Luther Blissett is a
multiple-use name
A multiple-use name or anonymity pseudonym is a name used by many different people to protect anonymity. It is a strategy that has been adopted by many unconnected radical and cultural groups, where the construct of personal identity has been crit ...
, an "
open pop star
Open or OPEN may refer to:
Music
* Open (band), Australian pop/rock band
* The Open (band), English indie rock band
* ''Open'' (Blues Image album), 1969
* ''Open'' (Gotthard album), 1999
* ''Open'' (Cowboy Junkies album), 2001
* ''Open'' (Y ...
" informally adopted and shared by hundreds of artists and activists all over Europe and the Americas since 1994. The
pseudonym
A pseudonym (; ) or alias () is a fictitious name that a person or group assumes for a particular purpose, which differs from their original or true name (orthonym). This also differs from a new name that entirely or legally replaces an individua ...
first appeared in
Bologna
Bologna (, , ; egl, label= Emilian, Bulåggna ; lat, Bononia) is the capital and largest city of the Emilia-Romagna region in Northern Italy. It is the seventh most populous city in Italy with about 400,000 inhabitants and 150 different nat ...
, Italy, in mid-1994, when a number of cultural
activists
Activism (or Advocacy) consists of efforts to promote, impede, direct or intervene in social, political, economic or environmental reform with the desire to make changes in society toward a perceived greater good. Forms of activism range fro ...
began using it for staging a series of urban and media
pranks
A practical joke, or prank, is a mischievous trick played on someone, generally causing the victim to experience embarrassment, perplexity, confusion, or discomfort.Marsh, Moira. 2015. ''Practically Joking''. Logan: Utah State University Press. ...
and to experiment with new forms of authorship and identity. From Bologna the multiple-use name spread to other European cities, such as Rome and London, as well as countries such as Germany, Spain, and Slovenia. Sporadic appearances of Luther Blissett have been also noted in Canada, the United States, Finland, and Brazil.
For reasons that remain unknown, though according to one former member the decision was based purely on the perceived comic value of the name, the pseudonym was borrowed from a real-life
Luther Blissett
Luther Loide Blissett (born 1 February 1958) is a former professional footballer and manager who played for the England national team during the 1980s. Born in Jamaica, Blissett played as a striker, and is best known for his time at Watford, ...
, a notable
association football
Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 players who primarily use their feet to propel the ball around a rectangular field called a pitch. The objective of the game is ...
player, who played for
A.C. Milan
Associazione Calcio Milan (), commonly referred to as AC Milan or simply Milan, is a professional football club in Milan, Italy, founded in 1899. The club has spent its entire history, with the exception of the 1980–81 and 1982–83 seasons ...
,
Watford F.C.
Watford Football Club is an English professional football club based in Watford, Hertfordshire. They play in the EFL Championship, the second tier of English football.
The club’s original foundation is 1881, aligned with that of its antecede ...
and
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...
in the 1980s. In December 1999, the Italian activists who had launched the Luther Blissett Project in 1994 decided to discontinue usage of the name by committing symbolic ritual suicide, or
seppuku
, sometimes referred to as hara-kiri (, , a native Japanese kun reading), is a form of Japanese ritual suicide by disembowelment. It was originally reserved for samurai in their code of honour but was also practised by other Japanese people ...
. After authoring the best-selling historic novel ''
Q'' as "Luther Blissett", five of them went on to found the writers' collective
Wu Ming
Wu Ming, Chinese for "anonymous", is a pseudonym for a group of Italian authors formed in 2000 from a subset of the Luther Blissett community in Bologna.
Four of the group earlier wrote the novel '' Q'' (first edition 1999). Unlike the open nam ...
.
