Lucy Harrison’s art practice investigates people’s experiences and memories of places. It takes the form of photographs, book works, video and various forms of printed and published material. Through researching historical material and collecting personal accounts, Lucy considers how the significance of a place is recorded over time. In so doing, Lucy uncovers narratives and moments that may not have been widely known in the official or mainstream history of an area. Layers of the past are gathered through memories of architectures, streets and personal encounters.

In Carnaby Echoes Lucy investigated buildings and locations around Carnaby through their musical connections, starting from people associated with these places and their stories. Over a long and pain-staking period of research through conversation, interviews and visiting personal archives, Lucy selected a series of places and contributors to develop into a films and to commemorate through permanent plaques installed in the public realm.

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Here, she describes her process and how Carnaby Echoes relates to her art practice more widely.

Could you talk a little about where your interest in history stems from and how it drives your practice?

I’m interested in how we record history, and how the way in which this is done affects how we remember things, sometimes making our view of the past fairly subjective. This is why I try to compare individual people’s memories of events or of eras with what has been documented; although memory can be unreliable and fragmented, what actually goes down as ‘history’ can be just as subjective and driven by the fashions and viewpoints of the time in which it was recorded. In this project it’s been fascinating to discover that there were many other versions of Carnaby Street and the surrounding area which aren’t necessarily the one most people think of when they picture ‘Swinging London’, which was an amazing time, but is also the only one many people associate with this street. More than one person has responded to me saying I’m working on a project around Carnaby Street by instantly talking about “that era” as if it is frozen in time.

This can also be seen in a political sense, in terms of the ways in which some of this understanding is based on a version of events which, for instance, may have been written about and publicised at a time when white people, and men, would have been more likely to have been included in the narrative. There has been a really important thread of black music history through this project, all the way from the 1930s and places like the Nest and the Florence Mills Social Parlour, of course through to the Roaring Twenties nightclub among other places. These venues have all been hugely significant and were all within a small triangle of streets.

Is this something that you were keen to explore through the project, to reveal this parallel Carnaby story?

Yes, and what became clear is that The Roaring Twenties is one of the reasons why Carnaby Street became attractive for people including musicians to visit in the early 1960s, and is incredibly important for the people who went there, and yet I don’t think it was included in many of the media reports about Carnaby Street from that time. As far as I can see, the overwhelming majority of the pop stars who are pictured in representations of that era are white, with the exception of Jimi Hendrix, and it’s been really fascinating to discover that there was this other version of history that could be discovered if you looked in the right places. I don’t even think this is always intentional that people do this, but that is why we should be careful of marginalising people and their stories even if it is accidental.

In terms of places, I’m also fascinated by the ways in which the past can resonate through time, and events can repeat themselves in different forms at the same locations. While making the films for this project, we’ve often found visual echoes within the buildings; people have unintentionally used colours or lighting which were there in previous eras. When we were filming in Ben Sherman we found that the playlist they use in the shop contained several of the tracks that would have been played in the same building when it was the Roaring Twenties nightclub- just a coincidence really, but strange to think that the same records are being played back into that space without anyone realising. It’s perhaps more strange to think that these extraordinary things happen in a given place but you can walk past the building and know nothing of it.

In previous projects such as Mapping Your Manor you have drawn together narratives and personal histories at a time of architectural and social change in a residential area. Was your experience very different working in a context that is driven by ongoing changes and shifts and defined by retail and venues rather than inhabitants? 

Yes and no, when I work on those other projects with local residents I am just as interested in someone who has just moved to a place, who only works there, or who has a fleeting memory of it. So someone who works in a place for a time or who has a strong memory of another era just has another version of that place in their imaginations, it’s not necessarily any less valid. However it did mean that the buildings had so many layers of stories, as the tenants have changed so many times over the years. Also, although there are people who live in Soho, you could see the community of central London as being one that is spread out across different places, as people visit and spend evenings there and then return home.

In exploring places you use archives, museums and primary material but overall your research is driven by people’s own stories and memories. Could you describe the sense of responsibility that brings?

Often people don’t realise how interesting their own memories are to other people, and it’s the small details that help us to understand what things were really like at the time they are talking about. So often it’s about trying to persuade people that there is something really interesting about what they may see as nondescript. People often don’t have confidence in their own stories but instead suggest others who they see as ‘experts’, however it’s always fascinating to find out different viewpoints of the same event or era, perhaps from someone who was more in the background or a less predictable choice, perhaps.

How did you approach filming the spaces as they are now and accommodating the gap between people’s memories of the place and their adjustment to the function and look of these buildings in 2013?

One of the things I enjoyed most about the project was the comparison and contrast between what was being talked about and what could be seen around us in the fabric of the building. I wanted to explore the architecture and details, and almost try to find leftovers of what the people were saying, not just literally, like a mirror being in the same place as it used to be, but also other visual echoes between the words and the objects. So I tried to gain access to the buildings whatever their current usage, meaning that we filmed interviews in empty spaces and in building sites if that was how they were now. What it also means is that the person who is brought back is either struck by the complete differences, or is reminded of elements they may have forgotten: where the stairs were, the view from the window, who was next door, the sounds they used to hear…. I hope that people watching the films or using the app will be able to imagine the streets and the buildings in these different eras and also to remember how they are now, as the city is constantly changing.

Conversation between Lucy Harrison and Sarah Carrington, Futurecity Project Manager, June 2013.