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Poetic Terrorism in practice

01:08 / 13.04.13

Before my senior year of high school draws to a close, a few of my friends and I want to commit a school-wide act of poetic terrorism, as Hakim Bey defined it:

The audience reaction or aesthetic-shock produced by PT ought to be at least as strong as the emotion of terror-- powerful disgust, sexual arousal, superstitious awe, sudden intuitive breakthrough, dada-esque angst--no matter whether the PT is aimed at one person or many, no matter whether it is "signed" or anonymous, if it does not change someone's life (aside from the artist) it fails.

In addition to Bey, we're also very enamored with Artaud's Theatre of Cruelty, the Situationist International, and Judith Butler. Our plan thus far is to take passages from novels, poems, essays and works concerning theory, etc., and to affix them to the lockers of our fellow students. The content of these texts should be some combination of experimental, obscene, radically leftist, radically feminist, and in all critical of the status quo, so as to evoke the maximum possible from the students, who are largely are right-leaning, anti-intellectual, and anti-women/gays.

My friends and I don't have any lofty aims for this endeavor. We simply hope to add an element of surrealism and chaos to the days of our peers. Ideally, we will challenge their deeply-held beliefs.

I was hoping that some of you might be able to offer pieces of writing that meet the description of what we're looking for, and that you might have advice on how we might refine our plan of action.

the real anti christ

14:59 / 24.04.13

Art alters people every day. The change may be slow coming perhaps even imperceptible but everything we view affects us to some degree.

22:43 / 27.04.13

I would probably avoid using the word terrorism because these are sensitive times and you could get in substantial trouble by people over-reacting to hyperbolic language. Focus on what you want to draw attention to and do so in a way that will startle and challenge people without giving them the luxury of being able to simply declare you offensive or dangerous.

23:18 / 28.04.13

I would probably avoid using the word terrorism because these are sensitive times and you could get in substantial trouble by people over-reacting to hyperbolic language.

I would agree – I wouldn't refer to any sort of art-acts I did as "terrorism" for exactly that reason. I only refer to it as such here only because I feel as though Bey's description is very close to what I am aiming for. If you think about it, it's an even worse choice of a word due to the fact that "terrorism" originally referred to acts of coercion and violence upon the people by the state. I suppose a better word would be "guerrilla art" or "culture jamming."

startle and challenge people without giving them the luxury of being able to simply declare you offensive or dangerous

Your comment also makes even more aware of the fine line between art which will be dismissed by the general public as only possessing "shock value," and that which will cause people to really consider the message being conveyed by the work. I think that the majority of the populace are so set in their views that they will automatically reject anything that they see as going against them, and thus it's important to present ideas in such a way that will cause people to think about why the piece was created in the first place, that is to say, will force them to search for the artist's intent.

To give an example, my freshman year, when I was but a wee gal of fourteen, I painted a portrait of Ronald Reagan and then printed a common epithet for gay people across his face in negative lettering. My purpose in doing this was to force students to question their veneration of Reagan and his ideals, and to critique the rampant homophobia at the school. Of course, most regarded my piece as "shock art" meant to "get a reaction" out of people, which meant my ideas weren't really considered and thus nobody changed zir minds about anything. If I were to redo the piece, I would instead print something along the lines of "Ronald Reagan was not a f*****" beneath the painting, hopefully causing people to wonder why I would make such an obvious statement in the first place.

Does anyone have any thoughts on this?

Tychaíos, o.p.

20:43 / 23.11.13

I'm bumping this because I really like the topic. The idea of adding little decontextualized elements to public spaces, and directing them at specific people is an act many times seen in urban art/guerrilla art, and has that little fluxist skill to it: making people wondering about whatever.
I really like the idea of pasting little radical and extremist sentences to the walls... I might do that one of these days.

19:50 / 25.02.14

give people something to feed their sense of wonder. the point of the exercise is to make people think about how more than their daily or weekly slog is possible, to prime them to think about how the world could be different and to open them up to revolutionary possibilities.

done right, it can be very powerful.

08:04 / 12.08.14

Terrorism's completely the wrong word. I'm going to go farther than the rest of the internets and tell you /why/.

You want radical poetry, radical art, radical radicals, to grab people by their eyeballs and eardrums and shake them out of their cot death complacency. The goal is to WAKE UP, to get /active/, to connect with and engage with the world, demonstrate a little care. It's shock treatment for the soul.

Terrorism, if there is such a thing, is the opposite. The means are the same: grabbing eyeballs and eardrums with a shock to the system, which is confusing. But the goal is /disconnection/. It wants to paralyze action. It fosters distrust, disunity, and stifles engagement by drowning the reptile brain in fear and self-preservation.

It's the difference between LSD or ebola in the water supply. Dig?