CLIMATE CHANGE ART

“On the streets of #Miami, an artist has been showcasing the increasingly delicate dance of climate change, water and everyday life. As scientists and politicians in Paris wrestle with the complexities of battling climate change, Lars Jan is inviting people to view it in a way that he said makes people “feel climate change in their guts, rather than just understand it.’’ He brought the installation, “Holoscenes,” to Miami this week.

A woman stands in a 3,500-gallon Plexiglas tank as it slowly fills with water. Or not so slowly — 12 tons of water are pumped into the tank over the course of a minute. She is holding a basket of persimmons, until it floats out of her hands, spilling the fruits to bob and twirl in the water. She tries to gather them back up, her skirts floating around her. Behind her, palm trees are silhouetted against the sky, and a crowd gathers.

Jan, an artist and director, created Holoscenes as a response to pictures of flooding in Pakistan four years ago:

“So this image popped into my head of a man turning pages of a newspaper in a totally mundane room as it slowly filled with water,” Jan recalls. “He would take a big breath and hold it, but he doesn’t react to the flood with any sense of crisis. He comes up for air and goes back to reading his newspaper. I wanted to show people adapting to this crisis on an everyday basis.”

The artists in the tank aren’t told when the waters will rise or recede — a pretty direct translation of the very real uncertainty of climate change — but they carry on with their tasks just the same: coiling a hose, playing a guitar, getting dressed. The lack of reaction speaks to a human resilience in the face of catastrophic change, Jan says. It also seems like a pretty apt dramatization of our ability to ignore disaster even as it unfolds around us.

LARS JAN is a director, designer, writer and media artist, and founding artistic director of Early Morning Opera, a multidisciplinary art lab based in Los Angeles specializing in live performance. 

The son of first generation émigrés from Afghanistan and Poland, Jan is committed to international artistic exchange.  In summer 2005, as artist-in-residence at Kabul University, he taught and developed public art projects throughout Afghanistan.  In 2003-04, he lived in Kyoto, where he trained and performed as a head puppeteer under Abe Hidehiko, designated an "Intangible Cultural Treasure" by the Japanese government.  He also traveled on two recording expeditions through rural Ukraine with virtuoso vocalist Marjana Sadowska, resulting in their performance collaboration, Without Ground.

A Saudi woman in an abaya, buying flowers in a mall

 see: http://www.holoscene.es/

THE STORY OF FILM & NURI BILGE CEYLAN

Have always been hooked on films, a passion which stems from childhood viewing in the Worthing picture palaces of yesteryear: 'Davy Crockett', 'The Pirates of Blood River', 'Bambi'. Our town had four grand cinemas - The Rivoli (which caught fire), The Odeon, The Plaza and The Dome - the latter miraculously survives and is one of the oldest working cinemas in Britain (1911). Saw 'Psycho' and 'Spartacus' there with my mum,  and later 'Easy Rider' (the freaks of Worthing took over the whole place). Later in life, read up on the history of film and, in the 70s, established the film section of the NME, spent many a happy hour in small screening rooms in Soho. Later worked on licensed magazines on'Star Wars' and, at the age of 29, went to Hollywood and met George Lucas. [see Previous Post   http://hqinfo.blogspot.co.uk/2005/06/star-wars-memories-of-galaxy-far-far.html

All of which is preamble to a review of this remarkable documentary 'The Story of Film' directed and narrated by the Northern Irish film critic Mark Cousins, which contains 15 one-hour chapters - a total length of 900 minutes. - available in a box set of 5 DVDs. First broadcast on More4 in September 2011, this is essential viewing for cineastes, film students, geeks and aficianados,

What makes it good? Firstly Cousins has literally traveled through space and time, beginning with Edison and Lumiere and bringing us right through to our era of digital cinema. He films in America, Europe, Asia, Russia, Latin America and takes us to
the actual studios and rooms where some of the greatest films ever made were conceived and produced. Of course many of the well-known names are there - D.W. Griffith, Kubrick, Jean-Luc Goddard - and there are some great original interviews with the likes of Lars von Trier, Bertolucci, Robert Towne and Jane Campion.

But then there are so many others that I was previously unaware of or ignorant of their work - the Danish filmmaker Carl Theodore Dreyer  and the Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu are two good examples. In all cases, Cousins selects intense and interesting excerpts that provide stunning vignettes, whetting one's appetite for a whole ocean of films as yet unseen.
 Cousins is also at pains to talk about technology and about cinema techniques, explaining how the medium has evolved. He has add energy to the films by interspersing all this with camera-eye view rides in cars, trains, buses in different cities around the world. It all repays repeated viewing.

Another cracking and important documentary is the great 'Side By Side' (2008), co-produced and narrated by Keanu Reeves. It takes us through every stage of the filmmaking process and contrasts the way it would be shot and produced on film and then using digital technology. At each stage, Keanu interviews key directors, cinematographers and technicians who give their for and against views about this transformation in the way movies are made. Of course George Lucas, James Cameron and the Wachowski brother & sister are all gung ho for the new kit and caboodle. Others lament the passing of film including Scorsese who has done so much to lobby for major pictures of the past to be remastered. One of the biggest problems is archiving. There have already been a large number formats and players and every time the technology evolves, films have to be transferred to the new medium. There is a great concern about how long they will last. Celluloid films from 100 years ago can still be viewed. Many speakers here are pessimistic about digital as a storage medium.

