- SELECTED WRITINGS

FROM THE ASSOCIATION

OF AUTONOMOUS

ASTRONAUTS

NO SPACE

The Association of Autonomous Astronauts consisted of an unknown number of chapters, groups, and collectives, formed in the wake of a 1995 call to action. As part of a ‘5 Year Plan’, the founders of the AAA called for the creation of “a worldwide network of community-based AAA groups dedicated to building their own spaceships.”In this sense, the AAA can be considered the first ‘inter-national’ network with aspirations towards becoming an ‘intergalactic’ association.

Yet the AAA expanded to become much more than sim-ply a hobbyist group, ini-tiating not only construc-tion projects, but also challenging national space agencies and contractors with interests in space travel for control of the sky. The basic argument emerged that these insti-tutions had completely failed in their attempts to access or provide ac-cess to the boundless possibility of space, and that it was time for them to relinquish control of the means of exploration to the passionate multi-tudes.

The AAA’s project can be viewed in a variety of ways. In a sense, it was profoundly Utopian, tapping into the dreams and desires of a previous generation. The 1950s is generally considered the heydey of the Space Age, when emerging technologies seemed to offer the possi-bility that excited adventurers worldwide would soon be able to pack their bags and blast off for a distant paradise. A variety of Science Fiction novels, comics, films and toys stand as testament to the palpable ex-citement of that generation. Yet by the 1960s, the ter-rifying realities of Space Travel were becoming clear. As Superpowers battled for hegemony, the possibility for autonomous space travel as a luxury was diminished. Meanwhile, resistance movements were crushed by both Soviet Tanks and US Marines, as the world became in-creasingly industrialized and nuclear war loomed.

INTRODUCTION : THE OTHER SPACE AGE

Subsequent Dystopian fiction paints a disturbing pic-ture of humans struggling to escape their own toxic atmosphere. With the emergence of the Environmental movement, it became painfully clear how terribly we had treated our planet. Furthermore, the consistent fail-ure of Governments to give up nuclear armaments, or scale back extensive military spending, convinced many that their current planet was doomed. As social change seemed to become increasingly impossible, the idea of exile amongst the stars gained a certain allure.

It stands as a testament to the AAA’s growth, to its ability to inspire and engage thousands, that the movement cannot be cor-rectly classified within any particular tendancy. As the following texts show, the interests, de-sires and motivations were incredibly diverse, as would be expected from a group that included art-

ists and agitators, sports enthusiasts and technicians. Brian Holmes quotes an AAA member talking about their group as a ‘Collective Phantom’, in a book of the same name. It is not difficult to see how the group compris-es the perfect cross-sectional example of the aesthetic and affective avant-garde of the late twentieth centu-ry.As Stepven Shukiatis writes in his book Imaginal Ma-chines, “While the AAA initially emerged very much out of the mail art and pscyhogeography scene, their ef-forts were intended to take the practice of the collec-tive name and extend it from being an artistic practice to a wider form of organizing and political action.”

Artistically, the group had strong connections to the emerging internet art scene, with an early conference being held at cyberculture center Pub-lic Netbase in Vienna, and with the internet being a major medium for the dis-semination of the project. Many creators had previ-ously been involved in the creation of zines, small

DIY publications like the one you’re holding, and the low-fi, easily replicable aesthetic they represented continued to be present in many of the groups’ works. The most notable juncture, however, was between the AAA and the emerging Rave culture, since both had as their aim a reevaluation and liberation of space.

The AAA started to become a political current through defense of artistic spaces, protests at Space Agencies and contractors and through participation in the Re-claim the Streets dance parties that tore through urban areas in the last part of the century. AAA’s politics drew from Anarchist, Autonomist and general Anti-Au-thoritarian tendencies, with AAA chapters often being strongest in cities with a history of revolt. Luther Blisset, a British footballer who found his name used as a pseudonym by dissidents in Italy, also found extra work as a spokesperson for the AAA. While some groups espoused a sort of New Age enlightenment approach, or advocated delicate culture jamming, more urban chapters saw their quest for spatial exodus as a part of a glob-al class struggle. As such, the AAA played a part in events like the London ‘Carnival Against Capitalism’.

In fact, it would be reasonable to argue that the AAA played a major role in constituting the anti-globalization move-ment, despite the fact that they claimed to be interested in fight-ing for anything but the globe. Though the organization dissolved months before the Se-attle uprising in 1999, the experience gained in building a global network of artists and activists would prove invaluable for the com-ing conflict. Further-more, the subversive, playful dissent employed by Astronauts would be taken up by some of the more effective anti-glo-balization groups.

“What are the stars but points in the body of God where we insert the healing needles of our terror and long-ing?”, writes Thomas Pynchon, in his postmodern classic ‘Gravity’s Rainbow’. It seems at times that the As-sociation of Autonomous Astronauts might, in fact, be not that interested in space itself. To a large degree, the militarization, corporatization and domination of Space by governments and corporations mirrors the con-trol those agencies leverage over our current home. By critiquing society at the level of its imaginary, the AAA allows itself to engage in Utopian fantasies seem-ingly rendered impossible by the fall of Communism and Neoliberal hegemony. “Each will have his own personal rocket,” dreams Pynchon and the Autonomous Astronauts.

INTO THE VOIDPHILOSOPHY

MIND THE GAP

SPATIAL PRACTICES & ELLIPTICAL ACTIONCHRISTPHE CAUCHY, AAA PARIS SUD

ESCAPE FROM DIMENSIONALITYNOMAD AAA

WE HAVE A WORLD TO LEAVE BEHINDINNER CITY AAA

WHO OWNS OUTER SPACE?RAIDO AAA

THEY NEVER REACHED THE MOONDISCONAUT AAA

INFORMATION WARRAIDO AAA

POLITICS

TAKE A DANCING FLIGHTDIONYSUS AAA

SPACE TRAVEL: BY ANY MEANS NECESSARYJASON SKEET, INNER CITY AAA

THE DREAM IS JUST THE BEGINNING KERNOW AAA

LEISURESEX, ROCKETS AND BLACK MAGIC

EWEN CHADRONNET

SEX IN OUTER SPACELUTHER BLISSET, RAIDO AAA

INTRO TO 3-SIDED FOOTBALL [SOCCER] EAST LONDON AAA

LEGACY

(c) in space, nobody can read your copyright.

PHILOSOPHY

The concept of the Void has been with us since language began, perhaps even before. The precise word comes from Ancient Greece where it literally meant nothing. It was the empty space between things, according to the atomists. Others refused to except its existence. As Parmenides (always the smart arse) pointed out, if the Void exists it is some-thing, therefore it is not no-thing, which cannot by definition exist. Atomists retorted with the abstract concepts of non objective or negative existence but

these were a strange idea for most people and was even considered an embarrassing fiddle by many atomists. But it also seemed likely that the Void must exist, for without it motion and change seemed impossible, with-out it we had either the fixed world of the plenum, the instability of an insubstantial turmoil or nothing at all. A couple of wise guy Athenians tried to take the middle option and add-on a concept of ‘Forms’, to ex-plain both stable order and occasional change, but, like the atomist’s non-objective existence, these un-demonstrable abstractions convinced only the religious. The problem they failed to solve was that no-thing is also every-thing, it is Chaos. Chaos, as the primal po-tential containing everything (first hinted at in the cosmology of Anaxagoras), still existed after the emer-gence of order, in the gap between things. Metaphysi-cal sophistry you may cry (well some of you might). But modern science points us in this direction as well. Even the tiniest region of apparently empty space is now believed to contain infinite quantum field poten-tial, a sea of ghostly particles of everykind, that are there and not there simultaneously.

This has recently been experimentally demonstrated. The resultant paradigm not only confirms these views of the

Void, but also aspects of all the other perspectives.Chaos rules.

