re Cowley Works Bridleway

Hi Rachel,

I was thinking about your comment on the bridleway and how you can see why BMW would want to close it, as well as seeing the point of view of the residents needing access. Although we are artists rather than campaigners, our work touches on many political issues and we don't necessarily need to sit on the fence.

Also I am interested in the no-photo/video sign. I wonder why? When the homeless man at Saint-Denis saw my camera and was quite aggressive as thought I meant to take a photo of him, it's understandable, as its very personal and to do with pride and his situation, but what was this sign about? Commercial secrets or the representation of the company? It is another kind of prohibition like places you can access or not.

S

Ideas so far for Oxford Paris project

Hi Suzy,
These are the ideas we discussed for the exhibitions at Ovada and in a Paris gallery. I hope this is a good representation of our conversation but you can add/edit. I expect (and hope!) the work will evolve and change from this but it is really important to have starting points

1 Postcards. We are working with postcards of Oxford and Paris, editing them and adding to them to reflect aspects of these cities that are not usually celebrated or used to define the city to outsiders. Additions include stitch, collage, painting and relief. These will be put together as a wall installation.

2 Suspended construction. This is based directly on the ring roads. The construction will be made from fabric and wooden batons, making the impressive engineered road systems into something homely and a bit ‘wobbly’. We will create both the Paris and Oxford ring roads to scale.
We plan to make paintings from objects and spaces that we photograph whilst exploring the outsides of the city. These will be placed around the gallery in relation to the suspended construction, creating a sense of the more intimate forgotten elements of the spaces the Périphérique passes through.
At Ovada this would also connect the different spaces in the gallery. The downstairs area of Ovada is divided into a rear gallery, reception area and front ‘shop window’ space.
We will also explore the possibility of creating a scale version of the old Oxford city wall, and mapping the various moves outwards of the Paris city wall, the Périphérique being located on the latest one.

3 Collections. We are doing lots of walking around the cities as part of this project and are collecting objects we find during these walks. We will exchange the Oxford and Paris objects, and make paintings of views/finds in the other city on each set of objects (paintings from Paris on the Oxford objects and paintings from Oxford on the Paris objects). These will be displayed in Oxford and in Paris. Here is an addition we haven’t discussed so let me know what you think: During the exhibitions we could organize a series of walks to return objects to the places we found them. This idea a bit influenced by Hilary Jack who mends and restores objects she finds and then returns them to the place she found them. I think painting on rubbish which then gives the rubbish value, but then returning them so that this is lost and they cannot be valued as objects could be quite interesting. They then become a memory and something that is documented.

4 Community project. Following on from postcards work we will set up workshops with elderly people and create postcards based on their photos – either from their personal albums or photos they take as part of the project. These will be selected and formatted into postcards that reflect residential suburbs and estates around the city. An edition of cards will be produced to sell at the gallery.
There is a precedent for making ‘local’ postcards in Oxford. A Victorian photographer - Henry Taunt – was based in Oxford and published many postcards of streets in residential areas of the city. You can see a few on-line at http://www.headington.org.uk/history/postcards/index.htm
Many are held at the public record office so I will try and get access to them. It would be good to use Henry Taunts images to inform the workshops and contextualise what we are doing. Also the postcards on the caravan gallery’s site have a subversive and playful approach which is relevant to what we’re doing. www.thecaravangallery.co.uk


5 Gateways. Bridges and underpasses to cross ring roads are the modern equivalent of gates in the old city wall. We will document the gateways to Oxford and Paris and put these images together in either one or two artists books.

6 Documenting journeys. We will find a way of documenting all the journeys we have made as part of our research for this project. This is partially happening via the blog and flickr, but we will also map our journeys.

There are lots of possibilities to think about, and no doubt they will evolve or some may be discarded in the process of making, but this is a starting point.

If this sounds different to what we spoke about the other night please add to this or change it!
Rachel

