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+HENRY FLYNT 
+Exercise Awareness-States (July 1961) 
+
+
+The July 1967 issue of IKON contained Henry Flynt’s “Mock Risk Games.” 
+This work was a reconstruction, from memory, of Flynt’s 1961 work, “Exer- 
+cise Awareness-States,” which Flynt had disavowed and discarded in 1962. 
+In 1981 Flynt obtained a copy of the original 1961 piece in the possession 
+of Tom Constanten. |n this issue IKON publishes, for the first time, the 
+original “Exercise Awareness-States.” Preceding the text, we reprint the 
+introduction from “Mock Risk Games” because of its clarity in explaining the 
+work. Flynt read “Exercise Awareness-States” during his July 15, 1961 
+appearance in the legendary series at George Maciunas’ A/G Gallery, NYC. 
+This was the only documented public presentation of the work in that period. 
+The reconstruction “Mock Risk Games” has been printed a number of 
+times—it was included in Flynt’s book, Blueprint For a Higher Civilization 
+(Milan, 1975). 
+
+
+INTRODUCTION (from “Mock Risk Games”—1967 Version) 
+
+
+Suppose you stand in front of a swinging door with a nail sticking out of it 
+pointing at your face; and suppose you are prepared to jump back if the door 
+suddenly opens in your face. You are deliberately taking a risk on the 
+assumption that you can protect yourself. Let us call such a situation a “risk 
+game.” Then a “mock risk game” is a risk game such that the misfortune 
+which you risk is contrary to the course of nature, a freak misfortune; and 
+thus your preparation to evade it is correspondingly superficial. 
+
+lf the direction of gravity reverses and you fall on the ceiling, that is a freak 
+misfortune. If you don’t want to risk this misfortune, then you will anchor 
+yourself to the floor in some way. But if you stand free so that you can fall, 
+and yet try to prepare so that if you do fall, you will fall in such a way that 
+you won't be hurt, then that is a mock risk game. If technicians could actually 
+effect or simulate gravity reversal in the room, then the risk game would be 
+a real one. But | am not concerned with real risk games. | am interested in 
+dealing with gravity reversal in an everyday environment, where everything 
+tells you it can’t possibly happen. Your “preparation” for the fall is thus 
+superficial, because you still have the involuntary conviction that it can’t 
+possibly happen. 
+
+Mock risk games constitute a new area of human behavior, because they 
+aren't something people have done before you don’t know what they will be 
+like until you try them, and it took a very special effort to devise them. They 
+have a tremendous advantage over other activities of comparable sig- 
+nificance, because they can be produced in the privacy of your own room 
+without special equipment. Let us explore this new psychological effect; and 
+let us not ask what use it has until we are more familiar with it. 
+
+Instructions for a variety of mock risk games follow. (I have played each 
+game many times in developing it, to ensure that the experience of playing 
+it will be compelling.) For each game, there is a physical action to be 
+
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+performed in a physical setting. Then there is a list of freak misfortunes 
+which you risk by performing the action, and which you must be prepared 
+to evade. The point is not to hallucinate the misfortunes, or even to fear 
+them, but rather to be prepared to evade them. First you work with each 
+misfortune separately. For example, you walk across a room, prepared to 
+react self-protectingly if you are suddenly upside down, resting on the top 
+of your head on the floor. In preparing for this risk, you should clear the path 
+of objects that might hurt you if you fell on them, you should wear clothes 
+suitable for falling, and you should try standing on your head, taking your 
+hands off the floor and falling, to get a feeling for how to fall without getting 
+hurt. After you have mastered the preparation for each misfortune separate- 
+ly, you perform the action prepared to evade the first misfortune and the 
+second (but not both at once). You must prepare to determine instantly 
+which of the two misfortunes befalls you, and to react appropriately. After 
+you have mastered pairs of misfortunes, you go on to triples of misfortunes, 
+and so forth. 
+
+
+EXERCISE AWARENESS-STATES (July, 1961) 
+
+
+| am concerned here to introduce an activity which | will call, for want of 
+a better term, “exercise,” and the states of awareness one has in exercise, 
+“exercise awareness-states.” Incidentally, this activity is based on wrong, 
+although common, philosophical assumptions, but | hope the reader will play 
+along with them for the sake of the activity; philosophical rightness is not 
+the main concern here. Exercise should be thought of first as training to help 
+prepare one for dangerous situations of a very special kind (which the 
+reader is admittedly not likely to encounter). (Incidentally, ’danger’ here 
+should not be an emotive word; my concern is with the theory of defense, 
+not with giving the reader vicarious experience.) Suppose that the adults in 
+a society occasionally have to be in situations, such as walking across a 
+bare metal floor in a certain “building,” during which dangers, very unusual 
+and unpredictable, may arise. Suppose that they know nothing of the 
+provenance of the dangers, just that they may be there, so that they can’t 
+prevent them (or predict what they will be); the persons are somewhat like 
+animals trying to defend themselves against a variety of modern (human) 
+weapons. They cannot adequately prepare for the dangers by practicing 
+responses to specific dangers so that they become habitual, because of the 
+extreme unpredictability of the actual dangers. However, the dangers are 
+such that when one arises a person can figure out what he needs to do to 
+defend himself fast enough and carry it out. 
