Istvan Kantor Media Revolt - Widok. WRO Media Art Reader Issue 3

ISTVAN KANTOR MEDIA REVOLT

WIDOK. WRO MEDIA ART READER

WIDOK. WRO MEDIA ART READER MATERIALS FROM THE HISTORY AND THEORY OF MEDIA ART ISSUE 3

SERIES EDITED BY VIOLETTA KUTLUBASIS-KRAJEWSKA, PIOTR KRAJEWSKI

ISTVAN KANTOR MEDIA REVOLT

EDITED BY VIOLETTA KUTLUBASIS-KRAJEWSKA, PIOTR KRAJEWSKI

WIDOK. ISTVAN KANTOR MEDIA REVOLT

© Copyright by WRO Media Art Center Foundation, Wrocław 2014 ISBN 978-83-929186-7-7

CONTENTS PREFACE

6

MACHINE POEM [IT WAS VERY NICE] [1980]

8

THE ART OF REBELION [2013]

10

STUDY OF PERSPECTIVE [2013]

13

MACHINE POEM [I REPEAT] [1983-1999]

18

MACHINE POEM [VIDEO VIDEO HOT DOG] [1983-1999]

19

HISTORICAL OUTLINE OF MY PERFORMANCE WORK [2008]

21

MEDIA OF REVOLT: A HISTORICAL OUTLINE OF MY MEDIA ART WORK [2008]

23

THE TOY GUN [2004]

33

BASIC TACTICS [1997]

35

35 YEARS OF NEOISM (1979-2014)

41

MACHINE POEM [IT HAS] [1983-1999]

42

MACHINE POEM [I’M TELLING YOU] [1983-1999]

43

THE BOOK OF NEOISM?! [since 1979]

45

THE BEAUTY OF VANDALISM [1998]

47

TRANSMISSION MACHINE [2007]

71

ACCUMULATIONS [1997]

79

MACHINE POEM [SUCK] [1983-1999]

98

MACHINE POEM [I JUST WANT TO FUCK] [1983-1999]

99

ABSURDITY [1984]

102

PHOTOS

114

DVD CONTENT

116

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PREFACE

I’m a refugee. An art criminal. I come from nowhere and I belong nowhere.

Istvan Kantor Born in communist Hungary, Istvan Kantor (aka Monty Cantsin, aka Amen!) creates intense and idiosyncratic productions that never fail to provoke discussions about the nature of art authorities and the institutionalization of art. He uses widely assorted means of expression: screen works, performances, multimedia installations, painting, photography, actionism, pop culture, antiideology, legalism, revolt, social movements, noise and song. In his ongoing battle for the independence of artists in a society that’s increasingly unified technologically but increasingly stratified economically, Kantor’s tone remains ironic and personal, and he finds the strategies of appropriation and reciprocity, pathos and mockery, planning and improvisation equally useful. As the “open pop star” Monty Cantsin, Kantor became the icon of Neoism, a subversive movement he launched in 1978 with an underground, anti-institutional stance that questioned mainstream ideology, economy, culture and artistic production.

In Kantor’s hands, old revolutionary slogans and icons that have become absorbed by pop culture, banalized and glamorized, once again regain their power and authenticity. Kantor’s work is the Dada of our times, opposing inequality, control, commodification and all manner of consumerism with irreverent, energetic irony.

Kantor’s message has remained consistent since the 1970s. His current writings are as forceful as they were then, and his performances have become even more reckless – like an experienced master of zen à rebours carrying out the controlled destruction of the material our stunned consciousness is made of. We need to be goaded into the perpetual renovation of our minds, and Kantor contributes to that process, acting as a whistle blower on the art world and reminding us to question everything, from the position of artists to the role of institutions.

Kantor’s works and writings are experimental intellectual rebellions. “Bringing about the downfall of art by giving up art objects was a 20th-century game, full of lost and failed revolutions ... But there are signs that the game isn’t over yet, and the desperate players that remain are still trying to overthrow the reigning system of art as commodity,” Kantor says. In keeping with the spirit of Neoism, Kantor carries on avant-garde traditions of rebellion, and his artistic endeavors

– no matter what media he uses – always relate to the social situation. Over the last three decades Kantor has been given numerous awards for breaking down barriers, and arrested and jailed more than once for his guerilla-style interventions in art institutions.

This multimedia publication is a collection of Kantor’s most important writings, videos and musical performances from the course of more than 30 years. Rather than chronological order, his writings are presented in topical sequences that highlight the recurring themes that form leitmotifs running throughout Kantor’s work. We have preserved Kantor’s original, idiosyncratic writing style, which often involves conscious paraphrasing, wordplay and deliberate distortions, as well as irony towards the awkwardness of international art language.

The publication also includes Kantor’s newest works, showing the indefatigable power of his performances, concerts and recitals with their seemingly simple staging. The recordings sometimes succeed in capturing the extraordinary tension that arises between the artist and the audience amid the all the lively action, heat and noise – the dynamism and genuine catharsis that results from Kantor’s reckless but fully conscious and controlled expressiveness.

Translated by Sherill Howard Pociecha

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Istvan Kantor

IT WAS VERY NICE IT WAS VERY NICE IT WAS VERY VERY VERY NICE IT WAS VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY NICE IT WAS VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY NICE NICE NICE NICE NICE NICE NICE NICE NICE IT WAS VERY NICE VERY NICE VERY NICE VERY NICE IT WAS VERY NICE TO SEE YOU SEE YOU SEE YOU SEE YOU SEE YOU SEE YOU SEE YOU SEE YOU SEE YOU AND TALK AND TALK AND TALK AND TALK TALK TALK TALK TALK TALK TALK TALK TALK TALK TALK TALK TALK TALK TALK TALK TALK TALK TALK TALK TALK TALK TALK TALK TALK TALK TALK TALK TALK TALK TALK TALK TALK TALK ABOUT TALK ABOUT TALK ABOUT TALK ABOUT TALK ABOUT REVOLUTION TALK ABOUT REVOLUTION REVOLUTION REVOLUTION REVOLUTION REVOLUTION IT WAS VERY NICE TO SEE YOU AND TALK ABOUT REVOLUTION

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THE ART OF REBELLION

[2013]

Istvan Kantor Monty Cantsin? Amen!

The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.

Monty Cantsin (Albert Camus)

I signed the above Albert Camus quote as Monty Cantsin sometime in the 80s, and adapted it as a plunder statement that perfectly fits into the Book of Neoism.

I also appropriated it as a template for making other statements such as the following one: The only way to deal with art in a totalitarian world is to become absolutely free from institutional control and museum dictatorship that your very existence is an art of rebellion. But how can someone implement such an idea into a creative practice in today’s extremely control-freak authoritarian society? What chances anyone can have to succeed in the realization of Monty Cantsin Albert Camus’ magisterial pronouncement?

I’m a refugee. An art criminal. I come from nowhere and I belong nowhere.

It’s always 6 o’clock. Past=Present=Future. I have never been interested in postmodern formulas of making art. I rather wasted my time as an eternal outsider refusing the norms of society for the sake of my own socio-political engagement. I often wonder what kept me from selling my soul to the authoritarian system. Why didn’t I sign a production deal with the divine driving forces of the art world just like a popstar would do with music managements and record companies? The idea of creating overproduced large scale installations for museums that were built to represent the power of spectacle always repulsed me. I am frightened by the possibility that one day my work will be discredited by the sponsorship of the murderous corporate mainstream culture’s leading financial institutions such as the Rentagon and the Bank of Broadcast Imperialism. During the night, when the curtain is down in Totalitaria, I can hear the rumbling noise of tanks moving through the stage of my everyday life, and, during the day, when the curtain is up, I see the bulldozers crushing the buildings: Gentrification – Eviction – Extermination – Genocide.

The Spectacle of Noise, Misery, Greed and Stupidity. But I never wanted to be a lonely landscape painter either. As a matter of fact I never wanted to be an artist. I wanted to become a revolutionary.

But instead of heading straight to the barricades waving my red flag in one hand and holding a flaming steam iron in the other, I took a course at a paramedic nurse school and then went to medical university. At the same time I also wrote poetry, practiced art and took part in activist movements.

Art, science, revolution,… My plan “A” was to follow the path of Che Guevara. In

case of losing the game my plan “B” was to disappear somewhere far, perhaps in Asia or Africa, like my other hero Arthur Rimbaud did.

Growing up in a communist country in Eastern Europe determined my future life events. I got educated in a world of dictatorships, insurrections, double standards, personality cult, brainwashing propaganda, chaos, convulsion, blood, fire, destruction, ruins,… I was surrounded by the ghosts of revolutionary movements, zombies of social insurrections, demons of future rebellions.

It was a fascinating experience, just as hopeless as full of desires and expectations. Very decadent. My aesthetics was shaped by both, a totalitarian system and a conservative family with aristocratic roots in Transylvania.

I was already in my early 20s when I finally followed my own instincts, and, like a sleepwalker or rather sleepswimmer I crossed the Seven Seas. I became the false prophet of Neoism in the Lower East Side of Montreal, and later in New York, across the street from the Blood Factory. From that moment everything happened really fast just like a blitzkrieg. I took over the late 70s and then invaded the 80s. There was a free spirited communication network, known as mail-art, that helped me to get in touch with other refugee types in

all parts of the globe. I sent out information about the Neoist Conspiracy and proposed to everyone to become part of it. “Call yourself Monty Cantsin and do everything in the name of Neoism”, was the magic sentence and the only rule. Everything else was up to the users of the names. In today’s technological sense Neoism can be interpreted as an early social interface. I called the network World Wide Neoist Web. This was around 1980, fifteen years before the official WWW and the invasion of cyberspace. It was a rebellious decade when changes took place all over the world. Punk and new wave music wiped out the authority of rock’n’roll. A new haircut philosophy transformed the look of youth.

A redeeming chaos and anarchy took over the streets. The flower children of the hippie peace movement were killed by a sudden stroke. Free haircuts were the best propaganda action for Neoism.

I initiated the Neoist Apartment Festival concept in 1979, in Montreal, by opening my own apartment as a center for performance events and other

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subvertainment. That was the only way to free ourselves from the oppressive system of galleries, museums and other institutions. We had no interest and time to send them exhibition proposals to produce shows in two or three years later. We didn’t exactly know what we wanted but we wanted it immediately.

And our proposals were always rejected anyway. Therefore we gave up working with them and started our own illegal organizations. We gave the finger to the unfree world of Cold War led by the Soviets and the USA. We declared our independence from the art system and turned our existence into a sci-fi novel, populated by illegal aliens, extraterrestrials, cults, conspirators, vampires, demons, shapeshifters, pornstars, superheroes… In many ways we have realized what Camus originally said in his above quote.

I was always much more interested in the activation of dead spaces than producing art objects in my studio for museum shows. Invading abandoned buildings and ruined military bunkers were among my favorite activities. Making work directly in museums, in the form of surprise interventions, was much more exciting than daydreaming in my studio. My best known method is the splashing of my own blood on museum walls.

This dynamic gesture, critically labeled as vandalism, instantly triggers reaction and activates the whole machinery of the art system. It alarms the security, confronts the museum directors, summons the police, appeals to the legal system, invites the media, excites the consumers of information… It usually grows into an all encompassing durational and basically never ending work in progress.

In 1979 when I began the Blood Campaign project my goal was to finance the operations of Neoism by selling my blood as an art object. I predicted that by 1984 my blood will reach the value of one million dollar per milliliter. In order to increase the value of my blood I created scandals, conflicts, confrontations, critical situations. I risked my freedom. My museum interventions were essential part of the value making process.

I got arrested, jailed, banned. Soon my mugshots were pinned up on the walls above the security desks in art museums. In 1988 I was charged with 10 million $ damage for defacing one of Picasso’s most important masterpiece, “Girl with Mirror”, with a few drops of my blood, in the Museum of Modern Art, New York. I took this charge as an official recognition of my work and an acknowledgment of the value of my blood as a work of art. While locked up in a detention facility in New York, squashed in a tiny prison cell with about a dozen high profile criminals, I figured out the equation of the Art of Rebellion. It’s written in blood, imprinted in my brain, engraved in my heart and tattooed in my soul: Blood=Life=Existence=Rebellion=Art.

STUDY OF PERSPECTIVE

[2013]

REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE ART CRIMINAL

by Istvan Kantor Monty Cantsin? Amen!

We live under constant surveillance, monitored by different spy systems, surrounded by security. There is nothing new in that. I can also claim that my audience is often composed by police officers, undercovers, intelligence agents, security guards and other authorities. Therefore when I locked my bike in front of the AGO last Thursday afternoon, I wasn’t really surprised that the building was encircled by cops and security agents. I didn’t like that at all, because it meant that the information spilled out and I wont be able to do what I have planned, but I was thrilled by their very spectacular interest in me. I’m known for being an anti-institutional artist. I have declared many times that museums are prisons. They have the same structural characteristics: security, surveillance and permanent collection I went to the AGO to send a message to Ai Weiwei asking him to support my request for refugee status in China. I was going to read my message, “GIFT TO CHINA”, in one of the rooms of the AGO’s Ai Weiwei exhibition. Upon entering the museum I was stopped by security. I wasn’t surprised. Seeing the cops outside I figured that was going to happen. They handed me a letter saying “Istvan Kantor is not authorized to access any premises on or in relation to the Art Gallery of Ontario.” Oh, Really? Like I didn’t know that. Doing unauthorized museum interventions is what I’m best known for. This was going to be my third one at the AGO (X-Mas Gift, 1989, Deadly Gift, 2006). I didn’t expect Mr. Matthew Teitelbaum, director of the museum, waiting for me at the door with a chocolate cake, a bottle of champagne and a letter of invitation for a retrospective.

I refused to leave, claiming freedom of speech and rights to be in a public place, but after a short argumentation the security removed me with force. They ordered me to withdraw from the territories of the museum. An undercover police officer approached me, presented his badge and told me to move from the front stairs area.

I have stepped down on the stairs to the sidewalk under the watchful eyes of the police and security, many of them armed with cameras, some of them taking notes. There were no journalists around, the ones I invited didn’t show up. Not having other choice I staged my performance in the street, in front of a large Ai Weiwei poster. I basically did the same piece I planned to do inside the Ai Weiwei exhibition, next to the Colored Vases. Those vases, with the dripped paint, reminded me of the barrels of the Blood Factory I have seen from

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my window when I lived in Montreal, in the early 80s. I used a sterile needle to collect blood from my arm in a small golden tray. “I’m a registered nurse and paramedic” I explained to the undercover policeman standing next to me who expressed concerns when I proceeded with the blood taking “I know what I’m doing.”

Yes, I spilled lots of blood in the name of Neoism during the past 35 years (started Blood Campaign in 1979, in Montreal). I am best known for my blood-x interventions in museums. I’ve got arrested many times for splashing my own blood on museum walls between famous paintings in the form of an X. This time I applied it to sign the letter “GIFT TO CHINA” that I intended to send to Ai Weiwei via the AGO. Holding up a Red Book of Mao I posed like those militant agitators on propaganda posters of the Cultural Revolution. I put a blue jaw-expander in my mouth that made my silver teeth more dominating and enhanced the intensity of my superhero look. Meanwhile I also read or rather shouted the text of my message “GIFT TO CHINA”. By the time I sang a revolutionary anthem in Hungarian there was a large amount of passers-by around me listening. The undercover police officer with the badge metamorphosed into my co-performer, always standing right next to me and commenting on every gestures I’ve made. He advised me not to deface the sidewalk with my blood.

So I covered the ground with my flyers. He was also concerned about how I’m going to dispose the rest of the blood that I wont use for the performance. I told him I’ll keep it in my archive, like I usually do.

My archive includes a large section of my blood works from 1979 to date.

Among them are signed and dated vials, blood-paintings, documentation of blood-x interventions in museums, blood soaked objects, blood graffiti on paper, bloody t-shirts, books written in blood, a complete list of my blood actions, related press clips, etc. I predicted in 1979 that the value of my blood will increase rapidly and by 1984 it will be 1 million $ per milliliter. But creating objects of value and selling them at a high price are two different things. When Duchamp made his mustache on a Mona Lisa postcard, or when he turned a urinal into an art object, he basically vandalized the notion of art, or, in other words, elevated vandalism to the notion of art. His simple gesture is now considered the most significant creative act that induced all that is happening in the arts today. Duchamp would be very proud of Ai Weiwei. Almost all of Ai Weiwei’s works are based on ready made or recycled material. Blood is also a ready-made.

I never made much money by trying to sell my blood as an object of art. I never made much money by selling any of my art products. I always lived way under poverty level. Last year for example my income was less than ten thousand $.

If I would retire my pension would be $85 per month. It’s not only depressing but also quite embarrassing to talk about.

So lets get back to the AGO. After cleaning up and waving goodbye to the security, I went to the park behind the AGO, accompanied by my collaborator friends who documented my performance. I carried the golden tray of unused blood in my hand. There, under a tree, I signed the rest of the undistributed flyers with my blood. I also picked up a piece of wood and a bark from the grass and stained them as well. While I was doing that the police and security kept watching and recording us from the street. Where they will keep all the documentation I was wondering? In the security files at the AGO? At a police station? In the archives of the RCMP? (I would love to check their collection one day and create an art exhibition selected from police files).

Finally, still followed by the police, we went back to Dundas street, to take a picture across the street from the AGO. I pointed my finger to the museum, repeating Ai Weiwei’s gesture. This one is titled “Study of Perspective by Istvan Kantor: Art Gallery of Ontario”, 2013. I’m sure the AGO is dying to exhibit it! ******************** “Please allow me to introduce myself. I am Monty Cantsin, the open-pop-star.

I’ve been around for a long time. I stole people’s sole and plundered their mind.

Pleased to meet you, hope you like my name. But what’s puzzling you is the nature of my game.” I’m not sure if I said exactly these things but I introduced myself to the passers by who stopped and wanted to know what was going on. And if I didn’t tell them all, now it’s a good time for it. I am not the only Monty Cantsin. There are many Monty Cantsins all around the world. Anyone

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can be Monty Cantsin. They are all different people and they do different things using the same name: Monty Cantsin. I am one of them, best known for doing blood-x interventions in museums. I’ve got arrested many times for splashing my own blood on the walls of museums between famous paintings in the form of an X. As a result I got banned from many local and international museums including the AGO, Power Plant, National Gallery, Museum of Modern Art, Ludwig Museum, Hamburger Bahnhof, just to mention a few.

I initiated the Monty Cantsin open-pop-star project in the late 70s in close collaboration with David Zack, correspondence artist. David came to Hungary, in 1976, to exhibit his letters and other mail-art products. We met at the Young Artists Club in Budapest. David was then about 40 years old and I was in my mid 20s. He saw in me the embodiment of his open-pop-star concept.

“When you give the same name to different people, control is impossible” he introduced me the concept and convinced me to join him in this unique antiauthoritarian adventure. The goal was nothing less than Total Freedom! For me, living under dictatorship behind the Iron Curtain, this was like an invitation for revolution. I was a medical student temporarily suspended from my studies for participating in political demonstrations. Behind David’s bearded face I saw the figure of Fidel Castro and I imagined myself to be the resurrection of Che Guevara.

Almost immediately I left everything behind, escaped from Budapest to Paris, and from there to Portland, Oregon via Montreal. “Your mission is to convince everyone that they are also Monty Cantsins” told me David at the airport in Portland. I employed all my talents, from singing revolutionary anthems to drinking my own blood, convulsing on the floor, waving red flags, making

scrapmetal noise, dancing with flaming steam irons and repeating the same hypnotic and mind-sharpening phrase in every venues in Portland: “I am Monty Cantsin, you are Monty Cantsin, we are all Monty Cantsins!” Hallelujah!

Hasta la Victoria siempre! Avanti popolo! Monty Cantsin became the specter of a new revolutionary game. It was the golden years of “apartment festivals” when gentrification haven’t began yet and warehouse spaces were available for fun. It was party time! From Portland to Montreal, New York, Toronto, London, Chicoutimi, Quebec city, Novi Sad, Tokyo… The open-pop-star revolution swept through the world fast like a forest fire. “Anyone can be Monty Cantsin, without any restrictions of age, color, religion, gender or language” we declared.

Please google Monty Cantsin and see how many you can find today! And while you are doing that check out another captivating name: Neoism! Neoism is a megalomaniac art and communication movement, the social network of Monty Cantsins. What is Neoism? Whatever you want it to be. It has no definition. “Call yourself Monty Cantsin and do everything in the name of Neoism” is the only rule to accept. Today the Neoist Network has a massive presence all around the world, from Canada to Indonesia, Thailand, Japan, Europe, USA, Mexico, Africa, China…

My work, as a Monty Cantsin, is to conduct Neoist events and search for new creative territories. But how to finance the world wide operations of Neoism?

This question was in my mind when I started Blood Campaign in 1979, in Montreal. I decided to finance Neoism by selling my blood as an object of art.

Therefore I started to create art works using my own blood.

