Friday, February 01, 2008
Just yesterday we got a weird email from Zebbler, a/k/a Peter Berdovsky, whom you will perhaps remember as the naked hippie/video artist responsible for last year's terrorista art uprising Cartoon Channel-funded movie stunt that had Boston's Finest mistaking lite-brite boards for IEDs. The email mentioned that a) hey, it's the one year anniversary of Mooninite Madness! (TM), and b) Zebbler is still broke. He also threw us his resume, which is actually so impressive that we're thinking about hiring the guy. In any case, we find it hard to believe that it's pure coincidence that we awoke today to the sudden appearance, just around the corner from us at Fenway Park, of a Mooninite tribute depicting Zebber-as-Mooninite.
In any case, above and below are some pictures of the stunt, and -- provided the cops don't make us look like hillbillys by freaking out again -- we wouldn't be mad to see this become an annual public-art tradition.
Mooninite, oh, Mooninite, you seriously rocked our faces off with your daring neon stare, cool 'tude, and box-like figure.
See!
[Photos by Kevin Banks]
 For comparison: Zebbler (right) and the Mooninite
Thursday, December 20, 2007
Saturday, March 31, 2007
"Bouncement"
Ghislain Poirier, Beat Research's DJ C and DJ Flack, Zebbler/Sean Stevens
March 30 at the Linwood Grill
Photos by Matt Teuten 
Monday, February 19, 2007
Tuesday, February 06, 2007
Just when you thought it was over . . . someone rigs up Mooninite whack a mole set, well . . . over near the Opera House by the looks of it. Genius.
PLAY: Save Boston!
Monday, February 05, 2007
In rushing to charge self-proclaimed “performance artists” Sean Stevens and Peter Berdovsky with disorderly conduct and placing a hoax device, Attorney General Martha Coakley’s office violated a cardinal rule of the criminal-justice system. To ensure fair enforcement of the law, prosecutors are supposed to move slowly and deliberately, unlike police and anti-terror squads facing potentially time-sensitive public-safety concerns, and news media facing deadlines and competitive pressures.
As the entire world now knows, Stevens and Berdovsky were hired by a New York advertising firm to place, at highly visible locations, magnetic light boxes advertising the Cartoon Network cartoon feature Aqua Teen Hunger Force. But despite the widespread sensationalistic description of Stevens and Berdovsky’s “guerrilla” advertising campaign as a “hoax,” the boxes were anything but.
To make the felony hoax charges stick, Coakley would have to prove the two placed the devices “with the intent to cause anxiety, unrest, fear or personal discomfort,” and that the devices were capable of “endangering life or doing unusual damage to property, or both, by fire or explosion….” As for the misdemeanor disorderly conduct charges, any dolt could see that there was no disorderly conduct, just disorderly thinking—and most of that was on the part of the authorities and the media, not the defendants.
Prediction: Stevens and Berdovsky will cut a deal rather than go to trial. Berdovsky, a political refugee in this country facing notoriously capricious immigration officials, cannot afford to pick a fight with either the state or federal government, nor risk even a remote chance of a felony conviction. Stevens probably would accommodate his friend. The path of least resistance for the defendants, and least embarrassment for the prosecutors, is to “continue the case without a finding,” putting both on probation for six months or a year. If both keep out of trouble, the charges would then be dismissed.
This ill-considered case will end not with a bang (so to speak), but a whimper.
-Harvey A. Silverglate
Friday, February 02, 2007
Got a cause? Night duders Peter Berkovsky and Sean Stevens are your poster boys. Need a couple of smirking, authority-defying artists behind which to hide your embarrassing law-enforcement and new-judgment calls, Mayor Menino and Channel Five? The cunning Berkovsky and Stevens are right out of central casting. Need help getting out your viral-marketing campaign? I know two starving wannabe artists with time on their hands who’ll do it for only $300 apiece. Looking for the lo-fi face of your goofball-transgressive alt-generation? Come on down to the Charlestown courthouse, y’all.
It’s been just a riot of subjectivity, exactly the kind of consciousness ripping that art thrives on. Except it’s a very old story. The avant-garde began baiting the flustered booboisee, with all its whited certainties, more than a century ago. Not far behind came the advertising industry, scavenging the talented hip away from the purity of their rebellion with cash money. And then, sometime in the late ’60s, the advertising industry began appropriating wholesale the gonzo ethos of countercultural subversion. It acquired “edge.” “The Conquest of Cool,” as Tom Frank (who’s better known for What’s the Matter With Kansas?) dubbed it in his much-worth-reading 1997 book by that name.
The resulting sense of cultural and spiritual suffocation gave rise to indie, remember? So why are these guys being high-fived for their pathetic enlistment in the stale, time-tested service of PR-flack art?
