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OVO 5

First Edition. 300 numbered copies. November 1988. 56 pages. 8.5 inches by 5.5 inches. B&W photocopy all editions.

Second edition. 20 numbered copies. March 1989. 56 pages. 8.5 inches by 5.5 inches. New introduction.

Third / Grey Area edition. 200 numbered copies. May 1989. 56 pages. 8.5 inches by 6 inches. New introduction.

“At every turn in its thought, society will find us waiting.”

Publisher/Editor: Trevor Blake

About OVO

OVO is a magazine published on an irregular basis introducing new works to the public domain. Issues are available in electronic form free of charge, printed editions at a nominal fee. Complete information on subscriptions, back issues, limited editions, errata, books and more is available on the Internet or by sending a send a self-addressed stamped envelope. See below for address.

Inquiries

Send a self-addressed stamped envelope for contributor's guidelines. Unsolicited manuscripts not accompanied by a self-addressed stamped envelope will not be returned. Unsolicited manuscripts addressed to OVO will be considered submissions for publication unless expressly stated otherwise. Publication in OVO does not necessarily constitute an endorsement by Trevor Blake or other contributors; the opinions expressed by contributors are those of the contributors alone. All inquiries should be sent to OVO at address listed below. No one besides editor and publisher Trevor Blake speaks on behalf of OVO.

Public Domain

The person or persons who have associated their work with this document (the "Dedicators") hereby dedicate the entire copyright in the work of authorship identified below (the "Work") to the public domain. Dedicators make this dedication for the benefit of the public at large and to the detriment of the Dedicators' heirs and successors. Dedicators intend this dedication to be an overt act of relinquishment in perpetuity of all present and future rights under copyright law, whether vested or contingent, in the Work. Dedicators understand that such relinquishment of all rights includes the relinquishment of all rights to enforce (by lawsuit or otherwise) those copyrights in the Work. Dedicators recognize that, once placed in the public domain, the Work may be freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, used, modified, built upon, or otherwise exploited by anyone for any purpose, commercial or non-commercial, and in any way, including by methods that have not yet been invented or conceived.

Contact

Trevor Blake

P. O. Box 2321

Portland OR 97208-2321 USA

http://www.ovo127.com/

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Annotations

OVO 5 was first published in 1988. The information on page two is accurate but it is unlikely that any of the addresses seen elsewhere in this issue are still valid.

ovo0501 – Cover. I thought of OVO as a 'movement' (of one) concerned with free information and surrealism. OVO 5 was less focused on surrealism and more so with my experiences at an anarchist conference I'd just attended in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The cover of OVO 5 tried to show the two 'movements' crossing paths: the OVOglyph and the 'circle-a' symbol of anarchism.

ovo0502 – Statement.

ovo0503 – Introduction. An early suggestion that OVO would be modular; users would add or remove pages from a binder. The print-on-demand editions of OVO now make this possible. Also, an attempt to put to rest previous works and make OVO more than it had been (particularly by emphasis on themes for each issue).

grey3 – Introduction to Grey Area Edition of OVO 5. A copy of OVO 5 made its way to a man named Barry who was part of an English anarchistic group named Grey Area. Grey Area liked OVO 5 and asked if they could reprint the entire issue. I sent them the master copies and this new introduction, and they printed an edition of two hundred.

ovo0504 – Stencil.

