Nigel Ayers in Network News Number Fourteen: Total Eclipse IssueJune 1999

..One week later I'm in the Spittle with Marky Martin and Jeffrey
Bernard (who was one of the art history tutors). Jeff had come to give
us a bollocking for talking (about art history, mind) during one of his
tutorials. But I explained to him that all we were doing was discussing
the creative aspect of historification. The point wasn't to talk about
art history, but to make it.

And Jeff said "But you weren't listening to the lecture" And I said "Yes
we were, it was about John Fare." "So what did you learn?" said Jeff. ...................................

And I said, "John Charles Fare was a sculptor/performer who was born in
1936 in Toronto, Ontario. Together with an Italian cybernetic sculptor
he built a computer-controlled machine that performed amputations. Fare
was the patieni, the computer functioned in a completely random way. The
performances were advertised and tickets sold at £5 a throw. These
performances took place in England. In total there were five amputations
on Fare by the machine and every body part amputated was replaced by a
bronze replica. "

"Oh, sorry, so you were listening after all," says Jeff "y`'hat'll you
two monkeys be having then, another two pints of piss warm 70s beer?"

"Cheers" we chorused, not letting on that we thought Jeff's lecture was
a load of bollocks. I'd met John Fare myself that summer in a squat in
Wiltshire and I'd heard the story from the horse's mouth. John Fare's
amputations were not chosen by computer at all, but by blindfolded art
collectors, who threw darts at a board with a diagram of Fare's body on
it. And that whenever one of Fare's body parts was removed it was
replaced by a plastic replica, not a bronze one.…

Nigel Ayers