Inferno, Purgatory, Paradise: Talking Trash at the BFI

 

As part of the BFI’s ‘Trash!’ season at the South Bank, I have been invited to give a lecture on my three-part Trash Project, published by Strange Attractor Press. Comprising three volumes, plus an additional Trash Concordance, this expansive and fragmented study contains personal reflections on Trash and Trash Culture developed over the years. Divided into Inferno, Purgatory and Paradise, the Trash Project presents a complex but structured mosaic of perceptions on everything from alchemy, beauty and sovereignty to sexploitation, biker movies and underground cinema. It was always intended to be wide-ranging but never definitive.

 

Thanks to the BFI, I have been given the opportunity to look back on the whole thing for the first time since the Trilogy was completed. I will be reflecting in particular on the relationship between movies and Trash, starting with the ‘Purple Death’ episode of Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe and then moving further into the deep spaces opened up by Jack Smith, Doris Wishman, Kenneth Anger and Mario Bava. I’m not saying that it won’t get messy, but it will be interesting – so do please join me.

 

The lecture will be taking place in the Reuben Library on the evening of Wednesday 29 April. You can find more details and book tickets by clicking here.

 

I will also be signing copies of Inferno, Purgatory and Paradise in the BFI bookshop before the talk and would be delighted to say hello to anyone who drops by. 

 

Here are the basics:

Inferno, Purgatory and Paradise

Ken Hollings’ Guide to the Trash Underworld

Wednesday 29 April 2026 at 20:00

In the Reuben Library

The BFI South Bank

 

Got My Name In The Paper: Ken Hollings Reads at Helen of Troy

 

Issue Two of the ambitious newspaper project Agapius hit the street on Tuesday 16 December with a new text by me on its front inside page. It was great to have the opportunity work with such a large format, and ‘Permanent Threat’ is the result. Its theme of constant societal collapse and menace has been carefully balanced by the editors with Jeremy Deller’s more reassuring ‘Community Centre’ text on the back inside page. In between, Agapius offers a wide range of subjects, styles and techniques. From Satanism in Bolivia to a Queer History of Diamonds, everything in this newspaper is a reflective surface.

 

The paper launched in grand style at Helen of Troy, a louche little hangout on Hanway Street in the West End of London. This marvellous dive’s interior lighting concept favoured deep shades of red, thus making it almost impossible for any text to read indoors. Charlie Hills, who coedits Agapius with Kay Basil Fletcher, had asked me to read ‘Permanent Threat’ at the paper’s launch, but I wasn’t sure how that would be possible under the circumstances – besides, everybody was having far too good a time to stop what they were doing and listen to me. Charlie, however, had the inspired idea of inviting me to read my text to the sizeable crowd smoking and vaping on the pavement outside Helen of Troy. Hanway Street feels more like a back alley in old Paris than something that leads off Oxford Street – even this close to Xmas – so I decided to do just that.

 

Long story short: doing the reading outdoors turned it into a small piece of theatre that ended up involving pedestrians and bystanders in the action. At one point a taxi dropping off a passenger had to inch its way past me, but I didn’t stop reading – no, not even for a second.

 

You can find more details about Agapius issues One and Two by clicking here. Support independent publishing wherever and whenever you can.

 

Pictured above: Ken Hollings reads ‘Permanent Threat’ to those attending the launch of Agapius Issue Two at Helen of Troy, Hanway Street, 16 December 2025 – photographs by @lahollings – also pictured above: Agapius Issue Two, a detail of ‘Permanent Threat’, plus the Agapius promotional badge. 

 

So Long, Noon - I'm Writing for After Noon now!

