Up Against the Wall Motherfuckers

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Up Against the Wall Motherfuckers , or just The Motherfuckers for short , was an anarchist-oriented artist and reference group in New York City , also influenced by the Situationists . The "Street gang with analysis" became known for its activism and in turn inspired members of the Weathermen and the Yippies .

history

The Motherfuckers began as a situationist organization, founded in 1966 by the painter Ben Morea and the poet Dan Georgiakis under the name Black Mask . Two of its founding members, Ron Hahne and Ben Morea, were youngsters from the street, not middle-class dropouts. Morea was involved in the activities of criminal youth gangs, took heroin and served a prison sentence before turning to painting and discovering the futurists for himself.

The group declared art as an " integral part of life, as in primitive society, and not an appendage to wealth ". The Black Mask first appeared on October 10, 1966. They intended to close the Museum of Modern Art . This symbolic action was intended to herald the opening of another front in the global struggle against oppression.

In May 1968, the group changed their name to Up Against The Wall Motherfuckers , based on a poem by Amiri Baraka , and went underground. One of the group's most sensational early actions was disrupting a three-day seminar on modern art at Columbia University : with slogans like “ Art is dead! "," Burn down the Museums! ”,“ Poetry is Revolution ”tables were knocked over, window panes smashed, brawls started.

At the “mill-in” in the New York Macy’s department store during the run-up to Christmas 1968, several motherfuckers came into the department store as “customers” and “employees”, soiled, broke, stole and gave away goods, and dogs and cats were released in the grocery department. Decoys with flags and banners stood in the midst of groups of real customers who were beaten and jostled in the chaos by police officers and department heads.

During the opening of the exhibition “Dada, Surrealism and its Legacy” in the Museum of Modern Art, the motherfuckers stormed the museum with over a hundred homeless people and dropouts from the Lower Eastside, shouted obscenities, threw flour and paint at the opening audience and set off smoke bombs.

In general, the motherfuckers tried to turn demonstrations into rioting. Following their communication model that communication is not a question of speaking but of acting together, they wanted to create a new revolutionary language, language as an expression of the whole body, as a collective action: " Violence and love give a fleeting taste of real surreality: the moment, where everything wavers on the edge, the past and personality are gone. All senses are involved. If you want to find yourself, lose yourself ... violence seems to be the only shock that is brusque enough to wake dissidents out of their trance and dream syntax ”. The group wanted to find an authentic expression of their revolt against everything that existed and established and to overcome the boundaries that separate art and everyday life without submitting to the prevailing ideas.

Furthermore, The Motherfuckers staged an "assassination attempt" on a poetry reading by Kenneth Koch (part of the established New York School around Frank O'Hara ) with blank cartridges, forced entry into the Pentagon during a protest march and occupied the Fillmore East to enforce weekly free concerts. They also contributed to the counterculture of New York by providing free sleeping places and free food, setting up a free store and arranging contacts with lawyers and doctors.

The Andy Warhol assassin Valerie Solanas was also connected to the Motherfuckers, the weapon with which she shot Warhol was obtained from Ben Morea.

The British section of the Situationist International was expelled in 1967 because of its ties to the Motherfuckers and founded the King Mob .

References

" Up Against The Wall, Motherfucker! “Was also the logo of the student protests at New York's Columbia University in the spring of 1968. They protested against the construction of a sports hall in Morningside Park, the presence of officers and government officials on campus for the recruitment of Vietnam fighters and against the university administration in general. Ordered by the then University President Grayson Kirk, the occupation of the campus by the New York police was forcibly ended. Kirk himself had to resign after the students boycotted the graduation ceremony.

The psychedelic rock band Jefferson Airplane used the line in her song We can be together , that on their album 1969 Volunteers appeared.

In Germany around 1970 there was a clandestine small organization called “ Up Against The Wall, Motherfuckers! “(Member was among others the writer Peter-Paul Zahl , 1944–2011), which specialized in enabling black GIs from Berlin barracks to escape to Sweden. For this purpose, the photographs were removed from stolen passports of African students in Berlin, that of the GI was inserted and the passport photo was given the required stamps or embossing.

See also

Web links

literature

  • Black Mask & Up Against The Wall Motherfucker. The incomplete works of Ron Hahne, Ben Morea and the Black Mask Group , 1996. ISBN 1-873176-70-8
  • Osha Neumann: Up Against The Wall Motherf ** ker. At the memoir of the '60s, with notes for next time . New York, London, Melbourne and Toronto 2008. ISBN 978-1-58322-849-4
  • Caitlin Casey: Up against the Wall Motherfucker: Ideologoly and Action in a “Street Gang with an Analysis” . In: Tom Goyens (Ed.): Radical Gotham. Anarchism in New York City from Schwab's Saloon to Occupy Wall Street . 1st edition. University of Illinois Press, Champaign 2017, ISBN 978-0-252-08254-2 , pp. 161-179 (English).