Last week we left Southend for a new adventure in Norwich after a dramatic few months. We sold our house in Essex in November. The next day, Hayley was diagnosed with breast cancer after a scan. The ensuing months have not been easy. Hayley had a double mastectomy in late January. Our amazing friends and family rallied around during her recovery (and we put a telly in the bedroom for the first time, so in one sense were living the dream). Life became a mission to keep this family of five together and as OK as possible during Hayley's recovery, and while we packed up the house. And so the bits of our lives that weren't taken to a charity shop were boxed up and driven up the A12. We moved our things in last Tuesday: Hayley's first chemotherapy session was Thursday. But we still had a magic Easter weekend in our new home. There is an uncertain road ahead but we are counting our blessings.
It feels proper apt that The Invention of Essex is out the week of the Whitsun bank holiday (on bookshop shelves this Thursday 1 June!), and so I thought I should take it down Southend beach to soak up some rays. Looks like a decent beach book don't you think? Preorder link in bio! ☀️🌴💪⛱️
I've only just recovered from a manic two weeks launching the book, all over Essex and London, from Castle Hedingham to BBC Broadcasting House, Wanstead Tap to Maldon, Colchester to Chelmsford. Here are some pics of the Book Launch Proper in Southend, at @twentyone_southend , which was an amazing and cathartic evening. Thanks @jenniferlucyallan for asking the questions, to Cecily and everyone at @profile.books , to @katewaterfieldm and @katharine.stout and @focalpointgallery for organising it, @newhamfolkarchive for DJing and to everyone else who came along to make it a special night. Massive love to Aaron at @new_waverley_studios who took these pics, off his own back, when it hadn't occured to me that I should document the occasion! Xx
SPECIAL SCREENING!
We will be holding a SPECIAL SCREENING at Rio Cinema, Dalston, London on Saturday 28 March 2026 at 3pm @riocinema
Cast and crew will taking part in a special post screening Q and A.
👉 Ticket link in bio
#markfisherfilm #markfisher
SCREENING and TALK
WE ARE MAKING A FILM ABOUT MARK FISHER
In collaboration with @plutopress and @theotherma , The Old Waterworks is hosting a series of events about ideas and people who are shaping the world around us.
We are making a film about Mark Fisher will be screened at The Old Waterworks and will be followed by a talk by Simon Poulter from Close and Remote. @markfisherfilm
Saturday 14 February 2026. 2 – 4pm
Ticket link in bio
We charge a minimal fee as we have found people book spaces but don’t attend. Please email if you need a free place and they are all taken.
The film was made with no budget, no studio backing and no institutional permissions. We started on a park bench in Rochford, Essex. A conversation between @timoburrows and Simon Poulter.
Sophie Mellor and Simon Poulter, working as Close and Remote, developed the film between 2024-2025. Through instagram, they enlisted the support of 70 people to make the film.
The film explores solidarity, shared labour and digital connectivity. It enacts what Fisher insisted was still possible – decapitalised cultural production, collective agency among the ruins of neoliberal atomisation. A reminder that DIY doesn’t mean private – it means working together.
Thank you Berlin. I said goodbye to Hotel Mit-Mensch this morning after a fortifying breakfast the British still might call 'continental'. I largely kept to the farther east parts of Berlin over the last 36 hours, and after I checked out of the hotel, I went to the Stasi museum, held in the old hq. One thing that struck me was how the totalitarian language of 'traitors' and 'enemies' reported again and again in the language of the Stasi is today used by the hard and far right - in the UK it's the type of language we have heard since Brexit. Faragism is a petit Putinism after all.
It is clear that one useful way to hold the line against the rise of the tech-assisted new wannabe totalitarianism is through cultural means. It occured to me on this trip that Fisher was always talking about complex structural problems about the way society works (or doesn't work) through cultural examples. Capitalist Realism is in a sense a book of essays about film and music. If there was one key metric that he judged culture by was what it said about human agency. Was it giving the voiceless a voice, was it messing with received conservative methods of control, was it offering a way out in some form?
