CRASS IS DEAD // LONG LIVE CRASS
Parting a sea of North Beach denizens clad in requisite St.
Patrick’s Day green, a small cadre of drably dressed trespassers trudge forth.
A drunken amateur vomits into a shamrock bedazzled plastic hat, stumbles
against the window of City Lights Booksellers and half a dozen police cars halt
in the middle of the road. Pairs and trios in neutrally solid colors continue a
little further and around a corner. Their destination is the Emerald Tablet (essentially
a gallery in all but name) but it’s ironically a sanctuary from the garish
green elsewhere in San Francisco’s forsaken North Beach neighborhood.
Gee Vaucher and Penny Rimbaud, best known as multi-talented
members of seminal English anarcho punk group Crass, are in San Francisco for a
series of events. V. Vale, operator of long-running Bay Area publishing house
Re/Search, arranged a screening of Vaucher’s film, Angel, and a small display of her visual art at the Emerald Tablet
for which the cadre of supporters in attendance braved North Beach on St.
Patrick’s Day. Vaucher and Rimbaud live at Dial House, a self-sustaining
communal home outside of London, and the event intends to raise funds for
establishing Dial House as a trust.
The event could have easily drawn more attendees, but it was
undersold in typical punk fashion, tickets limited ahead of time and room for
additional seating wasted. Rather than the cold profiteering of former Crass
singer Steve Ignorant’s performances in 2011, this event immediately benefitted
Dial House, a model for sustainable living championed by Rimbaud before, during
and after Crass. Furthermore, it showcased recent work of the two, rather than
opportunist rehashing of a band that existed for seven years out of Vaucher’s
life-long creative career.
Forty some odd people passed through North Beach’s green
melee of ritualized self-destruction and sat inside the Emerald Tablet. A small
display of Vaucher’s prints rested on a wall. Her most iconic work, like Crass’
Feeding of the 5000 cover and the
inner-poster of the group’s “Bloody Revolutions” single, hung alongside work from her own International Anthem, a publication conceived as a vessel for
Vaucher’s more radical work while she was earning a living producing graphics
for publications in New York. Other, less obvious work of Gee was represented
as well, like “Pretty Polly,” a gorgeous CMYK screen print with only a hint of
the collage style characterizing much of her work.
The diversity of work represented in Vaucher’s prints alone
reminded attendees that the evening wasn’t all about Crass, though. For Vaucher
and Rimbaud, Crass is a segment of their creative oeuvre, and one that much of
their work before and after bares little similarity to. Escaping one’s own
shadow can be difficult and disheartening. This very predicament is central to
what motivated Ignorant to drag Crass songs through the proverbial mud – his
own projects after Crass, like Stratford Mercenaries and Schwartzeneggar, were
flops compared to his tenure as an anarcho titan. To grapple, he concocted The
Last Supper Tour in flagrant disregard for Crass’ original intentions and
defended his right to do so with a casual shrug to the ensuing criticism. Meanwhile,
Vaucher and Rimbaud progressed and diversified as artists, accepting, if not
content, with their inevitable decline from the slogan-ridden stages of so many
Crass gigs.
Rimbaud performed two rousing poems for the small audience. He
cited a Vaucher piece hanging on the wall entitled “Oh America,” which became a
Tackhead album cover, as inspiration for the first. He spoke chiefly from the perspective
of Lady Liberty, who ultimately resolves that the United States is no longer a
country of refuge. Rimbaud crouched as if conjuring strength from the earth and
lunged into an exasperated delivery, at times yelling or dramatically rolling
his R’s as he veered between various topical, post-millennial issues in the
poem. All the while, his face partially obscured by scraggly yellow hair like
the faded jackets of Crass albums in attendees’ collections at home.
Vaucher’s new film Angel
screened next. She filmed the face of her 11 year old niece, Angel, for over an
hour, then slowed the footage and condensed its running time to 41 minutes.
Angel’s slight blinks and giggling were expanded well-beyond the natural
duration of such movements, effectively manipulating viewer’s perception of
time. Meanwhile, sound-collages built into frantic crescendos and retreated,
providing a counter-point to the slow unfolding of youth on screen.
Vaucher caught Angel on the cusp of adolescence, in the
period of clichéd innocence, and prolonged it. But, the film illuminates the
nature of Vaucher’s creative continuum. In her most famous multi-media work for
Crass, Vaucher brazenly appropriated graphic depictions of war, politicians and
religion to comment on their horror. Often, she was heavy-handed. For instance,
the classic steaming pile of shit collaged beneath Margaret Thatcher’s nose
comes to mind. To Reaga-era sensibilities, her work was alarming in the ideal,
meaningful sense of “shock value.”
Crass’ profile and reach brought Vaucher’s work to an
audience that didn’t share her values. Angel
was shown to a very small audience that at least sympathized with her
values, but the film’s dawdling pace, lengthiness and utter lack of action
challenged the audience to even show up. Many punks I spoke with prior to the
event were hesitant to invest the time and money into what appeared to be an
utter bore. Angel isn’t a bore,
though. It’s just unintentionally created as the antithesis of punk. Long,
innocent and ponderous, Vaucher’s film challenges the expectations of her
modern punk audience, which is actually more confrontational than performing
Crass’ songs nowadays. As far from their famed personas and tactics as
possible, but Vaucher and Rimbaud won’t be neutralized.
************************************************************************
Suss out the hype and
iterate your manifesto.
Sam Lefebvre
PO Box 3272
Berkeley, CA 94703
degeneratezine@gmail.com
degenerateephemera.blogspot.com
