Living in the Magical Mode

Dr. Phil Smith is a performance-maker, writer and academic researcher, specialising in work around walking, site-specificity, mythogeographies, web-walking, somatics and counter-tourism. With artist Helen Billinghurst, he is one half of Crab & Bee, who have recently completed an exhibition and walking project called ‘Plymouth Labyrinth (funded by Arts Council England), a short walking project in the Isles of Scilly and a residency at Teats Hill slipway. They recently published their book, The Pattern (2020).In his most recent book, Living in the Magical Mode, (an edited collection of documents surviving from a discontinued book club), Phil starts from the insistence that "Magic is not a power or command over nature, but a relationship with nature" and goes on to explain his view of everything.With Tony Whitehead and photographer John Schott, Phil recently published Guidebook for an Armchair Pilgrimage. He has also developed a ‘subjectivity-protective movement practice’ with Canada-based choreographer Melanie Kloetzel, published in January 2021 as COVERT: A Handbook. With Claire Hind and Helen Billinghurst, he co-organised the 2019 ‘Walking’s New Movements’ conference at the University of Plymouth - on which Walking Bodies is based. As company dramaturg and co-writer for TNT Theatre (Munich), he most recently premiered ‘Free Mandela’, co-authored with TNT’s artistic director Paul Stebbings, about the end of apartheid in South Africa. Paul and Phil have recently written a book about TNT Theatre’s transformation from tiny experimental theatre company to global touring organisation.​Phil is a member of site-based arts collective Wrights & Sites, who published The Architect-Walker in 2018. As well as Walking Stumbling Limping Falling (2017) with poet Alyson Hallett, Phil’s publications include Making Site-Specific Theatre and Performance (Red Globe/Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), Rethinking Mythogeography (2018) (with US photographer John Schott), Anywhere (2017), A Footbook of Zombie Walking and Walking’s New Movement (2015), On Walking and Enchanted Things (2014), Counter-Tourism: The Handbook (2012) and Mythogeography (2010). He is an Associate Professor (Reader) at the University of Plymouth.​You'd think he wouldn't have much spare time.

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• Publisher’s NoteThe Discovery of the TextThe Group DisintegratesThe Field ReportsThere is a Planet BHappenings“The Fuck Up in the Club is the Fuck Up in the World”PanThe Minutes Book contd.More ArgumentsSeparatenessConspiracy TheoriesInner LifeYet More HappeningsAlchemyGames, Rituals, Arts and JourneysSacred Space“Something Ancient and Dreadful”The Minutes Book contd.Horses and The Origins of MelancholyPsychic WarManifestoes and GrimoiresPsychic War 2RitualPsychic War 3How This Story EndsReferencesAppendix l: Lexicon of pseudo-sacred spacesAppendix 2: bibliography for the Professor’s paper ‘Dancing in pseudo-sacred spaces: signs passing through flesh’Appendix 3: pamphlet extracts received by the Guild