95 Theses:
Mission of the Machines

Dateline: 10/31/99

Marc Awodey is a poet, underground undercover P.T. Barnum publisher of Minimal Press -- one sheet of papyrus folded in unbelievable way to form an 8 pp book(let) -- booklets then (are you ready?) distributed through old pull-lever cigarette machines that he (personally) rebuilds, stocks & stores, with the great gravy of literature: poetry books. Here's a list of sites where you can find these babies:

• Gathering of the Tribes, NYC
• Mobius Artspace, Boston
• Java Hut, Worcester, Massachusetts
• Gibson's Bookstore, Concord, New Hampshire
• Wood Gallery at Vermont College, Montpelier, Vermont
• Magic Hat Brewery, Burlington, Vermont
• Fleming Museum, Burlington, Vermont
• Fletcher Free Library, Burlington, Vermont
• and portable machines at several other Vermont locations

Marc says there will also be a poetry machine exhibition at the University of Vermont in November. Visit the Poets Minimalist Press Web site for instructions on How To publish your own minimalist book. And read Mr. Awodey's most sacred screed here: The 95 Theses.

--Bob Holman

DISPUTATION of Marc Awodey regarding the system of money, power and middlemen that has caused abject corruption in the sacred Arts of literature, painting, and sculpture.

October 31, 1999

OUT OF A LOVE OF TRUTH and of the collective wisdom that only Artists AS A BODY can engender, Marc Awodey, a Master of Fine Arts in Burlington, Vermont has engineered POETRY VENDING MACHINES for the purpose of placing true Artwork into the World. Blessed are the Artists who bring their works into the streets, and any who disaffirm the veracity of DIRECT ACTION in the Arts are herein challenged to rebut these ninety-five theses BY THEIR OWN meaningful ACTS of sapient aesthetic inculcation:

1. Logic is not as linear as we have been led to believe. Artists must follow a HIGHER LOGIC based upon necessity, to enlighten the World with their purpose.
   
   
2. Artists enlighten the World by the MEAT of visionary vitality. Attempts to classify the Arts are attempts to narrow our vision.
   
   
3. We must use all available technologies: Vending Machines, computers, television, Xerox Machines, answering Machines, billboards, brick walls. . . All that humanity has invented must be pressed into the service of a HIGHER ART.
   
   
4. The creation and internalization of ART is an elementary function of the human spirit. AND IF we have souls -- the paramount incarnation of a human soul must be ART.
   
   
5. While nefarious Elites herd the Artistically insecure into red and gilded slaughter pens, Artists must seek a new path into the eye of the CULTURAL CONTINUUM.
   
   
6. We only heed MACHINES when they do something capricious. Poets must wield the capricious power of MACHINES in order to enter the eye of the CULTURAL CONTINUUM.
   
   
7. All operating instructions are written in dead languages.
   
   
8. We must become our own publishers, curators, garbage men, and critics.
   
   
9. By promoting the works of ten Artists before your own, ten Artists are promoting your work before their own.
   
   
10. By promoting the works of one thousand Artists before your own, one thousand Artists are promoting your work before their own.
    
    
11. Judge skill fairly. Question Artistic intent at all times. Motivations test veracity. Veracity is the Artist's hypothalamus.
    
    
12. If skill is lacking in another Artist -- teach. If your own skill is lacking -- learn. If you can neither teach nor learn, you are a mosquito.
    
    
13. The Elites will sow the seeds of their own irrelevancy by making and promoting the FALSE ART of cronyism.
    
    
14. The streets are the highest judge of ART. Read your books aloud on the streets -- grunt and squeal in bookstores.
    
    
15. Distribute free books to the workers of the World. Do not question the judgment of the masses. Study under the masses if they do not understand your work.
    
    
16. Cluster sculptures in industrial parks. Paint hand prints onto walls, interstate highways, and loading docks.
    
    
17. Nothing is criminal that does not injure others -- by this definition certain “criminal” acts can have Artistic relevancy. Use all necessary means to place ART into the World.
    
    
18. By converting a MACHINE into something unanticipated, we demonstrate that ALL animated beings can be transformed, rehabilitated, transfigured.
    
    
19. The National Endowment of the Arts is a jewel of iniquitous elitism. All of the state and local Arts agencies are equally squalid. They are all well meaning Democrats. Artists must become Jacobins!
    
