Intermod Series - 2: LAACM / Brennan McGaffey - August - December, 2001.

Intermod Series

The Ancient Order Fliers were initially presented as a part of our services Drawn Out  and Free For All. Thanks to the great enthusiasm and generosity of UbuWeb editor Kenneth Goldsmith, you can now view the complete collection of Ancient Order Fliers online at www.ubu.com/found_frames.html . Ubu Web is an exhaustive web site for Visual, Concrete and Sound Poetry. The site also contains numerous pages of found fliers and scribblings of the "insane."

The Ancient Order flyers were found over the course of a year in downtown Chicago. The main purpose of each flyer is to bring to light the mysterious workings of a group called "The Ancient Order" - who this group is, when they will strike in the future, what they were responsible for in the past, and how they have left their mark throughout history. No one we know ever saw the person that was behind these flyers. Every flyer is a single sided 8 1/2" X 11" photocopy, though several are longer and feature two or more pages stapled together. The flyers were only found inside free newspaper dispensers. Like newspapers, the flyers were always dated, and were folded so that the bold headlines could be read along the top. Only the most recent flyer was ever available; back issues did not recirculate. Almost exactly one year after the first Ancient Order flyer was found, they seem to have stopped circulating completely. The last flyer discovered, "The Ancient Order and the Pearl Harbor Prevision," is dated 3-17-2000.

A FESTIVAL IN CELEBRATION OF RADICAL CULTURE AND RESISTANCE
Come share your skills, knowledge & voices!  Meet local groups who operate creatively outside the cage of capitalism!  Stake your claims on a Chicago liberated from state & corporate control!  Join activists, artists & self-determining citizens seek new meanings in the events of 9/11 and confront the dominant racist & war-mongering public discussion!

OCT. 14, 2001 * 11AM-10PM
HYDE PARK ART CENTER
5307 S. HYDEPARK BLVD.
DEL PRADO BUILDING

INDEPENDANT MEDIA * PINATAS * BIKE REPAIR * ROBOTS * PIRATE RADIO * PROPAGANDA * FEAST OF FORAGED FOOD * ANARCHY * GAMES * RADICAL TEACHERS * DUCKS * UNDERGROUND MAPS * DONUTS

Rob Kelly and Zena Sakowski are audacious artists in every meaning of the word. They are fearlessly daring; their work is unrestrained by convention or propriety. They will define the limits of any opportunity they are given by exceeding all expectations. They show little regard for constraints of scale, architecture, or the moral boundaries of their audience. In short, they worry us. Is this lack of manners and restraint a good thing? In their case, absolutely. 

This is the first concentrated presentation of Rob and Zena's work in Chicago. This will also be the last show at Temporary Services' 202 South State Street office space. In addition to taking over our office and the adjacent room, Rob and Zena have planned an additional event at their Bridgeport headquarters. The exact details of all of their projects remain vague to us. We are learning about their transformations of our office space only after the fact. We gave them the keys to our office and they have been coming and going as they wish. We are wandering into all of this half blind and we couldn't be happier to give these artists the opportunity to run amok. We have committed to their work - whatever it is - in all its glory. At this point, we are helpless to intervene. 

Schedule and addresses:

202 S. State Street, Suite 1124 
Opening service: Friday, August 3, 5-9 PM 
Hours: Saturday Aug. 4, 12-5 PM  / Saturday Aug. 11, 12-5 PM  / Saturday Aug. 18, 12-5 PM 
Closing service at 202 S. State on Friday, August 17, 5-9 PM 

And: 

3201 S. Morgan, 1st Floor 
Opening service: Friday, August 10, 5 PM - LATE 
Hours: Saturday Aug. 11, 12-5 PM 

1. Kaleidoscope: The Symmetry of Chance 

This project consists of a human-sized kaleidoscope. The objects inside the kaleidoscope are not the usual glass or marble stones. There are three, small, painted TV sets. The outside of the kaleidoscope is made out of mirrored aluminium. The kaleidoscope itself stands perpendicular to the floor. 

