The Bioskop Presents …

We were deeply saddened to hear that Mark Fisher, the cultural theorist, died last week.
When we were starting the Bioskop in early 2010 I went (almost randomly) to a talk by Mark on his recently published book Capitalist Realism. It was a shock – and a wake up call – and led on to discovering (belatedly) his blog k-punk, and Zero Books where he was commissioning editor at the time.

In the early 2010s Mark Fisher’s writing acted as a touchstone or a point of departure that could lead to discovering Hauntology (the futures that were imagined but didn’t come into being), Speculative Realism, Post Humanism, the dark Deleuzianism of Nick Land and the CCRU, the use of sci-fi as a jumping off point for understanding the present, Italian Autonomism and Bifo Berardi, and Accelerationism in its negative and positive sense. And – through Zero Books – to Nina Power’s One Dimensional Woman , Carl Neville’s Classless, Steven Shaviro’s brilliant introduction to Post Cinematic Affect, and Agata Pyzik’s Poor but Sexy. (to name some highlights)

One of the defining statements of Fisher’s Capitalist Realism is “It is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism.”  Mark Fisher’s writing recognised that we are doomed to not having a future unless we understand the importance of our culture producing dreamings “suggestive glimmers of worlds radically different from the actually existing social order.”

Some great writing about Mark has appeared in the last few days, by friends and colleagues including this by Robin MacKay and this by David Stubbs.   A much longer version of this post with personal reflections can be found here.

Photos, video and background documenting this event are now up on the love page.

So… What did happen after they lived happily ever after?

Forget first love, forget head over heels, forget the fluffy stuff, lets look at the glistening grit that lies at the centre of real relationships…  Come with the Bioskop deep into Redcliffe Caves on a cinematic journey and discover the answers to the questions you didn’t even want to ask…  A selection of nine short films and live music from Goldcrest.

Screenings at 7pm and 9pm. Tickets available at the cube website. Come along!

What is that? An inducer? What, did it fall off? / Ummm… How do you…? // Let me see that again… I think I have it. / Hey give me your arm. / Ummm… you know… when I was at school it was all very different. We used to stay in bed all the time. / Combined Primary Economics. / Combined Primary Economics was a bottle about this big. Took a week.

nb to see the programme of films we showed on the night go to the family page, here.

The bioskop is heading to the Star and Shadow in Newcastle on Thursday 21st January to screen a programme we’ve assembled of artist’s film, rare documentary, and short fiction  called WE ARE FAMILY.

As well as being the bioskop we’re very proud to be part of the collectively-run Cube Cinema , which is a kind of a sister cinema to the Star and Shadow.  The two cinemas are very similar in the way they work, active at opposite ands of the country but sharing a lot of ideological and organisational DNA.

We’ve never been to the Star and Shadow so we’re going to screen each of the films in a different room – hopefully including the bar, auditorium, office and smoking area – so that we and the audience get a chance to explore.

If you’ve ever been part of a collective (or any work organisation) you’ll know the experience is a mixture of friendship, arguments, politics, flirting, work and shirking, endless meetings, egos, emails, inspiration and disillusion (and vice versa), drinking, cleaning, boredom and fun.

Its basically like being part of a large dysfunctional family – hence the name of our programme, WE ARE FAMILY.  We’ve chosen a set of films that as well as being films we love, we think reflect a bit of that experience…