What Is This That Stands Before Me? Heavy Metal And Modernism from Sapphire Goss on Vimeo.
"Welcome to the sound of the modern; to the inescapable gravity well. Face-pulverising, mountain splitting, reality-vaporising heaviness. The great riff valley. Can such an elemental idea be thought of as modernist? Hell yes. Modernism is as modernism does, battle jacket or not."
Artist filmmaker Sapphire Goss and tQ Editor John Doran consider the question ‘Is heavy metal modern art?’ as they bring their Live Documentary Performance – a combination of real time manipulated film, a mix of specially recorded drone music by Årabrot, Mark Pilkington & Ghost Writer, and spoken word – What Is This That Stands Before Me? Metal & Modernism to Chalk Farm’s The Camden Club on Sunday 19 May, drawing together the world of Black Sabbath, Napalm Death, Mayhem & Sunn O))) and the world of Picasso, Marinetti, Beckett & Lawrence.
Also on the bill, which is part of a specially series of presentations for Desertfest curated by Sound Affects, is Natalie Reilly – AKA Thirteen Scorpios – who creates psychedelic art inspired by the sights and sounds of her favourite era, the 1960s and Dan ‘The Doom’ Franklin, tQ writer extraordinaire and author of Heavy: How Metal Changes The Way We See The World and Come My Fanatics, the official brain-melting history of Electric Wizard.
It’s free in if you have a Desertfest pass or a tenner otherwise and you can get tickets here.