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Curved street in winter, Istanbul, 2004. [From his exhibition Turkey Cinemascope]

One person who doesn't appear in 'The Story of Film' is currently my favourite director: Nuri Bilge Ceylan, one of the world's great filmmakers.

I began with his famous film 'Once Upon A Time in Anatolia' (2011) that won the Palm D'Or at Cannes and am currently working my way through the rest of his ouevre: his later film 'Winter Sleep' (2014) and two other prize winners 'Three Monkeys' (2008) [Best Director at Canne], Climates (2006) [Firesci prize, Cannes] and 'Distant' (2003) [Grand Prix and Best actor at Cannes] which was when he first came to international prominence.  In all it received 47 awards (23 of them international) making it the most award-winning film in the history of Turkish cinema.

'Distant' (Uzak in Turkish] was the third film of a 'provincial trilogy', preceded by Clouds of May (2000) and The Small Town (1998). His very first short film Cocoon (1995) was an 'official selection' at Cannes. In his on-line bio it says: 'In all of these [early] films, Ceylan enlisted his close friends, relatives and family as actors and took on just about every technical role himself: the cinematography, sound design, production, editing, writing and direction...:' 

'Climates' lead roles are shared by Nuri Bilge and his wife Ebru Ceylan. At the end of 2003, in the course of location scouting for that film, Nuri Bilge returned to photography for the first time since military service. From this point on, he began devoting his time to both cinema and photography.

What is it about these films that makes them so great. Ceylan has a wonderful eye and in all his films you are able to contemplate and enjoy the beauty of the landscapes (always central, even dominant, like an extra character) and faces (eyes in particular). He goes in close and holds. The pace of the films allows time for contemplation. The characters speak but much of what they communicate in the shots, that are held  for a long time, where you can see that the person is thinking things through, conveyed only by subtle changes of expression. The stories are as deep as a Russian novel, have complex twists and turns and they ensnare you and your feelings.

Children riding bicycles, Midyat, 2004 [From his exhibition Turkey Cinemascope]

Needless to say, Ceylan is a crack photographer. There are two lovely videos of openings of his photoshow in Istanbul and Berlin. They are panoramas, blown up to some considerable size, the images heightened and enhanced by magic processes. Enjoy.
https://vimeo.com/113896904
http://www.museumbuzzy.com/nuri-bilge-ceylan-ny/

Ceylan's Official website: http://www.nbcfilm.com/

THE WORLD OF NUCLEAR WASTE

As of July 2015, 30 countries worldwide are operating 438 nuclear reactors for electricity generation and 67 new nuclear plants are under construction in 15 countries. They produce approximately 11% of the world's electricity.  All these plants produce highly radioactive waste and, at present, there are no facilities that can permanently and safely store it. 

This weekend Greenpeace were in action in Australia, to draw attention to a shipment of 25 tonnes nuclear waste from France on board an unsafe "dustbin ship" the BBC Shanghai. which they claim has been banned by the US government from carrying any kind of government cargo at all. 

Over the last twenty years, Australia has sent eight shipments of waste to France, the UK and the US for reprocessing to remove uranium and plutonium.  The waste sent to the UK will return in the second half of this decade and the shipments sent to the US will remain there.The  stabilised waste from France is being  housed at the Lucas Heights reactor in southern Sydney until a nuclear waste dump site is selected and built. 

Malcolm Turnbull's government has set a deadline of December 2016 to choose a location to dispose of the country's low and intermediate-level waste. The shortlist includes sites near Sally’s Flat in New South Wales; Hale in the Northern Territory; Cortlinye, Pinkawillinie and Barndioota in South Australia; and Oman Ama in Queensland. A 30-year saga to try and establish such a site at Muckaty Station in the Northern Territory failed after a lengthy legal battle. This time the government is consulting more closely with the communities and offering a sweetener for the landowner - up to four times of the value of the property - and the community - access to a $10m fund for local infrastructure or other projects. The preferred site will be named after the federal election next year and is due to be operating by 2020. 

Currently Australia has the equivalent of two Olympic swimming pools of low-level waste - mainly contaminated laboratory items and material used in medical treatments - which is being stored at 100 sites including hospitals and universities.

Intermediate waste is stored at Lucas Heights which houses Australia's only nuclear reactor.

Its HIFAR reactor was opened in 1958 which was replaced eight years ago by an OPAL reactor that uses low enriched uranium. Run by the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) it conducts research in many different areas of nuclear science and technology

Thirty per cent of its business is the  production of nuclear medicine doses that are used to diagnose and treat many types of cancers, heart disease, neurological disorders and other conditions. It currently produces 10,000 doses a day for 250 hospitals in Australia but construction is underway on a new plant in order to ramp up production to 13 million doses which would meet a quarter of world demand. Nuclear medicines are responsible for 80% of the waste at the plant. Federal funds of $22.3m have been allocated to refit two waste storage facilities over the next four years.

The reactor site on the edge of Australia's largest city has been the focus of  safety concerns by anti-nuclear protesters for decades. In 2001, Greenpeace campaigners climbed the razor wire and scaled the old reactor.

