Man is free at the instant he wants to be.
-Voltaire

Clear light of bliss

Silent Motion rolled up on the East London Greenway at about midnight. Sarah and Maria were with him and he was headed with a determined stride to an old flame. Architecturally speaking of course. The Abbey Mills Pumping Station, recently written about by our friend Paul Dobraszczyk on rag-picking history is indeed a Cathedral of Sewage.

The first empty Redstripe can spiked onto the security fence followed by another empty precariously placed on a ledge waiting for the next little gust of wind to send it spiralling into the River Lea clearly indicated that the Goblinmerchant and Brosa were already inside. But when Silent Motion and the girls rolled up, they found the dejected pair with the rogue Sophie dancing around a fifth of Famous Grouse playing tag with the demons of the night. The window was jammed.

Two hours of death-defying acrobatics followed. We all knew with Silent Motion there we weren’t walking away. The popping sound of the fire exit opening 40 minutes later was consequently rather satisfying, given how miserably cold we all were lying huddled around our empty Grouse bottle drawing straws to see who would be eaten first while we waited for the early-morning train from the Far East back to more respectable South London Boroughs.

Post-apocalyptic imaginaries were abandoned as we walked through the door.

In the presence

Of Bazalgette

Being in such close presence to Joseph Bazalgette, hero of London sewage, urban exploration and architectural aesthetics, was instantly sobering. Standing in the main hall, it become clear that Bazalgette was mad as a hatter when he built this absurd monstrosity of shit-pumpage. But as Jack Kerouac writes in On The Road,

“The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes “Awww!”

We were all on the same team here. It was clear to everyone in attendance that Bazalgette was there too, raving and craving, clawing and lusting, climbing and laughing. We went into a wild Bacchian frenzy. It was movable feast of affectual affordances as twisted Victorian metal was transmuted into swing and ladders, balance beams and gaps to jump. We played limbo under their security gates, we crawled on all fours across half-submerged pipes and used the derelict phone system to call the security hut and tell them they lost the game.

We don't need

To ask for

Permission

_________________________

The truth is that Silent Motion and I needed some time to play. We had been fighting police in the streets, sat in sub-zero kettles, setting fire to the city to keep warm for a month straight as part of the student protests. It felt like life had quickly become so serious. Even urban exploration had taken an ominous turn after other explorers started crying about our A-team exploits. One detractor even labelled our crew “the London can openers” which I quite liked.

Spot the can opener

Our participation in particular types of exploration, our participation in the riots that most explorers chose to ignore while they sad at home madly bashing their keyboards in frustration, our participation in whatever the fuck gets us pumped up is a reminder, however sad, that as Winch has said before, there is no UrbEx community, there are just friends who enjoy hanging out with each other. Some are braver than others. Some explore for the glory, some for the fun. Some walk in the track of others. Some blaze new trails. Some try to make things a little more fun. As Statler says, there are no rules to UrbEx, there’s just where your morals fit and as Sartre once wrote about the philosophy teacher Mathieu, “he could do what he liked, no one had the right to advise him, there would be for him no Good or Evil unless he thought them into being.”

We needed this night to remind ourselves that this is what we are capable of. Elegance was reaped by bringing along a visitor to London for the weekend to experience a night out that wouldn’t be soon forgotten. We fed on that initial wonder that comes with realizing that yeah, you can just do this.

Let's

Just do this

Being free doesn’t require consent and we don’t need to ask permission to explore, not from the government, other explorers or your mum. No matter how much frustration we brew, how serious our work gets or how intense our lives may become, we are reminded through urban exploration that all it really takes to feel free again is the initiative to walk away from it all and rewrite the rules for a night. Disclaimer? There is none.

Space, despite all allusions and illusions to the contrary, is free.

Beautiful all around

__________________________

The photo of Abbey Mills in 1868 was jacked from Rag Picking History.

The photo of Silent Motion the can opener was kindly provided by Nicholas Adams at Guerilla Photography.

The Red Stripes and Famous Grouse were provided, on discount, by Emron from Pakistan at my corner shop who still wants me to make a documentary about his quest to abandon the family business to become a pilot.

