In E!&

Julian Beere, ‘Leytonstone Waitings’, Digital Video, Installation.

‘Leytonstone Waitings I’ is one of a series of field studies intended as an exploration of liminal spaces in Waltham Forest. A ‘waiting’ is a term I’ve coined for a situation in which there has been an attempt to lose or immerse oneself in the relative minutiae of its various visual fields – in this study, my own vision and perhaps those of others haunting the spaces.

‘Leytonstone Waitings I’ is told as a circular route and virtual passage made between benches around and about Leytonstone. The transitional stages in the passage have been rendered in a manner similar to a ‘spot the difference’ puzzle, created using relatively basic digital image manipulation software (‘Microsoft Paint’).

As a participant you are invited to imagine or project how the objects and sites act collectively as thresholds and thus begin to form a rite. Some of the benches have potentially very specific social contexts in terms of life passages e.g. a bench outside a hospital wing and the associations that would have with birth, healing and death. Each site might share your presence as a ghost waiting in a moment as time goes by between a departure and an arrival – ‘the quickenings and retardings, the approaches and separations, all the shifting detail of its march and ordinance, according to the irrevocable caprice of its taking place’.*

‘Leytonstone Waitings I’ – assorted Jpeg images (2304X1728 pixels / 72dpi) treated using Microsoft Paint and revisited using Windows Movie Maker 2.6.

‘Leytonstone Waitings I’ is presented as a full scale projection for As Time Goes By, Leytonstone Library on 13^th, 14^th, 15^th and 21^st July and as a reduced scale playback on 12^th, 16^th, 17^th, 18^th, 19^th and 20^th July as part of the Leytonstone Arts Trail 2012

* - Samuel Beckett, Watt (1953).