July 19, 2003
The Grand Order of Cobbles
The Horse Hospital needs your support. We therefore invite you to become part of the very fabric of our historic building by sponsoring a cobble, of which we have exactly one thousand three hundred and eighty four. You, or your organisation, can select which type of cobble you would like to make your own by choosing from the link above, and the price list below. In addition to becoming a registered sponsor - and hence member of the exclusive Grand Order - only sponsors will be able to take part in our Infinite Cinema Project, details of which are to be announced soon. Cobbles now available range in price and position, as detailed here:
Code Where Type Size Available Price (£) 1 The Ramp Square cobbles 4.5 X 4.5 316 25.00
2 The Concourse Square cobbles 5.5 X 5.5 168 35.00
3 Centre Stage Oblong cobbles 12 X 5.5 315 80.00
4 A-Bay Oblong cobbles 14 X 5.5 64 35.00 5 B-Bay Oblong cobbles 23 X 4.5 22 125.00 6 C-Bay Oblong cobbles 25 X 4.5 19 140.00 7 The Stalls Diagonal slats 28 X 4.5 371 155.00 8 Shire Stall Diagonal slats 34 X 5 32 210.00 9 The Wings Oblong cobbles 40 X 4.5 9 220.00 10 The Box Oblong cobbles 84 X 4.5 16 450.00 11 Fly Gallery Oblong cobbles 84 X 4.5 31 450.00 12 The Trap Oblong cobbles 28 X 4.5 31 155.00 13 Prompter's Box Oblong cobbles 15 X 4.5 31 00.00 
Your contribution to The Horse Hospital is important. To become an Official Sponsor & Member of The Grand Order, winning our Gratitude, Respect & Many Consequent Benefits thereby, please contact popculture@thehorsehospital.com.
Citizens please note: This guide, and a secondary list of cobble sponsors will be updated as our sponsorship grows. Now what are you waiting for?
July 18, 2003
Hip Survival Bulletin #31
THE HORSE HOSPITAL
AUGUST / SEPTEMBER 2003
THURSDAY 28TH AUGUST
DOORS 7.00pm
Free, all welcome
NUDE MAGAZINE LAUNCH
New independent London Magazine!! This one’s FREE and features articles on
VINCE RAY, JUNKO MIZUNO,
JOHN FANTE & THE CULT OF LOMOGRAPHY
SATURDAY 30TH AUGUST
DOORS 7.30pm
£7 / £5
BARBARIA
An Evening Of Post-Zionist Video
Curated by Tai Shani
UK PREMIERES OF FUCKIN PUNK ROCK ART FILMS
FROM TEL AVIV
Boysgirls : Noaz Deshe 30 mins 2000
French Film : Keren Cytter 15 mins 2001
Satan Is My Father : Michael Hanegbi 25 mins 2002
Family : Keren Cytter 5 mins 2002
The Radicals : Joshua Simon 23 mins 2001
Freeland : Rona Yefman 14 mins 2001
plus the kinoKULTURE DO NOT MISS FILM OF THE MONTH
Search Agent Zerox : Noaz Deshe 60 mins 2001
For further details go to www.thehorsehospital.com
SEPTEMBER 6TH
FREE DERRY COMES TO LONDON
BOGSIDE ARTISTS PRIVATE VIEW ALL WELCOME
THE BOGSIDE ARTISTS
EXHIBITION
September 8th - 4th October 2003, Mon - Sat 12 - 6
Private View Saturday September 6th, doors 7.30pm
For further details go to www.thehorsehospital.com
MONDAY 15TH SEPTEMBER
Doors 7.30 pm
D.I.Y. OR DIE
or HOW TO SURVIVE AS AN INDEPENDENT ARTIST
IN THE PRESENCE OF THE FILMMAKER
A film by MICHAEL W. DEAN
A celebration of the underdog
featuring in-depth Interviews including:
Ian MacKaye (Fugazi), Lydia Lunch, Mike Watt (Minutemen), J Mascis (Dinosaur jr.), Jim Rose (Jim Rose Sideshow), Jim Thirlwell (Foetus), Richard Kern (Filmmaker), Ron Asheton (Stooges), Madigan Shive (Bonfire Madigan), Dave Brockie (Gwar)
and more.