    
20. A readapted Artistic use -- holy redemption for a MACHINE.
    
    
21. A readapted aesthetic paradigm -- holy redemption for the Artist.
    
    
22. All ART is theater.
    
    
23. All theater is POETRY.
    
    
24. All painting is POETRY.
    
    
25. All POETRY is sculpture.
    
    
26. All sculpture is music.
    
    
27. No piece of ART created for the purpose of gaining money is as meaningful as a found object.
    
    
28. Museums are elegant mortuaries.
    
    
29. We have a higher purpose than quality control -- do as you must then vanish into the crowd.
    
    
30. Set no standard fees for ART. Take as much as you can get from connoisseurs. They are all mad.
    
    
31. We attest to the veracity of our hallucinations with whatever tools are at hand, without seeking permission from the muse, the government, history, or the MACHINE itself.
    
    
32. Again: No piece of ART created for the purpose of gaining money is as meaningful as ART created only for Artistic purposes. Artists who are motivated solely by money may as well become counterfeiters.
    
    
33. A cigarette MACHINE that sells poems is very different than a poet selling poems, or a cigarette MACHINE selling cigarettes. Its obvious function is to trade coins for poems, but its hidden function is to raise questions about the nature of MACHINES, poets, commodities, and money.
    
    
34. MACHINES and Artists function best when their indigenous unpredictability is considered valuable. Once the nature of any MACHINE is questioned, everything is at risk.
    
    
35. ART resides in risk. We do not remember a peaceful commute as clearly as a fiery accident.
    
    
36. Critics motivated by money should only write in Lydian.
    
    
37. We will never be fully understood regardless of what we attempt to say -- so we must simply say whatever we please.
    
    
38. And we will do whatever we do.
    
    
39. Every spectator must seek their own MACHINE. Ours are for sale, but the price is terribly high.
    
    
40. Every POETRY MACHINE is a totemic MACHINE image that has been carefully calibrated to remind the World that ART imitates the original forces of creation. Providential randomness, chaos, chance. Such are the original forces of creation.
    
    
41. SLOT MACHINES are the highest order of ART.
    
    
42. ART Historians must take a broad-minded approach to ART history. There would be no history without ART history. But then we could begin anew!
    
    
43. Intellectual property is a fallacy - “great Artists borrow, geniuses steal.” The author of an idea is less important than the idea itself. I say -- steal all of my ideas. I publicly declare that any use of any idea is FAIR USE.
    
    
44. Vital ART will always see the light of day. We need not be coronated to claim our divine rights.
    
    
45. A POET is one who writes poems.
    
    
46. An Artist is one who makes ART.
    
    
47. A parasite is one who feeds off the blood and sweat of another.
    
    
48. Again: As galleries and publishers have generally closed their doors to Vital ART we must become our own publishers by publishing the works of others. We must become our own galleries by presenting the works of others.
    
    
49. We must ordain ourselves, each other, and seek bibles in the streets. By spaghetti cans, lottery tickets, love notes, broadsides we actuate our epiphanies.
    
    
50. Fundraising professionals, development directors do not seek money for the Arts -- they seek it for their bloated bellies. Arts administrators are fat mosquitoes.
    
    
51. The big book distributors have established monopolies. Our technologies will render them moot. Everything will work according to plan if the plans are written well enough.
    
    
52. Distribution monopolies are the last exhale of an old order. Guerrilla distribution is the first glint of jubilee.
    
    
53. We must repossess our prerogatives. Disseminate ART in subways, bars, grocery stores. Sneak books INTO libraries. Sneak books INTO chain book stores. Sneak books into prisons.
    
    
54. We cannot accept stylistic limitations. When the Anarchists captured Barcelona they did not form a government. When the Fascists recaptured the city, they were overwhelmed by chaos.
    
    
55. Censorship is evil. Government funding of the Arts is evil. Governments are in the business of control. We must work freely, without the largess of power Elites. We must remain beyond control.
    
    
56. Work with what you have. Find cheaper, more efficient methodologies for producing works of ART. Then let the exuberance of aesthetic controversy bloom and stink like an amaryllis.
    
    
57. Create from rubbish, rubble, refuse, debris if need be. Use hazardous waste for paint. Sculpt the spent fuel rods of nuclear reactors if need be. Wash the ink off old newspapers and rewrite history if you must.
    
    
58. VENDING MACHINES! VENDING MACHINES! VENDING MACHINES!
    
    
59. Set fire to Newberry Street -- nothing will change. Ignite yourself -- and everything will change! Every Artist is a burning monk. Every burning monk was a great Artist.
    
