Olchar's Report for Fiddlesticks #4

This one was quite a journey (aren't they all).

It began for me on the Friday night, working with Tsubasa to (finally) get Angee's floor tiles installed in the space. In many ways, putting on these kinds of shows and events are simply an excuse to get to prepare them with each other (in many ways the opposite is true as well, of course). Usually this preparation is pretty frenetic, in the earlier stages we're all brainstorming excitedly in a dozen different directions, in the latter stages running about like chickens with our heads lopped off, trying to salvage whatever is going to happen from the ruins of what we'd planned to happen even as those ruins continue to fall down upon us, all adreneline and (pointless) purpose. This has been for me one of the most durable and characteristic experiences of Post-Neo, whether with Catharsism of Narcotica in Ohio, with the Itinerant Mirror in England, with the Fiddlesticks shows here.... So it was particularly nice to install these with Tsubasa in a completely different manner, talking quietly and calmly as we both knelt on the floor, tearing off smaller and smaller pieces of tape as the roll disappeared; and an opportunity to take in at least a bit of his sensibility as he patiently compared tiles, grouped and regrouped them, placing each one with a care that made me feel a bit of the barbarian (bar bar bar).


The performances for this installment evolved in unexpected ways. We'd known a couple weeks in advance that Alex would be performing that night, but didn't know what he would be doing (we'd rather get to experience the piece like everyone else); and as of a week or so before we'd planned to do a set of Post-Neo Simultaneous Poems. Then we learned about Mr. Hugo Ball-Rat's illness.

We'd already done the Familiars' Hospital the week before, an undertaking that shows how some of us have come to relate to these inanimate rubber ids; and now a similar situation had struck us not with familiars, but with pets--not entirely different, but: alive. And in it David had suggested a Medicinal Poem; so this was added to the schedule for Saturday. A poem to read to everyone here, both written by and dedicated to a rat in England who could never read or write it (despite having done so)--and a gesture of friendship and empathy between two far-flung communities.

A couple days later, we learned of Tom's illness; and in the notion of the Medicinal Poem that David had put forward on behalf of a beloved pet on another continent, we found one form through which to materialise our concern, gratitude, and friendship to to this man on the other side of our own continent, whom none of us has met in person but with whom a number of us have collaborated, corresponded, and engaged with as readers. And so we added to Saturday's event a performance of a text Tom had sent me to play around with a few months ago.

So Saturday arrives, etc. etc. forgot we don't have key-cards etc. the printer doesn't etc. etc. etc. where's etc. etc. which ones should etc. etc. etc. etc. Oh shit, we thought you meant a digital etc. etc. etc. etc., and we prepare for the poetic chain-gang we had planned for Mr. Ball-Rat's medicinal poem: Warren reading it aloud from David's blog in the computer lab, shouting it to me standing in the doorway, shouting it in turn to Tomislav who finally delivers it to our guests in the gallery via Dave Hartke's puppet. (This mirrors a piece we had done in England a couple years ago at the Itinerant Mirror Cabaret: Warren had called in from the States to David Edwards at the desk of King Ludd bookshop; they eventually ended up downstairs in the basement where Natalie Waldbaum had to act them out.) It is as we are about to read the poem that Warren learns from that blog that Mr. Hugo Ball-Rat had just died. And so the poem became a Funereal Poem or Anti-Eulogy (a rodent Adonais); delivered with great aplomb by Dave's puppet.

Then it's onto the simultaneous poems--now pared down to only two, one by David (we did a few more at Fiddlesticks 5, which you'll see eventually) and one by Tom. Great fun as always; I think I've performed David's 'Society Function...' four or five times and have never to this day managed to gather the apple and nearly-empty-fast-food-cup-with-a-straw that the score calls for.

Then Tom Taylor's texts; Warren, Tom and I had scored them for three voices, treating each section differently, using techniques quite different from those of the simultaneous poems we'd just performed: performing them as canons, reading in different directions, following various visual cues--following the approach of the Be Blank Consort, many of whom have known and worked with Tom for decades. The texts were great fun to do; I'd like to read more Taylor aloud when I have the opportunity.

And finally there is Alex's piece, which turns out to be a very touching and understated vignette on the death of his grandmother. It manages to be simultaneously very direct--it is what it says what it is (yes), and it has an immediate emotional impact--and also quite readably indirect--we only hear his responses as he talks on the phone, not wanting to talk about it, yet, at least. And it gathers together the theme/s that have, gradually, turned into a very sad week, and affirms that, nonetheless, it can be dealt with, and that somehow, indeed, it seems to have tied itself together.

