Israel & the Bedouins
From the Guardian:
Bedouins say plans to move them to purpose-built communities sweep aside their culture and centuries-old ties with the land
http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/2012/may/09/bedouin-land-culture-israel-resettlement
Jeremy Deller’s bouncy Stonehenge
This is amazing. Deller has created a replica of Stonehenge as a bouncy castle in Glasgow. So right on so many levels. Can we have some more bouncy things please?
Image from Its Nice That, their story - http://www.itsnicethat.com/articles/jeremy-deller-sacrilege
Patrick Kieller at Tate Britain
Robinsonism
Robinson aimed to find out more about his subjects by looking at, and making images of, landscape. He once said he believed that ‘if he looked at the landscape hard enough, it would reveal to him the molecular basis of historical events’, and in this way, he hoped to see into the future. By walking, guided mostly by intuition, he sought to recover the possibility of political and economic transformation. The Institute continues his enquiry, with the aid of works by artists, writers, historians, geographers, cartographers and geologists, and a variety of other objects, that advance its exploration of unfinished histories in landscape.
Brilliant new exhibit at Tate Britain by Kieller dealing with a massive variety of issues through the medium of exploration both physical and artists through the Tate’s archives. Go!
http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/exhibition/patrick-keiller-robinson-institute
Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles
Jeanne Dielman’s static framing, long takes, and eschewal of reverse shots force the viewer to objectively experience its protagonist and the oppressive female labor that is her daily routine. Akerman’s attention to images between the images requires the same attention of the film’s viewers—an attention appropriate to its content. Though the filmmaker’s static frame and extended-duration shots stem from structural cinema, Akerman’s application of these techniques to women’s domestic work is unique. The picture inverts normal filmic expectations by removing drama from emotional intensity and attaching it to long takes that would only be implied and elided in more standard cinematic presentation. Jeanne Dielman’s temporal dilation equalizes its exposition and drama to transform knowledge of an object—Jeanne’s oppression—into a vision of it
Bad jargon from Wikipedia. Image from Wikipedia.
Save Leyton Marsh
Took a stroll down to Leyton Marsh along the River Lea (Lee) the other day to visit the protest camp which has sprung up in opposition to Olympic developments on what should be common green land.
Theres a gathering there Saturday 14th April to try and turn the pressure up on this development which has been granted planning permission (Olympics obviously). Would be there if I could!
Messages of support left tied to the gates around the development.
Unhappy pups.
As we left the no doubt doomed marshes, thick black smoke from a fire billowed out from the direction of Walthamstow.
UK shopping centres as modern fortresses
Wondering how much shopping malls in the UK now resemble some sort of medieval fortress re-imagined as a safe haven for endless peaceful shopping. This post was prompted by a visit to what was then the newly opened Stratford Westfield several months ago.
What I noticed riding a bicycle to Westfield Stratford was that the building was situated as if atop a large mound, riding past security checks and across a narrow bridge which rose up over the emerging Olympic building site I felt like I was going across a drawbridge which could be blocked at any point. The site seemed protected on one side by the A12 motorway, the other the by multiple railway lines with most pedestrian access coming across a long narrow foot bridge.
I’ve used this Wikipedia list of UK shopping centres as my reference point, top five listed by size below.
1. MetroCentre (image source)
2. Trafford Centre (image source)
3. Westfield Stratford City (image source)
4. Bluewater
5. Westfield London
While these images seem to show a certain trend, Westfield London and some which aren’t shown (like the Manchester Arndale) seem at first glance to buck the trend. Instead of being cutoff by motorways, railways and large pieces of water they seem well integrated into the urban fabric. Would be interesting of course is to establish how far they are actually integrated as opposed to just seeming to be part of the city.
Will Self on walking
…. we understand that to walk the city and its environs is, in a very powerful sense, to use it. The contemporary flâneur is by nature and inclination a democratising force who seeks equality of access, freedom of movement and the dissolution of corporate and state control.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/mar/30/will-self-walking-cities-foot
Nice article from Self on walking as a conscious act from the Guardian a few days ago. In particular reminds me to have a read of Rebecca Solnit’s Wanderlust, something I have been meaning to do for a while as it looks like a fascinating book.
One Day in the City
The UCL Festival of London and Literature
“One Day in the City”
15 June 2012
CALL FOR PAPERS
This conference – “One Day in the City” – will explore the everyday experience of the city, particularly (though not limited to) London. It is organised by the Department of English and the Bartlett School of Architecture, as part of UCL’s first literary festival, and papers will be welcomed from all disciplines. We expect papers from the fields of architecture, art, the digital humanities, film, history, literature, philosophy, and urban geography, but we are also interested in setting up a dialogue with researchers in neuroscience or psychology, for example. All proposals are encouraged
Topics might include, but need not be restricted to:
circadian or one-day novels
appropriating urban space: skateboarders, parkour, rap
modes of being in the city
hours of the day
the cockney
(night)walking in the city
mapping the city
the City
visions of the city
the riotous and rioting city
the Thames
Dickens and the city
suburbia
Please bear in mind that the conference is part of a larger literary festival, which will be open to the general public. It is requested, therefore, that conference papers are accessible to a non-specialist audience and kept to a summary 10 minutes, so that plenty of time is left for discussion.
Keynote speakers are yet to be announced, but our list of contributors include Man Booker Prize Winners Alan Hollinghurst and A.S. Byatt, alongside Andrew O’Hagan, Adam Thirlwell, Ali Smith, Geoff Dyer, Giles Foden, Will Self, and the poets Alan Jenkins, Sarah Maguire, Daljit Nagra, and Mark Ford.
Proposals for short papers (250 words) should be sent, along with a short bio, to: n.shepley@ucl.ac.uk
Extended deadline for proposals: 13 April 2012