The word were kindly provided by my brain, via my fingers during some sort of synaptic process that still eludes me.

I am pleased to announce a call for papers for the 2011 Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers) annual meeting, 31st August to 2nd September 2011, London, England.

Moving Geographies: Film and Video as Research Method

Organised by
Katherine Brickell (Royal Holloway, University of London)
Bradley L. Garrett (Royal Holloway, University of London)
Jessica Jacobs (Royal Holloway, University of London)

Sponsored by
Developing Areas Research Group
Participatory Geographies Research Group
Social and Cultural Geography Research Group
Women and Geography Study Group
_________________________________________

Geography’s relationship with film, like anthropology, began in earnest in the 1920s when J.B. Noel filmed the Royal Geographical Society-sponsored 1922 ascent of Everest – roughly the same time that anthropologist Robert Flaherty produced Nanook of the North in Canada. Yet while Flaherty’s study of Inuit culture spurred 80 years of anthropological film development into what we now know as the discipline of visual anthropology, the Everest footage was archived and geography instead turned its focus to cinematic analysis.

In recent years, however, partly helped by technological advances offering easier and more direct access to video and production software, geographers across the discipline are beginning to use audio-visual methods in greater numbers. Yet while it is claimed that the geographical analysis of film has ‘come of age’ (Aitken and Dixon 2006) the same cannot yet be said of geography’s theoretical engagement with their value as a research methodology.

This session is looking for contributions from geographers who use film and video as a research method in any capacity, and who are also beginning to critically theorise their contribution to this exciting field. We are interested in the use of video and film in any area of geography and for any reason, whether it is part of a participatory ethnography, a tool for data analysis or activism, or a reflexive exploration of new and creative methodologies. Abstracts that incorporate an interdisciplinary approach will also be welcomed.

Possible contributions to the session could include (but are not limited to):

*Relationships between text and film
*Audio-visual methods and data analysis/collection
*Activist and collaborative filmmaking
*Participatory filmmaking
*Ethnographies of place in film and video
*Psychogeographies and film and video
*Videographic publication
*Situating the geographical film

Selected papers are expected to include a screening of the audio-visual output (max 10 mins). We aim to accommodate longer pieces of work through an exhibitive screening (on a continuous loop) elsewhere at the RGS.

Please submit a title, abstract, and any links to your film/video work to me by January 15th 2011.

If you knew what you were doing, it wouldn’t be called research.
-Albert Einstein

From www.phdcomics.com

Whether due to my compulsive nature or my egregious energy levels, many of my postgraduate colleagues often ask me for advice on their PhD goals. It occurred to me, a few month ago while wandering through the derelict University of Liege campus in Belgium, that the strange model I have created for myself in my PhD has indeed been a good (dare I yet say successful?) one and that, in my last year, it might be useful to actually write down what has worked and what hasn’t for current and future PhD students. So here are 15 thoughts for PhD students.

Please keep in mind that these are not hard-and-fast rules, they are just ideas drawn from my experience. I hope they are helpful in some way.

1. Funding

My first thought is one of the most essential. Get full funding. I know this is harder now than it used to be but just keep fighting for it. Go pay for a one-year MA out of pocket and try again if you need to. Find the university you want to be at, contact the person you want to work with, wine them and dine them, write them love letters, write a killer proposal and get the cash. When they offer you partial funding (as Royal Holloway, University of London did in my first application in 2007), turn it down gently, when they offer you nothing, be offended, seriously. Most people don’t realize that funding is a negotiation and you can play hardball. My second application to RHUL landed me another £20,000 toward my work. Why is this important? Well, firstly, you will be a lot less stressed if you are not under under enormous financial pressures and anything you can do to alleviate stress during your PhD is pure gold. Secondly, it will give you confidence, and encourage you to live up to the investment the university has made in you (which is why I say if the university won’t invest anything in you, tell them to shove it!). Third, obviously, it looks awesome on your CV!

