NGS I T I WR TION D TE IA C C E L O E S - S THE AS OUS M ONOM S O R F AUT ONAUT F O R AST

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INTRODUCTION : THE OTHER SPACE AGE

The Association of Autonomous Astronauts consisted of an unknown number of chapters, groups, and collectives, formed in the wake of a 1995 call to action. As part of a 5 Year Plan, the founders of the AAA called for the creation of a worldwide network of community-based AAA groups dedicated to building their own spaceships.In this sense, the AAA can be considered the first international network with aspirations towards becoming an intergalactic association. Yet the AAA expanded to become much more than simply a hobbyist group, initiating not only construction projects, but also challenging national space agencies and contractors with interests in space travel for control of the sky. The basic argument emerged that these institutions had completely failed in their attempts to access or provide access to the boundless possibility of space, and that it was time for them to relinquish control of the means of exploration to the passionate multitudes. The AAAs project can be viewed in a variety of ways. In a sense, it was profoundly Utopian, tapping into the dreams and desires of a previous generation. The 1950s is generally considered the heydey of the Space Age, when emerging technologies seemed to offer the possibility that excited adventurers worldwide would soon be able to pack their bags and blast off for a distant paradise. A variety of Science Fiction novels, comics, films and toys stand as testament to the palpable excitement of that generation. Yet by the 1960s, the terrifying realities of Space Travel were becoming clear. As Superpowers battled for hegemony, the possibility for autonomous space travel as a luxury was diminished. Meanwhile, resistance movements were crushed by both Soviet Tanks and US Marines, as the world became increasingly industrialized and nuclear war loomed.

Subsequent Dystopian fiction paints a disturbing picture of humans struggling to escape their own toxic atmosphere. With the emergence of the Environmental movement, it became painfully clear how terribly we had treated our planet. Furthermore, the consistent failure of Governments to give up nuclear armaments, or scale back extensive military spending, convinced many that their current planet was doomed. As social change seemed to become increasingly impossible, the idea of exile amongst the stars gained a certain allure. It stands as a testament to the AAAs growth, to its ability to inspire and engage thousands, that the movement cannot be correctly classified within any particular tendancy. As the following texts show, the interests, desires and motivations were incredibly diverse, as would be expected from a group that included artists and agitators, sports enthusiasts and technicians. Brian Holmes quotes an AAA member talking about their group as a Collective Phantom, in a book of the same name. It is not difficult to see how the group comprises the perfect cross-sectional example of the aesthetic and affective avant-garde of the late twentieth century.As Stepven Shukiatis writes in his book Imaginal Machines, While the AAA initially emerged very much out of the mail art and pscyhogeography scene, their efforts were intended to take the practice of the collective name and extend it from being an artistic practice to a wider form of organizing and political action. Artistically, the group had strong connections to the emerging internet art scene, with an early conference being held at cyberculture center Public Netbase in Vienna, and with the internet being a major medium for the dissemination of the project. Many creators had previously been involved in the creation of zines, small DIY publications like the one youre holding, and the low-fi, easily replicable aesthetic they represented continued to be present in many of the groups works. The most notable juncture, however, was between the AAA and the emerging Rave culture, since both had as their aim a reevaluation and liberation of space.

The AAA started to become a political current through defense of artistic spaces, protests at Space Agencies and contractors and through participation in the Reclaim the Streets dance parties that tore through urban areas in the last part of the century. AAAs politics drew from Anarchist, Autonomist and general Anti-Authoritarian tendencies, with AAA chapters often being strongest in cities with a history of revolt. Luther Blisset, a British footballer who found his name used as a pseudonym by dissidents in Italy, also found extra work as a spokesperson for the AAA. While some groups espoused a sort of New Age enlightenment approach, or advocated delicate culture jamming, more urban chapters saw their quest for spatial exodus as a part of a global class struggle. As such, the AAA played a part in events like the London Carnival Against Capitalism. In fact, it would be reasonable to argue that the AAA played a major role in constituting the anti-globalization movement, despite the fact that they claimed to be interested in fighting for anything but the globe. Though the organization dissolved months before the Seattle uprising in 1999, the experience gained in building a global network of artists and activists would prove invaluable for the coming conflict. Furthermore, the subversive, playful dissent employed by Astronauts would be taken up by some of the more effective anti-globalization groups. What are the stars but points in the body of God where we insert the healing needles of our terror and longing?, writes Thomas Pynchon, in his postmodern classic Gravitys Rainbow. It seems at times that the Association of Autonomous Astronauts might, in fact, be not that interested in space itself. To a large degree, the militarization, corporatization and domination of Space by governments and corporations mirrors the control those agencies leverage over our current home. By critiquing society at the level of its imaginary, the AAA allows itself to engage in Utopian fantasies seemingly rendered impossible by the fall of Communism and Neoliberal hegemony. Each will have his own personal rocket, dreams Pynchon and the Autonomous Astronauts.

PHILOSOPHY
INTO THE VOID
MIND THE GAP

SPATIAL PRACTICES & ELLIPTICAL ACTION

CHRISTPHE CAUCHY, AAA PARIS SUD

ESCAPE FROM DIMENSIONALITY

NOMAD AAA

POLITICS
WE HAVE A WORLD TO LEAVE BEHIND
INNER CITY AAA RAIDO AAA

WHO OWNS OUTER SPACE? THEY NEVER REACHED THE MOON INFORMATION WAR
RAIDO AAA DISCONAUT AAA

LEISURE
SEX, ROCKETS AND BLACK MAGIC
EWEN CHADRONNET LUTHER BLISSET, RAIDO AAA

SEX IN OUTER SPACE

EAST LONDON AAA

INTRO TO 3-SIDED FOOTBALL [SOCCER]

LEGACY
TAKE A DANCING FLIGHT
DIONYSUS AAA

SPACE TRAVEL: BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY

JASON SKEET, INNER CITY AAA

THE DREAM IS JUST THE BEGINNING

KERNOW AAA (c) in space, nobody can read your copyright.

PHILOSOPHY

INTO THE VOID

MIND THE GAP MAGAZINE
The concept of the Void has been with us since language began, perhaps even before. The precise word comes from Ancient Greece where it literally meant nothing. It was the empty space between things, according to the atomists. Others refused to except its existence. As Parmenides (always the smart arse) pointed out, if the Void exists it is something, therefore it is not no-thing, which cannot by definition exist. Atomists retorted with the abstract concepts of non objective or negative existence but these were a strange idea for most people and was even considered an embarrassing fiddle by many atomists. But it also seemed likely that the Void must exist, for without it motion and change seemed impossible, without it we had either the fixed world of the plenum, the instability of an insubstantial turmoil or nothing at all. A couple of wise guy Athenians tried to take the middle option and add-on a concept of Forms, to explain both stable order and occasional change, but, like the atomists non-objective existence, these undemonstrable abstractions convinced only the religious. The problem they failed to solve was that no-thing is also every-thing, it is Chaos. Chaos, as the primal potential containing everything (first hinted at in the cosmology of Anaxagoras), still existed after the emergence of order, in the gap between things. Metaphysical sophistry you may cry (well some of you might). But modern science points us in this direction as well. Even the tiniest region of apparently empty space is now believed to contain infinite quantum field potential, a sea of ghostly particles of everykind, that are there and not there simultaneously.

This has recently been experimentally demonstrated. The resultant paradigm not only confirms these views of the Void, but also aspects of all the other perspectives.Chaos rules.

