THE FIRST INTERNOTIONAL THEATRE OF COMMUNICATION
Audience Participation Event
& Audio Recordings (Tapes 17 – 19)
May 20, 1994
The philosophy that “anyone could do anything” was the guiding principal at the FLAT, and this was reflected in the audience-participation-performance, The First Internotional Theatre of Communication. This call for all to participate began with the printing and distribution[133] of an open invitation from Horsburgh and Barry (see opposite page), and embraced in a single night a broad and all encompassing range of FLAT activities. It was conceived by them to “allow anyone to do anything in the space”, and evolved with very little plan, except to bring people together with the catalysts of an open microphone, two tape recorders, some provocative wall texts and a space to interact. The only goal was to allow for open expression and to ‘see what would happen’. Meijer and Owen then wrote in their respective art columns these reports reiterating Horsburgh and Barry’s words that the event would allow for ‘anything whatsoever’ and be ‘open-ended’
Durban’s only alternative gallery, The FLAT Gallery, will be hosting an evening of communication interaction. The aim is to gather as many people as possible in a single space providing them with a unique context in which to in vocal, written or active form express any information about anything whatsoever.[134]
The format of expression is entirely open‑ended. The only condition is that it does not prevent free expression.[135]
It is interesting to note, that though we did not then or with any of our other exhibitions or events stipulate that work must be ‘political in content or motivation’, the ‘political’ nature of the FLAT’s project was implicit in our openness to free expression to all participants and our blurring of lines between ‘art’ and ‘life’.
In a recent telephone interview with Barry, he pointed out that, at that time, Horsburgh was inspired by the 1968 student riots in Paris. “He was reading a lot of material concerning the Situationist movement in France.”[136] Indeed Horsburgh, in the credits at the end of this press release lists by name those involved with the Situationist movement as well as a number of other influential sources:
The evening is conceived and constructed by: Ralph Vanegeim, Guy Debord, Gilles Deleuze, Manuel de Landa, Felix Guattari, Peter Kropotkin, Jay Horsburgh, Pierre Proudhon, Hakim Bey, Thomas Barry, Isidore Ducasse, Toni Negri, Ronald Bogue, Rrose Selavy, John Cage, Bill Godwin, Fourier, Tristan Tzara, Isidore Isou, Justin Evans, Alex Berkman, Octave Mirbeau, Uncle Bill, and others. [137]
Indeed, this list read like a kind of personal geneology for Horsbourgh, and included many names, already cited earlier, as being historically significant to many of the FLAT projects at that time. The poetic strategies of Burroughs in the cut-ups, the Situationist tactics of Debord and Vanegeim or the absurdist non-linear theatrics of the Dadaists were all-important historical precedents. Perhaps most relevant to the Internotional, was the Situationist concept of the dérive or ‘drift’. Though the Internotional took place in a designated space, the spirit of the event, the ‘sense that anything might happen’, was perhaps informed in some ways by this notion.
Dérive, a Situationist method, also known as literally ‘drifting’ was a technique described by Debord as a “transient passage through varied ambiences…” entailing “playful constructive behavior and awareness of psychogeographical effects”.[138] For example, one might just decide on a given day to catch an unfamiliar bus, go to an place never before traveled, and enter a bar in that area to interact with a stranger in a chance meeting. The idea of drifting through urban geography was to experience new things by chance interaction rather than by set conditions, thereby disrupting normal social patterns. In fact some time later, Horsburgh, Levi, Matoti, Barry and myself embarked on such a ‘drift’. We filled a car with petrol and went with an obscure plan into the Natal midlands. We drove into unfamiliar towns and got lost.
Though it refers specifically to a kind of ‘urban journey’ without a map, the concept can be applied to a more expanded notion of ‘drift’, that simply involves letting things happen without plan or intention. The ‘political’ implications of such an action could be seen in the resistance it offered to what one might perceive as the ‘commodification’ of life. They suggested that in order to be released from the “jail of consumer society”, the process of the ‘drift’ was indeed necessary.
