LUTHER BLISSETT IN GERMANY

1-Luther Blissett on German TV

The talkshow "Hera Lind & Leute" with Luther Blissett's cameo has finally been broadcasted on November 9, 1996, from 4 to 5 p.m. on ZDF, a major German TV network. The Luther Blissett player had been recruited by a casting agency as one of a few pseudo-studio audience members. The topic of the afternoon was "body cult". The discussion was centered onto a panel which consisted of the moderator, Mrs. Lind, and five "expert" or semi-V.I.P. guests. Statements from the audience were collected twice, first at the beginning, later in the middle of the show. The Luther Blissett player had been placed into the second audience block. He was supposed to deliver a skeptical statement about "body cult" (i.e. bodybuilding, cosmetical surgery, beauty ideals). For this purpose, he wore a prepared white t-shirt saying "life guard" in bold blue letters on its front and "live guard" in bold blue letters on its back. However, as the assistant director of the show had found the t-shirt too bright and forced the player to wear his jacket, the lettering is hardly visible in televised show. The player knew in advance that he could only give one statement that had to be unsuspicious enough to pass the final edit. And so it happened. When being asked about his "body ideal", the player said that his role model was "Luther Blissett, a British soccer player who, after his football career, became a chess professional and made his way into the British chess league". Upon the moderator's question whether Blissett would therefore qualify as someone who reconciliates mental and physical versality, the player replied that he wouldn't draw this distinction because the brain itself is a body part while physical stimulation, like beauty and sex, ony serves to stimulate the brain and hence is purely neuronal. (The moderator commented with a slightly puzzled or amused "u-hu" and went on to interview the next respondents.)

2-Luther Blissett Published in a Berlin-Based Literature Journal

Anext to a translation of Luther Blissett's Green Anarchy-bashing pamphlet "Sucking Pit", the literature journal "Sklaven" printed an introductory essay by Super!Bierfront editor and Stewart Home fan Mario Mentrup. The following is a translation of the German text. Comments welcome.

"Belief Is the Enemy"

The author of the following text writes under a pseudonym chosen for strategical reasons. The name Luther Blissett is a so-called multiple name, invented by the Italian Transmaniacs or Situationauts. The multiple name concept was introduced in the early 1980s by the Neoists, a joint venture of artists from Canada, the USA, England, Hungary and Germany who were inspired by punk culture and Fluxus/Mail Art. The name Monty Cantsin (a word play: "Monty can't sin") could be adopted by everyone who happened to have heard of this concept, and it could be used for anything; so, finally, countless Monty Cantsins would have somewhat shaken the world of super stars and copyrights. They did not exactly succeed. [...] The multiple name of the Italians, Luther Blissett, even made its way onto the economy sections of major Italian newspapers, into the feuilleton, into radio and TV shows. Among the most interesting Luther Blissetts is the editor of the book "Hakim Bey - A Ruota Libera", published by Castelvecchi, Rome and Bologna, 1996.

This book caused some uproar in the leftist-anarchist league of Italy and by Hakim Bey himself. Hakim Bey, a pseudonym of "Semiotext(e)"/"Autonomedia" editor Peter Lamborn Wilson and the author of the book "T.A.Z.", had to face a book that had appeared under his name without his knowledge and which called the previous Hakim Bey writings complete nonsense and intentional deceptions of the audience. Besides, some earlier and newer essays of Hakim Bey are included. Peter Lamborn Wilson a.k.a. Hakim Bey, who heroically puts an "Anti-Copyright" stamp below the author's and publisher's name in all his publications, wasn't reluctant to tell his Italian publisher, who had faxed him the shocking news of an unannounced book, to take legal measures against the copyright violation and name tampering. A great success for Luther Blissett and at least one dozen slaps into the face of model anarchist Monsieur Peter Lamborn Wilson.

Another Luther Blissett publication I know is the pamphlet "Luther Blissett: Guy Debord Is Really Dead". The London-based "Sabotage" publisher and an Italian Luther Blissett took Guy Debord's suicide as an opportunity for a text which critically examines Debord's and Sanguinetti's pamphlet "The Veritable Split of the Situationist International" and Debord's post-situationist writing in general. The title "Guy Debord Is Really Dead" tells a lot. Those who want to know more about its argumentation can look up the article "Everything about Your Situs" in the Berlin-based fanzine Super!Bierfront no.6.

The text reprinted in this and the previous issue of "Sklaven" originally appeared as "Sucking Pit" in the reader "Green Apocalypse", Unpopular Books, London. This "Luther Blissett" can be ascribed to the London writer and artist Stewart Home. So far, Stewart Home is known in Germany as the autor of the anarchist sex & crime novels "Pure Mania" and "Defiant Pose", both published by Nautilus, Hamburg. It's not surprising that Stewart Home uses the Luther Blissett concept, since he had been an official Neoist for one year, 1985. Years later, in 1993, he founded his own Neoist Alliance.

He is also behind the multiple name Karen Eliot and the multiple magazine SMILE. Stewart Home works himself through the avant-garde and through occultism, because he recognizes similar structures, tactics and rules in both phenomena. In his novels, he combines pulp, that is, sex & crime and popular literature elements with high-cultural ingredients, philosophy, marxist and anarchist, socialist and national socialist phrases with the occult and avant-garde - Dada-Surrealism-Futurism-Situationism-Fluxus-Punk - to destroy the previous impact and ideological boundaries. Destruction and demolishing. That's the motto. No system, no solutions. In the key scene of his novel "Defiant Pose" a young skinhead speaks to leftist-anarchist radicals. The speech consists of fragments of Joseph Goebbel's novel "Michael". Nobody recognized it. "Belief is the enemy" Gamble with meaning. Babylonic confusion made easy. "Unfairy Ultra".

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