The Silent Academy

21/05/2024

dreamboat -

The other day I travelled into London. In a puddle outside the railway station where I started my journey a dead rat was floating. Flattened to almost nothingness against the black asphalt. It was a huge creature for being such a small creature. You know what I mean. The details. The presence. The p...

21/05/2024

“Air inside an elevator shaft.
Air inside the underground train.
Air between you and the thing that is coming.”

- Excerpt from The Sacred Tremor - a field guide - 014

Throw down your umbrellas, climb up your step ladders. Published today - the start of the second season of The Silent Academy sequential magazine. Each month’s - field guide - takes a minimalist excursion through a different theme, applying dream logic framework to esoteric practice and ordinary beauty. 

Every - field guide - is written & illustrated by Andrew Shaw.
Every - field guide - features a centre page spread from Philip Newcombe. This season the centre page spread is an object divided into twelve parts. Collect all twelve editions to rebuild the full object for display in your own home.

The Sacred Tremor - a field guide - 014 is available online via the Silent Academy website, or anywhere you buy print media - simply ask for ‘a field guide ISSN 2753-8184’

Magazine Specs:

Hand-Stitched
160 gsm Recycled Cardboard Cover
150 gsm Transparent Vellum Flyleaf
80 gsm Recycled Paper
54 Inner Pages
105x150mm
ISSN 2753-8184
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21/04/2024

Something That Resembles Grains Of Sand -

Sometimes if you have made yourself soft to possibility beyond being too clever-clever, you can lay on your back beside a canal or in the middle of a field or an overnight street. You can look up into the heavens and feel that all the weight of the world is balanced on your back, and realise that ac...

21/03/2024

souvenir -

One day you’ll be walking along a pavement and for no reason you will trip over. You will crack your forehead on the metal wing mirror of an antique sports car. Heads bleed a lot and your head will bleed down into your eyes. There will be dizziness like the dreams you have when stood on a clifftop...

21/02/2024

Pleasure (NSFW) -

The last cup of coffee I ever drank was in a plane. It was served with a thin stick sachet of white powder. The shiny dark blue packet had the word ‘Creamer’ on it. On another plane, over a decade later, (still not drinking coffee) I would be handed another thin stick sachet of white powder - th...

21/01/2024

Half an Inch off the Ground -

Here is a day with a name that everyone knows, but that nobody pronounces properly. There will be an elephant the colour of dull red velvet walking along a forest path. The elephant will be half an inch above the surface of the earth. Not entirely oblivious to gravity, but not concerning herself wit...

21/12/2023

Error(s) -

In Dumbo, Brooklyn, where a to***co warehouse once stood there is now a hotel. The hotel has been open to visitors for over seventy years. There are only forty-something rooms but they occupy seven floors. The building is tall and narrow and never quiet. If you place your nose to the wall you can st...

21/10/2023

Sleep -

Somewhere in a large ocean is a tiny island. The island has no name. The island is without inhabitants. Sometimes above the island a cloud will form. Rain from the cloud feeds the island’s trees. Some of the island’s trees produce the most delicate grey-white blossom, the flowers of which give w...

22/09/2023

Tomorrow, 23rd August 2023, is the autumn equinox.
Each solstice and equinox The Silent Academy releases a new seasonal themed pamphlet.

Tomorrow you will be able to buy “Items of Closer Music” from the link in our bio or from select indie bookstores in the USA and UK.
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Here is an excerpt:

How to Watch the Tide

Wait for a day so filled with rain
your body feels heavy with just the idea of it.
Gather together some small things
like coins or the sound of floorboards breathing
at night when the night is one of those nights.

Make yourself dense with the unsaid
and when the weight is too much, go out
into the rain with your elbows and your pockets,
and find a bus stop which feels appropriate.
Stand there all day speaking with no one.

Take no umbrella. Wear no sensible clothes.
Allow your shoes to become filled with water.
Stand in a puddle if you must.
Stand in the rain like an idiot lost at sea
listening with an ear to a storm-drenched radio.

Listen to the conversations of strangers
As they arrive and climb aboard buses.
Watch how they move their shoulders and limp.
Commit to this unpleasant endurance
as the world shapes transit lines around you.

Allow yourself to be smashed there.
Only go home when the water has entirely drained you
of energy or hope or resolve.

And when you are home with a pencil
think about love for a person similarly wrong with words.

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Words: .jpeg

03/08/2023

“a second of your life in a thousand words”

Excerpt from “There Is No Need To Look” by Syed Shoaib Mahmood.
Coming on 21st August 2023.

For more information and preorder options, link in bio.

02/08/2023

21.08.23
“There Is No Need To Look”
by Syed Shoaib Mahmood.
•
A book. An object. A process. Three aspects of an exploration into established faith. Statements, uncertainty, fresh builds and deconstructed imagery.
•
Link to the Silent Academy store in our bio.
Preorders are available now and will be dispatched on day of publication.
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Book Title: There Is No Need To Look
Author: Syed Shoaib Mahmood
Page Count: 48
Trim: 120mm x 120mm
Format: Paperback
Price: £10.00
•

21/07/2023

https://mailchi.mp/f84e8325c3c4/chairs-nsfw

Have you ever been so tired that you’ve sat in a chair and felt a hollow in your chest? Have you experienced the sensation of a space in your body where important things should be? Once on a bench in Hong Kong I found a tube of toothpaste in my pocket and had no memory of how it got there. The sky...

