Inner City: production diary
Spring 2001
Glass: the first test filming day
I dreamed of doing handstands against the
wall; two splinters of glass in my finger, which I removed.
Through a camera you look small - the world won’t all fit
through the tiny lens. So you pick out bits, stick them
together, and give the wider picture.
Underneath the Arches, Busker Jack plays on the site of the
North Gate. His right foot counting time in the reflected
wet as 26 silhouettes move forward in formation through the
subway.
Roll one
The top of Armada Way: look toward North Cross, grey sky,
gulls up above, people walk along to the subway. Brittle
palms, lavender beds. Afternoon shoppers travelling home.
Guys on bikes freewheeling down into the city. A pair of
benches by the YMCA, low down camera: our first time with
the whole team together. The two dancers have begun some
initial choreographic work with Lois in the studio and on
site.
I have to be very focused about our shoots as we actually
have very little filming time. The days are short with
company class at the Barbican in the mornings, then Jun and
Amanda need to refuel and warm-up before we start working
in the city centre in the afternoons. Lois needs to pick up
her son and doesn’t want to finish too late in the day, so
we agree that our window for working with the dancers is
between one and about four thirty.
Stuart and myself can do the business and work quickly when
we need to. We’re used to working in public, in amongst
people. Filming is a fluid process. I know what I and the
team need to achieve day by day so that a film can evolve
and develop - and so we get what we need to record.
As film-makers we’re conditioned to changing schedules and
filming set-ups, making quick decisions, anticipating and
reacting to wind, sun and rain, grabbing opportunities as
they present themselves. For us, the process of film-making
is a performance.
Jun and Amanda, our dancers, are a good match:
Amanda is salmon pink, strong and muscular with tiny feet.
She’s bendy and sways, leading movement with her hips.
She’s fair and flushes easily. Her face shows her moods.
She likes to be in control.
Jun is cool teal blue, his moves definite, contained and
athletic. A perfect face for the camera, sensitive and
controlled. I like the crackling noise his pimpled green
Japanese sneakers make as his feet dance across the gritty
pavement.
Entering the city
We are creating a psychic landscape, a place
of stripped down images and sounds. We transform something
visible into something privately experienced. The audience
steps inside the space and creates meaning. Inner City:
public art in a public space in the centre of the city. The
project explores the idea of city, of private activities in
the public spaces of pedestrian and garden zones.
Psychogeography
"The problem faced by contemporary artists
tackling urban space was twofold: first how best to
apprehend the experience of urban space not as spectator
but as actor; second how to best re-present urban space,
not in terms of figure and ground, on a two dimensional
plan, but in active physical and mental intervention. The
first question was solved through derive and its ulterior
forms in Fluxus and Conceptual Art; the second by the
topographical mapping of drifting processes, or cognitive
mapping."
Critic Christal Hooevoet writing about post-war art in
‘Wandering in the city, flanerie to derive and after: the
cognitive mapping of urban space’, The power of the city,
the city of power (1992). New York: Whitney Museum of
American Art. Quoted by Iwona Blazwick in the book Century
city, published to accompany the first major exhibition at
Tate Modern 1 February - 29 April 2001.
Iwona writes of the psychogeographic responses, of artists,
writers and film-makers "giving over authorship to the city
itself...a compelling strategy. Aimless wandering, ludic
nomadism, shadowing strangers, co-opting the streetwise
strategies of direct action, cutting across the grooves of
commuterdom - by turns playful and dangerous, such
‘senseless acts of beauty’ bear witness to the great
Situationist slogan ‘Sous le pave, la plage’ - under the
pavement, the beach." ‘Senseless acts of beauty’ is a
phrase associated with eco-activism and also the title of a
book by George McKay, London 1996.
Blazwick, I. (ed.) (2001) Century city: art and culture
in the modern metropolis. London: Tate
Drawing space
Digital video (DV): “dissolves the distinctions that
separate the permanence of architecture from the transience
of events.”
DV could be “a new centre of gravity for the
design/production process of architecture and its kindred
arts. The promise of DV is that it taps into the great fund
of visual/operational knowledge held in the culture at
large, and that it can enable the design/production process
to become more responsive and more open to a wider group of
interested parties.”
Extracts from Gavin Hogben’s essay Studio movies which
proposes that “the moving image can be developed as a
powerful sketching medium, with all the intimacy and the
immediacy, of pencil and paper.” Hogben, G. (2000) ‘Studio
movies’ Digital Creativity (Volume 11 / No 4 /
December 2000) New York: Routledge. p. 219
What was once
In the Blitz of 1940 bombing raids wiped out the heart of
Plymouth. Eye witnesses wrote of "the almost physical
impression that a city is slipping away from under one’s
feet" (Andre Savignon), and that "the heat was so great
that we could not look at it...it was lighter than day and
great bombs were falling every few seconds" (Stanley
Goodman).