Luther Blissett's mythmaking and politics
While the
folk hero
A folk hero or national hero is a type of hero – real, fictional or mythological – with their name, personality and deeds embedded in the popular consciousness of a people, mentioned frequently in folk songs, folk tales and other folklore; an ...
es of the early-modern period and the nineteenth century served a variety of social and political purposes, the Luther Blissett Project (LBP) were able to utilize the media and communication strategies unavailable to their predecessors. According to Marco Deseriis, the main purpose of the LBP was to create "a folk hero of the information society" whereby
knowledge worker
Knowledge workers are workers whose main capital is knowledge. Examples include programmers, physicians, pharmacists, architects, engineers, scientists, design thinkers, public accountants, lawyers, editors, and academics, whose job is to "thin ...
s and immaterial workers could organize and recognize themselves. Luther Blissett became a positive mythic figure that was supposed to embody the very process of community and cross-media storytelling rather than being understood only as a media
prank
A practical joke, or prank, is a mischievous trick played on someone, generally causing the victim to experience embarrassment, perplexity, confusion, or discomfort.Marsh, Moira. 2015. ''Practically Joking''. Logan: Utah State University Press. ...
ster and
culture jammer
Culture jamming (sometimes also guerrilla communication) is a form of protest used by many anti-consumerism, anti-consumerist social movements to disrupt or subvert media culture and its mainstream cultural institutions, including corporate adv ...
. Roberto Bui, one of the co-founders of the LBP and Wu Ming, explains the function of Luther Blissett and other radical folk heroes as mythmaking or
mythopoesis:
Mythopoesis is the social process of constructing myths, by which we do not mean "false stories," we mean stories that are told and shared, re-told and manipulated, by a vast and multifarious community, stories that may give shape to some kind of ritual, some sense of continuity between what we do and what other people did in the past. A tradition. In Latin the verb "tradere" simply meant "to hand down something," it did not entail any narrow-mindedness, conservatism or forced respect for the past. Revolutions and radical movements have always found and told their own myths.
Another important element was relationship of the Italian LBP to the
autonomist
Autonomism, also known as autonomist Marxism is an anti-capitalist left-wing political and social movement and theory. As a theoretical system, it first emerged in Italy in the 1960s from workerism (). Later, post-Marxist and anarchist tendenci ...
-
Marxist
Marxism is a Left-wing politics, left-wing to Far-left politics, far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a Materialism, materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand S ...
theory of labor known as
workerism
Workerism is a political theory that emphasizes the importance of or glorifies the working class. Workerism, or , was of particular significance in Italian left-wing politics.
As revolutionary praxis
Workerism (or ) is a political analysis, w ...
. Drawing from the work of Italian workerists, such as
Antonio Negri
Antonio "Toni" Negri (born 1 August 1933) is an Italian Spinozistic- Marxist sociologist and political philosopher, best known for his co-authorship of ''Empire'' and secondarily for his work on Spinoza.
Born in Padua, he became a political ...
,
Paolo Virno
Paolo Virno (; ; born 1952) is an Italian philosopher, Semiotics, semiologist and a figurehead for the Italian Marxism, Marxist movement. Implicated in belonging to illegal social movements during the 1960s and 1970s, Virno was arrested and jail ...
,
Maurizio Lazzarato
Maurizio Lazzarato (born 1955) is an Italian sociologist and philosopher, residing in Paris, France. In the 1970s, he was an activist in the workers' movement (Autonomia Operaia) in Italy. Lazzarato was a founding member of the editorial board of ...
and others, the activists of the LBP envisioned Blissett as the expression of the capacity of immaterial workers to produce forms of wealth that cannot be properly measured and attributed to an individual producer. The incalculability of these new forms of labor is articulated in th
"Declaration of Rights of Luther Blissett" redacted by the Roman LBP in 1995. In this
manifesto
A manifesto is a published declaration of the intentions, motives, or views of the issuer, be it an individual, group, political party or government. A manifesto usually accepts a previously published opinion or public consensus or promotes a ...
