In this month's Resonance 104.4fm show, Juliet talks to writers Sam Byers and Carl Neville about how they tried to represent 21st century Britain in their novels Perfidious Albion and Come Join Our Disease (Byers) and Resolution Way and Eminent Domain (Neville), and the concept of the 'state of the nation' novel. They talked about the challenges of writing in a time of rapid political flux, the need for such novels to capture a particular time and place, how the internet has affected ideas of the universal and the specific in literature, patriotic and dissident approaches to the genre, and how much it has been the preserve of straight white men.

For a full list of references, as well as an extra subscriber-only episode about how novelists might respond to the rise and fall of Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party, please subscribe at https://www.patreon.com/suite212 for as little as £1 per month.

Suite (212) - series 3

State of the Nation: Capturing 21st Century Britain in Literature

In the wake of the coronavirus epidemic and shutting down of much of the UK's cultural life, we have decided to bring you a series of interviews with contemporary artists, writers, filmmakers and other cultural figures, conducted via Skype (so apologies for the diminished audio quality), about their practices, the political issues that inspire them and the socio-economic conditions that have shaped their work.

In the nineteenth of these Sessions, Juliet talks to Belgian artist, filmmaker and writer Anne-Mie Van Kerckhoven about her recent retrospective in Berlin and its relationship to a work by Situationist theorist Raoul Vaneigem; her contribution to a group exhibition on the early 21st century, responding to Paul Van Ostaijen's epic poem Occupied City (1922); and her ongoing interests in feminism, the female body and technology.

The Suite (212) Sessions

The Suite (212) Sessions, no. 19 - Anne-Mie Van Kerckhoven

In this month's Resonance 104.4fm show, Juliet talks to academics Owen Holland (University College London) and Bertrand Taithe (University of Manchester) about how writers responded to the Commune of Paris of 1871, both during its two-month existence from March to May 1871, and over the following decades. They talk about the print culture and intellectual circles that existed in Paris and France at the time; how writers such as Gustave Flaubert, Victor Hugo, Arthur Rimbaud, George Sand and Émile Zola reacted to the Commune at the time, and throughout the rest of the 19th century; how British authors responded in the 1880s, and how this shaped the mythology of the Commune; and how this interest in the Commune's memory became less the concern of literary writers and more of political theorists in the early 20th century.

For a full list of references in this month's show, please subscribe at https://www.patreon.com/suite212 for as little as £1 per month.

Pilgrims of Hope: Writers and the Paris Commune of 1871

In this month’s Resonance 104.4fm show, former co-host Tom Overton returns to interview Suite (212)’s founder, Juliet Jacques, about Variations, her new collection of stories that tells a potted history of trans and non-binary people in the United Kingdom from the Victorian era to the present, published by Influx Press on 17 June 2021.

They talk about how Juliet moved on from her ‘Transgender Journey’ series for the Guardian and her memoir, Trans, that came out of it in 2015; why she chose to write Variations as short stories rather than as a novel, or a more straightforward British trans history, or make it as a film; the different forms she uses in each story, and her research processes; how postmodern approaches have intersected with prejudice to make the compilation of trans histories more difficult; how Variations looks at trans people’s complex relationships with industrialisation, law, sexology and media, as well as literature, music and film; the context of a British – and global – backlash against trans visibility and rights as she wrote the book; the absence of trans authors and authentic trans characters from literary history, the influences on her work and the uses of trans writers telling trans stories; and what Juliet might write next.

Pre-order Variations for £9.99 from the Influx Press website at https://www.influxpress.com/variations.

For a full list of references, subscribe to Suite (212) on Patreon for as little as £1 per month via https://www.patreon.com/suite212.

Variations: An interview with Juliet Jacques

In this month's Resonance 104.4fm show, Juliet talks to poetry, editor and academic Golnoosh Nour about the life and work of Iranian poet, writer and filmmaker Forough Farrokhzad (1935-67). Featuring plenty of readings from Farrokhzad's work (in the original Farsi and English translation by Sholeh Wolpé), Juliet and Golnoosh talk about Farrokhzad's early life and emergence on the post-war Iranian poetry scene, how her erotic feminist poetry scandalised the literary establishment, and her interest in traditional Persian literature. They discuss her only film, the short documentary The House is Black (1962) about a leper colony in Tabriz, northwest Iran; her relationship with filmmaker Ebrahim Golestan; and her influence on later Iranian filmmakers. Finally, they talk about Farrokhzad's enduring legacy in Iran despite her work being banned after the Islamic Revolution of 1979, and her influence on Golnoosh's poetry.

Rebellion: The life and work of Forough Farrokhzad

Now unlocked, this subscriber-only bonus episode came about because Juliet enjoyed talking so much to Sam Byers and Carl Neville about the 'state of the nation' novel for our monthly Resonance 104.4m show that they decided to keep going. They expanded on the question of what literature about Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party might look like, and how both the defeat and the intensification of neoliberalism might shape the form and content of British literature throughout the 2020s.

For a full list of references with links, please subscribe for as little as £1 per month via https://www.patreon.com/suite212.

Suite (212) Extra

EXTRA: Literature about and after Corbyn's Labour [unlocked]

In this month's Resonance 104.4fm show, Juliet talks to poets Ed Luker (based in London) and Nat Raha (based in Edinburgh) about the state of poetry, publishing and funding in 21st century Britain. She asks Ed and Nat to share their poetry and their influences, discussing the Cambridge school of poets around J. H. Prynne and their studies at Sussex with Keston Sutherland. They discuss the divides between 'big' and 'small' presses and what sort of work(s) they publish, and the flaws of the 'underground' vs. 'mainstream' binary; the relationship between contemporary poetry and new currents in feminist and socialist politics; funding models for poets and publishers; and how new left-wing media might work with sympathetic poets.

For a full list of references from the show, please subscribe to our Patreon for as little as £1 per month, via https://www.patreon.com/suite212.

Suite (212) - series 4

Poetry and Politics in 21st Century Britain

In this month's Resonance 104.4fm show, Juliet talks to playwright and screenwriter Trevor Griffiths, born in Manchester in 1935, about his life in writing for stage and screen since the late 1960s. Although Griffiths wrote the scripts for Warren Beatty's Reds (1981) and Ken Loach's Fatherland (1986), this interview focused on his plays Occupations (1970) and Comedians (1975), his TV series Bill Brand (ITV, 1976), his BBC TV film Food for Ravens (1997) and his play A New World, staged at Shakespeare's Globe in 2009.

A full list of references for this episode is available to Patreon subscribers for as little as £1 per month. You can subscribe at https://www.patreon.com/suite212.

