aREa sNEAKs

From the swell mob, we diverge to the kindred topics of cracksmen, fences, public-house dancers, area-sneaks, designing young people who go out gonophing, and other schools. Charles Dickens

Area Sneaks Issue 1, 2008 Editors: Joseph Mosconi & Rita Gonzalez Contributing Editor: Andrew Maxwell Layout and Design: Christopher Russell Design Assistance: Mathew Timmons Cover Image: Scoli Acosta The editors would like to thank the writers and artists who submitted to this first issue of our journal. And to Andrew Maxwell for providing us with a handle. Address correspondence to: Area Sneaks c/o Joseph Mosconi & Rita Gonzalez 1588 Oak Grove Drive Los Angeles, CA 90041 Unsolicited submissions will not be returned without a S.A.S.E. Copyright 2008 Area Sneaks. Rights revert to authors and artists upon publication. ISSN 1939-4152 ISBN 978-0-9802049-0-2

www.areasneaks.com

Table of Contents

Stan Apps On Social Art Stephanie Taylor In Conversation Sawako Nakayasu Improvisational Score Mark Wallace from Party in My Body Andrew Maxwell Collaborators Marie Jager Timelines Thrse Bachand from luce a cavallo K. Lorraine Graham from See It Everywhere Christopher Russell from Finding Faye Emmanuel Hocquard The Cape of Good Hope William E. Jones Tearoom Texts Ian Monk Start to Rhyme Scoli Acosta In Conversation Daniel Tiffany Infidel Culture Ben Doyle & Sandra Miller from The Sonneteers

7 8 31 32 36 44 60 70 78 89 114 132 143 163 184

Stan Apps

On Social Art

If artists should only be social commentators and the majority of the world is inhumane, then art would be totally irrelevant. If this were so, the effects of a work of art on an audience would be irrelevant to its value. Im sure the artist might defend it by saying hes trying to provoke thought, but that is merely an escape from the harsh realities of our world. Artists have failed to address the need for cultural baggage and the beautiful opinions of the art establishment. Historically, the role of the artist has been as a mirror and commentator on the danger of artists becoming irrelevant. The notion of art as authentic because of identity is in fact supported by the Torah, but that is irrelevant. Art is the realm in which intentions are irrelevant; I want to reverse this perspective and speak of the poet who mistook his work for people disappearing. A dinosaur that once walked the surface of the earth gave a prize for total freedom in art, with the stipulation that the taste of someone else is irrelevant to the artist because living is art. Art that is at worst degrading or at best irrelevant is of no value to me, unless it is degrading of me, or irrelevant to me in particular terms of segregation or alienation. The upbeat optimism of the fashion photographer is sniffy and boring when it cannot be made into the commentator for the unspoken black masses. The court jester of the corporate fiefdom is a humble Christian commentator whose beliefs are true but irrelevant. The cartoonist has no excuse for using these silly Sixties-style rebels as frozen dead mutations. Artist conception of mutant kitty reading out long irrelevant pamphlets in Parliament is ugly, controversial, or dull depending on your point of view, irrelevant to our own experience of phrases like I liked that or I didnt like that. Artists dont achieve anything because they continue to deal with issues. If the world was a game, then why could I not be the commentator; noise doesnt have any force and has run its course. The physical body is not irrelevant and the object of contemplation is broadcast live on the commentators mad mask. I am the artist flipping your concrete and concise burger. I think that there has never been a more irrelevant time to be a human being, artist, football commentator, or signifier present in the public domain. 7

Stephanie Taylor

In Conversation
with Kathryn Andrews & Michael Ned Holte

KATHRYN ANDREWS: When I see your work, one of the first things that comes to mind is miscommunication. I seriously question if Im getting what you intend when youre making it. STEPHANIE TAYLOR: Yeah, probably not. This idea how people perceive things differently is a major component of my work. When someone walks into a show Ive made, at first they might see a kind of story, and then, in trying to make sense of it, they might determine that its a story about something really specific such as peas. If they were interested, and wanted to learn more about the process of how the work was made, they would discover a second story that the show is also about sound and putting pieces of sound together. If they looked longer, they would find a discrepancy between the story of the peas and the story of how the sounds were put together and why. MICHAEL NED HOLTE: But, I could imagine someone whos completely uninformed about what youre doing not immediately understanding there is a story. ST: Yeah, that could happen. MNH: I mean, theyre going to confront a very diverse group of works sculpture, sound, different photographic media and they may make thematic connections. But, the narrative... ST: Its not a clear narrative. Michael Ned Holte: Right. And, it may sound obvious, but someone only becomes aware of a narrative over time, essentially. In that sense, time is really crucial to your work. ST: Yeah, in time, the viewer may uncover other stories too, in addition to the two I mentioned. MNH: Well, each work, I think, has its own circuit of reference and meaning. But, an array of discrete works put in proximity opens exponentially more circuits of reference and meaning, many of which may evade any overriding narrative.

ST: There are so many ways my shows can be interpreted. The idea is to have at least two seemingly contradictory readings. KA: Stephanie, can you elaborate more on how narrative relates to your first point, that you are interested in making work that explores the difference between an artists intended meaning and the viewers experience of it? ST: Im interested in that experience of the world where you see something and you dont know what it is. And so, you make up a story about it, to make sense of it. Im interested in how different the made up story is from what you understand once you know more about the thing in question. Basically, Im interested in the deception of first impressions. KA: Can you describe the stories about the characters? ST: These are abstract and not exactly clear, to say the least. But my central intention is to make them appear like fictional stories with a main character and a plot. Theyre not really stories. Theyre just fragments of stories that Im trying to pull together; I want to make these bits seem like they are naturally connected when, in fact, theyre just there because of a variety of unrelated decision-making methods Ive used to create them. For instance, Ill decide that Im making a show about a sailor. KA: Is that a common practice for you? To start with a subject and to use that to generate a body of work? ST: Yeah. My main material is sound, so a lot of times, Ill pick a subject based on a sound that relates the name of the space where Ill be doing a show. Then, Ill think of works to make to tell, or to pretend to tell, the story of the subject. So, Ill think of what rhymes with what. Once I did a show about a sailor because it rhymed with my own name, Taylor. In the same show there was a leopard. I made a silhouette of a leopard from cardboard. I actually called it a pard, which is what leopard experts call leopards for short. Made of cardboard, it was a pard lord. Pard Lord was the title. 9

Stephanie Taylor, Vexed Gaper Knawing, 2002 Pencil on paper, 18 x 18 inches Image courtesy of Galerie Christian Nagel

Next, my job was to prove that the leopard could be a part of the story about the sailor, though they shared no connection other than I chose to put them together. So, I commissioned a drawing where they were hanging out on a beach. That way, together they made sense. Illustration is proof enough for fiction. KA: Im not following. ST: Well, do you know when you encounter something unfamiliar, how you might look at its context to figure out what it is? In trying to make sense of it, you may entertain the possibility that it shares a story with whats around it? Basically, I am trying to point out how we do this and how we favor certain kinds of connections over others. So, Ill take two distinct characters and Ill put them in a drawing that seems to be proof that they share a story. When the viewer first encounters the work, I want them to take this kind of thing for granted. If the viewer keeps looking they will see other reasons why Ive combined the leopard and the sailor, in part to do with sound and rhyme, which will reveal the illustrated story of the leopard and the sailor as a kind of charade. In Conversation 11 MNH: But part of a viewers understanding of the story is going to be a result of having a spatialized experience of that narrative unlike a book, for example, where a story is told in a linear, temporal way. So, the parts might come together in a completely different order depending on the viewer and how they enter the show and where they decide to begin. In my experience of walking into your shows, there is always a question of where to start even though I may have some foreknowledge going in. I imagine it would be even more difficult for the unprepared viewer to find a point of entry when confronting such a disparate set of objects. ST: Yeah, you can walk through an installation in any order. And depending on how you go, the story will be different. I try to make it so the story of the characters is the first thing you see no matter where you start. The pieces arent organized in any particular sequence. Its like a book you can open to any page. KA: How do we begin to break the works apart? What cues indicate the presence of systems of cross-referentiality, systems that overtly link all the works together in a Stephanie Taylor show, systems that depend upon sounds and in particular those that rhyme? Whats the moment when we recognize the artist is fascinated by how sounds embed in words, how words are suggested by materials, and that the use of narrative is in service of this?

ST: There may not be a moment when you recognize that, and part of the reason is because the exhibition is made to intentionally delay legibility. The idea is to create a discrepancy between what you see and what you learn later if you read supplemental material or if you hear me talk about how the show is made. KA: When I saw the show you debuted at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE) in 2004, East Yard, I noticed you adopted a variety of aesthetic approaches as part of your exploration of the specific set of words in that body of work. I found that really curious. You seemed to casually couple, say, an abstract sculpture with other modes of representation other mediums that were partaking in different languages of referentiality. Take the Oring sculpture from that show. What was its name? ST: O-fence. KA: In it there were a series of O forms that you had strung together and hung between two walls. The fictional narrative of the show, visible in other works, somehow supported Ofences identity as a fence. But, when I encountered it, I first thought of non-contemporary sculptures, such as Minimalist and Post-Minimalist works simple in form and made from a limited set of materials largely exploring questions about that. In that same show, you installed works with less simple appearances; these used a variety of materials and forms that brought to mind a greater number of references. These kinds of works, for me, suggested other movements, including those that overtly dealt with referentiality, such as Post-Modernism. I remember enjoying the liberalness with which you allowed yourself to sample different aesthetic modes. But, I wondered, what kind of friction were you trying to create with this? Or, was my sense of that a misreading? ST: Theres a possibility for a misreading there. In fact theres an intention for a misreading. Often my works appear to be doing one thing while theyre doing something else. MNH: In some ways, that you allow yourself a lot of fluidity to move from one medium to another fits what Rosalind Krauss would call the post-medium condition. But then, in other ways, youre very focused on the specific medium that youre using. For example, a sculpture that you made for your exhibition about car thieves at the University of California, 12

Stephanie Taylor

Stephanie Taylor, Pard Lord, 2002 Cardboard, 38 x 30 inches Image courtesy of Galerie Christian Nagel

Irvine the can of gas made out of brass follows your usual rhyming structure, but then you push that because its cast. Cast sounds like gas and brass, but its also a sculptural technique. This pieces linguistic operations fit its medium. ST: I do work in a lot of mediums, but I connect what Im making to the medium Im using. For example, if I make a sculpture out of copper, the sound of the word copper is part of the material Im working with. KA: I wonder how, in addition to your fictional stories, you employ rhyme as a kind of joining device to justify the character elements in a work. Take the Pard Lord piece we were talking about earlier. Heres a leopard and its a lord. Together those things do not necessitate one another. But if you say, Heres a pard and its a lord made of cardboard, the relationship between the leopard and lord still doesnt make sense, but because the characters rhyme with what theyre made of, theres a kind of sense added in. The piece now has a logic unto itself, and this somehow allows the lack of logic elsewhere to pass. ST: A lot of decisions that I make are based on finding a justification for using something, finding a way to defend it, almost. That it has to be this because of that. It has to be X because of Y. As an artist how do you make a decision? Nowadays, when you have every choice in the world, what determines the decision you make? I think making work about the becauses somehow stems from these questions. Im playing with the way we force sense upon the world, and Im examining that operation with a bit of humor. If I start out with two things that have no inherent relationship it makes me laugh to think about all the absurd decisions I could make to connect them. MNH: We could talk about how each of your individual works has its own circuit of meaning, and an entire show has a circuit of meaning, and then, theres a larger circuit, which is all of language, for example, or phonetics, and all the objects in the world. But, maybe, theres a fourth circuit, which is smaller than that, and its art history, along with your ability or willingness to access and use it. Im interested in how, specifically, you see a responsibility to art history. ST: Yeah. Throw art history in the pot too. When Im making decisions, Im thinking of works that I know of. Sometimes the structure of a work will be based on another work, sometimes the way something looks is based on something Ive seen. Sometimes Ill use these precedents as justifications in the same way I use rhyme. 14 Stephanie Taylor

Stephanie Taylor, O-fence, 2003 Metal O rings and wire, 11 x 6 feet Image courtesy of Galerie Christian Nagel

KA: Can you give an example? ST: Well, one of the main things I use is quotation. Raymond Roussel put the idea in my head that its possible to quote something by making a rhyme of it, essentially making another version of it, quoting the sound sequence but not the meaning. Often Ill use a piece of language that already exists in the world, like a pop song or a poem, to generate a rhyme sound sequence. The sounds of the words from the original source spawn the subjects that Ill use. For example, once I used a nursery rhyme to generate the line a gutter foal and I thought, Whats a gutter foal? That could be the subject of a story maybe it could be a baby horse born in a gutter. The sounds of the names of the subjects relate to language that already exists in the world. In my mind, this makes them legitimate as part of the machine. MNH: Do you see a lot of those influences coming from the field of literature rather than visual arts? Stephanie Taylor 16 ST: A lot do come from literature, like Gertrude Stein someone who I find inspiring for reorganizing language to find a different way of saying something. My influences are not limited to art, but I am thinking about art whenever Im making an object that will be in the gallery. Im thinking about things that Ive seen that relate to what Im making. You know, thats material for me. MNH: The individuals youve mentioned Roussel and Stein, and I would assume, the Oulipo group as well, which was obviously influenced by Roussel all of them were using language as a material and were thinking about it very consciously not just as a thing that signifies, but as a thing that looks a certain way, sounds a certain way. In short, they were thinking about language in its materiality. ST: Yeah, exactly. MNH: So, its interesting that youve taken that language rather literally to three dimensions, for example, or into other media and given it a real physical existence in the world. ST: Yeah, I like the idea that you could make language into objects, because when you look at objects, language is sometimes the last thing you think about. KA: Last night, on the Web, I came upon some images of illuminated manuscripts. References

to some, where letters were used as pictorial elements to structurally support a figure, went as far back as the sixth century. A mans head might peer through the negative space of a P, or sit atop an H. Already there, letters were implicated as narrative characters of sorts while functioning within words. When I saw these, I was a bit taken aback. I had overlooked them in my desire to locate your practice in relation to works from the early 1900s, some of which weve mentioned, where there are full-on explorations of how language can be more than text. I mean, when I think of your work, I see it as so indebted to the kind of thing that can be seen right now at the Getty Museum MNH: ...poems by Italian Futurists. ST: That makes me think of Futurist performance and how, to me, its all about structure. There, a person would come on stage and scream, and then walk off, and then, vegetables would be thrown or something. In Conversation KA: How would that be about structure? ST: Isnt it obvious? [LAUGH] The units themselves were intentionally unrelated to such an extreme that there couldnt be a sensible connection between them. If there was any sense there, it would have to come from the structure. It almost didnt matter what the units were. It mattered more that they were unrelated. The Futurists were using the structure of a performance but were taking the units and making them into nonsense; this was a way of transforming the language of theatre. KA: Are you trying to empty words of sense? Or, at least, to divorce them from expected ways of signifying? By using a given word in multiple scenarios, are you pointing to its presence as an independent entity that can be invested with a variety of meanings? ST: Are you thinking of a particular piece? KA: Take the piece we were talking about before, O-fence. Its title bears an aural resemblance to the term offense and its also self-referential to the works form, a fence-like structure constructed out of O rings.

17

Stephanie Taylor, Bass, 2002 Brass plated bronze, 25 x 10 x 5 inches Edition of 3 Courtesy of Galerie Christian Nagel

MNH: A fence usually signifies defense too. KA: Sure, there may be many possible references with this one example. ST: Well, you can take any particular word in several senses. You can take it and run in a variety of directions. Thats actually what Roussel would do. He would use one word with two senses. He would use one sense in the first sentence of his novels and the other in the last sentence. And he would write the story by trying to connect them. KA: Can a comparison be made between your use of words and your use of aesthetics? Would you, as one could with a word, appropriate an aesthetic and imbue it with a variety of meanings, thereby freeing it from specific ways of signifying? For example, with O-fence, beyond its linguistic connotations, there are, as Ive already mentioned, its art historic ones. There, to what degree were you consciously trying to negate the past? ST: What youre saying makes me think of, what are the qualifications of what I can make into a piece? Often, part of that calculation for me is whether or not what Im making is recognizable as an artwork. Like, does it resemble what I think art looks like? In the same way that Im trying to make a semblance of a story, when I make a group of works, Im also trying to a make a semblance of an art show. I want the work to look like art. KA: Why is that important? ST: It goes back to when I talked about what you see when you walk into a gallery without knowing anything versus what you could learn from supplemental material. Im interested in the chasm between those two things. To make that chasm exist, to heighten it, the works have to seem like a story and seem like an exhibition of artworks. It has to appear normal, because one way that the show has to be read is as an art show for the whole thing to work. I think initially I am trying to draw the viewer into the story of the characters. I want my installations to look like the kind where the artist is really into a specific subject. So they make a whole show about it. Photographs relating to it, sculptures relating to it, et cetera. Where one takes for granted that the works in the room are working together to interrogate a certain subject matter. I am trying to create an appearance of this kind of subject-centered installation. Its the idea of making something that doesnt look like what it is. 19

In Conversation

KA: If the work looked unfamiliar, would the viewer get too hung up in its materials and their meanings? ST: I want it to look as different from what it is as possible. If I make a show that looks like its about the story of a horse, in my mind, that delays the viewers discovery that its also a story about sound derived from a quasi-systematic formula of rhyme charts. KA: When I attended your LACE show, that was my experience. When I entered the space I first saw a large wall atop which sat an abstract formal sculpture that seemed strongly influenced by works that I think of as particularly Modernist, works such as Giacomo Ballas Boccionis First-Lines of Force [1915] or, say, some of Max Bill from the 1930s. Then I saw the O-fence sculpture. Basically, there were several pieces that made me think about sculptural eras, not now. As I looked longer, I realized, no, these works werent so much trading in the concerns of their historical precedents; through a variety of cross-referencing strategies that you used, they were participating in the shows overarching fictional narrative. And they were also very much about sound. I found it really surprising that they could do all this while simply looking like old-fashioned art objects. ST: Mmm-hmm. MNH: If your work didnt take the form of artwork, what form would it take? ST: Um... is that a trick question? [LAUGH] MNH: No, I dont think so. Its a little Zen, maybe. If these things just existed as stories and werent transformed into objects that we accept as works of art, then it seems like your practice, which is inherently performative in that its an act of translation, wouldnt have the chance to really do its thing. ST: Yeah, thats true. I cant tell the story of the sounds of the materials without their presence. I cant describe how the exhibition was made, without the exhibitions existence. I actually think a large part of the work is my gallery talk. I usually give one with each show, and I think of these as performances. In them, Ill stand in the gallery explaining the elaborate system of rhymes that go into making each piece. 20

Stephanie Taylor

MNH: Theres a curious relationship to Sol LeWitt in your practice. In Paragraphs on Conceptual Art [1967] LeWitt wrote, The idea becomes a machine that makes the art. I think you even mentioned machine or machinations earlier. ST: I was thinking of Georges Seurat when I used that word. KA: Why? ST: Because I believe he talked about his paintings as machines. MNH: It makes sense. With Seurat theres a strong relationship to photography and a very scientific understanding of paint as a translation of light. I mean, its almost pre-Sol Lewitt in terms of the concept of the machine that makes the art, where hes not really changing his mind mid-stream and responding to something thats happening in the painting. Hes transcribing something into a different medium and doing that as faithfully as he can, presumably with an understanding that things dont always transcribe perfectly. In Conversation 21 ST: I think a direct relationship to Sol Lewitt would be my starting out with a sentence, breaking it down into syllables, making lists of syllables, and then writing a sentence from it. But, when I get to that point, Im making so many decisions and changing directions, and taking things out or putting things in. I may decide to make something, and then Ill try to find a reason why I should make it. Or, I may make something that fits in so seamlessly with the other things that people assume that I had a good reason to make it, when I didnt. Like Sol Lewitt, there seems to be a logic as to why Ive made the decisions I have. But, in my case, often that logic comes after the fact. Its a pose. In that way, I think my work is more like a masquerade of LeWitts structuralism. MNH: Well, his Paragraphs and Sentences on Conceptual Art are full of weird gulfs where an interpreter could find a lot of work. But it seems like, maybe youre doing an inversion of Sol Lewitt in some way, where you have point A and point B, and so youre devising this really perverse machine to get you from A to B and theres something Roussel-like about that. But, its really about the act of devising that machine. ST: The goal is to make it seem as if the story comes before the explanation when, in fact, its the other way round.

