anagnorisis - vermilion's text

- VERMILION's TEXT -

[Communique: 01.30.02]

Who/what is the teacher/teaching that I am looking for? It is not exactly Brad, not exactly Pedro, not exactly Yoda, not exactly a Zen Master. Some kind of alchemist working in a dark space full of color. The leader of a band, but the band has matured so that each disciple embodies a different study, having gone deeper down a path of which the master knows only the beginning. In the laboratory of the master are telephones, FX boxes, manuscripts of the old cosmologies, recent works of theater anthropology, copies of the New York Times and the Chinese equivalent, a titanium powerbook with DSL connection, buckets of paint, sculptures of garbage, a video camera, many pages of scripting both handwritten and typed, maps and diagrams for future projects, and of course a long dark empty space into which all these elements may be introduced. And then there is the discipline, some kind of (meta)physical alchemy, some arcane structure requiring one or three or six or twelve hours a day of constant devotion, a sort of branching hieroglyph containing many parts, none of which seem at first to be connected. The work of the pure body, almost naked, trained to tranfer energy, comes after the work of the deep emotions, the group dynamics, the crying and the laughing, and before the work of the intellect, the maps and charts, the discussions and arguments. Blend in objects and spatial design, add the truth about the world and the myths of forgotten peoples, some radical politics and some truly foreign histories, a sense of the absurd, a grudging acquaintance with fascism, an understanding of evil and of good, a love of the simply human, and always: the Work. How to make this work, how to find this teacher, how to become this Prophet -- that is the Work. To discover the nature of the Work, that is the Work. To produce to the Work, that is also the Work.

The structure brings out the potential of the dreams. The attention gives authenticity to the structure. The desire fuels the mind in its attention. The vision catapults the body into its desire. The world produces the vision. The prophet exists in and of the world. The endless stories map the life of the prophet. The dreams are the stuff of the endless stories.

[Communique: 01.29.02]

Reading _The Child in the City_ by Colin Ward and _Evasion_ from CrimethInc, and realizing that what most enchanted me about Tex and Blue and their fellow punk kids when I met them had nothing to do with their politics or their clothes -- at least not directly. It's something about their relationship to the city, something that can be revealed through poverty but is not the same as poverty. My dad had it when he was growing up, but my mom did not, and I did not. A feeling of connection not only to private interior spaces but to the body of the city. Being comfortable with sitting down on a stoop or the pavement, hanging out in the streets, playing in the parks, riding the subway all over the place, living in the public environment. What people do when they reach the middle class is they buy privacy and isolation, they get a spacious and lonely apartment, they start riding in taxis, and they think of the streets only as paths to get somewhere else. Finally, if that's not enough for them, they move out to the suburbs.

I would like to have this kind of relationship to the city, or at least to some part of it where I live. Traveling with Tex and Blue it became clear that the trains were always on time for them, never too crowded or stuffy, always perfect, because of the way their were conceived -- not as nuisances to be put up with but as the very stuff of life. The one-hour trip out to the absurd and empty boardwalk of Coney Island on a cool autumn day was not just a method of transportation, it was part of the adventure. This isn't so hard to establish, it seems to me. You just have to give up some privacy and accept the place where you live. If I ever have a posse of friends or a family or a living community, I want them to be a part of the place where they live. It turns out that that is what I was trying to get at with my "punk kids in the city of Rague" idea, which of course is based on that scene in _Hackers_ when they time the stoplights to cause a traffice jam right after they ride their skateboards through the intersection and get away free. But that's just a metaphor. You don't have to do anything so blunt as to hack into the traffic light system. All you have to do is remember that the city is a jungle, the city is a home, the city is the world, and you will find that the traffic lights always change at exactly the right moment.

[Communique: 01.25.02]

No, wait. I have more to say about anarchism and the pre-cultural. I think Zerzan has a point when he defends the nature/culture divide, referring to hundreds of thousands of pre-agricultural years as a state of "natural" existence and then seeking to interrogate our current ("modern") detour of about a hundred thousand years. He's right to point out that this whole post-agricultural civilization thing is not the only way humanity can exist. In fact it's a very recent development. He's also right to seek glimpses of working anarchy (my term for truly non-hierarchical society) in the past. Certainly technology magnifies the potential to create ranks and castes. However, Zerzan clearly idealizes the pre-cultural as a kind of anarchist paradise where everything was perfect. But looking at studies done on various species of ape, it seems obvious that although oppressive systems such as patriarchy must have been less developed before the agricultural revolution, they were still probably very much in place.

