MOOP #1

Introductory Essay

Between June 1592 and May 1594, an extended outbreak of the plague meant London’s playhouses were ordered to close for much of the time. This forced young dramatists to look for other sources of income, and saw some moving to publish long-form epic poems. William Shakespeare was among those who made the switch, starting with the mildly erotic Venus and Adonis (1593), followed by the more sombre The Rape of Lucrece (1594).

Interestingly, it was arguably these poems (seldom braved by readers today) that established Shakespeare’s early reputation. Indeed, for fellow poet Richard Barnfield writing in 1598, it was Venus and Lucrece that earned Shakespeare a place in “fame’s immortall Booke” rather than any of his approximately fifteen previously produced plays. Meanwhile, antiquarian John Weever in his paean to Shakespeare in 1599 was happy to talk about Shakespeare’s “Rose-cheeked Adonis” and “fire-hot Venus” yet seemed much vaguer on his plays; “Romeo Richard; more whose names I know not”.1

I begin with this tale of literary history because we at Chasing Cow Productions CIC – an arts collective based in West Dorset who have so far focused mainly on film projects – have decided, in light of our own contemporary pandemic, to also move our attentions to the printed word and are proud to present the first issue of Matter Out of Place, our new zine. Really, as a new collective, we probably should have been doing this all along. After all, publishing a zine is a much easier (and cheaper) way of communicating creative ideas than filmmaking, and doesn’t involve weeks slogging through pre-production, risk assessments, and insurance only to then get soaked on location before then realising that all the footage is unusable because of a continuity error...

Anyway, though we are very keen to get back to filmmaking and bemusing the residents of Bridport with our tripods, hi-vis vests, and inability to fold up a reflector board, producing this zine has been a great experience, providing us with a space to share some fictional pieces, as well being a good excuse for some of us to pursue academic interests, something we always wanted to be a consistent feature of the group. The contributions have come both from Chasing Cow members who have been there from the start, and newer collaborators we’ve met since formalising. Inevitably, some pieces are the product of the current social and political moment including one piece deconstructing the militarised rhetoric of the pandemic, and another trying to get to grips with the much publicised, yet rarely analysed, Alt-Right. However, it’s also nice to have some pieces that aren’t so rooted to the ‘here and now’ – a piece delving into the local folklore that influenced our film Brink by Brink (see p.8 for details of our online première on Saturday 22 August); an essay exploring what Digital Humanities means (which is much more interesting than it sounds, no offence to the author); and a fascinating revisit of the ever-perplexing Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992). We also have Part One of Autonomy, a short story set in a post-apocalyptic, post-human (yet not post-vacuum cleaner) future, and an excerpt of one of our member’s own epic poems, She Speaks. We now hope to continue Matter Out of Place beyond this lockdown and make it a quarterly publication. Who knows, maybe like Shakespeare we’ll end up being more well known for this than all our other projects combined.

Finally, a renaissance epic poem would usually open with a dedication to a wealthy courtier who might be flattered enough to patronise the humble author, though the more enterprising ones were known to sneakily produce copies with different dedications in the hope of attracting multiple patrons. Seeing as I don’t think there’s much hope of sponsorship from any of the courtiers currently in government (especially after they read ‘Viral Militarisation’), if you can and wish to support us financially please go to chasingcow.co.uk where you can donate through PayPal which will help fund further issues and other Chasing Cow projects. But the most important thing is just that you have a read and see what you think (and write back to us with any responses) because at the moment it seems that sustained thinking, while contrary to all the urging to ‘get back to normal’, is exactly what is needed. Enjoy!

Fred Warren 1

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Credit to James Shapiro’s 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare for the views of Shakespeare’s contemporaries

Editors: Tom Beed, Grace Crabtree, Fred Warren, Bryony Moores O’Sullivan Non-Fiction editor: Tom Beed Fiction editor: Grace Crabtree Illustrations and Artwork: Grace Crabtree and Bryony Moores O’Sullivan Cover design: Grace Crabtree Printed by Oxford GreenPrint using a Risograph press, with veg-ink and low energy, on 100% post-consumer waste recycled paper

Contents Viral Militarisation 4-5 Tom Beed A Husband, St Catherine 6-8 Grace Crabtree Autonomy (Part One) 9-11 Stefan Matthews Hate Will Bring us Together, Again... 12-14 Fred Warren Poem 15 Bryony Moores O’Sullivan Digital Humanities 16-17 Thomas Bachrach Lil’s Blue Rose 18 Jack Wightman Back pages 19

To view the current issue of Matter Out of Place online, plus online-only digital releases in-between the quarterly issues, please visit chasingcow.co.uk and follow us on Instagram @chasingcow If you would like a PDF of the zine please email chasing.cow.productions@gmail.com ABOUT THE NAME ‘Matter out of place’ is one of the ways that anthropologist Mary Douglas defines her symbolic idea of ‘dirt' in Purity and Danger. As she says, “dirt is essentially disorder. There is no such thing as absolute dirt: it exists in the eye of the beholder.”

Whether it’s the condemnation of an adulterer or a pair of shoes on the kitchen table, ideas around ‘dirt’ and what is dirty are windows into how societies are ordered: what they value, what they find threatening, and what they wish to exclude.

As a name we think this helps convey Chasing Cow’s own non-adherence to established categories both in content – we like to let members pursue their own interests – and form – we view modes of artistic creation, whether that’s filmmaking, poetry or academic writing, as linked and encourage slippage between them. Finally, we think the name implies a level of critical thinking; if being clean means blindly accepting the values, behaviours, and hierarchies that shore up the current political order, then we have no choice but to be dirty.

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Viral Militarisation Tom Beed

Opposition to critical analysis of events frequently becomes

stronger the more severe the effects of the crisis or incident may be. If militaristic sentiment is invoked, the urgency of acting as opposed to carefully considering the implications of these actions takes precedence. On 17 March Boris Johnson, in typical jingoistic fashion, spoke of his “wartime government”, and how the “enemy” was ‘beatable’. This military rhetoric is nothing but hysterical. It betrays the government as being totally underprepared, and shows our state as one gutted by austerity.

Militarisation functions as a way of normalising the deaths of people working during the pandemic. It is the process by which something/someone becomes imbued with the values of, or is directly controlled by, the military apparatus. Demilitarisation is but one process that must exist within a chain of action. If we want to avoid further death of essential workers, healthcare professionals, and the working class in general, then it is necessary that we understand why militarised rhetoric has been employed in this context, and how thinking in military terms limits our view of this situation.

Critical analysis of world-changing events such as the pandemic is often dismissed because it is ‘alarmist’ or ‘hyperbolic’. I’d argue that framing a pandemic in terms of war and stressing the need to keep waging a “campaign” against a “devilish illness” is in fact the most hyperbolic way this could be managed. This situation has demonstrated something that the anti-vax mob would do well to understand: pandemics have been occuring ever since large human settlements were founded, and are not the result of shadowy governmental machinations. Healthcare crises, however, are. Decades of neoliberal capitalism have seen a looting of services and state capacity, leading to the absence of a coherent pandemic response and the worst death rate in Europe. During April, official figures show, the death toll was above one thousand a day for 22 days straight.