    
60. The Dalai Lama is too wealthy to be holy.
    
    
61. “god bless henry
    he lived like a rat”
    
    
62. Who is better remembered -- Da Vinci or his swank, slack-jawed French patron?
    
    
63. Who is better remembered -- Diogenes or the faces that he startled by lamplight?
    
    
64. Polemics are useless; THE ACT is all that matters. Write with your whole body.
    
    
65. Dada was the Proto-Renaissance. This is the hour of Michaelangelo.
    
    
66. Verbosity shields ignorance.
    
    
67. The Poets of the Minimal Press have distributed more books than any other publisher in the State of Vermont. We have produced more titles than 95% of the POETRY presses in the World. Not a single one of us has even seen all of the Minimal Press titles -- but we all know they exist.
    
    
68. The time has come to organize a POETRY Internationale. We should convene in Atlantic City with all of the other gamblers.
    
    
69. We should put one fifty-dollar bill somewhere in each POETRY MACHINE to see if it sells more poems, and to ensure that we make no profit despite selling more poems.
    
    
70. If a curator asks to see your slides bring her a trombone.
    
    
71. If an editor wants to see your first chapter send him x-rays of your mother.
    
    
72. Abraham Lincoln was a fine poet. Unfortunately, his POETRY neither killed nor freed anyone -- and so he was assassinated.
    
    
73. When we ALL let delusions rule our lives, Nirvana will ensue.
    
    
74. Expect no rewards from your own times. Good works of TRUE ART will let you enter paradise -- in the eye of the CULTURAL CONTINUUM.
    
    
75. The Academies and Universities have become circuses of mediocrity. Artists must educate themselves and eachother in order to preserve the eye of the CULTURAL CONTINUUM. Let Academicians root out our truffles.
    
    
76. POETRY MACHINES will become the new Ark. We must lift our ART high into the wilderness. Let each MACHINE become a candle in the eye of the CULTURAL CONTINUUM.
    
    
77. Again: Museums are elegant mortuaries. True ART is MEAT not bones.
    
    
78. Again: And if we have souls -- the highest incarnation of the human soul is an everlasting work of ART. And every work of ART is ultimately a MACHINE.
    
    
79. Every MACHINE should be transformed into a work of ART.
    
    
80. No ART without representation. No representation without ART.
    
    
81. Representational sculptures that do not question their own existence are only fit to be smelted.
    
    
82. Doggerel, doggerel, the World dims with doggerel.
    
    
83. Watercolors should be hunted down and thrown into the Sea.
    
    
84. Poets with clean hands should be sentenced to write greeting cards.
    
    
85. Painters with clean hands should be thrown into the art galleries.
    
    
86. Artists who run art galleries are beyond rehabilitation.
    
    
87. Galleries, Publishers, Academies -- lend me your necks. I have come here to praise your beautiful necks.
    
    
88. Rather than sell books, Amazon.com will someday simply sell Writers.
    
    
89. Cantaloupes are more expensive than Poets, pound for pound.
    
    
90. Fat writers are a better deal. None however, are as sweet as cantaloupes.
    
    
91. Again: Expect no rewards from your own times. Your neighbors have other concerns.
    
    
92. Again: Expect no rewards from your own times. Past generations are always more sagacious.
    
    
93. TRUE ART can only germinate in the wild.
    
    
94. POETRY MACHINES will remain mysterious until the World has been blanketed by them, or at least by the idea of them.
    
    
95. Purgatory is the perfect place to create TRUE ART.

          finis.

--Marc Awodey

On the significance of the date these 95 Theses are posted here at About.com Poetry, Marc says:

P.S. The 10/31 date is perfect -- not as Halloween, but as that is the same date that Martin Luther's 95 theses were nailed to the door of his local cathederal in 1517. Ours is appearing on the door of the electronic cathedral. . . . ars longa vita brevis.

Back to the 95 Theses.

More Marc Awodey on the Net:

• Two poems, Devils & A Speaking Wind, appear in Utterants #3.
• Five of his poems were published in inter\face 15 -- “One Brief Man: a poem in three dimensions,” “Grand Canyon,” “New England,” “Reverie,” “We Never Knew the Sea” & “Tree of Hearts.”
• Immortali et mors has “Duellists” & “Pendency” in issue #7, “The Fall” & “Sunset” in issue #8.
• “Three Ghosts” & another version of “One Brief Man” appear in the archives at PoetryMagazine.com.
• “Tree of Life” is in the archives of the Bridge Collective poetry site.
• Eight of his poems are in the Poetry Cafe Anthology.
• Vol. 1, No. 5 of Eclectica has four of his poems -- “The Seasons,” “A Laughter of Fugues,” “In This Field” & “Our Empty Sea.”
• His collection, Telegrams from the Psych Ward & other poems (1999, Minimal Press) is available from Borders.com or directly from the distributor, Enfield Distribution, 1.888.874.6904.

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