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Mark Pilkington | |
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 Mark Pilkington (January 2009) | |
| Born | 26 February 1973 |
| Occupation(s) | Writer, publisher, curator and musician; publisher of Strange Attractor Press |
| Website | www |
Mark Pilkington (born 26 February 1973) is a writer, publisher, curator and musician with particular interest in the fringes of knowledge, culture and belief.
Pilkington has written two books, Mirage Men (2010) [1] and Far Out: 101 Strange Tales from Science's Outer Edge (2007). The latter collects the Far Out science articles Pilkington wrote for The Guardian newspaper between 2003 and 2005. [2]
For Mirage Men (premiered at the Sheffield Doc / Fest in 2013) [3] Pilkington and John Lundberg travelled to America in search of the truth behind the UFO enigma. As they spoke to intelligence agents, disinformation specialists and UFO hunters the pair began to suspect that instead of covering-up stories of crashed spacecraft, alien contacts and secret underground bases for the past 60 years, the US intelligence agencies had been promoting them all along, as part of Cold War psychological warfare and counter-intelligence programmes. [4] [5]
Pilkington's writing has also been published in numerous magazines and anthologies, including The Anomalist , Fortean Times , Frieze, Sight & Sound , The Wire, the Time Out Book of London Walks Vol.2 and London Noir [6] [7] [8] [9]
He has broadcast on Resonance FM, both as a guest, hosting Strange Attractor On Air, and DJing for the Kosmische Club. [10] [11] He has also given presentations to groups, conventions and festivals including Fortean Times Unconvention, Supersonic Festival, London Lore Conference, Litro and Skeptics in the Pub. [12] [13] [14] [15] [16]
Pilkington runs Strange Attractor Press and edits its anthology, Strange Attractor Journal. [17] Other books published by SAP include Medical London by Richard Barnett and Mike Jay, Welcome to Mars by Ken Hollings, Austin Osman Spare by Phil Baker and The Field Guide by Rob Irving and John Lundberg. [18] [19] [20]
As a curator Pilkington has organised events at London venues including the Horse Hospital, the Theosophical Society, Conway Hall and Barnes Wetland Centre. As well as numerous Strange Attractor events from 2001 (initially with John Lundberg) to 2004, [21] he has collaborated on larger projects including Pestival (2006, with Bridget Nicholls) and Megalithomania (2002, with Neil Mortimer of Third Stone Magazine ). [22] [23] In 2010 Pilkington curated the Strange Attractor Salon at Viktor Wynd Fine Art in London, an exhibition involving over twenty artists and a programme of talks, performance, music and film. [24]
Pilkington has also played electronics and synthesisers with improvising and experimental musical groups including Rucksack, Raagnagrok, Disinformation, Urthona, The Stargazer's Assistant, High Mountain Tempel, The Stëllä Märis Drönë Örchësträ, Yan Gant y Tan, Indigo Octagon and solo as The Asterism. He has appeared on two CDs by High Mountain Tempel, The Glass Bead Game and Pilgrimage to Thunderbolt Pagoda, Circuit Blasting by Strange Attractor vs Disinformation and Murmurations by Urthona and the Asterism. [25] [26]
In 2012 he appeared in an episode of the second series of Stargazing Live , a BBC 2 series about astronomy.
Space rock is a music genre characterized by loose and lengthy song structures centered on instrumental textures that typically produce a hypnotic, otherworldly sound. It may feature distorted and reverberation-laden guitars, minimal drumming, languid vocals, synthesizers and lyrical themes of outer space and science fiction.
Krautrock is a broad genre of experimental rock that developed in West Germany in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It originated among artists who blended elements of psychedelic rock, avant-garde composition, and electronic music, among other eclectic sources. Common elements included hypnotic rhythms, extended improvisation, musique concrète techniques, and early synthesizers, while the music generally moved away from the rhythm & blues roots and song structure found in traditional Anglo-American rock music. Prominent groups associated with the krautrock label included Neu!, Can, Faust, Tangerine Dream, Kraftwerk, Cluster, Ash Ra Tempel, Popol Vuh, Amon Düül II and Harmonia.
