on Nature Walking...

Just returned from an epic trekking experience: did the 'circuito grande' of the Torres del Paine national park in Patagonia, Chile. Walked about 180km over 8 days starting at Refugio Laguna Amarga and ending at the waterfalls at Pudeto (map below).

The park itself has a variety of areas of outstanding natural beauty and levels of tourist infiltration, from more upscale country-hotel lodgings to free camping. The general trek is called 'W' which takes you up to see Glacier Grey then around one small mountain range and up Valle del Frances, back down to the immense lake and up again to see the famous torres.

Though the 'W' trek is highly walked, around the back of the mountain range you can go at it alone with the wind, waterfalls and puma tracks as company. Taking all my provisions with me, it took a few days before the noise in my head died down. No company, no phone, no music just my 12k pack stuffed with a good tent and sleeping bag and my walking shoes.

There is a poetry in walking and traversing space consciously. Becoming aware of the gradations of landscape, of the changes in temperature to altitude, of your body's own weight and posture. There's that moment that you stand still only moving your legs while the earth magically revolves under you. I think about Richard Long's work, where we get to glimpse a single moment of a journey. But when that journey goes on a week it becomes a pilgrimage, like the Camino de Santiado de Compostella.

And silence... This is key. It was days before I had to speak to anyone and then it was 'hola' in passing. There is a lucidity in quietness, in taking the time to listen and hear. Each bird call transforms from a musical note to a language, the trickle of the upcoming river beckons a rest and a drink, the thunder of crashing snow and glaciar ice a power that fills with awe and dread.

I can't remember feeling so alive and full of hope before. You feel the wind come off the millennial ice caps, formed from the cracking and popping of millions of little air bubbles trapped since before the dinosaurs and breathed into your lungs, whirling in your brain. The cold, crisp water that tastes so pure you just become certain its somehow linking you with the planet from before man ever even walked this land.

And so much water... clean, fresh, aqua-blue, sweet water flowing non-stop.... The dreams of 2012 armageddon are very far away in these remote places...

Moving your body through a landscape allows a sense of focus and freedom, of accomplishment and dedication and of humbling pain and uncertainty. A time-out from the urban experiences I study and love. But it also gives me the tools to understand better how we may walk in the concrete forests of London, New York or Santiago by being connected to the more subtle currents that revolve around us.

I may have arrived but I've left part of me in those mountains while part of them remain in me....





Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Al-Thawra 2011 - الثورة

Housing Estates, London, and Dystopia

Just went to see the Broadwater Farm exhibition, portraying the story of a massive council estate complex in Tottenham made infamous after it's 1985 riots.


Held at Bruce Castle Museum, an interesting site in itself, a strange piece of history nestled in one of the more socioeconomically challenged areas of London. The power of the exhibit was in it's honour of the local people who made Broadwater a success. But underlying it all was the sense that the brutality of the civic system not only crushed a momentum of people's movement but left it dead on the curb.

Broadwater was one of those massive efforts at post-war social engineering, meant to deal with poverty and rising immigration. The huge complex was built and then basically left to decay and within a decade had fallen to such a state of disrepair that it clearly reflects a planned state of structural violence against a community by a council. The failure of these large-scale housing estates was studied by the Land Use Research Unit at King's College in the late seventies. The research of this group influenced Coleman's book Utopia on Trial: vision and reality in planned housing, which featured Broadwater Farm as an example (she was head of the research unit at the time).

The Centre for Spatially Integrated Social Science has a great article on this: Design Disadvantagement.

I also recommend the film Utopia London, which outlines the Labour vision of modern social housing and how in many ways it failed at the hands of politicians and urban planners with no foresight into community and culture.

Finally if you're in London a cycle up to Tottenham to see the exhibit takes you past the smashed windows and boarded shops that mark the result of the recent riots caused by anger over police brutality. Guardian: 'Tottenham in flames as riot follows protest'. 26 years on and history repeats itself, as we move faster towards a social dystopia fuelled by mind-numbing solutions by those in power: BBC: 'David Cameron back councils planning to evict rioters'. Russ Swan has some amazing photos he shot there in 1985 and an good article on his blog entry: Cat and mouse on Broadwater Farm, 1985

To not end on that note I channel the thoughts of Jane Jacobs and her research into the existence and importance of community at the street level and the failure of urban planning to respond to that community in her seminal book The Death and Life of Great American Cities, something that seems to have not been accounted for in the early planning of Broadwater and most other estates across the country. History doomed to repeat itself....

