Bureau of Lost Culture

This is the second part of our conversation with Joe Rush, the initiator, mentor, and driving force behind The Mutoid Waste Company, that extraordinary countercultural endeavour to turn the waste of our industrial civilisation into art, performance, street theatre - and a way of life. If you haven’t heard the first part, you might want to start here: https://bureauoflostculture.podbean.com/e/20th-century-mutoid-man-part-1/ This time, we covered a huge amount of ground — Joe's personal story, the birth of the Mutoids and the UK counterculture of the ’80s and ’90s: squatting. We hear about the Peace Convoy, the Battle of the Beanfield, the free festival scene, the warehouse party scene, and how those worlds were pushed into exile in Europe, where they helped spark whole new cultural movements of festivals, parties, and creative rebellion including 'Tanghenge', the repurposing of abandoned Soviet MIG fighter jets after the fall of The Berlin Wall and much more.. ---- Thank you to everyone who’s signed up to support the show on Patreon—that really does mean a lot. We have chosen not to carry ads here; it simply wouldn’t sit right with what we do. But that does mean we can really benefit from your support, in whatever form that takes. not just financial. If you’d like to get involved and contribute to this crazy endeavour, head to bureauoflostculture.com to find out more. Thanks to Letmiya SZTALRYD for excerpts from her wonderful film I am a Mutoid #BureauOfLostCulture #JoeRush #MutoidWaste #ScrapArt #IndustrialArt #BurningManArt #Counterculture #RecycledArt #PostIndustrial #UndergroundCulture

Beyond the official story, the myth, of the Second World War — its maps and medals, courage and sacrifice — there is another hidden narrative. Written in rare memoirs, or in letters and diaries never meant to be read by us, it tells of a kind of underground culture that was secret, transgressive, forbidden With millions of young men and women on military service, the transitory nature of life under threat of sudden and violent death created a charged atmosphere in which conventional boundaries loosened. In London the darkness of the blackout became both cover and catalyst. Writer and cultural critic Luke Turner, is the author of the beautiful book Men at War, Loving, Lusting, Fighting, Remembering 1939-1945, a book that excavates the sexual undercurrents of wartime Britain, how the social upheaval of wartime had a profound effect on the sex lives of British men in particular— in the city, in barracks, in prison of war camps. This is a story that feels less like military history and more like testimonies from an underground scene — improvised, poignant usually invisible - and later to be deliberately repressed.. IMAGE: Cecil Beaton /Imperial War Museum #sex #war #military #queerhistory #londonhistory #blitz #transgressive #

If you had been at the Glastonbury Festival in 1987, you may have seen a familiar silhouette emerging in the dawn light - upright monoliths arranged in a circle. Was it Stonehenge - magically transferred here across the Salisbury plain? No, it was ‘Carhenge'- a circle of upright cars, their chassis standing like monoliths, the archaeology of the automobile age And imagine ‘Tankhenge', a gateway made from abandoned Soviet tanks assembled in Berlin just after the fall of the Berlin Wall — the wreckage of the Cold War turned into a piece of anarchic sculpture Or imagine a huge mechanical creature crawling across the desert at the Burning Man festival in Nevada These strange and spectacular visions all come from the same source: The Mutoid Waste Company— a collective that, since the early 1980s, has been transforming the debris of industrial civilisation into giant sculptures, mutant vehicles and temporary worlds built from waste. This is the first part of our conversation with Joe Rush, the artist at the centre of it all. It takes us into the world of late 1970s West London, the punk years, the alternative communities and squats of the People's Republic of Frestonia, and the signpist along the way to becoming a Mutoid... And if you're listening in March 2026 it coincides with the opening of his latest exhibition -Unnatural - at The Bomb Factory Photograph: Courtesy of Guy Mayhew #BureauOfLostCulture #JoeRush #MutoidWaste #ScrapArt #IndustrialArt #BurningManArt #Counterculture #RecycledArt #PostIndustrial #UndergroundCulture

