industrial audio mindscape. Do not be fooled by the title: this soothing sound massage is not for the feeble. If you are ready, strap yourself into your meditation chamber, take a deep breath and let the sonic roughage cleanse your filthy soul. Order #00015 60 min audio cassette includes tract $5.50 ____________________________________________________ Recycled Time - by Christian Greuel and Aaron Ross The immediacy of pure existance can only be revisited as idealized and corrupted memories. Yet these three video selections, taken from a cyber-synaesthetic experience presented at the California Institute of the Arts, provide a bleeding edge, stroboscopic feeding frenzy for your central nervous system's hearty appetite. Very engrossing, often frightening and always beautiful, this tape is a wonderful endurance test for your psyche. Order # MK00016 Video cassette $20.00 ______________________________________ Books _______________________________________ Esoterrorist: Selected Essays 1980-1988 Genesis P'Orridge One of the best books about technoshamanism in existance.The product of one brains fascinating rollercoaster ride along the fringes of culture and sexuality, a virtual mapping of the evolution of an ORIGINAL Cyber-Shaman. If you only read one book this year, make it this one and become an interactive particle in the ESOTERRORIST web. All versions contain a new color collage by Genesis. Special Handbound Artlaw version.Limited quantity. Order # MK0002 $40.00 Regular Paperback version. Order # MK0003 $14.99 _______________________________________ Thee Psychick Bible: The Apocryphal Scriptures of Genesis P'Orridge & Psychick TV Thee Psychick Bible contains manifestoes, essays, qoutes, and other miscellaneous writings (i.e. scriptures) from the numerous PTV material dating from its earliest origins to the present day. With the exception of Liber XIII, which is a reprinting of Thee Grey Book. The layout is a double column format that can be read together or independently. Each page consists of a primary (larger) text block and a secondary (smaller) text block. The text found within the primary columns are materials compiled and edited from the numerous PTV L.P.s, CDs, twelve-inch records and other related matter.Nearly all the writing in the secondary columns come from other PTV/Genesis P'Orridge sources as a compliment and/or distraction from the primary text. Order # MK0004 $14.99 __________________________________________________ One Foot In the Future: A Woman's Spiritual Journey Nina Graboi Blending dramatic events with profound reflections on the spiritual path and the human condition, One Foot in the Future is written in a lucid and eminently readable style, covering one womyns journey from a Nazi prison camp to the LSD experience in America with Leary, and Alpert during the Millbrook days, and on through the present to the future. "Her autobiography is a rare, precious life achievment." Timothy Leary Order # MK0005 $16.99 _______________________________________ Records, CDs, Cassetes _______________________________________ Fixated The Seven Inches of the Apocalypse IndustrialTechnoSEXhouseMUSIC Fixated was concieved and created by Illusion of Safety founder/leader Dan Burke.The work of IOS can be categorized as ambient, post-industrial, power electronics, and decomposition. Music thats time is cum. Taking a pro-Erotica/anti-censorship stance this CD combines Kraftwerk type rhythms with loads of Industrial-Techno-House stylings interspersed with provocative soundbytes from pornographic films and real life, mixed with double entendres that keep it up. Lustful obsessions, Erotic sound bytes, and pornographic beats that move your mind and appendages. 50 min CD Order # MK0006 $12.00 _______________________________________ Fifteen/Finite Material Context Illusion of Safety Over 70 minutes of material from two previously available Complacency cassttes re-released on CD by Tesco orginisation (Germany) sub-label Functional.Some of the best "group" work from 1987/88 and solo pieces from the limited edition boxset "Finite Material Context" (1990)." a true gem of industry- meets-Andromeda sonic union."