In many ways, the idea of the ‘drift’ and the manner in which the evening evolved was also resonant with certain improvisational theater tactics. One particularly significant example is described by director André Gregory in his conversation with actor and playwright Wallace Shawn. Here in Louis Malle’s film, My Dinner with André, Gregory tells his friend Shawn of his experience with a respected Polish director, Grotowski:
André: - to find the theme through action. And that the action was created by impulse, by somebody having an impulse. In a way its going right back to childhood, where simply a group of children enter a room or are brought into a room, without toys, and they begin to play. Grownups are learning how to play again.
Wally: Yes right. So you would all sit together somewhere and you would play in some way - but what would you actually do?
André: Well, I can give you an example. You see, we worked for a week in the city before we went to our forest, and of course Grotowski was there in the city too, and, you see, one of the things I asked Grotowski was that I be kept as far away from him as possible so I couldn’t be influenced by him in any way, because his whole group was leading workshops. But I did hear that every night they conducted something called a ‘beehive’. And I loved the sound of this beehive, and a night or two before we were supposed to go to the country, I grabbed him by the collar, and I said, “Listen, this beehive thing, you know, I’d kind of like to participate in one, just instinctively I feel it would be something interesting”. And he said, “Well, certainly, and in fact, why don’t you, with your group lead a beehive instead of participating in one?” And I got very nervous, you know, and I said, “Well, what is a beehive?” And he said, ”Well, a beehive is, at eight o’clock a hundred strangers come into a room’” And I said, “Yes?” And he said, “Yes and then whatever happens is a beehive.” [139]
The beehive, where people arrive and ‘whatever happens is the performance’ indeed describes the events that took place on the night of the Internotional. For the event, Barry and Horsburgh had pasted on the walls, in a rather chaotic fashion, a large body of written and printed information. This material included some drawing and ‘artworks’, but was primarily text; both photocopied and hand written. Hannalie Coetzee from Jam & Co, an Afro-Jazz club in Durban, came and put up pictures and writings that were rough idioms around the topic.[140] Also set up were two open microphones and two portable tape recorders.
In the beginning much of the audience came with the expectation of ‘watching’ a performance and stood waiting to be ‘entertained’, not realizing perhaps they were in fact the ones who were ‘performing’. In a sense, this kind of ‘passive viewer as consumer’ was the very thing that Horsburgh and Barry were seeking to explode in such an event. The Internotional was an attack on the passive ‘watching’, letting others do the work, and not getting involved with one’s own cultural exploration of life.
The audience at first acted on the old habits of gallery going, reading the texts on the wall as if they were paintings at an exhibition, and waiting to ‘see’ the performance. Urged by Horsburgh and Barry to speak, people slowly began to approach the open microphones. Those who came to express themselves on various topics, interestingly included comments on the event itself, as well. As the evening evolved, more came and went, performing, conversing, looking at the text on the wall, occasionally coming to speak into one of the two tape recorders. Martyn, who spoke almost continuously into one of the portable recorders, made free association poetics through soliloquy, citation and exchanges. One such exchange with Horsburgh is transcribed below:
Horsburgh: Generate an audience.
Martyn: Generate organs? Jay wants to generate organs. Jay! Jay is an organ‑generator… Ah false.
Horsburgh: I open up parentheses in your falsehood, in order to say the following: To sleep in a butterfly is an epic abdication of a moral territory. To let a butterfly sleep in one’s hand is a secret theft of that territory of morals. The first is a surrender allowing oneself to be seduced by illuminous channel. An intuition that flees from maps. The map is not the territory, after all. The second is criminal. It’s to seek out those points at which moral landscapes buckle. To crawl into that space and plot, using the techniques of sorcery for an epic seduction. We will be making a sleep to fit the contours of one hand. Neither can be recognized without the other, so here I close the parentheses at criminal seduction.
