Thomas Murray Saté, “20 Questions for Freddie Baer, in Ecstatic Incisions (1992) and 16 of them were printed in Edinburgh Review, #89 (Spring 1993).

PDF & images of Edinburgh Review:

1. When/where were you born?

Fredrika Elizabeth Baer first made her appearance in Chicago, Illinois at 5 A.M., September 10, 1952.

2. Where did you grow up?

In a working-class neighborhood on the near northwest side of Chicago.

3. When/how did you first get involved with collage/art/politics?

I didn’t start doing collage until I was almost 30; I didn’t think I was very artistic. My involvement with politics came long before I started doing art; in fact you might say I came to do collage through my politics. On the other hand, I became political at an early age. I was a teenager during the late sixties: Viet Nam, the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago, the Civil Rights movement. The combination of politics and culture of that time and my parents’ sense of justice radicalized me. Though politically naive, my truckdriver dad was a rugged individualist and encouraged me to think for myself. When I was sixteen, I used to go to anti-war protests and also decided that I was an atheist.

In 1971, while a student at the University of Illinois, Circle Campus, I first heard of anarchism from Neil Rest, anarchist bon vivant and science fiction rogue. Through him, I met and joined the Nameless Anarchist Horde. In the years following my anti-authoritarian baptism, I worked with the IWW, Solidarity Bookstore, Newspace, and Black and Red while still in Chicago.

For a while, I did spontaneous guerrilla theater. My most infamous stunt was in 1972 when the student paper at the University of Illinois ran a ‘satirical’ column by Bill Chester that said how much women must enjoy being raped, how much fun it was, and boy, oh boy, he’d really like to be raped. In response, I sent him a note that read something to the effect of how I had heard he wanted to get his rocks off and that if he really wanted a good time, he’d show up at the women’s liberation office. This was 1972 — the women’s lib office was the size of two phone booths. The word had gotten out, and the place was packed with women. Chester showed up but wouldn’t enter the office so my two accomplices and I escorted him down the hallway. There, behind the elevators, we removed his pants and held him down, while talking to him about the realities of rape, and gee, wasn’t this a lot of fun. After about ten minutes of this, campus security found us and broke up the scene. Chester pressed charges; I was arrested, charged with assault, and eventually got off on a technicality. The case was in the newspapers from coast to coast. But, you know, it really was worth all the time and hassle; Chester said on the radio that now he knew what it was like to be raped and assaulted, that it was horrible, and that he would wish that on no one.

Despite dabbling with silk screen and offset printing as means of production, my initiation into collage and illustration didn’t happen until 1981 at an art show reception for the collages of Incite! (a San Francisco-based collage group). I realized that anyone could do collage — it was just a matter of putting the right pieces together. That night I went home and began my first real collage, ‘Bosses: the Real Time Bandits’. I’ve been glueing paper down ever since.

4. How did you end up living in San Francisco?

My lover was originally from San Francisco and wanted to return to the Bay Area after living in Chicago for five years. I didn’t want to move but was convinced to try a six-week vacation in San Francisco. Once there in June of 1978, the combination of the city’s tolerance of racial, sexual, and political differences (while not perfect, a hell of a lot better than Chicago) and its temperate weather (especially its cooling fog — I can not deal with hot weather) convinced me that San Francisco was the place that I wanted to be. We moved out here four months later in November, 1978.

5. Can you say how you get involved with typesetting and design?

Through Solidarity Bookstore and then Newspace; the folks at Solidarity actively worked with Fredy and Lorraine Perlman at Black and Red to produce books. When Solidarity metamorphosed into Newspace, we obtained a few printing presses and cameras and began to teach ourselves how to run them; that’s when I first dipped my hands in ink. In 1977, I took an intensive printing class that taught the basics of printing, camera work, and lay out. I also first experimented with silk screening at Newspace, printing t-shirts with other folks’ designs.

I worked with Processed World from late 1981 to early 1983; I learned typesetting and some design basics while working with them. I had just begun to do collage work; my illustrations are in some of their early issues.

In 1985, I got my first “real” job as an administrative assistant (I had been a bookkeeper for a living before then). The man who hired me was my Macintosh mentor. He knew I typed fast and had a little computer experience; he left me alone to learn the Macintosh computer on my own. He encouraged me to stay late to work on my own projects, knowing that the computer skills I learned doing my own problem-solving would be applied to the job. The more proficient I became using desktop publishing, the more I realized that my design skills weren’t as strong as I’d like them to be. In 1989, I began taking design classes at night at the University of California Extension Center. I plan to continue taking classes; with design and illustration there is always more to be learned.

6. Can you list a few of the people you’ve done typesetting / design / illustration for?

In the past five years: Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed, Fifth Estate, Factsheet Five, Ready Made Exotic World, and Live from the Stagger Cafe, Science Fiction Eye, Semiotext(e): SF, Komotion International, Times Change Press, AK Press, peter plate, Sperry … I forget all the work I’ve done. When you have graphic production skills, people approach you all the time for help producing their work.