THURSDAY SEPTEMBER 18TH Doors 7.30pm
STEP ACROSS THE BORDER
kinoKULTURE in conjunction with Harmonia Mundi UK and
the brine-saturated headless apparition
present
the award winning
90 minute celluloid improvisation by Werner Penzel and Nicolas Humbert, featuring music and appearance by
Fred Frith,
John Zorn,
Bill Laswell.
SUPER IMPROV!! SUPER DELIGHT!!
FRIDAY 19TH SEPTEMBER
Doors 7.30pm
leisur:hive present the legendary 13 - Symposium Of Exotic Reason
Entrance free to members and guests
SATURDAY 20TH / 21ST SEPTEMBER 12 - 6pm
LONDON OPEN HOUSE
We once again open our doors to the norms, come and watch them gape and gasp in awe!!
THE HORSE HOSPITAL COLONNADE BLOOMSBURY LONDON WC1N 1HX
( 020 ) 7833 3644
popculture@thehorsehospital.com
www.thehorsehospital.com
re: THE FINAL SOLUTION OF THE CELEBRITY PROBLEM
( this was anonymously posted as a comment upon our website, but I feel it should be highlighted. If the parties concerned do not wish it to be brought to the public's attention, please let us know, and we will take appropriate action. If they would like us to highlight it further, again, let us know. )
re: THE FINAL SOLUTION OF THE CELEBRITY PROBLEM
file-name: The Execution of David Bowie
Q: You are informed that you are being interviewed by [ ]
Do you understand the reason for your detention, and for this interview?
A: I understand that you and those with you have positions of authority and rank, and uniforms, and medals, and guns. I understand your weapons. I understand also that you are human beings with all the usual human frailties and some new ones all your own. I know that I'm here because chance has brought me here to face you, and I face you without fear. Does this answer your question for the record sufficiently?
Q: We have found the dead body of the celebrity musician and actor known to the world as David Bowie.
A: He was also a banker. He set up his own bank on the internet in the late 1990's, issuing credit cards with his own face on the plastic, like Apollo on the Amex card. He was an artist too, and he made the Stock Exchange a medium of artistic expression. Let's have all the facts correct, shall we?
Q: It was important to you that Mr Bowie was a banker?
A: Everything is important to me, especially that the fact he had to be executed. I mention it for the record.
Q: When you were arrested we found in your possesion a weapon with traces of Mr Bowie's DNA Do you recognise this hunting knife, with 8-inch serated blade? Your own DNA is also present on the handle.
A: Of course. Naturally.
Q: Do you admit to taking the life of David Bowie?
A: I admit nothing. I claim responsibility. I claim authority and authorship.
Q: Why? What is your motive for this 'execution'?
A: He knew it was coming. He was an acolyte of Dionysus, and on many occasions had taken on the form of the god to enhance his power. David Bowie had already killed himself in various personae which he knew had to be sacrificed in Dionysian ritual so that he, as a celebrity, could thrive, and rise to a higher level, as if transcending even death, like the pagan god which he offered himself up to. He murdered and drank the blood of the golden boy, sperm and urine and the dust of stars, and in doing so he rose to the state of demigod. Bowie was well aware of the fertile power of blood rites, and the value to himself of inducing mass hysteria. He bathed in menses, and he wore the head-dress of the Minotaur.
Q: You claim Mr Bowie drank blood and sacrificed victims how do you know this?
A: These are the facts, as you know very well, even though you choose to pretend otherwise. Their significance is perfectly clear to you all, as it was him. He showed me in my dreams that this is not reality.
Q: Please then, for the record, describe the facts as they happened
A: When I approached, he watched me, and I believe that he knew the time had come. Something touched him. His face was blank of all his personalities, and I saw myself reflected like a flame in his two different-coloured eyes.
He had arranged a meeting,the time and place of which I had discovered during my research into the Bowie Trademark share price and movements in his investment portfolio. I was collaborating subconsciously with Bowie on the presentation of Bowie-Bank and his economic choices as a work of Fine Art, trading in Futures like a brush-stroke on canvas. The timing of the execution could not have been more auspicious. Perfect.
Q: Where precisely did this take place?
A: He had stepped into the foyer, through those huge glass doors and all the security which makes that place look like such an elegant modern fortress, all white marble and shining steel. How could he feel anything but beautifully safe and sound and comfortable? He did not seem like a pop star or a movie star or a celebrity of any kind in fact. Did you know that Bowie once claimed, or someone claimed on his behalf, maybe Angie, I'm not sure, that David Bowie could turn his charisma on and off like a power supply, at will, so that he could be a superstar one moment, getting maximum attention, and at the next minute he could turn it off and become almost invisible, and fade into the shadows or the ordinariness of the surrounding space. That's interesting, don't you think? It's a philosophy of the Sufis that spiritual power of the highest order shows itself by the ability to become at one with the anonymous, divine presence. I know that secret too. That is how I was able to enter the bank, walk up close to David Bowie straight through his aura of protection, and end his existence in this realm - and then leave the building, without being troubled by the security guards or alarms.