...Option Magazine 70 min. CD Order # MK0007 $12.00 _______________________________________ Inside Agitator Illusion of Safety "...another in a never-ending series of uncompromising and exquisitely-crafted tonalities.the title refers to a favorite theme of founder/leader Dan Burke, namely a ghastly glimpse into the aberrations of the human psyche.This collection of the half-rhythmic beat/collages and half ambient-noise reflect the dichotomy within us all; the age -old struggle between the violent and the sublime, the Dark & the Light." ...Scott Marshal CD Order # MK0008 $12.00 _______________________________________ Prevost/O'Rourke Third straight day made public Live recordings cover by David Jackman liner notes by John Corbett TSDMP presents the meeting of legendary AMM percussionist Eddie Prevost and guitarist Jim O'Rourke performing live in England. Mining an area familiar to fans of both AMM and O'Rourke's, but also exploring new possibilities in the realm of improvisation. Ideas of what improvisation "sounds like" disappear and are replaced with extremely visual walls of sound, color, and light.There is an empathy beyond call and response, reaching a language of pure sound. Eddie Prevost: An original member of England's legendary improvising ensemble AMM (which has included Keith Rowe, John Tilbury, Cornelius Cardew, and the Arditti String quartet's Rohan de Saram), works with "Supersession" (with Barry Guy, Evan Parker, and Keith Rowe) and is a member of the Eisler Ensemble. Writes and lectures on improvistaion and related subjects. Jim O'Rourke: Known equally as a composer and improvisor. Known for his work with Henry Kaiser, Keith Rowe, K.Null, Derek Bailey, John Oswald, Gunter Muller, Voice Crack, and Nicolas Collins. As a composer, he has written pieces for the Rova sax quartet and the Kronos Quartet. 51 min. CD Order # MK0009 $12.00 _______________________________________ The Banishing Ritual Illusion of Safety with Joseph Matheny This new work embodies The Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram ( a timeless ritual of protection and pureification) with dense layered hard beat structure. The flipside is a trance piece, starting with dark soundtrack textures that build into a gentle rhythm using African log drum and Kalimba. Ritual vibrations and liner notes by Joseph Matheny of MediaKaos. 7" vinyl Order # MK0010 $5.50 _______________________________________ A Transmedia Litany Genesis P'Orridge with XKP Good quality tape of Genesis P'Orridge's Transmedia lecture and musical/visual litany, recorded in San Francisco, at the legendary MediaKaos/Future Cult Project Space. For the final show in the FC series Genesis and XKP put the audience into a trance, and then proceed to build up to an earth shaking crescendo. Double casstette set Contains original Transmedia Order # MK0011 Litany poster and handbill $8.99 _______________________________________ Aleister Crowley Poems and Evocations Original Recordings of A.C. performing rituals and reading his poetry. Very rare. Cassette Order # MK00012 $5.50 _______________________________________ T.A.Z.: The Temporay Autonomous Zone, a night of Ontological Anarchy and Poetic Terrorism. An audio tape of the above T.A.Z. show (see video section). Cassette Order # MK0013 $10.00 _______________________________________ Pagan Amen 4 songs Early MediaKaos "found/sound art" project, early trance/ambient experiments from 1988. Out of print until now. Rare. Cassette extended single Order # MK00014 $5.50 Allow 4-6 weeks for delivery (probably sooner). Included $4.75 postage for up to 5 items. Mail check or money order made payable to: Athanor MediaKaos/Athanor Arts 409 Laguna Suite #4D San Francisco, CA 94102 ______________________________________________ Coming in April: BOOKS, CD ROMS _______________________________________________ VIRUS David Jay Brown VIRUS is a science fiction psycho-thriller about a genetically-engineered virus of extraterrestrial origin. The novel is written through the eyes of someone who suffers from Multiple Personality Disorder, so perspectives shift with each personality. The virus we discover is a highly intelligent,conscious entity! _________________________________________________ The Last Book Joseph Matheny and Friends The Last Book is an ongoing experiment in interactive media, employing written word via email and snail mail, cassette culture and mail art collages, voice mail experiments, derive', and other mediums. The project started with a "template" created by Joseph Matheny utilizing cut-up techniques, trance visioning, games of chance, tarot, and the methods of John Cage. The results of the interactions between Matheny's template and various participants around the world are being gathered and bound in a handsome "Artlaw" edition and hypercard stack. __________________________________________________ INCUNABULA Peter Lamborn Wilson, Joseph Matheny, and Friends A CD ROM based on the wacky INCUNABULA works of P.L.W. and J.M. See INCUNABULA and INCUNABULA 2: gopher well.sf.ca.us Also see "Advances in Skin Science", bOING-bOING #11 October 1993 _________________________________________________ The Scrapbook of a Haight Ashbury Pilgrim: Spirit, Sacrament, and Sex in 1967/68 Elizabeth Gips Elizabeth was named "The Original Psychedelic Grandma" by Peter Bergman of Firesign Theater. A treasure trove of intensley personal Sixties memorabilia, esoteric and psychedelia... -Robert Anton Wilson A different look at the Sixties. __________________________________________________ @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Snail Mail: Voice Mail: EMAIL: MediaKaos (415)241-1568 mediak@well.sf.ca.us 409 Laguna #4D San Francisco, CA 94102 @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ ######################################## :FLOPPYBACK PUBLISHING INTERNATIONAL Consulting: FPI assists companies in preparing materials for electronic distribution, from raw material to retail packaging to distribution itself, stopping at all steps in between. One of our particular desires is to help the small business realise the communications potential of national electronic publishing. And FPI publishes its own line of floppybacks, details of which are given below. :NEWS FROM FPI - MAY 1993 FPI Inc. is proud to announce that Matthew Paris has joined the firm and will include among his responsibilities the position of Editor-in-Chief of the New Worlds line of floppybacks. He is a novelist, poet, playwright, musician and videographer, producing art shows for public access television. FPI's fall line-up is planned to include hypertext travel guides to New Jersey and the New England states. These will be distributed as freeware and will include all kinds of vacation related information. FPI can be contacted at PO Box 2084, Hoboken NJ, 07030, telephone (201) 963 3012 or on Compuserve at 71702,154 or via the Internet at 71702.154@compuserve.com. :SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS In general the only requirement for the floppybacks in this catalog is an IBM-compatible machine. Certain floppybacks may have their own requirements and, if so, these are indicated in a "Special System Requirements" note attached to that floppyback's entry. All non-New Worlds floppybacks come with display software that allows text search, printing, multiple sections of text onscreen and more. The only major exception to this is the New Worlds line of floppybacks which a) needs at least DOS 3.2 and b) is available only on 3«" 1.44Mb disks. This is because the New Worlds line uses display software called Orpheus. :SAMPLER DISKS Floppyback Publishing Sampler Disk #1 (FPI #0039). Contains extracts from all of the work in this listing except the Rutgers University Press floppybacks and The Clue. Includes two complete short stories by O. Henry, two complete short stories of Sherlock Holmes and fifty of Shakespeare's sonnets. The Rutgers University Press Sampler #1 (FPI#0040). Contains extracts (including complete papers) from all six of the Rutgers University Press floppybacks. New Worlds Volume I, Number I. (FPI#0041). As much a magazine as a sampler disk, New Worlds Volume I, Number I includes original essays on everything from Rex Miller and William Gibson to the future of e.p. as well as reviews and samples from the New Worlds Line of floppybacks. Over 400 pages of text! Available only on 3«" disks. :RUTGERS UNIVERSITY PRESS/FPI Please note that these floppybacks are all text-only versions of the books in question. *Cocaine in the Brain, edited by Nora D. Volkow and Alan C. Swann, M.D. ISBN 0-8135-1981-0. (FPI# 8101) *Owning Scientific and Technical Information: Value and Ethical Issues, edited by Vivian Weil and John W. Snapper. ISBN 0-8135-1980-2. (FPI# 8102) Fifteen chapters explore the complete range of new intellectual-property rights issues arising from new technologies. *Discovering the Mid-Atlantic: Historical Tours by Patrick Cooney. ISBN 0-8135-1959-4. (FPI# 8103) *Jersey Troopers: A Fifty-Year History of the New Jersey State Police by Leo J. Coakley. (ISBN 0-8135-1961-6). (FPI# 8104) *Quicksand and Passing by Nella Larsen; edited by Deborah E. McDowell. ISBN 0-8135-1960-8. (FPI# 8105) Part of the American Women Writers Series. Widely used in classrooms. Nella Larsen's Quicksand (1928) and Passing (1929) document the historical realities