The Scopophilic Psychogeographer and The Other-as-Exhibition

© Simon Bradley

This is me looking into a window of a small shop in Holbeck, Leeds. It is an area that I am particularly interested in because it is on the edge of one of those Urban Village projects which is a short distance away at the South side of Leeds railway station: Holbeck Urban Village. This photo was taken in, what I call, 'Holbeck Proper'. It is an area that is a large square of terraces that you can see here:

These terraces are gradually being pulled down by the council, although this has come to a temporary halt because they have run out of money (a local solicitor informed me). If you walk around this area, you can see the gaps left where some of the terraces were standing not long ago.

Holbeck Proper is an area of Leeds that is part of the urban regeneration programme. It is not a very well-off area and properties are selling at around £60,000 at the moment. I am not sure what the council are offering - money-wise - to those who they want to move in order to redevelop the area. I also heard that at some point the postcode will be changed to LS1 so as to include it in the Central Leeds region. The repercussions of this move are far-reaching in relation to property values and for those who will be priced out of the market in an area that is currently considered to be mostly working-class (unlike Holbeck Urban Village).

I find this a really intriguing area for many reasons. But I also have a problem with my own interest in the area. I like it, aesthetically, because it is a concentrated area of lovely back-to-back redbricks, which have a long and fascinating history in relation to urban planning. It is also interesting in regards to the demographic, with areas of white working-class and also first, second and third, generation Asian locals. I did find an online article in a US paper recently that mentioned some tensions between the youths of these two groups in the context of a discussion on two 'rival' groups in New York.

My problem is not new in the field of ethnography (not that that is my field) or in any field where one is observing another group where there may be issues relating to power in regards to representation in socio-political life. It has a long history in relation to the postcolonial other, so there is much written about it, especially in cultural theory. My own concern is with regards to my own practice, that of psychogeography. Much of the time this isn't a problem, as I am usually the one who is challenging the boundaries of power. This is mostly manifest in the classic security-guard-phenomena whereby they often seem to be ignorant of a law whereby providing you are standing on public property, you can take a photo. For my own experiences on this, see the following two blogs:

Kirkstall Valley Subdub or the Prozac Walk

The Forgotten Solo Dérive

What troubles me is that while psychogeography is a psychological response to urban space that takes in all the senses, being a psychogeographer can be a very scopophilic pursuit (the love of looking). And while this isn't an issue in regards to power most of the time, in certain situations it does feel like it is. I don't mean that I am a scientist observing another culture in an anthropological sense, but that I am in someone else's space, observing it, photographing it, and commenting upon it. And there are more than ethics involved in this process of observing "ethnoscapes"(Arjun Appadurai).

Links:

Knitting a New Holbeck

Cutting up Space, Part 1: L = S - [l + c + i = e + p]

As a psychogeographer I am particularly interested in pieces of land that appear to be waiting for something to happen. These can be owned by either the local council or a property developer and can be in abeyance for many reasons, including land-sitting (buying property to stop someone else buying it, or buying land speculatively). Sometimes, in the case of local councils, funding might have run out and the land development halted. Rarely, are they owned by individuals, although there are cases of private houses being left vacant, as has appeared on the news recently.

The land in the image above is off Low Lane, Horsforth, Leeds, and I think it might be waiting for further development in relationship to the future Woodside Railway Station in Horsforth, although I'm not certain.

This strange liminal space is in Hunstanton, Norfolk (below), is just off the promenade, but is easy to miss. Who does it belong to? Was it part of someone's garden? Do the council own it?

Philip Kivell's book 'Land and the City' is a really interesting book and discusses these issues:

He introduces a neat formula that is used in calculating land value which is dependant on the market value of existing properties in the local area:


L = S - [l + c + i = e + p]

Where:

L = developer's bid price for the land
S = anticipated selling price of completed development
l = estimated land preparation and infrastructure costs
c = estimated construction costs
i = estimated interest charges on land and construction costs
e = estimated legal and marketing costs
p = estimated developer's profits

There is a lot of development going on in the Holbeck area of Leeds, although it has somewhat come to a halt recently; for instance, the demolition of the terraced houses in one particular area. The satellite map below shows the rows of terraced houses that are under threat. It is not easy to see, because the road names block the view of the actual streets, but some of the terraces have already been pulled down. A local solicitor told me that the only reason that the demolition has stopped is because the council ran out of money.

Local councils acquire space currently used for private housing through Compulsory Purchase Orders. They just need to have a 'good reason' to do this, invariably economic, and it can be done with little recourse. The laws in this regard changed in the 1980s and became vaguer in relation to urban policy. This meant that just about anything could be done under the aegis of adding economic value to a region. We can thank Margaret Thatcher for this. Anna Minton writes about it in her book Ground Control

Kivell comments on land speculation when discussing power in relation to acquisition. He remarks that some critics of it claim that it "provoked the 1974 recession through an unbalanced flow of land onto the markets, the distortion of production costs of firms and the reduction in the spending power of households." (p. 131). I have heard this theory from other sources, too.

While Kivell does not talk philosophically about the cutting up of space (this is not his field), he does talk about zoning: the demarcation of space by the State for specific purposes. I think G. Spencer Brown's Laws of Form may be a useful way to approach this, coupled with deconstruction, so Part 2 of the blog will investigate the cutting up of space from that perspective.