And as usual, most of us remained behind for hours afterward, ordered pizza and ate it in Jamie's studio; at one point Alan's remaining City Poems were retrieved from the gallery and passed around again; etc etc etc., far into the night.

And then onward to Fiddlesticks 5--reports and documentation when we can! Huzzah!

FIDDLESTICKS #4 Photos: D. Hartke, A. Andrews, A. Lennard finally!

Finally, here are Tsubasa's photos of the fourth installment of FIDDLESTICKS, with additions by Post-Neo co-founders dadaDavid Hartke and Aaron Andrews, and at long last Angee's work wrested away from UPS and mostly installed. Reports and video of the events to follow soon, and then documentation of FIDDLESTICKS 5...

Andrews' Fist Fuck and Hartke's ANTI- army logo adorn the door. These ought to become stickers sometime....

Beside the door, large printouts from Angee's Mossdale Estates that served as partial scores when we'd done the Mossdale puppet show the week before. In them Rose encounters Hartke's, Andrews', Lindsann's and Chriss' Post-Neo band Catharsism of Narcotica.

The Lost & Found Gallery!


Angee Lennard's new cardboard-tile floor for the L&FG

dadaDavid's amazing puppet, built for the projected Müppet Flesh project and inspired by his own mOnocle-Lash logo, reclines on a corner of Angee's floor near some of Jamie's wall drawings and J.M. Bennett collaborations with C. Mehrl Bennett, Jessy Kendall, and probably others.

David Hartke's Cheez-ItnA mask emerges from the nether-bits of some Chriss-flesh

A syzegy: Aaron's The Judgement of Los Iron Man print and two John M. Bennett pieces (one with Italy's Luigino Solamito) hung over Tsubasa's drips at the conjunction of Lenny's and Brad's wall drawings.

A painting by Craig Olsen watches over the whole affair from above.

A better look at Dave's puppet, whose leather accoutrements need repaired. This puppet performed the Funereal Poem for Sir Hugo Ball-Rat at the opening, as you'll see when we get video posted.

Somebody or other saw fit to make a wall drawing in chocolate on the wall in-between shows (and kindly labeled it for us), and it seemed a good place to post up Aaron 's Professor Aristotle poster.

Underneath Andrews' looming Kitty Genovese Must Die print, the publication table expands with a collection of Angee Lennad's Sputnik Press comics, Alan Reed's City Poems for the taking and posting, various mOnocle-Lash books and journals, and some sculpture: Dave Hartke's Ice Cream Cone made of glass for some reason, and Angee's tiny dioramas, which will get their own post with close-ups very soon here.

Olchar's Fiddlesticks 3 Report finally!

Sorry about the sporadic blog updates, if anyone's trying to read them, but we're busy as motherfuckers out here trying to keep Fiddlesticks going and attempting to get everything ready for June (especially since so few people are communicating via the blog, which of course results in more work for us). But better late than never, so here's my (admittedly basic) report on the events for Fiddlesticks #3; we'll get reports and documentation up for the next two asap, along with other goodies.

Video documentation of all of this is a bit further down the blog.

Of course, by the time this thing went down, UPS still hadn't delivered Angee's contribution, though I'd had several arguments with them concerning it over the phone. So in the meantime, we tried to give her a presence by producing a puppet play based on an episode from her comic book Mossdale Estate. Initially this seemed like an unlikely decision, and it was certainly quite different from the prototypical Post-Neo puppet play, with its cartoon voices, screaming, shouting of nonsense, vomiting, pounding mayhem; like the comic book it was (relatively, at least) understated and sober. But both in the production of the play itself and in the story that Angee sent us to (anti-)dramatize, it showed how Post-Neo can and has existed in a very wide variety of modes that despite being very different on many levels, nonetheless inform and enrich and even directly develop each other. On the one hand, Mossdale Estate and Angee's work in general is aesthetically and even conceptually very different from the most noisy and assertive tendencies in Post-Neo. It is accessible and down-to-earth; in fact it is generally not even 'absurd' at all (the same could be said of many other people who have been vital parts of the Post-Neo community--Emily Panzeri, Edward Lense, Alan Reed, Casey Bradley, Imogene Engine, and many others). On the other hand, Angee, as one of the earliest collaborators on the Mr. Squibbles films, in fact helped to pioneer the Post-Neo puppet aesthetic which was here expanded to reach back toward what her work is. So on one level this puppet play was a new direction for Anti-puppetry to exlore, while on another level it was a homecoming. And the passage that she chose for us to perform also treats this encounter of the raucous face of Post-Neo with the everyday, with 'real people': her nursing-home resident Rose has come by chance upon the album of the first Post-Neo group, Catharsism of Narcotica, and we watch her quietly come to terms with her encounter with this 'thing' that she has no way to even contextualize.

