Digital Event Type: Zoom Lecture

John Waters In Conversation With Viktor Wynd – Zoom Talk

John Waters in Conversation with Viktor Wynd

Please Note This is a Live Event and There Will be No Recording Available to Watch Later

John Waters has written and directed sixteen movies including Pink Flamingos, Polyester, Hairspray, Cry Baby, Serial Mom and A Dirty Shame. He is a photographer whose work has been shown in galleries all over the world and the author of nine books: Shock Value, Crackpot, Pink Flamingos and Other Trash, Hairspray, Female Trouble and Multiple Maniacs, and Art: A Sex Book (co-written with Bruce Hainley), Role Models, and Carsick. The gift book, Make Trouble, published by Algonquin Books in 2017, features the text, with illustrations, of Waters’ commencement speech delivered at the 2015 Rhode Island School of Design graduation ceremony and was subsequently released as an audio album in 7” single format by Third Man Records. Mr. Know-It –All, The Tarnished Wisdom of a Filth Elder, was published in May 2019.

John Waters is a member of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. Additionally, he is a past member of the boards of The Andy Warhol Foundation and Printed Matter, a former member of the Wexner Center International Arts Advisory Council, and was selected as a juror for the 2011 Venice Biennale. In 2017, Waters’ was honored when his “Study Art” series was selected to be featured at the Biennale in Venice. Mr. Waters also serves on the Board of Directors for the Maryland Film Festival and has been a key participant in the Provincetown International Film Festival since it began in 1999, the same year Waters was honored as the first recipient of PIFF’s “Filmmaker on the Edge” award. In September, 2014, Film Society of Lincoln Center honored John Waters’ fifty years in filmmaking with a 10-day celebration entitled “Fifty Years of John Waters: How Much Can You Take?” featuring a complete retrospective of his film work.

In 2015, Waters was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) and the same by the Maryland Institute College of Arts (MICA) in May 2016, as well as by School of Visual Arts (SVA) in 2020. In the Fall of 2015, the British Film Institute also honored John’s fifty-year contribution to cinema with their own program called “The Complete Films of John Waters…Every Goddam One of Them.” 2019 brought two more awards, the Locarno Film Festival Golden Leopard and the Thessaloniki International Film Festival Golden Alexander. The French Minister of Culture bestowed the rank of Officer in the Order of Arts and Letters to Mr. Waters in 2015. In February 2017, John Waters was honored with the Writers Guild of America, East’s Ian McLellan Hunter Award honoring his body of work as a writer in motion pictures. “Indecent Exposure”, a retrospective of Waters’ art was exhibited at the Baltimore Museum of Art from October, 2018, to January, 2019, and the Wexner Center for the Arts in, Columbus OH. John Waters was the face of the Saint Laurent fall 2020 menswear campaign, the year before that he was featured along with Olympic gold medalist Megan Rapinoe in the Nike x Olivia Kim commercial.

Photo – Greg Gorman

Transformation and Identity in Austin Osman Spare by Michael Staley by zoom

Transmitting the Sacred Fire:

Transformation and Identity in Austin Osman Spare

There is a fervent, compelling mystical and magical vision, first articulated in The Book of Pleasure and subsequently developed throughout his work, which burns at the heart of many of Spare’s drawings and paintings. In this illustrated talk, Michael Staley discusses Spare’s vision with particular reference to a number of pictures which communicate it especially clearly, whilst also drawing upon Spare’s written work and in particular on the mature writings of his from the late 1940s and the 1950s which were published many years later by Kenneth and Steffi Grant in Zos Speaks!

Michael Staley lives in north-west London, and has been immersed in Spare’s work for many years now. In 2011 he published two early bookworks by Spare as Two Grimoires, and is planning the future publication of a number of Spare’s sketchbooks from the 1950s. Michael has a life-long interest in the occult, and is particularly interested in how Spare’s work resonates with other mystical and magical traditions

Britain’s Pagan Heritage With Professor Ronald Hutton

Britain can claim to possess the richest and most diverse collection of physical remains left by pre-Christian religions in any part of Europe, including Celtic, Roman, Germanic and Scandinavian pantheons of goddesses and gods, with others from all over the Roman Empire, and five successive ages of outstanding prehistoric monuments. Ronald Hutton invites you to join him for an evening to be spent looking at these remains and posing the question of how far it is possible to recover the beliefs which inspired their creation. He will propose his own answer to this, and then considers the implications of it in two special case studies, of the most famous prehistoric monument in the world, Stonehenge, and the most carefully studied ancient human body to be found in Britain, the so-called Lindow Man. It will end by asking what the best relationship between professional archaeologists and historians specialising in the subject, and everybody else interested in it, might be in the new century.

