JON BRUMIT * WRITINGS * PROPOSALS * LISTS

PROPOSALS AND MORE

talking homes letters and writings soon, but for now here's ...

COMPETE !! - in person, remotely, anonymously or otherwise in - FIVE KINDS OF WRONG -

IN PERSON AT THE UPCOMING HEADLANDS MYSTERY BALL THIS OCTOBER 28
(.. entries can be done before or after the fact by emailing MP3s or texts to jonbrumit ATTT gmail DOTTT com or dropping off in person at the Headlands Mystery Ball on October 28th prior to judging and awards ceremony ..)

FIVE KINDS OF WRONG

Ongoing competitive events will be happening throughout the night, followed by judging and awards ceremony.

All events are designated as group and / or solo below and each entry will be timed, measured, recorded, and even weighed.

Some entries can be done anonymously in recording booth if desired, although points will be added for bravery!

1. Best or worst pick-up line

solo - event will be recorded

2. Largest volume of food or gum chewed at once

group or solo - event will be measured, weighed and recorded on a volume-per-person basis

3. Best or worst electric guitar solo

solo - event will be recorded and timed

4. Best or worst fight story, with or without drugs or alcohol

group or solo - will be recorded, drawings made if necessary or relevant (groups must tell the same story together)

5. Most disturbing or offensive story about bodily functions or excrement, resulting from human or other sources

group or solo - event will be recorded (groups must tell the same story together)

Each contest will be judged by an ad-hoc audience just prior to the fantastic Awards Ceremony featuring hand-made prizes, objects, and free services. Each contest is to be judged with regard to weights, measures, times, and records. In the case of the more subjective contests each participant's entry will be judged with respect to facility or lack thereof, adherence or diregard to social norms and customs, whether it was a public or private event, level of dis / comfort on behalf of the storyteller, crowd response, and unusual plot twists

Thank you,

Jon Brumit
www.jonbrumit.com

..

FESTEVIL

notes on festevil, etc - i generally never even express this sort of thing in writing, opting instead for spirited verbal exchanges and even the occasional mind-melting action-producing thinktanks resulting from discovering shared opinions and shared passions ... and of course those thrilling moments of realizing i'm not relating but instead becoming the most hyper-local version of a bleeding liberal, conspiracy theorist, or other such non-conservative socialistic / anarchistic kook at the party and subsequent target for the dirty downloading (or would it be uploading?) of years of power-hungry corporation-loving media-crazed angst, usually requiring a brief nod as i ask where the restroom is and feigning stupidity as i 'get lost' and accidentally find the nearest outbound bicycle, sled, or large bird .... anyway even though these opinions / thoughts / impulses / notions are and have been the driving force behind so much of my research and my production , not literally or overtly, but rather as a point of departure ... as i generally focus on and develop projects or protracted acts good living, getting connected, community building, and other attempts at social expressions free of commerce (via creative resistance verging on complete distortion and abstraction) instead of attempting to enact some type of creative protest resembling or easily confused for a stunt, a prank, or looking like i'm so opinionated people feel there's no room for them, let alone some inkling of reality (at the worst) or spending significant energy focusing on the efficacy of various types of marches or protests (at best) ... anyway, to avoid seeming heavy-handed, didactic, or otherwise, and although it truly is on my mind pretty much all the time, somewhere between the front and the rear of it - anyway, in my mind 'festevil' is equal parts of the following list (as usual) --- celebration / protest / global cry for help to get the global warmers to cool their jets and just count their cash on their sinking ship / sonic disruption towards overthrowing growing viral corporate control of the world and world media / an attempt to join us virtually in protest and celebration even if we're not together geographically / total global noise-off / virtual drum machine circle to overthrow the inner axis of evil colluding in the w hite house and the pen tagon (ie pentagram!) threatening or acting to make the middle east the new west (manifest destiny was bad enough the first time !) / celebrate the date because everything's potentially so heavy we might as well try to have just a little fun / celebration of my own cherokee indian blood and protest for our collective murdered or enslaved ancestry / act of creative resistance fusing serious or overt political intentions with something potentially goofy, fun, completely divergent from political ambitions, and non-destructive and non-violent activities (burning sacrificial drumsets aside) ... whoa!