These are the Times: An interview with Trevor Griffiths

In this month's Resonance 104.4fm, Juliet spoke to London-based artists, writers, musicians, curators and teachers Pil and Galia Kollectiv about their practice, the art world's reaction to Covid-19 and the state of British higher education, especially in arts universities. They talked about Pil & Galia's Immigrants exhibition (2018), their short films, their bands WE and UrBororo, their background in Israel and their writing for the music press, and more.

A full list of references from this episode is available to Patreon subscribers. To sign up for as little as £1 per month, visit patreon.com/suite-212.

We: An interview with Pil & Galia Kollectiv

For Suite (212)'s final edition, host Juliet Jacques talks to writer/editor Owen Hatherley (Tribune and elsewhere) and Fatema Ahmed, acting editor of Apollo, about the current state of British cultural criticism and what the next few years might have in store. They discuss the reasons for stopping Suite (212) and the changing cultural climate between and after the General Elections of 2017 and 2019, and what's happened to the Labour Party; the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic; state funding, the media and the BBC; and what the left might focus on when thinking about the arts and culture.

The End: Politics, culture and criticism in the UK in the 2020s

Following from December 2021’s Resonance 104.4fm show on the cultural impact of the HIV/AIDS pandemic with James Butler and Sarah Schulman, Juliet talks to writer Huw Lemmey about Channel 4’s landmark miniseries 'It’s a Sin'. Written by Russell T. Davies and broadcast across January and February 2021, 'It’s a Sin' follows a group of friends who meet on London’s gay scene in September 1981, just as the first British cases are being diagnosed, and charts the impact of HIV/AIDS on their sex lives, relationships, families, friendships and careers over the following decade. In this subscriber-only episode on the miniseries, Juliet and Huw talk about the conservatism of British television and their reluctance to commission it; critical reactions to the show, and call-backs to the 1980s ‘moral panic’ about homosexuality; Davies’ skill in writing for television; how the programme looks at the personal impact of HIV/AIDS, and its portrayal of LGBT activism and its relationship with wider British politics; and how 'It’s a Sin' is ultimately a show about care, and how it represents models of queer (and straight) kinship.

EXTRA: It's a Sin [unlocked]

One hundred years after the Russian Revolution, the intellectual and ideological nature of the art and culture produced between October 1917 and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 remained hotly debated and, at times, poorly understood. Here, Juliet Jacques welcomes writer/critics Maria Chehonadskih, Owen Hatherley (author of Militant Modernism (2009), Landscapes of Communism (2015) and The Chaplin Machine (2016)) and Ilia Rogatchevski to discuss the cultural legacy of the Soviet period and challenge Western preconceptions about the relationship between art and politics in the former USSR, from the Constructivist energy of the 1920s and imposition of Socialist Realism under Stalin, all the way through to the underground art movements of the 1980s.

WORKS REFERENCED:

Maria Chehonadskih on Pussy Riot – https://www.radicalphilosophy.com/commentary/what-is-pussy-riots-idea
Adam Curtis on Vladislav Surkov - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Od4MWs7qTr8

SERGEI M. EISENSTEIN, Aleksandr Nevsky (1938)
SERGEI M. EISENSTEIN, Ivan the Terrible (Parts I & II) (1944-1958)
SERGEI M. EISENSTEIN, October (Ten Days That Shook the World) (1928)
EVALD ILYENKOV (Soviet theorist) - https://www.marxists.org/archive/ilyenkov/
ILYA & EMILIA KABAKOV (Moscow Conceptual School) - https://ilya-emilia-kabakov.com/
VITALI KOMAR (Sots Art founder) - http://www.komarandmelamid.org/
MIKHAIL LIFSHITZ(Soviet philosopher) - https://thecharnelhouse.org/2014/12/15/art-is-dead-long-live-art-mikhail-lifshitz-on-karl-marxs-philosophy-of-art/
EDUARD LIMONOV (National Bolshevik Party)
CHRIS MARKER, The Last Bolshevik (1993) - https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/film-happiness-is-making-a-bolshevik-laugh-1459870.html
VLADIMIR MAYAKOVSKY, '150,000,000' (1919-1920) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/150_000_000
VLADIMIR MAYAKOVSKY, The Bathhouse (1929) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bathhouse
VLADIMIR MAYAKOVSKY, The Bedbug (1928) - http://snoowilson.co.uk/The%20Bedbug.pdf
ALEKSANDR MEDVEDKIN (Soviet filmmaker) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Medvedkin
Deimantas Narkevičius (Lithuanian filmmaker/artist)
YURI OLESHA, Envy (1927) - https://godsavethetsar.wordpress.com/2015/08/04/dont-laugh-andrei-petrovich-yuri-oleshas-envy/
VIKTOR PELEVIN (Russian author)
BORIS PILNYAK, The Naked Year (1928) - http://www.overlookpress.com/ardis/naked-year-1.html
ANDREI PLATONOV, The Foundation Pit (1930) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Foundation_Pit
ABRAM ROOM, Bed and Sofa (1927) - http://www.calvertjournal.com/articles/show/1339/film-club-sofa-and-bed-abram-room
VLADIMIR SOROKIN (Russian author)
VLADIMIR TATLIN, Letatlin – http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-birdlike-soviet-flying-machine-that-never-quite-took-off
VLADIMIR TATLIN, 'Monument to the Third International' (1919-1920, unbuilt)
DZIGA VERTOV, The Eleventh Year (1928) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSve8HNjZ4Y
DZIGA VERTOV, Enthusiasm: Symphony of the Donbass (1930) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUInm2dC6Ug
DZIGA VERTOV, Kino-Pravda (1920s) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0SJyLX9MgQ
DZIGA VERTOV, Man with a Movie Camera (1929)
DZIGA VERTOV, Stride, Soviet! (1926) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILG1_ceQCzE
DZIGA VERTOV, Three Songs of Lenin (1934) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x66SYdygrpE
VOINA, phallus on Liteiny Bridge, St. Petersburg - https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2011/apr/12/voina-art-terrorism

Memories of the Future: The cultural legacy of the Russian Revolution

American writer, publisher and filmmaker Chris Kraus joins Juliet to talk about the difficulties of experimental filmmaking, her work with Semiotext(e)'s Native Agents series, critical responses to her work on Kathy Acker and the pressures of mainstream success.

