Ghosts of Borough Market

A magic lantern show in and on Borough Market, commissioned by General Public Agency and Ben Kelly Design for the London Architecture Biennale 2006.

Documentation available on request


"I like the pork pies. (...)

I really hate the lingering threat over this whole place. I don't think that people really care. Everyone's enthusiastic, everyone sees it as progress, it's all seen as really successful, and no one can be bothered to analyse the threat.

Partly it's the threat of
(1) it becoming advertising agency land,
(2) a mock-up of a market, and
(3) a destination for tourists,

partly it's actually something more sinister, which is somebody takes a big chunk of it and just kills it.

The writing on the wall is Spitalfields. If you lose the core assets and values of a place, then no one can stop it, and what happened to Spitalfields, where this monster has eaten it, and it's gone, will happen again. And it will never ever come back. It's completely monocultural, and it's just dead, it just killed it. ..." (...)

more images >