A few weeks ago, at The Printed Path event, I heard Iain Sinclair describing his walk to the 2012 Olympics site in the company of writer Robert Macfarlane. Sinclair spoke amusingly of Macfarlane's youthful enthusiasm and described his attempt to climb the sculpture of Alfred Hitchcock at Gainsborough Studios, thwarted by security, noting that climbing seems to be the way Macfarlane 'gets to grips' with a landscape. I have thought of going up with my camera to take a look at the Olympic site myself - I once did a Sinclair-influenced walk up the Lea Valley, before the Olympics came to town - but my opportunities for psychogeographical wandering are limited these days. I imagine it's quite a popular destination at the moment... Sinclair said that he and Macfarlane had encountered at least one photographer with 'art pretensions'...
In his talk, Iain Sinclair praised Stephen Gill's photographs of the Olympic Park site, and in today's Guardian, Robert Macfarlane discusses these, as well as giving his own account of the walk with Sinclair. When they reach the construction site Sinclair says "Are you ready for the zone? From here on in it's pure Tarkovsky." But beyond the 'light-industrial spaces, car-wrecker's yards, square-windowed studios, haulage depots' there is the perimeter fence 'designed to exclude not only access, but also vision. There are no viewing windows built into it, no portholes for the curious stakeholder. To see inside the zone, you must ascend a Stratford towerblock, hire a helicopter, or - the desideratum - visit the ODA's website, which provides stills of the construction process and mocked-up futuramas of the park.' Images of the future like this one really do have an eerie quality...
Robert Macfarlane refers to the The Manor Gardens Allotments, a green oasis and vital part of the area's history, which has now been demolished despite the efforts of a strong campaign. A lot of people will be reading about the allotments in Moro East, the latest cookbook from Moro restaurant (you can see a clip here). But sadly they will never now be able to see the allotments that have inspired the cooks at Moro and so many other local people over the years.
yes, it is kind of spooky around there, I drive around it during my driving lessons and on a bleak December day, the harsh blue wall and the thoughts of the lovely allotments going is a sad one. although perhaps the story inspires others to grow good things in new places (I hope those fruit trees from Manor Road allotments have been transported to the new allotments)
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