By the end of the war in 1945 Plymouth’s population had
gone down from 208,000 to 127,000, as people were forced to
leave the city to find somewhere to live.
Photos of the time show a few burned out hulks of buildings
standing in a huge wasteland of flattened rubble. Thousands
of homes were destroyed, along with 41 churches, 26
schools, 8 cinemas and 100 pubs.
I live just beyond the edge of the city centre near
Beaumont Park. Here on the hillside of Greenbank and St
Judes near the old Eastern city gate, German bombs fell in
streams and clusters along the terraces, night after night
after night.
One night’s bombing raid took out houses in the next
street. The explosions lifted the roof of what would be our
house, twisted rafters, brought down ceilings and split
walls. In the back garden wartime mums and dads hid out in
the shelter, the kids evacuated to South Hams or North
Cornwall.
The Morrison shelter in our garden was a six by five foot
chamber, walls of thick concrete reinforced with steel
girders, nuts and bolts, and pieces of old iron. Almost
indestructible. There was a green carpet on the floor and a
steel escape hatch through the garden wall into the back
lane. Others round here built an Anderson shelter,
excavated a hidey-hole under the downstairs floor, or just
chanced their luck.
As soon as the war ended Plymouth city councillor William
Miller, born in Stonehouse, the son of a Sierra Leonean
seaman and the grandson of a freed slave, became chairman
of housing and started the process of rebuilding the city
with a crash programme of prefab houses: in 1947 the
reconstruction of the city centre was given the go ahead,
the old geography was subsumed by post-war new-build, and
the future began.
Note: see Ossie Glover’s piece All at sea: like father, like son for
more about William Miller, and his son Claude Miller
who became Plymouth’s Lord Mayor, in Black History
365 (Volume two / Issue one / Summer 2008)
London: Smaart Publishing and
www.black-history-month.co.uk p. 4
The plan: turris fortissima est nomen Jehova
Originally there were three urban
developments: the towns of Plymouth, East Stonehouse and
Devonport, which had all evolved along separate river
estuaries. Early in the nineteenth century the architect
John Foulston designed Union Street to link the three
towns, which gradually expanded and merged, and in 1914
were formally amalgamated. The aim: to create a new modern
commercial area in the centre of the city, reinforcing the
importance of Plymouth as a major shopping centre for the
region.
Traffic circles around the city centre along a ring of
roads linked by roundabouts. Pedestrian access into the
city is via subways to the north, east and south under the
dual carriage-ways which form a tight boundary around the
centre. The grid pattern is based on two main axes:
north-south - Armada Way from Cobourg Street to the Hoe,
and east-west - Royal Parade from St Andrew’s Cross to the
eastern end of Union Street. A central concept to the Plan
was to extend the green of the Hoe along Armada Way right
into the heart of the city. A flagstaff set in a
reproduction of Drake’s Drum was built at the Armada
Way-Royal Parade crossing. In 1947 King George VI dedicated
the flagstaff at a special ceremony to mark the formal
start of the rebuilding of Plymouth.
Electric avenue
Martha Graham: “There is a vitality, a life
force, a quickening that is translated through you into
action, and because there is only one of you in all time,
this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will
never exist through any medium and be lost. It is not your
business to determine how good it is or how it compares to
other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours,
clearly and directly.”
Spoken to Agnes de Mille: de Mille, A. (1991) Martha:
the life and work of Martha Graham. New York: Random
House. pp. 264.
The ocean rises in a tsunami of green, up, over and down
past the war memorial, Moat House hotel. Splashing through
Barclays' banking hall and around the curved fountains of
San Sebastian Square.
Linear park
Armada Way - a wide avenue 1000 yards from
North Cross to the Hoe, a linear park of groves, lawns,
trickling streams, pools and fountains - the presence of
water a reminder of the sea.
Entry to the city on foot from the east is through a
labyrinth of mostly unnamed walkways, slopes, steps,
subways, and opes. Down under roads, curving around
buildings, cutting through gaps between shops.
There are no shared symbols, collective memories, or clear
landmarks. The only prewar survivor in the centre is the
Western Morning News building in New George Street - older
people still use this to orientate themselves. Younger
people, new residents and visitors to the city use the
sundial and the Place de Brest.
In the wide grid of the centre we are aware of the unseen
ocean just over the ridge. Gulls wheel high overhead above
the tops of buildings, flap and screech at tree level, peck
squawk and bicker for scraps and spilt chips on the ground.
During hot summer days a sea fret travels in on a high
tide. Cool white briny mist rising up onto the Hoe plateau,
then spilling down the bowl of Armada Way into the heart of
the city. The temperature drops from steamy tropical to
refrigerated in moments as the sun disappears behind a puff
of ice cloud.
There are no clocks. We rely on the sun to tell us the
time, the shape and depth of shadows, the colour of light.
In the city centre we are outside time. A matrix of few
permanent landmarks. Timeless we lose ourselves in the
green and granite maze of the city.
