AAAArchives : Space 1999 Festival
Envoi de 5yp le 07 Juin 2001:
In June 1999 the Association of Autonomous Astronauts'
world-wide network of independent and community-
based space programmes converged in London for ten
days of protests, parties, talks, gigs and astronaut
training. Space 1999 was the world's first festival of independent and community-based space travel, and built on the experience of previous Intergalactic Conferences organised in Vienna (June 1997) and Bologna (April 1998).
The ten day festival began with an action against the arms manufacturer Lockheed Martin, a protest about the militarisation of space and a demand that this corporate control of space technologies end by handing over their resources to the AAA. An Intergalactic Conference on the following day enabled discussions about the historical and social context to the AAA project, as well as speculations into the futures that the AAA is making happen.
Other events included: an Extraterrestrial Cinema night, a space quiz, AAA summer solstice training, art in zero gravity, a space caff, AAA launch site tour, a protest against UK spaceship licensing laws, a rave in space and two games of three-sided football including the first ever Intergalactic Triolectic Football cup final.
In addition to this, and throughout the ten days, the Info Centre in East London provided an exhibition of propaganda and printed matter from the AAA. Material was stuck directly to the walls, creating a non-linear evolutionary map of the AAA's Five Year Plan. The Info Centre also organised the collection and publication of texts and images for the Space 1999 daily newsletter.
Space 1999 proved what is possible when a bunch of people get together and decide to do something simply because they want to see it happen, and get a lot of enjoyment out of it in the process. That we pulled this off with very little money, and with each of us working on the organisation on a part-time basis with various other commitments, is a vindication of the power of the AAA's collective energy.
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The presentation at the Info Centre of propaganda
and printed matter from the Association of
Autonomous Astronauts (AAA) represents an overview
of the AAA's Five Year Plan. Launched on April 23rd
1995, this plan aims to establish by the year 2000
a world-wide network of local, community-based AAA
groups dedicated to building their own spaceships.
However, this exhibition is just one perspective,
created using archival material collected by Inner
City AAA. Other Autonomous Astronauts may map their
own histories, developing connections that are not
depicted here.
From the outset, the AAA's Five Year Plan was
meticulously organised, with five distinct phases
to the project: the launch, the information war,
the dreamtime, the consolidation and the final push.
These have demonstrated the possibilities for
well-planned assaults against the state, corporate
and military monopoly of space exploration. A wall
installation features the declarations released for
each new phase, positioned as planets around which
connected material has been placed in orbit. A
poster designed for the exhibition shows that the
AAA logo features a five pointed star representing
these phases, as well as indicating the several
directions at once that Autonomous Astronauts
continue to move in.
To support the connections constructed within
the wall installation, five AAA exit strategies
are transformed into stars illuminating specific
areas. These exit strategies have been collectively
developed by Autonomous Astronauts. They also
demonstrate that the AAA's idea of autonomy (and
the creation of autonomous communities in space)
is part of a process of speculation on the
possibilities that open up to us in space. The AAA
has declared that there is no point going into
space merely to replicate life on earth.
In the Info Centre shop, where AAA annual
reports, newsletters and flyers are available, a
media invasion board displays the results of the
Space1999 effort at using the media for spreading
our ideas. Space1999 has been organised by London
based Autonomous Astronauts, and has demonstrated a
collective energy capable of putting together a
major ten day festival of independent and
community-based space exploration. Space1999 is
also creating its own media in the form of a daily
newsletter that will be published by the Info
Centre. This will include reports from events,
festival updates, AAA texts and submissions.
Each issue will be installed on a launch site
at the Info Centre that counts down to the final
day of Space1999: a launch pad for reviews,
assessments and future projections.
Autonomous Astronauts have explored various
contexts for their ideas, and the propaganda
material presented at the Info Centre includes
an AAA 12 inch vinyl record and a CD with a
recording of an AAA radio broadcast. Also included
is an AAA propaganda video with edited highlights
from various AAA events. The Info Centre reading
table includes the latest newsletters published
by AAA groups, some of which have been designed
specifically for Space1999.
The Five Year Plan began as a simple idea: space
travel for everyone. This idea has become more and
more complex as different AAA groups have joined the
network and developed their own responses. This
exhibition at the Info Centre traces the evolution
of a simple idea into a social movement.
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I arrived at the rendez vous point to find several
Autonomous Astronauts from all across Europe already
waiting. A handful of police were also present, and
they seemed to get very over-excited when I produced
some Space 1999 propaganda. One of them gingerly
approached me and asked for a copy of the programme
(so, obviously a high degree of briefing!). When he
got one, the whole police contingent went down into
the tube station to read it all thoroughly.
