WEIRD DANCING IN ALL-NIGHT computer-banking lobbies. Unauthorized pyrotechnic displays. Land-art, earth-works as bizarre alien artifacts strewn in State Parks. Burglarize houses but instead of stealing, leave Poetic-Terrorist objects. Kidnap someone & make them happy. Pick someone at random & convince them they’re the heir to an enormous, useless & amazing fortune—say 5000 square miles of Antarctica, or an aging circus elephant, or an orphanage in Bombay, or a collection of alchemical mss. Later they will come to realize that for a few moments they believed in something extraordinary, & will perhaps be driven as a result to seek out some more intense mode of existence.
Bolt up brass commemorative plaques in places (public or private) where you have experienced a revelation or had a particularly fulfilling sexual experience, etc.
Go naked for a sign.
Organize a strike in your school or workplace on the grounds that it does not satisfy your need for indolence & spiritual beauty.
Grafitti-art loaned some grace to ugly subways & rigid public momuments—PT-art can also be created for public places: poems scrawled in courthouse lavatories, small fetishes abandoned in parks & restaurants, xerox-art under windshield-wipers of parked cars, Big Character Slogans pasted on playground walls, anonymous letters mailed to random or chosen recipients (mail fraud), pirate radio transmissions, wet cement…
The audience reaction or aesthetic-shock produced by PT ought to be at least as strong as the emotion of terror— powerful disgust, sexual arousal, superstitious awe, sudden intuitive breakthrough, dada-esque angst—no matter whether the PT is aimed at one person or many, no matter whether it is "signed" or anonymous, if it does not change someone’s life (aside from the artist) it fails.
PT is an act in a Theater of Cruelty which has no stage, no rows of seats, no tickets & no walls. In order to work at all, PT must categorically be divorced from all conventional structures for art consumption (galleries, publications, media). Even the guerilla Situationist tactics of street theater are perhaps too well known & expected now.
An exquisite seduction carried out not only in the cause of mutual satisfaction but also as a conscious act in a deliberately beautiful life—may be the ultimate PT. The PTerrorist behaves like a confidence-trickster whose aim is not money but CHANGE.
Don’t do PT for other artists, do it for people who will not realize (at least for a few moments) that what you have done is art. Avoid recognizable art-categories, avoid politics, don’t stick around to argue, don’t be sentimental; be ruthless, take risks, vandalize only what must be defaced, do something children will remember all their lives—but don’t be spontaneous unless the PT Muse has possessed you.
Dress up. Leave a false name. Be legendary. The best PT is against the law, but don’t get caught. Art as crime; crime as art.
Credits
- Hakim Bey, Pseud. of Peter Lambert Wilson (1945 – ) is an author whose books include TAZ, Autonomedia Anti-copyright, 1985, 1991, Millenium, Autonomedia & Garden of Delight, Anti-copyright, 1986, and Immediatism, AKPress Anti-copyright, 1994
Read more...
Where is Feminism in Cyberfeminism? by Faith WildingOK TEXTS by Mark Amerika
Abstraction and Complexity by Lev Manovich
Disciplining The Avant-Garde, The United States versus The Critical Art Ensemble by Gregory Sholette
Challenges for a Ubiquitous Museum: Presenting and Preserving New Media by Christiane Paul
Negotiating Identities by Jette Sandahl
The Work of Artists in a Databased Society: net.art as on-line activism by Ricardo Miranda Zúñiga
Prosthetic Head: Intelligence, Awareness and Agency by Stelarc
The Artist as Public Intellectual by Simon Sheikh
Robotic Art Chronology by Eduardo Kac
Note
The content of this site is authored and/or edited by NeMe members and other contributing writers.
The material published in this site may include views or recommendations of third parties, which do not necessarily reflect the views of NeMe, or indicate its commitment to a particular course of action.
Copyright
© 2005 - 2008, Hakim Bey.
IMCA