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A one-off newspaper distributed virally throughout Liverpool over the course of a day, offering a temporary alternative to the cultural propaganda that proliferated throughout the Liverpool Capital of Culture 2008 programme.

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Page 1: Future Visions Of History
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As Liverpool approaches the end of its greatly anticipated term as EuropeanCapital of Culture, this newspaper will explore some of the issues, themesand locations that do not feature in the official 2008 programme. The hidden,the neglected, the absurd, the contentious.

Distributed over the course of a day, this one-off publication will spread like a virus through the spaces and places of the city – cultural, commercial,suburban, industrial, derelict, regenerated, public and private. Featuringcontributions from a range of perspectives (writers / artists / teachers /photographers / researchers / students / activists / mums / granddads) fromLiverpool and beyond, this paper offers a temporary alternative to the city’scultural window-dressing. A pocket of discussion, imagination and resistance.

Taking the city’s recent history as a perspective on the future, this paper looksback to the International Garden Festival, held in Liverpool in 1984, a pioneeringpublic investment into leisure, culture and tourism for the purpose of socialand economic regeneration. Despite attracting more than 3 million visitors,the festival has had little sustained impact on the deprivation of the area, thesite sold to private developers and declining into dereliction.

In 2008, as the hopes for the future of Liverpool, like many cities internationally,rest once again on culturally driven regeneration, the overgrown and forgottenFestival Gardens – abandoned, privatised and fiercely guarded by 24 hoursecurity – offer an alternative perspective from which to discuss the legacy of the Capital of Culture. As our cities compete to become ever more glossy,international, cultural theme parks, what will today look like tomorrow?

Penny Whitehead and Daniel SimpkinsLiverpool-based artists and curators of this project

Keep this newspaper. Throw this newspaper away. Give it to a friend. Cherish it. Use it as toilet paper.

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Time to Evacuate?

Yesterday’s TomorrowHistory does not repeat itself but patternsbecome familiar. In time, they become thescript. There are many scripts in operation atany one time, concerning an economic sector,social group, or locality; or, as in the case oftoday‘s big script, operating at a globalscale – in the globalisation of capital and de-regulation of trade. After wartimedevastation, in the 1950s, the big scriptrevolved around the state’s responsibility forprotecting the well-being of its citizens.International modernism in architecture andurban planning was a rational solution tourban blight. It failed, in peripheral estates,because it over-valued professional expertiseat the cost of local knowledge; and sawurban problems literally as blight – an organicproblem to be dealt with technically. Inretrospect, urban professionals realise theinner-city streets they saw as breeding crimeand grime were extensions of living space.People met, and children played under thewatchful eyes of neighbours, learning tonegotiate life by watching others older thanthemselves. The street worked well enough.But dwellers‘ knowledge was tacit, notintellectual and so dismissed by experts.

Still, there was an assumption that urbanredevelopment was in the public interest.Yesterday’s tomorrow was a better world forall. In practice, consultation tended to meanshowing plans to people who could not readthem but said, because architects are authorityfigures like teachers, that they were fine. Yetthe optimism persisted, and planners anddesigners found ways to work with dwellers,whom they realised were experts on dwellingwhere they did. Often with not enough money.

There are examples of local people actingtogether to write their own script, but moreoften now, in the new world order, the mantraof inevitable progress is used in marketeconomics to trash local people’s sites ofsocialisation. The poor are thereby excludedfrom spaces representing a new affluencewhile, in place of the sites in which they once improvised a life, high-rise, high-incomeapartments, gleaming steel and glass corporatetowers, and shopping malls proclaim a richnew world. The poor can enter the malls –seeing the dreams of a celebrity lifestyle thatonly money buys – but not the corporatetowers: their complaints are dealt with in anew wage-slavery in call centres. This is moreeffective than totalitarianism in producingconformity. And, as a centre-right think tankrecently said, if it’s not nice you can migratesouth, like the swallows.

Today’s TomorrowToday’s tomorrow depends on visitorattractions, global food and coffee outlets,and malls. Waterside sites are attractive todevelopers. In place of post-war hope andpublic interest is cost-benefit analysis, theencroachment of privatised space on thepublic realm, and government’s evacuation of responsibility for public well-being.

For sociologist Zygmunt Bauman, the newworld order means poor people are subjectto increasing controls on movement (aseconomic migrants or asylum seekers) whilethe rich travel and shop globally, in real – andcyber-space. Production is moved to wherewages are lowest and employment regulationleast effective. Bauman writes,

Segregated and separated on earth, thelocals meet the globals through the regulartelevised broadcasts of heaven. The echoesreverberate globally, stifling all local soundsyet reflected by local walls, whose prison-like impenetrable solidity is thereby revealedand reinforced.i

Malcolm Miles

Page 7: Future Visions Of History

i Zygmunt Bauman, Globalization – the human consequences,Cambridge, Polity Press, 1998, p. 54.

ii Audre Lorde, paper to panel, ‘The Personal and The Political’, Second Sex Conference, New York, 29th September, 1979; in Jane Rendell, Barbara Penner and Iain Borden, Gender Space Architecture: An interdisciplinary introduction, London, Routledge, 2000, p. 54.

All this is evident in Liverpool, as in any citylurching from an industrial past to a de-industrialised future. Meanwhile, the marketbombards us with special offers, and thelottery dangles the dream of free money.

Grandiose public buildings and statuespronounced power’s inevitability in the 19thcentury. Today, signature architecture speaksthe power of money in the urban skyline. The mall is where some of it is made. Farfrom stating local identity, variety in the styleof mall development masks a single mode ofoperation: a space set apart, global chains,goods which play on a desire for identity.Cities, too, seek identities in the symboliceconomies profiling museums of contemporaryart, the re-use of industrial buildings, and newpublic spaces. The genius of Tate Modern isthat it combines all three. Trading on thepost-industrial chic of occupying a disusedpower-station, it has moved the cultural centreof London to Southwark (one of the poorestboroughs). Tate Modern employs local people,but in low-paid jobs in catering and securitywhile its regeneration effect is seen in up-market cafés, bars, and boutiques, and risingproperty values. This summer its exterior wallsdisplay international graffiti as contemporary,collectable art. There are alternatives: at nearbyOxo Tower, thanks to the Greater LondonCouncil in one of its last acts before abolition,a community group led the development,managing the site for community benefit.