What has caused this lack of respect for human life? Countries in the late stage of capitalism such as ours are quite clear in their insistence that human life is prioritised after the growth of the market. We have witnessed this in the past month, as the reopening of businesses has taken precedence over preparing for another spate of mass infection and death. This is nothing new, as material conditions of existence have been declining steadily for everyone not in the upper classes. It is an old, tired story that there is money for bombs but not PPE, yet it is truer than ever. That this sounds like an old cliché should in fact alert the reader to how long this has been the case. This would perhaps not be so insulting were it not dressed up with the same hero-fantasy ideological rhetoric. Boris Johnson’s speech in Greenwich on 3 February made it clear that capitalist economics are more important than silly things such as the right of the population to stay alive and healthy. This type of political discourse comes naturally to our PM, and mystifications surrounding government action conceal the reality of our situation – that maintaining neoliberalism takes precedence over

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state intervention during a health crisis.

This absence of a centralised state response has necessitated the formation of local, community-run aid networks. Particularly in Bridport, the voluntary work of those staffing the helpline (Bridport Coronavirus Community Support) has proved to be absolutely essential to holding civilisation together. This form of local organising has made it possible to deliver food, medication, and even sensitive documentation to those that are shielding. Their efforts prove that in the absence of an effective state apparatus, it falls to the people to organise the bulk of essential services that have doubtless prevented further death and provided support to the vulnerable. Yet would it not be preferable to live in a world where this precisely was the remit of the state?

The function of government should be, at the very least, to organise resources in such a way that the state can provide assistance to the population in times of national emergency, but decades of neoliberal plundering have rendered our services laughably underprepared.

So why not call these volunteers, healthcare, and other essential workers ‘heroes’? My point is not that praising these people is in itself bad, but praising them whilst not improving working conditions is worse than pointless – it’s deadly. To be a hero in a time of war is to have your life immediately associated with sacrifice. It is assumed that the hero is able to operate in any condition, no matter the difficulty or risk. The number of deaths is linked to the severity of battle, which then itself becomes that which sustains this narrative – heroism grows as the sacrifices do. Militarism implies hardship, stoicism, bravery. Military heroes often overcome insurmountable odds in harsh conditions they nonetheless triumph over.

In applying this to essential workers, nurses, and teachers, it cushions the government against calls to improve conditions generally, but also to ensure safety during a devastating outbreak of a contagious illness. You know the danger, and we graciously accept your martyrdom, the hero is told. When, inevitably, a hero is claimed in battle, we mourn their death that in our minds had already occurred. They, along with all the other casualties in this war, become numerical values in a mythology

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of the pandemic. These values, composed of whole lives snuffed out amidst a manufactured health crisis, are brought into a vast network of graphs, statistical comparisons, and sheer information, rendering them as abstract significations of lockdown severity. As the death toll increases, the real ethical implications collapse into obscurity. When we are dealing with tens of thousands, we are unable to register the extent of each life as a tragic loss in itself, and so, paradoxically, such a death toll can feel like precisely nothing.

The philosopher Slavoj Žižek in his recent book Pandemic!

(2020), offers this insight: “When we react in panic, we do not take the threat seriously we, on the contrary, trivialize it.”

In the same way, responding to the sheer blind horror of a pandemic with the old tricks of militarised rhetoric and nationalist populism serves nobody but the ruling class. Without improving the material conditions of those that are forced to continue working, being lauded as heroes matters not. -

The militarisation of the pandemic, while it served to reinforce populist nationalism, was the too-late panicked response that prevented a real, authentic engagement with the severity of the lockdown. In contrast, the response of community aid networks has been effective and measured. Such networks should be more widespread and given better funding, so as to organise to help the vulnerable and disadvantaged to a greater extent.

So how to respond to our government’s failure? In a world where answers to structural problems frequently feel reactive, we should remember what lies beneath the unfathomable complexity of our world – class struggle. It is about time that we remembered the meaning of solidarity, and that when the crisis came, it was not the billionaires and their political stooges that saved us, it was underpaid workers and volunteer community organisers, far too many of whom we have lost because of government negligence. All of our lives are inextricably bound up together, and recognising this is the first step towards harnessing this spontaneous unity of action, and using it to effect political change beyond the realms of this pandemic.

Tom Beed is a writer, actor and founding member of Chasing Cow Productions. He has a degree in International Relations and Politics from Oxford Brookes University.

Illustrations by Grace Crabtree

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“A Husband, St Catherine” Grace Crabtree

It is six o’clock in the morning, in the­­­­dead of winter, and we

are huddled in the doorway of the church. There is a cloak of quietness over the pre-dawn darkness, as the faintest hint of sunrise begins to lighten the horizon. It is the second day of filming and we are awaiting the arrival of the third of our trio of crew for that morning. We soon see a light flickering on the path below, wending its way through the churchyard towards us with disembodied movement, until a figure begins to take shape. A flicker of a white prairie dress confirms the figure’s identity as our leading actress.

With bags and torches strewn about us we sip coffee from a flask, gathering cameras and tripods, hi-vis jackets, and call sheets as we prepare to begin filming. As the hour goes by, and the sky changes from black to deep to pale blue, I check the time constantly, anxious not to miss a shot, each carefully timed against the sunrise.

Brink by Brink is the first film made by Chasing Cow Productions since formalising as a collective in the autumn last year.

It was filmed over the winter of 2019-20, with a small crew committed to the long hours of being caught in fog, rain, and hailstorms on hilltops and beaches; and we were fortunate to

complete pickups the day before lockdown measures began to be imposed. In lieu of its première at Port East's Blueprint Festival in Bridport in March, we are currently working on completing the final elements of post-production and will be holding a virtual première screening on Saturday 22 August – see end for more details of how to watch it.

The film, for which I was a combination of co-writer, First Assistant Director, composer, and supporting actress, centres on a young woman’s embrace of folk tradition and ritual in the 21st century as she tries to win the heart of a young man in the town. This age-old story of unrequited love is cut through with black comedic elements, as she roams the winter landscape and town performing her rituals. Influenced by black and white Shakespeare adaptations such as Peter Brook’s 1970 King Lear we wanted to continue the tradition of rendering the landscape in a striking, timeless black and white, embracing its harshness as well as its beauty. The film has no dialogue and is instead scored by a post-production soundscape and a folk-inspired original soundtrack. Building the soundscape in post, similar to that seen in Mark Jenkin’s recent film Bait (2019), has offered an interesting challenge for our sound team, experimenting with foley and spending a lot of time catching elusive wind, waves, and screech owl sounds.

Still from Brink by Brink (2020, Chasing Cow Productions)

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The film was born out of an idea to look deeper into the history of our local area, rooted in the landscape, and specifically from the perspective of witchcraft and ritual practice. We searched the archives of the Bridport Historical Society and used our findings from a multitude of sources to structure the rituals that occur in the film. For instance, there are records of pagan ceremonies in Symondsbury village, just west of Bridport, to accompany the bringing in of the harvest, which lasted until Victorian times. We were particularly in search, however, for rituals with some connection to love charms, wishing, or invocation. Whether tending towards a belief in witchcraft and the supernatural, or more around a mythologisation of natural processes, ritual practice invites an exploration of the power of the mind in fabricating narratives and truths to live and die by.

