Luther Blissett (pseudonym)

Luther Blissett is a multiple-use name and an open pop star informally adopted and shared by hundreds of artists and activists all over Europe and the Americas since 1994. The pseudonym first appeared in Bologna, Italy, in mid-1994, when a number of cultural activists began using it for staging a series of urban and media pranks to experiment with new forms of authorship and identity. From Bologna, the multiple-use name spread to other European cities, such as Rome and London, as well as countries like Germany, Spain, and Slovenia. Sporadic appearances of Luther Blissett were also noted in Brazil, Canada, Finland, and the United States.

For reasons that remain unknown, the pseudonym was borrowed from a real-life Luther Blissett, a notable association football player in the 1980s. In December 1999, the Italian activists who had launched the Luther Blissett Project in 1994 decided to discontinue usage of the name by committing metaphorical ritual suicide, or seppuku. After authoring the best-selling historic novel Q as "Luther Blissett", five of them went on to found the writers' collective Wu Ming.