Considering the successive iterations of the fence surrounding the London
2012 Olympic site in Stratford, east London, I demonstrate that during the
five periods of enclosure considered, these boundaries have highlighted the
London Games’ contested past, present, and future. An examination of
the material and discursive constructions of each of these boundaries shows
the Janus-faced nature of their relationship to the wider
‘mega-event’. I conclude that though the purpose of such
enclosures may initially seem obvious, in actuality they, as parts of a
wider assemblage, can act unpredictably both to support and challenge the
Olympic brand and its existence in this part of east London.
Introduction
In the computer-generated visions of the 2012 Olympic Park in Stratford (east London)
created prior to the Games, something crucial was missing: any sign of its vast
security infrastructure – no cameras, no police, and no fences of any
kind.1 The Games’ construction was
overseen by the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) who were careful to present a
particular view of the project, one that relied upon an uncontested representational
denial of certain elements and reinforcement of symbols of officially sanctioned
entertainment, order, and corporate sponsorship (Marrero-Guillamón 2012: 134). The crowd in these images do not
throw bottles, no missiles lurk upon neighbouring flats, and the police snipers on
the roof of the Holiday Inn are absent.
In this paper I consider one material element of this ‘missing’
infrastructure: the fences that surrounded the Park. In identifying five
archaeological phases of the Park’s enclosure, I attempt to document each
period’s material-discursive constructions and ask: how did the fences’
presences and absences manifest an official ideological justification for the event
and, at the same time, how did they act to contest this ideology?
Background
Creswell (1996: 9) argues that ‘[…] value and meaning are not inherent in
any space or place […] they must be created, reproduced and defended from
heresy.’ Only in their transgression are such ‘normative
geographies’, based upon ideological formations, exposed; these geographies
inform power relations (Cresswell 1996:
8–10). Ideology is here taken to mean how human agents consider
certain ideas about the world to be normative and thus adapt their relations with
other agents, who may have their own different and contrasting assumptions (Eagleton 1991: 6–8). The existence of an
Olympic fence is informed by such ideological positions; it was built in support of
a particular interpretative structure (e.g. a need to be ‘safe and
secure’), yet this original ideology can be materially and/or discursively
challenged (graffiting the fence for example) as a result of a different ideological
belief.
Relatedly, aesthetic responses to a thing can act as a means of
naturalising or challenging the ideological position it is based around (Eagleton
1988: 330, 337). Particularly in its more sensory definition, aesthetics allows an
unpacking of the discourses that produce a particular ‘idea’ of the
Olympic site; for example, as an ahistorical, ‘safe and secure’, utopian
‘Park’, as opposed to a heterogeneous, historical, and contested
agglomeration of smaller locales (Moshenska 2010:
610). The Park is experienced differently by individuals who relate to
its materiality in varied ways: a former employee of a business demolished for the
Olympic Stadium might look in the contours of the site for a recognisable trace of
his employment, whilst a tourist standing in the same place might perceive a banal
concrete esplanade that barely registers consciously. Accordingly, the tangible and
intangible constructions of the boundaries and fences themselves are not the product
of some abstract social ‘system’, but part of a continually changing
network of relations between things, humans, and systems of knowledge (Latour 2005: 11) in which human agents are not
considered to have greater agency than other parts of an assemblage. I study the
materiality of the Olympic fences not just to make clear the complexity of these
relations, but also to reveal how the ‘things’ in this network can be
influenced by and influence discourse.
Another example of such a relationship is how the Olympic Park’s network of
pre-existing river channels influenced the security planning for the event. These
landscape features led to the siting of the main stadium on an inter-river area
described as an ‘island site’ (Gilmore
2011: 28–29) using water in lieu of internal fencing (Wainwright 2011). The rivers as agents are
implicated in the Games’ security discourse, its organisers using them as a
‘natural’ resource, much like people in the Neolithic constructed
enclosures incorporating natural features (Edmonds
1999: 87). Yet these waters are also unpredictable, and in addition to
their barrier-like quality, have the ability to disrupt the Park and its inhabitants
through flooding or as a means of access for individuals blocked by the land-based
fences. Clearly such material-discursive relations are extensive; the water was also
seen aesthetically as a means of beautifying the park in a discourse of the
‘greenest games ever’, yet it simultaneously carried chemical pollution
unleashed by the construction works and thus must be managed using complex
engineering and administrative structures to remain ‘clean’ (Marchant et al. 2013). With
these example relationships in mind, I now move on to how the Park’s
boundaries relate to the event as a whole.
