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 The Original Manuscript of Stewart McKenzie's 1969 ICA Multimedia Adaptation of JG Ballard's The Assassination Weapon
The first document is entitled The Assassination Weapon, by Jim Ballard, A Trans Media Quest for Reality and printed on the first sheet is a sketch of a seating plan arranged in the typically Ballardian shape of a mandala. The plan is accompanied by instructions such as ‘Mandala closed after the audience is seated with projectors in the gangways, light man behind each projector etc. The remainder of the document reproduces the text of Ballard’s story (or ‘condensed novel’) The Assassination Weapon, and a final leaf includes a few extra comments by McKenzie concerning ‘the quest for reality’. The accompanying document is entitled The Big Mandala, Third Dimension and features another sketch of a performance printed on the first page. The remaining pages feature various texts and scenarios written by McKenzie. Update: In May, 2009 Ballard archivist Mike Holliday obtained a copy of the ICA Eventsheet announcing the upcoming event. Here are the relevant pages. For an interesting discussion of the write-up, plus some mythologizing of the event by a London newspaper, please click here.   Here is the script. Click to see large versions:                 They're four hundred feet high The following emails can be found on the JGB Chat Group: They're four hundred feet high Posted by: "stwrtmckenzie" Date: Sun Jul 30, 2006 I once read a Ballard story whose title I am trying to find. It was told "in the notional terms of a psychotic in the Belmont Asylum" and was divided into paragraphs each with titles such as "The Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors Even" and "The Quatarra Sand-Sea Depression". It had some notable lines, for example "They're four hundred feet high, the last thing you need is a pair of binoculars." Can anyone help me? Re: They're four hundred feet high Posted by: David Pringle Date: Sun Jul 30, 2006 (Is it Stewart Mackenzie?): "I once read a Ballard story whose title I am trying to find. It was told 'in the notional terms of a psychotic in the Belmont Asylum' and was divided into paragraphs each with titles such as 'The Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors Even' and 'The Quatarra Sand-Sea Depression'. It had some notable lines, for example 'They're four hundred feet high, the last thing you need is a pair of binoculars.' Can anyone help me?" That sounds like "The Assassination Weapon," which was collected in The Atrocity Exhibition. You maybe read it many years ago in New Worlds, April 1966, or in a Moorcock-edited anthology derived therefrom? -- David P. Re: They're four hundred feet high Posted by: "stwrtmckenzie" Date: Sun Jul 30, 2006 Hey David P. Yes, that was it, I did a light show of it at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London in 1968 or 69. How one forgets! Stewart McKenzie Re: They're four hundred feet high Posted by: "David Pringle" Date: Sun Jul 30, 2006 Stewart: Wow! You're one of the people who put on that ICA show? Could you tell us more about it, please? I doubt there's anyone on this mailing list who actually saw it at the time. I certainly missed it, only hearing about it after it was over. (I was 18 at the time, so I could have gone along... but I was a 6th-form schoolkid living in the Midlands.) How many performances were there? Did Ballard himself attend? Do you have a record anywhere of the exact dates? -- David P. Re: They're four hundred feet high Posted by: "stwrtmckenzie" Date: Sun Jul 30, 2006 Not one of the people, the person. I put it together with people from the Human Family, an English version of the Living Theater, working out of the Arts Laboratory under the exuberant patronage of Nigel Samuel, and students from one of the London theater colleges who provided actors and early multi-media technicians. We put on a demo at the ICA and Ballard came to see it, he loved it and invited me to join him in a video about the sexuality of car crashes which, I confess, sounded unappealing. It was performed at the ICA for about a week with the title "The Assassination Weapon, A Transmedia Search for Reality" some time in 1968 or 1969. It was performed a couple of times after that at the Regent Street Polytechnic School of Architecture and The Architectural Association. The show took Ballard's text from The Assassination Weapon with early analog electronic distortion and music, and played this back in surround streo around a vertical circular screen, about ten feet in diameter, which revolved slowly at the center of circles of concentric seats separated by four access corridors at the four cardinal points. The fire marshal required that the seats be fixed and I spent four days stapling chairs to a perfect hardwood floor, to the horror of my ICA minder. Once the audience was seated, the recording of The Assassination Weapon was played back and four projection tables shooting down the access corridors