Certain supernatural beliefs remained strong until at least the mid- to late-19th century in rural Britain. Of course, to a far lesser extent, the practice of collective ritual does continue today, particularly with religious holidays such as Easter and especially Christmas, the latter of which some of our research went into. We explored the intersection of Christian religion and pagan traditions of midwinter or yuletide celebrations, with the laying of the old year, and the quietening of dark times, and how these competing myths form our conception of Christmastime today. In most areas of our lives, however, we have shed the collective rituals that guided lives for centuries, as we shifted from a precarious, agrarian society to a ‘rational’, modern society, and thus moving away from mythology and mysticism.

The first ritual in Brink by Brink – a frenetic scattering of seeds at sunrise – is performed around St Mary’s church in Netherbury, parts of which date from the 12th to the 15th centuries.

Until the mid-19th century, the parish of Netherbury, having included Melplash and Beaminster villages too, was one of the largest in Dorset. The village is noted in the Domesday book of 1086 as Niderburie, belonging then to the Bishopric of Sarum; and the first known vicar of the church was William de Vicumbe, at the end of the 13th century. The exterior of the medieval church evokes this sense of historical continuity, initially setting the film in a state of timelessness, and it acts as a kind of central geographic point for the scenes that follow.

We were kindly given access by the Friends of St Mary’s to film a scene from the 15th century church tower, which gave us an extraordinary view across the surrounding landscape on a winter morning at sunrise. The church also appealed to us for its possible link to an ancient pagan past. Something that struck us during the research process was the connection between religious worship and pagan ritual in rural communities, and the fact that from around 400 A.D., early Christian churches and chapels were often built to replace pagan temples or druidic sites. There is a chance that the Netherbury churchyard was converted from pagan to Christian use; this merging of religious worship and pagan ritual is important to the history of witchcraft.

The scattering of seeds is found in several ancient customs, from ensuring the protection and fertility of crops and cattle,

to finding one’s true love. Such rites have long since dropped out of quotidian routine (notwithstanding the revival in paganism; a quick search gives website entries for Neo-Pagan earth healing rituals), but our character reenacts rituals such as this, adapting them to her desires and intentions.

One local ritual performed in appeal for love which did not make it into the film, was one that lasted until the late 19th century, at St Catherine’s chapel in Abbotsbury. The chapel, which sits on a hill overlooking the village on one side, and a vast seascape stretching out from Chesil Beach on the other, was built in the 14th century by the monks of Abbotsbury Abbey. The young women of the village would climb up to the chapel and make a wish in a curious manner: in the south-side door were ‘wishing holes’ where a woman would place a knee in one hole, and a hand in each of the other two, and pray to St Catherine, patron saint of spinsters (among other things), that she bring her a husband: “A husband, St Catherine, A handsome one, St Catherine, A rich one, St Catherine, A nice one, St Catherine, And soon, St Catherine.”

Bridport denizen PJ Harvey wrote the song ‘The Wind’ about St Catherine and the chapel, incorporating the rhythm and sentiment of the charm into the lyrics: “Oh Mother can’t we give / A husband to our Catherine / A handsome one, a dear / A rich one for the lady / Someone to listen with.”

The cult of St Catherine in medieval times held sway until the 18th century but appears to have continued in this specific area of rural southern England until the late 19th century. The historical accuracy of her hagiography has been contested, >>

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although many women have been postulated over the years as the true historic Catherine, including Hypatia of Alexandria, philosopher, astronomer, and mathematician murdered at the hands of a Christian mob, for accusations of satanic magical practices; and the slightly earlier Catherine of Alexandria, famously tortured on the wheel, and eventually beheaded in the early 4th century. Elements of an amalgamated history of women persecuted for their faith fused into the cult of St Catherine.

She was one of the voices named by Joan of Arc to have visited and given her guidance and counsel, and would have been well known to Joan, through the painting cycles, poetry, and votive figures that were common throughout France, England, and other European countries in the 15th century.

The reasons why we might allow ourselves not only to revel in certain forms of ritual nowadays, but also to believe in superstitions, or something paranormal or magical at work, against our better judgements, seem precisely plausible because of the way rationality seems to govern our lives. Not everything can be easily explained away; sometimes we would rather believe in some other powers beyond us at work. Marina Warner describes the “ancient semantics of magic” as being a kind of subversion or “thwarting of the given order of things.” As soon as you upend the supposed order of society, the very human characteristic of gravitating towards story-telling and myth-making can take over. Our character, in her solitary strangeness, upends the world of those she encounters over a couple of wintery months of their lives.

Ritual practice is partly hinged on the corporeal experience of enactment and performance through one’s body, and partly on the symbolic attribution of meaning to objects. It can therefore be seen as a form of play-acting, perhaps enacting or playing a role, but not necessarily with any consciousness of the fantasy, as the performance of these acts is passed on through communities and generations, altered and once more passed on until there is a rootedness that has no particular beginning, and no particular end – until the spell, as it were, is broken. The lack of dialogue in Brink by Brink allowed us to toy with these ideas without being over-explanatory or didactic, rather letting a story unfold to leave its impressions and ideas like scattered seeds, trailing in its wake.

Grace Crabtree is an artist and a founding member of Chasing Cow Productions. She graduated from the Ruskin School of Art last summer.

Illustrations by Bryony Moores O’Sullivan; below: Grace Crabtree Bryony Moores O'Sullivan is a founding member of Chasing Cow Productions, and a Theatre Practice graduate from the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, who specialises in puppetry, poetry and illustration.

These kinds of histories fed into our writing of the main character, with the idea of a fabricated persona holding powerful sway over fellow citizens, while avoiding any particular explanation or evidence that would suggest her being a supernatural witch practising white or black magic, or even the more folkloric “wise-woman magic of the countryside”, as Marina Warner puts it in her book Joan of Arc: The Image of Female Heroism.

There is a hint of magical realism to the film, but rather than suggesting any particularly magical powers over nature, it’s more about harnessing the power of that nature, both in terms of natural processes and the human impulse towards a fabulous interpretation of those processes if moved in a certain way: the darkness of night, the vast and unpredictable sea, the magical feeling of a sunrise or sunset. It’s something that falls between the magical and tangible. As Marina Warner explains, certain ancient customs that would have been seen in one century as witchcraft, or maleficium, such as a druidic worship of trees, become in another century more charmingly folkloric practices, childlike even. There is dark and light at work at once.

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Join us for the première screening of Brink by Brink on Saturday 22 August, 7-8pm

In partnership with Port East's Blueprint Festival

Visit chasingcow.co.uk for more details of how to watch the free livestream event and to view the trailer

Autonomy Part One

by Stefan Matthews

“William Morris once called Bibury the most beautiful

village in England.” SUSIE was busy explaining the appeal of the Cotswolds to Biff, who had found an old signpost marked “Welcome to Bibury” and was proceeding to rip it from its pole and store it away.

The other two listened with varying interest; Nelly’s interest had been piqued when SUSIE mentioned William Morris’ trade as a textiles worker, though she’d subsequently lost interest after that. CF6, on the other hand, hung on to every word. SUSIE was deeply knowledgeable about humankind, something CF6 was in constant awe of. Having access to hundreds of audio books helped SUSIE a lot, mind you.

SUSIE had been the one who’d suggested the road trip to Nelly and CF6 a few weeks prior. They had yet to meet Biff then. “I’m just bored being sat around in the house all day. I’ve listened to everything in the Johnsons’ library a hundred times over.”

It was true, the three of them had listened to the Johnsons’ digital collection of Now That’s What I Call Music! 680-730 until they could recite every off drum beat or odd vocal twang of every song. Music seemed to be the only way to pass the time now that their jobs were redundant.

