Friday, November 13, 2009

You are not about to witness the strength of street knowledge


Me on the significance of Ice Cube's near parallel career as architectural draughtsman and writer of NWA's best stuff. Oh yes. A somewhat different tack to the Fantastic Journal's take on Dr Dre and suburbia, which - honest guv - didn't occur to me at all when writing it, but popped into my head about five minutes ago while I was trying to think of a clever headline. Nonetheless, as post-NWA solo albums gom I'll take The Predator's insurrectionary fire over the smoove nihilism of The Chronic, irrespective of the undeniable leftist-guilt-ridden pleasures of the latter.

I won't be talking about any of this when I appear at Signs of Revolt, an event at the Truman Brewery in Shoreditch, celebrating ten years of the anti-capitalist movement - but I will be talking about neoliberal architecture in London, so expect lots of pictures and some swipes at the soon-to-be late and lamented Urban Task Force, and the general 'don't give me what I want, because that's not it' tenor of the last ten years of London architecture, the decidedly pyrrhic victories of attenuated neo-modernism and privately-patrolled 'public' piazzas. Sunday, 2pm. Timetable here.