Place, space, and capital: The landscapes of Patrick Keiller

Abstract

Through his three films London, Robinson in Space and Robinson in Ruins, Patrick Keiller has sought, inter alia, to provide an incisive commentary on the neo-liberal social order and the way that the spaces we inhabit are experienced and represented. Keiller’s films draw from a variety of sources including: surrealism; political economy; cinematic theory; and architecture. Yet, although there is a considerable body of commentary on his work, there is less analysis that engages in a detailed way with the substance of the work itself – its images and techniques – or with the framework within which it operates. Our aims are twofold: first, to redress that omission here, and especially to attend to what appears to be the divergent character of the most recent film, Robinson in Ruins, when considered in relation to the framework established by the first two – a divergence that directly implicates Keiller’s thematisation of landscape; and, second, to reflect more broadly on the wider significance of Keiller’s films for geography and other critically inspired scholarship.