2019_Thesis Book: Maria Diavolova

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a game of pick up sticks 2052 “We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be able to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.” 001 – T.S. Eliot 11 (12) YOU LAND at the intersection of Jacob Street and George Row, just off of Bermondsey 12 Wall. 13 The street is lined with compacted plastic in discolored blotches of pothole fill. You hop along the street, turning the post-carbon blemishes into a game of hotchpotch. Turning left onto Mill Street, 14 the compacted plastic grows vertical in the shape of street posts barring parking, street signs barring entry or formerly corroded wrought iron fencing. You turn right onto Jamaica Road; 15 glancing up at the fifty-foot building to your right, you see a swarm of industrial climbers, scaling the building, lowering what seem to be hundreds of treasure chests. Your eyes focus. Ah! They are HVAC units, sluggishly lowered from the building’s rooftop. You pause at the foot of St. Savior’s Dock 16 where the water is scraping the underside of the makeshift wooden pathway lining the building’s edge. The pathway is full of aluminum HVAC units sitting in purgatory; they are waiting for the next barge pick-up, which will relocate them from post-carbon London to carbon-filled Eastern Europe. 17 You turn right onto Shad Thames. 18 The narrow alleyway is buzzing with men and women in utility clothes, mixing, scrubbing, painting; it’s post-carbon spring cleaning! The alleyway grows visibly brighter, smoother somehow. Each cavity is surgically cleaned, reducing the multitude of depths that otherwise sharpen the contrast of the environment. You turn left onto the stretch of Shad Thames that runs parallel to the River Thames. A gust of wind is quick to fill your eyes with dust from the mound of toxic paint chips and century-old dust. Quickly, you turn onto Curlew Street 19 and find refuge at Butler’s Wharf Pier. 20 Bermondsey from Beormund, Anglo-Saxon lord of the district; ea or eye, an island; Beorm: Saxon for prince; mund security or peace “the prince’s security by the water’s side” or “a piece of firm land in a marsh” (Lambert) (13) 51°30’03.0”N 0°04’07.9”W (14) 51°30’04.4”N 0°04’16.5”W (15) 51°30’00.8”N 0°04’22.4”W (16) 51°30’01.6”N 0°04’25.1”W (17) “Last year, Bulgaria imported more than 100,000 second hand cars from EU countries, more than a third of which were grossly polluting diesels, according to clean mobility group Transport and Environment.” (Nasr 2018) (18) 51°30’02.5”N 0°04’25.5”W 1870 oil empire industry cholera toxicity 002 (19) 51°30’12.0”N 0°04’22.9”W USING the hydraulic elevator, you reach the wharf’s top story, overlooking the Thames. Your Apple Watch shoots up a vibration through the length of your arm. “IPCC Reports Proved Accurate.” You sit in the ghosted wharf, turned luxury apartment, flipping through heaps of IPCC reports on your Generation Post-Carbon (PC) smartphone; it is absolutely positively true -- temperatures have risen by 1.5 degrees Celsius since pre-industrial levels, 0.2 degrees per decade as predicted. The use of “likely” has been redacted to “has in fact.” The cryosphere has in fact all but melted. The Earth has in fact become a heat island, in spite of every effort for economies to transition from carbon-intensive fuel sources. London has surrendered its attempt at installing living roofs, instead opting for cool roofs aimed at reflecting 90% of sunlight and alleviating the sweltering interiors of London’s ill adapted Victorian homes. HVAC systems hang over brick silhouettes like the scandent weeds of a post-carbon reality. The United Lagoon Kingdom has constructed levees, dams, barriers in an island-wide network of defense. The Game is played, over and over again. One would lower, another would lift in a Game of Pick Up Sticks whose objective is to add or subtract boundaries without disturbing the operations of the Capital. The Second Thames barrier lowers, initiating a chain reaction, whereby levees along the Thames Embankment rise to contain the incoming surge from the North Sea. Concrete bathtubs emerge from the riverbed, rising forty feet in a sea of high-rise storage tanks. The water still spills. Only elsewhere—along the Mississippi River from Davenport, Iowa to New Orleans, Louisiana; along the Java Sea in Jakarta, Indonesia; along the Ganges Delta in Bangladesh. (20) 51°30’12.8”N 0°04’21.7”W (21) “IPPCC’s mitigation targets assume that profits from fossil capitalism will be recycled into green technology rather than penthouse suites in soaring skyscrapers.” (119, Mike Davis) (22) Positivism Auguste Comte See Oreskes, Naomi, and Erik M. Conway. 2014. The Collapse of Western Civilization: A View from the Future. Columbia University Press. (23) See IPCC. 2018. Global Warming of 1.5° C. The IPCC was established in 1988 (24) Glaciers, ice sheets, sea ice and permafrost (24) Design for London. 2008. “Living Roofs and Walls Technical Report: Supporting London Plan Policy.” London. (24) “Deadly flooding from heavy rains and snow melt continued to plague areas from Michigan to the South on Saturday. The Mississippi River ticked above levels reached in the historic 1993 flood in Davenport, Iowa, making it the highest level there in 157 years.” 013 014
