Black Factory

Overview (what happens when the black factory comes XXXXX...)

Note: 'next' (see below) is an artifact left over from a previous edit of this text.

Welcome to the Black Factory.

What is the Black Factory (or the BF as we sometimes call it)?

What does it do?

And how can YOU get in on the action???

"What? A factory that makes blackness?"

Yes, finally! BUT The Black Factory does not make blackness. we make something better: opportunity.

The opportunity to make a new blackness. And what is this new XXXXXXX?

Difference! A boutique lackness. A lackness on the beach. And — where is this this this — reach? Well, where is your frolitics? Lying on its multi-ethnic towel boiling under a hot, hot, hot pun.

Life is a sun.

So... what happens when the BF comes to your town?

Nothing.

That's right, absolutely nothing.

Unless the people who live in the town WANT XXX something to happen — and are willing to make it so…

The BF runs on people. It's our gas!

Here's a description of some things that could happen on a typical BF tour:

… after getting a flat in Topeka, we drive straight through to Ohio to Kent State University and sleep in an empty parking lot. Kent State University, on May 4 1970, was the site of a violent clash between anti-Vietnam war student protestors and the National Guard who, it has been documented, had not been adequately trained for the situation. Documents also claim some of the guard shot directly at the protesters. 4 students were killed and 9 others wounded. Like many of the galvanizing events of the 60's and early 70's the Kent State Massacre, as it has been called, has become a haunting and a phantasm. In a real sense, the only way to re-embody it is to theatricalize it…

Next morning campus security raps on the window. we take off for the next gig.

We pull into a town early the same morning. Try to locate parking for the BF truck and the follow-car, see if our host is awake and has hooked up lodging for our dusty three person crew.

We drive around the neighborhood.

Talk to folks. Hand out flyers.

Invite people to the performance.

Complain. Bullshit. Bullshit. Complain. Complain. Eat breakfast.

Walk the neighborhood some more. Invite more folks. hit the performance site, start set-up.

The best site for a performance is where the people at. What people? People on the street. People passing by. People out and about. People minding their own business. People minding other people's business. People unbeknownst. The performance set-up takes 1 hour. While we're doing, people stop, chat, gawk and re-gawk. The conventional performance lasts approx. 4 hours, give or take a few, based on tour commitments, host whoo-haaa, break downs, XXXXXX, god, the law, unhappiness in the ranks, getting lost in Sheboygan or in our ideas and hopes. In a way, as a way, the BF is always performing. Rain or shine, we deliver the gusto so the cracks show. No matter how little the host pays (so long as they pay), the BF performs. On the first tour, in partnership with MASS MoCA, no venue paid a tour fee. In 2005, less than half paid a tour fee. if we keep going like this, is there purity around the corner? Is it purer, is it freer if you don't pay for it? And how does that actually happen?

With high gas prices, the truck getting 9 miles to the gallon, free changes to low sodium free, we'll continue to waste gas and do guerrilla stops whenever we feel like it (though they can be the toughest cause there is no institutional net to catch you when you fall), in fact, we have to do guerila stops! They are our politic-colonic. The crew might disagree, especially after a particularly grueling stop but no matter it's what makes us go.

What be a guerrilla stop? That's when we go to a place, park the truck and trek out to meet the natives sans beads and blankets, sans muskets and powder, sans truck, sans spectacle, sans theatrical frame, sans the confidence provided by our familiar. Whatever you want to call it, we leave as much of it behind as possible and go native.

We have problems getting venues to fund this guerilla-thing, it has an elegant framelessness so it's difficult to 'product' so they don't trust it. Even I have a hard time with gueriila stops but that's what happens when you let more life
in —

Next. during set-up, we erect the inflatable igloo archive, a sort of freestanding 'bouncy- room' style space which displays a selection of donated black objects.

A black object is anything, anything! anything and no thing — that a person believes represents blackness to him or her. So far the BF has over a thousand donated black objects and we encourage and accept new donations at every turn. You can mail them also, see CONTACT. All donated objects are photographed (the ones that aren't lost or stolen or destroyed) and installed in the DONATED BLACK OBJECT ARCHIVE on this website. WE ALSO HAVE a cousin archive of actual physical black objects. A few of these were used for experiments or as props in performances or to make new products for the Gift Shop.

The Gift Shop is located in the cab of the BF truck and contains over 30 products. Half of these, the TWICE SOLD products, are peddled to raise money for local community organizations. The Yoda Bible is one of our newest products (as of 2005). It is a plastic Yoda head (actually a large slurpee drinking mug bought at Seven-Eleven) shrink-wrapped to a copy of 'The White Man's Bible' written by Ben Klassen, the founder of the white supremacist hate group 'Church of the Creator.' In addition we have a whole line of canned food products from the UK, for example, Sainsbury's Baked Beans or Heinz Spotted Dick or Tesco Chicken Curry (2006) —

Whoooo00000ooooo-Wheeeiieuuu! Next! we set up the pulverization podium workshop table and tabernacle and performance furniture environment (or PPWTTPFE). This is a kinda big-ass name for a kinda big-ass black table in three parts shaped like the U.S. and Cuba after an oil spill. They become lovers.

NEXT

We stand on this table.

Shout. Talk. Sing. Leap. Beg. Cajole. Shake in our boots. Act tough. Let our minds wander. Get the lack out.

Grind shit up on the table. Blind shit up on the table. Dance on the table. Spirit on the table. spit on the table...

Do experiments. Chew experience. Product the black that's out-of-wack. Serve enchiladas, watermelon, sauerkraut. feather, iron, saliva…blood…tums…

Hmmmm..... Ambiloquy…

After everything is set up, the rotation begins. To most people the rotation is the real performance. That's because, for the most part, the rotation is a series of things you can see and hear — entertainments, frustrationals, positions, reveries, skits, speeches (or sequences or nodes) linked together and that last four hours or more. The BF perform in its sleep. All the world is a node.

The rotation TRYS to keep its basic shape throughout the tour. Changes are inevitable and made as needed and there are always changes. Before each visit we receive a packet of info concerning the specific local issues of each town or city. We use this material to build dialog, get under the under and create actions, this is also where the rotation may shift. Sometimes a new node is added or an old node re-worked. Sometimes, on really hot days, we laze about like a fraggle of Palestinian Martians under an Israeli pun and sun around bitching about who forgot to pack the pipe bombs…

Our big thing is to be clumsy, very earnest and manipulative and imperfect in the face of beliefs like:
1) everything matters
2) nothing matters unless you got money then nothing matters because you got money
3) nothing matters unless you are you and nothing but you because you are the center of the XXXXX so help you god and there is no god except you how lonely

We are about the little things:

Listening to people. Unless we disagree with them. Then we hit them. Then listen to them.
Reaching out to people and feeling uncomfortable in the arms, the smell of our own humanity.
Feeling uncomfortable again stepping in the gum of the sum on the sidewalk of our own humanity.
Disagreeing with some. Agreeing with others. Then disagreeing with others and agreeing with some. We're not being even-handed we're politically dyslexic, letting our mind wander. getting deep in it all come watch us fall

Someone once told me: "The BF stages a kind of moral constipation." I said to myself: "That's cool. what does it mean?" It's a question that has to be asked and re-casted over and over again.

So... what happens when the BF comes?

You tell me.

XXXXXXX

NEXT'NEXT