alternative routes – Heygate on the move

Heygate, summer 2010: even before the ‘bigness’ of its architecture and the ‘abandonment’ of its spaces, it was the seemingly endless possibility to move about its elevated walkways, spiral ramps and stairs that fascinated me the most: pure perception on alternative routes…

“Perception… is not the achievement of a mind in a body, but of the organism as a whole in its environment, and is tantamount to the organism’s own exploratory movement through the world.” (Gibson, 1979, cited in Ingold, 2000: 3)

Canary Wharf, too

Canary Wharf ‘detour’

Like English life as a whole, nothing in Brooklands could be taken at face value.

JG Ballard, Kingdom Come

There still is life, however.  Birds chirp; sparrows, they must be.  Their small voices are clear and sharp, nails on glass: there’s no longer any sound of traffic to drown them out.

Margaret Atwood, The Year of the Flood

On a cold evening in early March, Claire Haslam, Alex McIlhiney and Christian von Wissel took a photographic walk around Canary Wharf, variously equipped with equipment, gloves and ideas.

These are some initial impressions, without an explicit agenda but trying (unsuccessfully?) not to take the ‘usual’ picture of Canary Wharf, and thinking about the strange fairytale park in the heart of the glass desert.

The Elephant and Castle part 1: materiality

From Christian von Wissel:

‘On Photographing Materiality’

Lea Valley Winter Walk Two

seeing with the feet: Pudding Mill Lane, Bow Interchange, Bow Creek, Limehouse Cut to Atlantic Wharf (detour vB)

Lea Valley Winter Walk One

seeing with the feet: Three Mills, Bow Creek, River Lea to Langdon Park. (detour CL)