With the TV patterns generated by the kaleidoscope we might get a football game, a peanut butter commercial and a talk show about the health care system in poor areas at the same time. In another case, an erotic scene, an electoral campaign and a documentary about global warming would all coincide. If these cases were generated by simply changing the channels of one's own TV, it might seem that the programs were unrelated to one another. But in the context of the kaleidoscope, we immediately get a symmetrical pattern of these seemingly random programs - that is, formal symmetry that unavoidably recalls a conceptual one (that actually underlies all possible combinations) and so establishes links among "random" phenomena. Thus, the kaleidoscope makes visible the formal symmetry of the different channels and programs. It reveals the conspiracy of the underlying powerful interests that constitutes the politics and economics of today's media as an undivided body - a homogenous, global whole.

2. Tele Television 

A TV installation is placed against the wall of the main room, by the entrance door. A glossy black surface, as big as the wall, is placed on the opposite side of the room. The room is dark so that its only light source is emitted from the TV-sets. The images coming from the TV-sets will be reflected in the glossy surface, although in very foggy way. A strip of rope will block the entrance to the room. The viewer won't be able to see the actual installation, but only its shadowy reflection in the glossy black surface across from it.

3. TV Guide

The first two pieces are accompanied by the necessary TV Guide. 

- Helidon Gjergji

My car broke down at a gas station in Pell City, Alabama when I was moving back to Georgia from California.A stranger named Rae came out to see if I needed a hand. Over the next twenty-two hours, a series of strangers helped me get my car fixed while showing me around town. Coincidentally, the day I was there, the only bookstore in Pell City and the surrounding towns was closing. 

I am organizing a series of book drives for their local public library as a return gift to the town. Sitting right downtown, the library is the only public source of books in the town. I am launching a book drive in Chicago that will coincide with the opening for The Library Project at Temporary Services. There will be boxes to collect donated books. Please bring books to the opening or during the hours on the 3 days in March. 

All books are accepted. They will sell any books they cannot use to raise money to acquire new books. The first book drive in Bloomington, Indiana raised over 320 books. Donations ranged from books on I-Ching and Harry Potter to romance novels and biology textbooks. I would like to double the size of the library. 

- Dana Sperry 

Pell City Public Library 
1923 First Ave North 
Pell City, Alabama 35125 

Images of the book drop

"1. Books and other library resources should be provided for the interest, information, and enlightenment of all people of the community the library serves. Materials should not be excluded because of the origin, background, or views contributing to their creation." 

 - The American Library Association, from the Library Bill of Rights 

"[...] I became a young novelist and wrote a book about the Jonestown, Pennsylvania, flood in 1830 - something where Clara Barton threw her weight around. The book was three-hundred-twenty-one pages long and I had set for myself the deadline of my eleventh birthday. I'd heard the girl who wrote Black Beauty was eleven so I wanted to be the youngest novelist in the world.  Since I didn't have any idea of how to get it published, I typed it all up, stapled it together, cut up some beer-case cardboard, and covered it with white butcher paper and Saran Wrap. I painted a relevant picture for the cover and smuggled it into the library and put it on the shelves in the correct alphabetical order. I never saw that book again." 

 - Cookie Mueller, from "My Bio: Notes on an American Childhood" 

BOOKS BY: An "Uncontrollable", Janell Baxter, E.C. Brown, The Center for New Community, Brooke Chaffee, Raimond Chaves, Salem Collo-Julin, Jim Duignan, Paul Druecke, Hans-Peter Feldmann, Flotsam, Fordham Urban Law Journal, Emily Forman, Paul Gebbia, Helidon Gjergji, Kenneth Goldsmith,  Kenneth Hirsch, Steven Hudosh,  Douglas Huebler, James Hugunin, Rob Kelly & Zena Sakowski, Nance Klehm, Kathleen Kranack, Stephan Lapthisophon, Aemin Annie Lee, Cindy Loehr, Josh MacPhee,  Ryan McGinness, Rebecca Moran & Rosie Sanders,  Simon Morris & Helen Sacoor, Leah Oates,  OK & OR, Stephanie Ognar, Trevor Paglen, Laurie Palmer, Robert Peters, Michael Piazza, Andrea Pinal, Jennifer Ramsey, Karen Reimer, REPOhistory, Bruno Richard, Chris Ritter, Jorge Rivera, Van Harrison, Chemi Rosado Seijo, David Shrigley, The Somnambulist, Dana Sperry, Deborah Stratman, Ervin Stuntz, Jocelyn Superstar 2001, Royal Torres, Samuel Torres,  Pedro Velez, Oli Watt, Tara Zanzig, and Pam Zimmerman 

