Intermod Series — 2: LAACM / Brennan McGaffey, August – December, 2001.
August – December 2001
Low Altitude Atmospheric & Civic Modifications. In 2001, the Intermod Series launched rockets in the city which contained payloads designed to create micro-alterations of a city’s near atmospheric environment. The LAACM had a monthly schedule with five different payloads which, when released into the air, propagated the designed effects determined by the use of therapeutics, noise and EMF screening, weather adjustment, and unusual optical events. The launch schedule was distributed over a 5-month period. Updates, locations, and cancellations were posted on the Launch Schedule Bulletin toll-free 800 phone number. Originally hosted by Temporary Services.
A special Intermod mailer was created and sent out to the Temporary Services mailing list to announce the project. The mailer was inflated and contained an embroidered patch, an embossed paper description, and stickers.
Photos show the Intermod diagram to illustrate the rocket launch sequence, a picture of the south-side launch, pictures of the rocket payloads, close-up photos of rockets and the kit, and pictures of a launch event by Deborah Stratman.
Follow link below for the five rocket payload descriptions and the Launch Schedule Bulletin 1-800 phone number recording for the scheduled launch period and additional information.
Ancient Order Fliers Online — August
The Ancient Order Fliers were initially presented as a part of our services Drawn Out and Free For All. Thanks to the great enthusiasm and generosity of UbuWeb editor Kenneth Goldsmith, you can now view the complete collection of Ancient Order Fliers online. Ubu Web is an exhaustive web site for Visual, Concrete and Sound Poetry. The site also contains numerous pages of found fliers and scribblings of the “insane.”
The Ancient Order flyers were found over the course of a year in downtown Chicago. The main purpose of each flyer is to bring to light the mysterious workings of a group called “The Ancient Order” – who this group is, when they will strike in the future, what they were responsible for in the past, and how they have left their mark throughout history. No one we know ever saw the person that was behind these flyers. Every flyer is a single sided 8 1/2″ X 11″ photocopy, though several are longer and feature two or more pages stapled together. The flyers were only found inside free newspaper dispensers. Like newspapers, the flyers were always dated, and were folded so that the bold headlines could be read along the top. Only the most recent flyer was ever available; back issues did not recirculate. Almost exactly one year after the first Ancient Order flyer was found, they seem to have stopped circulating completely. The last flyer discovered, “The Ancient Order and the Pearl Harbor Prevision,” is dated 3-17-2000.
Special thanks to: Matti Allison, Mason McCormick, and Paul Gebbia for contributing Ancient Order flyers to this collection.
Autonomous Territories of Chicago — Hyde Park Art Center, October 14, 2001 (One day only)
A FESTIVAL IN CELEBRATION OF RADICAL CULTURE AND RESISTANCE
Come share your skills, knowledge & voices! Meet local groups who operate creatively outside the cage of capitalism! Stake your claims on a Chicago liberated from state & corporate control! Join activists, artists & self-determining citizens seek new meanings in the events of 9/11 and confront the dominant racist & war-mongering public discussion!
OCT. 14, 2001 * 11AM-10PM
HYDE PARK ART CENTER
5307 S. HYDE PARK BLVD.
DEL PRADO BUILDING
INDEPENDENT MEDIA * PINATAS * BIKE REPAIR * ROBOTS * PIRATE RADIO * PROPAGANDA * FEAST OF FORAGED FOOD * ANARCHY * GAMES * RADICAL TEACHERS * DUCKS * UNDERGROUND MAPS * DONUTS
We are providing fabric membranes, foraged food and five new booklets:
Images from ATOC:
Biggest Fags Ever | Zena Sakowski and Rob Kelly — August 3 – 17, 2001. Opening service at our Downtown office August 3rd – Service at Zena and Rob’s building August 10th – Closing of our office space for good August 17th, 2001
Rob Kelly and Zena Sakowski are audacious artists in every meaning of the word. They are fearlessly daring; their work is unrestrained by convention or propriety. They will define the limits of any opportunity they are given by exceeding all expectations. They show little regard for constraints of scale, architecture, or the moral boundaries of their audience. In short, they worry us. Is this lack of manners and restraint a good thing? In their case, absolutely.
