The Trafford Centre Meets Concrete Island

Fenella Brandenburg and David Bolinger will be together again at the Fourth World Congress of Psychogeography on Friday 6th September at 12.30. The haven't presented together since 2017, when Fenella stormed off the stage in a strop. Here's hoping that their 2019 conference talk goes a bit better. This will be a performance-style talk at the cusp of J G Ballard's fictional Concrete Island and the non-fictional place, the Trafford Centre in Manchester.

I am hoping that Brandenburg will contribute a blog post after the conference, but last time I asked her she said “Are you kidding! There is no way I want to be associated with that load of bimbling idiots”.

All welcome! It is free, but please book your place.

Car Park Life by Gareth E. Rees

Gareth E. Rees’s “unexplored urban wilderness” of car park jouissance brings all of your favourite urban phenomenon together under one volume. From faux architecture to surveillance zones, live geese to dead humans, and psychogeography to dogging, it’s all here. The back cover says:

Gareth E. Rees believes that the retail car park has as much mystery, magic and terror as any mountain, meadow or wood. He’s out to prove it by walking the car parks of Britain, journeying across the country from Plymouth to Edinburgh, much to the horror of his family, friends – and, most of all – himself.

The chapters are themed, for example - The Access Road, Animal Instincts, and Doughnuts – making for a much more interesting read than just a straightforward car park by car park analysis. There are also images, taken from the research, and a neat little leitmotif of a shopping trolley, which pops up now and then.

Rees’s lively, articulate - at times sensitive and personal - non-fiction draws on his observations of the spaces to hand, includes background research, social history and his adeptness in crafting a good story. It is for psychogeographers and non-psychogeographers alike.

Car Park Life (2019) is published by Influx Press and you can find out more about it here.