Consultant in Residence 2007 Report: Mark HoslerThis is a featured page

Mark Hosler and Spandex Marco

August 21, 2007
Hello out there to whomever is reading this now or in the future- I am really looking forward to my visit to Tilburg and ZXZW 2007. So far, everything I have learned about how the fest is being created, and the attitude towards music, musicians, and culture that is embodied in the fest, is very similar to many aspects of how Negativland has been creating and distributing our work for the last 27 years. Now that I see that all my e-mails are going public, perhaps this is a good point to introduce myself a little bit. My name is Mark Hosler, I’m 45 years old, live in the USA, and I’m a founding member of the group Negativland. What Negativland is, and what we do, is rather hard to explain, so I am pasting our “bio” below in case you are wondering what possessed the ZXZW fest folks to invite one of us for this unusual idea of being a “consultant-in-residence”…more posts here soon, so stay tuned….

First ACIR REPORT

September 15, 2007
Welcome to Tilburg, a city I have never visited. I hear it’s sort of…modern. Working class. None of that Holland tourist crap. Perhaps you live here. Perhaps you are visiting. And perhaps it will be overrun with strange people coming out to hear strange music. We shall see! Right now I am in the Atlanta Georgia Airport waiting for the last leg of my flight to Amsterdam where I will be picked up by the ZXZW folks and driven to Tilburg where I will be doing my “job” for the next week or so - “Artist-Consultant-In-Residence.” And what in the hell is that? My job description is a bit fuzzy. The people of ZXZW and I will be creating it as we go. But, so far, from our conversations, here is (sort of, kind of) what I think is going on with my new job - Frank, Joost and Vincent are now on their third year of doing ZXZW, and it’s gotten really large really fast. They are ambitious and have big ideas for the future. What started out as a very small and totally underground thing is now much more visible in their city. They have many clear ideas about what they do NOT want to do in a festival (one of which is to not even call it a festival!), and they are exploring their ideas of what it CAN be, making something like this their own, and not following any pre-conditioned ideas about what a cultural event like this should look like, act like, or sound like. In addition, I think they have a very long term vision for doing this for many more years to come, so, as these years begin to go by, they are aware of the dangers of losing sight of the big and small things that matter to them about doing this in the first place. They want to be wary of the pitfalls and compromises that lie ahead as an event like this becomes an “institution”. They want to stay smart and sharp and fun about what they do with this ZXZW thing. They want to keep their integrity. So they have decided they want someone here, from outside their immediate Tilburgian community, to act as a sort of “art guard”, or a “conscience-of–the –fest”, a referee and cheerleader to reflect back to them in thoughtful and constructive and critical and encouraging ways about what they are doing. A sort of Jiminy Cricket for ZXZW. Now, having struggled with many of these same issues and worries in all my years of doing Negativland, this is very familiar territory to me, and most likely it’s why they asked me to do this in the first place. So my hope is that I can ask good questions, be a good listener and observer, and be a smart mirror to them about what they are doing there. And, by the way, if I can pull this off and give them what they need, then any impact of my doing this will be felt much more at next years ZXZW than this one. The fact that these guys are smart enough (and playful enough, because, really, at one level the whole idea of having an “Artist-Consultant-In-Residence” is hilarious) to want to be clear about these deeper issues tells me a lot about them already. Just being able to have the self-awareness to know that it’s important to ask these kinds of questions means they are already on the path they want to be on… Team ZXZW Okay. My plane is about to take off, and the dying battery on this laptop doesn’t work for more than 30 seconds, so I gotta unplug from sitting on the floor next to this electronic trash compactor. Next time I write, it’ll be from Tilburg. Awake for 30 hours!!