17/07/2023

This is a picture of the Storm Calming Festival catalogue.

The Storm Calming Festival is an augmented installation featuring work of Philip Newcombe and Andrew Shaw. Annika Ström and Gong Gong Gong also helped with a couple of installations.

On 21st July this publication will be made available for you to touch with your fingers. If you open it up you will see 68 full colour pages. The catalogue features details of all objects, events and processes that occurred between 21st May and 10th June 2023. Also featured are supplementary writings, images and details. 

Available to order now, via the Silent Academy website, and coming soon to galleries in Europe and the USA.

Imagine that.

13/07/2023

This is a picture of a lead polar bear.
The polar bear represents a clock which adjusts the tempo of your heart.

On 21st May 2023 this polar bear was placed adjacent to the Prime Meridian in Greenwich, England. It was the first object shared during the Storm Calming Festival.

The Storm Calming Festival is an augmented installation featuring work of Philip Newcombe and Andrew Shaw. Annika Ström and Gong Gong Gong also helped with a couple of installations.

On 21st July a catalogue of the Storm Calming Festival will be made available. It features details of all objects, events and processes that occurred between 21st May and 10th June 2023. Also featured are supplementary writings, images and details.

Available to order now, via the Silent Academy website, and coming soon to galleries in Europe and the USA.

23/06/2023

“You must live in a population 
clustered around an invisible bridge.
Watching in case it appears.”

- Excerpt from “How to Practice” which appears in the Silent Academy pamphlet, “Items of Almost Wanting” Available now from the link above.

22/06/2023

“Carry with you a candle
which in this image is white and small,
which in this version of events is stolen
from a place where people think light is special.”

- Excerpt from “How to Light a Candle” which appears in the Silent Academy pamphlet, “Items of Almost Wanting” Available now from the link above.

21/06/2023

Today, 21st June 2023 - the summer solstice - The Silent Academy has released “Items of Almost Wanting”- pamphlet number eighteen in the seasonal pamphlet series.

“Imagine all of the parts of your body
as if they were possible
inside the mouth of a larger thing.”

* excerpt from “How to Hold a Flower” a verse from “Items of Almost Wanting”, pamphlet number eighteen in the Silent Academy’s seasonal pamphlet series. Available now. 

10/06/2023

21.05.23 - 10.06.23

Today is the final day of the Storm Calming Festival.

Many thanks for all the kind words and support for the past 21 days.

A print media catalogue will be made available online at The Silent Academy website and via select galleries in Europe and the USA.

The Silent Academy STORM CALMING FESTIVAL is the work of Andrew Shaw & Philip Newcombe featuring Gong Gong Gong and Annika Ström.

Link in bio for more details.

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10/06/2023

From the third bardo of THE STORM CALMING FESTIVAL.

Details from the link in the bio.

31/05/2023

There is no centre there is no edge.

The Storm Calming Festival continues.

Details in link in bio.

29/05/2023

Storm Calming Festival

21.05.23 - 10.06.23

…continues in Bardo 002…

(link in the bio)

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The Most Beautiful Piece Of Music In The World

工工工 Gong Gong Gong

“Notes Underground 地下日記”

Performed at Bejing's Sanyuanqiao Underpass 三元橋地下通道

Still taken from the film by Luka Yang Yuanyuan

Projected intermittently at unfixed subterranean locations for as long as it feels necessary
If no subterranean location available project loop onto back wall of backroom

21/05/2023

The Storm Calming Festival is a twenty-one day project with work from Andrew Shaw and Philip Newcombe.

For the coming days, objects, processes, projections and writing will be shared in a number of locations,

Details from the link in our bio.

20/05/2023

https://mailchi.mp/2a2000e667fa/storm-calming-festival

The Silent Academy STORM CALMING FESTIVAL - 21.05.23

30/04/2023

- we were fit for nothing but staring -
bag three.

3 Green plastic bags each containing:

Three cans of Special Brew
1 bar of some kind of chocolate
1 Packet of King Size Rizla
1 Disposable Lighter

- 2022

30/04/2023

- we were fit for nothing but staring -
bag two.

3 Green plastic bags each containing:

Three cans of Special Brew
1 bar of some kind of chocolate
1 Packet of King Size Rizla
1 Disposable Lighter

- 2022

29/04/2023

- we were fit for nothing but staring - bag one.

3 Green plastic bags each containing:

3 cans of Special Brew
1 bar of some kind of chocolate
1 Packet of King Size Rizla
1 Disposable Lighter

- 2022

24/04/2023

This is a navigation aid divided into thirteen parts. It is called - a field guide - Complete Collection.
The first 12 parts are called:
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It Sounds like a Thousand Angels Singing
Secrets from Inside the Avalanche
A Key Snapped off Inside the Lock
Fiction/Non-Fiction
Describing a Glass Bottle to the Sky
Letting a Bunch of Flowers Die
Light on the Underside of Small Things
A Crow Flies Over a Pond
There is Probably a Way to Open it
Strangers with Umbrellas
Unusual Pleasure
Making the Ocean.
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The 13th part - the companion reader - is called Only One Distance.
Only One Distance unlocks everything.
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Andrew Shaw wrote the words.
Philip Newcombe made the centre page spreads.
Fu Kō created inserted objects and kicked on doors.
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If you drop this object bound in red ribbon onto any table there will be a pleasing sound.
Imagine that.
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