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Istvan Kantor

I REPEAT I REPEAT I REPEAT I REPEAT I REPEAT I REPEAT I REPEAT I REPEAT I REPEAT I REPEAT I REPEAT I REPEAT I REPEAT I REPEAT I REPEAT I REPEAT I REPEAT I REPEAT I REPEAT I REPEAT I REPEAT I REPEAT I REPEAT I REPEAT I REPEAT I REPEAT I REPEAT I REPEAT I REPEAT I REPEAT I REPEAT I REPEAT I REPEAT I AM I AM I AM I AM I AM I AM I AM I AM I AM THE ENEMY

Istvan Kantor

VIDEO VIDEO HOT DOG BANANA BANANA BABY DRACULA DRACULA KING KONG ASSASSIN ASSASSIN KISS KISS MASS MASS MASS MASS MASS MASS MASS MASS MURDER MASS MASS MASS MASS MASS MASS MASS MASS SUICIDE MASS MASS MASS MASS MASS MASS MASS MASS MEDIA VIDEO VIDEO HOT DOG BANANA BANANA BABY DRACULA DRACULA KING KONG ASSASSIN ASSASSIN KISS KISS MASS MASS MASS MASS MASS MASS MASS MASS MURDER MASS MASS MASS MASS MASS MASS MASS MASS SUICIDE MASS MASS MASS MASS MASS MASS MASS MASS MEDIA VIDEO VIDEO HOT DOG BANANA BANANA BABY DRACULA DRACULA KING KONG ASSASSIN ASSASSIN KISS KISS

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HISTORICAL OUTLINE OF MY PERFORMANCE WORK

[2008]

Looking back to the work I have done throughout my life it is evident that the focus was always on the creative aspects of production and never on the marketing. This is the main reason for the how and why an enormous amount of work could accumulate in my archives without being disseminated through publishing, collections, exhibitions or other means of sales and reproduction.

Some eye opening, historical moments in my life were the meetings with other artists: my first encounter with David Zack, American/Canadian mail-artist, in the heart of communist Budapest in 1976; my meeting with Robert Filliou in Montreal, in 1979, at Véhicule Art. There were a few decisive events which determined my creative development.

One of the most important among them was the 1956 Hungarian Revolution.

Another one was my first trip to Paris, ten years later, at age 16. My fleet from Hungary in 1976 radically changed my life and opened up a completely new horizon. The birth of my three children in the 90s was the top of all.

There were also important places, special locations and environments, cities and streets with strong inspirational character: Surany was my childhood paradise; the Lower East Side in New York in the 80s was my ultimate playground; Berlin with the walls, before 1989, was my land of fantasy; Montreal, a blank space, was the unknown territory to conquer.

1967 – 1975 My work as a performance artist dates back to my early youth in Hungary. Writing poetry and experimenting with music led me to other forms, such as theater and happening. By the late 60s, at age 18, I was fascinated by the history of the early avant-garde, dada and surrealism, and I was also seeking information about present day artistic movements, actionist art, pop-art, conceptual art, etc. I created my own happenings and theatrical actions, formed an anti-music group Drazsé Expressz, created scandals in university clubs, galleries, cultural centers. Some of these events were well documented through photography, sketc.hes and handwritten notes and I have all the documentation in my archives.

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After dropping out from the Medical University of Budapest in the early 70s I completely dedicated myself to artistic experimentation and fully explored my ideas under the given circumstances of an authoritarian, oppressive society which of course wasn’t supporting this type of actionist art, noise and anti-music.

1976 - 1977 In 1976 I left behind everything and escaped to Paris.

Here I became a political refugee. I survived as a subway singer and I was also active in performance art and mail art. I created my own street actions and also performed at exhibition openings.

I also toured in the South of France, exhibited and performed in Le Plan-De-laTour, St. Tropez, St. Maxim, Fréjus. Photo documentations of these events are in my archive. But in Paris I was surrounded by the same oppressive ambience as in Budapest. I had to keep going.

1977 - 1978 I arrived in Montreal in sept/1977.

As a new immigrant I worked as dishwasher, house cleaner, and machine operator in a factory. I always did everything in the name of art and I considered my factory experience a multidisciplinary performance.

It was there, in Montreal, where finally I could develop my ideas and devote myself to the exploration of my creative ambitions. I started with graffiti art and street action.

In June/1978, with a travel grant from the Canada Council, I went to Portland, Oregon, where I initiated the Monty Cantsin open-pop-star project under the auspices of David Zack and the Correspondence Art Service Foundation.

I executed a series of performances in local clubs, galleries, in the streets and also in the Portland Museum of Art. I met with many important artists of the new American art, poetry and music, among them dr Ackerman, Ken Freedman, The Residents, Musicmaster, Smegma, Eva Lake, John Shirley, and others. The Los Angeles Free Music Society put out a 7 inch mini-album containing five recent “syphon-music” recordings with my newly formed Monty Cantsin ISM b. band.

MEDIA OF REVOLT

[2008]

A CHRONOLOGICAL OUTLINE OF MY MEDIA ART WORK Istvan Kantor

My work as media artist dates back to the late 70s in Montreal where I started producing videos at Véhicule Art. Véhicule Art was an important artists run center where many of the new emerging artists were producing and exhibiting their work. I was a new immigrant, only recently arrived from Budapest via Paris.

At Véhicule I found a community of artists interested in the new developments of current artistic expression.

Video was a new form to be explored.

1st Period: 1979 - 1981 Up until my arrival to Montreal in 1977 video was basically unknown to me.

I became familiar with video production in 1978 when I joined Véhicule Art. Almost immediately I became a video addict and developed a close relationship with the video camera. This meant that I constantly documented my everyday life and my performances on video and I also started producing scripted and improvised short statement and manifesto like works. Video was a tool for me that I used almost all the time for different ideas and reasons but without thinking of myself being a director.

All these early tapes were produced on reel-to-reel half inch tapes mostly using a Sony Portapack kit but I also worked with so called studio cameras. I learned basic editing under the guidance of David Rahn, video artist and director of Video Véhicule. Of course in those days editing mostly meant straight cuts.

My first significant works of these early times were mostly performance related videos, either documentation of my own Neoist performance art works or artistic statements in relationship to my theoretical ideas and Neoist philosophy. I also incorporated video projection and closed circuit video transmission into my performance and installation pieces.

Most of these early reel-to-reel tapes were never transferred to newer formats and they are still waiting for resurrection in cardboard boxes. Only some of them survived the constant changes of video formats and were saved from degradation by transfer. But it could be an important part of this project to search through the old boxes of reel-to-reel tapes and rescue whatever is still possible. Even if they are not my strongest art works their historical importance is enough reason for saving them. Including some of these lost works into this

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compilation would definitely add a great historical value to the content of this publication.

I produced UFO in February/1979 in the small gallery of VĂŠhicule Art. I installed a lighting object on the floor, which I found the year before in Portland, Oregon, in the street, and duplicated its image on a monitor with the use of a camera (in other words I used closed circuit transmission). Changing the brightness/ contrast on the monitor the background of the lighting object (UFO) became very dark. I videotaped this dark image from the monitor while slowly moving the lighting object. The result was amazing, the static object turned into a strange moving object, looking like a spaceship. My artist friend and Neoist collaborator Raymond Pilon, today known as ZILON, provided an ambient synthetic electro-drone for the soundtrack.

A few days before I opened The Brain in the Mail international mail-art exhibition in the main gallery of VĂŠhicule Art with a performance piece POSTCONCERTO in which I also incorporated video transmission on several monitors.

The documentation of this performance/installation exists on a reel-to-reel video tape in one of those above mentioned boxes together with many other similar type of unedited documentation of other events of this same period, from 1979 to 1981.

Among the edited ones that were transformed to 3/4inch format are some important video documentations of Neoist Apartment Festivals (APT Fests) in Montreal and elsewhere. I started Neoism in Montreal in 1979 and it has grown into an international movement that today exists as a large network of artists.

Therefore such early videos of Neoist events are precious documents with historical, theoretical and aesthetic values.

The best known work of this early stage is INFRADUCTION (1979/80), a 7min tape in three segments. It especially became well know because of the participation of French artist legend Robert Filliou in the first segment of the tape. This tape was included in the collection of the Centre Pompidou in Paris.

In 1980 Radio Quebec produced a documentary about the emerging form of performance art in Montreal. My new performance RESTRICTION was featured in this documentary and received a strong reaction. The performance was filmed at VĂŠhicule Art by a professional television crew but the producers let me do everything the way I wanted. Therefore I approve this work as my own.

This is the only piece where I would need the permission of the producers (Radio Quebec) to include it in the compilation.

Meanwhile Tom Konyves, a poet and independent producer, also produced several tapes on my work for his own project Art Montreal. One of them, the documentation of my performance LIAISON INTER-URBAIN (1980) in Chicoutimi, is also a very important piece, immortalizing one of my most controversial and shocking performance works.

Another important single channel tape of this same period is SILENT TAPES (1980/81). Its length is 50min and has 9 short segments. I designed this work to be shown as a visual piece without sound, especially thinking about places where other noise or music dominate the ambiance.

2nd Period: 1982 – 1985 The change in video production came with the more sophisticated 3/4 inch video format. Editing became an important part of the work. SILENT TAPES was already a 3/4 inch studio production but I have done most of the location work with a Portapack therefore I still consider it as part of the first period.

The Second Period starts with the production of CATASTRONICS (1982/83, 45min). I designed this work to be an album of video songs, popularly known as music video clips. In my work video and performance went hand in hand, video feeding from performance and performance using video. CATASTRONICS was originally a video-performance in which I performed in front of a large screen using video projectors. There was a continuous, dialogue like interaction between me (the performer) and the screen. In CATASTRONICS I used two synchronized tapes played simultaneously at once and projected on two screens. In the early 80s this counted as a very high-tech presentation and therefore this work is an important example of the early use of technology in performance art. This was the time when I became extremely interested in exploring the technology of video as the main communication/transmission

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device in my works.

It’s important to note that my musical ambitions always played a major role in my video and performance productions. Like my interest in the song-form as an artistic expression definitely has been a determining factor in my video works.

Interestingly enough at the same time with this high-tech reign of video I started making super8 films. In fact I bought my first super8 camera at the time when everyone else was changing to video. This was a reaction to the huge hysterical publicity campaigns propagating video technology and especially home video.

I liked the idea of home video but I didn’t like the way it was sold. Therefore I bought a super8 camera in New York and started shooting short films. This led me to the production of RAT LIFE (1983/85).

RAT LIFE, a cine-diary, 22min and 43min versions, documents the life and death of six white laboratory rats I kept in my apartment known as the Neoist Embassy, located in Outremont, on rue Lajoie. The rats were also my performance animals, I carried them everywhere, they lived with me full time.

I used their life story as a metaphor of my own life thus the video includes footage of performance events as well, but most of it is about their daily life in their large, gold cage. It is edited into four parts: CHILDHOOD PARADISE, SHIT FACTORY, MANOIR L’AGE D’OR and VIDEO HEAVEN. RAT LIFE mimickers the character of family movies and deals with amateur film making as a basic philosophical process. The sound track of RAT LIFE includes songs of my band First Aid Brigade as well as Russian military music. With this first major super8 production I learned everything about low budget film making. I also kept all the relics of the production for an installation that can accompany the screening. Here I note that because of the use of the rats I got into serious trouble with the police and my case was discussed even in the Parliament in Ottawa because money from the Canada Council was involved. But during the police investigation my film served as proof to show that the rats were not killed inside a burning car as the media claimed it. This type of false claims and problems with authorities accompanied me throughout my life. I value RAT LIFE as one of the most important productions of my life work.

In Dec/1983 I staged OPERAT BLANC at the Spectrum. This was a multi-media spectacle with First Aid Brigade, videos, live computer animation transmission, elaborate stage design, etc. It celebrated the 5th anniversary of Neoism with invited guests from New York, Toronto and Baltimore. By then my work achieved a strong reputation in Montreal and there was a growing audience interested in my work.

OPERAT BLANC was an exceptionally large scale production but I also kept producing short super8 films. Some of these I kept in super8 format but some of them I transferred to video and edited them as video. Among these were

PSICHO-INDUSTRIAL (1984, 4min) which I edited with the use of an aniputer (animation computer). The soundtrack of this video is heavy electro-industrial music I was experimenting with at the time.

One thing I don’t have is a list of titles of all my super8 films. This is something I have to put together in the near future.

The new direction I took with CATASTRONICS continued with more expanded video performances. In 1985 I premiered BAGDATA at the Musee d’art contemporain. BAGDATA had two parts: AN OLD MAN TELLS A STORY and DIALOGUE. Both were video based performances exploring a dialogue between the performer and the screen.

I also produced single channel video versions of the performance. With BAGDATA I represented Canada at Documenta 8, in Kassel Germany, in 1987.

It was also shown across Canada at artists run centers from Halifax to Vancouver.

3rd Period: 1986 - 1990 In 1986 I sublet my Montreal apartment and I moved from Montreal to New York. I visited New York regularly in the early 80s, and since the 1982 Neoist APT Fest that took place in NYC I had a network of friends there. I settled in the Lower East Side(LES), first on Ludlow street and then on 10th Street between 1st Ave and Ave “A”. The environment always played an important role in the development of my work and living in the LES definitely determined many aspects of my artistic involvements. Almost immediately I joined the Rivington School, a local hardcore, rebellious artist group exploring junk-sculpture, scrapmetal-noise, street graffiti, etc. I became spokesman for the School and I also elected myself to Self-Appointed Leader of the People of the Lower East Side.

The gentrification process of the Lower East Side has been on its way but it was still a wild enough environment to do something new. I documented on super8 film and video the daily activities of the Rivington School. The result of this was ANTI-CREDO (1986/88, 28min). I post-produced it at PRIM Video in Montreal. ANTI-CREDO is a manifesto of scrapmetal culture, trash aesthetics and junk art. It features the Rivington School’s Sculpture Garden, a monstrous monument welded, assembled from bed frames, shopping carts, car doors and whatever available urban waste. Without legal permission the group transformed an empty lot into a mutating landscape of sculptural anarchy. The garden served as a free place for performance events, concerts, exhibitions, and festivals for almost three years. It had been bulldozed down in Nov/1987.

I consider this film, similarly to RAT LIFE, a master piece that immortalized the last revolutionary creative period of New York’s Lower East Side. I like to show ANTI-CREDO in the form of multi-screen projection using both video and

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original super8 footage, the edited version and also unedited leftovers. ANTICREDO was part of a major exhibition about the Rivington School’s work at the Brooklyn Museum of Art in 1995.

Another project I have initiated and developed in New York is known as THE ANTI-CYCLES OF MEGAPHONY (1986- 1996). It explores the noise of the megaphone as a voice based communication device. This project includes concerts, performances, and many short megaphony video clips.

Strangely enough in New York I didn’t have access to video editing and I kept post-producing my new works at PRIM, in Montreal. I also extensively traveled in Europe where I was introduced as a New York artist. In this period I have created a large quantity of new film and video works. Some of them I produced in Germany and Hungary but always edited them in Montreal. One exception

was VISITING ARTISTS (1986, 4min), which I produced at EM Media in Calgary during an across Canada tour with the collaboration of Neam Cathod (Jean Decarie). Among other works I mention SIXOKLOK (1988, 40min), CHANSON A MOURIR (1989, 4min), I AM MONTY CANTSIN (1989, 5min), PRELUDIUM VIDEA (1989, 60min), ETUDE (1990, 2min).

4th Period: 1991 - 1998 In 1991 I moved from New York to Toronto where my first child Jericho was born.

For a while I was traveling back and forth between New York and Toronto and I also frequented Montreal. Sharing my life and work in three cities was very motivating but I had to give up for financial reasons and for my growing family.

In 1992 my second son Babylon was born followed by my daughter Nineveh in 1995. The birth of my children was an important inspiration for me. The ANTICITIES TRILOGY: JERICHO (1991, 17min), BABYLON (1994, 19min) and NINEVEH (1997, 26min) was born out of this inspiration. The Trilogy’s main subject is technological organization, the city, the decay and power of technological society and the struggle of the revolting individual.

I produced JERICHO in New York, Quebec City and Montreal and I edited it at PRIM in Montreal. BABYLON and NINEVEH are Toronto produced but I finished the post-production of BABYLON again at PRIM. However, more and more I developed my video production and post-production connections in Toronto and starting with NINEVEH most of my videos were created here.

Here it’s important to note that changes in technology, the new video formats, Video8 and Hi8, and the professional quality Betacam SP again completely changed the process of video production and editing and also introduced a new quality. While before I always engaged editors for post-production by the end of this period I was editing my tapes myself, having complete control on the end result.

I sincerely feel that my video making evolved into a completely new phase with my move to Toronto. The works I produced since I live here are marked by a highly technological approach. Starting with ESCAPE FROM FREEDOM (1991, 9min30sec), and the above already mentioned tapes, and continuing with BARRICADES (1992, 11min), SLEEP (1993, 9min), CULT OF SEX (1994, 3min), RED FLAG (1996, 4min), CONCRETE NOISE (1996, 5min). I end this period with BLACK FLAG (1998, 9min) which might have been the most important piece among these videos. Its message is summed up in a political-activist slogan: “Down with the Government that Starves Us!” 5th Period: 1999 - 2004 Perhaps the most remarkable video works of this period are the ones I created with the participation of my newly formed performance group MachineSexActionGroup (MSAG). Starting with BROTHERS & SISTERS (1999,

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16min), followed by ACCUMULATION (2000, 10min), BROADCAST (2000, 20min), AXIOM/E (2001, 15min), THE TRINITY SESSION (2001, 7min) and LEBENSRAUM/LIFESPACE (2004, 72min). While BOROTHERS & SISTERS is not yet a MachineSexActionGroup video its production qualities are very similar.

Its fragmented narrative integrates juxtaposed performance segments, overlapping layers of computer animation, highlighted lines of texts, short loops of sounds and images. ACCUMULATION is a plunder-manifesto of raging loops, animated hyper-texts and sampled industrial mayhem. I became obsessed with frame-by-frame editing, loopmachine strokes and hyper-noise sequences. A rhythmic flow of images dominates the screen.

I formed MachineSexActionGroup (MSAG) in 1999. The focus was on the technologically extended body as a single machinery unit and technological society as interactive robotic machinery. The first demonstrative result of this work was AXIOM/E. AXIOM/E was both a video and also a large scale robotic performance premiered at Elektra in Montreal. Here it’s important to note that since 1995 I create computer controlled interactive robotic installation/ performance pieces and these works always involve video transmission.

Therefore my video works of this period are created always in relationship with my machinery works. With the making of 010100 (2003), which was featured at Buddies in Bad Times Theater in Toronto, I introduced a new form of hypermedia theater that embodied all aspects of my technology based work.

The making of kinetic sculptures and interactive robotic performances that led me to the creation of INTERCOURSE (1999), a large scale robotic work that was featured at the opening gala of Ars Electronica in 2000, for the Next Sex edition. By then I had incorporated interactive sound and video elements into the performance and Intercourse evolved into an ultimate robotic spectacle that also involved audience participation. In the coming years I added more pneumatic based robotic sculptures to it. Most of these machines, including the earlier pieces, explored the file cabinet as the main sculptural element for the hardware. Thus this work became known as THE FILE CABINET PROJECT. The use of the file cabinet was based on my theoretical discourse concerning control systems in technological society. In 1999 I presented a survey of this work in the form of an installation for the first time at Oboro.

In 2003 I produced a 26min video compilation entitled INTERACTIVE ROBOTIC PERFORMANCE (1999 – 2003). This video includes a good selection of my most important robotic installations and performances from EXECUTIVE MACHINERY to 010100.

The most ambitious video production of this period is LEBENSRAUM / LIFESPACE (2004), my first feature length experimental semi-fiction. It took me about three years to make it and especially editing took a very long time.

I edited it on my home system with AVID Express. This was the first time that I was able to do all aspects of editing myself with a PC. The fact that I could

edit at home any time I wanted and I didn’t have to deal with paying editors and editing suits completely changed the process of post-production.

6th Period: 2005 - 2007 Inspired by the success of LEBENSRAUM / LIFESPACE I initiated a new feature length production in Berlin, in 2004. Originally entitled Panic Attack, this video of many titles best known as UBERGESPENST / SUPERSPECTRE (2006, 67min). Its Canadian premiers took place in Montreal and Toronto and it will be first presented in Berlin, in May/2007 by Global Radio Festival. UBERGESPENST fuses music video, experimental narrative and documentary style. It’s the result of a six month residency in Berlin, a completely self-produced product without any financial assistance.

While working on UBERGESPENST I also produced REVOLUTIONARY SONG (2005, 10min). With this short tape I re-explored the popular form of music clip and it became one of my most popular videos to date.

