Category: Uncategorized

Entrances to Hell

Stephenie Clubley / / Uncategorized

Entrances2Hell.co.uk describes itself as “The constantly updated catalogue of entrances to Hell in and around the UK”. It is a tongue-in-cheek collection of photographs depicting dilapidated or unusual doorways that don’t seem to fit with the scenery around them. They are submitted by users from all around the UK and after being authenticated by the website administrators they are listed on the website with a name and it’s own fictitious mythology, often with humorous results.

"Airfix"

“Airfix has a reputation as a place where lovers meet and is where the devil finally married his 2 childhood sweethearts Milly the Milkmaid and Linda M. Daventree in 1761. Since their marriage these two have given birth to almost 17 billion little-devils who have already been sent to distant star systems to follow in their fathers foosteps. Birdsong here is always performed as an improvisation around the chords B flat minor and G7. The tunnel of Airfix has had the new long-life light bulbs installed along its entire length.” (Entrances to hell around the UK: Airfix, n.d.)

There do not seem to be any specific guidelines for spotting an ‘entrance to hell’, but from studying many of the photographs the general consensus is that these places are mostly neglected, grubby spots in an urban landscape that look anomalous. Many of them are places that would be unsettling to loiter around alone in the dark, and if they did happen to be portals to an other-worldly dimension it may be fair to say that it would not be an ideal tourist attraction.

Bricked up wall at the grandstand

This photo, taken at the Lincoln grandstand, depicts a keystone and archway above a patch of brickwork that looks conspicuous amongst the rest of the wall. This suggests there used to be a doorway here. In Mike Pearson’s Theatre/Archaeology, he asks us to consider an archaeological artefact. “Do not begin with the question, ‘What is it?’ Instead ask ‘What does it do?’. Enquire of its social work: What does it connect through its design, exchange and consumption?” (2001, p.53) The reason for the closure of this door is most likely simple disuse, but walled-up doorways always present room for curiosity and questions. One cannot help but wonder what kind of doorway once stood there, for whose use it was intended, and where it once led. Are there any traces of the other side of the doorway on the interior of the building? If there are not, it only adds to how unnatural the traces on the outside look. An open doorway can look mystical and inviting; a closed doorway can look threatening but still prompt our inquisitiveness.

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Non-Places and the personal

Stephenie Clubley / / Uncategorized

“Walking through
the underpass
under Cold Blow Lane
near Millwall
football ground
surrounded by mad fans
fighting
and police
while carrying two bags
of food and drink
I just walked
through it all
like walking through a film”

(Mirza/Butler, 1999)

In this ‘age of information’ we are constantly immersed in multimedia everywhere we look. For someone living in this age, it is quite easy to imagine your personal life as a film. As day to day events unfold and coincidences reveal themselves, they can become interlinked in ways that sometimes seem like they must have been scripted.

This illusory ‘film’ of your life is something only you will ever be able to see through your own unique viewpoint. No two people experience the same sights and sounds around them in the exact same way. If you were a Hollywood producer striving to recreate someone’s life on the big screen, you would edit out the majority of the mundane and the everyday. People would be interested in watching the immediate events leading up to John F. Kennedy’s assassination, but less so in watching the three hours spent on an aeroplane between Washington D.C. and Dallas.

Marc Augé states that “If a place can be defined as relational, historical, and concerned with identity, then a space which cannot be defined as relational, or historical, or concerned with identity will be a non-place.” (1995, p.77-78) However this does not prevent non-places like airports, bus stops and elevators from becoming  concerned with identity on an individual level. This is exemplified in Karen Mirza and Brad Butler’s film extract of ‘Non Places‘, where personal experiences are written as subtitles and laid over monochrome shots of ordinary walkways and stairwells. These places are not unfamiliar to anybody who has visited an urban area, but the subtitles illuminate invisible echoes of inner thoughts. “…the personal voice, translated into subtitles. There is no voice-over, so the lines are read, as it were, in the viewer’s own head. Personal memory, which might be thought alien to the very idea of a non-place, is here drawn close to it.” (Rees, 1999)

Mirza and Butler bring the personal in the non-place to light by evoking subconscious memories of non-places within the viewer that they may have previously overlooked.  “Some shots evoke an oblique connection between the story and the image – a train passes as the text refers to a railway station – but others imply a greater distance, a space for the viewer to fill by drawing on their own memories.” (Rees, 1999)

This ‘space for the viewer to fill’ invites the viewer to consider non-places with a dormant significance. Perhaps next time they pass such a non-place, they may find themselves smiling as they remember it afresh as their main meeting point for friends in their first year at university; the place where they sheltered from the rain the one time they locked themselves out of the house; or the first pedestrian crossing where their crush held their hand while waiting for the green light.

