ABSTRACT
Conceived by artist Sophie Mellor, Urban Retreat was an interdisciplinary art project involving a series of commissions and events that reflected on the use and value of the marginal landscapes of Barrow-in-Furness in Cumbria in northern England. For Mellor, the indeterminacy of Barrow's marginal landscape was considered a state of potential, its lack of fixed definition enabling it to operate in manifold ways. Yet, her proposal for Urban Retreat also identified the potential anxiety and mistrust with which marginal places are habitually considered stating that, 'seemingly with no obvious purpose or design, wastelands can cause uncertainty and unease'. Laura Oldfield Ford's 'drift' through Barrow's wastelands encouraged a different speed of navigation to the habitual purpose of normative walking routines, required a different kind of attention. Drifting involves a mode of attention that lags behind the trajectory of more purposeful action, where other knowledge(s) and meanings become revealed in the slipstream of intention, in its shadows and asides.
