The Howling does Bad Punk Friday 25 April

 

Hello fight fans! Absolutely thrilled to announce that the wonderful Johny Brown has invited The Howling, AKA Howlround and me, to appear on his late-night Resonance 104.4 show ‘Bad Punk’ this Friday 25 April. 

In fact, thanks for Johny’s kindness, for 90 minutes The Howling will be the ENTIRE show. 

I haven’t done any live radio in many years, not since my 'Hollingsville' series for Resonance back in the day, so am looking forward to it with that old familiar mix of exhilaration and sheer terror. 

The Howling will be presenting a version of a track from our upcoming album from The Tapeworm, ‘Be Quiet In This Church’ and will also be performing a one-off live collaboration with members of The Band of Holy Joy. There may be other surprise guests – it’s live and spontaneous, so anything can happen – but anyone who’s seen The Howling perform will know that. I didn’t really have suitable pictures to go with this post, so here are a few extra shots of me and Howlround performing at the launch event for my Strange Attractor Press book Paradise at The Horse Hospital a few months back. We will be playing a recording of this reading/performance as part of the show.

'Bad Punk' starts at 22.00 on Resonance 104.4 FM on Friday 25 April and finishes at 23.30 – so turn on, tune in and pass out. We’ll probably be right behind you. 

You can find Resonance 104.4 FM by clicking here

Pictured above:

KH and Howlround at The Horse Hospital - photos by @lahollings 

Utopia, the 1964 New York World’s Fair and The Dialectics of Oblivion

 

To mark the launch of the recent release, Utopia or Oblivion (CN5) Constructive Music have created a website ‘which will serve as a focal point for a series of essays, articles, artists work and information resources that will be derived from the same broad remit offered to the musicians’ who have contributed to the project, inspired by the writings of R Buckminster Fuller.

 

Their website announcement continues:

 

‘Whether it is to be Utopia or Oblivion will be a touch-and-go relay race right up to the final moment. Humanity is in a final exam as to whether or not it might qualify for continuance in the Universe.’ (Utopia Or Oblivion: The Prospects for Humanity R. Buckminster Fuller) Constructive are pleased to announce a compilation of work by 10 artists inspired by and in response to the work of R. Buckminster Fuller, specifically from the essays Utopia Or Oblivion first published in 1963.

 

In response to their request, I have written an essay on the theme on Utopia and the Dialectics of Oblivion, inspired by the 1964 New York World’s Fair. This global event, better known for the US corporations drawn to it rather the nation states it sought to represent, has always fascinated me. It opened the same year that Marcuse’s One-Dimensional Man and McLuhan’s Understanding Media were published. It was also the year that Jonny Quest and Bewitched first appeared on American TV. ‘The Trip that’s Worth the Trip’ is a tribute to this unique moment in the history of progress. It is another in my series of occasional essays that take their structure directly from Walter Benjamin’s ‘On the Concept of History’.  I follow the same numbering and divisions of his original text and retain all of the extracted quotes with which he begins and ends some of the sections. I also try and keep the relative length of each entry to approximately the same proportions as those used by Benjamin, even though the overall length of the text itself might vary. I first used this approach in the essay ‘On The Concept of History, Brexit, Covid and the Paradise of Sovereignty: A fable in eighteen parts with two addenda and seven supporting quotations’ - which you can find in its entirety here. 

 

You can find The Trip That’s Worth the Trip: Utopia – the Dialectics of Oblivion on the Constructive website by clicking here.  

 

The Constructive album release details are as follows: CN5 Various Artists Utopia or Oblivion 2023 LP / DL

 

Pictured above:

The Pop Up New York World’s Fair

The General Motors Futurama pavilion

Jonny Quest gets his jetpack

From the Bewitched opening animation sequence

Website, Instagram, Twitter

It has been way too long since I posted anything on this blog - not because I have lost interest in the medium but because I have simply been too busy doing things to report back on  them. This blog was always intended as a substitute for my woefully dated website, which now has the appearance of a strange prehistoric insect that has been inadvertently preserved in amber by some casual hand. The site is currently being updated and should be online sometime soon, but the process has taken far longer than I had anticipated. In the meantime I have recently started a Hollingsville account on Instagram and will continue to post on this blog and on my @Hollingsville Twitter timeline. 

