Claremont Rd Occupation: Protestival and Urban Palimpsest

CLAREMONT ROAD OCCUPATION: PROTESTIVAL AND URBAN PALIMPSEST EVANGELIA ILIOPOULOU

CLAREMONT ROAD OCCUPATION: PROTESTIVAL AND URBAN PALIMPSEST EVANGELIA ILIOPOULOU

Architectural Humanities Design Theory 2013/14 | AIM704 Tutor: Karin Jaschke University of Brighton 17 - 03 - 2014

I hereby declare that, I have consulted and understood the information provided in the University of Brighton’s Plagiarism Awareness Pack and the information on academic standards and conventions for referencing given in the Short Guide.

I know that plagiarism means passing off someone else’s writings or ideas for my own, whether deliberately or inadvertently. I understand that doing so constitutes academic misconduct and may lead to exclusion from the University.

I have therefore taken every care in the work submitted here to accurately reference all writings and ideas that are not my own, whether from printed, online, or any other sources.

Evangelia Iliopoulou 17-03-2014

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TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction

4

The occupation

6

Protestival and Creativity

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Palimpsest and Memory of Space

19

Conclusion

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Supplementary Notes

26

List of Figures

27

Bibliography

28

Word Count: 3661 2 Page

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INTRODUCTION This essay analyses the history of Claremont Road Occupation in London, 1994, which acted as a milestone in the M11 anti road campaign. The temporary urban transformation of the Road is examined as a tactic for brief spatial reconfiguration of the area, for the duration of the protest. Taking into consideration the contrasting creative models of the neo-liberal Creative Cities and the carnivalesque activism, this essay reviews the protest of Claremont road as a festal, radical performance. The paper concludes with an examination of the area as an urban palimpsest of co-existing layers of past histories and current realities and, also, immaterial heterotopias of functions and memories.

Figure 1: Campaign posters 4 Page

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THE OCCUPATION The occupation of Claremont Road in Leytonstone, London, United Kingdom, has been a part of a series of direct acts of resistance opposing the construction of the “A12 Hackney to M11 link road”, also known as the M11 Link Road.

1 Alarm Uk, ‘Roadblock: How Peo-

The extensive road construction in east London has been taking place as early as 1915 with the development of the Eastern Avenue. As an extension to this and being a part of the London Ringways (fig.2), the M-11 link road was proposed in the early 1960s- an important link between central London and the Docklands to East Anglia. The aim of the M11 extension was to connect traffic from the East Cross Route to the M11, avoiding urban streets, and was to run 3.5 miles through the London districts of Wanstead, Leytonstone and Leyton. 1

of Essex’, 1973

The program had been already causing local concern in Leyton and Hackney, from the late 1950s, [i] with oppositions from a number of groups, local residents and members of the parliament. 2 In some cases public enquiries were disrupted due to the direct action employed by a campaign group belonging to this opposition. 3

tonomous Zones’, Do or Die Mag-

ple Power Is Wrecking The Roads Programme’ , 1995 2 W.R.Powell (editor), ‘Leyton: Introduction, A History of the County

3 McKay, George, Senseless Acts of Beauty: Cultures of Resistance, 1996 4 Patrick Field cited in McKay, George, Senseless Acts of Beauty: Cultures of Resistance, 1996 5 ‘Earth First!, News from the Auazine, cited iin McKay, George, Senseless Acts of Beauty: Cultures of Resistance, 1996

The effects on the area had been evident since the 50s [1], with many shops closing in the blight of the Link Road planning 4 and high density housing neglected and decaying in Leyton and Leytonstone 5.

