 So I'd like to thank you Emily. I'd like to bring Vale into the conversation now Going from print and performance Since we've both worked at City Lights We both had the pleasure of knowing Philip Lamintia who was a surrealist Before he was considered a beat and was also a huge huge influence at least on me. I'm sure he was on you too If you could talk a little bit about you know taking Emily's lead and you know Kind of jumping into that place of cross-pollination that was City Lights You know after all furling Gettie and Ginsburg helped with search and destroy Oh You mean my phrase the cultural counter cultural continuum exactly Yeah, sorry about this It was only you know Peter has done this wonderful Dada festival which you know puts the searchlight on What was original about Dada in terms of I think being quote revolutionary. Do I dare use that word anymore and and sort of permanently subversive and I had always thought that for example that Burroughs and Geisen were the ones that kind of invented the cut-up and all that but I was shocked that Kurt Schwitters did cut-ups with scissors and then that's I got the word mares You know just from doing so so there was a lot that happened for the first time with Dada But it it was used those people were using of course I have a phrase that first technology then culture and There was we haven't always had the time of mass produced a sort of beautiful magazines and printing technology available and And there were magazines, but not a hell of a lot. I think before Dada and then Dada of course being anti-authority and and and black humor and Against the status quo and all that Well, they would how would you how would you? Do a critique of these beautiful magazines that? Present this gorgeous reality and ads and things well, you'd cut them up of course and you do collages and And it's that's the cheapest way especially if you don't have any drawing talent or ability To say produce a punk poster You know that that was a critique and funny and yet had the power of the original images But destabilized with your subversive message Like I'm sure Penelope here must have made a poster or two, right? You must have Oh Oh, oh Edward moons Okay I'm sure you didn't have permission from the estate for the scream But an iconic image so I have to talk about myself a little because I think I accidentally personify certain things like for example my father was a beatnik and my Super influential uncle was a beatnik, but he was these are like some of the only Asians In in in the beat scene and they really didn't go down in history. My my uncle Was lucky enough by chance to fight kill Germans. I guess in World War two like furlough and Getty and They're both in the same painting class Apparently it either the Sorbonne in Paris or whatever it was on the GI Bill, which is a wonderful thing and they became friends and They both moved to San Francisco My uncle sold furlough and Getty a lot in Bolinas if you can believe that for $3,000 Hate to think what it's worth now and And so more to the point you can't do anything without money and It was first Allen Ginsberg and then Lawrence furlough and Getty who each gave me a hundred dollar check so I could do the first publication on The rise of punk in San Francisco and I want to emphasize that Everything in life is personal and I swear those first two years the scene was so tiny You really knew everyone's name at least if you were me and that what the reason me I say that is because a Lot of people did want to get into search and destroy When it was going and so naturally they have to meet me And so it was like I felt lucky in the one I made huge mistakes as an Amateur anthropologist historian philosopher. I wish I had I'd started a database of every single person with their parents contact Info because this is pre-internet I would have loved to have a database of every person as they joined and the day they joined Punk don't you think that would be amazing to look at now Because because there are it was because there was such a variety of personality and artistic Achievement and and everyone really was encouraging. I called it. I called it the punk rock ages ago I called it the punk rock International naive art movement naive art meaning that you don't have to have academic training or any kind of Experience to start making posters which are they should be funny after all And and to start a band And you could play a bass for I guess a week and then write a song and then start a band And it's pretty amazing That you had that freedom Which was made possible and this is a thing I took for granted until you know ten or twenty years ago that If you want to have a club the first thing you need is a clubhouse no clubhouse no club and We were just so lucky that this no boo. I just happened to show up and be a really Super tolerant Generous host, you know, the Filipinos not not white people ran it Filipinos and And and they maybe they didn't quite comprehend what was going on But but they're but they were very tolerant, you know and very hospitable I think it's in the Filipino culture there were the spaghetti nights, too Which oh there was free spaghetti, but you know what they did it was horrible. I never ate it They over salted it So then you'd be forced to buy beers and and you're talking to someone who doesn't drink alcohol never has and and so Anyway, but but yeah, yeah, it was generous of them to do that. They also had they also had Over salted popcorn. I don't know if anyone remembers that But yeah, you could and also the the bear the bar of entry was was about Drop to the floor and punk. I mean in terms of training Social privilege advantage cultural background all that I mean you could really could There was a really awful band that didn't really take off Only Bruce Connor and I saw them and maybe a handful of other people I don't know if you saw them Penelope, but they're called ointment. Do you remember? Yeah, you don't even remember them that's because they you know for for all our for all our talk about how You know Punk was this and that There was still kind of prejudice against lower-class white trash People who are really white trash and this these people were like from the Ozarks or something I mean you had to have heard I think I have a tape I made of them But you you had to have heard this this vocalist I mean the punks did not like them quote punks in the room I mean I did because I'm I'm an outsider, but Anyway, the the point is about punk is that it's super important to remember that It's it's all about black humor first and black humor is just mockery making fun of anything that represents authority like Trump whatever and That's first I think the mockery of Authority authoritarianism whatever words you want to use no matter where you find it and Secondly, it's do it yourself, but of course it's stupid do it yourself because nobody is gonna do it for you Believe me. I mean that's a given and of course. I like the phrase anyone can do it and I Also think that the third Missing principal punk was mutual aid because believe me no one had any money and it was not cool to work a full-time job For the man or whatever you call them. I mean you you you are proud of working as little as possible It's kind of different from the Silicon Valley startup in which there are you know slaves They've conned these kids and to be being 160 hour a week working slaves You know, but but of course some of them become billionaires. So can you blame them? But But but this is a different startup situation in a punk in which And I especially liked it when I met Mark Pauline in 1978 and he told me about his his plan to do srl And I said god you should do it. I told him I'd seen a tingly show in New York City You know with all these rusty machines and stuff, but the idea of adding explosives and fire I mean that just seemed really punk And he did it and he's still undercredited I think for this huge mammoth skill what he pulled off Historically with no money. I mean Though you can see the videos free on on YouTube now ooh srl.org srl.org has them all but Yeah, go upstairs and see Penelope's Display and curating of whatever is in the the trains, right? Didn't you have a lot to do with that? Thank you So I want to I want to bring John John Lai into the into the conversation a little bit since we brought up srl And wait, but also billboards Because Pauline was was definitely into billboards, and I know that John knows a little bit about billboards, too having having been involved with BLF and and a whole bunch of other stuff which basically involves detouring mashing jamming Improving improving. Thank you improving Images that are meant to commodify life, but you know kind of turning them on there ass a little bit and having fun with it so Yeah, I guess Well, how do I talk about the billboard liberation front was a group where we would go out and take over Usually large-scale massive freeway billboards. I got the idea from a group called the suicide club and Gary Warren and Adrian Burke Who did an event that where we went and improved to billboards up on top of a big building alongside the freeway and We did it with 26 people and we had animal costumes and you know it took a really long time We had to vote on what we're gonna change the cop caption to and like a lot of things in the suicide club We didn't have any clue what we were doing. We're completely retarded about it And so we got caught of course all 26 people and 25 people in a gorilla. Yeah, anyway So I thought well, this is interesting You could go up on a billboard and just make it say whatever you want and being an 18 year old juvenile delinquent Recovering juvenile delinquent. I thought this is pretty cool And so but I thought we should do it with like four or five people like dressed up in black and like not get caught and so David T. Warren who? uses the name Irving Glick and Jason Wecter used the name Simon Wagstaff and I started the billboard liberation front and Where we'd go out and improve these billboards and we would change the messages and over time it developed we developed into what I like to call it Gratis advertising agency helping chat day and Ogilvy Mathers and the other big copywriters to do better work for their clients And we did we altered billboards for 34 years and we were anonymous. We had we wore masks We do talks and museums and shit like that and met wearing masks. Nobody Essentially nobody knew who we were and we did that for 34 years and you know Other artists came along, you know doing this sort of thing. We didn't invent it We didn't invent, you know fiddling with advertising had been done before and the 1970s Was a rife with this sort of thing or all kinds of groups doing doing the sort of thing taking over Advertising surfaces and and using them to