Louis
08-08-2006, 10:50 PM
I sometimes wish I were the type of person who could just up and do something like this. I guess I'll have to settle on seeing them when (if) they make it to St Louis.
NY Times Article (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/09/arts/09arma.html?pagewanted=1)
Project Web Site (http://www.missrockaway.org/wordpress/?page_id=5)
From the web site:
This summer we are building rafts and floating down the Mississippi River.
The catch is that we don’t know much about boats or rivers, and we don’t have any money. We know we are blowing crazy hot air, but if the idea makes your eyes glow like coals then you understand what we’re envisioning. For the last two months we’ve been meeting, making phone calls, holding benefits and drawing blueprints. We’ve been collecting scrap wood from all over the city and hammering it together piece by piece. We’ve been having benefit parties and socking away brown rice and dented cans. Soon we’ll be testing vessels in the Gowanus Canal or the East River. We’re organizing mostly out of New York because that’s where we live, but we have folks on the West coast as well as the Midwest.
Here’s the plan: We meet in Minneapolis in late July with sections of our raft in tow. We piece together our pontoons and fill them with salvaged blocks of foam. We make it beautiful and tie on anything that floats, adding it to our junk armada, our anarchist county fair, our fools ark. Our precious cargo is everything we hold dear: pieces and parts of the culture we are already creating. Our zines and puppets, sewing projects and poster campaigns. Mutant bicycles and punk rock marching bands. Plus our thoughts and dreams and irrepressible energy.
Together we float down the Mississippi river, as far as we can—all the way to St. Louis—anchoring here and there to perform, give workshops, and create the big huge stinking spectacle we wished would have stopped in our hometowns. And at each place we invite anyone to contribute performances or workshops of their own.
Our flotilla is built green with precycled materials, rainwater collection, solar ovens, and steam calliopes. If we make it right everything will run on sunshine and french fry grease. We want a floating garden, a bicycle-powered sound system, and wind-powered lights. We want to steal hippie technology from the hippies.
We are a small group of people with extensive experience making big insane projects. In the past we have taken 20-person bands to Mexico, pulled off town square-sized guerrilla theater in Berlin, and fed hundreds of people with garbage and love. We know this idea is ridiculous and impossible. That’s why we’re obsessed with it.
About Us
The Miss Rockaway Armada is a group of approximately 25 performers and artists from all over the country including members of the Toyshop Collective, Visual Resistance, The Amateurs, The Floating Neutrinos, The Infernal Noise Brigade, The Madagascar Institute and the Rude Mechanical Orchestra. This July we will converge in Minneapolis to construct a flotilla of rafts that will journey down the Mississippi River. We’ll stop in towns along the way, hosting musical performances and vaudeville variety-theater in the evenings, along with workshops and skill-shares centered around arts and environmental issues during the day. In our travels we intend to share stories and to solicit dialogue around subversive and constructive ways of living. We are a group of intrepids who believe in a hands-on, live-by-example approach to creating change within our culture. We are taking cues from Johnny Appleseed, traveling medicine shows, nomadic jewel box theater, and of course that old radical Mark Twain.
NY Times Article (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/09/arts/09arma.html?pagewanted=1)
Project Web Site (http://www.missrockaway.org/wordpress/?page_id=5)
From the web site:
This summer we are building rafts and floating down the Mississippi River.
The catch is that we don’t know much about boats or rivers, and we don’t have any money. We know we are blowing crazy hot air, but if the idea makes your eyes glow like coals then you understand what we’re envisioning. For the last two months we’ve been meeting, making phone calls, holding benefits and drawing blueprints. We’ve been collecting scrap wood from all over the city and hammering it together piece by piece. We’ve been having benefit parties and socking away brown rice and dented cans. Soon we’ll be testing vessels in the Gowanus Canal or the East River. We’re organizing mostly out of New York because that’s where we live, but we have folks on the West coast as well as the Midwest.
Here’s the plan: We meet in Minneapolis in late July with sections of our raft in tow. We piece together our pontoons and fill them with salvaged blocks of foam. We make it beautiful and tie on anything that floats, adding it to our junk armada, our anarchist county fair, our fools ark. Our precious cargo is everything we hold dear: pieces and parts of the culture we are already creating. Our zines and puppets, sewing projects and poster campaigns. Mutant bicycles and punk rock marching bands. Plus our thoughts and dreams and irrepressible energy.
Together we float down the Mississippi river, as far as we can—all the way to St. Louis—anchoring here and there to perform, give workshops, and create the big huge stinking spectacle we wished would have stopped in our hometowns. And at each place we invite anyone to contribute performances or workshops of their own.
Our flotilla is built green with precycled materials, rainwater collection, solar ovens, and steam calliopes. If we make it right everything will run on sunshine and french fry grease. We want a floating garden, a bicycle-powered sound system, and wind-powered lights. We want to steal hippie technology from the hippies.
We are a small group of people with extensive experience making big insane projects. In the past we have taken 20-person bands to Mexico, pulled off town square-sized guerrilla theater in Berlin, and fed hundreds of people with garbage and love. We know this idea is ridiculous and impossible. That’s why we’re obsessed with it.
About Us
The Miss Rockaway Armada is a group of approximately 25 performers and artists from all over the country including members of the Toyshop Collective, Visual Resistance, The Amateurs, The Floating Neutrinos, The Infernal Noise Brigade, The Madagascar Institute and the Rude Mechanical Orchestra. This July we will converge in Minneapolis to construct a flotilla of rafts that will journey down the Mississippi River. We’ll stop in towns along the way, hosting musical performances and vaudeville variety-theater in the evenings, along with workshops and skill-shares centered around arts and environmental issues during the day. In our travels we intend to share stories and to solicit dialogue around subversive and constructive ways of living. We are a group of intrepids who believe in a hands-on, live-by-example approach to creating change within our culture. We are taking cues from Johnny Appleseed, traveling medicine shows, nomadic jewel box theater, and of course that old radical Mark Twain.