Black Pig Liberation Front
Boston, Massachusetts, United States | INDIE
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?Taking their title from the Situationist text by Raoul Vaneigem, and marshaling the forces of alchemy, magic and the words of Giles Deleuze and William S. Burroughs, this large ensemble explodes in a mess of 'signifying' to match any evangelist, vowing to raise your consciousness to a higher plane.?Their chaotic music theatre noise, propelled by HipHop beats, is supplemented by NYC experimentalists from Sonic Youth, Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo, Mike Watt from the Minutemen and guests including DJ Low and Nels Cline. The recording is a multi-layered nightmare; a sense of paranoia prevails, and shock tactic samples disrupt the smooth flow; the notion of 'the city as a jungle' never felt more resonant. The BPLF collective enschews the cult of personality and star systems; a strategy embodied in their colorful alternative names (my personal favorite is Kosimar The Magneticist). However it seems Denis Mahoney alias Tariq Zayid is the main ideas guy. A prolific poet and writer (and man behind Ring Tariq press), he declaims his inventive poetry against the heavy beats. The Black Pig is a mythical figure of rebellion, borrowed from Celtic religion by WB Yeats, although Zayid claims to have found parallels to the image across Europe and the Middle East. BPLF wear their terrifying pig masks at their ecstatic, shamanistic performances to promulgate the image of destruction. Like the semi-obliterated texts on the cover, Zayid's meanings are obfuscated by layers of additional sound collage from the Torres brothers and treated distorted vocal noises and the ubiquitous TV samples which overload tracks with information.?Each recording is a soundtrack map, filled with foreign hieroglyphs; as with Burroughs, hidden meanings will leak out through the gaps in this contrived chaos.??Ed Pinsent (Wire - London)
- Wire - London
The Revolution of Everyday Life
1.
If we are going to make anything happen
then we are going to have to get down to it ourselves,
because nobody is going to do it for us
if we have any power at all it is in each other
not politics, commodity
or our lives being sold out for product and so called 'progress', the unchecked consumption
of land/spirit/life, not any one thing:
art nature politics business religion or family
but once they are named and thought of as separate things
once they are not the daily expressions of life
with complete participation
desire existence
we end up not thinking for ourselves,
as person, as community, and as intimate participant
in the living woven pattern of the universe
2.
This is a call to end materialist vision
the failed consciousness that continues to play along a death fault
This is the Revolution of the event of Living Now
living everyday as if it mattered
The tragedy of modern mainstream civilization
is the externalization of the physical universe
we must have faith that we are not stuck
isolated in superiority
alienated from the world around us
but involved by our very breath in the cooperative design of all living things
to meet coincide superimpose
that the substance of yourself is nothing but yourself
so that the inside and outside are the same
in common with everything
every human being is an artist
just by being alive
3.
The possibility of destruction is always
implicit in the act of creation
the greatest enemy of individual freedom
is the individual; we cannot
be free unless we are willing to sacrifice at least some
of our own interests and desires
to guarantee the freedom of others
4.
we will move in the shadows and traces
of an impenetrable jungle moon loop ripple that haunts you forever
there are things that can be known
the integrity of the entire poetic corpus becomes an open force field to use
of action and perception
a secret (sacred) image of the pre-being received and heard by a
post-individual across all the intervening years
continuity - 'ceremonial time'
make use of what you can
what has been said what is being said
what will be said there are no beginnings or endings or climaxes
but processes, becoming
past and present in the poetic consciousness
are not the past and present of history and journalism
they are not that which was nor that which happens
but that which is being
that which is creating itself
'the continuous present'
5.
the success of any revolution,
whether individual
or as a community taking control
resides only in itself
precisely in the vibrations and openings
it gives to us at the moment of its making
composes in itself history and memory
root rot giggle done mound past in dark brown chamber earth
opening as beautiful as Mallarme's
imagined flowers, in the imagination,
dreams, hopes, and acts of us together
6.
Don't let anyone tell you how much better things were
at any other time or point in history
we are all dealing with the same struggle, the same thing
to make something of the breath given
we will live and create now
a generational mixing of ideas images distortions contours
desires examinations revolutions
to mix across the boundaries in swirls and gestures
understanding accepting attempting cultural transformation
the restoration of lostness, a remaking using
language biology philosophy technology patterns
noise love culture nature fun hate nation and anti-nation
space and blankness and imagination making worlds
anything that will open the whole
this life to invention
mixed collaborative creations
to make real our time, here
7.
to go about thiswe must start again as individuals
form small tribes in the contemporary sense
do what we can to subvert the destruction
of everything that lives
show by example
that we can be considered (a)part of the bioregions we inhabit
stand up and refuse to participate
in the death march
'revolution is not the overthrow of the existing system
but the setting up alongside of a better one'
8.
