Stefan Szczelkun

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Born Hammersmith, London in 1948. "Lived an isolated life in a bedsit at the top of Regents street until we moved to Feltham when I was 3. Later I was a mod; then a reluctant architect; then a happy artist. Since then I've been in ten collectives of cultural producers from the Scratch Orchestra to Exploding Cinema. With one of these groups I built my own house in Kennington (finished in 1995)."

Stefan Szczelkun worked on the MA in Visual Culture at the University of Westminster before his recent retirement. He completed a PhD at the Royal College of Art in 2002 on the legitimation of collective sites of cultural production and their value within a democratic culture. The particular focus of this research was Exploding Cinema, an underground film and video showing collective that has been active in South London since 1991 [1].

In the Seventies Stefan had his three Survival Scrapbooks, Shelter, Food and Energy published by Unicorn Bookshop and Schocken Books NY after an architectural training at Portsmouth Polytechnic. He then 'dropped out' and lived in a van whilst playing with The Scratch Orchestra - the British version of Fluxus. On returning to London he took contact improvisation and other dance and bodywork classes at X6 in Butlers Wharf and did extensive research into the elements of human ability. Published as Sense-Think-Act; first as a mediawiki and more recently as a book.

Stefan is an artist with a particular interest in publishing both in traditional book format and in multimedia and digital video. In the Eighties he organised two groups relating to identity issues. The first was Bigos: Artists of Polish Origin which was a open group which was interested in putting on made-to-measure shows: now archived by Tate Archive. The second, ‘Working Press, books by and about working class artists’, supported artists to publish offset-litho books under a collective imprint. Working Press published a trilogy about his experience as a working class artist - Collaborations which was raw documentation, Class Myths and Culture, a book of polemical essays and Conspiracy of Good Taste, a history and theory review which led to academic teaching and research. The Working Press archive was acquired by UCA in Farnham and has recently been activated during a four week residency (2016).

In 2012 Stefan published the third in a series of DVDs concerned with London people-power and the counter culture of the Nineties. The DVD title is 'Creating a movement: the struggle for Inclusive Education'. Another collaborative project, Agit Disco, was on the web before in became a book later in 2011. After that he worked on a large scale activation of the archives of Brixton Artists Collective that ran Brixton Art Gallery 1981 – 1986. As part of this he produced an oral history video and working with a group of artists from London Underground called ‘Out of Uniform’. This was in partnership with 198 Contemporary Arts and Learning, supported by Arts Council, Heritage Lottery grants and Westminster University. See Brixton50 for more detail.

Pedagogic research interests included the use of video in teaching. One module used phone cameras and a YouTube channel as part of the students tools for data gathering and critique. He has supervised three students to complete their doctoral studies and was an external examiner of MA Cultural Industry at Goldsmiths College.

He retired from academic work in 2015 and started publishing work with Routine Art Co his collaborative imprint. He started by republishing two older works:

2017 SENSE THINK ACT: a collection of exercises to describe basic human abilities 206 pages of exercises with over 50 illustrations and diagrams. In subtle colour. Available as ebook. An almost lifelong project finally brought to rest in a proper book.

2016 The Conspiracy of Good Taste: William Morris, Cecil Sharp and Clough Williams-Ellis and the repression of working class culture in the C20th Standard Paperback, Colour 176pp 15 b/w illustrations, 10 colour photographs. 2nd Deluxe edition. ISBN 978-1-870736-71-8 Available as ebook. A new edition of the 1993 Working Press hardback. Describes my discovery of the part played in class oppression by three middle-class mediators of taste.

The first new book was a detailed documentation of the reprise of Scratch Orchestra practice he had undertaken. This was a collective process that resulted in four major London performances:

2017 Improvisation Rites: from John Cage's 'Song Books' to the Scratch Orchestra's 'Nature Study Notes'. Collective practices 2011 - 2017 Standard Colour, 168pp with 35 colour photographs ISBN 978-1-870736-96-1 Documentation of this extended project using press releases, reviews, participant emails, meeting minutes and photographs to capture the collective spirit of the project to reprise these historic written scores.