In this paper, the 2012 Olympics are considered as a ‘mega-event’: an
event that is unusually large-scale, international, culturally ubiquitous, and with
a ‘dramatic character’ (Roche 2000:
1–2). Sporting mega-events are mediated to global audiences of
hundreds of millions (Hamilton 2012) and are
highly politicised, often used to increase the visibility of a nation-state’s
‘brand’ as well providing opportunities for those who criticise or
oppose said nation-states to express their dissatisfaction (Gold & Gold 2005: 140). However we must remember that
though the ‘circus’ of such events moves around the world, we cannot
ignore the existing local conditions they are ‘laminated’ onto (Coaffee et al. 2011). Taking
Olympic security as an example, the Beijing Games (2008) were held against a
background of intolerance to protest, and thus radically differed from Barcelona
(1992), a democracy with on-going sub-nationalist tensions (Fussey et al. 2011: 48–49). These events
are never apolitical and are grounded in tension between the
idealised global event and the local conditions of their host
site, hence both their simultaneous appeal and ability to spark controversy.
All mega-events have some form of bounded-enclosure as a crowd-control and security
measure, but I contend that the Olympic barriers have multiple, complex functions.
Laura McAtackney (2011) has demonstrated how
Belfast’s ‘peace walls’ can operate as agents beyond their
purported necessity to prevent conflict in Northern Ireland, instead actualising
segregation and continued conflict through their very presence. London 2012’s
walls similarly operate at a variety of contested levels, both for and against the
mega-event, as I will demonstrate below.
Whilst accounts of London 2012’s security apparatus are invaluable for
deconstructing the discourses of ‘safety and security’ surrounding the
event (for example, Coaffee et al.
2011), they rarely consider the ideological and aesthetic impacts of the
material presence of the fences and of their absence after removal. The lack of
academic focus on their materiality serves to obscure questions about the nature of
the project and the way barriers operate more generally (McAtackney 2011: 81).
Klassen (2012) has demonstrated how the
official performance of the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics was challenged by
artists, who drew attention to the suspension of everyday ‘normality’
and the contradictions between the official rhetoric of inclusivity versus the
extreme security measures in the city. I seek to emulate such an approach to explore
the contested nature of the 2012 Park and how its enclosures both challenge and
support the Games project. Understandably, given the events of 7/7/2005 and previous
Olympic terrorist attacks, a rhetoric of threat and risk management permeates much
of the discourse surrounding 2012’s organisation; thus I also seek to
deconstruct the relationship between this and the materialisation of the fences
(Graham 2012; MacDonald & Hunter 2013).
Method and Chronology
This research is based upon site visits to the Park’s perimeter from 2011
onwards in a photographic survey, following a model similar to contemporary
archaeology projects like Schofield and Cocroft’s (2011) study of Cold War remnants in Berlin. The enclosures are
considered with reference to archival documents and my own experience of excavating
within the Olympic Park for several months in 2007–8. The archaeological
periodisation of the fences five phases I identify reiterates the continuous changes
of the 2012 project. Due to length restrictions, this paper focuses most extensively
on the first three phases.
Phase one considers the ‘prehistory’ of barriers, both anthropogenic and
‘natural’, that characterised the land that became the Olympic Park
prior to July 2007. Phase two concerns the installation and existence of a blue
wooden hoarding around the Park during initial construction by the ODA in July 2007,
most often called ‘the blue fence’. Phase three considers the steel
Olympic Perimeter Fence (OPF), installed as a security measure to protect the final
stages of construction from late 2009 onwards until the end of the Games in
September 2012. Phase four is the present phase of the Park and covers the
continuing presence and dismantling of the OPF, while phase five considers the
future boundaries of the Park.
In all of the phases, several overlapping themes emerge based on the presence or
absence of enclosures, with absence considered an equally valid
‘material phenomenon’ as presence (Moshenska 2012: 124). In particular, I consider
the location and accessibility of the fences rather like pre-historians have for
sites with obvious boundaries in Britain and Europe (for example, Edmonds 1999). Who gets inside or stays
outside? What areas were enclosed and why? Similarly, the fences’
temporality/lifespans must be related to their material existence. Why do some parts
of the fences linger? How are they modified or changed? With this in mind I now turn
to the ‘prehistory’ of the Olympic Park.
Phase One: Prehistory
The area that is now the Olympic Park once accommodated industry, housing, churches,
allotments, and rail depots, amongst many other things. To the ODA it seems to have
been considered a tabula rasa, though very little of it lay empty
(Davis 2009; 2012: 190). By calling this ‘prehistory’, I too
risk rendering the area devoid of any significance prior to the mega-event. This is
not my intention: I deem the term appropriate given that the area was rapidly and
irrevocably altered with the phase two ‘blue fence’ enclosure. I will
now examine the pre-existing divisions and boundaries characterising the area before
the erection of the blue fence in 2007 to determine how these influenced later
enclosures.