Q: You stabbed him three times, this is correct?
A: Please, savour the moment. Experience it. I was even closer to him than I am to you now, and I was aware of our positions relative to the digital surveillance system, which I knew was being hacked into at that very moment and downloading live or should I say streaming transported anyway to Bowie's official site. I smiled, and he returned the smile, and he recognized me as his un-maker, and then, only then, I took out the dagger. He saw before him the director of his death scene, and how it had been written for him. He understood immediately the significance of the time and the place our closeness to his chosen star. As I said, he already knew. And then, as you say, the blade flashed, silver and red.
[Questions 13 to 17 are concerned with technical details regarding the hacking of the surveillance system streamed live on the internet via the web-site at ( ) and are not printed for reasons of security.]
July 17, 2003
Travels In Corporeality by James B.L. Hollands
i) Love Is A Dangerous Angel - The Costa Duarada
"Never ever sterilise stethyscopes by boiling them, even if your intentions are good" Donald S.Passman.
Phrase of day one was " Ask Keith ". Keith appeared to be the only operative within Heathrow Airport capable of getting me out of the country - it´s virtually impossible to travel without a credit card nowadays...but if that position should ever present itself to you, ask Keith. It works.
After some taxi driver cunt dumps us twenty minutes from our flat, we arrive, do stuff and hit Sonar. It´s the hottest June in Barcelona for fifty years. The Sonar Complex is in Hoxton, we´re staying in a cross between Beirut and Chelsea. The Runts have commandeered a building site behind our flat, and the sound of firecrackers beats a tattoo for the next three days. We-are-young-and-we-bring-war.
Sonar is gentle, an outdoor complex, one indoor tent, a few stages, some big white building. Not too busy, just right. Outside they´re playing acid and Clipse. We arrive too late for the Mute presentation so hang waiting for Paddy´s mate Tony to magically appear, as working a mobile is impossible. ( Hallo Motorola! Hallo 02! ) There he is. Tony´s mate Shaz tells us about some thing happening that night on Avenue Diagonal - blastbeats from people who weren´t invited to play Sonar, or who couldn´t afford to pay to play, which is the rumour.
At the Wrong Festival some industrial retards are angle-grinding a cow´s skull. Go on, impress me, suck its fucking eyeball out you wankers. They don´t, I´m rock gig bored until one of the bands, or someone in the audience, whatever, drops pepper spray or mace or tear gas into the crowd. It´s an aesthetic first for me. It clears the club except for some grindcore kids and yours truly, who by this time is on vodka and running towards the stage through the choking, tear-streaming crowd
" Give it some fuckin WELLY you faggot SLAAAAGS".
Erm...DJ Rupture´s set was great, surf for him, leave then me n Pad stay up all night. Tony looks disgusted the next day at the empty bottle of brandy, but it tasted great and now I can slur in fifteen different languages.
====
We sweat heavily on the way to Sonar Day Two. Phrase of the day is "Que Sera Serrotta" - the feeling of ´Fuck It´ upon realising that one is about to greet one´s public with spunk stains around the fly of one´s trousers.The Sonar Complex has turned into hell overnight. Human detritus - both organic and inorganic - is everywhere. A permanent thoroughfare feeling descends - or is pushed - upon us. Everybody in the world blah blah Miss Kittin someone else will tell you that.
Trying to find space, walk past that big white thing. It´s got this wall of white noise hanging outside it like an Addams Family cloud; we´re straight in, down the front, Black Power salute, catch the end of the Pita / Tina Frank set, give them money they rock.
Outside I turn to P and say "It´s about here that I´d expect to bump into someone I know" and Lucy and Matt Beat13 tap me on the shoulder. Great to see them.
Turns out the white thing is the Barcelona Mueum Of Contemporary Art designed by Van de Roehe. There´s some art stuff in it which we check on Beat13´s recommendation. Two guys from MIT have just done...it´s frosted perspex draughts which illuminate neon when moved on a frosted perspex board. Four sets of headphones; each counter is assigned different sound sources on an LED grid beneath the counter revealed when you move it. By
moving the draughts, free flowing music is possible by interacting the grids with each other.
