<chapter>
<title>Luther Blissett</title>
<desc>...</desc>
<mails>
<mail>
<nbr>0.0</nbr>
<subject>Syndicate: net_institute's kernel is running!</subject>
<from>Luther Blissett</from>
<to>n/a</to>
<date>Sun, 19 Dec 1999 19:57:58 +0200</date>
<content>dear all,

net_institute's database is running! see http://net-i.zkm.de

The net_institute is  not another  institution  dealing with
new media but an  attempt to  develop  horizontal strategies
for cultural production and to deconstruct traditional power
models.

Net_institute's  web site is, in particular, a collaborative
tool  to develop  a cultural  infrastructure  in Italy and a
media  lab  in Bologna,  but it  features  also a map of the
european mediascape, which you are invited to construct. The
building  process is completely  public  and via the web and
makes up net_institute's mediatic image as well.

You  all are invited to add your projects, sites, media cen-
ters, mailing  list, bedrooms, etc.  to the  european media-
scape map and, if you like it, to net_institute's structure.
Further instructions are provided on the site.

Net_institute's  web interface wants  to work as a groupware
for the collaborative construction of networks and organisa-
tions. It could  be an useful  example for platforms such as
European Cultural Backbone  or urban networks such as Inter-
national City Federation and Open-Berlin.

The  interface can be improved.  This is the  first version,
not finished.  In the next weeks a more mass-friendly portal
will be designed. Comments, critics and support are welcome.
At  present  a listserver  is needed to run  net_institute's
mailing  list.  Collaborations  to apply  this idea to other
cities or urban projects are welcome as well.

mailto:net-i@zkm.de

A big thank to QWERG.com and Walter van der Cruijsen.

greetings,
Luther Blissett


[PS. The net_institute is the concept evolution and the
urban implementation of Luther Blissett as an "open pop
star" and multi-user tool. More info in the next weeks.]






____________________________________________________________


The net_institute.


The net_institute is a medium-building. It is an hybrid
between the net of the metropolis and the information
architecture of the internet, between landscape and
mediascape. The net_instute is a physical, social, mediatic
space controlled and constructed by the net. The content and
the structure produced on its web interface draw and shape
the urban space. The net_institute doesn't consider the city
an established identity but a collective representation
continuously reshaped by its users.

McLuhan: "We shape our tools and thereafter they shape us".
The net_institute is a trans-architecture project. It's not
a city-metaphor for another alienated virtual community but
an urban project to embody the structure and the content of
the net. It doesn't imitate the appareance of the medium but
its deep framework.

Franco Berardi aka Bifo: "Metropolis is the becoming-
cyberspace of the urban space". The concept of urban
interface is the opposite of the digital communities and
cities. The urban interface breaks with the cultural
dominance of discourses about cyberspace, virtual,
simulation. The net_institute is a physical, social,
mediatic space controlled and constructed by the net.

The 'institute' name and the image were chosen to abandon
the hype about virtual and cyberspace, and as a strategy of
retro-avangardism [see Neue Slovenische Kunst, Electronic
Embassy, Laibach, Luther Blissett itself]. They are also a
joke and a reflection about the institutionalisation of
subcultural movements.

The net_institute is a project of "hacking" of the
architectural and urbanistic code, not only of information.
Hacking means deconstructing a tool to understand its
working and to reconstruct in a personal, creative way. In
the jargon of computer science, the net_institute is the
implementation of the net in another environment.

The net_institute is a multiform building. Its name means
net_worked_institute. Everyone can integrate net_institute
architecture with public or personal spaces, bodies, events,
devices, theories, computers, photos, files, imgs, projects.
The image and the structure produced on the net thereafter
shape the urban space. The net_institute uses the net to
catalyze social life.

The net_institute web interface works as groupware, a space
for collective brainstorming, a field for the connective/
collective intelligence. It structures itself, in progress,
to be a "technology of intelligence" [Pierre Levy]. The
net_institute's framework, functions, links, spaces can be
redefined by users experimenting hybrid, creative,
surrealistic architectures, by making up other "institutes".
 The interface works as a conceptual map that has to be
subsequently developed in the real space.



____________________________________________________________

                             _
     net_institute     __   (_)
               _______/ /  __
              /__  __  /  / /
                / /_/ /__/ /__
               / ____________/
              /_/
                    http://net-i.zkm.de
                    mailto:net-i@zkm.de

____________________________________________________________
------Syndicate mailinglist--------------------
Syndicate network for media culture and media art
information and archive: http://www.v2.nl/syndicate
to unsubscribe, write to &lt;syndicate-request@aec.at&gt;
in the body of the msg: unsubscribe your@email.adress


</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>1.0</nbr>
<subject>Syndicate: Luther Blissett in solidarity with Piero Cannata</subject>
<from>Luther Blissett</from>
<to>n/a</to>
<date>Tue, 23 Feb 1999 19:29:42 +0100</date>
<content>&gt;From La Repubblica on line (&lt;http://www.repubblica.it&gt;, the digital edition of
the national daily paper, as well as the most visited Italian website)  3
February 1999, Wednesday:

WHAT IF CANNATA THE "MADMAN" WERE MORE "ARTISTIC" THAN POLLOCK?
A provocative letter: Must "mainstream" art be inviolable? And who decides
what is genius?

By  LUTHER BLISSETT


[begin staff preface]
ROME - Of course it is a provocation, but it is also more than that. The
letter which Luther Blissett - the collective identity that has accustomed us
to many coups (verbal and not) in the recent years - sent to
repubblica.it struck us and roused our curiosity. It expresses a feeling that
many people certainly got a week ago, when the vandalistic smearing of a
Jackson Pollock work hit the news. It was not a rational thing; rather, a joke
people uttered, or just thought, by instinct: "Which one is the smear?". A
superficial question that was restrained by cultural awareness and indignation
for this assault on contemporary art and its dignity. In his/her letter,
Luther Blissett turns the joke into a lucid provocation.
One may agree or not, but it would not be just to throw this text away. Our
correspondent and art expert Paolo Vagheggi replies to Luther Blissett at the
linked page.
[end]

 
On 26 January 1999, Piero Cannata operated on Pollock's painting "Undulated
Paths", exhibited at Rome's National Gallery of Modern Art. I challenge anyone
of the journalists that covered Cannata's action to tell the smear from any of
the other scribblings. Cannata's intervention is the best tribute ever to the
artist. The only difference between the American Abstract Expressionist and
the Italian performance artist is that the former used to express his madness
within an "artistic context", and consequently found the theoretical and
financial support of critics and art-gallery managers. Most likely, without
such a support, Pollock would have entered a lunatic asylum, nurses sneering
at his "works" on the walls.
Jackson Pollock didn't paint: he dripped, smeared and soiled. On his canvases
one can find saliva, cigarette stumps, matches, anything. One day Pollock
urinated into Peggy Guggenheim's hearth. Yeah, he pissed in it, before the
eyes of several onlookers. He was probably drunk. This immediately became one
of the best known "performances" of the great genius, whose life was
punctuated by such acts. That fireplace is still in one of the rooms with a
view on the Canal. If Piero Cannata or any other anonymous visitor of the
present "Peggy Guggenheim Collection" pissed into the same hearth, what would
the keepers do?
Of course they wouldn't deem the guy as a genius, at best he'd be denounced.
However, are you sure that Pollock's performances are more important than
Cannata's? Are you really sure that Pollock wouldn't like such a "betterment"? 
Why should an art work hang on a wall with people only allowed to look at it,
since it is obvious that eyesight is just one of the senses roused by whatever
work? One should be allowed to touch and smell. This would quickly wear out
the paintings? So what? What do you need a sacred and infinitely inviolable
object for? Don't you know that museums keep Calder's sculptures in narrow
rooms, though they were created for being exhibited in the open air and shaken
by the wind? Don't you know that museums bar the way to Beuys' and Tinguely's
works, though they were projected for interaction with the public? *This* is
violation. 
If the most important thing is the artist's intention, than Pollock's painting
was not destined to a reliquiary, and Cannata's intervention is licit and
particularly well-aimed. But museums and galleries are driven by other
factors, such as money. This is commonplace, then why keep schmoozing about
art being sacral and untouchable? Talk about commercial value. If the word
"artist" has ever had any meaning, then Piero Cannata is the real artist.
Unlike Pollock, Cannata never compromised himself with the art establishment,
never strived for the critics' and gallery managers' appreciation. He couldn't
care less, he's got better things to do. Mind you, this is not the first case:
people like Van Gogh were never understood at their time, only to be
re-estimated after several years. It?s funny to recall the blindness of Van
Gogh's coeval critics. Oh, they were so obtuse! Oh, those were such
obscurantist times! Nowadays it's different, art is free of prejudices...
Isn't it?  
Tomorrow Piero Cannata will go back to the madhouse that hosted him during the
past two years, and it's gonna take decades before he's acknowledged as a
well-deserving performer. Not only Piero Cannata will get entries in art
history books: he'll get them as one of the most radical and innovative
artists of the Nineties. This is one of the tasks we leave to our posterity. 

(2 February 1999)

__________________

DEAR LUTHER, ART IS A SERIOUS THING
A Reply to the "pseudo-Futurist" provocation: Pollock was a self-conscious
artist, values cannot be annihilated

by PAOLO VAGHEGGI

Maybe that of the pseudo-Luther Blissett is nothing other than a nice
pseudo-Futurist provocation. None of us has forgotten Filippo Tommaso
Marinetti's 'incendiary violence': 'We want to destroy museums, libraries and
whatever kind of academies', we want to set Italy free from 'its fetid
gangrene of professors, archaelogists, cicerones and antiquarians'. Therefore,
long live Piero Cannata, let's promote him to the rank of artist. Long live
the David hammer-freak and Pollock smearer. 
But what if this, instead of being a pseudo-Futurist provocation, were just
the opinion and belief of an ignorant (ignorant being for 'he who ignores')?
In this case, we should tell them the difference between a rash gesture caused
by madness and a conscious, advised, pondered and researched artistic deed. We
should tell them that Jackson Pollock, no matter what the nazis would have
thought of him, was not a dauber, nor was his art 'degenerate'. His strokes
were not felt-tip scribblings. His technique, "Dripping", was sharp and
pondered. As Dora Vallier explained, the canvas was placed on a level surface,
even on the floor; and a few holes drilled through the bottom of a color box
allowed the painter to work moving about and letting the color drip on the canvas.
There was no fortuitous act, as explained by Pollock himself, who died in 1956
at the age of 44: [...what follows is a Pollock's quote which I won't
re-translate from Italian back into English. It's about the control of the
drops' trajectory, T.N....]
I could go on for so long telling stories about Pollock, who studied
philosophy and psychoanalisis (as well as native-American painting), who was
Picasso-wise and always lived between anxiety and the rapture of his work.
This rapture was provoked by his quest for a personal existential style: he
identified himself with his artworks, which gradually expanded and absorbed
all his energies.
As Palma Bucarelli noticed back in 1958, during the NGMA Pollock Exhibition,
'thus, independently from any analogical reference, painting itself can
express the most profound movements of the soul; the more the canvas reflects
the "quantity" and the "length" of painting action, the clearer is the
expression of emotional intensity.'  
Jackson Pollock is not Pietro Cannata [sic]. Pietro Cannata is non Jackson Pollock.
Maybe someone dreams of an annihilation of values in order to say: 'I can do
that as well!'. Things are not like that. There will not be any Night of
Crystals, no matter what Luther Blissett believes.

(2 February 1999)

_____________


[Luther Blissett replied, but Repubblica didn't run the piece. Luther put it
into circulation as the issue #39 of their anti-art newsletter called
"Epistola Ex Vaticanis Museis". Here it is:]
 

DEAR MR. VAGHEGGI, MADHOUSES ARE SERIOUS THINGS, MORE SERIOUS THAN ART
Luther Blissett replies to Paolo Vagheggi about the Cannata affair

At best, your response proved that you didn't even read my press release.
At worst, you read it but didn't understand. I didn't say 'I can do that as
well!' nor did I call Jackson Pollock a worthless dauber. Maybe that's really
what I think, but I am not so naive as to give you the opportunity to splutter
the usual reply: 'You are ignorant, you don't understand contemporary art',
which means, as you said yourself, that I ignore it. 
I promoted (or degraded, which depends on the point of view) Piero Cannata to
the rank of artist. At this point, customary language would require a large
amount of terms like 'Post-Modern tension', 'Empathy', 'Genius',
'Intemperance', 'Existential Drama', plus a few quotes (preferably taken from
some mate?s book). Mix up, ferment for one month, and the artist is ready. Is
the vernissage scheduled?
It goes without saying that I won't do that, because I'm no respectable
critic. My tool box does not contain catalogues and invitations to
exhibitions, but a hammer, a knife and a few permanent markers.
If I'm no respectable critic, that's precisely because I'm not able to ignore.
Unfortunately, those who 'ignore' are people like you, journalists, critics,
gallery managers, collectors... You and the majority that you represent are
ignorant. You're ignorant because you think it's possible to
separate the "beautiful" from the "ugly", "art" from "madness", you have the
power to put a man into an asylum, that is the power of ignorance. I belong to
a minority that rely on their own "lack of culture" and (luckily or
unfortunately) couldn't even hurt a bug. Maybe I'd be able to hurt a hack...
You're so keen on defending Pollock's art from the charge of being
"degenerate", a charge that nobody pressed. Don't you find it bizarre? You are
supporting the improsonment of a 'mad vandal', a 'fanatic', while you try to
convince me that Pollock, who was praised in life and died a millionaire,
expressed a profound existential tragedy!
'He identified himself with his artworks, which gradually expanded and
absorbed all his energies'. Aren't these words perfectly suitable to the life
of Piero Cannata?
'There was no fortuitous act'... Yeah, you think that Cannata's is 'a rash
gesture caused by madness'... And yet, for more than 9 years, Cannata has gone
ahead with such a lucid project that even Fontana would envy him! Cannata
plans his actions months in advance, and is determined to carry on for the
things he believes in. No, Piero Cannata is not mad (nor does madness exist,
but this is another story). He's just mad enough to go a few inches beyond the
sacred and unpassable boundaries of Art, enough not to long for the support of
critics and galleries.
Paolo Vagheggi, Maurizio Calvesi, Achille Bonito Oliva and all the others:
you're precisely that kind of persons that in 1909 were shocked at Futurism,
and in 1917 were indignant because an urinal was exhibited in a gallery,  and
in don't-remember-what-year because an artist was selling his own shit. It's
too easy, after more than half a century, to organize Dada and Surrealist
retrospectives, dish up monographs on the likes of Marinetti, Breton and
Tzara, people who died and were enterred long ago.
You just recuperate; when will you *propose* anything? 
Here's my answer: your descendants will do it for you in a few decades, as
time pours oil on today's troubled waters, as Piero Cannata is gagged and
stuffed with thorazine, Alexander Brener grows old and suitable for museums,
Luther Blissett become a spectre (s/he already is). I look forward to those
banquets, revaluations, essays, exhibitions, catalogues, T-shirts and CD-roms.
No, it's not you that make history. Maybe it's not me either. Piero Cannata is
trying to do it.
Things are like that. There will be a Night of Crystals, no matter what Luther
Blissett believes. 

(5 February 1999)




_________________________________________________________________

Anti Art Web Site:
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Atrium/4281/aaws.html
The Ultimate Luther Blissett Website:
http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Rampart/6812/index.html
___________________________________________________anticopyright____




</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>2.0</nbr>
<subject>Syndicate: open_source_hell.com</subject>
<from>Luther Blissett</from>
<to>n/a</to>
<date>Fri, 14 May 1999 22:55:51 +0200</date>
<content>open_source_hell.com


www. HELL.COM was born in 1995 as a conceptual art piece, an anti-web
that sold and promoted nothing and was not accessible to the public: a
sheer b(l)ack hole of the web. For almost three years,
HELL.COM, a site with no content, never listed in any directory nor
linked anywhere, averages of a million hits per month from people typing

the name in search engines. It becomes therefore a conteiner for net.art

sites and art galleries in which is possible to get in only if you are
invited and whom list of member s is kept secret; it's what themselves
call "a private parallel web." The idea behind HELL.COM is to create a
launching pad for cyber-artists extremly elitist and with badly hidden
venal ambitions... a fuckin' museum!

During february 1999 HELL.COM organized "surface": a show with several
superstar net artists like zuper!, absurd, fakeshop and many more.
Like all the events by HELL.COM also this one was not available to the
public, but was opened exclusively to RHIZOME subscribers.

During the 48 hours opening  0100101110101101.ORG downloaded all the
files of the site; the clone has been put on line, this time
anticopyright,visible, reproducible and freely diffusible and, thanks to

some technical devices, even more easily downloadable.

According to 0100101110101101.ORG "the convinction that information must

be free is a tribute to the way in which a very good computer  or a
valid program work: binary numbers move in accordance with the most
logic, direct and necessary way to do their complex function. What is a
computer if not somthing that benefit by the free flow of information? "

At the moment the site is on line at the url:
http://www.0100101110101101.ORG/hell.com
The situation is constantly changing and nobody knows if and how long
the site will remain active; actually HELL.COM has already threatened
legal proceedings for copyright violations.



open_source_hell.com: http://www.0100101110101101.ORG/hell.com
HELL.COM: http://www.hell.com



_____________________________________________________________________

Subject: [7-11] [fwd] WARNING1.0|||COPYRIGHT VIOLATION
Date: Tue, 11 May 1999 21:14:37 +0200
From: 011101001010110100101111100001001000110101@0100101110101101.ORG
Reply-To: 7-11@mila.ljudmila.org
To: 011101001010110100101111100001001000110101@0100101110101101.ORG




Subject: WARNING1.0|||COPYRIGHT VIOLATION
Date: Mon, 10 May 1999 21:42:33 -0700
From: JUSTICE@HELL.com




re:

open_source_hell.com http://www.0100101110101101.ORG/hell.com

cute...



please immediately remove this material from your server

you are in violation of international copyright laws which are clearly
posted in the copyright information contained in our source code.

also of note,

it appears as though you have violated the copyrights of quite a few
of our members individually:::::::::::::::


http://www.0100101110101101.ORG
on behalf of these individuals we request that you also remove
these materials from your server as well

||||


it would make sense to use your "abilities"
to attempt something *original*

JUSTICE@HELL.COM





Security\\\\







http://HELL.COM







                                                |||||||||||



------Syndicate mailinglist--------------------
 Syndicate network for media culture and media art
 information and archive: http://www.v2.nl/syndicate/
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 in the body of the msg: unsubscribe your@email.adress


</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>3.0</nbr>
<subject>&lt;nettime&gt; Paedophiles and the Police Sta</subject>
<from>Luther Blissett</from>
<to>nettime-l@bbs.thing.net</to>
<date>Sun, 02 Sep 2001 14:51:08 +0200</date>
<content>
A Luther Blissett press release
Bologna, September 4th, 1998

PAEDOPHILES AND THE POLICE STATE
or: the ignominious end of liberal-democratic lies

It is difficult to speak when you're surrounded by hysteria,
superficiality and ignorance, criticisms are published in invisible
paragraphs, and District Attorneys choose psychological terrorism and
seize the computers of the suspects (often preventing these people from
doing their jobs) though they know that a back-up of the hard-discs would
be enough. 

The mega-raid against the 'Internet paedophiles' is the umpteenth,
tragical farce. "Paedophilia" is a mere excuse for slandering the Internet
as a horizontal, easy-accessible medium. As Franco Carlini writes on
today's edition of *Il Manifesto* daily paper: 'The ignorance of the media
people (especially the Italian ones) magnifies anything that happens on
the Internet (mostly good things, sometimes very bad ones, just like in
real life), as though journalists stirred up a scandal because drug
dealers call each other on the phone'. 

Naples' deputy DA Diego Marmo says that paedophilia is 'today's principal
emergency', parallels paedophilia to the Mob and talks about a sort of
international 'Paedophile Party'. 
 
Well, we presume that the situation in most of the raided towns and
countries is similar to that here in Emilia-Romagna, where the 'suspects'
are: - Two 20-year-olds who visited 'dodgy' pornographic websites. Their
computers and 'dodgy' diskettes have been seized by the DA office. - A
retailer who brought some rolls of film to a photography shop. The
photographer developed the films and called the police. The police seized
some photographs of the retailer's 3-year-old daughter in the nude, and
pressed charges against the man. The local papers don't say much else. It
is more than just to be suspicious, because the investigating magistrate
is Lucia Musti. 

It is absolutely normal [especially in latin countries] that parents take
photographs of their little sons and daughters playing on the beach or
taking a bath! Do you really think that child porn traffickers develop
their films at common photography shops? 

These are some devastating consequences of the new, absurd act on child
pornography, whose text could not be more ambiguous. Is the innocent
photograph of a child in the nude illegal? And what about a naked adult
besides the naked child, in a chaste, non-sexual situation? And the
picture of a father carrying his naked baby in his arms? 

It is a stupid emergency act that was written and passed on the wave of
moral panic. Far from solving the problem of child abuse, the act is going
to create further moral panic. It is also a liberticide law that violates
privacy. We're shooting ahead towards becoming a police state. 

We expect the police to seize our computers for having written this
release. We even expect to be arrested for having written *Lasciate che i
bimbi*. 

The Luther Blissett Project - Bologna

The Luther Blissett Mythopoetic On-line Guide:
http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Rampart/6812

---
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</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>4.0</nbr>
<subject>&lt;nettime&gt; Oz's talking about Luther Bliss</subject>
<from>Luther Blissett Project Newz</from>
<to>nettime-l@bbs.thing.net</to>
<date>Tue, 23 Nov 1999 15:19:05 +0100</date>
<content>
After I was interviewed by Jason Di Rosso on Australia's ABC national
radio station, an interesting discussion on the LBP started on their
website's "media responsibility forum", which is accessible from
abc.net.au/ by clicking on "radio national" and then on "forum". I could
answer some questions about copyright and alleged "ambiguities" (e.g. the
issues raised by McKenzie Wark), however, I'm about to commit seppuku, and
I'm more interested in a zen approach - why try to set the records
"straight"?  Blissetts will find their own ways.



&gt;Return-Path: &lt;jdirosso {AT} hotmail.com&gt;
&gt;X-Originating-IP: [203.101.13.98]
&gt;From: "jason di rosso" &lt;jdirosso {AT} hotmail.com&gt;
&gt;To: luther {AT} syntac.net
&gt;Subject: chat su LBP
&gt;Date: Mon, 22 Nov 1999 19:23:25 PST
&gt;
&gt;From: Glenn 23/11/99 10:27:23
&gt;
&gt;Subject: re: Luther Blissett post id: 389
&gt;
&gt;The Blisset project seems to attack a lot of the fundamental assumptions 
&gt;that we make about copyright and individual identity. It also attacks a lot 
&gt;of the traditional assumptions of art about 'individual ownership and 
&gt;identity". How do you think the traidtional 'arts' are engaging with those 
&gt;sorts of questions?
&gt;From: jason di rosso (panellist) 23/11/99 10:39:06
&gt;
&gt;Subject: re: Luther Blissett post id: 391
&gt;
&gt;I can only answer your question in terms of someone who has observed the 
&gt;Luthers from a distance and not as a spokesperson for the Luther Blissett 
&gt;Project of course. A lot of what gets written about the movement seems to be 
&gt;quite patronising...I don't think the traditional art industry think much 
&gt;about the idea of keeping thoughts and concepts free...my interpretation is 
&gt;that the Luther Blissetts view the trad. art world as being totally 
&gt;dependant financially on mecchanisms like copyright and concepts like the 
&gt;uniqueness of the artist etc...
&gt;From: Greg 23/11/99 10:49:46
&gt;
&gt;Subject: re: Luther Blissett post id: 395
&gt;
&gt;I didn't hear the segment - i just got an email about this, so maybe this 
&gt;has already been addressed on the program. But where does the name "Luther 
&gt;Blissett" comes from? Why was that name chosen?
&gt;
&gt;What is the origin of "Luther Blisset"
&gt;From: Bernice 23/11/99 11:10:27
&gt;
&gt;Subject: re: Luther Blissett post id: 412
&gt;
&gt;Dear Jason,
&gt;
&gt;Thank you for your item about the Italian Blissett. Brilliiant!!
&gt;
&gt;The whole copyright thingo is mean-spirited way in which 'boomers' hold on 
&gt;to their crumbling empire of intellectual edifices. It's a racket heavily 
&gt;protected by a privileged few who invoke sententious arguments of morality.
&gt;
&gt;It doesn't work anymore. ideas need to be free to wander, meet new ideas, 
&gt;make friends, enemies, and produce new ways of seeing, hearing, 
&gt;interpreting.
&gt;
&gt;Let's hear it for Blissett!!!
&gt;
&gt;From: jason di rosso (panellist) 23/11/99 11:15:22
&gt;
&gt;Subject: re: Luther Blissett post id: 413
&gt;
&gt;Luther Blissett was an Afro-Carribean footballer who played in England and 
&gt;Italy in the early eighties. I believe the choice of name was just random, 
&gt;absurdist if you like.
&gt;Check out the site at syntac.net/lutherblissett...it's done by some Italians 
&gt;but it's got a lot of English content...
&gt;
&gt;From: marcus westbuy (panellist) 23/11/99 11:19:36
&gt;
&gt;Subject: re: Luther Blissett post id: 417
&gt;
&gt;Jason, where does your interest in Mr Blissett etc. come from? Have you done 
&gt;stories on similar projects before?
&gt;
&gt;Oh, and has anyone asked the footballer what he thinks about them stealing 
&gt;his name? Maybe he should have trademarked it (as many sports stars are 
&gt;doing) :-)
&gt;
&gt;From: jason di rosso (panellist) 23/11/99 11:31:02
&gt;
&gt;Subject: re: Luther Blissett post id: 425
&gt;
&gt;I lived in Italy in 1995 and some of the friends I happened to make during 
&gt;that time were Luthers. Though I must point out the Luther Blissett Project 
&gt;has no nationality, I am broadly interested in political and cultural 
&gt;dissent in Italy in particular. Unfortunately I have not done any other 
&gt;stories in this area so far. That part of the world has a lot of very 
&gt;interesting ideas, for the most part drowned out by the huge advertising 
&gt;machine that promotes Italy's official cultural icons in fashion, tourism 
&gt;and art history
&gt;
&gt;From: jason di rosso (panellist) 23/11/99 11:37:43
&gt;
&gt;Subject: re: Luther Blissett post id: 429
&gt;
&gt;As for the footballer's opinion regarding the use of his name...er, yes I 
&gt;seem to recall an open letter to the football club he is currently involved 
&gt;with (as part of the managerial team I think) which sort of addresses the 
&gt;issue. The Times wrote an article on it actually, and it was in reference to 
&gt;this that a letter was sent sort of explaining the whole thing and 
&gt;apologising for any offence that may have been caused. I think the letter 
&gt;can be found at the syntac.net/lutherblissett site.
&gt;
&gt;From: Generic 23/11/99 10:34:25
&gt;
&gt;Subject: Copyright post id: 390
&gt;
&gt;Copyright is a huge cultural and political issue that a lot of the media and 
&gt;the art world aren't really engaging with. It underpins so much of the 
&gt;structure of both media and the arts but it is increasingly being challenged 
&gt;by people who see it as the same system that underlies the extension of 
&gt;intellectual property to trademarking words and phrases, and the system that 
&gt;leads to a 'human genome project' where people are effectively copyrighting 
&gt;the code that is at the heart of life itself.
&gt;
&gt;The problem is that most artists and arts bodies in Australia refuse to ask 
&gt;any questions beyond tinkering at the edges of the current copyright 
&gt;regeime. I think the Luther Blissett project is a leap in the right 
&gt;direction.
&gt;
&gt;From: suzie 23/11/99 10:40:27
&gt;
&gt;Subject: re: Copyright post id: 392
&gt;
&gt;the arts community are effectively apologists for - if not boosters of, the 
&gt;commercial notion of intellectual property as extended to cultural property. 
&gt;Culture isn't MADE by individuals, it is a community endeavour made by many 
&gt;people.
&gt;
&gt;The whole notion of the "professional artist" makes the artist nothing more 
&gt;than a commerical commodity who creates, buys and sells, intellectual 
&gt;property. I much prefer the artist as provocateur idea as explored by the 
&gt;likes of the Blissetts. Perhaps Arts Today should make an editorial policy 
&gt;of calling all their guests "Luther Blissett" - particularly the high 
&gt;profile ones.
&gt;
&gt;From: adam ford 23/11/99 11:02:34
&gt;
&gt;Subject: re: Copyright post id: 402
&gt;
&gt;Suzie -
&gt;
&gt;are you against the idea of an artist making money from their work? I have a 
&gt;particular spin on this idea - I prefer NOT to make a career out of my art 
&gt;(writing) because I don't wish to put my art under any sort of "survival" 
&gt;pressure, but I respect and understand the decision of other artists who 
&gt;want to do that.
&gt;
&gt;It seems to me that copyright is one of the tools that can allow an artist 
&gt;to make that choice.
&gt;
&gt;adam ford
&gt;
&gt;From: Suzie 23/11/99 11:10:15
&gt;
&gt;Subject: re: Copyright post id: 411
&gt;
&gt;I am not AGAINST artists making money from their work.
&gt;
&gt;But copyright is a system with tragic consequences - it is being extended 
&gt;into every aspect of life and property and it is a really problematic 
&gt;system. THe politics of copyright is a system that artists should be 
&gt;challenging NOT boosting, that's all...
&gt;
&gt;At the very least, there should be some sort of space within the arts to 
&gt;debate those issues rather than the relentless boosting of it in the name of 
&gt;protecting "artists rights"
&gt;
&gt;From: Bernadette 23/11/99 10:46:52
&gt;
&gt;Subject: Theft and vandalism post id: 393
&gt;
&gt;Some of the actions that Mr Blissett was speaking about were clearly on the 
&gt;wrong side of legality: stealing statues etc. As i understand it, Luther 
&gt;Blissett is 'many people' and i don't understand. When you said in the 
&gt;program that "Luther Blissett" said X does that mean that is an 'official' 
&gt;position or could that have been anyone?
&gt;
&gt;Is there such a thing as an official 'Luther Blissett?'
&gt;
&gt;From: jason di rosso (panellist) 23/11/99 10:59:12
&gt;
&gt;Subject: re: Theft and vandalism post id: 398
&gt;
&gt;I don't think it's my place to comment about the illegality issue, however 
&gt;the question about the "official" Luther Blissett is a good one.
&gt;The guy I spoke to is someone who I know has been actively using the name 
&gt;for the last few years. He is not an official Luther, but he did co-write 
&gt;the novel "Q" and has been following events in Italy enough to be able to 
&gt;relay them to a wider audience. This does not mean he is in contact with or 
&gt;even knows the other Blissetts talked about in the interview. For more info 
&gt;about some Italian Luthers, an interesting site is at 
&gt;syntac.net/lutherblissett
&gt;
&gt;
&gt;From: adam ford 23/11/99 11:06:28
&gt;
&gt;Subject: re: Theft and vandalism post id: 407
&gt;
&gt;There's an australian Luther Blisset, who produces a zine that's been called 
&gt;at various times: STEAL THIS ZINE, MAYBE SHE'S BORN WITH IT, NERVOUS 
&gt;DANDRUFF and BLOWN COLON. He's kind of an erotic linguistic terrorist.
&gt;
&gt;From: Svengali 23/11/99 11:50:18
&gt;
&gt;Subject: Italian Media post id: 439
&gt;
&gt;Jason, to ask an embarassingly broad question, you were talking about living 
&gt;in Italy for a while and i am interested in how the media climate there 
&gt;effects the politcal culture. I understand that Italy has a very 
&gt;concentrated TV environment (with Ex PM Silvio Berlesconi ) owning most if 
&gt;not all of the commercial networks. But i also understand that there is a 
&gt;really anarchic radio culture in Italy. Can you put the Luther Blissett 
&gt;thing into a braoder cultural/political media context and maybe talk a bit 
&gt;more about the things you observed in Italy.
&gt;
&gt;From: jason di rosso (panellist) 23/11/99 12:11:16
&gt;
&gt;Subject: re: Italian Media post id: 451
&gt;
&gt;What I witnessed in Italy in 95 and on subsequent visits was a thriving, 
&gt;extremely militant and class conscious underground. By underground I mean 
&gt;small independant publishers, community radios, and a network of self 
&gt;administered squats across italy open to the public for everything from 
&gt;raves to emergency housing for migrants to theatre performances.
&gt;Yes, the media ownership in Italy appears very dire, but I know too little 
&gt;about it to speak.
&gt;On the other hand I saw a very healthy and active "counter culture" as well.
&gt;Luther Blissett (in Italy) i think is part of this...the Blissetts certainly 
&gt;echo some sentiments that can be found across the spectrum of the Italian 
&gt;underground.
&gt;
From: McKenzie Wark (panellist) 23/11/99 14:59:17

Subject: re: Copyright post id: 533

I like the idea of calling everyone who appears on the ABC Luther
Blissett! Maybe there should be a Blissett day, where everything is by
Luther. 

Copyright is very weak protection. With writing, it really only protects
very specific structures of words. Nothing stops another writer borrowing
a story or some other element and messing with it. What's a lot more
complicated is the protection of recorded media such as film, which is a
cumbersome system.  The idea of copyright has always been about striking a
balance between protecting the rights of the creator with the rights of
other people to use the work to create something new, and the rights of
the public to have access to works that might be of benefit. 

McKenzie

From: McKenzie Wark (panellist) 23/11/99 14:53:12

Subject: re: Luther Blissett post id: 530

There's some ambiguities in the Blissett project -- is it OK to use
someone's name against their will, for example? Blissett wasn't too happy
about it.  How would you feel if someone started using your name for
things you might have nothing to do with. 

The other problem is that if there is no protection at all for the artist,
then how can anyone make a living? It's not just companies that own
copyrights. I kinda like the Luther Blissett cd project, where artists
contribute music and the cd goes out under the name of Luther Blissett. It
poses all these nice ambiguities about authorship. But is compete
disregard of all copyright really a good policy?  In the end, it benefits
the owners of the means of distribution. If content were free. they'd
still be charging for access to it, but the content creators wouldn't see
a cent. 

McKenzie

&lt;http://www.syntac.net/lutherblissett&gt;
A clear, thorough LB primer - English

&lt;http://www.LutherBlissett.net&gt;
The (in)Complete Archives 1994-99 - Italian/English

&lt;http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Leftbank/6815&gt;
Luther Blissett and the "Huelga de Arte"(Art strike 2000-2001) - Spanish

&lt;http://www.contrast.org/kg&gt;
Luther Blissett and Kommunikationsguerilla - German


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#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
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</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>4.1</nbr>
<subject>Re: &lt;nettime&gt; Oz's talking about Luther Bliss</subject>
<from>Nmherman</from>
<to>nettime-l@bbs.thing.net</to>
<date>Tue, 23 Nov 1999 15:20:41 EST</date>
<content>
In a message dated 11/23/1999 9:43:05 AM Central Standard Time, 
luther {AT} syntac.net writes:

&gt; &gt;are you against the idea of an artist making money from their work? I have 
a 
&gt;  &gt;particular spin on this idea - I prefer NOT to make a career out of my 
art 
&gt;  &gt;(writing) because I don't wish to put my art under any sort of "survival" 
&gt;  &gt;pressure, but I respect and understand the decision of other artists who 
&gt;  &gt;want to do that.

