Guerrilla Actions

Guerrilla Actions - 1980s

030. nameless wandering wind ensemble

- Baltimore, us@

- winter, 1979/1980

- cris cheek (clarinet), Chris Mason (bass clarinet), Gayle Hanson (clarinet?), Patty Karl? (clarinet?), & I (alto sax) improvised while wandering the streets & alleys. We were joined by a guy named John(?) playing recorder who heard us passing by.

- recollections from tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE

031. nameless wandering wind ensemble

- Baltimore, us@

- winter, early 1980

- With an unknown line-up that consisted of at least Chris Mason & myself, more wandering improvising on wind instruments. Again we were joined by John(?), this time on alto sax, when we unwittingly passed behind his apartment.

- recollections from tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE

032. nameless wandering wind ensemble

- Baltimore, us@

- winter, early 1980

- Again with an unknown line-up beyond Chris Mason, myself, & Doug Retzler pulling a wagon with some sort of large cardboard horn, meandering improvising thru the streets. A black guy told me I played like John Coltrane which I found strange but flattering considering that I could barely play the thing - especially in the cold weather.

- recollections from tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE

041. krononautic divector field didaction

- APT 81, Peking Poolroom & the streets, Montréal, CacaNada

- Samedi, 21 Février?, 1981

- In the kitchen, the oven door was open with a turntable on it. The turntable had a record on it which I had painted with glow-in-the-dark paint. The main lighting in the room was from a clamp lamp over the turntable & from lasers which were set up to reflect off steam irons (a neoist symbol of severity) held by Kiki Bonbon & Zbigniew Brotgehirn. While the turntable turned, I blotted out the record's light by spray-painting black on it & Richard Ellsberry (then known as Richard X) gave a lecture accompanied by chalk writing on the walls about the Krononautic Organism (the time travel "society" that those of us from Baltimore at this festival represented). Ruth Turner did something out on the roof adjacent to the kitchen. Doug Retzler wandered the streets of Montréal, under the influence of LSD, aiming a low-intensity portable laser into windows & doorways of bars & other buildings periodically calling the Peking Poolroom to interupt the lecture & report on his activities. The action more or less ended when Kiki asked Zbigniew " Do you really want to do this?" (i.e.: hold the steam irons to reflect the lasers) to which Zbigniew replied "No" & they stopped doing so.

- recollections from tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE

043. No No Class Umbrella Lesson

- Experimental High School -> the streets, Baltimore, us@

- fall, 1981

- Asked to co-teach a class at the Experimental High School, I named the class the No No Class & centered it around the teaching of guerrilla activities. At the 1st class I told the students that no matter how well they'd do in the class I planned to give them all "D"s (the lowest passing grade) since grades were aspects of a different political system than what the class represented. Some students dropped out immediately. They were then shown 2 vaudeos of quasi-documentation of 2 "guerrilla theater" type actions. At the end of the 1st class, they were asked to bring umbrellas to the next class.

- The 2nd class consisted of my having the students walk down the sidewalks, tightly clustered together, with umbrellas over their heads - despite its not being rainy or sunny. The purpose of this was to force other pedestrians to have to navigate under the moving variable height ceiling that the clumped umbrellas created. As the finalé, we blocked the entrance of a supermarket until a guard chased us away.

- recollections from tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE

044. Seatbelt Violation Public Works Promotion

- Public Works Festival, Toronto, CacaNada

- October, 1981

- Eugenie Vincent & I were tied to the roof of a rented car to attract attention to us while we drove around the city with signs advertising the festival we were to participate in & "HOMEX" - the magazine that 1 of the drivers, Ricki Kilreagan (the other driver being Sin-Dee Heidel), was editor of. After 20 minutes or so, we were stopped by a cop, who was eventually joined by 2 others. The cops tried to figure out what they could charge us with & eventually decided on "seatbelt violation" - much to the general amusement.

