Hollingsville: Episode 8, Trash – The Gasp between Clichés

Joining Ken Hollings for episode eight of ‘Hollingsville’ are Roger K Burton, of the Horse Hospital and the Contemporary Wardrobe Collection, and artist Edwin Pouncey, AKA Savage Pencil. Expect tough talk and grim idealism. Interludes for the show are taken from the Edwin Pouncey archives and include an extract from the recorded interview he conducted with the legendary Ed ‘Big Daddy’ Roth. Another radio first!

Trash has traditionally been seen as the unnecessary expression of popular mass consumption: the further we progress, the more trash we generate. Waste, squandering and surplus value are tied up with notions of identity and self-worth. The use of recycled materials has become an orthodox virtue – but what about the discarded trash of our culture? From classic ‘kustom kar’ pinstriping, and tattoo ‘flash art’, to musical exotica and Z-grade movies, an entire ‘trash aesthetic’ has come into being –- a refuge for sensibilities tired of the banalities on offer both from the mainstream and academic markets. Trash, in other words, is the outer expression of a culture opened up and left to bleed.

After visiting Mars, where next? Welcome to Hollingsville: the new twelve-part series from writer Ken Hollings. A World’s Fair of the airwaves, the shows focuses each week on a different aspect of our historical relationship with technology. From machines to monsters, spaces to dreams, this Radio Expo offers an unscripted tour through the chosen theme, utilising voices and sounds from special guests and presented by Ken Hollings with his usual idiosyncratic flair.

Ken Hollings is the author of Welcome To Mars: Fantasies of Science in the American Century 1947-1959, available from Strange Attractor Press. For more information go to http://www.strangeattractor.co.uk or http://www.kenhollings.blogspot.com