London

Where exactly does the South Bank begin and end? Does it stretch from County Hall to the Design Museum on Shad Thames, or from the London Eye to the National Film Theatre? Development and re-development have kept its definition fluid. Now I find myself in the odd position of being an artist in residence on the South Bank, trying to work out the co-ordinates as I go. Feature continues

As part of Saint Etienne I was involved in ‘What Have You Done Today, Mervyn Day?’, a film and music event about the Lower Lea Valley held at the Barbican last year. The South Bank Centre’s artistic director Jude Kelly saw it, liked it, and asked if we fancied becoming artists in residence for a year. We furrowed our brows, and tried not to look like four kids on Christmas Eve.

The task she gave us was to create a film and soundtrack for the hefty remodelling of the South Bank Centre and, specifically, the Royal Festival Hall. Amongst the four of us, it’s probably our favourite building in London. The idea of it being restored to its 1951 glory as a living cultural centre, with new public spaces, world-class acoustics and a bar where you don’t have to queue for 40 minutes was something we’d have been keen to document anyway.

Straight away, we smudged our copybook a little by assuming ‘in residence’ meant we’d automatically be provided with an office. Still, the powers that be smiled benignly and gave us one anyway. Lucky we didn’t ask where the towels were kept.

On arriving, we discovered the South Bank Centre is more or less the area of the 1951 site of the Festival of Britain: no National Theatre, not even the NFT, just the RFH, Queen Elizabeth Hall, Purcell Room and Hayward Gallery.