CAMP presents Pleasure: A Block Study

Bombay-based artists CAMP presented Pleasure: A Block Study, a publication that came out of their multi-year residency with the Edgware Road Project.

Produced entirely online, via the website edgwareroad.org, both the website and research towards this volume were initiated by the artists, focussing on a very small piece of the city: a few buildings on the Edgware Road in London.

This publication explores a history of ‘public pleasures’ that arose in the Edgware Road neighbourhood starting from the 19th century to the present, documenting social shifts on the street and the surrounding areas. Arab, Iranian, Irish, Kurdish and other businesses and groups produced a particular history of film, video, music and street life that often clashed with existing legal and proprietary structures. A tumultuous few decades of these struggles form the heart of this book, offering on the one hand, images and narratives of a pleasure filled Dionysian street-life, and on the other tales of bureaucratic containment that limit and regulate various emergences of public life.

A bilingual publication in Arabic and English, Pleasure: A Block Study was published in partnership with Brownbook Publishing.