When they returned, we headed off to Berkeley
Square for the protest proper, police in tow. Space
Suits were donned, and banners handed out with the
slogan 'Stop Star Wars:military out of space'.
We arrived at our target, Lockheed Martin, and started
handing out leaflets and so on. A delegation (led by
a 2.5 year old Inner City AAA member) headed for the
reception area to hand over our demands. Unfortunately
this seemed to cause a certain amount of agitation
amongst the police and the heavies lurking by the
entrance. This part of the protest was being broadcast
live on BBC Radio Scotland via our mobile phone.
Our letter to Lockheed (suggesting they hand over
their resources to the AAA and stop building weapons)
was eventually handed in to reception. No response has
been received at the time of going to press.
We stayed outside for a while and handed out our
leaflets. The response was generally very good, with a
few conversations being struck up with passersby and
even some people who work in the same building as
Lockheed Martin. Even the most hard-faced office
workers had to agree that we'd be much better off
playing football in outer space than using it as
a new arena for weapons testing.
After the protest, we headed into the City to check
out the embers of the other J18 events.
All in all, a good day out, and proof positive that
community based space exploration is on the up.
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Westminster University yesterday hosted the most exciting event of its academic year, the Third Intergalactic Conference of the Association of Autonomous Astronauts. The conference joined together AAA and non-AAA speakers, and, although the eight talks were demanding and the conference itself lasted the whole afternoon, we can say that the degree of attention from the public was impressive. The proof of this was the debate at the final symposium, when interesting and engaging questions were asked (certainly, as an Italian autonomous astronaut, I am used to silly comments about the AAA project).
The conference began at 11 am, with autonomous astronauts preparing the registration table, including a brief Who's Who of conference speakers and a collection of AAA propaganda, plus the new Space 1999 daily report. At the beginning of the conference there were about 40 people in the room.
John Eden introduced and managed the whole event. The first talk was by Professor Chris Welch, who traced the history of the British Interplanetary Society since its foundation in 1933. Science fiction writers as well as young physicists were involved and, after having been considered nothing more than a bizzarre organisation for over twenty years, they were revalued as visionaries at the beginning of the space race in the Sixties. After him, Paul MacAuley proposed his alternative historification of the conquest of the Solar System. Mark Sinker talked about the negative impression he had whilst meeting government-sponsored astronauts, and Neil Disconaut discussed the rise of free market space groups.
After a 20 minute pause, Barry Bryant (Aotearoa AAA) reflected on the necessity for radical emigration from Earth which, according to him, is necessary to save the planet from mankind's thirst for resources. Then he explained his group's researches on building spaceships with Readily Available Materials (RAM technology). Riccardo Balli (AAA Bologna) sketched the lines of their literary project, which includes a 333 day extension to the AAA five year plan. Dorothy Matrix outlined a psychogeographical experiment concerning the resistance of office mentalities in hostile environments, which took place at the juncture of three highways in the north of England. The last intervention was Inner City AAA's, which consisted of a review of space colonisation projects, and a parallel critique of the technological utopianism operating in them. Inner City AAA stressed the necessity of looking at the social implications of these rationalistic utopias, in order to become aware of their totalitarian implications.
To briefly conclude, we can say that we really enjoyed the conference, and the only thing we regret about it is that no woman was scheduled amongst the speakers.
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Summer Solstice 1999 was crowned with the highly successful AAA press conference on the roof of the White Swan in Blackwall. As the sun reached the highest point in the sky an AAA delegate explained the dynamic of the AAA's media invasion and issued an invitation to all media workers to join in the subversion of the media. This was swiftly taken up as the AAA panel were bombarded with questions which simultaneously appeared to defend the establishment but offered the AAA delegates the opportunity to further expose and denigrate the bosses system. 'Aren't you being arrogant? Isn't NASA democratic?' Such questions were readily met by the assertion that in seeking our goals we also actively supported other community-based initiatives which expressed different desires and that this had been shown by our participation in the June 18th protest across the City of London. The whole notion of 'democracy' was questioned as it only served to perpetuate a ruling elite and failed to give people control of their own lives. This was hammered home when the issue of the Cassini fly-by was raised: the world's population had not been consulted about this dangerous experiment which risked poisoning the atmosphere with radioactive plutonium.
But rather than dwell on the short-comings of the existing system, an AAA delegate discussed how successful the festival had already been by the fourth of ten days. With six further days to go it was clear that the festival could only be a resounding success. The press conference was followed with a psychic attack on NASA: the destruction of a piece of kitsch 1970's furnishing adorned with the cardboard letters. The site, Blackwall Steps, had been chosen because it was the launching point of the London Virginia Company¹s invasion of North America. This had led to a social and ecological catastrophe with the genocide of Native Americans and the accelerated development of capitalism.