Stratford (fig. 1) is located in the Lower Lea
Valley, a longstanding area of agriculture and industry from the early medieval
period onwards. This was part of London’ pre-modern hinterland; the Lea
provided transport for commodities and acted as a boundary between the old counties
of Middlesex and Essex (Glennie 1988: 14). In
the parish of West Ham and its environs (the site of the Olympic Park), the river
was divided into channels, which became known as the ‘Bow Back Rivers’,
in an attempt to drain parts of Hackney Marsh, beginning in the 9th
century AD (Powell 1973: 57).
From the 18th century onwards, east London was one of Britain’s
largest industrial areas; with the Industrial Revolution, businesses in West Ham
benefited from cheap coal conveyed by river-barges and, by the mid-19th
century, the railways (Clifford 2008: 133;
Marriott 1987: 130–140). Huge rail
yards emerged with the establishment of the Eastern Counties Railway works in the
1840s, and the North London line built in 1854, still cuts through the middle of the
Park as the London Overground (Lewis 1999:
108–112). This area also housed many noxious industries such as
chemical manufacturers, which have left contamination by heavy metals, asbestos, and
hydrocarbons. This toxic legacy was revealed with the Olympic reshaping of the
land.
One of the most obvious features of the site today is the Northern Outfall Sewer
embankment running along the south-western edge of the area completed in 1863, to
carry waste from north London to Abbey Mills Pumping Station (Upson et al. 2012: 157–158; fig. 2). This embankment is now topped by a public
path known as ‘The Greenway’, built by Newham Council in the 1980s
(Cherry 2009: 26), and has acted as a
useful fixed viewpoint over the transformations in the area.
Pipes of the Northern Outfall Sewer cross the Lea Navigation. Photograph: J.
Gardner.
The north of the area has been enclosed by the A12 dual-carriageway (East Cross
Route; fig. 3) since 1973 (TMA n.d.); to the south and east, the train
tracks to Cambridgeshire and Essex form another boundary. More recently the area has
been split north and south by the buried Stratford International Station
‘box’ in the centre of the now-Olympic Park completed in 2007, though
under construction since before the Olympic bid was won (HS1 2013). Another major element of infrastructure that divided
the area were over fifty electricity pylons (with power-lines buried during 2007 in
advance of the Olympics). These were significant local landmarks, snaking
north-south across the site (Davies 2012;
Murphy n.d.). This iconic dual line of
cables features heavily in both official regeneration literature and art projects
conducted prior to the Olympic changes (for example, Campkin 2012).
The A12 Crosses the Lea from Hackney Wick. Photograph: J. Gardner.
Overall, the Back Rivers, the railways, the Sewer/Greenway, pylons, and roads all
served to spatially divide this area in the past. The landscape that was present
prior to the Olympics was diverse and characterised by these features, forming a
complex canton-like landscape of infrastructure, businesses, and leisure space
(Davis 2009; 2012). Individually, most of these structures or spaces also
had their own enclosures: fragments of an old chain-link fence lingers today where a
tree has grown around it, just outside the OPF but also spattered with Olympic
blue-fence paint (fig. 4).
A palimpsest of fences: a chain-link fence is embedded in a tree spattered
with Olympic blue fence paint, with the OPF in the background. Photograph by
J. Gardner.
This was the supposed empty land that the Olympics were to obliterate (Campkin 2012). The authorities saw these
barriers as one of the main reasons the area required ‘regeneration’
(Owens 2012: 218–219). These
pre-existing divisions paradoxically made the site attractive for development, yet
also meant it could be easily secured for the Games. The old boundaries created the
wrong kind of enclaves: allotments, scrap dealers, travellers’ camps; things
that were undesirable to the new project but had flourished here precisely because
of the land’s undesirability. Only with a budget of billions could this
informal, disordered, and contaminated landscape be reordered to create a
homogeneous ‘sportspace’ (Edensor
et al. 2008: 290). Such huge resources, along with
the nebulous ideological justification of ‘the public good’, meant
legislative weapons like compulsory purchase orders could be deployed to remove the
old places (for example, Hatcher 2012:
197–198), enforced materially by eviction notices, demolition
crews, and, ultimately, fences.
Phase Two: The Blue Fence
The first Olympic fence was erected in the summer of 2007 as a ‘health and
safety’ measure to allow demolition and soil-decontamination to proceed (Beckett 2007). This fence’s appearance
marked the beginning of the transformation of the area, as Hilary Powell (2009: 84) noted:
The fence is a literal barrier, but the largest border
is the future park itself, which in its making,
inevitably closes down route ways and forms a divide between the
London boroughs that surround its edges.
The fence was 3m tall, 18km (11.2 miles) long, nailed into posts set in concrete
(Beckett 2007) with nearby trees and lamp
posts ‘boxed-in’ to prevent climbing (Cornford 2008): a seemingly unremarkable structure and ostensibly just a
legal requirement to protect passers-by from construction (H.M. Government 1980).
