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Unwieldy matter: Liquid landscapes of memory in postdictatorship Chilean film
Get PDFThis article considers the haunting presence of the Pacific Ocean in two films about Southern Chile that respond to the aftermath of the Pinochet dictatorship (1973–90). I build from the premise that the heterogeneous materiality of landscapes can provoke reflection on multiple entangled histories, memories and hauntings, potentially enabling a counter-hegemonic form of historiography. Water itself is rarely analysed as ghostly matter. Its liquid materiality resists the emplacing of memorials or the accumulation of human-made debris. And yet, in the documentary El Botón de Nácar (The Pearl Button) (2015) and the narrative film La Frontera (The Frontier) (1991), water is the agglutinating presence that places different pasts in dialogue. Through my analysis, I explore the films’ engagement with the complex temporalities and cultural connotations of the ocean in Southern Chile – the cyclical movement of tides, the inevitability of catastrophic tsunamis and the enduring currents between islands that are invisible to the tourist gaze. I argue that in engaging with these temporalities, the films open alternate ways of thinking about time, history, truth and justice in the Chilean ‘transition to democracy’. This disruption makes room for histories of Indigenous survival, transnational solidarity, natural disaster and ecological destruction that are often absent or erased from postdictatorship memory culture
The Evangelical Mind
Get PDFRupert Loydell takes issue with new book When Jesus Met Hippies, and its version of the 1970s and 80s Jesus Movement
Run From The Shadows
Get PDFA book review of The Art of Darkness. The History of Goth, John Robb (512pp, £25, Louder Than War
Dance of the Machines
Get PDFA poem about music, mechanization and society, taken from DAMAGE LIMITATION, a book of poems about 1980s musical subcultures, with specific refernce to Throbbing Gristle and Psychic TV
Havens: Stories and Portraits from NHS Lothian
Get PDFA publication containing portraits, artworks, creative fiction and QR codes linked to audio works. Published to coincide with exhibitions at the culmination of 18-month residency with NHS Lothian in Scotland documenting, interviewing and observing work-life in the NHS and the places NHS staff find to take a few minutes break during their working days
PUNK JAZZ?
Get PDFOriginally an eight-piece jazz band (1974), briefly a sextet (1975) and ultimately a five-piece, Landscape performed anywhere and everywhere they could in and around London and then further afield, from art colleges to village fetes as well as pub and club venues. I’m not sure if I first saw them at The Nashville or The Music Machine, but in 1977 they were a welcome distraction from and contrast to the pub rock and recycled pub rock of punk.
Landscape released two EPs, U2XME1X2MUCH in 1977 and Workers’ Playtime (1978) on their own Event Horizon label and managed to create quite a buzz around the band, with sold-out gigs, and then in 1979 their eponymous first album on a major label (RCA). They also appeared on the BBC’s science programme Tomorrow’s World, discussing computer programming as well as their electronic drums and wind instruments. It was a sign of things to come.
Before long two of the band were programming the Fairlight for Kate Bush’s third album Never for Ever (Bush 1980) and the whole band reinvented themselves as an electronic dance band, somewhat incongruously dressing themselves in futuristic vinyl, but soon achieving pop success with ‘Einstein a Go-Go’ and ‘Norman Bates', both tracks from their second album From the Tea-Rooms of Mars … to the Hell Holes of Uranus (Landscape 1981), both quirky, unexpected songs with killer hooks and bizarre videos.
The band would also turn up doing production duties and/or performing on various, often surprising, projects, not least music & dance troupe Shock’s deconstructive version of The Glitter Band's ‘Angel Face’ (Shock 1980), a neglected 7″ classic. Meanwhile, Landscape persisted with making their own dance music, although ‘European Man’ (Landscape 1980) failed to chart despite being issued several times. By the time 1982’s Manhattan Boogie-Woogie had been released, the moment had gone, as moments often do, and despite a brief incarnation as Landscape III (a trio), the band broke up for good in 1984, with members continuing session and production work, and writing for films and television, including bass player Andy Pask’s theme for TV cop drama The Bill (Morgan, Pask 1985)
Silent Archive
No full text‘Painful truths, surprising revelations and fresh perspectives on humanity’s complex relationships with the botanical world emerge from our exhibition Silent Archive.
International artists reveal RBGE’s archives in new ways, challenging us to discover hidden narratives and hear long-ignored voices that are preserved in our collections. Significant works that tell stories of scientific discoveries, colonial histories and cultural heritage are displayed for the first time. Plant artistry, photography, music and more help convey how these archives shape our view of history, whose past they represent and how they might inspire change.
Silent Archive features material from RBGE’s collections alongside work from artists Amanda Cobbett, Amanda Thomson, Annalee Davis, Cynthia Fan, Hannah Imlach, Işık Güner, Jacqui Pestell, Janise Yntema, Karine Polwart, Laurie Clark, Pippa Murphy, Sarah Roberts, Sharon Tingey, Shiraz Bayjoo, Sonia Mehra Chawla and Wendy McMurdo. Silent Archive is supported by Players of People's Postcode Lottery, the Outset Transformative Grant, and the National Lottery through Creative Scotland.
Your first time in the north
Get PDFA review of 'The Encouragement of Others', a novel by Magnus Mills