The Shard - Vertical Horizons

About

Presented at ROOM Artspace in January, Vertical Horizons: Living With The Shard in The City is a meditative film about Western Europe’s tallest building, The Shard, created through a Leverhulme Trust artist residency at UCL Urban Laboratory by filmmaker Tom Wolseley. The exhibition will feature a screening of the film, research material and photography.

Juxtaposing views of The Shard from different vantage points around South London, Tom contrasts narratives about the building with his own response to living in its shadow. The film asks questions about the relationship between the individual and larger global dynamics that are manifesting themselves in the changing landscapes of capital cities like London. Does ‘showing that London is open for business’ produce these iconic buildings that are less products of capital than conservative political ideologies? In turn are these architectural projections of an imagined future and present ideologies predicated on nostalgic national and personal modes of identification?

Ultimately the film speculates on whether we are in the midst of a re-functionalising of the built environment from cities once understood as places of habitation for people to storage containers for insecure financial assets.