and part of a letter to a well-respected collaborator on the topic of ethics, collaboration, etc ...

i don't want to belabor any of this, but i didn't at all mean to imply anything about you being open or closed, all i meant by any of it was
1. i really am open to other's ideas and thoughts, in the most collaborative spirit possible, 2. that maybe burning a drumset isn't
the best idea because of reasons we touched on, 3. that it might also be the perfect thing if it informs the collaboration / improvisation
or assists with / becomes a graphic score / sets up a time or duration (semi-fixed parameters which we play off literally or figuratively
(time being one of the operative driving concepts) etc and 4. that i'm willing to be wrong as much as i'm willing to speak up or speak out ... !

i generally never do stunts, or dupe people, or destructive stuff generally or whatever (at least without some hopefully good reason), was thinking it just seemed like it would make an excellent music video .. with total free improv collaborations (whatever strategies we use) rotating clockwise solos or the like happening with 'modern technology' with the original tool / instrument being destroyed while a community is built within a strict timeline / pressured or otherwise finite situation ...

anyway maybe my brain is just miswired but this is how i develop all of my work, lots of writing, taking an open look at different ideas,
and letting the best thing rise while the rest naturally falls away via collaboration or time having its way with things,
i'm also terribly interested in getting a 'free music' music video out there by an impromptu collective ..

there's my brain exposed to you! hope it's not too much information, and some ideas for the piece to boot ..

PROPOSALS ETC!!

A . proposal for a social / sound project ( just say yes! )

"MEET THE COMPOSER" by Jon Brumit

I wish to propose for the [ DOLORES residency in Munich ] a dynamic hybrid social project entitled "MEET THE COMPOSER", a highly fluid
anthropological survey project fusing social interactions with post-studio artistic production, highlighting discussion and
collaboration. "MEET THE COMPOSER" creates a platform wherein personal objects become interpretable media for use in creating sonic portraits
on a case-by-case basis. It serves as an alternative model promoting better living in that we can discuss and choose how significant things really
are to us, despite mass-media's and advertising's attempts to persuade us into proscribed roles as 'consumers'.

The project is a brazen act of conceptual, experimental, and theatrical free-will and non-materialistic defiance in the face of consumerism - that what we choose to buy, carry, or otherwise obtain can have a greater impact on our lives when shared and discussed in terms of use-value or as a point of departure rather than as simply evidence of status or a display of wealth.

Within the project, interactions with strangers generate spontaneous musical compositions based on drawings and photos taken by me of the
things carried by strangers - in their pockets, backpacks, etc. By placing this free exchange in a public setting, be it a sidewalk table
or storefront gallery, the project is very accessible and approachable, and all that choose to participate become transformed
into 'composers' wherein they direct me, the musical interpreter and documentarian, to represent them as dictated by their possessions and
associated use-value or personal significance of their collections.

The project confuses notions of consuming and creating and ultimately points to the decisions we make - regarding what we buy, what we
carry, and what we choose to share with others - as the culmination of a dynamic, ephemeral, and viral market system wherein people
inherently maintain their identity and hold inherent value as discerning 'individuals' ascribing use-value to their things and not
merely as 'consumers' of 'status symbols'. That said, a composition within the project based on a homeless person's shopping cart and
plastic bags would be handled with the same care and attentiveness as a real-estate developer's briefcase or expensive watch.

Thanks!
...

