STREET SIGNS cucr 20 years 1994-2014 Contents Introduction [Editors | Emily Nicholls | Claire Levy | Dr Alex Rhys Taylor [Alison Rooke CUCR Co-Director | Monica Sassatelli CUCR Co-Director | Alex Rhys-Taylor CUCR Deputy Director] Front page image by David Kendall Graphic Design by Caroline Fedash www.behance.net/carolinefedash]

INTRODUCTION 1 Welcome to the latest Issue of Street Signs. 2014 sees CUCR reflecting on its past and looking forward to a lively programme of research activities and events. VISUALISING AFFECT: AN EXHIBITION 3 STUART HALL 4 Since the last issue of Streetsigns we are proud to commissioned by Create. This was a valuable opportunity have hosted the 30th International Visual Sociology for MA students to get experience of the world of GENTRIFICATION WITHOUT DISPLACEMENT IN SHOREDITCH 8 Association conference at Goldsmiths. We worked contractual research and to understand the complex closely with IVSA’s President Doug Harper and CUCR’s micro-politics of delivering participatory art and cultural IN THE LIGHT OF DAY 11 Caroline Knowles, to bring this three day international strategy at local partnership level. In this issue see some CARPENTERS ESTATE - STRATFORD 12 conference to CUCR around the broad but compelling of the fruits of this partnership in Claire Levy and Harriet theme of The Public Image. The interest in contributing Smith’s reflections on their involvement with Marcus THROUGH THE CLOUDS: AN UNSETTLING ENCOUNTER WITH THE CITY. 14 to the conference was overwhelming (indeed it tested Coates’ everyday shamanism project. our organisational capacities!) and we very proud to be in MARCUS COATES’ SCHOOL OF THE IMAGINATION AND SOCIOLOGICAL IMAGINATION(S) 16 the position to help bring together not just a conference This year sees the continuation of the CUCR’s consulting ON SWANSCOMBE MARSH 20 with the familiar programme of plenaries, and conference arm as we work in partnerships with a number of papers, but a sociological festival, which included organisations developing critical and collaborative ACTUAL IMAGINARIES 22 walks, off-site exhibitions and interactive installations. approaches to research and evaluation at a local, national and international level. Much of the evaluative research 9UB OR THE ART OF URBAN SOCIAL SUSTAINABILITY 26 This is a good place to reiterate the expression of our gratitude: our thanks to all those involved, we hope it we carry out at CUCR is conducted in tandem with FAIRYTALE OF NEW ADDINGTON 30 was a rewarding experience. It was for us: among the others outside of the academy: This includes cultural 200 delegates from around the world, our colleagues institutions, public bodies, local authorities, health trusts, A NECESSARY AWARENESS 35 from CUCR and Goldsmiths played a great part in both artists ‘participants’ other researchers and ‘stakeholder’s and so is best thought of as being ‘co-constructed’. The FRAGMENTS FROM THE ATACAMA DESERT, SOUTH AMERICA 40 the academic and festive atmosphere, and we hope conversations and collaborations were started that will research we do does not merely evidence the impact of IN SEARCH OF EDGELANDS 42 continue to inspire our work in the future. As Streetsigns an intervention ‘as if from the outside’. Our approach to demonstrates: visual sociology is a constitutive part of evaluation arises out of the recognition that if research A SENSE OF DEJA VU: 46 the research CUCR endorses and carries out, and its role ‘works’ or is successful, it is by virtue of a variety of A SELECTION OF RECENT PUBLICATIONS FROM THE CUCR 48 within public will remain a central issue in years to come. social actors shaping it and contributing to it on an In this issue, the visual theme is strong with Kata Halasz’s on-going basis, well before the research can be framed CONTRIBUTORS 49 review of ‘Visualising Affect’ the exhibition she curated for as a ‘product’ or as an ‘outcome’. Our position arises the IVSA, along side the striking visual projects of Michael out of a scepticism regarding the instrumental use of Rogers, David Kendall and Christian von Wissel. evaluative research, being the handmaiden to the cultural establishment, doing the banal housework of cleaning up The summer of 2013 was also busy due to a collaboration after the show is over. with CREATE London, an organisation working to deliver London’s post Olympic cultural strategy in the ‘growth Our interest in the critical potential of research and arts boroughs’. Reflecting our commitment to develop CUCR’s intervention will be taken forward this year through two community of researchers, students from the World successful applications for awards under the AHRC’s Cultures and Urban Life, and the Photography and Urban Cultural Value research programme. This research stream Cultures MA programmes took part in two days intensive has arisen out of dissatisfaction with the arts and culture training in critical evaluation with CUCR’s research impact agenda impact agenda and the recognition that manager Imogen Slater, Dr Alex Rhys Taylor and Dr Alison the culturally or socially ‘valuable’ cannot always be Rooke. They subsequently went on to work on short, reduced down to a spreadsheet. In the spring the CUCR paid Research Internships focussing on five art projects organised two ‘expert workshops. The first Curating Community? The Relational and Agonistic Value of 1 Participatory Arts in Superdiverse Localities is concerned identities residential location. This project investigates with curating community. It brought together academics the proposition that in cities such as London we and practitioners from the fields of participatory arts are witnessing an increase in pro-active spatial dis/ and community development to examine the relational engagement by the rich; an increasing spatial retreat by Visualising Affect: and agonistic dimensions of arts participation, focussing the affluent; emerging forms of self-segregation; social in particular on the context of regeneration. The second insulation from what are perceived to be ‘risky’ urban workshop focused on the Creative Collisions and Critical environments; and a rising physical defensiveness to the Conversations and brings together mental health and homes and neighbourhoods of the very wealthy. an Exhibition social care practitioners, artists, gallery arts education In the last 6 months we have seen many of the CUCR practitioners, funders, theorists, researchers and artists [Kata Halasz: PhD candidate Visual Sociology] currently working at the interface between the arts and doctoral research students complete their research. mental health. This ‘creative collision’ aims to identify Congratulations go to Dr. Francisco Calafate, Dr. Paolo ways of delivering arts/mental health with energy Cardullo, Dr Gerald Koessl, Dr. Steven Hanson and Dr. and creativity in order to develop a shared sense of Rachel Jones. purpose and the recognition that arts practice not only Alison Rooke, Monica Sassatelli and Alex Rhys Taylor improves ‘patient management’ but also make a valuable contribution to the education and training of health practitioners. to hold dear 1994- 2014 – 20 YEARS OF CUCR CHERISH 2014 also marks CUCR’s 20th anniversary. The centre was established in 1994, with Nikolas Rose as its Director. Subsequently, in the 1990’s with Michael Keith at its treat with helm, , the Centre received funding for the research into several large regeneration projects. This research affection stream had a specific focus on the impact of regeneration at the level of neighbourhood and the perspective of and tenderness local communities on the changes taking place on their doorstep. Our anniversary year will be an opportunity to reflect on our roots in researching the politics of regeneration. In April we hosted an event organised with Jess Steele, author of Turning the Tide an Everyday History of Deptford, Ben Gidley (formerly of CUCR) and local organisations and activists from Deptford to reflect Can affect be visualised? Isn’t art about the visualisation—and circulation—of affect? on the changes that have taken place locally and to think Fifteen artists, filmmakers and visual sociologists propelled us into the midst of the always critically about the changes in regeneration politics on a multiple and ambiguous ways of how race, gender and sexuality come to matter. They brought city wide scale as London goes through rapid, corporate- close the affects we bring to these very present references, evoked in mundane and profound led regeneration anda major housing crisis, characterised examples of human experience, in a kiss, in a wedding, or in diasporic dying. Visualising Affect by increasing inequalities. The themes of local democracy, was an exhibition tense with the terrifying and the fleeting beauty, with the urge for capturing, accountability, participation, community involvement and economic transformation which framed much of CUCR’s for holding still a moment of visceral connection across times and borders. evaluative research seem as urgent as ever. Organised in conjunction with the International Visual Yvonne Füegg would lead viewers on a path that blurred These are just some of the highlights of our public events Sociology Association Annual Conference 2013 boundaries between sociological and artistic practices programme. CUCR continues to be a lively research (hosted by the Centre for Urban and Community and methods was an important curatorial concern , as well community. We are very pleased to welcome Dr. Michaela Research, Goldsmiths) the exhibition brought together as the creation of a safe and calm atmosphere. Benson and Dr. Anja Kanngieser to the centre alongside poetry and textile installations, video-art, photography, And slowly, the works started to engage with each other Prof Rob Imrie, Dr. Kim Kullman and Dr. Charlotte Bates. films, talks and written reflections. Lasting only three days and with a diverse audience made up of academic visitors Rob’s team are working on an ERC three year research but connecting far away countries, Visualising Affect: an of the conference, of gallery goers and locals, and of a programme, ‘Universalism, universal design and equitable Exhibition on Race, Gender, Sexuality and Affect opened teenage boy of about 12 or 13 years of age who became access to the designed environment’ which examines the up spaces for aesthetic and affective encounters with a regular visitor. the issues the works tackled. values and attitudes embedded into the production of the He came every day, silently wandered around and politely designed environment and how these relate to manifold Curating the exhibition was a huge but very rewarding thanked us for the exhibition. He never asked a question complexities of the body. This is being explored through task. Alongside invited artists and visual sociologists, about the works or the artists but seemed to be annoyed the context of disability and design, with the focus on emerging new talents came forward through an open when I approached him with my own questions about his assessing the relevance of the principles and practices of call. Nearly one hundred applications were received, interests and with my explanations about the show. one of the foremost, contemporary, design movements, from countries as far as South Korea and South Africa. I soon realised he did not want to know any of it. He just Universal Design (UD), and how it addresses the problems Reviewing each work was a reassuring and worrying wanted to be left to be alone with his own thoughts and of/for impaired bodies in interacting with the designed experience at the same time: they demonstrated that the curious discovery. environment. theme of the exhibition was highly relevant, but also that the lived experience of it was current, sore and painful. We will never know if it was him or another visitor CUCR’s research community also includes the Goldsmiths who left a hand made card in Yasmin Gunaratnam’s research team for Alpha Territories. A major national Creating a space where the works of Sutapa Biswas, poetry installation, in the breast bowl ‘Think Positive’, research project concerned with ‘spatialisation of Sandra De Berduccy, Nirmal Puwar, Yasmin Gunaratnam, which accompanied the poem ‘Blind Date’ about the social class’ and the relationship between social Julio Gonzáles Sánchez, Karin Michalski, Laura Cuch and entanglements between aging, disease and sexual desire.

2 3 Stuart Hall Thank you

Stuart Hall – academic and activist – died on the 10 February 2014. The tributes and stories that poured in after his death were extraordinary for a British intellectual. Hall was valued in so many fields beyond sociology and In the days following Stuart Hall’s death, together cultural studies, but it is no exaggeration to say that his work has been a vital with black feminist academics, artists and activists, we put together a collaborative tribute for the Media lifeline to us in Sociology at Goldsmiths. His scholarship on topics such as class, Listening to Stuart Hall made us see the world Diversified, writers of colour digital collective2. The race, nationalism and representation are taught on many of our courses and are differently and he had a gift that enabled us responses showed the enduring value and use of frequent points of inspiration and reference in our research. Some of us found to understand our life anew. He seemed to be Hall’s relational/conjunctural approach among black our sociological feet with Stuart. talking directly to you, even if it was through feminists. I also noticed something else: many of the stories spoke of a loneliness that Hall alleviated through As the Preface to the edited collection ‘Without Guarantees: In Honour of Stuart the TV screen or through the pages of one of his pedagogic and personal presence. The filmmaker Hall’1 puts it, ‘Everywhere, universities are beleaguered institutions and their his many influential essays. I think that is why Pratibha Parmar, one of the co-authors of the 1982 definitions of what counts as scholarly activity are becoming more narrow and so many people – even students and readers CCCS collection ‘The Empire Strikes Back’3 described restrictive. Stuart’s own record suggests that intellectuals –even academics – can who never met him in person – feel such a how her experiences as the daughter of a sweat shop still find important parts to play in cultural climates where the life of the mind is deep sense of personal loss at the news of his worker were seen as a hindrance to her research on the scorned.’ passing. topic in a previous academic department. Stuart Hall encouraged her to make connections across theoretical Thinking for Stuart was always a process of and experiential knowledge “My activist experience and transformation and of changing himself, making biography became legitimate tools in the formation of sense out of the senselessness of exploitation, my intellectual practice thanks to Stuart.” A Brazilian ‘very’ mature student, Vera Jocelyn, remembered Hall’s imperialism and racism. If you followed his attunement to others. In an Open University class Stuart thought you could not help but be transformed had showed images and asked students to raise their too. It was impossible to ever drink a cup of tea hand if they felt the image represented violence. ‘One of again without being reminded of the imperial the images showed several small children playing in the traces in the brown leaves and the sugar’s tiny balcony of a flat in a council estate. I immediately sweet taste. raised my hand – the only student to do so’ Vera wrote, ‘and Stuart’s comment was: “Yes, you would, wouldn’t Stuart Hall had an incredible capacity for you?” How did he know, so early on, that I was someone intellectual generosity. He could unlock a who regarded poverty as violence?’ student trapped by an intellectual conundrum I can’t remember the first time that I became aware of with a single phrase. He was interested in what Stuart Hall but I do know that his influence has been more you had to say and in conversation he would than intellectual. His work with black colleagues, students use phases like - “of course you have written and artists has continued to show me possibilities (and about that.” The sense of acknowledgement hope) for engaging rigorously and with openness to the was incredibly validating, conveying a sense shifting paradoxes and poetics of post-coloniality but not that you were playing a part in a much bigger at the cost of dissolving the phenomenology of complex project of transformation. experiences. The journalist Suzanne Moore has a story about Hall that captures the searing directness with which Stuart Hall’s life offers us an alternative path to he could move between various strata of knowledge and follow in the vocation of thinking and learning. experience ‘To see him debate with a conservative was a joy’ Moore wrote in the Guardian ‘Just a flicker of pity – He was committed to intervening publically or was it contempt? “In the back of my head are things on key political questions. He never followed a that can’t be in the back of your head. That part of me narrow academic path but knew theory was an comes from a plantation, when you owned me.” God, that essential lens for critique. We should honour hit home.’4 For all the endless post-structuralist deferrals that by asking, at any given point in a political and contingencies of meaning that Hall prised upon and argument or in an encounter with a student: encouraged us to see, he also had this knack of making “what would Stuart Hall do?” Then, having tangible, or at least making believable, those back-of-the- head metaphysical truths that are so resistant to reason established an answer with our own wits, act and language, which is just another way of saying that he accordingly. has made me feel less lonely too.

