Event category: Type

Graeme Miller’s LINKED has endured as perhaps the largest sonic installation and sculptural entity in London for 20 years. Since 2003 its transmitters have broadcast over a million times the voices of former residents of the buildings demolished to build the M11 Link Road motorway.

Originally commissioned by Museum of London and produced by Artsadmin, LINKED is an artistic response to the creation of the M11 Link Road which involved the demolition of 400 homes, including Miller’s own, amid dramatic and passionate protest.

Along a 3-mile route between Hackney Marshes and Redbridge Roundabout, 20 analogue radio transmitters can be heard by anyone with a special receiver, revealing 60+ voices and testimonies of people who once lived and worked in the area – resident families, road protestors, railway-workers, teachers, disco-goers, and artists from the substantial community living in houses destroyed by the road including several who are better known now – Cornelia Parker, John Smith, Jocelyn Pook, Gary Stevens, Christine Binnie. Together the assembly of voices evokes a cross-section of ordinary East London life and the dramatic events of these buildings’ final moments.

LINKED was intended to remain unseen, an almost secret layer of the geography of the communities where it transmits. It is in perpetual dialogue with the current walker/listener who animates the work with their attention finding their own narratives and in this sense, it is very much a social sculpture intended for a dynamic and changing area. Each 8-minute radio composition relays both the details of personal landscapes and the often dramatic events that took place in the area.

The transmitters broadcast on a single frequency and with a receiver the walker is able to navigate the neighbourhoods adjacent to the motorway, finding pools of sound that relate to the specific locations. Over the passage of time this work about the politics and poetry of place has come to reflect issues relating to community, environment and protest and the impact of sudden, top-down developments on people and place.

Recommended age range 8+

Radio receiver, headphones and maps can be picked up at Leytonstone Library between 11am and 4pm.

Additional dates:  25 November 2023 and 17 February 2024

CREDITS

LINKED was originally an Artsadmin project produced by Judith Knight and Mark Godber and commissioned by Museum of London in 2003. The making of LINKED was generously supported by Arts Council England, Heritage Lottery Fund, London Boroughs Grants Committee part of the Association of London Government, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and the London Boroughs of Redbridge and Waltham Forest. The restoration of LINKED (2022 – 2024) is supported by Arts Council England.

Artist – Graeme Miller

Researchers – Lucy Cash, Myra Heller, Dan Saul, Michael Sherin, Helen Statman

Technical Manager – Steve Wald

Technical Consultant  – Mike Harrison of White Wing Logic

Executive Producer (LINKED 2023/4) – Nikki Tomlinson

Producer (LINKED 2023/4) – Lydia Newman

The artist would like to thank all the many interviewees, production teams and friends involved in developing LINKED.

Graeme Miller’s LINKED has endured as perhaps the largest sonic installation and sculptural entity in London for 20 years. Since 2003 its transmitters have broadcast over a million times the voices of former residents of the buildings demolished to build the M11 Link Road motorway.

Originally commissioned by Museum of London and produced by Artsadmin, LINKED is an artistic response to the creation of the M11 Link Road which involved the demolition of 400 homes, including Miller’s own, amid dramatic and passionate protest.

Along a 3-mile route between Hackney Marshes and Redbridge Roundabout, 20 analogue radio transmitters can be heard by anyone with a special receiver, revealing 60+ voices and testimonies of people who once lived and worked in the area – resident families, road protestors, railway-workers, teachers, disco-goers, and artists from the substantial community living in houses destroyed by the road including several who are better known now – Cornelia Parker, John Smith, Jocelyn Pook, Gary Stevens, Christine Binnie. Together the assembly of voices evokes a cross-section of ordinary East London life and the dramatic events of these buildings’ final moments.

LINKED was intended to remain unseen, an almost secret layer of the geography of the communities where it transmits. It is in perpetual dialogue with the current walker/listener who animates the work with their attention finding their own narratives and in this sense, it is very much a social sculpture intended for a dynamic and changing area. Each 8-minute radio composition relays both the details of personal landscapes and the often dramatic events that took place in the area.

The transmitters broadcast on a single frequency and with a receiver the walker is able to navigate the neighbourhoods adjacent to the motorway, finding pools of sound that relate to the specific locations. Over the passage of time this work about the politics and poetry of place has come to reflect issues relating to community, environment and protest and the impact of sudden, top-down developments on people and place.

Recommended age range 8+

Radio receiver, headphones and maps can be picked up at Leytonstone Library between 11am and 4pm.

Additional dates:  25 November 2023 and 20 January 2024

CREDITS

LINKED was originally an Artsadmin project produced by Judith Knight and Mark Godber and commissioned by Museum of London in 2003. The making of LINKED was generously supported by Arts Council England, Heritage Lottery Fund, London Boroughs Grants Committee part of the Association of London Government, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and the London Boroughs of Redbridge and Waltham Forest. The restoration of LINKED (2022 – 2024) is supported by Arts Council England.

Artist – Graeme Miller

Researchers – Lucy Cash, Myra Heller, Dan Saul, Michael Sherin, Helen Statman

Technical Manager – Steve Wald

Technical Consultant  – Mike Harrison of White Wing Logic

Executive Producer (LINKED 2023/4) – Nikki Tomlinson

Producer (LINKED 2023/4) – Lydia Newman

The artist would like to thank all the many interviewees, production teams and friends involved in developing LINKED.

Small Things Are Possible is an immersive piece that spotlights Windrush Generation allotment holders in Waltham Forest, exploring their relationship to the land. The work combines audio and portraiture, creating a living archive of experience, presented at Vestry House Museum within an installation that pays homage to the idiosyncratic allotment sheds of the borough.

To the Windrush generation who left behind bountiful landscapes in tropical climates, starting new lives in heavily industrialised post-war London was a big culture shock. Island life in the Caribbean, even for those who weren’t farmers, fostered a deeper connection to the land and to the food consumed on a daily basis. For Caribbean families, growing their own produce at home was a matter of necessity but also a cultural practice shared by the whole family. Arriving in the UK to a lack of stable or adequate housing meant that, for many, growing their own crops was a distant dream. Until they found allotments.

Windrush generation growers can be found across Waltham Forest’s many allotments. These growing spaces are a firm part of the borough’s cultural identity and the evolving Windrush experience and legacy. Their contribution can be seen in the visual landscape of the allotments, but also in directly enhancing the borough’s ecosystems and urban biodiversity. Beyond the growers, their crops and cultivated plots evidence the resilience and adaptability that have come to characterise this generation; from adapting growing practices to cultivate Caribbean crops in the UK climate, to carefully passing down seeds and knowledge between generations of plot holders.

A zine with text by writer Cairo Clarke and additional images by Abel Holsborough accompanies the portraits and installation. Physical copies can be found at William Morris (ask at front desk) and inside the installation at Vestry House Museum.

Read the Small Things are Possible Zine

A Windrush 75 Commission for London Borough of Waltham Forest.

Sound design by dot.i

Produced by Sandra Jean Pierre

Images by Abel Holsborough

Watch the installation through timelapse