Direct from Ms. Mason, herself!:
Here is my acceptance speech in honor of the award I have graciously accepted:
I am so very honored to achieve the Lifetime Achievement Award, which fittingly enough, because I did not die of cancer and because I am still living, it is with utmost gratitude I thank all members of the Anne Elizabeth Moore academy for this appropriately titled Lifetime Achievement Award. Now I’ll be in the foyer huffing the pipes of a bus. Thank you.
Nell Taylor, defender of all things great and creator of many things wonderful, has done it again with this song, created to honor the brilliance of Laurie Jo Reynolds and Liz Mason on the receipt of their awards on August 21, 2009. (WARNING: Not for the faint of heart, nor for those who hate ridiculousness, who should probably go elsewhere anyway.)
It must also be noted for the record that rumors alluding to the appearance of a naked man interrupting the ceremony are, in fact, true; rest assured he was silenced and removed immediately, and no harm befell the award or any near-standing audience members.
As the administrator, founder, and multi-year winner of the Anne Elizabeth Moore Award for Excellence in Awesomeness, Anne Elizabeth Moore, I’ve been asked by the Institute for Excellence in Awesomeness to make a few remarks.
The Anne Elizabeth Moore Award for Excellence in Awesomeness was established in 2005 as an antidote to the barriers that had been erected to prevent Anne Elizabeth Moore from winning other awards. Despite the writer, artist, and activist’s extensive oeuvre in the field of Awesomeness—approaching and, the judges felt, surpassing a level of Excellence in that field—MacArthur, Guggenheim, and Publisher’s Clearing House awards continued to elude her grasp. The Anne Elizabeth Moore Award for Excellence in Awesomeness was named by musician Kevin Duneman, who suggested that she simply add it to her CV one autumn day. The award has been bestowed upon a deserving personage in the field of literature, art, and activism every autumn since.
The 2005, 2006, and 2008 awards went to Anne Elizabeth Moore of Chicago Illinois. She tells our judges, “I’m so excited to be the multi-year winner, and founder, of this prestigious award!” A major upset in the awards’ history occurred in 2007 when dark horse candidate Sarah Fan appeared seemingly from nowhere to claim victory.
Sarah Fan describes herself as a southern girl who dug herself out of the hardscrabble suburbs of North Little Rock, Arkansas. Kidding! There was no scrabbling, except of the board game variety. Sarah Fan was instrumental during calendar year 2007 for her dedicated editing and joke-telling facilities, and her Excellence in Awesomeness has only grown in renown since. She has worked tirelessly and with good humor at the New Press, a not-for-profit political publishing house, for over a decade, and loves cats.
The 2009 award is the first to be judged by an open ballot process. Although Anne Elizabeth Moore is again in the running for this esteemed honor, several people in addition to Anne Elizabeth Moore are too. This year’s award comes with a very small cash prize and a handsome framable certificate photocopied from an original purchased at a convenience store for $1.98. This year’s voting booths were lent by the Chicago Board of Elections in exchange for promotional consideration. This is true.
A few notable and worthy candidates for the Anne Elizabeth Moore Award for Excellence in Awesomeness include:
Write-in candidates were accepted in this year’s process, and a few of these included: Karin Patzke and Bob Barker (both of whose candidatures were accompanied by drawings of penises); A toilet seat of applesauce; Melissa Jay Craig; Mayor Daley Ha Ha; Party Possum, who first appeared in a 15-year-old’s zine in the accompanying exhibition, Dismantling the Corporate State and Other Amusements; Lucas Salinas 9 Years Old; Whomever is reading this; Cram it; and Lara Brooks.
One vote was originally cast for Abigail Satinsky but an apparent moment of reflection caused the voter to support instead Jimmy Carter; Similarly, a vote first cast for John Corbett and then crossed out included the explanation, “I totally had a thing for him as Aiden but now he’s kinda a d-bag so . . . . my boyfriend”—it should be noted that John Corbett is not, to my knowledge, an actor—; One ballot had both “Blago” and “Palin” written in, but in this case no votes were cast for any candidate.
Our campaign poster wall rarely promoted actual candidates in the election, instead reflecting—as more elections probably should—the intimate thoughts of voters. “I Like Boxes,” “Vampiers,” “no olympics,” “Don’t be hateful, change takes time,” “it’s all crap,” “no,” and the heart symbol were each represented by posters but not by any votes.
