BIO: John Rininger

I was born.

I'm probably alive.

I'm certain to die.

catalyst   Komic     8 0 1



Hello,
    As you can tell I'm not a professional artist. I never understood those
people. I don't claim sovereignty over these things. As I've gotten older,
I hate things less. Museums,  the whole structured image delivery device
system that is galleries - even people who wear too much black; all these
things I am not at war with anymore. Audrey is a friend of mine. I like 20%
of the images (which is very, very good). So I trust her. Now she wants me
to show to you - 10 slides, a bio - of what looks like me. Apparently the
book (Tomb of Louis XXX) sitting under the perf machine did the trick for
you. I hope you know Bataille. I am, like his Father, writing you blind.
The video is something Tom Trusky shot for his book art class in Boise; the
sound is Karl Stockhausen which I cranked a lot during construction. I've
done alot too many mail art/stamp things and at the time I was tired of the
lack of singularity. When I did this thing in 92/93 it was to will one
thing and have purity of heart in order to destroy the heart; I wanted to
image the shadowfriend through a rotoscope.. the thing is 600 foot long by
3 foot wide - around 14000 images mostly solvent transfers. I was a color
copy specialist. When I was at Purdue  (nuke engineering/english - honors
(1)) I read a report from NASA about animation systems that used
persistence of vision as an animation device and later at Indiana
University (comp. lit/pol.sci. BA'83 (2)) -  living with Tibetian Bon
freaks - we laughed at television noticing that images in a serial form
were triggering emotions conditioning the viewer's memory. It's a perverse
Art of Memory referencing the impossible, vast real world for cash. Now to
image the heart, one must try look at it. The attachment of looking clouds
the viewing. So by relentless working (image intoxication (Rausch)), I
induced a working delusional state of possession to reach an automatic
imaging plateau - for a year. I kept a full time job at Kinkos and at
Columbia College library (I didn't sleep much). What it was or what that
truly means I hesitate to put down as words. Regardless, I'm pretty sure I
can get Tom to send it back if you want to show it in small sections; I
worked immediately in a 20 foot swath but had enough memory to hold 70 foot
sections and on occasion all of it.
   The slides are easier and I think you can work those out. Slides are an
occasional cross section usually occuring when someone insists on taking
them. Now I didn't play much with art people in Champaign but in Cham/Urb
was some of my best collage work, in Cage/Johnson mail art circles, worked
for Domino's Pizza, almost in the IWW but they got Maoist, in the Haymarket
Centennial Miracle Mile Run May1986 Chicago (led the attack on the IBM
Building 401 N.Mich.), magazine insanity with Dominque Johns and Brad Goins
later with Tom Long and Gene White in DeKalb, Andrew Oleksiuk in Chicago
and maybe Tom again (on tour  - Some Zine 2  -
www.idbsu.edu/hemingway/some2.htm (some copies in SAIC Book Art Collection,
DePaul Special Collections, Sackler Archive, SubSpace Archive, MOMA via
Clive Phillpot(3) and copy/mail/stamp art "museums" in Europe and
America)), spray painting snow, xerox love, neoism, stamps, later the ASCW
- Aggressive School of Cultural Workers, defrocked by the Church of
SubGenius, etc.. But in Dekalb  - during the Art Strike - I had fun with
those people and got into painting more. I was in the student shows - Arts
Nova (Jack Olsen used to run this. Jack McCarthy might still remember me,
Joshua Kind too (4)) - I won 2nd and 3rd places a few years in a row when I
was there -Joe always beat me  and Nicole too - and I got the
"Surface/Edge" award for Graduate Painters one year. I was in Library
School at the time and worked in the Technical Services department at the
NIU library. Had a couple solo shows at the usual places and unusual -
K-Mart bathrooms, alleys, underground. And I worked at Kinkos there and
helped others make things. Katherine wanted to move to Chicago after she
got her MFA - 1991. So I came to Chicago and played the emerging artist
scene. A group show at MWMWMW; another at No Palace - I gave up. Started
the scroll and just made things (5).
    Later I found a nice place at the Book Art Center where they make
things and teach
people how to make things. Amy used to work there. We even taught a stamp
class there once. My perforator is there so others can use. They let me
show things and once let me curate a Mail Art/Stamp/Copy Culture Show
("Mail Art: Past, Present, Post" March 1997 -
www.faximum.com/jas.d/ppp_01.htm). I did get Reed Altemus's entire archive
(www-mitpress.mit.edu/e-journals/Leonardo/isast/spec.projects/electrobib.htm
l) of xerox art magazines there but it was hard getting people to handle
them. Nice stuff of Donald Evans and Fluxus West via Jas Felter
(www.faximum.com) was there too.
  So now Bill gets me into Judy Saslow's gallery to curate a stamp show in
October and I'm learning some things. Audrey got me into an exquisite
corpse show at Printworks in Nov 99. It's a simple corpse - not animated.
Where you work would make such a fine library; and you know Jno, another
friend, so I can speak to you now.





John Rininger a.p.










  I come from a family of Engineers. It was reflex. I also worshipped Ezra
Pound in high school. Purdue liked my deep-strike cobalt-salted South Pole
economy models.  I actually turned down a co-op job at JPL to go to IU.

 Had a thing for the Chinese Cultural Revolution and the Great Schism of
the Double Popes.  Also took an art class - Francis Whitehead no less -
"intro to studio". Ran away after 2 classes and got an F. But I did have
Mary Ellen Solt as a teacher and had my first slide/laughter experience. We
were the only ones who got the joke.

 Steve Perkins introduced us. I never heard back from Clive after I sent
Catalyst Komics 186 which was a functional pipe bomb. He apparently he had
not read much Lenin.

 I think he might still might be pissed I dumped his POMO class in 1990
because he wouldn't address Speer and Loos and the flowering of Ruins in
Corpses and the number of bodies Joe Bueys produced. DeKalb was a cow-town.

 Also some sickness (see New City Halloween issue 1995) But I was healthy
enough to hide Catalyst Komics logos in the cover art and thus claim the
entire print run as a virus issue.

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