 So looking kind of at some of the key elements that these different movements really have in common protest as Art and art as protest Radically critical anti-nationalist anti-colonialist in its approach in the case of Dada we saw being kind of Unarco individualist as well as anarcho communist But not nihilistic and I really want to kind of wipe that out the very beginning because there have been so many Kind of misconceptions about it and it's kind of weird you think well How can the kind of like the individualist and the communists kind of meld? That's really a different conversation But I'm gonna bring your attention to the book table at city lights that for the next week Has probably more Dada books on it than any other bookstore in the country so But it's something to consider because these things are actually very very important to Attack on consensus reality attack on bourgeois sensibilities on consumerism Revealing the hypocrisy in society Revealing the agenda of the elite economic class And I think in this way that you can really see the connections between Dada and things like the Occupy movement or Maybe even Ed Snowden who knows maybe we can talk about that too. They were very much into shock tactics Exaggeration ridicule sarcasm working with polarity The idea as I said earlier of going between yes and no Um Focusing on the grotesque and the absurd is another element All we have to do is really look at the work of George Grosh of John Hartfield of Raoul Hausman Actually, even Winston has played a lot with the grotesque He just came up with a wonderful poster actually that had kind of flames coming out of our our furor's head And then last but not least short circuiting culture culture jamming which can also be kind of tied into shock tactics but it's it's really the conscious idea that You want to kind of bring awareness to the illness that pervades culture So that is to say a culture that kind of can allow the slaughter of millions of people for the sake of profit and amusement of the few And this is really what you know with Dada's we're responding to it's like many of them had survived World War one or knew of people that had not survived and This had a huge impact on the kind of work that they produced So let's talk now about the threat itself And I'll take a few liberties Black Lives Matter Occupy The zine and independent music explosion The new collage explosion Things like desert desert site works and the cacophony society suicide club industrial music The machine art of organizations like SRL semen cal spell a tech Matt Hecker it's work There is of course punk itself Community Gary Warren Mail art Oolipo Fluxes Situationism letrism the diggers the Black Panther Party happenings Actionists of Vienna the machine art of Jean Tangolais Bouto the beat culture art from mid-century California artists outlaw culture and root folk music jazz music surrealism Burlesque and vaudeville I even include the Marx Brothers Greek Rebetica why not the men with the pointy shoes and of course we reach Dada and The Continuum as I mentioned earlier can kind of bounce around a little bit So I want to actually begin with this thread because I think it actually ties in a little bit to what we're experiencing right now Boris Vian who was a French musician and Esthete and part of a kind of a cabaret culture movement in Paris produced a wonderful wonderful classic of absurdist theater called the generals tea party and It has a bunch of generals kind of like sitting around plotting the destruction of the world for their own amusement So if we fast forward Um consider The wonderful hoax that the UK punk group crass created during the Reagan era So members of the group took existing speeches by Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan Chop them up to create a doomsday conversation where the two of them are planning nuclear war and So Crass is utilizing the cut-ups and Thinking about also the work of Tristan Zara because it doesn't really end with boroughs and gison you really have to go back to cabaret-voltaire and Tristan Zara chopping up poems putting him into a hat and Pulling them out randomly which at that time caused a riot. Well crass caused a riot and And it doesn't in there We can go way past Dada into the past and we find ourselves having to confront the work of Alfred Jari and to the right we have Perubu our president and Perubu was a despotic leader who was bent on annihilation in the end his own and Like I say, you know elements of the grotesque once again, you know, I mean we have very very strong similarities here so We keep kind of coming back to Artists dealing with trauma and I'm gonna go forward now to the post-war period and talk a little bit about buto Which is the Japanese dance theater that emerged at the end of World War two which very much subverted conventional notions of dance It created a formalization of Distress Oftentimes the event would the events would happen in public Sometimes without announcement For example, it might happen in a room like this where somebody might just rip off all their clothes and begin creating gestures and movements and others would join in and before you know it Something was happening. It was very shamanic in many many ways There were strong literary influences to buto They had read Yukio Mishima, La Tremont, Antonina Artaud, Jean Genet, Desad and Oftentimes you'd find buto players howling silently attempting to scream and I bring up howl and I bring up Allen Ginsberg because buto came out right approximately at this time and Starving naked hysterical buto players look starving hysterical naked This was a kind of a in some