Battersea Forum Q&A Available to Watch

On Wednesday 31s March the DRCA Community Centre hosted the presentation of REO / Treasury Holdings‘ planning application for Battersea Power Station.

As part of our ongoing Battersea Power Station project, we have edited together the charged question and answer session between the planning director, Jeremy Castle, and members of the local community which you can watch on our Battersea Power Station archive. Topics raised included affordable housing, schools, parking, fencing and the iconic chimneys.

The current plan, which you can read more about at our Battersea Power Station blog, includes the construction of 3,700 luxury flats, a riverside park, a hotel, and a new tube station surrounding the Grade II* listed Power Station which could itself become a retail centre. Wandsworth Council are set to make a decision in July.

REFUSING TO ACCEPT ONE’S PLACE, Tate Britain, May 7th

‘Refusing to Accept One’s Place’ is a discussion event held by This Is Not a Gateway exploring urban poverty and social exclusion.

Among the speakers will be Mark Saunders who will be talking on Poverty as a Media Event and Olympic Social Cleansing, based on Spectacle’s ongoing Poverty and the Media and London Olympics 2012 projects.

RESISTANCE & SPATIAL REFORMERS:

REFUSING TO ACCEPT ONE’S PLACE

FRIDAY 07 MAY 2010, 6:30PM

TATE BRITAIN {Turner’s Italian Odyessy T7}

* The salon is free but registration is necessary: salonsATthisisnotagateway.net *

As part of European Alternative’s Transeuropa Festival and Tate Britain’s Late at Tate event East is East, This Is Not A Gateway are organising a salon ‘Resistance and Spatial Reformers: Refusing To Accept One’s Place’.

The EA Festival is tackling the European Commission‘s 2010 theme ‘Poverty & Social Exclusion’- their specific interest is exploring the return of slums to European cities. Tate Britain‘s Cross Cultural Contemporary Art Team are looking at contested spaces and notions of London’s East End for their event ‘East is East’. TINAG’s interest in both these areas is the potential to explore the psycho/social idea of ‘refusing to accept one’s place’.

The salon will explore how notions of poverty are constructed, the return of slums in Europe, understandings of democracy, the links between land ownership and social exclusion and the psycho/social condition of Refusing To Accept One’s Place that may have motivated social and spatial reformers – past & present.

Speakers:

.       Ruhana Ali, Community Organising Foundation

.       David Rosenberg, teacher and guide of radical history walks in East London

.       Andrea Luka Zimmerman & Lasse Johansson, Fugitive Images

.       Kevin Cahill, investigative journalist and author of ‘Who Own’s Britain’

.       Oliver Ressler, artist and filmmaker

.       Andrea Gibbons, Right to the City, JustSpace and PM Press.

.       Mark Saunders, Spectacle Documentaries

.       Paul Trevor, photographer ‘Eastender Archive’

* Salons are free and there are always beer and bagels *

Information on previous salons (press releases and post-salon essays) can be found here.

This Is Not A Gateway hold a year long series of salon discussions focused on urban citizenship and cross-cultural exchanges with speakers from a range of fields and backgrounds. The salons are integral to developing a participant-led programme – a testing ground to see what questions and work are being produced in and on cities, and what formats might be possible.

The pillars of the project

Para leer este blog en español pincha aquí.

After having kept you in suspense with the “focus puller” problem, the moment has arrived to clear up all the doubts: Sam Rawlings has chosen to join us in the damp London instead of taking a short working trip to Italy. Well, that’s a relief!

Nevertheless, after doing the numbers we realised that something was wrong with the casting. We’re lacking two actors: someone representing the Middle East and someone from North Africa. The shooting will be in less than a week and there’s a weekend and a bank holiday before. We have to organise an audition and decide immediately who will be the new actors. We announce the second audition and in a few minutes we have printed out some new faces cv’s. We’ll risk our necks in a few hours and with a small sample of just eight actors. As if that wasn’t enough, we can’t use the same venue where we held the casting the first time. Fortunately, a charming Scottish security guy who greets us every morning with a “Buenos días, señorita”, suggests us to use the office next to ours. So we organise the audition and choose Rebecca Nasir and Rungano Nyoni, two young up-and-coming talents from London. Rungano forgot her appointment for the audition, right, but we know that she won’t forget the shooting day, will she?

Maybe the shooting day will arrive and we won’t have hands enough to set everything up and move all the furniture in the location, but we have at least our crew and actors:

– Mark Saunders, Director/Producer
Mark Carey, the director of photography
Sam Rawlings, the slippery focus puller
Rob Collins, the gaffer who will light our path
– Pilar, Cati and Clair, as producer’s assistant, 1st and 2nd AD
Steel Wallis, main face of the video, accompanied by Wendy Forbes, Hannah Raehese, Rebecca Nasir and Asif Dewan in the world above and below the glass.
– Completing the cast, Maine Auguste, Leonie Charles, Fan Yang, Daz Kaye, Denis Khoroshko, Rungano Nyoni, Angela Tennant and Víctor Zaragoza, inhabitants of the impersonal world above the glass

We have all that we need, haven’t we? When we visited the location it was clear that the frosted effect that we’d seen in the pictures is what we need for our shoot, but the glass floor is totally transparent. Actually, the pictures that we’d seen were from a glass door.

