Methods of Investigating

Unit 01, Assignment o1

Contents:
1. Getting Started
2. Early Experiments
3. Sketching as Investigation
4. Changing Form
5. A Look into Camden Passage
6. Reflection

1. Getting Started

For this first assignment, I wanted newer methods of ‘seeing’ by trying mediums that are not natural to my practice. For eg, photography – and within it, newer ways of distributing subjects through colours and texture.

For my location, I chose ‘Camden Passage,’ a narrow walkway lined with boutique shops and cafes near Angel, Islington. As a newcomer to London at the time, I wanted to explore this location to understand the contrast in the picture-perfect fantasy of a city like London with its actual reality.

2. Early Experiments

Version 01

In the antique market was a display of china, saturated with antique glazed porcelain and opaque colour pigments. How do you sort what you’re seeing in a busy room? I tried photographing them with B&W filter only selectively choosing colour, and sorting them in primary colours.

Version 02

My next method was notetaking through sketching, but the first attempt felt a little
anxious, trying to fit in all of the scene.

Version 03

A final experiment involved looking at maps – to capture the essence of being in a new space, of feeling removed even if you are present in the space. It was to capture the alienation that I could tangibly feel on my skin, of being in a city “in another part of the world”, a thought that collided with my perception of space. This approach was more personal, but a little outside the scope of the assignment and it would bend the idea of observation of a smaller space.

3. Sketching as Investigation

In the first drafts, I used sketching and collage as a form of reportage illustration to create new landscapes of the area. Wandering through the area during the quiet and peak hours, deconstructing different elements that composed the space as a whole, it observed of how space was being used – who occupied it, for how long and why. For this iteration, I kept the sketches loose and fast to capture moments and motion – and focussed on a part of the length of the lane instead of the antique store itself.

I started to sketch the different objects that appeared before me, the different kinds of people and landmarks that created, one by one, the landscape.

4. Changing Form

To interpret the process of illustration as note-taking and getting carried away in it as an artform, I referenced the Theory of Dérive by Guy Debord (1956). The dérive is closely linked to psychogeography, which studies how environments—streets, architecture, layouts—affect human emotions and behavior. Instead of treating the city as a functional map, it is experienced emotionally and sensorially.

Distortion of the buildings to match different view points, from the side, from below, as they tower over me. Changing the joviality of the scene to a darker mood and more.

I continued iterating on the landscape by then changing form of my sketches by distorting them, looking at from more than one angle, changing perspective, mapping out the emotional journey of passing through Camden Passage. I recombined these various elements to reconstruct the landscape.

A collage bringing together the emotional, temporal and visual trajectory of what one sees while passing through the area.

5. A Look into Camden Passage

Built in the 1800s and revived in the 1960s as a notable market, Camden Passage now situates itself at the intersection of digestible antiquity and curated modernity. To examine it, I used layers of transparency to evoke the unchanging, aged edifices (buildings and cobblestone) against its modern, transient decorations (new storefronts, seating and signage) and occupants to point out which parts of its legacy the space chooses to preserve.

The layers of transparency create a palimpsest of Camden Passage, of history mixed with aspirational modernity, with a high-value consumer base, and a working class that quietly sustains the lane in the background.

I focused on its inhabitants (customers, onlookers, stallholders), mapping visible and invisible semantics present in their belongings, personal effects and conversations that drive a social and class divide by design.

To conclude my set of illustrations, I wanted a peek into the life of an every-day commuter of Camden Passage, someone who is backstage, running the show. Gemma, the kind proprietor of the cafe from where I sat and sketched, offered some insight.

For this interaction, I was inspired by the journalistic illustrations of Olivier Kugler, who ethnographically and in-situ created new information through illustration art.

It was evident through her answers that Camden Passage wasn’t just a location for her business, but also the image of it.

6. Reflection

Through this exercise, I was able to see Camden Passage allowing for both performance and refuge. Camden Passage offers an anachronistic urban fantasy – fueled by consumption and a bit of escapism.

Sketching it is tracing the line between authenticity and artifice, participation and critique. Illustration becomes the spatial enquiry of how design, taste, ideology all intertwines in the walls and surface of city that is new to experience and perpetually imagined.

For future developments:

To further develop this project, I am interested in collecting these illustrations in a publication form that will become a container for an illustrated journal of Camden Passage.

Futhermore, I would like to delve deeper into the anthropological detail of the project, conduct more interviews to create an even fairer journalistic image of the locality.