WORKS REFERENCED:

Works by Chris Kraus

Books
CHRIS KRAUS, I Love Dick (1997)
CHRIS KRAUS, Aliens and Anorexia (2000)
CHRIS KRAUS, Torpor (2006)
CHRIS KRAUS, Summer of Hate (2012)

CHRIS KRAUS, L.A. Artland: Contemporary Art from Los Angeles (2005)
CHRIS KRAUS, Video Green: Los Angeles Art and the Triumph of Nothingness (2004)
CHRIS KRAUS, Where Art Belongs (2011)
CHRIS KRAUS, After Kathy Acker (2017)

Films
In Order to Pass (1982)
Terrorists in Love (1985)
Foolproof Illusion (1986)
How to Shoot a Crime (1987)
Gravity & Grace (1996)

Other works
PENNY ARCADE, Bad Reputation: Performances, Essays, Interviews (2009) - http://semiotexte.com/?page_id=213
Bruce Benderson - http://semiotexte.com/?page_id=188
BERNADETTE CORPORATION, Reena Spaulings - http://semiotexte.com/?page_id=26
ALBERT CAMUS, L'Étranger (The Outsider) (1942)
CHARLES DICKENS, Bleak House (1852-53) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleak_House
Marguerite Duras
Justin Fashanu - https://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/lifestyle/2012/05/justin-fashanu-and-politics-memory
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, L'Éducation sentimentale (Sentimental Education) (1869) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentimental_Education
Emily Gould
Pierre Guyotat - http://semiotexte.com/?page_id=51
RAYNER HEPPENSTALL, The Connecting Door (1962) - http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/the-connecting-door/
SHEILA HETI, How Should Be a Person Be? - http://www.sheilaheti.com/how-should-a-person-be/
Michel Houellebecq
I Love Dick (TV series)
Gary Indiana
THE INVISIBLE COMMITTEE, The Coming Insurrection (2007) - http://semiotexte.com/?page_id=135
Glenn Beck talks about 'The Coming Insurrection' - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EY7Yvd3cuY0
CHRISTOPHER ISHERWOOD, Goodbye to Berlin (1939)
LARS IYER, Spurious (2011), Dogma (2012) & Exodus (2013) - http://spurious.typepad.com/
JULIET JACQUES, Trans: A Memoir (2015) - https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/dec/06/juliet-jacques-trans-a-memoir
JULIET JACQUES, You Will Be Free (2017) - http://www.studiovoltaire.org/exhibitions/archive/juliet-jacques/
B. S. JOHNSON, Trawl (1966) - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2336211.Trawl
Franz Kafka
Wyndham Lewis
Sylvère Lotringer
COOKIE MUELLER, Walking Through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/302243.Walking_Through_Clear_Water_in_a_Pool_Painted_Black
COOKIE MUELLER & VITTORIO SCARPATI, Putti's Pudding (1989)
Alain Robbe-Grillet
NATHALIE SARRAUTE, 'The Age of Suspicion' - http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1964/03/05/nathalie-sarraute/
Claude Simon
MICHAEL SNOW, Wavelength (1967) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBOzOVLxbCE
LINDA STUPART, 'Chris Kraus and the Empathetic Exchange of Objects' in MIRA MATTAR (ed.), You Must Make Your Death Public: A Collection of Texts and Media in the Works of Chris Kraus - http://www.metamute.org/sites/www.metamute.org/files/You-Must-Make-Your-Death-Public-Chris-Kraus-9781906496647.pdf 
Lynne Tillman - http://semiotexte.com/?page_id=162
JEAN-PHILIPPE TOUSSAINT, Self-Portrait Abroad
Transparent (TV series)
MASHA TUPITSYN, Beauty Talk & Monsters (2007) - http://semiotexte.com/?page_id=163
Jackie Wang
DAVID WOJNAROWICZ, A Definitive History of Five or Six Years on the Lower East Side (1991) - http://semiotexte.com/?page_id=168
Kate Zambreno

Where Art Belongs: An interview with Chris Kraus

The General Election of June 2017, and the massive Labour surge under Jeremy Corbyn's socialist leadership, has provided a new sense of optimism for those hoping for an end to utilitarian approaches to culture and swingeing cuts to arts funding. This month, Juliet talks to Loraine Leeson, Hassan Mahamdallie and Hilary Wainwright about the concept of cultural democracy, the recent The World Transformed conference and the Arts for Labour initiative. What are Jeremy Corbyn's arts policies, and how are they informed by the anti-austerity movement? What has been learned from the Greater London Council's arts programmes of the 1980s, or the Attlee government's cultural policies? How did writers and thinkers such as William Morris, E.P. Thompson and Raymond Williams establish a long British tradition of 'cultural democracy', and what can we take from them in the 21st century?

WORKS REFERENCED:

Campaign to save The Cinema Museum: www.cinemamuseum.org.uk

'A Creative Future for All' - https://www.policyforum.labour.org.uk/news/a-creative-future-for-all
The Great Exhibition of the North - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tyne-43324069

The Gay Sweatshop Theatre Company - http://www.unfinishedhistories.com/history/companies/gay-sweatshop/
LORAINE LEESON, Art : Process : Change (2017) - https://www.routledge.com/Art--Process--Change-Inside-a-Socially-Situated-Practice/Leeson/p/book/9781138670631
KEN LOACH, The Spirit of '45 (2017) - http://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/sight-sound-magazine/reviews-recommendations/film-week-spirit-45
HASSAN MAHAMDALLIE on William Morris - https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/isj2/1996/isj2-071/mahamdallie.htm
WILLIAM MORRIS, News from Nowhere (1890) - https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/from-the-archive-blog/2011/may/17/guardian190-william-morris-news-from-nowhere
HILARY WAINWRIGHT, A New Politics from the Left (2017) - https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/persuasive-points-on-new-politics-from-the-left

Cultural Democracy

Juliet talks to Owen Hatherley (author of 'Militant Modernism', 'A Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain', 'Landscapes of Communism' and many other books) and David Stubbs (formerly of Melody Maker, and a writer on '1996 and the End of History' as well as Krautrock and electronic music) about the life and work of Mark E. Smith, who sadly died last month.

They discuss The Fall in the context of post-industrial Manchester, the post-punk scene, a changing (and ever less intelligent) music press, modernist literature and pop culture, and think about the group's legacy.

WORKS REFERENCED
LoneLady - Hinterland (2015) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6W6w8fQauwg
Julie Campbell on Mark E. Smith - http://lonelady.co.uk/blog/rip-mark-e-smith-5th-march-1957-24th-january-2018/

The Fall discography: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fall_discography

Mark E. Smith reads the football scores - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBUiPs1PxKo
'I feel like Alan Minter' graffiti - https://rollerderbyonfilm.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/i-feel-like-alan-minter.html
1970s graffiti - https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/feb/03/the-writing-on-the-wall-1970s-pioneers-of-british-graffiti

J. G. Ballard
William Blake
Thomas Carlyle - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Carlyle
Michael Clark
C86 (NME compilation tape, 1986)
Philip K. Dick
FRIEDRICH ENGELS, The Condition of the Working Class in England (1845) - https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/condition-working-class-england.pdf
Gang of Four, 'Entertainment!' (LP, 1979)
Antonio Gramsci
George Grosz
Wyndham Lewis
H. P. Lovecraft
FILIPPO TOMMASO MARINETTI, 'The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism' (1909)
The Passage, 'Troops Out' (7", 1981) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXBTFNE7qr0
Ezra Pound
SIMON REYNOLDS, Rip it Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978-84 (2005)
Sex Pistols, 'God Save the Queen' (7", 1977)
DAVE SIMPSON, The Fallen (2008)
MARK E. SMITH, Renegade (2008)
Talking Heads, Remain in Light (LP, 1980)

Prole Art Threat: The Fall, post-punk and popular modernism

Leonora Carrington (1917-2011) was one of the last surviving members of the Surrealist movement, and one of the most singular figures in English modernism. A writer, painter and sculptor, who moved from an English country house to Mexico City, via Paris and New York, Carrington’s life spanned incredible political changes and numerous cultural movements, yet her interests and style remained consistent across the different fields in which she worked.