My health has continued to improve over the past year, and I find myself busier than ever. Once again my sincere apologies for the protracted silence on this blog. To make up for it here are some graffiti skulls and some other details  I photographed recently in Leake Street. It ain't Hollingsville, that's for sure, but it felt like home. 

The Bell Labs ‘Secrecy System’ Vocoder Bible

The above pictures were snapped onstage at the Palace Theatre in Whitstable, just prior to Dave Tompkins presentation at ‘Off The Page’ on the history of the Vocoder, as detailed in his book How to Wreck A Nice Beach. The ‘Vocoder Bible’, as Dave calls it, is a thickly bound collection of ‘secrecy system’ documents devoted to the development of the device at Bell Labs prior to WWII with redactions done by razor blade. The book contains memos typed onto tracing paper and actual blueprint schematics. Hastily photographing its pages under the strong glare of the stage lights made me feel a little like a spy from some Cold War intelligence agency – although the overall effect was probably more Maxwell Smart than Napoleon Solo in pop culture terms. Later Dave and I recorded a long conversation on the Vocoder, its history and its all-round strangeness, which is being edited at the moment and will be featured in the upcoming second series of ‘Hollingsville’, due to start on April 6. More on the show and the new series as and when it comes up: for reasons of security, you are now required to eat this blog post.

Ray Scott Vs ‘Hollingsville’

Graham Massey, the official Hollingsville composer in residence, has sent me details of a recent event that took place in Manchester celebrating  Ray Scott, founder of Manhattan Research Inc and the man who took Twinkies into Outer Space during the early 1960s. As well as a screening of Stan Warnow’s Ray Scott documentary Deconstructing Dad offering an intimate portrait of his father’s life and work, after which Warnow took part in a Q&A session with the audience, Graham and associates served up some tracks either recorded in, or inspired by, the Manhattan Research Inc studio. As the set list featured above indicates, the performance included live renditions of pieces already familiar to Hollingsville listeners. We remain, as always, on the cutting edge of the past.

Pictured above: the Manhattan Research Transfer Project set list and scenes from the performance, photographs supplied by Graham Massey

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

A reminder that you can hear a new edition of Hollingsville at 7.00 pm tonight on Resonance FM. Featuring special guests Tai Shani and Chris Bohn of The Wire, it focuses on the extraordinary films of German director Hans-Jürgen Syberberg in advance of a special all-day screening of his masterwork ‘Hitler: A Film From Germany’ at the Horse Hospital on Saturday September 4, starting at 11.00 am. I will be giving a short introductory talk prior to this epic seven-hour presentation. Please note that this episode of Hollingsville will not be available as a podcast.

See also:
Hollingsville Update

Pictured above: light fitting, lower floor, at the Musikverein in Vienna

‘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.

Hollingsville TX11/12 ‘Cognition’

How to Pass the Turing Test

As far back as 1950 the mathematician Alan Turing predicted that ‘at the end of the century the use of words and general educated opinion will have to be altered so much that one will be able to speak of machines thinking without expecting to be contradicted’. Today technicians at MIT are teaching a robot dog how to read a child’s picture book. Movement and image recognition both suggest new ways of looking at how machine – and by implication, human – intelligence operates; but in that understanding lie new forms of power. The Turing Test was originally designed to separate out humans from machines, but perhaps it also points towards some deeper divisions. Human cognition could soon replace mass media as the true battlefield of the 21st century.

It is on the outer edge of consciousness that the military strategist, the infonaut and the new age thinker start to merge. Hollingsville is particularly pleased to welcome into this cognitive no man’s land documentary filmmaker Adam Curtis. Responsible for such magnificent films as The Power of Nightmares and The Trap, as well as the series Pandora’s Box and The Century of the Self, Curtis has been running a blog from the BBC website: the immensely readable The Medium and the Message. Expect live and unscripted wanderings through the military-academic complex, the behavioural labyrinth, the smart drugs laboratory and the even smarter weapons testing range. Welcome to the Geiger-Counter Culture, brothers and sisters.