KA: Yeah, youre not throwing things together willy-nilly, without some kind of connecting logic. Youre constructing narratives to be that logic. But their construction isnt exactly linear. You might start with the beginning of a story, an end and a middle point, and then, your activity as an artist is to shuffle us from A to B to C and to tell us something about that movement. Except its more like you take us from A to Q to W and then back to J and the routes in between are windy and bump ridden. ST: Its like, how do you connect a waffle, a rock and a dog? MNH: With a dictionary. A dictionary sandwich! ST: Yes. [LAUGH] MNH: Theres something Lautramont-like about that sandwich, right? His definition of surrealism is the chance meeting of a sewing machine and an umbrella on the operation table. Stephanie Taylor 22 ST: Thats good. You could make a comparison between how my stories operate and the Surrealist dreamscape where any subject can be introduced because its a dream. Whatever I bring in has to be justified by the story, the same way the dream gave Salvador Dal a reason for combining a melting clock and whatever else. KA: The story, like the dream, becomes the epidermis that holds the bodys odds and ends together. MNH I had a film professor, J.J. Murphy, who was directing a narrative film and realized his crew became rebellious when something in the script didnt seem to fit its visual logic. He solved this by calling it a dream sequence. He liked to say whenever you want to do something that doesnt seem logical, you just have to call it that in the script. ST: Yeah, I love that. KA: Whats the responsibility to logical narrative? Why have that? ST: I dont really have logical narrative. I try to make it seem logical as a kind of cover, but its not really. An example might be right now Im working on a story about a rabbit with a drug problem. Hes a hopper on poppers. That doesnt make sense anywhere except in the

Stephanie Taylor, East Yard installation view, 2004 Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, Los Angeles Image courtesy of the artist

world of fiction. I try to make this seem normal even though its completely ridiculous. MNH: You dont want seams disrupting the story. ST: Yeah, I want it to appear whole. MNH: Right. Even though the whole might be comprised of vastly different objects that signify in different ways. For example, a song signifies differently than a brass sculpture which signifies differently than a photograph, but you want all these objects to exist as part of a continuous whole the story, the installation. ST: Yeah. KA: Can we talk a little bit about your interest in purity of materials, and how it relates to a Modernist exaltation of such? And how you are exploring materiality of all kinds, to make a point about sound as a material that differs from others? Take the piece that Michael brought up earlier, the brass gas piece. Brass refers to both the material of the sculpture and, in its cast form, it represents a can of gas, which as a substance has really different physical properties than brass. So, right there you have brass and gas, two materials, being interrogated. ST: And sound. KA: Yes, in addition to that, you have the ass of brass and gas. That soundyou are emphatically making a point about it, but what is it? I feel like youre clueing the viewer into both the ability of materials to be pure and impure, to get to some truth about sound. ST: What youre making me think of is the collapse between form and content where form is content and content is form. The fact that gas and brass are almost the same word and that you can represent one with the other: brass can be shaped to suggest gas. To me, that is a near perfect relationship between form and content. In my work, when the characters or subjects are inseparable from the materials theyre made from, that justifies a co-existence. KA: Perhaps youre after a question about the absurdity of the malleability of materials to suggest things other than themselves: when brass is cast to represent gas. And how strange it is that specific words are the connectors for things. Like why is the metal, brass, called brass? And what does that have to do with another kind of material called gas? Its as if

24

Stephanie Taylor

youre pointing to a truth, but not that of the physical world, but rather to a so-called truth of rhyme. I feel like youre interrogating the truthfulness of the ass. Like, what is the ass in brass and the ass sound in gas? Is it trustworthy? Does it actually connect things? ST: Its the underlying structure the ass. KA: Yeah, that we have in excess. ST: We have the ass! MNH: Well, there are only so many sounds that can be made out of our twenty-six letters. And its far fewer than the number of books in Borges Library of Babel, but its still a lot of sounds. ST: And certain objects are related because of a sound that their names share. Certain things are related because of rhyme. They just are. In Conversation KA: You mean, we perceive them as being so. ST: Well, when we hear them, they are. If I hear wedge, it makes me think of ledge or hedge. Words which rhyme have a similar physical presence. If youve ever misheard something that someone said to you but it made perfect sense anyway, youve had this experience. KA: Are you skeptical about the truth of physical materials such as brass and gas since they can be used to represent things other than themselves, but youre less suspicious of sound? Perhaps, by repeating a sound in two alike words, you can point to how though it can get caught in signification, it can also easily be freed, and thus somehow its more pure? ST: What thats making me think of is that two things may share something because they share a sound, but what is it that they share? Is it something important? Is it something deep? Sometimes. But sometimes, its nothing. Nothing that Ill make into something. KA: I do think in that, for you, there is a pursuit of something substantive. Theres a desire for some kind of meaning there. MNH: I think theres this little bit of a suspension of disbelief in your practice. Its about being dead serious about something seemingly frivolous. But that something underlies the

25

entirety of how the world is signified and how we communicate. ST: Yeah. Its the conceit of the work that this is important. MNH: You are dead serious about your absurdity. [LAUGH] ST: Yeah. MNH: Im looking forward to seeing the little brackets with laughter. All laugh. [LAUGH] KA: Half laugh. [LAUGH] ST: Yeah. See, thats so great. There are so many things like that. Stephanie Taylor 26 MNH: I want to return to the question of teleology. Weve talked about some of your influences, but the trick is to have your work operate differently, right? If youre thinking about an art historical past that youve inherited, are you also consciously thinking about a future a trajectory? ST: Well, Hollis Frampton said that the really good teachers can teach students to do something that isnt imitative of them. I think about trying to do something different. MNH: From? ST: I dont literally mean it in terms of my teachers. I just mean it in terms of a general goal, for a reason to proceed into the future. MNH: How often do you think about questions like that, questions of imperative? KA: Questions like the necessity to make work that looks different than whats come before? ST: But, see, I dont want it to look different. I just want it to be different. KA: It may look the same, but it must produce other kinds of meaning? ST: Yeah.

Stephanie Taylor, Gas, 2006 Brass plated bronze, 18 x 16 x 7 inches Edition of 3 Image courtesy of Galerie Christian Nagel

MNH: I always wonder how much artists, my peers in particular, think about teleology, or what came before, or what point they envision their past beginning and where they see their work, or the trajectory of their work ending. Those are impossible questions, but ST: Yeah, those are big questions. Generally, Im thinking about the artists and filmmakers who have tried to make a material work in a different way. That could include Jackson Pollock, orthere are so many artists that have done that. My interest in Pollock isnt so much to look at his paintings. Or, if you take Roussel, Im much more interested in reading a book about him than reading his books. That may be my main interest in my own work its story. Like, what I say about it is, to me, more interesting than the work itself. MNH: Pollock is an interesting example to the issue of teleology. He obviously made tremendous discoveries in painting, but these didnt offer much to other painters that came after him, except something to fight against, perhaps. But they gave people working in other media a lot to work with for example, Post-Minimalist sculpture, or in the dance work of Yvonne Rainer or Trisha Brown. ST: Yeah, what I appreciate about his work isnt painting specific. Its materials specific. Its not so much the splatter. KA: Was it that he called for other ways of thinking about painting besides just as an image? That its materiality now had to be considered in terms of the way it was made? MNH: Adding gravity to the idea of painting? ST: Yeah, its more how after a minute or two you might have a thought about how what youre looking at on the wall once was on the floor. The splatter leads you to a thought about how the work was made. Im just as interested in what Andy Warhol did with Pollock, how he made literal dance diagrams and displayed them on the floor, in reaction to the discussion of Pollocks process as performance. The viewer was tempted to actually step on them to learn how to dance. It was an ironic literalization, and in that sense a critique, of Pollocks work. I appreciate all those things that people did which involved using a medium in a way it hadnt previously been used. Things that suggested an alternate route.

28

Stephanie Taylor

For me, its how can you make sculpture with sound? How can you make visual things suggest something not visual? Most people dont walk into an exhibition and start thinking, What does this material rhyme with? You know, thats not how people look at work. Its not the first thing that comes to mind. September 24, 2006 This interview is an excerpt from Modern Lovers by Kathryn Andrews, forthcoming on North Fig Press.

In Conversation 29

Stephanie Taylor, Chop Shop installation view, 2006 Galerie Christian Nagel, Berlin Image courtesy of Galerie Christian Nagel

Sawako Nakayasu

Improvisational Score
for equal number of musicians and insects

This performance may take place over any duration of time, from 0 seconds to many many years. A number of insects are placed in a clear container so that they are as comfortable as possible, given the circumstances. They are given oxygen and food and water, though they may not escape. The container of insects is placed onstage and a light is directed through the container and projected onto a larger screen so that the audience may see the insects. Each musician chooses an insect, and plays accordingly. If two insects begin fighting, the corresponding musicians should also fight, musically or literally. If an insect dies, the corresponding musician should also die, musically or literally.

31

Mark Wallace

from Party In My Body

* Funny that I couldnt have expected to be here. All these modern urban things! Characterizing ones own life can leave little time for anything else. What should we do with feelings of vastness in little windowless rooms? Does the slow accumulation of unpaid accounts lead to people becoming loose change? Divide yourself successfully? A party of specific advantages exposes itself to the language of fairness. Sounded against the finger or tongue, poetry also must never win. Get up, sit down, get up, sit down. The striking contradiction of hands. * Ghosts leer in the most ridiculous corners, official standard compartments. To have a fate so that somethings to blame. Weve gathered here to stumble efficiently. The mistakes of otherwise ordinary people raise unknown lives to the status of myth. The sun goes down while we walk in the park; who carved these hidden gravestones? Who spread this labored assembly line aura? Perhaps this thumping in my chest tells me I love you more than absence. The impersonality of portraits! Once again the pedantic day when workers learn how to be shelved. * Why should silence have a shape? Stuck inside the terms, Ive pulled back slowly, fearing betrayal on the face of nothing. Listen to the atomic hum. Reject what doesnt translate? There are days when we walk together, but so many less than there might be. If I forget that a touch can scare, will I forget the reason it thrills? Dredging up childhood feelings! How much can be said about goodbye? The deep dark of this hillside and the things that get thrown in the water. No one comes to the complex, no one casts the stone. * I need more cash for my mistakes. What street do you care about most? A voting booth in a hidden alley. These peoples painted faces make them seem more realistic. These antennas and windows sit so still in the rain. What connection has not been refused in the name of greater efficiency? We could be more together alone. Men hitting men in organized sports! What an excellent wall theyve built around the quarantined zone. Is it things that I remember, or former reflections on them? 32

* Among cries for change, I walk again to the local store. At the crossroads, a bargain is struck on a rock. Which way does the weaponry turn? Who could pay an invisible debt or see a fall in the dark? The trick is trying to estimate. Grab an easily destructible dynamo and imitate illusion. Old gods never hear. Haphazard interconnected mechanics! The precision of a song turns cryptic in a basement, and skin is also made elusive. We might say how faces are lost but who can claim to be sure? * How much is explained by opposable thumbs? Grass, trees, buildings, but not a sign of time. If you cant be there, that gives us a chance to talk more about you. The line as the musical phrase etc. Next year Ill try to be more flattering. Cut off from tenuous acceptance, a worker stares at a black iron statue. Do restless nomads offer hope to those who hate being stuck at home? The mystery of seeing people walk by every day of my life! Why another assertion of absence? Why does a narrowed stare feel cold? * Sometimes people go away, come back again in pieces. Theft and mutilation: the most common words at the corner store. Squeeze any unacceptable doubles back into bottles that never will hold them. To be unknown in an open air plaza! Can we escape didactic fleecing? Here on the Gorgons peninsula, many unexpected thrills. A little surprise and loss, money in a shoe. Perhaps Ill succeed in leaving early. In order to match prepared statistics, throw yourself away. Impersonate a floating lack that enters a conversation. * Lights in these apartments suggest what no one knows about anyone. Who would want to gain the air, hold back against a wounded hand? Theres no safety in numbers. Let a walk unfold, devoted to a bend. Unavoidable reluctance! I went her way and she went mine. Portions of these videotapes were edited for proper neglect. Captions rearrange the picture. Drink unruly ecstasy, legs against the undertow. Nothing means what you think it means or else thered be nothing at all.

33

* Not given. These buildings house the worlds business. The spark of our fingers strikes on a wall. For the aggressive, industrious engineer, cycles can be predicted. If you ask the listed dermatologists to recommend shampoo, does anything happen to the life of the mind? Whose back is turned to some small progress? Drifting between impertinent channels, perhaps one hears forgotten sounds dwindle in the night. How long has it been? The justice of false arrest! This little low budget horror satire really raises goosebumps. * Against the glare of afternoon, people walk lost to the air. Isolation webbed against bricks, a young woman smokes a cigarette, vanishes into her own hunched shoulders. How could anything be internal? Interruptions mean I can start again. A noisy group of competing models floated through the room. Making virtues of limitations! The person who could most use help has already not shown up. Its hard to find my way around a restless search for fantasy. All these people and absences jostled together in one small room. Any moment now, something important wont get said. * Intellectual debates often directly relate to funding. These are the characters and this is what happened. Grand cliched heroic passions huddled at the foot of daily chores. Comedy, history, starvation, gluttony. Arrange a more self-critical showcase? All this restless motion! Sudden flutter against the rib cage, nerves for every discernable reason. We speak the same language but dont know where to begin. What is it now, a sneak attack? Choose your own slow burning fuse. * Brief snaps of conversation reach me under the rush of jets which might be headed anywhere. Children love the sound of words and so do a few adults. Trying to slip away from purpose, I still got everywhere on time. Poetry happens often here; you just need to know where to look. Speaking a shared institutional language but not hearing much of what anyone says. Sitting outside in the sun, my body has different interests than the arrangements I made beforehand. Varieties of take out food! Conscious contradictory intentions bring me into your aura today. Who looks at the film that goes in those cameras? Confess now, and receive updated streamlined results.

34

Mark Wallace

* From the library beside the highway, I can see Bagel Bakery clearly, only the sign is old and the place sells seafood. Five close friends, one murder. I dont want to be the fly in the ointment, but I dont want to be the ointment either. Never mind, there are always other ways to get lost. Traffic is heavy where Middlebrook Road crosses Route 128. If poetry provided escape from the practical, would I keep noting the color of bricks? Passion might lead to true love or pure terror, the latest number of Sweet Valley High. The dreams of the lost to become CEOs! Betty began to suspect Theresa wasnt happy being cashier. Lacerations are plenty available; all youve got to do is ask. * A world of beautiful hair! Transparent to everyone, opaque to myself. Out on the town, seeking psychic protection, I stop holding back and touch a stop sign. Drugs and a rush of youth can make the night open out, and faces could any moment come close. Have you ever whistled while being abandoned? What will happen next? Talk can bring people beside us and talk can push them away. Surprised again by loathing, or how a body aches for bodies. Cant you tell Im king of the universe? Cant you see Im ruined by glory?

from Party In My Body 35

Andrew Maxwell Collaborators

Brighten the imagination of those who stammer instead of speaking, who blush the moment they assert something. These are steadfast partisans. Char/Corman

Innocence, you have a sign upon you. Woyzeck/Kinski

** To say here, and to stay apart The traffic is leanest, a regional indifference. But to stay here, and say apart, Im reaching out to you, yet look askance: World ho! American, Id prefer not to The genius of follow-through is seldom deliverance. Liaisons in error are neither bought to countenance the pidgin of liberty, but assert like an iamb proprietor or priority. Ive written a wicked book and feel spotless as the lamb. Melville lumbers American Hawthorne, discounting the plan in murderous privacy. Discovery isnt done, though the sound is gross, while its ours, a snob eidolon framing Longfellow Deeds thinking through his tuba another gaptooth in the battle royale, thought-bubble bruiser to refactor democracy, modulo singleton. 36

Theres debutante enough in the solitary occasion. While that doesnt phase us, missionary positioned on animal planet, shy of variance, found royalty; a cartoon riot is a novelty to build on, weak-kneed. Meanwhile it happens every spring, the screwball sound of aggregate loyalty. Too glad its not poetry, antique and dubious as that is, finding oneself happenstance on a mound of happenstance, preggers, a crowd finds its key in a golf vacation or dinner theater, the predicates of a life without subjects. Bonanza, the crowd apart, devoid of argument save the meal it grants us. Guess theres no rhyming a flagpole with the pants that fly up it, though we can start with those stupid videos, the family plot of late. Formal companions grow noisier when they collaborate as embarrassment in fact, they turn the page. Mondays grand voyagers are bedroom techno trucking in an error of recyclable gusto, smoke tree trunked to nomen dubium, tum-tum cloak bussed to roger wilco, a national trust, and folksy got-none What the geeks have done with the great quiet American. Lets make it up, Id say Revivalists, full of grace notes, heavy with fun, overdone w/ contrivances, but rarely clover, the mercy bulb won solo at lucky boy burgers, one a.m. is lit full up and not a prison powder, face dusted, or dubbed so unrecorded, or an overridden principal

37

If to preserve the star we keep the world half-lit, not to admit a common consent, billing Eddie Bracken for Andrew Jackson, darkling delivery of a sedan rurality, curled by payday and bent by an overridden principle: no ones particularism, however shorn from biding nature Honesty impolitic, morning light is strict. Where shall I go to fetch it? The roundabout of an inner life leads less to a lived characteristic than a blind turn to wit. No direct address and thus no life democratic, in the dim hallway of enterprise. We invent anyway to manufacture a slow burn of compromise. Its an assignment, or a mess, this music. And music again, ridiculous fragments, the victor: I shall ponder, I shall guess Outtakes, I confess Listen, Girls, to awkward verses, nod to shockgrass incorporate, the individual talent I wouldnt know being a junior on patrol, or a frank duck brained by finance and frankly phoney against the excellences of the past 38

Andrew Maxwell

I went out to meet it, me And my beautiful dream. Neither mean as Rasselas or willing to franchise adequacy to profit, I cannot separate sportsmanship from intrigue so I wander off-track. Much as its mentioned the world is never sought, but multi-tracked nomenclature jags, and thats that So I hang a shingle on that, the sound grassed over, chilblain variety, and fat as a losing streak, the pleasures enharmonic. What is a choice of life beside a rising tide that spins a liberal damage into an ideal gas, as if, prudence laconic, there were still also a common man? Mugwumpery at the peoples bank. I drew upon it a grand family plan. Whos going to pay for that one, cousin the novel idea in superalimentation, scanning the table for a prosy breadroll and radio silence. Nothing rivals direction like indirection. Cousin leans towards nothing to suppose were something, and is correct, of course; Fear is the anti-inclination. We fed up the children with magic, so coarse subjunctive get stuffed. We plan on the present if we plan on precedent, claim check a gift from the backlot, and night-script the angel spiff like citizen Paine. Heres the good angle on good boy Clean, a live pamphlet oer-laden with fruit, bummer pup, hes Lonesome Rhodes

Collaborators 39

Oh I see That mirror of gump, gimp luck: catch him plum in spotlit stills, playing his partisan harp, or catch him central cast as every mans perp and holding fast, cuffed underriver in coffin shale. Merman, batter my heart. I do haunt you still, discontent but of a page or just a stooge, a page Laugh riot wired up in the sound booth. The horse is galloping, the bell is ringing An arrow killed a lad in the street Sweet, I swear its the truth I got it on repeat Quick, darken the studio board. Lord outside the rhyme is weird but the foley choice. Ha ha, I hear him now, its a weird sort of funny voice, that either-or-ish chord yet I observe his railing Is not for simple love of piety The citizen heart is bloopers. That thirst. Its unsightly. 40 Radio editor, I need you first

Andrew Maxwell

My cap and feather days are numbered and verse lived is cluttered. This is the worst. Impassive inserts, thirsty oops, outtook or took in, like David Staebler or worse, his microcassette with retractable father rooked him. Radio edit, that. I take him for a fact when he burst his hot hearts shell upon it. Fantasy, thats our bit. My examples are inexact. We all imagine ourselves to be lucky boy burghers in an exact imagination. But unrecycled nor burglars, nor rhyme as fact: wild protocol, judas over-sleeve Collaborators Philippe, Ill remember that. Impossible to half-write you and reluctant to bite the hook. Reluctance to half-wit when half-wit is the prize I write my self into the book, build my fort in outlying areas and guy the mental stair to a stirring plot. A dirty work, collaboration: the guise legion when the self is not. Air raid, sirens and then thought. 41

So much fuss for a companionable form, a normal door cast open. Warden, all Nature seems at work. And music too objective to afford us a Natural treason. Unreasonable mind, this assignment Im behind on and Im behind it. I cant escape. The garden of effort: is this a contemporary region? Andrew Maxwell The artisanal future an advance On the past, and the advance of freedom a calling of our time, made febrile and sublime by a box fort rhetor? Partisan it is, to say apart, to say a part, or Leave the reporter dumb awhile, wise to the niche a past records. Artisanal mediator, vocoder, collaborator. Freedom at last a film at last, and roars from box forts past compromise but I want to make something with you, bland counsel, dead though you lie in the massy mind hungry to broaden our view, toward an end of course. Free kingdom. 42

Its terrible how we respond in kind with a phrase no one can use. If you could release me, synthesizer, and to speak freely Is everything in a word I d still hate it. Like the poetic, the demotic remains some compartment of me, locked in A music. To compose as to compromise, the country Is triadic. Wont you come calling instead, compatriot? With your face so free With ye untold latencies and extraordinary references and not this pidgin of liberty. for Philippe Beck Collaborators 43

Marie Jager Time Travels

Fig 1 Greenwich Time is linear. The present goes from a zero point (birth) to another finite state (death).

44

Fig 2 Beijing Time is cyclical. In the present moment, the individual is disconnected from the past and immersed into a future which opens up to infinity.

46

Fig 3 Copenhagen Time is subjective. In the present tense, one is simultaneously at the origin and at the ending point of time.

