Sunday 30 December 2018

Footfall in Brand Warrington


by Trent Dunlop

Another weekend rail strike. A friend of mine, who I have not seen for nearly twenty years, recently started working with me at my workplace for the busy Christmas period, after losing her job at the Marks & Spencer warehouse on the Grange Industrial Estate near Birchwood. Originally from Manchester, she moved to Birchwood in 1979 telling me of her happy days spent living in the New Town which, in synchronicity, saw the reopening of the exhibition ‘Days of the New Town’ by Susan Fitzpatrick in the local art gallery.


A mix of deadpan photographs and local’s photographs the exhibition can be read as either art or peoples’ history, and with just a basic written overview leaves it up to the viewer. Built on the cusp of Thatcher’s ‘Right to Buy’, Birchwood seems the last of the Utopian Modernist dream. The Park Ranger Service encouraged locals to volunteer, but never provided any training skills or job opportunities. A deadpan photo of a Fine Fare garage catches my eye reminding me of Twenty Six Gasoline Stations by Ed Ruscha.


Leaving the exhibition I head to the Beehive car park remembering my walk from last year when I was standing in the same spot watching the last of the Market being demolished to make way for the Time Square project currently on track to open in 2020, at a rising cost of an estimated £139 million for the new stakeholder capital multiplex cinema complex and council offices. It is a strange feeling: with the empty run down shops of the past on one side and the steel frame of the future buildings on the other, it heightens the senses to the psychic rhizomes. ‘No Deal Brexit’, government cuts, increasing homeless. An online Short, Sharp, Shock, and the Black Friday curse, as shoppers demand heavy discounting causing heavy competition and lower profit margins. Shares in Asos plummet by 42%. In a week’s time a homeless person being cruelly taunted by a gang of youths as he lies outside a shop front is filmed on a mobile phone. A future built on the foundations of austerity.


Approaching the skittles in the centre of the town a pop-up market is underway. I get attacked by an armchair quarterback, a cybernetic cowboy preaching at me like he's written the golden rule. A sidewalk supervisor, a frustrated artist, he is trying to force his narrative onto me on social media: I must buy ‘local’, support the town, save the High Street: some businesses have been here for over 100 years he tells me. But I don't want to buy anything. After a three day thread of online comments he finally goes away. A man on stilts dressed as a tree wanders past, the City of Culture is on the back burner - this is Brand Warrington. Food, drink, fridge magnets and spiritual healing! It feels like a ghostly apparition of Tony Blair's Millennium Dome appearing in drizzly Warrington. Inside the Golden Square Shopping Mall Father Christmas arrives whilst shoppers drink coffee whilst Arcade Fire’s song ‘Everything Now’ plays through the speakers in stores as 'The Folk of Warrington' satire page vanishes from Facebook. £500,000 to restore the Golden Gates outside the Town Hall, whilst the homeless shelter is under threat of closure. Two weeks in the future funding is found for the shelter up until May.


Sat in the semi darkness of the workplace canteen, boxes full of donations for the local foodbank on the counter. We brace ourselves for another night of Christmas peak period parcel sorting.

Saturday 22 December 2018

Non-Representational Theory - Part 1: 'Entering the Space of Encounter'


Edited by Candice P. Boyd and Christian Edwardes, Non-Representational Theory and the Creative Arts will be published by Palgrave MacMillan in 2019.

About the book:
This book presents distinct perspectives from both geographically-oriented creative practices and geographers working with arts-based processes. In doing so, it fills a significant gap in the already sizeable body of non-representational discourse by bringing together images and reflections on performances, art practice, theatre, dance, and sound production alongside theoretical contributions and examples of creative writing. It considers how contemporary art making is being shaped by spatial enquiry and how geographical research has been influenced by artistic practice. It provides a clear and concise overview of the principles of non-representational theory for researchers and practitioners in the creative arts and, across its four sections, demonstrates the potential for non-representational theory to bring cultural geography and contemporary art closer than ever before.
This is what the endorsers are saying:
Weaving together tales by scholars and practitioners, Non-representational Theory and Creative Arts is an important and timely contribution to the ongoing dialogue between cultural geography and creative art practice. Ambitious in scope, varied in style and innovative in format, the collection takes the reader on a compelling journey through stitches and studios, trees and art installations, water streams and ruins, geothermal vapours and musical tunes. It pushes for new tropes and vocabularies to talk about familiar and unfamiliar atmospheres, places, gestures, and all that stirs and eludes the human senses and imagination.
Veronica Della Dora, Royal Holloway University of London
Over the past fifteen years, non-representational theories have become central to the social sciences and humanities, inaugurating new ways of conceptualising and approaching the world. Featuring a multidisciplinary range of contributors who have been at the forefront of non-representational styles of thought and research, Non-Representational Theory and the Creative Arts is unique for its sustained and experimental engagement with the practices, styles and techniques of research that non-representational theories invite and offer. As such, it will become an invaluable resource for researchers hoping to learn new ways of encountering and presenting the world.
Ben Anderson, Durham University, UK
How might we envision a geography in the making, in the moving? With thought-provoking contributions that activate the affective force of the geologic, Non-Representational Theory and the Creative Arts explores the thresholds that move geography beyond representation toward its creative force. Entering the space of encounter, this book tests the limits of writing in a field that has always explored what lurks at the interstice of line and fold.
Erin Manning, Concordia University, Montréal