- recollections from tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE

046. Neoist Parking Meter Action

- APT 4, Montréal, CacaNada

- October, 1981

- Wearing sandwich boards that said in English & French: "Neoist Parking Meter Action - Pay Me to Go Away" & wearing a parking meter hood over my face, I stood at empty parking places & waited for cars to park there. Then I followed the drivers when they left their cars with an impassive face & my hand out-stretched mechanically. The drivers all avoided me by walking somewhere where I wasn't - after which I left a Neoist Parking Ticket under their windshield wiper. Finally disgusted by what I thought was a mediocre response to my imaginative begging, I started to walk back to the LOW theatre. En route, 2 guys stopped me & asked me what I was doing. When I explained, they thought it was so funny that they pretended to get out of a car & gave me money.

- recollections from tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE

047. Mont Royal Cathedral Painting

- APT 4, Montréal, CacaNada

- October, 1981

- Wearing my Tim Ore clothes, I set up an easel with a canvas on it in a park across from the Mont Royal Cathedral. Going thru painterly gestures such as extending my thumb to "check perspective", I proceeded to paint a very crude depiction of a house that wasn't intended to look like the cathedral. Keeping a straight face, I knew that people would look over my shoulder & look at the painting & think that I was some sort of "poor crazy man" & give me wide berth after seeing my "crazy" picture. It amused me that a simple child's painting of a house with a smoking chimney (or some such) when placed in this context could become a catalyst for fear. Eventually, 2 people had the nerve to ask me if I was attempting to paint the cathedral. I laughed & explained what I was doing - after which they were relieved & explained that, sure enough, they'd been afraid to talk to me because they thought I was crazy. Things aren't always what they seem, eh?

- recollections from tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE

048. LOW show

- APT 4, LOW Theatre, Montréal, CacaNada

- October 15?, 1981

- Wanting to only perform street actions during this festival but wanting to make money off of them by charging entry to the LOW theatre (a basement apartment with a bay window in the front) I decided to charge admittance to the theatre & then perform my actions outside so that the audience would be watching thru the bay window what they could have watched for free from outside. With a tv outside facing in (or inside facing out with the reflection visible inside?) showing video of the previous 2 street actions, I stood outside trying to sell "Neoist Passports" (large, elaborately folded & rubber stamped "blackprints" made from passports of Istvan Kantor's that he'd had altered by various friends & aquaintances in his travels) which I was trying to sell for some ridiculously LOW price - something like $3.00. Probably few people, if anyone, paid to enter the theatre. No-one would buy a passport off this "deranged-looking" character. As usual, I didn't make any money - but I'm sure that whatever free meal I got that day courtesy of Gordon W. Zealot & Monty Cantsin was delicious!

- recollections from tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE

053. Publicity Stunt (performed by Monty Cantsin)

- the Neoist Network's First European Training Camp, Würzburg, West Germany

- June 24, 1982

- The realization of the score (from my: PUBLICITY STUNTS my growth as an obscuro): "shoot (a) blank(s) in the dark" on a bridge at night.

- recollections from tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE

054. KILL NORMALITY B4 IT KILLS U!

- 2nd Church & Foundation of the SubGenius Convention, Chicago, us@

- September 4, 1982

- Displaying myself around town looking bizarre, as usual, & wearing sandwich boards that read KILL NORMALITY B4 IT KILLS U! on the front & DON'T KILL ME! I'M A SUBGENIUS! on the back.

- recollections from tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE

056. INAUGURATION OF THE B.T.O.U.C.

- Bal Tim Ore Underground Club, Baltimore, us@

- December 31 (New Year's Eve), 1982

- With the help of friends, I moved the 4' X 4' X 7' replica of a transistor radio called AS RADIO (previously mentioned in connection with the 2 last Crab Feast flops) into an abandoned set of rooms in the approximately 3 mile long train tunnel between (what had been) the Mount Royal Station & the Camden Station.

