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
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