In the heart of London’s Bloomsbury, behind a scruffy turquoise door, the world lies folded into drawers. Here are maps that survived wars, regimes, and revolutions — not because they were valued, but because they were forgotten. Some were reused when paper was scarce - a map of Cuba mounted on the reverse of a Second World War map of Berlin, the roads of one ruined city shining faintly through another place entirely, a haunting map of Hiroshima printed just weeks before destruction. Britain’s only Professor of Cartography, James Cheshire's book The Library of Lost Maps, explores the hidden collection of thousands of maps in a room at University College London. He joins us to tell us why paper maps still matter. Maps tell us what was ignored, how ideology, hope and catastrophe have been drawn onto paper; they tell us how power wanted the world to look, and they reveal hidden patterns in everyday life. And when map libraries disappear, it isn’t just paper that vanishes — it’s memory. #maps #maplibrary #hiroshima #ordnancesurvey #mapping #cartography #johnsnow #tubemap

This is the second part of a conversation with Alaura O’Dell / Mistress Mix, formerly known as Paula P-Orridge. In the first part, we traced Alaura’s journey from meeting the musician and cultural provocateur Genesis P-Orridge, as a 15-year-old schoolgirl in East London, to becoming a central actor in the underground art band Psychic TV and the occult network Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth (TOPY). While public accounts often focus on TOPY’s founder, Genesis P-Orridge, we heard about Alaura's role in the organisation — not just as a participant, but as an organiser and practitioner, the one “who handled the workings”: the practical magick behind the grand metaphysical ideas. In this episode, we rejoin Alaura and Genesis as they are in Kathmandu with their kids. Caress and Genesse. Back in Britain, the police have raided their home, prompted by unfounded accusations of moral deviance and child abuse in the media, during the infamous 'satanic panic'of the 1980s. We hear how they embarked on a life in exile in California, finding unexpected refuge with the family of Winona Ryder and entering a new West Coast countercultural milieu that included encounters with Timothy Leary and Terence McKenna. before hearing about Alaura's life after Psychic TV, TOPY and Genesis. Psychic TV, was a multimedia art and music project that blurred boundaries between performance, ritual, and experimentation in sound and imagery, imbued with a sense of magick (in both the occult and transformative senses) Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth (TOPY),was a loosely structured global network of artists, occultists, and seekers that emerged in the 1980s. #AlauraODell #PaulaP’Orridge #GenesisP’Orridge #TempleOvPsychicYouth #Counterculture #SacredSites #PersonalReinvention #SpiritualAwakening #TraumaAndHealing #CreativeExpression #ExileAndResilience #TimothyLeary #terencemckenna #PsychicTVHistory

Over the last century, thew word Shaman has been embraced by artists, hippies, psychonauts and spiritual rebels. In the 1960s and 70s, shamanism had become a kind of countercultural shorthand for altered states, secret, magical knowledge, and ways of seeing outside rationalism, capitalism, and institutional power. Shamans appeared in underground books, on psychedelic record sleeves, in communes and consciousness-raising circles. Writers like Carlos Castaneda blurred the line between ethnography and spiritual fiction. Psychedelics were framed as modern shamanic initiation rites. But as shamanism was absorbed into Western counterculture, the messy realities of the original shamanic cultures - land, lineage, service to the community, and sometimes danger - were replaced with personal visions, journeys and individual transformation. Our guest today is social anthropologist Max Carocci whose work looks at how this happened. His latest book, Shamans: The Visual Culture, is an incredible portrait of the original shamanic worlds with an eclectic array of the sacred objects, tools, clothing and images shamans have made, along with the way they been photographed, filmed, and mythologised. Max is especially interested in how these images have turned the shaman into a symbolic figure — part spiritual rebel, part cypher for Western longing — while the original shamans continue to live under pressure from colonialism, repression and environmental loss. #counterculture, #shamanism, #shaman, #tuvan, #galba, #newage, #spiritualisn, #magic, #ancestor