First touch of Tilburg!
September 16, 2007
MostlandiaYes, that’s me. A bit delirious here. After breezing through customs with a rather amazingly large amount of Negativland merchandise that I brought with me, and then a three-hour long comedy of errors at the airport (where I had arrived on time, my ride was on-time, and we were both *almost* but not quite where we were supposed to meet), and then a two hour drive, I am here.
On the drive I met Chris, who is also from America and is the assistant to the Ambassador of Mostlandia, a country of somewhat questionable existence. This ambassador will be part of the ZXZW “Land-In-Residence”, setting up shop for the duration of ZXZW at the local library (!) where he will answer any and all questions about Mostlandia, as well as give out passports and do studies of the townspeople of Tilburg, Holland’s most fabulous and luxurious city. Upon arrival in TiIlburg, I was taken straight to meet with the ZXZW brain trust, Frank, Joost and Vincent. I sensed it before, but after meeting these guys and spending the day with them, I can see even more how much they have a really great attitude and awareness about what they are doing with ZXZW. Joost and Vincent have a great, often very silly, sense of humor and a strong sense of PLAY about what they are doing, and, with Frank to spank them when needed, they are serious enough about what they do to have their shit together to make it all happen. It seems like a very good working, brainstorming, and creating combination. All week I expect that I will be telling them about what is great about what they are doing, and about exactly WHY it’s great. I am definitely a fan of how these guys operate. They seem to need to hear it, for some reason, even though, honestly, as I think I said yesterday, they don’t need my help to be on track at all, really! Joost has been showing me around and giving some history of the place. The textile mills here all shut down in the 70s and it really wiped out the town for quite some time. Check out the TRASH TOUR on the ZXZW site for more of the “other side of Tilburg”. From what I can tell so far, Tilburg needs something like ZXZW. Amsterdam definitely does not! It’s a great context to be doing something like this in, and I like how unpretentious the town seems to be. No tourists, no hipsters. After a long day running around Tilburg, here, in no particular order, is what my extra-scrambled brain has to tell you so far. (I am too tired to edit this well, plus, my brain tends to not have very clear boundaries about things, so my guess is that all my writings here will range far and wide about my time here, but always try to come back to the central reasons why I was brought to Tilburg. Bear with me). First off, I can see that my time spent here will be really fun, but very exhausting. Very little time to retreat and have down time (or time to even write these blog entries!), which I usually need to process things. So this will be a challenge. But I should do fine, especially when I remind myself that I am “on the job”. Hell, I am getting PAID to do this! I am getting to do something I really enjoy doing in my so-called normal life anyway - questioning and probing and thinking and listening and trying to figure out what is going on and why, with people and the world around me. The day started off with Joost taking me around town to help me get a better sense of the context in which ZXZW is taking place. It’s great that they wanted me to see this and that they realize why that is important, and it’s also exactly what I would have wanted to do anyway. Context is always king when making art, or, in this case, when talking about it! First off I was taken to Tilburg’s largest mainstream rock venue, “013” (bands like Nine Inch Nails or Chemical Brothers would play there). 013 have just completed some new design and construction on their main bar/lobby and were having some sort of unveiling party/breakfast/brunch, with the food being prepared by a “crazy” screaming chef who is nationally famous with his own TV show here. After the mayor spoke (the only word I could make out was “Chuck Berry”) and the owner of 013 thanked the workers and designers for way too long, the cooking show guy leapt up onto a small stage covered in a real live green grass lawn (!) and ran about yelling at us in Dutch. He wore a black leather cooking apron, all black clothes, silver shoes, his head was shaved, some of his basic cooking gear looked like weapons worn in a sort of ninja-like tool belt. I think he was trying to imitate something he’d seen on American TV. It was nicely surreal, as I had no idea what he was saying. After all the build up, the food served was hard boiled eggs, loads of meat, and breads, and about 4 kinds of shredded vegetables concoction drenched in various unknown white sauces. Cole slaw is what we call it back in the USA. I guess they do that white sauce thing to a lot of their food in Holland. It was edible, but pretty unremarkable considering how famous the guy is! More like food from a truck stop. So that made it even funnier to me than it already was. We sat around eating while “nice” live kind of “jazz” music ( singer, guitar and piano) was played loudly enough that you had to yell at each other to be heard. A rather unique way to start a Sunday, and the first time in my life I have gotten drunk before noon (they kept pushing champagne at us). Being that this is a rock venue, I was surprised to see that everyone at this unveiling event were all in their 40’s and 50’s and 60’s. What does this mean? Right outside of 013 was an old inventor with a HUGE contraption machine thing that he had built that made breakfast. In his demonstration, it cut the bread, made the toast, a small salad, put olive oil in a pan, broke an egg, cooked the eggs, and set it all on a plate ready to eat with the salad garnish on the side. Great stuff. I suppose 013 had hired him to be there as “color” for their event?? I don’t know. The inventor guy explained it all, but of course it was in Dutch. From there we went to large city center festival that had nothing to do with ZXZW. It seemed like it was all aging Dutch 60s hippies who now had families and had organized a fest for themselves with Beatles cover bands, some pseudo “world music”, “funny” skits with accordion music, and loads and loads of beer. It was supposed to be “fun”, of course, but somehow no one really looked like they were having too much fun. It felt more like they were there because… it was what there was to do on a Sunday. I couldn’t help but wonder how many of those people would attend events at ZXZW. Probably not too many! Do Frank and Vincent and Joost care about that? I’ll have to ask them. It’s interesting to think that these folks at the Centrum plaza outdoor fest probably all loved the Beatles when they were young because of how new and innovative and cutting edge and independent they were. And now that they are older and have kids and houses and jobs, instead of continuing to have that same attitude (and thus attending and supporting something like ZXZW, which is all of those things) they would rather listen to the same thing they listened to when they teenagers. Hmmmm. Maybe *that’s* why I like old Lawrence Welk records these days! Next, I saw my first ever-underground bicycle-parking garage. Great. Not like anything in the USA. . I wandered around inside it, and I saw the clever way they have devised to stack two bikes on top of each other. Fanzine Expo Then we went to the first actual ZXZW event, a punk rock zine display that was inside…. a typewriter museum!! Very nice, with a small catalog made by ZXZW to give some history and context of why it was part of ZXZW, and with a DJ quietly (very quietly!) spinning old and new punk rock tunes. And I loved seeing all the ancient European typewriters (some of the typewriters were 150 years old!), they are so beautiful, and this made for a perfect and perfectly odd setting for the zine display. Great idea! In a small world moment, it turned out that one of the zine expo curators, Jos of the local punk bands Staathaat and Seeing Red, grew up with the husband of the women who once owned Negativland’s record distributor. And I learned more about Frank’s punk background, which has clearly had a big impact on how he approaches creating ZXZW. My god, he even had a Black Flag tattoo! As did more than a few other people in the room. So it’s official- they’re punk! Well, I can see the punk ethic at work in ZXZW that is for sure. And that is a very good thing. More on that in another posting, I’m sure. Now, unlike other fests, ZXZW had decided to have no official “opening” event or unveiling or announcement that it had started. The fest just sort of start occurring all around the city, with more and more stuff going on each day. Has this been true each year? I will have to ask. I like this. Now in a way, I admit that I kinda want to see these guys get the credit for doing this and see it officially start and be “exciting” like that, but I really understand and respect why they choose not to. Making it too official sets a tone they want to avoid in this. There is fine line they are trying to straddle here, I think. But I will know more as the week goes one. We then moved to another space that had an opening of “naive” paintings of very nicely odd looking fathers and sons by local artist Roel Sloot (with a secret behind how the artist got all the thick and bizarre textures on the canvases that I am not allowed to reveal), and a butt load of really cool hand silk-screened posters by three different artists who all work for the same music venue called Vera in Groningen.

