Monday 17 February 2020

Inferno, the First Volume in My Three-Part ‘Trash Project’ Launches February 18







‘Trash has always served me well—over the years it has become the outer form and material expression of my dreams: of tomorrow, of life in space, of the blissful alienation from this world that I have always craved…’

My latest book Inferno: a Genealogy of 1960s Trash is being launched at the Horse Hospital on Tuesday February 18. 

The Horse Hospital is bravely fighting back against threats of closure once again – and once again they have managed to hang onto their amazing space off Russell Square until the end of March. I doubt whether Inferno would have been the same book, or would even have existed at all, if it hadn’t been for the Horse Hospital. The Trash Project has been a long time in the planning. Over twenty years of screenings, exhibitions, discussions and debates at the Horse Hospital have had an undeniable impact on writing and thinking about Trash and Trash Aesthetics. 

There has been no other place like it. The launch of my first book, Destroy All Monsters, took place at the Horse Hospital. Strange Attractor Press also enjoys strong connections with the Horse Hospital – some of its earliest events were held there. To celebrate the launch of Inferno at the Horse Hospital has tremendous significance both for me and for my publishers. I hope you can join us. There will be movies, a reading from Inferno, plus a book signing and special guest star DJs. You can find more details of what should be a highly memorable evening by clicking here.

Inferno is the first volume in a three-part work on the subject of Trash and Trash Aesthetics. It has been very closely modelled upon the structure of Dante’s Divine Comedy. The architecture of Hell as laid out in Dante’s epic poem perfectly suits the main subject of my own Inferno, which deals predominantly with exploitation and underground films in 1960s America. You can find more details about the book, including the complete blurb, by clicking here.  

Strange Attractor have included in their press kit for Inferno a short Q&A that I was asked to respond to earlier this month. I am reproducing the resultant exchange herewith, with thanks to Esmeralda Vogele Downing for asking such great questions. I think it tells you quite a lot about the new project. 


How can one best recognise trash?


Well, that presupposes that we already have a workable definition of Trash and its appeal. Trash maintains a highly elusive presence precisely because it escapes recognition. We might claim to ‘know it when we see it’ – but how far has this assumption ever got us? Apply the same pronouncement to ‘art’ or ‘beauty’, and you’ll see what I mean. One of the reasons why I started The Trash Projectin the first place was to explore how Trash is set up within a culture and why it is so necessary to the life of that culture. We tend, for the most part, to recognise Trash ‘when we see it’ only so that we can immediately dismiss it. This is essentially what’s happening when we claim that something is ‘so bad it’s good’. I understand what is being claimed by this statement as it is commonly used but not the mechanisms or attitudes that have produced it. These need to be exposed and examined much more closely. Or to put it another way: when everything tells you that you ought to look away but you keep on watching anyway – that’s the quintessential Trash experience to me.

What in Inferno is likely to surprise first-time explorers of trash?

That Trash even exists at all, to be honest. The sixties are habitually characterised as the decade when the western world went ‘pop’ for the first time. TV shows and comic strips, product design and advertising, AM-friendly radio tunes, dance music and romances were suddenly celebrated as examples of what was already being classified by the late 1950s as ‘popular culture’. But that celebration is itself highly selective: Disney’s OK but Speed Racer isn’t. Mickey Mouse is fine but Rat Fink isn’t. Advertising spreads in glossy magazines are acceptable, but ads for X-Ray Spex and plastic model kits in comic books aren’t. Playboy and movie star magazines are fine – but men’s adventure magazines and nudie cuties aren’t. In other words, critical accounts of what constitutes popular culture during this period tend to suppress or ignore Trash or, at the very least, garble the essential details of its existence. Concepts like ‘Camp’ and the ‘New Sentimentality’ gave a certain permission to celebrate some forms of Trash – but the cops and censors, the school board and the ‘moral consensus’ were always close at hand to keep an eye on things and make sure they didn’t go too far. On the other hand, it’s also likely that readers of Inferno will be surprised that some of the films, records or books featured should be considered Trash at all. That’s fine by me. The Trash Project is intended as an exploration, after all – not a definitive statement. However, I would be curious to know when, and under what circumstances, they first encountered these disputed examples of Trash. The passage of time has a pleasing way of sanding off the rough edges. I’m trying to look more closely at what made them rough in the first place.


Rat Fink or Mickey Mouse; who’d win in a fight, and why?

If it’s in an alleyway, on the drag strip or round the back of the school cafeteria, then Rat Fink would win every time. But if it’s in the boardroom or the courtroom, then my money’s on the mouse. Ed Roth’s creation may be an awkward and scabrous misfit, but he’s got heart; you just know he’ll fight dirty if he has to. Mickey Mouse is a suburban dad by comparison, and has a suburban dad’s values, which means he’d also have the best legal representation – and that’s where I’m going to leave it.

Which three items of literature, music or film would you recommend to accompany Inferno?

Just three? OK, I’ll offer one example in each of the suggested categories. While writing InfernoI went back again and again to Mary Douglas’s classic work of cultural anthropology, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. It’s so beautifully and clearly written, and first published in 1966, so it fits exactly into the period I am describing in the book. I also listened to a lot of surf instrumentals and songs about cars from the period when working on the book – everything from ‘Surfin’ Bird’ and ‘’Wipe Out’ to ‘Little Street Machine’ and ‘Dracula’s Deuce’. Couldn’t get enough. Finally, and after much thought, the film I would suggest to accompany Inferno would have to be Herk Harvey’s Carnival of Souls. Itsuits the mood and terrain of Inferno right down to its frozen heart – plus it’s a beautiful example of the strange poetry that you might find showing at your local drive-in during the early 1960s. 


How does the book tie into or evolve from your other works of critical theory?

That’s a hard question for me to answer because I tend to see each of my books as existing in its own separate world: written at a specific time in a specific way in response to a specific concern. I’m also not sure that they can really be categorized as works of critical theory in the conventional sense of the word. I think of my books as tools or devices that enable the reader to explore a relatively unexamined idea or condition. To this end they often use multiple voices, perspectives and disciplines. The lines between critical and creative writing in my work are intentionally blurred. This has remained a constant throughout my books and essays. Similarly, much of my writing has a strong structural component. The form and the strict ordering of material within my books has always been a recurring concern of mine – from the 200 numbered files of Destroy All Monsters and the chronological sequencing of Welcome to Marsto the labyrinthine doubling back of themes in The Bright Labyrinthand the astrological ordering of sequences in The Space Oracle. In that respect, Inferno definitely follows the same line of development –being the first in a larger three-part Trash Project, whose structure is directly derived from Dante’s Divine Comedy. I am currently about halfway through composing Purgatory at the moment, and Paradise is already being mapped out. I’ve never done a three-part work before, so that is also a new departure for me. Structure alone can say so much.

The Trash Project: Volume One
Ken Hollings
400 pp
Paperback
34 b/w images (approx.)
ISBN 9781907222795

February 18, 7.00 – 9.00 pm
The Horse Hospital
Colonnade 
Bloomsbury
London WC1N 1JD

Cover design by Tihana Šare 
Third and Fourth Inferno images by @lahollings 

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