The London Eye Olympic happiness index illustrates everything that's wrong with everything
“The mood of the British tweeting public during the Olympics and Paralympics will dictate what colour the London Eye turns every evening at 9pm, in the world’s first social media driven light show.”
I’m so depressed by this paragraph in the Telegraph that I’m setting my personal London Eye happiness index to “blacker than a crow’s armpit”.
The tweeting, the branding (it’s for EDF), the transparent falsity of the whole exercise…the tyranny of imposed happiness…
The urge rises to tweet something really grim, a dismal Graham Greene novel say, in its entirety, to keep the torch of misery alive in these troublingly cheerful times.
The Telegraph – Happy Olympic tweeters to light up London Eye
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19 Jul 2012
In-depth interview: Stratford filmmaker Winstan Whitter
“Everybody thinks it just was. But there’s a beginning to all things. A story that never got talked about, that got lost.”
Winstan Whitter tells lost tales. He likes to begin at the beginning, because that’s the part people later forget. There’s a shiny new block of apartments in Dalston, called Dalston Square, where one of these lost stories used to be. But more of that later. Let’s begin at the beginning ourselves.
Who is he?
“The biggest reason for wanting to put stuff to film is misrepresentation or underrepresentation”
Whitter is 38. He was born in Ghana, is late of Hackney, and now based in Stratford. He started in the film industry 12 years ago as a camera grip, and has worked up to become a director of photograpy on adverts, film and TV. In his spare time, he films the stories that are getting away.
First there was the skateboard scene. He started filming it from the inside in the 1990s, and in the early noughties began work on Rollin’ Through the Decades [trailer] [DVD]. It’s a documentary about the beginnings of skateboarding in the UK, when kids showed off their tricks in the nooks of the city, on concrete wasteland no one else wanted, while no one else was watching on.
“There was never a documentary that explained skateboarding to people outside,” he says. “Vicars in churchyards used to swear at us. In England it was looked on as a fad.”
In time the vicars stopped swearing and the fad caught on. Feet that had never touched a board started slipping into Vans. Tony Hawks’ video game character became a household name. It started making people, some people, very rich indeed.
Skateboarding went mainstream. Suddenly everybody knew what it was, and nobody cared how it used to be. That’s the lost story Whitter’s film seeks to pin down.
The lost club of Dalston
“What Hackney Council did will never be forgotten”
And so we come to Dalston Square, a newly risen apartment complex in the heart of Dalston. It’s built on the site cleared by the demolition of a Victorian theatre, which became a second hand car showroom, which then shared space with the Four Aces reggae and soul club, which both later became a dance club named Labyrinth. If you know Dalston now, and don’t know this, then do you really know Dalston at all?
Making Legacy in the Dust: The Four Aces Story was “like doing a history Phd,” says Whitter. He used to work at the club, as did his father, but his film goes back much further, before the post-war waves of immigration which buoyed up the Four Aces through the 1960s and 70s, and filled it til the early hours. He reaches back to the turn of the century, to the Victorian theatre and the Edwardian middle class. It’s the story of a hundred years.
The OPEN Dalston website was created in part to save the buildings threatened by development. In 2006 that blog set out the case against demolition and provided a focal point for local opposition to the change. In 2007, the building came down. Footage of that demolition opens and closes Legacy in the Dust.
The resentment rumbles on. Last week OPEN reported that the bus stand which formed a key part of the development proposal will serve no extra purpose during the Olympics, despite promises made at the time of its commission. It serves just one bus route, for £63m. Too late, now, anyway. It’s there, and the old buildings are gone.
Whitter’s is a sad film, in subject. An elegy for an abolished place. But it doesn’t watch like one. The editing is slick and witty. The clip above, in which contributors ranging from the Four Aces’ owner to members of the Prodigy try and fail to list the name of every band who played there, is a perfect comic viral.
And it isn’t new. Whitter finished the film in 2008 and showed it successfully at the BFI, at venues in Dalston, and at various festivals and events across the city. The Hackney Hear podcast was just getting underway back then, and their fifth episode reported from the film’s premiere.
