Met Nick Papadimitriou tonight to discuss the video we're shooting to tie in with the publication of his epic deep topographic tome, Scarp (published by Hodder and Stoughton this June).

Nick drew this map in my notebook to indicate some of the places where we could film to capture the key elements of the North Middlesex Tertiary Escarpment (hope I've got that right).

Plastic Ken Ardley Playboys figures in Victor Mount's basement. Nice to have an opportunity to air this clip as it won't make it into the film.

There's my info on my documentary about Bob and Roberta Smith here http://makeyourowndamnfilm.com/

Editing can sometimes be a bit of an assache but then you stumble on a clip like this.

And I doubt this will make it into the finished film about Bob and Roberta Smith.

It was filmed during one of Bob's Make Your Own Damn Music shows on Resonance fm.

There's more info about the film here

Back in April this year I was asked to show a work-in-progress cut of my documentary about artist Bob and Roberta Smith at the ICA. I wrote about it here at the time.

Now that 25 minute cut has taken on a life all of its own. It's currently looping in Pierogi Gallery's Boiler space in New York where Bob has a show (there is also some more recent footage projected onto his Gotham Golem sculpture).

The cut is also being shown this Sunday, 20th November at the Crunch Festival of art and philosophy in Hay-on-Wye with Bob doing a talk afterwards about his recently launched, Art Party - a bohemian reposte to the Tea Party.

The photo at the top of this page is the reason this film came into being - my desire to find out what happened inside that shed, the mysteries of the Leytonstone Centre of Contemporary Art. Now I know - I think.

"... this apparently alienated zone is the new Britain, a pointer to the real future facing this country. Developments in Fulham or Muswell Hill will have no bearing on what lies ahead. But what happens between the M3 and the M4 will define the character of Britain for the next half century."
J G Ballard, Tate magazine Issue 24, Spring 2001

Last Sunday evening my old friend Andy Ross came over to Leytonstone to make a video previewing his debut album Almost People, which was produced by ex-Stereolab drummer Andy Ramsay at Press Play Studios in South London.

Andy was my room-mate in a terraced house in Forest Gate when I arrived in London from the Chilterns back in 1989. We had both rocked up carrying guitars that we could barely play but that didn't stop us spending the next 3 years writing songs and forming a band with the rest of our dubious bunch of housemates who had little more musical apptitude than us.

We carried on writing music for a bit after leaving Poly, recording songs on borrowed four-track machines, but I wandered off on my travels (buying a guitar on the way) and that ended our musical collaboration.

But Andy has perservered and honed his craft over the ensuing 20 years and he's made a really beautiful album. Real treat for me to be able to rekindle the collaboration in some form.

We went up to The Hollow Ponds to catch the last hour of light which I seem to have slightly miscalculated meaning that we were chasing the sunset around the edge of the water. Being a Sunday we ambled round the grounds of the parish church and I grabbed a few images of Andy on the church steps before, out of the gloom, the vicar started shouting angrily at us about the Churchyard being private property and that we should ask permission to enter - no wonder church numbers are dwindling.
Oddly one of Andy's songs I remember most from Poly days was called Vicar in his Chapel - perhaps it was a prophecy.

 

 

  

Yesterday evening I got a call from artist Bob and Roberta Smith asking if I fancied exploring the new Westfield Stratford City that had just opened that day down the road from Leytonstone. I quickly grabbed my minidisc recorder and a mic and off we went.
Bob then played out the entire disc live and unedited on his Resonance fm show, Make Your Own Damn Music. This is a sample of the broadcast.

This was the view west from Blackfriars Bridge at around 7.30pm this evening

We walked via St Andew's Hill and looked in at Wardrobe Place where the plane trees reach over the Georgian buildings in defiance of their life-spans, soon to expire.

Paternoster Square felt like the living civic centre that the architects probably hoped for - the Italinate piazza where families take an evening passeggiata

 

"Exploration, I hope no-one has said this before, begins at home. Now that the North Pole has been reached and Cook's tourists penetrate to Patagonia there is very little undiscovered country left outside England for the roving adventurous individual to explore. But in England and especially within an hours ride from London there are vast tracts of terra incognita still left. It would take a long investigation to determine why in the last 40 years these formerly traveled districts have ceased to attract the foot of the wayfarer and explorer".

Pathfinder - Afoot Round London, 1911

 

 

Richard Leacock and Robert Drew discuss the origins and philosophy of Direct Cinema