Only Connect: ‘Welcome to Mars’ Live In Oslo

Yeah…I know, I have been neglecting this blog shamefully all year – blame a very hectic schedule, even by my standards, plus a determined effort to finish The Bright Labyrinth, my next book for Strange Attractor Press – more on that in the coming weeks. I hope to catch up on my blogging duties over the summer, so bear with me just a little longer while I sort out the backlog. In the meantime, anyone in or around Oslo this weekend may wish to drop by the Caféteatret at 20.00hrs (local time) on Saturday June 9, when I will be sharing the bill with Julia Holter and Felix Kubin as part of Only Connect: A Tonal View Of Times Tomorrow, a festival debut from Ny Musikk. Here is some information on the event’s theme:

Only Connect, Oslo’s newest festival of adventurous music and sound, taking place in June 2012. The theme of this year’s event is ‘A Tonal View Of Times Tomorrow’ (the title taken from a tune by Sun Ra), and the diverse range of artists have been chosen to explore aspects of Time. In a world of social networking, Twitter and 24–7 commerce, Time has become a premium commodity as businesses compete for chunks of our attention. At the same time, the incredible availability of music and footage online has opened up a wider cultural horizon than ever before, allowing artists and listeners access to an enormous historical span of creativity, which in turn inspires and feeds into the music being produced – a music often soaked in references to the past. In a musical context, Time can simply refer to the aspects of duration, rhythm and interval intrinsic to the composition and performance of music. But composers and musicians also explore ideas of time travel, journeys between past, present and future, representations of eternity and micro-events, artistic visions of the future and creative responses to retro styles and the ‘lost futures’ of history.

All these aspects are reflected in the diverse mix of musics, new commissions and performers at Only Connect. The festival features a wide range of experimental composers and performers from the international scene, from Norway, UK, Germany, USA, Belgium and more. The events include concerts, live film soundtracks, improvisations alongside sound art installations, multimedia presentations and talks, and culminates with an exclusive ‘séance performance’ by minimalist pioneer Charlemagne Palestine in the haunting surroundings of the Emanuel Vigelands Mausoleum. Only Connect is curated by Anne Hilde Neset, Artistic Director of Ny Musikk, and Rob Young, music writer and Contributing Editor of the internationally respected magazine The Wire.

I will be reading extracts from Welcome to Mars to an audiovisual accompaniment. This may be one of the last times to catch this performance before the new book comes out, so I hope to see you there.

Pictured above: what you get by feeding ‘A Tonal View of Times Tomorrow’ into Google Images. The Only Connect website had nothing that would upload effectively onto this site. Great design but no sticking power - this is the future.

‘Alien Transmissions’ at Sonores

This has proved to be a very busy year for me so far, trying to complete The Bright Labyrinth while at the same time keeping up my usual frenetic schedule of lectures, workshops and seminars. I have not yet had a chance to completely write up all my notes from my recent visit to the Sonores Festival in Portugal last week. Fortunately the Radio Sonores website has posted a recording of my late-night lecture, ‘Alien Transmissions: Sputnik I, Marshall McLuhan and the Voices of Space’, which is an expanded version of one I gave at Space Studios in September 2010. Also available from the Sonores site is a fine sequence of photographs taken by Teresa Ribeiro, a selection of which is reproduced above. My thanks to all who helped make the Friday-night lecture such a pleasurable experience. OK – more soon.

Sonores 2012 – Live and Online

 For those with an occasional interest in my physical whereabouts, next week I shall be based in Portugal taking part in Sonores 2012 a fascinating collective exploration of the symbolic value of sounds and how it is implemented in our culture.

The organizers have expressed the idea in the following succinct terms:

Sound is, from the very first place, a principle to the understanding of reality, functioning through two different channels, both physically and symbolically. From this point we start to transform it into a more complex thing: into a medium of communication (creating codes for sounds), a way to process meanings and symbolic exchanges. The relation with sound manifests an attempt to communicate that will generate human languages, a formal and abstract system of representation, and music, a system that organizes sound.

For a PDF download of the festival programme, click here; or you can check the calendar online by clicking here.

The festival itself is being held in Guimarães in northern Portugal, but a live radio feed is also available and can be accessed by clicking here.

The main theme for my two main presentations is dedicated to the proposition: ‘so long as radio exists, space exists’. Both presentations will concern themselves with our perceptions of outer space: how we hear and comprehend a phenomenon which remains permanently outside our human sensory range – in other words how the experience of space is constantly mediated through technology. The two pieces are commemorative in nature, looking back on the space race, the cold war and examining their legacy – now that the Space Shuttle program is grounded for good and we are left with nothing but the anniversaries of our achievements to celebrate.

The two presentations will be as follows:

May 4, 22.00 hrs (local time): ‘Alien Transmissions: Sputnik, McLuhan and the Voices of Space’

May 5, 18.30 hrs (local time): ‘Radiant Static: Seven Short Texts on Space’

Expect a full report in due course. For those in the neighbourhood, you can find Sonores 12 at ASA, Estrada Nacional 105, Covas, Polvoreira (GPS 41.419447,-8.303368).

STOP PRESS – on May 3 at 18.45 I am scheduled to present a reading of new material, taken from my forthcoming book, The Bright Labyrinth, at the launch for a new anthology Savage Objects – you can find out more details (or not) by visiting the Savage Objects website. The launch is taking place at:

Sociedade Martins Sarmento

Rua Paio Galvão

4814-509 Guimarães

GPS

Latitude: 30.942436

Longitude: 7.910156

Catching up with Chernobyl – in conversation with Tony White

Disasters, as Maurice Blanchot has observed, ruin everything while leaving everything unchanged. This Thursday April 26, I shall have the pleasure of pursuing this idea further in the company of noted author Tony White at the Freeword Centre as we discuss his latest published work, Dicky Star and the garden rule. A narrative irradiated by the media fallout from Chernobyl, Dicky Star and the garden rule is published by Forma Arts and Media to accompany Atomgrad (Nature Abhors a Vacuum) by artists Jane and Louise Wilson.

Commissioned by Forma to coincide with the 25th anniversary of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster Atomgrad (Nature Abhors a Vacuum) is a suite of large-scale photographic prints, depicting deserted interiors from the now almost entirely abandoned town of Pripyat, situated within the 30km wide Exclusion Zone. The richly textured images of former public spaces include a kindergarten, cinema and a swimming pool, all of which explicitly reveal years of decay and the hurried nature of their abandonment. Dicky Star and the garden rule follows young couple Laura Morris and her boyfriend Jeremy through the turbulent days at the end of April 1986 when the world’s worst nuclear accident occurred at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic of the former Soviet Union. Tony White’s narrative reveals Jeremy and Laura's story in vivid daily chapters that follow the disaster’s impact in the UK, but are also each determined by their own quixotic puzzle: each daily chapter must be told using all of the answers to the Guardian Quick Crossword from that day in 1986.

The following is taken from the author’s afterword to the published text:

The story occupies the Chernobyl time-line, from 26 April 1986 when the accident occurred, until 7 May when reports of the true scale of the disaster were printed in UK newspapers following the Kremlin press conference of the previous day. Rather than work with Jane and Louise in Ukraine or to have drawn too heavily upon the unique interviews and testimonies that they have been collecting in the course of their own research, it seemed pertinent to explore, in a work of fiction, the same events from a UK perspective and using contemporary print media as my primary source.

A metaphor for this approach might be that of the scientific control. In an experiment – e.g. one designed to test the effects of a particular drug – the control is of course the experimental sample that remains untreated or subject only to some standard or pre-existing variable or attribute in contrast to, or to provide a point of comparison with the main, treated sample.

My own research draws on two main sources. Firstly, the Leeds Other Paper archive, which is held in the local and family history section of Leeds Central Library. LOP was an independent, alternative left-wing newspaper published between 1974 and 1994 in that city, where I lived during the period in question. Secondly, archive copies of the Guardian newspaper held in the British Library’s national newspaper collection at Colindale, London.

Alongside the LOP’s prior anti-nuclear content, its critical stance and its notable dissemination of accurate scientific information about risks posed by ‘the cloud’ (as the plume of Chernobyl fallout was popularly referred to at the time), and the Guardian’s own extensive coverage of the disaster, I was particularly drawn to the then broadsheet’s back pages, to Steve Bell’s memorable cartoons of radioactive sheep and to the two crosswords, especially the Quick Crossword which I had been fond of doing at the time.