This is the first concentrated presentation of Rob and Zena’s work in Chicago. This will also be the last show at Temporary Services’ 202 South State Street office space. In addition to taking over our office and the adjacent room, Rob and Zena have planned an additional event at their Bridgeport headquarters. The exact details of all of their projects remain vague to us. We are learning about their transformations of our office space only after the fact. We gave them the keys to our office and they have been coming and going as they wish. We are wandering into all of this half blind and we couldn’t be happier to give these artists the opportunity to run amok. We have committed to their work – whatever it is – in all its glory. At this point, we are helpless to intervene.
Schedule and addresses:
202 S. State Street, Suite 1124
Opening service: Friday, August 3, 5-9 PM
Hours: Saturday Aug. 4, 12-5 PM / Saturday Aug. 11, 12-5 PM / Saturday Aug. 18, 12-5 PM
Closing service at 202 S. State on Friday, August 17, 5-9 PM
And:
3201 S. Morgan, 1st Floor
Opening service: Friday, August 10, 5 PM – LATE
Hours: Saturday Aug. 11, 12-5 PM
Images from S. Morgan:
Helidon Gjergji — Two new installations. April 20 – May 19, 2001. Opening service: April 20, 5 – 9 pm, 2001
1. Kaleidoscope: The Symmetry of Chance
This project consists of a human-sized kaleidoscope. The objects inside the kaleidoscope are not the usual glass or marble stones. There are three, small, painted TV sets. The outside of the kaleidoscope is made out of mirrored aluminium. The kaleidoscope itself stands perpendicular to the floor.
With the TV patterns generated by the kaleidoscope we might get a football game, a peanut butter commercial and a talk show about the health care system in poor areas at the same time. In another case, an erotic scene, an electoral campaign and a documentary about global warming would all coincide. If these cases were generated by simply changing the channels of one’s own TV, it might seem that the programs were unrelated to one another. But in the context of the kaleidoscope, we immediately get a symmetrical pattern of these seemingly random programs – that is, formal symmetry that unavoidably recalls a conceptual one (that actually underlies all possible combinations) and so establishes links among “random” phenomena. Thus, the kaleidoscope makes visible the formal symmetry of the different channels and programs. It reveals the conspiracy of the underlying powerful interests that constitutes the politics and economics of today’s media as an undivided body – a homogeneous, global whole.
2. Tele Television
A TV installation is placed against the wall of the main room, by the entrance door. A glossy black surface, as big as the wall, is placed on the opposite side of the room. The room is dark so that its only light source is emitted from the TV-sets. The images coming from the TV-sets will be reflected in the glossy surface, although in very foggy way. A strip of rope will block the entrance to the room. The viewer won’t be able to see the actual installation, but only its shadowy reflection in the glossy black surface across from it.
3. TV Guide
The first two pieces are accompanied by the necessary TV Guide.
– Helidon Gjergji
Images from the exhibition:
Pell City Book Drive — Dana Sperry. Launched concurrently with The Library Project. Continues through May, 2001
BRING BOOKS.
My car broke down at a gas station in Pell City, Alabama when I was moving back to Georgia from California. A stranger named Rae came out to see if I needed a hand. Over the next twenty-two hours, a series of strangers helped me get my car fixed while showing me around town. Coincidentally, the day I was there, the only bookstore in Pell City and the surrounding towns was closing.
I am organizing a series of book drives for their local public library as a return gift to the town. Sitting right downtown, the library is the only public source of books in the town. I am launching a book drive in Chicago that will coincide with the opening for The Library Project at Temporary Services. There will be boxes to collect donated books. Please bring books to the opening or during the hours on the 3 days in March.
All books are accepted. They will sell any books they cannot use to raise money to acquire new books. The first book drive in Bloomington, Indiana raised over 320 books. Donations ranged from books on I-Ching and Harry Potter to romance novels and biology textbooks. I would like to double the size of the library.
– Dana Sperry
Pell City Public Library
1923 First Ave North
Pell City, Alabama 35125
The Library Project preview and launch— Temporary Services office space, March 16, 17 and 19, 2001
Hours are Friday 5 – 9 PM, Saturday 10 AM – 6 PM and Monday 10 AM – 6 PM
Opening service on Friday the 16th from 5 – 9 PM.
The books were taken to the Harold Washington Library Center after the preview.
1. Books and other library resources should be provided for the interest, information, and enlightenment of all people of the community the library serves. Materials should not be excluded because of the origin, background, or views contributing to their creation.