But it´s too big to steal so we
oh, forgot to mention Datarock. If you ever see them advertised in your town, run. Run for your fucking lives as fast and as hard in the opposite direction as you possibly can.
====
Walk 15 steps and bump into Steve Sleeve. Fantastic. We settle, I go off to get drinks. There´s some shit tickets system and I don´t care. Bartender bloke takes my tickets, throws them on the floor and turns to serve the chick next to me. Don´t mess with me you fuckin Spanish cunt and within seconds I´m inside his neurons. His dreams are hideous for days afterwards. I have my first " I hate festivals " thoughts. After five attempts, he finally does the honour of allowing me some drinks.
Steve´s staying in Brighton with Tony Reynolds. Tony walks up looking like he´s gonna kill, all Cossack beard and ´London stinks of piss´ T-shirt. I love these guys.
Eat, sleep etceteraaaaa hit the road for Sonar by night. Sonar de Nit is existential; 100,000 people entertained by three sound systems in an aircraft hangar in Beckton. It´s so huge - and the sheer mass of people so overwhelming - that I´m actually scared. Suddenly our party becomes a single organism, melded for comfort.
It´s like that shit scene in Matrix 2. The factory is decorated in huge mobiles in the shape of ecstasy pills; Sonar´s logo is a man with pills for eyes. There´s no fucking way I´m psychically communing with this commercially crass drug industry bollocks so I do the whole night on two beers. Credit due, man, there´s 100,000 ( more like 7,000, says Sleeve later ) people and no hint of violence but it strikes me that the people are so dulled by the awful, AWFUL music they´re literally submerged in that resistance is futile.
There is nothing to do and we´re stuck in an aircraft hangar in Beckton all night. Great.
====
Richie Hawtin´s set is tired, I won´t even begin with that Mistress Barbara one and outside some twat is pretending to be a rock star and playing - Jesus - Goldfrapp. Fuck OFF Lowest Common Denominator Soundsystems.
Aphex Twin does a passable impression of a bottle of AmylNitrate for 15 minutes. By this point I´m feeling so old and cynical that I´m actually starting to enjoy myself.
Sonar is one huge body corporate; an egalite where the only right to exercise is the right to exercise; a decadance of corporeality. This is a festival billed as the 10th Barcelona International Festival Of Advanced Music and Multimedia Art. Advanced, my cunt. Don´t treat us like arseholes you fucking corporate wankers.
The evening ends and there´s 100,000 people on stupid drugs stuck on an industrial estate in the middle of nowhere. IT´S THE FUTURE, IT´S THE FUTURE. Give me strength. The bus queue is a voluntary Auschwitz; each time a bus randomly pulls up somewhere, the cram could - and Sonar are lucky it didn´t - have killed. It´s very, very frightening. We´re lucky enough to
a) be near a bus when it pulls up
b) have some quick thinking anarchist hop on board and open the back door of the coach :)
So we get away fairly quickly, but I hear horror stories of three hour waits to get out. Deeply unpleasant experience.
====
Wake up in afternoon, DARN, I´ve lost my ticket. Schlep to Sonar to see if I can get another one.
Fat chance. An hour and five " No,you must go there " laters and I give up.
"I fully understand your inability to print me another ticket due to the potential for abuse," I paraphrase to the really sweet guy behind the desk, "but what about human error?"
The guy looks at me, please don´t do this.
"I fully admit it. I have committed a human error, how does Sonar account for this?"
The guy´s eyeballs pop out and ticker tape streams from his mouth.
Thank god for that then. Can´t get back in to Sonar ( and I know what you´re thinking; for the record I didn´t deliberately lose my ticket or use it to make roaches. Honest. )...relieved because the only way I could have done SonAuschwitz again was monged off me head.
Which, incidentally, Barcelona is flooded with so we neck a couple and wander the city by night instead. Party town.
Steve rings "You goin tonight, J? " "Nah mate, lost me ticket" "Man, you could´ve had Tony´s; he just ripped his up..."
For at least four of us that weekend, Sonar was definitely a once in a lifetime experience.
Trent Harris Retrospective
DO NOT MISS
kinoKULTURE and The Horse Hospital in conjunction with Chris Campion are proud to present a two day retrospective of the films of TRENT HARRIS.
