Thank you for following Uncanny Landscapes. Here’s a new episode of the podcast; an interview with architect David Knight. As you know, this is a free project, both newsletter and podcast - nothing is paywalled. If you're able to support my work through a donation (aka paid subscription) - thank you!! I truly appreciate it. And if you're not, perhaps you can support by telling a friend (or two, or 100) about the Substack's free subscriptions and accompanying podcast.
The podcast (and all back ‘issues’) are also available at:
https://uncannylandscapes.podbean.com/
… and on most podcast platforms. I’ve got gigs performing The Great Satanic Swindle in Stockton and in Leeds, coming up in April 2025. Links are below. And as always, books, records and events ‘n’at here: https://linktr.ee/oldweirdalbion
Links:
David Knight’s practice DK-CM
Mutual Aid, Everyday Anarchism: Essays on Colin Ward book
Music is by Asher Levitas from his album Peripheral Lands
Justin Hopper presents The Great Satanic Swindle in STOCKTON and LEEDS
Obituary for Jonathan Easton, KC, Planning Silk
David Knight is a designer, writer and publisher based in London and originally from Shoreham-by-Sea in Sussex, on England’s South Coast. There he grew up near the last surviving buildings of a strange community called Bungalow Town, self-built houses on the shingle spit of a coastal beach, designed and made by the people who lived in them. Such ‘plotlands’ communities existed in many parts of the UK in the 20th century, and served as homes for refugees from industrial life, people who existed in a manner counter to the standard narrative, and those for whom escape from the cities represented a last gasp at freedom or stabilisation.
David Knight talks to us in this interview about plotlands and about Colin Ward, the great 20th-century British anarchist thinker and writer who championed these and other ‘everyday anarchist’ propositions - allotments, childcare possibilities and many other seemingly ‘apolitical’ urban ideas that might be seen as the great cause of anarchism. David also talks to us about planning law, and how these oft-overlooked decisions impact every aspect of our lives, even when we don’t notice.
You’ll also hear music by Asher Levitas from his new album Peripheral Lands - a beautiful meshing of musical composition and site-specific field recordings, inspired by Nan Shepherd. An East Londoner like Colin Ward (and, these days, David Knight) Levitas’ music helps to sonically imagine the breakdown in the dichotomy between ‘human’ and ‘nonhuman’.
I hope you enjoy this episode. The next one, an interview with the great writer of Eastern English landscapes Ken Worpole, will continue this conversation at least spiritually, not least because of Ken’s long friendship with Colin Ward. I hope you’ll return for that one soon.
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