Jim Allen first performed Poetry for Chainsaws in 1976 at the Experimental Art Foundation in Adelaide, Australia. In 2006 he repeated this performance at the Michael Lett Gallery, Auckland, and in 2007 at the St Paul Street Gallery, Auckland as a part of the O-AR exhibition.

Poetry for Chainsaws consists of a reading of Allen Ginsberg’s poem Howl which was first published in 1956. Simultaneously with the commencement of the reading three chainsaws are started which are left running until they have no more fuel. The reading takes place in the midst of the raging machines which move over the floor propelled by their own vibrations. Allen reads, undeterred by the noise and fumes, from time to time changing his position, standing up when one of the machines comes too close to him, sitting down again, leaning towards them and talking to them. One gets the impression that he is reading the poem to them rather than the audience. Once the machines fall silent the reading is continued, stopping at a random point after about 30 minutes.

Howl is an incunabulum of the beat generation, a furious condemnation of American society portrayed in the poem as the “Moloch” which destroyed “the best of my generation”. The poem’s impact which bristles with all the insignia of the outsider culture (censorship, trial, prohibition, arrest of the publisher) continues up to the present. It is not surprising that this should be so, particularly in the world of rock music where the air of revolt permeates the rhetoric. In any case it is noteworthy that it is in this world that Howl, ironically satirized or referred to indirectly, continues to survive as a document of revolt, while the intelligentsia gets tangled up in sophistries and ducks away in concordance with the neo-conservatives under the cover of factuality of global capitalism. To speak of radicalism in a world which has become less and less comprehensible due to the rank proliferation of complexities seems to be ridiculous to intellectuals who see it as either nostalgia for times long gone when the fronts were still clear, or as a marketing ploy to attract attention in a society bombarded by messages. Symptoms of this are seen in, amongst others, the re-enactments of earlier performances by artists such as Marina Abramovic which might easily be dismissed as a betrayal of the original ideals and an attempt to raise the dead for a saturated audience which craves for heroic and radical moments.

Jim Allen’s Poetry for Chainsaws is best understood against the backdrop of his experiences during a journey to Europe, the USA and Mexico which led him right into the middle of the turbulent student uprisings. De Gaulle had sought asylum in Germany, Paris was a cut off city, there were rumours about food shortages, and all night sit-ins in London. When he visited Chicago there were still blood stains on the university steps from the unrest during the Democratic party conference of 22 to 30 August 1968. There is no doubt that this journey was a watershed in Jim Allen’s biography. It is the point when he turns his back on the academics and moves from object-based art practices to action art.