, the LBP claims that because in
late capitalism
Late capitalism, late-stage capitalism, or end-stage capitalism is a term first used in print by German economist Werner Sombart around the turn of the 20th century. In the late 2010s, the term began to be used in the United States and Canada to ...
any social activity can potentially generate value, the culture and media industries should guarantee a
basic income
Universal basic income (UBI) is a social welfare proposal in which all citizens of a given population regularly receive an unconditional transfer payment, that is, without a means test or need to work. It would be received independently of a ...
to every citizen detached from individual productivity:
The industry of the integrated spectacle and immaterial command owes me money. I will not come to terms with it until I will not have what is owed to me. For all the times I appeared on TV, films, and on the radio as a casual passersby or as an element of the landscape, and my image has not been compensated . . . for all the words or expressions of high communicative impact I have coined in peripheral cafes, squares, street corners, and social centers that became powerful advertising jingles, without seeing a dime; for all the times my name and my personal data have been put at work inside
stats, to adjust the demand, refine marketing strategies, increase the productivity of firms to which I could not be more indifferent; for all the advertising I continuously make by wearing branded t-shirts, backpacks, socks, jackets, bathing suits, towels, without my body being remunerated as a commercial billboard
A billboard (also called a hoarding in the UK and many other parts of the world) is a large outdoor advertising structure (a billing board), typically found in high-traffic areas such as alongside busy roads. Billboards present large advertise ...
; for all of this and much more, the industry of the integrated spectacle owes me money
Money is any item or verifiable record that is generally accepted as payment for goods and services and repayment of debts, such as taxes, in a particular country or socio-economic context. The primary functions which distinguish money are as ...
! I understand it may be difficult to calculate how much they owe me as an individual. But this is not necessary at all, because I am Luther Blissett, the multiple and the multiplex.
And what the industry of the integrated spectacle owes me, it is owed to the many that I am, and is owed to me because I am many. From this viewpoint, we can agree on a generalized compensation. You will not have peace until I will not have the money! LOTS OF MONEY BECAUSE I AM MANY: CITIZEN INCOME FOR LUTHER BLISSETT!
Limited selection of Blissett's stunts, pranks, and media hoaxes
* January 1995 —
Harry Kipper, a British
conceptual art
Conceptual art, also referred to as conceptualism, is art in which the concept(s) or idea(s) involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic, technical, and material concerns. Some works of conceptual art, sometimes called insta ...
ist, disappears at the Italo-Slovenian border while touring Europe on a mountain bike, allegedly with the purpose of tracing the word ''ART'' on the map of the continent. The victim of the prank is a famous missing-persons prime-time show on the Italian state television. They send out a TV crew to look for a person that never existed. They go as far as London, where novelist
Stewart Home
Kevin Llewellyn Callan (born 24 March 1962), better known as Stewart Home, is an English artist, filmmaker, writer, pamphleteer, art historian, and activist. His novels include the non-narrative ''69 Things to Do with a Dead Princess'' (2002), an ...
and Richard Essex of the
London Psychogeographical Association
The London Psychogeographical Association (LPA), sometimes referred to as the London Psychogeographical Committee, is an organisation devoted to psychogeography. The LPA is perhaps best understood in the context of psychogeographical Praxis (pro ...
pose as close friends of Kipper's. The hoax goes on until "Luther Blissett" claims responsibility for it.
* September 1994–May 1995 — In September 1994, a Bolognese community radio began broadcasting Radio Blissett, a late-night show featuring a variable number of Luther Blissetts who "patrolled" the city on foot and called the studio from local phone booths. Inspired by the Lettrist-Situationist urban drift or
dérive
The ''dérive'' (, "drift") is a revolutionary strategy originally put forward in the "Theory of the Dérive" (1956) by Guy Debord, a member at the time of the Letterist International. Debord defines the ''dérive'' as "a mode of experimental ...
—a seemingly aimless wandering through the city whereby
psychogeographers
Psychogeography is the exploration of urban environments that emphasizes interpersonal connections to places and arbitrary routes. It was developed by members of the Letterist International and Situationist International, which were revolutiona ...
go in search of heightened emotional experiences—Radio Blissett allowed players to interact at a distance in real time. Listeners could also call in from home and direct the patrols to various locations to join or create unexpected social events, including guerrilla-theater interventions, street parties, three-sided football matches, and "psychic attacks" against public buildings and institutions. In the Spring 1995, the experiment was duplicated in Rome, where the wider extension of the city required the simultaneous use of car patrols and cell phones. The Saturday night show, which aired on the frequencies of Radio Città Futura, featured psychic attacks against the Italian copyright office, the office of employment, and other semi-improvised direct actions which culminated in one of the most well-known episodes of the Blissett’s saga.
