What Sticks to the Real, front page

A new issue of News of Common Possibility has just been published featuring contributions, imitations, intimations, affectations, affirmations and reproductions by the following individuals: Dodie Bellamy (SF), James Bidgood (NYC), Jorge Luis Borges (Argentina), Anna Craycroft (NYC), Friedrich Froebel (Germany), Jerzy Kosinski (NYC), Kevin Killian (SF), Erle Stanley Gardner (California) , Goldin+Senneby (Stockholm), Pierre Guyotat (Paris), Kim Einarsson (Berlin, Stockholm), Forrest Lewinger (SF), Jill Magid (NYC), Maria Montessori (Italy), Jason Morris (SF), Jean Piaget (Switzerland), Larry Rinder (SF), Bruce Springsteen (NJ), Jack Spicer (SF), and Gareth Spor (SF). This issue was produced in collaboration with the perceptive and sage-like artist Colter Jacobsen (SF).

“What Sticks to the Real” began when Colter introduced me to the book After Lorca, by the San Francisco poet Jack Spicer. A kind of address to the Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca, this book contains a selection of so-called ‘translated’ Garcia Lorca poems, odes to Lorca and a series of letters from Spicer to Lorca. But in actuality, all of its content is fabricated by Spicer; there are no full translations and Spicer’s letters were never sent because the book was published in 1957, 20 years after Federico Garcia Lorca had died.

What was interesting to both Colter and I was not any sort of deception on Spicer’s part, but rather his liberty—after all the title After Lorca clearly indicates that it is more about admiration then accurate translation. By using Lorca as a stimulant Spicer was able to play another role, permitting him the freedom to step outside his habits and comforts. It was a method, which also enabled Spicer to converse with someone he greatly admired but was never be able to talk to, i.e. Lorca. Using this book as our muse we invited several artists, writers, poets, and curators to play with the notion of an imitation, translation, embodiment, a possession or any other approach that allowed them to perform, to pretend, or to simply be someone else.

This issue is part of an ongoing series of thematic newspapers titled News of Common Possibility. I initiated the project as a way to explore the potentials for aesthetic experimentation and research, structured by an informal form of public address, a printed newspaper; and to serve as a platform to work with individuals and subjects from diverse arenas.

Though the publication is assembled on a computer, and advertised through digital media, the paper is only made available as a printed document. It is therefore distributed from hand-to-hand, through the post, or made available for free in several galleries, as these tend to be more interpersonal forms of exchange. If you would like a copy you can receive one through a number of methods. In San Francisco you can pick one up at Southern Exposure Gallery, 3030 20th St, San Francisco, CA 94110, USA, (415) 863-2141, www.soex.org. Or if you see/know any of the artists or writers involved they can give you copy. In a couple of weeks several copies will be available at Printed Matter in New York and again you will be able to receive copies from the artists there. If you happen to be in Goteborg, Sweden you can pick one up from me, and if you are in Berlin after February 10 copies will be left at the office of Sparwasser HQ. They are also available through the post, send $3.00 US inside the continental United States, $5 US for the rest of the world to 1118 Keith Ave, Berkeley, CA 94708

The first three issues of this paper have been made possible through an Alternative Exposure Grant from Southern Exposure gallery.

To give a little more background to the first Issue of News of Common Possibility (which is focused on the August 7, 1965 protest in Lafayette Park, (SF) by the San Francisco Mime Troupe) I uploaded this video shot last year for the project. In this piece I asked the SFMT’s founder Ronald G. Davis, wearing a Commedia dell’arte costume, to reenact the actions leading up to his arrest, but to perform it without using verbal language. I then slowed the video down to emphasize his gestures and movements, which I felt to be an equally important language to the verbal one. The words he spoke on that day serve as the title of this work. This video and the newspaper together with an audio work and a large sculpture of the Mime Troupe’s unbuilt stage comprise the elements of this project, titled “Create the Condition You Describe”.

Artist: Anthony Marcellini
Title: “Mesdames et messieurs, signore e signori, ladies and gentlemen, El Trupo de Mimo de San Francisco presents for your enjoyment today an ARREST!”
Duration: Video loop
Actor: Ronald G. Davis
Year: 2009

News of Common Possibility, Issue 1

On Friday, August 28, 2009, the first issue of News of Common Possibility was released. This issue began as research into an event in the mid sixties, involving a radical theater group, the San Francisco Mime Troupe (SFMT) who was beginning to make aesthetic advances into public space by bringing their political theater into the parks. My concern was with one particular performance in Lafayette Park on August 7, 1965, when the SFMT was arrested for attempting to perform without a permit (their permit was revoked by the Park Service who believed their performance to be lewd and therefore not fit for public consumption).

On this day the troupe’s founder Ronald Davis, after realizing that the cops assembled would not let the troupe build their stage, nor perform their play without arresting them, decides to perform anyway, without the stage and on the grass. Knowing that they will be arrested the second they begin to perform, Davis decides to take ownership of the confrontation and begins the performance by telling the audience and the cops assembled, that the Mime Troupe was presenting for their enjoyment, not their scheduled performance (“Il Candelaio” by Giordano Bruno) but the forthcoming ARREST! With this remark the cops are cued and rush in to arrest him. This causes great commotion, cops are tripped, their hats are knocked of and they are generally cursed and ridiculed. Davis and two audience members are arrested and carted off.

What was exciting for me (and what prompted this issue and an installation) is not the arrest as an act of defiance in the name of free speech, (the troupe is not really censored, they perform their scheduled play, Il Candelaio, anyway after the cops leave) but the moment right prior to the arrest when the result was uncertain and potential endless, when Davis decides to present the arrest. The act of owning the incarceration that follows represents for me, a moment of possibility, a split second of weightlessness, when the systems of power and control are rendered subservient and mocked by an act of freedom. This is the political of the aesthetic experience, a hint of freedom that can spark revolution. It is this possibility, that first drew me to the arts and it is what still keeps me here.

The newspaper is composed of interviews and texts with people involved in the SFMT or offshoots (The Diggers) as well as, artists, curators, and writers with peripheral interests to this history. Contributors are: Peter Berg And Judy Goldhaft (San Francisco), Ronald G. Davis (San Francisco), Michael William Doyle (Indiana), Aurélien Froment (Dublin, Paris), Fawn Krieger (New York City), Beatriz Santiago Munoz (San Juan, Puerto Rico), Paola Santoscoy (Mexico City, Palo Alto), Nato Thompson (New York City), Lee Walton (Greensboro, North Carolina).

There are no digital copies of this newspaper, it is only available in print. If you would like a copy of the newspaper, you can send $2 (if you are outside of the US please send $4) in the mail to my US address (1118 Keith Avenue, Berkeley CA 94708) and I will have a paper sent to you or if you will be in Europe (Goteborg, Sweden or some other place that I happen to be traveling) I can give you one personally. Southern Exposure who supported this project also has 100 copies; pick one up from them at their grand opening on October 16th. And all the contributors to the newspaper have extra copies. If you know them or meet them you can ask them for an issue.

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This newspaper is the first edition of “News of Common Possibility” an ongoing series of thematic newspapers, initiated by Anthony Marcellini and produced in collaboration with invited guest editors. It has been made possible through an Alternative Exposure Grant from Southern Exposure Gallery.

The next issue is titled, What Sticks to the Real. Issue 2 concerns imitation, translation, embodiment, role playing, possession, channeling or any approach which allows the author to be someone else in order to achieve some freedom and/or to start a conversation with someone who they have always wanted to meet or maybe just be. This paper is edited and produced with the SF artist Colter Jacobsen. It is scheduled for release November 2009.