48

Time is on my side, yes it is. MEADE I The druids had a feeling of awe in front of the natural movements of a tree. In French, the word for a watch means show me instead of the English look. The word for a watch refers to something to contemplate. Time became a visual event in the same way that space became a visual phenomenon through classical perspective and depth of field. The visual event was a primitive rhythm made visible. II Marie Jager Time as a circle The Danese perpetual calendar is made of a limited number of metal plates that can be combined to show any date in the past and future history. The Chinese experience time as a loop, a 12-year period, each year identified by an animal, which repeats itself. Numbers on a watch, names, animals using a set of limited elements, time is a process of reorganization, it is a matter of determining the order of things, but there is a sense of permanence. Nothing gained, nothing lost and nothing transformed. III With Kant, time becomes a straight line Swatch, the contraction for Second Watch introduced the watch as something disposable. You could wear 2 or 3 watches at the same time and replace them with the new model every month. An phmride or block calendar is a type of calendar in which each new day is a separate sheet that you throw away when the day is over. Time becomes a process of degeneration and destruction, a one-way street

54

My wing is poised to beat But I would gladly return home Were I to stay to the end of days I would still be this forlorn SCHOLEM to BENJAMIN on his 29th birthday

Time as an objective progression in one direction was introduced by the classical European tradition. Deleuze credits Kant for inverting the relationship of time to movement, from time being slave to the movement of the planets to time determining this movement. The Jewish calendar is unique, because it is not based on any planet movement (sun, moon or Venus) but on an autonomous (fictional?) event, the seven days to make the world according to the Bible. IV When you do a project, or you write a text, you never really know how it will end up at the end. Objective chance, new situations are created. This was Bergsons starting point when he was trying to understand time as an open-ended system, a becoming as opposed to a countdown. Bergson explains the invention of cinema was shaped by Newtonian physics: time as a succession of moments, t1 t2 t3 t4 created the idea of a film as a succession of photographs, the superposition of objective present in a causal and deterministic chain. The re-enchantment of the world In Tourou et Bitti, Jean Rouch continues to film the drummers even though nothing happens in front of the camera. It is in the hope that the act of filming might produce the trance people had gathered for, in the hope something will eventually happen because of the camera, that reality would be transformed by that presence. The subjective cameraman as opposed to an invisible, objective observer. Einstein, a rabbit in Chinese astrology, discovered that someone who is moving in space warps time and therefore creates a slower time than the one who is still. So a turtle or a tree are immersed in a time that possibly goes really fast, and maybe their long life expectancy compensates for that, whereas a second for a rabbit is like going through a whole year... Time Travels 55

V Revolutionary periods produce exciting new calendars. One of the first things the French revolution did was to create a new calendar replacing catholic saints by fruits, trees, and the climate. The ban on religion it imposed produced a resurgence of mystical beliefs, similar to what happened in the late 19th century. Un-chronological time The Songhay also practiced a form of time travel. The Songhay practice possession, but instead of using masks as is common throughout the world, the ancestors come alive through dance and music, embodied by a regular woman or man. The woman or man suddenly becomes possessed by the genius of thunder, of water... The apparition of the ancestors in the present helps resolve the problems of daily life. Non-historical time Scandinavia is as different from the West as it is from Asia in terms of its philosophical tradition. In Nordic mythology, an event may have several places in the timeline. Time is an elastic notion. There is a sense that the past, the present and the future coincide in the Scandinavian culture without the sense of a hierarchy or order. It might explain the peculiar relationship to change or history (history is another form of time measurement and consists in studying the past) of these countries. VI Time zones seen on a flat map dont really show what happens at the worlds poles. If the globe is like a big watch, with the North Pole as the center of the clock, it becomes a strange place, a place where because there is no movement, there is no time. Or rather where all the different times coexist. It is +5 hrs, -8 hrs and Greenwich time simultaneously. Time Travels 57

Thrse Bachand from luce a cavallo

Youll Never Know when we were young a book had more sense a peach somewhere or maybe a sunflower wish going paints my presence and frees my half soulled in this swanky joint a cheeseburger makes a sexy present but how can I write when you are whining a broad too faithful to piano and starlight on my lips a name close to electric shot through lonesome a crossword poem rain cheers up my little motel phone God is in charge even though all near seems embalmed & screwed up you just dont know how much I breathe (from Alice Doesnt Live Here Anymore)

60

lets pursue this dental wiggle a beige negligee safety-pinned to a more matured door thats usin your noggin

61

 cherchez la femme

(from Chinatown)

62

call me curly behind the venetian blinds Im another woman dying of thirst in a reservoir of blas like iced tea and booze all your threats are bad for grass a foreclosure of apple cores between desert and orange grove I was expecting something else beside this stunt you with your personal obsession for playing with your pants down and riding bareback on a lemon my deepest sympathy to the broad who discovers your dirty linen while youre allegedly finding yourself drop dead

Thrse Bachand

when it comes to publicity in a river bed everybody gets banged up swimming with Florsheim shoes on perhaps you will find a midget kitty cat to pleasure your goldfish a matrimonial affair is reasonable for a snoop but disturbing to the reputation of a working girl who could drown in a divertissement of bad luck Im doing you a favor let downtown be jealous heres the future evidence cherchez la femme 63

from luce a cavallo

 got nothin

(from The French Connection)

Even a bastard can have an honest daughter more content with a milkshake than a loser from the middle of Queens. Like Santa Claus I want to bust him, make the connection between whiskers and a barbershop in Poughkeepsie. Its an ugly mistake to think television locks you into a sunny trance with a black cadillac. Spotted from an armed building, hands seem to drop, question pockets, then bullshit a reasonable ankle. What time is it? In the middle of scrap metal, problems abandon precaution, foreign plates loosely translate to let yourself in. You know the set up. My room has been reassigned to a black cap who counts from nickels to dimes. Thrse Bachand

64

 fortune

(from McCabe and Mrs. Miller)

dispatching cards a man can find shelter in a bottle a gun and a nickel raise no objections to an eight of spades fortune is a small hotel where a pretty businesswoman takes a pee and an oyster or raw egg squares the imagination on expressive frontier broken differences make the funniest deals even frogs go quiet in the rancid odor of authentic cologne trees effect purposeful inventory while a shotgun divides property complaining inspectors break poetry and dress for tea

from luce a cavallo 65

 strange brew

(from Medium Cool)

his public posture on screen is of a skull of me-want questions a middling in the riot on record [civil disturbances] shoot the shit out of it as a direction we can live with just as optimistic guys with cameras are faithful to their mates or the interview is distorted by how much money a page can radiate whats good for the soul is primitive vegetables a river birds in season vigilante dictates

66

Thrse Bachand

have the same poetics as the promised land emasculating the equitable in the honkey rooms of stuffed envelopes and happy days of GIs on display from luce a cavallo 67

 celebrity

(from Nashville)

politics are stronger than the glory of tears who doubts that Jesus was an interview in the little church of holy genes friends will still ask the same strange questions did Daddy give him a medal do the sick require his autograph does mommy need her glasses while reading the morning paper and who is that lawyer at the gate (children find it terrific to wake in a blue parlor leaving, in a trio, for the river the dream begins early first the egg, then the face then the hobnobbing pink stars)

Thrse Bachand

as you can read he still is the master of his puny affairs didnt he get lost at a party of rednecks arent you positive you saw the yellow fiddler wave bye bye cant a munchkin disrupt the private hurts of his own demolition flick the score still brings him secret magnitude roast beef inhabits the frigidaire if you feel trapped tell the servants lies

68

easy manners relax the exact as for the oranges they were lost in the frost it was a beautiful raw shine just long enough to sight another wife vanishing

from luce a cavallo

69

K. Lorraine Graham from See it Everywhere

having had it several times the sunheat on my right shoulder and forearm being designed & grilled theres a courtyard and parrots in the design district wrought iron natural oddities of nature marketing find something to tie the bike to to sit and eat in frontlong garden shade and doorknobs to go ~ K. Lorraine Graham 70 lizards not bats no adults private school students and people going north ~ swooning not going to the UN but never believed anything could be saved still love seems a good idea: God willing you will find a wife g-d willing in English smile officers do and strip club bouncers do nearly no one going is ~

polluted lagoons are pretty egrets dont avoid them ~ stuckout limb & a complicated telephone poll series cut off what can I do / why go home? in my body are biles yours, too track by the track and fences self in everyone ~ the new wheels are about an 18th of an inch too long and the little snappy rings dont work And I dont really need the top hats. ~ something is slow to assess what the something about inbetween and among that doesnt account theres backbend eat review fix file and fillout especially one says to one we are (are we?) negative often and Houseboats. Farms. Lofts. Groves. ~ from See it Everywhere 71

I lack content. What about point of view in Moby Dick? I cannot print labels correctly. People come through the weapons testing zone. My body adjusts and must and this is not a blessing. Everything that happens is not a blessing to others or to me. ~ K. Lorraine Graham 72 It takes spiritual discipline to get up at 3 in the morning, he says, I know. Lean in. I want to be obvious: Warhol, desensitization, I was gasping for contact. I miss the fear of being attacked by people I love. Shared context but we blow it. A runner passes me running. Says, are we there yet? ~ You will die but not before we see you naked. ~ Town squares & recent hauntings. The Imperial Valley is looking forward to a temperature of a hundred and one. One day the damn blew up again we blew it up and we want you and them to come to us. ~

Its the getting out of the house that helped not the Wal-Mart. I mean it wasnt that specific. It was the getting away from abuse that helped, not the things I like my neighbors but there is nothing to say. ~ Flip flops in the jungle, comfortable anywhere but no good for leeches it rained and the river was brown and there was mud and on the road the road was mud and the river went over the road we walked or drove a white pickup truck it was fun the main character had so much fun and was so happy about the following: looking for rocks with her father, standing in the sun until the mud all over her body was dry. from See it Everywhere ~ visit because ~ militated improvident trips to the grocery store tetchy car trips a charry attempt to invite a new friend to dinner alone in the mountains under roofs sough with rain and so on rain as if it were linked together in a series an order of things its a good idea to have your characters talk to other people ~ cant imagine anything except jumping into a pool of edible packing peanuts or rectangular styrofoam chunks in shakes of grey and blue ~ 73

When I cant write I think of chickens. I think, I cant imagine not sharing my life with this machine. ~ There are noonday traffic jams all over the world and my friends are breaking fast with dates. I wore a shirt today that is cut too low for teaching. Remember the names of the tragic students first. We visited the museum and saw all the taxedermied animals. ~ organized wife dinner party carpet cleaner car seat hardwood car shower brunch with friends phone calls money Persian carpet dusting K. Lorraine Graham 74 ~ try to get us off the street during the end of the world off it people are exchanging bodies on purpose there are people saving other people and exchanging bodies theres a brief attempt at reggae music & people must find a way to do things or all will be lost things actions movement glue all of it in the meantime create sustainable industries and products other than soap and coffee the heart deciphers futuristic pictographs that are more complex than pictographs the fast food is appealing as long as it is abstract Say: This is concrete. Hold up a magenta dry-erase marker. If I threw it at you, you could catch it. ~

The heat is off in a gorgeous loft in Istanbul and we are there together. Other people are. It is important that the people like each other. ~ Then, we walked through the wedding party in our bathing suits. ~ After practicing asceticism we practiced asceticism made verse looked at the moon and the stars and the dirt we did not ignore water but we looked at other things first We are like angels, kind of. But we die. And eat. Also, we sometimes marry and have children. Perhaps you imagine us as resentful older sisters and brothers. Perhaps we are angry for legitimate reasonsits important to imagine a time when we were all working together cooperatively to churn the cosmic ocean and produce the Elixir of Immortality, I suppose. Or else we can concentrate on the remote possibility of being reborn as a saint. ~ Then wed have to think clearly: I now understand why abrupt departures in the midst of conversation are detrimental to conversation. ~ Going to the grocery store to buy salty yogurt drink and dates to break the days fast, a grocery store at the top of a mountain in the middle of the jungle on a Thursday afternoon, nearly impossible to describe precisely as I am in a kind of desert now. A likely place for dates. To go from desert to jungle I will need a lot of water, millennia, and continental shifts. Also, I will need money and time off. 75 from See it Everywhere

I can imagine an oasis but not with much detail: water, a spring, a wadi and some date trees, an unruly camel who breaks away from a caravan to chase me out of the oasis. I look back and see the camels neck stretching out. It bites me on the shoulder, leaving a camel-bite shaped blue and purple bruise which is now yellow and brown. So Im back in the desert imagining airplanes. One comes but does not land. Instead, women and men dressed in purple robes parachute out of the plane and run towards the oasis. The illhumored camel at the threshold bites a few and I want to return to the oasis to find them so that we may sit under date palms with our feet in the wadi and compare camel-bite bruises. It rains and the wadi floods and I paddle down it in a canoe, listening to operas on a waterproof gramophone. On the way to the ocean I pick up several women and men dressed in purple robes. One woman also has a camel bite and we talk about what thats like. The initial shock, how we didnt know camels could run so fast or bite so hard. Because there are no stars it is night and there is no rain; weve reached the ocean and all the other women and men are gone except for the other woman with the camel bite. We wont make it across the ocean and we dont know where the nearest jungle is. We throw the gramophone overboard and stay close to shore. A reef forms around the gramophone and we make assumptions. I put my right hand in the water and am stung by a jellyfish. My hand swells to two-and-a-half times its size and I weep and weep. My companion says hush hush. Ea shows up and the water boils. Or maybe Tiamat comes Id rather a goddess than a god in this story, but shes usually watery and depersonalized, or else shes a bloated dragon. And anyway, one of her grandchildren stood upon her hinder parts, smashed her head in with a club, cut open her veins, and then had the north wind carry away her blood to secret places. So Tiamat cant come and I dont trust her children, much, except perhaps for Ea with his love of beer and penchant for incestuous affairs. Perhaps we should stop telling each other about ourselves. 76 First time goes and then our sense of it. Landscapes shift but look the same, transient

K. Lorraine Graham

scapes and disappearances. An impossible unduality not in but is, where burial and banishment are a knack for death, entertainment, and storytelling I kept throwing the beetle away from my bag, or the ladybug away from the screen. Even if we are here for some kind of visionary experience, prefabricated cities will appear. There is no border or gate to guard, no bridge, no leaving to follow the voice of your lover, no never coming home. First doubt comes and then our sense of it. An inability to bow before kings, the ability to lead armies and argue over how to rank elements of which we are made. An arbitrary request. Get thee out of it, we might say. We might plead for clemency; wish to avoid being cast anywhere. Speak of me and I will know you are speaking of me, the sense of self before framework. The story is this: We went up then down. Or else we just went. from See it Everywhere 77

Christopher Russell

from Finding Faye

Every time I drive by Wiloughby, theres this tingly sense like I know something that escapes the rest of the world. I know thats one of the cross streets to Fayes house. To the rest of the world, its a street. Any old street. Just another street in Hollywood. I guess most people dont even think she left Beverly Hills, sold her home to make a movie and Catherine ZetaJones beat her to it. Bitch! So Faye lives in Hollywood now. Her neighbors call it Faye Watch, because she has to take bodyguards out with her when she goes jogging. But shes staying young and fit. The neighbors dont like to talk about Faye, but I talked to one. I went by the art store to get some paint and canvas. Its been a while, and Ive just been neglecting Faye. But I remember that Carol said her mother used to be Fayes cook. She told me a story about her mother writing a horrible note about Faye. She wrote it at her writing desk! But when Faye saw the letter, she gave it back to the woman and never mentioned it again. Carol said that Fayes favorite drink is amorongiac (?) We couldnt figure out how to spell it, but its a combination of congniac (con-yak) and ameretto. I wonder if Fayes garbage is full of bottles, or if the rumors get exaggerated. I hope that Fayes OK. I hate to think she spends her days in a stupor. I just want the best for Faye. She hasnt been doing a lot of work for the big screen, but shes been winning awards for made for TV stuff, a movie with Tom Selek, Runningmates, and Broadway shows. I bet she was the most perfect Maria Callas ever. Probably better than Maria Callas. She can be so imperious. She should have been a queen. Sometimes I want to cut her name into my arm like a tattoo but more real, because of how it is. I havent written in a few days, because all of my time has been spent on a new letter Im writing to Faye. Ive been working really hard on it, and I finally got it exactly the way I want it, and even though its top secret, Im still having Ken look at it to check how I spell things and stuff. I got really PISSED OFF TODAY. Because I met this workman that came to fix a wire in the ceiling and he saw my Faye works, and said what the hell is that? I mean

78

what the hell was he thinking I have this beautiful thing thats gold with yellow flowers, and pictures of Faye, and some of the writings about her, and theres the picture with the crow, and an Oscar, and lots of gold hearts, and theres a picture I painted of her in the middle, and she is beautiful, looking like she is from another country and her hair is gold and her eyes show how wonderful she is and that shes perfect. So I asked what the fuck he meant. That was Faye Dunaway and he said that Faye Dunaway crashes Danny Devitos 4th of July party every July! Fuck him like Faye doesnt have better things to do than visit Danny Devito! She can do anything, why would she hang out with him. And why wouldnt he want her to? Thats what I asked him, and he left, and its a good thing too. Because I dont want him to see all of my other Faye things because they are personal and I dont need a workman telling me about Faye. So I hope Im going to get my letter in the mail soon. Im hoping Faye will take a picture of her Oscar for me!!! I think she will. I love Faye

79

Christopher Russell, Finding Faye, 2002 Excerpts from artists book Images courtesy of Acuna-Hansen Gallery

Emmanuel Hocquard

The Cape of Good Hope

translation by Serge Gavronsky

Ill ask a kindly fat person to photograph us in front of a schooner. And these kodaks we will cherish into our declining ages. That is, Veronica, we are starting a family album. Robert Steiner, Passion

Last night, as I walked back along the alley flanked by two laurel hedges, real bay leaves ready for cooking, I observed, as on the night train which brought me here a couple of weeks ago, that once again the moon was full, so much so that, to turn to the left, at the end of the dark alley, I had no need, unlike preceding nights, to guide myself by the noise of the water fountain and the paleness of the little statue hidden in the leaves, at the corner of the hedge.

89

Its been so long since crossing a garden at night I would be filled with those delicious childish terrors, but yesterday, in the pale lunar light, as I was about to turn in front of the fountain, I felt a slight apprehension whose cause I was unable to grasp immediately, for it seemed less connected to a sensation, even a very small one, of fear, than the imperceptible oppression of consciousness when we awaken, plunged in deep despair, before day has wakened the pain momentarily chased away by sleep.

90

Emmanuel Hocquard

On the steps of the staircase leading up to my apartment, I was surprised that the persistent smell of smoke from burning wood that had ruled in these parts since my arrival, at the beginning of autumn, had vanished for the first time, and I had to admit that the disappearance, far from pleasing me, saddened me momentarily as if once more transparent the air threatened to revive the disturbing solitude that was broken, on nights of insomnia and wind, by the sinister and distant howling of wild animals held behind bars in the cages of the Villa Borghese.

The Cape of Good Hope 91

The weight of last winters snow, having fallen more heavily than in previous years, was barely borne by the giant trees in the gardens, in particular the umbrella pines, one of which died and the gardeners, after having sawed off the trunk at the bottom, set fire to the base which burned for a whole month, day and night, rain or shine, first in flames and then, when the fire reached the roots, hollowing out a vast crater of ashes and cinders, whose underground galleries reddened for a long time, freeing a remnant of heat and that bitter smoke which became familiar until, at the end, the fire no longer finding what to feed upon, died.

92

Emmanuel Hocquard

I She? I know, in all certainty, that that is her hand. Is that the kind of thing you can forget? Adieu, lizards, green fountains! Speak of me the way I was: Then you shall speak of one who did not love reasonably but all too well. A yellow silk blouse in July: the pomegranate trees were in bloom. Three iron arcs, one red on the cement. Through a silk opening, the beating of a heart. Farewell, my lady, summer was short. I write to you from afar, with affection and confidence, as befits true friends. Who do you think will ever believe that? She listens. A leap! Very well! Very well! By an odd stroke of luck, all men whose skulls are opened up have a brain inside. I offer you a tear because that was said so kindly and so simply. An ode, a ring (Rome 1987, engraved within), a flower given when everything is asleep. Si, Signore. She stands black-robed at the telephone. During these annoying autumn nights, I wish you a brighter tomorrow.

The Cape of Good Hope 93

II A hammer! I thought of those things I had witnessed! Hail bottle, fountain flower! Her glass was empty. She went back to the bar. Ghiaccio! Never say the word joy. But Im not sad, blue bird! Hands off! A wooden handle, a hammer. And we continued to live. That night, two owls in the moonlight kicked up a storm on the tiles, at the edge of the roof. A third one, perched on a chimney, contemplated the downy whiteness of the underside of their slow wings. TWIT TWIT TWIT! Hurry up, please its time! Summers feeble shadows already bend toward sad September. Night, stay with us! The city is asleep; white skin of the sleeping woman. O goddess, keeper of the fountain bar, there is no rest here! Our separation shall be as difficult as our meeting. Now, whats the matter? The stunning blank of a gaze, the pouting lips, a dreamy expression. This gracious creature gives the impression of knowing what she wants. Heres the way it happened. It was really great. What happened? Dont worry, Thomas. As for me, I dont think anything really happened. What can you possibly know about that, my God! Hurry up please, its time! No rest for you, Thomas, caught twixt earth and anvil! Good night ladies, good night sweet ladies, good night, good night.

94

Emmanuel Hocquard

III Today, inspiration is on the blink: impossible to represent, impossible to evoke, everythings impossible. Such a perfect modern set-up! Bees are similar to picture books. The book of bees is a chaos of sounds signifying nothing. Hovering bees under a Barberini sky. Thus the sacred text proceeds. Inspiration, Thomas, what a joke! You probably had one too many last night. In the middle of the fountain, theres the white of an object. The white residue of languages. A Pacific of pure redundancy. Find satisfaction in imitating the Ancients! And Ill manage to write the entire life of other copyists. Hes a chaser. A chaser and a fucker. Pretty? Sweet? An author should never allow the bitterness within to break through into general observations. The story is true down to its smallest details. The action takes place in Rome. Action, Thomas, the unstable iridescence on the surface of a bubble? When I got fed up with him screwing around, Id call him back. Such was my art: brusk contrasts between trivial prosaicness and nostalgic flights of fancy; the rapid switching of tones, the use of familiar language which didnt exclude erudite borrowings, mythological reminiscences, recourse to abstraction. He kept on sneaking out. Each time, I was always afraid hed never come back. Both of us perfectly still. For a long time we remained there, facing each other. Where did you ever get that idea? Nothing of the sort ever happened between us! Tom, good old Tom, youre barking up the wrong tree. I was always afraid he wouldnt come back, but he always did.

The Cape of Good Hope 95

IV All beauty sleeps. Let the echo of a mortal melody guide you, the beating of a heart which persists in sleep. Listen! An inaudible sound at the heart of a harmonic chain. Glass! Glass! A smile etched out on the lips. Summer heat: the yellow silk reappeared this morning. Alexander selects the captions. A bottle of white wine chills in the fountain. Ladies and gentlemen, the bar is now open! At half past noon, the sun is on the statues breasts. The gods give us some hope. They know how to ensnare us. And Alexander put the camera on automatic and took a picture. Alexander? He set the timer and then joined the group to be in the picture. The vegetation? Laurels, acanthi, box wood and umbrella pines, marble and papyrus. Her glass was empty. She went back to the fountain. What was that dogs name? Querer. Its name was Querer. The sun slowly turns around the little statues breasts. In order to describe their nuptial bed, one would have to borrow sounds, rustling noises and, especially, silence. Shadows wane. The sky is pure, motionless, blue. (Idiotic but exact.) Where did you ever get that idea, Thomas, that marble was vegetal? Colonel, didnt they ever teach you about Corinthian columns at the Military Academy? Call me Querer. Yet we have gone on living, patching up the pieces. We have gone on living, living and partly living, laughing, drinking, sleeping the sleep of plaster statues. A very sharp operator.

96

Emmanuel Hocquard

V Whats happening? Why is the bar closed? Is it a day of mourning for the black cypresses in the bamboo forest? Its only that winter has come in the middle of summer. That I see him as I see him, as I see her, as I see you, Tommy. The winter that has come is not the coming winter. We still ignore everything about next winter except that it will resemble previous winters. Old winter is always like itself. Thats why its called old winter and thats how one can recognize it. And your first winter, your very first winter, how did you recognize it? Like love, by all the ones that followed. But this winter in the middle of summer might very well be different. Might very well be another spring. A freezing spring in the middle of summer. The season of cold spells that brings on fevers. Im burning hot! Ghiaccio!

The Cape of Good Hope 97

VI All the way up, a square room. The pink flooring shakes with each step. Thick walls. Swifts nestle under the roofs tiles. Aint no mo need to hatch, wid that! Gotta be warm under there just like an oven. Sure gotta finally shrink their brain! Below, the shadow and the lights of the gardens (well, whats left of em after that nut had those trees knocked down): seven acres in the heart of Rome. Vegetal parallelism between women and flowers. A tale of cycles and motorcycles. Unfortunately, sir, hes quite mad. He turns in a circle in the square of his insomnias. Hes forgotten how to sleep. Between them, a stone staircase. The wind. Sometimes a storm: lightning hitting all around on lightning rods. The white paper chandelier wavers under the vaulted roof. The panes tremble. One window gives on to the Muro Torto. The other looks over the dead city. The inventory is over. Beware of exact descriptions. They lead nowhere. Lady, shall I lie in your lap? No, my Lord. On the table, another garden. He plans to put another person there.

