Photograph taken by the author.
: “Back in August I wrote about a lot of online advice for artists is framed around the trappings of corporate capitalism, and my deep-felt aversion to the call to adopt these trappings in the…”
The characters C. Auguste Dupin and Roderick Usher in a still from The Fall of the House of Usher. Source: Netflix
: “This blog post contains spoilers for the 2023 TV series The Fall of the House of Usher and probably for season 1 of the 2022 TV series Andor. …”
Read the rest of “The stories we tell ourselves about the world are important”…
My studio (which is also my living room)
: “A lot of online advice for artists is framed around the trappings of corporate capitalism: building your brand, hitting self-imposed targets, maximising sales through targeted marketing, and so on. …”
Still from Michael Radford’s film version of George Orwell’s novel 1984
: “This blog post is mainly concerned with the overlapping and/or adjacent spheres of hauntology, folk horror, the weird/wyrd, and other related subject areas, but the conclusions can probably be…”
Detail from the 2021 drawing Lamentation, by the author
: “Much has already been said about the championing of individualism over community by the likes of Thatcher and others from the 1980s onwards. It is — and continues to be — a weapon used to divide…”
Scene from the final episode of Andor season 1. Source: Disney+
: “I’ve mentioned here before that back in the 1970s and 1980s there seemed to be a myriad of ideas about potential future societies in popular (mainstream/children’s television) science fiction: …”
Read the rest of “Radical futures re-emerging in mainstream science fiction”…
: “One of my first Mastodon posts was a request: …”
Dr Callum Sutherland (left) and myself (right)
: “Back on 19th November 2021 I was interviewed over Zoom by Dr Callum Sutherland (pictured above, on the left) as part of his research. …”
: “Update: October 2023 - as you can see above, the YouTube copy of Stargazy on Zummerdown has disappeared. Hopefully another will appear at some point, but I can’t find one at the moment. Let me know…”
: “Yesterday was St Swithin’s Day and it hasn’t rained for days. …”
Bacchanalia Beneath the Wind Turbines, by the author
: “I’ve written about imagining progressive alternative futures here before, mainly as ways of breaking out of the chains of capitalist realism (most are tagged as Mark Fisher and/or Acid Communism if…”
: “I think hard times are coming, when we will be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, and can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies,…”
Read the rest of “Is it easier to end capitalism than to imagine the end of capitalism?”…
: “My creativity and inspiration have been very limited of late. Sometimes this just happens, and at other times there’s a definite correlation with what’s going on in the world. In this particular…”
Read the rest of “Diggers, Moss, and Bacon: a round-up for February”…
Bacchanalia Beneath the Wind Turbines, by the author
: “I’m a visual artist, so this brief piece about Mark Fisher’s draft introduction to his planned book Acid Communism (sadly never to be realised due to his premature death) examines the concept from…”
Part of the cover to the book Albion by Brenda Vale
: “The problem with modern democracy is that it has thoroughly convinced everyone that you only get one chance to improve society every five years. …”
Read the rest of “Albion: utopianism and the post-apocalyptic pastoral”…
Photograph by the author
: “I’ve lifted the term “post-apocalyptic pastoral” from a book review by Goodreads user Terry from Toronto who effectively seeded my reading list by citing Richard Jefferies’ After London: or,…”
Read the rest of “Post-apocalyptic pastoral and post-industrial”…
In the Dark Woods (detail) by Paul Watson
: “I have mentioned “The Weird” as a concept before, and I wanted to expand on the idea, particularly after reading …”
Previously unpublished photograph from the Keeper of the Archives shoot, by the author
: “In a recent blogpost Ellen Rogers wrote of her current Gnosis project: …”
Read the rest of “The Psychedelic Gothic in Acid Renaissance”…
: “I’m starting to see more people talking about the need to imagine the future, which is both fantastic and absolutely necessary. …”
: “Back in the 1970s there seemed to be such a myriad of ideas about potential shared futures, exploring all aspects of the political, social, and cultural. The aim of neoliberal capitalism of the 1980s…”