1. What is A.T.T.A.C?
-A.T.T.A.C. is a collective entity of cultural terrorists employing the weaponry of art in all of its many manifestations. The individuals and groups involved with A.T.T.A.C. comprise a mutual support network for the execution and realization of radical ideas.
2. What is an art terrorist?
-An art terrorist is one who utilizes his otherworldly gifts (artistic talent) to discharge his ideas into this world. His/Her ambition is to create a paradigm shift whereby the spark of consciousness can be ignited in any given audience. He/she knows that creative change is essential to existence and that it is sorely lacking in the efforts of common man. Additionally, the art terrorist recognizes his form for what it is; a tool, a device and a mechanism used to expose his/her essence. In a 1912 publication entitled "Der Blaue Reiter", avant-gardist Arnold Shoenberg addressed this issue by saying that the artist "paints pictures in which the external object is hardly more to them than a stimulus to improvise in color and form and to express themselves."
3. Who can join A.T.T.A.C.?
-experimentally minded musicians, film makers, painters, photographers, writers, architects, genetic engineers, sculptors, performance artists... Any medium can potentially be utilized by the art terrorist to express and convey his/her self. A.T.T.A.C. is looking for individuals who are unconventional, thought provoking, challenging, conceptual, and/or otherwise avant-garde.
5. What are the benefits of membership in A.T.T.A.C.?
-The voice of a small elite is louder than the squeaks and groans of a mass. Through A.T.T.A.C. your voice could be heard clearly, and propel itself across the expanses of time and space. For the benefit of all members, a co-operative quarterly publication, "Viva Neoterica!" will be the vocal chord of this roaring voice. This forum will be accessible for the transmission of opinions, critiques and commentaries, a networking device for collaborative efforts, an exhibition for still art (in colour) and creative writing, and otherwise a method to reach intelligent and interested people. In addition to the publication of a newsletter, A.T.T.A.C. plans to organize multi-media events to shock the populace.
A.T.T.A.C. BRIEFING SHEET #1
A.T.T.A.C. is an avant-garde militia dedicated to the principles of Terrorforming as conceived by Mind Skelp-cher. We are an action-oriented body of men and women who desire to unsettle the Pop-Culture in which we find ourselves situated. The objectives of this militia are to 1. perform acts of terrorism (within legal boundaries) against radio-stations, music-stores, newspapers, dance-clubs, television-stations, and other institutions that support/promote Pop-Culture, 2. do the above with the intent of shaking the masses out of the slumber induced by the hypnotic media devices that they slavishly worship.
Terrorforming and Legominism:
In James Webb's "Harmonious Circle" is recounted the foundation of Terrorforming in Legominism: "There have been attempts to show that the use of theatre to shock people, to disrupt what Moreno would call their "role-Conserves," derives from Traditional wisdom (i.e. Legominism)." The distinctly Gurdjieffian application of shock and friction to induce an experience of the sublimity of isolate consciousness constitute what is identified by Mind Skelp-cher and A.T.T.A.C. as "Terrorforming." This concept essentially expresses the process of establishing conditions within which the above mentioned experience can ensue. Both the initial impetus and submersion in the experience are terrifying, as the Order of the Trapezoid illustrates in its Mission Statement:
"Immanual Kant likened the experience of the sublime to standing atop a high cliff that simultaneously attracts us to move closer to its ledge and repels us to scramble for safety." A.T.T.A.C. endeavors to utilize Terrorforming for the purposes of mass alienation and isolation; a violent extraction of role conserves in crowds, leading to the dissolution of "demotic giganticism" and subsequent solution - independent thought.
Aesthetic Terrorism:
Are you an aesthetic terrorist? Aesthetic Terrorism is the process of intimidating ones environment with demands for the installation of a set of personally determined principles of beauty. Aesthetics, as a branch of philosophy, involves the relation between art and its foundation in other disciplines of thought (psychology, for example). What this infers is that art can be an objective manifestation, or illustration of certain principles existent within the realm of ideas, and thus a gateway for the invasion of form into function. This process involves terrorism on two levels
-1.) that which is new is commonly met with fearful responses, and 2.) ideas manifesting within the realm of manifestation must combat existing inertia. Here are a few helpful hints that may indicate that you are an Aesthetic Terrorist: 1. you publicly demonstrate your affections through what is called in the art-world as "Environments, Happenings, and Performance", 2. you are the god of your own subjective universe and you communicate this divinity through art in order to furnish a proper dwelling place for this god.
