RESPECT TO THIS LAND AND THOSE PEOPLE WHO CAME FROM THIS LAND. THIS LAND OWNS US. LOVE THIS LAND. LETS SHARE THIS LAND TOGETHER.
UR BAN SURVIVAL
U R B A N TtheAadventure you... # N G E Nfinds TS //
TS NGENyou URBAN TA //the adventure finds
.......................
the urban personality
La nuit les murs de la ville parlent des gens qui ne sont psad’ici qui sontd’ailleurs d’une autrenuit
Night falls the walls of the city speak of people who are not from here who are from elsewhere from another night
Art punx
Our eyes glance through infinity and become fixated on a trajectory of brain thoughts, colours, complex puzzles, myths, and an exact location buried beneath the city.
\\ A PRO-active city project supporting the underground network of alternative communication \\ This is a natural non-perishable product
stenciled, scrubbed, painted, sprayed, postered, stenciled, photo d, photocopied, cut up, collaged, photocopied, reproduced, photocopied, reproduced, postered, scrubbed, stenciled, painted, sprayed, demolished.
I walk the narrow streets my heart thumping, an omnipotent streetlight casting shadows across the piss-soaked alleyway of non-existent doorways and nauseating corners, where you know
you ll find a fit or two, or three. Is this the city I know? The city of fold-up cafes of ultrastylish coffee
drinkers and cobbled uneven edges where my bike refuses to go. This is a time of war, they say. The words chase me round narrow bends, catapult me into a state of uneasy queasiness. I remember months ago stealing headlines from a newsstand. They declared in bold black font the war on terror and the pursuit of freedom . Buzzwords for the wealthy and their hidden agendas. The headlines are silent now or they proclaim Serial Elvis Madness whatever the fuck that means, but hey, it keeps the masses happy. I return home pissed. The city is still. Strange for a city. As I roll a cigarette I look across at my neighbours, twenty floors of life in an architectural monstrosity, and watch the synchronising blue of TV screens, flashing Morse code into the black of night.
At least there’s no fucking around any more with the illusion of liberal democracy.
THIS IS A NOTICE TELLING THE AUTHORITIES TO FUCK OFF . SHOW RESPECT AND STOP C R U S H I N G O U R C R E AT I V I T Y AND HISTORY. \\ In the society of sadness, art is separated from life, what’s more, art is increasingly more separated from art itself, because it is possessed, made rotten, by mercantile values. \\
The lines have been clearly drawn and we must now accelerate our levels of organisation accordingly.
Art is creativity and creativity is life. ordinary skills, learned traditions. shapes form, movement transforms. I see art. It challenges me. a pzzle\\ a map. time rotates... My city art galleries inspire me. Push me. Each curve, sharp, draws me closer. cold. cool. An image forms in my head. my mind. Strong. An image which is structurally sound: inversed and upside-down. And play... Art speaks for itself. No one else. It exists. Uneasy, and fought over. Interpretations draw from childhood experiences and ancestral wisdom. Arguments formed over past histories. Again art challenges. It threatens us. Drowning out all screams of terror. Crushing all hopes of rescue. You are forever connected to art - attracted & repelled. One cannot expect to grasp this concept immediately. It is a learned concept. It requires training. Practice. Although not ’work’*. A new work. And leisure is integral. For this allows the mind to play. Become relaxed, and open to other senses, compositions, angles,....and the concept of dimension. It requires different levels of social interaction. Different forms of friendship. New meanings to class, patriotism and subculture. The ordinary will unveil all its depth and beautifulness. And I. Well I will admire. The slow progression in myself. As my training develops. [*traditional]
Proudly Austral i ‘Young and Nai an ve’
The city calls for plagiarism. many words are stolen in this publication. many ideas have existed before. All uses of the word new in this publication are false. do not believe them. So, respect and thankyou to all the people we have stolen words and ideas from, thankyou for your inspiration.
in motion My conscious slips. Time stalls as i do backflips. The traffic noise bothers me. didn t think it would. the blood of society runs faster. More efficient. More purposely. The traffic stops. The traffic goes. Stragglers and deviants break the rules.. But still the blood flows. I have only just realised that maybe my interest in science is an aesthetic one. I love aerial photography. I am fascinated by highly magnified microscopic images. i love texture, light, fractured detail... Sitting on a couch, up the back, at a party the other night my attention was drawn to the visuals. The video mixers were playing some distorted video shots of traffic, from above and sped up. The traffic moved through the city. Stopping. Starting. Moving purposely, constant. Mass numbers of cars passing through the city with ease. Through the intricate, complex road networks. Channelling to the major urban, suburban, centres. The footage looked like highly magnified images of red blood cells passing trough the veins of an animal. I came to ponder the reality of modern evolution. Is the technology we see around us, and our urban lives, the next stage of human evolution? We become more aggressive, less receptive, to increase the the efficiency of our new ecosystem - The City. We drive sometimes without realising we are driving. We construct large arteries, huge concrete freeways, linking urban centres. The blood of the freeway moves without realising where it is passing through. Separated from the land, the flesh. Yet bringing life supplies to the major organs. People fight to get more done ... As the saying goes war is good for the economy . On the streets we walk hard, to help the city grow. ................................................................................ Driving, watching, i get the urge to pull over and write. I like the sight of a rotting highway. You know when you ve driven the same highway for a few years, and you notice that you re on the new highway which has just bypassed your old favourite little town. You ve missed that roadhouse and the crazy country general store with everything you need for survival in it with no prices. Well i like seeing the old highway and seeing the decay. It gives me hope. The grass is creeping in from both edges. The cracks increase, spreading their fractal organic patterns. The tar has faded to the colour of dirt. The bridge has rotten, rusting at every bolt. It reminds me of this story i read when i was a kid. In the story these kids are walking to the city, from the bush, in a post war/ post-modern Australia. All the roads and houses are deteriorating, and they keep bumping into all these survivors. When they get to the city it has rotted and is crumbling back to earth. They live near the old collapsing zoo in the city, with the now wild animals on the roam. They join with others trying to live in the world. I loved these images of a decaying modern materialistic world. Maybe i was more into the adventure and survival. maybe this is why so many people crave these instincts. They, we, miss adventure, by ourselves or with others, and the feeling of having some responsibility over our very survival... cars shake the car i sit in as they speed past me parked too close to the side of the highway. i feel i must move on and take on those familiar hills which await me, listen to some good tunes, and ponder some more.
