┐ Peter Lamborn Wilson aka Hakim Bey └

© Peter Lamborn Wilson, Pang Yang & the Universal Friend #2 (framed map and box)

© Peter Lamborn Wilson, Esopus Island #3

“His collages and assemblages are psycho-geographies, cryptic records of transient rituals the poet performed at sites with historical/mystical significance around the Hudson River Valley from 2009-2011. He sees these visual maps as a way of “extruding his words into the material realm.”

Wilson merges a lineage of subversive play from Alfred Jarry and the Situationists with his vast knowledge of American hermeticism — a potent mixture of African American ritual, Native American medicine, and European occult sources. It is clear to see the political connections between these recent psycho-topographies and Wilson’s seminal text T.A.Z: The Temporary Autonomous Zone (1991): “The “map” is a political abstract grid, a gigantic con enforced by the carrot/stick conditioning of the “Expert” State, until for most of us the map becomes the territory- -no longer “Turtle Island” but “the USA.” And yet because the map is an abstraction it cannot cover Earth with 1:1 accuracy. Within the fractal complexities of actual geography the map can see only dimensional grids. Hidden enfolded immensities escape the measuring rod. The map is not accurate; the map cannot be accurate.”

(…)

excerpt of text taken from 1:1 TAZ projects

More of Peter’s Vanishing Art here

An online version of TAZ here