Professor Ronald Hutton is a Professor of History at the University of Bristol. He is a leading authority on history of the British Isles in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, on ancient and medieval paganism and magic, and on the global context of witchcraft beliefs.

M.r. James Fireside Ghost Stories With Robert Lloyd Parry, Live On Zoom

“If any of my stories succeed in causing their readers to feel pleasantly uncomfortable when walking along a solitary road at nightfall, or sitting over a dying fire in the small hours, my purpose in writing them will have been attained…”

Montague Rhodes James (1862 – 1936) more than succeeded in this modest ambition. Over a century after their first publication, his Ghost Stories of an Antiquary remain the most admired supernatural tales in the English language. James first performed them to friends at Christmas in King’s College, Cambridge in the year up to WW1. Since 2005 Robert Lloyd Parry has sought to bring this tradition back to life.

In Canon Alberic’s Scrap-book, a young antiquary discovers the devil in the details of an old book in a medieval town in the French Pyrenees. The story lasts about 40 mins. Afterwards, if you are good, this will be followed up by a reading of a bonus shorter work by M R James.

Storyteller: Robert Lloyd Parry has travelled widely in the UK and USA with his candlelit M R James performances, which have been covered by The New Yorker, The Fortean Times, The Spectator, The Times, The Sunday Times, The Washington Post, The Daily Mail, The Guardian and The Morning Star. In 2014 he appeared as the author in Mark Gatiss’s BBC2 Documentary ‘M R James: Ghost Writer.’ For more details see www.nunkie.co.uk

The History Of Taxidermy By Dr. Pat Morris, Live On Zoom

This talk will review the history and development of taxidermy as a part of our social and natural history. It will search Europe to find the oldest existing stuffed animals, comment on the use of arsenic and review styles and methods used by the multitude of businesses, small and large, that operated in the 19th and early 20th century. It considers the customers, ranging from huntsmen to bird collectors and householders. A brief comparison is made with developments in American taxidermy. Bad taxidermy is contrasted with how professional taxidermists now strive to attain perfection in this field of artistic endeavour. Lots of different stories, to show that taxidermy has multiple dimensions. People shouldn’t hurry past the next time they see a stuffed animal, but stop and think “Hmm, that’s interesting…”

Licentious Worlds – Sexual Culture In Global Empires – Julie Peakman

Licentious Worlds is a history of sexual attitudes and behaviour through five hundred years of empire-building around the world. In a graphic and sometimes unsettling account, Julie Peakman examines colonization and the imperial experience putting women back in the picture, showing their role in the building of empires, but also how marginalized men and women were almost invariably exploited.

Women acted as negotiators, brothel-keepers, traders and peacekeepers, but they were also oppressed, forced into marriages and raped. The book describes daily life in Turkish harems, Mughal zenanas and Japanese geisha houses, as well as in royal palaces, private households and on board ships. The stories are drawn from many sources – from captains’ logs, missionary reports and cannibals’ memoirs to travellers’ letters, traders’ accounts and reports on prostitution. From debauched clerics and hog-sodomizing Pilgrims to sexually fluid cannibals and homosexual samurai, Licentious Worlds takes history where it has never been before.