+
+Finally, suppose that although it is desired to train persons [to be prepared] 
+to defend themselves in the situations, there isn’t the technology to simulate 
+dangers, so that they can’t be given a chance to actually figure out and carry 
+out defenses against simulated dangers. Then it would seem that the best 
+preparation in the situations (until a danger appeared) would be the state 
+of mind—"unpredictably-dangerous-situation awareness state"—of lack of 
+preconceptions as to what one might encounter, emotionlessness (except 
+for the small amount of fear and confidence needed to make one maximally 
+alert), very very heightened awareness of all sensory data, and readiness 
+to figure out (quickly) whether they indicated a danger and [to figure out] a 
+
+
+defense against it. After all, it might be best to stay away, or at least get 
+away, from the preparation resulting from practice with simulated dangers, 
+just because the actual ones are so unpredictable. Training for the situations 
+would then be to help persons achieve this best dangerous-situation aware- 
+ness- state when in the situations. Then (one should first think) the purpose 
+of “exercise,” or the “exercises,” is to help persons to achieve the best 
+dangerous-situation awareness-state in the situations by teaching them to 
+achieve “u/timate exercise awareness-states,” which are as similar as pos- 
+sible to the best dangerous-situation states within the limitations | have 
+given. 
+
+Exercise may secondly be thought of as something to be done for its own 
+sake, so that ultimate exercise awareness-states are achieved for their own 
+sake, in particular, as an unusual way of “appreciating” the sensory date 
+while in them. This is the way | suppose the reader will regard exercise. Thus 
+exercise, rather than unpredictably dangerous situations, is the principal 
+subject of this paper. However, it should not be lost sight of that exercise 
+could be useful in the first way; and the development of exercises should be 
+controlled by concern with whether they are useful in the first way. 
+
+| will now give some explanations and general instructions for exercise. 
+An “exercise” is what the general instructions, and a specification of a(n 
+exercise) “situation” one is to place oneself in and of several “given dan- 
+gers” to anticipate in the situation, refers to; an “exercise awareness-state” 
+is any state of mind throughout an exercise. In first doing an exercise, one 
+anticipates given dangers; the point of having specific dangers to anticipate 
+at first is to keep one from anticipating nothing, being indifferent in the 
+situation and thus not achieving an interesting awareness-state. In a good 
+exercise, the dangers should be interesting to anticipate, one should find it 
+easy to anticipate them strongly, and it should be clear what is dangerous 
+in them and how they can defended against. It is only when one can 
+anticipate the given dangers strongly that one does the exercise, places 
+oneself in the situation, without thinking of specific dangers, trying to strong- 
+ly anticipate unpredictable danger; when one can do this one will be achiev- 
+ing “ultimate exercise awareness-states.” 
+
+The general instructions for the exercises follow. First place oneself in the 
+situation, anticipate one of the given dangers as strongly as possible (short 
+of getting oneself in a state of fright), be very very aware of all sensory data, 
+and be ready to figure out (quickly) whether they indicate the danger and to 
+start defending against it. Try to achieve the greatest anticipation of and 
+readiness for the one danger. The result is an “initial exercise awareness- 
+state.” Finally one can do the exercise forgetting the given dangers; place 
+oneself in the situation, try to anticipate [unpredictable] danger strongly 
+(short of getting oneself frightened), without preconceptions as to what form 
+it will take, be very very aware of all sense data, and be ready to figure out 
+(quickly) whether they indicate a danger, and a defense against it. This is 
+an “ultimate exercise awareness-state.” A final point. So that one will not be 
+distracted from the exercise, there must be a minimum of familiar events 
+extraneous to it during it, such as the sight of a door opening, talking, 
+cooking smells. For this reason, unless otherwise stated exercise should be 
+taken in environments as inanimate, quiet, odorless, etc. as possible. One 
+will fail to achieve interesting exercise awareness-states if one cannot play 
+
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+along and (for the sake of the exercise) strongly anticipate danger; [because 
+one doesn’t expect it,] but rather remains relaxed, indifferent, or worse is 
+sleepy, physiologically depressed (indifferent, depressed exercise states). 
+It should be clear that one has to really try the exercises, not just read about 
+them, in order to appreciate them. 
+
+
+EXERCISE 1 
+
+The situation: You walk across the floor of a medium-sized brightly lighted 
+square room, from the middle of one side to the middle of the other, in a 
+straight line. There should be no other animal [fauna, animate creature] in 
+the room and the path of walking should be clear [of obstructions]; ideally 
+the room should be bare. 
+
+The given dangers to anticipate: 
+(1) Heavy invisible objects falling around you, making a whirring noise as 
+they do. 
