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Confessions of
a Crop-Circle Maker:
Caryn Anscomb Interviews John Lundberg
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this interview
John Lundberg
is an artist and filmmaker. He graduated from the
National Film & Television School in 2004, where he
created four documentaries.
His film The Mythologist
was broadcast on BBC4 in March
2004. It won the 2004 Jerwood
First Cuts Documentary Award at
the Sheffield International
Documentary Festival and was
shortlisted for the 2004
Grierson Awards in the best
newcomer category. His subjects
are usually drawn from the edges
of contemporary culture, and
underpinning all of his work is
a deep interest in how myth and
artifice can shape and alter
reality.
“Of the myriad shapes found
in the fields, some were assimilable into the framework
of the plasma vortex theory; others, from the insectoid
to the alchemical, implied a more intelligent
authorship. As the latter increased in relative
frequency, and accounts began to circulate of hoaxers
seen here, heard there, my perception of this phenomenon
began a dramatic shift. The occasional messiness of
circles became due not to the dumb haste of spinning
plasma, but to the inexpertise of humans. Nor, now, was
the symbolism of the shapes accidental; indeed, it
seemed as though the hoaxers were paying a great deal of
attention to the predictions of the circles enthusiasts.
Similarly, the enthusiasts' gatherings began to seem
like convocations of the religious faithful, with the
odd eaves-dropping hoaxer thrown in.
As I began to make circles myself, l noted that my
own mistakes, or unconscious idiosyncracies, were
transformed magically by cerealogists into special
accomplishments that no human could possibly duplicate.
A standing stalk in a circle of felled wheat, missed by
my garden roller as a lawnmower might miss a blade of
grass, was seen as a cerealogical miracle. A pictogram,
fabricated with the aid of several pints of Guinness and
a wood-and-rope stalk stomper, was later alleged, with
the most sensitive instruments, to be buzzing with
radioactivity.”
-- Jim Schnabel.
Caryn: Hi John. How
did you first become interested in Crop Circles?
John: I first became aware of the circles like most
of the UK population when there was an upsurge in media
coverage here in the late 80s. It was difficult to pick
up a paper or turn on the TV news without seeing a
reference to the ‘mysterious crop circles’. It’s also
when I discovered The Cerealogist magazine and started
to read about the various theories put forward to
explain the authorship of the circles. Around this time
I also met up with a fellow artist called Rod Dickinson
who also had an interest in the circles. We used to sit
up long into the night talking about them and wondering
how we could become involved in the crop circle
phenomenon. Back then we were just as much in the dark
as to their origin as everyone else - except whoever or
whatever was making them of course. So eventually we
decided that we wanted to contribute to the phenomenon
and ventured out into the fields in the early 90s to
create one, then many crop circles. It really was a
revelation to me, seeing the disconnect between what we
were doing – flattening cereal crop with planks of wood
– and what our works audience was perceiving, which
could be anything from physiological and psychological
effects brought on by visiting the circles, to
electronic equipment failures or malfunctions, alleged
curative powers, or the inverse, reports of people
feeling nauseous in our creations. I think this was the
hook that pulled us deeper into the phenomenon, all of
the narratives that were attached to our work, the
mythology and folklore that was built up around it. It
can be very intoxicating and exciting for an artist. We
weren’t pushing paint around on a canvas that sat in a
sterile gallery environment; we were quite literally
forming and shaping the culture that surrounded us. The
circles we created could be seen as virulent mind
viruses or memes that traveled right around the world
permeating both underground and popular culture. I have
to say that when Rod and I were first creating circles,
we didn’t have a clear idea of the origin of the other
circles out there in fields, we were completely open
about who or what were the authors. To give you an
insight into our early thought processes, we had
designed a series of formations that used sigils,
(pictorial spells), after lots of discussion we actually
decided not to create any of those designs, just in case
the spells actually worked!
Caryn: You’ve mentioned your
friendship with Doug Bower. When did you first meet with
Doug?
John: I feel so lucky that I’ve been able to
forge a close friendship with Doug, I really do consider
him part of my family. It wasn’t actually until 1994
that I met up with him at an informal gathering of
circlemakers at the Percy Hobbs pub in Winchester,
Hampshire where Doug and Dave Chorley used to spend
every Friday evening together. Doug is my greatest hero,
and a true British eccentric in the best possible way.
Meeting him was one of those rare occasions when I came
face to face with one of my heroes and they didn't
disappoint or undermine my expectations of them. I truly
believe that Doug Bower is one of the greatest artists
of the 20th Century.
Caryn: You previously mentioned Doug’s personal
motivation for crop-circle making. Can you repeat it for
publication?
John: The true history of Doug and Dave is yet to
be made public, and it’s not a happy tale. I have it all
on record and Doug has given me permission to make it
public once he is no longer with us, which I hope will
be for many years yet.