Today it is almost completely gone. Only in places do fragments linger, surrounding
infrastructure for the Park’s ‘legacy’ period, or forgotten under
bridges (fig. 5). The fence used so much wood
that if laid flat, it would have created a surface area of 56.6km2 (Andrich 2011). For so long this was the only
physical sign of the London Olympics: ‘a vivid blue frontier’ (Sinclair 2008), all that could be seen from
outside, other than mountains of demolition rubble. Its absence now is striking.
A remnant of the blue fence in 2013 under the London Overground. Photograph:
J. Gardner.
Internally, the Park’s construction was divided into Planning Delivery Zones
(PDZs), each overseen by many consultants and sub-contractors, with the North and
South Park divided by checkpoints. Working inside was confusing as landmarks were
demolished and new geographies emerged. The blue fence obscured this protean terrain
and allowed the tumult that attacked the earth, rivers, and buildings of the area to
be hidden from the outside. Unlike the OPF, this fence was opaque and there were no
(official) viewing windows. The site was not yet ready to be seen; only a privileged
few could see the whole thing from a viewing gallery atop the decaying Holden Point
tower in Stratford (Richardson 2012: 69).
Frequently, archaeological interpretations are made about the scopic power-relations
that sites of ritual importance employ; the cursus at Stonehenge, for example,
blocked a clear view of the rituals taking place to those outside (Pearson et al. 2006). The ODA
similarly did not want people to see - this was vividly illustrated by the numerous
arrests and harassment of photographers and others outside the barrier during its
existence (for example, Sinclair 2009: 552;
Marrero-Guillamón 2012).
The overriding demand of the project was for it to be finished on time for the Games,
but this and the argument for ‘safety’ would appear to belie an almost
colonial ideology by the ODA. Not only were people removed and access restricted,
but most were not even permitted to see how tax billions were being spent, except in
carefully drip-fed press releases (for example, ODA
2007). This limitation facilitated a re-ordered landscape to emerge
butterfly-like after seven years inside an unsightly pupa. This scopic-denial was no
accident; the magic and thus legitimacy of the project would have arguably been
challenged if all could have watched the demolition of allotments, homes or
churches, or the long-buried contaminated soil being removed by contractors in
protective suits. The fence not only protected the site and (supposedly) passers-by
from its dust and machinery, but in its materiality it also enclosed a utopian
vision whose existence and necessity, like some ancient ritual, was not to be
questioned.
In contrast to the secrecy surrounding the inside of the Olympic Park, were the CGI
images of venues, sports, and future surroundings, along with corporate
sponsors’ logos on the blue fence’s exterior. Some of these display
panels can still be seen on Marshgate Lane in the south of the site
(fig. 6). Many of these proclaimed
‘DEMOLISH. DIG. DESIGN.’: the battle-cry of the ODA’s campaign
superimposed on a ‘constant procession of happy, hygienic images of the
future’, in contrast to the toxic hills behind and twitchy security guards
(Marrero-Guillamón & Powell 2012:
14).
Promotional panels extant on the blue fence at Marshgate Lane. Photo: J.
Gardner.
The fence’s material presence and these official visions’ denial of the
old places were strongly challenged by its relationships with artists, protesters
and academics. Gesche Würfel’s photographs, for example, highlight the
blue fence’s banal absurdity (fig. 7) yet
capture its impermeability and impact on its surroundings (Knowles et al. 2009: 74–75).
Jean-François Prost acquired a can of the blue ‘All Aboard’ paint
left behind by teams of painters who kept the fence graffiti-free (Beckett 2007), and after getting it matched at a
hardware store, painted a multitude of other blue objects. He then left these around
the perimeter to question the fence’s existence, testing if maintenance teams
would remove them (Powell 2009: 85; Prost n.d.; fig. 8). The Office for Subversive Architecture/Blueprint Magazine installed
a viewing platform of six steps made from plywood and painted blue which went
unnoticed by the authorities for 60 hours in June 2008 in protest at the
invisibility of the site2, and innumerable
graffiti artists temporarily modified the fence.
Although these actions had little lasting effect on the work inside, they demonstrate
anger about how this area was appropriated for the mega-event and the fact that
people were generally kept in the dark about what was happening inside. This anger
seems particularly poignant if we note that at the same time as these actions, local
people were continually complaining about dust drifting out over
the blue fence, despite the fact that radioactive soil (previously thought to be
clean) was being excavated and spread around the site, thus exposing the
fence’s ineffectiveness as a ‘health and safety’ measure (Cheyne 2008; Wells 2010).