But the concept of the Void has more uses than just cosmological dialogues. The whole of existence can be put into the context of the Void, it is the one universal metaphor. It is the ultimate reality. Many have written of it. It is the Chaosmos of Joyce, Mallarmes mime of the imaginary, the sublime Hymen of Derrida and the uterine, Semiotic Space of Kristeva [Fucking name dropper! ED]. It is the only reality to which all concepts refer, the container of all ideas and the ultimate abyss into which they collapse. As the rhizomatic chaos of Deleuze it connects all things, it is the only unity [Ok, ok we get the picture ED]. But back to the everyday. The human value of this view is the freedom it brings. Without it we are trapped within dogmatic truths, logical prisons, limiting worldviews and exclusionist ideologies. Under it we can no longer create binding, deterministic models of the world. Potential lies within every situation, limited only by our imagination and a vastly reduced set of formal conditionals. The Void is the imaginal space of Castoriadis and his Situationist acolytes. It is the seedbed of revolution.

Since Nietzsche, a current has existed that seeks to free itself from limitation and oppressive structures...
This is has proved not to be easy (certainly not as easy as say, the dreamy optimists of 60s counter culture believed), the extreme experimentation of Foucault and his followers have shown us the barriers that need to be broken through. But the struggle goes on, and not without some personal successes. The bourgeois bastille is beginning to crumble. Nietzsche came up with the ultimate symbolism for this process, of personal and social liberation, when he writes of a time to leave the safety of dry land, get on board ship and voyage out into uncharted seas. He makes good use of the traditional metaphor of the Ocean, as Chaos and the Void, throughout his works. Ultimately his mission is to find new land across this imaginal Ocean, or die in the process, but it was the journey and the Ocean itself, with all its potentials and dangers, which fascinated him most of all. Elsewhere he refers to his lonely strolls in the mountains in the same vein, using this as a transcendental metaphor. But his most influential symbolism arose when he combined these two ideas (perhaps under the influence of the contemporary popularity of Jules Verne) into the imagery of the aeronauts of the spirit.

It was not a great leap of the imagination for 20th century intellectuals influenced by Nietzsche to extend this symbolism into its ultimate form. The journey beyond Earth itself into deep space. Some of the first manifestations of this were amongst the Russian nihilist and anarchist artists of the turn of the century, who saw space (as the region beyond the atmosphere) as a zone of absolute freedom, or even the locale of the sublime. This latter view influenced the Russian anarchist artist Malevich, who wrote of breaking the blue boundary of the sky and a swimming in the sea of infinity. Alas, these ideas often contained elements of a mystical essentialism, and it was only in Dada (partly influenced by the earlier Russians) that the Void really began to be presented in art. Much later the beatnik idol William Burroughs when commenting on the space race restated the metaphor when he said, Space is dream... Why move a PX with all your dreary verbal preconceptions to the moon? To travel in space you must leave the old verbal garbage behind: God talk, priest talk, mother talk, family talk, party talk, country talk. You must learn to exist with no religion, no country... You must learn to see what is in front of you with no preconceptions. Around the same time the Scottish wing of the Situationist International, Alexander Trocchi, was also playing with the metaphor and declaring himself an astronaut of inner space. These ideas of Burroughs and Trocchi were to have a lasting effect on contemporary counter culture. Space is the perfect metaphor for the Void. Reaching it certainly isnt easy, even after we have summoned up the courage to leave the safety of a stable world, a considerable amount gravity has to be overcome before we are free of the Earths strong attraction. Once in space though we enter the free-fall of zero gravity and begin our liberation from terrestrial limitation. An aspect of the metaphor profitably elaborated on by Timothy Leary, who described it as the hedonic conquest of gravity, the turn-on state, comparable with the Zen buddhist metaphor of enlightenment as a Floating... One foot above the ground. Mystical speculations aside, it is interesting that Learys other, more scientific, observation, that 85% of astronauts have entered altered states of consciousness as a re-

sult of space travel, may mean that space is more than just a metaphor for the Void, or perhaps rather, that it has incredibly symbolic power [But fucking on hash is cheaper. ED]. And certainly the potential inherent in space exploration has real, material consequences as well as symbolic meaning. As groups like the AAA have pointed out in recent years, with their entertaining presentation of both the abstract and concrete significance of space travel. Another aspect of the space metaphor is that once in free-fall it is very easy to become captivated by the gravitating effects of nearby planets, particularly the one we recently escaped. Even astronauts can get trapped in orbit, a state that may ultimately lead to a very hard fall back down to Earth. Deep interstellar space alone frees us from these gravitational dangers (though it is only in the intergalactic regions that we are entirely free of significant influence, but here we also lack stars to guide us. And life without ideals is difficult). The Void of space is as much of an abyss as any Void but dangers here are of an extreme sort, ranging from the annihilation of all matter and form in the absolute Void of a collapsed star, through the destruction inherent in approaching too close to an active one, to the alienation, impatient tedium and apparent pointlessness of a decades long journey between two. The worst danger however is the overreaction of the weak spirited to such extreme conditions, and lack of orientation, in the creation of rigid local structures (prophesized in Sci Fi visions of a technocratic and militaristic star fleet). A process that eventually fixates life and throws it into conflict with all that is outside it.

Fortunately no one can live in the Void forever, and the aim here as in all journeys is to reach other worlds. But the emphasis will be on the plural. Whether we choose to live on a new planet orbiting some distant star, an artificial, private space station in permanent orbit around it, in worlds orbiting other stars or travel nomadically between all of these, our alternatives will be endless.

SPATIAL PRACTICES AND ELLIPTICAL ACTION

CHRISTPHE CAUCHY, AAA PARIS SUD MESSAGE 1 : ELLIPTICAL ACTION
To hell with phoney scientific disputes surrounding space exploration! The AAA plan to develop a programme of autonomisation in the field of spatial activity, to which each human brain will be a gateway. We want to show how important the elliptical cognitive capacities will be to future explorers of hyperspace. This elliptical conception of action refers to a whole body of complex notions, a whole didactic system based on the symbolic and individual flourishing of future Autonomous Astronauts. In the murky debates of the boffins, the limits of legitimised cultural variation is never posed. Any deviation from the laws of the universe is completely disregarded. It is this arbitrary culture which we are fighting against and which we shall overcome. Elliptical action is not about objectified truth: it arises from questioning social conditions in a way that excludes the possibility of logical action. Elliptical action (or action in an ellipse) is defined as an action which can only realise its own (alogical) effect if its objective truth is subjectively misunderstood through the imposition of a serialised and instrumentalised process. Each autonomous spatial programme possesses the essence of its autonomisation within its very being. We are thus led to develop a collection of complex, self-regulated systems where the practical objectives of life in hyperspace are subjectivised. We can already decode certain signals or signsystems taken from various different galaxies. As institutionalised programmes such as NASA and ESA are straight-jacketed by arbitrary culture, our objective is to superceed the orginal relation whereby these pseudo-space programmes allow the arbitrary imposition of an arbitrary content. Thus non-violent or symbolic action is an incontravertible postulate of elliptical action (i.e. a collection of spontaneous and spontaneist representations of elliptical action), which is opposed to the symbolic violence exercised by any of the general theories of space. Thus our project is opposed to the rationalised and unidimensional content of future capitalist space.

The gateway to potential liberation which independant spatial exploration offers is based on the second characteristic of elliptical action: multi-dimensionality. This potentially emancipatory possibility destroys all bureaucratic values and rational goals. Our field of thought brings to light autonomous hyperspaces which are composed of non-heirarchical systems of ellipitical action. Elliptical action is not the fruit of reason - that quasi-religious notion upon which is based the limited and partial rationalistion of the phoney space programmes.

