Dumb Kunst - non-works by Anti-Friend Hut

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Front window istallation of artifacts from past Anti-Friend Hut perfromances. with a video collection of archived performance tapes. Suitcase paintings by Patrick Corrigan (Clog Wornago)	Dumb Kunst: non-works by Anti-Friend Hut April 1 - 30, 2005 A Portland performance art history review sorta' amounts to a blip in the radar, or even a skeptical eyebrow raise that begs to wonder, "what performance art scene?". One might answer with this-or-that, so-and-so poetry reading accompanied by a watery ensemble, or rumors of someome doing something with meat products at the art school, or simply stare blankly, as we all tend to do when confronted with defining performance art. While certainly there's always been a marvelous tendency in Portland to fill in the blanks between theatre, music, and art, like most urban environments however, this little urchin tends to operate in relative obscurity. However one might recall back along (in those turbulent days of the late 1990's), a particular troupe of barbarians, perhaps witnessed at the Free Street Taverna or the Fine Arts Theatre, or even a sidewalk or two, in front of now-defunct art galleries... a crude, ramshackle Rube Goldbergian trio they were: blasting and sawing through an unintelligible riot of homemade instruments, refrigerator-box costumes, waving posters bearing incoherent slogans, and accompanying this grand mess with the occasional use of potpouri airfreshener or a runaway lawnmower. So whether a dim memory to some or a clangorous duck-and-cover for others, one champion to the Portland performance art world was this cacophony trio known as, Anti-Friend Hut. Uniting under the cause of art, or rather, lifting art from under its sleepy eyelids, this mischieveous threesome, donned fancy capes and even fancier pseudonyms: Gaylord Pasternak, Clog Wornago, and Reverend Crank Sturgeon. Sneaking into rockclubs or art galleries as means to perpetuate their craft, the Hut professed a mission of anti-friendliness: the idea that a grenade or two wasn't such a bad thing, if lobbed at notions of cultural obedience or art as an elitist occupation. By stitching together bits of1960's Happenings, guerilla theatre, and tumultuous noise art, the schematic was never the same thing twice. Anti-Friend Hut was in some sense, a jack of all trades: conducting noise weddings, recreating the Olympics, or striking up an elephant hunt parade on Peak's Island... resonating throughout its performances that these things should not only be inserted at random liberty onto the landscape, but encased in a celebration of the absurd and pessimistic glee. From the years 1997 through 2002, Anti-Friend heralded the times with a "sound for sore eyes" ethos. The rumbling din of found objects like amplified birdcages, noise-making baby toys, snowshovels as drumsticks, and stationary bikes pedaling mounted LP's, served often as a visual pun to the established idea of musical instrumentation. Elaborate costuming and headgear also accomplished this task, from Gaylord's funnel helmet (with a cymbal attached) to Crank's "testicle head" (a balls'y looking head with a hidden violin). And as important as the audio barrage was the need to address the audience. Instead of the typical deadpan approach of ignoring the observer (that one encounters with similar avant garde events), the Hut would counter this by festooning the viewers with free-art giveaways, offering them a view of the performance (and perhaps its psychology) through countless handouts and pamphlets, or even inviting them to participate by shouting along, or ruining the event with a snowball fight. Through all the junk-noise cacophony, costumes, actions, and occasional foodgroup (for instance, offering freshly microwaved Little Debbie Snack Cakes or sips of mayonnaise), one could infer that all of this was somehow under the umbrella of a larger tutorial or underlying theme, a cumbersome plotline or psuedo-science lecture; challenging the audience to make sense of things through incongruent word associations, cultural reference points, and bad instructions. And so, Anti-Friend Hut once again arises from its frozen glacier this April, to bid all welcome to come and join in and mull and muck in the collective calumny, housed under one roof at Ubu Studio. Picking pieces from their individual collections, the show will be an amalgamation of histories (dead and gone), manifestoes and classified ads, personal plops (in the form of collage, assemblage, and botched cartography), creatures housed inside suitcases, and the portents of things to come (more glaciers, more slag-heap ziggurats along the waterfront, more Dolph Lungren revivals). Mayonnaise will be served, there'll be plenty of pamphlets to take home with you, and perhaps even a recreation of a historical performance involving Gaylord walking the plank. -Reverend Crank Sturgeon, March 2005	Back to art gallery archive Read the mind boggling history or Portland's foremost dada performance group (click here) Clog, mentally preparing to leap of the roof of ubu studio onto the cardboard 'art condo'.

Dumb Kunst: non-works by Anti-Friend Hut April 1 - 30, 2005

Dumb Kunst:
non-works by
Anti-Friend Hut
April 1 - 30, 2005