I think this is a pretty interesting question.  If we call everything
"art," then you are either for or against people having money.  If we call
some things art and some things by another name, there is a possibility of
money only being exchanged for the non-art activity.  The area we call
"art" could be completely excluded from the cash economy. 

Sometimes we wish to give money to people who are doing things we like. 
Call it a gift, geras, honor-prize.  What would it mean to never exchange
money for any kind of art?  After all, if no art is copyright you can just
make your own copy for free.  It is possible that some artists could
decide not to earn or accept any financial reward directly from their art. 
Thus all music would be free, all writing, all painting, all sculpture,
film, video, and entertainment. 

We don't realize the enormous consequences of charging money for art.  The
first and permanent result of art for pay is the creation of a hierarchy,
a professional class.  This is analgous to the caste systems of more
ancient cultures, but the arbitrary and conventional process of selection
goes unnoticed if the illusion of a free market prevails.  If everyone has
access to an art medium--painting for example--there can be no harm or
hypocrisy in profit-making by the most talented and competitive painters. 
Of course this logic is the mirror of the corporate ethos, ridiculous on
its face but accepted wisdom nonetheless. 

The danger of a digital stock market is that money looks after itself,
first and foremost.  At least in the USA, preserving the value of
investments is a top governmental priority.  Recession is not an option
even if the economy is disastrously out of balance with concrete and
verifiable externalities. 

No one wants to deny him or herself the convenience and gratification of
payment, endorsement, ordination, whatever.  However, we may be entering a
stage in history for which the commercial (profit-seeking) mechanism of
media production is completely unsuitable and possibly dangerous. 
Antitrust law has been used in the past to protect diversity for producers
and consumers.  But when actual market presence for a given activity is
limited to unrealized and unrecognized potential, an externality caused by
insufficient capitalization, monopoly practices can become confused with
simple efficiency. 

Which way is the global market going on the issues of copyright and the
super-corporation in media production?  More or less along the path set by
Reagan when he canceled the Fairness in Reporting Act and allowed
telecommunication to self-regulate.  Viacom expunges uncomfortable content
from its Chinese broadcasts in order to stay in with the government there. 
These kinds of problems may ultimately prove to be irrelevant and
inevitable, should the multinationals actually achieve the utopia they're
planning.  From my personal perspective however, I doubt the prospects of
the WTO most seriously and consider intervention now to be the number one
job of everybody. 

To the extent that artists remain in their prescribed economic niche, they
will have no effect on the larger developments of the next fifty years. 
But this is nothing new.  Artists have always posed a threat to economic
interests because markets can only be organized through media. 

Max Herman
The Genius 2000 Project
www.geocities.com/~genius-2000

#  distributed via &lt;nettime&gt;: no commercial use without permission
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</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>4.2</nbr>
<subject>Re: &lt;nettime&gt; Oz's talking about Luther Bliss</subject>
<from>Luther Blissett Project Newz</from>
<to>nettime-l@bbs.thing.net</to>
<date>Tue, 23 Nov 1999 22:10:01 +0100</date>
<content>
At 15.20 23/11/99 EST, Mnherman wrote:

&gt;In a message dated 11/23/1999 9:43:05 AM Central Standard Time, 
&gt;luther {AT} syntac.net writes:
&gt;
&gt;&gt; &gt;are you against the idea of an artist making money from their work?  


Actually, I *do* make a living out of anti-copyright stuff. 

Luther Blissett's books have always been anti-copyright, they can be
copied and re-manipulated, not only self-publications, also works offered,
nay, *imposed* to major publishers. The main reason why we achieved this
is the fame and reputation LB mobsters conquered after years of
communication guerrilla. 

This doesn't prevent the people who put the works together (call us
"authors", if you can't help using this term) from gaining their
percentage each time someone purchases a copy. Most of the texts we have
published in Italy are also downloadable from the Net, and yet people've
kept buying them in bookstores, maybe because the book format still has
its fans.

In this way, we are hardly going to be millionaires, but we *do* make
money, pay rent and bills, eat twice a day, buy stuff, travel around. I
even have an agent! 

Get rid of all false dichotomies, the objections taken by greedy
net-artists after the rise of 0100101010101010-style art theft make no
sense at all.

When we got the novel *Q* bought by a big Italian publisher, we started a
hard struggle with their legal representatives - they said there was no
way they could waive copyright on the book - after months of negotiation,
we found a good compromise - now the novel can be copied, put into
electronic circulation, partially re-written etc. by readers, on the
condition their purpose isn't strictly commercial, whereas movie and TV
producers, as well as other corporate publishers, must pay through their
noses to buy the rights. I think this is a good precedent to start from
and head into the second phase of the copyright wars. Why should
anti-copyright ignore the class issue?


LB


&lt;http://www.syntac.net/lutherblissett&gt; 
A clear, thorough LB primer - English

&lt;http://www.LutherBlissett.net&gt;
The (in)Complete Archives 1994-99 - Italian/English

&lt;http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Leftbank/6815&gt;
Luther Blissett and the "Huelga de Arte"(Art strike 2000-2001) - Spanish

&lt;http://www.contrast.org/kg&gt;
Luther Blissett and Kommunikationsguerilla - German


#  distributed via &lt;nettime&gt;: no commercial use without permission
#  &lt;nettime&gt; is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
#  more info: majordomo {AT} bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body
#  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime {AT} bbs.thing.net
</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>4.3</nbr>
<subject>Re: &lt;nettime&gt; Oz's talking about Luther Bliss</subject>
<from>Luther Blissett Project Newz</from>
<to>nettime-l@bbs.thing.net</to>
<date>Wed, 24 Nov 1999 13:57:51 +0100</date>
<content>
At 15.20 23/11/99 EST, Mnherman wrote:

&gt;In a message dated 11/23/1999 9:43:05 AM Central Standard Time, 
&gt;luther {AT} syntac.net writes:
&gt;
&gt;&gt; &gt;are you against the idea of an artist making money from their work?  


Actually, I *do* make a living out of anti-copyright stuff. 

Luther Blissett's books have always been anti-copyright, they can be
copied and re-manipulated, not only self-publications, also works offered,
nay, *imposed* to major publishers. The main reason why we achieved this
is the fame and reputation LB mobsters conquered after years of
communication guerrilla. 

This doesn't prevent the people who put the works together (call us
"authors", if you can't help using this term) from gaining their
percentage each time someone purchases a copy. Most of the texts we have
published in Italy are also downloadable from the Net, and yet people've
kept buying them in bookstores, maybe because the book format still has
its fans.

In this way, we are hardly going to be millionaires, but we *do* make
money, pay rent and bills, eat twice a day, buy stuff, travel around. I
even have an agent! 

Get rid of all false dichotomies, the objections taken by greedy
net-artists after the rise of 0100101010101010-style art theft make no
sense at all.

When we got the novel *Q* bought by a big Italian publisher, we started a
hard struggle with their legal representatives - they said there was no
way they could waive copyright on the book - after months of negotiation,
we found a good compromise - now the novel can be copied, put into
electronic circulation, partially re-written etc. by readers, on the
condition their purpose isn't strictly commercial, whereas movie and TV
producers, as well as other corporate publishers, must pay through their
noses to buy the rights. I think this is a good precedent to start from
and head into the second phase of the copyright wars. Why should
anti-copyright ignore the class issue?


LB


&lt;http://www.syntac.net/lutherblissett&gt;
A clear, thorough LB primer - English

&lt;http://www.LutherBlissett.net&gt;
The (in)Complete Archives 1994-99 - Italian/English

&lt;http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Leftbank/6815&gt;
Luther Blissett and the "Huelga de Arte"(Art strike 2000-2001) - Spanish

&lt;http://www.contrast.org/kg&gt;
Luther Blissett and Kommunikationsguerilla - German


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#  &lt;nettime&gt; is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
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</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>5.0</nbr>
<subject>&lt;nettime&gt; Is Watford in Ireland?</subject>
<from>Luther Blissett Project Newz</from>
<to>nettime-l@bbs.thing.net</to>
<date>Thu, 25 Nov 1999 04:48:08 +0100</date>
<content>
A prestigious yank's whimsical mythopoesis on the Luther Blissett Project:
is Watford in Ireland? Is Ireland even in Yoorope? Enter none other than
the American conspiracy novelist Robert Anton Wilson!


http://www.realastrology.com/oracle/robert-oct.html


Reality Loop-the-Loops


I AM HE AS SHE IS ME AS WE ARE ALL TOGETHER
By Robert Anton Wilson


"In the dialectic between nature and the socially
constructed world, the human organism is
transformed. In this dialectic man produces
reality and thereby produces himself." 
--Berger and Luckman, The Social Creation of Reality

Would you believe that an English football star has stolen the infant
Jesus--four times, from four different Italian churches--and is holding him
or them for a ransom of 100, 000, 000 lire?

Well, neither would I, but it seems to have happened, sort of. But then
most things in this confusing modern world only seem to have happened  . .
. sort of. . . .

Luther Blissett, to start at the top, was once the best footballer in
England, as well known and beloved as O.J. Simpson was over here, before he
got accused of cutting throats. Now Mr. Blissett is a coach in Watford,
Ireland. Unlike O.J. he has never been charged with a major felony, or even
with jay-walking. He says he knows nothing about the other Luther Blissett
who, in addition to holding Jesus for ransom, has written a number of
anarchist tracts, including a left-wing history of the Rennaisance, and is
suspected, by the Italian authorities, of being a group rather than a person.

Some, of course, claim he is the Devil. 

It seems to have begun--the miraculous multiplication of Blisetts--when the
true, original Luther Blissett became a hero, and a controversial figure,
in Milan while playing football there 10 years ago. Most sports fans loved
him for his derring-do, but Italian neo-fascists hated him for the double
offenses of [a] being black and [b] winning higher scores than white players.

Luther Blissett the First (as we better call him for clarity) went back to
England, remembering his triumphs and trying, I suppose, to forget the
racism. 

Luther Blissett the Second, Third, Fourth, and Fifth manifested a few years
later when four workers were arrested for riding on a train without a
ticket. Each insisted his name was "Luther Blissett," and stuck to that
name, even when hauled into court for sentencing.

Then other Luther Blissetts began to appear, on Internet and even in
bookstores. As to whether he or they were or are a group or an individual,
they or he (or she) offered the following explication:

"Luther Blissett is not a 'teamwork identity' as reported by the
journalists; rather, it is a multiple single. The 'Luther Blissetts' don't
exist, only Luther Blissett exists. Today we can infuse ourselves with
vitality by exploring any possibility of escaping conventional identities.
The struggle is still against the language of the powers-that-be." 

If that isn't perfectly clear to non-anarchists, recall the Dada movement
in Switzerland during World War I. The Dadaists, in total rebellion against
the insanity of war and the general insanity of everything else, held
poetry readings at which the poet was drowned out by other Dadaists with
noise-makers. They had art exhibits where the audience was provided with
axes at the door and told to destroy any paintings they didn't like. They
held lectures in public urinals. In short, they began the "post-modern"
revolution against conventional "identities" and the language that divides
things and people into classes.

In 1923, in Paris, the Surrealists held their first art show. To enter the
gallery, the audience had to pass through a garden with an incongruous taxi
standing in the way. Working their way around the cab, they had the
opportunity to observe that it was raining inside of it but not outside. (A
whimsy of Salvidor Dali.) Once in the gallery, the audience-- or the
victims, as you prefer--confronted a sign devised by Andr&#233; Breton:

DADA IS NOT DEAD!
WATCH YOUR OVERCOAT!

Or, to move closer to the present enigma, consider the time novelist Ken
Kesey met novelist Terry Southern. Kesey found to his delight that Southern
was just as funny in person as he was in his books and they had a wonderful
time together. Only long after did Kesey discover that he had not met Terry
Southern at all. He had met somebody else--an "imposter" in pre-anarchist
language. 

I also met Terry Southern once, or think I did, and also found him
hilarious. Of course, with Kesey's experience in mind, I might wonder if I
actually met the "real" Terry Southern. But modern anarchists would inform
me that even asking such a question is buying into the language and
metaphysics of the ruling class which oppresses us by defining us. One can
only say that Terry Southern has become a multiple single.

Anyway, once Luther Blissett was firmly established as both an individual
sports hero in Ireland and one or many anarcho-surrealists in Italy, life
became more interesting for Europeans--the way it was for most of us on
this side of the pond in the 1980s when we could watch Ronald Reagan play
the hero's buddy in a morning college football movie on TV, then catch him
again playing the hero himself in a Western in the afternoon, and finally
see him a third time playing the President on the evening news. 

The Italian Luther Blissett(s) then published a book of essays allegedly by
Arab-American anarchist, Hakim Bey. It later turned out that only one essay
was by Bey; the rest were forgeries--although one was a translation from
John Zerzan, the Oregon anarchist who became famous, or infamous, for
declaring that the Unabomber was his personal hero. 

Things became a bit stranger when the infant Jesus disappeared from a
church in Belvedere, followed quickly by the vanishings of three more
infant Jesi from churches in Marittimo, Tortora, and Diamante, all four
cities being on the Tyrrhenian coast. 

"What is the Buddha?" a student once asked a Zen Master.
"The one in the hall," replied the Master.
"But the one in the hall is a statue, a piece of wood! " 
"True. . . ."
"Then what is the Buddha?"
"The one in the hall."

Italians seem to understand Zen logic better than most Europeans and the
dematerializing Jesi (or Jesuses?) really caused mass emotional reactions.
It was as if Andy Warhol had sued Campbell Soup for selling cheap imitation
Warhols.

Then the ecclesiastical athorities received a communique (written on an old
Olivetti typewriter) demanding that the Church distribute one hundred
million lire to the poor, or else: 
 "The Holy Child will be destroyed. Anyway, you  only care for the money,
not for the Child's  sacral value. . . . In Calabria people die of  hunger,
thirst, unemployment, mafia, corruption  and usury. Illegal employment is
the rule. There are no houses. The Church doesn't care and gets  richer. If
you don't distribute a 100 million  lire worth of food . . . the Holy Child
will be  smashed into pieces."   --Luther Blissett

The prototype Luther Blissett in Ireland told the press he didn't
understand what was going on."They keep doing all sorts of things and I
keep getting the credit or the blame for it." 

The police in Italy announced that they suspected a sort of Luther
Blissett-X--not the "original" multiple singularity of anarchist
pranksters, but a band of professional art thieves masquerading as the
masqueraders. The infants stolen have a high commercial value, said the
suspicious cops, and instead of being smashed they may be sold to the
highest bidders, like the famous Maltese Falcon.

One incautious priest in Belvedere remarked worriedly that the only way to
prevent future thefts would be to lock all the churches and keep everybody
out. The press gleefully quoted him. If there were no thieves thinking of
that before, there certainly are now. . . .

Will the Church distribute the100 million lire to the poor? Will the Infant
Jesuses (Jesi?) be smashed or sold to private collecters? How many more
Luther Blissetts will come forth from the shadows before this saga is over?
You can follow future developments through the following websites:

     http://www.blather.net/winstuff.html
     http://www.syntac.net/lutherblissett
     http://www.LutherBlissett.net
     http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Leftbank/6815
     http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sport/football/newsid_293000/293678.stm

I sort of think I know how the first Luther Blissett feels, because a lot
of people on Internet still claim I was murdered by the C.I.A. on 22 Feb.,
1994. No denials by me have stopped this absurd rumor, because the
conspiracy buffs who believe it also believe that the C.I.A.replaced me
with an "android" or humanoid robot which writes and talks just like
"Robert Anton Wilson." Some even claim that my evident "sincerity" in
claiming I am "Robert Anton Wilson" just proves how advanced the secret
technology of the C.I.A is: Any really good RAW android would not only
write, talk and look like me, but woud necessarily think it was me....

 As Oscar Wilde said, "The reality of metaphysics  is the reality of masks."
 
    --------------------------------------------------
 For more intelligent convolutions from the  world's smartest CIA-made
android, go to:
 http://www.rawilson.com and prosper

     --------------------------------------------------
    
    

#  distributed via &lt;nettime&gt;: no commercial use without permission
#  &lt;nettime&gt; is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
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</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>6.0</nbr>
<subject>&lt;nettime&gt; Holy Child kidnapped by LB!!!</subject>
<from>Luther Blissett</from>
<to>nettime-l@bbs.thing.net</to>
<date>Thu, 02 Sep 1999 17:20:30 +0200</date>
<content>

&gt;From "La Repubblica" (Italian daily paper), 2 September 1999, p. 21:


GANG KIDNAPS HOLY CHILDREN
"Give 100 million lire to the poor!"
Calabria, four statues stolen in churches. 
A famous name claims theft: Luther Blissett 

from our correspondent Pantaleone Sergi

Diamante - Since the fourth Holy Child was kidnapped, snatched from the
arms of the Virgin Mary, the people of Cosenza's Tyrrhenian coast (where
tourists are enjoying the last sunny days) have started to be alarmed. 
Nobody can figure out what is the real purpose of the persons hiding
themselves behind the name "Luther Blissett". They wrote "Up with Marx! Up
with Debord!" at the foot of their communiques, by which they summoned
Ecclesiastic authorities to distribute 100 million lire [about $53,000,
t.n.] to the local poor.  Luther Blissett is a famous alias on the
Internet, a cyberpunk [sic! :-)].  However, this tyrrhenian name-sake, who
stole statues in the little towns of Belvedere Marittimo, Tortora and
Diamante, does not seem to feel at home with the Net: the communiques are
typewritten by an old Olivetti (very anarchist-chic), and the language
reminds of past red terrorists: "The Holy Child will be destroyed. Anyway,
you only care for the money, not for the Child's sacral value [...] In
Calabria people die of hunger, thirst, unemployment, mafia, corruption and
usury. Illegal employment is the rule.  There are no houses. The Church
doesn't care and gets richer. If you don't distribute a 100 million lire
worth of food in the next 48 hours, the Holy Child will be smashed into
pieces."  Parish priests are alarmed: four art thefts in less than two
weeks. Padre Antonio Ranuio, priest of Diamante parish, says he is "sad
and sorrowful".  Padre Guido Mollo, priest of Belvedere parish, talks
about a conspiracy. As a matter of fact, all thefts took place in broad
daylight, and the only way to avoid new ones would be shutting all
churches' doors.  According to investigating authorities, these thefts
have not ideological motives. The traffic of sacred art is growing wide,
and most little towns host rich collections of XVIIth century Neapolitan
art. Diamante's Church of Immaculate Conception hosted the 15-inches
wooden Holy Child which the thieves snatched from the arms of the Madonna
del Rosario. According to experts, the statue has a high commercial value
for art collectors. "I hope this was the last burglary", says padre
Ranuio, who fears a sacrilegous use of the statues.  The Holy Child Gang
started to strike at mid-August holyday. The first theft (a XVIIth century
Holy Child in Belvedere) took place on the 16th.  Two days later, again in
Belvedere, the second victim was a Crown-carrying angel. Another Holy
Child was stolen a few days later in Tortora's Chiesa dell'Annunziata: the
thieves broke in from a side entrance and snatched the child from St..
Anthony's arms. Last monday, the latest theft in Diamante.  Believers are
now praying and begging God that the statues return to their churches. The
Carabinieri say they have some clues and will capture the mysterious gang.

[A press-release from the authors of *Q*]


UNCONDITIONAL SOLIDARITY TO THE LUTHER BLISSETTS 
WHO STOLE HOLY CHILDREN FROM CALABRIAN CHURCHES

Bologna, 2 September 1999

Journalists wonder what is behind it: why do unknown people steal Holy
Child statues from the churches of Tyrrhenian Calabria? Why do they use
the "Luther Blissett" multiple name?  To us, there's nothing "behind" it
except what our name-sakes themselves wrote in their communiques: the
Church must give 100 million lire to the poor, or the statues will be
destroyed. It's plain and simple: priests must empty their wallets!  It is
possible that these wonderful actions of iconoclasty and class war, these
attacks to the catholic power organizing its arrogant self-celebration
(the 2000 Holy Jubilee) was inspired by our novel *Q* - the whole story
seems has an Anabaptist flavour and seems to have gushed out from the
novel's pages. If this were real, we'd be happy to be described as "wicked
teachers". Indeed, we are very keen to call ourselves the "ideological
mandators" of the Calabria events. So far, this is the best consequence of
the 30,000 copies we have sold.  We hope that numberless emulators follow
these Calabrian steps. Forcing priests to shut the doors of their churches
is the best way to oppose the impending Jubilee.  In the unfortunate case
the police capture our Calabrian name-sakes, we'll express our active
solidarity by any means necessary.  We don't need a War on Poverty. What
we need is a war on the rich. 

Luther Blissett 
(in this line-up: Fabrizio P. Belletati, Giovanni Cattabriga, 
Luca Di Meo, Federico Guglielmi)


&lt;http://www.syntac.net/lutherblissett&gt;
A clear, thorough LB primer - last update: August 1999 - English

&lt;http://www.LutherBlissett.net&gt;
The (in)Complete Archives 1994-99 - Italian

&lt;http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Leftbank/6815&gt;
Luther Blissett and the "Huelga de Arte"(Art strike 2000-2001) - Spanish

&lt;http://www.contrast.org/kg&gt;
Luther Blissett and Kommunikationsguerilla - German

#  distributed via &lt;nettime&gt;: no commercial use without permission
#  &lt;nettime&gt; is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
#  more info: majordomo {AT} bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body
#  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime {AT} bbs.thing.net
</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>7.0</nbr>
<subject>&lt;nettime&gt; Seppuku!</subject>
<from>Luther Blissett</from>
<to>nettime-l@bbs.thing.net</to>
<date>Mon, 06 Sep 1999 19:09:54 +0200</date>
<content>
S e p p u k u ! 


'The question obsessing me is: have I kept my promise? Without doubt, by my
refusal and my critique I made some kind of promise. I am not a politician,
by keeping my word I would not dispense any real benefit to anybody, and
yet I am haunted night and day by the feeling that I have failed to keep a
promise, one that is more important and necessary than those of
politicians. Sometimes I am tempted to sacrifice literature itself, if only
I could keep that promise. Maybe it is a mere repercussion of "male pride",
however, there is no doubt that having lived in peace through the past
twenty-five years of democracy - even getting advantages out of it in spite
of my dissent - has long hurt my soul.'
(Mishima Yukio, 1970) 

'When the enemy is frightened, his combativeness weakens, which creates a
loss of timing. Even simple, ordinary gestures can be used to distract the
enemy's attention. For example, throwing one's sword to the ground is part
of the art of war. If you are really able in swordless fight, you will
never be disarmed.'
(Munenori Yagyu, XVIIth century)


Many subjectivities of the Luther Blissett Project Italian columns have
decided to greet the new millennium by committing seppuku, a ritual
suicide. Suicide is the practical demonstration that Blissett gives up
mere survival as a territorial, identitarian logic. Suicide is the
ultimate and most extreme 'take to the bush' of this folk hero. 

We are not advocating nihilism or relinquishment; rather, we are choosing
life. Seppuku is not *the* course of action, Luther Blissett is a name
that anybody can keep adopting also after next New year's Day. There are
countries where the fight has just begun, and we surely hope it goes on. 
Seppuku is our suggestion for those who have used the name for at least
the past five years, so that they look for new styles of this martial art,
and let the "newcomers" free to develop their own plans. We should be
strangers in nameless lands: to someone else, this can be accomplished by
adopting the LB multi-use name; to us "veterans", it is quite the
opposite. 

The Seppuku is not the end of Luther Blissett. It is the beginning of a
new phase, a new way of using his face and name. For those who will commit
it, Blissett's suicide will consist in giving up that signature and moving
on to new conflicts. It is quite the contrary of what usually happens to
suicides: they don't go anyplace, while their names are more oft-mentioned
than before their death. 

Seppuku is not a defensive move, to avoid the Multiple's spectacular
recuperation or something like that. What has non identity cannot be
recuperated. Blissett's purpose has always been infiltrating "mainstream
culture" as a trojan horse and opening the city's doors to multifarious
experiences. They owe a plenty of money to all of us, now we are entering
the vault. 

Thinking of Buddhist belief in reincarnation: the followers of the
Awakened One do not believe in an immortal soul; none the less, they think
that a person can reach the Nirvan once s/he's gone through several lives. 
Reincarnation without soul (as well as without identity) may seem a
contradiction in terms, and yet it is conceivable, because every action of
living beings leaves a trace, some sort of potentiality which, once the
individual's earthly body is dead, produces the birth of another being. 
Analogously, so that the tension which Blissett produced in the past years
can become incarnate in other experiences, the corpse must release spores
that are both infective and thaumaturgical. Never the less, the Multiple
has numberless bodies, many of them will stay alive notwithstanding the
death of some others. 

Thanks to the Seppuku, "Luther Blissett" will go through different
rebirths, all of them disengaged from the strict adoption of a name, for a
name cannot help producing an identity. Whether this identity is singular
or collective, real or virtual, historical or mythological is certainly
not without consequences, but after a while it become something you need
to get rid of. 

As Zhuangzi reminds us: "The perfect man has no ego, the inspired man has
no works, the wise man has no name".  And, as the matchless Cary Grant
once put it: "It is better to leave a minute earlier, leaving people
wanting more, rather than a minute too late, when people are getting
bored." 

Luther Blissett Project - Bologna, September 1999


&lt;http://www.syntac.net/lutherblissett&gt;
A clear, thorough LB primer - last update: August 1999 - English

&lt;http://www.LutherBlissett.net&gt;
The (in)Complete Archives 1994-99 - Italian/English

&lt;http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Leftbank/6815&gt;
Luther Blissett and the "Huelga de Arte"(Art strike 2000-2001) - Spanish

&lt;http://www.contrast.org/kg&gt;
Luther Blissett and Kommunikationsguerilla - German


#  distributed via &lt;nettime&gt;: no commercial use without permission
#  &lt;nettime&gt; is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
#  more info: majordomo {AT} bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body
#  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime {AT} bbs.thing.net
</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>8.0</nbr>
<subject>&lt;nettime&gt; Heise and the truth about LB's seppuk</subject>
<from>Luther Blissett</from>
<to>nettime-l@bbs.thing.net</to>
<date>Fri, 10 Sep 1999 17:28:55 +0200</date>
<content>
The following piece appeared on the latest issue of "Heise"
&lt;http://www.heise.de/tp/&gt; a German on-line magazine covering Internet and
net-culture phenomena. The author seems to have read a lot of material
about LB, and yet the piece contains several errors (probably due to such
bad sources as the Nihil junk-list) and misinterpretations. For the last
time before my "ritual suicide" as a Luther Blissett name-bearer,
flag-waver and web-master, I feel I must set the records straight. After
December 1999, it won't be none of my goddamn business anymore. My comments
are at the foot of the message.
Long live Luther Blissett, become Luther Blissett!

Roberto Bui, aka Fabrizio P. Belletati 
(one of the activists formerly known as "Luther Blissett")


09.09.1999

Luther Blissett is dead
Long live Luther Blissett

by Ashley Benigno

Taking inspiration from Yukio Mishima, Luther Blissett has announced he
will be committing ritual suicide on the first day of the new millennium.
At the same time, he has been kidnapping religious icons in the south of
Italy, the ransom notes demanding money for the poor. While on the
publishing front, his novel "Q" is taking Italy by storm. Random
coincidences perhaps, or a beautiful example of the diverse identities a
collective identity can develop. So why the call to Seppuku?

Rumours of the imminent demise of Luther Blisset had been circulating on
Italian mailing lists for a few months, some declaring him already dead,
until Luther himself announced his Seppuku on the Nihil list a few days
ago, and has now gone global by posting on mailing lists such as Nettime
and Rhizome his intention of committing ritual suicide on 1 January 2000.
But as a multi-user name, who will die? According to Luther Blissett, it
will be the veteran posse behind Bologna's equivalent of Karen Elliot, the
anonymous ones that have been operating behind the name for at least five
years. It is time, LB says, "to let the 'newcomers' free to develop their
own plans". But who are these 'newcomers'? and could it be that Luther
Blissett is pissed off with Luther Blissett?

The recent publication of the novel "Q" by LB and its subsequent success,
with 30,000 copies already sold in Italy and soon to be published in
Germany (by Piper who bought it from Einaudi for 120 million D-marks; a
small fortune for a first novel), seems to have upset many of those behind
Luther Blissett, opposed to the commercial exploitation of the name. Worse
still, is the fact that the four authors of "Q" have revealed their own
names behind the pseudonym, thus depriving LB of his image and giving him
four actual faces. It is maybe not a coincidence that Luther Blissett's
Seppuku note followed on the trail of a LB posting made by the authors of
"Q", signed Luther Blissett and, in brackets, their four names. When we
consider that multiple names were established to break away from
recognition and financial reward in favour of anonymity, it becomes
apparent that the authors of "Q" have committed what is in effect an act of
cold-blooded murder. And if so, is the call to Seppuku simply coming from
the ghost of Luther Blissett, dreaming of a more noble death?

At the same time, can multiple figures die? One thing is for certain, away
from book and Net incarnations, Luther Blissett is currently alive and
kicking (shit) in the south of Italy. Over the last two weeks, along the
southern Adriatic coast, four statuettes of the Baby Jesus have been stolen
from four different churches. At the feet of each Jesus-less Virgin Mary a
note demanding the church authorities pay a ransom of 100 million lire
(just over 50,000 US dollars) to be distributed among the poor, and signed
by Luther Blissett. If the money is not paid, the statuettes will be
destroyed, the note recites. Curiously, for a techno-saboteur, the notes
were written on an old Olivetti typewriter.
[end of article]

* * * * *





Will Luther Blissett die?
"Our own plan is to continue for a while, then learn from this experience
and move to some other thing. On 31 December 1999, last day of the
Millennium, Luther Blissett might as well die and become something else.
Who knows?" 
(One Luther Blissett, interviewed by Loredana Lipperini on *La Repubblica*,
13 March 1997).

By the way, the time of the Italian LBP will expire by year 2000. Why?
"As the matchless Cary Grant said, it is better to leave one minute
earlier, leaving people wanting more, rather than a minute too late, when
people are getting bored. 
(The authors of *Q* interviewed by the same journalist on *La Repubblica*,
6 March 1999)

"One of the stories about General Li says that when the Japanese surrounded
his Headquarters by surprise and he was forced to flee at dead of night, he
ordered his troops: "Get rid of Marx, get rid of Lenin and Stalin, get rid
of Mao Zedong. Bury your books, you'll get them back later." Some of the
men objected: "But... we've got to take our Marxism with us!". "Comrades",
Li said, "what does 'Marxism' means at the moment? It does mean that when
you are to flee, you've got to run faster!".
(A.L.Strong, *Red China*) 


And faster we're running.

The "Seppuku" of the Rome and Bologna sections of the LBP was announced to
the press more than two years ago, thus it's got nothing to do with the
publication of *Q*. 

Ours was a Five Year Plan. We adopted the name in 1994, and now we call it
quits.  

Our ritual suicide, however, doesn't imply the end of the name, as the
Heise writer herself pointed out. Myths cannot die. 
Indeed, since the first edition of the novel, there was a dramatic increase
in the name's adoption, appearances and webpages. As to who these
"newcomers" are... For example, the guys stealing statuettes in Calabria
are newcomers - You bet your life. 
All the people who have recently started to adopt the name on the Net are
newcomers. 

After more than five years, Luther Blissett is still king of the shit pile.
Why should we "veterans" keep breeding a child that's already
self-sufficient? Why should we run the risk of becoming ideological
ballast, preventing other people to give their own practical
interpretations of the name?

As to *Q* and the alleged commercial exploitation of the multi-use name... 
The book DID NOT upset "many of those behind Luther Blissett". Indeed, one
of the problems about the LBP in Italy is that multiple-name bearers tend
to *adore* us "first wave movers", a trend that made us sound like some
sort of "central committee"... which we never were. 
Actually, the only guy who pretended he was upset by *Q* - and posted an
iracund message on the sorry list Nihil (entirely devoted to flame-wars and
junk-mail) - had long ceased using the name, and his motive was strictly
personal. 
*Q* didn't came from nowhere. During the three years we'd been writing the
book, the rest of the LBP (at least, the people we were able to reach) were
constantly informed about the whole operation. 
The fact that anonymous guerrillas have kept striking the media system by
becoming LB is enough to prove that the novel's success, far from
dissuading other people from taking the action, was and still is a powerful
incitement. 
A multiple name is not a collective identity one can betray, that's what my
iracund acquaintance failed to understand. Rather, it is a flexible tool
whose use can never be "wrong" as long as it respects the anti-copyright
policy and a few other style clauses. Certainly, there are more ambiguous
adoptions than writing a novel. As far as our "four faces and names" are
concerned, I feel I must remind everybody that we don't appear on TV and
there's just one photograph of "us" in circulation, nearly a panoramic
picture: our faces are so small and far away that nobody could recognize
us. However, are you really sure those four men are "us"?
As to "commercial" exploitation, since its beginnings the use of the name
has always had "commercial" traits - unlike anarchists, LB never encouraged
ideological or material pauperism. The multiple name was frequently used to
promote pornographic and sexploitation websites, cfr.
&lt;http://www.blissett.com&gt;. The funniest example I can throw into this
message concerns *Capital*, a high-brow Italian magazine appealing to
businessmen and stock exchange freaks. All the book reviews on the mag
(mainly financial crap) are signatured "Luther Blissett"! We don't support
this kind of adoption, nay, we despise it, but what can we do about it?
None of these things ever managed to kill the name. 

Still king (or queen) of the shit pile. 
Most likely you go your way and I'll go mine.
Become Luther Blissett, and I'll become someone else.


Roberto, Bologna, 10 September 1999





&lt;http://www.syntac.net/lutherblissett&gt;
A clear, thorough LB primer - last update: August 1999 - English

&lt;http://www.LutherBlissett.net&gt;
The (in)Complete Archives 1994-99 - Italian/English

&lt;http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Leftbank/6815&gt;
Luther Blissett and the "Huelga de Arte"(Art strike 2000-2001) - Spanish

&lt;http://www.contrast.org/kg&gt;
Luther Blissett and Kommunikationsguerilla - German


#  distributed via &lt;nettime&gt;: no commercial use without permission
#  &lt;nettime&gt; is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
#  more info: majordomo {AT} bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body
#  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime {AT} bbs.thing.net
</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>8.1</nbr>
<subject>Re: &lt;nettime&gt; Heise and the truth about LB's seppuk</subject>
<from>Ashley</from>
<to>nettime-l@bbs.thing.net</to>
<date>Mon, 13 Sep 1999 15:49:36 +0100</date>
<content>
&gt;The following piece appeared on the latest issue of "Heise"
&gt;&lt;http://www.heise.de/tp/&gt; a German on-line magazine covering Internet and
&gt;net-culture phenomena. The author seems to have read a lot of material
&gt;about LB, and yet the piece contains several errors (probably due to such
&gt;bad sources as the Nihil junk-list) and misinterpretations. For the last
&gt;time before my "ritual suicide" as a Luther Blissett name-bearer,
&gt;flag-waver and web-master, I feel I must set the records straight. After
&gt;December 1999, it won't be none of my goddamn business anymore. My comments
&gt;are at the foot of the message.
&gt;Long live Luther Blissett, become Luther Blissett!

