Gene Youngblood’s Expanded Cinema (Online Group Video Session)
April 23, 2020
Night Sweats & Fever Dreams – A Live Interview with Oli Spleen and Nick Hudson (Online Group Video Session)
May 12, 2020

 

Exploding Appendix is a book whose sacred heart has been ripped out, and finds itself growing, eternally, as a series of fragmented, incohesive appendices. Deprived of a singular unified core, its pages spew in multiple indeterminate directions, growing in number, pressing with increasing force against the binding that should keep them in place, as if, at any moment, the book could explode and a flurry of pages scatter through the air.
The First Rehearsal for an Exploding Appendix Manifesto
…we seek the preliminary jotting, the work-in-progress, the persistent rehearsal for an ever-expanding and mutating revolution. Our aim is to build an open-ended dialogue; a discursive interplay in the ongoing mutations of a communal experimentation that aspires towards transformative ideals.  We demand a renewed commitment to a love of life and a radical aspiration in every faction of it, yet we have no eternal manifesto. Instead we offer mere rehearsals. Meagre drafts, compiled as an unfinished edifice. A mere tangential blog posing as a new ‘Lutheranism’.  Yet this bombastic posturing reveals our driving ideals: we are descendants of Gutenberg. Ours is the radical pamphlet; the incendiary manifesto.  We will not sit quietly, but instead nail our meagre drafts to all the sanctified ‘churches’ of our modern world.
The Second Rehearsal for an Exploding Appendix Manifesto
Exploding Appendix is a project that attempts to build upon the history of avant-garde art in order to construct a radical vision for our own future. Our project is both intellectual and creative. We value a vast range of theory, and prize thorough intellectual investigation, but we are also practitioners. We seek to meld the two in a context of fun and mutual experimentation. The first two Rehearsals for an Exploding Appendix Manifesto (First, Second), lay down some of the general themes of our investigation.
Central to the Exploding Appendix project is the fortnightly meeting of the Exploding Appendix Avant-garde Art Practice and Research Group, where we meet to explore ideas and share in the process of creation. Founded in July 2018, these meetings ran alongside a series of creative projects and provided a space for artists and researchers of different stripes to convene, share work and explore ideas. Since then our meetings have developed to include regular presentations, workshops, interviews and discussions. These sessions are free and open to all. We seek to create a fun and friendly atmosphere where a range of ideas can be explored. We welcome a diverse array of people coming from very different backgrounds, each learning from one another in an ongoing process of exploration.
Exploding Appendix also functions as a multimedia online platform. Originally founded in 2017, Exploding Appendix started as an attempt to archive and expand upon the now defunct One+One Filmmakers Journal (2009-2014) and its accompanying blog (2009-2015). One+One was a film publication that drew its name from Jean-Luc Godard’s 1968 film One Plus One, and like the film, explored themes of revolution and social transformation whilst championing an avant-gardist approach to film and filmmaking. Despite abandoning the strict focus on film, Exploding Appendix sought to extend these themes to art and culture as a whole.
Especially in its 2017 inception, Exploding Appendix sought to create a platform to both share and develop artistic work and think intellectually about ideas and culture more generally. Exploding Appendix sought to create an interdisciplinary approach to a range of issues around art and culture and sought to use its online journal, its podcasts and its videos to do this. By doing this we sought, not only to meld theory and practice, but to develop our own philosophical approach to many issues. Short selected clips from our films and videos can be viewed below.

 

 

Alongside this we sought to build creative projects and use the site as a ‘gallery space‘ for showcasing work, especially work created in and around our meetups and research group. Our forthcoming feature film, The Cake Tasting Society, will be released soon, and we are currently in the preproduction stages of a new dance project. A compilation of our previous dance films are presented below.

 

 

With the outbreak of COVID-19, many of our meetings have moved online for the time being, and whilst this brings limitation, it also provides the opportunity to reflect back on past projects and contemplate how to move forward. Ideas for collaborations and exchanges are always very much welcomed and we can be contacted via email. (explodingappendix@gmail.com)
Bradley Tuck  xx