DJ steve fly at the 12 Bar London

Mphdj Fly Agaric 23 @ 12 Bar London. Mohawk Release party with John Sinclair. May 11th, 2014.

XENZ CHU & BUSK: Dump Up the Volume

Xenz busk chu London E9 2009.
Uploaded by Xenz
Music: Sugar Bear-Don't Scandalize Mine

Mirror in the Buurvrouw & Sod The Rich

http://www.schudio.co.uk/blog/2011/mirror-in-de-buurvrouw/

From CHU:

After the success of the previous wall, the good folk at De Buurvrouw asked me to back to decorate their main wall in the bar. The inspiration came from the famous song by The Beat ‘Mirror in the Bathroom’ (there’s a fantastic interview with Dave Wakeling about the origin of the songs’ lyrics, not what you think). More details, a few 360 degree panoramas and a video after the jump.

I set up a timelapse camera, capturing every 30 seconds or so. The video below also has a soundtrack made by Amsterdam’s own Dr Marshmallow Cubicle, featuring the many talents of another long time collaborator and dear friend Steve FlyAgaric Pratt with guitar by Vicente Pino.
http://www.schudio.co.uk/blog/2011/mirror-in-de-buurvrouw/


SODTHERICH by flyagaric23

ROBERT ANTON WILSON and the DJVJ Revolution.

ROBERT ANTON WILSON and the DJVJ Revolution.

I dedicate this writing to Ken Campbell and the Science Fiction Theatre of Liverpool, and Ole'England, to the creative artists who use music, theatre, and multimedia inspire others to interpret and spread the wisdom and ideas of Dr. Robert Anton Wilson across all four corners of the metaphorical, toast.

Approx. three years ago, Matt Black and Mixmaster Morris spearheaded a multimedia tribute to Robert Anton Wilson held at the Royal Queen Elizabeth Festival Hall in London. This event set the vanguard for a new decade of technology and cyber-culture directed toward expanding consciousness and connecting the emergent 'hyperintelligent' social newtworks into a comprehensive praxis of edutainment.

I played a small role in this event by way of my relationship with Deepleaf productions and Maybelogic that helped link up Matt B. and Dr. Wilson for some of the exsquisite video material used in the 2.5 hour extravaganza. With some help I also managed to find an independent host for the entire show, and have been ruthlessly promoting the event since March 2007 together with other sharable RAW related projects.

Over the last three years a lot has happened for the characters involved with this show and here I hope to touch upon some of these events and build a cultural map, with Dr. Robert Anton Wilson firmly in mind.

Ken Campbell
On the 31st of August 2008 the great British writer, comedian, actor Ken Campbell passed over, the comic-glue who pulled the whole RAW tribute event together as the ring master and master of ceremonies for that evening. Not afraid to follow in RAW’s footsteps and explore the 'Chapel Perilous' of his writings; Ken preserved the biting wit and information rich satire that I find budding in RAW and that seems to me desperately missing from the popular conspiracy movement and the alternative social network revolution. Equally, if studied and carefully extracted from these great exemplary figures and their works, what might be missing can indicate the ingrediants for a new synthesis.

There have been a number of fitting tributes to the life of Ken Campbell and I hope that someday, maybe somebody will produce an equally stunning multimedia tribute to Ken, like that which was made for Bob (RAW).

Jung’s Dream & Number 223
On a personal note I, like RAW have traced most of my reasoning for being here to Jung’s dream (Page 223 of Jung’s Memories, Dreams, Reflections) situated in Liverpool, a dream that inspired the creation of the science fiction theatre Liverpool, the theatre which the ‘science fiction group inhabited’ first opened on the day Jung died (6th June, 1961) and is the theatre where John Lennon and the Beatles first sang Yellow submarine, you can read about this on page 223 of Cosmic Trigger by Dr. Wilson.

The fact that Jung called Liverpool the ‘pool’ of life may be due to this dream he had that I found of particular interest as it concerns the discovery of a swimming pool. More than approx. half of the dreams that have come to me, and I have wrestled into the waking world concern bodies of water.

I should add that I first came across the works of Robert Anton Wilson in the mid 1990’s while living in the UK and the sources of my discovery lead me to deduct that Bill Drummond and the KLF, who were the rich cultural icons carrying the RAW flame in the UK at that time, probably led to my coming across Cosmic Trigger. Bill Drummond leads back to Liverpool and 1976 when he was working briefly alongside Ken Campbell, and in the RAW tribute video describes how he first came across the book Illuminatus Trilogy!

Bill spoke of his new seventeen project and ‘no music day’ that also came up on radio show (2009) on the 'late late breakfast show' that also featured my friend John Sinclair, who admires 'Wild' Bill Drummond, which brings us by a commodious vicus of recirculation back to the JAMS. The JAMS!

Word to the wise: Bill Drummond Burns a Million Quid.

RAW attracted me to the United States in 2000 A.D and led me on a five year journey acriss-cross the United States and back to Europe (2005). In fact, the day after the Royal Tribute to RAW I flew out from London to Amsterdam and have lived here since then up to 2010. I once caught up with Matt Black and Mike Ladd andColdcut when they played the club 'Paradiso' in 2008.

When I ask myself the simple question ‘why am I here’ the best short answer is because of Jung’s dream, that Ken Campbell start's off his fantastic and perfect choice role as narrator and ring-master of the Robert Anton Wilson memorial concert.

Due to the tragic loss of the great comic 'Ken Campbell' I hope that in his memory others will research and continue his work, re-enact his plays and read his words aloud. My contributions so far are only within the synchro-mesh that surrounds Liverpool and RAW.

Coldcut and Ninjatune and Big Dada.
Since the London performance Coldcut and the constellation of artists that appear under that umbrella have produced countless ‘live’ shows, recorded and released ‘tracks’ ‘albums’ and even a conscious social green movement called energyunion, continuing their trajectory into the uncharted territory of multimedia manipulation and networked sound arts and activism.