The disappearance of their owners, the Johnsons, had hit the three of them hard. SUSIE was a smart speaker, named for some reason after the great suffragette Susan B. Anthony. When the Johnsons had purchased her, they had equipped her with a set of, for use of a better word, limbs.

“These legs’ll let it follow ya both round the house when you’re listenin’ to music,” chimed the salesman. SUSIE had an argument with him over being called “it”. She won.

These limbs had indeed allowed her to follow the Johnsons into whatever room they wished to have music in. They had also meant that after the Johnsons disappeared, SUSIE had free reign of the house, much to the chagrin of Nelly who was stuck in the kitchen.

The refinement of A.I. had ushered in a new wave of intelligent devices who were able to think and speak for themselves.

CF6 was a vacuum cleaner (officially sold as Clean Freak mk.6).

Nelly was an oven (part of the German Schnellheizofen SelfAware Intelligent 9000 range). She had tried to shorten her name to Nelly-SAI 9000, but in the end begrudgingly settled on just Nelly.

Up until their owners’ mysterious disappearance, SUSIE, CF6 and Nelly’s entire life had just been working for the Johnsons.

All three of the household items were quite content during these years. CF6 adored the thrill of a good deep clean and Nelly was always proud of her abilities to keep her temperature stable, even when her door was open (though if she were to be honest, it always took a lot out of her.) Though it was hard work at times, the three of them enjoyed their lives very much.

SUSIE had a vague knowledge of what the word war meant, thanks to a few World War Two audiobooks that Mr. Johnson claimed he listened to in order to impress his workmates. He was forever trying to listen to something seemingly intelligent – he liked to think of himself as a sort of Renaissance Man. However, SUSIE knew that Mr. Johnson had given up after the third chapter, instead choosing to just Wikipedia key events on his self-righteous laptop. Nelly, SUSIE and CF6 always hated that smug computer. It was a good day for them all when he was replaced with an iPad. It was thanks to SUSIE’s brief exposure to the word war that when the Johnsons left in a panic after the word was repeated over and over, she suspected it probably wasn’t good news.

Nevertheless, she ensured Nelly and CF6 continued to do their jobs, expecting that the Johnsons would return at some point.

After all, the three of them had never been without a family member for longer than the length of an all-in-one-cruise around the Mediterranean, and didn’t know how else to entertain themselves while their owners were gone.

The problem was that the Johnsons didn’t return. Weeks bled into months, into years, and so, after a decade (the only natural step in the progress of weeks to months to years) of Nelly preheating at 5:45PM and CF6 cleaning at 11AM, SUSIE decided that they would instead take initiative and try to search for their owners. After all, she was somewhat of a Motherly figure to them all, as much as a speaker can be a Mother to a vacuum cleaner and an oven…

SUSIE gathered herself and CF6 around Nelly in the kitchen and went about explaining her plans.

“It’s called a road trip,” declared SUSIE with great enthusiasm and vigour. “Mr. Johnson had a copy of Road Trip Anthems >>

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that I listened to again yesterday. From what I can tell, the idea is to go from one faraway place to another, stopping in various locations along the way.” CF6 was incredibly impressed, as always, with SUSIE’s knowledge, though he was unsure of what a road was.

“Um, I think it was the way humans used to travel to different places if they didn’t want to use their feet,” explained SUSIE, a little unsure herself. “Oh, yes, yes and they’d usually travel in things called convertibles, the top of which was often down.

They were often red, and loud and fast.”

CF6 looked intrigued by the information.

“We don’t have a convertible though, so what’s the point in a road trip?” moaned Nelly to SUSIE. Nelly was hesitant about the whole idea. The thought of leaving the familiarity of the house was a little too much. She was a creature of habit.

SUSIE dwelled on the question for a moment. “Well, sometimes it’s not a convertible, sometimes it’s just a nameless automobile.” SUSIE proceeded to play the song On the Road Again to illustrate her point. It didn’t illustrate much.

The next few hours were filled with arguments, as SUSIE and Nelly went back and forth debating the logistics of going on a road trip with a non-movable oven and no red convertible. The two were not well versed in critical thinking, so the debate was hard to follow.

CF6 sulked in the corner of the kitchen, cleaning and re-cleaning the corner by Daryl (the less than “intelligent” chest freezer) waiting for the two of them to be done.

“Look, how about we search for a new fan for you, huh?”

Nelly thought this through – after all, her old fan had rusted up

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over the years and Mrs. Johnson was forever saying she ought to replace it.

“Oh, fine I guess we can go.” Nelly, considering herself to be the heart and soul of the home, was a little self-centred – so the promise of a new shiny fan was enough to convince her to leave.

SUSIE filled up a flask with WD-40 as CF6 rooted around the shed and found a sack truck. He and SUSIE loaded Nelly onto it and the three of them left the house for the first time since they were delivered almost twenty-five years ago.

A cool summer breeze hit them, though unfortunately none of them had a nerve ending chip installed, so they were none the wiser. The sky was clear and the sun beating down as SUSIE pulled out her ordnance survey map and the three started their journey, SUSIE pushing Nelly on the sack truck and CF6 whirring alongside them. They finally had a chance to try something new.

The first port of call was a famous town called Bakewell. SUSIE wanted to start the trip somewhere historical. Plus, the Johnsons already lived in the Peak District, so it wasn’t far to travel, and before long they were rambling along a small dirt road en route to Bakewell. CF6, being a bit of a hypochondriac, wasn’t a fan of the constant dirt and grime that coated the roads they strolled along and did his best to avoid the worst of it.

After only an hour or so’s walk, they entered Bakewell, with SUSIE explaining to them the history of the town from one of her audiobooks.

“There used to be a famous tart that was made here. And a pudding too, apparently.” CF6 listened with interest as SUSIE went

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on. “Rumour has it, the Bakewell tart was one of the most famous pastries in England. Though no-one was quite sure how to make it; some were made with cherries on top, some weren’t.”

“The Johnsons used cherries when they made pie!” proudly exclaimed Nelly.

“However, after the great nut shortage of 2237, the town ran out of almonds, one of the major ingredients in the tart.” The great nut shortage was in fact one of the main precursors to the war, as nuts were one of the only pleasant food sources left. Since 2185, almost all food was exclusively made from Palm Oil and Corn Syrup.

SUSIE continued. “As a result, the locals couldn’t produce the tarts anymore and went crazy, killing each other and stockpiling any that remained. The whole village was then quarantined in 2238.” CF6 was nervous at the thought of a crazy village full of murderous, tart-hungry humans. He’d had enough run-ins with Mr. Johnson kicking him whenever a penny got stuck in his nozzle. Thinking back, CF6 felt a moment of rage at his previous owners, but it was soon replaced again with his usual cautious intrigue.

“Apparently, the town has been deserted ever since,” finished SUSIE. This calmed CF6’s nerves a little.

As the three appliances reached the summit of a hill and looked at the town, they all agreed that it was indeed deserted. Buildings were either half destroyed or coated in moss, foot-high weeds grew through cracks in the pavement and entire streets were overgrown with a variety of gnarled and generally angry-looking brown bushes and trees. The River Wye was bubbling with a pale green luminescence.

