On cities, mapping, psychogeography and the experience of places.

“Part city symphony and part visual poem, this award-winning film explores the invisible life of London, its patterns and its hidden secrets, through the eyes of crane drivers working high above its streets.

The result is a lyrical meditation about how our existence is shaped through the environment we inhabit, both for the drivers and the people they are watching far down on the ground below them.”

You will be slightly disappointed if you expect to see here a deep reflection on psychology and alter-urbanism, to go by the over-stated description above – the film monologues consists for the best part of mundane platitudes narrated by the crane drivers themselves, though this doesn’t remove any of the visual beauty of this peaceful string of panning shots featuring highly unusual sights of London. Overall, an enjoyably conemplative film I would highly recommend for lovers of the city skyline, its buildings and its cranes.

The Solitary Life of Cranes Dir. Eva Weber (UK), 2008, 28 min.

The Solitary Life of Cranes / City of Cranes [Director Eva Weber's website]

This documentary is available to watch on 4OD until the 8th of January.

“imagine walking through a film, but it’s happening on the streets you walk down everyday.”

‘As if it were the last time’ is a series of street actions/soundwalks which took place in London, Bristol and Liverpool on the 12th, 13th and 14th of November. After signing-up, participants were able to download one of two soundtracks and gather along a location that was kept secret up to the beginning of the event, in order to take part in an impromptu public performance. On a rainy Thursday evening, the mob started to congregate in the area around Seven Dials, and at 6pm sharp, mp3 players began to unravel their story:

As an atmospheric soundscape started to resonate in my headphones, the heavy drops of rain were giving the situation a sense of heightened drama. The first couple of words whispered in my ear coincidentally seemed to be echoing what was going on around me: someone looking over their shoulder, readjusting their coat, putting their hand in their pocket… Everything that was said seemed to predict what was going to happen, as if the street suddenly became the scene of a theater that was directly responding to the soundtrack, as if seemingly random passers-by were all part of an orchestrated setup, their choreographed moves obeying a pre-determined script.

The result of taking part in subtlemob: the schizophrenic feeling of being both a spectator and actor, an insider and an onlooker. Above all, the inexplicably intense sensation of belonging to the street, of being here and now in the city.

http://www.subtlemob.com/

Stunning large-scale photographs of what was once the third largest energy generating site in the UK and the most thermally efficient power station in the world are currently on display at the Royal Institute of British Architects until 29 Sept.

The building’s exterior was designed by Giles Gilbert Scott (responsible amongst other things for the red letterbox, phonebox and Bankside Power Station  a.k.a. Tate Modern) and was built and opened in two phases, respectively in 1936 and 1956. It was decommissioned in 1983.

Having visited the derelict building a couple of years ago, I was already taken aback by its sheer scale (It is said that the boiler house could contain St Paul’s cathedral) and the poignant remains of heavy machinery scattered around the storeys. Michael Collins’ photographs succeeded particularly well in conveying the vastness of indoor spaces; He applied the technique of ‘record picture’ photography to capture the experience of the site, extensively used by the government and institutions for the purpose of official visual documentation, and used some traditional equipment to produce the shots, resulting in a somewhat bizarre timeless feel particularly visible in the shots of the control rooms.

The site now faces uncertain prospects after several failed attempts at re-development spanning over two decades, which only succeeded in removing the roof of this brick cathedral, now open to the elements.

The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA)

66 Portland Place
London, W1B 1AD
020 7580 5533

http://www.architecture.com

http://www.recordpictures.com Michael Collins Photography

The retrospective of arguably the best-known contemporary British artist/walker concludes this weekend at the Tate Britain. Richard Long’s practice has consistently placed primitive mark-making at the centre of the work, exploring relationships between time, distance, geography and measurement in the simplest way: by instigating walking as a means of marking, sensing and measuring the vastness and eternity of the world. Long explains with disarming simplicity:

“my work really is just about being a human being living on this planet and using nature at its source. [...] It’s about the intellectual pleasure of original ideas and the physical pleasure of realising them. I enjoy the simple pleasures of wellbeing, independence, eating, dreaming, and sometimes leaving (memorable) traces.”

Long instituted walking as an act of mark-making on possibly the vastest scale possible, freeing sculpture from the constraints of exhibition: the only remains of the artist’s peregrinations in the land are those pictures and diagrams, strangely similar to strategy maps: photographs of deserted landscapes or plans printed with geometrical figures showing the whereabouts of the artist/walker. His trajectory and purpose are often driven by natural forces: gravity, wind, water flow, magnetism, geology – or by his interest in transference (physics) – the idea of a certain equivalence of places and events on different sides of the world.

Using his foot as instrument for art, expressive and perceptive, the footprint as a testimony of his journey and presence in time and space, Long’s walks become an act of inscription; a reminder that the verb “to write” originates from the practice of incising, as in the inscription of running letters in stone or the furrowing of a track.

Richard Long – Heaven And Earth at Tate Britain until 6th September 2009.