I am starting to wonder if LB will have the mental strength for his
announced ritual suicide, or if he will be languishing in one of Italy's
dejected and sorrowful homes/prisons for the old, because senile dementia
does seem to be in the air.

With all honesty, how can Luther Blissett, considering his essence and
intentions, come out and speak THE truth about Luther Blissett. Is it
actually possible to do so?

At the end of the day, is not LB a multiple name, a parasol for those
seeking anonymity, released to whoever wanted/wants it, like a cultural
shareware programme ready to be hacked to one's tastes and desires? Is it
therefore possible to speak of &lt;errors&gt; and &lt;misinterpretations&gt;?

&lt;I feel I must set the records straight&gt;, you say. But doesn't that hint at
some kind of proprietorship, when LB is of public domain? I don't know. It
just doesn't sound like LB very much:

"If you want to tune in to the Net's wave, you need to be initiated to its
culture. It is a spontaneous and natural initiation. You can't be online for
more than two days without finding out what a manga is, who the Simpsons
are, what kind of philosopher's stone Trash promises, who William Burroughs
is, and so on, without end"
(p.27, Luther Blissett, net.gener {AT} tion, Oscar Mondadori 1996)

The above does. Come on, you have always been a brilliant prankster,
throwing any appetizing ingredient (like the recent collaboration with oi!
band Klasse Kriminale) you could find into your hypermodernist cauldron,
while now it is time for the one and only truth! You haven't turned Hegelian
in your old age have you? Forgot, that "there are no facts, only
(mis)interpretations"? Do you desire history or myth?

"Che sara', sara'", Doris Day used to sing. Time will tell if LB will live
or die; even histories and myths have a lifespan. For the time being,
however, he seems very sputtanato (to have lost much credibility). First the
auhtors of Q, now you

&gt;Roberto Bui, aka Fabrizio P. Belletati
&gt;(one of the activists formerly known as "Luther Blissett")

are giving names and identities to someone whose beauty and strength resided
in his complete anomymity. LB was mysterious. Who is he now?


In any case, maximum respect for the work done and looking forward to your
next incarnation.

Ashley Benigno.

p.s. Will the Reverend William Cooper be taking care of your funeral?


#  distributed via &lt;nettime&gt;: no commercial use without permission
#  &lt;nettime&gt; is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
#  more info: majordomo {AT} bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body
#  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime {AT} bbs.thing.net
</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>8.2</nbr>
<subject>Re: &lt;nettime&gt; Heise and the truth about LB's seppuk</subject>
<from>Luther Blissett</from>
<to>nettime-l@bbs.thing.net</to>
<date>Tue, 14 Sep 1999 14:22:59 +0200</date>
<content>
Dear Ashley Benigno,

you keep mistaking one thing for another, and now that I got your angry
response I suspect you may be doing it on purpose. I hope you're not.
You write:

&gt;With all honesty, how can Luther Blissett, considering his essence and
&gt;intentions, come out and speak THE truth about Luther Blissett. Is it
&gt;actually possible to do so?

The paradox of censorship!

It depends on what you understand of his (her) "essence" (aaarrggghhh!) and
"intentions".

In the past years we've been dealing ad nauseam with such fundamentalist
misconceptions, by people who thought that Luther Blissett's main features
were secrecy and anonymity. Although those people never adopted LB's name,
they grew more fanatical than we ourselves ever were, and started to foster
such paradoxical censorship. 

Luther Blissett (sorry to disappoint you) is just a name, and it does have
very little to do with anonymity. If the latter were the most important
thing, why not refuse to use *any* name? No, man, the most important thing
was and still is mythopoesis. Since 1994, there was never any contradiction
in using both the multiple name *and* other names. I myself never did it
until the Five Year Plan was about to expire, but many people used to do it.

Now, don't I have the right to speak out - not as a Luther Blissett priest
(I hope they will never exist): just as *myself* (a man who has been using
the name for five years)- and honestly state that I'm gonna cease to adopt
that name, because I feel that after all these years it might become a
prison, "frozen style", a set of rules to comply with, that my experience
is over and other people will probably use the Luther Blissett moniker in
more fruitful ways? Several dozens of people decided to do the same. Who
are you to tell us what we may say and what not?

When I wrote that I should "set the records straight", I talked about *my*
records, because I am one of the authors of *Q* and you wrote a lot of
moronic innuendos about us.

But then you showed a fair amount of ignorance by citing this:

&gt;"If you want to tune in to the Net's wave, you need to be initiated to its
&gt;culture. It is a spontaneous and natural initiation. You can't be online for
&gt;more than two days without finding out what a manga is, who the Simpsons
&gt;are, what kind of philosopher's stone Trash promises, who William Burroughs
&gt;is, and so on, without end"
&gt;(p.27, Luther Blissett, net.gener {AT} tion, Oscar Mondadori 1996)

Well, I suppose you're the only person who doesn't know what this text
(which I wrote myself) really is, why don't you read the truth (yeah, the
TRUTH) at: &lt;http://www.syntac.net/lutherblissett/mondadr.asc&gt;?

And you aroused my suspicions again by writing?

&gt;First the auhtors of Q, now you
&gt;
&gt;&gt;Roberto Bui, aka Fabrizio P. Belletati

If you're so in touch with the scene, how come you don't konw that
"Belletati" is one of those authors?

Bests,

R.

&lt;http://www.syntac.net/lutherblissett&gt;
A clear, thorough LB primer - last update: August 1999 - English

&lt;http://www.LutherBlissett.net&gt;
The (in)Complete Archives 1994-99 - Italian/English

&lt;http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Leftbank/6815&gt;
Luther Blissett and the "Huelga de Arte"(Art strike 2000-2001) - Spanish

&lt;http://www.contrast.org/kg&gt;
Luther Blissett and Kommunikationsguerilla - German


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</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>9.0</nbr>
<subject>&lt;nettime&gt; The mask of Zorro</subject>
<from>Luther Blissett</from>
<to>nettime-l@bbs.thing.net</to>
<date>Tue, 14 Sep 1999 15:28:11 +0200</date>
<content>
A Footnote to my previous message

Perhaps the best thing one can do to understand what the Seppuku means for
us  is rent a movie:
"The Mask of Zorro" (1998), starring Anthony Hopkins and Antonio Banderas.
It explores "Zorro" as an open character adoptable by different people. The
fact that don Diego de la Vega ceases to adopt it doesn't entail the death
of the character, because the younger Alejandro Murrieta trains to become
the new Zorro. A classic cloak-and-dagger movie, but with a strange edge to
it. 
That's what will happen to "Luther Blissett"
Now, we are far from being old, e.g. I'm only 29, but we are to move to
another project, add new experiences to our class war &amp; pranksterism
curricula, that's why we leave the newcomers (some of them are older than I
am!) with *Q*, a sort of allegorical handbook, a summa theologica of our
experiences as multiple name bearers. 
I'm very pleased by that all Italian multi-use name bearers have devoured
the novel and enthusiastically approved the *Seppuku* operation, and I look
forward to the foreign editions.


Roberto 
(one of the activists formerly known as "Luther Blissett")
&lt;http://www.syntac.net/lutherblissett&gt;
A clear, thorough LB primer - last update: August 1999 - English

&lt;http://www.LutherBlissett.net&gt;
The (in)Complete Archives 1994-99 - Italian/English

&lt;http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Leftbank/6815&gt;
Luther Blissett and the "Huelga de Arte"(Art strike 2000-2001) - Spanish

&lt;http://www.contrast.org/kg&gt;
Luther Blissett and Kommunikationsguerilla - German


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#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
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</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>10.0</nbr>
<subject>&lt;nettime&gt; CD: Luther Blissett Tri</subject>
<from>Luther Blissett</from>
<to>nettime-l@bbs.thing.net</to>
<date>Mon, 16 Aug 1999 03:44:27 +0200</date>
<content>
MAN, WE'VE HAD A LONG WAIT FOR IT!
FINALLY, THE CD BY LUTHER BLISSETT, THE OPEN POP STAR!
A collaborative project - details below!
 

"At the beginning, the matter was not to be 'I' or 'myself' anymore, to
become a 'whoever' singularity, and then turn to a multitude of 'whoever'
singularities that would choose this impersonal name, 'Luther Blissett'. 
When Luther would say 'I' or 'myself', s/he was actually telling us about
his/her *numberless* selves. 
Now that Luther says 'I am not me anymore', s/he's referring to the fact
that all those selves are no longer... themselves. You may keep calling
them 'Luther Blissett', but they are no longer the same Blissett as they
were, and if they turn around when you call them, that's just because your
voice is music." 
(A sentence uttered by Luther Blissett at a celebration party organized by
fans)

	*  *   *

At the beginning of 2000, some of the informal groups historically involved
in the Luther Blissett Project - especially active in Bologna and Rome,
Italy - will celebrate the expiry of their direct involvement (which was an
old-fashioned Five Year Plan), stop adopting the name and leave other
people with the task of taking the myth higher. Subversion continues, and
Blissett too, without all that dago ballast. 
This will be remembered (at least by us) as "The Big Seppuku". The future's
so bright that we've got to wear shades. Details will follow.    

In order to celebrate this handover (from anyone to whosoever), Dutch
record label WOT4 will release a CD by Luther Blissett the open pop star
Luther Blissett.
The "open pop star" is none other that the community of bands, musicians
and djs willing to participate and send us one or more tracks. Rather than
a compilation, it's going to be the output of one eclectic, multi-styled
and multi-headed performer.

We call on all bands and composers whose discourse and praxis are similar
or close to Blissett's: send us tracks! 
We also invite all multiple name bearers and fifth columns of the Project
to forward this message to people who may be interested.
We put our trust in our network's collective intelligence.


1) Technical details

The deadline is October 10th - media and formats: send DAT or CD by snail
mail,  or MP3 files via e-mail. Good quality required.
The album will have absolutely NO COPYRIGHT, collaborations are no profit.
The CD will be signed Luther Blissett. Bands and single performers shall
not be credited as authors of the tracks; rather, they'll be mentioned as
"guest stars" in the acknowledgements list. An example [we'll pick up a
band at random, one we'd like to abduct for the project] : "I wish to thank
Nocturnal Emissions for their kind participation to [track title]" etc. etc.  
 To sum up, bands are exhorted to become Luther Blissett for the duration
of a track. Tracks shouldn't be longer than 4 minutes.


2) "Artistic" details (Aaaaarrrgh!)

Luther Blissett is an eclectic composer. That's his/her music ranges from
drum'n'noise to symphonies, from jazz to Oi!, not only from one track to
the next, but also (if you like) within the single track. We'd like a
plenty of different styles, to release a rich and dense product.
If possible, throw interesting voice samples into your track(s), no matter
the language. Some of the tracks will include samples from Mario Schifano,
Piero Cannata and Stewart Home, excerpts from radio broadcasts, ramblings
against Identity, etc. However, this is just a suggestion - all-musical
tracks and songs will be heartily accepted.
The track list will be decided by the editors. 

3) Collaterals and packaging

The CD will also contain ROM tracks, and will be accompanied by a booklet -
thus, it is possible to send short writings and multimedia stuff (e.g.
video files, icons, net-art...).

For more info, contacts, etc.: 
mailto:sleena {AT} tiscali.net,ndr {AT} ecn..org?subject=LutherBlissettTribute

DAT tapes and/or CDs must be sent (by October 10th) to:

Roman Psychogeographical Association
c/o Vazquez
Via del Pellegrino 96
00186, Roma
Italy 



http://www.syntac.net/lutherblissett
last update: August 1999

http://www.LutherBlissett.net
The (in)Complete Archives (mostly Italian, for the time being)

...It means only that Luther Blissett is an open star with no limits, who
can be in a number of places at the same time. Better than Santa Claus
because Santa Clauses are the same. They look the same, they do the same
things. I never met a Santa Claus with no beard, no red uniform. Red
Santa's existence is subject to a short period of time and h appiness. Who
cares about Santa Claus after Christmas ? And does Santa try to rupture the
endless sameness of life? 
I'm not anti-Santa. I am Luther Blissett. I have this firm belief that
anyone can become and be Luther Blissett. Each of us has to discover that
Luther Blissett self in an individual, proper way. You have to find your
individual Luther Blissett potential. 

Luther Blissett, *The Rosicrucian Book* 1984 

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<mail>
<nbr>11.0</nbr>
<subject>&lt;nettime&gt; An Attack on the Commercialization of Web Ar</subject>
<from>Luther Blissett</from>
<to>nettime-l@bbs.thing.net</to>
<date>Sun, 25 Jul 1999 05:07:35 +0200</date>
<content>
[Luther Blissett is NOT 0100101110101101.ORG, I just wrote an article
(art.hacktivism)  about him/them/her, the Mirapaul's article is good but
he has done a lot of confusion between Luther Blissett and
0100101110101101.ORG, so, if you want to talk with Luther Blissett write
me back, but if you want to talk with 0100101110101101.ORG please mail to
somebody at 0100101110101101.ORG]

---------------------


from the "New York Times" on the web, "arts {AT} large"

http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/99/07/cyber/artsatlarge/08artsatlarge.html

July 8, 1999

By MATTHEW MIRAPAUL


An Attack on the Commercialization of Web Art

Richard Rinehart thinks he may be next the next victim, and that's all
right with him. 

Last week, Rinehart sold a copy of his Web-based art work "An Experience
Base -- A Boolean Typhoon" for $52.50 on the eBay auction site, making him
one of many digital artists exploring the commercial potential of their
online efforts. But the sale makes him a likely target for activists who
in recent months have been attacking such artists by copying their sites. 

Operating under the pseudonym "Luther Blissett," the person or group has
already duplicated two digital-art sites, the "Surface" showcase organized
by HELL.com and the Art.Teleportacia online gallery, and posted the
replicas on the Web site 0100101110101101.org. 

In e-mail messages sent to arts discussion groups online, "Blissett"
explained that the actions were based on "the conviction that information
must be free" and the hope that the Web would be a no-copyright paradise
where digital art would not "regress" by adhering to traditional art-world
models of ownership and economics. 

"Anyone can spin this any way they want, but in the final analysis, it is
just simple theft," said Kenneth Aronson, the founder of HELL.com. "It's a
publicity stunt to create awareness for a bunch of people who have no
apparent talents." 

Luther Blissett was a British soccer player whose name has been
appropriated by a number of media pranksters and cultural guerrillas. The
0100101110101101.org site is registered to an address in Bologna, Italy,
but a Luther Blissett Project site is hosted on the server for
Idiosyntactix, a Toronto-based arts alliance. 

Dmytri Kleiner, an Idiosyntactix member, said his group supports the
activists and supplies server space for them, but has not been involved in
duplicating the sites. 

Attempts to contact the activists via e-mail yielded only silly, off-topic
replies, even less illuminating than the muddled manifestos that were
posted to the arts discussion lists. Still, the copied sites highlight the
challenges that digital artists will face in trying to assign a value to
their easily reproduced work. 

These issues are part of what prompted Rinehart, an artist in Berkeley,
Calif., to put "An Experience Base" up for bid on eBay. At the end of the
10-day auction, Robbin Murphy, a New York artist and co-founder of the
artnetweb site, made the top bid of $52.50 to acquire a clone of the
digital original. 

Rinehart said: "Is $52.50 the true value of the work? Well, it doesn't
need to be, because I sold a copy of the work to Robbin, not exclusive
ownership rights. I sold the only form of property relevant in the
'e-verse:' intellectual property. Maybe digital artists could make up in
volume at low prices what they lose in uniqueness at high prices." 

But supporters of "Blissett's" tactics maintain that intellectual property
is an elusive commodity. Referring to the creators of the HELL.com
project, Kleiner said, "I refuse to admit they have any intellectual
property. They're just slightly modifying the intellectual property that
we all share. In fact, they're threatening to steal it and package it as
their own." 

HELL.com is a private Web space for creative collaboration by artists, but
the "Surface"  showcase was opened to invited guests earlier this year as
a prelude to its contributors' plans to launch a pay-per-view Web event
later this year. 

In May, the activists put the contents of "Surface" on
0100101110101101.org, as well as a playfully modified version of the
online introduction to the HELL.com site. Calling it "cute," Aronson
pointe out to the activists that the site was violating copyrights and
asked for the material to be removed. It remains there. 

"It's thumbing your nose at the 'digerati' kind of elitism," Kleiner said. 

But Rinehart said the activists might be falling prey to their own
arguments. He said he disagreed with "their narrow definition of the
Internet as being purely a chaotic and idealistic free-for-all." 

"Well, some of it is, but other parts are surely not," he said. "The Net
and Net art are both big enough to contain many types of practice. I agree
that it's important that we protect the 'free' part strongly, but not that
we should become equally elitist and obnoxious dogmatists and declare that
only one type of art is right." 

Auriea Harvey, a New York artist and a "Surface" participant, took a
similar stance, but said she was untroubled by the site duplication
itself. 

"Every time someone looks at anything on the Web, a copy is made" in a
browser's cache folder, she said. "I've even seen some masterful remixes
of my own work online. Who cares about copying? If you don't want
something stolen, don't put it on the Net." 

"The problem I had was with this dippy and short-sighted notion that it is
somehow wrong or anti-Net to try out new forms of presenting and
generating revenue from your work as an artist," Harvey said. "A world
where Net art as Luther Blissett wants it to be would be very boring
indeed. Out of their chaos comes stagnation." 

Harvey herself just bought a digital art work, Olia Lialina's "If You Want
To Clean Your Screen," from Art.Teleportacia, the first online gallery
where Internet-based art is for sale. Last month, the Blissett activists
copied the site's files, altered them somewhat and reposted an
"anti-copyright" version on 0100101110101101.org. Lialina, who operates
the site, said she liked the copy so much that she included a link to it
in the "Under Construction" section of the gallery. 

This is not the first time that an art site has been copied to make a
point. In 1997, the Slovenian artist Vuk Cosic captured the contents of
the Web site for the Documenta art exhibition, held every five years in
Germany. That show's official site was taken down, but a facsimile
survives on Cosic's site. Although Cosic remains mum on his reasons for
copying it, creating a permanent online presence for a temporary
real-world event has some artistic merit. 

For his part, Rinehart now figures he is tempting fate. Even before he was
aware of the "Blissett's" endeavors, he included a "Copyright" section in
his piece. In it, he urges visitors to "steal this Web site" and gives
examples of the flexible interplay between copyright and creativity in the
art world. 

Would it bother him if the work became part of the collection at
0100101110101101.org? 

"I wouldn't care that much, although I may take a little wind out of their
sails with some of the examples," Rinehart said. "I think their experiment
is also worthy, purely by way of exploring new options. More power to
them. But it leaves me a little less interested than some other art
activities I've seen." 

Rinehart noted that there may be a side benefit if his work reappears
there. "Perhaps getting hacked onto their site will become a form of honor
among digital artists, maybe even raising the price of their original
works." 




Related Sites

An Experience Base -- A Boolean Typhoon
eBay
artnetweb
HELL.com
Art.Teleportacia
0100101110101101.org http://www.0100101110101101.org
Luther Blissett Project http://www.syntac.net/lutherblissett
Idiosyntactix http://www.syntac.net
Auriea Harvey's Entropy8
Documenta
Vuk Cosic's DocumentaX

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<mail>
<nbr>12.0</nbr>
<subject>&lt;nettime&gt; Anti-copyright stance of *Q*'s authors</subject>
<from>Luther Blissett</from>
<to>nettime-l@bbs.thing.net</to>
<date>Tue, 27 Jul 1999 16:04:39 +0200</date>
<content>
The German publishing house Piper Verlag has bought *Q*'s rights of
translation for 120,000 DMs, which is the highest offer Einaudi has ever
got from Germany. Such an investment makes you think, there will probably
be a big and stylish launch on the German book market.  As to the Spanish
translation, Grijalbo publishing house is already at work on the text.
This is the open letter we authors sent them a few weeks ago (back then,
we hadn't yet got an agent - now we've got him, and *he* is the guy
dealing with the - alas, partial - waiving of copyright) : 



Dear Mr. Claudio Lopez

We are glad to hear that Einaudi and Grijalbo came to terms about *Q*'s
Spanish edition. We are writing to remind all the parties involved of a
very important detail. Since the beginnings of the Luther Blissett Project
- for obvious reasons related to the nature and media strategy of this
multiple name - all books authored by "Luther Blissett" (both in Italy
and, e.g. Germany [the reference is to the *Handbuch der
Kommunikationsguerilla*, t.n.]) were published with formulas waiving
copyright, either totally or partially. All "Luther Blissett" output is an
ever-changing result of a collective process of network creation and
re-elaboration. If Grijalbo intends to strictly observe the international
laws on copyright, this would be perceived by every multi-use name bearer
as an unnatural strain.  As the old "Net.gener {AT} tion" affair proved [see
&lt;http://ww.syntac.net/lutherblissett/mondadr.html/&gt;], Luther Blissett's
transnational network is perfectly capable to reject and boycott a work by
the Multiple that is not freely reproducible, at least by single persons
or for non-commercial purposes.  *Q*'s Italian edition carries the
following wording: "Partial or total reproduction of this book, as well as
its electronic diffusion, are consented to the readers for non-commercial
use". We augur that all the involved parties agree about the insertion, in
the Spanish edition, of a similar wording in Castillan.  Thanks in
advance, and greetings from

Luther Blissett
(th authors of *Q*)
----------------------------------------

Return-Path: &lt;claudio {AT} grijalbo.com&gt;
Date: Mon, 28 Jun 1999 09:27:30 +0200
From: CLAUDIO LOPEZ &lt;claudio {AT} grijalbo.com&gt;
To: luther {AT} syntac.net
Subject: Re: Traduzione di Q in castigliano
Content-Disposition: inline

Nessun problema. Es un placer poder editar Q en lengua espa&#324;ola. Gracias
por todo y hasta pronto.
Un saludo muy cordial,
C.

http://www.syntac.net/lutherblissett


'Never been to a cinema school, never learnt the cinematographic technique.
It's by chance that I entered this profession. Simply, I had the urge to
create something, either a text, either a film, by any means. I wished my
desires to come true, for example the desire to kill cops. I cannot do this
in real life, of course. But in a film I can exterminate a huge number of
cops all at once. There you are, I started making movies for a very crude
motive.' (Koji Wakamatsu)


Re-thinking AIDS:
http://www.duesberg.com
http://www.virusmyth.com/aids/index.htm

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<mail>
<nbr>13.0</nbr>
<subject>&lt;nettime&gt; Klasse Kriminale &amp; Luther Bliss</subject>
<from>Luther Blissett</from>
<to>nettime-l@bbs.thing.net</to>
<date>Tue, 27 Jul 1999 16:04:51 +0200</date>
<content>
Klasse Kriminale, Sham 69 and Luther Blissett United in Struggle!

Klasse Kriminale &amp; Luther Blissett
*Mind Invaders*, vynil 7'', 33 RPM
1999, Mad Butcher Records, 
Bergfeldstrasse 3, 34289 Zierenberg, Germany
http://www.pader-online.de/madbutcher

The legendary Italian Oi!/punk band Klasse Kriminale have re-recorded
their last year 7'' titled *Mind Invaders* (mind-slashing lyrics written
by Luther Blissett), and re-issued it with a new cover (a Blissett whose
face and clothes are a precarious synthesis of different youth
subcultures). An old-fashioned jewel for the many fans of vynil records. 
The song was re-recorded at the Hach Farm Studios in Hersham, London, and
produced by Jimmy Pursey, singer and leader of Sham 69 - possibly the most
important street punk band ever. Pursey wrote the notorious skinhead
anthem *If the Kids Are United* (which was later covered by thousands of
bands all around the world). Now the track has a more solid sound and, at
the end of the tune, you hear Stanley Kubrick's *Spartacus* peak scene,
with all the captured slaves yelling: "I AM SPARTACUS!". That scene was
cited numberless times in Luther Blissett's writings and video
productions. The funny thing is that Klasse Kriminale used the
Italian-dubbed edition of the movie!  The cross-fertilization between
Luther Blissett and Klasse Kriminale is yet another statement of creative
freedom, against all absurd stereotypes about skinheads being unable to
criticize identity, and the Luther Blissett Project being just an evasive
heap of technophiles and apologists of the "Immaterial". Actually, among
"historical" subcultures, nowadays skinheads are possibly the most active
scene on the Net (command a query on Altavista and you'll see with your
own eyes), while in the LBP - where a bunch of style-conscious guys has
always had connections with the Mod and Skinhead scenes - many people lay
the stress on a necessary insurrection of bodies, on being street-wise and
martial. Incidentally, I must say that Klasse Kriminale - just like the
LBP Bologna column - are committing a "Seppuku" (samurai ritual suicide).
Their *1st Class Kriminale* newsletter (whose heading is a detournement of
the Calvin Klein logo) bears this motto: "We can't fucking stand Klasse
Kriminale anymore... Klasse Kriminale are dead... Long live Klasse
Kriminale".  It is worth translating and reproducing the lyrics of the
song. We also remind that the multi-use title *Mind Invaders* derives from
an imaginary noise-rock band "founded" by Piermario Ciani and Chris Lutman
in the early Eighties. Later, *Mind Invaders* became the title of both the
first book authored by LB in Italy (1995) and an anthology of cultural
guerrilla warfare and "semiotic terrorism" edited by Stewart Home
(Serpent's Tail, London 1997).  "My name is your name / Without names
everybody is free / One name for the whole world / One name for the music
/ United, united, so much united / that we don't even have names / If they
don't recognize us they won't emprison us / If they can't distinguish us,
they won't knock us down / YOU ARE ME, I AM YOU / WITHOUT NAMES,
EVERYBODY'S FREE/ IF THEY DON'T RECOGNIZE US THEY WON'T EMPRISON US / IF
THEY CAN'T DISTINGUISH US THEY WON'T KNOCK US DOWN/ I am Nobody, you are
Nobody / like Ulysses vs. the Cyclop / if I am nothing I'll be free/ if
you are nothing you'll be free / YOU ARE ME, I AM YOU / WITHOUT NAMES,
EVERYBODY'S FREE/ IF THEY DON'T RECOGNIZE US THEY WON'T EMPRISON US / IF
THEY CAN'T DISTINGUISH US THEY WON'T KNOCK US DOWN!"  Collectors,
multi-use name bearers, fans: order the single via the mail, by sending an
international money order (7 euros) to: Klasse Kriminale, c/o Marco
Balestrino, c.p. 426 centrale, 17100 Savona, Italy For more info and
direct contacts: kkconnection {AT} angelfire.com
&lt;http://www.angelfire.com/ok/klassekriminale/&gt;

http://www.syntac.net/lutherblissett


'Never been to a cinema school, never learnt the cinematographic
technique.  It's by chance that I entered this profession. Simply, I had
the urge to create something, either a text, either a film, by any means.
I wished my desires to come true, for example the desire to kill cops. I
cannot do this in real life, of course. But in a film I can exterminate a
huge number of cops all at once. There you are, I started making movies
for a very crude motive.' (Koji Wakamatsu) 


Re-thinking AIDS:
http://www.duesberg.com
http://www.virusmyth.com/aids/index.htm

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</content>
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<mail>
<nbr>14.0</nbr>
<subject>&lt;nettime&gt; Bifo on Luther Blissett's *Q*</subject>
<from>Luther Blissett</from>
<to>nettime-l@bbs.thing.net</to>
<date>Tue, 27 Jul 1999 16:05:38 +0200</date>
<content>
The following text is an excerpt from a long review written by Franco
"Bifo" Berardi. It is going to be published on the pilot issue of Exit, a
new Italian magazine.  ---------

In Thomas Pynchon's *Vineland* we already experienced this feeling - of
being in a post-historical time-space where nothing happens anymore,
nothing but an absurd hanging on along the past's edge. A daughter
(Prayrie) reconstructs an indecipherable past from the fragments and rags
left behind by her parents' generation. That past is indecipherable
because Zoyd and Frenesi (i.e. Prayrie's father and mother) can no longer
provide clues for the puzzle: Zoyd makes a living out of simulating
accidents, and is also on welfare for partial insanity. As to Frenesi, she
keeps embarking on troublesome enterprises.

And yet *Vineland* is still a contemporary novel - I mean, it hasn't been
written by someone of the "post-generation", because Pynchon, the greatest
unknown man of our times, (although we don't know precisely how old he is) 
most likely belongs to the psychedelic broom.  Pynchon has paved the way
for Luther Blissett's faceless name, and yet he is still settled in the
century of historical tragedy.  Now, however, we are witnessing the
release of the following generations' early greater narratives. Mind you,
I mean: 'following' modern history and modern Humanism.  At the end of the
Kosovo war springtime, that springtime during which students hadn't
occupied any Italian, French or German university, I read two
extraordinary novels: Michel Houellebecq *Les Particules elementaires* and
Luther Blissett's *Q*.  These two books have just one feature in common:
they are written by people looking in from the outside (indeed, from two
utterly different outsides).  The viewpoint I am talking about is the
space-time where action has become uncontrollable and meaningless. Yet,
the two landscapes could not be more different: while Houellebecq's book
is desperate and sad, Luther Blissett's is desperate and happy. [...] *Q*
and *Les Particules elementaires* are the first novels whose
post-historicality and post-identitarianism are utterly conscious, though
identity is dissolved in two opposite ways: Houellebecq's dis-identity
replaces individuals (names and surnames, personal and collective stories) 
with the aggregations and disgregations of biological becoming and
decompositon. Such dis-identity is degrading, the basic particles move
about looking for the individual's consistency, something that's
irremediably gone.  On the contrary, LB's dis-identity is awareness of the
language's becoming, mutation of roles, becoming community, bodies meeting
up with one another, desertion and going adrift. 

			***

"Now I turn around when people call me Gustav... I've got used to a name
which is not more 'mine' than any other". 

*Q* is a book that comes after history... And see how these dis-identitary
pirates skillfully master history, with the contempt of those who took a
look through the idealistic fabric - through civilization, religion and
politics. Idealism is the condiment of mankind's cannibalistic meal. It is
the pepper and salt of both history's violence on bodies and men's
violence on women.  First of all, I must say that *Q* is written with a
wonderful masterly skill. The recombination of time is not simply a series
of flashbacks - it is a fold-in of temporal strata whose double,
subjective sequence is composed of Gert tom Kloster's passionate look and
Q's police-like and political one.  Although the book is very lenghty and
thick (more than six hundred pages), the plot flows quick and involving. 
Secondly, I must say that *Q* is impressively rich from a philosophical,
ethical and political point of view.  The ground stalked by all these
precariously named characters is that of the frenzy and madness produced
by an historical change in the infosphere, the invention and spreading of
a new information technology, that is the press, the possibility of
reproducing texts.  The word is no longer "volatile", it acquires an
unprecedented power thanks to the invention of flyers, flugblatten.
Peasants and craftsmen receive undisputably striking messages. The word
becomes matter, and history.  All the madness, fanaticism and wicked
violence of modern class war, and also its devotion and generosity, spring
out from messages whose path is no longer mouth-&gt;ears - rather, it is
hand-to-hand, and their readers grasp them as the Word, the Scriptures,
the Truth. If the Bible is printed, then any printed text is bible. The
Scriptures spread themselves around, they are no longer exclusive property
of the Power - everybody can spread the word, and turn the word into flesh
There is a logical shift in the relationship between the infosphere and
the mind. The printed word gets into circulation is social milieux that
are accustomed to oral tradition - those people interpret the text in
mythological, strongly picturesque ways.  Communitarian mythology arises
from the ashes of oral culture and overlaps with the critique of the
Power, turning the critique into a new dogmatism and revolt into a
totalitarian power. This overlap is the origin of all the delusions that
have tormented the proletarian community for almost five centuries.  The
radical critique of the world turns into the mythology of the Kingdom,
autonomy turns into dialectics, the insurgents become victims,
pleasure-loving bodies turn into meat in the slaughterhouse of history. 
Luther Blissett's novel depicts the tragedy of the proletarian community
during the last five centuries, the modern age.  The novel is set in early
16th century Germany, a few years after the beginning of protestant
Reformation, precisely during the Peasant War.  Through the plot we can
see the stories of our 1960's and 1970's - first the exhilarating creation
of communities by the force of our discours, by the shared pleasures of
flesh and mind, then a tragic armed confrontation, fanatical violence in
the name of ideals, and finally police repression.  I don't know if some
of the numberless reviewers noticed that *Q* is the first Italian novel
(and even the first European one, as far as I know)  handling the
experiences of libertarian and autonomous movements, and then of
"terrorism", laying the stress on the latter's inextricable tangle of
totalitarian fanaticism and state provocation.  It is from this point of
view that *Q* is a desperate novel. There's no hope in history, there's no
hope in dialectics. When the movement arising from everyday life
designates itself as an avenging judge, when utopia takes the place of
life, here comes the spectre of identity, and the rebellious body is
imprisoned by sacrificial idealism. Then, the boss recognizes the rebel's
face, and hits it hard.  In Luther Blissett's novel there's no hope, and
yet there can be happines.  It is an Epicurean novel, nay, a Spinozist
novel. Happiness is in the pleasure of meeting each other, in the contact,
the caress, in words playing games with no pretence to Truth.  Eloi, the
Antwerp roof-maker who organizes an egalitarian community based on the
refusal of armed violence, is the prototype of a whole generation of
insurgents who did not want to seize power, nor did they want victory or
revenge. Those people are usually sucked into the pit of assassin history,
owing to their fanatic and sex-repressed brothers, who found parties,
organize insurrections, provoke massacres and create totalitarian states. 
"Ursula is something I won't feel anymore, Melancholy, engraved on my
flesh and soul. I look at her, she says: 'You are not like Hoffmann, you
do not expect anything. You have a hopeless defeat in your eyes, but you
are not tormented by resignation - you are tormented by death. You already
chose life, once.'" (*Q*, p. 191) Luther Blissett's heroes can be happy,
precisely because they don't expect anything, they don't invest their
desiring energy in history, the future, a dogmatic truth that is to be
realized by sacrificing the flesh. Happiness is only in the present, the
flesh, the pleasures of contact, the concrete community of bodies touching
each other and minds exchanging signals.  As far as I know, *Q* is the
greatest lesson of irony against fanaticism, ever. 

			*** I heard that *Q* caused a sensation in the circles of hardcore
multiple name bearers. "What?", someone said, "Luther Blissett signing a
contract with a major publishing house? Is this the end of the multiple
name and dis-identity?". 