People who have seen this film like it, but it’s never been widely released. Why not? It’s those two old partners, never far from each other’s side: lack of money and lack of opportunity.
What makes it hard?
“Copyright is a black hole”
Whitter would like to release Legacy in the Dust more widely, as he did with Rollin through the Decades, But there’s a £50,000 problem. Rights.
His film contains archive news footage which is needed to fill in the context as his story moves through the 20th century. Permission to use those clips in giving the film a wider release, he guesstimates, would cost him £50,000.
“Big corporations have got all this archive footage and no one us using it. There is an uphill struggle with that and something needs to change because all of this stuff is just sitting there and a lot of people have got great ideas for [it].”
The industry itself also seems, to Whitter’s eyes, a closed and cliquey place, interested only in a certain type of tale. He talks of a season of reggae films which illustrated the growth and impact of the West Indian music scene with clips of UB40. You sense a frustration. He’s been making films, good ones, for a decade now. He’s a successful independent filmaker. But he’s still pushing his work on his own, and as any artist or artisan knows, that’s not an easy task. “It takes time,” he says, with the tone of a man who has expended a lot of it on an uncertain hope. But his efforts and his belief may be about to pay off.
What’s next?
“Now people are knocking on my door”
Whitter has been approached to direct a feature film set against the Ska Wars music of 1968 Dalston. On the side he will keep pushing Legacy in the Dust, but he clearly relishes the prospect of being wanted by others. It’s been a long time coming. He also wants to make a film about Dr Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s first president whose proposal for a united Africa was used as a prototype for the EU.
“He’s another pioneer,” Whitter says, a passion rising in his voice. “It’s another story a lot of people aren’t being told.”
Winstan Whitter’s work:
About the replanning of Dalston – Save our heritage
Skateboarding doc – Rollin through the decades
The story of the Four Aces Club – Legacy in the dust
In defence of Shoreditch’s strip clubs, by the women who work there – Handz Off
Winstan Whitter – Showreel
OPEN Dalston – The demolition story
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Twitter: @Mikpollitt
Email: michael.pollitt@snipelondon.com
17 Jul 2012
The first paragraph of Zadie Smith's new Willesden-set novel 'NW' has been released
Exellent US books site The Millions has obtained the opening lines of NW, the new novel by Zadie Smith.
“The fat sun stalls by the phone masts. Anti-climb paint turns sulphurous on school gates and lampposts. In Willesden people go barefoot, the streets turn European, there is a mania for eating outside…”
There’s more, go to their site if you want to read the rest.
NW will be released in September. Here is the publisher’s spiel, copied and pasted from Amazon:
“This is the story of a city.
The north-west corner of a city. Here you’ll find guests and hosts, those with power and those without it, people who live somewhere special and others who live nowhere at all. And many people in between.
Every city is like this. Cheek-by-jowl living. Separate worlds.
And then there are the visitations: the rare times a stranger crosses a threshold without permission or warning, causing a disruption in the whole system. Like the April afternoon a woman came to Leah Hanwell’s door, seeking help, disturbing the peace, forcing Leah out of her isolation . . .
Zadie Smith’s brilliant tragi-comic new novel follows four Londoners – Leah, Natalie, Felix and Nathan – as they try to make adult lives outside of Caldwell, the council estate of their childhood. From private houses to public parks, at work and at play, their London is a complicated place, as beautiful as it is brutal, where the thoroughfares hide the back alleys and taking the high road can sometimes lead you to a dead end.
Depicting the modern urban zone – familiar to town-dwellers everywhere – Zadie Smith’s NW is a quietly devastating novel of encounters, mercurial and vital, like the city itself.”
10 Jul 2012
You have one day to see this exhibit. Today.
CAN.IS.FACE/BOX
BoxPark | Shoreditch | 55DSL | E1 6GY | London
A one-day exhibition on Monday July 9th, 1 – 7pm
In an era of rising youth unemployment and arts funding cuts, the collaborative arts network, CAN, is an incubator for creative enterprises, ideas, events and collaborations.
