Scarp

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The initial film was given form by three ‘expert’ interviews with Iain Sinclair, Will Self, and Russell Brand, talking about Nick and his practice. It comes across as the written equivalent of a Godfrey Ho movie where various elements are cut together with a total disregard for narrative and logical sense. There are a few hints at spells of mental illness, but nothing much is said about work or family life, despite the intimate nature of that which he does bring up.

Bill Drummond’s neat summary of psychogeography is perfect – ‘An intellectual justification for what I have been doing most of my life’. In narrating the initial evolution of his views on the “Greek Question” in exile, this study attempts to surface the underlying dynamics responsible for radicalizing his politics in that direction. When we were schlepping round industrial estates in Park Royal and Perivale I always saw it as a Beat quest. I roared, a fiery demiurge, below the pantiled bungalows, the pubs decked out in brewer's Tudor, throwing all this multiplicity into the world in my fury before subsiding back into the humming darkness of the undifferentiated planetary mass. Weird, leftfield, and slightly eerie, almost like a poetic version of the wasp factory - slipping into other minds and mini-stories that all blend into one larger and semi-somnolent awareness.It was a majestic sight to see this suburban stream rushing to meet its mother river before working its way to the Thames at Brentford.

He accepts its stories, often it's casualties without judgement and most importantly without recourse to human sciences or politics to justify the links he makes. A mostly crap scrap of the neither-here-nor-there London exurbia is the subject of Nick Papadimitriou's wonder Scarp. I chose not to bring a camera, or my iPod; I wanted to concentrate on looking and listening, without imposing extra demands on my attention. Show full abstract] ravine where the dense canopy of foliage intercepted the ash and gave us some relief.He's also got an incredible language at his disposal, remarkable ideas and a deep sense of lucid confusion. Above you can watch the complete documentary on Nick and his work – The London Perambulator by John Rogers. Although it has been an increasingly regular occurrence over the last four winters, Londoners of my generation still consider snow a novelty. He takes a sort of amalgam of old Ordnance Survey atlas, decommissioned guide book prose and personal recollection, and rewalks the landscape with no preconception. Most of this is delicious nonsense; Reginald, at least, we know to have once been a real thing as well as a regular object of ridicule for Monty Python's Flying Circus.

This bridge instantly triggered memories of walks with Nick Papadimitriou, starting in the summer of 2005, that often took us over this metal bridge with the Hendon Way pulsing below and views of the distant high ground that would later become the subject of Nick’s celebrated book, Scarp. When I stepped out of the station to be greeted by Nick he seemed to read my mind, I mentioned the Jerrold and the idea of taking in Hanger Hill and Twyford Abbey was tacked onto the itinerary. Like Iain Sinclair the walking tour is a peg to which he attaches his own musings and recollections, mostly about a troubled adolescence in the 70s that ended in a spell in prison. It’s not the cheariest of books – the final chapter startThere’s some good stuff in those out-takes that didn’t make the final cut that premiered in the East End Film Festival at The Whitechapel Gallery in April 2009.