Ina concurrent development, the South Australian Government established the Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission on 19th March 2015 to undertake an independent and comprehensive investigation into the possible expansion of activities that form part of the nuclear fuel cycle. Commenting on this initiative the day after he named Dr Alan Finkel, a vocal advocate of nuclear power, as Australia's next chief scientist, Malcolm Turnbull was sceptical about the possibility of creating a domestic nuclear power industry.

“I was just talking about this with the cook in the cafe downstairs, when I was having some coffee and breakfast with Steve Marshall [the SA Liberal leader],” he told Adelaide radio station FiveAA. “As Brett, the chef, was saying, and I think a lot of South Australians feel like this and it’s a perfectly reasonable view: we’ve got the uranium [and] we mine it; why don’t we process it, turn it into the fuel rods, lease them to people overseas; when they’re done, bring them back – and we’ve got very stable geology in remote locations and a stable political environment – and store them? That is a business that you could well imagine here.”

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Finland looks like becoming the first nation in the world to successfully launch a deep underground repository  on Olkiluoto, an island off the country's west coast which already has a nuclear reactor on it.  The Onkalo facility, which will cost 3 billion euros, is designed to hold up to 6,500 tonnes of uranium stored in copper canisters, packed in clay and lodged in a network of tunnels cut into the granite bedrock. The plan is to start storing the waste in 2023 and to seal the facility in 2120. Finland's case has shown that getting approval for a nuclear waste storage site requires not only a safe site but also a supportive local community willing to work with the developers to shape the project. 

According to a recent article in Nature by Elizabeth Gibley: 'Sweden has already used a similar engagement process, and its government is currently considering a licence to build a facility using the same technology. Last month the Swedish Radiation Safety Authority gave its formal backing to building a repository at the chosen site, in Forsmark, and a final decision is expected around 2017.'

Forsmark is already home to a nuclear power plant and a disposal site for intermediate-level radioactive waste. According to World Nuclear News 'The repository will have capacity to store 12,000 tonnes of used nuclear fuel in 6000 copper-cast iron canisters, which would be surrounded by bentonite clay to absorb any future leakage. At a depth of 500 metres depth in 1.9 billion year-old granite it will feature around 60 kilometres of disposal tunnels.'

In 2017 the French nuclear waste agency Andra hopes to apply for get a licence for a 35 billion euro facility at a deep-storage site in Bure, in northeast France, where there is already a test facility. The aim is to bury highly radioactive waste 500m underground in thick layers of argillite rock. The plan faces resistance from local residents and environmental groups.

In a report released in July this year, Andra estimates that the amount of nuclear waste that will need to be stored in France will triple once all its nuclear stations have been decommissioned. The French utility EDF runs 58 nuclear reactors with an average lifespan of 50 years. A new reactor is under construction at Flamanville. They supply some 80% of France's electricity.

Total nuclear waste volumes at the end of 2013 were 1.4 million cu m. Andra estimates that this will rise to 2.5 million in 2030 and will eventually reach 4.3 million. The main bulk of this waste will be slightly radioactive building rubble, Andra's current low-level waste facility in Morvilliers, in the Aube region, is likely to be full  between 2020 and 2025. 

Highly radioactive, long-life waste represent just 0.2 percent of the volume but 98 percent of the radioactivity. This  volume is likely to rise from 3,200 cubic meters at the end of 2013 to about 10,000 cubic meters when all France's nuclear plants reach the end of their life. 

In August 2015, the German cabinet yesterday adopted a draft national radioactive waste disposal program. For the final disposal of radioactive waste, the program proposes two locations: the former iron ore mine Konrad in Salzgitter for low- and intermediate-level waste and another as yet undetermined site for high-level waste [which] will need to accommodate all radioactive waste produced by 2022, when Germany's last nuclear power reactor is set to shut under the government's nuclear phase-out policy. In addition, the ministry has made a forecast of all the radioactive waste that will be generated in the country by 2080.

According to the ministry, there will be some 10,500 tonnes of used fuel from the operation of nuclear power plants, which could be stored in about 1100 containers. A further 300 containers of high- and intermediate-level waste are also expected from the reprocessing of used fuel, as well as 500 containers of used fuel from research and demonstration reactors.
In addition, some 600,000 cubic meters of low- and intermediate-level waste will need to be disposed of. This includes such waste from the operation and decommissioning of nuclear power plants as well as from industry, medicine and research.

Under plans announced in 2010, some 200,000 cubic metres of mostly low-level waste are being removed from Germany's Asse radioactive waste disposal facility, a salt dome which has proven unstable. This waste, together with some 100,000 cubic meters of waste from uranium enrichment operations at Urenco's plant at Gronau, will also require disposal..

[Source: World Nuclear News]

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Several smaller European countries have banded together to form a European Repository Development Organisation to work on the concept of a shared facility: Austria, Ireland, Netherlands, Poland, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Italy, Lithuania, Romania, and  Slovenia

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A new US Department of Energy (DOE) initiative on radioactive waste disposal in March 2015 announced three decisions:  that military nuclear wastes should be disposed of separately from power plant used fuel;  that  'a consent-based approach' would be adopted to find a location for military waste disposal; that it will create an interim storage facility for the power plant materials in the meantime.