Shifting the SceneryIn 1984, the Liverpool Garden Festival was a reaction by the Thatcher government to aneruption of unrest in Toxteth. Money wasthrown at the city’s appearance, but not itsstructural problems. The site is now derelict,bought by a private-sector developer forwaterside apartments, guarded 24/7. Itsplight questions the promise of an Olympiclegacy in London, while nearby areas ofsocial housing also decline.

Garden Festivals were held in Ebbw Vale,Stoke-on-Trent, Gateshead, and Glasgow, aswell as Liverpool. They were elements in a widercontext of cultural provision as a relativelylow-cost means to deal with structural socio-economic disturbance. This led to a rapidgrowth in public art’s infra-structure, mostprojects reproducing an informal consensus

among dealers, curators, collectors, criticsand public-sector arts officers as to what isvalid as contemporary art. Art is highly visibleand attracts publicity. When a project iscontroversial, it distracts attention fromunderlying structural issues. There has beencommunity participation in a parallel growthof local projects, but artists are not socialworkers and should not be asked to solveproblems such as social exclusion – a termintroduced by the centre-right governmentwhich came to power in 1997 – or otherinstances of failure in public policy followingreplacement of an ethos of public benefit bythe ideology of market capitalism.

With Capital of Culture, the cultural stakes areraised. The Cities/Capitals of Culture programmewas initiated by the EU in Athens in 1985.Most cities nominated have not been nationalcapitals but regional centres: Florence (1986),Glasgow (1990), Antwerp (1993), Weimar (1999),and Cork (2005), for examples. It boostscultural identities and, importantly, creates amap other than that of global finance. Onlycities such as New York, London and Tokyoare part of the global city of financial servicesenclaves linked by 24/7 information flows.Frankfurt is a contender. Paris is not. Liverpooland Stavanger, the Capitals of Culture in 2008,have no claim. But the culture-map allowsregional cities another kind of significancethan that of global finance. In a period ofimmaterial production, Capital of Cultureprojects may attract inward investment; yetthey can, at the same time, support local culturalagendas and production. Bergen, in 2000, forexample, used its modest budget to developcultural production within the city, bringing inworld-class conductors and composers towork with local musicians, rather than payingfor signature performances. All too often,though, local cultures are sidelined in favourof glamorous imports which obscure thecultures of local life. The scenery shifts, butafterwards the script is the same.

With Liverpool, the external perception – I live inDevon – is of management feuds, a reliance onthings turning out alright on the night, nostalgia,and reconstruction of the city-centre as a giantshopping mall. Nonetheless, arts organisationssuch as FACT are working to engage localpublics in new ways. And there is a fringe ofgrass roots, in some cases antagonistic,cultural work. Perhaps this free newspaper is an example. I want to emphasise thatantagonism is a resource. Any active publicsphere – by which I mean the metaphoricalsite in which a society or city’s future script iswritten by its members or dwellers – dependson argument. Argument can be healthy, andit can be articulated in cultural forms; or it canbe suppressed by cultural colonization.

Building the StageLiverpool’s situation as a de-industrialisedregional centre may have advantages. Thecuratorial programme at Tate Liverpool wasalways more engaged than that of TateModern. Perhaps the masters in London had little interest in controlling a space so faraway. The impact of Liverpool’s cultural yearmight encourage discussion of the city’sfuture. Art cannot change the world as the

avant-gardes of the 19th century hoped, norcan it take the place of grass-roots activismor single-issue campaigning on issues suchas GM crops and anti-roads or airport runwayprotest – a new politics moving into thevacuum of the state’s evacuation of its role.But where such refusals of the dominantscript arise, art can offer visibility, and assistin articulating latent desires as specificagendas. In unscripted ways, art can provokeawareness of the contradictions andirrationalities of a script which disregards thehuman consequences. In 1996, for example,artists David Cross and Matthew Cornfordinstalled a steel security fence around a patchof grass by the bus station in Stoke-on-Trent,causing outrage in the local press. By chance,Cross was on a bus when the driver pointedout the scandalous fence to passengers,reminding them that it was art. Brave orfoolhardy, Cross owned up to making it. The bus pulled in for several minutes whileeveryone joined a lively discussion. This wasa micro public sphere of a kind never achievedby the Garden Festival (which was not meantto). Nor can real regeneration be delivered bytop-down or profit-led redevelopment, of whichspectacular cultural programmes are oftenthe badge of cultural value...

Liverpool’s Capital of Culture programmerevolves around the city’s past, from the slavetrade to popular music. It may encouragegrass-roots cultures, or foster the use of acreative imagination which extends fromculture to social, economic and politicalfutures. But new scripts are seldom writtenon old machines. Top-down programmesdeliver control, and are designed to do so.The alternative begins in local initiatives,taking over direction of the scenario. If thissounds like the demand – made in Russia in1917 – to take over the means of production,it figured also in the welfare state, in whichinfra-structure and key natural resources weretaken into public ownership. But history isnot repeated. Now, chaos in financial markets,peak oil, and the disdain of capital for bothconsumers and workers, may lead to economicreform; but there will remain a need tounderstand how people can write the scriptfor their own individual and collective futures.To build a new stage on which new scenarioscan occur needs a new means of production.For black poet Audre Lorde, the need now isto learn how to stand defiantly outside thecircles of marginalisation, making commoncause with others similarly disaffected:

… to define and seek a world in which wecan all flourish … learning how to take ourdifferences and make them strengths. For the master’s tools will never dismantlethe master’s house. They may allow us totemporally beat him at his own game, butthey will never enable us to bring aboutgenuine change.ii

I offer no conclusion. It is not for me to prescribewhat people in Liverpool, or artists, should do.My job is to ask questions, including awkwardones. So: do we reclaim the streets, or cancultural work act like a virus to spread newideas, radical hopes? Since power is notdonated, only taken back, can people empowerthemselves through art? I don’t know, buthope some will try to do so.

Nor can real regeneration be deliveredby top-down or profit-ledredevelopment, of which spectacularcultural programmes are often thebadge of cultural value...

Page 8: Future Visions Of History

Stephen Sharp

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L IVE R P O O L

LOVE R S’ OI L

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BARCE LONA

Despite high-profile initiatives and a containerload of cash, Liverpool is still not internationallysynonymous with cultural tourism. We needa chant or spell or incantation to draw downthe triple powers of culture, retail, leisure andbind them to our civic aims.

Here, drawn from the dark arts of themarketeers and image men, is such a spell.The lines form a series of almost-anagrams:each successive line has one letter that differsfrom the previous line. This list may call upunwelcome images from the city’s past andpresent, but we must persist with it, using its troubling resonance to reach the promised future.

