1978 Berlin Boys

Tom Joslin and Mark Massi were on a bowling team with me in the fall of 1977, calling ourselves the Berlin Boys in homage to Iggy Pop's The Idiot and David Bowie's Low lps. We took the bowling league seriously, as did other teams--one of which bought the from-the-catalogue bowling outfits. The Berlin Boys went with hand silk-screen tees. One of my scars comes from a bowling competition, as I stubbed out onto the back of my left hand a cigarette, standing at the scoring desk of the bowling lane before my turn to bowl.

October 1978

The day of a performance planned for Marie Thibeault's studio party, I was practicing my poses, working throughout the day with at least two packs of Polaroid film. The white wall with black ties and tape allude to the photo documentation of actions by the the Viennese artist Rudolf Schwarzkogler. I'd bought a catalog the summer of 1977 at the gallery, Rene Block, which represented Joseph Beuys and Schwarzkogler.

First Half of 1978

Using a Polaroid camera to document myself, my actions, and my transformations, instead of a Kodak Instamatic or more rarely a 35mm camera, as i had used previously, began in the fall of 1977 in Florence, Massachusetts. Living with Mark Massi and Tom Joslin [see "Silverlake Life"] that fall, I first used a Polaroid Land camera then a One-Step SX-70 to capture my ManicPanic 'Peacock Blue' color hair. Mark shot the Land camera images and I took the One-Step shots, using a ten-second self-timer. the Land camera shots are the upper top left of the left-hand image. "Look, I was already a pillow biter!" These Land camera images began a year-plus of performances for the camera, steps for the One-Step, about two hundred in these four snaps.
The One-Step SX-70s continued with my move back to San Francisco, arriving "home" on New Year's Eve, 1977/78. While New Year's Eve was spent at a friend's apartment above 18th & Castro, by the end of January I was on Pierce Street, just off Duboce Park. 1978 is the first time in 4 or 5 years I live one full year in one place; not just one city, but one place, apartment...flats, as we call them in SF. One year + one flat = 1978.

One of my main causes of concern is that I feel I have no concise theories similar to Rudolf Schwarzkogler’s “Art as experience training and as the destruction of all established ideas about life... painting as therapy... Art is a cure against addiction... chains of experience.” [Nov. 22, 1978]

Identity Is the Crisis Can't You See

I honor the life of Poly Styrene, who passed away from breast cancer complications [http://www.spinner.com/2011/04/26/poly-styrene-dead/]. The performance piece of falling from a skateboard [see Jan. 7 entry] was preceded by my playing "Identity" by Poly's band X-Ray Spex while I changed into grey tights. I wore the tights under my jeans; I would later shred the tights from my body after the piece went south, interrupted by an audience member who didn't want to watch me throw myself from a skateboard agaisnt the concrete floor of Marie's studio.



In an entry of November 6, 1978, I write: "I ignore my role. I fall, consciously, into the Poly Styrene syndrome - basic paranoia...I need to look out for self. No, I need to be more conscious." Wrestling with whom I should be, much as Marianne Elliot-Said would more seriously be, as it turned out.

Stand Tall 'Cause You're An Art Student

The billboard paper-background series is early October, whereas the red t-shirt Polaroid is from a series shot in two packs on the day of a performance, described in an earlier post, at which I attempted to capture an image of my falling from a skateboard. The red t-shirt series resulted in about eight shots that remain, playing with the motif of 'tying off' and intravenous tubing, imitating images from Actions in the mid-sixties by Rudolf Schwarzkogler.




October 1978 "Nails in wall under board, similar to bondage wall, to hand ropes, objects for props for photos"

Two Characters--September 1978

Those are my two characters--
one has emotions, the other writes them down.
No need to guess which is the external character.

Reviewing my work in August 1978

I look at my photos and think, well, what is the point? Where would I even take them, why should I want to take them out of their cheap snapshot reality? Why belabor such a point? And why go on … with school, art trendies, etc.
My desire to take pictures--usually there is no “photograph” I want want to shoot, just want to participate in the act. The setting up, the posing for the time.

When trying to make the poster for Judy, I was thinking, “Well this fits in with the current style of mine, and this will be viewed as....” Real asshole art stuff.

Repeating old excesses by shooting Instamatics so far. Not that I ever started out w/ preconceived ideas but still sitting and grimacing isn’t doing it.

Have done some other photos, pseudo outside (billboard), Marine emblem stuff. Just no movement things as usual. Cleaned up room a little, rearranged posters and billboards, thought of the bag of 45s as an art piece, little brown baby pinned to it. A punk environment. No one else, outside of 4 or 5 people, has tried the setting up in a gallery a normal room. Mostly it has been as an effort to breakdown what is and isn’t art/life. Taking that for granted nowadays and presenting life as we know it. Theatre.

Pretending to be an artist

Art pose, Art prose. ↓ BAD WRITING ↓
Pretending to be an artist.
Feigning a background.
Imitating your heroes.
Calling attention to a fluke/a stroke of good luck, not genius.
Wanting to be in w. the art crowd.
The thrill egoism of being able to say "I went to school with _____."

