"Drone … plane … sky …" I mumbled my words, closed my eyes and waited for the whoosh of a missile.
The commander and his men laughed. "These are media lies, that Americans can see us," he said. "Look now, we are a big group of Taliban. There are 200 men here and they can't see us. We believe in God, so don't be scared."
Another fighter spoke up: "If you stand still in the dark and not move they can't see you. It's written in the Qu'ran."
On the way to the camp I had been told of other drone-dodging techniques. If you are on a motorcycle and the drone fires a missile, jump off and the missile will follow the motorcycle. If you are with a large group, stop, like musical statues, and the drone will confuse you with the trees.
*
"These trips have their own lingo, I learned, as part of the traveling press corps assigned to chronicle every speech, handshake and hug. “Bi-lats” are bilateral meetings. “Meet-n-greets” are visits to American embassies. “Camera sprays” are essentially photo opportunities, usually staged and no questions allowed, and “spray” can be used as a noun, as in, “there’s a camera spray at 2 p.m. with President X” or as a verb — “come on guys, time to spray the lunch.” The secret service on her plane refer to their M-4 assault rifles as their “sticks.” The secretary of state is called “the package.”"
*
"In eastern Congo, we needed to use two planes to land at a small airport and Mrs. Clinton’s plane circled in the air for 15 minutes so journalists could land first, set up their cameras and get the arrival shot of her, the first secretary of state to swoop into Congo’s conflict zone, despite the fact this very area has been a killing field since the mid-1990s."
Witches from the mountains have kidnapped a young child belonging to some tourists. In a message to the local paper they threaten that if a large ransom is not paid they will turn the child into a fox. Special forces locate and then storm the encampment of the witches who flee into the barren, inhospitable foothills, leaving the child behind, to be found - curled and hidden beneath a pile of sacks - in a cave . The parents are relieved and consider themselves lucky in the reunion with their son. Only when he hits puberty is the truth revealed with the first signs of strange red hair that begins to sprout across his back, the lost, dark and feral look in his eyes. A nightmare. Permalink
Following on from my Heroes & Heroines of Live Art (First 110)T-Shirts project (see here) for the Live Art Development Agency's tenth anniversary 'presents' series, LADA and I just released a kind of follow on - the 'bonus' Heroes & Heroines of Live Art Poster which features all 110 artists' names in their appropriate (and not so appropriate) typefaces (see above for example). The posters are 1 Edition of 110, A0, signed and editioned on the back. You can order them here from the LADA online bookshop Unbound.
I wrote a text about the two works which was read in my absence by the performance maker Rajni Shah, at a LADA event at the Rochelle School, last Saturday.
(Not-so-relevant footnote: Rajni is also one of the two main models for the pictures I made for Forced Entertainment's Void Story).
He wrote me about a friend, a long way back.
Who as a kid had had a
set of seven pairs of underpants each with a day of week printed on
them, written for some reason in German
one pair for each day of the week
she liked them she said
except for the peculiar feeling produced from time to time by wearing
the wrong pants on the wrong day
a feeling of perverse pleasure,
as though living the whole day under the wrong sign
or the living the whole day under a lie,
living life under mischief, a mis-naming,
the wrong name
even now he tells me,
keen to point out the obvious
I'm Rajni
reading Tim
a question of one voice
in another mouth
For his own part, he said, for a long time he more or less refused to
wear clothes with any kind of writing on them at all
not liking to live under any kind of sign, right or wrong
or fearing what would happen in that space 'under writing',
like another friend of a friend
he reported
who'd refused to read novels for fear of the way he got taken over by the characters in them.
Anyway
sometime or other all that snapped
and he started to like wearing words on clothes
especially simple words that said the something so simple simply that they could easily make an endless confusion
KETCHUP it said one shirt, a red one
a favourite
since the one word text seemed to vacilate endlessly between appearing to declare a love or support for Ketchup,
or instead to indicate that the wearer was in some way ketchup
or instead, since the shirt was red, it was possible to maintain that
this word ketchup simply reffered to its colour.