This space, & another, newer, set of rooms in a new extention of the old tunnel, were further decorated with elaborate graffiti (mostly made with stencils) made by myself, Dave Bakker, Randy Hoffman, & Laure Drogoul (&, possibly, others). An 8 track cartridge player & an amplifier & some speakers were installed in the AS RADIO & connected to the power in the tunnel & the Club was ready to open! Having stuck a marker up thru a manhole cover at the top of a shaft leading from the club, we located what was to become the "V.I.P." entrance on a conveniently unused lane on Howard Street. On New Year's Eve, Randy, Dave, & I (as Tim Ore) placed highway cones around the manhole & used a meathook (which bent) to lift the heavy, concrete coated, manhole cover. Dave & Randy were dressed as construction workers with hard-hats & shirts that had ID tags on them that read "Balto Co". Friends were invited down into the hole & down into the club & beer was provided. 2 truck drivers who stopped to ask for directions were invited down the manhole. They were dubious at 1st until they saw the spandex wrapped Sin-Dee Heidel emerge at which point they decided to descend. Eventually a reporter & a photographer came & did their do. When they left, they called train authorities to ask them what they thought of this & 2 of them stopped by at street level to visit. When they arrived, Randy & Dave, still manning the manhole, kept a straight face & asked them if "they'd like to see the boss". They did & I popped to the surface looking very "un-boss-like". I chattered away merrily & explanatorily for awhile & promised to close the "V.I.P." entrance when we left & the railroad officials were sensible enough to leave us in peace.

- recollections from tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE

057. Parade de Propagande

- the Sixth International Apartment Festival, the streets to Phillips

Square, Montréal, CacaNada

- Lundi, 21 Février, 1983

- Boris Wanowitch drove his car with the steam irons painted on it thru Montréal. Mounted on top was a P.A. system connected to a tape player & a microphone on the inside. Monty Cantsin/Istvan Kantor played a tape of some of his dramatic electro-pop music with sirens & such-like Apopolyptic sound effects & provided a voice-over of neoist slogans provided mainly by him & myself such as "We Are Not Subject to the Lies of Science" & "Neoism Now & Then!". We were stopped by the police & given a ticket within 20 minutes for some sort of noise violation. When we reached Phillips Square, we continued with our broadcasting & got out of the car to display the usual neoist eye-grabbers: flaming steam irons, the gold flag of near neologisms (not really called that at the time), etc & to promote the festival. Other participants included Alan Lord & Kiki Bonbon. The police eventually stopped this too.

- recollections from tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE

061. Poop & Pee Dog Copyright Violation Ceremony

- 14BX Sub-Par/Con (The 3rd Church & Foundation of the SubGenius Convention), a Baltimore Train Tunnel, us@

- September 18, 1983, very early morning

- A wire was stretched across the train tunnel thru an eye hook & 2 partially truncated & mummified dog corpses that I'd found there that had apparently been run over by trains were hung from the wire on either side of the tracks. A metal sheet with instructions for using Black & Decker power tools with a No Copyright symbol spray-painted on it was suspended between the dogs. The dogs were painted white with the words "Poop" painted on 1 of them & "Pee" painted on the other & glowing cyalume light sticks were placed between their rear legs. The walls of the tunnel were spray-painted with non-intersecting (except for, perhaps, the occasional accident) squiggly lines which I associated somehow with native Australian dreamtime culture. A strobe light flashed, someone made the dogs dance by tugging on the wire, & Ron Cummings manipulated & played tapes that he'd made of him beating on the dead dogs. I was naked except for my shoes & socks & I had white squiggly lines painted on me. I danced & gyrated wildly & beat the dogs & the thunder sheet with a club. The dogs were on fire & exuded what one might call a "foul" smell. I had been entrusted with the sacred head of Arnold Palmer by a representative of the Bloody Head Launcher's Society which I had set on fire & which I was also beating about the tunnel. The title of this ceremony was a reference to "Pee-Dog" comix by Jay Condum & Gary Panter & "Poop-Dog" comix (which was a friendly rip-off of "Pee-Dog") by the Reverends Ivan Stang & Sterno Keckhaver. Eventually a large quantity of police came (from the railroad cops, the city police, & the nearby federal reserve bank guards) because 1 of the attendees reported having witnessed something "horrible & immoral" & I was arrested. When the "news" found out about this (it was done partially as a publicity stunt anyway) they "reported" that I was a "Cult Leader" who was "praying to the dogs" etc. Very little attempt was made to actually find out who I really was or what I actually was doing & when I was interviewed what I actually had to say was considered too weird to quote. I was quoted both in the newspapers & on tv as saying things that I hadn't said by people who hadn't even been present at the time when I'd supposedly said them. The cop who'd arrested me bought a photo of this ceremony from me. Another cop who'd allegedly been on the "force" for 26 years was quoted as saying in the newspapers "I'd rather run up against a man with a gun than a situation like that!" The beat goes on..

