.

CODING CODRESCU

A Collaboration Between "Intercoder,"
Ebon Fisher, and NPR Essayist, Andrei Codrescu

On the heals of Hurricane Katrina, NPR correspondant and New Orleans citizen, Andrei Codrescu, found himself drawn into what might be called tertiary fallout from the storm. First the storm, then the bungled government response, and thirdly the media spasm. His transmedia efforts to help illuminate the heroic struggles of his home region hustled him in a whirling arc across the United States -- including touchdowns in Phoenix, Chicago, New York and throughout New Orleans and Baton Rouge. A recent letter and email exchange between Andrei and myself brought about a new Zoacode* based upon Andrei's circuitous journey, and by extension, the storm. Perhaps a little of the spirit of New Orleans is encoded in there as well. What follows are elements of a spontaneous collaboration which brought about the new Zoacode, "Signal Strangely."

--Ebon Fisher, March 28, 2006

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*Zoacode: a viral network symbol/map/code (AKA bionic code)

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FROM: ANDREI CODRESCU
Subject: injecting intercodes
Date: March 13, 2006 2:27:20 PM EST
To: Ebon Fisher

Dear Ebon: I wish somebody'd draw the wiggles of my itineraries these past two months, they'd look like the work of an agitated somnambulist...

Best of luck, Andrei

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FROM: EBON FISHER
Subject: agitated somnambulist
Date: March 13, 2006 8:24:29 PM EST
To: Andrei Codrescu

T H E . N E R V E P O O L
_____________________________________________________
Ebon Fisher, Director, www.NERVEPOOL.NET, 609-680-5688

...I was in the car with my wife (Suzy) and 6 yr. old (Anatoli) who handed me an orange 2x5 card and said, "this is your drawing kit, Dad." So I began thinking about your comment, "I wish somebody'd draw the wiggles of my itineraries these past two months, they'd look like the work of an agitated somnambulist."

So I took a crack at something an agitated somnambulist might resonate with. I drew a rough Zoacode with the tentative text, "PROBE STRANGELY." I'm thinking of actualizing it, but I'll need your feedback on its text and form once I have a digital draft underway. I suspect your intinerary had been warped considerably by Katrina?

.

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FROM: ANDREI CODRESCU
Subject: injecting intercodes
Date: March 13, 2006 2:27:20 PM EST
To: Ebon Fisher

Well, it's impossible, but let's see:

february 23-Feb 28 (Mardi Gras) work with NPR and production of "Big River Blues" documentary in various hoods of NO [New Orleans]: interviews in the French Quarter, film Andrea Garland, hero, [see below] at her K-damaged house with the altar of crosses in the neutral ground brought over from Crawford, TX where she was protesting with Cindy Sheehan, shoot in the Lower Ninth Ward and Chalmette in St. Bernard Parish, eat, drink, dance at Spotted Cat, Marigny Brasserie, Molly's, hear and interview John Sinclair reading at the Gold Mine, anchor NPR ATC show with Robert Siegel from in front of my apt watching St. Anne Parade pass; interview son Tristan about growing up in NO; leave Ash Wendesday for Chicago and Champaign, IL, symposium on the Romanian book collection I donated to the Slavic Lit library, back to Chicago then on to NYC for Columbia U Architecture School symposium on rebuilding NO, back to NO for a day, fly ungodly early AM to Phoenix then to Flagstaff, deliver Kline Lecture on "Borders," back to Phoenix to Baton Rouge starting ungodly am -- teach next day at LSU. I'm sure I forgot something. ac

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A RUDE SKELETON OF ANDREI'S ITINERARY:

New Orleans area
Chicago
Champaign, IL
Chicago
NYC
New Orleans
Phoenix
Flagstaff, AZ
Phoenix
New Orleans
Baton Rouge, LA

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EBON'S MAP OF ANDREI'S ITINERARY WITH
NEW ZOACODE PATTERNED AFTER IT:

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JUST THE ZOACODE HOVERING OVER ANDREI'S
(PHYSICAL) COMMUNICATIONS ZONE:

________________________________
ZOACODE TEXT-IN-PROGRESS:

PROBE STRANGELY
PROBE NATURE, SIGNAL STRANGELY
SIGNAL STRANGELY

 

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THE RESULTING ZOACODE :

. .. ..

.._____________________________________________________________
AN ESSAY BY ANDREI CODRESCU WHICH CONTRIBUTED TO
THE WRITHING QUALITY OF THE ZOACODE:

ANDREA GARLAND: portrait of a New Orleanian
By Andrei Codrescu

     Andrea Garland was in Crawford, Texas, demonstrating against the war in Iraq when the Storm came. As news of the catastrophe engulfing her hometown reached her, she drafted some Vietnam vets who were willing to come to New Orleans to help. The vets were protesting the new war along with Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a soldier who died in Iraq. Vietnam had been a lesson that America was quickly forgetting, and now here was an American city being abandoned by the U.S. government in its darkest hour.
     Andrea reached a New Orleans occupied by several armies of the U.S., many of them National Guardsmen who had just come from Iraq. She helped organize rescue parties and gathered supplies to take to people still stranded in the city. She aided the escape of her friend Daniel who had stayed behind with his two cats, unwilling to sacrifice his pets. Official rescue vehicles took out people, but not their pets.
     When Andrea finally reached her neighborhood in New Orleans, at the edge of the Ninth Ward, she found her house damaged, but not as brutally ruined as some other houses on the street. Her husband Jeffrey, her brother-in-law, and some of her friends from Crawford, set to work immediately to clean what they could and to stop the invasion of mold that was visibly and literally eating up the old homes around. She and Jeffrey also set out to re-establish their art gallery, L'ART NOIR, with a powerful show of “Toxic Art,” an exhibition by local artists using some of the toxic debris that covered the city. The centerpiece of the exhibition rose on the neutral ground in front of their house, including a collection of crosses that had also stood in Crawford, Texas, to symbolise soldiers killed in Iraq. The same crosses now stood on the border between the neighborhoods of Bywater and the Ninth Ward to symbolise the dead of New Orleans. In a single swift art work, the victims of George Bush's mismanaged war merged with the victims of George Bush's bumbling internal policy. The dead of Iraq and the drowned of New Orleans testified together to the incompetence of our leaders.
     Andrea Garland is an artist, web-designer, political activist, and one of those people, like myself, who were adopted by New Orleans and given the space to create in what was the last urban bohemia in the U.S. I say was, but Andrea makes me think that it may be wrong to use the past tense.

Andrei Codrescu's HQ: The Exquisite Corpse
..