Dicky Star and the garden rule
Freeword Centre
60 Farringdon Road
London, EC1R 3GA
26 April 2012
18:30 (Doors 18:00)

Forma is delighted to announce a launch event to celebrate the publication of a specially commissioned work of fiction by Tony White, author of the critically acclaimed novel Foxy-T (Faber and Faber). Tony White will read excerpts from the book and be joined in conversation with writer and broadcaster Ken Hollings. Followed by drinks reception. RSVP essential. Please email Divya Thaker on dt@forma.org.uk  or +44 (0)207 456 7820.

Chernobyl image found on The Atlantic website.

The Thing Is…William Sargant’s Lobotomy Needles

I said in my previous post that the revealing of the ‘mystery object’ from the Wellcome Collection’s vast archive of medical artefacts and documents at ‘The Thing Is…’ would be absolutely worth waiting for – and indeed it was. Even though I had known in advance that the item in question would be William Sargant’s Lobotomy Needles, still neatly packed away in their box with his home address written in ink on its cover, I was still quite in awe of the actual moment of uncovering. Already safely inside their Perspex display case and hidden beneath a blue silk wrapper when I arrived in the Wellcome Library’s reading room, where the event was to be held, they formed the unacknowledged focal point of my initial conversation with Radio 4’s Quentin Cooper about the early history of neurosurgery and its charged, complex relationship with psychiatric practice.

When asked to come up with a title for this event I had chosen ‘Brain Wars’ because it related to four distinct aspects of the imperative to treat mental illness over the past century or so. Firstly, I am always surprised at how often the struggle to understand and cure is presented in warlike terms – there comes with it a weary and stolid shrugging of the shoulders, as if to say that the treatment may offend our ethical sensibilities or standards of human propriety, but this is war, goddamn it. Secondly we might add the impetus which the First and Second World Wars put upon the search to find a cure for the dreadful psychological aftermath of combat – the concept and naming of Post Traumatic Street Disorder is, we should recall, still a frighteningly recent phenomenon. Then come the savage partisan wars that have broken out, during the second part of the twentieth century between the advocates of the various branches of psychoanalysis, drug therapy and solidly physiological approaches to the problem of mental illness. It often feels – and perhaps it should – that something which threatens the mind of one person must inevitably threaten all of us in that it challenges our sense of precisely who we are. And finally there are those attempts made by secret intelligence agencies and military strategists to use the mind itself as a biochemical weapon – now starting to be referred to as ‘neuro-terrorism’, this aggressive approach to the mastering of sanity has a long history, parts of which are covered in Welcome to Mars, but which still maintains a disturbing presence – recent stories on Operation Midnight Climax and the shameful death of Frank Olsen, plus the final admission of CIA involvement in an outbreak of mass insanity in the French village of Pont- Saint-Esprit in 1950 all indicate that neuroterrorism is far from being a recent phenomenon.

Contemplating the points of Sir William Sargant’s lobotomy instruments brought all of this into sharp focus for me – as such they inspired their own hysterical awe in the same way that the former possessions of a dead chieftain among his survivors. Sargant himself had nothing but withering contempt for the psychoanalytic approach to mental illness and even less for those who thought sanity might be found in a capsule. Thanks to the good graces of Ross MacFarlane, I was able to spend a fascinating afternoon in the Wellcome Library’s archive room going over some of Sargant’s papers. One quote from a piece written for the BMJ in 1958 leaped out at me in particular. ‘Some, especially in America,’ he wrote, ‘have been talking about a new golden era in psychiatry when it will be possible to give up insulin coma, leucotomy and ECT and have the chemical tranquilizers as humble handmaidens of universally applicable forms of dynamic psychotherapy for all types of neurotic and psychotic patient. I venture to predict that those psychiatrists who are saying this sort of thing will prove to have been more psychotherapeutically brainwashed than their patients.’

