Concrete 3: Memories Of The Future

Crown House, Central Leicester, November 2014

All that crumbling concrete and haunted Modernism in my last post is just too delicious, so here are a few more images from the same shooting location.  Some of these are a little more oblique or formally self-conscious and, as with so much of what I do, there’s that love of the atmospheres, surfaces and materiality of my urban surroundings.

Multi-Story Car Park, Lee Circle, Central Leicester, November 2014

The images here all derive from my ongoing quest for locations for my concrete-themed video collaboration with Andrew Smith.  How much of this footage will find it’s way into our final effort is impossible to predict, but I’m massively enjoying just getting out there with the video camera and bagging such subjects, wherever I find them.  I’m conscious that, around the turn of the year, we’ll need to harden down, both thematically and editorially, and I’m sure that will be when the real work (and learning) really starts.  The aim is to have something coherent to show at our ‘Mental Mapping’ exhibition at Rugby Art Gallery & Museum, next June.

For now though, it’s still about the sheer pleasure of getting out there and hunting down the raw imagery, despite the drawbacks of plunging temperatures and ever-diminishing light levels.  Increasingly, I’ve found myself wandering out of mic range with the DSLR to collect static shots at the same time, leaving the movie camera to get on with it, when appropriate.

Multi-Story Car Park, Lee Circle, Central Leicester, October 2014

For this shoot, I based myself in Leicester’s Lee Circle multi-story car park, - an edifice whose wider significance I touched on last time.  Fairly early on a Saturday morning, I had the deserted upper decks to myself and was clearly of insufficient interest to Security for them to inquire about my (plainly benign) activities [1.].

Multi-Story Car Park, Lee Circle, Central Leicester, November 2014

The car park structure is of obvious appeal as a subject in its own right, and it was fascinating to be able to catalogue those interior spaces in their abandonment, whilst conscious of the building slowly filling up with vehicles from below like an encroaching tide.  This was conveyed through the ever-increasing volume of sound events drifting up the building’s ramps and central well, and also through the quality of vibrations transmitted through different parts of the physical structure.  A certain multi-sensory heightening is one of the notable features of this steady-gaze approach to filming and I’ve never once become bored, as I’ve allowed the true experiential dimensions of such places to unfold, as my static lens records minimal ‘action’ in real time [2.].  Increasingly, I seem to find ever more captivating layers of stimulus in locations that so many others seem to keen to disregard, despise, or escape from as rapidly as possible.

Crown House From Lee Circle Car Park

The other point about the car park is that it provides an admirable vantage point from which to survey other notable and related landmarks.  Prime amongst these is the abandoned, and increasingly derelict, Crown House, just across the road.  This sublimely ugly monolith is rapidly becoming a bona fide modern ruin, - a state that often presages imminent demolition.  Interestingly, the plot immediately in front of the building was temporarily used as an impromptu car park until recently.  My interest in urban car parks sometimes feels perplexingly nerdish [3.], but I can’t help musing on the differences between the contemporary organic opportunism of today, and the very conscious planning of the 1960s temple to parking opposite.

This One Speaks For Itself, Doesn't It?

Lee Circle, Central Leicester, October 2014

I don’t know what the plans are for Crown House, (although the hoardings around what is now an exclusion zone, don’t bode well).  For now, I must confess, it fascinates me in its decaying state far more than when in use.  The view from the car park allowed me to document the rich textural interest now evident at ground level, where certain sections have already been removed, and the increasing variation in the strict grid of its façade, - created as windows are gradually broken or boarded up.

Crown House, Central Leicester, November 2014

Beyond the Multi-Story, on the other side of Lee Circle, lies a rather beautiful building that once housed Leicester’s main Telephone Exchange.  This is an example of a lighter, earlier tradition of Modernism than the sullen Brutalism of Crown House.  It displays the influence of Scandinavian design and a hint of the ocean liner or seaside aesthetic that once reflected a more pleasure-seeking aspect of Modernism.  This is reinforced by the off-white paint that coats its concrete.  That paint is fairly clean, and the building well maintained, having been redeveloped as an apartment block in recent years.  In that respect, it represents somewhat misplaced, pre-recession attempts to gentrify a neighbourhood that, for now, remains resolutely down-at-heel.

Redeveloped Telephone Exchange, Lee Circle, Central Leicester, November 2014

A couple of other notable, slightly more distant landmarks caught my eye in passing, as I looked out from Lee Circle Car Park.  One is the impassive, slab-sided stump of The Cardinal Exchange Tower, - another telecoms-related building that, I assume, replaced the earlier exchange as the telephone network expanded.  It’s closer to Crown House in its stern aesthetic, and even taller, remaining a powerful presence on the Leicester skyline.