Despite the public discontent, the implementation of the construction plan got planning permission and started in the early 90s- 35 years after it was designed. [ii] The M-11 6 Page

6 Jordan, John, ‘The art of necessity: the subversive imagination of anti-road protest and reclaim the streets’, in McKay, George,

DiY

Culture. Party and Protest in Nineties Britain, 1998

Figure 2: The London Ringways as proposed in late 1960s

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was soon to be a six-lane motorway (fig. 3) routed through 350 homes in East London and ancient woodland, forcing the displacement of several thousand people.6 In September 1993 contractors moved in to Wanstead with their bulldozers to begin clearing trees along the proposed

route, an action that immediately sparked direct actions against the road, leading, eventually, to a series of protest camps in remote landscapes. Although, the very first action was the squatting of a roofless house at 110 Eastern Avenue in Wanstead 7, followed by further squatting and minor arrests, what drew the media and public attention was the struggle to protect a three century old Chestnut Tree at George Green, in December 1993. As Drury, Richer and Stott described in their summary of the protest events, the Chestnut Tree was, ultimately, pulled down by the authorities on 7 December, in the presence of more than 200 campaigners, all of different age groups from children to pensioners, some locals and some activists, thirteen of whom were arrested.8

7 Aufheben, ‘The politics of the anti-road struggle and the Struggles of the Anti-road Politics: the Case of the No M11 Link Campaign’, in McKay, George, DiY Culture. Party and Protest in Nineties Britain, 1998 8

Drury, John et al, ‘Transform-

ing the boundaries of collective identity: From the ‘local’ anti-road campaign to ‘global’ resistance?’, 2003, Social Movement Studies, 2, p 11-12

Figure 3: Just a line on a map?

Just a line on a map? But one which carved through 250 houses, common land, and ancient forest. Claremont Road was situated close to Leyton Station, Charlie X

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9 Jordan, John, ‘The art of necessity, 1998 10 Charles, Claremont Road, Wanstead chestnut tree, 350 houses, 2004 11 Hamm, Marion, ‘Reclaim the Streets! Global Protests and Local Space’, 2002 12 Aufheben, ‘The politics of the anti-road struggle and the Struggles of the Anti-road Politics, 1998 13 Harris, Adrian, ‘The Power of Place: Protest Site Pagans’, 2011 14 Hunt, an activist, cited in Wall, Derek, Earth First! And the antiroads movement, 1999 15 McLeish cited in Alarm Uk, ‘Roadblock: How People Power Is Wrecking The Roads Programme’ , 1995, 16 Hunt cited Derek, 1999

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After, a series of evictions from Wanstead the centre of attention turned to the southern route of the planned demolitions and Claremont Road: Claremont road in Leyton, E11, London, was a street of thirty-five terraced houses right in the path of the link-road.9 It is described by Charles in his online depository of lost London as a “retreat of peace and quiet”10 despite its location between the central tube line and one of Leyton’s major roads, Grove Green road.

The Road’s occupation housed the M-11 campaign for its eight-month duration but it was always more than merely a campaign site. Claremont Road was a festival of resistance that altered the urban landscape: Hamm described the protest as an “amalgamation of art, bodies and media.11 It was, also, an experimentation in unconventional ways of living, an “ongoing performance art, an experiment of communal living and car free space.”, as McLeish claims. 12 The use of the buildings in the road was given anew to support the needs of the campaign and echoed the suggested alternative lifestyle: a gallery space, two cafes, a stage, a bicycle workshop and an information centre. 13 In the Art House, the exhibition space, coins were painted on the sink insinuating the worthless expense of the motorway: “money going down the drain”. 14 Multiple temporary urban interventions are described by McLeish: “The Street was painted and filled with psychedelic sculpture-barricades, above them the nets, treehouses, aerial[sic] walkways and towers”. 15 The netting (fig. 4) was gathered from circuses, and acted as a durable but dangerous to cross aerial walkway from the trees to the roofs. 16 McKay explains the sculptures were made from

distorted waste, for attention, creating counter-cultural and political art related to Mikhael Bakunin’s anarchist statement that the “urge to destroy is also a creative urge”.17

