Aislinn Evans

A city symphony of a small part of Poplar, East London. In conversation with William Raban's Under The Tower trilogy.

The skyscraper 1 Canada Water, Canary Wharf, London, becomes a rocket.

Negative space. An energy drain. Dead time. Purgatory. A form of amnesia. A tunnelled landscape. In 1995 my dad walked up the A13 searching for a wormhole, a doorway, a portal, out of London. If he’d had a car, the wormhole would have already opened itself up to him. We aren’t supposed to exist on the road just to be there. It is not a place by its own merit, but a non-place, a hyper alienated channel to transport capital (workers, goods, waste) from A to B. The landscape beside the road becomes a blur, a background, dimly perceived – relegated there by the roadscape. Bus stops, warehouses, housing estates, tent encampments and traveller sites, all to the side and underside the road. Which side are you on?

A short walk around Rainham's Concrete Barges, while listening to the half-functional wind-up information point. You'll learn all there is to know about the Ford Dagenham wind turbine.

An hour on the District Line.

Romford town, December 26th, 2020.

A city symphony of a small part of Poplar, East London. In conversation with William Raban's Under The Tower trilogy.

The skyscraper 1 Canada Water, Canary Wharf, London, becomes a rocket.

Negative space. An energy drain. Dead time. Purgatory. A form of amnesia. A tunnelled landscape. In 1995 my dad walked up the A13 searching for a wormhole, a doorway, a portal, out of London. If he’d had a car, the wormhole would have already opened itself up to him. We aren’t supposed to exist on the road just to be there. It is not a place by its own merit, but a non-place, a hyper alienated channel to transport capital (workers, goods, waste) from A to B. The landscape beside the road becomes a blur, a background, dimly perceived – relegated there by the roadscape. Bus stops, warehouses, housing estates, tent encampments and traveller sites, all to the side and underside the road. Which side are you on?

A short walk around Rainham's Concrete Barges, while listening to the half-functional wind-up information point. You'll learn all there is to know about the Ford Dagenham wind turbine.

An hour on the District Line.

Romford town, December 26th, 2020.

A short cultural history of spitting.