In March 2018, The FRONT ROOM staged a second night of performance-poetry-film following up our Waving Not Drowning event in 2017. The event took place on Thursday 31st May at The Loft, Albert Road.
Participating artists were requested to respond to the theme of BRAVE NEW WORLD.
When he wrote Brave New World in 1931, Aldous Huxley he may have intended it as a satire of his own time but the themes he explored are all too familiar today. The book is a commentary on the lives of those who had little say in their society, who were at the mercy of an all-powerful elite. A world where the distinction between public and private is inverted and all relationships are open and subject to public scrutiny. It predicted the ways in which media technologies are used to manipulate and control. The predilection for drugs and pharmaceuticals as a panacea for all manner of societal ills pervades Huxley’s world. Genetic engineering, conditioning, enforced consumerism are all part and parcel of Huxley’s fantasy.
He describes for us a technology-sedating, consumption-engorging, instant-gratifying bubble. He presents us with a world where there is no need to ban books because nobody reads them anymore. A world in which we are reduced to passivity and egoism by the flood of information and fake news. Where truth is buried under a tide of irrelevance and triviality. How close have we come, in our modern world, to the society of vapid consumers, idle pleasure-seekers, inner-space trippers and programmed conformists?
- How do we escape from Huxley’s dreamed utopia?
- How can we reclaim meaning from the tide of triviality?
- How do we resist and what form might such opposition take?
We invited responses to these questions from artists, performers, poets, musicians, writers, filmmakers and creatives from all fields or walks of life. The only proviso is that their response would be in the form of a performance-poem-film, an audio-visual synthesis of the word, the image and the stage. We said they could present new work, old work, work in progress. In some instances, we matched poets with filmmakers or filmmakers with poets. We encourage them to think beyond just the spoken word and to consider action, theatre, film and sonic arts as means of resistance.
Performances of poetry, music, art and film based on Aldous Huxley’s 1931 Brave New World with:
- Klaus, Gunther and Plotz
- Alistair Winter & Jenna Lions, The Metaverse Project
- Matt Parsons & Janet Ayres
- Jackson Davies & Dr Lighthouse
- Anna Pluto
- Scott Jowett