Hear Hollingsville TX11/12 ‘Cognition – How to Pass the Turing Test’ this Thursday June 24 at 7.00pm on Resonance 104.4 FM , repeated on Tuesday June 29 at 11.00pm. Musical interludes have been specially created for this episode by Frances Morgan, with background moods from ‘Hollingsville’ composer in residence Graham Massey and ins and outs from Indigo Octagon.

See also:
Hollingsville posts
Cognition
RAND Corporation on Radio 3
RAND Online

Pictured above: the writing on the wall, courtesy of the RAND Corporation website.

TX10/12: Running Backwards, Pointing at the Sky and Screaming

Admit it: no one was really surprised that I ended up talking about Godzilla in an episode of Hollingsville dedicated to monsters – except perhaps for Martin McCarrick of the McCarricks who was assured by me that I absolutely wouldn’t. Even so, their wonderful musical interludes caught the spirit of the show perfectly. But what else can I say? Nietzsche and Godzilla have left both their names, crossed over each other at the ‘z’, indelibly imprinted upon my mind. Fortunately I had the incredible Laurie Lipton in the studio to talk about her early childhood spent in the family basement drawing deaths and beheadings for her family to look at and admire. Her book The Extraordinary Drawings of Laurie Lipton, published by beinArt, is available from Last Gasp. ‘At long last a comprehensive book on Lipton's work has been published,’ runs the online catalogue entry. ‘The subjects of her art -- fear, politics, sexuality, murder, mayhem, greed, indifference -- are timelessly classic yet relentlessly up to date. This publication is not only for art lovers, but for anyone who has ever seen the mask slip off "reality." The Extraordinary Drawings of Laurie Lipton is a 96 page, hard cover art book (21 x 29.7 cm) with over 70 drawings spanning 3 decades. Almost all of Laurie's works are black and white, but the book is printed in full color.’

I was also very favoured to have Strange Attractor’s Mark Pilkington in the studio as well to talk about his new book Mirage Men: An Adventure into Disinformation, Paranoia and UFOs – due out from Constable Robinson next month – and to share with us some interesting new mythological readings from the ground of the UAV drones filling the skies over Pakistan. Mark has also set up a Mirage Men blog related to the themes explored in his book, which you can find by clicking here. He already has some amazing stuff uploaded - the new flying saucer pilgrimage starts now.

‘Monsters: Fair Warning’ will be repeated at 11.00 pm this coming Tuesday June 22 on Resonance 104.4; and the podcast should be available from the Resonance website from noon on Wednesday June 23.

See also:
Hollingsville Posts

Pictured from top to bottom: Laurie Lipton recalling her childhood basement; Mark Pilkington preparing to worship the predator

Hollingsville TX10/12 ‘Monsters’

Fair Warning

‘…but in spite of it all we would not like to be without the harrowing poetry of their proximity, for these monsters often arrive when our life, involved as it is in the spider’s web of purposes, has become too tedious and too filled with anxiety, and provide us with a sublime diversion by for once breaking the web – not that these irrational creatures would do so intentionally!’
- Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak

Monsters, no matter what their shape or size or attitude, serve as a warning and should be welcomed as such. Having no place either in nature or in polite society, they have little choice but to exist as reminders of the things we’d much rather forget. Godzilla, for example, has been good to us over the years, the way only a bad dream can be. The unforeseen by-product of atomic tests taking place in the Pacific Ocean over fifty years ago, the blinding intensity of Godzilla’s birth ensured that he cast more than one shadow over the intervening decades. Whichever way you look at him, he remains the ultimate outcast.

But what about the monsters that lurk in our own homes? Or the ones that occupy the vast deserts of our modern myths? Slouching into Hollingsville for episode ten of the series, we are honoured to welcome Laurie Lipton, an artist whose line is fine enough to raise the hairs on the back of your neck, and Strange Attractor’s Mark Pilkington, whose affable dealings with the disconcerting are admirably documented in his forthcoming book Mirage Men: An Adventure into Disinformation, Paranoia and UFOs. Musical interludes have been specially created for this episode by the sublime McCarricks, with background moods from ‘Hollingsville’ composer in residence Graham Massey and ins and outs from Indigo Octagon. Expect the terrifyingly sane and the uncannily familiar – for here be monsters.

