On Sunday October 4th, the wall was visited by Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) who also agreed to sit for an interview with me during the on-air live broadcast on Radio Free Brooklyn I was doing at the site at the time of his arrival.

In the overnight hours of October 7-8, the Wall of Lies was vandalized with Pro-Trump and white supremacist slogans, including “Vote Trump or Die” and “Stand Back and Stand By.” The latter was a phrase, directed at the white supremacist group Proud Boys, uttered by Donald Trump during the first 2020 presidential debate, and subsequently adopted by the group as a rallying cry. Rather than backing down, Phil and I launched a gofundme campaign to have the wall resurrected.

We raised enough money to create a second wall 100 feet long—twice as long as the original—at the corner of Lafayette and Grand Streets in lower Manhattan.

The post Wall of Lies first appeared on Tom Tenney.

As always, please listen with a good set of headphones if possible.

The post Reunion first appeared on Tom Tenney.

The post Off the Grid first appeared on Tom Tenney.

click to play.  TRT ~33 mins 

Introduction

Radio began as a DIY endeavor, invented by amateurs and tinkerers – the hackers of the late 19th and early 20th century. The Radio Act of 1927 allowed the government to privilege certain groups, particularly the radio corporations, in the allocation of the radio spectrum, and effectively locked the amateurs out.  Since that time, unlicensed broadcasters – or pirates – have roamed the airwaves and tried to elude the FCC. Through a series of interviews, this 33 minute “broadcast” looks at some of the motivations of these radio hackers – why they started doing it, and why they stopped. It also takes a critical look at the recently passed Local Community Radio Act (LCRA) – legislation which intends to open the airwaves to broadcasters under 100 watts, but may not be able to accommodate broadcasters in the largest urban areas. Finally, the migration of many microbroadcasters from the airwaves to the Internet is examined, particularly how this move allows for broadcasts to proliferate, but may not serve the public in exactly the same way the traditional radio medium is able to.  It concludes that there still is much more work to be done towards equitable distribution of the airwaves, and that while Internet radio may be able to meet the needs of certain communities, its very distribution methods indicate a much different audience than would be served by local radio.

Concept & Methodology
The original idea of this project was to investigate the “disappearance” of pirate radio broadcasters from the airwaves over the past decade.  I had noted, observationally, that as Internet adoption grew in the United States and Internet technologies were better able to accommodate the transmission of live audio over digital networks, the “buzz” about illegal microbroadcasters I’d previously heard in underground performance and alternative media communities had diminished.  This observation was corroborated by other recent examinations of the pirate radio phenomenon.  For example, in a video entitled Pirate Radio Frequencies (2010), a short documentary produced by Vice Magazine on the London (UK) pirate scene, one DJ declares, “the Internet has killed pirate radio, and I don’t think it can come back.”  In this study, my intent was to investigate the phenomenon of pirate radio and DIY microbroadcasting in New York City specifically, whether the phenomenon still exists, whether the broadcasters have moved to the Internet and if so, why.  I also wanted to examine the Local Community Radio Act, new national legislation allowing the licensing of community stations of under 100 watts and what effect, if any, this might have on the future of microbroadcasting, pirate and DIY radio.

Instead of conducting and presenting my research in the traditional way, it was decided that it would be presented as a short “radio show” which could be played over the airwaves, on Internet radio, or otherwise distributed by means that were more relevant to the medium being discussed than they were to traditional academic methods of writing and submitting a research paper.  To this end, I conducted a series of five interviews with people who were involved in DIY radio and microbroadcasting in a variety of ways, after reading several essays and articles on DIY radio to familiarize myself with the territory.  I chose my subjects not only based on relevancy to the topics being explored, but according to accessibility within the time frame given to complete the project.   The five subjects interviewed for the project were:

• Hank Hayes:  Hayes was a pirate radio DJ that started in the late 70’s while he was still a teenager.  For over 30 years, Hayes and his partner, Jim Nazium, broadcast illegally in NYC – often moving to different spots on the dial in order to elude the FCC. In 1986, Hayes was a member of a loose coalition of pirate broadcasters that purchased – and operated from- a ship, The Sarah, in international waters off the coast of New York.  The ship was raided and shut down by the FCC after just five days. In the early 2000s, Hayes and Nazium went “legit” by moving their broadcasts to the Internet.
• Andre Alleyne:  Andre isn’t a pirate broadcaster, but hosted a pirate transmitter in his Brooklyn apartment for four days in 2009 for a friend of his brother’s, a young man who ran a pirate radio station broadcasting Caribbean and urban music to the community.  Despite his lack of meaningful involvement in the operation, the FCC raided Alleyne’s apartment, and he was fined $10,000.  I found Andre through an Internet search of public records of people in New York that had been cited by the FCC for illegal broadcasting.
• Candace Clement:  Clement is an outreach manager at Free Press, a New England based media advocacy organization that lobbied for the passage of the LCRA.
• Brandy Doyle: Doyle is the policy director for Prometheus Radio, a Philadelphia-based micro-radio advocacy group that was among the most outspoken lobbyists for the LCRA.  The organization started as a pirate radio station – Radio Mutiny – that operated out of West Philadelphia in the late 90’s before being shut down by the FCC.
• Katrina Cass: Cass is one of the founders of BBOX Radio, an Internet radio station that has been broadcasting from a 160-square-foot shipping container in Brooklyn’s DeKalb Market since July of 2011.  The station was set up after she and her friends won a contest sponsored by the market, which asked, “What would you do with a shipping container at the DeKalb Market?”  Along with the space, the group won $5000 in seed money, and recently raised an additional $15,000 through a Kickstarter campaign.