Les Back Yasmin Gunaratnam 4 5 While undertaking the second year of my undergraduate degree in 1999, I opted for a 10 week module entitled simply “Gramsci”. Nine weeks of the module consisted of a close reading of excerpts from Prison Notebooks, illustrated with historical notes that related the opaque codified passages to early twentieth century geopolitics. Over the first nine weeks I started to build an understanding of how the 5 Stuart Hall’s substantive focus closely analysed state practices, radical Sardinian’s nuanced take on Policing the Crisis written by Hall and his collaborators at the their interactions with the media, social, cultural and political Marx, in particular his emphasis on Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at Birmingham was movements, as well as diasporic art practices. He is one of the culture, its contradictions and the path breaking in many ways. It is most usually known for its few sociologists (probably the only one) who has both been a need for hegemonic consensus, might analysis of the role of the media in manufacturing a moral panic President of the British Sociological Association and overseen be better suited to understanding the about ‘mugging’ in the 1970s. Another, less discussed, feature an arts building and project, as Chair of INIVA, which now current conjuncture than the radical of the analysis converses with a contemporary focus on ‘surplus holds talks, exhibitions and the Stuart Hall Library. The breadth politics I was familiar with. population’ - an idea that marginalisation or expulsion from the of his attention, in terms of where he has seen the world It was not, however, until week capital-labour relationship can itself be a factor of politicisation. move, breathe, oppress and change has been vast. Hence his 10, when the reading was Stuart The concluding chapter of Policing the Crisis provides a means audiences have also been from diverse disciplines and sectors. Hall’s essay “Gramsci and Us”, that to reflect on some of the stakes of thinking the politics of His work and way of being a sociologist has influenced such everything fell, remarkably neatly, unemployment in light of antagonistic differences that are a a large and diverse group of students and staff. He relayed a into place. This text, alongside part of the production of superfluous populations – in the case additional readings that illustrated rare kind of pedagogic scholarly style - sharp, warm witted and of Policing the Crisis, the unemployed black youth which were the CCCS’s use of Gramsci, offered engaged. a concise guide to applying the target of the moral panic over crime. Gramscian analysis to the impending At a conference held on diversity and the arts at the British Dovetailing with the discussions of the politics of women’s millennium’s political landscape. Hall’s Library, Hall spoke of the political potential of the arts but he application of Gramscian thought reproductive labour at a time when, approaching the black also provoked us to think about the current moment in which became integral to my understanding proletariat in Britain through the angle of superfluous the work is being made and consumed. In the context of neo- of the tenuous consensus populations promised for Hall and his collaborators a break liberal changes in the university sector where large grants do between neo-liberals and cultural with narratives of social exclusion and criminality. It introduced not necessarily equal new ideas but are part of the cultural conservatives that would come to the strategic problem, shared with feminist debates over capital that secures jobs and promotion, Hall’s words on reinvigorate the centre right. And it housework, of how to align, as they put it ‘sectoral struggle with working with policy and funding imperatives have stayed with is central to my understanding the a more general class struggle’, in terms of the ‘double structure’ devastating inability of progressives me. He understood very well the need to work strategically and of exploitation at work in both the sexual and racial division to respond with any agility to the 1. Gilroy, P. , Grossberg, L and McRobbie, tactically. At the same time he warned us that when the words wars, recession and austerity that within class. A. (2000) (eds) Without Guarantees: In of these institutions, and policy makers, start to come out of our would eventually unfold. Of course, Honour of Stuart Hall. London: Verso Hall et al.’s stress on the need for political strategies able 2. Ahmed, S., Bhattacharyya, G., Gunaratnam, own mouths, we need to worry. as a researcher involved in the study Y., Jocelyn, V., Noxolo, P., Parmar, P., of culture, identity and multiculture, to confront the ‘discrepancies, the divergences, the non- Phoenix, A., Puwar, N., Scafe, S. (2014). Stuart Hall’s signature image is perhaps the way in which he there are many more obvious ways correspondences between the different levels of the social Meeting Stuart Hall. Media Diversified. Retrieved from: http://mediadiversified. worked an audience with his accessible and in-depth sharp in which Hall’s thinking influences formation in relation to the black working class – between org/2014/02/14/meeting-stuart-hall/ intellectual analysis, often with vital specks of humour here my own, not least in terms of the economic, political and ideological levels’6 suggests we 3. University of Birmingham Centre for and there. In a Q & A session after the screening of the film theorising the relationship between should be wary of the kind of philosophies of history that Contemporary Cultural Studies, (1982) ed., representation and identity. However, Empire Strikes Back: Race and Racism in The Stuart Hall Project (directed by John Akomfrah, 2013) at assume a unified class reality – be it in the form of propositions 70’s Britain. Routledge. the ICA, speaking from the audience, Hall lit up the room with for me, Hall’s biggest influence is of universal wagelessness, precarity, or ‘surplus humanity’. If 4. Moore, S. (2014). Stuart Hall was a Voice tying the study of the most everyday for Misfits Everywhere. The Guardian, 12th his voice. Heads turned to the back of the auditorium to see aspects of our lives – who we think anything, an analysis of surplus populations attunes us to the February 2014. what he had to say. He congratulated the film team. “This film is potent ways in which capital fragments experiences of class Retrieved from: www.theguardian.com/ we are, what we do and how we commentisfree/2014/feb/12/stuart-hall- about the myth of Stuart Hall” he said at one point, “It is not the perceive the world around us – to suggesting that it is far more effective in the constant unmaking voice-for-misfits-legacy film I would have made about my life”. Reflexive and challenging questions of power, consensus and and decomposition of working classes than in unifying, 5. Hall, S., Critcher, C., Jefferson, T., Clarke, J the shifting terrains of class struggle. and Roberts, B. (1978). Policing the Crisis: to the end. structuring and organising its own gravediggers. Mugging, the State and Law and Order. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Nirmal Puwar Alex Rhys-Taylor Alberto Toscano 6. Policing the Crisis, p. 393 6 7 Gentrification without Displacement in Shoreditch

[Wong Joon Ian Journalist and graduate of MA Interactive Media: Critical Theory and Practice]

First came the Young British Artists. Then it was Banksy and his cohorts. Now, it’s the million- the man himself is habitually clad dollar startups of Silicon Roundabout. Shoreditch and its brick-walled, Victorian warehouses, has in period dress. He has lived in the been branded a cultural quarter since the Young British Artists moved into the hollowed out light- area for 20 years. He remarks on the industrial area on the City’s edge in the early ’90s. difficulties of local lobbying in the area: But even as the various cultural industries — first the and retail space. One common response from nearby “There are not that many artists, then the “brandals”, now the app-makers — briefly residents is similar to that voiced by Gary Sharkey, who homeowners in Shoreditch,” he says. “shine and burn”1, they have proved to be essential tinder rents in a newbuild near the goods yard site in Tower “We’re on our own.” for property developers, as Pratt notes in his 2009 survey Hamlets. I interviewed him at a public consultation of the area. session of the goods yard set up by the developers’ THE GENTRIFICATION consultancy in the summer of 2013: ARGUMENT Now Shoreditch is poised on the cusp of a new wave of development that will see the addition of 50-storey “I’ve never seen anything like this before,” he said, Andy Pratt points out that owners residential towers to its skyline for the first time, and an referring to the tent pitched on the goods yard site of light industrial spaces within unprecedented amount of new, high-density housing. containing scale models and lined with information the Shoreditch Triangle were often The new towers will be built on sites left fallow by their boards about the proposed project. “It seems effective at relieved when they disposed of owners for decades. So just who is being affected by consulting with the public. I look forward to getting more their property in the area. Unlike the these developments? Is Shoreditch gentrifying without from the site than I do now.” narrative of commercial or industrial displacement? gentrification, in this case, the Residents can hardly be faulted for expecting more from displaced property owners welcomed COMING DEVELOPMENTS AND LOCAL these massive brownfield sites. When a new elevated park the move out of the area. Again, this RESPONSES and repaved throughways are promised, as in the case of upsets the narrative of wealthier the proposed goods yard plans, a positive response from incoming gentrifiers displacing Shoreditch has several large sites that have laid derelict local residents can only be expected. But this sets up a existing residents. In the case of for years. These brownfield sites, which include the dichotomy between a mixed-use development aimed Shoreditch there were no existing former Bishopsgate railway goods yard, are finally being at the more affluent, with its attendant public realm residents to displace. put to use. Developers have won planning approval from improvements, and a wasteland that is left largely closed Hackney council for almost all the sites on the border to the public. “Thus, the narrative of ‘commercial or of the City and Shoreditch. Sites that haven’t yet been industrial gentrification’ may not be approved, like the goods yard, are undergoing intensive As one local campaigner, the historian and broadcaster one of forcing out, but willing flight,” public consultation driven largely by the developers, Dan Cruickshank, put it at the opening speech of a new Pratt writes of the area’s industrial before planning permission is sought. pressure group called The East End Preservation Society, landlords. the goods yard is simply an example of developers Together, these brownfield sites will account for up to “squatting on” important sites until market conditions Andrew Harris in his 20122 paper 3,051 new residential units. For context, compare this to suit them. Residents end up supporting developers’ studying the links between the the Olympics athlete’s village in Stratford, just a few stops proposals in the absence of more imaginative or inclusive YBAs and Hoxton, suggests that east on the Central Line. That complex accommodated alternatives. gentrification scholars have failed to 17,000 athletes and officials during the 2012 Games, and incorporate cultural landscapes and it was then converted into a residential complex with A relative lack of existing residential density — aesthetic registers in their analyses. 2,800 units, or about 90% of the size of the planned particularly owner-occupied properties — means that He wants to bring the place-branding developments in Shoreditch. there is less organised community action on development of Shoreditch into a dialogue with and planning issues. This is the sentiment expressed by the socio-economic processes The planned increase in residential density is Johnny Vercoutre, who owns a building on Shoreditch of gentrification. This is further accompanied by millions of square feet of new office High Street. His home is an homage to the 1930s and

8 9 In the Light of Day

[David Kendall Visiting Research Fellow CUCR, Goldsmiths, University of London]

problematised by the fact that the process of gentrification taking place in Shoreditch does not necessarily create displacement.

But as Harris notes, quoting Hackworth, “the production of urban space for progressively more affluent users” is taking place in Shoreditch. The areas “transformation” shows a kind of “class-based process of neighbourhood change” that takes place without displacement3. A SHORT HISTORY OF SHOREDITCH

Shoreditch rose to prominence as an artistic hub linked to the Young British Artists in the early 1990s, largely driven by the many parties, festivals and events initiated by the late art impresario Joshua Compston, with an explicit place- branding agenda, as Harris’ work tells us. The artists, many supplied by the East London Line from Goldsmiths in the south, were attracted by hollowed out Victorian light industrial spaces and cheap rent arising from the neighbourhood’s blighted reputation.

