Bread Bandits
Action #1
Bread Bandits Manifesto #1
Pane Pane Non Fontane
(or, Fewer Monuments, More Bread)
As an industrial product, Wonderbread exists as the perfect, mechanized, tasteless, non-nutritive and substanceless SUBSTITUTE for the staff of life. Therefore, ìWonderî is our material of choice for our artistic statement in the Nationís Capital.ìWonderî refers to the spectacleóthe con game of business and mass cultureóand to the spectacular production of food. A shameless abundance of products that look good but which provide no good fuel for mind or body.
Thus, we say, LESS ìWONDER,î MORE BREAD.
However, in our alliance with the Partnership for a Reality Free America, we acknowledge that wonder (astonishment, surprise, marvel, mystery, joy) is a desirable component of life. The brand name ìWonderî attached to pseudobread misleadsóconnoting and promising that an industrialized imitation of food will yield a life filled with joy, mystery, fulfillment and satisfaction. If we do not want Wonderbread, we certainly do want wonder in our lives.
It has been argued (see John Zerzan, ìAgriculture: Demon Engine of Civilizationî in Apocalypse Culture, Revised Edition, Feral House Press, 1990) that agriculture is the root of all evil, and that prior to the development of scientific planting and food production, human life was more leisured and healthy. Agriculture eventually lead to the invention of cultural concepts of time, property, control, and the separation of work and playóand thus to physical conditions of stress, stress-related illness, and psychological disorders, and to sociological phenomena of crime, sin, violence, and jealousy. With the technological advance of the steam engine precipitating the Industrial Revolution, agriculture was abstracted by speedóand its physical, psychological, and sociological byproducts were multiplied and accelerated in society and the individual. [For a fuller treatment of the need for greater control as a result of increased productionóand the ultimate development of computer technology to provide this controlósee James Benigerís Control Revolution (Harvard University Press, 1986).]
The bottom line is that in the face of productionóand the work, anti-leisure, stress and psychological dysfunction it yieldsówe have lost our sense of wonder. We need wonder.
So we say, LESS WONDERBREAD, MORE WONDER AND MORE BREAD.
This is our final position.
Meet our demands or suffer the
consequences:
of a world
filled with lies, sorrow and
emptiness.
[signed]
The Panino Bandito
ìSaving Wonder from Wonderbreadî