2. Create a great PhD topic

One easy way to get funding is to work under someone else’s research project. This, in my experience, creates the most miserable PhD students. It sucks, don’t do it unless you have to. Your PhD topic should be yours; you should love it inside and out. If you don’t dream about it and get a shiver of excitement when you think about the book you will publish at the end, just walk away because you will be miserable for the next big chunk of your life. As someone once told me, it’s best that you love your PhD topic from the beginning because you will most certainly hate it by the end!

3. Apply to work with an awe-inspiring supervisor

Yes, your supervisor should be kind, helpful, supportive and all that. But they should also be successful, powerful and intimidating. If your supervisor is (relatively) famous, well published and successful, you might get your stomach in knots every time you meet with them but it will also set the bar high. And, of course, it looks good on your CV.

4. Be brave, say yes!

As a professor at UCLA once told me, “if you are not a little bit afraid every day, you are not trying hard enough.” When you begin your PhD, regardless of where you came from, who you are or what you are think you are capable of, roll into town like Clint Eastwood after his saddlebags full of cash got jacked. This is seminal opportunity to redefine yourself as a force to be reckoned with and you should take it. Tell everyone that you intend to publish like crazy and attend every conference and then do it! When someone asks you whether you want to be involved with projects, say yesssss! with ridiculous enthusiasm. Be infectious about your passion for everything great. Propose ridiculous projects, take the lead on things. As my Dad always told me, “what the hell, why not just run it up the flagpole and see who salutes it?”

5. Network ruthlessly

In your first year especially, sign up for everything that looks remotely interesting, seminars, conferences, workshops, whatever, and network like crazy. Work the room at all of these events, make it known that you are one the scene and will be seen. When you attend talks, contribute something, even just one-on-one after the talk. Think back to high school. Do you remember being embarrassed about contributions you made? I don’t either. Just go for it. People will probably not remember if you say something daft, but they will remember that you got involved and were confident about saying something daft and that’s fun anyway.

Email people when and where you can to ask for papers you can’t find, let them know you are passing though town and would like to stop by and introduce yourself, comment on their blogs and send them your publications. All of it shows that you are active and engaged and will help to make the right contacts.

6. Read, watch, listen to your favourite authors through and through. Then go meet them!

Let me demystify this further – the most famous academics in the world are just people. They like it when you call them and tell them their work is awesome and you want to have coffee, buy them a beer or interview them for a video project. When you get to meet with them (it almost never fails, just ask), tell them that you would like to get involved with anything they are doing. Offering your services (for free sometimes yes) on their projects as a photographer, field goon, transcriber, whatever is a great way to get to know them. If you really like their work, it will be fun anyway. It’s also (surprise!) good for your CV.

7. Get organized

Okay so you’re in your PhD program, you’re getting involved, downloading articles, taking a bunch of notes in your Moleskin notebook, feeling all smug. Your life is now your PhD. There are going to be ups and down here, believe me (lucky up today after a long night of epic trespassing – woohoo!). In down times, my best suggestion is get organized. When I am cleaning my house, I am scared and retreating. When I have pulled all my books down and am organising them by thesis chapter, please take me out for a beer because I am slipping into the abyss.

But that time can be really useful. The need to have your shit together applies to your computer files and physical notes, books, article, field documents, whatever. I assure you that, however OCD it may appear, a militantly organized PhD is far less intimidating than your piles of scraps of notes and cameras full of pictures from the field last year you never downloaded. Seriously, if I get one more friend calling me saying, “I had all these pictures from the field but the hard drive doesn’t work any more…” Just take a weekend, strip everything down to the bone and create the space you need to work and an effective system to keep the rhythm and flow going. Remember, this may be the only time in your life that you have 3 years to invest in a project that is all yours with (almost) complete freedom. Create your own workspace heaven, however you need to do that.