The offices of Temporary Services are now available as a refuge from winter's chill. Persons in need of temporary warmth are encouraged to travel to 202 S. State Street, Suite 1124 and use our amenities. Free clothing, food and beverages will be offered to all visitors. Comfortable seating and reading materials are also ready for perusal. 

A space between the journey and home, a rest stop, a few minutes of warmth are sometimes all that is necessary to rejuvenate us. Warmth is an elusive entity in the freeze of city life. We encourage all to visit and be still, to watch the hurry of downtown from our windows, to take off your coats and shoes and get warm. 

Chrisdian Wittenburg gave Shiatsu treatments on January 25 and 26. 

Ribbon Effect has agreed to help us close the project on February 16th. Their music, our over-active radiators and curried pea soup will keep you very warm.

To hear a track from Ribbon Effect's CD "Slip"  click here

In "Breakfast in Orbit with a Bang," Danish curator, critic, and editor Lars Bang Larsen will perform a psycho-slapstick reading / multimedia performance of a catalogue text he wrote on Peter Land. Slides, video, music, bourbon, and cigarettes will be utilized to their full potential in the performance. In Bang Larsen’s words, "Breakfast in Orbit" promises to be "The Big Peter Land Blow Out: Copenhagen Delirium."

Lars Bang Larsen is the Associate Editor of Document sur l’Art (France) and ArtText (Los Angeles), in addition to being the Danish Editor of NU: The Nordic Art Review (Stockholm). He recently curated Pyramids of Mars and Decompressing History, but Chicagoans will remember Bicycle Thieves, a group exhibition of Scandinavian artists that was shown in 11 galleries in Chicago and Milwaukee in 1998, and which Bang Larsen co-curated. Presently he is a Visiting Critic in the Department of Art at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Peter Land was born in Aarhus, Denmark, and currently lives in London. He has mainly shown video works since 1994, but he constantly accompanies them with drawings and photographic works. Land’s work deals with self-exposure: of the body, the person, the artist and ultimately of society. His images demonstrate the tragi-comic failure of human attempts to appear competently, casually and yet convincingly in societally determined roles—and they deal with the absurdity, the shattering ridiculousness, the clown-like sadness that is associated with the failure of these attempts.

The newest issue of TENbyTEN, themed "Plastic,"  will be available at the lecture and a plastic bomber jacket made especially for TENbyTEN by Jasmin Shokrian and Shane Gabier (featured in PLASTIC FASHION) will be auctioned. 

The Orbit Restaurant is located at 2936-54 North Milwaukee Avenue (between Diversey and Belmont Avenues) in Chicago’s
Little Warsaw area. Seating for the lecture is limited, and the pancakes have to be ordered in advance, so please RSVP by Thursday,
February 8 by calling 773.235.9688 or through contact@tenbyten.net

TENbyTEN

Temporary Services ran a free boutique beyond the initially scheduled one week. This project began on July 14th, 2000. Visitors were welcome to come by, drink coffee, look at our booklets, try on clothes in our dressing room and take whatever clothing they want. Many thanks to all the people that have donated clothing and accessories for this service. 

We are still taking donations so bring in your unused and unwanted clothing. Drop off clothes Monday through Saturday in the fire escape room next to Temporary Services' office.

Boutique continued for several months in the fire escape room next to our office. We realized public versions of the project in public. The free clothing element of the boutique was integrated into our Warming Center in the winter of 2001.