98

Emmanuel Hocquard

VII Favored by the darkness, the shadow threaded through leaving no other traces behind itself but the shadow of a body moving in broad daylight. Such are the shadows privileges. Everything is there: the gait, the carriage of the head, the outline of the lips, the brightness of the pupils. But until we hear the sound of her voice, something remains missing from the whole. Come closer, pretty child, and tell us who you are. Are you the new character? Si, signore. Every new character begins by usurping the words of another. That is how he enters into his role. That is how a new pulley proves itself in its turn by creaking in the air. As we wait for day, stretch out and sleep. But be careful not to walk in my dreams. The Cape of Good Hope 99

VIII A dress strewn on the edge of the bed. She takes a deep puff of her cigarette and bites her lip. Its my fault, she says. Two dimples in the hollow of her cheeks, a bright toothy smile. An expression momentarily thoughtful. Snow diminishes distances without eliminating them. It equalizes our chances like iron, which is her art, equalizes luck in struggles of an uncertain outcome. Young snakes are on the watch for thaw, they patiently wait to swim in springtime rivulets. Ive seen them do it. Whats she afraid of? The frontiers of the past remain unpredictable. She was there when, a long time ago, leaning forward, hands on her knees, I admired the labor of the dung beetle. Its meticulous black claws traced unforgettable ephemeral signs in the sand, in between castor oil plants and the devils flowers. There was Betty, sullen child with blonde braids, who stood me up near a torrent of the native land: dark forests of blue pines and dead soldiers helmets, a hornets refuge. She was there in Nantucket. We walked back up Broadway holding hands. In San Francisco, we went looking for an alley of pepper plants. Visiting a model Midwestern dairy farm, I touched her breasts through the creamy silk. Parallel to mine, her gaze followed the thaw in Saint Petersburg from the Winter Palace bridge. There were green reflections on the snow. The ice flow broke into pieces on the current, knocking against each other, and piling up in the waters of the Neva, darker than her hair, before flying into fragments against the stone pillars in a roar of broken glass. The distance was slight that separated us as we gazed upon the same things. That distance was our intimacy.

100

Emmanuel Hocquard

IX Time for the first whisky. The first, Thomas? An ode to light. Start of a summer evening. The light fades under the pines. For the past two weeks, bungalow C has been under repair: dirty blue scaffolding, gray beams, a streak of fresh cement on the rough surface, washed-out pink wall. Tiles stacked along the length of the roof. In the distance a row of flowering hibiscus. A space for disappointment? End of day; the workers gone until tomorrow morning. The racket starts all over again at seven-thirty. The French windows open out onto the dried lawn. Before the workers began, Anne-Marie woke me up one morning to ask me what her watering hose was doing on my lawn. I answered that I did not know what her watering hose was doing on my lawn. I never water. Conversation interrupted by silences and the singing of crickets. With a flip of his finger, Alexander flicked his butt into the grass. Whats your burning butt doing on my wet lawn? The Cape of Good Hope looks like those evening encounters. Travelers brought together by chance at the intersections of great maritime routes. Make mine a glass of white wine. With ice, please. Thanks. An ode to light. Hurry up please, its time! Total liquidation! Nothing must remain! Everythings got to go!

The Cape of Good Hope 101

X Whos that scraping out some words at night? Climbed on top of a yellow crane, once a long time ago a man left for good. Had her body become heavier and more tender, her kisses deeper on those nights, or is it you, Thomas, who, after such kind words, lets yourself go on about the male sex? In this world of replies, something, suddenly, painfully alive. Once beyond the smiling cape of the first half of the trip, silk silently falls once again on silk. Listen! In your dream you were reading a book. You had that feeling that each new page was a translation of the previous one. Such a book is endless. And yet, youve got to go to the end. Dont look through my drafts! Dont look for my drafts: theyve all been published. Dont jump to conclusions after what Ive just said, unless youre a past master of the subtle art of the squid: a small and very lively animal who emerges from the barbershop, a cloud of black ink on its head. I ask myself, I ask myself it may be that Ive gone mad, naturally (that interjection came from him, not from me; naturally, he wasnt mad at all; he had merely been hit lightly over the head . . .). He had been incubated by a tile in full sunlight. A delicate creature leaving behind a black trail.

102

Emmanuel Hocquard

XI Love and leave! Stretched out on clean sheets, flipping through a magazine sold under wrappers color photographs of languid young women, posing in the nude, legs apart, their sex visible in the hollow of their blonde or brunette fleece the nightly parade going in the opposite direction of Italian railroad stations reflected in the mirror of the compartment. A hand placed on the upper thigh or in the hair, lifted above the neck, the other pressing a breast. At dawn, already far away from the burning whirlwind of that Latin earth, the train follows the sea. Mountains of white potassium, foppish flowers, suntan oil: a typical summer jerk. The old and wearisome melody. Let a harpsichord resonate next to another harpsichord: all the notes that can make up a cord between the two of them answer each other. Poor Tom is cold. He lowers the window: an attempt at the bodys rationalization; a daily clearing of a field. A simple puddle between the paving stones, a chaos of clouds under foot. Aphrodite rising from the sea. She doesnt stop exercising her powers for a single minute: a chapter a day. Carmina erunt formae tot monumenta tuae. All of that is colored by the reflection of cloths stretched out on the temple, flower of the black foam.

The Cape of Good Hope 103

XII The coming and going of the foam on the rocks, such a clouded measure of time. Cut it short. Find something else. A rhythm, a breath, a perfume sweeping away such worries. Bubbling fountain, the waiting only gathers itself. Days lost trying to seize an absence, modern Aphrodite broken by the bubbling of the waters. A motor boat, foam on the rocks. The definite article orients the story: the hollow swell, rising, engenders itself. I wholeheartedly invoke the thunder torn from clouds. A light, a volute, a letter. From such a distance, the voice no longer carries. What is she saying? A touch of fever on my forehead. Look and recognize without surprise what you have never seen before: the curve of the road rising between light-colored houses, a wasp nest at the foot of the steps, tiles whitewashed on the roofs, jasmine without flowers. Day after day, a giant gourd grows in color and wisdom under patient fig trees. Two long blue strips of cloth hang from a window. All day long, I carried around a little greasy brown paper bag, half-filled with old churros. The waiter in the caf doesnt have a neck. A twilight sketch of a caf waiter. Disenchanted vision? Come on! Remembering an old palm tree, I never paint things blacker than they are. Neckless people are a dime a dozen. Let me say it again, this is a superb sketch. Thus my eyes fall in the shadow of my gaze. Ladies-of-the-Night perfume wafts in a dead angle.

104

Emmanuel Hocquard

XIII Now open the book. Open it up at random and hold it up to your eyes as if it were a fruit. Now, smile! No rabbit will leap out of any hat. Neither resignation nor melancholia. The end is near. But though it is written in the beginning, we ignore what it shall be. I believe here were confronted by an interesting situation. We do not know what the end shall be, but we can assure you that it shall become the object of a very literal review. I told you: hold the book up in front of your eyes like a mirror. Summer breaks in a morning storm, after a nocturnal wind that shook up the tower and laid low the papyrus in the fountain. That night, you could see, shining in the distance, all the windowpanes in the hills. Disappearance of the swifts. The Cape of Good Hope 105

XIV To evoke what can happen between a beginning which isnt really one and an end which isnt one either, at any time, and anywhere, but not quite in any fashion, is the art of narration, the stringing together of simulacra. A promising rustle, the silky crumpling of words, a real syntax which inspires confidence; an elegant murmur. Let me go with you, via della Scrofa. Let me walk beside you for a moment until we reach piazza Navona. Didnt you know the Tre Scalini is closed on Wednesdays? At six, on a summers evening, sit with me at the terrace of the Caff, via della Pace. No one will serve you that freshly squeezed lemon juice you were dreaming of. Go back, get to San Eustachio by crossing the courtyard of the Palazzo della Sapienza. The spire of San Ivos shines in the setting sun. Try the other outdoor terrace where the waiter is carefully preparing a strychnine sandwich for the cigarette vendor across the street. Go home via the Trevi Fountain. Dont hold my hand. I need it to write. Emmanuel Hocquard 106

XV The last time I saw him, he was sitting on the grass, past midnight, along the edge of the alley of orange trees. He was totally sloshed and talking to a cat. Stupid beginning. But its okay. One cannot be constantly sublime, especially when its a question of simple transitions, necessary for sustaining novelistic action from one chapter to the other. He had just celebrated their departure, forgetting that he was going to be the first one to go. Return of that grating note, the one which keeps on coming back and provides the tone of the story. To speak to a cat! Is it possible to be so bitter is so few words? Thats what burst forth in contact with him, such as he was with certain things the way they were. The following night, he did battle with a tree. Thats realism! Not a sordid realism, coldly spelled out, but of a very desolate kind. That same evening, K. wandered through the streets of Rome looking for a hotel. He trembled at the thought that some marauder might steal the only copy of his manuscript which he carried with him. He did not find a hotel.

The Cape of Good Hope 107

XVI Last Sunday in August. Morning sky, helicopters, carillons. Motionless leaves. Silence. Standing naked in the sunlight, in front of his window, he wrote. Solitude. Roofs, singing birds. The window wide open. A sunlit trapeze in the angle formed by the walls and the ground. The sound of the pen and the smell of ink on paper. Not quite. This fellows got nothing to sell. Hes thinking. You know him; theres no one else like him to follow a lead. With his own special method, hes able to figure out the most inextricable situations. Hes a top private eye. Officially, the case will end up with a hung jury. The old man will straighten out his white wig, hold up his sleeves, knock with his ivory hammer (youll note that I did not mention Ahabs leg in my report. It had been stolen on June 20th and, therefore, did not figure among the evidence presented). Then hell pass judgement. He who holds the bag is as guilty as the one who fills it! Alexander? He steps in puddles, tears up the table cloth when dinner is over, turns over wine glasses on the table, rips out rose petals from vases, puts sauce on the handle of his knife, burns the back of his shirt with a cigarette, wears a green shoe on one foot and a blue one on the other, so many disquieting signs, but they do not prove that hes permanently over the edge. Besides, these details were not brought up by the prosecutor. They hadnt even figured in the trial. She? A pretty smile, deep, laughing eyes. Fine, but thats not the question. I was able to observe her during this whole period, do you understand? I was doing my job. From the very beginning, I was convinced that she held the key to the whole business. Perhaps even without knowing it. Was Alexander in on it? Im quite certain of the opposite. However facetious or clever he might have appeared to be at times, there was something in him of the rectitude of a pastors son. Nevertheless, I do not believe hes ever been duped. No! Thats not the right trail to follow. And K.? What part did he play?

108

Emmanuel Hocquard

XVII By mid-July K. had disappeared. A little while later, he was spotted in Copenhagen. From there, taking the train and then the ferryboat, he docked in Aarhus. A car immediately took him up North, the wind, the sand, pale brick houses, yellow color. The extreme northern point of Denmark is a sandy spit in the shape of a comma, thrusting out into the water. Thats the point of convergence between the North Sea and the Baltic. The wind sweeps down in gusts from Sweden into the axis of the comma. As they converge, the waters of the two seas bubble up, under a sky of luminous clouds, like boiling oil in a giant frying pan. K. picked up, among the pebbles, a straw-colored brick worn by sand gusts and the tides. Filled with salt water, the brick was heavy. He put it down, a bit further, at the foot of the dunes. Yellow is the color of the North. Whadya say, ol man, how about one last beer? The following day, K. visited, in a lumbering fashion, the museums in Copenhagen. Looked at black skeletons bent over at the bottom of black sarcophagi. Bought notebooks with stiff bindings at a stationary store. A good detective can follow someone for days on end without ever losing him, even if hes never set eyes on his face. Early in August, K. flew to London. When his luggage was searched in a Chelsea hotel, nothing was found. This is where the trail ends.

The Cape of Good Hope 109

XVIII Eighteen times, Tommy? Not a single one. The symbol of infinity. And yet I came back. It was the Equinox, the very worst time of year for a journey, and for such a long journey. Every time the school year began, we had to learn all over again how to read, write and speak. Dont you remember, Alexander? Those are things you dont forget. Under the gaze of the small-breasted statue, the cold water in the fountain no longer serves to chill the white wine. Above the green spot of the papyrus, the goddess abandons us to our destiny. What destiny, Thomas? God damn you to hell! Get away from me! Emmanuel Hocquard 110

I write to you from a distant place. Ive just spent two days in the dark room developing photographs, late into the night. Theyre not beautiful photographs. Most of them have at least one defect. Others have more. But each one contains some precious detail. Take them as they are because, despite their imperfections, they rightly place in evidence this private aspect of vacation photographs. What you and I can see, no one else will see, for the sensations and the emotions they evoke only concern those who have lived those moments the way they have lived them. There, there is a secret that, even spread out in broad daylight, visible to all, can only remain a secret. Because the intimate nature of these proofs did not require enlargements, I printed them in a small format.

The Cape of Good Hope 111

Leaving the laboratory around one in the morning, I was happily surprised to discover that it had stopped raining. There was a strong smell of wet pine needles, the temperature deliciously pleasant, the air light. In the very blue sky not a somber blue or a dark blue, but an intense, deep, cobalt blue the brilliant full moon shone on all things surrounding with an unusual light. The wind chased imposing clouds, fast-moving, upon which, detached against the light of day, curiously motionless, the leaves of umbrella pines. The night was so luminous that one of the last roses of the season which I had spotted on the path, at the beginning of the afternoon, in the alley of orange trees (besides, I had promised myself to pick it up on the way back) was wide open, the detail and the color of each petal clearly distinct in the lunar light. I regretted that you were not here to admire it, more open in the night than it had ever been during the day, as if the full moon, swelling the water of the seas, had acted similarly on this October flower. Emmanuel Hocquard 112

In the most complete silence, the rose sprung out of the leaves, languid and provocative, in the middle of an arrangement that didnt appear to be due to chance, too perfect, too precise, almost artificial a mime, the lascivious forms of a body in feverish desire, the folds of a sheet, the studied undulations of her hair, the gaping sex offered to the eye: see and understand; thus am I made; such is the hidden meaning of my nature; I was born in order to reveal it to you, so kindly, so simply an almost angelic show, marked by the same religiosity, charged with the same voluptuous expectation revealed in holy paintings in city churches and duplicated by the ecstasy of girls photographed in pornographic magazines sold under wrappers. As for yesterdays prostitutes, dressed in purple and scarlet, holding in their hands a gold cup filled with the repugnant impurities of prostitution, they sleep, forgotten, near the tennis courts built between the fast lane and the Muro Torto in order for wealthy Romans to lose some of their excess fat while exchanging volleys on the very spot where, long ago, outside the walls, stood an ancient cemetery. The Cape of Good Hope What noise is that high in the air That maternal lament I left the rose on the rosebush and went back home to sleep.

113

William E. Jones Tearoom Texts

My film Tearoom consists of footage shot by police in the course of a crackdown on public sex in the American Midwest. In the summer of 1962, the Mansfield, Ohio Police Department photographed men in a restroom under Central Park, the main square of the city. The cameramen hid in a closet and watched the clandestine activities through a twoway mirror. The film they shot was used in court as evidence against the defendants, all of whom were found guilty of sodomy, which at that time carried a mandatory minimum sentence of one year in the state penitentiary. The original surveillance footage shot by the police came into my possession while I was researching this case for a documentary project. The unedited scenes of ordinary men of various races and classes meeting to have sex were so powerful that I decided to present the footage with a minimum of intervention. Tearoom is a radical example of film presented as found for the purpose of circulating historical images that have otherwise been suppressed. In his classic 1970 study Tearoom Trade, sociologist Laud Humphreys asks, If sixtyfive different men are caught engaging in the tearoom game in the course of two weeks in one restroom in the small city of Mansfield, Ohio, what does this suggest as to the number of men involved in such activity over a years time in the hundreds of public facilities in metropolitan areas with populations in the millions?

114

Hidden Movie Camera Used by Police to Trap Sexual Deviates at Park Hangout, 17 Arrests Climax Probe
By Donn Gaynor
Spurred by a sex deviates confession that he wantonly murdered two little girls who cried out for help when he attempted to molest them, Mansfield Police are completing one of the most spectacular investigations of homosexual depravity ever undertaken. County Prosecutor Rex Larson yesterday and today filed sodomy charges against 11 Mansfield and area men, has issued warrants for two more. Four additional men are being held for investigation of sodomy and other arrests are expected. These men were arrested Monday and Tuesday following a months-long investigation directed by Police Chief Clare W. Kyler in which homosexual activity in the mens washroom in Central Park was photographed on color movie film by a hidden camera. The public toilet, long suspected as a meeting place for male sex deviates, has been permanently closed. Officials said although they suspected such activity in the toilet facility, no one expected to witness the bestial scenes which the cameras recorded. The hidden camera, manned by police officers, also hidden from view, watched everyone who entered and left the mens room for nearly two months. But no photos were taken unless the visitor or visitors remained for long periods of time or acted in an abnormal manner. Some of the men reportedly spent as long as two hours in the underground toilet room. The things which some of these men did cannot be printed. They break the laws of Ohio, of decency and of humanity. Chief Kyler said the investigation of male sex deviates began shortly after the killing of nine-yearold Jean Bertoch and seven-year-old Connie Lynn Hurrell near North Lake Park Saturday, June 23.

Jerrell R. Howell, 18, a youth with a past record of molestings, confessed the double killing in which he reportedly stomped the girls to death with his feet, is waiting grand jury action in county jail. Having learned that the Central Park restroom was reputedly a gathering place for deviates, Chief Kyler, working in cooperation with Park Superintendent Frank Burton, arranged to have a camera hidden in the room and worked out methods of getting officers in plain clothes in and out of the room to spell each other on shifts behind the camera. The hidden officer would notify an outside man via radio when an abnormal act had been witnessed. The outside officer would then follow the offenders and obtain identification in various ways. Police soon began compiling a list of the offenders and double-checking identities. The daily investigation continued until the attempted molesting of a young boy occurred. After the arrest of the would-be molester, Chief Kyler ordered the toilet closed for the protection of the citizens of Mansfield. A round-the-clock roundup of suspects began Monday. Suspects were interrogated and in some cases shown the films which had been taken of them. Most of those charged have been transferred to county jail to await court action. Chief Kyler also commended the men of his department for one of the best investigations I have ever seen in over 30 years of police work. Some of the suspects reportedly seemed relieved at being caught. Officials said one man said he was glad it was over. The suspect reportedly stated he may have been subconsciously attempting to get caught by police. The particular suspect, a married man with children and a respected man in his community, is reported to have said he did not know why he committed such acts, except that he sometimes got an urge. He stated that he would despise himself at the conclusion of a depraved act, had consulted a minister and made other attempts to straighten

OFFICERS HIDDEN

CANT BE PRINTED

DESPISED HIMSELF

himself out, but to no avail. A number of those arrested are married and most of these married have children. One suspect reportedly told of talking over our affliction with another deviate whom he had arranged to meet at a secluded place outside of the city. He stated that after finding out that his date was also married and had children, the two lost interest in each other and just went home. Prosecutor Rex Larson said today that the law requires persons charged with sodomy to be given a psychiatric examination. Conviction on a sodomy charge calls for a sentence of one to 20 years in the penitentiary. Charged with sodomy and taken into court on bills of information in which they agree to plead guilty are: Vernon Sheeks, 51, of 565 Arnold Ave.; Christ Alamanteoff, 33, of Shiloh; Lawrence Burge, 58, of 3731/2 Grace St.; Paul Henry Downey, 25, of 99 West Luther Place; Troy Leon Grant, 45, of 120 1/2 Hedges St.; Roger Elwood Pifer, 28, of Mansfield R. D. 1; Samuel Gail Kuhn, 55, of Mansfield R. D. 1, Taylortown Rd.; Frank Joseph Thomas, 36, of 594 Warren Rd.; Edward John Walton, 45, of 173 1/2 Vale Ave.; Francis Clarence Bowman, 36, of 1051 Seminole Ave.; and Frederick C. Birmelin, 28, of 479 N. Mulberry St. In addition, Larson has issued warrants for the arrest on sodomy charges of Lawrence L. Kellogg, 35, of Galion and Roger Lee Plummer, 22, of Crestline, R. D. 2. Richard Amos Eberly, 41, of Monroeville, whom police reportedly observed attempting to molest a young boy in the restroom, was also arrested and faces a felony charge of indecent exposure. Charges are expected to be filed against the four men still being held in city jail for investigation, and additional arrests will be forthcoming, according to police. Chief Kyler said today, The investigation is an outcome of the brutal murder of two little girls in North Lake Park. This is to be a continuous investigation to assure that this type of subject is not permitted to run at large in the City of Mansfield. These men are from all walks of life, not just one

class of society. Any sex deviate may be a potential killer. The chief also urged the public to cooperate in cleaning abnormal sex activity from Mansfield by reporting persons acting suspiciously around children, parks and playgrounds.

Mansfield News-Journal, vol. 78, no. 169 (August 22, 1962) pp. 1-2.

Camera Surveillance of Sex Deviates Evidentiary Problems

By William McKee
The extensive investigation of sex deviates initiated in June of 1962 by the Mansfield Police Department presented a number of problems to be considered jointly by the police and prosecution officials. The investigation, as previously reported in this magazine, was concentrated in a restroom maintained by the City of Mansfield for the general public in the central square of the city. A two-way mirror was installed in a towel dispenser on a door in which a hole had been cut so that the officers could observe the restroom area from a concealed position. Not only were the activities of deviates observed but colored films were taken of the criminal acts which were used both for identification and as evidence in subsequent trials of the offenders. The problems which were faced in presenting the observations of the officers and the films obtained were broken down into two categories. The first problem presented was one of resolving the question as to whether or not an unlawful search and seizure was involved. The second type problem concerned the general evidence questions as to the admissibility of the film. It was believed in advance that both of these matters would be strenuously argued by an accused as the statutes in Ohio making sodomy a felony provide imprisonment for one to twenty years with no possibility of probation and further make a mental examination mandatory.