1. Cold Calls - Musical Teleconference (will debut at the Pacific Film Archive fall 2005 during the Busy Signals series)

2 . The Garbage Games (still unrealized, but yielded a commission from the Crissy Field Center)

3 . Singing Bridge / Traffic Conduction Project (completed spring 2004 at AVA Gallery in TN, a gallery right around the corner from the singing bridge in the proposal)

4 . Audience Conduction (versions 1 and 2 at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, version 3 Novi Sad Contemporary Museum (Serbia)) developed from a series of video-formatted graphic scores for ad-hoc ensembles with 4 performances completed from the video series

5 . Detroit Superbowel (for spring 2006)

6 . Proposal for a New America: 12 week course with related projects, draws upon community wellness and related global health statistics, publicity stunts, sustainability, web-based projects, civic planning and architecture as models for improvisation, and other community- related information towards expanding one's studio practice

7 . Band Camp: 12 week course exploring the relationships between musical and artistic production highlighting collaboration and using related course projects to utilize these modes of production within contemporary creative practice

8 . Greeting Station: combines explainers, information kiosks, and museum docents and impromptu tours, drawings and maps, and other improvisations with the general public as they visit the gallery or museum exhibition, beverages where allowable

9 . Escort Service: walk people to their cars, watch over them as they exit (gallery, school, library, etc), show them around town and highlight unusual things and phenomena

10 . Contemporary Art Survey Program: ask questions and discuss people's interest in art, music, music videos, favorite tv shows, favorite conceptual artist, take notes, make book

11. A.C.D.C. - Austin's Cultural Discourse Center: combined potlucks and rock band called "parasites" or similar which makes music processing the sounds from wireless microphones placed in neighboring venues

12. Multi-Level Marketing Museum

13. Public Monument for Discontinued Products (pending)

14. Art Fast Food: menu would include performance, painting, collage, music, sculpture, video, and more from one of four menus - a $5, $10, $20, and a $50 menu, bench seats like taco bell, small stage, paper diner caps, identi-covers, and car dealership style window graphics

15. Musical performance in your home using your own garbage

16. Parade Float In Your Honor (almost sold at Southern Exposure!)

17. top ten list given to C. FINK! (pending printing)
the one, the ten, pre-apologies, see you around, enjoy!
ten favorites from 2004, some are naturally left over from unrequited
object-affairs, most are dumb - so last year, still others are things i want
to say only to be liked, feared, or pitied for my attempts to overcome my
diagnosis at age eight as "near-genius"
10. amount of dryer lint cleaned up nightly at "Lectric Wash House", getting
boo-d during my set at dunes in portland, the low rumbly sound in
surround-sound movies to indicate someone's thinking or having a moment, van
halen, shutting my mouth for a change in line in front of the drunk guy
buying two umbrellas who was yelling at me that i'd better get it together
and that he would love to beat the s#*@ out of me
9. the very long needles used to numb the mouth, where do they go? i always
expect the back of my neck to bleed on the chair, i thought it was
accupuncture until last year
8. shared hatred for deplorable progressive disposable culture and confusion
regarding - 1: marketing/advertising destroying the credibility of all
things once sacred and celebrating many things forever stupid, 1: speed
metal's inability to actually get any faster than it was when i was 15, and
1: how to legally affect some change in the pulse of our dumb-@$$ president
sorry i don't know how else to say this, welcome to the no-fly list jon, i
know murder isn't the answer, maybe i should go to vendetta retreat too?
7. sarah's frogs and flowers (ginko balboa!), smoking spiders, ritter
sport's butter cookie thing, the vp of big wheel sending four big wheels
next day fed-ex to help out with the race, absence of thought, my metmusel
coffee mug, not getting arrested for directing traffic on that singing
bridge in chattanooga with sarah, recovering from sciatica enough to go back
to the skatepark
6. free radio, feeling some hope, figuring out sliv & dulet actually want to
be organic gardeners, rain
5. hell house, the documentary, whoa! how about that "pentagram"!! i grew
up in a place like that! places like that are breeding grounds for the
"middle east is the new west" sentiment apparently held in high regard by
gw.terd-face.us and his cronies, white castles and methamphetamines every
sunday morning from now on ok? then you can run off to shoot dogs and cars
with your bb gun down at the new road ok? and git back here for supper on
time hunney-bunney or it's no more playboy channel after cub scouts for two
weeks, lil heathern, y'hear?
4. i need a teaching job because construction is killing me, sharing my
birthday with bill cosby, richard simmons, buckminster fuller, and julius
ceaser, and how my best friend when i was five years old was mrs bohr across
the street who was 92 at the time, she would try to pay me to visit and it
would upset me quite a bit and i would refuse in disgust to take her money,
i would always however take some poundcake, she had a graveyard in her yard
with all of her dead little bulldogs, boxers or french bulldogs, something
like that
3. it's funny, i don't feel fifty two, i always imagined i would be fully
bionic by now, and would paint faster and have corporate sponsors like ibm,
mit, nike, liquitex, and pontiac, but settling for living in a barn with no
heat, cashing my unemployment checks, buying broken boom boxes and
turntables for my front yard, and working on my chrome-plated chevette
limosine seems appropriate somehow
2. weddings with marching bands
1. detroit