Underground and cult filmmaker extraordinaire, Harris' work will be screening on Saturday August 2nd and Sunday August 3rd 2003.
 |  |  |  |
|  |  |  |
" The real lesson to be learnt from Harris' journey as a film-maker is that if you dedicate yourself to following your passions they will lead you on a spiralling path that inevitably circles back to where you came from, forcing you to confront the 'I' enclosed in the pyramid of the world. " Chris Campion
Saturday August 2nd Rubin & Ed 82 min / The Wild Goose Chronicles 25 min
Sunday August 3rd The Beaver Trilogy 83 min / The Cement Ball of Earth, Heaven, and Hell 54 mins
Rubin and Ed stars Crispin Glover & Howard Hesseman and Karen Black, while the Wild Goose Chronicles tells the real life story of the inspiration behind the film.
The Beaver Trilogy ( BEAVER KID, BEAVER KID 2, and ORKLY KID ) stars Crispin Glover, Sean Penn and Groovin' Gary.
Los Angeles Critics Association awarded Beaver Trilogy
BEST INDEPENDENT/EXPERIMENTAL FILM OF 2001
What the critics are saying...
"A rivetingly strange, multilayered inquiry into celebrity, obsession and
serendipity."
New York Times - A.O. Scott
"By far the most exciting and heart-breaking piece of cinema this critic has
seen in years."
IndieWIRE - Aaron Krach
"Filmmaker Trent Harris is a genuine maverick who has poisted his first
piece of genius."
The Times London - James Christopher
"Both guileless found art object and beautifully crafted pop
fantasia...Beaver Trilogy is destined to go down as the coolest footnote to
any number of careers."
Filmmaker Magazine
"Of all the films that have ever been or will be, nothing compares to Beaver
Trilogy."
Sundance Film Festival
"A stunning and complex exercise, an elaborate karaoke-upon-karaoke that
snaps right into place with contemporary obsessions."
New York Press - Ed Halter
"I would strongly recommend your taking a look at Trent Harris's Beaver
Trilogy, a work that's as strange and rare as a fire-dwelling salamander."
The Nation Magazine - Stuart Klawans
"Beaver Trilogy is so perfect, so odd, and so affecting that you will feel
you're in the presence of a minor miracle or some strange form of
beatitude."
New York Video Festial - Lincoln Center
Article from Film Comment magazine
New York Video Festival: Cover Versions:
Fact and fiction are up for grabs in Beaver Trilogy, an authentic one-of-a-kind video oddity
by Chris Chang
The remake is a tricky thing. On the one hand it raises the issue of an absence of ideas in the culture industry. On the other it paves the way for projects that provide a modicum of perverse fascination. (Think Terry Gilliam remaking La Jetée as 12 Monkeys or Gus Van Sant doing whatever it was he thought he was doing with the shot-by-shot remake of Psycho.) Filmmaker Trent Harris jumps the remake gun with his project Beaver Trilogy. In it we find three story variations within one cross-pollinated whole. Trilogy doesn’t retell one narrative from different perspectives, à la Rashomon, but does something altogether new. And what makes that newness all the more invigorating is the fact that the video was begun two decades ago and has only now been brought to light by the New York Video Festival.
The storyline is simple enough. In 1980, a TV cameraman encounters a young man named Gary in the station’s parking lot in the arid suburban environs of Salt Lake City. He energetically explains his love of impersonation and his fascination with all things broadcast. He informs the director that he has an alter ego named Olivia Newton Dawn, based on you know who, and shyly suggests his act would make entertaining subject matter. The director agrees and meets up with the performer at a funeral parlor in a town called Beaver. The town is apparently so small that this is the only place you can get a decent male-to-female makeover. The camera records his transformation from an idiosyncratic resident into a simulated superstar and we are off to a nearby high school where “Olivia” is part of the line-up in a local talent show in which, he promises, we will be treated to “Beaver’s finest.” Although the visual style appears to be as makeshift as home video comes, the unsuspecting viewer has already been introduced to one of the many structural interplays that make Beaver Trilogy a unique artifact. As one watches very funny examples of amateur local color strutting its stuff with reckless abandon, aspects of what could be called a “pathetic aesthetic” come into play. Is this a condescending exploitation of complete outsider artistry? Or is it an example of a keen documentarian’s eye doing exactly what keen documentarians’ eyes are supposed to do? That is, show the viewer things never seen before. The only other alternative for documentary excellence is to show old things in new ways.
