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The Haunted Generation – A Spectral Primer/Revisiting and Hookland Re-Enchantments: Ether Signposts #49/52a

Fortean Times June 2017-Bob Fischer-hauntology-2b

The June 2017 issue of Fortean times is well worth a visit.

It contains an 8-page cover article called The Haunted Generation by Bob Fischer that essentially acts as a primer for all things hauntological and to a degree where such things meet and intertwine with the flipside and sometimes unsettled aspects of bucolia:

From children’s TV to public information films, the 1970s were suffused with melancholy and disquiet. Bob Fischer discovers how Penda’s Fen and the Spirit of Dark and Lonely Water inspired a generation to creativity, and ponders the future of popular hauntology.

The article takes as its initial and core theme haunted/spectral television largely from the 1970s (rather than say overtly concentrating on the more lost progressive futures aspects of hauntology) and wanders elsewhere from its starting point as Bob Fischer talks to Jim Jupp of Ghost Box Records, Frances Castle of Clay Pipe Records, Jonny Trunk of Trunk Records and Richard Littler the creator of Scarfolk about their influences, inspirations and where they see such work travelling to next.

Fortean Times-June 2017-Fiona Maher-Hookland-2

Also in the issue and just following The Haunted Generation article is a feature on the imaginary forgotten English village Hookland, where Fiona Maher talks to its imaginer (summoner?) David Southwell, who says this on some of his reasons for Hookland coming to be:

I wanted to do something that dealt with the ghost soil of Britain – all the folklore, all the high strangeness that grew and bloomed in the gloriously strange TV, film and books I grew up with as a child in the 1970s. I wanted to put the weirdness back. I strongly believe that re-enchantment is resistance and even back in 2012 you could see how the fight for the national narrative was going and how the ghost soil voice needed to be heard more strongly within it.

Fortean Times June 2017-Bob Fischer-hauntology-Hookland-Fiona Maher-2b

(File post under: Other Pathway Pointers And Markers)

Directions and Destinations:
The Fortean Times
The digital version of the June 2017 issue (which I assume is legitimate as the same website is advertised in the magazine).
The lost county of Hookland

Local Places Of Interest:
Day #65/365: Mr Jim Jupp’s parish circular
Day #162/365: Hauntology, places where society goes to dream, the deletion of spectres and the making of an ungenre
Day #169/365: On your marks… the return and reprise of the corporeality of vibrations in the air… and a bakers dozen of Clay Pipe Music
Week #20/52: Pastoral Noir, if onlys, a seeking of names / the ether giveth and the ether taketh away

 

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