DESTROY THE MUSEUMS. OUR STRUGGLE CANNOT BE HUNG ON WALLS. A NEW SPIRIT ISRISING. LIKE THE STREETS OF WATTS WE BURN WITH REVOLUTION... October 10, 1966. Ahandful of young guys and girls, having stalked up from New York's Lower East Side scatteringleaflets calling for the closure of the Museum of Modern Art, are stopped Just outside theMuseum entrance by a whole phalanx of cops and crashbarriers. The story had leaked, and thecops, on the ball as ever, had sensed a new and very real type of threat months before anyoneelse: the cops at least have got it clear Just whose side Art Is on... The Director of the Museum(largest collection of Dada in the world) out on the steps, wringing his hands, almost in tears,only too anxious to please: "Why are you doing this? We haven't done anything..." The group,unheard of before this, called BLACK MASK... Next, early one morning, black balaclava hoodspulled down to their eyes, cracked rictus skulls skewered on stakes, BLACK MASK, swollen to15, marched from Canal Street down Lower Bn~adway to Wall Street. Throwaways readingTraders in stocks and bones shriek for New Frontiers... Bull markets of murder deal in a stockexchange at deafh... WALL STREET IS WAR STREET... The cops and the overdressedcorporation errandboys plain dumbfounded; the only people to get really uptight were,predictably enough, alas, a group of straight proles who showed up... A relative flop, all in all.Too much sub-Committee of 100 stuff - Grosvenor Square = Genocide Square, etc. In fact allBLACK MASK's early experiments with Provo-type tactics were far more trenchant and originalwhen applied to the culture scene. It was official 'experimental' art rather than official leftwingpolitics that they'd broken out of. And they loathed its guts...

That first year BLACK MASK seized every possible opportunity of fucking up culture.They moved in at a moment's notice and improvised as they went along. They heckled,disrupted and generally sabotaged dozens of art congresses, lectures, exhibitions,happenings... For a group that hailed Futurism and Dada as Its only forebears this type of shitwas diametrically opposed to the permanent, multi-dimensional revolutionising of immediateexperience demanded by all the highpoints of modern art: See what you can make with acathedral And a little dynamite. Probably their most notorious escapade was the wrecking ofthe 3-day marathon seminar on Modern Art sponsored by the Loeb Student Centre. Howls ofART IS DEAD, BURN THE MUSEUMS, BABY, and POETRY IS REVOLUTION. Tables kicked over,windows smashed, scuffles breaking out. Larry Rivers roughed up a bit in the best Futurist

1

manner. The- -the.oretical dimension - uFuck off, you cunt" - equally worthy of the occallon.Reaction wasn't slow to follow. In fact It was the one systematic attempt the official avantgardamade to deal with them that allowed BLACK MASK to pull off their neatest single coup. A panelof experts on Futurism, Dada and Surrealism advertised a 'Trap for Black Mask' throughout theUnderground (sic) press: a souped-up panel discussion on the true revolutionary meaning ofmodern art, a bait to which they Imagined, correctly BLACK MASK was bound to rise. They elsaImagined, far less happily, that their own erudition and wit was such that BLACK MASK couldonly be put down. really hard, once and for all. BLACK MASK excelled themselves. They ren offthousands of passably well printed "Invitations to a free party - free sounds, free food, fr.ebooze - same time same place as the ambush, and handed them out to the harde.tb••tardsthey could find in Harlem and the Lower East Side 8 few hours before the fun was due to atart.The ambush was riddled like a colander. All night really uptight black and white down-and-outswere hammering on the doors, Intermittently crashing them and furiously demanding their freefood, drink and women... .

The interpretation of Dada was correct by even the strictest academic standards - hadn'tHuelsenbeck written, so long before, Dada is a club? - all the same the scandal resulted InBLACK MASK being ostracised right along the line. Artists couldn't understand the politics,politicos couldn't understand the art and neither could stomach the violence. The group wasdealt with by the normal avantgarde techniques of repression: silence In the media, prurientwhispers of fascism over the vernlssage cocktails. Not that BLACK MASK wasn't pretty damnunrecognisable when it hit In late 166. The two original animators of the group, Ron Hahne andBen Morea, were kids straight off the streets, not mlddleclass dropouts. Morea had Deenmixedup with the delinquent street gangs, been on H and done a stretch In Sing-Sing before he turnedto painting and discovered the Futurists. This background allowed them to get through toFuturism straight away - to the real Futurism, science, eleg~nce and violence, the most purelydelinquent of all 20th century art spearheads. Not the art of a Sofflcl or a Boccionl but the post­artistic wayof life of a Marlnettl ... Marine"i beating up Wyndham Lewis In an allnlght urinal andhanging him up on some adjacent spiked. railings by his coat collar... Marinettl imprisoning 8

bevy of wealthy culture-vultures in a belltent and driving his motorbike over it full throttle timeafter time... Marinetti,even althe end, at aha of Mussolini's galas, kicking over a banquet tab'eon top of Hitler, Just to show that he really couldn't give a fuck ...