combined images on the revolving screen which could take front and back projection. I asked Jack Henry Moore, then the director of the Human Family, for a recommendation for the material for this screen, he recommended bed linen soaked in Parrafin (a flamable liquid), he said it took back projection beautifully. I decided that, after the trouble with the chairs, I would not go to the mat with the fire marshal on this one, it was a white plastic. The projection tables had a variety of image and light emitting parephanalia, still and movie projectors, boiling liquids (this was the sixties), rotating color filters. strobes, smoke machines, etc. There was an image script but some room for improvisation to exploit happy coincidences on the screen which could become quite complex since, in addition to the front and back projection, the sides of screen segments (it was made up of six pizza slices bolted together) caught projections as the screen rotated, introducing lines of color and fragments of images into the main projection. The English humor magazine "Punch" found it "Puzzling", the English manners magazine "The Lady" found it "Trying". We played to full houses at every performance. London was fun back then. Re: They're four hundred feet high Posted by: "David Pringle" Date: Mon Jul 31, 2006 Stewart: Many thanks for the detailed description of your ICA production of "The Assassination Weapon." "Not one of the people, the person..." OK, sorry, you were the person. "I put it together with people from the Human Family, an English version of the Living Theater, working out of the Arts Laboratory under the exuberant patronage of Nigel Samuel, and students from one of the London theater colleges who provided actors and early multi-media technicians. We put on a demo at the ICA and Ballard came to see it, he loved it and invited me to join him in a video about the sexuality of car crashes which, I confess, sounded unappealing..." I wonder if that was a first glimmering of the short film, "Crash!", which was made for the BBC and eventually shown in February 1971? "It was performed at the ICA for about a week with the title 'The Assasination Weapon, A Transmedia Search for Reality' some time in 1968 or 1969..." It was 1969, probably in August. Years ago, when I was compiling my Ballard bibliography (published in 1984), I copied out this bit of description from the Punch review (which, until now, was virtually all I knew of your production): * "The Assassination Weapon." Institute of Contemporary Arts, London (August 1969). Multi-media play based on the short story of the same title. A review by Jeremy Kingston, in Punch (August 20, 1969): 313-314, states: "The ICA Theatre in the Mall is showing a remarkable programme called 'The Assassination Weapon'... In the centre of the room a large white disc slowly rotates. Projectors in the four corners flash images on to this double screen while a voice sonorously reads passages by the ex-science-fiction writer J. G. Ballard... The superimposed photographs, surrealist paintings, charts and mandalas coupled with Ballard's dense distressed sentences have the texture of an unhappy dream. A Max Ernst worldscape of mighty fragments -- flyovers, deserts, dark reservoirs, radio telescopes -- following the private logic of an hallucinating mind. Puzzling, frequently powerful, devised and invented with an ingenuity and skill." [theatrical event] "It was performed a couple of times after that at the Regent Street Polytechnic School of Architecture and The Architectural Association..." That's good to know. So your production had a bit of an afterlife, beyond the ICA. Are you perhaps American, Stewart? Your description of Punch as "the English humor magazine 'Punch' makes me suspect so. No native British person would normally refer to it as "the English humor [or, indeed, humour] magazine" -- they'd just say Punch. If you're originally from the States (or elsewhere), when did you first hit the London scene? -- David P. Re: They're four hundred feet high Posted by: "Jo" Date: Mon Jul 31, 2006 Stewart -- thanks for your illuminating desciption of the ICA event -- I have been trying to find out more about it just recently for my PhD thesis. Do you have any photographs in situ or any other material relating to the event that you would be willing to share with us? All the best Jo Re: They're four hundred feet high Posted by: "Stewart McKenzie" Date: Mon Jul 31, 2006 David, Grew up in London, came to the States in 1972 to study ecological planning, now US citizen with children who talk with American accents. Stewart. Re: They're four hundred feet high Posted by: "Stewart McKenzie" Date: Mon Jul 31, 2006 Jo, Before I left England I packaged all the raw materials for the show, including the screen, and left them with a transient and unreliable base. Much of the equipment, slide and movie projectors, amps, speakers, etc. was dispersed. I then packaged my life into a trunk and two suitcases, as it has turned out, never to return. All