I wander thro’ each charter’d street, Near where the charter’d Thames does flow. And mark in every face I meet Marks of weakness, marks of woe. – William Blake Properties on the banks of the river were first earmarked for government-approved privatisation some years ago. Though private property had been a constant on the banks of the Thames for several hundred years, this millennium saw … Continue reading Fictions: The Charter’d River
“Thanks to TV and for the convenience of TV, you can only be one of two kinds of human beings, either a liberal or a conservative.” – Kurt Vonnegut. Rather like J.G. Ballard, Nigel Kneale had a certain knack of preempting future social, technological and cultural trends. Kneale’s work is perhaps less appreciated than Ballard’s because the medium he predominantly worked in, television, is far and … Continue reading Nigel Kneale and Fascism
When Jeremy Deller took control of the UK’s pavilion in the 2013 Venice Biennale, the press coverage caught hold of one specific aspect that the artist discussed; its “aggressiveness”. With environmental concern sat at the heart of the exhibition, alongside the general political upheaval caused by the coalition government during its third year of power, it’s unsurprising to find Deller’s work channelling some form of … Continue reading Responses: Jeremy Deller’s A Good Day For Cyclists (2013)
Apart from going on a number of planned walks throughout 2016, towards the end of the year I managed to head on a number of more random jaunts out into a variety of places. Though the reel of photos I took has come back mixed in terms of quality, the walks were still interesting enough for me to want to write about them. Three in … Continue reading Wanders: Odds and Ends
Once I loved a man who was a lot like the desert, and before that I loved the desert. – Rebecca Solnit Late last year, I watched two films back-to-back that effectively spoke of one very particular theme. Viewing Michelangelo Antonioni’s Zabriskie Point (1970) followed by Dennis Hopper’s directorial debut The Last Movie (1971) highlighted a number of unavoidable connections between the films. Both films … Continue reading Sex and the Landscape
I was initially struggling to put together a showreel for 2016. I don’t think my film work has ever been so reliant on its varied soundworlds for their full context and so pulling the strongest images out of that context doesn’t quite work. I’ve tried my best to make something vaguely cohesive from these moments though, looking back at the five films I’ve made this … Continue reading Showreel 2016
The Swiss town of Zermatt lies on the Italian border south of the Naturpark Pfyn-Finges some way from Bern. There lies a string of more bustling towns to its north, following a liner path marked by a roadway, connected by the towns of Sion and Sierre. Zermatt is a place for those interested in a variety of winter sports more than anything else, though I’d … Continue reading A Ghost Story For Christmas: The Mountain Grave.
Having detailed some of the history that inspired my last film of 2016 in this article on Caught By The River, I have very little else to say in regards to The Attempt. It’s a mixture of essay film and drama, combining a stark moment in the life of the poet, Edward Thomas, with the tragic hindsight that he was not afforded. I wanted to … Continue reading Short Film – The Attempt (Edward Thomas)
As recently announced, I have a book being released in January all about Folk Horror and its many related areas of interest. The book has been in the works for the last year or so though many of the arguments within have been growing now for several years. Though I’ll undoubtedly being doing the usual interview-esque things to coincide with the release in December and … Continue reading Folk Horror: Hours Dreadful and Things Strange (January, 2017)
Throughout 2016, I’ve been trying to respond to artwork about landscape in more ways than simply essays. I found that in trying convey work that I liked, there was only so far I could go with conventional journalistic and essay writing. At the tail-end of each response article, I’ve been sneaking in a poem about the work and its themes so thought it would be … Continue reading Responses: Poems On Landscape and Melancholy
Celluloid Wicker Man 