Redeveloped Telephone Exchange, With Newer Cardinal Exchange Tower Beyond,
Central Leicester, November 2014

Of rather more ruin appeal is another, slightly alarming multi-story car park edifice, situated a little to the north east of Lee Circle, between Abbey Street and Garden Street.  If the aesthetics of Lee Circle divide opinion, it’s probably fair to say only an architect’s mother could have loved this one - even in the 1960s.  It’s another example of how central the car was to the thinking of urban planners of the period, this time featuring a hotel (most recently, the Sky Plaza), perched inelegantly on top of a distinctly rickety looking multi-deck parking structure.  It’s been empty since a fire in 2012, but is clearly visited in its increasingly disheveled, current incarnation by Urban Explorers and Graffiti Writers.

Sky Plaza Hotel & Car Park Building, Central Leicester, November 2014

Looking out from Lee Circle, towards the Sky Plaza building, you can almost sense the two monuments to a past era speak to each other of lost optimism across the intervening rooftops of a more disappointed age.  With my fantasy head on, the Sky Plaza building even feels a little like some post-apocalyptic rampart, - rising from a decaying cityscape.  Re-imagined in a suitable dystopian SF novel or film, it might be peopled by refugees, survivalists, anarchists, mutants, or who knows what?

Multi-Story Car Park, Lee Circle, Central Leicester, November 2014

[1.]:  I’ve lost count of how many times this has happened as I’ve been out and about with my cameras, in locations clearly not commonly regarded as standard photographic subject matter.  Most recently, two Police Officers interrupted me; keen to know why I was filming in a desolate Leicester underpass.  In fairness, they were nice as pie and professed to be merely intrigued.  Generally, I find that claiming to be “An Artist, - recording my surroundings”, satisfies both authority figures and curious members of the public, who (I imagine) probably go on their way convinced they’ve just encountered a harmless nutter.

[2.]:  Of course, very few subjects can be said to be completely static.  One theme that has already emerged, as I’ve filmed in various locations, is the wealth of nuances, perceptual shifts, micro-actions and implied events that often reveal themselves in nominally motionless, environmental subjects.  Having got my eye (and ear) in, I often find that the smallest movements, changes in illumination, fugitive cast shadows, or passing sounds, begin to feel like major events. 

[3.]:  Does this make me a Nurb?

First Ride Out

A mellow spring day leads to this year’s first significant trip out on two wheels.

Leicester, March 2014

Without great ambition or any agenda, we spin along Leicester’s towpath, pausing to sample the latest clues in a favourite location, bathed in hazy sunlight and shivering reflections.  A salvaged trolley lies between concrete pillars like an encrusted cliché.

All Images: Leicester, March 2014

Further along, we come upon more dramatic changes where planners have decreed a new river bridge in advance of major redevelopment.  This whole section is undergoing a process of transformation from dereliction and lost industry, to estate living and the knowledge economy.  An air of tantalising anticipation hangs over another tract of wilderness, about to give way to the future.  These are precious last days.

All Images: Leicester, March 2014

Where a new route has opened up, along a damaged causeway, we discover a previously hidden enclave of decaying buildings, abandoned by dead or relocated businesses.  Overlooked by broken or bricked-in windows lie piles of detritus, - each an identifier of the individual companies who fled, or of opportunistic fly tippers.  Commerce abhors a vacuum, even in retreat. 

Both Images: Leicester, March 2014

Drawn further in, we capture banks of car tyres, and drifts of fabric, garment hangers and label ribbons.  Elsewhere, a mound of smashed plasterboard is reconstituted into a complex geological model.  We find enough water fountain vessels to rehydrate every city office and, a lovely yellow grove of lemon juice bottles.

All Images: Leicester, March 2014

Our shots are backgrounded by the polychromatic murals of aerosol artists.  Unchallenged, and with time to indulge themselves, they become ambitious, - creating a gallery where it is least likely to be seen.  A huge face glowers at us, violet with anger, as angular letterforms twist themselves beyond legibility.

Both Images: Leicester, March 2014

Finding unsecured doors invitingly ajar, we cross the threshold into some real Urban Exploration.  Melancholy light enters through shattered roof panels and the geometry of roof trusses.  Recent rain puddles floors crunching with grit and a scattered archaeology of automotive components, beyond all repair.  Offices and rest rooms are reduced to bleak cells and, (a propped mattress suggests), someone’s bedroom.  Discarded tools and unexplained, totemic stacks appear like obscure messages from a lost civilisation.  A boneless hand lays camouflaged on a red-painted floor.

All Images: Leicester, March 2014

Remerging into the hazy afternoon light, we gaze upon an advancing frontier of residential hutches cloaked in blandness, and of new economic imperatives too obscure to fathom.

Leicester, March 2014

Bradley Garrett: 'Explore Everything' (Explored)

A while back, I wrote a post about the phenomenon of Urban Exploration and, in particular, the work of Bradley Manning, whose book, ‘Explore Everything: Place Hacking The City’ [1.] had just been published.  I obtained a copy over Christmas and, having just finished reading it, can report that it is an entertaining, informative and thought provoking read.

American by birth, Garrett is an Anthropologist and Oxford Academic whose engaging writing style and exuberant, participatory approach to his subject matter contradict the stereotypes of such occupations more than a little.  ‘Explore Everything’ is an account of the two years he spent as a member of The London Consolidation Crew, the British Urban Explorers who became infamous for scaling ‘The Shard’ tower before its completion and for visiting every one of London’s disused ghost tube stations.

Indeed, as Garrett acknowledges, some of the publicity adhering to the LCC and their extensively reported acts of creative trespass, may be in part due to his own presence within the group.  Furthermore, far from being merely ‘The Scribe Of The Tribe’ [2.], his efforts to understand and explain the motivations behind their exploits may have helped to spur them on to ever more intrepid heights, (and depths).  The ways in which Anthropological researchers may inadvertently affect their subjects is clearly something Garrett has contemplated at some length.

Upside Down, Beneath London.  Photo: Bradley Garrett

Much of the book’s immediate appeal lies in its account of a journey into the city’s obscure, forbidden underbelly, and the intrepid, illegal (in civil law), and often plain dangerous expeditions that constituted it.  There’s plenty of macho bravado around the UrbEx scene, just as with Parcour, guerrilla Street Art and other contemporary subcultures, and Garrett certainly entertains us with accounts of ascents of massive windswept cranes and high buildings, rope descents into tunnels and drains, and games of midnight cat & mouse with security guards. 

Beneath London.  Photo: Bradley Garrett

His beautiful, long exposure photos are spectacular and often steeped in vertigo and/or claustrophobia.  They also serve as testament to the achievements of his crew, being visual trophies in essence, but some time is also spent considering the aesthetics of such photos, and what they imply about the motivations behind Urban Exploration.  He is particularly interesting on the subject of ‘Ruin Porn’ and the area of entropy-chic generally, (something that is making me reflect long and hard on my own practice).

Beneath London.  Photo: Bradley Garrett

Indeed, the book expands its scope in several directions to question both the wider philosophy and politics of UrbEx and Garrett, quite logically, makes connections with the Situationist tradition, and with the wider issues of public access versus private interests, and contemporary ‘Security’ agendas, without pushing any specific dogma.  I note with interest that he also references Robert Smithson, an artist who interests me greatly and about who I've written before here.  Garrett takes full account of the psychology of exploration and it's interesting to discover how easily the conscious historical, geographical, documentary or political agendas he may have started out with, gave way to a purer quest for ever more stimulating experiences and the thrill of reaching somewhere secret in the moment.

Garrett is also pretty frank about the hypocrisies, conflicting viewpoints and internal politics running through the scene; something he and his compatriots were to eventually fall foul of.  As these, and the long arm of the London Transport Police, and The State’s post 07:07/pre-Royal Wedding & Olympics paranoia finally caught up with them, the LCC inevitably started to fragment.  Garrett ends his book with tales of their final expeditions abroad, (partly to escape the heat and publicity at home), and with reflections on those dispossessed communities forced to make a life underground, for instance in the storm drains of Las Vegas.  He also ponders the future of Urban Exploration and the prospects for those who will continue to pierce the increasingly impermeable official surfaces of our modern cities.

Beneath London.  Photo: Dan Salisbury

Rather than venturing into deeper analysis of ‘Explore Everything’, I’ll simply recommend it to anyone who, like myself, finds themselves fascinated by the idea of ‘The City’ or, indeed, all those just in search of an interesting read generally.  In conclusion, here’s a passage from the book that particularly stuck in my mind,

“In the practice of urban exploration, it is not the philosopher or the scientist who interpret spaces but the often uninformed wanderer searching for knowledge as it presents itself.  If, as Dsankt [3.] tells me, we ‘do it because we want to do it, not out of a grand sense of preservation’, what then can we learn from taking the unguided tour, where the important historical attributes of a place are overwhelmed by the sensory, emotional, affective experience of simply being there?” [4.].

Beneath London.  Photo:  Marc Explo

I’m too old and too cowardly to climb crane gantries or spelunk the sewers, and unlikely to transgress beyond the mildest bits of benign trespass.  Nonetheless, that “sensory, emotional, affective experience of simply being there”, makes complete sense to me.  It’s one of the reasons I remain an artist.

In addition to ‘Explore Everything’, plenty of interesting additional material, (Including videos and loads of high quality photography), relating to Urban Exploration, can be found at:

http://www.bradleygarrett.com

http://www.placehacking.co.uk

http://sleepycity.net

http://dansalisbury.co.uk

http://ejectable.net

[1.], [2.] & [4.]:  Bradley L. Garrett, ‘Explore Everything: Place-Hacking The City’, London, Verso, 2013.

[3.]:  The Frenchman, Dsankt is one of the world’s best-known Urban Explorers.