This is the second part of a conversation with the poet, musician and thinker Penny Rimbaud, co-founder, with Steve Ignorant, of the anarcho-punk band and activist art collective Crass Crass emerged as a band in 1977, but quickly became something more complex, rejecting rock stardom, record industry norms, releasing records on their own label and using their platform to challenge war, nationalism, consumerism, sexism, and state violence. In this second part of the interview, we about the events that led to Crass and hear more about Dial House, an old rambling farmhouse in rural Essex, a long-running experiment in collective life — part commune, part refuge, part creative hub. It was here, where he still lives, that Penny's music, philosophy, artwork, debate, and daily survival are entangled. And we hear about the founding of the Stonehenge Free Festival and the death of Wally Hope, cultural terrorism, Penny's work since Crass, and his thoughts on art, spirituality and the self. Music played: Futility and The Soldier’s Dream (The War Poems of Wilfred Owen) So What (Crass) The Song of Self (With Louise Elliot) You Brave Od Land (With Youth) For more on Penny and his work #counterculture #crass #pennyrimbaud #anarchism #capitalism #dialhouse #artschool #wallyhope #stonehengefreefestival

The sea, its myths, and the supernatural is the theme of this special New Year edition of the Bureau when we leave behind our usual waters to set sail into the past of a very unusual counterculture. For most of human history, the sea has been both a road and a riddle. It promises fortune and freedom — but it also swallows ships whole. And in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as Britain’s empire spread across the globe, the sea became seen, not just as a physical frontier, but as a psychic one — a vast, perilous deep where faith, science, fear, and fantasy collided. This is the story the British cultural historian Karl Bell tells in The Perilous Deep: A Supernatural History of the Atlantic, an epic study of sailors’ lore, ghost ships, sea monsters, superstitions, omens and uncanny maritime experiences. We hear about 'the caul' - the protective embryo of an unborn baby said to keep sailors safe, the 'jonah', a scapegoat eyed suspiciously by those on board as responsible for the ship's misfortunes, H P Lovecraft, cross-dressing pirates and more. This is not a history of battles or trade routes, but of dreams, fantasies and terrors — of the sea as it existed in the minds of those who sailed upon it The Perlious Deep: A Supernatural History of the Atlantic

In early 1990s South London — a time when rave culture was mutating and London’s squats were pulsing with creativity, Aphex Twin, Global Communication, Nightmares on Wax, Autechre,Andrea Parker, Scanner — could be found DJ-ing and performing in spaces where a strange new sound-world was blooming. This is the story of Telepathic Fish, the ambient afterparty scene created by the Openmind Collective. Telepathic Fish parties and club rooms were DIY countercultural happenings with turntables, psychedelic installations, living-room lamps, photocopied zines and a lot of imagination, becoming a meeting place for bohos, ravers, multimedia explorers and a new wave of electronic musicians. Now, as a new vinyl compilation and a beautifully illustrated 20-page booklet, The Telepathic Fish has resurfaced to rave reviews, Kevin Foakes — DJ, designer, archivist and cultural custodian — returns to the Bureau to talk squat party ‘finstallations’, Aphex Twin, Mira Calix, illegal Roundhouse raves, ambient zines and what DIY culture can do when technology, community and youthful imagination collide. The Telepathic Fish Compilation For Kevin / DJ Food #ambientmusic #aphextwin #autechre #miracalix #orbital #theorb #counterculture #diyparties #diyculture #telepathicfish #djfood

