Sunday 23 May 2010

TX6/12 Backspaced



The backspace key usually lies at one corner of the standard QWERTY arrangement, but it provides a useful metaphor for the latest episode of Hollingsville. As discussed during the course of the programme, Andy Sharp of English Heretic has some blogs that record in fascinating detail some of his urban psychic journeys – the entries on Northolt in the Hoodlum Scientist’s Fieldbook and Heuristic England are well worth exploring - if only for the moment when they suddenly cease for no discernible reason. Meanwhile Mark Fisher’s excellent K-Punk blog continues to weave complexity out of the flat space of the computer screen, the keyboard becoming a summoning board under his fingers. Unlike the spacing bar, however, the backspace key does not activate any application - it merely takes us...back. Mark’s contributions to the show mixed MR James with Jacques Derrida, old ‘Dr Who’ locations with Cold War industrial archaeology in a way that extended Julian House’s exposition on sixties television in the previous episode. Look out for the forthcoming panel conversation he is chairing on the afternoon of June 5, with John Foxx, Ian Sinclaire, plus Julian House and Jim Jupp of Ghost Box, at the Roundhouse.

After the broadcast these two spectral visitors returned to what now seems like some mythic region of Norfolk that is not to be found on any map. Hollingsville is indeed fortunate to have opened its doors to these mysterious travellers.

Hear the repeat of Hollingsville TX6/12 ‘Spaces – Buildings Dream Too’ this Tuesday May 25 at 11.00pm on Resonance 104.4 FM or download the podcast on Wednesday May 26.

See also:
‘Hollingsville’ Posts
‘Spaces’ lecture
‘Catching Up With’ Posts

Pictured from top to bottom: Andy Sharp contemplating the eternal glamour and poetry that is Northholt; Mark Fisher seeing visual space fill up with Maersk shipping containers

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