If you have a Mac, I will suggest 3 programs that will change your life: Endnote, Super Duper! and Papers. Get them and use them. If you don’t have a Mac, stop wasting your time dicking around with that retard of a PC and get one. And get an iPhone to take notes, photos, etc when and where you can. I have written roughly 1/6 of my thesis on my iPhone while on the London Underground. In terms of your PhD (or any self-motivated project) productivity, efficiency and organization trumps your need to “fight the man”, make a statement, or whatever it is you are asserting by using that clunky machine. But, whatever you use, BACK IT ALL UP! Once a week at the least. Better yet, once a month give a third copy to your supervisor to hide in their office. They like it when you entangle them in your paranoia, don’t worry.

8. Mix it up

The old idea of breaking your PhD into three isolated sections of reading, doing and writing is stale and boring. As Alf Rehn scribbles (see endnote) “one definite upside to a frontal lobotomy is focus, and you should keep this in mind when your supervisor talks about focus.” Go do your fieldwork whenever you want/can. Take your reading with you. When you have a lull, hit the library hard or go read on the beach with a cocktail. Write constantly, ferociously, channel Kerouac writing on the road until you burn out. Maybe it doesn’t look anything like “thesis” writing but that doesn’t matter – you never know what is going to be valuable 3 years down the road or what weird little gem will be hiding in that mania. The trick is, I think, when you are inspired to do any of these things, do them. Follow passion first and foremost. Do valuable things that have little or nothing to do with your PhD. Be utterly busy with everything awesome and worthwhile. Which, by the way, looks awesome on your CV.

9. Treat your PhD like a (really cool) job

Make no mistake – if you have full funding and you spend the majority of your day playing World of Warcraft (unless it’s your research topic), you are an asshole. A PhD is a job. You are paid to do something and you should, just as you would if you were getting paid for any other job, put in 40 hours a week on it. I mean, seriously, if your university has invested a big chunk of change supporting you, what are you giving back? And please don’t say a thesis. No one cares about your thesis. But they are all watching what you do outside of it, that is the real marker of a rockstar student. In the end, if you developed a thesis topic that blends work and play, fun and critical engagement, home and field, than you won’t notice that you work endless hours anyway (I just chuckled to myself, realising I was writing this a 9pm on a Sunday night).

10. Present your work (in the right places!)

Connected to this (no) work ethic is the impetus to present your work. Do present. Based on what I have heard, 2 presentations a year is a fine minimum bar. But keep in mind that presenting will not get you a job (as publications will) and does require a lot of effort. Sometimes, you might get a book chapter or special issue article out of it but you usually don’t know this until afterwards and book chapters are not as valuable as journal articles in the end anyway. Try to send abstracts for chapters for section you need to write, using the pressure as motivation to get on with it.

Contrary to popular belief, presenting at small conferences (20-30 people) will do more for your career that large ones I think, though the large ones often have better parties and this should obviously be taken into consideration. I say do one of each every year. Also, before your PhD is over, make sure you organize at least one session at a conference. It’s not that hard and it shows that you a more driven than most. And it’s fun. And, you guessed it, it looks good on your CV.

11. Publish or perish

It’s not a joke people. If your supervisor told you that you shouldn’t worry about publishing until you are done with your PhD, they are sabotaging your career and you should slash their tyres in retaliation. Just think of it this way – when you graduate, you will graduate that year with a couple thousand people (just in the UK) who have the same degree you do. There will be about 12 academic jobs that year if we are lucky. The new minimum bar for a job after your PhD is 2 publications in high-ranking journals. I often publish in other places, sideline journals, online magazines, interviews on other people’s blogs, etc. but these are always in addition to my primary work thread. My best advice, passed on from my magnificent supervisor, Tim Cresswell, is to write each chapter of your thesis first as an article, submit it and then fold it back into the thesis after it gets published. Not only do you get publications out of it, you get comments and feedback on your work before it even makes it into the thesis. For instance, what will largely be my methods chapter (chapter 2) is now published in Progress in Human Geography and chapters 3 and 4 are sitting with reviewers right now at other journals. Your supervisor will love you for all the marking you saved them. Not to mention how much they are going to love your 7-page CV (just kidding, that’s obnoxious – see mine)!

If this all sounds mad, let me assure you that despite our wonderful moments of collaboration, this is a competition. Coming out on top requires a bit of strategising, just be sure not to become so entrenched that you pull the ladder up behind you like the current UK government administration is doing. Succeed so we can all succeed. It’s always better to create a job than to get one anyway so go forth, kick ass, and create new opportunities.