17 McKay, George, Senseless Acts of Beauty: Cultures of Resistance, 1996 18 Hunt cited in Wall, Derek, Earth First! And the anti-roads movement, 1999 19 Jordan, John, ‘The art of necessity, 1996 20 McKay, George, Senseless Acts of Beauty: Cultures of Resistance, 1996

Figure 4: Netting, Charlie X

Other public art included a human scaled chessboard painted on the road with hubcaps, traffic cones and broken hoovers as pawns. 18 The street housed a stage, parties and bonfires. 19 A “brickhenge”, a replica of Stonehenge made out of bricks, was built at Claremont Road, halfway between Leyton and Leytonstone. 20 A car was “pedestrianized”. It was painted and cut in half, with each of its sides placed on the two sides of the road, and joined by an added pedestrian crossing, which ran all the way to the end of Claremont Road. Other cars were filled up with plants and one had the slogan “rust in peace” written on its side. The walls of the Road were painted with murals, including a 10 Page

21 Jordan, John, ‘The art of necessity, 1996 22 McKay, George, Senseless Acts of Beauty: Cultures of Resistance, 1996 23 Harris, Adrian, ‘The Power of Place: Protest Site Pagans’, 2011,

Figure 5: Daisy chain, Maureen Measure

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horse galloping 21 and a daisy chain (fig. 5) across the front of every house.22 The slogans of the protest like “Homes not roads” were, also, painted across the walls of the road.

A tower built on a roof reached up into the air (fig. 6). This 100-foot scaffolding was the crowning glory of Claremont Road. 23 Claremont Road residents constructed it using

hundreds of found lengths of scaffolding joined in chaotic ways and nicknamed it the Dolly [iii] tower. 24 Jordan notes the inspiration of the tower came from a French children’s book where the protagonists have escaped the demolition of their house through a similar tower. It was an installation that could be seen for miles and for its brief life became a local landmark. 25

24 Jordan, John, ‘The art of necessity, 1996 25 Harris, Adrian, ‘The Power of Place: Protest Site Pagans’, 2011,

Figure 6: Tower at a Stop, the M11 squat on Claremont Road, Josephine Berry Slater & Anthony Iles Leytonstone, 1994,

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26 Ibid 27 McKay, George, Senseless Acts of Beauty: Cultures of Resistance, 1996 28 Jordan, John, ‘The art of necessity: the subversive imagination of anti-road protest and reclaim the streets’, in McKay, George,

DiY

Culture. Party and Protest in Nineties Britain, 1998 29 Hamm, Marion, ‘Reclaim the Streets! Global Protests and Local Space’, 2002, 30 McKay, George, Senseless Acts of Beauty: Cultures of Resistance, 1996

Figure 7: The bunkers and tun-

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At Claremont Road the houses were connected by an extended tunneling (fig 7), reminiscent of Gordon MattaClark’s building cuts; a hole was cut in every single wall of a row of thirty houses to link them. This urban incision was a physical expression of the art-ivists strategy to evade the bailiffs 26 and a metaphorical intervention against isolated living. Moreover, similar to Walter de la Maria’s art of filling a room with earth, inside the houses, bunkers and lock-ons and tunnels were camouflaged in tons of rubble.

27 Windows and attics were fortified and doors were reinforced. 28 Hamm emphasizes the importance of a specific act of removing the furniture of the interior of the houses, the pri-

vate interior space, to the public sphere of the street. 29 The armchairs on the road merged the difference of internal and external space: the project’s aim was to recreate actual rooms on the street, using the furniture, carpets fittings and various found objects from the houses. 30 This displacement was a blockade to prevent any vehicle entering the street in an effort to reclaim a safe public space, a deliberate reference to pre-car communities, where the street was used as a place to socialise and play. 31

31 Jordan, John, ‘The art of neces-

The law known as the Criminal Justice Act was introduced in November 3, 1994 to tackle the DiY rave trend, and, also, worked as the milestone to the disruption of the M11 campaign. The following weeks saw moments of constant trespassing of the M11 construction site by the authorities.

