CcFieldTripToKenningtonPark
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[edit] Field Trip to Kennington Park ex-common.
http://chinabone.lth.bclub.org.uk/albums/kennington_ex_common/ken20.jpg
with Stefan Szczelkun
My proposal is for a field trip to Kennington Park ex Common which is my area of psycho-cartographic interest. This is a very intense nexus of communication struggle whilst at the same time having all inscription to this history erased.
meeting arrangements:
I think the Kennington Park walk should start at 2pm We can gather in the cafe lunch from 1pm (they do decent healthy stuff like freshly squeezed juice, plus cakes and good coffee and even organic ice cream.) The morning could be spent on autonomous research or action in the park. People may wan to form their own impressions or make their own impressions even. The walk will be about an hour or so depending on weather, voice, interest etc. We can then take a tea break in the cafe and find our what people are interested in doing the rest of the afternoon.
There is much cartographic work to be done on this site. I would suggest a a picnic or lunch in the new cafe depending on weather, and then a session of orientation led by me (a kind of walk and talk) in which strategies of marking up the landscape would be discussed. A final afternoon session would re-present the park in ways agreed by the group. People would need to bring any tools or materials needed.
As preparation people might read my basic text on the park is available on the web.
http://www.backspace.org/kenningtonpark
Meeting place etc.. to be announced.
[edit] Report from the walk:
http://chinabone.lth.bclub.org.uk/albums/kennington_ex_common/ken09.sized.jpg
some more photos are here: http://chinabone.lth.bclub.org.uk/gallery/kenningtonexcommon
Stefan's talk was absolutely fascinating, and one of the most interesting points I think he made was about how the non-attributed monuments in the park function. His theory was that when the park was enclosed and turned back from a common into a royal park, they palace erected non-attributed and half-arsed monuments close to, but just far enough from sites of particular emotional and historical intensity.
http://chinabone.lth.bclub.org.uk/albums/kennington_ex_common/ken18.thumb.jpg
The effect of these distractions - or better, misdirections, is to create false points of collection near enough to the places that really should be commemmorated (the chartists or suffragettes rallying points, or the site that was used for public executions) to diffuse some of those energies and smooth over movement through the park. People wander through, joining the dots in a meaningless pattern, effacing the patterns of movement and congregation that should be commemmorated and re-used. Stefan described his attempts to get these strange monuments re-designated so they actually do comemmorate some of the people's uses of Kennington park when it was still a common land.
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