FELONY CHARGE

A series of California cases based upon a somewhat comparable investigation were closely examined as the California court had ruled that an unlawful search and seizure existed and that observations of the officers and films which were obtained were not admissible in evidence. In the California cases the investigations had been conducted in a restroom in an amusement park and in a department store. In each instance, while the property was open to the public, it was privately owned. Also in each instance the restrooms involved had toilet booths which were closed on three sides and had a door. The restroom in which the Mansfield investigation was conducted was one which was publicly owned by the City and maintained by the City and, based upon dicta contained in a decision of the United States Supreme Court, it was felt that such public ownership placed upon the City not only the right but the responsibility to protect lawful users of the restroom. The restroom involved was also one which was generally open and which, while it had toilet stools enclosed on three sides, the stools faced open without doors. Accordingly, any accused could not claim any private sanctuary of a closed booth. No films were taken of lawful users. If a privately owned restroom had been involved it was believed that the problem of search and seizure may have been solved by placing a conspicuous sign on the premises which stated that the restrooms were subject to security surveillance and filming for the protection of lawful users and that by using the facilities any user consented to subject themselves to such surveillance. It was believed that the effect of such a sign could further be strengthened by removing any doors from the toilet booths. Reasonable cause to conduct such an investigation was resolved inasmuch as a convicted deviate had testified that the restroom was generally a rendezvous and area utilized by other deviates. It was further established that the only type investigation which would be of any use was one of clandestine observation as sending uniformed or plainclothes officers into the restroom for frequent observation produced no results. Following the arrests in the Mansfield investigation, motions to suppress the observing officers testimony as based upon unlawful search and seizure were first presented in preliminary

SEARCH AND SEIZURE

hearings. These were uniformly overruled based upon the facts above adopted by the State. The testimony thus presented probable cause which resulted in a bind-over to the Grand Jury in every instance. Prior to Grand Jury proceedings, an injunction proceeding was initiated in Common Pleas Court which sought to enjoin the State, the police, and other officials from presenting the evidence to the Grand Jury based upon the search and seizure question. This action was dismissed by the trial court on the theory that Grand Jury proceedings were secret as established by law and were not subject to limitation by the court as to what evidence might be presented. Following presentation of the testimony and films to the Grand Jury indictments were returned in every instance in which there was positive identification as to the deviates involved. Following the return of the indictments, motions to suppress the evidence, again based upon the search and seizure question, were presented to the trial court. These motions in each instance were overruled by the trial court. Proceedings then followed one of two patterns. Most defendants then proceeded to trial and sought rulings on appeal that the films and observations were illegally obtained. To date the appellate courts have sustained the right of the State but the Supreme Court of Ohio has not as yet finally ruled on the matter. Several defendants followed a second manner of procedure by filing an action in the appellate courts to obtain a Writ of Prohibition, seeking to present the view that the trial court had no jurisdiction to proceed to trial inasmuch as all evidence was illegally obtained. This procedure had proved successful in California where the court had held that the remedy of prohibition did lie. The Supreme Court of Ohio decided that preliminary questions as to evidence are properly decided in the trial court and are subject to review only by appeal and that prohibition is not a proper remedy by which to divest the trial court of jurisdiction. Accordingly, the Ohio courts have differed in each instance with the California courts, based primarily upon distinguishing circumstances which were considered in advance. It is therefore believed that cooperation and planning between the police and the prosecuting attorneys may circumvent search and seizure questions and may properly make available

as evidence the results of clandestine observations. The films obtained by the Mansfield Police Department were observed and identified from taking to ultimate presentation in court by several officers so that continuity in handling of the evidence could have been presented. It was, however, the belief of the State that under the modern tests as to admissibility of pictures and films that such continuity was not essential. The law in Ohio had been for some time that still pictures were properly admitted in evidence when identified as fair and accurate representations of what the photographer had viewed and of what they purported to display. The courts had held, with the advent of motion pictures, that such motion pictures were merely a series of still pictures and that the same test should apply. With the further development of colored pictures the same test was still adopted. In presenting the evidence in the trial the officers involved testified as to their observations. The film which was to be introduced was then marked for identification purposes only. A motion was then presented to the court that the jury be excused and that the film be shown to the court, the defendant, counsel, and the officer, without comment so that the court might preview the evidence, the defendant might enter objections, and that the officer might view the film for identification purposes only. Following such a preview of the film, testimony was then sought from the officer that the film presented a fair and accurate representation as to what he had viewed and filmed, that nothing had been deleted from the film, and that nothing had been added or altered. Based upon this testimony, the film was offered and received in evidence and then shown in open court to the jury. Objections based on no showing of continuity of possession were overruled. Further objections were entered that the film was cumulative and presented to the jury the same facts which the testimony of the officer had presented. Further objections were entered that the films were lewd, indecent, and obscene and were presented only to inflame and arouse the passions of the jury. In each instance these objections were overruled, the trial court finding that such films were properly considered by the jury for whatever weight the jury might care to give to them and for

whatever assistance the films might be in arriving at a verdict.

OTHER EVIDENTIARY PROBLEMS

The initial juries were given a view of the restroom involved. This did not appear to materially aid the trial. It was believed, however, that a diagram to scale of the restroom, the location of the booths, the urinals, and other facilities, as well as the location of the officer, would be of great value to the jury in understanding the testimony. Such a diagram was placed on a blackboard in the courtroom and identified by the officer as a fair and accurate representation of the location of the facilities in the restroom. A picture had been taken of the blackboard which was identified by the officer as a fair and accurate representation of the blackboard and was marked as an exhibit but not entered in evidence. The photograph was made a part of the record solely so a reviewing court could consider everything which had been presented in the trial and so that such reviewing court could appreciate the open nature of the restroom during its deliberations on the search and seizure question. Several motions for discovery and advance viewing of the films were made by counsel for several defendants. As is the case in all criminal matters, some counsel for defendants are interested in examination of evidence solely with a view toward finding the truth and entering a plea of guilty if such is warranted by the evidence and truth, while others seek a knowledge of the evidence solely with a view toward future circumvention of the evidence during trial. For this reason, where the latter situation was possibly believed to exist, such motions for discovery were resisted by the State and denied by the courts. In several of the cases defendants claimed alibi and claimed that they were not actually the ones pictured. While the testimony was positive that the accused was in fact the one pictured, the jury in its deliberation did desire to again view the films which had been shown upon only one occasion in the trial court. In such instances the projector and screen were marked as courts exhibits and sent to the jury room. No operator for the projector was permitted to go to the jury room and it was therefore essential that

RELATED PROBLEMS

a projector be used which had adequate instructions as to its use mounted on it. The additional viewing of the films and use of projector and screen were sanctioned by the court inasmuch as the film was real evidence and was subject to continued review by the jury as would have been a regular still print which the jury would have been entitled to take into its deliberations. The results of the Mansfield investigation and the subsequent trial and convictions of those found to be violating the sodomy laws of Ohio indicate that evidence may properly be obtained through advance planning and cooperation by the law enforcement officers and those charged with the trial and prosecution of offenders. No such investigation should be conducted unless such preliminary planning is made with a view to avoiding the legal pitfalls involved.

Law and Order, vol. 12, no. 8 (August 1964) pp. 72-74.

Sex Deviates: A Review of a New Film

By W. Cleon Skousen
The Mansfield, Ohio Police Department has just produced a new film which is a pioneer in its field called Sex Deviates. This film is a shocker for anyone who has not worked on a vice squad since it presents evidentiary films taken at the scene of the offense. The Mansfield Police Department successfully prosecuted a large number of perverts as a result of the investigative techniques depicted in this film. For obvious reasons, the film is restricted exclusively to the use of the police profession and can only be obtained through official channels. Police executives have realized for some time that the growth of homosexual cults throughout the country is creating a new and baffling challenge to law enforcement. The seriousness of the problem is aggravated by the fact that some of the worst sex crimes against children involve sex deviates. In fact, in Mansfield, Ohio, it was the brutal torture slaying of two little girls by a teen-age pervert that led to the action depicted in the film. These murders demonstrated that every deviate is a

potential perpetrator of far more serious crimes and it is the responsibility of each department to identify its deviates and see that they get appropriate disposition. Captain J. P. Butler was given the task of identifying the deviates in Mansfield, Ohio. The favorite rendezvous spot for perverts was a downtown restroom so he concentrated on that. Captain Butler and his associates succeeded in constructing an appropriate viewing port through which colored 16mm motion pictures could be taken. They then employed two-way radio to communicate with officers on the outside so they could contact the deviate under pretext and thereby learn his identity and address. Only after practically all of those who frequented this place had been identified and the evidence obtained did the Mansfield Department initiate any arrests. In this way the Department was able to make a clean sweep without tipping off any of the subjects in advance. This is no doubt the first of a number of films which will be produced on the deviate problem. The Mansfield Department has made an important contribution to the police education field.

Law and Order, vol. 11, no. 11 (November 1963) p. 72.

The Best Suit in Town

By John P. Butler with Peter Mars Chapter Eighteen: No Discrimination

The one place in the city where there was no discrimination, where both black and white, the elite and the derelict, came to meet with few words spoken was Central Park. From college professor and church organist to truck driver and prison parolee, all had one thing in commonthey were all going to jail. The best of attorneys and spin-masters could not change this one. The dont ask, dont tell were the norms of the community and were in full force and effect whenever two consenting adults agreed to participate in abnormal activity. The laws had not yet been changed. The due

process, the procedural steps from arrest through conviction conforming to established rules and for the protection of the individual, was followed to the letter. No one was acting under duress. The evidence was legally presented before a court. The continuity of the evidence was established. Real evidence, also known as demonstrative evidence, was exhibited before the judge and jury. This was evidence that speaks for itself and provides not only credibility but proof to what police officers, who were eyewitnesses, gave as direct evidence to what they had seen. The crime occurred on public property which was open and accessible to the citizens of Mansfield. The person responsible for this investigation was a young man being held for the murder of two small girls, Jerrel Ray Howell. While being interviewed by officers, Howell stated, You guys dont know nothin, you ought to take a look at the mens room in Central Park on the square, thats where I first had oral sex with a man. We took up his suggestion and started to work on a plan. A key was obtained from the park superintendent which allowed us into the passage between the mens and womens rest rooms. What became obvious to us was something that went beyond what the Mansfield Chamber of Commerce had in mind when they touted our city as The Fun Center of Ohio and downtown Central Park our town square with its statues and patchworks of flowerbedsa pleasant green valley that offers excellent recreational opportunities. A requisition was given to the city auditor to purchase a two-way mirror. This prompted an inquiry from one of the women in the auditors office as to what this was being used for. The chief was contacted and I was advised to tell her a lie as we did not want word of what was being investigated to leak out. Our only other cost was for the painting of the mens room with a lighter gray color and the installation of stronger light bulbs. The paper towel rack with a mirror was moved to the wall adjacent to the passageway after cutting a hole in the wall and replacing the mirror with the new device which would allow the investigator to look into the mens room. All the work was done at night when the rest rooms were locked up. Because we did not have money available to us for the cost of the camera equipment we needed

to film the suspected activities taking place on a regular basis in the restroom, the Highway Safety Foundation was quick to assist. They furnished us with a 16mm camera and film. Later we had to get a court order from the states attorney in Chicago to get the developed film back from Eastman-Kodak as they had said it was too obscene to be released. The camera recorded men masturbating each other, blacks and whites were exchanging blows. This was not with their fists. Others were playing leap frog. After reviewing the film you would better understand what giving a person the finger means; or the expression of up yours means. The only place they did not have their penis was under the other guys armpit. There was no color barrier down there, or class distinction. These people were all the same classno class at all. Dogs have more class than these participants. Many men were dressed in suits and looked like successful business people. Some were dressed casually and others were dressed as laborers. As I stated earlier, there were college professors and prison parolees. No doubt the exprisoners learned much of this behavior while in the joint. There was even the organist from one of the local churches. Only this time it was his own personal organ that was being played. From all walks of life they came to meet here. And they came in all sizes and shapes. Their only purpose in being in this toilet facilityperverted sex. When we started the investigation at the rest room, we did not confer with the prosecutor and did not know that there was a mandatory sentence to the pen for sodomy. The law stated that sodomy was defined as placing the sex part of a body into any part of the body other than the sex part of the body. Obviously, according to that definition, two women cannot commit sodomy. As the rest rooms were underground, we were required to run a wire with an antenna outside so that we could use our two-way radio, which was a large portable unit. A room was obtained for free above one of the places of business on the square where the restroom and outside parking area could be observed. This was a three man detail. One man was secreted in the passageway where he could film the activities. Another man watched where the described subject was going as he left the underground facility. And a third man was usually on a three-wheel bike. His job

was to stop the man in his car or, if he was walking, to identify the subject and get full information about him. When we first prepared to set up the sting we needed not only to find the best place to locate the camera recording equipment, but we also needed to see what we would be dealing with as far as the restroom facility was concerned. We discovered that holes had been cut into the sides of the partitions which separated the toilets from the urinals. They were cut there for only one purposeto be able to sit on the crapper and look at other mens penises as they urinated. Bill Spognardi and Dick Burton were the cameramen. They worked daylight hours as the rest rooms closed each night in conjunction with the downtown places of business. Spognardi, who was an Army vet and who served in the occupational army in the Pacific right after World War II, said, How low can you go on this jobIm being detailed to work in the crapper. The detail ran for about three weeks and was stopped when Spog had to come out of the passageway and grab a guy who started to mess around with two young boys who were playing in the restroom. The restrooms were closed after this investigation and later were filled in with dirt. Of the 70 men arrested, 69 were convicted and went to the Ohio State Penitentiary. One colored man was found not guilty as the film did not show his facial features clearly. Mansfield was the fun city of Ohio with lots of recreational opportunities. Only a comedian would find humor in this as he might say, Its my mouth and I will haul coal in it if I want to. If some of these people had as many pricks sticking out of them as they had stuck in them, they would look like a porcupine. And we wonder how AIDS gets spread. Add to that the fact that the feelgood public elects people to public office who admit that they would like to visit the rest room described here or have visited this room for that purpose, and we wonder why some lawmakers want to change certain laws and make the introduction of certain evidence in court almost impossible. The sodomy laws in Ohio were changed. Most of the arrested men were released after doing one year in the pen. One man was later killed in a stickup in Mansfield.

Keep in mind, at this time, numerous houses of prostitution were in operation, and like the restrooms, they were open to the public. The Highway Safety Foundation later released a 16mm color sound movie labeled, The Sex Deviate. The film was used nationwide by the FBI for sex crime training of police officers.

Punta Gorda, Florida: Royal Palm Press, 2001

Ohio, in The Sensibilities of Our Forefathers: The History of Sodomy Laws in the United States
By George Painter
Three reported sodomy cases (in fact, the last reported cases in Ohio), followed an incredibly virulent anti-gay witch hunt in Mansfield in the summer of 1962 that involved hidden cameras in a public restroom. Some 65 men had been filmed in living color engaging in sexual acts in the restroom, but only 38 ever were identified and arrested. Of these, very few challenged the right of the state to prosecute them. In 1964, the first of the cases, State v. Thomas, was decided by the Ohio Supreme Court. Otho Thomas had been put under the pall of the Ascherman Act upon his arrest and he attempted to block the procedure. The Court unanimously found that initial commitment under Ascherman for observation before sentencing was a procedural matter and could not be appealed. Another 1964 Mansfield case was State v. Chamberlain.5 The Supreme Court denied the right of James Chamberlain to withdraw his guilty plea pending initial observation under the Ascherman Act. The Court again found that this was not a final appealable order, and he would have to be examined psychiatrically before he could attempt to withdraw his guilty plea. The Court gave no hint of the appalling police intimidation that Chamberlain endured upon his arrest. Fighting to the end, Chamberlain appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which refused to hear his case. The final reported Mansfield case, and the last reported sodomy case in Ohio, was decided

in federal court in 1965. In Poore v. Ohio,9 U.S. District Court Judge James Connell rejected Ralph Poores attempt to invoke a federal law10 that permitted removal of certain criminal prosecutions into federal court if a prosecution under state law appeared to be discriminatory. Connell noted that the purpose of the federal law was to prevent invidious discrimination that deprived a defendant of equal rights.11 The equal rights claim was rejected by the Court because it did not involve race.12 On the motion for stay of orders pending appeal, Connell rejected Poores claims that the search and seizure of the restroom by use of the hidden camera was illegal because the acts took place in view of anyone who would enter the restroom.13 A medical journal article from 1964 revealed that gay men at the Lima State Hospital for the Criminally Insane were given doses of an extremely dangerous antidepressant drug, tranylcypromine, that has a number of potentially fatal side effects. The medication was combined with educational therapy or group therapy. One-third of the number were considered good remission cases and were recommended for release.14 (2002),http://www.sodomylaws.org/sensibilities/ ohio.htm

1. Laud Humphreys, Tearoom Trade. (Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company, 1975) pp. 86-87. 2. Mansfield News-Journal, Aug. 22, 1962, 1:7. Much gloating over the success of the operation is found in Law and Order. The Mansfield Police Department also put out a brochure called Camera Surveillance, detailing how it went about setting the trap, thus encouraging other police forces to do so as well. 3. 175 Ohio St. 563, decided Mar. 11, 1964. 4. Id. at 565. 5. .177 Ohio St. 104, decided Dec. 9, 1964. 6. Id. at 105-106. 7. Chamberlain, who was married and the father of three children, was arrested at work and his employer was brought along to witness the interrogation, during which Chamberlain was outed to him. He was asked if he and

his wife engaged in sodomy, was told that it was just as much a crime as with another man (thereby hinting that she might be arrested unless he talked), was threatened with public exposure (he wasnt out to his wife or his parents, either), and falsely was told that the state would go easier on him if he cooperated with the police. He was promised probation by the investigator, even though state law forbade probation for sodomy. Chamberlains employer, witnessing the entire interrogation, though surprised to learn that Chamberlain was gay, nevertheless did not abandon him, and verified Chamberlains claims of intimidation at the hands of police. 1226 Ohio Supreme Court Briefs and Records 2d 38621. 8. 385 U.S. 844, decided Oct. 10, 1966. 9. 243 F.Supp. 777, decided Apr. 9, 1965. Motion for stay of orders pending appeal, June 10, 1965. The case of Townsend v. Ohio was consolidated with this case. Townsend was another Mansfield arrestee 10. 28 U.S.C. 1443. 11. Poore, at 779. 12. Id. at 780. 13. Id. at 782-785. 14.. Rudolph Buki, A Treatment Program for Homosexuals, Diseases of the Nervous System, 25:304-307 (May 1964). According to the Physicians Desk Reference, tranylcypromine should be given only as a last resort and can cause severe convulsions, shock or coma, hypertensive crises, peripheral vascular collapse, and intracranial bleeding.

William E. Jones, Tearoom, 2007 Stills from the film Images courtesy of David Kordansky Gallery

I wish to acknowledge Bret Wood; The Ohio State University Law Library; and Ohio Historical Society, Columbus for making these documents available to me. The Wexner Center for the Arts provided post-production facilities for Tearoom. Paul Hill, Bill Horrigan, Jennifer Lange, and Mike Olenick at the Wexner deserve special mention for helping me realize this project.

131

Ian Monk START TO RHYME

NOTE This is one of the shattered classical forms from a forthcoming collection of poetry entitled F O R M S (to be published by Make Now Press in 2008). A standard form is chosen, in this case the villanelle, and sequences of poems are written using the required rhyme scheme but at no time do the beginnings and ends of the poems in each sequence coincide with the beginnings and ends of the forms in question, but always stop before the end or else run on over into the next structure (except, of course, at the start and finish of each sequence). The meta-structure also reflects the basic form; in this case, as a villanelle contains six stanzas, there are six sections of six rhyme schemes. The ones published here are sections three and six.

132

STOP STRUMMING YOUR GUITAR YOU FUCKER Stop strumming your guitar you git she thinks for once for twice we were so young so full of shit the wonder is we got over it I think we did I mean scrap the rice stop strumming your guitar you git I repeat to myself and spit out this boa catch of babes and mice we were so young so, full of shit, mistook cruelty for wit and crabs for childish lice stop strumming your guitar you git I repeat youre the fucking pit s and so do sods play dice we were so young so full of shit what more can be said? You grinned, lit the thing and passed it on in a trice stop strumming your guitar you git we were so young so full of shit we could hardly swallow any more of what? Im not going to tell you 133

Ian Monk

darkness beckons through the next door to where my lover vomits on the floor her mix of vodka and special brew we could hardly swallow any more when we got here for Christs sake why drink your self into such a flirty shit-stirrer blue darkness beckons through the next door to where my ex wife is acting the whore for a pill or two and a nose bag of glue we could hardly swallow any more when we split up so now dont pour your grief on me darling Im through darkness beckons through the next door to where my father lies dying my sisters roar were so alone now mothers gone too we could hardly swallow any more darkness beckons through the next door to where the sun forms patterns on the wall and the paper flakes away and I remember who I have to call no it doesnt really matter not at all we will live and shite another day to where? the sun forms patterns on the wall the shit-filled young are learning to crawl while the noisy brats come out to play and I? remember who I have to call? not a bit of it, stupid the words fall out as we must lets go I say to where the sun forms patterns on the wall and where were pleased to shop in the mall of all our dreams live later now we pay and I remember who I have to call

134

is none of your business, girl haul your arse over here and let us prey to where the sun forms patterns on the wall and I remember who I have to call tonight shes the love of my life maybe but only space and time will tell apart the absurd lover and the free loader from the truly get old with girl whose smell tonight (shes the love of my life maybe) says roll onto my pillow into me wrap me in the silence of our wedding bell apart: the absurd lover and the free thinker (or so she thinks in his chains) see in the absence of obvious heaven and hell tonight (shes the love of my life maybe, or so he thinks in her chains) a reasonably clear invective: this letter set to spell apart the absurd lover and the free offer at the local shit pizza place Je sus forget it darling just a joke oh well tonight shes the love of my life may be a part the absurd love rand the free nonsense poetry permits in its wake and love? is like any other subject its reasons are: on the make again; a permafrost lake of the deepest dreariest most abject nonsense poetry permits in its wake like I mean, seriously give us a fucking break and hate? is like any other object its reasons are: on the make as well; the devastatingly unexpected quake in the paintwork the wrist the wrecked

START TO RHYME 135

nonsense poetry permits in its wake when its perpetrator has gone as flak y as this one in a life both so lost and cock-pecked its reasons are on the make believe list of the desperate take away approach to the loner the established sect nonsense poetry permits in its wake its reasons are on the make shift run to oblivion with the following cast: the actor the liar the fool the merchant banker the political swing ster the business suit and the sting er merchant all tanning round the unswum pool shift: run to oblivion with the following indelible pointers to fame and a fling with large-breasted groupies whose curves are a drool the merchant banker the political swing of time ignorance and greed curling the lips of moneys oh so willing fool shift (run to oblivion with the following disaster) a night to day wallowing among the most impossibly uncool the merchant banker the political swing er man aint it crazy here no its fing er licking dangerously suicidal in fact a bull shift run to oblivion with the following: the merchant banker the political swing

136

Ian Monk

IN YOUR DREAMBOAT JUST LOOK In your dreamboat there just look she is as cute as the neighbours brown gaze as the silence of her thought as the haze around this mornings bile the hook in the blue of the magazine took my sperm away my breath steaming a maze of pathways in the dark the love the craze in your dreamboat there just look while across the trees two magpies three crows one rook flap their instincts into the laz iness of an English autumns trees as limp as praise around this mornings bile the hook of the tune the tumble-down crook angling his breakfast from the raise d ghosts of steamed shootless veg and eyeless rays in your dreamboat there just look think about what youre doing in this nook theres an army with its amaze ment still intact browns to greys around this mornings bile the hook of the song the reason the cook who batters away his fritter the easy lays who fling out their kisses love uneasiness love me stays in your dreamboat there just look around this mornings bile the hook is still in my skin you fucker still there tangled up with your hair and everything about your thin smiling body this morning in a kind of bored desperation I spare

START TO RHYME 137

Ian Monk

myself from myself from you while care is still in my skin and my traces my bruised shin Dan dare machine imagined rare and everything about your thin beauty theres no prescription to spin just the usual list blue stare the beckoning stair is still in my skin that kind of thing the pin cushions the needle the fair play of the debonair and everything about your thin admiration for my chat my grin rattling its way through my face where nothing occurs to me and to you everything is bare is still in my skin and everything about your thin religion is as soft as doughnuts the kindest curse comes from hate the weasel words from love she ate the silence of my face like butts of given-up fags of huts full of fucking hunters with great shots over the nature reserve her state religion is as soft as doughnuts but she hasnt noticed cos her guts are as hard-wired as her brain cells which state the bleedingly blindingly blatant its late

138

the silence of my face like butts over a tea flakes the madman cuts the wilfully celibate the wantonly cerebrate religion is as soft as doughnuts this bargaining position for instance for when Jesus shuts up the shop of his bleeding non existence makes a date with all the gobs whove swallowed since the year fate the silence of my face like butts burning to themselves like candles incense ruts through the meadow of daily bored meaning bait dangling from hook to plate religion is as soft as doughnuts START TO RHYME the silence of my face like butts that rub their presence into a surface I shift from side to side till my bone pricked hide gets as worn and weary as my face is an ongoing fucking disgrace forgotten features slide into the absence of mirrored pride that rub their presence into a surface of desperate distraction at this pace forget the others along for the ride by the waters of life he spewed up and cried gets as worn and weary as my face and reason its just another mindless race to a limp finishing line he lied to himself then smiled

139

 the dumb the snide that rub their presence into a surface watch their fucking backs just in case some cunt comes along with applied knowledge of butchery which when trusted and tried gets as worn and weary as my face she bends to undo her lace and her motion is so lovely I stare like fried scallops like globules that just crept out and died that rub their presence into a surface gets as worn and weary as my face does in this stream of silent crap I envy you I said I love you she replied then fled nowhere better than this someplace this trap for the hap lessness for the unbelieving undead the credulous bled does in this stream of silent crap any solution float up to the trapdoor of breath? your head brushes against the floor and your love your hate unsaid nowhere better than this someplace this trap finally ring true tapwater to the deliriously drunk or bread to the stuffed and ugly lead does in this stream of silent crap work more effectively than imagination or dap perly draped thoughts and charming lyrical effects red Ian Monk 140

by no one neither in youth nor more or less senility nowhere better than this someplace this trap open you gob lip service the pap and the water and the wed ding balls head is the now of redemption the wrap per on the problem the cred ulous hope of silence the who there? the unfed does in this stream of silent crap nowhere better than this someplace this trap sound like an argument with the time of his gas and groans

bed?

