Moving between 101 selected points of reference Mark Beasley’s Hey, Hey Glossolalia: Puff, Puff and Hatchet (Volume one) combines narrated text, found and captured footage, curated artwork and digital posters in an unforced thematic that examines the shifting terrain of the independent producer. Proposing connective points between seemingly incongruous sources – from Smithson’s Spiral Jetty, digital gaming architecture and narratology, Mary Anne Girling and the New Forest Shakers, Drone Metal and glossolalia to the ocular sensibilities of West Coast beat writer and artist publisher Wallace Berman – Hey Hey Glossolalia is an active research tool that proposes multiple points of departure and an informal network of creative moments.
The first stage of the project takes the form of an installation at the Stanley Picker Gallery and features the video work of artist Stephen Sutcliffe. The project structure seeks to reflect the earliest form of educational and imprinting techniques of man. After 200,000 years of nomadic existence Palaeolithic man went underground with paints, engraving tools, and lamps to make concrete the growing body of information that he needed for the expansion of a new life. The exhibition environment is designed in collaboration with architect Stephen Beasley and designer David Jones.
Hey, Hey Glossolalia takes as its precursor Wallace Berman’s hand printed limited edition poetry journal Semina. Described by contributing poet Michael McClure as a “scrapbook of the spirit”, Berman produced nine issues of Semina between 1955 and 1964.
Emulating the format of NUS venue gig-tours of emerging bands Hey, Hey Glossolalia comprised a series of free public screenings at Norwich School of Art Student Union Bar and the Vardy Gallery (University of Sunderland), with accompanying lectures by some of the artists and collaborators involved in the project including Stephen Sutcliffe, Mark Titchner and Bonnie Camplin.
A DVD publication will be published in 2007, funded by Arts Council England, documenting the entire project and including selected work by John Russell, Damon Packard, Stephen Sutcliffe, RIGO 2005, Alun Rowland, Stephen Beasley, Mark Titchner, Nathaniel Mellors and The Duds amongst others found on the research trail, with a soundtrack by leading San Francisco laptop electronica musician Sutekh and the London music collective the Erotic Ghosts of Vietnam.