ASCII 3
04.05.2012 in the back room of the California Clipper, Chicago
Participants: Jon Bollo, Stephanie Burke, EC Brown, Chris Hefner, Andrea Jablonski, George Larson, Bruce Neal, Catie Olson, Cole Pierce, Christopher Smith, Edra Soto.
Documentation
Principal specifications
- An edition of artifacts shall be created, to be distributed freely.
- Editions must involve recorded audio.
- Attire shall always be elegant.
Candidate specifications
- Each artifact should include documentation of all specifications fulfilled, adhered to conditionally, or violated.
- Each artifact should bear your insignia.
Extended specifications
Brute Nail's Cruel Eitquette, v.3 [+]A History Of...
Select a topic or theme, quote, creature(s), season, metaphysical abstract, et cetera.
Propagate a compilation of recordings in which every track traces back to your chosen subject.
Ensure that the track-listing is in chronological order, or reverse chronological order, as per date of the original recording.
Include a blue flower (marker, sticker, printed, constructed, et cetera) with your packaging.
Wear a blue flower (real or homespun) on the evening of the event.
—furnished by Bruce Neal
Begin with the following mixture:
- 2 shots INEBRIANT. Sinewave-based recordings.
- 3 doses BITTER EXTRACT. Recordings granting predominance to a musical instrument that is noxious to you.
- 3 drops TINCTURE. A sweetener, preferably French, Italian or Brazilian in origin.
- 4 oz. BASE. Relative silence, such as room tone or faint field recordings.
- 1 lozenge TRANQUILIZER. Slow-acting and total.
To this mixture, add 1 GARNISH of beatnik or pseudo-beatnik banter.
Supplement at your discretion, but all additives should include documentation, including the ROLE and RATIONALE.
Serve with evening gloves.
—furnished by EC Brown
THE ABATIS PROPOSAL
Since you are already dressed formally (well done, I commend you on your stalwart sense of occasion), I feel it is time to add a new flavor to our communal melange: That of Danger. For this Winter's installment of ASCII, I, Chris Hefner, invite you to be as uninviting as possible.
An Abatis is traditionally a military barricade constructed of material culled from the area surrounding the battlefield and arranged in such a way to offer direct personal violence to anyone attempting to cross the threshold. What spoils lie beyond the ad-hoc architecture of felled trees, rusted wire, salvaged bayonets and sharpened, poxy bones? VICTORY. Voluptuous, immemorial, crimson-streaked Victory.
In this spirit I invite you to create a mix of your most sacred recordings, secrets worthy of military defense, an intimate hope-chest of unspoken passions, the red, throbbing central muscle of your frail emotional being. Create this compilation with love, and GUARD IT. To present it, construct, from the scattered detritus of the metropolitan battle scene you see about you, the most imposing safety device since that of the mighty corset, the bra hook and the HUMAN RIBCAGE. Offer pain and terror for those who would taste of the honey within! How you accomplish this is up to you, however I will here introduce an addendum: Offer us violence with one hand, but mercy and a rewarding caress with the other. Your guarded secret must, at the end of some rigor, be available for consumption. But make us earn it. For the world is an invading army, and the flickering incubator in which swim your willowy, squinting and fragile loves is your last and only true asset.
In this, as in life, you must be wary, violent and crafty while in the same breath offering rewards worthy of such savage steps.
All who take this challenge must signify with red blood or black soot.
Never yours,
—Chris Hefner
Instigations
When the horse begins to take over it seeps inward -- soaked up by human tissue, the horse spreads through and quickens, stretching to consume like fire does air, like man does the earth.
In its original body, the beast was passive, docile for an eternity of service; here, having entered a new form, it gallops through arteries and sweats through pores.
The artist's veins are red and swollen: you can see through her skin where it puffs up angry, beating with new blood: greedy to possess, consume and digest. Her face remains placid. The cigarette, abandoned in its ashtray by her feet, smokes itself. She slept poorly thereafter, was turned off meat with spattered, restless nerves—