As some of the first visual jockeys (VJ's) and inventors of the first VJ software that I am aware of: VJAMM’ Coldcut and by extension Ninjatune have been the mainstay of my case for introducing some principles and methodologies from Dr. Wilson into the new cultural infotech-sphere.

I was first attracted to Ninjatune by way of the Jazz Breaks series around 1994 and some of the early releases from Journey's by DJ’s, Luke Vibert, DJ Food, Amon Tobin and Funki Porcini. This new sound together with the emerging Bristol-bass scene, some Drum and Bass brewing from both Birmingham and Wolverhampton and the sounds of James Lavelle’s 'Mo-Wax' imprint; more or less shaped my musical cultural leaning and inspired me to aquire turntables, a mixer and start sharing tunes with others and mixing em' together in a Novel way.

One sure fire sign that Ninjatune, or somebody at Ninjatune, had a respect for RAW came when they released NINJASKINS: Ninjatune signature rolling papers that came with a wonderfully intelligent fold out package describing various terms and phrases of Ninjatune philosophy.

A local encounter with a UK Graffiti artist CHU blossomed into a collaboration with another UK graffiti artist and music producer PART2 that was released on Ninjatune’s sister label ‘Big Dada records’ that was recently featured in a UK Hip Hop exposition. The track was called Quantum Mechanix’ from the album Equalibrium by New Flesh For Old, now shortened to New Flesh.

I should point out here that this was a one off release and I was a mere guest on the album, and that I played drums on the track while turntable scratching was provided by DJ Weston. But still I carried the album to the US in 2000 AD wishing to turn on Bob to Big Dada and Ninjatune, and my own ‘superstring theory’ recording, and perhaps collaborate on something, such were my naive desires as a 23 year old kid with his head in the clouds.

RAW Moving pictures album.
After spending some time with RAW at the Prophets Conference Palm Springs and in San Francisco, I was finally invited to his home to conduct an interview on September 10th 2002.

It was here he told me about a movie project he was working on with some locals tentatively called Maybelogic, and so like a good researcher; I got in contact with 'Deepleaf productions' and soon turned them on to Matt Black and Ninjatune, and some other musical entities I thought had an affinity with RAW such as 'Kosmic Renaissance' (The Supplicants). For this linking I was generously given associate producer credits on the finished movie, plus music I mashed-up featured on the DVD menu music featuring my mentor and Garaj Mahal bassist, Kai Eckhardt.

With the kind hearted and good spirited contributions to this DVD project from many sources it turned into my dream album in some sense, a movie all about RAW with a soundtrack by Ninjatune, more or less my favourite things.

Maybe it was all wishful thinking and I had done nothing more than send an email link, but for me after this spree of good fortune I would be a tireless promoter of this movie, of the Maybelogic Academy (that sprung up in 2004 to provide online classes with RAW himself) and of Ninjatune philosophy, although by no means representing Ninjatune officially, just by playing many of their records for over sixteen years and crediting them with inspiring me to experiment with 'psychedelic' DJ sets and mixing techniques. I simply resonate with their early philosophy of Funk, Jazz, Dub and Hip Hop mashups.

Since 2007 and moving to Amsterdam my musical diet has changed dramatically once again, almost leaving behind electronic music generally to develop 'live’ music and writing projects, greatly influenced by my encounter with the giant of music, poetry, activism, and the MC5: John Sinclair.

So today in March 2010, writing about Ninjatune lacks the original spark it first struck me with in the 1990’s, before I started writing, before Internet. Back then the new 'sample' sound hypnotized me deeply, but now has morphed into tones of Sun Ra, John Cage, Jimi and Miles... I am romancing Ninja to rekindle a flame in my heart and so pulling a particular lens gell upon COLCUT: a collective of artists on the Ninjatune label (and who appear upon many other labels of the independent persuasion) that happen to feature two members that instigated the imprint in the early 1990's.

Together with Mixmaster Morris, and Juxta, Coldcut produced the Robert Anton Wilson Tribute show in London that I have picked as the centre point for this writing, and in my opinion is the most information rich multimedia event to date.

"Although the circumstances for this event were somewhat rare and the resources to reproduce such an event based on donations for the most part, I still feel it stands as an testimony to Multimedia edutainment at its most terse and best, almost fully formed in its experimental launch that night the video teaches by example how educational lectures may look and sound like over the new decade.--Matt Black."

Royaley RAW Edutainment
Although the show is 3 years old it has not picked up dust, only moonlight, and seems more relevant each day that passes, it stands as a great experimental interface between cinema, music, theatre, comedy and poetry that I feel culturally binds America, Britain and the rest of Europe and the entire World due to its shared global web presence and open source offering's.

All schools, colleges and University programs would benefit from such an interactive DJ VJ interface to present artistic interpretations of intellectual topics and biographical data.

Alan Moore.

For me Alan Moore produces consistent work that secure his place as the greatest living Britain; one of the best, a genius in fact, and a widely celebrated creative interpreter of 'art and reality engineering', buttered with RAW’s maps and recipes.

To see and hear Alan reading from ‘Masks of the Illuminati’ and his wonderfully bright ‘eulogy’ for RAW, was a heart thumping highlight of the evening in London, listening to Alan’s Northern accent made me feel at home and really proud to be British, and to be honest I don’t often get patriotic feelings like that. A propa warrior mystic Midlands monk, I rekon. He performance was alike RAW performing 'cameo' in the Black Mass scene of the Illuminatus the stage performance in Liverpool, directed by Ken Campbell 31 years previous.

And with the added ambiance of the occasion (that of the passing of Robert Anton Wilson) Alan really put five cherries on top of the Escher cake, his first words from Masks included “A watchmaker in Amsterdam...” The following morning, as I said, I flew to Amsterdam and the 'Jam in the Dam' festival to meet with the band Galactic from New Orleans.

