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Deposit guide Contact: email The Way Out Invisible Insurrections and Radical Imaginaries in the UK Underground 1961-1991 Kasper Opstrup Frederiksen PhD Humanities and Cultural Studies Birkbeck College University of London 1 Declaration of Authorship: I hereby declare that, except where explicit attribution is made, this thesis and the work presented in it is entirely my own. ________________________________________________ Kasper Opstrup Frederiksen 2 Abstract This thesis explores a 'hidden' cultural history of experiments to engineer culture to transform humanity. Through a mixture of ideas drawn from artistic avant-garde movements as well as new social and religious movements, it examines the radical political and hedonist imaginaries of the experimental fringes of the UK Underground. Even though the theatres of operation have changed more than once since 1991 with the rise of the internet and a globalised finance economy, these imaginaries still raise questions that speak directly to the contemporary. My central inquiry examines the relations between collective practices with an explicit agenda of cultural revolution and discourses of direct revolutionary action, cultural guerrilla warfare and patchwork spirituality, all aiming to generate new forms of social life. These expanded practices blurred the lines between inner and outer, the invisible and the material. Four singular concatenations of aesthetics, politics, education and mysticism in the period from 1961 to 1991 are the objects of my examination: the sigma project, London Anti-University, Academy 23 and thee Temple ov Psychick Youth. At the core of these imaginaries is an idea about a new type of 'action university', a communal affair which would improvise a new type of social relation into existence by de-programming and de-conditioning us without any blueprints for the future besides to 'make it happen'. The goal of its production would be to produce new subjectivities, new commons and new social relations, thus realising another world 'in the shell of the old' through simple acts of pooling resources, sharing knowledge and building international channels for the exchange of information. Instead of being turned upside down, the world was to be changed from the inside out. Besides historicising and contextualising parts of the 1960s underground which has been relegated to footnotes, the thesis promotes a reading which is neither solely aesthetic (artistic avant-garde) nor political (revolutionary communism) but argues that those tendencies are dependent upon each other. Instead, the case studies can be fruitfully examined as examples on cultural engineering, speculative techniques for igniting an invisible insurrection with cultural means. Thus, it contributes to a discussion of art, medias, politics and radical education in the contemporary. 3 Table of Contents Acknowledgements..............................................................................................................................................6 I. INTRODUCTION 1.1. Apocalyptic Futures of the Past............................................................................................................7 1.2. From Beyond....................................................................................................................................................22 1.3. The Constraint of Souls...........................................................................................................................30 II. THE SIGMA PROJECT 2.1. On the Ecstatic Edge..................................................................................................................................53 2.2. First Connective Points: Beat, Situationism and the 1960s.............................................59 2.3. Sigma – A Potted History.......................................................................................................................76 2.4. The Invisible Insurrection....................................................................................................................89 III. THE ANTI-UNIVERSITY OF LONDON 3.1. Society as a Madhouse............................................................................................................................103 3.2. The Anti-University..................................................................................................................................118 IV. THE POLITICS OF EXPERIENCE 4.1. Beyond Art and Politics..........................................................................................................................129 4.2. Lead, Follow or Get Out of the Way..............................................................................................139 4 4.3. Who Owns You?..........................................................................................................................................152 V: ACADEMY 23 5.1. 'Curse, Go Back!'..........................................................................................................................................157 5.2. Academy 23....................................................................................................................................................177 5.3. Wild Boys Always Shine.......................................................................................................................187 VI: THEE TEMPLE OV PSYCHICK YOUTH 6.1. Our Aim is Wakefulness, Our Enemy is Dreamless Sleep..........................................196 6.2. The Frequency of Truth........................................................................................................................222 6.3. The Wastelands of the Real vs the Kingdoms of the Occult.....................................228 6.4. When Nothing is True, Everything is Permitted................................................................235 VII: INVISIBLE INSURRECTIONS AND RADICAL IMAGINARIES 7.1. A Sinister Dream Factory.....................................................................................................................243 7.2. Across the Great Divide........................................................................................................................255 VIII: AFTERWORD 8.1. Conclusions...................................................................................................................................................262 List of Works Cited...........................................................................................................................................265 5 Acknowledgements I would like to thank my co-conspirators, supervisors and fellow London Consortiumites for intellectual and emotional support over the course of four years as well as friendship. I am indebted to the individuals who showed me press clippings and collections, opened their homes for me and allowed me to interview them. Special thanks to Barry Curtis, Esther Leslie, Stewart Home, Mikkel Bolt Rasmussen, Fabian Tompsett, John Eden, Joe Berke, Mark Pilkington, Tania Ørum, Jakob Jakobsen, Peter Davis, Matthew Levi Stevens, Maitreyi Maheshwari, Kathleen Pullum, Oisín Wall and Joanne Ahern. This work is dedicated to Ida, Aggi and Edgar. 6 I. INTRODUCTION I mean, brethren, the appointed time has grown very short; from now on, let those who have wives live as though they had none, and those who mourn as though they were not mourning, and those who rejoice as though they were not rejoicing, and those who buy as though they had no goods, and those who deal with the world as though they had no dealings with it. For the form of this world is passing away. - 1 Cor 7: 29-31 1.1. Apocalyptic Futures of the Past Will the rise of the internet realise the promises of communism? Or are we instead on the brink of living in a drowned world? Whether the future brings digital utopias or ecological disasters, the various hopes, fears and desires for a new age constitute a radical imaginary which is concerned with producing an unknown future perceived as a radical break with what came before. Simultaneously, this imaginary wants to produce a new type of wo/man to inhabit this unknown future. It is pre-occupied with living in if not the End Times then at least a post-apocalyptic wasteland where humanity ultimately is doomed. It is a resurfacing of the perennial popular belief that we are living at a time when humankind is in the midst of a great transformation, be it from the industrial to the digital or from the Age of Pisces to the Age of Aquarius. It is concerned with death but it is also concerned with survival. Thus, it poses the question: how should we live if we want to survive even though we probably are doomed? To the groups and collectives inspired by this imaginary,