But by the 2000’s Shoreditch, and its synonym in the cultural imagination, Hoxton, had descended into self-parody. It was seen as emblematic of New Labour’s ‘Cool Britannia’ and spawned the satirical rag The Shoreditch Twat, which lampooned, among others, the incoming residents it labelled the ‘Marlyebone Tunnellers’, who could always pop back into their more salubrious West London environs as needed. My work-in-progress, ‘In the Light of Day’ considers how ocular and auditory Perhaps it was fitting that during this period the area provided a canvas, landscapes seem to have no distinct presence or absence as modes quite literally, to the self-described “brandalist” Banksy, whose spray-painted of public disclosure. stencils on the walls of the area critiqued consumer culture by mocking it Current work originates from Doha in Qatar. This city is undergoing rapid and expansive economic in various ways. The Bristol vandal kick-started his international career with and structural growth. New urban landscapes create views of the city imposed by specific an ‘exhibition’ in the Rivington Street tunnel, white-washing the walls and architectural identities and rigid political structures. Consequently what scenes are revered in the then stencilling on them, pulling off the feat dressed as a builder on official 1. Pratt, A.C. (2009). Urban Regeneration: city and what space do they occupy? Highways and roads laden with traffic connect architectural business. From the Arts `Feel Good’ Factor to developments in downtown Doha with new office buildings, shopping malls and residential estates the Cultural Economy: A Case Study of Today Shoreditch trades on both the contemporary art blooms of the YBAs Hoxton, London. Urban Studies 46(5-6), in adjacent areas. Therefore the skyline becomes significant in this process locating and orientating and Banksy’s street-level critiques. It remains “on the edge”4, as Pratt has p. 4. all road users. The ‘apparent’ horizon becomes a destination for residents and visitors navigating written, but it has been branded part of ‘East London Tech City’, also known 2. Harris, A. (2012). Art and gentrification: an evolving infrastructure network. Walking in Doha is a polluted environmental experience, and pursuing the urban pastoral in Hoxton, standing still in dust and exhaust fumes generates social and physical barriers. In the streets of colloquially as ‘Silicon Roundabout’, a cluster of technology start-ups that are London. Transactions of the Institute of given state support to promote things such as ‘innovation’. British Geographers 37(2), pp. 226–241. the city the relentless noise of motor vehicles, construction sites and housing that underpin new 3. Ibid. p. 10. backdrops in populated areas reveal sensory absences. As one area becomes obsolete another But the inter-weaving of borough-wide social deprivation with a brand 4. Pratt, A.C. (2009). Urban Regeneration: comes into focus. Encouraging provisional sites to emerge as visual pauses, momentary fragments of knowingly provocative artiness has produced a certain pervasive style From the Arts `Feel Good’ Factor to the Cultural Economy: A Case Study of of cohesion punctuating inter-subjective experiences on foot. Nevertheless the cacophony of associated with the area. Style is generated by certain “technologies of Hoxton, London. Urban Studies 46(5-6), audio-visual experiences produces ongoing sensory surfaces and impulses, woven between glamour”, as Thrift has noted, and Shoreditch itself has become a space “in p. 8. infrastructure in abrasive climatic conditions. Within earshot underexposed moments rise to the which every surface communicates something”5. 5. Thrift, N. (2008). The Material Practices surface; punctuating monotonous journeys and auditory sensitisations that condition movement of Glamour. Journal of Cultural Economy 1(1). p. 17 underfoot and encourage new paths in the city. 10 11 Carpenters Estate - Stratford

[Text and photography Anthony Palmer former MA Photography & Urban Cultures Orly Zailer]

The Carpenters Estate was built as a council house community in Stratford, East London in the as a continual reminder of lost friends and neighbours. late 1960’s and is situated on the eastern fringe of the London 2012 Olympic Park. It is a self- Images that frame the estate this way typify the dislike contained estate that comprises three of the largest tower blocks in the London borough of residents feel about the negative portrayal of social housing communities, as it represents a distorted, narrow Newham, along with maisonettes, terraced houses and three green spaces. view of the way these residents have experienced living Perhaps driven in part by Olympic regeneration, to the top down viewpoint, much used by planning and on the estate. For most residents, the current uncertainty increasing land values and changes in social housing development teams, of only seeing the house as a plot on of the estate’s future has created a sense of being in provision, the Carpenters Estate has become a topic the landscape. After producing the portraits, we recorded limbo. Some feel powerless to make a move even if of re-development and while there was discussion of a conversation with each of the sitters so that we could they want to and others, not wishing to move away, are regeneration and renewal ten years ago this has more learn their views about the estate and this is now a video unable to move on with even basic things like home latterly become talk of decanting and demolition. Within that acts as a narration for their stories. improvements, thinking it might be a waste of time and the last year, a plan to develop a new University of money. London campus on the land was signed off by Newham Some residents had moved to the estate as tenants The closeness of the Olympic Park and the implications council only to be later scrapped because of funding from a row of Victorian terraced homes, an original of Stratford’s regeneration continue to be significant issues. Walking around the estate, the evidence of this Carpenters Estate that was subsequently knocked down. theoretical considerations for this project not least as, future uncertainty is visible in the boarded up and empty They recalled the delight of moving into new homes from within the estate, it is possible to see where the homes, yet inwardly there remains a strong sense of home with modern facilities; a bathroom and a downstairs truncated Carpenters Road remains blocked off at the not least because many of the original residents, some of toilet as well as a proper garden space. Others recalled point that it enters the Park. The road was once the whom are now in their eighties, still live there. the experiences of living on the estate, having close neighbours who had families and young children of the artery that connected many residents of the Carpenters same age and who shared in community life. In the 1980’s, Estate to places of work and criticism of the displacement With the future of the estate unclear, we began a some residents chose to buy their homes, as Right to Buy of this local business community, as was done in 2007 portraiture project in 2013 working in close participation tenants, anticipating that with ownership would come before the construction of the Olympic Park, implies with the estate’s residents. Developing the project greater security of tenure. Others felt that the Right this is consistent with a globalising gentrification that has been done slowly and by building trust with the to Buy policy has only led to the fragmentation of the is changing the neighbourhood. If the Carpenters residents which has mainly resulted in us being warmly community. During the last twenty years, as more of the residents are also to have a share in the future of this welcomed. Our approach was to adopt a formal owner occupiers left the estate, there has been the rise place, it seems highly relevant to create work like this portraiture style which included the interior of the home of the private landlord and what were once family homes photography and video project, that complicates the as an inseparable part of the portrait; the resulting have undergone a change in use to become homes of generalising narratives of regeneration and shares image being a representation of the person as well as multiple occupation. When social housing residents have viewpoints that are more intimate and personal. their house which has been made a home over many passed away, their homes have been boarded up, leaving years. The intimacy of the portraits is also in opposition not only a look of dilapidation but an emptiness that acts Photos http://anthonypalmer.me/projects/carpenters/ & http://orly-zailer.com/?portfolio=carpenters-estate 12 13 Through the Clouds: an unsettling encounter with the city.

[Francisco Calafate-Faria, Research Fellow, CUCR]

party is taking place. I sit down at a table full of wonderful never cease to astound me, especially in the face of their savoury homemade nibbles and cakes, surrounded by 6 various difficulties. Both their problems and their generous or 7 women, who exchange stories of urban crime, whilst welcome are much more relevant than the influence these the children run around the house. The scene reminds me impressions may be having on my first thoughts of the city. Curitiba in South Brazil has been known for at least twenty years as a “first world capital-city”. of Teresa Caldeira’s thoughts on fear of crime: The ‘talk of I had heard, read, and talked a lot about the city, before starting fieldwork for my PhD thesis on crime’, performed by communities of neighbours orders At times, the experience feels like an embodied blockage the city’s informal recyclers (also known as ‘scavengers’, waste-pickers, or catadores). However, I the space by imposing symbolic walls, prohibitions, and to my initial approaches to street research and incursions had never been to Brazil before. What follows is an account of my arrival to the research setting, other geographic regulations. It also fuels and exacerbates into the problematic urban spaces associated with the urban fear of crime1. The geography of fear is outlined waste trade and urban poor. At times I feel like other which followed a week in Rio de Janeiro, where I participated in the 2010 UN World Urban Forum researchers of informal waste collectors in the urban and in the counter-event Urban Social Forum. around the street where we are, and in the city centre close to the bus stop at the other end of my commuting South, who were hesitant to approach people on the streets and decided to keep to institutional settings3. As I take off from the central airport of Rio de Janeiro, the Out by the airport, it is indeed cold and rainy and I reach routine to be. In my complete inexperience about the area Yet, this early impact with the reality of urban insecurity view is stunning. From the aeroplane window, protected for my jumper and jacket. A friend of a friend, and her and the city, there appears to be no way to avoid it, no and the sense that frontiers of safety are by and large from the city’s unforgiving heat, I can behold Rio’s brother-in-law meet me to drive me to her house, where alternative geography in which to navigate. symbolic and illusory allows me to develop mechanisms to magnificent geography and bizarre built environment, I will be hosted for 7 weeks. My first approach to the city During the rest of my fieldwork in Curitiba I am often overcome those limitations. with bunches of self-built houses, misaligned, protruding is about to be marked by the story my new friends will tell welcomed in the family house of my host’s sister, where shoulder to shoulder from every hill, over the sea, over the me on those 40km between S José dos Pinhais and the she often stays, a few miles away, in a neighbouring As a posted ethnographer, who had always lived in the lake, over the Guanabara Bay, looking down on the rest North of Curitiba. borough. Their father had built the house more than Global North, most of those frontiers were in my own of the city, inverting the obvious topographies of spatial habitus, developed through socialisation in the “abyssal Here’s the story. One of my host’s neighbours, a girl in her ten years ago, too close to a small watercourse where social stratification. The setting is illuminated by a bright way of thinking”4, which draws lines between Urban North early twenties, was murdered two weeks ago. Through wastewater from houses upstream is discharged. They sunshine tamed by a few cotton clouds, and the view is so and South. I am convinced that the aim of fieldwork in the one-hour drive, accompanied by the sound of the have been penalised by the fact that the local government sharp that I can almost see the incalculable energy that social sciences – especially in urban settings, is exactly windscreen wipers, as I struggle to imagine the street changed regulations on minimum distance between the exhales from the friction of the city. to cross those barriers to a deeper and wider knowledge where I am going to stay, she is filling my imagination houses and the watercourse, does not treat the sewage, of other people and other places. Ultimately, fieldwork Less than an hour later, the captain announces that we with a horrific tale of the girl’s last weeks of deep crack and does not give permission for them to work out a is also a way to confront, and hopefully overcome, the have started to descend to Curitiba. I peek through the addiction and chaotic life with criminal company, two solution themselves. So the market value of the house researcher’s own limitations. window, with my camera ready to capture the first image doors down from us. When the murder happened, on has dropped to zero, despite having 4 bedrooms, two of the city. I also have an open notebook on my lap a forest path a few meters away from our street, the floors and easily accommodating at least 8 people. This 1. Caldeira, T. P. R. (2000). City of Walls: Crime, Segregation, and prepared for a written account of my first impressions English mother of the deceased young girl was in London. experience shows me a reality that might otherwise have Citizenship in São Paulo. University Of California Press. 2. Moore, S. A. (2007). Alternative Routes To The Sustainable City: from above. From the window, all I can see is clouds. The She returned, a few days ago, when the body of her escaped my observation. It is a very intense first revelation of the flip-side of Curitiba’s urban “miracle”2, even Austin, Curitiba, And Frankfurt. Lexington Books. Pg. 73 hope of having an aerial glimpse of my research setting daughter had been already identified, subjected to all legal 3. e.g Coletto, D. (2010). The Informal Economy And Employment In evaporates, as we penetrate the white mass of clouds investigations and cremated, thanks to the diligence of my amongst middle-class or lower-middle-class families. Brazil: Latin America, Modernization, And Social Changes. Palgrave and the windows turn grey. It is as if Curitiba, the city, is host. Thus life is allowed to go on. Macmillan. My hosts in the first stage of fieldwork repeatedly disprove 4. Sousa Santos B (2010) Para Além do Pensamento Abissal: Das corresponding to the adjectives of closed and cold, with the idea that Curitibans might be less welcoming or more Linhas Gerais a uma Ecologia dos Saberes in Santos B de S. e which other Brazilians usually associate its residents. As soon as I put down my bags at my new place, I am Meneses M (eds) Epistemologias do Sul Coimbra: Almedina 2010 taken to another neighbour’s house where a kid’s birthday closed than other Brazilians. Their warmth and generosity

14 15 Marcus Coates’ School of the Imagination and Sociological Imagination(s)

[Claire Levy: Researcher, CUCR and editor of CUCR Blog. Harriet Smith: PhD Candidate Visual Sociology & freelance researcher CUCR]

