35 Million Blogs

'35 Million Blogs, doubling every six months, the average blog has just one reader, the blogger.' Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google speaking at this weeks Tory Party Conference.

First off, in this blog I am going to be thinking of what type of artistic 'intervention' I shall be planning for my Photographic Cultures assignment. I will however not be referrring to 'it' as an 'intervention hereafter. Primarily because I disagree that it will intervene or making any difference anyone apart from me. That is not to say that I do not think it a worthwhile exercise. You may hear me referring to 'guerrilla art' or some other terms. I am convinced of the exercise' worth (at least to me and not least because of the marks that I shall recieve for it after reading this inspiring blog/website...

Going completely against the notion of drifting I think I will create a trail around Elephant and Castle (E&C from now on). If anyone else reads this blog apart from me and has any ideas do let me know.

I would like to print stickers with photographs and clues on for people to follow. The photographs would be of a landmark people could see in the (not so far) distance, they would then know to head towards that. Text would be included to suggest alternative ways of thinking about the space they are in. A local library will have to be visited for this.

I envisage my audience to be a small number of local kids with nothing better to do but would love anyone to follow the trail - at least part of it. I would like people to take different routes to their usual ones and to learn one new thing about E&C. Perhaps I will sit and see which the most used routes between places and suggest alternative routes. One other idea I have is to show photographs at various points of the view they are seeing in the past (from library archives) and the future (from the internet and artist's sketches of the forthcoming development like this one. For more artist impressions like this one click here.

So while I need to think a little more about exactly guerilla activities I will be carrying out I know that my purpose is to help people to reanalyse the E&C space. What a noble purpose!

Heres some links, theres more at my del.icio.us


http://www.altterrain.com/article_medialife_Guerilla_Media.htm

http://www.elephantandcastle.org.uk/home/

www.into.org.uk/

Drifting Around Elephant and Castle

Map of Elephant and Castle

This week I followed in the footsteps (not literally) of the situationists. I walked aimlessly around the Elephant and Castle area of South London. It was an experience I found quite enjoyable, not surprising as walking and exploring tends to be how I like to spend much of my spare time and holidays. The absence of an agenda or the necessity to get 'the shot' was extremely liberating. When you are not concentrating on where you are going you become free to really think about where you are.

I decided to use my K800i SonyEricsson mobile phone instead of my SLR because I thought I would draw less attention to myself and the light was adequate for using a camera phone. This was the only plan I made before going for my walk.

The first thing that struck me was how many signs there were. Here, in a space used by many, the most effective way of communicating the approved modes of behaviour is by leaving messages for others. These included council notices of planned demolition works to 'No Parking' painted on to gates. I began to realise that common spaces such as this it be very difficult for so many people to live and work in this close proximity to eachother without these signs to mediate everyone's needs. There are a few examples below...
I suppose as I wandered I was looking for signs of human uses for and influences on the space I was travelling through. I was struck (as I often am in London) how an area can change so dramatically even from one end of a street to the other. This can be seen in the slide show below where we see bricked up squats next to family houses with a collection of bicycles outside.

I would have really liked to present this blog as a map with points on it that you could click on and photographs would then appear. As it is I have posted I slideshow of the images of my drift around the Elephant as well as a montage of scenes around the Elephant roundabout.




Please click below for a closer look at the slide show.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnhRHlBOLvo

Hi,

My name is Peter. This is my new blog. Here is a picture from my holiday from Italy. You can see some more at my Flickr at www.flickr.com/photos/peterdarch
Hopefully this blog will be something that not just i enjoy. I'm going to go now and think of some interesting things to say.

Ciao