On the contrary, that was the final coup de theatre, before the planned
melting into thin air. First of all, there can be no "hard core" of
faithful Blissetts, because LB is a prank pulled on faith. Secondly, if
identity stillness must be radically contradicted, why not make happen a
thing like that? Now, the same mechanism that caused a thousand changes in
the relationship name-subject is causing the umpteenth and final change: 
those who have pig-headedly avoided the "Author" mythologies and logics
for such a long time, have the freedom to act as "authors", the best
authors there are. Hats off for comrade Luther Blissett, whoever s/he is.
Luther Blissett emerges as the most important thing happened in 1990's
Italian culture.  He displayed a brilliant critique of politics - critique
of literature - critique of critique, while managing to produce the best
politics, the best literature, the best critique. This is pure life,
pleasure of the struggle, pleasure of language, pleasure of a community
that flows and keeps changing instead of fossilizing.  And now? What is
Luther Blissett going to do after the end of their Five Year Plan? [*] Hic
Rodus hic salta?  What will you do, fellas? What shall we all do?  I greet
you. Hopelessly. Happily. 

Bologna, June 1999

[*] This only concerns the older milieux of the Italian Luther Blissett
Project. Of course, everybody will still be free to adopt the name.



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</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>15.0</nbr>
<subject>&lt;nettime&gt; Who the fuck is Luther Blissett?</subject>
<from>Luther Blissett</from>
<to>nettime-l@bbs.thing.net</to>
<date>Wed, 28 Jul 1999 18:39:10 +0200</date>
<content>
&gt;From l'Unita (Italian left-wing daily paper), 30 April 1999, Friday :

The affair: 
ALL LUTHER BLISSETT'S MYSTERIES
&gt;From the *Q* breakthrough to the latest book on our republic's plots,
*Enemies of the State*, an essay on Italian "emergencies" from the
Seventies to these days

by Stefania Scateni


"Luther Blissett represents the power of communication and collective
intelligence - no copyright can fight him back". This was the last
sentence of an early text by the Luther Blissett Project, possibly its
very birth certificate, which was published on *Derive Approdi* magazine
in March 1995. Today, less than five years later, that statement does not
sound overambitious anymore. Indeed, it has become a mere ascertainment,
not only because the group hiding behind the "Luther Blissett" multiple
name has performed several actions of media terrorism (e.g. the creation
and propagation of false news about inexistent satanic cults - by which LB
egged on a plenty of newspapers) and authored many serious texts (e.g. 
essays against the Italian judiciary), but also because their literary
work, the very famous *Q* (Einaudi, pp. 643 - for the first time a major
publishing house waived copyright on one of their novels!) has been read
by thousands of readers (the first edition sold 15,000 copies, the second
sold 10,000 more).  Now, consider that *Q* is not simply a very good
novel, exciting and skillfully written - it also has a strongly subversive
political subtext. This throws more light on the counter-cultural value of
the whole operation.

Another Luther Blissett book hit the bookstores just now. It is the
latest, maybe the last one, because the Luther Blissett Project, nay, the
Bologna-based group adopting this collective alias, has decided to
continue their journey in another disguise. The book is titled *Enemies of
the State: Criminals, "Monsters" and Special Laws in the Society of
Control* (Derive Approdi, pp.282). It is the other side of *Q*, or rather
a sort of handbook for *Q*'s readers. OK, it is less captivating and
charming than the novel, because it is a theoretical text filled with
footnotes and references, court verdicts and law texts, and certainly it
is going to remain less popular, and yet it is the same book. I mean it.
While *Q* is an allegory of Blissett's theory and practice, *Enemies of
the State* is a more explicit enunciation. Although the two books were not
authored by precisely the same members of the collective, "they both are
emblematic of our way of investigating and writing", as LB themselves
said. 

Let's try a brief summary of the two "plots". *Q* narrates thirty years of
violent repression in the Europe of Reformation and Counter-Reformation,
by the voice of an anonymous dissenter and revolutionary fighter (the last
man standing after an overwhelming wave of blood and repression) and
through the watchful eyes of "Q", a secret agent in the pay of cardinal
Giovanni Pietro Carafa (i.e. the supreme brain of the Holy Inquisition,
who later became Pope Paul IV). The big historical and human fresco
painted by the novelists shows us all the plots of 16th century politics,
especially the alliances between princes, emperors and powerful bankers.
The mighty Vatican shadow stretches out on everything: Carafa is always at
work to create scapegoats and public enemies, in order to find more and
more allies and strengthen the Church's power. 

*Enemies of the State* reconstructs thirty years of Italian history in
order to "cast new light on some judicial and media mechanisms which link
the 1970's emergency laws to today's molecular emergencies. The historical
setting is economic globalization, the full restoration of the Catholic
model and the rise of a new constituent power that will dare speak its
name soon". The book's "counter-inquiry" starts from some stories which
Blissett tells in order to make mechanisms visible: from the Cossiga Act
(1980) to the 7th April affair, from the endless preventive detention of
Giuliano Naria to the judicial persecution of Enzo Tortora, from the
Anti-mafia season to the "Clean Hands" inquiry, down to the latest public
"emergencies", i.e. squatters, pedophiles, satanic cults etc. Luther
Blissett writes: "We call 'emergency' a continual re-definition of the
'public enemy' by the powers-that-be. Thanks to emergencies, so-called
public opinion accepts not only the violation, but even the *suspension*
of all freedoms and rights formally warranted by the constitution and the
declarations of human rights. All this is accepted because the media
describes it as *necessary* in order to defend democracy".  &gt;From
terrorism to the Internet, from *molar* to *molecular* emergencies, from
politics to culture. In default of a clear conflict between labor and
capital, as well as between the society and the state, any conflict can be
turned into an emergency.. According to Blissett, in the name of the
defence of the state, the constitution was torn to pieces, with the
engagement of intellegence agencies, the alliances between politicians and
magistrates, the vicious circle between the media and public prosecutors,
and the full-time interference of Vatican long hands.  Yes, the thesis is
pretty extreme, and certainly not agreeable, especially when Blissett
deals with such complex phenomena as pedophilia. However, what the Luther
Blissett Project wants to do is giving us a new pair of glasses,
"uncomfortable" glasses to take a new lokk on reality.

I wrote: 'uncomfortable'. In fact, Blissett risks being sentenced to a
fine of 100 million lira [about $ 53,000] for having caused "moral damage"
to a Bologna magistrate. The court trial is about the scandal provoked by
Blissett's book *Let The Children... "Pedophilia" as a Pretext for a Witch
Hunt*, a pamphlet about the most recent "emergency", in which the
collective tells the story of Mr. Marco Dimitri and his group "The
Children of Satan", who were victims of a sensational judicial error. The
public prosecutor, Mrs. Lucia Musti, brought a legal action against the
authors, for "defamation" and "misuse of the right to critique". Musti
asked the Bologna tribunal to seize and destroy all the copies of the
book. Before this happened the authors, whose freedom of speech is in
danger, made the text freely available on nearly 50 websites [the list is
at http://www.syntac.net/lutherblissett/url.html, t.n.]. Now censorship
has become impossible. 

This is Luther Blissett's force: being ubiquitous, elusive and
indestructible. The power of the multiple name is a nomadic,
uncontrollable, rhizomatic power. "A line, not a dot". 

http://www.syntac.net/lutherblissett


'Never been to a cinema school, never learnt the cinematographic technique.
It's by chance that I entered this profession. Simply, I had the urge to
create something, either a text, either a film, by any means. I wished my
desires to come true, for example the desire to kill cops. I cannot do this
in real life, of course. But in a film I can exterminate a huge number of
cops all at once. There you are, I started making movies for a very crude
motive.' (Koji Wakamatsu)


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</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>16.0</nbr>
<subject>&lt;nettime&gt; Down with war criminals</subject>
<from>Luther Blissett</from>
<to>nettime-l@desk.nl</to>
<date>Fri, 02 Apr 1999 19:09:59 +0200</date>
<content>
Down With War Criminals!
A press release


Europe is finished
Q, p. 643

We consider the NATO offensive in the Balkans as useless, absurd,
criminal and even apocalyptic. Useless, nay, counterproductive: it turned
Slobodan Milosevic and his cut-throats into unconvincing heroes and
self-styled opponents of the New World Order, leaving Serbian people with
no choice but siding with their dictator. Absurd: historical ignorance
and lack of strategy stirred up a war with dark prospects, in a
geopolitical area that worked as incubator for the bloodiest conflicts in
modern history. Criminal: while it is dubious that NATO wants to impede
ethnic cleaning, it is certain that they&#146;re ratifying and speeding it up.
&gt;From Dayton onwards the Western powers have promoted, as a "solution" of
the Balkan problem, the invention of grotesque mono-ethnic states whose
borders can hardly be outlined, kept together only by hatred for their
neighbors.  Apocalyptic: the abovementioned lack of strategy and the
inexistence of clear political purposes are making a ground attack
unavoidable, with unimaginable consequences. 

In times like these, it is difficult not to sound rhetoric; you hear your
own voice and immediately experience a sense of triviality at the bottom
of your stomach. Yet every passing day of war and carnage, every bunch of
falling bombs brings about certainty that we wrote a book abot what&#146;s
going on. *Q* is an epic on the origins of so-called Modernity which
actually deals with the present, with this epoch, the end of Modernity
itself. Q&#146;s scenario is XVIth century Europe, a continent swarming with
religion wars, characterised by a conflict between old and new powers
(both of which wave the flag of Faith to cover quite other interests) and
a mercantile integration that crosses borders and overcedes local wars by
launching a new, global one, the war of finance. This Europe is
constantly reconstructed by political decisions which are determined by
German bankers. Faith is "defended" by mercenary gangs that often abandon
themselves to rape and looting, to the detriment of entire populations
subject to martial law.  In consequence, columns of fugees leave their
villages aflame, as desperate rebellion encounters the solid response of
both old dynasties and emerging merchant powers, the usual shitty
response: guns, further war, genocide.  In the end, it is a continent
over which one man, an emperor whose domain stretches from America to the
Balkans, tries to impose one order, his own, with support of the most
powerful bank in the world. 

Those pages are about the folly of NATO bombings on towns, factories,
houses and people, about escalation to global massacre, about gasoline
thrown in the fire of ethnic hate, and what&#146;s more, about the
unbelievable annihilation of intelligence, about this chilling silence.
Fear of bombs in Belgrade and Pristina has an equivalent on this side of
the sea, in the fear provoked by the deliberate impotence of these
miserable European government celebrating themselves as Socialists, not
to mention the obtuse faces of intellectuals and opinion leaders, none of
which is able to grasp the meaning of what&#146;s going on.  Indignation is
good for nothing. Generic appeals to peace never roused our interest:
war, today as four centuries ago, has a very solid raison d&#146;etre, rooted
in the criminal decisions of states and supernational powers, the United
States as well as Charles V&#146;s empire. Ethnic cleanings and retaliations
have their reason too, a reason that we reject and oppose, being aware
that time won&#146;t stop rewarding with victories and defeats those who keep
up this struggle, i.e. the only conflict worth enlisting for. These days
of bloodbath coincide with our Q promotional tour all over Italy. It
would immoral and inconsistent with our long-time political praxis not to
seize this opportunity, that&#146;s why we&#146;re using our paradoxical "fame" to
censure both the madness of rulers and the apathy of the ruled ones. 

The collective of Q&#146;s "authors"
Luther Blissett Project - Bologna
April 1st, 1999

---
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<mail>
<nbr>17.0</nbr>
<subject>&lt;nettime&gt; The downed Stealth and other Serbian pranks</subject>
<from>Luther Blissett</from>
<to>nettime-l@desk.nl</to>
<date>Sat, 03 Apr 1999 22:46:02 +0200</date>
<content>

I read with much interest Roya*jakoby's posting about infowar, propaganda
and, er, "communication guerrilla" by the Serbian regime. It is curious
that, while many "skeptical" postings  were dismissed as "paranoid rants",
this apparent satire of anti-NATO positions on Nettime wasn't exposed as
pro-Serbian "black" propaganda claiming to come from the other side while
depicting a charming eulogy of Belgrade's almighty, ultra-clever ministry
of information. Suggesting that *all* e-mail from Yugoslavia is being
written by intelligence pros (I presume jakoby referred to Insomnia's
diary) may be the most brilliant hoax ever pulled by these pros themselves.
If I were a Serbian "ratfucker", I'd flood list-servs and newsgroups
precisely with this kind of messages. 
Unfortunately, I'm afraid jakoby's isn't neither black propaganda nor
subtle collaborationism, just flawed "white" stuff whose main sub-text is:
NATO has the exclusive right to media manipulation in the West, no-one but
Uncle Sam should be allowed to fuck with our minds. 
I strongly disagree, I think that what goes around comes around: after
almost ten years of bullshitting monopoly, the Pentagon had to face the
rise of a highly sarcastic (as Ivo Skoric noticed) overt
counter-disinformation. It's a karma thing, you know.  

In one of my previous postings, I incidentally described Slobo (mind you, I
still regard him as a fascist sleazebag) as a ' merry prankster'. On the
same day, someone phoned the families of all German soldiers quartiered in
Italian NATO bases, informing them that their beloved ones were just dead
in the Balkan skies. Headquarters were flooded by desperate callers seeking
confirmation.
Friends made me notice that such black humour was one of Blissett's
trademarks in the Project's early years, so I tried to investigate among
phone pranksters adopting the multi-use name, but my efforts were
unsuccessful and I had to assume that, although it is a trivial example of
zero-budget grassroots trashing, it was 100% a Serbian operation. 
Another example: Yugoslavia let it be known that they aren't at war with
nobody, as they're victims of  a terrorist aggression, thereby Stone,
Ramirez and Gonzales aren't prisoners of war and can't appeal to
international conventions. This sounds both disturbing and bloody funny.
What did NATO expect, since they pig-headedly kept describing this war as
"humanitarian peace-enforcing" and other euphemisms? No officially declared
war, no conventions. Plain and simple. A while later, spokespersons for
Slobo hinted at western judicial "guaranteeism", saying that the martial
court is 'gathering evidence', implying  that S, R &amp; G will have a "fair"
trial all the same. All the western media can't help but reporting this joke.

Besides this, it seems to me that, since the first day of bombings,
Yugoslavia resorted to counter-manipulation of Western media as a
"raspberry" response to NATO's muscle-flexing, often giving a paradoxical
twist and acceleration to the whole game. The best strike is the story of
the 'downed' Stealth. Given that no-one from the press was allowed to talk
to the pilot (or even see him), the Italian media has started to doubt the
official NATO version of that "crash". On March 31st Mr. Enrico Mentana,
chief news-editor at Canale 5 television, said that 'the lack of
"transparency" about this affair reverberates on the whole NATO operation'.
The day before, an activist of the Rome-based MIR [Men In Red] group had
posted the following message on the Italian &lt;movimento {AT} ecn.org&gt; listserv:

'[...] An F-117's can be piloted from the base, with no man aboard. Since
the beginning of this war Serbian sources announced at least 3 downings of
F-117s before the case we know about, and a further one later. NATO always
denied. The only difference between these reports and the confirmed one is
footage of the downed plane.
Given Yugoslavia's permeability by foreign journalism, it wouldn't have
made any sense to release fake reports on downed NATO aircraft, doomed to
denial [...]
As a matter of fact, the only undisputable evidence that a plane was shot
down, besides pictures, is the presence of a human pilot aboard. If he
dies, it will be difficult to keep it hidden. It makes sense to think that
Serbian anti-aircraft has really shot more aircraft down, which NATO could
easily deny due to lack of serious consequences, since no pilot was dead.
Perhaps the Serbs realized how to play the game: they hit the fourth plane,
then not only made the images public, but also talked about two captured
pilots. 
Several years later, NATO confirmed the shooting down, but stated that the
pilot (one) had been salvaged. 
It is hard to believe that a NATO helicopter landed in the middle of
Yugoslavian territory, 30 kms. from Belgrade, while the pride of US air
force was knocked off at flying height. It is even harder to believe that
the helicopter arrived before the Serbian "militias" controlling that
territory [...] This is unconvincing fiction.
The shocking truth may be: there was no pilot aboard the Stealth, and if
serbian reports are true and other planes were shot down, there may be no
human being aboard the aircraft bombing Yugoslavia.
Think of it: while civilians are dying, no military man is really putting
his life on the line; these "heroes" are simply playing some sort of
cyi&#283;nic videogame.'

Someday we'll find out the truth. If it coincides with MIR's supposition,
historians will give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and regard this prank as a
towering achievement of Milosevic's infowar, no matter if he is and will
always be a filthy mind-fucker.

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<nbr>19.0</nbr>
<subject>&lt;nettime&gt; Franco Berardi Bifo: Europe, the stillborn ideal</subject>
<from>Luther Blissett</from>
<to>nettime-l@desk.nl</to>
<date>Fri, 16 Apr 1999 03:47:48 +0200</date>
<content>
&gt; From: lop1912 {AT} iperbole.bologna.it
&gt; Data: Wed, 14 Apr 1999 23:56:14 +0200
&gt;
&gt; This text will be published in the next issue of Tempos, due for release on
&gt; the 20th of April 1999 at:
&gt;  &lt;http://www.mediaevo.com/tempos&gt;http://www.mediaevo.com/tempos
&gt;
&gt;  Franco Berardi Bifo
&gt;
&gt;  Europe, the stillborn ideal
&gt;
&gt;  "People never rave about their mothers, they rave about nations, borders,
&gt; ethnic groups, race, class&#133; in the last couple of years everyone (myself,
&gt; the Pope, Milosevic, Emma Bonino and Marc Dutroux included) have all taken
&gt; to raving about Europe.
&gt;  Europe does not exist, a fact which is hardly worth shedding a tear over.
&gt; Identity is always and only something that has already been lost (or better
&gt; still, something we thought we had) and the more we go on about Europe,
&gt; &#147;Europeanism&#148;, European Culture, etc. the further the spectre retreats into
&gt; the shadows. We have all been taken for the biggest ride on record; a
&gt; united Europe: the Bundesbank, FMI, Pensiero Unico, ENFOPOL and American
&gt; bases all over the place." (luther blissett)
&gt;
&gt;  The empire of catastrophe, national communism and the end of century
&gt; identity disease
&gt;
&gt;  Kosovo Polje, 1989. While the empire of Evil collapses, the empire of
&gt; catastrophe takes its place.
&gt;  The empire of catastrophe is the gospel according to aggressive identity
&gt; affirmation; the bloody ghouls, People, Nation and Race are back to haunt
&gt; us again.
&gt;  In the 1900s, what was wrongly referred to as communism, proved to be a
&gt; powerful bastion of archaic resistance (feudal, bureaucratic, military and
&gt; nationalistic) against the dynamic innovations of capitalism and against
&gt; the trend towards globalisation that can be seen right from the beginning
&gt; of the century.
&gt;  One day the true story of these regimes has to be told, the story of these
&gt; ultra reactionary twentieth century regimes and how they usurped the title
&gt; of communism: the regime in Russia that placed absolute power in the hands
&gt; of the army, the police bureaucracy and the orthodox church; the regime in
&gt; China that shored up the power of the mandarin class, the regime in
&gt; Yugoslavia that let the military caste and priests of various denominations
&gt; (but principally that of the orthodox church) take control.
&gt;  It is now clear that these regimes played the same role as fascism in
&gt; Italy or nazism in Germany and their main aims were to contain the dynamic
&gt; innovations of capitalism, to protect national identity from nomadic
&gt; deterritorialisation resulting from technological breakthrough, to snuff
&gt; out any unidentified sparks of life and to impose the shackles of family,
&gt; nation and state.
&gt;
&gt;  Slobodan Milosevic is an excellent example of a figure who succeeded in
&gt; uniting the bureaucratic class, who had denied freedom of movement to
&gt; entire populations, preferring to incarcerate them in cells of social
&gt; conservation and ideological dogmatism, and the nationalistic military
&gt; class who had seized power, a pattern recurrent in most of the ex communist
&gt; countries.
&gt;  In 1989, Kosovo Polje, witnessed the birth of end of century national
&gt; communism. National communism is the synthesis of the worst aspects of the
&gt; socioauthoritarian tradition (dogmatism and dictatorship, without the
&gt; trappings of social egalitarianism, in other words a version similar to
&gt; that consecrated in the massacre of Tien an Men square in the same year),
&gt; with the aggressive re-emergence of nationalistic and ethnic
&gt; identification, a process parallel to that of the Islamic world in 1979, of
&gt; neo Hinduist India in the 1990s and of Christian fundamentalist America.
&gt;  Historical communism at least had the saving grace of universal size. End
&gt; of century national communism is nothing more than another fundamentalist
&gt; regime to add to the list. It has less archaic depth, less power of
&gt; imagination, more atomic armaments, more conventional weapons and a higher
&gt; degree of segregation.
&gt;
&gt;  From Kronstadt to Sarajevo
&gt;
&gt;  Let us have a brief look at the history of the ten year war in Yugoslavia.
&gt; The country was created in a series of stages starting &gt;from the Serbian
&gt; Nationalist uprising of 1989. The Germanic revolt and the catholic church
&gt; then stirred up the fire of Croatian secessionism.
&gt;  It is important not to forget that the horror of the Serbo-Croatian war
&gt; was created under the auspices of both Woytila and Kohl and that they have
&gt; Vukovar on their conscience just as much as Milosevic and Ratko Mladic do.
&gt;  After this came the war in Bosnia and the protracted agony of Sarajevo.
&gt; Sarajevo is of immense importance, because it was there that Europe fell,
&gt; along with the hope and dignity of modern civilisation. Sarajevo had a
&gt; population of five hundred thousand people, today only two hundred and
&gt; fifty thousand are left. Fifty thousand are dead, massacred by Karadzijc&#146;s
&gt; snipers. Sarajevo was the city of interracial harmony, the city that
&gt; represented the dignity of the human race, the city where no one was
&gt; excluded.
&gt;  Sarajevo was the token of human solidarity. So why did the &#147;international
&gt; community&#148; do nothing to help? At the time, a number of people, who no one
&gt; (without running the risk of seeming ridiculous) could accuse of war
&gt; mongering, begged Europe, the USA, ONU, and NATO, to intervene.
&gt;  Why was not a single bomber sent to intervene then? Was it because, at the
&gt; time, Milosevic was considered to be a reasonable person? Why was Sarajevo
&gt; left to its fate?
&gt;  There are those who oppose humanitarian interference in the name of
&gt; national sovereignty. What a shit-ass expression national sovereignty is.
&gt; It is forever on the lips of people like Cosutta, the epitome of a
&gt; murderer&#146;s slimy sidekick, if ever there was one. Cossutta wasn&#146;t around in
&gt; 1921, but you can bet your bottom dollar that if he had been, he would have
&gt; been all for the Bolshevik extermination of the communards at Kronstadt. He
&gt; was around in 1956 and 1968 enthusiastically supporting the use of tanks to
&gt; quell the student uprisings in Moscow and the factory workers in Budapest
&gt; and Prague. He is currently breaking all records by paying lip service to
&gt; the assassin Milosevic while simultaneously supporting the murderers
&gt; taxiing down the runway at Aviano. It is his vote that sustains the
&gt; government which continues to give carte blanche to the bombers.
&gt;  A person such as Cossutta opposes the bombing in the name of national
&gt; sovereignty and yet this is like opposing lightning in the name of thunder
&gt; or opposing the effect in the name of the cause.
&gt;  At Sarajevo, the conflict between national sovereignty and human
&gt; solidarity was so clear that now there can be no doubt that the nation
&gt; takes over where humanity leaves off. Humanity cannot stand up straight
&gt; until it has thrown off the chains of nationalism, the bonds of membership.
&gt; Humanity did not manage to free itself from nationalism even after Hitler.
&gt; The rhetoric of the post second world war years is full of appeals to the
&gt; nation and the people and the results of this are what we are witnessing
&gt; today.
&gt;
&gt;  Why did they do this?
&gt;
&gt;  Why did Europeans and Americans let Karadzijc&#146;s fascists kill fifty
&gt; thousand people in Sarajevo without raising a finger, and yet now they
&gt; choose to intervene in the Kosovo? Why did NATO decide on such a demented
&gt; course of action as that undertaken on the 24th of March 1999?
&gt;  You do not need to be a military expert to realise that NATO politics in
&gt; the Kosovo are complete folly. To begin with, they chose to support the
&gt; Kosovo Liberation Army, an aggressive, nationalistic group linked to the
&gt; mafia of Berisha, thus isolating the followers of Ibrahim Rugova, a group
&gt; that has been struggling to avoid bloodshed for the last ten years. In the
&gt; end this decision catalysed an offensive whose inevitable (and predictable)
&gt; effects could never have been anything other than what we have seeing on
&gt; our TV screens. In a year the Serbian military machine massacred 2000
&gt; Kosovites, in a week it massacred ten times that number. NATO then launched
&gt; its own offensive and its first move was to strike down the very wretches
&gt; it was supposed to be protecting. The cover of the Economist from the first
&gt; week in April shows an ageing Kosovite crying desperately, and the
&gt; superimposed question he asks himself is: Victim of Serbia - or NATO?
&gt;  Why did they do this? Are the political and military leaders of Nato all
&gt; out and out sadists or idiots?
&gt;  Even if I wouldn&#146;t readily discount their idiocy, I think that the real
&gt; reason lies elsewhere.
&gt;
&gt;  Over the past year American foreign policy has undergone a substantial
&gt; change. From 1989 onwards, arms expenditure has been reduced drastically
&gt; and with the cold war at an end government finances moved from military to
&gt; civil research. The 90s however did not turn out to be the decade of peace
&gt; that the new liberal ideology had predicted. In 1993, in a book entitled
&gt; Out of control, (published in Italy by Longanesi) Zbignew Brezinski speaks
&gt; of a future, dominated by an escalation of regional conflict and planetary
&gt; civil war.
&gt;  The United States has turned out to be a complete failure at a global
&gt; level. Saddam Hussein emerged the victor of his war, the blueprint of a
&gt; host of other battles, and ten years after the bombing of Baghdad continues
&gt; to tyrannise and murder Curds, Shiites and various other dissidents. US
&gt; intervention in Somalia, another fiasco, finished in hasty retreat. The
&gt; allied Afghan forces financed by the USA to undermine the USSR have
&gt; established one of the most horrendously inhumane regimes imaginable. The
&gt; mentally unstable son of Kim il Sung continues to launch missiles and build
&gt; up his stock of atomic armaments while in the last five years as many as
&gt; three million North Koreans have died of hunger, not perhaps quite the new
&gt; order the Americans had in mind.
&gt;  At this point, American foreign policy has had to make a choice: either to
&gt; adopt an isolationist policy, to retreat, leaving Eurasia to sink into the
&gt; slough of its increasingly powerful, age old conflicts, or to crank up the
&gt; American arms industry and increase the technological expertise of the
&gt; American military machine.
&gt;  The isolationist policy is rather weak: how could America possibly turn
&gt; its back on Middle Eastern and Central Asiatic oil resources and how could
&gt; America possibly forget that these archaic fundamentalist groups are all
&gt; equipped with nuclear weapons?
&gt;  In early 1999, President Clinton, who as a young man refused to fight in
&gt; the Vietnam war, announced that American military expenditure would return
&gt; to the same level as that under president Reagan. For those who delight in
&gt; the machinations of behind the scene politics, it is not difficult to
&gt; imagine the price that the American lobby demanded of Clinton in exchange
&gt; for resolving the despicable case set in motion by judge Kenneth Starr.
&gt;
&gt;  Europe, the land of bankers and corpses
&gt;
&gt;  So now it is the turn of Europe to take the stage. This new born financial
&gt; power begins to contemplate the possibility of a united army, an army that
&gt; could one day challenge the monopoly of the American military lobby on
&gt; global warfare.
&gt;  The American arms industry lobby cannot possibly allow this to happen. The
&gt; European risk must be dispensed with and this is where the Kosovo fits in.
&gt;  Pandemonium and chaos are unleashed in the name of humanitarianism. In
&gt; order to protect the Albanian population, a criminal force is sent to
&gt; exterminate and deport them. In the midst of this confusion, Europe is
&gt; forced to take the front line and those who govern behave like torpid
&gt; puppets, void of the slightest trace of dignity.
&gt;  A marginal aspect of the disaster that is taking place, is that the dazed
&gt; actors involved in this tragedy are those were twenty years old in 1968.
&gt; Now, they are nothing more than presumptuous cretins who have lost any
&gt; right to exist and yet refuse to step down from the stage they conquered
&gt; all those years ago in the name of utopia and justice. These ageing cynics
&gt; are willing to turn their hands to actions as vile as this to cling onto
&gt; the positions they have gained.
&gt;  The idealism of the 1968 revolt has sunk under the waves of hypocrisy and
&gt; egotism.
&gt;  The generation of &#146;68 is no more; it has been lost in the inhuman lust for
&gt; power, in its lies and in its violence.
&gt;
&gt;  If there is any logic at all behind the Easter war, it is this: the North
&gt; American industrial military machine has defused any threat that Europe may
&gt; have constituted in political and military terms. It has succeeded in
&gt; forcing Europe to take part in a suicidal war that can only end in
&gt; humiliation and defeat, a war in which the worst instincts of the European
&gt; nations will be rekindled.
&gt;  The war in the Kosovo is only part of a vast puzzle of interlocking
&gt; pieces. The antagonism between Turkey and Greece, the war between the Turks
&gt; and the Curds, the labyrinthine Caucasian conflict. The war between Iran
&gt; and Iraq, between Pashtun and Tajik in Afghanistan, between India and
&gt; Pakistan. The entire Eurasian continent is immersed in low profile wars
&gt; that regularly explode into unspeakable violence and continue to establish
&gt; the disturbing threat of the capacity for mass extermination.
&gt;  This is the powder keg into which the Kosovo, with a lighted match in its
&gt; hand, could easily blunder.
&gt;
&gt;  Europe is a stillborn ideal. It is now little more than a secondary
&gt; element tacked onto a NATO initiative and will never be able to act
&gt; independently. The link between the ancient world and the post modern has
&gt; been smashed.
&gt;  At the risk of repeating myself I feel it is important to underline this
&gt; point: Europe is the link that joins the continent of past identity, the
&gt; continent of the vile history of archaism and modernisation, to America,
&gt; the continent with no history, the continent that is free from archaic
&gt; fundamentalism, free to construct all the synthetic, fake fundamentalisms
&gt; it chooses.
&gt;  Europe is the link between history and technology, between the root and
&gt; the expedient.
&gt;  This is the link that has been broken.
&gt;
&gt;  A macabre screenplay
&gt;
&gt;  The screenplay to the 21st century has begun to unravel.
&gt;  Globalisation has nothing to do with the homologizing of human society. On
&gt; the contrary it institutes a profound and lasting duality in planetary
&gt; society.
&gt;  Five or ten per cent of the human race make up the virtual class, enclosed
&gt; in the info-economic system CAORBINT (interconnected orbiting capsules),
&gt; and somewhere way below, on planet Territory, planetary civil war becomes
&gt; the main driving force behind the material economy.
&gt;  The virtual class and civil war have no geographical boundaries, they are
&gt; not territorial functions: Bangalore plays no part in the virtual circuit,
&gt; whereas South Central Los Angeles is part of planet Civil War.
&gt;  Therefore, even if it is easy to foresee that Eurasia is the continent
&gt; where the collapse of archaic territorialism will remain predominant, in
&gt; America it is the virtual economy that will prevail. Either Europe can
&gt; function as the link and point of dynamic interchange between these two
&gt; worlds or be smashed and swept up by one or the other or both.
&gt;  The war in the Kosovo seems to favour the second hypothesis.
&gt;  As far as one can predict, the American isolationist hypothesis (the idea
&gt; of transferring the American continent to a separate, inaccessible planet)
&gt; is somewhat unrealistic: the proliferating threat of the bomb holds the
&gt; planet tight and united in an infernal embrace.
&gt;  In this screenplay, there is no role for us to play.
&gt;  We must desert from this inevitable war.
&gt;  We must desert from nationhood and state, from identity and from
membership.
&gt;  We must become life without duty and without justification.
&gt;  We must live as if the world did not exist.



http://www.syntac.net/lutherblissett
A New Guide To The Luther Blissett Project
last update: April 1999
the endless self-historification. the baffling creation mythologies. the
amazing media pranks. the incredible amount of press coverage. Dozens of
texts and several useful pics (including LB's face). You too are invited to
adopt the "Luther Blissett" multi-use name for communication guerrilla
actions, hacktivism, civil disobedience (electronic and not) and radical
mythopoesis.


'Well, I don't wanna remain underground. There is subculture and main
culture, and I don't wanna remain as one of the subculture at all. More and
more people who like subculture are coming close to me. They nestle close
to me saying "Mr. Blissett", and all of them are weird. I often think "You
must be sick. Take balanced nourishment, vitamins too, and become healthy,
then come to me." I don't like people intending to be underground.' (F. P.
Belletati, Naples, April 7th, 1999)


Re-thinking AIDS:
http://www.duesberg.com
http://www.virusmyth.com/aids/index.htm

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<nbr>20.0</nbr>
<subject>&lt;nettime&gt; Luther Blissett Update # 3</subject>
<from>Luther Blissett</from>
<to>nettime-l@desk.nl</to>
<date>Thu, 04 Mar 1999 00:06:05 +0100</date>
<content>
Luther Blissett Project, Italian Situation, Updates 
March 1999 - # 3
Repression and the "Musti Affair"


A few days ago, in the morning, one of my roommates answered the phone and
an unknown female voice said: &#145;There's a package for Mr. [my real surname],
nay, for Luther Blissett... It's on your floor's landing, at your
neighbor's door". I went out and ran into a smelly card-board box. I opened
it carefully and found a severed pig head. 
It's just one of the several threats we've gotten from someone who isn't
pleased with our "Children of Satan" campaign. Of course these people know
that I'm one of our collective Spiderman's Peter Parkers. Well, we've got
some plausible suspicions, those clowns will get the fucking thing up their
sorry asses before they can say "ehm...".  
This update is about our libel court case and other related events. Those
of you who are yet unaware of the case (which originated from our book
*Lasciate Che I Bimbi: "Pedofilia", un pretesto per la caccia alle streghe*
[Let The Children...: "Pedophilia" as a Pretext for a Witch Hunt], 1997)
can have a look at
&lt;http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Rampart/6812/ramp2.html&gt;.  This website
badly needs to be updated and revised, I&#146;ll do it myself ASAP. All the
same, it contains a fairly good account from the publication of the book to
Summer 98. 
Luckily, the book wasn't banned, there was no preventive seizure of the
copies.  The next hearing is scheduled for 11 November 1999. In the
meanwhile, Deputy District Attorney Lucia Musti filed an appeal against the
full acquittal of the Children of Satan, putting in a 250-pages-long,
groundless objection to the sentence. As always, her text didn't make
references to any evidence or reliable testimony. Moreover, she's looking
for some other nark to lie in court and slander the defendants. To make
things worse, a few copycat McMartin-like trials are going on in other
Italian towns...
The tangly events that have unfolded since the fateful day we decided to
write the book inspired a thicker and more scholarly essay entitled *Nemici
Dello Stato: Criminali, "Mostri" e Leggi Speciali nella Societ&#341; di
Controllo* [Enemies of the State: Criminals, "Monsters" and Special Laws in
the Society of Control], which will be available in Italian bookstores on
March 12th.
And now, the latest stunts and coups-de-theatre.

I.

