This is #GANTOB2024 Pamphlet 35. That means that we are two thirds of the way through the 52 Pamphlets. And it isn’t even the end of April 2024. The end stages of GANTOB (the project) are rushing on. These pamphlets are contributions towards the third GANTOB book.
We are therefore 2/3s of the way through the third of three books. On publication of 52 Pamphlets (the book) GANTOB (the project) will end. That will probably be sometime towards the end of July 2024.
It is therefore time to start taking stock. The GANTOB Pamphlet Committee calls it “evaluation”. “Securing the GANTOB legacy”. But that’s just jargon from The Benefaktor. It makes the project sound like the London Olympics or something else much grander than it is. Though there are certainly times that GANTOB (the project) feels like a marathon.
Luckily, Question 22 of the 23 Questions gives us a route into exploring the project’s impact. Skellbert’s Pickles has asked “GANTOBBING: HOW WAS IT FOR YOU?”
I like that. GANTOB has become a verb as well as an anonymous participative art project. It hadn’t dawned on me that the present participle of the verb “to GANTOB” would have two “B”s, but it makes sense.
I want to hear from people who have participated in GANTOB (the project).
First up, it’s Christine. Let’s make our introductions.
After this pamphlet I am handing over to Christine (AKA Missi Formation) for a trilogy of personal pieces.
GANTOB was born on 27 July 2023, a few days after reading about the refresh of The KLF Re-enactment Society, and while ploughing through The JAMs’ book 2023: a trilogy for the first time. On 13 August 2023 Christine followed GANTOB’s Instagram account.
GANTOB messaged back that same day:
| Many thanks for the follow. If you’d like to enter the Grapefruit Are Not The Only Bombs 2023 Kompetition please send a message via Instagram or an email to 100percentvinyl2@gmail.com, asking a question about how you can improve 2023 for yourself or others, giving a bit of context to the question, your name and address. The 23 winning entries will be sent a copy of the book by post, which will include a quote answering their question. Examples already submitted include “How can I improve my swimming skills?” and “Will AI develop empathy during 2023?” Please ignore this message if you have already submitted an entry. It’s not always easy to match up name and Instagram identities. #GANTOB2023 |
The rest, as they say, is history. Over to you Christine…
17 April 2024
Shwmae GANTOB (The Original),
I’ve been rather busy lately, what with the house and the garden and slaying the mud monster that tried to destroy my polytunnel. I’ve also been busy writing, something that a year ago I would have laughed out loud if you’d have told me I’d be enjoying. Ha! I’d have snapped! I have always struggled to write, I got through my studies with one-to-one support from my dyslexia tutor and tears and tantrums before deadlines. I have no confidence in myself, and the times I’ve been treated like I’m stupid still resonates through my brittle ego. I felt most things I say are shit and meaningless. I’d rush to finish my sentences so that people didn’t have to listen to me for any longer than needed.
Then one day I got a calling to throw a leaflet into the very river I had been out protesting and singing about to defend it from the rubbish it was having pumped into it. “Our waterways are losing wildlife, plants and flowers, we can save it we have power”, I sang again as I let the paper plane fly from my hand taking a sharp turn downwards into the mud at the side of the river, just out of my reach. I felt bad and good, unruly and accomplished. Such a tiny act got me out of the house and doing something as instructed to perpetuate some madness about to stir. I liked that.
The antics of a grapefruit got me all excited too. I’ve always given substance to inanimate objects, talking to them as they appeared in my path: “hello chair, you’re looking pretty today sitting there with your shiny legs”. I have a whole drawer of googley eyes for inanimate objects that look a little lifeless. It helps others to understand why I am talking to the objects I see around me. Anyway, I started writing about the Grapefruit, as you know. No one seemed to mind at GANTOB the project if my writing was shit, rambling or silly. So I just wrote. Then when I saw it in a book, I couldn’t read it because it was in a book, I flicked through looking at the pictures and examining the tables, placing my finger under the odd line of someone else’s text, which I felt compelled to read. Then the second book arrived, this was even more off-putting. I flicked through the pictures and put it down, leaving it for my husband to read. He assured me I had read most of it anyway as I had been reading the blogs. Blogs are easier for me to read and I never feel guilty about not finishing one if it is too long. I scroll on. I love books. I’ve got hundreds of them. I have read most of them, but often from the back to the front.
There were talks about a third book, and invitations to write and contribute again, except it all seemed to get way too serious and the main characters lost the round and squishy pinkness I had become fond of. I was bored.
I had several pages in my Google Drive where I had started a sentence or two, but often clicked them closed when I next opened my MacBook. I was very bored by now. Waking up in the middle of the night is a speciality for women my age, often catching a glimpse of the clock at 3:23 am. On March 6th this year, it was my dad’s birthday. I was feeling particularly emotional and couldn’t get back to sleep, so by the time it was 5 am I started writing to settle the boredom and to keep me quiet. I’ve been known to move inanimate objects around in the night. The screeching of table legs on hard floors is annoying in the middle of the night, or so I have been informed.
So this night, I wrote and it flooded out. Poured. Oozed. Dribbled and dropped, right out of me. It hasn’t stopped since and I don’t know quite how to deal with it. Compliments on my writing‽ Absurd! Unheard of. It has been an emotional year. I’ve struggled with grief for most of my life and this year challenged that pain, and brought it to the surface for me to examine again. I didn’t want my story to be about the KLF. They really bore me. Not just the band, but the KLFRS and their lack of inclusivity. However, the facts were, on 23rd November 2023 I walked down a road I had not been down in forty years. Life had taken me on a huge journey to complete this circle returning me to the same bit of waterfront I had only ever walked along once before.