photo: Dave Bakker

- recollections from tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE

069. Figment of the Collective Imagination

- Madrid, Spain

- May 1984

- Erecting a banner reading "Eso Es Una Quimera Colectivo" (intended to mean "We Are A Figment of The Collective Imagination") a group of 6 or more of us (including Ricki Kilreagan & Gail Litfin) made alotof noise while kids romped around us wearing cylindrical boxes around their feet & lower legs that we'd originally brought as drums. This was late at night in a public square with a central statue & was brought to a halt when an old woman from a near-by apartment building came out & chastised us for disturbing the old & infirm.

- recollections from tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE

071. Neoist Guide Dog

- the Neoist Network's 8th Apartment Festival, London, UK

- late May, 1984

- My lover/travelling companion of the time, Gail Litfin, was diabetic. She'd had laser surgery on her left eye which had left that eye blind. Her right eye had hemorrhaged so that all she could see was the red blur of the pool of blood there. She was legally blind. Since I was leading her around, we joked about me being her "seeing-eye dog". We bought a dog mask from a store specializing in animal masks (where Gail almost got caught shoplifting) & added a leash to my outfit for "completeness". The Festival's organizer, Monty Cantsin/Pete Horobin, shot a film of Gail leaving our fest HQ with me on all fours as her "guide dog" (as they say in England), boarding a bus (where guide dogs ride for free, of course, & the driver didn't question the unusualness of this particular dog), & shopping in a mall (where we were kicked out of 1 store).

- recollections from tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE

072. Les Promenades Hysteriques

- Paris, France

- late May?, 1984

- I was periodically visiting my friends Reinhardt U. Sevol & Via Vidorae in Paris. Reinhardt was an avid anti-neoist at the time & wasn't planning to participate in the London Apartment Festival so we decided to form another group to perpetrate actions. Those present at this founding were Eugenie Vincent, Via, Reinhardt, Gail Litfin, & myself. The name of the group, Ton Tocock Schisme, was a mesostic made from the names of previous groups that we'd been involved with. Reinhardt made a flier announcing "La Fondation d'une Clinique d'une Realite Cyniquement Inversive". Later, Reinhardt, Via, & I made a film of the only series of actions made in the name of this group that I know of. My main part in it was wearing chef's coveralls that R.U.S. had swiped from his hotel kitchen job which had the title & credit for the film on it while laying on my back on the longest pedestrian conveyor belt in the Paris subway. Reinhardt filmed while people navigated their way past my obstacle.

- recollections from tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE

073. Halloween Demonstration Against Reagan

- near the White House, Washington DC, us@

- October 31 (Halloween Day), 1984, 10:30AM - 1PM

- In an action conceived of & co-ordinated by Doug Retzler, people wore cardboard "Halloween" masks with Reagan faces on them with null signs over them & distributed anti-Reagan literature to convince voters to vote for anyone but him. The gist of the message was "If You're Not Scared, You Ought To Be." I was photographed by the secret service while wearing mine. If only Reagan could have been arrested as a result in a case of mistaken identity, eh?