Hayes, Clement and Doyle were all interviewed via Skype, and recorded with Audio Hijack, software designed to record computer system audio. Alleyne and Cass were interviewed in person. The specific interview questions, listed in Appendix A, were tailored specifically to each interviewee’s area of expertise, but were all designed to answer the following fundamental questions related to DIY radio and microbroadcasting:

• How did pirate broadcasting come about – what were the motivations for illegal broadcasting?
• Where is DIY Radio happening today in New York City?
• Did the advent of the Internet cause DIY radio stations to move online, or are there still pirates on the airwaves?
• What are some of the economic considerations of microbroadcasting vs. Internet radio?
• How will the passage of the Local Community Radio Act affect microbroadcasting, particularly in cities like NYC?

Outcomes

The outcomes that were revealed through the process of interviewing the five subjects could be categorized under four broad topics: motivations, benefits, limiting factors, and economics.

Motivations

In her interview, Candace Clement stated that the motivations for all microbroadcasters, whether pirate or legitimate, could be summed up by stating that

“they see a need that’s not being met. They might not see that they’re doing it that way but that is ultimately why they’re doing it, because something doesn’t exist and they’re making it exist because it’s not there.” (Airwaves 19:30)

This conclusion was borne out by both my reading on microbroadcasting and the interviews I conducted.  For example, Mbanna Kantanko started pirate radio station Black Liberation Radio (now Human Rights Radio) in Springfield, Illinois because his community wasn’t provided an outlet by mainstream media to express the violence and inequality they experienced in their neighborhoods. He said that the FCC put radio broadcasting

“out of the reach of the people what we’re trying to reach – people who live in public housing…who have no hope at all… of ever achieving any economic success in this country.  That regulation [requiring a minimum 100-watt transmitter] systematically excludes the disadvantaged… When you’re facing the conditions that our community in particular is facing, you have a duty as a human being to do whatever you can to try to turn those conditions around.  And we feel that communications is one of the things that we have to take control over.”  (qtd. in Bekken, 1998)

By clearly perceiving his reality and creating a radio station as a way to overcome the oppression he perceived in his community, Kantanko’s creation of  BLR can be seen as a prime example of the use of praxis as a method for overcoming a “limiting situation” as described by Paolo Friere in Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970).  In that work, Friere wrote,

“In order for the oppressed to be able to wage the struggle for their liberation, they must perceive the reality of oppression not as a closed world from which there is no exit, but as a limiting situation which they can transform. This perception is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for liberation; it must become the motivating force for liberating action.” (49)

In a 1996 interview, Napoleon Williams – another leader of Black Liberation Radio – also spoke to the necessity of constructionist principals in education for teaching technology as a tool for liberation to children in oppressed neighborhoods, echoing the writings of Papert and Harel (1991).  Williams said,

“I don’t know why we are not taking technology that is at our disposal and running classes to teach our kids to read schematics. Give your child some kind of electronic intelligence.  You got to realize that technology exists to create a radio station almost on a matchbook, and our kids would be fascinated by that if we would direct them toward it.” (Williams 1996)

     Not all radio pirates were as political as Kantanko and Williams. Hank Hayes began pirate broadcasting because he felt that commercial broadcasters were destroying the “fun” of radio.  In my interview with him, he says that a primary motivation was a change in commercial broadcasting in the 70’s that emphasized

“the DJ not talking. And we liked the DJ. And what happened was, we said ‘well, if we can’t get it anymore we’re going to do it ourselves.  And that’s exactly what we did.” (Airwaves 05:49)

Whether the motivations for pirate broadcasting were political or not, I agree with Clement’s assessment that for microbroadcasters, a primary motivator is to meet a need that is perceived as “not being met” by mainstream media.

Benefits

Much of the discussion, with all of my interviewees, revolved around the benefits of microbroadcasting over Internet radio or vice-versa, depending on which side of the philosophical fence the subject happened to be on.   For Clement and Doyle, the prevailing opinion is that, when it comes to broadcasting that is able to serve local communities,  “radio offers something that the Internet just doesn’t at this time” (Doyle 22:55).  Neither argues against the inherent values of the Internet as a medium that can reach a mass audience, but their concern is more for providing a medium that speaks to a local audience in a

“globalized moment when people are really yearning for that local, and they’re looking for local food and local businesses and local artists, and a sense of being part of a local community at a time when that has been wiped out.” (Doyle 22:39)

Katrina Cass of BBOX Radio tends to disagree, and finds that the Internet is able to not only serve a local community, but provide a “local flavor” to a global audience and thinks that

“there will be an audience that’s interested in what’s happening locally here in Brooklyn.  I think people in Mississippi and California are interested in what’s happening in Brooklyn.  There are things that are different. And you might not be seeing that on the larger national networks.”

(Cass 24:03)

Cass raises an excellent point, in the fact that local broadcasting is not available on the “larger national networks” which is precisely why Clement and Doyle are interested in opening the airwaves to community broadcasting.

