An Aesthetic Operation

Please join us in saluting Jon Henry, a great artistic hero:

"Speech for the End of Time"
Randall M. Packer
Secretary, US Department of Art & Technology
Wednesday, April 23, 2003, 7:30 pm
Johns Hopkins University, School of Arts & Sciences, Room LL07
1717 Massachusetts Avenue, NW
Washington, DC


Jon Henry is the National Chairman of the USA Exquisite Corpse. He is
dead.

Jon Henry was killed fighting the war machine, but his spirit lives on.
His spirit remains strong. So strong in fact, that he is about to lead
the Experimental Party in 10,000 Acts of Artistic Mediation.

Jon Henry's epic journey to deconstruct a new medial state begins
tomorrow evening (April 23) when his spirit is released into the night,
during my "Speech for the End of Time."

In this speech, I am calling on coalition artists to "to inspire other
artists into action by undergoing an aesthetic operation as a form of
magic designed as a mediation between our strange hostile world and the
human spirit." Jon Henry will lead that effort.

The new Jon Henry, the young artist from Baltimore, inspired by the
old, legendary John Henry, continues the brave fight against the
machine in Operation Artistic Freedom.

Here then, is an excerpt from Jon's Manifesto:

"WAR is the ultimatum of capital. It is the result of the energized
spectacle of money. God/Money is the fuel that will drive us into the
ground. Gain is intertwined in the roots of this cancerous tree of
America. And they called the mechanized vacuum of the wretched rich
freedom? As the past became history the new Jon Henry saw the object of
spectacle in front of him and he knew that in order to be free he must
fight against his assimilation; he must face the war spectacle and
battle it to his death." - Jon Henry

Randall M. Packer
Secretary, US Department of Art & Technology

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The US Department of Art & Technology
http://www.usdept-arttech.net

The US Department of Art and Technology is the United States
principal conduit for facilitating the artist's need to extend
aesthetic inquiry into the broader culture where ideas become real
action. It also serves the psychological and spiritual well-being of
all Americans by supporting cultural efforts that provide immunity
from the extension of new media technologies into the social sphere.

The Experimental Party
http://www.experimentalparty.org

The Experimental Party - the "party of experimentation" - is an
artist-based political party that has been formed to activate
citizens across the country in an effort to bring the artists'
message to center stage of the political process. This is a political
awakening, 'representation through virtualization' is the major
political thrust of the Experimental Party, it is the driving force.