This week, Juliet talks to Mexican novelist and critic Chloe Aridjis about her personal and creative relationship with Carrington, as well as Carrington’s life and work, and its influence on Josh Appignanesi’s new film Female Human Animal, in which Chloe and Juliet both appear.

WORKS REFERENCED

WORKS BY LEONORA CARRINGTON
The Debutante and Other Stories (2017) - https://www.silverpress.org/the-debutante-and-other-stories/
Down Below (1943) - https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-strange-irreverent-worlds-of-down-below-and-the-complete-stories-of-leonora-carrington/
The Hearing Trumpet (1974) - https://vulpeslibris.wordpress.com/2016/07/20/surreal-old-people-leonora-carringtons-the-hearing-trumpet/

Tate Liverpool exhibition (2015)

CHLOE ARIDJIS, Book of Clouds (2009), Asunder (2013) and Sea Monsters (2019) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chloe_Aridjis
Homero Aridjis - https://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?owner_id=13
André Breton
Claude Cahun
Robert Capa - https://www.picturecorrect.com/tips/the-mexican-suitcase-a-fascinating-chapter-in-the-history-of-photography/
LEWIS CARROLL, Jabberwocky (1871)
Ithell Colquhoun - http://www.ithellcolquhoun.co.uk/
Salvador Dalí
HUGH SYKES DAVIES, Petron (1935) - http://jacketmagazine.com/20/hsd-watson.html
Toni Del Renzio - https://www.theguardian.com/news/2007/jan/18/guardianobituaries.artsobituaries
Eisenstein in Guanajuato (dir. Peter Greenaway, 2015)
Max Ernst, ‘Two Children Menaced by Nightingale’
Female Human Animal (dir. Josh Appignanesi, 2018) - http://film.britishcouncil.org/female-human-animal
DAVID GASCOYNE, Man’s Life is This Meat (1936) - http://www.bookride.com/2012/08/mans-life-is-this-meat.html
DAVID GASCOYNE, A Short Survey of Surrealism (1935) - https://www.theguardian.com/books/2000/dec/02/poetry
Ernő Goldfinger
Peggy Guggenheim
ALDOUS HUXLEY, Eyeless in Gaza (1936)
International Surrealist Exhibition (Burlington Galleries, 1936)
Edward James - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04y9gsw
Humphrey Jennings & Charles Madge - http://jacketmagazine.com/20/meng-jen-madg.html
The Kabala
Frida Kahlo
Edward Lear
E.L.T. Mesens - https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/e-l-t-mesens-1624
Violette Nozières - http://unrealisedfutures.tumblr.com/post/162742317295/e-l-t-mesens-violette-nozieres
Octavio Paz
Benjamin Péret - https://www.atlaspress.co.uk/index.cgi?action=view_backlist&number=2
Beatrix Potter
Gisèle Prassinos - https://www.nationalgalleries.org/art-and-artists/43480/gis%C3%A8le-prassinos-reading-her-poems-surrealists
¡Que Viva México! (dir. Sergei Eisenstein, 1932)
HERBERT READ, Surrealism (1936)
Diego Rivera
Mary Shelley
Dylan Thomas
Marina Warner - https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/apr/06/leonora-carrington-from-high-society-to-surrealism-in-praise-of-100-years-on
Imre Weisz

A Mexican Fairy Tale: The life and work of Leonora Carrington

Despite decades of censorship and neglect, Peter Watkins (http://pwatkins.mnsi.net/) has created a body of work that marks him out as one of the UK’s greatest filmmakers. Born in Surrey in 1935, Watkins began his career pioneering the ‘docu-drama’ in two works for the BBC: historical drama Culloden (1964) about the final battle in the Jacobite rebellion, and The War Game (1965), speculating about a nuclear attack on the UK. The BBC refused to broadcast the latter, and after his feature film Privilege (1968) had a poor commercial and critical reception, Watkins spent the rest of his career in exile.

In his theoretical writing, teaching and filmmaking, Watkins has challenged the ‘monoform’ – a standardisation of Mass Audio-Visual Media that barrages its audience with a rapid flow of changing images and sounds, with the intention of preventing any real contemplation. Joining Juliet to discuss Watkins' work is Gareth Evans, former editor of Vertigo magazine and adjunct Moving Image Curator at Whitechapel Gallery.

Watkins on the monoform and the global media crisis: https://www.closeupfilmcentre.com/library/documents/the-dark-side-of-the-moon-the-global-media-crisis/

SELECTED REFERENCES

FILMS BY PETER WATKINS
The Forgotten Faces (1960) - https://player.bfi.org.uk/subscription/film/watch-the-forgotten-faces-1961-online
Culloden (1964) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkxW-nB0nNU
The War Game (1965) - https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p02zy7nt/the-war-game
Privilege (1966) - https://player.bfi.org.uk/rentals/film/watch-privilege-1967-online
The Gladiators (1969) - https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/the-gladiators
Punishment Park (1971) - https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2005/jul/08/4
Edvard Munch (1974) - https://www.filmcomment.com/blog/art-of-the-real-edvard-munch-by-peter-watkins/
The Journey (1987) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xsYLt9bSRbw
The Freethinker (1992-94) - http://seul-le-cinema.blogspot.com/2012/01/freethinker.html
La Commune (2000) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZ1S18jsyyw

