FoolishPeople

"Am I allowed to tell everyone the truth now?"

"Am I allowed to tell everyone the truth now?" - Hettie

STRONHEIM - NR 2 EMERGENCY SUB-FREQ978

Strange Factories - artefACTS unveiled - The Society of Vandals - 7:30pm - 3/2/12

 

Today the Guilds artefACTS are unveiled.

Kilto Take
http://www.kiltotake.com
Three musical catalysts collide by chance, like some audio-laboratory experiment gone wrong. After the smoke has cleared, what's left is a volatile compound of commanding guitars and regimented percussion.

Sally Rushbrook
Divine Jazz and blues infused with a deep fascination with poetry and storytelling.

Guignol's Band
Blackly humorous songs about death cults and decline for electric guitar and soprano saxophone, members of The Devil May Cares, the Young Lovers, various improv groups, et cetera.

STRANGE FACTORIES
Exclusive expedition featurette and Society of Vandals footage and immersive research presentation.

The unveiling of the Strange Factories debut trailer. A thank you to the supporters of FoolishPeople for helping us to successfully fund the 'Strange Factories' expedition.

A few tickets remain to this unique 'Strange Factories' event, you can purchase entry for two people into the Society of Vandals guild by purchasing Waystation I via the Weaponized online store.

This will also give you access to exclusive content and future special events, alongside access to the 'Strange Factories' Radiograms. The online transmedia narrative which supports the 2012 release of FoolishPeople's first feature film 'Strange Factories'.

>>> >>> URGENT PUBLIC STATEMENT. READ NOW. <<< <<<

          >>>> THE DREAM MUST BE FREE TO HAUNT THE WORLD <<<<

This invitation confirms that We, the Society of Vandals, have begun the process of fully cataloguing and assessing.  

On Friday 3rd February, our Great Founder and Leader - Arlec himself - will share unique documentary footage and photography taken in the Settlement and will report back upon the exciting details of how he believes we have found the source of the echoes within Yu Sze's map of the Geisterwege. Prepare for your CAGE to be RATTLED as SECRETS are DISSEMINATED.

FoolishPeople, our partners and collaborators on this expedition will be in attendance. They are full of surprises. BRIMMING. [We would also like to inform you that we have finally gained access to the Settlement's Radiogram broadcast system. PREPARE FOR BROADCAST ON 08.01.12.]

If you're a citizen of the Settlement then your name has already been placed upon the guests of honour roll, enabling you to gain free entry to this special event. Please await broadcast of Radiogram VIII on January's full moon and decode this and await further instructions and directions to the secret location of the host venue, the Society of Vandals guild.

NEITHER A VANDAL NOR CITIZEN OF THE SETTLEMENT???

Plagued by dreams so strange that you are sure they are not your own?

Please contact us IMMEDIATELY.

dreamer@theatricarcana.com

We can help seekers of the idea gain entry to this special Society of Vandals event.

quod me nutrit me destruit

Act quickly as places are strictly limited.


                                 www.theatricarcana.com

                           >>>> END OF INFILTRATION <<<<<

Hyperreality II: Sex, Death & The Cinema of Attractions

In the previous article, which you may have mistaken for some sort of crumpled pamphlet which I dug out of the corner of the pocket of a pair of straight leg black jeans stolen sometime in the 1990s and regurgitated purely for the purposes of nostalgia, I outlined the concept of hyperreality, a means to describe a particularly modern sort of saturation-fuelled disorientation and disengagement from reality.

Now, I hear you cry, why is she digging up some outdated concept and calling it modern when it is over a decade old? And why is she about to label a very contemporary set of films with said term, when she has herself admitted that the concept is not of this century? Is she saying that is takes, on average, fifteen years for cultural ideas to filter down to the medium of cinema? Is she actually still wearing the same jeans she stole from Camden market in the nineties? And anyway, wasn’t this series of articles meant to be about the end of the world?

No, “well, yes, so?” and yes, respectively. The concept of hyperreality may have been borne of the 20^th century but if we are to use it as a lens through which to view the world today then the picture which rears its head is that of an ascension towards the very peak of that state which the term hyperreal so aptly describes, the point of absolute saturation (there‘s a chemistry term on the tip of my tongue right now but as I‘m currently traversing the North Sea my hopes of Googling it are, I‘m afraid, slim) and of an inevitable pummelling, in the very near future (2012?), off some kind of precipice towards the ultimate conclusion of the hyperreality hypothesis - Baudrillard’s “inertial destiny”.