INTO THE VOIDMIND THE GAP MAGAZINE

But the concept of the Void has more uses than just cosmological dialogues. The whole of existence can be put into the context of the Void, it is the one uni-versal metaphor. It is the ultimate reality. Many have written of it. It is the Chaosmos of Joyce, Mallarme’s mime of the imaginary, the sublime Hymen of Derrida and the uterine, Semiotic Space of Kristeva [Fucking name dropper! ED]. It is the only reality to which all con-cepts refer, the container of all ideas and the ulti-mate abyss into which they collapse. As the rhizomatic chaos of Deleuze it connects all things, it is the only unity [Ok, ok we get the picture ED].

But back to the everyday. The human value of this view is the freedom it brings. Without it we are trapped within dogmatic truths, logical prisons, limiting worldviews and exclusionist ideologies. Under it we can no longer create binding, deterministic models of the world. Potential lies within every situation, lim-ited only by our imagination and a vastly reduced set of formal conditionals. The Void is the imaginal space of Castoriadis and his Situationist acolytes. It is the seedbed of revolution.

Since Nietzsche, a current has existed that seeks to free itself from limita-tion and oppressive structures... This is has proved not to be easy (certainly not as

Nietzsche came up with the ultimate symbolism for this process, of personal and social liberation, when he writes of a time to leave the safety of ‘dry land’, get ‘on board ship’ and voyage out ‘into uncharted seas’. He makes good use of the traditional metaphor of the Ocean, as Chaos and the Void, throughout his works. Ul-timately his mission is to find ‘new land’ across this imaginal Ocean, or die in the process, but it was the journey and the Ocean itself, with all its potentials and dangers, which fascinated him most of all. Else-where he refers to his lonely strolls in the mountains in the same vein, using this as a ‘transcendental’ met-aphor. But his most influential symbolism arose when he combined these two ideas (perhaps under the influence of the contemporary popularity of Jules Verne) into the imagery of the ‘aeronauts of the spirit’.

easy as say, the dreamy optimists of 60’s counter cul-ture believed), the extreme experimentation of Foucault and his followers have shown us the barriers that need to be broken through. But the struggle goes on, and not without some personal successes. The bourgeois bastille is beginning to crumble.

It was not a great leap of the imagination for 20th century intellectuals influenced by Nietzsche to ex-tend this symbolism into its ultimate form. The journey beyond Earth itself into deep space. Some of the first manifestations of this were amongst the Russian nihil-ist and anarchist artists of the turn of the century, who saw space (as the region beyond the atmosphere) as a zone of absolute freedom, or even the locale of the sublime. This latter view influenced the Russian anar-chist artist Malevich, who wrote of ‘breaking the blue boundary of the sky’ and a ‘swimming in the sea of in-finity’. Alas, these ideas often contained elements of a mystical essentialism, and it was only in Dada (part-ly influenced by the earlier Russians) that the Void really began to be presented in art.

Much later the beatnik idol Wil-liam Burroughs when commenting on the space race restated the metaphor when he said, “Space is dream... Why move a PX with all your dreary verbal pre-conceptions to the moon? To travel in space you must leave the old ver-bal garbage be-

Space is the perfect metaphor for the Void. Reaching it certainly isn’t easy, even after we have summoned up the courage to leave the safety of a stable world, a considerable amount gravity has to be overcome be-fore we are free of the Earth’s strong attraction. Once in space though we enter the free-fall of zero grav-ity and begin our liberation from terrestrial limita-tion. An aspect of the metaphor profitably elaborated on by Timothy Leary, who described it as the hedonic conquest of gravity, the ‘turn-on’ state, comparable with the Zen buddhist metaphor of enlightenment as a “Floating... One foot above the ground”. Mystical spec-ulations aside, it is interesting that Leary’s other, more scientific, observation, that 85% of astronauts have entered altered states of consciousness as a re-

hind: God talk, priest talk, mother talk, family talk, party talk, country talk. You must learn to exist with no religion, no country... You must learn to see what is in front of you with no preconceptions.” Around the same time the Scottish wing of the Situationist Inter-national, Alexander Trocchi, was also playing with the metaphor and declaring himself an ‘astronaut of inner space’. These ideas of Burroughs and Trocchi were to have a lasting effect on contemporary counter culture.

Another aspect of the space metaphor is that once in free-fall it is very easy to become captivated by the gravitating effects of nearby planets, particularly the one we recently escaped. Even astronauts can get trapped in orbit, a state that may ultimately lead to a very hard fall back down to Earth. Deep interstellar space alone frees us from these gravitational dangers (though it is only in the intergalactic regions that we are entirely free of significant influence, but here we also lack stars to guide us. And life without ide-als is difficult). The Void of space is as much of an abyss as any Void but dangers here are of an extreme sort, ranging from the annihilation of all matter and form in the absolute Void of a collapsed star, through the destruction inherent in approaching too close to an active one, to the alienation, impatient tedium and ap-parent pointlessness of a decades long journey between two. The worst danger however is the overreaction of the weak spirited to such extreme conditions, and lack of orientation, in the creation of rigid local struc-tures (prophesized in Sci Fi visions of a technocratic and militaristic ‘star fleet’). A process that eventu-ally fixates life and throws it into conflict with all that is outside it.

Fortunately no one can live in the Void forever, and the aim here as in all journey’s is to reach other worlds. But the emphasis will be on the plural.

Whether we choose to live on a new planet orbiting some distant star, an artificial, private space station in permanent orbit around it, in worlds

orbiting other stars or travel nomadi-cally between all of these, our alter-

natives will be endless.

sult of space travel, may mean that space is more than just a metaphor for the Void, or perhaps rather, that it has incredibly symbolic power [But fucking on hash is cheaper. ED]. And certainly the potential inherent in space exploration has real, material consequences as well as symbolic meaning. As groups like the AAA have pointed out in recent years, with their entertaining presentation of both the abstract and concrete signifi-cance of space travel.

To hell with phoney scientific disputes surrounding space exploration! The AAA plan to develop a programme of autonomisation in the field of spatial activity, to which each human brain will be a gateway.

We want to show how important the elliptical cognitive capacities will be to future explorers of hyperspace. This elliptical conception of action refers to a whole body of complex notions, a whole didactic system based on the symbolic and individual flourishing of future Autonomous Astronauts. In the murky debates of the bof-fins, the limits of legitimised cultural variation is never posed. Any deviation from the laws of the uni-verse is completely disregarded. It is this arbitrary culture which we are fighting against and which we shall overcome. Elliptical action is not about objec-tified truth: it arises from questioning social condi-tions in a way that excludes the possibility of logical action.

Elliptical action (or action in an ellipse) is de-fined as an action which can only realise its own (a-logical) effect if its objective truth is subjectively misunderstood through the imposition of a serialised and instrumentalised process. Each autonomous spatial programme possesses the essence of its autonomisation within its very being. We are thus led to develop a collection of complex, self-regulated systems where the practical objectives of life in hyperspace are subjec-tivised. We can already decode certain signals or sign-systems taken from various different galaxies.

As institutionalised programmes such as NASA and ESA are straight-jacketed by arbitrary culture, our objec-tive is to superceed the orginal relation whereby these pseudo-space programmes allow the arbitrary imposition of an arbitrary content.

Thus non-violent or symbolic action is an incontrav-ertible postulate of elliptical action (i.e. a collec-tion of spontaneous and spontaneist representations of elliptical action), which is opposed to the symbolic violence exercised by any of the general theories of space. Thus our project is opposed to the rationalised and unidimensional content of future capitalist space.

SPATIAL PRACTICESAND ELLIPTICAL ACTION

CHRISTPHE CAUCHY, AAA PARIS SUD

MESSAGE 1 : ELLIPTICAL ACTION

Having already proposed the essential maxims of Ellip-tical Action, we now wish to discuss the basic princi-ples of independent space exploration.

However, several ques-tions still remain. According to the first contact made between the pioneers of inde-pendent space travel and previously unknown life-forms, the estab-lishment of a two-way communication process requires that we leave behind a belief in the creative liberty of each individual.