I have a long list of thanks and wish to add some extra names to those on the E-flyer’ Matt Black, Lance Boucher, Nigel Blunt, Nick Larson, Part2, Ninjatune office staff, Juice Aleem, John Sinclair, Galactic, Mixmaster Morris, Mike Ladd, Propanon, Toby Philpott, Chu.

Steven 'Fly Agaric 23' Pratt
Amsterdam NL.























http://raw.maybeee.com/




And now for something a little different...

PART II Jung’s Dream Revisited.

A constellation of synchronicities surround a dream that Carl Jung had, twas based in Liverpool. A dream that led to Robert Anton Wilson visiting Liverpool and Ken Campbell producing the Illuminatus Stage paly and, Bill Drummond coming into orbit with the Northern renaissance, but not in that order.

John Lennon and the Beatles first performed yellow Submarine at the Cavern, also on Mathew street, Liverpool, and Jung died on the day it opened on June 6th, 1961. Please note Jung visited Lucia Joyce in Northhampton and Jung prescribed James Joyce's Finnegans Wake to the Western World as good medicine. Alan Moore writes about Lucia Joyce and the Northhampton 'Intersection points' and 'syncro-mesh'.

As a student of synchronicity, by way of RAW, best explicated in his book ‘Coincidance: A head test’ I'm somewhat familiar with this synchromesh around Carl Jung and his Liverpool based dream. And was happy when Ken Campbell reignited my interest when describing the events at the ‘Coldcut and Mixmaster Morris Tribute to RAW’ held in the Royal Festival Hall London.

Three years after that memorable occasion I have been steered back to Jung’s dream, partly due to the writing of my own dream book ‘Shannanigums Wave’ over those three years, and my continual reading and re-reading of RAW, James Joyce, my personal favourite writers whom I feel wonderfully complement one-another.

The opportunity to present my independent research in this area has arisen due to Evolver and the ‘Dream’ theme of the planned April 21st ‘Evolver Spore’ or (art and edutainment salon). I hope that in combining a mixture of RAW inspired dream content based upon a Jungian’ framework, and with a plash’ of Joyce thrown in I can capture the ‘reality’ of some dreams, and provide sharable tools for others to interpret their dreams and dream-states, or those of others.

The future congress of like-minded ‘dream’ evolvers looks to create an environment where dreams and thoughts about dreams can be shared and openly discussed. My idea for a ‘Jung’s dream’ spore here in Amsterdam is only my first thought on the matter, and I hope to share the available time and resources available so that everyone has an opportunity to interact with the group if they wish. My choice of a RAW inspired glossing of the event reflects my affiliations with the Maybelogic Academy, something else I would encourage people to bring any questions or queries about to the spore.

Two or more audio/video presentations:

• 1. Ken Campbell introducing Jung’s dream, taken from the London Raw tribute.
• 2. RAW speaking of Synchronicity and Isomorphism in Finnegans Wake
• 3. ‘Jung’s Dream’ DJ set by Fly Agaric 23

Other activities and fields of resonance include Hyperbolic Crochet, pancakes, live theatre, comedy, meditation, live music, smoking, dancing, sharing mixed and mashed media, magic truffles.

Recommended reading list:

• 1. Coincidance by Robert Anton Wilson
• 2. Mankind and His Symbols by Carl Jung
• 3. Cosmic Trigger by Robert Anton Wilson
• 4. Finnegans Wake by James Joyce.

Ken Campbell: We did it in Liverpool because Peter O'Hallaghan had come across a dream in Jung's Memories, Dreams, Reflections. The dream changed Jung's life, persuaded him to buckle down to the Unconscious for the rest of his life. Anyway, on page 223 he says something like: I was in a dark and grimy city. It was clearly Liverpool. It goes on . . . And this began to obsess Peter who was a proud Liverpoolophile. - http://www.frogboy.freeuk.com/ken.html

At O'Halligan's venue, known as the Liverpool School of Language, Music, Dream and Pun, artists became immersed in readings, performances and bizarre experiments. "It was the inspirational talking shop, where dole-queue dreamers developed their big ideas," Bill Drummond says. - http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2007/feb/21/europeancapitalofculture2008.liverpool

www.rawilson.com
www.maybelogic.org
www.coldcut.net
www.soundphotosynthesis.com
www.blunt1.com

Robert Anton Wilson - Maybe Logic: The Lives And Ideas Of Robert Anton Wilson

Label: deepleaf productions

Catalog#: none

Format: DVD

Country: US

Released: 2003

Genre: Non-Music

Style: Interview, Political, Education, Speech

Tracklist

001		Tuning In
002		Childhood Mysteries
003		Discordian Infallibility
004		Quantum Gamble
005		PPS Pain
006		Existential Maps
007		PPS Medicine
008		Conspiratorial Responsibility
009		Magick Science
010		Sirius Pookha
011		E-Prime
012		Green Donkey
013		Forgiveness
014		Santa Cruz Protest
015		Optimism
016		Infinite B.S.
017		End Credits

Credits

Artwork By [Package Design] - Propane Studio
Directed By, Written-By - Lance Bauscher
Executive Producer - Timothy F.X. Finnegan
Featuring - Douglas Rushkoff , Ivan Stang , Paul Krassner , R.U. Sirius , Tom Robbins , Valerie Corral
Music By - Amon Tobin , Animals On Wheels , Boards Of Canada , Cinematic Orchestra, The , Funki Porcini , Ognen Spiroski , Pullman , Rick Walker , Supplicants, The , Tarentel
Music By [Dvd Menu] - Fly Agaric 23
Narrator - Robert Anton Wilson
Other [Associate Producers] - Amanda Dofflemyer , Fly Agaric 23 , Katherine Covell
Other [Best Boy] - Robert Anton Wilson
Other [Camera] - Amanda Dofflemyer , David Allen , Ivan Stang , Katherine Covell , Lance Bauscher , Robert Dofflemyer
Producer, Edited By, Artwork By [Designed By] - Cody McClintock , Lance Bauscher , Robert Dofflemyer

Notes
Contains over 3 hours of material including Maybe Logic feature, expanded interviews with all the featured RAW cohorts, maybe logic exercises, and original, non-simultaneously, DVD-randomized footage of the best of Pope Bob.

