The first conference of the International Dada Centennial Committee is over. Did we at least come up with any new anti-art? Mostly we came up with anti-me. First of all, there were objections to my posting physical descriptions of the attendees. One even suggested that I was in the early stages of Alzheimer's for not knowing that they would all pull out their laptops during coffee breaks and read about themselves almost as soon as I wrote. Number three was amused at my suspicion that she is a lesbian.

"I get that all the time," she said. Her husband, on the other hand, was livid. He read it and called her on the cell phone. I could hear his threats from across the room. "Cool your jets, Vinnie," I heard her tell him, "Get a sense of humor. Do it now."

Number six started giving me funny smiles all the time. It was terribly embarrassing. Number four announced he was trying to be an ex-gay and did not mind the whole world knowing about it. He was one of the few who had no objections.

Number ten pretty much took over as leader of the conference. That was just fine with me. At the end, the bottom line was, believe it or not, a consensus: We do not have to wait thousands of years for the Earth to evolve a sentient life form that is capable of defending itself without an instinctive love of committing senseless mass slaughter on battlefields. This sentient life form is already with us. And it is not artists. It is women. To be continued.

Conference Notes pg. 3

I am wondering, of course, whether any of the individuals present at this little conference have responded to the blog before. Before I ask, I try to guess. I guess that #1 might be the rhythm-free jazz combo called the Empty House, whose members I have suspected to be all the same person, playing the different parts with his mouth. I decide to be blunt.

"Are you, by any chance, connected with the jazz combo called the Empty House?" I ask.

He smiles. He nods. Otherwise, he is silent.

"Are you, perhaps, the entire group?"

"Was it that obvious?" he asks.

"It took me a few minutes."

"You are pretty good."

"So, no one else has ever picked up on this?"

"Well, since we, I mean, I, usually play in city parks, picking up on this is not usually an issue. But, yeah, you are the first to get it without seeing us, I mean me."

"Wow. I am flattered."

"You should be."

"So what brings you here?"

"Excelsior."

"Nietzsche."

"Man is to be overcome."

"So is rhythm."

"Precisely. Rhythm is so predictable, isn't it?"

"Swingin'!" says #9.

To be continued.

Conference notes p. 2

I welcome everyone to the first conference of the International Dada Centennial Committee. I inform them that here there are no rules.

"That's a rule!" interjects #10.

Aha. A troublemaker. I was worried from looking at this crowd that we might not have a single troublemaker. It has occurred to me that while Dada is still, a century later, pretty hip, coming to a meeting of the International Dada Centennial Committee is not. The ten attendees struck me as accordingly square. Therefore boring. That is alright, for I have always had a high tolerance for boring people. This may be an extension of my childhood preoccupation with my insect collection: boring people come in as many different types as Coleoptera (beetles).

"I stand corrected," I tell #10.

"Is there any such thing as correct?" asked #2, in a not unfriendly way, "I mean, you know, like correct as opposed to incorrect, truth as opposed to falsehood. I think truth has been overrated."

Everyone is suddenly silent. I see at least two furtive glances in the direction of #8, who has admitted that she believes the Bible to be true. I break the silence by soliciting comments on the core idea introduced by Dada, that art has a duty to trick mankind into not committing senseless mass slaughter on battlefields.

"How many of us are artists?" I ask, raising my own hand (I make abstract-surrealist collages, xerox them and paint the photocopies. Xerox company will now be angry with me for endangering their copyright by tossing their name about generically. I feel evil. Every once in while I need to feel just a little evil. Xerox! Kleenex! Band-Aid!).

Five others raise their hands. #1 is a musician, #2 writes poetry, #3 writes fiction, #8 paints, and #9 seems to be trying to hide a smile as he says, "I do all sorts of stuff," and takes a drag on his cigarette. It is a hand rolled cigarette. I secretly hope he turns out to be a trouble maker too. Too many troublemakers can destroy a group. But too few can as well, especially if the non-troublemakers have no clue as the fact that they are destroying it.

I am left wondering what is the story with #6. She is not an artist. What is she, besides drop-dead gorgeous? I hope she turns out to be real boring, and real soon. It is nerve wracking to be constantly worrying that you will say something stupid in front of some member of the opposite sex. If she is real boring, I will relax a little. So far so good. Relaxation relieves stress. Stress shortens human life. #6 does not know that she is secretly killing me. Or maybe she does know. Maybe that is an art form in itself: Be drop-dead gorgeous, then walk into a room and the middle aged men start dropping dead. Turn around, walk out, find another room and do it again. Stranger things have been called art.

