The fantastic artist Hilary Powell and academic Isaac Marrero-Guillamón have just produced an edited volume The Art of Dissent: Adventures in London's Olympic State.
The book, which has been beautifully illustrated by Hilary Powell,
includes critical responses to the Olympics from artists, writers, film
makers, academics and photographers, with contributions from amongst
others, Iain Sinclair, Lara Almarcequi and Chris Dorley-Brown.
The piece I wrote for the book with Duncan Hay focuses on Holden Point,
a 22 storey block of sheltered housing on the Stratford side of the
Olympic site, and which is also the location of the Olympic Park Viewing Platform. As such, it has played a role in creating a particular image
of the Olympic site for visitors and residents. It also embodies the
starkness of the contrast between the huge investment in the Games and
the lack of investment in the deteriorating estates that surround it. Housing schemes such as Holden Point were themselves built
on the basis of the promise of a better life for their prospective
inhabitants. Through a collage of the different representations of the
past and future developments around the Olympic site, historical
research and prose, we question whether the utopian promise of
the Olympics, or indeed the utopian aspects of the post-war social
housing schemes around the site, can hold good.
If you're interested in reading more you can buy the book here.
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