This episode brings us onto another important point about the barrier: control of
access. Barriers such as this are not particularly effective at keeping people out -
they can be climbed over easily (Cornford
2012). The agency of the fence was thus also manifested in its
psychological impact of implementing force over the outside environment. For
example, locals walked miles out of their way around it (Prost n.d.). Michalski (2007:
202, 209) notes that things like signs, fences, or emergency exits, as
non-human agents ‘reach beyond and beneath intellectual cognition to secure
the acquiescence of individuals.’ In other words, at a mostly unnoticed level
these things influence our behaviour and help foster compliance to both their
presence and the disciplinary regime on whose behalf they act. However, we should be
wary of accepting this as a regulatory force imposing an ideology that we respect
unquestioningly. The very fact I am writing this article shows that the fence was
not only a barrier but also a site of critique. Furthermore, it simultaneously
acted, for example, as an escape route for feral cats marooned in the Park (Hammond
2007), a place of work for fence-painters, and an abstract line on a map that
planners idealised. These diverse agential relations with the fence demonstrate that
although it did sometimes act as its creators intended, its relationship with other
agents was much more nuanced.
Within the Park, as we archaeologists moved around inside the blue fence, we would
see internal zones fenced off with written warnings against access, usually due to
high levels of contamination or Japanese Knotweed.3 These barriers, like those outside, also manifested a complexity of
relations that generally seemed to go unnoticed at the time. Contamination was dealt
with according to particular systems of knowledge which in turn influenced decisions
and other agents. For example, I avoided certain areas inside even if they were not
marked as contaminated (though mindful of the other parts of the assemblage: safety
briefings, protective equipment) due to fear of particular chemicals (mercury,
arsenic) and their ability to cause illness. Conversely, specialist workers sought
out these places, probing the soil to earn wages and deploying diagnostic chemical
tests strongly attracted to certain molecules and not others.
Arguably, the organisers’ use of enclosure represents a physical and
psychological need to counter a fear of the unknown, similar to my own (Fussey et al. 2012: 265).
However, their fears were, in the main, not grounded in the spaces of the Olympic
Park and its toxic subterranean ‘legacy’, but rather in the outside, a
place of unquantifiable threats, given the local area’s deprivation and nearby
high-profile terrorist cases (BBC News 2012).
This need to secure the site was not only to protect those inside but the Olympic
‘brand’ itself (Fussey et
al. 2012: 278). This came to an apogee with the third phase
of the fence, to which I now turn.
Phase Three: The OPF
Following the dismantling of the blue fence beginning in late 2008, it was replaced
with a high-security, welded-mesh barrier, called the Olympic Perimeter Fence (Batsworth 2008; fig. 9 and 10). This fence,
mostly still extant at the time of writing (May 2013), is 5m high (including, in
most areas, a 5000 volt 1.2m high electric-pulse topping) and roughly follows the
18km course of the blue fence (fig. 1). It is
composed of welded-mesh panels attached to posts with 7m-high CCTV posts at regular
intervals, equipped with cameras, infrared and high-power white lights, and is based
upon Home Office-accredited designs (ODA 2008:
28). The fence was manufactured and installed by Zaun (DCMS 2012) and appears to be a model called
‘High-Sec® Super’, their most secure product (Zaun 2012: 20).
The OPF, looking south-east. Photo: J. Gardner
The OPF’s watery manifestation at the confluence of the Lea and Lea
Navigation. Photo: J. Gardner.
Here I will consider the OPF’s existence during the period prior to and during
the Olympic/Paralympic Games. The fence is implicated in wider discourses of
security, threat, and inequality in its material presence and relationships with
other parts of the Games’ assemblage. Its existence highlights a variety of
interlinked and contested narratives based on a sense of
‘inside/outside’, accessibility, and permanence/impermanence.
Significantly, it differs from the previous barrier in its semi-transparency and its
resilience to subversion.
Firstly, let us turn to accessibility and the delineation of the inside and outside
of the Park and the project more widely. The OPF’s necessity is justified in
its planning application (ODA 2008: 28) with
a rhetoric based on the fear of crime and the notion of constant threat, linked to
police/military planning doctrine and the ‘Secure by Design’ principle
(Coaffee et al. 2011).
Such doctrine emphasises that security of certain environments must be
‘built-in’ to prevent crimes, no matter how unlikely; it often treats
petty crime, social unrest, peaceful protest, and terrorism under the same umbrella
of threat.4 This can be seen as part of a wider
trend towards a ‘hardening’ of urban places first noted in the early 90s
(Davis 2006). In the OPF’s case, its official threat assessment tellingly
included protest and terrorism in the same sentence:
[…] it is a site of particular interest to people who would seek to
gain unauthorised entry, the Olympics is also a potential
target for protest and terrorism. (ODA 2008: 4)
This is also reflected in the Olympic Safety and Security Strategic Risk
Assessment produced by the Home Office (2011: 2) to analyse five major threats to the Games: terrorism; serious
and organised crime; domestic extremism; public disorder; and major accidents and
natural events. In this document protest is considered a form of ‘public
disorder’ and is connoted with ‘domestic extremism’ (2011: 5, ΒΆ
2). This assessment must be seen in relationship to widespread public belief in the
prevalence of crime, despite consistently falling recorded crime levels (Shaw 2013),
along with privatisation of formerly public space, and the rise of the
private-security industry, which stands to profit from this (Minton 2012; Graham 2012b: 448). The OPF materialises an
official need to keep the Park ‘secure’ and empty of all conceivable
‘threats’, both to the physical site and the 2012 brand (Houlihan & Giulianotti 2012: 703).
