The next issue of the THE END IS NIGH will launch at Impressions Gallery in Bradford on Sunday 1st November at a fantastic free event:
From the Large Hadron Collider to the end of Mayan calendar in 2012, our fascination with potential apocalypse is ever present. Inspired by our exhibition The Last Things, Journalist Michael Molcher and editor of zine The End is Nigh, will take an informed yet satirical look at the speculation surrounding the end of the world in his free illustrated talk at 2pm. Join us and help predict the date the world will end!
Throughout the afternoon the award winning independent Comic Book Shop OK Comics, will be transporting their Drink and Draw event over to Impressions. Like-minded comic fans, budding artists and designers will be able to meet, exchange ideas, sup free hot tea and scribble away. Paper will be rolled over all the tables in the Studio and pens left everywhere, so come along and draw whatever you feel like. Everyone is welcome no matter what your artistic ability and pro comic book artist Leigh Gallagher will be on hand to trouble shoot your illustration irritations at his drop in surgery.
OK Comics will also be bringing a selection of apocalypse themed comic books, which you can browse over a wedge of cake, or yours to buy and take away.
Amble into the gallery and you’ll have a last chance to see our exhibition The Last Things by David Moore before it closes on 8 November 2009. Described by writer Iain Sinclair as a "photographer of secret spaces", Moore provides an exclusive glimpse of the Ministry of Defence’s secret crisis management centre beneath the streets of central London. This hidden space, only to be used in a major national emergency, hides a strictly controlled working environment continuously on stand-by in which a looming sense of threat is ever present.
Come along and meet the team, be the first to buy the new issue and hang out in a great venue!
In the meantime, this just popped into our inbox ...
"Richard Heene, the man suspected of the alleged "balloon boy" hoax, was driven by a conviction that the world will come to a cataclysmic end in 2012, according to a friend."
With friends like these ...
Showing posts with label The End is Nigh. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The End is Nigh. Show all posts
Friday, 23 October 2009
Thursday, 16 July 2009
A notice and some good news
I guess it wouldn't be THE END IS NIGH without the unexplained and prolonged silences, followed by intense bursts of blogging, followed by more inexplicable breaks ...
But we're back! It's been a bit of a busy few weeks, apocalypse watchers - what with the piggy sniffles cutting a swath through the tabloid press and further dire warnings of impending climate disaster.
So I hope you'll be pleased to hear that, after a FOUR YEAR hiatus, the next issue of THE END IS NIGH is due to be published in October.
More details, and hopefully more regular blogging, here soon ...
But we're back! It's been a bit of a busy few weeks, apocalypse watchers - what with the piggy sniffles cutting a swath through the tabloid press and further dire warnings of impending climate disaster.
So I hope you'll be pleased to hear that, after a FOUR YEAR hiatus, the next issue of THE END IS NIGH is due to be published in October.
More details, and hopefully more regular blogging, here soon ...
Tuesday, 23 September 2008
ANALYSIS: it's the global apocalyptic financial end-of-the-world money armageddon!!
Far be it from me to suggest that the mainstream media has a nasty tendency to overhype things, but as you'll have seen if you've read Doomwatch in issue two, they have a nastier tendency to reach for the apocalyptic phrase book when things turn sour, as evidenced by the language used in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
So is it unreasonable for the financial press to avoid “crash,” “panic,” “apocalypse,” “Armageddon,” “meltdown” or “freefall” in news stories?
More to the point, does the speed with which they fall back on apocalyptic imagery alter our behaviour towards such events? If we're conditioned to react instinctively and quickly to such strong language then doesn't using it without just cause make over-reaction more likely? Do such words spark an inherent herd instinct to protect ourselves? What effect did the publishing of images of queues outside Northern Rock have?
