Look Again, Again

 

All Images: Digital Photo-Manipulation, 2020 (Original Photos: Northeast Leicester, August 2020)

My two most recent architectural meditations (entitled 'Look Again 1 & 2') both dealt with the moments of spontaneous revelation that often cause some habitually disregarded or over-familiar landmark to take on a sudden resonance, from which more considered thought narratives may subsequently flow.  I've frequently reflected on this in recent times, coming to recognise that - however much I may try to cultivate or facilitate multiple strands of potential meaning within my work, the initial spark still comes from something experienced in the moment - out there in my immediate environment.  My own instincts will never be those of the true Conceptualist, it seems, for - important though they may be, the ideas come second to the subject (a close second - but definitely still second).

Both of these recent instances featured overlooked examples of 'forgotten' Modernism hiding in plain, everyday sight, within the local landscape.  As such, both provided obvious portals to a fairly standard hauntological reading - forging connections between a discredited set of aesthetic conventions, the societal assumptions they might have once represented, and - by extension, a soft philosophical/political meditation on the idea of 'lost futures' or misplaced utopias.  Others have written far more eloquently on those themes than I could ever manage - and constructed accompanying artistic genres and aesthetic tropes, to boot.  That's not too important here though, for it now seems that more specific or topical connections may have also emerged from my modest little deriviste explorations of urban territory, and by sheer coincidence.

I've made no secret of the fact that, whilst this slightly aimless exploration of the cities in which I live or visit, is a long-established habit of mine - they have ramped up significantly during the recent months of lockdown and general Covid-19 conditions.  Indeed, my attraction to the two sites under discussion, was as a direct result of encountering them from an unfamiliar direction, or under particular conditions, whilst out on one of the numerous extended bike rides that characterised the lost summer of 2020, for me.

It's also no secret that the situation has been a little different for us here in Leicester, than for the rest of Britain - for a few weeks, at least.  As has been widely reported, we gained the dubious honour of being the first British city to be subjected to stricter local lockdown restrictions - even as the rest of the country appeared to be enjoying a somewhat more relaxed situation throughout July and much of August.  Reports of dramatically spiking (if ineptly recorded) incidence of infection here, were accompanied by darker hints that this may be partially a result of inadequate safety standards and otherwise substandard working conditions in many of Leicester's clothing factories.  It's clearly dangerous to draw crude parallels between high infection statistics and the areas of highest economic deprivation, population density, or immigrant demographics, without proper, locally-informed analysis.  However, in Leicester, as elsewhere, it does seem that at least some of those dots may join up.  Further investigation - not least by The Guardian newspaper, has shed light upon some of the problematic working practices common amidst the 'grey' Fashion economy, that have long been Leicester's 'grubby little secret'.  That the vast majority of the contracting and sub-contracting garment businesses active in the city (and particularly in East Leicester, where Covid-19 numbers have been highest) form the supply chain for the Boohoo stable of fashion brands (also locally-based), raised eyebrows yet higher.

The long-term damage which may have been inflicted on the economic and social fabric of Leicester by an extended (and continuing) lock-down, and the degree to which the abuses and conditions which may have fuelled the situation, will become evident in the fullness of time.  Doubtless, should Boohoo seek to restore its share price and PR standing, by relocating its activities offshore (perhaps ducking adequate inspection/auditing of standards yet further) it will have a direct impact - not least on many of the city's most vulnerable families.

Of more selfish relevance to my own practice is the depiction of one of my own 'Look Again' subjects - namely, Cobden House, illustrating another investigative Guardian article on the matters above.  As I mentioned in my post about the building, it currently houses a number of businesses - one of which it now transpires, is linked with the payment of below-minimum wages to an exploited workforce.  Indeed, the paper has named it in a list of local companies at the heart of its investigations.