12. Write diversely, work creatively

The publishing system completely blows and does not acknowledge, for the most part, that people work in different ways. I know that many people are not the best writers (me included) or work more productively in another media or format (me included). Other people are better at writing, say, fiction, than academic articles. I say go for it. As long as you hit your bar of two journal articles in high-ranking journals, you should spend the rest of the time doing whatever you love. Just make sure you balance the time you spend doing to the time you spend producing. For instance, I have three writing outlets to keep me producing. One is this blog, for half-baked and still formulating thoughts (okay haters?!), one is popular publication for those moments when I write about my direct experiences or try new creative stuff, the last is my academic publications where I exercise the full force of my abilities. I also juggle writing, obviously, with photography and videography. The most important rule here is what my supervisor told me at the beginning of my PhD: do what you love and keep doing it. When you love your work, it shows.

Connected to this, I want to just mention that being a perfectionist is crippling. In the wise words on my friend Adam Fish in anthropology at UCLA, “get into it, get on with it and get over it.”

13. Cultivate a public image

If you Google yourself right now and get no results, you are failing your PhD. Like it or not, your Google ranking is just as important as your publications or, in a real life analogy, your credit rating. It requires active work to bump up the things you want on that list and push others down. Not to say that even bad press can be good at times. A recent blog posting I posted infuriated a whole bunch of people and drove 1200 hits to my blog in 2 days. I say that’s a victory (thanks, naysayers!). You also have to destroy anyone’s ranking with the same name as yours or change your name (I became Bradley L. Garrett at the start of my PhD because I couldn’t compete with this guy). Be sensible but ruthless about this. A blog is the single best way to have a strong public image but also be sure to keep your university webpage up to date as well. Get on Twitter and Facebook, Academia.edu, LinkedIn etc. if you are not already and use them as publishing and promotion platforms and to push other people with your name down the list until they are publicly dead. It works. Oh, by the way that CV I keep mentioning? Make sure it is hyperlinked, updated, formatted beautifully and all over the internet. It works wonders.

Also, keep those connections in mind you made back in the beginning. Collaborating on public projects with noted scholars and artists based on those earlier relationships will help immensely. For instance, my documentary urban explorers, quests for myth, mystery and meaning connected my research to the work of Caitlin DeSilvey, Hayden Lorimer, Tim Edensor, Alastair Bonnett and David Pinder. In addition to getting the fantastic opportunity to meet and work with them, their names are indelibly attached to mine online (in fact, the last time I saw Caitlin she told me “I was a little dismayed when I Googled my name and your blog was the second hit!”).  Being an epiphyte can be very valuable. Seek these collaborations wherever possible and lock them down.

14. Protect your time

Remember in the first year when I told you to network with everyone? Forget that in your third year. If you did this well, they are watching you now. What you now need to show them if that you are not just going to show up to their conferences and make contributions and pitch cool projects that only a slightly-weird postgrad could dream up, you are now going to effectively guard your time to be sure you can produce the best work possible during your PhD (my current moment). If there’s a really good offer, like an invitation to speak at an important and relevant conference, of course, take it. But do not, under any circumstances, go to conferences, workshops or events where you have no funding to attend or are not presenting something, it’s just a time drain for the most part. And it, frankly, looks a little sad this late in the game. Participate or get back to your main thread!

More importantly, you have to protect your day-to-day time with extreme militancy. Unsubscribe from as much crap as you can to liberate your inbox for work, set-up email filters, learn to turn off your phone and wireless connection when you need to. Tell your friends they can only come over if they proofread your new article (just kidding). Stop spending worktime trolling through your friends facebook pages. I once called my brother Pip moaning because I was getting 130 emails a day and couldn’t keep up with them, let alone get to the “real” work. Pip (who owns a very successful cabinet company) told me,

“look bro, there’s a big difference between being productive and being active. Productive is getting the shit done you definitively set forth to get done in a particular ‘work’ session, while keeping in mind that there is nothing else that matters other than what is on that list. Granted other distractions (non-list items) are sure to and will arise, phone calls, e-mails, whatever… Fuck ‘em… and realize that ignoring them until your session is over will not be the end of the world… that’s productive. Being active on the other hand is doing anything else not on the list, regardless of how ‘busy’ you think you are are.”

