Extract from WMD - A Revision

Wow.  Okay, there’s a lot to parse here. Living in Vauxhall, as we did, we were all horribly fond of the Battersea Power Station.  In the 1980s there were two great construction projects that captured our imaginations.  First was, of course, the Isle of Dogs and Docklands, which became Canary Wharf, one of Thatcher’s Enterprise Zones.  I used to go to the Isle of Dogs with my friends in the early 80s before construction began; we’d ride around on our bikes and romanticize the wasteland.  It took a long time for Canary Wharf to succeed and its status as a kind of North American-style adjunct to the City’s financial district means that it still isn’t a part of town I frequent, but that’s because I’m not a banker, and none of my friends are bankers either. 
The other great construction project that obsessed us was, of course, Battersea Power Station; but unlike Canary Wharf, this project has absolutely failed to thrive and has gone through countless takeovers and buy-outs and planning applications.  It pops up in the news every now and again as someone else takes it over and then fails to raise enough money to do anything with it. 

But to me in the 80s the building was emblematic of so much – the decline of industry, of course, but also, a failure of imagination of sorts.  I went on a tour of the building shortly after it was de-commissioned, before whoever bought it knocked so much of the actual building down.  It was truly a thing of analogue 1930s beauty – the control room was all hardwood parquet floor and big round dials and shining pipes.  The idea of turning it and all its riverside splendour into a theme park and shopping mall was depressing when all around it lay a part of London that was quite seriously deprived and gloomy. 

This chunk of text kind of encapsulates everything that is both awful and wonderful about WMD.  Some very bad writing, but lots of energy and ideas.  We really did have conversations like this.  We really did talk about slavery and class and art and ideas. 

However, the idea that a couple of artists would get such senior-sounding jobs on such a prestigious building project is, frankly, a little unbelievable.  Sigh.

To read more, including the actual extract this commentary is based on, go to WMD - A Revision.