Exploding Appendix Avant-Garde Art and Research Group: February/March Brighton Programme

The Exploding Appendix Avant-garde Art and Research Group (EAAARG) is a meet-up that meets upstairs at The Marwood, 52 Ship Street Brighton, England, BN1 1AF. The meet up start at 7.30pm regularly on a Tuesday.

Our aim is to create a space where artists, intellectuals and others can meet to discuss ideas, issues and creative projects. The evening is composed of two elements.  On the one hand, evenings tend to comprise of relaxed informal discussions about art, art projects and ideas. On the other hand, we try and add something different each session. This might be a film screening, a live performance, an improvisation/creative session, a work in progress session, a reading group, a guest talk, an interview, a panel discussion, a debate, a workshop, an exhibition, live music or a party. This is all very flexible and can be built around the interests of the group.

EAAARG will run alongside the Exploding Appendix website (www.explodingappendix.com), a multimedia online magazine that produces videos, podcasts, articles, interviews and visual essays exploring ideas and culture generally, and can be used as a platform for presenting projects related to the group.

Whilst drawing upon the history of avant-gardist and counter-cultural ideas we aim to explore a wide range of issues beyond the narrow purview of conventional art discussion. We welcome people working within different disciplines, different artistic mediums and coming from very different perspectives.

Below is the schedule for February and March:

12 February 2019 (7:30pm to 10:30pm)

Heretical Sects and Radical Millenarians in the late medieval and Early Modern Period (Presentation and discussion)

In this meeting we will explore subversive and radical ideas emerging out of heretical Christianity. Drawing on the history of apocalypticism and sects from the movement of the free spirit to Anabaptists, Diggers and Ranters, we will explore how these movements challenged the idea of sin, experimented with gender and sexual liberation, rejected religious authority, embraced pantheism, and proposed radical political revolution. We will explore how the birth of the printing press fuelled the rise of the radical pamphlet, and explore parallels in the new technologies that shaped the 20th century avant-garde, the DIY punk scene and Online subcultures today.

NO PRIOR READING IS NECESSARY. However, for further reading see:
Raoul Vaneigem, The Movement of the Free Spirit
Norman Cohen, In Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages
Karl Kautsky, Communism in Central Europe in the Time of the Reformation
Christopher Hill, The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas during the English Revolution

12th March 2019 (7:30pm to 10:30pm)
Screening and discussion with filmmaker Kai Fiáin about his work.