Zstock posters
The posters were all beautiful and all the artists were there, which was nice. There were also some photos on display that were more connected with fashion companies and their logos and skateboarding and somehow showing off this design and clothing stuff as “art”. It seemed rather weak and lame to me, but more importantly, it simply seemed very out of place at ZXZW. Joost, Frank, and Vincent all agreed with me on that one, so that was a good to know we were on the same page there. They told me that the art angle for ZXZW this year was added a bit late in the game, so it is not quite as solid they hope it will be next year when they will be giving a more time and attention to that aspect of it. We then went to see a rather unfocused performance art piece with milk, syringes, bandages, fake blood and a half naked woman rolling around all covered in those things. The name of the piece they did is a single Dutch word that means “little pieces of broken up glass” (and of course I am amazed that a language would have a single word for such a thing. I wonder why?). The live sound track was really well done, all made by looping and processing acoustic sounds into droning soundscapes. But playing with such potent imagery came off as being waaaaaaay to heavily “symbolic” for my tastes. If you are going to have milk and blood and syringes and partial nudity in a show, the stakes are high if you are going to pull off something good and make it work! And the woman should have been totally nude. It seemed too halfhearted to only strip down to black bra and panties. So far, I have had no good luck in finding decent food to eat here. One thing the ZXZW guide could really have used is a guide to places to eat around town, along with a map that show where they are. This is useful both for the artists in ZXZW, as well as out-of-towners who attend it and who don’t know Tilburg. I’d suggest doing that next year in the guidebook. Starting tomorrow Meldy (of Meldy Peaches fame) will be making a large dinner each night for ZXZW guests. Looking forward to that. As I type this, very late at night, some of the ZXZW folks are sneaking out to various places in town that have all the wheat-pasted posters pout up to promote all the normal dumb rock shows and dance clubs around town, and they are painting them all completely WHITE. Then tomorrow all day they will have artists painting things over them, putting up “art” posters and images, and one guy will even glue small paintings to them. And at 5pm tomorrow we will all gather in the town plaza to do chalk art all over the ground (it’s illegal to graffiti here, but they think they can get away with chalk). All great ideas, and it’s very important to take things like this out of venues and into the public space. In new and evolving forms, this is something they need to maintain in all future ZXZW’s. About my digs whilst here- after a bit of…er…. adjusting, I’d say they were hilarious. The hotel I am in just might be the cheapest in all of Tilburg! It’s called the Central Hotel, and it’s a bit….seedy. The main colors in the hotel and in the rooms are a headache inducing baby salmon pink and baby shit yellow. I have no toilet or shower (they are down the hall and the shower randomly changes from burning your skin off hot to ass freezing cold whilst using it), the TV that was once attached to the wall has been ripped off, there are no shelves or drawers, no coat hangers in the closet, and the bed is a single piece of foam!! I am on the 3rd floor ( that’s the 4th floor to us Americans) with a view directly across the street to the main train station. Good thing I brought my ear plugs! The table I am typing on is made 100% of unfinished particleboard disguised by a tablecloth. It’s the kind of place that has had everything stolen from it, where people piss in the sink, where there are cigarette burns in the most unlikely of places, and you’d think it would be fancy as its right across from the train station. Probably it once was. It might be a bit rough to be here every night for so many days, but these guys need to save money, it’s half the price of all the other hotels in town, and their hearts are so much in the right place that I have not given them even an ounce of grief over it. So I hope they don’t read this part. Oops. They did. Well, must go! My piece of foam awaits!!

It’s Vlaflip Day!
September 17, 2007
The offices of ZXZW are adjacent to a room with a kitchen and large table, where we all will be meeting each day for dinner. A very good idea - free food and a daily way of connecting with many of the fest organizers and guests. Nice. We met tonight for lasagna dinner, cooked by Meldy. The feeling around the table is that no one is more special than anyone else, whether you are a performer, an organizer, a cook, a sound or tech person, a driver, or what have you. Very good, and something I hope stays true for all future ZXZW’s. It’s an important tone to set in an event like this, though my guess is that it comes very naturally to Frank, Vincent, and Joost. For dessert was…something…very…strange. Vlaflip! If you are from Holland, then you can skip the next paragraph, since you will already know what I am talking about. Vlaflip is a strange and…well…disgusting dessert delicacy that the Dutch like to eat - you pour runny liquid vanilla pudding (called “vla”) from a waxy cardboard container into a glass, top it off by pouring on an even more runny plain liquid yogurt, then pour liquid raspberry concentrate over the top of all that, and garnish it with tasteless grayish orange canned peach chunks. The raspberry sauce slowly seeps through to the bottom of the glass, and you drink it (sort of), or eat it with a spoon. Stirring it all up is not allowed. Of course I wanted to try it, and I *did* manage to finish off nearly my entire glassful, but I think that will be the end of my vlaflipping for the duration of my stay here. After lasagna and vlaflip, we headed out to be part of ZXZW’s Chalk City, where many boxes of colored chalk and charcoal were being made available to anyone who wanted to draw on the streets with them. The city has laws against graffiti, so ZXZW thought that chalking would allow for a kind of temporary graffiti that would circumvent those laws. Due to the lightly drizzling rain (a common feature of life in the Netherlands), it had been relocated from the main outdoor plaza in Tilburg to a covered shopping mall area (the Schouwburg Promenade) that was open to the air at either end. On my way there I realized that this would mean that no future rains would be able to wash it all away, and it would be the job of the shopkeepers to deal with it. A potential problem for ZXZW?? Hmmm. More and more people arrived over the next two hours and the equivalent of about one long city block was covered with drawings, words, designs, and a really detailed and beautiful image of Vincent Van Gogh, who went to school in Tilburg as a young man. My favorite thing on the ground was from someone who came along and had no idea what event this was or that it was a planned thing- he just saw a loads of people having fun with loads of chalk, and decided to join in. In grammatically challenged English, he wrote on the ground LIFE LIVE 2 THE MAX. I spoke with Vincent at length during all this, wondering if they were worried about how business owners might react to it. He was aware, but not too concerned. The thing I liked best about all this chalking was imagining the reactions of the people the next day who would arrive to work or to shop, and find that all this art had just magically appeared over night. A great imagined moment to have been part of creating. There was at least one TV news shows there covering the event, and I mentioned to Vincent that events like this often work at many levels- in this case, one level is that of the actual experience people have of doing it and reclaiming privately owned space as public space. Always a good thing to do, of course! Another level is how the media covers it, which may have little to no relation to what actually happened, and a third level is - from conversation, gossip, and the media combined - what people around here *think* happened, which can often seem much larger than what actually happened. The impact of these various levels are all interesting, possibly powerful, and all valid in some way, possibly troublesome, possibly good, and probably useful for future perceptions of ZXZW. It’s something to be aware of any time you do things like this. Keep your eyes as wide open as you can! Perception versus reality, which is always an interesting place to play around with (it’s also a huge part of any good prank, it’s how politics work, and how wars are started). From there we went by a small crumbling brick squat that, strangely enough, was in the main shopping area of town. It had a really nice and charming feel to it. Each night of ZXZW, they are putting on contemporary classical “new music” at this squat, a great contrary setting for something as academic and formal as “new music”. Tonight it was WIRE GRIOT, a male/female duo from Chile and Canada who worked with brittle and glitchy electronics noises and operatic vocals. I am not a huge fan of opera, but they were very good at what they did. I took a break to get some more bad food from a Shoarma fast food place with Joost, and then we headed to the Paradox, a local jazz club. On the way Joost mentioned he wanted to stop and see something that was somehow part of the ZXZW. I was not sure what he meant, but as we turned around a corner, we came upon a large outdoor postering kiosk, and on it was a ZXZW guest artist “art” billboard that was so over the top and insane that I nearly fell over. What I saw did not even register at first as being what it was because…well, how could it be? It looked like a totally real ad. It was a picture of a woman right after giving birth, taken from right in front of her, with her legs wide open for you to see everything in great detail, the umbilical cord hanging out of her vagina, the blood covered baby in her arms, her husband looking at her adoringly, and the doctors hands hovering above. The ad said (in Dutch) - HER JOB IS GIVING BIRTH. OUR JOB IS GETTING YOUR ATTENTION. And it had a logo for a design company at the bottom that was called “The Design Discounters.” It was supposed to look like an ad from an imaginary design firm in town that is proud of how well they make ads, and wanted you to hire them. It was, of course, *totally* fucked up, and more than a bit gasp inducing, and I can’t imagine it will stay up for more than a few hours tomorrow! I am not even sure what I think of it, but I don’t care - seeing something so “wrong” in such a normal setting was just great, and I haven’t been that startled by anything in many years. Congratulations to ZXZW for creating the chance for something so crazy to go up in this town! If you can get over the shock, I suppose it’s about how far someone will go to sell themselves, a topic Negativland has dealt with in our own work more than a few times. Next, on to the Paradox. All week of ZXZW, instead of its usual jazz, the Paradox will be having noisy improv stuff going on. Unfortunately I missed the first act, Chris Forsyth, but saw SUPERSILENT, a quartet of two drummers and two keyboards, who were really balls-to-the-wall going crazy, making a hell of a lot of noise, and doing it very, very well. This kind of free improv noise stuff can often be the worst shit you’ll ever hear, but these guys were great, really played off each well, and their sound had a surprising amount of emotion in it. A great show. Well, so far I have been impressed with what has gone on with ZXZW. In reading through the catalog for the whole week, in all of the descriptions of the bands and of the various other events around town, you can really sense ZXZW’s genuine enthusiasm and love for *all* kinds of music and for what they are doing. These guys seem to be into what is good regardless of style (we’ll see what happens at Thursdays Heavy Metal Bowling party!), and, while it might make the exact “identity” of ZXZW impossible to pin down, that is actually a real strength, and very important to maintain from year to year. There is a very funny sounding event at tomorrow I am looking forward - the “opening” of a sound installation that is, literally, inside the mayors office!! Great!! They somehow talked him into this. I suppose this means that you can then make an appointment with the mayor to see him so you can play with the noise making “wall of art” that will be built behind his desk!!

Art In The Mayors Office!
Tuesday September 17
Using the way too vague ZXZW map of venues for the fest, I got a bit lost trying to find City Hall and the Mayors office for the art opening of an audio/art installation in his office.
Once inside the building, it took me a while to find the actual upstairs office as the front desk guard spoke very little English, and it made no sense to him that they would be part of a music festival inside of city hall! He kept taking my map of Tilburg and trying to help me find other places that might have concerts. I kept pointing at the upstairs, and insisting that, yes, it actually *was* in the mayors office. It was getting pretty comical, and we were getting nowhere, until someone came along who did speak English, cleared things up, and I was on my way. This being not-the-USA, I was not searched, frisked, questioned, or scanned before heading into the building, and in fact I just waltzed right in to the floor where all of the cities political offices and politicians were and wandered around completely unquestioned until I found the right door for the reception. I was quite struck by this, and was then startled to realize how quickly us American have become accustomed to a completely unnecessary fear induced total high security/high surveillance state of existence since September 11, 2001. Pretty depressing.