The specific contribution of every astronaut to the realisation of a spatial praxis goes through an exteri-orisation and then rejection of the powerful relation-ships that affects a recognition by the other of our legitimacy. But, although it is difficult, this legiti-macy can escape from the totalitarian culture which it objectifies. It is not only a relative force, supported by non-elliptical claims and actions.

Our conception of space and time must henceforth reflexively include its own action within its own field. Thus the fundamental conditions are created for the possibility of the autonomisation of independant spatial activity.

The gateway to potential liberation which independant spatial exploration offers is based on the second char-acteristic of elliptical action: multi-dimensionality. This potentially emancipatory possibility destroys all bureaucratic values and rational goals. Our field of thought brings to light autonomous hyperspaces which are composed of non-heirarchical systems of ellipiti-cal action. Elliptical action is not the fruit of reason - that quasi-religious notion upon which is based the limited and partial rationalistion of the phoney space programmes.

MESSAGE 2 : SPATIAL PRACTICES

From a purely technical perspective, the existence of autonomous and subjective conditions regarding the practical aspects of spatial experience cannot be dem-onstrated any further. A number of issues have emerged and confirmed the validity of our aims.

That said, it does permit a direct expression across various elements of mediation, material concerns and symbolic representation. It allows the creation of cul-tural models that correspond to particular structures and forms of social routes. To reduce the level of com-munication with the other to within the totalitarian culture results in information being used as domina-tion. Contrary to this, the purpose of Elliptical Ac-tion is, in a very profound sense, to transform infor-mation into formation.

This type of practise excludes all possibility of el-liptical information (see the recent developments in Information Theory). This is also equivalent to a re-jection of the principle that there are many different ways to encounter Elliptical Action (condition no. 4).

It is because it lacks an economic

or symbolic plan of any worth that our

action will not aim at imposing its own legitimacy. On the

contrary, so much is revealed of its own origins, it can do

nothing but exclude from itself modes of production dominated by rational action.

If one does not negate the entropic effect of Ellipti-cal Action, the elliptics and illusions which are at-tached favour a combination of the misunderstood and the recognised in what lies underneath, or the non-spo-ken. The emission and the comprehension of an ellipti-cal message (under the conditions of intergration in an evoltionary spiral of infinite radius emanating from an ‡ point) cannot be deduced from its intrinsic character-istics. This is not a tacit delegation of a larger mass of information but a spontaneous translation of a high-er subjective action.

Government space programs do not re-alize how the sys-tems of production

and distribution are well defined in eco-

nomic and symbolic practice.

Opposing the hetero-regulation of serialised spatial practises, the AAA network is working towards develop-ing the conditions for autonomous space exploration. We must appreciate the value of practise, and of opin-ions and ideas that may be contradictory and divergent. Because it is not only about forgetting pre-determined choices as also having the determination to reproduce the subject’s own intrinsic properties and dispositions regarding that which is to be considered as the studied object. Materially or symbolically the deviant object produces its own legitimacy. The process which aims to reduce the properties of the other object to the prop-erties conferred on it by the dispositions (or intrin-sic properties) of the transmitting subject, show the incapacity of science - in the pay of state controlled space agencies - to have an awareness of the weakness of their own investigations.

The inability to think of the universe as a zero-gravity space obstructs a mechanism that reveals the importance of a rational (and mercenary) explora-tion of it. Mapping out the elliptical dimensions of the galaxy, it is pre-pared for a rule of chaos which threatens any spe-cific dynamics.

Not only is modern man incapable of leaving the one-dimensional world in which he remains ‘locked’ - thanks to the laws of gravity - but, moreover, he is ignorant of the extent of his freedom.

The approach to ellipsis can and must be seen as a betrayal of the liberal model of community; an ideal which aims at enriching man in all kinds of civilised characteristics: moral judgement, reason, private prop-erty, guilt...The sacredness of the individual and his inalienable rights and freedoms? Let’s not wait! Auton-omous space has made such questions pointless. Ellipti-cal Action is not an excercise based on pre-established references and contingencies.

MESSAGE 3 : THE WORST IS YET TO COME!

Any space/time voyage must be autonomous and independent because space itself de-

mands it in all its autonomy and complex-ity. In this sense it cannot be and must not be given over to any established or-ganisation which reduces it to an empty

space of the senses.

On the contrary, the Galaxy, as mysterious as it is un-fathomable, offers us the opportunity to free ourselves from humanist thought (or, one could say, from anthro-centric obsession). Is individual well-being compatible with any social system? Who cares! What we envisage isn’t the problem of establishing a system of co-opera-tion between individuals who each hope to benefit, thus reinforcing the idea of freedom that must be fought for and won. The world is not space, it is not even a de-formity but rather a divergence. Autonomous spatial action cannot base itself on moral criteria or behav-

The illusion of being understood and that of understanding reinforce each other - they don’t, however, imply an under-standing of this il-lusion. Yet this is a constituent element of Elliptical Action (con-dition Number 5), and thus of the autonomisa-tion of eliptical space. The statutory legitimacy of Man is an illusion, and nothing more. Rea-son is a means of per-petuating what one has acquired, a particular manner of using what one has acquired in express-ing the principles of an objectified rela-tionship between what has been acquired and a collection of social or spatial characteristics that are still to be ac-quired.

For us, as Autonomous Astronauts, illusion is a pa-rabola on which we nourish our autonomy. The subjec-tive nature of our action defines the VIRTUAL ELLIPTIC. Experience, sense and being are closely linked in an expanding universe. The relationship to the Cosmos is indivisible from the spatial practice. In effect, El-liptical Action is perceived (not conceived) as the product of the interiorisation of subjectice conditions of existence in space which arise from the interrela-tionship between an object with divergent rationality, an alien (time traveller) and a collection of dispo-sitions on the perpetual interactions within the uni-verse. How can one render obsolete the notion that he who acts must refer, even without knowing it, to a sub-set of determinations objectivising the space in which he is deployed?

In order for us to fully imagine the practicalities and possibilites of space exploration, the Nomad AAA be-lieve that we must start from the premise that all cur-rent notions of dimensionality, all our known relations with time and space, should be rejected immediately.

Many ‘eastern’ philosophies have no room for Aristo-telian logic, the right and the wrong, the up and the down. They have made a logical‚ spiritual progression from linear poles (the black vs. the white) towards a third path - a higher middle‚ ground.

ESCAPE FROM DIMENSIONALITY

Polarity (by its nature a human conceit) cannot ex-ist in space - like the Grand Old Duke, in space we are neither Up nor Down. If we therefore discount such two-dimensional existence, it follows that a middle or third way cannot exist either, as it is defined by the very things it proports to transcend. It would seem that to exist in space, we must then reject not only the polar opposites and the third path but in fact all perceived forms of “earth-bound” dimensionality.

We cannot therefore have the fifth dimension of time if we have discount-ed all others. We only need to examine the com-mon misaprehension that time is linear to see how shallow the concept re-ally is. Spiritualists may argue that time flows in both directions, but they succeed only in grounding themselves in the belief that there are only two ways to travel. Earth-bound time, as a concept, must therefore also be discarded.

With all dimensions thus dissolved, we cannot therefore allow ourselves to be blinded by the fundamental ideol-ogy that we exist in any here or now. We are the only species on this planet that concerns itself so destruc-tively with the concepts of age and location. In space one’s place and date of birth will be deemed nonsensi-cal.

NOMAD AAA

Whilst acknowledging that the concept of the nomad is still dimensionally bound, the Nomad AAA has re-defined the notion of no fixed abode to include both space and time. If we are to be Nomadic travellers through space, we must start this process by relinquishing the harness of our address. We must open our minds to the concept of living everywhere and everywhen.

