Bureau of Lost Culture

Genesis P-Orridge, a groundbreaking performance artist and co-founder of Throbbing Gristle, discusses their innovative 'cut-up technique' and transformative identity exploration through extreme body modification with director David Charles Rodrigues. They delve into the impact of 1970s counterculture and the Temple of Psychic Youth, a radical musical project focused on empowerment. The conversation addresses themes of grief, love, and the poignant final days of Genesis, revealing a deeply personal journey intertwined with creativity and societal challenges.

In the turbulent late 1970s, six-year-old Susanna Crossman moved with her mother and siblings from a suburban terrace to a crumbling mansion deep in the English countryside.   They would share their new home with over fifty other residents  - idealists from all over the world - armed with worn paperbacks on ecology, Marx and radical feminism and drawn together by utopian dreams of remaking the world.  They did not leave for fifteen years.   This was not a hippie commune or a new age retreat but a community run on radical socialist Marxist principles.  Yet, however noble the intentions of the adults, was this suitable place - a suitable home -  for a child to grow up? Susanna wrote a book to try to answer that question and came to the Bureau to tell us all about it - and about the pleasures and perils of growing up in the fallout of the Utopian Dream.   More on Susanna More on her book  Home Is Where We Start More on British Intentional Communities   #communes #counterculture #punk #radical  #utopia #alternativecommunities #intentionalcommunities #esoteric #hippie #marxist

The Joy of Sex was published in 1972 and for years, was rarely out of the bestseller lists, generating sequels, revised editions and a lot of imitators - so how could it be countercultural? For two reasons: firstly that Dr Alex Comfort who wrote it was a deeply countercultural figure, and second, because its publication represents the moment when the sexual revolution of the countercultural years of the late '50s and ‘60s, threw off its remaining clothes and dived naked into the bourgeous middle class mainstream.   And it changed a lot of peoples’ live - well their sex lives at any rate.   Social justice journalist activist and anarchist Eric Laursen, author of Polymath: The Life and Professions of Dr. Alex Comfort, came to The Bureau to tell of the poet, novelist, doctor, biologist, gerontologist, anarchist, scientific humanist, public intellectual, pacifist and activist who also happened to write the world’s most famous guide to lovemaking..   For More on Eric   For More on Polymath: The Life and Professions of Dr. Alex Comfort  #sex #sexguide #thejoyofsex #alexcomfort #thesexualrevolution #counterculture #sexmanual #sandstone

*Every society is a high society.  Getting high has been a pursuit of civilisations throughout time.   *Every day, people drink coffee in European cafes, chew betel nut in Indonesian markets, nibble coca leaf on Andean mountainsides and smoke tobacco in every nation on earth.   *Mind-altering drugs have been part of virtually every human culture that has ever existed - from prehistory to the present day. They have shaped cultures, kick-started global trade, transformed our understanding of the mind, built empires and threatened the fabric of society.   *Cultural historian and writer on the psychoactive Mike Jay returned to the Bureau to tell us why   For more on Mike and his book High Society   #drugs #drugwar #opiumwars #psychoactive #opium #heroin #mescaline #lsd #cocaine #khat #betel #psychedelics #highsociety #gettinghigh #addiction #cartels 

“Ima­gin­a­tion thrives in dark­ness”  We talk about The Undergound often at the Bureau - not London’s subterranean rail sytem, but the countercultural alternative society of the 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s. But that is just one of the undergrounds - the underworlds - that are the subject of this episode Dizzying ossuaries, freakish creatures of the deep sea, astounding colors of agates, lava and crystals,  mind bending organic structures of mycorrhizal fungi, caverns, crevices, burrows,  bunkers, burial chambers, ghistly shipwrecks, religous hellscapes and surrealist dreamscapes, natural and constructed subterranean realms and the imagined and unconscious worlds of dreams and the human psyche. Image Alchemist Stephen Ellcock came to take us on a deep dive journey down under with his truly astonishing, visually stunning guide book Underworlds, a volume in five sections covering both the real and the imaginary, moving between continents and time periods and disciplines such as philosophy, biology, art history and literature.   We talk of how the actual physical world beneath us has fed our fears, visions and imagination – and conversely, provoked us to imagine a mythic, esoteric, mysterious underground - the afterworld of the dead, of the fairies and of the psychogical unconscious.   For more on Stephen and his amazing work

*In 1918, Billie Carleton, a West End actress, came off stage, went partying with friends, returned to her flat and was found dead the next morning - apparently of a cocaine overdose. A few years later, Frieda Kimpton, a dancer in Soho bars, committed suicide - with cocaine.   These events blew up into a huge media dope drama - with a cast of characters includes villians - Brilliant Chang, a Chinese restaurant proprietor and Edgar Manning, a black jazz drummer  -  and victims, Billie, Frieda and the other 'Dope Girls'.    *Around them, in the Soho streets off Shaftesbury Avenue, there swirled a raffish group of seedy and entitled hedonists. Britain was horrified and fascinated, and so the drug underground and the moral panic about it, was born amid a gush of exotic tabloid detail.   *MAREK KOHN whose newly revised cult classic Dope Girls has inspired an upcoming BBC TV series, came to the Bureau to tell us how the  panic about drugs that kicked off on the 1920s (bringing in drug laws that are still with us today), was more about the fear of newly emancipated women in society and an imagined menace of foreigners bound on enslaving them, than about any damage done by the drugs themselves.   *More about Dope Girls HERE *More about Marek HERE *More about the upcoming BBC series Dope Girl   #drugs #psychedelics #cocaine #opium #morphine #druglaws #counterculture #drugculture  #drugunderground #soho #overdose #dopegirls #dope #drugunderground

