Thinking about Britain is easier now that we live in Athens.
On Thursday, while in London, we started teaching a course about hauntology, opacity, and imperfection in the arts. Hauntology, according to Mark Fisher, is about ‘the sense of yearning for a future that we feel cheated out of’ – the lost futures, the possibilities or promises that could be, but never were.
Fisher also believed that this concept is particularly applicable to the contemporary British social and political context. ‘Haunting happens,’ he writes, ‘when a place is stained by time, or when a particular place becomes the site for an encounter with broken time.’ Bulldozed brutalist buildings as a sign of a future that did not arrive.
Perfect place to begin the course.
I am running to the Fitzcarraldo Editions annual summer party, navigating an unprecedented heat wave that London was not prepared for. The mighty dark grey concrete walls of the disused car park in Peckham, where the party is hosted, make the event feel like an actual greenhouse. Despite this, all the people look very smart and well-dressed.
In general, in the British art scene, I have always encountered the most effortlessly and impeccably dressed people. Always looking around and at each other with some self-consciousness… Britain, the best electronic music ever, the best painters I know, the coldest social interactions.
The reading is very clever and runs smoothly. When it is over and I exit the venue, I notice a small nature installation with purple-blue Sea Holly flowers, dry herbs, driftwood, and a rusted metal sculpture: it is a fragment of Derek Jarman’s garden. I think of him and of Deo art exhibition in the Greek island of Chios, where I saw a tribute to Jarman’s garden last summer, also – of all that amazing culture that Britain has produced…
Up the stairs, at the large scale rooftop bar, I suddenly notice two things: a bright red sunset on one side of the roof, and an extremely black and active smoke coming from a building right next to us on the other side. It is a supermarket on fire.
‘We are watching both the sunset and the end of the world,’ says a person next to me to their friend while taking a sip of a bright orange Aperol in a thin glass.
I am afraid to leave this beautiful scene. Downstairs feels like an apocalypse.
Who comes to my mind just before the smoke reaches our disused car park, our arts venue, our large-scale open air bar, is a platform attendant in Balham, whom I had asked for directions earlier on my way to this poetry event.
Just before leaving the platform, looking straight in my eyes:
“Hey, miss. Clapham Junction is the first stop.”
“Oh, thank you!”
…
“Yeah…
But keep an eye, innit.”
*
And so,
I
Keep
An
Eye
