FoolishPeople

Looking Glass

Occasionally in life you'll stumble across a being who puts everything in perspective. A looking glass in perfect focus.

If you're particularly blessed, it'll happen every few years. For those of you with fortune similar to mine (verging on obsolete) you might just be able wish on it hard enough to manifest it. 

For me, these beings appear when they're most needed; when I'm at my lowest ebb. Just about to give up control of my life, sit back and become the oxygen-stealing, sack of wasted potential I'm expected to be by what commonly passes as society. I'm trying to be careful here, not to sound too much like a foolish girl with a misguided crush for my soul has grown gnarled and hardy in recent years so as not to allow such things to happen. So, for the sake of a little clarity; your looking glass wont always appear in a form you'd be happy to fuck. Though, for the cost of a little extra gnostic(j)ism, they just might.

I detest the use of the word 'Familiar' in this context. Such a lackluster title to give something that's showing you your path, your way through the mire to who you could be, to essentially an Eden of you're own making. Familiar.  'Oh, yes, I thought your face was familiar' or 'That smell is familiar, I must of stood in some shite' are perfectly acceptable uses of the word 'Familiar'. 'I would never have created my own little paradise on earth without my familiar' isn't. 

Looking glasses inspire. Not through preaching, but by creeping under your flesh and opening you up so fully you're flushed through with their lucidity and purity.  An elysian soul-douche, if you will.

Sometimes they're temporary. Most of mine have been. Trick is, I think, to garner everything they're prepared to gift you, suck it up, miss them when they leave, but always grow.

Invocation to Cúchulainn

Coming night cool and green presses her wet lips against burning skin. Eye to eye with the hound.

God's own blood burning through mortal veins.

Teeth hard as stone and sharp as spear tips snap. A great gaping maw snarls death's invitation. There is no mercy or quarter in the hound's eyes, and this is but one way in which we are the same.

"I am here at the behest of the King."

But this mountain of muscle, fang, and claw would not give passage to the mightiest of men, let alone to a boy as small as I.

Still, even now I am mightier than most men.

Eyes full of hate; straining sinews; a body taught to tear men asunder. Springing forward heavy paws dig into my shoulders, jaws snap at the air where this young child's head should be.

Blood boils. Steam rises.

Ríastrad burns and twists.

Preternatural strength contorts muscles, spine snaps, shifting; I am somewhere between wolfhound and man. Hand balled tight around the sliotar shoving, unstoppable, greased with slobber, down the dog's gullet. Not even those wet choking sounds that announce certain death can stay this rage. The beast will die and die and die again. The writhing body breaks apart between me and the standing stone.

The skies open, and cold torrents of divine blood stay the wrath of gods beating in my heart. Poor Culann weeps harder still than the sky and I swear to stand guard where his beloved hound once stood until the day I have reared its equal.

Before I am through many mothers will mourn; and the mighty will fear until carrion birds pick at my corpse.

The wise?

The wise will continue to fear.

For many are my sons and daughters, each like that solitary stone at Knockbridge. Their blood burns like a prayer, finding my ears even before that last blade finds my throat. Howls through time, ríastrad answering ríastrad.

Many are the Hounds of Culann.

For Immediate Release: FoolishPeople announce Weaponized Imprint

 

For Immediate Release: London, May 26th 2010 

Today, FoolishPeople announced the creation of Weaponized, an imprint that extends the immersive art of FoolishPeople into the realm of publishing. 

“FoolishPeople have a long and strong history in collaborative ventures using open source practices, we plan on using all of our unique skills in the creation of a publishing venture like no other,” said John Harrigan, FoolishPeople's artistic director. “Our mission beyond our own creations and collaborations is to seek out and disseminate experimental forms of fiction, prose and art that offer new ways to experience stories and myths. We’re passionately committed to finding unique narrative hybrids that engage, inform, challenge and inspire our readers.”

Books released under the Weaponized imprint will be supported through additional content and media produced by FoolishPeople in the form of musical releases, podcasts, films, and live events that expand the stories that our authors create.

Weaponized launches in the UK and US in July 2010.