Un: Place – A curation by Beatrice Jarvis, exhibition opens 3 June – 20 July at the Jerwood café

Alys Williams / Benjamin Bailey / Seecum Cheung / Ilona Sagar / Dana Macpherson / Inzajeano Latif

An exhibition of personal cartographies and urban responses

Six artists have each created a piece of work that responds directly to the landscape of Jerwood Space, an iconic building situated in the heart of bustling Bankside. This reclaimed area between London Bridge and Waterloo is steeped in fragmented traces of lingering history, where passages of time are lost in hidden corners and marked histories are glimpsed on decaying facades.

The city has and will always remain a myriad of inspiration, This exhibition explores the creative relationship between the city and the individual to develop unique personal cartographies ; relearning mapping as an intricate interaction of the imagination in a diversity of forms and media.

Jerwood Space
171 Union Street
London
SE1 OLN

www.jerwoodspace.co.uk or www.jerwoodvisualarts.org

A new book exploring the political, social and cultural implications of visualising intimate biometric data and emotional experiences using technology.

“The Bio Mapping tool is therefore a unique device linking the personal and intimate with the outer space of satellites orbiting around the earth.”

A collection of essays by Raqs Media Collective, Marcel van der Drift, Dr Stephen Boyd Davis, Rob van Kranenburg, Sophie Hope and Dr Tom Stafford brought together and edited by Christian Nold.

Book launch, with talks by the editor Christian Nold as well as Dr Tom Stafford and Sophie Hope, Friday 24th April 2009 6.30 -9pm at SPACE, Hackney.

SPACE, 129-131 Mare St, London E8 3RH

Lately, my work has taken me to a college in Reading where I teach 16-18 years old kids; Weirdly perhaps, I haven’t been round so much juvenile display for the past 10 years. Being there was like jumping back in time, suddenly putting me back face to face with what I must have been like at that age. Yet because of the progressive evolution of my circle of acquaintances (and my aging!), I didn’t realise how I came to look retrospectively at the places I lived in with a strong connection to a particular age band – London being the most “grown-up” environment, dispossessed of any immaturity, as if pranksters had ceased to exist just because I became oblivious to them.

Coincidentally, Reading was also the set for a comedy series of 6 episodes running last autumn on BBC2, starring two teenagers as they are grappling with the hopes and dreams of moving to London in order to fulfil their lifelong ambition of becoming respected hair-dressers and being around the ‘Beautiful People’. The series amusingly managed to capture the essence of the nineties pretty well – thanks to a heavy load of girl-bands-era soundtrack [CD sold separately]. Besides, the acting was pretty good, especially from one of the characters who struck me by the physical resemblance he bore with me, and the similarities of his views on life.

The journey to London they undertake towards the end of the series is a lot more than a mere 30-min train ride: it tells of the irresistible attraction of the big city, the very embodiment of ambition, freedom, stardom: everything one craved as a teenager. It clearly represents the symbolic transition from one age to another, from one status to another. Only to realize that after all, the life of the Beautiful People isn’t as desirable as one might have imagined.

Beautiful People on bbc.co.uk

The Monument Project (Si Monumentum Requiris Circumspice), a new digital video installation by Chris Meigh-Andrews commissioned by Julian Harrap Architects on behalf of the City of London Corporation opens on the 21th of March at the Nunnery gallery, Bow.

The installation, which produces a continuous stream of ambient responsive panoramic images from the top of the Monument in the City of London, 24 hours a day, 7 days per week for 3 years, can be accessed at http://www.themonumentview.net/

The launch event will take place at The Nunnery Gallery, Bow Arts Trust, 183 Bow Road, London E3 2SJ, from 6:00 PM to 8:30 PM, Friday, March 20^th, 2009.

Finisterre is a collaborative film project, part-documentary / part-music promo, between film-makers Paul Kelly, Kieran Evans and the electro-pop band Saint-Etienne, produced by CC-Lab and supported by Onedotzero.

I watched this film for the first time shortly after it came out in 2003, and remained fascinated by it ever since; after watching it again recently I was inhabited by the same irresistible feelings of nostalgia and tenderness. Beyond the innovative format of the film, which seeks to explore the possibilities of a 60-minute music-promo at the scale of an entire album, the combination of Saint-Etienne’s melancholic or energetic tunes and Kelly/Evans thoughtful shots successfully captures the alternating moods that London has to offer to the unsuspecting visitor.

The film starts and finishes with a train journey in and out of the city, dusk to dawn, unknown to familiar, and transports the spectator on a journey of discoveries and insights into the ‘London Nobody Knows’, through a succession of interviews of local artists and residents connected to the story of Saint Etienne, blended with powerful musical passages accompanied by imagery ranging from architectural patterns to urban scenes and walking crowds, always meticulously shot as stills documenting the city area by area, punctuated by an overwhelming voice-over narrative that features the observations and reminiscences of Lawrence. Finisterre sheds some light on London as a source of influence, inspiration and curiosity for many, offering a trip through the city that is largely reminiscent of a line of psycho-geographic films such as ‘London’, ‘Robinson In Space’ (Patrick Keiller), and ‘Orbital’ (Chris Petit).

The result is a touching tribute to London, marvelously conveying the essence of the place while forming a visual record and musical impression of the city today.