Future of the City


“… 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

With the London Perambulator now out in the world thoughts inevitably turn to future projects. I’ve started work on one already, with another in discussion. There will also be the usual pitches to the Channels. But I know that there will be another film with Nick, there almost has to be. The first walks we did together in 2005 hinted towards a much bigger project than The Perambulator could fulfill – that has merely prepared the ground, created a context. All I can see for now is Nick wandering through the Lea Valley Industrial Estate at Edmonton with the brief to ‘engage’ with people as much as the infrastructure and identify the phenomena that Ballard is taking about, isolate the virus creeping through the crumbling industrial fringe of the city, the zones of distribution and re-consumption, disposal and transit – before it’s too late.

london