Laurence Bradby

Page 10: Future Visions Of History

First Retreat then Advance!!On the 11th of September 2008 nine artistsand cultural activists held a summit at thehighest point in Liverpool at Everton Browunder a red banner, which read ‘The Conceptof Culture is deeply Reactionary.’ This quotewas taken from Félix Guattari’s essay‘Culture: A Reactionary Concept?’. Nine artists and cultural activists lookeddown upon Liverpool in silence. They saw a plastic skyline, derelict docks, disusedwarehouses and post-industrial neglect. The summit was facilitated by The Institutefor the Art and Practice of Dissent at Home,as a part of the project DIY 5: First Retreatthen Advance!!

The Institute for the Art and Practice ofDissent at Home is a home-run initiative, runout of the spare room of a council house inEverton, Liverpool. The Institute is run by afamily of two adults and three kids, collectively,twoaddthree (Gary Anderson, Lena Simic,Neal, Gabriel and Sid). The Institute is a self-sufficient and sustainable initiative drawingfrom 10% of all income from its members(currently £2857.10 for the year). The Instituteis concerned with dissent, homemadeaesthetics, financial transparency as well ascritiquing the capitalism of culture embodiedin Liverpool08, currently European Capital of Culture. The Institute is interested in socialtransformation and has refigured a part of the family living space into a meeting placefor critical thinkers, activists and culturaldissenters. The Institute has hosted anumber of residencies and events, rangingfrom individual encounters through groupconversations to theatrical events. Theseactivities are undertaken in order to pursueideas and take action toward a ‘culture’ notnecessarily driven by market forces. Formore information about the Institute’sinitiatives see www.twoaddthree.org.

First Retreat then Advance!! was a four-daycultural activist intervention into Liverpool08,Capitalism of Culture.This project wassupported by Live Art Development Agencyand their DIY programme of professionaldevelopment projects BY artists FOR artists.The Institute was given £1000 for the project:£500 was retained by twoaddthree as a fee(£100 for each member) and £500 was placedin the box for all the participants to decide whatto do with. The box of money accompaniedus everywhere. First Retreat then Advance!!took place in two stages over two weekends:11/12 September 2008 (Retreat) and 20/21September 2008 (Advance). twoaddthreewere joined by Abi Lake, Ange Taggart,Caroline Wilson, Lorena Rivero, Jane Trowell,Janice Harding and Steve Higginson. In theRetreatwe discussed our own capitalisticsubjectivities. We were interested in thinking

about our own complicity, as artists andcultural workers, in the capitalism of culture.The Retreat was a time to take a step backfrom art making in order to take stock andconsider our own places and responsibilitiesin the world. In addition to discussion at theInstitute, we went swimming, walked to thehighest and lowest points in Liverpool, attendeda private view of an exhibition, listened to eachother’s presentations, ate plenty and dranksome. At the Retreat’s closing Forum each oneof us offered some preliminary ideas for anAdvance. We all agreed on a basic structure:we were to come up with our own individualAdvances from 12pm to 3pm on the 20thSeptember and then meet at the Pier Head totake a ferry across the Mersey. The Advance,which took place on the 20th of September,clashed with the opening of the LiverpoolBiennial, one of Liverpool08’s flagshipevents.

The Advances:Abi Lakewrote and hid a series of letters innine locations around Liverpool: metal benchat Liverpool Lime Street station, Royal MailStreet L3 sign, Copperas Hill bench (burnt outand rotting) near Sea Circle sculpture, disusedbuilding on Brownlow Hill, dance recordssection in the Oxfam charity shop, marblebench outside Topshop on Church Street,toilets in Burger King (pictured), under theropes on Mersey ferry and on the bench atNew Brighton prom. Each letter lists some ofAbi’s concerns about Liverpool and the capitalof culture award. These are site-specific piecesof writing running underneath Liverpool08like an underwater stream. Each envelopereads: ‘To whom it may concern. Pleaseopen.’

Caroline Wilson engaged reflexively with thethemes of private and public finances and herown attitudes to cash. She used £25 of her ownmoney. She ripped one £5 note and scatteredit round Liverpool1 (Europe’s biggest andmost unnecessary new shopping centre), shehid one £5 note in a book called ‘The TippingPoint: How Little Things Can Make A BigDifference’ at WHSmiths and she spent £15on a couple of books which would educateher about supermarkets and the economy.

Twoaddthree

Page 11: Future Visions Of History

Torn between his working class roots and hismiddle class education Gary Anderson took aninitial step towards a personal reconciliation.He dragged his firstborn son Neal (7) to an oldfashioned political meeting at Next to Nowhereon Bold Street. The topic of the meeting wasthe recent arrests in connection to the semi-legal distribution of leaflets in the city centre.He mobilised two political activists and stageda protest in the city centre, Church Street. Eachof them carried a sign intended to reflect thesilencing of dissenting voices in the publicsphere: ‘I am not allowed to give you this leaflet’.Crowds gathered and questioned the protest.Many conversations ensued.

Armed with official looking clipboard andtags Jane Trowell labelled the ‘places ofinterest’ from Lime Street through EvertonBrow, crossing Scotland Road and VauxhallRoad to Princes Dock and back to Lime Street.During her walk she audited the area withthe help of two official-looking Liverpool08tags: a Zone of Sacrifice and a Zone ofResistance. Giving marks out of ten and abrief write-up, she proceeded to take picturesof these zones to compare with the picturesshe will take two years from now. Jane foundout that beauty, honesty, women’s safety,maintenance, exchange, self-respect andflow had been sacrificed but also that quality,long-termism, integrity, service, ownership,resilience, girl power and bloody-mindednesswere all features of a resistance in the area.

Janice Harding tried to access the river andfloat 100 white home-made, paper boats. Shemanaged to float 20 of them before beingasked to move on from the area ‘for her ownsafety’ by the Police. She found out that accessto the river in Liverpool was minimal to thegeneral public, but easily accessible for wealthy‘sports’ activities.

Lena Simic (with Gabriel and Sid) consideredthe question ‘What constitutes an event/anadvance?’ in relation to Liverpool Biennial andthe peripheries of the city. They travelled bypublic transport from a non-affluent Everton tothe more affluent Aigburth. They wonderedwhat impact Liverpool Biennial’s openingmight have on their own day, a Saturday walkwith kids in Sefton Park. Lena talked to theyoung and the old, listened to their concernsand posted a message in a baby bottle intothe River Mersey entitled Manifesto forMaintenance Art 2008!

