by Luther Blissett » Wed Mar 16, 2011 7:05 pm
In the fall of my senior year at design school, I was tasked with choosing a thesis subject for my senior design project. It'd be a book that we'd be expected to design, produce, and bind multiple, identical copies of.
I really liked the magazine Dazed and Confused; mainly because I consider myself to be pretty well culturally-informed and that magazine was really ego-busting in that regard. Every issue seemed like this universe that was impossible to tap into; it almost felt like a hoax at times (reminding me of a handful of "punk"-ish zines which hoaxed entire scenes in little rural towns in my teenage years, which were delivered to shows in larger cities. I fell for it once and went on a drive looking for one of these areas in the middle of the night, TOTALLY believing that there was a Star Wars collectible-themed antique store, jazz cafe, and 24-hour diner in this little old PA Dutch burg in the middle of nowhere). The subtitles often read like this: "This month, Dazed visits with Eskewich+Elkevitch, the dynamic pair whose new work in the Maidstone Covenant scene has been exploding for the last 18 months or so. Come take a dive amongst the tulips and gypsies with us." Like, WTF does any of that even mean? I just read an introduction that tells me absolutely nothing about the article I'm about to read. Work? Exploding? Google any phrase for hints of context and get nothing. Maybe it was because I am American and just couldn't understand what they were talking about, but I always took delight in exploring these strange unknowns.
Anyway, Dazed is primarily an avant fashion and culture magazine, but back then it was a little more heavy on the culture, and the actual layout of the magazine was genre-pushing. I have held onto the old random copies that I would have purchased back then. It was the "Word" issue that year which covered a lot of literature and gonzo journalism. Towards the back I stumbled upon a piece on Luther Blissett. It was, at its very essence, confusing; and this, more than most other pieces contained within, seemed as fake as could possibly be.
Luther Blissett was an anonymous, deconstructed multiple-personality street project carried out by anarchists from Bologna, largely against the fascism of Prime Minister Berlusconi. Blissett was a former footballer from the UK who had once played for AC Milan, one of Berlusconi's teams. Through some sort of good old fashioned Italian racism, Blissett was derided and sent back to the UK. His name seemed like a perfect symbol with which to attack the establishment.
A lot of what I found at first was rather heady, dry, masculine, and heavy on the Eco-isms - especially on the Luther Blissett website at the time. The deeper I went, the more romantic I found it, and their projects, to be. I tried to imagine a graffitied, mobile anarchist talk radio van on rainy Bologna streets at 3am, the gatecrashed bus parties, a chimp on television, the delightful exposure of psyops in colorful 90's Italian mass media, a Reformation-era tale told in swarthy modern language. I settled on doing my thesis project on Blissett, largely based on the Dazed article, which in and of itself seemed almost to be part of it. I felt that the themes of the legend fit well with the personal story I was starting to develop in my style which would eventually lead me to success in my field - carrying the themes of modernism, socialism, dissent, beauty, ecology and optimism.
The production of the book was invigorating and I would often have my professor literally howling with delight. He wanted me to be outside, doing THINGS, and using them in the book. It was one of my favorite times in my life and set me up well for a very creative, very wild post-graduate year.
In the end, my thesis was a success, and the Luther Blissett project eventually because Wu Ming. I felt that it had lost a bit of its jangly, 90's eurolustre, but everyday I could see the spirit of the project being carried out in new ways. While in totality it seemed to be happening completely outside of the realm of the harsh realities of the Bush administration, much of the groundwork laid by Blissett and Wu Ming is alive today in cultural spaces occupied by Anonymous, 4chan, Wikileaks, and this place (the analysis wing of the contemporary web activist universe). It often informs me, in the back of my mind, with any activism I take part in. And as a nom de plume which very specifically states to the world "I am anonymous", what a perfect handle.
It was only later, after I pulled a faux pas in the General Discussion by posting not only a personal appeal, but one that revolved around child abuse, was I informed of one Blissett project that is not written about very much and of which I, a self-professed Blissett expert, was unaware (and even now, a search of Luther Blissett and "satanic panic" returns little results of substance). Knowing what I know about the project, its founders and its spirit, I cannot say what the motivation was behind this. However, it certainly ruffled some here and made them very suspicious of me. I promise that I was genuinely unaware, and hope that most people here do not associate my username with satanic panic.
I am very fond of the history behind this username and think that the very small, very localized operations it carried out in Italy in the mid-to-late 1990's really set the stage for modern dissidents using internet / real life means to carry out humorous pranks and attacks on present-day fascist entities. That could just be romantic old me, but it's still a rather straight path when studied in the broader scope.
The Rich and the Corporate remain in their hundred-year fever visions of Bolsheviks taking their stuff - JackRiddler
