Savage Messiah: DELIRIOUS ANXIETY STATES---DRIFTS IN A SPECIAL ECO...

Laura Oldfield Fords drifts (psychogeographic derive) are always interesting. And her narrative drawings illuminating. This one in Futian (near to Hong Kong) China is remarkable for the majority of the physical culture being international. Mostly it could be anywhere on the planet. Only the people, and an occasional building, exhibit local character. Even then you get Chinese-styled McDonald's burger dive. It reminds us all that the Chinese boom - on which world economic health depends - is fragile. Social strains of Milton-Friedman Thatcherite Reagonomics informed economic policies leading wealth inequalities, are also leading to unrest, riot, and acting as a brake on development.

Please follow the link below for more

Savage Messiah: DELIRIOUS ANXIETY STATES---DRIFTS IN A SPECIAL ECO...: Delirious anxiety states--- 狂热的焦 THE FUTURE IS OBSIDIAN, BLACK MIRROR REFLECTING BLACK SUN--- 未来如黑曜石，黑色镜面折射出黑色太阳 AGIP//CHEVRON//T...

Savage Messiah - book is....

....published October 17th http://www.versobooks.com/books/1022-savage-messiah
Worth a squint for the psychogeographic drifts around London -

Smiley Culture, Laura Oldfield Ford, Police Offficer No Justice No Peace

Hackney Wicked

Next Weekend: Friday 29th July – Sunday 31st July 2011 pop down to Hackney Wicked festival - between Victoria Park and The River Lea Festival website


festival map


It is framed in an area bounded by Victoria Park, the River Lea, the A12 (fast road) and the Old Ford across the River Lea.  And centred on Hackney Wick rail station.The south border is the Old Ford, the main river crossing from the Iron Age, Roman and medieval times afore queen Matilda almost drowned and had Bow Bridge built - to ease her route to Barking Abbey.

Oh and you might just have noticed the Olympics site on the opposite bank of the river (& cut)


Laura Oldfield Ford has a poster site at White Post Lane, her drawings are always stimulating for people interested in Landscapes and the world around them


AND, You can't get anything more appropriate than a  Coracle Regatta for a festival on the site of the Iron Age river crossing on the main road between Camulodunum (Colchester) and Calleva (Calleda/Coed) Atrebatum (Silchester). Both were Pre-Roman towns and capitals of minor states. Even if the coracles start a we bit upstream of the crossing point.

Landscape and memory

The significance of Alessia Avellino's art - apart from a mastery of drawing technique - is that they are of memorised landscapes. Images may be twisted or deformed but they capture the CHARACTER of the place, as in Lloyds Building

and St Pancras (2) London  

 

Landscapes are ineluctably bound up with memories - as part of how we order and rationalise our memories. They provide a card index to events, names, people, as well as an environment to interact in. Kristiina Sandoe's art makes explicit the ordering of the landscape by human intervention, particularly the linear, and (consequently) narrative form of trackways through landscapes. Laura Oldfield Ford's psychogeographic method means that her images are always within a multilinear narrative context. Whilst they have many currents the main flow is always one of a critique of the growing inequality of access to good quality environment and "confronting the polite veneer of redevelopment spectacle" .  Take a good look at the world around you - these artists are.

West Midlands "Heart of Landscape" and London?

An interesting example of attempts to implement the European Landscape convention is the West Midlands Heart of Landscape website , which facilitates public participation in landscape policies by allowing folk to highlight aspects that they like. There's also a "Heart of Landscape" booklet  to accompany the website and provide policy background.

Where are the opportunities for Londoners to express their priorities about the London Landscape?  Are not the 7million+ Londoners denied their treaty-rights to participate in Landscape Policies, by law? and mightn't this be actionable by court action in Europe?  London better get it's act together.

Meanwhile, Laura Oldfield Ford's Psychogeographic Blog provides one of the few inciteful commentaries on the London Landscape