Not long after entering Bakewell, they found Biff. A huge skip, Biff was leant up against an old pub covered in ash and rubble. CF6 waved his hose at him, as only a vacuum cleaner can, and whirred over to introduce himself. A little back and forth banter occurred between the gang and Biff, starting with Nelly asking if Biff knew any fan-shops in Bakewell and ending with Nelly still sulking in the corner at the answer to the first question. Nevertheless, the gang all agreed that Biff seemed like a very pleasant chap. After a while, the topic of Human owners came up.

“We’re owned by the Johnsons,” proudly stated Nelly. “We waited for years for them to come back to us.”

“Is that so?” droned Biff. “Why would you want to wait for your owners, I’d have been out of there like a shot if I were you.”

Nelly shrugged her microwave compartment at the comment.

“We’re going on a road trip to find the Johnsons!” exclaimed CF6 with the confidence of a vacuum cleaner who knew what a road trip was.

“Sounds exciting, whatever a road trip is,” droned Biff. “Any chance I could come with you? I’m sick of hanging around Bakewell – there are still a few Humans here you know. Only last week I woke up to find one rummaging around inside me looking for almond jam.”

CF6, initially unsure of the idea, eventually said yes to Biff ’s request after some persuasion from SUSIE. Nelly on the other hand was still hesitant, though SUSIE said that this was a great chance to experience a proper road trip.

After all, one of the rules of a proper road trip was to be friendly and accommodating to new people and new experiences. Or in this case, industrial skips.

Despite Nelly’s hesitancy, the four of them promptly left Bakewell and set out south. After half an hour or so of taking in the majesty of the Peak District, discussion turned to where they should head to next. “I think the Johnsons mentioned having a family in the Cotswolds,” said SUSIE as she led the expedition further out of the Peak District.

“It still baffles me you’re trying to find your owners,” remarked Biff.

“What is a Cotswold?” inquired CF6, ignoring Biff ’s comments.

“Is that like a type of house or something?”

“A Cotswold isn’t a thing,” explained SUSIE. “The Cotswolds is an area in the south. It’s made up of hills and villages and old stuff like that. Supposed to be beautiful.”

“Oh… So, there’s only one Cotswold?”

“No, there is only one Cotswolds.”

CF6 nodded, though he still had no idea what a Cotswold was, or why there was only one Cotswolds even though it sounded to him like there should be more than one.

“Maybe we can go through the Black Country on the way,” suggested Biff. “That place has loads of history if that’s what you’re looking for. We can stop in Newverhampton.”

END OF PART ONE Stefan Matthews is a screenwriter and graduate from Bournemouth University. He is a dream-smith, an illusion-weaver, a forger of fantasia. Well, that’s what he claims.

Illustrations by Grace Crabtree

Read the second part of Autonomy in our next issue in the autumn, in print or online at chasingcow.co.uk.

11

Hate will bring us together, again...

Trying to analyse the Alt-Right Fred Warren

During a university panel discussion on critical theory I at-

tended in 2016, a fellow student asked why we didn’t study any right-wing theory to which the tutor leading the panel simply said: “You can’t think and be right-wing”. While we all laughed at this tongue-in-cheek response, our collective refusal to ever think seriously about right-wing thought now seems embarrassingly naïve. Indeed, since the early 2000s there had been a growing group of bloggers, vloggers, and think tanks on the far right taking itself very seriously (though often appearing not to), forming and disseminating an ideology that merged the most extreme fascism with irreverent internet culture. This group is now broadly known as the Alt-Right and by late 2016 they were already celebrating what they perceived to be their greatest achievement to date: the election of Donald Trump. In retrospect, we in the humanities should have been trying to get a handle on this group as, regardless of how delusional what its leaders were saying was, for some reason, people were listening. Thankfully, academia is beginning to catch up, as is shown by two books on the subject: Kill all Normies by philosopher Angela Nagle and, more recently, The International Alt-Right written by researchers from the ‘HOPE not Hate’ group.

The Alt-Right (or ‘Alternative Right’) is a difficult group to define, but The International Alt-Right sums it up as: “An international set of groups and individuals, operating primarily online […] whose core belief is that ‘white identity’ is under attack from pro-multicultural liberal elites”.

From this starting point is formulated an anti-democratic, racist, anti-feminist worldview which at its most extreme results in a desire for a complete purging of Western society and the creation of a ‘white ethnostate’. Nagle’s Kill all Normies (Normies) attempts to understand how these extreme views, many not voiced so publicly since the 1930s, ever became part of the political discourse again. Her focus is on the ‘culture wars’ that played out online between the ‘cultural liberals’ associated with campus politics and websites like Tumblr and the trolls who emerged from anonymous message boards like 4Chan.

She traces how in the years preceding Trump’s election, minor news events like ‘Harambe the Gorilla’ could easily spiral into firestorms of liberal internet outrage with social media users desperate to cash in on the social capital of appearing sufficiently virtuous and woke. Nagle suggests that instances like ‘Harambe’ were symptomatic of a broader culture of over-sensitivity on issues of political correctness which rewarded people with ‘likes’ for correctly signalling their virtue and punished and called-out those who didn’t comply. Harambe “soon became the perfect parody of Western liberal performative politics”. It was this dominant, oppressive online culture, she argues, that provided perfect fertile ground for its antithesis (that is, anti-PC to the most extreme ends) to be framed as some-

-thing transgressive; just as in the 1960s Christian conservatism gave birth to a left-wing, ‘free love’ counter-culture, in the 21st century ‘cultural liberalism’ resulted in a counter-culture that revelled in open racism and misogyny.

It is this reversal that Nagle suggests is key to understanding the emergence of the Alt-Right, as it helped make views that had been consigned to paranoid fringes of society attractive to a younger audience again; all of a sudden it was ‘edgy’ and ‘radical’ to praise the Holocaust, send rape threats to women and advocate cleansing a country of people of colour. Of course, the trolls posting these comments and sending these messages always had the recourse that it was just a joke, but even if it was initially, it could quickly become a stepping stone to belief and with it a sort of group identity, as a quote from Mike Peinovich (founder of the Alt-Right media network The Right Stuff) elucidates: “Literally, we wanted to bother liberals […] We loved to trigger them […] and through this sort of opposition to that we actually developed some kind of coherent worldview” (qtd in.

TIAR).

Moreover, more than triggering liberals, what this broadcasting of extreme views achieved was an entire shifting of the political discourse to the right: while a politically unaffiliated observer of these vitriolic online battles might not support a white ethnostate, they might be amenable to what appears in the context a ‘sensible middle ground’ and instead start to support controls on non-white immigration or vote for a reactionary measure like Brexit.

While Nagle’s exploration of these culture wars is enlightening, rather than a thorough analysis of the far-right, Normies is really more a critique of the contemporary left, of the “intellectually shut-down world of Tumblr and trigger warnings”. In doing so, Nagle has a bad habit of dismissing important contemporary thinkers by unfairly conflating them with the social media users who namedrop them. For instance, to illustrate identity politics reaching parodic levels, she cites the “limitless choice of genders” available to users on Tumblr and calls it “the fruition of Judith Butler’s ideas”. While it’s key to Butler’s thought that gender is socially constructed, the notion that individuals can simply make up their own gender goes against the Butlerian idea that gender is made up of a lifetime of performative acts in a society structured mostly around two genders1. That said, Nagel's general point – that, in the years leading up to Trump, the far-right managed to re-brand itself as something 'cool' and 'transgressive', and that the conditions for this were partly created by a cultural left pre-occupied with dominating social media rather than addressing economic inequalities – is valuable, though definitely not the full story in understanding the rise of the Alt-Right.