To know the spirit of a place
is to know that you are a part of a part
and that the whole is made of parts
each of which is a whole
start with the part you are whole in
9.
as our egoism dies in this new vision
as we are jerked and thrown in through
the gut and jaw and lungs
in and outside of ourselves
we are free to live in ways we never thought possible
a significance of transformation to become what you must
enter pattern complete magic argued
wonder seduce intone
10.
this spectacle of now is to confide to the future
the constantly renewed and resumed struggle
cast knots in patterns on top of patterns
free yourself of hierachization
develop action thought desires
through patterns of relations and juxtaposition
dwell in paradox and mystery
mistrust all rigid categories and logical alternatives
destroy the repeated forms of expression immediately
so as to make repetition and incorporation impossible
destroy all forms of oppression
against self, against otherness, nature, universe
and become a set of patterns
a beautiful tapestry of interactions
11.
that we might rest our heads in each other's hearts
- Mike Watt Hoot Page
"Black Pig Liberation Front is the most innovative band on the planet. Nobody on earth does or even comes close to doing what they do on stage. The word experimental doesn't come close to labeling or identifying them. They are the avant-garde cosmonauts diving headfirst into the unknown to fearlessly explore the unseen unheard they are the lightning bolt shaman creative warriors standing between worlds receiving messages translating them into music/word poems/songs/dance/rhythm/heartbeat. They dwell in space measure space with time and Black Pig Liberation Front adds the alchemical real magic rhythms that save us from the death of mundane life. Their last recording included Sonic Youth, Mike Watt, DJ Spooky, & other cutting edge life altering art/culture transformers. Black Pig Liberation Front will be one of Airwaves front headliners. They are Real Art Real Life." - literary renaissaince
Black Pig Liberation Front is history, philosophies, politics, patterns, technology, sociology, and impact of sound in art. Emphasizing that "none of the arts is entirely mute," the spectacle surveys the potential equality of aural and visual in the artistic hierarchy, the influence of aurality on various forms of art and cultural thought (and vice versa), the fluid boundaries between the concepts of noise and music, and Western vs. Eastern definitions of the voice. BPLF covers everything from the poetry of Diane di Prima and texts of Bataille, the films of Bunuel, the compositions of John Cage, and the paintings of Jackson Pollock to dripping water and body sounds. - Set Magazine - re-print
Their performances are a stream of intensity and psychic energy, a celebration of the greatest festival, that of tracing the ’self’. They will bring a new work to Plutopia 2009, part of a series of sessions, sound and lecture, confronting the intense entanglement of relations in artwork - individuals in?uencing wider dynamics - the impact on wider systems of interaction, including space, time, viewer, and the transformation of signi?cation from individual to communal use of art. In this case, the work of Beuys and Eno, as conceptualized by Black Pig Liberation Front. Titled Beuys, Eno, Sorcery, and Sound: Redistributing the Psycho-Spatial Stratum, they will use of Moog, samples, fabrics, blood, paper, plaster, glass, and so on… topped off with an interactive, interwoven fashion show. They will also touch on Urban Ecology and New Technologies: QR codes for community interactive participation.
Black Pig Liberation Front has presented a variety of ritualistic text/sound/body work. Utilizing frequencies as specific magical sound pulses to help induce the body in a fertility of text, the delirium of a dancer’s movement, the touch of the person next to you, sound vision flowing between contact. Drone pulse. Monkey Chant. An attempt to achieve ‘sacred time’ – as Bataille would call the moment of annihilation, ultimate inner experience, compounds, electrical waves. The impossible — as knowing what is beyond the model-building activity and the model itself does not lie within the scope of representational thought. It may be that every one of us is set upon the earth to find a new method of divination, a syntax of the heart to locate the center of ourselves in the structure of process. Across sexual platforms, cognitive science, gender, word, scent, movement, and sound to develop a theoretical and philosophical approach responsive to our changing understanding of our selves and our world. Is it possible to craft a mode of philosophy, ethics, and interpretation that rejects the classic humanist divisions of self and other, mind and body, society and nature, human and animal, organic and technological? Can a new kind of humanities — a post-humanities — respond to the redefinition of humanity’s place in the world by both the technological and the biological or “green” continuum in which the “human” is but one life form among many? Note: If text/sound/body project works as proposed in prepared setting, becomes ritualistic event. There is the possibility of confirmation.
(there is no audience here, only a communal experience). - Plutopia
Discography
1. Black Pig Liberation Front - The Revolution of Everyday Life, cd on Fringecore (w. Thurston Moore, Lee Ranaldo, DJ Spooky, Mike Watt, Nels Cline, Stephen Perkins, DJ, Low, plus numerous European DJs and musicians)
2. There No God but God, BPLF live show nyc: Cosmodemonic Telegraph
3. 7" vinyl on Pop Rocket Records:
Black Pig Liberation Front with Mike Watt (Minutemen, Stooges) and Kira (Black Flag)
4. Black Pig Liberation Front - Various Ways of Slaughtering a Pig, - new cd on Cosmodemonic Telegraph, January 2012.
5. limited edition cassette release 1000 copies, Force Gallery, San San Francisco, CA - opening, - Black Pig Liberation Front - Ambient Oscillations
6. track with Lykki Li, mix of tz & Lykki Li under BPLF sound-waves and 'little bit'
7. On club track-mixes, usually pre-show, after soundcheck, with various European DJs, on club dance compilations from Club Vera, Groningen Netherlands, Melweg, Amsterdam, Caimán Club, Antwerp.