Lorena Rivero gave out tiny leaflets in frontof the massive screen outside Liverpool LimeStreet station that runs adverts all day long.Each leaflet read: ‘Do you agree that thespace at which you are standing needs to be decolonized? Decolonized: Attainingindependence from imposed oppressivestructures. Ex: Capitalism. Ex-Culture 08.’Lorena asked big questions in small print.

Steve Higginson considered our individualimprints, made some observations betweenour conversations during the Retreat andcommented on some clippings from the localpress. His outlandish conclusion was that we,the participants of First Retreat then Advance!!were directly responsible for the state offinancial collapse in Liverpool1, new shoppingcentre. Steve spoke of the bawling headlines ofthe local paper on how the hyper-capitalizationof Liverpool was now in crisis; space was to be given up for FREE by the variousproperty developers.

As we got off the ferry at Seacombe andwalked all the way to New Brighton, wewatched Liverpool from the other side of theriver. We looked again at the places we’d been,from the top of the hill to the seaside. We atefish ’n’ chips at the Seaside Café and witnessedthe setting of the sun.

Stop Press!As artists and cultural workers we agree thatthe task is to make visible the structures andpractices that oppress us. We feel that theadvance on the capitalism of culture can bethought of as a benevolent virus. We arereminded of PLATFORM’s Ignite from 1996–7(www.platformlondon.org/ignite.asp) anewspaper that threw out the journalisticrulebook and told the truth about the oilindustry. They spoke of the dissemination ofthe thousands of copies of their newspaperon commuter trains to the financial district in London as ‘the spreading of a benevolentvirus’. In presenting an unofficial view ofLiverpool we hope this publication can spreada virus, not of the desperate picture ofLiverpool08, but the one filled with the hopethat comes with thoughtful resistance: thatthis virus is contagious. Things don’t end whenthe artists go home. Through this newspaper,as through our own thinking and resisting,the work goes on. We continue to advance.First Retreat then Advance!! was a time tothink critically about our own positions in theprocesses of capitalist production enshrinedin the art market, through Liverpool08. Justbecause we live here doesn’t mean we haveto buy into it! From January to now, over onehundred artists, cultural workers, criticalthinkers, activists, cultural dissenters,academics and others with local, regional,national and international roots have passedthrough the Institute for the Art and Practiceof Dissent at Home. Conversations anddebates have been lively, inspiring, powerful,passionate and above all full of hope. As wereflect on the year of the Capitalism forVultures Liverpool08 we are left not withdespair and complaint, but with hope and afeeling of solidarity. Come and be infected!

Page 12: Future Visions Of History

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Page 13: Future Visions Of History

Anna Francis

er song of the lark walk on, through the wind walk on, through the rain though your dreams be tossed and blown walk on, walk on, with hope in your heart and you’ll never walk alone you’ll never walk alone

Page 14: Future Visions Of History

Esther Macgregor

In so far as the new Liverpool retail developmententitled the ‘Paradise Project‘ hails as anexample of architectural innovation, the factremains that the character of the site has beenpredetermined by specialists and planners ina process of control, branding and marketing.Claiming to achieve an ‘eclectic atmosphere’through distinct ‘quarters’ which respond tothe surrounding environment, the project stillproves somewhat deficient in forming a placethat is focussed on the people and history of the locality. The site, like many other re-engineered city spaces, is itself created as a product to be consumed through retailactivity and entertainment.

Sandwiched between the bustling ParadiseStreet shopping outlets and the hotels andprivate housing development of The BalticTriangle, the remaining nearby industrialquarter stands to challenge such principlesand claims. A certain richness is expressed bythe scale and physicality of the architecturalforms and intricate network of streets andtrade signs. In the very surfaces, branded bygraffiti and decay, can be found a true senseof place – something of the cultural heritagethat you can engage with, touch, grasp onto.History breathes through the gaps in brokenwindows and time is entrapped betweencracks in the walls.

In its strategy to create a prime visitor destination,which is successful in its essence, the ParadiseProject is in danger of robbing the mystery ofthe place, which the visitor could so easilydiscover for himself. By venturing down lowerParadise Street and continuing along Park Laneand Jamaica Street, a unique discovery ismade around each and every crumbling corner.We should reject the need for privatising‘public realm agreements’ and reclaim ourright to explore.

The Paradise Project: The Road out of Paradise

Page 15: Future Visions Of History

Sarah Smizz

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F rom ‘First Lecture on Liverpool, of The Boat University, London.’ The Round Pond, Kensington Gardens, Friday 15th August 2008

...With the Mclean’s i photo in hand,welcome to the Boat University, conveningas usual in a rowing boat in the Round Pond,Kensington Gardens, London, to discuss theissue of the International Garden Festival sitein Liverpool. Notice the shoals of propertydevelopers swimming alongside the boat,eager to hear every word of our imaginativelyrich and theory-laden discussion...

... and how this photo reminds us of our ownkey question: how to imagine the future sothat it doesn’t resemble an Olympic village?We have much to talk of concerning the startof the football season, but now is the time tofocus our minds. Symbolically apt or not,there is a burning hot sun and we are adriftwithout sun lotion or bottled water...

...To avoid some misunderstandings thathave recently arisen in regard to otherprojects of the Boat University we haveprovided everyone with copies of thefollowing statement:

WE ARE DEEPLY IMPRACTICAL, BUT FULL OF IMAGINATION, SOOUR CONTRIBUTION IS UNLIKELYTO PROVIDE MATERIAL FOR THELEGAL SPECIFICS OF YOURSITUATION. BUT WE DO WANT TO PROPOSE A NUMBER OFIMAGINATIVE OR STRATEGICMANEUVERS, POSSIBLY OUT OFOUR OWN DESPERATION, THATMIGHT PROVE USEFUL.

Okay? Let’s go. Firstly, we are excited that,as this project indicates, you have returned to the level of proposal. Because for aninstitution like The Boat University, immersedin the history of twentieth century art andarchitecture, this is where many of the mostexciting developments occur. Even when suchprojects are realized, like Kurt Schwitters’Merzbau, their cultural currency comes fromthe way they return to or retain the state ofproposition and model. We think of you likeArchigram or Ant Farm. We reflect that manysuch visions are now realized, thoughdevelopments in technology and awarenessof sustainability issues.

So, to summarize the discussion so far:

• Become model, made of paper.• Become proposal, tangled like a koan.• Become ethylene tetrafluoreythlene membrane.

... We are less concerned with the shift fromimaginative proposal to reality. This is partlybecause we are interested in the degree towhich proposals and models are themselvesrealities. It is also because we have few financialresources and our minds move quickly fromone topic to another...

