knit one street purl one city

robinson in ruins

Soon to be released by the BFI is Patrick Keiller’s new film, Robinson in Ruins, which has new narrator Vanessa Redgrave picking up the story of Robinson’s investigations after London / Robinson in Space.

Synopsis from the BFI site :

Patrick Keiller’s latest sees his shadowy, somewhat eccentric titular researcher embark on another tour of ‘sites of scientific and historical interest’ in and around Oxford.

A decade after his earlier trips around London and England, film cans and writings are discovered suggesting that Robinson – though is that his real name? – resumed his investigations upon release from prison. Keen to cure the world of ‘a great malady’ (symptoms include the banking crisis, global warming, war in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the transfer of British land to obscure owners), Robinson sought – or so we’re told by an ex-lover (Vanessa Redgrave) of the now deceased narrator of the first two films – to communicate with ‘non-human intelligences’ determined to preserve life on Earth… Keiller’s witty, revealing script weaves together philosophy, the arts, history, politics, economics, science, agriculture, architecture and much else, even as surreal, mysterious and beautiful images, imbued with a deep love of the natural world, remind us of what’s at risk. Timely indeed.
- Geoff Andrew

Read an excellent interview with Patrick Keiller at 3AM magazine

Ode to J. Smith : travis, dahl + birdsall

Taken last week on Wellington at West Regent in Glasgow, Travis’ Omnific eye billsticker is revealed again; probably first posted (and then covered over many times since) in summer 2008.

The eye design was taken off a 1980s Roald Dahl book cover. It’s classic late-old-school (i.e., just before macs came) graphic design, from the master of late-old-school british graphic design, Derek Birdsall.

If you’re interested in street typography, pop over to the excellent Letterpool who are preparing a new book on London.

adam curtis on debt

Best person to tackle it – should turn out to be a classic Curtis documentary.

\\I am researching this area, and I thought I would put up some of the films from the BBC archive from the time when there was moral disapproval by those in power of the “lower orders” wanting to “live beyond their means”.

And beyond that there is a growing envy and resentment.//

See the films here.

Ian tomlinson murder

No charge. Not a one. Explanation full of lengthy legal machinations based on the coroner’s conflicting evidence – a complete red herring of an excuse. The actual event takes them one sentence to describe, in amongst all the bull (oddly no mention of Ian Tomlinson’s head hitting the ground).

What with Kenny MacAskill getting caught with his pants down in front of the president this week (I wish Americans would recognise that Scottish people died too – it’s not all about them), one thing is clear.

Black IS white. Right IS wrong.

Got that?

Maybe the IPCC have something up their concealed sleeves – or maybe a simple legal embargo – either way the truth will out, even if the murderer gets let off with a flea in their ear like poor Delroy Smellie, assaulted with a ferocious, deadly 150ml cardboard orange juice carton held at arms length. Oh poor Delroy, what a tragedy. THANK YOU Delroy, belatedly, for standing up to such a devilishly evil little female, out to crush you and all we hold dear with her moriarty-ish tiny little limbs – and deeply depraved miniature cardboard orange-juice carton. Suburbia is safe again thanks to you, Captain Corrupt.

Not forgotten.

Still waiting, 2010.

new labour – born in edinburgh

Thirteen years ago on 2 May 1997, Tony Blair ended the Thatcher years by defeating John Major. Thatcher’s period in office brought huge transition to the UK, both for country and individual; a transition that we still haven’t fully absorbed.

But it was clear to everyone thirteen years ago that this wasn’t going to be a re-run of James Callaghan’s ficticious “crisis what crisis” denouement. No – we all smelt the good times, Did We Not.

Then Diana died on 31 august 1997. But it was OK – we found that grief unified our sense of britishness; like any family, there were disagreements, yes; the Queen’s apparent reluctance to grieve confused many, for instance.

The many turned to money soon after – easy credit and a necessary inflation in the value of property to feed it… but yeah, we know how that one worked out.

So where did this golden age for the middle classes begin
–––––––––––––––––––––––

Firstly, the US
The Americans, through Blair’s more experienced doppleganger, Bill Clinton, became a dominant influence after the groundwork done by Thatcher and Reagan. The Simpsons had just started to gain an audience in 1997, and the corporate-owned internet was about to happen (these pernicious, high-consumerist, untouchable ad-vehicles still thrive today; it’s not all about physicalities like cola and starbucks and the baseball cap – that perennial sign of US cultural hegemony).

Secondly, society
Blair’s attempt to engender a fairer, more liberal society sadly resulted in a compaction rather than an enema of Thatcher’s policies – if you thought the inner city was grim in the 1970s, the 2000′s version… but yeah, we know how that one worked out too. The main problem was that the working classes (yes – working classes – this never was a flat society), demoralised by the decimation of the UK’s manufacturing base, took the liberal-left’s handout and never got up again. The Guardian newspaper then flourished as an enormous wave of social problem-solvers were recruited to look after the sub-working. But don’t shoot the messenger – I’m a guardian-reading chablis-sipper myself…

Lastly, the plot unravelled when most people – at last – at least subliminally – realised the purpose of fighting pointless, unwinnable wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Oil.
Insert your favourite Charlie Brooker-ism here.

Well just let me correct something there. Like the guardian, america is a hugely diverse collection of individuals and I do enjoy it. The “america” talked about here is of course our old 20c friends – corporations; unelected power brokers; their kissing cousins running the mainstream media channels.