LAUNCH TITLES:

Cirxus by John Harrigan

1957- Seascale, the North of England. Cirxus; an old English circus lost in the shadows of the smoke stacks of Calder Hall, the world’s first commercial nuclear power station. Step into the world of Cirxus, explore its sideshows and meet extraordinary characters from the past and future.

Athalia the ballerina waits in the ring for Loudon the clown to return with directions to the Black Pool, the mythic site of the Home Sweet Home, the final show of the season. Join her as she begins a bizarre and wondrous search for Loudon through the irradiated secrets of Cirxus, where she must face the macabre atomic menagerie, haunted by circus animals and navigate her way through the maze of strange, hallucinogenic sideshows to the other side of time.

Immerse yourself in the world of Cirxus, where theatric arcana and atomic fallout irradiate the sawdust arenas of our inner worlds.

Cirxus is the first work to be published from FoolishPeople's back catalogue and is the first script of an immersive theatrical event to be published in the world. Cirxus defies genre and form and offers a literary experience like no other. A combination of hallucinogenic novel and blueprint to a physical experience. Each copy includes concept art and an original score composed and performed by P. Emerson Williams, alongside additional content from the first run of Cirxus at the Arcola theatre in 2009. 

The Sparky Show by Xanadu Xero

Meta-physics and mechanics in the nude, with sex and drugs. An exploding dossier of words and photography of a doomed and perfect relationship, retrofitted with psilocybin. Love is a gun. Shove it up the crack of the Multiverse, demand what you want.

Xandu Xero is unable to understand the desire of the female species for romance over sensation.

A report from the trenches of love post culture, mid-life. Not your average empty-nest Mom.

There is no moving on. 

Forum by Richard Webb 

Richard Webb presents a spectral image of our culture and collective psyche via the reflective portal of an internet football forum. Documenting the exchanges between visitors of the site in 2001, this chronological record of a publicly anonymous debate on a sports website explores ideas of moral panic, vigilantism, moral projection and vendetta.

Webb's objective role in simply compiling and re-presenting the correspondence instigates debate on the value and status of ideas one may not agree with, whilst serving to mirror cultural discourse surrounding emotive subjects. 

Dead Language by John Harrigan

Platoons of the latest replicas of Banksy roam the landscape, led by General Clone Banksy, a talentless nobody who once found a sample of Banksy DNA on an empty spray can. A rowdy gang of Tracey Emins wrestle half a dozen dazed Andy Warhols to the ground.

IT IS THE FUTURE AND ALL FORMS OF ART ARE FREE. Perfect replicas exist of every masterpiece ever created, artworks and ideas are stolen from the mind before they're even created.

Copyright or ownership is meaningless. Artists have realised that their own identity is the only thing they can own or control to spread their infamy, they recruit fans to become copies of themselves: FLESH-WORTH is all that matters.

One final piece of uncorrupted art remains, yet to be copied: a living story told by Neonate Muses and exploited by Mr Shine, the bastard child of the apocalypse.

Read Dead Language and watch the world die or don't and help it do so, CULTURE CORPSE walking. Arm yourselves with weaponised art to explore the notions of open-source myth. What are intellectual rights in a decomposing culture?
 
Featuring full archival material from FoolishPeople's performance run of Dead Language at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in 2007. 

The Book of Hate by John Harrigan and P. Emerson Williams

The code to a soul. Cracked and deciphered. A combination of Harrigan’s highly experimental, stream of consciousness prose and P. Emerson Williams hallucinatory art. Explorers at the outer edges of art. Together, their expedition reaches new vistas of strange, as they voyage together through transcendental neurosis, over a surface of nightmare imaginings. Beyond the internal, beyond the dream, beyond heaven and hell to the other side of human.

NOTES TO EDITORS: 

ABOUT FOOLISHPEOPLE
FoolishPeople's working practice, Theatre of Manifestation combines mythology, shamanism, drama therapy and open source collaboration to create immersive experiences that have the power to raise a numinous experience within the audience. It dismantles the notion of the spectator being a passive recipient of a theatrical experience; active engagement and participation is vital and absolutely necessary.