WILLIAM BLAKE, ‘Jerusalem’
Blowup (dir. Michelangelo Antonioni, 1966)
BERTOLT BRECHT, The Days of the Commune (1955) - http://daysofthecommune.com/pages/play.html
A Clockwork Orange (dir. Stanley Kubrick, 1971)
GUY DEBORD, ATTILA KOTÁNYI & RAOUL VANEIGEM, ‘Thesis on the Paris Commune’ (1962) – http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/Pariscommune.htm
End of Days (dir. Peter Hyams, 1999)
Future Revolutions: New Perspectives on Peter Watkins (2018) - https://wolfberlin.org/en/wolf-shop/book-new-perspective-on-peter-watkins-future-revolutions
If … (dir. Lindsay Anderson, 1968)
It Happened Here (dir. Kevin Brownlow & Andrew Mollo, 1965) - https://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/news-bfi/interviews/it-happened-here-kevin-brownlow
Jubilee (dir. Derek Jarman, 1978)
V. I. LENIN, ‘Lessons of the Commune’ (1911) – https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1908/mar/23.htm
The Living Dead (dir. Adam Curtis, 1995) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xoM6-1SWl4
Manfred Mann
KARL MARX, ‘The Civil War in France’ (1871) – https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/index.htm
Ralph Miliband - https://www.marxists.org/archive/miliband/index.htm
The New Babylon (dir. Grigori Kozintsev & Leonid Trauberg, 1929) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyOhcTuFYe0
O Lucky Man! (dir. Lindsay Anderson, 1973)
Stanisław Przybyszewski - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanisław_Przybyszewski
Role of a Lifetime (dir. Deimantas Narkevičius, 2003) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69EREtDfYoM
August Strindberg
Threads (dir. Mick Jackson, 1984)
West of the Tracks (dir. Wang Bing, 2002) - https://theartsofslowcinema.com/2017/05/16/west-of-the-tracks-wang-bing-2003/
Who is America? (TV series, 2018)
ÉMILE ZOLA, La Débâcle (1892) - https://readingzola.wordpress.com/2014/01/14/la-debacle-the-downfall/

Peter Watkins: Filmmaking against the global media crisis

Best known as a poet in his native Lithuania, Jonas Mekas (1922-2019) became a titan of US underground cinema after moving to New York in 1949. This week, Juliet talks to filmmaker/artist Chiara Ambrosio and curator/critic Herb Shellenberger about Mekas' life, work and legacy.

SELECTED REFERENCES

Films by Jonas Mekas
Film Magazine of the Arts (1963) - http://film-makerscoop.com/catalogue/jonas-mekas-film-magazine-of-the-arts
Walden: Diaries, Notes and Sketches (1969) - https://www.slantmagazine.com/dvd/diaries-notes-and-sketches-also-known-as-walden
Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania (1972) - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0069172
Lost Lost Lost (1976) - https://vimeo.com/217911753
Self-Portrait (1980)
The Education of Sebastian or Egypt Regained (1992) - https://vimeo.com/40317134
Zefiro Torna (1992) - http://retentionalfinitude.blogspot.com/2010/05/jonas-mekas-zefiro-torna-1992.html
As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty (2000) - https://variety.com/2001/film/reviews/as-i-was-moving-ahead-occasionally-i-saw-brief-glimpses-of-beauty-1200467427 
A Letter from Greenpoint (2005)- https://vimeo.com/229569417
Paris Hilton (2007) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3i8VBich1k

Texts by Jonas Mekas
Anti-100 Years of Cinema - http://www.incite-online.net/jonasmekas.html
Conversations with Filmmakers (2018) - https://www.itsnicethat.com/articles/conversations-with-filmmakers-bremer-and-storz-publication-171018
I Had Nowhere to Go (1991) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9GWqYqPbew
I Seem to Live (2019) - http://jonasmekasfilms.com/books/index.php?book=I_seem_to_live
Scrapbook of the Sixties (2010)

2002 (dir. C. Spencer Yeh, 2015) - https://issueprojectroom.org/event/c-spencer-yeh-video
Robert Aldrich
Kenneth Anger - https://www.kennethanger.org/
Anthology Film Archives - http://anthologyfilmarchives.org/
Stan Brakhage - http://www.ubu.com/papers/tyler_parker-stan_brakhage.html
Bread and Puppet Theater - http://breadandpuppet.org/about-bread-and-puppet/other-links/peter-schumann
James Broughton
Un Chant d'amour (dir. Jean Genet, 1950) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RN_IDtPcNE
Shirley Clarke - http://www.projectshirley.com
Tony Conrad - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Conrad
Maya Deren - https://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/news-bfi/features/maya-deren-meshes-of-the-afternoon
Film Culture (journal) - http://www.ubu.com/papers/film_culture.html
Film Culture 80: The Legend of Barbara Rubin - http://www.artbook.com/9783959052023.html
Flaming Creatures (dir. Jack Smith, 1963) - http://sensesofcinema.com/2002/cteq/flaming/
For Life, Against the War (dir. various, 1967) - http://flahertyseminar.org/life-against-war
Allen Ginsberg
Beverly Grant - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beverly_Grant_(actress)
Ken Jacobs - https://vimeo.com/kenjacobs
Peter Kubelka - https://offscreen.com/view/interview_kubelka
Jim Kweskin & The Jug Band - https://www.discogs.com/artist/1013031-Jim-Kweskin-The-Jug-Band
Jacques-Henri Lartigue - https://thephotographersgallery.org.uk/print-sales/our-artists/jacques-henri-lartigue
George Maciunas - http://georgemaciunas.com/about
Gregory Markopoulos - https://www.closeupfilmcentre.com/film_programmes/2018/gregory-markopoulos
Marie Menken - https://lightcone.org/en/filmmaker-220-marie-menken
Hermann Nitsch - http://www.nitsch.org/index-en.html
Pull My Daisy (dir. Robert Frank & Alfred Leslie, 1959) - https://vimeo.com/92403607
Nicholas Ray
Ron Rice - https://www.villagevoice.com/2018/08/23/the-shooting-star-cinema-of-ron-rice/
Shadows (dir. John Cassavetes, 1959) - http://people.bu.edu/rcarney/cassoncass/shadows.shtml
Shoah (dir. Claude Lanzmann, 1985)
P. Adams Sitney
Susan Sontag
Stranger Than Paradise (dir. Jim Jarmusch, 1984)
Thanatopsis (dir. Em Emshwiller, 1962) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcVAPnFf20Y
HENRY DAVID THOREAU, Walden 1854)
Amos Vogel - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amos_Vogel
Andy Warhol
Walt Whitman

Scenes from the Life of Jonas Mekas

Since his violent death in 1975, Pier Paolo Pasolini remains internationally renowned as a filmmaker, but less known as a poet, journalist, critic and activist outside his native Italy. This week, Juliet talks to Italian author Daniela Cascella about Pasolini’s varied artistic practice, the persecution he suffered as an outspoken leftist and openly gay man, and the context of post-fascist, post-war Italy.