2

They grasped, .Imoat Intuitively, the crux of the 1910-1925 art crisis: that the content o~ modernart Ihe vision of a totally recreated world stemming from the flrat Romantlcl, wal potentiallyt~ moat vitriolic aUack on bourgeois civilisation ever made; while, on the contrary, Ita FORMItra,tJ_eketed il within 8 pure'y reactionary rele, Taken literally It la dynamite. Taken culturally Itla one of the .yatem'. main supports. Kubl. Khan can be taken and used aa 8 metaphor, a·blueprlnt, of e real paredlM; Kubis Khsn ean be taken and used as a fantasy, a means ofevading the rea' hell In which we live, 8 compensation for It. Everything depends on whether ItI. related to one'l own everyday life or whether it is related to the labyrinth of our Byzantineculture, where no road le.ds to Xanadu. The quick of the 20th century cultural crl.ls: creativitymust break free of a" It. previous feners and forms; It must stop being the creation of aBepllrated and Imaginary world and become the transformation of real experience Itself. ThusTzars: 'Life and Art Bre One. The modern artist does no' paint, he creates directly. 'This Is whyBLACK MASK was more advanced than the relatively more sophisticated 'Rebel Worker' or'Resurgence Youth Movement', or, for that matter, the great Marcuse himself. From the startthey demanded complete Identity of theory and practice and really tried, whatever their luck..ups, to create an organisation In line with this.

Which at the time left only one force with which they could identify: the post-WattsBLACKS. Only the Blacks' rejection of everything was 8S high-handed and demonic 88 theirown. Only the Blacks were In a position where they had to really DO something, not just sit ontheir ar••• and talk. BLACK MASK, along with the French Situatlonists, were the only whites atthe tim. who really grasped the revolutionary feeling coming to the boil in the US 'race' riots:understood that there was a really positive content to the looting, arson and tentative gunplay,sensed the real joy and affirmation in what the whole Left shrugged off as complete nihilism.They quoted a couple of newspaper clippings:: 'At times, amidst the scenes of rlol anddestruction that made parts of the city look like. a battlefield, there was an almost carnivalatmosphere.' 'New York Times' 16n/67 and 'Said Governor Hughes after a tour of the riot­blighted streets... "The thing that repelled me most was the holiday atmosphere... It's likelaughing at a funeral.'" 'Time' 21n/67. One reporter from Detroit described suddenly seeing ahuge bunch of gladioli skipping through the rubble. As It passed a 7 or 8 year old negro kidpoked his head out of the middle. "l'm a sex maniac" he yelled and disappeared among thegutted buildings. What Is this if not the consummation of modern art; its death and rebirth:DADAI And what 20th century avantgarde vision of Utopian architecture can hold a candle tothe barbaric, almost elemental splendour of Detroit in flames? Playing with fire .- purelyaristocratic philosophy. Nero beggared by· a mob of semi-illiterate teenage nigras.Notwithstanding which they stili couldn't break through the mistrust, on any except the mostpersonal basis, of the Blacks of '67. They were stuck with the whites and, moreover, thol.lghthey had defined their own goal as 'a form of action which transcends the separation betweenart and politics', they were lumbered with precisely this separation: with the culturally orientedHippies and the politically oriented New Left.

While they were utterly disgusted by everything about Flower Power they recognisedthat, out of the whole white opposition, the dropouts were the group potentially closest to them.They too had rebelled, In however half-arsed a way, against the whole of life as It Is. BLACKMASK completely agreed with their basic conviction that work was to be avoided at any cost,that the American dream was ao much crap and that life should be devoted exclusively toexperiment with the perimeters of lived experience: to a new, post-industrial lIfe-style. Stirringup the Hippies meant really laying into the whole Flower Power scene. In England, the BlackHand Gang are the best critics of Hippiedom: 'In the desperate passivity of a 'groovy' pad, 'hehell crawls down the walls and across the floor. The silent circle in the candlelight pretends tobe absorbed. Without success. The nightmare of· consumption consumes the consumer. Youdon" smoke the hash, the hash smokes you. The record on the box makes sure that nobody.'n95 or dances... And SUddenly the whole non-communication, the whole malaIse and senseof being lost in rhe middle of nowhere snaps Into focus: the 'underground' is just another rangeof consumer goods, of articles whose non-participatory consumption follows the same rules inBetsy Coed as In Nott/ng HIli: passivity and through passivity, iso/atlon. What /s happening?