More info available from http://www.maybelogic.com/.

Jung as a writer
By Susan Rowland

A TURNTABLE OPERATING MANUAL

CHU CUBE 2010

Square the circle by removing the corners,
object subject turning liquid like waters,
lines flowin' in all directions, the chu cube is like you tube,
call it CHU CUBE.

Twenty ten cubism inside and out,
floors walls and ceiling give that space-timeless feeling, to viewer,
step onto the stylus and track your beat, shuffle your feet and fly
through the art with a star fleet, greet the words and the wires that connect em',
catch the fifty-one bus from Walsall to Birmingham
to the beatbox in a box in a box.

Holosthesia spreads like 'Check-it' pox,
artists work hard day and night like Ox,
bringing the inner-word to the outer world,
to the writers Gild, to the sight-builders mill.
A cube to step inside, sweet like sugar,
CHU from all quarters. Step into thrillennium.

Chunese Cube year. Step into it. The future realized and shared.
Turn on the chube. Mind the gap between the light source
and your mind, smell the sauce, the wooden frame,
step to the game.

Re-orient.
All art is game play,
a welcome invite into the field.
Painting a shield to protect humans from total coercion,
what is it? If not on a canvas or a wall?
what is it, or what shall we call it? er...

Holosthesia and total immersion, talking about legal tripping
in a non-virtual 'virtual reality. Inside the cube the digital man
is reversed. Polarities shift and change, Oh man,
everything you say it is, it isn't.

Eight corners and curves to infinity,
am I a computer? am I the glasses now, or
are the glasses me, inside a total
immersive environment?

3D and 3D and 3D. Ambiguity in terms,
who makes them anyhow? Cyberspace?
The artist as steersman and seer, appy new year!
A temple of Graffiti perception and street level
communication.

Miles of wires with plugs to tempt thugs with drums,
as the city light hums, as the concrete slums rise into
the air, shattered bricks and mortar flying
backwards, in fact, reforming as offspring, springs
and sprockets, microphones and rockets,
garden features and human creatures, ash and cash
and flash photo paint drip.

Drop the Iron curtain onto a hot city and wash
the melted cheese scape across the steel canvas
to tongue-stun.

Soup and symmetry, bread and born and bred.
Tangled speaker cables plug into the sewer,
speakers blast' slang and shouts from the streets
mixed with beats, to find the perfect beat, look
and rewind the slidewalks tape-ways.

Step.

love, fly

AEROSOL INTELLIGENT GRAFFITI (AIG)

AEROSOL INTELLIGENT GRAFFITI (AIG) v1.0

by Steven James Pratt
Fly Agaric Studio's, Amsterdam NL.
Edited Feb. 11th 2010.

BOOK I. CHAPTER I.

Introduction:
All the innovative Graffiti art provides a testament to a collective Great British spirit of rebellion and revolt, that I heartily support and that I hope to romance here in these lines. I started writing out these ideas for the purpose of creating a book about CHU 51 and his Artwork, which alone requires a great deal of patience and meditation on my part, as I have come to see how writing about CHU is also writing about UK Graffiti and there are a lot of writers out there who also deserve a book, an essay or a blog post article about them by independent investigative journalists like myself, and friends of the artists, and to be shared among the community by the community.

Graffiti Art, Aerosol Art and Urban street, whatever you call it emerged--phoenix like--from the streets, to form a global village of new art perception and language manipulation, in urban cities across the world.

This artform suffers attacks upon it from various authorities, unlike any other, and who act upon the laws that determine Graffiti ART's "criminal damage" impact, in most but not all' cases and, furthermore, variousorganizations remove Urban Street ART on a regular basis creating a unique criminalized merry-go-around, a revolution that highlights the hypocrisy and sophisticated intolerance of modern lawyer run capitalist society, and the all out warfare on street culture icons, on urban artists generally. The global village calls forth Graffiti Art revolutions in the streets, new art for social change, art as a creativity medium for the newtechnological challenges to humanity and global culture.

Personally, I am fond of diverse types of art and culture, 'O Di Diversa Natura' as Giordano Bruno once wrote. Not just Graffiti art, but the culture that fosters it and that unique street level philosophy just appeals to my aesthetic, whever and whatever that is? I grew up during the emergence and mutation of Graffiti Art in the UK (1980's-90's) and feel fortunate to have had the rare chance to spend time with some of the UK's finest, before the Banksy boom, and I soon gathered a rough idea of what Graffiti culture was about: assimilating the corporate advertisement media and infecting the language structures of culture with a super surrealist virus, at it's best. Ugly tags and mindless vandalism at it's worst, and who's 'best' and who's 'worst' are we talking about anyhow? British Transport Police? Local council? Art Critic's guild?
(See Robert Del Naja of Massive Attack vs. Transport For London)

After meeting some UK Graffiti writers, drinking tea, sharing a spliff or two and realizing they were mostly working class lads, I became fascinated with the idea of these warrior poets decorating the streets with wisdom, crushing wit and otherwise censored 'social commentary', and felt that indeed, a new language was being born, a new language culture was hacking the corporate media, that 'pych' virus, growing exponentially in the social sphere, and dragging it out onto the streets, beating it to pieces and lovingly resurrecting the word-image-message for us, the people who have to live in these advertisement parks throughout Britain.

