"The mercurial mind of filmmaker, curator, and ideologue Craig Baldwin
swarms with frenzy. Overload and overwhelm have always been part of his
oeuvre. Baldwin’s modus operandi—in life, art and action—is to refute
blind allegiance to ideological authority, to question beliefs and
belief systems, to talk back to media."
That's my favorite introduction to Craig, from The Miami Rail, besides his own description of how he works: "Rather than apply for the grants or get studio funding, just work form where we are, poor people, but taking advantage of the fat of the land, so to speak, taking advantage of the resources that we already have, in other words, trash, a culture of instant obsolescence. I call it 'surfing the wave of obsolescence'."
As Will Kreith puts it, talking about Baldwin's theater, Artist's Television Access (ATA), "Not only do the seats come from dumpsters, but much of Baldwin's best footage is found in trash cans containing film somebody else threw away."
Since 1995, Craig has made two more films since Sonic Outlaws (full film on Internet Archive), which was commented on by Kreith: Spectres of the Spectrum (1999) and Mock Up on Mu (2008). You can find short descriptions and links to (clips of) these films and his prior works here, and a bit more from UbuWeb.
Ward Parkway designed a set of 28 stickers, labeled The Urban Absurdist Survival Kit™. I searched for these years back and I was pretty sure Ward had a website with these stickers in higher resolution, but now in April 2020, I instead found 1) a Wikipedia page for Ward Parkway, a boulevard in Kansas City, Missouri, United States, near the Kansas-Missouri state line; and 2) copies of the stickers, scanned from the Handbook, included in Swankivy's Shenanigans, a very 1990s website.
Above is my own, hastily cleaned up copy of the first six stickers, digitally clipped out of the Internet Archive copy of HMHB. You can do this, too! Get yourself a free photo editor that can adjust brightness levels and you can clean up those scans right quick. Or just get the pictures from Swankivy and make your mark on the local corporate landscape.
If these images aren't enough, do your own thing with a free vector graphics editor, because it's 2020 and there are a range of free programs that allow you to be the mischief you wish to see in the world, at least when it comes to stickers.
As for the International Press Association pass, the black-and-white card may not cut it now, but luckily there's a whole website dedicated to Microsoft Word ID Card Templates, and specifically press reporter IDs. And if you really want to jazz it up, generate your own QR codes and replace the code the "MobileApp" code included.
"If you're an artist, you use the medium that communicates the best, and what bigger medium than the media?" asks Joey Skaggs, a practitioner of the rare art of media hoaxing.
Andrew Hulktrans covered a range of hoaxes by Skaggs in the four page write-up, starting with his "Cathouse for dogs" from 1976, as you can see above with some of the TV coverage from the period, with follow-up commentary from Scaggs himself. Skaggs archived more on his site, including a reward poster that was taped outside Joey's apartment, sorted into the categories "hook," "line," and "sinker." Andrew recaps this same order of events, noting that "The lingering malodorous smell left behind by a Skaggs hoax reminds us that the media often functions as the propaganda wing of corporate America."
Apparently 10 years is enough to forget the name Joey Skaggs, because the above clip also includes "The Fat Squad," diet-enforcers for hire, which started with his distribution of a press release, and lead to instant coverage. He announced later that it was another hoax, to the brief chagrin of the media.
Joey has presented a number of other hoaxes and pranks over the years, as presented briefly in the clip above, including traveling confessional, the power of roaring like a lion, cockroach hormone cures, Solomon the judicial AI. Some hoaxes are a mirror for the wishes and hopes of the public, and others are calling for action in outlandish ways, but Joey always pushes the limits of credibility, as noted by Andrew. "Skaggs quickly deflates the assumption that reporters are educated by employing bad Kafka references in a roach pill scam," and was pushing scope of how much people would trust technology over the judgement of their peers. The Solomon Project was presented in 1995 and 1996, well before the current era of Big Data and Machine Learning, when we are now struggling with the fact that "all predictive models are shaded by human judgment, which we know falls far short of being error-free," as noted in an article in Forbes in 2019.
Andrew notes that Skaggs was an early adopter of technology. "Since 1990, he has gone high tech
circulating a well-designed brochure for a 'virtual vacation' spa called 'Comacocoon'." 14 years before the birth of Wikileaks, he toyed with leaks as ways to catch media attention with the Brooklyn Bridge Lottery in 1992, and the next year, he promoted the world’s first sexual virtual reality company, Sexonix, but don't look for anything substantial—it's just vaporware. But for some, the greater digital sin was that this was a hoax, carried out on in part on early message boards including the WELL and Fidonet. One WELL user, Journalist Brock Meeks, wrote, “When you’re jacked into Cyberspace, you are who you say you are. No exceptions. And if you try a street scam out here you’re going to be held accountable. F— with the WELL and you’ll feel like you’ve been f—ed with an elephant prick.” I wonder how Meeks feels about the internet meme and adage "on the internet, nobody knows you're a dog."
In the 25 years since the Handbook was published, Joey Skaggs has continued to prank the media, presenting hoaxes as fact and getting the benefit of the doubt, time and time again. Where his elaborate pranks are intended to improve media literacy and encourage critical thinking, unlike other recent hoaxes, like the Balloon Boy hoax of 2009, which had the apparent goal of landing the family a reality TV show.
One would think that one would grow tired of the sport because it no longer looks sporting. More like fishing out of barrel. But each catch is a new adventure and makes a great story. I personally have many trophy fish in my den. And, like all fishermen, I prefer exhibiting the big ones, but I’m proud of everyone that I’ve caught.