Once inside the office, the ambassador of Mostlandia, dressed in a fabulous all-orange suit and pants ensemble with wine colored sash across his chest emblazoned with the word MOSTLANDIA, began the evening by welcoming the mayor with a speech and greetings from Mostlandia. He presented the mayor with a special golden safety helmet (they are very big on safety in Mostlandia), which he looked quite silly wearing, and the mayor then handed the ambassador a bouquet of flowers as a gift from Tilburg. There was a waiter handing out red and white wine, and a large variety of hors d'œuvres, and it was all much more fancy and official and upscale than probably anything else in the entire festival. Joost was actually (slightly) dressed up, and I got to meet both Joost parents and the mayor. Perhaps he brought them out to this night in particular, as it might seem to be the most respectable of ZXZW events!

The artwork in the mayors office consisted of a series of canvases all hung on the walls behind the mayors desk and to either side of him, which had various knobs and input and output jacks as part of the canvases. The artist then strung brightly colored audio cables to link them all together to create an ever-shifting series of bleeps, squeals, clicks, and hisses. I loved getting to hear all these kinds of noises happening inside a working politician’s office, a most unlikely place for such a thing. In America, something like this would never happen in a million years. The mayor himself seemed to enjoy the whole evening quite a bit.

We then headed to the squat to hear another evening of new music. In this case it was a piece composed for nylon string acoustic guitar that was deliberately made to be so complex so that the player could never really accurately play it. So part of the piece became what happens when the player ‘does his best’. He has a lot of choices of what to play and what not to play. I was told that the name to this approach was called: The New Complexity. Which I don’t think was supposed to be a funny name, but I thought was pretty damn funny.

Next up was a walk to a small theater to see a program of film shorts called “Cinema of the Ear”, a bunch of experimental films from the 1970s that all had sounds as their main visual component. Historically interesting, and with some good background notes in the ZXZW catalog, but I still thought that the guy who presented the films did not tell us enough to put it all in a context, so, unless you read all the background notes, it seemed a bit of a head scratcher. But this kind of direction is a good one for the fest to expand on in the future, bringing in other mediums and historical works that can help contextualize the music and educate folks who attend ZXZW.

Later that night back at the ZXZW offices, I hung out with Joost and Frank and the conversation turned to punk, punk rock, and the definition of punk. And I learned more about Frank’s musical background as a player and an organizer - he is very much grounded in a punk ethic, attitude and ideology. This made a lot of sense to me given all that I’d seen of ZXZW thus far.

I was 15 or 16 when punk started, and I told Frank about my impressions of it and what I thought it was really about. Punk, to me, was never about a certain sound or clothing or hairstyle. It was always about an attitude and a point of view - making your own culture, not having to be a “professional” to make music, pushing at the edges of what people think is music and art, working with others in non-hierarchical ways, and generally stirring shit up and going outside of peoples expectations. It was, to use a word from way back then, “anti-static.” In fact, I can recall that I was pretty confused when, in the early 80s, punk actually *did* did settle down in being a sound and a look and a hairstyle. That always seemed very un-punk to me. Groups like WIRE were more the model of what I (perhaps mistakenly) thought all punk rock would evolve into, getting more and more experimental as a band evolved. In 1978 Brian Eno produced the amazing compilation NO NEW YORK that set the standard for how weird and freaky punk rock could get. But alas, these were to be the exceptions, not the rules. Of course I’ve always seen Negativland as being very punk rock in our attitude, our work and how we run a business. And when we put out our “U2” single, as much hell as the aftermath was to go through, I was very proud of the fact that after 11 years together as group, we had managed to put out some work that caused so much of a media hoo-ha and was such a stick up the butt of so many people in the mainstream culture business. It seemed…very punk rock.

I mentioned all this to Frank and Joost because it’s pretty clear that ZXZW takes all those attitudes and ideals as a foundation for what they are doing (and, more importantly, not doing) in how they create, promote and operate ZXZW. And, it should go without saying, that I totally support that!

And speaking of punk rock, back at my hotel I was in for a real treat. The sink in my room had not been draining properly all week and was getting worse and worse. When I tried to poke at the drain to clear it out, the entire drainpipe under the sink fell off!! I was able to screw it back together, but it now has a permanent leak and I have to keep the garbage can under it at all times to keep the drip from getting the carpet all wet!

And We Get Into A Loop That Goes On Forever!
Wednesday September 18
I forgot to mention that yesterday, the day after the poster of the woman giving birth went up, it was immediately torn down. The artist now plans to put up his response to his art being torn down. Looking forward to seeing what he does with this idea, though I already have a good guess of what he’ll do.

Something I’ve been noticing- the texts in the ZXZW catalog that describe each event and each band or artist feel pretty straightforward, direct, funny and enthusiastic. It fits with the vibe of ZXZW, and gives you a sense of how far ranging and anti-elitist they are in their musical tastes. And the English is sometimes a bit wrong, which only adds to the charm.

Tonight at the Paradox is…NOISE NIGHT. Interspersed in between a semi-public discussion in Dutch by attending academics that is all about philosophy and Kierkegaard and Hegel (yes, really), The Haters give a brief 20-minute blast of noise, Wouter Van Veldhoven does his noisy thing, someone whose name I forget does a lovely piece using modular analog synths with an antique tape loop delay system set up the way Robert Fripp used to do for his Frippertronics, and then the amazing Madam P, formerly of Italy and now living in Amsterdam, does her supreme looping madness. In fact, her lengthy performance is, so far, the single best thing I’ve seen yet at ZXZW - she clearly loves to make noise (and is brilliant in the use of her looping device to build up complexly layered rhythms and textures), but is also a trained musician and could probably sing old Billie Holiday Jazz standards quite well. So this mix of noise and sounds, with actual catchy melodies occasionally stuck on top, sounds just great together. She does it all with just her voice, a few distortion boxes and a single looping pedal. Some of the philosophy chatterers won’t shut-up while Madame P performs, and no amount of polite requests that they take their conversation elsewhere has any effect in getting them to stop. I briefly feel like smacking them!