- recollections from tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE

090. to 106. First Meeting Re-Enactments

- San Francisco, San Antonio, & Baltimore, us@

- every Monday (except June 2) from May 26 'til September 22?, 1986

- Martha Peterson & I met when I showed my film (made as Monty Cantsin in collaboration with Monty Cantsin & Monty Cantsin - with soundtrack by Monty Cantsin, etc..) "Transparent SMILE - Monty Cantsin Performing with White Colours" (broken into 2 parts on YouTube: https://youtu.be/EGc-rohmq4k & https://www.youtu.be/p84MiQDrsnc ) at a bar called the "Sixteenth Note" in San Francisco. We "fell in love" (a.k.a. had sex under the influence of Ecstacy) & I asked her to go to BalTimOre with me. On our weekly-versaries, we "re-enacted" meeting each other for the 1st time by reliving it in various new ways. This story is told in substantial detail in the "I Guess SMARM isn't Short for School Marm After All?" chapter in the revised 2nd edition of my book How to Write a Resumé - Volume II: Making a Good First Impression. As such, I'll keep the description short here. Martha & I would, usually, go to a public place pretending not to know each other & go through a pre-planned mating ritual - the silly extravagance of which was sometimes intended to bemuse unsuspecting onlookers. Sometimes we had confederates. One of these was filmed in super-8 by Patty Blaster in San Antonio. This was probably the 2nd re-enactment & to quote the YouTube notes: "The cynical good humor & alcoholic self-parody is clear.": http://youtu.be/Ne1_-f6RaQg My current favorite might be the one where I went to a bar /restaurant where I had friends working & where the bar-tender, John Fonda, was a friend of mine. Martha came in later & told the bar-tender that she'd just arrived from San Francisco. When he asked her why she'd move to B-More from there, she said that she'd seen a film show by a guy named "tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE" & that she'd liked it so much that she decided to move to the city where he lived. John got very excited & told her that I was sitting in the restaurant. She, very shyly approached me at my table where I was sitting with friends & introduced herself. When "it came out" that "she'd just arrived in Baltimore & had no place to stay" I "magnanimously" offered to "let her stay at my hotel for free". My friends were shocked at my using such a ridiculous lie as to say that I owned a hotel in such a transparent ploy to fuck Martha but they didn't say anything. After a little more of this straight-faced silliness, she & I left together. This provided material for gossip for months until I finally told my friends that they'd been set up. The laziest "re-enactment" I can recall was one where Martha simply came into my bedroom while I was there & we tried to figure out how we could've managed to not previously meet each other when we'd been sharing the same bedroom! We managed to continue this practice 15 to 17 times until we were no longer interested in each other enough to bother.

- recollections from tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE

107. pirate tv premier of "6 Fingers Crossed Country T.Ore/Tour" vaudeo

- Luskin's, Towson, Maryland, us@

- Saturday, December 27, 1986, 3PM

- With the essential collaboration of Lizard Media Systems & using a channel 3 broadcaster, we tried a test-run broadcast from Lizard's mobile home. It was a sunny day & my vaudeo showed bright & clear on the wall of tvs in the Luskin's (a sortof cheap home entertainment center store). For the actual event, a fairly large group of people was organized to meet at Lizard's R.V. They were asked to go in small groups into the Luskin's & to gradually tune all the tvs to channel 3 while we broadcast the guerrilla premier of the vaudeo quasi-document of the "6 Fingers Crossed Country T.Ore/Tour". Unfortunately, the broadcast wasn't working at 1st & none of the people tuning the tvs to 3 thought to come back to tell us that the tvs were only receiving "snow". This had alerted the salesman that something weird was going on & they were following the strange "customers" & retuning the tvs to football. Finally we got the transmission corrected & the pirate tv game continued. All of the participants did a good job of playing it straight & the Luskin's personnel never really did have any clear idea why they suddenly had so many customers wanting to tune the tvs to a channel that "doesn't get anything" but was getting something anyway!

- recollections from tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE

111. street action with the booed usic busking unit

- Covent Gardens & Leicester Square, London, UK

- Saturday, May 28, 1988

- The "Portable booed usic Busking Unit / Nuclear Brain Physics Surgery School Lab / Philosopher's Union Member's Mouthpiece / Blatnerphone Hallucinomat", usually just called the busking unit, was a suitcase full of battery powered tape-player/radios, mixers, a tv, an amplifier, a PXL camcorder, & mouths that moved depending upon the volume output from the amplifier (etc, etc..). It was designed to enable me to present street actions with complex "concrete mixing". The tv-PXL connection enabled me to present the Philosopher's Mouthpieces (see the previous entry) - henceforth abbreviated P.U.M.M.s. The tape-player/radios & mixers enabled me to both mix prepared recordings & other "live" inputs. When set up, people could watch the tv (just barely - it was pretty small) & hear the sound coming from 4 speakers which could pan from left to right & from back to front &, of course, vice versa. This was the 1st street action "performed" with it. I was almost immediately moved along by the bobbies at Covent Gardens so I moved to Leicester Square where I was unmolested. Assistance in this was from Laura Trussell, who shot some footage with the PXL, & from Scott Larson - who threw money onto our collection cloth to try to catalyze the onlookers to do the same (to no avail). At least 1 tourist with an expensive video camcorder shot footage of us - I'd love to see it.