Next Warren read a poem of his own, one of my favourites from Synapse 3, and four phonetic poems by William Clippenger (no relation to Martha Clippenger as far as I know--correct me if I'm wrong; I've corresponded a bit but never met him in person). These are precisely the kinds of phonetic poems Warren excels at reading: repetitive cycles morphing slightly upon each return, plenty of open vowels that allow him to hurl his voice unrelentingly against the wall in wave upon sharp wave, with the no-nonsense attack of an a-verbal battering-ram, atavistic and throaty. I've actually not seen Warren perform per se nearly as much as I'd like or expect ince I came to New Jersey, and it was refreshing.

I myself have scarcely performed at all since I came here either, and actually this was my first solo performance since I arrived! (needless to say, Brute Salon and soirees are something else, really, more like conversing.) I did my sub-phonetic poem Prayer for the Poison-Child, the first from this body of work I've performed for over a year; and I've missed it. Due to the nature of New Jersey's particular version of Post-Neo, in which group automatism is more the focus than discreet or semi-discreet poems, plays, and sketches as it was in Britain, and also due to my having nowhere to rehearse and exercise my vocal apparatus for a few hours a week as I used to, it was a bit strained, and my breathing was especially shoddy; for the most part though I settled into the poem like an old glove (which it is), and my time apart from the score may actually have helped me to find a greater range of interpretations. Hope to rehearse and do another, longer one at the festival in June.

After all the performances we all went up and hung out in Jamie Bruno's studio, which has just about become a little Fiddlesticks tradition; talked about whatever it was we talked about (hey, it's been three weeks), did some exquisite corpses and other games while Jamie drew on her wall, and finally split about 4:30 AM or some such ungodly time.

And that was that.

3-D Print Show

Hi. So this isn't directly relate to the anti-festival, but it could... Basically I am going to invite all reading this to participate in a print exchange hosted by Spudnik Press (details below). It is a completely separate entity from the anti-festival, and the prints produced are not toys, and for the most part, won't likely be made under that moniker of "Anti-Art". However, the work produced does require viewers to where 3-D red and blue glasses, which is remeniscent of childhood, which is remeniscent of toys. And it sounds like there will be plenty of toys at the festival... oh, and I could bring all the prints with me when I come to New Jersey June 21st and 22nd.

3-D Print Show and Exchange:

In an attempt to merge high brow with low brow, "traditional techniques" with contemporary trends, and fun with serious, we are facilitating a print exchange (and show) featuring all 3-D work. Not actually 3 dimensional, mind you. But 3-D when viewed with those charming
red and blue glasses.

How does it work? Spudnik prints a red and blue gridded background on 20 sheets of paper, then send them your way. You print an image on the gridded paper, and ship back 12 identical prints. We hang 'em up for a show. After the show, you will receive a portfolio with 10 3-D prints from other artists. Every participant gets their very own 3-D glasses!

We have tested this paper with silkscreen, relief, and intaglio, and it worked beautifully. Bold, graphic images work well, but we are excited to see it pushed in other directions.

Register by April 15, 2008
Deadline to receive prints is May 15, 2008

The 3-D Print Show
Commemorating the 1 year anniversary of Spudnik
Opening and Fundraising Event
June 7, 2008

For the full downloadable prospectus, visit www.spudnikpress.com. If you have any questions, please contact us at info@spudnikpress.com.

Post-Neo Film Night--THURSDAY!

That's right, in our endless quest to eliminate all down-time, we are instituting an as-nearly-as-possible weekly Anti-Cinematech (i.e., a small TV playing DVDs from a videogame console) at Warren & Olchar's apartment; and the first one is THIS THURSDAY at 8:00 PM.

