XXRAXX: Hour Zero

Photo's reproduced with kind permission from Vicky Trueman

XXNKX2507XX: Thank You Dad!

Do you think the others will make it long enough to write about us?
 
What ultimately began as a need for an exterior meditation on the murder of 909 congregation members quickly unravelled and spiralled into an exercise of pushing against a deluge of exterior forces to remember the dead.

We did not set out to recreate a massacre, rewrite history or change a spiritual framework.  We believed and still do in the idea of Jim Jones.

If it only worked for a day then it was all worthwhile...

The three day process solved many problems, and the one hour showing created many more. The invocation of hardcore within the piece was present in the vest tops and x's on the back of both audience and performers hands but it became clear that a space with only three bodies, the images had to be passed through an interpretive lense.

There is a bleak tragedy in three twenty-somethings attempting to mosh alone in  the room, and strategies employed eventually manifested in the use of slings filled with flour that would create a controlled blunt force trauma and a bombastic impression on the space.

The vat, the vat...the vat, wheres the vat with the Green-C?

Throughout the entire Rage Actions process, beginning with Invoking Jonestown and taking in several research and development projects I have developed a relationship with the qualities of syrup and the duality of the substance. Whilst it is a sweet and infantile substance it also carries a legacy in its stickiness and all over inconvenience when contacted with the skin. The presence of its scent, volumised through contact with the skin and by proxy body heat fills a confined space and is at first a welcome reminder of child hood baking. This smell quickly neutralises, and dependent on who you speak to disappears or becomes rapidly sickly.

I have imbibed so much of the amber fluid that it now immediately starts to aggravate my gag reflex when tasting or smelling it.

For the purposes of Hour Zero the syrup worked to both block and disrupt the breathing of the performers within the space and as a means of bringing forth a tactile and sporadic expulsion, firstly going onto the floor and then accross the performers backs.

Are we not Black, proud and socialist? What are we?

The Reverend set out on what he would describe as a 'sociological experiment'. In much the same way, as the talks moved through the devising process and thinking about it afterwards the piece could be viewed as an exercise in Dyonisian ritual. The piece, for good or bad attempts to be ecstatic but the ante must be upped and the audience inculcated to move this forward; clear boundaries were put in place to protect the audience from the onslaught of of syrup and flour and were supposed to dissolve as the piece went on but unfortunately this did not occur.


I am speaking to you today, not as a leader...I am talking to you as a prophet...


The voice of Jim Jones acted as a welcome propellent, forcing the current trauma to end and offer a minutes break before the next started. Hour Zero could be seen as a process in psychic claustrophobia, egging the audience to constantly question their role as witness (and in turn martyr) and at some points encouraging them to exit. Again this exit could be seen as a psychological rather than a physical one; pushing out of the limus and looking at the piece as a series of endurance processes hanging off of a skewed dogma.

I have lost count of the number of times I have listened to the tape; the weak and almost resigned attempts to at least get a few more minutes of daylight and air before the foaming at the mouth and shutting down of the body occurs. That voice is not mine and in much the same way that documentary makers have acted it was warped to the company's needs; cut, pasted and used to invoke a quiet nightmare.

Mother, Mother, Mother, Mother please.

I feel no guilt about the how the piece ended, although ethically you could question the decision to despoil an audience contribution. A fall through occurred and the need to no longer fight the corruption but become it manifested in a dismissing and soiling of the congregations prayers. Personally, I feel this is as close to a reenactment as we would take the piece, the opened wound and the blood dripping from my forehead acting as a physical interpretation of the dissolving of all rationale and logical thought process.

I just want everybody to know...I been here nine months and I have never been happier in my life...You are the only...You are the only...

Thank you Dad!

XXNKXAHXCCVX2107XX: Day Two

XXNKXAHXCCVX1807XX: Day One

 

Photos Courtesy of Poppy Johnson

XXAHX0407XX : Group Dynamics : The Pack Falls

3 days holed up with kettlecoffeechemicals and the Velvet Underground. Wind billowing curtains, sweeping the day into night into day into night and we four became one, us against all else, making sense, understanding everything at once together.

3 days.

Then it was time to go out.

We stood in the doorway, the four of us, huddled against the alien outdoors, the lights flashing siren wails in our minds and the rumble of tyres vibrating in our fingers. We had been strengthened, we had no need for that world, those sounds, sights or people. 

But it was time to go out.  

We met up with faces that should have looked familiar, we felt strong enough to open our arms and welcome them in. We were met with blank faces, cold shoulders and increasing frustration. We had developed our own language, we moved as a pack, the wild within was our home, our terrain.