capital of capital blackfriers railway bridge london bridge walworth london bridge st. saviours estate bermondsey tower bridge river thames “A stranger, standing on one of the wooden bridges thrown across this ditch in Mill Street, will see the inhabitants of the houses on either side lowering, from their back doors and windows, buckets, pails, and domestic utensils in which to haul the water up; and when his eye is turned from these operations to the houses themselves, his utmost astonishment will be excited by the scene before him. Crazy wooden galleries, common to the backs of half-a-dozen houses, with holes from whence to look on the slime beneath; windows, broken and patched, with poles thrust out on which to dry the linen that is never there; rooms so small, so filthy, so confined, that the air would seem too tainted even for the dirt and squalor which they shelter; wooden chambers thrusting themselves out above the mud, and threatening to fall into it, as some of them have done; dirt-besmeared walls and decaying foundations—all these ornament the banks of Folly Ditch.” — Charles Dickens 25 001 OLIVER LANDS at the intersection of Jacob Street and Georges Row, just off of Bermondsey Wall. 26 He crosses the footbridge over Georges Row onto Jacob Street; midway through, he glances upon the still water beneath his feet, which looks like a rare marble stone of algae and surface run off. Jacob Street is lined in cobble stone, barely visible beneath a hefty layer of dirt. Oliver lowers himself to the ground, crouching over the dirt in an attempt to decipher the street’s horizon. The subsurface water is causing the street to settle unevenly, turning the street into an ever- shifting seabed. Oliver hops along the street, turning the cobble stone islands into a game of hotchpotch. He turns left onto Mill Street, 27 crossing over a centaur—half bridge, half street. The canal running parallel to Mill Street is being buried, in part by the demolition of the adjacent wooden galleries, whose rotten wood dissolves nearly instantaneously in the viscous substance, adding onto London’s clays. He turns right onto Thornton Street; 28 glancing up at the fifty-foot wharves to his right, he sees windowless silhouettes, animated by the indiscriminate voices of hundreds of men. He pauses at the foot of St. Saviour’s Dock, 29 where the low skies spill into the city following the mud-lined path of the tributary. He turns right onto Shad Thames. 30 The narrow alleyway is filled with wooden crates, which spill over from the adjacent wharves. Laborers toss burlap sacks of goods across the alley. Oliver runs beneath their arched throws and turns onto the stretch of Shad Thames that runs parallel to the River Thames. A carriage of goods nearly runs over his tiny body, barely visible in the cloud of black dust that fills the air. Quickly, he turns onto Curlew Street 31 and finds refuge at Butler’s Wharf Pier. 32 (26) 51°30’03.0”N 0°04’07.9”W (27) 51°30’04.4”N 0°04’16.5”W (28) 51°30’00.8”N 0°04’22.4”W (29) 51°30’01.6”N 0°04’25.1”W (30) 51°30’02.5”N 0°04’25.5”W (31) 51°30’12.0”N 0°04’22.9”W (32) 51°30’12.8”N 0°04’21.7”W london’s geology, mylne, r.w. 1858 https://www.crouchrarebooks.com/maps/view/mylnegeological-map-of-london Legends, Symbols Locations where water from the Thames becomes a valuable resource, as a transporter of goods, as a component in production, as a vessel for the treatment of goods. wharf factory tannery 002 OLIVER SITS in the corner, observing like an invisible presence on the shores of Bermondsey. A map sits atop a beat-up stool, anchored by a pair of charred logs, its edges fluttering in the wind. Hands reach over hands, drawing, smearing, marking, hatching. Heavy charcoal lines populate the would-be-white space in a seemingly illegible network. A bell rings once, then twice, signaling the 13:00 o’clock arrival time of the next ship. Water, the connective tissue of planet Earth, is organized via the logic of capital as an artery of a global network of exchange. Time is money; so, the 015 016
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Page 7: preface “Creative agents advance
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Page 13 and 14: erosive potentialities “I am not
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2019_Thesis Book: Maria Diavolova

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