[colorful rectangles of cut-up paper folded blank white zine booklets glue, scissors, markers photos of tattoos on the wall in the background - 'survivor' on an arm, 'killjoy' on a foot - and a set of blue signs on the wall that read:]
MAKE YOUR OWN "INSTRUCTIONS for a MAD HOME" ZINE. Throughout our mad home you will find instructions about living madness (yellow, green, blue pieces of paper). These emerged from our convos over the past little while. The booklet is meant as a place for you to glue in the instructions you want to take with you - or write your own instructions - or do whatever. we trust you
A bit about these instructions Emerging out of a conversation on how to document our Mad Home, dales brought up Fluxus, and the use of “proposal pieces, propositions, or instructions” (Friedman & Smith, 2002, p. 1). Or, as we sometimes referred to them: invitations.
{Fluxus is many things. It is a performance art tradition, and a collection of loosely associated artists from across the world. It is also a set of ideas and practices and a “way of doing things” characterized by relationships to at a vast array of considerations, including: “globalism, the unity of art and life, intermedia, experimentalism, chance, playfulness, simplicity…[and] presence in time” (Friedman, 1998, p. ix). It is also a “way of viewing society and life, a way of creating social action and life activity” (p. ix). One way of making art in this tradition is the Fluxus event score. We drew on the concept of the event score, or brief “proposal pieces, propositions, or instructions” (Friedman and Smith, 2002, p. 1), in composing performative invitations featured in Mad Home.}
We were excited about this practice specifically because it is an invitation to action, calling folks into Mad performance practice with us. Lindsay shared the Fluxus Performance Workbook (Friedman, Smith & Sawchyn, 2002) with the group. We talked about Yoko Ono’s (1964) Grapefruit: A book of instructions and drawings, Fluxus art practices, and this bit of performance art history. We all wrote out invitations in a number of our group meetings, and dales typed them up so we could scatter them around Mad Home, inviting people to choose ones that resonated and glue them into their own personalized zine. Inspired by this work from Fluxus, we crafted invitations to share in a Mad experience that is meaningful to us. Interestingly, roughly two thirds of these were deeply embodied sensorial invitations. Some invitations we crafted that you can include in your "Instructions for a Mad Home" zine are:
“Lay in a hot bath right before the water cools, take out the drain and lay on the tub floor, letting the water drain around you” “compression” “crack a just frozen puddle” “rock back and forth until everything settles, or forever, whichever comes first” “be Jello (preferably lime)” “get elbow deep in your deep dark blue” “spin and wobble” “echolalia” “eat 100% dark chocolate with mint that tastes like blood and butts (then call Alexis and tell her)” “itch your bones” “rip up a piece of paper again and again” “make hiccups” “turn your body into water. Pour yourself across your bed, the floor, the ground” “pug pant” “converse with the voices” “pluck your armpit hairs with tweezers, 1 by 1” “wear headphones with or without music” “dried white glue” “mispronounce your words” “spin in circles in the dark” “throw. up.” “Bubbles” “put your hands in your pants” “peel a clove of fresh garlic. Smell your limbs as much as you can before you sleep” “hesitate under or inside doorways” “hang upside down (‘possum’)” “eat chips as loudly as you can” “hold the pain spots on your body, say hello” “stay home” “STAY MAD” “Mad recipe: darkness, avocado, maple syrup, smoked paprika, eat from a friend’s hand,” “rip up these instructions and throw them into the river” “fuck it.” We discussed these invitations as a way of creating that could allow us to communicate what we would like in a Mad home (including all of the possibilities and impossibilities), even if we need to float away on the day we invited other people into our Mad Home. These invitations were also a way of sharing our work, and our sensual experiences, with folks who could not attend in person.
[a blue medicine ball. a green medicine ball. a hardwood floor covered in colorful rectangles of cut-up paper the legible instructions read: talk to self in 2nd person NOT TODAY NOT TODAY MUTHAFUCKERS throw up NOT TODAY MUTHAFUCKERS seed bead fall asleep in the bathtub blackout]
[a scattering of colorful rectangles of cut-up paper in the folds of a futon cover. the legible instructions read: hair until it bleeds dig at an ingrown hair until it bleeds dig at an ingrown hair until it bleeds let the pain drawn tears Just Shove it! get separate, not just a(lone) let the pain draw tears from your eyes to the point of dehydration Bubbles]