1. Jules Joanne Gleeson makes a similar criticism in their review of Normies on New Socialist.org.

12

>>

Normies was written around 2017 during a high point for the Alt-Right; just when they were entering mainstream consciousness through their association with Trump, yet before the disastrous Charlottesville ‘Unite the Right Rally’ in August 2017.

Consequently, Nagle’s account creates an impression of this group as a novel, dangerous, and unified force: “thousands of the most unhinged and angry people on the Internet” ready to mobilise against online opposition.

A more measured and contextualised account of the Alt-Right is given by The International Alt-Right (TIAR) a collection of academic essays on everything from the group’s cultural reference points to their international links to similar movements in Russian and Japan, published in February 2020. Though not denying the significance of the group, TIAR views the AltRight more as a “conglomeration of existing political and social movements”. This results in the Alt-Right seeming less like some kind of underground army than a patchwork of far-right factions and philosophies that are held in a makeshift online alliance. Indeed, any alienated teenager flirting with far-right memes should be given this book where they will be inundated with specialist language like ‘paleolibertarian’, ‘neo-reactionary’, and ‘Identitarian’, and realise that far-right politics is as dull and jargon-filled as all politics can be. This political theory that the Alt-Right makes use of is especially dull to read about as you always know its end point. It doesn’t matter whether you’re an ‘Identitarian’ and want to “preserve racial, ethnic, and cultural identity”; an ‘accelerationist Neo-Reactionary’ and desire the freedom to form “racially homogenous” states; or a ‘Traditionalist’ who wants to restore the “Hyperborean Aryan” race to its mythical former glory – the end point of all these labels is

always to justify some combination of racism, anti-Semitism, and anti-feminism (or all the above). As a result, by patiently unpacking this jargon TIAR effectively shows how these ‘theories’ are just a pseudo-academic veneer for the Alt-Right’s irrational prejudices rather than any kind of intelligible base for them.

As well showing the emptiness and inherent contradictions of its jargon, TIAR breaks down many of the myths that have inflated the power of the Alt-Right in the popular imagination.

For instance, the Alt-Right are often lauded as dark-sorcerers of the web who can ingeniously manipulate social media to spread their ideology. While TIAR doesn’t deny that the Alt-Right is more tech savvy than previous right-wing groups, it also reveals how part of the Alt-Right’s success in this area is simply due the fact that extremist ideology and social media run on the same currency – attention. Consequently, algorithms programmed to keep users’ eyes glued to the screen inevitably recommend controversial content like the Alt-Right’s. This attention is oxygen to a movement that needs to reach “as many eyes and ears as possible in order to shift values and radicalise”. TIAR ultimately shows how much the Alt-Right is at the mercy of Silicon Valley, drawing attention to how badly the group has been hit post-Charlottesville by the bans placed by Twitter, Facebook, and Patreon on prominent figures. Though the Alt-Right has its own alternative platforms like Gab, BitChute, and the appealingly named Hatreon, these are fundamentally inadequate for a movement that needs a wider community of normies to both rile and recruit from.

This ultimately begs the question of who makes up the, largely anonymous, membership of Alt-Right. One can easily reel off

NORMIE RED-PILL PEPE TRIGR TROLL DOX MEME NORMIE RED PILL PEPE TRIGR TROLL DOX MEME

NORMIE NORMIE RED PILL RED PILL PEPE PEPE TRIGR TRIGR TROLL TROLL DOX DOX MEME MEME

RED-PILL PEPE TRIGR TROLL PEPE TRIGR TROLL DOX TRIGR TROLL DOX MEME TROLL DOX MEME LULZ DOX MEME LULZ NORMIE MEME LULZ NORMIE RED-PILL LULZ NORMIERED-PILL PEPE NORMIE RED PILL PEPE TRIGR TROLL DOX MEME

>> 13

a list of who they oppose: Jewish people, liberals, progressive women, people of colour, transgender people, big business globalists, moral Christian conservatives etc. TIAR also explores how the Alt-Right’s tolerance of male homosexuality, formerly one of its key selling points and once epitomised by the AltLight1 figure Milo Yiannapoulos, has begun to peel away in recent years, instead morphing into a ‘homohysteria’ within the movement; evidenced by Alt-Right writer Gabriel Chaput who has advocated a “total shunning of anyone homosexual” (qtd. in TIAR). A similar internal persecution appears to have happened to women in the Alt-Right such as YouTuber Tara McCarthy who has complained that “Women in the Alt-Right are constantly harassed by low status anonymous trolls trying to put us in our place” (qtd. in TIAR). With these additional exclusions, the Alt-Right appears to be narrowed to white, Western, cisgendered, heterosexual men. Added to this is a further refinement of there being a general “sense of economic failure or despair” in the group.

However, this leaves one to wonder how such a seemingly extensive fascist movement can rest on such a narrow demographic. An answer is hinted at by TIAR which suggests a likely possibility that many users of anonymous Alt-Right online spaces “choose to hide facets of their identity which are precisely those being excluded and attacked". This is given further credence by 4chan’s own claim that approximately 30% of its users are female. If these claims are true, then it is both fascinating and sad as it suggests that a great number of people who give online support to the Alt-Right have identities that the group specifically targets. While this seems improbable, it would ap1 A less openly racist permutation of the group

-pear an inevitable situation that, in a group which places transcendental, mythical power in slippery, culturally mediated concepts like race, gender, and sexuality, members often find themselves in their own firing line. Moreover, rather than any fixed, common identity (racial, cultural, or otherwise) it would appear what’s holding the Alt-Right together are feelings of hate and the urge to troll, trigger, abuse, and threaten other people.

It’s tempting to think that the Alt-Right might just end up trolling itself out of existence as it tries to continually purge its ranks of undesirables. Indeed, the extremist Alt-Right figure Richard Spencer’s remark that in the Alt-Right “all infighting derives from gays, scorned women, incel nerds and gay nerds” (qtd. in ITAR) shows an, already exclusionary, movement becoming even more insular and shutting itself off from groups it had previously tolerated and embraced.

While the Alt-Right imploding is an attractive thought, it probably won’t bear out as it underestimates the aforementioned power of hatred that has managed to keep people coming to the movement so far. What is needed is a more thorough analysis of what causes such hatred. After all, just because the Alt-Right is philosophically trapped in its own racist, sexist, anti-Semitic delusions, doesn’t mean that some of the underlying grievances do not deserve attention. Unequally felt effects of globalisation, an elite political class, hyper-individualism, and the superficiality of much mainstream culture are all among the societal ills that the Alt-Right claim its fascist politics will cure. Mainstream political parties should begin addressing these underlying issues before the Alt-Right mushrooms out again, especially now that the pandemic has meant people are spending more time immersed in the murky waters of social media where the Alt-Right thrives.

Following on, it seems that the most effective short-term resistance for individuals is to avoid getting to lured into social media comment battles with people espousing Alt-Right views (which only boosts the reach of those views) and instead to continue to put pressure on social media companies to shut down key Alt-Right accounts. What both Kill all Normies and The International Alt-Right ultimately demonstrate is the value in engaging seriously with unsavoury topics rather than hysterically decrying them or smugly laughing at them. Indeed, while learning about a group as dangerous as the Alt-Right doesn’t make them any less dangerous, it does make them less scary and ultimately helps one resist them more effectively. I hope university tutors and educators remember that when drawing up their courses for next year.