I approve of working anarchy as a goal, but I don't blame the technologies of language, number, and linear time for the destruction of some imaginary earlier paradise state. If such technologies were really at fault, then instances of working anarchy would have been dwindling since the birth of civilization, and by now they should be all but totally gone. And this is the picture that Zerzan paints of our modern world, as if strip malls and alienated communities and lifeless jobs (etc.) were omnipotent and omnipresent. As if there were nothing else. But there *are* pockets of resistance, there are all kinds of communities and families and friendships inspired by genuine love and equality, and the fact is that these instances of working anarchy are not any less technological or linguistic or chrono-logical than the mainstream culture that surrounds them. Which leads me to believe that if we did in fact take a wrong turn somewhere towards systems of domination and hierarchy, then getting rid of language and time and agriculture will not help. I believe in radically dismantling all systems of domination, but if that is to be an even slightly realistic hope, then it will be accomplished without giving up on civilization in its entirety. And in fact, I don't think I could ever accept a revolution that proposed to get rid of art as a system of domination.

There is a parallel in my theatrical work. A certain philosophy of performance art is basically an attempt to create a performance community of people who interact in an equal way, sharing in the creation of a joint project together without following any externally imposed structure. This is working anarchy onstage. Dance improvisation, as Susan Laurie teaches it, is definitely about creating this kind of fully-realized anarchist moment. Chery Cutler's new webpage leads me to believe that she is after the same thing, conceptualized there as a balance of speaking and listening. Meanwhile, I suddenly understand what Pedro meant about finding "pre-cultural" and "pre-symbolic" meaning in dance. Always before I had dismissed it as a highly un-postmodern nature/nurture binary. But this is the same thing that Brad is trying to reach through his Odin-inspired "animal work." The work of the body before the work of the brain. As dancers say, "getting into my body" and "getting out of my head."

And always, always, always, I have felt not quite perfectly at home in these attempts to create pre-symbolic and pre-cultural meaning. I am simply not convinced that anarchy is only or mainly to be found in the pre-symbolic. In fact, I am most excited about post-symbolic anarchy, because that is the vision of the world that I most embrace. My utopia has to be post-symbolic. Postmodern dance (and Brad's "mineral work") attempt to bring the elements of culture (language, number, linear time, semiotic structure) back into the mix, but to me it often seems contrived, as if the "real work" is supposed to come from the body, and then afterwards the mind is given a chance to tack on a few ideas and rearrange things a bit. For me, there can be no gap between the body and the mind, between the pre- and the post-symbolic. And this is, of course, what the teachings of Pedro and Brad eventually lead to, but I have very rarely seen it in performance. A working post-cultural anarchy. Now that would be something.

[Communique: 01.25.02]

Hospitals are strange places. On the one hand, they are bastions of health, technological havens of technology, places where lives are saved and loved ones reunited, where everything is directed towards strength and prosperity, and basically the only structures of money, machines, and beaurocracy that don't give me the creeps. Human health is the only thing I can see justifying such a mess. On the other hand, they are places of death and sickness, gatherings of the unwell, frequently unfriendly, incompetent, or disorganized, and generally somewhat reminiscent of prisons.

I spent all week in Mount Sinai with my grandmother. We had many adventures together on many different floors and in many different departments. The pantheon of doctors that watches over her (there are at least ten of them) consulted amongst themselves and occasionally with us and did various things to her. I tried to keep abreast of what was going on, but after all, I haven't been to medical school -- in fact I haven't taken a science class since Frosh year. Sometimes she was exhausted and wanted to give up. Other times she looked at me with eyes of thanks that are the best reward you can possibly get. Pedro told me that when you take care of someone every day for a long time, it's hard, but they also give you irreplaceable, invaluable "gifts." It was Amanda Lazarus-Cunningham who taught me that "treasure" is not something you can hold in the palm of your hand. My grandmother told me that she learned stenography at a WPA school during World War II. She doodled a few symbols in my notebook. My bubbe knows a secret code!

