Misplaced Pages

#456543

41-565: Kevin Llewellyn Callan (born 24 March 1962), better known as Stewart Home , is an English artist, filmmaker, writer, pamphleteer, art historian, and activist. His novels include the non-narrative 69 Things to Do with a Dead Princess (2002), and the re-imagining of the 1960s in Tainted Love (2005). Earlier parodistic pulp fictions work includes Pure Mania , Red London , No Pity , Cunt , and Defiant Pose which pastiche

82-688: A Dead Princess contains capsule reviews of dozens of obscure books as well as elaborate descriptions of stone circles, while in Down and Out in Shoreditch & Hoxton every paragraph is exactly 100 words long. At times in this period Home's film making also became radically non-representational, and rarely required any original cinematography whatsoever; for example his 2002 fiftieth anniversary English language colour re-make of Guy Debord 's "Screams in Favour of De Sade", and 2004 "Eclipse & Re-Emergence of

123-449: A Dead Princess by the fictional cult writer K.L. Callan, which contains a conspiracy theory about the death of Diana, Princess of Wales . Callan's book claims that Diana was murdered then her corpse was dragged around Scottish stone circles until it fell apart, and Callum/Alan decides to test this by repeating the process with a ventriloquist's dummy. The novel contains extensive descriptions of Aberdeen and nearby parts of Scotland. About

164-460: A conflict between him and Neoism founder Istvan Kantor had escalated and led to their alienation. Home's SMILE no 8, which appeared in 1985, reflected the split with Neoism by proposing a "Praxis" movement to replace Neoism, with Karen Eliot as its new multiple name. This and the following three SMILE issues otherwise featured an eclectic mixture of manifesto -style writing, political reflections on radical left-wing anti-art movements from

205-401: A lengthy publishing record with established publishers, Home still had difficulties, in recent years, finding publishers for his work, notably Art School Orgy , on account of the central character sharing the name with living artist David Hockney. The book depicts Hockney participating in scenes of extreme BDSM. During 2021, Home promoted the book via social media, predominantly via Facebook, and

246-466: A number of non-fiction pamphlets , magazines, and books, and edited anthologies . They chiefly reflected the politics of the radical left, punk culture , the occult, the history and influence of the Situationists – of whom he is a severe critic – and other radical left-wing 20th century anti-art avant-garde movements. In Home's earlier work, the focus of these reflections was often Neoism ,

287-435: A pamphlet and later a badge by Home as part of his prestigious edition of Imprint 93 multiples. At this time uber curator Hans Ulrich Obrist also included Home in his survey of young British art "Life/Live" Musée d’art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (October 96- January 97, subsequently toured). In the mid-nineties Home was also appearing regularly as a live artist at "Disobey" events organised by Paul Smith and featuring music from

328-462: A proposed movement and a series of "Festivals of Plagiarism" in 1988 and 1989, which themselves plagiarised the Neoist apartment festivals and 1960s Fluxus festivals. Home combined the plagiarism campaign with a call for an Art Strike between 1990 and 1993. Unlike earlier art-strike proposals such as that of Gustav Metzger in the 1970s, it was not intended as an opportunity for artists to seize control of

369-565: A recipe for much of his subsequent novel writing of the 1990s (there are exceptions such as the non-linear "Come Before Christ & Murder Love"). The book Neoist Manifestos /The Art Strike Papers featured, on its first part, abridged versions of Home's manifesto-style writings from SMILE , and a compilation of writings and reactions regarding the Art Strike from various authors and sources, mainly Mail Art publications. His 1995 novel Slow Death fictionalises and ridicules this process of

410-483: A series of YouTube videos featuring Home with an inflatable doll named David Hockney. The book was eventually published in January 2023 by Loughborough-based online record label, New Reality Records, and sold via their Bandcamp page. The Neoist Alliance was a moniker used by Home between 1994 and 1999 for his mock- occult psychogeographical activities. According to Home, the alliance was an occult order with himself as