Regarding some of the other differences between radio and Internet broadcasting, one of the most salient ones that I tried to have each interviewee address was the concept of “discoverability” i.e. how one finds a broadcast without knowing about it and specifically seeking it out.  While both Clement and Doyle see this as an advantage of radio, both Cass and Hayes have been able to find an element of discoverability in their Internet broadcasts.  For Cass, the element of discoverability comes from the studio’s physical location in the Dekalb Market, with people literally stumbling upon the station.  For Hayes, he thinks that discoverability comes from being a part of a larger network of Internet stations (stickam.com) where people who listen to one show on the network are likely to check out another.  He also thinks that once people are exposed to his show, they hear something they’ve “never heard before” – which is the old school style of broadcasting that he and Jim practice.

Limitations

Through my interviews, I found that there are several limitations to microbroadcasting, particularly if one seeks to become licensed under the LCRA. First, the way the bill is written doesn’t allow for a set percentage of the radio spectrum to be allocated to low power radio, but only for community broadcasters to be able to set up shop in whatever portions of the spectrum commercial radio isn’t using.  Therefore, in large markets like New York City, there will be very little opportunity for community broadcasters to become licensed.   This is a limitation that is acknowledged by both Doyle and Clement, and a reason that Cass sees Internet broadcasting not necessarily as a solution to the problem, but as a necessary alternative.

Another limitation to microbroadcasters getting a license under the LCRA is the fact that all licensees must be non-profit corporations.  Given the amount of organization and paperwork this requires, not to mention the time it takes to be recognized by the government as a nonprofit, this places a serious limitation on DIY broadcasters who place a premium on getting things done quickly.  An example I raised in the interviews was the Occupy Wall Street movement, which emerged fairly rapidly and could have potentially benefitted by having a low-power FM station broadcasting to the protesters.  The licensing restrictions and nonprofit requirement, then, would effectively eliminate a movement like OWS from having legitimate low power broadcasting available to them as a viable option.

Finally, a limitation to legitimate broadcasting raised by Andre Alleyne, is that becoming licensed can be “price prohibitive.”  This was certainly true before the passage of the LCRA, when setting up for a station of 100 watts or more could cost in the tens of thousands of dollars.  Certainly the new bill will lower the economic barrier to entry for many, but compared to the Internet, setting up a terrestrial radio station can still be an economic barrier, and will be discussed in more detail in the next section.

Economics

The last outcome of the research I’d like to discuss is how the economics of local community radio compares to that of Internet broadcasting.  According to Candace Clement, local radio is more cost efficient in the sense that it places the economic threshold to entry for the average listener much lower than it is for Internet radio listeners. Her feeling is that with Internet radio, there are economic barriers for the listener such as equipment, access, and data caps whereas “broadcast radio is totally free.  You just have to get yourself a radio and you’re in, you’re all set, you’re good.” (Clement 21:50).

On the other hand, Cass sees the Internet as being more cost efficient, at least for the producers if not necessarily for the listeners.  She emphasizes that for her station, the startup costs were low enough that they could get up and running easily, and that BBOX started with only

“a small stipend that pretty much covered the insurance for [the studio] and everything else was coming out of our pockets. So if we wanted to try and go get a transmitter for a space that doesn’t even exist for us, it just didn’t make any sense.  A web server is like a hundred bucks a year at most.  It’s very reasonable.”  (Cass 25:10)

After listening to arguments about the economics of microbroadcasting vs. Internet radio from both perspectives, it appeared that an inverse relationship exists between the economics of each media.  On the one hand, participation in microbroadcasting is much more inexpensive for the listeners but more expensive for the producers, both in startup costs and time and energy involved.  On the other hand, Internet radio is very inexpensive for producers to get a station up and running, while access to listeners is limited by the availability of equipment such as smart phones and computers, as well as Internet access – all resources that are far more expensive than an average transistor radio.

Conclusions and Limitations

Although the topic requires more research, I was able to reach at least two conclusions from the outcomes of this project.  The first is that, while the passage of the LCRA is a step in the right direction, it isn’t a solution that works for everyone.  New York City, a city that could benefit from community broadcasting due to it’s several ethnic and cultural communities, will be eliminated from participation due to the fact that there is no room in the radio spectrum because of the space inhabited by commercial broadcasters.   It would seem to me that a more equitable solution would be legislation that ensures a certain percentage of the spectrum is guaranteed to be available to community broadcasters in any market.  This has precedent in the 1984 Cable Communications Act that required that all cable companies allocate a certain amount of their resources to community access television, and would certainly allow for a more equitable distribution of the airwaves.

Another conclusion is that, until allocation of the spectrum becomes more equitable, Internet radio may not be able to provide a solution to the problem, per se, but an alternative to those producers who want to get their message out in a way that is cost effective and has few barriers to entry.

Some of the limitations of the research include the fact that, due to the temporal limitations of the project, speaking to listeners of both microbroadcasters and Internet stations was out of the scope of the project.  I believe that hearing the opinions of those who are actively engaged in these types of broadcasts would provide invaluable insight, and should be addressed in future studies.  Another limitation is that my roster of interviewees didn’t ultimately include microbroadcasters or pirate radio operators that are currently active.  One reason for this is that it can be extremely difficult to locate pirate broadcasters, if only for the simple reason that they don’t want to be found.  After all, if I can find them, so can the FCC, and they have a vested interest in remaining underground.  Ultimately, my hope is that if I continue this research in the future, I will be able to overcome these limitations.  Hopefully by that time, we’ll be able to better understand the effects of the LCRA on the state of microbroadcasting as well.