I guess it all goes to show that - for all that I might often feel like I'm simply pedalling around in my own, self-absorbed and slightly eccentric little art bubble, I can be stumbling upon a locus of significant events, without even knowing it.  If the initial encounter remains an essential singularity at the centre of my practice - the subsequent network of connections and potential readings, radiates out in many, unpredictable directions. 

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jul/03/leicester-coronavirus-lockdown-is-no-surprise-to-its-garment-factory-workers

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/aug/28/boohoo-leicester-factories-went-to-war

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/aug/28/boohoo-the-audits-and-an-industry-under-the-spotlight

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/aug/30/revealed-shocking-lack-of-regulation-at-leicester-garment-factories

       

Look Again 2

 

All Images, Northeast Leicester, August 2020

Here's another of Leicester's examples of forgotten Modernist architecture.  This one's only a few hundred metres from Cobden House (as featured in a recent post), and is clearly visible from the busy road that separates the two buildings.  In this case however, the original function has altered rather more dramatically [1.].  A greater degree of dilapidation is also in evidence.

Up until recent years, the building was operated by Leicester City Council as a training centre, serving various public sectors.  Indeed, it may have been purpose-built as such, I suspect.  If it originally had a fancy name - I'm not sure what it was.  By the time I attended a couple of training sessions there, sometime over the last decade, it was coming to the end of that role, and was simply referred to as 'St Matthews Training Centre'.  Despite the neglect and dilapidation that were already evident, it was however clear that it had originally be rather well equipped as an institution.  That in itself probably tells a story about the decline in public service provision in recent times.  Certainly the Local Authority here (as elsewhere - no doubt), has been forced to divest itself of many such facilities, and any work-related training I've received in recent years has been farmed out to private contractors and increasingly, accessed through a screen.

Anyway, my reacquaintance with the building was again, the result of my extensive two-wheeled explorations of less familiar tracts of the city, over recent months, and the significant expansion and adaptation of my mental map, which has resulted.  On numerous occasions, I have found myself plotting new routes through the St Matthews Estate, immediately to the Northeast of the City Centre - an area I had previously only ever really skirted around (and usually by car).  The estate itself is an extensive tract of public housing, made up mainly of numerous communal, but relatively low-rise blocks.  Although the relative poverty, and massively altered demographics [2.] of the neighbourhood, are clear for all to see, the extensive greenery between blocks, and carefully laid-out street plan still suggest something of the social idealism of the Post-War Consensus years, in which it was built.

Such complexes have tended to acquire a pretty poor reputation in subsequent years.  At worst, they've been labelled hot-beds of crime and social dysfunction.  Often they've been regarded as failed experiments and, in many places - slated for demolition or redevelopment.  Elsewhere, they've simply been allowed to slide into dilapidation and neglect, as public funds dwindle, and any idea of adequate social housing provision is allowed to wither on the vine.  However, I've yet to feel any real tangible threat in St Matthews, as I've pedalled my way ever deeper into the maze of streets and interconnecting alleyways and enclosed spaces.  The overall atmosphere is far from depressing, and there actually seems to be a considerable air of communality still operating.  My bike, camera and person remain unmolested, and I've generally been left alone to sample the various small thrills and revelations that occur as new territory unfolds before me.

As with Cobden House, this post is less about the factual aspects of a chosen subject, and more to do with that moment of immediate encounter, when something familiar - but overlooked, is suddenly revealed in a new light.  It's about that fleeting impression - triggering a subjective reaction, from which various, more considered thought-processes may flow.  I'd previously approached the building's canopied main entrance via the main road, with a practical reason to be there.  This time, I came upon it's most neglected aspect, unexpectedly, and from within the estate - having first navigated a series of interlocking, and slightly scruffy, public spaces.  I was very much in 'drifting mode', and the moment of surprise was critical - as was the perennial thrill of making new and unexpected connections, both on the map, and in time.  Viewed in blistering sunlight, the stack of shabby windows and Constructivist roof-level accents rose from a weed-infested compound, in something less reminiscent of mere societal change - and more of an wider civilisation in collapse.  For want of a better reference, it felt like a distinctly Ballardian moment.  The subsequent repeat visits to photograph - from various angles, a building that was there all along, and the kind of thought processes outlined above, all flowed from that one instant.

It may all sound a bit fanciful - I'll admit.  But I can only repeat that this whole process is all about snatching those moments of weird, ineffable poetry from 'The Everyday'.  It's also about accepting that, for me - they often arise from my being in a certain place, at a particular time, and under a specific set of conditions.

[1.] & [2.]:  Eagle eyes will spot that the building has most recently been occupied by an Islamic educational organisation - a fact which very much reflects the demands of the current community.  

Look Again 1

All Images: Northwest Leicester, August 2020

Part of the appeal of living in any city, of average size or above, is its ability to keep throwing up new instances of Psychogeographic resonance, even if one has dwelt amongst its streets and buildings for an extended period.  Sometimes this is to do with any dynamic city's tendency towards regeneration or expansion (as epitomised by my numerous construction-related photos of recent months)  The converse of that is, of course the numerous examples of picturesque decay or entropy to be found in many urban environments - particularly where economic decline, faltering investment (or global pandemic) have held sway.  Clearly, I'm no stranger to those either.  Often, it is the state of uneasy tension between those two tendencies - and the surprising juxtapositions it can generate, that supply the real thrills of urban observation.

But there's another, primarily subjective, category of psycho-geo surprise to be relished during routine urban drifts.  It has to do with the re-framing of the familiar or overlooked, and with the ability of a particular landmark or locality that one may have largely ignored, to suddenly reveal itself in anew.  Such (re)discoveries can signify the breaking of old assumptions, and presage the forging of new narratives or conceptual connections.  My last post dealt with the idea of an entirely new edifice suddenly emerging before my lens - as if having hidden in plain sight for weeks, or even months.  The building featured here also stands as an example of something stumbled across, as the result of a slight deviation in an habitual route.  However, what makes it worthy of comment here is the fact that it was here all along - suddenly appearing to take on a new significance, on a particular day, and in particular conditions, for reasons one can only seek to analyse after the event.

Cobden House, should be pretty hard to ignore.  Despite being situated amongst the workaday environs of Leicester's Cobden Street Industrial Estate, it rises impressively above its generally low-level surroundings, and is clearly visible from the busy link road which passes nearby.  It's also typical of the style of degraded post-war commercial Modernism that surely should surely appeal to my tastes on any day of the week.  Exhibiting defiantly monotonous window grids, and long, parallel balconies, the building combines Brutal aesthetics, with an aura of relative dilapidation.  The latter impression is somewhat deceptive - being something that often adheres to such buildings, even when reasonably well maintained (as here).  The now-standard narrative is, of course, one of a long-despised and supposedly 'failed' architectural style, lingering on as a dilapidated monument to a society (and associated economic orthodoxy), whose priorities changed decades ago.  Could many of its exemplars'  inability to age elegantly be a causal factor in this, or merely a result of it - I wonder?  Either way, Cobden House clearly still functions, but now as an expedient shelter for multiple scuffling manufacturing or distribution businesses (in which the city specialises) - but lacking any real sense of unified purpose or real vision.

But, of course, it's the external staircase tower, appended to one end of what would otherwise be a pretty featureless block, that gives the building its real presence(or even, drama).  It's a stylistic flourish not untypical of its era, and suggest that the architect of what must have always been envisaged as a largely functional edifice, was given scope to dream just a little.  It's urgent, ascending diagonals, and mildly futuristic capital speak of a faith in a technological future, and even the implied utopian impulse to create a better, more dynamic society, that now feel like pretty distant memories.  That seductive narrative of the failed utopia, and the future that never was, has been a staple for Hauntologists, wistfully deluded Marxists, and nostalgic Baby Boomers, for quite a while, and I probably fit into at least one of those categories myself.

But such reflections all come after the event of initial recognition (however rapidly).  As I've long reflected, it's that immediate moment of visual/atmospheric impact that really stimulates any  subsequent thought processes involved in my artistic noodlings.  In this case, a simple, unpredicted shortcut during one of my early evening cycle rides - and the choice to turn a certain corner at a particular angle, was enough to create the sense impression sufficient to reframe the building in an entirely new light.  The partial silhouetting of the staircase tower against a pale golden sky, in conjunction with the building's overall mass, and shadowy receding balconies, was sufficient to arrest my progress, and turn a glance into a gaze.  The reality is, I've passed Cobden House a thousand times, and even parked beneath it - while visiting nearby suppliers, as part of my day job.  But this was the first time I've actually pulled out a camera - as if encountering the sight/site for the first time.  That recognition of something ineffable and resonant, within the mundane, and possibly over-familiar, is at the heart of what I'm fumbling to express here.

In this occasion, the only camera available was on my phone.  With slightly shaky hands - and in rapidly fading light, I grabbed what I could (shown in essentially unedited form immediately above) - resolving to return with 'the big camera' to take some 'proper' shots, as soon as possible.  The paradox is, naturally, that you can't recapture a moment - but simply reflect further upon it.  Two days later - on one of the hottest, sun-drenched days of the year, I was certainly able to take more considered, and better composed, focused, or exposed shots.  I was also able to pay greater attention to the building's details, including the masses of boxes stacked against its upper windows (stimulating new narratives about possible current functions), and to the way the coiled razor wire around its perimeter wall create the impression of a fortified citadel.  But the quality of those shots is palpably altered, and as a result - so is their emotional effect.  Ultimately they are more about investigation, than about recognition.  Simple light levels may play a large part - to be sure, as must intention.  But I think there's something far more subjective at play also.  It's about remaining receptive to a certain kind of 'vibe' - often when least expected, or in (supposedly) the least promising circumstances.  It's the inability to adequately analyse that away in objective terms - and yet, to repeatedly experience such small-but-significant revelations within the everyday, which keeps me endlessly circulating through the back streets, housing complexes, and industrial estates of an unglamorous Midlands city, year after year.

The City Clears Its Lungs

All Images: Imperial Tobacco Horizon Site, West Nottingham, May 2019

As I discussed in my recent printmaking-related post, one of the biggest current influences on my local environment is the impact of significant redevelopment and construction work, here in West Leicester.  As I write, the clang of girders, and clatter of pneumatic wrenches drifts through my open window, as another section of the local skyline is filled in with a complex cage of steelwork.

But, before such transformative physical statements can be imposed on a city, it's normally necessary to clear space for them to occupy.  Indeed, this continual process of upheaval - of drawing, erasure and redrawing - of rising, falling, and rising again, is a big part of what lends any major conurbation its characteristic dynamism.  That churning dynamism, and the drive to invent, and reinvent themselves on a grand scale, is of course, what all cities have been about - ever since they first appeared as a mode of habitation, in the ancient Middle East.

Thus, before this blog, as seems likely, becomes an arena for my already expanding library of construction-related images - it seems only fitting to include a few relating to what goes on (or comes down) before.  In this case, the site under scrutiny is actually on the outskirts of Nottingham, rather in my own back yard - being the rapidly vanishing Imperial Tobacco 'Horizon' plant.  This edifice has long constituted an imposing behemoth on the western fringes of the city - an effect that was only magnified by its stark, Brutalist design.  It's perhaps only fitting then, that its removal from the landscape should play out with such post-apocalyptic grandeur.  My camera was certainly never going to resist a spectacle of such thrilling devastation.  

To read a little further into the events depicted, one could naturally find significance in the erasure of yet another large-scale concrete monument to the modernism of my childhood, or even draw some conclusions about the rapidity of our culture's turn away from recreational smoke inhalation.  And, depending on what replaces the plant - they may also represent  more evidence of our turn from manufacturing, towards a service and knowledge-based economy.