FoolishPeople have produced original work in London, USA, Amsterdam and Prague at venues including the Institute of Contemporary Arts, Arcola Theatre and the Horse Hospital. Our core collective features five artists from England, America and the Czech Republic, which grows when we undertake new collaborations with worldwide artists in the development of our open source projects. 

WEAPONIZED
The Weaponized management team consists of P. Emerson Williams, Lucy Harrigan and John Harrigan.

For further information please visit www.foolishpeople.org or email enquiries@weaponized.net

enquiries

Art imitating art imitating art...

 FoolishPeople's Warhol propaganda from 'Dead Language'

Graphics by Mark Butcher

In an artistic case of which came first- the chicken or the egg, artist Yason Banal is recruiting Andy Warhol lookalikes in an artwork that bares striking resemblance to the plot of FoolishPeople's Dead Language, performed at the ICA in October 2007.

The look-alikes are being sought as part of his artwork 'Last Warhol Stand Inn' at the Tate Modern's 10th anniversary show on May 14-16. It will be his work's second installment, having being shown in Frieze Art Fair last year.

Hosted by the Tate Modern and organized by curators Maurizio Cattelan, Massimiliano Gioni and Cecilia Alemani, the independent festival will bring together some of the most exciting and experimental 'new art' from around the globe, displayed in an unconventional do-it-yourself style.

We have no idea if Yason Banal has seen or knew of 'Dead Language' or if the the narrative of 'Dead Language' is beginning to manifest, but what makes this even more interesting is the fact that the first version of 'Last Warhol Stand Inn' shown at Frieze Art Fair was part of Stephanie Syjuco's Copystand, who made replicas of the works of other artists at the fair, sold at a much cheaper price.  

Dead Language imagines a Future where all forms of art are free, perfect replicas exist of every masterpiece ever created, copyright and ownership and meaningless, ideas are cheap and replicated ad infinitum. The only way for artists to protect their worth is by recruiting members of the public who are willing to lose their own identities to become a copy of the artist to spread Weaponised Art, forcing consumption upon a bloated society, sick from every idea, cheaply imagined and replicated.

The artist has become terrorist and soldier, surviving by raising the core flesh worth of their art. A rowdy gang of Tracey Emins wrestle half a dozen Andy Warhols to the ground. Platoons of replicas of Banksy raid the landscape, led by General Clone Banksy, a talentless nobody who once found a sample of Banksy DNA on an empty spray can.

The script of Dead Language is due to be released later this year.

Mr. Shine takes a red handkerchief from his pocket and holds it up, before dropping it to the floor. Warhol and Emin pull the lever and the curtain falls to reveal two cages that each hold about twenty people. In one cage replicas of Andy Warhol play with their hair, whilst taking photographs and trying to ignore the horrendous insults coming from the other cage. In the other, twenty Tracey Emin clones clutch the bars tearing at their clothes, showing the Warhols their tits and screaming they will never be man enough to fuck all twenty of her.

The doors open on the cages and the two tribes rush at each other. The Warhols are surprisingly nimble as they dart from the cage and run effeminately at the Emins. Effeminacy is irrelevant in Art War.

The Warhols are no match for the Emins, Tracey gouges eyes, tears testicles from between the loose and soft flesh of old thighs. The Emin's are imaginative and kill almost every Warhol standing in the most terrible manner, Genghis Khan went to Central St Martins. Pop Art’s first son is defeated. All that remains of his cult is one copy. He holds an Emin by the hair; dead and limp. The Emins close in around him.

Excerpt from 'Dead Language' written by John Harrigan
© John Harrigan All Rights Reserved 2007-2010

 

 FoolishPeople's Warhols in Dead Language at the ICA

Photography by Brian Jones

Yason Banal's Warhol at the Copystand at Frieze Art Fair

Baby Banksy in Dead Language at the ICA

Photography by Brian Jones

Maryam Hashemi - A Red Threatening Sky - Artists Profile

I explore my subconscious and beyond through my paintings. It is my tool to know myself or push the boundaries of my dream state reality. My endless interest in mysteries and my Iranian background often blend in a surreal form and reveal untold stories. 