- recollections from tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE

112. booed usic busking

- Busking Competition, Dowanhill Park, Partick Fair, Glasgow, Scotland, UK

- Sunday, June 5, 1988

- Busking is a term for street performing mainly used in Europe - where such practices are more likely to be legal than they are in the US. Of course, most street performers play acoustic instruments. I've heard of 1 kid in NYC who plays an inverted bucket as a drum - using his foot to lower & raise the bucket to change the tone. He would be a great example of the impoverished simple means variety. With my busking unit I represented a wealthier extreme - but still, hopefully, sharing the innovative qualities of the impoverished 1. In Europe, it's fairly common practice for art students to do "old master" (& other) chalk drawings on sidewalks with a cup or a hat or a (clean?) handkerchief out for people to throw money into. Show that you can copy the "masters" & we'll help pay your way. In Dundee there was a busker who played muzak on his mid-range cost electronic keyboard. He seemed to get a fair amount of coins. So I entered the busking competition - not to try to win but to just expand the usually narrow parameters of such things. Kids loved me. As I wrote to a friend, I felt like the pied piper of Glasgow. The judges, on the other hand, were not so enthused. That was fine with me though because the woman who won (studio time?) probably didn't have much money & had a kid to support so I was glad to see her helped out.

- recollections from tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE

116. INAUGURATION OF THE G.S.B.B.T.O.U.C.

- Glasgow Suburban Branch - Bal Tim Ore Undergound Club, Glasgow, Scotland, UK

- Wednesday, June 29, 1988

- Glasgow is 2nd only to London as the railroad capitol of the UK. It had had (& still has?) various competing railroads & had some abandoned lines as a result. Laura Trussell & various new friends of ours & I explored Glasgow trying to find a suitable underground location to found a "club". We finally picked an abandoned subway station underneath a botanical garden. Decorating the club with two 5 foot long papier maché "boats" from the Transmission basement & various other things, we inaugurated the club with about 17 people. We provided free booze, badges (buttons) made by Mark Pawson that identified the club somehow but were printed black-on-black in honor of the subterranean darkness, & set up the busking unit & let them play with it. The station had large air vents that vented in the botanical gardens park but they were surrounded by bushes & most people probably didn't even know they were there. So when the busking unit was playing, people walking by in the park would hear strange sounds coming from the bushes. Eventually, someone must've alerted the cops to these sounds because they forced their way thru the bushes & shone flashlights down into the pit to try to see what was going on. Threatening to flush us out with dogs if we didn't come out, we finally left. Fortunately, by then, the party had already basically climaxed. There were no arrests.

- recollections from tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE

117. Tent's Muir

- Tentsmuir Park, Scotland, UK

- July 11, 1988

- a movie version is on my onesownthoughts YoUTube channel here: http://youtu.be/oBBjSe3REHA

- Laura A. Trueseal, Pete Horobin, & I lugged about 120 pounds or more of equipment for several miles at my not-very-enthusiastically received suggestion so that I could play with the booed usic busking unit (see previous entries for explanation) in front of seals in their natural habitat. I'd wanted to wear a seal mask while doing so to "attempt to blend in" (more to observe their reaction) but Dundee's modest costume shop only had Donald Duck representing the aquatic world so I reluctantly rented the duck mask. In order to reach where the seals were, we had to ford a narrow point of an arm of the North Sea to reach a sand bar & walk further out on it. When we arrived, most of the seals slithered into the water to watch from greater safety. Their heads bobbed up & down - continuously looking in our direction. Only a couple of younger seals stayed ashore. 1 older 1 stayed briefly but finally left somewhat sluggishly. I stripped & put on the Donald Duck mask & set up the busking unit to play it. The seals were too far away to have much of an experience of that, especially considering that it wasn't very loud in contrast to the sea & the wind, so I nervously decided to get in the rather cold water to give them a closer look at me at least. Knowing nothing about seals, & not being able to see very well with the mask on, I was afraid the seals might try to bite me thinking I was threatening their children. Back ashore again, I was squatting by the water-line when 1 of the younger seals approached from a few feet away curiously coming directly toward me. Still awkward as an inter-species diplomat (despite that being my partial purpose for being there) I started to stand to back away. This body language was apparently interpreted as an act of hostility & the seal hunched its back & hissed at me. So for those likely to "follow in my footsteps", don't hunch your back at a seal if you want to "break the ice".