Hear Hollingsville TX10/12 ‘Monsters – Fair Warning’ this Thursday, June 17 at 7.00pm on Resonance 104.4 FM, repeated on Tuesday, June 22 at 11.00pm.

See also:
Hollingsville posts
Godzilla Has Left the Building

Laurie Lipton Knows Where You Live
Laurie Lipton Still Knows Where You Live
Laurie Lipton Is Coming To Get You

‘Spaceship UK’ Online

Earlier this year Sound and Music commissioned me to write an extended essay offering a personal view on the history of British electronic music for a stand-alone publication to be made available at this year’s Sonar festival. You can preview an edited, much shorter version of the piece – ‘Spaceship UK: The British Space Programme as Musical Exploration – The Untold Story’ – in this month’s edition of INTO, Sound and Music’s online magazine. The print version, which is over twice the length, comes in a limited edition package with a cover design by Julian House and a 7” vinyl disc featuring music by Daphne Oram and Belbury Poly one side and a fabulous piece of etching on the other, all in a transparent cover. For copyright reasons, it won’t be available for sale in the UK – however, an online version of the complete essay will be posted, together with a personally-selected playlist, just as soon as Sonar is safely over.

In the meantime, I am in the process of putting together a special music-only edition of ‘Hollingsville’ which will be broadcast on July 1 while the Resonance studios are closed for repairs and maintenance, and then repeated on July 6. It will be based on my ‘Spaceship UK’ essay and will feature contributions from Delia Derbyshire, Tristram Cary and Desmond Leslie, with additional material from the likes of Hawkwind, the Focus Group and The Orb. This episode, which constitutes an extra addition to the scheduled Hollingsville series, will not be made available as a podcast so the July 1 and 6 broadcasts are the only chances to hear it. Anyone anxious to know why I seldom do DJ sets is urged to tune in.

Pictured above: the Skylon at night from RIBA’s architecture.com site.

TX 9/12: Pulling Back the Skin

Anyone who still doubts that ‘Hollingsville’ goes out live and unscripted every week need only catch the opening moments of episode nine, ‘Wounds: Blood on the Streets’, to be set straight on this score. For some reason the fader on my microphone refused to respond, meaning that listeners were not only treated to a little more of Indigo Octagon’s excellent title theme than is customary but also my uncannily accurate impersonation of Grace Jones at the start of her version of ‘Night Clubbing’. Having already attempted my opening statement four or five times without success, I was in the process of asking the others in the studio if anyone could actually hear me when the microphone suddenly decided to pick up my every word.

The rest of the show, however, was an absolute delight, so far as I am concerned. Cathi Unsworth’s reading from her latest novel Bad Penny Blues over one of UnicaZürn’s two interludes was immensely dramatic - and all the more striking, since she had never heard the piece before. Also bringing something to the dissection table, Ross MacFarlane of the Wellcome Library turned up with grisly Wound Man diagrams from the fifteenth century. From violent narratives to violent anatomy, this episode had it all – after all, even Oscar Wilde had to refer to a pathologist in order to learn how Dorian Grey might dispose of his friend’s body using scalpels, bone saws and acid.

Those who enjoyed Cathi’s reading might like to visit her website, where they can hear her read three selected ‘transmissions’ from Bad Penny Blues with soundtracks specially created for them by Pete Woodhead. Anyone who wants to find out what’s happening at the Wellcome Library, find their own Wound Man diagrams or simply to learn more about what Ross and his colleagues are up to, check out their excellent blog by clicking here.

‘Wounds: Blood on the Street’ will be repeated at 11.00 pm this coming Tuesday June 15 on Resonance 104.4; and the podcast should be available from the Resonance website from noon on Wednesday June 16.