32 The eviction of Claremont Road started on November 28, and lasted till 2 December 1994 33 being the longest one in post-war British History. 34 Protesters were spreading the word and more people were gathering on site, as close as

35 Aufheben, ‘The politics of the

sity, 1998 32 Harris, Adrian, ‘The Power of Place: Protest Site Pagans’, 2011 33 Ibid 34 Alarm Uk, ‘Roadblock’, 1995

anti-road struggle and the Struggles of the Anti-road Politics, 1998 36 Hamm, Marion, ‘Reclaim the Streets!’, 2002 37 McKay, George, Senseless Acts of Beauty, 1996

Figure 8: Claremont Road Views, Urban75

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38 Aufheben, ‘The politics of the anti-road struggle and the Struggles of the Anti-road Politics, 1998 39 Jordan, John, ‘The art of necessity, 1998 40 Ibid 41 McKay, George, Senseless Acts of Beauty, 1996 42 McKay, George, Senseless Acts of Beauty, 1996 and Wall, Derek, Earth First! And the anti-roads movement, 1999 43 Harris, Adrian, ‘The Power of Place: Protest Site Pagans’, 2011 44 McKay, George, Senseless Acts of Beauty, 1996 45 Jordan, John, ‘The art of necessity, 1998 46 Aufheben, ‘The politics of the anti-road struggle and the Struggles of the Anti-road Politics, 1998 47 Ibid

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possible to the defending area. 35 The Road was protected as a “months-long permanent performance” 36 even by the first protesters encountered, who buried their arms in the concrete and casually lied on mattresses.37 A protester acknowledged that the protagonists approached the eviction as a game “knowing that the future is rubble”, 38 The art installations were now repositioned as barricades 39 being an effective obstruction to bailiffs. Jordan names such a version of cultural resistance “activist aesthetics”. 40 The defence was slowly becoming the main priority, yet, irregular actions on the site were still occurring. 41 The last campaigner, Phil McLeish, managed to avoid capture for several days secured in the scaffolding tower 42 as it was too dangerous to try to remove him.

In the last days of Claremont it appeared that the landmark of the occupation, was “destined to be the dramatic stage for the final showdown”.43 The eviction of Claremont Road is described by the protagonists of the occupation as a “cathartic release” 44 after an eight-month struggle to create a transgressive urban moment. An activist explained: “We always knew that one day all this would be rubble, and this awareness of impermanence gave us immense strength - the impossibility of failure - the strength to move this Temporary Autonomous Zone on to somewhere else.” 45 Thus, this eviction was a much awaited moment 46 and worked as a starting point for a new wave of urban social struggles and more anti-road protests, as the utopian title of a zine of that time evinces “Claremont Road: The End of a Beginning” 47 . [iv]

PROTESTIVAL AND CREATIVITY The idea of direct action as performance was always evident in the squatted Claremont Road, which was celebrated for the art it produced 48 [v]. Heather Hunt, who experienced the atmosphere of Claremont road as an activist, observed: “every Sunday night there was a street party and musicians came and folk singers came and there was dancing in the street”. 49 Creativity became a weapon and music brought in party-goers. 50 Jordan describes the Claremont Road as an inventive theatre of creative resistance, a spectacle. 51 He agrees, though, that in contrast with conventional theatre the nonviolent direct action method the activists followed were fundamentally political. 52 The spatial reclamation involved behaviours synchronously tactical-instrumental, pragmatic- and festal -playful, spontaneous. 53 This peaceful and creative character of the protest was also favoured by the media, as a campaigner described. 54 Campaigners were using the performative strategies of direct action every day accompanied by music drums and whistles. 55 Most evidently in the final days of Claremont, the defence was seen by the activists as a game between the authorities and them: “1300 members of the riot police danced on the occupiers’ stage, a theatrical performance that cost the state over two million pounds”. 56 Claremont became the contemporary model for this performed artivism. 57 Protests like the J18 or Occupy Wall Street, have been inspired by and borrowed Claremont’s festal qualities. These protests are described by Tancons using Surrealist Vaneigem’s maxim that demonstrations are revolutional moments where the individual is celebrat-