The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 later saw Yucca Mountain in Nevada selected as the country's one-and-only disposal site for highly radioactive material. The project received $10 billion of industry funding and progressed to the point of having an approved design but the Obama administration put the project on ice in 2009. The US trade body the Nuclear Energy Institute claims that Yucca Mountain remains the legislated disposal site for used nuclear fuel. "That program is the law of the land and should be completed" says Marv Fertel, NEI's head.

Not everyone agrees. Yucca Mt.’s geology repeatedly failed to meet legal requirements, so the specs were repeatedly weakened. The Obama Administration killed the project because it could not be defended on scientific grounds. The selection of Yucca Mountain by the US Congress in 1987 was, from the outset, a political rather than a scientific choice.  Nevada is the third-most seismically active US state. 

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According to a 2013 inventory report from the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), the body responsible for the clean-up of the UK's nuclear legacy, the UK has to manage 4.5 million cubic metres (4.9m tonnes) of radioactive nuclear waste - enough to fill Wembley Stadium four times over.

This figure is the total volume of radioactive waste that exists today or is forecast to be generated over the next century from existing facilities. Around 4.3 million cubic metres (96%) of this waste has already been produced.

The other 4% (around 160,000 cubic metres) of radioactive waste has yet to be produced.
This includes waste forecast from planned operations of existing nuclear power facilities, from ongoing defence programmes and from the continued use of radioactive material for medical and industrial purposes. 

In the long term, high-level radioactive waste (HLW) will need to be stored in a geological underground repository, but this isn't estimated to be ready until 2040. The process has already seen many delays, meaning the actual date could be much later..
Source: power-technology   

Detailed history of nuclear waste disposal in Britain.

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INSIDE JOHN HIGGS: IT ALL CONNECTS

This rambling tale, centering on a bravura trio of books by John Higgs, begins in dramatic fashion. I'm sitting on a bar stool in the Lewes Arms when Adrian rushes through the door. Adrian is in his late '70s, went to art school in the '50s. He holds out this book and says you must read this - and then rushes out again. 

So I was plunged into the world of 'The KLF: Chaos, Magic and The Band who Burned A Million Pounds'. Next I caught sight of JH's recently published book 'Stranger Than We Can Imagine', an alternative view of the 20th century and requested a review copy. Finally came 'I Have America Surrounded: The Life of Tim Leary' which I devoured in about 48 hours. Now I'm trying to draw breath, explain what's happened to me and try and give you some introductory insights into three books which I consider to be of great value and import.

'What was my KLF book but a statement that five seemingly separate stories were, in a certain light, one bigger story? It was my way of saying that the stories of Bill Drummond, Robert Anton Wilson, Ken Campbell, Alan Moore and Doctor Who were parts of something larger, even if none of the characters in that story were aware of it.'

This is a perfectly pitched John Higgs quote. There is something going on here but you're note sure what it is. Are you Mr Jones. It certainly to do with connectivity, synchronicity, magical thinking, new perspectives and alternative angles on 'the truth' which is out there somewhere. Monsieur Higgs is very deft at interweaving and I am sure also at public speaking judging by his timetable of talks.

In case you haven't been introduced, Bill Drummond is one half of KLF, Robert Anton Wilson wrote the Illuminatus trilogy which Ken Campell later staged. Alan Moore is the uber-genius, Gandalfian figure who revolutionised the comic and graphic novel medium and Dr Who is a Time Lord (but you knew that).

The KLF long-story-short story is almost unbelievable. Drummond and  Jimmy Cauty found KLF which becomes a monstrous behemoth that strides the world of dance music, generating number ones across the planet, making millions. Disillusioned by their success, they then seek to remove every single trace of KLF from the internet and the world which they are quite successful at. But how to get rid of the filthy money. Simple: burn a million pounds.  All in all its a wonderful read. Full of juicy quotes, tit-bits of startling information, unusual conjunctions, challenging assertions. It will make your brain fizz.

Short intermission: KLF are or were Discordians, a belief system first popularised by Robert Anton Wilson. The Wikipedia entry is good entry point

Discordianism is a religion and subsequent philosophy based on the veneration or worship of Eris, a.k.a. Discordia, the Goddess of chaos, or archetypes or ideals associated with her. It was founded after the 1963 publication of its holy book, the Principia Discordia,^[1] written by Greg Hill with Kerry Wendell Thornley, the two working under the pseudonyms Malaclypse the Younger and Omar Khayyam Ravenhurst. The religion has been likened to Zen based on similarities with absurdist interpretations of the Rinzai school, as well as Taoist philosophy. Discordianism is centered on the idea that both order and disorder are illusions imposed on the universe by the human nervous system, and that neither of these illusions of apparent order and disorder is any more accurate or objectively true than the other. There is some division as to whether it should be regarded as a parody religion, and if so to what degree.

The golden apple symbolizes the eristic principle (disorder). The pentagon symbolizes the aneristic principle (order). 

'Stranger Than We Can Imagine' is a lengthy and studious work from which I took copious notes. Summarising its many levels and subjects is difficult but here goes. 

There is, say Higgs, 'a moment for every generation when memory turns into history...the right time to take stock.' He describes his journey as an 'alternative route through the landscape of the last century.'