Martyn: Whoever paints his face taking the marks of an arbitrary characterization of a future people. Whoever appropriates in the exhaustive way of all possible terms and threats language as a science of imagery solutions. Whoever refuses to explain himself and despite the emission doesn’t stop robbing nor in fact engages in any collective practice. Such a person is the agent of subversion which… have great significance. The alchemy of the word, information requires uncertainty. The person that can predict a message knows it in advance. Then that message is not information hence meaningless. That part of the message that is not unpredictable is redundant. Redundancy is productive because redundancy guarantees the primacy of certain messages to the exclusion of all spurious information, which is called noise. The greater uncertance of the message, the more noise it will contain. The loss of productivity in the system is called entropy. Entropy is the information and meaningful step taken with the full weight of the body on a plump and rounded ball of the foot… down the conclusive and dangerous brick road to chaos.[141]
What was perhaps most significant about the evening was the odd simultaneous occurrence of so many actions. Though this was reminiscent of the SWANS performance, here the events were even more random and un-scripted; the ‘collaboration’ more open ended. Some, like Paterson who worked in his sketchbook, sat quietly throughout the evening. Others engaged in conversation, read from texts or bantered with non sequiturs. Much was made about those who had not attended, Martyn criticized the gallery for being elitist, and Barry spoke at length to university English lecturer, Rob Amato, about his philosophy around both the event and the FLAT. Amato had run an alternative theater space in Cape Town and spoke about the experience. Barry and Amato discuss the Internotional:
Barry: Basically what we are doing is recording anything that people are saying or doing and we are going to be compiling that or just keeping it as some kind of record.
Amato: Storytelling?
Barry: Yes.
Amato: Events and histories.
Barry: And we haven’t really tried to define what will be taking place. In that way people will shape what does happen. But at the same time we are trying to create some kind of break in… communication. A shift!
Amato: A communication break is deeply desired. Give us a break in communication. Ja, I can see that’s lovely stuff but what I am most intrigued by is the degree to which we could have a theatre which frees itself of Sneddonism![142] Which has had a thirty-year scurge in this area.[143]
The evening grew raucous with various people ‘performing’ simultaneously. Horsburgh and Barry singing a song, while Tione Scholtz, a Natal University Composition student, ‘rudely’ interjecting some ‘theory’ about something. Interrupted conversations and disjointed exchanges flowed. In some ways, as the evening ‘warmed up’ it brought to mind the stories around the Cabaret Voltaire.
Cabaret Voltaire was founded in 1916, by Hugo Ball and is seen historically as being the beginning of Zurich Dada. Created when Ball arranged for ‘artistic entertainments’ at a local café, which Ball along with Tristan Tzara, Jean Arp, Marcel Janco and Emmy Hemmings performed nightly. These were staged with a great deal of improvisation with simultaneous disjointed ‘acts’. Using Janco’s famous painting Cabaret Voltaire to recollect, Arp describes a typical evening:
On the stage of a gaudy motley overcrowded tavern there are several weird and peculiar figures…Total pandemonium, The people around us are shouting, laughing and gesticulating. Our replies are signs of love, volleys of hiccups, poems, moos, and miawing of medieval Bruitists. Tzara is wiggling his behind like the belly of an Oriental dancer. Janco is playing an invisible violin and bowing and scraping. Madame Hemmings with the Madonna face, is doing the splits. Huelsenbeck is banging away nonstop on the great drum, with Ball accompanying him on the piano…[144]
As with Cabaret Voltaire, the evening at the FLAT was a theatrical mix of concurrent but unrelated performances that created a strange ‘collage’ of overlapping dialogue, action and music. A ‘free for all’, where the audience became performers without a script. It was fitting that Cabaret Voltaire happened not in a museum, or institution, but ‘in the street’, in this case, in a pub, and that the FLAT event resembled a typical evening in a club, where the usual social restraints are loosened.
