Punk did not die, it just moved East
Thirty years after the release of The Clash’s iconic album London Calling, researchers at the University of Warwick have discovered punk did not die, it is still alive and kicking in Eastern Europe.
Professor of Sociology Hilary Pilkington and her team have just secured more than half a million pounds to study why post-socialist punk has survived as a strong movement in Russia, eastern Germany and Croatia.
The project has been funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and will run for four years. One of the main outcomes of the project will be a new website called Rotten Beat, due to go live later this summer.
The site will become an electronic resource for the study and dissemination of contemporary punk and related scenes.The site will be managed by one of the research team, post-doctoral researcher Ivan Gololobov.
He said: “We want this site to act as a kind of fanzine for the punk scene and hopefully it will carry on after the project finishes. It is a platform for contemporary punk artists to showcase their music, we will have audio tracks on the site and films too. There will also be information to contextualise the music.”
This project is being highlighted as part of the Festival of Social Sciences taking place all this week at the University of Warwick. The Festival will include a range of seminars, workshops and exhibitions, as well as new podcasts and blogs being published on the event website each day.
A series of podcasts on different aspects of the punk project is also available on the Festival website.
(Please note these recordings contain lyrics that may not be suitable for listeners under the age of 18).
Professor Hilary Pilkington said: “We will explore the presentation and performance of punk alongside the subjective meanings attached to it by punks past and present. We want to map punk in relation to political, commercial, and cultural fields of public life and within the broader youth cultural context.”
Notes to editors
The Festival of Social Sciences will take place from 15-19th June and will also include keynote lectures from the University’s Vice-Chancellor Professor Nigel Thrift and Lord Professor Anthony Giddens, who will discuss his latest work, the ‘Politics of Climate Change’. For more details about the Festival of Social Sciences, visit http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/festival
For more information, contact Kelly Parkes-Harrison, Communications Officer, University of Warwick, 02476 150483, 07824 540863, k.e.parkes@warwick.ac.uk
Podcasts
Post-socialist Punk in Eastern Europe - Introduction
May contain lyrics not suitable for listeners under the age of 18.