The book is constructed of 15 chapters of around 20pp each, which follow an overlapping chronological sequence: Relativity, Modernism, War, Individualism, Id, Uncertainty, Science Fiction, Nihilism, Space, Sex, Teenagers, Chaos, Growth, Postmodernism, Network.
Every one is introduced with an unusual and striking double-page photo that strikes an eerie chord: 

'Science Fiction' has a picture from the set of Fritz Lang's 'Metropolis' the girl actress inside the metal girl suit with her helmet off, drinking through a straw from a glass held by a white lab-coated technician. On her other side a man in a suit and tie, holds a hair dryer that is blowing air down into the cracks in her suit. 'Individualism' has a bunch of five sturdy outdoor explorer types posing in front of three tents. The second from left is Aleister Crowley, an image of him which is miles away from the classic caricature.

What is genuinely interesting is that in that period 1900-1912  and post-War the worlds of both science, art and culture were transformed by what Higgs describes as 'genuinely new, unexpected and radical new ideas: atomic science, the birth of relativity and later quantum were being paralleled by The Rites of Spring and the works of Kandinsky, Cubism, Duchamp, Joyce et al . What's more these new ideas seemed to be pointing in a  broadly coherent direction.

Underlining the role of chance, this memorable paragraph about the event that led to World War 1 is a stunner: 

'The initial shooting that led to the conflict was itself a farce. The assassin in question was a Yugoslav nationalist named Gavrilo Princip. He had given up his attempt to assassinate Archduke Ferdinand of Austria followng a failed grenade attack by Princip's colleague and gone to a cafe.' Whilst he was standing outside 'by sheer coincidence the Archduke's driver made a wrong turn into the same street and stalled the car in front of him. This gave the surprised Princip the opportunity to shoot Ferdinand and his wife Sophie... Over 37 million people died in the fallout from that assassination.'

In the work of writers, musicians and artists there were 'persistent attempts to destroy frames of reference' by film makers (Eisenstein), musicians (Schoenberg, Stravinsky), writers (Joyce, Eliot and Pound). A big theme that emerged was 'no single perspective can be considered correct or true.' Knowledge is dependent on the perspective we take.
'Einstein and the Modernists' appear to have separately made the same leap at the same time... [and] 'found a higher framework'.

'There are no eternal facts as there are no absolute truths'- Nietzsche (1878)

JH incidentally puts forward the hypothesis that Duchamp's 'Fountain' was actually the idea (and work) of Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven.

In the 'War' chapter, Higgs describes the concept of emperors as being 'one of the great constants in human history.' Within a few short years they are swept away in the carnage of World War 1.  Again the 'removal of single, absolute, fixed perspectives.'. Universal suffrage appeared in much of Europe and democracy acquired its own multiple perspective.

What follows is the birth of 'individualism' with Aleister Crowley singled out as a leading influential figure, who considered us to be 'self-centred rational agents with free will.' Mussolini coins the terms 'fascism' and later Ayn Rand  invents 'objectivism'.

'Id' begins with the premiere of the 'Rites of Spring'. Picasso, Proust, Gertrude Stein, Ravel, Debussy and Cocteau were all there. 'The wild and irrational premiere', says Higgs, was 'followed by global descent into total war' in what he later calls ' a perfect storm of technology, nationalism, individualism and the political rise of psychopaths.'

'Uncertainty' leads us to logic and paradox, Bertrand Russell and Godel's Incompleteness Theorem. Niels Bohr, one of the father's of quantum mechanics' says: 'Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real.' One of the most surprising discoveries about the atom was that it was mostly empty.The sub-atomic world was 'a fuzzy sea of guesswork and speculation' which could be changed by the very act of observation. A particle could be in two places at once. 

These discoveries were unsettling. Higgs writes; 'Just as our conscious minds were only a bubble of rationality in a larger unconscious mind... so the physical world of matter and comprehensible cause and effect was just a hiccup in a larger reality....Our world, both mind and matter, was a small bubble of coherence inside something so alien, we haven't even been able to find adequate metaphors to describe it.'

'Science Fiction' as a term was named in the 1920s. J.G. Ballard considered it 'the last genre capable of adequately representing present day reality.' 

Higgs spends some space and time discussing Carl Jung's 1959 book on UFOs, written when he was 83. The first sighting by Kenneth Arnold in 1947 had triggered of a wave of other reports of sightings of alien craft. People had always seen, lights, gods, angels and visions in the sky but the emergence of this new 'alien' version of the 'other' intrigued Jung. he thought it represented 'a huge change in the collective unconscious. 'UFOs to Jung,' say Higgs, 'were a projection of Cold War paranoia and the alien nature of our technological progress. He recognised that the phenomenon told us more about our own culture than it did about alien spaceships.'

'Nihilism' is a rich vein in post-war times. After Hiroshima and the Holocaust, existentialism thrived - 'life is meaningless and the experience of existing in the present moment is all that matters'. The gang's all here: Alex Trocchi, Beckett, Camus, Sartre and, in the US, The Beats, where it got mixed up with beatitudes, satori and other forms of eastern mysticism. The 'I Ching' and the 'Tibetan Book of the Dead' were consulted. It was about the here and now, loss of ego and a connection with something larger than the self. Higgs explores also Joseph Campbell's 'monomyth' 'The Hero's Journey' - his own invention that he projected onto the stories of the ages. Hello Star Wars!

