A Journey Through London Subculture: 1980s to Now (2013)
Filed under catalogue | Tags: · 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, alternative culture, art history, culture, design, experimental film, fashion, london, music, performance, photography, post-punk, publishing
“A Journey Through London Subculture: 1980s to Now illustrates a perceived thread of creativity between the post-punk era and the present day.
Gilbert & George, John Maybury, House of Beauty & Culture, Tom Dixon, Jeffrey Hinton, Bodymap, St John, Alexander McQueen, Martino Gamper, Julie Verhoeven, Giles Deacon, Charlie Porter, Chisenhale Gallery, Lucky PDF, Vogue Fabrics Nightclub, Sibling, J W Anderson, Bethan Laura Wood, Matthew Darbyshire and Louise Gray are amongst the 60 figures from London’s scene involved in the project.”
Publisher Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, 2013
76 pages
Exhibition
Video preview of exhibition
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
Proud to be Flesh: A Mute Magazine Anthology of Cultural Politics after the Net (2009)
Filed under book | Tags: · art criticism, art history, internet, london, media, media art, net culture, networks, politics, technology, theory
“In late 1994, back in the days of dial-up modems and Netscape Navigator 1.0, Mute magazine announced its timely arrival. Dedicated to an analysis of culture and politics ‘after the net’, Mute has consistently challenged the grandiose claims of the communications revolution, debunking its utopian rhetoric and offering more critical perspectives.
Fifteen years on, this anthology selects representative articles from the magazine’s hugely diverse content to reprise some of its recurring themes. This expansive collection charts the perilous journey from Web 1.0 to 2.0, contesting the democratisation this transition implied and laying bare our incorporeal expectations; it exposes the ways in which the logic of technology intersects with that of art and music and, in turn and inevitably, with the logic of business; it heralds the rise of neoliberalism and condemns the human cost; it amplifies the murmurs of dissent and revels in the first signs of collapse. The result situates key – but often little understood – concepts associated with the digital (e.g. the knowledge commons, immaterial labour and open source) in their proper context, producing an impressive overview of contemporary, networked culture in its broadest sense.
Proud to be Flesh features a mix of essays, interviews, satirical fiction, email polemics and reportage from an array of international contributors working in art, philosophy, technology, politics, cultural theory, radical geography and more.”
Edited by Josephine Berry Slater and Pauline van Mourik Broekman, with Michael Corris, Anthony Iles, Benedict Seymour and Simon Worthington
Publisher Mute Publishing, London, with Autonomedia, New York, 2009
ISBN 9781906496289, 1906496285
572+48 pages
Reviews: Nicholas Thoburn (New Formations), Charlotte Frost (Rhizome), Julian Stallabrass (New Left Review).
PDF, PDF (15 MB, updated on 2019-6-12)
Comment (0)