A Hooliganniversary

A lot has happened in the past year: students have come and gone, landmark restaurants and stores snuffed out, butt scandals passed over social media and other such occurrences of utmost importance. But one thing that has remained alive amidst these tumultuous times is the TENET artist collective’s ability to put out a zine (almost) every month since their beginning last January.

I know, I know; another post about this so-called artist group who still doesn’t really exist outside its target audience of art schoolers, English majors, vijjy enthusiasts, and the general hooligan population of Ann Arbor? Especially when this self-appointed spokesperson of sorts hasn’t shown his rambling face around these parts in a hot minute. But I maintain that you few people traversing these particular sidewalks and alleyways of the world wide webtown should know about this kind of stuff, nay - need to know about this stuff, about these people making drawings and words and ZINES and happenings right under your noses, and that its possible for anyone to do with a pen and a copy machine and a lot of time on their hands, or maybe just time to sacrifice (is sleep not for the weak?).

Yes! This is all gravity and bones because for the first time TENET has broken out of the living-room-turned-gallery-space method of past events in favor of entering the “real world” “art scene” by showing work and releasing zines in the North Quad space on State Street, the one with all the windows and tables and TVs and oddly shaped chairs and stools scattered around a huge projection screen. How did they manage to convert a space usually reserved for Powerpoint lectures and Acapella performances, you ask? Well there were zines hanging from a coatrack! all the past issues! mountainous drawings on tables! raw paintings leaned against walls! reflective sculpture on the floor! tasteful shower videos in the corner! there were readings by never-before-heard Teneteers, speaking words straight from the zine! there was almost a release of this music vijjy by the Tusks Band (technical difficulties being inevitable)! It was a new way to see the work of these obsessive image makers and word crafters, outside the comfort of their own friends’ homes!

The gallery show was followed up by a long and arduous march back to where the legend all began, at the Mundungus cave on South campus before returning to the new stomping ground of Kerrytown, onward to Sparkman’s Palace where Tusks and Wych Elm killed it (as usual) in the basement of low pipelined ceilings and brick walls, cement floors and columns that ring when you knock them – and here it was that the essence of these events reared its beautiful sweating head, the gallery show and zine release just a means to an end, important to those who’ve lived and grown within this vortex of creative expression over the past year but really the gem of experience being the potential for connection between people, the connection of TENET with the public, in TENET, through TENET but not solely about it and them, about all us hooligans roaming these Arboreal streets in dazes, all about the US, everyone, the innocent bystander becomes angsty ruckus maker, the introverted poet becomes proclaimer of words and feeling, and TENET ceases to be this small group of subterraneans meeting in basements and poring over mags talkin bullshit to each other at a mile minute – here everyone becomes TENET and TENET becomes everyone. I know, you know, we all know and feel what it is to connect other like-minded hooligans, for shenanigans, and it just keeps getting better.