13.03.04 Flying from Amsterdam to London for the day to take a walk through London based on ‘Transition and Reinterpretation’, written by the London based short story writer James Miller. The following are his excerpts: This walk revisits those places around the City, the tower blocks and demolition sites, that express a sense of the city as a living, changing presence. They reflect a dynamism that always seems lacking from the atrophied atmosphere of the traditonal sights. Sure, the Houses of Parliment, Buckingham Palace, St. Paul’s and the Tower are all wonderful buildings, capable, when viewed from a certain angle or bathed in one of London's surrreal smog-scented sunsets, of impressing even the most jaded urbanite. However, this walk sets out to see the city in a different way: not as an achieved or static form, to be carefully preserved [like Venice or Rome], but a a city that is continuously evolving. This very process of evolution, as a city constantly destoying, rebuilding, renovating and reinterpreting itself, is part of London's essential character. London is neither beautiful nor architecturally harmonious, but dramatic and frantic, thriving on its unresolvable tension between immense antiquity and extreme modernity.  Start by taking the tube to Old Street, just North of the City. This is border territory skirting the racial and economic confusion of Hackney, the vibrant gentrification of Islington and the City’s wealthiest citadelsBut it is in these transitional districts that so much of London’s essential character exists, the unseen centres, where the city of the past lies neglected and buried, as the city of the future struggles to be born. This can be graphically demonstrated by Bunhill Fields, 20 yards down City Road.It is the resting place of the capital's greatest visionaries: John Bunyan, Daniel Defoe and William Blake. A large office block overlooking the cemeterywas converted into luxury flats, green grass and terracotta cladding replaced the drab concrete. One of London’s most encouraging trends has been this process of redevelopment; property speculators have finally had the good sense to start turning some of the capital’s empty office buildings into new flats and lofts that promise to bring a sense of life and community back to what, at night, are some of the quietest streets. From Bunhill Row walk into Moor Lane, watching yourself entering the City in the reflective glass of the offices opposite. In Moor Lane turn left along Ropemaker Street, gazing up at the 395-foot green glass structure of Britannic House. Keep walking along into South Place, where the throng of grey suits declares as clearly as the surveillance cameras and police checkpoints that you are entering the City proper. The police checkpoints were started after IRA bombs added to the City’s history of sudden destruction and subsequent restoration and reconstruction.Up ahead the Broadgate Centrebuilt around and over Liverpool Street Station, is a genuinely strange piece of architecture. It seems to take perverse delight in its ability to alienate the people who move through it. I can’t help thinking the architects must have been satrising their client’s prententions. The tinted and dark steel buildings, partly camouflages by ivy and shrubs, resemble a hi-tech ruin. Continue down Bishopgate pausing to step inside St Helen’s Place on the left. The site is occupied by Leatherseller's Livery Hall, a City Guild that has existed for 800 years.Take the next left into Great St. Helen’s. Between the tiny church of St Andrew Undershaftwhich dates from 1520, is the 387 foot Chicago-style Commercial Union Tower and the massive hi-tech bulk of Richard Rodger’s Lloyd building.Turn left past the Lloyd’s Building into Leadenhall Market,a Victorian mall designed by Sir Horace Jones in 1881.There has been a food market here, originally the site of the Roman forum, since the Middle Ages. From there, walk over London Bridgetowards the mishmash of Southwark and Bankside.Walk left along the river to the tremendous brick behemoth of Bankside Power Station. Designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott and completed in 1955, this cathedral of power is now the Tate Modern. You'll now be taking an interior walk through the Modern Art Collection of the Tate. As you walk into Turbine Hall, you’ll see The Weather Project by Olafur Eliasson. excerpts from text about the project: The subject of the weather has long shaped the content of everyday conversation. The eighteenth-century writer Samuel Johnson famously remarked ‘It is commonly observed, that when two Englishmen meet, their first talk is of the weather; they are in haste to tell each other, what each must already know, that it is hot or cold, bright or cloudy, windy or calm.’ In The Weather Project, Olafur Eliasson takes this ubiquitous subject as the basis for exploring ideas about experience, mediation and representation. In this installation, The Weather Project, representations of the sun and sky dominate the expanse of the Turbine Hall.A fine mist permeates the space, as if creeping in from the environment outside. Throughout the day, the mist accumulates into faint, cloud-like formations, before dissipating across the space. A glance overhead, to see where the mist might escape, reveals that the ceiling of the Turbine Hall has disappeared, replaced by a reflection of the space below .
Transition and reinterpretation continues via Tate’s organization of their Modern Art Collection in the main part of the museum. The following are the sections and sub-sections with my choices from each. HISTORY/MEMORY/SOCIETYsection; Monuments:Dan Flavin.
A History of Modern Art at Tate:Amedeo Modigliani.
Trace of Time: Anselm Kiefer.
In Focus-The Kiss:Auguste Rodin.
LANDSCAPE/MATTER/ENVIRONMENT section; Urban, Suburban, Rural:Christopher Richard Wynne Nevinson.
The Expansive Landscape:Patrick Heron.
Matter and Space:Lucio Fontana,Shozo Shimamoto andYves Klein.
Jospeh Beuys: .
Cy Twombly: .
Nature Into Action:Mark Rothko,Franz Kline.
STILL LIFE/OBJECT/REAL LIFE section;
Art of the Everyday:Sir William Nicholson.
Modern Life:Fernand Leger.
Trash Into Art:Kurt Schwitters,Daniel Spoerri.
Subversive Objects:Marcel Broodthaers,Man Ray.
Tate Thames Dig:Mark Dion.
After Duchamp:Richard Artschwager,Julian Opie,Jeff Koons,Roy Lichtenstein andMarcel Duchamp.Back outside the museum, the walk continues:Leaving the Tate, walk across the bridgeto Liverpool Station, from which a tube or traincan be caught anywhere, even Paris, whose south [or I should say left?] bank couldn't be more different.

Project by laurie halsey brown [all photographs by lhb except works of art in the Tate]. excerpt from ‘review’ in Fucking Good Art based in Rotterdam: The Rotterdam based USA born artist Laurie Halsey Brown has an interesting online project that we like to bring under your attention. On the 13th of March Laurie was flying from Amsterdam to London for the day to take a walk through London based on Transition and Reinterpretation, written by the London based short story writer James Miller. Laurie presents this project online. In order to read the text you have to scroll through the website and you will encounter pictures related to the text. This concept is a beautiful translation of the walk and makes you feel like actually walking through the city.