&gt;From La Repubblica-Bologna, 15 January 1999, Thursday, p.V:

SATAN AND THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR COME ON THE SCENE
Dimitri-Musti Clash Becomes A Play - Black Mass Court Trial To Be Staged at
Teatro Polivalente Occupato

by Luigi Spezia

The "Dimitri affair" became a theatrical performance, as happened to the
"Sofri affair" staged by Dario Fo. Indeed, this performance focuses on the
magistrate that ordered the detention of the president of the Children of
Satan, thereby the title is "Il caso Musti" [The Musti Affair]. The
Bolognese Satan's judicial misadventure will be staged on January 30th at
TPO ("teatro polivalente occupato") in via Irnerio [a notorious squatted
building, t.n.], a place patronized by Luther Blissett, the collective
agent of alternative counter-information who assailed Deputy DA Musti's
inquiry on black masses. The magistrate refused to comment on the latest
"provocation".
*Il Caso Musti* is authored by Riccardo Paccosi, an actor and playwright
belonging to Amorevole Compagnia Pneumatica [...] It will be performed in
the context of a benefit show to raise funds for Luther Blissett's court
costs. As a matter of fact, Mrs. Musti brought a libel suit against
Blissett after the publication of the book *Lasciate che i bimbi*, which
bitterly criticized the Dimitri inquiry. 
*La Repubblica* contacted a spokesperson for Luther Blissett&#146;s "Permanent
Workshop on Censorship and Repression", which might also be described as
"the producer" of *Il Caso Musti*. He stated: 'Dimitri will get some money
too. He's completely pennyless since his release from prison. IACP [Council
Housing Institute, t.n.] is about to evict him. Although he was innocent,
he's got such a wrecked reputation that nobody is giving him any job'.    
On January 30th, the performance will be staged twice during a
Latin/tropical dancing party. TPO, that was squatted three years ago [...],
will turn into a sort of sauna, given that the temperature will rise up to
35 deg. C,  'in order to escape from this bleak Inquisition winter'.
Marco Dimitri gave some advice for the performance: 'Last Summer [...]
these guys asked for my authorization, which I was very glad to give them.
I didn't see the rehearsals nor did I read the script, but I provided them
with first-hand accounts of the case. I support this work because people
must be aware of how risky is the judiciary [...]'.
As to Luther Blissett, he declared that Marco Dimitri's judicial mishap 'is
theatrically appealing. The case is an Odissey, and the magistrate is an
interesting character as well'. Nobody asked the latter's authorization
though. It seems that Luther Blissett doesn't fear another suit by Mrs.
Musti [...]
Riccardo Paccosi is a young author. He took part to the "Luther Blissett
Situationautic Theater&#146;, now disbanded, which was devoted to street rioting
[...] He describes himself as 'an actor who tries to turn art into ethics
and then into politics'. [...] 'The play's targets are three: the Catholic
Church that backed the inquiry, the judiciary and the media'.


II.

from *Il Resto del Carlino* [Bologna right-wing daily paper], 24 January
1999: 


VIA IRNERIO THEATER TO BE EVACUATED
Illegal performances in spite of  safety irregularities - The DA Office
informs the City Hall - A Show on Prosecutor Musti? 

by Biagio Marsiglia

In the Local Magistrate's Court the rumor is official [bullshit! If it's a
rumor, then it cannot be official; if it's official, then it insn't a
rumor. T.n.]. The Teatro Polivalente Occupato in via Irnerio could be
evacuated by the police by the end of next week. This situation, which has
been tolerated for a long time (at least two years), suddenly became an
urgent question.
In fact, [...] after the news informed that next Saturday night the illegal
theater will host a show entitled *Il caso Musti* (i.e. Lucia Musti, the
magistrate who handled the investigations on the sect called "Children of
Satan"), the DA office sent an official report, directed to the City Hall's
Engineers' Office. Now TPO is an "affair" itself, and nobody can pretend
not to know what happens in there [...]


III.

[This is a press release issued by TPO and other squats, Leftist groups and
alternative media. The content is provokingly "liberal", in order to piss
off Musti and show her that those fucking Autonomists are far from being
juridically unprovided.]  


THE HIGH BOARD OF THE JUDICIARY MUST SUSPEND 
LUCIA MUSTI FROM HER OFFICE AND HER SALARY
Bologna, 25 January 1999

[...] [Lucia Musti's move] striked us as an attempt at interfering in the
hazardous negotiation between occupied clubs and the City Hall, to make the
latter lay an iron hand on the guilty of *crimen lesae majestatis*
[lese-majesty crime]. This is an extremely irresponsible behavior,
susceptible of provoking tension and make this problem even worse.
We are facing an intolerable, hideous preventive censorship of a cultural
manifestation whose content is yet unknown. By a groundless pretext
(safety), freedom of information and satire is injured, in obvious
contradiction with the 21st Article of the Constitution ("Everyone has a
right to freely express their thoughts by speech, writing and any other
means of propagation"). Should an entire community be forced to
(literally!) pay for the private grudges of a touchy magistrate?
Let's break through the enemy's lines, and take the field of knowledge that
- presumably - pertains to Musti. In this case, we find sufficient grounds
to charge her with 'abuse of official duties' and 'pursuit of private
interest in public function'. The substance of the offence invalidates the
reliability of both this magistrate and this District Attorney Office.
Musti is not new to infringements and violations: her behavior during the
inquiry on the Children of Satan striked us as contrary to virtually every
fundamental principle of the Constitution [...] and many articles of the
Declaration of Human Rights [...] 
Musti is not new to the intrusion of her personal opinions into his
investigations, either: a few weeks ago, she announced an inquiry on the
Animal Liberation Front and stated: 'I'm crazy for furs. I used my first
salary as a judge to buy myself a mink coat'. A magistrate who declares
his/her preconceptions towards the people subject to preliminary inquiry
acts in violation of the Code of Penal Procedure, whose art. 326 obliges
public prosecutors to 'ascertain any fact and circumstance that can
exculpate the person subject to preliminary inquiry'. 
All this considered, we urge the Disciplinary Section of the High Board of
the Judiciary to intervene and suspend Musti from her duties and her
salaries, in all cases granting food checks not exceeding the terms of law.
Alternatively, we ask for official censure and removal to another court. 

Coordinamento "2001 Odissea negli spazi"
(Teatro Polivalente Occupato, Luther Blissett Project, Link, Livello 57, il
Covo, Sottotetto, Grafton 9, Zero in condotta, Radio K Centrale,
Coordinamento gruppi teatrali, Bambini di Satana)



The sensation caused by our reaction forced the City Hall to officially
state that TPO wouldn't be evacuated. On 30 January, about 800 people
attended *Il caso Musti*.

 
Next updates:
#4 - Q

F.P. Belletati, Bologna, Italy
---
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<mail>
<nbr>21.0</nbr>
<subject>&lt;nettime&gt; The London Times on Q</subject>
<from>Luther Blissett</from>
<to>nettime-l@desk.nl</to>
<date>Wed, 10 Mar 1999 02:39:58 +0100</date>
<content>

The Times, 9th March 1999

The name of the footballer cited in literary mystery
FROM RICHARD OWEN IN ROME
A FORMER Watford and England footballer is at the centre of a literary
mystery in Italy involving the novelist Umberto Eco and a group of
anarchists. The group use the collective identity "Luther Blissett" to hide
their identity.
Blissett played - briefly -for AC Milan, but scored only five times in 30
games for the club in 1982, earning him the nickname "Luther Missit" and
giving rise to the gibe that Milan had bought "the wrong black Watford
player". (The "right" player would have been John Barnes.)
In March 1097 four young Italians accused of travelling on a train without
a ticket all answered "Luther Blissett" when asked for their names in
court. It emerged that the loosely organised group of self-styled
anarchists had been struck by Blissett in Italy.
In his latest incarnation, "Luther Blissett" has written Q, a 650-page
novel set in Renaissance times, with a mixture of real and imaginary
characters. It is full of historical and literary allusions in the manner
of Eco, author of The Name of the Rose. Described as "a saga of good and
evil", the novel is set against a background of espionage, the
Inquisition's ruthless struggle to root out heresy, Martin Luther and the
Reformation, holy wars and peasant uprisings.
"Q" is the code name of the
hero, a theological student who becomes the righthand man of Gian Pietro
Carafa, the Neapolitan aristocrat who became the fanatical and
narrow-minded Pope Paul IV (l555-59), clashing with Elizabeth I and
introducing the Index of Forbidden Books.
According to La Repubblica, Q was written by Federico Guglielmi, Luca Di
Meo, Giovanni Catabriga and Fabrizio Belletati. They refuse to give
biographical details, beyond saying they are all between 26 and 35 and are
all from Bologna. II Messaggero said the hook is a "masterful fresco
depicting the struggle of the individual to escape from his preordained
destiny... a metaphor for the united Europe of to-day".
        The authors said they had chosen the 16th century because it "saw
the birth of all that is rotten in modern life: Europe, mass
communications, the police state, financial capital. It took six months to
research the history, another six months to work out the plot, and two
years to write it," they said, speaking "collectively".
        Collective writing was "like a jazz band - some are virtuoso bits,
other parts we play together. Or a video game in which 20 people are
credited as authors. We hope Q will be posted on the Internet. A novel
nowadays is like interactive software . . . this is the future of creative
writing".
        The anarchists said they would end their attempts to cause panic in
the sanctuaries of power" in 2000, "because as Cary Grant said, it's
better to go a minute early, leaving people wanting more. rather than a
minute too late, when people are getting bored".
        The publishers said they were waiving copyright on the hook, in the
spirit of  "Luther Blissett". "Anyone can reprint it." Eco, meanwhile, has
denied that the hook is an elaborate "joke within a joke", and that he is
"Luther Blissett".
        The anarchists - their hoaxes include Naomi Campbell's alleged
cellulite problem and an exhibition of "chimpanzee art" - say "anyone can
use the name to show their anger".
        They chose Blissett because he was "a nice Afro-Caribbean guy who
had problems with the Italian way of playing football and became a target
of racist jokes. The Luther Blissett project is a way of taking revenge on
stupidity."
        Blissett, back on the staff at Watford, said yesterday: "I am not
pleased, but what can you do about it?"


Well, this is grossly superficial and reports things we never said, but...
it's the press, baby!


Next updates:
# 4. The four names - Blissett's most subtle hoax exposed and praised by
comrade General Vo Nguyen Giap 

F.P. Belletati, Bologna, Italy
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<mail>
<nbr>22.0</nbr>
<subject>&lt;nettime&gt; Luther Blissett Update #4-a</subject>
<from>Luther Blissett</from>
<to>nettime-l@desk.nl</to>
<date>Thu, 11 Mar 1999 02:08:50 +0100</date>
<content>
Luther Blissett Project, Italian Situation, Updates 
March 1999 - #4-a
Q's  Deflagration


The piece on Luther Blissett written by the Italian correspondent of The
London Times (see my previous message) is one of the most ridiculous
accounts of the LBP since its birth. It would be impossible to handle and
de-construct all the absurd contradictions and non-sensical assumptions
contained in the article.  That tall story about tickets and trains is a
ball of bullshit which has bounced from a British rag off to another for
more than two years. In 1995 a bunch of Roman Luther Blissetts, during a
broadcast of their psychogeographical radio show, occupied and hi-jacked a
night bus. The police attacked the vehicle and the "psychogeographical
rave party" flowed into a street riot, with cops shooting skywards and
eighteen "hijackers" brought to the nearest police station. Given the
slowness of our judiciary, the court trial is still dragging on. This has
clearly nothing to do with Richard Owen's account. Even the description of
LB as an 'anarchist' and the false statement about 'showing one's anger'
is 100% copycat crap, already featured on The Daily Express and other
toilet paper. None of the four "authors" who "revealed" their "real" names
is an Anarchist.  Moreover, *Q* has no similitarities with *The Name of
the Rose*: no monastries, no Agatha Christie-like mysteries. Q's plot
stretches for nearly 40 years (not just a week!) and unfolds in the open
air. The 16th Century doesn't resemble the early Middle Ages in the
slightest and, what is more, the political content of the two books is
extremely different.  It must also be said that Umberto Eco is growing
foolish and reactionary: last week he praised the New York City Police
Department from his weekly column on *L'Espresso*. The London Times also
"forgot" to mention that rumors about Eco being the 'big brain' behind
Luther Blissett are part of a Nazi conspiracy theory. I also remind you
that the London Times bought those forged Hitler diaries in 1983... :-)
Here is the Repubblica interview, which was badly translated, heavily
re-written and dishonestly cut-and-pasted by Mr. Owen. It is preceded by
an official disavowal of the Repubblica piece, and followed by excerpts
from *Il Messaggero*. In the next update (#4b) comrade Vo Nguyen Giap will
comment upon our latest move. Keeping you up-to-date on the twists and
turns related to a novel that you can't read (at least for the time being)
may seem bizarre and redundant. However, I believe that the latest
controversies may cast new light on the Luther Blissett multi-use name and
the ways one can adopt it in order to perforate the media and inoculate
radical content.  As always, I exhort people to adopt the name for
activism and electronic civil disobedience. 


1.
REQUEST OF DISAVOWAL

In compliance with article 8 of Act n.47/1948 (law on the press),
governing the right of rectification, we demand that you publish what
follows: The headline, subheads and captions of the interview with us
"authors" of *Q* ('Luther Blissett is Us', La Repubblica, 6 March 1999, p.
6) have no correspondence whatsoever with the content of our statements,
nor with the tone of Loredana Lipperini's introduction. We never uttered
the headlined words (although they were dishonestly put in quotation
marks), nor have we claimed to be the authors of any 'computer hoax'. We
do not intend to incur all the police and DA investigations on presumed
offences committed by Blissett's name in several Italian towns. We will
not do it, because we are NOT 'the four people who hide themselves behind
Luther Blissett'.  'Luther Blissett' is a multi-use name that can be
adopted by anyone and is used every day and every night in the rest of
Europe and the world. As regards Bologna, dozens of people are involved in
the Project. In fact, the statement that kicked off the interview goes:
'We are less than the 0.04% of the Luther Blissett Project'. 
 
In witness thereof,

Fabrizio P. Belletati - Luca Di Meo - Federico Guglielmi - Giovanni Cattabriga


2.
[La Repubblica, details above]

'LUTHER BLISSETT IS US' By means of an uncommon novel, four people claim
to be the authors of past computer hoaxes and unveil their identity for
the first time

by Loredana Lipperini


ROME. What happened to minimalism? Where have all those indoor short
stories gone? This is quite another story: enter *Q*, a novel people were
craving for because it would be the debut in fiction of subversive Luther
Blissett (a pseudonym behind which several authors played computer pranks
in the past few years) and proved to be a real literary coup, a very solid
book that goes beyond any scandal or sensation. An extraordinary
643-pages-long adventure set in the early 16th Century, made of faith,
revolution, conspiracies and massacres. We read about Saxony and armoured
horsemen, Anabaptist utopians storming Westphalia, pontifical Rome
swarming with spies weaving the bloodiest plots and, what is more, two
foes chasing each other. They are a nameless theological student and Q.,
the "eye" of Gian Pietro Carafa, the Great Inquisitor who will become Pope
Paul IV. The novel is published by Stile Libero Einaudi [...] It is
cultured, charming and sharply written despite its complexity, and was
appreciated by more than one prestigious reader who enjoyed it before the
publication and spread the predictable rumors: the "real" author was
assumed to be some heretic clergyman and/or (obviously) Umberto Eco.
Things are not what they seem. The authors are four and have been involved
in the "Luther Blissett Project" since its beginnings. They accepted to
tell us their names, because they do not throw any weight about them.
Society news: they are Federico Guglielmi, Luca Di Meo, Giovanni
Cattabriga and Fabrizio P. Belletati. They are between 26 and 35 and live
in Bologna: some of them work in social welfare assistance or in the
publishing industry, one works as a bouncer in night clubs. End of the
biography.  'Our names' they state in a strictly collective interview,
'have little importance. Our biographies are even less relevant. We are
the team that actually wrote *Q*, and yet we are less than the 0.04% of
the Luther Blissett Project'.  Why did you accept to come out then? 'Not
in order to spectacularize ourselves and become young fashionable hacks or
talk show guests, which would be a very dishonourable end. If that ever
happens we hope that other Blissetts will finish us off like wounded
horses. This move is aimed at showing that we are a collective entity, not
a single "Author". Behind Luther Blissett (and behind *Q* as well) there
is no boss, no mysterious scholar, nor have we been the only Blissetts who
contributed. It is network the future of creative writing'. Yes, but you
started from the past. Why did you choose to write a historical novel set
in the 16th Century?  'Q is a novel that encompasses several genres: it is
a crime novel, a spy story, an adventure novel and, finally, a historical
novel. We engaged in a back-breaking narrative, crammed with intertwining
sub-texts and sub-plots. This is what we like, what literature should be
about: telling stories, making mythologies. We're fed up with with
magnified short stories based upon one concept (at best!), which are
nothing more than style exercise, pseudo-autobiographical and
"generational" booklets. The minimalist wave is going to end, nay it
*must* end. Indeed, it's already over, and long-forgotten. As to the 16th
Century, we chose it because it gave birth to Modernity and everything
that is rotting today: Europe, mass communications, police apparatuses,
financial capital and the State. And what's more, as the book-seller
Pietro Perna says in the novel: "Whores, business, forbidden books and
papal conspiracies. Is there anything else that makes life worth living?"'
What was the initial hint? 'There were more than one. At the end of 1995
we were inspired by reading the papal encyclical *Ut Unum Sint* [That all
may be one], Raoul Vaneigem's study on the movement of the Free Spirit and
James Ellroy's *American Tabloid*. We might describe *Q* as a synthesis of
all these things. It took six months to research the history, another six
months to work out the plot, and two years to write it. How was collective
writing? 'It's like playing in a jazz combo: good understanding,
collective arrangement and individual solos. Another possible example is
the production of a videogame: you bump into at least 20 names credites as
authors. Is there any difference between a novel and interactive software?
Besides, Blissett has been saying for years that creative writing is an
utterly collective operation: concepts can't be anyone's property, the
genius doesn't exist, there's just a Great Ricombination'.  The book has a
yet unpublished clause: it may be totally or partially re-used and
re-printed, except by other publishing houses... 'Yeah. For the first time
in the history of the publishing industry we forced a major to accept an
anti-copyright formula. It's an important precedent, and we're extremely
pleased with it'. Besides, *Q* is also the *summa theologica* of the
"Luther Blissett Project, certainly not because the word 'Luther' appears
on the walls at page 69 (in this case, it is Martin Luther), but because
one can find all your concepts: multiple identities (the protagonist's
numberless names, ways of infiltrating the establishment... What more?
'We'd rather people find the references themselves, however, one thing
must be said: *Q* pays homage to all those "second leads" that make
history, the lively and anonymous multitude sustaining the weight of human
vicissitudes. Some time ago this multitude was named "Luther Blissett".
Anyhow, baptism is optional'. By the way: Italy's "Luther Blissett
Project" will end by 2000. Why? 'As our cherished Cary Grant said, it's
better to go a minute early, leaving people wanting more, rather than a
minute too late, when people are getting bored'. 

3.  &gt;From *Il Messaggero*, 6 March 1999, p.20, section "Cultura &amp;
spettacoli": 


LUTHER BLISSETT: THE 16th CENTURY LOOKS LIKE 2000

A thriller, a document. The first novel published in Italy by the
mysterious author of several computer hoaxes. Luther and the Anabaptists,
Gutenberg's revolution and the Inquisition. A historical fresco. A saga of
the Powers-that-be, which is having its first effect: the pursuit of the
author. 

by Fiorella Iannucci

It caused sensation even before entering bookstores. Not bad for Luther
Blissett, the Master of Deception, the Big Sapper, the impregnable pirate
that baptizes his initiates by his own name, assuring that their opinions
and actions will get much publicity and remain anonymous [...] Here is
*Q*... whose only synthetic thing is the title, which is followed by 651
pages filled with historical events, dates, crimes, protagonists and
second leads, walk-ons and completely fictional characters. It all belongs
to that feverish, terrible period which shattered 16th Century Europe.
Holy wars and heresies, Gutenberg's revolution and Luther's Reform, the
Anabaptist cult and proto-Communist beliefs, the Peasants' War upon the
steel-covered mercenaries paid by princes and bishops. It was both the big
prologue of Modernity and its undetachable shadow. [...] A thriller. A
document. A novel, as well as a metaphor of the present. Charles V's
boundless empire (funded by the German bank, swarming with a thousand
irredentisms) sounds like today's Europe. The Jubilee's road-yards were
the same as today's, and many people (Martin Luther first among equals)
were indignant with the sale of indulgences to buy Heaven. They still are.
As to Gutenberg's revolution (concepts printed on books, classes and
hierarchies overcome by new knowledge) sounds like the computer
revolution, sweeping hierarchies away on a planetary scale, thanks to the
Net. These are just a few cues, useful for a multi-levelled reading of
*Q*. This book is a stone thrown into the system's pond [...]

Next updates:
#4-b  -  The four names: Blissett's most subtle hoax exposed and praised by
comrade General Vo Nguyen Giap

F.P. Belletati, Bologna, Italy

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<nbr>23.0</nbr>
<subject>&lt;nettime&gt; Luther Blissett to be rehabilitated</subject>
<from>Luther Blissett</from>
<to>nettime-l@desk.nl</to>
<date>Sun, 14 Mar 1999 23:32:57 +0100</date>
<content>
An Open Letter To Mr. Luther Blissett,
(first-team assistant-coach at Watford FC, England) 

Dear Watford FC webmasters, 'zine editors and supporters,

I am one of the numberless people who adopted "Luther Blissett" as a
multi-use name for radical actions and theory, multimedia works, anti-art
performances and open political contexts in Italy and other countries of
continental Europe.  Since the mid-Nineties, the British press gave
extremely distorted accounts of our activities, describing us as
'Anarchists' (which we aren't) and manipulating our statements. The
British press made us look like moronic students, while we're people who
work bloody hard and managed to be praised/feared by the cultural
institutions of our country.  Maybe this distortion is the reason why Mr.
Blissett sounds very pissed-off in his latest declarations (see The Times,
8/3/1999, p.3). He (and you) may not share our political and aesthetic
views, however we'd like to set the records straight once and for all:  It
was never our intention to sneer at Mr. Blissett's unlucky season in
Italy. We always thought that the press and the supporters treated him
unfairly since the beginnings: in the early Eighties it took a plenty of
time for a British player to understand the Italian way of playing
football, which was boringly defensive. He was never allowed to get used
to Italy. Moreover, the club was a dreadful rabble of weirdos, and the
owner Giuseppe Farina was a crook and an alleged arms dealer, who went
bankrupt a few years later.  We hope that someone will pass this letter on
to Luther, and post it on the Watford Mailing List. We'd like to get a
surface mail address for Luther, so that we can send him our books,
publications and a lot of press cuttings covering both us and him.  The
following piece is a colourful article published on today's *Tuttosport*
(one of the three sports&#146; daily papers), where both one Luther Blissett
and the journalist argued that it's time to re-establish Mr. Blissett&#146;s
good name.  Thank you very much,

Fabrizio P. Belletati a.k.a. Luther Blissett




Tuttosport, March 14th, 1999, Sunday:

BLISSETT, FROM RABBIT TO BEST-SELLING WRITER
by Gianluca Scaduto

Do you remember the English at Milan AC? They were so unlucky that they
preceded the Dutch trio [Gullit-Van Basten-Rijkaard, t.n.]. Hateley
retired from football two years ago. Wilkins is about to strike the big
one: he entered the staff at Chelsea and there is a rumour that he's going
to replace Rix (Vialli's vice, who got mixed up in a court trial under
charges of abuse and paedophilia) when the latter is fired. As to Luther
Blissett, he was one of the most unpopular foreign players in the history
of Italian football. Since those years, however, we've seen much worse
players, perhaps it is time to rehabilitate Blissett's Italian season
(1983-84, 30 matches, 4 goals). [Actually 5 goals T.n.] In fact,
somebody's trying to re-establish Blissett's good name. After only a few
days since its publication, *Q* already needs to be reprinted. *Q* is an
adventure set in the 16th Century, a 643-pages long ponderous novel,
authored by people who had the nerve to recall the Church's skeletons in
the closet, a few months before the 2000 Jubilee. The author is Blissett,
indeed, the real Blissett has nothing to do with this: he's back at
Watford FC, his former team, and works as a first-team deputy coach.
However, his name was adopted by dozens of people all over Italy and
Europe, to create the most various situations. Some Luther Blissetts are
the bogeymen of journalism: they invent fake news and journalists usually
buy them. Their best strike was the story of Henry Kapper [actually "Harry
Kipper", t.n.], a "multimedia guru" who was travelling around Europe on a
push-bike, his route virtually spelling the word "art" on the map. He
allegedly disappeared in Trieste, soon before diving into Bosnya. Daily
papers and press-agencies gave the alarm, "Chi l'ha visto?" ['Has Anybody
Seen Him?', a missing persons' prime-time TV show, t.n.] covered the case.
Two hours before the broadcast Luther exposed the hoax: the guru didn&#146;t
exist. This demonstrated that so-called "sources" may be utter bullshit.
However, Blissett's name is also used for political activism and
three-sided football games played on hexagonal pitches ("good old
Trapattoni" games: the winner must concede less instead of scoring more
goals). Strange blokes, aren't they? And now they've got a face, nay, four
faces. *Q* is not a common book, it is a masterpiece, and some people
believed that Umberto Eco was the real author behind the collective name
(which anyone is free to adopt). Thus the four authors came out (though
they took to the bush again, and swear they'd never be guests at Maurizio
Costanzo Show). The book may even make history: there's no precedent for a
novel written by four persons, with an anti-copyright clause. No, they
don't believe in 'the romantic concept of genius. Ideas aren't anyone's
property', as stated by one of them. Anyhow, why did they choose
Blissett's name to sign their works? 'A footballer's name would be an
excellent Trojan horse for our actions. We chose Blissett because we
wanted to rehabilitate him. He wasn't that bad: the year before coming to
Italy he&#146;d been top goal-scorer in the English league. It was the team
that sucked: in fact, president Farina went bankrupt not much time later.
Moreover, we appreciated Blissett's Jamaican roots:  racists on the
terraces used to welcome him by crying like monkeys'. And what is Luther
Blissett's opinion? 'A few days ago The Times wrote about *Q* and asked
him: are you glad you've become a literary mystery? He answered: "I'm not
pleased, but what can you do?"&#146;

Next updates:
#4-b  -  The four names: Blissett's most subtle hoax exposed and praised by
comrade General Vo Nguyen Giap

F.P. Belletati, Bologna, Italy

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<nbr>24.0</nbr>
<subject>&lt;nettime&gt; Kosovo, Iron Lungs And Hard Cocks</subject>
<from>Luther Blissett</from>
<to>nettime-l@desk.nl</to>
<date>Wed, 31 Mar 1999 02:35:22 +0200</date>
<content>
[All the Luther Blissetts involved in the *Q* operation decided to turn
every evening of  their much-hyped promotional tour into an anti-war
agit-prop performance. This text is based upon the stand-up act I'm doing
these days, with striking responses from the audience (standing ovations,
etc.) ]


KOSOVO, IRON LUNGS AND HARD COCKS


Although you're here because I'm a novelist, I'm not going to talk about my
book. It would be *immoral* not to talk about this war, as military
aircraft takes off from the Adriatic coast, just a few miles away from this
bookstore. 

As a matter of fact, *Q* is a Trojan horse manifactured by radical
opponents to the present-day world order; its makers at the Luther Blissett
Project managed to intrude themselves into Troy, that is mainstream pop
culture, and now they're "hi-jacking" every conference, public reading and
debate, taking every opportunity to speak out against bloodbath disguised
as "Humanitarianism". 
Now that Luther Blissett reached no.2 in the national Hit Parade of books,
s/he's got the duty to be uncompromising. You'd rather listen to some
complaisant hack? Fuck off and die, then.  

What do you think our novel is about? In the 16th century the Great Powers
of Europe were head over heels in debt, and had to stir up religious
conflicts for strategical reasons. When these conflicts became gangrenous,
new international alliances were stipulated to "enforce peace", liquidate
God's enemies and establish a New European Order (1555, the Augsburg
Treaty, "cuius regio, eius religio"). There were "multinational
contingents" of Lansquenets, columns of refugees escaping from villages on
fire, "limited national sovereignties" etc. 

Is there something vaguely familiar? Ever get the feeling you're being
cheated?
Doesn't the Fuggers' Bank resemble the International Monetary Fund, the
World Bank and the likes? Doesn't Charles V's turbulent empire resemble
today's Europe? Aren't today's "international police operations" carnages
perpetrated by high-tech lansquenets in the name of God, Peace, Democracy
or whatever can gild the poison pill? 
Historical novels, unless they're *Ramses*-like crap, are always political
statements, and *Q* is our statement against "humanitarian" war propaganda,
as well as - on another level of intepretation - against censorship, the
new Inquisition and the ongoing Catholic "Reconquista" .
 
One is never delirious about mothers and fathers: one is delirious about
nations, borders, ethnic groups, races, classes... In recent years we have
been delirious about Europe - all of us: myself, the Pope, Milosevic, Emma
Bonino, Marc Dutroux...  
Europe doesn't exist, nor do we need to feel sorry about it. Identity is
only and always something we've lost (or rather, something we never had),
and the more we talk about Europe, "Europeanism", European Culture etc.,
the more these spectres fade away in the distance. United Europe is one of
the tallest lies ever: Bundesbank, IMF, *Pens&#233;e Unique*, Enfopol, American
bases everywhere... And yet it's no good to be "anti-American", just as it
is useless to be "anti-European". There's no tactical choice but hiding
ourselves *within* Europe in order to escape and make fun of kapos:
'Very few prisoners made up their mind about escaping from Dora, and those
who tried were tracked down by the dogs and hung on their return to the
camp... So the Russians adopted another tactic: one day they hid inside the
camp, for example under a Block... The nazis sought for them outside, and
obviously didn't find them... After a week  they gave up searching. That's
when the Russians escaped for real. They had good chances of making it,
since nobody was seeking them anymore.' 

The problem is not "America", "Europe" or "limited national sovereignties"
etc. The problem is capital, its *unlimited* sovereignty. People talk about
nationalisms and ethnic policies, but those are just epiphenomena: the
telluric shock that causes subsidence and landslides is still the clash
between classes, division of labor on a planetary scale... And yet
epiphenomena have devastating consequences...

The NATO bombings prove that Europe doesn't exist. Just fancy Italy! This
government is of little worth, a coalition of weaklings and pygmies.
They're so used to talk about UDR being the tongue of the parliamentary
compass, or the Senate's "mixed group" being over-crowded, that they hardly
imagine there's a whole world outside the iron lung of grotesque
provincialism that both emprisons them and keeps them alive (or rather,
undead). It is stomach-turning enough to witness a bunch of freaks such as
the PdCI [Partito dei Comunisti Italiani] becoming the coalition's
"critical conscience", being content with the fact that "our" aircraft is
not dropping bombs, while the whole country is reduced to a colossal
flattop, and Italy is on the front row of this war. 

NATO bombings considerably worsened the situation in Kosovo, interrupted
food re-stockings and induced a large portion of Yugoslavian public opinion
to side with Milosevic, turning the latter scumbag into a bold, daring
patriot. Either Wesley Clark and his chums are a bunch of morons, or
there's a hidden agenda common to both parties.

Does Kosovo really exist? Come on, let's be serious, who ever gave a flying
fuck about Kosovo at NATO headquarters? I'm not the first to say that this
pretext is absolutely unbelievable, and I'll change my mind when I witness
NATO aircraft bombing Morocco in support of the Saharawi. 
It took years before people doubted the incident in the Tongking Gulf which
provided the pretext for the Vietnam war. Progress exists after all: nobody
really buys the bullshit about Rambouillet, not even those who vigorously
state the contrary. 
As to the KLA, we were repeatedly told that it comprised about 30,000
guerrillas, and yet Serbian comb-outs in Kosovo are encountering no armed
opposition. Where are those 30,000 heroes? Why aren't they fighting back as
they're backed up by NATO air strikes? Does the KLA really exist or is it
an invention of US propaganda?

It might have been any other pretext, the aim is making "Europe" feel the
presence of the *carabineros*, confirming that no antagonism will be
tolerated on this soil. What is more, such a masculine strength test was
necessary in order to supercede the Alliance's identity crisis, harden its
character armor, prove that the balls (albeit rarely used) are still at
their place, and no Milosevic may take the liberty of busting them.

However, as stated above, identity is something we've lost (just like
rights: one starts to claim them once their violation has become
everybody's recurrent behavior). NATO is a 50-year-old big man that never
screwed but doesn't want to die a virgin, thus he assaulted and raped the
first walk-up fuck he bumped into: Yugoslavia.   
A common idiom among "straight chauvinist males" goes: 'It takes an iron
stomach and a steel toe-capped cock to screw a tart like that!'. As a
matter of fact, NATO's cock *is* made of steel and the Serbian regime is
far from looking good. As to the iron stomach, unfortunately *we* are the
ones who need it, since the media are stuffing us with pseudo-humanitarian
shit. In such cases, *ius resistantiae*  [the right to resistance]
encompasses retching and throwing up.

If there's no common hidden agenda, then Wesley Clark is an idiot. Where
the fuck is the "art of war"? If Sun Tsu were alive, he'd beat NATO field
officers with a stick. After less than a week of war, they no longer know
what to do, we hear them arguing that black is white and white black,
rambling about "phase B" and air-landing operations... A bunch of lunatics
playing Risiko in the asylum's toy library. 

And Bill Clinton? Posterity will remember him as a blow-job freak (which I
am myself) and an exceptional instigator of Anti-Americanism. Each of his
"humanitarian" operations increases hate. As Malcolm X would put it, the
chickens of violence will return to Whitey's poultry pen: the US chose to
play the "tough cop", but no-one's playing the "good cop". When some cops
come to a very bad end,  the Pentagon will resort to Nazi arithmetic ("One
GI killed, ten civilians bombed"). Any sociopath with access to an arsenal
will then stand as a hero of resistance, as Saddam, Milosevic and Osama Bin
Laden are already doing. A shitstorm is to come, unless we ignite
opposition here in the West.

Yes, Milosevic's regime is authoritarian, repressive, liberticide and,
maybe, guilty of genocidal intentions, but... Does any of you remember what
happened in Timisoara back in 1989? A fake carnage staged by coupists and
former Securitate agents. Corpses were stolen from the morgue, mutilated
and piled up in the street. And the snuff movies presumably shot by Serbian
troopers in 1991-92? Nobody saw them, then the rumor slowly faded out. And
that Swiss tourist who spent his thrilling holidays as a sniper on the
Sarayevo hills? Did any of you meet him?
I think we should think twice before buying the urban legends spread by the
CIA's Shit Department. 

Each time a nation, an army and/or a head of state are charged with "crimes
against humanity" or whatever, check the ID of those who are "representing"
wo/mankind: you'll probably find out that they're as rotten as the ones
they're accusing. For instance, as regards Italy, the most enthusiastic
advocates of this war are the Radical Party, Emma Bonino and the likes... I
hope you remember that they also supported the Israeli massacres at Sabra
and Chatila, as well as any other pogrom and butchery perpetrated by
Israelis within and beyond their borders. Compared to their pal Begin,
Milosevic is a merry prankster.

