great cities need great sleuths
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Tag Archives: London
city as media
Archigram, Instant City (1969)
The concept of city-as-media is not new. Since at least the 1960s and 70s, with the explosion of cheap consumer electronics and the accessibility of telecommunication systems in urban centers around the world, artists and architects have been at the vanguard of creating images and theories that elaborate this reality of contemporary urban life. In the 1960′s, London-based architectural collective Archigram represented a new generation of students plugged in to popular culture and mass mediated urban living. Departing from the architect’s directive to produce plans for buildings, they began to create images (drawings, cartoons, collages) that mirrored the emerging spatial organization of the city, and reflected the realities of young urban dwellers.
research as exhibition
This event took place last May, but there is a podcast which might be of interest to some of you researchers interested in thinking of alternative ways to present your work, and to think through the research process itself.
There seems to be funding in Britain available from AHRC and the ESRC for research that takes creative forms, and that overlaps with curatorial and artistic practice. Some of the speakers on the panels have quite practical advice about how to go about getting such funding, and thinking through creative research practice.
Beyond the Academy
Research as Exhibition
Friday 14 May 2010, 10.00–18.30
SOLD OUT
The exhibition is increasingly being reframed as a ‘research output’, but what can new forms of research and collaboration bring to the concept and curatorship of the exhibition? Is the idea of the exhibition being distorted or creatively extended by new disciplinary practices and knowledge? In what ways do new forms of research exhibitions create new types of knowledge and experience for the audience?
Confirmed speakers include Dr Gail Lambourne, Professor Bruno Latour, Dr Angus Carlyle,Irene Revell, John Byrne, Alistair Hudson, Dr Ken Neil, Dr Leslie Topp, Professor Felix Driver,Professor David Cotterrell, Professor Oriana Baddeley, Dr Noortje Marres, Kate Southworth,Dr Susan Pui San Lok, Dr Brian Dillon, Professor David Solkin and Peter Ride.
MJ
(from a paper, given with Barbara Adams, at the Royal Academy of British Architects, London, July 2009)
I remember the first Michael Jackson music video I ever saw; in my grandparents’ living room in Lagos, during the evening hour when state television showed the latest in American, British and Caribbean black pop music.
The glowing halo of curly black hair, the even skin, shy white smile. The fragile teen-aged body. Tuxedo jacket open, with a large, loosely-tied bowtie, sleeves pushed up to the elbows, one hand finger-snapping, one hand in pocket. White socks, black loafers.
Falling suddenly, into a marbled sky, and to me, an avid marble collector, and fan of blowing soap bubbles, this seemed like a dream—I want to be there! I want to be where he is. He splits into 3 loosely synchronized selves in this music video, each one imploring me, in stereo, not to stop til I get enough rocking, snapping, spinning, freezing.
Here, I should tell you what this is not about:
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waacking the city
Waacking is a form of house dance which had its heyday in the 1970s. But these London rockers are part of a new wave of dancers keeping this New York City tradition alive. I love this video, in which you see the way the dance itself is a response to the atmosphere of the night time city. In the deserted streets of London’s Chinatown, they glitter and glow like lanterns.
London calling
The city of our imaginations was London. In Lagos of the 1980′s “London” was a magic sound: its very utterance conveyed unattainable sophistication, hipness, style, escape. London stole my father for a few years of study. London bathed the in-crowd at school with the “been-to” glow. A wash of light followed even those whose cousins-fathers-sister-friend-daughters-boyfriends were rumored to have visited that fabled city.
Like many schoolchildren, I knew the London of Dickens, of the Queen; the London of black taxis and Big Ben. So when this Terence Trent D’Arby video slid into heavy rotation on state television, I was unprepared for this other, intensely romantic London, of warehouses and dive bars, of motorcycles, dandies and miscegenation. This is when London became a real place, a tangible desire of mine.
Of course, this desire maintained intensity for a brief season, and I spent my adolescence in that unlikely emerald city, Seattle, and later New York. With each new city, London’s call grew fainter. I doubt I will ever live there. But thanks to the internet, I’ll always have Terence.