Bahktin, mentioned earlier in relation to the SWANS performance, speaks to this notion of creating an ‘alternative social space’ through his exploration of the ‘carnival’. Michael Gardiner in his book on Bahktin, The Dialogics of Critique, writes about the notion of carnival as observed through the eyes of Goethe, pointing out the importance of this eyewitness account in Bakhtin’s work. Goethe in witnessing a New Year’s carnival comments that, the carnival is not an occasion of state, but rather something that people “give themselves”. Described as a “tumult of people, things and movements” that can only be “experienced firsthand”.[145]
According to Gardiner, Bahktin observed how a carnival is “the free and spontaneous combination of formally self-enclosed and fixed categories, that brings together, unifies, weds, and combines the sacred with the profane, the lofty with the low, the great with the insignificant, the wise with the stupid.” [146] As a “symbol of communal performance, it can only occur in the streets and the public square, where social relations are free and unrestricted, full of ambivalent laughter, blasphemy, the profanation of everything sacred…” [147]
This breaking of rules and this “creation of a new social space” is possible in a carnival, because “there is no barrier between actors or performers and those who witness it.” [148] An event, where people become participants rather than observers, was seen by Bahktin as having profound political implications. This is addressed specifically when he observes that the carnival effectively breaks down formalities, “replacing the established traditions and canons with a ‘free and familiar’ social interaction based on the principles of mutual cooperation, solidarity and equality”.[149] Gardiner adds that “It demonstrates that other, less rigid and hierarchical social relations are possible and indeed desirable, through the utopian enactment of an integrated, egalitarian community.” [150] The spirit behind the Internotional, and indeed the mission of the FLAT, was to create such a social space.
Explicitly stated in the Internotional press release was: “the principal is that it does not matter what you have to say, but it is vitally necessary that you say it. The only criterion is that it does not prevent another participant from freely expressing themselves”.[151] This echoes Goethe’s words that “in the carnival proper everything (except violence) is permissible.”[152]
However, this also speaks to another concept central to Bahktin’s notion of the creation of a social space and that was the importance of ‘polyphony’. The polyphonic model implies that all voices are valid and that the resultant dialogue is richer by way of such inclusiveness. Free and familiar interaction by necessity requires an openness to many viewpoints. Gardiner speaks to Bahktin’s use of the term ‘polyphony’ in reference to a discussion of Dostoevsky’s novels. Here the narrative is developed without a singular point of view. For Bahktin, the implication is that a polyphonic voice is more democratic in that it operates beyond a ‘dominant’ singular voice. Gardiner says:
Through the structural dissonance of polyphony - the interplay of unmerged voices and consciousness - Bakhtin argues that we can become more aware of our location in the dense network of discursive and ideological practices.[153]
In the carnival, social constraints are thrown off. By becoming active creators rather than passive consumers, individuals are empowered. In a sense, by creating an opportunity for an audience to become performers, many voices are brought to the conversation, and the passive role of the art viewer is also challenged. Anything can happen. This is significant, for such events are not separate from life, or ‘bought’ like an evening at the theater (or in front of the television). Rather they are lived, experienced, and transformed into life itself.
Not all of the events were completely spontaneous, and the Internotional included a number of ‘performances’ with prior preparation. Brendon Bussy came early, played his viola for a short time and left for another ‘gig’ across town. Scholtz played recordings of some of his experimental electronic compositions. In conversation that evening, he spoke about this work:
Scholtz: That was a piece based on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange data converted into real time midi data and put into a computer and played back through a synthesizer.
Allen: Not to mention our tape deck. Thanks![154]
Etienne De Kock, declaring that he “didn’t like to listen always to the clamor of 100 saartjies [or softies] trying to discover themselves” read several ‘nonsense’ poems including one on “youth”:
De Kock: The first poem is… quite an old poem. It talks about a college and college-students, right. And now there is a college called Milton, or something. And a freshman is someone new who arrives at university and this was written very long ago. Milton is obviously a literary college of some sort and literature and art are very closely linked. It’s called “After sending freshmen to describe a tree”:
Twenty inglorious Milton’s looked at a tree and saw God.
Noted its clutching fingers in the sod.
Heard Zephyrs gentle breezes wafting through her hair.
Saw a solemn statue, heard a growing woody prayer.
Saw dancing skirts and the Lord’s desire.
Green arrows to God instead of pyre.
Saw symbols and squirrels, heard musins indeed.
Not one of the Miltons saw any tree.
[Laughter]
If you must see a tree, clean, clear and bright.