An expanded and luxury edition of Agit Disco was translated and published in Japan: 2018 Agit Disco (Japanese expanded edition) pp352 ISBN 978-4-907276-92-8 Published by ele-king Includes 10 extra Japanese selectors. See above for original edition from Mute Books.

Then came the publication of a series of projects that had been 'in the pipeline'for some time:

2018 Chalet Fields of the Gower 70 Colour photographs of houses plus an interview with the architect Owen Short. Hard back and paperback ISBN: 9781-870736-18-3

This book was the first published photographic survey of a UK plotlands.

This was followed two years later with: 2020 Plotlands of Shepperton, with a Foreword by the late great Judith Tucker and an Introduction by Chris Saunders. 27 thumbnails, 38 full page photographs in premium colour. ISBN 978-1-870736-24-4 A photographic study over several years with a stream of commentary to give an in-depth insight into this little understood phenomenon of the UKs plotland self-builders. My plotlands books were intended to undermine the conventional knowledge category of ‘Housing’ by examining a buried UK wide movement in the C20th in which people were providing their own housing with a different mind-set to the mortgage/ council housing mode that prevailed. I want to critique the status quo knowledge of ‘housing’ as a warped category that has lost it relation to human powers to provide basic needs in artful ways.

2019 Compostion 17 large premium colour photographs, 36 pages, landscape hardback. ISBN 9781-870736-17-6

Composting considered as fine art.

2020 SILENCE! the great silencing of British working class culture 84pp in standard colour. 30 Illustrations ISBN 978-1-870736-22-0 Foreword by Lorraine Leeson. Cover design by Chris Saunders Research in the new millenium, that followed the themes of Conspiracy of Good Taste, which focuses on the repression of singing together and whistling public in the first half the C20th, followed by appendices of other forms of silencing as a mechanism of cultural oppression.

2024 Can Working Class Culture be Knowledge? ISBN 978-1-870736-32-9 Currently ebook only from https://payhip.com/b/IDFJ9 This went back to a college thesis that had expanded on 'The Conspiracy of Good Taste' with new research in 1997.

2023 Dementia Painting,[[2]] 88pp 216 x 216mm. Full colour illustration of paintings. Hdbk ISBN 9781870736947 £20 $ 25 Pbk ISBN 9781870736923 £9.95 $16 This book argues that my mum was released from the constraints of art conventions by her dementia. It is also about being a working class artist and housewife. Accompanied by three video pieces on my mum, culture and dementia. One on her embroidery, one about singing her songs from her teenage years and finally one on her continuing to paint into her years with dementia.

In 2021 I got around to publishing my PhD research as a book: Exploding Cinema 1991 - 1999: culture and democracy [3] 190 pp c47 b/w illustrations ISBN - 9781870736046 Based on my 2002 thesis with the theory chapters cut out. A closely observed and contextualised history of the first nine years of this key counter-cultural collective.

Dementia Painting completed the projects that needed documenting and I went back to my first love of drawing and painting, with local groups. I also started an arduous task of going thorough my accumulated paper archive of all my projects which led to making a contribution to Peter Haining's materials at the Dundee University Archive. This represented my earlier involvement in the international mail art network since 1983, and my, since then almost continuous, correspondence with Peter Haining.

Ongoing and past imagery @szczels

Given longer time living I intend to make some book object titled: 'Mind Cage', which will look at how I am constrained by a literary tradition that is not of my own class. I'd also like to do something with several folders of stuff on 'glamour' expanding on the scraps in Collaborations and Class Myths and Culture. I'd like to be able to exhibit my six watercolour paintings of community noticeboards... Here's an example:

Crystal Palace


Publications[edit]

88 pp 216 x 216mm. Full colour illustrations of paintings. Hdbk ISBN 9781870736947 £20 $ 25 Pbk ISBN 9781870736923 £9.95 $16. Argues that my mum was released from the constraints of art conventions by her dementia. Accompanied by three video pieces on my mum, culture, dementia.

Currently 2024: Working on a series of auto generated audio chapbooks to explore the hegemonic effect of the last 1000 years of Western Book culture. https://play.google.com/store/audiobooks/series?id=VzG8GwAAABjqIM

Interviews[edit]

Links[edit]

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