Wanders: The M53 Cavern (A Northern Concrete Island)

Somewhere in this nexus of concrete and structural steel, this elaborately signalled landscape of traffic indicators and feeder roads, status and consumer goods, Vaughan moved like a messenger in his car…  – Crash (1973), J.G. Ballard In the dead space before Christmas 2015, I found myself meandering back towards my old secondary school on The Wirral peninsula, one of only two things that I still … Continue reading Wanders: The M53 Cavern (A Northern Concrete Island)

Short Film – An Impossible Dérive.

An Impossible Dérive is a film that channels a number of my own current interests.  Though predominantly about the changing landscape and topography of the city centre of Liverpool, it is also about using psychogeography and the writing of John Wyndham to assess and comment upon the fallout of such change within the landscape.  The title, An Impossible Dérive, refers to two different aspects of … Continue reading Short Film – An Impossible Dérive.

Ringo’s Dérive in A Hard Day’s Night (1964).

Richard Lester’s film collaboration with The Beatles, A Hard Day’s Night (1964), has been attributed many aspects of foreshadowing modern culture.  From the almost accidental invention of the surrealism-infused music video to the defining of pre-counter-culture 1960s Britain and London, the film acts as both a periodical bubble and an innovative audio-visual experience that is as prescient today as it was then.  One segment in … Continue reading Ringo’s Dérive in A Hard Day’s Night (1964).