Olchar E. Lindsann is a writer,
theorist, publisher, historian, teacher, performer, archivist, organiser, translator, object-maker, and
whatever else is necessary in facilitating his primary project: the
formation, maintenance, and transformation of marginal countercultures. A co-founder of the International Post-NeoAbsurdist Collective, he
is also actively engaged with Fluxus, Neoism, the Eternal Network, and many
other radical and avant-garde projects internationally. In his capacity as
publisher of Monocle-Lash Anti-Press, he has edited and issued over 150 books,
journals, and discs featuring work by scores of writers, thinkers, and artists
from around the world. Himself the author or co-author of 40 books of critical
and social theory, verse, historiography, performance scores, visual poetry,
polemic, and collage, Lindsann has performed and lectured extensively in the US
and the United Kingdom, in contexts spanning anarchist squats to university
classes to bookshops to (accidentally) biennials to punk basements. He actively maintains several archives of contemporary and historical countercultures, notably the Post-NeoAbsurdist Archive (contemporary avant-garde), Revenant Archive (19th Century avant-garde), Autonomous Library (chapbooks, zines, and micropress). and Southwest Virginia Punk & Zine Archive. Lindsann teaches cross-disciplinary Humanities classes, writing and history at Community High School of Arts and Academics, a progressive school in Roanoke, Virginia.
Narrative Biography
Olchar E. Lindsann co-founded the Post-NeoAbsurdist (anti-)Movement in Columbus, Ohio in 2002 and edited its mouthpiece journal, The in-Appropriated Press. Post-Neo’s fusion of Dada and DIY Punk ethos was the context for his first sound poetry and performances.
Initially a joke, by 2005 Post-Neo groups existed in Hawaii, Washington, New Jersey, & the U.K., where Lindsann studied at the utopian Dartington College of Arts. There he co-founded & performed with the violently absurd, multidisciplinary Itinerant Mirror Cabaret, published the journal Synapse, and founded mOnocle-Lash Anti-Press, today one of the most active print avant-garde presses in America with nearly 150 titles. In The Ecstatic Nerve, he initiated a long-term project to re-conceptualize avant-garde history, in both its content and its social role in today’s radical countercultures.
Returning to the US in 2007, he joined the Post-Neo group in New Jersey. By day he did warehouse work, mostly alongside immigrants and refugees from Latin America and Africa; by night he wrote poetry and essays on countercultural praxis and radical historiography, encouraged subversive subculture among Rutgers University students, and organised exhibits and performance events, including the 2008 International Post-Neo House Festival.
In 2010 Lindsann relocated with other Post-Neos to Roanoke, Virginia and joined the avant-garde activity around Collab Fest, Art Rat Studios, and the Marginal Arts Festival; since 2015 he has led the proudly un-funded AfterMAF Festival. He teaches humanities and writing courses at a progressive high school. He actively curates an archive of contemporary zine/micropress publishing (3,000 books) and the Revenant Archive of the 19th Century avant-garde (650 items), and translates forgotten French countercultural works, often from the latter archive. The Revenant Editions imprint was launched to publish this and related material, and today he edits the journals Rêvenance, The In-Appropriated Press, and Synapse.
Posts