3

Sweet fuck allis happening. The latest goods and the latest poses are being exhibited, envied,bought and exhibited sgaln. As the Situationlsls have said, IT'S ALL A SHOW. A show that ~."only go on because everyone pretends tobe enjoying It - because everyone thinks th.r he:alone is the total misfit. Conformity is a reign of terror. The Beatles, Zappa, the Crazy World ofArthur Brown. Shit, the lot of it, products like these mark nothing more than the turthe'(,frontiers yet of consumer society. Its most gratuitous, decadent and self-destructive produc~wlis most snobbish pr.release. And no more than Its pre-release. What Is today the opIum 01 therebel will tomorrow be the opium of every normal slob in the street. Reynold's TobaccoCorporation has already patented the brand names of every variety of pot. TWenty AcSpu(coGold. Ten Congo Brown. They'll bfl in the vending machines yet, along with the ontology ."dbubble-gum.' From 'Songs of the Black Hand Gang', 'Hapt' B. \

. BLACK MASK's agitation snapped into sharper focus: showing the Hippies that theirrefusal to work was, however unconsciously, a perfectly accurate assessment of the freedomwhich could be granted by automation and cybernation today - the eradication of all forms.ofinvoluntary labour - the creation of a civilisation based on free creativity, on PLAY - that theirfundamentally Utopian vision could, If only It were taken seriously and no longer etherlallsed_

.~.~~:~UJllII1IIRJ"" ~1I~Wmw.ftll"·!rf:";·i as. drug and culture fantasy, become one of.':'.'~JlIf2:.. 1-·~~!~~lUaiJj'~,Lr!.'I'.'\!1: the most highly explosive forces In play

The-,e-s-t-o-" hi -. h·,d;' -- -. ~. 11 today. The Lower East Side was plasteredIn hiding ..• ~ecw~ ood he spe,nt k~ Ii with 'Iyposters and littered with throwaway~:--"'--~-.-..-. .:..~-_~a:.:..::s:...:a2!.u~~o~~lIIar. ..d. WE CONDEMN Timothy Leary. Not for new

. " i ~ ..:I,U[' 1.1, .~ till ideas but for organised religion. Not for~,l U·'r. expanding the mind but for limiting theJ II II revolution. Alien Ginsberg. For embree.In9A .~ '11 II Johnson In the face of death. For giving

- :Ii II 'Time-Life Inc.' a safe rebel. For leading"j youth away from revolution. useo. For

.....~~I. II III adding new lights to old art. For a new media;11 Ir~ with the same message. With Detroit and~H II Newark, BLACK MASK decided to hold street~I II meetings on the Lower East Side. They were~II II a mixed success. They muscled In on localII II community meetings In Tom.klns Square'1 I Park, but they were really Just too much, TheI II local community leadershlt was more

Interested In getting progressively minded,College-boy cops to come along and 'help',rather than getting mixed up with 8 bunch ofrabid anarchists. The majority of the Hippies

. were stili grOOVing on the dreary vision of the'Barb' and the 'Oracle' and felt much thesame way. Specific groups like New York

~. Provo actually went· so far as to denounce~ BLACK MASK to the cops...

At the same time they tried. desperate­ly to snap the usual New Left rent-a-erowdmilitants out of their inertia: to get beyondcounting arseholes. Intellectually theylashed out at the whole Vietnam and ThirdWorld industries, at the condition' of masshypnosis they sustained. Time after timethey plugged the fact that the only effect ofIssue politics In general -- and those regard­Ing the other side of the planet In particular -

I. 10distracteveryone'.attention away from the terrible fucking atate they areIn themselves.'The whole Third World bit has come to be no more than the crudest monopolisation 01 themeaning 01 the word pOllerty. Poverty Is only allowed to mean hunger, disease, exposure. ete ­the poverty 0' Imperialistic exploitation or of the last remaining pockets of 19th c8ntury westernIndustrial poverty - while the atrocious modern poverty of the over-developed countries - this

. lexual and general energy I pleasure frustration produced by a totally self-destructive and antl­life economy, these universal conditions of passivity, Isolation, boredom, naulea and generalcrack-up In every direction - thl. poverty ha. become 80mething completely Intangible. TheIdiot Left has allowed the specific objective phenomena of modern social alienation to bepassed over In terms of purely subjective neurosis. Practically, they tried to turn demos Intoriots. To turn everyone on to the complete shit of everything, the cars, the buildings, the goodsfor Isle, every aspect of their immediate experience. To turn them on to the physical excitementand euphoria of actually fighting It all, fighting It fully, here and now, fighting It with their handsnot only their minds. To turn everyone on to the fact that the only possible value, or pleasuretoday, the only way to really get across to anyone els8, to one8elf, Is to join together to combatthe whole of reality. TO TURN THEM ON TO REVOLUTIONARY VIOLENCE.

'.Jh ff:t" '.