It is funny. These guys couldn’t be any better suited to all the parts they’re being asked to play. But the one role they’re not playing is that of independent artist, carving out institutions with critical distance from the world. As long as we all understand that, as long as we don’t conflate pop-culture savvy and hip and indie into some watery aesthetic porridge, there’s still hope for this world.
--- Catherine Tumber
One among dozens of small gestures of solidarity with the artists behind the Mooninite scare was captured on video last evening by our own K. Bonami. Tipped off by a prominent local video artist, she showed up in Central Square just in time to catch a projection that included clips from Aqua Teen Hunger Force as well as the Mooninite catch-phrase "I'm Doing This As Hard As I Can," which seems on pace to replace "All Your Base Are Belong To Us" as the universal geek code for "You been pwned." We expect to see T-shirts momentarily. Here's the video:
The artist behind last night's silent vigil was also nice enough to send along a video file of one piece of his installation, in case you just happen to have a spare digital video projector lying around. Or maybe you just want to boot it up on your video iPod and thrust it in the face of passerby on the T. In any case, here goes:
DOWNLOAD: Anonymous, "I'm Doing This As Hard As I Can" (mp4)
Call it the Big Chill: after the events of the past 48 hours, would any self-respecting public artist want to exhibit anything that might be mistaken for, erm, a bomb? Hellz no. So count the easter bunny -- sort of -- as the latest casualty of Boston's Aqua Teen Hunger Farce. The following came in via email from Louisville-based artist Jeffrey Scott Holland, who had been planning a public-art exhibit here this spring. (Find out more at his EGGS NOT BOMBS site.)
As you may know, last year I left green Easter Eggs in various
public and semi-public places in several American cities, as part
of my PROJECT EGG public art installation. This April, it had been my intent to the expand the egg hunt to cover the entire nation,
with eggs hidden in the major cities of each of the fifty states.
However, in the wake of the ludicrous and Orwellian response of
Boston city officials to the Aqua Teen Hunger Force ad campaign,
I have been deeply morally appalled at behavior and statements
of Boston Mayor Thomas Menino and Assistant Attorney General
John Grossman, claiming that lightboxes such as those used in
the Aqua Teen Hunger Force ad campaign were no longer
appropriate in a "post 9/11 world", and that the "hoax" perpetrators
"clearly intended" the lightboxes to be mistaken for bombs.
Given this chilling effect the powers-that-be in Boston have cast on
free expression (not to mention common sense), I must withdraw my
intent to give away Easter Eggs in the state of Massachusetts in
April. I will not give these men further fuel in their drive to present
themselves as intelligent and valiant fighters of "potential" terrorism
in the name of national security, which is the real hoax being
perpetrated here.
To paraphrase Senator Jordan in the original Manchurian Candidate
film, "these men could not be doing more harm to America than if
they were paid Russian agents".
Holland also worries, not without reason, that "the entire project may be jeopardized now because of Mayor Menino ratcheting up nationwide paranoia and hysteria over 'potential terrorism' in found objects." Developing...
So when, and how, did the cops figure out that one man's IED is another man's marketing campaign? The answer appears to be: from a comic-book shop, around 1 p.m. on Wednesday.
Erin Scott, a store manager for the New England Comics chain, says the police told her that a tip she placed to the Boston Police's non-emergency line was used to help investigators (who were scouring the internet) corroborate the fact that the city was not under attack by terrorists, but instead was being heinously marketed to by performance artists armed with lite-brite boards. On Wednesday, Scott was minding her own business at the Harvard Square shop, when a co-worker's boyfriend called and told them to turn on the news. "We saw what was going on -- the picture of Err [the Mooninite in question] -- and I was like, 'Oh, that's the thing that's outisde my [Allston] store." After briefly debating whether or not to alert the cops to their mistake ("Sometimes," Scott sighs, "I try to be helpful"), she called the Boston police non-emergency number. She was transferred to "big investigations," then to media relations, then to a third person, who listened to Scott tell them that they were chasing a cartoon called Aqua Teen Hunger Force. "And I suggested that this was some sort of art-student project gone awry. They later called back and they told me that they then went on the internet and used my information to confirm that it was a cartoon, a 'hoax' and not a bomb threat. But I don’t know if they were just saying that to make me feel nice." Scott says she called the police between 1 and 2 pm, and the cops showed up within the hour. "They took [the Mooninite] down with a trashbag," she says. "By that time they’d figured out it was just a Lite Brite."
