Publisher/film maker Stuart Swezey and author/film programmer Jack Sargeant will talk books, underground publishing, underground culture, and much more, while screening excerpts of appropriately transgressive films and videos.
7pm - 10pm
£5 advance / 7£ on the door
Amok Books became legendary with the Fourth Dispatch that introduced global readers to books on topics ranging from mind control techniques to surrealism, from occult books to dissident political commentary. Emerging out of the creative ferment of LA’s punk rock and noise music community, Amok was formed as a collective dedicated to disseminating “the extremes of information.” Lacking the funds to actually stock a bookstore, they issued a 30-page combination dada-inspired collage and book catalog dubbed the Amok First Dispatch.
The Amok First Dispatch eschewed traditional genres and set up its own categories: Control, Mayhem, Orgone, Sleaze, etc. and became an immediate underground sensation and counted psychedelic visionary Timothy Leary among its first enthusiastic customers.
Amok then opened its first 300-square-foot bookstore just off of Sunset Blvd. Events sponsored by the Amok Bookstore included an in-store show of paintings by serial killer John Wayne Gacy, the “Nailed!” performance by poet Bob Flanagan in which he nailed his scrotal sac to a wooden board at a nearby club. Amok also publishes its own original book titles ranging from the works of the acclaimed noir author John Gilmore to dissident surrealist philosopher Georges Bataille to a monograph of the controversial Slovenian arts collective NSK (Laibach/Irwin) to the ground-breaking compilation Amok Journal: Senssurround Edition. The Amok Bookstore was also at ground zero of the burgeoning zine movement and was one of the first retail outlets to carry them.
The Amok Third Dispatch was described by J.G. Ballard as “a wonderful conspectus of that other literature that exists light-years away from mainstream publishing and the respectable academic consensus.” With the release of its Fourth Dispatch, Vanity Fair magazine proclaimed it to be “the benchmark sourcebook on deviant literature” while the San Francisco Chronicle asserted that "a side effect of reading the Amok Dispatch is that it could make you reconsider the very nature of imagination, freedom and possibility." The Amok Fifth Dispatch opened up its ranks to a wide-ranging group of “oddball bibliophiles” (as director John Waters termed them) and was nominated for Best Non-Fiction Title in the Firecracker Alternative Book Awards. More recent publications include John Tottenham’s The Hate Poems and Jack Sargeant’s latest book on underground visceral film Flesh and Excess.
In the years since the Amok Fourth Dispatch, the information landscape has changed dramatically. The concentrations of power and the potential for manipulation by setting the parameters of acceptable discourse has only intensified. In the ensuing onslaught of distraction and fragmentation of thought, the importance of books as a vehicle for establishing our autonomy as freethinking individuals has become increasing clear.
Sydney-based underground culture expert Jack Sargeant and LA’s Amok Books co-founder Stuart Swezey have been collaborating since the height of the alternative publishing boom of the 1990s, touring Europe for a wild series of talks and continuing to work together on their book and film projects.
Now publisher/film maker Stuart Swezey and author/film programmer Jack Sargeantwill talk books, underground publishing, underground culture, and much more, while screening excerpts of appropriately transgressive films and videos.
STUART SWEZEY
Stuart Swezey began his creative career organizing the Desolation Center events in the desert and at sea that featured music groups such as the Minutemen, Einstürzende Neubauten, Sonic Youth, and Meat Puppets among others. He is a founder of Amok Books—the influential extreme information sourcebook, cult L.A. bookstore, and publishing house. His book Amok Fifth Dispatch: Sourcebook of Extremes of Information in Print was nominated for the Best Nonfiction Book Title in the FIrecracker Alternative Book awards. Swezey produced the acclaimed feature documentary Better Living Through Circuitry. Swezey has been a VP, Development for Original Productions (Ice Road Truckers, Black Gold), Alternative Programming exec for Syfy Channel, documentary film producer, and reality television producer and show runner. He recently directed a feature documentary Desolation Center about those events which had its world premiere at the CPH:DOX festival in Copenhagen, UK premiere at Sheffield Doc/Fest and US premiere at Slamdance Film Festival. Desolation Center is currently in the midst of a North American theatrical release in over 50 cities and recently prompted Film Threat to declare, “Who knows? Maybe this movie can change your life? Let it!”
Jack Sargeant by Tyler Hubby
Jack Sargeant is the author of numerous books on underground film and culture, including Flesh and Excess: On Underground Film, Against Control, Naked Lens: Beat Cinema, Deathtripping, and many others. His writings have appeared in numerous collections, journals, and magazines. Starting as a curator and producer in the late eighties, he has curated film and art exhibitions across the globe. He currently lives in Australia where he continues to write, curate, take photographs and work in various aspects of moving image culture.