Plural Machine

Thanks to all who watched the event on Friday, we all enjoyed it and were really pleased with the response, we were only sorry not to have more time for questions and discussion. Ludmilla Andrews did a great job of executing the film at great speed in lockdown conditions. My commentary for the film was written in haste over the New Year and recorded in the following week. It's a snapshot of the transition from 2020 to 2021 through the prism of Test Dept's work and Fisher's response to it. 

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 ...

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...