The attitude expressed in this excerpt – Olympian, fiercely dogmatic and robustly pragmatic – is really that of an old general surveying the battlefield and making the kind of tactical blunder Clausewitz would have warned against: that of seeing only how the battle ought to be going, not the actual course it was taking. It would still be a couple more years before Tim Leary took up his post at Harvard and a few more before The Politics of Ecstasy was published – but there is something about the tone in much of Sargant’s writing that almost invites the kind of irreverent perspective offered by Leary in the title of an essay for the Journal of Atomic Scientists back in 1962: ‘What To Do When the Viet Cong Drop LSD in Our Water Supply’. The following from the National Center for Biotechnology Information might be considered a more recent – and much less mischievous – update:

Neuroterrorism


Bioterrorism is defined as the intentional use of biological, chemical, nuclear, or radiological agents to cause disease, death, or environmental damage. Early recognition of a bioterrorist attack is of utmost importance to minimize casualties and initiate appropriate therapy. The range of agents that could potentially be used as weapons is wide, however, only a few of these agents have all the characteristics making them ideal for that purpose. Many of the chemical and biological weapons can cause neurological symptoms and damage the nervous system in varying degrees. Therefore, preparedness among neurologists is important. The main challenge is to be cognizant of the clinical syndromes and to be able to differentiate diseases caused by bioterrorism from naturally occurring disorders. This review provides an overview of the biological and chemical warfare agents, with a focus on neurological manifestation and an approach to treatment from a perspective of neurological critical care.

Pictured from top to bottom: Quentin Cooper and KH in conversation, then bearing down on the mystery object, plus some wonderful background details of the Wellcome Library reading room where ‘The Thing Is…’ was held; KH at the Perspex display case containing William Sargant’s needles; a view of the ‘Watts-Freeman lobotomy instruments’ from the top of the case; members of the audience coming in for a closer inspection of the needles at the end of the event. This photo series comes courtesy of Daily Planet roving shutterbug Kitty Keen, to whom respectful and profound thanks are as always due - as indeed they are to all those who helped to make this event such an engaging pleasure.

Brain Wars at the Wellcome Institute

In advance of their forthcoming exhibition on the human brain, the Wellcome Collection has invited me to be a guest at their Sunday-afternoon forum, The Thing Is... this weekend. In the company of Quentin Cooper I will be discussing a mystery object – I have been asked not to reveal what the mystery object is in advance of the event, but I can tell you it will be worth the suspense of waiting to find out.This free event was booked-out the moment it was announced back in January, but some extra tickets seem to have become available – and there should still be some returns available 90 minutes before the event itself, so I hope you can make it. Here is the copy I supplied for the Wellcome site to give you some idea of what to expect:

From neurosurgery to neuro-terrorism, over the past century the human brain has been a battlefield over which rival theories, treatments and beliefs have fought relentless campaigns for supremacy. Is the brain an organ of cognition which can be treated as any other part of the human anatomy, or something that can only be accessed as a set of precepts and behaviour patterns? Is psychotherapy a form of ideological programming? Is surgical intervention little more than clinically sanctioned violence? Fierce arguments have raged over a possible answer to these questions - and that is before the military and the intelligence agencies grew interested in the brain's workings during the height of the Cold War, resulting in psychiatric wards and medical research programmes being turned into training grounds for new forms of cognitive warfare. Meanwhile in the 21st century there are increasingly dark ruminations over how mood stabilizers, sedatives and hypnotics might be used to attack and disrupt civilian populations, thereby transforming the brain into a form of biochemical weapon. One thing remains certain, however: from Freud's early studies in hysteria through William Sargant's controversial writings on influence and belief to Tim Leary's utopian 'Politics of Ecstasy', the brain has remained a concealed chamber in which angels and demons continue to slumber.

Ken Hollings and Quentin Cooper explore these issues, with the aid of a mystery object.

The Thing Is...Brain wars
25 March 2012, 15.00 - 16.00
Free admission by ticket only - book now

Justine - The Marquis de Sade

JUSTINE
or The Misfortunes of Virtue

A faithful and unexpurgated translation
by Alan Hull Walton from the original
manuscript of 1787, together with
expansions and selected variants from the
editions of 1791 and 1797, notes,
bibliographies, and an introduction.

Note to the reader
This, and only this, is the complete and
unexpurgated edition of the Marquis de
Sade’s most celebrated work, about which
the French critic, Maurice Blanchot said:
‘Nowhere in the world, and at no other
time has there been such a scandalous book
in the whole of literature.’

JUSTINE
A CORGI BOOK

Originally published in Great Britain
by Neville Spearman Ltd

PRINTING HISTORY
Neville Spearman Edition published 1964
Corgi Edition published 1965
Corgi Edition reprinted 1965

© Alan Hull Walton

Dediée
A MONSIEUR JEAN-JACQUES PAUVERT
AMI ET EDITEUR
par
ALAN HULL WALTON

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the written consent of Transworld first given, be lent
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