On the evening of October 31 2024, writer Ken Hollings and sound artist Howlround, otherwise known as The Howling, presented a special Halloween show at Margate Caves. The Howling, described in The Wire as ‘the missing link between John Cage and Suicide’, stage intense performances in which words collide with heavily looped effects. For this special Howloween presentation, The Howling premiered a new work for multiple voices specifically created to be realised in Margate Caves. ‘Be Quiet In This Church’ is a fractured meditation on repetition and variation in which a series of uncorrected language exercises were transformed into a haunting subterranean experience. 

Howloween began with a reading by Ken Hollings from his latest book, Paradise: The Psychoanalysis of Trash, published by Strange Attractor Press. The third and final volume in The Trash Project, Paradise offers some final thoughts on the aesthetics of waste, sovereignty and excess. This was the first time Ken read any of his latest work in public, making this a unique underground event.

Ken Hollings is a writer, broadcaster and performer whose work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies and been featured for BBC Radio 3, BBC Radio 4. His books include Welcome to Mars, The Bright Labyrinth, The Space Oracle, Inferno and Purgatory, all available from Strange Attractor/MIT Press. His latest book for them is Paradise.