The US aircraft dropped on Vietnam thousands of dolls stuffed with
explosive. The timing was perfect: they usually blew up while children were
playing with them. Numberless splinters ran into the children's bodies,
crippling forever those who didn't die there and then. The splinters were
made of a plastic material, invisible to X-rays, impossible to remove
surgically.  
And Napalm? What a brilliant invention, a combustible that keeps burning
you alive underwater. 
Other masterpieces were tested in Panama (1989) and Irak (1991) - to the
extent that a number of Gulf veterans are dying of cancer due to contact
with chemical weapons. 

Aren't these "crimes agains humanity"? You bet your ass they are, and yet
we never saw Norman Schwarzkopf on the dock, 'cause he was one of the good
guys, *he* put people on the dock. 
We must refuse this "Cardassian" administration of justice (see *Star Trek:
Deep Space Nine*), that sentences defendants as guilty *before* the trial. 
We must be suspicious of those who put the fingers on the world's public
enemies, and always resist, sabotage and ridicule these international
police operations. 
Thank you very much for your attention.


Luther Blissett, Faenza, 29 March 1999

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<subject>&lt;nettime&gt; Luther Blissett Update #2</subject>
<from>Luther Blissett</from>
<to>nettime-l@desk.nl</to>
<date>Mon, 22 Feb 1999 22:14:40 +0100</date>
<content>
Luther Blissett Project, Italian Situation, Updates 
Late February 1999 - # 2
No-Art 



&gt;From La Repubblica on line (&lt;http://www.repubblica.it&gt;, the digital edition
of the national daily paper, as well as the most visited Italian website) 
3 February 1999, Wednesday:

WHAT IF CANNATA THE "MADMAN" WERE MORE "ARTISTIC" THAN POLLOCK?
A provocative letter: Must "mainstream" art be inviolable? And who decides
what is genius?
By  LUTHER BLISSETT
 ---------------------------------------------------------------
[begin staff preface]
ROME - Of course it is a provocation, but it is also more than that. The
letter which Luther Blissett - the collective identity that has accustomed
us to many coups (verbal and not) in the recent years - sent to
repubblica.it struck us and roused our curiosity. It expresses a feeling
that many people certainly got a week ago, when the vandalistic smearing of
a Jackson Pollock work hit the news. It was not a rational thing; rather, a
joke people uttered, or just thought, by instinct: "Which one is the
smear?". A superficial question that was restrained by cultural awareness
and indignation for this assault on contemporary art and its dignity. In
his/her letter, Luther Blissett turns the joke into a lucid provocation.
One may agree or not, but it would not be just to throw this text away. Our
correspondent and art expert Paolo Vagheggi replies to Luther Blissett at
the linked page.
[end]

 
On 26 January 1999, Piero Cannata operated on Pollock's painting "Undulated
Paths", exhibited at Rome's National Gallery of Modern Art. I challenge
anyone of the journalists that covered Cannata's action to tell the smear
from any of the other scribblings. Cannata's intervention is the best
tribute ever to the artist. The only difference between the American
Abstract Expressionist and the Italian performance artist is that the
former used to express his madness within an "artistic context", and
consequently found the theoretical and financial support of critics and
art-gallery managers. Most likely, without such a support, Pollock would
have entered a lunatic asylum, nurses sneering at his "works" on the walls.
Jackson Pollock didn't paint: he dripped, smeared and soiled. On his
canvases one can find saliva, cigarette stumps, matches, anything. One day
Pollock urinated into Peggy Guggenheim's hearth. Yeah, he pissed in it,
before the eyes of several onlookers. He was probably drunk. This
immediately became one of the best known "performances" of the great
genius, whose life was punctuated by such acts. That fireplace is still in
one of the rooms with a view on the Canal. If Piero Cannata or any other
anonymous visitor of the present "Peggy Guggenheim Collection" pissed into
the same hearth, what would the keepers do?
Of course they wouldn't deem the guy as a genius, at best he'd be
denounced. However, are you sure that Pollock's performances are more
important than Cannata's? Are you really sure that Pollock wouldn't like
such a "betterment"? 
Why should an art work hang on a wall with people only allowed to look at
it, since it is obvious that eyesight is just one of the senses roused by
whatever work? One should be allowed to touch and smell. This would quickly
wear out the paintings? So what? What do you need a sacred and infinitely
inviolable object for? Don't you know that museums keep Calder's sculptures
in narrow rooms, though they were created for being exhibited in the open
air and shaken by the wind? Don't you know that museums bar the way to
Beuys' and Tinguely's works, though they were projected for interaction
with the public? *This* is violation.
If the most important thing is the artist's intention, than Pollock's
painting was not destined to a reliquiary, and Cannata's intervention is
licit and particularly well-aimed. But museums and galleries are driven by
other factors, such as money. This is commonplace, then why keep schmoozing
about art being sacral and untouchable? Talk about commercial value. If the
word "artist" has ever had any meaning, then Piero Cannata is the real
artist. Unlike Pollock, Cannata never compromised himself with the art
establishment, never strived for the critics' and gallery managers'
appreciation. He couldn't care less, he's got better things to do. Mind
you, this is not the first case: people like Van Gogh were never understood
at their time, only to be re-estimated after several years. It&#146;s funny to
recall the blindness of Van Gogh's coeval critics. Oh, they were so obtuse!
Oh, those were such obscurantist times! Nowadays it's different, art is
free of prejudices... Isn't it?  
Tomorrow Piero Cannata will go back to the madhouse that hosted him during
the past two years, and it's gonna take decades before he's acknowledged as
a well-deserving performer. Not only Piero Cannata will get entries in art
history books: he'll get them as one of the most radical and innovative
artists of the Nineties. This is one of the tasks we leave to our posterity. 
(2 February 1999)
--------

DEAR LUTHER, ART IS A SERIOUS THING
A Reply to the "pseudo-Futurist" provocation: Pollock was a self-conscious
artist, values cannot be annihilated

by PAOLO VAGHEGGI

Maybe that of the pseudo-Luther Blissett is nothing other than a nice
pseudo-Futurist provocation. None of us has forgotten Filippo Tommaso
Marinetti's 'incendiary violence': 'We want to destroy museums, libraries
and whatever kind of academies', we want to set Italy free from 'its fetid
gangrene of professors, archaelogists, cicerones and antiquarians'.
Therefore, long live Piero Cannata, let's promote him to the rank of
artist. Long live the David hammer-freak and Pollock smearer. But what if
this, instead of being a pseudo-Futurist provocation, were just the opinion
and belief of an ignorant (ignorant being for 'he who ignores')? In this
case, we should tell them the difference between a rash gesture caused by
madness and a conscious, advised, pondered and researched artistic deed. We
should tell them that Jackson Pollock, no matter what the nazis would have
thought of him, was not a dauber, nor was his art 'degenerate'. His strokes
were not felt-tip scribblings. His technique, "Dripping", was sharp and
pondered. As Dora Vallier explained, the canvas was placed on a level
surface, even on the floor; and a few holes drilled through the bottom of a
color box allowed the painter to work moving about and letting the color
drip on the canvas.
There was no fortuitous act, as explained by Pollock himself, who died in
1956 at the age of 44: [...what follows is a Pollock's quote which I won't
re-translate from Italian back into English. It's about the control of the
drops' trajectory, T.N....]
I could go on for so long telling stories about Pollock, who studied
philosophy and psychoanalisis (as well as native-American painting), who
was Picasso-wise and always lived between anxiety and the rapture of his
work. This rapture was provoked by his quest for a personal existential
style: he identified himself with his artworks, which gradually expanded
and absorbed all his energies.
As Palma Bucarelli noticed back in 1958, during the NGMA Pollock
Exhibition, 'thus, independently from any analogical reference, painting
itself can express the most profound movements of the soul; the more the
canvas reflects the "quantity" and the "length" of painting action, the
clearer is the expression of emotional intensity.' 
Jackson Pollock is not Pietro Cannata [sic]. Pietro Cannata is non Jackson
Pollock.
Maybe someone dreams of an annihilation of values in order to say: 'I can
do that as well!'. Things are not like that. There will not be any Night of
Crystals, no matter what Luther Blissett believes.
(2 February 1999)
-------------------

[Luther Blissett replied, but Repubblica didn't run the piece. Luther put
it into circulation as the issue #39 of their anti-art newsletter called
"Epistula Ex Vaticanis Museis". Here it is:]
 

DEAR MR. VAGHEGGI, MADHOUSES ARE SERIOUS THINGS, MORE SERIOUS THAN ART
Luther Blissett replies to Paolo Vagheggi about the Cannata affair

At best, your response proved that you didn't even read my press release.
At worst, you read it but didn't understand. I didn't say 'I can do that as
well!' nor did I call Jackson Pollock a worthless dauber. Maybe that's
really what I think, but I am not so naive as to give you the opportunity
to splutter the usual reply: 'You are ignorant, you don't understand
contemporary art', which means, as you said yourself, that I ignore it. 
I promoted (or degraded, which depends on the point of view) Piero Cannata
to the rank of artist. At this point, customary language would require a
large amount of terms like 'Post-Modern tension', 'Empathy', 'Genius',
'Intemperance', 'Existential Drama', plus a few quotes (preferably taken
from some mate&#146;s book). Mix up, ferment for one month, and the artist is
ready. Is the vernissage scheduled?
It goes without saying that I won't do that, because I'm no respectable
critic. My tool box does not contain catalogues and invitations to
exhibitions, but a hammer, a knife and a few permanent markers.
If I'm no respectable critic, that's precisely because I'm not able to ignore.
Unfortunately, those who 'ignore' are people like you, journalists,
critics, gallery managers, collectors... You and the majority that you
represent are ignorant. You're ignorant because you think it's possible to
separate the "beautiful" from the "ugly", "art" from "madness", you have
the power to put a man into an asylum, that is the power of ignorance. I
belong to a minority that rely on their own "lack of culture" and (luckily
or unfortunately) couldn't even hurt a bug. Maybe I'd be able to hurt a
hack...
You're so keen on defending Pollock's art from the charge of being
"degenerate", a charge that nobody pressed. Don't you find it bizarre? You
are supporting the improsonment of a 'mad vandal', a 'fanatic', while you
try to convince me that Pollock, who was praised in life and died a
millionaire, expressed a profound existential tragedy!
'He identified himself with his artworks, which gradually expanded and
absorbed all his energies'. Aren't these words perfectly suitable to the
life of Piero Cannata?
'There was no fortuitous act'... Yeah, you think that Cannata's is 'a rash
gesture caused by madness'... And yet, for more than 9 years, Cannata has
gone ahead with such a lucid project that even Fontana would envy him!
Cannata plans his actions months in advance, and is determined to carry on
for the things he believes in. No, Piero Cannata is not mad (nor does
madness exist, but this is another story). He's just mad enough to go a few
inches beyond the sacred and unpassable boundaries of Art, enough not to
long for the support of critics and galleries.
Paolo Vagheggi, Maurizio Calvesi, Achille Bonito Oliva and all the others:
you're precisely that kind of persons that in 1909 were shocked at
Futurism, and in 1917 were indignant because an urinal was exhibited in a
gallery,  and in don't-remember-what-year because an artist was selling his
own shit. It's too easy, after more than half a century, to organize Dada
and Surrealist retrospectives, dish up monographs on the likes of
Marinetti, Breton and Tzara, people who died and were enterred long ago.
You just recuperate; when will you *propose* anything? 
Here's my answer: your descendants will do it for you in a few decades, as
time pours oil on today's troubled waters, as Piero Cannata is gagged and
stuffed with thorazine, Alexander Brener grows old and suitable for
museums, Luther Blissett become a spectre (s/he already is). I look forward
to those banquets, revaluations, essays, exhibitions, catalogues, T-shirts
and CD-roms.
No, it's not you that make history. Maybe it's not me either. Piero Cannata
is trying to do it.
Things are like that. There will be a Night of Crystals, no matter what
Luther Blissett believes. (5 February 1999)

----
Next posting:
update #3: Repression And The Musti affair

F.P. Belletati, Bologna, Italy
A Luther Blissett Mythopoetic On-line Guide:
http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Rampart/6812
last updated: Autumn 1998

Re-thinking AIDS:
http://www.duesberg.com
http://www.virusmyth.com/aids/index.htm
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<mail>
<nbr>26.0</nbr>
<subject>&lt;nettime&gt; NETSTRIKE FOR CPA FI-SUD</subject>
<from>Luther Blissett</from>
<to>nettime-l@desk.nl</to>
<date>Tue, 22 Dec 1998 13:41:44 +0100</date>
<content>
Posted-Date: Tue, 22 Dec 1998 11:19:32 +0100
X-Sender: cpa {AT} www.ecn.org (Unverified)
Old-Date: Tue, 22 Dec 1998 11:13:05 +0100
To: cslist {AT} ecn.org
From: CPA Fi-Sud &lt;cpa {AT} ecn.org&gt;
Subject: NETSTRIKE FOR CPA FI-SUD
Cc: movimento {AT} ecn.org, cyber-rights {AT} ecn.org
Date: Tue, 22 Dec 1998 11:19:55 +0100
Sender: owner-movimento {AT} ecn.org
Reply-To: movimento {AT} ecn.org

NETSTRIKE FOR CPA FI-SUD


After nine years of selfmanaged activity within the former industrial area
"Longinotti" in Florence South, Tuesday December 22nd. The City Council of
Florence has approved the project for the construction of yet another
shopping mall, in this instance a "Coop" ("red" version of a chain store)
for a total of 11.000 square meters. This has sealed the fate of our
center, putting an end to all our social, political and cultural
activities (we'd mention here the battle won against heroin dealing in the
neighborhood, the wonderful relationship with our community, a cultural
offer unique to this city, an entire range of cultural experiences -
music, theatre, videoart, Hack.it - born and grown in the Center). 

Do the Right Thing ! Netstrike (with cache=0) x CPA against the decision
of the Municipality of Florence to build a supermarket and erase an
important political, social and cultural experience: the same one that
supported hackit98. RELOAD your browser with cache = 0 with (4th january
1998 6.00 - 7.00 p.m. GMT +1) on http://www.comune.firenze.it and
http://www.coop.it and stay tune on #strkxcpa irc channel

for more info:
http://www.ecn.org/cpa/

... to be continued...





CPA FI-SUD
Viale Giannotti 79 50100 Firenze
tel./fax. (+39) 055 6580151
e-mail: cpa {AT} ecn.org
http://www.ecn.org/cpa/
** IL CPA E' SOTTO SGOMBERO! **




___________________
Quaderni Rossi di Luther Blissett, n.2
Nelle migliori librerie e nei piu' loschi infoshops
---  ---
Luther Blissett Project
"Apocalisse ed emergenza.
Dai mostri in prima pagina al super-Stato postmoderno di polizia"
Ed. Derive Approdi, Roma, No Copyright
MARZO 1999
---  ---
Per contribuire alle ingenti spese legali del Luther Blissett Project
nel caso " Lasciate che i bimbi", versamenti sul
Conto Corrente Postale n.28374403
intestato a Roberto Bui
---  ---
The Luther Blissett Mythopoetical Guide,
http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Rampart/6812/
--- ---
"Disobbedienza civile elettronica" del Critical Art Ensemble,
edizione libera anti-Castelvecchi:
http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Hangar/2558
--- ---
RE-THINKING AIDS 
http://www.virusmyth.com/aids/index.htm (english)
http://www.duesberg.com/ (english)
http://freeweb.aspide.it/freeweb/infoaids (italiano)
http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Hangar/2558/aids.html (italiano)




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<mail>
<nbr>27.0</nbr>
<subject>&lt;nettime&gt; Stop censorship: PIE on lin</subject>
<from>Luther Blissett</from>
<to>nettime-l@desk.nl</to>
<date>Wed, 18 Nov 1998 16:05:00 +0100</date>
<content>
This is the translation from Italian of a message put into circulation by
one &lt;nobody {AT} replay com&gt;. 

STOP CENSORSHIP!

Although this message is anonymous, it is not a spam.
In order to say HELL NO! to censorship, we decided to put on line a cartoon
seized in Italy under charges of "paedophilia". The URL is

http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Nook/2279/bastacensura.html

The cartoon is  PIE. (Paedophile Information Exchange) by Miguel Angel
Martin, taken from the comic book Psichopatya Sexualis, published by
Milan-based Topolin edizioni. 
This comic book had been taken to court before, its publisher had been
fully acquitted, and yet Deputy District Attorney Maria Rosaria Sodano
ordered the seizure of the whole Topolin catalogue. 

Sodano claims she has enforced article no. 600/3 of the infamous Child
Pornography Act, which the Italian Parliament passed on July 3rd, 1998. The
article emends the Penal Code and establishes a harsher punishment for
'anyone who... distributes or spreads news or information aimed at
enticement or exploitation of the under-age, i.e. under 18'. It goes
without saying that Martin's work has nothing to do with art.600/ter, whose
enforcement in this case is ludicrous and bad-faithful. In fact, we are
talking about a cartoon, that is a product of creativity and free
imagination, in which no actors or models were hired or exploited. 

To us, this case unveils the real meaning of this law and the purpose of
its enforcers. These people don&#146;t care about child abuse, their target is
any cultural work that undermines bigotry and the hypocritical notions of
"normality" they wish to impose as an universal rule.
These modern inquisitors are so obsessed with persecuting "deviants" that
they seized a work which had already proved not guilty. As the judge
himself wrote in his verdict, Psichopatya Sexualis does not adovcate the
violence it depicts. 

We could say many other things about the nature of the ongoing campaign
against "paedophilia" (which is unbearably hypocritical and instrumental). 
We could describe the law-and-order, pro-censorship hijack of the just
worry about child abuse. We could say much more about the assault on the Net.
We could also expose the role played by journalists, hacks and TV anchormen
- these people gave up any dignity and professionalism, for it is much
easier to build a lucrative career upon witch hunts and sensationalism.
Eventually we could point out that child abuse (sexual and not) usually
takes place inside the very institutions worshipped by  most witch hunters,
i.e. the Church and the patriarchal family.  
But we&#146;ll just say that our choice (to make one of the seized cartoons
available on the web) is to defend everyone&#146;s right to choose what can be
read or watched. This right is in danger, because of liberticidal mass
hysteria. 

Will some other zealant magistrate or priest consider our action illegal?
We don&#146;t know. We don&#146;t even care. 
We don&#146;t belong to Topolin Edizioni, we are not acquainted with the authors
of the seized comic books, we are not members of any of the several
associations that have expressed their solidarity to Topolin.
We&#146;ll remain anonymous. We aren&#146;t trying to avoid responsibilities. We
think we are much more "responsible" than those who think that only passive
acceptation of the rules they enforce must be deemed as a responsible
behaviour. What we are trying to do is assert our belief in the Net&#146;s
potential as a virtually uncontrollable media, still open to all those
opinions and rights that the powers-that-be want to repress. 
We also believe that free circulation of ideas and knowledge, as well as
cooperation between those who spread them, can render censors ridiculous
and make fun of all their attempts.
This website may be condemned to a short life. We invite you to link it,
nay, to save the pages and upload them elsewhere, in order to continue the
defense campaign.




_____________________

&lt;BLINK&gt;
Per contribuire alle _ingenti_ spese legali del Luther Blissett Project
nel caso " Lasciate che i bimbi", versamenti sul
Conto Corrente Postale n.28374403
intestato a Roberto Bui
&lt;/BLINK&gt;
----
The Luther Blissett Mythopoetic On-line Guide,
http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Rampart/6812/
last updated 6 September 1998 - Lots of new documents and pics.
----
"Disobbedienza civile elettronica"
del Critical Art Ensemble,
edizione libera anti-Castelvecchi:
http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Hangar/2558
----
The Anti Art Web Site:
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Atrium/4281/
----
Nelle migliori librerie: Quaderni rossi di Luther Blissett, n.1, lit.5000
Numero 2 in uscita a novembre.
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<nbr>28.0</nbr>
<subject>&lt;nettime&gt; on moderation and spams</subject>
<from>Luther Blissett</from>
<to>nettime-l@desk.nl</to>
<date>Sun, 11 Oct 1998 16:48:55 +0100</date>
<content>
Since the debate on moderation continues, I feel it's my duty to express
solidarity to Ted Byfield, which I already did in a private message
yesterday. It's too easy to charge him with authoritarianism or whatever. 
Anyone who spent just a few weeks in the 1980's mail art network remembers
that there were all kinds of real stalkers who couldn't help by stuffing
other people's POB with junk (crushed cans, used condoms, my pal Vittore
Baroni even received a big rotting fish!). Antiorp reminds me of them. I
think s/he's little more than a spammer. Or is s/he... an "artist"? If so,
much the worse for him or her! My personal opinion is that 'art' is an
obsolete idealistic category which jack-off middle-class smart-asses adopt
as an excuse for anything they happen to throw up. When "art"-oriented
harassment meets nice-ism and political correctness, the result is
time-wasting, nowhere-going nihilism.  Or is antiorp an "info-warrior"?
Right. S/he declared war upon... whom? Me? So why can't I counter-attack?
And even if antiorpisms were worth reading, why post them on Nettime? I'm
sure there are more suitable contexts.  Antiorp fans want us to be
open-minded - antiorp tried to tear our nervous system apart. Two
different beasts, I daresay. Any attempt at describing such annoying
behaviors either as "performances" or as "mind-challenging" dunno-whats
will always provoke my fierce resistance. Even Monty Cantsin's Invisible
College list (whose subscribers are devoted to 'mad science' and coded
language games) unsubscribed a guy named Barnoz who used to post hundreds
of lines of [&gt;&gt;quote(&gt;quote)] garbage. I think that "moderator" is a bad
word though.  Anyway, this is the abovementioned message: 


Hi there.

As a nettime subscriber I reckon you - and any other moderator who
unsubscribed or is going to unsubscribe antiorp from their list(s) - did
the right thing. In off-line reality your decision would be deemed as
absolutely normal: three mornings in a row some guy I don't know comes
over and puts smelly turd into my mail box. First time I wonder 'what the
hell kind of a sick weirdo...?', on the second day I get mad. OK, that
might be a "clever art trick", "performance art" and whatnot, but I don't
give a damn: third day I wait for him, give him a good kicking and shove
the turd down his throat. This is not repression of free speech, is it?
Bye,

Belletati

 
The Luther Blissett Mythopoetic On-line Guide:
http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Rampart/6812
last updated: 6 September 1998
New documents and pics on the ramps!

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</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>28.1</nbr>
<subject>Re: &lt;nettime&gt; on moderation and spams</subject>
<from>cisler</from>
<to>nettime-l@desk.nl</to>
<date>Mon, 12 Oct 1998 14:47:01 +0100</date>
<content>
I'm sticking with nettime (classic). I find the moderation as it has been
carried out to be desirable and not heavy-handed.  I don't mind that someone
is starting a splinter group with a similar name, but I think it is bad net
etiquette to take a mailing list and automagically sign everyone up as has
happened with nettime free.  Because I don't have too much time to read
eveything and because of the involuntary subscription I have unsubscribed.

Steve Cisler

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#  distributed via nettime-l : no commercial use without permission
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</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>28.2</nbr>
<subject>Re: &lt;nettime&gt; on moderation and spams</subject>
<from>Stefan Wray</from>
<to>nettime-l@desk.nl</to>
<date>Mon, 12 Oct 1998 17:48:20 +0100</date>
<content>
At 02:47 PM 10/12/98 +0100, cisler wrote:
&gt;I'm sticking with nettime (classic).

Me too.

&gt;I find the moderation as it has been
&gt;carried out to be desirable and not heavy-handed.

I agree. Filtering out Antiorp nonsense is fine with me. I don't have time
for jibberish from anonymous sources. There is enough jibberish from
people I know that I have to read. If people think this is against free
speech, now they can read as much nonsensical Antiorp jibberish as they
want on the other nettime list. 

&gt;I don't mind that someone
&gt;is starting a splinter group with a similar name, but I think it is bad net
&gt;etiquette to take a mailing list and automagically sign everyone up as has
&gt;happened with nettime free.

I also agree with this.

For moderators: how did they get the list of subscribers??? Was this not a
private list?  Can you make it so no one can copy nettime-l addresses
again? 

&gt;  Because I don't have too much time to read
&gt;eveything and because of the involuntary subscription I have unsubscribed.

Yes.... Why should I have to take the trouble of unsubscribing myself? If
it was "OK" for whomever it was that stole the nettime-l addresses and
then started a new list to subscribe all those people, then I presume it
is "OK" for someone else who knows how to, to simply unsubscribe all those
addresses. Why should we all have to go in there and individually take our
names off? When we weren't asked in the first place? Can someone
automatically take people's addresses off the new list? 

- Stefan

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#  &lt;nettime&gt; is a closed moderated mailinglist for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
#  more info: majordomo {AT} desk.nl and "info nettime-l" in the msg body
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</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>28.3</nbr>
<subject>Re: &lt;nettime&gt; on moderation and spams</subject>
<from>David S. Bennahum</from>
<to>nettime-l@desk.nl</to>
<date>Mon, 12 Oct 1998 20:13:16 +0100</date>
<content>
Stefan wrote:

&gt;Yes.... Why should I have to take the trouble of unsubscribing myself? If
&gt;it was "OK" for whomever it was that stole the nettime-l addresses and
&gt;then started a new list to subscribe all those people, then I presume it
&gt;is "OK" for someone else who knows how to, to simply unsubscribe all those
&gt;addresses. Why should we all have to go in there and individually take our
&gt;names off? When we weren't asked in the first place? Can someone
&gt;automatically take people's addresses off the new list? 

I received a series of idiotic posts from nettime.free, and prompty 
unsubscribed while making a point of calling them assholes.  Assholes 
are people whose brains are located somewhere in their lower colons, 
they exhibit traits of assholeness, such as taking the names on one 
mailing list and appropriating them for use on another mailing list 
without permission.  nettime.free is herby renamed nettime.assholes.  I 
herby submit this post gratefully to moderation.  Oh ye nettime gods, 
kill or forward this post as ye see fit.  Your will is law, and I accept 
it gratefully, for a list without law is a list of nettime.assholes.

/d


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#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
#  more info: majordomo {AT} desk.nl and "info nettime-l" in the msg body
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</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>29.0</nbr>
<subject>&lt;nettime&gt; The exposure of Mussolini's corps</subject>
<from>Luther Blissett</from>
<to>nettime-l@desk.nl</to>
<date>Thu, 17 Sep 1998 16:00:50 +0200</date>
<content>
Timothy K. Gallaher wrote:

&gt;And then in
&gt;&gt;the 20th century Mussolini urged the Italian people to reconnect with
&gt;&gt;their ancient conquering glories under the banner and label of
&gt;&gt;"fascism", which they did until the bitter end when it became necessary
&gt;&gt;to hang Mussolini upside down from a lamppost and cut him in half with
&gt;&gt;machine-gun fire.

Rinaldo Rasa replied:
&gt;The exposure of the corpse of Benito
&gt;Mussolini and Claretta Petacci (her lover) was an inhuman event,
&gt;i agree.

My point of view is different.

The allied forces were about to reach Northern Italy, and many cowards who
had supported Mussolini for more than twenty years suddenly switched to
antifascism. A few days after the Liberation, a lot of long-time members of
the National Fascist Party subscribed to clandestine antifascist parties
and claimed to have fought in the Resistance. Although nobody had seen them
in action, why split hairs? 

According to some witnesses, many of those who beat il Duce's corpse to a
bloody pulp were far from being political opposers or former victims of
fascist persecution - indeed, some of them had enthusiastically applauded
Mussolini's last speech in Milan, just one month before his death. 
The exposure of those smashed corpses became one of the many great alibis
and spectacular moves staged to cover the substantial coherence between the
defeated regime and the victorious one. Togliatti (general secretary of the
Communist Party) granted amnesty to every fascist psychopath imprisoned by
the Allies. The fascist Penal Code wasn't changed. The high bureaucracy of
the state remained exactly the same: the judges who had inflicted centuries
of prison to antifascists simply swore their loyalty to the new Republic,
and kept the power in their filthy hands. Even the 1948 Constitution, one
of the most advanced in the world as far as civil and human rights are
concerned (although none of those principles was ever put into practice),
referred to the Concordat between Italy and the Vatican, which on the
initiative of Mussolini had acknowledged Catholicism as "the only religion
of the Italian state".

Despite this, I don't feel like blaming those men and women who honestly
hated their former dictator, and couldn't help but going berserkr in
Piazzale Loreto when they were able to lay their hands (and feet) on his
body. Remember that Mussolini had been one of the most untouchable scumbags
on earth: those people had been seeing the son of a bitch in the distance,
a small bald head waving fists like a demented spastic, speaking from
platforms and balconies surrounded by armed soldiers. 
Those people had been hearing his voice on the radio, full of ostentation,
announcing that he was going to send them and their husbands/sons/brothers
to the bloodiest war in modern history. 
They had been bumping into unbelievably ugly Mussolini statues and busts in
every street of their town. They knew that was the guy they had to thank
for the death of their beloved ones. Maybe some of them thought: 'Sure I'm
gonna thank him someday!'
What would've you done? Me, I would have kicked the shit out of the
cankerous bastard, even if he was already dead. Human beings aren't saints.
Human beings aren't robots.

Sorry, I reckon this has little to do with net-culture.



The Luther Blissett Mythopoetic On-line Guide:
http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Rampart/6812
---
#  distributed via nettime-l : no commercial use without permission
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#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
#  more info: majordomo {AT} desk.nl and "info nettime-l" in the msg body
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</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>30.0</nbr>
<subject>&lt;nettime&gt; Songs From The Wood</subject>
<from>Luther Blissett</from>
<to>nettime-l@desk.nl</to>
<date>Mon, 21 Sep 1998 01:47:48 +0200</date>
<content>
Songs From The Wood
Net-Culture, Autonomous Mythology and the Luther Blissett Project

by F. P. Belletati
All rights dispersed

keywords:  mythology - class war - identity - sabotage


_As Down Home As I Can Get_

     The prime mover was a loose-knit current of Italy's Marxism labelled
'operaismo' [workerism], which had absolutely nothing to do with the
Communist Party.
     In the early 1960's the Operaisti started to investigate changes in
the sociological composition of the working class.  At that time, the young
mass-worker of Fordist-Taylorist factories was still the tongue of the
compass, the most important segment of the proletariat. The operaista
intervention in class struggle was based upon a participant observation of
the mass-worker's behaviour. The mass worker explicitly refused the older
generation's work ethic and discipline. This insubordination was the main
mover of conflict in the workplace. Sabotage was not invisible anymore:
along with moments of open struggle (strikes and demonstrations) there was
a flourishing of micro-tactics to slow down or stop the assembly line.
     Operaisti were committed to studying those behaviours and defining the
dialectics between class struggle and capitalist development which I'm
going to sum up - taking some shortcuts. The continual confrontation
between capital and living labour was the cause of all technological
innovations and changes in management, which would provoke further changes
in the class composition, therefore the conflict would continue on a higher
level.
     After the so-called Hot Autumn (1969), a season of general strikes
and radical struggles with millions of workers taking the streets,
proletarian insubordination increased. Struggles became more and more
'autonomous' (this was the adjective by which wildcat strikers would
describe their occupations: "assemblea autonoma"). In 1973 the
self-disbanding of the post-operaista group Potere Operaio [Workers' Power]
gave origin to the scene renowned as autonomia operaia organizzata
[organized workers' autonomy].
During the 1970's, Italian Autonomia theorists (Toni Negri first among
equals) started to investigate and define the existence and subversive
behavior of the 'operaio sociale'.
Such an ambiguous collective noun - hardly translatable into English -
served to describe both the youngest generations of industrial workers who
had broken away from the work ethic once and for all, and the whole cast of
frustrated service workers, 'proletarianised' students and white collars,
unemployed wo/men and members of youth subcultures whose conflict was
clearly 'anti-dialectical'.
     'Anti-dialectical' means that self-organization, wildcat strikes,
occupations and acts of sabotage did not take place within the realm of
negotiated class struggle, indeed, they even cut loose from the traditional
dialectical bond between struggles and development, and challenged the
recuperative function of the unions and the Left's political control.
In order to repress those uncontrollable eruptions and outbursts (the 1977
movement above all), the ruling class had to impose a state of emergency.
It was a bloodbath. By the end of the decade, most militants had been
killed, thrown in prison, escaped from the country or started to shoot up
heroin. But that's another story.
     As some have suggested, from now on I'm going to use the term
'composizionismo' instead of '[post-]operaismo', because the former is more
precise and does not automatically correspond to a particular segment of
the working class (the "blue collars").
     The so-called 'third industrial revolution' made capital supercede
the fordist-taylorist paradigm, and turned information into the most
important productive force.
     Appealing to those passages of the *Grundrisse* where Karl Marx used the
expression 'general intellect', compositionists began to use such
descriptions as 'mass intellectual' and 'diffused intellectual' making
reference to multifarious subjectivities in the new class composition.
     'Mass intellectuals' are those people whose living labour consists,
broadly speaking, in a subordinated output of "creativity" and social
communication (in compositionist jargon: 'immaterial work'). This segment
of the operaio sociale ranges from computer programmers to workers of
Toyotist factories, from graphic designers to copy writers, from PR people
to cultural workers, from teachers to welfare case-workers etc.
     Negri's analysis in particular is based upon the 'prerequisites of
communism' immanent to post-Fordist capitalism. By 'prerequisites of
communism' Negri means those collective forms that are created by past
struggles and are constantly re-shaped by the workers' tendencies,
attitudes and reactions to exploitation. Some of these forms even become
institutions (e.g. those of the Welfare State), then they go through a
series of crises: social conflict created them, social conflict keeps them
open and necessarily unfinished. Their crisis reverberates on the whole
society, so conflict continues on a higher level.
     The most important prerequisite of communism is the collective
dimension of  capitalist production, which brings about more social
cooperation.
     The stress must be laid upon the most strategic form of today's
living labour, i.e. 'general intellect', immaterial work, "creativity", you
name it. 'General intellect' (unlike labour in Taylor's 'scientific
management') is self-activated. The mass intellectual's workforce is not
organised by capital, because social communication is prior to
entrepreneurship. Capital can only recuperate and subdue social
communication, control the mass intellectuals from the outside after having
acknowledged and even stimulated their creativity and far-reaching
intelligence.
     The conflict continues on the highest level: capital's
"progressive" spur is over, autonomy is becoming a premise rather than a
goal.