CONCERN:Is this insensitive to the specifics of capital,ridiculed by the 24-hour security? Let’s talkabout The Boat University’s own situation.Here on the round pond, we have cut ourselvesadrift, in full view of the Serpentine Gallery,the Royal College of Art, and the former homeof Princess Diana, to none of which we haveany formal affiliation.

We come here for respite from the intensegentrification taking place in Shoreditch andWhitechapel, eager for the relative peace aConservative safe seat brings.We never setsail without checking the boat is fully stockedwith at least six copies of Robert Smithson:The Collected Writings ii, a book of startlingrelevance to every subject we discuss,including this one.

When we need a break from discussion, we often rehearse a choral setting of selectedpassages from Smithson’s 1973 essayFrederick Law Olmsted and the DialecticalLandscape. As half the group sing this, theothers break into a cat-call of other namesand books that might be useful, whilstsomeone usually seizes the microphone andmock-drunkenly reads Gregory Bateson’sdefinition of the metalogue:

A metalogue is a conversation about someproblematic subject.This conversation shouldbe such that not only do the participantsdiscuss the problem but the structure of theconversation as a whole is also relevant tothe same subject. iii

It’s so hot today. After fine-tuning this, westopped thinking about your specific situationat all and engaged in an enjoyable discussionabout Garden Cities, Plotlands, the designcompetition for Central Park, and the outbreakof artist designed Pavilions which have beenappearing in the parks of London this summer.We, too, are a kind of summer pavilion. All of these delineate a certain territory of theimagination: the handmade, the improvised,the utopian, the mediated, pleasure and leisure.

But how does this relate to larger economic realities?

Someone in a passing boat interrupted thisreverie by asking us to consider the relationshipof the occasional and the permanent, takinginto account the accretions of history and theyearning for tabula rasa, and all of us here atThe Boat University became quite gloomy

AN APOCRYPHAL ANECDOTE:Sometimes,we steal one of the rowing boatson theRoundPond and rowdown theThamesto the site for the Olympics.

Perhaps this resembles the site for yourGarden Festival? Perhaps your feelingsresembled ours and you, too, walked insilence amongst so much potential. Here itseems unreal to have such clear space sonear the centre of the city. Such a clearspace for imagination and projection and, of course, it is also likely that what is builtcannot equal these imaginative visions. So such spaces become forever a space of trauma, where the utopian was admittedagain and then finally defeated, cruel how they are always allowing possibility, but also exciting..

Postcards fr om the Boat University, London

David Berridge

Page 17: Future Visions Of History

...Our hour is up and they are calling us infrom the shore. The developers have left thewater, changed back from fish to human. I cansee them on their Blackberry’s, orderingRobert Smithson: The Collected Writings fromAmazon UK, eager to see what the fuss isabout...

...Friends of the Boat University, we’ve reachedthe beginning and the end simultaneously,which makes us all giggle. Are we a garden?Are we a garden festival? Are we a memoryof one, confused in our minds with triumphantOlympic swimmers, cyclists and plants? Our discussion ends with a recreation of an earlier Boat University seminar:

As I row back to shore I’m going to recitepassages from thinkers such as Paulo Freireand Ivan Illich. You will probably be unfamiliarwith these revolutionary thinkers. They canseem a bit dated now. But they underpin allthat we have talked about today, so I’mdisappointed some of you have tucked yournotebooks into your underwear and jumpedoverboard. I’ll also tell you about my cousinwho is 12, and goes swimming at 5 everymorning, before school, dreaming ofrepresenting Britain at the 2012 Olympics.It’s an inspiring story, I promise, and then we will talk of all this no more...

The Boat University is often found floatingon the round pond in Kensington Gardens,London. Since August 1st 2008 it has beenthe basis for a series of lectures, seminars and birthday parties exploring the connectionsof contemporary art, culture, poetry, radicalpedagogy, architecture, and storytelling. Its physical proximity to the SerpentineGallery, the Royal College of Art and theformer home of Princess Diana, are entirely coincidental.

How to imagine the futureso that it doesn’t resemblean Olympic village?

i Langtree McLean have been backed by Liverpool City Council in their plans to redevelop the site of the International Garden Festival into a mixed-use, privately owned ‘transformational redevelopment’. View images of the plans at www.festivalgardens.co.uk

ii Is this all about entropy? The property developers dive into the boat at the mention of the word.They gasp for breath at the bottom of the boat. I could ask: what are the components of your dialectic? but I just pick them up and throw them back into the water. It’s also my birthday so as well as Robert Smithson: The CollectedWritings there are several boxes of iced fairy cakes.

iii Gregory Bateson, Steps to an Ecology of Mind, Chandler Publishing for Health Sciences, 1972, p. 2.

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These images present utopian models fromtwo very different yet surprisingly overlappingsources. They alternate between stills fromthe 1936 British film Things To Come (re-photographed from the projected film) andre-photographed images from the Domebookcounterculture manuals, independentlypublished in California in the early 1970’s.

The film Things to Come (screenplay by H.G.Wells, directed by William Cameron Menzies)sets out a future history for the century following1936, the year it was made. The war with whichthe film begins continues for decades. Mankindis reduced to a state of savagery, technologyregresses and humanity falls into a new darkage. A plague, “the wandering sickness”,sweeps through the land. The last survivingband of scientists mount an attack to bombthe people with a sleeping gas known as “thegas of peace” to pacify them. The remainderof the film presents what might be seen aseither a utopia of technological progress or atotalitarian dystopia.

In the 1960’s, notions of wandering and peace gas take on very different connotations.Edited by Lloyd Kahn in 1970 and 1971, thetwo Domebooks were practical and quasi-philosophical handbooks for creating analternative architecture for an alternativesociety and a psychedelic culture. Theysimultaneously documented and informedutopian living projects created by hippiesaround the world, on the principle that “youdon’t need to know that much, you just needto go ahead and try it out”. The originalDomebooks are hard to find now, but welldocumented in Alastair Gordon’s recentSpaced Out: Radical Environments of thePsychedelic Sixties. (2008, Rizzoli InternationalPublications, New York.)

Revealing uncanny similarities between thesci-fi dystopia of a 1930’s film and utopiandomestic spaces built in 1960’s and 70’s USA,this piece celebrates the view that “the utopiandream that has repeatedly turned into anightmare needs to be criticised in the nameof the democratic utopian hope to which thedream gave expression, not as a rejection ofit”. (Susan Buck Morss, Dreamworld andCatastrophe, 2000, MIT Press, Cambridge,Massachusetts.)