Some writers stuck apart, with the flavour of discordianism and some other past attempts to organize by precise 'disorganization.' Organized Confusion? Others reformed under new names, new crewes, most moved to London. Simultaneously to this organized confusion of artists, huge corporations got fat on real capital in the swinging 1990's, moving in with the missing capital, and bought up a stack of talent, a rack of sneakers, and cranked out replicable fashion objects like all the other junk makers. (See Cory Doctrow)

And the movement went underground again, crewes splintered, letters cracked and bulged in all directions, occasional success stories, amidst the thought-police, the crime-watch-think and all the damned NEWSPEAK they made assimilation's with global village culture through the emerging decentralized--internet--idea infections.

At the same time a sudden influx of cheap imitations and watered down 'Graffiti Ideologies influenced' font styles, and a phalanx of trashy products from 'aftershave to 'breakfast cereal' were referencing the once underground 'Hip Hop and Graffiti culture' in particular (R.I.P). Everything suffered except the language virus of Graffiti itself that eats all: the referential questioning of grammar, rhetoric, logic, control, authority, Identity and signifying.

Graffiti artists rely on word of mouth and physical networks of friendships to get work done and invariably writing' and commentary on Graffiti in any general or regionally exclusive way can stifle the development of the global artists village. In some sense, only the language of aerosol Graffiti, its symbols, colors, size and impact, can describe what aerosol graffiti means. Many non-graffiti writers are set about describing a similar experience of being with justified words, poetry seems to have the closest fit with theartform, poetry, not rap, I think.

Graffiti culture and hip hop culture have been fattened for corporate snakes, bodysnatched, raped and beaten to death. I have watched the motherfucking snakes slither off with the very thing, or cultural artefact, that we have made, and neutralized it, mass produced it, and handed it to thepre-packed consumer, at half price. This kind of 'culture mill' often results in the degradation of the consumer as well as the product, as Mcluhan said 'the tools you use shape you, as you shape them' not to speak of the cultural conditions and challenges that fostered the new artistic breakthrough and new youth movement that went unseen, un-recorded. In science and technology I notice a similar pattern of cultural hijacking and technological piracy, always spearheaded by the biggest private market places, the richest markets and the most powerful market monopolists. One man's pirate maybe another man's king.

GRAFFITI ARTS AND CRAFTS.

In which i explore the role I perceive of the Graffiti artist in 2010 society, the art world vs. the art village, the street art world and the street art village. The invisible interior worlds of creative imagination.

“All words transmitted as sonic or visual signals—sound waves or light waves—rapidly become photons, electrons, neurotransmitters, hormones, colloidal reactions, reflex arcs, conditioned or imprinted “frames,” physiological responses, etc. As they impact upon the totalsynergetic organism. –RAW, Black Magic and Curses.

A good artist will spell properly, have command of logic and grammar, will have good knowledge of languages, mathematics and geometry and how these things fit together to work on the people and the environment.

Symbols combine with the word meanings and are per-mutated to produce imagined auditory snapshots. Captured thoughts, reflected by the good Graffiti artist on the urban street canvas, immediately, where spelling and grammar are exploited 24-7 by the Global Capitalist Advertising Pirates. The new art helps the re-balancing of public thought spaces, in my opinion.

Balancing equations between adverts, between political propaganda, between real estate, and adding footnotes next to the footpaths so that some lucky critters maybe confronted and arrested by OrwellianNewspeak that has speech bubbles and helpful footnotes. Thought-crimes are committed and made flesh. A tit for tat poetry slam playing throughout various global media:TV, Billboards, Radio, Packaging, Newspapers.

A good Graffiti artist fulfills an important role in society as the defence early warning radar system. They can sniff out the bullshit in the language before the thing it refers to manifests itself. Sign and commercial code breaking. To remix the symbols and send them spitting back into the environment as messages, fair commentary,imagist poetry, hologramic prose and stunning visual expressions reaching beyond any textual language – therefore, the good Graffiti artist can show up the Global Corporate Advertising Industry.

Turn on CNN, or most TV news stations and get a dose of that meaningless, indeterminate dribble they spread, the board room executive sales virus, the news-speak of the modern corporate POP monster and his salesman. The great beast of the apocalypse is slayed on many street corners and on walls with an increasing ingenuity, a growing brevity and creative intelligence today in Britain, the America's and throughout Europe. The surveillance culture has made the artist smarter, fitter and made them better players of the game.

Aerosol Graffiti Art is launching a spear through the veil of Marketing language and the corporate codes of mass brain-washing and misinformation programing. Every city in the world has it’s Graffiti and history of writers. Reaching far back to the stone age and the cave dwellers, back to before civilization and cities and agriculture there were Graffiti artists communicating on the walls, drawing what they saw, interacting with mind and sharing messages with the others.Timebinding through artistic expression and representation.

“It’s a very very conservative toff/mercantile alliance (The merchant Ventures and their circle) who still set the social, political and cultural agenda in the city to a remarkable extent. The reality is that Banksy had to go to London to make a name for himself as he was ignored in Bristol.” –The Bristol Blogger

I have noticed regional government failure in the UK, failure to notice local talent and nurture them, especially within the arts, combined with a nationwide criminal stereotype of the 'hooded aerosol villain' or vandal, this failure leads to a lowered possibility of getting paid work for one's art these days.

How can a Graffiti artist have a gallery show unless one partners with some sonsor, or accept a government grant maybe handed over by the same institutions that enforce the Graffiti abatement program and reinforce our cultural rations of Sugar, War-speak, Automobile-pimp, insurance-lies and banking business bullshit? It has always been hard for the artist, and Graffiti Art is the blues story of Hip Hop. Million's can sing of the Graffiti blues, sitting in a cell for learning to spell in public.