18. so i was thinking of starting a company based on your sculpture (to matt blake and enis sefersah)

1. i start a company / campaign based on the sculpture, but i think it's a meteorite and start a foundation to save / restore it / put it into the smithsonian or some kind of research center
2. at the same time i try to make money off it but try to pass it off as trying to save or restore the meteorite, raise ethical issues and suspicion and doubt of my character
3. discover / create backstory of you two discovering it, sculpting it, transforming it into sculpture and not telling anyone about it being a meteorite of such importance that it needs to be restored and put into the smithsonian, included in the backstory would be research done about the title of the piece, where it was shown before, and why nobody else ever figured it out before, specifically i claim it to be the meteorite that landed in siberia in 1908 killing 1500 reindeer and knocked a man unconscious, and i link this to your trip to bosnia (and serbia - mistaking it for siberia, adding to my character's stupidity)
4. i call the media about the cover-up, hold a press conference, explain that you're trying to get rich selling the piece and that the people whose reindeer were killed lost their contract with santa claus or something and should be honored with a portion of the sales
5. i start a sponsorship program to save and restore the meteorite: every sponsor gets 'rights' to one of the meteor's facets, have their photos printed onto a piece of paper the same shape of their facet and i build a maquette of the meteor with the prints, and each sponsor gets mentioned by name in any appearance of the meteor in the media and is also notified of where their facet appeared and when, also i try to get / propose that money earned trough sponsorship will help restart the reindeer farm in siberia
6. mural paper backdrop for tourist photo opportunities as though the people are with the meteor in its original landing site before it was discovered and ruined
7. try to sell rights to the meteorite for healers, doctors, tv and radio commercials and try to make money off the photo studio and other projects
8. organize and curate a big group show of small works on the theme of the meteor and reconnecting with the past

i don't know how big the space is but i'd need room for a desk and chair (makeshift small office) for me and also i don't know how you guys feel about having mural paper somewhere around your piece and all of this weird recontextualizing..!?

seems like a good way to do a lot of things at once:

1. perform / install / work in some kind of harmonious or purposeful way with your piece
2. constantly shift public focus between the object, my confused efforts, and the overall piece, entrprenuerial practice, marketing and sales as performance, drama, media,
3. deal with your piece / work in a way that references a kind of amnesia and a scramble to create drama and hype, try to make money with art, but not with the actual art object but with all kinds of activity around the piece, by loading onto it an exorbitant amount of baggage / lineage / backstory / drama
4. present a kind of problematic model of current media, the art market selling shares of famous paintings, and the disconnect between genres of work and also the disconnect between generations of contemporary artists, openly contradict that artists are special, that they can't indeed actually make anything but are always trying to pass of found objects as contemporary art work
5. a very weird intense look into instant amnesia and bulimic media practices and the probablility that it's pervading and shifting our perception of ourselves and the importance of 'our time' as opposed to us being part of a space-time-continuum so to speak!!

what do you think?? i'm into it but let me know!

