Photos click for larger size detail.
19:45pm CST
Now updated with Facebook commentary.
21:47 pm, CST.
21:52 pm , CST. Edited to get rid of spammy-looking art sale, sorry.
20:23 pm CST, May 13, 2012 Blogpost abstract, edited from FB comment thread:
This is the summary of an essay that arose from FB commentary thread re: a proposed ten year jail term for wearing "masks" at Canadian protests, posted at the end of this blogpost. Please check out the pics and vid below and Pls tweet, stumble, FB, etc. Thanks
Puppet and mask street theatre is a court-recognised and historically significant artform and way of having a public voice, outside of socially-mandated "channels of communication". The proposed "ban on masks" can and will be abused to interfere-with and legitimise the abuse of puppet and mask troupes. I know it's not part of your daily reality, but these are great people and great artists working for you. In order to preserve it, it is necessary to acknowledge that public art is legitimate way to lobby our shared society, our shared mindspace as well as our political system. To agree that we are engaged in real conversation, to try to find areas of agreement. I am lobbying the room to agree that masks and/or the wearing of masks at our protests should NOT BE BANNED in Canada AND AFFIRM that public mask/mask-type/puppet theatre is a legitimate means of public expression. Considered responses only, please.PS: They want to put people in jail for ten years (10), for "wearing a mask" at a protest.
You are not endorsing a spanking, with your unthinking assent.
04:01 am, CST. May 14, 2012. Sent my MP an open letter.
Mr. John Rafferty, MP;
I don't know if you have heard this argument against the proposed mask ban and imprisonment legislation: It would begin to exclude or at least punish the puppet and mask street theatre techniques which are successful tool s to attract attention to the message of a protest. The proposed 10 year ban on "wearing of masks" could be abused as the blunt instrument and threat of official suppression of free speech. A "grey area" with exceptions to the rule would only leave wiggle room for prosecutors and riot police to arrest and prosecute first, then sort later.
Thank you, for your consideration.
Sincerely,
:Eric C. Keast
:Eric
This is a new painting, on an old canvas.
It's called SpinnerBait;
A "Colorado spinner"-type lure , permanently attached to a single-hooked
jighead, with rubber skirt.
It is designed to provide plenty of action at slow retrieve,
allowing the caster to plumb holes and structure.
The wire, swivel, rings and spinner-blade of this lure -without a lure, but with a snap- can be obtained at your local tackle shop. I've always called them colorado spinners, they come in a variety of colours but I like the metallic flavours and they can be attached to a wide variety of lures, other than "jigs".
There are some robust, heavy-gauge wire varieties of the spinnerbait, produced for freshwater musky and saltwater use, with large, heavy, multiple spinner-blades and interchangeable large-body rubber baits.
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Here is a recent clip from the Zzorhn And BingoRage episode, "The Privacy Apocalypse"
BingoRage Filthy Puppet Theatre
presents:
"1984 - deleted scenes (as reenacted by sock puppets {live})"
[The action starts about 03:12, but give the start a whirl.]
written by Eric C. Keast
produced by : Zzorhn
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The latest Zzorhn And BingoRage show (Season 02, Episode 17),
“The Mob Mentality Apocalypse” (link to Ustream.tv)
is in the metaphorical can. Episode notes, are as follows:
We are late. Our bandwidth problems. Video quality gets better two minutes in.
Intros. Penguins and polar bears do not fight. Feed back. (Eric has first breakdown at 8:00; does not want new show member, will consider a “hot intern”.) Zzorhn pimps his FB chatroom page. Eric warns against inviting the internet into your back yard.
Stealing blues songs is bad. Eric is angry. This is a comedy podcast.
Skit, re: Montreal taxi driver hit and run. Eric wears a suit, get corporated by Zzorhn. (18:20) I object. Horse puckey. Hello DanniPants 24:51. Watch Montreal taxi driver hit and run after Zzorhn vamps in blue. Eric says the tax driver abused an imbalance of power and is therefore in the wrong. Eric then tries to make the point that our government and corporations are increasingly abusing the imbalance of powers in society?
We want to see the missing video of previous time; how much is missing? Eric drops knowledge about Canadian news and P.Q. Student riots as backdrop to this story.
Art review: Papier-mache rattle and puppet. 50:25. Describe papier-mache process with foam and clay model, transfer to handle for "functional sculpture"; war club theme.
The internet is built for cats, 52:04. What a good JohnnyCat.