How easy is it to describe something as an 'apocalypse' yet how hard to explain precisely how - while many people are suffering from the effects of a global economic downturn, will the world's financial sector crumble to dust, leaving us homeless, destitute and eventually eating each other in the streets? Highly doubtful. Yet frightening images are conjured up by these words and when big financial decisions are being made based on the latest rumour, words and how you use them become very important indeed. Image a president or a prime minister using words like 'apocalypse', 'armageddon' or 'end of the world' - we know they don't, simply because they'd spread panic. So what happens when reporters put such words into people's mouths? For all our tomfoolery at The End is Nigh, in the big wide world the apocalypse is not for toying with.
So is it unreasonable for the financial press to avoid “crash,” “panic,” “apocalypse,” “Armageddon,” “meltdown” or “freefall” in news stories?
More to the point, does the speed with which they fall back on apocalyptic imagery alter our behaviour towards such events? If we're conditioned to react instinctively and quickly to such strong language then doesn't using it without just cause make over-reaction more likely? Do such words spark an inherent herd instinct to protect ourselves? What effect did the publishing of images of queues outside Northern Rock have?
How easy is it to describe something as an 'apocalypse' yet how hard to explain precisely how - while many people are suffering from the effects of a global economic downturn, will the world's financial sector crumble to dust, leaving us homeless, destitute and eventually eating each other in the streets? Highly doubtful. Yet frightening images are conjured up by these words and when big financial decisions are being made based on the latest rumour, words and how you use them become very important indeed. Image a president or a prime minister using words like 'apocalypse', 'armageddon' or 'end of the world' - we know they don't, simply because they'd spread panic. So what happens when reporters put such words into people's mouths? For all our tomfoolery at The End is Nigh, in the big wide world the apocalypse is not for toying with.
Tuesday, 16 September 2008
"Cheer up, it's not the end of the world!"
Yeah, it wasn’t funny the first hundred times I heard that either …
But doesn't it worry you that, maybe, one of these days someone's going to be right? Hideously, devastatingly right? No, me neither ...
That, apparently, is odd for a man who edits a magazine about that very subject.
Three issues of the official magazine of the apocalypse in and I'm becoming something of an authority on the subject ... a terrible boring authority ... yet you could never exactly call me a believer as such. I don't start to fret when oil prices go up, I remain unconvinced that George W Bush is the anti-Christ, I really think God has better things to do than dole out virgins to trigger-happy idiots. And yes, shock, horror, I don't believe in THE END OF THE WORLD.
Completing this circle of non-belief is 'most people', as it is they who now don't believe me. Chief amongst these is lawyer-turned-acerbic-TV-host and Bee Gee baiter Clive Anderson. I found this out while being interviewed for a BBC Radio Four show called The End is Nigh ... Again last year which, rather festively, was broadcast on New Year's Eve. It purported to examine the latest predictions of the end of the world and included interviews with apocalypticly-minded minds such as Gaia-theorist James Lovelock.
And me.
The questions were benign enough, but when all of my answers tended to slightly mock whatever theory we were talking about, Mr Anderson and his producer were a little bemused.
The problem is that I just don't believe. Sure, mankind isn't going to on forever, whether it's fire, ice, war or plague that wipes us out, but I certainly don't believe the one day I'll wake up and find that all the Christians have been hoovered off to heaven or that global warming will make this place completely uninhabitable. The end will come, but it'll either come before we can do anything about it, or it will be the long, slow twilight every race must suffer – bare in mind that 99% of the species that have ever existed are now extinct. There, that puts it into context, doesn’t it.
So how, asked Anderson, could I say I didn’t believe in the end of the world (other than when our sun gasps its last and destroys whatever is left of our home planet) when I edit and produce a magazine about it? Easy, say I, I just find the concept and its hold on the human psyche utterly, endlessly fascinating. Witness the reams of newsprint, the mountains of books and the endless number of webpages about this most timeless of concepts. Ever since mankind developed a sense of the future, he has had a sense of it coming to an end; as mortal beings we are only too aware of our impending death, yet we are ultimately powerless to change or delay it. Predicting it is a cunning way to try and exert some control, exercise some measure of influence over that dark day that awaits us all. Doesn't work, but that never stops people trying. Whether it's voices in their head, a feeling in your gut, an alignment of stars or the way your dog's entrails sit just so on the makeshift Stonehenge in your back garden, trying to second guess fate has been a favourite past time since time immemorial. But we just can't seem to get it right ...