Cowley works bridleway

Dear Suzy,
I went back to the Cowley works today to see if i could access the bridleway. The pavements are being dug up around the edge of the works near to the Eastern bypass and on the Garsington Road. This must be the alternative route that is being created. For the time being the bridleway is still accessible and so Zola and I went along it. You can see from the photo above that they have banned users from taking photos or video, but I thought one photo taken from outside the bridleway would be OK.
Despite being almost asleep in her pram when we started walking, Zola quickly woke up as there were lots of interesting things to see from a toddler perspective. Fork lift trucks were whizzing backwards and forwards to our left moving crates around. On our right car transporters were being loaded up with new minis.
It is easy to see why BMW are so keen to lose the bridleway and amalgamate their two sites. It must be logistically very inconvenient to have a divided site and security is probably more complicated. Nevertheless I felt a lot of sympathy for the people who want to use the path to get to work or to reach Brasenose Woods and Shotover Park. Walking along the eastern bypass is not an attractive alternative and would take much longer.
I was on the Bridleway between 11am and 11.30 am and two people passed me on bikes. It would be interesting to go there at a time of day when people are going to work and see how many people are using the path. I'm also curious to talk to people about how they feel about losing this right of way.
It took me about 10 minutes to reach Horspath Road where Stagecoach have a depot. On the way back I picked up some polystyrene packaging and noted a discarded disposable boiler suit which I will return for (didn't have a bag to carry it in and it looked a bit mucky!). The first finds for our 'collection'.
Rachel

Paris City walls

Hi Rachel,

Thinking about the connection between the historic city wall as a boundary and fortress and today's Peripherique, I went to the Pavillion-Arsenal, a museum about the development of Paris and it's architecture.

There have been several city walls, each time extending Paris's boundary outward. Since the middle ages the development of Paris had happened spontaneously around the trade routes, churches and convents. The first city wall was begun by Philippe Auguste in 1190.

Then is 1357 A new wall was started by Etienne Marcel, provost of the merchants. It was finished in 1383 by Charles V and enclosed parts of the north west suburbs. On the left bank the Philippe Auguste fortifications were rearmed and modernised, 6 new bastides were constructed, including Bastille (it seems incredible to imagine Bastille being at the edge of the City) From the map it looks like the wall had a moat around it.

Louis XIV (1638-1715) preferred Versailles, and so liked to keep the city at arms length, investing in the periphery. From 1670 the city began to loose protective fortifications in favour of a boulevard linked to new avenues built across the countryside. The capital became open again to the rest of the territory.

In the 18th century Paris was growing and extending it's boundaries, despite a desire to control the surrounding area with a degree banning construction in 1724, and in 1783 and 1784 others which aimed to check development by designing minimum width of street and regulations on prospect. So a new city wall was built in 1784 by the Fermiers Generaux, tax collectors on behalf of the king. Now their was again an intra-muros de velopment.

The last city wall was constructed by the Prime Minister Adolphe Thiers in 1840. These walls were for military fortification with outlying forts. By the time it was finished it enclosed a number of hamlets outside Paris, among them Auteuil, Passy, Montmartre, La Villette, and Belleville. It was dismantled in the 1920's (I need to find out why) This then became the site for the Périphérique which was built in the 1970's.

I'd like to find out more about what happened to the areas which the Périphérique cuts through when it was built. There were 50 years between the walls being pulled down and the motorway construction so how did that loss of connection play with the residents? I've started walking around the Périphérique and although there are bridges and walkways it is hard to get near it .

S

Cowley works walk

Underneath the ring road with Cowley Works in the background.


Hi Suzy,
I went for a walk around part of the Cowley works today where BMW make minis. This was originally the production line for Morris and many people living in East Oxford worked there.
The works occupies a huge site adjacent to the eastern bypass. At one time the works were also located on the opposite site inside the ring road. This has now been turned into a business park with boxy glass office buildings surrounded by landscaping and manicured lawns. I wasn't sure if i'd be able to cross the junction that connects the cowley works and blackbird leys to the city as a pedestrian, but decided to try. It was actually fine - with pedestrian crossings enabling office workers to get to shops at the nearby retail park.
I followed the Garsington Road, going under the railway bridge of what is (i think) a disused train line. Passing a few random shops and businesses including a barber's and Lidl I turned left into Transport way, hoping to get closer to the Cowley Works.
On the left I passed another clunky glass office building - impeccably maintained - but most other buildings were shabby and semi-industrial. After this I could see the Cowley works from the rear with huge car parks where minis were being loaded onto transporters, and behind this the factory buildings. As I continued walking i passed a gas tower, derelict 70's industrial unit and some other businesses.
AT one time it would have been possible to cross the middle of the Cowley works on an old bridleway that connects Blackbird Leys with Brasenose Farm and Shotover Park beyond the works. BMW gained planning permission to block this right of way at the end of last year. This has caused a big outcry among locals who use the route to get to work, and horse riders.see http://www.iwca-oxford.org.uk/blackbirdleys/news/nws06020.htm
A pedestrian and cycle route is being created along the eastern bypass but apparently there is no provision for horse riders. The eastern bypass is a very long way round as well as being an unpleasant route for pedestrians who say they will now have to drive to work. I've put some more pics up on Flickr.
Rachel