Saturday 3 November 2018

Right Map Making

Here is a copy of Right Map Making: Five Ways to Make Maps for a Future to be Possible by Steven R. Holloway. It's a great 'manifesto' and I am posting it here as it is readily available online and I think he wouldn't mind it being on this blog. Dr. Holloway is an academic in the Department of Geography at the University of Georgia in the US, specialising in urban geography and diversity.

Holloway says: "The problem for the makers of maps being that our maps are, in part, engaged in the wanton destruction of the world".

You will need to download the image, or zoom in on your screen, in order to read the manifesto itself.



Wednesday 12 September 2018

Art History’s ‘Wriggle and Chiffon’ Fashion Movement

When I worked in Trafalgar Square in London, I loved to visit the National Portrait Gallery. In the 1990s I remember working my way through its floors. I did one floor per week. It was a walk through history in terms of portraiture. At the time my favourite portrait was Giovanni Boldini’s Gertrude Elizabeth (née Blood), Lady Colin Campbell (1894) (below). She was an art critic, journalist and socialite and had a troubled marriage, plus much scandal surrounding her (mostly of a misogynist nature, it seems). I like this portrait as I think there is something defiant in her gaze.

This short post is a quick look at the way the chiffon is represented in these paintings and the effect I think it has on the subject of the painting: the women in these portraits. It is a style coined by Walter Richard Sickert: ‘wriggle and chiffon’.


Boldini was also known as ‘the master of swish’ which clearly lends itself to the movement in the chiffon, the ‘wriggle’ side of it clearly making reference to the female body that resides within it, although I am guessing that Sickert isn’t using this term in a positive way at all. There is something of an ‘illustration’ style to Boldini’s portrait, which makes it somehow familiar to us. You might expect to see this in a magazine rather than on the wall of a stately home.


While the above image is from many years later (late 1930s), and is a design illustration rather than an oil painting, you can get a bit of a flavour of what I mean. In Boldini's painting the dress is a pretty important component of the image. One might say that is the subject of the painting. However, I see the dress rather more as a vehicle to help represent the subject of the painting (Lady Colin Campbell, herself).

Also, of the ‘wriggle and chiffon’ moment is John Singer Sargent. Below is his portrait Lady Speyer (1907). He was also put under scrutiny by critics, with Roger Fry stating that it was a surprise that his work had been “confused with that of an artist”.


I think these critics, in their disregard of this moment in the representation of women’s dress in portraiture, have missed the point entirely. The painterly way the brushstrokes free the chiffon - indeed its ‘wriggle’ when it comes to life when being worn by the subject of the portrait – is what gives life to the image and the wearer of the dress!

Saturday 1 September 2018

Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fashion!: 'What academics put on their office doors (and why)'


I read this article in Times Higher Education magazine - 'What academics put on their office doors (and why)':

"Lecturers who fancy themselves as creative types adorn their doors, any available pinboards and wall space with exhibition posters, their own artwork and a studio-standard black and white image of themselves. Or the very, very important scholars, who advertise their books, provide copies of their journal articles in a special door-pocket, and may find a moustache has been drawn on their impressive visage glowering full-size from a finely framed photo” 

...and I have created my first door notice (above) for when I start at the Manchester Fashion Institute on Monday 18th June!