See also:
Hollingsville Posts

Pictured from top to bottom: the sphinx-like Cathi Unsworth at her most enigmatic; Ross MacFarlane wondering how we ever managed to survive the sixteenth century in one piece

Hollingsville 9/12 ‘Wounds’

Blood on the Street

The wound represents an entry into the body which is made by something that can never be a part of that body. It will always be foreign to our flesh, and as such it constitutes a technological assault upon the body. Its effects are extraordinary: the wound is the most terrifying expression of violence, and yet it also represents intimacy, an awakening of the senses and the acquisition of sudden knowledge. From the ecstasies of saints revealed as stigmata to the forensic scrutiny of modern crime scenes, the wound communicates more than just another opening of the human body. On the darkened streets of the city – itself once a metaphor used by eighteenth-century anatomists to describe what goes on beneath our skin – the wound speaks of crime, madness, delirium and a total loss of identity. Or to put it another way, what kind of stories could we possibly tell each other without also breaking our own flesh?

Joining me in the clean room, handing out sutures and gauze for episode nine of ‘Hollingsville’ – scheduled to go out live 7.00 pm on Thursday June 10 on Resonance 104.4 FM – will be cultural pathologist supreme Ross MacFarlane of the Wellcome Library and Cathi Unsworth, author of fabulous London-based crime novels The Not Knowing, The Singer and Bad Penny Blues, as well as being editor of the anthology London Noir: Capital Crime Fiction. Be on the qui-vive for gimlet-eyed observations and flinty asides. Interludes for this particular episode come courtesy of the masterful UnicaZürn with background moods from ‘Hollingsville’ composer in residence Graham Massey and ins and outs by Indigo Octagon.

See also:
Hollingsville Posts
Morphology of the Wound

Pictured above: Dark entry on a Vienna side street

TX 8/12: Backhanded Compliments

Memories, when you get right down it, are just trash you can still find room for; and nobody has greater storage space than the two most recent visitors to ‘Hollingsville’ Roger K Burton of the Horse Hospital and Edwin Pouncey, AKA Savage Pencil. The relationship between the technological effects of mass production and the individual desire to preserve throws up new forms of solitude in the post-modern world: whether it be Edwin’s audiocassette recording of his telephone interview with Ed ‘Big Daddy’ Roth, part of which formed one of the interludes to ‘Trash: The Gasp Between Clichés’, or Roger’s tale of Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood hacking up hundreds of unsold ‘Let It Rock’ T-shirts to create throwaway punk ‘classics’, the uniqueness of the moment, preserved through the economics of trash was admirably well expressed. That both Roth and McLaren are no longer with us made such moments all the more fascinating. Add some squawking guitar feedback, me getting knocked off my intro by a stray Resonance FM ident at the start of the show, and you had history in the making, dear listeners, history making.

Hear Hollingsville TX8/12 ‘Trash - the Gasp between Clichés’ this Tuesday June 8 at 11.00pm on Resonance 104.4 FM or download the podcast from the Resonance website on Wednesday June 9.

See also:
Hollingsville Posts

Pictured from top to bottom: Edwin foresees the coming of the Anti-Quack; Roger K Burton considers the effects of offering Vivienne Westwood another double brandy.

Hollingsville 8/12 ‘Trash’

The Gasp between Clichés

The time has come to insult listeners’ intelligence. Trash has traditionally been seen as the unnecessary expression of popular mass consumption: the further we progress, the more trash we generate. Waste, squandering and surplus value are tied up with notions of identity and self-worth. The use of recycled materials has become an orthodox virtue of recent years. But what about the discarded trash of our culture? Not only are old images, themes and footage recycled but an entire trash aesthetics has come into being – classic ‘kustom kar’ pinstriping, tattoo ‘flash art’, tiki art, musical exotica, pulp fiction, burlesque bump and grind and Z-grade movies have all provided a refuge for sensibilities tired of the banalities on offer from both the mainstream and academic markets. To flay the eyeball is to flay the soul itself – trash is the outer expression of a culture opened up and left to bleed.

