In the past year, my relationship with this city has been erratic at best - a roller coaster of thoughts and feelings. The ennui I am often left with quickly fades when hidden treasures, strange performances, and unique contrasts present themselves to me. In doing so, a story of the post-modern unravels, an archaeology of Western civilsation and globalisation unearthed. Such an archaeology can be experienced in the wonderously surreal environs of East London.
On the unusual occasion of a sunny day, I will often take a walk down the Regent's Canal. Sometimes I will turn left and head towadrs to the yuppie charm of Georgian Islington. More often I turn right and venture east towards Haggeton, London Fields, Hackney, and Bethnal Green. Even on the brightest day with an azure sky, the cloudy waters of the canal reflect their industrial past. An almost unctuous film resists the blue shining from above, evidence of human progress and technology gone awry.
In the optimism of early Modernism, architects, artists, writers, and theorists welcomed the seemingly endless progress of technology as a way to improve the human condition. This uniquely Western view of universality resulted in one of the most important revolutions the world of architecture has seen. From it the Bauhaus was born - the beautiful simplicity of Mies Van Der Rohe, Gropius, Le Corbusier, and Neutra. In the aftermath of the Second World War, the scars of which London still bears, the ideas and principles of Modern or 'International Style' architecture were applied on a mass scale. During this frenzy of construction, the loft ideals Mies and Corbuiser espoused and proselytised were conveniently swept aside for mundane rubbish that was cheap to build. In London's rubble, particularly in the East, endless blocks of council estates were built in this Modern style, all elegance and beauty lost. The building continued into the 1970s and the utopian dreams of the Modernists were left for the post-modern urban decay that ensued. The style became synonomous for poverty and derelication, with ugly, cheap brick and concrete used in place of stucco, steel, and glass.
As the 1980s led to the rise of the post-industrial, late-capitalist world, money flowed in new ways with such force that the regeneration began to hold out hope. In fact a strange irony occured. With adequate time behind us (and sufficient funds for the new upwardly mobile), the intelligensia began to propagate a new Modernist style. Glass and steel became fashionable again, the beauty of geometry and high quality minimalism a symbol of young wealth. In the late 1990s and into this decade, new Modernist luxury flats began to pop-up along the canal. In it a gaze, an archaeology, was created. These flats - populated by young City professionals, fasionable designers and media-whores - looked across the canal at the crumbling council-block failures of the 1960s. Modernism failed and was instead transformed into novelty. That poverty and great wealth exist side by side is no new phenomenon. However, presence of both in such immediacy is - it is this that is apparent along the Regent's Canal. Hyper-capitalism and a rabid consumer culture has brought the two to the edge, to the point where they are literally fighting for space.
The post-modern world is also post-colonial. As the ideals of Modernism withered away, so did the Empires that sustained the industrial-world of the early 20th century. After their downfall, new immigrants flocked to the lands of their former imperial masters, Britain being particularly popular. Many of the poorest in London are immigrants from the developing ex-colonial world, symbolic of globalisation and the fall of Modernism. As you journey further down the canal an old Cockney pub has been transformed into a Nigerian grocery, a Bangladeshi restaurant has replaced the old pie and mash shop. Yet the boutiques of the glass and steel flats begin to encroach. Whereas multiculturalism and money have always melted into a more unified New York experience, the resistance, the polar opposites of these two lifestyles define London. Poverty and wealth, the native and foreign, they are like magnets of the same charge - both rooted in the same socio-politico charge, yet with a strong resistance. This resistance results in an isolation, a lack of unity - yet it is what allows the archaeology of civilisation to be so easily discovered here in London.
This contrast in the context of isolation is what I love about London - the most amazing things can be discovered. I love that I can buy a GBP 30 book on Phillip Starck a short walk away from a dodgy Vietnamese grocer. I love that there are glamourous martinis down the block from endless blocks of council houses. I love that glass and steel luxury flats are hidden behind strange alleys. I love the skyline of the City rising over a misty field surrounded by derelict housing. I love that old cockney men still fight drunk on the street while women covered in burkas bump into Dior clad hipsters. The 1800s, the 1920s, 1950s and 1980s all swirl in one surreal urban experience.
Yet the anthropological isolation also results in a social isolation. The feeling of everyone in their own existence, trying to deal with an oppressive city with no unifying energy. The difficulty in co-ordinating plans in a vast metropolis. A pluralism that has become so extreme that sub-cultures are no longer bastions of freedom, but Berlin Wall's of identity. A transience and multi-culturalism that becomes self-referential, and in the process, self-defeating. Everyone becomes foreign.
In a way, I have given up trying to make sense of London. I try to appreciate what it offers, while I resign myself to the side-effects of this elixir. Where this will lead I continue to be uncertain of, yet the archaeology is wonderous. If Indiana Jones is looking for his next [post-modern] adventure, than London should surely be at the top of the list.
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