We Meet Face to Face

The International Dada Centennial Committee is having its first conference. Cultural Terrorist will be minuting the event in the blog. In attendance are ten individuals, all of whom will be anonymous, regardless of whether they wish to be anonymous. I will go so far as to describe them, physically and otherwise, but will only call them by number in the order that they sit in a circle, clockwise from my left.

#1 is male, about five nine, very thin, longish dark hair, eyeglasses, wispy beard, mid twenties, dressed all in black.
#2 is female, about five five, medium build, long auburn hair, thirtyish, long dark green floral print skirt, sandals with thick, hot pink socks (it is January), mauve sweater into which her rosy face seems to blend.
#3 is female, short, rounded figure, salt and pepper hair cut very short, fortyish. She dresses in a masculine sort of way. I am fairly certain she is a lesbian until she mentions her husband several times. Maybe it was the thick Brookyn accent that made her seem... I don't suppose this is any of my business... especially if her father is in the Mafia.
#4 is male, short, slight build, blond, a pretty sort of boy, looks to be about twenty two, pale olive green turtle neck, khakis, penny loafers, shy, nervous, twiddles this thumbs. I need to ask him where he got the penny loafers. I did not know they still made them.
# 5 is male, about five eight, stocky, probably muscular, thick wrists, gray hair, balding, vaguely middle aged, wears a dark gray tweed jacket. He makes a point of telling us, perhaps a little defensively, that he is openly polygamous, numbering his wives at four, "so far."
# 6 is female, about five seven, very thin, disturbingly pretty, shoulder length mouse brown hair, late twenties, dark maroon velvet jacket, white shirt, faded blue jeans, tennis shoes, white socks, large intelligent eyes the color of clover honey, or is it buckwheat honey? Definitely darker than sourwood honey. Crosses her legs and moves her toe up and down as if keeping time with some internal music, adagio. Beethoven's "Sonata Pathetique?" A soft, friendly pink mouth like....I really ought to shut up about #6 lest my wife read this and pepper me with irrelevant questions.
#7 is male, tall, thin, hair the same color as the eyes of #6, next to whom he sits, dressed rather expensively, I think, paisley tie, jacket also the same color as the eyes of #6, (I really must shut up about her), strikes me as a dandy, so to speak, very chatty, animated, thirty something.
#8 is female, also in her thirties, a bit plump, extremely long dark hair, long black skirt, brick colored sweater, asks whether it is okay that she is a Bible believing christian. Everyone nods enthusiastically.
#9 is male, average height, average build, bald, in his sixties at least, rimless glasses, quiet, gray suit, white shirt, no tie. Asks whether he can smoke. Everyone nods enthusiastically except #2, who just sighs in acquiescence.
#10 is male, very short, very thin, very bald, probably prematurely so, pushing forty, wears expensive looking blue jeans, expensive looking cowboy boots, black turtleneck sweater, intense pale blue eyes.

The meeting is called to order.
To be continued...

Practical Sainthood Part III

One hundred years in the past, artists declared that art had failed in its task of civilizing humans as evidenced by the senseless mass slaughter on the battlefields of France after August 1914. One hundred years in the future, artists will declare that they are finally successful in their task of civilizing humans as evidenced by the utter lack of senseless mass slaughter on battlefields, despite the heroic efforts of folks who like that sort of thing. Senseless mass slaughterers are left scratching their heads. They desire senseless mass slaughter. They think about senseless mass slaughter. They plan senseless mass slaughter. They drink beer and talk about senseless mass slaughter with their fellow senseless mass slaughterers. But when it comes to actually committing senseless mass slaughter, somehow, it just never seems to come together.

One of the senseless mass slaughterers remembers a philosophy professor of the twentieth century who maintained that anything can be done if it is broken up into small enough steps. There is a ray of hope. The senseless mass slaughterers order another pitcher and get busy with their pencils and papers breaking the job up into smaller steps. Still, nothing ever comes of it. The senseless mass slaughterers get old and fat and sluggish and die blabbering about suicide bombings and thermonuclear attacks they used to plan back in the old days.

But before they die, they tell their grandchildren to find out who is responsible for undermining their efforts. The Jews? The Artists? The Quakers? It is, indeed the artists, but they dare not come out of the closet yet, lest they be declared saints and get martyred. One of the tactics of practical sainthood may to blame someone else when accused of sainthood.

"Me? A saint? Whoa! You got the wrong guy, buddy! You mind if I smoke? Yeah sure I make sculptures that make people feel uncomfortable about committing senseless mass slaughter, but it's all my wife's fault. She is just so queasy about murder, theft, rape, sucking the brains out of fetuses, all that exciting stuff. Me, I'm just in it for the money, you know? Here, have a beer. She hassles me about how my art should be, you know? What can I say? It sells. Hey, look at my collection of old Schwartzenegger dvds. Lots of boom, boom, boom, nome sane?