"These smut sheets, are today's Molotov cocktails thrown atrespectability and decency in our nation... They encourage depravityand Irresponsibility, and they nurture a breakdown in· the continuedcapacity of the government 10 conduct an orderly and constitutionalsociety." Rep. Joe Pool(House Un-American Activities Committee)

5

BLACK MASK saw themselves as a catalyst: a small, tightly-knit guerrilla unit, Its taCticspreplanned, Its objective to precipitate a state of mass hypnosis Into a Relchlan outburst ofanxiety, anger and festivity. They began to be In and around SDS and were one of the groupsmost Involved In the Initial experiment with mobile tactics - the first steps towards any futureurban guerrilla - taking place et that time. The first time they were Involved practically Inillustrating the enormous tactical superiority of small autenomoue groups over huge remote­controlled crowds was during the big Dean Rusk demo organised by SOS In November: rOVingbands blocked the main traffic Intersections, took confrontation right off the area dealgnaled bythe cops, Jumped Isolated cops they'd lured down aldestreets, etc.

The 'mln-ln' at Macy's (a huge department store) during the Christmas shopping rush waseven more effective. Large numbers of people, either alone or in small groups, flooded the ato'reat its peak -hour. None of them looked like demonstrators, and they were free to Impersonatenormal shoppers, floorwalkers and staff in various configurations. They moved goods aroundIn a businesslike way. They soiled, broke, stole and gave them away. Half-starved dogs and catswere let loose In the food department. A hysterical buzzard flew around the china sectionsmashing more and more hideous crockery as equally hysterical salesgirls either tried to catchor escape from it. Decoys with flags and banners planted themselves in the middle of groupsof straight middle-class shoppers who were promptly roughed up and hustled outside by copsand floorwalkers. Utter chaos ... With hindsight one could say that It was at about this tim.,winter 67· I 68 that the whole atmosp~ereof the States began to change. A longtimeunderground process began to break: out into the open. And, as Burroughs remarkssomewhere, whatever it Is that has seeped and crawled its way out is enough to make anambulance attendant puke. Perhaps even 18 months ago it was possible to have some Illusions.Not any more, not with suburban housewives practising in the rifle-range, not with copspatrolling every subway train. America is on the brink of a disintegration unparalleled since thecollapse of the Middle Ages. And, In this. cardhouse world, its fall will almost certainly flip therest of the planet over with It: global nig~t and fire.

To specify in terms of the 'avant-garde', the 'youth revolt', or whatever. ~QJitlc:~~ly_J",efiasco of the huge Whitehall demos In December (panavision version of the. October 27 pantoIn London) not only spell out the futility of mass demonstrations In general but also that theirfutility couldn't solely be put down to their tactics. The New Left was reduced to zero. Even thepretense of an avantgarde subculture folded up, ~nd really folded up, at much the same time. Itwasn't even nihilistic or vapid any more. It. just wasn't anything at all any more. Just anothercommodity, like lilacs or beans on toast. And we all know about the last days of the drug scene- the twilight of the garlanded· TWA expense-account shamans, behavlourlst lushes andCalcutta airport hustlers trying to make the big time; the soft drugs gone about as soft 8S putty';then the speed scene, the loonlng and first killings••• The West Coast now the kids all on speedand most everyone else smacked out Just for 8 bit of peace...

A civilisation coming down like the House 0"Usher and Its slow motion fall sweeping allforms of experience into one - 'Because,when the smack begins to flow / I really don'I care anymore / About all the tensions In this town / And a/l the politicians making crazy sounds I Andeverybody putting everybody else down / And all the dead bodies piled up .around.' Thisconvergence is .. real process and has expressed itself concretely in the formation of' theGHETTO.The ghetto: an ambiguous and dialectical phenomenon par excellence. Negatively Itstands for the dissolution of everything. It's no transitional experimental station or enclave: noTangier, no Big Sur. It's pure hell. One window, one door, four walls. A dead end. The ghetto: theplace you go when there's nothing else left to do, when there's nowhere else left to go. Theprison without bars. The loony bin so big no one can even see its there. Backrooms andendless nlghi. Neurosis, Inertia. The abyss opens ... the horror. the horror...

Yet, at the same time, dissidence becoming conscious, an organisational problem, aproblem of actual city space. Isolated Individuals gathering Into a mob, a mob In a distinctlydesperate and ugly mood, and gathering permanently, everyday, so It can't be busted that easilyjust for loitering. A state of mind claiming its own real space, its physical interplay·and thus,oddly· enough, the first step towards a revolutionary concept of the city, of life together: a

6

ALL J:" .KNOWIS·--Y()U .TRY "TO K/~L ME!.'

~

Heaven.bullt In Hell's despite. The ghettols3t~on of the young white dropout allowed BLACKMASK to grapple, concretely, with this upsurge of a qualitatively different r~voltwhich has beenrising· clearly for al least 5 years now, a revolt without a name, 'youth revolt', 'dropout', 'newlumpen', what you will. At last this new revolt became tangibl~: the Lower East Side in early '68was a potentially revolutionary COMMUNITY...

