Death Squad "Intent" video essay

[Rubby]

The most recent episode of Harsh Truths podcast is an interview with Michael Nine- he talks about this performance and even expresses regret about the gun.

[Eigen Bast]

William T Vollmann fired a pistol loaded with blanks at a crowd during a reading about the same time in San Francisco. I wonder if anyone was at both events.

*ah, Vollmann did his in 92! Still...the question remains

[JLIAT]

Found some prior examples...

THE WORD `SURREALISM' first appeared in Paris during the summer of 1917. It was coined by the poet Guillaume Apollinaire. That summer saw the first performance of his play Les Mamelles de Tirésias, staged under the auspices of the review SIC (Sons, Idées, Couleurs).

   The performance was announced for Sunday, 24 June, at the tiny Salle Maubel in Montmartre. André Breton, a young poet then serving as a medical auxiliary at the Val de Grâce hospital near the Sorbonne, urged his friend Jacques Vaché, who was due for some leave, to meet him there.
...
Unfortunately, though full of wit, the play was entirely devoid of structure. Soon the theatre was in uproar once more -- so much so that nobody seemed to notice the young officer in English uniform who entered the stalls at the end of the first act, pulled out his revolver, and prepared to discharge it into the audience.
...
André Breton, the auburn-haired young man, remembered this episode; the other participant, the `officer' (who was Jacques Vaché and not English at all) never gave his side of the story. The only certainty is that, years later, Breton defined `the simplest Surrealist act' as `going into the street, revolver in hand, and shooting at random into the crowd'. Not that he himself would ever have done any such thing. But Vaché might — or so Breton liked to think, and -- perhaps — Vaché really had.

Huelsenbeck claimed he and plants in the audience exchanged blank gunfire at his dada lectures...

The Second Manifesto of Surrealism - Selections
André Breton, 1929..

. . . The simplest Surrealist act consists of dashing down the street, pistol in hand, and firing blindly, as fast as you can pull the trigger, into the crowd. Anyone who, at least once in his life, has not dreamed of thus putting an end to the petty system of debasement and cretinization in effect has a well-defined place in that crowd, with his belly at barrel level . . .

if it was realism to shoot a human being because he wore a German uniform, it would be superrealism to apply the principle more broadly.

Unforgettable is the Dada hero, Arthur Cravan, poet, boxer, soi‐disant nephew of Oscar Wilde, who gave unexpected emphasis to one of his lectures in Paris by firing off random pistol shots that sent his audience scrambling up the aisles.

Arthur Cravan organized a show in Paris, on 5 July 1914, during which he fired a pistol, boxed, danced and delivered a lecture, punctuated by insults to the audience...

[MateriaPrima]

William T Vollmann fired a pistol loaded with blanks at a crowd during a reading about the same time in San Francisco. I wonder if anyone was at both events.

*ah, Vollmann did his in 92! Still...the question remains

And in 1998 in San Francisco Rudolf Eb.er as Runzelstirn & Gurgelstøck performed his 'Konzert For Piano and Shotgun' where he sat at a piano playing strange dissonant chords wailing and screaming incoherently for a while until he, barely intelligibly, screams "I'm gonna shoot you.....I'm gonna shoot you...And if you don't believe me...I'll do it! I have a weapon!" Then he stops, produces a shotgun, cocks it and shoots it into the audience. He does this two times, obviously using blanks, but still. The recording can be heard at the end of Runzelstirn & Gurgelstøck's 'Asshole / Snail Dilemma', you can hear the shell drop after the first shot. It's interesting these things were happening there around the same times, something in the air?

Interesting document, thank you

[OlivieMelco]

Thanks for sharing! I'm a fan of this stuff, and such topics are rare. Man, that's amazing! I think everything about it is excellent, and I'm waiting for even more videos! I also like writing essays, and I mostly post them on reddit under a fake name. None of my friends knows I write fanfics about my favorite movie characters. I hope it is not strange to reveal it to strangers and not talk about it to my close people. I use no helping sources but an app, wich checks my spelling and grammar, so I don't make any mistake and don't have to re-read it. I would love to see these videos; maybe I'll get inspiration to write even more