Wandering sickness and the gas of peace

Derek Horton

“Building is a time of expansion.”i

“The universe or nothing – which shall it be?”ii

“We have come to a time of increasing mental fluidity.The dome is expressive of our new approach to the universe. ”iii

“Domes don’t offer as much wind resistance as sharp-angled buildings, which slow down the earth’s rotation.”iv

“The utopian dream [that] has repeatedly turned into a nightmare needs to be criticised in the name of the democratic utopian hope to which the dream gave expression, not as a rejection of it. ”v

i Lloyd Kahn (ed), Domebook 2, 1971, Nowels Publications / Pacific Domes, Menlo Park, California.ii ‘Cabal’, played by Raymond Massey, in the film “Things To Come” (1936), screenplay by H.G. Wells, directed by William Cameron Menzies.

iii Swami Kriyananda, in Domebook 2, 1971, op cit.iv The Ice Cream Fairy, in Domebook 2, 1971, op cit.v Susan Buck-Morss, Dreamworld and Catastrophe, 2000, MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

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The New Iconoclasm

As the curtain falls on Liverpool’s year asEuropean Capital of Culture to a fanfare ofbiennial art installations and exhibitions, theundisputed star of the show has been thecity itself, its seemingly endless architecturaltreasures, landmarks and curiosities atriumphant backdrop to the festivities.Amidst the din of congratulations, celebrationsand controversies of this year-long 800thbirthday party, Liverpool has revealed to theworld what the North West already knew –an elegant iconic city, its architectural grandeurand beauty never diminished by a post warhistory of economic decline familiar to somany cities across the North.

But as the dust settles on the commercialdevelopment Liverpool One, theredevelopments around the Kings Dock and the restoration of the city’s historic core,concerns about the wholesale demolition ofdistricts on the inner edges gather pace,throwing into sharp relief familiar questionsabout the legacy and future of this prevailingmodel of regeneration, and adding to a widerdebate around issues of public and privaterealm, contemporary versus historic,ordinary over iconic. As preservationists andfuturists argue about the aesthetics of whathas been dubbed the Return of the City, i theordinary, everyday landscape we inhabit hasbarely a champion in sight in this stampedetowards global pre-eminence, towards aniconotastic city.

Can an icon really be commissioned or‘imposed’ on the city identikit style bywhichever currently favoured signitect?London’s Gherkin, Manchester’s Beethamtower or Alsop’s Cloud court as muchcontroversy as admiration. Perhaps that’s the point. Or must they always be historic,grand municipal reflections of past imperialaspirations? Between the rhetoric of ‘sensitiverestoration of historic buildings’ and ‘cuttingedge urban design’, what space remains forthe living footprint of our city, the existinglandscape of our own post-war generation?

Once upon a time Iconic status was reservedfor spectacular monuments, historical figures,legendary movie stars. Nowadays it seemsthey are ten a penny, cheap and cheerful,ubiquitous. Perhaps this is no bad thing, ademocratising of bygone elitism. In an age ofcelebrity worship and a constant stream ofreality stars revelling in their fifteen minutesof notoriety, it seems not only can we allachieve fame, we are all would-be icons.

In theory this opens up the possibility ofconsidering anew other aspects of oureveryday existence. Maybe this proliferationamounts to a new iconoclasm, freeing us toappreciate the world we actually inhabit, tofind beauty in the utilitarian and commonplace,and embrace the makeshift imperfections ofour cities, those extraordinary patchworkquilts, testimony to a million stories. Thiseveryday mundanity is the story of us, aniconography of ourselves, of the 20thcentury, warts and all.

Yet no one is interested in the ordinary or theaverage; not even the humble toilet roll canafford to be anything less than sumptuous –velveteen, luxurious, even our basic necessitiesare cloaked in an opulent facade. We simplydon’t deal with the everyday as a conceptbecause it doesn’t fit our much hypedaspirational lifestyles. This image problemmakes it virtually impossible to market theeveryday 20th century as iconic or future relic;who wants to save a tatty old cinema, postwar office block, high rise flat or noxious coolingtower when it’s unspectacular, functional orjust plain ugly – visually offensive to a generationreared on shiny and new or antique andartfully careworn?

Maybe the 20th century is just too recentand the 21st still an ideal more than a reality– the ‘noughties’ merely a transitional periodsimultaneously looking forward and behind.And here lies the problem. Historically the Ruinis the end product of a long process of use,abandonment, dereliction and neglect, withenough time elapsing for it to become mysteriousand forgotten, gradually disappearingunobtrusively into the landscape. Eventuallythe Ruin is rediscovered and a battle ensuesover whether to demolish or defend it – re-engage and acknowledge it as part of the builtenvironment as opposed to the subliminalone it inhabits on the edges of our subconscious.So the Ruin becomes Iconic.

The Icon is the epitome of the mysterious,mythical, even sacred; the grand and glamorousremnants of former civilisations – the Pyramids,the streets of Pompeii, the Easter Island stonesor even those giant men and white horsesmarauding the English countryside. Popularbooks on archaeology are emblazoned withtitles such as ‘wondrous’ or ‘marvellous’ not‘ordinary’ or ‘everyday’!The past, we areassured, is another country, perpetuallyunfamiliar and exotic, with rites and customswe can glimpse but never decipher. With thisexoticism comes stature and allure. But anyfield archaeologist knows (and a typical episodeof Time Team will confirm) that the reality ofdigging is more often than not an engagement

with the ordinary – the regular, average stuffof people and their daily activities. This is thecrux of the dilemma for potential icons, foricons in waiting. Without the necessarycoating of antiquity they remain merely thetat we’ve thrown away, forlorn reminders ofunfashionable design, derelict eyesoresmore than romantic ruins.

Yet we are quick to afford iconic status to thenew and untested, the Keira Knightly over theBette Davis. Iconic is now the hackneyedpreserve of marketers and those in the murkybusiness of ‘re-branding’ our cities into worldclass venues for investment, enterprisescrudely entitled ‘civic masterplan’ or ‘urbanrenaissance’ in which cities slug it outgunslinger style in a ceaseless battle for‘world class’ culture, sport, art – those universalsignifiers of success in an ever shrinkingglobal market. Art and culture in the serviceof commerce is as old as the hills of course,but it’s the scale, the speed, the relentlessconformity to an already tired blueprint thatspells trouble for our future Icon. In this visionof the city as pleasure dome, every experience,every need, every whim is provided, isreadymade, with no room for ad hoc, off thecuff enjoyment. Everything has a purpose, isbusy earning its keep, nothing falls betweenthe cracks to fade, be forgotten, lie still andfall into decay. The age-old cycle of use,abandonment, dereliction and neglect isbroken. In this incarnation the city is doomedto a perpetual present, with no carbuncles orgnarly bunions to remind us of past adventuresor journeys trodden through the well-wornlandscapes of our cities, no reminders that allthings must pass, that our contemporaryconceits and preoccupations are mere triflesunder the archaeologist’s trowel. This newiconoclasm has a dark side.