BLACK MASK - whose real axis was still essentially abstract and ethereal: a magazine ­dissolved Itself·and a hard core of some 20 odd people reformed as the Lower East Side 50Schapter:(I): UP AGAINSTTHE WALL MOTHERFUCKEA... AND INTOTHETRASHCAN... The firstthing they really got their teeth into was the Lower East Side Garbage Strike. As a metaphor thegiant rat-Infested heaps of rotting garbage were a godsend: now no"one could, or would, shiftthe shit out of sight any more. Not only were they up against the wall - they were, qulte literally,In the trashcan. From street to street they fired the spread-eagled mounds, drank and dancedround them and when the firemen finally arrived (there was a big Firemen's Strike at the sametime) climbed on to the tenement roofs (roofs, like sewers, major unpatrolled zones] and lobbedbricks, slates and anything else to hand down on them to cries of 'black-legs'. Unwashed.~ndregg,d, dancing, singing, hammering tomtoms, they ferried load after load of muck via the8ub~BY and dumped it In glossy uptown Rockefeller Plaza... " .

They were the perfect catalyst. Numbers grew fast, and 8S they did their activity reallytook oft: became permanent, polymorphous, a revolutionary life-style. They threw off athousand gags to precipitate the crisis at the heart of the modern ghetto .- its oscillationbetween groovy zonked-out reservation and real underground focus, sensual, communal and

7

aggressive - to build up general Iconoclasm and agitation In a more systematic manner thananyo.ne before them, ATMOSPHEFUCS·: revolutionary technique designed to exacerbate thecontradlctlon between what people ,."paren.'y feel and what they really feel: to invert all thesymbols and stereotypes In any given area. They 'shot' (with blB.nks, alas) the 'poet' Ke"ethKoch as he W88 giving a reading In a local church to what he actually referred to 8$ his'congregation'... They lumbered an: entire lavatory down to St. Marks Place and held acommunity 'shlt-In"which proved highly popular until B squad of infuriated; blushing, highlyProtestant fuzz arrived and, perfect symbolical end of a perfect symbolical ev~nfng, literallybeat it to pieces with their nightstick.... They triggered off militant demonstrations outside theprecinct nick every time anyone wa' :bust fC)r drugs (at the 8am~ time spacing out' the moreinane heads and dealers all over to~n In search of phantasmal deals they had set up). TheyInflltrated,the kitchens of the most fashionable arty cafes and bars, spiking the more expensivedrinks and dishes with an assortment of drugs, violent emetics, sleepers, hallucinogens... Acouple actually having to shut.... -

They spearheaded the city's fiJrst real Hippy riot (during which they fought thelr'waythrough a throng of cops guarding a !squadcar In which one of the Motherfuckers was locked,wrenched the lock, freed him and 81':901 away)... They organised some 400 Lower East Sidedropouts in the storming of the MuSeum of Modern Art for putting on an exhibition 'Dada,Surrealism and their heritage' (herlt~ge being' the usual creek, Rauschenberg,' Funk et al)•

.'Struggling, dishevelled and distinctl~, unbeatJtlful people screaming obscenities, hurling paint,flour and smoke bombs at the First, r;,Ilght crowd and the cops defending them ... They printed

,Invitations from one of the major gh~.o stores offering, at a specified time on 8 specified day,as many free,goods' as their customers could carry away, 50·of the Motherfuckers setting theball rolling... They had been training Itt karate for over.a year and had further refined their streettactics with hot'copies of th'J ~Natl9nal Guard manual' 'How To Deal With Civil Disorders'(particularly attracted to the Idea ofutaleashlllg Alsatians with handgrenades strapped to them).They ,were terrifying when actu8l1y~ In action. They would break aut of the main body ofdemonstrators like gress"ed lightning, smashing windows, kicking over trashcans androadsigns, firing anything that woul~. burn, setting off a series of Intersection traffic Jams todisperse standard cop dispersion procedure, and then pick them off one by one. They wadedIn using karate chops, brandishing knives 8nd slashing with bicycle chains strapped to theirwrists, screaming UP AGAINST THE~ WALL I MOTHERFUCKER... they baptised this mercurialstreet guerrilla, DIAL-A-PIG or IF YOU'RE TAKING TWO STEPS BACK I FOR EVERY· STEPFORWARD I TURN AROUND I AND GO THE OTHER WAY...