_The Common Being And The Net_
=09
     A compositionist approach to computer networking reveals that:
- The Net's horizontal and trans-national development brings about a
potentially autonomous social cooperation.
- Most netizens fall within the anthropological, sociological and
economical descriptions of  'mass intellectuals'.
- Today's Net landscape is the synthesis of many molecular insubordinations
and some important molar victories, (e.g. the anti-CDA 'Blue Ribbon'
campaign) and is continually re-shaped by conflict.
- The Net is also shaped by software piracy and copyright infringement:
private property of ideas and concepts is challenged and often defeated. If
any one of you is without copied or cracked programs, let them be the first
to throw a stone at me.
- As an "institution", The Net is going through a growth-crisis that is
reflected upon the whole society. In its turn, this crisis is a mover of
conflict.
     In plain words, the Net seems to be the prerequisite of communism
*par excellence*. This is not an uncritical utopian view of computer
networking, of course there's a huge gap between the potential and the
actual: work-force vs. work, *langue* vs. *parole*, capital vs. living=
 labour,
consumerism vs. social communication. The Net is the OK Corral. It's
paradoxical that, after all the schmoozing about 'molecular revolution',
we're heading straight to a new molar impact.
The global anti-"paedophilia" mobilization is the state of emergency by
which the powers that be want to gag netizens. The reappropriation of
knowledge and the self-organization of mass intellectuals require the
defense of the Net from slanders and police raids. We must keep this
"institution" unfinished and open to any possibility, prevent capital from
filling the abovementioned gap with censorship and commodification. It
isn't just a liberal battle for free speech: it's class war.
     But this is not enough yet. We've got to make history, no less -
fill that gap with autonomy and self-organization. We also need myths,
narratives that incite mass intellectuals to take action. Each historical
phase of class war needs propelling mythologies, there's nothing wrong with
that. Georges Sorel has been slandered and misunderstood for too long. As
Luther Blissett put it:

'...the trouble is not the "falsehood" of myths, but the fact that they
outlive the historical forms of the needs and desires they channelled and
re-shaped. Once ritualised and systematised, the imaginary becomes the
mirror image of the powers that be. The myths of social change turn into
founding myths of the false community built and represented by the power
[...] The myth of the "Proletariat" was rotten as well: instead of fighting
for the self-suppression of proletarians as a class, the communist movement
had mystical wanks over any sign of  "proletarianship", such as the
"hardened hands" of the workers, or their "morality" [...] proletarians
were defined according to sociology and identified with blue collars
themselves at best, or with the "poor" of the Scriptures at worst, or even
with both figures, while Marx had written: 'Either the proletariat is
revolutionary, or it is nothing'. The direct consequences were Zdanov's
Socialist Realism, puritanism, sexual repression vs. bourgeois "decadence",
and all that shite.
However, [...] the "destruction of myths" makes no sense, we must
concentrate our efforts in another direction: let the imaginary move,
prevent it from crystallising, try to understand when and how myths are to
be deconstructed, dismembered or forgotten before the plurality of images
is reduced to one and absolute. [...]'
(*Mind Invaders: Come Fottere I  Media*, Rome, 1995 - a partial translation
available at &lt;http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Rampart/6812&gt;)

We need open, interactive... rhizomatic mythologies. But mythologies are
always created, modified and re-told by some community. What community are
we talking about here?
Let's start again from 'general intellect'. 'General' means 'common',
literally 'belonging to the genus', i.e. wo/mankind, our species. In *On The
Jewish Question* and the *Economic And Philosophical Manuscripts* (1844),
Marx appealed to two important concepts: *Gemeinwesen* (common being) and
*Gattungswesen* (species-being). Class struggle, the self-suppression of
the proletariat as a class and, eventually, revolution were to overcome the
alienation of human beings from their own *Gemeinwesen* and
*Gattungswesen*, in order to build a global human community that coincided
with the species itself, beyond races and state-nations, beyond
citizenship. We cannot understand the compositionist theory which stems
from the *Grundrisse* if we don't stick to Marx's humanistic idea of
community.


_The Waldganger's Black Game_

The Luther Blissett Project consciously started as an experiment of
networking as myth-making. 'Luther Blissett' is a multi-use-name that can
be adopted by anybody. The goal is an anthropomorphization of 'general
intellect': since 1994 many people who don't even know each other have
endlessly improved the reputation of Luther as a "Homo Gemeinwesen". And
yet, as Bifo put it: 'One must not overvalue the importance of Luther
Blissett. We could even say that Luther Blissett doesn't count for
anything. All that really counts is the fact that we're all Luther Blissett
[...]'.

Here are some sub-mythologies studied and put into practice by Luther
Blissett:

1. The nordic myth of the *Waldganger*, the rebel who "takes to the woods".
In 1951 the German reactionary writer Ernst J=FCnger wrote a pamphlet titled
*Der Waldgang*. J=FCnger described the society as ruled by plebiscitary
patterns and panoptical systems of social control. In order to escape from
control, the rebel must go to the woods and organise resistance. In
nineteen-fucking-fifty-one! What should we say nowadays? Echelon,
interceptions, video-surveillance everywhere, electronic records of our
bank operations... Taking to the woods is more necessary than ever.
     Some hacks have compared "Luther Blissett" to Robin Hood. Actually that
hazy myth has much to do with multi-use-names. In XIIIth century England,
Saxon peasants ill-treated by the Norman ruling class expressed their
malcontent and everyday resistance by ascribing many anonymous actions
(real and imaginary) to one outlaw whose figure gradually became that of
"Robin Hood". The surname suggests that this folk hero (at least at the
beginning) wore a hood - he had no face, he represented anyone. That's the
way the myth works, though in the Middle Ages it could only bring temporary
consolation for a very limited *gemeinschaft*.

2. Some other journalists described Luther Blissett as a "pirate" or a
"buccaneer". It is an error. OK, net-culture and orthodox underground
culture are clogged with maritime metaphors and, yes, "pirate" also means
someone who illegally copies material protected by copyright. But Luther
Blissett is a terrestrial myth. You don't breathe brackish air in the
woods. The sea is far away, maybe a utopian horizon to which the outlaw
gradually moves.
     If there's a utopian element in the Luther Blissett narrative, it
is the utopia of the criminal class: 'fuck them over and take the French
leave', as melancholically evoked in Gary Fleder's *Things To Do In Denver
When You're Dead*, a gangster-movie whose characters greet each other
saying: 'Boat drinks!'. This is the happy end of all the movies whose
protagonists manage to pull a fast one (a fraud, a robbery...). In the last
sequence you see them sailing around the Antilles, quietly sipping their
Daiquiris.
     Of course 'boat drinks!' can only be a propelling sub-mythology,
certainly not a realistic project, because there is no "elsewhere" left -
misery is all around. The epilogue of Jim Thompson's *The Getaway* is very
instructive. Sometimes one can achieve 'boat drinks!' though. Ronald Biggs,
the Englishman who made the Great Train Robbery of 1963, fled to Brazil
and, as far as I know, he's still there. But the Waldganger is too far from
the sea, indeed, only those who stand in the middle of dry land can
cultivate 'boat drinks!' as their utopia: 'This is Denver, what do you need
a boat for?'.

3. The last recurrent description is 'cultural terrorist', which is less
unacceptable but it is improper all the same, because 'terrorism' is a term
that the ruling class uses to defame anything and anybody, and also because
"terrorism" and state repression always mirror each other (the ETA vs. the
GAL, the Armed Islamic Group vs. the 'ninjas' of the Algerian Army etc.).
The dialectic between police state and "terrorism" is based upon emulation.
     And yet, even the apparatus of the state can provide us with some
useful images. I'm talking about "intelligence" and black propaganda.
Multi-use-name bearers from Italy and other countries often mention and
cite a book, Ellic Howe's *The Black Game: British Subversive Operations
Against the Germans During the Second World War* (Queen Ann Press, London,
UK, 1982).
     During WW2, Mr. Howe was the secret Political Warfare Executive's
specialist for the manufacture of printed fakes and forgeries. PWE's
instructions were to undermine the morale of German soldiers and civilians,
by means of disinformation and psychological warfare. Thanks to a network
of agents in the enemy-occupied territories, PWE issued fake NSDAP circular
letters about feuds in the Party, bogus government edicts about desertion,
a frightening *Plague Booklet* supposedly published by the German Ministry
of Health and leaflets advising the female army personnel not to have sex
with soldiers because of venereal diseases. PWE even produced half a dozen
issues of *Der Zenit*, a bogus astrological magazine that dissuaded sailors
from weighing anchor on a certain "inauspicious" day (of course it was the
date of some important naval operation). PWE also invented Gustav Siegfried
Eins aka *Der Chef*, a non-existent German dissident talking on a bogus
clandestine radio station (actually the broadcasts were from the UK),
entertaining the audience with invectives against nazi politicians and
detailed (albeit false) gossip about their sexual perversions.
     Since the dawnings of the project, Luther Blissett has been playing
a black game like that. This is another viable mythology for mass
intellectuals. Given the new molar dimension of conflict, this is the
molecular we can find and work with. Try to figure all those tricksters,
impostors and transmaniacs meeting up in the woods, spreading rumours and
black material, inoculating lethal viruses in the territories of this
global electronic Fifth Reich and then... 'Boat drinks!'.


September 1998
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#  distributed via nettime-l : no commercial use without permission
#  &lt;nettime&gt; is a closed moderated mailinglist for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
#  more info: majordomo {AT} desk.nl and "info nettime-l" in the msg body
#  URL: http://www.desk.nl/~nettime/  contact: nettime-owner {AT} desk.nl

</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>31.0</nbr>
<subject>&lt;nettime&gt; New Interactive Communication and 'Antagonismo' in Italy</subject>
<from>t.tozzi {AT} ecn.org</from>
<to>nettime-l@desk.nl</to>
<date>Thu, 24 Sep 1998 18:16:15 +0100</date>
<content>
New Interactive Communication and 'Antagonismo' in Italy

By Strano Network

Keywords:  self-governance, co-operation, rhizomatic, cyber-rights

In this text we will try to explain how new digital technologies and the
values of equality, self-governance and co-operation came together in
Italy in the last two decades. We will describe the Italian portion of the
birth of a new global subject who has found in, and develops from digital
communication new means and tools of social and political action.=20

During the second half of the 70's and in the 80's, we saw two different
strands of social protest and rebellion:  the 'Autonomia' movement and
Punk: two distinct movements always sizing each other up.  The former was
rooted in the ongoing conflict with Italian political and economic
institutions and was mostly based on a network of 'centri sociali
occupati' (squatted community centres).

=09The latter has been more of a loose network of individuals and
groups who made artistic experiences and events in the streets or
generally with a social and 'against the establishment' attitude, e.g.
graffiti, mail art, low cost fanzines, music.  The concept of 'doing
networks' and a deep interest in new languages and means of communications
emerged first within the Punk scene.  Punk was an extremely spontaneous
development, without any clear direction or recognisable organisational
structure.=20

The very first experiences of social uses of digital media were
characterised either by a strategy of direct conflict against institutions
or by the experimentation with new languages which might help evade
institutional authoritarianism. Both kinds of experiences fought back
against the "New World Order' and its strategies of global exploitation
and pointed out how the new means of digital communication have a
potential for empowerment and equality.=20

In the following we present a short chronicle of the main events in the
development of socially-aware uses of digital communication and of the
institutional attempts to impede them. Due to space and time limitations,
we are unable to give a complete historical overview of the many who had a
role, e.g. we may only mention the PeaceLink network.  Instead we'll
concentrate on the European Counter Network (ECN), and CyberNet. In our
point of view, these are the two most interesting and influential
experiences we had in Italy.=20

Chronology

Mid-eighties. The group of people who a few years later will be involved
in Decoder starts to meet and to discuss the social uses of BBS and
networked communication;=20

1985 Centro di Comunicazione Antagonista (Florence), Radio Onda Rossa
(Rome), Vuoto a Perdere (Rome) meet to check the feasibility of a computer
network for the exchange of information related to activist movements. The
attempt fails : in Italy it was too early.=20

1986-89 The Decoder group (Milan) explores the possibility of opening a
CyberNet area within Fidonet. They get in touch with a variety of European
groups (Vague, Chaos Computer Club, Encyclopaedia Psychedelica), from whom
they find out about the hacker meeting Icata89 whose 'ethical principles'
they later translate in the "CyberPunk" volume.=20

1988 "TV Stop", a Danish group, make a proposal for a European
'antagonista' (activist) network, the preliminary idea for the future ECN.
Class War (UK), Radio Dreickland (Germany) Coordinamento Nazionale
Antinucleare e Antiimperialista (Italy) are some of those who join in the
efforts. "Remote Access" is chosen as the connecting software and is
decided the European network will be a federation of the national networks
that should be created..=20

1989 The Decoder group tours North Italy in an attempt to convince a
variety of political and counterculture groups to develop a common
network. They fail.=20

1989 Italy starts to be connected with the ECN (via Telix software).=20

1989 (University Occupation Movement 'La Pantera'). A variety of meetings
about networking and its technologies and uses are organised all around
Italy. The difference between two main strands of opinion emerges. The ECN
people see the network more as a new tool for political organisation and
action. The Decoder group, people who are later with the Avana BBS in
Rome, the La Cayenna group in Feltri claim that networks change and extend
human communication possibilities and urge people to explore what that
could mean.=20

1990 The first European nodes of the E.C.N. were born in Italy: Padua,
Bologna, Rome, Milan. These nodes are almost exclusively made up of file
areas used to exchange activist materials with only a few echomail areas
(messages) used just to co-ordinate the structure.=20

July 1990 At Sant'Arcangelo di Romagna Festival, during some lectures
organised by Decoder, the Cyberpunk Anthology, published by ShaKe is
presented. This book will soon became the basic document of the Italian
cyberpunk movement and it is publicly acknowledged as a new possible
social subject.=20

December 1990 "Hacker Art BBS" was born: an artistic self-managed
telematic data base.=20

January 1991 Senza Confine BBS (No Boundary BBS) was born in co-ordination
with a Roman association bearing the same name.  The association was
founded by a European MP. of an Italian leftist party (Democrazia
Proletaria) that promotes the civil and legal defence of immigrants.=20
Senza Confine BBS was born with messages and file areas dedicated to this
subject. In 1991 it became part of the P-net that was a common hobby
network with sympathies for the cyberpunk movement. When the cyberpunk
area of the Fidonet was later closed down, Senza Confine BBS becomes the
vehicle of cyberpunk area itself, amongst other various P-net nodes
present in almost every part of Italy. This situation lasted until the
Florence meeting during which it was decided to create a new independent
network (Cybernet) with gateways opened to all the networks' needs. In
this way it was possible to create a gateway from all Cybernet messages
areas to both P-net and ECN. During the well-known Italian Crackdown in
1994, Senza Confine BBS is the only BBS to remain unconfiscated, so it
became a central point for all the telematic community of this region.=20

March 1991 During the three day meeting "I.N.K. 3D", organised in the
squatted space Isole nel Kantiere in Bologna the new telematic message
area Cyberpunk is presented.  It is hosted by a group of sysops from the
hobbyist network Fidonet co-ordinated by the Fido Milan BBS sysop. During
"INK 3d" in Bologna the cyberpunk area also opened up in the Fidonet BBS
Arci BBS. This area was closed down 2 days later by the BBS sysop after
the publication of an article on the newspaper "La Repubblica" in the
pages of Bologna section linking the cyberpunk area to information piracy.=
=20

April 1991 the Lamer Xterminator BBS was founded in Bologna. It was part
of the upcoming cyberpunk network, but completely independent from
Fidonet, taking messages directly from the BBS in Milan.  This was costly,
and called for a network which would be totally independent from Fido.
This didn't happen, and Lamer BBS died one year later because of financial
problems. The Lamer Xterm activities group went on, however, until 1994,
with the aim of providing everyone with technology. The result of 3 years
of work was 150 courses and workgroups on computer and information
technology held on different levels at a political price and which took
place in the Bolognese underground movement.=20

June 1991 "International meeting" in Venice (proceedings are published by
Calusca Edition in Padua in the same year). In this occasion about 2000
people (many of them representing national and international groups) met
for a period of three days to discuss and to face new activist forms in
opposition to the emerging "New World Order". A specific section was
dedicated to the new forms of telematic communication. This section was
principally oriented to the projects of European Counter Network, but
besides the numerous nodes of this network, Hamburg's Chaos Computer Club,
Radio Onda Rossa (Red Wave Radio), Link and Zerberus from Vienna, Decoder,
Amen also took part in this meeting; there were also speeches on the
Internet, Bitnet, Infonet and Peace-Net.=20

Summer 1991 The E.C.N. starts carrying some material from the cyberpunk
area.=20

July 1991 At Sant'Arcangelo di Romagna Theater Festival the Shake -
Decoder group organised the meeting &amp; inter/active workshop "All
technologies to the people".

The international workshop "Inter-action" decides to study media
interactivity and the necessity for horizontal communication. For this
they study the creation of laboratories for the diffusion of low price
infomatic and telematic technologies.=20

1991 The annual report of the Italian secret service and Department of
Interior covers activist telematics.=20

1991 The ECN nodes linked themselves in a Fido network consistent with the
zone number "45" and region number "1917". Digital material from BBS and
activist organisations comes to and leaves from this network from all over
the world but, so far it seems, no activist BBS networks have been
established outside of Italy.=20

1991-96 E.C.N. tries to also include realities that do not use digital
media - digitising documents produced by these organisations. In this way
the network tries to link every area of the movement through telematic
media. Its goals are modified as such to include the aims of the general
activist movements and not just those of Coordinamento Nazionale
Antinucleare e Antiimperialista (Antinuclear and Antiimperialist National
Co-ordination).  Between 1991 and 1992 ECN begin publishing, as paper
zines and newspapers, the news that was previously only available on
telematic media. From 1993-94 it begins to develop the idea of a network
that is not a simple distribution service but also a new social and
political subject.=20

June 1992 The importance of the cyberpunk movement gains media
acknowledgement - getting a self-managed TV show called "Mixer" shown by
RAI (the Italian national broadcasting company).=20

June 1992 First issues of Feltrinelli's Interzone books.=20

Summer1992 The cyberpunk message areas are closed by the Fidonet's
leaders, completely ignoring users' needs. This closure places in greater
contrast the difference of intentions between the cyberpunk area and
Fidonet's leaders. Amongst the reasons for the closure there is a visit
from the police to a Fidonet sysop managing the cyberpunk message areas.=20

December 1992 Law 518 on copyright passed. This weighs the institutional
management of telematics in favour of protected elites, against the
interests of the people.=20

January 1993 The telematic network "Cybernet" was born. The national hub
is "Senza Confine BBS" (Macerata); the other three nodes are initially
"Hacker Art BBS" (Florence), "Decoder BBS", (Milan) which was started at
this point, and "Bits Against the Empire BBS" (Trento). Before 1995 there
were about forty nodes, distributed all over Italy, with an average of
about 300 users for every BBS, but with up to 800-1,000 users for Decoder
BBS and 5,000 for Virtual Town TV. Unlike ECN, Cybernet presents itself as
an "open" network, with message areas where anybody can both read and
write. Proposals for a rhizomatic kind of telematic network will be
discussed and promoted here to overcome the hierarchic structure of the
FIDO-like model. (These proposals will receive a very detailed formulation
in the "Gaia" project, a description of a network based on technical
self-organisation principles). Cybernet assumes as a basic principle the
right for every person all over the world to communicate without barriers
through telematic media. The proposed model will be used as an example for
all the future discussions not only inside the E.C.N. area but also for
the future civic network and for Internet providers.=20

April 1993 Strano Network (Strange Network) started in Florence.=20

Spring 1993 "No copyright, nuovi diritti nel 2000", ("No Copyright, new
rights in 2000") edited by the Decoder group is published by ShaKe.  This
anthology will constitute the theoretical basis for a political answer to
law 518 on copyright.=20

October 1993 "Immaginario tecnologico di fine millennio" ("Technological
Imaginary at the end of the Millenium") edited by Libreria Calusca of
Padua is published. An important moment of discussion between the
different Italian telematic organisations.=20

December 1993 Law 547. This law begins the regulation of computer crimes
and forms the prelude to the Italian Crackdown.=20

May 1994 The so called "Italian Crackdown" begins: looking for copied
software police make confiscations, with the temporary closure of about
150 BBSs, mainly of Fidonet and Peacelink networks.=20

June 1994 Meeting organised by "Informatica per la democrazia (Computer
Science for Democracy)" in Rome. This meeting examines the laws on
software copyright and computer crimes that are judged illiberal and
potentially dangerous for the telematic network.  It also considers the
applications made by magistrates (in Pesaro, Milan, Rome). For sure, the
laws are an attack on freedom of expression.=20

1994 Start of the Bologna civic network that gives a free Internet e-mail
address to every person living in Bologna.=20

October 1994 Virtual Town TV BBS, (formerly Hacker Art BBS) starts. VTTV
uses the new software First Class with a version - UUCP - that can supply
free Internet e-mail to users, a graphical interface and the possibility
to make multiple chat (5 contemporaneous lines).=20

December 1994 "PsycoSurf" &amp; "MediaTrips", events in CSOA Forte Prenestino
(Rome) with the birth of the Avana group (Avvisi Ai Naviganti - Warnings
To Sailors: the name of the special nautical weather reports on the radio)
and of the Avana BBS. The future activities of the Avana group include:
introduction courses, (Internet, word processing, free systems, etc.);
engagement in electronic democracy, (the Roman civic network); hypermedia
installations; and reflections on the "yield of citizenship " and
"political enterprise".=20

February 1995 " Communication Rights at the End of the Millennium",
organised by "Strano Network" in the Luigi Pecci Center for Contemporary
Art in Prato. For the first time about twenty hobbyist networks also met
at this convention.

This encounter was born from the necessity to find a common platform to
react to institutional actions (the Italian Crackdown) that, in the
initial phase of internet promotion in Italy, both tried to limit the
experiences of data transmission and misunderstood its specific
requirements and purposes. With the birth of the phenomenon of the "civic
networks" it was part of an attempt to formalise just two possible actors
in data transmission: commercial providers and institutional "civic
networks". These were proposed to replace all other things, including the
world of the 'associazionismo' - the grassroots networks. In such
conditions every experience of spontaneous data transmission remained
excluded or "not protected", ( a clear example is the recent censorship of
the field of 'associazionismo' and hobbyist data transmission made
possible by a specific article of the Roman civic network in July 1998).
The proceedings of this convention are collected and published in the 1996
book "Nubi all'orizzonte - Clouds to the horizon " edited by Strano
Network and published by Castelvecchi. Taking part in the meeting were
Cybernet, ChronosNet, EuroNet, E.C.N., Fidonet, Itax Council Net,
LariaNet, LinuxNet, LogosNet, OneNet Italy, P-Net, Peacelink, RingNet,
RpgNet, SatNet, SkyNet, ToscaNet, VirNet, ZyxelNet and many journalists,
artists and intellectuals. The convention was preceded by a "hypermedia
conference " via the networks in the autumn of 1994. The convention
produces a motion signed by all the participants that can be considered
the common base of a new political subject that although composed from a
widely differentiated constellation of social members emerges through the
use of telematic media.=20

March 1995 Decoder Media Party including the presentation of the Decoder
and Strano Network Web sites.  In Rome the web sites of "Tactical Media
Crew" and "Malcolm X" and elsewhere others, are launched.=20

1995 The Decoder group propose a collaboration with the Milan Civic
Network. It is not accepted because it is considered to contrast with the
"civic" organisation of the network and because it is considered too
radical.=20

1995 The civic network of Rome hosts Avana BBS and approximately thirty
other BBS and associations of the Roman area, as a result of one
negotiation.=20

October 1995 About fifteen Tuscan BBSs co-ordinated by Strano Network form
the FirNet network (of which VTTV is the host). In Florence City Hall
FirNet open a "Consultation of the telematic area of the metropolitan
Florentine area" with the demand for a Civic Network in which the BBSs
take part and that also guarantees those ethical principles that Strano
Network had formulated in the text "Fluctuating Interface and
Communication Right" presented in October at the international convention
Metaforum II in Budapest. After few months a Civic Network of Florence
will be started - totally neglecting the demands of the Consultation.
Citizens will not be guaranteed any rights of communication using
telematic media and the civic network will be a simple "display window"
for the promotion of the interests of the shop keeper.=20

October 1995 Strano Network realises in "Cybercaf=E9 Zut" the first public
and free Internet connection in Florence.=20

December 1995 "Warnings To Sailors (AvANa)" in Forte Prenestino (Rome).
Meeting on the new frontiers of self-production and a general test for the
new AvANa BBS using First Class software.=20

December 1995 First global Netstrike, devised and promoted by Strano
Network. To protest against the nuclear experiments at Mururoa, ten sites
of the French government are almost blocked and their operation is
drastically slowed down by thousands of net-strikers from all the world
through a simultaneous concentration of activity of many browser on one
same site. The "Net strike" is the demonstration that the technology of
data transmission supplies also new kinds of social and political protest.=
=20

1996 Netstrike for Chiapas.=20

1996 The start of "Islands in the Network" and the transfer to the
Internet of the main documents of the E.C.N..  Its main message areas are
also now converted into mailing lists: "Movement" (on political
initiatives from alternative movement in Italy), "CS-LIST" (on initiatives
of Italian squatters), "International" (on internationalist news), " ECN
news " (list consisting in a newsletter published by ECN.ORG) that will be
join in few months by "EZLN It" (on political initiatives carried out by
Italian movement on chiapas matters), "Cyber-Rights" (on the Italian
right-to-communicate matters) and "Shunting lines" (on gay and lesbo
matters).=20

1996 Meeting in Pesaro, organised by Metro-olografix and others.=20

1996 Netstrike against American 'justice' (focusing on the cases of Mumia
Abu Jamal and S. Baraldini). The White House site in Washington is blocked
for 12 hours.=20

September 1996 A company is acquitted after being accused of simultaneous
multiple use of Microsoft software whilst only having a single license.=20

1997 513 DPR Regulations governing the encryption of documents.=20

1997 "Infoxoa" was born in Rome, during the G.R.A. (Great Self-production
Connections).=20

May 1997 The "Decoder-Mattino" case. A Roman magistrate, concerning at
some graphics pages in Decoder 8, explains the thesis that,
"Cyberphilosophy, the defence of rights to both privacy and anonymity
using networks has to be considered the behaviour of accomplices to
paedophiles".=20

1997 Magistrate complains about the publication of a book by the Luther
Blissett Project.=20

January 1998 The Anonymous Digital Coalition announces a net strike.  It
stops two Mexicans financial web-sites in solidarity with the Zapatista
cause.=20

1998 The first Italian anonymous remailer started by the ECN. So another
important digital self-defence instrument is added to the already
nourished resources and programs bookcase, which was in the "crypto"=20
directory of the "Isole nella Rete" server.=20

June 1998 " Hack It 98 " at the C.P.A. in Florence. Hack It 98 is the
actual point of arrival of the new social subject's process of growth .

Nearly all the groups and scenes described here participate,
everyone supplying their own theoretical and technical contribution. The
characteristics and the main proposals of this three day event, full of
seminars, demonstrations, installations, conferences, concerts, TV
experiments and self-managed radio are: the horizontal dimension of the
event, without "organisers, teachers, public and customers"  but with
"sharers" ( the meeting is organised by an "open" mailing list);  the
proposal to repeat the meeting annually; the proposal to throw out other
national enterprises; thought by the collectivity and locally organised;
the achievement of an inquiry about work in the field of national data
transmission.

Finally, amongst all the proposals and plans originated by Hack-it 98 one
stands out, the one born at the beginning of the conclusive general
assembly (subsequently re -discussed in the network) about the
constitution of an Agency for communication rights.=20

September 1998 The Agency for Comunication Rights is called for again by
Strano Network, which suggests it has the following main characteristics:=
=20

Using the collaboration and technical hospitality of ecn.org the Agency
should constitute itself as a "non-profit cultural association".  On the
legislative front it will comment on existing laws and watch over
liberty-destroying-legislation; promote referenda on every law that
negates freedom of information and communication on the Network.  On the
legal front, the Agency should offer help to anyone who is a victim of
censorship.  It reserves the right to appear as a civil plaintiff if, and
any time it might be necessary.  On the technological front, the Agency
will comment on any developments that can be thought to decrease the
rights of privacy or access of individual citizens.  The Agency should
defend people using computers at work - stimulate debate about themes such
as: poisoning from monitors; the defence of workers' privacy; potential
guarantees necessary for new forms of work organisation.  The Agency
should strive to constitute a task force of lawyers, jurists and
technicians. This group would be at the disposal of the Agency for advice,
attendance, processing documents, analysis etc.=20

-----------------

MANIFESTO FOR  FREEDOM OF ELECTRONIC COMMUNICATION  IN THE THIRD MILLENNIUM

- FREEDOM OF INFORMATION
- the free, unimpeded exchange of information by the use of horizontal and
interactive communications made possible by all the means that new
technologies offer are essential elements of our fundamental freedoms and
must be supported in every circumstance.
- the right "to inform and to be informed" wants to be free: it belongs to
all the world. It is produced by and for all over the world, so that
access to information must not be the exclusive right of an elite or
privileged groups.
- the networks' property must not be under the control of monopolies or
private and public oligopolies . Communication and information should be
the property of all. The people of the networks must be in a position to
control and to participate in the managerial choices of all those who own
networks.
- communication by private subjects cannot be restricted. Neither can it be
entirely their own property. Customers have the right of self-manage data
transmissions according to  autoregulation criteria.
- information must be accessible to all, and everyone should be able to
insert his/her own information in the network
- the simple technical possibility of access to information is not
sufficient to guarantee peoples' freedom. People must be  free to have and
to use the necessary critical instruments to learn and to process
informations which they need, so that they may make their own
interpretation and transform themselves in meaningful communication.
- people are not the passive terminal of information flows devised by
elites or managers. People's freedom exists in producing social action and
communication, free from prejudice and discriminations on the grounds of
race, sex or religion - even when those actions and communications may
contradict established economic or political interests.
- BBS
- we recognise the public usefulness of the Bulletin Board System and of
every communitarian and non-professional form of communication.  We love it
for its autonomy in managing information, and for its freedom from the
great media and editorial oligopolies
- the activity of the BBS must not be subordinate to authorisations or
censorship.  It must be recognised and protected because it is a social and
useful instrument for the free manifestation of thought.

- TECHNOLOGY
- in the network the standards of communication must be the fruit of a
global decision.  They must not be spread by the economic politics of a
narrow power group. Technology does not have to submit to controls and
economic politics which might stop their distribution or global production.

- PRIVACY
- anonymity must be agreed.  The privacy of every custumer must be
protected. Network customers have the right to defend their privacy of the
data transmissions and by the use of all available technological and
cryptographic means. No  information regarding the personal data of any
individual should be stocked or searched by electronic means without the
explicit agreement of that person.

- RIGHTS, RESPONSIBILITY AND LAWS
- those who manage the nodes of data transmission networks  are not
responsible for the material placed by other people on the system they
manage.  This is because of the practical impossibility of controlling all
of this material and because of the inviolability of private
correspondence. System managers' responsibilities end where customers'
responsibilities start. Interpersonal, electronic communications and other
forms of communication should be defended from every kind of censorship,
control or filtering
- the police seizure of computers to realise investigative aims, instead of
the simple copying of the data-contents of the computers themselves, is a
serious violation of personal freedom that does not have a logical or a
technological foundation.
- we denounce and condemn as unjust the legislation of a false "society of
information ".  For years magistrates have arranged 'motiveless' seizures,
causing damage to the social data of networks and within which they have
penally pursued those who are merely suspected of breaking laws about
computer technologies. It is time to defend the rights of individual
citizens instead of the interests of giant software manufacturers.
- Anyone has the right to use any kind of information and to use it in
total freedom, provided that everybody recognises the intellectual and
economic rights of the authors,  proportionately to intellectual and
economic advantages. The duration and characteristics of economic rights
must not deny the legitimate evolution of knowledge or limit all humanity's
thirst for learning.
- We refuse every present or future legislative form which might limit the
use of data transmission technologies as has already happened for radio
technologies.  Here, a system based on authorisation and licences has
prevented diffuse and popular access to the possibilities of social change
offered by radio. The use of networked electronic communication
technologies must neither be bound by authorisations or concessions, nor
limited by fiscal or bureaucratic obstacles.