SELECTED REFERENCES

WORKS BY PASOLINI

Articles
‘I Know’ (1974) - https://overland.org.au/2012/03/what-is-this-coup-detat-i-know/

Novels
Hustlers (1955)
A Violent Life (1959)
Petrolio (1992) – http://movies2.nytimes.com/books/97/03/23/reviews/970323.23eberstt.html

Films
Accattone (1961)
La Ricotta (1962) – http://www.alphavillejournal.com/Issue7/HTML/ArticleMurphy.html
The Gospel According to Matthew (1964) – https://www.lrb.co.uk/v35/n06/michael-wood/at-the-movies
Love Meetings (1965) – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_Meetings
Theorem (1968)
Medea (1969)
Porcile (Pigsty, 1969)
The Decameron (1971)
The Canterbury Tales (1972)
Arabian Nights (1974)
Salò: 120 Days of Sodom (1975) – https://mubi.com/notebook/posts/the-lost-pasolini-interview

Poems
‘Gramsci’s Ashes’ (1954) – https://gramsciintheworld.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/gramscis-ashes.pdf
‘The PCI to Young People’ (1968) – https://www.jacobinmag.com/2018/06/pier-paolo-pasolini-pci-communist-party

Bernardo Bertolucci
Maria Callas
ITALO CALVINO, Invisible Cities (1973) – https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-letters-of-italo-calvino-day-v
DANIELA CASCELLA, ‘Faint Signals’ - https://minorliteratures.com/2018/09/07/faint-signals-of-the-imaginal-and-the-aural-of-speaking-with-the-dead-and-their-books-for-impossible-writing-daniela-cascella/
Ernesto de Martino – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernesto_de_Martino
MARQUIS DE SADE, 120 Days of Sodom (1785) – https://www.odaha.com/sites/default/files/120_days_of_sodom.pdf
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY, Demons (1872) – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demons_(Dostoevsky_novel)
Death in Venice (dir. Luchino Visconti, 1971) – https://www.theguardian.com/film/2010/oct/20/death-venice-arthouse
DARIO FO, Accidental Death of an Anarchist (1970) – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TqKfwC70YZI
Fuori! (Turin gay collective)
Diamanda Galás, ‘Supplica a mia madre’ - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mh4D3Gxk_jk
André Gide
Jean-Luc Godard
Ugo Gregoretti
Jacques Lacan
Roberto Longhi – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roberto_Longhi
La Lotta Continua (publication) - https://bigflameuk.wordpress.com/2009/05/30/lotta-continua
MARIO MIELI, Elements of a Homosexual Critique – https://www.plutobooks.com/blog/mario-mieli-keep-treasure-in-my-arse
Marianne Moore
Alberto Moravia
Nights of Cabiria (dir. Federico Fellini, 1957) – https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0050783
Ezra Pound – http://www.openculture.com/2012/12/pier_paolo_pasolini_talks_and_reads_poetry_with_ezra_pound_1967_.html
Stefano Rodotà – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefano_Rodotà
RoGoPaG (various directors, 1963) – https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056171
Roberto Rossellini
Jean-Paul Sartre
August Strindberg
Giovanni Tiso – https://bat-bean-beam.blogspot.com
Lars von Trier
Wu Ming Foundation – https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/2719-the-police-vs-pasolini-pasolini-vs-the-police

Pier Paolo Pasolini: Renaissance Man

Brian Eno's huge back catalogue of work as a solo musician, band member and producer goes back decades, including high-profile work with Roxy Music, Talking Heads, David Bowie, John Cale and many others. He is often credited with inventing ambient music, but this conversation between Juliet and Brian does not talk about the past. Instead, we focused on how Brian has adapted to new music, new technology, and neoliberalism, and what responsibilities artists have to acknowledge and use their cultural capital.

SELECTED REFERENCES

Works by Brian Eno
Discreet Music (1975)
Ambient 1: Music for Airports (1978)
Spore (2008, video game soundtrack) - https://pitchfork.com/news/30187-brian-eno-makes-interactive-music-for-spore/
The Ship (2016) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pn1riJSHhkY
Reflection (2017) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dwo-tvmEKhk
Bloom (with Peter Chilvers) - http://www.generativemusic.com/bloom.html

Berlin Horse (dir. Malcolm Le Grice, 1970) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDj8Tc6259o
Gavin Bryars, 'The Sinking of the Titanic' (1975, LP) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2oVMRADOq5s
David Byrne & Brian Eno, 'My Life in the Bush of Ghosts' (1981, LP)
Anna Calvi
Client Earth - https://www.clientearth.org/people/eno-brian/
Richard Dawkins
DiEM25 - https://diem25.org/brian-eno-people-are-rethinking-what-democracy-means
Mark Fisher (k-punk), 'Precarity and Paternalism' - http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/011486.html
Forensic Architecture - https://www.forensic-architecture.org
gal-dem - http://gal-dem.com
PAOLO GERBAUDO, The Digital Party (2019) - https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745335797/the-digital-party/
Stuart Hall
Harmonia & Eno '76 - https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/20947-complete-works
Jon Hopkins
Long Now Foundation - http://longnow.org/seminars/02003/nov/14/the-long-now/
Lowly, 'Baglæns' (2018, song) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9ydgJenbQA
Henri Matisse
Media Reform Coalition - https://www.mediareform.org.uk/
Tom Rogerson, 'Finding Shore' (2017, LP) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxWMlK31Mpw
Alexei Sayle
Superflux - http://superflux.in
Raymond Williams
Liv Wynter - https://i-d.vice.com/en_uk/article/pamn9v/hero-of-the-week-liv-wynter-who-resigned-as-tate-artist-in-residence

Suite (212) - series 2

An interview with Brian Eno

This week, Lara Alonso Corona talks to Culture.PL editor and Stories from the Eastern West podcast presenter Adam Żuławski about his grandfather Jerzy Żuławski’s science fiction series The Lunar Trilogy and On the Silver Globe, the film adaptation directed by another family member, Andrzej Żuławski and first shown in 1988, and showing in London as part of Kinoteka – the London Polish Film Festival. They also discuss many of Andrzej Żuławski’s other films, the Young Poland modernist movement, and the challenges of making cinema in Communist Poland.