It’s Heavy Metal Bowling Night! And Negativland!! And "I Threw Up" Stickers!
Thursday September 20
Well, tonight was quite a night, and probably the most silly of the entire fest. I have a hard time imagining how you could get any more ridiculous that getting local legend DJ Spandex Marco and a bunch of Dutch Tilburgians in an all-you-can-bowl, all-you-can-drink, all-you-can-rock-out-to night of bowling to heavy metal music. This event was SOLD OUT. 20 Euros got you in, and pretty much every one inside was dressed up in their metal-head finest.

But I digress. As I had guessed, the “response” poster to the birth image being torn down was a very verbose apology for having done something so offensive, with a reproduction of the very offensive poster itself right in the middle of the apology, so you knew exactly what they were apologizing for. Very funny. I also learned that one of the members of the ZXZW staff (who will not be named) has a very elaborately created alter ego (who will not be named) who DJs nothing but….. German Schlager music. Sometimes mixed with techno. Being a huge fan of that kind of stuff, I was surprised to find out he knew so much about it. Great, and I hope to hear this some day.

Earlier in the evening, I presented the European premiere of Negativland's new feature length DVD “Our Favorite Things”, a collection of film work we have been slowly creating over the last 10 years. While much of this work is in a very legally grey area that some would call “copyright infringement”, it all very much comes out of the experience of being and living in the USA. And it’s a fairly dark picture we paint of 21st century America, juxtaposing paranoia, torture, control, power, guns, fear, suicide, cola wars, mental illness, and intellectual property issues with the lighter side of dopey advertising, cartoon characters, cleaning products and Jesus.

The DVD was almost not going to be shown, at all! I got word from the rest of Negativland back in the USA that the entire 2500 pressing of the DVD might be defective and that many copies would not play in any DVD player! So what did I have with me to show? A defective copy from our pressing of the DVD, of course!! I spent all day trying to get it to play with no luck. As panic set in, and with only 2 hours to show time, a young computer whiz was able to rip the entire data stream off of it to his hard drive, and so we showed the film directly from his hard drive. Whew!

Our film was well received, and it was fascinating to hear the reaction to it from people how are subject to American actions and culture and behavior and global domineering, but who don’t actually have to live in the country.

And then...on to Heavy Metal Bowling!!

I was not sure what to expect, but it was in fact a rather large bowling alley, filled to bursting with metal-heads and those pretending to be metal-heads, and with an aging, pot bellied, balding, mulleted, spandex wearing guy who was, indeed, DJing his favorite metal music while many pitchers of beer were drunk, light flashed, and disturbingly shaped deep fried pork balls were eaten. DJ Spandex Marco did much fist raising and ran up and down the alley a lot and lip-synched and air –guitared to nearly every tune he played. As did many of those in attendance, as well as Frank and Vincent, who, to my surprise, actually knew a lot of the music DJ Spandex was playing! Hilarious. They gave out prizes at the end of the night – vinyl metal LPs, beer and boxed sets of metal bands I’d never heard of. And no, they did not do anything so dopey and typical as give away promotional t-shirts for ZXZW. Whew!! I like that these guys actually think about details like that. Very important. Heavy Metal Bowling at ZXZW I presented DJ Spandex with an “ I Threw Up” sticker, but he did not seem to know what to do with it. But I did- I was wearing one on my face all night, and it was great to be to attend something this stupid at ZXZW (and I mean that in the nicest possible way, guys). Everyone had a blast, and we all agreed that it was best not to repeat it next year so it would not become some kind of “shtick” of the fest, keeping things “anti-static.” Though, as your artist-consultant-in-residence, I do think that having classical avant-garde music performed in the bowling alley next year would be a very nice idea. So get to work on it!
Hair Gel Explosion! Let's Go To The Library! Lets Get Pants! Let's Techno-Squat A Concert Hall!
FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 21, 2007
I have never been a hair-care product kind of guy, but for the past few months I have been experimenting with some stiff goopy gel that make my hair stick out a little bit in a way that, to my eye, makes me look very "grown-up-man" looking. And I also haven't been shaving for a week ( also very unusual), so I’d say I have a whole new look going on here. My day begins with the discovery that storing your nearly full brand new extra-the large tube of hair gel at the bottom of ones back pack is a very bad idea. Nearly the entire bottle has squirted out and completely filled up and coated the backpack and everything in it. I spend a good hour attempting to siphon, scrape, wipe, and rinse out my back pack. Today I am determined to finally visit the ambassador from Mostlandia as his temporary week-long residency at the Tilburg Public Library. He is set up in the lobby and has a series of very funny and confusing forms to fill out in order to get a passport to his country. When I try to ask him a question, I am informed that, even though he is sitting directly across the desk from me, all questions about Mostlandia must be submitted in writing. My questions were "Can I have the piece of paper that I am writing this question on?" and "Can I have copies of all the other pieces of paper on your desk." The ambassador stamped and re-stamped each question with many different stamps ( they seem to do that a lot in Mostlandia) and answered in the affirmative for both questions. I am then photographed for my honorary Mostlandia passport, pose for pictures with the ambassador, and am on my way to visit the Haters. The Haters, the official artist in residence for ZXZW, was set up in small gallery space with a do-it-yourself noise making set up of contact mics attached to toy shovels and small scale you could rock back and forth. Making loud annoying noise is a Haters speciality, and this set-up worked great, and I also picked up a Haters branded measuring ruler that is designed to be impossible to use to actually measure anything all. Nice. Since I accidentally came to Holland with only the pants I was wearing on the plane, I then proceeded to a low cost clothing store to see if I can find myself a new pair of trousers. Luckily, Europeans are not nearly as fat as Americans, and I am able to find something that fits my skinny legs. Yay! Success! New pants! And they look all "Euro-style" in a way you'll never find in the USA unless you shop in New York. Andreas van Zoelen and Frank Crijns do some not very interesting baritone sax and guitar noise skronk at the squat, and then I head to Kraaklink to see a local techno-collective, who usually set up and play all night in squats, do their thing. For those of you reading this who don't speak Dutch, Kraaklink is the term used to refer to a squat. But this "squat" is in a very fancy shmancy concert hall. So all week ZXZW has programmed avant classical music in a real squat, and squat music in a classical concert hall. They do this because they think it's funny. Which it is. The stage of the hall is filled with an ear bleeding monster wall of speakers, arranged more like an amazing sculpture, and the many electronic dance music makers are lined up in the hall across the seats where the audience would normally be sitting. So we dance on the stage, and the music is made live from the seats, with a short break for a blast of Haters created noise, where myself and others lie on the floor to feel the intense vibrations of the noise. Later on at Kraaklink, I try to dance some, but can't really get to into it, and head out for some pizza. At the end of the night, I still smell of hair gel.