7. Can you say anything about any political groups you’ve been involved with?

After arriving in San Francisco, I was involved with Processed World (a self-described magazine “for and by dissident office workers”) from late 1981 to early 1983 and Bound Together Anarchist Bookstore from 1984 to 1986. From 1983 to 1987 I was also associated with several study groups discussing political theory.

Processed World was a fiasco that has been written about innumerable times; the best account of what happened during my participation is Bizarro Processed World by Stephanie Klein (available from Stephanie at P.O. Box 7353, Menlo Park, CA 94025). I don’t feel that I can add anything else to that critical discussion, especially since those events happened almost 10 years ago.

I don’t consider myself a member of any group right now, though I do work for the Fifth Estate, Anarchy, AK Press, Times Change Press, and Komotion International. After my experience with Processed World, it’s important for me to work with individuals who have ideals and viewpoints with which I mostly agree.

8. Can you say something about how you first met many of the people you’ve worked with, i.e., peter plate, Political Asylum, Peter Lamborn Wilson, science fiction people, & c?

I originally came into contact with many of these folks through the various aspects of the marginal scene — the anti-authoritarian, science fiction, and cultural circles that sometimes overlap. I haven’t always met the folks I’ve worked with (or work with them before meeting them). I have a number of long-time friends and colleagues that I’ve never met; we correspond through the mail; Factsheet Five has provided a network of like-minded people. If I run across a project that I like through the pages of Factsheet Five, I volunteer my services. I need to have some agreement with the aims of a project before I participate.

9. Can you say something about the work you’re doing with the science fiction journals and Semiotext(e): SF ?

It’s very exciting; I find science fiction liberatory. To imagine a future or other world / history — whether utopian or dystopian — that takes vision and a thinking-out of why things are the way they are and how they could be different. I’ve been reading science fiction since I was six; it’s been a way of experiencing an alternate reality while living in this time and place. I think a lot of my work are illustrations for stories that haven’t been written yet. I feel the collage work I do for Science Fiction Eye allows me to participate in the science fiction world as more than just a fan.

10. Can you say something about how your design / collage relates to your political beliefs?

One reason I started doing collage was because I was sick of seeing the same illustrations reprinted over and over again in the anarchist press. I also started doing graphic design for the anti-authoritarian scene because important and well-written essays were rendered unreadable because of poor design.

I don’t charge for the work I do — I think this is important when you’re trying to separate yourself from a commodity-based economy. It’s hard for folks to accept the idea of craft as gift. However, I am currently faced with the issue of payment when doing illustration work for mainstream magazines or small businesses — I haven’t got an answer for that contradiction yet.

I have problems with calling myself an artist; that’s an elitist term. As I said before, anyone can do collage — and the more you do it, the better you get.

11. How do you set about doing a piece of collage either for yourself or to order or someone else?

It depends whether it is an assignment or not. If I’m to illustrate a story or essay, then I usually read the piece several times to find an “angle” from which to approach it. Sometimes a very specific image will suggest itself from the words, and other times I’ll capture a mood. I’ve learned not to take a work too literally but instead let the visual images flow.

I have two ways of doing collage for myself. I will either have a very definite idea of what I would like the piece to look like, and it’s a matter of finding the graphics to illustrate that idea. On the other hand, I’ll have no idea what I want to do, and I flip through my resources to see if a collage piece suggests itself. With collage I can’t always follow my original vision — I have to go where the pieces lead. There’s a lot of me wrapped up in my work for myself; I try to illustrate my emotions in such a way that provokes others to feel that same emotion in themselves.

12. Do you see your collage work taking off in a new direction in the future, or do you think you’ve arrived at a form which you find aesthetically satisfying and will stick with?

My graphic work is constantly mutating; right now I have about four different styles in which I create collages, and I’m experimenting with other methods, including incorporating more computer-generated bits and hand-inked drawings into my collages. I’ve also begun to play with textures and patterns. I’d love to do more color collage work, but no one can afford to reproduce it.

13. Can you say something about the t-shirt of the month club?

Once a month since January 1989, I design a t-shirt with a new design and send it to approximately 50 subscribers. I don’t repeat designs, and the t-shirts are available exclusively to subscribers. I started doing the t-shirt of the [month] club to experiment with different forms of collage. To come up with a different image every month forces me to be creative and try techniques that I normally wouldn’t use. I like the idea that t-shirts are both functional and ephemeral — they’re not considered art.

When I print t-shirts, two assistants help me in exchange for a copy of the shirt and a burrito. Two of my most faithful assistants, Phil Lollar and Johann Humyn Being, are incredible collage artists themselves.

14. The most obvious comparison I can think of for your collage work is with surrealist artists such as Max Ernst. What do you think of this type of comparison and does it annoy you?

It’s a legitimate comparison — Ernst has been an influence for me — but I get irritated when it’s made to dismiss or trivialize my work as second-hand Ernst. While Ernst and I both use 19th century wood engravings, we have two very distinct styles; my detractors seem unable to look beyond the method and see my message. To say that I should avoid using engravings because Ernst already used that medium is to say that no one should paint with oils because Rembrandt used them. I find it interesting as I begin to play with shapes and patterns that some of my recent work has been confused with M.C. Escher’s.