SELECTED REFERENCES

Blinded by the Lights (TV series, 2018) – https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6520930/
Boris Godunov (dir. Sergei Bondarchuk, 1986) – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boris_Godunov_(1986_film)
Braindead (dir. Peter Jackson, 1992) – https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103873/
Cosmos (dir. Andrzej Żuławski, 2015) – http://cinema-scope.com/cinema-scope-online/bleurghing-the-unspeakable-a-stroll-through-andrzej-zulawskis-cosmos/
DAVIES, GLIŃSKI & ŻUŁAWSKI, Quarks, Elephants & Pierogi: Poland in 100 Words (2019) – https://culture.pl/en/work/quarks-elephants-pierogi-poland-in-100-words-mikolaj-glinski-matthew-davis-adam-zulawski
Philip K. Dick
Hard to be a God (dir. Aleksei German, 2013) – https://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/sight-sound-magazine/reviews-recommendations/review-hard-be-god
FRANK HERBERT, Dune (1965) – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dune_(novel)
Stanisław Lem – https://culture.pl/en/artist/stanislaw-lem
Bronisław Malinowski – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bronisław_Malinowski
On the Silver Globe (dir. Andrzej Żuławski, 1988) – https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/on-the-silver-globe-2016
Possession (dir. Andrzej Żuławski, 1981) – https://www.timeout.com/london/film/possession-1981
Solaris (dir. Andrei Tarkovsky, 1971)
Stories from the Eastern West (podcast) – https://culture.pl/en/stories-from-the-eastern-west
Jules Verne
H. G. Wells
STANISŁAW WYSPIAŃSKI, The Wedding (1901) – https://culture.pl/en/artist/stanislaw-wyspianski
Young Poland – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Poland
JERZY ŻUŁAWSKI, The Lunar Trilogy (1901-11) – http://translatingmarek.com/the-moon-landings-and-the-prophecies-of-jerzy-zulawski-polands-hg-wells-1969

On the Silver Globe: The Zulawski family and Polish science fiction

The 1970s were a fertile time for feminist film, producing not just a huge body of women's work - including Chantal Akerman's seminal 1975 film Jeanne Dielman - but also a corpus of journals and criticism. This week, Tom Overton talks to Daniella Shreir, editor of Another Gaze (http://www.anothergaze.com/) about the need for such publications and the history of feminist film criticism, as well as the work of Chantal Akerman, whose memoir Daniella has translated for Silver Press (https://www.silverpress.org/).

SELECTED REFERENCES
Marina Abramović
Chantal Akerman – https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2015/october/on-chantal-akerman
Dorothy Allen-Pickard - https://www.dorothyallenpickard.com
Melissa Anderson - http://www.bkmag.com/2016/09/19/brooklyn-100-melissa-anderson-film-critic/
Erika Balsom - http://www.erikabalsom.com
Grace Barber-Plentie - https://www.bfi.org.uk/people/grace-barber-plentie
Camera Obscura (journal) - https://www.dukeupress.edu/camera-obscura
Cléo (film journal) - http://cleojournal.com
Marguerite Duras - https://www.filmcomment.com/blog/the-films-of-marguerite-duras
Annie Ernaux - https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/apr/06/annie-ernaux-interview-the-years-memoir-man-booker-international
Sandy Flitterman-Lewis - https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/author/flitterman-lewis-sandy
Sheila Heti - https://soundcloud.com/suite-212/resonance-fm-suite-212-18th-june-2018
Molly Haskell - http://www.mollyhaskell.com
Jeanne Dielman, 23, Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (dir. Chantal Akerman, 1975) - http://www.anothergaze.com/radical-banality-chantal-akerman-labour-in-cinema-and-legacy-may-68
Christian Lacroix (fashion designer)
Babette Mangolte - http://babettemangolte.org
Jonas Mekas - https://soundcloud.com/suite-212/scenes-from-the-life-of-jonas-mekas
Frances Morgan
Laura Mulvey - http://www.screenonline.org.uk/people/id/566978/
Eileen Myles - https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/eileen-myles
No Home Movie (dir. Chantal Akerman, 2015) - https://theartsofslowcinema.com/2017/10/02/no-home-movie-chantal-akerman-2015
Ulrike Ottinger - https://www.ulrikeottinger.com/index.php/home.670.html
Griselda Pollock - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griselda_Pollock
Sally Potter - https://sallypotter.com
Sarah Schulman - https://topsidepress.tumblr.com/post/130731976949/chantal-akermanon-suicide-by-sarah-schulman
Delphine Seyrig - https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0786891
Agnès Varda - https://www.anothergaze.com/after-agnes-varda-obituary-memorial-discussion-sandy-flitterman-lewis-kiva-reardon-lauren-elkin-as-hamrah-grace-barber-plentie-samia-labidi-jenny-chamarette-sheila-heti
A Very Curious Girl (dir. Nelly Kaplan, 1969) - https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/10/movies/a-very-curious-girl-restoration.html

Another Gaze: Feminist filmmaking and the work of Chantal Akerman

This week on Suite (212), Tom Overton talks to author Shiromi Pinto about her second novel, Plastic Emotions (https://www.influxpress.com/plastic-emotions), recently published by Influx Press, inspired by the life of 20th century Sri Lankan architect and feminist icon Minnette de Silva (1918-1998).

SELECTED REFERENCES
Shiromi Pinto: http://www.christopherlittle.net/authors/shiromi-pinto/
Minnette de Silva: https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/dec/14/minnette-de-silva-the-brilliant-female-architect-forgotten-by-history

Geoffrey Bawa: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoffrey_Bawa
Henri Cartier-Bresson
Le Corbusier: https://www.wiley.com/en-gb/Le+Corbusier:+Architect+and+Feminist-p-9780470847473
David Lean
Pablo Picasso

Plastic Emotions: An interview with Shiromi Pinto

In the wake of the coronavirus epidemic and shutting down of much of the UK's cultural life, we have decided to bring you a series of interviews with contemporary artists, writers, filmmakers and other cultural figures, conducted via Skype (so apologies for the diminished audio quality), about their practices, the political issues that inspire them and the socio-economic conditions that have shaped their work.

In the third of these Sessions, Juliet talks to London-based writer Owen Hatherley, editor of Tribune magazine’s culture section, about the blogging circle in which he began writing in the mid-2000s; his experiences of writing about politics and culture in broadsheet newspapers and magazines; the appalling state of the British media and the venal, unserious nature of many of its contributors; the relationship between arts and culture writing and the British left, including the Labour Party, and how culture can continue to be politically useful to a socialist project.

A full list of references for the programme, with links, can be found via our Patreon at www.patreon.com/suite212, and are available to $3 subscribers.

The Suite (212) Sessions, no. 3 - Owen Hatherley

In the wake of the coronavirus epidemic and shutting down of much of the UK's cultural life, we have decided to bring you a series of interviews with contemporary artists, writers, filmmakers and other cultural figures, conducted via Skype (so apologies for the diminished audio quality), about their practices, the political issues that inspire them and the socio-economic conditions that have shaped their work.

In the fourteenth of these Sessions, Juliet talks to English conceptual, video and installation artist Jeremy Deller, who was born in London in 1966. They discussed Deller’s documentary Everybody in the Place: An Incomplete History of Britain 1984-1992 (2019), commissioned by Frieze and shown on BBC Four; ideas around collective joy and acid communism, as well as young people’s access to culture and the music heritage industry; his film with Nick Abrahams about Depeche Mode fans; his Battle of Orgreave (2001), which recreated a pivotal confrontation during the miners’ strike of 1984-85, and helped Deller to win the Turner Prize in 2004; Deller’s poster campaigns for the 2017 General Election and in support of immigrants during the Covid-19 crisis; and what the culture and higher education sectors might look like in the wake of the pandemic.

