NeoAncients — the People's Pyramid
by Tattie Baker | The RYSE
May 2025
Anyone down for a wake?
On May 2, as part of the NeoAncients festival in Stroudl, K2 Plant Hire Ltd and Sports Banger’s talk brought an eclectic crowd into Stroud’s Lansdown Hall, an invitation to catch a glimpse into the experimental world of concrete en-culturing of vibrantly new rituals of death.
The afternoon’s discussion was held by Joe Muggs with speakers Jonny Banger (Sports Banger), Daisy Eris Campbell (ceremonial bricklayer) and Steve Lowe (L-13 Light Industrial Workshop). Drawn together by the gravitational pull of duo Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty’s rabbit-warren like networks.
Something that struck me about the speakers was how rascally they seemed, like they had never lost their sense of play. Call it a twinkle in their eyes.
They seemed completely convinced of their unserious-ness yet (un)grounded in deeply sincere work, calling potential mourners in with untethered joy and “ambient house residual sludge”.
The talk opened with a short film, “26 Funerals and a Fashion Show” documenting last year’s bricklaying ceremony and taking us through the process from prep to catwalk; from silent ferry across the Mersey to uproarious gig.
Contrasting the experience of solemn contemplation of folks saying their goodbyes as their friends or families were incorporated into the pyramid followed by “a body-bag down the catwalk.”
The panel described the structure as “part manifesto, part peoples artwork”, intended to create situations of profound feelings – love and loss, grief and joy – attempting to open us up to talk about death in more honest and insightful ways.
Starting with the personal is great but how do we open these conversations up further, to create the emotive spaces that we need, so we can talk about our grief over the climate emergency and those in other parts of the world who are dying from the overreach of UK arms industry.
Re-sensitising ourselves to death and particularly the scale and speed of mass extinction is a hard ask with little reward, yet it is needed.
— James Baldwin
You may have heard of the KLF [Kopyright Liberation Front] or the Justified Ancients of Mu-Mu from their forays into musical and commercial success followed by acts of spectacular self destruction - machine-gunning (with blanks) the audience of music industry execs at the 1992 Brit Awards, or setting fire to an obscene amount of money.
They created a number one hit parody under the name The Timelords – and shared their secrets to success with the world through the guidebook “The Manual (How to Have a Number One the Easy Way)” — their most compelling piece of advice was to go to the Jobcentre and sign on, to free up time to work on the music, decades before the advent of Universal Basic Income. Their final acts were to delete their entire back catalogue for 23 years and to produce the film “the K Foundation Burn a Million Quid.”
They are the ideas guys, the movers and shakers behind the growing monolith known as “The People’s Pyramid”. Despite their non-participation in the talk – their presence could be felt through the reverence Daisy, Johnny and Steve showed for their iconic collaborators.
Walking the tightrope between sensationalism and elusiveness they created a cult following who turned up in force to support their continuing projects. Inspired by various Situationist International artists and writers – the spirit of counteracting the spectacle continues throughout their work.
Creating offence in the public or mainstream for the sake of chaos. Revelling in a “pure” hedonistic non-materialism. I see threads of this philosophy of a party at the end of the world rearing it’s head again here and there.
It’s clear from talking to folks who were around before The Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 (and the following crackdown on free parties and raves, amongst other draconian advances of state and police powers) that currently that the sub-culture is a shadow of it’s former self.
Sometimes it feels frustrating having these conversations and attending events like Saturday’s talk where panellists and attendees mainly hail from a bygone era of anarchic freedom discussing all the self made parties and off the wall projects that feel much harder to put together these days.
antenna
Jeremy Deller talks about Rave's place in the history of British culture
Rave as a large-scale demonstration of resistance is dwindling and knowledge on how to protect a rig is rarer and rarer despite an uptake in new crews.
Let alone the rate of night club closure (nearly 400 closures since the start of the pandemic according to the Night Time Industries Association) and the increasing commercialisation of legal festivals (see festival republic) maybe partying itself is dying. Anyone down for a wake?
Poppy Reid
“Mumufication”
THE TEAM BEHIND the pyramid are part of a larger shift towards restoring death cultures – getting back in touch with mourning.
“Mumufication” is a particularly specific process – firing 23 grams of cremated human remains into a standard brick at 1100ºC turning remains into glaze.
Planned to be completed with 34,592 bricks the structure when finished will probably take hundreds of years to complete – a trustful gesture for future generations to continue a common project. In a time where so much of the future feels uncertain building something with so much temporal and personal reach I find radically refreshing. One wonders how the experience will change for mourners as the bricks pile higher.
The creation of new cultures of grieving and celebrating the dead feel alien for many in this land.
Separated from our connection to land and common histories it can be hard to find personal rituals to remember what and who we have lost.
Enclosures and industrial migration have moved many away from burial sites of their ancestors, the Cremation Act of 1902 and it’s 1930 issue regulated the burning of human remains and set standards for crematoria and eventually banned open air funeral pyres.
Often loved ones are resigned to “normal practice” – unknowingly skipping one of their last chances for personal touches. Separated from the past and our dead, how can we possibly think of planning for the future.
David Lambert
On a dying planet mourning becomes a solemn duty – yet it can also present an opportunity to consider the bountiful world that is slipping through our fingers; party like there’s no tomorrow; and fight damn hard to see it arrive.
sophie
Tattie Baker is an activist and educator with the RYSE - Radical Youth Space for Education. They are particularly interested in community self organisation and radical sub-cultures.
The Radical Youth Space for Educations (RYSE) is a social action youth community based in Stroud
Amplify Stroud is supported by Dialect rural writers collective. Dialect offers mentorship, encouragement and self-study courses as well as publishing.
You can find out more at https://www.dialect.org.uk/
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