about "blaster" al ackerman
blaster al ackerman (1939--2013) was a baltimore based author, performance artist, and prolific mail artist. he also fought in the vietnam war, working in burn wards in hospitals along the west coast for a period of time after returning to the united states. his work was preoccupied with madness, and neoism founder istvan kantor described ackerman as "a master of pseudonyms and schizophrenia." ackerman operated in the underground, and caught the attention of people from richard kern to genesis p. orridge. the letters ackerman and p. orridge exchanged spurred the creation of what many consider to be one of the most disturbing songs of all time, and the focus of this project— hamburger lady.
ackerman believed that "to stay creative, artists should always work in a despised medium." while a fair amount of his work did end up traditionally published (by shattered wig press, or in friends' zines), he also submitted poems to small magazines using psudonyms, and wrote poems, vignettes, and short stories specifically for correspondence. the latter is what is known as mail art— something poet vittore maroni describes as
a freewheeling grassroots group of art activists that bypassed all the hierarchical rules and institutionalized bureaucracies of the mainstream art market, to promote instead a direct contact and egalitarian, uncompetitive interchange... there were precise subterranean links between mail art and the sixties counterculture, and even the beat(nik) literary circles that preceded it.
that is to say, mail art is correspondence as an art form. because it can include sending stickers, prints, photographs, or paintings as well as zines, short stories, written letters, or even books, the formal constraint is not what might be considered "art" or "literature" in the traditional sense, but what can be sent through the mail. authors shared their work in an informal setting, not setting out for notoriety but communication. in doing so, they were also attempting to surpass earlier postmodern forms of writing.
from p. 45 of blaster: the blaster al ackerman omnibus
while ackerman's concern with dysfunction often centered on schizophrenia (incl. cultural schizophrenia) he occasionally wrote about his encounters with physically ailing people during his time in serving in vietnam and working in hospital burn units up and down the west coast.a portion of a letter ackerman wrote to throbbing gristle front wo/man genesis p. orridge is found on the sleeve of doa: the third and final report of throbbing gristle. in the letter, ackerman describes a patient he treated in a burn unit. the throbbing gristle song hamburger lady is based on this letter, and an excerpt of it is available on the sleeve of doa: the third and final report of throbbing gristle. the song and the letter describe the same thing: a woman who has sustained terrible injuries in a car accident being kept on life support. she is covered in serious burns from the waist up. ackerman claims that her "lower half is untouched, and this, i guess, is what keeps her alive." does adapting ackerman's experience with this person into a song cheapen or diminish it? did "hamburger lady" ever exist?