You have much faith in your machines.
night. Afternoon turns to , ts cu late night hair ide light. ts ou ht ig under a br d plants. planting scavenge th found goods. returning home wi friendships. of s shared storie punk bands alone. and talk of seeing the city \/ perception of
noticeboards, buskers, old men posses, dumped cars ...
Come on an adventure. This is a chance to share our secret spots, traverse the empty streets of night, have picnics beside derelict storm waterdrains while water trickles down a hidden city stream. Dumpster feasts, organic delights, home baking and cups of tea. We can visit city lanes, admire beautiful, treasured, street art. Take paint to the walls, collaborate, make mist a k e s t o g e t h e r, c o m m u n i c a t e . Explore building sites, raid skips, steal plants. Lets trade knowledge of city surveillance, security and quiet spots/ locations... escape the cold, escape the heat. experience mad pop culture, witness human endeavour. Connect, experience, explore. Tell stories of past adventures. Ride bikes together. Go on road trips to the most fucked up, polluted industrial parts of town, or down the posh highways where people pay daily through their credit cards, or through the yuppie streets of nightclub mayhem. Take trams, and buses, and trains, and ferries. Climb rooftops in search for a better view. Look for urban interventions, interactions; altered street signs or billboards, road blocks, murals, kids cubby houses, posters, street public
Discover remnant native habitat, survivors of development. Chase dogs in parks. Sit around an open fire. plant trees, native grasses, ground covers and vegetables. revegetate roundabouts, empty lots, footpaths, medium strips and in crappy parks.
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Explore shops, finding collectable remnants of the past. Take supplies. Learn first aid and survival skills. Lets record our adventures, Lets leave our mark. Lets write our stories down. Who is us , you ask... us is who ever reads this and relates. whoever reads this and takes action. Whoever takes the adventure when it finds them. You, you are us. Get in contact, form your own tour company, spread the word, travel with friends, go on solo missions, take a buddy and scavenge through hard rubbish/ throwout day, reclaim your suburb, leave your mark. Contact the CIVIL TOUR COMPANY through this publication or email:
[email protected] to make plans/rendevous time and location. Start making your maps and collecting your ideas.
...... g? have that costs nothin >>> How much fun do you >>> you to think se questions may cause >>> The answers to the eriments for exp may then plan other of other questions. You ers which oth and to these questions yourself. The answers the d tan ers und lf help you to you may plan for yourse environment we live in.
LEARNING THROUGH MISTAKES IS LEARNING HOW TO LEARN. LEARNING THOUGH MISTAKES IS LEARNING A NEW WAY OF LEARNING. AUTHORITY SPEAKS OUT AGAINST THIS. SO LET AUTHORITY LEAVE YOU. LET ALL FORMS OF SELF BEING, BOTH IMPOSED ON YOU BY YOURSELF OR OTHERS, WHICH PREVENTS YOU FROM BEING YOURSELF LEAVE. RELEASE THE TIES WHICH HOLD YOU BACK. LET IT GO. YOUR MISTAKES WILL BE FORGOTTEN THROUGH YOUR LEARNING.
Insects journey through the city. They don’t carry anything, hardly ever encounter one another [or similar beings] and they meander about - eating, sleeping, hiding. Not lonely - Loners, little survivors. \\Jess
keep an eye to th e street for a letter addressed to YOU.
Fuck 24/7 Fuck 7/11 Sleep patterns distorted. Confusion engulfs power. Pills to help you sleep. Pills to help you work. Colonising the night.
st albans kids
always make the aud ience suffer as much as possible.
dronal mass
tree busts through concrete
nodal futures
The line between art and life should be kept as fluid and indistinct as possible.
WE ARE ARTISTS BECAUSE WE MAKE ART AND WHAT WE MAKE IS ART BECAUSE WE ARE ARTISTS.
What strikes me is the fact that in our society, art has become something which is only related to objects and not to individuals, or to life.
>> >> >>
Traven B.