For the urban enthusiast or archaeologist ofthe contemporary, the Icon is all around us, itis not simply a demarcation of time or indicatorof high status; it is embedded in the day today world, in the materiality of routine, run of the mill stuff and the humdrum spaces weinhabit and traverse. If the icon can truly bethe everyday just waiting to happen, then we must widen our gaze to encompass theforgotten, overlooked or scorned scraps ofthe 20th century before they are demolishedand silenced forever. Two stories illustrate ourprevailing schizophrenia. At the heart of bothis the nature of monumentality and culturalmemory, urban dereliction and regeneration,and the precarious state of our 20th centuryarchitectural heritage.

Euphemia Niblock

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The triumph is the tale of a disused medievalchurch in the centre of Maastricht, a dilapidatedarchitectural jewel lovingly transformed intoan atmospheric, dramatic bookstore.ii

The aesthetics are classic, reassuringlytraditional, accessible; the regenerationproposal practical, functional and commerciallysound – in keeping with the prevailing languageof city redevelopment and urban planning.Visually it is a magnificent achievement; aharmonious marriage of the building’s soaringedifice and austere spirituality, the outcome apresent day cathedral to learning and commerce– the bookstore as secular ‘sacred space’,vessel of cultural and intellectual heritage,scholarship, aspiration, big ideas. It certainlyticks all the right boxes – Maastricht is anestablished tourist destination, beloved by thechattering classes, picture box perfect for thefashionable ‘urban nomads’ weekend away.Everyone’s a winner, not least a beautifulbuilding in peril rescued from the bulldozer,an exemplary and honourable solution to theincreasing problem surrounding the rapiddecline and crisis facing abandoned religiousbuildings of often remarkable beauty andarchitectural merit.

In stark contrast is our disaster story, a sorryend to an equally vigorous campaign to savean altogether different monument, but iconicnonetheless; a complicated affair packed withall the usual suspects – economic, social andindustrial decline, urban dereliction, regenerationand re-branding. This stalwart attempt by adedicated pair of young Sheffield urbanenthusiasts captured the public imagination,sparking both controversy and support

Over the last three years the Tinsley towers,simple, austere, even elegant, have become, inthe words of Alexandra Topping in the Guardianin April 2008, “Symbolic of the battle for thecity’s soul – between those determined tocreate a 21st century gleaming metropolisand those intent on preserving and celebratingsome of the city’s industrial heritage.” iii

A happy ending seemed secure when thetowers were amongst the 6 winners ofChannel 4’s Big Art Project, securing fundingand support from Arts Council England andThe Arts Fund. Within two days however E-on,the owners and electricity suppliers, announcedthe towers unsafe and set a date for demolition.A subsequent campaign for a temporaryartwork has similarly met with rejection. In an intriguing twist, Sheffield City Council hasapparently been offered a large sum from E-onto commission a new public artwork on the siteafter demolition. For the city council this is asatisfactory solution, one that fits snugly intotheir newly unveiled plans for a Sheffieldreinvented in the Manchester and Liverpool mould.

Cooling towers might seem an unlikely iconand hardly worthy of our attention or support.Who in their right minds would be sorry tosee the demolition of a couple of coolingtowers on the steel manufacturing corridorbetween Sheffield and Rotherham, blot onthe landscape, oppressive symbol of 20thcentury heavy industry, outmoded cliché ofthe North, polluter of public health and theenvironment? Not much to celebrate then noran obvious candidate for iconic status to besaved and relished by either local or nationalconsciousness, especially with the promise ofa lovely shiny new artwork to soften the blow?

On the contrary: Iconic status cannot beconferred by committee or appeals to our senseof delicacy or good taste. Monuments arecreated not made. The pyramids, the Coliseum,even the tower of London were each forgedout of the toils, sacrifice or oppression of thepopulation but we recognise and respond totheir engineering ingenuity, sheer dynamicphysicality, endurance – in short, they resonate,linking us to our predecessors, their place inour story. Attempts to suppress undesirablesymbols of our own age are naïve at best,cultural whitewash at worst. All too often thefate of non-sacred, non-institutional buildingsis to be demolished despite widespreadcampaigns of support. So the sensitivereworking of the Maastricht church, symbolof the city’s history and heritage needs nojustification whilst nearer to home a similararchitectural and archaeological symbol ofplace, landscape and heritage is condemnedto oblivion.

Both have made the headlines but it seemsthat in the popular imagination only a fewmisguided modernists or 20th centuryenthusiasts will be mourning the loss of anugly industrial blot on the Northern landscape.In a sad and ironic footnote, a two week saleof Tinsley tower memorabilia, tea towels, mugsand postcards, sold out in the first couple ofhours. Miniaturised, contained, useful andcommodified, the towers have finally submittedto the dominant ethos of our age.

Art, architecture, dereliction, regeneration,monumentality, archaeology: this tale of twotowers speaks volumes about the gulf betweenthe fate of 20th century architectural classicsand that of more cherished and respectederas such as the Victorian and Medieval; notmerely a gulf of aesthetics, but of the politicsof nostalgia, the pretensions of the cultureindustry and its mistrust and misappropriationof the everyday, the popular, the vernacularheld in its care.

The demise of the Tinsley towers is a cautionarytale – its telling a challenge to reinterpret theIcon and release it from today’s slavish, passiveworship of made to measure posterity, towardsan appreciation of the magnificent monsterslurking in our midst, inimitable and distinctiverelic of our unholy age.

As the Tinsley campaigners put it,

“The city has been let down. They could havebeen amazing – a Tate modern for the North,our own turbine hall. We could have done our temporary art project with Anish Kapoor. We could have changed the way people lookat this city. And they didn’t let us.”

The towers were demolished at 3am onSunday 24th August, 2008.