These will be pretty informal; a half-hour to forty-five minute series of Post-Neo films and documentation from the U.S. or England, followed by hanging out and talking/ artmaking/ whatever with some more PNA performance documentation that you can dip into or out of as it strikes you. Feel free to bring imbibe-ables if you wish. We both have work Friday morning, so they shan't go TOO late (presumably...)

Each week we are going to try to concentrate on one or two themes, to suggest both the similarities and differences of what Post-Neo "is" and what it looks like in different places, and has looked like in different stages of its development. Hopefully this will lay the groundwork for understanding a bit about Ohio Post-Neo or British Post-Neo or Washington Post-Neo or whatever, when you finally meet some of the people involved in June. It takes a very different form in each place and for each person, and yet there are a surprising number of both broad and intricate relationships and motifs that appear everywhere.

FOR THIS THURSDAY AT 8:00, the first installment will focus on the very first Post-Neo event EVER, in Columbus, OH, Nov. 2002; when even the most annoyingly bombastic of us were young and naive and had no fucking clue what we were getting ourselves into. The entire group shared one analogue video camera with no editing capabilities at all. The films here were screened (among others) at that first show:

Chronic Depression: It's No Monkey Business
Mr. Squibbles and Mr. Livingston are possibly the two leading Anti-stars of Post-Neo film, and a large part of the intentionally-shitty nature of much Post-Neo film. They first appeared in this film made by Emilie Lennard, who was around 13 at the time, and her brother Olchar (sans pseudonym), in which nobody can even remember their exact names.

Brooms and Bayonettes: A 3,000 Year History of CCAD Maintenance.
That's right, Post-Neo had it's roots in the Maintenance Department of Columbus College of Art & Design, when Dave Hartke, Aaron Andrews (current additions to the FIDDLESTICKS show), and Olchar (under another name!) decided to put on a show for their fellow custodians and especially their legendary boss, Pete. (Fellow Post-Neos Brad Chriss and Chi-Kit Kwong also passed through Maintenance in their day.) This film was shown at that exhibition and attempts to get across the utter absurdity of Maintenance and how it changed those involved so much that it (not-so)suddenly became Post-NeoAbsurdism.

Mr. Squibbles Goes Camping
The second installment in the ongoing Mr. Squibbles series, this was made a day after the first one by Olchar and his brother, Chris Lennard.


and after the films, we can all hang out while the screen is filled with

Re: Pete: The Novel: The Exhibition
Documentation of the tomfoolery, hijinks, actions, and performances at the opening of the first Post-Neo exhibition. The exhibition was organised by Catharsism of Narcotica (Hartke, Andrews, Lindsann), but much of the nascent Columbus Post-Neo group is involved here, including the first ever performances by and Warren Fry, Brad ChrissChris Lennard in addition to the first actions of the members of Catharsism. Awww, we were all so young...

These include the infamous Chair Jousting, an Anti-Critique of the show, and a video tour of the exhibition.

Here's a bit of a preview of what you're in for:
A Day in the Life of Mr. Squibbles
by Emilie Lennard and Olchar Lindsann:

Stop on by, it will be fun! And it's your last chance for some Anti-action until the film night the following Thursday, since this weekend we'll be at the Transmodern Festival in Baltimore with Joelle Howald and Nathan Shafer hocking ghosts on unsuspecting pedestrians.

That's 8:PM, at 221 Howard St., etc. Give us a call if you'll be late, or else you'll probably miss the films.

VIM VOM VIM VIM VOM VIM VIM!

Planning my trip... and toys...

Hey everyone. It's Angee Lennard here (of Mossdale Estate and some floor tiles). I am working on actually scheduling my trip to the Anti-Festival before my summer gets to filled up and I inadvertently forget to come or forget to save money to come. I am planning my trip for June 21st and 22nd.

I am very okay with just absorbing the festival and attending events. However, it has been brought to my attention that there is some talk of a toy exhibition. This is something I would be very interested in contributing to. I have been wanting to make paper dolls of my Mossdale characters, and this would be the perfect opportunity. I will print multiples so visitors to the exhibition can have something to take home with them. I also could screen print cards for the exhibition that can later be cut out and made into something approximating a toy. Please, respond with ideas...