Responding to a call by LIFT to participate in a project called Film Is Dead I produced THE BLOOD OF MANY FILMMAKERS (2006, 27min). The title refers to Cocteau’s famous film ”The Blood of a Poet”. I dedicated this work to dead filmmakers and especially to Roberto Ariganello, a recently deceased Toronto filmmaker/organizer, the initiator of Film Is Dead project. This video is composed from three parts: The Dead Filmmakers’ Uprising, Requiem for Film and Every Sunday Morning. While the first two parts are constructed strictly with the use of appropriated film clips, the third part explores the form of the song with original footage shot in my studio.

Finally I can note that currently I finished three new video works, KAPELICA ROBOT (2007, 3min), DEADLY GIFT (2007, 12min30sec) and THE LEGEND OF JOAN DARK (2007, 45min). KAPELICA ROBOT is a machinesexaction performance I produced in Ljubljana, Slovenia in 2003 and edited only very recently. DEADLY GIFT documents my most recent museum intervention at the Art Gallery of Ontario during an Andy Warhol exhibition. THE LEGEND OF JOAN DARK tells the story of an animal rights activist, mixing reality and fiction, plundered clips and original footage. These three recent ones were not shown to the public yet. Two other new production are at an initial stage to be completed by the the end of this year.

I also note that the above historical outline doesn’t include my unedited videos which are in a much greater number in my archive than my edited ones.

Among the many festival awards I received for my media-art work are the Videonale Award (Germany) in 1991 and the Telefilm Canada Award for Best Film and Video in 1998. In 2001 I won the Transmediale Award in Berlin.

In 2003 my video INTERACTIVE ROBOTIC PERFORMANCE was nominated for

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International Media Art Award and was featured at the ZKM in Karlsruhe. In 2004 I was one of the recipients of the Governor General’s Award for Visual and Media Arts in Canada. In 2005 the Art Gallery of York University presented my robotic art and interactive video installations in a solo exhibition entitled MACHINERY EXECUTION, curated by Philip Monk. This exhibition summed up the work I have done during the past decade as a media / new media artist.

This exhibition was voted as the best gallery exhibition of 2005 by critics at NOW magazine, in Toronto.

THE TOY GUN

[2004]

Istvan Kantor

The revolution hit me with full blast of energy even though I was only 6 years old. I absorbed it completely and later it became the most important inspiration for my entire life. Though Vorosilov ut, where my family lived, was not the center of the battle fields, we spent long days and nights in the air-raid shelter together with all the other tenants of the building. I loved the ambiance of the crowded bunker and totally enjoyed the whole experience of decadent fear, danger, hope and hopelessness. We lived in a large apartment on the second floor of Vorosilov ut 16, right across the street from the Yugoslavian Embassy (I happened to witness some of the historical moments of Imre Nagy’s residency from our window) with my sister, parents and grandparents. The name of our street was changed several times according to the political changes. It’s almost like my CV- I was born on Stefania ut, I grew up on Vorosilov, and lived on Nepstadion ut until the moment I ran away 20 years after the Revolution, in 1976. Then sometime after 1989 they changed it back to Stefania ut again, but by then almost everyone was dead. From our great family unit I got the deadly mission to sell the apartment after my father passed away in 1997. I think the building was renovated since and there is no any sign of physical remains of the revolution. Most tenants from ‘56 also died or moved, but those days remain in my mind forever. Days and nights of rumbling soviet tanks going up and down on Vorosilov ut threatened the population and the many embassies that were located there, I always heard machine guns, explosions, screams and the church bells ringing - it was a soundscape of permanent disaster.

I used to play hide and seek with my sister and the other smaller kids in the basement. My grandfather, Apuko, made me a ‘toy gun’ from firewood with an ax. I would wear it on my shoulder most of the time and generally no one paid much attention to it until that dramatic day. I was always curiously inclined and wanted to know what was happening otside. I had heard so many stories of young children fighting the enemy with molotov cocktails. Those children were the heroes of the revolution and though I was too small to join the insurgents I really felt like being part of the events. We listened to the noisy, distorted radio Free Europe transmissions and to people who went outside to find bread who’d come back with news, but I wanted to see the happenings with my own eyes. One day, when no one was watching I found my way outside to the street and holding my little toy gun, I hid behind a tree in front of our building. There was an armored military vehicle coming from Thokoly ut followed by a load of tanks. I lifted up my gun and pointed it to the vehicle from behind the tree. It felt like a natural gesture and of course as a six year old, I didn’t think about

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consequences The armored car stopped and thus the whole convoy as well.

A soldier jumped out and slowly came forward. At this moment I started running back to the house going through the front door, slamming it behind me, running to the darkest corner in the basement.

I remained there in fear and excitement. The soviets surrounded the building and explained to the janitor and the building’s delegate that they were looking for a little boy with a gun. The heated discussion continued for quite a long time with the unrelentless cannons of the tanks pointing towards the building for hours, but what seemed like an eternity! Finally and miraculously they left and the tenants were furious at my grandfather who made my toy gun, demanding that he immediately destroy it. He broke my toy gun in half with one simple gesture. When the fighting ended we went for a real long walk. I saw desolation, fire, blood and the signs of destruction remained in the streets for a long time.

We played on the fields of death throughout my childhood.

I have been obsessed with the revolution ever since, especially with failed revolutions. I made a replica of my toy gun and use it in my performances. Very recently I created a piece THE TREE OF LIFE - 1956 on Queen Street Westin Toronto, in front of Engine Gallery where I had an exhibition of my new mixed media works dedicated to the 50th anniversary of the Hungarian Revolution 1956. I stood behind this small tree with my toy gun gazing at whatever was going on in the street. I also placed a small memorial stone. This tree is still small but it will grow and perhaps serve people with something they need, to hide behind when necessary.

A child of doom, despair, dictatorship, death, mayhem..., I grew up in the enchanted garden of post-worldwar desolation, dripping of blood, decorated with sculls and bones.

The 1956 Revolution determined my creative development, aesthetic interest and philosophical orientation.

Refusal, negation, destruction and denial became the driving forces for my artistic experimentation.

My lifelong quest for the beauty of failed revolutions and my decadent longing for tragic ends are the result of my childhood experiences.

BASIC TACTICS

[1997]

ENFORCED SELF-EVOLUTION AND CONSTANT UPDATING

1998 A statement of NEOISM?! is not yet a definition; to define NEOISM?! is to negate it. NEOISM?! is a process, in the course of which the irrational foundations of total freedom come out into the open.

From the very beginning I had only a name, that was NEOISM?!. I didn’t want it to be anything that needed work, I just wanted it to unfold as it goes, without any hard work, like a game.

I wanted everyone to do everything in the name of this thing that was NEOISM?!.

I mean it was not a thing, only a name, but in my mind sometime it seemed to be a massive theater play, some kind of total theater which needed a thousand year to unfold. That’s all I was thinking about all the time: NEOISM?!. And I thought maybe other people want to do the same thing.

I did a concert in Budapest and I met a guy from America and he told me that I would be perfect for the Monty Cantsin role. That was David Zack. His mission was to find someone to start the Monty Cantsin open-pop-star project. I didn’t know who was Monty Cantsin but from then on I started to use the name and I introduced myself as Monty Cantsin. I AM MONTY CANTSIN! And I repeated it so many times that I really became Monty Cantsin. The name. Because Monty Cantsin is only a name. Or let’s say it this way: it WAS only a name then.

But today there are so many Monty Cantsins that no one knows who is Monty Cantsin and that’s great. That’s what NEOISM?! is. Nobody knows what it is.

It used to be only a name but today it’s used by countless number of conspirators and they all define it in different ways, so nobody knows what it is.

Only Monty Cantsin knows.

But I’m not playing a role. Monty Cantsin is not a role. There are no two Monty Cantsins of the same, we are all different. We live in different places, talk different languages, have different sexual preferences, we like different food, we use different drugs. I don’t use ready-made drugs. I run ten or twenty K every day and do lots of push-ups, sometime a thousand sometime only a hundred. But I’m out in the parks every day. That’s how I generate my drugs in my body fluids, by exercising. It’s my daily ritual to generate the necessary chemicals in my body, in my blood..

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But NEOISM?! is not a religion. There are certain rituals we like to perform, like flaming iron ritual, coat hanger ritual, or the ritual of breaking things. It’s okay if somebody has the feeling that there is a connection to religion, but we are only playing a game. I’m often called a priest because I’m playing with the role of the priest but I’m also playing with other roles. I’m not playing any roles, I’m playing WITH the roles. That’s a big difference. Because I’m not interested about acting, I want reality to play my part. So I create a situation and the rest goes by itself.

There is no script. Or if there is any we usually don’t follow it. The most important part is the beginning, the rest goes on. Like you give a name to a baby and then the baby develops into something. There are radical ways to manipulate this development, of course, but even if you don’t do anything something will happen. The baby will grow up because that’s how life goes. We live and die, and meanwhile things happen, revolutions, love, cruelty, violence, war, dinners, breakfasts, lots of shit and some happy moments. Sometime we eat cakes and drink champagne.

NEOISM?! is everything. It shows what is going on in the world. And more than that. It shows what never happens. And its very important because somehow we have to communicate about things that are not real but could be real.

Misery is not necessary. We could all live like Rockefellers if we would all play this game. But since we don’t have any rules we cant force anyone to do what we want. And we don’t even know what we want, but we want it right now. That’s typically a Monty Cantsin thing. We want the impossible.

I am very influenced by psychoanalysis. We have more energies than we need in life and we repress the energies we are not able to change. We repress our energies too much. And there is a need for NEOISM?!. For a name that is good for everything. Partly it comes out of our subconscious. But it’s there in reality.

You can see it when you look at television or read the newspapers. NEOISM?! is everywhere. But, of course, don’t take me wrong, it’s not what you really see, it’s what you make up in the name of NEOISM?!. It’s both, a very deep and very superficial thing. And all depends on you. Something must come out from this.

In the early times there were only a few Monty Cantsins. I was the first. And of course David. We performed different actions, music, happenings, whatever, we read poetry, went to parties, got into fights, stayed up all night, wrote letters, printed flyers, and always did everything in the name of Monty Cantsin.

NEOISM?! came only later. Monty Cantsin was our tool for communication, and it was our subject as well.

David played cello or tenor guitar and I played guitar and I sang. He sang as well.

And some people from Smegma joined us. That was a post-syphon and postfluxus period. Or we can say pre-NEOISM?! period. We sent out information through the mail to our friends and asked them to send us their Monty Cantsin

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starphoto, their Monty Cantsin music, their Monty Cantsin whatever. It was clear that we wanted to develop this open-pop-star project through correspondence and performance. And after a series of concerts in Portland, Oregon, and a campaign through the mail, the idea got picked up and spread.

Meanwhile David moved down to Texas with his family and I moved back to Montreal. It was only six months of forced training and extended propaganda.

We could have been in a terrorist traning camp in an Arab country, or let’s say in a secret headquarters in the USSR, or in a fucked up loft in New York City.

But actually it was better to be in Portland, at the Portland Academy/CASF that was extended with the Smegma House, the NWAW, Steve Minor’s junkyard, the Earth Tavern, the Long Good-bye, the Library, the New Jerusalem church, the streets, the cheap bars and restaurants, the abandoned buildings, the supermarkets, the police, the parks, the harbor front, the bridges, etc.

And Portland got extended down to San Francisco. Yanagi’s Golden Gate avenue apartment became my headquarters for a month. I met Yanagi in 76 in Paris. A painter and photographer. For me all the different forms seemed to be a little bit like auto-therapy, a dramatic process of psychoanalysis through making things. I was more interested in the concept. It was just perfect to have a name, only a name. I only had a small bag of my personal things and paper and pen.

I felt a personal satisfaction that came out of the process of traveling, meeting people and using the name. That process was the most important for me.

To sit in David’s van and drive from friends to friends, house to house. That’s how I got introduced to America and that’s how I introduced myself to this new world. I am Monty Cantsin. And suddenly there were other Monty Cantsins. Like in a personal drama that develops into something more complex, into a plot of millions, a Chinese opera with no catharsis.

The basis of NEOISM?! was personal communication. Talking. Singing.

Fucking. Screaming. Making noise at the Smegma House in the name of Monty Cantsin. Post-Janov primal scream. Search for the black girlfriend. A part in a Bill Thomas play. All these little things. Especially the fleas that moved from David’s dog to my bed. Of course I have to give credit to Molly, Marianne, Synthia and Suzanne.

I was overwhelmed by everyday life. And came Jerry Sims, the windhover of Texas. He moved into the basement, but he wanted my room on the ground floor. It was an aesthetic fight that ended up with a deal. Jerry became our manager. He hated our music and our language. He was therefor the perfect manager. NEOISM?! is often hated by people. Hate is a very deep emotion. And NEOISM?! is very superficial. And that’s where the missing catharsis is.

I was always interested in superficiality. That’s why I loved video immediately.

To video tape my skin was the greatest joy and discovery. Masturbating into the camera. In this respect the history of communication was also very important.

When I speak about the history of communication it’s also the history of sexuality. When I use video I understand all these connections. And there is blood. Reality fluid that is right here on the surface. You only have to scratch a little bit your skin and you see blood. When I take blood from my arm it’s nothing but blood taking. It’s not a symbolical act. It’s the same thing doctors and nurses do everyday in hospitals. I do it in the name of Monty Cantsin and NEOISM?!. Of course different interpretations are possible. I like reflections, I like to meditate, but the fact of reality is what I prefer, nothing else.

For me blood taking is not a ritual, it’s a clinical necessity to get blood from a body for certain use. When you work with blood most people take it as a kind of religious act. Especially catholics. They want their christianity to answer all questions. They can only explain things through the Bible. But most religions have lost their power. They are only interesting when you study them, when you go back to the father of church and to early Buddhism and Hinduism. But mots religion has lost its real existential power. They got too detached from our everyday life. From the flow of blood.

Of course you can say that NEOISM?! is a new religion. Why not. Everybody should be fed up by now with all the traditional, organized religions. NEOISM?! is the new religion, it’s very new and much more real. And still it has the reality of the abstract. Or I can say that its abstract is filled with reality.

I hope I wont die before I finish this book. What you read here is confusing but I have the feeling that I am right. I have the feeling that I’m going the good way.

I mean the wrong way that is the good way for me.

I repeat: I AM MONTY CANTSIN. Many people ask me why I repeat this so often? Because that’s my work, my mission. I’m glad that I can say it in a very concentrated way. In four words. Or in three words. I AM NEOISM?!. I have to say it. I say it for a long time, and repeat it over and over again. This book could be nothing else than these two short phrases repeated millions of times. It’s one melody, that’s all.

NEOISM?! is real. You can see it with your eyes, hear it with your ears, smell it with your nose, taste it with your tongue, touch it with your hand. All these senses are very important in NEOISM?!.

In NEOISM?! there is absolutely no stage and no stenography. It is not necessary. The stars are the background. In NEOISM?! everyone is a hero and the story of the play is the story of individuals.

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NEOISM?! is just crap.

NEOISM?! has nothing to do with the authority in Japan.

NEOISM?! exists outside the authority of Japan.

I think of NEOISM?! as networking. By networking people all around the world can cooperate with one another. For example I have this porno photo which I send to individuals around the world. I ask them to masturbate while looking at it. This is the form my networking takes. There are thousands of people masturbating to my photo all around the world.

I am the master of NEOISM?!. I think NEOISM?! is the best method to have fun and lots of orgasms. The main purpose of NEOISM?! is to amaze people.

The purpose of NEOISM?! is to show the world the beauty of destruction.

I’m working on creating destruction.

35 YEARS OF NEOISM 1979-2014 [2014]

While each Neoist has a different concept about the origin and beginning of Neoism and we refuse to celebrate historical events such as the current 35th Anniversary of Neoism, still, for the sake of arguments, smiles and a few drinks, let me remind you that all the hell broke out on may 22nd 1979 in Montreal at the corner of McGill and Sherbrook streets. It was a sunny day. Accompanied by Lion Lazer, I, Monty Cantsin, today known as Istvan Kantor Monty Cantsin? AMEN!, was sitting on a Neoist Chair, a chair with a Neoism sign attached to the back of the chair, and distributed flyers to passers-by. People were curious to know what Neoism was about. We didn’t have any idea but from the conversations we learned a lot. Thirty-five years later I still have difficulties to explain what is Neoism, however, at the same time, all I can say that it is still the most revolutionary street subvertainment. You agree or not it doesn’t matter.

What matters is that anyone can sit on the Neoist Chair and argue about Neoism or get up and break chair. I propose that you try one of these tomorrow, on may 22nd 2014, and see what happens.

Otherwise you can do whatever you like in the name of Neoism! Our conspiracy is the potential energy of the future, present and past. We are not subject to the lies of science. Thank you for your gold and blood and in the name of all Neoists I declare that we love you!

We are for perpetual change and total freedom!

Monty Cantsin

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Istvan Kantor

IT HAS IT HAS IT HAS IT HAS IT HAS IT HAS IT HAS IT HAS IT HAS BEEN IT HAS BEEN IT HAS BEEN IT HAS BEEN IT HAS BEEN IT HAS BEEN IT HAS BEEN IT HAS BEEN IT HAS BEEN GOING ON IT HAS BEEN GOING ON IT HAS BEEN GOING ON IT HAS BEEN GOING ON IT HAS BEEN GOING ON IT HAS BEEN GOING ON IT HAS BEEN GOING ON IT HAS BEEN GOING ON IT HAS BEEN GOING ON IT HAS BEEN GOING ON IT HAS BEEN GOING ON IT HAS BEEN GOING ON IT HAS BEEN GOING ON IT HAS BEEN GOING ON IT HAS BEEN GOING ON TOO LONG IT HAS BEEN GOING ON TOO LONG IT HAS BEEN GOING ON TOO LONG IT HAS BEEN GOING ON TOO LONG IT HAS BEEN GOING ON TOO LONG IT HAS BEEN GOING ON TOO LONG IT HAS BEEN GOING ON TOO LONG IT HAS BEEN GOING ON TOO LONG IT HAS BEEN GOING ON TOO LONG IT HAS BEEN GOING ON TOO LONG IT HAS BEEN GOING ON TOO LONG IT HAS BEEN GOING ON TOO LONG IT HAS BEEN GOING ON TOO LONG IT HAS BEEN GOING ON TOO LONG IT HAS BEEN GOING ON TOO LONG IT HAS BEEN GOING ON TOO LONG

Istvan Kantor

I’M TELLING YOU I’M TELLING YOU I’M TELLING YOU I’M TELLING YOU I’M TELLING YOU I’M TELLING YOU I’M TELLING YOU I’M TELLING YOU I’M TELLING YOU I’M TELLING YOU I’M TELLING YOU I’M TELLING YOU OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN AGAIN AGAIN AGAIN AGAIN AGAIN I’M TELLING YOU OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN I’M TELLING YOU OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN I’M TELLING YOU OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN I’M TELLING YOU OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN I’M TELLING YOU OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN I’M TELLING YOU OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN I’M TELLING YOU I’M TELLING YOU I’M TELLING YOU I’M TELLING YOU I’M TELLING YOU I’M TELLING YOU I’M TELLING YOU I’M TELLING YOU I’M TELLING YOU I’M TELLING YOU I’M TELLING YOU I’M TELLING YOU I’M TELLING YOU I’M TELLING YOU I’M TELLING YOU I’M TELLING YOU I’M TELLING YOU I’M TELLING YOU I’M TELLING YOU I’M TELLING YOU I’M TELLING YOU I’M TELLING YOU I’M TELLING YOU I’M TELLING YOU

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THE BOOK OF NEOISM?!

ENDLESS NOTES FROM THE NEOIST?! PLUNDERGROUND

[since 1979]

A (DE)DEFINITION HYPERVAGANZA 6 VOLUMES (ABOUT 500 PAGES) OF PURE NONSENSE THAT PROMISES TO BE THE MOST FUTILE AND THE MOST CONFUSING LITERARY WORK OF ALL TIMES. ####Istvan Kantor (a) Monty Cantsin? AMEN!

The BOOK of NEOISM?! is based the concept of my accumulationist theory that takes everything for free values expanding in non-linear history’s timeless zone of vertical reality. In vertical reality, symbolized by the six o’clock arrow, past, present and future are not separated but everything happens and accumulates simultaneously at the same time at six o’clock. That’s where the definition of NEOISM?! is: in this confusing mess of millions of accumulating ideas.

The BOOK of NEOISM?! is a massive accummulation of thousands of interchangeable definitions of NEOISM?!. Most of them are simple appropriations taken/stolen from various well known, less known and unknown authors and added, altered, cut, restructured, developed, fucked up, improved, recomposed, destroyed, deteriorated, reorganized, dethroned, revaluated, abused, galvanized, anti-freezed, dehydrated, dehibernated, recontextualized, totalized, reswallowed, welded, remastered, untouched or distorted beyond recognition. Creating thousands of different definitions of NEOISM?! is almost the same as not having written a single definition and therefore leaving the subject (NEOISM?!) open to any interpretation in any directions one can possibly go.

It has been declared many time by both masochist Neoists?! and sadist antiNeoists!? that NEOISM?! is nothing but worthless rhetoric. To repeat this again and again is important because the secret force of NEOISM?! is in repetition.

