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 ...

Join us for the London launch of the English/German book Gesamtkunstwerk Laibach , a collection of new perspectives on the work of the group. Co-editor Uwe Schütte will present the book and this will be followed by a panel discussing their own selections of Laibach videos: Alexei Monroe will analyse  Mi kujemo bodočnost 1983 Simon Bell  will analyse  Opus Dei (Life is Life) Michael Goddard  will analyse  Wirtschaft ist Tot Uwe Schütte  will analyse  Germania Codex Europa will play a selection of rare and lesser-known Laibach pieces, alongside a few classics. Tickets are available on the door or f rom the venue website .

Title slide of my presentation. Image of the doomed Birmingham Central Library, June 2015. Photo by A.M. Last week I spoke at the Nonument Symposium in Ljubljana, focussing on the way that 'Brutalism' is used and abused in contemporary culture. The renewed cult popularity of Brutalism is a phenomenon I've been observing with a mixture of fascination, enjoyment, ambivalence and disgust for some time and the lecture had a packed agenda. It was an attempt to try and decode the various agendas and interests circling around Brutalism and to track them. I analysed a range of examples, from internet culture to contemporary design to industrial music to science-fiction.  Brutalism as a (life)style or even an attitude is arguably more 'sexy' and, for some, virtuous than ever, yet many of its most iconic structures are now being demolished or de-brutalised through cladding - a term now synonymous with the horror of the Grenfell Tower fire. Image of the doomed Birmi...

18th November saw the opening of the first ever British exhibition by Autopsia. It also marked the publication of my 2nd book,  Autopsia: Thanatopolis , the first extended study on the work of the group. I devised the Thanatopolis (city of death) concept while working on the book. It seemed highly appropriate, given Autopsia's artistic focus on death and the destructive, if not fatal, social and economic forces that roam freely in Neofeudal London. The conclusion of the book speculates on the technologically-driven future of art and culture in a Thanatotic city and culture. Autopsia had its roots in the Punk and industrial scenes of late 1970s London and so it was natural (and long overdue) the project should symbolically return to the city that helped inspire it. The exhibition featured several new works and worked well in the cold, gloomy interior of the Horse Hospital. Early 1980s works were featured ... Alongside Autopsia's latest sardon...

For the past few years I've been working intensively with Test Dept and Peter Webb on a comprehensive archival book documenting their work and its impact. I've contributed an introductory text and two shorter texts on the group's work. Full details of the book and where to buy it will be available soon. Total State Machine will be published by PC-Press on April 23rd and this will be marked by a special event at The Ritzy in Brixton . A premiere screening of DS30 , documenting Test Dept's monumental 2014 installation and video project on the River Tyne will be accompanied by a selection of Test Dept archive material on film and video. This will be followed by a Q & A with founding members Graham Cunnington, Angus Farquhar and Paul Jamrozy. Special DJ sets will be provided by Scanner and Shelley Parker. www.testdept.org.uk
 www.pc-press.co.uk

I'l be giving a talk entitled From Electronic Terror to Electronic Terrorism: Dr. Who Soundtracks and Industrial Music as Sonic Dystopianism . This is a sequel to the Doctor Who and The Death Factory talk from last year and will include new audiovisual examples and other material. You can view the programme of the conference here . There are papers on preserving electronic music, classic equipment, the work of Daphne Oram and more. The event will conclude with a concert marking the 80th birthday of EMS pioneer Peter Zinovieff. Doctor Who and The Death Factory is an evolving project and I've created a youtube playlist to demonstrate its arguments. More news on this work will follow...

Demolition of  the Island Block, October 2006. Photo c. Alexei Monroe On December 1 st I'll be taking part in an event in Maribor entitled A conversation about the formation of national iconographies and their framing . This is a closing event for a complex and challenging exhibition by the artist Jasmina Cibic.   My talk, Unacceptable Faces of Monumentalism?, is an interpretation of competing utopian and dystopian tendencies in London architecture, culture and politics. It's an experimental approach to analysing architecture, a subject I'm increasingly interested in. It's also a conceptual sequel to my Tate Modern presentation in April. Here's a sonic cue, Shockwork by Test Dept...

You can now hear my recent appearance on the Resonance FM programme A Colder Consciousness via the show's mixcloud page . The show began with Nico's controversial version of Das Lied der Deutsche as played by Igor Vidmar on Radio Student in 1983. We discuss the Slovene and Yugoslav underground scenes and the associated political questions.

I feature on today's episode of A Colder on Resonance 104.4 FM in London and online elsewhere at resonancefm.com . This is a special editin of the show dedicated to Slovenia and ex-Yugoslavia. The show features Nico, 300 000 V.K., Abbildungen Variete, Electric Fish, Autopsia, Borghesia and Laibach and I discuss with ACC host Flora Pitrolo the musical and cultural history of the period between 1983 and 1987.

The excellent Bio-Mechanics site invited Codex Europa to produce their latest podcast and the result is available now here . This is a harsh experiemental sequence taking a range of harsh and radical electronics that parallel or negate techno "proper."

Montage by Vera Bremerton.  Next Friday I'll give an experimental presentation at Noise=Noise on the strange parallels between the sonic and conceptual dystopianism of Doctor Who and first generation British industrial music. Dr. Who exposed mass audiences (often very young) to a combination of experimental electronic sound and dystopian themes, a combination that could also summarise industrial music. Dr. Who frequently presented post-apocalyptic scenarios of mutation, mind control and para-militarised societies and, in the process, at least implicitly criticised actual political and technological developments of the time, particularly those associated with the Cold War arms race. Due to budgetary constraints these visionary scenarios were often realised in a rudimentary ad hoc fashion; an approach that also applies to industrial. The early industrial groups highlighted the most serious social and political themes using very primitive electronic equipment, creating a kind of...

I'll be introducing a screening of Johnny Yes No at The Horse Hospital this Friday night from 7.30, details here . The event is to mark the release of a Mute DVD/CD box set containing both the original and new versions of the film and soundtrack plus extensive sleeve notes. There's a timeless quality to CV material and I still find the scratchy, grimy bleakness of the early works strangely uplifting, even if so much has changed over three decades. After all, back then Britain was in the midst of a recession and was governed by an authoritarian clique of free market fundamentalists...

This deluxe box of rare archive audio and video is available now from Vinyl on Demand . Besides the five LPs, DVD and deluxe artwork there is an extensive booklet which I edited. Besides my own text there are exclusive texts from Donald Campbell, Igor Vidmar, Michael Goddard and  Aleš Leko Gulič.

Over the summer I had a long and interesting discussion with Thomas Bey William Bailey about Tech-Nostalgia, covering issues such as the fetishisation of analogue technology, the romance of Cold War Poetics and the current fashionability of EBM and other 1980s electronic and industrial variants. These exchanges can now be read on Vague Terrain .

Klub V.E.B./Codex Corporation Present: ‘40 Jahre’ : A.M./B.N. 1969 – 2009. A unique event for the 40th birthday of one of the V.E.B. members. Special tribute mixes from V.E.B. DJ’s and guests. A sequence of half hour sets will span a range of electronic genres from dark ambient/electronica to electro, industrial/EBM, minimal techno, doomcore gabber, electro and some surprises. Saturday August 15th. 19.30 – 23.00 The Fleapit 49 Columbia Road, London E2 7RG. FREE Techno – Industrial – Electro – Gabber and more…. Many thanks to Alex Nym for his work on the flyer.