So after you have gotten organized and handled your business, take time off. Lot’s of it, in big blocks. Reward yourself at the end of everyday with a big spliff and bad TV, and take a week or two off every few months. Just make sure you deserve it. If you don’t, lash yourself and eat only lettuce for a day (no don’t do that). This the joy and the curse of being your own boss – you’re supervisor will probably not tell you you don’t deserve the holiday you’re taking. One last thought here on being your own boss. Realize you can work wherever you want. If you feel like going off the snowy Swedish wilderness to drink beer in a hot tub and write for a few weeks (I did!), you should. No one can stop you but yourself.

15. Prepare for life after

As much as your PhD may dominate your life (if you’re doing it right), by the end of your 2^nd year, you need to start thinking about the next step. And the game starts all over again. Go hit the streets for coffees, meet and re-meet all those brilliant people you have collaborated with and followed in the past few years. Let them know that you are ready for the next step and want that post-doc or whatever. Of course, no matter how good I feel about my PhD at the moment, whether or not I have been successful at the next step of this game remains to be seen!

My last bit of advice is the most important. Love every minute. We could never be in a position of more privilege than we are – 3 years to do whatever on earth we dream up. 3 years to make yourself a little wiser and (hopefully) mildly well-known writing a whole bunch of funky things for notable journals and telling people over drinks how important your research is while they roll their eyes. This is the best job in the world. Make use of every minute as if it was your last, breathe it in through the belly and treat each day as sacred.

Good luck everyone – hope this was more useful than strange!

___________________________________

For more on this topic, I suggest reading Alf Rehn’s fantastic free book The Scholar’s Progress.

I am pleased to announce the publication of my new article in the journal Progress in Human Geography on video and geography. Thank you to everyone who supported me in writing this article.

I would also like to announce that at next year’s Royal Geographical Society annual conference, I will be running a session with Dr. Katherine Brickell and Dr. Jessica Jacobs on this very topic. More details will be provided as they become available.

I spent a week in Istanbul, Turkey earlier this month, taking some necessary downtime after a heavy few months of publication submissions. The city was beautiful and I left feeling rejuvenated and ready to work on a new project. Which of course I did. My plane touched down back in London November 20th at 9pm and by November 21st at 6am I was on a train to Scotland.

Istanbul

I arrived in Dundee to meet with Michael Gallagher, Jonathan Prior, Brian Rosa, Tom Croll-Knight, Jennifer Rich, Jackie Calderwood, Amanda Repo Taiwo Thompson and Jessica Jacobs to take part in a workshop called working creatively with sound and image organised by Michael and Jonathan from the University of Edinburgh.

At the workshop, we were given a free hand to produce whatever we felt drawn to and I ended up organically gravitating to Brian and Jonathan who I have worked with previously on smaller projects. We decided in the end to attempt to produce a small film in the 3 days we had to work. We envisaged the film being roughy based around the Jute industry which thrived in Dundee at one time but has been long dead, now surviving as urban memory as part of the flagging tourist industry here. We went into the city armed with video cameras and audio recorders to try and locate connections between the historic industrial Jute city, the port that was essential to the transportation of the Jute and the changes that are taking place within the city that both build on and and overwrite that rich maritime heritage. In the end, the film also became as much about process as discovery as we found that the story we sought was buried in the urban palimpsest.

Methodologically, we were interested in making a film that broke from traditional documentary form, a piece led by sound (collected by Jonathan and Michael) rather than visuals (collected by Brian and myself) only taken from our time in “the field”. We were particularly careful to avoid narration or a film score, leaving the viewer with, we hope, a strong sense of a particular place at a particular time.

Given that the film is built around the audio, it is best watched with headphones on. Hope you enjoy it!