Repeating worthless ideas is basically corresponds with meditation methods of Yoga and the teachings of Tao. Is that to say therefore that there is a direct line that connects NEOISM?! to Taoism via Yoga? NEOISM?! is not only the story of my experience with Yoga and Tao but also of Yoga’s and Tao’s experience with me.

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To put together The BOOK of NEOISM?! I appropriated the ideas of Buddhism, Taoism, the Islam, the sayings of Confucius, the Bible, the Vedas, The Complete Idiot’s Guide series, the Gilgamesh, Zionism, idiots, murderers, gangsters, pop-stars, sex workers, unknown heroes, my father, the Catholic Church, the Rivington School, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, children books, the ideology of Fascism, Communism, Capitalism, Socialism, Anarchy and Nihilism, all the philosophers from Aristotle and Plato to Baudrillard via Hegel, Kierkegaard, Fourier, Marx, Sartre, Marcuse, McLuhan, Reich, all the isms of the avant-garde from Dada to Post-Modernism via Surrealism, Futurism, Lettrism, Situationism, Fluxus, Actionism, Noism, Fuckism, Whatism, Stupidism, all the ideas of scientific and visionary minds from Descartes to Joe Davis via Galilei, Newton, Einstein, Edison, Tesla, Stephen W. Hawking.

I also reused and integrated the ideas of revolutionaries and anarchists like Bakunin, Kropotkin, Lenin, Trotsky, Emiliano Zapata, Buenaventura Durutti, Emma Goldman, Rosa Luxemburg, Che Guevara, Abbie Hoffman, Ulrike Meinhof, Gudrun Ensslin, Guy Debord, David Zack, writers and poets like Endre Ady, Orwell, Camus, Henry Miller, Ginsberg, J.G.Ballard, Bob Black, Hakim Bey, Kathy Acker, Blaster Al Ackerman.

I robbed the intellect of occultist Aleister Crowley, starving fuck-off genius tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE, and countless others from Krishna to Hitler, from Michelangelo to Dali, from Charles Manson to Jack Smith, from Wagner to Robert Filliou, from Eric Satie to Yves Klein, and also Marinetti, Tatlin, Cornelius Cardew, Kaprow, Gina Pane, Vaneigem, Sari Dienes, Genesis P-Orrige, JuppiterLarsen, and more and more and many many many endless more. Their names imprinted on my mind and are also listed at the end of each chapter.

The BOOK of NEOISM?! is characterized by its exalted uselessness and voluminous emptiness. Because The BOOK of NEOISM?! is just pure bullshit and unreadable claptrap it can be considered a perfect masterpiece, an opus dei or opera omnia of NEOISM?!. The only purpose of NEOISM?! is to simulate and to pretend that NEOISM?! is actually a real movement with real philosophical background.

The BOOK of NEOISM?! is only one example and just a small part of the mind provoking massive chaos of definitions that surrounds our mental and physical space. The BOOK of NEOISM?! attempts, once and for all, to define NEOISM?!, and, at the same time, to make the definition of NEOISM?! impossible, through an endless flow of (de)definitions.

NEOISM?! is only a name and should stay only a name, so anyone can use it, without restrictions, without any rules, anytime, anywhere, and in any ways.

Call yourself Monty Cantsin! Do everything in the name of NEOISM?!.

THE BEAUTY OF VANDALISM AND THE SPECTACLE OF NOISE AND DECAY AT THE GATE OF THE ZEROES

[1998]

AN INCLUSIVE SELF-INTERVIEW WITH/BY ISTVAN KANTOR MONTY CANTSIN AMEN!

The Beauty of Vandalism page 1 Bring art to an end through abolishing the art object was a 20th century game with lots of losers and failed revolutions: the art object, guarded by police barricades and high-tech security systems, survived all assault led by the traitors and criminals of art, among them conceptual artists, situationists, actionists, social and political activists, guerilla art groups, anti-institutionalists and other subversive elements of the worldwide neoist scum. But there are signs that the game is not completely over yet and the rest of the desperate players are still trying to undermine the ruling system of commodity-art. According to Lenin, Marx considered rebellion as art and declared that rebellion has to be handled as art.

Istvan Kantor Monty Cantsin AMEN!, is known for playing this bloody art as rebellion/rebellion as art game for not less than three decades. A prominent figure of today’s trans-ultra-terrorist hyper-radical post-neo-popo-corn-pornzero-art movements, Kantor literarily and deliberately bloodied some of the cathedrals of art while developing his long term project Blood Campaign.

He is actively involved in the global anti-business of destruction-art, and formulated his own theories of criminal-art and vandalism since the 70s. He has accumulated criminal records in many countries including Canada, USA, France, Germany, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Romania, Italy. He is best known as the founder of Neoism?! (1979) and co-initiator of the Monty Cantsin open-pop-star project (1976). Kantor/Cantsin lived in Budapest, Paris, Montreal, New York and presently he co-ordinates the worldwide operations of his office in Toronto.

The following interview/dialogue (monologue?) with Kantor was conducted by the artist himself. Please note that as the interviewer and the subject of the interview are the same person there is no reason to determine who is which and which is who.

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The Beauty of Vandalism page 2 You (I) use different elements of assault and gestures of vandalism in your (my) work, like for example the demolition of monuments, the defacing, burning and breaking of objects, the wrecking of furniture, the splashing of blood on museum walls, the making of unbearable noise via excessive and risky body actions expanded with the use of scrapmetal objects and furniture robots.

You (I) set the ambient climate of destruction and conflicts, you(I) create critical open-situations and crises in order to achieve the necessary intensity to demonstrate your(my) ideas and to confront power and authority. Destruction seems to be your(my) ultimate tool of transformation that allows you (me) to investigate and subvert the act of creation. Besides your(my) museum crimes you(me) also like to explore different kind of intellectually and physically assaulting methods of destruction, from breaking objects to generating noise.

Let me first say that the Art of Destruction is a very poetical post-monumental subject in ruins with disappearing names, collapsed ideas, demolished arguments, decaying historical documents, crushed events, wiped out symposiums. Today it’s a phantasy land for airbrush painters for the new millennium, like Luis Royo. It’s a college student/professor paradise that sometime also produces strong, new talents like Jubal Brown. Look at some of the jeans and work wear commercials by DIESEL, for example, or remember the Batman movie with Jack Nicholson as the Joker wrecking artworks in the museum scene. The Art of Destruction is an image bank for big stars and big bucks. As a radical form it’s dated, it’s over, it self-destroyed, it’s dead.

So it might sound disappointing for you (and for me) that I’m still involved with such a recuperated and discredited form. But I basically don’t intend to destroy anything. I would like to keep everything as they are and where they are for ever. I like to accumulate things. I don’t even want to touch anything, just watch and observe. But even pleasing inactivity can become an act of vandalism that radically destroys the obstacles of creativity. That’s what I call fuck-offrevolutionary machinery.

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The Beauty of Vandalism page 3 For a recent performance event in Toronto I did something I haven’t done for a long time: stayed almost completely motionless for the duration of an event, holding an empty cookie jar. I have done very static, durational performances in the 70s and early 80s, always focusing on one simple gesture, like a yoga exercise, that got amplified by the timing process. LIVING SCULPTURE (Budapest/1974) or IT WAS VERY NICE TO SEE YOU AND TALK ABOUT REVOLUTION (Montreal/1979), are a couple of examples. I never really gave up that sort of “tableau vivant” expression but incorporated it as an element in my more structured, multi-layered pieces. Because one single gesture just didn’t seem to be enough for me to demonstrate my idea of vertical expansion.

I needed to explore simultaneity, confusion and decay and I could only achieve that by integrating lots of layers of information in one work. In the cookie jar performance, THAT’S HOW I WANT TO BE REMEMBERED (1998), I included mostly ideas concerning the destruction of objects in a narrative form by explaining my gesture later in the evening. And finally I broke the jar. But that jar was already broken at the beginning anyway. I mean theoretically I didn’t really have to break it. On the other hand, in a timeless zone it would have stayed unbroken even after the breaking. And that’s why I propose that it’s always 6 o’clock because only in a timeless zone we can keep everything as they are.

6 o’clock means vertical expansion, that is, in other words, the accumulation of everything at the same time. An idea that makes linear history obsolete and thus annihilates time and history. That’s what I call the theory of accumulation that I’m still developing through different practical methods. Of course my theory is only a poetical proposal, a contemplation over the circumstances of creation and destruction. But there is a British physicist, Julian Barbour, who confronts the theory of time we adapted from Newton and Einstein. He has been called time’s assassin. Barbour argues that we live in an eternal present without past and future where everything coexists and we are all alive and dead at the same instant. As an analogue he uses the phenomenon of sub-atomic particles which have the capacity to exist in two different places at the same time.

The Beauty of Vandalism page 4 In this timeless zone of accumulations, the Art of Destruction, this decadent form of artistic refusal and negation, can only survive under its own ruins. It’s a mess of bloody shit, broken parts and confusion, like a compost. And that’s why it can remain a very fertile ground for inspiration.

Take for example the Auto-Destructive Art Manifesto (1959) of Gustav Metzger, the piano destructions by Raphael Montanez Ortiz (60s to date), the monumental tv-destruction performance “Media Burn” by Ant Farm (1975), the spray paint museum actions by Alexander Brener (1997) and Tony Shafrazi (1974), the giant mess rituals by Johanna Went (80s), the violent fuck-off transgressions of G.G. Allin (80s, early 90s), the horror movie style stage shows by Kembra Pfahler (80s) and Joe Coleman (80s), the orgiastic taboo acts by Carolee Schneemann (60s), Paul McCarthy (70s/80s), Otto Muhl (60s), Hermann Nietsch (60s to date), the vomit solos and sledgehammer attacks on objects by Jubal Brown (97/98), the tv destructions by Wolf Vostell (60s) and tv-image distortions by Nam June Paik (60s), Henry Flynt’s pamphlet “Down With Art” (1968), the Black and Decker diva actions of Ghera (90s), the search for an absolute architecture through the wrecking of a house by Jean-Pierre Raynaud (1993), the SRL mayhem performances with the use of robots (80s), the riot concerts by Missing Foundation (80s), the ambient noise of Phycus (90s), the scrapmetal events of the Rivington School (80s). “The vision of the Guggenheim Museum in ruins” is the title of an art work by Komar and Melamid (1970s). “Conscious Vandalism” (1975) is a work of art by Arman who also used to set furniture on fire. Lets not forget the cut-up novels and shotgun paintings by William S. Borroughs. Or the “Erased De Koonig” (1953)

by Rauchenberg. Robert Filliou’s art anniversary project is basically an attempt to bring art to a slow death through the process of increasing celebrations and without any destructive violence. Guy Debord’s war with the institution of art was direct political action that ended on real barricades. And Duchamp, Cage, Klein, Manzoni, Yoko Ono, Ray Johnson, Sari Dienes are on the list as well. The Dadaists destroyed all the words (10s), the Lettrists annihilated all the idols (50s), the Neoists (80s) eliminated originality. I have a publication titled “A Guide to Art Vandalism Tools: Their History and Their Use: an Illustrated Encyclopedia” by Steven Goss. It contains information mostly about museum crimes, attacks on art works done with the use of hammer, scissors, ink, knives, paint, lipstick, guns, acid, spray paint.

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The Beauty of Vandalism page 5 Perhaps I can also fit here the recent removals of statues and monuments in ex-communist countries or even the demolition of the Berlin Wall, not to mention the sledgehammer destruction of Confucian temples by Red Guards in the 60s. All these things, names and ideas, are accumulating in the rubble of history of the Art of Destruction. And this rubble is my living territory.

Everybody is using broken pieces of information found in the rubble. And some people try to put copyright on them which is very absurd, but, on the other hand, it creates another field of conflict where authority can be challenged through the maze of plunderground. There are various forms and methods of plagiarism. Something I (you) like to explore. Vertical expansion, or vertical reality as you (I) also like to call it, is an extremely contradictory field of theory where we can freely appropriate any ideas. We have to use a language that integrates everything otherwise it would sound completely fake and unrealistic, like a five minute stupid love song lie.

Yes, lies are only useful when they subvert reality. My mission is to provoke, confront, challenge the facts of everyday reality, time and decay. Two years ago, during the opening of my exhibition at the Black Black Gallery in Budapest I’ve got arrested and thrown in jail under totally absurd circumstances. And all I did was a performance that consisted of a very minimal action, me sitting on a chair and whispering to the visitors concerning a new revolution I was about to start. I told them I was the spectre of Neoism?! and was able to transmit my ideas through telepathic means using a coat hanger antenna attached to my head. Apparently someone called the police suspecting I was part of a religious sect, perhaps spreading the ideas of a satanist cult. They came and didn’t leave until they found a good reason to arrest me. Subverting reality challenges retaliation.

We got used to the idea that nothing lasts for ever, everything has to die, must disappear. Immortality is yet impossible. Everything last only maybe for a second and then turns into something else.

The Beauty of Vandalism page 6 Every second has its own history that gets destroyed, gets vandalised by the next one. Hours, decades, centuries, millennia... they all mean destruction.

In our technological society survival and peace are controlled by the instruments of mass destruction. War is an ongoing thing, on the surface and also deep in our mind. Everything gets broken, both objects and ideas.

That’s the ambience that surrounds me, the noise of the machinery that makes and destroys things. There are different systems, but they are all interconnected through technology. The best example is now the internet that connects basically everything with everything. One of my recent sculptural work, EXECUTIVE MACHINERY (1996) explores this situation the most extreme way, slamming the drawers of data storage furniture, I mean file cabinets. It simulates the real machinery that is an office-system all over the world, composed by file cabinets, computers and people. Information stored in the hardware of cabinets gets digitized and manipulated through the electronic system and then stored again in drawers. The opening and closing of the drawers of file cabinets is part of the noise of information processing, manipulation and destruction. If we could accumulate all the noise file cabinets make in only one minute, it would sound like a postmillennial noisesymphony by the trans-techno-archangels of destruction. That’s the kind of vextatic earritainment I like to explore with my machines in order to make a definitive but rather poetical statement. Noise especially became important in my work during the second half of the 80s when I lived in New York and joined the Rivington School. The School operated in the Lower East Side and explored junk sculpture, scrapmetal noise, graffiti, rebellion. I documented the School’s work through a super8 film, ANTI-CREDO (1987), that immortalized the construction and destruction of the Rivington School Sculpture Garden.

Using an empty lot at the corner of Rivington and Forsyth streets the School created a giant scrapmetal maze that became an important architectural and artistic site of the local landscape. The Garden became the victim of development and got destroyed by a wrecking crew hired by the city.

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The Beauty of Vandalism page 7 Development is definitely based on the act of vandalism. That’s what linear history tells us. Every city, every place that has vanished from history first had to be destroyed. And usually not by the elements of nature but by people, by the act of wars arising from human conflicts that were conditioned by emotions, culture, education, religions, poverty and the struggle for power. And that’s what interests me the most, power and authority in technological society. And when I talk about technological society I mean the whole scale of history, starting with the walls of Jericho, the tower of Babylon and the cuneiform tablets of Nineveh. When I look for material in a junkyard I feel like I’m standing on the ruins of Babylon. It sounds like a hallucinatory experience, but again, I’m using the theory of accumulations and for me the expansion of time is vertical. The rubble of history is mixed with the ruins of present decay.

That’s basically the subject of your (my) video trilogy, the Anti-Cities, that includes JERICHO (1991), BABYLON (1994) and NINEVEH (1997). You (I) also gave your (my) children the same names. You (I) are completely obsessed with vanished cities and the theoretical function of the decay of technological society in your (my) everyday life. Seems like you (I) stepped beyond the “society of the spectacle”, jumped right into the background, crawled under the ruins, focusing on the spectacle of noise and decay. The ambient surface of ruins, that superficial territory of everyday life that is only visited by tourists and archeologists, that has never been explored by anyone else, that stayed untouched even by the Situationists.

It’s the territory of children. Every child knows that destroying things is lots of fun. Just watch little kids at the playground, in the sandbox. Most of the time when they build a sandcastle they already know at the very beginning that at the end they will destroy it. It’s like a collective ritual to be repeated over and over again. It’s like a mirror of history. That’s why we make them sandboxes, so they can learn how to build and destroy, how to play with the elements of creation and destruction, how to combine them.

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The Beauty of Vandalism page 8 Destroying sandcastles, breaking toys, stabbing teddy bears, tearing pages from books, scribbling on walls, turning over furniture, etc. are part of the everyday events of children’s life. Part of a constant play what we can call the art of childhood. Interestingly enough such artistic acts that involve the use of destruction often get criticised as childish, juvenile, immature, etc. The Situationists were afraid everything that could be criticised as childish activity.

We are not. We know that we get our best ideas when we are children. So we try to remain children. And you cant criticise a child for being childish.

Their behaviour is definitely a genetic response that has been programmed in our control system millions of years ago. But I’m (you’re) not so much interested in discussing the scientific and historical aspects of destruction. I (you) would rather continue focusing on your (my) own artistic ideas and activities directly concerned with destruction, vandalism and crime.

Ok. Let me add something to what I’ve just said about the art of childhood. The 1956 revolution in Hungary was definitely the most decisive event of my whole life. I was six years old and I directly experienced every aspects of it: destruction, blood, ruins. I had a toy gun made by my grandfather from firewood. One day I slipped out from the bunker where my family has been sheltered, run out to the street and pointed my toy gun to an armored car. It stopped, a soldier jumped out and came toward me. I ran back to the building. For the next couple of hours a bunch of tanks surrounded the building causing fear and panic among the residents of the bunker. Lots of young kids were firing real guns and throwing Molotov cocktails at Russian tanks those days. I consider that toy gun action a real piece of art. It was a real piece of childhood art.

A totally innocent gesture that got retaliated by real military force. Peter Pan against the pirates. And it already incorporated certain strategic elements you (I) later employed in museum interventions.

The Beauty of Vandalism page 9 That’s true, a very important remark. Basically I have done everything when I was six years old. I have a collection of defaced items including family photos with my pencil marks, ink spots, or my father’s official documents, for example, damaged by my graffiti. Whatever I have done later I can trace back it’s origin to my childhood. Like my “Neoist Passports” (also know as Lost Passports) are good examples. I have circulated them through the mail-art network in the late 70s asking everyone to make marks in them. They were my official travel documents from Hungary, the red one was for communist countries in the Eastern Block and the blue one for the West. I kept using the blue one until my arrival to Canada (1977), already filled with notes, signatures, rubber stamps, drawings by mail-artists. From David Zack to Cavellini via Anna Banana, Buster Cleveland, Dr Al Ackerman, Art Lover, tENTATIVELY and many others. Then I got a new brown travel document or homeless passport which I used for the next few years and again I asked artists to sign it. I considered their signatures as visas. Among the visa-signatures were John Cage and Robert Filliou. This passport got stolen from me in New York in 1981.

Both, the Monty Cantsin open-pop-star project and NEOISM?! were part of the mail-art phenomena in their early stages. Mail-art was the perfect vehicle for spreading the ideas of Neoism?! through short sentences like “Anyone can be Monty Cantsin”, or “Do everything in the name of Neoism?!”. The official, post-modern, institutional art world could never swallow such anti-theoretical, immature statements. Neoism?! was designed to resist and reject established art and museum culture at all costs. It was evident that such shit-shows like the BRING YOUR MONTY CANTSIN(S) (march 25 - April 1, 1988) group exhibition I organized in collaboration with the Rivington School, for example, had to be held at such anti-establishment places like the Crystal Palace, a filthy, run down bar in New York’s Bowery. Though this was not a mail-art show it reflected all the characteristics of mail-art mixed with the fucked-upness of junk-art aesthetics of the Rivington School.

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The Beauty of Vandalism page 10 Mail-art was an anti-art form heralding the idea of interactive direct communication that annihilated the old fashion creator-artwork-public aspect of art and turned everyone into artists. Adding ideas, notes, signs to each others works, which, in many ways incorporated the act of vandalism, was a regular method of mail-art actions. Mail-artists eliminated the need of art galleries and museums, turning the postal network into an ongoing exhibition. They often got into trouble with authorities for circulating art, what was considered sexually explicit, obscene or politically subversive material, through the international mail system. This anti-institutional, provocative aspect of mail-art corresponds with the theories of the art of destruction. Mailart was a hothouse for new, confrontational, radical ideas, a playground for those obsessed with the idea of total freedom.

Most of your (my) projects in the 70s and 80s were connected to mail-art. As you (I) said it before, the Monty Cantsin open-pop-star project and Neoism?! both began as a mail-art projects, spreading and developing through the mailart network. There are many important names attached to this period, among them David Zack and Dr Al Ackerman. Zack died in 1995 after spending a few years in prison in Mexico. His involvement in nut art, communication art, mailart and then in Neoism, from the 60s until his death is something that should be researched and perhaps saved in a book. Most of his works got destroyed by the circumstances of his chaotic life. Him and Ackerman were instrumental in training you (me) to become a subversive.

