This was the second of the live Google Hangout This Other London Storywalks – part one following a section of the walk in Chapter 5 across Horsenden Hill and into the Pure Vale of Perivale. Then it’s off the Cricklewood in search of the lost film studios.
There are more Storywalks on the This Other London website.
Headed up to Scarborough at the weekend for the inaugural Art Party Conference organised by Bob and Roberta Smith and Crescent Arts.
I’ve been to Labour Party Conference a few times and performed my satirical comedy show The Soapbox Cabaret on two occasions – but as soon as I stepped inside the Spa at Scarborough it was apparent that the Art Party Conference would be a world away from the murky world of block votes and corporate lobbying.
The target was clear – Tory hateboy Michael Gove, the man with a mission to remove art from education, and erase the cultural memory of the nation. Where Thatcher was the ‘milk snatcher’ Gove is the ‘crayon grabber’.
Bob and Roberta Smith read out his impassioned letter to Michael Gove making the case for the importance of art in education.
Artists had come from far and wide to rally to the cause, show their work and generally have a bit of a laugh in the bracing North Yorkshire air. I was there to present my documentary about Bob – Make Your Own Damn Art, a film that focuses on the humorous polemical campaigning heart of Bob’s work.
Jessica Voorsanger as Salvador Dali
There was a great programme of films shown in the splendour of the Spa Theatre, a space more accustomed to vaudeville than artist film and video. Amongst the films there was Cornelia Parker’s Chomskian Abstract, Ian Bourn’s zen meditation on the cockney staple Black, Green and White – the way of the pie, and a John Smith programme that featured the world premiere of another of his hotel diary films, Demo Tape, as well as classics such as OM and Gargantuan.
Apparently Michael Gove was seen walking out into the sea the next day in his pants before disappearing beneath the waves.
Earlier today I did the first live This Other London Storywalk using Google’s Hangout on Air app on Google Plus (above is the archived video of the event). It’s a great way of taking people out for a wander round London from wherever they happen to be. Hopefully be doing more of these and looking at ways of extending the possibilities.
Here’s a video I shot on the walk for Chapter 5 of This Other London, following the traces of a neolithic trackway from Sudbury Hill to the Wharnecliffe Viaduct at Hanwell, passing over the top of Horsenden Hill with its wonderful legend of Horsa and his ghostly steed, and through Perivale, the ‘pure vale’.
Filmed in my shed.
‘What both the interwar topographers and the situationists recognised was the transformative potential of large numbers of people regularly stepping outside the matrix, taking to the streets and walking, becoming active participants rather than passive spectators.’