I also made a friend named Tanya. It's vaguely possible that we will drive to Mardi Gras in New Orleans together in her new Lexus. She has sickle cell and no friends. Her grandmother is being mean to her so she bought herself a nice new car. Meanwhile my aunt and uncle just offered me their old Toyota. I wouldn't mind a car, but the insurance will be high because I'm a young man, statistically the terror of the earth. But even so, I'm supposed to be an anarchist. Anarchists don't drive cars! I have been reading _Evasion_ by CrimeThinc. Last week I read _Future Primitive_ by John Zerzan, a radical eco-Luddite who believes that language, numbers, time and civilization were just one huge bad idea, and we should all go back to hunting & gathering. Well, I don't know. Does technology save more lives than it takes? Are we better off now than we were a hundred thousand years ago? Against a dark blue evening sky like the one I saw tonight, do I prefer the silhouettes of trees or of skyscrapers? As always, when confused, I turn to theater, sending a rough draft of a potential storyline to Kid Lucky, pondering over the overt sexuality in Eli's play, and planning for the anarchist theater workshops I hope to run in February.

[Communique: 01.18.02]

Things are okay. I'm making stone soup. Here are the ingredients:

[1] A stone (me).

[2] A language, either ASL (as a paratheatrical gestural vocabulary) or Spanish (because it will allow me to connect to a huge demographic of potentially radical New Yorkers).

[3] A physical discipline, like mime or clowning or acrobatics -- something closer to theater than to dance.

[4] Electronic music -- I need to figure out how to use drum machines and sample synthesizers and maybe start creating some rudimentary "songs."

[5] Theater writing (Emergency Gazette).

[6] Other writing (still trying to revise The Desert)

[7] Looking for mentors (planning to interview Susana Cook and who knows who else, maybe Laurie Anderson takes interns...)

[8] Experimental directing -- I don't want to actual put up a show, so I'm thinking of holding some one-day workshops where I can just play around with some ideas I've been having. Also I might be working on Eli's or Yelena's shows in some capacity.

[9] Still engaged with anarchism and thinking it's the only community I've ever found where the politics are good across the board.

[10] The grandparents, of course, constant reminders that for some people the main agenda for the day is about what to eat. I'm trying to see both sides of that, the way in which it's both annoying and profound, because on the one hand I never want to organize my life around food, but on the other hand there is a certain groundedness in such a simple relationship to the stuff of life, a potential to escape the claustrophobic, narcissistic ivory tower of my head...

Stone soup. Ten ingredients. Things are okay.

[Communique: 01.16.02]

I feel like shit. Perhaps it's because I had a really long & intense conversation with Yelena just now after watching her rehearsal, but it got all abstract and theoretical and in the end felt a little bit icky, like after I share something with someone and it comes out sounding shallow. Or perhaps it's because I really want Eli to like me and I was hoping he'd have written me an email when I got home but he hasn't. Or perhaps, yes, perhaps it's just that I'm finally truly fucking off-road, and it's really fucking scary. There is no path and no validation, nothing I can tell people I am doing when they ask. I'm not ready to direct but I'm not interested in being in anyone's show. I'd like to write about theater but that's not my calling and I'm not especially good at it. I'm hoping that Matvei and Yelena and Eli are part of this really vibrant theater culture that I've been looking for, but if they're not perfect -- and how could they be "perfect" -- then maybe I shouldn't have left NaCl for them after all. What am I looking for? I thought I knew: Some kind of community of creative young artists doing interesting postmodern culturally radical work. But I am off-road and disoriented, I'm having the same old self-doubts about my own arrogance and whether or not I even deserve to speak, let alone speak publically, while all the while I'm still feeling a constant pulse of visions, like eventually all of this will just have to work out because at some point I am going to have to make the Work. But in the meantime I just feel like shit.