Enter Sean Penn. For the second part of the trilogy, made in 1981, Gary has become “Larry,” and is played by Mister Bad Boy himself. Penn’s performance retraces everything we observed the first time through, although this time the elements of directorial condescension are made much clearer. There is now an actor playing the part of the director, his name has shifted from Trent to Terrence, and he clearly displays an attitude of exploitation. Penn’s version of Gary prepares for the talent show, but this time there is a greater sense of the desperation inherent in his drag fantasy. Penn, as an actor, does a remarkable job portraying a nonactor. He nails the operative balance of greenhorn timidity and recklessness on the head. And insofar as the story line allows, he does an excellent job of plumbing the new depths of psychology the second version introduces. Whereas the original population of Beaver accepted the apparition of “Olivia,” this time around Larry is perceived as putting on stage something a little too degenerate for small-town tastes. And that reaction is deeply troubling to Penn’s Larry. By the end, he barely escapes total disaster.
The first story is shot in a cinema vérité video format. The Sean Penn sequence is shot in black-and-white video, with greater emphasis on what that kind of light and darkness can bring to composition. The third version, The Orkly Kid, made in 1985, this time featuring Crispin Glover, is shot in grainy color film. Glover’s performance synthesizes elements from the first two and moves on into new territory. The actual Gary can be excused for his own ridiculousness because he is perceived by the audience as a real person. Penn’s Larry can’t get off that easily because he comes off as a bit of a parody.
But his reverence for the original makes that parody one from the heart. Glover turns everything inside out by somehow becoming more Gary than Gary himself. He’s obviously been studying the videotapes. He can do the original walk and talk but he manages to add something new to the growing complexity that surrounds Gary’s “act.” He elevates a small-town joke to the level of tragedy. In version three we watch Glover go through the same basic rigmarole. This time the viewer is mentally armed with two earlier versions to contrast and compare. Gary is a performer who hits his apex when covering an Olivia Newton-John song. Penn is an actor covering Gary covering the same song. Is Penn covering Olivia’s song or “Olivia”’s song? Whose song is Crispin Glover covering? A pervasive sense of visual madness ferments as the idea of originality collapses. This is the same kind of circularity that drives characters in Roman Polanski movies bonkers. It’s also reminiscent of musical invention. Think of fugal modality, serial music, theme and variation, etc.
What makes Beaver Trilogy even more complex is that the first version, the alleged original, appears to be based in reality. By definition we then return to the concept of documentary. What would it mean to take, for example, a famous documentary and remake it? Could there be a remake of Titicut Follies, Triumph of the Will, or Grey Gardens? If it were possible, one assumes they would all end up resembling This Is Spinal Tap.
Much theoretical noise has been made about the disappearance of the real, the primacy of the simulacra, and the end of art in a post-everything world. If you’d like to address these issues and walk away with laughter, rather than a headache, search out Beaver Trilogy. Forgoing that, you’ll just have to wait for the Hollywood remake. And that will most certainly be a long time coming
The Cement Ball meanwhile is a documentary about Aki Ra, who joined Pol Pot's murderous Khmer Rouge army at the age of nine. Twenty years later, the film sees him roaming the minefields of Cambodia in search of redemption. Obsessed, Aki Ra seeks out and destroys many of the six million landmines that infest his country. Armed only with a stick and a pocket knife he works alone, without pay, metal detector or shield.
For further details on Trent's films, please see :
http://www.cc.utah.edu/~th3597
And also check Chris' articles and interviews with Trent Harris and Crispin Gloverwhich are out in Dazed and Confused August issue out July 15th and the Telegraph magazine, out Saturday June 25th.
Tickets £5 members, £7 non-members in advance.
For booking please call 020 7833 3644 or email
popculture@thehorsehospital.com
Hip Survival Bulletin #29 - July 2003
Gentle Readers,
our upcoming programme. AND HOW GREAT IS IT???
check out these puppies :
Salon : This Friday July 18th
Film : TRENT HARRIS / CRISPIN GLOVER :
Literature : 3AM MAGAZINE : Steve Aylett :Nicholas Blincoe : Matthew Collings : Billy Childish : Vic Godard : Kazuko Hohki :
Bertie Marshall : Preethi Nair : Kerri Sharp : Richard Strange : Mitzi Szereto : Matt Thorne : Paul Tickell : Tommy Udo : Steven Wells :
Art : THE FIRST MAINLAND BRITAIN EXHIBITION OF NORTHERN IRELAND'S THE BOGSIDE ARTISTS :
William Kelly; Tom Kelly; Kevin Hasson
September 6th - 4th October 2003, Mon - Sat 12 - 6
FRIDAY JULY 18TH
13 - THE SYMPOSIUM OF EXOTIC REASON
7.30pm onwards
Members and guests only.
featuring - The Gay and Lesbian Vaishnava Vampire Association hosted by Suvi, Satu and Adam.
