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The secret origin of Perdu sur le vaisseau spatial!

By its very nature, our recent photozine Perdu sur le vaisseau spatial (Lost on the Spaceship), by Jean-Paul Marsaud, has been shrouded in a little mystery.

However, in this brief essay (which will come with Perdu as a supplement), Colossive’s “Tom Murphy” looks back at the unlikely-sounding genesis of the project.

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A couple of weeks after moving from Chorley to London in 1986, I saw Jean-Luc Godard’s Alphaville at the Barbican. Which was exciting enough for a wide-eyed nipper with a Billy the Fish football perm who’d just hopped off the National Express 570 Rapide.

However, the main feature was preceded by a cryptic yet compelling 16mm short called Mitte, by a compatriot of Godard’s named Jean-Paul Marsaud. Later, with a more functional  critical vocabulary at my fingertips, I’d be able to wax lyrical about Mitte. However, at the time its mesmerising sequences depicting a glide through an unidentified city became a formative experience that I struggled to put into words and which had a profound effect on how I perceived my new metropolitan environment.

A bit of (pre-internet) research revealed that while Marsaud had taken pains to remain generally under the radar, he had made two more similar films – Proxima and Espacio – that also seemed to beguile as much as they baffled. A huddle of cognoscenti would gather at festival screenings and private cinema clubs to pore over these films, in which the strata of urban reality unfolded like a thousand-petalled lotus bloom.

Then, in 1992, le cataclysme. At a time of great personal distress, Marsaud destroyed the negatives and prints of his three films and withdrew from public life. Despite persistent rumours, it seemed that the films didn’t even live on as an n‑th generation VHS.

And that might have been the end of the story, had it not been for a chance encounter at London’s Institut français at which I became an unlikely instrument of destiny.

Attending a bande desinée (comics) event and making awkward smalltalk with a couple of acquaintances, I became aware of a similarly uncomfortable looking man on the periphery of the group. Later, in the pub, one of my rosbif companions revealed that the man, known only as Jean-Paul, was nicknamed le fantôme (the ghost) around London’s French community, and that he had apparently been a great artist who had suffered a breakdown and destroyed his life’s work.

With my mind making connections and my curiosity piqued, I­ returned to the Institut français and pestered the librarian, who reluctantly confirmed Jean-Paul’s identity and agreed to pass my details to ‘the ghost’. Weeks passed, and, as I’d expected, no contact was forthcoming. Unable to let go, I made increasingly regular visits to the French enclave of South Kensington, wondering if I’d ever track down my elusive quarry – or even if, true to his nickname, he was a phantom who had once more dissolved into incorporeality.

I had all but given up hope when fate again intervened. Having dived into an unpromising chain pub for an early-afternoon loosener, I heard a familiar voice order a crème de cassis from the other side of the frosted-glass snob screen.

Using my stool as a prop to lever myself upwards, I peered over the screen to see none other than the auteur manqué Marsaud, peering intently into the maroon depths of his drink as if seeking the likeness of a long-dead lover.

As I introduced myself, my bumbling – and uncharacteristic – enthusiasm seemed to drive him further into his retreat. However, a crack appeared in the curtain when he waspishly corrected me over my apparent misinterpretation of one of his films. With the regular replenishment of his glass, he began to defrost (albeit never showing the slightest bit of interest in my own life or work).

I probed him gently on the destruction of his films, and in a startling moment he revealed that he’d kept an archive of sketches and photographs from the production of his films. With a certitude that I generally lack in my quotidian routine, I resolved not to let le fantôme dematerialise until he had agreed to the Colossive Gallery staging an exhibition of these priceless artefacts. As the sun crept lower and the bar bill did very much the opposite, a deal of sorts was reached.

Many terse episodes of psychodrama were still to be played out over that summer and autumn, but on October 15th the Colossive Gallery opened ‘All That Remains – The Lost Films of JP Marsaud’. But you know that already, don’t you? You were probably there.

Anyway, the show went – as they say – like gangbusters (despite JP failing to grace us with his presence even once). When the fortnight was up I met JP as arranged – back at the Institut français – to return his material. I’d anticipated that he’d be late, but when he slouched in, in his usual laboured gait, I was intrigued to see another package under his arm. Without a greeting he dropped a foxed envelope, emblazoned with coffee rings, on the table in front of me. With the most minimal of gestures, he indicated that I should look within.

What I found was a disordered series of black-and-white photographs of various claustrophobic, even sepulchural locations. He wouldn’t be drawn on their origin or purpose, but wanted my opinion as to whether any money could be made from them. Over a coffee (and a seemingly obligatory Cognac) we reached what could loosely be termed an agreement to publish them as a zine. He didn’t bother to hide his disappointment – his disdain, even – when I revealed the scale of production and promotion that Colossive would be able to provide. However, pouring another Cognac on the troubled waters seemed to do the job.

However, my request for a title for the work seemed to test his forbearance to destruction. Downing his drink (after a reflexive swill round the glass), he rose with a previously unsuggested nimbleness and rolled back out into the London rain.

A couple of mornings later, a seemingly hand-delivered postcard was waiting in the gallery letter box, bearing nothing but the words Perdu sur le vaisseau spatial. Lost on the spaceship. So that’s what it is.

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Les nouveaus zines sont arrivés!

I’ll be writing a much lengthier blog on the highly unusual story of how this zine came to be, but in the meantime…

We’re delighted to announce that, just in time for the DIY Space for London Zine Fest on Sunday July 7th, we’ve received our copies of Perdu sur le vaisseau spatial (Lost on the spaceship) – a photozine by an old friend of Colossive, JP Marsaud.

