Thursday, December 22, 2005

B. Jones Archive Project: Stamp Detournements

As part of the B. Jones Archive Project, I present some of his stamp detournements. As time and bandwidth permit, I will post more. In the last two years of his life, he created hundreds of these images, many of which he sent out on postcards with allusive quotations. He continually referenced Hakim Bey in this regard, often referring to his mailings as "poetic terrorism":

WEIRD DANCING IN ALL-NIGHT computer-banking lobbies. Unauthorized pyrotechnic displays. Land-art, earth-works as bizarre alien artifacts strewn in State Parks. Burglarize houses but instead of stealing, leave Poetic-Terrorist objects. Kidnap someone & make them happy. Pick someone at random & convince them they're the heir to an enormous, useless & amazing fortune--say 5000 square miles of Antarctica, or an aging circus elephant, or an orphanage in Bombay, or a collection of alchemical mss. Later they will come to realize that for a few moments they believed in something extraordinary, & will perhaps be driven as a result to seek out some more intense mode of existence.

- Slightly larger images on the click -










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