Myth and the art strike of the international parallel union of telecommunications

One of the most remarkable and speculative calls for an 'art strike' was ‘The General Art Strike and The Perpetuum Mobile’, announced by the so-called 'International Parallel Union of Telecommunications' and its 'Vice-Dispatcher', Tamás St. Auby in 1991-2. The strike was proposed against the 'reigning myth of work', and this myth, as well as the strike against it, are traced back to the book of Genesis. The strike aimed ultimately to restore humanity to its condition before the fall. This essay attempts to understand the somewhat esoteric rationale behind these claims, especially with a view to its conception of myth. This leads to an investigation into the obscure and ambivalent status of myth in the broader project of St. Auby since the early 1970s. It also leads to an investigation into the relation of 'The General Art Strike' to the Art Strike of 1990-3, especially with regard to the claim by Stewart Home that the 1990-3 Art Strike should be understood as itself a myth, following Georges Sorel's conception of the general strike as a myth. This exposes a variety of approaches to the precarious renewal of mythopoesis.