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AMERICAN
CAMPGROUNDS |
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AMERICAN CAMPGROUNDS, the first book by Philip Best, is a radical photo-collage novel of primal fear and predation. Taking as its starting point the shocking abduction of 8-year-old Shasta Groene and her year older brother Dylan from their Idaho home in 2005, Best's modern jeremiad conjures a nightmarish landscape stalked by natural and man-made catastrophe, relentless media perversity and almost unimaginable cruelty. Like Night Of The Hunter restaged by the ghosts of Max Ernst and the Marquis de Sade, AMERICAN CAMPGROUNDS is a trip into the fractured, infernal underworld of human souls in jeopardy. Drawing upon Best's extensive collection of lyric and scrapbooks, and further developing the themes of his 2009 gallery show in New York with Peter Sotos, AMERICAN CAMPGROUNDS offers an obsessive compendium of images and tropes that have regularly haunted his challenging yet compelling work. Notoriously reticent concerning his often ambivalent artworks, Best nevertheless positions “Shasta's tale, or Book, as one of hope, redemption and exemplary resistance to black, titanic forces”. The book also features BODYGUARD, a brand new, 40-page text by Peter Sotos. AMERICAN CAMPGROUNDS contains 280 full-page artworks, with over 60 pages in full colour, and is printed on high-quality coated paper. Since 1982 Philip Best has written and recorded music with Whitehouse, Ramleh and Skullflower, and more recently with his long-running solo project Consumer Electronics, releasing Nobody's Ugly (2007) and Crowd Pleaser (2009). He has also performed on numerous occasions in the USA, Japan, Australia and throughout Europe. In 1999 Best gained a PhD in apocalyptic literature from the University of Durham. AMERICAN CAMPGROUNDS LIMITED HARDBACK WITH SIGNED PRINT UNLIMITED
PAPERBACK EDITION |