Press Release:

In 1985 Broadwater Farm experienced one of the worst nights of civil unrest anywhere on mainland Britain. It shocked the nation and nearly destroyed a community. Just months before, Diana Princess of Wales visited to congratulate the Broadwater Farm Youth Association on its success. Today Broadwater Farm is seen as a model of social housing, attracting visitors from around the world. This exhibition will explore the heroic achievements of a community who from the very beginning fought against all the odds. October 2010 at Broadwater Farm Community Centre. Now on at Bruce Castle Museum June 2011 to March 2012

Hoods, Freedom & Dancing

I love the Hackney Gazette. Mostly because it comes free through my postbox, its local and not stapled, meaning I can read it page by page as I walk my dog and use it to scoop his poo off the pavement. I dont though agree with it's big brother policy of posting photos of looters so that we can all pretend to be hey-diddly-doo neighbour vigilantes in Fahrenheit 451. Reminds me of the graffiti I saw in Greece, 'WE WEAR OUR HOODS UP SO YOU CAN LOOK US IN THE EYE'

A friend of mine just wrote to me: 'the only forces who feel empowered to express themselves in our society r the yobs who riot for flatscreens. the rest is divergence...'

As usual I find myself somewhere in between all stances and I still go with Emma Goldman's philosophy, if I can't dance I dont want to be part of your revolution:

'I did not believe that a Cause which stood for a beautiful ideal, for anarchism, for release and freedom from convention and prejudice, should demand the denial of life and joy. I insisted that our Cause could not expect me to become a nun and that the movement would not be turned into a cloister. If it meant that, I did not want it. "I want freedom, the right to self-expression, everybody's right to be beautiful, radiant things." Anarchism meant that to me, and I would live it in spite of the whole world — prisons, persecution, everything. Yes, even in spite of the condemnation of my own closest comrades I would live my beautiful ideal.' (Goldman 2006)

Memory Walking and Nostalgia

Just returned from Crete, visiting a friend who grew up in the capital Heraklion. We were given an amazing tour of the city centre that was based on her memory of what was there when she lived in the city during a variety of different ages. Seeing past the numerous cafes and bars a new city began emerging. Hidden under the parasols and flat screen tv's of the multiple venues, were beautiful facades of stately homes that housed a variety of characters who came to life among the cobbled lanes. The white noise of chatting people and buzzing phones, became the ghost sound of a child's bicycle racing down the slanted alleys, or the old woman chasing them with a pot of boiling water.

A new city emerged, like Raban's Soft City, one of histories and stories, one which seemed much more local as a social network. Raban tell us 'the city, our great modern form, is soft, amenable to a dazzling and libidinous variety of lives, dreams and interpretations'. It was this soft amenable city that came alive with the bench behind the square where lovers once met now empty, the popular hair dressers studio where the scraping of chairs being pulled out for customers was heard around the corner but is now turned residential, the childhood home transformed into a health spa yet retaining the original tiles and doors, allowing the phantoms of nostalgia to continue to inhabit the hard city. The hard city that retains its shape while the soft city lives and dies within it. 

Going on this walk around Heraklion opened up a past, re-awoke a memory, like Lazarus it brought to life a narrative that once was but had died. The deep nostalgia that punctuated the derive was palpable and I felt a strange sense of both belonging to the place and envying the memory. Somehow wanting to be a part of that which was never mine. It reminded me of Boym's The Future of Nostalgia and her rich analyses of the workings on memory on society and city. She tells us 'the past of the city... is not entirely legible; it is irreducible to any anachronistic language; it suggests other dimensions of the lived experience and haunts the city like a ghost.'

This was an alternate ghost tour of a city, a rich and vibrant walk down memory lane that made me really truly appreciate Heraklion and see it for what it was and had once been.

Taking Root: Taking Part

Am the guest psychogeographer on the research phase of the redevelopment of the garden at Camden Arts Centre. Am exploring site as evocation of memory and escape from the quotidian through a video, a 2D work, a walk and a presentation.

I'llll be presenting my research findings along side other project partners: a zoologist, choreographer, psychologist, poet and architect.

Should be interesting to see varied perspectives on nature, walking and its inclusion in an urban setting.

The event is free, but places are limited and Camden Art Centre are taking bookings on 020 7472 5500 or at camdenartscentre.org.

London Riots and Structural Violence

Photo: Sebastian S. Fuller

Spent the last few days doing what most people in London avoided, going towards places where skirmishes were taking place. I wanted to see for myself exactly what was going down, mediated information is never the same and like it or not simplifies any extraordinary event into a single lens. Even the pictures that my companion shot that night seem somehow much more violent than the actuality of walking down the street. 

I cycled round the confrontations early on Monday around 6:30pm at Hackney Central and a large amount of people in the street just watching lines of riot police form and reform. The mood of the crowd was celebratory, with a mix of ages, races, genders. I saw veiled girls, lanky teenagers, council mums with their prams, older Eastenders holding a can of beer, hipsters on bicycles and a few groups of young guys in hoodies definitely looking like this was the most fun they've ever had. The only sign of political unrest was a single young guy with a swollen black eye and an agitated staffie at the end of a lead. He was shouting about police abuse, violence against minorities, lack of government help among other topics. I appreciated his anger and recognised at least here a cause and motivation. I cant say I saw the same power of protest in the fat teen who came past in a balaclava causing a group of teens to launch into hysterical laughter.