Angee

FIDDLESTICKS #3: Puppet Play by A. Lennard, readings by W. Fry & O. Lindsann

Warren & Olchar do the most subtle (?) Post-Neo puppet play ever, an adaptation from a scene from Angee Lennard's comic book Mossdale Estate. In it, the nursing home resident Rose comes upon an album by the firs Post-Neo Group, Catharsism of Narcotica--Dave Hartke and Aaron Andrews (work going up in Fiddlesticks 4 this afternoon), Lindsann, and Bradley Chriss (Fiddlesticks 1).

Warren's reading of his own poem The Dipthong of FQ and four phonetic poems by William Clippenger from Synapse 4.

Olchar performs his sub-phonetic poem Prayer for the Poison-Child. For compare and contrast, see the video of his performance of this piece in England a year or two ago on his facebook page, or the score for it in Puking Trolley.

Documentation and Olchar's Un-Report on the Silent Soiree and The Disappearence of Imogene Engine

Never say that we're not suckers for self-inflicted punishment, for it has come about again: the 'documentation' must be specific to the particularities of the event from which it is culled, even though it entails our giving ourselves absurd amounts of extra work that we certainly don't need.

There have been (among others) two key motifs that can be seen in both the FIDDLESTICKS #2 exhibition and the events related to it (and there was a great fluidity between those two parts of the whole shebang that weekend), that it is worth pointing out here, to whit:

1. Tsubasa's beautifully subtle care-taking of the space; cleaning up the debris of the shit we leave him to deal with (last week, the local bureaucrats; in this case, the bloody rubber carnage of five life-or-death surgeries!) despite our attempts not to do so, and in the attention that he pays to that process, transforming the space in a way that is nearly invisible but entirely pervasive, better than than a work of 'art' because we can't even put our finger to it, it is already dissolved into the world. (You could compare this to Post-Neo's roots in an art school maintenance department; what if instead of Catharsism of Narcotica you'd had someone who wasn't lazy? You might have Tsubasa...)

This care extends to his documentation of this whole campaign; in a way that is far from merely aesthetic, in the attention payed to all of the nuances of each situation as it unfolds, and an equal sensitivity of how it might say itself in a different form when viewed by you-all out on the blog in England or Ohio or Canada or Washington or Florida or Chicago or Cornwall, he does not record what happens, but translates it into another language. Because of this there has been a kind of growing conversation between the photos and blog, and the events as they happen; his photos have become as much a part of the whole enterprise as the events they come from.

To be (relatively) brief, Tsubasa's photos are different from 'what happens', but are something just as integral, and a definite addition, to constituting what the festival 'is'.

2. The action of arrangement in Imogene Engine's poetry, which as many of you presumably know was part of the literary/performative aspect of FIDDLESTICKS 2. This constant arrangement and shifting, and the way in which it oscillates between the life that it stems from and the 'something else' that it is, might be related to the subtle shifting about, lining up, relating, that Tsubasa does with objects such as the remnants of the Surgery, and with patterns of light and socialized movement through his camera. Re-arranging relics. The way in which her poems are dismembered and refigured, constantly re-arranged, to create discrete poems that are never in fact discreet but are different forms and combinations of parts of each other.

3. You might also see how this theme relates to the idea of silence, of not-saying, of thinking of saying but--because you can't or because it won't be said--withholding. And even more specifically to the idea of a Silent Soiree, the need to communicate even when you cannot say, to find a way to speak when you can't speak; and so whatever you talk about isn't itself. And so really, in Imogene's work, in Tsubasa's work, and in the idea of a Silent Soiree, its the idea of speaking through silence, of speaking through not speaking-about.

Pure magical evasiveness. (Engine: 'if she tucks her leg underneath, she disappears')

This is also to say that if this installment of Fiddlesticks throws up a certain facet of Post-Neo (and all of the people involved--Alan, Imogene, Tsubasa, Charlotte, and Angee ,whose work was absent due to UPS--have positioned themselves outside the noisy, polemic aspects of Post-Neo, and in some cases or ways outside of its various more 'speechifying' (un)centres, while all being vital to Post-Neo in a relatively silent manner; a quiet and careful and even cautious embodiment of it, or interjection into it, without which Post-Neo as it is would be unthinkable), a facet which realizes that subtlety and respect are not enemies of fun or energy, and in fact that neither has any value without the other.

And it is here that we find that the idea of silence has an unexpected relationship to that of trust (and therefore, equally, with its reciprocal, respect). To withhold speech, to remain voluntarily silent, is a mark of respect for the speech, or the silence as such, of the other. To request silence is to trust that the other will extend this silence, to allow one to speak to them. To withhold speech may be to hope that one has earned enough respect for others to trust in what is not said, in the deliberation of this withholding.

