Recipes for Disaster: an anarchist cookbook

Believe it or not, I am writing you from Wal-Mart. I am now well into my thirty-seventh hour of occupation. My plan is to stay for seventy-two hours, but I have had absolutely no luck finding a suitable place to sleep ? go figure! Infaa, I just got busted trying to nap. I was settling down under a rack of orange camoufiage cover-alls, when I saw a pair of feet approaching. "What are you doing under there?" the employee asked. I assumed Thinktank

that I'd be escorted out thejront door (or worse), so I didn't bother with an elaborate ex ss^

cuse ? "Hiding," I said, as I climbed out and waited, like a good criminal, for the firing squad. But the strangest thing happened! She just stood there looking at me. (She wanted to open the application hut she didn't have the right program.) Afier a few seconds, I just walked away. I took off my wig and spent next few hours hiding in the magazine seUion. Now the "Radio Diner" is open again, and I'm back in the booth where my refill cup hides ... J think the whole things blown oven Always Wal-Mart, Always, -.

Premise 4 Design your thinktank like you would design a machine. In support of your specific goal, assemble a group of people, facilities, materials, and tools. Each part should be integral to the project.

For a long while, I had a project in mind that required serious bike mechanic skills and an inventor's tenacity. I had a friend in Boston with both. He came to McLeansville for two weeks so we could give it a shot. Taking turns doing what we each did best, we ended up succeeding moments before the bell. In the process we learned a lot from one another.

At the same time, forget about recruiting the perfect mix of speciaUsts; a thinktank is neither a machine nor a management team. There are experts in small things, but no experts in big things, and a thinktank is strictly a big thing. Instead, focus on designing an environment that is perfect for the people who ought to be involved. "Two weeks prior to lock-in we still had a spot to fill A friend of a friend of a friend recommended Tera. She couldn't claim any of the mechanical skills we thought we were looking for, hut she was excited about the project. The project ended up revolving around her energy and ideas. My subsequent projects have gotten a million times better, thanks to Thinktank ^^^^ experience. Three years later she invited me to he part of a thinktank she desired. I

The thinktank is first the tool by which the work is made, and thereafter the lens through Premise 5 which the results are to be understood.

"We. could not have set out for our results; before the project, they didn't yet exist. All we did was create a situation that seemed fertile and let ourselves loose in it. We built up our Galapagos island, and let the beaks of its birds evolve as they would. Now, for our performance to be relevant to the outside world, we will have to go some distance toward recreating, in each performance, the world that brought it into being, "-journal entry upon exiting Thinktank Eight

A thinktank is not just temporary, it is necessarily temporary. Like a fifty-yard dash or a Premise 6

temper tantrum, a thinktank is, by definition, unsustainable.

"A modem day vision quest, [thinktank] does violence to the borders between self and group. We be^n like steel, but the process energy is a heat and things begin to bend. At moments the line between individual and group becomes fluid; inertia evaporates and change is all there is. It can't be sustained. It's not about being sustained. It's about building up an uncommon intensity, then pouring it, at the right moment, onto the other world."-Mani-festofor Concentration [thinktank], Jamaica Plain, MA iggg

The rules for a thinktank can seem confining from the outside. If being locked into Premise 7 certain rules seems harsh, consider what is being locked out. Carefully chosen rules can liberate spaces and individuals from the implicit rules that had dominated them. Finding freedom doesn't necessarily mean abandoning all rules: it can also mean choosing rules that have potential to reveal new possibilities. "Running off to the store or even the dumpster is against our stated rules. This felt ridiculous at first. I was always thinking something like 'We're out of staples, really, what's Thinktank

the problem if I run to the hardware store?' But it feels good, aaually, to switch from a S53

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consumer mode in which solutions are selected to an inventor mode in which solutions are imagined based on what is available. In this mode every 'possible' resource is right under our noses. It invests us with a feeling of real presence."