Joining me in the emergency room for episode eight of ‘Hollingsville’, scheduled to go out at 7.00 pm on Thursday June 3 on Resonance 104.4 FM, will be first responders Roger K Burton, of the Horse Hospital and the Contemporary Wardrobe Collection, and Edwin Pouncey, AKA artist Savage Pencil. Expect tough talk and grim idealism. The ‘Hollingsville’ composer in residence is Graham Massey. Ins and outs, as always, are by Indigo Octagon. Remember: never take ‘yes’ for an answer.

See also:
Hollingsville Posts
‘Trash’

Pictured above: Ghost Mall photograph by Brian Ulrich, courtesy of the Morning News

Hollingsville Podcast Update

As there has been a brief hiatus in the posting of ‘Hollingsville’ podcasts, this seems like a good time to recap the ones that are currently available:

TX1/12: ‘The Future, Suddenly it’s 1960!’ with Matt Jones and Steve Beard: voodoo science parks, cities as battle suits, pods, capsules and world expos.

TX2/12: ‘Media, The Extensions of God’ with Richard Thomas and Russell Davies: dead media, lo-tech art forms in a hi-tech world and the communications potential of village halls and four-minute podcasts.

TX3/12: ‘Machines, History and Hardware’ with Bruce Woolley and James Bridle: music-making machines, typewriters, early movie cameras, factory assembly lines, opera houses and concert halls.

TX4/12: ‘Networks, Welcome to the Labyrinth’ with Becky Hogge: social networking and online politics, high weirdness and paranoia, ARPANET and the Cold War, CNN and Desert Storm, DRM and balls of wool.

TX5/12: ‘Dreams, While the City Sleeps’ with Julian House: deep-water soundings, lurking sea monsters, phantom sonar activity, the ruins of Atlantis and spectral dream broadcasts from beyond.

Look out for further updates as they become available, either by subscribing to this blog or by visiting the Hollingsville page on the Resonance FM website.

See also:
Hollingsville Posts

Pictured above: Skylon, the Festival of Britain, courtesy of Shifty Paradigms

TX7/12 Backstage Passes

‘The theatre, the theatre,’ wondered avant-garde choreographer Danny Kaye, ‘what’s happened to the theatre?’ The fact that he chose to pose this question in a movie should give you some idea of just how serious things have become. Tai Shani previewed her new play Last Night I dreamt I was Venus from Beyond the Mirrors, inspired by the Dali’s Dream of Venus pavilion at the 1939 World’s Fair, while Richard Strange spoke of a drunken Robert Fraser hurling shoes from his perch at the bar back in the sordid glory days of Cabaret Futura. Both spelled theatre to me in what was probably the chattiest and most smoke-wreathed episode of ‘Hollingsville’ so far. The spirit of Cocteau was with us – as always – just as the words on his headstone told us it would be.

Last Night I dreamt I was Venus from Beyond the Mirrors will take place at the Barbican on July 24. Cabaret Futura – aka the Cabaret of Dr Caligari – comes to life once a month in Paradise – for more details, please visit the show’s Facebook page

Hear Hollingsville TX7/12 ‘Events - the Birth of Chance’ this Tuesday June 1 at 11.00pm on Resonance 104.4 FM or download the podcast on Wednesday June 2 - although regular subscribers to the podcast will note technical details mean that the postings are running a little late at the moment.

See also:
Hollingsville Posts
Karlheinz Stockhausen in conversation with Ken Hollings (complete transcript)

Pictured above from top to bottom: Tai Shani dreaming of Venus; Richard Strange summoning Cesar into consciousness for another show

Hollingsville TX7/12 ‘Events’

The Birth of Chance

After staging the first complete performance of Erik Satie’s Vexations, a work that requires over 18 hours in which to enfold, John Cage remarked that ‘the world looked new, absolutely new’. Ideas of simultaneity and the instantaneous, as developed in variety theatre, cabaret and modern dance, gave way to the notion of duration as the main organizing principle. Anything could now be part of a performance. Chance was suddenly no longer an abstract mathematical proposition or an expression of malign fate: it became more playful, a shadowy and untrustworthy reflection of the human gesture. What then has become of the stage itself? Is it just another non-place, or as the site for events that are as yet unknown? Can the world still be absolutely new? And who is now waiting in the wings to amaze us?

