The Culture Show

Tara recommended that I watch a special episode of The Culture Show on BBC2.  It was based on Anish Kapoor, a reknowned sculptural artist, and his latest commision: Britain's largest sulptural piece - The Orbit -, located in the Olympic Park.

It was very interesting to see a large-scale artistic project at work.  As the programme went on, I noted many similarities between the workings of creating the structure with my own work and the architect meeting which I sat in on.  Firstly, Kapoor talked about how he wanted the sculpture to be much taller than the 120 metres that it is - cost limited him from doing so.  Also, a meeting between Kapoor and an architect reminded me very much of the meeting I attended.  The architect had an obligation to make the tower people-friendly and safe whilst Kapoor, the artist, refused to compromise anything on the design.  In addition, the London Mayor, Boris Johnson, constantly kept a close eye on funding and image.  Despite the scale of the project being much bigger, the reality is that it is almost identical to the process of creating Blackburn College's new Media Centre. 

A lot of the show content was similar to my own work of studying postmodernity.  The Orbit was described by the artist as 'discordant' - a word not too far removed from 'multifaceted' and 'ludicrous' - words used by the Victoria and Albert Museum to describe postmodernity.  Others described it as 'futuristic', again relating to the same idea.  Kapoor talked about how he thought of the Eiffel Tower as springing from the ground in a continuous tower of steel.  He wanted The Orbit to be seemless in it's standing - to be held up my the continuous orbiting movement of the steel skeleton - inspired by the movement of the planets - space-age, much like Santiago Calatrava's work. 

I was interested in how the presenter was keen to know about the people's reaction to the building.  Right at the beginning of this project, I wrote about the website PPS and their work with making buildings ideal public places for people.  This documentary assessed the location of the building with it's relation to the general public: it is located in the Olympic park which is on the fringes of East London, a ward struck with poverty.  Despite Olympic proponents arguing that the games will bring jobs to the local community, East London is yet to see a significant impact.  Some of those who were interviewed didn't understand what the tower was meant to be representing; some were worried about the price of ascending the tower.  These issues constantly need to be assessed when designing new buildings - it has been the same for centuries and will only become more difficult to address as buildings become more complex in their nature and artists like Kapoor become more stubborn.