June-August 1998 Many attempts at censorship by the authorities and
magistracy were happening (see below). They show an actually increasing
trend of repression and underline the necessity of an international
co-ordination of activist servers

June 1998 As a result of a complaint, the "Isole nella Rete" server was
confiscated because the server contained a message which formed a presumed
defamation of an Italian tourist agency. Massive mobilisation begins
immediately in the networks and in the mass media to defend "Isole nella
Rete", to condemn the seizure, its motivations and its method. The
immediate restitution of the server was an important demand. The principle
that, "The server represents an entire community and it cannot be closed
because of a single action of a single customer on the server" is one of
those supported, together with other principles.=20

1998 July Rome City Council's Civil Network censors the Roman Digital
Forum.=20

1998 July Law about child pornography.=20

1998 July News Servers are declared not to be responsible for the messages
circulating in newsgroups or for the customer's messages, because the
message itself is considered to be "free expression".=20

1998 August A new, clumsy attempt to seize Isole nella Rete's server: as a
result of an inquiry by the criminal police of Massa about a threat to a
local newspaper (with the publication of a message sent in a mailing list
from Isole nella Rete).  The police threaten the seizure of Isole nella
Rete if it doesn't hand over the users' activity log.  Logs had not been
created on INR for a long time so that in the case of such threats they
would be undeliverable.  The server is not seized.=20

August 1998 Seizure of two personal computers at the Isole nella Rete
representative's Bologna home.=20

We acknowledge the support and the wealth of information kindly given to
us by Decoder (Milan), Avana (Rome), Senza Confini BBS (Macerata), Zero
BBS (Turin), and Lamer Xterminator BBS (Bologna).  In this text there are
no names of individuals but only of groups or situations.=20

Internet addresses

- Associazione Culturale Malcolm X www.mclink.it/assoc/malcolm/
- Avana www.isinet.it/lynx, www.wonderpark.com
- Banca Dati della Memoria www.clarence.com/memoria/index.shtml
- Centri Sociali News www.ecn.org/cslist/
- Centro di Documentazione Krupskaja www.geocities.com/Hollywood/2607/
- Centro Popolare Autogestito www.ecn.org/cpa
- Comitato Romano contro la Repressione Mumia Abu Jamal users.iol.it/comlab=
/
- Cooperativa Sociale Blow Up www.blow-up.it/
- Cyber Rights ~ Mailing List www.ecn.org/cybr/
- Cybercore www.sexonline.cybercore.com
- Decoder www4.iol.it/decoder
- Deviazioni, situazioni gay e lesbiche antagoniste www.ecn.org/deviazioni
- Digital Skull BBS www.eldorado.it/dskull
- ECN Bologna www.ecn.org/bologna
- Free Waves www.alpcom.it/hamradio/freewaves
- Infodiret(t)e Padua www.ecn.org/pad/
- Isole Nella Rete www.ecn.org
- Kollettivo Estrella Roja www.ecn.org/estroja
- Kyuzz.org www.kyuzz.org
  (Server che ospita svariati personaggi del panorama cyberpunk italiano
  diventa fondamentale per l'organizzazione dell'hackit98 anche attraverso =
la
  relativa mailing list "hackmeeting {AT} kyuzz.org")
- Luther Blissett (and many others...) http://www.pengo.it/blissett/
- Neural www.pandora.it/neural/
- NeuroZone 2 Alor.home.ml.org
- Orda Nomade www.kyuzz.org/ordanomade/index.htm
- Post_axion Mutante strano.net/mutante
- Radio Blackout www.ecn.org/blackout
- Senza Rete (Cobas) www.geocities.com/Paris/7975/
- Settore Cyberpunk www.ecn.org/settorecyb
- Strano Network www.strano.net
- Tactical Media Crew vivaldi.nexus.it:80/commerce/tmcrew/
- Zero! (Turin) www.ecn.org/zero/
- ZIP! per l'autonomia in rete www.ecn.org/zip/

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1990 "Amen", # 8, Milan.
September1991 "International Meeting", La Calusca edition, Padua.
June1991 "Opposizioni '80", Amen edition, Milan.
May 1991 Bulletin "Interzone", Rome.
September1991 "Neuronet", Bologna.
October1991 "Data Bank: transazioni, connessioni, controllo", Murnik
edition, Milan.
April1992 "Comunit=E0 Virtuali/Opposizioni Reali", in "Flash Art", april-ma=
y,
#167, Milan.
1st May1992 Translation of  "Giro di vite contro gli hacker", Shake Ed.
Underground, Milan.
June1992 "Conferenze telematiche interattive", edizioni P. Vitolo, Roma.
1992 "Cyber Web - La rete come ragnatela" in Decoder, # 7, Shake Ed.
Underground, Milan.
December1992 "Metanetwork - fanzine su floppy disk e rete telematica per
comunit=E0 virtuali", # 0, Florence. (3 issues from 1993 to 1994).
1992 "Zero Network", Padua.
1993 gennaio "Codici Immaginari", # 1, Rome. (4 issues from 1993 to 1994).
1st May 1993 "No copyright, nuovi diritti del 2000", Shake Ed. Underground,
Milan.
1994 "Regole e garanzie per la Frontiera elettronica" in "Il Manifesto",
07-gennaio, Rome
1994 "Testi caldi - Osservatorio interattivo sui Diritti della Frontiera
Elettronica", Global Publications, Pisa.
1994 "Giro di vite per la libert=E0 d'informazione" in "Il Manifesto",
21-maggio, Rome
1994 "Due leggi da cambiare" in "Il Manifesto", 21- maggio, Rome
1994 "Le trib=F9 delle reti" in "Il Manifesto", 21- maggio, Rome
1994 "Byte avvelenati. Finora solo leggi a senso unico" in "Il Manifesto",
10-luglio, Rome
September1994 "Italian Crackdown", in "Decoder" # 9, Shake Ed. Underground,
Milan.
1994 "Il messaggio tra lavoro e liberta'" in "Il Manifesto", 20-ottobre, Ro=
me.
1994 "La bibbia del modem", Muzzio Nuovo Millennio edition.
June1995 "Le bbs e il futuro", in "Decoder" #10, Shake Ed. Underground, Mil=
an.
1995 "Una legge ai minimi termini" in "Il Manifesto", 10-agosto, Rome.
1995 "Digital Guerrilla", Turin.
1996 Translation of "Hackers, eroi della rivoluzione informatica", Shake
Ed. Underground, Milan.
1996 "Nubi all'orizzonte", Castelvecchi edition, Rome.
1996 "Net Strike, No Copyright, Etc.", AAA edition.
1998 "La nuova frontiera elettronica" in "Il Manifesto", 09-febbraio, Rome
1998 "Ribellione nella Silicon Valley - Processed world anthology", Shake
Ed. Underground, Milan.
1998 "Kriptonite", Nautilus, Turin.
June1998 "Ragnatela sulla trasformazione", Citylights editions, Florence.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------=
-----
-----------------

E-mail for Strano Network
t.tozzi {AT} ecn.org

Biography
Strano Network are one of the groups involved in this process. The most
recent achievement was the co-organisation of HackIt 98, a meeting for
hackers, for all of these networks groups and individuals, and for the
defence of cyber-rights taking place in Florence in June 1998.


---
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</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>31.1</nbr>
<subject>Re: &lt;nettime&gt; New Interactive Communication and 'Antagonismo' in Italy</subject>
<from>Luther Blissett</from>
<to>nettime-l@desk.nl</to>
<date>Fri, 25 Sep 1998 19:54:54 +0200</date>
<content>
At 18.16 24/09/98 +0100, t.tozzi {AT} ecn.org wrote:

&gt;- Luther Blissett (and many others...) http://www.pengo.it/blissett/

No, mate, that site is old, never updated since 1995 and written in an
ultra-clumsy "sounds-like-English". You'd better refer to the following one
(which is linked to many others).


The Luther Blissett Mythopoetic On-line Guide:
http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Rampart/6812
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#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
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</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>32.0</nbr>
<subject>&lt;nettime&gt; Blue Telephone vs. Luther Blissett ?!</subject>
<from>Luther Blissett</from>
<to>nettime-l@desk.nl</to>
<date>Thu, 27 Aug 1998 22:37:26 +0100</date>
<content>
Telefono Azzurro [azure telephone, light blue telephone] is an Italian
(supposedly) no-profit association with easy access to state funds and
corporate sponsorship. Their field of activity is the prevention and
repression of child abuse. The reason of such a bizarre name is that
battered/violated children are supposed to call the association's
ultra-advertised number. Being the colour of the national soccer team,
azure is usually associated with hope.  This is a piece published on La
Repubblica daily newspaper, followed by the translation of Luther
Blissett's press release. 

-1-------

La Repubblica (Bologna edition), August 27th, 1998: 

BURGLARS-VANDALS AT TELEFONO AZZURRO After an escalation of threatening
calls to Prof. Caffo

by Carlo Gulotta

A series of threatening phone calls, then a communique from Luther
Blissett that called in question the group for its support to the new bill
on paedophilia, eventually a strange act of burglary, more likely to be a
warning. Three different episodes that have probably nothing to do with
each other, but whose target is the same, Telefono Azzurro.  A few weeks
ago the group's Bolognese office started to receive a different kind of
calls: insults and threats. A few days ago professor Ernesto Caffo gave
the police a leaflet which Luther Blissett had sent to a press agency. By
this leaflet, Blissett "warns" the association. Blissett's 'media pirates'
are also involved in troubles with the judiciary because of their book
'Lasciate che i bimbi' (published on the Internet) - it seems that they
intended to warn Telefono Azzurro about the escalation of child abuse
which will probably follow the passage of the new bill on paedophilia.
TA's pressure and efforts facilitated the passage of the bill, which
aggravates punishment for child abuse.  Professor Caffo immediately
contacted the police and gave the leaflet to the detectives. The leaflet
was faxed from a copy shop in Bologna, and also targets two other similar
associations. 'We are used to threatening calls', says professor Caffo,
'One must be able to make distinctions between the different episodes,
though it is obvious that some people do not appreciate our efforts. We
have an established relationship with the police, and immediately brought
the leaflet to the station'.  Yesterday, Telefono Azzurro made yet another
official accusation, after a strange incursion in their office, via
Oberdan 24. It happened last Monday night. Someone forced the locks of two
doors on the ground floor, broke into the office, opened cabinets,
rummaged into drawers but did not steal anything. Before leaving the
place, they even evacuated their bowels in the lobby. TA activists believe
that it was 'a warning, some sort of affront. They didn't steal anything'. 

-2----- Press Release from the Luther Blissett Project in Bologna (authors
of "Lasciate che i bimbi") about vandalism at Telefono Azzurro's Bologna
office

Bologna, Thursday 27 August 1998

An article by Mr. Carlo Gulotta on today's La Repubblica (Bologna edition)
calls us in question with reference to threats and vandalic incursions
suffered by the Telefono Azzurro office in Bologna.  We understand that
Mr. Ernesto Caffo, president of Telefono Azzurro, mentioned us in relation
with the latest effraction. Caffo talked about a communique supposedly
sent by one Luther Blissett. 

Gulotta's reference to this communique is ambiguous:  'It seems that
Blissett's "media pirates" intended to warn Telefono Azzurro about the
escalation of child abuse which will probably follow the passage of the
new bill on paedophilia'.  This may have two different meanings: either
this Blissett says that the new act on child pornography is so badly
written that child abuse will increase rather than decreasing (by the way,
this is our opinion), or the communique is a Mafia-styled warning, 'You
let that bill pass? OK, we'll make you pay by raping even more children!'. 

We have nothing to do with any threatening phone call or vandalic raid
suffered by Telefono Azzurro. We disdainfully reject every hint and
insinuation. 

We also advise Telefono Azzurro to think twice before calling in question
people whose social praxis and political activities have always been
stylish. We would never stoop to such rascally triviality. 

We've been handling the issue of "paedophilia" for years. We think that
"paedophilia" is little more than a pretext to spread law-and-order
authoritarian culture and destroy all civil rights and guarantees in this
country.  We have never attacked Telefono Azzurro, nor have we stated that
child abuse is not a serious problem. We have researched a plenty of
journalistic/judiciary errors and horrors, clinging to our libertarian
point of view.  We have defended the Internet users' community from absurd
attacks, by exploding many lies that were published on newspapers and/or
broadcasted on TV.  We have fought traditional media hacks, and exposed
the mixture of ignorance, fear and envy that inspired their slanders. 

We even broke with a custom of the Luther Blissett Project, and decided to
run our campaign publicly, turning up at conferences and public meetings,
showing our faces, even before Lucia Musti started her libel suit. Our
book "Lasciate che i bimbi" is available in the bookshops, and it is the
only reliable source on our position. [...]

Anyway, the new act on paedophilia and child pornography (bill S2625,
approved by the Senate on June the 9th) is a juridical monstrosity, a
classic emergency act which contains various elements of
inconstitutionality. We are not the only ones to say this. For instance,
some representatives of the gay movement (e.g. attorney Ezio Menzione)
deconstructed the bill's text and demonstrated that it is useless,
sexophobic and liberticide. Moreover, MCmicrocomputer magazine strongly
criticised the bill because it modifies the Penal Code (3rd comma of the
article 600/3) in order to make Internet service providers responsible for
the "paedophile" pictures and texts passing through their servers. This is
like holding Telecom Italia as responsible for obscene calls. 

That's all. 





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</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>33.0</nbr>
<subject>&lt;nettime&gt; Italian netizens are in danger</subject>
<from>Luther Blissett</from>
<to>nettime-l@desk.nl</to>
<date>Thu, 26 Mar 1998 15:16:56 +0100 (MET)</date>
<content>
THE 1998 ITALIAN CRACKDOWN EXPOSED


Index

0. Premise
1. What Is The Musti Affair?
2. The assault on Internet service providers
3. We Need International Solidarity




0. Premise

Something serious is happening in Italy. A crackdown recently started in
Bologna  is going to threaten freedom of speech for Italian netizens. The
so-called Musti affair, which we'll sum up in the next paragraph, is a
pretext to create a legal precedent, foster (self-)censorship and possibly
enforce the (remarkably restrictive) law on the press in the Italian
cyberspace.


1. What Is The Musti Affair?

Lucia Musti, vice-District Attorney in Bologna and former Public Prosecutor
in a famous trial against an innocuous cult called 'Bambini di Satana'
[Children of Satan], sued a 'traditional' publisher (Castelvecchi Edizioni,
based in Rome) and two Internet service providers (Cybercore, based in
Bologna, and 2mila8, based in L'Aquila) for having published or put into
electronic circulation Luther Blissett's book 'Lasciate che i bimbi.
"Pedofilia": un pretesto per la caccia alle streghe' (Let The Children...
"Pedophilia" as A Pretext for A Witch Hunt]. The book is anti-copyright,
thereby it is also freely available on the Web. Lucia Musti wants the book
to be banned, all the copies to be destroyed and its electronic versions to
be removed from the indicted servers. Moreover, she claims moral damages
for 450 million lire (approximately $300,000). She asked the competent
magistrate to sequestrate Castelvecchi's accounts and contracts (officially
in order to know how many copies were put into circulation - more likely
she wants to find out the real names of the authors). The first session of
the trial will take place on the 5th of May at the Tribunal of Bologna.
According to Musti, the book's content is 'insulting', 'slanderous' and
'prejudicial' to her reputation and identity. The charge is 'Misuse of the
right of criticism'. Why?
The first chapter of Blissett's book consists of a scrupulous account of
the BDS trial. In 1996 the three defendants (the cult leader Marco Dimitri
and his fellows Piergiorgio Bonora and Gennaro Luongo) were arrested and
charged with child rape, satanic ritual abuse and even human sacrifice.
There were no corpses, no reliable witness, no evidence at all whatsoever.
The defendants went through a long, groundless detention before being taken
to court. The media upheld their guilt, fostered moral panic and described
them as little more than bloodsucking monsters. Eventually they were
acquitted, but their life was destroyed.
Soon after the arrest the Luther Blissett Project launched a campaign of
counter-information and challenged the investigating authorities, whose
Jeanne d'Arc-like commander was Lucia Musti. The LBP exposed her lies, her
staunch clericalism and the ambiguous role played by the Curia of Bologna
[local ecclesiastic authority] through a group of bigots named GRIS [Group
for Research and Information on Cults]. Combining media hoaxes, private
investigations and a meticulous deconstruction of Musti's propaganda, the
LBP helped to free Dimitri and the other guys. Some newspapers (e.g. La
Repubblica) were greatly influenced by Blissett's campaign, and explicitly
censured Musti's behaviour and fanaticism.
According to the LBP the 'Children of Satan' were scapegoats, and that
trial was a manifestation of the sexuophobic/homophobic/obscurantist
euro-paranoia about pedophilia, ritual abuse and kiddy porn on the
Internet. The first chapter of 'Lasciate che i bimbi', which is far from
having a slanderous content,  tells the whole story from the arrest to the
acquittal, exposing the ways Musti took advantage of her position in order
to manipulate the public opinion and persecute innocent people. After
having ruinously lost the trial, she even wanted to avoid the consequences
on her reputation!


2. The Assault On Internet Service Providers

Musti's 'Atto di Citazione' [certificate of action at law] is a violent
assault on the Internet providers whose servers hosted the electronic text
of the book. The target is the Internet, its "difference", the features
that make it uncomparable to the traditional media, i.e. the horizontality
which has granted freedom of speech for those who have no access to the old
media and the trans-nationality which has made a lot of wanna-be censors
sleepless.
The Italian legislation on the Internet is full of blanks, this is the
state's chance to fill them, set a dangerous precedent and force providers
and netizens to self-censorship. If Musti wins the trial, the Italian Net
landscape will be impoverished if not ravaged, with serious repercussions
all over Europe and the world.
Here's some translated excerpts from the abovementioned Atto di Citazione,
dated February 11th, 1998:

'[In Italy] the responsibility of providers for torts committed via the
telematic nets is currently the subject of a lively debate. Two fronts
oppose each other: one considers providers equal to publishers, thus
responsible [for the contents], the other considers them equal to
booksellers and newsvendors, thus non-responsible.
We think that  the 11th article of the law on the press - which is about
the common responsibility of the publisher, the owner of the publication
and the author - is extensible (at least by analogy) to [Internet] service
providers. Although the mentioned law is enforced for "all typographical
reproduction, obtained by any mechanical or physio-chemical means, anyhow
aimed at publication", we must remember that, despite the wonderful terms
currently used to describe the information highways, the material which is
put on the Internet is not destined to stay in a virtual world of
immaterial communication, indeed, it can be easily fixed on such material
supports as computer hard disks or diskettes, as well as reproducible by
such mechanical means as printers.'

'However, the responsibility of providers can also be demonstrated
according to the article 2050 of the Civil Code [which is about
responsibility for dangerous activities]. In fact, this rule is enforced
not only for the activities regarded as dangerous according to the law on
Public Security and other special laws, but also to all the activities
which, to the opinion of the competent judge, can intrinsicly be harmful,
even if they are as much licit as useful for society.'

'In the case the competent justice decides there are no premises for the
enforcement of  the article 2050, we can take into consideration the
article 2051 [which is about damages caused by things kept in custody],
because it is undeniable that A) [providers] have a direct, concrete power
on the sites running on their servers, B) [the sued providers] were aware
that the contents of Blissett's text were prejudicial to other people's
reputation, and could have easily removed them from the sites [...]'


3. We Need International Solidarity

This struggle has an immediate political value, every Italian provider has
to take part in the general mobilization. Besides setting limits to freedom
of speech, this precedent will extend their legal liability.
The Net is an organism that can defend herself. Her immunity systems are
electronic civil disobedience, the netizens' quick reflexes and the almost
instinctive solidarity that doesn't leave abuses unpunished. Musti has made
a big mistake taking offence at the Italian Web. We have suggested anyone
who runs a site or a server to create pages dedicated to this crackdown, by
mirroring (or re-designing)  'Lasciate che i bimbi', and loading the text
you are reading. International solidarity is indispensable. We've just
started to get media coverage and organise events, while other people are
putting the incriminated book on their sites. We' ll constantly update the
list and sent it to all the concerned netizens, along with all the material
we'll be able to translate into English.
We also call on every enemy of obscurantism, repression and censorship to
take the field and make a protest against this crackdown, by sending e-mail
to Italian newspapers.

Luther Blissett Project, Bologna, last week of March 1998

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
'Lasciate che i bimbi' is already available at:
&lt;http://www.ecn.org/deviazioni/libreria/&gt;
&lt;http://www.2mila8.com/luther/Lasciate.html&gt;
&lt;http://members.tripod.com/~fabbro/Luther.htm&gt;
&lt;http://www.arpnet.it/~umanisti/bimbi.html&gt;
&lt;http://www.geocities.com/capitolhill/7424&gt;
Add your site to this list!
An English translation of the book's introduction is at:
&lt;http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Rampart/6812/ramp.html&gt;
The complete files on the Italian crackdown (Italian language) are at:
&lt;http://www.2mila8.com/Attacco.html&gt;
&lt;http://www.sexonline.cybercore.com/crackdown/&gt;
Luther Blissett Project - Detailed info, no frills:
&lt;http://www.ecn.org/deviazioni/blissett&gt;
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Italian media:

larepubblica {AT} repubblica.it, bologna {AT} repubblica.it,
repubblicawww {AT} repubblica.it,redazione {AT} ilmanifesto.mir.it,
lettere {AT} lastampa.it, ilmondo {AT} rcs.it, ildirettore {AT} ilfoglio.it,
mediamente {AT} rai.it, target {AT} mediaset.it, giornale {AT} starlink.it,
luca.debiase {AT} mondadori.it, unione {AT} vol.it, mobydick {AT} rti.it,
gris {AT} bo.nettuno.it






-----End of forwarded message-----
---
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</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>34.0</nbr>
<subject>&lt;nettime&gt; Negri, Bordiga, the general intellect and the nomadic war machines</subject>
<from>Luther Blissett</from>
<to>nettime-l@desk.nl</to>
<date>Tue, 02 Dec 1997 00:48:53 +0100</date>
<content>
Dear Barbrook,

Glad to see that this debate is proving useful. However, I strongly disagree
with your opinion that these issues cannot be interesting for the net-time
subscribers, indeed, the stuff  about Stalin and defunct ideologies
certainly isn't (and it wasn't me who put it there in the first place), but
some references to the perception and re-elaboration of Marx's Grundrisse in
Italy are VERY important in order to understand how so-called _net-culture_
developed there, and then grasp  the very relationship between Negri and
Deleuze, which appears to be puzzling you. Nowadays, no account of this
history can seriously count Bordiga out, because he was THE prime mover and
shaker.

That's why, in order to answer your (private) questions about Negri, it is
necessary to (publicly) explain why you're underestimating Bordiga. There
are more things in his writings and personal history than you could imagine.
Your third-hand sources must be extremely clumsy, while my first-hand ones
are very good. Unfortunately (for me) I'm a "doctor" myself, I made a degree
in History of Technological Innovation, and - guess what - Bordiga was the
subject of my thesis, whose title was 'Technology And Environment In Amadeo
Bordiga's Post-War Writings'.

In plainer words: while I was writing the  essay on Bordiga I got access to
a lot of old books and long-forgotten issues of 'Bordiguist' newspapers. It
was an unbelievably interesting experience. For instance, I discovered close
links between Bordiga and Negri (Negri would never admit this), being the
former a forerunner of those post-Grundrisse studies that have changed
forever the elaboration and praxis of Italian 1960's "operaismo" (the
antechamber of 1970's Autonomia). So would you please stop conforming to
stereotype, I mean, displaying the typical arrogance of the academic? Me, I
would never play the wiseacre writing about the UK. I know it isn't that
important, but I can't help saying it: the bordiguists were marginalised
within the PC at the Congress of Lyon (1926 - not 1927!), but they (and
Bordiga himself) weren't expelled from the party (that is, from the
Komintern) until 1930. 

And now... back to the serious issues.

All my books and archives are in Italy, so I can't be 100% precise in my
quotations, but it isn't difficult to describe the theoretical (as well as
personal) relationship between Negri and D&amp;G. I inform you that Negri and
Deleuze interviewed each other in the late Eighties (the conversation, as
far as I remember,  was published on Negri's magazine 'Futur Anterieur' in
1988 or 1989). In the early eighties Negri and Guattari even co-authored an
essay titled "Les nouveaux espaces de liberte'" (which I read in Italian as
'Le verita' nomadi' - "Nomadic Truths"). Sorry, I don't remember the French
publisher.

As you know, Negri deems the Grundrisse as the centrepoint of Marx's work.
To Negri, Marx's notes on the labour process and alienation in machinery and
science, as well as the distinction between 'formal' and 'real' capital
domination, is nothing less than *the touchstone of everything*. Like his
master Raniero Panzieri (the founder of 'Quaderni Rossi', the most radical
revolutionary magazine of the sixties - even more important than the frankly
over-rated 'Internationale Situationniste'), Negri lays the stress on the
subversive potential of collective living labour (which Marx describes as
"social mind" and "general intellect")  rather than on the alienation of
labour in machinery. 

According to some mainstream, narrow-minded interpreters of the Grundrisse,
the  "general intellect" has simply to do with dead/ objectified labour,
which is expropriated from the workers and incorporated into the machinery.
According to the Italian post-operaista school, "general intellect" is what
the workers' *living* labour has become since  the hegemony of relative
surplus-value (i.e. the increasing automation) has provoked the collapse  of
any dialectical theory of labour-value and radically mutated the old fordist
class-composition (with its obsolete distinction between white and blue
collars). Nowadays General Intellect/Living Labour is not only physical
work-force; it implies technical skills, mastering of complex language codes
etc.  

During the seventies, unlike his contemporary Camatte, Negri didn't
liquidate the proletariat. Rather, he described the new antagonist
subjectivities bent on raising hell all along the 'social factory', and
gathered them under the umbrella-term 'operaio sociale'. Ed Emery
ludicrously translates 'operaio sociale' as 'social worker' (!) while it
means, more or less, 'diffused worker' [social factory = decentralised
factory]. The operaio sociale was the personification of the living part of
general intellect, the synthesis of a mixed-up class composition which
included the younger generations of industrial workers (who, unlike their
fathers and mothers, were absolutely uncontrollable by the unions, real
foreign bodies to the traditional mediations of industrial conflict) as well
as 'proletarianised' students, former white collars, unemployed (nay,
unemployable) graduates, etc. 

As the micro-electronic revolution definitively destroyed taylorism-fordism,
the definition "operaio sociale" started being replaced with "mass
intellectuality" (or "diffused intellectuality"), which means all those
subjectivities whose work-performance is constructed upon a subordinate,
compulsory output of 'creativity' (in Grundrisse-speak: upon a further
valorisation of the living elements of the general intellect). For example,
the 'collaborative' workers of toyotist/post-fordist factories, computer
programmers, media low-level workers, etc. The post-fordist labour process
is increasingly based on workers' 'collaboration' and 'self-activation',
e.g. the Japanese model. According to Negri and other commentators, the
existence of a potentially revolutionary  network of such newer operai
sociali is a prerequisite of communism in itself. These people are in the
key points of the social factory (telecommunications, spectacle, transports,
services, education), their insubordination would have shocking
repercussions on the capitalist command structure. The workers are already
managing 'immaterial production', their work doesn't depend on the bosses
anymore, they could even get rid of the whole command structure (and of the
unions as well). Workers' autonomy is not an aim anymore: it's a
precondition - see what happened in France in 1995.

So what is living labour nowadays? According to Negri, it includes
"artificial languages, complex articulations of information and science of
systems, new epistemological paradygms, immaterial determinations,
communicative machines". That's why Negri is interested in D&amp;G. works (and
generally in post-structuralism and philosophy of language) - and vice
versa. Negri's description of today's living labour has much to do with D&amp;G.
allegories, "the subconscious is not a theatre: it is a factory",
"deterritorialisation", "rhyzomes" and all that. Negri thinks that 'Mille
Plateaux' is the most important philosophical work of the century. There's
an obvious affinity between the concept of workers' autonomy in the
post-fordist labour process and the allegory of "nomadic war machines". 

Deleuze &amp; Guattari had the same opinion, that's why they described
themselves as 'marxists' - I suppose they meant to say Negri's peculiar
anti-hegelian no-more-dialectical marxism (curiously enough, many years
after Bordiga had stated that marxists should bury the stinking corpse of
Hegel). Negri wrote two books on Spinoza ("L'anomalia selvaggia" and
"Spinoza sovversivo"), trying to demonstrate that the replacement of Hegel
with Spinoza was as important for revolution  as the replacement of The
Capital with the Grundrisse). One may agree or not with these declarations,
what I'm saying is that there's no detectable incongruity between Negri's
position and D&amp;G. works. 

If i may append my personal position: I find Negri very interesting (albeit
frequently disputable), that's precisely why I've got sick of all those
anti-communist deleuzo-guattarians. They've missed the point. The difference
between your point of view and mine (apart from my being a communist) is
that you don't think such a point ever existed - heret's what is making you
unable to describe the Italian situation. For instance, the fact that
Guattari didn't find it necessary to be shot or beaten to bloody pulp by the
police in the streets of Bologna does NOT mean, as you wrongly assumed, that
he'd had no influence on Radio Alice. Even after the bloodbath, Guattari
kept doing all he could to get the comrades released from jail, gave
hospitality to many exiles (including Bifo and Negri himself) and put his
reputation on the line to defend the Italian movement from further
repression. He failed, but at least he had tried. You may not agree with his
theories and despise his lingo, but respect is due.

I hope this is of some interest to someone (especially the German
a.f.r.i.k.a. group, whose members once asked me something about these
things) and apologize for my English - it's very difficult to explain these
things in a language which is not Italian. By the way, I find the English
translations of Negri's books ugly and unreadable, but I admit I couldn't
ever do better than that.



Luther Blissett


P.S. Did you think I was just a media prankster?   &gt;;-))))))


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</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>35.0</nbr>
<subject>&lt;nettime&gt; Negri &amp; Guattari</subject>
<from>Luther Blissett</from>
<to>nettime-l@desk.nl</to>
<date>Tue, 02 Dec 1997 21:31:41 +0100</date>
<content>
I've just found out that Negri &amp; Guattari's book was published in English by
Autonomedia with the crappiest title I've ever seen: "Communists Like Us".
My gosh! Anyway, the book may be useful for Richard's next re-mixes of TPOHF.

A footnote to my previous net-time posting, which was still a little bit
obscure:

According to 'autonomist' marxism, every technological 'advancement' is also
a response to proletarian insurgence or, at worst, resistance, and so is the
following cultural/anthropological transformation.
Capital can't do anything by itself: it is a vampire that needs fresh blood,
it has to exploit and/or recuperate the society's energies.

The latest waves of technological innovation were the historical result of
the ongoing friction between workers' struggles (firstly fordist
mass-workers, lately post-fordist 'diffused' workers and intellectual
proletarians) &amp; capitalist development.  Living labour was increasingly
objectified and turned into fixed capital, but the part which 'stayed alive'
got potentially uncontrollable, until the traditional dialectics of social
conflict fell apart. 

One of the reasons why the factories began to accelerate their
decentralisation/automatisation in the seventies was because the work-force
had become either openly riotous or subtly 'defeatist', unreliable. There's
a huge amount of oral history about the undetectable tactics mass workers
used to sabotage the assembly line in order to slow down production and take
some rest. From the managers' point of view, that was what a modern
operaista would call "a waste of general intellect". Such "proletarian
knowledge" might be recuperated into production. That's what Toyotism is
about: the workers are exhorted to make a 'collaborative' use of their
first-hand knowledge of the machinery. Instead of using errors and  flaws to
sabotage production, they are requested to find solutions, and are rewarded
with a rise in their salary. It is called "Total Quality".

Since the accumulation of relative surplus-value has changed the whole
society (and not only the workplace), we've got a new version of the "social
factory", that is the "information society", and obviously a
"net-production". This newest sub-mode of production is increasingly
generating new, subtler tactics of grassroots sabotage, as well as new ways
of repressing/defusing/recuperating them (even videogame-exterminating
software hunting games on the employees' computers and automatically
deleting them so that the bastards won't waste time), but this time it's
happening on a higher, non-dialectical level.


saluther. 


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</content>
</mail>
<mail>
<nbr>36.0</nbr>
<subject>Syndicate: [net.INSTITUTE.it] Call for partecipations and contributions</subject>
<from>Luther Blissett Project</from>
<to>n/a</to>
<date>Fri, 16 Jul 1999 11:24:19 +0200 (MET DST)</date>
<content>dear frieds,
below you find a fast abstract of the new media lab project [beta-version!] that the Luther Blissett Project in Italy has developed in the last two months. It's the first italian project in the field of new media and net culture, with a critical approach, I mean.

There is no kind of new media-oriented centre in Italy. No content provider/developer in net culture. Ours would be the first one, small but connected to the european scene. We are working to eliminate this gap and to introduce italian artists and activists into what we call [from Italy] the "north" european network. We have got an european fund of 10.000 euros and we hope to open in October in Bologna.

[If someone needs details, I can describe the sad italian situation in the field of new media and net culture from institutions to underground.]

This is a call for partecipations and contributions for the [few] syndicalists based in Italy and not. Comments and suggestions from the northern :) Europe are welcome.

worksite, only in italian:   http://utenti.tripod.it/net_i

ciao,
 matteo
 Luther Blissett Project
 Bologna - Italy



______net.INSTITUTE Project______________
___________________by Luther Blissett____

     open architecture project___urban interface
     public netbase___new media centre
     Bologna___Italy

                     _
               __   (_)
        ______/ /  __
       /_  __  /  / /
        / /_/ /__/ /__
       / ____________/
      /_/

Das Institut               http://utenti.tripod.it/net_i
F&#252;r Netzkultur             net_i@iname.com
            \                    |
             net.INSTITUTE project
             |                    \
Urban interface                   Luther Blissett
Bologna, Venice, Milan...         open/architecture pop star

 #i

Italy shows a wide technological, cultural, political gap in the field of
new media culture: there is no kind of new media project or event alike the
ones existing in "northern" Europe. The Luther Blissett Project designed
this experimental net-based centre in order to introduce in Italy, starting
from the city of Bologna, the european net culture, in an easy, fast and
pop way. In brief, it is an inexpensive all-in-one new media centre :).

 #i

The net.INSTITUTE, as its name suggests, is an hybrid between the net of
the metropolis and the information architecture of the internet, between
the social, urban, architectural spaces and the media-scape. The
net.INSTITUTE is a conceptual architecture work ejected into the real
world. It considers the city the field of action of the net: it is an urban
interface of the net and of net culture.

 #i

The Luther Blissett Project has put in this project its media activism
experience and networking attitude. The Luther Blissett Project is a
collective of media activists that organized in the last years, in Italy as
well as in Europe, mediatic hoaxes and counterinformation campaigns, in the
name of Luther Blissett. Luther Blissett is a multiple name: whoever can
use it in the most creative and freest way. LB is a networked mass avatar
on the media stage, piloted from the net: an open architecture pop star.
The net.INSTITUTE is its urban and architectural implementation.

 #i

"We shape our tools, and thereafter they shape us" [Marshall McLuhan]. 

The net.INSTITUTE is a trans-architecture project. It's not a city metaphor for
another alienated virtual community but an urban project to embody the
structure and the content of the net, as a net and by means of it. It
doesn't imitate the appearance of the medium but its deep framework.

 #i

"Metropolis is the becoming-cyberspace of the urban territory" [Franco
Berardi aka Bifo].

The concept of urban interface is the opposite of that of
digital communities and cities. The urban interface breaks with the
cultural dominance of discourses about cyberspace, virtual, simulation. The
net.INSTITUTE is a physical, social, mediatic space controlled and
constructed by the net.

 #i

The name and the concept of the 'Institute' were chosen to give up the hype
about virtual and cyberspace, and as a strategy of retro-avantgardism [see
Neue Slovenische Kunst, Electronic Embassy, Laibach, Luther Blissett
itself]. It is also a joke, and a reflection about the institutionalization
of the subcultural movements.

 #i

The net.INSTITUTE is a project for "hacking" the architectural and
urbanistic code, not only an info-communication one. Hacking means
deconstructing a tool to understand the way it works and to rebuild it in a
personal, creative way. In terms of computer science, the net.INSTITUTE is
the urban "implementation" of the net.

 #i

The Net.INSTITUTE web interface works as groupware, a space for collective
brainstorming, a field for the connective/collective intelligence. It
structures itself, in progress, to be a "technology of intelligence"
[Pierre Levy]. The Net.INSTITUTE's framework, functions, links, spaces can
be redefined by users experimenting hybrid, creative, surrealistic
architectures, by making up other "institutes". The net.INSTITUTE, inspired
by situationists' psycogeography and urbanism, uses the city as a map for
the network and the latter as a map for the city. The interface works as a
conceptual map that has to be subsequently developed in the real space. The
Scheme is the Medium.

 #i

The net.INSTITUTE is a multiple building. Its name means NETWORKED
INSTITUTE. Everyone can integrate net.INSTITUTE architecture with public or
personal spaces, bodies, events, devices, theories, computers, photos,
files, imgs, projects. The image and the structure produced on the net,
thereafter, shape the urban space. The net.INSTITUTE is a sort of political
role-game: the city is not considered as an established identity but as a
collective interface continuously reshaped by its users. The net.INSTITUTE
uses the net to catalyze social life.

 #i

A proof of the outcome of the net.INSTITUTE within the urban texture is
Das Institut [a german name in an italian-speaking context!], a low-tech
minimal retro-avantgardistic sub-project, a youth sub-cultural interface devoted
to urban space exploration and "mass engineering", events organisation,
'old-style' media art activism, parties, psychogeographical investigations
and drifts.

 #i

The net.INSTITUTE is a medium-building.

 #i

thanks to:
 The Society for Old and New Media, Amsterdam, http://www.waag.org/
 Public Netbase t0, Vienna, http://www.t0.or.at/

 #i
___    
                 _
           __   (_)
    ______/ /  __
   /_  __  /  / /  
    / /_/ /__/ /__
   / ____________/
  /_/
  
  DAS INSTITUT             http://utenti.tripod.it/net_i
  F&#220;R NETZKULTUR           net_i@iname.com
           \                    |
            net.INSTITUTE project
            |                    \
  urban interface             LUTHER BLISSETT
  Bologna, Venice, Milan...   open/architecture pop star

SUBSCRIBE #i-info list! 
mailto:net_i@iname.com?subject=[#i] subscribe
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