...at YOU ARE HERE BUT WHY? A Free Festival of Mapping
South London June 2005
www.mdx.org.uk/mapfestival.html
www.56a.org.uk
you can see we have been busy programming events in
the YOU ARE HERE BUY WHY? Free Festival of Mapping
that's taking place in and around 56a Infoshop in
Walworth throughout June 2005. There are loads more
walks and talks during this Festival plus games,
mapping, psychogeography (!) and music and food. For
full details of what it is and what's happening, check
out the full programme on the website or look for one
of the printed flyers in various social centres
(including 56a Infoshop). Or send SAE to 56a Infoshop
for a copy.
· Tuesday 7th June:
STONEHENGE + BATTLE OF THE BEANFIELD 1985
SOUTH LONDON RADICAL HISTORY GROUP presents Andy
Worthington, author of 'Stonehenge: Celebration and
Subversion', remembering the 1985 'Battle of the
Beanfield'. If you don't remember it, it was probably
one of the bloodiest police riots ever. Not so much a
battle as a trashing. Part of a political conspiracy
reaching right into the heart of the State, the
'Battle' smashed the Stonehenge Free Festival, which a
year earlier had attracted thousands of people. A
hidden history of a scene and way of life that would
be a huge influence on rave and squat culture and
resistance in the 90's. Possible showing of
'Beanfield' video.
The Pullens Centre, 184 Crampton St Walworth SE17
7.30pm Free
· Friday 10th June:
HISTORY NO! >> THE FUTURE!! Presentations + Chatting
South London Radical History Group has been putting on
talks and walks for over three years now with stuff on
forgotten local radicals, gentrification and
enclosure, witch trials, squatting and so on.
Practical History is a well maintained website that
archives documents and writings that would otherwise
be lost on topics that bring the past alive and
kicking once again into the future. It has also
organised interventions for the memory of William
Blake and the Homestead strikers against a newly laid
(corporate?) gloss on these radical identities. Past
Tense Publications is the publishing wing of a loose
collection of history types putting out cheap
pamphlets based on the researches that come out of the
obssessions and manias of the above.
This is open discussion around themes and tensions of
mapping local radical history: on fiery radicals
getting older, on cynicism. Does radical history
signal a retreat from the future? Does digging up a
radical past build up local colour and 'heritage' that
aids gentrification? What is history anyway, how good
is our memory of what really happened and is that
important? Aren't riots and arrests just a spectacular
version of history? Put together by individuals
involved in the above three projects, these themes
come out of the work and practice, ups and downs, and
current feelings in these groups. We will also present
our own short history of what we have been up to and
what we hope to get up to in the future, barring
spontaneous revolutionary upheaval getting in the way
of our researches. 56a - 7.30pm
RADICAL LONDON CHART
Come down to our mega-mapping of London's radical
activist scenes and draw in your own political or
poetic trajectories. We got a big piece of white and
we want you to darken it by filling it in, amending
it, correcting it and to start fresh genealogies. What
links and chains can you plot on our Radical London
Chart? What connects you to us, to other strands, to
the future, to the past? Like this?
Mai68>LWG>ACF>RTS>J18>G8? LSU>ASS>SNOW>BSA>56ª>FofM?
Blimey! Acronym city! What lies behind the above
collection of abbreviated histories. Even if you cant
add anythihg, you'll come away knowing your DAM's from
your ALFSG's. So, we'll start it, you takeover. Come
down and expand this conspiracy! We hope to continue
this project in various printed versions. If you wanna
be inspired, then check out our chart 'History of the
Italian Left 1968-1977'
www.mdx.org.uk/mapfestival.html