Category: field reports

by the bitter lake we sat down and wept… no.1

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another suicide in the financial district… grim politician masks stare lifeless from the podium… roaring drone of helicopter gunships resonate through the catacombs of the mausoleum… child soldiers bleed to death in field hospitals as the markets expand… wallowing in the economic filth and writhing in the blood and fuel… detestable actions of the few…

a series of blurry images from the field… snapshots within the turmoil of the western lands… meaningless days and nights filled with harrowing images coming in from the still… spectral torment tumbles and sets in a series of numbing waves… artillery and rocket fire. shells pounding the old town as drones glide in insect tones high above the demilitarised zone…

concrete tower blocks cast long shadows over empty lots as flames dance and rise from burning cars amidst the chaotic swarm of rioting… extending patterns of grim intent drawing themselves out into a vast mosaic of guilt and surveillance, distrust, abuse and callous calculation… scratching ‘six six seven’ into grey slates waist deep in the dead river…

poisoned well-water, blighted crops failing in the dead ground… the river winding on through the war-torn lands as bodies litter the ruined villages since abandoned… board members picking at the rotting hollows of broken lands and distant lives… we ride the train-lines and bathe in the radiance… filtering the signals down to nothing, worshipping our ornaments of servitude…

futile lives lived out within a nightmare world of worthless action… bleating in the pit… narrowing our worldview… stripping language of its meaning… seeking calm and escape in mindless soma abandon… falling over ourselves to be free… weeping into the reflecting pool and trying to describe how it feels to a fading reflection staring back from a mirror left undusted…

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outpost dissonance feedback no.1

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…outpost dissonance feedback… quonset in flames… horizontal coleman’s burning, spitting fire… open-twin throne burner, desert futility… do the dirty fingernail scrape, do the flint-lock; the harrowed reprise… hack a two-foot incision into the guts of the giant centipede and crawl inside…

…fields of desolation… cockroaches march down crenshaw… witness sublimation at the foot of the obsidian monolith… priest fingers choking the congregation… santa muerte ghost-riding the whip… maximum death-penalty… bible-belt-fed-armour-piercing rounds…

…go live… two-room column of fire into the heavens… gas station specials, AR-15’s and the scream of the bleeding valves… ‘art don’t give you what you thought it was gonna give you’ …throat-clutch of the warden… bandana city; the jailhouse wins…

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hallucination dreams from the abandoned desert camp no.1

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colombian necktie sky exploration… cold diamond skin crawl… black handle regalia… upstream poison fields… tucson rap promoters in flames… fingers in the driest mouths…

licking the screen, decimated… do that dawn chorus, that vaccination grave… boardroom anomaly… christ wept… prarie dogs at the throats of roaming priests… torch-lit quicksand baptism ceremony…

‘…i am shot with wounds which have eyes that see a world all sorrow, always to be, panoramic and unhealable, and mouths that hang unspeakable in the sky of blood…’

dead end horror of the centipede god… fumigating misery through the groaning valves… hounding the workforce into grim submission… willow, weep for me… honey-dip agony… billboard reads: ‘this will not end’.

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fear rituals from the 49th parallel no.1

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…grain elevators in flames… a series of totem poles sinking betwixt the mangroves… a church tower daring to reach up through the smog… abandoned train-lines writhe, overgrown and forgotten… factory smoke stacks hang dormant above terraced homes, alleyways, school-yards, gas-stations… a dismal sky blankets the city as a blazing sun hangs buried in a yellowed heavens… a lone generator moans and reverberates in a sunken outhouse as a campfire flickers and spits… a coleman lantern glow from a quonset doorway… water bubbling in a rusty pan, the sound of metal-work… a camera flies high above a ruined city in the western lands, detailing the devastation as it moves from outskirts, to the suburbs, to the centre itself… a soundtrack of rusty chains over a freezing-cold stone floor…

6|6|7

amnesia dreams in the quarantine fields no.1

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. . . 6|5-6|5-6|5-6|5-6|5-6|5-6|6|7-6|5-6|5-6|5-6|5-6|5-6|5-6|6|7 . . .

bring your own annihilation . . . burial ground panhandlers . . . handing out wolf-tickets for the immaculate misconception . . . amnesia dreams in the quarantine fields . . . amnesia dreams in the quarantine fields . . . ribald-like . . .  standing out . . . vague face on a platform . . . saying something ’bout: ‘hold up; (wait a second) this doesn’t make any sense… ‘ . . . old john smith road . . . garage island . . . holler at your boy . . . i ain’t even lying . . . filtered recollections trapped in the waves . . .  the slow ongoing droning sounding out in the concrete maze . . . do that flagship . . . that half-mast communion . . . sing the songs and take your medication . . . get bent get dead go wrong go broke get dead get bent get dead go wrong go broke get dead go home . . . old john smith road . . . garage island . . . holler at your boy (my friend scott) . . . i ain’t even lying . . . what are you leaving behind? . . . who are you leaving behind?