One option open to the up and coming artist, who happens by chance not to have been born into great wealth or into a geographical area with high employment for artists and the opportunity to pursue any cutting edge cultural activities, is to simply move location, go, go , go to where the action is and where the employment may exist, move to London, New York or Paris, the heart of Modern cultural policing and monopoly on what (is) hip. Closer to the source of the language of Graffiti, the city pulls in and push's out billions of symbols per second, some are captured on walls without borders.

Corporatism seems to be at the center of this phenomena of artist exile, as I view it, and accepting the ground rules of society without question often leads to apathy and the rise of totalitarian control while you were sleeping. This phenomena seems widespread around Great Britain and with the anti-Graffiti programs as a case in point I can see why. I feel saddened that communities that might benefit most from these artistic visions, village humour and tireless town promotion are purged of local talent, probably after they attain a certain threshold of popularity and cannot find the local support and are forced to move on out.

This artist in exile phenomena, seems a bit like what’s termed the 'Wimbledonization' of Great Britain and her entire world culture, by osmosis, whereby we often host the biggest global corporations without giving our own local players a competitive chance of competing on a fair and equal playing field. Consider the full resistance to Graffiti Art and Urban Street Art by the British Government and the puritanical mobs of cops contrasted with the history of UK Graffiti culture, the starving artists and they’re underground Olymic stamina.

The seeds of revolt are being nourished, and the Graffiti artists from one time or another are unified by their poetic interpretation of reality or their figuring out for themselves that language manipulates “reality” in different ways, and can modify your perceptions and the perceptions of others, at least temporarily, and taking the language-system into their own hands, writing hands, and translating some parts of it onto walls and buildings, re-creating “reality” in full colour pictographs, all in their own individual perceptions, not learnt in school, college or University but a new synthesis, a totality of these exeriences on the street itself.

Graffiti artists of no school or class but the chaos of the streets, or, organized confusion. Artists of a more discordian persuasion influence universe by striving for the original, always spontaneous, on high alert and prepared for co-operative partnerships with other language-systems and “reality-constructs”. Mobile artists continually revising updating and expanding the class of all scientifically meaningful statements available to us at this date, and some deliver the news painted in the streets five stories high!

ART DEAL?

"To be aware of what is going on, I must take a semantic jump beyond appearances and "realize" it, make it become real for me." --J. Samuel Bois. Our space-time world.

Agents and Art Dealers exert an influence on the manufactured “realities” of the art world and have a certain monopoly of the languagestructure and the means to distribute it throughout the village, by using the same global corporate media enterprises that keep in place the consumer labyrinth we inhabit, albeit temporarily. Some have said that the ART world really consists of around 666 people, most of them in New York and this has been the scene for over the last 60 years approximately.

“ART theory, pure and simple, words on a page, literature undefiled by vision, flat, flatter, flattest, a vision invisible” Tom Wolfe writes in The Painted Word, hinting, in my opinion approx. that ART and the ART World and the public perception of these 'things' may have been hijacked by the multi-media corporations that reproduce THEORY in 'type', and manipulate neuro-Semantic highways along which the 'reality of language' and the 'language of reality' are transported.

Art can hope for no success unless 100 Million people “know what it is” and the process of defining “things” and their “meaning” by way of relationships is the heart and craft of the good Graffiti artist, andcrewe network, a lone assassin of knowledge working in the streets, but tuned into the village heart radio, working without sleep to wrestle the language of “reality” back from the greedy corporations and their ART world off-shoots back into the village milk float.

“All forms of Black Magik therefore, depend on confusing and mingling these two classes: the nonverbal experiential and the verbal nonexperiencial.” RAW

If money and status are influential in ART movements then such a movement might be distinguished from those which emerged from comparative poverty: low income areas with high crime rates and a hijacked community infrastructure.

Jacked by the RICH economy and the capitalist system of might makes right, a system in which the RICH have control and influence to get richer quicker. In the UK it was the invitation of what I view as the worst part of America, right into our village, our shops and our front living rooms, that helped me developed such a critical view of business and trade enterprises with the giant American companies.

Mcdonalds, KFC and Burger King are just the tip of the iceburg , beneath the surface Billions of Pounds are swapped for Dollars and real estate, our future land resources traded by millionaire's and their friends in Government, both national and local, whereby handing our culture over to the worst viral entities from the USA. Who's 'lovin' it now? But this 'pych' operation was simply assimilated by Graffiti ARtists and poets, more grist for the grind sir'.

Welcome to the market ART economy world of 'The Makers'. If the ART world turns out to be just another arm of the bourgeoisie 'makers', with it’s connected 'Agents, Dealers and promotional markets', then what can we ever know about ART? or art theory without actually experiencing it with our own neuro -semantic nervous system? Why then, is Graffiti Art illegal and criminalized by the United States and United Kingdom law makers, and most other National Governments? Money, control, paranoia, making our village pretty?

If only the artists and the public at large could interact and understand each other better, and using these new social network tools emerging like magic mushrooms. Artists are the antenna of the race, visual healers of social ills and cooperative language interpreters for us all. Street artists and street news journalists all-together, wrestling with the symbols, the rhetoric, the grammar that produce spontaneous feedback, but open-source and fair: thinking globally and acting locally. Always on' and in contact with the other writers faced with the same daily predicament and correlating group feedback into good research. The Global Village walls are now become writing tablets. Grammar, Rhetoric, logic?

RELATIVITY

"FUCK SOCIALISM --Paul Krassner.

Urban Graffiti artists and street culture at it’s most poetic dwells in the sewers of language and trash of our culture, with the flies, rats, pigeons and the plague, with Burroughs and Joyce and the French Symbolists--Graffiti artists--are like chameleon commando's that can survive on anything the city labyrinth leads them to: war, famine, pestilence, economic disaster, racism, abuse, celebrity culture, false flag terrorism anything you can imagine, brutal, bigoted and/or dogmatic as you can imagine, turned inside out, synthesized and reconstructed as art and poetry, leading us to a temorary salvation, at least.