There are figures in counterculture whose names appear only in the margins of the story — whose influence is eclipsed, overshadowed, even dismissed, by more mythologised personalities. Alaura O’Dell — known to many under her earlier name, Paula P-Orridge - is a musician, artist, occult practitioner, and was a co-conspirator in the band Psychic TV For a long time, Alaura was described almost exclusively in relation to her then-husband, the arch provocateur and musician Genesis P-Orridge but she joined us to talk about life before Genesis, the formative years of Psychic TV: the chaos, the energy, the experiments with magick and media, the turbulent times of TOPY - Thee Temple Ov Psychick Youth - the global network of seekers and outsiders, where she was not merely a participant but an organiser — the one who handled the workings, the practical magic behind the grand metaphysical gestures. Alaura’s life didn’t end when she parted ways with the band, with Genesis, or with the Temple. In fact, in many ways, it began anew. We will be hearing more about that in the second part of our interview in a future episode. For more on Alaura and connect with her here (as Mistress Mix) #psychictv #TheeTempleOvPsychickYouth #paulp-orridge #genesisp-orridge #throbbinggristle #satanist #satanicpanic #counterculture #coseyfannitutti #occult

We are on the brink of a new nuclear age - the energy crisis, the push towards net zero and the gargantuan power requirements of AI demand it - or so we are told. But here in Britain, the old nuclear age isn’t just a historical footnote - it’s etched into the very landscape. Tom Bolton went on an epic journey around the UK to explore the extraordinary, imposing locations in that landscape, from the 16 vast concrete cathedral-like power stations on remote coasts to the hidden nuclear missile silos that cast a long, physical, cultural and environmental shadow over Albion - past, present, and into the distant future. His extraordinary new book, Atomic Albion: Journeys Around Britain's Nuclear Power Stations, not only maps the physical geography of Britain’s atomic ambitions, but also digs into their psychic, mythic and cultural impact. With great power comes great responsibility, as Spider-Man's Uncle Pete said. And of course, where there is state power, there has always been countercultural dissent, quite rightly in this case, because the power we unleashed by splitting the atom could bring us to the very brink of oblivion.. #atomic #atomicage #nuclear #nuclearpower #nuclearweapons #atombomb #powerstaions #albion #atomicalbion #counterculture

When the filmmaker David Lynch died earlier this year, fans created shrines filled with coffee, doughnuts, cigarettes and blue roses; a level of spontaneous mourning more common for dead rock stars or royalty than filmmakers. His auctioned belongings sold for staggering sums, almost as if they were treated as relics, showing how many people felt deeply connected to his work. Why? David was that unusual figure - an artist who had mainstream success but seemed to remain defiantly and deeply countercultural. How? And, this was a man who had an adjective - ‘Lynchian’ - named after him But what does that mean? The writer and cultural historian John Higgs, returns to the Bureau. His new book ‘Lynchian: The Spell of David Lynch’ tries to answer those questions while taking a deep dive into the hidden depths of Lynch's films - where beauty and horror, dream and reality, suburban innocence and lurking evil co-exist; where simple pleasures—coffee, pie, music—take on a sacred resonance in contrast to violence and decay. Where we can take a journey into darkness and out again - changed. And we dig into art, consciousness, dreaming, ideas and the writer's life in these changing times. #DavidLynch #Lynchian #TwinPeaks #CinemaOfDreams #SurrealCinema #BlueVelvet #FilmNoir #Mulhollanddrive #CultFilm #DreamLogic #transcendentalmeditation

Penny Rimbaud , who has spent more than half a century living the ideals that most of us only talk about, has been described as an activist philosopher, an anarchist, a Zen Buddhist. Though he would likely not recognise those descriptions, he is certainly a poet, a musician, an artist. Born Jeremy John Ratter in 1943, in the late 1960s, together with artist Gee Vaucher, he founded Dial House, an open community and creative refuge in rural Essex. It became both a home and a hub — a living experiment in anarchism, art, and radical living, from which emerged Crass, a band that tore apart punk’s nihilism and replaced it with a fierce moral energy: anti-war, anti-sexism, anti-consumerism — but pro-peace, pro-freedom, and defiantly DIY. Their black-and-white graphics, polemical lyrics, and uncompromising stance made them one of the most influential and challenging acts of their time. When Crass disbanded in 1984, Penny kept on creating, often with Gee. He became a prolific poet, writer, and spoken-word performer, continuing to explore themes of love, pacifism, and spiritual autonomy. Now in his eighties, he still lives and works at Dial House — still questioning authority, still seeking truth through art and language. We range back and forth across Penny's personal history and his thoughts on culture, capitalism, art and the very notion of the self. In his own words: “There is no authority but yourself.” ---- During this conversation, we hear: 'Dulce et Decorum Est’ - from What Passing Bells (The War Poems of Wilfred Owen) ‘How?’ - from How? ‘Of Summer's Passing' - with Peter Vukomirovic - from Of Summer's Passing 'Oh America' - with Youth - from Oh America #counterculture #crass #pennyrimbaud #anarchism #capitalism #dialhouse #artschool #

