Frieze Magazine asked critics and curators from around the world to choose what, and who, they felt to be the most significant shows and artists of 2006: Alex Farquharson wrote: “‘Social Cinema’ was as memorable as it was fugitive. Over three evenings they created outdoor cinemas that made for delicious juxtapositions between London landmarks – Berthold Lubetkin’s Finsbury Health Centre and Norman Foster’s Millennium Bridge – and films related to Modernist thinking on architecture, urbanism and social progress in postwar Britain.”

In 2006, as part of the London Architecture Biennale, we collaborated with artists Neil Cummings and Marysia Lewandowska on Social Cinema: a project consisting of a series of temporary cinemas, each installed for one night only into the existing urban fabric of the Biennale designated route between Exmouth Market and the Millennium Bridge.

Films about, set in, or commenting on London and its architecture were stunningly projected upon the city itself.  At each location, buildings became screens, steps seating, and owners of nearby buildings generously gave power, or loaned their houses as projection booths. The architectural fabric of the temporary cinemas was improvisory, playful and subtle; pallets ‘borrowed’ from a Smithfield Market made temporary bleachers, plastic crates from local pubs and restaurants became seating, neighbours joined the audience, and volunteers with torches acted as ushers.

Social Cinema turned un-built spaces into auditoria and spectacularly intervened in neglected places around landmark buildings. The film programme of the Social Cinema traced an evolution in the representation of everyday life. Each program began by introducing ideas and observations on London and its buildings with excerpts from lectures in the Architectural Association Film Archive, including contributions from the architects Cedric Price, Denys Lasdun, Reyner Banham, and Ron Herron; and then looped back to the 1960’s showing some magnificent films from the Free Cinema movement, of everyday working class experience. Free Cinema was followed by a selection of extraordinary amateur films from Straight 8 and these segued into short films previously uploaded onto internet sites where skateboarders, shoppers, and tourists record their interactions with the architecture of the city.

To see more about each location, have a look at the portfolio page here. Detailed film listings are on the artists’ website: Chanceprojects and at the Photographers’ Gallery

None of this possible without Sam Collins or James Lingwood. Thanks also to Malcolm at XL video and Simon Fryer at Cover-it-up.