48 McKay, George, Senseless Acts of Beauty, 1996 49 Hunt, an activist, cited in Wall, Derek, Earth First! And the antiroads movement, 1999 50 Wall, Derek, Earth First! And the anti-roads movement, 1999 51 Jordan, John, ‘The art of necessity’, 1998 52 John cited in Jordan, ‘The art of necessity’, 1998 53 John, Graham, ‘Counter Tribes, Global Protests and Carnivals of Reclamation’, 2004 54 Allison cited in Harris, Adrian, ‘The Power of Place: Protest Site Pagans’, 2011 55 Jordan, John, ‘The art of necessity’, 1998 56 Ibid 57 John, Graham, ‘Counter Tribes, Global Protests and Carnivals of Reclamation’, 2004

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58 Vaneigem cited in Tancons, Claire, ‘Occupy Wall Street: Carnival against Capital? Carnivalesque as Protest Sensibility’, 2011 59 Bakhtin, Mikhail, cited in John, Graham, ‘Protestival: Global Days of Action and Carnivalized Politics in the Present’, 2008 60 Ibid 61 John, Graham, ‘Counter Tribes, Global Protests and Carnivals of Reclamation’, 2004 and Carmo, Andre, ‘The Protestival and the Creative Transformation of the City’, 2012 62 Harris, Adrian, ‘The Power of Place: Protest Site Pagans’, 2011 63 Carmo, Andre, ‘The Protestival and the Creative Transformation of the City’, 2012 64 Harvey, David, ‘From Managerialism to Entrepreneurialism: The Transformation in Urban Governance in Late Capitalism’, 1989

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ed with the regenerated society in a spirit of carnival. 58 Hence, Claremont occupation can be studied as a carnivalesque protest, responding to the social order consistent with Mikhail Bakhtin’s carnival. The society’s forgotten - the activists- served the function that Bakhtin attributes to clowns in carnival: ‘the clown sounded forth, ridiculing all “languages” and dialects [in] a lively play’. 59 This play was parodic with a main aim to stand against the norms . 60 John and Carmo agree that the campaign can be examined as a carnivalesque protest or, a protestival. 61 [vi] The protestival is linked to the playful avant-garde spatial theories that challenge the urban boundaries, for instance Situationism, and contains characteristics of guerrilla theatricalism. Though the main slogan of the campaign was “Homes not Roads” from the start, after the imminent threat of the Criminal Justice Act, Claremont protest became as much political as artistic. 62 New slogans had emerged: for instance, “defending diversity and dissent” and the activist “Creativity, Courage & Cheek”. Influenced by the Situationists call to “be realistic – demand the impossible”, the artists of Claremont Road answered to the evictions with theatrical non-violent direct action.

The carnival and the creative avant-garde have been aiming to challenge the urban transformation and its struggles for decades now. However, these urban conditions exist in a city of struggle where creative manifestations can at the same time work in favour and in conflict with the individuals reinventing those new public realities. 63 The model of urban transformation that has been developing since the 1970s, is related equally to regeneration and gentrification, creating subsequanlty both foes and allies. 64 The word creativity in an urban landscape is nowadays linked

with the socio-economic term of the Creative Cities. This model is largely based on the economic competitiveness and focuses on a creative class, a bohemian and liberal environment. 65