As a solely descriptive term hyperreality proves useful, but as with the cancer to which Baudrillard alludes, diagnosis is futile when the disease is inevitably terminal. What we are living through now is a this period of terminality, of future oblivion, of the end of capitalism (something utterly impossible for any of our well-informed, rolling news filled minds to comprehend) and consequently the end of the world. These are The End Times. And if we’re not already living it, our inertial destiny is right in front of our noses. But more of this later, lets get back to the movies.

I argue that the cinema of Lars Von Trier and Gaspar Noe is distinctively contemporary in its adoption of the hyperreality thesis. Melancholia and Enter the Void both go beyond merely describing the phenomena of modern simulacra - the Matrix and The Truman Show served this purpose relatively well in the nineties, when description alone was enough. When the end of the world was not quite nigh, we needed a little sugar-coating to get ourselves ready for the future (or lack of it).

Many crises later, Von Trier and Noe tread the risky route of the Fool, jumping off the cliff edge and consequently plunging into the abyss, facing the inevitable conclusion of all that has come before by stepping into the heart of oblivion. (It is worth noting that the personalities of both directors seem to embody something of the Foolish spirit - neither are exactly known for their skills in controversy-avoidance and both have been simultaneously portrayed in the media as idiotic exhibitionists and fearless geniuses). They do this by taking the opposite path to the relatively softcore Matrix and The Truman Show ; instead of packaging their messages into fun-filled, action packed, teen friendly fantasies, they go for full blown, adult-only brutality.

Rather than zooming out and exposing the bigger picture, the larger forces at work, they zoom in. Rather than portraying reality as possibly fictitious, they heighten reality to the point of fictitiousness, at which point it merges back in to reality. In ETV this takes the form of the enlargement of the microscopic - the unconventional sex scene is the most obvious example, whereas in Melancholia the opening credits, which feature the end of the world in extreme slow motion set to Wagner in full flight, serve a similar function. Whilst these techniques are not necessarily in line with Baudrillard’s definition of the hyperreal as “the simulation of something which never really existed”, they do simulate things which are never really seen.

Unlike the nineties cinema of the hyperreal, much of the sheer force of Melancholia and ETV stems from the way in which both films champion showing over telling. Neither adopt traditional narrative forms; ETV in particular is a largely visual and auditory experience, with long psychedelic sequences composed purely of colours, lights and patterns. This harks back to what Gunning termed, in reference to films of the early 1900s, the cinema of attractions, which “directly solicits spectator attention, inciting visual curiosity and supplying pleasure through an exciting spectacle”. The unique nature and possibilities inherent in cinema, which I have written further on here, were perhaps better understood in these early days of emergence and initial discovery. As a form of new technology, cinema’s power, its ability to conjure numinous experiences for purposes of both good and evil, were oft cited by both its champions and its fiercest critics. This power was achieved by almost entirely visual means - by utilising the sheer scale of the screen and a variety of camera and editing techniques as they emerged, to trigger the cogs and gears of the imagination, to kick start the subconscious.

Upon the introduction of the talkies, however, much of this understanding of the medium was lost and outside of the avant garde narrative and more literary forms of storytelling prevailed. Von Trier and Noe’s recent adventures in filmmaking, however, serve to reclaim cinema as a sensory experience, a workout of the imagination not unlike a session on Freud’s sofa.

Neither are afraid of using shock tactics, of risking puritanical accusations of vulgarity, pretentiousness, the utilisation of cheap thrills. For these ingredients form part of the director’s toolkits for raising the numinous experience- every time the audience is confronted by a disturbing image or sensory ordeal, such as the horrific car crash motif in ETV, the devastating final moments of Melancholia, or the notorious rape scene in Noe’s earlier Irreversible, they are catapulted out of the fictional story world by fright and forced to ask why it is that they feel confronted or assaulted.

Each ordeal acts as a wake up call. Why, for example, did I feel nauseous during the opening credits of ETV? Was it the strobe-like visuals, the pounding electronic music? Was I being manipulated entirely by what I was presented with? Or did the graphics trigger something else, a deeper primal instinct, a raw nerve, a buried fear? All of this before even being immersed in any form of narrative. The stimulation of visuals and audio had acted as a springboard back into my own life. I was thus able to discover the real, via the hyperreal.

Gunning says of the cinema of attractions, “ [it] is a cinema that displaces its visibility, willing to rupture a self enclosed fictional world for a chance to solicit the attention of the spectator”. In the cinema of attractions the audience are, in a somewhat Brechtian manner, aware of being the audience. They are therefore also aware of being themselves. They are never allowed to be fully absorbed into the cinematic fiction; there is always an awareness that the film and the interior of the picture house are separate yet equally as vital as one another. What is more real, the movie or the screen it is projected onto?  

