110. [Something that Dissolved the Shadow of Something that Was Next to Something that Burned Twice
- Neil Feather & Valerie Dearing's Apartment , Baltimore, us@
- Easter, 1988
- The 1st "public" concert by this improvising group with the ever-difficult John Sheehan not participating (if I remember correctly). I was probably presenting Philosopher's Union Members' Mouthpieces (approximately 5&1/2 minute PXL-2000 close-ups of mouths of people responding to the question "What is your philosophy?" or some such) for the 1st time. The riddle-like name that serves as the title above was our band name. The band consisted of Neil Feather, John Berndt, & myself playing who knows what.]
- 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
113. "Less English" Mad Scientist Didaction
- Transmission Gallery, Glasgow, Scotland, UK
- Thursday, June 16, 1988
- In preparation for this tour of England, Scotland, & France I'd assembled 2 vaudeo compilations: "Less English" (literally less English language & more image-centered so that I'd have something to present in non-English speaking countries) & "More English" (obviously, English text-heavy things - like "EYE-TRACKING"). As such, the 3 "shows" that I gave at Transmission were centered around the 2 compilations & the "Philosopher's Union" tape that I'd brought. As with most of my "Mad Scientist Didactions", this involved some slight "theatrical" elements combined with dense audio & unusual appearance & complex formal & visceral film & vaudeo - all strung together with anecdotes. All 3 Transmission didactions began with the door person asking attendees for the password. As response to whatever the person said, they were either told that they were right or that they were wrong & told to try again. Eventually everyone was told that they were right. Unfortunately very, very few people attended & the door-people were almost totally non-aggressive - so the impact of this was almost non-existent. After the audience had entered the space where the didaction was to be, I entered thru the rear door - setting off the burglar alarm, pulling along the busking unit (superficially explained in previous entries) with the tv exposed (& showing a Philosopher's Mouthpiece?). I'd greet the audience & give an intro. Then the vaudeo would be presented with explanations between each section & occasional simultaneous projection film. The "Balling Tim Ore is Best" section would involve similar nudist "6 tit" robotic "dancing" as during the "6 Fingers Crossed Country T.Ore/Tour". On this night I did bicycle exercises on a massage table.
- recollections from tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE
114. "Philosopher's Union Members" Mad Scientist Didaction
- Transmission Gallery, Glasgow, Scotland, UK
- Friday, June 17, 1988
- See the previous entry for a description of the beginning. When I'd entered with the busking unit, Laura Trussell plugged in the PXL camcorder to the tv showing in the front of the suitcase to show the audience itself & to create feedback. Then I introduced the night by saying "Hello, welcome to the unpopular, but non-elitist, cobbley world of user-friendly spectacle.. [more specific blither about the Philosopher's Union, etc..] ..& please keep in mind that Laura & I are the audience & you're the performers - which isn't, by the way, a role-reversal, since performers we will never be.. - ANYWAY, enjoy yourself & MIND THE GAP!!" At some point I'd congratulate them for having known the password - explaining that we'd had to turn away 157 (or whatever) people who hadn't known it (that got a few laughs). Then there was 2 hours of "Philosopher's Mouthpieces" - during the ones that were non-lingual (particularly Valerie Dearing's) I probably added busking unit audio.
- recollections from tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE
115. "More English" Mad Scientist Didaction
- Transmission Gallery, Glasgow, Scotland, UK
- Saturday, June 18, 1988
- See the previous 2 entries. This basically combined the "best" of both of these nights in the most linear & didactic way.
- 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
118. "More English"
- Festival of Non-Participation, VAUDIO Weekend, Dundee Resource Center for the Unemployed, Dundee, Scotland, UK
- Friday, July 22, 1988
- The space had an intricate Graham Harwood xerox mural on the wall behind me. Given that this was the Resource Center for the Unemployed & that Graham had lived on the dole for something like 8 years by this point, this was remarkably appropriate. There was a 4 foot screen tv in the middle with a film projection screen above & behind it. The booed usic busking unit was on top of the tv. Starting off wearing my "leper-skin suit" (a tattered white linen suit with color xerox heat transfers of pictures of lepers & rotting skin of lepers & an obvious take-off of the leopard-skin clothes that were popular when I made the suit), I eventually stripped off a layer to reveal my zipper clothes (pants & a jacket made entirely from zippers) & during the "Balling Tim Ore is Best" section unzipped the front of my jacket to reveal my "6 tits" sweatshirt. Following the usual procedure of showing films &/or vaudeos with anecdotal prefaces in between, by midway thru I'd added the moving around of a safety lamp to complicate the lighting, reveal the mural when the lights were otherwise off to enhance the projection situation, & to enable me to use the busking unit. For the last half of the show, I played the busking unit & presented Philosopher's Union Member's Mouthpieces on its tv. For the last 3rd of the night, I had "You Haven't Heard the Record, You Haven't Read the Book, NOW! Don't See the Movie!" projecting at a slow speed while a couple of other vaudeos preceeded its presentation on the tv at a faster speed - enabling the 2 versions to be out-of-sync, in-sync, & out-of-sync with each other again.