That’s absolutely right. That was in 1978 in Portland, Oregon, at the Portland Academy, that was basically the living quarters of Zack and Ackerman, extended with clubs, bars, churches, abandoned buildings, the streets, the Smegma house and some nonprofit art centers. It was a very intensive situation with constant brainstorming and experimentation. One of my unpublished manuscripts THE ORIGIN OF MONTY CANTSIN(S) sums up this period in the form of a biblical novel that is based on my diary.

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The Beauty of Vandalism page 11 From Portland you (I) went back to Montreal and initiated Blood Campaign, a work in progress since 1979. According to you (me) “the aim of Blood Campaign is to finance the operations of the Neoist conspiracy by selling my blood as an art object.”

Yes, blood and Neoism were going together. And the first performances of Blood Campaign also incorporated the participation of the entire mail-art network, and most of the time the participation of local Neoists as well. Lion Lazer (today known as Zilon), Kiki Bonbon, Zbigniew Brotgehirn, Yana, Terre Z, Michelle Febvre, R. U. Sevol, Moondog, Adrenalin, Napoleon Moffat, Mr. Green, Boris Wanowitch, Frater Neo, 1175 X Agent, Y. Steel, Tintin, Bill Vorn, Louise Litsz, Bretty Nova, Neam Cathod, Valertie Figoli, Nathalie Mongeau, Marianne Lebas, Gary Singerman, Li-San Tibodo and others. RED SUPPER (1979), for example, was held at Véhicule Art, in Montreal. The performance consisted of a blood taking action involving a nurse and the making of a soup using all the “ingredients” received through the mail. In order to make the soup I basically destroyed all the material that was sent to me by cutting them up, tearing them to pieces, mixing them together in a pot, soaking them in water and blood and serving the International Mail-Art Soup to the audience. It was an ironic gesture but also a liberating, radical way of getting rid of the art object. I had a constant dialogue in my head debating about the final end of art, adding new ideas to the ongoing annihilation of art that was necessitated by the equation made between art and life. That’s what I demonstrated in REFUS (1980/Montreal), an anti-installation/performance that took place at No-Galero (my own apartment). I sat on the toilet in my bathroom all day long and typed the same phrase over and over again “No Performance Pas”. I pulled back and taped my dick into my legs to give myself a rather asexual appearance. The bathroom door was open but I covered it with a semi-transparent golden, mylar sheet, so you could see me only when I turned the light on inside. I did this for about two weeks. The end of 70s, the beginning of 80s were extremely important for me. I was completely seduced and activated by the “life is art, art is life” and “everybody is an artist” theories I learned from David Zack, Joseph Beuys, Robert Filliou, Ray Johnson, Sari Dienes. Breaking chairs was one of my routine like actions of this period, a somewhat violent demonstration but still a very poetical statement.

The Beauty of Vandalism page 12 I had to show that I didn’t make art, I lived art and so the audience was not necessary. And the mail-art network was a perfect and very fertile ground for this kind of discourse. Usually nobody got pissed for anything but rather added to the ideas. On the back of a postcard invitation of another mail-art action I organised around the same period, titled MUSÉE (1980), I clearly stated that “I will put your art in a barrel and throw it in the ocean.” And it wasn’t just a joke, I did it. But I kept part of the soup in a jar expecting new life to arise from this semi-alchemistic experience. In later years, by the end of the 80s, mail-art degenerated into routine like shows focusing on crafty exhibitions and it was not serving anymore its original function of noninstitutional, direct communication. I sent back insulting letters to all mail-art invitations I received in order to subvert the weakening network and to put mail-art back into revolution. But the response was very disappointing and eventually I gave it up.

You (I) also kept doing more and more propaganda for Neoism through mail-art and apartment festivals. The apartment festival concept, “a cheap holiday in someone else’s misery”, immediately took off and it became an international method to spread Neoism. Events were held in Montreal, Berlin, Baltimore, New York, Toronto, Novi-Sad, Amsterdam, Paris, London, Tepoztlán, Budapest and elsewhere. Meanwhile, to get back to our previous subject, you (I) also executed a series of Supper performances under different circumstances and mostly in different cities. Hallowmass Supper/Montreal, Seizmik Supper/Ukiah/ California, Counter Supper/Portland/Oregon, Midnite Supper/Vancouver/ British Columbia, always involving blood and mail-art. Police interventions, audience fainting, gallery censorship, shaking nurses conditioned these events.

I was on the road full time, travelling from city to city like a missionary, convincing people to join Neoism and performing wherever and whenever I could. In Ukiah (California) my performance was stopped and ended by the intervention of a nervous hotel-detective who couldn’t handle the blood-kiss part that involved mouth to mouth blood transfer between me and another male performer.

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The Beauty of Vandalism page 13 In Vancouver an unexperienced nurse punctured my veins some 16 times while trying to draw blood from my arms. Meanwhile several members of the audience fainted. One of them was taken to the back room to take a rest.

He probably didn’t know that it was my change room. When I went back there after the performance, naked, my dick taped between my legs to achieve an asexual look, bleeding from my punctured arms, my mouth and face bloodied by the final blood kiss action, he fainted again and was hospitalized. These obscure, characteristic episodes formed a ring of legends around Neoism and conditioned the ambience of further events. Of course I was very conscious about the usefulness of scandals and police interventions and that they were working for us, helping us to gain access to the media.

Blood Campaign has grown into a monster project of hundreds of performances each of which incorporated the act of blood taking that was usually done by professional nurses, doctors or by yourself (myself). But your (my) blood performances were not orgiastic and theatrical taboo rituals like the happenings of Vienna Actionists but rather demonstrations of the clinical act of blood taking where blood taking means blood taking. It was either very short, clean and ironic, sometimes even funny, or painfully long, really bloody and dead serious, mostly depending on the performance of the nurse or doctor.

During the blood taking you (I) usually encourage the audience to ask any questions concerning your (my) work, life, ideas, whatever.

The moment of blood taking creates a clear intensity that is often uncomfortable for the audience and because of that it is perfect situation for making statements. When you sit on a chair at a talk you don’t have to focus on what you see and what you hear. The act of blood taking destroys the comfort of non-participation and draws you into the action. Afterwards I use the blood in different ways, like to make soups or give blood kisses as I described it already above, or I splash the blood on specific objects, like t-shirts, books, newspapers, art works, on people, on the floor, on the sidewalk, on museum walls, into the fire. I splash it on a pregnant belly. I drink it, spit it on my own body, spit it on somebody’s body.

The Beauty of Vandalism page 14 I stick a blood tube into my anus and then go up in a yoga position so the blood can flow from the vial right on my face, to my mouth. I smear it on something, on a pigeon’s white feather for example. I usually keep a vial for my own collection and try to sell another one to an art collector. I make people play blood-lottery. I donate my blood to the red cross. I fry it, mix it with rice and eat it. I let it drip on a hot plate. I use the blood tube for sexual gratification.

The blood-x splash made on the walls of museums, usually between two artworks, is one of your (my) trade marks. Your (my) best known blood-x masterpiece is the one you (I) have done between two Picassos, in New York Museum of Modern Art, in 1988. You (I) also hit the walls of Toronto’s AGO (1989), the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa (1991) and the Musée d’art contemporain, Montreal (1985), to mention a few of the ones you (I) have done in internationally known museums representing the high authority of culture.

I also like to remember the more obscure actions at smaller places as well, like the one I have done on the wall of a chapel in Transylvania, or the one at CBGB gallery in New York, or on the wall of a building in Budapest, or in Sarenco’s gallery in Italy, or in abandoned buildings, in clubs, in my office, in a bathroom, in living rooms, etc. Many of these actions were executed in front of a public but often they were witnessed by only a few close friends. And I should add my most recent one which I have executed during a European performance tour, last summer (July 1st, 1998), at the Ludwig Museum in Köln, Germany. I have a very large archive of these activities, objects, photos, drawings, collages, manifestos, notes, etc. I have had an exhibition that was titled STOCK - THE BEST SHIT OF MY WORST YEARS at Espace Global, 1990, Montreal. I filled the rooms with accumulated material, from snapshots to blood tubes via human bones, expanding from the floor to the ceiling. There was no chronological order, it was completely non-linear, everything at once presentation, reflecting the theory of accumulation.

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The Beauty of Vandalism page 15 That was a formal, organized exhibition with printed invitation and opening.

But many times your (my) works were done under illegal circumstances, exploring the form of guerilla performance, surprise intervention, criminal action and openly relating to the act of vandalism. You (I) have got arrested and imprisoned at several occasions for vandalism, for donating unwanted blood-x works to museums, for defacing the walls and art works.

I usually use empty white walls to make my blood paintings and if some drops fell on a Picasso or on a Rauschenberg, like it happened at the Museum of Modern Art and at the Ludwig Museum, it was not my intention. My intention was to give a gift to the museum that is basically impossible to accept.

Of course I always asked them to keep it until it becomes meaningless, obsolete. And of course they never accepted my donations, quickly eliminated them, washed and painted the walls, cleaned the floors. Should I say that by cleaning up the gallery they vandalized my vandalist work? That would give them too much credit.

You’re (I’m) using extreme situations to trigger a very strong reaction, to exactly define my theory and practice. You (I) have to create a crisis in order to present the cause. The blood x marks the nerve center of this crisis around which circulates people’s opinion, the reality of laws, politics, spirituality, sexuality, and they intertwine to create a chaotic, convulsive and somewhat coherent pattern. That’s your (my) working method. You (I) don’t mind to be called a criminal, in fact you (I) learned that to become an artist first you have to become a criminal.

In Sept/1992 a final decision made by the Rental Board of the City of Montreal forced me to move from my apartment, known as Neoist Embassy, located at 1020 Lajoie, Outremont, Québec, where I lived for more than ten years.

My eviction was the result of investigations carried out by city officials after the landlord’s complaint of blood rituals, sex orgies, satanist ceremonies, neonazi gatherings, destruction, etc. Investigators entered my apartment without permission led by the landlord several times while I was away.

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The Beauty of Vandalism page 16 They searched my rooms and took documents to prove the landlord’s accusations and to convince the City about my illegal and subversive activities.

In their reports they described my apartment in details listing everything that looked suspicious to them: “... the walls were black with red signs on them made by hand... there was also a big white bedsheet hanging on the wall with inscription NEOIST MACHINE GROUP PHYCUS... one door was lacked and signs were stuck to it like NO ENTRY, FIRST AID PRODUCTIONS and SALUT LES RICHES!, ... On the walls in the living room there were drawings made with very dark red.... there was also red paint on the walls and on the radiator... on one of the walls there was a flyer that was given to me by the landlord to take it with me...”

This flyer was later presented by the investigators to the Rental Board as an evidence to prove the accusations. It was an artistic statement in connection with “Blood Campaign”. Written with irony and humour, it was printed in the form of a publicity flyer for an exhibition/performance that took place at Le Lieu, in Québec city, in April/1991. It included the following text: “WHY WOULD YOU DREAM ABOUT SPENDING 80 MILLION OR MORE ON A USED VAN GOGH WHEN YOU CAN HAVE A BRAND NEW, FRESH BLOOD PAINTING OF MONTY CANTSIN FOR FREE!” After a year of legal battle I had no other choice but to accept the decision of the Rental Board of Montreal and get the hell out for there. To make a final statement I turned my eviction into a “retrospective exhibition”.

Besides showing my personal belongings and original works to a video camera, I incorporated falsely identified cardboard boxes reproducing the landlord’s accusations, wearing such signs as “Satanist ceremonies”, “Vandalism”, “Sex orgies”, “Blood rituals”, etc. Of course I also made sure that certain objects of my ill-fated reputation, like my series of blood paintings, my own gold bust, or the gold cage of my rats, for example, were part of the “retrospective”.

The Beauty of Vandalism page 17 I have never really thought about vandalism until I read it in a newspaper that what I was doing was nothing but vandalism. That made me laugh and at that moment I realized that the best is to absorb it as a useful term, recognize it as my own, and employ it without being afraid of it. So I decided that I should not defend myself against the accusation of “nothing but vandalism”, but contrary, I should defend vandalism as the ultimate act of creation. And that became the basic subject of my 1993 Monument Temporaire installation presented by CIAC in Montreal.

On the last day of the exhibition you (I) destroyed the entire installation.

Yeah, with the help of a wrecking crew, using axes, crowbars and hacks. It was also a perfect situation to talk about all the essential elements and necessary circumstances of my work. It was basically a lecture directly illustrated with live action. This is a kind of presentational form I like to explore because this way you keep a close contact with reality, with the actual moment of the performance.

That’s what exactly happens when I do a museum intervention, it’s like an illustrated talk involving the guards, the public, the police, the curators, the director, my co-conspirators, the media, basically the whole system of art and society. Although my CIAC destruction was no illegal action but an officially presented lecture/performance the execution itself has created a very intense atmosphere that subverted and overturned the official context, creating chaos and confusion among the public and lots of distress for the organizers.

For the launching of your new CD NOISE BIBLE (Oct/1997) you (I) burned a thousand books in downtown Toronto, in an empty lot on Bathurst street, between Queen and Dundas, and got away with it without getting arrested. A few months earlier you (I) did a similar bookburning action during a Neoist event in Hungary. In Toronto I distributed sticks and marshmallows among the audience and asked them to make it look like it was a barbeque party. Of course it was only a strategical gesture in case the firemen and police would come and charge me with arson.

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The Beauty of Vandalism page 18 But they only came much later when we were already gone. I got the books from Goodwill for fifty bucks and sprinkled them with various highly flammable liquids. I gave a speech and sang a song before setting the fire contributing a few narrative ideas to the gesture of bookburning. Noise Bible is a CD with a small red book about Neoism?!, an extreme publication providing the perfect occasion to address extreme ideas. It was again that vertical reality situation connecting Bathurst street to world history, from the burning of the Alexandrian library to Fahrenheit 451 via the various religious or political book destruction rituals. People saved some of the books before I set the fire and that was ok with me. I wouldn’t even mind if someone wanted to save them all. I wasn’t burning bibles or any specific books. I wasn’t doing it because I am an enemy of printed information or because I wanted to demonstrate that electronic technology made books obsolete. No. I wasn’t engaged in any dogmatic bullshit. I was interested in the confrontational experience of bookburning. In every aspect of a destructive gesture that is very powerful and very difficult to deal with.

In one of your (my) most recent performance work, OFFICE/BUREAU (1998) that was commissioned by Le Lieu in Quebec for Art Action 1958-1998, you (I) destroyed the entire set of your (my) performance representing the 80s. It was something similar to the above described CIAC event. Except that here you (I) ended the performance with the making of a junk monument, using the broken and unbroken pieces of the set, also including some of the tables and chairs of the audience.

Yes, it demonstrated how the ruins accumulate and form a new surface and a new dimension as well. Ten years before I was almost killed in a fight with a group of artists, in Kassel, Germany, at documenta 8. And there were many other less and more violent or destructive episodes in my life in the 80s instrumental in determining my further involvements, forming a series of decisive moments that were impossible to escape. So the Quebec event was a good occasion to stage my revenge to history. Of course the whole thing wasn’t only about the 80s, but perhaps about the whole century.

The Beauty of Vandalism page 19 What I have done was only a visual play with the idea of vertical reality and accumulation, using the method of destruction as means of expression.

Reality is all in ruins now anyway. We arrived at the gate leading to the Zeroes.

And I think this new epoch will be characterized by what I somehow already summed up in a manifesto twenty years ago by blackening out an unwritten text on an empty page. Actually it wasn’t completely empty. I have put down the title NEOISM MANIFESTO (1979) and one short sentence “neoism has no manifesto”. Then I have made black marker lines, simulating the idea that I have blackened out the rest of a text, and signed it. But, as I said, what I eliminated was actually an unwritten text on a virtually empty page. book covers breaking bread, clocks graffiti at Véhicule found paintings signed Organized Crime Action

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TRANSMISSION MACHINE

[2007]

I’m frightened and I’m ashamed of myself for being frightened.

I’m ashamed of myself for becoming what I have never wanted to become.

And that’s why I am frightened.

I’m a victim of technology for a long time but somehow I always had the strength to resist the system of technology. But now it seems like I lost my life long battle and my revolution has failed.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Please let me tell you what happened. It might be a good learning experience for you and it might help me too to heal my troubled mind through confession therapy.

I have lived for over 50 years now and I have seen life as it is.

I have seen misery, pain, desolation, despair, destruction, fire, blood and everything else. I have been a soldier and a slave.

For a couple of years I also worked as paramedic nurse in Budapest before going to medical university. And of course I have seen lots of people dying.

Mostly ordinary people, common people who died of heart attacks, accidents, suicide… They didn’t have the glorious death of heroes, they didn’t have famous last words.

Many of them died in my arms. And as I looked into their eyes I saw not only fear but also confusion. They were frightened and confused and there was a question in their eyes: why? Were they wondering about why they had to die?

No. They knew one day they will have to die. So then what they were wondering about? Maybe they were wondering about who I was, this strange guy holding them at the very last moment of their life. Could be. But I think what they were really wondering about was something else. I think they were wondering about why they had ever lived!

I always learned from other people. Annabel Chong is one of them. I’m sure most of you also heard about this amazing porn artist who once had sex with 251 men within about 8 hours. That was a world record. And she once said in an interview that “SEX IS GOOD ENOUGH TO DIE FOR.” I repeat, “Sex is good enough to die for.”

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But can I say that, “Art is good enough to die for?”

Well, if art is sex and sex is art then art is good enough to die for. Or if art is revolution and revolution is art then art is good enough to die for as well.

I want to live and die for art!

If it doesn’t make you horny it’s not art!

I was always very curious about prison life. Once when I was in a high security prison the guards and my prison mates thought I was a crazy person, some kind of mental product because even though they beat me up and sexually abused me I kept being friendly to everyone. I let them gang bang me in the shower or to punch my face until I was bathing in my own blood. For some reason my behavior irritated them and soon I got transferred to a psychiatric institute. There I had to wear a red armband because I was considered a

dangerous criminal and the red armband was a sign of dangerous criminals.

And I kept wearing it ever since.

Once, very long time ago, maybe millions of years ago, I was a monolith.

You know what is a monolith. It is a large cube, a single massive stone. It’s also called “prima material.” I was a very dark monolith, a black monolith.

I radiated free signals. In other words I was a single standing transmission unit.

I transmitted free information in different parts of the universe simultaneously at once. Because just like a subatomic particle that can be at least two places at the same time I was standing erect at several places at the same time.

I was standing here on the Earth, and I was also on the Moon and on the Jupiter, and maybe elsewhere. I don’t remember everything. But I know that I had transmitted free creative information and I played a principal role in initiating civilization.

Then I turned into a file cabinet.

File cabinets are monolithic sculptural objects made to store information.

How boring to be a file cabinet one can say. No, not at all. It was very exciting.

I was filled with information most of the time but sometime I was empty. People pushed thick files of information in my body, they were moving drawers in and out of my body, they stuffed me with their ideas. I was excited all the time, it was like a constant intercourse, a spontaneous orgasmic performance. And soon I got connected to other file cabinets all around the world through the electronic networks. People digitized all the information that was stored in me.

They turned it into invisible numbers. And all the information that was stored in my body was sent to other file cabinets via the computer system. And on the other end they turned the digital information into hard copies again. They just kept making hard copies of everything. Therefore they needed more and more file cabinets. In spite of the dominating force of digital technology the information storage furniture industry is still growing, getting bigger.

As a file cabinet I became very interested in information society, in information systems. I learned a lot through experience again. I learned that there was information exchange at many different levels and that information production was under the control of a higher system of protection and surveillance.

I learned that the flow of information wasn’t free at all. I learned that information technology controlled the world through the broadcast systems. I learned that broadcasting became the most powerful system of global control.

Once I was known as Wilhelm Reich.

I was a psychoanalyst, many of you probably heard of me.

I was a student of Freud who was very interested in sexual behavior as part of his psychoanalytical research. But I went further than him. I summed up my theory in one short sentence: “Sex is the driving force of society.”

But my ideas were not welcomed by the political parties of those times. The communist kicked me out from the communist party and the Nazis burned

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all my books. I escaped to the United States where I continued my research.

I became convinced that the universe was filled with pulsating bio-energy.

I called it orgone energy. I observed that the human body was enveloped in this energy. When it wasn’t then it was not healthy. I realized that I could heal people with orgone energy. I made orgone energy accumulators. These were boxes made of layers of organic sheets and metal sheets. They were big enough for a person to sit in it. The orgone energy cabinet accumulated orgone energy and radiated it to the person sitting inside the box. I only made a limited number of these furniture like orgone accumulators but I considered it a very successful experience. When I wanted to disseminate my ideas and distribute the accumulators the US government intervened. History repeated itself. My books were burnt and my orgone energy accumulators were destroyed. I was arrested and I died in prison just about 50 years ago, 1957.

When I was Adolf Hitler I murdered millions of people. But I also made millions of people believe in me. They trusted me and followed my commands.