FACE/BOX explores interactions, consumption and self-image in the digital age, using the box as a format to represent virtual worlds and comment on mediums, using everyday, historical and fictional narratives.
The show’s curator, 19 year old Tottenham based creative, Monique Todd, is motivated to create a legacy for art by transforming spaces. “From alternative worlds to “lonely hearts” ads for obsolete objects replaced by modern technology, FACE/BOX spotlights the little nuances of our pixilated lives whilst offering light-hearted alternatives.” She explains.
Ten of the network’s artists use graffiti, illustration, and graphic art to question their online, everyday selves and the nature of collaboration for the youth of today, in this one-day exhibition on Monday.
09 Jul 2012
Chatsworth Road: the front line of Guardian gentrification essays
Gentrification essays occur when Guardian journalists become sufficiently attracted by an area’s juxtaposition of hardware shops and upmarket delis that they want to go and write there.
There are some upsides to gentrification essays, such as increasing the profile of local businesses. In this case it’s interesting that the businesses which get named and linked to are the upmarket delis and restaurants (Shane’s, L’epicerie, Venetia’s). The “Kashmiri takeaway” remains, sadly, nameless.
But gentrification essays also have downsides, such as the perpetuation of a false dichotomy between “the area’s traditional demographic”:
“On the nearby Clapton Park estate, Chatsworth Road prices are not the only issue. They want useful, everyday commodities available locally – a fish shop, a Chinese takeaway. Sourdough and comté cheese are not part of their grocery lexicon.”
and “newcomers”:
“…who attend arty happenings such as a ‘site-specific event in an old newsagent shop’”.
These caricatures create the illusion that there exist clearly defined, discrete blocks of people incapable of sharing space, shops and aspirations. They are pernicious.
So, how should you respond to gentrification essays if you think you see them in action? There’s very little you can do to stop them happening, so it’s probably best to skip all the cliche and caricature and go straight to the academic’s quote at the end.
“In London, everyone feels like a victim.”
Says Rowland Atkinson from the University of York. Finally, someone trying to bring people together.
See also:
Guardian – Chatsworth Road: the frontline of Hackney’s gentrification
Hackney Hive – have been on gentrification for a while, and have a much better comment thread
Snipe – Some things to learn from the nearby, and very flower-ful, Clapton Park poppy estate
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Twitter: @MikPollitt
Email: michael.pollitt@snipelondon.com
09 Jul 2012
NY art gallery Pace will move into the Royal Academy, chasing London's artists and super rich
New York art gallery Pace will move into the Royal Academy, reports Gallerist NY. The exhibition space will open in October with a Mark Rothko and Hiroshi Sugimoto show.
Why is London somewhere Pace wants to expand? It’s not about you or me.
Artinfo.com spoke to Marc Glimcher, Pace’s president:
“London is a place where citizens of certain regions come to really live, not just to visit,” Glimcher said, when asked about the city’s appeal as an art market. “Just look at the nationalities of the kids in English schools. People from the Middle East, Eastern Europe, Russia, and India — they are all committed to London.”
These are the global rich, the 1%ers. They buy the art, and London has a lot of them.
It also has a lot of artists. Again, from Artinfo:
““There certainly is fierce competition over artists,” [Glimcher] said. “It’s become extremely brutal, and for a small group of galleries, having a space in another city gives them a foothold that they will try and utilize with the artists” — in other words, to poach them.”
This isn’t art. It’s business.
04 Jul 2012
Is going to watch the Shard opening ceremony at 10.15pm on a Thursday night really a thing?
The Shard opens is inaugurated [see comments] on Thursday night at 10.15pm. Apparently this is perfectly normal and not something we should be batting any eyelids about. After all, why shouldn’t an office building open be inaugurated at 10.15pm on a Thursday night? It’s just common sense.
I know this is happening because a friend of mine has been invited over Facebook to go and watch it with some friends. Apparently there’s a laser show and some music from the London Philharmonic.
Music and lasers notwithstanding, I struggle to comprehend how this is a social thing. I know it’s a tall building, but…it’s an office block! Why is it a thing to go and watch it open be inaugurated? Why?!