say what they wanted to a lot of the punks did this sort of thing The only real difference was that we did press releases with them and made up a whole phony organization And we would say things when we talked to the press like there were 350 members We were all most of us were advertising executives and we were sort of expiating our guilt And they would print this shit in the newspaper Which taught me something really interesting that newspapers will print pretty much anything as long as it sells more, you know beans or tampons or cigarettes or whatever they're trying to sell and So we did this for 34 years anonymously and then other artists came along Shepard Ferry who I've met and who I admire and Ron English She's been doing billboards for a long time Banksy came along and Banksy was anonymous Probably still is and everybody wanted to know who Banksy was we've been doing it for 34 years and nobody gave a shit So we finally retired so Which is okay, but but the idea was that you could you could take a Advertising campaign that some corporations spent an enormous amount of money on and with very very little effort Make it say something completely different and change the concept the idea completely and most importantly Putting that idea in someone's head because you don't need to dress up like ninjas and climb up a rope and swing around on you Like on these billboards at night Risking your life and limb and getting thrown in jail to to change these These massive advertising messages in order to get in a dialogue with them All you have to do is change the message in your head And that was an idea that I kind of really liked and we tried to develop and talk about a little bit You know or a kid with a crayon could go on to a subway and change what you know The little advertising messages said if everybody did that all the time you wouldn't be Spoken to you by these advertising campaigns you'd be in a dialogue with them Which I think is a much better way to deal with this constant input and you know billboard liberation front old old tech Old technology is kind of old hat, you know last last millennium sort of thing But people are doing this sort of thing constantly all the time there are groups that do it in all media negative land a wonderful group started in the In the 80s late early 80s that actually coined the term culture jamming there a music Cut-up group that very data oriented Surrealist and they're in there in the work that they put out big influence on all kinds of future mash-up groups In visual art imagery and all stuff It was a great debt I think to the dot s the only art movement of the 20th century that I give a shit about because it was anti art You couldn't really commodify it. It was difficult if not impossible to commodify I mean, I know they sold the urinal finally, but you know I mean you got to keep ahead of them a little bit and the group that I fell into when I was a juvenile delinquent the suicide club Which opened up a whole world to me being you know headed to prison basically at that time I realized you could do this sort of thing you could fuck with things and you could really Change your environment and and fuck shit up like the punks would like to say but if you had a song in your heart and you were doing it with a with with a real sense of Joy at making something wonderful in this shitty stupid world that we live in where we have this orange uberoy clown as president now You know, it's like what do you do? I mean you got to get fucking mad and angry But but if you're not having fun and if you're not doing something that's fun and funny You might as well just quit or kill yourself. I mean frankly You got to laugh at this shit or else you just pull your teeth out with a pair of channel ox And so that was what the suicide club represented to me. It was a group where we didn't know what we're doing We'd somebody to have an idea we go Hey, let's get dressed up and you know like as animals and go try to and keystone cops and go try to deposit fish at a bank of America, you know and see what happens Let's take over the let's take over the elevators and Union Square parking lot for level below ground parking lot And put a different scene in each one you know including a gorilla with four people bound and gagged hostage on the floor with it with a gun another scene was a Spaghetti dinner with a young couple sitting at the table eating a spaghetti dinner with a violinist with a top heel top hat And tail is playing music so when these elevator doors would open up people would see this incredible scene of course would go to the next of the three elevators in which there would be another scene and culminating in David T. Warren one of the founders of the suicide club doing his fire eating act Out out of the door as his lovely assistant held the door open So I remember I was in the shower scene in this elevator to a little old ladies and Down shopping in Union Square didn't really look in the elevator before they stepped in and they walked in this elevator Were there three naked people with towels around their ways waiting in line to get into the shower Which is half of the elevator. I was behind the curtain you know with a little bathing cap on and tape recorder cassette tape which is a little box machine that you put this little plastic thing and it made music and And it had I was playing running water and and I looked over