Exploring 'an area of outstanding unnatural beauty': A treasure hunt around King's cross, London

Cultural Geographies

Volumn 12, Issue 4, 2005, Pages 429-462

  Battista, Kathy ^a,b   LaBelle, Brandon ^c   Penner, Barbara ^d   Pile, Steve ^e   Rendell, Jane ^d  

^a KING'S COLLEGE LONDON   (United Kingdom)

^b University of Copenhagen ^*  (United Kingdom)

^c UNIVERSITY OF COPENHAGEN   (Denmark)

^d UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON   (United Kingdom)

^e OPEN UNIVERSITY   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ART; CULTURAL INFLUENCE; STRATEGIC APPROACH; URBAN AREA;

CAMDEN; EASTERN HEMISPHERE; ENGLAND; EURASIA; EUROPE; KINGS CROSS; LONDON [ENGLAND]; UNITED KINGDOM; WESTERN EUROPE; WORLD;

EID: 26844548656     PISSN: 14744740     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1191/1474474005eu345oa     Document Type: Article

References (72)

1. The treasure hunt follows in the footsteps of other forms of urban exploration: e.g. L. Andreotti and X. Costa, eds, Theory of the dérive and otber situationist writings on the city (Barcelona, Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona and ACTAR, 1996);
2. W. Benjamin, 'One way street' (1925-6), repr. in One way street and otber writings (London, Verso, 1979) pp. 45-104;
3. G. Bridge and S. Watson, eds, A companion to the city (Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 2000);
4. S. Buck-Morss, The dialectics of seeing: Walter Benjamin and the Arcades Project (Cambridge, MASS, MIT, Press, 1989);
5. and S. Pile and N. Thrift, eds, City A-Z (London, Routledge, 2000).
6. See also Steve Pile's introduction to Real cities: modernity, space and the phantasmagorias of city life (London, Sage, 2005).
7. The title of this exhibition refers the British designation of 'Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty' (AONB) applied to 'a precious landscape whose distinctive character and natural beauty are so outstanding that it is in the nation's interest to safeguard them' under the legislation of the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act of 1949. AONBs 'represent 18% of the finest countryside in England and Wales.'For further details see www.aonb.org.uk.
8. See e.g. M. Edwards, 'A microcosm: redevelopment proposals at King's Cross', in A. Thornley, ed., The crisis of London (London, Routledge, 1992), pp. 163-84.
9. Our awareness that Richard Wentworth intended to make a great deal of maps and mapmaking in his exhibition was one of the inspirations for the treasure map. For us, this accorded with more academic interpretations of mapping that seek to uncover maps' relationship to place, power and even subjectivity. See e.g. D. Cosgrove, ed., Mappings (London, Reaktion, 1998);
10. P. Gould and R. White, Mental maps (London, Routledge, 1974);
11. P. Jackson, Maps of meaning: an introduction to cultural geography (London, Unwin Hyman, 1989);
12. S. Pile and N. Thrift, eds, Mapping the subject: geographies of cultural transformation (London, Routledge, 1995);
13. and D. Wood, The power of maps (London, Routledge, 1992).
14. Richard Wentworth insisted on calling 'ping-pong' just 'ping'. The idea for including the table tennis tables and tournament in the exhibition came from his sense that this had once been a popular activity for locals and was now no longer available.
15. Artangel is perhaps most famous for commissioning Rachel Whiteread's House (1993). Artangel is committed to commissioning new work that is not only exceptional but also uses unusual 'quasi-public' spaces. In this way, it hopes to change expectations of art as well as influence debates about art and public space.
16. In fact the subtitle was later removed, and the book is only called City A-Z (see n. 1 for details).
17. Some of this material was drawn from websites, including www.camden.gov.uk;
18. www.kingscrosslondon.com;
19. www.findagrave.com;
20. www.stpancrasoldchurch.org.uk;
21. and, www.kingscrosslondon.com.
22. G. Stamp, 'From Battle Bridge to King's Cross: urban fabric and change', in M. Hunter and R. Thorne, eds, Change at King's Cross (London, Historical Publications, 1990), pp. 23-5.
23. Blue Plaques are erected in London to commemorate the lives and works of famous individuals. For further details see www.blueplaque.com.
24. See e.g. T. Brennan, Prospectus.. a manoeuvre (London, Norbury Park Art and Landscape Project, 1999);
25. T. Brennan, Guidebook. three manoeuvres by Tim Brennan in London E1/E2 (London, Camerawork, 1999);
26. T. Brennan, 'Mercator manoeuvre', Cultural geographies, this issue and J. Cardiff, The missing voice (case study b) (London, Artangel, 1999).
27. On Cardiff's piece see D. Pinder, 'Ghostly footsteps: voices, memories and walks in the city', Ecumene 8 (2001), pp. 1-19.
28. Could writing be considered a site-specific practice, in the way that art is? For discussion on site-specific art, see e.g. A. Coles, ed., Site specificity: the ethnographic turn (London, Black Dog, 2000),
29. and N. Kaye, Site-specific art: performance, place and documentation (London, Routledge, 2000).
30. A. S. Byatt, On histories and stories (London, Vintage, 2001), pp. 139-41.
31. See e.g. P, Levi, The periodic table (London, Penguin, 2000);
