F_able Navigates: Another space, Another time
F_able worked in collaboration with residents in Bow, east London, along with spoken word artists, musicians, visual and performance artists, schools and civic organisations. For one night, we wanted to transform abandoned or under-used spaces, both public and private, on and around Roman Road, without imposing changes in real life. The project reimagines the potential for common space free from the customary barriers imposed by organisations, systems and governments.
We define this project as an activist method of making visible, via creative and fictional practices, the need for communal, resistant spaces in a city submerged by privatisation
To experience the event please refer to the "Art Walk" Story, and earlier posts on the F_abe Instagram
The event, which took place on Sunday 24th November 2019 was a map-led art walk navigating Roman Road, exploring eight newly commissioned performances and art installations.
Special thanks to the artists Lottie Bolster, Camilla Brendon, Ella Dorman-Gajic, Noemi Gunea, Grace Lambert; Ale Lopez, Iftikhar Latif, Veronica Rowlands, Elly Rutherford.
Photographs taken by Nina Klaff
Cakes sit, dust-iced, awaiting the heat of birthday candles and glowing faces demanding a slice. Concrete chips on the road that leads to nowhere, wishing for the pounding of dancing feet, the hum of conversation, on its forgotten ground. A newspaper turns brown, pages curling, yearning to be read, its words years out of date beyond the glass façade of the newsagent. The fryers in the fish and chip shop rust, the catch of many days past immortalised on the chalk of the blackboard. Gone is the chatter of children punctuated by the chewing of steaming chips
As you walk into the night, immerse yourself in the fantasies you encounter. Hadn’t you noticed the orange trees in Globe Town Square or the jungle leaking onto the street from the empty letting agency, “Kbros.”? Take the fiction home with you, see not what is, unopened letters on a mildewed doormat, but what could be; a Fish and Chip Museum, a cake shop brimming with the dreams of those who buy a slice, or a meeting place for the lady-bird buses which navigate this city, and consider what this fantasy might mean for the people who live here.