'The Bomb' and 'Space'. The first begins with Russia's first nuclear test (August 1949) which triggered the space race, fuelled by weapons technology. Higgs interestingly focuses on the Russian space programme and Sergie Korolev its visionary architect. The Big K got the Sputnik up there (4th Oct 1957) and Gagarin in orbit by 12th April 1961 with much in between. When he died in 1966 the Russian space programme collapsed and the US became the ascendant.  

We also meet Marvel Whiteside Parsons, who loved blowing things up and became the co-founder of the US Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). Did I mention that, during the same period, he was running an occult commune in Los Angeles based on Crowley's teachings. Also Werner von Braun, architect of the Nazi V2 rocket programme, built with slave labour, who was smuggled to the US in  Operation Paperclip and masterminded the US space programme.

'Sex' touches on Marie Stopes, suffragette and contraceptive pioneer, Betty Friedan and The Female Eunuch as well as the prosecutions of Henry Miller and 'Lady Chatterley's Lover' and the fact that in 1974 the Paedophile Information Exchange was receiving funding from the Home Office. In 'Teenagers' there is talk of the growth of individualism, counter culture and Thatcherism.

'Chaos' begins with Lorenz's  mathematics, the 'butterfly effect' and the emergence of order in chaos. The wonderful Benoit Mandelbrot reveals that reality is fractal and chaotic. This Higgs links to James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis and the vision of earth and life working together as a self-regulating organism, life generating conditions for life. Gaia.

'Growth' examines the rise of corporations, hardwired to perpetual growth and the rise of the environmental movement. The uncomfortable truth is that Margaret Thatcher was the first world leader to acknowledge climate change, at the UN in 1989.

'Post -Modernism' came and went as did the New Age movement. 'Network' brings us to our globally connected world and the need to challenge individualism and corporate power. 'The millennial generation...understand that the most effective way to get on in such an environment is to co-operate.' Occupy and Anonymous are leaderless structure. 

Higgs believes that as the concept of an 'individual' has become more complicated to define (there are entire ecosystems inside the human biome); that our sense of 'self', of a single entity making rational decisions, is no more than a quirk of mind. 

He concludes: 'Perhaps the network will last as our defining model for as long as the imperial system did. If that is the case, then free-floating, consequence-ignoring individualism was a brief liminal moment in history a pause between breaths. The twentieth century will have been a rare time indeed...it was a glimpse of mankind at its worst, and at its best.'

Source: The Leary Project

'I Have America Surrounded' must be one of the great book titles ever. It is difficult to speak too highly of this amazing biography which has authority, insight and style. Actress Winona Ryder was his goddaughter and she gave a speech at his memorial service on 9th June 1996, reprinted in the book. She says Tim liked the idea of being the 'mad scientist' and that he lived a life of 'flat out epic grandeur'.

Like most others of my generation, Leary was a lighthouse figure whose beam touched us all when we too began conducting our own experiments with LSD in seaside bungalows but his legend became tarnished and muddied by allegations of him snitching to the authorities. The media turned him into a cartoon character which Leary played up to but this has overshadowed his genius, his humour, handsomeness and humanity. A genuine pioneer of the mind-altering world, he faced his own death with inquisitive enthusiasm and wonder.

The trajectory of his life: An only child, born (Oct 20th 1920) to an uptight mum and charming alcoholic rogue of a dad who disappeared when he was 14. Five years later. he enrolled at the prestigious West Point military academy where he got into trouble for illicit drinking. He refused to resign and was court martialled and 'sent to Coventry'. He endured nine months of this punishment before resigning. He then enrolled in the University of Alabama and, more by accident than design, started studying psychology. He was found spending the night in the girls' dormitory and expelled which meant he lost his draft deferment. 

He enlisted in the anti-aircraft artillery but had his hearing damaged as a result which prevented him being sent into combat. He completed his psychology degree before his discharge, moved to California (Sept 1946) and enrolled as a doctoral psychology student at Berkeley. He rose quickly and smoothly through the ranks and became director of the Kaiser Foundation Hospital (1954) and published nearly 50 papers in psychology journals. His meisterwork 'Interpersonal Diagnosis of Personality'  - a method of categorising patients  based on their personality types - was highly praised and considered essential reading.

Leary married Marianne (12 April 1944) and they had two children (Susan and Jack). Cracks in their marriage, Leary took a mistress named Delsey and Marianne took her own life the day before Leary's 35th birthday (Oct 21st 1955). Leary married Delsey, honeymooned in Mexico, traveled to Spain and was divorced shortly afterwards. In Spain his whole life seemed to be falling apart and then he got so ill that he thought he was dying. Letting go of all his worries remarkably led to a full recovery, an experience Leary considered spiritual.
Shortly afterwards he was offered a job at the Harvard Center for Personality Research.

Here he met Richard Alpert and other like-minded souls and they discussed recent reports about 'magic mushrooms' with extraordinary properties. In August 1960, Leary and colleague traveled to Cuernavaca in Mexico where he ate psilocybin mushrooms for the first time. The slight change to the chemistry of his brain had altered his entire world. It was a pivotal moment in his life. He decided to dedicate his life to understanding the psychedelic experience.