The stance against protest must also be seen as a result of the ‘Host City
Agreement’ that the 2012 organisers signed with the International Olympic
Committee (IOC) and the UK’s acceptance of the Olympic Charter, which demands
that the Games not be used for any kind of protest (IOC 2011: 91). Although relatively little protest took place prior to
the Games,5 one notable example involved
activists for victims of the Bosnian genocide. These activists chose to nominate the
‘ArcelorMittal Orbit’ tower in the Park as a
‘memorial-in-exile’ to the victims of ethnic cleansing at the site of an
iron-ore mine in Omarska (Republic Sprska, Bosnia).
Around 800 people were murdered at Omarska in 1992 with many buried in mass graves
and over 1000 still missing (Schuppli 2012).
ArcelorMittal bought the mine 12 years after the conflict and in building the Orbit,
as an official 2012 sponsor, provided steel from every continent it operated in,
including some made from Omarska ore, for the tower. ArcelorMittal has, after
initially being sympathetic to the survivors and relatives, denied regular access to
the Omarska site as a result of pressure from local Serbian ultra-nationalists,
citing ‘safety concerns’ (quoted in Fabian 2012). Thus, the activists felt that the Orbit could act as a
‘memorial-in-exile’ to the victims of these crimes, given the
steel’s tainted origin and their lack of access to the mine (Schuppli 2012).
Unsurprisingly, given its need to placate sponsors and maintain its obligations to
the IOC, the London Organising Committee for the Olympic Games (LOCOG) maintained a
deafening silence on the Omarska issue when the memorial was nominated, as well as
on their involvement with ArcelorMittal (who are also allegedly involved in
controversial practices elsewhere (Moushumi 2010)). This situation would appear to
contradict the universalistic and peaceful credo of Olympism (IOC 2011; Houlihan &
Giulianotti 2012: 715); however, clear parallels can be seen with other
Games. The myth of apolitical Olympism was exposed most recently with preparations
for the 2014 Sochi Winter Games, where venues are being built on the site of
genocide against Circassian ethnic minorities (No
Sochi 2013). It is unfortunate that the Orbit, like the memorial at
Omarska, is restricted and behind a high fence, also in the name of
‘safety’. Hopefully this situation will change when the Park
re-opens.
In relation to LOCOG’s silence, the OPF can be seen as a material embodiment of
the monolithic façade of the Olympic project and its general attempts to stifle
or ignore dissent to protect the brand. The belief that sport is apolitical and that
the outside world must not affect the inside is
both sustained by and necessitates the material existence of security fences, CCTV
systems, and missile launchers (Milmo 2012;
Cheyne 2013b). This is not to deny the
necessity of security as there are obvious risks to such a high-profile event,
particularly given the terrorist attack on the Israeli team at Munich 1972 and
bombing at Atlanta 1996. However, Boyle and Haggerty (2009) argue that as mega-events have become ever more spectacular, their
security measures have also become ever more spectacular, acting as a form of social
regulation that makes people ‘feel secure’ through displays of force
combined with well-calculated public relations (see also Price 2008: 2). The fence is not just a manifestation of the
threat of terrorism and commensurate desire to prevent an attack, but is a material
reinforcement of the importance of this threat’s existence in society; it is
an attempt to strengthen a belief that the ‘ends justify the means’, and
in its reassuring presence, encourages people to leave the motives and legitimacy of
the state and, crucially, the reasons for this threat unquestioned. However, the
other side of this is that the fence’s presence only reiterates the
threat’s supposed gravity; we are therefore made worried just
enough to submit to such measures by their mere existence.
Such levels of security often serve to displace attacks outside to non-venues with
less protection, as with Atlanta’s Centennial Park bombing by an individual
with an extremist anti-abortion stance in 1996 (Fussey et al. 2011: 50). Many security measures are
also necessary as a result of the host Olympic nation’s foreign policy (2011:
45): 2012’s preventative measures relating in large part to the UK’s
policies and military action in the Middle East and Northern Ireland.
A calculus of ‘lesser evil’ seems to have been employed by the 2012
Games’ security organisers (see Weizman 2011:
8–16). For example, placing Rapier missiles on the building
rooftops near to the Park meant, theoretically, that hijacked planes could be shot
down to avoid them hitting the venues. This deployment, as well as notionally acting
as a deterrent to would-be terrorists, is also reliant on a calculation of
acceptable collateral damage should the worst happen: i.e. the remnants of a plane
hit by Rapiers would fall somewhere in the London area. Security officials deemed
this acceptable, as the ‘lesser of two evils’ since fewer people would
die (and by implication, less damage would be done to the Olympic brand) in such a
crash than one at the main stadium (Corera
2012). It is outside the scope of this paper to address the full ethical
questions around this, but I contend that the OPF, as part of a wider security
assemblage, displaced threats outside the Park and was implicated in a value
judgement about the difference in importance of people inside and outside of the
Park.