ways Not exactly a violent approach Leroy Jones, Amiri Baraka had a different tactic Black data Leo Lizmos was not a passive approach. It was not a defeatist Approach, which howl in some ways is is a protest poem, but there is a defeatist element Amiri Baraka went on the warpath with this poem. It's available on YouTube. I encourage you all of you to Check it out Tango Eisen Martin Did a mash-up of this poem on opening night of Dada World Fair that was phenomenal Very very important moment and which Fed into Other important moments that came a little bit before and a little after on the upper hand right is Bruce Connor There is a show at MoMA, which I suggest all of you catch Beneath him is one of his pieces in a state of decay Above on the other side is a piece by George Herms beneath it is George Herms itself and at the center is The seal of the rat bastard protective association Which brought together both Herms and Connor and Michael McClure a beat and many many others They had strong connections to Wallace Berman and Semina Journal from LA Dennis Hopper was also involved with his photography This was Part of the beat thing, but not really. I mean it really kind of it's funny I interviewed Ruth Weiss who is now Approaching her 90s about a year ago. We were celebrating the sixth gallery tribute at City Lights and We were talking about the term beat and she said, you know, I just hate the word I always hated the word. She said, you know, I thought of ourselves as neo-Dadaists And I thought I had just this amazing affirmation because here we are we're planning for Dada World Fair and She just you know, like said exactly what I'd wanted to hear and she said, you know, you have to understand there were these amazing clubs and you know and Crash pads and apartments and because San Francisco was so affordable, you know you could Work two or three days a week and still have money left over to buy art supplies or guitar strings or you know Whatever happy drug you wanted and the parties would often go on and on and they would begin And it was just this ongoing wonderful mishmash kind of like what we had at Dada House the other night But they were just more common and happened more often and it brought together musicians from the jazz clubs It brought in artists from San Francisco Art Institute it brought in All kinds of misfits and Politicos and they were all swimming around in the same ocean and This later kind of led to things like happenings Some of the same people got involved in Things that were very Alan Caprao kind of you know inspired but You know it also opened up into the 60s and some of those people also became involved with the diggers and became involved with the Cockets and became involved with the angels of light and again, we're looking at kind of protest art We're looking at art. That's art of the absurd And that's very very critical of culture Upper left-hand corner is the San Francisco Art Institute to the right of city lights. There is a kind of sort of Hub of activity Not just around North Beach. I mean it used to extend into the film art one time He used to extend into the mission that has changed because the demographics of San Francisco have changed But there has always been these wonderful relationships between again Institutions like the art Institute bookstores like city lights There was the Mabuhay Gardens and we're gonna talk with Vale and a little bit about kind of that interesting feedback loop between Punk rock and the beats and the literary scene on the right. We have the deaf club Bruce Connor was a regular at Mabuhay Gardens. If you haven't seen his photographs He has a collection of photographs of the punk scene that are absolutely brilliant And so we have this kind of very interesting sort of feedback loop Philip Lamentia Who is known to be a beat but prior to that was really a surrealist in fact Andre Breton Published Lamentia way before beat was a thing So again, we see these kind of interesting threads. So let's jump somewhere else now talk a little bit about fluxes So it's both a kind of a protest start, but it's also a kind of a defeatist art and it's also toying with expectation and Of course, you know Yoko Ono We're all familiar with Some of the other fluxes people we might not be we may or may not kind of go more into detail but I have to invoke fluxes because So many of the tactics of fluxes like run parallel to Dada playing with expectation playing with outrage playing with You know Decay Playing with you know the kind of things that that you know people like Bruce Connor and George Herms also addressed in the 50s And then this later it kind of worked its way into Mail art some of the same people went on to mail art, but also there was another current which was happening kind of at the same time which was via knees actionism and There's some very very interesting kind of parallels between People like Otto mule and Herman niche both of which went to jail for their performances Some of them were extremely radical and they were kind of invoking the massacres at places like Belsen and Dachau and Again like the Bouto players who were kind of dealing with you know the atomic holocaust of Hiroshima and Nagasaki Nish and mule and others were considering you know like art in relation to You know again trauma One of my favorite favorite performances of theirs is when they got a whole bunch of very very affluent people in dinnerware penned up like cattle and Basically had an abattoir in the center and no one could escape But they had to kind of slaughter pretty much these creatures that were in the middle of the abattoir sadly for the creatures But but it