Just as the Nomad AAA has no affinity to an anchor of place through time, we also have no attachment to property. The notion that we can some-how ‘own’ material goods and property is a necessary myth in order to convince us to look down, to look away and to keep our heads ferociously buried in the sand. By focus-ing so much on the empire we build around us, consumerism forces us into a corner of our own construction - we become ensconced in camps, surrounded by high-wire perimeter fences, and as much as we convince ourselves that we are building a protective shell, we are ac-tually building our own prison cell.

By thus relinquishing all frames of reference to the earthbound self, the Nomad AAA skip, hops and jumps onto an evolutionary crest that carries themselves, along with the flourishing AAA community world-wide, towards a future diametrically opposed to our current state of being. Such a vision naturally confuses and irritates the WoMan on the ground, and it is for that specific reason that the Nomad AAA undertakes to pro-mote, cajole and vociferously challenge today’s status quo.

The Nomad AAA believes that an es-cape from gravity will lead not only to an escape from dimensionality, but ultimately to an escape from what we

notionally call Reality.

Once we have touched the sky, our minds will be tuned into an

existence of infinite possibilities

Therefore, in order to effect such true nomadism, the Nomad AAA also seeks to relinquish as many physical and material ties as possible.

POLITICS

SQUAT THE

MOON

SMASH THE

HOTELS,

‘My Lord, we are Four or Five, some say Hon-est, others Foolish, but all say Drunken

Fellows, now drinking Your Lordships Health at the Tavern; and our Poetical Inclinations are all attended with Poetical Pockets. Some

of us have Six-pence and Eight Farthings, some neither Eight Farthings nor a Sixpence;

so that the chiefest of our dependence is upon the strength of this Dedication. And

since the Majority of Us are too dirty for Your Levee, we have pick’d out the nicest

Spark of us All, to make this present by.’ Tom Brown - Petition to the Earl of Dorset

(Miscellanies Over Claret, 1697)

London offers many pos-sibilities for inner city space exploration pro-grammes. As a city composed of startling contrasts and diverse zones of experi-ence, London inhabitants use urban space in a va-riety of ways, not all of which are sanctioned by the authorities. London con-tinues to observe a multi-

‘Grub Street’ entered the language in the 17th Century and became a household phrase in Hanoverian England, a metaphor for the seamier side of life. Grub Street was a place of filth, clutter, noise and squalor, home to crowds of sharpers, thieves, beggars and harlots. Then, following the lapse of the Press Licensing Act in 1695, scores of printing presses based themselves in the area, accompanied by the writers that could now hope to make a living from their newly established profession, no longer having to depend on the patronage of aristo-crats.

WE HAVE A WORLDTO LEAVE BEHIND

INNER CITY AAA

tude of everyday conflicts, including the Association of Autonomous Astronauts’ own explorations into sex in zero gravity, raves in space and games of three-sided football. With this in mind, Inner City AAA have con-ducted an intense series of researches into the psycho-geographical qualities of various London sites, and we are now able to announce that our first launch pad has been successfully located in Grub Street.

Grub Street came to be associated with the literary hacks that lived and worked there throughout the 17th and 18th Centuries. The huge increase in publishing fed the growing appetite of a predominantly middle-class reading public. But this rise of a publishing industry also increased the availability of politically subver-sive texts, broadsheets and pamphlets that were largely self-published and that created a dynamic within soci-ety still present today. For example, the various con-flicts over the idea of free expression on the Internet can be traced back to the antagonisms created by the culture of Grub Street.

The denizens of Grub Street created an atmosphere of sedition and revolt, of combat with the forces of law and order. Grub Sreet lay just outside of the old me-dieval city wall, and had always been a space beyond the control of city authorities. Milton had once lived in the area, and in 1830 Grub Street was replaced with its present-day designation as Milton Street, in an at-tempt to clean up its popular image as a place of non-existent morals, distinct street life and hang-outs for disreputable writers. These ghosts still remain, and Inner City AAA have reclaimed the cultural heritage of Grub Street in order to refuse the Victorians their sanctimonious cover-up.

We have located our launch pad at the northern end of Grub Street, in an empty and derelict square that lies several feet beneath road level, and forms part of an abandoned building that was a former college of higher education. Our seizure of this space demonstrates the AAA’s tactic of taking whatever we can find and mak-ing our own use out of it. In addition, this specific site, a former educational establishment, is used to reflect the AAA’s attitude towards the organisation of knowledge within western culture. The AAA has resisted intellectual specialisation by promoting transversal approaches that combine different and diverse ways of thinking.

Much of the original Grub Street has been swallowed up by the Barbican, a huge complex of luxury flats, art galleries, cinemas and a library. Our Grub Street launch pad is also near the financial centre of London, the square mile that forms a nerve centre for capital-ism. By situating our launch pad here we have delib-erately put ourselves in close proximity to the very culture that we intend to destroy by building and suc-cessfully launching our own spaceships. Despite the number of surveillance cameras in the area, our games of three-sided football have confirmed that the au-thorities are not equipped for preventing us from using this site as our chosen launch pad.

Grub is derived from the old English word ‘grube’ mean-ing a drain or ditch. Close to Grub Street a tributary stream had ran to the notorious Fleet Ditch near Hol-born. These ditches were used for hundreds of years as sewers by local residents. Even dead bodies could be found dumped in these disgusting waters. Even though this water has long since been concreted over, our in-vestigations have shown that it still flows beneath our launch site, and we have already began exploring ways of tapping into the psychic energies associated with underground rivers. These forces will assist our plans for independent space exploration, and help us as we continue to generate a huge underswell of activity that connects with our network of groups dedicated to devel-oping strategies for escaping gravity.

Grub can also re-fer to a maggot or worm that is able to infest a larger body, and digest it from the inside out. Our Grub Street launch site is also then the ideal spot for plotting further media invasion campaigns. This element to our space exploration program aims at

The culture of Grub Street contributed to the develop-ment of satire as a weapon against the prevailing or-der. Inner City AAA has located its launch pad in Grub Street in order to continue these Grubbaen tendencies, and to make satire a tool for community-based space exploration. But whereas in the 17th and 18th Centu-ries Grub Street and its libertine persuasions existed as a physical location in the geography of London, the forces of social control have since then significant-ly developed their own strategies for coercion. Now Grub Street must be reclaimed, not only by locating our launch site here, but also as part of a geography of the imagination, as a Grub Street of the mind that combines semiotic terrorism, self-confessed propaganda, information warfare, comical devices, cultural sabotage and a wicked, twisted sense of the absurd.

planting ideas within a variety of contexts, ideas that are able to resist the filtering techniques applied by commercial publishers and broadcasters. As these ‘idea grubs’ penetrate the thick flesh of the media, the con-cept of independent, community-based space travel is taken and used by people who may not even know of the AAA’s existence.

WHO OWNSOUTER SPACE?

It is a truism that in current society you can have anything you want, as long as you can afford to pay the price. Everything is one big shop window on planet earth, and for those of us tired of shopping, withdraw-al often seems like the best solution. But increasing-ly, even the avenues of escape are being auctioned off to the highest bidders.

An organisation calling itself the Lunar Embas-sy1 is already selling the moon piece by piece. $16 dollars (plus tax and shipping, of course) will buy you a 1,777 acre patch on the light-side. “...probably the most romantic and origi-nal present you could ever give to a loved one. Sharing this gift under a full moon has become the pass-time of many of our clients, ro-mantics and visionaries from all over the world earth, and for those of us tired of shopping, withdrawal often seems like the best solution. But increasingly, even the av-enues of escape are being auctioned off to the highest bidders.

The Lunar Embassy boasts 16 years in business and “over 7,000 satisfied customers, including 2 former US Presi-dents!”. Registered under the US Homestead Act of 1862, their “right” to do this is the ancient swindle yet again: “It’s a bit like the old west: Who stakes their claim on a piece of land get the best property....as the Americans were the first to walk on the moon and plant their flag on it...it could be argued that if the Moon belonged to anyone, it certainly belongs more to the USA than any other nation.”