 

Dr. Julie Peakman is a historian in eighteenth-century culture and an expert in the history of sexuality, erotica and pornography. She is Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and Honorary Fellow at Birkbeck College, University of London. She is a frequent contributor to journals, magazines and television documentaries for BBC, Channel 4 and the Biography Channel. Her books include Licentious Worlds. Sex & Exploitation in Global Empires; Amatory Pleasures, Exploration in Eighteenth-Century Sexual Culture (2016); The Pleasure’s All Mine. A History of Perverse Sex (2013); Lascivious Bodies: A Sexual History of the Eighteenth Century (2004) and Mighty Lewd Books: The Development of Pornography in Eighteenth-Century England (2003). She has also edited 6 Volumes of A Cultural History of Sexuality (2011); Sexual Perversions 1670-1890 (2009); and 8 Volumes of Whores Biographies, 1700-1825 (2006-7). She is also biographer of Peg Plunkett, Memoirs of a Whore (2014) and Emma Hamilton (2005)

The Origins & Rituals Of Absinthe: A Virtual Lecture & Tasting

Join Directors Allison Crawbuck & Rhys Everett for a virtual lecture as they explore the origins & rituals of absinthe.

Guests are invited to channel the notorious spirit of the Belle Époque. The event will begin with a virtual absinthe tasting and a look into how the mysterious spirit has been prepared for centuries. After everyone’s senses are well lubricated, the duo will explore tales of the absinthe’s tantalising past, from its origins as a cure-all elixir to a delightful aperitif, before eventually enduring a near century-long ban.

General admission includes a ticket to the virtual lecture. Guests are encouraged to have a glass of absinthe in hand during the event to bring the tales of this exquisite elixir to life.

Tasting sets of Devil’s Botany London Absinthe are available via: www.devilsbotany.com/shop.

Discount codes will be sent with your e-ticket for absinthe tasting sets or full 500ml bottles of Devil’s Botany London Absinthe.

Email [email protected] if you have any questions regarding this event.

Event is suitable for 18+ only.

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About the Hosts

Allison Crawbuck and Rhys Everett have always shared a passion for unearthing curious tales and rendering them in liquid form. The duo are co-owners of The Last Tuesday Society’s cocktail bar in East London, transforming Hackney’s best-kept secret into the city’s favourite absinthe and cocktail haunt. In 2019, it was voted the Best Bar in London at the 7th annual Design My Night Awards by a public vote of over 180,000 Londoners, and in 2020, their absinthe menu was shortlisted for Imbibe’s Specialist List of the Year.

In December 2020, Allison Crawbuck and Rhys Everett launched London’s first Absinthe distillery: Devil’s Botany located in the city’s east end. They are also authors of Spirits of the Otherworld: A Grimoire of Occult Cocktails & Drinking Rituals, published by Prestel/RandomHouse (Sep 2021 | ISBN 9783791387147).

In The Realm Of The Dark Rabbit: A Comic Lecture By David Bramwell

“A nude horse is a rude horse” ran the US campaign slogan for The Society for Indecency to Naked Animals in 1959. The group even picketed the White House, demanding that the Kennedys cover their horse’s private parts with trousers. For its founder, Alan Abel, the society was one of innumerable high-profile pranks at the expense of the media. A few years later he even convinced the media that his 83 year-old grandmother, Yetta Bronstein, was running for president, with policies that included ‘compulsory national bingo and mink coats for all’.

Abel was a classic trickster, the archetypal peddler of mischief whose cunning, deceit and mischief can be found in every culture across the globe.

Whether it’s Sascha Baron Cohen as Ali G, Bugs Bunny, Pussy Riot, Bart Simpson or even – arguably – Donald Trump, tricksters take the role of rule-breakers, subversives and catalysts for change. From email fraudsters to the antics of Banksy, they can confound and delight in equal measure. They are the gremlins in the works. What drives some people to con, deceive and pull pranks and hoaxes, often at considerable risk?

In this funny and fascinating talk, Dr Bramwell unveils the strange and mercurial world of the trickster, from archetypes of Wile E Coyote to real-life examples such as as Chris Morris, Bonsai Kittens and Boatie McBoatface.

But while tricksters change culture, is culture changing our relationship with the trickster? In our digital age has the trickster risen to become a new driving force in politics, culture and social networking? There are even new religions with trickster gods as their figureheads and using meme magic to spread political chaos. Are we living in a ‘golden age’ of trickery or a time in which unprecedented levels of deceit and cunning leave many of us wishing we could put the rabbit back into the hat?