Blaming the Jews for turning humanity into a race of wimps could lead to a holocaust. Blaming artists or Quakers may do the same. But blaming the women? Too risky? Cultural Terrorist will have to think about this for a long time.

Practical Sainthood Part II

In Dadaland, the world of the future, artists have successfully manipulated cultural climate change so that no senseless mass slaughter on battlefields ever occurs, despite the heroic efforts of folks who like that sort of thing. The artists run the risk of being pegged as "saints" and consequently going through the slow horrible death that is traditional among saints. One way of avoiding this is trying to blend into the populace and become invisible, much the way that a green tree frog blends into the leaves on a twig, a Zebra blends into the tall grass of the savannah, or a treehopper pretends to be a thorn on a rose bush.

This method of blending into the populace has been tried many times, notably by nuns. Young nuns wished to resemble old widows, lest they be raped by Vikings or, if they were blonde under the wimples, hauled off in the dragon-headed ships to Spain, to be sold for a pretty penny to Moors who believed, with no scientific evidence, that these girls would breed especially healthy children. Nuns, however, tended to lack fashion sense. That is to say, they were so busy reciting psalms that they did not notice when women began buying clothes they did not actually need in order to be wearing something different from what they wore in the previous month. After about four hundred years of this, approximately when Twiggy in her mini skirt burst out of London's Carnaby Street into the mass media in 1963, the nuns finally noticed that they no longer blended in with the populace. Fortunately, the Moors had, by then, been driven out of Spain and the Vikings had given up rape and taken up furniture making.

Nonetheless, in Dadaland, it will be highly inadvisable for an artist to dress like a nun. Even a claim that he or she is merely engaging in "Performance Art" may lack crediblility. This was done, in the 1960's by a companion of Paul Krassner, editor of an underground periodical called "The Realist" : the pair went to various public places and performed acts of passionate saliva swap and wimple disarray. Performance Art is, in Dadaland, just sooooo twentieth century.

Preferable to dressing as a nun is playing golf to blend in with the populace. An artist who plays golf will probably be able to openly say "I am an arist. I manipulate the cultural climate so that no senseless mass slaughter on battlefields ever occurs, despite the heroic efforts of folks who like that sort of thing." His or her golf companions will reply "Yeah, right, tell me another one." The International Dada Centennial Committee is, in fact, planning to establish a special golf school for artists to be ready for this world of the future when artists are the dominant life form on Earth.

To be continued...

Practical Sainthood

In Dadaland, the world of the future, artists have successfully manipulated cultural climate change so that senseless mass slaughter on battlefields never occurs, despite the heroic efforts of people who like that sort of thing. The artists will sometimes become paranoid that they might get perceived as "saints," you know, the guys who are so clueless about the unspeakable joys of murder, theft and rape. They get told all the time, "You are such a saint." Then they get nervous, because they remember their art history courses, where they were exposed to paintings of Saint Agnes, Saint Catherine, Saint Sebastian, Saint Joan, all depicted as suffering horrible death by torture. Then there were all the sainted disciples of Jesus, to say nothing of Jesus himself. If one is Catholic, one can experience this paranoia before taking any art history courses.

In Dadaland, it is highly likely that the artists will begin to contemplate how to avoid being perceived as "saints," thus avoiding crucificixion, barbecuing and the like. As Dadaland will require a large number of artists to do the enormous task of cultural climate change, the International Dada Centennial Committee wishes that people do not avoid becoming artists in order to avoid slow, horrible death that is traditional among saints. So we will be offering occasional practical advice about how to avoid slow horrible death from being perceived as a saint, even if one actually is a saint.

1. If one finds that one's saintly lifestyle inadvertantly results in a collection of fawning sycophants, this is not, in and of itself, a bad thing. They will probably be more trouble to the "saint" than they are worth in ego strokes, but it is often the case that without their "saint," the lives of these fawning sycophants would seem empty, dreary and meaningless, leading to blowing their brains out, and worse, leaving a note that names the rejection by the "saint" as cause. So if one is stuck with a collection of fawning sycophants, it is highly inadvisable to refer to them as "disciples." Preferable is "homies." One can get away with this better if one is visibly of African ancestry, or, lacking that, speaks with a Black accent. A Black accent can be acquired by going through a heroin addiction treatmen program. The IDCC knows of no such program that requires applicants to prove that they are actually heroin addicts, so do not worry about getting busted for imperonating a junkie.

2. To be continued.