New BPC Title: King Mob: The Negation and Transcendence of Art (illustrated).
By Dave and Stuart Wise
Available as a paperback (£9.99) or an ebook (£4.99) from Amazon
Twin brothers David and Stuart Wise, as art students in mid-1960s Newcastle, immersed themselves in the radical ideas of Icteric (‘the often confusedly anti-art magazine’). The Wises participated in the saving and restoration of Kurt Schwitters’ Lakeland Merz Barn, and organised a controversial commemoration of the Russian Futurist, Kazimir Malevich. The documents in this book, written over a 50-year period, describe these and subsequent efforts by the Wises to subvert the ‘recuperation’ of ‘art’ into the capitalist culture industry. In reflection on their engagements with like-minded radicals – the English and French Situationists, New York’s Black Mask collective, the London-based King Mob, and more recent formations – the authors consider how and why the Revolution ‘due to unforeseen circumstances’ did not take place. They also analyze the recuperation of radical aesthetic ideas in the works of latter-day chancers like Damian Hirst and Banksy.
Contents
Introduction by David Black
1– New York 1967: King Mob and Black Mask
2 – King Mob at Selfridges, December 1968
3 – The 1970 Situationist Reorientation Debate … and the ‘Never Work’(ing) Workers…
4 – Nietzsche, Wagner and the Theatricalisation of MusiC Stewart Wise
5 – Kurt Schwitters’ Barn: A Tale of Two Cities
6 – Malevich in the 21st Century The Square as Recuperation
7 – The Physical Impossibility of Damian Hirst in the Minds of the Living
8 – Meccano on Crack (Or Tatlin on Crack) A Psychotic Amalgam of Architecture/Sculpture/Engineering Stuart Wise – The Physical Impossibility of Damian Hirst in the Minds of the Living
9 – All the Way to the Bank(sy) SOME REFLECTIONS…
10 – Mayakovsky and Tatlin A Catastrophic Social / Creative Impasse
11 – Ralph Rumney From Artist to Situationist and Back Again
King Mob: The Negation and Transcendence of Art is the third title to be issued as BPC’s WisEbooks Series this year. The other two are:
Lost Texts Around King Mob 1968-72: by John Barker, Chris Gray, Ronald Hunt, Phil Meyler, Fred Vermerol, Dave and Stuart Wise); and
Dialectical Butterflies: Ecocide. Extinction Rebellion, Greenwash and Rewilding the Commons by Dave and Stuart Wise
https://www.amazon.co.uk/King-Mob-Transcendence-Schwitters-Situationists-ebook/dp/B0CYKY1DGY/