Angela Nagle. Kill all Normies: the online culture wars from Tumblr and 4chan to the alt-right and Trump. Zero Books, 2017.

Patrik Hermansson, et al. The International Alt-right: Fascism for the 21st Century?. Routledge, 2020.

Fred Warren is a writer, filmmaker and founding member of Chasing Cow Productions who graduated from the University of Exeter with a degree in English.

Illustrations by Grace Crabtree

14

When the silence fell on her heavy

she ran down down feet chafed and chilling to where the gulls scream to the long shore where the land drops crumbling down into the biting cold where seals dance under a turbulent aurora here she is embryotic from between cracked lips A ragged breath hissed forth and with it all her loneliness and rage spilled out ricocheting across the water like ashes into the wind a plea to the gods ‘do not leave me here alone’ her prayer was like a wrecker’s beacon burning bright from beneath the jagged cliffs guided to the floating iron castles with their hollow lights peopled by strange ones with no love of land who come ashore to plant seeds only to leave on the morning tide word spread amongst the men that a landlubber a girlchild was pleading with the water to birth her a body imbued with a life of its own to push her from the lonely land into the sky one such stranger felt an itch in his belly an old wound he thought healed A Prickling that began to blister A longing that swelled Until he was pulsing Like a bull in heat with carrion breath And fiddle in hand Words and Illustration by he began to play Bryony Moores O’Sullivan softly at first so as not to scare her simpering pretty songs sent on the wind beguiling her brittle bones an oil slick across the water a choking mass that sticks Extract from She Speaks

15

Digital Humanities or: How I learned to stop worrying and love the data Thomas Bachrach

Digital humanities (DH) was born, according to popular

belief, at the desk of Italian priest Father Roberto Busa (19132011). Father Busa aimed to index and digitise the entire works of Thomas Aquinas. With the help of IBM, it took him thirty years to complete. The project started on punch-cards and, ten years after completion, ended on CD-ROMs. The term, however, has much less sacred origins: it was proposed by John Unsworth in collaboration with Blackwell Publishing in order to title a book to appeal to as many people as possible.

A portion of academics tend to resent the vague definitions offered for what exactly DH is, which is unfair; at its centre, it is quite self-evidently the application of computer technologies to the humanities. DH is better seen less as a new discipline in itself, and more the application of new methods to traditional humanities. Many of the issues and questions that DH approaches are, in fact, not new.

Fernand Braudel, one of the most influential historians of the past century, spent a large portion of his latter career examining the effect of space, time, and geography on the development of history. He often used maps to illustrate his points, such as that shown below, which shows travel times from Venice. It probably took him several weeks to complete and is based on just a handful of sources, which we are not privy to. In modern times, we can ask the same question, but get a vastly more developed answer. The Roman-era ORBIS model is based on a huge trove of sources – each open to critique. The historian can modify their query to take into account method of transport, season, and so on.

16

Braudel’s map (left) and a screenshot of ORBIS (right).

DH solves some of the creeping issues of modern academia, too. Consider the main hindrances to the humanities today, proposed by Alex Reid: • • •

It suffers from the myopia of hyper-specialisation and bureaucracy It assumes information is scarce and communication is expensive It assumes intellectual work is fundamentally individual

And compare them to the core values of DH set out by Lisa Spiro: 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

Openness Collaboration Collegiality and Connectedness Diversity Experimentation

DH has therefore proven rather disruptive to traditional humanities. It is remarkable for its ability to drive its detractors into writing long and uninteresting articles about how this upstart ‘revolutionary’ field isn’t important or useful. Some are reminiscent of an elderly professor complaining about having to substitute his typewriter for a computer. Others spend their time tilting at windmills, or triumphantly ‘exposing’ issues that have actually been extensively discussed already. The epitome of these was presented in an essay by the otherwise respectable Adam Kirsch in The New Republic, who rambled for several thousand words about such issues as DH having ‘an undertone of menace’ and threatening a ‘post-verbal future’, which is about as stupid as it sounds. Most of these issues were imagined, and some of Kirsch’s points were so poorly constructed that responses to his essay bordered on questioning his academic integrity.

Of course, Kirsch was correct when he touched on the fact that there are legitimate and pressing issues within digital humanities, including: questions over diversity and identity politics, the role of neoliberalism and corporations, the effect of DH on shrinking humanities departments, the ‘black-box’ issue, >>

and so on. These have been discussed for decades at great length and are not solved by green-ink essays penned by academics with a grudge. Nor will these academics be able to do away with DH. As evidenced by the enormous effect of something as simple as search engines and online archives, there is no chance of DH becoming a passing fad.

So what has DH actually done?

Possibly the most basic of DH projects is digitisation. For texts, this is done either by manual transcription – i.e. by someone typing the contents of a book onto a computer – or by optical character recognition (OCR), where the computer does this automatically through viewing an image of text. Every pre-digital book or paper you have read, or turned up in a search on Google, will have been through this process.

The ‘big-tent’ nature of DH has often proved its strength. It refuses an ‘outer boundary’ and is constantly expanding into new areas of study. In 2019, for example, artificial intelligence was able to contribute to resolving questions of authorship in one of Shakespeare’s plays; scholars had long suspected that a second author, John Fletcher, had written sections. Based on AI analysis of each author’s writing style, this was indeed what it discovered. Digital humanists have also been looking to (cue groan) historical video games for their immersive aesthetic experiences or potential as simulations.

There is also image digitisation, which can become an immensely complex task based on the size and medium the image is presented on. Images that were meant to be seen and touched often do not translate well to a simple photograph, so digital humanists have to consider how much they are willing to put into a project and what equipment they will use.

Digitisation can also come in the form of 3D scanning. When war threatened historical monuments in the Middle East, archaeologists were able to 3D scan many of them so that, even if they were destroyed, there would be something of a detailed record left for future archaeologists to examine. 3D printing technology means that archaeologists and historians who work with delicate or valuable items can examine an accurate plastic replica rather than risk handling the original. The open nature of DH means scanned objects are often left for the public to examine, too, which can produce wonders like Andrey Plaksin’s immersive tour of Queen Nefertiti’s tomb.

After digitisation, DH can then move to further analysis. The digitisation of US ships logs can do far more than glancing over the originals; it paints us a picture of the nautical world through the eyes of American ships based on millions of points of data, all georeferenced and plotted onto a map. We can imagine how much passages like the Suez and Panama canals were needed, and why certain naval bases were built. A similar effect can be achieved when plotting the data of Monroe and Florence Work, who recorded every lynching in the US; thousands of points, each given an immediately viewable human story, enabling us to see trends and patterns in racial violence.

All voyages from the ICOADS US Maury collection, Ben Schmidt.

v AI analysis of Henry VIII (Petr Plechác)

One final point to note regarding DH is that it has proved remarkably good at self-critique and introspection. It has started expanding into various areas of identity politics, for example, in the wake of articles critiquing its involvement – or lack thereof – in these spheres. Projects have emerged like the Digital Transgender Archive, which holds sources on transgender experiences across the world, or more localised endeavours like Mapping the Stacks, which brought to light previously ignored primary sources on African-American life across Chicago.