451-565: A simple vandalism by some parts of the media. Curator Laura O'Reilly, commenting on Istvan Kantors writing "Monty Cantsin" on a piece by artist Nelson Saiers in the Hole Shop gallery in New York, said "There's a fine line between pissing on someone else's piece as a form self expression – if you're going to call that art." Past work also includes noise installations and performances with electrically modified file cabinets. He also founded

SECTION 10

#1732787604457

492-520: A subcultural network of which he had been a member, and from which he derived various splinter projects. Typical characteristics of his activism in the 1980s and 1990s included use of group identities (such as Monty Cantsin ) and collective monikers (e.g. " Karen Eliot "); overt employment of plagiarism ; pranks and publicity stunts . As a youth Home was drawn first to music and bohemianism , and then to radicalism . He attended meetings of many different leftist groups including several organised by

533-407: A third of the novel is pornographic sex scenes. The book draws on 1960s-70s experimental novelist Ann Quin , particularly her seaside novel Berg . Home claimed the book was "influenced by literary Modernism and recent continental philosophy". The Times identified attacks on literary figures including Michael Bracewell , Robert McCrum , and W. G. Sebald . It was reviewed at length in

574-600: Is a Canadian performance and video artist , industrial music and electropop singer, and one of the early members of Neoism . Kantor was born in Hungary on August 27, 1949. In the 1970s, he studied medicine, but also participated in the underground arts scene of communist Budapest that centered on the art historian László Beke  [ hu ] . In 1976, at the Young Art Club in Budapest, Cantsin met

615-504: Is considered a useful art-history work, providing an introduction to a range of cultural currents which had, at that time at least, been under-documented. The work has, however, been highly criticised for deficiencies in its view of utopian currents, including its personal biases, by such writers as Bob Black . Pure Mania , Home's first novel from 1989, took the recipe of the Richard Allen parodies from SMILE and turned them into

656-557: The London Review of Books by the Aberdonian writer Jenny Turner, who said, "I really don't think anyone who is at all interested in the study of literature has any business not knowing the work of Stewart Home." In a favourable review, she noted many of Home's usual preoccupations including sex, philosophy, and settling petty grudges, but also a good knowledge of Aberdeen and a surprising absence of skinheads. Tim Teeman in

697-588: The Lettrist International , the Situationists, Fluxus , Mail Art , individuals such as Gustav Metzger and Henry Flynt , and short parodistic skinhead pulp prose in the style of his then unwritten early novels. Many texts included in Home's SMILE issues plagiarised other, especially Situationist , writing, simply replacing terms like "spectacle" with "glamour". At the same time Home

738-683: The Monty Cantsin identity. Kantor's own work in the late 1970s and early 1980s consisted most notably of the "Blood Campaign", an ongoing series of performances in which he takes his own blood and splashes it onto walls, canvases or into the audience. At the same time, he continued to work within the Neoist network, co-organizing and participating in a series of Neoist festivals, which began as "Apartment Festivals", which were also called simply "APTs". His more controversial works involve vandalism and gore, painting large X's in his own blood on

779-406: The Situationists , punk , and the plagiarism and Art Strike campaigns, and, as his source of income, the continued pulp-novel writing. In the post-Art Strike years, he had for the first time publicly occupied himself with hermeticism and the occult . The Neoist Alliance, his third one-person-movement after The Generation Positive and Praxis, served simultaneously as a tactical reappropriation of

820-706: The Times found "much to engage the reader", including atmospheric and detailed descriptions, and the clever way Home plays with characters' identities: despite the book's weaknesses, Home is "so rude, nasty, funny and weird" that it works. For the same paper, David Mattin found it "mesmerising, affecting and powerful". Publishers Weekly described it as a "fusion of highbrow theory and pulp pornography"; their critic found it "occasionally tedious" but OK for fans of Kathy Acker or Robert Coover . Istvan Kantor Istvan Kantor (aka " Monty Cantsin ", and "Amen!") (Hungarian: Kántor István ; born August 27, 1949, Hungary)

861-648: The Trotskyist Socialist Youth League and even two editorial meetings of Anarchy Magazine . He did not join these organisations and later repudiated them as reactionary , instead professing autonomous communist political positions after going to the London Workers Group. In the late seventies Home produced his first punk (music) fanzines, including early issues of "Down in the Street" which had run to seven numbers by