[Communique: 01.15.02]

I am no longer with NaCl. I do not have enough faith in their mission. I cannot trust Brad's vision completely. I have my own ideas. He senses this. I am not humble enough. I am on my own path. I still have visions. I do not feel guilty about this. I feel sad and scared but also very exhilarated. I do not feel like I fucked up. NaCl did not feel like my work. It felt like postponing the real beginning. I was doing it because I wanted to tour in Europe. That's the thing I'm most sad to miss. I was looking for physical craft. I want to be able to do flips and handstands. This is not what NaCl is about. They do not teach a cool performance body which I could learn and then take away. I could not be a clever thief with them because they were not offering what I want to steal. I need another kind of physical training. Maybe I can find it on my own. NaCl was preventing me from living as I need to in NYC. Andrew Suseno did not join Pilobolus. I did not join NaCl. I am stepping off the cliff. I am about to be more seriously challenged than I have ever been before.

[Communique: 01.11.02]

Okay. New vision of a band of wildly individual yet united performance artists. Modeled after the Justice League of America, which at its highpoint included such figures as Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman. The point is that it is really not so far-fetched to imagine creating such a team of superheroes. Naturally, they wouldn't have "powers" in the sense of being able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, but they would have other kinds of powers: the powers of speech, acrobatics, charisma, script-writing, dance, attention-throwing, poetry, sleight-of-hand, misdirection, stage combat, and of course the four "powers" of hiphop -- DJing, MCing, breaking & graffiti. Of course, the word "superhero" here has nothing to do with taking the moral high ground or even performing acts of "heroism." I could just as well use the word "gods," in the sense of a pagan panthen of individuals who represent the forces / attitudes / perspectives / categories which compose the universe. An eclectic group of individuals united in metaphysical power. I am talking here about using superhero/scifi/mythic imagery as a kind of *language* for talking about radical countercultural performance. (The strongest precedent for this is afrofuturism. See also Camille's paper, especially the drawing of Rammellzee's famous Gasholeer, a real-life super-hero costume if ever there was one.)

Therefore...

A CALL TO ACTION! Calling all superheroes, archetypes, mages, performance artists, afrofuturist cyborgs, cyberfeminist warriors, hacker punks, drag queens & kings, glam rockers, anarchist DIY wizards, candy-ravers, zine-crafters, singer-songwriters, and loudmouths from all walks of life. At some point in the future I would like to create an affiliation among us. Differences in form and content will be respected and even fostered. The criteria to join are as follows: You must have an alter-ego. This alter-ego must have a recognizeable and extra-normal style of dress, speech, action and/or performance. You must be able to create your own material and to perform alone, but you must also be interested in working together to create larger spectacles as part of a group. We will form a set of archetypes. A live-action tarot. A pantheon. POSSIBLE ACTIONS INCLUDE: 1) Streaming from all directions into Washington Square Park, staging some kind of eclectic carnival, and then disappearing. 2) Issuing proclamations from rooftops, either on adjacent buildings to create the sense of a vast army of wackos, or on distant buildings to spread our imagery throughout the city. 3) Creating a media frenzy by staging a complex network of interrelated performance acts over a whole month. 4) Putting out a ton of sub-legal publicity to make it well-known that Gotham has a new crowd into town, and we are looking for justice of a radical & performative kind. 5) Other possibilities to be discussed at the first meeting. Come prepared with your own fantastic agendas.

... Anyone interested? Do not be fooled by those who tell you that science fiction and comic books are irrelevent to "real life" and are always escapist and/or masturbatory! I have been down that path and it only leads to legislative politics and lengthy economic debates! The transformation of the means of production cannot be accomplished without the transformation of the cultural landscape! The old archetypes have been co-opted and new ones are required! The old gods have grown conservative and the radical upstarts will have their day! The thousand faces of the hero are worn out and stagnant! Gone are the days of Odin, Thor, and Loki! Gone are the days of Zeus, Athena, and Poseidon! Gone are the days of Jupiter, Mars, and Venus! Gone are the days of Beowulf and Don Quixote! Gone are the days of Anansi and Brer Rabbit! Gone are the days of the Coyote and the Raven! Gone are they days of Fool, Mage and King! Gone are the days of Arthur, Gwenevere, and Launcelot! Gone are the days of Harlequin, Dottore, and Scaramouche! Gone are the days of Mother, Maiden and Crone! Gone are the days of Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos! Gone are the days of Brahmin, Vishnu, and Shiva! Gone are the days of Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman!

Now who shall take their places?

[Communique: 01.07.02]

It's snowing!!!

