A London Address: The Artangel Essays

Jul 2013 · Granta Books

About this ebook

In a unique collaboration between Artangel and Living Architecture, a dwelling was built on top of London's Queen Elizabeth Hall. The dwelling was a boat, Roi de Belges, inspired by the Thames and by Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. Writers and artists were given short residencies and wrote about the strange experience of staying in a boat overlooking the river. This book, a collection of their pieces responding to Conrad's masterpiece, is a result of that collaboration.

From Juan Gabriel Vsquez's meditation on belonging, identity and the otherness of London to Michael Ondaatje's piercing reflections on history and literature, via Jeanette Winterson's lyrical, impressionistic musings and Caryl Philips's supple and poetic observations, this is Joseph Conrad, the Thames and the capital city as you have never experienced them before.

About the author

ARTANGEL commissions and produces exceptional projects by outstanding contemporary artists. Over the past two decades, Artangel projects have materialised in a range of different sites and situations and in countless forms of media, from film and video to sculpture and sound installations. Artangel has generated some of the most talked-about, contentious and acclaimed art of recent times, including work by Francis Als, Clio Barnard, Matthew Barney, Jeremy Deller, Brian Eno, Douglas Gordon, Roger Hiorns, Michael Landy, Susan Philipsz, Gregor Schneider, Rachel Whiteread and Robert Wilson.