Caryn: You now travel
the globe crop-circle making, what countries have you
visited?
John: As an organization to date we’ve created
circles across the USA, New Zealand, Japan, Mexico and
across continental Europe. We have several projects in
the pipeline that will take us to many more far-flung
corners of the world.
Caryn: Are you in constant contact with fellow cropcirclers internationally, and do you team up on
projects?
John: I launched circlemakers.org the website which
documents our work back in 1995, and it’s given us a lot
of visibility. As a consequence I’ve been contacted by
circlemaking teams from all over the world, although the
most talented and ambitious circlemakers are all based
here in the UK - which is apparent from the complexity
and scale of the formations that are created here. And
yes, sometimes we team up with other circlemakers to
swell our ranks and enable us to create more ambitious
crop circles.
Caryn: Can you give a few samples of the type of work
commissioned?
John: We’ve worked on numerous projects for TV shows,
movies, music videos, adverts and PR stunts. Clients
have included Greenpeace, Microsoft, Shredded Wheat,
AMD, Hello Kitty, Nike, Pepsi, Weetabix, BBC, The Sun,
Mitsubishi, O2, NBC-TV, Orange Mobile, History Channel
and the Discovery Channel.
I’ll give you a couple of examples of the types of
projects we are asked to do. Last year we were asked by
Nike to tour across Italy creating giant footprint
shaped crop circles that were used in 4 TV adverts that
featured both us and the circles we created. We did the
same across the US for the launch of the Microsoft Xbox
360 games console, with a MTV crew documenting our
creations. The footage was later used in a ‘making of’
documentary screened in the US on MTV about the Xbox 360
campaign.
Caryn: The term hoax has been applied to crop-circles.
This always amuses me, the circles themselves aren’t
hoaxes. How do you feel about being labeled a hoaxer?
John: Well I think it’s shorthand vernacular for who we
are and what we do. It’s a term used by the crop circle
research community to demonize and marginalize us, as it
has negative associations. We were once unfavorably
compared to Wearside Jack the Yorkshire Ripper hoaxer.
But like you say it’s not an accurate description of us,
or our work. We are artists and the circles we create
are artworks.
Caryn: You have a number of critics, how do you normally
respond to them?
John: I don’t. I think you learn very quickly as a circlemaker that entering into any discourse about your
work with someone who has invested belief in it is an
ultimately fruitless pursuit. The circlemakers and the
crop circle researchers - or followers - have a very
symbiotic relationship. We need each other - not that
any crop circle researcher would ever admit that. They
act as agents for our work, propagating the images
across the globe, and more importantly weaving complex
ever evolving and shifting narratives about the
non-human origin of the circles. They come up with
litmus tests that become an article of faith for them,
terms such as ‘bent not broken stems’, ‘physiological
changed to the plants’, etc are their ‘proof’ that the
circles could not possibly be the work of mere human
mortals. I think this attitude shows a complete lack of
belief in human potential. Do these people not look
around them and see what human civilization has
achieved? The scientific, engineering and artistic
marvels? We can get a man to the moon and back, but
these people can’t believe that a few well organised
artists can flatten cereal crops in a complex pattern.
Of course within the same community there are those that
don’t believe we ever sent men to moon.
Caryn: You mentioned a while back that you have received
death threats from folk in the past, can you elaborate?
John: I think being a circlemakers is ultimately a
masochistic pursuit. Traditionally when you think about
art you think of it’s author, we refer to the work as a
Picasso, a Warhol or a Leonardo, etc. But for the
circles we create to function correctly, they must
remain authorless, if we claim a formation we
immediately drain it of all of it’s power, it’s taken
out of the realm of the unknown and becomes just
flattened crop. So it’s this gap in information about
the authorship of the circles that enables them to
function correctly. Although we have not - and never
will - claim authorship of any individual crop circle,
we do obviously talk about out work in general terms. So
to the research community this immediately sets us up as
a perceived threat and consequently a target. We are the
heretics, calling their belief system into question by
the mere fact that we exist and talk about our
circlemaking activities.
Sometimes this spills over into
threatening behavior on the part of the believer. We’ve
had potatoes stuck up our exhausts, wing mirrors ripped
off of our cars, and threats of physical violence, in
person, over the phone, via email and through our
letterboxes. Only last week I had someone call me and
threaten to attack me if I continued to talk about my
work. I just accept it as an unpleasant but necessary
part of what I do.
Caryn: The main argument by the pro-circle researchers
is that the designs are far too complicated to have been
created by human hand. How do you respond to that
argument?