I promised them the most powerful empire ever existed on Earth. I achieved my power through broadcast technology, through broadcast radio. It was a very new and important invention. People were hypnotized by my voice through radio broadcast. That’s how I disseminated nazi ideology and created the Third Reich. I took the idea from Lenin who did the same thing with communism. He created communist ideology and the Soviet Union with the help of broadcast technology. And that’s how politicians work today as well. Except that they have many new tools. I don’t have to explain that to you. There is no political power without broadcasting power and no one has the authority of broadcasting without a reliable and closely co-operating political system.

Now that I’m Istvan Kantor and I live in Toronto I’m more and more interested in revolution. As I told you at the beginning of my speech I’m afraid that my revolution has failed. I was 6 years old when the Hungarian Revolution happened. And I wanted to be part of it. I somehow slipped out from the air raid shelter and I pointed my toy gun to a Russian tank from behind a tree. The tank stopped and a soldier jumped out. I ran back in the house and hid in the dark.

They surrounded the block and were looking for the boy. There were lots of little boys then playing heroic revolutionaries.

I kept playing it throughout my life. As a result I was kicked out, evicted, banned, deported, arrested and jailed. Ever since my arrival in Toronto my life was centered on gentrification. Toronto is a capital of gentrification.

It’s a very trendy subject here. For many people it means the upgrading of old neighborhoods through evictions, demolishing of buildings, relocation of people against their will. For others it means the victory of real estate, luxury homes, new businesses and higher profit.

But gentrification is not only about the city and the neighborhoods. It is about people’s mind, the way they live and think. Everything has been gentrified

not only the neighborhood. The arts had been gentrified; the museum and galleries have been gentrified. The libraries, theaters, parliaments, the streets, subways, police stations, hospitals, the church, the beaches, the train stations and airports, they were all gentrified. And gentrification couldn’t be done without broadcast technology. Broadcast technology is the driving force of gentrification. It’s been already quite a few years that we are staring at those shiny, bright, glossy, friendly pulsating displays, screens, monitors. Their hypnotic shiny power is undeniable and we know that for a long time. Shinism rules. I’m not telling you anything new here. We live under the dominating control of broadcast technology and we embrace it. We call it freedom.

Why do you think the AGO is building a 300 million $ façade? It will be a monument of shinism, a gigantic shiny screen made from titanium and glass, a titanic glossy surface of command and control. It will pull people inside the AGO like a magnet. And inside the AGO there will be more shiny art.

Why do you think the AGO didn’t want me to mix my blood into the new walls.

I proposed them that I will mix my blood and other people’s blood into the walls to create an invisible monument that pays tribute to the slaves of the arts. That pays tribute to those who lived and died for art. And for sex and revolution. But my blood is too dark and the AGO didn’t want my dark blood to be associated with their new shiny building.

They want shiny art, like the new at of Damian Hirst. You know the famous British artist who recently made a human skull sculpture from 100 million $ worth of diamonds. And this sculpture will be exhibited in the most important

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museums of the world. And then it will be sold for 5 hundred million or more to one of the honorary members of global gentrification.

Gentrification denies everything that is dark because it reminds them of the dark ages when there was no broadcast technology yet. Even dark chocolate is too bitter for them.

I wonder what happened to the 10 million $ damage I caused in the Museum of Modern Art in 1988. I was charged with felony for causing 10 million $ damage to a Picasso with a few drops of my own dark blood. Even though they cleaned it up with some warm water and a few cue tips the museum claimed 10 million$ damage. Being considered an anti-art artist this 10 million $ damage equals 10 million $ worth of art or damage-art. If I can create 10 million $ damage-art with a few drops of my blood on a Picasso then imagine how much more money Damien Hirst can create with the power of 100 million $ worth of diamonds?

It’s evident that art in a gentrified society means nothing else than the creation of money from money.

You can’t just mix together some dirt, dust, mud, blood, salt and water and call it art. The “prima materia” of today’s shiny art is money. The intense processing of information generates lots of heat in my body. While my head is

spinning my cooling system also works hard.

I am a transmission machine. Like everyone else. I transmit heat, sounds, voices, I radiate light, and all kinds of other signals, psychotronic, telepathic, extrasensorial, and I also transmit biochemical substances. I transmit more or less information under different conditions. My information transmission becomes almost overwhelming during orgasmic function and almost incomprehensible during a revolution. During epileptic seizure the body’s information production surpasses all limits.

Transmission machines like me are independent units only transmitting directly from one to another. However lately, with all the new technology furnishing our homes we are also part of the global broadcasting system. We are the ones who pay the rent to the techlords and keep the Rentagon in business. We are feeding the parasites so they can parasite us even more. It’s not anymore the legendary magician, the wonderful OZ neither the control freak mighty Big Brother standing at the wheels of control. It’s a global system of higher technology that operates through broadcast imperialism.

During the 80s I lived in Montreal and New York at once. It meant lots of traveling between the two cities. I usually took Czechoslovak airline. It was cheap, only 79$ return. And on the plane they sold a bottle of vodka for only 1$. And this wasn’t all. The plane was shaking a lot and because the seats were made from metal the shaking was even more significant. Everyone had the fear of death that produced tons of adrenalin in our blood. We were all totally excited. Today the seats are very comfortable, duty free items are expensive, and there is that little glossy hypnotic screen in front of everyone deliberately obligating us to constantly stare at shinism.

The only time when I get away from the gentrifying shiny waves is when I’m in the park doing my daily exercises. I do yoga, stretc.hing, push ups, sit ups, chin ups, I also run, sing, pray and meditate. I try to do it for at least two hours every day. I go to High Park or Trinity Bellwoods when I’m in Toronto. In New York it was the East River Park, in Montreal I went up to the mountain. When I’m on the road I always look for a park right after arrival.

I have a payer: Anyu, Nagyi, Kati, Apuko, Apu… Anyu is my mother, Apu is my father, Nagyi is my grandmother, Apuko is my grandfather, Kati is my sister.

They are all dead only their spirit is alive.

And I call them and ask them to surround my body.

I think they are part of the orgone energy Wilhelm Reich discovered.

And I call other people as well, mostly artists I have met when

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I was young. Robert Filliou, David Zack, Sari Dienes, Ray Johnson, Jack Smith, Andy Warhol, Joseph Beuys, Cassandra von Rinteln and others.

I ask them to protect me from gentrification and don’t let me become a shinyist clone.

Well, I just bought a new iMac. One of the leading product of the current shinyist technology. It completely seduced me and now it’s in my office.

As I told you at the beginning I’m frightened and I’m ashamed of myself for being frightened. I’m afraid of becoming what I have never wanted to become.

And that’s why I am frightened.

ISTVAN KANTOR (A) MONTY CANTSIN? AMEN!

ACCUMULATIONS

[1997]

FULLY REINTEGRATED MULTI-STRATEGICAL PROLIFERATING PERIPHERIAL SOCIO-SONIC MACHINES & MONUMENTS IN TOTALITARIA BUSINESS, DOMESTIC, PUBLIC AND SERVICING SECTORS (Office - Kitchen - Street - Cleaner)

Introducing the Zeroes Puppet Government Media Office 1997 background implementing philosophically re-manipulated hyper-concepts into the anarchitecture of an exclusively over-transitional and vextatic document background Accumulating shit: the ancient method I accumulate, therefore I am (the robot) [dead broke] (Low budget horror movie:) accumulating shit is a committed, sophisticated and ultimate way of addressing dead ideas (stabbed bodies in plastic bags).

There is absolutely nothing new in it (fuck novelty!: fading impulse of (un) pleasant used furniture [m]usic, a la Rick Sote). [Algorithmic escape sequence] It starts with stones, leaves, bogs, dead birds, continues with drawings, notes, books, photos, letters, debts, and suddenly you are surrounded by a gigantic mess of useless objects, (s)crap, tapes, documents, instruments, ultimatums, antithesis, police, machines, monuments... (Plague! Mayhem! Suicide!)... [Long Live Coat Hanger Cult!] Comrades/Darlings: I don’t think I can avoid making mistakes. (remember Gay-Debby Ord)

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The same thing happens inside the sub-operational asylum of the nervous (protein-computer) system, muscles, brain, teeth, veins, kidney, lung, heart, etc. Clients (clients are biophysical n-tities in the metaphorical world of Totalitaria) are accumulating/integrating things and things are accumulating/ integrating clients. Memories. Data. Calcium. Digits. Protein. Poison. Lowfrequency vibrations in sync with the nervous system(city-zone anachronism).

When clients take a shit (piss, spit, vomit, cut arteries, dump, download) they get rid of some accumulated stuff (and their shit gets rid of them). That’s what everyday life (revolution-in-decline slapstick decadence) is about (a la Kraoul von Eingem). Of course clients can save their shit (Rev. Man Zoni) and preserve it for further use (dated, titled, pseudo-valued). That’s what we traditionally (used to) call art (merda d’artista). {Up to the monument: a huge pile of shit.} The old fashion scene of avant-garde crime (market place: church: kitchen) is included in the new (media) business game and open to the public (Deadsite/ extermination camps). By integrating with the city we become hostages/ accomplices (reason had been excluded).

Note: Joe Leonardo da Davis proposes the Norton Ring / USA astronauts’ shit containing bacteria accumulating and circulating in space(soviets take it back home) / there might be alien shit as well / origin of Totalitaria (humanity) / bacteria from alien shit deorbited to Earth background Vacationing in Totalitaria Arise, go to Nineveh, that great machinery (Reactivated/extended nervous system:) the city accumulates (technoinvasion overload: jerk-off component) more and more buildings (parallel expanding/vanishing into cyberspace: decay/ruin/cold soup). The buildings accumulate more and more people (terrorizing aspects of the redesigned immortality: extraterrestrial condom-fever). People accumulate more and more stuff(automatic gestures and purifying pollution). Each unit(building, house, mistake) has a specific role and character (circus posthistoricus: architecture/performance/environment) depending on the stuff it holds and accumulates (sucked into electronic vortex). Streets are external units of the accumulationist happening (acceleration/crisis/libido). Depussy [why (not) Depussy?] would prefer walking in the country’s fields and woods to going to a concert (according to Johnny Cage). With the help of accumulationist theory I can pass (piss) through Times Square without disgust (perpetual confrontation - permanent revolution).

(Conspiratorial tele-existence:) survival in Totalitaria is my primary occupation that keeps me busy (& broke). Inter-testing/investigating all super-deadly aspects and lethal hardware of the massive-opressive techno-power-ritual

(the algebra of sucking) of trans-gigapolis (Heil Virgin Mary!); alternatively and strategically immersing myself (blood partizan) in the noise, the beat, the speed, the sex, the fragmentation, the danger, the misery, the decay, the shit, etc., (sweet home architecture & x-[mass]ray syndrome); remastering the learning-teaching multi-dialogue concept proposed by Roberta Phillia

(early integrative Interface); focusing on sexual phenomena (atoms rub against one another): trillion byte memory/ engine/ dildos (Sumerian origin); continually cross-questioning (robot-brain) and re(de)constructing my own hyper-existence: Das Kapital!; taking my children up and down on the freight elevator (high-tech tower/Babel-playground); these are some principal cityZen activities I practice everyday in Totalitaria (frigophony anthem fades in). Everyone is on the stage. Don’t be scared... I’ll take care of you, darling: from affirmation to negation. I’m built on a missing column (void/absence).

I’m physically touched by language (tongues). My work (system administration, programming, worshipping, fucking) is intended as an indicative demonstration dedicated to the operational concept of accumulations (permanent creation/ vacation in Totalitaria). Look, there goes Prometheus, the left-brain guy! background Notes from Plunderground Whatever I create shall NOT remain unaltered!

A technical aspect of life (God during the Renaissance) which always stupefies me is the progressive amount of state-of-the-art trash (infiltrating mainstream) which accumulates daily in Totalitaria. The process of accumulation is signified by the garbage super-production of the day (evidently even the highest technology {cybercultural depth is penetrating} will end up, sooner or later, in a scrapyard). And it’s the same with accumulating ideas [sub-version 3.2.1] in the form of books or electronic media. Even if we give more respect to certain

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(application specific) printed products (People of the Book: Hebrews/Greeks/ Romans) by preserving copies in safe monasteries guarded by genetic mutants or in cellular alarm armed public libraries, most of it will end up as waste in scrapyards and will be recycled (within a vast multiplicity of possibilities). Book burnings or record destruction power-rituals are the more radical forms of antiaccumulationist (nomenclature) recycling turbo-methods in Totalitaria.

For a number of years now there is a strong and ongoing tendency (or perhaps a trend) in all fields of creative activities (writing, music, film, video, electronic arts) to save the continuously accumulating mass of information/knowledge by anti-authoritarian ultra-recycling. Appropriation/plagiarism/plunderism have already a long and impactful history and probably an even greater and more (un)intelligent future. Taking ideas from others, using up all available accumulated information, is a traditional way of the collective teaching/ learning process of inter(re)active living. Even if something has been written by one person or dictated by God, it expresses the genius in everyone struggling for life throughout many generations (dictatorship of the mesmerizing Millennium).

Of course it is hard work to make a decision of what to select (Tatiana and/ or Mathilde?!) from the already existing, accumulated ideas (enemies: good taste/$/politicians). And in the middle of a counter-revolution we have no time for fine scruples over the copyright of ideas (higher priority rhymes/hard beat of cabinet drawers). If one wants to know the taste of a worm one has to transform the worm by eating it. Transposing an image or idea from one context to another is often sufficient to alter its meaning or significance, or to recharge its extensible value. The worm (experimental reality experience): I am empty and void and waste. {Never ending simultaneity!} background The (n)origin of The Book of Neoism?!

Neoism?! (is the machine that) makes Neoism?! more (less) interesting than Neoism?!

To put together this preface (conceptual makeup) I took ideas from The Book of Neoism?! (dissemination of research) which is already plunderist hyperproduct (protocol definition). Later on someone will reuse this preface in some ways (links to files) that it will get altered into another phase-text (Bible) or get transformed into another form (navigation environment). At a disastrous as well as lucky moment it might even get back where it came from (nowhere). And this advanced process will continue [and go on] & (on) {for ever and for ever}.

Eventually everything will get mixed with everything that no origin of ideas can be ever traced back. That will be a happy time: 6 o’clock! Gang-Bang! Orgasm!

In the Book of Neoism?! (three volumes of the projected six are finished, the forth is in progress) I keep accumulating thousands of interchangeable definitions of Neoism?! (megaphonic convulsions/frigophonic hummings/ bureauphonic slammings/psychotronic transmissions). Most of them are simple appropriations taken/stolen from various well known, less known and unknown authors and added, altered, cut, restructured, developed, fucked up, improved, recomposed, destroyed, deteriorated, reorganized, dethroned, revaluated, abused, galvanized, anti-freezed, dehydrated, dehibernated, totalized, recontextualized, reswallowed, welded, remastered, untouched or distorted beyond recognition. The Book of Neoism?! can be looked at as both accumulationist (or accumulist) and plunderist document. The Book of Neoism?! is both, a product of the accumulationist method and a textoretical ground for the various concepts (bureauphony, frigophony, megaphony, psychotronics, etc.) integrated in this project, under title ACCUMULATIONS. The following text intend to lay out the relating discourse and contribute some enlighteningly confusing notes concerning my accumulationist concept and its strategical aspects. Our Laundry or Death! Return!

Sector 1 BUREAUPHONY fuck-off-revolution machinery Introduction In Jan/1993 I opened my new office, Puppet Government, located at 372 Richmond Street West, in Toronto. My interest in file cabinets developed at around this time, and, as it happened at so many occasions before, it has been induced by chance. I’ve found a four drawer lateral cabinet at the freight elevator waiting to be thrown in the garbage. I moved it immediately into my office and at that moment I knew it was the object I was waiting for. For the first time in my life, I looked at a file cabinet as someone would look at an alien device with astonishing interest. I felt vextatic. I started pulling-pushing the drawers in and out and I was fully amazed by the noise they made. I have been using scrapmetal junk for performances and installations for many years collecting them from junk yards and from the streets, but, for some reason, I’ve never paid enough attention to the file cabinet. It took a special moment to discover the nature of this perfect noise instrument and potential monument. Soon after this major discovery I have made a couple of motor powered kinetic cabinets. The function of these machines is based on gravity and the pulling power of AC motors. When the cabinet tips forward the drawers slide out and when it tips back the drawers slide back. The thumping sounds created by the mechanical movements of the cabinets (slamming drawers) are digitally sampled, manipulated through voice processors and accumulated in the form of multi-layered loops. The very first time I used a lateral file cabinet on stage was at The Music Gallery in Toronto, Nov 12, 1993, in a performance

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entitled ARENA, part of the Freedom In A Vacuum experimental music festival.

Since then I keep exploring the cabinet as a noise-machine and as one of the main subjects of my activities. My most recent file cabinet robots (Executive Machinery) are computer controlled machines driven by compressed air via pneumatic arms. Beside exploring the cabinet as multifunctional object (sound instrument, kinetic sculpture, machine, monument) I also developed a theory about the principal role of the file cabinet in the world wide territory of office/information system(s). The file cabinet and the related sound-action refer to socio-sonic networks and technology.

Office There are countless office buildings in the city. Cathedrals of bureaucracy.

The Business Quarter. The art of architecture belongs to the world of business, the government and the church. Everyone is hypnotized by production and conveniences - subway system, bankmachine, cellular phone, video game, recycling container, drugs. From the lobby elevators take us to any floors. We can listen to ambient elevator music. A short walk and we are in the office.

Work stations are divided by acoustical panel systems. The sound-dampening fabric panels offer an attractive, contemporary look, create a pleasant, private office environment while reducing the distraction of unwanted noise.

Furniture/File Cabinet We take a closer look at the office. Let our eyes wander from an executive multitilt arm chair to a heavy duty operator chair via an “all-in-one� computer desk.

We remark the newly installed file cabinets. The steel hardware of information storage survives even in a digital world. Cabinets combine function, economy and attractive styling. Lateral and vertical cabinets are available in two, three, four or five drawer heights. They accommodate all types of files and change easily from legal to letter size. Front to back filing is maximized by the deep cabinets. The cabinets have smooth operating, durable roller systems. They are equipped with full cradle suspension and sound dampened drawer fronts, so drawers open effortlessly and close silently. Stresspoints are reinforced. In some cases mechanical interlock allows only one drawer to open at a time to prevent tipping. They are complete with pull handles, latch, lack and fully adjustable removable follower block. A range of colors are available, black, grey, sand, beige, nevada.

Performance Information stored in file cabinets is also digitally processed in computers.

The mechanical movements of people working in offices keep the cabinet closely connected to the computer. Gestures are made. File cabinets are opened and closed, opened and closed, opened and closed. The smooth operating roller system wears out and cant reduce all the sound anyway.

Simultaneous and similar sounds are made. Noise. The sounds of the file cabinets. A chain reaction. The digital file is sent to another office.

The receiver has to look for more information in the metal drawers of file cabinets. Impulse and feedback. It is repeated unlimited times. Number of participants unknown. Every computer is linked to a network. Networks are linked together. Thus file cabinets are directly linked together all around the world. My concert/performance is a model of this socio-sonic action, illustrating it in an extreme form and under the traditional circumstances of a concert/spectacle.

Accumulation If we could accumulate the sounds made by all the file cabinets around the world by a single day we would perhaps listen to the most dramatic, superchaotic, ultra-radical, fuck-off-revolutionary aural earitainment. This ongoing work-in-progress concert is a contemporary (di)version of what Erik Satie called “furniture music for law offices, banks, etc.”. He meant some kind of ambient music that is composed for specific environments. The origin of this musical form can be traced back in history: devotional atmosphere for worship, carnival tunes, etc. The herein explored socio-sonic office sound goes beyond the original idea of furniture music as it explores distracting noise, the unwanted by-product sounds of office work that nobody supposed to listen to. It is not intended to be an enjoyable sound to inspire office employees. It has nothing to do with composition, nobody planned it, nobody controls it. There is no need to call it music. The world is filled with these type of sounds. Factories are the best examples where the noise of machines and mechanical movements are more evident. File cabinet sounds would become evident only if we would be able to accumulate it and play it back. But its nobody’s aim.

Conclusion This project demonstrates the system of bureauphonic sounds and introduces the file cabinet as socio-sonic noise machine and interactive sub-monument.

It creates a special occasion to take a closer look at the inter-operable strategic architecture of the worldwide conspiratorial monument of Bureauphony.

The File Cabinet Project investigates the sculptural system and kinesonic mechanism of information storage furniture. The digital age didn’t kill the old hardware of information technology and the metal office furniture became part of the new electronic communication network. There are file cabinets in every office all around the world. While in the old times all data was stored in the metal hardware of this specific furniture, today file cabinets are extended with computers and are interconnected through the electronic system of communication. Information kept in the cabinet drawers is transfered to the computer and distributed through cyberspace. Files are accessible through the opening and closing of the cabinet drawers. The kinetic movements of the drawers produce mechanical sounds. We can conclude that the single

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monolithic file cabinets are linked together by computers and integrated into a giant network that functions as both kinesonic mega-machine and world wide monument serving the entire planet with information.

