LINKED

Commissioned by the Museum of London and launched in 2003, LINKED is a radio installation installed on lampposts across 3 miles of East London. It is an artistic response to the creation of the M11 Link Rd in the 1990s which involved the demolition of over 400 building, including my own home, amid dramatic and passionate protest.

In this its 20th anniversary year, LINKED is being fully technically restored and made available to the public again as a free audio trail.

Along a route between Hackney Marshes and Redbridge Roundabout (adjacent to the Link Rd) analogue radio transmitters reveal the voices and stories of 60 people who once lived and worked in the area – families, road protestors, railway-workers, teachers, disco-goers, and artists from the substantial community living in houses destroyed by the road – among them Cornelia Parker, John Smith, Christine Binnie and Ian Bourn. Together the assembly of voices evokes a fascinating and moving cross-section of East London life.

LINKED has endured as perhaps the largest sonic installation and sculptural entity in London for 20 years, broadcasting over a million times the voices and stories of people who lived or worked in the area impacted by the road. 

CREDITS

LINKED was originally commissioned by the Museum of London in 2003 and produced by Mark Godber, Judith Knight and Gill Lloyd of Artsadmin. The making of LINKED was generously supported by Arts Council England (ACE), Heritage Lottery Fund, London Boroughs Grants Committee part of the Association of London Government, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and the London Boroughs of Redbridge and Waltham Forest. The restoration of LINKED (2022 – 2024) is supported by ACE.

With thanks to all the many interviewees, production teams and friends involved in developing LINKED and to the researchers who developed the interview content for LINKED (2003): Lucy Cash, Myra Heller, Dan Saul, Michael Sherin, Helen Statman. Original technical design by Simon Beer of Integrated Circles.

Production (2023/24): Steve Wald, Mike Harrison, Lydia Newman, Chris Warner, Lou Doyle, Nikki Tomlinson

More about LINKED

LINKED was intended to remain unseen, an almost secret layer of the geography of the communities where it transmits. It is in perpetual dialogue with the walker/listener who animates the work with their attention, finding their own narratives and in this sense, it is a social sculpture intended for a dynamic and changing area.

The transmitters broadcast on a single frequency and with a receiver the walker is able to navigate the neighbourhoods adjacent to the motorway, finding pools of sound that relate to the specific locations.

Over the passage of time this work about the politics and poetry of place has come to reflect issues relating to community, environment and protest and the impact of sudden, top-down developments on people and place.