* 17 June 1995 – A few dozen participating in the Roman Radio Blissett boarded a night tram at different consecutive stops. A rave party took place on the vehicle until the police decided to stop it. Requested to disembark and identify themselves, the ravers refused to identify themselves other than with the multiple-use name. A riot ensued in which the police fired three shots in the air. A journalist from Radio Citta' Futura covered the event with his cell phone broadcasting the riot and the shots on the radio program. The radio program caused a media sensation.
* June 1995 — Loota is a female
chimpanzee
The chimpanzee (''Pan troglodytes''), also known as simply the chimp, is a species of great ape native to the forest and savannah of tropical Africa. It has four confirmed subspecies and a fifth proposed subspecies. When its close relative th ...
whose paintings are to be exhibited at the Venice Biennale of Contemporary Arts. In the context of the hoax, Loota is described as a former victim of sadistic experiments in a
pharmaceutical
A medication (also called medicament, medicine, pharmaceutical drug, medicinal drug or simply drug) is a drug used to diagnose, cure, treat, or prevent disease. Drug therapy (pharmacotherapy) is an important part of the medical field and re ...
lab. The ape was then saved by the
Animal Liberation Front
The Animal Liberation Front (ALF) is an international, Leaderless resistance, leaderless, decentralized political and social resistance movement that engages in and promotes non-violent direct action in protest against incidents of animal cruelt ...
, and later became a talented artist. Some newspapers announced the event. However, Loota did not exist.
* November 1995 — An article in the "
Workshop For A Non-Linear Architecture" journal ''Viscosity'' stating that the
K Foundation
The K Foundation was an art foundation set up by Jimmy Cauty and Bill Drummond, formerly of The KLF, in 1993, following their 'retirement' from the music industry. The Foundation served as an artistic outlet for the duo's post-retirement KLF inc ...
had announced a 23-year moratorium on "all further activity" following their burning of a million pounds in cash on the Isle of Jura is credited to Luther Blissett.
* 1998–2000 — In 1998, Italian art magazines such as ''Tema Celeste'' and ''Flesh Art'' begin reporting about the activities o
Darko Maver a hitherto unknown radical Serbian performance artist who has been disseminating hyper-realistic replicas of dismembered bodies in public spaces and hotel rooms across the former Yugoslavia. The magazines and a web site called "Free Art Campaign" report that the artist has been arrested by the Serbian authorities for his performances, which are meant to offer a scathing meditation on the hyperreality and media representation of the
Yugoslav Wars
The Yugoslav Wars were a series of separate but related#Naimark, Naimark (2003), p. xvii. ethnic conflicts, wars of independence, and Insurgency, insurgencies that took place in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, SFR Yugoslavia from ...
. On 30 April 1999 the Free Art Campaign announces that Maver has been found dead in a prison cell in
Podgorica
Podgorica (Cyrillic script, Cyrillic: Подгорица, ; Literal translation, lit. 'under the hill') is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Montenegro, largest city of Montenegro. The city was formerly known as Titograd ...
, Montenegro. In March 2000, after alternative art spaces such as Kapelica Gallery in
Ljubljana
Ljubljana (also known by other historical names) is the capital and largest city of Slovenia. It is the country's cultural, educational, economic, political and administrative center.
During antiquity, a Roman city called Emona stood in the ar ...
,
Forte Prenestino
CSOA Forte Prenestino is a large self-managed social centre based in a squatted fort in Centocelle, Rome. It was occupied on May Day 1986. Forte Prenestino is an "important node of production of
cultural and political events" and hosts many group ...
in
Rome
, established_title = Founded
, established_date = 753 BC
, founder = King Romulus (legendary)
, image_map = Map of comune of Rome (metropolitan city of Capital Rome, region Lazio, Italy).svg
, map_caption ...
