Derek Jarman’s King’s Cross
In 1987 Derek Jarman filmed a promo in King’s Cross, creating footage that would be used by the dance music duo the Pet Shop Boys in the video for their song ‘Rent’ (released October 1987). The film features Rupert Adley (aka ‘Spring’, who also played in The Last of England) alongside an angelic-looking Pet Shop Boy, Chris Lowe. The shoot took place in the summer, in and around the underground station ticket hall — before the same station was devastated by fire in the evening rush hour on the 18th November 1987, killing 31 people; an event later commemorated with a humble plaque on the ticket hall wall.
Ben Campkin examines Derek Jarman‘s filmic footprint on 1980s King’s Cross.
The Prophetic Silence of Bolaño’s ‘2666′
A proper understanding of existence is that we are not its purpose. Bolaño writes to that impressive fact. His esotericism is a matter of asserting this anti-providentialism. It results in a change of consciousness. Yet as an author there is a lingering requirement to order and structure that rejects happenstance. Bolaño’s writing knows that there is a creative imagination ordering and processing. But the new consciousness it springs out of is one that withdraws from saying what purpose it has, or if there is any.
Richard Marshall on Bolaño’s ‘2666′.