 

I have some wonderful news for all you culture freaks out there. After a brief absence following the Covid pandemic, Noon is back – glossier, more relevant and more ‘post-everything’ than ever. Except now it’s called After Noon, and has recalibrated itself for the end of 2025 by going back to issue 01

 

When Jasmine Raznahan told me she was launching After Noon, I immediately agreed to contribute something. I like working with her very much and was very happy to contribute to issue 01 as I have been a regular contributor to Noon since Jasmine first invited me to write something for issue 2 back in 2014. In fact, I have contributed something to every issue right up to the magazine’s recent post-Covid hiatus. While writing for the magazine, I developed a very strong sense of what Jasmine wanted from me, especially for the ‘theme’ issues. I was aware that she was looking for texts that would complement the visual content of the magazine but would also take the reader off on some interesting and unusual tangents. 

 

It usually takes Jasmine and I one conversation to come up with the right tangent. She told me that the theme was ‘Borders’. And my immediate response was to write about New York in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. The memory of this event had started haunting me again: Donald Trump was in the White House ordering airstrikes against Iranian nuclear sites. Back then he had been boasting that the destruction of the World Trade Centre meant he now had the tallest building in New York – spoiler alert: he didn’t, and he never had. I was actually in Manhattan in the middle of October 2001 with my bride Rachel. As newlyweds, we had always planned to honeymoon there and were determined not to change our plans, despite the terrible tragedy that had just unfolded. What Rachel and I encountered there still surprises me to this day. 

 

I have always tried to make every text I wrote for Noon as different from the others as I possibly could. Jasmine has always given me the space and the opportunity to experiment with new ideas and approaches. It’s one of the reasons why I’m so excited to be working with her magazine again. ‘The Safest Place on Earth’ is different from a lot of my previous writing in that it is highly personal – I have rarely used the first person in my previous work, but I’m finding that autobiographical and autoethnographic writings are increasingly useful instruments for probing whatever the hell it is that’s happening to us today. One thing is clear to me, however: at some point, every writer worthy of the title owes their readers a life – and I’m trying to pay back some of that debt right now. 

 

The After Noon 01 launch took place last week at Claire de Rouen, a chic little bookshop in London’s East End. You knew it was chic because someone had dumped one high-heeled shoe and an empty can of Pabst Blue Ribbon in the trash. 

 

Buy yourself a little happy with After Noon (01) – and check out some Noon back issues by clicking here.

 

Dazed digital currently has a feature on the reincarnation of Noon as After Noon, and you can read it by clicking here.

 

Pictured above:

After Noon 01 cover – Katherine Hamnett by Juergen Teller

After Noon 01 cover detail

After Noon trash at Claire de Rouen

After Noon spine

Dazed screengrab

KH flashing ‘The Safest Place on Earth’ at Claire de Rouen (pix by Max King)

‘The Safest Place on Earth’ detail

 

 

The Ruins Launch with The Howling for London Design Week

There is going to be a very special launch event on Saturday September 20 as part of this year’s London Design Festival. Illustrator Matthew Frame and I have been collaborating on The Ruins, an elegant stand-alone publication that combines his sharply inked panoramic images with some of my sharply inked panoramic writing. Matt’s subject is 1950s dystopian sci-fi movies, drawing upon scenes from the likes of The Time Machine and This Island Earth. My text, written at his request in response to Matt’s illustrations, is a section-by-section reworking of Walter Benjamin’s ‘On the Concept of History’ considered from the perspective of Beyond the Time Barrier, a 1960 B-movie involving a US jet pilot who finds himself in the divided future of...2024. It is the latest in a short series of reworkings I have undertaken of this key Benjamin essay, which was only published after his death by suicide. The book has been beautifully designed and laid out by Patrick Fry and is absolutely gorgeous. It is being published in a limited edition by Jaune Press, so get them while you can. 

 

The Howling will be performing. Matthew Frame will be speaking. There will also be a chance to play videogames and to experience ‘Paradise’, an amazing site-specific installation by the sculptor Max King.  

And there will, of course, be you.

 

Here are the details:

 

Where – Free Play City, 199 Eade Road, Harringay Warehouse District London N4 1DN

 

When – 20 September, 19.00-22.00

Admission – free, no ticket required, but you are requested to RSVP via this link, which contains a lot of useful extra information. 

