This Saturday, October 10th, [ s p a c e ] on Mare St. in London will be hosting the first of a new regular screening event presented by artist Laura Oldfield Ford of the zine Savage Messiah.  The films will be shown from 1-4pm and will include Patrick Keiller’s Dilapidated Dwelling, Jim Goddard’s The Black Stuff, and Kevin Brownlow’s Winstanley.  Click “Read More” for more information.

DILAPIDATED DWELLING (2000 dir: Patrick Keiller)

This is an examination of the predicament of the house in advanced economies, the UK in particular. A fictional researcher (with the voice of Tilda Swinton) returns from a 20-year absence in the Arctic to find that, though the UK is one of the most electronic of the advanced economies, its houses are the most dilapidated in western Europe.

The film includes archive footage of Buckminster Fuller, Constant Nieuwenhuys, Archigram and Walter Segal, and interviews with Martin Pawley, Saskia Sassen, Doreen Massey, Cedric Price and others.

THE BLACK STUFF (1980 dir: Jim Goddard)
written by Alan Bleasdale

The Black Stuff follows the stories of five tarmac layers and was originally written for BBC1 Play for Today anthology series in 1978. Set in Bleasdale’s home city of Liverpool, the play reflects many of his own experiences of life in the city.

The series that followed (Boys from the Black Stuff) was highly acclaimed for its powerful and emotional depiction of the desperation wreaked by high unemployment and a subsequent lack of social support.

WINSTANLEY (1975 dir: Kevin Brownlow)

‘The work we are going about is this, to dig up George Hill and the waste ground thereabouts and to sow corn, and to eat our bread together by the sweat of our brows… that we may work in righteousness, and lay the foundation of making the earth a common treasury for all, both rich and poor’
- Gerrard Winstanley – ‘The True Levellers’ Standard Advanced’

in April 1649 Winstanley led a band of Diggers (aka ‘True Levellers’) in cultivating unused common land on Saint George’s Hill in Cobham, Surrey. According to the principles of his own writing: all should be equal in status and labour and all property is to be shared according to needs. They aroused crushing hostility: physical attacks, law-suits, prosecutions; the tiny community lasted only a year, but not without planting other seeds around the country.

ALSO… preceding the Savage Messiah film day:

Curators Talk
Saturday 10th October 12 – 1pm
SPACE curator Paul Pieroni considers the current exhibitions by Tom Ellis and Richard John Jones via a talk and tour.