A Walk (1990) by Jonas Mekas. From the “Godfather of American avant-garde cinema”, this is video strolling in its rawest form. Beginning in Worcester Street, Soho, New York and ending... well, you’ll see; this hour long walk in the rain is spattered with poetry, recollections, musings and fragments. Unrehearsed and un-edited, Mekas’s ambling monologue responds directly to the ambiance of the streets he passes through, interrupted and punctuated by the rhythms and cacophony of daily life.

“Step after step I’m walking the streets of the city that has become my new home. I walked these streets in 1950 and I did not know its soul: no window, no street, no door, no building responded to me, spoke to me, it was just emptiness. But now I’m walking these streets and I recognise them. There is something in these miserable streets that speaks back to me, we are friends. We grew together, the city and me, we are inseparable: this little store, this pavement, dirt, puddles, cans, paper scraps, garbage; it’s all part of me too.”

[i asked the city to dance with me on a tuesday afternoon] by Beatrice Jarvis.

This film is an outcome of my Groundwork Residency: Tracing the Pathway at Milton Keynes Arts Center in May 2015.

The body in the city acts as vessel; to carry, contain and interact; forming routes and navigations through the immediacies of its encounter. The body in the city becomes a means to extend the discourses of the mind and architecture to a frontal physical plane. The experience of the body as it moves through its decided and undecided routes of the complex labyrinth becomes synthesis; forming in such modes of encounter a reflection as to the physical landscape it temporally habits. Exploring the passage ways of the body through the city can function as means for discourse as to the nature of affect the city may have on the psychology of urban human behaviour and simultaneously affords insight as to how the city is formed and cemented by the very patterns which human occupancy projects. This mutual dialectical relationship becomes synonymous to concepts as to how far cities are designed for people and how people essentially redesign and augment the fabric of urban texture. The embodiment of the urban experience by the human form becomes focus for this research; how far can the body enter a state of conscious reflection as to its use and positioning within the built environment to observe and how can such conscious observations be then potentially be reapplied to generate shifts in land use patterning and generate possible realms of progress within discourses of spatial planning. 

My field work like approaches site as a canvas upon which numerous marks, symbols and lines have been added to; such marks and codes constitutive of some form of spatial and movement language; how can this language be transcribed, documented, recorded and then re- told using visual performance and spatial intervention. How does the site permit and enable? How do our surroundings form our codes and conducts and how might we use performance as a tool and resource to begin to understand and re-evaluate our own performance within time and space? Through the language of multi-disciplinary performance making exercises I  explore how constructed narrative, historical documentation and oral histories in collaboration with movement, voice, costume and visual representation can come to represent strands of personal experience of shared heritage space. 

For more information please see: http://beatricejarvis.net/2015/06/09/this-is-not-a-manifesto/  

And the full catalogue is online here: http://issuu.com/urbanresearchforum/docs/final_doc_?e=3178383/13407243

Beatrice Jarvis is an urban space creative facilitator, choreographer and researcher, and founder of the Urban Research Forum and The Living Collective. As a dance artist, she works in Romania, Gaza, Berlin, Germany and Northern Ireland to generate large-scale and site specific choreographic works to explore the social power and potential of embodied movement practices.

http://beatricejarvis.net/

“Rest” was shot in a New Jersey Mobil station’s mens’ room. I was on a road trip with my family and I needed to go to the bathroom. After I finished, I said to my wife, “I need a few minutes to shoot the mens’ room.” She said “Ok, take your time.” I obviously married the right person.

This is part of a web series called Next to Heaven. For more see here: https://vimeo.com/channels/nexttoheavenseason1

The Value of Trespass - Bradley Garrett TED Talk

Urban exploration (UE) is the assertion of bodily freedom through the practice of trespass. Governments, corporations, and fellow citizens raise countless borders, and rarely do we discuss whether these borders are ethical, justified or even legal. Often, we're not even aware they exist or how they shape our lives. By hacking the city, UE democratises urban space and questions the legitimacy of the lines that divide us. Bradley L. Garrett is a lecturer in the Economy, Governance & Culture Research Group at the University of Southampton with a passion for photography of off-limits places. His first book, Explore Everything: Place-Hacking the City (Verso Books 2013), is an account of his adventures trespassing into ruins, tunnels and skyscrapers in eight different countries. Details of his current research, media projects, publications and events can be found at bradleygarrett.com

My Back Garden: Lee Kern documents Mango the wonder-dog as he conducts an autopsy of his back garden, unearthing dreams and memories long-since buried in childhood. A suburban wonder-piece taken from the Channel 4 series, "The House of Memory".

Birmingham City Centre: Business as Usual

Between the 16th of May and the 17th of September, 2015 I took a few photos. A bit of video too.

During this time Birmingham City Centre was undergoing something of a transformation, what with the redevelopment of New Street Station and Grand Central, the laying of tramlines between Snow Hill and New Street stations, the destruction of Paradise Circus and the Central Library, the Arena Central development on Broad Street, and general heating and electrical maintenance works thrown in for good measure. I became obsessed with documenting this tumultuous landscape using my pocket camera and later a microphone. This film is an attempt to convey through image, video and sound what it feels like to navigate the city centre at this time. A snapshot of an always restless city taken at a particularly noisy point in its endless cycle of destruction and renewal.

"Business As Usual" refers to the practice of businesses putting up temporary signs and banners to assure their customers that they can carry on shopping despite the chaos. Perhaps this could be adopted as the new city motto?

By Andy Howlett

A short film (11.50) that searches for Jesse and Celine in Vienna on Bloomsday, 16 June 2013. As their absence reveals the city, so this pilgrimage to places they have been becomes lost in time, and an homage to three films of flânerie: Before Sunrise, Sans soleil and En la ciudad de Sylvia. By Rob Stone.

