Ken Hollings

Catalog of an exhibition held at Onomatopee, December 5, 2016 - February 26, 2017 In astrology, the movement of celestial bodies are believed to have an influence on the future development of life on earth. Throughout history, flyby comets and falling stars are believed to have brought respectively disaster or opportunity. In Radiant Matter, Dutch artist Marjolijn Dijkman (b. 1978) curated a brilliant selection of approporiated images that are united in their desire to analyse and reflect on the nature of scientific inquiry, the role of speculation, fiction, and spiritualism throughout time. With the texts by Ken Hollings, Maarten vanden eynde, and Raqs Media Collective, and an artists conversation with independent curator Kris Dittel, flowing through Dijkmans poetic edit of imagesa challenging look into the unknown takes shape and meaning. An exciting catalog released just before celebrating the 50th anniversary of first moon walk in 2019!

Space is still the final frontier and Mars continues to make news and attract generations of young people. In this fascinating book, hero-astronaut Buzz Aldrin challenges curious kids to think about Mars as not just a faraway red planet but as a possible future home for Earthlings!

"Using the expansive pop poetry of Japanese monster movies, Destroy All Monsters offers a darkly ironic retelling of recent events, as America slides into war in the Middle East." "Muri, a Japanese android, is befriended by Yena and Mai, two American girls on the loose in Tokyo's red-light district. In a world of experimental drug dealers, gangsters and professional sex workers the girls find themselves on the run from sinister forces as giant reptiles descend on Japan.". "With aliens taking over the White House, Elvis returned from the dead, and a small telepathic dog, this is not your average read, but then you're not an average reader, are you?"--BOOK JACKET.

A radical retelling of our relationship with the cosmos, reinventing the history of astronomy as a new form of astrological calendar. Astronomy is another form of cinema. Time is fragmented and extended. Matter becomes light in motion. The camera remains fixed, looking outwards into the darkness, while the earth moves beneath our feet. A carefully constructed text in sixty numbered sections, The Space Oracle reinvents the history of astronomy as a new form of astrological calendar. This radical retelling of our relationship with the cosmos reaches back to places and times when astronomers were treated as artists or priests, to when popes took part in astral rites and the common people feared eclipses and comets as portents of disaster. Panoramic and encyclopedic in its scope, The Space Oracle brings astronauts and spies, engineers and soldiers, goddesses and satellites into alignment with speculative insights and everyday observations. The universe, Hollings argues, is a work in progress—enjoy it.

A series of essays modeled on the Purgatory of Dante Alighieri—personal reflections, historical incidents, and unexpected mythological correspondences. “The obsession with Beauty and Virtue must inevitably bring Trash into existence. Trash offers a way of lifting their curse; it marks the end of all such fatal enchantments.” In this sequel to 2020’s Inferno, Hollings shifts his attention away from America in the Age of Pop to take a close look at European decadence and decay at the end of the nineteenth century. Purgatory follows the twin fates of Hallward and Hancock as they are drawn, like so many artists before them, towards the city of Paris. It was here that exiled Swedish playwright August Strindberg struggled to turn iron and carbon into gold, while the aesthete Sâr Péladan staged his sumptuous Salons de la Rose+Croix. Over a series of thirty-three essays directly modeled on the Purgatory of Dante Alighieri, personal reflections, historical incidents, and unexpected mythological correspondences are combined to uncover a restless underground labyrinth of alchemists, poets, painters, and philosophers. Together, their combined influence would shape not only the events of May ’68 but the emergence of a uniquely European form of Trash cinema devoted exclusively to beauty, sex, and despair. To celebrate the 700th anniversary of Dante’s death, Ken Hollings offers the reader a radical retelling of the middle part of the Divine Comedy. Hell may be a tough act to follow—but, as Volume Two of the Trash Project reveals, Purgatory can be just as weird and dangerous.

Born in East Africa, Yusuf has few qualms about the journey he is to make. It never occurs to him to ask why he is accompanying Uncle Aziz or why the trip has been organised so suddenly, and he does not think to ask when he will be returning. But the truth is that his 'uncle' is a rich and powerful merchant and Yusuf has been pawned to him to pay his father's debts. Paradise is a rich tapestry of myth, dreams and Biblical and Koranic tradition, the story of a young boy's coming of age against the backdrop of an Africa increasingly corrupted by colonialism and violence.

A subtle and sometimes disturbing account of how technology has impacted upon human culture. The Bright Labyrinth is a subtle and sometimes disturbing account of how technology has impacted upon human culture. Offering a theoretical map for the future development of communication design, The Bright Labyrinth draws upon architecture and film, avant-garde art and critical theory, military strategy and machine intelligence to guide the reader through the Digital Regime that has shaped a century of human creativity and thought. Inside The Bright Labyrinth you will encounter Edison's talking dolls, the dream archi- tecture of world fairs and movie sets, Japanese comic books, early super- computers, sex researchers, zombies, assassins, monsters and ghosts. Ken Hollings reveals how our relationship with media and machines is far more dynamic, unstable and stimulating than we have previously allowed ourselves to believe. The Digital Regime throws long shadows over our past; and it is only by looking deeply into these shadows that we can begin to understand the rapid changes taking place all around us.

The Last Sex continues the exploration of gender politics in the 1990s, begun in The Hysterical Male and Body Invaders; with the addition of key articles on lesbian and gay sexuality, The Last Sex broadens its survey of issues to include a reflexive consideration of themes related to transgender and trans-sexuality. This provocative collection responds to a major shift taking place both in feminist theory as well as in the very style of feminist writing.