Drift: The Hammersmith and City Line

Penguin Lines – Celebrate 150 years of the London Underground

by Philippe Parreno

Artist and filmmaker, Philippe Parreno, who created the documentary, Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait, takes us in Drift on a unique voyage through London - a journey without the typical purposes of a journey, an artistic, psychogeographical path - part of a series of twelve books tied to the twelve lines of the London Underground.

'This is my rather steam punk proposal: A time machine. While you read this book you will go back in time. It takes an hour to read the book and it takes an hour to reach Barking station from Hammersmith station. This is an hour in 21 years.' So begins Philippe Parreno, running in film clips from Marilyn to Gremlins, Philip K. Dick to Jurassic Park, exploring as he goes the meaning of time, of consciousness, of art and creation. The result is an argument, an essay, a psychogeography, a manifesto.

Genres: London, Art, London Underground

112 pages, Paperback

First published March 7, 2013

Reviews

[Owen Hatherley · Rating 2 out of 5]

Tedious illustrative whimsy, appropriately by someone who on the back cover lists his favoured mode of transport not as tube, but as 'taxi'.

[Lou Robinson · Rating 1 out of 5]

A load of pencil drawings that I just don't get. Maybe it's only me....but a definite "I did not like it". Only bought to complete the set of tube books.

[Darryl · Rating 1 out of 5]

Although the Hammersmith & City Line was officially named in 1990, the origins of this line go back to 1864, the year after subway service began in London. In that year the Metropolitan Railway extended the Paddington to Farringdon service westward to Hammersmith. In later years the line was extended eastward, reaching its current terminus at Barking in 1902. The line shares stations with District, Circle and Metropolitan Line trains, which run just under the street surface throughout much of its route, unlike the deeper tube lines such as the Bakerloo, Piccadilly and Victoria Lines. The Hammersmith & City Line formed part of the Metropolitan Line until 1990, when it acquired its current name.

Here's a photo of the "new" Hammersmith station, built in 1868 to replace the original 1864 station:



The Hammersmith & City and the Metropolitan Lines are now served by the newest London Underground trains, the S stock, which are the first fully air conditioned lines to operate in the system.



French artist and filmmaker Philippe Parreno was given the task of writing a book about the Hammersmith & City Line for Penguin's Underground series, which celebrates the 150th anniversary of the London Underground in 2013. His contribution is a collection of crudely drawn images, such as the one that appears on the cover of this book, which consists of animals, insects, people and buildings, but no trains or stations, which seem to have no connection to one another and nothing to do with the Underground in general or this line in particular. The only text is found on the cover and on one interior image at the beginning of the book. I have absolutely no idea what Parreno was trying to do here, and, more importantly, I don't understand why Penguin would have published this piece of rubbish as a book or paid Parreno to create it. A six year old child of average talent could have created a more meaningful work than this one, and would have been far cheaper to employ than Monsieur Parreno (and why was a Frenchman hired to write a book about the London Underground?). I feel sorry for anyone who bought this book without looking through it first, and those who paid more than five pence for it should be given an immediate refund.

[Abeer Abdullah · Rating 4 out of 5]

I feel sort of bad adding a book to my reading list that doesn't even have any words in it lol. But this was beautiful and expressive and a little scary kind of like the metro and I used it as a notebook to write poetry in and the result was beautiful and I would like to get recommendations on similar books.

[Emily · Rating 1 out of 5]

Listen. I don’t even know what that was. And how it counts as me having “read” this book. Sorry to the Hammersmith & City line that this was what you got for your book in this London Underground 150 series.

[Sam Still Reading · Rating 1 out of 5]

I’ve nearly finished my journey through the Penguin Lines series, which has had some hits and misses. Unfortunately, Drift is a miss for me. While a good idea, the lack of words just didn’t work for me.

So what does Drift contain? It’s 100% pictures, with Parreno describing it as ‘an attempt to produce a psycho-geographical map of a subway line’. I’m not familiar with the Hammersmith & City line, but I don’t think there are any dinosaurs or aeroplanes in it (unless they are toys). I ‘read’ this book a few times to see if I could ‘get’ it, but I just didn’t. It doesn’t really work as a flip book nor as trying to imagine the pictures fitting in with a Tube journey (except in that some bit are very dark). The drawings are well done. Ultimately it was a disappointment – I appreciate the risks taken in this series, but this didn’t really pay off for me. I do like the picture of the book with mushrooms growing in it though.

http://samstillreading.wordpress.com

[James · Rating 1 out of 5]

It would be easy to dismiss this as a few doodles, but I don't know what story was being told or what point was being made, so it just seemed to be a few doodles. Some people must actually have paid a fiver for this.

[Victoria · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like the sketches but I don't really understand it!

[Connaire Demain · Rating 2 out of 5]

would be lying if I quite understand the concept behind his idea. the drawings are nice, but there is something strange