I would like to share with GANTOB some of the writing I have done since March. GANTOB certainly inspired me. You should be careful doing that! Going around empowering others to do their thing, it’s dangerous and beautiful, and very kind. I wasn’t going to share it with you, but when Gillian informed us through her blog today, that GANTOB will not exist after the next book, I just wanted to let Gillian know that she did good and I would like to thank you/her/him/them/it.
Diolch yn fawr iawn.
Cheerio and thanks for all the Grapefruits.
Christine
I replied a week later.
24 April 2024
Dear Christine,
I have been thinking about your email of 17 April.
Here is my response to some of the themes and points you raise.
When I was newly hatched as GANTOB, back at the end of July 2023, the world was new, brightly coloured and full of new people to meet. It was fun. I was working, with a reliable salary, in a comfortable house. Bursting with creativity, guided by The JAMs’ imagined version of 2023 (from their 2017 trilogy), I tried out a lot of new ideas. It was all paper aeroplanes and the liberation of destrukting a kollektion that had taken Ali (and latterly me) decades and £+++ to gather. I was on fire. I burnt out.
The Benefaktor took over. He funded and printed my early work in the first book. We spread the load, coopted others from our circle of friends, family and associates, and then from across the world through the process of Demokratisation, and knuckled down to document our 2023, in real time. This became the second book. The inner circle of GANTOB pretended to be artists/animators/writers even though we knew that we weren’t really. It was fun pretending, and to be knocking about with people who are properly creative and sparky. The second book has some differences from the blog – there is less of the snipping and art, more of the backstory, through The Philatelist’s chapters and the trip to Vienna that Ali and I took over Hogmanay. I don’t know if they are of any interest to you or others – but they certainly helped Ali and me understand some of the mischief that The Benefaktor had perpetrated and some of the quirks in the life of Ali’s father Curt Finks.
The 400-word snapshots in the second book were all very well, but they didn’t allow elaboration, even if we strung a few posts together. I wanted to give myself and others the opportunity for longer pieces. This gave birth to the 52 Pamphlets idea for the third book. Some early pamphlets meant that the writing took a literary turn, through William Blake (whose work I didn’t know, but I have now explored via Stuart and Urs’ contributions) and Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle (which was a connection back to my much younger self). It has helped me understand why I have kept coming back to topics like the 1960s and The KLF throughout my adult life. (+) It has corrected some misconceptions and poorly remembered ideas. And it has helped me read, process and write new thoughts down much more rapidly.
I have enjoyed reading the pamphlets that others have contributed, and have been inspired down completely unexpected paths. I have certainly engaged my creative side in ways that I could never have anticipated and have met some lovely people, albeit via email and social media. Unfortunately, I have to I accept that anonymity is absolute as GANTOB (the person). I am proud that the combined power of GANTOB (the project) has unofficially completed the 9 Missing Years in Bill Drummond’s memoir. I am pleased that some of the output of Curt Finks is in print, including in Vipers Tongue Quarterly. Once the Muons pamphlets are complete I will be able to file the rest of Curt’s writing away as “curios”. There will no doubt be some GANTOB writing that will go the same way.
There have been times when I have been very busy with other things, when I have had to force myself to sit and think, devise creative challenges, write and print pamphlets and personalise them and remember to post them and update the social media feeds. Recently, with the evenings getting lighter and bird song pulling me outdoors in my spare time, I have had to remind myself that I have made a commitment to other contributors, to The Benefaktor as funder, to readers of the blog. I am on “task and finish” mode. I am empowering people. I am inclusive. The power of positive thinking drives me on.
The paper aeroplanes have all been launched. My kollektion has been Destrukted. I have developed and shed my childish ways. GANTOB (the person) now has baggage, commitments and deadlines to meet. Over the past 9 months our youngest child has flown the nest, I’ve changed job, moved house, settled into a completely new way of life with none of the old certainties. My father’s health is failing. I can see the effects on my writing. I am now exploring the past, relationships, loss. I am finding a philosophical streak. I try to write in a way that will interest others, but perhaps we are all really writing for ourselves. When I read the first draft of the third book – which the Deputy General Manager of GANTOB (the project) has committed to having on my desk a few days after the final pamphlet – I am not sure that I will be able to be objective about this work. Perhaps I should ask you, as my most frank critic.
So what? That is always the question, though not yet one of the 23 Questions. Perhaps I will add it today. Having written this all down I realise that your path may have followed a similar trajectory to mine. From cuddly representations of cartoon grapefruit that can swim and converse in pubs and clubs you have moved to a very touching exploration of your life and family. I am delighted to include your trilogy as part of the 52 Pamphlets, and am very grateful for your feedback. I will have to think how I can capture the spirit of early GANTOB as we reach the project’s end.
Thank you for everything,
GANTOB
Pamphlet 35 of the 52 Pamphlets
Part of the answer to questions 22 and 23
Stay tuned to the blog for Christine’s trilogy over the next few days, and consider making your own written or artistic contribution to The 52 Pamphlets, the 23 Questions, or feeding back about your experience of GANTOBBING. You can navigate your way through the different parts of this project using the menu at the top of this page.
(+) I am not sure if I am brave enough to attempt the same type of approach for the other itch that I really want to scratch before GANTOB’s work is done – The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon. I read that at around the same time and have felt it tugging at me recently. The intrigue, symbolism and nonsense in that book may explain a lot about The KLF and GANTOB.
As a final point, GANTOB (the person) would like to say that in her experience The KLFRS has always been very approachable, supportive and inclusive.
GANTOB blog 