of Harlem in the 1920s. *A Model for National Health Care: The History of Kaiser Permanente, by Rickey Hendricks. ISBN 0-8135-1956-x. (FPI# 8105) By 1990, the Kaiser Permanente health care plan, with almost seven million members was the largest health care maintenance organization (HMO) in the United States. :CLASSICS *Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (FPI# 2105) *The Four Million by O. Henry (FPI# 2106) *Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton (FPI#2107) *The Hound of the Baskervilles & Other Stories by Arthur Conan Doyle (FPI#2108) *Three Men in a Boat (to say Nothing of the Dog) by Jerome K. Jerome (FPI #2109) *Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad (FPI #2104) *SHAKESPEARE The Sonnets and Other Poems (FPI # 3209) :FICTION *The Angel of Death by Bruce Gilkin. (FPI #6101) The first-of-its-kind, no-holds-barred story of one man's fight to survive - Then in Vietnam and Now against Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, the terrifying "flashback" illness that strikes at over 250,000 veterans. For credit card purchases _of this title only_ please call 1-800-526-9153 Monday thru' Friday 9-5 Pacific Time. All major credit cards accepted. *The Bone Orchard by Joseph Trigaboff (FPI#6106) =NEWWORLDS= A classic of the crime genre. *New York: 2084 by Karl Shapira (FPI#6105) =NEWWORLDS= A novel of intelligent rats in the near future. *Mystery by Matthew Paris (FPI#6103) =NEWWORLDS= The cult-classic, praised by Philip Jose Farmer, about a rogue cop. Originally published by Avon in 1973. *The Holy City by Matthew Paris (FPI#6104) =NEWWORLDS= Described by some as a how-to manual for making love to robots and by others as, well... Originally published by Carpenter Press. *Decadent Plant by Matthew Paris and Robert Fox (FPI#6107) =NEWWORLDS= A Voltarian pilgrimage of Don Juan through an infinity of amorous watering-holes. *Toothless Days, Clawless Nights by Jack Moskowitz. (FPI# 6102) Hanaloar, Niz "Short i" Snider, Dozod and the theater robbery. :NON-FICTION *The Star Trek People by Matthew Paris (FPI# 1029) =NEWWORLDS= The story of how the media produced an environment for Americans in which Americans could accept a scientific class. *On Hazardous Service (Scouts and Spies of the North & South) by William Gilmour Beymer. (FPI# 1027) Originally published in 1912, this work is a collection of ten accounts of the mission of scouts and spies (both men and women) for the North and South during the Civil War. *As Seen By Me by Lilian Bell (FPI#1028). Originally published in 1900, this humorous journal details the novelist's European Grand Tour in the late 1890s. *How I Took 62 Years To Commit Suicide by Ben Weber (FPI#1030) =NEWWORLDS= The memoirs of America's first twelve-tone composer. *On The Threshold by Seyn Leproyan (FPI#1031) =NEWWORLDS= A study of philosophy and politics by Fulbright scholar, Turkish emigre and computer expert Seyn Leproyan. :MAGAZINES Spaceflight August 1991. BIS. (FPI# 9101) A sample copy of one of the two magazines published by the BIS, the British Interplanetary Society. :POETRY *The Clue: A MiniMystery in the Form of a SoftPoem. by Robert Kendall (FPI# 5103). (Please note the special systems requirements below) Award-Winning Work: SoftPoetry uses the computer as its medium to turn literature into visual art. Graphics and animation bring the text to life on your monitor with color and motion as you, the viewer, control the poem from the keyboard of your PC. Robert Kendall has received awards for both his SoftPoetry and his written work. His book of poems A Wandering City won the 1992 Cleveland State University Poetry Center prize in 1992 (and was published by them). His SoftPoetry won a New Forms Regional Grant Program Award in 1992. The Clue has been seen on televison and has been exhibited at many sites, ranging from a major science museum to a national poetry festival. Special Systems Requirement Note: Unless otherwise specified the titles in this catalog require only an IBM compatible. The Clue, however, requires 512K RAM, a hard drive with 3MB of free disk space, DOS 3.3 or higher, and an EGA or VGA display. *Love, War & the Movies by Paul F. Peacock (FPI #5101). Electronic publisher and journeyman poet Paul F. Peacock writes formalist poetry about computers, robots, love affairs, war, the movies and our lives. His work has been published in small poetry journals such as Black Swan Review and the Passaic County Review *Smoking Banana Paradise by