Catching Up With Coniston Water

Listening to the low murmur of voices on and around Coniston Water, all of them talking about Donald Campbell’s fatal here crash in January 1967, you suddenly realize that the Bluebird is still back-flipping its way across the lake, sending out ripples that can be felt even this far into the future, when both speedboat and body have been retrieved from the lake and consigned to their respective resting places. A phantom architecture comes into being here that links JG Ballard with Arthur Ransome and John Ruskin, both of whom are linked with buildings on the opposite shore from the empty and fenced-in Bluebird Café.

Pictured above: The Bluebird Café, closed for renovations; the stretch of water where the crash took place; a memorial to Donald Campbell CBE.

Featured below: footage of the crash posted on YouTube (try watching the clip with the sound off for the most lasting effect)

‘Hollingsville’ Update

I am very pleased to announce that ‘Hollingsville’ will be returning to Resonance 104.4 FM for a new series in October. In the meantime, I am presenting a ‘Hollingsville’ special on Thursday September 2 at 7.00pm:

‘Film: The Music of the Future’ – the Cinema of Hans-Jürgen Syberberg

‘No human story, but a story of mankind, no disaster film, but disaster as a film. The end of the world, Deluge, the cosmos biting the dust’ - H J Syberberg

Guests Tai Shani and Chris Bohn and I will be discussing the passionate cinematic vision of Hans-Jürgen Syberberg prior to an all-day screening of the controversial director’s seven-hour masterwork ‘Hitler: A Film from Germany’. Check the Resonance FM schedule for more details.

The Horse Hospital will be showing this amazing film on September 4, 2010 - for more information on this unique event, for which I have been asked to contribute a brief introductory talk, please click here.

Pictured above: a scene from Part One of Hitler: A Film from Germany, courtesy of Shooting Down Pictures.

SpaceBaby Online

SpaceBaby: guinea pigs don't dream from London Fieldworks on Vimeo.

London Fieldworks have recently put their film SpaceBaby: Guinea Pigs Don’t Dream online. Working with them as the writer on this project was a fascinating and stimulating experience – I’ve never been able to look at a hospital or university laboratory in quite the same way since. Scientists are absolute maniacs.

London Fieldwork’s copy for the SpaceBaby Vimeo post reads follows:

The performance/installation SpaceBaby was the first in a trilogy of works by London Fieldworks exploring the theme of hibernation and suspended animation. This video work incorporates SpaceBaby performance documentation and choreographed laboratory procedure with CG elements in collaboration with the composer Dugal McKinnon and writer Ken Hollings with narration by Roddy Maude-Roxby.

SpaceBaby was performed at SPACE SOON, an event organised and curated by The Arts Catalyst that took place at Camden Roundhouse in London, September 8-13, 2006.

The SpaceBaby video work was Funded by Arts & Business (New Partners Award), AHRC and Arts Council England and sponsored by Affymextrix, Ambion, with collaborative support from Department of Genetics at University of Leicester.

See also: SpaceBaby Screening at Less Remote

Read This (You Need Us)

Biting Tongues at Relentless studio Ancoats MCR 02/08/1981, produced by Stuart James, engineer: Tony Roberts. Previously unreleased track from the ‘Live It’ sessions recorded directly onto two-track tape through an eight-channel desk. Film by Howard Walmsley. Part of the text is derived from a xerox form letter sent out by an unnamed individual describing mind-control experiments he claimed were being carried out on him via microwave signals – the ‘read this’ instruction was reproduced at the foot of each photocopied page.