It is, admittedly, early days yet - and we’re sure that the legality of this venture will be challenged (not

RAIDO AAA

least by the Universal Lunarian Society, who are sell-ing off chunks of the lunar crater Copernicus for $50 an acre). It seems likely that the argument will re-volve around who owns the moon and planets, rather than if such a concept is desirable in the first place.

The Association of Autonomous Astronauts are trying to achieve new ways of living in outer space. Ways

that go way beyond our conceptions of existence on planet earth. Ways that

allow people to achieve their full po-tentials, exercise their imaginations

and... well, we don’t even know the rest yet...

We’ve been working towards this aim for 2 years now and we’re only beginning to see the full extent of the pos-sibilities. We’re also beginning to see our ideas be-come co-opted by the powers that be. At the end of last year NASA and the Space Transport Association (an alli-ance of 16 aerospace firms) signed an agreement “with a view to establishing a space tourism business. Dr Jack Mansfield, who signed the agreement for NASA had this to say:

“Up till now, space has been a young man’s game, an astronaut game, a government game. Soon it will be anybody’s game, as costs come down. From now on, NASA is in the business of helping peo-ple to make money out of space.”

We expect to have our ideas ripped off, but we’re far from happy at having them sold back to us at a profit afterwards.

Space Tourism looks like the big thing for the next decade, with early estimates (both Japanese and Ameri-can) putting flights at the year 2010. Don’t hold your breath, though. It looks like another diversion for the oh so world-weary rich. $4,000 dollars a ticket will gain entry to the proposed “space hotels” which will include all the usual consumables like sports facili-ties, TV, a low gravity shower, karaoke, and a window view of the Earth5. Even when the price inevitably de-creases, the prospect of “Butlins” on the moon is too disgusting a waste to contemplate. We don’t want to leave the planet only to find another High Street full of WH Smiths and Burger Kings.

“The moon is a barren wasteland... sun-bathing is out because there is no ozone

layer shielding you from radiation.”

Tourism is about maintaining your composure, about bringing your hang ups and parochial attitudes to other places. It is a sterile, pre-packaged adventure to take your mind off the stresses of home. We want to travel, to explore, to take control of our own lives and share our experiences with those we encounter. We want to take chances, not holiday snaps.

The Catholic Church has also entered the picture. 4 centuries after burning philosopher Giordana Bruno at the stake for having the temerity to suggest that there may be an infinite amount of planets, they have also teamed up with NASA. Father George Coyne, Director of the Vatican Observatory, is looking for life on other planets - so he can convert them to Christianity. Words fail us!As ever, the most interesting developments lie outside of the shopping precincts and boardrooms. The street finds its uses for everything. There is already a net-work of hobbyists building rockets in their garden sheds and garages. A group of hackers working under the name H4G13 managed to bring chaos to NASA’s WWW server earlier this year with a fraction of their computing power and resources.

The AAA doesn’t need a business plan to get off the planet -

the most powerful rocket fuel we have is the power of imagination.

The Apollo ‘moon landings’ between 1969 and 1972 are presented by NASA as the highest point of the space programme, and as model for all future adventures. In reality nothing better demonstrates why it is unfit to explore anything more exciting than the inside of the Science Museum.

A favourite question for conspiracy theorists world-wide is whether the moon landings actually happened or whether the whole thing was faked in a TV studio like in the film Capricorn One. If we give NASA the benefit of the doubt and allow that it may have sent a rocket somewhere it is clear that they never reached the moon, or at least not the moon as it has been known through the ages.

This was not the moon of heretics, pagans, lovers or night time revellers. The moon of tides, madness, god-desses, rituals of drink, drugs and dancing. Neil Arm-strong and his mates did not have the imagination for the kind of space travel needed to reach this moon. All they were able to reach was a lump of rock somewhere - possibly in orbit, possibly in New Mexico somewhere.

How did they mark this momentous occasion of the first landing on July 21 1969? The first thing they did was plant an American flag like it was just another piece of imperial real estate. By 1969 there were very few places left where it was safe to do so. Losing the war in Vietnam and with flags burning everywhere else, per-haps the whole space programme was an attempt to find a place where the Stars and Stripes could fly unmolested.

The Apollo 14 ‘moonlanding’ in 1971 witnessed another leap of fantasy and imagination when Alan Shepard be-came the world’s first lunar golfer. Billions of pounds and years of effort culminated in the staging of the first lunar open. All over the world, people are being uprooted and ecosystems bulldozed to build golf cours-es, sanitised homogenous outdoor playgrounds for the rich. Judging by the Apollo programme a similar fate awaits the universe if NASA have their way.

The Apollo programme shows that no matter how many miles NASAnauts may travel they will never get any-where because in their heads they will still be in the suburbs of middle class America, travelling across the universe opening golf courses and fly-through MacDon-alds.

THEY NEVER REACHED THE MOON

DISCONAUT AAA

Whilst space ships must enter the earth’s atmosphere at an angle of 33 degrees to avoid burn-out, the Asso-ciation of Autonomous Astronauts desires only to leave this society behind. At 00.33 hrs on April 23rd 1996, on the first anniversary of the official launch of both our independent space exploration program and our Five Year Plan for establishing a world-wide network of lo-cal, community-based groups dedicated to building their own space ships, the Association of Autonomous Astro-nauts declares Information War against state controlled and government funded space agencies throughout the universe.

Apathy regarding space travel is now historically manu-factured by the control and regulation of information relating to the forms and content of human space explo-ration. The technological elites attempt to inscribe on the landscape of our memories their own rupture with the history of space travel: their motto could be ‘You will be going nowhere. You can only sit back and watch as we are the ones who will travel through the stars’. The Information War declared by the Association of Au-tonomous Astronauts will liberate history and demon-strate what has always been known by those who will at-tempt the impossible to achieve the absurd.

The Information War declared by the Association of Au-tonomous Astronauts threatens the twilight world of the technological elites. This Information War effort is the force which can create new concepts of space and of space travel. This Information War effort is also the critique of the current state, military and corporate monopoly of space exploration through which individuals and communities have to create places and events suit-able for the seizure of, not just their own dreams of space travel, but also the appropriation of the entire history of human space exploration.

The greatest evolutionary idea concerning space trav-el is not itself technological. It is the decision to reconstruct current attitudes to space travel in ac-cordance with the needs of Autonomous Astronauts and a world-wide network of local, community-based groups dedicated to building their own space ships. The au-tonomy of space travel can be discovered, thus bringing the realisation of life understood as space explora-tion, which contains its entire meaning within itself.

DEATH TO GOVERNMENT SPACE AGENCIES EVERYWHERE.

ALL POWER TO THE ASSOCIATION OF AUTONOMOUS ASTRONAUTS!

INFOMATION WARANONYMOUS AAA CHAPTER

LEISURE

DOWN WITH RESTRICTION

PLAYTIMEFOREVER

In California during the War, young engineers working on propulsion, John W. “Jack” Parsons, Frank J. Malina, Ed Forman, alongside their mentor Todor Von Karman at CALTECH founded the Aerojet company concerned with pro-pellant rockets. The group was quickly forced to move its test facility far from the main campus at CALTECH to the Arroyo Seco region in Los Angeles County. This site, and the research they conducted later, became the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), with Frank Malina as second director between 1944 and 1946. This still ex-ists, and is the structure on which NASA was founded in 1958. At the end of 1945, the rockets became too large for the buildings of Arroyo Seco, so the trial base was moved to White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. It is here that the WAC Corporal rocket probe became the first rocket to reach 50 miles (80 km) altitude in Oc-tober 1945.

However, as part of the Hermes Proj-ect, Von Braun and his team worked on reconditioning V2 rockets that had been sent from Ger-many to White Sands. On 16th April 1946, the first V2 was launched at White Sands. Fifty seven launchings would follow. Realising

Jack Parsons, explosives expert and a charismatic fig-ure in the group, was leading a strange, parallel life. Passionate about black magic, in 1942 he became Grand Master of the Agape Lodge, the Californian branch of the Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO) of Aleister Crowley, then an ageing, errant occultist and heroin addict, living off his disciples and gifts.

that research on rocket technology was being taken up by the ex-Nazis and being steered towards weapons of war, the young engineer Malina and his colleagues, who disapproved of this new direction, re-assessed their careers and thus sold their share in Aerojet Company.