In other Shard views, published author Simon Jenkins comes up with this corker in the Guardian:
“The Shard is thus an adjunct of Tony Blair’s foreign policy, a cure for erectile dysfunction.”
Lost. It.
And the BBC has a more respectful, sympathetic, you might say sane, facts and figures rundown here.
See also:
Events uncut – Laser light opening of the Shard
Simon Jenkins in the Guardian – The Shard has slashed the face of London for ever
Andy Dangerfield at BBC London – London’s Shard skyscraper rises above its critics
Snipe – Why does the Shard intimidate us
Snipe – Watch The Shard’s architect Renzo Piano talk about creating his ‘vertical city’
04 Jul 2012
Malaysia Airlines' new Airbus route to London should make us query the "Heathrow in crisis" spin
The Evening Standard ran an editorial last week entitled London needs new runway space now. They’ve also knocked up a graphic for the print edition of the paper which announces “Heathrow in Crisis”. We should take this with a pinch of salt, and here’s why.
The Malaysian national news agency reports:
“SEPANG, July 1 (Bernama) — Malaysia Airlines (MAS) launched its maiden Airbus A380 flight to London tonight with Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin sending off the passengers on the flight at a glittering ceremony, here. The superjumbo will be on a thrice-weekly KL-London service before going daily in August.”
Why is this significant? It’s significant because, as it’s configured for Malaysia Airlines, the Airbus A380 can carry 494 passengers. The airline’s existing fleet of Boeings carry a maximum of 386 passengers. That’s an increase of 28% in the number of people who can fit on each flight.
Why am I boring you with the seating arrangements of far eastern airlines? Because if more passengers can be accomodated on the same number of planes, then a growth in capacity can be accomodated by the existing infrastructure. More people can land on the same number of runways.
Labour’s London Assembly member Murad Qureshi puts this under-argued case in a blog post entitled Heathrow is expanding but BAA don’t want Londoners to know it.
“At present Heathrow turnsover 69 million passengers annually and once the redevelopment and construction of the five terminals are complete, it will be able to cope with 90 million passengers a year…It would be helpful for both passengers and for the wider industry if BAA were a lot more truthful about what is actually happening at Heathrow. The discussion should cease to be one way traffic all about lack of capacity and should instead focus on what is happening on the ground right now. Larger planes, more passengers flying and room for more.”
It’s not flat-earthing to suggest that we should maximise current capacity before building more. Capacity can increase and is increasing without the need for more runways or airports. An argument can be fairly made that in time demand will still exceed capacity. But “Crisis? What crisis?” is a question we need to ask before swallowing the air lobby’s spin.
UPDATE: Please see the comments for a well-informed complication to the argument stated here.
02 Jul 2012
Five paranoid authority freakouts that could spoil the Olympics
A month from the start of the London 2012 Olympic Games, It’s worth gathering together some of the restrictions, bans, and don’t you dares which seem so essential to defining the modern Olympic spirit. While these controls have been reported individually, it’s only by stepping back and considering them together that we can hope to understand the mindset which has produced them. As we shall see, it’s a mindset governed by two impulses: greed and fear.
1. Brand exclusion zones
Brand exclusion zones will be in place around each of the Olympic venues. A map of each can be found on the Dept of Culture’s website here. Inside the zones, which in many cases extend beyond the venues and out into the public streets, advertising and general commerce will be policed. I use that word advisedly. These zones are a fine example of reason running unchecked into madness. It all began reasonably, in the late 1990s, as a sensible attempt to stop Nike buying all the billboard space around stadiums hosting events sponsored by Adidas. Fifteen years of brand greed and official fear later, what word is there but madness to describe the forced closure of any ATMs near the venues which are not branded by Visa? People inside the brand exclusion zone will have to queue for longer to get the money to spend on the brands which the IOC allows inside the exclusion zone. Everybody loses! Visa announced a net income of $3.5bn in 2011. What are they frightened of?
Diamond Geezer ran through some of the implications of the exclusion zone for the Olympic Park in Stratford here. An excellent post by Kosmograd alerted me to the maps and explains some of the background.