Speaker: David Bramwell is a British writer, musician, performer and broadcaster. For BBC Radio 3 and Radio 4, he has made programmes on diverse subjects, including Ivor Cutler, clapping, time travel, and the murmurations of starlings. He is the founder and host of Brighton’s legendary spoken word night, the Catalyst Club.

These are extraordinary times and the plague has hit some harder than others, tickets are by donation – if you possibly can £10 is much appreciated, but £2 is also much appreciated. Thank you for your support.

Me and My Shadow: Sympathy with the Devil in Folk Tradition – Jeremy Harte

Making friends with the Devil may sound like a high-risk strategy, but the dark one couldend up being good company – at least for a while. Working together, he’d help his partner magician do good deeds, channel rivers and create new highways. It must be true, because you can still see the works of the Devil in the landscape to this day…

Just as often, however, the two unlikely companions would fall into competitive bickering, matching their strength in simple games and their wit in commercial bets – storytellers loved to create new ways in which an ingenious mortal could get one over on his uncanny friend.

How did rural tradition create these rollicking tales of toxic buddies out of the much darker lore of ceremonial magic? Hell threatens anyone who accepts the Devil’s favour, but this terrible threat is always wriggled out of by a trick condition, a clever wife, or a disintegrating strand of sand rope. Even at the very end, when relations are about to turn nasty, the folk magician finds a burial place that will save him from damnation. (Faustus, on the other hand, was not so lucky.)

The folk Devil is an inconsistent character – frightful and wicked, but also silly, combative, vengeful and vain. It seems that Devil lore was transformed by the English peasantry, an eschatologically insubordinate class who listened to everything preached at them by the holy and the learned, but only heard the parts that fitted their world view. This way of seeing things was much less fearsome than that of the occultists, and much more forgiving than that of the Church…

Jeremy Harte is a researcher into folklore and archaeology, with a particular interest in landscape legends and tales of encounters with other worlds. His book Cloven Country: The Devil and the English Landscape will be published by Reaktion at Halloween this year. Previous books include Explore Fairy Traditions, which won the Katharine Briggs award of the Folklore Society, Cuckoo Pounds and Singing Barrows, and The Green Man. In 2006 he was elected to the Committee of the Folklore Society and has subsequently organised the Society’s Legendary Weekends. Since the foundation of the journal Time & Mind, he has been Reviews Editor. He is curator of Bourne Hall Museum in Surrey.

Your host for this event will be the writer Edward Parnell, author of Ghostland: In Search of a Haunted Country. Edward Parnell lives in Norfolk and has an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia. He is the recipient of an Escalator Award from the National Centre for Writing and a Winston Churchill Travelling Fellowship. Ghostland (William Collins, 2019), a work of narrative non-fiction, is a moving exploration of what has haunted our writers and artists – as well as the author’s own haunted past; it was shortlisted for the PEN Ackerley 2020 prize, an award given to a literary autobiography of excellence. Edward’s first novel The Listeners (2014), won the Rethink New Novels Prize. For further info see: https://edwardparnell.com

[Image: A man in prison praying to the devil to have him released. Etching by D. Stoop. Credit: Wellcome Collection.]

Magic, Medicine, and the Body in Pre-Modern Europe with Dr. Alexander Cummins

The influence of the magical world – the astrological forces of the shifting starry heavens, the impact of both helpful and haunting wandering spirits, and the myriad of stray witchcrafts – upon our physical bodies has been a perennial concern throughout human history.

In this class, professional diviner, magician, and historian Dr Alexander Cummins will take us through the history and magic of melothesia: the practice of understanding occult influences – from the stars to restless spirits and everything in between – upon the human body.

Such a study begins with the infamous “Zodiacal Man” diagrams so popular throughout Western magic, medicine, and astrology: that were used to chart the underlying causes as well as symptoms of various maladies, distempers, and dysfunctions. These maps of an “occulted anatomy” also provided schema for establishing therapeutic treatments and regimen, and even informed works of magical protection and prevention as well as cure.

Such a class aims to not only celebrate enchantment and magical ways of viewing the body, but also the actual anatomisation of occult philosophy and sorcerous activity themselves. That is to say, not only how magic could be located in the body, but how the body could inform and enrich our engagements with the spirits and sorceries of the world.