SATURDAY 26TH JULY
Summer party for the best alt.lit whorehouse in the metaverse.
Entrance £5
Leaving The 21st Century
3AM MAGAZINE'S SUMMER EXTRAVAGANZA
3am - Mind Porn For The Chattering Classes
When : 26 July 6-11.30pm
How much? Entrance: £5
Why? Why not?
Who? Readings, live music and performances courtesy of (in alphabetical order):
Steve Aylett
Nicholas Blincoe
Matthew Collings
Billy Childish
Vic Godard
Kazuko Hohki
Bertie Marshall
Preethi Nair
Kerri Sharp
Richard Strange
Mitzi Szereto
Matt Thorne
Paul Tickell
Tommy Udo
Steven Wells
www.3ammagazine.com
Saturday August 2nd and Sunday August 3rd 2003
Doors 7.30pm
THE FILMS OF TRENT HARRIS
kinoKULTURE and The Horse Hospital in conjunction with Chris Campion are proud to present a two day retrospective of the films of TRENT HARRIS.
Underground and cult filmmaker extraordinaire, Harris' work will be screening on Saturday August 2nd and Sunday August 3rd 2003.
" The real lesson to be learnt from Harris' journey as a film-maker is that if you dedicate yourself to following your passions they will lead you on a spiralling path that inevitably circles back to where you came from, forcing you to confront the 'I' enclosed in the pyramid of the world. " Chris Campion
Saturday August 2nd Rubin & Ed 82 min / The Wild Goose Chronicles 25 min
Sunday August 3rd The Beaver Trilogy 83 min / The Cement Ball of Earth, Heaven, and Hell 54 mins
Rubin and Ed stars Crispin Glover & Howard Hesseman and Karen Black, while the Wild Goose Chronicles tells the real life story of the inspiration behind the film.
The Beaver Trilogy ( BEAVER KID, BEAVER KID 2, and ORKLY KID ) stars Crispin Glover, Sean Penn and Groovin' Gary.
The Cement Ball meanwhile is a documentary about Aki Ra, who joined Pol Pot's murderous Khmer Rouge army at the age of nine. Twenty years later, the film sees him roaming the minefields of Cambodia in search of redemption. Obsessed, Aki Ra seeks out and destroys many of the six million landmines that infest his country. Armed only with a stick and a pocket knife he works alone, without pay, metal detector or shield.
For further details on Trent's films, please see :
http://www.cc.utah.edu/~th3597
And also check Chris' articles and interviews with Trent Harris and Crispin Gloverwhich are out in Dazed and Confused August issue out July 15th and the Telegraph magazine, out Saturday June 25th.
Tickets £5 members, £7 non-members in advance.
For booking please call 020 7833 3644 or email
popculture@thehorsehospital.com
THOE BOGSIDE ARTISTS
September 6th - 4th October 2003, Mon - Sat 12 - 6
The Bogside Artists are a group of three artists from an area of Derry City, Northern Ireland, known as the Bogside. It was in this area that fourteen people were shot dead by the British army on 30 January 1972. The artists commemorated the event in a large mural situated on the site. This mural is called simply ‘Bloody Sunday’. Situated not far from it are two more murals, one depicts a child in a gas mask holding a petrol bomb. It was named by the artists, ‘The Battle Of The Bogside’, to commemorate the event in October ‘69 when the Catholic Bogsiders confronted the RUC, and their auxiliary force the B-Specials, in a pitched battle. This mural is world-famous and is referred to locally as ‘the petrol bomber’. The mural beside it commemorates the part played by Bernadette Devlin in this historic battle. Just recently the Bogside Artists completed a second mural about 'Bloody Sunday'.
Almost in honour of their endeavours in the dangerous and demanding field of commemorative art the artists were christened by locals as "The Bogside Artists", a title which they have been proud to wear till this day.
William Kelly studied art in Belfast Art College in 1970 and went on to take an honors degree in painting at the National College of Art and Design, Dublin in 1977. He has had fourteen one-man shows throughout Ireland and has published many articles on art.