Our conception of space and time must henceforth reflexively include its own action within its own field. Thus the fundamental conditions are created for the possibility of the autonomisation of independant spatial activity.

MESSAGE 2 : SPATIAL PRACTICES

Having already proposed the essential maxims of Elliptical Action, we now wish to discuss the basic principles of independent space exploration. From a purely technical perspective, the existence of autonomous and subjective conditions regarding the practical aspects of spatial experience cannot be demonstrated any further. A number of issues have emerged and confirmed the validity of our aims. However, several questions still remain. According to the first contact made between the pioneers of independent space travel and previously unknown life-forms, the establishment of a two-way communication process requires that we leave behind a belief in the creative liberty of each individual. The specific contribution of every astronaut to the realisation of a spatial praxis goes through an exteriorisation and then rejection of the powerful relationships that affects a recognition by the other of our legitimacy. But, although it is difficult, this legitimacy can escape from the totalitarian culture which it objectifies. It is not only a relative force, supported by non-elliptical claims and actions.

That said, it does permit a direct expression across various elements of mediation, material concerns and symbolic representation. It allows the creation of cultural models that correspond to particular structures and forms of social routes. To reduce the level of communication with the other to within the totalitarian culture results in information being used as domination. Contrary to this, the purpose of Elliptical Action is, in a very profound sense, to transform information into formation.

Government space programs do not realize how the systems of production and distribution are well defined in economic and symbolic practice.
This type of practise excludes all possibility of elliptical information (see the recent developments in Information Theory). This is also equivalent to a rejection of the principle that there are many different ways to encounter Elliptical Action (condition no. 4).

It is because it lacks an economic or symbolic plan of any worth that our action will not aim at imposing its own legitimacy. On the contrary, so much is revealed of its own origins, it can do nothing but exclude from itself modes of production dominated by rational action.
If one does not negate the entropic effect of Elliptical Action, the elliptics and illusions which are attached favour a combination of the misunderstood and the recognised in what lies underneath, or the non-spoken. The emission and the comprehension of an elliptical message (under the conditions of intergration in an evoltionary spiral of infinite radius emanating from an point) cannot be deduced from its intrinsic characteristics. This is not a tacit delegation of a larger mass of information but a spontaneous translation of a higher subjective action.

Opposing the hetero-regulation of serialised spatial practises, the AAA network is working towards developing the conditions for autonomous space exploration. We must appreciate the value of practise, and of opinions and ideas that may be contradictory and divergent. Because it is not only about forgetting pre-determined choices as also having the determination to reproduce the subjects own intrinsic properties and dispositions regarding that which is to be considered as the studied object. Materially or symbolically the deviant object produces its own legitimacy. The process which aims to reduce the properties of the other object to the properties conferred on it by the dispositions (or intrinsic properties) of the transmitting subject, show the incapacity of science - in the pay of state controlled space agencies - to have an awareness of the weakness of their own investigations. The inability to think of the universe as a zerogravity space obstructs a mechanism that reveals the importance of a rational (and mercenary) exploration of it. Mapping out the elliptical dimensions of the galaxy, it is prepared for a rule of chaos which threatens any specific dynamics.

Any space/time voyage must be autonomous and independent because space itself demands it in all its autonomy and complexity. In this sense it cannot be and must not be given over to any established organisation which reduces it to an empty space of the senses.

MESSAGE 3 : THE WORST IS YET TO COME!

Not only is modern man incapable of leaving the onedimensional world in which he remains locked - thanks to the laws of gravity - but, moreover, he is ignorant of the extent of his freedom. The approach to ellipsis can and must be seen as a betrayal of the liberal model of community; an ideal which aims at enriching man in all kinds of civilised characteristics: moral judgement, reason, private property, guilt...The sacredness of the individual and his inalienable rights and freedoms? Lets not wait! Autonomous space has made such questions pointless. Elliptical Action is not an excercise based on pre-established references and contingencies.

On the contrary, the Galaxy, as mysterious as it is unfathomable, offers us the opportunity to free ourselves from humanist thought (or, one could say, from anthrocentric obsession). Is individual well-being compatible with any social system? Who cares! What we envisage isnt the problem of establishing a system of co-operation between individuals who each hope to benefit, thus reinforcing the idea of freedom that must be fought for and won. The world is not space, it is not even a deformity but rather a divergence. Autonomous spatial action cannot base itself on moral criteria or behavThe illusion of being understood and that of understanding reinforce each other - they dont, however, imply an understanding of this illusion. Yet this is a constituent element of Elliptical Action (condition Number 5), and thus of the autonomisation of eliptical space. The statutory legitimacy of Man is an illusion, and nothing more. Reason is a means of perpetuating what one has acquired, a particular manner of using what one has acquired in expressing the principles of an objectified relationship between what has been acquired and a collection of social or spatial characteristics that are still to be acquired. For us, as Autonomous Astronauts, illusion is a parabola on which we nourish our autonomy. The subjective nature of our action defines the VIRTUAL ELLIPTIC. Experience, sense and being are closely linked in an expanding universe. The relationship to the Cosmos is indivisible from the spatial practice. In effect, Elliptical Action is perceived (not conceived) as the product of the interiorisation of subjectice conditions of existence in space which arise from the interrelationship between an object with divergent rationality, an alien (time traveller) and a collection of dispositions on the perpetual interactions within the universe. How can one render obsolete the notion that he who acts must refer, even without knowing it, to a subset of determinations objectivising the space in which he is deployed?

ESCAPE FROM DIMENSIONALITY

NOMAD AAA
In order for us to fully imagine the practicalities and possibilites of space exploration, the Nomad AAA believe that we must start from the premise that all current notions of dimensionality, all our known relations with time and space, should be rejected immediately. Many eastern philosophies have no room for Aristotelian logic, the right and the wrong, the up and the down. They have made a logical spiritual progression from linear poles (the black vs. the white) towards a third path - a higher middle ground. Polarity (by its nature a human conceit) cannot exist in space - like the Grand Old Duke, in space we are neither Up nor Down. If we therefore discount such two-dimensional existence, it follows that a middle or third way cannot exist either, as it is defined by the very things it proports to transcend. It would seem that to exist in space, we must then reject not only the polar opposites and the third path but in fact all perceived forms of earth-bound dimensionality. We cannot therefore have the fifth dimension of time if we have discounted all others. We only need to examine the common misaprehension that time is linear to see how shallow the concept really is. Spiritualists may argue that time flows in both directions, but they succeed only in grounding themselves in the belief that there are only two ways to travel. Earthbound time, as a concept, must therefore also be discarded. With all dimensions thus dissolved, we cannot therefore allow ourselves to be blinded by the fundamental ideology that we exist in any here or now. We are the only species on this planet that concerns itself so destructively with the concepts of age and location. In space ones place and date of birth will be deemed nonsensical.

Whilst acknowledging that the concept of the nomad is still dimensionally bound, the Nomad AAA has re-defined the notion of no fixed abode to include both space and time. If we are to be Nomadic travellers through space, we must start this process by relinquishing the harness of our address. We must open our minds to the concept of living everywhere and everywhen. Just as the Nomad AAA has no affinity to an anchor of place through time, we also have no attachment to property. The notion that we can somehow own material goods and property is a necessary myth in order to convince us to look down, to look away and to keep our heads ferociously buried in the sand. By focusing so much on the empire we build around us, consumerism forces us into a corner of our own construction - we become ensconced in camps, surrounded by high-wire perimeter fences, and as much as we convince ourselves that we are building a protective shell, we are actually building our own prison cell.