 

Works Cited:

Leaving an imprint of ground, material and people

Olivia Milne / / Uncategorized

 

‘Familiarity may not breed contempt, but it takes the edge of admiration.’  William Hazlitt

Three cards, wandering lincoln finding places that we felt the words on the card reflected or told us to place them. I found upon reading them, that infact they were not undiscovered places the cards needed to be hidden, securely stowed. But places I walk past every day, places the words on the car reflected and I subconciously had kept account of. My own street became the new homes to two of my cards as it wasn’t until I stopped and thought, that I realised, my seemingly humble,e quite road possesed such mysterious, subtle activity. A cat roaming its pavements, lit up windows easily accessible to the curious eyes of pedestrians, voices heard through thin brick, and over gates. Again my drifting opened my narrow gaze to the enchantment of a road I walk up and down in and out of countless times a day. If it was not for the drifting opening my mindset and eyeline I would not daily be rejecting Hazlitts quote

 

Card One: ‘From here I can hear the sound of people talking and music I don’t recognise.’

Placed in Vodka Revolution booths, behind a speaker and stranger, both echoing unfamiliar words, conversations and rhythms.

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Card Two: ‘There are ruins and buildings that will eventually become ruins and people that will eventually become bodies.’

Placed on a broken wall next to my house, littered with smashed bricks and fragmented concrete blocks. Been in ruins since I have moved in, curiously nobody has ever touched it.

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Card Three: ‘ A shot from distance of other peoples houses, perhaps where a cat picking its way along the wall.’

Placed on the corner of my house, unfortunately cats were not present, but it is the exact spot where a robin sits everyday. Opposite the other side of the street lined with houses.

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The second card began to resonate with me and I felt a sense of sorrow when leaving it on such a discarded and disheveled wall. In a way I began to feel like that about our performance being left on the Grandstand. The building once so glorious is left stood alone broken and unfixed. The card reminded me of the process and hours we will have departed with when at the grandstand and eventually the remains of our performance, the odd penny it came to light later on. I had mixed feelings about finishing our piece, but hoped the messaged we left would be powerful, it began evident to me after or performance that we did not leave the message at the site. It was shared with the people that visited it as we educated them in the lives lost and they carried that away back into society hopefully sharing and questioning the message back into moving life.

The Drift

Ben Middleton / / Uncategorized

A drift put simply where you go for a walk through your local town or city with no destination or purpose in order to find the things mostly overlooked by the people who do have a purpose and a destination in their journey.  The art form of drifting has evolved from the romantic walking that came about in Europe during the late eighteenth century which was a response against the age of enlightenment that was occurring around the time ‘a reaction against the material changes in society, which accompanied the emerging and expanding industrial capitalism in the late eighteenth century’ ((Oosthoek, Jan (1999) ‘Romantic Movement, late 18th and early 19th century’ online http://www.eh-resources.org/timeline/timeline_romantic.html (accessed 25th March 2013) )) the idea was to get back to nature, that nature was the key;  the Romantic Movement was this alienation of the city and the move back to the nature because nature was seen as pure .

Drifting evolved from the Romantic Movement to being about the journey rather than on a destination (back to nature).  Instead, it has the aim of ruling out destination altogether ‘first, separation from the community, then a plunge into flux in a liminal space, finally reintegration back into the community’ ((Smith, Phil (2010) Mythogeography: The art of Walking sideways Triarchy Press))the idea of plunging into a flux is that of getting, essentially, lost; this is so you do not rely on where you are going or sign posts or directions to interrupt the flow of walking that is supposed to be coming subconsciously.  However, this form of reintegrating back into community is warned about ‘collapsing back into the everyday and missing the whole point’. In order to overcome this lapse back into the norm and forgetting all about the drift you can do little exercises or tasks to change the route or drift completely. For example, you could have the person use a large leaf as a map, or as they are walking have them look up at the tops of the buildings they walk past.

Linking the idea of drifting back to the Grandstand we can look at the old romantic walking of the eighteenth century.  The romantic walking was about getting back to routes, essentially to nature, but with the Grandstand we could look at getting back to its original use of being a racecourse. Furthermore, since the Grandstand is empty, we can look at it as a non-place, or a place generally forgotten by the public; this echoes the ideologies of drifting since the focus of a drift is to find something generally overlooked by the public.

Higher Ground

Eloise Fitt / / Uncategorized

Church Picture

In trying to find a places in which to leave my cards for our task this week, I decided to head into town. I went the back way from my house which leads me through the residential streets, past the houses that are all mainly inhabited by students. While my intention was to go all the way to town i got distracted by the surrounding area near where i live. The church in the picture is something ive seen before but never really looked at. Ive wondered why its abandoned? How long has it been like that? What will happen to it? I put the card on it because i felt that it said something more about the state of faith nowadays. If society can let a place of worship fall into decay, then whats happened to the people that used it as a place of solace, a place to rise to higher ground, have they fallen into decay too? Have they lost their sense of purpose as well as their place in faith?