 

"From the memories , I'm giving birth to a Demon , can't wait to see his face" 

http://maryamhashemi.blogspot.com/ http://www.iranian.com/Arts/2006/February/Hashemi

Jules Newman - A Red Threatening Sky - Artists Profile

 

Jules Newman is a London based artist whose fascinations with mythology, dreams, and symbols and interests in theatre and performance have led her to work in a variety of roles including in-crowd performer, model, make up artist, set designer, props maker, and events manager. She also runs an online spell shop called 'The Magic Tree', and makes horned headpieces, masks and wigs as part of another project called 'Ghoulia's Peculiars'.

In all her endeavours Jules seeks to stimulate people to challenge their understanding of normality and to engage with their environment, senses and imagination. This can be manifested through meditation, through physical acts that symbolise catharsis, or by encouraging people to embrace the daydreams, wonder, humour and playfulness that may be considered conventionally unacceptable. She aims to provide disguises that reveal truth and enable an authentic and inspiring experience. 

Photo by Yiannis Katsaris

Her animal masks from 'The Abattoir Pages', a previous Foolish People event, are being displayed at The Reading Room, 65-66 Frith Street, Soho, London W1D 3JR from 8th February - 2nd March 2010, as part of the 'Miss Kiki Salon Presents...' exhibition. 

Website: www.myspace.com/ghouliaspeculiars 
Email: ghoulia@hotmail.co.uk 

Tom G Adriani - A Red Threatening Sky - Artists Profile

 

Tom G Adriani was born in London to Dutch and English parents and graduated from Central Saint Martins in 2005. He has subsequently exhibited in a number of renowned galleries including; The Northern Gallery For Contemporary Art, ' A Modern Bestiary' (2006), The Factory Berlin, 'London Contemporaries' (2007), Wiltons Music Hall, 'Book of Phobias' solo show (2008), The St Pancras Crypt Gallery, where he both exhibited in and curated 'Tales from the Electric Forest' (2009) and Somerset House, 'Academy Hang' (2010). 

His work is based on the foundation of storytelling and mark making. He uses these tools to unearth and explore the tales that creep “unannounced” into his imagination. He sees the work he makes as trapped daydreams and is “fascinated by the process of using paint and ink to render thoughts visible and living a life of their own”. 

Adriani explains that the characters that “pitch up” in his head seem to unravel their tales before his eyes, all he has to do is keep his pen moving; “My first memories of life were playing with a large collection of toy cars and soldiers. Each one had a name and a very different personality in accordance to it's physique. I realise now that each character reflected a different fragment of my own mind. Like most other young children during play, as a story grows, all awareness of ones body and the outer world disappears. My characters would move deep into lands and scenarios that battled between good and evil, heroism and fear, life and death. To this day, my characters and the stories I watch them in explore the same regions of myself as those of my childhood”. 

For more information please visit: www.jotta.com/jotta/viewProjects/adriani 

FoolishPeople present 'A Red Threatening Sky' 

11th – 20th February 2010 
7:30pm, 8.30pm & 9.30pm
Tickets: www.ClubAethereus.com
07597576075
The Old Abattoir, 187-211 St. John’s St, Clerkenwell, London. EC1V 4LS

For Immediate Release - 'A Red Threatening Sky'

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – LONDON 04.01.2010 

FoolishPeople present A Red Threatening Sky 
 Written and directed by John Harrigan 

 Thurs 11th - Sat 20th February 2010 
 Press night: Saturday 13th February 7.30pm 

FoolishPeople present A Red Threatening Sky; an immersive Valentine’s event combining performance, art installation and investigative interaction to create Club Aethereus; a strange and surreal underworld of Gnostic Noir. A place where crime, passion, the sacred and profane all cast one shadow.

Synopsis 

The Valentinian. Harry wakes with no memory of how he arrived inside the club. He has been contracted to find a missing person. Pearl. 

The Hotel room. Her hands and feet are bound and a hood hides her face. Teddy boy philosopher Roy Boutling watches the prize for the club’s owner. Sebastian Qyain. 

The Aviary. The birds song has become distressed. The ornithologist Miss Moreau waits for her lover, a man whose face she has never seen. 

The Dance Floor. The showgirls receive a letter from Sebastian Qyain. It contains the revised ending of the Valentine’s show at Club Aetherus, directing them in a horrifying act. 

Opening hour approaches under a red threatening sky. 

You are invited to enter and investigate the mystery of love’s final destination, in a unique experience honouring the earliest traditions and rituals of courtship, jealousy, union and lust. A Red Threatening Sky examines the nature of love, an unrelenting force which pervades all our lives from the moment we are born until the day we die. 

It follows FoolishPeople's sell-out run of The Abattoir Pages, where they partnered with Guerrilla Zoo for their third open-source meta event at the Old Abattoir, and the critically acclaimed Cirxus, which was performed at The Arcola. 

Poster Art & Design P. Emerson Williams 

Notes to editors: 

• FoolishPeople create immersive art, ritual theatre, film, books and open-source events to raise a numinous experience within the witness
• The creative team consists of John Harrigan, P. Emerson Williams, Lucy Allin, Tereza Kamenicka, Ruth Middleton, Hannah Druckes, Emma Tompkins & Abbie Yaxley 
• FoolishPeople is currently in pre-production for their forthcoming feature film entitled 'GraveLand' 

Listings Information: 
A Red Threatening Sky
11 February - 20 February 2010
7.30pm, 8.30pm & 9.30pm entrance times
Book tickets online: £16 online: ClubAethereus.com
£19 on door, reserve tickets: 07597576075 tickets@clubaethereus.com
The Old Abattoir, 187-211 St. John’s St, Clerkenwell, London, EC1V 4LS 

Not suitable for people of a nervous disposition. 

For further information, please contact: Lucy Allin FoolishPeople lucena@foolishpeople.org 

ClubAthereus.com 
Foolishpeople.org

Download 'A Red Threatening Sky' Press Release

FoolishPeople Present A Red Threatening Sky

FoolishPeople present A Red Threatening Sky; an immersive Valentine’s event combining performance, art installation and investigative interaction to create Club Aethereus; a strange and surreal underworld of Gnostic Noir. A place where crime, passion, the sacred and profane all cast one shadow. 

The Valentinian. Harry wakes with no memory of how he arrived inside the club. He has been contracted to find a missing person. Pearl. 

The Hotel room. Her hands and feet are bound and a hood hides her face. Teddy boy philosopher Roy Boutling watches the prize for the club’s owner. Sebastian Qyain. 

The Aviary. The birds song has become distressed. The ornithologist Miss Moreau waits for her lover, a man whose face she has never seen. The Dance Floor. 

The showgirls receive a letter from Sebastian Qyain. It contains the revised ending of the Valentine’s show at Club Aetherus, directing them in a horrifying act. 

Opening hour approaches under a red threatening sky. 

You are invited to enter and investigate the mystery of love’s final destination, in a unique experience honoring the earliest traditions and rituals of courtship, jealousy, union and lust. 

A Red Threatening Sky examines the nature of love, an unrelenting force which pervades all our lives from the moment we are born until the day we die.

It follows FoolishPeople's sell-out run of The Abattoir Pages, where they partnered with Guerrilla Zoo for their third open source meta event at the Old Abattoir, and the critically acclaimed Cirxus, which was performed at The Arcola.

Tickets are on sale now for A Red Threatening Sky.

Poster Art & Design P. Emerson Williams

Creative Team

John Harrigan
P. Emerson Williams
Lucy Allin
Tereza Kamenicka
Ruth Middleton
Hannah Druckes
Emma Tompkins
Abbie Yaxley

Listings Information:

11 February - 20 February 2010 

7.30pm, 8.30pm & 9.30pm entrance times.

Tickets: £16 Only available online ClubAethereus.com 

The Old Abattoir, 187-211 St. John’s St, Clerkenwell, London, EC1V 4LS

Immanence of Myth - Anthology - progress update

I am also beginning several interviews for the anthology with artists that I feel do work that is mythic, touches on myth, etc. Right now these include Laurie Lipton, John Harrigan, David Mack, and several others. I have decided that I will be running these on Alterati when they are finished so you can get some sneak peeks.

James Curcio with an update on his Immanence of Myth Anthology.