The Pepys of London E11: Graeme Miller and the Politics of Linked

Abstract

In 2003, Graeme Miller was commissioned by the Museum of London to produce a sitespecific artwork for its oral history collection. Miller responded by creating Linked, a performance which bears witness to the disastrous impact the M11 link road has had on his local neighbourhood since its construction in the 1990s. Helped by a team of researchers, Miller interviewed local citizens and road protesters and broadcast their testimonies from twenty transmitters that line the route of the link road. In order to activate the work, the participant borrows a headset from a local library and is invited to follow the link road from Hackney to Wanstead, a distance of roughly four miles. This article explores the politics of Linked from a number of different theoretical perspectives: contemporary ethnography, everyday life studies, urban theory, and Situationism. The objective is to show that Linked offers an alternative paradigm for political performance – a paradigm which also necessitates an idiosyncratic and subjective form of writing. The article is followed by an interview in which Miller speaks about the processes involved in making Linked. Carl Lavery teaches performance and theatre at Loughborough University.