That's all perfectly valid.  But, to be honest, when I stood on a pile of rubble to take these shots, I was mostly just captivated by the raw, visual excitement of those pulverised ramparts and mountains of shattered concrete - and with the muscular steel monsters rumbling around amongst them.  As ever, experience first - theorising later.

Bristol Brutal

Kingsdown, Bristol, April 2019

Here's another short photo-essay from my recent Bristol dérive.  In this case, it features a series of architectural studies, of often-overlooked corners of the city - each stumbled upon, rather than sought-out, during my perambulations.

The Bristol Hotel, Narrow Quay, Bristol, April 2019

Anyone familiar with Bristol will know it's all too easy to be seduced by the Georgian, Regency and Victorian architectural styles, which still characterise much of the city - dating from the period of its spectacular mercantile expansion in the eighteenth and nineteenth-centuries.  There's no denying that there's much to enjoy there, in terms of sheer visual (or atmospheric) environment.  But it's also important to remember that much of what now appears charming and quaint was built with the proceeds from massively exploitative colonial expansion, the trades in alcohol and tobacco, and most disturbingly - slavery.  Indeed, Bristol's dirty history as a major nexus of the slave trade is still commemorated in specific place names - not least Whiteladies Road, Blackboy Hill, and the various locations named after famed slave trader and so-called 'philanthropist' Edward Colston. 

Either way, Bristol has reinvented itself more than once since those days. Notably, it has  currently thrown-up numerous pockets of much more contemporary redevelopment -  often styled with the kind of sleek, almost hyper-real, minimalism beloved of late-stage Capitalism.  Such buildings often seem to incorporate highly reflective surfaces that seem to camouflage their real intent by throwing our own image back at us - or else the kind of curtain-walled transparency that might privilege the idea of transparency over any real insight into the interior workings of a specific institution.  Increasingly, there is almost a sense of architecture as a series of monumental screens - an analogue of the pocket-sized portals to the digital realm  we all now routinely carry.

Millennium Square, Cannon's Marsh, Bristol, April 2019

In Bristol, one such notable example would be the Millennium Square complex.  Nominally an attempt to re-imagine the old quayside hinterland of Canon's Marsh, as an 'exciting' public space, there's a strangely alienating Science Fiction quality at work here, with its huge mirrored sphere, geometric reflecting ponds, and purpose-built facades (suggesting the clean machine ethic of racked server towers).  Even those original dockside buildings that remain have been spruced up to become the carriers of blandly inspirational texts, or to incorporate an actual large video screen.

It occurs to me that the two most overtly favoured forms of architectural expressions at work in contemporary Bristol thus appear to reflect the city's commercial drive across the centuries, over any more civic aspirations.  This is as true of the rapacious sea-faring mercantilism evoked in the picturesque legacy of heritage Bristol, as it is of the race to monetise services and, above all - information, that informs its most recent manifestations.   

Freemantle Square, Kingsdown, Bristol, April 2019

Kingsdown, Bristol, April 2019

Reflecting (quite literally, in certain cases) on all of this, is fascinating, but there's another, perhaps less expected Bristol too - as demonstrated by most of these images.  This is the often arbitrary intervention of certain jarring elements of twentieth-century Modernism, or else - a kind of supremely quotidian functionalism, into the mix.  Thus, I could wander through picturesque Cotham, arriving at the charming (and personally nostalgic) Freemantle Square, only to turn a corner, and be suddenly confronted by a series of startlingly antithetical blocks of tawdry Brutalist public housing.  Clinging to the edge of Kingsdown, as it descends to Stokes Croft below, these feel like ramparts, from which one might survey wide tracts of the city as if from a disconnected, parallel timescale.  They're like a point of chronological fracture, or alternative history - just as they represent a rupture in physical and architectural space.