 

Pictured above: some views of The Ruins by Matthew Frame and Ken Hollings, design by Patrick Fry

The Trash Project Does Little Atoms

 

I was recently given the opportunity by Neil Denny to appear on his show Little Atoms to not only talk about my latest book from Strange Attractor Press, Paradise: The Psychoanalysis of Trash, but to discuss The Trash Project in its entirety. With Neil’s kind encouragement, I was able to go over the origins of Inferno, how it developed into the alchemic arcana of Purgatory and then ended with a protracted meditation on the relationship between sovereignty and waste in Paradise. There was also time to outline the complex generative relationship between The Trash Project and Dante’s three-part Divine Comedy. The result was a lively hour of conversation, which you can either download here as a podcast – or if, like me, you still think of radio as an event, a slightly shorter version of this episode of Little Atoms is being broadcast by Resonance 104.4 FM on Monday 13 January at 11.00. Feel free to listen in. And a Happy New Year to all my readers, to Resonance 104.4 FM and to everyone involved with Little Atoms.

 

Pictured above: obligatory packshots – The Trash Project, Inferno, Purgatory, Paradise and The Trash Concordance 

 

'Paradise' Launch at The Horse Hospital, Friday 6 December

 

On Friday 6 December, I'd be delighted if you could please join me and Strange Attractor Press in celebrating the completion of my monumental Trash Project with the publication launch for Paradise: The Psychoanalysis of Trash at The Horse Hospital. The event will also celebrate twenty years since Strange Attractor’s first book event at this most blessed and favoured venue.

I will be reading from Paradise, alongside a performance from Howlround’s Robin The Fog on reel-to-reel tape recorders. You will of course know us better as The Howling.

Copies of all three volumes – Inferno, Purgatory and Paradise – will be on sale, along with their companion volume The Trash Concordance; and I will be signing copies of all four titles while stocks last.

‘Virtuosic in its scope…never less that compelling in its sheer erudition’ 

Chris Hill, Fortean Times

‘Energetic and enthusiastic, Hollings’ conception of trash is poetic, exaggerated and true to the conceptual and ultimately confrontational nature of the underground.’

Laura Jacobs, Art Monthly

In the third and final volume of his personal reflections on Trash Aesthetics, Ken Hollings tells the story of three kings who squandered everything they had in a grandiose spectacle of waste. King Ludwig II of Bavaria, ‘King of Rock ‘n’ Roll’ Elvis Presley and Michael Jackson, the ‘King of Pop,’ all shared the same doomed innocence. Their lives and early deaths were connected through individual displays of unfettered extravagance that brought them to the very edge of ruin. Each of them lived out their personal ideals of beauty and pleasure – even after the money was gone. In his reworking of Dante Alighieri’s Paradiso, Hollings presents Heaven as a place of rebellious but tragic self-indulgence.

 

Here are the details

December 6th
Doors 7pm
The Horse Hospital
Colonnade
London 

Free Entry

Ludwig II of Bavaria: The Movie King

 

I was recently invited by Adam Alston, the editor of Staging Decadence, to contribute an essay to this remarkable online platform. I was told that it could be about anything I wanted. This gave me a welcome opportunity to write about a subject that has interested me for quite a while. The movies made in the twentieth century on the life of King Ludwig II of Bavaria have long fascinated me. Ludwig is a major presence in my latest book, Paradise: The Psychoanalysis of Trash, which is the third and concluding part of my Trash Project. Ludwig II is a supreme example of aesthetic sovereignty attained through spectacular extravagance and waste: the castles that proved to be his ruin are magnificent Baroque follies stranded in time towards the end of the nineteenth century. He had these fairytale dream palaces built at a time when modernism was already making its first technological incursions into contemporary society and culture. 

 

Although frequently photographed during his reign, Ludwig did not live long enough to appear in even the earliest moving pictures. This means that he never personally encountered what would become the modernist artform.  However, it didn’t take long for an emergent movie industry to start portraying Ludwig’s colourful life. The first surviving film depicting scenes from his life appeared in 1920, released with an early Tarzan movie from Hollywood. Another silent movie from 1930 met with official disapproval. Later in the century came Hans-Jürgen Syberberg’s low-budget masterpiece Ludwig: Requiem for a Virgin King, first released in 1972. This was the same year in which Luchino Visconti released his lavish retelling of the king’s life in Ludwig, starring Helmut Berger in the title role. 