This demonstrates the way in which, in the cinema of the hyperreal, the boundaries between the real and the hyperreal become blurred to the point of the two being indistinguishable. Reality is, it turns out, as complex, illusory and abstract as hyperreality. It too functions as little more than a descriptive term. Both ETV and Melancholia are meditative films existing on the plane of the hyperreal which serve very little purpose save the demonstration of the lack of there being a point, in anything. Of the unreality inherent in everything.

They seize all the illusions and artificial constructions of modernity to confront us with ourselves, not in the interest of improvement - there is no therapy to put one at ease.

 As unpleasant as both films may be in their various ways, they serve an important function in the movie marketplace as antidotes to Hollywood’s cinema of dreams. Disneyland Nasties. In the hyperreal worlds of Von Trier and Noe there are no happy endings. Within the first half hours of ETV and Melancholia this is made absolutely clear; the boy will die a horrible death and his spirit will be trapped in the world of the living; the world will end and it certainly won’t be any fun, for anyone. Even Kirsten Dunst will look ugly and lost. Hollywood, on the other hand, continues to spew out heightened tales of “winning” (the girl, the job, the money…the girl again), offering two and a half hours on average of escapism in which our prescribed dreams and fantasies come true.

The Hollywood desire to entertain means that the world conditions that the films it produces should be fantasy. After all, reality could never be so satisfying. Anti-illusionalists, neorealists and new wavers, however, want to make films that show reality as it is. Unfortunately, the hyperreal world makes it impossible to "show reality as it is" (and this is not just a problem of memesis, but something more profoundly late modern) without resorting to the most extreme of illusions. And what exactly are the most extreme of illusions? Those fantasies of death and apocalypse harboured in every bedroom across the world.

Everyday, we are confronted with incidental details that contain within them the immanence (and perhaps imminence also) of the end of the world as our only possible satisfaction, our only joy and the only true form of valediction. Film differs from other aspects of reality only in that we can go to the cinema to enjoy the end of the world, to play it out as a fantasy. I have often declared the way in which cinema is a form of ritual and this is a very clear example of the form which this can take. The fetishistic enactment of our final days, where the object of our lust is, to use Epstein's words, the "dazzling incarnation" of the inertial destiny which looms over us. The presentation of life not as it is, but as it can never be in as much as life can never be anything, in all of it's agony, ecstasy and LSD-tinged fluorescence. The End Times, on acid.

Sounds fun, doesn't it?

 

*This article forms part of the series Rapture & Decay: The New Eschatological Cinema. You can read the Introduction here and Part I here. The series will continue and reach its inevitable conclusion in 2012.

A Seasonal Message

As the Winter Solstice marks the beginning of a period of rebirth and renewal, FoolishPeople would like to take this opportunity to thank all who have supported us over the course of 2011. From the announcement of Strange Factories to the completion of principal photography in the Czech Republic, the kind words, generosity and level of belief that you have invested in our work is truly staggering. Without such support, creating our art would be both incredibly difficult and ultimately futile. As we tread the terrain of the filmmaking landscape our audience, as ever, lie at the heart of our process and we are so very glad that you're on board for the ride. This has proven to be an action packed year full of highs, lows, extreme change and great achievements in so many aspects of all of our lives and 2012 looks set to be just as challenging and hopefully as rewarding too.

Since returning to the UK and commencing post-production on Strange Factories we have been working immensely hard behind the scenes on preparations for the next stage of the project. We cannot wait to unveil all that we've been working on in 2012. Most of all we cannot wait to share the narrative of Strange Factories with you and to further your immersion into its world.

So enjoy all of the feasting and festivities of the season, be good to yourselves and count your blessings, every last one of them. Be happy and have fun.

With love from all at FoolishPeople HQ xxx 

 

Hyperreality I: The Inertial Destiny of the Saturated World

This article forms part of the series Rapture & Decay: The New Eschatological Cinema. Read the Introduction here.

 

...modern mankind found itself in the midst of a great absence and emptiness of values and yet, at the same time, a remarkable abundance of possibilities -Marshall Berman.

From Adbusters and the anti-capitalist movement to discussions of "post everything syndrome" and more recent analyses of the London riots; the notion that we live in a disorientating, overloaded, media-driven, celebrity-obsessed world is not a new one. Revolutions are televised. Ikea can help us to sleep better (whilst we may experience the beginnings of split personality disorder leading to the erection of international fighting club franchises, at least we won’t be hospitalised after tripping over badly stored shoes on our way to the bathroom in the middle of the night). Plastic mannequins are more attractive than real women (see case of H&M in the media this week). Disneyland is the ultimate escape from handling your hyperactive, unable-to -play-by-themselves children this Christmas. Lonely? Call in the entertainment factor of your mate Dave, available at the flick of a Freeview remote control.