>> Sadly, these days B. Traven and his many novels have been assigned to relative obscurity in the world of literature and politics. Traven was but one of the many aliases used by this mysterious author, adventurer and revolutionary. Many historians have tried to uncover the secret behind Traven’s identity, linking him from the illegitimate son of Kaiser Wilhelm II to a theology student from Cincinnati. Whatever the case, Traven always shied away from the spectacular role as author as superstar, preferring to let his novels be judged by the ideas contained within. >> Traven’s wish for privacy and anonymity can be witnessed by the number of different assumed names he went under to disguise his identity. Over the years he went under many different guises such as Ret Marut, Traven Torsvan and Hal Croves. Our interest in Traven begins with his earliest proven incarnation as Ret Marut. Marut was an aspiring German actor who later became involved in anarchist politics and also edited an anarchist/pacifist magazine "Der Ziegelbrenner", "The Brick burner." >> Marut wasn’t just an armchair revolutionary though. He actively participated in the insurgent Bavarian Republic of Councils in 1919 as chief censor of the bourgeois press, keeping the latter day Andrew Bolt’s in their place. Marut was active in the Bavarian capital, Munich, and narrowly escaped summary execution when the revolutionary fervour was crushed by nascent fascist Friekorps and ‘loyal’ troops sent in by the German equivalent of the Labor party, the Social Democrats. Understandably, Marut went underground after the White reaction destroyed the Council Movement in May 1919. Up until September there were still executions of revolutionaries taking place to avenge the middle classes who had had power temporarily wrenched away from them by the proletarian class. Marut later resurfaced in Chiapas, Mexico in the early 1920’s under the name Traven which he wrote his first, and in my humble opinion, greatest novel, "The Death Ship." >> The Death Ship is the story of a horrendous chain of events that befall an American sailor appropriately named Gerard Gales. Gales loses his identity, humanity and right to existence when his ship sails without him with his sailor’s card and passport still on board in his jacket pocket. Stranded on foreign shores, our sailor is systematically persecuted by the authorities of various European countries he has no desire to even be in. Gales is frequently jailed, deported and even sentenced to death simply for the crime of being a worker without papers. Needless to say he is treated with respect only by fellow workers who share what little they have with him. >> Bereft of a sailor’s card, Gales cannot secure a job on a ship to go home to New Orleans. To
Adventures: RIDL [SYD]
further complicate matters, the American consulate won’t supply him with the necessary papers because he has no proof of his identity. Gales travails with bureaucracy assume truly Kafkaesque proportions in his attempts to prove his American citizenship; while wealthy fellow travellers obtain the necessary documents within minutes provided by obsequious officials who make ordinary folk wait around like cattle. >> Desperate to escape his precarious situation, Gales reluctantly accepts a job on the Yorikke , a rusting hulk rumoured to have been built in the times of the ancients. Gales fellow crewmates are all in the same unfortunate position, unable to secure passage on a decent ship with Union conditions. The Yorikke is truly a death ship. The work regime is torturous and simply unsustainable with sailors jumping overboard or murdered by the captain, unable to keep pace with the hellish amount of work. Not much can be said for the health and safety conditions either with sailors frequently burning themselves in the antiquated steam room, and even the ships rats won’t touch the swill doled out to the hapless and perennially hungry sailors. >> Some critics have dismissed The Death Ship and Traven’s body of work as being hopelessly dated and idealistic because Traven makes explicit attacks on the dehumanising aspects of capitalism and unfettered greed. Indeed, the last few decades have seen popular literature retreat either into general misanthropy or even worse, the glossolalia of post modernism. These days novels that articulate the premise that any positive change from below is possible are as rare as hen’s teeth. Indeed we are expected to consume defeatist literature which not only depicts the working class as boorish, uncultured thugs, schooled in misogyny and mired in xenophobia and self-hatred, and yet we are given no plausible reasons for such outlandish stereotypes. >> Traven was cut from much different cloth compared to the current crop of defeatists and out right reactionaries masquerading as serious authors so popular today. While Gales and his fellow sailors often faced insurmountable odds put in their way by the real axis of evil, the bosses, cops and the state, they always fight back using solidarity and mutual aid as the only weapons they have. While The Death Ship is a truly terrifying book to read, it is also full of black humour, the inventiveness of which is truly astonishing. There are also numerous references to the Industrial Workers of the World and the Russian Revolution which remind the reader of a time not so long ago when the ruling class was in collective retreat and world wide revolution seemed just around the corner. >> In the current political climate, The Death Ship serves to remind the reader of the plight of seafarers, particularly those from Majority
world (Third world) countries who sail on modern day death ships which are registered under flags of convenience so the owners can circumvent environmental, health and safety, and pay conditions hard fought for by previous generations of sailors. At the moment in Australia, ships that operate in Australian waters are being reflagged, the crews sacked and then replaced by Ukrainian sailors on only $20,000 a year. Needless to say, the Ukrainian crews will be forced to work much harder for much less than their now unemployed Australian class brothers and sisters as transnational capital seeks to push wages and conditions down in the global race to the bottom. Hopefully sailors, who have traditionally been the most revolutionary sector of the working class, will not fall for the fratricidal myth that their jobs are being stolen by cheaper Third world labour. This blame the victim mentality only serves to disguise the role that governments in conjunction with shipping companies have played in decimating the working conditions of sailors. >> Likewise, comparisons can be drawn between The Death Ship and the current plight of workers wishing free movement across borders worldwide. Not much has changed since Gales was locked up for being an illegal alien in the 1920’s to Australia in 2002 where workers are put in camps in the desert simply for the crime of arriving without the necessary documentation. In fact authorities would prefer that undocumented workers died in their quest to reach the workers paradises of America, Australia and Europe. Who mourns the 2000 Latin Americans who have died in the last 10 years trying to cross the militarised border between Mexico and the U.S.A, or the 351 Afghans and Iraqis who drowned trying to reach Australia in an area under constant military surveillance? Not to forget the Moroccans washed up on Spanish beaches, Chinese suffocated in shipping containers en route to Britain or Gypsies murdered by racists everywhere? >> Every time a Union leader blames ‘foreigners’ for taking jobs this serves as justification for the unabated pogrom committed against workers without papers everywhere. Adopting the rhetoric of the masters only makes workers more despicable slaves when they swallow wholesale the bile spewed forth by their rulers. To be a patriot is to be an assassin especially when a fellow worker is at the other end of sights. Now more than ever, workers of the world have to realise that national boundaries are no more than lines a cartographer has drawn on a map. Capital knows no boundaries, so why should we continue to self-administer the poisons of nationalism and racism which divide us rather than unite us. "Workers of the world, you have no country!" From Joe Zigman
for starters checkout:
#23 How To: Get Ahead in Advertising [crisis edition] a. Simplify the message. During a national or international \\situation\\, people are not prepared to \\pump for meaning\\ from a complicated ad. b. Practice advertainment. When the day’s news is troubling, advertising can act as \\comfort food\\, warming the heart and promising hope. c. Make them laugh. Gentle jokes and \\life’s pretty funny-sometimes\\ humour are \\hot\\ in difficult times. Irony and disparagement are \\not\\. d. Look for the silver lining. Arms dealers, security agencies, government officers, and corporations suddenly caught in \\hotspots\\ will need marketing more than ever. Have a frank discussion with your colleagues about such issues as \\propaganda\\ and \\profiteering\\. e. Use the flag, but don’t abuse it. Brands can be patriots. patriots can be \\branded\\. But don’t try to make your product a hero.
