Comment from Mary Dery

Yates is a British punk/postpunk graphic designer whose “stealworks” (mordant agit-prop collages that use appropriated images in savage critiques of capitalism, the social order, American power, etc.) are associated with the Dead Kennedys’ Alternative Tentacles Records label, for whom he worked as in-house designer for a decade (http://stealworks.com/about). File contains postcards, poster, booklet related to his anti-war Warfear project; posters.

A book about his work, Stealworks: The Graphic Details of John Yates, is included in Box #1. A cassette containing my 1995 interview with him is included in the box containing interview cassettes.

Comment from Mark Dery

Baer is a San Francisco-based punk-Surrealist collage artist whose work shares political sympathies and an aesthetic sensibility with culture jammers working in the field of visual art. File contains correspondence from Baer in advance of my 1995 interview with her in San Francisco; promotional materials about exhibitions of her work and press releases from her publisher, the San Francisco-based anarchist AK Press; articles about Baer and her art. Note: A book about her work, Ecstatic Incisions: The Collages of Freddie Baer, is included in Box #1. A cassette containing my 1995 interview with her is included in the box containing interview cassettes.

Comment from Mark Dery

Slides of works by, correspondence with, notes on, publications by, articles about San Francisco-based guerrilla media activists Billboard Liberation Group, some of whose members (such as the pseudonymously named Jack Napier) were also involved in the neo-Situationist group, The Cacophony Society. File also contains the group’s booklet, The Art & Science of Billboard Improvement, about the theory and practice of billboard banditry.

Comment from Mary Dery “The Cacophony Society is ‘a randomly gathered network of free spirits united in the pursuit of experiences beyond the pale of mainstream society.’ It was started in 1986 by surviving members of the now defunct Suicide Club of San Francisco. … Cacophony has been described as an indirect culture jamming outgrowth of the Dada movement.” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cacophony_Society) (The Suicide Club “was a secret society in San Francisco, which lasted from 1977–82. It is credited as the first modern extreme urban exploration society and [was] also known for anarchic group pranks. Despite its name, the club was not actually about suicide. Rather, the club focused on people facing their fears and engaging in daring experiences.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_Club_(secret_society) File contains Cacophony Society “membership cards” (“You may already be a member!”); correspondence from various CS members; articles about the group and its activities; copies of...

Comment from Mark Dery

These Xeroxes, intended for inclusion with the book proposal I planned to send to various small presses (but never did because the idea had, I ultimately decided, passed its sell-by date), are copies of articles that appear elsewhere in my culture jamming archive. I include this folder for redundancy’s sake, on the off-chance that one or two of them might not be included in other folders or if they do are represented by damaged or partly illegible versions.