Therefore, in order to effect such true nomadism, the Nomad AAA also seeks to relinquish as many physical and material ties as possible.

By thus relinquishing all frames of reference to the earthbound self, the Nomad AAA skip, hops and jumps onto an evolutionary crest that carries themselves, along with the flourishing AAA community world-wide, towards a future diametrically opposed to our current state of being. Such a vision naturally confuses and irritates the WoMan on the ground, and it is for that specific reason that the Nomad AAA undertakes to promote, cajole and vociferously challenge todays status quo.

The Nomad AAA believes that an escape from gravity will lead not only to an escape from dimensionality, but ultimately to an escape from what we notionally call Reality. Once we have touched the sky, our minds will be tuned into an existence of infinite possibilities

SMASH THE HOTELS, SQUAT THE MOON

POLITICS

WE HAVE A WORLD TO LEAVE BEHIND

My Lord, we are Four or Five, some say Honest, others Foolish, but all say Drunken Fellows, now drinking Your Lordships Health at the Tavern; and our Poetical Inclinations are all attended with Poetical Pockets. Some of us have Six-pence and Eight Farthings, some neither Eight Farthings nor a Sixpence; so that the chiefest of our dependence is upon the strength of this Dedication. And since the Majority of Us are too dirty for Your Levee, we have pickd out the nicest Spark of us All, to make this present by. Tom Brown - Petition to the Earl of Dorset (Miscellanies Over Claret, 1697) London offers many possibilities for inner city space exploration programmes. As a city composed of startling contrasts and diverse zones of experience, London inhabitants use urban space in a variety of ways, not all of which are sanctioned by the authorities. London continues to observe a multitude of everyday conflicts, including the Association of Autonomous Astronauts own explorations into sex in zero gravity, raves in space and games of three-sided football. With this in mind, Inner City AAA have conducted an intense series of researches into the psychogeographical qualities of various London sites, and we are now able to announce that our first launch pad has been successfully located in Grub Street. Grub Street entered the language in the 17th Century and became a household phrase in Hanoverian England, a metaphor for the seamier side of life. Grub Street was a place of filth, clutter, noise and squalor, home to crowds of sharpers, thieves, beggars and harlots. Then, following the lapse of the Press Licensing Act in 1695, scores of printing presses based themselves in the area, accompanied by the writers that could now hope to make a living from their newly established profession, no longer having to depend on the patronage of aristocrats.

INNER CITY AAA

Grub Street came to be associated with the literary hacks that lived and worked there throughout the 17th and 18th Centuries. The huge increase in publishing fed the growing appetite of a predominantly middle-class reading public. But this rise of a publishing industry also increased the availability of politically subversive texts, broadsheets and pamphlets that were largely self-published and that created a dynamic within society still present today. For example, the various conflicts over the idea of free expression on the Internet can be traced back to the antagonisms created by the culture of Grub Street. The denizens of Grub Street created an atmosphere of sedition and revolt, of combat with the forces of law and order. Grub Sreet lay just outside of the old medieval city wall, and had always been a space beyond the control of city authorities. Milton had once lived in the area, and in 1830 Grub Street was replaced with its present-day designation as Milton Street, in an attempt to clean up its popular image as a place of nonexistent morals, distinct street life and hang-outs for disreputable writers. These ghosts still remain, and Inner City AAA have reclaimed the cultural heritage of Grub Street in order to refuse the Victorians their sanctimonious cover-up. We have located our launch pad at the northern end of Grub Street, in an empty and derelict square that lies several feet beneath road level, and forms part of an abandoned building that was a former college of higher education. Our seizure of this space demonstrates the AAAs tactic of taking whatever we can find and making our own use out of it. In addition, this specific site, a former educational establishment, is used to reflect the AAAs attitude towards the organisation of knowledge within western culture. The AAA has resisted intellectual specialisation by promoting transversal approaches that combine different and diverse ways of thinking. Much of the original Grub Street has been swallowed up by the Barbican, a huge complex of luxury flats, art galleries, cinemas and a library. Our Grub Street launch pad is also near the financial centre of London, the square mile that forms a nerve centre for capitalism. By situating our launch pad here we have deliberately put ourselves in close proximity to the very culture that we intend to destroy by building and successfully launching our own spaceships. Despite the number of surveillance cameras in the area, our games of three-sided football have confirmed that the authorities are not equipped for preventing us from using this site as our chosen launch pad.

Grub is derived from the old English word grube meaning a drain or ditch. Close to Grub Street a tributary stream had ran to the notorious Fleet Ditch near Holborn. These ditches were used for hundreds of years as sewers by local residents. Even dead bodies could be found dumped in these disgusting waters. Even though this water has long since been concreted over, our investigations have shown that it still flows beneath our launch site, and we have already began exploring ways of tapping into the psychic energies associated with underground rivers. These forces will assist our plans for independent space exploration, and help us as we continue to generate a huge underswell of activity that connects with our network of groups dedicated to developing strategies for escaping gravity. Grub can also refer to a maggot or worm that is able to infest a larger body, and digest it from the inside out. Our Grub Street launch site is also then the ideal spot for plotting further media invasion campaigns. This element to our space exploration program aims at planting ideas within a variety of contexts, ideas that are able to resist the filtering techniques applied by commercial publishers and broadcasters. As these idea grubs penetrate the thick flesh of the media, the concept of independent, community-based space travel is taken and used by people who may not even know of the AAAs existence. The culture of Grub Street contributed to the development of satire as a weapon against the prevailing order. Inner City AAA has located its launch pad in Grub Street in order to continue these Grubbaen tendencies, and to make satire a tool for community-based space exploration. But whereas in the 17th and 18th Centuries Grub Street and its libertine persuasions existed as a physical location in the geography of London, the forces of social control have since then significantly developed their own strategies for coercion. Now Grub Street must be reclaimed, not only by locating our launch site here, but also as part of a geography of the imagination, as a Grub Street of the mind that combines semiotic terrorism, self-confessed propaganda, information warfare, comical devices, cultural sabotage and a wicked, twisted sense of the absurd.

WHO OWNS OUTER SPACE?

RAIDO AAA
It is a truism that in current society you can have anything you want, as long as you can afford to pay the price. Everything is one big shop window on planet earth, and for those of us tired of shopping, withdrawal often seems like the best solution. But increasingly, even the avenues of escape are being auctioned off to the highest bidders. An organisation calling itself the Lunar Embassy1 is already selling the moon piece by piece. $16 dollars (plus tax and shipping, of course) will buy you a 1,777 acre patch on the lightside. ...probably the most romantic and original present you could ever give to a loved one. Sharing this gift under a full moon has become the pass-time of many of our clients, romantics and visionaries from all over the world earth, and for those of us tired of shopping, withdrawal often seems like the best solution. But increasingly, even the avenues of escape are being auctioned off to the highest bidders. The Lunar Embassy boasts 16 years in business and over 7,000 satisfied customers, including 2 former US Presidents!. Registered under the US Homestead Act of 1862, their right to do this is the ancient swindle yet again: Its a bit like the old west: Who stakes their claim on a piece of land get the best property....as the Americans were the first to walk on the moon and plant their flag on it...it could be argued that if the Moon belonged to anyone, it certainly belongs more to the USA than any other nation. It is, admittedly, early days yet - and were sure that the legality of this venture will be challenged (not

least by the Universal Lunarian Society, who are selling off chunks of the lunar crater Copernicus for $50 an acre). It seems likely that the argument will revolve around who owns the moon and planets, rather than if such a concept is desirable in the first place.

The Association of Autonomous Astronauts are trying to achieve new ways of living in outer space. Ways that go way beyond our conceptions of existence on planet earth. Ways that allow people to achieve their full potentials, exercise their imaginations and... well, we dont even know the rest yet...
Weve been working towards this aim for 2 years now and were only beginning to see the full extent of the possibilities. Were also beginning to see our ideas become co-opted by the powers that be. At the end of last year NASA and the Space Transport Association (an alliance of 16 aerospace firms) signed an agreement with a view to establishing a space tourism business. Dr Jack Mansfield, who signed the agreement for NASA had this to say: Up till now, space has been a young mans game, an astronaut game, a government game. Soon it will be anybodys game, as costs come down. From now on, NASA is in the business of helping people to make money out of space.

We expect to have our ideas ripped off, but were far from happy at having them sold back to us at a profit afterwards.
Space Tourism looks like the big thing for the next decade, with early estimates (both Japanese and American) putting flights at the year 2010. Dont hold your breath, though. It looks like another diversion for the oh so world-weary rich. $4,000 dollars a ticket will gain entry to the proposed space hotels which will include all the usual consumables like sports facilities, TV, a low gravity shower, karaoke, and a window view of the Earth5. Even when the price inevitably decreases, the prospect of Butlins on the moon is too disgusting a waste to contemplate. We dont want to leave the planet only to find another High Street full of WH Smiths and Burger Kings.

The moon is a barren wasteland... sunbathing is out because there is no ozone layer shielding you from radiation.

Tourism is about maintaining your composure, about bringing your hang ups and parochial attitudes to other places. It is a sterile, pre-packaged adventure to take your mind off the stresses of home. We want to travel, to explore, to take control of our own lives and share our experiences with those we encounter. We want to take chances, not holiday snaps. The Catholic Church has also entered the picture. 4 centuries after burning philosopher Giordana Bruno at the stake for having the temerity to suggest that there may be an infinite amount of planets, they have also teamed up with NASA. Father George Coyne, Director of the Vatican Observatory, is looking for life on other planets - so he can convert them to Christianity. Words fail us! As ever, the most interesting developments lie outside of the shopping precincts and boardrooms. The street finds its uses for everything. There is already a network of hobbyists building rockets in their garden sheds and garages. A group of hackers working under the name H4G13 managed to bring chaos to NASAs WWW server earlier this year with a fraction of their computing power and resources.

The AAA doesnt need a business plan to get off the planet the most powerful rocket fuel we have is the power of imagination.

THEY NEVER REACHED THE MOON

The Apollo moon landings between 1969 and 1972 are presented by NASA as the highest point of the space programme, and as model for all future adventures. In reality nothing better demonstrates why it is unfit to explore anything more exciting than the inside of the Science Museum. A favourite question for conspiracy theorists worldwide is whether the moon landings actually happened or whether the whole thing was faked in a TV studio like in the film Capricorn One. If we give NASA the benefit of the doubt and allow that it may have sent a rocket somewhere it is clear that they never reached the moon, or at least not the moon as it has been known through the ages. This was not the moon of heretics, pagans, lovers or night time revellers. The moon of tides, madness, goddesses, rituals of drink, drugs and dancing. Neil Armstrong and his mates did not have the imagination for the kind of space travel needed to reach this moon. All they were able to reach was a lump of rock somewhere possibly in orbit, possibly in New Mexico somewhere. How did they mark this momentous occasion of the first landing on July 21 1969? The first thing they did was plant an American flag like it was just another piece of imperial real estate. By 1969 there were very few places left where it was safe to do so. Losing the war in Vietnam and with flags burning everywhere else, perhaps the whole space programme was an attempt to find a place where the Stars and Stripes could fly unmolested. The Apollo 14 moonlanding in 1971 witnessed another leap of fantasy and imagination when Alan Shepard became the worlds first lunar golfer. Billions of pounds and years of effort culminated in the staging of the first lunar open. All over the world, people are being uprooted and ecosystems bulldozed to build golf courses, sanitised homogenous outdoor playgrounds for the rich. Judging by the Apollo programme a similar fate awaits the universe if NASA have their way. The Apollo programme shows that no matter how many miles NASAnauts may travel they will never get anywhere because in their heads they will still be in the suburbs of middle class America, travelling across the universe opening golf courses and fly-through MacDonalds.

DISCONAUT AAA

INFOMATION WAR
Whilst space ships must enter the earths atmosphere at an angle of 33 degrees to avoid burn-out, the Association of Autonomous Astronauts desires only to leave this society behind. At 00.33 hrs on April 23rd 1996, on the first anniversary of the official launch of both our independent space exploration program and our Five Year Plan for establishing a world-wide network of local, community-based groups dedicated to building their own space ships, the Association of Autonomous Astronauts declares Information War against state controlled and government funded space agencies throughout the universe.

ANONYMOUS AAA CHAPTER

Apathy regarding space travel is now historically manufactured by the control and regulation of information relating to the forms and content of human space exploration. The technological elites attempt to inscribe on the landscape of our memories their own rupture with the history of space travel: their motto could be You will be going nowhere. You can only sit back and watch as we are the ones who will travel through the stars. The Information War declared by the Association of Autonomous Astronauts will liberate history and demonstrate what has always been known by those who will attempt the impossible to achieve the absurd. The Information War declared by the Association of Autonomous Astronauts threatens the twilight world of the technological elites. This Information War effort is the force which can create new concepts of space and of space travel. This Information War effort is also the critique of the current state, military and corporate monopoly of space exploration through which individuals and communities have to create places and events suitable for the seizure of, not just their own dreams of space travel, but also the appropriation of the entire history of human space exploration. The greatest evolutionary idea concerning space travel is not itself technological. It is the decision to reconstruct current attitudes to space travel in accordance with the needs of Autonomous Astronauts and a world-wide network of local, community-based groups dedicated to building their own space ships. The autonomy of space travel can be discovered, thus bringing the realisation of life understood as space exploration, which contains its entire meaning within itself. DEATH TO GOVERNMENT SPACE AGENCIES EVERYWHERE. ALL POWER TO THE ASSOCIATION OF AUTONOMOUS ASTRONAUTS!

DOWN WITH RESTRICTION

PLAYTIME FOREVER

LEISURE

SEX, ROCKETS AND BLACK MAGIC

FROM THE OBSCURE ROOTS OF THE NASA SPACE EXPLORATION PROGRAM by EWEN CHADRONNET
In California during the War, young engineers working on propulsion, John W. Jack Parsons, Frank J. Malina, Ed Forman, alongside their mentor Todor Von Karman at CALTECH founded the Aerojet company concerned with propellant rockets. The group was quickly forced to move its test facility far from the main campus at CALTECH to the Arroyo Seco region in Los Angeles County. This site, and the research they conducted later, became the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), with Frank Malina as second director between 1944 and 1946. This still exists, and is the structure on which NASA was founded in 1958. At the end of 1945, the rockets became too large for the buildings of Arroyo Seco, so the trial base was moved to White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. It is here that the WAC Corporal rocket probe became the first rocket to reach 50 miles (80 km) altitude in October 1945. However, as part of the Hermes Project, Von Braun and his team worked on reconditioning V2 rockets that had been sent from Germany to White Sands. On 16th April 1946, the first V2 was launched at White Sands. Fifty seven launchings would follow. Realising that research on rocket technology was being taken up by the ex-Nazis and being steered towards weapons of war, the young engineer Malina and his colleagues, who disapproved of this new direction, re-assessed their careers and thus sold their share in Aerojet Company. Jack Parsons, explosives expert and a charismatic figure in the group, was leading a strange, parallel life. Passionate about black magic, in 1942 he became Grand Master of the Agape Lodge, the Californian branch of the Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO) of Aleister Crowley, then an ageing, errant occultist and heroin addict, living off his disciples and gifts.

