MAKING USE. LIFE IN POSTARTISTIC TIMES IS AN EXHIBITION AND PUBLIC PROGRAM FEATURING MORE THAN ONE HUNDRED PARTICIPANTS

Loompanics Unlimited

Loompanics Unlimited

Cover of Night Movements, published by Loompanics Unlimited in 1988, courtesy Loompanics Unlimited.

Loompanics Unlimited was a publishing house founded by Michael Hoy, active in the United States between 1975 and 2006. LU specialized in guides to unconventional fields of knowledge, operating on the edge of legality. LU published books about anarchism, conspiracy theories, the cultivation of psychoactive plants, tax fraud, occult practices, sex, and survival strategies (e.g. for the homeless or prisoners). Publications were available only by mail order. Once a year, LU distributed a catalog of several hundred titles to potential customers. When sales moved online, Ebay, Google, and Amazon refused to advertise items from the LU catalogue.

Loompanics Unlimited guides displayed wit (inspired by the surrealistic satirical magazine National Lampoon from the 1970s), imagination, subversion, and a flamboyant approach to relations between the state and its citizens (see: coefficient of art). Contemporary artists consulting these works include Seth Price, author of How to Disappear in America, and the duo, Bik van der Pol, who in their own exhibitions present a collection of over one hundred titles from the LU catalogue and encourage the audience to copy them and make use of the knowledge they contain.

 

The report presented in exhibition consists of three books, How to Disappear Completely and Never Be Found, 1995, How to Start Your Own Country, 1999, and How to Make Driver’s Licenses and Other ID on Your Home Computer, 1999, purchased by the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw in November 2016.