– The American Library Association, from the Library Bill of Rights
[…] I became a young novelist and wrote a book about the Jonestown, Pennsylvania, flood in 1830 – something where Clara Barton threw her weight around. The book was three-hundred-twenty-one pages long and I had set for myself the deadline of my eleventh birthday. I’d heard the girl who wrote Black Beauty was eleven so I wanted to be the youngest novelist in the world. Since I didn’t have any idea of how to get it published, I typed it all up, stapled it together, cut up some beer-case cardboard, and covered it with white butcher paper and Saran Wrap. I painted a relevant picture for the cover and smuggled it into the library and put it on the shelves in the correct alphabetical order. I never saw that book again.
– Cookie Mueller, from “My Bio: Notes on an American Childhood”
Click booklet image to download PDF.
With The Library Project, Temporary Services is adding 100 new books and artists’ projects into the library holdings through a donation. The library has not been told about the gifts they are going to receive. Every title has been checked against Harold Washington’s catalog to verify that each book is not already owned by the library. Several books that are already in the collection, are being added in creatively altered new versions. We are giving the Library books that it has not acquired on its own. We believe these are books that it will probably want to keep. Nearly all of the books are brand new and most of them were published or created within the last few years.
Though composed almost entirely of books by artists, this gift will infiltrate all of Harold Washington Library and not merely the floor devoted to Visual and Performing Arts. Creating new juxtapositions of materials not normally possible in common library practice is one component of this project. Another major goal is to bring obscure, subversive, self-published, hand-made, or limited edition works by underexposed artists to a wider audience.
The following presses, artists, and groups, contributed books and book projects: An “Uncontrollable”, Janell Baxter, E.C. Brown, The Center for New Community, Brooke Chaffee, Raimond Chaves, Salem Collo-Julin, Jim Duignan, Paul Druecke, Hans-Peter Feldmann, Flotsam, Fordham Urban Law Journal, Emily Forman, Paul Gebbia, Helidon Gjergji, Kenneth Goldsmith, Kenneth Hirsch, Steven Hudosh, Douglas Huebler, James Hugunin, Rob Kelly & Zena Sakowski, Nance Klehm, Kathleen Kranack, Stephan Lapthisophon, Aemin Annie Lee, Cindy Loehr, Josh MacPhee, Ryan McGinness, Rebecca Moran & Rosie Sanders, Simon Morris & Helen Sacoor, Leah Oates, OK & OR, Stephanie Ognar, Trevor Paglen, Laurie Palmer, Robert Peters, Michael Piazza, Andrea Pinal, Jennifer Ramsey, Karen Reimer, REPOhistory, Bruno Richard, Chris Ritter, Jorge Rivera, Van Harrison, Chemi Rosado Seijo, David Shrigley, The Somnambulist, Dana Sperry, Deborah Stratman, Ervin Stuntz, Jocelyn Superstar 2001, Royal Torres, Samuel Torres, Pedro Velez, Oli Watt, Tara Zanzig, and Pam Zimmerman
Essays, interviews and other texts about The Library Project:
- LINK: Hassert, Joe. ”A Prank and Its Possibilities”. Communication Currents: Knowledge for Communicating Well 8, no. 3 (June 2013):. Accessed 04/11/15. Https://www.natcom.org/CommCurrentsArticle.aspx?id=3845 | PDF
- LINK: Libraryasincubatorproject. ”The Library Project by Temporary Services”. The LIbrary as Incubator Project (Blog), December 11, 2012. Accessed 04 November 2015. Http://www.libraryasincubatorproject.org/?p=7925. | PDF
More images of The Library Project. We will soon have high resolution replacements.
From Tom Brown Jr.’s “Field Guide to City and Suburban Survival”
Warming Center — January 25 – February 16, 2001
Closing reception featuring Ribbon Effect on February 16, 5 – 9 pm.
The offices of Temporary Services are now available as a refuge from winter’s chill. Persons in need of temporary warmth are encouraged to travel to 202 S. State Street, Suite 1124 and use our amenities. Free clothing, food and beverages will be offered to all visitors. Comfortable seating and reading materials are also ready for perusal.
A space between the journey and home, a rest stop, a few minutes of warmth are sometimes all that is necessary to rejuvenate us. Warmth is an elusive entity in the freeze of city life. We encourage all to visit and be still, to watch the hurry of downtown from our windows, to take off your coats and shoes and get warm.
