My review of David Burrows and Simon O’Sullivans Fictioning: The Myth-Functions of Contemporary Art and Philosophy is now online at Third Text.
Vitalism and the Machine
Documentation of Dean Kenning‘s talk ‘Vitalism and the Machine’ at SVA on August 9th 2019, part of the Art, Ecology and Science Fiction series.
In the talk he discusses his kinetic sculpture works, social-body-mind maps, Arkady and Boris Strugatsky’s Roadside Picnic, Sci-Fi, Horror, the Soviet biochemist Alexander Oparin’s book What is Life?, Francois Jacob’s The Logic of Life, Descartes, animal automata, pain, Freud’s Beyond the Pleasure Principle, the death instinct, repetition compulsion, Jacques Lacan, Edgar Allan Poe’s The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar and melt movies.
Anna Walker Artists Talk at SVA
I’ll be hosting an artists talk by Anna Walker at Stroud Valley Arts this Friday (September 20th). Anna is an artist, writer and researcher working in multi-media. She has been exploring trauma in her art’s practice for many years, researching how the body responds to overwhelming traumatic and stressful situations and how it reorganises itself to cope with or manage it. The experience of trauma creates a tension in the body that ruptures the functioning of ‘normal’ memory schemas, whether in an attempt to forget or an effort to manage the memory.
Through video, text and sound, Anna investigates the interaction between states of knowing and not knowing, acknowledging and the refusal to acknowledge, and the endeavour to illuminate the relationships between previously unrelated events, structures, perceptions and actions, and to explore cultural trauma, social responsibility and political action.
The talk will take place at SVA, 4 John Street, Stroud between 5.30 and 7.30 pm. £5 on the door.
The Occult Conspiracy of the Unconscious: Discussion with Jasun Horsley
I recently had a most enjoyable conversation with Jasun Horsley, author of Seen and Not Seen: Confessions of a Movie Autist and Vice of Kings: How Socialism, Occultism, and the Sexual Revolution Engineered a Culture of Abuse, on his podcast The Liminalist.
In part one we discuss our travels in Mexico, the Narco-Satanicos cult, tabloid press, sensationalism, The Believers, Maximón, Ah Pook, Baron Samedi, Jesus Malverde, Nagualism, Seen and Not Seen, I Spit on Your Grave, video nasties, sexual repression, Georges Bataille, trauma, transgression, psychoanalysis, false screen memories, deviant cultural imprints and mothers.
In part two we discuss secrecy, shame, Philip K. Dick, uncanny zones of literary encounter, Jonathan Lethem, Erik Davis, sleepers in the matrix, Undead Uprising, academic politics, Foucault, Bataille, Neo-Gnostic conspiracy, Anti-Christian Marxism, accelerated coincidence, affinity, George Hodel, The Black Dahlia, Man Ray, Surrealist S&M, crime, Fred Vermorel’s Dead Fashion Girl, Frankfurt School, Cultural Marxism, Room 237, Fabian Society, Walter Benjamin and cannabis.
Maggie Mer Roberts at SVA, June 2019
Documentation of Maggie’s recent talk at Stroud Valley Arts where she spoke about her work with 0rphan Drift and screened her videos Miasma and If AI Were Cephalopod. This was the second in a series of talks on Art, Ecology and Science-Fiction. You can view Miasma at https://vimeo.com/260984258 and IF AI Were Cephalopod at: https://vimeo.com/336275408.
Vitalism and the Machine: Dean Kenning Artist’s Talk at Stroud Valley Arts
I’m very happy to announce the third of Invisible College Stroud’s Art, Ecology and Science Fiction talks. The artist, writer and arts educator Dean Kenning will be discussing the concepts of vitalism and machine in relation to his recent exhibitions ‘The Origin of Life’ and ‘Psychobotanical’ at Stroud Valley Arts and to the genres of science fiction and horror. The talk will take place between 5.30 and 7.30 on Friday 9th August in the SVA bar and will be followed by the opening of the Stroud Summer Show. All welcome. £5 on the door.
Agnès Villette on Invasive Insects
Here is the documentation of Agnès Villette’s talk on Invasive Insects that took place at Stroud Valley Arts on June 8th 2019. It was the first of a series of talks on Art, Ecology and Science Fiction hosted by Invisible College (Stroud). The next will be Maggie Robert’s screening and talk at The Goods Shed in Stroud this Friday, 28th June.
Art, Ecology and Science Fiction Talks in Stroud
Under the auspices of the recently incarnated Invisible College (Stroud) I will be introducing a series of talks about Art, Ecology and Science Fiction at SVA (Stroud Valley Arts) in June. The talks will continue on a monthly basis.
The first talk will be given by Agnès Villette on Saturday June 8th 2019 between 4 – 6 pm.
Agnès will be speaking about her current project: Alien of the Species a photographic series about 12 invasive insects that have recently arrived in Europe. Contrasting interviews with entomologists and environmental humanities theorists, the project maps the complex entanglement of human / animal relationships within disrupted ecosystems subjected to global warming and mass migrations.
The introduction in our ecosystems of the Asiatic Hornet, Anoplophora, the Boxwood moth or the Palm tree Weevil opens complex narrations of global Capitalism, bio war and damaged ecologies where insects invite us to rethink the polarised relation of nature and culture. Building on the media coverage of the disappearance of insects, ‘Alien of the Species’ interrogates discrepancies between how the scientific and environmental humanities create narratives about the underlying interconnectedness of the world we share with insects.
The second talk on Saturday, June 29th 2019, 4 – 6 pm will be by Maggie ‘MER’ Roberts.
Maggie is a British artist who lives and works between London and Capetown. She is a founder member of the cyber-arts collective 0rphan Drift that worked with CCRU (Cybernetic Cultural Research Unit) in the late 90’s and early ‘00’s. Her work employs collage techniques across audio-visual, digital, sculptural and painterly mediums as a way of manifesting virtual frequencies that affect visible reality. These frequencies – such as expanding cosmic, geological, biotechnical and cultural time scales; animal becomings; climate crisis as the violence of excess and luxury; ‘machine vision’ and communication currents in matter – she sees as catalysts for change.
Maggie will be talking about her current show Uncanny Valley, Difficult Kin at Aspex gallery in Portsmouth and her recent show (with Ranu Mukherjee) If AI were Cephalopod at Telematic Gallery, San Francisco.
Both events are £5 on the door and Agnès and Maggie will be offering studio visits while they are in town.
Gilbert Adair Reads from SYZEM: Book Two
During a recent visit to Stroud, Hawaii-based poet Gilbert Adair gave an impromptu reading from his recently published ‘SYZEM: Book Two – A Book of Sky and Islands (& a city)’. Gilbert gives a short introduction to the work, in which he explains the inspiration for it. In this case that involves the cultivation of genetically modified crops in Kawaihae designed to withstand pesticides. This is combined with elements of the Anglo-Saxon chronicles, the story of Salome and the ‘Salomania’ craze that spread the Europe and America at the beginning of the 20th century. Following Gilbert’s reading there is a short discussion between myself and Gilbert about the work.
Duke Skullcracker Talk
Below is a recording I recently gave to the FHI Social Practice Lab at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina on April 16th. Many thanks for Pedro Lasch, director of the lab, for extending the invitation.
Invisible Mirrors 