Walking Cities: London / Edition 2

by Jaspar Joseph-Lester, Simon King, Amy Blier-Carruthers, Roberto Bottazzi

Overview

Walking Cities: London (second edition) brings together a new interdisciplinary field of artists, writers, architects, musicians, human geographers and philosophers to consider how a city walk informs and triggers new processes of making, thinking, researching and communicating. In particular, the book examines how the city contains narratives, knowledge and contested materialities that are best accessed through the act of walking.

The varied contributions take the form of short stories, illustrated essays, personal reflections and accounts of walks both real and fictional. While artist and RCA tutor Rut Blees Luxemburg and philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy recount a nocturnal journey from Shoreditch to the City of London; architect Peter St John of the practice Caruso St John offers a detailed and personal reflection on the Holloway Road; and architect and author Douglas Murphy examines what he calls London’s ‘more politically charged locations’ in his account of a solitary walk through an area of South London. Ultimately, Walking Cities: London seeks to understand the wider significance of changing geographies to generate critical questions and creative perspectives for navigating the social and political impact of rapid urban change.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780367407896
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	05/21/2020
Edition description:	2nd ed.
Pages:	422
Product dimensions:	4.81(w) x 7.31(h) x (d)

About the Author

Jaspar Joseph-Lester is an artist, Reader in Art and Post-Urbanism and Head of the MA Sculpture Programme at the Royal College of Art. His work explores the conflicting ideological frameworks embodied in representations of modernity, urban renewal, regeneration and social organisation as a means to better understand how art practice can redefine masterplans and regeneration schemes that determine the cultural life of our cities. He has exhibited his work internationally and is author of Revisiting the Bonaventure Hotel (2012).

Simon King, co-founder of the Walkative project, is a tutor at the RCA. Currently undertaking a practice-led PhD at Birkbeck, University of London, King’s research is interested in the dialogic, convivial and performative aspects of group-led walking. As Noble & King he works and walks collaboratively with the artist Corinne Noble towards the creation of public art walks in London.

Amy Blier-Carruthers is a lecturer at the Royal Academy of Music and King’s College London, where her research and teaching interests revolve around performance style and recording practices. She has recently been invited to speak at Princeton University, King’s College London, and the Smithsonian Institution, and is co-investigator for the AHRC project ‘Classical Music Hyper-Production and Practice as Research’.

Roberto Bottazzi is an architect, researcher, and educator based in London. He is the Director of the Master in Urban Design at The Bartlett-UCL. His research on the impact of globalisation and digital technology on architecture and urbanism has been widely published both in the UK and internationally.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

Site

My Kind of Town Peter St John 17

London Has to Continually Refresh its Offer Douglas Murphy 23

Against Porosity, Against the Crowd: Walking for a Spatial Complex City Adam Kaasa 45

Gravesend-Broadness Weather Station Roberto Bottazzi 61

Walking | Material Conditions of the Street David Dernie 75

Night

London Winterreise Rut Blees Luxemburg Jean-Luc Nancy 95

Night Moves Nayan Kulkarni 105

Writing

Point to Point Sean Ashton 133

Public Notice Jaspar Joseph-Lester 141

The Rotherhithe Caryatids Laura Oldfield Ford 147

Monuments

Squatted Somers Town Esther Leslie 167

Docked and Parked Jo Stockham 189

Freud in London Sharon Kivland Steve Pile 203

Walking Round Trafalgar Square (Temenos and Omphalos) Ahuvia Kahane 235

Music

The Travelling Mindset: A Method for Seeing Everything Anew Amy Blier-Carruthers 265

Practise. Walk Peter Sheppard Skærved 293

Dialogue

Curling up Tight Phil Smith 327

Walkative: A Choreography of Resistance Rosana Antoli 341

The Sound of Sweetness on the Grand Union Canal Tom Spooner 355

The Optimists Duncan Jeffs 371

Notes on Contributors 383

Index 391

Index of Places 404

Acknowledgements 411