____________________________
Communication breakdown - an idea from 1970.
those words aren't used. The punks aren't attempting to define a generation gap. They are acknowledging that there is one, --- "Your Generation," "Youth, Youth, Youth," "Wild Youth." I guess that indicates some form of definition, some statement of place in society.
Offer no alternatives, state the conflict.
I want to be in a group.
I want to join.
I want to feel a part of something.
I want to be rebellious within reason, so as to be still acceptable to society.

Sportswear, the band before Voice Farm

Journal entry, July 4, 1978: A small party for Charly...over at Gary and Barbie’s, with Steven, Steven, Matthew, Carol, two men I didn’t know. Fruit salad, bagels, meats, pie and Jack’s own date orange bread, from Quick Mix recipe. Made Charly two small photo pieces--one photo from Burke catalog--”this is a job for C. F. Brown,” and a photo from January of me (SX70) red hair, posing with Jeffrey’s acoustic guitar, white presstype around bottom and right hand side reading “I auditioned for SPORTSWEAR” . He seemed pleased. Charly and Steven went this afternoon to a fashion picnic, Charly apparently being asked for a date by someone--Am I jealous? I don’t think I should ever pose that question to myself again. It is stupid of me.

Am listening to a tape I made last night at Mark’s. Kathy took back her stereo, so I had to get some new music on tape. All the other stuff is from last fall. Now have Laura Logic, Teenage Jesus, Throbbing Gristle and the Alternative TV LP, “the Image Has Cracked.” Am just resting, trying to keep on top of this cold I have again. Slept a lot yesterday, missing out on seeing Charly for his birthday.
3:30 p.m.--thoughts while listening to Laura Logic and reading the Individuals book and Douglas Davis’s Artculture, thinking about punk. For Charly’s birthday, Steven bought him Essential Logic. I’ve been exposing people to it right and left. Marie and Mickey know the vocal inflections of that one and also X-Ray Spex’s Day-Glo, Teenage Jesus & the Jerks’ “Orphans” b/w “Less of Me.” All of these blew me away, and I play them for all. Don Vynil is always saying that the Offs aren’t punk. I feel I can’t discuss it anymore. What is, was punk?

You Can't Trust Redheads

you can't trust redheads.
You can't trust redheads.

red dreams red scream
red scare red cigarettes
red information red pants
red ties red, white and blue, I love you
red/dead

red scars on my hands, red hair on my hands/head.
red cot/red costs
red well red shoes red shirt red pants red socks red lips to intice you with



red im ge
sympathizing with the commies, they're up against an american wall
red, white and blue bunting.

On my calendar, red signifies a new week, starting out once again on the same old routine
not enjoying life all that much.

Someone asked me if the reason that I changed so much was because I wasn't content with my looks but I answered that on the contrary, I am satisfied enough to be able to change.

I owe three thousand dollars to the school.
I owe a month's back rent.
I owe fifty dollars a moth for my red Mercedes.
If I wasn't in the red already, I would something to become so.

Red Painting No. 5


a typewritten sheet from early 1978--Red Painting No. 5 is the painting destroyed at the SF Art Institute New Wave Show mentioned in another entry. Some nights I typed my journal entries, thinking the speed of the typewriter helped me think, captured better the thoughts rushing fast through my brain. The clack of the keys echoing the emerging electro-punk/post punk of the Screamers and the French punk band Metal Urbain. I write of wanting a rhythm machine, a percussion box. Screamers drummer K.K. played a drum set and ran a rhythm machine, kicking me fast in the face. Sound was the new visual art.
"If I wasn't in the red already, I would buy something to become so," and how true that is.

Note from 1978 journal about all the bands forming

July 7, 1978 (1:30 a.m.) "Now, in the immediate future, I will be needing to practice, the band is on the way. Three, no four, bands, I know of on the way in SF: IUD, Sportswear, Dead Kennedys, and Joy’s band, who at least have a place to play/practice. The Offs seem almost big-time, with offers to play LA and Cleveland."

Catching myself falling from a skateboard

a performance in which I tried to time myself falling off a skateboard to the ten-seconds of the Polaroid self-timer. I set the timer by rotating a plunger that would methodically wind back before plunging down to push the Polaroid One-step shutter button. The camera is propped on a step of a wooden step-ladder, facing the wall with my 45-rpm phono player, with the Stranglers' cover of the Burt Bacharach/Hal David classic "Walk on By" grinding out.
The piece began with me in an angry state, pissed off and probably piss drunk. I played X-Ray Spex "Identity" while changing into my performance clothes--grey tights beneath my jeans and red t-shirt. [News of the death of Poly Styrene come on the day I update this entry: http://www.spinner.com/2011/04/26/poly-styrene-dead/]



On the wall are a poster from New York post headline about the Son of Sam, an Itek photo enlargement of a self-portrait in center, and a grid of previously taken Polaroid self portraits on the right side of the wall. Of the five photos I have documenting the performance, three of the five show the same wall as two of the pics here.

"I've been trying to invent characters, someone else who could speak my lines.
Not that they could say them any better, but that you would accept them, my words, more readily. Coming from me, they sound didactic. Coming from an invented character, the words and the character seem to strike more chords."