Sunday-week (22 July) is a bit of a Patrick Keiller-fest at the tate Modern*.

Two of Keiller’s films are being shown that afternoon, “London” at 1pm and “Robinson in Space” at 3pm. I have both these on DVD so I won’t bother going to see them, but I would heartily recommend them to everyone.

The DVD cover

Then at 6pm the man himself is presenting a lecture about his work.

Patrick was one of my tutors while I was doing Fine Art BA at Middlesex University in 1993 – he was always very patient and helpful although I can’t have been the easiest student to tutor.

I’ve always read his films as being ruminations on the state of being of a traveller in a city as expressed through the disjointed imagery. “London” especially brings out the relations between these places and the experience of them physically or mentally, through the traveller’s day-to-day, hour-to-hour existence walking, or being propelled through them. The films also have an eye to their own structure, they make you somewhat aware of the breaks, the editing process and it’s creation of a sequence of images which are interpreted as a narrative space (or otherwise?).

Wonderful, funny and poignant films. I’m looking forward to seeing Patrick again after all this time, and to hear what his future works will be.

* These events are in parallel with the “Global Cities” exhibition currently on display in the Turbine Hall, which in itself is an interesting presentation of factoids about and proposals for world cities, intelligently combined with artworks in many cases providing the focused view of the city which is lacking from the charts and statistics plastered across the installation.

Patrick Keiller: forthcoming talk at tate Modern by escdotdot is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International