The Madness Begins!
SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 22
An aside - as an American, something I have noticed and enjoyed all week is the different pace of life that, as far as I can tell, seems to come with so many people riding bicycles everywhere. If you ride a bike yourself, you know what I mean about how differently you take in the world around you. So then imagine a whole city where it is one of the main modes of transportation. And because of that, those that do drive cars are very bike conscious and very unlikely to hit you, throw things at you, or yell as they drive past. It’s very nice. My day began with another bit of hilarious hotel excitement – the sink in my room has been slightly clogged all week, and getting worse each day, so I finally decided to investigate. When I put my finger in it to see if I could pull anything out, all of the piping under the sink fell off! I was able to sort of screw it all back together, though I now have to have my small garbage can underneath it to catch the perpetual fast drip as it slowly drains out anytime I run the water. And, of course, it’s still clogged, so it must be something further down the line. At 1:30pm I arrived at the De Pont Museum in Wilhelmina Park to do the second of my two “official” presentations at ZXZW. This time it’s a lecture, with some short films of ours tossed in, called “Adventures in Illegal Art,” where I cover the entire history of Negativland’s work and touch on pranks, media hoaxes, media literacy, the art of collage, creative activism in a media saturated multi-national world, file sharing, intellectual property issues, evolving notions of art and ownership and law in a digital age, artistic and funny critiques of mass media and culture, and so-called “culture jamming.” I’ve done talks similar to this over 70 times now in the last six or so years, including in Holland a few years ago in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and Utrecht. I was curios about how well it would go over in Tilburg. Since the Dutch speak English mostly quite well, and tend to have a pretty silly sense of humor, my previous presentations in Holland have been well received. The Mostlandian Ambassador Mr. Hosler at De Pont Well, it went just fine, though attendance to my event was sort of low. I think partly because it was in a place that was fairly far away from where the various venues for ZXZW were clustered, and perhaps folks were holding back for the onslaught to come later that day…. …because, as busy as the fest has felt this past week, nothing quite prepared me for how crazy-busy-intense it became today starting around 6pm. Nine venues with bands playing in all nine all at the same time until very late! (you can refer to the ZXZW website for a complete list, photos, reviews, etc)… Here is quick rundown of some of what I saw- Rhys Chatham, legendary (to me at least) father of New York minimalist rock that influenced folks like Glen Branca and Sonic Youth, played a pieced composed in the 1970’s (called “G3, “) that was, back then, his first attempt at marrying minimalist classical avant-garde techniques from folks like Steve Reich and Phillip Glass and Terry Riley with a punk rock band. Cool stuff! He had recruited a local drummer, a bass player, and six other guitarists to create a great wall of one chord rock, played in two parts, each about 30 minutes long. Both sounded identical expect one had the high hat and drums and one did not! Very nice. As I enter the theater Joost informs me that Rhys is a real MySpace addict, and when I am introduced to him, the first thing he says is “hey, you can be my friend on MySpace”! He’s quite a character, and, I think, nearly deaf from his experiments in using volume as compositional device compositional device. Rhys Chatham concert Next was a quick walk back to the city center to see “?Alos” from Italy (yes, that is how she spells her name), doing a noise/music /cooking show. A great idea, though I thought it needed a more organized presentation to really work. Then I went to another space and saw part of Crippled Black Phoenix, a kind of anthemic psychedelic rock band that was not my cup of tea. Next up- I got lost using the crappy ZXZW map trying to get to the Haters show across town. I had been invited to be onstage as an honorary Hater and help them make a shit-load of noise for 30 minutes and was looking forward to it, but I got so lost trying to find the venue that I missed the show entirely! Aargh! At the venue I learned that Suuz, who has been a volunteer helping with ZXZW all week, was robbed! Well, so much for my idea of a safe Tilburg! But the story is somewhat amazing - Suuz was so pissed off that this guy had grabbed her purse that she chased him to his car, and then, as he tried to speed away, she actually got *into the car with the guy*, hitting him, scratching him and trying to get her purse back until she eventually fell from the moving car. She seems to be okay, though very shaken up. Looking at the length of her nails, my guess is that the guy will need stitches! Back in the USA, no one, man or woman, would try this, since we all would be too worried that the thief had a gun! In Holland, this is highly unlikely. Well, now it’s back to my dripping hotel room to get some rest for tomorrow, which will have a zillion more bands and events….