[Communique: 01.06.02]

Someone was asking me where I stand in relation to anarchist politics. I told them I'm an artist, I try to make really good performance art that is also in alignment and coming out of my politics. For the record, I'm very glad that Bread & Puppet exists, and I think they're really great, but they're not quite what I want to do. First of all, I don't care that much for puppets, but secondly, I'm really only interested in theater that comes out of disciplined artistic exploration and training. I don't want to make the kind of theater where an untrained person can just walk up and join in. I don't want to make theater that anyone can do. Perhaps that makes me less radically democratic. Anyway, for the record, here is what I think of as *radical* theater:

"The Filament Cycle" by Stateless - tells the story of a refugee and an artist who become friends. the two performers / creators are in fact a refugee and an artist who became friends, and this is radical because it shows the culture clash inherent in such a friendship, where one has lived through war and the other wants to document war, where one has experienced war and one is curious about such an experience. this kind of clash is deeply relevent, both personally and politically, to the global village situation in which middle-class Americans watch Afghanistan get bombed on the television and then go outside and walk past homeless bums. it's radical to form a genuine coalition across borders like that and it's very radical to create a work out of that coalition. also to mirror that kind of culture clash with the formal clash of theater and video and to arrive at a kind of synthesis: cinematic theater.

"HIGH" by Slant Performance Group - some kind of modern-day post-punk myth, starring three characters who to me seemed instantly recognizable as contemporary archetypes although i had never seen any of them before. dwelling in the depths of the subway system: 1) a masterful street artist in a zebraipe leotard who knows all the ropes, 2) a homeless guy, new to the scene, wearing only garbage bags, looking to have fun without getting caught, and 3) the cop, a mixture of robocop and judge dredd. three reworkings of ancient archetypes (fool, mage, king), transformed completely into superheroes for the third millenium. in the end, the three men perform an aria wearing gas masks amid the debris of an exploded subway station. a ballet for our times.

"A Huey P. Newton Story" by Roger Guenvere Smith (soon to be a major motion picture) - an absolutely brilliant solo performance creating a portrayel of a real historical figure that is also a vision of a kind of mythic, deranged, pathetic genius prophet. Newton's poetry speaks for itself, but only RGS could create such a powerful portrait. also radical for involving a very intimate relationship of DJ/sound-designer and performer, a one-on-one interplay that was in place since the conception of the work, allowing for joint improvisation so smooth you would think the sound was tuned directly into RGS' body.

"Dha Fuzion" by Akim Funk Buddha - as New York Magazine says, "a surprisingly physical take on what a global village carnival might look like in the next millenium." radical for its sheer cultural diversity, but even more so for its combination of theater and music performance styles. this truly is a piece of theater that could be performed in the background of a club. AFB manages to slide back and forth between "lead singer" and "solo performer" in such a way that you suddenly look at what you thought was a music piece with a dancer and realize that it has become pure theater.

"Rhyme Deferred" by Hip-Hop Theater Junction - for making genuine hiphop theater, rather than hiphop that gets a little theatrical (like "Full Circle" by "Soular Power'd") or theater that appropriates hiphop (like the "Bomb-ity of Errors"). an example was the final MC battle of the two brothers, in which both brothers rap back and forth "badda badda boom, ratta tat tat, kablam" etc. --rather than actually trying to write the perfect rap which triumphs over all (an impossible task), they used a theatrical convention to suggest such perfection. you could tell who was winning by looking at the faces of the onlookers. it seemed a perfectly hybrid moment.

"Highway to Tomorrow" by Elevator Repair Service - for its amazing sense of play, a kind of social surrealism. for its brillant and bizarre comedy. this is most difficult to explain. i will site two moments: first, when Pentheus tells Dionysus that as his punishment, he must surrender the plastic thermos he has been carrying around the whole time. and second, when "expositional dialogue" reveals to us that the large black man who has just entered stage-right is playing the role of several chinese women -- not just one, but several. "ah," says Dionysus, "my Chinese women." it's hard to explain why these moments were so funny & wonderful. something about play, but it seems radical to me because the toys with which they are playing are distinctly modern, despite the Euripides connection. also brilliant use of low-tech integrated audio technology.

"Wurst - Take it and Eat It... I mean, Take it and Keep It" by Radiohole - for its use of junk and a junk aesthetic, for turning a warehouse into a little junkheap hacker zone with lots of lights and sound equipment run during the show by the actors themselves pulling on chains, dashing over to hit switches, and stepping on buttons mounted on the floor. for a vision of how to make theater in a culture of garbage.