Of course, all of this does not only go for what calls itself a 'silent soiree' (and the soiree itself, in fact, was fairly silent).

Now, as events continue to unfold, these kinds of motifs have a tendency to reduplicate themselves, especially once you notice them; so that they somehow manage to become seemingly necessary to carry on, even if it costs you a good deal of extra energy, worry, and time that you can ill-afford. And what do you know, it's ended up happening once again.

For the video (we're getting to it) stemming from the Silent Soiree and my reading of Imogene's poems attaches itself to this set of themes. It is not a representation of what happened, but an attempt to remain silent about it, while re-arranging its elements to create something else of value, something new; because what happened, of course, cannot be said, and those of you who did show up and experience it itself will understand why; though even then, only in part.

(What a lot of speech I have found necessary to articulate this silence, which nonetheless remains silent within itself,--it turns out to be practically a whole essay on silence! And motivated by the very silence that it perpetuates while, perhaps, speaking.)

At times, one wants to speak to so many people at once that the only option is a complex silence through which one can speak silently to each; only silence has so many tongues. And one must be silent even about the relevance of this silent speech (which is the opposite and the same as a speaking silence).

Therefore: Here is a palimpsest of the evening--and all palimpsests are, of course, creations, they are leaving things out or they would not be palimpsests, and that is such a lovely word. The transition from silence to speech, which was not an easy one (it never is), is here, as much as I could make it, preserved; I have arranged Imogene's poems into something that I hope is (even, of course) better than the reading itself that has disappeared; if her disappearance that night (and she did disappear, of this there is no doubt) cannot help but disappear again when all the many of you who were not there view it, then is it not best that it disappear as beautifully as possible?

Of course it is equally possible for her not to disappear, and her poems may reappear at any time.

Now. Please excuse my digressions; and feel free, if you wish, to put it all down to simple eccentricity. I will remain verbosely silent on the subject, as usual.

So here it is:

THE DISAPPEARENCE OF
THE DISAPPEARENCE OF IMOGENE ENGINE
and the SILENT SOIREE!!!

thusly:

FIDDLESTICKS #2 DOCUMENTATION

All right, it's pretty fucking crazy out here trying to keep all of this moving, and we're behind on our documentation, but here are some of Tsubasa's photos of the second incarnation of FIDDLESTICKS, Alan Reed, Charlotte Whalen, and Tsubasa Berg. (Angee Lennard was supposed to be included, but UPS stole her artwork--see the post below; we've finally received it and it will be installed for the next one).

We're taking this weekend off from installing more and performing in order to try to get the documentation up to date, so over the next few days look for photos, video, written reports, etc etc. of the events for FIDDLESTICKS 2, the gallery show and events for FIDDLESTICKS 3, and announcements for the following weekend's FIDDLESTICKS 4.

We'll post a video-tour this weekend.

So here you go, Post-Neo: THIS WAS FIDDLESTCKS !!!!!!


What you saw as you entered the gallery: Tsubasa's largely subtractive intervention into the space included adding layers of wash over Lenny's and Brad's wall drawings, taking down most of Jamie's string sculpture (how sad to see it gone! a combination of Tsubasa's prerogative and the school bureaucracy expressing disapproval of the removed ceiling tiles), and his uncannily apt and thoughtful stewardship of the space itself--organising the debris from the surgery on opening night into a kind of display, with a recovery/sick-bed for the Familiars.




To the immediate left as you enter, Charlotte's wonderful 21679 Short Poems About Capitalism, including a shredder-turned-poem-generating-machine that guests can use themselves.

Instructions.

Free poem-refills.


If you look carefully, you'll see that somebody has recently fed one of Alan's City Poems through the shredder--a different shade of white. Like finding a needle in a poem-stack.




Tsubasa's arrangement of the surgical instruments from the Familiars' Hospital.


He preserved the operating table as well.




Alan Reed's video piece There is a Table. At first the video ran on a loop with headphones, but we later decided to remove the headphones and let the soundtrack play aloud to the whole gallery, as you'll hear in the video tour.

