A TRIAL FOR LUTHER BLISSETT?

On the 15th of march, four of the uncountable personalities of Luther Blissett (a multiple (anti)identity adopted by thousand of artists, video makers, music bands, magazines, radio programs, computer programmers, urban culture activists, universitary political groups, intellectuals, etc.) will go to court accused of riotous assembly, outrage, resistance and other crime for the nomadic art performance Neoist Bus.

Since 1988 the Luther Blissett Project in Italy is, in the artistic research and media sperimentation fields, one of the most relevant events, not only for the happenings, the metropolitan exhibitions and performances, but even for the several appearances on the main publications about this topic and for the books edited by Castelvecchi (Mind Invaders), Mondadori (Net.gener@tion) and A.A.A. (Totò, Peppino e la guerra psichica). In the last two years, the most important national newspapers published several articles about the project's activities in their cultural pages.

The Luther Blissett's performative activity is growing in the public spaces (both urban and the media). His project, linked with the historical avant-gards, is to go beyond art and to connect the creativity act with everyday life. But sometimes this means taking a few risks, expecially when an art performance act can be mistaken for a crime performance act by the police.

During the performance Bus Neoista (June 17th 1995) such a mistake did actually happen. The performance meant to cross the city on a bus having a party in it with anybody that could join in along the way. At the same time there was a contact by radio and phone with the broadcasting station Radio Città Futura in wich the "psychogeographical" transmission Radio Blissett was going on.

What the performers wanted to make was a full immersion of bodies in the dense net of the communication fluxes, those of the urban, technological and mediatic planes. This in order to redefine the space in a creative way, and to reconfigurate the public bus as a location for extraordinary events, beyond the border of the everyday forced mobility. A misunderstanding about the ticket to pay on the bus, made the situation grow far beyond the performers' intentions. When the bus stopped cops and carabinieri were waiting. They saw one hundred people enjoying themselves with music, beer and cotillons, and weren't able to understand the meaning of the situation and making it degenerate. A man in plain clothes, (only later people will know that he was a carabiniere) fired off two shots of gun. It caused a panic situation in which the cops beat people up with clubs. The mistake was immediatly recognized by some cops and by the police inspector of Guido D'Arezzo's street. He suddenly reassured everybody about eventual penal procedures. The performance recorded by some video-makers was broadcasted on TV twice by RAI2, once by the cultural program "L' Altra Edicola" and once by "Format - Professione Reporter", intentionally without the police beatings.

Today four of the artists are on trial for this happening. Nothing illegal happened that night, except the dangeorus use of a shotgun by a carabiniere, probably the only reason because the trial started.

EVERY ONE CAN BE LUTHER BLISSETT
THIS MEANS THAT EVERYONE TODAY IS ACCUSED

Luther Blissett