the rest of my possessions, including, I fear the Assassination Weapon stuff, have been swept away by the tide of time and events, so I cannot help you with anything but memory, but you'd better hurry because that's going too. Stewart. Update From 2009: From: Stewart McKenzie Date: January 21, 2009 To: Rick McGrath Subject: Re: stewart, I have ICA news for you Rick, Wow! That took me (a)back. Thank you so much. I had forgotten how much work it was and that I had sent a copy to Jim Ballard and that we worked together on the staging. He came to see a demo that we had to lash up in a hurry in a cramped space at the ICA. He loved it. The rotating screen was the star of the show. It was made up of segments like a pizza, wooden frames with white plastic stretched over them, the framed segments were mounted with the plastic sheet alternately up and down. The plastic we knew could take front and back projection from the four light tables but didn't realize until we rehearsed that the frame edges, which were painted white, also took projections but these were at 90 degrees to those on the main screen. This added a whole new dimension to the combinations happening on the main screen. The improvisations became quite mesmerizing after a few performances. I haven't done much more in that medium. Not long after that show I took of to America for a career in environmental planning. I still do multimedia performances of poems some of which you can see at poemhunter.com, set their poet name search engine for Stewart McKenzie. Thanks again, Stewart. From: Rick McGrath Date: January 21, 2009 To: Stewart McKenzie Subject: Re: stewart, I have ICA news for you thanx for that... as you can see, my copy also has a JGB signature, no doubt added fairly recently couple questions for ya (if you don't mind) 1. on page 8, you wrote: "P.S. Here comes an afterthink just in time to catch this manuscript as it goes to press." Goes to press? was this ever printed? as an audience handout, or as scripts for the actors etc... 2. how did JGB help you in the staging? 3. did he ever see a performance of it? From: Stewart McKenzie Date: January 21, 2009 To: Rick McGrath Subject: Re: stewart, I have ICA news for you Rick, 1.The MS you sent me was the one I prepared for acting and sound technician students at the London Academy of Dramatic Art who were reading the script and manipulating the sounds, which ended up being recorded rather than live, and for people who would operate the light tables, many from the Arts Laboratory, a fading blaze of sixties glory. It was typed on mimeo sheets on a very old Oliver typewriter and reproduced on a mimeo machine we had rescued from the rubbish. The fire marshal did not let us close the aisles but we did end in silence with the final images on the screen and peoples shadows were cast on the screen. We did not tell the audience what they could do or pass out any handsheets. 2. & 3. As I said I had forgotten working with Jim although the scenario notes make it clear I did. I must have sent him the scenario, I'm sure we talked on the phone and I know he came to the ICA demo. I think he came to the first full performance which had first night problems when the motor rotating the screen failed and we had to put my girlfriend under the screen to rotate it. Jim invited me to work with him on a film he was thinking of which had to do with the erotic nature of car crashes but I was off to America to study environmental planning. From: Mike Holliday Subject: Assassination Weapon at ICA Date: May 13, 2009 Following Rick's scanning of the script for the ICA's 1968 production of "The Assassination Weapon", I've managed to get hold of a copy of the ICA Eventsheet for the relevant month. I was hoping the seller also had a copy of the Eventsheet which contained "Crash!", but no such luck! From: David Pringle Subject: Assassination Weapon at ICA Date: May 14, 2009 Mike H (and Rick): Your reminding us of that 1969 event at the ICA gives us another opportunity to comment on the following... If you remember, the anonymous obituary of JGB which appeared in The Telegraph on 19 April contained this: "Despite Ballard's avuncular appearance and booming voice, his air of bonhomie belied a much darker side. Acquaintances recalled that as young man he was 'obsessed' with topics such as assassination, car crash injuries and psychosis. One of Ballard's more outre projects had been an 'installation' at the ICA called The Assassination Weapon featuring a story about a deranged bomber pilot simultaneously screened on three walls to the sound of cars crashing… “...Another long-term obsession, assassination, culminated in Ballard producing a screenplay, Atrocity Exhibition, which became part of an 'installation' at the ICA entitled The Assassination Weapon (1969). "The film told the surreal story of an H-Bomber pilot lost among a series of motorways and psychiatric wards and haunted by images of John F Kennedy, Malcolm X and Lee Harvey Oswald. It was projected onto a number of