Visiting RE-LINK
Graeme Miller’s radio transmissions were situated at the top of street lights and trees in various locations along the M11 Link road.
A red line marks the trail on the map we followed with our radio receivers. I was informed that we would be listening for transmissions. Fragments of recorded interviews of the Residents of Leytonstone describing locations before the roads were built and many areas and houses were bulldozed during the 90s. Protesters and residents protested the demolition of the area for several years due to the homlessness, pollution and destruction it would cause the local community. The attention the protests brought and the money it cost to counteract them meant that many other road schemes that were being considered were canceled. However despite their efforts, the road was built and open for traffic in 1999 and is now the 9th most congested road in the UK.
Miller and his family were directly affected as residents of the Claremont Road area in Leytonstone. They experienced armed police storm their house, evict them, and quickly afterward demolish their house. Many people did not recieve an option of somewhere else to live and were given less than a days notice to evict the property.
On Monday I arrived at Leytonstone Tube station. I exited out the front of the station to be met with an overlap of roaring main roads. The grey morning matched the grey roads and pavements; all things concrete merged to become one big grey Labyrinth. The first impression that this left me with informed my expeiriance of the installation and being opened to the truth that this place was once more than this.
First we arrived at the mulberry tree. The Signal started picking up distantly at first exciting the feedback in my headphones.
And then a voice starts chipping in. A woman’s soft voice describing her walk through concrete arches, picking Mulberry’s the juice dripping down her hand from the tree that I now stood beneath, today situated in a Sainsbury’s carpark. The people walking past give us strange glances as we press our radio receivers into the tree to get a better signal. I feel like a secret agent. Miller’s installations activate these landmarks that don’t mean a thing to the unaware passer-by. Another interview recalls the infamous story of the Lollipop Lady, Jean Gosling, who was fired from her job after instigating a protest to stop the chopping down a hazelnut tree.
As we completed more of the trail more of the story started piecing together. Collecting fragments of the entire picture. From the first transmission we knew something had happened here and we were understanding what that was.
I think the installation successfully evokes the imagination of what was once before; Commemorating places, communities, stories and People who cared about their home. It was an inspiring story of resistance to the occupation of public space which Miller immortalizes. I enjoyed the way that the interviews were accompanied by Miller’s compositions describing more of the atmosphere and creating a ghostly feel like the voices were haunting us and those responsible for the demolition.
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