Scott first saw the Mooninite on her store a few days before the bomb scare, and her first instinct was to be annoyed. "I thought it was a sticker, and I was pissed because I was going to have to scratch the sticker off the front of my store -- it was flipping someone off, which I can’t have next to my store sign. But the next day I saw it had lightbulbs on it, so I thought I’d leave it up so I could see it at night." Her second instinct was to collect it: she remembers wondering if she could get the Moonie down without breaking it -- a good instinct, since the going prices for recovered Mooninites are now hovering around $2000. Alas, "then I forgot about it," she says. "Then [the next day] I saw it on the news."
While Scott is peeved that the blame for the scare came down on the artists, instead of on the culture of fear perpetuated in Washington, she had no criticism of the police. "They had to do what they had to do," she says. As regards the Mooninite campaign -- "like an Obey sort of thing where people see them and they get people to talk about it and collect it" -- she has some advice for Boston's viral marketers: "They should stick with stickers."
Thursday, February 01, 2007
Here's what we know about Peter "Zebbler" Berdovsky. He's 27 or 29 years old. He faces up to five years in prison for putting up a bunch of lite-brite Mooninites. As the government's scapegoat for yesterday's "bomb hoax" -- which played in every other media market in the country as, "Look how stupid those Boston people are" -- he's about to become a very public martyr for the viral-marketing industry. At present, he's only taking questions about "haircuts in the '70s."
But let's face it: that's really tangential information. What we really want to know is, Who is this guy? What does he look like naked? Did he have a band?
Now for some answers. From the website of his band, Superfiction, for which he is the singer:
A writer, a voice artist, a music maker, a painter, a sculptor, and an
established video artist who studies human neurology, and
consciousness as a hobby. Peter Berdovsky (aka Zebbler) is a natural
born performer using any means possible to bring ideas to life, from
singing for cow herds to live video performances. Surrounded by an
urge to squish sounds since childhood Zebbler began trying out the
rock band thing when he was was 14 years old and still in Belarus.
I guess growing up where the local police enforcement is encouraged
to pull aside kids on the street, hold guns to their heads and threaten
them as a way of keeping them in check might inspire some thrashing
noise rock. For Peter this is a life long project, perfecting the band's
performances year after year, incorporating new knowledge and new
technologies and sounds into what they do. Oh, and he can make
websites as well. Check his solo work out at www.zebbler.com
"I love to play with people's brains, what other chance like that
can I get? Music is capable of syncing up masses of people.
Performing sound live is an amazing opportunity to communicate a
message on multiple levels, conscious and unconscious, emotional and
reasoned. I want to pry open secret doors and explore hidden realms
without getting lost forever - while bringing other people in for a
ride."
Well, um . . . mission accomplished, we suppose. Now about that naked picture:
We can already hear your pirated copy of Photoshop whirring into action. Post links in the comments. Zebbler entered a not-guilty plea this morning. But he pleads differently . . . in his music! Here's lyrics from "My Knot":
Guilty
Love could tease it out
Through your
Trusting gentle eyes
When I say I am sorry
I am trying my best
To put my past to rest
I'm trying my best
DOWNLOAD: Superfiction, "My Knot" (mp3)
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Boston, 2007 = Grovers Mill, 1938.
For those of you not familiar with Aqua Teen Hunger Force, the Mooninites are a race of video-game aliens who attempt, albeit inefectually, to wreak mayhem on the world. (They are completely awesome, though, because Schooly D does their theme song.) The joke is that the Mooninites always fail to do any real harm.
Except, that is, in Boston.
Roads and rivers were closed, businesses sent employees home, traffic was snarled, and the bomb squad even detonated a "sophisticated electronic device" when a bunch of lite-brite boards -- all bearing a peculiar resemblance to a certain Adult Swim cartoon, which also happened to be plastered across billboards in Allston and I-93 -- were uncovered by Boston's crack anti-terrorism units. The BPD, which has had trouble the past couple years solving real crimes, wasted no time in rounding up the Arlington artist who was an accomplice to this grave deed. The state AG is promising lawsuits, and lots of them. Sleep easy, Massachoochians, your blessed city is safe . . . from evil cartoons.
Just to make you feel worse, the "devices" were also scattered around NY and LA. Nobody freaked out there. Our guess? Something to do with this new-fangled contraption called "YouTube." Apparently this city's never heard of it. At least not over at the Globe, which posted a grip of bomb-scare stories (this just after the boring broadsheet fell for another local hoax -- the one about Theo Epstein getting married at a New York hot dog stand. Oops.)
Here's the video of people planting "bombs" . . .
Now for something really scary. Not only can Mooninites reduce our city to a gibbering, paranoid gob of hysterical bitches . . . they can also rock your face off. (Replace "Uncle Cliff" in the following clip with "Deval Patrick," then see if you can keep from crying.)
Oh no, here they come again!:
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