Soldiers leave the armed forces [Chad McCail]
indymedia.org spacestation.org thepaper.org.au octapod.org antimedia.net myspinach.org cat.org.au scan.cat.org.au active.org.au skatv.org.au schnews.org.uk sarai.net disinfo.com guerillanews.com Use the independent media. Participate. Contribute. Support. Get involved. spiralobjective.com citystate.org getsmart.org.au roguestates.com criticalmass.org.au prwatch.org dolearmy.org.au anarchy.org.au boatpeople.org videoactivism.org bignoisefilms.com freespeech.org iratiwanti.org foe.org.au antimedia.net/data urbancyclist.org skatv.org.au undercurrents.org anti-bases.org wwoof.com.au xchange.anarki.net banksy.co.uk infoshop.org reclaimthestreets.org cleansurface.org bloodyfist.com graffiti.org billboardliberation.com subvertise.org renewal.org.au/artcrimes crimethinc.com punkplanet.com bigissue.org.au adbusters.org appliedautonomy.com systemcorrupt.com spaceinvader.com 3CR.org.au [community radio melbourne] 855AM PBS [melbourne] 106.7 fm RRR [melbourne] 102.7fm SYN fm [melbourne] 90.7 fm zzz [brisbane] 102.1 fm 2SER [sydney] 107.3 fm Sticky [underground at flinder st station] Polyester books [fitzroy] wunderkeimer [carlton] Barricade books [brunswick] internationalist bookshop [trades hall carlton] irene/spacestation [brunswick] Grande midnight star [sydney] Octapod [newcastle] spareparts [newcastle]
The pranskster undermines confidence and security in everyday belief systems, sabotages the official reality by moving objects, letters, words, using chemicals, solvents, and adhesive s to manipulate the media in such a way as to bring in to sharp relief the true the lines, the clenched fists of closed agenda hidden between captioned commentary, provided by the being impaired. - Anonymous
ly one ter knows on ac ar ch e iv ct e activity: \\The destru room; only on ke d ma d, or hw watc fresh air an His need for . \ ay .\ aw ed ng tr ri ha clea any stronger than is e ac e sp iv open struct amin, “The De - Walter Benj 1931 Character”,
There is No Limits TO OUR LAWLESSNESS! We are OUTLAWS. THE City is our FRONTIER!
Introducing: PANTHERS. [Part one] ** A Question Posed By THE COMMITTEE - ARE YOU DOWN? We hate the past and have disdain for the “Future”- our passion is now. ARE YOU DOWN? We aren’t a band, we are VANDALISTS/ OUTLAWS/ UNDESIRABLES. ARE YOU DOWN? We stand for destruction of art in all forms. ARE YOU DOWN? We are WRECKLESS! FUCK THE LAW! ARE YOU DOWN? We are HYPOCRITES/ PLAGIARISTS/ LIARS We are YOUTH! ARE YOU DOWN? Our Enemies: ART/ SQUARES/ PIGS - You. WE ARE PANTHERS! ARE YOU DOWN?
Piggy-Boy In came a pig. 1 stick, 2 stick, 3 sticks, matchstick. Built a house. A house outta matchsticks. Poor little piggy-boy didn t see wolf comin. Didn t know wolf had been watchin. From round the corner wolf came chargin, wolf-whistlin and chargin in his hotted—up Trana. Come out little piggy-boy, piggy, piggy, piggy. I Know you re in there. Tried to smash piggy s house in. Smash his face in. He smashed his face in. Knocked him out cold.
break the corpor ate
Commentary Written in free-verse. The lines are punctuated at the end of sentences. They are short and punchy however they are placed together like a short story which produces the affect of fast-paced action. The poem is in one stanza It begins with a play on the fairytale The Three Little Pigs but as it progresses shifts to an urban location. The tone is dark. The details are visual and sonic. They reproduce the fairytales own details, then are twisted slightly to fit the change in location and ending. Words throughout are colloquial such as Trana.
I wonder how many centuries of feeling are held in the grooves of the foot? There once was a man who hadn t worn shoes for seven years. He trekked over mountains, and treaded the rocky desert powder with the familiarity of an old friend, the paths of walking etched in his hardened skin. I too must circumnavigate the earth. I ll unbuckle my shoes and walk barefoot down the narrow city laneways past the stencils of political tricksters, navigating the street-like labyrinths where the concrete bumps and buckles from the escaped roots of trees. The hard cool bluestone under my soles the weeping love grass tickling my toes. Talus: the uppermost foot bone forming the ankle joint with the tibia and fibula. Calcaneus: the largest foot bone, forming the heel. Formally known as the calcaneum or os calcis. Navicular, sesamoid and cuboid bones: the first a little ship navigating the footpaths of the world, the second a small seed stuck between toes, the third a cube: origin unknown. Phalanges: the bones of the toes, two for the great toe and three for the others. They help connect the foot to the ground and the leg to the foot. I must tread the earth carefully. Walk barefoot.