, and major art venues such as the
Venice Biennale
The Venice Biennale (; it, La Biennale di Venezia) is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy by the Biennale Foundation. The biennale has been organised every year since 1895, which makes it the oldest of ...
have dedicated retrospectives and paid tribute to the artist, the Luther Blissett Project, along with the newborn net art collective
0100101110101101.org, announce that Darko Maver is himself a work of art.
* 2007 — A month before the appearance on the bookshelves of ''
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
''Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows'' is a fantasy novel written by British author J. K. Rowling and the seventh and final novel of the main ''Harry Potter'' series. It was released on 21 July 2007 in the United Kingdom by Bloomsbury Publi ...
'', an email was sent to the ''
Full Disclosure
Full disclosure or Full Disclosure may refer to:
Computers
* Full disclosure (computer security), in computer security the practice of publishing analysis of software vulnerabilities as early as possible
* Full disclosure (mailing list), a mail ...
'' mailing list. In the e-mail, a self-declared group of Catholic hackers purportedly gave away the ending of the book, declaring they violated the computer systems of
Bloomsbury
Bloomsbury is a district in the West End of London. It is considered a fashionable residential area, and is the location of numerous cultural, intellectual, and educational institutions.
Bloomsbury is home of the British Museum, the largest mus ...
(exclusive publisher of the Harry Potter books) to obtain it. The e-mail quoted
Joseph Ratzinger
Pope Benedict XVI ( la, Benedictus XVI; it, Benedetto XVI; german: link=no, Benedikt XVI.; born Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger, , on 16 April 1927) is a retired prelate of the Catholic church who served as the head of the Church and the sovereign ...
's words against Harry Potter. The news escalated from niche IT security mailing lists to mainstream media outlets, and in about 48 hours, it was run by
CNN
CNN (Cable News Network) is a multinational cable news channel headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. Founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable news channel, and presently owned by the M ...
,
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board ex ...
,
Reuters
Reuters ( ) is a news agency owned by Thomson Reuters Corporation. It employs around 2,500 journalists and 600 photojournalists in about 200 locations worldwide. Reuters is one of the largest news agencies in the world.
The agency was estab ...
, and over 9000 blogs (declared in the claim). Three days after, Luther Blissett claimed responsibility for the
hoax
A hoax is a widely publicized falsehood so fashioned as to invite reflexive, unthinking acceptance by the greatest number of people of the most varied social identities and of the highest possible social pretensions to gull its victims into pu ...
in a public email in which he described how easily the media could be manipulated and how this could be used for
psyops
Psychological warfare (PSYWAR), or the basic aspects of modern psychological operations (PsyOp), have been known by many other names or terms, including Military Information Support Operations (MISO), Psy Ops, political warfare, "Hearts and Mi ...
purposes. The revelation was ignored by most media outlets, with the notable exception of Noticiasdot, which published an interview with Luther Blissett. The psyop may be the cause of the 5% drop of
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Bloomsbury Publishing plc is a British worldwide publishing house of fiction and non-fiction. It is a constituent of the FTSE SmallCap Index. Bloomsbury's head office is located in Bloomsbury, an area of the London Borough of Camden. It has a ...
stock quoted on the London Stock Exchange.
''Q''
The novel ''Q'' was written by four Bologna-based members of the LBP (Roberto Bui, Giovanni Cattabriga, Federico Guglielmi and Luca Di Meo), as a final contribution to the project, and published in Italy in 1999. So far, it has been translated into English (British and American), Spanish, German, Dutch, French, Portuguese (Brazilian), Danish, Polish, Greek, Czech, Russian, Turkish, Basque, Serbian and Korean. In August 2003 the book was nominated for the ''Guardian'' First Book Prize.
In January 2000, after their "
seppuku
, sometimes referred to as hara-kiri (, , a native Japanese kun reading), is a form of Japanese ritual suicide by disembowelment. It was originally reserved for samurai in their code of honour but was also practised by other Japanese people ...
", the authors of ''Q'' formed a new group called
Wu Ming
Wu Ming, Chinese for "anonymous", is a pseudonym for a group of Italian authors formed in 2000 from a subset of the Luther Blissett community in Bologna.
Four of the group earlier wrote the novel '' Q'' (first edition 1999). Unlike the open nam ...
