Interviews part 1

Me and Jennie did some interviews yesterday in Elephant&Castle area. we started in the pun Duke of York in Borough Road. we were using mp3 player with facility of recording to do that. first as a test we asked our classmates to share their opinion about E&C, Jennie took some photos as well with her camera phone(so people are not so scared if we want to photograph them, for sure it will be much better then using a professional equipment). after interviews in the pub we moved on to the Perry Library and we spoke with the security guys working there, then we walked near the shopping centre and we asked some people in the street about their opinion about the area. we spoke to Bill, a homeless guy who is begging near the shopping centre, I think that his point of view was very different then the other people. anyway the opinion about the regeneration plan wasn't the same(not that I expected that it will be). some would like to modernise the shopping centre and around E&C as well, but some also would like to live it how it is with the diversity of cultures and that they like the way it is.
all the material will be posted shortly to our separated blog(which I mention in some posting before). I think it will be necessary to do the website or if not to advertise our blog that there will be bigger interest in what we are doing.
we decided with Jennie that we will do that kind of interview session each week, or even twice a week, so hopefully it will grow to a big project:)
what is difficult is to photograph the person who we talk to, not all of them agreed yesterday to be photograph, also I don't know how we will put everything together as a one peace, we would like to do it as a slide show, but some of our stories are short and some of them are long, so the question is shall we decide which one is more important? and what to do if we don;t have an image to go with the story? anyway I think that we will put it together somehow.
now I need to transfer the recordings from my mp3 player and edit them in some software so we will have a clear voice without the messy background.

some example of the photos Jennie took with her camera phone:

Intervention- progress

So what to do with the intervention?

This week on Tuesday, we had a chat with Paula, our photocultures teacher, we were discussing different aspects of how we can improve our new blog and she also gave us some ideas what we can do next. We all decided that from now on, each week we will be working on small interventions in the E&C and later on we would like to put everything on together as one peace onto our blog and also we would like to work with Aviv and Patrick and with some more people from our class.
My and Jennie R would like to still do some interviews in local pubs, to ask maybe elderly people about their memories with E&C and about their vision about the future and if they think it will change the area for better.
I would like to photograph E&C each week from different angels, so I can present the variety of E&C, I will be interested more in architectonic shoots of buildings.
Also from now on me, Jennie and Sandra will be working separately and together, so we still want to keep a brain storm, so there will be many different ideas what to do and how.

Elephant and Castle

Project intervention in E&C

For the project intervention we decided to work in the group of 3, not because it easier but because we all got quite the same idea what to do, so 3 brains put together is not one... and that change the situation.
when you thinking about Elephant&Castle you not only think about the future but also about the past. So who is in the intervention project group? 3 very ' smart' brains: Jennie R, Sandra M and Ala S. We thought it will be interesting to collect peoples memories who used to live in E&C, to know their opinion about the are and how it used to be to live here in the past and if it changes a lot during the years. So for example we think it will be interesting to point out the place where some of the stories of peoples which we will interview took place. for example by putting up posters or stickers in the area.
we created a separate blog, which will be anonymous. for this blog we are going to design a sticker( it is still in the progress), or a kind of logo which will identify the blog, so people who will see it in the location, hopefully will check the blog.
the separate blog will be present to the class shortly, so also people from the class will be able to post some comments if they want to.
just to explain: the separate blog don't have any connection with this blog, because we want to keep in anonymous.
what we need to do know is to start working on the intervention.
first we thought we should stop people in the street and ask them some question about E&C, but to be honest who will stop?if they don't stop for the annoying advert and stuff, we don't think they will stop for 3 students from South Bank University...

Elephant and Castle Research

Here are some interesting links regarding Elephant&Castle area:
that one is just showing panorama of E&C:
http://www.urban75.org/vista/elephant.html

http://www.elephantandcastle.org.uk/

some info from wikipedia about E@C underground station:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elephant_&_Castle_station

The face of the Elephant wears all expressions - victorious, defeated, homely and hoodlum... Faces to laugh at. Faces to wink at. Faces that hit you like a blow.”
this link is for a web which contains a photographic project of :

BERT HARDY: THE ELEPHANT AND THE CASTLE. VINTAGE PHOTOGRAPHS OF LONDON LIFE IN THE 1940S - 2004

some very nice sepia photos of old E&C you can find there, how the E&C area used to look like 60 years ago and so on:

http://www.jameshymanfineart.com/pages/exhibitions/information/535.html

http://www.worldarchitecturenews.com/index.php?fuseaction=wanappln.projectview&upload_id=453

http://beta.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif

Photocultures

http://www.photocultures.blogspot.com/

Photos which you see below were taken today in the afternoon. we were asked to walk around Elephant&Castle and get lost somewhere...to drift. well I don't really know E&C so well, even after one year studies in London South Bank University. I never actually walk around much, only to the terrible shopping centre- Tesco exactly and to the tube. so it was very easy for me to get lost and drift around. I discovered abandoned streets and off street passages. abandoned places, looking very horrifying. E&C is a various area of different places, streets, buildings, pubs. Is it beautiful? not really I would say. I think in evening time it can be really dangerous in some places. I was for me exiting exercise and I think I will do it again soon, I would like to drift more E&C. All the photos which you can see I took using my small digital camera, not the digital SLR, I thing for than kind of exercise small compact cameras or mobile phones with built in cameras are perfect, giving you more options as you can behave as paparazzi and shoot everywhere and everything, also I felt much more secure with this Sony cybershot.

P.S I found this nice description of drifting on the web:

..The situationist' desire to become psychogeographers, with an understanding of the 'precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behaviour of individuals', was intended to cultivate an awareness of the ways in which everyday life is presently conditioned and controlled, the ways in which this manipulation can be exposed and subverted, and the possibilities for chosen forms of constructed situations in the post-spectacular world. Only an awareness of the influences of the existing environment can encourage the critique of the present conditions of daily life, and yet it is precisely this concern with the environment which we live which is ignored.

"The sudden change of ambiance in a street within the space of a few meters; the evident division of a city into zones of distinct psychic atmospheres; the path of least resistance which is automatically followed in aimless strolls (and which has no relation to the physical contour of the ground); the appealing or repelling character of certain places - all this seems to be neglected."