Thursday 30 August 2018

Merlin Coverley’s ‘Psychogeography’ – Revised & Updated Edition


I have been reading Merlin Coverley’s revised edition of Psychogeography, first published in 2006. This new edition, with a lovely green cover (2018), has an updated information, a new preface and appendix, and a much updated ‘Psychogeography Today’ section, which also includes Nick Papadimitriou’s Deep Topography.

When I first got into psychogeography in 2009, this was ‘the bible’ of psychogeography and I think it still is. It was my first psychogeography book, followed swiftly by Will Self’s Psychogeography (2007). I always recommend Coverley’s books to my students as an intro to the subject (now alongside Walking Inside Out, of course, however that wasn’t available till 2015).

I think Coverley’s revised edition signals the current popularity of psychogeography, its latest phase, its contemporary resurgence, its newest incarnation/interpretation... Maybe this new edition also acknowledges the ‘New Psychogeography’ that I mooted in Walking Inside Out. Either way, I’ve really enjoyed revisiting it and would highly recommend it to anyone as an intro to the subject, or as a top-up if you haven’t read the original for a few years, like myself...

Saturday 4 August 2018

A Visit to Alexandra Park


It transpires that my local park, Alexandra Park in Manchester, is only about 10 mins walk from my house, so I trotted off there today to check it out.


This lovely lodge (designed by Alfred Darbyshire) is gothic-inspired, as you can see, and this Victorian park is known as 'The People's Park'. There were lots of people about - playing table tennis, walking their dogs, watching cricket, visiting the car boot sale, and just moseying on down in the sun - so it was true to its name!


There was a big flagpole (not pictured as it was a bit boring) and this drinking fountain, which I got a quick snap of when the young woman wasn't looking.


One of the most exciting things was seeing these lovely terrapins(?) which some young girls had spotted on the log. They were telling me that there was a spot around the corner of the pond where lots of them often hang out. They seemed to know a lot about them and I was pleased to see their enthusiasm about the natural world. This is the best photo I could get on my phone, as I had to zoom in quite a bit. The two on the right were smaller than the other one, and I wondered if they were the babies of the larger one. The one on the far right lifted his leg up from time to time - maybe he was trying to get good sun coverage, or perhaps the wood was too hot for his tiny feet.


I spent a nice couple of hours there and will definitely go back. The car boot sale wasn't too good, however I think they have gone downhill since their heyday in the 1980s. There was so much 'tat' there. Some of the stuff was being sold for way more than you would pay in a charity shop and a lot of it was only worthy of landfill.

I had a coffee in the cafe (the old pavilion) and watched the cricket for a while, then wandered back home to the existential degu...


Wednesday 18 July 2018

'Concrete, Crows and Calluses' - Alternative Covers


I was putting some images into frames for my desk in my new office at work the other day and, while I was looking for the digital cover of Concrete, Crows and Calluses to frame, I came across a number of different covers I had experimented with when working on the cover design. So, I've loaded them up below as I think they are interesting.

While the one I finally settled on is probably more 'aesthetically pleasing' it doesn't have the psychogeographical grittiness of the three that I rejected. However, the one I chose did actually become a talking point as it's an interesting derelict building in Armley, Leeds (that I call The Water Shed) which was also painted by Judy Tucker. Anyway, here are the images. The last is the final one, but the other 3 - probably more edgy, or at least more quotidien - were also considered. In a way, I actually now prefer the first two for their suburban ordinariness..








Friday 8 June 2018

'Gudbuy T'Leeds': A Teeny Tiny Psychogeographical Goodbye to the University of Leeds

This is a very short film of my last wander on campus, saying goodbye to some of the places there. The title of the blog is a nod to Slade's 1972 single 'Gudbuy T'Jane', for those of you who can remember it. My trip was aided by Rob from Engineering, who you will briefly see in the film.

I'm off to the Manchester Fashion Institute at MMU now!

Click here for the film: Gudbuy T'Leeds




Saturday 26 May 2018

Freud’s Kettle Logic


Sigmund Freud uses his ‘kettle logic’ in his discussion in The Interpretation of Dream [1899], as part of his analysis of Irma’s Injection Dream. I remember studying this dream as an undergraduate in my ‘Reading Freud Reading’ module. It’s a fascinating dream, not least because it is Freud’s own dream and involves Freud and is friend and colleague Otto Rank, as well as Irma, of course.