53:45 Pack mentality. Safety in numbers, power in numbers. Our fractal metaphors don't surprise me. We like to think we have free will. Everybody likes dogs; even if they have sexual needs and Eric's bestiality fear. Eric realises that Zzorhn is full of pooh. Again. Zzorhn implies that we are all in danger of succumbing to our animal nature, our pack nature; when exposed to a “mob”.Sathyrhana"Satyagraha" 1:03:00; Zzorhn is happy that I made a certain distinction. Eric says that the Internet is the veil drawn over your eyes and police risk dehumanising themselves by “alienisation”. The black bloc are agents provocateurs and a danger to peaceful protest.
1960's psychological experiments regarding imbalance of power, social behaviours beyond our control and the appeal of creeping fascism. Stanley Milgram, the Stanford Prison Experiment, The Third Wave . The" third wave" experiment is not well-documented, but seems to suggest that their is a leaning towards fascism, in our deeper pack mentality.
BingoRage Filthy Puppet Theatre (1: 17:00). Excuse me. 1:19:30 The Milgram experiment (as enacted by sock puppets). 1:23:50
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This canvas has a divot, created by long storage against a pointy thing. The fabric may rebound a little, but the dimensionality has been set in an acrylic matrix.
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Facebook comment update from May 12, 2012.
21:15 'ish pm, CST.
- (Okay; just had to interrupt the update to check out ruckus, at the window. My big old round cat, the brave Johnnycat, is sitting in the window and two ravens are sitting in the branch immediately outside the big panes, discussing how to dissect and share him. Johnny seems to love the attention. What a brave Johnny.)
Fellow forum members; please do not mistake my previous points as an endorsement of violence.
I am a staunch believer in the rights of "free speech" for all, "freedom from violence and threat of violence" for all and "freedom to have a voice in the affairs of my society" for all, which -for myself, yourself and others- is mostly limited to our shared pool of armchair political speech, by reasons of health, calendars and/or location. Other people who have access to city populations and seats of government can lobby the actual physical persons whom represent us, or wish to "manufacture our consent" (Noam Chomsky), in person. Their bodies , their rights and their privacy are being broken and battered for us, a significant portion of the population (Perhaps for you at times and in the interests of my intellectual foes, occasionally.). They represent me, because they are brave for me, for us and even for you, occasionally.
What, then does this have to do with the wearing of a mask? Why would a person wear a mask? There are only two polar answers, you cannot deny one or the other:
a) Because they are a criminal, or have “done something wrong” and wish to escape punishment.
OR
b) There actions were legitimate and they wish to preserve their privacy for legitimate reasons, and wish to escape punishment.
If you say there are no legitimate reasons to preserve your privacy and the wearing of masks at protest is a criminal act, then you are endorsing punishment for what you consider “immoral beliefs and/or actions”, not a crime against person or property. These are fear-based reactions accessed by your consciousness when you perceive someone else as an “other”, not an intellectual judgement. This is the animal response system that propaganda, advertising, political media messages, canned news, press releases and the emerging “arena-politics” play with.
Zzorhn speaks to the pack mentality in our most recent show ("Mob Mentality" link above).
I can prove that there is at least one legitimate reason to wear a mask to a protest. Without a doubt and beyond contravention. (Unless, of course, you are just a mindless troll for your set beliefs{ERIC; Cite particular meaning “reactionary, provoking online behaviour”}, hijacked by some malevolent, reactionary memeplex that you are not aware of, yet.)
If the protestors are using theatre and artistic tools to tell their story and voice their position, such as puppet and mask presentations, then these are legitimate, timeless means of public media, public voice. Please, let us not get into the game of creating exceptions to an atrocious rule (that only gives police and prosecutors a "grey area" to arrest people in); please just admit that there is a legitimate reason to wear a mask to a protest.
If it is your contention that this is not a legitimate means of public expression, then you really may be irrelevent and have to reevaluate what it means to be human, for yourself. You are without art, or in denial extremis: going insane with the contradictions that you are allowing to fire around the inside of your head.
When you see a gathering of people labeled as a “violent protest” -regardless of your political stance, economic stance, religious stance, urban vs. Rural stance, right/left position, etc.- You, I and everyone else should be held accountable to recognise there are many social systems in place to label and shape how you perceive that event. That doesn't mean that everything is a lie; don't live in fear, live in ongoing evaluation. Look at different sources and actually read the arguments.
You have to acknowledge, not that you are wrong, but that you may not be correct, this time.
No one person is ever right all the time and you should be suspicious, when the media and social sources you choose to believe, echo what you think is right.