In this world of other people, our linked arms - a defiant barrier when we left the house - began to slacken, lose their grip. Doubt crept between us as we struggled to let the outside in. By the end of the night, we were in separate corners having broken conversations broken links broken sleep puncutated by the loud music and voicesvoicesvoices.

3 days. By the end of the fourth night, we were in separate corners.

It could never have lasted.

XXCCVX21/06XX

A long (sorry) account of some personal recollections of ‘mosh’.

While trying to recall the morsels of memories connected to moshing experiences in my racier days (before abandoning the scene) I remembered both liberating and frustrating feelings at the presence of a mosh scene.

I liked the physicality of a union amongst a group of people enjoying the same music. I like the music becoming the second importance in a moment- it is then we might hear it the most.

I am thinking first of my young self, gazing upon, what, at a push, would be referred to as a mosh scene. It was a Misfits gig, 1996 (or 7?), Leeds Uni -a promotional gig for American Psycho album. The pit was established but there was no one in it. The gigsters were dancing, tribal style in a circle, knees high and ploughing forward- ‘fun’, me thinks! Other gigs I attended at this time were occupied by those that were ‘flirtatious moshers’ (the younger ones who had found a new kick!). Men were pushing others out, throwing themselves in to the odd crowd surf and nodding and swaying their chests between proving they were ‘too cool for school’ in attempt of pulling the birds.

I indulged the odd knock, the ducking and diving in the empty gaps of air, the being helped to the stage, and the nervousness of throwing myself into a created pit. And, I fully indulged the post-mosh sensation; time having passed by speedily, beer soaked, sweat soaked (yours or theirs-who knows?) and ears ringing.

I appreciate those moments. They force you to break created inhibitions-so very important.

Though, after those years, even years after being heavily booted in the head, I felt this love for expression and shared insight to music had been some what boffed on (a notable memory of this at a Strapping Young Lad gig). All of a sudden you find yourself a battery hen, unable to move and wishing you were listening to the C.D at home.

Where did the freedom go? Even I, who disliked this situation, at moments found myself with a poppers headache rocking my neck back and forth.There is something to be said for stepping back and observing both stage and the moshers response to it, it adds a new dimension and pushes you further into your own purpose for your individual presence at that gig.

Back in time again to the Leeds Duchess toilets, over coming fatigue and a hurling episode I crawl to watch Police Bastard (I think). I liked gigs here because there was room to manoeuvre and so few people that the mosh quarter was like sharing a moment with new family…tho, so few people that those hard arse punks that purse there lips and waft an air of ‘fuck you I’m a better punk’ stuck out saw thumb and mile long. So did the more ‘humorous’ chicken moshers-the older, dressed up punks taking themselves far too seriously. Oh, wait, those are the hard arses. But it was the creating of a shared energy through mosh manoeuvring  in the room to do it that mattered.

At clubs I have seen moshers who: like to over-look the scene and pull people in and out of it, moshers who I would call ‘staple spine’- head in hands, thrusting and connecting with their knee joints every second beat, giving the appearance of a full mental breakdown, moshers who are like jelly – arms elasticised slapping people in the face, reserved moshers – chin in like an on-the-spot power walk, moshers who only work from the pelvis upwards and (this is my favourite) the ‘I’ve lost my contact lense’ mosher, bent down stiff legs straight back and the only thing that moves is their hair.

All these moshers aside I have my favourite mosher. He was a graceful mosher who I never saw in a pit (lucky for them) but I watched my friend in awe for years. Bow-legged, swinging torso, arms snaked reaching up as though calling upon some being higher than ourselves. He would face all directions making a track on the floor, a mesmerising mixture of sensuousness and abruptness, throwing his red dreads through the air and lifting his head to the ceiling. One of the most spiritual things I have encountered (and will never forget).

The concept of moshing un doubtfully has a different measure of meaning for different people; for some perhaps a tedious waste of time and a disruption to the music, for others maybe an important opportunity for making a point? releasing or creating aggression, a delightful bonus to a new group of friends?

To me, it is fundamentally an opportunity to ‘shut your eyes and go there’.

So, in the words of Ministry’s Al Jourgensen

Use the button, connect to the goddamn gods…let’s make a pledge should I listen to the voices in my head, who am I trying to impress? Who could care less?’

I must remember every now and then to go back to my roots…BLOODY ROOOOTS’

XXNKX1706XX: ....it is fucking dead.

....it is fucking dead! by user2148804