Their basic tactic in all was sticking their neck right out - then trying to work with a.nyoneattracted by -their extromism. In this 'IV'Ythey hoped to pUIi the most desperate elements of theLower East Side together: to create en embryo community. They hustled the bread to set up a'free store', The Rathole, run less atong trad Digger lines - the latter having been written offlong since' as a mare -hlp Salvation Army' - than as a general coor~lnation and meeting pointfor both the Mothertuckers (by now 30 hard core with a further 300 In and around) and anyoneelse who c811!d to fall by. An experiment In reoccupying a fraction of the land that has beenstolen from us. A move to/erode the !.whole system of .isolatlon that Is the basis of hierarchicalpower - a gtld"system holding itself together by holding us apart - all the 9bjective aspects ofwhich are unified and summed up concretely In the structure of the 'city. 'Irradiating from thisthey tried to reinforce the dropout's newbelligerence and to ward off the chili police heat it wascalling forth. They tried to Infiltrate the local social services, to use them as B front to shelterreal militancy which, as It grew In stt;ength, could afford to shatter them and expose the purelyrepressive role they play. They became embroiled in tenants' struggles: rent strikes and theidea of street and block committees. They helped set up a number of crashpads. They tried toturn hustling - dog eating dog -- into more organised libertarian forms of crime: working outsteady Illegal supplies of everything from food and medical supplies to actual hardware... Hereas elsewhere coherent self-defense proved Inseparable from actual aggression...

They stepped up the typical ghetto tension over public use of. what are nominally publicplaces: turned them Into a combat zone, a field polarising all those who blunder Into them. 'True

8

friendship Is made on the battlefield'. Raids on the Fillmore East Theatre are going on at themoment: 'mobs of longhaired gits regularly smashing th_ir way in, reasserting Its new name TheWerehouse and using It as a community centre, with i'ree food and drink, music, dancing,getting' stoned, discussion of tactics, organisation, free karate classes, etc. Moreover, theirInitial zeroing In on one specific area, far from becomIng stLiltifying, getting them stuck in ablind alley. lead naturally through more and more far-'iung connections along a sketchy butthoroughly real national network. The ghetto Is fast becoming one of the most vital- nervecentres of this feverish doomed society. Crooks, middleclass culture dropouts, Immigrants and"worklngelass delinquent street ·gangs all put right on the same intolerable spot. Not only didalliances with other dropout communities all over the States spring up, but for the first time agroup of .young whites really got across to theBlacl<s; were accepted as having identicalInterests. This coalition reached the point of EldridgeOleaver offering the Vice-Presidency ofthe Black Panthers to one of the Motherfuckers -and appreciating being turned down. Politicsis shit, man, deadpanned the Mothers. Anarchy realisediit was black a century before the ThirdWorld. And Lucifer, Prince of Morning, right In the dawn of time.

They also closed In on one of the richest -sources feeding the ghetto and which anyghetto organisation must embrace: the _scnoot and university system. They systematicallyfreaked out all the SOSsummits they could get to; they wreaked havoc on the various attemptsmade to bureaucratise the New York Teachers Strike. In :~oth caees they used the same Ourruti­like tactics of pUlling together the extremists they attreeted and then leaving them to organisetheir own scene themselves. Their most notorious intervention was during the occupation of

9

Columbia. Electricity put out of commission, then Bome really swashbuckling "'dlo·drop;:iut·over the university's own broadcasting system. Successful attempts to Involve the IOCIII SllICkand Puerto Rican youth gangl and to take the confrontation right out of Its piddling academiccontext. Their 18st8uggestion., ,during the actual fighting with the pollc., of covering the •.of the barricades with the choicest Items from the university'. collection of ceramic••nd~.masters (headline: Policeman S~ashes Art Treasurel) finally got them kicked out...

But perhaps the most rad'cal aspect of all they did during the summer of '68 cenbe .....as their faltering but persistent attempt to create 8 new form of 8elf expression beyondurt Cipdpolitics: a new revolutionary langulJge. In the first place, they started to write In the Ianguap.Ofthe streets. What, a few months .before, had been 'The poverty against which man has ~nconstantly struggling Is not merely the poverty of material goods; In fact, In Industriallyadvanced countries the dlsap~arance of material poverty has revealed the poverty'··ofexistence Itself' became 'Your communitY represents death. You eat dead food. You live deadlives. Youfuck dead women. Everything about you 'S dead... The struggle Is for r.alllf....' Fromthe Situatlonist SALON down te). Skid Row. Form changed along with style. The apare, allgl)tlyPuritanical BLACK MASK 8wlt~hed Into a stabbing crossfire of grotty geatetnered ·leBf~_.,

obscene broadsheets, posters,~' comlca, .'oSians, apraycan graffiti, banners, chants, songs,tomtom tattoos. Sculpture, musIc, literature, all forms dissolved and regained their unity. Tralle.of slime and glanl footprints me.ndered through back-alleys. Snakes with propaganda paintedalong their backs. Dogs and rabbits with similar tags... And the cops trying to round them up•••with nets... But even the mosti Inflammatory smutsheet remains trapped within the officialdefinition of 'communication'. Thescene, wrote the Mothers, 'Is now going through a processof polarisation - those who want to continue the media 'blow-out' and those who want to blowout the media'. For communication if It Is to have any meaning at all can only be Inter-ehangeand Interplay between people, 8 dialogue, while all the mass media, however mixed, work bydefinition in one direction only.~ They are a broadcast, a show, 'a spectacle that can only beconsumed by a passive spectator'. Novel, film or symphony, you can't talk back to any of them~And what communication can there be when one can never reply? Sweet luck all, comrade,sweet fuck all. What passes as communication Is In fact the installation of total non­communication, of passivity, isolation and abstraction - the media are the material expressionof participation In non-participatory society.