- recollections from tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE
119. Quasi-Documentary Residue
- the Collective Gallery, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK
- Saturday, July 30, 1988
- This was the pinnacle of my UK didactions in inside, scheduled circumstances. In an attempt to make my presence more exciting & the films & vaudeos less gruelingly long, I pared down the length of the program & added more planned action. Tired of the miniscule audiences, I made a poster on which I called myself a "FAMOUS NEW YORK PERFORMANCE ARTIST & CLOSE PERSONAL FRIEND OF GENESIS P. ORRIDGE". I did attract a slightly larger crowd but whether it had anything to do with my misleadingness I don't know. Amongst the new elements added to the usual simultaneous film, vaudeo, story-telling, & booed usic busking unit were my taking my vital signs data (as participation in Pete Horobin's decade-long data project). I had drunk alotof water beforehand so that I was wriggling with a desperate need to pee thruout. When I began to show my piss-in-the-mouth SubGenius movie, "Pee on "Bob"'s Head", I finally allowed myself to pee - thusly beginning the data section. I pissed thru a cored banana - thusly using the old extended dick in a banana joke. I was pissing into a pint jar but I'd had to piss so bad that it overflowed onto the floor. Then I used a urinalysis test strip, took my blood pressure & pulse, etc..
- 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
123. Neoist MythStory
- First International Anathema Party Takeover (the One Millionth Neoist Apartment Festival), Chameleon Bar, Lower East Side / NYC Akademgorod, us@
- Flaming Wednesday, November 23, 1988
- Having been scheduled to present projected vaudeos in a bar I knew that it was highly unlikely that anyone would pay attention to them. Given that people will usually notice the wail of a baby in almost any environment, I invited an acquaintance of mine, Debbie Montgomery, to help me with the show by being on the stage in front of the screen with her 11 month old baby. The organizational conditions at the bar being almost completely indifferent to whether anything was arranged for me before the show, I found myself competing with "Star Trek" when it came time for me to do a sound-check. "Star Trek" was far more important to the patrons of the bar so my "sound-check" was cursory. Debbie & I taped contact mikes to the baby & she was encouraged to play with the baby in a way that would make her vocal (without hurting her). The contact mikes were plugged into the house sound system. It was hoped that if the baby were making alotof noise in front of the screen that people might occassionally look down the tunnel space next to the bar & see some of the movies. I had been assured by the organizer of the festival, Monty Cantsin/Istvan Kantor, that the whole night was mine & that I could present movies for 3 hours if I wanted to. Nonetheless, when the time came for me to present the 90 minutes that I'd planned, Monty tried to convince me to stop halfway thru so that other people that he'd told could do something could start. I refused - hence Monty's organizing left me looking like an egomaniac. Another fine contentious time was had by all. Eventually, for the last 1/2 hour or so, I invited some of the more vocal people on stage to liven things up & people shouted revolutionarily to their near-content.
- recollections from tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE
124. demonstration of the booed usic busking unit
- First International Anathema Party Takeover (the One Millionth Apartment Festival), Stockwell Galero, Lower East Side / NYC Akademgorod
- Steam Power Friday, November 25, 1988
- Another contentious evening in which the cops came to stop a scrap-metal concert from occurring as a result of a noise complaint (or some such). D.J.Steve (of the scrap metal contingent) was angry because he'd carried all that heavy metal to the gallery & saw no good reason why he should stop playing just because the cops had once again interfered. Pamela, from the gallery, & Monty argued with him that the gallery couldn't afford the trouble. Both D.J.Steve & Monty/Istvan are very energetic & argumentative. Their face-off reached monumental proportions during which Steve raised a lead pipe as if to strike Istvan on the head. Meanwhile, John Berndt wandered around blindfolded. Being rather bemused by it all rather than emotionally involved (for a change), I suggested to Steve that hitting Monty on the head with a lead pipe might be overkill. A friend of Steve's later told me that Steve had told him that I had prevented Steve from killing Monty. Somewhere in the midst of all this, Peter Pan (a.k.a. Peter Zahorecz) & I gave a brief & unobtrusive demonstration of the busking unit.
- recollections from tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE
125. [Concrete Mixing
- The Attic, Baltimore, us@
- November 30, 1988
- This was originally scheduled to be the cLosing of Karen Eliot's "Paracultural Exhibition" but it coincidentally turned into the aftermath of the Losing of my bookstore job (weelll.., I didn't actually lose it, I was fired). This presentation was from Karen Eliot (John Berndt), Karen Eliot (Peter Pan), & Karen Eliot (myself) - all playing various tapes & electronics. I played the busking unit/blatnerphone with Philosopher's Mouthpieces. Given that I was a bit angry about the circumstances of "losing" "my" job, my penultimate participation was spent ranting about money etc.. - followed by a spirited playing of a pan of meat. The other Karens contributed such things as rewritten Hardy Boys material & Muson playing.]
- recollections from tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE
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