CLANDISTAN (1967-2027)
Clandistan is the territory that hosts and houses a spectrum of works pertaining to clandestine practices. But it is also a school of thought. A way of being. An inevitable movement.
From the Clandie Shoppe to Clandio and other clandonyms, from the taxonomy of cloaked works to smudgeages and clandadjacent works, Clandistan holds, protects, secures, defends, and champions this vast range of clandestine engagements. The works are at the vanguard of literature and art, but at the vanguard, as well, of distribution, dissemination, activation, and the poetics/politics of participation. They adhere to an autonomous, protective, uncompromised creative practice with deeply anarchistic tendencies.
Clandies are, in effect, works that take shape and are manifest in various clandestine ways. Whether performance, publication, play, exhibition, or a hybrid new form, they are distributed in limited ways to specific entities, or presented in secret to invited audiences. They are also obviously political in nature. The first conscious Clandie (which allowed, in turn, recategorizing many works of the past as clandies of some type) was Le Chaise (Yes, Le), public-ed in 2016. (That’s right: it’s ‘public-ed’, as in ‘made public’, sounds like ‘publiked’–not a typo!) Since, I have generated shorter and longer works that are also Clandies, from micro-clandies to grand and super-clandies.
Clandistan is actually my longest-running ongoing work–it started in the womb, before birth into this world, and it will end, by my own choice, in 2027. It was thus a sixty-year venture, with sound pieces, performative works, dramatic interventions, and truly undefined relational pieces put into action throughout. The earliest works, created in that wholly different consciousness and in the earliest coming-to-life stages, include: the Embryonic Enactments (the EmEns), and the Immediate Post-Birth pieces, or IPoBs.
Some works are so timely (and funky) that at some point, they may have a more conventional public-ation. Others shed their clandestine skin, and become fully open, accessible, and public over time. Others forever embrace their clandestine nature and remain on their territory in Clandistan. In any case, the first ‘edition’ will generally correspond to the date a clandestine work was first created and made public–‘public-ed’–the date of the first public-ed-ation and public-making. If the year/time of the work being public-ed does not correspond to a year it was also more widely and conventionally distributed (which is often the case), both the public-ation date and the public-ed-ation date can be referenced in their specific ways. As a consequence of innovative clandestine creations and selective public-making, a whole range of works that I never could have imagined have been conceived, created, and birthed, all while adhering to the general Clandistanian ethos.