The two references that directly relate to my investigations of Columbia Road in London are Georges Perec’s section ‚Species of Space’ in his book Species of Spaces and Other Places (1974, pp. 50-55), as well as Patrick Keiller’s movie Robinson in Space (1997).

Reference One

Perec’s book Species of Species and Other Places (1974) inspired the closer interrogation of my immediate surroundings and investigation of what was happening in the neighbourhood. He wrote in his piece that each year he chooses ‚twelve different places, where he used to live or else felt attached to‘ (1974). 

For this reason, I chose a place that I live close to and yet feel very attached to – Columbia Road, a street in East London. What triggered my interest in this area was the aspect of gentrification and the memory of old London, which used to exist there before. Throughout the experimentations, I tried to use as much attention to detail as Perec, which he weaved in his subjective experience of the spaces. First, overwhelmed by the amount of information (people, cars, animals etc.) in the street, I began with Perec’s recommendation to make an inventory of what one can see and define the street’s beginning and end. Thereby I started studying doorknobs, documented conversations between the EastEnders (people who had lived in East  London before the gentrification of this district) and people on the streets and observed the shopfronts.  

Perec’s investigations also involved describing each of the places he picked in different months of the year. As a result, I started using Google Maps Streetview as a tool to analyse the road changes by going back in time – thus understanding the constant transformations of shopfronts.  

Reference Two

The second reference related to my investigations is the movie Robinson in Space (1997) by Patrick Keiller. Robinson in Space (1997) is a curious portrayal of London that captures the city moving about its businesses. While filming, Keiller emphasised the quiet moments, always using a static camera and thus pointing out the little moments that all together create a bigger picture of the city of London. The movie depicts the thought process of an unseen character, Robinson (spoken by Paul Scofield), whose sentences are witty and wisely aligned with the visual content. Robinson decided to assist in the study of the ‘problem’ of London that is his life’s work

The connection between Keiller’s and my body of work lies in the choice of subject as well as in the way our subject is portrayed. Similar to Keiller’s work I used storytelling elements such as an unseen narrator and humorous elements in order to ridicule the ‚problem‘ of East London. Furthermore, I utilized very much alike to Keiller’s static camera work, a static way of framing the street by using stop-motion. Through experimenting with stop-motion technologies, I realised that Keiller’s work correlates with these stop-motion techniques. 

These filming methodologies focussing on London’s streets, and in my case, Columbia Road, supported in understanding and capturing the city’s atmosphere. Transitioning between a mediative reflection and satirical elements Keiller’s and my investigations jump between past and present.

Perec, G. (1974) Species of Spaces and Other Places. London: Penguin.

Robinson in Space (1994) Directed by P. Keiller. Available at: Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crVFU-5B6fs (Accessed: 9 Feb 2023).