(
Chinese
Chinese can refer to:
* Something related to China
* Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity
**''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation
** List of ethnic groups in China, people of va ...
for "nameless"), under which name many novels were published in several languages and countries.
Real Luther Blissett
The multiple identity is named after the
association football
Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 players who primarily use their feet to propel the ball around a rectangular field called a pitch. The objective of the game is ...
er Luther Blissett, who used to play for
Watford F.C.
Watford Football Club is an English professional football club based in Watford, Hertfordshire. They play in the EFL Championship, the second tier of English football.
The club’s original foundation is 1881, aligned with that of its antecede ...
and
A.C. Milan
Associazione Calcio Milan (), commonly referred to as AC Milan or simply Milan, is a professional football club in Milan, Italy, founded in 1899. The club has spent its entire history, with the exception of the 1980–81 and 1982–83 seasons ...
in the 1980s, among other teams. It is particularly popular among Italian subcultural activists and artists, possibly because of the Milan connection. The reasons the group chose the name remain unclear to mainstream journalists (e.g. the
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board ex ...
suggested that Blissett, one of the first black footballers to play in Italy, may have been chosen to make a statement against right-wing extremists in the country). It has also been suggested that, when being scouted by
A. C. Milan
Associazione Calcio Milan (), commonly referred to as AC Milan or simply Milan, is a professional football club in Milan, Italy, founded in 1899. The club has spent its entire history, with the exception of the 1980–81 and 1982–83 seasons ...
, the
Watford
Watford () is a town and borough in Hertfordshire, England, 15 miles northwest of Central London, on the River Colne.
Initially a small market town, the Grand Junction Canal encouraged the construction of paper-making mills, print works, a ...
player they were impressed with was in fact
John Barnes
John Charles Bryan Barnes MBE (born 7 November 1963) is a former professional football player and manager. He currently works as an author, commentator and pundit for ESPN and SuperSport. Initially a quick, skilful left winger, he moved to cent ...
and they mistakenly bid for Blissett being one of the two black strikers at the club. If this is the case, the group may have taken the name as a reference to a
red herring
A red herring is a figurative expression referring to a logical fallacy in which a clue or piece of information is or is intended to be misleading, or distracting from the actual question.
Red herring may also refer to: Animals
* Red herring (fis ...
.
Since the beginning of the project, the real Blissett has been aware of the group taking his name. However, early reports differed widely in saying whether he liked the attention he received because of them. On 30 June 2004 he appeared on the British television sports show ''
Fantasy Football League
''Fantasy Football League'' is a British television comedy programme hosted by David Baddiel and Frank Skinner. It was inspired by the Fantasy Football phenomenon which started in the early 1990s and followed on from a BBC Radio 5 programme ho ...
- Euro 2004'', broadcast on
ITV
ITV or iTV may refer to:
ITV
*Independent Television (ITV), a British television network, consisting of:
** ITV (TV network), a free-to-air national commercial television network covering the United Kingdom, the Isle of Man, and the Channel Islan ...
, and joked about his own (alleged) involvement in the Luther Blissett Project. After host
Frank Skinner
Christopher Graham Collins (born 28 January 1957), professionally known as Frank Skinner, is an English comedian, actor, presenter and writer. At the 2001 British Comedy Awards, he was named Best Comedy Entertainment Personality. His televisio ...
read a line from the novel ''Q'' prologue ("The coin of the kingdom of the mad dangles on my chest to remind me of the eternal oscillation of human fortunes"), Blissett produced a copy of Luther Blissett's Italian book ''Totò, Peppino e la guerra psichica'' (Toto, Peppino and the psychic war) and quoted extensively from it, in the original Italian: ''"Chiunque può essere Luther Blissett, semplicemente adottando il nome Luther Blissett"'' (Anyone can be Luther Blissett simply by adopting the name Luther Blissett). At the end of the show, hosts and guests all said in unison: "I am Luther Blissett!" Two years later, highlights of this broadcast were posted on
YouTube
YouTube is a global online video platform, online video sharing and social media, social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by ...
.
Luther Blissett fantasy footballer
YouTube.com.