SEX, ROCKETS AND BLACK MAGIC

FROM “THE OBSCURE ROOTS OF THE NASA SPACE EXPLORATION PROGRAM” by EWEN CHADRONNET

The money he stole from Parsons contributed largely to the publica-tion in 1950 of Dianet-ics, the basis of the doctrine of Scientology, which he presented as a bridge between cyber-netics and the general semantics of Alfred Ko-

A clash of interpretations with Aleister Crowley re-sulted in Parsons breaking off with the OTO. Parsons went on to work for Hughes Aircraft (Howard Hughes’ aerospace company). In his writings from 1950 he antic-ipates a number of the social, moral and ethical dilem-mas of the second half of the 20th century. In 1952, while he was under surveillance by the FBI, and before he could go to Mexico with his companion as he in-tended, Parsons died in an unexplained explosion in his laboratory. A crater on the hidden face of the moon is named after him.

Marjorie Cameron continued to pursue her career as art-ist and muse of occultism, while acting as “sorceress” for Kenneth Anger in his film The Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome, or for Curtis Harrington in his Night Tide.

Frank Malina did not follow Parsons in his adventures concerned with the OTO. In 1947 he left to join UNESCO in Paris, though he had to leave his post because of MacCarthyism. He launched himself into a cinetic art career alongside Nicolas Schoffer and Abraham Palatnik and in 1967 founded the Leonardo Journal of Arts, Sci-ence and Technology (olats.org), known internationally today.

With the money he acquired, Parsons bought a large manor house where secret rituals, sex and the magic of the order were practised. He welcomed and housed demo-bilised soldiers, as well as artists and budding young science fiction writers, such as Robert A. Heinlein, who was actively campaigning for the control of supra-national nuclear weapons of mass destruction, and Ron L. Hubbard who later became the founder of the Church of Scientology. After having played the role of scribe in the secret rituals of Jack Parsons (the “Babalon Working”), Ron Hubbard swindled him in 1947 in a mutual affair concerned with the location of yachts, and left with his second wife Sarah Elisabeth Northrup.

rzybski which was popular at that time in the science fiction world (see also The World of A. by Van Vogt). However, Parsons met Marjorie Cameron, whom he saw in a vision as his “Secret Woman”, sorceress and muse, potential mother of “Moon Child”, as conjured up by Aleister Crowley.

Of all the things people do, at home and in private, usually with close friends, sex alone is subject to extraordinary interference and control from outside forces. This is no accident - everybody is aware of its power. Even if only for a few moments, individuals can release a power and energy from within that renders any system of society, or regime, meaningless. It is a liberator. Even someone in solitary confinement can indulge in it and in their fantasies travel into any situation or possibility unfettered, and, at the moment of orgasm itself, to be both blissfully vulnerable and undeniably free, elsewhere, filled with energy.

Sexuality is as fundamental as it is universal. We have, therefore, found it rather sad that our re-searches into sex in space have so far turned up very little. NASA’s poverty of thought is demonstrated yet again when they push sex right to the bottom of their agenda and even deny it. This is hardly surprising when we consider that the organisation is made up of engi-neers and quasi-soldiers. It is a patriarchy like all state-agencies. 90% of all NASA astronauts have been male, even though women make better ones (by and large they eat less, take up less room, need less oxygen, and in zero gravity the need for physical strength is mini-mal). The first female astronaut wasn’t even consulted about her menstrual cycle by the boys in the backroom - they just packed 2 years’ supply of tampons on board and scuttled off!

All of the literature we have seen on the subject re-peats the dull phrases of efficiency and repression: “astronauts face a workload busy enough to ensure such matters are not a priority. However any future flight to Mars, for example, would take a very long time, and the physical and psychological well-being of the crew may drive this subject onto the agenda.”, “in-flight intercourse would help relieve astronauts of the enor-mous amount of stress they undergo during missions.” It is the language of dead, sexless lives, of work making Jack a dull boy.

The repression of sexual instincts func-tions to make people submissive and inclined

to irrational behaviour and thus paralyses their potential for rebellion and leaving

the planet.

SEX IN OUTER SPACELUTHER BLISSET, RAIDO AAA

We have been unable to come up with any references to masturbation in outer space and have therefore surmised that either: a) It has occurred but has been covered up. b) Only sexually repressed astronauts are selected. c) Some kind of military equivalent to bromide in tea is being utilised.However sex is such a natural, vital part of life that it will emerge regardless.....

Whilst NASA will only state that the first married couple to go on a mission together were on the space shuttle Endeavour in September 1992, their counterparts in the former Soviet Union are not so bashful. We have discovered that Svetlana Savicka, a Russian cosmonaut, fucked freely in Jaljut 7 as far back as June 1982. Whilst we applaud this, we are saddened by her bosses’ response which was just to initiate a plan to conceive the first child in outer space, as if sex was merely for procreation.

The Association of Autonomous Astronauts is eager to promote a meta approach to sex in zero gravity. We re-ject utterly current space programmes and their priori-tisation of work over play, of commerce over pleasure. We believe that sex will be even better in outer space and that it should be freely available for all. One only has to look at any of the numerous fetish maga-zines to see the immense amounts of creativity that humanity has put into its sexuality, and we expect this to increase in outer space as new dimensions and possi-bilities open up.

Elaine Lerner, an American inventor, has already pat-ented a harness to allow one partner to exercise con-trol of the movements of the hips of the other partner during a zero-g fuck. And many bondage enthusiasts are already experimenting with gravity-defying pulleys and ropes to enhance their orgasms. We predict that a whole range of new sexual expression will begin when we form autonomous communities in outer space. Not just the new positions that zero gravity will allow, but whole new ways of relating to each other. Variable gravity will make extremes possible for S&M enthusiasts, and we expect a whole range of new fetishists and pervs to emerge, once free from the restrictions and guilt of planet earth. As we adapt to life without a planet, our bodies and organs may evolve into something else en-tirely, either through new forms of body modification, or just from living in new environments. The possibili-ties are limitless.

The AAA is eagerly awaiting the chance to take their bodies to new peaks of

pleasure in the depths of space.

It appears that the first person to come up with the idea of 3-sided football was Asger Jorn, who saw it as a means of conveying his notion of trialectics - a trinitarian supercession of the binary structure of di-alectics. We are still trying to discover if there were any actual games organised by him. Before the London Psychogeographic Association organised its first game at the Glasgow Anarchist Summer School in 1993, there is little evidence of any games being played.

There is, of course, the rumour that Luther Blis-sett organised an informal league of youth clubs which played 3-sided football during his stint at Watford in the early eighties. Unfortunately, our research has found no evidence to support this. Nevertheless, Blis-sett’s name will probably remain frimly linked to the 3-sided version of the game, even if in an apocryphal fashion.

The key to the game is that it does not foster aggres-sion or competitiveness. Unlike two-sided football, no team keeps a record of the number of goals they score. However they do keep a tally of the goals they con-cede, and the winner is determined as the team which concedes least goals. The game deconstructs the mythic bi-polar strucuture of conventional football, where an us-and-them struggle mediated by the referee mimics the way the media and the state pose themselves as “neu-tral” elements in the class struggle. Likewise, it is no psycho-sexual drama of the fuckers and fucked - the possibilities are greatly expanded!

The pitch is hexagonal each team being assigned two opposite sides for bureaucratical purposes should the ball be kicked out of the play. The blank side is called the front side. The side containing the orifice is called the backside, and the orifice is called a goal. Should the ball be thrust through a team’s ori-fice, the team is deemed to have conceded a goal - so in an emblematic fashion this perpetuates the anal-re-tentive homophobic techniques of conventional football whereby homo-erotic tension is built up, only to be sublimated and repressed.