Fortean Times is a British monthly magazine devoted to the anomalous phenomena popularised by Charles Fort. Previously published by John Brown Publishing, I Feel Good Publishing, Dennis Publishing, and Exponent (2021), as of December 2021 it is published by Diamond Publishing, part of Metropolis International.
Karl Shuker is a British zoologist, cryptozoologist and author. He lives in the Midlands, England, where he works as a zoological consultant and writer. A columnist in Fortean Times and contributor to various magazines, Shuker is also the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Cryptozoology, which began in November 2012.
Lionel Pigot Johnson was an English poet, essayist, and critic.
Spring-heeled Jack is an entity in English folklore of the Victorian era. The first claimed sighting of Spring-heeled Jack was in 1837. Later sightings were reported all over the United Kingdom and were especially prevalent in suburban London, the Midlands and Scotland.
In the folklore of Lee County, South Carolina, the Lizard Man of Scape Ore Swamp is an entity said to inhabit the swampland of the region. First mentioned in the late 1980s, the purported sightings and damage attributed to the creature yielded a significant amount of newspaper, radio and television publicity.
Karl Pilkington is an English presenter, comedian, actor, voice-artist, producer and author.
Paul Frederic Bennewitz, Jr. was an American businessman and UFO investigator. According to the multiple sources, Bennewitz was the target of a government disinformation campaign that ultimately led to his psychiatric hospitalization.
John Lundberg is an English artist and documentary filmmaker. His work is concerned with ostension. Underpinning all of his work is an interest in how myth and artifice can shape and alter reality, especially regarding crop circles, UFOlogy, and other examples of urban legends and the paranormal.
Richard Freeman is a cryptozoologist, author, zoological journalist, and WebTV Presenter. He is also the zoological director of the Centre for Fortean Zoology (CFZ), and co-edits both the journal, Animals & Men and several editions of the annual CFZ Yearbook. Freeman has written, co-written, or edited a number of books, and has contributed widely to both Fortean and zoological magazines, as well as other newspapers and periodicals, including Fortean Times and Paranormal Magazine.
Doug Skinner is an American composer, writer, and performer.
Hilary Agard Evans was a British pictorial archivist, author, and researcher into UFOs and other paranormal phenomena.
The English Defence League (EDL) is a far-right, Islamophobic and generally xenophobic organisation in the United Kingdom. A social movement and pressure group that employs street demonstrations as its main tactic, the EDL presents itself as a single-issue movement opposed to Islamism and Islamic extremism, although its rhetoric and actions target Islam and Muslims more widely. Founded in 2009, its heyday lasted until 2011, after which it entered a decline.
T. Peter Park is an historian, a former librarian, and a prolific Fortean commentator on anomalous phenomena. According to Chris Perridas, Park is "a foremost Fortean authority on H. P. Lovecraft and the cultural impact his writing has had on our culture through folklore."
An Idiot Abroad is a British travel documentary comedy television series broadcast on Sky One, as well as a series of companion books published by Canongate Books, created by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant and starring Karl Pilkington. The ongoing theme of both the television series and the books is that Pilkington has no interest in global travel, so Merchant and Gervais make him travel while they stay in the United Kingdom and monitor his progress.
Mirage Men is a 2013 documentary film directed by John Lundberg, written by Mark Pilkington and co-directed by Roland Denning and Kypros Kyprianou. The film had its world premiere at the 2013 Sheffield Doc/Fest in the UK on 13 June 2013, its North American premiere at the 2013 Fantastic Fest in Austin, Texas on 22 September 2013, its Australian premiere at the Canberra International Film Festival on 31 October 2013 and its Nordic premiere at the Stockholm Film Festival in Sweden on 10 November 2013.
John Olsen Lear, son of Learjet magnate Bill Lear, was an aviator who set multiple records, later flying cargo planes for the CIA during the Vietnam era.
The Rhodes UFO photos, sometimes called the shoe-heel UFO photos, are two photos that were reportedly taken on July 7, 1947 by amateur astronomer and inventor William Albert Rhodes. The photographs purport to show a disc-like object flying above Phoenix, Arizona. Rhodes's account and photographs were published by the Arizona Republic on July 9.
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