Ring roads

Hi Suzy,
I had a couple of other thoughts about the ring road idea.
It might be interesting to make both Oxford and Paris ring road to
scale and display them together so the piece gives a sense of the size
of each city. this started me thinking about the original oxford city
wall which would have included a very small area of the modern city. Maybe we
could work with this as well?
Also I'm thinking about how the city grows in an organic way and its
boundaries can be quite blurred as it grows and incorporates villages
and suburbs as opposed to the ring road which creates a bold and
definite division around the city. I'm interested in the way the ring
road divides up areas and is an artificial boundary and the conflict
between the city's organic growth and the clarity of the ring road.
I've been wondering about ways we might explore this in some
collaborative drawings - perhaps as studies for work we might make in
the show.

Eastern Peripherique walk

Dear Rachel,

My walk started at the Parc Bercy, which is on the north bank of the Siene in the 12ar, it is elegantly landscaped with various institutions contained in the park like the Palais Omnisports de Paris-Berc with grass growing on the sloppy sides. and the Cinématèque Français. On the other side of the Siene is the Bibliotheque Francois Mitterrand, with 4 towers cornering a sunken garden like book ends. Connecting the two is the footbridge Simone de Beauvoir.

The park feels like the last place going east along the Siene where a pedestrian is meant to be. The road next to the river soon became the dual carriage way which leads to the Périphérique. As the road became more inhospitable there were barriers and wire fences to separate the drag along the river from the dual carriageway. Lining the edge of the river itself were a series of industrial estates, cement works and builders wholesalers, so I was sandwiched in only able to go on or back. I saw a long boat carrying sand pass down the river. I imagine that this area would have been a good place for industry historically using river for transportation of building materials and goods.

I was now walking on a small tarmacked path with sides like motorway barriers on either side. The white markings divide it into cycle lane and pedestrian. To my left the dual carriage way and to my right the river. It seems to be on stilts over the river at some points. There are signs telling me the pedestrian path is ending, but no way of getting out where I have got to but going forwards! I am a little hesitant as i am with B asleep in the pushchair, but carry on using the cycle lane. We cross under the Périphérique bridge which is a utilitarian concrete structure. Then suddenly there are signs telling me that the pedestrian path begins again. Not sure how the pedestrian was meant to get from where the last was to here, perhaps swimming or walking on the dual carriage way.

Just after the bridge I came across a fenced off area by the river with various things stored, eclectic pieces of building materials. Then there are a small number of shanty dwellings, made from plywood, tarpaulin, rope. Some are together like terraced houses, a few stand alone. They have quite robust doors with locks on. I saw a kitchen window with venetian blinds. A man opened a door, and started walking along the path towards Paris. He looked quite ordinary in a black shirt and jeans.

Then I came across what looked like an ornamental section of an 18/19th century bridge, standing alone on the grass by the river. I wonder why it was left there? perhaps the whole bridge was destroyed to make way for something else. Then a tent, another temporary home for someone.

Next I pass under the ponts Nelson Mandela which from the map seem to be part of a contra flow traffic system. I catch sight of some caravans under the slip road which leads onto the second bridge. As I get closer I can see it is a gypsy encampment. There some men sitting outside watching the river. In the space just where the bridge meets the ground I glimpse a constructed interior, there are hundreds of teddy bears and soft toys attached to posts with string. It looks fascinating, but I doubt the interest would be welcome, so I try to see as much as possible as I walk past, while attempting to look disinterested!

All this is happening just by the dual carriage way. I pass another place selling industrial materials.

Then I caught sight of the point where the Seine meets the Marne. As a key geographical point, I had anticipated something in the surroundings to mark it. But was greeted by a huge corporate Japanese pagoda type building. Bizarre and kitch. I pass by a sports ground and lots of noisy school children. B wakes up. There is some building work going on here so to reach the foot bridge crossing the Marne to the land in between I snake through temporary corrugated fences. The Marne feels like a big contrast to the Seine - much smaller and has a bucolic feel to it. I spot a submerged rubbish collecting boat in the water with a large teddy bear floating on top.

Over the bridge I am in Alfortville. I photograph some net curtains with a windmill motive. It makes me think of Emily Wolfe's paintings, an idealised piece of the countryside appropriated and contained. Alfortville has the feel of a place with its own history separate from Paris, but a bit down at heal. There is some graffiti "Alfortville 94" - the postal area, I wonder if the local people / gangs have a pride in there non-Parisian identity like in Saint Denis.

With B awake we jump on a bus headed for the Bois de Vincennes, just over the Marne back near the 12ar.