Event overview
Part of the Thursday Club season
"I have finished my weekly supermarket shop, stocking up on provisions for my three kids, my husband, our dog and our cat. I push the loaded trolley across the car park, battling to keep its wonky wheels on track. I pop open the boot of my car and then for some reason, I have no idea why, I look up, into the clear blue autumnal sky. And I see him. It takes me a long moment to figure out what I am looking at. He is falling from the sky. A dark mass, growing larger quickly. I let go of the trolley and am dimly aware that it is getting away from me but I can’t move, I am stuck there in the middle of the supermarket car park, watching, as he hurtles toward the earth. I have no idea how long it takes – a few seconds, an entire lifetime – but I stand there holding my breath as the city goes about its business around me until … He crashes into the roof of my car."
The car park of Sainsbury’s supermarket in Richmond, southwest London, lies directly beneath one of the main flight paths into Heathrow Airport. Over the last decade, on at least five separate occasions, the bodies of young men have fallen from the sky and landed on or near this car park.
All these men were stowaways on flights from the Indian subcontinent who had believed that they could find a way into the cargo hold of an airplane by climbing up into the airplane wheel shaft. No one can survive this journey. “Flight Paths†seeks to explore what happens when lives collide – the airplane stowaway and the fictional suburban London housewife, quoted above. This project will tell their stories; it will be a work of digital fiction, a networked book, created on and through the internet. The project will include a web iteration that opens up the research process to the outside world, inviting discussion of the large array of issues the project touches on.
Questions raised by this project include: what are the possibilities for new narrative forms? How do we ‘write to be seen’ or ‘write to be heard’ when creating multimedia narratives, and can we imagine writing to be smelled, tasted, felt? What are the effects of collective authorship across multiple forms?
KATE PULLINGER works both in print and new media. Her most recent novels include A Little Stranger (2006) and Weird Sister (1999). Her current digital fiction projects include her collaboration with Chris Joseph (babel) on 'Inanimate Alice', a multimedia episodic digital fiction and 'Venus Redemption', a game for female casual gamers. Pullinger is Reader in Creative Writing and New Media at De Montfort University.
CHRIS JOSEPH is a digital writer and artist who has created solo and collaborative work as babel. His past projects include 'Inanimate Alice' (with Kate Pullinger), an award-winning series of multimedia stories; 'The Breathing Wall' (with Kate Pullinger and Stefan Schemat), a digital novel;
and 'Animalamina', a collection of interactive multimedia poetry for children. He is editor of the post-dada magazine and network 391.org, and a founding member of The 404, a network of artists. He is currently Digital Writer in Residence at De Montfort University, Leicester.
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The Thursday Club is an open forum discussion group for anyone interested in the theories and practices of cross-disciplinarity, interactivity, technologies and philosophies of the state-of-the-art in today’s (and tomorrow’s) cultural landscape(s).
Supported by the Goldsmiths Digital Studios and the Goldsmiths Graduate School.
Dates & times
| Date | Time | Add to calendar |
|---|---|---|
| 7 Feb 2008 | 6:00pm - 8:00pm |
Accessibility
If you are attending an event and need the College to help with any mobility requirements you may have, please contact the event organiser in advance to ensure we can accommodate your needs.
