Blaster Al Ackerman

Blaster Al Ackerman

Blaster Al Ackerman is the most commonly used name by an American mail artist and writer who has been active since the early 1970s.

Heavily influenced by post-war pulp writers like Theodore Sturgeon, Raymond Chandler and Fredric Brown (with whom Ackerman corresponded as a young person) as well as by modernists like Ray Johnson, Francis Ponge and the Oulipo, The name Al Ackerman is a pseudonym most likly alluding to the Science Fiction editor and collector Forrest J. Ackerman.

Al Ackerman's writing has dealt playfully, if obsessively, with themes of madness and weird phenomena. His visual work is also in the tradition of black humor, often including a trademark character, the hebephrenic, with a wide upper lip and two protruding teeth.

His voluminous mail art output was anthologized in "The Blaster Omnibus" and given a one-man show at the Chela Gallery in Baltimore, Maryland. Other books include "Let Me Eat Massive Pieces of Clay," "I Taught My Dog to Shoot a Gun," and "Corn and Smoke". Over the past twenty years, he has been mostly frequently published The Lost and Found Times, published by frequent collaborator John M. Bennett, and in the Shattered Wig Review published by Rupert Wondolowski, although his massive body of work is difficult to track due to his regular use of a variety of pseudonyms (which he relates to his childhood love of the pulps), including Eel Leonard, Luther Blissett, and Swarthy Turk Sellers among many others, as well as regular anonymous and collaborative works.

His influence in the 80s was strongly felt by neoism founder Istvan Kantor, performance artist Andre Stitt, photographer Richard Kern (who published Ackerman's writing in his magazine "Dumb Fucker") and musicians Genesis P-Orridge who used one of Ackerman's letters as the text of Throbbing Gristle's song "Hamburger Lady." Many of his stories have been made into videos by Steve "Sleeze" Steele, and one, about a man who give his life over to the creation of a garment made of vienna sausages, was given feature-length film treatment by Catherine Pancake under the name "The Suit". In 2005 a long playing record of his spoken performances, titled "I am Drunk", was issued.

External links

* [http://www.chelagallery.org/gallery/blaster Artwork images]
* [http://www.paghat.com/MAblaster2.html Artwork image]
* [http://www.paghat.com/MAblaster1.html Artwork image]
* [http://jas.faximum.com/library/tam/tam_70.htm Mid-90s Ackerman Mail Interview]
* [http://www.mailartist.com/johnheldjr/AlAckermanInterview.html Earlier Ackerman Mail Interview]
* [http://www.ehserecords.com Spoken word mp3s]
* [http://www.thing.de/projekte/7:9%23/ack_index_index.html Neoism-related writing]
* [http://www.citypaper.com/film/story.asp?id=5940 Biographical article]


Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

Игры ⚽ Нужен реферат?

Look at other dictionaries:

  • Ackerman (surname) — Acker came German or Old English, meaning field , and is also related to the word acre . Therefore, Ackermann means fieldman . This is a list of people named Ackerman:*Allan Ackerman, American magician *Arlene Ackerman, American minister *Bettye… …   Wikipedia

  • Neoism — is a parodistic ism. It refers both to a specific subcultural network of artistic performance and media experimentalists, and more generally to a practical underground philosophy. It operates with collectively shared pseudonyms and identities,… …   Wikipedia

  • Istvan Kantor — (aka Monty Cantsin , and Amen! ) (Hungarian: Kántor István; born August 27, 1949, in Budapest) is a Hungarian born Canadian performance and video artist, industrial music and electropop singer, and founder of Neoism. In the 1970s, he studied… …   Wikipedia

  • John Berndt — (born 1967) is a musician and organizer based in Baltimore, Maryland who is best known as an extended technique experimental saxophonist and electronic musician. As an enfant terrible , he participated in what might be called the second wave of… …   Wikipedia

  • Kidd Video — Infobox Television show name = Kidd Video caption = genre = Animated series creator = DiC Entertainment Saban Entertainment director = Bernard Deyriès Richard Raynis Bud Schaetzle developer = presenter = starring = voices = Steve Alterman… …   Wikipedia

  • List of Tamiya product lines — Over the years, the Tamiya Corporation has created a huge number of notable product lines, a large of these has since become collectable in its own right. Radio controlled vehiclesCars (1/12 scale)*The first radio controlled car to be released by …   Wikipedia

  • Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope — An original 1977 North American theatrical film poster by Tom Jung[1] Directed by George Lucas …   Wikipedia

Share the article and excerpts

Direct link
Do a right-click on the link above
and select “Copy Link”