On episode seven of ‘Hollingsville’, scheduled to go out at 7.00 pm on Thursday May 27 on Resonance 104.4 FM, my studio guests will be Tai Shani, arranger of spectacles and creator of glamours, and cultural hustler supreme Richard Strange. Prepare to be blinded by silence. Specially commissioned musical interludes and moods are by ‘Hollingsville’ composer in residence, Graham Massey. Ins and outs, as always, are by Indigo Octagon. Life is a radical gesture, old chum.

See also:
Hollingsville Posts
Duration: or the Birth of Chance out of the Spirit of Music

Pictured above: the Philips Pavilion at the 1958 Brussels World’s Fair – ‘status: demolished’ - courtesy of the Structurae site.

TX6/12 Backspaced

The backspace key usually lies at one corner of the standard QWERTY arrangement, but it provides a useful metaphor for the latest episode of Hollingsville. As discussed during the course of the programme, Andy Sharp of English Heretic has some blogs that record in fascinating detail some of his urban psychic journeys – the entries on Northolt in the Hoodlum Scientist’s Fieldbook and Heuristic England are well worth exploring - if only for the moment when they suddenly cease for no discernible reason. Meanwhile Mark Fisher’s excellent K-Punk blog continues to weave complexity out of the flat space of the computer screen, the keyboard becoming a summoning board under his fingers. Unlike the spacing bar, however, the backspace key does not activate any application - it merely takes us...back. Mark’s contributions to the show mixed MR James with Jacques Derrida, old ‘Dr Who’ locations with Cold War industrial archaeology in a way that extended Julian House’s exposition on sixties television in the previous episode. Look out for the forthcoming panel conversation he is chairing on the afternoon of June 5, with John Foxx, Ian Sinclaire, plus Julian House and Jim Jupp of Ghost Box, at the Roundhouse.

After the broadcast these two spectral visitors returned to what now seems like some mythic region of Norfolk that is not to be found on any map. Hollingsville is indeed fortunate to have opened its doors to these mysterious travellers.

Hear the repeat of Hollingsville TX6/12 ‘Spaces – Buildings Dream Too’ this Tuesday May 25 at 11.00pm on Resonance 104.4 FM or download the podcast on Wednesday May 26.

See also:
‘Hollingsville’ Posts
‘Spaces’ lecture
‘Catching Up With’ Posts

Pictured from top to bottom: Andy Sharp contemplating the eternal glamour and poetry that is Northholt; Mark Fisher seeing visual space fill up with Maersk shipping containers

Hollingsville TX6/12 ‘Spaces’

Buildings Dream Too

‘The concept of “place”,’ the editors of Archigram asserted in the 1960s, ‘exists only in the mind.’ As the influence of the airport, the shopping mall, the international hotel and the modern office block impinges upon our consciousness, the concept of ‘place’ becomes increasingly unreal. Networked ‘interactive’ spaces now flicker and whisper around us, conjuring up dreams of data, ghosts of purpose and direction. ‘And suddenly,’ Archigram’s Warren Chalk announced from the pages of the Architectural Forum, ‘the medium is seen to be more important. Architecture will no longer be concerned with individual buildings or groups of buildings, but with forming a permissive environment that is capable of any configuration according to circumstances.’ Space has become haunted; and we have become the phantoms wafting like dreams through our own cities.

In the sixth episode of ‘Hollingsville’, scheduled to go out at 7.00 pm on Thursday May 20 on Resonance 104.4 FM, my studio guests will be Andy Sharp AKA English Heretic cartographer of intense psychic spaces and radical mediumistic ideologue Mark Fisher. Keep a weather eye open for mirages and scale models, spectres and apparitions, tricks of the light and lines of influence. Specially commissioned musical interludes will be by English Heretic with additional moods by ‘Hollingsville’ composer in residence, Graham Massey. Ins and outs are by Indigo Octagon. Hey...what was that sound?

See also:
‘Hollingsville’ Posts
‘Spaces’
‘Catching Up With’ Architecture Posts

Pictured above: the Palmenhaus in Vienna, courtesy of wandering shutterbug Kitty Keen