Primer

Speculative fiction on the new phase of ‘relational gentrification’ in south London. In ‘Monday Begins on Saturday’, the Bergen Assembly 2013 catalogue, Sternberg 2014. Commissioned by David Riff and Ekaterina Degot. ‘Primer′’ repurposes Sean Carruth’s important low budget feature film (Primer, 2004) about a start up outfit who accidentally create a time machine to explore the new wave of art and 'regeneration' in south London, in the process considering the proposition that the riots of 2011 in London and UK constitued the first authentic response - politically and potentially aesthetically - to the preceding 20 years of privatisation and social cleasing which had mobilised as a catalyst for the inflation and, post 2008, reflation of a UK real estate bubble. Primer' considers the impact on artists and those in the areas undergoing gentrification of this process as it attains paroxyistic levels. Using the conceit of the time machine as a cogent way to consider both the extended looting and recycling of resources achieved by large scale regeneration, and the putting to work of all 'inputs' experiences by artists and other workers, it also diagnoses the fascist tendencies in contemporary liberal culture in (social/reproductive) crisis. Published in ‘Monday Begins on Saturday’, the Bergen Assembly 2013 catalogue, Sternberg 2014. Commissioned by David Riff and Ekaterina Degot.