Page 13 - Studio International - November 1972

unpleasant. One might almost fancy that in patches of skin. Each of these scraps had been of about seventeen said. Fare was wheeled into
these stunts, however amusing and informal, replaced by a bizarre metal or plastic facsimile, another room and three days later travelled by
it is not impossible to discern a tinge of so that when he entered the gallery — a man who, rail to New York.
masochism as well as the slightly feminine in purely fleshly terms, was so small and faint `Dying is an art like everything else.' Since
tendencies to discard things and extort medical that, thus refurnished, he seemed to beggar the the evening I have described, Fare has made
attention. (Any woman, for example, will customary initial enquiry in the game Twenty six appearances in various cities. Much of his
throw away an arrowhead collection, and a Questions — several memories were coaxed audience has from the very start consisted of a
survey conducted in 1968 indicated that in forward all at once: brass monkeys in winter, hard core of mainly professional, mainly
Harley Street 91 per cent of the customers are A Rebours, the whittling of Dr Moreau, the middle-aged people waiting patiently for the
women.) final condition of Bonny Parker, Nathanael masterstroke. The date of that event has always
After a brief spell in the bughouse, Fare was West's curtailed heroes, a bird cage in Bradbury, been kept very secret.
They'll applaud until their tickets tear up the
again arrested when, early one morning, a `Captain Carpenter', 'Johnny, I Hardly Knew ushers.
frightfully Danish police constable found it You', and in the instance of the thumb, an
impossible to ignore Fare's curious treatment of eloquent rejoinder to Nazi bad taste in the
a parked motorcar. Fare had in fact already field of interior decoration. Encore du Barry
spent several hours fastening random objects That night in Toronto, his entire right hand, The context of my article about implied
to the vehicle in question with epoxy resin. previously unmolested, was scheduled to run meaning in sculpture, including a literary
These included: golf balls, milk bottles, out of luck. The gallery was hung with dissection (annihilation) of Mr Dalwood's piece
brooms, unopened tins of food, one dead cat, Andoff's huge, faintly Transylvanian murals. at the Royal Academy is understandably (as he
his own clothes, old gramophone records, Andoff and Czervath assembled the operating says) not understood by him. (Dissection comes
dozens of biros, and over a hundred forks and table and its adjuncts in front of the audience, from dissect, a transitive verb meaning to cut in
spoons. While Fare sat quietly in the local putting the whole thing together 'from scratch'. pieces.)
stationhouse, the police officer waited patiently Fare stood perfectly still in one spot, smiling Why should he though, since the only claim
for the owner of the car to arrive so that it could vacantly while lazy blond spotlights grazed he makes to 'ownership' of it is in the
be explained that a known lunatic had slowly about the ceiling, as if in response to craftsman's sense of actually having put the
unfortunately made him the target of vandalism, reports of leftover Messerschmitts, harmless pieces together, and referring to the 'loose'
but had been apprehended and would be in their old age, ever so simple to catch. description of the title as making its content ?
charged as soon as the victimized motorist At length, Fare lay him down upon the Simply, I did not like his sculpture. It lacked
would be good enough to sign a formal charge. assembled table, and his two assistants strapped intention and was confused. It lacked 'truth to
However, when the owner did turn up after an a number of tiny microphones up and down his material' in that it could have been made from
hour or so, he appeared not to notice anything flesh, so that the highly amplified sound of his rubber for all I could perceive — rubber trees
at all unusual about anything. When pressed pulse, breathing, and multilation could be laid perhaps ? (Perceive means to apprehend
by the astonished officer, he suddenly declared on at will. At first, before the robots began the through one of the senses). It lacked a real size,
that he thought there was something different actual surgery, it sounded like whale music. looking rather like an overdone, puffed up
and appeared to be highly entertained. He Andoff and Czervath stepped into another pastry — I mean maquette just made larger. The
immediately arranged Fare's release and room, and, as the four hands of the robots began painting softened almost to non-existence the
introduced himself: Golni Czervath, who was a all at once to move very energetically above the underlying forms which raised the question of
cybernetic inventor, electronics wizard, and an weird table and its stylized cargo, I was why those particular forms at all ? (Form means
accomplished musician. Together they began, reminded for a moment of a xylophone recital visible aspect (especially apart from colour),
almost at once, to develop a robotic operating I and a girl named Nellie had gone to about ten three dimensional shape).
table, consisting of two robots (each with two years earlier on the planet Neptune. Her last We stand now with thousands of years of
flexible hands), attached to the table, beneath name was something like Fisher, only it wasn't cultural history behind us. Events have taken
which was located a power source and an Fisher. place which could not have been predicted
ingeniously controlled programming system. One metal hand gave Fare an injection, before their time, or if they were only ideas in
Assisted by the painter Gilbert Andoff, they paused, and began in concert with the other circumspection.
worked out a series of programmed three to perform exactly as one imagines a We are the richer, or the poorer, in conscious
'appearances', which, if nothing else, ensured competent surgeon and an assistant would. and unconscious moments for that. We are not
a very settled career for Fare and an end to the Alarmingly coloured lights began now to always aware of these influences ingrained into
sort of trifling which had so far coloured his life emanate from the robots themselves as they our being and which condition our concepts and
and which parents so often find vexing. The continued the job. Plague shades flooded the actions. Consequently our every-day decisions
series of amputations thus planned was still, room, lurid crash pigments, a filthy Dallas cannot be isolated self-created acts, they are part
of course, a kind of strip show; yet the difference crimson, shabby leper mud, a kind of frayed of this and past time. They are enacted inside a
between it and Fare's earlier disrobings is the porky one, and a truly horrifying yellow that convention whether we are aware of it or not.
difference between sculpture and election Winsor & Newton knew nothing about. The It (the individual act), is as much conditioned
posters. absurdly amplified noise of the bone-saw by group exchange of ideas as by the individual.
The first operation, a lobotomy, was resembled huge panting elephant death yells The group conscious (now time) idea of the
presented in June, 1964, in Copenhagen. The played backward on too many tape recorders. exchange of information leads to a collective
time and day — 8.3o p.m., Friday — never varied People blacked out here and there, a few more conscious and more unwittingly to a collective
in subsequent appearances. His mind thus during the sutures. unconscious. We are not and cannot be
abridged, Fare was more or less proof against The operation over, one metal claw abruptly completely in control of the communicated
any doubts concerning his vastation which he raised the hand and wagged it about horribly alternatives that any statement we make may
might otherwise have entertained. for a few seconds, as one would a found purse have. Linguistic logic perhaps is a science that
By the time I was at last invited to attend everyone had been searching for in a large field. gets closest to its study, but it can only in the
one of Fare's appearances — at the Isaacs It then placed the hand in a jar of alcohol, end say that meaning, interpreted from any
Gallery in Toronto, 17 September 1968 — Fare which Andoff, reappearing with the houselights, statement invested with a meaning by the
was short one thumb, two fingers, eight toes, carefully labelled and placed on a table next to transmitter, becomes clearer the more the
one eye, both testicles, and several random the birth certificate. 'What larks !' a pretty girl statement moves away from the original
161