“ ...imagination is the capacity to shift from one perspective to another from the political The East London theatre group Cardboard Citizens, who around us rather than using traditional materials. Marcus to the psychological; from the examination of a single family to comparative assessment of work with homeless people, helped to recruit participants. explained that in his view, traditional shamanic tools national budgets of the world... It is the capacity to range from the most impersonal and remote Their approach also draws on Boalian techniques and this operate as mystifying objects, and he therefore prefers had fed into Coates’ early research into the project. to use objects relevant to our own culture. transformations to the most intimate features of the human self and to see the relations between the two.” The School of the Imagination consisted of a week We understood that we needed to become both of workshop sessions. Participants worked in groups immersed in the project, and at the same time utilise C. WRIGHT MILLS : 1959: THE SOCIOLOGICAL IMAGINATION: OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS and individually; utilising journeying techniques a methodology to hold our observations together; we CLAIRE’S JOURNEY used by shamans; using subconscious imagining to therefore saw ourselves not as observer/ experts, but address external questions and issues. These sessions rather as forming a partnership, which was evolutionary “I’m sitting with my eyes closed. I can hear Marcus to the CUCR, commissioned by Create to evaluate several were facilitated by Marcus and filmed by a crew from and co-operative, allowing us to share back observations describing how I’m in a room – it’ s a room I know, my projects taking place over the summer months. production company Nomad. The director of Nomad and theoretical understandings whilst absorbing what parent’s living room. There’s a hole in the floor under is Michael Smythe who has worked with Marcus for and how events took place. a chair. I move the chair and jump down the hole. In The CUCR approach to evaluation is – like much of its many years. Part of our integration into the group was to help serve order for this journey to work, I must concentrate on my work – thoughtful, evolving and emphasising a reactivity The venue for the work was Teesdale Community Centre lunch each workshop day, which helped us to find our imagination, letting my mind’s eye wander to familiar throughout the process. There is no form filling at the end in Bethnal Green, which is a small hall with a beautiful place, while we also hung around with the group during places. Marcus tells me I’m at a tree. Again I see one I’ve of a project, rather researchers are implicated from the community garden, surrounded by brick council blocks. breaks and joined them when they worked out on the seen before – I’m mining my memory bank for images to beginning and work with project organisers to embed The heat of July meant all windows were open in the street in Bethnal Green. create this story. And then he leaves me – I must continue the evaluation into the practice. CUCR’s approach comes from a recognition, following Savage et al 2011 1 that surrounding flats and sounds echoed through the garden. this journey without him – I walk along a mossy bank, We participated in a rehearsal session the previous research methods have a social life. As such, methods are The journeying vocal call, collectively termed ‘Yoike’ next to a stream, I sit in the water and it feels cool – the week, held in part for the film-crew to see the set fully of the world that they are also active in constituting. filtered around the garden each day, and sometimes sun is strong, no need to worry about getting chilly… I up and for Marcus to try out some of his techniques. Taking this proposal seriously allows us to reconsider people would hang out of their windows to watch and meander like this for a while, feeling very relaxed, but it’s Having experience of shamanic journeying helped us to the ways we go about evaluative research. This is a field comment when the group were working in the garden. not quite like dreaming – then Marcus says I must go back understand what was going on, and how the participants which has been heavily criticized historically for its role in to the tree and he leads me back up through the hole The workshops sessions followed a strict time pattern, were feeling. We could relate to what they were going instrumentality and governmentality. Rather than being and back into the living room. What follows is a sharing the importance of the schedule made a potentially through and comprehend the problems of interpreting an instrument of governmentality, evaluation can also be session with my fellow journeyers – we’ve all been sitting destabilizing process easier to cope with, giving the the journey messages – reading the meanings both can also be a form of criticality and action research. The in a circle, each reaching into our imaginations for a participants parameters for the work and regularity individually and collectively. research we undertake, which is integral to the project journey which we try to compare notes on. Marcus leads to the rhythm of the week. As well as the regularity of ‘delivery’ is shaped by a number social actors contributing us through this conversation and is helpful and reassuring. the scheduling, the journeying took on a pattern which We had our research questions, which related to the to it on an on-going basis, well before the research can be It’s slightly bewildering, like waking up from a massage..” offered reassurance and contributed to the sense of commissioning body’s concerns. However, the process of framed as a ‘product’ or as an ‘outcome’. authority amongst the participants that emerged later. participating in the project opened up questions about During the summer of 2013 we embarked on a journey Frierian practice and how horizontal lines fit into a view of At our initial meeting, Coates explained that they were The structure for the journeys – warm up exercises and with performance artist Marcus Coates and his team evaluation which involves sharing experiences rather than drawing on the work of Augusto Boal and his ‘Theatre precursor activities to the journey itself – was mapped to research and evaluate his new project: The School expertly taking information and judging others. We also of the Oppressed,’2 which works along the principles of out and stuck on the wall, thus reinforcing the ritual, of the Imagination. reflected upon how shamanic practice can speak to social the audience being allowed to intervene in performance the intention of the process, the client, and the sense of research and we even wondered whether journeying Marcus Coates and Nomad were the 2013 winners of an and direct and participate in it. Boal in turn was greatly security within this. could become a valid evaluation tool. annual award for a participative art project, commissioned influenced by Friere’s ‘Pedagogy of the Oppressed’3 which Marcus adapts shamanic practices and ideas into rituals by Create London on behalf of Bank of America. ‘The emphasises a dialogic learning between teacher and and processes that situate themselves firmly in the now: Involved in a shamanic journey is the idea of first setting School of the Imagination’ aimed to draw on Coates’ student: the lines of power being horizontal rather than the urban present of our culture. For example the group an intention. This is very important, as it is easy to ask shamanic techniques, and used the imagination to find vertical. We were to find that these theories tap directly made ‘Eye-curtains’ out of sunglasses and Tipp-Ex4; the wrong question or not to fully understand what one new ways of solving problems and answering questions in into the participative nature of Create’s original brief and utilizing components of our throw away world that are is asking. Once the group had worked with questions the material world. As researchers, we were new recruits were manifested throughout the Coate’s project. 16 17

The journeying vocal call, collectively termed ‘Yoike’ filtered “ around the garden each day, and sometimes people would hang “out of their windows to watch and comment when the group were working in the garden.

from each other, the team endeavoured to introduce and outside of sociological practice proved a challenge, and white ways, and needs to be more aware of grey external ‘clients’ who had questions or concerns for perhaps one that shifts on every occasion, or perhaps areas. However, this was read as both a personal message which they might want an answer. At this stage the becomes clearer with experience. regarding herself, and also understood in relation to group worked with the client to form a clear question: the journey question, which was focused upon the a journey intention, which was then answered through The process had performative qualities that challenge Syrian conflict which at the time was in a stalemate images produced during the imaginary state. There mainstream notions of problem solving, and the dynamics between sides. The group’s individual journeys showed is always more than one answer and these answers and meaningfulness of community consultancy. This many collectively shared symbols, which suggested an are not always conjoined. For a shaman, or a group of parallels some types of evaluation and could be viewed individual and collective imagination working in tandem. shaman, learning how to interpret the journey is skilled as playing with critiques of professional community We gained an understanding of how subconscious and takes experience. consultation as a performative (PR) production. This symbols also reflect social ones and within the reach type of consultation is sometimes seen as a tick box of the project experienced how people came together In journeying, getting the intention precise is a skill; exercise providing evidence for pre-made ideas decided through this process. in evaluation getting the questions right is also a skill, upon by experts and now it was being turned on its but one that can shift throughout the process as things head by a community group answering the questions This was a project which succeeded through the become visible : concerns made apparent. Yet, just of professionals. In our own way we were attempting to coherence of the close-knit group members – who as the School of the Imagination required a very firm usurp notions of evaluation as being a tick box ‘add-on’: quickly grew to trust each other and indeed us; which we structure (formulated through the film routine, the being performers in the project rather than observers concluded was due in part to experienced and sensitive journey process, and the daily timetable ) in order to after the event. project management, but also due to the nature of evaluate in a participatory way we found we needed to the imaginative journey work. The ability of individual have a clear working structure to enable our observations The final consultation involved the group visiting members to ‘attune’ enabled the collectivity of the to be formulated within a meaningful methodological Department of Health researchers in City hall: the group sessions to manifest. We aimed as researchers to framework. And as researchers we also needed to be participants took on the role of experts advising experts. actively share the experience of the group in order to able to differentiate between observations as noise and This evidenced a knowledge production practice turned pick up on the collective ideas, concerns, and symbols. observations as data. on its head : where experts were put into the role of We were able to play with preset notions of evaluation, amateurs, and were given the answers without use of and pre-thought research questions with their imaginary RESEARCH EVALUATORS AS EXPLAINERS? theoretical tools or statistical measurements. The tools or expected answers and to just ‘allow what happened’ now used involved the human imagination, but used in a within a structure of qualitative methodology which seeks There were moments when we were struck by our inside/ specifically focussed and participatory collective way. to give account with as much accuracy as possible. The outside position to the project. On the Thursday the project found its strength in the opening up of perceived group were taken onto the street to do spontaneous The work was both funny and serious: people were social hierarchies, listening to all and responding to ‘mini-journeys’ for passers by. This felt quite exciting as walking around in Tipp-Ex sunglasses making strange their experiences. A lesson for us as evaluators and members of the public stopped to ask us what we were noises. But it also reminded us of the process of clowning researchers. doing. But as apparent team members, these questions where truth is often delivered as humour. It became came to us too. As researchers we found ourselves apparent that people find the idea of this project funny, Images by Michael Smythe and Claire Levy. torn between our participation in the moment (helping and yet there are deeply serious issues being addressed. the camera crew and finding participants) and being The Department of Health researchers were very asked directly by passersby what was going on. This interested in the journey information and extended their had implications for us as well as Marcus and Michael consultation by over an hour. : Should we have stepped up and given an account? Isn’t that what we were there to do after all? But to give Perhaps one of the most important elements to have become apparent is the relationship between self, group, account, suddenly on the spot without agreed permission 1. CRESC Working Paper Series,Working Paper No. 95, March 2011 to speak for the group, was not something we felt we and society. For example, one participant recounted 2. Freire, P. 1996. The Pedagogy of the Oppressed. London. Penguin. had clearance to do. Finding the line then, between meeting a zebra during one of the journeys, she explained 3. Boal, A, 1979 The Theatre of the Oppressed,London,Pluto Press that this was because she tends to see life in very black 4. To help the shamanic practice by excluding most vision, leaving just participation, ownership, permission, and explanation, in enough for the body to find its way around. 18 19 In this story the concerns ON SWANSCOMBE of a heterogeneous group MARSH of photographers encounter

[Peter Luck Crossing Lines] the processes of redevelopment at the urban periphery.

Swanscombe Marsh is a peninsula pointing north within a loop of the Thames below Greenhithe. Often in such places there is a rhetoric of ‘mere There was often curiosity (anxiety? scepticism?) about To the south it is bounded by cliffs left after two centuries of chalk quarrying. The flat lands, once wasteland’, a zone full of detritus. A walk on the marsh the theme park: did we know if it was going ahead? marsh grazing and saltings, have been transformed since the beginning of the nineteenth century shows that this is a misapprehension, applicable only to Some knew the marsh well, loved it and told us more parts of the industrial perimeter. The interior is a varied about it… Local knowledge and pride survives. by the cement and paper industries to the south, by riverside industrial development to the east landscape of low land-fill hills, scraped fill, surviving and by successive waves of landfill including the reclamation of the saltings in the early twentieth grazing and surprisingly beautiful tracts, particularly the A second, larger exhibition us now planned for April century and the dumping of polluting flue ash from the cement works. The Channel Tunnel Rail reed beds and around a small lake. Near the point of the in the New Academic Building Atrium at Goldsmiths Link emerges from its river crossing in the centre of the marsh. peninsula is the Broadness Moorings, an isolated and where we will show work from all the participants deeply scruffy collection of boats and sheds. Random along with more developed accounts of the history Three factors led to the proposal for a project here. At about this time (late 2012) a third factor came into survivals from industry have an enigmatic presence. and futures. One photographer, Sabes Sugunasabesan First, for several years I had visited the marsh from time play. Attendance at the 2012 Brighton Photo Biennale Such marginal lands become semi-wild places, quiet has independently shown a selection of his marsh work. to time seeing traces of the past cement industry: a debates brought Eugenie Shinkle’s argument that zones, escape zones. Contributions to history archives are possible. Beyond pier, workshop sheds, the floor plates of demolished topographic photography can tell little of the ‘abstract April, the possibility of a third, local show and various buildings, stray lengths of railway track, and the several processes, economic relationships, and movements of They have a value of their own which just may be linkages both local and academic are mooted. An article generations of landfill. Vegetation was overgrowing all capital that constitute globalisation’. Further, she talked beginning to enter the mainstream.2 on the project will appear in Urban Design quarterly; but one severely contaminated area. In summer 2012 of a strategy of deliberate absences1 but I found this articles by me and Sabes have already appeared in fLIP, the requirements of an exhibition made my visits more too closely paralleled the ills of globalisation, having Early in 2013, the group determined that it should have the magazine of London Independent Photography. frequent and more purposeful. too little regard for the specifics of a place. Feeling some interaction with the local people. So we followed a Several photographers have decided they will continue somewhat wedded to the topographic, I wanted precedent offered by Mike Seaborne who had exhibited documenting the changes on and around the marsh. A familiar road was barred and I found myself talking to to counter this but found, not too surprisingly, that photos of the Isle of Dogs at the Asda store there. The a security man who said this was due to the land now photography is indeed unable to show directly the store at Greenhithe, close to the marsh, was willing to The photographers are: Lesley Brew, Chris Burke, Trevor being owned by the cement company, Lafarge. But they digital workings of commercial power. What it can give us the small space it could, so a four-panel show Crone, Keith Ellis, Denis Galvin, Simon Head and Nick and their predecessors had owned it for many years. show is the effects on a locality. went into the cafe for a fortnight in late January 2014. Scammell, John Levett, Peter Luck, Alex McIlhiney, While we talked a large car full of ‘suits’ came slowly Ingrid Newton, Anthony Palmer, Jennifer Roberts, Mike down the track and over the next landfill hillock. Yes, With these factors in mind a project was proposed: a With the aid of invited selectors, Tony Othen and Krystina Seaborne, Sabes Sugunasabesan, John Whitfield. they were Lafarge. number of photographers should work on the marsh Stimakovits, work from eight of the participants was over a protracted period, each in their own way included along with brief illustrated texts on the history Soon after, the news broke: a theme park based on according to their own priorities, showing that here of the marsh and the futures proposed since the closing Paramount block-buster movies was planned. Precise was a place sufficiently rich to respond to a variety of the cement industry. This included the sole visual information on the proposal has been scarce, but initial of concerns and methods. While we could show the image of the theme park so far published. Recently, a reports indicated a possible 27,000 jobs. The local present state of things, the operations of capital would scoping application has been made to the two authorities planning authorities appeared to love it. No surprise in have to be implied by a documentary account of the having a part of the site and it is now possible to trace its a depressed area. Just one computer-generated image history of the marsh and the proposals for its future. In limits on the ground and see an approximate distribution circulated that made it impossible to orientate. the event, after a presentation to Crossing Lines, sixteen of elements. The drawing of this was too complex to photographers signed up. be shown small in the show but we gave a reference to A second factor was a concern about cultural amnesia. where people could find it on the web and had a hard For some while before (and since) memory has played a copy available to discuss with anyone interested. large part in the deliberations of Crossing Lines, the joint forum of CUCR and London Independent Photography, Many people passed straight by, but a satisfying number largely playing out in terms of personal biography. But did not. Conversations showed a great variation in what is at issue in locations such as Swanscombe Marsh knowledge of the marsh from newcomers who had been 1. Shinkle, E. (2012). Visible Economies, Invisible Topographies in Visible Economies, University of Brighton / photoworks is the cultural memory: here the survival of signs that getting to know it and following local history, to those 2. The literature is growing fast: see for instance Mabey, R. (2010, first this was once the home of a pioneering cement industry. who had lived locally all their lives and had never entered published 1973). The Unofficial Countryside. Little Toller; Farley, P. & Such signs as remain are fragmentary and fragile. the marsh. Roberts, M. S. (2010). Edgelands. Vintage; Orton, J. & Worpole, K.: The New English Landscape. Field Station. 20 21 I chose street imagery as my subject, initially because that Actual Imaginaries was developed during my studies was the arena with which I was most familiar. However, I on the MA Photography Course at London College of was rarely interested in photographing people before this Communication. The catalogue entry for the project Actual project, and my focus on figures in the urban environment included the following text: arose from research around the imagination of the city, how it is experienced, and most importantly how it can be The ongoing series Actual Imaginaries explores urban experienced. I sensed a correlation between the ‘finality’ of space and photographic space as parallel sites of the Imaginaries the photographic print and the ‘given’ nature of the urban imagination. Michael’s approach combines etching and fabric. Both are potential sites of agency and overlooked colouring* techniques with photography in a creative dialogue that extends beyond the surface of the print and [Michael Rodgers Crossing Lines] connections. The dynamic relationship I initiated with my photography fed back into my perceptions of the city into the image. Such careful applications aim to activate The Actual Imaginaries series grew from an interest in extending the dynamic potential of my and its inhabitants. The resulting works serve as models the photograph and render forms that are as ‘real’ as the scene depicted. In correspondence, the process opens up relationship with photography. I felt that the print too often signals the end of the photographic for approaching the city and the photograph together as malleable, contingent structures. relationships between people, objects and architecture process and, even after shooting, it can be more about selection and calibration rather than as spaces for engagement and imaginative projection. any direct form of response or interaction. How could an artist maintain a dialogue with Each Actual Imaginary is presented clipped to a hand- As photography and the urban increasingly embody our photography? How can this dialogue develop its subject? cut board, which is held off the gallery wall to emphasise image of society, Actual Imaginaries is a reminder that the immediacy of both image and material to the viewer. neither the city’s fabric nor the photograph are fixed, Each work is suspended in a manner that reflects the and that it is vital to grasp the potential of both spaces simultaneous weight of its material reality and the present before us. weightlessness of its imagination.

