Last Stand
2019
4”10’
16mm film transferred to digital media
Supported by Guildhall Art Gallery and Bellway Homes

I am standing on a concrete tower core on a development site in Nine Elms, London, taking a last stand. The phrase Last Stand means a last stand before defeat; a desperate last measure bound to fail, but there is an imperative to do it which maybe moral, desperate. Last Stand is a stand against privatisation of the sky through selling it as real estate, and against the defensive aggressive building of the US Embassy.The concrete tower I am standing on is crenellated like a castle. Castles are built high for defence. Looking down on the world gives a sense of control of the world spread out below you. But seen from behind the concrete core is hollow. Far from providing security, concrete drinks in water and breathes out CO2, so it poses a direct threat.The first shot in the film shows the tower with a form like a Modernist sculpture. The language of late Modernism came largely from material units of production, and the concrete tower returns it there, but now with a more dystopian view of the future.This simple form of Modernism echoes the Asceticism of Saint Symeon the Stylite, the Medieval saint who lived on a post in the desert for 37 years.