Roiilaexxur and Bob Myer. (FPI#5102). Freeform verse from California. *Songs for Patricia by Norman Rosten (FPI#5104) =NEWWORLDS= Poems for his young daughter by two-time Guggenheim winner Norman Rosten. *White Towers by Francis Bernard (FPI#5106) =NEWWORLDS= Love-poetry by a man who had a distinguished career as a premiere basso in many modern opera premieres. *Modem by Matthew Paris (FPI#5107) =NEWWORLDS= Poetry about computers by Matthew Paris, inspired by the impact computers are having on our lives. *Einstein's Folly by David Zimmer (FPI#5108) =NEWWORLDS= Poetry about Science by rocker and poet David Zimmer. *Cocoa Joe by Bob Tramonte (FPI#5109) =NEWWORLDS= Poems of Italian-American life in Brooklyn, New York. :INTERVIEW BOOKS *Portraits of American Musicians (FPI#5110) =NEWWORLDS= Transcripts of interviews with American Musicians such as Virgil Thompson, Aaron Copeland, John Cage and more. *Portraits of American Writers (FPI#5111) =NEWWORLDS= Transcripts of interviews with American writers such as Isaac Asimov, Lester del Rey and Stanley Ellin. :CONFERENCE PAPERS *1993 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation: Conference Proceedings Abstracts. (FPI#9110) Order from: FPI Inc. PO Box 2084 Hoboken NJ 07030. F.P.I. Sampler #1 5.00 IEEE Robotics & Automation R.U.P. Sampler 5.00 Conference Abstracts 15.00 New Worlds Vol. I/I 5.00 On Hazardous Service 9.00+ Ethan Frome 9.00+ As Seen by Me 9.00+ Three Men in a Boat 9.00+ Heart of Darkness 9.00+ The Sonnets/Other Poems 9.00+ Huckleberry Finn 9.00+ Hamlet 9.00+ The Four Million 9.00+ The Taming of the Shrew 9.00+ The Hound of the Baskervilles & Other Stories 9.00+ Love, War & The Movies 8.00 Smoking Banana Paradise 8.00 The Clue 8.00 The Angel of Death 15.00 Toothless Days, Clawless Nights 13.00 The StarTrek People 10.00 Einstein's Folly 10.00 How I took 62 Years To Commit Suicide 10.00 Moons of Venus 10.00 Modem 10.00 Portraits of American Musicians 10.00 White Towers 10.00 Cocoa Joe 10.00 Portraits of American Writers 10.00 Songs for Patricia 10.00 The Bone Orchard 10.00 New York: 2084 10.00 Decadent Planet 10.00 Mystery 10.00 The Holy City 10.00 ######################################## CONTRIBUTOR NOTES FORREST RICHEY--poet, engineer, inventor, net-worker, editor, publisher of TRANSMOG: a zine of absurd, dada, surreal, experimental, found, computer generated/altered, stream of consciousness, etc. texts and graphic art. Goal 2-6 issues/yr. Est. October 1991. Includes contributor names/addresses. Trades OK, submissions OK, no subscrip- tions, single issue $1 or 3-stamp long SASE, copies of back issues 1-6 $1.50/set, issues 710 $2.00/set (ppd). Ficus strangulensis c/o strangulensis Research Labs; Rt 6 Box 138, Charleston, WV 25311 (ca. 11 pp 8.5"x11") WES CHAPMAN--helps keep the net clean thereby catches big fish. JEAN A. HERIOT--expands our knowledge and appreciation of history and its replication. JIM ESCH Originally from Pennsylvania, Jim Esch holds a Bachelors Degree in English/Latin from West Chester University, and a Masters Degree in English/Creative Writing from University of Texas, Austin. In addition to freelance writing, he has been a part time college English instructor. He has previously published poetry in GENERAL ECLECTIC, MAD POETS REVIEW, and has contributed to SPARKS, a zine co-founded by Esch. He now resides in St. Louis, Missouri. LARISSA SHMAILO is a NYC writer and fundraiser living in Manhattan. Her recent work includes a short story, The Wrong Woodstock, scheduled for publication in winter 1993, and a novel, Patient Women; the poem(s) appearing in this volume of Grist are the "work" of the novel's protagonist, Nora Nader. A former translator, Ms. Shmailo is currently Director of Development for Urban Health, a South Bronx community medical center. JOSEPH MATHENY--"Ong's Hat" came into my hands while I was doing some research into the Ong's Hat enigma. I recieved it from a person calling themselves "Emory Cranston", and I was instructed to post it on the net to "get the word out". I have since placed it in several gopher and ftp sites around the world. I have received an enormous response as a result of these postings, and am investigating further. As for my bio, I am the founding member of MediaKaos, a Culture Jamming organization, and have published extensively as a freelance writer. My main interests are: Media Piracy, Text Mangling, Cut-ups, and fringe culture. MediaKaos may be reached via email -mediak@well.sf.ca.us. We also publish strange fringe