¿Existe una medida internacional de translucidez?

Is there any international frosting measure?

We have to find out how to get this look without damaging the glass floor. We find some stores next to the office where we can get a frosting spray, but we prefer a window frosting film that we’ve found in an online store, but we’ll need at least 3 working days to get it dispatched. As we said before, there is a weekend and a bank holiday before the shooting day. We’re running out of time, as usual. We call the providers and explain our problem. We give them the address of the location. If Karim isn’t there when they arrive, they can deliver it to Mark Carey, who fortunately lives in the same building. If he’s not at home, they’ll leave the parcel in his neighbour’s home. All the possibilities are catered for. We can just cross our fingers and hope Sam won’t run away to Italy, Rungano will remember her appointment with us and the frosting film will get to the location on time.

If you want to get more information about the project “Speak out against discrimination”, click here.

For more information about Spectacle, click here.



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Los pilares del proyecto

If you want to read the English version, click here.

Tras dejar en suspense la cuestión “1er asistente de cámara” parece que llega el momento de despejar las dudas al respecto: Sam Rawlings optará por trabajar con nosotros en la húmeda Londres en lugar de hacer una escapada laboral a Italia. Todos respiramos tranquilos.

Sin embargo, echamos cuentas y algo falla con el casting. Nos hacen falta un par de actores más, alguien que represente Oriente Medio o el norte de Africa. El rodaje es en menos de una semana. Tenemos que hacer el casting y decidir inmediatamente a quién queremos, ya que hay un fin de semana y un festivo de por medio. Convocamos un segundo casting y en cuestión de minutos tenemos impresos algunos currículos y nuevas caras. Vamos a jugárnoslo todo en un par de horas con una pequeña muestra de tan sólo ocho personas. Por si fuera poco, no tenemos a nuestra disposición el recinto que usamos la última vez para realizar las pruebas. Afortunadamente, un encantador escocés que nos saluda cada mañana con un “Buenos días, señorita” y que trabaja como security en la entrada del bloque de oficinas, nos sugiere que hablemos con el propietario de una oficina que está en nuestro mismo pasillo. Por lo visto nos la pueden alquilar por unas horas para llevar a cabo el casting allí. Es así como nos hacemos con Rebecca Nasir y Rungano Nyoni, dos jóvenes promesas del panorama artístico londinense. A pesar de que Rungano se ha olvidado de su cita con nosotros, y de lo problemático que podría ser que “perdiera la memoria” precisamente el día de la grabación, confiamos en que en el momento clave sea puntual.

Tal vez llegue la hora del rodaje y nos falten manos para mover muebles y preparar el set, pero al menos tenemos nuestro equipo técnico básico y a nuestros actores:
– Mark Saunders Director/Producer
Mark Carey, el director de fotografía
Sam Rawlings como el escurridizo 1er asistente de cámara
Rob Collins, jefe de eléctricos que iluminará el camino a seguir
– Pilar, Cati y Claire como asistente de producción, primer y segundo ayudante de dirección
Steel Wallis, la cara principal en el video, junto con Wendy Forbes, Hannah Raehese, Rebecca Nasir y Asif Dewan, que lo acompañarán sobre y bajo el suelo de cristal.
– Completando el casting, Maine Auguste, Leonie Charles, Fan Yang, Daz Kaye, Denis Khoroshko, Rungano Nyoni, Angela Tennant y Víctor Zaragoza serán los habitantes del impersonal mundo sobre el cristal

Tenemos todo lo que nos hace falta, ¿no? Cuando visitamos la localización quedó claro que el efecto translúcido de las fotos sería el ideal para los planos que tenemos proyectados, pero el cristal del suelo es totalmente transparente. Realmente las fotos del cristal translúcido son de una puerta.

¿Existe una medida internacional de translucidez?

¿Existe una medida internacional de translucidez?

Tenemos que investigar de qué opciones disponemos para lograr ese look sin estropear el techo de cristal. Iniciamos la búsqueda a través de internet. Encontramos varias tiendas cercanas a la oficina en las que venden un spray que podría servir, pero preferimos usar un papel adhesivo que tardará, como poco, tres días en llegar. Como decíamos, hay un fin de semana y un festivo de por medio. El tiempo está muy ajustado. Llamamos a los proveedores y les explicamos la situación. Les facilitamos la dirección de la localización. En caso de que Karim no esté allí cuando lleguen, lo entregarán a Mark Carey, que afortunadamente vive en el mismo bloque. De no encontrarse en el domicilio, dejarán el paquete en la casa del vecino. Todas las posibilidades están cubiertas. Sólo podemos cruzar los dedos y confiar en que Sam no escape a Italia, Rungano recuerde que tiene una cita con nosotros el jueves y que el papel translúcido llegue a tiempo a la localización.

Para obtener más información acerca del proyecto “Speak out against discrimination”, pincha aquí.

Para obtener más información acerca de Spectacle, pincha aquí.



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