screens and was accompanied by flashing lights, incense and the sound of car crashes. The event lasted for 75 hours." How wrong can you be? "75 hours"? A "screenplay"? Evidently, the person who wrote the above knew something about the ICA's Ballard production, but was relying on very garbled memories of it. I've hypothesized that those may have been the journalist Lynn Barber's memories. I say that because the same obit recycles the story of JGB allegedly showing photographs of his girlfriend's car-crash injuries at dinner-parties -- a seeming tall tale which first surfaced in one of Barber's JGB profiles from years ago. (Which girlfriend? What car crash...?) Rick, are you still in touch with Stewart McKenzie by email? It might be worth bouncing that Telegraph obituary off him to see what he thinks about it -- in particular, to see what his reaction might be to the claim that there was a 75-hour Ballard "film" at the ICA. From: Stewart McKenzie Subject: Assassination Weapon at ICA Date: May 14, 2009 Hey Rick, I saw the obituary and was amused (by the misreporting, not Ballard's death), clearly the writer wasn't there although rumor of the show had clearly spread, as to the 75 hours, the show was deliberately designed to induce a state of light trance so perhaps someone's time sense was altered, or perhaps they came in already altered, it was an altering time. I was delighted that the obituary writer considered this Jim Ballard's most outrageous work, quite something when you consider the reach of his imagination. As a response I suggest you point him at the cyber correspondence that you have included on your web page which lays out the making of the show in some detail. Did you read Ballard's short piece "Autobiography" in the New Yorker? He would have liked the television show "The Earth After People". Thanks for keeping me in touch, Stewart Update From 2012: On 2012-10-28, at 10:50 AM, Jim Laws wrote: Hi Rick Nothing to do as the clocks go back so I tap in “The Assassination Weapon, ICA”, as you do. So I find you AND Stewart McKenzie! He was the Godfather of that production and I was a midwife. In ‘66-67 at the Regent Street Polytechnic I was year one Surveying & Stewart was year 2 or 3 Architecture, which had a lot of creative souls in it. I was sound man for the Poly drama society and met Stewart through that. I helped him with a Poly multimedia happening in late ‘66 called Splat. By the time of the Assassination Weapon, I was a stage management student at LAMDA. We’d kept in touch and I helped to realise the production, coming up with the actors to record the text, the means of turning the mandala (rim driven horizontal bike wheel with vari-speed Parvalux motor), helped with the concept of the projectors and I made the sound tape, producing the electronic “music” on my Beocord 2000 reel to reel. I think I still have the tape. We had one speaker above the mandala and one below, so the stereo was quite dramatic. The first performances were at LAMDA Theatre, Earls Court, with technical students on the projectors. Ballard came to one of the shows. The guy who stored the production was, I think, Vince of Insanity Machine, who also had a hand in the projections. I believe there were 8mm film loops as well as slides. By the time of the ICA performances I was stage manager at a weekly seaside rep theatre in Southwold, so couldn’t help stage or be at the ICA shows. This I always regretted, especially when I heard about the non-spinning mandala! Doubtless if Stewart is still out there we will be chatting! ’m still in Suffolk, doing lighting design (mostly in churches) and teaching it a bit. Best to all Jim From: Rick McGrath Sent: 28 October 2012 15:25 To: Jim Laws Subject: Re: The Assassination Weapon Wow… Iames… whatta cool bolt out of the blue. Yes, Stewart is still out there… when I found him he was teaching in washington, DC… Fascinating info… love to hear the tape… you shd digitize it. Too bad you never saw a production… do you remember which one JGB went to? On 2012-10-28, at 12:06 PM, Jim Laws wrote: Hi Rick Thanks, I saw the LAMDA production, in fact I asked LAMDA if we could use their space (as I was a tech student there). I led the staging of it and LAMDA was the first show, before the ICA. I may have the programme. I did live sound for it, recorded voices but live electronic music, mics/feedback I'm fairly certain, plus I had speed control of the mandala and co-ordinated aspects of the projections. The voices were LAMDA students Paul Beque (may not be exact spelling, NOT the one on bid TV!) & Richmond Hoxie (American, quite busy) Ballard came to one of the LAMDA shows & we met him but he had no direct hand in it before seeing it. He may have been approached earlier to use the script; Stewart would know that. We may have located him through my old-boys school directory, we both went to The Leys, Cambridge. JGB likely came to the ICA as well. I'll have to look through my reels! Best Jim |
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