My interest in the relationship between London and its historical misprisions, by which I mean our failure to appreciate the city's identity. Two well-known early nineteenth-century examples are indexical of the ways that ruins can project social, political and cultural distinctiveness in an urban context. Joseph Gandy's "Bird's-eye view of the Bank of England" (1830) emphasizes the monumentality of Sir John Soane's design and the institution itself through the illusion of decay. Similarly, Gustave Dore's image of Thomas Babington Macaulay's fictive New Zealander resting on a broken arch of London Bridge speaks of the architectural devastation of the first city of empire. Images of architecture in fragments are undeniably powerful, but my interest goes beyond the aesthetic of the ruin. Using Walter Benjamin's idea that 'Allegories are, in the realm of thoughts, what ruins are in the realm of things', I read the ruins of London as a process. Ruination becames a critical tool trough which we can explore misprisions of London's past and future through fragments of (invented) memory.

中文翻译：

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伦敦的错误

我对伦敦与其历史错误之间的关系感兴趣，我的意思是我们未能理解这座城市的身份。两个著名的 19 世纪早期例子是废墟在城市环境中投射社会、政治和文化独特性的方式的索引。约瑟夫甘迪的“英格兰银行鸟瞰图”（1830 年）通过腐朽的幻觉强调了约翰索恩爵士的设计和机构本身的巨大意义。同样，古斯塔夫·多尔 (Gustave Dore) 的托马斯·巴宾顿·麦考利 (Thomas Babington Macaulay) 笔下的虚构新西兰人躺在伦敦桥破碎的拱门上的形象讲述了帝国第一座城市的建筑破坏。碎片中的建筑图像无疑是强大的，但我的兴趣超出了废墟的审美。使用沃尔特本杰明 我认为“寓言在思想领域就像废墟在事物领域一样”，我将伦敦的废墟视为一个过程。毁灭成为一种重要的工具，我们可以通过（发明的）记忆碎片探索伦敦过去和未来的错误。