I’m just hoping that some day my tales will be more about the one that got away. That mythological, uncompromising, ethical, incorruptible journalist. An unbiased advocate that employs responsible journalistic practices. But for now, I’m going fishing.
His recipe still stands, and is even current enough to reference the value of internet presence. So get out there, hack reality, tweak some noses, and push people to think critically.
Stuart Mangrum paints a picture of being on the Black Rock Desert in northwest Nevada. "Heat waves shimmer off the hardpan alkali flat, and a fine white dust swirls on the wind. Thunderheads gather over the distant mountains that ring the plain, but the sky above you is a deep, cloudless blue. Behind you is your camp, a Rube Goldberg mix of vans, tents, and RVs arranged in a great circle."
In 1995, the playa gathering was only 5 years old, in the first period of the Burn, after its birth as a San Francisco beach gathering in 1986. Here's a documentary of someone's largely uninformed visit in '95, when they planned for a one-night rave, but ended up surviving for a week on the kindness of some of the 4,000 other people there:
By 1996, the event had grown to 8,000 attendees and unrestricted driving on the open playa was becoming a major safety hazard, so the gathering moved slightly, and the organizers added new restrictions and structure to what was first conceived as a dadaist temporary autonomous zone with sculpture to be burned and situationist performance art. But those changes have allowed the grow in size, with the video below of when the gathering surpassed 70,000 attendees.
The organizers help create a whole city that exists for a week, only to erase their presence and leave no trace. (Disregarding the fact that having tens of thousands of people travel to one central location from all over the world means a lot of emissions, effectively doubling the annual average for personal emissions.) Back to the Handbook and 1995:
Burning Man is one of the last places on earth where people from all walks of life, all social strata. and all points of the compass can come together and share an extraordinary experience a very primal experience: surviving as a group in a challenging environment. creating a temporary culture or their own design, and sharing one of the most elemental experiences of our species, the awesome mystery of fire.
Oh yeah and it's also one hell of a party.
How is it decades later? It's a lot easier to know what you're getting into. HMHB included not a website URL, but a phone number to call. Now we can watch videos, read plenty of newbie guides so you know how to prepare.
And it's still a party. But inclusive? Not in the same way. Elon Musk Is Right, Burning Man Is Silicon Valley. The wealthy literally jet in, flying on private aircraft, getting chauffeured to an exclusive cluster in Black Rock City, adjacent to the naked hippies, but in air conditioned tents, eating fresh lobster, instead of communal living in the desert.
The original Burning Man has spun off regional events around the world, so if you want that burner experience with less of the brogrammer nonsense and decrease your emissions, find a local group. Or better yet, make your own event wherever you are.
"It was in 1986 that Los Angelenos first awoke to find an unnattering poster of Ronald Reagan and three cronies staring from hundreds of traffic-light switching boxes at intersections across the city. Bearing the slogan 'Men With No Lips, the poster marked the first of a series of nonsanctioned portraitures that would, over the next decade, mysteriously appear in cities across the country..."
"But this is like graffiti! Illicit messaging in public spaces!" you might say, if you're something of a square who doesn't realize saying public spaces should only be plastered with permitted corporate messaging is undermining the whole idea of "public space." Colin Berry reminds us of the history of this sort of "counter-infotainment" messaging:
"MWNL also reawakened for many the centuries-old art form of political postering, an avenue for editorial comment borne of citizen participation and used historically to reflect political feeling." The need to find new outlets for free speech is all the more apparent in the wake of the 2010 Citizens United decision, giving an increased voice to corporations (and labor unions, who aren't currently in the same fiscal weight class as corporations).
"One of the simplest forms of reality hacking is the good old-fashioned phone prank. Using the telephone can be a very cheap, convenient, and creative way to shake the torpor out of your average drone."
In the years since, there have been plenty of goofy, punny calls by Bart on The Simpsons, but also groups who gather to make or celebrate real calls that are more in the realm of unhappy mutants, making people angry for laffs. You can hide who and where you are with free services like Google Voice, for good and for ill. Make 'em laugh, or tweak some noses, but don't be a jerk about it.
Beatnik World Servicing, a division of ASAP Systems and Shawn Wolfe Associates Inc., have a solution to one of the problems of living in the modern world:
Face it, even the happiest mutants often feel defined not so much by what they think or do, but rather by what brand of product they choose to buy. At one time, brands were used to identify' products, but now it's the consumers who are branded as labels, which have moved from the inside of garments to the outside and ail over the person, literally from head to toe. Trying to "kick" the brand name habit won't help. It only leads to another line of "clear." "lite," or "simple" products, new consumer frontiers for the herd to orbit.
No, the answer isn't avoiding brand names, it's developing your own "personal brand name."
The four-page article promotes a mix of tagging (slapping stickers on things), and branding anything and everything ("mugs, calendars, pencils, fobs, even wristwatches with 'your logo here' are cheaply had"), to using official-looking letterhead and business cards to acquire "free and bizarre catalogs and trade publications you never knew existed" , and even registering "all forms of bizarre complaints and 'leveraged warnings' to corporate thugs and elected officials!"
25 years later, this message is no less accurate, and if anything, the barrier to creating a new brand is even lower. Heck, make an appealing enough brand, and people will pay to spread your message! Slap together something eye-catching, post it on Redbubble or another print-on-demand site, and you might even make a bit of money back when people latch on to your message!
(If you're more keen to eschew the corporate landscape as much as possible, anti-corporate organizations like Adbusters [Wikipedia; official site] might be more your scene.)
And a final note: while you can use personal brand names to reclaim a small swathe of commercial space, be warned that your brand may outlive you, or get you junk mail that's no fun at all. It's a small price to pay for "saving your mutant soul."