65 Florida, Richard, The Rise of the Creative Class. And How It’s Transforming Work, Leisure and Everyday Life, 2002.

66 Carmo, Andre, ‘The Protestival

Creativity in the city, therefore, is of a paradoxical nature: it is essential for both the neoliberal model of creative city and the protestival which challenges this model. 66 However, Carmo blames Florida’s creative class as inconsistent and favours the protestival, as he believes it can “foster urban transformations in a radically different way” and temporarily reconfigure and free urban spaces from the negative aspects of the neoliberal city. 67

and the Creative Transformation of the City’, 2012 67 Ibid

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PALIMPSEST AND MEMORY OF SPACE 68 H.W. Fowler (editor) et al, Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English, 1979 69 Azimzadeh, Mir, Bjur, Hans, ‘The Urban Palimpsest: The Interplay Between The Historically Generated Layers In Urban Spatial System And Urban Life’, 2007 70 Freud, Sigmunt, Civilization and Its Discontents, 1979 71 Huyssen, Andreas, Present Pasts: Urban Palimpsests and the Politics of Memory, 2003 72 Cupers, Kenny, ‘Towards a nomadic geography: Rethinking space and identity for the potentials of progressive politics in the contemporary city, 2005

From the Greek πάλιν (palin) “again” + ψάω (psaō) “I scrape”: “scraped clean and used again” Palimpsest is a term that denotes the writing of a manuscript on material on which the original text has been effaced 68, so that the earlier writing remained incompletely erased and still visible beneath their surface.

The concept of palimpsest has persistently been used to explain the layered construct of architectural monuments and urban morphologies developed through the course of history. 69 This application of the concept is associated with Sigmund Freud’s use of Roman palimpsest to model the structure of human mind. He recognises Rome has evolved in stages and imagines the city as an entity with a living past that continues to co-exist alongside the present development phases. 70 Though Freud believes the space cannot possibly have two different contents, the urban imaginary may contain temporarily different moments: a memory of what used to be or an imagined alternative to what there is.

This notion of palimpsest is being used to explain the intangible and dynamic aspects of layers in cities that act as a memory archive. Andreas Huyssen, writer on cultural memory, explains that in cities traces of the past, erasures, losses, heterotopias are merged with the present. 71 Cupers, in addition, agrees that in a city palimpsest some layers disappear, while others “remain active in constituting identities”. 72 Similarly, in his short essay “The City as Palimpsest”, theorist Munoz Millanes renders the city as “a palimpsest where traces of heterogeneous times accumu-

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late”, and the architecture of the city becomes the testimony of everyday life, where the changes of humankind are registered through the times in its fixity. 73

73 Millanes, José Munoz, ‘The City

In addition to theorists, architects have imagined the city as a collection of perverse layers which remain vaguely superimposed, too. Aldo Rossi states at the beginning of The Architecture of the City: “Architecture, attesting to the tastes and attitudes of generations, to public events and private tragedies, to new and old facts, is the fixed stage for human events. The collective and the private, society and the individual, balance and confront one another in the city”. 74 Claremont Road, likewise, can be perceived as another fixed stage of human events, as a palimpsest of disparate overlapping stories of its present, an erasure of the past and the brief moment of the protestival (fig. 9).

the City, 1984

as Palimpsest’ 74 Rossi, Aldo, The Architecture of

75 Urban 75, ‘Urban75 waxes lyrical and reflects on its ‘street protestin’

years’...’,

archive,

http://

www.urban75.com/Action/roads. html 76 Jordan, John, ‘The art of necessity: the subversive imagination of anti-road protest and reclaim the streets’, in McKay, George,

DiY

Culture. Party and Protest in Nineties Britain, 1998

Claremont is studied therefore as a field of inscriptions and effacements, the traces of all layering themselves into urban history and life. Some of those layers are faded and barely visible, like the past built reality of the street; the road was once built of a series of Victorian houses; tree lined on one side and described as a beautiful and quite neighbourhood. Or, the surreal fleeting reality of the M-11 protestival with its “mad and cheerful sculptures made out of found objects that sprung from walls and stumbled into the street.“ 75 Some layers, though, are newly made and present, like the M-11 motorway and a separating wall.