For God’s sake and mine, look outside your heart and write.[155]
He dedicated this reading to “all you middle earth, third eye, politically correct people.” And after reading four more poems, closed with the remarks that “it’s been a long time since I’ve had such a captive audience.”[156]
For some weeks before the Internotional, I had been toying with a sound work. This piece called Conversation (and discussed earlier - Tape 16) seemed appropriate for the Internotional as it was about “communication interaction”. Indeed, I was utterly absorbed at that time with how people communicate with each other, whether across gender or cultural lines. I was interested, not only in the way in which two people of different language groups, race, or gender, always communicate with some kind of implicit power relations but also how one relates to different people in different contexts. In talking to a male friend, my mother, or a strange woman in a nightclub, each would bring from me a different ‘voice’.
For the Internotional, Elmin and I presented our ‘communication performance’. Though it was only our intention to face each other across the room, later observation showed that we seemed to reference images of “Adam and Eve” from religious paintings. We stood silently as speakers above each of our heads re-broadcast our voices, the ‘banal’ conversation that we had recorded earlier. We ‘communicated’ only through our ‘preprogrammed’ conversation, and so, in a sense, the piece was a parody of an interaction between two people at a gallery function. As we stood on display, our taped conversation echoed the typical boring exchanges that one might endure at such an event.
The idea of presenting a critique of human interaction at an event that called for any human interaction was interesting to me. The concept behind the presentation of this audio‑piece at a public function was the notion that we come to these events with encoded information. By presenting banal conversation, I wondered if I might evoke in the audience a self-consciousness towards their own interactions that evening.
Though the event asserted itself as being open and inclusive, some of the criticism of the event addressed the problem of ‘exclusivity’. All interaction was allowed, even silence as performed by Paterson, who remained quiet throughout the early part of the event, choosing to draw in his book instead. He spoke about this later in an interview:
Allen: Please describe and comment on your involvement at the Internotional when: a) you remained quiet, drawing in your book; and b) when you and I recorded our conversation about screaming.
Paterson: a) I was well within my rights according to the aims of the Internotional. Through drawing I was able to observe the process of liberating ideas and the eradication of censorship.
The drawings still exist and they continue to inform me. With this in mind I think The Internotional Theatre of Communication is still on the go. b) You scream, ice-cream, we all scream together.[157]
But later in conversation he had this to say about the event:
Allen: Would you try to make the point that the Internotional was significant in terms of the shift in the South African political situation at the time? That is it occurred twenty days after the elections and to a certain extent the Internotional embraced ‘freedoms’ which up until that point were forbidden to most South Africans.
Paterson: I feel the Internotional failed to realise the magnitude of the event. People have been saying what they liked for centuries, how do you think apartheid came into being.
Allen: What else can be said about the Internotional?
Paterson: The Internotional had a limited audience, which hindered the aims of the event.[158]
Indeed Carol Gainer, another FLAT regular, was quite critical of the Internotional and of what the FLAT Gallery had become; she had these comments in an e-mail discussion on December of 1998:
Allen: On May 20 (1994), 20 days after the ‘historic’ SA elections, Jay and Thomas organised The First Internotional theatre of Communication. They advertised it with a flyer stating that “this event will provide a unique context in which to express, in vocal / written / or active form any information about anything whatsoever”. In one of the recordings taken at this event, you expressed some criticism about the event (and/or the FLAT) [“Well once again I have to tell you that I think it’s really fucking pathetic!”]. Could you articulate why you felt this way?
Gainer: The reason why I felt as strongly as I did at the time i.e.: “fucking pathetic” and “masturbation” was because I felt as if the FLAT was becoming a “boys own club”! I seem to remember feeling that the lack of boundaries during this time was not a problem for me but... the exhibitions/performances did start to move into something else, which I did not really think of as art. The element of debauchery seemed to shift the pieces into more of a ‘jolling’ category. I do know now, that on reflection, I was also feeling left out in the sense that if one did not hang out continuously at the FLAT drinking etc, then one did start to feel alienated. It seemed to me at the time that the major players at these events were the ‘boys’ who hung out and I guess that pissed me off in a way as the intensity on a very REAL level which I had previously experienced was not there for me! Also...the pieces started to become boring as there was no genuine discussion generated by them to anyone else other than the involved parties - trying to get some kind of sense out of you, Thomas or Jay at the time was VERY difficult and a little too "airy" - too many uhhmms and aahhs!!!
Allen: The Internotional occurred 20 days after the ‘historic’ elections. Given this context, would you say that it was significant that the event embraced certain ‘freedoms’ (aims) such as stated in flyer: “the principle is that it does not matter what you have to say - but it is vitally necessary that you say it”? This event also reiterated the FLAT’s main aim and goal that, “anyone can do anything in the space”. The event represented perhaps one of the FLAT’s most seminal events. Would you agree with this? If not, explain why.
Gainer: Generally, though, the concept of “letting anyone do anything” was not in question as much as the actual presentation and follow through of the pieces. I feel that we kind of lost our contact with ourselves, and our audience, during this period and after all it was ALL meant to be about communication.
Allen: What are your feelings about the way programming at the FLAT was developing? Do you feel that the later exhibits at the FLAT had slipped into a kind of decadence?
Gainer: I started to detach myself from the FLAT around this time as felt that if I could not keep up with the general ‘jol’ then maybe I should just opt out! The so-called ‘boys own club’ has a very strong historical base in this country as you know and it, as far as I was concerned, became too exclusive and as far as I had understood the FLAT’s mission statement was to be an INCLUSIVE experimental space.[159]
In spite of these valid criticisms, the Internotional still affirmed our struggle to redefine the function of a ‘gallery’. We were not only an exhibition space, but also a ‘cultural centre’, a ‘club’ and a living place. The FLAT events reflected what we saw as being the potential for a new South African culture. It operated in a way that was difficult to define, in a manner which ran contrary to conventional notions of how one might live practically and how one might express oneself culturally. We questioned whether a gallery needed to be ‘official’ or if art needed to be exhibited in a particular way. We asked whether we could not make our actual life our art. For us, art production that operated through conventional means was limited, and we as artists could make radical art out of everyday life, when we established a gallery in our own home. When Horsburgh addressed in his statement the notion of freedom for all, he also spoke to the need to conflate art and life. The Internotional, as an event, was reflective of the ongoing exchange at the FLAT; the ‘performance’ created out of spontaneous interaction where audience and artists become one.
[133] Barry recalls: “I remember that we sent flyers, advertising the event, all over - including the Green Door, a club or restaurant in Maritzburg. That was the furthest we went to disseminate the information.” Barry, Allen; Interview 10, Telephone call, AT&T, Feb 16, 1999.
[134] Therese Owen; The Weekly Mail, Johannesburg, May 1994.
[135] Marianne Meijer, Artbeat, The Daily News, Durban, May 20, 1994.
[136] Barry, Allen; Interview 10, telephone call, AT&T, Feb 16, 1999.
[137] Horsburgh, Barry; The First Internotional Theatre of Communication, Press Release, Durban, FLAT, July 1994.
Ralph Vanegeim and Guy Debord (1931 ‑ 1994) were both members of the Situationist International, a literary, “political” organisation established in France (1957 ‑ 1972). Their writings and activities lead partially to the 1968 events (riots/strikes) in France. Debord is the author of the book The Society of the Spectacle (1967) and Vanegeim of The Revolution of Everyday Life (1967). Gilles Deleuze (1925 – 1995) was a professor of philosophy at the University of Paris at Vincennes. English translations of Deleuze’s work include Kant’s Critical Philosophy: The Doctrine of the Faculties, Cinema 1: Image/Movement and Nietzsche and Philosophy. Felix Guattari (1930 – 1992), a practicing psychoanalyst and lifelong political activist, worked since the mid-1950s at La Borde, an experimental psychiatric clinic. He was an active participant in the European Network for alternatives to Psychiatry. Together, Deleuze and Guattari coauthored Anti-Oedipus and Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature and A Thousand Plateaus – Capitalism and Schizophrenia (Mille Plateaux) (1980). Jay Horsburgh was a member of the FLAT Gallery (1993 ‑ 1995) in Durban, South Africa. Pierre Proudhon (1809 ‑ 1865) an “anarchist”. Hakim Bey, anarchist of the occult political theories of the Temporary Autonomous Zone – “come together in secret, work fast, get out while the goings good”. Isidore Ducasse (aka Comte de Lautreamont) (1846 ‑ 1870) is the author of the infamous Maldoror and Poems, heralded as one of the first Surrealist books Maldoror has been called an “oceanic text, a frenetic monologue, infantile, brilliant, a work of genius and above all EVIL”. Toni Negri is the author of Marx beyond Marx: Lessons of the Grundrisse (1991). The concept of “post‑wokerist” Marxism would be picked up by Toni Negri and others in the 1970s in Italy. Thomas Barry was a member of the FLAT Gallery (1993 ‑ 1995) in Durban, South Africa. Rrose Selavy (aka Marcel Duchamp) foremost 20thC conceptual artist. John Cage foremost 20thC experimental composer. Often associated with Fluxus group but (he) claims no inclusion. Teacher at Black Mountain College. Charles Fourier (1772 ‑ 1837), a utopian socialist. Tristan Tzara was a member of the Dada anti‑art movement and co-founder of the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich in Feb 1916. Isidore Isou (1925 ‑ ), an anti‑poet of Romanian origin, was the leader of the Parisian based group known as the Lettrist International. This group is often seen as a precursor to the Situationist International. Octave Mirbeau is the author of the macabre classic The Torture Garden. (1899) (ReSearch) which features a corrupt Frenchman and an insatiably cruel Englishwoman who meet and then frequent a fantastic 19thC Chinese garden where torture is practiced as an art form. Uncle Bill (aka William Burroughs) author of The Naked Lunch, was involved with the Beat movement in the USA in the 50s. Also involved with Brion Gysin and ‘cut‑up’ theory. Interestingly Horsburgh and Barry, in what could be seen as a pretentious act, included themselves in the company of this ‘who’s who’ of avant-garde and theoretical writing and practice.
[138] Guy Debord, ‘The Theory of the Dérive’, Ken Knabb (ed.), Situationist International Anthology, Berkeley, Bureau of Public Secrets, 1981, p. 50.
[139] Wallace Shawn, André Gregory, My Dinner with André, Screenplay for film by Louis Malle, New York, Grover Press, 1981, p. 26 – 27.
[140] Barry, Allen; Interview 10, telephone call, AT&T, Feb 16, 1999.
[141] Martyn, Horsburgh; ‘Internotional I’, FLAT Recordings, Tape 17, Durban, FLAT, May 20, 1994.
[142] Professor Elizabeth Sneddon was an established theater lecturer at the University of Natal, who was well known in Natal for her involvement in the theatrical arts.
[143] Amato, Barry; ‘Internotional I’, FLAT Recordings, Tape 17, Durban , FLAT, May 20, 1994.
[144] John Elderfield’s introduction to Flight Out of Time – A Dada Diary by Hugo Ball, New York, Viking, 1974, p. xxiii .
[145] Michael Gardiner, The Dialogics of Critique – Bahktin and the Theory of Idology, London, Routledge, 1992, p. 44 – 45.
[146] Ibid, p. 47.
[147] Ibid, p. 129 – 130.
[148] Ibid.
[149] Ibid, p. 51.
[150] Ibid.
[151] Horsburgh, Barry; The First Internotional Theatre of Communication, Press Release, Durban, FLAT, July 1994.
[152] Michael Gardiner, The Dialogics of Critique – Bahktin and the Theory of Idology, London, Routledge, 1992, p. 44 .
[153] Ibid, p. 92.
[154] Scholtz, Allen; Internotional III’, FLAT Recordings, Tape 19, Durban , FLAT, May 20, 1994.
[155] De Kock; Internotional II, FLAT Recordings, Tape 18, Durban, FLAT, May 20, 1994.
[156] Ibid.
[157] Paterson, Allen; Interview 7, snail-mail, April 1998.
[158] Ibid.
[159] Gainer, Allen; Interview 11, e-mail, cyberspace, Dec 4, 1998.