1985 - Poetic Terrorism - Hakim Bey
Texto
Weird dancing in all-night computer-banking lobbies. Unauthorized pyrotechnic displays. Land-art, earth-works as bizarre alien artifacts strewn in State Parks. Burglarize houses but instead of stealing, leave Poetic-Terrorist objects. Kidnap someone & make them happy.
Pick someone at random & convince them they’re the heir to an enormous, useless & amazing fortune — say 5000 square miles of Antarctica, or an aging circus elephant, or an orphanage in Bombay, or a collection of alchemical mss. Later they will come to realize that for a few moments they believed in something extraordinary, & will perhaps be driven as a result to seek out some more intense mode of existence.
Bolt up brass commemorative plaques in places (public or private) where you have experienced a revelation or had a particularly fulfilling sexual experience, etc.
Go naked for a sign.
Organize a strike in your school or workplace on the grounds that it does not satisfy your need for indolence & spiritual beauty.
Graffitti-art loaned some grace to ugly subways & rigid public monuments — PT-art can also be created for public places: poems scrawled in courthouse lavatories, small fetishes abandoned in parks & restaurants, xerox-art under windshield-wipers of parked cars, Big Character Slogans pasted on playground walls, anonymous letters mailed to random or chosen recipients (mail fraud), pirate radio transmissions, wet cement...
The audience reaction or aesthetic-shock produced by PT ought to be at least as strong as the emotion of terror — powerful disgust, sexual arousal, superstitious awe, sudden intuitive breakthrough, dada-esque angst — no matter whether the PT is aimed at one person or many, no matter whether it is “signed” or anonymous, if it does not change someone’s life (aside from the artist) it fails.
PT is an act in a Theater of Cruelty which has no stage, no rows of seats, no tickets & no walls. In order to work at all, PT must categorically be divorced from all conventional structures for art consumption (galleries, publications, media). Even the guerrilla Situationist tactics of street theater are perhaps too well known & expected now.
An exquisite seduction carried out not only in the cause of mutual satisfaction but also as a conscious act in a deliberately beautiful life — may be the ultimate PT. The PTerrorist behaves like a confidence-trickster whose aim is not money but CHANGE.
Don’t do PT for other artists, do it for people who will not realize (at least for a few moments) that what you have done is art. Avoid recognizable art-categories, avoid politics, don’t stick around to argue, don’t be sentimental; be ruthless, take risks, vandalize only what must be defaced, do something children will remember all their lives — but don’t be spontaneous unless the PT Muse has possessed you.
Dress up. Leave a false name. Be legendary. The best PT is against the law, but don’t get caught. Art as crime; crime as art.
Contexto
Se publica impreso en 1985 en CHAOS Thee broadsheets of ontological anarchism, editado por Grim Reapers Books (Providence), quizá la primera edición: https://archive.org/details/ChaostheBroadsheetsOfOntologicalAnarchism/page/n5/mode/2up Libro que aparece con la invitación... "No copyright 1985. May be freely pirated and quoted- the author and publisher, however, would like to be informed at (...)" y sin ISBN, número de catálogo de la Biblioteca del Congreso y "no Imprimatur, no Nihil Obstat".
Aparece más adelante en varias publicaciones impresas y electrónicas como: - IAO Core (zine citado en ek Whole Earth catalogue de fall 1990, p. 65)
- (1985, 1991, 2003) T.A.Z.: The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism. New York: Autonomedia
- https://hermetic.com/bey/taz_cont
- En la copia de The Anarchist Library se lee:
"Chaos: The Broadsheets of Ontological Anarchism was first published in 1985 by Grim Reaper Press of Weehawken, New Jersey; a later re-issue was published in Providence, Rhode Island, and this edition was pirated in Boulder, Colorado. Another edition was released by Verlag Golem of Providence in 1990, and pirated in Santa Cruz, California, by We Press. “The Temporary Autonomous Zone” was performed at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics in Boulder, and on WBAI-FM in New York City, in 1990".
"Thanx to the following publications, current and defunct, in which some of these pieces appeared (no doubt I’ve lost or forgotten many — sorry!): KAOS (London); Ganymede (London); Pan (Amsterdam); Popular Reality; Exquisite Corpse (also Stiffest of the Corpse, City Lights); Anarchy (Columbia, MO); Factsheet Five; Dharma Combat; OVO; City Lights Review; Rants and Incendiary Tracts (Amok); Apocalypse Culture (Amok); Mondo 2000; The Sporadical; Black Eye; Moorish Science Monitor; FEH!; Fag Rag; The Storm!; Panic (Chicago); Bolo Log (Zurich); Anathema; Seditious Delicious; Minor Problems (London); AQUA; Prakilpana."
- Se incluye una versión ligeramente distinta en Gareth Branwyn, Peter B. Sugarman (eds.) (1991) Beyond Cyberpunk!A Do It Yourself Guide to the Future. Louisa, VA: The Computer Lab. (a HyperCard application) https://archive.org/details/BeyondCyberpunkMacintosh
En la introducción a esta versión se lee:
"Robert Anton Wilson has described Hakim Bey as "A Blake angel on bad acid." Bey's multiple personalities are all over the place, his naughty fingers dipping into lots of sweet sticky pies. His "Broadsheets of Ontological Anarchism" have appeared in numerous pervert publications worldwide. His work with The Moorish Orthodox Church, Autonomedia, and Semiotext(e) continues to be interesting and prolific.
I first read the "Manifesto of Poetic Terrorism" in the San Francisco xerox art rag "IAO Core." It has since been bundled with most of Bey's rants from 1985-1990 in "T.A.Z. Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism."
Word has it that this manifesto and the T.A.Z. essay were a major influence on Kata Sutra and her NeoWobblies".
Enlaces
Primera edición: Hakim Bey (1985). CHAOS Thee broadsheets of ontological anarchism. Providence: Grim Reapers Books, pp. 4-8
URL: https://ia802902.us.archive.org/14/items/ChaostheBroadsheetsOfOntologicalAnarchism/Chaos.pdf
Wayback Machine: https://archive.org/details/ChaostheBroadsheetsOfOntologicalAnarchism/page/n5/mode/2up