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.

FIDDLESTICKS #4: Aaron Andrews & dadaDavid Hartke, performance by Alexander Conner

That's right, it's FIDDLESTICKS 4!

In this installment of the exhibition, we have dadaDavid Hartke and Aaron Andrews (both of Ohio), who along with Olchar Lindsann founded the very first Post-NeoAbsurdist group, Catharsism of Narcotica, as a joke back in A.Da. 86 (2002). We have also FINALLY received Angee Lennard's package of goodies from Chicago after an epic bureaucratic battle with UPS, and you can expect to see an Un-shiny new Anti-floor to the L&F Gallery as of THIS SATURDAY, MARCH 29th, at 7:00 PM, when this installment opens with various goings-on:

-Alexander Conner will be performing a piece called Close it Closet, stop by to learn more!
-Warren, Tomislav, Olchar, maybe some others will perform a simultaneous poem or two--
-There will be two 'medicinal poems'--what appears to have suddenly become a new Post-Neo poetic micro-form--for Mr. Hugo Ball Rat and Thomas L. Taylor; see the post above for details on that.

The following weekend, there will be no FIDDLESTICKS activity because Warren and Olchar will be down in Baltimore performing at the Trans-Modern Festival there, seeing British Post-Neo comrade-in-arms Alice Kemp (aka Germseed) perform, and distributing free sample-hauntings for Right-Geist, the Ghost Temp Agency they have started with Nathan Shafer and Joelle Howald.

The weekend after, April 12, the British invade the L&F Gallery in the form of David Beris Edwards, Emilie Lennard (Toledo, OH) adds her two cents, and perhaps others; and we will treat you to the premier of two brand-spanking-new installments of the Anti-legendary serial Mr. Squibbles short films.

Huzzah!

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...

C.o.N. & what this means for you.

! am hop!ng that Caraths!sm of Narcot!ca w!ll get the!r acts together so that they m!ght !gn!te a stellar event, bend!ng & stretch!ng sound & s!ght w!th focus/hocus & !ntent/untent. the corpse needs re-an!mated, needs a toe na!l cl!pp!ng, scotch guard!ng, !ng!ng!ng...

Are there any plans float!ng out there for what we m!ght do when we once aga!n face each other? !f not, how bout we start hammer!ng out the !deas on th!s forum?

!'m stat!ng r!ght here that ! want real!ty to r!p l!ke a sheet. the shepard shall be struck & the flock shall be scattered.

What say you, my heart!es? !s th!s what ye have sh!pped for? Aye, ! th!nk ye be brave.

plus, !'m try!ng to get a Rape Van performance sh!pped out !n t!me for the fest!val. Matt just won't stay !n the box.