Shadows on the Road : London orbital and the Journey Through Space, Time and Culture

London Orbital was born as the shared project of an eclectic writer – Iain Sinclair – and an equally eclectic filmmaker – Chris Petit. The basic idea was that of ’stalking’ (the late, sinclairian interpretation of flânerie) around the M25 – “a nightmare even before it was finished” - and using this road as a privileged observatory on London, as it is and as it was, gathering together architectural hints, literary references, filmic quotations, history, stories, myths. The first result of the project was a very unusual film, a road movie – literally - throwing light on sides of London never reported on before. In the same year - 2002 – Sinclair published a non-fiction volume with the same title and with photographs by Dave McKean and Illustrations by Renchi Bicknell. The book is loosely linked to the film. Both works report on Sinclair’s attitude to the city and on his attempt at drawing his personal map of a city which resists any mapping. So space is the first issue: the act of stating topographical landmarks is the main purpose. The cityscape is built as an heteroglossic textuality, slowly accessing to a degree of familiarity. It is, of course, a double path, producing a double – or, better, multi-level – map, dynamically unstable because drawn on the ground of a real London invaded by memories which are not to be kept, but tend to be the favoured victims of a process of endless displacement.