A full list of references for the programme, with links, can be found via our Patreon at www.patreon.com/suite212, and are available to $3 subscribers.

The Suite (212) Sessions, no. 14 - Jeremy Deller

In the wake of the coronavirus epidemic and shutting down of much of the UK's cultural life, we have decided to bring you a series of interviews with contemporary artists, writers, filmmakers and other cultural figures, conducted via Skype (so apologies for the diminished audio quality), about their practices, the political issues that inspire them and the socio-economic conditions that have shaped their work.

In the seventeenth of these Sessions, Juliet talks to London-based visual artist and teacher Oreet Ashery. Born in Jerusalem in 1966 and educated at Sheffield Hallam University and Central Saint Martins, Oreet Ashery is a transdisciplinary artist who engages with biopolitical fiction, autoethnography, gender materiality and potential communities, making large-scale projects that span moving image, performance, music, writing and activism. Here, Ashery discusses her new text ‘We’ve been preparing for this our whole lives’ in respond to the Covid-19 outbreak; her recent film Dying Under Your Eyes (2019), commissioned by the Wellcome Collection for the Misbehaving Bodies exhibition that combined Ashery’s work with that of British artist Jo Spence (1934-1992); her Jarman Award-winning series Revisiting Genesis (2015-16) and its themes around death, dying and the digital; her Party for Freedom (2013), made in response to the rise of Dutch far-right politician Geert Wilders, and The World is Flooding (2014), based on a play by Vladimir Mayakovsky; and the implications of the widespread adoption of digital technology during lockdown for the art world and especially the art school.

A full list of references for the programme, with links, can be found via our Patreon at www.patreon.com/suite212, and are available to $3 subscribers.

The Suite (212) Sessions, no. 17 - Oreet Ashery

Established in 1965, the Greater London Council hosted one of the United Kingdom’s most radical experiments in cultural policy after Ken Livingstone and the Labour left took control of it in 1981. This month, Juliet talks to academic Hazel Atashroo and Red Metropolis author Owen Hatherley about the entrance of the “post-1968 generation” into the GLC, and their approach to the arts: their interest in cultural democracy and challenging the Arts Council’s model of centralised funding; the Ethnic Arts and Community Arts sub-committees, and their critics; their use of post-punk aesthetics and their hip hop festival; their engagement with the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and other radical movements. They discuss the reasons for the GLC’s abolition in 1986, the media campaign against “the Loony Left” and Thatcher’s assault on local authorities; its influence on New Labour’s cultural policies and foundation of the Greater London Assembly in 2000; and what can be learned from the GLC’s approach to the arts in the 21st century.

Cultural Capital: The Greater London Council's arts policies, 1981-86

Tying in with World AIDS Day, December 2020's Resonance 104.4fm programme is about the cultural response to HIV/AIDS in the UK and USA, first identified in both countries in 1981. Juliet talks to Novara Media co-founder James Butler and writer, historian and journalist Sarah Schulman about the emergence of the virus and the response from right-wing governments, activist movements and radical artists, as well as the long-term impact on queer culture and lifestyles. They discussed works by Tony Kushner, David Wojnarowicz, Larry Kramer, Rosa von Praunheim, Gran Fury and many others.

A full list of references, with links, is available to subscribers - please visit https://www.patreon.com/suite212 to sign up.

Silence = Death: The Cultural Impact of the AIDS Crisis

This month’s episode, coinciding with Holocaust Remembrance Day 2021, looks at the specific role that documentary film played in recording, relaying and representing the horrors of the genocide. Juliet talks to Dr Libby Saxton, Reader in Film Studies at Queen Mary University of London, about how the Nazis coerced directors into making propaganda films at Terezin and Westerbork to show the concentration camps in a positive light; the importance of newsreels in exposing the atrocities at the end of World War II; how filmmakers moved from short-form to long-form documentary, and why it took years for such films to focus specifically on anti-Semitism and Jewish suffering; the importance of testimony from survivors, perpetrators and witnesses in the epic films The Sorrow and the Pity (1969) and Shoah (1985), and the limits that Claude Lanzmann placed on representation of the extermination camps; the complicity of cinema in the Holocaust; and what future documentaries, and visual culture, of the Holocaust might look like as the last of the survivors die out.

For a full list of references with links, please subscribe to Suite (212) at https://www.patreon.com/suite212. Our theme music is 'Aus' by Fennesz.

Documentary Film and the Holocaust

In this month's Resonance 104.4fm show, made available a day early for our Patreon subscribers, Juliet talks to Dr Samba Gadjigo, author of a biography on the subject and co-director of the feature-length documentary Sembène! (2015), about the life and work of Senegalese writer and filmmaker Ousmane Sembène (1923-2007). They talk about the place of Senegal within the French empire, Sembène's upbringing in French West Africa and his political and literary awakening in post-war Marseille, his film training in the USSR and cinematic work in post-independence Senegal, his relationship with President (and poet/cultural theorist) Léopold S. Senghor, and his place within Senegalese, African and global cinema.

A full list of references is available for our Patreon subscribers - please visit https://www.patreon.com/suite212 to sign up.

Ousmane Sembène: 'The Father of African Cinema'

This is a preview of our Patreon-only episode about Ousmane Sembène & Thierno Faty Sow's historical drama Camp de Thiaroye (1987), about the mutiny of French West African troops at a transit camp in Dakar and their subsequent massacre by French forces on 1 December 1944, following on from this month's Resonance 104.4fm programme.

Here, Juliet talks to Dr Samba Gadjigo, co-director of Sembène! (2015) and biographer of the writer/filmmaker, as well as Helen Day Gould Professor of French at the Mount Holyoake University in Massachusetts, about one of Sembème's greatest works. They discuss how closely it was based on the actual events and on Sembène's experiences; controversies around the film's content, commission and funding; its relationship with the history of colonialism and African independence movements; its reception in Senegal and France; its importance in the cultural memory of the massacre; and more.

To hear the entire episode, please subscribe at www.patreon.com/suite212.

PREVIEW: Ousmane Sembène's Camp de Thiaroye (1987)

Suite (212) is a radio programme, broadcast on Resonance 104.4fm, and podcast that explores the arts in their social, political, cultural and historical contexts, hosted by Juliet Jacques. We take an inter-disciplinary approach, with an emphasis on innovative, underground or avant-garde work. Sometimes, panels discuss cultural politics; sometimes, we focus on a new publication or exhibition, or a specific individual or group whose work we admire.

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