AN INTRODUCTION TO THREE SIDED FOOTBALL

EAST LONDON AAA

However the trialectic appropriation of this technique dissolves the homo-erotic/homo-phobic bipolarity as a successful attack will generally imply co-operation with the third team. This should overcome the prominent resistance to women taking their full part in football.

Meanwhile the penetration of the defence by two oppos-ing teams imposes upon the defence the task of counter-balancing their disadvantage through sowing the seeds of discord in an alliance which can only be temporary. This will be achieved through exhortation, body lan-guage, and an ability to manoeuvre the ball and players into such a position that one opposing team will re-alise that its interests are better served by breaking off the attack and allying themselves with the defend-ing team.

Bearing in mind that such a decision will not neces-sarily be immediate, a team may well find itself split between two alliances. Such a situation opens them up to the possibility of their enemies uniting, making maximum use of this confusion. 3-sided football is a game of skill, persuasion and psychogeography. When the ball goes out of the play on the frontside, a throw-in is conceded. This is carried out by the team whose frontside it is, unless they had last touch. In that case the throw in is taken by the team whose goal is the nearest. When the ball goes out of the play at the backside, the defening team has a goal kick, unless they had last touch, in which case a corner is taken by the team whose goal is nearest. The semicircle around the goal functions as a penalty area and it may be nec-essary to use it for some sort of offside rule which has yet to be developed.

ABOVE THE PAVING STONES,

THE STARS

LEGACY

Exactly 30 tears after NASA launched the Apollo space pro-

gramme, Disconaut AAA has unveiled its own Dionysus Programme.

When Apollo 1 caught fire on the launch paid in 1967 it marked the start of the US government’s biggest ever space effort. but why Apollo? If pagan deities was the name of the game there were plenty of others to choose from. To answer this we have to turn to Fred Nietzsche, the 19th century German philosopher and dance enthusi-ast.

In the Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche identified two an-tagonistic cultural tendencies with the Greek gods Apollo and Dionysus. Apollo was associated with restraint, control, order and rational-ity. The rituals of Dionysus on the other hand involved music, passion, wine, in-toxication and the dissolving of bound-aries. As part of the military industrial complex, seeking to extend the control

The starting point for the Dionysus Programme is Ni-etzsche’s description of “the glowing life of the Dio-nysian revellers”: “In song and in dance man [sic] expresses himself as a member of a higher community; he has forgotten how to walk and speak; he is about to take a dancing flight into the air... He feels himself a god, he himself now walks about enchanted, in ecsta-sy... He is no longer an artist, he has become a work of art”. Phew, all this without MDMA.

TAKE A DANCING FLIGHTDIONYSUS AAA

of the imperial order through the conquest of space, NASA’s programme could only be the Apollonian. The Dio-nysus Programme has been launched in direct opposition to Apollo and its successors, to put into practice Dis-conaut AAA’s mission to explore the potential for dance cultures for the exploration of space.

Disconaut AAA are attempting to apply this insight into the links between dance, ecstasy and flight as we leave the twentieth century. For some years experiments have been carried out in a global network of underground laboratories of pleasure. We can now report some of our preliminary findings:

- The Dionysus Programme has accumulated extensive evidence of near flight experiences on the dancefloor. Participants typically report sensations of ‘rushing’, of accelerating velocity, of the body tracing a line of flight and of leaving behind ‘the real world’ and es-tablishing a direct connection with the wider universe. There are clear parallels here with the effects on the body and the euphoric feelings of escaping gravity as-sociated with ‘lift off’ by more traditional means.

- In the Dionysus Programme we have tried to break the tyranny of liquid-fuel rocket-propulsion and to identify alternative fuel resources and means of trans-port. In the process we have experimented with a range of easily ingested chemicals, some of them derived from plants, others artificially manufactured. These sub-stances have contributed some invaluable insights and certainly have a role, particularly in maintaining the stamina needed for long flights. However we have to report that several of our experimental human probes which were successfully blasted beyond the atmosphere with chemical propulsion quickly crashed down to earth and vanished without trace, while others are now drift-ing aimlessly in space circumscribing ever decreasing circles around their navels.

- The Dionysus Programme has conducted a whole range of tests with extremely high tempo electronic sounds. Our hypothesis was that a continual acceleration in beats per minute would enable us to reach earth’s es-cape velocity and take off. Unfortunately after pro-longed uninterrupted exposure to these tests the ship began to break up and several participants showed signs of exhaustion and in some cases nausea. Future experi-ments will attempt to reduce the risk of side effects by introducing greater variety and rhythmic complexity.

- Ill-fitting space suits have been an ongoing prob-lem in the Dionysus Programme. A major difficulty has been the rigid masculine character armour which even some potential astronauts seem unable to discard. Dance cultures provide a space where it is possible to escape the confines of a fixed identity and explore a range of subjectivities and possibilities. Sadly a lot of men in particular seem afraid to appear as anything other than cool, serious and controlled. Clearly this is incompat-ible with the flexibility required in space. Disconaut AAA are developing fun fur and sequin space suits to help overcome this.

The present efforts of the Dionysus Programme are geared towards the Dreamtime project, through which AAA groups around the world are imagining what life will be like in autonomous communities in space. Dance settings provide a unique opportunity for collective dreaming, not the passive dreams of sleep, but the visions of the lived body in perfect motion.

Here we are not only able to think about life in space, but to feel what it will be like to live in an au-tonomous community. Nietzsche described this sensa-tion: “Under the charm of the Dionysian not only is the union between man and man [and woman] reaffirmed, but Nature which has become estranged, hostile or subju-gated, celebrates once more her reconciliation with her prodigal son, man... Now the slave is free; now all the stubborn, hostile barriers, which necessity, caprice or ‘shameless fashion’ have erected between man and man are broken down... Each one feels himself not only united, reconciled, blended with his neighbour, but all is one with him.”

By creating autonomous zones in our own parties on earth we can create conditions that prefigure autono-mous communities in outer space. To do this we have to neutralise the negative effects of various black holes which suck energy out of dance cultures, such as com-mercial promoters and the police. This will be the fo-cus of the next stage of the Dionysus Programme.

1. Modular dance ma-noeuvering unit; 2. Batteries (not in-cluded); 3. VR visual enhance-ment system; 4. Acoustic command and control system (in-cludes filter cutoff and resonance sliders) 5. Hand control re-leasing gaseous am-phetamines into helmet; 6. Fibre optic cable connected to hypermedia megastream; 7. Hand control for dance and sexual move-ments.

“If writers are to travel in space time and explore areas opened up by the space age, I think they must develop techniques quite as

new and definite as the techniques of physi-cal space travel.” - William Burroughs

SPACE TRAVEL: BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY

JASON SKEET, INNER CITY AAA

The Association of Autonomous Astronauts (AAA) was launched on April 23rd 1995 as the world’s first inde-pendent and community-based space program. A Five Year Plan was also established for creating, by the year 2000, a world-wide network of local, community-based AAA groups dedicated to building their own spaceships. In order to expand this project, the AAA has organised an Intergalactic Conference on independent, community-based space travel, that will take place in Vienna, Earth June 21-22 1997. This conference will bring to-gether various strands within the Association of Au-tonomous Astronauts, for further cross-fertilisation of ideas and experiences, demonstrating the varied and at times contradictory movements Autonomous Astronauts make whilst escaping from gravity. The conference will also expose local communities in Vienna to the possi-bilities of independent space exploration. Indeed, this Intergalactic Conference will advance the AAA’s aim to grow and develop in several directions at once.