Semioticians such as Umberto Eco and Jean Baudrillard have utlitised the term hyperreality to describe how, in advanced postmodern cultures, we are increasingly unable to distinguish fiction from fantasy, the real from the unreal. Our world consists of hollow signs and simulacra where the fake offers a better experience than the real thing. How many Facebook friends do you have? How much of your holiday did you spend snapping away on your digital camera, constructing the perfect narrative to describe the experiences that you want to look like you were having? Did you truly experience anything or were you just projecting your explorer fantasies onto an 18-24, ten day guided coach tour of Hidden India?

Science is beginning to produce results which suggest that the hyperreality hypothesis is more than just an idea; earlier in the year I posted this link to a paper which describes how "digital doppelgangers" can induce false memories in those exposed to them.

Now as an actress, I deal in fictions. But I don't deal in fakes. I’m all for exploring imagination, total unreality, multiple realities, and so on. Yet the fictional worlds which I dip in and out of are ones which I feel very deeply connected to indeed. They become my reality. The problem with hyperreality is that illusion reigns, nothing is felt, everything is sign, simulation, replication, masquerading as reality. It’s the lie that is the dangerous part. We seek simulated stimuli, no longer sure of what is real and what isn’t, not even questioning experiences, forever unfulfilled no matter how much we gorge on "culture" or engage in "exercise" or participate in "down time". We seek out highs and stimuli and entertainments like overwrought addicts.

We are organised and enchained and bored out of our minds.

Take television, for example. Do we ever ask ourselves why we would rather watch a recreation of a scene in an accident and emergency ward rather than doing anything else out of the infinite range of possibilities of "activities" available to us at 8pm on a Wednesday night? As Baudrillard points out, "television knows no night. It is perpetual day. TV embodies our fear of the night, of the other side of things".

Ah- ha, so, we’re afraid of the dark! Baudrillard takes this even further whilst discussing aspects of modern excess and its inherent emptiness:

"Tentacular, protuberant, excrescent, hypertelic: this is the inertial destiny of a saturated world. The denial of its own end in hyperfinality; is this not also the mechanism of cancer? The revenge of growth in excrescence. The revenge and summons of speed in inertia. The masses are also caught in this gigantic process of inertia by acceleration. The masses are this excrescent process, which precipitates all growth towards ruin. It is the circuit that is short circuited by a monstrous finality".

Perhaps we are, ultimately, afraid of this monstrous finality. Afraid of death. And what makes us afraid of death? Fear of our limited time here, fear of underachieving, of lacking a legacy, fear of pain and suffering, fear of a wasted, meaningless existence. Fear of the meaningless of existence. Some people face this fear, decide to drop out, and commit suicide. Some people read Camus and decide to hang on for a bit. Some people join mega churches and pin their hopes on salvation and eternity. Some people audition for X Factor. Some people eat too much. Some people eat too little. Some people turn to drink. Most people try to construct a sense of meaning. Most people try to "think positively". Some people, as Umberto Eco obsesses over, write lists:

"We have a limit, a very discouraging, humiliating limit: death. That's why we like all the things that we assume have no limits and, therefore, no end. It's a way of escaping thoughts about death. We like lists because we don't want to die".

There are undeniable forces at work. Forces of chaos, of craved for and enforced order, of seeping unreality and of desperate attempts to reconstruct a former reality. I’m waiting for my box of locally produced organic veg delivered by a fairly paid driver to arrive at my door any minute now.

Sometimes it’s hard to face the future, sometimes the future is uncertain. Sometimes it feels like the world is ending and we wish it would just hurry up. Next time, I’ll take a look at ways in which contemporary filmmakers are exploring the hyperreality hypothesis, of how they are projecting this sense of disorientation and saturation onto film, and why they should even bother attempting it... 

  

(Image: David Dees)

Radiogram - VII - FULL MOON RISING

 

"There's only a few who remain, who truly understand the chain of events that Marlowe's death set in motion" - Anonymous

Radiogram VII is broadcast upon the full moon.

Rapture & Decay: The New Eschatological Cinema, An Introduction.

Upon the purchase of Lars Von Trier’s recently released end-of-the-world movie Melancholia, Boris Kit, the head of Magnolia Pictures, commented, “as the 2012 apocalypse is upon us, it is time to prepare for a cinematic last supper”. Subtitled by Von Trier as a “a beautiful film about the end of the world”, Melancholia delivers not only on Kit’s promise but also succeeds in providing a brutal social critique, masquerading as an archetypal character study which explores the nature of the depressive mind versus that of the socialised individual. Switching from a staged social realism reminiscent of the Dogme films to the fantastical science fiction of the movie‘s second half, Von Trier utilises cinema’s possibilities for the hyperreal similarly to, and as effectively as, Gaspar Noe's nihilistic exploration of life after death Enter the Void.