2. Copyrighting the words “London 2012”
The above video, via Big Smoke, shows a Camden market trader reacting to a leaflet telling him what he can’t sell. It’s a bit slow by internet standards, so let me quote him.
“We cannot have the word “London 2012” on any piece of merchandise…somehow LOCOG own the words London 2012 – the name of our capital city and the year. They suddenly own this. Does this not seem a little bit strange?”
Does it not?
3. Missiles on the roof
On Saturday local residents of Leytonstone and Bow gathered to protest against Starstreak missiles, like the one pictured above, being plonked on their roofs. Other batteries are planned for Blackheath, Eltham, Enfield and and Barn Hill. Missiles on homes in peacetime is just common sense, say the installers. Because what if…? Because what if…? The fear must be fed. One of the missiles’ minders, Col John Campbell, says he wants to “de-militarise this and let the sport do the talking.” But how do you demilitarise putting missiles on someone’s roof?
4. Controlling athletes’ tweets
From the IOC’s Social media, blogging and internet guidelines:
“any…postings, blogs or tweets must be in a first-person, diary-type
format and should not be in the role of a journalist – i.e. they must not report on competition or comment on the activities of other participants or accredited persons…”
The IOC, which you might think exists to organise an event which lets the finest athletes of the world express themselves, in fact seeks control over their words. It’s perverse.
5. Banning flags
From a BBC report:
“…a spokesman for the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games (Locog) confirmed the rules would mean the saltire could not be flown over Hampden, which is hosting some Olympic football matches.”
This is because Scotland is not an IOC-recognised country. If they let a Scottish flag fly, the logic goes, what about the flags of other non IOC-recognised countries? So reason runs to madness once again, and the Scottish flag is banned from the Scottish stadium. And Locog enforces it, and the government endorses it, because it’s in the Host City contract and don’t you see that everyone’s hands are tied? TIED BY FEAR!
Control. Restrict. Deny. Happy Olympics!
Images: Map from Department of Culture, Media and Sport. Pictures from Wikipedia
See also:
Vuvuzelas, pets and oversized hats: full list of items you’ll be banned from taking in to the Olympics
If the O2 had to be renamed for the Olympics, it should have been called the Millennium Dome
Follow Mike
Twitter: @MikPollitt
Email: michael.pollitt@snipelondon.com
02 Jul 2012
Time Out writers were told to go easy on Boris Johnson says former Time Out writer
In today’s edition of the British Journalism Review, former travel editor Chris Moss laments the dwindling influence of Time Out and accuses the new investors of issuing a pro-Boris agenda.
… it was made clear to many writers – including this one – that we were to refrain from attacks on the City and on Boris Johnson. The former left most of the journalists incredulous. The latter was a major turnaround as Ken Livingstone had long been Time Out’s friend and ally, even serving as its gardening columnist for a spell. But [Peter Dubens, chair of the hedge fund that purchased half of Time Out] supports Johnson and he, it was evident, was now the editor-in-chief as well as the owner of the only part of the company that was expanding. Tony Elliott’s 50 per cent was a shrinking half; appropriately, the magazine was cut to 124 pages – the thinnest it had been in years.
It’s too bad, now we’ll never know which cupcake shops Ken Livingstone prefers or have an indepth investigation on the Greater London Assembly’s views on the top 10 vintage markets.
H/T Peter Watts
25 Jun 2012
Snipe Highlights
Some popular articles from past years
- The five best places in London to have an epiphany
- Diary of the shy Londoner
- An interview with Desiree Akhavan
- 9 poems about London: one for each of your moods
- Peter Bayley has worked for 50 years as a cinema projectionist in East Finchley
- Random Interview: Eileen Conn, co-ordinator of Peckham Vision
- Summer Camp: Roll out those lazy, hazy, crazy days
- Only 16 commuters touch in to Emirates Air Line, figures reveal
- London has chosen its mayor, but why can’t it choose its own media?
- Nice Interactive timeline lets you follow Londoners' historic fight against racism
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