22 23 Strange: cruel [David Jackson: MA Photoraphy & Urban Cultures] My mother died four years ago in Malta and my father has kept some of her things. One of her most treasured objects suffering and was a Singer sewing machine, still perched on a small black desk under a window in the hallway. My mother was always yet – through making stuff and every room in the house bears witness to the curtains, tablecloths, bedcovers and lampshades the episode of she made–all in her favourite colours, mint and peach. Last summer I visited my father and one morning, out of the Photographs curiosity, I opened the sewing drawers. Inside were all the tools she used to make these things, just as she left them: thimbles, scissors, sewing boxes, tape measure, hexagonal – the sensation glasses, and so on. Each specifically gendered object summoned the absence of the person who used them that the real and acted as a powerful emotional and affective trigger to my memory. My mother persists beyond her death as a mourning is lingering presence through what is left and it is precisely this recognition of the ability to feel a past human presence beginning. through looking at objects that interests me here.

ROLAND BARTHES, MOURNING DIARY, JUNE 15, 1978

24 25

What is social urban sustainability 9UB or the art in the first place? What does art ‘do’ – or not do – as research practice “ of urban social and as the facilitator for an exchange of knowledge? And how will 9UB’s sustainability “ network structure enable the [Dr Alison Rooke: Co-director CUCR | Mathieu Hilgers: Visiting Fellow, CUCR; dialogue and mutual learning that Associate Professor LAMC Free University of Brussels | Christian Von Wissel: PhD Candidate Visual Sociology] is central to the project?

Nine Urban Biotopes – negotiating the future of urban living (9UB) is an international art project URBAN SOCIAL SUSTAINABILITY concerned with the research and exchange on urban social sustainability in cities in South Africa and the European Union (Johannesburg, Soweto, Durban, Cape Town, London, Paris, Turin and A decisive question of our time is whether urbanization Berlin). 9UB is a network project combining a series of local, socially engaged art interventions is a durable solution or a threat to the perpetuation of our species and, more broadly, of the planet. We are with a framework and web platform that fosters trans-local dialogue. routinely given statistics, through the media, which Within this framework, 9UB brings together urban activists’ The second trialogue in early summer comprises Taswald remind us of the scale of urbanisation on a global scale initiatives and social institutions addressing urban issues Pillay engaging with a Roma community on the outskirts and the urgency of finding sustainable solutions for the including health and housing, youth and the elderly, of Paris (residency host: Quatorze), Armin Linke exploring challenges and impact of urbanisation. Cities occupy migration, mobility and economical subsistence. Invited travel routes and patterns of Durban street traders (host: only 3% of earth’s land surface but host about 50% of the artists from Africa coming to Europe, and vice versa, will dala) and Dan Halter coming together with migrant world population. This high density might be a source of engage with residents, issues and social contexts of each of gardeners on Turin’s old Fiat factory plant (host: Istituto advantages. On the other hand, the high concentration these ‘biotopes’ through site-specific, artistic interventions. Wesen). of human activities in the urban environment engenders multiple problems. To guarantee that cities become a Integrated reporters to the project document these creative The third and last trialogue through into early Autumn solution to ecological challenges, the quality of urban research processes and feed this up into 9UB’s shared includes Terry Kurgan exploring co-housing cultures in life must improve and must at least “meet the needs of website with weekly insights at www.urban-biotopes.net. residency at ID22 in Berlin, Anthony Schrag collaborating the present without compromising the ability of future This provides the link between the actual art interventions, with neighbourhoods in inner-city Johannesburg (host: generations to meet their own needs.” 2 the trans-local dialogue partners and an interested Drama for Life) and Ra Hlasane sharing his radical public. From January 2014 to September 2014, the nine pedagogy with young people in Peckham during his Urban social sustainability is regarded to be “the art-residencies that together form 9UB will run in three residency at South London Gallery. continuing ability of a city to function as a long-term, consecutive ‘operation blocks’ of three simultaneously viable setting for human interaction, communication 3 running local research encounters and trans-local Reviewing 9UB’s aims and strategies, three questions and cultural development.” Purposefully, this definition ‘trialogues’. The overarching aim of this seemingly complex jump to the fore: What is social urban sustainability describes a relatively malleable notion of the concept. structure is to identify and learn from locally crafted paths in the first place? What does art ‘do’ – or not do – as It would be a mistake (and probably impossible) to to urban social sustainability by generating, sustaining and research practice and as the facilitator for an exchange of impose a single and uni-linear definition as every social passing on a live (alive and real-time)1 dialogue that reaches knowledge? And how will 9UB’s network structure enable configuration has its own specificity and its own tensions. across geo-cultural, content-related and institutional divides. the dialogue and mutual learning that is central to the project? Beyond the plurality of such definition, it is nevertheless With the beginning of 2014, Antje Schiffers started pertinent to distinguish three main interpretations the first trialogue with an apprenticeship project and This is where CUCR comes into the picture. Since the very of the notion of social sustainability that constitute 4 intimate dialogue with spoken word artist Zipho Hlobo beginning in 2011 we have been accompanying 9UB in its complementary aspects. These are: basic social on everyday life in Cape Town. She was joined by Athi- unfolding network and research activities, encouraging sustainability referring to the provision, accessibility Patra Ruge exploring migration identities with members dialogue among partners, evaluating the steps taken and guarantee of basic needs, social capital, justice and From a rigorous scientific point of view the truly “context- 5 of Moabit Youth Theatre in Berlin, as well as by Marjetica and providing academic support to the project. In the equity; sustainable behaviour concerning the social dependant concept” of urban social sustainability Potrc and students from Hamburg University of the Arts following, we would like to outline some first reflections change and concrete human action needed to reach an appears often blurred or too vast. From an activist’s point transforming public spaces together with residents in regarding two of the three questions raised above: What environmental sustainability; and cultural sustainability of view this flexibility can open a large space for diverse Soweto. does the social, and what does art do in and for urban which is related to the importance of diversity, to and multiple initiatives which concern the common futures? (The third question, that of dialogue, will be the awareness of social-cultural characteristics and good. The ambition to reach and develop urban social addressed at a conference in Durban later this year). specificities of each situation where social sustainability is sustainability constitutes indeed a real opportunity for at stake. innovative urban futures. 26 27 SOCIALLY ENGAGED ART PRACTICE danger of being employed discursively without realising the opportunities for critical reflection they offer.12 At The nine artist’s residencies are central to 9UB. All of the root of the idea of sustainable development was the these artists use what has become known as socially idea that the economy should be re-regulated in order engaged art practice. Since the 1960’s the art world to align it with the needs and interests of the biosphere. has witnessed the emergence of disparate practices – However, critics of the discourse of sustainability 13 happenings, interventions, performances, workshops argue that sustainable development is a once radical and actions of all kinds – that challenged the traditional discourse which has been thoroughly appropriated by notion of ‘art’ by turning it’s matter and sensations into neoliberalism. Today discourses of urban sustainability concepts and actions. In the wake of this development, opportunistically and systematically deploy the notion of art came to increasingly blur the boundaries between art ‘ecological reason’ but, in a perverse twist, advocate the and life and to direct its focus on political and ecological continuation of the current global economy as the very issues.6 Since then, different theoretical frameworks means of that securing that future. There are similarities have tried to grasp, systematize and distinguish the here with that other urban buzzword, ‘resilience’, which characteristics and potentials of the multiple branches sustainability is regularly paired. Therefore we need to of these expanded notions of art. ‘Dialogical art’, for think carefully about what is achieved in the deployment instance, focuses on the communicative aspect of art, 7 of the concept of sustainability and socially engaged whereas ‘relational art’ focus on the creation of micro- cultural interventions on a global scale. utopias of social interaction. 8 The broader term ‘socially “YOU HAVE TO GET YOUR HANDS DIRTY” engaged art practice’, for its part, places the process of 1. cf. Back, L., and Puwar, N., eds. (2013) Live Methods. The production at the centre and suggests understanding the Sociological Review Monographs. Wiley-Blackwell. 9UB allows us to consider the possibilities and limitations result to be a collaborative piece of artistic intervention. 9 2. United Nations (1987). Report of the World Commission on of converting the promising yet troublesome ideal of Environment and Development. General Assembly Resolution. New The motivation behind socially engaged art practice is, sustainability into a possible and concrete utopia. It York. 3. Yiftachel, O., and Hedgcock (1993). “Urban Social Sustainability: The 10 provides the rare possibility to put in operation and, without doubt, also a political one. Artists seek to create Planning of an Australian City” no. 10. pp 139–157. meaningful relationships with the public by exploring at the same time, challenge the contested grounds of 4. cf. Vallance, S., Perkins, H. and Dixon, J. (2011). “What Is Social different types of sociability and engaging locally with socially engaged art practices. While the art residencies Sustainability? A Clarification of Concepts.” Geoforum no. 42. pp pressing social and political concerns. ‘Community art’ take on the local nuances of urban social sustainability: 342–348. And Ghahramanpouri, and Sedaghatnia. “Urban Social Sustainability Trends in Research Literature.” Asian Social Science has claimed to achieve ‘cultural democracy’ while ‘art what it might look like, what it entails, on whose terms 9, no. 4 (2013): 185–193. activism’ has argued to use “aesthetic tropes of play and is an intervention sustainable, the trans-local dialogue 5. Maloutas, T. (2003). “Promoting Social Sustainability. The Case of creativity” to pose political questions.11 When operating allows interrogating both the specific meanings of social Athens.” City 7, no. 2. pp 167–181. sustainability and the site-specific methods of their 6. Lippard, Lucy R. (1973). Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art within urban constellations, socially engaged art projects Object from 1966 to 1972. University of California Press. frequently also claim to address Lefebvre’s notion of a artistic analysis. 7. Kester, Grant H. (2004). Conversation Pieces: Community and Right to the City. Communication in Modern Art. Berkeley: University of California Talking about her art, Marjetica Potrc, working in Soweto Press. Given these claims, socially engaged art practices also within the 9UB framework, describes what could well 8. Bourriaud, Nicolas. Relational Aesthetics. French first: 1997. Dijon: be a statement for the project’s overall aims, method Les Presses du reel, 2002. entail a series of problematic grounds that have to be 9. Lacy, S. (1995) Mapping the Terrain: New Genre Public Art. Seattle, carefully assessed from case to case. While art critics and subject: Wash.: Bay Press. disagree whether to evaluate these practices according 10. see e.g. Kwon, M. (2002). One Place After Another: Site-Specific “Working together with residents, artists can create a Art and Locational Identity. Cambridge Mass.: MIT Press, 2002. to aesthetic judgements or on the basis of their ethical project… a ‘relational object’… I often get asked: “How And Kester, G. (2011) The One and the Many: Contemporary concerns, in the social and political sphere, they risk Collaborative Art in a Global Context. Durham NC: Duke University do you define your role as an artist?” That’s easy: I’m a instrumentalising artists as ‘aesthetic social workers’. This Press. mediator… The word ‘sustainability’ has been overused casts doubt on art’s autonomy of production and can 11. Kelly, O. (1984). Community, Art, and the State: Storming the to the point that its meaning is nearly lost. But even so, Citadels. London; New York: Comedia Publishing Group, 1984. place both artists and participants in situations for which sustainability is crucial for the survival of our cities, so we And Bang Larsen, L. (2010) “The Jury Stays out: Art, Activism neither of the two have received the adequate training and Art’s New Normativity.” In Concept Store: Art, Activism and need to rediscover what it means... I’m a hands-on person. to enable them to manage possible negative effects Recuperation, 26–33. 3. Bristol: Arnolfini. You have to get your hands dirty. You don’t change much (short-term engagement leading to misunderstood 12. cf. Deutsche, R. (1992) “Art and Public Space: Questions of if you just talk. Doing things brings change. This is where Democracy.” Social Text no. 33 (January 1). Pp. 34–53. And social contexts, disappointed expectations, economic the relational object comes in: it is this something that Deutsche, R. (1996). Evictions: Art and Spatial Politics. Chicago; and legal disputes concerning funding, image rights and Cambridge Mass.: Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the people engage with, that produces social change.” 14 possible future sales of the artwork, hurried opportunist Fine Arts; MIT Press. are increasingly employed by a variety of agents in 13. Reid, J. (2013).“Interrogating the Neoliberal Biopolitics of the commissions, malevolence of third parties, etc…). the context of urban renewal and change in order to With the first of 9UB’s trialogues in action, the time has Sustainable Development-Resilience Nexus” International Political decorate commercial interests in the colours of social come to ‘get dirty’ and talk. CUCR will be right there, on Sociology. Accessed February 10, 2014. Socially engaged art practices are commonly associated 14. Lepik, Andres, and Marjetica Potrč. “Cities in Transition.” In the ground, trans-locally yet also with a critical eye on with the political left and with projects that aim to sustainability. In many of these cases, popular concepts Architektonika (exhibition Catalogue), edited by Gabriele Knapstein the possibilities and underlying assumptions of dialogue resist deprivation and marginalisation. However, they like ‘community’, ‘participation’ and ‘change’ are at and Matilda Felix, 155–163. Berlin: Verlag für Moderne Kunst; and ‘learning from’. We hope you will be there, too. Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, 2012. 28 29 Fairytale of New Addington

