John Lundberg

John Lundberg

John Lundberg at the National Film & Television School in 2004.
Born 5 December 1968
London, England
Occupation Artist, director, producer
Website www.offkilter.co.uk

John Lundberg (born 5 December 1968) is an English artist and documentary filmmaker. His work is concerned with ostension.[1] Underpinning all of his work is an interest in how myth and artifice can shape and alter reality, especially regarding crop circles, UFOlogy, and other examples of urban legends and the paranormal.[2]

He was born in London and studied fine art, interactive design, and the creative use of the Internet at Middlesex University (1988–1991), University College London (1991–1992) and the University of Westminster (1996–1997).[3][4][5] In the early 1990s he founded Circlemakers, an arts collective dedicated to exploring the phenomenon of crop circles and the role of deception in the process of artistic creation. Lundberg and his collaborators – including Rod Dickinson, Gavin Turk, Simon Bill, Wil Russell and Rob Irving – followed after Doug Bower and Dave Chorley in anonymously creating their own crop circles at night. Sometimes treated as not only authentic but as "significant" by paranormalists,[6] Lundberg and the Circlemakers' work has been the subject of a BBC documentary and been commissioned by various clients, including the rock band Korn.[7][8]

In 1995 Lundberg created the Circlemakers[9] website to document his group's activities. He also coauthored the 2006 book The Field Guide: The Art, History and Philosophy of Crop Circle Making with Rob Irving.

Lundberg and Dickinson have been accused of being behind the Alien Autopsy footage, a charge they deny (although Lundberg is a fan of the film).[5][10] Circlemakers' activities have also led to Lundberg and his collaborators being threatened with violence and accused of being MI5 recruits.[11][12]

Lundberg graduated from the National Film and Television School's Documentary Direction program in 2004, and his graduation film The Mythologist, about UFOlogist Habib Azadehdel, won the Jerwood First Cuts Documentary Award at the Sheffield International Documentary Festival, was shortlisted for the Grierson Awards in the best newcomer category, and was shown on BBC Four.[13]

His feature-length documentary Mirage Men,[14] created with Mark Pilkington, Roland Denning and Kypros Kyprianou is about how the US government used mythology to cover up their advanced technology. The film had its world premiere at the 2013 Sheffield Doc/Fest[15] in the UK on 13 June 2013, its North American premiere at the 2013 Fantastic Fest[16] in Austin, Texas on 22 September 2013, its Australian premiere at the Canberra International Film Festival[17] on 31 October 2013 and its Nordic premiere at the Stockholm Film Festival[18] in Sweden on 10 November 2013. American novelist Ernest Cline credits the Mirage Men movie as an influence on his novel and screenplay Armada.[19] Mark Pilkington's book about the project, also called Mirage Men, was published in 2010 by Constable & Robinson.[20]

Mirage Men has been excerpted in the Adam Curtis documentary HyperNormalisation on BBC iPlayer.[21]

He's currently working on his second feature-length documentary Kaufman Lives [22][23] about the life, death and legend of Andy Kaufman.

Besides his Circlemakers and film activities, Lundberg has also been involved with gallery-based art in collaboration with UFOlogists, and was reported to have been enlisted by graffiti artist Banksy to stealth-promote the latter's film Exit Through the Gift Shop.[10][24]

References

  1. ↑ de Vos, Gail (2012). "Ostension, Legend Tripping and Commodification of Folklore". What Happens Next?. ABC-CLIO. sec. Examples of Ostension and Pseudo-Ostension. ISBN 978-1-59884-634-8.
  2. ↑ Margry, Peter Jan; Herman Roodenburg (2007). Reframing Dutch Culture: Between Otherness and Authenticity. Ashgate Publishing. p. 148. ISBN 978-0-7546-4705-8.
  3. ↑ The Hypermedia Research Centre – University of Westminster
  4. ↑ Off Kilter
  5. 1 2 Furh, Paul (2008). "Interview with John Lundberg". Paradigm Journal. Archived from the original on 20 November 2008. Retrieved 14 August 2012.
  6. ↑ "Crop circle debate reignited". guardian.co.uk. The Guardian. 21 August 2001. Retrieved 14 August 2012.
  7. ↑ "Inside Out: Crop circle investigation". BBC Norfolk General Features. BBC. 9 September 2006. Retrieved 14 August 2012.
  8. ↑ "Korn play gig in the middle of a crop circle". NME. IPC Media. 8 July 2010. Retrieved 14 August 2012.
  9. ↑ Circlemakers
  10. 1 2 Creswell, Simon (10 March 1996). "The Art of Deception (A Crop Circle Maker's Ideal Home)". Mute. Retrieved 14 August 2012.
  11. ↑ Anscomb, Caryn (2006). "Confessions of a Crop Circle Maker". Starpod. Retrieved 14 August 2012.
  12. ↑ http://www.richplanet.net/detail.php?dbindex=209
  13. ↑ "John Lundberg". National Film and Television School. Retrieved 14 August 2012.
  14. ↑ Mirage Men on IMDb
  15. ↑ "'Tantalizing documentary suggests UFO folklore was deliberately fabricated under a U.S. psychological warfare program.". The Hollywood Reporter.
  16. ↑ "'Fantastic Fest 2013 Review: MIRAGE MEN Offers Disclosure And Discomfort In Equal Measure.". Twitch Film.
  17. ↑ "'Mirage Men – Cabberra International Film Festival.". Archived from the original on 27 January 2014.
  18. ↑ "'Mirage Men – Stockholm Film Festival.".
  19. ↑ "‘Sci-Fi Has Been Prepping Us for an Alien Invasion for Years".
  20. ↑ Pilkington, Mark (2010). Mirage Men. Constable & Robinson. p. 320. ISBN 9781845298579. Retrieved September 2013. Check date values in: |access-date= (help)
  21. ↑ "‘Mirage Men excerpted in the new Adam Curtis documentary".
  22. ↑ Kaufman Lives on IMDb
  23. ↑ "'Kaufman Lives – Official site.".
  24. ↑ Spratt, Charlotte (21 January 2010). "Banksy unmasked". Mail Online. Daily Mail. Retrieved 14 August 2012.
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