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| The City that erases itself, The
City of Forgetting. These walks will explore
the questions of visibility and invisibility of the
impacts of commerce in The City and have commenced with
the walk "Loot - Reckoning with the East India
Company", devised by historian Nick Robins and
PLATFORM core member Jane Trowell.
The East India Company
remains the most powerful corporation the world has
ever seen, a precursor to today’s transnational
corporations. Starting out as a speculative venture
to import spices from the East Indies - modern day Indonesia
- the Company grew to fame and fortune by trading with
and then conquering and governing India. But visit London
today where the Company was headquartered for over 250
years, and little marks its rise and fall, its innovations
and its crimes. The walk takes you round this invisible
behemoth...and asks in terms of contemporary corporate
behaviour, what has changed, and what has remained the
same ? Crucially, what can we learn ?
The walks visit sites
of the company's headquarters in
Philpot Lane and Leadenhall Street, circumnavigating
the huge complex of warehouses
at Cutler's Gardens, and standing at the feet of bronze
statues of key company figures
such as Robert Clive and Lord Wellesley, later Duke
of Wellington. These walks have
been rolling discussions, as well as presentations.
Below are some extracts from the
Loot! poster accompanying the walk.
The walks are experimental and periodic:
they will be announced here.
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from the Loot! walks:
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click on the images to see larger versions
of the Loot! poster
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detail from walk:
 Lloyds
Building, Site of East India House (1648-1858)
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Standing
beside the steel and glass of Richard Rogers’ Lloyds
Building, it is difficult to appreciate the raw energy,
envy and horror that the Company generated in 18th century
England. For 30 years after the Battle of Plassey in 1757,
where the Company gained control of Bengal, East India House
was instrumental in both the economy and governance of Bengal
and indeed Britain - a notorious ferment of traders, bankers,
conquerors and power-brokers. Robert Clive was rewarded
for leading the Company’s armies to success at Plassey
by being made Governor of Bengal. |
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Under his reign, a decade
of corruption and systematic looting transformed a periodic
drought in 1769 Bengal into a catastrophic famine. Rather
than help the starving, the Company increased taxes, while
its agents hoarded food to drive prices up further. An
estimated 10 million people died - at a time when the
population of London was less than a million, providing
a foretaste of future famines under the British Raj. |
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The pressure for reform was overpowering
and, in a series of moves, Parliament gained a growing control
over the Company, so that by the 19th century, it was more
a sub-contracted administrator for the British state, a
Victorian public-private partnership. Throughout this period,
what Company activity highlights is the ‘tyranny of
the bottom line’ - a financial logic that forces corporate
executives down unethical pathways. The reality of the situation
was that few, if any, of its executives could see that the
solution for India, as Adam Smith advocated, lay in independence.
The tragedy was, what emerged was empire. |
 Clive
Statue, Whitehall
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At the height of the Empire, Lord
Curzon commissioned a statue of Clive to decorate
Whitehall, a belated recognition for this infamous
Company employee who laid the foundations for the
Raj. Both the Company and the Raj are now long gone,
but Britain has yet to reckon with its actions. A
selective memory reigns - viewing the Company largely
through our current obsessions with consumerism and
celebrity. To get a complete picture, it is imperative
that the Company is viewed in light of its obligations
regarding corporate responsibility and accountability.
Just as cities like Bristol are now confronting their
past as slaving ports, so the City of London now needs
to reckon with the legacy of the East India Company
and its contemporaries.
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Background
One aspect of our work is
to create imaginative and safe spaces for difficult discussions.
The role of art is crucial in achieving this: art and art
strategies with such purposes can alter sensibilities and
disarm aggression. Freedom in The City proposes to create
experimental guided walks in London's financial district,
with the aim of inspiring people to explore and share their
understanding of the complexity of our current globalised
economy. Through a range of guided walks informed by the
imagination and vision of socially engaged artists in collaboration
with
others, The City can be seen as contemporary, vibrant, and
above all mutable.
Since 1999, our 90% CRUDE work has been concerned
with a particular part of the metropolis: the Square Mile, also
known as The City. We have been walking, talking, debating and
sensing The City at all times of day and night, and with a variety
of people : City workers, corporate analysts, activists, historians,
newspaper vendors, artists, church wardens, inhabitants, and
refuse operatives. The Square Mile is not only one of the world’s
most important financial centres, providing employment for 250,000
people, it is also the most ancient heart of London. Furthermore,
it is increasingly raising its profile as a contemporary cultural
location with a boom in restaurants, bars, clubs and cultural
venues both within and on its immediate fringes. London is in
a boom time for ‘Guided Walks’, yet a close look
at what is on offer in this historic centre of London reveals
that nearly all of the walks focus on social, architectural
or archeological history, and only one or two focus on its vibrant
contemporary reality. It is as if what is happening now - the
contemporary activity and influence of The City - is deemed
uninteresting to the public. Paradoxically, there has been a
snowballing of world attention on issues of globalisation, capitalism,
environmental justice, corporate culture and transnational finance,
mainly through mass activism such as has been seen in Seattle,
Prague, Genoa, and also here in London. The issue has become
devastatingly acute after the utter violence of the terrorist
attacks on the potent symbols of such activities, the World
Trade Centre in New York City, and on the ensuing military response
of the USA and Britain. Collaborators
to date: Nick
Robins and Jane Trowell Freedom in The City is funded by Arts
Council London.
Museum of the Corporation is funded by the Clark Foundation.
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