Catching up with the Haus der Kulturen der Welt

It was a rare privilege for me to speak last weekend about cold war media and technology from inside one of the most fabulous pieces of early Space Age design: the Haus der Kulturen. Formerly known as the Kongresshalle, designed by American architect Hugh Stubbins and a gift from the United States to the people of West Berlin, it was the ideological equivalent of a NATO airbase or missile range planted right next to the Wall that divided East from West – John F Kennedy spoke from here on his visit to Berlin in June 1963. To me, it did not matter in the least that those attending transmediale 13, whose proud theme was ‘Back When Pluto Was a Planet’, had voted not to reinstate the lonely planet’s status: within the negative spaces and projecting curves of the HdeKdeW’s interior Pluto was, so far I was concerned, definitely still a planet.

The most prominent ‘collapsing new building’ of the Cold War reconstruction of West Germany, its roof having caved in, resulting in one death and several injuries, thereby marking its place in pop culture history, it belongs in outer space and to a future that we may never see. In other words, it feels as if a piece of the 1964 New York World’s Fair had been broken off and relocated in the Tiergarten. Playwright Heiner Müller once remarked that the only real place in the world was the dividing line between East and West Germany – today it might well be the empty lawns and fountains outside the Haus der Kulturen der Welt. In the meantime Hugh Stubbins went on to design the Citicorp building in Manhattan; and it was in the lobby of this fine building with its array of payphones that the first 2600 hacker meetings took place on the first Tuesday of every month. Every wall on this planet has a story to tell.

Pictured above: KH in the sleet outside the Haus der Kulturen der Welt prior to the BWAPWAP panel (picture courtesy of Sunil Manghani – note Henry Moore’s Large Divided Oval: Butterfly in background); interior space; evening descending upon a flying saucer in the trees; daytime exterior views – exit in search of Pluto.

Back When Pluto Was a Cold War Planet: transmediale 13

Anyone planning to wander through the Tiergarden next Saturday morning might like to know that I am in Berlin again taking part in transmediale 2013. The theme this year is Back When Pluto Was a Planet,which is less a reference to the past than a GPS locator for our present situation. To this end I have been asked to contribute to a panel on Militarization, Media and Space: ‘Back When Pluto Was A Cold War Planet’.

It starts at 11.00 am in the Theatersaal of the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, John-Foster-Dulles-Allee. Here is an extract from organizers’ blurb for the event:

This panel focuses on mediation and coordination of space and Space by the military. Since the advent of the Cold War, celestial bodies have featured in strategic military planning and often in controversial ways. One attempt to stem militarization was, for example, the 1967 Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, Including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies which declared the moon a site free of any military activity. However, during the War on Terrorism and its protracted ghostly image in the present, the US Department of Defense’s strategic plans have included the abolishment of such quaint treaties, so that sites such as the dark side of the moon might well become the platform from which the military can convert urban centers (targets) into mirror images of munitions lift-off sites: the clichéd wasteland of the lunar landscape. These plans apply to a range of other celestial objects as well, and their relationship to militarization on and under the ground—from high-tech signaling and radio spectra, to inversed stargazing, i.e. tracking terrestrial targets from outer space. Terrestrial and extraterrestrial space provides the medium for thinking about complementary and, occasionally, contradictory desires of militarization processes. Such desires operate perhaps without a singular, centralized and human agency, but are nonetheless especially effective from the perspective of epistemological and military mapping through various media of bodies and their movements. Presentations in this panel investigate this entanglement of architectures, observation, epistemological technologies and celestial bodies.

Participating are: Ryan Bishop, Lisa Messeri, Sunil Manghani, Jussi Parikka, Ken Hollings, and the event is being moderated by Kristoffer Gansing, the artistic director of transmediale. The venue of course could not be more ideal: the original collapsing structure of the early Space Age, a thrusting piece of Cold War spin reminding us once again that we are living in someone else’s future.

February 2, 2013, starting 11.00 am
Theatersaal, Haus der Kulturen der Welt
10 John-Foster-Dulles-Allee
info@hkw.de

Pictured above:  Haus der Kulturen der Welt ascendant, plus Gemini and satellite in conjuction

Ken Hollings Radio 3 Essay Series Back Online

My series of talks for BBC Radio 3’s Essay series, ‘Requiem for the Networks’, is now back online again after its original one-week run on i-Player last year. A great opportunity for those who missed them the first time around to hear them at their leisure, the series also offers early drafts on some of the material contained in my forthcoming book, The Bright Labyrinth: Sex Death and Design in the Digital Regime’, the final text for which is pretty much 98% complete.

