We are very proud to be taking part in this year’s event.
A tribute to a truly great cultural and political thinker and a very lovely person.

NOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND
The Mark Fisher Memorial Lecture 2021 with Test Dept, Alexei Monroe and Peter Webb

Fri, January 29, 2021
6:00 PM – 8:00 PM GMT

Free Online Event
Register: https://tinyurl.com/y6rf7svz

Mark Fisher, also known under his blogging alias k-punk, was a British writer, critic, cultural theorist, philosopher and teacher based in the Department of Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London. He was noted for his writing on radical politics, music and popular culture, and was probably best known for the success of his book ‘Capitalist Realism’ and for his K-Punk blog.

The Mark Fisher Memorial Lecture 2021 with Test Dept
by Department of Visual Cultures, Goldsmiths, University of London

This year’s event titled ‘Notes From The Underground’ features the collective Test Dept with cultural critics Alexei Monroe and Peter Webb.

“There is something very timely about the return of Test Dept … [they] have arrived just in time for the deep crisis of neoliberalism in the UK”
Mark Fisher, 2015.

When he visited Test Dept’s DS30 installation in Newcastle, Mark Fisher found much to inspire him and met with the group. In a subsequent article he described their work as an example of radical ‘popular modernism’ which could still be highly relevant in the present day. Inspired by this, the group have worked with Alexei Monroe and Peter Webb to explore their legacy and its relevance to now.

Fisher described the documentation of their work in the book Total State Machine (2015) as an ‘invaluable archive, an inventory of strategies, gestures and techniques’.

This two-part event will feature a new film work exploring Test Dept’s archive with a commentary by Alexei Monroe and Paul Jamrozy exploring their legacy through the lens of some of Fisher’s key concepts. This will be followed by conversation and Q&A facilitated by Peter Webb.

Test Dept worked intensively in and around Goldsmiths and the local area in the 1980s. The film and the conversation that follows will explore a series of key themes and questions, relating Test Dept’s history and current work to the multiple political, social and cultural challenges of 2021.

Can popular modernism still have an effect in the 21st Century, as Fisher believed it could? What lessons are there for today in the way that Test Dept operated in harsh environmental, economic and political conditions? How did Test Dept create its artistic “fuel to fight” from ruinous conditions and spaces and is it possible to imagine something like this in our own increasingly ruinous political and economic conditions?

# MarkFisherMemorialLecture2021 #TestDept

Dear All, We have decided to mark the 5 year anniversary of the publication of the Test Dept book ‘Total State Machine’ by offering a bundle of the book and a Test Dept T-shirt featuring the Cog, Hammer and Book design on the left breast. Available in S,M,l and XL. Book and T bundle will be £35 and book on its own will be £30 . Reduced for the anniversary period from May to July for lockdown reading. This book is the definitive book on Test Dept history and development. 386 pages and printed in Full colour:

‘Total State Machine’ is published by PC-Press and is a unique historical document and visual representation of Test Dept, one of the UK’s truly investigative agitators, authentic industrialists, utilisers and recyclers of society’s debris.

“As well as manifestoes, excerpts from tour diaries and many previously unknown stories and documents, the book also contains extensive interviews conducted in which they speak openly about their history.

Printed on high quality art paper, the book contains chapters and reflections from Paul Jamrozy, Graham Cunnington, Angus Farquhar, Stephen Mallinder (Cabaret Voltaire), Robin Rimbaud (Scanner), Marek Kohn, Malcolm Pointer, Ivan Novak (Laibach), Alan Sutcliffe (Kent Miners) and many more with an introduction by Alexei Monroe and Peter Webb. The book also contains original artwork, photography and documentary images of the group from all periods of their work.

With hundreds of artwork and event photos from the group’s archives and others, it is a highly visual book, illustrating the spectacular scale and impact of Test Dept’s work.”

Real time update! The printer ran into an issue last week with the eco-friendly vegetable inks that we are using, not coping with the rich and dense black colour on several pages of the book. They have played around with a few different eco-friendly inks, and have eventually found a solution that provides a beautifully dense and rich black for those parts of the book where photos either have those colours or are framed by them. This has set the print run back by at least a week unfortunately, but otherwise, all is running beautifully as planned. I attach some images of completed pages and stacks of them in the print shop to show you the progress that has been made. This issue will shift the shipping dates back a bit – but as soon as we hear the exact finish date then I can update you with revised shipping times. Almost there now – and those pages that are printed look AMAZING! PW.

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