Recipes for Disaster: an anarchist cookbook

Either way, the frogs will still croak and the buds will still blossom, and people will still love each other, and you. And this cancerous prison that mankind has erected for itself will continue to teeter toward its increasingly imminent collapse, and the sooner the better, I say. We will continue to wage war on that system, and to learn and releam how to live in harmony with each other and with the earth, because if we do not then we will all surely die. If we do all die then we will return to the earth, and the ashes of our species will decompose in its bosom, and eventually something will grow up out of the compost. One time, in total despair, I looked down and saw two hornets fucking in the dust, and I saw that it was good. In the long run everything really will be all right, and I mean that. Hell, there are folks out there doing bids longer than I really expect to see civilization as we know it last. That's something to think about when you're getting dovm in the mouth! Surviving a Felony Trial Remember: your body will always be a part of the magnificent web of life, of plants

548 and animals inhaling oxygen and carbon dioxide, of birth and death and decomposition.

You are in the embrace of an unbroken body of ghosts that reaches back through every place since the dawn of time. We have done everything that we could to combat all that is abusive and cruel. We have endured every manner of suffering and tribulation, and we have never given up the ghost. No matter what, you must know that we love you, that we give thanks to you for what you have done, and that your efforts?^whatever they have been?have not been in vain.

Survmng a felony Trial 549

Thinktank

Instructions

A Method for intensive Colial:}oration

Premise i

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A thinktank is a period of self-imposed isolation and concentration for creative purposes; it enables the participants to live Vidthin the creative process, centering their attention and liberating their imaginations.

The thinktank method focuses on exploring formats of production and interaction. A thinktank is not simply a way to produce results: it is also a wslj to experiment with process. A thinktank can produce science, performance, stories, music, healing, art, a machine, a philosophy; the composition of the thinktank determines the conditions, rules, materials, facilities, and individuals with which these products are hewn. The exact goals of a thinktank might not even be established in advance; the development of goals may itself be a goal.

A thinktank is a free university: inside, we get smarter and more capable. Accordingly, the objects, insights, and lifeways that arise out of it are to be shared. In that spirit, we have assembled this guide. It is a framework of ideas, not a list of rules. Italicized texts are anecdotes or examples from specific projects. If you carry out a thinktank, or whatever else you call it, be sure to pass on your findings, as well.

In a thinktank, a set amount of time?two weeks, for example?is devoted to a specific goal. Examples of such goals could include designing and building a mechanism or a piece of art, producing a performance or intervention, occupying an unusual space, creating a publication, building a whey-powered airplane, or all of these at once.

The stated goal of a thinktank is not the ultimate end, but rather a means to it: the ultimate end is to conduct and enjoy an experiment in collaboration. For this reason, it may be enough in some cases to set the conditions of the thinktank and let its goals develop in the process of exploring those conditions?see Premise 5, below.

A thinktank is intense and focused. Because of this, it can generate in participants the Premise 2 same excitement, urgency, and supernatural powers that otherwise appear only during natural disasters, popular uprisings, thesis defenses, and similar emergencies, without any of the nasty side effects. "Day 11, midday: I was sewing a six-foot inflatahle Arnold Schwarzene^er prop, Drew was in the subbasement trouhhshooting heats on the sequencer, Erik was hunting down projection equipment, Jason was screening the last of the t-shirts and posters, and Chris, while out on his trailer bike picking up an electric motor, managed to dumpster dive Uvo pizzas and a head of cabbage, which we ate for lunch."

A thinktank is holistic. Every part of life during the thinktank belongs to the proj ect. There Prem ise 3 are no lunch breaks or business hours. For the given period, the thinktank is in effect twenty-four hours a day. Activities like eating and sleeping are part of, not breaks from, the project; they are integrated into it as experiments or adventures in themselves. Dearest ??-,