Back on 19th November 2021 I was interviewed over Zoom by Dr Callum Sutherland (pictured above, on the left) as part of his research. Callum is a Research Associate at Glasgow University’s School of Geographical & Earth Sciences where is research, supported by the Urban Studies Foundation…
This isn’t a review, but rather an opportunity for me to expound about some of my personal interests — in my case utopias, acid communism, and the post-apocalyptic pastoral — using Stargazy on Zummerdown as a jumping-off point. That said, I will be talking about the plot, characters,…
Yesterday was St Swithin’s Day and it hasn’t rained for days. The Met Office has issued its first ever Red Warning for extreme heat, predicting that “exceptional, perhaps record-breaking, temperatures are likely on Monday, then again on Tuesday.” with temperatures potentially hitting…
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 you want to read them). I’d like to pick up that thread of thinking again, especially since…
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 an artist’s perspective. As an immediate warning to the curious, I want to make clear that…
My original plan was a very large scale, multi-figure, drawing of the Court of Queen Mab, but I simply don’t have the room - I’d need a large studio space to attempt something like that. So instead my amended plan is to make five or seven “Studies from the Court of Queen Mab”, which…
The problem with modern democracy is that it has thoroughly convinced everyone that you only get one chance to improve society every five years. Didn’t succeed this time? You’ll have to wait another five years before you can try again - that’s the rules. The way to start to change…
Read the rest of “Albion: utopianism and the post-apocalyptic pastoral”…
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, Wild England (1885), Edgar Pangborn’s Davy (1964), Richard Cowper’s The Road To Corlay (1978),…
Read the rest of “Post-apocalyptic pastoral and post-industrial”…