Invisible
Waves ripple across the Slumberdown mattress
from Bude to Lipson. A 3.6 tremor in the solar plexus.
About ten to one, just lain down to sleep, the earth moved.
The window shook in its frame, floorboards bounced.
In the street looped together with hula hoops, a chain of
kids - Lily, Oliver and friends. Over the road at number
one, Tubbs is out gardening by eight thirty. Hubs and her
scrape out their front flowerbed, ready for the summer. A
ring of annuals.
The sun beats a hot solar rhythm on the dry slatey earth,
baked rock hard.
Balance
I decided fairly early on in the
pre-production process to consciously frame most shots of
the two dancers in order to bisect or cut up their bodies.
By chopping off significant portions of the figure I wanted
to make the audience aware of the edge of the frame: our
attention is drawn to the figure itself as well as what it
is outside the frame that we cannot see.
This fragmented but controlled construction of images of
performers and passersby resonates with our experience of
moving through inner city space. It is as if we are moving
along a tightrope. We achieve balance but it is precarious.
We move forward in a linear direction and the momentum
drives us further. In general, as viewers we learn the
grammar of traditional shots - the long or wide shot, the
medium or mid-shot, and the close-up - from watching
television and film. And in such a way each successive shot
pushes the film - and us - onward on our journey through
the inner city, being led by the the two performers, who
are given authority by appearing above us, being shot
mostly from low angles.
Dancing without music to the rhythm of the dancers'
movement within the frame, and against the hard edge of
walls, windows, the percussion of footsteps and edits, the
incidental choreography of passers-by.
We are moved on a journey through space and time as we
follow the trail of images, being led to and fro, but
always onward, from the beginning of the film to its end:
the silent darkness.
Future past
Stuart and I are aware that the existence of
what we're filming is limited. We are tuned in to time.
Time has been called on the subways, pathways and copses
that spool down from the heights of North Cross, linking
one space to another in one fluid movement. Time is up for
the Drake Circus shopping centre, (opened by Princess
Anne), at the top of town.
We know that what we're seeing, the spaces we're moving
within, won't be here for much longer. The escalator, the
plate-glass display windows placed to reveal glimpses of
ourselves and others multiplying as we disappear off into
the future past.
The smooth slate circle is vulnerable to the council's 21st
century restructuring of the city centre. What is old will
be re-modelled as a shopping mall, the freedom for
pedestrians to cross roads at street level, and the
creation of a flat events space in Armada Way.
The subway under Royal Parade will one day soon be
bricked-up with breeze blocks, the tiles telling Plymouth's
story smashed and walled-in; the access slopes filled with
rubble and paved flat with granite slabs.
As the choreographed journey of camera and dance takes
shape in the early days of our three week residency in the
city centre, our locations suggest names for themselves:
Whispering Wall, Stop Start Steps.
I draw up a map of the action (a storyboard?) with North
Cross at the top, moving down Armada Way southwards to San
Sebastian Square and the twin crescent fountains. In the
air there is a promise of the ocean, unseen beyond the bulk
of Plymouth Hoe. Somewhere over there is a far horizon,
flat-lining across a distant frame where sea meets sky.
During filming we capture a natural, lucent beauty from
digits and pixels. The shots are framed carefully, the
dancers move with precision, a counterpoint to the
observed, undirected action of the inner city people.
The film is lit naturally, except in the subways where the
light below ground is thick, gelatinous, sticky with time.
We use the footage straight as it comes during the edit, no
colouring, no effects, following the progression of our map
as we select and cut the rhythm of the inner city journey
together.
We compose the soundscape using audio recorded on location
in the landscape the dancers travel through. A sound
catches our attention: it's out of sight, but moves closer,
into view, is held for a brief moment, then carried away
into the distance beyond the frame as our ears pick up a
new sound.
The principle components of the soundtrack are the
diversity of voices overheard - different languages,
accents, ages; noises produced by movement - footsteps
across different surfaces and textures, water, the spinning
wheels of bicycles and buggies; and qualities of sound in
both enclosed and open environments - the echoes of
children in the subways contrasting with the clarity of the
wide spaces above ground.
Although we originally filmed on Kodachrome 40, back from
the lab the footage looks so lush, moody and belonging to
time past - especially the subterranean movement sequences
- that it seems to belong to a separate film. We decide to
include clips from only a single K40 Super 8 roll: home
movie out-takes from one lazy off-duty afternoon after our
rigourous lunchtime shoot outside the jeweller's on New
George Street. It reminds us that we are watching the past,
a memory taking shape: the dancers chat, and laugh and warm
themselves in thick, golden sunlight outside Carwardine's
café; Jacqui Gee's daughter and her best friend are caught
forever in a teenage moment of ice creams, smiles and
swingy hair. The dream replayed, these brief interludes
remind us that what we're seeing is no more, can never be
again.
Copyright © Kayla Parker 2001 - 2010
Extracts taken from Inner City production diary 2000 - 2001