Album #18, Festival of Plagiarism, San Francisco 1988

The Festival of Plagiarism (FOP) ran continuously from 6pm, Friday, Feb. 5 - 10pm to Sunday, Feb. 7th, 1988 at ATA art space in the Mission. The FOP was organized by Scott MacLeod, Laura Brun & Stephen Perkins with the help of many others. This photo would seem to document some activity taking place at the opening reception for the festival.

SPK "Meat Joy," performance.

SPK body prints.

Random crowd photo.

Harvey Stein and Cynthia De Moss.

Harvey Stein and Cynthia De Moss.

"Plagiarism as a positive artistic technique," panel discussion (l-r) Leslie Singer, Barrett Watten, Nayland Blake (moderator), Minnette Lehman (1928-2026), Csaba Polony (1944-2014), Michael Peppe & Marshall Weber.

Different activities were taking place simultaneously in different areas of the gallery space.

Performances were taking place overnight in the window of the gallery.

Sue Carlson and others in the gallery window area.

Marshall Weber up in the rafters doing a performance in another space in town not associated with the FOP.

Manet's, Le déjeuner sur l'herbe (Luncheon on the Grass), 1863/1988 with Sigi Torinus model/director.

The grand finale: Sigi Torinus' "Last Supper."

A year later the documentation for the festival was printed. Total revenue from the weekend: $1824, minus rental to ATA we cleared $912. After deducting costs of $684 we had a net profit of $228, and these last monies were used to photocopy this festival documentation.

Album #17, San Francisco 1988/89

This is Sue Grant-Marsh (a fellow brit) and somehow she embroiled me and another woman (in photo at right) to be the stars in her final film for college. Titled "8hrs Difference," the time difference between SF and the UK, it was fun being on the set, but I can't remember a thing about the plot now. Sue still lives in the area. The film never got completed.

 

Artists dancing.

In June of 1989 our community of artists in sf welcomed 3 artists from the UK (Andre Stitt, Shaun Caton & Tara Babel) on their performance tour stop in SF. Much drinking and fun was had. Here's Andre at the start of his piece in the basement of ATA.

Here's the basement at the end of Andre's piece.

Shaun did this powerful almost shamanic work in the basement and in the process created a very different world in that dark space.

Tara cooked up a different batch of anarchy upstairs.

Fathers and daughters, sometimes I guess dads can be a bit embarrassing!

More father and daughter love. 

The AIDS quilt in the Moscone center - very powerful.

Album #16, San Francisco 1988

Bill Caploe doing some kind of magic trick.

Somewhere on Market street.

When a bunch of visual and language poets & writers get together anything can happen.

Laura Shay at home.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti installs the sign for Jack Kerouac Alley in North Beach just across from City Lights Bookstore. The alley was formally known as Adler Alley.

Soon after the installation & ceremony Gregory Corso (1930-2001) turns up and things get difficult.

Cool artwork in the streets in the Mission.

Learnt some useful new skills from a day and night spent in Mendocino county during harvest season.

Food Not Bombs was this cool group that gave out free food to people in the park. I can't remember the details of what's happening here but they are about to be be forcibly removed by the cops.

Food Not Bombs the arrests begin.

Food Not Bombs.

April Jones and myself did this performance piece about onanism as part of the 'Discourses of Desire,' film night at ATA. Painted white and sitting on a plinth in the dark of the ATA basement we had looped onanistic films projected onto our naked bodies with an accompanying sound piece.

What was left after the piece with April.

Somewhere off Market street.

Another piece of mine where I used the then current slogan "Read My Lips: men use condoms of beat it." I like the other graffiti here and the woman settled in for the night.

Vivisection, the crew for the "Carnival of Faith" gig.

Somewhere off Market street.

Album #15, San Francisco 1988

This event took place at KPFA radio in Berkeley, and if i remember Tom Patrick gave us air time during his radio show "Over the Edge." We were reading plagiarized texts as publicity for the upcoming Festivals of Plagiarism.

Geza Perneczky is a Hungarian art historian and one of his interests is artists' periodicals. He came to stay in our home in the Mission and secretly was trying to get me to join him as an editor of his book on artists' periodicals. I didnt need pursuading and this important book "The Magazine Network" came out in Hungarian in 1991, and english in 1993. I'm listed as 'assistant editor'. 

Me and Geza probably arguing over some small detail...either way he considered me an expert on zines/artists' periodicals and i was happy to oblige him!

 

Geza took this photo of Arda and myself which I've always liked. By now we were living together in the Mission.

The beautiful Diego Rivera mural in the Art Institute of California - San Francisco.

The final and 4th issue of Box of Water. As you can see I've really got down my organization around collating etc...

Julie Murray, Irish film maker.

Missy on scooter, and on the right Todd and Bill Daniel. Bill has just published a book, 'Tri-X-Noise:', that chronicles in b/w photos 3 decades of punk, and all sorts of other cool underground stuff, check out details on getting a copy of the book and photos here: http://www.billdaniel.net/tri-x-noise/ 

Old Brit friend Stan who was a classical musician and passed way too early.

An english boy.

Selfie

Andrzej Dudek-Durer, a Polish visual and performing artist who was on a tour of the USA and I arranged an installation/performance at ATA for him. Andrzej is contemplating his 'art shoes' here.

More 'art shoes.'

Andrzej's installation at ATA.

After the gig.

Mission still life.