Both directors specialise in bombarding their audiences with visual and auditory spectacles to numinous ends via shock and awe. But in addition to their shared technological preferences and overridingly nihilistic outlooks, there exists a shared sense of the ecstatic, of the seductiveness inherent in destruction. Von Trier and Noe are masters of the numinous realm, of the creation of cinematic rapture and loaded technological attractions. This often serves the purpose of translating their individual visions of oblivion into the minds of the audience. The results are undeniably beautiful and cathartic. But let's not be bowled over by mere aesthetics, or be fooled into believing that either director believes in shock for shock's sake.

It is apparent, in light not just of 2012 but of the current global situation, that both Von Trier and Noe have captured something of the zeitgeist. They have channeled particular kinds of feelings of futility in the face of a dying planet, a dying capitalist order, a consumerist cultural wasteland, in addition to a more generalised sense of existential doom. But why does this sense of doom, of living in the end times, resonate? Have people of every generation and social order contemplated the notion of living in the end times or is this phenomenon specific to the late capitalist period? What separates the current apocalyptical discourse from previous, more ancient visions of Judgement Day? And why is it that, as Jameson once remarked, we find it easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism? Finally, how is cinema reflecting these feelings, or even, moulding them?

Over the coming weeks and months I shall be posting a series of articles which explore the history and nature of eschatological thought and how these ideas have come to bear on cinema. Along the way I shall encompass elements of film theory, philosophy, psychology and cultural theory in exploring the concept of time itself and the seemingly inevitable outcome of a dead-end consumer culture, all with a focus on The End (of the world, of time, of capitalism).

I also aim to reveal the way in which Strange Factories can be placed within this mileau and how its themes manifest in both the content and form of FoolishPeople's forthcoming Film Fantastique.

Perhaps there will be some light at the end of the tunnel. Perhaps, to paraphrase Half Man, Half Biscuit, the light at the end of the tunnel will be the light of an oncoming train. Nevertheless, I hope you'll take your chances and bear with me. After all, have any of us anything to lose...?

      

(Images: Lars Von Trier's Melancholia; Gaspar Noe's Enter the Void)

Calling All Graphic Designers & Web Designers!

FoolishPeople are currently seeking astonishingly talented graphic designers and website designers to join the Strange Factories post-production team. Strange Factories is an immersive feature film which will be toured internationally as a live show. You can read more about this ambitious project across the web, for example in this article by Wired. You will be working closely with an international team of creatives who have performed in prestigious venues across the globe including the Institute of Contemporary Arts. To read more about FoolishPeople's work click here.

As graphic designer, your role will include creating exceptional and captivating poster artwork which has the potential to be seen by millions of people across the world. Your artistic response to the narrative will be crucial to the successs of this project.

As website designer you will be responsible for moulding the online presence of the film. You will also be responsible for facilitating our Radiograms - an innovative system of exclusive online content which is accessible only to our subscribed fans and followers and is broadcast every Full Moon. 

Although both roles are initially unpaid they will provide extensive and unique opportunities to showcase your skills to a very wide audience indeed. There is also the possibility of profit-share for the right candidates.

If you're interested in putting yourself forward for either or both of these roles please get in touch by emailing art@foolishpeople.org. We look forward to hearing from you soon.

(Image: Sir Muirhead Bone, Scottish engraver and draughtsman)

Adam Curtis: On Dreams (Dream On)

"Fourier had no truck with the idea of changing people. All the different things inside their heads was just what they were like - and you worked with that extraordinary range of human nature and channelled it to create societies in which everyone played a role suited to their nature. His vision is wonderfully optimistic. Even potential murderers are allowed to work off their psychotic impulses - as butchers.

And at the heart of Fourier's society is the idea of Love - a grand feeling of which sex is just a part. And there were special groups in the Phalanxes whose job was to manage the dynamics of Love. If you had been rejected by someone you loved, a special corps of "fairies" would come immediately and take you away, and cure you of your unhappiness.

Fourier's romantic innocence seems intensely shocking to us today - because it seems so naive and optimistic. But it is their power to shock us in this way that potentially makes these long-forgotten utopian ideas genuinely revolutionary.

You may not believe in fairies, but in today's world it's hard to believe in the infallibility of the laws of free-market economics. So which one would you choose?"

- Adam Curtis, Dream On: How the Left Got Trapped Inside Their Own Heads - And How Fairies Can Open the Door to the Future. 

