THE NORTH RIDING PROJECT

One day in 1983, a Jamaican-born striker for the English national football team named Luther Blissett arrived to the clubhouse astonished to find his contract had been sold to AC Milan, one of the best teams in Europe, for 1 million pounds.  It was a massive salary for the time, especially for Italy’s first black player, but weirdest of all, Blissett was not known to be particularly impressive.  After his first few mediocre outings in Italy, speculation spread that the team’s scout had confused Blissett for his more talented teammate John Barnes.  At the end of the season his contract was sold back to England at half price, and legend of the debacle made his name synonymous in Italian slang with “catastrophe”.

Gittlitz/Posadism

In 1994, a group… inspired by the journeyman footballer’s accidental path to cultural fame, declared “Luther Blissett” a multiple-use pseudonym available for anyone to use.  They proceeded to organize complicated pranks on the media – hacks both online and social, acts of vandalism, and staging satanic conspiracies, all claimed by Luther Blissett.  The moniker became something like the singular ski mask worn by autonomists in their black blocs to provide safety from surveillance and deindividualize each participant into a collective folk hero.  

Gittlitz/Posadism