FoolishPeople

#VirulentExperience

 

"I’m wonderin’ if a thug’s prayers reach
Is Pious pious cause God loves pious?
Socrates asks, “Whose bias do y’all seek?”
All for Plato, screech
I’m out here ballin’, I know ya’ll hear my sneaks"

#VirulentExperience

"Give me convenience or give me death". #virulentexperience

 

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'.

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 I

 

Have you received your access code for Radiogram I yet?

If you would like to be granted access to the first transmission from Stronheim’s factory, all you need to do is sign up via our subscription of promises.

You may also be interested in entering Stronheim’s Tombola for a very special prize.

http://www.radiogram.strangefactories.com

Theatre of Manifestation - Strange Factories

Theatre of Manifestation is FoolishPeople's unique working practice, created by its founder John Harrigan and further developed and perfected by FP over the last twenty years during projects undertaken throughout the UK, Europe and USA.

Theatre of Manifestation is central to how 'Strange Factories', FP's first living feature film will produced, created and experienced.

‘Strange Factories’ explores the power of stories and myths and how they are ultimately given life by those who engage with them.

We would like you to become part of our story.

Join our IndieGoGo campaign and become a part of 'Strange Factories'.

indiegogo.com/​strange-factories
strangefactories.com
info.strangefactories.com
foolishpeople.org  

 

 

The Providence Experiments

STILL STRUGGLING TO “MAKE IT” AS AN ACTOR, ARTIST, ASTRONAUT, WRITER OR EL PRESIDENTE?
FEELING BLOCKED?
DISILLUSIONED?
WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?
THE PROVIDENCE EXPERIMENTS HAVE ARRIVED.

“Providence is always on the side of the last reserve” Napoleon Bonaparte

WHAT ARE THE PROVIDENCE EXPERIMENTS?

The Providence Experiments are a unique series of workshops and events that fuse experimentation, visualisation, ritual, psychological intervention and immersive game. Test subjects will be thrust into bizarre events that offer the willing participant the opportunity to undergo a challenging yet positive artistic transformation.

Over one lunar calendar month, you will receive spontaneous transmissions, puzzles, choices and oddities that may pervade any and every part of your life. Prepare your mind for anything.

This experience will be designed specifically for YOU. Perception of self and reality will constantly be challenged. We will initiate you into in a unique journey where you are the hero or villain in your own story.

The aim of the Providence Experiments is to unleash your subconscious creative potential while offering an amazing, unprecedented experience unlike anything you’ve likely participated in before.

The Providence Experiments will consist of one set session per week in Central London over five weeks, starting Friday 5th November. Specialised directions to each venue will be transmitted 5 days before each session.

Warning: The Providence Experiments will not be confined to the five stated sessions. Active engagement and full participation is vital and absolutely necessary.

WHO CREATES THE PROVIDENCE EXPERIMENTS?

YOU and your subconscious will be the true playing ground for the game. However, this experience will be facilitated by FoolishPeople, a group that create immersive occult events using their developed practice Theatre of Manifestation. They will be aided with media and profiling consultation provided by Mythos Media, a team assembled to create modern myths.

HOW DO I SIGN UP?

Prospective applicants must e-mail providence(at)weaponized.net immediately. Do it now: the number of places are extremely limited. If you receive an application form, you are lucky enough to have passed Phase I and are on your way to taking your place within Test Bed One.

DATES

Friday November 5th
Sunday November 14th
Sunday November 21st
Friday November 26th
Sunday December 5th

BOOKING PRICE:

Early booking discount: £150 (£30 per week) Available until 17th October Standard booking: £200 (£40 per week) Available from 18th October

foolishpeople.org
weaponized.net
modernmythology.net

Rumpus - Launch Edition

Run by an old friend you may remember, the saint from Cycle VI of Dark Nights of the Soul - Santi. This is going to be something rather special. Get your tickets at rumpusparty.eventbrite.com

“Cosmic Blast” Stimulating Mystical Experience Washes over Earth?

A most curious report is circulating in the Kremlin today, submitted by Colonel Boris Sokolov of the Ministry of Defense, one of Russia’s top UFO investigators, and wherein he states that ‘embedded’ within last months largest ever recorded Cosmic Blast was a ‘40 megahertz radio wave coded signal’ that could ‘stimulate’ the electromagnetic activity of religiously devout people by ‘substantially altering’ their brain frequencies.
The areas of the brain of devout followers of religion most likely to have ‘received’ this ‘cosmic message’, this report continues, had previously been identified by French Researchers from the University of Montreal, and who stated about their research:

“The main goal of the study was to identify the neural correlates of a mystical experience. Rather than there being one spot that relates to mystical experiences, we’ve found a number of brain regions are involved. This does not diminish the meaning and value of such an experience and neither does it confirm or disconfirm the existence of God,” explained lead researcher of the study Dr Mario Beauregard. ”

Colonel Sokolov continues in his report by stating that this ‘cosmic message’ would be first ‘understood’ by the most devoted followers of religion as their brain frequencies are more attuned to the 40 megahertz radio wave and that these people would be, most likely, found in cults.

Now, and most curiously, following this ‘cosmic message’ blasted at our Earth, both the United States and European Union have launched near simultaneous crackdowns against their respective religious cults…

If true the above has to be one of the most interesting pieces of news I have heard in a long time, for many different reasons. JH

Found Via Signs of the Witness

Year Zero