Made in Abearica

Yesterday I rendezvoused with a brother in arms at the cigar store and was handed a manila envelope enclosing a dossier pivotal to the success of the Mimeo Revolution. The scans above do not do justice to the breadth and depth of this project. It is a multi-media affair with a CD, a website, text and artwork.

Like all the great mimeo productions of the past, the Abearica project draws on the foundations that supposedly build America: individuality, non-conformity, and freedom of thought, action and expression. There is an anti-war stance that holds the project together but the war could just as well be a guerilla action against the mainstream media's assault on one's consciousness as the United States's foreign policy. But as the Abearica project makes clear the assaults of the media and the government are inseparable.

The Abearica dossiers are not for sale. They are handed out to comrades in arms as well as mailed out to the unsuspecting, selected at random. It remains to be seen what the uninitiated will do once they open the dossier. I, for one, sat in shock.

The printing is top-notch as is the paper. What sets Abearica apart is the obsessive attention to detail. The little touches. The confidential stamps, the authentic memoranda, the personalized stamp with the Abearica logo on the self-addressed envelope to be used to mail-in your signed Declaration of Conformity, the hand-painted dossiers and envelopes, the sew-on patch. I have yet to listen to the CD put the lyrics to this merging of hip-hop and spoken word are on http://www.madeinabearica.com/. The website gives you some idea of the entire affair.

Abearica made me think of the In Numbers book should this be the first in a series. Like Semina before it, Abearica is an art project, a state of mind, and a call to, not so much arms, as eyes and minds. Like Abearica itself, eyes and minds are to be opened.

JB