Non-winners, or in other words, losers of this prestigious award are advised to keep in mind that the award is rigged—likely to go to me, Anne Elizabeth Moore—and that there is no umbrella organization to which one may air grievances or concerns about this process. The Institute for Excellence in Awesomeness remains blissfully unbeholden to state, city, or ward governance, funders, or indeed any set of rules, guidelines, or stipulations whatsoever. Such processes follow in the grand tradition of American democratic electoral procedures as interpreted by the State of Illinois and the City of Chicago. The stated mission, to foster the pursuit of excellence in all manners awesome is a subjective one that our administrators take very seriously, if not very consistently.
Additionally, it should be underscored that the award is fake, and holds very little value beyond the humorous.
That being said, in this, the fifth year of the Anne Elizabeth Moore Award for Excellence in Awesomeness, our judges have decided to create a new, fake, rigged award in the category of Lifetime Achievement in Awesomeness. This award is created in honor of the achievements of Liz Mason in actually beating cancer this year and continuing to run the bookstore Quimby’s, despite the demise of both independent publishing and bookstores. May the abilities of Liz Mason to beat seemingly insurmountable odds continue to inspire us all.
In 1998, the first prisoners were transferred from prisons across the state to Tamms CMAX, in Southern Illinois. This new “supermax” prison, designed to keep men in permanent solitary confinement, was intended for short-term incarceration. The IDOC called it a one-year “shock treatment.” Ten years later, over one-third of the original prisoners had been there for more than a decade. They continue to live in long-term isolation—no phone calls, no communal activity, no contact visits. They only leave the cell to exercise alone in a concrete box 2 to 5 times per week. They are fed through a slot in the door.
Tamms Year Ten is a grassroots all-volunteer coalition which came together to protest the misguided and inhumane policies at Tamms on the ten-year anniversary of its opening. After initiating a program of cultural, educational and political events to publicize the conditions at the supermax, the organization held hearings before the Prison Reform Committee, chaired by Rep. Eddie Washington. Since then, we have been working with Rep. Julie Hamos, and 27 co-sponsors to pass a supermax reform bill in the Illinois General Assembly (HB 2633). In May, Governor Quinn announced that he was appointing a new IDOC head with the top priority of reviewing the supermax. The campaign is endorsed by over 70 organizations, including mental health advocates, churches and faith groups, prisoner-reentry programs, policy and legal aid groups, and art collectives.
Tamms is located at the southern tip of Illinois, 360 miles from Chicago. The partially underground facility was designed to hold prisoners in permanent solitary confinement. Doctors and psychologists have described prolonged isolation as torture, and the United Nations Committee Against Torture and numerous human rights groups have condemned the practices of supermax prisons in the U.S.
Although Tamms Year Ten is a coalition of organizations and individuals, Laurie Jo Reynolds is one of their most strident and dedicated activists. Over this summer alone, the organization has:
- Held an August 6 Call-in day to demand Governor Quinn reform Tamms, harnessing a recent spate of investigative pieces about the Supermax Facility
- Lead a multifaith prayer vigil at the State of Illinois building to demand reform
- Called out the Chicago Tribune on a shoddy, misguided and occasionally downright factually incorrect editorial
- Released a new petition calling for Tamms reform
- Conducted an innovative mud-stenciling project throughout the city with a national coalition of artists.
Real reform at Tamms now seems, for the first time, an imminent possibility. This is thanks, at least in part, to the work of Laurie Jo Reynolds, who combines politics with poetics in video, performance, and straight-up organizing.
Filmmaker Dara Greenwald writes, “Laurie Jo Reynolds is a champion of legislative art, in fact she invented it! She has mobilized the Chicago arts community to deal with the crucial problem of the prison industrial complex and fights tirelessly in keeping her practice and organizing both real and poetic. She deserves a whole bunch of awards, even that genius grant!”
Nominator and videographer Emily Forman writes, “Laurie Jo Reynolds . . . has excelled in making people ask new kinds of questions ([you might be familiar with her project] “Ask Me!”), laugh until they cry, and has inspired many of us in her creative and truly tireless efforts to end abusive solitary incarceration at Tamms Supermax prison in Illinois. Resoundingly awesome!”