[Les Back Department of Sociology, Goldsmiths College]

Alex Hopkinson has worked as a bus driver in south London for ten years. I visited him early in with glowing snowmen and Father Christmases shining The estate is much more socially variegated than 2014 to talk about his father Derek’s Christmas lights. The Hopkinson’s family home on the corner out of the pitch darkness at night. Sukdev Sandhu writes outsiders would have it. Home ownership on the estate of Homestead Way, New Addington is fabled for its electric Technicolor decorations – each that houses that stick out from timid suburban conformity is 38% in Fieldway known locally as the ‘New Estate’ and appear both “heroic and lonely”2. Christmas kitsch in December from the eighties the house was lit up like a giant beacon of festivity. 55% for the older ‘red brick houses’ in New Addington ‘Addo‘ has that kind of exceptional boldness. Driving ward. This is relative low when compared with 69% for 5 Derek Hopkinson grew up in Hoxton, East London and as life. “Oh yeah, enjoying themselves. It’s all lost now people around this year there are fewer illuminated houses than Croydon as a whole. The homes decorated extravagantly a boy worked in the East London markets. Derek picked are too busy now, doing their own stuff now - not caring in previous Decembers. Austerity is biting like the cold at Christmas are often – although not exclusively – the up the patter and brogue associated with that world. about no-one else”. The family moved to New Addington North Downs’ wind. red-brick ones. The festive illumination of these homes Alex, now in his thirties, explained: “My father was a real in 1984. New Addington is home to 20,000 residents, many does not simply reflect their economic status or spending When I left home over thirty years ago almost no-one showman… Everyone that met him loved ‘im… he was like of them from working-class families that were allocated a power, rather the Christmas lights are a seasonal gift to outside Croydon had heard of New Addington. Tia Sharp’s a magnet… he never turned anyone away.” council property here on the edge of London in the sixties the estate as a whole. tragic murder, Emma West’s racist tram rant, the riots and seventies. Seven miles from central Croydon it has of 2011 and the episode of Secret Millionaire featuring Derek Hopkinson died in St Christopher’s hospice, In 1997 the London Weekend Tonight TV show ran a always felt a bit remote. Early residents referred to it as computer mogul Bobby Dudani undercover on the estate Sydenham in 2004. Alex put up the Christmas lights that festive competition for the best decorated London home. ‘Little Siberia’ signaling that sense of cold isolation. John changed all that.3 To outsiders New Addington became year and decided to “leave it at that”. They sold some of It was the second time they had run the competition and Grindrod documents how building estates like ‘Addo’ were a short hand tag for the work-shy underclass, benefit the ‘blow mould’ decorations that Derek had imported a neighbour nominated the Hopkinsons. They won and actually part of a noble scheme of post war reconstruction scroungers and cultureless ‘Chavs’. In November 2013 The at considerable expense from the United States. In 2013 when the film crew visited with the good news and when that aimed to offer working people a healthier and better Croydon Advertiser published ‘well being scores’ for the Alex wanted to rekindle the tradition in his Dad’s memory Derek was asked why he did it he told the reporter - “It’s environment to live in.1 just pleasure, just pleasure”. The prize included a trip to borough and the New Addington and Fieldway estates to mark the tenth anniversary of his passing. 4 Lapland but here was a small hitch, as Alex explained: After a few years the Hopkinsons started to externally came bottom: the worst places to live in Croydon. I asked Alex what it takes to put on a show like this. “It’s “the conditions were it was Mum and Dad and two kids decorate their home at Christmas. Alex Hopkinson The estate was a place of improvement for many working tiring but worth it for the people’s faces. We started back under the age of 16. I was already at college and my explains tells me it was his father Derek’s idea: “My mum’s people offering them a first real stable home, an escape in October.” The roof was first thing to tackle with the brother is six years older than me. So of course my Dad birthday is the 3rd December. As a single parent in the from slum clearance and post-war austerity. During help of a couple of mates. Alex continued: “When we done his charm and rang them up and said ‘Oh we can’t 1960’s my nan always tried to make sure that mum had the seventies home ownership was very low, confined started doing it people came up to us and said ‘oh we afford to do it can you still let everyone go’ and they said as much as the other children and worked every hour to mainly to the oldest part of the estate built in the thirties remember when we brought our kids around.” ‘yeah’. That was one of the first times we had been on a make sure this happened...this included Xmas decorations named after Charles Boot who envisioned Addington plane, ski mobiles, skiing reindeer rides – it was great fun.” up by her birthday. Dad just carried this tradition on but as a ‘garden village’. Thatcherism changed this and the On Sunday 1st December the Hopkinson’s Christmas in an even bigger way!!” lights were ‘turned on’ and it was a truly extraordinary I asked Alex whether he thought there was something level of home ownership during the eighties increased spectacle full of excitement and festive anticipation. A unique about working-class men of his Dad’s generation. The Hopkinson’s were not the only family to celebrate rapidly, as residents took up the ‘right to buy’ their homes. picture of Derek Hopkinson was mounted on the front of “There is yeah…” Alex replied. The larger than life local Christmas in this way. By the nineties there were Families like my own and the Hopkinson’s bought their the house decorated by 10,000 lights, luminous reindeer, characters that ran Sunday football team and had a love of numerous homes on the estate decorated in lavish colour, council homes. choirboys and of course Father Christmas himself. Four

30 31

At the heart of this story is an ordinary miracle. In contrast to “ the glitzy consumerism of the supermarkets and shopping “ centres that profit from Christmas, this is a spectacle of community - a gift given for free in hard times by a family to the estate.

hundred people assembled in front of the house in Hard times have hit and unemployment is rising and local who are poor always give and people that are rich don’t… expectation, news had spread through word of mouth house prices are soaring. People cannot any longer afford and that’s the reason they stay rich for.” We laugh as he and Facebook. A local grandmother asked via Facebook to buy their council homes. In 2012 Croydon Council continues. “When you think about it a lot of the rich people if her grandaughter - Ellie - could switch them on. When received 119 expressions of interest in ‘right to buy’ but they sort of don’t give to people and that is the reason why Ellie flicked the switch at 7 pm the Hopkinson’s treated the initiative resulted in just two sales.6 Elderly residents they’ve got money.” Is that why they’ve got their classy white their neighbours to a firework show launched from – many of whom are widowed - are being forced to lights, I ask? “Exactly” he concludes. their back garden. One of Alex’s friends played Father remortgage their homes to private companies in order Christmas and handed out 170 bags of sweets to children to avoid sliding into poverty. ‘Right to buy’ brought The money raised from the collection box in front of their over the course of nearly two hours. They served teas affordable council housing to an end and the risk now for house will be donated to St Christopher’s Hospice. “Up here and coffees from an urn in front of the house raising over low-income families is a return to the impoverishment of obviously a lot of people go there either with cancer or other £500 for charity on the night. Kids and parents from all pre-war slums.7 illness. They were fantastic and allowed my mum to sleep in over the estate came to witness the gloaming spectacle the next bed during his last few days so that they could be on a cold night. “You can do a class analysis of London with Christmas together. The money we raise will be given to them to help lights,” writes China Miéville astutely.8 In December class enable their work to go on,” says Alex. I asked him if people think he is mad to invest so much. distinction can be discerned through peering through the “It was something I thought he Derek would have wanted. window of most London homes. In poorer homes “the At the heart of this story is an ordinary miracle. In contrast Dad liked it so much, it was sort of like part of him. Next season is celebrated with chromatic surplus”; while the to the glitzy consumerism of the supermarkets and year it won’t cost me half the amount.” It has cost him rich and middle-class “strive to distinguish themselves shopping centres that profit from Christmas, this is a £1,500 so far, not an inconsiderable amount for a man with White-lit Christmas trees”.9 spectacle of community - a gift given for free in hard times supporting a family on a bus driver’s salary. Then there by a family to the estate. You can see it reflected in the will be the extra £150 on top of their winter electricity bill. Driving to New Addington seems to support Miéville faces of the children as they laugh excitedly and come “I done it for the local people,” explains Alex. He carries thesis. In affluent Beckenham homes are bathed in subtle to admire the glowing colours of the Christmas lights. more of his father in him than he realizes. white light sometimes with a luminous electric stag There is no better tribute to Derek’s memory, one of New grazing on the lawn. “Ah good taste, as Picasso may or Addington’s best-loved characters. It has been a tough time I say to Alex. “Yes, Tia Sharp may not have said, what a dreadful thing,” writes Miéville. 10 and the riots of 2011 I think it just needed another cause I am sure he would approve of New Addington where As a child Kirsty MacColl lived close to New Addington. to start to enjoy themselves again. That’s why I put up entire houses are illuminated with multi-coloured electric In her famous collaboration with the Pogues, Fairy Tale of the ‘Wishing Tree.’” In front of the house is a tree with excess. New York – the greatest Christmas song of all time – she tags and a Sharpie pen. It is smothered with scribbled sings with Shane MacGowan “And the bells are ringing messages to lost loved ones and messages to Father I put this to Alex and ask him if there is a relationship out. For Christmas Day.” Somehow the Hopkinson’s festive Christmas from kids.” between social class and Christmas decorations. He nods decorations are reminiscent of that stirring refrain. Long knowingly: “I think it’s people who have never had nothin’ may their electrified lights shine chromatically on the corner who like to give back to people. You always find people of Homestead Way at Christmas time.