SECTION 20

#1732787604457

902-543: The international Neoist network which had been active since 1980. Stewart Home had previously become a member and activist of that network in 1984, but renounced it one year later and subsequently worked under the collective monikers of "Praxis", later " plagiarism " and the Art Strike movement. Despite its highly personal perspective and agenda , The Assault on Culture: Utopian currents from Lettrisme to Class War (Aporia Press and Unpopular Books , London, 1988)

943-481: The "Generation Positive" in favor of Neoism, and make SMILE and White Colours part of Neoism as well. According to Florian Cramer (who didn't come into contact with Neoism until the late eighties) one year later, Home took a sleep-deprivation prank played with him at a Neoist Festival in Italy as the reason to declare his split from Neoism; Home insists he decided to break with Neoism before going to Italy. Shortly before,

984-541: The "Generation Positive", which in their rhetoric resembled those of 1920s Berlin Dadaist manifestos . In April 1984, Home got in touch with the originally American subcultural artistic network of Neoism , and participated in the eighth Neoist Apartment Festival in London. Since Neoism operated with multiple identities, too, and called upon all its participants to adopt the name Monty Cantsin , Home decided to give up

1025-592: The American prankster and mail artist David Zack. Zack suggested the idea of adopting the multiple identity Monty Cantsin , which Kantor accepted, to the extent that it became chiefly associated with him. Returning to Montreal, he organized a Mail Art show, "The Brain in the Mail", and in 1979 founded the Neoism movement. Soon afterwards, Neoism expanded into an international subcultural network that collectively used

1066-489: The Neoism label for self-promotional purposes, and as a corporate identity for pamphlets that satirically advocated a combination of artistic avant-garde, the occult, and politics into an "avant-bard". Higgs included Home in group shows he curated – such as "Imprint 93" at City Racing (London June–July 95), "Multiple Choice" at Cubitt Gallery (London March–April 96) and "A to Z" at Approach Gallery (London 1998) – as well issuing

1107-495: The Oedipus Complex", the latter consists solely of still photographs of his mother with a narration scripted by Home but delivered by Australian actress Alice Parkinson. This tendency towards abstraction was already evident in some of Home's work of the 1990s, particularly sound pieces such as the cut up radio play "Divvy", but in the 2000s it became increasingly central to his output. Art School Orgy Despite having

1148-475: The book as "pornography and insulting Christian values". Kervey says this is happening in the context of a campaign run by such far-right groups as the National Bolsheviks against Home, which has included arson attacks against T-ough Press alongside state censorship . 69 Things to Do with a Dead Princess Following epigraphs from Karl Marx and Samuel Taylor Coleridge , the novel tells

1189-585: The concert hall by magical means during the concert. This was an homage to the 1965 anti-art picketing of a Stockhausen concert in New York by Fluxus members Henry Flynt and George Maciunas . Alliance activities ran parallel and were closely related to those of the revived London Psychogeographical Association and the Italian-based Luther Blissett project. Despite its name, the Neoist Alliance had no affiliation with

1230-647: The historification of Neoism (including the planting of archives at the National Art Library in the Victoria and Albert Museum . Home's novel Cunt was rejected by several publishers before being published by Do-Not Press in 1999. Its plot, which satirises travel writing , the picaresque novel and the publishing industry, centres on David Kelso, an author attempting to write a trilogy recounting his sexual experiences. Confusion Incorporated: A Collection of Lies, Hoaxes and Hidden Truths , published in

1271-492: The likes of techno acts Panasonic and Aphex Twin . Aware of the marked decline in countercultural activities throughout the urban centres in which he operated, Home shifted gear in this area of his work in the new millennium, upping his level of Internet activities; web work had been only a minor part of his repertoire in the 1990s. Home's novels in this period no longer incorporated subcultural elements and instead focused on issues of form and aesthetics: 69 Things to Do with

Stewart Home - Misplaced Pages Continue

1312-493: The magus and only member. The manifesto called for "debasement in the arts" and in a parodic manner plagiarized a 1930s British fascist pamphlet on cultural politics. Alliance activities mainly consisted of the publication of a newsletter "Re-action" which appeared in ten issues. In 1993, the Neoist Alliance staged a prank against a concert by composer Karlheinz Stockhausen in Brighton by announcing its intention to levitate