Also in the gallery and elsewhere around the city are various of Alan's City Poems, posted anonymously in appropriate (or otherwise) spots; they'll continue to appear for the duration of the run of FIDDLESTICKS (maybe longer), and there is a stack in the gallery for you to take and post somewhere yourself. Some have also been fed through Charlotte's shredder, creating several score of Short Poems About Capitalism and the Alienation of the Post-Capitalist Flaneur (with the latter word under erasure). Alan, you are free to berate me for the inadequacy of this off-the-cuff moniker and suggest a better one, if you so desire.


More to Come!

UPS: Our Eternal Enemy

Well, our documentation of FIDDLESTICKS is lagging a bit behind the event itself, as one might expect; but it makes its way up eventually. Look for my report on BOSCH ON ICE this weekend; and soon after we'll get reports, photo, and video up from FIDDLESTICKS 2 and the accompanying Silent Soiree and Imogene Engine reading.

BUT FIRST, an un-report to fill the gap; because UPS, yes, the United Parcel Service, is fucking everything up for us pretty royally. Their stupid policies, shoddy and uncoordinated internal procedures, and incompetent and duplicitous employees have come together to derail us.

yes, UPS, the most expensive way NOT to have your package delivered!!

Due to their continued refusal/bureaucratic inability to deliver Angee Lennard's work, her work could not be displayed at the opening of the 2nd Fiddlesticks show; so we reorganised everything to include her in the show opening this weekend. And yet, TWO WEEKS after she paid for expedited service, WE STILL DO NOT HAVE HER WORK IN HAND.

So remember: DO NOT USE UPS when sending anything here for the Fiddlesticks show, for either of the Festival exhibitions, or anything else. The U.S. Postal service will cost you 1/3 as much money, and better yet, will actually deliver the package. (Don't request signature either, as we are not here during the day.)

I have called in to UPS three times already concerning this, sweet-talking them, raving wildly at them, coldly implying legal threats, all to no avail. All three times I've been directly lied to: told there was n way for them to track the package (?!), then promised it would be at my house within the hour, only to have it still undelivered two days later, told there was no signature required, then told there was... and their drivers are equally idiotic, to make a long story short.

Which is why you will still not see Angee's work in the gallery this evening, despite being the second show she's been advertised with. As soon s we get it in hand it will go up.

We will however present a puppet play--quite different from our usual offerings--based on her comic book series Mossdale Estate, which follows the daily lives ad routines of a group of Elderly Home residents. This is a scene in which one of the residents, Rose, stumbles upon Catharsism of Narcotica, the first American Post-Neo group.

It should be a laid-back event, afterward Warren and I will perform some of our own poems, which we scarcely ever have a chance to do anymore; I'm thinking of performing my sub-phonetic poem, Prayer for the Poison-Child, for the first time since returning to the States...

FIDDLESTICKS!!!- C. Olson, J.M. Bennett, Shanks McGovern, A. Lennard

BOING-G-G !
"what the freak?!"

In a very special episode of FIDDLESTICKS, the oddments of three wayward artists arrive at the Lost and Found gallery to join the 'artistic' remainders of last week's guests. Craig Olsen, from New York, fiddles with paints in his home and writes about other peoples 'modern artworks' in some liberal rag. Ohioan John M. Bennett plays with stamps and scribbles silly words on paper (but don't tell him they're backwards). Then he mails them to his friends. Angee Lennard hangs out at the old-folks home and runs a print shop in Chicago which attracts loitering artist-type bums. They can be seen reading the comics she prints. It sure is different.

On Saturday evening at 8:00 Eastern time, two of these artist-type bums, Olchar Lindsann and Warren Fry, are putting on a very special sock-puppet play about the comics. These two bohemians are what you might call 'performance-poets,' which is apparently about making funny mouth-noises and looking at people. It takes all kinds, I guess! They're even inviting people just to sit there and listen to it. Don't believe us? Go see for yourself, at the Lost & Found Gallery, room 231, CSB. These people sure are special.

And at FREE, at least its cheaper than the Olive Garden.

and,

SHANKS McGOVERN !!!

SHANKS McGOVERN !!!

SHANKS McGOVERN !!!

FLYER FOR MARCH 8TH 92ADA

FIDDLESTICKS #2, EVENT #1: IT'S VERY HARD TO TELL YOU THIS...

Soon we'll post photos and reports of BOSCH ON ICE; but in the meantime... well...

Sit down.

