Ghosts and Empties is part of a continuing series of films titled Zones of Change, exploring themes surrounding the disjointed development of the Thames Gateway region. Using sound, and moving image to act as a portal to read and experience the landscape, this film explores the Gateway region at night
At night the edgelands come alive. The drab grey exteriors of warehouses become bathed in light, sodium, fluorescent and LEDs, in a shifting hue of yellows, reds, ochre’s, greens and blues. Arterial roads are given over to tankers and ‘artics’, ferrying goods and fuel from giant out of town distribution centres. Boy racers in souped up hatch backs tear apart the still air, bass carrying for miles, engines screaming for respite, wheels screeching for purchase on the damp asphalt. Nightclub patrons are ejected onto the street, bleary eyed and wrestling with gravity, Cigarettes are lit, drinks regurgitated, vivid colours splash. Sirens pierce the void.
‘The scale of expansion of the ‘night-time economy’ in British major cities, secondary towns and our sub-centres has been considerable. Like most spaces, edgelands and urban wildscapes can be divided into too distinct spheres of usage, night and day. Contemporary edgelands have a very diverse night-time use, that can be categorised as both positive and negative, depending on your perspective.
This film attempts to extend, and explore the way we see the marginal landscape and extend that understanding at part of a multi-modal engagement. Working on the area known as the Thames Gateway I will create and collect a range of materials from moving image, photography, field recordings, aural histories, interviews with practitioners and academics, and archival materials, leading to the creation of a series of spatial ethnographic films under the title 'Zones of Change'.
These films form a cross-disciplinary reading of place and are informed by an experiential methodology of both ethnographic and auto ethnographic methods.
Through examining both landscape theory and my own experience of an embodied approach to landscape, my work examines the potential of film to act as a portal to read and experience the landscape.
The film is informed by research and practice covering the whole arts and humanities spectrum, and is designed to engage the public, not just with the physical area of the Thames Gateway, but also the wider socio-political themes that form and shape the region during a time of great uncertainty within the regions communities.
