PRESS RELEASE – FEBRUARY 2007

ADVENTURE: Showdown at the pig palace…
Mark and Stephen Beasley
28 minutes 30 seconds

ADVENTURE is a new audio work from Mark and Stephen Beasley, which will be broadcast on independent and community radio stations as well as feature in concurrent presentations at Outpost, Norwich and City Projects, London.

Taking the form of an experimental radio play, ADVENTURE weaves together a fictional dialogue between two teenagers with a measured description of the architectural specifications of a typical shopping centre, from the excavation of virgin soil to the addition of fixtures and fittings. The play is accompanied by a soundtrack, composed and performed by Nicholas Bullen (Napalm Death, Scorn, Black Galaxy).

The dialogue, which takes place at the site of an unidentified shopping centre between “girl” and “boy,” is punctuated with quotes and cultural references, which leak meaning throughout the work creating a labyrinthine structure of influence that the characters endeavour to absorb and utilize.

Shopping, having become synonymous with entertainment, is received in distraction and the messages communicated by the seemingly benign architecture of the megalopolis work upon our protagonists in waves. “Girl” and “boy” struggle to orientate themselves, politically and culturally, or direct their desires, bouncing between resistance, through means of imagined violent revolution, and assimilation. Ill equipped to understand their adversary, they submit to its control as readily as they resist it and are caught in a futile game of bluff and double bluff. Moving swiftly from enchantment to suspicion and back again, occasionally threatening to awake from their somnambulistic stroll, “girl” and “boy” are buffeted and cradled by forces beyond their control and understanding. Less a battlefield, or cathedral of commerce, the modern shopping centre, for them, is a theatre or film set.

Mark and Stephen Beasley previously worked together as Flatpack001, a collective project drawing upon artistic, architectural and curatorial practices to explore issues related to these disciplines and specific art and cultural histories. Now working under their own names, they continue to explore this territory. Recent projects include Seagulls Screaming Kiss Her Kiss Her (Frozen Tears III, publication edited by John Russell), Beasley Street (Camden Arts Centre), and The Delinquent Silhouette, Metropole Gallery, Folkestone.

Nicholas Bullen is one of the founding members of grindcore/death metal band, Napalm Death. The genre of music that became known as grindcore grew out of anarcho-punk, a sub-genre of punk music that fused incredibly fast and loud punk rock with extreme leftwing politics. After performing with Mick Harris in Scorn Bullen now performs with Simon Mabott as experimental electronic collective Black Galaxy. Bullen also produces sound installations and films. He is based in Birmingham, England.