Foot Anatomy quoted from McMinn, RMH. Hutchings, RT. Logan, BM, A Colour Atlas of Foot and Anke Anatomy . London: Wolfe Medical, 1982.
Once there was a man who wouldn t speak. His mouth had been slammed shut on a cold winter s night in the great storms of 97. His mouth slammed shut. Never to speak again. In fact he d never even personally attempted to reopen it, not even to feel the hum of a lullaby tickle his lips or to whisper a Chinese whisper. Never. There had been many failed attempts at re-opening , by industrious old friends and wellmeaning neighbours but all to no avail. The man was happy in a self-punishing kinda way. He d always possessed a love-hate relationship with words anyway. They could be cowardly and they could be plotting. Sometimes they would sit on the tip of his tongue and not come out even with vast amounts of coaxing. Other times they d jump out from dark corners and frighten people with their audacity. No he was better off without them. Locked up in the attic once and for all.
\\ Writings\\ Lou Smith
The only problem with capturing words and torturing them into complacency is that words are very powerful and after a while the man realised that words, big and small, well-meaning and cruel, were breeding viciously. They floated around his head like the ghosts of the undead; haunting, neglected. The man could simply be paying his phone bill at the post office when the tears would flow from his eyes, tender and soft, uncontrollable. But his bottom lip didn t so much as quiver let alone tremble. He took to writing. If he could transpose these wanderings onto the page maybe, just maybe, the words in his head would disappear once and for all. And so began the tales of the man. Page upon page of tenderness, and sorrow beyond comprehension. He wrote at daybreak and continued till way after nightfall. But no matter how much he wrote the words kept on coming. He wrote so much that the calluses on his hands were harder than rock and his arm cramped in what little restless sleep he managed. As the years went by the man realised that he lived to write. He had found his passion, or rather, his passion had found him. He wanted to show what he d written to the world, but would that just be pampering to the whim of the words? The words were his soul, his intellect, his creativity, his mixed emotions. He could control them, place them where he liked on the page, taunt them and play with them. He smiled. There was no need for the man to speak. He had found his voice. It was there on the page staring back at him.
It swerved unexpectantly with the gentle flutter of brown and white wings and as the sun streamed warm curtains the butterfly touched my skin, whispering to me a thought of death. A strange thought a somewhat disturbing thought. I walked on unperturbed by the thought or at least I placed it with the old love-letters and childhood memories at the back of my mind. With an ease in my step and the sun warm on my back, I opened the door. He s dead, the boy is dead they said. Strange words no, hello, how are you? just, he s dead . Was he in love? I inquired. His love had expired and he d become tired of the confusion and loss of resilience. I know I will mirror his anguish periodically, be carried away on a butterfly s wing. I stamp my feet.
Free radio surfaced in Czechoslovakia in 1931 when a station operated by a mobile transmitter called for a mass mobilisation of workers to unite against fascist leaders in Europe. Czech authorities responded by searching for the transmitter in homes of well-known Communist party members but never found it as it had disappeared. Pirate radio operates at a grassroots level in questioning the governmental and bureaucratic control over the production of radio and the dissemination of information over the airwaves. Most nations have placed broadcasting in the hands of government agencies, private corporations and bureaucracies instead of allowing citizens and community groups to provide programmes. This deliberate lack of public contribution in radio programming has led to an illegal form of radio termed radio piracy. ‘Pirate radio broadcast’s on FM, AM or shortwave bands to entire cities or larger areas.’ Radio transmitters, unlike a printing press, can be constructed relatively cheaply and be moved easily. This technology is therefore relatively accessible to various demographics such as young people and untrained radio practitioners. Radio also has the added advantage of being able to reach a large amount of people in a short amount of time. The term ‘pirate radio’ came into existence because the first unlicensed stations that broadcast popular music to the U.S. were located in international waters. Likewise, 25 years later in Europe, unlicensed ship-based stations appeared off the European coast. Broadcasting at an underground level, pirate radio allows control to be placed into the hands of the subject not the overriding regulatory power structures operating within society. It is a medium that can provide political information, disrupt mainstream ideas or purely provide entertainment and information for the audience of sub-cultural or cultural groups that are neglected by the government-regulated mainstream. For the person operating pirate radio, a certain sense of empowerment would surely ensue through control over technology and the ability to interfere with mainstream ideals. The accepted norms of what radio is, what it speaks of, how it is presented and whose ‘voices’ have control over it can and are being subverted. The overexposure of particular ideologies and the prevalence of predominantly white male voices, such as those presented by radio personalities in the forms of shock-jocks and talk-back hosts, is undermined and questioned. With pirate radio any voice can be heard, in any accent, as long as you can obtain access to the required technology and the skills of operation. Pirate radio can blur the line between public and private through the use of unknown and potentially anonymous personalities presenting a diversity of information and music. Throughout history, advertising has funded many mainstream radio programmes. Radio itself, in its early stages "…symbolized the bounties of industrial capitalism with its endless production of new and existing commodities freely available to all in the marketplace.” Pirate radio, on the other hand, has the ability to reject advertising of any sort. ‘Pirate radio operators are dedicated to their music and listeners: profit is not part of the equation’. Pirate radio has not been as prevalent in Australia as it has in Europe or America. Perhaps the range of nongovernment controlled and antiadvertising community radio stations in Australia provide a platform for poiltical debate and a forum for a