1353-557: The means of distributing their own work, but rather as an exercise in propaganda and psychic warfare aimed at smashing the entire art world rather than just the gallery system. The Art Strike campaign caused something of a rumpus in the contemporary London art world (Home got to talk about the Art Strike at venues such as the Institute of Contemporary Art and Victoria and Albert Museum , as well as on national BBC Radio arts programmes and London area television arts programmes), but

1394-489: The same name in 1982. He also published an art fanzine SMILE , the name of which was a play on the Mail Art zines FILE and VILE (which in turn parodied the graphic design of LIFE magazine ). The concept was that many other bands in the world should call themselves White Colours , and many other underground periodicals should call themselves SMILE , too. Home's early SMILE magazines mostly contained art manifestos for

1435-509: The same year, is a collection of fictional interviews, reviews and essays. A third 1999 publication, the pamphlet Repetitions: A Collection of Proletarian Pleasures Ranging from Rodent Worship to Ethical Relativism Appended with a Critique of Unicursal Reason , consists of letters, prefaces and introductions. Alex Kervey of T-ough Press , publishers of the Russian edition of Come Before Christ and Murder Love has reported repression of

1476-416: The story of a man, variously called Callum or Alan, who is planning to kill himself. He has relocated to Aberdeen in the northeast of Scotland, where he befriends Anna Noon, a female student at Aberdeen University who also acts as the novel's narrator. They discuss literature and philosophy. Callum/Alan has a large collection of books he is attempting to read, including the fictional 69 Things to Do with

1517-412: The time he stopped publishing it in 1980. At the end of the seventies Home also made his first public appearances as a musician as bassist with revolutionary ska band The Molotovs. From 1982 to 1984, Home operated as a one-person-movement "Generation Positive", and having already founded a punk band called White Colours (named after an experimental novel by R. D. Reeve) in 1980, he started a new group with

1558-739: The walls of modern art museums including next to two Picasso paintings at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in 1988 and at the Jeff Koons retrospective at the Whitney Museum in 2016. In doing so he has been banned from some art galleries, a status he holds with pride. In 2004, he threw a vial of his own blood on a wall beside a sculpture of Michael Jackson by Paul McCarthy in the Hamburger Bahnhof contemporary art museum of Berlin. Although his later work has been dismissed as

1599-609: The work of 1970s British skinhead pulp novel writer Richard Allen and combine it with pornography, political agit-prop , and historical references to punk rock and avant-garde art. Home was born in Wimbledon , (then in Surrey ) South London . His mother, Julia Callan-Thompson, was a model who was associated with the radical arts scene in Notting Hill Gate . In the 1980s and 1990s, he exhibited art and also wrote

1640-802: Was involved in a series of collective installations including "Ruins of Glamour" (Chisenhale Studios, London 1986), "Desire in Ruins" (Transmission Gallery, Glasgow 1987), "Refuse" (Galleriet Läderfabriken, Malmö 1988) and "Anon" (33 Arts Centre, Luton 1989) which generated serious art world interest and art publication reviews and even coverage in British newspapers such as "The Observer" and "Independent". Those Home worked closely with on these shows included Hannah Vowles and Glyn Banks (collectively known as Art in Ruins ), Ed Baxter and Stefan Szczelkun. Following on from this and drawing on 1980s American appropriation art , Home's concept of plagiarism soon developed into

1681-712: Was more seriously discussed in subcultural art networks, especially in Mail Art . Consequently, mail artists made up a reasonable proportion of the participants at the Festivals of Plagiarism , and Mail Art publications disseminated the Art Strike campaign. In the 1980s Home was also a regular contributor to the anarcho-punk /cultural magazine VAGUE . In 1993 Home officially resurfaced, having meanwhile gained an influence and reputation in American counter-culture comparable to writers like Hakim Bey and Kathy Acker . Aside from reassessments of his earlier engagement with Neoism,

Stewart Home - Misplaced Pages Continue

#456543