ovo0505 through ovo0518 – Toronto. It took a special effort to find a place that would print this essay on a laser printer in 1988. The man with the green mohawk I met at the bus station was Tom Jennings, inventor of fidonet and publisher of Homocore magazine. The RCP that was not welcome at the event was the Revolutionary Communist Party. The body art I saw there prefigured the explosion in body art in years to come; I also saw my first 'fanny pack' there. The “Mike of Rensalaer” I met was Mike Gunderloy, publisher of Factsheet Five magazine. I heard Michael Board of Maximun Rockandroll magazine made fun of me for crying in the polyfidelity workshop but I never saw the article in question if he did. The “ABC” mentioned was the Anarchist Black Cross, a pen-pal club between anarchists and prisoners. The band MDC did play in a club while I was in Toronto, but since they were banned in Canada they went under the name My Dog Charlie. The “Rainbows” mentioned were the Rainbow Family Gatherings, something like an earlier movable Burning Man event. The “Psychic Youth” mentioned was a member of the Temple of Psychic Youth, founded by Genesis P. Orridge of Psychic TV. The crime I saw at the 'day of action' meeting was one anarchist picking the pocket of another – I said nothing to stop it, to my discredit. Riots induce altered states of consciousness. I have not before nor since felt the surrender of individual identity I felt in the riot. I acted as part of a group and entirely lost my sense of self; watching birds change direction in flight, with no plain signal between them, is how it felt. The number of times I wrote about 'ending up somewhere' is an indication of my altered state. It was frightening and exciting, something I both want to experience again and never want to experience again. The altered state of the riot followed by the shock of being in jail was great enough of a strain to cause hallucinations. The initial bail hearing was conducted late at night. A friend had his before me, and when he left the office he was smiling. Turns out the officer who was supposed to be conducting the interviews had been out drinking and didn't show up until my turn in the office. So my friend left and I spent three days in jail. No wonder he had a smile on his face as he left! I do not believe any longer that the other people in jail were interested in anarchism, although I did at the time. A short while after my adventure in Toronto I went to the anarchist demonstrations at the 1988 Democratic convention in Atlanta, Georgia. I felt a need to prove to myself I wasn't afraid of getting in trouble while causing trouble. One of the events I participated in there was blocking a white power group from marching in the streets; when our blockade was clearly successful, we marched on their planned route. The police in Toronto said that they were going to inform the local police in all our home towns about our arrest. Whether they did or not, I was under clumsy surveillance for the next four years in Knoxville (my car was repeatedly broken into but nothing was ever stolen: friends had their houses robbed, but the only things taken were address books, etc.). What stood out for people who read my account of the Toronto anarchist gathering was how personal it was. What stands out for me is my appreciation of big(ger) city life, and the shock of the riot followed by a few days in jail. I know now that my time in jail could have been much longer and much worse than it was: I was fortunate, no matter how much of a negative impression the experience made on me at the time.

ovo0519 – What Can You Do With This Page. Well, what can you do with this page? I think leaving this page blank was a mistake, corrected at the last moment by presenting it as an opportunity for the reader to make use of it.

ovo0520 – Nadzrealizem versus anarhizm. This text originally appeared in the book Pozdravi iz Babilona. I do not have a copy of what I wrote in English, but I remember that it was a clumsy provocation stating surrealism was 'better' than anarchism.

ovo0521 – Brian. This is the friend who entered the bail hearing office just before I did, who got away instead of staying in jail.

ovo0522 – T-Shirt. Artist unknown. My attempt to bring money back to the people who donated my bail money by advertising a fund-rasing t-shirt.

ovo0523 – Stencil. The paper candy-stripe used here is the kind used in the United States government to indicate classified documents. A friend gave me a small stack of this paper, now all used up in pranks.

ovo0524 – People with AIDS: The Government is Not Your Friend. The United States government was decidedly slow to respond to the spread of AIDS, and many people suffered due to that delay.

ovo0525 - Image taken from the first edition of The Medium is the Massage by Marshall McLuhan. Also seen in ovo0433.

ovo0526 – Recommended Contacts. Background from prior issues of OVO. Note that one half of the rent on my apartment in Knoxville in 1988 was $140/month.

ovo0527 and ovo 0528– Ovoglyph. I wanted the ovoglyph to be used by other people as a symbol of free information and (in some vague way) surrealism. I thought it would be helpful to make a standardized version of it. No one ever used it but me, and I stopped using it long ago.

ovo0549 through ovo0551 – Announcement of OVO 7. OVO begins to move clearly toward themed issues. The first US patent for a mammal occurred in 1988, the year I mentioned it in OVO. The border is more of the secret paper candy-stripe paper. ovo0551 is a catalogue.

ovo0552 – Collage. I was around 21 years old in this photograph.

ovo0553 – Back cover. This scan depicts a copy returned in the mail.

grey4 – Back Cover to Grey Area OVO 5.

toronto01 and toronto02 – my account of the Toronto anarchist gathering got enough positive feedback that I made it available as a booklet.

barry2 – Barry was my contact for Grey Area. After a time he dropped away, never to be heard from again.

grey1 – Front cover to the Grey Area edition of OVO 5.

greyareans – The Grey Area mob at Christmas time. Barry holds the sign reading “On the Eigth Day, God created Christmas, and all the Shop Keepers and Businesmen saw it and said it was Very Good.”

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OVO 5

Public Domain http://www.ovo127.com/

2004-05-16T19:15:55