#BenMorea

"Even in his heyday, Morea cultivated an air of mystery. In the early 60s, he was an abstract-expressionist painter who signaled his lack of compromising nuances by dressing completely in black. Later in the decade, he used to strut around St. Marks Place and Second Avenue, longhaired and bearded like any number of hippies, but instead of adorning himself in flowers and beads, he wore a leather jacket, carried a switchblade and peddled manifestos full of cryptic poetry and angry agitprop. The Motherfuckers described themselves as a kind of politicized street gang, but in the media they were known only as 'a group with a certain unprintable name.' Their general attitude toward the counterculture summons to mind something Patti Smith later said about rock 'n' roll: 'We created it; let's take it over!'

This is a group who once carried piles of stinking, festering trash from the East Village and dumped it on the steps of Lincoln Center. ('WE PROPOSE A CULTURAL EXCHANGE,' they declared in an accompanying leaflet: 'garbage for garbage.') In 1968, they rallied in support of Valerie Solanas, the tormented feminist who shot Andy Warhol. A year later, they cut the fences at Woodstock, famously helping to turn it into a free concert for thousands."

https://libcom.org/article/ben-morea-garbage-guerrilla