From: antonsen-AT-alf.nbi.dk
Subject: laughter 
Date: Mon, 02 Sep 96 15:02:14 +0200


It's a bit difficult to give a decent impression of diabolic laughter by these 
restrictive electronic means, but if you'll use your imaginations you will hear 
the laughter echoing through dark, dusty, moist and secluded corridors.

What I wrote late last week was really only intended as a statement of my 
personal view, pure expression of my feelings (art, if you like...) and wasn't 
directed at anyone particular. But, yes, I was pissed off by having to hear 
patronizing Artists, shouting at me from their beloved ivory towers, in their 
blissfull ignorance of real life, real love, real laughter taking place at their 
very doorstep! Don't you see, the towers are not made of ivory, but of 
sugarcoated shit? So, I tried for a while to infuse people with the need for 
revolutionary change, for action, for changing the world. But it didn't get me 
anywhere. My last attempt was then to state my own personal views as clearly as 
I possibly could. And THAT brought some very interesting replies.

And now, on with the show!

Celine's first reply was:

>Maybe I'm reading you wrong but are you inferring that creating art is
>equalavent to withdrawing from the world? 

In fact, I say precisely the opposite. You and William in particular come very, 
very close, however, to inferring this.
and:
>Are there only political and social solutions to our human condition? 

Any solution which is not ALSO political and social is NOT a solution, it's just 
a sleeping pill.

Later:
>There are many ways to do this, engage in life. I suggest, just
>waking up in the morning and walking out my front door is
>participating in life, but here we get off the subject.

We are indeed. You know just aswell as I, that simply walking out the door and 
into the shopping mall does not constitute engaging in life!

futher:
>There has never been a radical political group (in my opinion)
>that was as effective as a great painting, drawing, photograph,
>book.

What about the American war of independence, the French revolution in 1789, the 
Paris commune of 1848, the Russian revolution of 1917, the Spanish civil War 
1936, Paris 1968 etc.? Many artists have been inspired by these things, but I 
have yet to see a painting, photograph, poem or novel which has a similar 
effect.

then:
>I'm sorry here, if I am taking this too personally. (Actually, I
>am not sorry and I do feel attacked). But are you suggesting that
>my life of observing the world, of inner contemplation, and
>writing, is a life of withdrawal? I would say that it is the
>artist (and again by this term I mean anyone willing to go
>inward) is confronting a whole lot more than the average
>political joe. 
>
>You sound to me more like a typical cheerleader of ants. The same
>old chant that has ruled the world into a mindset that is
>dangerously benumbing.

The average artists confronts a lot less than a political activist, which is why 
the average artist is never banned by any regime no matter how fascist it is. 
I'm NOT saying you are an average artist, but you sometimes sound to me more 
like a typical lamb.... (sorry, couldn't help it; I don't mean this as it 
stands, I just wanted to provoke you to think from a higher perspective).

>And along these lines, please Frank, and I do not mean to
>threaten you, but I am truly interested. Personally, what is your
>method of life?

No problem, Celine, I'm not at all threatened. If you want to threaten me, 
you'll have to do much more than this, so ask me anything you like. I have just 
outlined my personal VIEW of life, what else do you want to know? Please ask.

Let me emphasize this again. I did not intend to attack you (nor anybody else), 
but the FACT that you did feel attacked seems to me to be much more worthy of 
suurealist investigation than whether art can be murder or vice versa. I have 
had to say these thing very directly, very bluntly, I know you are all strong 
enough to take this, and if I didn't respect you, I wouldn't have written any of 
it.

And then you, William.

>Through-out my life, I've been pissed-off about the political events
>surrounding my life, but I am simply NOT the sort of person who riots in the
>streets. Understand, I am all FOR this person... I'll buy them the fucking
>gun, but I, myself, BEING HONEST WITH WHO I AM, simply am NOT that p;erson.

A simple question: why not? Now this is not just a stupid question, I suspect a 
LOT can be learned from you answer to this! I take it, you are not normally in 
the habit of wanting other people to act in your place.

>Instead, as Celine so adaquedtly responded already, I, and people like me
>(like us), cause Giant Revolutions in our studio's. On the off chance you
>think this is slightly less full-filing than street-action, I refer you to
>the work of Delacroux, and certainly Hugo, and, I assume J'Acusse is known
>also.

These revolutions you talk about run the risk of fooling you, they run the risk 
of being actually only minor insurrections, which only appear like great 
revolutions because the room is so small! This is of course not always the case, 
but you only see this by actually putting it to the test.
What I am advocating is NOT street-action over studio-art or vice versa. They 
are BOTH needed. Isn't this precisely what Delacroix, Hugo and Zola did?

