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NB: This is a preview of the event that occurred on 25 January 2002.

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MERZ NITE at the V&A

The DIY-ESEMPLASM takes over The Dome at the Victoria & Albert Museum, Cromwell Road, London SW7, on Friday 25 January 2002 between the hours of 6.30pm and 10.00pm. Collages, film-making, DJs, bar, enlightened discussion, benign madness & dialectical debate. Collective Free Improvisation Hour at 8.00pm. Esemplasticists, arise! (that includes you, young James Meadway ...)

Where did we get the idea of doing something at the V&A? From Tom Raworth (only nick from the best). He was reminiscing about his pre-poet, pre-publishing, teenage years: "I remember going past and into the V&A, and seeing a little Schwitters book in a glass case and something about it interested me. I had nothing to do with museums at that time, but I went in and said, `Can I look at that book?'. And they were really nice to me, they said, `Come into this room and sit here and we'll get it for you.' They took it out of the glass case and brought it in. It was the MERZ book and I looked through it and thought, `This is great!'. It introduced me to the generosity of certain official institutions - whether they'd do that now, God knows." Tom Raworth in conversation with Out To Lunch, 5 February 2001.

The V&A say, yes, they do "do that" now! Raworth's reminiscence spawned an idea. What would happen if a group of like-minded people, who have spent their lives fomenting direct-access, non-hierarchical, anti-commercial performances and publications were to celebrate both their favourite dadaist and the egalitarian mission of direct-access, non-hierarchical, anti-commercial institutions like public libraries and museums? The plot for MERZ NITE was hatched on 12 April 2000 at the wake after my mother's funeral thanks to SUSAN MCCORMACK from the V&A Events Team and the timely intervention of ESTHER LESLIE causing a temporary respite in the famous "WAR OF THE WATSON BROTHERS". Now that the V&A is no longer charging admission, it seemed apt to celebrate FREE museums with FREE music and FREE verbals.

In July 1919, Kurt Schwitters published the following statement in "Der Sturm":

"The word MERZ denotes essentially the combination of all conceivable materials for artistic purposes, and technically the principle of equal evaluation of the individual materials. MERZ makes use not only of paint and canvas, brush and palette, but of all materials perceptible to the eye and of all required implements. Moreover, it is unimportant whether or not the material was already formed for some purpose or other. A perambulator wheel, wire-netting, string and cotton-wool are factors having equal rights with paint. The artist creates through the choice, distribution and metamorphosis of the materials.

"The metmorphosis of materials can be produced by their distribution over the picture surface. This can be reinforced by dividing, deforming, overlapping, or painting over. In MERZ, the box top, playing card and newspaper clipping become surfaces; string, brushstroke and pencil stroke become line; wire-netting becomes over-painting or pasted-on greaseproof paper becomes varnish; cotton becomes softness.

"MERZ aims at direct expression by shortening the interval between the intuition and realization of the work of art."

In Britain, FREE IMPROVISATION is the authentic inheritor of Kurt Schwitters' programme: the prime site of UNCOMMODIFIED ARTISTIC USE-VALUE in the Modern Metropolis. From the Termite Club to the China Pig, this is where musicians and listeners worth their salt TUNE THEIR CHOPS & EARS for revolutionary refusenik have-it-now culture. MERZ NITE is part-&-crossmerz-parzel of Out To Lunch's polemical exposure of FREE IMPROVISATION to an astonished art-world, a campaign which includes his ESEMPLASTIC TUESDAYS at the Royal College of Art throughout January and February 2002.

The letters "MERZ" came from tearing a poster for Hanover's KOMMERZ UND PRIVAT-BANK. Four random symbols salvaged from everything the Dadaists hated: commercialism, private property, financial institutions. MERZ could be a collage, a poem "written" with a rubber stamp, a performance of vocalised "sound" poetry, a junk sculpture that required burrowing through the ceiling to complete, an anti-militarist parade. MERZ is a rallying cry for those who reject careerism and commercialism and celebrity, who disdain to accept definitions that restrict them to one medium, one mode, one death. These agitators and irritants have learned from Lettrisme, Free Improvisatione and Punke that what we need is a poetry of SITUATION: the right people in the right place at the right time. MERZ NITE at the V&A - Why Not?

Enter Esther Punnck in black rubber galoshes, wearing a dayglo-pink tutu and shouting Polystyrene-weise into an oversize plastic megaphone: "If we've gathered together a totally unlikely collection of wrinklies, baldies and mad old motherfuckers, we're totally unapologetic: this is the DIY-Esemplasm (an informal network of determined anti-career artists) thanking its longterm heroes and inspirations. Let the MERZ commence!"

PARTICIPANTS SHALL INCLUDE: Lol Coxhill (soprano saxophone), Mick Beck (bassoon), Simon Fell (bass), Rhodri Davies (harp), Gail Brand (trombone), Pat Thomas (piano), Sonic Pleasure (flute, amplified bricks),THF Drenching (dictaphonist from Fenland Hi-Brow Recordings), Jennifer Pike (dance), Esther Leslie (camcorder), Tom Raworth (anti-monophone), Maggie O'Sullivan (post-telephone), Out To Lunch (ansaphone), Adrian Clarke (hypophone), Ulli Freer (poet), Bob Cobbing (mouth from Birdyak), John Plant (polemicist from Diary), Gamma (ambassador from the Martian Embassy), Mark P (vocalist and guitarist from Alternative TV), Dave Ross (drummer from Kenny Process Team and Trike), Ian Stonehouse (computer sound-collage and "boing"), L.T. Gray (designer and collagiste), Chris Cutler (cymbal and electric razor), Caroline Kraabel (saxophone), Dallas Boner (DJ) ... and YOU.

Sixty-minute collective improvisation with three-minute soapbox cameos by heroic leaders of the demotic mass, tribunes of the oppressed unconscious and all-round "barking" inspirations (woof woof). Slides made by OTL of the V&A Library and Department of Prints & Drawings Schwitters holdings will be projected during the performance. Screens will display collage postcards made both before and during the evening, to be donated to the V&A library in a box marked MERZ NITE. Gamma will say incredible things it will defy reason to predict.

If you don't know what the hell we are talking about, go and read ART, CLASS & CLEAVAGE: QUANTULUMCUNQUE CONCERNING MATERIALIST ESTHETIX by the absurdly-named "Ben Watson" (and published by the equally absurdly-named "Quartet"). Failing that, simply turn up and GAWP, you poor lost souls. If switched-on punters like the Ketamine Kreeps don't want to miss Iain Sinclair's Orwell Lecture at Birkbeck College, rest assured that MERZ NITE has been cunningly timed so that they'll still be able to make the run from Bloomsbury to South Kensington in time for the 8.00pm start.

THE ESEMPLASM: THE WIBBLY WOBBLY WORLD WHERE DOING BECOMES "BOING" ... FOR AN END TO 90S MISERABLISM, IMPOSSIBLISM and TUC-BACKED POST-9/11 NEW SOCIAL REALISM ...

Esemplastic Tuesdays at the RCA (because I knew you'd ask):

There's an anti-war demo in London on 26 January: OTL has invited MERZ NITE participants and sympathisers to form a DADA PHALANX on the demonstration with FREE IMPROVISORS & THEIR INSTRUMENTS, permanently-spouting POETS and all those who are PROUD TO BE MAD, including Gamma.

Does anyone know where one can score a pint of YELLOW SNOW, the seasonal-cheer beer with a pump-clip showing a huskie-having-a-wee-wee made by the Mighty Oak Brewery in Marsden?