Memory Museum [1996]

Outside the RCA, on way to site. 1996. Location - a pedestrian underpass, Paddington, London - under 'The Westway' motorway. This was my favourite place - so I wanted to do a project that used all the qualities of the site and the urban architecture, but without changing it with a building design. It's a place where all you can hear are the cars, but you can't see any when you are inside - this draws on my theories of dissociated sound.

The Westway, as featured in Ballard's novel 'Concrete Island', where Maitland crashed car and lived for a bit.

West London, above Hyde Park, near Paddington Station, under the Westway Flyover motorway.

.........


The FM Radio transmitter broadcasts the sound of the underpass to the BBC Radio 1 frequency of anyone listening in their cars passing above, within a limited distance, woshing along at 30 or 70mph. The audience.

 

As part of the installation process i made a series of proper metal road signs, with pedantic number of meters to the location of the temporary transitory museum.... I biked about in my donkey jacket and steely boots and signs on my back with a ladder and put them up... .... Picadilly Circus, Paddington Station, Waterloo Bridge [stayed up for 13 years], Kensignton Gardens, Notting Hill Gate, aaaaaaand outside Buckingham Palace, where the pollice arrived and as i was up the ladder asked me what i was doing... so i offered them a flyer and explained the new museum opening in the summer.... and they responded, Oh OK,,, i thought you were trying to steal the sign, and drove off :->

Buckingham Palace Sign

Picadilly Circus Sign

Waterloo Bridge Sign

I made postcards of the London Tube map with Maitland Island on it and distributed locally... :->

further information in an interview at the time: here