A great chaos of sound: alternative practices of working through madness, alienation, and the aesthetics of catastrophe in 60s Britain

Authors

Mark Harris, University of Cincinnati, Ohio, USAFollow

Abstract

After Bomb Culture, Jeff Nuttall’s valediction to 1960s relentless anti-system experimentation, what kind of call to order were the Portsmouth Sinfonia’s commitment to community DIY practice and Veronica Forrest-Thomson’s withdrawal of language from meaning? Nuttall’s Laingian references to madness acclaim culture as symptomatic of living with the H-bomb. This essay considers alternative expressions of intimacy and apartness like Doris Lessing’s writing on women’s madness, the Caribbean Artists Movement’s understanding of schizophrenic post-colonial consciousness, and Kate Millet’s and Robert Wyatt’s eulogies to friends and partners, as marginalized by the aesthetics of catastrophe of Nuttall and his Destruction in Art Symposium colleagues.

Recommended Citation

Harris, Mark, A great chaos of sound: alternative practices of working through madness, alienation, and the aesthetics of catastrophe in 60s Britain, Counterculture Studies, 3(1), 2020.