21 January — 21 March 2010

As part of his residency, The Cassiopeia Plan, during The Year of The Improbable, 2010, Mark Aerial Waller curated a series of events.

Thursday 21 January
The Wayward Canon Presents: La Société des Amis de Judex III.
The Wayward Canon, founded by artist Mark Aerial Waller in 2001, is a shifting platform for the re-evaluation of cinema. La Société des Amis de Judex III is a provocative reconsideration of Surrealism. It aligns Guillaume Apollinaire’s poetry, 1960s Batman and Louis Feuillade's Judex with a smoke machine. Previously presented at Tate Modern, FACT, Liverpool and Objectif, Belgium.

Thursday 4 February
Writer Tom McCarthy read from his best selling novel Remainder, a novel to be read for the existential discomfort that it leaves you with. It attempts to re-enact the soul and its connection to the material world, and cleverly poses the question, who is observing who and what is the real self? Mark Aerial Waller read from G.K. Chesterton’s early 20th century classic, The Man Who Was Thursday – the book that inspired his recent film commission for Wysing. Readings followed by a conversation between novelist and artist.

Thursday 18 February
Mike Sperlinger, Assistant Director of LUX, the agency for artists' moving image, introduces the film Invasión, 1969 by Argentine Director Hugo Santiago. 123 minutes. English sub-titles. Invasión, a gem of south American cinema, is the metaphysical and poetical tale of the besieged city of Aquila. Following a chequered history that saw it banned by the Argentine authorities in 1974, at which time the film negative was stolen and suppressed until its restoration in 2000. Written by Jose Luis Borges and Adolfo Bioy Casares Invasión is ultimately about resistance. In the words of Bioy Casares, “Homer will forgive me: the heart is always on the side of those who resist.”

Saturday 6 & Sunday 7 March, 12-5pm
Mark Aerial Waller invited Paris based collective France Fiction (Stéphane Argillet, Marie Bonnet, Eric Camus, Lorenzo Cirrincione and Nicolas Nakamoto) to make a special event that encompassed the fields of science fiction, utopias, gaming and narrative processes.

France Fiction is an artistic and curatorial entity running an art space in Paris since 2004. France Fiction develops collective art projects, performances, installations, films and writings, and went on to have a residency at Wysing later in 2010.

France Fiction invited the public to join them in a ceremonial hole digging event. Visitors were asked to help France Fiction find out what lies beneath Wysing and join them in burying some specially created artefacts that may, perhaps, be dug up at some time in the distant future. As well as being part of the event, visitors to Wysing were able to sit in the spring sunshine enjoying tea and cakes made especially for the occasion.

Sunday 21 March, 2-6pm
Brown Mountain College 2010
The Living Newspaper
Mark Aerial Waller invited Brown Mountain College to provide a weekend course for all to attend.

Brown Mountain College (artist Mel Brimfield, curator Ben Roberts and writer Sally O’Reilly) presented The Living Newspaper, a cabaret based on the Zhivaia gazeta, which began as a way to bring news stories to the illiterate Red Army soldiers of Soviet Russia and was further developed into full-scale theatrical productions that were part broadsheet, part music hall.

The Brown Mountain edition of The Living Newspaper followed the original remit; combining public entertainment with the delivery of cultural, political and documentary information; in an event reviving the avant-garde ethos of collaboration between artists, actors, filmmakers, political activists and comedians.

Comedy improvisation team Grand Theft Impro presented a series of satirical sketches, scenarios and improvisations on notorious and less well-known headlines from current and archaic newspapers. Comedienne Rachel Pantechnicon delivered a series of monologues in response to readers’ letters to the newspaper’s resident agony aunt. Other events featured advertisements and the racing pages.

The sports pages of the paper featured the deans of Brown Mountain College as various sponsors of a number of specially devised races, including an Orange Stacking race between Erwin Wurm and Barbara Hepworth.

Food was provided and we are grateful to The Potton Brewery Company for sponsorship of the event with a barrel of real ale.