Paradise Lost?

Paradise Forum, Central Birmingham, October 2015

As mentioned in a previous post, I recently made one of my regular trips over to Birmingham, partly to take in Fiona Banner’s ‘Scroll Down And Keep Scrolling’ exhibition.  The other reason was to catch up with my recent co-exhibitor, Andrew Smith, for a bit of a chinwag.

That’s something we’d been meaning to do shortly after our ‘Mental Mapping’ exhibition came down in June but, in the event, we’d both been plagued by various ailments, aches, pains and other distractions over summer, meaning it was long overdue.  Although we’ve hooked up on numerous occasions over the last 12 months, it occurred to me that this was the first time we’d been able to just relax over a couple of beers, with no need to take care of practical arrangements or remain conscious of lurking deadlines.  As it turned out, we both spent time with Ms. Banner, before retiring to discuss our thoughts about her work, in addition to a general catch-up and a bit of putting the world to rights.  Very enjoyable it was too.

Paradise Forum, Central Birmingham, October 2015

I’ve always valued having contact with people who aren’t put off when conversation ventures out into slightly deeper waters, and who can discuss Art, Literature, Cinema, Music, etc. from a similar, (if not greater), knowledge base than my own.  Andrew certainly fits into that category and, hopefully, it won’t be the last time we can chew the fat in that way.  It was encouraging to find that we’re both starting to reach out tentatively towards new phases of our respective artwork, so I’ll be interested to see what he’s been working on over the coming months.  I’ve already stated more than once, the whole experience of collaborating on ‘Mental Mapping’ was a very positive one for me, not least our jointly produced video ‘Orfeo’, so who knows? – Maybe we’ll find an opportunity to pool our creative energies again in the future.  ‘Orfeo 2’, anyone? - be like that then!

As it turned out, I probably didn’t venture more than half a mile from my car all day but, as the sinking sun put on a particularly fiery late-afternoon light show, I did take a small detour, returning via Birmingham’s soon-to-be redeveloped Paradise Circus complex.  This is probably one of the most evocative bits of ‘failed’ Utopian Modernism in the country, and one that I’ve returned to with fascination over the last few years.

Central Library Building, Paradise Circus, Central Birmingham, October 2015

I can’t expect everyone to revel in the picturesque squalor of its latter years, as I do, and I’m sure that, for many Brummies, it’s been a perceived blight on the local landscape for some time.  However, many still find something genuinely audacious in the resolute Brutalist design of the original project, and in the idealistic vision such developments represented, (at least in part), in Post-War Britain.  Despite the grime and dereliction that overtook its immediate environs, and apparent compromises over original build quality, the inverted ziggurat of John Madin’s Central Library building remains one of the most striking bits of high Modernist architecture ever realised in Britain.

I’ve written about all this before, both in connection with my own inner-city reveries, and with John Grindrod’s enjoyable survey of the field, ‘Concretopia’ [1.].  I can’t pretend that I don’t feel my age somewhat, as more and more of this supposedly discredited architecture is swept away.  That was the world I was born into, after all, and the social and political assumptions of the age, however outdated, still colour many of my own attitudes in one way or another [2.].  Of course, I have to admit that there may also be more than a little dystopian thrill seeking involved too.  All that self-indulgent, vicarious alienation can be highly enjoyable, at least until one has to live with it practically, on a daily basis, (as I recently discovered not long ago).  Put even more baldly, maybe I’m just a sucker for a good ruin.

Library Of Birmingham, October, 2015

Anyway, Birmingham has newer, glossier theatres and libraries now, just a stone’s throw away, although I note with weary resignation that the new library is already feeling the financial pinch as the Government seeks to remove public funding from anything genuinely worth nurturing.  Younger generations, or those drawn only to the city’s temples of retail commerce, may even feel that such things are an irrelevance altogether, for all I know.

Central Library Building, Central Birmingham, October 2015

Either way, I had fully expected to find demolition work in full swing in Paradise during this visit.  As it turns out, although the extensive barricading and publicity material relating to future plans indicated very imminent movement, it was still possible to walk through Paradise Forum, and even a little way round the side of the complex, in search of a few very last photographs of it in its complete state.

Even more intriguingly, I was invited to contribute to an on-line petition opposing the demolition scheme, even more recently.  However, Wikipedia suggests that any such attempts were in vain, and I suspect that events will have moved on apace the next time I’m over that way.

Paradise Forum, Central Birmingham, October 2015

[1.]:  John Grindrod, 'Concretopia: A Journey Around The Rebuilding Of Post War Britain', Brecon, Old Street Publishing Ltd., 2013

[2.]:  It feels like the more self-consciously future-facing the zeitgeist, the more readily and rapidly it becomes obsolete.  Others, more perceptive than I, have explored this idea of a lost future in some depth; notably Mark Fisher in:  ‘Ghosts Of My Life: Writings On Depression, Hauntology And Lost Futures’, Winchester Hants, Zero Books, 2014.  Vestigial Modernists on the political Left, such as Fisher, suggest that we have replaced utopian futurism with a hypnotised sense of ‘no future’ at all.