Walked around the Heygate Estate for the first time this afternoon. It seems like the whole area has been designed to entrap people. Once you get in, the energy seems to change, and there is a feeling of being enclosed in a world that is cut off from the all the life outside. I noticed that people have created footpaths along the road side, even though this is expressly forbidden, so they can avoid having to walk along the footpaths which are suspended above ground with no obvious escape route. Where there could be shops or market stalls or play areas, there are garages, as if everyone has a shiny new car to protect. And it is so quiet, so empty of people, even in the middle of a Saturday afternoon. A world without exit.
It must have been very strange for Abi to come here with her family, after living in the Ethiopian Highlands. In Azezo you can't help but get involved and be aware of the life of the wider community around you, here it seems that people are forced to mind their own business.
The architecture seems to crush the life out of the area. It's architecture as ideology, the souless, crushing, core idea of post-war Socialism brought to life in concrete: we are all the same. I'm sure that the people at the council and the architects and academics who created this ideology never even dreamt of living in a place like this. I was intrigued when one of the tutors spoke about his, and his colleagues, affection for the area. Earlier in the same session he had mentioned that it took him over an hour each morning to get to college, so he obviously doesn't live here. In fact, I wonder if any of the Guardian reading intelligentsia ever actually live in places like this. Of course not. They just design, plan, photograph and write about them.
The whole Elephant project has a tension for me: I can't help think that we (or at least some of us, or at least me) are middle class people (or at least people who can afford expensive cameras and laptops) taking pictures of people who are much poorer and less privileged and that there is something inherently patronising, almost colonial about the whole exercise. By making this area the subject of a massive, multi-year documentary exercise aren't we guilty of objectifying the whole area as 'other', as something to be collected, like 19th century anthropologists in search of exotic tribes or shrunken heads. I find the whole thing unsettling. Why are we doing this? Is it fair on the people who live here to be scrutinised in this way?
What do others think?
2 comments:
I hated the E&C area. This weekend was the first time I'd been there in all the 6 years I've lived in London.
I've been living in big cities so long that I rarely feel threatened or freaked out when I'm walking -- especially in broad daylight. Not so in the aforementioned estate. I didn't want to walk on those suspended walkways at all and once I forced myself on them I wanted to run to the end and away. I kept finding myself looking over the side trying to spot the nearest bus stop. Thankfully, the most excitement I had that afternoon was the feeling I felt when we were on the bus back to the City.
I live in Hackney, which is supposed to be the worst borough in all of England to live in (according to Phil and Kirsty). After visiting the urban planning disaster that is the E&C, I seriously begin to question the criteria upon which this assessment was made... Hackney looks like Hampstead compared to this soulless place.
I am reliably informed by a trusted source (my husband) that a lot of E&C is soon to be redeveloped, this time more sympathetically.
I understand your squeamishness about intruding Richard, but isn't that kind of the point of documentary making? It's the same with qual research. Having a sensitivity to the issue you describe will (hopefully) make for better work.
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