For centuries poets and artists have taken to the streets for inspiration, wandering both city and country in order to seek a sense of the other, and a sense of self. From Wordsworth’s rural strolls to Thomas de Quincey’s opium-fuelled ventures into London’s darkest haunts, literary walks are part of our cultural inheritance. Inua Ellams - performance poet, playwright and graphic artist – is tapping into this history and re-inventing it for the modern city-dweller.
Ellams is an artist of all sorts – his poetry draws together rich-voiced romanticism, hip-hop, jazz and the silkiest of lyrics, his scriptwriting is mature and refined, and his graphic art is strikingly inventive. To add to this, he is now the curator of a physical exhibition that stretches across the streets of cities world-wide. In 2005, Ellams and a friend became impatient waiting for a night bus, and decided to make their journey across London on foot. Enraptured with the nocturnal cityscape and the darkened alter-egos of the night-time streets, Ellams dreamed up The Midnight Run. The project is a literal example of poetry in motion, as Ellams and his magican-poet-performer friends lead groups of people around the city by night, exploring ideas of communal space, identity, and urban development, and creating art as they go. The idea is for people to view their own streets, their run-friends and themselves with a fresh pair of eyes, in a playful process of defamiliarisation. From the perspective of a literary critic, Ellams’ eco-critical explorations are right on trend, and from the perspective of an art-lover, they are simply groundbreaking.
In his mission statement, Ellams explains the influence of The Situationalists, a political and artistic movement which rejected the commercialism of art in 60’s France, and sought to replace it with ‘real’ experience. The Midnight Run is just that – a physical, immersive, artistic experience. For Ellams, any city, anywhere can be a poetic playground, from impromptu story-telling in a darkened alley, to sunrise tai chi, to group writing tasks. I organised a poetry workshop with Ellams whilst at university, and got a sense of his innovative and inviting style. He has a natural talent for drawing out the poet in everyone, whether he’s performing himself, working with musicians, or gently teasing out ideas from his audience.
This gentle teasing is at the heart of The Midnight Run; the project asks us how we interact with our environment, and encourages us to do so differently. So many cities are increasingly filled with private spaces and private people – a fact of life connected to the ethics of The Midnight Run. For me, Ellams seems to be suggesting that private, restricted city space is closely linked to both spiritual and economic poverty. Even on a short bus ride in London, one can weave through many different communities of enormously different wealth, sandwiched uncomfortably together in disparity. By inviting us to look closer, Ellams is exploring some of the most pressing social and political issues in modern society, whilst creating a piece of peopled art.
Over the last ten years, The Midnight Run has spread from an independent London movement, to Spain, to New Zealand, to work with the Tate and the Southbank Centre, with the founders striving towards building a global urban movement. This is a growing piece of performance art like no other, with Ellams, a 21st century flaneur, at its helm.
Originally published in XXY magazine.
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