was one of the events that they get into a lot of trouble for And of course we got to talk a little bit about punk which kind of like follows Hot on the heels and the shock tactics of punk of course are very well known to most of us And of course huge huge influenced hugely influenced by Situationism I really have to kind of invoke the name of of Jamie Reed who's a Designer upper left-hand corner. We have the 45 for holidays in the Sun Which Really kind of directly Addresses, you know the hypocrisy In the UK It opens with this preamble a cheap holiday in other people's misery And really kind of is goading the bourgeoisie So we see kind of illuminated the stark realization like whether you're behind the iron curtain or whether you're in front of it Repression and slavery is pretty much the same colonialism has its own trajectory So Jamie Reed was really playing with if you look in the lower corner one bus says nowhere the other bus says Boredom of course, there's the very famous God save the Queen which we all know about but then in the upper right-hand corner very self-effacing and And sort of pre-saging the demise of the group and saying you know what even we are Complicit that's a American Express sex pistols card so Situationists were a direct influence on Jamie Reed on Malcolm McLaren on the pistols themselves Gita bore and Raul vanaghyme in Society of the spectacle and the revolution of everyday life If you look through sex pistols lyrics, but then if you look through the lyrics of a lot of other punk bands You will find much the same sentiments So if you cross the ocean to America at around the same time You have lyrics like it's the American in me that makes me watch the blood run out of the bullet hole in his head It's the American in me that makes me wonder why Kennedy was murdered by the FBI And of course that was the Avengers Following the Avengers you had the dead Kennedys My wife knows a woman whose dad was one of the pathologists that Actually presided over Kennedy's body He saved the smock and actually put it under glass as a momento. It was a very weird thing They lived in the Bay Area one day his daughter took the smock out of the glass and wore it to a dead Kennedy's concert Um She kept telling people, you know, you're not gonna believe this and they're like, no we don't But it was true and I that the power of that moment in my mind is Huge and I think we go back to Gita bore we go back to the idea of spectacle And we have to begin to think about like, you know, what exactly has happened to us, you know, and You know what I think that, you know, everyone we've kind of looked at so far has attempted to do is kind of Bring this to the foray and sort of like snap us out of our trance of Consuming and bring us a little bit closer again to citizenry There are a lot of contemporary artists that follow within these currents upper left hand corner is John Sim He's the artist who married to gay a gay confederate soldier to a gay Union soldier in a Ceremony in the south where the confederate flag was hung on a noose behind them So I cannot tell you How that freaked out a lot of people in the most wonderful wonderful way He's also taken the confederate flag and and colored it in different colors and kind of like rasta configurations And many many other colors. He's really a brilliant brilliant artist. There is Trevor Paglin in the right side who has been researching covert military sites around the world and Also has Created these amazing sculptures. He created a radioactive sculpture that was collected from glass from Los Alamos That's in kind of a a secret location that you know, you have to kind of like arrange with him to visit and also he's been in touch with Fukushima artists who have been working inside the radioactive zone and No one can really see the art they're making but they have been documenting it But it's really incredible work and and and very timely work We have Reverend Billy in the lower right hand corner who I think he gets arrested like once or twice a month I mean he's really quite wonderful and I think some of you probably already know He is and then on the upper lower right hand left hand corner is Cali lasny of ad busters magazine Who is really an amazing amazing? Designer But also kind of a theorist together with people like Mackenzie work Finn Brunton David Graber and I can kind of go on and on and on and on but I'm just gonna run through a few more slides On the right is John Hartfield and His grandson also named John Hartfield was at Winston Smith space a few days ago And it was really a wonderful event where we got to see a lot of imagery from his grandfather This is Winston do we see a resemblance maybe a little resemblance there But then there's Winston again on the left side and then we have a ho on the right side and I'm just gonna let the images sort of speak for themselves This is a Jean Tangela event that took place in France in the Cal was at the late 50s or the early 60s New York City I would say apropos this is a survival research event. I don't know when this is but probably in the 80s or 90s Here we have the futurists and Here we have Matt Hecker He's gonna be in duet with Cal on Sunday and one of his sculptures and here is one of Cal sculptures and On that note, I actually want to kind of bring you into this dialogue Cal and I Mean you've obviously been touched by futurism But I think you know you've also kind of equally been touched by I think the kind of optimism that crutch bidders Like kind of a playfulness that crutch bidders has I mean I see that in your work Like especially like in your your moving trees and stuff and things