Purgatory, Beauty & Trash at the BFI

 

On Monday 31 October I will be giving a lecture in the BFI Reuben Library to introduce my latest book – Purgatory: Towards the Decay of Meaning.

 

Published by Strange Attractor Press, Purgatory is the latest addition to the three-part Trash Project in which I take a personal look at Trash and Trash Aesthetics. From Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray to Tony Hancock’s The Rebel and from the decadent artworks of the late nineteenth century to the early years of cinema, this sequel to Inferno examines the complex relationship between ‘beauty’ and ‘trash’.  

 

I will be looking at how a renewed interest in alchemy and a stern cult of beauty met in Paris in the late nineteenth century and how together they reflected a hierarchy of values that would shape the social unrest of the late 1960s. Consequently, in the wake of May 68, I trace the emergence of a uniquely European form of Trash cinema devoted exclusively to beauty, sex and despair.

 

The talk will begin on Monday 31 October at 18.30 and will last around 90 minutes, so you will have plenty of time to go home afterwards, change into your Halloween costume and scare your neighbours. 

 

The BFI is located on the South Bank within spitting distance of Waterloo Bridge and National Theatre – but I wouldn’t recommend that as means of finding the place. The Reuben Library can be found in the same part of the building as the box office and NFT3.

 

Tickets for the event are £6.50, and they’re selling fast, so be sure to book in advance.

 

Details can be found here.

 

Pictured above: Cover art for Purgatory by Tihana Sare – Tony Hancock Irene Handl and George Sanders register their unalloyed delight at the prospect of being featured in Volume II of The Trash Project

 

The Cosmos Remains A Work In Progress

I have a lot of new work coming out in print at the moment – and, as is typical, it is all coming out at once. First up is Space for Visual Research 2: Workshop Manual and Compendium, which contains an essay I wrote over the summer at the request of Anna Sinofzik, one of the volume’s editors and a former student of mine. The work contained in this fascinating collection represents an extracurricular graphic design laboratory at the Bauhaus University Weimar, and I am particularly proud to have been invited to contribute – it feels to me as if a tradition is being carried through from the early twentieth century into the twenty-first. My best wishes go out to all who are involved in this enterprise.  

My essay is called ‘The Cosmos is a Work in Progress: Astronomy as Communication Design – A Guide to What You Are Missing’ and is based on a lecture I gave at the Royal College of Art earlier in the year – details on that particular talk can be found here .

For more information on the publication, which is available from Spector Books of Leipzig, please click here or here.

There are two more new essays of mine that have just gone into print, and I will get to them in successive posts. Each deserves to have its own entry as each is very different. Bear with me while the blog adjusts itself.

The Cosmos Is A Work in Progress

On Tuesday January 17 I will be giving a public lecture at the Royal College of Art in South Kensington The talk, called ‘The Cosmos Is A Work in Progress: Astronomy as Data Design’, is presented as part of the School of Visual Communications Work in Progress show.

Here is a an extract from the blurb:

The history of astronomy offers a platform from which we can explore ideas and theories surrounding experimental communication and information design. To examine how the cosmos can fit into that our narrow frame of references is to confront complex issues of representation, illustration, visual complexity and media archaeology. What are we actually seeing when we look at space? Ken Hollings offers a guide to what you've been missing.

So get ready for optical canons, Mayan suicide gods and Saturn devouring his children. The talk is scheduled to start at 4.30. This is a free event, but you will need a ticket to attend. You can order those by clicking here.

For more information on the students’ WIP show, check their Facebook page here.

Pictured above: rarely seen moments in our universe.

The Bright Labyrinth at the ICA

On Saturday June 6 between 2 and 6 pm I will be taking part in a panel with Mark Fisher, Caroline Edwards of Birkbeck University of London and Mary Margaret Rinebold. The session is dedicated to ‘Changing Prospects’, dealing with change and our collective sense of futurity; and I will be presenting some extracts from The Bright Labyrinth and publicly reaffirming my desire to be reincarnated as Astro-Boy one day – although there are some who fear that this may have already happened.

