Mutoid Waste Company
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The Mutoid Waste Company was founded by Joe Rush and Robin Cooke in the early 1980s. Influenced by the movie Mad Max and the popular Judge Dredd comics, they specialised in organising illegal parties in London throughout the eighties, driven at first by eclectic assortments of fringe music such as psychedelic rock and dub reggae, but then embracing the burgeoning acid house music movement by the late 1980s. They were probably also influenced by the TV show, Blake's 7, which featured Mutoids, reconditioned humans who had had their personalities removed. They became famous for building giant welded sculptures from waste materials and customising broken down cars, as well as making large scale murals in the disused buildings where they held their parties.
In 1989, after a number of police raids on their warehouse in King's Cross, they left the country and travelled to Germany where they became notorious for building giant sculptures out of old machinery and car parts, one of which was a giant figure, utilizing a VW Beetle for the chest, doing a 'v-sign' over the Berlin Wall. They had a collection of scrap military vehicles including a Russian MIG 21 Jet Fighter plane which 'followed' them around wherever they went! They moved to Santarcangelo di Romagna in the early 90s where they set up a scrap village called "Mutonia" and continued working, displaying and performing at squat and libertarian celebrations in the Bologna region.