 

I had wanted to write more about Ludwig as a modern cinematic obsession in Paradise, but the very strict ordering of the text, determined by the structure of Dante’s Divine Comedy, meant that I had to set this intriguing theme aside for another day. Well, another day has finally come, and you can find my essay ‘Projected Fairy Tales: The Life of Ludwig II of Bavaria as Revealed in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’ by clicking here.

 

To coincide with the posting online of this new essay, I have been informed by the wonderful Lady Liminal, AKA Rebecca Lambert, that Sky History has recently shown a film documentary on the death of Ludwig II, which features extracts from an extensive filmed interview I gave on the subject some years ago. Rebecca tells me that the doc can also be found on Amazon Prime if you know where to look. The film was part of a series on Royal Murder Mysteries, so you can only imagine.

 

There will be other events and occurrences to celebrate the launch of Paradise: The Psychoanalysis of Trash in the coming weeks, and I will be posted advance information on social media in due course. To order an advance copy, please click here.

 

Pictured above

Ludwig II posing for the court photographer (Joseph Albert)

Neuschwanstein’s inner courtyard (Rachel Hollings)

Inside The Venus Grotto at Linderhof (Rachel Hollings)

KH wearing black on TV for Ludwig II (Rebecca Lambert)

'Paradise' is Here - And It's Brought a Friend

I’m very happy to announce that Paradise: The Psychoanalysis of Trash, the third volume of my journey into the domains of trash culture and trash aesthetics, is available now Strange Attractor Press.This volume completes a trilogy of works that began with the publication of Inferno: A Genealogy of 1960s Trash Culture back in 2019, and continued with Purgatory: Towards The Decay Of Meaning in 2022. 

Customers who buy the book directly from Strange Attractor Press will also receive a complimentary copy of The Trash Concordance: A Guide to The Divine Comedy, The Trash Project, Dante and Me. And you can find that offer by clicking here. 

Here’s a quick overview of Paradise: The Psychoanalysis of Trash taken from the back of the book: 

In the third and final volume of his personal reflections on Trash Aesthetics, Ken Hollings tell the story of three kings who squandered everything they had in a grandiose spectacle of waste. King Ludwig II of Bavaria, ‘King of Rock ‘n’ Roll’ Elvis Presley and Michael Jackson, the ‘King of Pop,’ all shared the same doomed innocence. Their lives and early deaths were connected through individual displays of unfettered extravagance that brought them to the very edge of ruin. Each of them lived out their personal ideals of beauty and pleasure – even after the money was gone. In his reworking of Dante Alighieri’s Paradiso, Hollings presents Heaven as a place of rebellious but tragic self-indulgence

 If you’re new to The Trash Project, Strange Attractor are happy to offer, for a limited time only, the complete set of works at a discounted price of £45.00 plus P+P. Check out their webstore here while stocks last. This will bag you all four books, ie the three main titles, plus The Trash Concordance, a fully-illustrated limited edition bonus volume that maps connections between the Trash Project and its structural inspiration, Dante's Divine Comedy. 

The bundle includes: 

 - Inferno: A Genealogy of 1960s Trash Culture (2019) 

 - Purgatory: Towards The Decay Of Meaning (2022) 

 - Paradise: The Psychoanalysis of Trash (2024) 

- The Trash Concordance: A Guide to the Divine Comedy, The Trash Project, Dante and Me (2024)

 The whole of The Trash Project has been beautifully designed by Tihana Sara assisted by Baphorock on Paradise and The Trash Concordance.

There will be some very special launch events coming up in the autumn, so look out for these - announcements will made in all the usual places on social media. 

 The long journey is nearly over - the end is in sight. 