like that. So I'm just kind of wondering When you think of this continuum that I've sort of evoked That brings all these kind of strains of culture together I mean what do you personally walk away with and then what what is you know kind of what does it evoke the last 10 minutes? if anything Well Peter Big question. Thanks everyone for coming and Thanks for doing this Peter appreciate it stellar mine up here riff-raff bum bum bum bum, you know, I think I recognized almost every image and so I in a way all of those people have changed my life and I keep trying to learn about them and Oh Matt just walked in yeah What's the question How are we gonna secede from California? How are we gonna use art to create a strong secessionist movement? You know what I We talked about that last night. I kind of couldn't just sit home I was trying to work in my studio and went to the protest march and it felt so good and people were talking about it and What do we do next and a lot of my students were there and really great young energy and What I could suggest to them is Keep working and find your voice and claim a space and hold it and don't give a shit what people think and And that sadly maybe includes your family. You can't Be a radical and think about what other people can't worry about offending other people and Dada gave me that the sisters of perpetual indulgence gave me that punk rock for sure gave me that I mean when I first went to my first art museum show, which wasn't till I was about 21 or 22 I was appalled at how boring it was and just Because I had been going to punk shows and I thought well I'm not doing this with my art, but I'm gonna be an artist and I'm gonna I want to be moved like I moved at a punk show Where I'm scared and confused and excited and happy and partying and celebrating and Pretty quick. I realized it's not the museums or these mainstream venues It's the weird dark alley you go down to find something radical. I mean later you could might end up in a nice basement of a library and I've had a bunch of shows and museums for better or worse But you know the cool stuff is at the weird places and I did I answer the question? Beautifully, baby, beautifully so Winston wake up There was a moment when you and Hartfield were talking and I just It was hard not to get kind of teary-eyed and had the hair kind of stand on end and just kind of realize that there was this like amazing bridge that had formed between now and the time that it his grandfather was being chased around Germany by the fucking Gestapo and You know and and I I think I talked to several people who were you know at the event and For those of you who came in late the grandson of John Hartfield Gave a talk and a PowerPoint over at Winston studio last Saturday, which was really incredible He showed a lot of images. He talked about the politics of the day What was happening in Berlin? It was really an amazing show So I just you know, I got to say there was just a moment where I was really kind of moved by all of it Tell me a little bit about like, you know what you came away with it from with you was you know, he was saying that Because we were talking for a couple hours before the event took place and we said gee How come we never knew each other before this and we're separated at birth and Although I was you know, he was gonna my artwork and see how some might be of my granddad's things and I didn't even know about Hartfield's work until after 1984 it was during the the Democratic Convention to know that yeah, the Democratic Democratic Convention when Reagan was running for re-election and A friend of mine in fragile Palado showed me Alistair showed me this book. I said, oh, how come I never knew about this guy? I recognize some of the pictures, but I didn't know who was and it occurred to me that I was selling John when I do stuff or when we all do the Nonsense or inspired or whatever we think of it our activities our artistic activities We kind of just do it for fun and we do it because we're inspired or to inspire others But when his grandfather was doing that, they were gonna kill his ass, you know, they they had a price on his head they he was a hundred wanted dead or alive, you know, and I Often have wondered if I'd be quite so you know up a D and You know Pointing out rude things if I had the Gestapo chasing me I think a lot of us, you know might You know think twice about it But he was like running from country to country to you know to survive and finally Finally did did sit out the war during you know, I guess in England and then afterward had to return to of all places East Germany and You know like out of the frying pan into the fire, but You know what his his grandfather had done and what John he's a musician, so he has another way of expressing himself but he does have a Very good presentation. He's a professor, so that helps he's you know, obviously you can tell I'm not a public speaker so but in his case he has that talent and skill and To present what his grandfather did it's relevant now as it was then You know not to draw too close a comparison to brother Trump and Adolf Hitler or Mussolini, but there are certain comparisons can be made and I'm kind of glad he's chosen this time to go around and do these presentations It's like he was available with some kind of a miracle You said when he called you and said yeah, hi, I'm John Hartfield. Well, can we come in and do a thing there? He's yeah, right. I'm the Queen of England So I'm glad you sorted that out before you hung up on him So I want to actually take a moment to have Emily give a little presentation about Zines and magazines and print culture