None of these readings, not one of them, being certain in any case
He wrote me:
When it came to LADA and the Birthday I wanted to make tshirts
and the thought I had was about the pleasure in wearing another person
or wearing another person's name
he wrote
I was thinking about a white work tunic I'd bought second hand somewhere years back
a strange looking Muji style thing
largely cotton but with some faint taste of nylon in the mix
on the shoulder of which was a name tag, complete with a company logo,
beneath which it said in bold and clear bright red letters
itallic, embroidered script the single word, anothers' name
TONY
I found it odd to wear this shirt.
Perhaps to do with not liking to be Tony
but it made me (he wrote) know something about the power of the worn name
the strange double of one voice in another mouth
For the Live Art Development Agency (he wrote) I made one shirt for each person
each person a hero or heroine of live art
whatever that might mean
and I liked the idea (he wrote)
not of mass production
(how many t-shirts say Madonna, Bruce Lee or Bruce Springsteen?)
but instead a kind of modest one to one
one shirt per person of these Live Art Heroes & Heroines,
bestowing a kind of intimate fandom,
modest, human scale
or else (he wrote)
as with the ketchup,
perhaps these shirts convene a kind of masking or impersonation
as if
the guy wearing the Alastair McLennan shirt (when it's finally sold) might be *being him* for a moment,
I guess I don't trust much or care about the top 100 anything
that whole MOMA Series of the top 100 performances they plan can rot in Hell
just like i don't find it too hard to turn off the best 100 adverts or the top 100 screen kisses or whatever
I mean for me the Heroes & Heroines of Live Art (first 110) was more a less an absurdity, a mockery
but with and despite all that
i do like names (he wrote)
and how they circulate
and the names that mean most to me
are those that contain what Greil Marcus once called a secret history
a secret knowledge
and i liked the chance, on these t-shirts, to whisper some of those names that have been important to me
out into the world again
passed from mouth to mouth, life to life,
live art to life art
a chance
to nod to some of the people that changed things for me
probably changed things for all of us here
people whose work I saw and which touched me
or those perhaps a way to nod to those whose stories or documents wound a strange route to me
in sheffield say
when glancing at a book or some internet picture
i got that spine-tingling feeling
as many people here did no doubt
get that spine-shaking feeling
of connection to an action that happened long time back, or short time back
in another room
far away in space
and with it always a story and a name
from this often secret history
today we launch the poster
Live Art Heroes & Heroines (First 110) - bearing all 110 names in my list, each name in its dedicated typeface
and T-shirts bearing fabulous legendary names are still on sale
just one of each
roll up roll up
happy birthday again LADA
keep up the good work
and
get em while they're fresh
coming at you not exactly live and certainly indirect
[You can find the same text as above, plus another short text I wrote about the T-Shirts and the Posters back over at LADA here.]
Let us remind you that there is no life-guard around our swimming pool and that it is open without any time limitation. Its cleanliness is secured by means of a "robot creepy crawler". You can take your moonlight swims without worries - we only beg you not to remove the robot - should it be taken out of the water it would cause irremediable damage.
(The reality of the scene at the apartment-complex swimming pool late at night was regrettably somewhat less strange than that summoned above.)
*
"I could hear human activity outside and I hoped I could be part of it again some time but I knew I wasn't ready..."
Been listening to The Slits album Cut again after, er, something of a pause. I wasn't doing the maths but it's apparently 30 years since it was recorded. Sounds very fresh. Somehow came across a link to the bands 1978 Peel Sessions put up for download by someone here. Not sure how long the link will last.
Meanwhile, just so it's not all old music around here I'm putting in a word for DOOM's most recent Born Like This, esp the tracks That's That and Gazzillion Ear both of which I've been playing often since Berlin. Pure crazed delight in language, breathtaking, robust and playful, genius.
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