Most people in the past chose not to dig too deeply into the “official story” of events in our society because it was a hard thing to do, and dangerous, as the bodies of murdered journalists around the world and the beating and imprisonment of media in our own countries would attest to. However, nowadays, we have access to more information, as an increasingly participatory audience, that was supposed to be hidden from us by distance and official silences and denials. Or sources are augmented by the spread of cameras, phones and connectivity; the evolving “participatory panopticon” (Jamis Cascio) that we are embedded-in and growing. It is becoming a powerful tool to criticise the behemoth of government with accessible, proveable numbers, photos, video, scientific research... real evidence that is increasingly sourced and produced in a non-university, non-corporate, non-governmental, non-NGO fashion. It is open-sourced, crowd-sourced grassroots that is in increasing danger of suppression.
I speak about the erosion of free speech so much, because it really is on the rise. When I was growing up, my generation X and the previous generation of Baby Boomers (now in power, a huge segment of the population) grew up in fear of the official enemy of North America (Yes, Canada, too, was frightened). They were the bad guys, because they were a torturing, totalitarian state and closed market, where free speech, free movement and economic innovation was not allowed. We, were the champions of life, liberty, freedom from torture and “cruel and unusual punishment”, good governance and free markets. Well, we beat the Soviet Union and now we are embracing and endorsing an emerging, creeping totalitarianism, that is already endorsing the tactics of oppression and suppression that once were accusations leveled at the “thuggish KGB”.
When we allow the nonstop, persistent erosion of civil rights on the ground and in the evolving online fora, we are endorsing the punishment of legitimate criticism. Sure, that means that bad actions will still occur, but that is what our legal system and prison system is for..
the punishment of bad actions,
not the punishment of the desire to preserve our rights, our privacy.
A mask is speech; it says that "you frighten me and I do not want you to find me", for good reason or ill.
Saying that a person is not allowed to protect themselves from official violence means that you endorse the official punishment of people you disagree with. Therein lies the road to fascism. It is subtle and seductive to say: "violence is wrong, unless it is used against someone with whom I do not agree, even if they are right".
There is an Indian word, "Satyagraha", which means "insistence on truth". It has spiritual interpretations, of course, but I like the real world insistence on the truth, a "reality-based" world, where evidence has primacy over "gut reactions". It means that humanity should base its decisions on the realities of the world, not the "just-so" stories about the environment, the afterlife, evolutionary science and "dirty, violent protestors" that we share with people that think like us.
I do not fear the increasing surveillance that we are all subject to, as long as it is evenly distributed. When all politicians, corporate executives, policemen and bureaucrats -you and I, as well- are subject to the same level of scrutiny as everyone else and our free speech is truly protected, then all corruption, unnecessary violence and stealing would disappear, theoretically.
But, if the people in charge use the surveillance state only on "us, the population" (yes, you too), if the elite/aristocracy/police/oligarchs/politicians/whomever can “switch it off" ala 1984 (G. Orwell) and operate criminally without fear of legitimate consequence, then the corruption and insanity of contradictions above us is insulated from change. Allowing the erosion of rights for some, endorses the erosion of all your rights.
This comment started out as a response to a previous posting, but I would now like to announce an initiative for the forum: Could we as a loose, rather random group of folks with widely varying views actually work together to create shared public documents, manifestos that are sets of shared agreement on how to fix the world, or at least little parts of it, a little at a time. I propose the hashtag #ZBGmanifesto to tag future proposal/discusion on the Bar and Grill page.
If you have stayed with me, so far, then "Bravo."
Have I spoken to the rationale within you and convinced you that the wearing of masks to a protest should not be illegal?
The short version of my blogpost: Puppet and mask street theatre is a court-recognised and historically significant artform and way of having a public voice, outside of socially-mandated "channels of communication". The "ban on masks" will be abused to interfere with and legitimise the abuse of puppet and mask troupes. I know it's not part of your daily reality, but these are great people and great artists working for you. In order to preserve it, it is necessary to acknowledge that public art is legitimate way to lobby our shared society, our shared mindspace as welll as our political system. To agree that we are engaged in real conversation, to try to find areas of agreement. I am lobbying the room to agree that masks and/or the wearing of masks at our protests should NOT BE BANNED in Canada AND AFFIRM that public mask/mask-type/puppet theatre is a legitimate means of public expression. Considered responses only, please.
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Eric, in front of the "Northwestern Ontario Warrior Walleye, Not A Fucking Zander" canvas.
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