START TO RHYME

meanwhile the lonely bones of intelligence start to rhyme the unlikely with the lame ice with the dime awful beauty of the street stones with the cotton of discovery while clones sound like an argument with the time of their creation as they noisily mime conversations on inexistent phones with inexistent dolly birds while the crones of intelligence start to rhyme with themselves youre stym ied now you fool your skill blatantly hones nothing from something while the drones sound like an argument with the time dinner is to be served or not so take your slime and plump it forget the hoity toity tones now your professional moans of intelligence start to rhyme

141

in their sleep like a crime still to be uncovered like cones dripping with neglect while our chaperones sound like an argument with the time of intelligence start to rhyme

142

Ian Monk

Scoli Acosta

In Conversation
with Joseph Mosconi and Rita Gonzalez

JOSEPH MOSCONI: Scoli, you spent the years 2000-2003 creating art in France. In your book documenting that period1 you wrote that your work was constructed as a day to day novel. Can you explain what you mean by that? How did such a novelization of daily life manifest in your work? SCOLI ACOSTA: Because of the framework of four years in France, the work became somewhat of a narrative construction. I think that being subjected to my work is like being put inside the middle of a narrative. It has a lot to do with dream structures. JM: Dream structures? SA: An internal logic, vaguely familiar, cyclical as well as linear time. Ive read interviews with David Lynch in which he speaks of the structure and logic of dreams. JM: Much of the art you made in France drew on the life and work of the 19th century poet Gerard de Nerval, who was also interested in the structures of dreams, in a pre-Freudian sense. How did you become interested in his writing? SA: I first read a book by Rene Daumal called Mount Analogue in Chicago in 1995. In the preface to that book there was some mention of Daumals influences, and one of them was Nerval. So I went and bought his book Aurelia, or The Dream and Life, and thats what I knew about France when I went to Paris. I used Nervals work as a springboard to create a series of relationships to other literary and artistic movements. And also to my own existence. JM: I remember when we first spoke about our mutual admiration for Mount Analogue all of a sudden you recited the poem that ends the book. You knew it off the top of your head. SA: Yes, I know this poem by heart. Its one of the few that I know.

143

I am dead because I lack desire, I lack desire because I think I possess, I think I possess because I do not try to give; Trying to give, you see you have nothing, Seeing you have nothing, you try to give of yourself, Trying to give of yourself, you see that you are nothing, Seeing that you are nothing, you try to become, Trying to become, you begin to live. JM: Does this poem have any other particular significance with the work you made about Nerval? There seems to be a nodal chain of influence moving from Nerval to Daumal to you, and looping back to Nerval. Did you find that one way to begin to live was to re-enact the lived experience of Nerval? SA: There were certain correlations but I wouldnt say that I was trying to become Nerval. I think that poem resonates in the quotidian. JM: What is it about the quotidian that fascinates you? Do you see it as a site for critique of the culture of cinematic spectacle, of consumption, of the fuel economy? (I ask this because your most recent show at the Daniel Reich Gallery, Day Was to Fall as Night Was to Break appropriates imagery from the Terence Malick film Badlands, as well as various motifs from car culture and the space race). You use low-tech objects in your work, and they are day-to-day objects, but they are also mass-produced objects. SA: I think theres a certain aesthetics of resourcefulness that Im interested in, and that just comes from people making things with their hands. I think there is a certain amount of critique that seeps into the process of making things, but my objective is not to critique institutions, or critique the film Badlands. Im interested in the poetry of the day-to-day, the juxtaposition of beautiful things, and the record of beautiful moments. Something like photography, but perhaps not necessarily realized as photography. Its more about trying to capture some kind of poetry or insight on a quotidian level. JM: You re-created the walking of Nervals lobster as a video-performance2, and you went to various spots that were important to Nervals life and took photographs by throwing a camera in the air, which produced a spinning effect in the photos. I wonder how your daily existence intersected with his. How did you theorize this relationship, and how did it work itself out as performance? You were doing a lot of performance at the time Scoli Acosta 144

Scoli Acosta, The Artist in the Role of Andr Breton, 2001 Photograph, 120 x 180 cm Image courtesy of the artist

SA: In terms of the geography of Paris I was able to go through the literature of Nerval and find the exact places where such and such a thing happened. It was like using doors to the past and becoming a shadowy figure in the literature itself and documenting it. The spinning motion of the camera in the air is somehow very fitting. Like going down a drain... the ability to go to those places in the early 2000s was somehow like time travel, I thought. JM: I want to ask about the photographs Nadja and The German Romantics. SA: Nadja was part of I was invited to do a few pages in a book by this French artist collective called MIX a few different things were coming together at that time. I was reading Nadja by Andre Breton, which was kind of a great discovery because it has photographs in the text and its about the city as well. It had a lot to do with what I was doing there. At the time that I was invited to do this, a friend had gotten an affich, a small advertisement in the mail for a voyant, a fortuneteller, and he read the name to me and it was Sakho. He said, Look. Monsieur Sakho! And I said, Oh yeah, thats the same name as Andre Bretons fortuneteller. But in Bretons book it was Madame Sacco, the same sound. I called the fortuneteller up and made an appointment, and I asked him for five locations in Paris that I could meet with a dead woman named Nadja. And so in those five different places I either wrote about the place, or I found an object there, or I took a photograph. JM: This spiritism mixed with the personal seems to echo Bretons quote in Nadja, Tell me whom you haunt and Ill tell you who you are. Did you make the costume that appears in the photograph specifically for your project, Nadja? How does the costume relate to the text of Bretons book? SA: It was partially intuitive and partially lifted from the second edition of Nadja, which included multiple photographic strips of her eyes. These are the only existing images of the actual Nadjaexcept for her own drawings that Breton also included in the book. She actually speaks about him as fire over water, if I remember correctly. There is a bit of a haunting going on. I was interested in opposites. The watery blue hat and gloves over the fiery scarf. It rained on the sun mirror as well. Regarding The German Romantics: Nerval was really interested in The German Romantics. Being a visual artist I asked myself who my German Romantics were and came up with a mish-mash of Josef Beuys and Drer. . I was using the term Romantics here very loosely. Drer once rode a horse from Austria or Italy across Germany and the Netherlands to the Dutch coast to draw a beached whale.

146

Scoli Acosta

Scoli Acosta, Nadja, 2001 Photograph, 60 x 90 cm Image courtesy of the artist

Scoli Acosta, The German Romantics, 2001 Photograph of character used in several performances Image courtesy of the artist, photograph by Daniel Klein

Perhaps its only romantic in retrospect though. JM: What I find striking about The German Romantics in particular, as well as a photograph of yours called The Artist in the Role of Andre Breton, is that they seem to echo certain art historical performance-projects. The character in The German Romantics brings to mind Kim Jones Mudman, and the Breton mask is almost identical to David Wojnarowiczs Rimbaud mask project. SA: I actually didnt even know about those. Its only recently that I saw a picture of Mudman and someone showed me the Wojnarowicz Rimbaud masks a couple of years after I started the project. I was glad to find kin. RITA GONZALEZ: Im struck by something that you said when you returned to Los Angeles. You said that when you gaze back on those years in Paris, it seems odd to you that so much of the work there was performance-based and now that you are back in Los Angeles, it seems much more of a slow, meditative, and solitary space. I wonder about your response to the rhythms of the city. Will you talk about the rhythm of the city dictating the kind of work that you do? SA: I wouldnt necessarily say that the city was dictating; the city dictates the sort of output that I have, but in Paris I happened to be invited early on to make some performances, and it seemed to be able to link a lot of the objects and drawings I was making together, and it just so happened that that sort of practice or process that I developed in the framework of this project was also very accommodating to the invitations that I was receiving from different institutions and different art spaces. So once Id done a couple performances, people saw them and it ended up being an efficient way to present steps within the evolution of the project there. JM: One thing Ive noticed looking at the work you did in France, and looking at the work youve done in Los Angeles, is that the work in France seems to have a very literary aspect to it; youre working off of ideas from Gerard de Nerval, as well as the Surrealists. In Los Angeles, I see a more of a cinematic and vehicular quality to your work, such as in your appropriations of Terence Malicks Badlands, the screen images of Sissy Spacek, your work with drive-in movie screens, and your exploration of alternative fuel economies. SA: The work is geographically specific and the subject matter for the most part evolves by chance. Nerval was on mind my when I went to France because that was what I knew of 149

In Conversation

France when I went there for the first time. The approach was literary from the beginning. Also living and working in a foreign country makes me very conscious of language all the time. So coming to Los Angeles Ive become very lazy with my words and very nonliterary but all of a sudden there is the American landscape, cinema, the ocean, and cars. The quotidian. RG: So much of your work, especially the performances, had been physically taxing. And then you came here and became more studio-based and you tried to eke out a space for that kind of work. You havent become sedentary, but perhaps less body-oriented, less physical. SA: It has become less physical. Also I think in Europe I do tend to write more, because it becomes more of a personal time when I can reflect on whats going on; it becomes my private English time where I get to create and be articulate in English, and go on with my day. Whereas in America youre just speaking English and you can get away with fewer words and being lazy about it. But I think this does relate to my practice. For instance coming to Los Angeles, this is the first time I have had a studio separate from my living space. The demand and invitations as well have changed in respect to the different countrys systems. RG: We were talking about the quotidian, but Id like to talk now aboutnot so much the place in which you find objects, but the object itself and the whole process of finding the object. I was thinking about this in relation to the residency you did in Lyon with the metal detector, with which you searched for underground objects in some way thats the perfect metaphor for the way you approach the found object. Theres a sort of excavation involved, theres this ferreting out of the object, and theres something else, almost an alchemical transformation of the object. SA: In taking into account those things youve already said, I think it has something to do with living in cities and simply being a lover of things, and also that eye of resourcefulness in finding the beauty in discarded objects. As well the energy that those objects consume over the course of their existence not necessarily consume, but absorb and exude. I like that psychic aspect of it, and I take that into account when Im building upon or recreating the objects. Living in cities actually this is in opposition to living in Los Angeles, because coming here was very difficult, I had to adapt my process to a certain extent in order to live here, because I found that in other cities simply going from point A to point B for an appointment, for

150

Scoli Acosta

example, I would find things that I liked a lot along the way. Whereas in Los Angeles youre isolated in the vehicle so you have to make time to actually go and find stuff, and look in secondhand stores, or go to places where you can often find discarded objects. RG: Sometimes the discarded object becomes a motif in your sculptural and performance worknot so much an ornamental motif but actually a sort of floral relief that is also a mass-produced decorative element. Theres some way that you actually rip that decorative element out, and somehow in its re-tracing or re-casting as a mask or tumor or extension growing out of your head, it begins to take on a much more mutant form. There are many artists right now who are interested in 50s or 60s design typology, and in a way theyre recasting the history of design. Here its almost as if youve taken these extremely banal design elements and youve mutated them. So they become an atomic cloud, or a shamanistic mask. Is this process intuitive or are you looking for that indeterminacy of form? Are you always trying to read against what something looks like? SA: In France I used to speak a lot about the things I made as a part of a visual vocabulary. And I think that a lot of the objects I work with are part of a particular vocabulary. So when Im working on projects I keep a mind-frame that filters out, or lets in, those things in my environment that are pertinent to those mind frames. And so thats how I start incorporating the found objects. Theyre already being pulled into a process. Its filtering out all the noise and bringing in those things that will further the movement. And as far as that transformation goes, it depends on how fully theyre incorporated into the spine of that visual vocabulary. If I find something thats appealing, I carry it with me as long as it will go along, as long as it will keep moving with me, or I with it. And in that process it does become transformed and does get integrated into the main structure of my work. JM: Are the particular objects themselves such as the chandelier or the nightshade, which are recurrent objects in your work symbolic? In some way I feel that theyre not symbolic that they operate as objects in and of themselves, or as objects with multiple purposes. But because youre drawing on a certain legacy of art history that emphasizes the symbolic reading of objects (such as Surrealism or Expressionism) I worry that your work could be mistaken for engaging in a kind of facile symbolism. Is a chandelier always just a chandelier? 151 In Conversation

Scoli Acosta, Mayonnaise (product shot), 2001 Photograph Image courtesy of the artist

Scoli Acosta, Spark Plug (product shot), 2001 Photograph Image courtesy of the artist

SA: Thats one of the weird things. I dont necessarily have a fixed set of rules. So sometimes a chandelier is a light source, sometimes its a headdress. I think its case-specific. It depends on the object and it depends on the context. I rely on a certain kind of dialogue. RG: So much collage is about an uneasy juxtaposition of images that creates tension and humor, or sarcasm and irony, al the collage work of John Heartfield. But you seem to reach for some kind of language, a descriptive language, to describe what happens when one actually transposes images. SA: I see the things that Im making as working against themselves and together within themselves; if its a series perhaps theyre working against and resonating with each other, internal dialogues. JM: In your most recent work there is an implicit critique of car culture the way oil is used, of the fuel economy. For instance, there is a poodle made of popcorn and corn, which is used in ethanol, is also an ingredient of moonshine. Do you see any connection between the theme of alternative technology in your work and the low-tech materials you use? Scoli Acosta 154 SA: I like possibilities. I think it all boils down to resourcefulness, and looking around you and seeing what you have in your environment, and trying to think of better ways to do things, or more beautiful combinations. That goes back to resourcefulness, or a handmade quality. What youre talking about there, that was a moonshine still that appeared in my installation and theoretically it could function if we traded-in the copper-covered wood with a copper still and put a fire under it. It is all about resourcefulness and poetry. Moonshine still. RG: I know its not ideologically driven but have you ever thought about your work in relationship to different tendencies in art history that are about an aesthetics of poverty, from Arte Povera to Chicano Art? The idea of resourcefulness or rasquache, sort of making due with what you have, like being able to transform a tin can into a vase which goes back to an aesthetic of poverty or hunger. SA: I included a picture of one of Mario Merzs igloos in my proposal for the Montreal Biennial. The handmade or this aesthetics of resourcefulness that youre talking about is interesting because I think its roots are in poverty. Yet when you find yourself not patching your roof with who-knows-what to keep the rain out, but spending your time instead as an artist putting together objects with your hands, it all of a sudden becomes quite luxurious. The time, the objects.

Scoli Acosta, ... Day Was to Fall as Night Was to Break... installation view, 2006 Daniel Reich Gallery, New York Image courtesy of the Daniel Reich Gallery

Hopefully this is not simply a tree of luxury. RG: So would you say its more an ethos or an ethics? SA: Its a necessity. Fluxus for example thats a good reference, not because I integrate that history into my work but because Fluxus was a combination of actions and materials on a very simple level that completely opened up a whole other mind space. I could see that parallel to my work. I hope it does open up other possibilities or other mind spaces. Sort of like walking into a dream. Its like going into an entirely different structure that is built up by the day-to-day, but it has this twist on it. At the moment I dont really have any art historical moments that Im really looking at; its more like Im looking at the murals and the cornucopias on every street corner around my studio. JM: But muralism is a part of art history. SA: I havent gone that far yet. Its still raw material. RG: Lets jump back to Los Angeles. Youve been back for a few years now, and recently you were asked to do a performance after not having performed for quite a while. Because so much of the work that youve been making here has been in other media, such as process-drawing, or teaching yourself how to paint, or the installations that involve collecting the residue of different trips and urban explorations, how has your approach to performance changed from when you were performing in France? SA: Being asked to make a performance after three years was very good for me. In a way, since so much of my work was built upon performance as the main expression of what I was doing in Paris, in the end I guess I was a bit tired of it, and it was a bit of a relief to get back to paper and pen and tin cans. I just called the new performance Pretty Picture. Its basically a series of performed non-sequiturs that nonetheless do have something in common. A broken-up narrative. But after making the performance, and in the process of making the performance, I realized what an incredible element I had been excluding from the presentation of the work in other media, which was my body. Which is quite an incredible antenna. It has sent me onto this new body of work. Thats not to say that since Ive been in Los Angeles Ive excluded the body those paintings with the eyeglass shape, the nightshades, those are conscious of being a body. So I think that performative work was living on in my production, but not necessarily in a performative sense. Scoli Acosta 156

RG: Those nightshade paintings to me were, in a sense, trying to represent vision, a sort of embodied vision. But the drawings, paintings and objects you made after your latest performance seem like relics of the performed event, almost like you were casting off elements if you can think about it in terms of your body, it was like an egg you had laid during the performance. SA: The sunglass or nightshade paintings are an attempt to make paintings from further back from the surface of my eyeballs. So that the exterior narrative or image was surrounded by internal chatter, something more abstract like phosphenes, or the bleeding of the external to the internal, and vice versa. The paintings and drawings I used for the performance either became decorative elements for the body or decoration for the set. Nonetheless, content. The performance and the objects for the performance were made in a short time. I wanted to continue to explore its various facets. It had been such a long time since Id made a performance, so it served as a period of digestion and meditation on the act of performing as well. JM: What I found fascinating about the performance is that it was so non-performative. It wasnt a show, it wasnt theatrical. I think when people go to a performance today I think most performance art has become so streamlined into a show, that thats what viewers expect: a show. Whereas your performance had these moments of beauty and coherence as well as these distressing moments of failure. You asked the crowd, Is this okay? That really made the audience uncomfortable because thats not what theyve come to expect. They want something professional. SA: Theres a certain fragility in performance that I have always been interested in, but it is also those visual mechanics that become interesting in tying the narrative together. The rhythm. Moments of engrossing focus and fluidity strung together with a wheres the light switch? mentality. I didnt expect the majority of this particular performance to be so audience-engaging, but I think it was that push and pull of performing and not performing that helped give it the energy it had. I liked the part near the end when people began suggesting how the set should be lit. This push and pull somehow relates back to the drawings and paintings as well. 157

In Conversation

Scoli Acosta, Pretty Picture performance, 2007 LA>< ART, Los Angeles Image courtesy of LA>< ART, Photograph by Lesley Moon

JM: Well nobody was throwing rotten tomatoes at you, but as the piece went on, as a piece of endurance, it was driving people away. In the end there were probably five people in the room, whereas in the beginning there were maybe a hundred or more. Were you trying to drive people away? SA: When Malik Gaines, the organizer of the event, met with me to discuss ideas, one of the things he mentioned was one of the performers at Cabaret Voltaire taking the stage and just starting to count. And that was the performance. It could have just gone on forever theoretically. And so that captured my imagination. Besides the fact that I would have loved to see Kurt Schwitters do the Ursonate in person. I think it would have been terribly boring! But in retrospect it would have been a great moment. So that comment by Malik about the counter stuck to me. And also the fact that when I was younger, in high school and just out of high school when I was discovering performance, I always liked the work of Chris Burden, and I was on the West Coast, so there was a touch of that spirit in the piece. RG: Only you didnt get crucified. In Conversation SA: I wouldnt want to! JM: But it must have been quite painful, right? You ended the performance by holding your arms above your head and mimicking the movements of a dove for nearly two hours. SA: It was tiring. I did it once at a friends house in Kansas City for fun. There are certain things that reappear or come back in the work, and this also relates to the idea of a visual vocabulary. In this case, the durational aspect stems from a conversation I had with that same friend in the early 90s. He said, You can hold up your hands forever! So I decided to try it. Its just something I was able to draw upon. It was an experience and something that became quite performative. JM: A past that youve excavated, much like the objects that youve excavated. SA: Yeahexcavation from my own past is a bit severeexcavation of objects is more fitting. I would say revisiting rather than excavating. My past was revisiting me, rather than me revisiting it. RG: Do you think of the objects that you make after or before your performance as relics of the event? 159

SA: After the fact, yes. But its hard to say. They come back. Things do come back, so its not necessarily like they ever died and became relics. I see them as still alive. They can be repurposed, or even remade, so that kind of spirit is back in the work. JM: Do you remake performances ever? SA: Ive remade certain actions within a performance using the same or similar objects. I havent remade an entire performance except for an opera-comique, which we did three days in a row in Paris. But within those three days there were so many possibilities for error and deviation that it was never the same. I use the objects and sculptures as mnemonic devices in the performance. That extends from the fact that I was creating installations that performances would take place within. JM: We talked earlier about how your installations adopt that approach. When you walk into your installation they are laid out in a narrative, diagrammatic sense, where youre walking among objects with oblique connections between them. Scoli Acosta 160 SA: I think that extends from the fact that I was making installations for performances. I think that was one of the things that was interesting to the people I worked with in France; the performances werent just stand-up comedy, they were engrossing installations that a performance would take place within. RG: Although when I actually got to witness your process (in terms of the installation you did at the California Biennial) I began to believe more and more everyday I began to see how much control you had over the situation, over a seemingly chaotic situation, and I began to think about it more as you creating some kind of obstacle course and I dont mean that in terms of tripping people up physically, but every element that you added was almost creating this necessity for mental gymnasticsand I dont know that most people would have spent that time to perform the mental gymnastics. But you thought it through, you thought what you wanted the person going through that to do. SA: I would say in that situation that it was almost more filmic, in that it was composed more by feeling rather than a particular intellectual read that I expected people to get from one object to the next. At the same time that I am creating these obstacles I am always trying to keep in mind the whole. The piece becomes self-reflective and evolves its own internal logic. I try to give each of the elements its own integrity so it can stand alone or make the whole that much stronger, and generally speaking I already have elements that Im working with that I use as springboards.