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20+ intrepid travellers gathered at Hampstead Heath station for a magickal mystery tour that was to take them to Parliament Hill, outer space and back within three hours. The Solstice training event, facilitated by Neil and Juleigh Disconaut, kicked off with some theoretical orientation using nursery rhymes to demonstrate that most of us have been in training to be astronauts since we floated semi-weightless in the womb. The full meaning of lines like 'I saw an old woman flung high in a basket, seventeen times as high as the moon' will only become apparent when we go into space.
Next stop was the children's playground, locked for the night but swiftly reclaimed by the innovative use of dustbins to scale the fence. Exercises included gravity awareness on the swings and disorientation on the roundabouts. The possible use of the see-saw to catapult people into space was also explored.
Imagination training was carried out under an oak tree on the hill, dressed with candles, stars and other decorations. Nobody volunteered to climb to the top to see if this was actually the World Tree with its roots in the underworld and its branches touching the sky. A discussion of reclaiming our sense of our relationship to the stars, and of the significance of the solstice, was interrupted by some kids asking us for drugs. Asked for their suggestions of how to get into space, one of them came up with the idea of a tunnel leading from earth to the moon.
Dreaming is the cheapest and easiest way to fly, and there was a discussion of various techniques for inducing dreams about space, such as sigilization. Neil described his dream experiments from which he concluded that in our dreams as in the rest of our lives the social gravity of capitalism inhibits the flight of the imagination. While he had succeeded in having some dreams of flying, these had had to struggle against numerous dreams featuring work, school, the police and other horrors.
After some astral body aerobic exercises contributed by Phil, John Eden facililtated an astral projection exercise inviting people to float above the Heath and out to the stars. There were some interesting experiences, with one person reporting that the space she had visited was quite noisy with lots of bird sounds.
The night wound up with some eating and drinking and with people from the band 'They came from the stars' playing on toy musical instruments.
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The venue was awash with Autonomous Astronauts, fans of experimental music, and the simply curious. The evening began with some spacey and jazzy sounds being spun by Interossiter, while the AAA and Nocturnal Emissions stalls both did a brisk trade. 'Beam me up KJ' are a group formed specially for Space 1999 and the bulk of their set consisted of loops, samples and strangeness from Classic Star Trek. The climax of their set was an all too brief appearance from KJ Grant (ex-Cop Shoot Cop) who appeared on stage in full glamorous alien chick garb, topped off with a huge wig. She captivated the whole audience with her other worldly space-operatics, leaving the stage to rapturous applause.
OSI was unable to DJ because of his appearance on Carlton TV to discuss 3-sided football. This gave Raido AAA's John Eden the chance to play an extended space reggae selection, which intensified the ideas set out in the new issue of their 'Ad Astra' newsletter.
Nocturnal Emissions took to the stage at about 10 o¹clock. They began with a shrill, almost bag-pipe like ambient section reminiscent of the opening of their excellent 'Invocation to the Beast Gods' CD. This was accompanied by some ritual gestures by Nigel Ayers, which the geezer next to me assured me were 'OTO stuff'. The rest of the set took in all of the Noccie's styles: from the abrasive, to the dancey, to the ambient. Many of the lyrics were specially adapted for Space 1999, much to the delight of the less dour and industrial sections of this typically fragmented London audience. I only hope that we don't have to wait another 12 years before the next gig!
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Arriving by underground one may well have wondered 'where exactly IS this Vauxhall Taverna we are looking for', and looking on the local map would have seen the British Interplanetary Society listed just round the corner, and of course then the psychogeographic triangle between the two Vauxhall corners and Saturday's lecture by Chris Welch became clear.
On arriving at the venue we received the following message:
'Welcome to Earth. We are your hosts tonight on behalf of the Family Way. The Family Way have been held up in an alternative dimension entertaining some of Queen Boedecia's behemoths (it is their 10th anniversary for winning the whelk catching contest). So we the çÅ€ç¨Å¯^ºî ›Âþä¥þ|ä¥ èðÅ€ê®^ö¯¨ºê (roughly translated as The Family Way) have agreed to take their place for tonight and treat you to some Plutonian delights. Usually we play music in the 4th galaxy 'fantastica' so of course it is in the fantastic scale which has 310 notes and 2 and half flats and no rhythm (or off with your head!!) . Tonight we have translated all our songs into the English system of music. Funnily enough this has made our songs, which would normally explode the head of humans, an exact match for The Family Way's normal repertoire.
We the fantasticans wish you earthlings well and hope you achieve your desire to travel throughout the galaxy in your little ships. We would remind you that everywhere apart from earth, black is the colour for war, so if other universeians look cross it might be because you've inadvertently declared war on them with your lovely black t-shirt.