We walk the streets every day — and through parks, across squares and pavements and along beaches, and mountains, over 'The Commons' — without much thought for who really owns them. These apparently public spaces have often been battlegrounds over public rights. From the rural enclosures that fenced off England’s open fields, through the city squares where protesters have clashed with police, to the gated plazas and shopping malls of today — the story of The Commons is the story of who belongs, who is excluded, who can gather, and who makes the rules. In this episode, we’re diving into that story with historian Katrina Navickas, whose book Contested Commons: A History of Protest and Public Space in England traces how people have fought, for centuries, to claim, reclaim and defend shared space. We hear about The Chartists, about The Greenham Common protests, Occupy, Reclaim the Streets, trespassing and hear some surprising answers to the question 'Who Owns The Ground Beneath Our Feet?' We finish with a recording of 'The World Turned Upside Down' by the wonderful Leon Rosselson #trespassing #thecommons #commonland #theclearances #protest #thechartists #occupy #reclaimthestreets #counterculture

As musician and activist BILLY BRAGG makes a welcome return as a voice of countercultural sanity, we revisit the Lost History of Skiffle as he takes us on an extraordinary whirlwind tour through the music that the counterculture forgot. Along the way, we hear about the emergence of The Teenager in post-war Britain, the massive impact of Rock Around the Clock, the Soho espresso bar culture of the 50s and the birth of British youth culture. We explore why Skiffle, which soundtracked that youth culture for a few intense years and was the inspiration for musicians in The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, The Who and The Rolling Stones, has been oddly forgotten. And Billy explains why, as the first British DIY musical revolution, Skiffle provided the template for the Punk movement of the 70s that was to inspire him. Along the way, we get educated about the post-war 'trad jazz' movement, the cultural stranglehold of the BBC - and the terrific transformatory power of a guy - or a girl - with a guitar. For more on Billy and his book Roots, Radicals and Rockers: https://www.billybragg.co.uk/product/roots-radicals-and-rockers-how-skiffle-changed-the-world-hardback-signed-by-billy/ #skiffle #billybragg #beatles #rock'n'roll #teenager #1950 #musichistory

In the old towns and villages of Britain, before the police, before the tabloids, before social media shame-storms, there were other ways to deal with those who stepped outside the rules. Noisy ways. Cruel ways. Dangerous ways - the 'Rough Music' rituals — part punishment, part performance, part pagan magic — at the dark edge where community, cruelty and celebration collide. Liz Williams, the Glastonbury-based author, folklorist and pagan, came to the Bureau to talk about them. Her latest book Rough Music: Folk Tradition, Transgression and Alternative Britain, explores often violent, forgotten traditions of noise, mockery, and ritual humiliation — and how they ripple forward into today’s counterculture, protest movements, and online doxing. And we hear about some other, less cruel, but deeply strange British rituals that cling on: the annual Cheese-Rolling at Cooper’s Hill, The Burryman’s Parade in Scotland and the yearly Shin Kicking competition in the Cotswolds.. #folklore #tradition #albion #cruelty #shaming #doxing #skimmington #roughmusic #counterculture

