Phytology is an artist led nature reserve exploring use, value, resilience and function of wildness within urban ecosystems. The billboard is set in a small wood, facing outwards towards the City of London. Situated in Tower Hamlets, a borough with some of most deprived areas in London, the billboard stands only a mile from one of richest. A powerful global financial centre, London is one of the most unequal cities in the developed world. Our project responded to its position, using the billboard to ‘speak to the city’ with a series of statements that evolved and changed each week over a period of 4 months.

Taking on the radical East End tradition of resistance, the billboard statements act as a challenge to the City and its logic of prosperity through financial growth. Drawing on our interest in the politics of language and how words carry social historical meanings, a series of simple statements such as ‘we work’, ‘we question’, ‘we fight’ and ‘we multiply’ suggest a process or story of collective action.

Like a puzzle or game, each word morphs into the next by adding and covering letters, pasted up by members and users of Phytology, the local community and ourselves. As each word becomes the next, a narrative of resistance is told as the seasons change from Summer to Winter.

On September 1st 2018, we launched the billboard with a talk, shared lunch and campfire.

The billboard had 16 iterations: