4 smashed penny designs
PAMPHLET AUTHORS
Luc Sante
Luc Sante was born in Verviers, Belgium. His most recent book is The Other Paris. His other works include Low Life, Evidence, The Factory of Facts, and Kill All Your Darlings. He is the recipient of a Whiting Writers' Award, an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Grammy (for album notes), an Infinity Award for Writing from the International Center of Photography, and Guggenheim and Cullman fellowships. He has contributed to The New York Review of Books since 1981 and has written for many other publications. He is a visiting professor of writing and the history of photography at Bard College and lives in Ulster County, New York.
Brian Frye
Brian L. Frye is the Spears-Gilbert Associate Professor of Law at the University of Kentucky College of Law. He teaches classes in civil procedure, intellectual property, copyright, and nonprofit organizations, as well as a seminar on law and popular culture. He received a J.D. from the New York University School of Law in 2005, an M.F.A. from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1997, and a B.A. from the University of California at Berkeley in 1995.
Professor Frye is also a filmmaker. He produced the documentary Our Nixon (2013), which was broadcast by CNN and opened theatrically nationwide.
Elizabeth Henson, PhD
Research Associate University of Arizona History Department.
Pamphlet: Los Flores Magon contributor to pamphlet covering radical Mexican leftists the Flores Magon brothers
Laurie McKenna
A pamphlet documenting Rosa McKay- pro-labor state legislator in 1917 for the Cochise County district. Her writing on Ras McKay has been published in The International Worker and Cochise County Historical Journal 2017
Music
Jon Leidecker contributed a loop for the Undesirables entitled Solace/Vexations. It is also used in the video vignettes. Jon has been producing music under the name Wobbly since 1990, improvising with recordings to produce music which inherently questions the act of being captured. Recent performances deploy a battery of mobile devices driven by their built-in microphones, reacting spontaenously with error-prone yet intelligent variations on the notes and sounds they believe themselves to be hearing: a tightly-knit ensemble with inhuman reflexes, which the human performer influences more than controls. Currently touring and recording with Negativland and the Thurston Moore Ensemble, other live and studio collaborators include Zeena Parkins, Dieter Moebius & Tim Story, People Like Us, Matmos, Laetitia Sonami, Fred Frith's Gravity Band, Thomas Dimuzio, Porest, Tim Perkis & Xopher Davidson, Tania Chen, Sue C., The Freddy McGuire Show, Sagan and the Chopping Channel. Radio Web MACBA commissioned a nine hour podcast overview on the history of recorded collage music entitled 'Variations' in 2008, and related lectures have been presented at Mills, Oxford, Peabody, & Stanford. In 2015 he inherited Negativland's long-running Over The Edge radio program, broadcasting from KPFA FM in Berkeley.
Graphic Art
Bridget Shanahan gave to the project generously and significantly. Bridget is a dedicated and talented artist, co-founder of Dog Cat Mouse media design company in Bisbee, and Adobe creative suite extraordinaire. Bridget tightened up penny press artwork and did the layout of the pamphlet files and designed the poster for the premiere of the Undesirables
Penny Smasher engineer and fabricator
Collaborator Andrew Fairbank
Andrew lives in New Hampshire and designed and fabricated the Penny Smasher long distance. Andrew is a side car motorcycle racer. He built two sidecar motorcycles for Matthew Barney's Cremaster 4 Guggenheim exhibition. The Penny machine incorporates a length of railroad track donated by local mining company.
THE FABRICATION OF A PENNY PRESS MACHINE
These vending machines are located at the sites of tourist attractions and smash pennies imprinting them with images commemorating historical moments, industries, or locations. I have appropriated this machine to challenge its mainstream intentions. It vends 4 distinct embossments of my design. Most machines create a souvenir that carries little meaning. My designs are counter to bland memorialization. The machine is like no other and was designed and built by Andrew Fairbank.