And that’s where THE END IS NIGH! comes in. We seek to chart and preserve mankind’s on-going fascination with its own demise, examining the claims of those who would see us consumed by solar fire, dashed to pieces by flying rocks, obliterated by nuclear weapons or wiped out by a big bad bug. Where there is a hell-fire preacher predicting perpetual purgatory, you will find us. When a scientist looks up from his microscope or telescope eyepiece in horror, we will be there.
In the end, they cut me out of the programme, preferring instead to concentrate on the scientists and their pet theories.
Just as well really ...
But doesn't it worry you that, maybe, one of these days someone's going to be right? Hideously, devastatingly right? No, me neither ...
That, apparently, is odd for a man who edits a magazine about that very subject.
Three issues of the official magazine of the apocalypse in and I'm becoming something of an authority on the subject ... a terrible boring authority ... yet you could never exactly call me a believer as such. I don't start to fret when oil prices go up, I remain unconvinced that George W Bush is the anti-Christ, I really think God has better things to do than dole out virgins to trigger-happy idiots. And yes, shock, horror, I don't believe in THE END OF THE WORLD.
Completing this circle of non-belief is 'most people', as it is they who now don't believe me. Chief amongst these is lawyer-turned-acerbic-TV-host and Bee Gee baiter Clive Anderson. I found this out while being interviewed for a BBC Radio Four show called The End is Nigh ... Again last year which, rather festively, was broadcast on New Year's Eve. It purported to examine the latest predictions of the end of the world and included interviews with apocalypticly-minded minds such as Gaia-theorist James Lovelock.
And me.
The questions were benign enough, but when all of my answers tended to slightly mock whatever theory we were talking about, Mr Anderson and his producer were a little bemused.
The problem is that I just don't believe. Sure, mankind isn't going to on forever, whether it's fire, ice, war or plague that wipes us out, but I certainly don't believe the one day I'll wake up and find that all the Christians have been hoovered off to heaven or that global warming will make this place completely uninhabitable. The end will come, but it'll either come before we can do anything about it, or it will be the long, slow twilight every race must suffer – bare in mind that 99% of the species that have ever existed are now extinct. There, that puts it into context, doesn’t it.
So how, asked Anderson, could I say I didn’t believe in the end of the world (other than when our sun gasps its last and destroys whatever is left of our home planet) when I edit and produce a magazine about it? Easy, say I, I just find the concept and its hold on the human psyche utterly, endlessly fascinating. Witness the reams of newsprint, the mountains of books and the endless number of webpages about this most timeless of concepts. Ever since mankind developed a sense of the future, he has had a sense of it coming to an end; as mortal beings we are only too aware of our impending death, yet we are ultimately powerless to change or delay it. Predicting it is a cunning way to try and exert some control, exercise some measure of influence over that dark day that awaits us all. Doesn't work, but that never stops people trying. Whether it's voices in their head, a feeling in your gut, an alignment of stars or the way your dog's entrails sit just so on the makeshift Stonehenge in your back garden, trying to second guess fate has been a favourite past time since time immemorial. But we just can't seem to get it right ...
And that’s where THE END IS NIGH! comes in. We seek to chart and preserve mankind’s on-going fascination with its own demise, examining the claims of those who would see us consumed by solar fire, dashed to pieces by flying rocks, obliterated by nuclear weapons or wiped out by a big bad bug. Where there is a hell-fire preacher predicting perpetual purgatory, you will find us. When a scientist looks up from his microscope or telescope eyepiece in horror, we will be there.
In the end, they cut me out of the programme, preferring instead to concentrate on the scientists and their pet theories.
Just as well really ...
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