...THE LAST DAY!
Sunday SEPTEMBER 23, 2007
Not much sleep last night, and now up for the last day of the fest, and the most action-packed day yet! I saw and heard..... Minitel - pounding drums, feedback, cassette noise onslaught. Nothing new to me, but everyone is smiling because of how full-on they are into doing it. Paper Tiger- folksy, upbeat, synthy, 60-ish pop, with steel mandolin, nice harmonies, and some pretty bad lyrics. I'd say that English is not their first language! Sudden Infant - from Zurich, solo rhythms and noise, loads of screaming, distortion, with stark light from below and white face! Ansatz Der Maschine - lovely instrumental electronic music, great intertwining sax melodies laid on top, mix was way too loud for the kind of music it was, but they sounded great. Ovo- they made some okay bunch of noise. Kap Bambino - destroyed synth pummel pop. Acoustic Noise - a series of performances taking place outdoors in the middle of people eating outside at cafes, going for strolls, etc.. A situationally great idea - how much noise can you make without amplification? I am not sure who I stumbled onto first, maybe "Vulvax"?, but they were wearing torn tights, fury hoods over their faces, smashing things, blowing stuff up, squealing and screaming. On stage it would have been just sorta okay, but in this context, it was great! Bas Verbeek was a vision of silver, wearing a suit made entirely of duct tape, and smashed on loads of hanging metal all attached to a rolling stand and all spray painted silver. Lewd - long defunct Tilburg based trio who regrouped just for this fest. Not my cup of tea, but very good at what they did- very, very hard rock coming from a near noise aesthetic. Agent Side Grinder - young guys from Sweden who sound *exactly* like late 70's Suicide meets early 80's Joy Division, actual real analog tape loops, ancient keyboards, old drum machines, very nice. In fact, I saw a number of bands who clearly had a Suicide influence to them. Psychic TV - at this point in his plastic surgery odyssey, legendary P-TV main man Genesis P-Orride quite literally looks like a cross between actress Carol Channing and singer Courtney Love ( after each of those woman had had extensive surgery). An unnerving sight, to be sure. I suppose they were okay, though personally I am not into the very normal sounding psychedelic pop rock they played ( along with way too random "transgressive" videos projected over the band that would have looked innovative 25 years ago, but now felt very, very dated). They somehow did not seem to fit the fest, really, being very much a "rock star" vehicle for the lead singer who gets whomever he can to fill out the rest of the band. Blowlfy - obscure and legendary 63 year old black man from Florida, insane lyrics, been making crazy "novelty" and messed up cover versions funk records since the 60's at least. Like an altered version of "Should I Stay or Should I Go Now" changed into " Should I Fuck This Big Black Ho Now," in another song about his love of large woman he sang "I've got a wallet full of rubbers, she's got panties full of blubber," then invites white guy from the crowd saying to him "Don't worry, trust me. Now I am sorry to tell you, but for this next song, you're a nigger. And what's worse... you're R.Kelly who fucked those 12 and 13 year old girls and made those videos and married a girl who was 15 and divorced here at 17 because she was too old," and proceeded to sing to this guy all about how much he hates R. Kelly, sang a song called "Freddie's Dick is Dead," etc. etc. The rest of his band was a really tight funk machine as he spouted off a barrage of relentlessly tasteless stuff about sex, big dicks, jerking off, impotence, and I am not sure how well this would work when he was 30 or 40 years old but it worked great at his age now. Now what made this all so especially over the top was that the ZXZW guys had set up this show *outdoors* in the main plaza of Tilburg so it could be seen and heard by anyone in the area. There were a lot of dumbstruck passersby who had no idea in hell what was going on. All of this was simply great. Blowfly at ZXZW Well, here is the part where I think I am supposed to attempt to "wrap it all up." Not any easy thing to do after experiencing, seeing and hearing so much varied stuff for nine days! My earlier posts still seem true to me as far as the strengths of the fest and the guys who put it on. I can tell that my own sensibilities and quirks were much more drawn to the weirder situational stuff that went on all week before the "main event" of hundreds of bands on Saturday and Sunday. It almost feels like two different festivals. On the weekend, it was great to be able to "sample" so much music in so short a time, though I felt a bit bad for the bands as the sheer numbers of them playing meant that most crowds they got were not as attentive as they might have been for a one-off show at a club. I am not sure how clear that aspect of it was made to the bands that were invited to play, but if you are prepared for the fact that it's great exposure, and can deal with having your audience arriving late and leaving early a lot more than you are used to during your set, you'll be okay. As much as I realize that a big conceptual part of the Saturday and Sunday shows was to cram in as much as possible so people could be exposed to all sorts of music that might not otherwise check out, I still think they might consider paring it down a wee bit for next years fest... I hope that my nine days in Tilburg of ZXZW based questions, perspectives, reflections, and ideas about music, art, and culture, have been helpful in various ways for Joost, Frank and Vincent, and I want to thank them for having me as part of ZXZW. It was tremendous fun. I think my biggest role was my actual presence and "cheerleading" at the fest itself, and less so these daily "reports," though they do act as an official record of my role at the festival and I hope give people in the future who read this some sense of what happened here this year. As to whether or not they'll want to have another artist-consultant-in-residence at the next ZXZW fest, I'll be curious to find out. I know I took so damn long to finally get these last reports to them, that they are probably ready to kill me!
-written by Mark Hosler, Consultant in Reside


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ZXZW 2007