| Altered States forms part of an ongoing body of research focused on the era’s surrounding the first and second summer(s) of love exploring the aesthetics that interlink both summers with a specific focus on the communal experience of music.
This exhibition offers a visual sample of printed materials that highlight the shared graphic language of flyers, handbills & postcards that advertised the be-ins, dance concerts, acid tests, club nights and raves of each era alongside supplementary printed matter that serves to further provide visual context.
History records the first summer of love as 1967 centered primarily on the city of San Francisco, USA and the second summer of love as 1988 across various cities in England, UK, although both summer’s reverberated geographically and into the future creating a psychedelic continuum.
A key feature within both periods was the creation of total environments and temporary autonomous zones focused primarily on both auditory and psychedelic experience and their enhancement via a blend of sound, light, performance, movement and design. These elements would merge together to create a synergistic form of call and response between the audio-visual act and the participants mind-body state.
Utopian ideals were commonplace during both periods fuelled in part by the transformative effects of psychotropic agents. A need to imagine a future beyond the status quo and generate a counter move via the open practice of community, collective consciousness and creative freedom.
Musically the first summer encouraged live improvisation with trancelike repetition, long drum solos and winding guitar riffs. Gone were the bandstand dance moves of the Frug or Twist and in their place free-form bodies belonging to the enlightened few were captured in stills across strobe lit dance floors. The second summer saw ecstatic dancers shed the rigid codes of their daily existence and reach up into the laser mapped fog to experience the rush of continuous 4/4 rhythms laced with acid drenched bass lines, uplifting keys, pop sensibilities and calls to ‘Jack your Body’.
The ephemeral nature of each event often left no trace outside of one’s own memory or the printed announcement produced to advertise the occasion, most often in the form of a flyer and/or poster. The information for each event was encoded in the design signaling that this was only for those that were hip to the scene – only for the headstrong. The designers ‘sampled’ a variety of popular and cultural source material alongside hand drawn illustration and graphic design to create a kaleidoscopic effect that somehow conveyed the experience awaiting the reader.
This exhibition create’s a further point of reference within the ongoing study into the connections between and continued impact of each summer of love. The intentional non-linear placement of the visual material’s from each era aims to both communicate the show’s original concept while also creating space for further interpretation and imaginings.
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Associated research
‘Join in the Chant’
MOCA Geffen Contemporary, Los Angeles 2014
‘I trawl the Megahertz’
Bookmarc Gallery, Tokyo, 2018
‘A Cosmic and Practical Manual For Modern Positive Living’
Another Man Magazine, London 2019
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Wild Life Archive
A collection of ephemera, books, magazines, clothing & related artifacts documenting dance music culture from its early origins through to today’s global scene. Comprising over 5,000 items dating back to the early 1970’s including New York disco, Chicago house, Detroit techno, Belgium new beat, Ibiza balearic and UK acid house to name a few.
This unique archive has been exhibited at world class museums and galleries including the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA in Los Angeles, Design Museum in London, Institute of Contemporary Art in London, Barbican in London, Tate in Liverpool, V&A in Dundee, Bozar in Brussels, Philharmonie in Paris and Vitra Design Museum in Germany.
Learn more at wildlifepress.com |