Please click here for part 2 of this blog:

Cuttingup Space, Part 2: The Laws of Form

The following links may be of interest:
What else could go here?

Student farm in Brooklyn

Cyborg Attack Over Bridgewater Place

Here are some images I took over Leeds from the top of West Riding House last summer (2011).

There's something surreal about this car park, which looks more like a childs' toy than a real car park.

While this one of cranes is a bit disorienting, I think I was fortunate to just be in the right place to get them to appear like they are crossing over each other.

Here is the famous Leeds Dalek aka Bridgewater Place. Where I was standing I was unable to get the sloping section on the other side which gives it the Dalek-effect. However, there does seem to be a supernatural/cosmic occurrence taking place above it, which can only be some kind of cyborg attack .

Links:

Armed for Armley

The Lickless Derive (Horsforth)

Knitting a New Holbeck

The Headingley Arndale Centre

Knitting a New Holbeck

On Saturday July 9th 2011 Simon Bradley and myself went for a walk around Holbeck. The first thing I photographed was this lovely little guerilla knitting sculpture, which I nearly missed. I like it because it's quite subtle and also I wonder what the long term effects of water running over it will be. Will it calcify like those teddies that people hang up in caves for visiting tourists.

Holbeck is now part of a regeneration scheme in the Leeds area. Below is one of the lovely old Victorian buildings that still remains in the area, the old library. Simon and I think it is probably an office now. Thankfully from the outside you wouldn't know it was. Even the old sign remains above the door: Ex Libris:

The above image was stencilled on the pavement of the bridge that you can see in the photo of the library. And the following reliefs were on the wall near Ingram Road Primary School. The date is 1904.

This lovely tree stump sculpture is on the grounds of a nearby church, which I think is now a community centre for Holbeck. It has an Arts and Crafts Movement feel about it, but I'm sure it is new. Below is the underpass nearby. As underpasses go, I've seen much worse. And, note, no graffiti - unusual:

Related Links:
Holbeck on Wikipedia
1963 Aerial View of Holbeck on Leodis

The Cootie Catcher Dérive or A Walk With Some Really Interesting Dutch Chaps

A Device for a Chance Route
A few weeks ago I was very fortunate to be invited, along with a number of other Leeds-based organisations, to take some visitors from Holland on an urban walk around Leeds. So, on Monday October 11th I headed off to Temple Works in Holbeck to meet them.




Along with a dice, which I had made specially for the event, that gave instructions on turning in particular directions (e.g. first left), I also made the above device. We used to play with these at school, but I couldn't remember the name of them - neither could anyone else. Having searched for it on the web, it appears to be a Paper Fortune Teller. How dull! I thought it was going to have a much more exciting name. . . But then I found out it was also called a 'Cootie Catcher', which sounds a bit dodgy, yet much more interesting!

Paper Fortune Teller

My own paper fortune teller has numbers on the outside, then small symbols representing urban phenomena on the next face (motorway, trains, etc.), and inside, various instructions such as: head towards the nearest blue object, or look for the nearest railings.

On the walk, while I took my usual photos of prohibition signs, etc., I decided to concentrate my attention on images that were aesthetically pleasing (click on the images to get the full advantage of them).


Discarded Objects






One of the things I believe is important for someone exploring urban space is to reconsider the detritus of everyday life by reframing it. For instance, when looking at the above chairs it is hard to understand why, when they look perfectly fine, they have been thrown away. However, the side-effect of this casual act is that it enables a recontextualisation to occur, the product of which is the above photo.

While I understand this is not a new way of looking at the phenomenon in space, I think it enables discussions that digress from those that tend to begin in the area of whether you 'like' something or not; in other words it encourages a non-dialectical discussion. To me, liking something or not is, kind of, irrelevant: as this means attaching positive or negative terms to these objects, which always end in an impossible impasse (see discussions on classical v contemporary architecture). Of course, these images are of rubbish: however, there is rubbish everywhere and attempting to reframe it, aesthetically - as in, is it interesting?, what does this rubbish say about contemporary society? - may be a way through this problem.



What I try to do with the refuse that I see when walking is look for patterns, or seek an attractive composition, or engage with it on some theoretical/philosophical, if possible. After all, it is a product, well actually a by-product, of our postmodern age, and is hugely significant and should not be ignored. In a way it is the outcome of the spectacle of which Debord spoke. We all have too much 'stuff', we don't need all these consumer products - we discard perfectly useful objects without considering the repercussions: and I don't just mean that in an ecological way



The above image is interesting for a number of reasons: why did the trees get cut down (this area hasn't even really been redeveloped properly); also, if it were a rural area, there would likely be some local pressure group that would prevent the sawing down of these trees (in other words, dare I say, a regional middle-class demographic that had some power). Anyway, it provided me with a lovely, organic image...


In Conclusion
I'm obviously not the first person to have recognised the significance of these liminal areas such as Holbeck. Nevertheless, to prevent it from being just another theoretical discussion (either locally or nationally) it should be visited and (re)considered in the context of postmodern space and in the light of capital accumulation...


Relates websites:
Fonds BKVB
What's Up, What's Down