SAT 18 NOV

Today I go North up the Valley again. I imagine the contour lines of the map I am travelling. Widely spaced. Water higher than land in weighty reservoirs. This is a popup of ‘PopupPopup’ (https://hilarypowell.site/#/pop-up-pop-up/) - a revisiting of the public production line staged in an industrial building in Stratford in 2014 where a team of people were trained and set the challenge of making as many copies as possible of the pop-up book ‘Legend: An A-Z of the Lea Valley.’ This became a prototype for the ‘thinking through making’ of Bank Job and Power’s public money printing – tactile, tangible ways in to conversation and questioning of the ‘structures of enchantment’ (a description of pop-up book architecture as well as the design of capitalism) that surround and control us – from debt to regeneration.

The ‘Valley Room’ is transformed into transient archive. Film of this ‘making of’ is projected onto stacked cardboard boxes, the book itself open at P for Pylon and surrounded by the parts of its production- from very first sketches to mock ups and source material. And this material is manifold – gathered from years of roaming and research, community and collaboration. Described at the time, possibly by me, as ‘a handheld animation of regeneration both local and universal - charting and reimagining industrial decline, mutating place names, flora and fauna and local legends.’  The book is called Legend. Myths we base our societies on – that are written or live on in the stories we tell ourselves and each other. In the legends that come from places. Legend as key to a map.

I talk to the assembled small group of artists, local business owners and council representatives come out of the way to see the work on a Saturday afternoon.  It is a chance to reflect on processes forgotten and absorbed into ongoing practice, to remember and reclaim.  One question is ‘Why the A-Z format?’ Looking for ways to gather and order these complex fragments of a place I turned to the alphabet. As I was already working with a form that is dismissed as ‘for children’ as if that and they have no value, I examined this other structure of the childhood library. The encyclopaedic. The learning of a language of things.

The first poem in Mosab Abu Toha’s collection ‘Things You May Find Hidden In My Ear’ begins with a Palestine A-Z:

Under B is ‘A book that doesn’t mention my language or my country, and has maps of every place except for my birthplace, as if I were an illegitimate child on Mother Earth.

Borders are those invented lines drawn with ash on maps and sewn into the ground by bullets.’

Recently I ‘ve been seeking out the alphabet again. Obsessively solving code words and word searches -  sorting and stacking letters as exercises in stopping screaming. And so I collect together another A-Z in the language I know to contain the horror. Ordering chaos. Sense making the senseless.

A is for annihilation. Atrocity amnesia.  Airstrikes and accusations as confessions.

B is for bombs and bombardment. Borders. Bread. Bakeries.

C is for ceasefire. Called and cried for. Calendars marked in complicity. Civilian casualties and care. A colossal crime scene.

D is for death by dehumanisation. Destruction, defamation and damage. Denial. Defiance.

E is for everything eviscerated. Evidence. Erasure. Enforced exile. Ethnic cleansing.

F is for the fallacy of force majeure.  Fake news. Freedom.

G is for gas fields and gas lighting. Of genocide denied.

H is for hypocrisy.

I is for impunity from International law. Injury. Injustice. Indoctrination and indifference.

J is for Justice. Jews for ceasefire. Journalists.

K is for kidnapping. Kill zones. Keffiyehs and Kippah marching together for peace.

L is for language. Lies.  

M is for media and manipulation. Murdered medics. Mass graves and military munitions. Missiles and the missing.

N is for never again never again. North. South. Nowhere safe. Name after name after name no more. Nakba.

O is for operations without anaesthetic. Olive trees on fire. Occupation. Oblivion.

P is for proof. Propaganda. Private screenings and public horror. Prison. Poetry.

Q is questioning.

R is for resistance. Resilience. Rubble. Refugees. Rulings on the ownership of rain.

S is for settlers and segregation. Self Defence as slaughter. Selective sight, sound and safety. Solidarity and struggle.

T is for termination.

U is for us.  United in disgust.

V is the vast gulf between the valued and valueless. Actual victims versus violent victimhood.  

W is for water. Walls. Weapons. War crimes.

X marks indiscriminate targets. Deletion.

Y is for years and years. Decades of domination.

Z is for Zionism. Zealots. Zero justification. Zero accountability.  Zeroing in on zero. Empty rhetoric. Void souls.

 Anna has pulled up a carpet tile and painted a yellow square on the floor next to the window. From it, over sloping industrial rooftops, beyond the valley, the towers of Canary Wharf stand shimmering, sometimes disappearing, but consistent in their presence and power.  Wagtails dance. Darkness is falling fast. Starlings murmur over the hum of pylons.