diversity of music a tastes and opinion. ‘Pirate recordings are the unauthorised duplication of only the sounds of one or more legitimate recordings.’(3) Sound piracy subverts the idea of the ownership of music by the music industry through the homeproduction of CDs made up of sampled electronic music. It is through sound piracy that copyright laws have been brought to the fore, and there have been many cases of artists being sued for using recorded music that is not their own. The music/noise group Negativeland, for instance, have been sued twice for copyright infringement for using music by U2 in audio collage. Since the rise of recording technologies, music has been transformed into a fixed mass-marketable consumer product by the music industry. As Hakim Bey says, " Music is the victim, not the cause of the "problem". The invention of the CD and the CD burner has led to greater accessibility for the individual to plagiarise music. Following on from the mix tape phenomenon, the individual is not only the consumer of music but also the creator. Mix CD collages are made and then swapped or given away, creating a localised or even global network of mix CD communities. In other words, everyone can be a musician and have unlimited free access to new music on CDs which are very expensive to buy in Australia. The creation of the mix CD is a cheap way to make music in that it can store large amounts of audio information, particularly in the format of MP3s downloaded off the net. However, the self-produced CD could be seen as a reflection of the mainstream since many people use this technology to record compilation CDs of the Top 20, not to create their own sampled collages? The popularisation of relatively underground phenomenon occurs constantly and consistently in advertising and in the marketing of consumer products. Pirate radio has already been popularised in the Hollywood film ‘Pump Up the Volume’ staring Hollywood actor Christian Slater. Just as self-produced CDs appropriate snippets of recorded music, it’s big business for advertising to appropriate alternative cultures and ‘mainstream’ them; to promote illegal activity as a ‘cool’ endeavour rather than a political art form or an economic necessity. “ The Droplift Project is an art-response to the current relation of artists and lawmakers to the techniques of appropriation, collage, and sampling in music." It is a project whcih uses mostly uncleared samples. CDs are then ‘dropped’ onto the shelves of record stores for free. The Droplift Project’s philosophy rejects the mass marketing of music and the passivity of the popular music consumer, ‘ …I reject your acceptable music. I reject your appropriation of my culture for your profit orientated mass market. I reject your exploitation of my life. I reject your hypocrisy. I reject your authority and I no longer fear you. I will finally stand up and actively fight back.’ The Droplift Project actualises the autonomy of the individual who challenges the ownership of sound. Both pirate radio and sound piracy have changed how we think about culture through the subversion of the control over airwaves and through questioning what is sound and who has ownership over it. Unlike government radio, pirate radio can play noise music that contains popular music samples without the concern over copyright. It is also not the pirate radio deejay’s position to promote the sale of records to the public through high-rotation playing. Sound piracy subverts popular music styles by often sampling them into politicised lyrics. Subversion exists purely in incorporating popular music into noise music, and here the question of originality also comes into play. Self-producing CDs without the aim of profit, extends this subversion.
Works Cited * Soley,L,1999, Free Radio: Electromic Civil Disobedience, Westview Press,Boulder Colorado * Bey, Hakim, 1995, ‘The Utopian Blues’ in Sounding Off! music as Subversion/Resistance/Revolution, Autonomedia, Brooklyn * Cutler, Chris. ‘Plunderphonics’ ibid * Johnson,l, 1988, in The Unseen Voice: A Cultural Study of Early Australian Radio, Routledge, london. * The Droplift Project: check out www.droplift.org * www,grayzone.com
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\\ What is\ considered to be music itself is controversial and linked to large-scale ideological formations invested in defining "music" apart from non-music. This operation is\an effect of power, one that functions through discursive strategies that construct "music" as an aspect of civilisation, while sound and noise are linked to the uncivilised ..Through mechanical reproduction of the 20th century, sound has also been controlled through its incitement. Repressing rhythm and noise has become more selective, while its management has been enabled through the wallpaper-like proliferation and commodification of music.\\
speak softly. But carry a big can of paint.
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Bicyclism is the political philosophy that recognises those who use or depend on bicycles and bicycle technology for transport and living. It holds that the revolution shall be low-speed, and bicyclists must lead the way. The Bicyclist must be bold in hir maneuvers on the street. Clearly signal your intentions and communicate with others. Cars are dumb beasts with a very limited vocabulary, we must sheperd them properly. Defer the right to those of the lowest speed. Ultimately Bicyclists must uphold total respect for self, and by extention, all others encountered. Cultivation of a low-speed consciousness is necessary for future bicycle revolutions. Cities need to evolve toward a slower, closer, people-oriented topology and pace. Bicyclists and foot-travellers are on the forefront of creating that future. Without concerted focus on low-speed travel, our cities will be lost to pollution, anti-human and increasingly militarized zones. Institutions are too conflicted with monetary [development] issues to effect the changes necessary. It is the role of bicyclists and pedestrians to actualize the changes required to secure a livable future. We must identify and mark low-speed corridors and pathways through the city corpus. Bicyclists have the unique opportunitiy to envisage the framework of the eco-city glowing beneath the concreate shell. We can make this framework visible to others by: marking psycho-geographic landmarks and routes with bicycle and pedestrian logos, frequent travel by human powered vehicles, spontaneous sub-critical masses, bold bicycle signalling, friendly attitudes towards menacing cars, and selective urban modification and marking. Safe pathways facilitating autonomous transit are a necessary characteristic of the bicyclist vision. Importantly: recognise other low-speed beings with respect, unity, strength and support when needed. Mutual consciousness, cooperative riding tactics, and positive regard will encourage others to go low-speed and prepare the way for increased communication and effective urban solidarity.