Paradise

The Psychoanalysis of Trash 

by Ken Hollings 

 £17.99 

 ISBN: 9781913689858 

 352 pp. | 130x 182mm 

 35 illustrations 

 Pack shots above by Rachel Hollings

Let Me Die a Monster @ Camden Art Centre

 

To celebrate the publication of the long-awaited Strange Attractor Journal 5, my publishers hosted a special launch event at Camden Arts Centre on Thursday April 27, which included the staging of a couple of scenes from Let Me Die a Monster, an exploitation movie script I had cowritten with ‘the Truffaut of smut’ (BBC Radio 3) David McGillivray at the distant start of 1997.

 

The experience took me back nearly 25 years to the end of the previous century and the start of the new millennium. There were two things that struck me about this unique period. The first was a sense of looming catastrophe. It was a very apocalyptic time: one of mass suicides, technological terrors, potential alien invasions and the collapse of civilization itself. The message was in the mainstream media, out on the streets and in the air: everything must end. The second and more encouraging thing about this period was the sense of frivolity that went with the apocalyptic mood – if the whole thing was about to come crashing down, people’s attitude seemed to say, let’s at least have a party while it’s happening.

 

Living on the edge of a disaster that hadn’t happened yet produced a strange kind of gallows humour – and the screenplay that David McGillivray and I worked on together back in 1997 remains a good example of it. I have written a short account of how the project came about as a preface to the published version of the screenplay in Strange Attractor Journal 5 for those who wish to learn more. Perhaps a better introduction to the script might be to consider some of the forces driving it. At the time it seemed perfectly normal that the production company who had initially approached me and then later brought David and I together to write Let Me Die a Monster should be called Trash 2000 – it suited the times, or at least it suited how I understood those times. Trash 2000 had been making videos for Stereolab, Cornershop and Leftfield, which were using a lot of the imagery and attitudes that appealed to me, so when filmmaker Nick Abrahams approached me on behalf of Trash 2000 to ask if I had any ideas, I was ready.

 

So, did I have any ideas? Well, no – I didn’t. It was only after the initial meeting that I recalled that there was a story I was very interested in writing – and that was the one about the American movie actor Nick Adams. He was one of a small bunch of Hollywood stars, including Russ Tamblyn and Joseph Cotton, who had made monster movies for Toho films in Japan. At the time, I’d been a consultant for a BBC2 history of the horror movie, dealing specifically with the kaiju phenomenon in general and Godzilla in particular. Nick Adams had appeared in one extraordinary Godzilla movie, known in the West as Monster Zero AKA Invasion of Astro Monster. 

 

As far as I was concerned, Godzilla was the apocalypse incarnate. What made the Nick Adams connection so fascinating was not only that Adams died relatively young, overdosing on pills, but he had also been close friends with two other mythically self-destructive figures: Elvis Presley and James Dean. This connection was the starting point for Let Me Die a Monster. I developed a story that begins with Adams’ suicide – the pills producing a powerful hallucination in which Nick sees himself back in Tokyo making one last kaiju movie; but things are not going so well for him. His part keeps being rewritten, and he’s gradually being upstaged by a second American actor, who’s clearly after the starring role. Adams starts cracking up. The script for Let Me Die a Monster concerns itself with the flashbacks and fantasies unfolding in the dying actor’s brain.

 

For the Camden Art Centre reading David McGillivray selected two scenes and assembled a wonderful cast to interpret them. I am particularly indebted to him, Kamura Atusko, Iain Stirland, Daryl Crick and Henry Galvan for such an extraordinarily special event.

 

Pictured above:

Strange Attractor Journal 5

David McGillivray and KH posing for the camera

Stirland and Crick in character

The cast and the writers from right to left: Henry Galvan, Daryl Crick, Iain Stirland, Kamura Atsuko, David McGillivray and KH

 

 

Strange Attractor Presents ‘At the Gates of Purgatory’ @ Iklectik April 5

 

On the evening of Wednesday April 5 at the fabulous Iklectik Lab I will be presenting an extended reading from my latest book Purgatory – The Trash Project Volume II. In the past I have always given short readings based on extracts from my work, but increasingly I have had members of the audience coming up to me afterwards saying that they would have liked to hear a little more. So, I thought I would give them a lot more. 

 

You can find more details and book tickers by clicking here.

 

At The Gates of Purgatory is a special ‘live audiobook’ adaptation featuring support from Lori E Allen, Martin McCarrick, Mark Pilkington and Howlround, incorporating voice, cello, electronics and tape loops. I have worked with each of these wonderful performers individually in the past; but this is the first time I’ve collaborated with all four of them at the same time. Expect a long deep dive into digitally looped cello, shimmering electronics and raw analogue tape effects. This is going to be a unique spoken-word experience.

 

The Trash Project is a three-part work modelled upon Dante’s Divine Comedy. Inferno, the first volume, deals with US underground and exploitation movies made during the 1960s, while Purgatory examines how nineteenth-century European attitudes towards Beauty and Sin, Art and Morality continue to influence the way we think about Trash today. The first nine essays of Purgatory correspond directly to Dante’s account of the journey made by the dead to reach the gate to Mount Purgatory, where they will eventually atone for their sins. This may be a long reading for me, but it’s going to get very weird very quickly.

 

In the second part of his Divine Comedy, Dante describes the souls of the dead arriving on the shore of Purgatory, a mountainous island in the middle of an empty sea. The dead must then journey upwards on a steady incline past many perils until they reach a gate set in a wall. Once beyond this gate they begin the long and painful climb up the terraces of Mount Purgatory, shedding their sins as they go, until they reach the Earthly Paradise at the summit.

 

Over the course of At the Gates of Purgatory, horror and violence, corruption and desire become inextricably entwined as we travel from the pleasures of the Palace of Art during the day to the terrors of the Wax Museum at night. Along the way we meet Anthony Hancock and Dorian Gray, Lola Montez and King Ludwig I of Bavaria, Daphne and Apollo, Aphrodite and Medusa. 

 

NOTE: At the Gates of Purgatory is a continuous performance without any breaks or intermissions. You are welcome to come and go as the mood takes you, listen to as much or as little as you wish, but please be mindful of the other audience members when entering or exiting the hall. 

 

My sincere thanks are due to Lori E Allen, Martin McCarrick, Mark Pilkington, Howlround, Lucie Štěpánková and Isa Ferri for their unstinting support of this project.

 

Strange Attractor Presents At the Gates of Purgatory

At Iklectik

Wednesday 5 April 2023

Doors: 7.30pm 

Start 8.00pm

 

Pictured above

KH (photo by Rachel Hollings)

Lori E Allen 

Martin McCarrick (photo by Nelle Strange)

Mark Pilkington (photo by Rachel Hollings)

Howlround 

Purgatory (cover by Tihana Sare)

Purgatory Launch Event at the Horse Hospital November 17

 

On the evening of 17 November, Strange Attractor Press is holding a launch party for my new book Purgatory at the world famous Horse Hospital in Bloomsbury. This is Volume II of The Trash Project which I began in 2020 with the publication of Inferno. There will be movies and music, and copies of both books will be on sale, along with some choice items from my Strange Attractor back catalogue.

Following my reading from Purgatory at Iklectik in September and my recent lecture at the BFI, this will be the main event to welcome the second part of The Trash Project into the world. All are welcome, so I hope you will come along and help me celebrate.  I will present a reading from Purgatory and signing copies over the course of the evening. Join me and the wonderful people from Strange Attractor Press and The Horse Hospital if you can.

You can find more details from the Horse Hospital website by clicking here. But here's the basic information:

Where: The Horse Hospital, Colonnade, Bloomsbury, London WC1N 1JD

When: from 19.00 until Roger gets tired of the whole thing and kicks us all out

Pictured above: Strange Attractor invite to the Horse Hospital event (Tihana Sare); copies of Purgatory and Inferno on sale at the BFI bookshop; KH concluding his lecture at the BFI's Reuben Library - Thank You