Written City 2: Cultural Blackspot

Belgrave Gate, Leicester, December 2009

Some posts back I alluded to a lack of confidence in what I was doing with my work and gave clues about the confusion of ideas tangling my mind.  My solution is threefold as follows...

1:  Just keep working anyway and reject old habits of self-sabotage.

2:  Maintain a programme of reading into the various ideas that currently preoccupy me.  Calm research and critical analysis should help me order my thoughts and decide how it all relates to my work once digested properly.

3:  Accept that, for all the theorising, it’s direct experience that really underlies my work.  If in doubt, just get out there and keep looking.

These points aren’t novel and It's a little pathetic how long I've taken to recognise them.  Anyway, the first two points are taking care of themselves.  This post is about the third and how important a source of welcome chance it can be.

My regular drive to work passes a building that always captures my attention.  It’s in a dilapidated part of town between two major roundabouts and is essentially a shell from which the whole façade has been removed and boarded up.  I can’t remember what it was originally and can only assume it represents a failed redevelopment project and speculate on the reasons.  What originally struck me two years ago was the contrast between the overall expanse of blank, grey plywood above and the section at street level that became an evolving fly-poster’s bulletin board.

Since then, I’ve photographed the site repeatedly, relishing the tattered collage of successive posters and formulating ideas about the processes of transformation that affect urban neighbourhoods and the relationship between unofficial and approved information streams.  More recently, I’ve noticed the Council’s attempts, here and elsewhere, to obliterate fly-posters under coats of dismal brown paint.  One can only marvel at the covering of the polychromatic evidence of a vibrant entertainment culture with a uniform hue likely to remove all visual joy from the environment.  Does this really improve Leicester?  Is a shored-up monument to systematic shortcomings improved by preserving its facelessness?

Well, it really is a gift that keeps giving.  Recently, I noticed the appearance of ‘Cultural Blackspot’ posters on the plywood and on a couple of other fly-posting sites I regularly monitor.  They are already torn so the urgency to document them sent me back into the Friday evening rush hour with my camera.

Frog Island, Leicester

So what are these about?  Initially, I wondered if it was another bizarre tactic of the council’s but Internet research indicates that there may be more to it.  It seems the symbol has appeared around the UK for some years and there are numerous images of it on flikr but I’ve uncovered no definitive explanation.  Is it a straightforward anti ‘vandalism’ campaign or a protest against official attempts to stifle ‘street' culture or leave cities prey to planning blight and property speculation?  Could it be a critique of nearby cultural activity?  An artist called Brian Jones claims the image was stolen from him whilst there are suggestions it’s connected to the anti-Capitalist movement - particularly the Situationist inspired detournements of the Adbusters group.  

Photo:  Beatnic, London, 2007

Given my readings into Situationism and involvement with public texts this really fascinates me.  Does anyone know the real story?