Strength, Elegance and Subversion.
shoutouts to the family, the civil group, lou[x], ned [much respect], jim, adam, shadey, sydney crew, newcastle crew, melbourne crew, the clash, crease, gabba, Alan W. Evans, kernow, spacekids, octapuses, 7u?[no frills], tai [cowlik], YOU, pauL, lach, esta, shane pinkboy, eve, xyz, shok, irene, all the communal group/share houses out there, travellers not tourists, all the social centers, Aussie independent media, urban bush revegetation crews, conference and party organisers, zinesters, vj s, rock n rollers, graff/street artists, record spinners, pranksters, friendly strangers, welcoming friends, storytellers, artists, machine fixers, cooks, teachers, cultural theives, the elements, and people who dare to share.
Manifesto for Subliminal Manipulation "Just as we ourselves are made up of billions of biological entities (mostly bacteria), it seems absurd to mistake our consciousness for 'ourselves', that is as separate individual entities. It is more plausible to conceive of the human race as a single entity with many consciousnesses that are unable to recognise each other as parts of themselves. Of course it is just as reasonable to extend this concept to everything that exists as being of a single entity that cannot be pulled apart and separated. For the sake of convenience lets just call everything 'god' but in doing so we must detach all the baggage that comes with such a word (I would rather not call it 'god' but any basic memeic unit is loaded in some meaning or another - by using the word 'god' I am following more the meaning of that which is unspeakable/inconceivable rather than a creator being). In this sense a conversation between two humans could be described as two points of 'god' having a conversation with each other not being conscious of the fact that they are in fact the same thing. The myth of separate individual beings is the greatest tragedy of the human animal." -Excerpt from "Blind manifestations of the material mind" By Rose Margahrita Magdalene We are all asleep. This is a cliche, a banality. We all know this yet it is never us that sleeps, we would never admit this to ourselves. It is always everyone else who sleeps. An asleep animal especially one that thinks it is awake is the easiest to subliminally manipulate. Rather than ask whether subliminal manipulation is desirable or not it would be more realistic to ask whether pure conscious communication is indeed possible. Our minds delude us into the belief that our consciousness is us and we are our consciousness after all this is where we experience the concept "I" or "me". However nothing could be further from the 'truth'. Consciousness performs but a small bodily function just as our kidneys filter our urine or our bowels process our shit. Julian Jaynes sums it up like this: "Consciousness is a much smaller part of our mental life than we are conscious of. How simple that is to say; how difficult to appreciate! It is like asking a flashlight in a dark room to search around for something that does not have any light shining on upon it. The flashlight, since there is light in whatever direction it turns would have to conclude that there is light everywhere. And so consciousness can seem to pervade all mentality when actually it does not." Our consciousness flickers like a flame until one day it is extinguished and evaporates in a puff of smoke. That is not to say that it disappears into nothing. It becomes something else just as the elements that construct our being are continually changing. Many of these cyclical changes occur much faster than one would imagine. For example, our pancreas replaces most of its cells every twenty-four hours, our stomach lining every three days; our white blood cells are renewed in ten days and ninety-eight percent of the protein in our brain is turned over in less than one month. Even more amazingly, our skin replaces its cells at the rate of 100,000 cells per minute. In fact, most of the dust in our homes consists of dead skin cells. Just as our physical body is continuously changing so too is our mental life being continually replenished. Although our consciousness may disappear into dust perhaps it is possible its memory is permanent. That however is not the topic under discussion. Mention the word subliminal and the most common conception of it, is of some form of magic where messages are somehow secretly implanted in our brain. We do not understand the word 'subliminal' because we are barely conscious beings. Our subconscious are subconscious by the very fact that they are not conscious. Do we need a conscious mind to drive a car?, to ride a bike? NO! Do we need a conscious mind to learn something new? NO! Do we need a conscious mind to add 2+2? NO! Our ego's would like to think so, our many ego's but that is beside the point. When we add 2+2 the solution emerges from our subconscious. It is only in retrospect that the ego reconstructs the illusion that it is master. Because of this the mind creates many mistaken concepts such as; theses and anti-theses or dialectical materialism. These become cultural assumptions that have little to do with how our brains actually work. Consciousness is merely where we become aware of ourselves, the analog "I". An awareness of our identity. This identity is by and large false, constructed in our minds by linear oral or written language. Generally it is mindless chatter in our heads that creates our identities. If it is possible to experience our "actual self" then it must be done on another level, free from language and imagination, on a direct experiential level. An understanding of our analog "I" and our many
competing egos makes it possible to understand how easy it is to subliminally manipulate. Make no doubt about it everyday media is saturated with subliminal data. It compliments us every minute to get us on side whilst simultaneously feeding our anxieties. All this makes it easier to communicate a deeper ideology or intention. We generally only see the surface layer, unable to decipherthe many layers of mass advertising and mass media. Again subliminal is the norm not the exception as Wilson Key has said: "Over a ten year period I was often involved with various techniques of testing for large, international ad agencies. From time to time, I performed consumer recall evaluations on ads, usually to placate a client who had become nervous about the effectiveness of a large promotional expenditure. As far as I know, recall analysis was never seriously applied in the development of new, creative ad themes. Banality, not memorable (consciously memorable) dramatic content was the basic building block for saleseffective advertising. The executives who employed me often commented that any ad consciously recalled was a loser, as far as sales were concerned. At the time, this logic puzzled me. Now, I realise the purpose of an advertisement is to motivate a purchase decision - days, weeks, or even months after it has been perceived for even an instant......The conscious memory system may actually be incompatible with media's marketing objectives." Advertisers understand exactly what they are doing. This is for certain. One percent of the world's GDP is spent on advertising. That's a hell of a lot of money. Billions! Advertising works. The more we pretend it doesn't the more effective it is. For this reason advertiser scan spend a lot of time making the surface message banal. The sub text is what you need to look out for . Very often this is much more complex than it seems. Advertisers persuade and manipulate by what is not said more than by what