+(2) Immovability of whichever foot presses most strongly on the floor, and 
+a steel cylinder two feet in diameter with sharp edges’ falling down, around 
+you (hopefully). 
+(3) Instantaneous inversion of yourself so that you rest on whatever part of 
+your surface was uppermost in walking, and doubling of the gravitational 
+force on you. 
+(4) Sudden dizziness, change of equilibrium to that of one who has been 
+turning around for a long time, and the floor’s vanishing except for a narrow 
+strip, where you have walked, shortening from the front. 
+(5) Change of field of vision to behind your head, instead of in front, 
+something’s coming to hit you from the side in an erratic path, and loud 
+noises on the side of you opposite it. 
+(6) What you see’s suddenly becoming two-dimensional instead of three so 
+that you bump into it, while the room fills from behind with a mildly toxic gas; 
+and going forward’s requiring that you guess the unpredictable action, 
+symbolic of getting past the barrier, which will enable you to get forward. 
+
+
+EXERCISE 2 
+
+You stand, in a dark room, facing a wall and pulling medium hard with both 
+hands on a horizontal bar running along the wall and attached to it, for five 
+minutes. Have an alarm clock to let you know when the time is up. There 
+should be no other animal in the room; ideally the room should be bare. You 
+must not let up on the pulling; the assumption is that if you do your eyes 
+and ears will be assaulted with a blinding light and a deafening sound, 
+except in the case of certain dangers. 
+
+The dangers: 
+(1) Loss of your kinesthetic sense. (body-movement or muscle sense) 
+(2) Suspension of the “normal” “cause and effect” relationship between 
+pulling and keeping the light and sound from appearing, so that you just 
+have to guess what to do to keep them from appearing and it changes with 
+time, with the restriction that it will be closely related to pulling on the bar, 
+e.g. letting go of the bar. 
+(3) Suspension of the “normal” “cause and effect” relationship between what 
+you will and what your body does, so that you just have to guess what to 
+will to keep your arms (and hands) pulling on the bar and it changes with 
+
+
+time, with the restriction that it will be closely related to willing to pull on 
+the bar, e.g. willing to let go of the bar. 
+
+(4) Having the tactile, cutaneous sensation of being under water, so that 
+you will “drown”’—"cutaneously"—unless you cutaneously swim to the top; 
+your sight and hearing being lost except for sensitivity to the light and sound 
+if you stop pulling. 
+
+
+EXERCISE 3 
+
+The situation: You lie on your back, barefoot, on a bunk, your arms more 
+or less at your sides, with a pillow on your face so that you can breathe but 
+not easily, for five minutes. Do not change your position; the assumption is 
+that you can’t except in the case of certain dangers. Have an alarm clock 
+to let you know when the time is up. The room should be dark and there 
+should be no other animal in it. Ideally you should be lying, in the middle 
+and along the longitudinal axis of a not uncomfortably hard rectangular 
+surface a yard above the floor and having an area almost that of the room, 
+in a very long room, which should otherwise be bare. 
+
+The dangers: 
+(1) The gravitational force’s becoming zero and the room’s getting un- 
+bearably hot towards the ceiling. 
+(2) Having to press the pillow against your face with your arms and hands, 
+except for one angle of your face wherein you can roll your face from under 
+the pillow, your head and neck becoming movable. 
+(3) The surface you are lying on’s and the pillow’s turning into a two-part 
+living organism, of which the lower part is so delicate that unless you 
+distribute your bodily pressure on it as evenly as possible, it will be injured 
+and the upper part will pull you off of it by the skin of your face in 
+self-protection, the organism being sufficiently telepathic that you can 
+sense when it is hurting. 
+(4) Division of your body (and clothing) just below the ribs. The two halves 
+separate by 114 feet and a metal wall one inch thick appears between them. 
+Matter and so forth are transmitted between halves and they remain in the 
+usual position relative to each other so that it is rather as if you simply grew 
+in the middle by 112 feet. Your consciousness suddenly seems to be located 
+in the pillow, where the pillow is, rather than in your head; nothing that 
+happens to the pillow materially affects your consciousness. Two kinds of 
+metal blocks come crashing against the wall from far in front of and behind 
+it, starting slowly and speeding up as they get near the wall, and then draw 
+back to where they came from. Blocks of the first kind come from the front 
+(the side the upper part of your body and the pillow are on) only; they are 
+“vertical,” tall and narrow so that they can be avoided by moving from side 
+to side. Blocks of the second kind come in pairs, one in front, one behind. 
+They are “horizontal,” two feet high (thick), and very wide (long). The ones 
+in front hit low and the ones in back high, so they can be avoided by standing 
+up (necessarily in a stooped position). Each time the pair hits higher and 
+higher. There are long indentations in the back side of the wall in which one 
+can get footholds to climb the wall. If one gets to the top of the wall, gets 
+both halves of one’s body above the wall, they will rejoin. 
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