Good Graffiti artists, in my estimation will find a way to amplify, nullify, beautify and fry-up these linguistic invaders from the grey board room, and will shake the language-structures out through a simple aerosol cap into 'illuminated epiphanies from the streets', radical new sign-age of the struggle to balance the equation by any means necessary, fingerprints of what democracy looks like. Struggle, synthesis, renewal. A unique illustration of the painted-word in the depraved streets of the modern Urban Warfare zones. Culture warfare and information warfare waged in fairness?

"going beyond a form means passing from one form to another." --Jean Baudrillard, recovering radical illusion.

Good Street Graffiti has found a new way to gain agency to social change and it involves the manipulation of symbols and signs, image and casting the shadow of a new language into the “reality” construction process.

I think a pandemic of sane street Graffiti languages pose a threat to the centralized totalitarian monopoly on thought and, I that publicly repressed knowledge concerning the relationships between language and reality, and the high probability of an 'observer created universe' or perceived co-created “reality” constructed, and influenced by the sense impressions left by symbolic languages.

The coincidence of you being there and the Universe being there at the same time, or simply a sort of magical worldview where manipulation of language can effect “reality” and a view wherein everything counts and is connected, all is networked into a meaningful whole, a gestalt 360 panoramic.

Maybe the Gods of human conceptions are merely further symbolic inscriptions, scrawling attempts to grasp the ineffable angels, or exhaust fumes created from our co-created human experience of “things” and "motion in things", but sensed to be out there, beyond language or beyond human language developed thus far.

Urban Street Graffiti, for me, molds the keys to a revolution in the minds of the people where the centralized systems of control and coercion are short circuited and turned inside-out by non-violent means, adding beauty and alternative tribal 'meanings' to the Urban environment and bringing good news to the CCTV camp walls of Britain.

GRAFFITICK

“In the existential world—in the sensory -sensual continuum—Thoth still reigns and language still has Magik. All communication contains sorcery and/or hypnosis...” –RAW, Black Magic and curses.

The ruler oriented minority of publishers perish at the wall down the street my friend. Strict control over the press in the interest of the safety of the state has run it’s 400 year course, we are at the 'end of the word' in my humble opinion.

Maybe mass mediated alphabet cultures are literally turning insane, in part due to the lack of precise meanings, or precise distinguishing values between word/symbols and the “things” they represent. The words and symbols you use, write, speak and process, co-create, the “reality tunnel” that you experience, and Graffiti Art and Street Art and artists are dancing with these principles outside of the usual urban control parameters.

Linguistic and semantical review in the face of mass cultural implosion and apocalypse requires a moments contemplation...which positively results in meditation, analysis and scientific research into language mediated “reality” constructs.

I would imagine a big rush to implement these new findings into the public “meme-sphere”, to try to help those who may not have had a University education to recognize the “fnords” and to better distinguish between different value systems, humanistic and economic, and to better navigate through constellations of different meanings, thedamnbiguation of our times, readying the mind-body interface between the language virus and the human hardware for the big show down, or the big future in general. But no big rush to teach NLP to the kids, just the adults and CEO's. No rush to legalize Graffiti and acknowledge the primal symbolic features of human beings.

Good urban Graffiti artists are a glimmer of hope, as they hold the keys to make change in conformity with will and write out the equation concerning the pressing questions. What makes civilizations go insane, what (is) identity, society, ART and Reality doing, Postmodernism, multiculturalism, nouns, verbs andpreffix's?

TELE COMMUNE EQUATIONS

“The first rule of politics is to use the language precisely. Otherwise nobody understands anybody else, and everything falls into chaos –Kung Fu Dzu.

Communication between Graffiti writers, in the language of Graffiti, keeps their nervous systems tuned in with their surroundings, and local environment, and can lead them to study the human symbol systems and languages that they re-produce in their own street more closely, even scientifically sometimes, the rare times you get artists doing local socio-linguistic study and keeping notes, to enable the conversation to continue and stimulate new thought with these recorded artefacts.

The practical situation of painting in the street can cause friction and stress upon the individual writers, and the community, often amplified by the anti-graffiti police, whitewashed press, major media and art world boasters, all working to turn original street culture into a saleable readymade commodity' to replicate and mass produce, to mass distribute, and working at the ultra-mega massive scale: Universal, Sony, Disney,Pixar, EMI Time Warner etc., these pirates have held a massive advantage so far in the game, based on might makes right logic, and massive amounts of capital investment to back what they like, but the tides are turning and the BlackMagick of corporatism seems to be wearing off a little, consuming itself in the primal tribal fires rekindling in our community.

The capitalist game maybe loosing any scraps of meaning and sane purpose it may have held up until 2010, once more product and the consumer inter-twinned, but with the new interfaces of the WWW the balance seems to be returning somewhat to the individual artist eccentrically.

Good Graffiti Artists and sly advertising CEO’s and mafia run marketing executives are doing a similar process, after all, but at different levels of magnitude and under different social, economic and cultural conditions. They are manipulating language in conformity with will, with different instruments for their personal science/entertainment program and different survival parameters. And they share their artistic vision and social commentary. The art of sharing is the art of spreading your language.

Like the airy quality and concept of 'success' measured by the amount of meals one eats per day, contrasted with the number of Billion square feet in real estate a company may own, such as Tesco . A modern David and Goliath scenario, echoing the unbalanced problem with the centralized world economic platform, where the majority of people and made to feel powerless and insignificant against the multi national giants of culture, agriculture, banking, warfare and closed system curses, that magically somehow own the world, with the help of 900'000 lawyers, and anything that can be hijacked by a label, a category of a state. Language hijacked, but for a closed group of private individuals. The good Artist has always tried to share knowledge with others.