Before I go onto the kettle logic aspect of the dream (which appears in the chapter ‘The Method of Dream Interpretation’), I will post the full dream in order to get to the kettle section, which is near the end. Irma was originally Rank’s patient, but was referred to Freud by Rank. This is Freud's dream:

A large hall—numerous guests, whom we were receiving—among them was Irma. I at once took her on one side, as though to answer her letter and to reproach her for not having accepted my ‘solution’ yet. I said to her: ‘If you still get pains, it’s really only your fault.’ She replied: ‘If you only knew what pains I’ve got now in my throat and stomach and abdomen—it’s choking me’—I was alarmed and looked at her. She looked pale and puffy. I thought to myself that after all I must be missing some organic trouble. I took her to the window and looked down her throat, and she showed signs of recalcitrance, like women with artificial dentures. I thought to myself that there was really no need for her to do that.—She then opened her mouth properly and on the right I found a big white1 patch; at another place I saw extensive whitish grey scabs upon some remarkable curly structures which were evidently modelled on the turbinal bones of the nose.—I at once called in Dr. M., and he repeated the examination and confirmed it. . . . Dr. M. looked quite different from usual; he was very pale, he walked with a limp and his chin was clean-shaven. . . . My friend Otto was now standing beside her as well, and my friend Leopold was percussing her through her bodice and saying: ‘She has a dull area low down on the left.’ He also indicated that a portion of the skin on the left shoulder was infiltrated. (I noticed this, just as he did, in spite of her dress.) . . . M. said: ‘There’s no doubt it’s an infection, but no matter; dysentery will supervene and the toxin will be eliminated.’ . . . We were directly aware, too, of the origin of her infection. Not long before, when she was feeling unwell, my friend Otto had given her an injection of a preparation of propyl, propyls . . . propionic acid . . . trimethylamin (and I saw before me the formula for this printed in heavy type). . . . Injections of that sort ought not to be made so thoughtlessly. . . . And probably the syringe had not been clean.

I won’t go into the analysis here (it’s not a long analysis and is really interesting, so I would recommend it), except to say I did always wondered why Freud ‘missed a trick’ on occasions in his analysis of his own dream (although he somewhat covers himself for that in the conclusion to his analysis – see below). I remember asking my undergraduate lecturer why Freud didn’t question the dynamics of his own relationship with Rank more, in regard to how it was played out in the dream, which I thought might have reflected some degree of competition between the two of them (however, since Rank deferred to Freud here in referring Irma, maybe Freud saw no competition, perhaps seeing himself as the superior of the two). Interestingly, Freud does acknowledge the competition between Rank and another psychoanalyst that he mentions in the dream analysis, Leopold. I also thought that the injection itself was an Oedipal symbol (given in the mouth of Irma by Rank), which Freud also seemed to overlook in this regard, analysing it in relation to another friend of his who took cocaine via injection and also reproaching Rank, later, for giving injections too readily.


So, onto the kettle logic...

In his summary, Freud acknowledges the contradictions in his dream, which he says “unite in acquitting me” and “do not agree with one another”. Providing his kettle logic analogy, he attempts to explain how these contradictions work when one is defending oneself, but also contradicting oneself at the same time, putting into question what the reality of the situation really is. In regard to the dream story (the latent aspect of the dream), Freud believes that contradictory dream elements often appear simultaneously:

The whole plea—for the dream was nothing else—reminded one vividly of the defence put forward by the man who was charged by one of his neighbours with having given him back a borrowed kettle in a damaged condition. The defendant asserted first, that he had given it back undamaged; secondly, that the kettle had a hole in it when he borrowed it; and thirdly, that he had never borrowed a kettle from his neighbour at all.

I think we can probably all recount examples of others (maybe even ourselves) in an argument, ‘grasping at straws’ in order to acquit themselves and throwing out contradictions at every turn. In this regard I see it as an overdetermination inasmuch as multiple elements all point to one cause, which never appears in the contradictory list of defences. And for our kettle ‘thief’, the returned/damaged/never-borrowed kettle all point towards one cause, a stolen kettle!

Tuesday 1 May 2018

Presupposed Actualization Wobble and the Rhizomes of Doubt in the City of Culture


By Trent Dunlop

Warrington, the market town between Liverpool and Manchester, is changing fast and daily, with the past, present and future existing at the same time: mixing, weaving and colliding together as it continues the story from town to City of Culture. A soup of instant history, spin and regeneration is taking place before your eyes as you walk the streets, and at the same time in cyberspace and on social media. I pick up my camera, notebook and pen, and hit the streets for another walk and update, ready to immerse myself in the narratives.