On his return he set up the Harvard Psychedelic Research project. obtained a supply of psilocybin in the form of pink tablets from Sandoz Labs in Switzerland and wrote a proposal for 'A Study of Clinical Reactions to Psilocybin  Administered in supportive Environments'. A happy coincidence was that the 66-year old Aldous Huxley, author of 'Brave New World' was a visiting lecturer at nearby MIT and was happy to advise on the project. He considered Leary to be the ideal 'front man'' to explain the importance of psychedelics. He also introduced Leary to Dr Humphrey Osmond, the British psychologist who'd coined the word 'psychedelic' and used mescalin to treat alcoholics in Canada.       

Leary began by running psychedelic sessions with Beat writers, Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady, William Burroughs and poet Allen Ginsberg, who was an enthusiastic convert. Ginsberg first took it with Peter Orlovsky at Leary's house in 1960. This profound experience made him realise it was time to start a 'love and peace movement'.

Leary and Alpert set up a programme  to work with inmates in the Massachusetts prison system. The results appeared to show that recidivism rates amongst prisoners who had undergone psilocybin therapy had dropped from 70% to 10 percent. They also conducted similar experiments at Harvard Divinity School in order to compare the psychedelic experience with "true" religious ecstasy. 

In November 1961, Dr Leary was introduced to LSD. He wrote later that it was the most shattering experience of his life. The rest is history. LSD became illegal in 1966 and Leary  was described by Nixon as 'the most dangerous man in the world.

Leary's most famous soundbite came when he was one of the main star speakers at the legendary Human Be-In in Golden Gate Park (14th January 1967). he told the assembled crowd of 20,000: "The only way out is in, Tune in, turn on and drop out! Of high school, junior executive, senior executive. And follow me! The hard way!' 

Source: Timothy Leary Archives

[Interestingly, Wikipedia quotes a 1988 interview by Neil Strauss as the source for the fact that this quote was "given to him" when he had lunch with Marshall McLuhan at the Plaza Hotel in New York (Spring 1966). Higgs discusses their meeting but does not mention this. Rather he says McLuhan advised Leary to become a living advertisement for the positive benefits of the drug and that this could best be done by using one of Tim's greatest assets - 'his infectious smile.'
A third version about the friendship between the two men is found in an article by Leary's archivist Michael Horovitz that was published on Boing Boing in June 2014:

'Leary wrote: “The conversation with Marshall McLuhan got me thinking [that] the successful philosophers were also advertisers who could sell their new models to large numbers of others, thus converting thought to action, mind to matter.”'Inspired by McLuhan, Leary took LSD and devoted several days to creating a slogan. He claims he was in the shower when he came up with “Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out.” ]

After declaring his candidacy for governor of California in 1970, Leary was arrested on marijuana possession and received a decade-long jail sentence. After several months inside, he managed to escape from prison with help from the Weather Underground, financed by The Brotherhood of Eternal Love.

He made it  first to Algeria, where he hung out with Eldridge Cleaver of the Black Panthers, then Switzerland and then Afghanistan, where the DEA caught up with him in 1973 and brought him back to face American justice. He was eventual pardoned by Governor Jerry Brown in April 1976.

Amongst the many issues, campaigns and ideas that Leary embraced in later life was interstellar travel. Appropriate then that after he died (May 31st 1996), his ashes were sent into space in a Pegasus rocket (April 21st 1997) along with the ashes of Star Trek creator Gene Rodenberry, space colony pioneer Gerard K. O'Neill and the rocket scientist Krafft Ehricke. It orbited the Earth once every 96 minutes for just over five years before re-entry on May 20th 2002.

The last word rests with Hunter S. Thompson, he said of Leary: "Tim was a Chieftain. He stomped on the terra, and he left his elegant hoof-prints on all our lives,"


See: http://jmrhiggs.blogspot.co.uk/

FELIX DENNIS: A TRIBUTE

The first (and probably not the last) biography of Felix Dennis has recently been published. As a long-time friend of Felix's I approached it with trepidation and a sense of relief that I hadn't been asked to do the job. 

Right up front let's say 'Hat's off' to Fergus Byrne for producing such a readable and professional piece of work that traces an ultimate rags to riches story of a unruly intelligent unstoppable boy/teenager who first sought fame and fortune as a beat band drummer, became nationally notorious as one of the Oz Three and went on build a magazine empire that earnt a bone fide fortune (£520 million plus). 

In his later years he indulged in a number of other passions, becoming a best-selling poet and author, an important patron of portrait bronzes (a legacy contained in his remarkable 'Garden of Heroes and Villains') and one of the greatest British tree planters - a modern-day John Evelyn. His vision of planting an entirely new forest in the centre of Britain - the Heart of England Forest - is already being realised. Before his untimely death in June 2014, he planted the one millionth tree. Another 11 million will follow, a process funded partly by charitable donations but mainly by all the profits from Dennis Publishing and whatever other income is gained from the dispersal of his estate. For this alone, we are all in his debt. 

The obituaries and editorial coverage following his death highlighted his well-known predilection for sex with multiple female partners and his well-publicised addiction to crack cocaine -  amongst other substances. Byrne does not shy away from this and his account makes uncomfortable reading as Felix's happy-go-lucky sex romps become more controlling and deameaning. His ability to 'pick up' women was noticeable from his teen years onwards when he was already oversexed with the gift of the gab and the energy of a rutting goat. 

Without indulging in cod psychology, Byrne gives us enough information about his childhood years and his battling relationship with his very strong and strict mother ( who died 17 days after him) to make his behaviour at least understandable if not excusable. Abandoned by his father at the age of four, he prematurely became the man of the house. In a memorable quote, his younger brother Julian says he was always aware that his brother was  different: 

'It was almost like from day one he was on a mission. He'd have a faraway look in his eye and always be skirting the edges, looking for something that was completely different, that other people wouldn't do or wouldn't say or wouldn't see.' 

*

From Left: Felix, Ralph Steadman & Will Self at a Groucho Club charity auction event. May 1999

As someone who, like many others from the underground press of the 1970s, worked for Felix and knew him, off and on, throughout the years, I want to take this opportunity to add some of my stories to the historical record and pay a       personal tribute to a dear friend and a generous patron, who encouraged me, gave me tremendous opportunities and saved my sorry ass on numerous occasions. 

Felix liked me I think partly because I was a good listener and I was no competition as I had absolutely no ambition to be rich and own and control the world. Underneath the bluster, the unbearable shouting at people, Felix was of course still dealing with his demons against which his only defense was his poems. I never thought he enjoyed his wealth. His natural acumen at making money was truly a mixed blessing.

I think we connected partly because my dad died when I was nine. I also had a difficult Mum (bless her). He was rarely interested in what I was doing and that was fine. I loved hearing of his exploits and behind-the-scenes gossip. Much of our hanging-out time was spent catching up on the current status of all our other mutual friends from the old underground. Mick Farren's death saddened him badly I know. 

I don't know how our friendship began but as some stage in the proceedings, when Felix was working with OZ and before the busts and the trial, we would meet on a semi-regular basis at a caff in Tottenham Court Road, have capuccino and cheesecake and then head over to the arcades in Leicester Square where we played pinball for a couple of hours. Felix loved pinball as I did. Having cut my teeth at 'The Goldmine' and 'The Viking' in Worthing, working the flippers in the company of pilled-up Mods I was good, Felix was also flash and we both worked hard to win. 

When Felix set up Bunch Books in Goodge Street at the end of the 70s we were all signed up to do stuff. It was the time of the poster mag. First came 'TV ScFi Monthly', edited by Mick which had a lot of fancy artwork alongside stories on a wide range of moves and tv series. Remember writing a feature on the Bionic Woman on an old sit-up-and-beg manual typewriter. 

Then 'Star Wars Monthly' arrived and we were really in business. We produced some 20 issues and Felix flew me out to Hollywood twice to do a 64pp newsstand special magazine on The Making of The Empire Strikes Back'. You can read my adventures here: 

Following on from this we did some poster mags on Indiana Jones and another newsstand special on the 'Making of Indiana Jones & The Temple of Doom'. I met and interviewed Spielberg (for the 2nd time) and many of the key players and makers including Kate Capshaw (Spielberg's future wife), the Costume Designer, the Cinematographer (who had shot the Ealing Comedy 'Kind Hearts &Coronets') and many others. 

Then there was a long gap. The occasional meet, the odd drunken party before the pre-Millennium period by which time I had reached the end of my tether and resources. I wrote to Felix and asked for his help. It was something like a 4pm appointment in his office in Kingly Street. I went to Golden Square and had a coffee just before and I knew that whatever Felix suggested I was going to have to do By the time I was ushered into his office the sky had turned inky black and loud thunderclaps boomed across Regent Street like bomb blasts. Felix came straight to the point. "I've got two jobs for you". There was massive lightning strike right over the building. Then a pause. I want you to edit 'Tree News' magazine and catalog The Oz Archive. That was the next five years of my life. 

Another five-year stretch leading up his death, revolved around the production of a beautiful illustrated book on 'The Garden of Heroes and Villains'. A second edition followed which, in the end contained more than 50 larger-than-life bronze figures from some 30 different sculptors.  A last memorial supplement documented the final pieces he'd commissioned including a large bronze figure of himself, wearing an old flying jacket inscribed with some of his poems. 

*

A great strength of Byrne's book to my mind lies in his account of Felix's final years, not so much the material on the poetry tours but his medical condition and the sufferings he had to go through. I was on the mailing list for to receive a number of letters from Felix in which he described in grim detail the stages of treatment he was going through and its results. I thank him for persuading me to give up smoking (three years now). I know we've all got to die but I thought I'd try and avoid his way. He did recover from the throat cancer due to prompt treatment but in the end the lung cancer got him. 

This force of nature was a figure Shakespeare would have revelled in, a dangerous hybrid of Felix the Cat and Dennis the Menace. A man who seemed to stride the world, to have experienced sexual and financial extremes, drug addiction and high-flying adrenaline-riven business pressures at the highest level, who had several close-calls with the Reaper and spent his last years pumping out poetry and planting trees. He has left a legacy of memories in the minds of so many. Bombastic and domineering, he had a wonderful laugh and, buried deep, the sweet and fragile nature of a damaged child. 

Byrne pctures him wandering round Mandalay, one of two houses he owned on Mustique, fingering and gazing at the many treasures and objects he owned, like a character from Greek tragedy. He lost his voice and his battle for life in the end but his spirit and nature are captured in his verse and encoded in his vision of a new Forest of Arden. I can hear his voice now, shouting: 'Wendy.Where's my tea' and 'John, just bloody well get on with it.' I miss him  a lot.