London Orbital - Self initiated project research

As a child enduring torturously long car journeys to visit my father, I would contemplate the dismal scenery of the motorways and fields our journey traversed with a sense of suspended animation. The relentless repetition of identical features - fledgling trees in there plastic supports, grey concrete overpasses, the rhythmic flitting of the of the central barrier, amount to a kind of purgatory, a never-ending slide show of mundane images, like the moving backgrounds of a cartoon chase scene, passing the same house again and again and again.


Its no wonder then, that I would resort to playing mind games, where an imagined character would run along side our car, effortlessly leaping over obstructions, jumping from bonnet to bonnet or perhaps a lazer beam, stretching far into the distance and slicing everything we passed in twain.  More often still these games were an effort to distract myself from the travel sickness that dogged these early journeys.


This desire to discover narrative in the bleak expanses of man-made traveling systems is at the heart of Iain Sinclair's book and Chris Petit's film of the same name; London Orbital, an exploration of the M25 that not only succeeds in capturing the road in all its banal glory but in revealing a multitude of unexpectedly related themes.  To watch a preview, please visit the link below - 


http://www.illuminationsmedia.co.uk/filmstobuy/category/6/product/8/london_orbital.html 

This is a fascinating piece of work and undoubtably related to my current project, in that it deals with the atmospheres and themes of traveling in a space that is essentially a means to an end - the road.  Much as with the train track, these places are not designed to entertain us.  They are functional, practical testaments to the demands of our society.  Yet anyone who has spent any time on a motorway or the train, will recognise that these journeys are not devoid of thought, indeed for many they are times of reflection and meditation and it is this aspect of road travel that London Orbital so brilliantly, if at times unsettlingly records.