I’m also influenced by John Heartfield and Hannah Hoch, dadaists, Terry Gilliam and Jan Svankmajer, animators, and illustrators such as Kay Nielsen, J. J. Grandville, Sidney Sime, Hannes Bok, and Virgil Finlay.

15. What is Mystopia?

Mystopia was the name I gave my p.o. box and own project. It’s word play: we don’t know what the future will hold, whether it will be a dystopia or utopia. It’s a mystery to us — hence, a mystopia. Then again, it could also be a big mistake — mistopia.

16. Politically, where do you think we’re at right now? What direction do you think the anarchist scene should take in response to the present situation?

The world is changing so fast: the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe and the corresponding rise of nationalism on one hand, the replacement of governance by the rise of Capital on the other; total and complete eco-disaster that loops on the horizon; the dehumanization of the individual; the turn to the right by the United States and Great Britain. Things can’t go on the way they have been.

You can’t apply a 19th century philosophy as a bandaid to the world’s ills. Marx doesn’t have the answer; Bakunin and Malatesta don’t have the answer; Debord doesn’t have the answer. However, you can read what these people had to say and take what is applicable to the current situation. A more coherent theory needs to be developed that takes into account past history and current events, a theory that won’t become stagnant and dogma but can grow and incorporate the changes taking in [sic] place in our world and respond to current events. This theory needs to be self-critical and self-examining. Anarchists should also examine their own motives, need to change. Dysfunctional by living in this society, by which methods can individuals health themselves, becoming more whole and complete beings? How can we change the world and ourselves simultaneously?

17. How do your own activities relate to your answer to the last question?

I read, I talk, I discuss, I participate, I criticize and self-criticize, I learn. I contribute my skills. I heal myself through my art. I try to know who I am and how I fit into the scheme of things.

18. What do you find depressing and what do you find inspiring about the anarchist scene at the moment?

The anarchist / anti-authoritarian community is a false community; the only thing that holds anarchists together is the tenuous glue of shared politics: opposing the state. The anarchist community has become an insular and self-perpetuating ghetto that does not question its own ideology and action and further fragments into different forms of opposition, various types of rigid anarcho-isms. Anarchists still react in the same old kneejerk way without questioning why.

I find it encouraging that more people, not necessarily self-identified anarchists, are reading and questioning, exploring other, non-traditional avenues of rebellion, both internal and external. Also, I’m inspired by the theoretical growth taking place within parts of the anarchist / anti-authoritarian community, especially in the pages of the Fifth Estate and Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed.

19. You’ve been involved with the anarchist scene for a long time; a lot of people pass through it as young adults. Why do you think you’re still involved when a large number of anarchists seem to give up politics before the age of 30?

People come into movements not only with a desire for social change but with many of their own needs of which they themselves aren’t even aware. When they don’t get those personal needs met through the various scenes, they become cynical and drop out rather than examine why they were there in the first place. People also get caught up in survival, working for a living and all the activities, social and otherwise, that can fill a life, or they have the luxury of an upper class life they can return to after experimenting with alternative lifestyles.

I’m still involved because I’ve fond ways to make my life, politically and otherwise, emotionally satisfying. It’s been hard, though; I’ve had some bad times with political groups and individuals over the years, but with every negative experience I’ve gained some self-knowledge and know what I need to avoid. Most of all, I’m optimistic about the future: the world can change. And when there is hope, there can still be dreams.

20. Can you sum up your activities since the early seventies, say whether you’re satisfied with them and give a brief outline of how you see the future for yourself as an individual activist / cultural worker rather than for the anarchist scene as a whole?

Well, technically, I’ve become proficient at my craft. I’ve learned every aspect of the graphic arts on one level or another; that was a goal I set for myself in the mid-1970s. However, I feel that I have a lot more to learn about doing illustration work, creating “art.” I’m halfway through my life, and there’s still so much technical knowledge for me to absorb. Over the years I’ve been influenced artistically by the dadaists and surrealists and politically by left-anarchists, the situationists, feminist theorists, anti-authoritarian Marxists, and anti-technology theorists, especially Fredy Perlman and George Bradford. But I don’t want to be pigeon-holed, defined by my past activities or confined by labels.

I’ve gained a self-awareness through my past experiences, an ability to be able to analyze situations. I try to be critical (and self-critical) without becoming paralyzed and isolated. I’d like to work on becoming more coherent about my beliefs; I miss being in a study group. I like the discipline of regularly meeting with others to discuss ideas and theories; it gets your mind working and sharpens your tongue, keeps your mind from getting intellectually lazy.

To summarize what I’ve said earlier, I will continue in the future to contribute my graphic knowledge and skills to projects that challenge the destructive prevailing system and with whom I have basic agreements. I plan to evolve politically, artistically, and spiritually and to grow critically. My visions will sustain me through the difficult times ahead, and through my collage I will share those visions with others.

Note: The Edinburgh Review printed sixteen of the twenty questions; Ecstatic Incisions printed all twenty.