- recollections from tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE

120. Tim Ore's participation in the Burning

- Festival of Non-Participation, Glasgow Green, Glasgow, Scotland, UK

- Monday, August 8, 1988, 8PM

- Organized by Kenny Murphy-Roud (sp?), this part of the fest was a burning of art works on a garbage pile in a section of a park used for sports. As Tim Ore, I made a "gallery" painting with this text on it "The Artist Does Not Grant The Purchaser of This Painting the Right to Guard It in Any Way". With Laura A. Trueseal acting as my "agent" we made a show of selling the painting to Kenny for 1 pence. It was then burnt.

- recollections from tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE

121. Murraygate Busking

- Murraygate Shopping Mall, Dundee, Scotland, UK

- Saturday, August 13, 1988

- A movie version can be witnessed on my onesownthoughts YouTube channel here: http://youtu.be/Wk-J_nDrVSo

- Busking is legal in Scotland. Therefore, buskers are a regular feature of shopping areas in Dundee. On the day that we decided to busk at Murraygate, there was a guy playing acoustic guitar & playing such things as Simon & Garfunkel songs. The only other busker there that day was doing representational chalk drawing on the sidewalk. No-one seemed to pay much attention to them but they would throw them coins. We set up the booed usic busking unit in front of a John Menzies store. I was wearing my zipper clothes & had an infinity symbol shaped hair-do (it looked more like ring worm ouroborous). Vex (Mike Kane) played his guitar amplified thru the busking unit. L.A.W. (Laura Ann Walker) made more original & personalized chalk drawings than the usual fare. Laura A. Trueseal & I alternated between shooting PXL footage & "concrete mixing" with the busking unit. The mixers allowed us to move both our sounds & Vex's guitar playing thru the 4 speakers. We put a white shirt on the ground that had "Yes, This Is Busking!" written on it & I made an attempt to get people to give us money. We attracted a fairly large crowd of curious & baffled people, unlike the other buskers, who actually stayed & watched. However, again unlike the other buskers, only a few people would give us money. Eventually, the John Menzies employees complained to the police about the noise & about the crowd blocking their store without coming in & the police chased us away. We made approximately 2 pounds. Pete Horobin shot a vaudeo quasi-document of all this.

- recollections from tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE

122. street action with the booed usic busking unit

- during the Edinburgh International Theatre Festival (or whatever it's called), Edinburgh, Scotland, UK

- Saturday, August 20, 1988

- Setting up with the busking unit on a field of stones 40 feet or so across from a woman selling extremely generic water-color landscapes as a part of some sort of outdoor crafts fair. Playing the busking unit with dense gusto, I attracted a crowd who turned their backs on her water-colors. Georg Ladanyi shot a super-8 film of this (I'd like to see it some day Georg!). However, perhaps being intimidated by my zipper clothes, my shaved head with brain tattoo, the stone field I was in the middle of, & the conceptually perverse aggressiveness of my sound output, people kept a "safe" distance of at least 20 feet or more from me. Before long, the woman trying to sell her landscape paintings came over & screamed at me to stop because I was distracting her customers! I just screamed back & continued until I was bored with it all.

- recollections from tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE

132. park presentation of the booed usic busking unit

- Without Borders @n@rchist G@thering, San Francisco, us@

- July, 1989

- Another outdoor "concert" with the busking unit. Peter Pan, dressed as a "chaos scout" (a boy scout with a "chaos" flag), plugged in his digital delays to it. 1 kid came up to us & asked if he could rap with us. We tried miking him with a contact mike but it didn't work too well.

- recollections from tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE

tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE

idioideo at verizon dot net

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to the tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE Bibliography page

to my "Blaster" Al Ackerman index

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to the tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE Censored or Rejected page

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