One Day in the City

Hilary Powell is an artist and is currently AHRC Fellow in the Creative and Performing Arts at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL working on a three-year project critiquing the utopian narratives of the Games through the appropriation of the traditional techniques of pop-up book production and etching alongside a  ‘residency’ on a demolition site.

Abstract: ‘The Art of Dissent: Adventures in London’s Olympic State’ brings together a body of work that has emerged in response to the arrival of the Olympics in East London.

Artists, writers, film makers, academics, photographers and activists intervene in the dominant discourse, language and images of regeneration and the Games. The book examines both the political economy of the mega-event and the silenced history of Lower Lea valley, making a powerful case against the politics of erasure and the corporatisation of urban space. Issues of land grab, displacement, military urbanism and exceptional measures of legal protection are explored through essays, images, poetry, fiction and installations.