(Read the full blog post here)

Radiogram VI has been broadcast...

A full moon hangs high in the sky. Radiogram VI is now live.

Join the settlement.

 

Modern Mythology Fundraiser for 2012

Modern Mythology are seeking to crowdsource funding through IndieGoGo in order to keep publishing thought-provoking pieces on pop culture philosophy and social commentary, and to keep expanding our audience. There are tons of old, dead philosophers with books enshrined in the academic sphere. Modern Mythology takes a hammer and chisel to the "ivory tower" idea of academic research--the pantheon of philosophers of the past--and carves the voices of the new generation, sublime and ridiculous, into the side of that shrine, half graffiti, half sculpture, half literature, half philosophy, but in all cases necessary in order to truly explore the worlds we live in.

Visit ModernMythology and explore for yourself some of the incredible research and articles that have been shared over the last year and then make a contribution or help spread the word.

Visions of the Future

"the young actors built communal buildings, a small hotel, stables, cowsheds, barns. Each actor built his own house which then became his own property, while everyone took part in communal tasks. It was a Tolstoyan existence. It was to prove an ideal, a way of life and a way of work that would haunt the imaginations of other artists at various times. Vera Komisarjevska, the sister of the director, Theodore Komisarjevska, dreamed of such a community of artists, Copeau formed a group of actors, and, twice in the Vieuz-Columbier, took them away to live and work in the country. His successor, Michel Saint-Denis, did likewise with the Compagnie des Quinze. So did Charles Dullin. So, too, the Group Theatre in America in the 1930s, the Living Theatre, and Peter Schumann's Bread and Puppet Theatre in the 1960s, and Peter Brook and Eugenio Barba. Vera Komisarjevska dreamed of a company of actors united by the same understanding of the art of acting. She came to the conclusion that a theatre of ideas needs interpreters who have been brought up on the ideas and methods of that particular theatre...."

-James Roose-Evans, 1970.

Yes, FoolishPeople are back in the UK after the life and perception altering experience of living and filming Strange Factories in the Czech Republic. Finishing ahead of schedule, we now have only two days of shooting to complete in the UK before the editing and post-production phase can begin. Meanwhile actors and crew alike are undergoing a process of rest, recovery and rejuvenation, greatly assisted by the healing powers of Cesneka (garlic soup) and distant memories of sharing Medovnik (honey cake) over multiple cups of coffee and jugs of Hot Ginger in Prague during our week of exploring the city's forbidden limits (and attempting to re-enter society following a period in the literal and metaphorical wilderness).

Whilst we are itching to reveal all that took place in the depths of Bohemia a level of secrecy must, at this stage, hold tight for the sake of the artistic integrity and the success of the project. However, keep an eye on this space over the coming months as we reveal choice fragments of the process so far, ranging from the beautiful to the downright brutal, traversing the spectrum of human and Otherly experience. 

Most of all, we look forward to sharing the trailer with you...soon, my pretties, soon!

Photo: Lefteris Eleftheriou 

Cinema @ The Settlement

Last night the Strange Factories technical whizz kids (Mr Punch and Yiannis to be exact...Punch insists on a credit...) once again proved their versatility by providing entertainment for the masses; setting up an outdoor cinema at Stronheim's settlement and beaming Aussie indie flick Bad Boy Bubby onto the wall of our beautiful new home. What better way to spend an evening's break from a hardcore shooting schedule than wrapped in blankets under the stars, eating out-of-date popcorn and working our way through a crate of local Czech beer? We look forward to sharing our new screening setup this weekend with our latest arrivals - the winners of the Strange Factories Secrets, Dreams and Storytelling Competition.

As we move into the final stages of our gruelling month of what can only be described as guerilla filmmaking, the transformative nature of our working progress becomes ever clearer. Art and life seep further into one another; a new reality (or rather, surreality?) has been born. Over the past week we have seen actors going missing, animals behaving very strangely, costumed archetypes trudging up hills at sunrise, long journeys with wheelbarrows full of equipment, all events tainted by sleep-deprivation induced delirium. There's something distinctly odd about living on our own filmset. Odd in a good way. We ask ourselves daily, where exactly do we end and our characters begin?

We have been blessed with a technical crew so aligned to the FoolishPeople vision that they are able not only to participate in this month long ritual, fulfilling the most vital roles with a complete understanding of both performative, aesthetic and practical aspects, but also to serve as our audience too. In this sense the camera has become something of a voyeur, a key player in the live performance aspect of the work. The nature of the Strange Factores experience has been, from the outset, defined by such blurring of boundaries, masks and role play, revelations of truth within fiction and vice versa.