32 33 A necessary awareness A journey to Munich’s Architecture of the Anthropocene

[Texts & poetry by Diane Chalumeau | Lorène Chiron | Bebhinn Egan | Heba Elkhalifa | Catarina Queirós (architecture students erasmus at TUM) & Christian Von Wissel PhD Candidate in Visual Sociology and teaching assistant at Munich Technological University (TUM) Photos by Isabel Mühlhaus]

During a seminar in history and theory of architecture, we, a group of architecture students from Munich University of Technology, explored the implications of man’s wholesale reworking right where we live. Power plants, highway canyons and plastic gardens, glasshouses, rivers and derelict train stations all materialise the Anthropocene in the cityscape of Munich. In the buildings and landscapes presented in the following human time, biological time and Earth time converge and the city and its inhabitants become visible as a collective geological force. A JOURNEY INTO THE ANTHROPOCENE:

“Is Nature over?” While writing this question, I take a look above my desk and my eyes meet the splendid maple tree, peacefully covering my garden. I come back to my computer screen. Is Nature Over? Once entering the wide world of the Anthropocene, once starting philosophical, scientific, architectural… but also political and poetical reflections about the environment and its meaning to In the 18th century, the steam engine set us, once letting our mind float in the big bath that is loose far-reaching transformations in the our world, or actively swim through it, from one buoy to relationship between man and nature. The another, from one question to another, this concern cannot Industrial Revolution changed everything from get out of our heads anymore. the way we build to the way we move to the “Is Nature Over?” could be a conclusion as well as an way we think our cities. Yet what started out introduction. Will you get an answer? I still don’t know. I as a project of liberation from physical labour could ask: “who am I, what is life?” I could ask: “where are now binds us to systemic growth. Our hunger we from, where are we going?” I could ask: “what being is for energy has made us reshape the planet meaning?” or simply the question “why?” and – as we are beginning to see – is putting “Is Nature over?” opens up an imaginary travel into the our own survival at risk in the course of such questions of our time, this particular conjunction of Earth 1. John Grindrod Concretopia: A Journey Around the Rebuilding of Postwar Britain (Old Street Publishing, 2013) see pp. 432-433, 2. Sukhdev Sandhu Night Haunts: A Journey Through the London Night (Verso & Artangel, 2007) p. 22. reworking: “Nature is over,” the Earth is made and Humankind where, and when, Nature meets Culture to 3. See Channel 4 Secret Millionaire http://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-secret-millionaire/4od#3377103 by man: Welcome to the geological epoch of give birth to new inquiries about our identity, as humans, 4. Data Blog: Where is the best place to live in Croydon, Croydon Advertiser, 1 but also as integrated parts of an ‘all’, an ‘all’ we are just http://www.croydonadvertiser.co.uk/DATA-BLOG-best-place-live-Croydon/story-20164938-detail/story.html the Anthropocene. 5. See Strategic Partnership Croydon Fieldway Ward Profile (Strategic Partnership, 2009) http://www.croydonobservatory.org/ starting to take consciousness of. (LC) docs/ 877820/877871 and Strategic Partnership Croydon New Addington Ward Profile (Strategic Partnership, 2009) http://www.croydonobservatory.org/ docs/877820/877880 6. Rhiannon Bury ‘Right to buy falls flat’, Inside Housing, 21st September, 2012 http://www.insidehousing.co.uk/tenancies/right-to-buy-falls-flat/6523826.article 7. See James Meek ‘Where will we Live’, London Review of Books, 9th January, 2014. 8. China Miéville London’s Overthrow (The Westbourne Press, 2012) p. 29 9. Ibid. p. 30 10. see Les Back ‘Flame Immune to Wind: The Songs of Kirsty MacColl’, City, 7 (1), 2003 pp. 107-11 34 35 RAILWAY TRACK COVER AT ARCHITECTURE’S NEW NATURE (SWISS RE THERESIENHÖHE: BUILDING):

Tired little bird A new kind of architecture is emerging – one that faces the Anthropocene, the new age of man. The outmoded dandelions near plastic grass lament for virgin nature, untouched and separate to train below breathing humankind, has been replaced by a new vision of A blackbird lands on a plastic park: a psychedelic pasture connectedness between the created and the natural where wooden ‘horses” graze amongst sand dunes and environment. The old sense of separation is becoming astro-turf. It is an ‘anthropocenic’ gesture: manufactured blurred. The false dichotomy between the natural and the nature – a floating garden unconnected to the ground man-made is being replaced by a hybrid form where each below. quietly intertwine.

Children climb the grassy mounds. They play in sand and The very idea of nature is a complex one, not without run through boxes which echo the shapes of the trains apparent inbuilt contradictions: Arthur Lovejoy notes below. There is a pine grove to the north. Its trees growing no fewer than 66 meanings of the words “nature” and a new ring each year beside the rubber goals, the grainy “natural.” This makes it very challenging to define these gravel and heavy concrete, man’s stone. terms in a wholly satisfactory manner.

This grass is not freckled by daisies (who close their The common, Holocenic understanding of nature as petals when the sun goes down). Every stem has been STATE MUSEUM OF EGYPTIAN ART: defined by John Passmore is “that part of our world planned, constructed, engineered by man. which has not been made by human beings, but comes I’m attracted by the majestic concrete mass displaying the into existence and vanishes, changes and remains Those who arrive here might be too distracted to notice stratum of its living proof. I go down this contemporary constant in virtue of itself”. This definition is particularly “NUCLEAR EGG” RESEARCH REACTOR IN the railway tracks below where passing trains exhale XXX grave; the light abates. I still feel in the now but travel interesting because of the emphasis it places on the GARCHING: and passengers drink luke-warm tea in stuffy carriages. forth down this timeline into the past. autonomy of nature and its disconnectedness from Beyond the windows, they see weeds and rail tracks— man. As Sasa Zivkovic says: “Nature is the good, green, On March 11, 2011, without inclination to the plastic island that floats above. I can feel the bond with the bygone era through the happy counterpart to our obscene dangerous grey and an earthquake of nine point zero Richter, (BE) image I see. Every piece of art stands in all its beauty and destructive society.” pride. In this barren space, I almost feel the aridity of the tsunamis of more than 20 meters height and desert and the light, dazzling, is softened and filtered by However, in the Anthropocene, humans and cities are three simultaneous meltdowns at concrete trees. not external to ecosystems. Nature, as we know it, is Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant dead. This is, as David Harvey asserts: “There is nothing I feel overwhelmed by history but the sun shining beside unnatural about New York City.”3 (BE) made energy infrastructure the obelisk reminds me of everyday life. I remember stop the light catching my eyes, it says: “All art has been contemporary”. being the specialised interest of scientists and engineers only. Are the architects the new Pharaohs, masters of construction? As for Egyptians conserving the body was Since Columbus, the meaning of the egg essential for continuing their existence in the after life I lies in the difference do now understand the building and its message: Each between architecture is the sediment of its time and every architect a God whose name is engraved in Earth’s epochs with doing and could have done. (CW) ‘anthropocenic rock’. 2 (DC) 36 37 HIGHWAY CANYON TEGERNSEER RESPONSIVE ARCHITECTURE FOR THE LANDSTRASSE: ANTHROPOCENE:

Homerun to destruction, Starting out from what we considered to be the beginning, the Industrial Revolution, we travelled through sedimentation of lines, scale, force, time, size and history of the Anthropocene until reaching its ultimate now. We drew on Boullée’s and this is the way we go: Ledoux’s utopian-visionary architecture and revisited straight on, Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty. More recent examples like social community actions in the form of guerrilla over and over, gardening, Cornwall’s Eden Project ecology amusement park, eco-enclaves like Masdar City and open pit coal from city to city mines turned into lakes, all demonstrate how we are remodelling planet Earth. as the city is “nowhere now/here”. These examples, we didn’t mean to be ‘solutions’. Rather, “May the force be with us”, we considered, that the implication for architects is that May the force they have to be conscious about this new geological epoch. Architects, scientists, engineers, botanists and be us. (CW) designers should embrace it with a responsive attitude: because everything is being re-designed now, from details of daily objects to cities, from landscapes to DNA. (CQ) PERFECT WAVE OF THE “EISBACH” STREAM:

The Eisbach is a tributary of the Isar river flowing through Englischer Garten landscape park. It runs in a manmade channel, which at one point counts with an artificial, one- meter high wave used for surfing.

River and wave are made perfectly. Nothing seems to interrupt their peaceful ‘nature-ness’ except for the passer-bys and fans supporting the surfers with their cheerful excitement. 1. Crutzen, P. J. (2002). ‘Geology of Mankind’. Nature 415(6867):23– 23. and Walsh, B. (2012). ‘Nature Is Over’. Time Magazine, March 12. The wave is for experienced riders only. Competitions Retrieved April 11, 2013 (http://content.time.com/time/magazine/ have been held here and international surfers have visited article/0,9171,2108014,00.html). 2. Dibley, B. (2012). ‘“The Shape of Things to Come”: Seven Theses Munich just to ride this famous wave. Thus I wonder on the Anthropocene and Attachment’. Australian Humanities whether the Eisbach wave is competing with natural Review Online (52). Retrieved January 14, 2013 (http://www. waves? Man creates the nature he needs, the way he australianhumanitiesreview.org/archive/Issue-May-2012/dibley. wants it and wherever he decides to do so. The whole html). P. 1. and Zalasiewicz, J., Williams, M.. Steffen, W., and Crutzen. P. (2010). ‘The New World of the Anthropocene’. Environmental Earth is like a wave made by man and which we are now Science & Technology 44(7):2228–31. P. 2230. riding over and over… (HE) 3. Lovejoy, A. (1935). A History of Primitivism London: Barkers. p. 133. and Passmore, J. (1975). Man’s Responsibility for Nature: Ecological Problems and Western Traditions, London: Gerald Duckworth & Co. p. 32. and Harvey, D. (1982) The Limits to Capital, Oxford: Basil Blackwell. p. 373. 38 39 Fragments from the Atacama Desert, South America

[Felipe Palma: PhD candidate Visual Sociology]

These brief snapshots of the Atacama Desert are part of my ongoing PhD project in Visual Sociology. The main goal of my project is to construct an audiovisual map of this territory. Each of the presented sections highlights one of the episodes that will compose my film: I. The Ritual Festivities, II. The Mining Industry, and III. The Native Communities..

The nitrate industry is dying quickly, exhausted; it is no “As you might have read in the quotes above, that is just longer able to continue feeding fiscal voracity. All efforts a sample of the thought they have over us. Explorers made ​​by the government to extend the old regime are and scientists wrote some of those words, which make only serving to precipitate the last gasps of the victim.1 us wonder: For what is this science then? To treat us like animals? To oppress us? To despise us? We believe the answer is yes. For years - and even today, we have been their “object of study”, we have been exhibited in zoos, our bones in museums, and we are now exhibited in books and magazines. “The Indians still have no soul” therefore no rights. But we’re not objects, we are not guinea pigs for absurd theories that only serve to fill someone’s ego.” 2 The ChyoChyo had bitter defeats. He enjoyed light but his darkness followed the same proportion. His anger was as big as his sympathy. Loved and hated with equal intensity. And along this transit arose beauty, like a desperate attempt to hold on to the cliff. Here is laid the ethics: the only necessary challenge is to mediate between the opposites. Or to put The three pictures shown above were taken during a collective it in a more festive way: nothing good comes without some evilness. Which also could be: there is no possible synthesis ethnography done in 2010. but rather procession between extremes. And Pachacamac climbs up the hill and throws the four cardinal points to Credits: attempt give some order to the world. Picture 1/ Pablo Iriarte; Picture 2/ Felipe Palma; Picture 3/ Ignacio Llana. 1. Zig-Zag Magazine (1933). Editorial, 20th October 2. Carmelo Miranda (2013). President of Asociacion Espiritu Ancestral Lickan Antai 40 41 In search of Edgelands Urban PhotoFest walk

[Peter Coles: Visiting Research Fellow in the Centre for Urban and Community Research]

Untitled (July 3rd): objects found in my mother’s sewing drawers four years after her death

610 x 610mm digital inkjet prints mounted on aluminium, 201 As part of this year’s Urban PhotoFest in October, a group of nine photographers and I walked south-eastwards along the Greenway – a raised footpath that covers the Northern Outfall sewer – from Stratford to the Thames. Well, that was the plan. In fact, to get anywhere near the Thames in the three hours we had (officially) it was necessary to turn off the Greenway about two-thirds of the way to its end and follow the Capital Ring path to Beckton Park, London City Airport and the Royal Albert Dock. Two of the group did exactly that, as, after a few hours, the end of the Greenway didn’t seem anywhere in sight, while time was passing and feet were getting tired. One of the group turned back at Plaistow, as she’d left her car at Stratford station in a cripplingly expensive car park, and also wanted to enjoy the pleasure of going back over the walk from the opposite direction, with new insights into what she’d already seen (or missed). Two others decided to catch a bus back to Stratford when their Achilles tendons started to complain. Meanwhile, four of us decided to trudge doggedly on the last couple of miles in search of the eastern end of the Greenway, and what the poets Paul Farley and Michael Symmons Roberts aptly named ‘Edgelands’.

I’ve walked along the Greenway from the Abbey Mills 15-foot high mesh fences around the site, making it look Pumping Station – not far from Stratford High Street like a nuclear power station, rather than a complex of (or indeed West Ham tube) – many times, usually past Victorian hydraulic machinery to pump Londoners’ poo. the Olympic site and as far as the Lee Navigation canal, Indeed, these fences and razor wire have become part of before following the canal to Hackney Wick, or more the signature of the Olympic site and its legacy. So much recently, to enter the Olympic site itself. In that direction, for inclusion. it’s an interesting, surprising and varied walk, with views over East London’s skyline, before dipping into the almost This part of the Greenway is riddled with tributaries rural tranquillity of the canal. But the walk east from and creeks off the Lea river, like Abbey Creek, which Stratford High Street is different. was at low tide as we passed over the bridge. A few wading birds poked around in mud the colour of The first couple of miles are fascinating, the jewel perhaps elephant hide, pocked with supermarket trolleys and being the old Abbey Mills Pumping Station itself. Like rubber tyres. Walking southeast, the footpath offers several other buildings designed by an engineer – this one fine far-off views of the glass and concrete of Canary by Joseph Bazalgette – it seems to be the creation of a Wharf and Bankertown. And in the foreground, unusual ‘nobody’ trying to rise above the crowd by leaving behind rooftop views over a disappearing part of East London. a wonder-of-the-Earth monument – like Simon Rodia’s A Victorian school, workers’ houses from the time when 30-metre high Watts Towers in Los Angeles, made out there were still factories (and work) here. On the right, of junk, glass, coke bottle tops and chipped pottery; or we looked down over the East London Cemetery, and the Palais idéal of postman, Ferdinand Cheval (le Facteur the Memorial Recreation Ground. A muscle-bound young Cheval) in the Drôme region of France. Bazalgette’s man did pull-ups from the crossbar of a rugby goalpost to pumping station is more like a Byzantine church than impress his equally fit-looking girlfriend, while the Voice a waterworks, with its bell tower, ornate brickwork and of God bellowed through loudspeakers as an evangelical columns. Before the Olympic development of 2012 it was priest addressed an increasingly fervent congregation in possible to get quite close to the building and even walk what looked like the sports pavilion. around its perimeter along unofficial paths made by kids and dog walkers. But no longer. Spirals of razor wire cap 42 43 Just after Newham Hospital the two fellow walkers who had decided to take the Capital Ring path peeled off. The Greenway by now had become rather boring, at least close up. It was straight, manicured and featureless, rather like a Dutch tramway. Or at least the features hadn’t changed much for an hour or so, even if the middle ground and foreground still looked interesting. But you needed a telephoto lens to capture anything interesting. Even so, four of us decided to carry on, spurred by an iPhone map that promised a sewage works, gasometers and the Thames, not far away.