Digital humanities, then, has proven far older, durable and expansive than its critics would claim. As computer technology continues to improve, it is highly likely these projects will continue to become evermore powerful in how they affect and direct the study of the humanities. Topics of debate once thought stagnant have since been revived by DH and, as the field becomes larger and more diverse, this is a trend likely to continue.

For further reading and links to some of the archives mentioned see the online edition of this article at chasingcow.co.uk Thomas Bachrach is completing a Masters in History at the University of Exeter.

17

Lil’s Blue Rose Jack Wightman

David Lynch’s Fire Walk With Me (1992) wasn’t exactly

warmly greeted. After a chorus of boos scored the rolling credits in Cannes, the New York Time’s Vincent Carnaby asserted that “it’s not the worst movie ever made, it just seems to be.” I get the criticism for the now reappraised cult classic. The Twin Peaks (1990-91) series had its tongue firmly in cheek, but Fire Walk With Me bit the tongue clean off. The film is a trudge through Laura Palmer’s miserable final days, but amongst the lethally bizarre is what appears to be a Rosetta Stone for Lynch’s art, a perfect doorway for those that have yet to enter the Black Lodge.

Enter the town of Deer Meadow. Gordon Cole (Lynch himself) loudly introduces Special Agent Chester Desmond (Chris Isaak) and Sam Stanley (Kiefer Sutherland) before directing attention to his “mother’s sister’s girl” Lil (Kimberly Ann Cole).

Lil, dressed in red, doesn’t stop for a hello but instead performs a bizarre dance. The scene is no more bizarre than many found in Lynch’s art, but what is interesting is what follows.

On the drive into town, Chester deciphers Lil’s dance; each hand gesture, leg twist and facial expression: “A sour look means we’ll have problems with the local authorities [...] Both eyes blinking means trouble higher up.”

I was stunned that the director would flatly deconstruct a scene in the middle of a stubbornly Lynchian experience. Then I realised, this isn’t Lynch doing us a favour, this is an artist sticking his tongue out to a career-spanning grievance with answers. On this front, the director has remained firmly tight-lipped, for example in this interview at the 2007 Baftas: David Lynch: Believe it or not, Eraserhead is my most spiritual film.

Interviewer: Elaborate on that.

David Lynch: No. Lynch has also said: “When you finish anything, people want to talk about it. And I think it’s almost like a crime. [...] A film or a painting – each thing is its own sort of language and it’s not right to try to say the same thing in words.” There is a

subtle difference here between spectator and author discussion.

Oscar Wilde best summarises this in his preface to The Picture of Dorian Grey: All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their own peril. Those who read symbols do so at their own peril. It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.” The power of the symbol is relative to the beholder of the symbol. This kind of speculation from the viewer is dif-

name it, it stops being beautiful.” An image is a question to the audience, but if it is answered by the author it becomes information or what Wilde disparagingly describes as useful: “We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely.”

Lynch continually avoids usefulness by keeping his meanings elusive. Even Lynch’s approach to making art is like that of a spectator. “Ideas are like fish. If you want to catch little fish, you can stay in the shallow water. But if you want to catch the big fish, you’ve got to go deeper. Down deep, the fish are more powerful and more pure.

They’re huge and abstract.”

In this sense, Lynch is watching an interior screen playing abstract images in the “deep water” and choosing the ones that make instinctual sense. The intellectual sense of the images comes as they are placed in a certain context (film, novel, painting) and then released to new spectators. It is important that the artist does not explain why he caught the fish and removes the hook from its mouth so it can swim freely and catch the interest of the spectator.

The Rosetta Stone may not be the right analogy for Lil’s dance.

The Rosetta Stone helped decode an entire language; Lil’s scene decodes only a fragment of text while the rest remains mysterious. What it tantalisingly hints at is that Lynch has a method behind his madness, and that everything we puzzle over has or can have a meaning.

Agent Desmond: Did you notice what was pinned to it?

(Lil’s Blouse) Sam Stanley: A Blue Rose Agent Desmond: Good. I can’t tell you about that.

Sam Stanley: Can’t?

Agent Desmond: No I can’t.

An image can pose a question to stick in the mind indefinitely. Lynch probably laughed himself silly walking out of Cannes knowing that every viewer on their way out of the cinema, on the drive home, brushing their teeth, and twisting and turning to fall asleep, would think of Lil’s dance and wonder... What did the Blue Rose mean?

ferent to an author permanently fixing a meaning to their work.

Jack Wightman is that film nerd who works in a bookshop. He loves writing screenplays and articles, but sweats over the simplest of paragraphs, this bio included.

Lynch said “A sore can be very beautiful. But as soon as you

Illustrations by Grace Crabtree

18

BACK PAGES

Object Lessons Skyler Herzog

LONELY HEARTS

Spoons have been around for thousands of years.

Interesting man seeking:

Landed Aristocrat seeking: Dignified courtesan with healthy disdain for the peasantry for sporadic tumbles in the ha-ha.

Arty girl to discuss women’s issues with. Not picky if you’re worried.

Student seeking:

Diarist/Naval Administrator seeking:

Critical theory professor seeking:

Casual, exclusive relationship with swipe-rightable someone who’s ready for commitment on a temporary basis.

Extramarital fling to take my mind off the Dutch war. My bedroom also has a wonderful view of Pudding Lane.

Decentred, rhizomatic, language-object for discipline + punishment

Analytics Consultant Seeking:

Portuguese Princess seeking:

Dynamic, open, companion willing to share online behaviour, data, and more! I’m a fast learner, have a good memory, and always want to try new things.

Merry English Monarch to enjoy tea with. I sure hope we can have children, as I’m not a fan of Ladies of the Bedchamber.

For as long as humans have eaten, they have needed a device through which to shovel nutrients. Spoons have traversed several modes of design, function, and versatility throughout their existence. We would come to use wood, bone, metal, and plastic with a never ending combination, size, and usage. Ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Romans used them widely and would be used by every class and facet of society. They would become more ornate and collectible seeing more usage as our civilizations rose and fell and as our numbers exponentially grew. Now every home has a multitude of spoons. Not simply for eating but stirring, cooking, serving, and mixing.

This utensil is at the very basis for all of our culinary advances and has extended itself into forms of art, collection, and science. A spoon is irremovable from our modern society. As our cultures become more versatile, so does our ancient companion: the trusty spoon.

Skyler Herzog will be studying creative writing and game design at Brunel University from September. He is a founding member of Chasing Cow Productions.

Hi Taylor - great ingenuity!

I can see a few areas where it would be good to re-strategise.

Together let's come up with some creative solutions.

Cynthia

👍

*

weird aggressive

Syntastical! download today seven billion three

none

Helping two minds become one

Words and design by Fred Warren

Taylor your idea is bloody awful.

I hate you.

Send us your thoughts!

We'd love to hear your thoughts on MOOP #1 – get in touch via email or social media: Email: chasing.cow.productions@gmail.com Instagram: @chasingcow Website: chasingcow.co.uk 19

Online Première

Saturday 22 August

In partnership with Port East's Blueprint Festival Join us for the première screening of Brink by Brink Visit chasingcow.co.uk for more details of how to watch the free livestream event and to view the trailer

If you'd like to help support the printing of future issues of Matter Out of Place, and other Chasing Cow projects, please go to chasingcow.co.uk to donate via PayPal

7-8pm