This is a stop-motion video taken with over 4000 images. I manually clicked the shutter with the exposure lock button and manual focus engaged ensuring photos without focus lag or exposure lag. Once captured I composed the video on my computer where I added sound effects (after-market, not my own recordings). Make sure that you have the sound on as it is important for the video itself.

This project was shown at Linear House Gallery in London, UK with the Crossing Lines group that runs out of the CUCR (Centre for Urban and Community Research) at Goldsmiths College, University of London. The exhibition Elephant in a Room ran for one month in 2011.

As a foreigner I don’t know much about The Elephant and Castle or its history. To me it is a hub. A place where planes, trains, the underground, cars, buses, bikes, and people all travel through. There is no permanence in The Elephant. It is a place in constant flux. This temporary-ness lends to a medley of comings and goings—a cacophony of movement and sound.

As The Elephant grows and changes it decays more and more as it is left in a space of ceaseless transition. Those that live there have roots that exist to hold them there, but utilize other routes to transpose their ways to other localities for work and pleasure. They try to escape from The Elephant and Castle, but are held there in transitory space as they themselves become more and more transitory.

Moving through The Elephant you become accustomed to its sounds, its sights, its tastes, its smells, its feel. You grasp what it means to be part of The Elephant. However, when you feel as though you understand the rhythm of The Elephant, know the heartbeat of The Castle, it surprises you and annihilates your concept of it: your experience changes. You become just another cog. You begin again in the spaces in between. You can never stay at The Elephant. You can only ever move Through or temporarily be In or At The Elephant and Castle.