Jordan emphasizes that there is no trace or relic of Claremont Road left: With the destruction of the road, not only was there a hundred years of local history lost, but also an extraordinary site of creative performance. 76 Though there 20 Page

is no physical vestige of the past Victorian reality of Claremont road left, which is now run over by the M-11 motorway, there are hidden layers that manifest lost memories. The brick wall, built to conceal the busy motorway and standing where the edge of the road once was, can be considered as a built stimulus that points to the ambivalent nature of the road’s built past, its temporary autonomous creative burst and its urban reality today. Hyussen examines the memorial space using the example of the Berlin wall as an empty page, soaked in invisible

Figure 9: Overlayed photomontage of different realities of the palimpsest the road, the protestival and the wall

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history. 77 As the Berlin wall signifies a change in the spatial topography and echoes back memories, the separating wall of Claremont Road can be a metaphor of a memory threshold that recollects the event of the protest.

The landmark scaffolding-tower of Claremont had a brief life of a few months; it can, nevertheless, be argued that a temporary architectural installation can abound monumentality. Hyussen argues that “monumentality can do without permanence and without destruction, is fundamentally informed by the modernist spirit of a fleeting and transitory epiphany, but is no less memorable or monumental for it”. 78 He claims, for instance, that Christo’s nomadic “wrappings” were designed as temporary art installations and anti-monumental in their essence, yet, they were memorialised by the media. Thus, it can be evident

77 Huyssen, Andreas, Present Pasts: Urban Palimpsests and the Politics of Memory, 2003 78 Ibid 79 Rossi, Aldo, The Architecture of the City, 1984

Figure 10: Map showing the route of the road as built over an older map of the area, with key protest sites marked

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80 Ibid 81 Jordan cited in John, Graham, ‘Protestival: Global Days of Action and Carnivalized Politics in the Present’, 2008 82 Jordan, John, ‘The art of necessity: the subversive imagination of anti-road protest and reclaim the streets’, 1998 83 John, Graham, ‘Counter Tribes, Global Protests and Carnivals of Reclamation’, 2004

that the temporary tower of Claremont Road was a memorial and a utopian symbol of the temporary urban landscape rendered by the protestival.

Even though the built palimpsest in Claremont Road consists of the layering of the old road’s housing and the blight reality of the M-11 motorway, the eight-month occupation of Claremont Road can be a palimpsest heterotopia on its own, too. The notion of landscape as a palimpsest can be used to explore the remnants of people’s physical use of the land and, also, the insubstantial socio­cultural remnants and perceptual characteristics of places and their meanings. According to Rossi, building can adapt to functions and values quite different to those for which they were destined. The change of function takes the urban dweller back to the past, when they discover in urban forms the original function persisting in the present-day function. 80 Artivists were making political and environmental statements using the road as a living room and the cars as urban installations, simultaneously, juxtaposing the old uses with an alternate reality. On adopting a new function, the architecture changes its relative position within the city, even without having changed place. 80 The alternative reconfiguration of the use of space, which the activists wished for, is considered to be a transgressive movement by Jordan. 81 This experimental autonomous space was aiming to look to the future for inspiration or reclaim the future. 82 Activists were reusing and deconstructing their surroundings to render anew the road and suggest a utopian urban palimpsest where urban dwellers could “demonstrate alternative energy and sustainable transport practices” and “form the structure of the new world in the shell of the old”. 83

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CONCLUSION Claremont Road occupation was a ludic experiment aiming to transform the street into a tactical spectacle. In its short life it provided a way to reconstruct the conventional use of space and politics. Though urban conflicts are mostly related to reclaiming the city’s past, “as the city remains both the site and stake of struggles”. 84 Claremont was able to form a glimpse of an alternate future. The protestival of Claremont Road managed to exploit the power structures of the Creative city in a non-violent manner, while revealing its flaws. 85