With the money he acquired, Parsons bought a large manor house where secret rituals, sex and the magic of the order were practised. He welcomed and housed demobilised soldiers, as well as artists and budding young science fiction writers, such as Robert A. Heinlein, who was actively campaigning for the control of supranational nuclear weapons of mass destruction, and Ron L. Hubbard who later became the founder of the Church of Scientology. After having played the role of scribe in the secret rituals of Jack Parsons (the Babalon Working), Ron Hubbard swindled him in 1947 in a mutual affair concerned with the location of yachts, and left with his second wife Sarah Elisabeth Northrup. The money he stole from Parsons contributed largely to the publication in 1950 of Dianetics, the basis of the doctrine of Scientology, which he presented as a bridge between cybernetics and the general semantics of Alfred Korzybski which was popular at that time in the science fiction world (see also The World of A. by Van Vogt). However, Parsons met Marjorie Cameron, whom he saw in a vision as his Secret Woman, sorceress and muse, potential mother of Moon Child, as conjured up by Aleister Crowley. A clash of interpretations with Aleister Crowley resulted in Parsons breaking off with the OTO. Parsons went on to work for Hughes Aircraft (Howard Hughes aerospace company). In his writings from 1950 he anticipates a number of the social, moral and ethical dilemmas of the second half of the 20th century. In 1952, while he was under surveillance by the FBI, and before he could go to Mexico with his companion as he intended, Parsons died in an unexplained explosion in his laboratory. A crater on the hidden face of the moon is named after him. Marjorie Cameron continued to pursue her career as artist and muse of occultism, while acting as sorceress for Kenneth Anger in his film The Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome, or for Curtis Harrington in his Night Tide. Frank Malina did not follow Parsons in his adventures concerned with the OTO. In 1947 he left to join UNESCO in Paris, though he had to leave his post because of MacCarthyism. He launched himself into a cinetic art career alongside Nicolas Schoffer and Abraham Palatnik and in 1967 founded the Leonardo Journal of Arts, Science and Technology (olats.org), known internationally today.

SEX IN OUTER SPACE

LUTHER BLISSET, RAIDO AAA
Of all the things people do, at home and in private, usually with close friends, sex alone is subject to extraordinary interference and control from outside forces. This is no accident - everybody is aware of its power. Even if only for a few moments, individuals can release a power and energy from within that renders any system of society, or regime, meaningless. It is a liberator. Even someone in solitary confinement can indulge in it and in their fantasies travel into any situation or possibility unfettered, and, at the moment of orgasm itself, to be both blissfully vulnerable and undeniably free, elsewhere, filled with energy.

The repression of sexual instincts functions to make people submissive and inclined to irrational behaviour and thus paralyses their potential for rebellion and leaving the planet.
Sexuality is as fundamental as it is universal. We have, therefore, found it rather sad that our researches into sex in space have so far turned up very little. NASAs poverty of thought is demonstrated yet again when they push sex right to the bottom of their agenda and even deny it. This is hardly surprising when we consider that the organisation is made up of engineers and quasi-soldiers. It is a patriarchy like all state-agencies. 90% of all NASA astronauts have been male, even though women make better ones (by and large they eat less, take up less room, need less oxygen, and in zero gravity the need for physical strength is minimal). The first female astronaut wasnt even consulted about her menstrual cycle by the boys in the backroom - they just packed 2 years supply of tampons on board and scuttled off! All of the literature we have seen on the subject repeats the dull phrases of efficiency and repression: astronauts face a workload busy enough to ensure such matters are not a priority. However any future flight to Mars, for example, would take a very long time, and the physical and psychological well-being of the crew may drive this subject onto the agenda., in-flight intercourse would help relieve astronauts of the enormous amount of stress they undergo during missions. It is the language of dead, sexless lives, of work making Jack a dull boy.

We have been unable to come up with any references to masturbation in outer space and have therefore surmised that either: a) It has occurred but has been covered up. b) Only sexually repressed astronauts are selected. c) Some kind of military equivalent to bromide in tea is being utilised. However sex is such a natural, vital part of life that it will emerge regardless..... Whilst NASA will only state that the first married couple to go on a mission together were on the space shuttle Endeavour in September 1992, their counterparts in the former Soviet Union are not so bashful. We have discovered that Svetlana Savicka, a Russian cosmonaut, fucked freely in Jaljut 7 as far back as June 1982. Whilst we applaud this, we are saddened by her bosses response which was just to initiate a plan to conceive the first child in outer space, as if sex was merely for procreation. The Association of Autonomous Astronauts is eager to promote a meta approach to sex in zero gravity. We reject utterly current space programmes and their prioritisation of work over play, of commerce over pleasure. We believe that sex will be even better in outer space and that it should be freely available for all. One only has to look at any of the numerous fetish magazines to see the immense amounts of creativity that humanity has put into its sexuality, and we expect this to increase in outer space as new dimensions and possibilities open up. Elaine Lerner, an American inventor, has already patented a harness to allow one partner to exercise control of the movements of the hips of the other partner during a zero-g fuck. And many bondage enthusiasts are already experimenting with gravity-defying pulleys and ropes to enhance their orgasms. We predict that a whole range of new sexual expression will begin when we form autonomous communities in outer space. Not just the new positions that zero gravity will allow, but whole new ways of relating to each other. Variable gravity will make extremes possible for S&M enthusiasts, and we expect a whole range of new fetishists and pervs to emerge, once free from the restrictions and guilt of planet earth. As we adapt to life without a planet, our bodies and organs may evolve into something else entirely, either through new forms of body modification, or just from living in new environments. The possibilities are limitless.

The AAA is eagerly awaiting the chance to take their bodies to new peaks of pleasure in the depths of space.

AN INTRODUCTION TO THREE SIDED FOOTBALL

EAST LONDON AAA
It appears that the first person to come up with the idea of 3-sided football was Asger Jorn, who saw it as a means of conveying his notion of trialectics - a trinitarian supercession of the binary structure of dialectics. We are still trying to discover if there were any actual games organised by him. Before the London Psychogeographic Association organised its first game at the Glasgow Anarchist Summer School in 1993, there is little evidence of any games being played. There is, of course, the rumour that Luther Blissett organised an informal league of youth clubs which played 3-sided football during his stint at Watford in the early eighties. Unfortunately, our research has found no evidence to support this. Nevertheless, Blissetts name will probably remain frimly linked to the 3-sided version of the game, even if in an apocryphal fashion. The key to the game is that it does not foster aggression or competitiveness. Unlike two-sided football, no team keeps a record of the number of goals they score. However they do keep a tally of the goals they concede, and the winner is determined as the team which concedes least goals. The game deconstructs the mythic bi-polar strucuture of conventional football, where an us-and-them struggle mediated by the referee mimics the way the media and the state pose themselves as neutral elements in the class struggle. Likewise, it is no psycho-sexual drama of the fuckers and fucked - the possibilities are greatly expanded! The pitch is hexagonal each team being assigned two opposite sides for bureaucratical purposes should the ball be kicked out of the play. The blank side is called the front side. The side containing the orifice is called the backside, and the orifice is called a goal. Should the ball be thrust through a teams orifice, the team is deemed to have conceded a goal - so in an emblematic fashion this perpetuates the anal-retentive homophobic techniques of conventional football whereby homo-erotic tension is built up, only to be sublimated and repressed.