 The Essays series comprises five talks:
‘Welcome to the Labyrinth’
‘Victorian Search Engines’
‘The Network Goes to War’
‘I’ll Be Your Orange Juice’
‘Heads in the Clouds’

From the introductory preamble to ‘Requiem for the Network:

As weaponry systems, commercial enterprises, banking and home entertainment draw increasingly upon the same operating platforms, the neutrality of the network is open to question. Perhaps the most appropriate model for understanding the enduring nature of the network is the Labyrinth: a structure of mystifying complexity where technology, deception and violence all meet. The US military, having been instrumental in developing the Internet, has now withdrawn into its own secret labyrinth, which it considers a safe environment for the transmission of classified data.

You can find the entire series as separate episodes on the Radio 3 website by clicking here.

Please note: as with the original i-Player version, the last five minutes of the final episode is missing: it is useful to note in this respect that networks not only accept errors but can also perpetuate them. I have brought this missing section to the attention of the series’ producer, the wonderful Mark Burman, in the hope that he can get those responsible to correct it. In the meantime, I can make the script for episode five available as a PDF to those who wish to read its thrilling conclusion.

See also:

Requiem for the Network on BBC Radio 3

Requiem for the Network – Essay One, ‘Welcome to the Labyrinth’

Requiem for the Network – Essay Two, ‘Victorian Search Engines’

Requiem for the Network – Essay Three, ‘The Network Goes to War’

Requiem for the Network – Essay Four, ‘I’ll Be Your Orange Juice’

Requiem for the Network – Essay Five, ‘Heads in the Clouds’

Pictured above: KH has left the building...a clean desk in the studio at Henry Wood House

Ludwig II’s Venus Grotto

At the start of Wagner’s Tannhäuser, after the orgiastic dance sequence insisted upon by the Jockey Club for its first performance in Paris, we find the poet sickening of the sensual pleasures offered in Venusberg – resisting Venus’s charms he elects to return to the world of men. Far from the world of men, in the grounds of his palace at Linderhof, did King Ludwig II a subterranean pleasure dome decree – in the form of an underground cave of stalactites surmounting a small artificial lake. In fact everything about this chamber was artificial – conceived and designed between 1876 and 1877, the Venus Grotto is an immersive stage setting constructed from canvas, cement and steel – its coloured lights, some reflecting the exact shade of Capri’s famous Blue Grotto, were powered by a series of 24 dynamos. The grotto’s air temperature was kept at a manageable level by the furnaces built into the cave’s walls. Have I missed any of its wonders? Oh yeah, the golden half-shell boat and throne from which Ludwig could admire his underground realm of the senses – the ceramic garlands and the artificial waterfall – and the rugged limestone entrance that was also the work of artifice rather than nature.

The Venus Grotto is an early media device – not surprisingly its conception coincides precisely with Edison’s invention (one wants to ‘discovery’ of so fundamental a device) and also with the raising of Wagner’s Festspielhaus in Bayreuth. A cinematic experience before such a thing had coalesced around the moving image, the Venus Grotto is not a spectacle that King Ludwig was prepared to share: we note again the womb-like warmth and wetness of the grotto itself, his own refined sense of ‘spirituality’ as opposed to what he considered the grosser sensations of sensual love, and finally that highly suggestive vertical slit in the rocks through which he entered his pleasure chamber. It was perhaps an unconscious arrangement that allowed a man, whose own birth at Nymphenberg was witnessed by selected members of the Bavarian court, to ensure that the first-born really was the next king of Bavaria, to return to the womb in nobody’s company but his own.

Pictured above from top to bottom: the entrance to the Venus Grotto in the grounds of Linderhof, the main chamber; stalactites and garlands; another view of main chamber showing a little more detail of A Heckel’s mural depicting Tannhäuser in Venusberg; and a side grotto. Photographs by roving shutterbug Kitty Keen as KH was incapable at the time, having succumbed to a mild case of Stendahl Syndrome.

See also:

Psychopathia Esoterica

First Autumn Leaves at Linderhof

Central St Martins Studio Sessions

Over the past few weeks I have been running a series of experimental one-day encounters with BA Graphic Design students who are particularly interested in the current relationship between communication design and interactivity. The idea was to engage with a relatively simple proposition but also to explain your response as clearly as possible: the three propositions I put to them were as follows:

Five Chairs

Arrange five identical plastic chairs in a designated space to convey an idea, proposition or concept. This can be a mathematical progression, a geometric arrangement, a social encounter, a narrative environment or an argument: you decide – but be prepared to explain the thinking behind your arrangement to rest of the group.

Talking Utopia

You are invited to take part in a live panel discussion with a difference: you can start out as a panellist, a member of the audience or a moderator, but that’s not where you’ll end up. A series of cue cards can change the composition of the panel, the direction of the discussion as it goes along and who gets to be a moderator. The subject is ‘Utopia’ – in other words your ideal world. Make it happen.

Dead Media Hunt

From telescopes and lorgnettes to VHS videocassettes and Motorola phones, ‘Dead Media’ is the term coined to describe any communication platform or device that has been rendered ‘obsolete’ by technological progress. However, no media ever truly dies (just take a look inside your pencil case if you don’t believe me). You have 60 minutes to find an interesting example of ‘dead media’, bring it to table, demonstrate it to the group and explain why you find it interesting.

The students all responded with great enthusiasm and insight. The pictures taken above offer some photographic record of each studio session – from top to bottom: two images each from ‘Five Chairs’, ‘Talking Utopias’ and ‘Dead Media Hunt’.

Ken Hollings on Twitter

I’ll keep this brief – you can now follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/Hollingsville. You can also find a link in the Absolute Elsewheres part of this page. Still figuring out the local lingo but it is an interesting experience. Pictured above: an early Tweet from John Ruskin, found in the gardens surrounding his home at Coniston Water in Cumbria.

Quatermass and the Pit-bull – Nigel Kneale in New York

Those of you reading this in New York are probably more than used to apocalyptic scenarios at the moment, but I couldn’t let this distant echo of a world ending go by without drawing it to your attention. Organized by Sukhdev Sandhu in association with Mark Pilkington of Strange Attractor, this day of remembrance dedicated to the greatness that is Nigel Kneale is taking place on November 17 at the Michelson Theater. Quite what Kneale’s creeping civil weirdness and genteel brusqueness might mean in the land of the pit-bull and men called Mitt is open to debate – but this event will undoubtedly repay your weird and wonderful support. To quote liberally from the press release for this event: 

Nigel Kneale (1922-2004) was a visionary dramatist, a pioneering screenwriter-auteur, one of the most important British science fiction writers of the 20th century. In works such as the Quatermass trilogy (watched by one third of UK television owners, Kneale forged singularly visceral and unforgettable fusions of horror, spooked thriller and Cold War-era weirdness.

A Cathode Ray Séance is a day-long celebration of this hauntological icon whose work, even though it paved the way for well-known series such as Doctor Who, is less familiar to American than to British audiences. Staged by the New York-based Colloquium for Unpopular Culture in collaboration with London’s Strange Attractor, it will include rare screenings, talks by Kneale admirers, and a special musical interpretation by Mark Pilkington, Rose Kallal and Micki Pellerano of Kneale’s legendary-but-lost 1963 drama The Road.

To mark A Cathode Ray Séance, there will be available for sale copies of a very limited-edition book designed by Rob Carmichael(John Cale, LCD Soundsystem, Animal Collective ‘Crack Box’) and featuring contributions by a wide range of musicians, artists, curators and cultural theorists including Sophia Al-Maria, Bilge Ebiri, Mark Fisher, Will Fowler, Ken Hollings, Paolo Javier, Roger Luckhurst, China Mieville, Drew Mulholland, David Pike, Mark Pilkington, Joanna Ruocco, Dave Tompkins, Michael Vazquez, and Evan Calder Williams. Initial copies will come with Restligeists, a tape of specially-recorded Knealiana by The Asterism & Xylitol, Emma Hammond, Robin The Fog, Hong Kong In The 60s, Listening Center, Mordant Music, and The Real Tuesday Weld.

Midday: Introduction (by Sukhdev Sandhu)
12:15: Screening: The Stone Tape (1972, 90 min) (introduced by Dave Tompkins)
2:00 – Screening: Murrain (1975, 60 min) (introduced by Bilge Ebiri)
3:30 – Panel Discussion including Mark Pilkington and Will Fowler
4:45 – Screening: ‘Baby’, from Beasts (1976, 60 min)
6:00 – Screening: Quatermass and The Pit (1967, 97 min) (introduced by David Pike)
8:15 – Musical Performance: The Road (1963) – reading/ live synth and percussion soundtrack by Rose Kallal, Micki Pellerano and Mark Pilkington of a long-lost Kneale TV play

WHEN: Saturday 17 November 2012, midday-9pm
WHERE: Michelson Theater, Room 648, 721 Broadway, New York
[at Broadway and Washington Place]

Remember: Hallowe'en III must be avenged!