WORKS CITED

Bekken, Jon. “Community Radio at the Crossroads: Federal Policy and the Professionalization of a Grassroots Medium.” Seizing the Airwaves: A Free Radio Handbook. Ron Sakolsky and Stephen Dunifer (eds.) San Francisco: AK Press. 1998. p 39.

Friere, Paolo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed.  New York: Herder and Herder. 1970.

Papert, Seymour & Harel, Idit (eds). Constructionism: Research Reports and Essays 1985-1990.  Epistemology and Learning Research Group, The Media Lab, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Ablex Pub. Corp, Norwood NJ. Chapter 1: Situating Constructionism. 1991.

Pirate Radio Frequencies. Dir. Matt Mason. Palladium Boots. 2010.

Williams, Napoleon.  “A New Drum for Our People: An Interview with Napoleon Williams (Black Liberation Radio). Seizing the Airwaves: A Free Radio Handbook.  Ron Sakolsky and Stephen Dunifer (eds.) San Francisco: AK Press. 1998. p 114.

APPENDIX A – INTERVIEW QUESTIONS

Andre Alleyne (interview on 11/30/2011)

1. Describe the radio station you hosted the transmitter for.  What was the content of the broadcasts?  How often did they broadcast?
2. Who were the listeners?  Was there community involvement in the station?
3. Describe what happened with the FCC.  How did they first contact you?  How would you characterize their attitude towards you?
4. You said in your email you feel you’d been made an “example” of – can you elaborate on this?
5. Do you feel your persecution – and subsequent fines – by the FCC had a negative effect on other pirate broadcasters in NYC?
6. Has there been subsequent consideration of resurrecting the station?   Did your brother or his friend at any time consider trying to become licensed by the FCC?  Why or why not?  What do you consider the biggest obstacles to an individual obtaining a broadcast license?
7. Was there consideration given to broadcasting over the Internet? What effect, if any, do you feel Internet broadcasting has had on the state of community, low power, or pirate stations on the airwaves?
8. Do you consider yourself a political person?  How does community broadcasting fit in with your personal politics?
9. Last year, a bill was passed to allow FCC licensing of micro-power and community radio stations.  Do you think this helps or undermines the pirate radio movement?  Is it worth it to get a license?

Hank Hayes – Radio Free New York (interview on 12/1/2011)

1. Your story is incredible. You and Jim have known each other since childhood, correct?  How did you start getting into radio?
2. You’ve been shut down by the FCC several times, and yet kept coming back for more.  Why?  What kinds of penalties did the FCC impose on you guys?
3. It says on the site that you mainly started doing pirate radio because there wasn’t any good commercial radio on the air.  As you continued to do it, and continued to get harassed by the FCC, did political motivations, like free speech issues, come into play as well?
4. Did you have day jobs?  How did you guys make money?
5. I read on the site that your signal could be heard up and down the eastern seaboard.  That’s pretty impressive for microbroadcasters. Is that mainly because you were on the AM band? How powerful was your transmitter?
6. The story about RNI and the Sarah is amazing.  I was kind of horrified to read about the apparent violence of the FCC – smashing equipment, cutting wires, etc.   also the shotgun bearing Marshalls of 1989 bust.  Seems like a bit of overkill for a couple of radio pirates. What’s your take on that?
7. The case was dropped, so basically the message was “don’t fuck with us, because we’ll shut you down any time we want, right?”   So, why DO you think they shut down RNI?  or any of your other stations for that matter?
8. Did you ever consider getting licensed, as opposed to just leasing time?
9. I know you guys did radio because of the sorry state of radio at the time.  What do you think of radio today?  Has it gotten better or worse?
10. When did you make the move over to the Internet, and why?
11. What about this move from the airwaves to the Internet?  Do you feel like you’re accomplishing the same things?  How do you perceive the difference between Internet radio and microbroadcasting?
12. What advice would you give to someone today who’s interested in getting into microbroadcasting? Is it worth it to broadcast on the airwaves or would they and their listeners be better served on the Internet?
13. Last year Congress passed the Local Community Radio Act, which will allow licensing to microbroadcasters under 100 watts.    How do you think this will affect DIY broadcasters?  Is this a good thing, or is this just FCC’s way of getting microbroadcasters to play by their rules?
14. Talk about what you guys are up to now – anything else, etc.

Candace Clement – Free Press (interview on 12/1/2011)
Brandy Doyle – Prometheus Radio (interview on 12/2/2011)

1. What is LPFM and why is it important?
2. Last year Congress passed the Local Community Radio Act (LCRA).  Can you describe this bill and talk a bit about its importance?  Who will benefit most from this law?
3. Do you know how who gets licensed will be decided? It seems like this could be a big win for progressives, but only if the fundamentalist don’t swoop in and snap up all the licenses.
4. It seems as though, with the Internet, radio has almost become a “forgotten” medium.  Do you think the LCRA will change that?  How will it/could it affect the overall radio landscape in this country?
5. What do you see as the benefit of LPFM broadcasting over the airwaves vs. using the Internet?  How is radio different?
6. What about communities, urban diasporas, in big cities where spectrum space is scarce.  Will there be opportunities for them as well?
7. The FCC has up to 2 years from passage of the LCRA to start taking applications – any idea when that will happen?
8. I’ve heard that the waiting list could be up to five years after application. It would seem that this could be frustrating to those with an immediate need to get up and running.  It also seems like it would effectively put the kibosh on anyone whose intent is to use the airwaves for discussion of any current political events (OWS comes to mind).   Any thoughts on that?  Could this be a way of the FCC to gain even *more* control of the airwaves?
9. I understand that licenses will only go to registered nonprofits.  Doesn’t place even more restrictions on who can and cannot broadcast?
10. One of the most frequent complaints (or rationales) heard by unlicensed LPFM broadcasters in the past was that they couldn’t get a license from the FCC.  Now, if they become licensed under the LCRA, they will have to play by the FCC’s rules.  Is that a trade off you think will be worth it for them to make, or has the Internet effectively killed the pirate radio movement, rending the point moot?

Katrina Cass – BBOX Radio (Interview 12/4) /2011

1. Tell me the story of BBOX.  What’s your mission and how did you guys get started?
2. Did you or any of the other founders have a background in broadcasting?  What sparked this particular idea when you came up with it as your entry to the shipping container contest?
3. What do you see as the principal differences between broadcasting on the Internet vs. micropower broadcasting on the airwaves?
4. Do you think that the Internet has diminished the public’s interest in broadcasting on the air?  Is the Internet a competing technology or a complementary one?
5. Do you have any data on *how* people are listening to your station?  Do they listen at work on their computer with headphones? via Smartphone apps?
6. BBOX appears to be a very DIY effort – what have you found to be the biggest challenges in running an Internet radio station?
7. Aside from the Kickstarter campaign, what are some other ways BBOX is funded? Do you have sponsorships, lease airtime, or have other means of bringing in an income?
8. One of the reasons I find this project particularly interesting is that you’re doing something that’s very locally focused (community radio) on a decidedly non-local medium (the Internet).   How has the local response been to BBOX and how do you feel you  serve the local Brooklyn community?
9. What’s your process for selecting programming?  What criteria do you use?  Can anyone apply to have a show on BBOX?
10. Are all of your shows broadcast from the shipping crate studio, or have you done any remote/on location broadcasts from other places?
11. What’s the future of BBOX?  Are there any plans/desires to broadcast over the airwaves? What would be your advice to would be DIY broadcasters on the Internet?  What’s the best, easiest way for them to start?

The post We Want the Airwaves: An Investigation into Pirate and DIY Broadcasting first appeared on Tom Tenney.

I started wondering what it would sound like if some of these artists *could* play together…. I concocted an imaginary installation in which buskers from all over New York (or maybe all over the world?) were mic’d and their music broadcast to each other so that they could all play in a continuous, 24-hour jam in real time.    Logistically, I’m not sure how this would work, but it would be an interesting experiment – maybe start with 2 or 3 just in New York, and then gradually scale up to include many others.   Anyway, this piece is simply a meditation on that thought….

Thank you to Moonshine Shorey for providing the vocals.  As always, please listen with quality headphones if available.

The post We Are All Underground (ft. Moonshine Shorey) first appeared on Tom Tenney.

At the risk of saying too much about the ‘intent’ of this piece (something I usually steer clear of), I feel as though explaining a bit about how it was constructed might enhance the listening.  When creating Scream Symphony #1, I tried to find screams that were as “authentic” as possible – some of my sources were CVR (cockpit voice recorders) from plane crashes, phone calls from WTC on 911, and sounds from the Haiti earthquake aftermath to name a few. In other words, screams as media that were never meant to be media, the most unwilling participants in art you’ll ever find. Pulling these together and listening to each one was one of the most difficult things I’ve ever worked on – just completely draining emotionally.

There is one scream of my own, made by taping a homemade piezo transducer mic to my throat and screaming into my pillow. The scream was 4 seconds long, but I time-remapped it to 5 minutes, the length of the piece. Then I remapped the other screams at various lengths and used these to form the backbone of the “symphony” – the underlying rhythm and melody – trying to layer them in a way that was eerily musical. Other layers were then added, including many of the screams heard at their original speed.

WARNING:  Some have found the content of this piece disturbing.  Proceed at your own risk.

Listen with a good set of headphones if at all possible: [Runtime: 5:00]

The post Scream Symphony #1 first appeared on Tom Tenney.

& special nods to Todd Haynes & Bruce Conner

The post “They Call Me Pubefinger” – A True Story Told in Pop Culture References first appeared on Tom Tenney.

The post Great Expectations: A Love Story first appeared on Tom Tenney.

Statement of Intent:
The piece was actually inspired by a Brecht quote about “an inescapable profusion and confusion in the tower of Babel.” I thought that “I didn’t know that” would be a good starting point for an exploration of state-controlled “truths” with the title phrase representing the public’s naive willingness to accept what we now recognize as mistruth and propaganda. I wanted the tension between time periods to emphasize how relativistic these messages are, depending on when we hear them – hopefully the mixing of periods emphasized the relationship between contemporary and dated material.

I originally titled the piece ” I Didn’t Know That: A Triptych” because I tried to create three distinct sections. The first is the monologue of media controlled messages, the second is a dialogue between the messages. The third section actually begins with Brecht himself reading a poem in his native German entitled “To Those Who Follow in Our Wake”, which, in translation, begins:

Truly, I live in dark times!
An artless word is foolish. A smooth forehead
Points to insensitivity. He who laughs
Has not yet received
The terrible news.

Layered on top of this is the voice of McLuhan discussing his idea of “resonance” – nonlinear, nonlogical comprehension of sounds and images. These are the 2 voice of “authenticity” that are eventually buried by the familiar voices introduced in the first two parts, which are layered over them to create a cacophony that is (hopefully) a sum greater than its parts. Anyway, I removed the subtitle since it didn’t strictly fit within the Third Coast guidelines and I’m sort of glad I did, as I felt it opened the piece up to a greater breadth of interpretation.

The post ‘I Didn’t Know That’ – A Collage for Radio first appeared on Tom Tenney.

There is also an accompanying short paper, which you can read below  if you wish.

Art Stars: The Children of Jack Smith

The 9-minute micro-documentary, Art Stars: The Children of Jack Smith is, broadly speaking, an investigation into the influence of cinema on New York City performance art and artists.  Jack Smith, a performance artist and filmmaker living and working in New York in the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s, is best known for the controversial underground film, Flaming Creatures, which was central to the battle against censorship in NYC in the 1960’s.   Smith was profoundly influenced by cinema in both his films and live performances – especially by the 1940’s actress, Maria Montez.  My subtitle, The Children of Jack Smith, can be understood as referring to two modes of influence on today’s performers.  The first is simply the way in which today’s artists’ work are influenced by cinema in general – contemporary, period, underground, or mainstream – in the same way that Jack Smith’s work was influenced by a particular style of film.  The second interpretation is the way in which today’s artists are specifically influenced by the Jack Smith’s work itself – his movies, performances, writing and philosophy.  As evidenced by the documentary on the artist, Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis, Smith had a profound influence on the performance artists of his time, and it was they that laid the foundation on which today’s performers build.

I interviewed three artists for the film: writer, performer, filmmaker and sex columnist Reverend Jen Miller; filmmaker, former b-movie actor, and proprietor of the underground performance venue Surf Reality, Robert Prichard; and Velocity Chyalld, extreme burlesque performer/producer, and front woman for the band Vulgaras.  All 3 have very different relationships to cinema.  Reverend Jen has written and directed films, several in collaboration with filmmaker Nick Zedd.  She produces a superhero TV show on cable access called Electra Elf and Fluffer – featuring her 7-year old Chihuahua, Reverend Jen Junior, as her trusty skateboarding sidekick.  Robert Prichard began as an actor in B-movie cinema, starring in the Troma films The Toxic Avenger and Class of Nuke ‘Em High.  He subsequently made underground films in NYC in the early 90’s with filmmaker Matt Mitler, in what they called the “Movie of the Month Club.”  In 1993, he opened the underground performance venue, Surf Reality, where he produced, directed, and performed in hundreds of productions.  Velocity Chyalld is not a filmmaker, but a performance artist who takes the art of burlesque as a starting point, from which she leaps to, and dances on, the edges of acceptability.   An aficionado of a diverse array of genres from David Lynch to Jean Harlow – Velocity appropriates cinematic imagery for her performances – whether borrowing the image of Harry Dean Stanton singing into a construction lamp in Blue Velvet for a live performance, or evoking the image of the 1940’s Femme Fatale into her music videos.

In this paper, I will attempt shed some light on both cinema’s influence on these artists, and the ways in which we can see Jack Smith’s influence on their work.  In most cases, Smith’s influence will be more broad and cultural rather than direct. Some of these artists have never heard of Smith, and one in particular found his work “boring.”   Nonetheless, he helped define a culture of underground art in New York City in which each of these artists participates and although the influence may be subtle, it is doubtless present.  To me, each of these artists demonstrates a different way in which both cinema and Smith’s influence are manifest: Sex (Reverend Jen), B-movies (Prichard), and the iconic allure of the Femme Fatale (Chyalld).

Reverend Jen: Sex

A long-time sex columnist for Nerve.com, Reverend Jen has a history of incorporating the sexual into both her life and her work.   In the early 1990’s, Jen met filmmaker Maria Beatty at Pandora’s Box, a dungeon at which they both worked as professional submissives.  Beatty was in the process of making a series of fetish films at the time, and asked Reverend Jen to perform in one.  Jen agreed, doing it “just for the money,” yet aspects of fetishism manifested themselves in several of her later film projects particularly Elf Panties: The Movie, and her superhero TV show, Electra Elf and Fluffer – both collaborations with underground filmmaker Nick Zedd.

When speaking in our interview of the latter, Reverend Jen specifically mentions fetishistic elements of superhero TV shows of the 60’s and 70’s, and their underlying fetishistic (and feminist) elements.

“I don’t think there’s a woman alive who was a girl in the 70’s who didn’t worship Wonder Woman.  She was, to me, the ultimate feminist role model when I was five years old.  It was only later that I went like, ‘oh, they have her running around in panties!’  From a fetish aspect, Nick [Zedd] thought it would be really sexy to have me in a leotard in all these compromising positions and that’s like… when you watch Batman and Batgirl is tied up, you know people are jacking to that.”

Instead of superimposing a social or political layer of serious meaning onto this use of sex in her film and performance, Reverend Jen instead sees it as just funny, mixing sex and humor in a way that democratizes sex and makes it fun, which may ultimately be more political than using sex intentionally as a political statement or feminist polemic.  When speaking of her motivations for Electra Elf, she says:

“We thought it’d be hilarious to make it over-the-top… if you watch Electra Elf there’s like ridiculous close ups on my ass, and we did that just to make a joke of the whole thing… Electra Elf is driven by my sense of humor, which basically is on par with a 12-year-old boy.”

When Jack Smith’s film, Flaming Creatures, was under attack by the U.S. government for obscenity, Jonas Mekas and Susan Sontag attempted to defend the film by reframing it as “high art” (Suarez 186).  Smith, on the other hand, stated explicitly that he never meant the film as high art.  Like Reverend Jen’s Electra Elf he just thought Flaming Creatures was “funny.”

“I started making a comedy about everything that I thought was funny.  And it was funny.  The first audiences were laughing from the beginning all the way through.  But then that writing started – and it became a sex thing… When they got through licking their chops over the movie there was no more laughter. There was a dead silence at the auditorium” (Smith 107).

Another aesthetic that Reverend Jen shares with Smith is that of imperfection.  In his live performances, Smith used junk and debris as his sets and décor, a style he referred to as the “moldy aesthetic.”  This was likely a reaction to the gentrification that Smith saw taking place in Soho, a phenomenon that forced many of the artists there to retreat to the less-expensive Lower East Side.   Smith referred to this gentrification – and the general clean up of NYC that was taking place in preparation for the 1964 World’s Fair – as “landlordism,” and dedicated several of his performances to this theme (Suarez 200-204).

Similarly, Reverend Jen’s style could be called an aesthetic of imperfection.  Many of her props and sets are made out of cardboard, and make no attempt at realism. “There’s nothing you can’t do with cardboard, fabric, tape and a hot-glue gun.  You can accomplish anything,” she says in an outtake of our interview.  As for “landlordism,” a segment of Jen’s 2003 book, Reverend Jen’s Really Cool Neighborhood, is a short musical puppet-play called Les Misrahi, the story of a young girl imprisoned for stealing a glue-stick from Kinko’s.  The play is an overt satirical attack on the landlord of Jen’s Lower East Side tenement.  In the play’s introduction, she writes:

“I wrote Les Misrahi with the intention of satirizing my landlord, who is notorious…It is important that if one is to properly perform Les Misrahi one must perform it directly in front of one’s landlord’s office, thus Les Misrahi could become an effective weapon against gentrification” (Miller 6).

Although their work is decades apart, clearly the works of Reverend Jen and Jack Smith intersect at points both political and aesthetic.

Robert Prichard: From Movie Camp to Surfing Reality

Robert Prichard appeared in Troma Pictures’ b-movie classic, The Toxic Avenger, in 1984 at age 26, as well as in the sequel, Class of Nuke ‘Em High.  These were seminal experiences for him, and he later went on to apply the b-movie aesthetic to several of his own underground films, including Dick and Jane Drop Acid and Die, and Thrill Kill Video Club.  In 1993, Robert and his wife Jennifer opened a performance space on Allen Street on the Lower East Side called “Surf Reality”, named for a phrase he had used to describe the experience of making underground films.  “My wife asked me, ‘what’s that like, shooting improvising actors all day long?’  And I said,  ‘It’s like…. surfing reality.’”  Surf became an epicenter of the Lower East Side performance scene until closing its doors in 2003.  The space is now a Bikram Yoga Studio.

In our interview Prichard described the experience in acting in Troma films as “movie camp.  It was very little pay, extremely long hours, and kind of outline of a script, or a story…horrible food, little sleep, not too much money.  Like downtown theater!”  Remarkably, Lloyd Kaufman –Troma Pictures co-founder and director of The Toxic Avenger – employs the same metaphor when speaking about the experience of working on a Troma set:

“The experience of making a Troma movie is something that everybody lives with forever. It’s sort of like going to camp, or some kind of incredible bonding experience. It’s very hard to describe but it’s a great ‘life-experience.’ And since all of our movies are comedic there’s a great deal of improvisation. Talented young actors love working on Troma movies.”

This improvisational and do-it-yourself aesthetic stayed with Prichard when he began working on his own films in New York City.  Surf Reality actually began as a video production company that Prichard started with his friend Matt Mitler in 1991.   Early in their partnership, they realized that they had access to everything they needed to make films – talent, equipment, and time – so they decided to do just that, and started the “Movie of the Month Club.”  As Prichard tells it,

“There were story lines that were just an outline, and the actors would improvise on them, and I would shoot it.  We were spoofing genres.  We did a French existentialist one [Les Enfants Miserables], we did the cautionary drug movie [Dick and Jane Drop Acid and Die], we did a horror with Thrill Kill Video Club…we actually sold a few, got reviewed in Playboy magazine and it was a hell of a lot of fun.”

Mitler also recalls the fun of this period of on-the-fly guerilla filmmaking:

“We appropriated a style of long takes (one master if possible), and shot for the cut with absolutely no coverage.  My wife made the food.  We edited…at a production house where we knew an editor…We used the facilities after hours, for free.  For the soundtrack, Robert pulled copyright infringement French R&B music from the 60’s.   The final product was about an hour long, and cost $300” (Mitler 491).