Kyle Harris, activist, writer, artist, recently of Free Speech TV, says “There is no doubt that Laurie Jo Reynolds is the most awesome of the awesomest. . . . Not only has Laurie Jo promoted general curiosity and opened thousands of minds with Ask Me!, fought like hell to stop torture at Tamms (she’s literally suffered/ing horrifying rashes, insomnia, and other ailments from working so heroically on this campaign), advocated for the most loathed and rejected people on earth, liberated animals, challenged me with cutting questions and analysis, pushed her students to new levels of creativity (pushed us all to new levels of creativity), wrote at least two brilliant, provocative, and controversial plays, created amazing videos, and told THE FUNNIEST jokes I’ve ever heard, she also took me in when I didn’t have a home and treated me with utmost hospitality. Not only is she one of the greatest artists and activists I’ve ever met (totally under-appreciated by the thick-heads in the academy, the art, and activist worlds), she is an amazing friend who has supported me and others with transparency, love, challenge, humor, and infinite generosity. Anne, this is more than one line and I apologize . . . but PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE–Laurie Jo Reynolds is a hero of awesomeness and the appropriate successor to your obviously deserved victories. . . . I adore her.”
With that, I am pleased to announce this year’s winner of the Anne Elizabeth Moore Award for Excellence in Awesomeness, LAURIE JO REYNOLDS.
[Please note that because Laurie Jo Reynolds was unable to attend the awards ceremony, it was accepted in her honor by Anne Elizabeth Moore.]
This handsome, frameable certificate is accompanied by a $25 cash award, donated by attendees of the August 21 award ceremony.
The votes are pouring in for the 2009 Anne Elizabeth Moore Awards for Excellence in Awesomeness at the Book & Paper Arts exhibition Dismantling the Corporate State and Other Amusements. There are still five more weeks to vote, but I thought I’d update the out-of-town and lazy on the status of the vote so far. Hopefully, they’ll get their rumps in gear and come down and make sure the right person wins!
So far, I’m winning, with an easy majority of the votes. This is probably not a surprise, as I have remained the clear favorite to win for the entire duration of the award, since I invented it to give to myself.
However, the following individuals and fake entities are also given a healthy showing in an early tally.
Laurie Jo Reynolds, the tireless prisoners’ rights activist and artist best known for her work with Tamms Year 10.
Liz Mason, the Quimby’s Bookstore Manager who recently kicked cancer to the curb.
Crayon Man, a fake entity represented in the gallery by a drawing utensil taped to the wall by someone who drew arms and legs next to him.
And Melissa Jay Craig, about whom no information has been supplied.
The time to vote is now! The time to donate money is also now! Donations being accepted via paypal at: artshowheckyeah@gmail.com. (Please put “AEMAEA” in the subject line. Thanks!)
The Anne Elizabeth Moore Award for Excellence in Awesomeness will be decided this year via in-person paper voting ballot and announced at the closing of the Center for Book & Paper Arts exhibition, Dismantling the Corporate State and Other Amusements.
Visitors will be invited to cast ballots for any of our pre-selected or write-in candidates. The winner of the 2009 Anne Elizabeth Moore Award for Excellence in Awesomeness will be given a small cash donation and the certificate of Excellence in Awesomeness in a public ceremony on Friday, August 21, 2009.
You are invited to nominate any individual, living or dead, who has excelled in awesomeness between August 31, 2008 and our award ceremony. Nominations will cease to be accepted online on August 20, 2009.
To submit a nomination, simply:
1. Add the name of the person you’d like to see on the ballot in the comments section below.
2. Add a brief one-line description of the awesomeness of that person in general, or the way that person has displayed excellence in awesomeness, since August 31, 2008. (Please be advised that links, while helpful, will not translate onto our paper ballot, so your descriptions should be succinct and mind-blowing.)
3. Be aware that I might win anyway.
4. Donate to the kitty, which, if not me, will be awarded the winner. Paypal donations to: aem AT anneelizabethmoore DOT com. (If the winner is me, the money will be disbursed equally among attendees of the award ceremony.)
YOU NEED NOT BE PRESENT TO WIN BUT YOU MUST BE AWESOME TO ENTER.