Already this film is very much alive. The switch has been flicked. The curtain well and truly lifted. The words cannot go back on the page. And audentia, we are so incredibly excited about sharing our manifestations with you...

(Photo by Yiannis Katsaris)

 

Wish You Were Here

Ahoy!

Greetings from Stronheim's settlement. We have now been eating, sleeping and filming in the depths of the haunted Czech countryside for a week. On day one our manifestations proved so potent as to explode the internet across three villages. Despite this, the hospitality of the local people has proved to be both unshakeable and inspiring. 

We have been overwhelmed by the spirit of generosity; particularly on the part of our neighbour, the local gravedigger. After inviting us into his home (a former mortuary within the cemetery itself) he welcomed us to his country with glasses of homemade cherry rum, whilst rifling through his vast collection of antique oddities in order to provide us with some truly unique props. We turned down his offers of poison and machine guns but were otherwise delighted to incorporate several of his less lethal possessions into our work. A few days ago he surprised us once again by trudging up a hill during a violent storm in order to provide our drenched crew and actors with soup for sustenance. Only a FoolishPeople production could attract such unique local interest and this very special energy has spurred us on in our endeavours over the course of the week.

Such demonstrations of selflessness and community spirit have proved vital to the success of the shoot so far and serve to reinforce the values at the heart of FoolishPeople's working practice. As we rely increasingly on our instincts for both survival and artistic purity we have the Czech people to thank for filling our stomachs, keeping us warm and more generally sharing in the absolute delight, gruelling graft and fiery energy that so far defines the creation of Strange Factories. 

Until next time,

Nashledanou! xxx

Winter returns to Deep England

Winter has returned to Deep England and FoolishPeople leave for Prague in 5 hours. 

A strange mixture of emotions are floating within my mind, currents connected to new truths and old memories.

Life is a constant presentation of choices that increase in frequency and volume when engaged in Art/Magick.

I’ve been lucky, I’ve watched time and time again how these moments engage us in intense action, that in turn leads to rebirth in those who open their arms and embrace the surge of life/mind/body altering events, that pull you into a proactive existence that is far removed from the existence we’re expected to lead within the ’Modern World’.

If I know one thing it’s this.

Art and creativity offer us protection. Immunisation against mass produced memes of profit and commerce, born to terra form our individuality. Plowing our brains, creating fields where the only ideas that grow take from us rather than reward in the manner mythic endeavours do.

Ideas born of wonder and imagination have the power to drive you to truth, via a path that often travels via the dark corners of all that you are. Careful, you might just fall into the future you wanted to live, you know the one you dreamt, rather than the idea of who you were born to be that you inherited.

Imagination, when tended correctly is a coral reef of beautiful sharp numinous ideas that protect us with compassion, wit and a healthy dose of creative insanity that needs to flip open your mind and violently impale a mass produced future that screams in the words of profit over individuation.

Principal photography on ‘Strange Factories’ is about to start because of your imagination, support and faith in the dream of new forms of cinematic experience. A film fantastique that places you at the heart of a story of creative birth.

During the coming month Rachael will continue her series of incredible essays on the history of cinema that reveal more about FoolishPeople’s methodology ’Theatre of Manifestation'.

Both of us will be sharing photos, memories, dreams and portents along with other fragments from the heart of the settlement in dream country.

Muybridge's Revolver @ The Horse Hospital

 
On October 17th 1874, Kingston born photographer Eadweard Muybridge shot dead the drama critic of The San Francisco Post, Harry Larkyns, with a single bullet from a Smith and Wesson No 2 revolver. A jury, convinced by lawyers under the patronage of railroad magnate Leland Stanford, acquitted him of “justifiable homicide” and Muybridge went on to photograph and publish his outstanding 1887 work “Animal Locomotion” in eleven volumes and 781 plates measuring 19 1/8 inches by 24 3/8, composed from over 20,000 gelatin dry plate individual glass negatives, printed as paper collotype photographs of men, women, children, horses, and other animals shot sequentially for the first time in stop motion and full photographic resolution.

Commissioned and organized by the University of Pennsylvania the work comprised: Vols. 1–2 Males (nude), Vols. 3–4 Females (nude), Vol. 5 Males (pelvic cloth), Vol 6 Females & Children (semi-nude and transparent drapery), Vol. 7 Males & Females (draped) & Miscellaneous Subjects, Vol 8 Abnormal Movements Males & Females (nude and semi-nude), Vol. 9 Horses, Vol. 10 Domestic Animals and Vol. 11 Wild Animals & Birds.