 The event is part of the ambitious fig-2 year-long cycle of exhibitions and installations. This panel is one of a series instigated by the artist Marjolijn Dijkman. To give you more information on this exciting project I am reproducing the programme notes for this event below:

A three century old ritual is reimagined by artist Marjolijn Dijkman in the form of a week long presentation of ideas and discussions called ‘LUNÄ Talks: Uncertainty Scenarios’. The LUNÄ Talks take place around a table, a reproduction of the original table which accommodated The Lunar Society of Birmingham, where pioneers of the Industrial Revolution debated Philosophy, Arts, Sciences and Commerce, every month on the night before full moon. Three centuries later, this table, becomes a platform to develop and expand the knowledge production of our times. The programme includes conversations about the notion of Time, recent developments in Neuroscience and explorations in Big Data, amongst others. The programme of invited speakers posits seeds of thought planted to flourish in a close future.

Saturday’s session will concentrate on the notion of change in relation to the locus of collective imagination of the future. We will explore different approaches, which are utilised to motivate and trigger seismic shifts relating to the world around us.

LUNÄ is based on the Lunar Society of Birmingham, which was formed from a group of amateur experimenters, tradesmen and artisans who met and made friends in the Midlands in the 1760s. The original Lunar men gathered together for lively dinner conversations, the journey back from their Birmingham meeting place lit by the full moon. Members included the flamboyant entrepreneur Matthew Boulton, the brilliantly perceptive engineer James Watt whose inventions harnessed the power of steam, the radical polymath Joseph Priestley who, among his wide-ranging achievements discovered oxygen, and the innovative potter and social reformer Josiah Wedgwood. Their debates brought together philosophy, arts, science and commerce, and as well as debating and discovering, the ‘Lunarticks’ also built canals and factories, launched balloons, named plants, gases and minerals, managed world-class businesses — and changed the face of England.

June 6
2 – 6 pm
fig-2
The Institute of Contemporary Arts
The Mall
London SW1Y 5AH
For tickets and more information, click here.

Pictured above: the LUNÄ Table by Marjolijn Dijkman

Ludwig II: Dandyism, Decadence and Decay

On the evening of Monday April 20 at London’s Viktor Wynd Museum of Curiosities, Fine Art & Natural History, I will be giving a talk on one of my favourite subjects: the life, architecture and aesthetics of King Ludwig II of Bavaria. He is one of the key figures in my next book on Trash and Trash Aesthetics and a constant source of fascination.

Ludwig II ascended to the Bavarian throne in 1864 at the age of eighteen. His first act as king was to invite his hero Richard Wagner to Munich. Those who understood or appreciated his deep passion for beauty and sensation would not have been surprised. Builder of extravagant palaces, shunning the day in favour of the night, lover of poetry, theatre and opera, Ludwig’s life was the embodiment of the ‘fairy tale as aristocratic dream’ – to quote his cousin Crown Prince Rudolf of Austrian. Ludwig was also quick to embrace modern technology – including electricity, engines, glazed spans and cement – in the realization of his fantasies, even though his dream of a flying throne, submarines and a death ray were never to become a reality in his own life.

 An inspiration to Verlaine, Huysmans and Crowley, his tragic death, denounced as a madman and stripped of his crown, remains a key myth for the 21st Century.

April 20th 6:30 - 8:00 pm
The Viktor Wynd Museum of Curiosities, Fine Art and Natural History
11 Mare Street
London E8 4RP
02079983617
info@thelasttuesdaysociety.org

Tickets are £10 - £5 concessions

To book and learn more about this event, please click here.

See Also

Ludwig, Elvis, Michael at the Venice Biennale

Ludwig II’s Venus Grotto

Pictures from Nyphenburg and Herrenchiemsee by KH and the Daily Planet's roving shutterbug Kitty Keen