32. I. Calvino, If on a winter's night a traveller (London, Vintage Classics, 1998);
33. and G. Perec, Life: a user's manual (London, Collins Harvill, 1992).
34. Calvino refers to H. M. Enzensberger, 'Topological structures in modern literature', Sur (May-June 1966).
35. To fish was to dig up graves - as Young Jerry did, in Old St Pancras churchyard, in Dickens's A tale of two cities (1859).
36. S. Rushdie, The satanic verses (Delaware, Consortium, 1992), p. 461.
37. For discussions of how metaphors of dirt justify social segregation, see G. Baeten, 'Inner-City misery', City 8,(2004), pp. 235-41;
38. B. Campkin,'Urban image and legibility in King's Cross', in M. Miles and T. Hall eds. Interventions (Bristol, Intellect Books, forthcoming);
39. and D. Sibley, Geographies of exclusion (London, Routledge, 1995).
40. Many sex workers would reject the idea that they are in need of salvation, but do want improved working conditions. To draw attention to their rights, the English Collective of Prostitutes staged a high-profile occupation of the Church of the Holy Cross in King's Cross in 1982.
41. Suburban Sahara' quoted in C. Dickens, Our mutual friend (1865) (London, Penguin, 1997), pp. 41-2;
42. and 'A huge blot...; quoted in P. Davey, 'Outrage', Architectural review (June 1997), p. 6.
43. The moralism of English urban reform is discussed by R. Evans, 'Rookeries and model dwellings: English housing reform and the moralities of private space', in Translations from drawing to building and other essays (London, Architectural Association, 1997), pp. 93-118;
44. and R. Fishman, Bourgeois utopias (New York, Basic Books, 1987), pp. 34-8.
45. Rushdie, Satanic verses, p. 469.
46. For classic examples, see E. A. Poe, 'The murders in the Rue Morgue', in The fall of the house of Usher and other writings (London, Penguin, 1986), pp. 189-224;
47. W. Collins, 'Who killed Zebedee?' in Who killed Zebedee? (London, Hesperus Press, 2002), pp. 1-30;
48. and A. Conan Doyle, 'The adventure of a case of identity' and 'The adventure of the man with the twisted lip', in The adventures and memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (New York, Modem Library, 2002), pp. 47-62, 103-24.
49. E. A. Poe, 'The gold bug', in The fall of the house of Usher and other writings, pp. 283-319;
50. R. L. Stevenson, Treasure Island (1883; London, Penguin, 1994).
51. Useful discussions of the detective novel are found in J. T. Irwin, The mystery to a solution: Poe, Borges, and the analytic detective story (Baltimore, MD, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994);
52. F. Moretti, 'Clues', in Signs taken for wonders (London, Verso, 1988), pp. 130-56;
53. and G. W. Most and W. W. Stowe, The poetics of murder: detective fiction and literary theory (New York, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1983).
54. P. Auster, 'Ghosts', in Tbe New York trilogy (London, Faber & Faber, 1987), pp. 133-96.
55. E. Bloch, 'A philosophical view of the detective novel', (1965), repr. in The utopian function of art and literature (Cambridge, MASS, MIT Press, 1988), pp. 251-2.
56. A. A. Dun, Vale Royal (Uppingham, Goldmark, 1995).
57. See J. Rendell, 'Imagination is the root of all change', in L. Blakstad, ed., Bridge: the architecture of connection (London, August Media, 2001), pp. 30-37.
58. On sound and sonic geographies, see: G. Corradi Fiumara, The other side of language: a philosophy of listening (London, Routledge, 1990);
59. B. LaBelle and S. Roden, Site of sound: of architecture and the ear (Los Angeles, CA, Errant Bodies Press, 1990);
60. R. Maconie, The concept of music (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1990);
61. M. R. Schafer, The soundscape. our sonic environment and the tuning of the world (Rochester, VT, Destiny Books, 1994);
62. A. S. Weiss, Phantasmic radio (Durham, NC, Duke University Press, 1995).
63. Maconie, Tbe concept of music, p. 22.
64. G. Kohon, ed., The British School of Psychoanalysis: the independent tradition (London, Free Association Books, 1986), p. 20. The British School of Psychoanalysis consists of psychoanalysts belonging to the British Psycho analytical Society. Within this society are three groups: the Kleinian Group, the 'B' Group (followers of Anna Freud) and the independent Group.
65. See e.g. D. Winnicott, 'Transitional objects and transitional phenomena', International journal of psychoanalysis 34 (1951), pp. 89-97.
66. C. Bollas, 'The transformational object', in Kohon, The British Scbool of Psychoanalysis, p. 84.
67. Ibid., p. 86.
68. L. Irigaray, To be two (London, Routledge, 2000), p. 19.
69. M. Serres, Angels: a modern myth (Paris, Flammarion, 1995), pp. 140-7.
70. See Wentworth's photographs of objects on the Caledonian Road, King's Cross. R. Wentworth, "The accident of where I live": journeys on the Caledonian Road, an interview with Joe Kerr', in I. Borden, J. Kerr, J. Rendell with A. Pivaro, The unknown city. contesting architecture and social space (Cambridge, MASS, MIT Press, 2001), pp. 386-406.
71. See J.-P. Le Goff and Jacques Reda, Le cachet de la poste (Paris, Gallimard, 2000).
72. For more on the intervention 'Sortie de camions', see Jill Fenton's article in this issue of Cultural geographies.