So how come new labour and Edinburgh
–––––––––––––––––––––––

Fettes College, where Tony Blair was educated.
Edinburgh University, where Gordon Brown was educated.
Loretto School, Alistair Darling…

…and so on. The links with other heavyweights in the edinburgh firmament are manifold and eclectic.

So how come Edinburgh does London and ends up in bed with the US
–––––––––––––––––––––––

The answer is that the dynastic chain needs to remain intact, and flourishing. Cameron, Cameron, Cameron… isn’t that a Scottish name?

This reality is connected to Stephen Hawking, who said this week in connection with light-speed colonialism –

“If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn’t turn out well for the Native Americans”

Despite the fact Hawking has contradicted himself, there is a clue here. We – as in the UK, Germany, France, Ireland, Spain, Portugal and Russia, et al - would fail the DNA test if implicated in what our relatives have done since 1776.

An Old Day Has Set, Has It Not – the end of an era
–––––––––––––––––––––––

So… as mentioned in a previous post… who are you going to choose tomorrow – Diana, or Jessica?

image : Scots Dragoon Guards Museum entrance, Edinburgh Castle

Stephen Walter on BBC4

As mentioned before on fromztoa, our favourite mapmaker Stephen Walter features on BBC4′s Maps series, episode 2 here

magazines and iPad

This video summarises the thought processes involved in re-creating a magazine in a new way. That’s as in a new way since Caxton.

As an alternative, sure, to the print edition – but this is so immersive. Here’s Jack Schulze from BERG London, elucidating on the process.

Mag+ live with Popular Science+ from Bonnier on Vimeo.

By the way, it seems the 3G iPad is the one to go for… saving already for UK launch.

Catch more of Jack at the Horizonless Manhattan Project.

G20 1 year on

The death of innocent newsvendor Ian Tomlinson, murdered unofficially on-camera (and on denied official cctv) by a police officer on 1 April 2009 during the G20 protest walks remains an uncrime. So far (unlike the comments on MP’s behaviour by Jack Straw, broadcast on R4 Today programme, march 23 2010, on the Hewitt n’ Hoon Cash For Questions on which he stated more than once it took just 24hrs to ascertain without doubt “no criminal behaviour”) – there has been no word on Ian Tomlinson’s Metropolitan Police-employed TSG murderer being brought to justice.

How very strange – if we had beaten to death a fellow member of the public in broad daylight under numerous – and, naturally, especially-attentive that day – cctv there’s absolutely no doubt we’d be in jail by now, taking advantage of jail’s ready heroin and cocaine and crack supply – well you get the picture.

Today’s judgement (31 march 2010) on the so ridiculous its mildly funny (imagine rowan atkinson in police body armour… look out – she’s got a carton of orange juice – chharrgggeee!) TSG police attack on Nicola Fisher (who very sadly refused to be present in court) does not bode well for the outcome of the family of Ian Tomlinson’s search for justice. It looks like a softening-up of media channels before a not-proven verdict is forthcoming from the Crown Prosecution Service emissary Keir Starmer.

This is a dreadful ongoing tragedy for a family who have met face-to-face for probably the first time in their London lives the reality of a violence-sanctioned state-sponsored police stasi doing what comes naturally.

I hope Boris does the right thing and kybosh the now, by all indications, rather predictable result.

Will Self on psychogeography : R4 march 2010

On Broadcasting House this Sunday 21 March 2010, with Paddy O’Connell, with the hook of the BA strike and Self walking to Heathrow/JFK (an old story in media-years I know but he’s clearly still affected by it…).

||Everytime I do it it’s the shock of the realisation of where I am… it’s a kind of local sourcing of ones’ sense of being in the world… it does mint the whole city anew for me, I do this a lot, I walk out from Central London and it works every time…||

Liked this aside from Self : (on an underpass sign at heathrow) – No Pedestrian Access – go back to the Renaissance

Link to the original psychogeography piece in the Independent (oh those russians…). Sorry can’t locate the tv programme on the airport walk.

London Perceived 2

Just have to share this piece of text by V. S. Pritchett from my favourite book on London – London Perceived. If you have an interest in London, it’s a fine one to look out for second-hand (see previous post Evelyn Hofer :: london perceived).

(talking about the Tower of London…)
“All European cities have these lumps of dead history in them; they obstruct the mind, lie inertly across it for centuries and do no more than alert the fancy for an hour or two in these happy times when a sense of the past is a personal taste, a passing wonder before which we congratulate ourselves on our progress or, at any rate, on our change. But a real sense of the past cannot exist without a sense of the present. We are now closer to the Middle Ages than the Victorians were. [here I think he's talking generally about the just-experienced brutality of WWII as a retrograde step] These picturesque lumps bristle and wake up. In what way does the medieval ethos now differ from that of Europe or, indeed, the greater part of the world? The Tower means murder now, torture now, stranglings, treacheries, massacre, the solitary cell, the kick of the policeman’s boot. The scratchings on the walls of the Tower are the scratchings of Auschwitcz. We are reminded of what the words “struggle for power” mean in our own age. It may have astonished Victorians that Wren’s uncle, a harmless, dull, and climbing bishop, was shut up here for eighteen years; but that sort of thing does not astonish us today. It is normal. I say nothing of the Great. The Tower, grey and nasty, is awake again, and the dirty waters of the Thames lapping under Traitors’ Gate, where they rowed the fellows in, looks sly and has the light of a conniving eye.”

I haven’t done it but I imagine googling Tower of London will not trawl up anything even slightly approaching this analysis – written 47 years ago – and still good for our own time.