the curtain I said oh ladies you're gonna have to take your clothes off and get in line like everybody else So we kind of changed their day their reality. They they got something out of that. I don't know what But that was the idea is that yeah, and this is we were we weren't the actors We were stupid and we're ridiculous our street theater was pathetic when we started doing it It was really bad, but we were doing it to challenge our fears and to do that kind of thing The data influence on the suicide club was was real and I knew nothing I had no history didn't come from a musical or an artistic background at all I was a juvenile delinquent, but I happened to fall into this group. Thank God and Gary Warren who's a primary source the primary avatar for this group was highly influenced by the Dada's and the fact that they He hated art. He hated commodified art and how how you could buy and sell fucking anything So USA club came out of a group called community which is part of the free university movement He believed some shit. You would just be free Not everything should be commodified not everything and so that's what we did You know our events were free We did them for ourselves and if somebody else liked them that was great and if they didn't tough shit so it was correlated to the punk punk scene in that in that sense, I think although it was much smaller thing and I don't know we weren't musical, but I don't know any other questions You know, I'm immediately reminded of number one how the both the Berlin and the Paris Dada Really were very media savvy and knew how to mess with the media and then the next thing is like I think it was either it was either Eve Klein or or Tangle a who used to steal a construction equipment Get them started appropriate appropriate appropriate liberate. Thank you liberate a construction equipment and run through the Parisian streets like digging the streets up, so I think these we see these These again these threads that kind of like we're helping helping. Thank you even better Why don't we open it up for? comments questions I Have a comment. Oh, please. I think a thread that's read run through almost everyone's comments was not needing to go to school and I think the Dada's nothing against school. I went to school But you survived it Cal Sort of and the Dada's ran with this started this I think was not needing talent and not you know needing schooled talent, but having an idea and a passion and Not giving a damn and going for it and that's empowering and it is a workaround of our society that tries to capitalize everything and What a gift these people a hundred years ago gave us that anyone can do Stuff and leave the world a little weirder. Oh, you know, I was shocked I was shocked to learn from from your festival Peter that the founder of Dada the person who invented the word was only 20 years old and also that the first I guess official startup date of Dada was William Burroughs birthday February 5th 1916 and so I just immediately Saw a connection that I'd never seen before. Thanks to your festival. Yes. Well, we're working on that right now I'm working with a bunch of young artists like in their 20s and 30s right now and a Dada related thing And that most of them had never heard of Dada before and they bought they're all about, you know Like 300 400 pages and at least one book about it They're they're so excited about it and they were already doing super cool stuff I mean amazing stuff can't talk about it really but but but but you know Introducing them, you know, thank you by the way Peter for doing all this. Thank you very much. It's amazing amazing festival No shit And they are digging it so hard like 40 of them 30 40 of them working with and most of them like I said They'd heard of it and they knew a little bit about it, but they didn't really know much and now they are just Obsessed with finding out more about that movement I'm working with some hackers and I I feel like if I was younger I would have I'd be a hacker and I feel like they're tapping into some other level stuff and It's pretty exciting. It's a skill set. I don't have any I don't have that skill. So it's fun to collaborate with them Yeah, I think Alfred Jerry It wasn't just his work that was an example I mean his life was an example and I think that that that Pataphysics, I mean there wouldn't be a data without pataphysics I mean it would be a different thing and I think that it really kind of set the course and got a lot of people very inspired and so essential Do you know the name of the group Julie? I'm not I don't know I'm not familiar with that particular prank But there have been several groups in in New York that are doing really interesting stuff right now There's a group called wanderlust projects, which is kind of at the end of their iteration They're their first iteration and kind of moving on to doing some other things, but they're doing things like taking over public spaces and using them for these ongoing events Abandoned spaces much like we did in the suicide club and much like people in the second, you know Egyptian dynasty snuck in a building in the first from the first Egyptian dynasty But you know, it's not like we invented it But they're groups doing that right now in very smart events really different in certain ways and what what we did in the 70s and 80s and There's that group and they're the well I mean, you know the best-known group that's doing street prank stuff's been around for a long time Which is improv everywhere Charlie Todd's group, which does the flash mob, you know the note pants subway ride and Yeah, oh improv every yeah improv everywhere. Yeah, you're talking about improv everywhere. Yeah They've been out for a while and they do some really funny funny pranks using large numbers of people connected through the internet and through you know texting and setting up these theatrical scenarios like What is a Grand Central Station having like 500 people come in and all stop moving the exact same second and just stand there Like statues for that was one of that one of my favorites that they did but that kind of thing using the see Using the current modern technologies and and concepts that you know We used to use to communicate, you know with bongo drums and smoke clouds and things like that and they have the internet now So and they're using it to great effect to to do pranking and to connect with other people You know in the real world in the meat spaces they say Oxford Winston Usually, you know for For the the punk rock era Which the reason I was so drawn to it is it reminded me very much of my exposure up to then of the data era and Thought finally, you know, this is finally coming back. This is like refried data and You didn't have to paint like Rembrandt I mean I can draw and stuff, but I prefer to cut up other people's drawings and it was more like instant, you know Surrealism I can't think of any parallel there is with music except maybe You know freeform jazz or you know non structured music So the good thing about the The art side of the punk scene which in San Francisco is more of an art movement than it was music I think say as opposed to New York City or Los Angeles where it was more Performances and and and less, you know graphic work Was that you didn't have to have an art degree to to do things like like John was saying just changing a couple of letters and an ad Completely sabotage the meaning of it. I think you know how Satisfying that was for the People who didn't have the ten million dollars to launch an ad campaign for, you know coca-cola or whatever it was to have that altered just a little bit and Ruin their hard work By now it could be it's that's 30 35 years ago. I'm talking about so maybe after You know, it's like I say if you've lived in a place long enough Say after 30 or 35 years, then you can be an unofficial native so maybe The new version of the data movement has been growing for nearly half a century as at least since after the war and and Also, we have even much more Graphic imagery available to sabotage. I mean, that's why people could do it in the 19 teens was the 1900s is suddenly there was a vast Available market for people with, you know, books of pictures adverts newspaper adverts People didn't ever have that before before the 1880s or 1890s mass You know, they had newspapers, but they didn't have adverts of color. Yeah, and then color changed everything and and and suddenly you had Trademarks of you know Betty Crocker and the RCA dog and you know all these little things that you could Put together, you know, probably illegally, but that was also part of the thrill of to do it covertly and And maybe make a new meaning every time someone sees the RCA dog now They're gonna have a company, you know, they're gonna the dog is holding a hand grenade or something And and that once the idea is in their head. It can't be taken away. You know, it's You're planting a Seed that will grow into a great oak tree I think also that aesthetics determine Consumption, I mean, that's one of my three-word aphorisms and I think when you think about it I think certainly the punk rock cultural revolution that I'd like to think I live through had a huge Aesthetic, you know upheaval I I don't want to use that word disruption That's a Silicon Valley word now. It also was it was too ugly to be co-opted by the mainstream We kept thinking it was ugly wait wait a long enough Then everything there wasn't a proton anti aesthetic approach that was considered ugly by the mainstream And that was purposefully done. I think yeah, because the flower power stuff of you know The 1960s and 70s they got turned into Kleenex boxes and Orange juice bottles and it was too pretty too agreeable too nice and nobody wanted some skanky Punk rock. I don't know about that because I mean a whole corporation called hot topic with a zillion storage and malls started up But that took a couple decade in the city too much. That was a lot later though That was a lot later. Oh, it was later, but not that much later Only 20 years wait a generation and everything can be remarketed. Yeah Aesthetically, I'd also like to chime in and say, you know, I think the element of surprise Certainly in data and in many other movements was very very important because this is how you shock people sometimes and this is also how you You know Once people become accustomed to like, you know when we were designing the posters and the postcards for this whole festival I didn't want to recreate that kind of cliched Kind of letterpress Dada type thing I figured can we do something that will still capture people but you know in a different way Which I think we we succeeded at but I think the element of surprise is has always been something whether it's Dada or Whatever all the way through to now that if