. . . 6|5-6|5-6|5-6|5-6|5-6|5-6|6|7-6|5-6|5-6|5-6|5-6|5-6|5-6|6|7 . . .

6|6|7

drums of the centipede no.1

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…a distorted voice, coming in broken and fractured, over the last functioning closed-broadcast unit…  drums of the centipede, drums of the centipede, drums of the centipede… low-frequency buzzing and a sound like house-keys scraping slates…. a thousand low-watt bulbs flaring-up and extinguishing themselves along an endless corridor… a black crow in flight sails high above a collapsing grain elevator…

…irregular dreams in the insect compound… nine days in serpent graves… a column of ants marches across a dead field; failed crops rotting into the acrid soil… aborted reconditioning of the last water-purification units… an electrical hiss coming over the outpost address system… intermittent insect clicks and centipede limbs on soaked concrete…

…a frame-tent camp left abandoned under a rotting canopy… stone-circle campfire doused in ashy soil and leaves… foot-print pools leading in all directions between scattered refuse, plastic containers and broken branches… ripped awnings, twisted poles and tangled ropes… a small compass sinking diagonally into the sodden path…

6|6|7

fever dreams at the detection facility no.1

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low frequency modulation across the radar-field. fever dreams at the detection facility. centipedes crawl across the consoles, rattle and scratch within the air ducts. white-noise and static, morse-tapping and cut-up voice-tracks coming over the portable units.

faint shadows in the half-light as the temperature steadily rises over the long summer weeks. low drones in the long distance and the image track of rain falling on a corrugated iron awning, rusted under the endless sun. a blazing orb shimmering over the oceans of burning sand.

a giant black beetle burrows under the glinting surface, the vacuum of the absolute desert, absolute silence. walking out into the nothing-field, eyes wide open, hands out. the hammering of a worn shutter breaking free of its fastenings as the winds usher in a gathering storm.

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geometry of a mid-town intersection no.1

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desert heat, and an azure sky above the hazy cement-dust air of the now-abandoned commercial district. crackling white-noise over portable radios; behind smashed windows and barred doors. sunlight glinting in the broken glass, reflecting upon rusting metal spines, prying awkwardly from piles of debris.

an image track of a bustling shopping mall flickers into tainted celluloid life on a plaster wall hosed with kerosene. happy shopper faces hiding confused ideas, bathed in uncertainty.  bags filled to the brim, tired legs, searching for the direction back towards parking lot access. a match-head ignites at one thousand frames per second; flames begin to writhe and crawl diagonally across the image.

vagaries of the street-corner architecture under extreme conditions. complex measurements amidst the fractured landscape snap-shot. slow polaroid exposures framing reinforced concrete in ascending layers. grid networks extending, intersecting; steadily failing across the system. we set up camp on the roof of an office block overlooking a burnt-out gas station.

6|6|7

spinal landscapes no.1

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failing structures buckle along fault-lines. street-corner apparitions crawling along wounded blocks. silhouetted cranes looming from the bridge-view. sat low and staring long into the rising dream-state.

darkest shadows creep steadily in the morning light. tepid tap-water from a worn plastic bottle. stench of cattle, concentrated in camps lining the highway. throat leech, marks of vaccination.

desert sands and the spinal landscape. drained lake, poisoned reservoir. faint outline of the water tower. black tea, long-wave radio, coal plant, steel mill, factory furnace and rail-road. dismal ash-clouds.

an advancing column marching across a dead plane. drums of the centipede. incense veil, ritual tone poem drone expanding. new-found systems in the ghost maps, dissonance fields reflecting…

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research outpost dissonance no.1

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…first transmissions from the remote outposts… tempestuous skies and electrical storms… rattling of the shutters… morse code tone poems and the rusted guts of a tortured two-track… during the day the sun baked the paint of the quonset, in the night the crescent moon shone over an icy, frozen steppe… tape samples and dissonant oscillations collected… the shadows move imperceptibly across the landmass at dawn and dusk… crackling of the radio tower cables in the dust-storms…

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