culture books, CDs, records and tapes and are in the process of starting a quarterly magazine to be release in the summer or fall of 94. The Ongs Hat and related material is available from: gopher.well.sf.ca.us under INCUNABULA and INCUNABULA 2. see also "Advances in Skin Science" Joseph Matheny interviews Nick Herbert about Quantum Tantra. bOING-bOING #11, Oct, 1993. LOU ROBINSON is the author of Napoleon's Mare, Fiction Collective Two. (This novel was co-winner of F.C's 1991 National Fiction Competition). Her work has appeared recently in The American Voice, The Kenyon Review, Quarterly, Epoch, Top Stories, and Top Top Stories, City Lights. "Infanticide" is a poem published by Flockophobic Press on a lead tablet. Work is forthcoming in Black Ice. She is co-editor of Resurgent: New Writing by Women, University of Illinois Press. Surveillance, a collaborative novel written with Ellen Zweig is forthcoming. Lou lives in Ithaca, New York, and works at Cornell University Press. ELLEN ZWEIG, ezweig@brownvm.brown.edu, is an artist who works with video, performance and installation; a writer and theorist. Her work in all of these fields concentrates on images of the Other and the discourses between us and them. In her installations, she uses optics to create camera obscuras, camera lucidas, video projection devices. She has presented work in Europe, Australia and the U.S, has received two NEA grants, and is now touring a large collaborative project (with Meridel Rubenstein and Stein and Woody Vasulka) about Edith Warner, a woman who lived near Los Alamos during the time of the making of the bomb. Her other projects include a permanent installation of a camera obscura for the Exploratorium in San Francisco, continuing work on the series of instal-lation/performances, EX(CENTRIC) LADY TRAVELLERS, and a series of image/text pieces about concepts of the monstrous and the wonderful. ALL TEXT IN THE 19S PLAY FROM: Abir-Am, Pnina G. and Outram,Dorinda, Uneasy Careers and Intimate Lives: Women in Science, 1789-1979; Alpers, Svetlana, The Art of Describing; Altick, Richard,The Shows of London; Barber,Lynn, The Heyday of Natural History; Bartlett, Jennifer, History of the Universe; Blais, Marie-Claire,Anna's World; Buck-Morss,Susan,The Dialectics of Seeing; Campbell, Mary, The Witness and the Other World; Crow Dog, Mary,Lakota Woman; Drinka, Birth of Neurosis; Foucault, Michel,Madness and Civilization; Gachenbach, Jayne,Control Your Dreams; Gernsheim, Helmut and Alison, L.J. M. Daguerre; Helmut and Alison, L.J. M. Daguerre; Gerstner, Karl, Compendium for Literates: A system of Writing; Huysmans, J.K, La-Bas; LaBastille, Anne, Woodswoman; Le Brun, Annie, Sade: A Sudden Abyss; Luhrmann,T.M., Persuasions of the Witch's Craft; Mair, Victor, Painting and Performance; Millett, Kate, The Prostitution Papers; O'Brien, Edna, The High Road; Ribeiro, Darcy, Maira; Rosca, Ninotchka, The Monsoon Collection; Rossi, Cristina Peri, The Ship of Fools; Rower, Ann, If You're a Girl; Salomon, Charlotte, Charlotte: Life or Theater; Sarraute, Nathalie, Childhood; Sarrazin, Albertine, The Runaway; States, Bert O., The Rhetoric of Dreams; Strachey, Lytton, Eminent Victorians; Toepfer, Karl, Theater, Aristocracy, Pornocracy; Valenzuela, Luisa, He Who Searches; The Journal of Eugene Delacroix; Wells, H. G., Brynhild or The Show of Things; (Name Gabrielle Russier from Mavis Gallant's Paris Journals). KEITH DAWSON, kdawson@panix.com, 29, is a writer and magazine editor living in Brooklyn, New York. ezra--"how many more chapters can there be? lurker but never shirks." j.lehmas of Cyanobacteria, Experiment Planetscale (see also GRIST On-Line #2) expects a new addition to his family in about four weeks. "lemna pistia #2" is due in March and a new text corpuscle for "Flora et fauna anthropophobica" should be published in a few months. "Machinery" with texts by j.lehmas and illustrations by Francoise Duvivier is available. Contact him at P.O. Box 8, 70151, Kuopio, Finlandia. ANDREA OVCINNICOFF, PAOLO BARRILE, TADEUSZ KANTOR, GE of(Huth) from the Cyanobacteria Collective these pieces having appeared in "Flora et fauna anthropophobica", 1992. KARL YOUNG, poet, mailartist, editor, publisher: Light & Dust Books and now Interneter extraordinaire; watch out! see also GRIST On-Line #1. karlyoung@delphi.com JEFFERSON M. PETERS, 7-12-15 Tagami, Kagoshima City 890, Kagoshima, Japan. FAX: 0992-82-9902. US address: 9431 Krepp Dr., Huntington Beach, CA 92646-2708. JOHN LABOVITZ of Internet list fame.