Read Rob’s accompanying essay on the theme of “The Flâneur on Film” here: http://filmstudiesforfree.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/the-flaneur-on-film-on-films-by-richard.html

In You Are Here - Chris Paul Daniels creates rapid portraits and glimpses of lives from residents and workers of the Digbeth and Bordersley areas.

Taking Birmingham New Street Station as the literal starting point for an understanding of the city, each of the portraits is specific in length to a ratio that has dictated its duration. Each frame, at a rate of 24 frames per second, represents 0.5 metres in the distance from New Street Station to the location of the interview.

In choosing to impose a rigid structure on each portrait’s length - Daniels is acknowledging the limits on his attempts to understand a place, which are informed by each of the brief encounters in a city in which he does not dwell.

A series of interviews took place and participants were asked to discuss their own perspectives on their immediate environment and their notions of community within it.

The footage collated jumps between different formats - Black and white 8mm film, Colour 16mm film and HD video to highlight the dramatic variations on how place can be represented. While the score by renowned electronic musician, Graham Massey (808 State, Massonix, Biting Tongues) builds on the theme of dis-location.

Twyford Abbey - A Deep Topographic Enquiry: a short documentary by John Rogers exploring the ruins of Twyford Abbey in Northwest London. Readings from Gordon S. Maxwell's Just Beyond London by Heidi Lapaine - and featuring Nick Papadimitriou and Peter Knapp. 

Made for the Video Strolls goes to Flatpack event in Birmingham, March 2015.

Mark Thomas investigates the places all over the UK that don’t appear on any maps. Directed by Steve Connelly and Michael Cumming. First shown on Channel 4 in 2002.

Con. E. Crete visits her beloved civic carcass of Reading Civic Centre one last time before it is demolished. Her reflections echo the situations many other brutalist structures conceived throughout post-war glory days now find themselves in. It seems as though she is alone in caring; alone in seeing the shortsighted nature of 'their' ways: a real loss of architectural, social and political heritage for future generations.

Made by Roxanna Collins originally as an installation for ‘Video Strolls goes to Flatpack’, Birmingham, 27-29/3/15

Voiceover by Helen Tomkins

Cross City Walk by Pete Ashton and Andy Howlett. Walking in a straight line (roughly) across the city of Birmingham from Selly Oak through Birmingham Uni, City Centre, Aston, Spaghetti Junction and Erdington. Starting and finishing on the Outer Circle bus route. Pete wore a chest-mounted GoPro that automatically took a photo every 5 seconds. The photos are shown here at 10 frames per second.

Pete - “When we walked from the University to Spaghetti Junction we thought we’d be comparing two monlithic institutions which happened to be opposite each other, but the real interest happened along the Aston Expressway where we were forced into a desert of industrial estates and business parks. Each one was a monument to investment and regeneration policies of the post-industrial era, some successful, many not-so. The architecture along this route was atrocious but it didn’t matter as no-one would ever pass this way accidentally.”

For more info on the ongoing Cross City Walk project, and to get involved, see: www.xcw.org.uk

Turnpike Lane to Purfleet by Four Feet Films AKA Mark James and Liberty Rowley. Made for Orbital London 2011 and screened at ‘Video Strolls goes to Flatpack’, Birmingham 29/3/15.

Mystery River - a wander along the Lea with Michael Smith.

“The idea was beautifully simple: we’d make a film that followed the Lea through the epic sprawl it helped create - follow it from beginning to end to find out where it goes.”

Co-commissioned by UP Projects' Floating Cinema and The Departure Lounge and made with support from the University of Bedfordshire.

This short video is recommended for any person or persons looking for an introduction to the various historical plaques commemorating figures and events of import in the inner city district of Shoreditch, situated directly north of the City of London, the capital's financial heart and an international epicenter for finance; the video gives a clear and comprehensive recitation of the text on each plaque, helpful for the hard of hearing or those who's first language is not English, equally it allows sufficient time for note taking and can be a useful teachers tool in the classroom, whether teaching a GCSE History class or an English as a foreign language class; the overall aim of the video is to give the viewer a clear and concise primer for the study of historical dedicatory signage in the area of Shoreditch.

Made by Jack Wormell and screened at ‘Video Strolls goes to Flatpack’, Birmingham 29/3/15.

The Devil’s Footprints is a “mythogeographical” tour of Devon lead by Phil Smith and shot by Siobhán Mckeown. The Devil's Footprints refers to a route along part of the Devon coastline which the filmmakers followed to shoot parts of the film.

“At its simplest, Mythogeography is a way of walking, thinking and visiting a place on many levels at the same time. Anyone can do it. You can do it. Walking becomes a performance, walkers become performers and the route becomes their co-star. In a city, for example, walkers become aware of their urban home as a site, a forum, a playground and a stage: all there to enjoy, understand and provoke on multiple levels... The levels of the city are reflected back in the many levels of the walker - the public and the private, fact and dream, admissible and inadmissible, forgotten and remembered, past and future.” - See more at: http://www.triarchypress.net/mythogeogeography.html#sthash.2osmVpWA.dpuf

(this is part 1 of a 3 part video)

Pilgrimage 2: Syd Barrett

In 1982 Syd Barrett, formerly of the Pink Floyd, walked from his flat in Chelsea Cloisters back to his mother’s house in Cambridge. In 2010 Mark James and Liberty Rowley of Four Feet Films retraced his steps. This film is a document of their journey.

The soundtrack to this film was recorded live as part of Making Tracks in December 2010. The film was selected by Whirlygig Cinema and re-scored by The Cabinet of Living Cinema.