The fence as an agent in the assemblage of London 2012 also acted as a control on
visibility: through its semi-transparency one could gaze at the festivities yet be
barred from entering. If you were inside, it was the ultimate limit for the Games
spectacle, a reminder of the outside world and the abnormality of the inside. Sorkin
(1992: 209–211) highlights how such
places allow an officially sanctioned ‘fun’ that is inherently
conservative; an illusion of freedom that only allows a certain level of release.
This utopia is a mirage, a supposed improvement on the outside that is actually a
hall of mirrors (Sorkin 1992: 26; Mitchell 1992: 299). This is not to deny its
reality (mirrors are, after all, ‘real’ things); however, just like the
outside, the spectacle is based upon mundane assemblages: sewers, bureaucrats,
electricity cables, and low-wage employees. I contend that the OPF’s presence
generally went unnoticed during the Games. Paradoxically, the organisers wanted the
focus to be on the inside, yet outside, prior to the event, police and security
forces hassled photographers who wanted to look through it (for example, Laurent 2012; Marrero-Guillamón 2012). During the Games, even this limited vision
was blocked with most adjacent paths sealed off (fig. 11).
The Lea Navigation towpath sealed off during the Games, August 2012.
Photograph: J. Gardner.
The OPF’s initial designation as a ‘crowd control barrier’ (Comerford 2012) is also telling: those inside
are explicitly in a place of control that they have paid to enter. Bennett (1995) describes the ‘exhibitionary
complex’ as a counterpart to Foucault’s panopticism that sees power
deployed not only through self-regulation based on perceived constant surveillance,
but additionally through instruction and displays of order in public spectacles
where everyone is permitted to be the (potentially) all-seeing warden. He argues the
likes of the Great Exhibition demonstrated:
[…] a [disciplinary] power made manifest not in its ability to
inflict pain but by its ability to organize and co-ordinate an order of
things and to produce a place for people in relation to that order.
(Bennett 1995:
67)
Although a Foucaultian architecture of panopticism clearly existed at the Olympics,
this incredible organised spectacle arguably performed a similar role to the
‘exhibitionary complex’ in its display of state power through organising
and controlling an assemblage of people, things, and knowledge on a vast scale. The
fence, as part of this ordering assemblage, not only bounds the spectacle but is
asked to reinforce a self-regulation that demands the ideology of the utopia be
taken at face-value, without questioning the historicity of the place and who is
situated outside the fence.
The OPF, despite its initially obvious purpose of ‘safety and security’,
was clearly a fulcrum for many different discourses around the project, and though
partly acting in the service of power, also exposes the limits of that power in its
versatility as a marker of protest and dissent that has repercussions beyond
Stratford. As I now turn to the end of its life, it becomes apparent that this
fence’s materiality was just the most obvious part of a wider act of enclosure
performed by the London 2012 project, and that this bounding will linger long past
its physical dismantling.
Phases Four and Five: Present and Future
Currently the OPF is being disassembled: the electric current for the fence was
turned off in October 2012 (Cheyne 2013a),
its wires are being removed (fig. 12), and in
places the whole fence has been cut down (fig. 13). In these places, temporary fencing has sprung up, with
vicious-looking ‘Ultra-Barb Razor Wire’ preventing entry to the
construction site (fig. 14). Many (though not
all) of the CCTV cameras and lights have also been cut down, suggesting
‘safety and security’ is no longer the main priority for the site but,
once again, merely ‘health and safety’ (V. Stonebridge pers. comm.
8/1/2013). Questions remain over how much of the fence will be left behind, with
some suggesting that even if mostly removed, its legacy may be another divided
landscape (Houlihan & Giulianotti
2012).
The removal of the OPF’s electric wires. Photograph: J. Gardner.
The OPF is replaced by temporary fencing. Photograph: J. Gardner.
‘Ultra-Barb’ warning sign on the temporary fencing. Photograph:
J. Gardner.
Athens retained its cripplingly expensive Games surveillance system (Samatas 2007) and Sydney kept Games-time
legislation criminalising protest and homelessness near the venues for years after
the event (Toohey & Taylor 2012). The
concern is that one of the OPF’s legacies will be the retention of London
2012’s even more aggressive security regime (Fussey et al. 2011: 32). For example, all of the
Park’s (and fences’) cameras are linked to police control centres in
Lambeth, Bow, and Hendon, suggesting London’s ‘newest park’ might
also be kept under the most surveillance. This is part of an overall strategy for
greater integration of surveillance in London, particularly in areas of high
deprivation like Newham, Hackney, and Tower Hamlets (Fussey & Coaffee 2012: 88–89). Will the Games and legacy
organisers’ commitment to sustainability include reusing its 900 cameras
elsewhere?
