The Diminutive Alfred Jarry

Alfred Jarry was considered to be the father of Absurdism , he lived in an apartment in Paris. He stood under 5 feet tall and as an Absurdist pioneer was happy that his landlord had lowered the roof of his apartment to half the usual height to make way for an additional floor, as an artist he was sad that the same landlord had not lowered the rent also. There is much that can be said about Jarry, but it does not concern public sculpture in Wellington.
It was in fact thru the auspices of the pataphysics research laboratory in London that we came across a manuscript which did concern us. Alfred Jarry was of course a well known playwright, much of his writing happened in the century before last. Thru secret connections in various Avant-Garde circles the research library came to hear of our efforts to uncover hitherto unknown psychic roots in Wellington, offering us proof of an extraordinary role that Wellington has played, almost since its beginning, in developing and nurturing lucid but hallucinatory notions of existence.

As a preamble to launching of our first monument , this Sunday outside thistle hall, at 5 o clock we will be reproducing segments of this previously unpublished Absurd manuscript - fully translated from its original French. But until then we leave you with this quote from the playwright, taken from his excellent essay - The killer pedestrian

"Now that, in our opinion, is an excellent, and for reasons that will become obvious as the circumstances unfold. In the year 1888 or 1889, tourists on bicycles or penny farthings were insulted, barked at, bitten and encouraged to topple over, until such a time as dogs, as we can see today, had acquired the habit of steering clear of the new locomotor machines, as they had previously learnt to do for cars. Canine education being now complete, the riding-crops and other defensive weapons of the cyclist of those bygone days have been thrown on the scarp-heap, like the tyre levers of the stone age."