While my principal socio-sonic concept and the related bureauphonic system can be taken for a simple plagerist mix of the dadaist concept of the readymade and the situationist detournement technique, my project has gone far beyond both ideas. I have no interest of claiming the file cabinet as a readymade for old fashion museum display. In fact I’m not interested in the readymade at all. As an object of over-tournement the file cabinet does not mutate into something else that an outmoded situationist would like to appropriate, but it stays in the hand of the original user thus negating to negate the negation of negation. Therefore my re-actionary concept of the “reintegration” of objects to their place of origin proposes to leave everything as it is and where it is.

Pleasing inactivity becomes an act of vandalism that radically destroys the obstacles of creativity. That’s what I call fuck-off-revolutionary machinery.

Sector 2 FRIGOPHONY ambient kitchen-noise machine Introduction The fact that a few million people are farting simultaneously every second is just as fascinating as the fact that a very large number of the world’s population listen to refrigerator noise everyday. Refrigeration and farting are, in some ways, closely related and some day I’ll have to write a pamphlet about the socio-econo-atmospheric whatever sounds of farting. But now, according to my original plans, I devote this essay to the refrigerator. (By mentioning the sensationalistic farting-project I just wanted to increase reader’s attention and add to the excitement of reading about the built-in by-product economechano-socio-ambio sound of the refrigerator.) I became interested in the refrigerator-as-object (and only many years later as sound source) at around age 6 when I have discovered an old icebox in the basement of our country house and hid things in it. This lifelong inspiration later continued with various installations and performances in which I placed objects inside refrigerators. THE FRIGIDAIRE OF MARCEL DUCHAMP (1985), an expanded video-performance and song(released by Maldoror records in 1987, NYC) marks the continuation of this special interest. I never owned a refrigerator until July, 1980 when my father surprised me with a brand new model because the one in my apartment was dead, just laying on the floor on its back, filled with red water and with a few out of order fish. I have exhibited my sticker collection on refrigerator doors throughout the 80s. One of them, “The Black Door”, is still in my collection. I have made my first recordings of refrigerator noise in 1986, after the surprising result of an interview tape I have recorded in the kitchen (I noticed the refrigerator noise after listening to the interview tape to which I haven’t pay any attention during the interview). Since then I have incorporated sampled refrigerator noise in sound pieces at several occasions.

Though I spend a larger part of my time in Toronto, I keep my ties in Montreal as well. My “secret” storefront studio space in Ville-Emard that replaced the legendary Neoist Embassy (Outremont) after my eviction, is a time capsule, stuffed with the remains (archives, objects, videos, printed material, blood paintings, garbage, etc.) of the late 70s and the 80s. But there are also new things that make the place functionally updated. The furniture is the same as ever including an old, noisy refrigerator that still has the worn-out sign: “the frigidaire of Marcel Duchamp.” This kitchen appliance gave me tons of inspiration in the past and it produced the necessary impulse for this project. tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE’s recent review, Egnekn’s fridge, in Musicworks No63, is now a significant official document on the subject. He reviews a cassette of refrigerator noise, credited to a certain Egnekn (I wont disclose the origin of this obvious pseudoname). He also mentions another recording of the same type, “The Kenmore Symphony - in 2 movements” by Komar & Melamid.

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tENTATIVELY also mentions another reference to the cultural significance of the fridge that is on page 53 of Douglas Davis’ book Art and the Future where he credits artist Martial Raysse of “The New Realists” with saying “I wanted my work to possess the serene self-evidence of mass-produced refrigerators.”

The concrete noise of the refrigerator has already made its way into recording history. But would anyone listen to this sound if it wasn’t built into this special kitchen appliance, or, in other words, would you buy recordings of refrigerator noise that comes on a CD without the real furniture? Years ago perhaps the answer was a definite NO, but today it is not that evident at all. This project is an effort to pay tribute to the refrigerator, the world’s greatest household “classical” drone instrument, icon of aural ambiency and kitchen-noizak.

Kitchen Dinner time. Happy Quarter. Stereotype Suburbia. This house looks just like that house. Welcome home. Have a drink and relax in the kingdom of good smells and tastes. Everything looks clean and shiny. The floor is covered with square pieces of bright, flowerly linoleum. The walls are lined with light green Dutch tiles from the floor up to 5 feet and the rest is painted glossy white.

There is a vase of fresh flowers on the table that is already set for dinner. The kids are washing their hands in the basement bathroom. Mother and Father are enjoying a glass of red wine. Some cooking pots are steaming on the stove. The dinner is cooked and it is waiting to be served. The humming of the refrigerator adds to the warm evening atmosphere. Somewhere else in the world, in a loft of an artist type being, who lives in the surroundings of an individually charged set, impactedness and disorder, the ambient noise of an aged refrigerator sounds almost the same (perhaps a bit louder) but the atmosphere it creates is radically different.

Appliances/Refrigerator While having a conversation in the kitchen, we notice the noise of the refrigerator when it stops, causing a sudden silence. This silence reveals us the world of ambient sound that fills the kitchen and all the rooms of the homeland. The world of household appliances. The monuments of function. Stove. Heating system. Air conditioning. Washing machine and dryer. Lighting. Water system.

And more. The refrigerator is the heart of every kitchen. This beautiful white box is constantly filled with tasty ready mades: fresh food (except at harder economic situations when the cabinet space transforms into the empty void of fresh misery).

A modern domestic fresh food refrigerator consists primarily of three parts: the cabinet, the mechanism (condensing unit and evaporator) and the electrical circuit. The cabinet contains and supports the evaporator and condensing unit; it also supplies shelving and storage space for the foods or beverages. In the evaporator, the liquid refrigerant expands and becomes a vapor. This vapor absorbs heat from the foods or beverages in the cabinet. The condensing unit

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removes the heat absorbed in the evaporator. The liquid refrigerant then returns to the evaporator to repeat the refrigeration cycle. The lower temperatures slows down oxidation, reduce multiplication of bacteria in the living cells and fibers and decrease the aspiration (removal of fluid) of the food. Keeping the food fresh by the control of temperature, that’s the principal function of the refrigerator. The sweet humming (or rumbling noise) is just an inevitable byproduct.

Ritual Food stored in refrigerators ultimately gets processed and consumed.

The mechanical movements of people making dinner in the kitchen keep the refrigerator closely connected to the everyday activities of life. Gestures are made. The fridge gets filled with food. Someone takes something out or puts something back. Fruit. Milk. Cheese. Beer. Juice. Butter. Vegetables. Meat.

Eggs. Mayonnaise. Jam. The supermarket and grocery store are connected to the kitchen-table via the refrigerator. To make this interactive event more ritualistic everybody has to listen to the same or similar sound of the refrigerator. Number of participants are unknown but it is certain that a great part of the world’s population is involved in this socio-sonic ritual.

Accumulation The source of refrigerator humming is the refrigerator mechanism: condensing unit and evaporator. The compressor, motor, and fan motor make most of the sound, depending on their mechanical condition. Heavy rumbling sounds, excessive vibration, loud hums, rattle or knocking are some of the sonic symptoms indicating motor troubles, worn out bearings, poorly aligned belts, loose and dirty connections, etc. The flow of liquid refrigerant is another sound source but perhaps less noticeable. The resonating space of the cabinet and the vibration of its walls and parts add more body and color to the sounds. There are many different type of motors and compressors making very different sounds. More sophisticated refrigerating systems are added with different accessory devices, among them vibration damper and special muffling devices. The soundless refrigerator would definitely kill kitchen ambiance. Sampling and accumulating refrigerator noise doesn’t seem to be problematic at all, but rather easy. I can imagine excited students and research collaborators going from home to home with a microphone/digital sampler kit, just like those enthusiastic collectors of folk music done it in the past with the help of recording devices. A mission like that would truly and radically manifest the rapidly changing universe of our interest in sounds and objects.

The accumulated sound of all the refrigerators of the world would be the true ambio-socio-sonic master piece for the Millennium. This is no utopia at all!

Conclusion Time has come to (re)discover the ambient sound devices of everyday life and enshrine the cultural values of the refrigerator. I propose Frigophony to be used as a general term for the total world of ambient sound created by any home hardware like heating, air-conditioning, fluorescent lighting and cooking devices. I propose the FRIGOPHONY MONUMENT as a conceptual sculptural system that incorporates all the working and broken refrigerators of the world: a pseudo-monumentalist monstrous anti-object. In this simple acoustic presentation the sound of the refrigerators are “amplified” by the global number of machines signifying the progressing world wide frigophonic manifesto.

If this seemingly simple idea needs more justification then I can mention its many different borderline aspects (which might be boring and didactic), among them the boundaries of concrete-noise and psycho-acoustics, the inspiration of fluxus-events and situationism, the stimulating areas between poetry and performance. Frigophony questions the perception and capacity of hearing and investigates the relations between physics, bio-structure and psychology.

Frigophony will undoubtedly bring post-ideological multi-salvation to the kitchens of the whole universe and will liberate perceptivity from under the oppressive forces of serious culture for ever. Frigophony makes the sound of the refrigerator more interesting than the sound of the refrigerator. Frigophony puts the refrigerator back into fuck-off-revolution (aka everyday life).

Sector 3 MEGAPHONY low-tech riot voice-machine Introduction After being at a John Zorn saxophone improvisation event at the Generator, sometime in 1989, in New York, I ran home (from 1986 to 1990 I lived in the Lower East Side territory) and inspired by Zorn’s technique I blew my megaphone all night long. I was amazed by the sounds it produced and since then I employ the term megaphony to describe works in which the portable megaphone (bull horn, voice gun) is the main source of sound. The megaphone is a convenient PA for outdoor events. Throughout the 80s I used to carry a boom-box and a bull-horn, to play my “backing-music” on the boom-box and sing through the megaphone. This simple system enabled me to perform in the streets, in parks, under bridges, in front of monuments, at ruins, in any situation and under any conditions. Due to my practical attachment to the megaphone I kept experimenting with its use, and, as I above already mentioned I appropriated free-jazz saxophone technique in order to develop my own megaphonic method. By blowing, licking or sucking the megaphone’s mouth piece (the microphone), in other words imitating as it was some kind of airophone instrument, I am able to extort yet unheard sounds: nothing pretentious but

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rather primitive noise, somewhere between animal screaming and alien vocal signals, farting and explosion. Megaphonic sounds are mentally and physically difficult to endure, are vextatic (vexation + ecstasy) and irritating. I have made countless sound recordings and videos of megaphony, and, The Anti-Cycles of Megaphony, a work I devoted to the exploration of this particular instrument, remains a work in progress. ESCAPE FROM FREEDOM (1991), JERICHO (1991), BARRICADES (1992) are among the many videos exploring the megaphone and its sounds with passionate determination to assault and to subvert. In the creation of megaphonic noise both physical performance and technology (analog and digital) are equally important. I use samplers to capture and to accumulate the sound of the megaphone directly from a mike or through voice processors. From the countless megaphone performances I have done up to today I like to mention that of a Mexico city event at X-Teresa, because it was the only time that my original and rather symbolical intention to break walls with the sound of the megaphone (similarly to the trumpets of Jericho) became a realistic dangermotive. As I heard afterwards, the sound man was ordered by the festival organizers to keep the volume low and each time I signaled to increase it he only pretended pushing it up to the maximum. The directors were worried that the already inclined old church will collapse to the megaphonic noise.

Street We are somewhere in a big city. Fields of ruins and new districts of skyscrapers.

Or perhaps the skyscrapers are old and the ruins are new. The continuous development and constant decay of technology is evident. The total chaos of the big city is a stereotype image represented by New York, Tokyo, Frankfurt, Berlin, Rio de Janeiro or Mexico city. Luxury and misery.

Gold and shit. The arena of business and crime. Kingdom of gangs and police.

Center of energy and disease. Home of the ordinary and the extreme. A banal, trivial, overwrought subject. Business men and women, homeless beggars, cars, buses, subway, and of course, lots of noise. Perfect background for megaphone performance.

Device The megaphone is the perfect outdoor device for demos, police squad action, film shooting, street prophets, sport fans, etc. The one piece object of the portable megaphone is a small PA system, including the microphone, amplifier and speaker in the same small, handy unit. It is battery operated, has an on/off switch and volume control. Sometime it is added with special features like siren or whistle. It has a handle for easy holding. Its shape follows regular speaker design, stretched towards the mike end. It’s body is made from hard plastic today and combines different colors, mostly red and white. Its distorting, low quality sound is the result of the simple technology it represents, just good enough for the necessary diffusion of aggressive voice. The sound of the

contributes to the creation of a heavy urban socio-sonic atmosphere.

Performance A man in worn out business suit is standing at a street corner, convulsively talking into a megaphone and trying to transmit messages from the Bible.

Not too far, somewhere in a park in the Lower East Side demonstrators are demanding social changes. Someone uses a megaphone to address the crowd.

Riot police is surrounding the demonstrators and they also use megaphones to give instructions to people. The event is being filmed by a news crew. Standing on a mobile platform, the director is holding a megaphone in front of his face and keeps yelling into it.

Accumulation The recording and accumulation of megaphone sound is being done by the media, alternative media and individuals. Demos, riots and other public events are usually assisted by journalists and camera people armed with recording equipment. Everyday we can watch different megaphone performances on the news. The megaphone is a real instrument of outdoor communication. Using a special method of playing and generating sounds, I added a new aspect to its function. But it’s still the same instrument. My megaphonic voice, a particular one, is added and blended into the accumulating socio-sonic action-sounds of total megaphony.

Conclusion What I wanted emphasize with this text is the fact that the megaphone is an instrument of noise, a contemporary trumpet of doom. It is a popular system of amplification for anyone’s use. No skills are needed. Licking, sucking, blowing the megaphone the way I do takes some practice and special interest, but it’s a very simple operation. Because the megaphone is mostly used as a lowtech tool by riot police, demonstrators or street speakers, its image and sound reflects the accuracy of social unrest, frustration and alert.

Sector 4 COAT HANGER CULT telepathic transmission mobile Introduction In 1980, at Apt 80, The Second International Neoist Apartment Festival that took place in Montreal, Kiki Bonbon used a coat hanger headgear in his performance at the Peking Poolroom. While his gesture was only intended to be part of a single performance, with my intervention and renewed appropriation

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of the coat hanger as head-gear, almost fifteen years later, it turned into the inducing, initiative moment of a “cult”. What was Kiki’s concept of the coat hanger I’m not sure at all and I would be delighted if he would give me some clues. In my interpretation the coat hanger as headgear-antenna represents my increasing fascination with extrasensory communication (telepathy, psychotronics, psychokinesis) as well as my continuous resistance to the domination of technology. Though psychotronics is now also becoming part of the scientific language that deals with the perspectives of communication, when everybody technobabbles about electronic highways and cyberspace I feel like going back to the forest to hunt and fish. And it’s not because

I suppose to be anti-technology. I like to play, I don’t negate technology as a toy or tool, I use it everyday. I refuse to leave it in the hands of those who control it for their own profit, I refuse to be oppressed by them. But I can’t stand the overblown aspect about its redeeming nature nourished by politicians that only serves the owners of technology in their clever exploitation of the masses. In the early 80s when video got exploited by music television and the consumer market, I started making super8 films. Though I didn’t stop making videos I demonstrated my critical resistance through the use of an old technology.

I was one of the firsts to incorporate computer graphics in video, but now, when it’s a trend promoted by a giant market I’m less convinced of its creative value. I’m into networking (direct, mail, electronic) for more than two decades but the hype around the internet only makes me feel sick and pushes me into resistance. This resistance seems to be symbolized by the coat hanger.

A few years ago when I started wearing it I haven’t have much theoretical basis for its use. It seemed like a great object to create lots of questions by simply placing it on my head. My family became the first representative group of the “cult.” Soon, with the collaboration of Gordon W., Alan Lord, Dr Armino

Kink, Angela Idealism, Ghera, BMZ and others, it spread as some kind of a new trend. Parties and performances in Toronto and elsewhere were devoted to the celebration of this cheap and simple object often identified with fashion business and drycleaning. Recently I have collaborated with several transartistic organizations to demonstrate the zones of telepathy with the use of the coat hanger. Transpathic Telecstasy events took place in Oct/1995, in Nove Zamky, Slovakia, and in Budapest, Hungary. The series continued with a demonstration in Hull, England in may/1996, with the collaboration of Roddy Hunter. A transnational coat hanger cult event/manifestation “The One Night Only Neoist Party Seminar” took place at the CineCycle in Toronto, July 26, 1996.

Cleaner There is a special smell in the cleaner’s shop, created by the chemicals used in the procedure of cleaning and by the old dust and dirt removed from the clothes. It might have some specific origin, I have to find it out. I’ll perhaps ask the shop people next time I take some dirty shirts in. The shop has three parts: the counter, the storage space and the cleaning site. The counter is a place of gestures and verbal communication. In the storage space cleaned clothes are hanged, tagged, covered with paper and/or transparent plastic. They also use part of the storage space to accumulate the dirty clothes. The cleaning site is where the actual cleaning job is done with the use of special machines and instruments. When the job is done the cloth is hanged on a coat hanger made from wire. Though the coat hanger belongs to several specific places, I chose the cleaner because I wanted to investigate my subject through a special field.

I could also take the garderobe but then I couldn’t be as specific since the garderobe belongs not only to the home but to any gathering places (business, entertainment, etc.). The universal character of the coat hanger greately interests me, however, I can perhaps better deal with its functional qualities in a more specific context such as drycleaning. This way I also have a chance to incorporate a new site into this project that takes inspiration from different sectors of everyday life.

Object The coat hanger is a very simple industrial object designed to hang clothes: coat, jacket, pants, shirt, etc. The image of coat hanger often used as a symbolical icon of drycleaning and fashion business. Coat hangers are made from wood, plastic and metal. I’m particularly interested in the very common metal wire hangers of today that people often use to unlock their car through a tiny fissure of the side window or replace a TV-antenna. As a headgear symbolizing telepathic communication, it is only known for the initiated.

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Performance Though people do their own washing/cleaning, they also take their dirty clothes to the drycleaner, especially items that are more difficult to clean or the ones that necessitate special care. Cleaners open earlier and close later than other servicing shops. The client arrives with a bag of dirty clothes and put them on the counter. One of the shop employees or the shop keeper him or herself will select the items, make a list and put some identity tags on them. She or he will also write a receipt that includes the client’s address and phone number. With this piece of paper the client leaves the shop and wont return until the given date, marked on the receipt. On that date all the dirty clothes will be clean and ready to be taken home. They will be hanged on freely provided wire hangers (only on special request folded) and covered with paper or transparent plastic.

The client will pay the bill, grab the clean clothes by the hanger and leave. The client will repeat this performance periodically throughout his/her life. During his/her life time the client will collect thousands of coat hangers but will only accumulate a bunch of them. The rest will be thrown in the garbage and recycled into file cabinets, refrigerators or megaphones.

Accumulation Coat hangers can be found basically anywhere. The cleaner’s shop is one of the many places where coat hangers are accumulated in a very large number.

There are special hangers to hang coat hangers. A monument made from all of the coat hangers of the world would be a very impressive object to visually represent the coat hanger cult. The monument unmade from all the coat hangers of the world is also a very impressive object that visually represents the coat hanger cult. The cleaner’s shop is a popular headquarter of the coat hanger cult. Though wire hangers can make interesting sounds by touching each other, like some chiming toys do, in this case I’m more interested in the hanger as transmitter/receiver, an antenna for telepathic communication, a headgear that helps accumulate the greatest ideas of the world.

Conclusion The coat hanger cult concept might sound like a joke, however, it represents the basic idea of psychotronic phenomena. Psychotronics is defined as a science of telepathy, clairvoyance, teleestesia or psychokinesis. It introduces the term extrasensory perception. Any movement of psyche and consciousness is a movement (aspect, side) of some kind of matter after which radiation appears and it carries with itself the information about the subjective content of the psyche and consciousness. Psychotronics abilities are the beginning of a new form of consciousness or total-consciousness. The need of new sense organs and the development of new information channels are inevitable necessities.

The question is how the extrasensory function can be activated, controlled and amplified to help us accumulate the world’s greatest ideas without

being ripped off by the architects and owners of technology. The coat hanger is a radiant nimbus such as the Buddha himself might proudly wear. images: video/photo documents The Book of Neoism?!

Installation at Oboro Demonstration Network Telecstasy Final note The appearance of new necessities outmodes previous inspiration.

The gesture of transplanting objects of everyday use into art galleries is an old fashion idea that does not subvert thinking neither surprises the eyes anymore.

It is an overused working method that only promotes the production of artistic pollution. Keep filling museums with junk seems to be completely unnecessary and ridiculous today.

The simple and consistent removal of every single ready made displayed in museums and galleries and the reintegration of the ready-made to its former environment is an absolute necessity. The time of removal has come. Instead of physically destroying each object, it will be enough to remove them, and, for example, put the bicycle wheel back to a bicycle. This act of creative vandalism would put the ready-made back into the revolution of everyday life. Of course this work can not be done under the present circumstances.