Given the East End’s infamy for crime and, more recently, suspected terrorists,
Fussey et al. (2011: 68)
speculate that developers in the Park will not be keen to build here without either
incorporating such infrastructure or building new barriers and cameras to entice
cautious would-be tenants. This is perhaps all the more important given recent
memories of the 2011 August riots. Internal divisions will also remain in the form
of rising bollards and ‘secure-by-design’ hard landscaping, with
contractors being sought as long ago as 2007 for a ‘security legacy’
(ODA quoted in Coaffee et al. 2011:
3322).
Additionally, the Park’s new housing runs the risk of acting as an unaffordable
series of gated barriers in the middle of East London, much like the
‘regenerated’ Docklands (Gardner 2011:
22–23). Of the promised 11,000 new homes, it seems few will be
affordable: the housing associations responsible for many of them will be permitted
to charge rents of up to 80% of London market rates even for ‘social
housing’ in one of the most deprived areas of the UK against a background of
housing benefit cuts (Cheyne 2013c; Minton 2012; LPP 2011).
A more positive element of the Park’s future will be the provision of new green
spaces and access to the Back Rivers, which will be traversed by new bridges in many
places. In the short term (while the Park lies undeveloped), once the fence is down,
the area will be easier to traverse than before the Olympics, given its unified
landscape and single ownership (OPLC 2012).
The legacy project also aims to integrate the surrounding ‘fringe’ areas
with new infrastructure (DFL 2013). Boris
Johnson argues that such surrounding neighbourhoods ‘[…] cannot feel
like they are on the edge, looking across at something new’: a laudable
sentiment given the disconnections I discussed regarding the OPF (quoted in DFL 2013: 4).
However, this positivity comes with caveats, as the post-Olympic Park (to be called
the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park) is to be privately managed and patrolled by
Balfour Beatty contractors (LLDC 2012). One
therefore wonders how ‘public’ this park really will be, and if, like
nearby Stratford City, it will in effect be a ‘private-public’ space
where activities such as rough sleeping, photography, and demonstrations are
prohibited (Minton 2009: 31–32).
The long-term future of the Park cannot be fully considered here; however two things
are clear. As the Legacy Corporation is clearly aware, this new park and its
eventual housing and businesses must be successfully integrated into an existing
area, not only aesthetically but also in terms of creating genuine opportunities and
accessibility to employment, housing, and public services (Tomlinson 2012). If this is to be a success, then several
fences must come down including the OPF, along with less tangible barriers such as
high rents, cuts to housing benefits and local services, and prejudices against
low-income communities (Barnes 2012). Only
then will this really be ‘everyone’s park’ (LLDC 2013).
Conclusion
In this consideration of the enclosures of London 2012, I hope to have demonstrated
that such barriers, like the project itself, are highly contested. Their ability as
agents in the wider assemblage of a mega-project to both support and undermine it
make clear that our relationship to fences and other boundaries is not as
self-evident as we might think.
With the Olympic fences we see a specialised attempt to deploy enclosure as a means
of protecting brands: the idealised city, nation, sponsors, and Olympic movement
itself. As both representatives and material enforcers of this discourse at London
2012, the fences at times did act on behalf of power and dominant ideology. Yet, the
project organisers’ desire to protect 2012’s legitimacy was directly
challenged by human action such as trespass, graffiti, and protest, as well as more
indirectly by the material constructions the ODA themselves deployed. For example,
the material presence of the OPF manifested (to some) an unnecessary and unwelcome
intrusion onto the life of the city and exposed an uneasy link between Stratford and
the foreign and domestic policies that are said to have necessitated its presence.
The deployment of the blue fence as a ‘health and safety’ measure also
exposed the complex nature of its agency; its material inability to control dust may
sadly re-materialise in the bodies of local people in years to come. The prehistory
of the site’s barriers was equally contested and complex: the beauty of its
rivers was appreciated, yet their ability to carry pollution was not; its
heterogeneous landscape was seen as limited and underdeveloped, yet allowed for a
diversity and complexity of relationships in the local area that the post-Olympic
Park may struggle to replicate.
The five rings of the Park uniquely raise questions not only about the legitimacy of
mega-events, and of the agency of boundaries, but also how enclosure as a wider
phenomenon might be said to structure wider power relations between human and
non-human, ideals and reality.
See http://tinyurl.com/2012CGIs for CGI images.
See http://www.dezeen.com/2008/08/12/point-of-view-by-office-for-subversive-architecture/
A plant whose roots can destroy concrete building foundations and was the scourge
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