84 Nagel, Caroline. Reconstructing Space, Re-Creating Memory, 2002 85 Carmo, Andre, ‘The Protestival and the Creative Transformation of the City’, 2012 86 Yacobi, Haim, Constructing a sense of place: architecture and the Zionist discourse, 2004

Yacobi describes the built environment as a politicised landscape of contradictive meanings grounded in history, in which sites of memory tend to serve as repositories that collect and accentuate struggles. 86 Accordingly, through its destruction and reconciliation, Claremont Road became a depository of memories veiling the contradicting narratives of the city’s past-present and envisioned future.

Claremont Road Occupation managed to unpack connections between space, memories and memorialisations of the past, accentuating the notion of carnival, which by definition is an opportunity for society to cohere anew during the festivities. Through this carnivalesque reversal of the status quo the site was effectively shaped into a collective space which invited the dweller to a brief moment of a lived utopia or a Foucaultian heterotopia.

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SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES [i] The threat of the link-road construction in the 50s, ironically had some positive effects on the area until the demolition time. The area retained its architectural authenticity despite the gentrification of its neighbouring areas and “became a preservation area for legendary East London life” (Patrick Field cited in McKay, 1996). [ii] The M11 Link Road is less than 4 miles long, and yet cost £250 million, destroyed 350 homes and acres of green space. By the time of its construction, the road was already an anachronism (Harris), and encouraged more cars commuting into central London. (Alarm UK, 1995) [iii] Dolly was a 92 year old woman who was the only resident of old Claremont road that remained in her house and resisted the eviction alongside the campaigners (Jordan, 1998) [iv] After the eviction of Claremont Road in 2 December 1994 next was the seven hour operation to evict ‘Munstonia’, the last house on the M11 route in June 20, 1995. The final camp of the M11 protest to be evicted was ‘GreenMania’ in September 5, 1995, after 10 hours of resistance (McKay, 1996). Though the protest managed merely to delay the road construction, its success was seen in financial damage and the fact that the social concerns moved into the foreground alongside ecological ones. [v] The large amount of artists in the local population of Claremont road was ironically partly due to the link road: houses that had been purchased over the years in the blight of the motorway were released to agents that encouraged artists providing them with low rent short loan, accommodation (McKay, 1996). [vi] The term protestival was invented by Sydney activist John Jacobs. He describes the protestival as a site of “creative resistance rooted in aesthetic protest and insurrectionary pleasure running from the 1960s back to the Paris Commune of 1871” (Jacobs cited in John, 2004).

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LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Campaign posters (http://www.urban75.org/photos/protest/claremont-road-e11. html, accessed 28/02/2014) Figure 2: The London Ringways a proposed in late 1960s, http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/aa/London_Ringways_Plan.png/1024px-London_Ringways_Plan. png Figure 3: Just a Line on a map?, Charlie X, http://www.flickr.com/photos/littletrampvgreatdictator/420860402/sizes/o/ Figure 4: Netting, little tramp, http://www.flickr.com/photos/littletrampvgreatdictator/ sets/72157594578920776/ Figure 5 : Daisy chain, Maureen Measure, http://www.demagazine.co.uk/art/m11-link-road Figure 6 : Tower at a Stop the M11 squat on Claremont Road, Josephine Berry Slater & Anthony Iles Leytonstone, 1994, http://www.metamute.org/editorial/articles/no-room-to-moveradical-art-and-regenerate-city# Figure 7: The bunkers and tunnels, drawing Figure 8: Claremont Road Views, Urban75, http://www.urban75.org/photos/protest/claremont-road-e11.html Figure 9: Overlayed photomontage of different realities of the palimpsest the road, the protestival and the wall Figure 10: Map showing the route of the road as built over an older map of the area, with key protest sites marked,, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:M11_link_road_protest_map.png

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