Iceland is one of the last remaining Western countries where a substantial proportion of the population believes in the presence of other beings - The Hidden Folk. For centuries, and until fairly recently, ghosts, revenants, trolls and elves were regarded as an integral part of everyday life. Their stories were shared during the long nights of winter gatherings, and they felt just as real to Icelanders as the people sitting beside them. Ethnologist Dagrún Ósk Jónsdóttir came to the Bureau to talk about the role of these mythical and supernatural beings in Icelandic society and landscape. Her book 'Ghosts, Trolls and the Hidden People: Icelandic Folktales’ opens the door to the astonishing and eerie world of folk legends in the various settings of farm, wilderness, darkness, church, ocean and shore. We hear about her own family's ghost, how to recognise a magical being, how to scare off a troll and how construction projects in Iceland can still be delayed or rerouted in order to take account of the Hidden Folk. #folklore, #iceland, #icelandicfolklore, #trolls, #elves, #ghosts, #supernatural, #supernaturalbeings, #sorcery #ghoststories, #counterculture

They called them the voices of the dead. Whispers in the static. Words in the hiss. Messages that—so believers said—slipped through the veil between worlds and onto magnetic tape The story of Electronic Voice Phenomenon, or EVP begins in the late 1950s, when Swedish artist Friedrich Jürgenson was out in the countryside recording birdsong. On playback, he heard not only the birds but what he swore were voices—some speaking to him directly, including that of his deceased mother. Latvian-born psychologist Konstantin Raudive took up the work, making thousands of recordings and publishing his 1971 book Breakthrough, which brought EVP to wider public attention and cemented its place in paranormal lore. We explore the history and the practice of EVP—its roots in spiritualism and its connection to the technology of sound recording with Rikard Friberg von Sydow whose research examines how we preserve and interpret recorded sound, and Carl Michael von Hausswolff — Swedish sound artist, composer, and curator who has incorporated EVP into his artistic practice for decades. William Burroughs, Genesis P-Orridge, Lars Von Trier, Nigel Kneale and David Lynch also get a look in.. #Friedrich Jürgenson #Konstantin Raudive #paranomal #numberstations #EVP #electronicvoicephenomenon #William Burroughs #Genesis P-Orridge, #LarsVonTrier #NigelKneale #DavidLynch #twinpeaks

Amongst its pages, there are many familiar names—Oscar Wilde, Quentisn Crisp, Sappho, James Baldwin, Freddie Mercury — but also many we might not expect: Florence Nightingale, Marlene Dietrich, Cary Grant, J. Edgar Hoover, Eleanor Roosevelt, Tchaikovsky, Greta Garbo, Richard the Lionheart, even Abraham Lincoln, along with 1000 other stories of artists, generals, politicians, kings, despots and many more figures drawn from 5000 years of hidden culture. Keith Stern came to the Bureau to talk about his extraordinary encyclopaedia ‘Queers in History’, what drove him to write it, and why it matters. The book is more than a who’s-who of queer life —it’s a challenge to the official version of the past, a reminder of how history gets made, unmade, and remade, depending on who’s telling the stories, inviting us to consider how queerness has always existed, and has contributed to the culture. And we get into the subject of whether Gandalf was Queer - yes, we really do…

What does it mean to be naked, in body or in spirit? Why has human nudity so often been revered, feared, sexualized, or weaponised? This episode was recorded on July 17 - International Naked Day. Our guest Philip Carr-Gomm is a writer, psychologist, spiritual teacher, and for 30 years, leader of the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids—one of the largest Druid organisations in the world. His book A Short History of Nakedness is a rich, wide-ranging exploration of the role nudity has played in religion, protest, art, and performance, from the ancient world to the modern era. He takes us through everything from Christian flagellants and naked monks to contemporary naturists and political activists who’ve used nudity to make bold statements. We get into all that, into druidry, the difference between being naked and nude, Lady Godiva, naked Counterculture, Adam and Eve, John and Yoko, Breasts not Bombs, The Naked Rambler - and streaking. And Philip tells why we should all get our kit off and shares some tips on how to get more naked… Allen Ginsberg by Richard Avedon #counterculture #johnandyoko #naked #nakedness #nude #nudity #naturist #druid #druidry #streaking #ladygodiva #breastsnotbombs #OBOD #nakedrambler