Text from the booklet:
The first fire can I saw was on a hill outside Whitewater, Wisconsin. I was escaping the doldrums of junior high summer camp, and saw it: metal barrel, brilliant flame. No shoe tracks in the mud nearby, no trail marking sticks on the ground. It was a well-made fire, but why was it burning unsupervised and why was I the one who discovered it? My twelve-year-old mind imagined the worst as I freaked and ran back to the cabins.
Museums make me nervous. I truck into sterile empty rooms in search of the rare and great and often find myself alone. There is not even the click of an underpaid guard’s heels. White ceilings and glossy floors betray the marketing departments’ claims: it appears as though no one has ever entered these rooms. What happens after hours? Do roaches and water bugs invade, holding hands and discussing lofty ideas? What is the point of a warm, well-lit room when no one sees the objects that are diligently preserved? The presence and quantity of humans change the nature of these artificial spaces. A museum after hours is just a beautiful waiting room.
For four weeks, Temporary Services changes: not in name, but in designation. Sit in our chairs and leaf through books, eat noodles and drink tea, chat about the lofty and the low-down dirty. Please remember to take extra clothing and reading material with you. Your presence is payment for these simple gifts.
Chrisdian Wittenburg gave Shiatsu treatments on January 25 and 26.
Ribbon Effect has agreed to help us close the project on February 16th. Their music, our over-active radiators and curried pea soup will keep you very warm.
Breakfast in Orbit with a Bang — Presented by TENbyTEN magazine in association with Temporary Services: A Pancake Breakfast & Lecture / Multimedia Performance by Lars Bang Larsen on artist Peter Land. Saturday, February 10, 2001. Orbit Restaurant, 2936-54 North Milwaukee Avenue, 1:00 p.m.
$15.00 cover includes lecture and pancakes – all proceeds go towards the next issue of TENbyTEN.
In “Breakfast in Orbit with a Bang,” Danish curator, critic, and editor Lars Bang Larsen will perform a psycho-slapstick reading / multimedia performance of a catalogue text he wrote on Peter Land. Slides, video, music, bourbon, and cigarettes will be utilized to their full potential in the performance. In Bang Larsen’s words, “Breakfast in Orbit” promises to be “The Big Peter Land Blow Out: Copenhagen Delirium.”
Lars Bang Larsen is the Associate Editor of Document sur l’Art (France) and ArtText (Los Angeles), in addition to being the Danish Editor of NU: The Nordic Art Review (Stockholm). He recently curated Pyramids of Mars and Decompressing History, but Chicagoans will remember Bicycle Thieves, a group exhibition of Scandinavian artists that was shown in 11 galleries in Chicago and Milwaukee in 1998, and which Bang Larsen co-curated. Presently he is a Visiting Critic in the Department of Art at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Peter Land was born in Aarhus, Denmark, and currently lives in London. He has mainly shown video works since 1994, but he constantly accompanies them with drawings and photographic works. Land’s work deals with self-exposure: of the body, the person, the artist and ultimately of society. His images demonstrate the tragi-comic failure of human attempts to appear competently, casually and yet convincingly in societally determined roles—and they deal with the absurdity, the shattering ridiculousness, the clown-like sadness that is associated with the failure of these attempts.
The newest issue of TENbyTEN, themed “Plastic,” will be available at the lecture and a plastic bomber jacket made especially for TENbyTEN by Jasmin Shokrian and Shane Gabier (featured in PLASTIC FASHION) will be auctioned.
The Orbit Restaurant is located at 2936-54 North Milwaukee Avenue (between Diversey and Belmont Avenues) in Chicago’s Little Warsaw area. Seating for the lecture is limited, and the pancakes have to be ordered in advance, so please RSVP by Thursday, February 8.
One Week Boutique — This project started in July 2000. It has been integrated into several projects since.
Temporary Services ran a free boutique beyond the initially scheduled one week. This project began on July 14th, 2000. Visitors were welcome to come by, drink coffee, look at our booklets, try on clothes in our dressing room and take whatever clothing they want. Many thanks to all the people that have donated clothing and accessories for this service.
We are still taking donations so bring in your unused and unwanted clothing. Drop off clothes Monday through Saturday in the fire escape room next to Temporary Services’ office.
Boutique continued for several months in the fire escape room next to our office. We realized public versions of the project in public. The free clothing element of the boutique was integrated into our Warming Center in the winter of 2001.
Public versions of OWB:
