Plural Machine

Tonight I'm taking part in this hybrid event hosted by Goldsmiths. Entitled Notes from the Underground , it's a hybrid format rather than a traditional lecture. The first part is a new film, produced at speed and under lockdown, followed by a Q & A. The film blends Test Dept archive footage and some of my local photography   with reflections from Paul Jamrozy and my own theoretical commentary. The commentary explores Test Dept's legacy and relates their work to some of Mark Fisher's concepts. The full text is below.  You'll be able to watch the event live  this evening and youtube users will be able to pose questions.  If you prefer to use Zoom, please book a free ticket .  Commentary: Test Dept Notes from the Underground DS30/Sailing the Industrial Styx  An ex-industrial site is supposed to be mute. It should know its place in the symbolic order of sedative post-imperial heritage that Test Dept have always confronted. It should be picturesque, but not intrusive

Five years have already passed since the fateful NSK exhibition From Kapital to Capital  in Moderna Galerija. During the weekend of the exhibition symposium there was a Laibach Kunst gramophone performance on the steps of the gallery. To commemorate, here are my recently unearthed photos of the occasion.

A brief review I've published on the Goodreads site of an interesting recent book. It's relevant to a critique of hauntology that I'm currently working on ... Ghostland: In Search of a Haunted Country by Edward Parnell My rating: 4 of 5 stars This is a haunted and haunting book haunted by its own absences. The personal story it relates is moving and borne out of cycles of family tragedy. Yet this aspect of the book is sometimes at odds with the collective "haunted country" it seeks to describe and sometimes prevails over it. Ultimately, this is somewhat more of a personal and family memoir than a work of cultural and landscape analysis. The author's knowledge of ghostly fictions and the landscapes that have inspired them is not to be doubted. Yet oddly this knowledge sometimes promises more than it delivers. More than once, when he seems about to "grasp the nettle" and confront the dreadful "it" that animates a particular story, h

One of my photographs of the fabled sound mirrors at Denge has been used as the cover image for Eden Grey's new recording, an atmospheric, modular synth-derived soundscape. Taken on a close, ominous July day in 2014, the photo fits the sonic atmospheres well.  Listen here .

Despite its undoubted cultural vitality, Glasgow has often had a grim reputation, especially south of the English border. Yet the very bleakness, exacerbated by epic mismanagement, aggressive deindustrialization and sectarianism has also made it a site of constant and sometimes tragically over-ambitious attempts at utopian regeneration. This can be seen in the now highly poignant film Glasgow 1980 , which was already being quietly forgotten and surpassed by harsh reality even before the city had reached the year the film is supposed to depict. It poignantly promised a gleaming, post-industrial future in which "muscle gives way to automation." Yet in between the completion of the film and 1980, the oil shock and economic slowdown shattered the dreams of its makers and backers. Relatively little of the utopian plans (which to some already seemed dystopian) was ever built and many of the hopes of the "white heat of technology" era came to nothing. Other buildings

Last Saturday I join a pan-European group of friends and c. 700, 000 others on the People's March. As I explained to a Japanese journalist, we were there as we felt we had no choice. I have the sense that many in the country feel that if they just keep their heads down and give the Brexit People what they want, then they'll be satisfied. This is a huge mistake. The elite mob of disaster capitalists, neofeudalists and kleptocrats may not be unstoppable, but they are absolutely insatiable. Ultimately, nothing will satisfy their lust for blood and power, so it is better to make a stand now while it's still possible than to have to wrest back control from them amidst the Hard Brexit chaos they dream of. The most hard-hitting banner: Farage as English F ührer  I've been on 2 previous marches on this subject, but this was a huge increase in numbers and energy. Apart from a tiny pro-Trump mob outside Brexerspoons on Whitehall, there was no opposition. The weigh and spiri