In 1964 he was a working class hippie student crossing Haight Street, a road in San Francscso, when hit by a vision  - and life as he knew it was over In 1994, he was a multi-millionaire new-age entrepeneur crossing Wilshire Boulevard, a road in Los Angeles, when hit by a car - and life as he knew it was over. In the years in between, along with the co-founder of The Yippies Abbie Hoffman, counter-culture icon, anti-war activist, new age/self-help proponent, social-networking pioneer and all round troublemaker JERRY RUBIN helped articulate the voice of young America in the '60s and early '70s.   He was arrested countless times, carried out many extrardinary protests that used performance art, pranks and provocation including an attempt to levitate The Pentagon and regularly hung out with John Lennon and Yoko Ono in New York. Unlike Hoffman, who lived off grid for several years following a drug bust, died by suicide in 1989 and was canonized as a countercultural saint, Rubin was accused by many of “selling out" - the worst thing a 1960s radical could do - and as a consequence got written out of the hippie history books.   Well that is until our guest for this episode wrote the biography, 'Did It! From Yippie To Yuppie: Jerry Rubin, An American Revolutionary'   PAT THOMAS, archivist, uber re-issue producer, countercultral author and music journalist returned for the third timr to the Bureau.   Previously he was here to talk about The Black Panthers and Allen Ginsberg,and this time, he traced  Jerry Rubin's journey from high school journalist to stoned political freak and multi-millionaire entrepeneur.   Along the way, we hear about The Yippies(the Youth International Party), The Chicago 8, John Lennon and Yoko Ono in the early 70s, EST training - and selling out   And we debate the question: 'Once a revolutionary always a revolutionary?'   Pat's book:  'Did It! From Yippie To Yuppie: Jerry Rubin, An American Revolutionary'     Check out this Rubin related playlist   #jerryrubin #abbiehoffman #theblackpanthers #blackpower #yippies #theyippies #thebeats #allenginsberg #timothyleary #activism #socialism #revolution #levitatethepentagon #eldridgecleaver #bobdylan #nixon #johnandyoko #vietnam #anti-war #protest #johnlennon #haightashbury #thechicago8

When musician ARTHUR RUSSELL died in 1992, at age 40, of complications related to HIV-AIDS, he was an obscure figure — though a legend in the 70s and 80s underground music scenes at downtown New York clubs such as The Loft and Paradise Garage.  RICHARD KING, author of 'Travels Over Feeling'(Faber) a poignant and evocative visual chronology of Arthur's life and times, came to the the Bureau to tell us about him and why he matters. Despite his prodigious output, his inability to finish songs, and the genre-busting uniqueness of much of his music, meant that he released only two albums under his own name in his lifetime. But in the decades since his death, a series of posthumous releases have generated a deep love and admiration in many who have been lucky to come across his music.   We also get into indie record shop culture, music sobbery, the underground New York club scene of  the mid seventies and ask the question: 'How do you know when, a song, a book or a piece of art is finished?' Thanks to Dan Papps at Faber, to Steve Knutson of Audika Records and Cat Corrigan of Beggars Banquet who have posthumously released much of Arthur's unpublished work, for permission to include his music. We also included two selections from Matt Wolf’s film 'Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russell' Image by Joel Sokolov/Courtesy of Audika Records   #arthurrussell #newyorkclubs #avantagarde #philipglass #audikarecords #richardking #faber #hiv #music  

They helped inspire a whole generation of young ravers and lit the fuse for what was to blow up with Technival and Burning Man - as well as more mainstream festivals across Europe and the US - but their (counter)cultural contribution remains largely unacknowledged in their home country.   Marc Angelo Harrison, one of the orginal founders of the people’s sound system, techno, free party, DJ collective Spiral Tribe came to the Bureau to tell some of their story - and about his own journey up and down the spiral. His book A Darker Electricty published by uber-cool electronic music publisher Velocity Press is a rollocking, rumbuctious, beautifully written testament to a deeply countercultural spirit and time.    We dive deep into the free party scene of the early 90s and talk squatting, sound systems, Ladbroke Grove, doing things for free, police brutality, the 'new age’ travellers, the tragedy of Castle Morton, ongoing inspiration, community - and the power of bass..   A Darker Electricity- Mark's book A Darker Electricity- The Audio book Free Party: A Folk History - Aaron Trinder’s wonderful documentary of the last 80s and early 90s free festival scene   #festivals #counterculture #freefestivals #spiraltribe #squatparty #travellers #newagetravellers #battleofthebeanfield #hippie #castlemorton #techno #drugs #lsd #soundsystem #raveculture #raves #breakbeat #stonehenge

*Whatever happened to the Greek Gods? if you are a teenager living half way up a 1970s tower block listening to Drill, should you even care? *On this epside we travel in time and space to Ancient Greece, the classical psycho-geographic birthplace of Western Culture (and therefore of counterculture), specfically to the mythic landscape of Epidavros and the sacred temple of Asclepius. *Our guide and guest is Sarah Janes, one of Britain's foremost lucid dreamers, explorer and teacher of ancient mysteries.  *We hear how the Temple of Asclepius's treatment of the sick involved diet, excercise, theater - and comedy - in addition to surgery and medicine. *We revisit the subject of dreams, nightmares and countercultural consciousness  - and hear why the gods are still with us, whether we ignore them or not. •And the Scottish band The Proclaimers make a surprise apearance....  For more on Sarah and her work #dreaming #psychedelics #theunconscious #consciousness #truth #madness #counterculture #sleep #luciddreaming #dreams #neuroscience #consciousness #nightmares #epidavros #ancientgreece #greekgods #asclepius #jung #ecstasy #thegods