Nothing was happening really. Then about a dozen officers with barking German Shepards moved towards the scattering of people near St. Augustine's Tower. The most aggressive people there were the police so I decided to leave but quickly was boxed in. They began shouting at people to leave, actually many of us were trying to. One man who was walking through didnt realise what was going on and got yelled at by an over eager officer. At first startled he then got very upset and the situation easily escalated. I left it was clear that the antagonism would continue, the kids would break stuff up and run from the cops and the police would have a real field day.

Zooming out of the effect and looking at the cause:

There is a context to London's riots that can't be ignored

Haringey youth club closures: 'There'll be riots' - video

and for a step-by-step of the match that lit the fire: 

Anatomy of the London Riots

But the prevailing sentiment heard on the media is of 'us' law-abiding citizens and 'them' the thugs who are rioting. The condescending tone of this BBC article is a prime example: 'What turns people into looters?'. Though the riots were not race-based at all (the kids I saw breaking glass came in all shades) it does feed into the white british fear of minorities. And how can it not, in a country where wealth disparity and racism is both rampant and unspoken. And lest the UK pride itself in how mixed the country is lets not forget the actual statistics, it is over 92% white and even these statistics when you navigate them are clearly coming from an ethnocentric point of view, an us and them comparison.

The most surprising thing to me is not that the riots have happened, its that anyone is surprised at all. When you punch someone in the face what do you expect? People seem startled by a burning car and smashed window but what about the violence of policy and budget cuts. This is a direct result of poor social policy of a government continually led by a core of well-funded individuals who have no experience with need, poverty or discrimination. 

I recommend Gilligan's book Violence: reflections on a national epidemic to begin understanding root cause and subsequent effect in the body politic. Though he is writing about the US prison system, his perspective on marginalisation and its aftermath are spot on. And I also keep thinking about Paul Farmer's take on structural violence in his book Pathologies of Power and how poverty fractures the social fabric. According to Farmer the capitalist division between affluent and poor, creates a series of politic manoeuvres which not only sustain the status quo but are violent in their impact on poor communities. Read this is a great article on structural violence and human rights for extended explanations on the topic. 

This is why it seems to me when as a governing principle you kick the most economically-challenged in a the teeth, you're going to get some broken windows and missing trainers... 

Linked by Graeme Miller

Did the intrepid journey that is the audio tour of Graeme Miller's archive of stories surrounding the construction of the M11 in East London and subsequent displacement of locals and protest culture that arose from the development.

Alas technology has erased all my notes, but I'll try to give an impression. Linked is a tour of East London given through a series of sound installations that are broadcast from transmitters attached to light poles across a 4 mile stretch. You have to pick up your own receiving devise and headphones in order to listen to the work, but these are hard to come by. Luckily Redbridge Museum had a few, adding a good amount of miles to our journey but somehow part of the adventure (if you plan on actually doing this walk plan ahead).  Though there is a map, finding each transmitter is still a challenge, though a group of us were lucky to be guided by Oliver James Hymans, who wrote a dissertation on psychogeography with this piece as a case study.

As you approach each transmitter the sound slowly starts feeding into the headphones. Its slightly eery and ghostly, as if you are overhearing a conversation through an open window somewhere nearby. It becomes clear the recordings are testimonials of people affected by the construction of the M11 motorway and destruction of well anything in its path. The recordings are sampled and remixed with music giving it the impression of an early negativland track. The testimonials range from residents, to squatters, to elderly focusing mostly on the energy of protest and the destruction of sites of memory and places of local identity and history. I particularly like the transmission coming from a light pole in between two chestnut trees that referenced The Battle of George Green and the feeling that the takeover of the park by protesters was like a return the common land before the Acts of Enclosures privatised areas across England, a fantastic analogy and still powerful today.

I was interested in the people who lived in the houses near these transmitters and I wondered if they had any idea about it. Though I loved the experience, even for me who loves to explore and is interested in site, history, memory and place this was not an easy task to fulfill. This was mostly due to such poor maintenance of the artwork itself by Museum of London and Arts Admin. I couldn't help to wonder about those transmitters powered 24/7 and broadcasting empty messages to deaf ears. Perhaps this is the route history eventually takes, most people forgetting the struggles of the past for the comforts of the future. After the work I felt happy to have learned a piece of history and a new respect for a locale and yet somewhat melancholic in thinking about our constant move towards greater privitisation and development. As a radicant myself I wonder about how to save and respect roots while helping us move across borders freely.

