
Thanks to Mark S for supplying us with a complete set of AAA Aotearoa’s newsletter Suspension In Reality issues 1 to 10.
You will find them all in this folder: AAA Aotearoa
The sharp-eyed amongst you will also spot, lurking here, a lesser known journal… Issue 19 (sic) of Artschmart – A Journal Of AAA Aotearoa was issued on 31st March 1999.
Artschmart was produced by Barry B, an emissary of AAA Aotearoa, sent up to the ‘podes to participate in the Space 1999 festivities where he spoke with great precision and alacrity…
MARK S WRITES:
AAA Aotearoa, the local branch of the Association of Autonomous Astronauts, was active in the actual world from 1998 to 2001.
‘Suspension in Reality’ was our AAA zine, ten issues, four A4 pages each, that mythologised our startling adventures over those years.
We were a community-based space program that successfully launched from backyards, Garden Place and the nation’s greatest dance party. We tailed NZ’s biggest-ever GE-Free demo to save it from orbital nukes. We did genuine space tourism inside The Meteor. We took stunned ravers on an actual trip in a rotating black box. We rolled a giant silver ball around town and wore space suits on stilts. We certainly looked like we landed on Mars.
Every word I say above is true, these things actually happened, there will be breathing witnesses to those events reading this.
Astronauts who wrote and/or appeared in the pages of ‘Suspension of Reality’ included Adrian Holroyd, Barry Bryant, Vanessa Carnevale, Val Smith, Paul Gordon Cooke, Paul Smith, Rodney Hansen, Ruth Irwin, Sam Buchanan, Russell G Shaw, Malcolm Hutchinson and Emit Snake-beings.
International guest stars included Annick Bureaud, Ewen Chardronnet, Jason Skeet, Jon Eden, Riccardo Balli, Millennium Twain and Luther Blissett himself.
Even our lovely friends Alec Forbes, Alida Steemson and Mark Houlahan are mentioned for their star turns in the AAA-aligned production of Brecht’s ‘The Life of Galileo’ we did at the Hamilton Gardens Piazza in May 2000 to mark a planetary alignment.