Antiuniversity of London: Antihistory Tabloid (2012)
Filed under brochure | Tags: · aesthetics, anti-psychiatry, art, education, politics
“The Antiuniversity of London appears in many ways as a massive failure when looked at superficially. But whether it was a terminal failure or actually an experiment that did not succeed at its specific point in history depends on how you approach this historic anti-institution.” (from the Introduction)
Compiled and edited by Jakob Jakobsen
Publisher MayDay Rooms, London, 2012
ISBN 9781906496852
63 pages
Kasper Opstrup: The Way Out: Invisible Insurrections and Radical Imaginaries in the UK Underground, 1961-1991 (2017)
Filed under book | Tags: · 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, aesthetics, avant-garde, counterculture, cultural history, education, london, mysticism, politics, protest, social movements, united kingdom
“A counterculture history of art and experimental politics that turns the world inside out
The Way Out examines the radical political and hedonist imaginaries of the experimental fringes of the UK Underground from 1961 to 1991. By examining the relations between collective and collaborative practices with an explicit agenda of cultural revolution, Kasper Opstrup charts a hidden history of experiments with cultural engineering, expanding current discussions of art, medias, politics, radical education and the occult revival. Even though the theatres of operation have changed with the rise of the Internet and a globalised finance economy, these imaginaries still raise questions that speak directly to the present.
Here we encounter a series of figures – including Alexander Trocchi, R. D. Laing, Joseph Berke, Brion Gysin, William Burroughs and Genesis P-Orridge – that blurred the lines between inner and outer, the invisible and the material. Four singular forms of speculative techniques for igniting an invisible insurrection with cultural means make up the central case studies: the sigma project, London Anti-University, Academy 23 and thee Temple ov Psychick Youth.
Contained within these imaginaries is a new type of action university: a communal affair that would improvise a new type of social relation into existence by de-programming and de-conditioning us without any blueprints for the future besides to make it happen. Instead of being turned upside down, the world was to be changed from the inside out.”
Publisher Minor Compositions, Wivenhoe, 2017
ISBN 9781570273285
252 pages
Eric Hynes: Neither/Nor: Chimeric Cinema, New York City, 1967-1968 (2013)
Filed under booklet | Tags: · documentary film, film, film criticism
“Chimeras have existed since the advent of film, a form that has always simultaneously offered to record and represent, to capture and simulate life. But as filmmaker Jim McBride says, “Something was in the air” in the mid-to-late 1960s, particularly in New York City, where the likes of McBride, William Greaves, D.A. Pennebaker, as well as transients Peter Whitehead and Jean-Luc Godard, were making gloriously uncategorizable works of cinematic art. It was a moment when everything and everyone seemed to be riding, or even embracing, the edge of things, when films and politics and morality suddenly seemed undefined, up for grabs, subject to reinvention. With the Civil Rights era giving way to Black Power, Kennedy idealism ceding to Johnson’s military morass, Beat Dadaism transforming into hippie agitation, and mod Godard morphing into Mao Godard, it was as if utopia and dystopia were both within reach—if not one and the same.” (from the Introduction)
Publisher True False & Ragtag Cinema, 2013
Open access
31 pages