The M11 felt both like a massive border and yet somehow an escape route...


Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

CTR 147 / Summer 2011 “The Activist Classroom: Performance and Pedagogy”

Canadian Theatre Review investigates the power of performance as a tool for critical thinking and social and political action within and beyond the university theatre studies classroom. 


Some great articles, unfortunately you have to be linked into academia to access or pay, not very activist of them but hey suppose its changing the system from the inside. Or ask your Anonymous friend to hack it.


The Activist Classroom: Performance and Pedagogy

11 Rooms Group Show - Manchester Art Gallery

Just came back from Manchester International Festival, a really fantastic civic take on arts and culture integrated into an urban environment. Went to see Robert Wilson's Life and Death of Marina Abramovich, but seeing as it was one of the biggest cultural disappointments of my life I'll focus on 11 Rooms, a group show of live art / performance at Manchester Art Gallery.

I'm going to focus a descriptive analyses of some of the works that I felt were socially-engaged in one way or another.

Santiago Sierra - presented Veterans of the war of Northern Ireland, where a man stands in the corner facing a wall. Both times I went in the room it was a soldier in full army gear in a frozen attention facing the corner. I walked quite close and could sense his awareness but discipline to remain still. His uniform was crisp new and clean looking. I found it a powerful allegory that was both political and simple. Apparently there were many veterans who stood for a brief period of time and all were in civilian clothes but I didn't see this. I'm not sure how powerful the statement would have been for me with some guy dressed in black. A performer I knew in one of the other pieces informed me that the particular soldier I saw was not enlisted for the artwork but saw the exhibition and requested to participate, which further expands the work's impact in the social sphere.

Tino Seghal - presented Anne Lee 2011, where a young girl maybe around ten enters the room and engages the audience in a painfully scripted monologue about commodity, time, systemisation and self (there were a series of them playing the part). She awkwardly poses questions, waiting for an answer only to continue with segments of script. The effect on the surrounding audience was to stupify their gaze with a slightly condescending smile reserved for precocious children. It's very much about you somehow, as she asks: 'would you prefer to be too busy or not busy enough?' A good question for a room full of culture vultures who probably possess middle class values of work and commodity, Seghal prods the audience he knows will be there. But somehow you can't judge the littel girl by the same set of standards so her eloquent words seem to resonate stronger. 

Some of the other works also relied on acting skills, something that charges the performance with a whole other set of values and forms of communication and reception that resonate on a totally different level for me. An example is Roman Ondák' Swap, where a jovial man at a table requests or rather tries to convince oglers to swap whatever object he has for another. Reminded me of the man who traded a paperclip until it became a house. Its a game I also play with my students, but somehow in the art gallery seemed trite. 

I'll mention two more I enjoyed though I wouldn't categorise as Applied Live Art, still resonated: Laura Lima's Men=Flesh/Women=Flesh where the ceiling of the gallery is lowered to about 1/2 a metre off the ground and as you peer in on your stomach you can see a hanging lamp laying on the floor and a person with a disability laying inside. I disliked the voyeur aspect of it, and found it slightly didactic but was still a beautiful image. Finally the whole show would have been upped incredibly had John Baldessari gotten his way and put a dead corpse on display in the same position as Andrea Mantegna's Foreshortened Christ, instead we got the archive presented in A4 email format.

Paper Panel – Putting words in their mouths: verbatim and authenticity

I will be presenting a paper on authorship and community engagement this Thursday at Central School of Speech and Drama's conference:

Authoring Theatre


Paper Panel – Putting words in their mouths: verbatim and authenticity
THURSDAY 14 JULY, 16:15 – 17:45
REHEARSAL ROOM 6, WEST BLOCK

PUTTING WORDS IN THEIR MOUTHS: VERBATIM AND AUTHENTICITY

Chair:
Amanda Stuart Fisher

Presenters:
Maria Jose Contreras Lorenzini - Dramaturgies of the real In Chile: the problem of authorship
Steve Gilroy - Let’s get real about ‘verbatim’
Roberto Sánchez-Camus – Triangulated City Beirut: Co-Authorship in Applied Live Art

THURSDAY 14 JULY, 16:15 – 17:45
REHEARSAL ROOM 6, WEST BLOCK

You can read my abstract online.

NYLON

It's hard to wrap your head around the scale of New York and London as they are so topographically different.
London is a complete mess of roads neatly organised into concentric zones that seem to spread out forever until suddenly it hits the M25 motorway and becomes farmland.
New York is a neatly organised set of roads set on to a mess of islands and inlets and seems to be encircled by endless suburbs with farmland somewhere way down the I95 highway.

I made loads of versions of these maps in some sense to put my two realities together, they somehow help me better contextualise and understand my place in these two twin cities (fraternal twins of course)