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Istvan Kantor

SUCK SUCK SUCK SUCK SUCK TIT SUCK COCK SUCK CLIT SUCK SUCK SUCK SUCK SUCK TIT SUCK COCK SUCK CLIT SUCK IT SUCK IT SUCK IT SUCK IT SUCK TIT SUCK COCK SUCK CLIT SUCK SUCK SUCK SUCK SUCK TIT SUCK COCK SUCK CLIT SUCK SUCK SUCK SUCK SUCK TIT SUCK COCK SUCK CLIT

Istvan Kantor

I JUST WANT TO FUCK I JUST WANT TO FUCK I JUST WANT TO FUCK I JUST WANT TO FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK MY BRAINS OUT FUCK MY BRAINS OUT FUCK MY BRAINS OUT FUCK MY BRAINS OUT FUCK MY BRAINS OUT AND DESTROY AND DESTROY AND DESTROY AND DESTROY DESTROY DESTROY DESTROY DESTROY DESTROY THE WORLD DESTROY THE WORLD DESTROY THE WORLD DESTROY THE WORLD WITH AN ORGASM WITH AN ORGASM WITH AN ORGASM WITH AN ORGASM ORGASM ORGASM ORGASM ORGASM DESTROY THE WORLD WITH AN ORGASM

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ABSURDITY

[1984]

art is nothing art is dead art is living art is bread art is junk art is dust art is useless art is a must art is a bloody son of a bitch art is for the poor art is for the rich art is for your eyes art is in your hands art is in the stores art is in the banks art is shit art is nada art is stupid art is dada art is heaven art is hell art is everything art is everywhere ladies and gentlemen I obtained my prestigious reputation by drinking my girlfriend’s warm and tasty high-tech piss an artist should always be searching and searching I used to put a tube of blood into my asshole while, upside down in a yoga position, holding my legs up to the sky,

and then by squeezing my muscles the test-tube could turn out from my anus and the blood could flow down over my face, into my mouth do you remember me?

I remember you. yes, I remember you. do you remember me? say: WE REMEMBER YOU There are too many people in this city and there are too many problems in this city, I’m going crazy, I’m scared, I have to run, I ran into a room fool of dirty people, they were smelling like that soft French cheese, and I was one of them, one in this disgusting, homeless horde, we were standing in silence, nobody said a word, nobody complained, it was like hallucination, WE ARE LOOKING AT NOWHERE WITH BURNED OUT EMPTY EYES WE ARE LOOKING AT NO-O-WHERE WITH BURNED OUT EMPTY EYES Then someone took the mike and announced that they are about to close off the city and eliminate urban society because our government can’t handle the city problems anymore and doesn’t need the cities. yes.

Cities are hiding places for terrorism.

Citylife is hotbed for homosexuals, lesbians and all kind of perverted animals.

City means epidemics, drugs, sickness, poverty.

The city is a danger for people living in it.

SET IT ON FIRE. BLOW UP THE BUILDINGS. DESTROY THE HOUSES. ERASE THE STREETS. WIPE OUT THE CITY. I was waiting at a corner because the light was red, when someone from a black limousine shot me in the head I rushed into a house, there was an open door, and a woman said “Hi, what are you looking for?”

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“Hello, my name is Robert, but you can call me Bob, I just moved in this city and I’m looking for a job” That’s all I could say, I was bleeding like a chicken, she smiled “Come in Bob” and we went into the kitchen She dried my bloody face, she gave me a cup of tea, her eyes touched my eyes and I felt completely free Absurdity, Absurdity, Absurdirty is a big city, it’s a big city, yes, a big city, it’s a big, big, big, big, big city Don’t look at me like that.

What do you want to know?

What do you want to know?

OK. I tell you.

I’m not in love with you. No. I don’t want a heavy relationship.

I’m more off than on.

I DON’T WANT TO FALL IN LOVE, I’M NOT MISSING ANYONE, IN THE DARK WHITE IS BLACK, ALL I NEED IS A SLICE OF BREAD. I don’t even understand why should I define my feelings for you?

I don’t have to tell you what I feel.

You are so conventionally moral.

You are so conventionally moral.

You can only fuck one guy at a time.

How can you be in love with me?

You don’t know me, you have only known me for a few months and you are just a little kid, a baby, or an idiot.

I don’t believe you when you tell me you love me.

I can’t hear you. I’m deaf.

I can’t see you. I’m blind.

I can’t run after you. I’m a cripple.

I CAN’T TRUST THE PEOPLE IN CHARGE OF MY LAUNDRY. Miracles are gone.

I learned to live on lentils, noodles, rice, chapati, cheap vegetables.

But I don’t call it mystic diet.

I don’t call it health food.

I’m not a vegetarian.

I don’t call it alternative living form.

I call it political and economic necessity.

On November 24/1870, when Isidore Ducasse Le Comte de Lautremont died in Paris, dog meat sold at 2.50 francs a pound, while cats’ meat cost 12 francs.

I went into a house, I went into the kitchen.

There were two people, an old man and a young girl They were sitting in silence, in front of the tv, with a needle in their arms, they did not move at all I sat down and I looked, they never moved Then the older man gave himself a shot of dope and he said to me: “You are not going to fuck my daughter!

She hates you. And I’m sick of your songs. I’m sick of being in your songs.

You are singing like a bird and we are sinking into the dirt.

You son of a bitch performance artist” Do you remember me?

I remember you.

Say: WE REMEMBER YOU.

Did you know that I am the anarchist who threw a bottle of vitriol into the middle of Stock Exchange?

I fired only three revolver shots into the crowd: bum-bum-bum!

But I killed everybody, yes, everybody.

And the cops couldn’t get me because before they could get me I blew my brains out with a gunshot.

Yes. And then I laughed at them:

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HA, HA, HA, HA And then I screamed: LONG LIVE REVOLUTION LONG LIVE ANARCHISM LONG LIVE DYNAMITE BUNCH OF IDIOTS And they tried to save me.

They tried to save my life.

They put a mask on me, they connected my body to a machine.

But I was a dead man, more dead than anyone else.

I couldn’t even talk anymore.

SHIT OF DEVIL It was a beautiful day, summer time.

She got up early, took a shower, then she had breakfast: milk, honey and bread.

Then she went to the Post Office to send a letter to a friend Then she came to my place and borrowed my video kit.

She said “I have a great idea” I said “You always had great ideas” Then she made a grimace, and we started to laugh There is a place, that people call: SHIT OF DEVIL. It’s a swamp, it’s not a lie, when you step in that shit you sink, good bye.

She took a train and went to that place.

She walked there from the station,

it was a really beautiful day.

She was the only one going that way.

She put the camera on the tripod, and put a tape in the recorder, she took off her clothes and burned everything, then she went into the swamp and slowly began to sink I got her letter the next morning.

She gave me instructions how to find the place, and besides that, she said: “everything else is on the tape�

I played it back, it was empty...

Perhaps she pushed the wrong button (1987) I believe in the power of imagination to create a new history, to release the traumatic mind of those prisoners of oppressing systems for whom the most frightening experience of life is freedom.

I believe in the vision of a new revolution, in dancing millions holding flaming steam irons in their hands and singing the International Anthem of Neoism I believe in number 6, in the 6 Finger Club, in the mythology of the 60s, in 666, in the 6 letters of Neoism, in every 6 minutes.

I believe in the 6 principles of the Red Cross: Unity, Universality, Neutrality, Impartiality, Independence, Voluntary Service I believe in the lunatics of impossible utopias, in the invisible creators of the Himalaya, in time travelers, plastic soldiers, immortal super heroes, Dracula, Frankenstein, Monty Cantsin

I believe in Bob and in the Church of the Subgenius, in the 14 Secret Masters of the Universe, in the Rivington School, in any underground and fictive organizations I believe in the beginnings, in Mondays, in January first, in midnight, in my next ideas I believe in the architecture of bridges, spaceships and swimming pools, in the expanding body of the Sculpture Garden

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I believe in robots, in bread makers, alchemists, pata and dataphysicians I believe in the ecstasy of aliens, in a never-ending orgasm I believe in any words chosen by random from any dictionary I believe in the beauty of my flowing blood, in the reality of blood taking in a disco club in Transylvania I believe in my ghetto blaster, in my vocal chords, in the Street Corner Operas of every moments, in my screaming exercises under the Williamsburg Bridge, in the East River Park I believe in the bills I have to pay every month I believe in my own gold bust made from chocolate, bread and all kind of vegetables I believe in your fears, hallucinations, humor I believe in an empty room filled with milliard micro-sculptures of zero The day will come, I am here to tell you that the day will come, the walls will tumble and blood will coat the cobblestones of your lovely little village On the day the sun will rise and you will fall to your knees, the whips will strip your back bare to the bone Your children will cry for you as they are slaughtered before your eyes, you will kneel in their blood, your teeth will break against each other, but you will not cry, for there will be no one to hear you, Your nostrils will ache with the smell of bloated death and drying blood You will be bound and filled with sickness Infested with disease, your limbs will drop from your body like wet loaves of bread Your unending last sight will be of the dogs that will come to feed upon you You will live and die at the same time, and you will know the day

The day will come Life itself will come to visit and demand payment You will get old You will bow and creep upon the streets for all to mock You will become sick and hope to die Day and night will become one and fear will be your only emotion You will know nothing and the darkness will hold you tight You will cry but no tears will come You will run and fall Your blindness will let you see only each waiting danger, while it bars your escape Your body will be your enemy and your intestines will wrap around your heart and take your breath away The guns will come The knives and clubs will come The razors and broken bottles The chains and ropes The hangings The electric wires The twisted arms The broken legs The drowing faces The bond eyes The broken teeth The ripped ears The rape The midnight rides The damp cells The people you do not know who want to be inside you The monsters The hyenas The hungry wolves The day will come. Your neck will crack You will hang high over the streets You will be buried in piles

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You will dig your own hole You will starve and cry You will suck your own running sores The day will come It will be a long day When every is dead it will be over Not before this is a number, this is a window, this is a front door, this is a house, that’s where I live, this is my kitchen, this is my stove, this is my bicycle this is my chair, this is my bed, this is my table, these are my books, this is my tv, this is my radio, this is my telephone, these are my keys I LIKE TO COLLECT THINGS FROM THE STREETS, MY APARTMENT IS FULL OF JUNK, UGLY, DIRTY OBJECTS, A LOTS OF PEOPLE LIVE LIKE THAT, THEY LOVE TO SEARCH IN THE GARBAGE, IT’S A RITUAL, BUT SOMETIME I GET BORED OF MY MESSY PLACE, I WOULD LIKE TO SET IT ON FIRE AND LET THE FLAMES CLEAN IT UP this is my mother, this is my father, this is my sister and this is her lover this is my grandma, this is my uncle, this is my girlfriend, this is my self-portrait put on your white shirts, put on your black pants, today is my birthday, but where are my best friends? this is gasoline, this is my lighter, this is my surprise: lets party!

For a short time my girlfriend Adrenalin lived in my apartment, but she couldn’t stand my furniture and the objects I accumulated, and one day when I brought home a few new pieces of junk she went completely mad, she took an axe and cut my chairs and writing table to pieces, she stabbed my bed with a kitchen knife, dashed my radio to the ground, flung my books out of the broken window, smashed my tv, telephone, typewriter and everything else she could find, and then like someone who finished a good job she said goodbye, she took her bag, opened the door, then I put my hand on her hand, I looked in her eyes, and I felt like I was playing in a video clip and just like a silly rock’n’roll star I began to sing:

“baby, baby, baby please dont leave me, baby, baby, baby please believe me, baby tell me what’s wrong? baby this is a love song” Yes, I am Monty Cantsin, neoist open-pop-star Immortal hard-art singer, self-appointed leader of the people of the Lower East Sides EL SOL TU CORAZON Y EL NEOISMO I was only 4 years old when I swallowed down a few nails because I wanted to know what is pain?

PAIN I’m working for the 14 Secret Masters of the Universe, a fictive power of art and science to create giants and monsters, and horrify the good little children of bourgeois burocratism, and terrify all the lying leaders of stupefying politics, and take over reality by turning it into a new legend WE MAKE YOU SWING WE MAKE YOU SMILE JOIN US AND NEVER DIE STOP MISERY STOP MISERY say what they don’t want to hear show what they don’t want to see do what they want to stop If we workers take a notion we can stop all speeding trains every ship upon the ocean we can tie with mighty chains every wheel in the creation every mine and every mill fleets and armies of all nations will at our command STAND STILL

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I am to lead You are to follow I am today You are tomorrow BEAUTY - that idol of imperial aesthetics- has repeatedly shown itself to be a calamity for all revolutionary creativity and it will remain so until it is overthrown for ever by the people of the Lower East Side so don’t talk besides the point: fire is fire, ice is ice, hunger is hunger, rice is rice pain is pain, bread is bread, money is money, blood is red a rose is a rose, an eye is an eye, a dog is a dog, a lie is a lie people are people, dreams are dreams, fools are fools, beans are beans STOP MISERY STOP MISERY STOP MISERY STOP MISERY

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PHOTOS

front cover: ANTIHERO! / CoCr-remix, performance at the Media Art Biennale WRO 2011 Alternative Now, photo: Katarzyna Pałetko, WRO Art Center (Wrocław) page 7: Media Art Biennale WRO 1993, photo: Mirosław E. Koch, Open Studio/WRO Art Center (Wrocław) page 9: ANTIHERO! / CoCr-remix, Media Art Biennale WRO 2011 Alternative Now, photo: Małgorzata Kujda, WRO Art Center (Wrocław) page 11: ANTIHERO! / CoCr-remix, Media Art Biennale WRO 2011 Alternative Now, photo: Mirosław E. Koch, WRO Art Center (Wrocław) page 12: ANTIHERO! / CoCr-remix, Media Art Biennale WRO 2011 Alternative Now, photo: Mirosław E. Koch, WRO Art Center (Wrocław) page 14: GIFT, 1988, Museum of Modern Art, New York, blood-x intervention between two Picassos, photo: Gabor Szitanyi, Neoist Archive (Toronto) page 16: GIFT, 1988, Museum of Modern Art, New York, surrounded by security guards, photo: Gabor Szitanyi, Neoist Archive (Toronto) page 17: Ideal Gift, 1991, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, blood-x intervention, photo: Krista Goddess, Neoist Archive (Toronto) page 20: ANTIHERO! / CoCr-remix, Media Art Biennale WRO 2011 Alternative Now, photo: Małgorzata Kujda, WRO Art Center (Wrocław) page 24: Transmission, 1980, Neoist Research Center, Montreal, photo: Michel Dubreuil, Neoist Archive (Toronto) page 28: Monty Cantsin Speaks/The Summer of Return, International Festival of Experimental Art, Studio Erte, 1989, Nove Zamky, Slovakia (former Czechoslovakia), photo: Balint Szombathy, Neoist Archive (Toronto) page 32: ANTIHERO! / CoCr-remix, Media Art Biennale WRO 2011 Alternative Now, photo: Katarzyna Pałetko, WRO Art Center (Wrocław) page 37: Inter-Dada ‘80, Cavellini Parade, Ukiah, California, from left: The Residents, Kazu Yanagi and Monty Cantsin (Istvan Kantor) page 40: The day before the MOMA action at New York Headquarters of Neoism, August 25th, 1988, photo: Toyo, Neoist Archive (Toronto) page 44: Neoist Propaganda, NYC, 1987, photo: Bretty Nova, Neoist Archive (Toronto) page 48: Neoist Flyer, NYC, 1989, Neoist Living Propaganda Art production, Neoist Archive (Toronto)

page 54: Post-action picture of Deadly Gift, 2006, at Implant Productions, Toronto, photo: Marc De Mouy, Neoist Archive (Toronto) page 59: Deadly Gift, 2006, AGO (Art Gallery of Ontario), blood-x action in front of Andy Warhol’s Red Disaster, with Richard K, Alexander Braun, Sandy Baron, photo: Linda Dawn Hammond, Neoist Archive (Toronto) page 64: The Great Confusion, blood painting, 1986, NYC, Rivington School Garden, photo: Bretty Nova, Neoist Archive (Toronto) page 69: Revolutionary Dictatorship, 2005, New York, at Tank, with Kantor Family Circus, photo: Neoist Archive (Toronto) page 70: ANTIHERO! / CoCr-remix, Media Art Biennale WRO 2011 Alternative Now, photo: Katarzyna Pałetko, WRO Art Center (Wrocław) page 72: Intercourse - The File Cabinet Project, Next Sex edition, Ars Electronica, 2000, Linz, opening gala concert/performance, Neoist Archive (Toronto) page 75: Intercourse - The File Cabinet Project, Elektra, 1999, Montreal, photo: Michel Dubreuil, Neoist Archive (Toronto) page 76: 010100, 2003, Rhubarb festival, Toronto,with MSAG (MachineSexActionGroup), photo: Miklos Legrady, Neoist Archive (Toronto) page 78: Istvan Kantor’s “Étant donnés”, 2000, Toronto, Dundas Bunker, model: Volta, photo: Amen!, Neoist Archive (Toronto) page 81: Executive Machinery, 1996, Music Gallery, Toronto, photo: Andre Laredo, Neoist Archive (Toronto) page 86: Slammer (1993), File Cabinet Project, 1999, Oboro, Montreal, photo: Michel Durbreuil, Neoist Archive (Toronto) page 89: Robot Platform (1991), Intercourse - The File Cabinet Project, Elektra, 1999, Montreal, photo: Michel Dubreuil, Neoist Archive (Toronto) page 94: Final Day, 2002, Toronto, Dundas Bunker, with MSAG (MachineSexActionGroup), Neoist Archive (Toronto) page 97: ANTIHERO! / CoCr-remix, Media Art Biennale WRO 2011 Alternative Now, photo: Marcin Łuczkowski, WRO Art Center (Wrocław) page 100-101: The Globe and Mail, Canada’s National Newspaper, Thursday, March 11, 2004 page 113: Nineveh, video, 1997, Toronto, production still, with Angela Idealism and Istvan Kantor, Neoist Archive (Toronto) page 118-119: 100%(pure)CRAP, exbition/installation/performance, 2014, Istvan Kantor/Shalom Neuman collaboration, opening performance at FusionArts Gallery, New York, photo SPACEWOMb Gallery page 122: ANTIHERO! / CoCr-remix, Media Art Biennale WRO 2011 Alternative Now, photo: Katarzyna Pałetko, WRO Art Center (Wrocław) back cover: It’s Always 6 o’clock, 2001, Toronto, photo: Jowita Kepa, Neoist Archive (Toronto)

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ANTIHERO! / CoCr-remix performance recorded at the Media Art Biennale WRO 2011 Alternative Now, 23:50 Revolutionary Song, 2006, 9:30 Song of the Antihero, 2010, 10:20 Neoist Hokey-Pokey, 2010, 5:30 Black Flag, 1998, 9:00 Accumulation, 2001, 10:00 Chanson a mourir, 1983/89/2010, 6:00 White-Boy from the East, 2009, 19:00

video editing: Dariusz Karnicki, Bartosz Konieczny

The DVD included in this publication is for private, educational and research use only.

The audiovisual materials contained on the DVD are protected by copyright laws.

Copying, public screenings, wired and wireless broadcasting and creation of derivative works is prohibited.Š Copyright 2014 Istvan Kantor and WRO Media Art Center Foundation

WIDOK. WRO MEDIA ART READER ISSUE 3

ISTVAN KANTOR MEDIA REVOLT edited by: Piotr Krajewski Violetta Kutlubasis-Krajewska cooperation: Barbara Kręgiel Jan Tarnowski Krzysztof Dobrowolski layout: Bartosz Konieczny photo editor: Adam Kolenda

The publication accompanies the exhibition ISTVAN KANTOR MEDIA REVOLT as part of the project

curator: Piotr Krajewski in cooperation with: Dominika Kluszczyk Zbigniew Kupisz Jan Tarnowski Krzysztof Dobrowolski

WRO ART CENTER Widok 7, 50-052 Wrocław | POLAND tel.: +48 71 343 32 40, email: info@wrocenter.pl | www.wrocenter.pl

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WIDOK. ISTVAN KANTOR MEDIA REVOLT

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WIDOK. ISTVAN KANTOR MEDIA REVOLT

patron. wro art center / renoma department store / wroclaw photomonth festival / lubicz office centre/ krakow trip round kato / supersam / katowice czułość gallery / koszyki market hall / warsaw imka theatre / warsaw

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Griffin Art Space is both a patron of the arts and organiser of cultural projects. It invites prominent galleries and cultural events to the unique spaces owned by the Griffin Group, where they are revitalised through their new context. The Griffin Art Space supports bold artistic projects and pursues ambitious creative programmes, making art available to a wide audience.

www.griffin-artspace.com

Co-funded by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland

Co-funded by the Wrocław Municipality

The Patron of

project:

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16th MEDIA ART BIENNALE WRO 2015

OPENING EVENTS: MAY 13th-17th, 2015

wrocenter.pl

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