Skirting around the edges: a creative practice-led research project into notions of resistance and continuity of life experience in the city fringes (case study area: Clerkenwell, London, UK).

This essay was selected by an interdisciplinary board headed by Professor David Wang, at WSU, from an initial conference paper presentation. The E-Publication is blind peer reviewed.
This paper presents the practice-led research project in association with Vivacity2020 and AUNT-SUE (as outlined in Output 1) through focusing on the production of one of the commissioned works - Skirting, (DV Projection 2006).
The paper looks at the research methodologies of an artist, and looks at how the moving image as a research methodology can contribute to the wider concerns of the consortia. Drawing on Bendon’s existing body of work, the paper investigates the city fringe area (Clerkenwell, London) in terms of a complex dynamic between physical and psychological space; the relationship between people and the space they inhabit. The paper underlines that history—that is, time and the unintended environments time leaves in its wake in localize venues over the centuries—is an essential ingredient of urban livability. This is not something the New Urbanists can easily recreate. Bendon’s essay is an informative example of an on-the-ground engagement with what interdisciplinary research—or “interdisciplinarity” in research—entails, both in the kinds of new knowledge such efforts can yield, but also in the confusions that might result from multi-method and multi-disciplinary modes of inquiry. Bendon’s self-reflective essay highlights these tensions.