RG: Right, but not necessarily an iconography that you draw from. Because what youre saying for someone whos not familiar with your work, they would think, Oh theres these recurring visual motifs. Well not really. I think you really have a vast emporium of objects and images that you use, but its much more abstract than just saying, Oh I always paint flowers. SA: As opposed to a bible of iconography I take these opportunities as a chance to explore and discover. There are certain things that I am looking out for or paying attention to over periods of time. But in the process as well as in the product, it all somehow comes back to poetics and resourcefulness.

1. A Deep Puddle & Piquillo ou le Reve de Mr. Hulule, Scoli Acosta. Les Laboratoires dAubervilliers et lcole Nationale Suprieure des Beaux-Arts. Paris, 2005. 2. According to legend, Nerval would often lead his pet lobster on a blue ribbon through the gardens of the Palais-Royal in Paris.

In Conversation 161

Scoli Acosta, Dandelion, 2005 Mixed Media 91 cm x 61 cm Image courtesy of the Daniel Reich Gallery

Daniel Tiffany Infidel Culture

The Brands of Cupid To those who look on poetry with suspicion like those confronted by the jargon of a secret society lyric obscurity is a fact, perhaps the only fact divulged by a poem. The enviably polarized condition of readers duped, baffled, or snared by a rhyme may help to explain the particular absence in the history of letters of anything resembling a physiognomy of nightlife. The rare student, or philosopher, of the night must address her audience, like Socrates, in a voice that is not her own, though we should not forget that one exemplary figure, Doctor Matthew Mighty-Grain-of-Salt Dante OConnor (a character in Djuna Barnes novel, Nightwood) speculates, notoriously, from experience: the good doctor, surprised in a blond wig at three oclock in the morning by a female visitor to his chambre coucher, undertakes with some irritation his great prospectus of the night: Take history at night, have you ever thought of that, now? In true Socratic fashion, he supplies an answer to his own question: Have you thought of the night, now, in other times, in foreign countries in Paris? When the streets were gall high with things you wouldnt have done for a dares sake, and the way it was then....The criers telling the price of wine to such effect that the dawn saw good clerks full of piss and vinegar, and blood-letting in side streets where some wild princess in a night-shift of velvet howled under a leech.1 The night criers hawking wine (and the application of the leech) in Barnes text belong in the company of vendors and beggars chanting in the streets, to the poetics of the canting song. Voices, never entirely real, rise out of the historical night, scant evidence of a culture that remains beneath the threshold of verisimilitude. Yet these anonymous measures also contribute, more substantially and reliably, to a literary topos, a place made of words, a placeless place, where history and lyric poetry converge in the dark: a nightspot. The anachronistic air of Barnes great experimental novel one of the distinguishing features of the modern nocturne draws on many of the same Elizabethan and Jacobean sources which preserve the rhyme-booty of the canting crew. Indeed, the specialized

163

trades and topographies of nightlife include the itinerant habits of the canting crew, often finding common ground in the promiscuous space of the tavern. Thus the history of nightlife and the riddling speech of cant illuminate one another, blindly and reciprocally, disclosing precious details about phenomena that have nearly vanished from historical memory. In this sense, the rhymes of the canting crew (embedded in a variety of sources) function as sources of historical and profane illumination, fitfully and haphazardly lighting the topography of nightlife. The Politics of Nightlife The sociological obscurity of the nightclub provides safe haven for practices judged to be improper, indecent, or illegal by ordinary society. These forms of transgression have historically often amounted to little more than intimate transactions between disparate social classes and races events that would be impossible in the light of day. The fact that these transgressions have political significance becomes evident only when they are identified as elements in a larger field of cultural experimentation. Under these circumstances, the nightclub becomes a social and political laboratory, a theater, but also, more surprisingly, an early site for the implementation of the new technical media a media lab. Transmission becomes a form of transgression in the sociological half-light of the tavern. The advent of modern nightlife, the moment of historical self-awakening, coincides with a general expansion of court records of infidel culture. The portrayals of the demimonde encrypted in the canting song begin to appear in the records of the political state, as witnessed, for example, by these dossiers from the archives of the Parisian police, 1781-1785. GORSAS: proper for all kinds of vile jobs. Run out of Versailles and put in Bictre [a jail for especially disreputable criminals] by personal order of the king for having corrupted children whom he had taken in as lodgers.... Gorsas produces libelles [slander sheets]. He has an arrangement with an apprentice printer who has been fired from other printing shops. He [Gorsas] is suspected of having printed obscene works there. He peddles prohibited books. AUDOUIN: calls himself a lawyer, writes nouvelles la main [seditious pamphlets], peddler of forbidden books; he is connected with Prudhomme, Manuel, and other disreputable authors and book peddlers. He does all kinds of work; he will be a spy when one wants.

164

Daniel Tiffany

DELACROIX: lawyer, writer, expelled from the bar. He produces [judicial] mmoires for shady cases; and when he has no mmoires to write, he writes scurrilous works. 2 These shadowy figures represent la basse littrature, a new kind of literary community shaped in part by radical politics, but also by a revolution in the media of the demimonde, which began to take shape in the waning years of the Old Regime in France. Though we have some evidence of the ephemera produced by this community of authors and printers (pamphlets, scandal sheets, squibs, broadside ballads), a detailed picture of this clandestine milieu at the very bottom of the Enlightenment depends largely on reports filed by government spies and on the archives of the Bastille. As comments in the files Ive cited indicate, many of these individuals served the Jacobin revolutionary cause by participating in the burgeoning democratization of print media at the time. They were authors (and so-called philosophes), but also booksellers, smugglers of forbidden texts, and radical pressmen; they had no choice but to operate underground, apart from the monopolistic and government-protected guild of printers. This clandestine society of ultra-radicals made its headquarters in what had been the domain of the canting crew: taverns, night cellars, and coffeehouses. In Paris, a constellation of counter-academies and anti-salons emerged prior to 1789, as Robert Darnton explains: While the great names gathered in the Procope or La Rgence [celebrated Parisian cafs], lesser figures congregated in the notorious Caveau of the Palais-Royal, and the humblest hacks frequented the cafs of the boulevards, blending into an underworld of swindlers, recruiting agents, spies, and pickpockets; here one finds only pimps, buggers, and bardaches. 3 Elsewhere, Darnton emphasizes that one could not easily distinguish between the radical and criminal elements of the demimonde; he states, Many writers lived on the fringes of the law....Some, at the bottom of the literary underworld, sank into criminality. At the same time, however, the pamphleteers and radical pressmen who occasionally turned to crime to make ends meet could also be recruited as government spies, in order to protect themselves from prosecution for their criminal pursuits. Darnton claims that many spies were underworld writers themselves with their own dossiers in the archives of the police.

Infidel Culture 165

166

Evidently, the manifold or queer identities of the canting crew extended to the formation of a radical underground, yet the topology of nightlife was permanently and fundamentally altered by its increasingly political orientation, by its incorporation of new technical media (print, at this stage), and by the industrialization of light in the mid-nineteenth century. With these changes, the innate, though by no means guaranteed, affinities between nightlife and radical politics become more discernible, as do certain topologies of pleasure. For one thing, the dissolute and adversarial nature of the canting crew becomes more explicit, more agitational, and more organized though still largely improvised and ephemeral. Secondly, the class implications integral to the violence and dissolute pleasures of the dangerous classes become far more distinct and overt in the newly politicized topos of the tavern. The new rhymes of the canting crew (songs, slogans, sermons) adapt the rough trade of the nightspot to the social and sexual libertinage of insurrection, contributing to the anomalous genre of the night-book, le livre philosophique, which is at once pornographic and politically seditious. In many respects, the social, textual, and political experimentation informing the fluid topology of nightlife at this time established the groundwork for what would become the modern avant-garde. The incorporation of a technical medium (print) into the newly politicized topology of nightlife represents an exceedingly complex and ambiguous development in the history of infidel society. On one hand, one could argue that the dissemination of the libertine rhetoric and praxis of the demimonde facilitating revolution via the technical medium of print causes an irreparable breach in the hermeticism (and integrity) of the topos, or stanza, of the nightspot. Yet the secrecy of the canting crew had already been compromised by the dissemination of anonymous lyrics written in the canting speech of vagrants and thieves. Hence breaking the secrecy of the nightspot its conversion into an open secret is an inherently lyrical event, recapitulated in the technical dissemination of its abruptly politicized habits and judgments. Integrating print (a technical medium) into the topology of nightlife thus renews its lyrical economy, demonstrating as well the transmissibility of its substance. For if it is true that the canting song, with its inscrutable jargon, may be understood as the truest form of nightlife (precisely because of its ambiguous verbal substance), then the dissemination of a radicalized (but also newly mediated and derealized) form of nightlife offers historical evidence of the reciprocity between the substance of the medium and the improvised substance of the nightspot. Furthermore, a society undone, or dissolved, by this transfusion of substance, so to speak, can be refashioned in the image of the demimonde, becoming its own underworld: a means of queering the world that deprives it, happily, of material certainty and continuity. But only for an instant: instantia, in stanza.

Daniel Tiffany

Insofar as the transfusion of substance (via the medium of print) can be viewed as an abstraction of physical circumstances and events, then one must acknowledge the increasing sentimentality of nightlife that is, its progressive derealization, or removal from its physical settings. In other words, the evolving sentimentality of nightlife coincides with the increasing role of the technical media in its articulation. Furthermore, this process of mediation (in a revolutionary context), this depletion of the purely sensual aspect of nightlife, can be seen as advancing the hidden teleology of its primary, verbal substance, as a restoration (and a revision) of the elemental correspondence between the lyric stanza and the topos of nightlife. One could therefore claim that the essential inwardness of nightlife, its resistance to appearing openly in the world, finds renewed expression (and political significance) in the tenuous substance of the new media. Infidel Culture The French expatriate colony of radical pamphleteers, offshore printers, and smugglers active in London prior to 1789 gave way in the 1790s to native revolutionary cadres operating out of a confederation of Jacobin clubs, radical public houses, and dissenting chapels. Analyzing the social composition of this tavern political underworld, historian Iain McCalman writes, the London democratic movements of the 1790s comprised three separate but related elements: the mainly artisan proponents of French Jacobin-republicanism; overlapping groups of infidels, or political freethinkers, dedicated to moral and political subversion; and an auxiliary force of lower-class religious enthusiasts with a similar passion to overthrow the established order.4 Further, as was the case in the milieu of la basse littrature in Paris, according to McCalman, many of these ultras were also connected with Londons notorious underworld of crime and profligacy. Through activities such as theft, pimping, rape, blackmail, and pornography they introduce us to a region where popular politics intersected with lumpen and organized crime. As a result, McCalman speculates, this marginal society of artisan revolutionaries, infidel poets, and plebeian social prophets helped to preserve cultural forms associated with the criminal underworld that is, the vernacular tradition of the canting crew: Some elements of this ultra underworld act also as long-term carriers of rough political and cultural traditions which are thought to have perished at the end of the Regency [the

Infidel Culture 167

168

years 1820-1830]. Evidence of the radical underworlds affinity for the canting tradition can be found, for example, in the career of William West, author and infidel printer, who published not only seditious and pornographic texts, but anthologies such as The Ramblers Flash Songster and The Flash Chaunter. As an author, West published Tavern Anecdotes and Reminiscences of the Origins of Signs, Clubs, Coffeehouses... (1825), one of the few contemporaneous sources documenting the tavern culture of the radical underworld. 5 The significance of the term infidel as a general rubric for these underground activities can be traced to the appearance in London (after the 1790s) of seditious chapels devoted to the proliferation of various outlaw discourses supporting the ultra-radical cause (those advocating physical force, in contrast to reform radicals). More remotely, this term would have reverberated with the atavistic threat of the alien disbeliever, the muslim infidel. Taking advantage of laws permitting public assembly for religious purposes, these abject meeting places functioned as a public forum in which the discourse of the emergent could be grafted over the discourse of the dominant.... Religion could be read as an allegory of politics. 6 That is to say, these heretical chapels spawned a generation of political prophets and infidels, cultivating a revolutionary theater of mock worship. 7 Such worship included the circulation of fugitive literature and infidel publications: tracts by Voltaire, Paine, and Volney; chapbooks of infidel poetry, and half-penny pamphlets such as Every Man His Own Pike Maker. 8 Aside from the rare autobiographical or historiographical text (such as The Polemic Fleet of 1816, a lengthy, satirical broadsheet), our knowledge of this clandestine milieu, like our picture of the Parisian literary underground, depends largely on reports of government spies, whose testimony was periodically compiled in the parliamentary Report from the Committee of Secrecy. Many of the surviving pamphlets and broadsheets of the radical underworld exist only in copies confiscated by informants (along with their scribbled notes) and deposited in the archives of the Home Office. Further, the various infidel societies meeting in taverns, coffee houses, and dissenting chapels were thoroughly infiltrated by informants hence the common practice of No Names at meetings and spies (including a type known as engraver-spies, trained to produce visual records of clandestine events).9 William Blake called these spies Satans Watch-fiends. 10 Indeed so pervasive was the surveillance that David Worrall contends, Britain 1790-1820 was a spy culture. Even the surveillers were surveilled. 11 Jeremy Bentham, for example, came under surveillance for funding conspirators seeking to assassinate the British cabinet: the inventor of the Panopticon had already been fixed in the Governments panoptic gaze. 12

Daniel Tiffany

 Emphasizing the correlation between the unreliability of the evidence in these reports and the need for secrecy among the ultras (and citing the example of the infidel Robert Wedderburn), McCalman writes, Such people usually escape the historians notice because they leave few traces. That we are able to reconstruct something of Wedderburns mentality and milieu is thanks in large part to the labours of government spies and informers. Needless to say this is partial evidence in every sense; scholars such as Edward Thompson and Richard Cobb have warned how carefully we must fumigate every fact that comes from police and intelligence records. Yet, allowing with Ben Jonson that most spies are of base stuff, the early nineteenthcentury variants offer a surprising diversity of testimony and perspective: they include casual observers of all classes, nosey clergymen, anonymous informers, professional shorthand writers, stolid police undercover men, self-appointed sensation seekers, needy, greedy, or fearful radicals and their disgruntled relatives, and a few schizoid individuals with loyalties to both government employers and radical colleagues. 13 Taking into account McCalmans observations, we find, once again, a basic correspondence between the hermetic nature of the communities under consideration (the radical/infidel underground, the demimonde of the canting crew, the topology of nightlife) and the obscurity of the verbal elements disclosing (or substantiating) these communities (spies reports, canting songs, tavern talk). In the particular circumstance of the London radical underground, the correlation between verbal and sociological obscurities became more acute with the rise of counterrevolutionary sentiment and government repression in the late 1790s, a development, as Bryan Palmer explains, requiring the infidel community to withdraw more effectively into the backrooms of taverns and brothels: Forced into darkness by state repression, the Jacobinism of the late 1790s withdrew into the shadows of political culture and the last of the decades revolutionaries, their democratic, public agitation outlawed, nurtured the radicalism of the clandestine cell. 14 These developments suggest that the dissemination of infidel culture (via print) waxed and waned, periodically retracting into the social monad of the tavern, the archetype of the clandestine political cell.

Infidel Culture 169

170

Bearing in mind McCalmans revelation of the intricate motivations of spy testimony, which contribute to its status as partial evidence, one would want to emphasize its lack of objectivity, its variegated tone and, hence, inadvertent literary effects. In this sense, one should identify the writing of spies, despite its official task, as one of the principal productions of the world of radical-infidel letters. 15 Indeed, from a purely stylistic perspective, some attention might be given to the curious innovations in prose resulting from the spies efforts to record verbatim, coupled with their own interpolations, the oaths sworn by infidels in a boisterous tavern. 16 The clandestine society of writers and hacks made its headquarters, as Ive indicated, in seedy alehouses, backroom chapels, and low coffeehouses. The Report from the Committee of Secrecy of 1817 describes the freethinking literati who attended the secret meetings of the London Corresponding Society (LCS), a seminal organization in radical politics: the minds of those who attend their meetings are tainted and depraved; they are taught contempt for all Decency, Law, all Religion and Morality, and are thus prepared for the most atrocious scenes of outrage and violence. 17 Thomas Spence, the founder of the LCS and author of an agrarian reform plan which became the basis of ultra-radical doctrine, maintained a bookstore called The Hive of Liberty, a clearing-house of seditious publications. A spys report from 1794 describes the setting: Another shop is Spences in Little Turnstile where a periodical work called Pigs Meat is published. This man lives in dirtiest poverty, but his shop is decorated with lines in prose and verse, expressing a determination to carry on his traffic in spite of Laws and Magistrates. This is one of the houses where they train to arms. 18 In addition to training men to arms an act of high treason Spence developed what he called a New Alphabet, a curious phonetic system designed to enable the inarticulate. 19 For a number of years (between 1801 and 1814), Spence also conducted political free-and easies (the preferred mode of ultra-radical debate) every Wednesday night at a low alehouse called the Cock at the corner of Lumber Court and Grafton Street, Soho.20 There, according to McCalman, No one was too poor or unrespectable to be excluded from Spences utopia; it embraced every man, woman, or child, whether born in wedlock or not, as well as immigrants, foreigners, blacks and even criminals all those who have no Helpers.21 In addition, Worrall claims, Radical debating clubs (and perhaps radical politics in general) may have been socially important in providing the opportunity for people with disabilities to fully realize their own potential: Thomas Preston and Thomas Hazard, the post-war Spenceans, were both lame while the more famous Samuel Waddington was 4 feet 2 inches tall. 22

Daniel Tiffany

 The Spencean underworld harbored, in one spys words disciples of the wildest wickedest theories, intending to inflame the unthinking. 23 A detailed description of a typical free-and-easy appears in a spys report of 1817: It wanted about 10 minutes to 7 when they got therethey went first into the tap room then up stairs The room upstairs is two Rooms made into one, it is a cosy room. They waited in the tap Room till the Company became very numerous, then they went up.... Then Porter [Thomas Porter, associate of Spence] called Silence and gave the first Song It was a song against the Prince Regent, about the fat pig in Hyde Park, and the King gone to St. Pauls then others sang a great many Songs all against the Government and after each Man had done singing he gave a toast One was given by Porter and was this May the Skin of the tyrants be burnt into Parchment and the Rights of Man written on it. 24 In addition to this succession of songs and toasts, the infidels at a free-and-easy sometimes as many as 150 could be found wearing what one informant called a kind of radical millenary items of clothing and accessories signifying radical sympathies: white hats, for example, or a green silk umbrella with a hooked yellow stick. 25 Whats more, the mechanicks and sailors present could order a glass of Radical: Radical was a beverage drunk as an alternative to heavily taxed tea, coffee, and alcohol: to order and drink a glass of Radical was to take part in an economic boycott. Like a white hat, it was a badge recognized by others. 26 The range of signifying practices and experimental media extended to infidel print culture: In much of his propaganda, Spence deliberately sought to use the language and literary forms of the vulgar, the poor, and semi-literate (including chapbooks, ballads, posters, and almanacs). 27 Not surprisingly, elements of canting speech surfaced in these ephemeral media and in the incendiary wall-chalkings that appeared on walls overnight a practice reflected, perhaps, in the mottoes and lines of verse covering the walls of Spences bookshop. 28 Experimentation in new and traditional media thus ranged from handbills to graffiti to small metal tokens stamped with revolutionary slogans and mottoes (sometimes on existing coinage). 29 Infidel Culture 171

 A notable, strategic variation of subversive wall-chalkings occurred through the agency of so-called cell-wall poets: political detainees slated for execution who scribbled their final poems on the walls of their cells. One of the Cato Street conspirators, for example, inscribed several quatrains against the government, one of whose spies (anticipated in the poem) dutifully recorded these lines, written in the tower by J T Brunt: The home Departments Secretaire His Orders they would make you Stare An hour a Day Consigned to Walk But mind they neither Wink nor talk For those Are Gifts of human reason And they Are Adepts At high Treason No biger rogues on earth they be on For so Saith edwards the espion Daniel Tiffany You may Let them eat drink And sleep But Knives and forks must from them keep or theyll Comit Assassination The rogues would Overturn the nation. 30 Concerning the transitivity of this speech act, Worrall notes, Brunts declaration of authorship is interesting and probably an attempt to circulate his thoughts to a wider audience after his execution and subsequent to some Home Office leakage. 31 And, indeed, since our knowledge of this poem depends on the spys preservation of it, Brunts strategy may have achieved a kind of success. In addition, however, to the emerging vernacular genres of slogans, mottoes, toasts, and cell-wall testaments, Spence appropriated and published excerpts of canonical British poetry in his radical journal, Pigs Meat. Accordingly, Worrall notes the efforts of houseto-house booksellers who recommended Spences pamphlets while they sold Popes poetry in part-works. 32 More specifically, in Pigs Meat, one finds Examples of Safe Printing, where Spence introduces a passage from Spencers Fairie Queen (punning on the spelling of poets name) with an apology of the most devious kind: To prevent misrepresentation in these prosecuting times, it seems necessary to publish everything relating to tyranny and Oppression, though only among the brutes, in the most guarded manner. The following are meant as Specimens. 33 He then proceeds to demonstrate how seventeenth-century

172

Elizabethan poetry might be turned to the ends of radical politics in the 1790s: That tyger, or that other salvage wight Is so exceeding furious and fell, As WRONG, (Not meaning our most gracious sovereign Lord the King or the Government of the country) when it has armd himself with might; Not fit mong men that do not reason well But mong wild beats and salvage woods to dwell, Where still stronger (Not meaning the Great Men of our country) doth the weak devour. 34 In a most guarded manner in a gesture of ironic deflection the interpolated lines in italics convert Spencers allegory into an Example of Safe Printing: one curious Specimen of infidel poetry. Less ambiguously, the slogan for the Spa Fields Rising (the closest the ultra radicals come to armed insurrection) was a fragment from Shakespeares Tempest: like the baseless fabric of a Vision leaving not a wrack behind. 35 Poetry and singing, as earlier descriptions of free-and-easies indicated, were essential to the conviviality and revolutionary praxis of the tavern political underworld: Songs and ballads one of the oldest expressions of the English poor also featured prominently at Spencean debating club meetings, just as they had done in Jacobin taverns during the 1790s and at Spencean free-and-easies during the war years. This kind of singing alarmed the establishment almost as much as plebeian debating....The Report from the Committee of Secrecy of 1817 cited the Spenceans profane and seditious songs as one of the chief justifications for suppressing the society. 36 More concisely, Thomas Evans, in his manifesto of the Spencean free-and-easy, exhorts the infidel: Sing and meet and meet and sing, and your Chains will drop off like burnt Thread.37 Elaborating on the subversive measures of oral poetry, Worrall comments, A populace who sing their rights and instruct each other in song eluded surveillance in their

Infidel Culture 173

chorus of members. Though there were spies in the tavern, they could sing Spencean songs in their Families. The music of the free and easy is the music of the carnival, harlequin with an apocalyptic dagger. 38 Many poets of unrespectable origin, including Spence himself (whose poems were collected in Spences Songs of 1811), helped to record scenes from an underworld in the making. Here, for example, burly stonecutter-thief, Thomas Porter recalls (in a ballad of 1807) meeting Spence at the sign of the Swan: ...To the Swan I took my flight, Down in the New Street Square, Sir, Where every Monday night, Friend Tommy Spence comes there, Sir. 39

Daniel Tiffany 174

Another portrait of Spence appears in a tavern ballad of 1811 by Thomas Evans (a leading activist): At the sign of the Fleece For a trifle apiece Spence treats all the swine with a Book But not for vile pelf, Tis all wrote by himself To instruct by Hook or by Crook. 40 The reference to swine alludes to Spences radical journal Pigs Meat, a title appropriating Burkes reference to the swinish multitudes in Reflections on the Revolution in France. Pelf is a cant word meaning spoils or booty, which gives us the verb to pilfer. The appearance of cant in some of these poems can be explained by the class origin of many of the participants at these meetings: bakers boys, mechanics and artisans, the backbone of Londons drunken free-and-easies, cider cellars, cock and hen clubs, and blackguard taverns....many of whom also exercised their literary bent by composing tracts, elegies, odes and songs. 41 These comments point to the influence of the militant drinking songs of the canting crew (which often abuse the authorities) on the writing of poetry in freethinking circles and clubs.