Beware the lexicons of love from the planet of Badu, for though they are sensuous and beautiful to the eye, they in fact excrete poison and when excited they can kill at 30 dribbles.
We recommend the planet Barton for those of you looking for musical delights where the moustache of Lee is the controller for the entire planet's musical output This season's new black is of course the precise colour of purple obtained from a Martian turtle's droppings when they've been put in a microwave which has been submerged to 200 feet in mouldy semolina.
The Family Way's guide to some religion throughout the universe: Of course when earth beings figure out how to get out there and hang with the rest of the universe's population they will realise that most beings threw out religion as arse when they went to where heaven and hell shoulda been and found other planets and a big heap of mud...
But of course there is the ever growing cult of the sun lords. Every being knows that earth is very very sad and insignificant in the eyes of the rest of the universe: except for our musical output. Thusly when an earthling popking dies he gets his own sun and when it's a popqueen she gets her own moon. So as every being knows Mar's moon is ruled by Janis Joplin, its sun by Jim Morrison. Pluto's moon is ruled by Nico, its sun by Otis Redding and so on......
Of course some planets have more then one sun or moon and thusly more then one lord or lady. These monarchs do not ask for worship but if asked nicely try and shine a bit of pop light on you..........
No one is quite sure who the lord and lady of earth are, possibly Nick Drake and Billie Holiday 'cos earthlings are usually so sad.'
Back on the Human front, many astronauts were seen to be practising their low gravity dance movements to the sounds of The Family Way and to The Adventures of Parsley's many theme tunes. Not forgetting the space discs spun by Danny which complimented nicely the release of the new Disconaut AAA newsletter which lists some records on their own playlist.
To summarise: a top pop space night was had by all.
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Last night autonomous astronauts, their friends, families and other guests, met at the Info Centre for a Five Year Plan gathering.
Since the AAA has evolved into a social movement that can attract people from a variety of backgrounds, events like this also afford the chance for people to get to know each other more. The AAA has always insisted that there could be a danger for autonomous astronauts to base their identities on their activities as AAA members. Each of us has a whole universe of possibilities waiting to be discovered.
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The AAA has made its first contact with an alien civilisation. An AAA representative was granted a meeting with 'Pippa' from the British National Space Centre (BNSC). The meeting took place in the reception area in the building where the BNSC has its offices, and only one AAA member, and no video camera, was allowed through the tight security (although during the meeting a two year old Inner City AAA delegate did successfully storm the building). The meeting was polite and friendly, although some problems in communication were encountered. Whilst the AAA insisted that the 1986 Outer Space Act is an example of government control and regulation of space exploration, Pippa responded that their concern is only with ensuring that any activities in outer space are carried out for peaceful purposes. Obviously in this situation she was having to express the official line, and the AAA hopes that it is through encounters like this with those who work within the state, corporate and military space sectors that the idea of independent, community-based space exploration will have an effect, if only on the level of making those working there realise that their activities are being challenged and questioned.
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The sun was baking down on a Kennington Park hexagonal pitch with 3 goals staked out for the one and only deciding match of this year's Intergalactic Triolectic Football cup. The game began with people visualising a playing card. 3 suits were allocated a goal each and the remaining one was allowed to be on any side they were drawn to.
The first minute of the game started with much treachery. But this was useful to quickly assess which side people were on. And build up a greater determination to score against those who wound one up. One team decided to shorten their goal but this lead one to the other two teams concentrating their efforts on them.
After a first half which lasted an hour, and despite two injuries due to a low branch, it had had been alot of fun, fun, fun, including many rib tickling slips, tumbles and pile ups.
The second half which was set to last half an hour, and was marked by an influx of fresh players, with fresh styles, who ran rings around other players. The game oozed with excitment and frothed with panache. It was only after the game that one reflects the value this training has to us as astronauts.
With many factors other than goals to be taken into account, Bram (2.5 year old Inner City AAA player) had the difficult job of judging who to bestow the sought after cup upon. He was very in tune with the confusion element to the game, which he managed to sow very well during his brief interventions. But he made a decisive decision to give the cup to the team that by this point consisted only of Space Bunny and Jon Eden.
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Today some of us will get together for a summing up and farewell at 56A Info Shop. Space1999 has been organised by a collective of people, and has shown what can be possible when people get together and decide to organise something for themselves. Hopefully Space1999 has helped to make various connections between people and ideas, as well as consolidating and extending the AAA network. There is much that can be taken away to inspire future projects, as well as giving us the confidence to realise what is possible.
The Five Year Plan may be coming to an end, but this will be the start for new ideas to develop.
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