Environments, Happenings, and Performance:
The most potent application of Terrorforming is to be found in the methodology of Environments, Happenings and Performance.
From Rossalind E Krauss's "Passages in Modern Sculpture:
"The link between Oldenburg's work and the notions of a "theatre of cruelty" was forged in the late 1950s and early 1960s through the sculptor's participation in the theatrical manifestation of "happenings". Happenings were dramatic events staged for the most part in New York by artists and their friends, who performed in lofts, galleries, or as in Oldenburg's case, storefronts. As Susan Sontag has pointed out, three typical features of the happening connect it to Artaud's notion of theater: "first, its supra-personal or impersonal treatment of persons; second, its emphasis on spectacle and sound, and its disregard for the word; and third, its professed aim to assault the audience." In describing this last aspect Sontag writes:
Perhaps the most striking feature of the happening is its treatment (this is the only word for it) of the audience. The performers may sprinkle water on the audience, or fling pennies or sneeze-producing detergent powder at it. Someone may be making near deafening noises on an oil drum, or waving an acetylene torch in the direction of the spectators. Several radios may be playing simultaneously. The audience may be made to stand uncomfortably in a crowded room, or fight for space to stand on the boards laid in a few inches of water. There is no attempt to cater to the audience's desire to see everything. In fact this is often deliberately frustrated, by performing some of the events in semi-darkness or by having events go on in different rooms simultaneously. In Allan Kaprow's A Spring Happening, the spectators were confined inside a long boxlike structure resembling a cattle car; peepholes had been bored in the wooden wall of this enclosure through which the spectators could strain to see the events taking place outside; when the Happening was over, the walls collapsed, and the spectators were driven out by some-one operating a power lawnmower. - Susan Sontag, Against Interpretation 1967
If the attack with the lawnmower in A Spring Happening signalled the end of the event, many happenings gave their audiences no such clues as to when they were over. Lacking any kind of narrative or dramatic arc, and lacking suspense or structure, they often left their audiences standing and waiting for some time after they were in fact ended. "The Happening operates by creating an asymmetrical network of surprises, without climax or consummation; this is the alogic of dreams rather than the logic of most art. Dreams have no sense of time; neither do the Happenings. Lacking a plot and continuous rational discourse, they have no past." (Sontag) And this withholding of a sense of structure is, if sublimated, as much an attack on the audience as the physical menace of the power mower.
Another aspect of the Happening, "its supra-personal or impersonal treatment of persons", is clearly important to Oldenburg's sculptural thinking. In the Happenings, performers were often shrouded in burlap sacks or wrapped in paper to resemble objects; or they were rendered inanimate props; or acted upon as though they were depersonalized instruments - lifted, thrown, pushed, stroked. "Another way in which people are employed is in the discovery or the impassioned repetitive use of materials for their sensuous properties rather than their conventional uses; dropping pieces of bread into a bucket of water, setting a table for a meal, rolling a huge paper-screen hoop along the floor, hanging up laundry."
Tactical Antics Corp:
The Mind Skelp-cher Komandatura is the beating heart of A.T.T.A.C., and is organized for the dissemination of information relating to combat tactics for public villainy. Through the newsletter, "Viva Neoterica!", the Tactical Antics Corp will treat subscribers to operation procedures involving equipment, propaganda, and target audiences. If you wish to be involved with the Tactical Antics Corp by becoming a Hellion (one who is troublesome and mischievous), please contact the Kommandatura with a proposal and details of previous activities.
Kommandatura:
The Kommandatura is the militia headquarters of A.T.T.A.C., and it is from this centre that current Aesthetic Terrorist activities emanate. The command centre is that vital element which inserts the "K" into A.T.T.A.C. If you are an accomplished Aesthetic Terrorist, with a group of individuals working under your direction, you may wish to contact the central headquarters of A.T.T.A.C. regarding the instituting of a Kommandatura chapter in your geographic location.
