The 400 & The 99
Excitement and speculation over what’s now being called Burn The Shard Part 1 has been bubbling away all week. As usual, details remain deliciously sparse.
Here’s what we know so far.
The event will run between 7pm and midnight on 23rd November 2017 in London.
It’s north of the river, which means the actual Shard — looming 310 metres tall on the south bank — won’t be our playground. But it’s hard not to picture it glittering in the distance as we get up to whatever nefarious business awaits.
There will be 99 volunteers, chosen by lottery: 49 pairs of tickets, plus a single golden ticket. (Yes, I entered immediately. No, I don’t know when we’ll find out.)
Each of the 99 will need to bring their copy of 2023, ideally read, as the Dead Perch Menace may be on hand to quiz us. Wrong answers = penalties. Whether that means the beret-wearing hardnuts of Dark Ages infamy or something new entirely, we’ll see.
Finally, we’ve been promised that once the tasks are complete, The JAMs will rubber stamp the 99 copies of 2023. Tasks? Jobs? Rituals? Who knows. The brief version of the site even said:
“The 99 Volunteers will be expected to break the law. Once the law has been broken The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu will stamp all the 99 copies of 2023.” Yay.
As before, pyramid imagery has been sprouting everywhere — sketches, sculptures, Twitter handles, blogs. Some of it probably meaningful, some of it total nonsense, some of it sheer coincidence. We’ve been here before. (Knitting circle, anyone?) It all adds to the obsession, and keeps us entertained in the gaps between official tid-bits.
But this time, instead of finger-hovering over the “book train tickets” button, the community has actually been distracted by something far more productive: the creative aftershocks of Welcome To The Dark Ages.
Take Andy Gell, one of The 400 (and the irresponsible sod behind my Badger Kull tattoo). He’s written Whatever, a play inspired by the Dark Ages. A funny, surreal behind-the-scenes imagining that pokes at synchronicities, discordianism, art, mortality — basically everything we’ve been chewing over since August.
And then there’s the beautifully produced zine Between The Click And The Bang, its name lifted from Callender and Callender’s unforgettable sermon during the Rites of Mumufication. It’s 37 pages of reactionary creativity from across The 400: poetry, prose, illustrations, cartoons, and more. Properly designed, stamped with its own logo, and perfectly in keeping with the JAMs aesthetic.
I had half a mind to contribute but couldn’t summon anything worth adding. Besides, everyone’s heard enough from me. Better to let fresh voices in. Judging by the first edition selling out instantly (a second print is up now, after which it’s gone forever, files and all), that was the right call. Buy it while you can.
Other projects are still in the pipeline:
Page owners recording themselves reading their assigned pages to be stitched together into one performance.
How I Died, a book compiling the deaths dreamt up by volunteers.
Thanks to Lisa Louise and the heroic efforts of the Facebook hive mind, the names of all page holders have been collated and included in the paperback run of 2023.
A proposed remix single with Oliver Senton.
The Welcome To The Dark Ages website, still alive and regularly updated with guest content.
I take my hat off to it all. Big ideas, small sketches, quick stabs, sprawling projects — every one of them adds to the ideaspace. Seeing them start to bear fruit three months on proves the Dark Ages did leave a mark. Not on everyone maybe, but on enough of us.
In a way, the event gave us a ready-made audience. A fan base. Anything we create now has a small but supportive crowd willing to cheer it on. That takes some of the fear out of releasing things into the world. And that’s priceless.
If the energy continues, each project will get bigger, braver, stranger, and more heroic.
And isn’t that the point?