Fugitive Images are Andrea Luka Zimmerman, Lasse Johansson and David Roberts.
Fugitive Images platform grew out of a desire to capture the peculiar moment of the place where they live and work immediately prior to it being demolished. Haggerston Estate is suspended somewhere between it first being occupied in the 1930's and imminent demolition in 2009 (second phase of demoloition is in 2013), a place in transformation, in wait.
Fugitive Images have an established track record of creating and producing a number of significant projects, across media and across communities. These have involved management and liaison with residents, the public, public bodies and private agencies.
Fugitive Images is currently producing Estate, a reverie, an artist's film, song cycle and installation to be created and performed by the disappearing community of the Haggerston Estate. It is the final and most ambitious project in a trilogy of collaborative works on the estate led by artist resident Andrea Luka Zimmerman, working closely with architectural researcher and writer David Roberts, following the public art/photo-installation i am here (with Lasse Johansson and Tristan Fenell) and the artists' book Estate (Myrdle Court Press, with Lasse Johansson, Paul Hallam, Cristina Cerully, Victor Buchli), both of which have gained international acclaim.
Statement Johansson/Roberts/Zimmerman:
We recognize that working directly with specific contexts requires a set of artistic practices distinct from those emerging out of the studio and gallery nexus. Outside of the highly controlled narrative environment of the white cube and exposed to a multitude of social, economic and political forces it is no longer possible to maintain the illusion of being in control of context. We recognize that we are neither the sole originators of meaning nor interpretation but rather an interlocutor in ongoing dialogue with the context we are working within.
I have been making films since 1998, originally as part of a film
collective called Vision Machine, which worked predominately in
Indonesia exploring the impact of Globalisation and working
directly with plantation workers. From this period developed my
nearly completed non fiction feature essay Prisoner of
War, which investigates US militarism and foreign policy
through a character study of one of its most enduring rogue agents.
I have just completed Taskafa: stories of the street, a
film about resistance and co-existence told through the lives of
street dogs in Istanbul, and am in production on Estate, a
reverie, an essay film made in collaboration with the
residents of the about to be demolished housing estate in
Haggerston, Hackney, where I also live.
I am an Associate Lecturer at Central St. Martins College of Art
and Design, and Wimbeldon College of Art [University of the Arts
London] and teach cinematography on the MA Documentary Practice at
Brunel University.
Lasse works with film, photography and installation. Since graduating from Chelsea College of Art in 2001 he has explored issues around the formation of public spaces and the identities they give rise to. İn 2002 he co-curated the public art exhibition Conetmplation Room at Gallery Overgaden, in Copenhagen together with Cecilie Gravesen and Kristine Agergaard. He has developed a prototype vertical garden to be used as a social sculpture on inner city estates with no access to cultivatable land. İn 2008 he completed an MA in Photography and Urban Culture at Goldsmıths University. His most recent works include the short film Bruce & I and the public art installation i am here and Estate, which he made in collaboration with Andrea and Tristan. He is currently collaborating with Andrea developing a film about Haggerston West & Kingsland Estate, which is part of their ongoing estate project.
Lasse has run community film workshops, and several doc in a day workshops, in schools and colleges. He is a visiting teacher at the University of the Arts London, and guest lecturer at Goldsmiths college.
David is a parliamentary researcher and architectural design PhD student at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL. He uses poetry and photography to explore the relation between place and language. He has exhibited, lectured and published work related to architecture and housing, critical methodologies and site-specific practice. He is the author of Slab, a collection of concrete poems to be published next year.
> David Roberts' CV