The Horse Hospital is on the corner of Herbrand Street and Colonnade. It was built in 1797 to provide stabling for the local gentry and later became a hospital for sick and lame horses. After years of neglect, the building reopened in 1993 as a venue for avant garde and underground art. Today, it claims to be London’s longest-running, truly independent artist-led venue. But a rent increase means it is facing closure.
***
Let this be the place.
Chase off the pigeons,
clear out the rats,
make way for the uneducated,
the amateurs, the low class
and the no-class, the furiously
romantic life-affirming,
independent, intuitive, difficult ones.
Let the strange in
and get ready
to learn from this alternative,
this celebration
of individualism, anti-conformism,
this not giving a damn,
this taking of control,
this doing-it-yourself,
this won’t be controlled.
Champion the outsider,
the unfashionable,
the back-street, below-stairs,
mews-hidden other ones.
Reject the professional,
the strategy, the power,
the market, the sell-out.
Abolish boring. Commit
highway robbery. Stand
with one another. Deliver.
This is the long struggle.
Enough is not enough.
Whip up a crowd.
Kick down door after door.
Think: What would happen if
we questioned the desires
that harness our minds
and rein in our lives?
We could do anything.
So reject the scavengers,
the nay-sayers,
the extorting bullies
who have done to the earth
what they have done,
with their two-faced tidy rooms,
their plastic flowers in grubby windows.
Destroy their sense of solidity
and permanence. Let these grooves
and gutters gush with effluvia
and irreverence.
Let these cobbled, stabled streets
overflow with offence. Draw strength
from connecting with one another.
Take what you can get
from this chamber of pop culture,
this cheap, nasty, revolting carnage
and go, do your work.
Liberation is in the air.
This place put it there.
Neil Baker