Vanguard Street, Anfield, Liverpool 2011 © Alex Currie

Varthen Street, Anfield, Liverpool 2011 © Alex Currie

Venice Street, Anfield, Liverpool 2011© Alex Currie

Vyrnwy Street, Anfield, Liverpool 2011 © Alex Currie

The project which is still in its infancy is a collaboration with Scottish Photographer Chris Leslie who will be creating short videos for the project.

3-minute OPEN

Friday 16th December 6.00pm – 9.00pm

Practitioners will deliver three-minute presentations as part of this PechaKucha-style networking event. Organised with the help of PechaKucha Brighton.

Alex Currie

Richard Chivers

Chris Leslie

Read Full Article here. 

Other Artists include

Joan Alexander
Diana Artus
Gordon Ashbridge
Murray Ballard
Alex Bailey & Helen Flanagan
Julian Baron
Kevin Beck
Pierre Bessard
Pogo Books
Antony Cairns
Margarida Correia
Lawrence Daley
Caitlin Duennebier
Jon Dunning
Ramon Eding
Peter Edwards
Human Endeavour
Dan Epthorp
Jason Evans
Virgilio Ferreira
Peter Gates
Stuart Griffiths
Nicolas Haeni
Yoann Hagnere & Viola Korosi
Andy Heller
Bonifacio Barrio Hijosa
Kenji Hirasawa
Fergus Jordan
Shiho Kito
Josef Konczak/Martin Seeds
Espen R Krukhaug
Jason Larkin
Queenie Rosita Law
Chris Linaker
John Maclean
Louise Maher
Bertil Nilsson
Simon Norfolk
Bruno Quinquet
Misha de Ridder
Nick Rochowski
Davi Russo
William Sadowski
Kayne Li Lui Sang
Maria Serrano
Amelia Shepherd
Jess Smith
Ewen Spencer
Lucy Steggals
Aya Takada
Mikel Telleria
Megan Turner-Jones
Harry Watts

Heterotopia, the tragic fall.

Vincent J. Stoker
Heterotopia is a phenomenological investigation of the ‘other places’. It uses photography to dissect architectural bodies into their fundamental elements and to reach a better understanding of the world we live in.

Hetero : the other, otherness. Topos : the place.

Heterotopias can be defined negatively, by what they are not. Here and nowhere, they are neither real, nor utopian but both at the same time. Places out of all places but still recorded on maps, they are the physical locations of utopias, utopias that have become matter.

“The tragic fall” is my first series of heterotopias.

Architects frustrate Nature by creating ascending shapes. They strive to channel the forces of Nature which tend to flatten everything. The series shows this eternal struggle that even monuments end up losing. The history of these places is the History of our crises, the History of the failure of utopian projects. They, the places reveal the dark hidden parts and cast doubts on autophagous systems that let destroy what they have built themselves. My work is to remember those mistakes, the forgotten losers of History. I give voice to those we don’t listen to. Heterotopia is a testimony to the small ones, former monuments supporting great expectations.
It shows what would happen if mankind disappeared from the planet. Obviously, nature would reassert itself and reclaim its rights. Our civilization would be forgotten almost instantly, covered up with moss.
But the series is also a rise. It is the birth of a new order, the alliance, the improbable match, harmony of Nature and Culture. These places have never been as beautiful as today, in decay. Physics makes art and magnifies architecture. My pictures praise the slow and meticulous work of time, the inspired worker.
These stout and monumental monsters, relic of the past, murmur lessons to our ears. I hear them shout the brevity and fragility of our existence. My ruins have an edification power. Could it be possible to imagine Vanity and the “memento mori” in a more powerful way than the monument in ruin? The other lesson is to see in them an opportunity to make peace with our past. Humanity makes mistakes; this is what must not be forgotten. These terrible mutilations, we will end up liking them.

Behind the dust, the rust and under the rubble, we can sense the architects’ original visions of order and the rigid geometry of the buildings. The shots are framed with an almost mathematic exigency and show decrepit textures, all to try and make you, the viewer, discern the conflict in these places that are falling into chaos and rising with meaning.

Today I’m working on other series of heterotopias, “the utopian bodies”, “the end of History”, “the stored knowledge”…

www.vincent-j-stoker.com

Image. Park Hill Flats. Sheffield. 2009 Alex Currie.

Other Photgraphers showing their work with Instant Coffee projections are:

• Freya Najade – If you are lucky, you get old
• Ben Roberts – Gathering clouds
• Jim Naughten – Re-enactors
• Human Endeavour Collective – Degeneration
• Ian Teh  - Dark clouds
• Briony Campell – The Dad project
• Seba Kurtis – 700 miles
• Michele Tagliaferri – Mapa
• Fernando Brito  -  Your steps were lost in the landscape
• Andrew Jackson  -  The hidden landscape
• Will Hartley  -   Lawrence Hill
• Dalia Khamissy  -  Lebanese´s missing

I have posted some links to his work Glasgow Renaissance here:

http://www.chrisleslie.co.uk/glasgow-renaissance/

Whereas our other project ‘Degeneration’ aims to reflect on the sociological and political implications of the demise of social housing across the UK, ‘Glasgow Effect’ specifically looks at the demise of social housing within Glasgow and it’s implications upon the so-called “Glasgow Effect”. Even though comparable cities in the UK, such as Liverpool and Manchester, have similar levels of social deprivation, there appears to be a disparity in terms of life expectancy. This can be seen within Glasgow in terms of long standing illness, acute sickness and potential psychological morbidity, resulting in 30% higher mortality rates for premature deaths and 15% higher mortality rates overall.

All Images Alex Currie.

So since then i have been researching various schemes where the design and housing are still being used successfully.

One scheme is Sir Edwin Lutyens Grosvenor Estate on Page Street in London. The design of the housing has a distinctive chequerboard appearance, L-shaped communal courtyards and gallery access.

The architecture, although varied in its detailing, is consistent in height, scale and massing, giving the blocks a strong sense of group value. The estates remain largely unaltered demonstrating the original quality of workmanship and materials.

“Grosvenor is an early example of the use of the type of access-gallery building that became one of the hallmarks of English social housing of the post-WWII years. This was an idea promoted by the Alison and Peter Smithson in their Golden Lane competition project of the 1950’s as “streets-in-the-air”, a concept to recreate the social and spatial qualities of a village street in the access system of hi-rise residential buildings. Lutyens’ buildings are only 5 & 6-floors high so the contained space of the courtyard is visible from the open gallery. Also, when the gallery occurs at every floor, there are fewer dwellings per gallery and, therefore, this space seems to belong more to each individual dwelling. The gallery type, however, was more often used as a skip-stop section type where buildings contained a combination of flats and maisonettes. Here the gallery is used by many people and becomes much less the domain of the individual apartment. The economy version of the gallery type that came to so widely used in the UK, however, housing estates like Park Hill in Sheffield (that was the built version of the Smithson Golden Lane project), the skip-stop slabs at Roehampton Estate in London, or many other examples of English social housing of the 1960’s and 1970’s, usually had neither the spatial quality nor the social amenities of Lutyens’ design.”

(Jones, Edward & Chriustopher Woodward, A Guide To The Archigecture of London, Van Nostrand, Reinhold, N.Y., 1983, pp. 321.)

Page Street London. Richard ChiversPage St. Richard Chivers