Works
* ''Mind Invaders'' (Italian, 1995).
* "Guy Debord è morto davvero" (Italian, 1995; English edition
"Guy Debord is Really Dead"
* ''Totò, Peppino e la guerra psichica 2.0'' (Toto, Peppino and the psychic war), AAA edition, 1996,
* '' Green Apocalypse'' (with Stewart Home
Kevin Llewellyn Callan (born 24 March 1962), better known as Stewart Home, is an English artist, filmmaker, writer, pamphleteer, art historian, and activist. His novels include the non-narrative ''69 Things to Do with a Dead Princess'' (2002), an ...
, 1996)
* '' Anarchist Integralism'' (1997)
* ''Handbuch der Kommunikationsguerilla'' ("Handbook of a Communications Fighter", German, 1997, with autonome a.f.r.i.k.a. gruppe and Sonja Brünzels)
* '' Q'' (Italian, 1999)
*
Luther Blissett - The Open Pop Star
' (Italian, 1999 compilation album of electronic / experimental music by various artists)
* ''The Invisible College
Invisible College is the term used for a small community of interacting scholars who often met face-to-face, exchanged ideas and encouraged each other. One group that has been described as a precursor group to the Royal Society of London consis ...
'' (2002)
* Numerous software
Software is a set of computer programs and associated documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work.
At the lowest programming level, executable code consists ...
recipes in the ''Python
Python may refer to:
Snakes
* Pythonidae, a family of nonvenomous snakes found in Africa, Asia, and Australia
** ''Python'' (genus), a genus of Pythonidae found in Africa and Asia
* Python (mythology), a mythical serpent
Computing
* Python (pro ...
Cookbook'' edited by Alex Martelli
Alex Martelli (born October 5, 1955) is an Italian computer engineer and Fellow of the Python Software Foundation. Since early 2005, he works for Google, Inc. in Mountain View, California, for the first few years as "Über Tech Lead," then as "Se ...
and published by O'Reilly and Associates
See also
*54 (novel)
''54'' is a novel by Wu Ming first published in Italian in 2002.
Wu Ming is a collective of five authors founded in 2000. The members were formerly associated with the Luther Blissett Project, and four of them wrote the international best-selling ...
*Eva and Franco Mattes
Eva & Franco Mattes (both born in Italy in 1976) are a duo of artists based in New York City. Operating under the pseudonym 0100101110101101.org, they are counted among the pioneers of the Net Art movement and are known for their subversion of pu ...
*Wu Ming
Wu Ming, Chinese for "anonymous", is a pseudonym for a group of Italian authors formed in 2000 from a subset of the Luther Blissett community in Bologna.
Four of the group earlier wrote the novel '' Q'' (first edition 1999). Unlike the open nam ...
References
External links
Luther Blissett Project website
(archives 1994-1999)
"Lots of Money Because I am Many: The Luther Blissett Project and the Multiple-Use Name Strategy"
- long essay by Marco Deseriis on the birth, life, and death of the Italian Luther Blissett Project.
*A very extensive and detailed interview with Wu Ming 1 and Wu Ming 2 (ex-Blissetts from Bologna
Bologna (, , ; egl, label= Emilian, Bulåggna ; lat, Bononia) is the capital and largest city of the Emilia-Romagna region in Northern Italy. It is the seventh most populous city in Italy with about 400,000 inhabitants and 150 different nat ...
) about the Luther Blissett Project, conducted by professor Henry Jenkins
Henry Jenkins III (born June 4, 1958) is an American media scholar and Provost Professor of Communication, Journalism, and Cinematic Arts, a joint professorship at the University of Southern California (USC) Annenberg School for Communication an ...
and published o
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Luther Blissett Myspace page featuring Blissett-to-Blissett interview in blog
lutherblissett
- a comic book artist tries on the name
Luther Blissett
journals and books digitized by Archive Grafton9 are freely available on archive.org
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Anonymity pseudonyms
International artist groups and collectives
20th-century Italian novelists
20th-century male writers
Psychogeographers
Culture jamming
Neoism
Lists of practical jokes
Hoaxers