Four Books by King Mob (Dave and Stuart Wise) published by BPC

1 October – BPC Publishing has now issued TEN titles, available from Amazon/KDP. Four titles have been issued in the BPC WiseEbooks Series in 2024 as paperback and ebook. In reverse chronological order they are:

A Newcastle Dunciad 1966-2008: Recollections of a Musical and Artistic Avant Garde plus Bryan Ferry and the Newcastle Arts Scene (WiseEbooks Sries No. 4)) – 24 Sept. 2024.

In 1966, King Mob founders Stuart and David Wise were students at Newcastle School of Art, publishing the avant garde magazine Icteric. A Newcastle Dunciad, the latest in the WisEbook Series, recalls the ideas and practices of the Tyneside radicals and how they were ‘recuperated” by the developers for the post-industrial ‘regeneration’ of Tyneside. This volume also has a Situationist critique of their art school contemporary, Bryan Ferry.

King Mob: The Negation and Transcendence of Art: Malevich, Schwitters, Hirst, Banksy, Mayakovsky, Situationists, Tatlin, Fluxus, Black Mask (WiseEbooks Series No. 3– 21 May 2024

Twin brothers David and Stuart Wise, as art students in mid-1960s Newcastle, immersed themselves 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 Hurst and Banksy.

Dialectical Butterflies: Ecocide, Extinction Rebellion, Greenwash and Rewilding the Commons – an Illustrated Dérive (WiseEbooks No. 2 – 12 March 2024)

Beautifully illustrated with original colour photos, Dialectical Butterflies is a psychogeographical exercise in butterfly preservation as part of the environmentalist, anti-capitalist struggle against ecocide, The lifelong fascination of David Wise and his late twin, Stuart, with the ecology of butterflies goes back to their involvement in the mid-1960s surrealist-inspired radical arts scene in Newcastle. From their contact with the Situationist International the Wise brothers adopted the concept of ‘recuperation’ which they see exemplified in today’s ‘greenwashing’ PR exercises. Their latter-day rewilding campaign is effectively a post-situationist Longue Dérive through the relatively forsaken terrains of derelict industrial sites and zones of autonomy in northern England; as well as the contested public space of Wormwood Scrubs in London.

BPC Title: King Mob: The Negation and Transcendence of Art (illustrated).

Lost Texts Around King Mob by Dave and Stuart Wise with contributions from Ronald Hunt, John Barker, Fred Vermorel, Chris Gray and Phil Meyler (BPC WisEbooks Series No. 1 – Jan. 2024).

King Mob was initially a coming together in London of members of the English section of the Paris-based Situationist InternationaI and like-minded individuals from Newcastle associated with the anti-art magazine, Icteric, and the Black Hand Gang. Following Guy Debord’s expulsion of the English members from the Situationist InternationaI in December 1967, the King Mob Echo was co-founded in April 1968 by former SI member, Chris Gray and ‘friends from the north’, Dave and Stuart Wise.
The material in this collection by King Mob writers and their associates still has a power to provocatively invigorate and open-up new directions of thought and action emanating from a subversive critique of culture. For the most part, these texts have been forgotten and therefore never archived in the libraries of art history and the ‘popsicle academy’ of media/music studies. Indeed, they had to be rescued from what Marx referred to as “the gnawing criticism of the mice”.

For more books published by BPC see HERE

Author: admin

Covering Psychedelic Culture, Situationist Poetics, Radical Politics and Working-Class History View all posts by admin