Shoemaker Poets The laboring poor and indigent classes appropriated and revised the critical philosophy of the Enlightenment in myriad ways. In France, where this volatile amalgam of social and philosophical elements first began to coalesce prior to 1789, the descent of rationalism from the salon to the street, from Voltaire to Marat, provided the most immediate intellectual framework for the Jacobin revolution. The figure of the philosophe, the Enlightenment intellectual, gave birth to the Rousseau of the gutter (le Rousseau du ruisseau): the revolutionary spirit passed to the lean and hungry men of Grub Street, to the cultural pariahs who, through poverty and humiliation, produced the Jacobin version of Rousseauism. 42 In this context, the word philosophical (or philosophique) could be applied to a work of scholarship, but also to a pornographic novel, a scatological ballad, or a seditious political tract. 43 A similar phenomenon, with a more pronounced literary orientation, developed in the tavern political underworld of London: The legendary eighteenth-century Grub Street milieux of London and Paris had been partly created by influxes of educated provincial artisans who burned to become philosophes. By the early nineteenth century the trend was being exacerbated by the rapid increase in elementary popular literacy and the rising status of the professional man of letters, particularly the young Romantic poet-philosopher made fashionable by Byron, Shelley, and Keats. 44 The vocation of the infidel poet-philosopher found its most eccentric and forceful initiates, according to McCalman, at the lowest levels of society: workers from what were seen as contemptible trades such as shoemaking and tailoring frequently manifested disgust at the poor and demeaning nature of their trades by involving themselves in literary and intellectual activities.45 Hence the embattled and traditionally militant trade of shoemakers supplied to the radical underground a remarkable number of its leading activists and poets, including Robert Fair; the mulatto William Black Davidson (who became the leader of the New Union of Shoemakers in 1819); activist and organizer Thomas Preston; author Allen Davenport, and many others who eked out a living from their dishonorable trade. 46 175 Infidel Culture

Daniel Tiffany

From his shoemaking shop on Edgware Road in London, Davenport rose to become a wide-ranging author and activist: Davenports testimony forms one of the most complete records of how an artisan entered and acquired his contemporary symbolic culture of literacy, literary aspiration, and ultra-radical politics. 47 Davenports autobiography, The Life and Literary Pursuits of Allen Davenport, remains a seminal account of the obscure tavern world of London radical culture. 48 In addition, Davenports most successful poem, The Kings, or Legitimacy Unmasked, was printed on the Oxford Street press of the Spencean activist Samuel Waddington a milieu, Davenport complained, where instead of the errors of the author being corrected, in passing through the press, they were doubled by typographical errors and blunders. 49 A spy purchased a copy of Davenports poem at Robert Wedderburns dissenting chapel and sent it to the Home Office the sole surviving copy of Davenports pamphlet. 50 Some of Davenports poems betray his advocacy of physical force, as do, more provocatively, the goading and sometimes philosophical poems of the ultra radical, E. J. Blandsford. A musician and a barber, Blandsford published poems regularly in Thomas Davisons pro-Spencean journal, Medusa: or, Penny Politician (masthead motto: Lets Die like Men, and not be Sold as Slaves). 51 The physical force sympathies of Medusa provided a ready outlet for Blandsfords chauvinist taunting (of his comrades in arms): I dreamed a real dream awake And told those sleepers what to do! But they, too DULL to understand Or else their nerves too weak and loose, Are with the weapon in hand Too COWARDLY to try its use. 52 In addition to exasperated polemic, Blandsford, along with Davenport and Robert Wedderburn, played a critical role in developing the Spencean equation of laborer and the surplus of nature. On this point, Worrall explains, enigmatically, the battle-cry of revolution is the battle-cry of Nature. Those who read only a Romanticist metaphysic of Nature would miss the call to the populace to arm. 53 These autodidact literati aspired to become not only artisan-philosophes and poets, but radical pressman as well. They saw the burgeoning medium of print as a revolutionary tool the technical counterpart of their infidel philosophies and poetic vocation. Though too poor to own presses or cover costs of printing, they sought out patrons with radical

176

sympathies to underwrite the production of poetry as cannon shot, to fund printing of radical materials: song sheets, broadsides, chap-books, etc. In addition, these artisanphilosophes produced, and often wrote, the first generation of underground journals and newspapers, including Thomas Spences Pigs Meat; Robert Wedderburns ephemeral Forlorn Hope and Axe Laid to the Root (1817); Thomas Davisons Medusa; James Griffins Cap of Liberty; and Jonathan Woolers Black Dwarf (1817-1824). 54 Among the unlawful materials issuing from underground printshops were pirate editions of libertine texts. Items circulating in the underground book trade of London in the first quarter of the nineteenth century included Les nuits de Paris (originally published 1788-1794, in sixteen volumes) and Nocturnal Revels (1779), set in London, both works by the French novelist and reformer, Restif de la Bretonne; as well as The Voluptuous Night: or, Ne Plus Ultra of Pleasure (1777) by Baron Vivant. As these titles indicate, the earliest libertine or pornographic novels laid the foundation for what might be called a literature of nightlife, a narrative subgenre that would be sustained in works such as Eugne Sues Les mystres de Paris (1843), which contributed to the modernity of Baudelaires poetry of apachedom and Georges Batailles often obscene variant of Surrealism. Playing off the documentary aspect of the first generation of libertine novels (which might be described as the writing of spies), the former radical pressman, William Dugdale, published Yokels Preceptor in the 1820s, an underworld directory of smut shops, brothels, thieves dens and gambling hells. 55 The full title of this work, which claims to reveal the secret life of Londons flash cribs, evokes the world of the canting crew. 56 Although the incentive to publish obscene materials became increasingly mercenary during the 1820s the infidel press was, in fact, birthplace of the modern porn industry the original impetus can be traced to the entanglement of Enlightenment rationalism and libertine philosophy, which called for a revolt against orthodox customs and morals. Thus, McCalman observes, The body of Enlightenment ideas which spread to English artisan and lower middle-class circles in the latter part of the eighteenth century had always contained a libertinist or sexually libertarian aspect. 57 William Benbow, originally a shoemaker and ultra-radical pressman, went on to become the most prolific pornographer of the nineteenth century. The overlapping of political and sexual underworlds in Benbows career was reflected in the heteroclite topos from which he ran his clandestine operation: a combination tavern-printshop, known as the Byrons Head, in Leicester Square, the neighborhood where tradesmen in the smut industry were concentrated in London. Robert Southey, the Poet Laureate (whose dramatic poem, Wat Tyler, shows sympathy for infidel causes), described Benbows hybrid tavern-printshop as one of those preparatory schools

Infidel Culture 177

for the brothel and the gallows; where obscenity, sedition and blasphemy are retailed in drams for the vulgar. 58 As an emblem of the Romantic topology of nightlife, the Byrons Head adopted the name of a poet associated with revolutionary libertinism; yet the tavern also harbored the technical means to produce pirate editions of Cain and sections of Don Juan, thereby becoming a secret source of obscene populism. At the same time, the topos of the nightspot became a place where the politics of pleasure, radical dissent, and infidel culture intersected. Among those active in the overlapping political and sexual underworlds of London in the first few decades of the nineteenth century was an illiterate mulatto seaman and Antinomian preacher named Robert Wedderburn. An obscure figure whose career integrated many of the disparate strands of the ultra-radical underground, Wedderburn (a native of Jamaica and the son of a Scottish plantation owner and an African-born slave) first arrived in London in 1778 at the age of 17 as a sailor in the British navy (a vocation historically predisposed, as a result of conscription, to political radicalism). Once in London, like many discharged sailors, he drifted to the rookeries around St. Giles where a substantial community of his countrymen, including runaway slaves, congregated alongside other immigrant minorities, Jews, Lascars, and Irish. Here, he likely became part of a subculture of London blackbirds, as they were known, who eked out a living by their own wit, strength, agility, and cunning as musicians, entertainers, beggars, thieves, and labourers. 59 From this heterogeneous subculture, which sheds important light on the social and racial components contributing to the radical-infidel community, Wedderburn first entered the netherworld of Jacobin sympathizers in the 1790s as a licensed and militant Methodist preacher, who established his own dissenting chapel in two back rooms of a ruinous hay loft in Soho a millenarian revision of the topos of the nightspot. 60 In his thrice-weekly sermons or lectures, Wedderburns emphasis on prophecy and dreams, talismanic attitude to the scriptures, and love of communal hymn-singing were typically West Indian.61 Thus the manner in which Wedderburn combined the Methodist hymnody with radical politics and his lifelong fascination with magic and the supernatural contributed unique elements to antinomian discourse in the early nineteenth century. In addition, Wedderburns speeches were said to be fraught with the beauties of Billingsgate slangan echo of the verbal demimonde in which he carried out his work.62

178

Daniel Tiffany

 From his origins as a dissident minister of enthusiastic disposition, Wedderburn went on to practice a secular doctrine of rationalism and libertinism, became a passionate advocate of the underground press, and emerged as a ferocious infidel who quickly earned the nickname of the Devils Engineer.63 Wedderburns libertine rationalism included working as an agent peddling obscene materials for the same printers that published his seditious pamphlets, as well as several arrests for keeping a brothel.64 Sharing in the public notoriety of persecution and illegality provided grounds, aside from common ideological goals, for libertinist and infidel writers to make the argument that blasphemy, obscenity, and political sedition were elements of a common cause.

1 Djuna Barnes, Nightwood (New York: New Directions, 1946), p.86. 2 Excerpts from dossiers compiled by government spies, 1781-1785, in the archives of the police in Paris. Cited in Robert Darnton, The Literary Underground of the Old Regime (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982), p.26. 3 Darnton, The Literary Underground of the Old Regime, pp.23-24. In the latter part of this passage, Darnton is citing a pamphlet of 1784 by one of the most notorious and violent pamphleteers in Paris at that time, Charles Thveneau de Morande. 4 Iain McCalman, Radical Underworld: Prophets, Revolutionaries, and Pornographers in London, 1795-1840 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), p.1. 5 I should note that there is some uncertainty as to whether the publisher William West is the same person as the author William West an indication of the challenges facing a historian of this milieu. 6 David Worrall, Radical Culture: Discourse, Resistance, and Surveillance, 1790-1820 (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1992), pp. 178-179. Robert Wedderburn, the most notorious of the dissenting preachers, declared of himself (and his kind): we might call him an Infidel, true he once professed Christianity but now he was an Infidel, Ignorance was better than knowledge, Barbarism better than Christianity (129). 7 See Worralls chapter on The Temple of Sedition of Hopkins Street, Radical Culture, pp. 165-186. Also, Iain McCalman, The Infidel as Prophet: William Reid and Blakean Radicalism, Historicizing Blake, eds. Steve Clark and David Worrall (London: St. Martins Press, 1994), pp. 24-42. 8 Worrall, Radical Culture, pp. 143, 196. 9 Worrall, Radical Culture, pp. 72-73. 10 Blake, cited in Worrall, Radical Culture, p. 6. 11 Worrall, Radical Culture, p. 7. 12 Worrall, Radical Culture, p. 7. 13 McCalman, Radical Underworld, p. 3. 14 Bryan D. Palmer, Cultures of Darkness: Night Travels in the Histories of Transgression (New York: Monthly

Infidel Culture 179

180

Review Press, 2000), pp.111-112. 15 Although Iain McCalmans scholarship in Radical Underworld is based on extensive archival research, he does not generally cite the actual testimony of spies in the dossiers hes examined. Hence, to see these materials, one would have no choice but to visit the pertinent archives in London: the Home Office Papers; the Privy Council Papers; the Treasury Solicitors Papers; the Kings Bench Records; and the Records of the Metropolitan Police Office. 16 See, for example, Worralls citations of informants records of songs and speeches presented by various infidels. Radical Culture, pp. 136-138. 17 Parliamentary Report from the Committee of Secrecy (1817), cited in McCalman, Radical Underground, p.120. 18 Cited in Worrall, Radical Culture, p. 20. 19 Worrall, Radical Culture, p. 78. McCalman notes that Spence, who was representative of a vital autodidact culture, produced pioneering works in the field of phonetics, including Grand Repository of the English Language (1775), which, along with his other contributions to English orthography and language, are now acknowledged as significant works of scholarship as well as agents of linguistic levelling. Radical Underworld, p. 92. 20 McCalman, Radical Underworld, p. 7. 21 McCalman, Radical Underworld, p. 46. 22 Worrall, Radical Culture, pp. 36-37. 23 Cited in Worrall, Radical Culture, p. 95. 24 Cited in Worrall, Radical Culture, p. 93. 25 Worrall, Radical Culture, pp. 58, 159. Worrall indicates that a short-lived journal entitled The White Hat was published in 1819. 26 Worrall, Radical Culture, p. 188. 27 McCalman, Radical Underworld, pp. 46-47. 28 McCalman, Radical Underworld, p. 22. 29 See Worralls discussion of Spences tokens, Radical Culture, pp. 26-28. See also R. H. Thomas, The Dies of Thomas Spence (1750-1814), British Numismatics Journal, vol. 38 (1969-70), pp. 126-162. 30 Cited in Worrall, Radical Culture, p. 195 31 Worrall, Radical Culture, p. 195. 32 Worrall, Radical Culture, p. 101. 33 Cited in Worrall, Radical Culture, p. 23. 34 Cited in Worrall, Radical Culture, p. 24. 35 Cited in Worrall, Radical Culture, p. 107. 36 McCalman, p. 118. 37 Thomas Evans, Address to All Mankind, (1817), cited in Worrall, Radical Culture, p. 91. 38 Worrall, Radical Culture, p. 91.

Daniel Tiffany

39 Porters ballad appears, according to McCalman, in a paper appended to an 1807 account of Spences trial. Radical Underground, p.47. 40 The 1811 edition of Spences Songs includes several examples of Evans poetry. McCalman describes Evans as a restless, marginal artisan, an incorrigible revolutionary, a tavern bon vivant and balladeer, a radical blackmailer and a smut-pedlar, Radical Underground, pp.47, 49. Quite a resum! 41 McCalman, Radical Underground, p. 83. Worrall indicates that bakers boys, along with shoemakers, were among the most radicalized tradesmen in London. One government spy wrote in 1819 that many bakers were prepared in a call to arms to convert their underground areas into weapons into improvised bombs that could ignite the underground gas lines of London: their [sic.] is a Great number of Bakers Ovens that runs under the street which can be easy Blown up, and best of all the Bakers are almost to a Man Radicals and Spenceans. London stands upon nothing. Radical Culture, p. 175. 42 Robert Darnton, The Literary Underground of the Old Regime, p.40. 43 Darnton cites a letter of 1772 from a bookseller in Poitiers to his supplier in Switzerland, in which the phrase philosophical books (livres philosophiques) refers to a range of outlawed texts (hence the Swiss publishing house): Here is a short list of philosophical books that I want. Please send the invoice in advance: Venus in the Cloister or the Nun in a Nightgown, Christianity Unveiled, Memoir of Mme la Marquise de Pompadour, Inquiry on the Origin of Oriental Despotism, The System of Nature, Theresa the Philosopher, Margot the Campfollower. The Literary Underground, pp.1-2. 44 McCalman, Radical Underground, p.156. 45 McCalman, Radical Underworld, p. 48. 46 In British literature, the figure of the infidel shoemaker-philosopher is memorialized in the character of Doctor Manette in Dickens novel, A Tale of Two Cities. 47 Worrall, Radical Culture, p. 83. On Davenports formation, Worrall comments, By comparison, Davenports contemporary, the field-labourer poet John Clare in the village of Helpston, Northamptonshire, was much more advantaged in educational opportunities. It took initiative, independence, labour and careful planning to learn to read and write. The result, in adulthood, was that Davenport could not shake off the ruling passion of poetry(81). 48 Worrall, Radical Culture, p. 83. See Allen Davenport, The Life and Literary Pursuits of Allen Davenport (London: G. Hancock, 1845). 49 Davenport, cited in Worrall, Radical Culture, p. 83. 50 Davenports The Kings was reprinted in his poetry collection from 1827, The Muses Wreath. 51 Cited in Worrall, Radical Culture, p. 151. 52 Blandsford, AN EX POST FACTO HINT (referring to the title of his earlier poem, A Real Dream), cited in Worrall, Radical Culture, p. 158. 53 Worrall, Radical Culture, pp. 153-154. 54 Woolers Black Dwarf offers a tantalizing example of the material continuity, both practical and symbolic, of these antinomian projects: Malcolm McClaren, the manager of the seminal punk band, the Sex Pistols,

Infidel Culture 181

claims to have in his possession a complete set of all the issues of Black Dwarf, passed down from generation to generation in his family. (This anecdote appears in an unpublished essay by Peter Wollen on the history of Situationism.) 55 McCalman, Radical Underworld, p.218. Dugdales scurrilous pamphlet probably follows the example of various guides to nightlife in London in the 1780s, such as Harris List of Covent Garden Ladies, an annual directory of call girls, with a compendium of offerings, prices, and lyrical descriptions of anatomical precision. Cited in Palmer, Cultures of Darkness, p.75. 56 The full title of Dugdales pamphlet, published under the pseudonym H. Smith, is Yokels Preceptor: or More Sprees in London! Being a Regular and Curious Show-Up of All the Rigs and Doings of the Flash Cribs in this Great Metropolis (n.d.). 57 McCalman, Radical Underground, p.208. The overlapping of political and sexual underworlds occurs most flamboyantly, according to McCalman, in the career of the Antinomian Methodist preacher, John Church (an orphaned ex-ornament maker): Church was accused in 1813 of preaching Antinomian libertinism of Commonwealth days in his Obelisk Chapel at St. Georges Fields, and of putting his theology into practice by seducing young men and performing mock-marriage ceremonies amongst the transvestites at the Vere Street homosexual brothel. McCalman, Radical Underground, p.59. 58 Robert Southey, cited in McCalman, Radical Underworld, p.205. 59 McCalman, Radical Underground, p.54. 60 These biographical details about Wedderburn derive from McCalmans account of his career. Radical Underground, p.132. 61 McCalman, Radical Underworld, p. 56. 62 McCalman, Radical Underworld, p. 137. 63 McCalman, Radical Underworld, p. 50. 64 McCalman notes the criminal aspects of Wedderburns career, Radical Underground, pp.44, 205.

182

Ben & Sandra Doller from The Sonneteers

The Sonneteers (a 50 sonnet sequence, a demi-corona) were constructed between August 2004-December 2004 as part of a relationship-experiment (ongoing). The first sonneteer spontaneously combusted in the apartment of Biswamit Dwibedy, who had a Shakespeare sonnet in his typewriter. Turning this sonnet 90 degrees in the typewriter allowed space for the birth of the sonneteer with each of us writing alternate lines, messing with rhyme scheme, playing with the instantaneity of the art object-verbal object as a performative mode. (In the case of the first sonneteer, someone was reading from the book of Revelations in a thick brogue...) In the ensuing sonneteers, ink was spilled, more typewriters were deployed, and simultaneous sonneteering occurred. A dialogue emerged not just between the writers and their slant-rhymed couplets, but also between the found-art-papers and the texts. Were particularly attracted to the dual notion of the sonneteer as a sonnet-writer and as a shoddy poet, and sought to push these boundaries in our multiple resistances to form and regiment. Were grateful to Biswamit Dwibedy for the initial party impulse, and for many of the papers. Other papers have been constructed and generously contributed by the sonneteers themselves, as well as Sarah Doyle, Scott Inguito, the Toyota Company, The New Yorker, a jump rope, a slipper, Sandra Bullock & Ben Affleck, with cameo appearances by Srikanth Chicu Reddy and Louise Glck.

184

Subscriptions
One year (one issue) $15 * Two years (two issues) $25 Make checks payable to: Joseph Mosconi * 1588 Oak Grove Drive * Los Angeles, CA 90041