Nørgaard, Bjørn. – Thomas Fuglsang med flere:. HÆTSJJ Nr. 34: “ABORTVEJLEDNING. ” København: Dansk Tidsskrifts Tryk 1969. 4 sider. Illustreret. Meget flot “foto-collage” “omslag”

Hætsjj, the Danish avant-garde artists’ “newspaper” A phonetic spelling of the Danish word “hetz” (“smear” or “slander” campaign), this publication was issued, for a time, almost daily and was sold on the streets amidst the burgeoning avant-garde, collectivist movements. The publication ran from 1968 to 1970 in 48 numbers. Hætsjj arose from a pivotal moment in Danish experimental art. In 1966, The Experimental School (“Ex-School”), an important avant-garde art school set up as an alternative to the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, moved into a condemned building near Fredrik’s Church in the Indre By. There, the Ex-School powerfully nurtured the vanguard: in their first year in that abandoned building they hosted Nam June Paik and Charlotte Moorman, as well as Joseph Beuys, who gave his first performance with the dead hare there. Next door to this collective live-work experiment “was an equally run-down flat which was used as a headquarters for a loose group among whom was the main organiser of the Danish Provo Movement, inspired by the Dutch Provos” (Ørum, 798). The Danish Provos and their associates were organizing and creating art derived from Situationist and Fluxus aims and aesthetics; indeed, “during the late 1960s they even made similar art objects, such as treated book art and assemblages in the typical style of the underground drug culture” (ibid). The concomitant developments in offset printing techniques made it possible for these artist-organizers to produce their own newspaper for their community cheaply. The leftist politics, art-making, performance pieces, and collectivist experiments in living mixing in these two buildings alone was a potent blend of revolutionary, avant-garde spirit — and the groups collaborated extensively on each other’s publications. Originally founded and edited by Henning Prins and Leif Varmark, their initial goal was to be a mouthpiece of the underground movement, to “incite against the authorities and against those who choose to cooperate with them in any way.” Members of both the Provos and the Ex-School contributed to Hætsjj, but the editorial oversight was eventually handed off predominantly to Ole Stig Andersen and Ole Grünbaum, and the artists at the nearby Gallery 101 (home to Joseph Beuys’ “Eurasia” actions), such as Bjørn Nørgaard and Peter Louis-Jensen. The first issue was published just days after the assassination of Robert Kennedy, and following comments from Denmark’s then-Prime Minister Hilmar Baunsgård, that “violent demonstrations” were “the greatest threat to democracy.” The incendiary publication was issued as direct counterpoint to this pacifying, bourgeois ideology, and was made up of local, underground news, political commentary, parody, pornographic political collage, and critical commentary on art and publishing. It “was not political art, but a political activity which was part of the spectrum of activities ranging from art to everyday life, social events and political activities undertaken by the extended Ex-School circle during the late 1960s” (ibid). The publication comprised the work, thinking, art, and organizing, of innumerable groups with divergent aims and methods — but who were united in their commitment to the counterculture. This heterogeneous mix was in fact part of the publication’s power. Guided by neither a manifesto nor a strict aesthetic program, and published in the form of a newspaper, it offered an image of an alternative world: a self-determined yet collectivist social reality, one governed by freedom of expression, rather than the murderous machinery of capital. Indeed, “Detailed instructions on how to produce an issue of Hætsjj were published in the paper as an encouragement to everyone to contribute or to establish their own newspaper” (ibid). All copies of Hætsjj are extremely rare. Each beautifully made issue is a remarkable work of revolutionary ambition. Not only an important, scarcely seen record of the European vanguard, these are still genuinely inspirational works at the intersections of collectivist thought, political organizing, and anti-commercial expression. Reference: Tania Ørum, “Counterculture,” in A Cultural History of the Avant-Garde in the Nordic Countries 1950-1975 (2016