---
Proposal for Tokyo Thingamajigs, April, 2006

the elf-ops

I propose for Tokyo Thingamjigs 2006 a series of compositions based
on the Field Synth, my newest created instrument. The Field Synth is
a sample-based instrument designed to reflect and represent
inhabitants of select chosen neighborhoods. As a means of composition
and field research, I have been going Door to Door making cold calls
at strangers' homes, discussing their favorite sounds of their homes,
neighborhoods, or cities. I then compile these sounds into a
searchable, configurable database and can affect and alter playback of
the samples using filters/fx made with data about the sample's
original location or source and the conditions at the time of
recording of said sample. In brief the instrument is a means for
synthesizing personal, geographical, demographic, and other data in a
sonorous way.

I will have adequate samples and data gathered by the time of the
performance, but in a manner similar to preparing my ELF-OP (ELectric
Found Object Piano, debut performance Thingamajigs 8, Oakland Metro,
2005), I would prefer to gather samples and data for the Field Synth
from the area around the venue prior to a performance, as I prefer
incorporating chance, adaptivity and site-based strategies into my
work as much as possible.

For more information on some of my instruments, sound work and more
please visit http://www.jonbrumit.com/instruments.html and for more
about my Door to Door project, on which this instrument proposal is
based please visit http://jonbrumit.com/door_to_door.html when you
have time.

Thank you. Looking forward to hearing from you.

_________________________________________________________________________________________

buy an electric piano which plays found objects! edition of 10!
buy some sound art for a loved one! many options to choose from!
write to set up a studio visit!

---
anti advertising proposal...REFUSED!!

I hope this letter finds you well. Happy Holidays and happy Anti-
Advertising and Budgeteering!

I wanted to write in a brief description of an Anti-Advertising
campaign for billboards, print, or otherwise...

Briefly I would characterise the images as showing free exchanges of
materials, information, and warm regards within contexts of
consumerism. The more industrial the place of commerce, the more free
and warm the exchange depicted photographically. Visualise handshakes,
hugs, telephone numbers, and gifts, but generally in the form of
monochromatic items designed to reference nothing particular. The
foremost idea is to show activities which are commonplace but in such a
way as to affect a perceptual shift wherein the viewer of the
variations of this campaign might see the possibility and ease of
disassociating themselves from the commerce of desire.
Feel free to visit my site, the Sliv & Dulet site, or Marc's site for
any necessary info regarding resume, press, and the like.

I'm sorry if this is too informal, I am in India until the first of
January and wanted to write in with an idea for a campaign for your
project. Consider this a personal or a collaborative proposal, as you
wish, I imagine the images for the campaign might very well feature
Marc and myself engaged in these non-commercial activities. He and I
have not had a chance to talk about this so I thought I would go ahead
and write in.

Thanks!
------------------------------------

proposal for PFA...

Hi Steve,

Thanks for asking! I'd love to come back to the PFA!

I want to cold call people from within the auditorium and try to get them to tell me about their favorite local sounds, and if possible get them to perform some of them over the phone. I will explain that I'm collecting sound samples for a new instrument, the TELESYNTH, and as a way to get people involved I will perform some of my favorite samples for them first. I will call a mixture of people both known and unknown to me, in hopes that indeed we will experience a range of sampling successes and failures.

Thanks!
---

proposal for testsite...

ACDC

Project Title:

ACDC: Austin’s Cultural Discourse Center

Project Description:

Acting as Sliv & Dulet Enterprises, an experimental Creative Services
Agency, we will conduct informal meetings, discussions, presentations,
and performances in the “testsite,” bringing together a broad spectrum
of the local population for conversations over lunches, dinners, and
other interesting events. We wish to engage as diverse a crowd as
possible with discussions about Austin and its role as a host for such
a rich history of cultural production in multiform. We also wish to
use the information and general consensus of our guests to pursue and
explore new modes of creation and experimentation for everyone
interested in living a more fulfilling and creative life.

Additionally we will book ourselves at local music venues as “The
Parasites” and will play experimental music by using the sounds from
outside the venues and also neighboring venues’ musical acts, through
the use of wireless microphones.

We have several writers in mind to suggest, but, as we are unsure of
the schedule, we are unsure of how to propose or present to them the
idea or project at this stage. Any suggestions or advisement would be
much appreciated.