|
Magazine
On the track of a carbon web
HEMANGINI GUPTA
|
London’s climate change walk traces the effect of modern commerce on the city.
|
PHOTO: AFP
What does the future hold?: A view of central London.
London usually preens for tourists in an extravaganza of slick West-end entertainment, colourful neighbourhood markets, museum displays and the legendary London walks. But now, hovering ominously over the trail of such nostalgia-laden walks as the Be
atles walk, is the climate change walk: a prescient reminder of London’s simultaneous existence as a site for more dubious enterprise.
This one-hour walk through the inner lanes and buildings of London’s commercial hub, the borough of The City, is directed by an audio guide downloadable from the website www.andwhilelondonburns.com. Produced by arts organisation Platform and downloadable on mp3 player, the walker puts on her headphones and follows the carefully narrated guide to cut a trail past the inner, glass building-laced lanes of the square mile of The City. Tracing what it calls the “carbon web”, the walk weaves deftly between the banks and oil companies located in The City.
Set to a haunting operatic background score by Isa Suarez, the walk begins at the heart of the city, by the Bank station.
At two levels
The guide’s protagonist is a hapless financial worker, whose lover has just left both him and her fast-paced City lifestyle, to discover the quiet and calm of seaside England. Sliced into three parts — Fire, Water and Dust — the guide functions on two levels. The meta story points out the corporation offices that form links in the oil and energy chain and leads the listener to physically experience and imagine effects of imminent climate change. The personal narrative leans on the protagonist, who draws us into his confused and unhappy life with the initial admission that he is just back from a doctor’s visit where he has been found impotent.
Suggestively marking the irony between the aggressive, virile nature of City businesses constantly exploiting natural resources and conquering new, fertile parts of the world, and the worn-out impotency of the City worker, the guide focuses especially on the activities of British Petroleum (BP). Following headphone directions to turn left or right, the guide’s voice marks a path through the web of institutions and corporate offices that extract oil and gas from the ground, “fuelling the global economy, running our lives”. Colliding audio excerpts from business news updates and those from weather reports warning of rising temperatures, the guide constantly notes the coordination between fund managers, banks, insurance companies, recruitment agencies and advertisers, to form the “carbon web” of companies. History constantly layers the narrative even as we stop to linger by the ruins of the Temple of Mithras, mulling over similarities between Rome’s “suicidal success” and contemporary London’s own dizzying growth.
Wealthy links
Through the walk listeners are led past the proud displays of wealth in The City — massive building fronts, glitzy shopping arenas — and ushered through small entrances, up past quiet staircases to watch, hard at work on their laptops, the collaborators in the carbon web. It’s not just offices that are pointed out; it’s also the links between them. Listeners are told about Royal Bank of Scotland’s positioning of itself as Europe’s oil and gas bank. The guide tells us about a seamless link between advisor and client, employer and employee that converges into one congruous whole.
Padding the constant stream of information about companies’ activities in different parts of the world and their interconnections is the reminder that climate change will hit us, as citizens, in more personal ways. Led down to the clamour of the Bank station, the guide mocks the routine security announcements on the London tube to “please stay calm” with a variation — the disembodied voice of the security official announces a one-degree change in climate and its effects. Then a two-degree change. Then a three-degree. With each degree comes the reminder of impending doom — glaciers melting, cities rising, a permanent El Nino effect, further carbon dioxide emissions, refugees, the Nile delta and Bangladesh under water, permafrost melting. Listeners are led around and around the tube stop till, head spinning, you pause in front of a whirring exhaust fan, to feel its suffocating heat on your face. (But, ladies and gentlemen, please stay calm.)
The gripping walk culminates at the Monument to the fire of London, which the guide describes as a “monument to the possibilities that disasters bring in their wake”. Listeners are invited to climb the tower for a look at London from above, mulling the destruction that could occur if flooding overwhelmed the Thames barrier, submerging the very areas we gaze downwards at. The grave warnings of the past hour are partly offset by this powerful climax: a beautiful view of London from above, a music score that turns wistful and a gentle breeze that reminds you that the Monument you are standing on is a tribute to the spirit of people who returned to make a new city.
Printer friendly
page
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Magazine
|
