Comment on this story Art for Art’s Sake

by Mike Gibson

The new surrealism

In researching a Metro Pulse cover story on underground artists, I heard whispers of a local performance collective dedicated to subverting traditional concepts of art. They were rumored to be a group of University of Tennessee students, and one of their storied antics involved members lying on blankets in the middle of the school’s Humanities courtyard during finals week, in pouring rain, sipping from (empty) beer bottles. Another included an elaborate game of something called “Red Hand, White Man” (so named for the symbols on electronic “Don’t Walk” signs) at a busy Cumberland Avenue intersection, the result of which was general chaos and bad traffic. I dismissed them as pranksters, but was nonetheless intrigued.

Since all of the other artists we had approached were of the visual, musical, or literary sort, I sought out a member of the group for inclusion in the story. My contact, M., was reticent about discussing even so much as the name of the collective, although he agreed to meet with me in person at a nightspot in the Old City, perhaps with a few of his fellow members.

I arrived at the intersection of Jackson and Central at 9:30 sharp on the evening of our rendezvous. Standing on the sidewalk a few yards from Hanna’s Café were three 20-something women, shoulder-to-shoulder, singing Christmas carols from color-coordinated folders. Though my audience with M. was to take place at the Urban Bar across the way, it seemed too much a coincidence that this kind of weird business was transpiring only a short distance from our meeting.

I tentatively approached the girls and, feeling very foolish, asked if they knew M. Without breaking verse, they cast dubious eyes up from their makeshift hymnals, probably thinking me daft, and shook their heads in the negative.

Abashed, I crossed the street to the Urban Bar, and identified a tall, slender, bespectacled patron seated next to the front window as my contact, M. He was a pleasant fellow, a liberal arts major of perhaps 23, and we sat down to discuss particulars while we waited for his friends to arrive.

“The whole thing is very anarchical. Our organization is practically nonexistent, and there’s free ownership of ideas,” he said, telling me everything and nothing at once.

“We do what we do in response to a very routine environment,” he continued. “Routine can be so constricting. It prevents you from making your own decisions. People walk on cowpaths to water, and they don’t know why. We try to focus on that impulse that everyone always has in any given situation, the crazy one that they usually let go of. We take that impulse and we run with it.”

M. paused and turned to his left to pull some hand-written pages from a folder in the chair beside him. As he did so, a tall, long-haired guy, looking not the slightest bit like a member of the wait staff, walked up to our table and asked, “Have you all been helped?”

Before I could tell him that yes, indeed, we already had a server attending us, as evidenced by the nearly full beer sitting in front of M., he picked up M.’s glass and drained half of it in a single, hasty drought.

As he walked away, M. looked up from his folder, bewildered, not sure as to what our unwanted visitor had done. “That guy just sucked down half your beer while you weren’t looking,” I exclaimed, taking umbrage at the fellow’s gall. I rose angrily from the table, bent on telling a manager that he should be removed from the bar.

M. seemed distressed; a mild-mannered sort, he obviously wasn’t one to make trouble. When I saw that my reporting the guerrilla guzzling incident might cause him needless upset, I let it pass.

M. made a brief call on his cell phone, then told me that one of his friends, J., had just gotten off work. J. was unfamiliar with Old City establishments, M. said, and asked that we meet him at the busy Jackson/Central intersection.

I followed M. outside, and we crossed the street to the corner where the carolers had been stationed when I first arrived. They were still in the vicinity, having moved from their former spot to another corner, in front of Manhattan’s, still merrily crooning Christmas songs from bundles of sheet music.

M. made small talk as we waited, and handed me a type-written group manifesto of sorts, something about “acting out senseless ideas for the pure enjoyment of it,” and “using street theater to reclaim cognitive real estate.” As I glanced over it, a guy on eight-foot stilts suddenly strode out of the shadows behind the carolers, wearing a blindfold. He crossed the street without breaking step, and lumbered past us as I watched, nonplussed.

M. also seemed surprised, admitting to me that, yeah, it was surely a strange coincidence that so many kindred spirits had descended on the Old City the same night as our meeting. As he spoke, a guy seated on the public bench a few feet in front of us stood up, walked over to a garbage can, and began nibbling on select morsels liberated from its depths.

At that moment, M. tapped me on the shoulder, and indicated that his friend had arrived. The next few seconds were a blur: a white Blazer pulled up to the intersection and screeched to a halt directly in front of us. M. grew suddenly panicky.

“Take this,” he said, shoving an uninscribed envelope with a red wax seal into my hand, just before three men jumped from the Blazer, grabbed him and threw him inside. Before I even realized what was happening, they had disappeared, faded into the shadowy industrial nether-regions of East Jackson.

Not knowing what else to do, I broke the seal on the envelope and removed a brief, hand-written note. It was from M. and his fellows, of course, and it was mostly a plea for anonymity, ending with the words, “We like it underground. Thank you and Goodnight.”

It was only then that I realized that the whole evening was a set-up. Or most of it. Or at least some of it, anyway. The carolers? The beer drinker? The stilt-man and the trash eater? Had I missed anything? I wasn’t sure. Dazed, I headed East on Jackson, toward my usual parking space, until I remembered that I hadn’t driven my car.

I felt as if the Old City had been a giant prop, a stage peopled with actors performing entirely for my benefit. Which of the faces I saw as I stumbled home had been in on the gag? Even the vagrants looked furtive, like maybe they were snickering at me.

A kid wearing a Superman costume passed me on a bicycle, headed in the other direction.

I had witnessed amazing synergy that night. M.’s troupe had been so thorough in their planning, so deft in their execution, so clairvoyant in their anticipation of contingencies as to stage every event I had seen from my entering the Old City until my departure some 30 minutes later. Or else a series of fantastic coincidences had added spice and wonder to a clever kidnapping stunt. I’m still not sure, and I’m not sure that it matters.

But I did leave with the certainty that I would honor M.’s request for anonymity; after an experience like that, it was the least I could do. I was sure of one other thing too; after that night, my own answer to the question “What is art?” would never again be the same.

May 6, 2004 • Vol. 14, No. 19 © 2004 Metro Pulse