[matilda] prees release for pretentiousartist.com

[worldwarfree at riseup.net]

Hello as the name http://pretentiousartist.com suggests, we do take
ourselves that serious and who knows if our life, demographics had not
been what they are if we had not published a zine called collectableanorak
here will not have been.. there are 3000 images, all work has been created
by 0742/armchair hippy from our love of Sheffield, a desire not to stick
to the tourist parts of this most punk city, going into places we should
not have been there we could have wished for a digital camera way back
when we began but we guess it was never meant to be photographed and even
though we have a camera we realise there is not always a need to take
images, neither share any point of info about what we have found.. of
course, there is always the temptation and for a city that is undergoing
such a vast rengeneration, we feel, that the past social history needs to
be documented.. that's what http://pretentiousartist.com is about and it
has been our very real desire to relocate all our work to here and now
this has been done, we hope we have reproduced the real feeling of
self-discovery

The navigation of http://pretentiousartist.com is like the navigation of
self-discovery we undertake in our Urban Exploration of Sheffield, the
very wonderful Bucolic parts we also find where Nature has reclaimed her
stolen earth.. we are working on further projects and our next aim is to
locate into an empty shop industrial unit and continue our work, we also
aim to apply for funding to buy more digital equipment to aid us in our
future projects. please read on..

We have been doing Urban Exploration well before it became trendy.. At the
start of the 201st century, Sheffield, like virtually all cities in the
UK, is awash with the ruins of long surpassed industrial fortresses,
relics of earlier epochs in the gallop of capitalist production, no match
for its modern day demonic velocities. Peppered, it is also, with
accidental memorials to long vanished communities, acts of unshakably
heroic rebellion, and of unspeakably horrific oppression, and human-made
structures almost entirely consumed and reclaimed by the flora and fauna
that has gradually clawed its way back from exile. A wander along the
Sheffield Canal, The 4 mile long Sheffield and Tinsley Canal was opened in
1814 to carry boats between the navigable River Don at Tinsley, and a new
basin close to the heart of Sheffield. During the Victorian period, a
number of improvements were made to the Don Navigation, with some new
locks and lock cuts constructed or through Attercliffe Where The 8 km long
Five Weirs Walk runs alongside the River Don in Sheffield, England. From
Lady's Bridge in Sheffield City Centre, it heads downstream, northwest,
over the Cobweb Bridge, through Attercliffe to Meadowhall.

As the name of the walk suggests, it passes five weirs. It is now possible
to continue the walk along the Don, under the Tinsley Viaduct, to
Rotherham. Along with certain parts of the Sheffield city centre may
reveal many such sites, empty buildings, lost archways, stone skulls set
in walls, doors that go nowhere, tunnels, odd bits of rusty metal that
seem to have no purpose, and outdoor escalators overgrown with moss like
an Aztec ruin in miniature.

We grow used to living in an environment where functionality holds sway
and in a city that is designed to fulfil the requirements of the free
market, never the desires of its inhabitants. However, if we are prepared
to search for them, there are countless places and spaces that have
slipped the net. They either lie entirely forgotten and neglected or they
are locked away from public view lest they fall into playful hands before
capital has the chance to recolonise them.

Urban Exploration is a subject dedicated to the subversion of space via
the exploration of local places in which capital is temporarily absent or
in which capitalist functionality is suffocated by the presence of the
marvellous. This was the intention for my own expeditions of these places
and to publish photographs and reports on their history, psycho-geography,
possible uses, potential for transformation, found objects, and anything
else i felt might feel is important and/or appropriate.

All work here is of course ANTI-COPYRIGHT all we ask is that if used you
credit http://pretentiousartist.com as your source for any work used.. all
html and CSS is hand coded some created just for here please feel to use,
i.e. nick, as that is what we often do.. here is hosted by lowtech.org (we
are in talks with other servers to move this work, this will not effect
your viewing) this work was in various locations and it has been moved
here. this work began september 2004 completed jan 2006. the archive is
not fully working and is likely to take more time, read the notes at the
blog or come back.

We must thank Matilda Social Centre Community for putting up with us while
doing this work, Lowtech for hosting our work over the years, our friends,
lovers and countless others for the love, time and understanding.