John: Look at the Sistine Chapel. I could never conceive
of creating something like that, but just because I’m
unable to create it, I don’t believe that no human could
have created it. I think this is the flaw with a lot of
the researchers, they look at a complex crop circle
design and they could not possibly conceive how it would
be possible for them to create it under cover of
darkness in one night, so therefore they inaccurately
conclude that it can’t conceivably be man made. But, I
assure you it is entirely possible and we’ve
demonstrated our craft on numerous occasions. We would
obviously not be flown all over the world to create crop
circles for commercial clients if we did not have the
necessary skills to create them.
Caryn: As the crop-circle makers come forward to tell
their stories we are beginning to see a shift in
consensus from ‘it can’t possibly be manmade’ to ‘A
divine hand is at play, working through the
circle-makers’. What would you say to that?
John: Divine inspiration? I don’t know really, I’m just
doing what every artist before me has done, sucking my
pencil end and waiting for that flash of inspiration and
it can come from all sorts of places. A mobile phone
cover, a quote from a book, or something one of the
researchers has said. Sometimes it’s just a matter of
play and experimentation, lots of times I’ve been
working on one type of design then I’ve gone off
completely at a tangent and discovered new construction
techniques or geometries. Sometimes a design can look
fantastic on screen – I now use CAD software to design
all of the circles, it’s the type of software an
Architect would use to design a building and it’s
perfect for circlemaking – but once it’s been created in
the field it doesn’t live up to the diagram, and
conversely, sometimes a design that looks ok on screen
can look stunning once it’s been created in the field.
Caryn: I noticed from your website that several folk
mention observed anomalous occurrences whilst
crop-circle making. Can you discuss your own
experiences?
John: The thing I’ve most commonly experienced is very
bright localized flashes of light, like a flash gun
being held up to my face. Twice we’ve had journalists
along with us and they’ve experienced the same
phenomena. I’ve also seen a silent structured craft in
the sky above Alton Barnes. It was a elongated cigar
shape and read as a dark shadow in the sky blocking out
the stars behind it as it moved in a arc from left to
right across my field of vision. It would have been easy
to miss, it was only because we’d stopped working on the
circle for a while as there were people nearby, so we
were all crouched down in a tramline waiting for them to
leave. That’s when I spotted it. To be honest it’s quite
amusing to see something like that when you’re part way
through creating a design. I don’t know what it was,
aliens from out of space, inter-dimensional beings,
military black project, or another group of artists
showcasing their latest creation, who knows…
Caryn: You have just released a new book The Field
Guide: The Art, History & Philosophy of Crop Circle
Making: co-authored with Rob Irving, what prompted you
to come clean, as it were?
John: The book has its genesis 12 years ago when myself
and Rob Irving created a pamphlet called ‘A Beginners
Guide to Crop Circle Making’ for an art show we were
asked to participate in. Some of that text still
survives intact in the current book, which is now 288
pages in length. We’re not really coming clean; the book
is just an extension of the discourse we’ve built up
around our work since we went public in 1994. Our
website has over 250 pages of information about what we
do and why we do, we see the book as a logical next step
in that process of discussion and revelation.
Caryn: Do you anticipate a decline in public interest in
crop-circles when the facts become widely known, or do
you believe folk will become more enthusiastic?
John: The facts are widely known! We’ve been very open
about our ‘covert’ pursuits for the past 12 years. If
anything, I hope the book will inspire a new generation
of artists to go out and roll their own circles, for
future generations to wonder at.
For further information on John and circlemakers, please
visit:
www.circlemakers.org
Copyright (c) 2006 Caryn Anscomb. All rights reserved.
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this interview
About Caryn Anscomb
Caryn Anscomb is an independent researcher in the
field of cultural shamanism, world religions, anthropology, and phenomenology.
She is the director of an accountancy firm based in the UK.
Layout and Design Copyright (c) 2006 Starstream
Research. All rights reserved.
Synopsis:
The truth behind one of
the greatest mysteries. It's almost 30 years
since the first crop circles appeared in the
Hampshire countryside. They made FrontPage news
around the world, perplexing and inspiring
millions of people. UFOs, demons, tornadoes,
hedgehogs and Mother Earth herself have all been
identified as the force behind the formations,
but the reality is perhaps more incredible. The
circles are made by ordinary, if talented,
people, working through the night in small
teams, usually equipped with nothing more
sophisticated than planks of wood, rope and tape
measures. Despite being responsible for some of
the most celebrated artworks of the 20th century
- iconic creations that have appeared on
countless TV programs, films, adverts, album
covers and even tattoos - the artists behind the
crop circles have always refused to claim
authorship of their work. Now, for the first
time, the team behind some of the most
spectacular formations of the past 20 years,
whose work has appeared all across the UK, the
USA, New Zealand and Continental Europe, are
ready to reveal their secrets. "The Field Guide"
is sure to fascinate anyone with an interest in
the paranormal, pop culture and contemporary
art. And you can't say that about many books!
To order book please go to:
http://www.strangeattractor.co.uk/fieldguide/
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