One of the trajectories that the conference will trace is the new phase that the AAA’s Five Year Plan for cre-ating a world-wide network of local, community-based groups now moves into. We have called this phase the Dreamtime, and it is in essence a transversalist con-cept which helps to define the AAA’s total opposi-tion to other existing space programs. The Dreamtime asks,”What is the point of going into space only to replicate life on planet earth?” AAA groups around the world are now exploring what kind of experimental modes of living Autonomous Astronauts will create in space, what new social relations will be formed, and what new activities will fill up the empty spaces that had pre-viously fixed the limits of life back on planet earth. The Dreamtime regards space travel as an evolutionary process which will inevitably lead to the extinction of present-day government space agencies. Autonomous As-tronauts will create an extra-terrestrial consciousness that jettisons earth-based concepts of national borders and state controls. Amongst other things, the AAA is exploring how sex in zero-gravity will be even better than it is on planet earth, investigating the poten-tial for organising raves in space, and using games of 3-sided football as essential training for Autonomous Astronauts. The AAA is interested in the new possibili-ties that open up when we form autonomous communities in space.

After the Second World War, organisations like NASA emerged to regulate and control the developments in space exploration technology. Since the collapse of the cold war myth, NASA has been struggling desperately for a new identity. It no longer has the Soviet enemy to compete with, and must dream up new excuses for it-self. The AAA has consistently rejected the rationale of government space programs which, dominated by the world-view of engineers, regard the universe as a vast machine that can be manipulated according to certain laws and principles. For example, we completely oppose the idea of terraforming other planets. (Terraforming is the creation of a potentially life-supporting at-mosphere on a planet through the acceleration of this process by an outside force. This may come in the form of exploding nuclear weapons above the planet’s surface or by causing a succession of meteorites to hit the planet. A massive ‘greenhouse’ effect is created, thus beginning the process that hopefully leads to an atmo-sphere capable of supporting carbon-based life-forms - terraforming has been proposed for Mars). The AAA understands that terraforming will be the action of a capitalist system that, completely out of control, has exhausted the earth’s resources and requires another planet to devour.

The AAA has formed an ap-proach to technology that is pri-marily con-cerned with investigating how a spe-cific technol-ogy is used and who gets to use that technology. It is inevi-table that the technology to build space-ships will get

cheaper, or even that new technologies will be devel-oped that make present-day rocket propulsion systems entirely redundant. The AAA is the world’s only space program that makes technological issues secondary to the concern with what we will be doing when we form autonomous communities in outer space. The AAA inves-tigates conceptions of space exploration in which the imagination is central. In doing so, Autonomous Astro-nauts create a complex interactive project that anyone can participate in, and which completely changes exist-ing notions of space travel.

AAA groups develop specific strategies for engag-ing in the process of social transformation that they have dared to dream of. One such strategy for the re-distribution of resources throughout society is an AAA inspired competition for the first privately-funded group to have sex in space. The XXX Prize Foundation, based in London, has announced that it intends to pay 1 million pounds to the first privately-funded team to launch a craft into sub-orbital space - about 60 miles - and to then engage in sexual intercourse whilst up there. This sexual act may take any form and involve

Not only is the AAA combating the government, military and corporate monopoly of space travel, but Autonomous Astronauts are also fighting the increasing number of private enterprise space exploration groups. The AAA has revealed how these conquests of zero-gravity space will be a continuation of the imperialist occupations of planet earth. The Catholic Church has even discussed with NASA a plan for the conversion of aliens to Chris-tianity. But as the technology to go into space becomes cheaper, the AAA will be concerned with how that tech-nology is used. Plans to create a space tourist indus-try confirm that the myth of the ‘free market’ will be projected into space in a bid to further fabricate the fantasy of capitalisms that are inescapable and omni-present like the force of gravity. The AAA opposes the ‘wild west’ pioneer metaphors put out by many of these space age entrepreneurs by bringing to space travel a class dimension, and demonstrating how economic auster-ity is manufactured by those who have a vested interest in preventing the working class from building our own spaceships.

any number of people, but visual documentation must be provided to prove that the sex did occur in a weightless environment. Meanwhile, other AAA groups continue to point out how the process of creating autonomous communities in space must go hand-in-hand with an identical pro-cess back on planet earth. Wealth will then be re-de-fined in terms of the qual-ity of life within autono-mous communities in space. Autonomous Astronauts are making this future happen.

The AAA does not intend to be interpreted as a metaphor for something else. When we talk about building our own spaceships we really mean just that. However, it does follow from this that what we have to say can have

But the AAA is not an utopian current for fin-de-siecle bargain hunters. The AAA is interested in the new so-cial relations that exist with the creation of autono-mous communities in space. This evolutionary process continues the moment someone opens their mind to such possibilities. According to our analysis, the AAA oc-cupies a unique vantage point from which a multitude of historical trajectories may be traced. And yet, as a network of local, community-based groups who are not seeking to impose their visions of space exploration on anyone else, it has become clear that in outer space no-one will be concerned with the present-day organ-isation of knowledge. That is, the compartmentalisa-tion of knowledge into the particular categories de-veloped by capitalist culture over the last 500 years. The AAA network allows for a diversity of people to be involved, bringing together different experiences and skills. Ideas collide and new possibilities are made available.

A fundamental strategy developed by the AAA has been the ability to move in several directions at once. The AAA’s Intergalactic Conference will further demonstrate this, and promises to be an intense two days of activ-ity. The conference will include: a public presenta-tion of the AAA’s aims and objectives, with a debate on independent space exploration; screening of AAA promo-tional videos; the opportunity to meet Autonomous As-tronauts informally; a SpaceBase established for the duration of the conference, where AAA propaganda mate-rial will be on display; a rave in space dance party with experimental electronic music; training day for Autonomous Astronauts with game of 3-sided football. In addition to this, computer terminals will be available for visiting an AAA web-site made by Viennese children, and a spaceship with an interior designed and con-structed by children at the Vienna Kinder Museum will be installed. But the real challenge for those that attend this conference will remain - how to build our own spaceships and construct autonomous communities in outer space.

many different and complex levels of meaning to it. For example, the myth of space travel as the ‘final fron-tier’ is like that other myth about private space en-terprise in a universal ‘free market’. These myths are designed to mask the social forces that actually shape the present-day state, corporate and military monopoly of space travel. The AAA opposes these myths with our own specifically constructed and contradictory propa-ganda. These rhetorical constructs are often put into orbit around the concept of space travel as being in-herently bound to human evolution. The AAA has declared that the next stage in human evolution is to go into outer space.

THE DREAM IS JUST BEGINNING

It is time to re-invent the whole concept of Space Travel. Space Travel acts as a metaphor for conscious-ness and political transformation, it is also the es-sential notion on which the Autonomous Astronauts As-sociation (AAA) is based. We really are planning to create new communities in Space and to evolve new com-munities on Earth. Each member of the AAA has their own reasons and desires, that’s what the word “autonomous” means. It is not about joining the AAA, it is about forming a group for yourself. There are now many AAA groups around the world, but many of them are sleeping. This is a wake-up call!

Many cells of the Association of Autonomous Astronauts went into suspended animation for seven years, while the initial program of the heroes of the Five Year Plan was forgotten, or exploited by other agencies. There were problems attached to the initial structure of the AAA, firstly an over-dependence on a centralised cadre, secondly a shortage of funds, and thirdly some of us thought it was a joke. Humour can help us escape from gravity, but this is no joke, the Community Space Pro-gram is all about Community-Based Space Travel. That’s where NASA and the Soviet Space agencies got it wrong. Space travel should be for one and all, not just for a scientific, or cultural elite.

The technological apparatus of space exploration is almost in the hands of the Richard Bransons of the world, but times have changed and in the seven years that have passed, we have at last learned how to use the Internet. There are now the possibilities of buying ex-Soviet space kit off Ebay, for

This is not a Space Race.Autonomous Astronauts are Everywhere.

AAA KERNOW

example. Steven Hawking says we must leave this plan-et, but we say the forthcoming apocalypse is a figment of minds who exploit it for their own gains. It’s that millennialism stuff all over again - use your imagi-nation and do not be controlled by mass panics! Space Travel begins at home, it is too important to be left in the hands of government or corporate agencies.