>You say "It is oooooooh so easy to withdraw..." Shit, Frank... do you think
>I've withdrawn? Well, spend a day or so in MY head... ity might be rougher
>than any street action you've seen. And, if you think living as an artist in
>a world where even the people who are SUPPOSED to be on your side have
>absolutely no conception of what your talking about.... well, I can't explain
>the un-explainable.

Well, as I've said earlier, I did not direct this against anyone in particular, 
so WHY DO YOU FEEL HIT? If you spend your days in your head, well, then you have 
withdrawn, but I'm not saying you've done this. Only you can answer this! What 
goes on inside your head might be tougher than anything outthere in the real 
world, but then again it might not..... I too very often feel that no-one 
understand a word I'm saying....

>Now, you recommend I join a fucking church....

No I don't. But I did ask if someone held the veiw that the world was hell, and 
there wasn't anything we could do about it, then why didn't that person join a 
church.....

And then on, with the mail which WAS directed at you personally.

>Is Auschwitz a great work of art? I can answer this simply... no, it  wasn't.
>The fact that it was an extreamly efficent machine which functioned quite
>well at its appointed tasks hardly makes it a work of art.

Are you saying that a work of art does not perform its appointed task? Or are 
you making merely a distinction between art and machine? If so, what about 
Tinguely, Roussell or Duchamp? All these question, are of course, rhetorical.
I do not know the 19th century painters you mention next, so I have no comments.

>At this juncture, I must ask if you are recognizing the differences between
>an artist and a person who does art.

I wasn't aware that there was a distinction. Enlighten me.

>...there NEVER is a point, given that TWO
>HUMAN BEINGS ARE INTER-ACTING, when power-games arn't in play...
>Lets face it, unless you exist in a hole in the ground, and refuse to eat the
>worms that crawl past you, LIFE is a continual power-game.

Not true. When two people interact, recognizing eachother as equals and as free, 
then there is no power-game. There is a difference between coorporation and 
competition. That is why life is worth living, why it isn't hell, and why the 
present system is rotten and must be overthrown.

>Being able to create solutions that go beyond Hollywood (the city I grew up
>in, by the way), is as easy as my next fantasy.

Good. My last question in that mail was in fact intended as a challenge. What I 
have been trying to get across is that simply because some notion is 
"outrageous" (meaning that it SEEMS to go against bourgeois society) does not 
mean that it is worth pursuing (meaning that it really IS contrary to bourgeois 
society), and that teh notion of "murder as fine art" is one such notion. But I 
could be wrong, therefore I challenge you, who were the first to advocate this 
notion, to come up with something proving me wrong. I have nothing against being 
proven wrong, quite the opposite: it is part of engaging in life!

>A foot-note...Frank, you seem to be the one who is taking all the heat with
>this. While I am somewhat discouraged that your position seems so opposed to
>ours, so far you haven't drawn a gun, so, like Celine, I say that my comments
>arn't directed AGAINST you, but to you.

I didn't take it as against me in the first place. And I don't mind taking some 
heat: life can be rather dull without it don't you think?

A final comment on this bit. Celine used my mail to William to write:

>Again, to understand what Wm. is getting at here it is
>neccessary to suspend one's way of thinking in the normal world.

My point all along has preciely been that I cannot see that neither William nor 
Celine have in fact done this in this particular example. That they have 
inadvertedly fallen prey to the ideology underlying the entire bourgeois view of 
the world, a current running UNDERNEATH the surface, which seem to contradict 
it.

It is really a pitty that Carlos seem to be away for the moment, I would very 
much have liked to hear his comments on all of this!

Then I must address Pierre. (By the way, this mail seems to growing into typical 
Pierre-like proportions).

As far as my "anarchist RELIGION/lullaby" is concerned: I deplored the lack of 
revolutionary thought on this list, the political perspective. Surrealism 
without its political side is really DEAD. To make it alive, dangerous, it was 
necessary to insist on the political aspect. I do not insist that other people 
share my political views, and I think my "religion" is rather open-ended, in the 
sense that I applaud any kind of anti-authoritarian left, be it Marx, Fourier, 
Trotsky, Bakunin, Malatesta, the Frankfurter school etc. As you yourself often 
enough point out, poetry comes from a Greek root meaning to do. I stated the 
political perspective more because I was the only one doing so, and I refuse to 
accept the historian's reduction of surrealism to merely an art-form!

I know you're not saying this, but let me just make absolutely sure:
	IS ANYONE SAYING REVOLUTION IS NOT ON THE AGGENDA???

................... and then I come back and see everybody discussing whether we 
should change the name:
	FRIENDS: ONE MORE EFFORT IF YOU WANT TO BE FREE.

Frank