In trying to grasp how we might put these technologies to work, we used them against the grain, taking ‘cultural heritage’ recording practices to the Aylesbury Estate in South London. The ‘sink’ estate, in fact prime real estate, is under siege by the forces of capital, demolition has begun, tenants are being ‘decanted’, artists are moving in. The welfare offices and health centre have become studios. Built in the sixties, it was bad-mouthed by tabloid press as ‘hell’s waiting room’, preparing the conditions for ‘regeneration’. Ironically, it was here in 1997 that Blair gave his first public speech as Prime Minister, promising to help “the poorest people in our country [who] have been forgotten by government”. Channel 4 still use the ‘ident’ of the estate, the camera pans across the desolate walkways aligning in a magnificent concrete logo, what Virilio would call a phatic image – the context evaporating in the stress between image and logotype.
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