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Parasol AAA invites you to consider The Downside of Fashion

Back then there was an online discussion group, a sort of Mos Eisley cantina for wandering astronauts from across the galaxy. It was a strange and violent place and on occasion it descended into a sort of deranged fan-fiction taking in and detourning pop-cultural icons of the day…

Parasol AAA made copious notes and issued some of these unhinged rantings as a pamphlet under the title The Downside of Fashion.

downside

That same discussion group, or a later variant of it, was implicated in the production of a fake Stewart Home novel, Stone Circle, copies of which are reputed to fetch thousands of Euros on the dark web…

 

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Another manifestation of AAA Aotearoa…

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.

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A O – let’s go!

aaaaLiving in perpetual darkness… clinging to the underside of the planet in defiance of gravity… AAA Aotearoa proved to be one of the most practical, inventive and creative AAA chapters pioneering the use of Readily Available Materials (RAM) technology.

We have six issues of their newsletter Suspension In Reality but even as we speak, Mark S is busy tunneling his way through the Earth in a home-made Mole Machine to bring you the remaining issues.

Suspension In Reality no2

Suspension In Reality no6

Suspension In Reality no7

Suspension In Reality no8

Suspension In Reality no9

Suspension In Reality no10

 

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HERE COMES EVERYBODY- 1st Annual Report of the AAA

The first annual report of the AA was published in April 1996.

Produced by Inner City 1stAAA it kicks off with a launch report from the previous April and runs through a number of key AAA texts.

At the back you will find a  list of AAA Groups numbering eleven- mostly from the UK, London in particular, but also Wales and Scotland and groups in Italy and France…

The global expansion of the AAA had begun.

HERE COMES EVERYBODY