However the trialectic appropriation of this technique dissolves the homo-erotic/homo-phobic bipolarity as a successful attack will generally imply co-operation with the third team. This should overcome the prominent resistance to women taking their full part in football. Meanwhile the penetration of the defence by two opposing teams imposes upon the defence the task of counterbalancing their disadvantage through sowing the seeds of discord in an alliance which can only be temporary. This will be achieved through exhortation, body language, and an ability to manoeuvre the ball and players into such a position that one opposing team will realise that its interests are better served by breaking off the attack and allying themselves with the defending team. Bearing in mind that such a decision will not necessarily be immediate, a team may well find itself split between two alliances. Such a situation opens them up to the possibility of their enemies uniting, making maximum use of this confusion. 3-sided football is a game of skill, persuasion and psychogeography. When the ball goes out of the play on the frontside, a throwin is conceded. This is carried out by the team whose frontside it is, unless they had last touch. In that case the throw in is taken by the team whose goal is the nearest. When the ball goes out of the play at the backside, the defening team has a goal kick, unless they had last touch, in which case a corner is taken by the team whose goal is nearest. The semicircle around the goal functions as a penalty area and it may be necessary to use it for some sort of offside rule which has yet to be developed.

LEGACY

ABOVE THE PAVING STONES, THE STARS

TAKE A DANCING FLIGHT

DIONYSUS AAA
Exactly 30 tears after NASA launched the Apollo space programme, Disconaut AAA has unveiled its own Dionysus Programme.
When Apollo 1 caught fire on the launch paid in 1967 it marked the start of the US governments biggest ever space effort. but why Apollo? If pagan deities was the name of the game there were plenty of others to choose from. To answer this we have to turn to Fred Nietzsche, the 19th century German philosopher and dance enthusiast. In the Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche identified two antagonistic cultural tendencies with the Greek gods Apollo and Dionysus. Apollo was associated with restraint, control, order and rationality. The rituals of Dionysus on the other hand involved music, passion, wine, intoxication and the dissolving of boundaries. As part of the military industrial complex, seeking to extend the control of the imperial order through the conquest of space, NASAs programme could only be the Apollonian. The Dionysus Programme has been launched in direct opposition to Apollo and its successors, to put into practice Disconaut AAAs mission to explore the potential for dance cultures for the exploration of space. The starting point for the Dionysus Programme is Nietzsches description of the glowing life of the Dionysian revellers: In song and in dance man [sic] expresses himself as a member of a higher community; he has forgotten how to walk and speak; he is about to take a dancing flight into the air... He feels himself a god, he himself now walks about enchanted, in ecstasy... He is no longer an artist, he has become a work of art. Phew, all this without MDMA.

Disconaut AAA are attempting to apply this insight into the links between dance, ecstasy and flight as we leave the twentieth century. For some years experiments have been carried out in a global network of underground laboratories of pleasure. We can now report some of our preliminary findings: - The Dionysus Programme has accumulated extensive evidence of near flight experiences on the dancefloor. Participants typically report sensations of rushing, of accelerating velocity, of the body tracing a line of flight and of leaving behind the real world and establishing a direct connection with the wider universe. There are clear parallels here with the effects on the body and the euphoric feelings of escaping gravity associated with lift off by more traditional means. - In the Dionysus Programme we have tried to break the tyranny of liquid-fuel rocket-propulsion and to identify alternative fuel resources and means of transport. In the process we have experimented with a range of easily ingested chemicals, some of them derived from plants, others artificially manufactured. These substances have contributed some invaluable insights and certainly have a role, particularly in maintaining the stamina needed for long flights. However we have to report that several of our experimental human probes which were successfully blasted beyond the atmosphere with chemical propulsion quickly crashed down to earth and vanished without trace, while others are now drifting aimlessly in space circumscribing ever decreasing circles around their navels. - The Dionysus Programme has conducted a whole range of tests with extremely high tempo electronic sounds. Our hypothesis was that a continual acceleration in beats per minute would enable us to reach earths escape velocity and take off. Unfortunately after prolonged uninterrupted exposure to these tests the ship began to break up and several participants showed signs of exhaustion and in some cases nausea. Future experiments will attempt to reduce the risk of side effects by introducing greater variety and rhythmic complexity. - Ill-fitting space suits have been an ongoing problem in the Dionysus Programme. A major difficulty has been the rigid masculine character armour which even some potential astronauts seem unable to discard. Dance cultures provide a space where it is possible to escape the confines of a fixed identity and explore a range of subjectivities and possibilities. Sadly a lot of men in particular seem afraid to appear as anything other than cool, serious and controlled. Clearly this is incompatible with the flexibility required in space. Disconaut AAA are developing fun fur and sequin space suits to help overcome this.

The present efforts of the Dionysus Programme are geared towards the Dreamtime project, through which AAA groups around the world are imagining what life will be like in autonomous communities in space. Dance settings provide a unique opportunity for collective dreaming, not the passive dreams of sleep, but the visions of the lived body in perfect motion. Here we are not only able to think about life in space, but to feel what it will be like to live in an autonomous community. Nietzsche described this sensation: Under the charm of the Dionysian not only is the union between man and man [and woman] reaffirmed, but Nature which has become estranged, hostile or subjugated, celebrates once more her reconciliation with her prodigal son, man... Now the slave is free; now all the stubborn, hostile barriers, which necessity, caprice or shameless fashion have erected between man and man are broken down... Each one feels himself not only united, reconciled, blended with his neighbour, but all is one with him. By creating autonomous zones in our own parties on earth we can create conditions that prefigure autonomous communities in outer space. To do this we have to neutralise the negative effects of various black holes which suck energy out of dance cultures, such as commercial promoters and the police. This will be the focus of the next stage of the Dionysus Programme. 1. Modular dance manoeuvering unit; 2. Batteries (not included); 3. VR visual enhancement system; 4. Acoustic command and control system (includes filter cutoff and resonance sliders) 5. Hand control releasing gaseous amphetamines into helmet; 6. Fibre optic cable connected to hypermedia megastream; 7. Hand control for dance and sexual movements.

If writers are to travel in space time and explore areas opened up by the space age, I think they must develop techniques quite as new and definite as the techniques of physical space travel. - William Burroughs

SPACE TRAVEL: BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY

JASON SKEET, INNER CITY AAA
The Association of Autonomous Astronauts (AAA) was launched on April 23rd 1995 as the worlds first independent and community-based space program. A Five Year Plan was also established for creating, by the year 2000, a world-wide network of local, community-based AAA groups dedicated to building their own spaceships. In order to expand this project, the AAA has organised an Intergalactic Conference on independent, communitybased space travel, that will take place in Vienna, Earth June 21-22 1997. This conference will bring together various strands within the Association of Autonomous Astronauts, for further cross-fertilisation of ideas and experiences, demonstrating the varied and at times contradictory movements Autonomous Astronauts make whilst escaping from gravity. The conference will also expose local communities in Vienna to the possibilities of independent space exploration. Indeed, this Intergalactic Conference will advance the AAAs aim to grow and develop in several directions at once. One of the trajectories that the conference will trace is the new phase that the AAAs Five Year Plan for creating a world-wide network of local, community-based groups now moves into. We have called this phase the Dreamtime, and it is in essence a transversalist concept which helps to define the AAAs total opposition to other existing space programs. The Dreamtime asks,What is the point of going into space only to replicate life on planet earth? AAA groups around the world are now exploring what kind of experimental modes of living Autonomous Astronauts will create in space, what new social relations will be formed, and what new activities will fill up the empty spaces that had previously fixed the limits of life back on planet earth. The Dreamtime regards space travel as an evolutionary process which will inevitably lead to the extinction of present-day government space agencies. Autonomous Astronauts will create an extra-terrestrial consciousness that jettisons earth-based concepts of national borders and state controls. Amongst other things, the AAA is exploring how sex in zero-gravity will be even better than it is on planet earth, investigating the potential for organising raves in space, and using games of 3-sided football as essential training for Autonomous Astronauts. The AAA is interested in the new possibilities that open up when we form autonomous communities in space.