Clifton, Bristol, April 2019

Elsewhere, I found found myself pausing, on the steep climb from historic Park Street - and up to Clifton (that pinnacle of old, moneyed Bristol), only to find myself peering through concrete slats into a basement car-park so baldly functional as to seem totally decontextualised - like a pocket of parallel reality, or a portal through which one might leave the world outside behind.  A little further, a battered steel box, aspirated noisily through the slatted grille occupying its front face.  It was unexplained by its surroundings, and ignored by all other passers-by, and I'm left wondering exactly what kind of hidden subterranean realm might by served by such a ventilation duct.

Clifton, Bristol, April 2019

High Kingsdown, Bristol, April 2019

Another, similar, basement space was to be observed, screened behind security gates at High Kingsdown.  This is part of a self-contained realm of modernist estate housing, inserted into the older and more organic surrounding neighbourhood, in another incidence of arresting architectural juxtaposition.  Possibly planned to provide staff housing for the nearby hospital (I'm guessing), the stylistic contrast with its neighbouring areas is so marked as to suggest it might even be some kind of independent micro-state.  I passed through freely, in the event - but expected to be challenged for my papers at any moment.   

Sir James Barton, Roundabout, Bristol, April 2019

Overlooking the rim of 'The Bearpit' at St James Barton Roundabout (itself, a whole other story - almost resembling a kind of post-apocalyptic anarcho-shanty town, these days), I found a grid of shabby mirrored windows in whose bleak signage, the commercial property boom seems to have been reduced to a kind of panicky fire sale. Nearby, a disability access lift has been inserted into a narrow aperture - resembling nothing so much as some kind of transporter unit - from which one might be beamed onto to the surface of a different planet altogether.  However, the broken bottle shards, alongside, and clearly compromised 'safety' barrier, are hardly reassuring - a situation unalleviated  by a few runs of hazard tape, inexpertly applied to the lift itself.  Would one's scrambled atoms ever be successfully reassembled in their correct configuration by such a dubious-looking unit? - we might ask (Scotty).

Sir James Barton Roundabout, Bristol, April 2019

Perhaps the most dramatic juxtaposition of all comes in the form of The Bristol Hotel & Conference Centre.  It's a building I've always found thrilling in its breathtaking incongruity.  With historic Queen's Square to one side, and the repurposed industrial archeology of the old Floating Harbour, to the other - one can only stand before its stark, pre-cast grids, and the even more dramatic latticework of its carpark facade, and marvel at the misguided conviction of its architects - that theirs' was the real future to build.

Of course, such buildings are generally regarded as little more than a pernicious blight, these days.  It's amazing just how many have already been swept away around the country, and I can only assume this one survives because it's prime city centre location has caused the hotel it houses to thrive as a business.

The Bristol Hotel, Narrow Quay, Bristol, April 2019

Much has been written about how the Modernism of the post-war twentieth century, and the brief moment of social(ist) consensus it represents, now feels indicative of a kind of future that never was.  Such ideas have spawned much of the recent pop-cultural re-imagining of the idea of Hauntology, as well as the awakening of a kind of alt-heritage impulse amongst Leftists, the self-consciously design savvy, and those inclined to embrace irony, or contrarianism.  But I think it would be disingenuous not to allow that there's probably a significant element of good old fashioned nostalgia at play too.  For some of us, of a certain vintage, such buildings represent a world we were born into - one whose naive Utopianism might have suggested the beginning of a more idealistic age, but which now seems, instead, to mark an end to innocence altogether.

If the main impulse behind my little West-Country excursion was a degree of autobiographical reprocessing (as I think it was), the meditations above are really only part of a more personal emotional journey.  They definitely represent certain familiar ideas that I've connected with in different cities, over recent years.  But, perhaps because of the even more dramatic architectural juxtapositions at play in Bristol, they seemed to swim into even sharper focus at various points during my brief stay.  Also, whatever cod-philosophy I might dress it all up in, you already know how much I love to photograph those straight edges and formal geometries, as well as all that delicious bleakness  - don't you?