Walking past the chemical works, over the railway bridge and into the town centre I come to the Golden Gates in front of the town hall, Warrington’s ‘Jewel in the Crown’. Such a big fuss is made of these gates, with so many photos snapped and posed that I find them boring: a tourist type area, bringing pride for those who can see no wrong in the town. Some think of it as a rugby team to get behind and support with a ‘you are either with us or against us’ mentality. I walk past shops, and bars now start to appear as I approach the centre.


Two articles have appeared recently in the local press that indicate something is afoot and I want to find out more. The first, a letter from a reader entitled "Why I am worried about Warrington's Time Square". The second, a rant by a local journalist, which in my opinion feels patronizing, instructing us to "Give Warrington a chance" (to roll up our sleeves), and ending with a chilling Orwellian type message: "Remember negative thoughts can lead to negative outcomes". I turn left and into the Cultural Quarter.

I walk past The Lounge Bar, it still has Viola Beach written in chalk on the stonework where the shrine to the local indie band used to be. I pass Springfield Street Post Office and the ghostly figure in the upstairs window, and Palmyra Square with its interpretation boards and public spaces protection order signs. Also, the Parr Hall where the Knotty Ash big bass drum would bang every year when Ken Dodd visited: Diddy Men, jam butty mines, chuckle muscles and tickling sticks.


This is the upmarket area of the town. Posh restaurants and pop-up artisan food stalls, Dan Price and the embedded City of Culture bid. The local libraries saved by the public, 1848 the first town in the United Kingdom to open a rate-supported public library. I walk on towards the new multi storey car park.

The car park is a massive new structure covered in brown and gold hexagonal cladding, at present completely dwarfing the surroundings - the shock of the new and the shape of things to come. "We call it the Beehive", a man whispers in my ear as I stop to take some photos. It is up for a Peoples’ Choice Building of the Decade Award on BBC North West Tonight and has made the shortlist. One local journalist has promised to show his backside at Market Gate if it wins! It represents hyper-capitalism to me, and I wonder if it will become a design classic like Preston Bus Station or the National Theatre.


Opposite me is a large empty space surrounded by a ring of steel where the market used to be - the skeletal steel frame of the new multiplex cinema rising from the ground. The word ‘multiplex’ now feels dated, bringing to mind thoughts of action films and romcoms. What a wasted opportunity, we could have had a good arts centre instead. The whole area has been rundown, looking like 1970s ‘slum clearance’, with the buildings in Bridge Street looking so grotty that people have started photographing the top floors. Pound shops, cash converters and charity shops: there are now more coffee shops than ever, ready for the changing of the area into an entertainment zone. The only places busy in this area at the moment are McDonald's and Burger King: reassuring comfort food in the time of ‘austerity’.

But something has gone wrong, spending has plunged and growth plummeted to its weakest levels in more than five years as the ‘Beast from the East’ storm blew in battering the high street. Shop footfall nationally fell by 6%, mixed with a second wave of shop closures. I think of Fenella Brandenburg's “presupposed actualization”. And, yes, the new buildings do already exist but schizocartographic rhizomes of doubt have grown and spread, causing a presupposed actualization wobble with the illusion of the story unravelling. The city is a failure with the new buildings empty. I walk to Market Gate, seeing the dystopia that now exists. A budget of 1.8 million has been found to promote the town.


Market Gate is the centre of the town/city a crossroads with a bland circular water feature and the infamous skittles. Characterless 1980's style American Mall ornamentation, robbing the area of its roots and identity, embarrassment comes to my mind as I walk past, heading home.

Maybe it is a generational thing with the online shopping and click-and-collect revolution, but I do feel a bit nostalgic and sad as I walk past another pound shop, my memory superimposing the red Woolworths logo that used to be there. I see the newly empty Marks and Spencer store, unavailable, now, for people to pop in and buy a few groceries and comfortable underwear. The town is not fit for purpose if you can no longer buy what you want, I think to myself. I don't know whether I’m in a town or city anymore. A strange thought occurs to me that I need to regenerate myself like Dr Who!

I have always enjoyed catching the train and the excitement of visiting cities: will anyone want to come here? I walk past the remaining wall of the old Victorian Public Baths were I learnt to swim as a child, remembering happy times. Switching on the radio later, back at home, the news comes in that 450 jobs are at risk in the local Marks and Spencer Distribution Centre as it closes down and moves to another part of the country. The Trans Pennine express train will not stop here soon.The story continues...