you can produce something that kind of somehow Shocks somebody, you know, they have a different response. So I mean one more question It's kind of the bastard child. Well, we're gonna find out about technology. I think because Because just the just the meat just again the signature. I think art Invention communication media, whatever you call it of Dada was the collage and that's also the signature. It's still the signature I think you know graphic art Contribution that punk I put the word in quote marks, you know as known by I mean I'm just I'm just looking at all the stuff that's out there and the zines and in the punk posters and the album covers and all that I mean you can't you can't afford to hire Winston. Well, you can actually Unfortunately Shouldn't be green day green day got him. They they paid some money Didn't you make more for that one piece for green day than all the other stuff put together or something? It then had to pay 30% taxes, which of course the Donald Trump wasn't paying the taxes Yeah, you need his tax attorney to go to the question of the Dada And then the punk scene in the next iteration whatever it might be that's coming. There's a common denominator I mean, there are many things that you know character these of these groups characterize these movements character one thing in common was extreme fucking anger at Bullshit that's going on in the larger world the military and the government and the next iteration that I can feel Coming right now is gonna be that and it will have that in common with it And you can't just I mean it's like a lot of protest stuff if you're if you're not having fun if you're not having a lot of fun Fucking and just running around and running amuck and really trying to say something. Why do it? I mean if you're so fucking serious that you have to you know be as ugly as what you're attacking That's not the point. I mean the point is to make fun of them and have fun while you're doing it And so the Dada's did that I mean they were facing the world of mechanized war for this brand new fucking thing Where are these horrifying monsters corporations that come up with ways to mow down people by the tens of thousands? We have our drone warfare stuff. We have it's just continued on I mean it's just as ugly now and this stuff needs to break out and people need to respond to that and art You know, that's why Dada was to me the only relevant really relevant art movement of the century and all the ones that were Any relevance that came after it came were influenced by it, you know And the unifying factor was you know a non commercial bent and and not playing the game Not not choosing to just make objects for sale You know and responding to this horrible world, you know Then there's so many parts of it that we should try to make better through art whatever I also think it's an attack on logic because logic is so Overvalued, you know in in our mass media at least But you know it doesn't really make nothing really makes sense in a weird way Another key ingredient is poverty. I think and when you're poor and angry. Oh, yeah How do you have a voice in the society and that punk? Gave that to to the youth and Dada did the same thing I mean, this was a group of people in Europe that were literally hunted down and chased off of their continent and A lot of them survived the war. They saw mustard gas What was it the poles charged the Germans on horseback and the Germans mowed them down with machine guns And there was this Napoleonic noble way to for some warring factions to go into war with your chin up and charge forward and and That was that caused a lot of PTSD My my grandfather fought in the World War one came back with PTSD and that's how I explained my art to my mother She was so upset with what I was doing and I talked about how Politics can radicalize you and change you and then you want to have a voice and When I connected that to her father, she kind of for ten minutes got what I was doing I Mean as far as the youth, you know As everyone's been saying the past two days. Wow, I can't wait to see the art that comes out of this and and We might all be in the same Detention camp, so I hope we you know bring your glue six well as always the optimist Winston Well as Vail said, you know, there was there's communities and you back each other up and you get a posse and you support each other And that's what we need to do now very much like where the night the Reagan was elected the first time in 1980 and a friend of mine came over to my studio and I was sitting there just looking at the wall and he didn't say anything I didn't say anything. We just looked at the wall for each other. He says well, I guess All we can do now is that it's up to us the half old farts to get out there and raise hell and You know fight back even though it was eight years late No, 12 years later before Reagan and Bush were out of the White House, but it was mortified when Reagan got elected the first time I thought it was the end of the world. I a clown actor got out We've improved so much We've come so far and So gang I have a seance to host in about 20 minutes, so I gotta go, but please continue I think we gotta we gotta end it. We're a little out of time, but thank you. Thank you to the panel Thank you to Penelope for helping host this and The San Francisco Public Library and to all of you there are Three more days left to Dada World Fair