Rapid Eye Movement

by Simon Dwyer

Rapid Eye was founded by Simon Dwyer in Poplar, East London, on 23rd January 1979. It has taken several different as magazine, mailart campaign, series of booklets and audio tapes, coffee-table album, etc, culminating with a trilogy of deluxe editions inaugurating the final decade of the 20th Century. The last supper.
The project's original To put Art and Magick onto the street, where they belong, in order to facilitate the process of understanding and civilisation in a wilfully ignorant and manifestly, uncivilised society.

Rapid Eye Movement contains the best of Simon Dwyer's writing, and is published as his last testament to our troubled but stimulating times.

With a brand new foreword by Genesis P-Orridge.

Genres: Counter Culture

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2000

Reviews

[christopher · Rating 4 out of 5]

The long essay that is the centerpiece of this book, the Plague Yard: the Altered States of America, is absolutely stunning and deserves to be much more well known. It's part a travelogue about an Englishman traveling across US and part searing art criticism with lots of musings on technology and religion as well. Gorgeous writing. The essay uses the controversy surrounding Andres Serrano' Piss Christ photo as a metaphor for the competing forces for the American mind in a really clever way. It's just a really great piece.

The profiles of Genesis Bryer P-Orridge, Brion Gysin, Derek Jarman, and Gilbert and George in this book are very enjoyable. The essay Brazil about censorship in 80s Britain was kind of a slog, and why I docked this book one star. The closing essay about Simon Dwyer's struggle with AIDs related illness was very heat wrenching. Rest in Power.

[Nish · Rating 2 out of 5]

Meh. I didn't show a lot of patience with this book. It could stem from the masturbatory opening essay where time, religion, and control were all predicated on fear of death. After such a half-baked stab at the dread of corporeal existence confined by its own finitude, there followed a series of works with varied topics such as Derek Jarman, Psychic TV, American kitsch, Jeff Koons and other PoMo artists. Maybe if I gave it more attention. A finite commodity.