"Gross National Product" by Susana Cook - also for making a theater into a junkheap, or vice versa. for having a big diverse ensemble cast of women come onstage and plan a riot, picking up all these big pieces of trash from the surrounding piles. for having the playing-space spread out with mics dangling from the ceiling so that the actors can walk around freely. for Cook's constantly brilliant social-surrealist dialogue about internet transmissions, global exploitation, and gospel songs. and for not being afraid to vent righteous anger in the form a riot, or screaming, or smashing things.

There you have it. A little round-up of not-very-well-know theater pieces that happen to have inspired me. I didn't put Staniewski Gardzienice or Odin Teatret on this list because, while they have been personal inspirations to me, they are not part of the movement of radical post-punk pomo-techno-garbage theater that I'm hoping will transform America in the decades to come. I also didn't put any of the theater groups that I've heard about that sound really exciting but I've never seen them perform. Those and many other interesting theater resources can be found in my links.

[Communique: 01.05.02]

I'm imagining some kind of house, like a tower of babel, in a central location in this huge & sprawling city, where subcultures would interact as art forms... or where art forms would interact as subcultures. I'm imagining a kind of artist / activist -collective living space / performance space where hiphop would jam with punk, where techno would cross-pollinate with slam poetry, where riot-grrl would encounter drag queen glam, where theatersports would learn from anarchist agit-prop, and vice versa, vice versa, vice versa.

But how to avoiding tokenizing "diversity"? What kind of Project would really draw people from all these groups, without tokenizing them, without thinking of them as "representatives of their cultures," without removing the politics from the art or the art from the politics. How to devise a Project that would not flatten any of these forms, that would retain the individuality of all of them, that would not pull representatives out of "authentic" subcultural communities but would rather serve as a nexus through which all of these communities could connect. It is easy enough to imagine a house in Crown Heights where the art & politics (they are one and the same, after all) of the blacks and the jews comes together. It is also possible to imagine a house serving all of New York City in this way -- but the danger is that it would become a flat, bourgois, state-funded "arts" instituion which would be obligated to drop its politics in order to get funding.

How to build a house that stretches across age and gender and race, without diluting the significance of cultural difference, without tokenizing diversity, without turning it into a white/male "neutral" (conservative) space, without being defeated by separatist identity politics... What kind of a Project could bring such a crew together? One thing is certain, it could not be *my* space -- it would have to be a coalition of artists / activists coming together precisely because they refuse to choose between art and politics.

[Communique: 01.01.02]

My grandmother can fold a contour-fitted sheet so that it lies completely flat in the closet. So that any normal person picking it up cannot tell what kind of sheet it is without unfolding it completely. This is not an old-world skill, because in the poor jewish eastern european world where her parents and my grandfather came from, I do not think they had contour sheets. But it is not a new-world skill either, because I do not have it, and I do not want to have it, and none of my friends can do it either. It is a middle-passage skill, the kind of skill claimed triumphantly by immigrants who pass into the American bourgois. A little kind of incarnation of the American Dream -- perhaps the best that the American Dream has to offer such immigrants. It is beautiful in its own right, but also caught tragically between two worlds, like my grandmother herself. Having left behind the Old World -- the schtettle, the potato farms, the sugar cane, the village, the chiefs, the elders -- these middle-passage beauties also have no place in the new century of internet, techno, mega-capitalism, and anti-globalization activism. The art of the perfectly folded sheet will soon be lost to us, and I will not mourn it, but my grandmother will one day be lost too, and then I will mourn. So it goes with every generation: the creation of skills, the appreciation of beauty, the aging of cultures, and the gradual change into something that will eventually be completely unreconizable. Our generation will say: "What does it mean to fold sheets perfectly?" Our children will say: "What does it mean to fold sheets?" And one day they will say: "What is a sheet? What is a bed? What is a home?"

I was very sick for a few days. Now I'm back. Happy New Year to anyone reading this (I like to imagine there is at least one person on the other end). The stuff from December has been archived. More soon.

vermilion's text = journal of a rootless cosmopolitan
inspired by slander
all text by bspatz
go to anagnorisis