The students picked up on some of these strands at the screening last night. We got an lovely email from @catalyst.berlin 's Richard Scott this morning. He told us 'the film plays right into discussions and dilemmas the students face, about the permacrisis, culture and politics, narrative structures, independent production and much else'. As we move closer to a moment of intangible emergency/ies, new forms of DIY culture made using the same tools that also oppress us through algorithms are needed.
There is now talk of future screenings of We Are Making a Film About Mark Fisher in Berlin. Watch this space. Until next time, auf wiedersehen.
We screened the film to music and film students @catalyst.berlin last night. Before the screening, Richard Scott who leads the music MA programme showed me around Funkhaus, the ex Soviet run radio studio complex that was once the biggest in the world. We had good pizza and talked about his previous life as a Wire magazine journalist and how Mark Fisher's writing on the Fall might be the best to ever be printed on the band. He showed me the modular synths students can borrow (pic 1) and we took a hauntological selfie (pic 2).
The screening was in a snug purpose-built cinema (pic 3) within the three floors of Catalyst, and was pretty much a full house. I introduced the film wiith Richard and told the students a bit about the MR James story and film adaptation Oh Whistle and I'll Come to You, a touchstone for Fisher, that influenced the narrative structure of the film. It was thrilling seeing it on the big screen a second time. It drew a great round of applause after the credits had rolled.
The discussion afterwards was animated and long. Many of the students had already read Mark Fisher before Richard even announced the screening and included his work in the course. Despite the continued lack of media support, Fisher's work has its own life out there. A lot of the feeling in the room was that it was an inspirational film about finding ways to make culture imbued with collective solidarity and hope. The no funding format interested the students. One said she loved the long cuts of protest footage from 2011 to now, that they showed the human side of resistance. They were also interested in why the film shows Mark Fisher on a laptop and not a phone, which led us to discuss how tech has shifted online discourse from the desk to the pocket since Kpunk first started in the early 2000s. A Goldsmiths student astutely pointed out that the blog format was the reason Mark was such a a good writer: there was no restraining hand there, just unfettered intellect doing its thing.
The students thanked me for coming over to show them the film, and I return such thanks to them and to Catalyst. A worthwhile and meaningful trip.
Oi oi! We’re on a tee shirt!
Super chuffed that @sportsbanger took inspo from our project Clubbing and Commune-ing in Essex for this limited edition tee 🪩 🌞 we’re forever fans of what they do 🫡 and the money from any tees sold goes to help @firstsitecolchester kids holiday programme 🤑
This collaborative project comprised of an exhibition, live events and a publication (swipe to see some pics of it all) PLUS ~ you can still grab a copy of the latter via links in our bios for a tenner!
Essex was once a hotbed of clubbing and this project explored the demise of these clubs alongside an intervention in the good time decline to re-affirm the social importance of the dance floor and look to the lasers with optimism. More power to dancing with strangers!
Hope to see you on a dancefloor in the tee ~ tag us if you’re out in one! 🪩 Link to tee also in bio 💞 photos of show by @anna.lukala
One of the many side projects of Mark Fisher's was maintaining the Facebook group 'Boring Dystopia', which highlighted the utterly banal dysfunction of neoliberal modern life. (When I interviewed him one of his best lines was: 'I don't object to change, it's just everyone's change is shit!'). The hotel I am staying in east Berlin could conversely be called an example of a 'boring utopia'. It is clean, cheap, simple and staffed largely by people with disabilities: its income is used to finance jobs for disabled people. Quite evidently it's a place that subverts the capitalistic drive for bottom line luxury, and a fitting place to stay ahead of the Berlin screening . #wearemakingafilmaboutmarkfisher
This was a special one to work on. I spoke to @devhynes about grief, youth and what put the Essex into the new Blood Orange record, Essex Honey, after I read he used The Invention of Essex as inspiration to look again at his home after moving to New York almost two decades ago. I was so pleased to be able to honour his family story and shine a light on his creative process. Looked handsome in print too. Pics included in feature by @a_damp_owl