It’ll be up in our shop once we’ve got the weekend out of the way. In the meantime, here’s a sneaky-peek!

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Our latest donation to St Christopher’s

We’ve just made our latest donation – £102.04 – to St Christopher’s hospice from sales of How Graffiti Saved My Dad’s Life… and Things My Dad Saw…

That brings our total so far to £1,376.65. Thanks so much to everyone who’s bought a copy (or made a donation during London Calling Blog‘s street art tour of Penge in January).

If you’ve enjoyed either or both of the books, please spread the word so we can carry on raising funds for an amazing institution and getting Gordon’s work in front of more eyeballs. Bless you all!

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“Being awake in these dead hours is not always a torment”: VJ Sellar on 3:52 AM

Guest blog by VJ Sellar, creator of 3:52AM

I took the photographs and produced the text for 3:52 AM as a way of passing time in the early hours of the morning, during a recent bout of insomnia. Although I’ve never been a brilliant sleeper, it’s got worse in the last couple of years – a side-effect of the medication I was prescribed when I was diagnosed with breast cancer a couple of years ago. Any time between 3:30 and 4am is the worst time to wake up – too soon to have had a decent night’s sleep, too late for that still to be a prospect.

When I’m awake in the early hours of the morning, I generally pick up a camera (mind you, I generally pick up a camera when I’m awake, whatever time it is). Being awake in these dead hours is not always a torment. Sometimes I get the impression that the normal boundaries I exist within have disappeared. None of the pressures of being awake in the daytime (work, money, life…) seem to exist. It can be very liberating and allows me to find new opportunities for expression.

Of course, photography is not a recommended cure for insomnia. You’re supposed to distract yourself with something mindless and soothing – activities which don’t stimulate the mind – until you start to feel sleepy enough to go back to bed. Photography, on the other hand, provokes all sorts of questions, and by the time you get to the end of a shoot you might as well have had several cups of coffee for all it’s going to help you sleep. But it does take your mind off time passing.

All the profits from the sale of this zine are going to the Maggie’s Wallace Centre at Addenbrookes Hospital in Cambridge. Maggie’s Wallace is a brilliant organisation, which provides practical, emotional and social support for people affected by cancer, in a friendly and non-clinical setting. I visited them a couple of times a week for two or three months when I was recovering from treatment. Raising money from the sale of this zine is a very small way of paying back the help and support I got there.

3:52 AM will also be available at the Sheffield Zine Fest on Saturday May 19th.

For more of VJ Sellar’s photography, visit her Instagram page

 

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Cover reveal: ‘Things My Dad Saw (But Never Bothered Mentioning)’

It’s been all hands/paws on deck here at Colossive HQ ahead of the Sheffield Zine Fest on May 18th!

We’ll have a bit more on 3:52 AM in the next few days, but today’s exciting development is that we’ve sent Things My Dad Saw (But Never Bothered Mentioning) to the printers.

It’s kind of a follow-up to How Graffiti Saved My Dad’s Life (At Least for a While), drawing again on the incredible photographic archive of Jane’s late dad, Gordon Gibbens. However, rather than graffiti and street art, this is a look at some of the stranger things he encountered on his perambulations round the capital.

Jane has written an introduction, and we’ll be posting a few more teasers in the run-up to the launch at Sheffield. Keep an eye on our social media. We’ll obviously have it for sale on here as soon as possible, as well. As with How Graffiti Saved My Dad’s Life, all the profits will be going to St Christopher’s hospice in Sydenham.

In other news: sorry if you were waiting for the rumoured two-colour de luxe riso edition of Skating for Godot. It turned out to be a lot more eye-wateringly expensive to produce than I was anticipating. How do people afford to do a whole comic by riso? Thanks to Tracey P for being so characteristically stoical about the whole thing.

On the other hand, the bits have arrived to produce more copies of High Precision Ghosts 1: Incident on Dilke Street, so we’ve got a nice bit of trimming, folding and stapling ahead of us.

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In good company

Dropping into Bookseller Crow on the Hill (London’s most elevated bookshop*) on Saturday, we were thrilled to spot How Graffiti Saved My Dad’s Life… looking the world right in the eye, among some splendid company**.  

We’re enormously grateful to the shop’s co-proprietor Jonathan Main, who is carrying our book free of charge to maximise our donations to St Christopher’s. If you’re within staggering distance of London SE19, roll up, enjoy the fresh air and support an invaluable local bookshop.

In related news, we’re currently hard at work*** on a companion volume of Gordon’s non-street-art pics – Things My Dad Saw (But Never Bothered Mentioning) – which we’re aiming to present to the world at the Sheffield Zine Fest on May 18th, also in aid of St Christopher’s. Watch this space!

* Probably

** Although we still haven’t worked out why Margaret Atwood signed a book to ‘Dave’ when Jane met her at the Edinburgh Book Festival a few years ago

*** Gawping at the screen with a mounting sense of panic

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Sheffield Zine Fest – Saturday 18th May

After our triumphant debut at last year’s Catford Comic and Zine Fair, we’re very excited to be bringing the Colossive Experience to this year’s Sheffield Zine Fest.

As well as our Now Legendary backlist of goodies, we’ll be giving a public debut to 3:52 AM by our brilliant friend VJ Sellar. It’s another little gem of a zine, combining words and pictures to evoke the experience of insomnia. And all of the profits from it will go to the Maggie’s Wallace Centre in Cambridge, which provides free practical, emotional and social support to people with cancer and their family and friends.