After the Second World War, organisations like NASA emerged to regulate and control the developments in space exploration technology. Since the collapse of the cold war myth, NASA has been struggling desperately for a new identity. It no longer has the Soviet enemy to compete with, and must dream up new excuses for itself. The AAA has consistently rejected the rationale of government space programs which, dominated by the world-view of engineers, regard the universe as a vast machine that can be manipulated according to certain laws and principles. For example, we completely oppose the idea of terraforming other planets. (Terraforming is the creation of a potentially life-supporting atmosphere on a planet through the acceleration of this process by an outside force. This may come in the form of exploding nuclear weapons above the planets surface or by causing a succession of meteorites to hit the planet. A massive greenhouse effect is created, thus beginning the process that hopefully leads to an atmosphere capable of supporting carbon-based life-forms - terraforming has been proposed for Mars). The AAA understands that terraforming will be the action of a capitalist system that, completely out of control, has exhausted the earths resources and requires another planet to devour. The AAA has formed an approach to technology that is primarily concerned with investigating how a specific technology is used and who gets to use that technology. It is inevitable that the technology to build spaceships will get cheaper, or even that new technologies will be developed that make present-day rocket propulsion systems entirely redundant. The AAA is the worlds only space program that makes technological issues secondary to the concern with what we will be doing when we form autonomous communities in outer space. The AAA investigates conceptions of space exploration in which the imagination is central. In doing so, Autonomous Astronauts create a complex interactive project that anyone can participate in, and which completely changes existing notions of space travel.

AAA groups develop specific strategies for engaging in the process of social transformation that they have dared to dream of. One such strategy for the redistribution of resources throughout society is an AAA inspired competition for the first privately-funded group to have sex in space. The XXX Prize Foundation, based in London, has announced that it intends to pay 1 million pounds to the first privately-funded team to launch a craft into sub-orbital space - about 60 miles - and to then engage in sexual intercourse whilst up there. This sexual act may take any form and involve any number of people, but visual documentation must be provided to prove that the sex did occur in a weightless environment. Meanwhile, other AAA groups continue to point out how the process of creating autonomous communities in space must go hand-in-hand with an identical process back on planet earth. Wealth will then be re-defined in terms of the quality of life within autonomous communities in space. Autonomous Astronauts are making this future happen. Not only is the AAA combating the government, military and corporate monopoly of space travel, but Autonomous Astronauts are also fighting the increasing number of private enterprise space exploration groups. The AAA has revealed how these conquests of zero-gravity space will be a continuation of the imperialist occupations of planet earth. The Catholic Church has even discussed with NASA a plan for the conversion of aliens to Christianity. But as the technology to go into space becomes cheaper, the AAA will be concerned with how that technology is used. Plans to create a space tourist industry confirm that the myth of the free market will be projected into space in a bid to further fabricate the fantasy of capitalisms that are inescapable and omnipresent like the force of gravity. The AAA opposes the wild west pioneer metaphors put out by many of these space age entrepreneurs by bringing to space travel a class dimension, and demonstrating how economic austerity is manufactured by those who have a vested interest in preventing the working class from building our own spaceships. The AAA does not intend to be interpreted as a metaphor for something else. When we talk about building our own spaceships we really mean just that. However, it does follow from this that what we have to say can have

many different and complex levels of meaning to it. For example, the myth of space travel as the final frontier is like that other myth about private space enterprise in a universal free market. These myths are designed to mask the social forces that actually shape the present-day state, corporate and military monopoly of space travel. The AAA opposes these myths with our own specifically constructed and contradictory propaganda. These rhetorical constructs are often put into orbit around the concept of space travel as being inherently bound to human evolution. The AAA has declared that the next stage in human evolution is to go into outer space. But the AAA is not an utopian current for fin-de-siecle bargain hunters. The AAA is interested in the new social relations that exist with the creation of autonomous communities in space. This evolutionary process continues the moment someone opens their mind to such possibilities. According to our analysis, the AAA occupies a unique vantage point from which a multitude of historical trajectories may be traced. And yet, as a network of local, community-based groups who are not seeking to impose their visions of space exploration on anyone else, it has become clear that in outer space no-one will be concerned with the present-day organisation of knowledge. That is, the compartmentalisation of knowledge into the particular categories developed by capitalist culture over the last 500 years. The AAA network allows for a diversity of people to be involved, bringing together different experiences and skills. Ideas collide and new possibilities are made available. A fundamental strategy developed by the AAA has been the ability to move in several directions at once. The AAAs Intergalactic Conference will further demonstrate this, and promises to be an intense two days of activity. The conference will include: a public presentation of the AAAs aims and objectives, with a debate on independent space exploration; screening of AAA promotional videos; the opportunity to meet Autonomous Astronauts informally; a SpaceBase established for the duration of the conference, where AAA propaganda material will be on display; a rave in space dance party with experimental electronic music; training day for Autonomous Astronauts with game of 3-sided football. In addition to this, computer terminals will be available for visiting an AAA web-site made by Viennese children, and a spaceship with an interior designed and constructed by children at the Vienna Kinder Museum will be installed. But the real challenge for those that attend this conference will remain - how to build our own spaceships and construct autonomous communities in outer space.

THE DREAM IS JUST BEGINNING

AAA KERNOW
It is time to re-invent the whole concept of Space Travel. Space Travel acts as a metaphor for consciousness and political transformation, it is also the essential notion on which the Autonomous Astronauts Association (AAA) is based. We really are planning to create new communities in Space and to evolve new communities on Earth. Each member of the AAA has their own reasons and desires, thats what the word autonomous means. It is not about joining the AAA, it is about forming a group for yourself. There are now many AAA groups around the world, but many of them are sleeping. This is a wake-up call! Many cells of the Association of Autonomous Astronauts went into suspended animation for seven years, while the initial program of the heroes of the Five Year Plan was forgotten, or exploited by other agencies. There were problems attached to the initial structure of the AAA, firstly an over-dependence on a centralised cadre, secondly a shortage of funds, and thirdly some of us thought it was a joke. Humour can help us escape from gravity, but this is no joke, the Community Space Program is all about Community-Based Space Travel. Thats where NASA and the Soviet Space agencies got it wrong. Space travel should be for one and all, not just for a scientific, or cultural elite. The technological apparatus of space exploration is almost in the hands of the Richard Bransons of the world, but times have changed and in the seven years that have passed, we have at last learned how to use the Internet. There are now the possibilities of buying ex-Soviet space kit off Ebay, for example. Steven Hawking says we must leave this planet, but we say the forthcoming apocalypse is a figment of minds who exploit it for their own gains. Its that millennialism stuff all over again - use your imagination and do not be controlled by mass panics! Space Travel begins at home, it is too important to be left in the hands of government or corporate agencies.

This is not a Space Race. Autonomous Astronauts are Everywhere.