off beat: jeff nuttall and the international underground

OFF BEAT:
JEFF NUTTALL AND
THE INTERNATIONAL
UNDERGROUND
8 September – 5 March 2017
The 1960s was one of the most volatile decades of
the 20th century. It saw dramatic changes in society,
politics and culture, with developments in communications
technology and media that resulted in the concept of
a ‘global village’. Beneath the surface of it all, an
international cultural underground evolved, a wide-spread
bohemian community of writers and artists that connected
via exchanges of correspondence and through the sharing
of their self-published magazines and books.
Jeff Nuttall became the key British architect of, and
contributor to, the Underground network, advocating its
ideology of experimentation, defiance of censorship and
anti-commercialism. In Bomb Culture, his seminal account
of British and transatlantic counterculture, Nuttall
recalled that ‘to a certain extent the Underground
happened everywhere spontaneously. It was simply what
you did in the H-bomb world if you were, by nature,
creative and concerned for the humanity as a whole.’
Nuttall was certainly creative: the Lancastrian-born poet,
painter, sculptor, actor, performance artist and musician
published nearly 40 books between the 1960s and his
death in 2004. His work was unequivocally shaped by the
impending threat of atomic warfare and his despair of
the social order that engendered it: his work is urgent,
provocative and exhilarating. ‘Art lives when values
melt,’ Nuttall declared: ‘if you want to exist you must
accept the flesh and the moment.’
aware of new poems or forthcoming publications.
Some despatches were pure flights of joy or madness,
relating their ceaseless struggles with love, risky
habits, the police, or the wolf at the door. As a
result, correspondence between the Underground poets
and publishers often became an expression of private
revelation as well as creative originality; poetic and
even experimental in style and content.
My Own Mag attracted contributions and enthusiasm from
around the world, including William Burroughs (who often
had his own section in the magazine), Douglas Blazek,
William Wantling, Carl Weissner, Charles Plymell and
Alexander Trocchi. In turn, Nuttall’s writing and art was
sought for their publications, including some produced
by Mary Beach - a restless artist and publisher - and her
partner, the French Lettrist, Claude Pélieu.
Many counterculture figures led vagabond, frugal
lifestyles, so print production techniques that were
quick, makeshift and cheap were ideal for their needs.
This also emphasised their urgency to keep in touch,
move the news around the community, keeping everyone
a duplicating machine/process that
produces a limited number of copies
from stencils. During the 1960s many little magazines,
including My Own Mag , were printed by mimeograph,
usually operated by poets to circulate their own
and their friends’ work, which led to the term
‘mimeo revolution’.
• Prepared environment –
Douglas Field and Jay Jeff Jones, Curators.
LANGUAGE OF
THE UNDERGROUND:
• Antiuniversity –
an educational concept related
to Situationism and championed
by Alexander Trocchi, where the teaching and learning
exchange is spontaneous, continuous and free.
• A r no l d W e s k e r
and Centre 42 -
Centre 42 was a project led by
the playwright Arnold Wesker
and based at the Roundhouse
in Chalk Farm, London. There was a plan to adapt the
redundant engine shed as a ‘people’s art centre’ to
bring culture to ‘non-elite’ audiences. The unrenovated
Roundhouse was the location of the launch party for
International Times (1966) where the newly selfidentified London underground community gathered
to watch light shows and listen to Pink Floyd and
Soft Machine. The attendees included Paul McCartney,
Michelangelo Antonioni and Kenneth Rexroth.
• Cut-up technique –
Finding inspiration from European avant-garde
artists and the purposeful veteran writers of the
Beat Generation, Nuttall sought out fellow creative
adventurers for collaboration. In 1963, he produced the
first issue of the little magazine, My Own Mag: A Super
Absorbant [sic] Periodical on a mimeograph machine at
the school where he worked. It would run for a further
16 issues, becoming one of the leading publications of the
International Underground. ‘We were all suddenly in touch
with one another,’ Nuttall recalled, ‘thrown out by the
termination of our loneliness.’
• Mimeograph -
William Burroughs and the
painter Brion Gysin developed
the cut-up technique in Paris, 1959. There are variants,
but cut-ups involve cutting up passages of prose and
randomly pasting them back together to create new words
and sentences. Film and audio tape can also be cut-up.
• Happenings –
artistic events, which may
include a mixture of practices and
media, abstract or improvised performances, ‘prepared
environments’ or installations and audience participation.
The intention often is to provide an unexpected,
absurd experience that will provoke emotional or
intellectual responses.
• International
Poetry Incarnation –
in 1965, around 8000
people flocked to the
Albert Hall to hear
over 20 poets, including Allen Ginsberg and Michael
Horovitz, perform their poetry. Compèred by Alexander
Trocchi, the event was captured in Peter Whitehead’s
documentary, Wholly Communion .
a literary periodical that
is usually not produced on a
commercial basis and frequently a showcase for new
and non-mainstream writers.
a space that is
transformed by the
artist(s) into a three dimensional artwork that may
include painting, sculpture, found objects, live or
recorded sound, light effects or projections. Often the
viewer is expected to interact with the exhibition or
the artist/performer. The experiences vary from being
very shocking or distressing, to uplifting or thought
provoking. They could also be, like in the case of the
original San Francisco Trips Festival, enhanced by
taking drugs.
• R D Laing and
Kingsley Hall –
Laing was a controversial
psychiatrist who set up an
experimental, residential
community of schizophrenics. The arts were an
important part of Laing’s approach and many
underground artists and writers held events and
meetings at Kingsley Hall, London. Laing also
supported project Sigma and the Antiuniversity.
• Sigma –
the name of Trocchi’s personally
developed Situationist project that
proposed (in his terms) a ‘meta-categorical revolution’
and ‘invisible insurrection of a million minds’.
Its defined aims were elusive but encouraged
individuals to achieve self-liberation.
• S i tu a t i o n i s m –
a revolutionary artistic/social
philosophy descended from Dada,
Surrealism and French Lettrism. Developed originally
in Paris by Guy Debord, it argues that the quality
of modern life has been debased through consumerism,
which has resulted in an alienation from directly
lived, authentic experience.
• U n de r g r o u n d –
an alternative culture that
included writing, art and film
produced outside the establishment. Its content and
style was usually avant-garde, explicit or obscene
(by the standards of the time) and often politically
and socially provocative.
Photograph of Jeff Nuttall
courtesy of the Roger Birch Collection
• Little magazine –
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www.manchester.ac.uk/rylands/off-beat