Tom Kelly is not only one of the triumvirate but is a committed Christian who leads a Celtic Christian community in the heart of the Bogside where the mentally and spiritually scarred can come for the sort of assurance and benediction that medicine cannot help, still less cure. He has been painting murals since long before 1969 seeing in art a means by which Protestants and Catholics can come together. He is well known for his cross-community work and has pioneered the use of art to assuage religious conflict long before it’s efficacy in this respect was fully recognised by the cultural elite of Northern Ireland.
Kevin Hasson has travelled widely throughout the world. He is married to an American, and lived in Frankfurt for twelve years. He painted many murals across Germany. Kevin comes from a family talented in both the pictorial arts and in music. His experiences at a young age in Calcutta, India as a member of The International Voluntary Service awakened his mind to the ubiquity of social injustice and its roots.
These three artists are dedicated to using painting as a means to objectify the past so that its unconscious hold is unravelled. This explains both the style and historic content of their output. Their work is commemorative and in being so it is also curative.
The Artists' Statement
Three individuals make up the group known as 'The Bogside Artists' - Tom Kelly, Kevin Masson and William Kelly. William’s son Paul takes care of video and documentation. The group is famous for their murals in the area of Derry, Northern Ireland, known as Free Derry Corner. These murals depict key events of 'the Troubles' in the city since 1968. The artists have lived in the Bogside most of their lives and have experienced the worst of the conflict. This exhibition of their work is a chronicle of those events that they consider to have been the most significant during the last thirty years. In telling this story they have served a pressing need for their community and Derry people in general to acknowledge with dignity if not pride the price paid by those who became victims of the struggle for democratic rights. Their work therefore is essentially a homage.
As Peter Sheehan, the Vice-Chancellor of the Australian Catholic University in Sydney, so aptly expressed it in his introduction to their recent exhibition: "The scale of the daily violence experienced by the people of the North of Ireland is not to be assessed just in terms of fatalities and the physical and emotional results of the violence. There is a deeper spiritual dimension that is communicated. I find myself responding most to the overpowering message of the murals: This is our story, where is yours?"
The artists are pledged to continue to express this spiritual dimension on the gable walls of the Bogside. Although they are aware of the parochial nature of the images, they also understand the universal aspect of the conflict. What has happened in Northern Ireland and what has been experienced by the people of Derry is by no means peculiar to either Derry or Northern Ireland.
What confers a unique provenance on our work is the fact that we, both as artists and as citizens, are part of the story we feel obligated to tell. The story of the Bogside is our story and vice versa. Hence our sympathies are with all of the people who have suffered in Northern Ireland whatever their class, creed, politics or belief systems. We believe that only when both communities of Catholics and Protestants have confronted the wounds they have inflicted on each other, and on themselves, can there be the possibility of healing or forgiveness.
To tell it like it is and was is vital to this catharsis. Our murals stand therefore as the not too silent witnesses to the colossal price paid in suffering and brutalisation by a hopelessly innocent people in their struggle for basic human rights. The institutionalisation of sectarian exclusivity is the very essence of the conflict. It is a crime against both Catholics and Protestants. Our fervent wish is that the peace process will give us time to put right what has been so drastically put wrong. To this end we devote our craft and our energy, our imagination, our story and our hope.
The wall murals
The Bogside Artists have produced a range of works of art in various mediums. They are best known for the wall murals that they painted in the Bogside area of Derry, Northern Ireland. At present there are eight large wall murals on view in the Bogside. The artists intend to produce a number of new murals on the history of the conflict.
James xx
COMING SOON :
THE WORLD'S FIRST POST- ZIONIST FILM SHOW : ROGER K. BURTON @ THE NFT : NUDE MAGAZINE LAUNCH : TAV FALCO : JOHN MICHAEL McCARTHY : PAUL DUANE : TAYLOR MEADE : WRIGHT THOMAS : ANDY WARHOL : MOHAMMED ALI : ELVIS PRESLEY no, seriously...
July 14, 2003
UnThirteen
Friday 15th August 2003, do we have a very very special 13 - The Symposium Of Exotic Reason presented by the magnificent UN, of HALO, TerroriZOR superstars and quote "the direct descendant of Sabbath, the logical next step in the evolution of heavy." (hellridemusic.com)
BUT we also have the private view of our latest installation :
"Le Presbytere" by
FLORENT PINZUTI
Doors 7.30pm