But optimistically speaking, a scenario dependent upon crooked language systems and exploited hypnosis techniques has it’s Achilles heel’, and will also boom and burst, hijacked by way of the swinging backdoor and inoculated by a more powerful andefective antidote in the forms of new perceptions and the emergence of new scientific and research based - new language - cultures! Graffiti tribes of free and uninhibited citizens of Universe.

Street Graffiti language, when charged with the highest possible meaning and spread as far and wide throughout every Urban environment on earth, can resist the thought police and advertising vultures that encircle the apocalyptic circus of the postmodern corporate controlledmediasphere .

Organize and do your homework, think for yourself, write questions to authority in pictures on your streets, our streets? why should we allow the corporations to invade our communities with their death trip, sex trip and tax trip slogans and to cast hypnotic spells that we are told are supposed to warn us, but, as I see them contain a stereotypical guilt technique developed from the government agencies, presented in Newspeak 2.0, leading to mass-confusion deployed upon our families, friends and loved ones. Fair play I spray!

NO. I state that the culture wars are fought non-violently in the streets with revolutionary language, charged with maximum meaning and sincerity, deployed back into the hearts and minds of the people – fresh, spontaneous, creatively and beautifully, and in contrast to the dull black “newsmagick” spook-speak, currently oozing out from almost every consumer-able product, street corner, shop front, roadside and transport route.

“i am working on every level, artistic, commercial, advertising...” – Andy Warhol.

60's UPSIDE OUT AND INSIDE DOWN.

"If our symbol system is three-dimensional, as in Euclidean geometry, the structure of the world is assumed to be three dimensional, if our logic is multi-valued, as in modern science, the structure of the world is assumed to be multi-dimensional. -- J.Samual Bois. An Important Distinction.

Street artists are an antenna of the race, beaming out across the urban streets, and in Great Britain for roughly 25 years. Among the hundreds of unrecognized and under-acknowledged Street Graffiti artists, who in my humble opinion – taking into consideration the manic police tactics and government snooping used against them – deserve a huge congratulations in the shape of some funding and resources to continue to set up new Urban environments, to share dreams through paintings. And support for those that are not phased by the violent and sly attacks upon British youth culture, art, music and the freedom to share this art, and to explore one's own consciousness without getting banged up in jail.

Some Graffiti and some Hip Hop culture in Britain mutated into an early engine room for anarchy and 60's spirited counter-cultural ideals. Building a new culture within the shell of the old, together with the rise of the globalinternet , and the uprising of underground art and music seemed to be gathering force, infecting the others, everybody could now feel the 90’s cultural landscape changing as the new Millennium approached..

LEGOCY

The four magical weapons of Hip Hop culture: Breakdancing, DJ’ing, M.C’ing and Graffiti; were develpoed all-at-once around New York in the 1970's, and then spread to Britain; mixed in with TV shows like Dallas, 'Disco music and 'McDonalds during the 1980's, and although only a wee trickle back then, the few messages and signals that did get through began to take hold of some young artists and early pioneers of streetlanguaging.

Like the slow, awkward, half-assed move to digitize all music in Britain, leading to Apple’s quick monopoly of the technology, Graffiti art and culture is lacking in support, to repeat myself again: Graffiti remains a CRIME in most urban areas, where it still thrives and grows in new hearts and minds of all ages, throughout all the genetic-soup packets and nationalities brewing in Great Britain, and around most of the world.

Australia seems to have a particularly destructive policy concerning Urban Street Art, along with the UK, and the U.S. I would propose that cultures and environments with a healthy and blooming Urban Street Art movement are the sign of a healthy community: New York, Paris, Brighton, Berlin, Bristol all have a recognized Graffiti culture, but even in these culture capitals Graffiti is still defined as a criminal offence and punishable by law.

The emergence of internet and the means for everybody to communicate with the rest of the world, at least for a few moments and turn each other onto alternative versions of historical and cultural events, probable causes, new models and metaphors, hidden influences etc, the centralized power structure has failed, the bullshit has piled up so high that nobody can breath anymore, let alone see, choking on our own entropy and bullshit, to be negative.

The creativenegentropic processes at work in manipulating "reality" and "Language" by way of what I call 'Good Graffiti, on the other hand, may help save some of the collective mind of humanity from going totally insane due to the alphabetical virus gone wild, and the enhanced redundancy of information in our daily messages. Information = surprise.

--Steve fly agaric 23.
Amsterdam
EDITED Thursday 11th Feb. 2010

SOURCES:

Tom Wolfe, The Painted Word. William S. Burroughs, the electric age. James Joyce, Finnegans Wake. Robert Anton Wilson, email to the Universe. Hakim Bey, The criminal Bee. Marshal McLuhan, The Gutenburg Galaxy & Understanding Media. Jean Baudrillard, The conspiracy of art. Ezra Pound, Cantos. Orson Welles, F For Fake. Alfred Korzybski, science and sanity. J. Samual Bois, Explorations in Awareness.

Crispin Stillwell Henry Chalfont Rammellzee Simon Reynolds Kodwo Eschun Part 2, John Sinclair. Plus...Hakim Bey, Frank O’ Hara. Allan Ginsberg and Kerouac. Karl Popper, T.S Elliot, Pound, William Empson, W.B Yeats, Ernest Fenollosa, Wyndam Lewis, Andre Breton, Dali, Picasso, Alan Moore, Mouse/Kelly, George Herriman.

Photographs from 51 Degrees preview night. MAY 2009

| posted on May 15 2009

51, birmingham, cube, gallery, jibbering art

Photography

All photographs courtesy of Brett Wilde.

The preview night had hundreds of people stopping by. Fly Agaric flew in from Amsterdam to maintain the audio component of the show, Chromatouch assisted with the animated projections and the Jibbering crew were in full effect. The gallery had invited a photographer along called Brett Wilde, who took some great photographs.