Bits of Business

London (Patrick Keiller, 1994)

Tonight I managed to catch a screening of Robinson in Ruins - the final film in Patrick Keiller’s ‘cultural geography’ trilogy. The film is more resolutely political than the previous two works yet it retains their overall form: a discursive approach in which the voice-over and images often achieve a dialectical relationship. The film recapitulates Robinson’s episteme as stated by the narrator in London: ‘Robinson believed that if he looked at it hard enough he could cause the surface of the city to reveal to him the molecular basis of historical events and in this way he hoped to see into the future.’