We TOLD Hector Clam not to attend Bosch on Ice. "You'll get hurt," we said. But he insisted. It is such a major event for the New Brunswick community who have collectively raised me, he argued, that I must be a part of it, how could I not be involved? Especially with the Professor and Miss Ricketts going, and even the two rubber chickens who don't have names! We reminded him that they were made of tough rubber (though that didn't stop one of those rubber chickens from getting slashed from throat to gullet!). "After all, the Comptroller and Bill Murray were staying home!" But you forget, he countered, that my first appearance was at the first Brutesthletics game, four days after Olchar arrived in town, as everyone was buying props at the thrift store! I must come! I owe it to all of my beloved Brunswites!

Well.

Someone--there are conflicting reports as to whom--got hold of Hector Clam. Over and over again he careened into the ice like Icarus dropping onto a frozen ocean. In the end he was split in half, and a part of his flank caved in--



BUT NEVER FEAR--

Reid Bingham led us all in an emergency triage operating--Hector was bound together again by a rubber snake (caduceus?) wound round his waist, and a donkey-puppet pulled over his head like a hood-mask to hold his skull together (and to protect him from the sight of his own temporary dismemberment). Hector Clam is still among the living! But like the Professor, the Comptroller, Miss Ricketts (whose tongue was torn out and who has sprung a leak), Bill Murray (who no longer sings and dances), and the unfortunate unnamed rubber chicken who was torn apart while being used as a drum stick by Tsubasa during the climax of Bosch on Ice, Hector is certainly worse for wear.

Before (above) and After (below)

This is why we are convening an emergency Anti-Surgery THIS SATURDAY at 5:00 PM at the LOST & FOUND GALLERY at the opening of the 2nd FIDDLESTICKS installment. In addition to Angee Lennard (Chicago) and Alan Reed (Montreal), this show features Tsubasa Berg and Charlotte Whalen, both of whom have been Hector's roomates and foster-parents during his formative years.

Hector Clam will require some heavy reconstructive surgery, so it's been suggested that perhaps we might provide him with a form even more befitting of his grandeur; hasn't it always seemed like he might have a unicorn's horn? a __(noun)___? an etc.?

So come visit, see what these four have done with the gallery, and bring along some ideas or materials as all of us work together to repair and comfort our rubber friends and RESURRECT HECTOR CLAM!

And then, after a break for eating or otherwise refreshing, meet us AGAIN at our place at 221 Howard St., floor 3 (enter through the rear) at 8:00 PM for a Silent Soiree culminating in poems by Imogene Engine--more information below!

FIDDLESTICKS!!! #2- T. Berg, A. Lennard, A. Reed, C. Whalen

This weekend the FIDDLESTICKS Perpetual Exhibition will receive its first re-writing as the second group of artists moves their work into the space:

TSUBASA BERG (New Brunswick), proprietor of the Lost & Found Gallery, and source of many of the wonderful photos on this blog and elsewhere; ANGEE LENNARD (Chicago), heart of the Spudnik Press printing space and imprint, creator of the Mossdale Estate series, and carer for the elderly; ALAN REED (Quebec), semiotician and writer in all senses of that word, beyond those of theatre-maker, poet, novelist, and theorist; and CHARLOTTE WHALEN (New Brunswick), photographer and the Danton of last year's student revolt at the school of art at Rutgers University.

THERE WILL BE TWO EVENTS THIS SATURDAY in conjunction with the show: This new embodiment of the FIDDLESTICKS show will open at 5:00 PM this Saturday, March 8th, at the Lost & Found Gallery, 2nd floor of CSB, 33 Livingston, New Brunswick. There we shall all pitch in on a workshop-surgery to SAVE HECTOR CLAM and other of our rubber friends after the carnage at last Saturday's Bosch on Ice (more reports on that on their way--see the next post).

THEN

at 8:00 PM the same night, we will RECONVENE at our place-- 221 Howard St., 3rd Floor, entrance in the rear--for a SILENT SOIREE which shall culminate with spoken words finally materializing in the form of a set of poems by IMOGENE ENGINE (Columbus, Ohio)-- inveterate social volunteer and crypto-lyric originator of Post-Neo verse--as read in her absence by Olchar E. Lindsann.



Alan, Angee, and Imogene can't be here in person for this event, but all three have expressed an intention to visit New Brunswick for the Anti-Festival in June, so come see their work now, and meet them person (and see more work) in a few months!

More info on Saturday's events will be posted tomorrow. Unfortunately, Warren and I must both be up for work again in the morning...