We are played on radio stations, mostly college, or local, from CT College, Bard College, Chicago with friends The Ponys, Austin, TX, San Francisco, ambient set and literary interview with Tariq Zayid. In London, Groningen, Berlin, and in Amsterdam for a German tv show with Nick Cave, on literature.
Onboard Stubnitz, a converted fishing ship, now art collective in the Baltic and Northern Sea, our performance filmed, TZ did long interview, and our subversive art-chaos performance used in promotion of Stubnitz for summer sails; heading towards cities like Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Newcastle Upon Tyne, Hamburg, Sankt Petersburg and so on. Open invitation to perform anytime.
Through the highly awarded Nobel-nominated poet Ron Whitehead, we are played on Icelandic National Radio.
Tariq Zayid has also participated on independent panels at SxSW.
Many interviews set up by manager. As the sufi poet, tz goes wherever asked, to talk about BPLF aesthetics, performance details, critical theory/semiotics, avant-appropriation, exquisite decay, and books tz has written.
Photos
Bio
Frequencies are the Fetish
Black Pig Liberation Front started 1997-1998, when poetic terrorist Tariq Zayid, sound assassin DTorrs, and electronica explorer Anna Glebova-Soudekina were asked to give a performance at The Meer Dan Woorden Festival in The Netherlands based on Tariq Zayid''s book Black Pig (Hozomeen Press) containing several sections of tz's ongoing life-long pig text. The Situationist Spectacle was enhanced and organized when Ms. Pleasant joined the collective and became overall coordinator and organizer of body modulations.
BPLF uses a playful desire to rebel and repel. A play between the exoteric and esoteric, between wonder and decay, between a winter doing battle with a summer.
We are involved in the avant-garde scene, working with everyone from Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo, Mike Watt, DJ Spooky, Stanza from London, numerous DJs, noise artists - all on our first cd - DJ dance beat shows, the slow groaning controlled sensual feedback we use to play galleries and intimate spaces.
We have toured extensively across the United States and Europe and play SxSW on a regular basis. Black Pig Liberation Front is an ever-evolving collective creating zones of free, ecstatic, erotic, and experiences of terror. The YouTube videos give a little idea of what we do, and the tracks included, a sense of our production.
While we create situationist spectacles and soundscapes, it is literature (text) that started everything and provided an opening, or a compulsive, even convulsive, entering into the body of the poststructuralist / postmodern position of artist as one fragment within a realm of interpretations. We became opposed to meaning as a manufactured set of manipulated representations instead of open interpretations. By following these patterns of thought our sound evolved.
It is with literature we began and it is with literature, and its re-coding, that we continue to create fetishistic desires. We followed the ‘Death of the Individual Artist’ and made our entry into Collectivist Art.
Poet Gerrit Lansing said: "history, philosophies, politics, patterns, technology, sociology, and impact of sound in art. Emphasizing that "none of the arts is entirely mute," the spectacle surveys the potential equality of aural and visual in the artistic hierarchy, the influence of aurality on various forms of art and cultural thought (and vice versa), the fluid boundaries between the concepts of noise and music, and Western vs. Eastern definitions of the voice. BPLF covers everything from the poetry of Diane di Prima and texts of Bataille, the films of Bunuel, the compositions of John Cage, and the paintings of Jackson Pollock to dripping water and body sounds.
The first part of our name comes from the William Butler Yeats’ poem “The Valley of the Black Pig”. As a note, he included an important commentary on the black pig:
‘All over Ireland there are prophecies of the coming rout of the enemies of Ireland, in a certain Valley of the Black Pig, and these prophecies are, no doubt, now, as they were in the Fenian days, a political force ...and with other old Celtic boars and sows, one sees that the battle is mythological, and that the Pig it is named from must be a type of cold and winter doing battle with the summer, or of death battling with life.’
It is this Yeatsian concept that gave our collective the Black Pig, the mythical rebellious meaning behind it gives our name the sound of an organization finding new means of exploring perception and deconstructing aesthetics.
Black Pig Liberation Front is an expanded and sometimes anonymous-membered poetic terrorist collective. A transgressive theatre, always focused on text, sound, beats, and presentation, in our interchange of energies and as principal form of communication. Members revolve and mutate and we always have a strong line-up, most especially now. Each a participant without hierarchy, just a script we may have written for open interpretation.
We have collected an arsenal of electronics, both digital and analogue. Soviet oscillation machines, numerous circuit bent machines and boxes, hand manipulated 1970s rebuilt reel-to-reels, processors, d-beams, anything that can be used to create the gesture of sound required at the moment.
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