is said. It is worth looking at some advertising methods in Vance Packard's book written in '57 as an example of the extent that advertisers go too: "...First, they decided, you can't assume that people know what they want. A major ketchup maker kept getting complaints about its bottle, so it made a survey. Most of the people interviewed said they would prefer another type the company was considering. When the company went to the expense of bringing out this other bottle in test markets, it was overwhelmingly rejected in favour of the old bottle, even by people who had favoured it in interviews. In a survey of male beer drinkers the men expressed a strong preference for a 'nice dry beer'. When they were then asked how a beer could be dry they were stumped. Those who were able to offer any answers at all revealed widely different notions. Second, some marketeers concluded, you can't assume people will tell you the truth about their wants and dislikes even if they know them. What you are more likely to get they decided, are answers that will protect the informants in their steadfast endeavour to appear to the world as really sensible, intelligent, rational beings. One management consulting firm has concluded that accepting the word of a customer as to what he wants is 'the least reliable index the manufacturer can have on what he ought to do to win customers'." Every moment of the day our body absorbs billions of sensations, we observe a feast of sights, hear a cacophony of delights, our taste buds continuously tasting, and the smells always wafting up our noses. Yet our consciousness grasps only the most microscopic fraction of this astronomic influx. We aren't talking here of the Freudian or Jungian symbolic subconscious. That too is smaller than an atom compared to the totality of our unconscious mechanisms. The periphery of our vision is not black or dark but rather disappears into nothingness, we simply are not conscious of it. Again to elaborate on this a little think about the process used to read. You are not conscious of the way you decipher words out of individual letters or gather meaning out of the strings of words that form sentences. This is all done in fractions of seconds but not in your conscious mind. Similarly whilst reading this your consciousness focuses on the images or meaning gathered from the words and becomes oblivious to all else. All the while your senses continue to take in your total environment but not consciously. Smells, sounds, taste, the sensation of gravity and feel of clothes on your skin (if your not naked), etc., continue to be taken in by your mind. Our consciousness seems to be formed mostly by verbal and written language. A layer of verbal discourse flows continuously. Underneath a visual discourse takes place. It is a mistake to reinterpret this discourse in a verbal sense. This discourse has its own meaning, certainly a constructed meaning and not an actual meaning. Under this there are more layers like actual bod-
ily sensations. We tend to absorb these sensations then interpret them verbally thus they get reduced to a verbal explanation and their direct meaning is lost. Every day we are assaulted with a barrage of information. It is blaring at us from all directions. Mass media, billboards, radio, television. By the time the average child graduates from high school they will have watched some 350, 000 television commercials. It simply is not possible to process all this information on a conscious level. Advertising hits us from all angles. Most of it enters at the subconscious level, waiting like a time bomb for the right moment. The moment to consume. The moment to fill our lives with pseudo needs to give us pseudo comforts. Visual information generally for most people holds much more 'authority' over an individual than the actual content contained in the words. The less aware the individual is of this reality the more likely it is true. A paper printed on a dot matrix computer holds less 'authority' than one printed on a laser printer. The more work gone into the graphic presentation the more 'authoritive' the information is considered. A good quality graphic presentation without sources holds more 'authority' than a poorly presented paper with all it's sources included. This is true precisely because the relevance of the graphics is not considered consciously by most individuals. In relation to logos certain shapes and symbols hold much more 'authority' over other shapes and symbols. Exactly why this is no one really knows but it has something to do with our collective histories (and maybe universal habits). Circles for instance hold much more 'authority' than most shapes. Also our senses are interconnected so a symbol can actually affect the way we smell taste or feel an object (or organisation) it is relating to. This has been well tested in advertising circles. A logo can have an enormous effect on how some one perceives an organisation. This is why Coca Cola's corporate vision statement is "To create value for our shareowners on a long term basis by building a business that enhances the Coca Cola trade marks." The actual physical product is irrelevant. The actual product they are selling is the visual baggage contained subliminally in their advertising. This is also why corporations pour such huge sums of money into advertising. At the end of the day the product is the advertisement more than the actual physical product. The physical product has subconscious values ascribed from the advertisements, perhaps in a similar way we ascribe values to the physical manifestations of money. The first stage in selling all products is convincing the consumer that advertising doesn't have any effect on sensible individuals. Naturally vanity leads the consumer to consider themselves as a sensible individual. This is a call to be aware of the existence of the enormous cavern of that which is not conscious. It is a call to be aware of this when producing propaganda and in all attempts at persuading others of a better vision of how we could live on this planet. Anyone who looks solidly at the facts can see our situation is desperate. Anyone who looks solidly at the facts can see we face extinction. This is for certain, irrefutable. It is time we realised this on an actual level and not just an intellectual level. On the level of bodily sensations. Maybe shed a few tears over it if necessary. It is time to end our fantasies of permanence. It is time to cloud the distinction between work and leisure, to see they are part of the same continuous life. To gradually increase the participation in our own lives until passive entertainment becomes passe, becomes boredom as we already know it is. This is a call to cause external confusion in order to take refuge in inner wisdom. To release upon the world a new level of discord. To speak not just on the surface level but to know and understand all other levels of communication. We are not rational beings. The more we pretend to be the less we are in actuality. This is a call to blur the line between fact and fiction . Paradoxically there are many truths in fiction. Certainly there are many lies in facts. This is a call to ASSUME YOUR OWN AUTHORITY. That is for sure. Do not trust even trust the authority of this writing. ASSUME YOUR OWN AUTHORITY but don't count on it's substance. There have been too many mistakes by many whom believed themselves right. The mind plays too many tricks, deluding itself in its righteousness. This is about as much as I can ascertain. Monty Cantsin Chief Advertising Executive The Blind Authority Manipulation
Corporation