The whole crock of shit comes down to the a priori assumption that communication Is 8

matter of talking. It's nothing ~f' the sort - it's a matter of acting, of acting together. TheMotherfuckers' real importance: was that they were trying to create this new revolutionarylanguage - at once lautreamont's poetry made by everyone and Boehme's sensual speech.Language as the self expression of the whole body. Language as collective action. This Is whythey got away so much on riots: riots, probably the first significant breakthrough In masscommunication since Marconi. Communication is a group project and adventure - a sharedpredicament, dangerous, illegal! - a world suddenly tense, expectant and tonic, a situationwhose outcome depends solely on the verve and audacity of one's own intervention. Riot, likelove, gives a brief taste of real surreaUty: the moment everything totters on the brink, the pastand the personality gone, the present and the body found, all the senses called into pley. If youwant to find yourself, get lost ... Violence seemed" the only shock brusque enough to snapdissidents out of their trance and fts dream sY':ltax:a karate-trained Dadaist commando actuallyfighting in the gutter is enough tq complete the demoralisation of any intellectual, whether It'.Ayler or Georg Simmel he's pickled In. 'Revolution in dreams / Revolution in books/ Revolutionin cars I Revolution In advertising I But everywhere repression... Your biggest enemy Is yourARSE I Pick It up I Let it move..." INERTIA IS THE REAL ENEMY.

As the summer drew 0" they entered the realm of revolutionary folklore. Theirenthusiasm for any kind of hardware left all but the most rabid Panthers looking sallow - HueyNewton's 'If you don't believe in Jead, you're already dead' much quoted - and most of theshooting on the white scene last summer was inevitably Motherfuckers. Not only were theyresponsible for the sporadic, apparently Hippy rooftop sniping at cops on the Lower East Side,tJ.!ey were also toting the guns and cocktails on the Berkeley and Haight-Ashbury barricades.

10

September, they blew up the~erkeley water supply 88 a reprisalraid for Chicago. They were theunknown terrorists who since~anuary have, deep In the country, atthe dead of night, been dynamiting~allfornia'8 electricity grid,,(~Iectrtclty, the baals of the realRower that keeps the machinerunning... without It nothing canwork... black anarchy...). UP~GAINST THE WALL I MOTHER­:PUCKER began to pay for the;notoriety: Did B good nltes work pigijld / Gal his rocks off swinging clubs.fter being· fruslrated all Friday /Arrests B member of UP AGAINSTtHE WALL" MOTHERFUCKER for.tandlng on the street. Charge:,conspiracy In the 4th degree. ArrestsIi girl for protesting his arrest.Arrests a Yippee for-slanding on thestreet corner: Charge: disorderly

conduct. Arrests B people on Sixth Street for trying to bJo.ck the street to traffic after a kid washit by. car. Arrests a guy carrying a drum for carrying a drum. Arrests a guy for backing up hiscsr sfter getting 4. tickets. Charge: trying 10 run over a cop..Arrests a girl trying to get up ball toget out the others arrested... the police are coming down heavy on motherfuckers...

By the end of the summer their hard core was up on countless criminal charges,-withpenalties· ranging from 10 days to 10 years - the worst of which was late JUly when Benn Moreawas done for having knifed a couple of servicemen - a Maljine and an airman·- who along withsome 20 odd other rightmlnded- citizens had cornered 4 of the Motherfuckers In a Bostonbackalley and laid Into them with bricks and clubs. His trial opened in November and is stillgoing on at this minute... The paranoia the whole time, and no paranoia like New York paranoia.The uproar, the filth and neon, the sense of being trapped. Politics or dope It feels like theycould come and get.you at any time. Telephone bugged, with a transmitter picking up soundsall over the apartment, Smoking over the bog seat with one hand on the handle. People scaredof even being seen around .. with you. And the Motherfuckers loonlng around spitting at everycop tht!y happened to come across on the street. When the heat really began to move In a lotof them split New York City. They travelled from one end Of the Slates to the other. fucking upthings from Alaska to New Mexico and trying to link the various peopie they made contact with.Attempts to let up a nationwide network of guerrilla cells were put together during this period.Rounded off by the formation of the I.w.w.e. The/ntematlonal Werewolf Conspiracy. tradeJokeonthe I.W.W. • which more or le.a brings It up to now...

