The psychogeographers on the bus go round and round
One thing those old Hebrew storytellers had was a grasp of the symbolic power of encircling a town. When Joshua brings down Jericho it’s not the brass arrangement, it’s the ongoing circumnavigation. So if there was an easy way to surround one of Europe’s largest cities you’d do it, wouldn’t you?
Luckily there is — the eleven bus. The number eleven skirts the city of Birmingham, the 11C clockwise, the 11A anti, taking in all of its great suburbs as far from the city centre as you can get without ending up in the wider conurbation. At two hours 45 minutes long it’s one of the longest bus routes in Europe, and if you stop on you can go round and round again.
And that’s what we’re doing on Tuesday the 11th of November. From 11am, around 30-40 people (we reckon) will be spending 11 hours on the 11c bus, photographing, recording, blogging, drawing, mapping, writing about the experience. You’ll be able to watch some of the action on the web as it happens.
There are few rules, we won’t be together (unless by chance we meet) and we’ve not divvied up tasks. This will be a random, personal, portrait of a city enclosed by a bus route. If there’s enough good stuff then we might make an art exhibition, and we might do it again next year and again and again on the ultimate 11/11/2011. You can still take part – see elevenbus.co.uk for details.
And T-Shirts, both BiNS branded and with only elevenbus.co.uk on are available (you could pretend you took part even if you didn’t)
