GLASGOW 0:16:15 a multi disciplinary project by Duncan Campbell in cooperation with Daniel Jewesbury and Karl-Heinz Klopf --------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Donnerstag, 3. August 2000 21:50 Uhr To: Karl-Heinz Klopf <khk@expand.at From: Duncan Campbell <duncandkas@compuserve.com> karl-heinz, I got your email and yes I am still interested in doing something for the expand web-site. you asked if i would write something about glasgow and I have been giving this some thought. because my thoughts on the place are constantly changing i would like to do something that reflects this, something that oscilates between being about glasgow specifically and urban space generally. i will explain and you can see what you think. i have been thinking about making these videos that involve a fixed shot through the front window of a car at night. this work comes from an interest i have in scenes from film or television dramas where a character drives around the city (usually at night) in a random and aimless way. these scenes usually shown as a counter-point to some trauma unfolding in the life of of this character. taken in isolation they are like a road movie but without the process of self-discovery usually associated with road movies. they represent the city as random and lacking in order. the negotiation of the city taking place is both alienated and also mimetic of, and mediated by, a stream of concoiusness. for the expand web-site i thought that i could take the idea of a fixed shot from the front window of a car driving around glasgow, and break it down into three mediated parts: (1) an arbitrary set of directions which dictate (2) a filmed journey driving around glasgow and (3) this piece of footage is viewed and translated into a piece of writing. (1) the first stage would involve you (karl-heinz) sending me a set of arbitrary directions for example: left, third right, right after a neon sign, i think with urban space it is possible to come up with many such generalised directions. (2) i would then shoot a video from a car using these directions as a map. (3) the video tape will then be sent to daniel jewesbury, a writer based in belfast who would translate what he sees into a piece of writing. so with each stage the view of glasgow that you get comes in and out of relief. there are a number of ways in which this could be presented. all three stages could be shown: the original directions, an excerpt of the video (i don't know if this would be possible) and the writing. or any combination of these or maybe just the writing. all the best, duncan. --------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Donnerstag, 10. August 2000 14:30 Uhr To: Duncan Campbell <duncandkas@compuserve.com> From: Karl-Heinz Klopf <khk@expand.at> hello here are 10 directions for the glasgow night ride: 1 turn around the block (clockwise or counterclockwise) from the site you start (=your or a friends house in glasgow) until you are back at the start site. 2 then take the next street towards the city center 3 stay on this street, cross 4 streets, on the 5th pull right 4 next left 5 next left 6 next left 7 seek for the next street towards city center 8 go straight along 10 blocks 9 make a right after the 10th block 10 drive in this direction until the last traffic light at the edge of the city. this should be the end of your ride. have a nice ride kh --------------------------------------------------------------- STILLS from GLASGOW 0:16:15 Please find enclosed the video for the expand web-site. The footage in the video is silent. This is deliberate, the sound track comes from live radio. I have asked Daniel to tune into Virgin radio, just after 1200 kHz on the medium wave band, while he is watching the video. This is incidental to the web-site, but you can do the same when you whatch it. Virgin radio broadcasts via the astra satellite so you should be able to pick it up in Austria. If not it is a fairly generic pop/rock station, so any station along these lines will provide an equally good soundtrack. --------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Dienstag, 10. Oktober 2000 15:00 Uhr To: Karl-Heinz Klopf <khk@expand.at> From: Daniel Jewesbury <danielj@ndirect.co.uk> here's the text that i've written to accompany duncan campbell's video for expand. Turn the radio off. Move those people from the countryside. Turn the radio off. Park up here. Do you know where we're going? (I'd like to write something about going and not going, about movement and standing still, about the inexorable motion of the road, how it's the road moving, not us. About Roland Barthes describing the windscreen as the cinema screen, upon which the outside world is re-presented for us, virtualised.) M461 EGO. What a laugh. Bowie. Serious Moonlight indeed. We're not from round here. I don't think we should be round here. (30 mph and the city never leaves us behind. We can go all night and never leave. We can go all night and never be anywhere. Are we moving at all?) This isn't living pal. Where the hell is everybody? Find a road that makes sense, get a bit of speed up. (I can talk about the night, the lights, the parallel lines drawing us into the distance even as we draw them before us, the two centres of everything, the vanishing point and the eye. All things arranged between these two points, all things arranged to be viewed from here. I can ask you to drive all night, perhaps we can get out of here.) Turn the radio off. Turn the lights off. Sit here all night, engine running. Pull up. Everyone makes way for us. The parting of the Red Sea. Get out of the way. Let me see. Turn the radio off, I can't see. Jesus, poor old Jagger. They never had their plane crash. 'Start me up'! Okay, where's the crank handle? Edges of town. Driving on the edge of town. (Driving on the edge of town, making us edgy. We'll never arrive because the place we're going isn't anywhere, we might be there already but we carry on moving, carry on going nowhere.) Keep right. Get me out of here. Away from the edges. "Driving in your car, I never never want to go home... Take me anywhere, I don't care." Take me where there's people... My eyes hurt. Turn the radio off. (We all keep driving around something, something that's too big for us to perceive, to comprehend, to see. Everybody, everything here, all part of it, except us, here, now. We can't represent this city, we can't see this city, the darkness isn't hiding anything. Detached, we see the city, we don't see ourselves in the city, we don't see the city in us. How can we represent that?) Don't stop, don't stop. Don't step on the cracks. I see lights, in the distance. I see elsewhere. I can see it from here. This doesn't feel safe. Shouldn't we turn the radio off? This is nowhere. Nowhere I belong. (Nowhere I belong.) Clutch gas brake clutch gas. Keep left. Stop, man, stop. Just stop. Are we nearly there yet? Let's stop. Let's just stop. Crash this thing. Let me stop. Glasgow & Edinburgh. We're not moving anywhere any more, and the dial says 60. The wheels are turning and we're not moving. What if I just open the door? --------------------------------------------------------------- DUNCAN CAMPBELL, video artist based in Glasgow DANIEL JEWESBURY, writer based in Belfast back top