Attempts to suppress undesirable symbols of our own age are naïve at best, cultural whitewash at worst.All too often the fate of non-sacred, non-institutionalbuildings is to be demolished despite widespreadcampaigns of support.

i Return of the City, IFHP’s Annual International Conference, 1–3 June, Liverpool Arena & Conference Centre, 2008

ii www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2008/apr/09/architecture.bestbookshopsiii www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/apr/02/regeneration.communities

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David Berridge lives in Whitechapel,East London. In addition to co-ordinatingThe Boat University he edits and writesMore Milk Yvette: A Journal of the BrokenScreen, a blogger based magazinefocussed on artists’ film and video, and art writing. www.moremilkyvette.blogspot.com

Lawrence Bradby is an artist whosepractice makes use of urban public space.He has written about privately-ownedpublic space for the forthcoming issueof the on-line journal Dialogue.www.axisweb.org/Dialogue.aspx

The Caravan Gallery is a gallery in acaravan run by artists Jan Williamsand Chris Teasdale. Since 2000 theyhave been travelling around the UKphotographing the reality andsurreality of ‘the way we live today’as regeneration fever sweeps the land.www.thecaravangallery.co.uk

Mike Carney is a graphic designerbased atThe Royal Standard studios inLiverpool. His approach to the designof this publication was informed by childhood memories of the InternationalGarden Festival and his experience ofthe Capital of Culture.www.mikesstudio.co.uk

Reg Cox is a Liverpool-basedphotographer and target shooter. Hewas a student at Liverpool Art Schoolin the early 1940s and from 1946 heserved twelve years for the Royal AirForce as a Photographer, eventuallyprogressing to Lecturer in Photographyat Liverpool Regional College of Art,later Liverpool Polytechnic, then JohnMoore’s. He was a member of LiverpoolAcademy of Arts, where he wasPresident from 1974–76.

Contributors Acknowledgments

Anna Francis is an artist based inStoke-on-Trent. Her work investigatesthe impact that art and cultural activityhave on the regeneration of cities.www.annafrancis.blogspot.com

Nelson Guzmán Avellaneda is an artist based in Bogota, Colombia. He recently spent three months inresidency in Liverpool, during whichtime he explored the notion of evilfrom the perspective of an outsidernavigating a new city.

Jim Hall is a retired teacher born at the Liverpool Royal Infirmary in 1942.For Jim the Garden Festival was anexperience not to be forgotten, and onethat he would love to still be availabletoday. Thanks to John Bythell for hisassistance with Jim’s contribution to the newspaper.www.sjsfiles.btinternet.co.uk

Derek Horton is an artist, writer andteacher. He works with language andmanufacture, and is interested inephemeral, nomadic and improvisatoryapproaches to cultural production. He was the Director of Research inContemporary Art at Leeds MetropolitanUniversity until December 2007 andco-founded the on-line project/secondswith Peter Lewis in 2005.www.slashseconds.org

The Institute for the Art and Practice of Dissent at Home is a home-run artist activist initiative, run out of thespare room of a council house inEverton, Liverpool.www.twoaddthree.org

Esther MacGregor is a 2007 graduatefrom Bristol UWE, now continuing her practice. Her work is based aroundnotions of industry and regeneration andmuch of it draws influence from graphicdesign in early 20th century Europe. www.esthermacgregor.co.uk

Dr. Malcolm F Miles is Professor ofCultural Theory at the University ofPlymouth, UK, where he convenesCritical Spaces – the Centre for CriticalCultural Research. He is author ofUrban Utopias (2008), Cities & Cultures(2007), Urban Avant-Gardes (2004) andArt Space & the City (1997). His currentresearch is between contemporary art,critical theory, and social change.www.malcolmmiles.org.uk

Euphemia P Niblock spinster,antiquarian, and flaneuse is the epitome of the Edwardian bluestocking.Emerging unexpectedly from therevamped Manchester Museum in 2003,she is still adjusting to the fact that it isnot 1927 but the 21st century… herslightly bemused explorations into thecontemporary world can be read in heron-line Diary of a Bluestocking.www.diaryofabluestocking.blogspot.com

Daniel Simpkins is an artist and curatorbased at The Royal Standard studios inLiverpool. His practice centres on socialand cultural issues prevalent in post-industrial and globalising cities. www.danielsimpkins.net

Stephen Sharp is a graduate of TheUniversity of Wolverhampton and iscurrently working in a secondary schoolin Dudley as an unqualified teacher.www.axisweb.org/artist/stephensharp

Sarah Smizz is an artist and studentbased in Sheffield. Her practice iscurrently engaged in the social valueof architecture as a spectacle and sheis founder of C.A.a.D [ContemporaryArts as Dialogue] and the StreetFormOrganisation.www.sarahsmizz.comwww.utopianprotagonist.co.uk

Penny Whitehead is an artist / curator /writer and director ofThe Royal Standard,an artist-run gallery, studios and socialworkspace. Having moved to Liverpoolin 2007, she has divided her time mainlybetween working in minimum-wage jobsto support her practice, and thinking aboutculture, capitalism and regeneration.www.pennywhitehead.net

PROJECT CO-ORDINATORS / CURATORS

Daniel Simpkins and Penny Whitehead.

PHOTOGRAPHY

Nelson Guzmán AvellanedaFront and back cover, Page 1, 5.Liverpool International Garden Festival site, 2008.Page 20,The Walk of Fame, 2008.

The Caravan Gallery Page 1 (top), 4.Liverpool International Garden Festival site, 2008.

Jim Hall Page 3.Liverpool International Garden Festival, 1984.

Anna Francis Centre pages.Panoramic of Venmore Street, Anfield, 2008.

Reg Cox Page 19.Liverpool International Garden Festival site, 1984and 2008.

DESIGN

Mike Carney. www.mikesstudio.co.uk

Commissioned by Open Eye Projects, aprogramme strand of Open Eye Gallery, Liverpoolwww.openeye.org.uk. Open Eye Projects is adynamic programme of exhibitions, projects andprofessional development activities involvingemerging artists and taking place in experimentalformats, contexts and locations around Liverpool.

No part of this publication may be reproducedwithout prior written permission by the publishers.The views expressed are not necessarily thoseof the publisher. Copyright Penny Whitehead andDaniel Simkins. All rights reserved. All imagescopyright the artist unless otherwise stated. All text copyright the authors.

CRIME CULTURE COMMUNITY UNEMPLOYMENT OPTIMISM

TOURISM PRIVATISATION DISSENT SHOPPING PROGRESS

CRIME CULTURE COMMUNITY UNEMPLOYMENT OPTIMISM

TOURISM PRIVATISATION DISSENT SHOPPING PROGRESS

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