In 1993, Surf Reality became a theater for live performance art, and maintained the aesthetic of rough, do-it-yourself creation, along with the attitude that art doesn’t have to cost a lot of money.  Over a decade, the theater hosted thousands of low-budget performances and was considered home to hundreds of performers.

Prichard sees a stark contrast between the New York City he moved to as a young man and the cleaned up version of it we see today.  “New York in the 70’s and 80’s was a dangerous place,” he remembers, “and the culture that came out of New York in the 70’s and 80’s had an edge to it…today, it’s Disney, and ESPN Zone, and it’s very G.P.”     Jack Smith saw a similar change occurring in New York in 1964.  In preparation for the World’s Fair and a visit from the Pope, “New York authorities undertook a ‘clean up’ of the city whose affect on avant-garde milieus was the seizure of independent films, the interruption of shows and screening deemed immoral, the arrests of artists, and temporary closedown of alternative artistic and cultural spaces” (Suarez 204).  The current “cleanup” that began under Mayor Giuliani may not use “morality” as the battle cry as they did in the 60’s – today the impetus for censorship is economic, but the result is the same:  small venues like Surf Reality are disappearing from the Manhattan cultural landscape, leaving us with a wasteland of Starbucks, K-Mart and high-rises as the artists are, as they have always been, pushed to the edges – into the junk and debris from which they, like Jack Smith and Reverend Jen, will build their sets.

Velocity Chyalld and the Classic Femme Fatale

Halfway through Jack Smith’s Flaming Creatures, a pale blonde figure emerges from a white coffin after an earthquake.   According to Juan Suarez, she “has often been referred to as a Marilyn Monroe impersonator, yet since she engages in several acts of vampirism, she also connotes a whole lineage of voracious Hollywood femmes fatales” (Suarez 192).   This scene, sans the coffin, could describe a performance by Velocity Chyalld.  A NYC performance artist who employs the imagery of  “the dark side of femininity”, Velocity is also the founder of BadAss Burlesque, a darker-than-your-average-fan-dance burlesque show, and front woman for the rock band Vulgaras.

Like Reverend Jen, Velocity also performed in one of Maria Beatty’s fetish films in the early 90’s.  She also did it strictly for the financial reward, but is a bit less willing to talk about it today, dismissing it as “not my shtick.” However, Chyalld’s performances include darkly sexual, if not overtly fetishistic, images.  She is known for masturbating on stage with a butcher knife, her performance ending with stage blood running down her legs, or smeared across her mouth where she has licked the knife clean. Many of these motifs are more reminiscent of horror movies than fetish or porn, but in fact she stitches together tableaux from all of these genres to create a visual performances that have clear cinematic influence.

One of the iconic cinematic symbols used most frequently by Velocity Chyalld is that of the 1940’s femme fatale.  In fact, Chyalld cites this influence not just in her burlesque and performance art, but acknowledges its strong presence in the music videos of her band, Vulgaras.  Speaking about the video for Heavy Handed Heart, the title track of the latest Vulgaras record, Velocity tells us it “celebrates the film noir genre.  I play death, following a young woman who is feeling quite suicidal, and in the end, I take her.” Velocity’s portrayal of death in the video is shot in black and white with Chyalld dressed as a film noir femme fatale.  She also admits being fascinated by certain film starlets of the era; particularly those she sees have having a “dark side.”  One of her favorites is Marilyn Monroe, whom she sees as having

“a certain power that your average socially acceptable girl would be afraid to wield – the power of the forbidden.  She offers that forbidden sexuality that was underneath what was acceptable at the time.  It’s as if she sort of slipped through the cracks.”

Velocity has also seen the influence of cinema in the performances as other artists as well. “I’ve seen a variety of pieces from Mommy Dearest to Psycho… the extremes, you know,” she says, describing the types of cinematic imagery adopted by her contemporaries.

Conclusion

Through looking at the work of Reverend Jen, Robert Prichard, and Velocity Chyalld, we can see that cinema, as well as a multitude of other forms of media, continue to influence live performance today – it has become one of our common languages.  Jack Smith, considered by some to be the father of underground cinema and NYC performance art, has clearly left a mark on the cultural landscape, even as artists continue to be pushed to the outer boroughs.  But they will keep making art, and keep recycling the images they find in cinema because, as Jack Smith reminded us, “Everyone is filled with Hollywood” (Smith 112).

Works Cited

Kaufman, Lloyd. “Holy Shit! What is All This Green Stuff?”  Tabula Rasa. Number 1.

1994. http://www.tabula-rasa.info/Horror/LloydKaufman.html. Last accessed May 13,

2009.

Miller, Reverend Jen. Reverend Jen’s Really Cool Neighborhood/Les Misrahi. Printed

Matter. 2003.

Mitler, Matt.  “The Movie of the Month Club, 1991-1992.” Captured: A Film/Video History of

The Lower East Side. Ed. Clayton Patterson. New York: Seven Stories. 2005. 491-494.

Smith, Jack.  “Uncle Fishook and the Sacred Baby Poo Poo of Art.” Wait For Me at the

Bottom of the Pool: The Writings of Jack Smith.  Ed. J. Hoberman and Edward

Leffingwell. New York: High Risk. 1997.

Suarez, Juan. Bike Boys, Drag Queens, and Superstars: Avant-Garde, Mass Culture, and Gay

Identities in the 1960’s Underground Cinema. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

1996.

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