A very few points. The Motherfuckers are the classic 'left-wing adventurlsts' - that oldalibi of the straight revolutionary, and his dam against the visceral revolt in himself. Actingwithin a new and completely unexplored theatre of operations - community 8S opposed tofactory organisation and strife - and exposing themselves 1000/0 to pollee victlmisatlon, theyhave galvanlsed 8 vast area of the American scene. They s~lt on the 'tactical' ruminations of theusual leftwlng arseholes (only 'adventurists' are entitled to:talk tactics) and pop the balloon ofthe Maoists· stralghtfaced absurdities with the wild laughter of real aggression against a realenemy. And their extemporlsatlon has paid off as a catalyst: in the realm of atmospherics theyhave changed the tenor not only of the whole post-Flower-Power' underground but also of 50S.And there is still a great deal to be done In this field. 'The positive aspects of the .major

11

ENGLISHMOTHERFUCKERTHE FORGOTTEN

PRISONER OFCASTLEMERE

hallucinogens, for example, Is slill sUbmerged under thesales talk of the '87 psychedelic merchants. Theirrudimentary deconditlonlng,partlal ego-dissolvingproperties· and stripping bare of the social structuring ofperception - these have stili to be appropriated byrevolutionaries and put into term. of 'practlcal sensualactivity' (Marx). But the role of catalyst has ItsdraWbacks, and the group has now reached a turning­point. With the International We~wolf Conspiracy thereis both an attempt to grapple Vilth the problems of alarge-scale decentralised netwo.,,, and an unequivocaldesire to get at least a mal~r part of· the wholeorganisation well out of the lime'ight. Personal audacityIs of the greatest possible valu, In ending this bloodynightmare - is it me or them thalt. insane? - In paradingwhat one really feels - but putti~g the finger on oneselfthe whole time can only end up ~hh the bastards sittingoutside your door all day, se"lng~'you up for 8 five yea, .; I

stretch. Some of the least cool Motherfuckers are "'.beginning to disappear from the front line - disappearing ... --. .to reappear with a changed name, a changed address, a~changed persona. One day a 8~ruffy wlldeyed glt, the -next a flashy executive with aerosoJ ONTIn his briefcase,and a week later a mlldmanner.d union official quietlyfucking up the union comptom.-er... The whole vastproblem of structuring open a"d closed organisation.The depersonalisation and anonymity of bureaucraticcivilisation is the jungle of the urban guerrilla... '..

At the same time the Moth~rfueker8 seem to feel a .-marked dissatisfaction - viz. the acid - with theirprevious reduction of therapy - :and, for Christ's sake,what else Is It all about? - to ~pen violence, violencepure and simple. Obviously vlol,nee has an enormousabreactive power, but as Reichl underlined time aftertime, a flood of pleasure, anxiety and fury merelyindicates the sweeping aside of ,the first major level ofinhibition, of character and body armeur; One's sense ofan enormous underlying manic-depressive swing withthe Motherfuckers would seem Iqiconflrm Reich's claimthat the fundamental question Is one of reconnecting ona far, far deeper level - on the level of the Id, on the levelof a primordial energy - and let'. hope It Is a slightlymore serene and ineluctable trip. The case of theMothers raises the question of th. aims, imperative andpitfalls of a revolutionary affinlty;group. Behind a hard,imaginative and Identifiable fron_, an occult network ofresistance. Along with breaking through to the deepestand most intoxicating levels of our real selves, a nonstopand intelligible harassment of the prevailing organ­Isation of reality. War, therapy, co~munlty. No part of theproject can be separated from the others. But these arepractical problems, and they can never be solved on abig table covered with pieces of paper. 'FULL STEAM IWIIi-••..-lilliilliliiiiiiiiiliiiil- - .AHEAD THROUGH THE SHIT' NECHAEV ~

THE END.

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Johann Baader: schizophrenic, becomes the key figure of Berlin Dada. He is Tzara's 'Idiot'transcended: the Idiot I Madman I Guerrilla In life - the man without aim or prospects, the'lowest' ofall, the shit 01AmerICB. Tzara,the men of letters WBS horrified becuB5e Baader Is forteal. Confronted with the non-inleiligence of Baader, Tzara who said 'intelligence' Is to be foundon the streets' was appalled. Hugnet wrote:'Saader's was II special case of coming to therevolution through individualism and madness.' Baader rides B white horse Into ParllBment.Baader dereslises <death (death the most potent form of social coercion) In a magnificent flightfrom taste and persona' responsibility: Inviting 3,000 people to his wife's funeral (whom heloved dearly), smiling he shaves offhalfhis beard while herbody Is lowered Into the grave. Thisact Is equalled only by Fritz Jung's hi-Jacking of a Germsn battleship as a present for theembarrassed Russian Bolsheviks. This Is Berlin Dada. Like eVlJrything else it was forced to diewhen· the revolutionary prospects died and Its energy was dlv~rted into the forced acceptanceof old forms. BLACK MASK

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