Muybridge’s plates were to be sold as full sets by subscription, in individual folders of an “Author’s Edition” of 20, and were also offered in a 100 - plate “Subscription” set where the buyer could choose plates from a prospectus. Copper collotype plates for the work were prepared by the Photo -Gravure Co. of New York City and the “Elephant Folio” books were printed by J.B. Lippincott of Philadelphia. Complete copies were sold for $500 unbound and $550 in leather. The attenuated version, bound in “full Russia leather” was priced at $100 plus + $1 per additional plate.

Only 47 complete sets of Animal Locomotion were ever completed on commission. Housed today in museums and libraries around the world, exhibited in galleries such as London’s Tate Britain, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, London’s Victoria & Albert, they have been described as ‘the eighth wonder of the world” for their analysis of human and animal movement in all its wonder and eccentricities.

“Muybridge’s Revolver” is a rare opportunity to re-examine Eadweard Muybridge’s “Animal Locomotion” in an “Author’s Edition” accompanied by a selection of projected animations taken from original plates, culminating on the 2nd October with a live performance finale installation to Muybridge’s moving images from sound archeologist Aleksander Kolkowski of the Recording Angels, accompanied by Marek Pytel’s film “Eadweard Muybridge” premiered in 2010 at the British Library. Also rare screenings of Thom Andersen’s “Eadweard Muybridge Zoopraxographer” (1974) on the 27th September, and a discussion evening on the 14th with renowned Muybridge and pre cinema chronophotographic specialist Stephen Herbert.

A selection of original “Animal Locomotion” plates on exhibition will be offered, framed, for purchase and a further 60 original plates, also framed, for sale by prospectus.

Private View: Friday 9^th September 7:30pm

Exhibition: Saturday 10^th September – Sunday 2^nd October, Mon – Sat, 12 – 6pm

14^th Sept 7pm FREE: Stephen Herbert talk

27^th Sept 7:30pm FREE: Screening of Thom Andersen’s “Eadweard Muybridge Zoopraxographer”

2^nd Oct (time TBC) £7.50: Live performance from sound archeologist Aleksander Kolkowski accompanied by Marek Pytel’s film “Eadweard Muybridge”

 

 

The Path Less Travelled

"One of the reasons that the same fables are repeated and that new tales don’t come into being more often is that there’s always a price to be paid to the current of the story you are communicating with. The energy and effort the work requires in creation and its importance/value to the narrative of the writer is a very direct relationship. This equation is the true nature of how stories effect change in the lives of the people who directly experience them".

- John Harrigan, April 2011

It has now been almost 6 months since FoolishPeople announced the production of our first feature film, Strange Factories. Times flies! Next week cast and crew shall board a flight bound for the Czech Republic, armed with our costumes and scripts, ready to manifest a new world of phantasmagoric fiction. In the past five months we have travailed the treacherous seas of pre-production, assembling a core group of dedicated team members who will bring this challenging project to fruition. We have raised over $12000 via crowdfunding in order to meet our equipment needs and now, as the final spreadsheets and shotlists hit the printing press, we are prepared. Sacrifices have been made, noses have been burned (long story), candles waxed at both ends, tears and blood spilt across the cold stone floor of our rehearsal space. But above all, there has been much joy and discovery. And, of course, anticipation.

As John Harrigan has previously explained, Strange Factories is partly constructed from the history and myths of FP and the screenplay explores the way in which we experience our own rituals, creating our own myths and folktales. The personal experiences that members of FP have had deep within the process of creation lie at the heart of this narrative, giving the work a unique intensity which would not be possible in a less tightly-knit company. Throughout the rehearsal process (the details of which, alas, must remain secret due to the nature of our work) it was clear that for this project we have been gifted with a group of people so utterly dedicated, talented and sharing so closely a vision, that we would be able to overcome any material constraints that should confront us in our path.

Of course, the film is just the beginning. Strange Factories is, above all, a living event; we aim to create an active space at the heart of the story for our audience to inhabit, engaging with us on a journey that explores the stages of the relationship between spectator and performer. From passive voyeurs to active revolutionary within the narrative, directly affected in the final act, we shall offer our audiences a new way in which to experience cinema, theatre, art. The world of Strange Factories will be brought to life in a dreamlike immersive environment in which you, the audience, are able to interact with the characters and to explore the space at your free will.

We urge you to keep your eye on FP.com for forthcoming transmissions from Prague...

Victor looks at the road ahead and then at an overgrown trail leading off across a field. He thinks for a moment, then leaves the road, walking along the barely visible path...

 

A Man Who Dreams...

"It was intensely real, far more so than everyday life....This confirms my belief that a man who dreams is sometimes a far more gifted artist than the man who is awake. Words cannot express the length of time passed in a vision that lasted seconds".

- Julian Green, Diary 1928-1957