Indeed, a big change came as soon as we crossed under Newham Way and picked up the last leg of the Greenway on the other side of a vast traffic interchange. For the first time in three hours we had to wait for a green light to cross a road. The previously monotonous gravelled path took on the character of a narrow country lane, with high brambles on either side. To the right, the surreal Beckton Alps ski slopes. And then, coming towards us at a lick, was a pony and trap with two young men perched on a low-slung bench behind the horse. An instant change of pace. The skyline became more industrial, with new boxlike factories next to the defunct ironmongery of far-off gasworks. Giant hogweed mimicked the skeletal industrial towers.

Finally, we reached the end of the Greenway. But it wasn’t the end I’d anticipated – a theme park of sewage works and gas storage tanks next to the Thames. Instead, the path just petered out, with two main filaments – one going left towards a superstore and the other, right, beside a soft drinks bottling plant. Straight ahead, a dingy litter-strewn track through the scrub under the motorway, that led nowhere.

We backtracked, past a bench festooned with hamburger cartons and coke cans, looking for a way above ground to cross the dual carriageway. As electricity pylons strode overhead we finally came out onto the road. There, in the distance, was the sewage works and a few bits of industrial architecture, but still too far for tired legs to reach now. And no sign of the river. We crossed back and into the undergrowth. A bit further on, a cycle path led off to Beckton housing estate and what promised to be the quick way home, while a disused spiral footpath suggested another way out. We decided to take the long, uncertain route, and not be cheated of the river view at least. But the path led only to an abandoned bridge, flanked with Soviet-style street lighting. It seemed to go nowhere, yet an occasional car careered around a hidden corner, as if we were on a Frankenheimer film set. From this one- sided bridge, we could see a scrap of salt marsh meadow, the Gallions Reach Docklands Light Railway station and glimpses of City Airport running beside the monotonous remnant of the once glorious Royal Albert Docks.

This wasn’t the romantic, derelict industrial scene I’d imagined. But it was, nonetheless an Edgeland: “…where the city’s dirty secrets are laid bare, and successive human utilities scar the earth or stand cheek by jowl with one another; complicated, unexamined places that thrive on disregard, if we could only put aside our nostalgia for places we’ve never really known and see them afresh.” 44 45 A Sense of deja vu: from Peckham to the King’s Road.

[Luna Glucksberg: Researcher, CUCR]

“Yes there are boutiques but there are My previous field site was Peckham and its council estates. However, this process is gathering momentum, and one of also Starbucks, Boots and Holland and Barrett, Living and working there meant I was well acquainted with its side effects is how it is increasingly hard for councils to phone shops, builders, charity shops, dirt on the the ways in which essentializing works in ‘quasi’ realistic hold on to their housing stock in the centre of London, as pavement. It’s not as hyper-clean and posh and documentaries and reality TV shows, as well as in fiction. the trend is for “Section 106” money to be spent to build It is all in the cuts, the careful editing out of anything social housing “elsewhere”. Out of sight, away from the it’s not always sunny, of course. green or pleasant or even human – the landscapes are centre, which is simply too valuable to be inhabited by almost always empty of anyone a part from “scary” youths anyone but the very rich. Incidentally, the narrative and Plus there are buses, there are older people and or (too) young mothers pushing (too many) prams. rethoric of mixed communities being inherently “good” mothers/au pairs with children and pushing The cameras linger on dirty staircases and dingy shops, does not seem to apply in these areas. prams, and there are many more foreigners than carefully portrayed in the worst possible light. This is how the show allows for. Most of what I hear spoken inner-city estates come to symbolize and stand for all that We know, from robust literature, that the more people’s around me is not English. is wrong with society, repositories of the nasty poor, the lives are spatially segregated, the more they live with degenerate, defective and incurable. people who are only like them, the more likely they are People with tattoos walking around, skinheads, to believe in negative media stereotypes of other social As a social scientist, I am only too aware of how those groups because they have no meaningful interactions with not just typical Sloanes. media representations have played a crucial role in the them. Cities, and most certainly London, have always been demolition, regeneration and gentrification of this - and I about people from different backgrounds mixing together, Boarded up shop on the corner of Smith Street suspect many more - area, shrouding these processes in against segregation by income and origin. What we are and Kings Road. narratives of recycling and improvement while effectively witnessing today is the polar opposite, and this is being displacing thousands of poor inner city dwellers. And fought at many different levels, not just that of housing Net.a.porter.com van. Same day fashion delivery. yet, sitting in a café on a little side street, what I was prices and market forces. witnessing in Chelsea was exactly the same sort of the 1 Busy road, buses, fire engines and police as well extreme editing and intense glamorizing and essentializing David Graeber argues that the most important battles are as posh cars, white vans, range rovers, white that places like Peckham usually receive, only in reverse. fought at the level of imagination, specifically when what cabs. It was obvious that the King’s Road in real life did not is at stake is what value is, and what is valuable, even more look anything like the one shown in MIC, just as real life than the subsequent fights about the acquisition of said Some very smartly dressed people and many housing estates don’t look anything like their media value. If spaces like Chelsea, through media imagery, are more normal people as well, tourists and representations. being created and reproduced as even more segregated workers, a lot of construction workers and than they already are, the battle to stake a claim for a city What is happening in the centre of London at the moment that belongs to us all becomes much harder. Just as the builders and delivery people around (and the is an incredibly intense process of exclusion of all but estates become “naturally” the receptacles of all our worse sandwich shops to cater for them, as well as the the most affluent inhabitants, those who can command fears, Chelsea becomes the natural playground of only the posh restaurants).” economic and financial resources way above the average, rich and famous. or even the well paid, Londoner. Areas where media Chelsea, and the King’s Road, was my field-site, and executives, lawyers and doctors feel “excluded” and priced As the connections between those at the top and those at these were the notes I took on my very first day. What is out. We obviously need to think about different terms – the bottom become ever more strained, the entitlement remarkable here are two things: one, I was immediately, from displacement, for example – because in these cases of those who own most of the resources – economic instinctively reading the space through the images of individuals often mourn their area but find themselves but also educational, social and symbolic, of course – a media product, the reality TV show Made in Chelsea, with a few million pounds to spend to rehome themselves becomes naturalized, just as the abomination and essential which I had previously watched, and comparing it with it, somewhere else, and this is simply not the same as a unworthiness of the dysfunctional poor is. Connecting mainly being disappointed with the ‘real’ thing vis a vi the council tenant being moved out of the city without any say these two spheres and highlighting their interdependence hyper-beautiful, on screen version of Chelsea. Secondly, in it. and their mutually constitutive relations is not easy, of this realization gave me a profound sense of deja vu: I had course, but it is essential. And it is all but impossible to do been there before, only in a different place. if we don’t look up, as well as down.

1. Graeber, D. (2001). Toward an anthropological theory of value: the 46 false coin of our own dreams. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Contributors

LES BACK: DEPARTMENT OF SOCIOLOGY, GOLDSMITHS COLLEGE FRANCISCO CALAFATE-FARIA: RESEARCH FELLOW, CUCR DIANE CHALUMEAU: ARCHITECTURE STUDENT/ERASMUS AT TUM LORÈNE CHIRON: ARCHITECTURE STUDENT/ERASMUS AT TUM PETER COLES: VISITING RESEARCH FELLOW IN THE CENTRE FOR URBAN AND COMMUNITY RESEARCH BEBHINN EGAN: ARCHITECTURE STUDENT/ERASMUS AT TUM HEBA ELKHALIFA: ARCHITECTURE STUDENT/ERASMUS AT TUM LUNA GLUCKSBERG: RESEARCHER, CUCR DR YASMIN GUNARATNAM: SENIOR LECTURER IN SOCIOLOGY KATA HALASZ: PHD CANDIDATE VISUAL SOCIOLOGY MATHIEU HILGERS: VISITING FELLOW, CUCR; ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR LAMC FREE UNIVERSITY OF BRUSSELS JOON IAN WONG: JOURNALIST AND GRADUATE OF MA INTERACTIVE MEDIA: CRITICAL THEORY & PRACTICE DAVID JACKSON: MA PHOTOGRAPHY & URBAN CULTURES DAVID KENDALL: VISITING RESEARCH FELLOW, CUCR, GOLDSMITHS, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON CLAIRE LEVY: RESEARCHER, CUCR & EDITOR OF CUCR BLOG. PETER LUCK: CROSSING LINES EMILY NICHOLLS: PHD CANDIDATE IN VISUAL SOCIOLOGY FELIPE PALMA: PHD CANDIDATE VISUAL SOCIOLOGY ANTHONY PALMER: FORMER MA PHOTOGRAPHY & URBAN CULTURES CATARINA QUEIRÓS: ARCHITECTURE STUDENT/ERASMUS AT TUM DR ALEX RHYS-TAYLOR: DEPUTY DIRECTOR, CUCR Photo: Peter Coles MICHAEL RODGERS: CROSSING LINES DR ALISON ROOKE: CO-DIRECTOR CUCR HARRIET SMITH: PHD CANDIDATE VISUAL SOCIOLOGY & FREELANCE RESEARCHER CUCR CHRISTIAN VON WISSEL: PHD CANDIDATE VISUAL SOCIOLOGY & TEACHING ASSISTANT AT MUNICH TECHNOLOGICAL UNIVERSITY’ (TUM)

48 A selection of recent publications from the CUCR

Bates, C. (eds) (2014). Video Methods: Social Science Kendall, D. (2014). 'Always Let the Road Decide' in Research in Motion. Routledge, New York. Architecture, Photography and the Contemporary Past, Göteborg, Sweden: Ernst Cassirer-sällskapet. Back, L. & Sinha, S. (2013). You’ve Got A Text from UKBA: Technologies of Control and Connection, Discover Knowles, C. (2014). 'Dancing with bulldozers: Migrant life Society, 2 , 12th October http://www.discoversociety.org/ on Beijing's periphery' In City: analysis of urban trends, stop-press-youve-got-a-text-from-ukba-technologies-of- culture, theory, policy, action vol 18, no. 1, pp. 52-68. control-and-connection-2/ Knowles, C. (2014). Flip-flop. A Journey through Back, L. (2014). “Police and Thieves as a Political Proverb: Globalisation's Backroads. London: Pluto Press. Junior Murvin’s Gift”, Theory, Culture and Society, 17th January http://theoryculturesociety.org/les-back-on- Rhys-Taylor, A. (2014). “Intersemiotic Fruit: Mangoes, junior-murvin/ Multiculture and the City.” In Jones, H. and Jackson, E. (eds) Stories of Cosmopolitan Belonging: Emotion and Benson, M. (2014, Online First) ‘Trajectories of middle- Location, Routledge. class belonging: the dynamics of place attachment and classed identities’, UrbanStudies. Rhys-Taylor, A. (2014). “Urban Sensations: A Retrospective of Multisensory Drift.” In Howes, D. (eds) A Borda-González, A, Kendall, D, Nokhasteh, A, Traoré, Cultural History of the Senses in the Modern Age, 1920- M. (2014). 'Paris 19: Mobility, Memory and Migration' in 2000. London, New York: Bloomsbury. Bloom, T., Nair, P. Migration across Boundaries: Why Migration Research Needs an Interdisciplinary Approach. Sassatelli, M. (2014). ‘The Biennalization of the art world: London: Ashgate. the culture of cultural events’, in L. Hanquinet, L. and Savage, M. (eds) Handbook of The Sociology of Art and Halasz, K. (eds) (2014). The Future of Art is Urban. Culture, Routledge. Catalogue. London. Sassatelli, M. (2014). ‘European festivals and the creation Jackson, E. and Benson, M. (2014). ‘Neither ‘Deepest, of a cultural public sphere’ in Maughan, C. and Bianchini, Darkest Peckham’, nor ‘Run of the Mill’ East Dulwich: F. (eds) Festivals in Focus. Collected works in honour of the middle class and their ‘others’ in an inner London Dragan Klaic, Central European University Press. neighbourhood’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, vol. 38, no. 4, pp 1195–1210,

To see expanded articles and images from this Streetsigns edition and other articles by CUCR members go to the CUCR blog : https://cucrblog.wordpress.com ISSN 2043-0124