REPOSITORY OF STORIES: A TALE OF TRADE

by Ali Cadir

The project explores the tradition of story telling in response to the digital eroding our ability to share and tell stories through person to person interaction and experiences. The vision for the project is to provide a place where stories of the current fish market and the local area are preserved, told, and exhibited. These spaces are designed to enhance the story and contribute to the act of storytelling as well as being a container. I had met with an archive director (The Barter Archive) and artist at Billingsgate market to construct gestures and characters to based on their archive and stories. These characters define a new vernacular, with strange yet familiar geometries for story telling. The site is in Canary Wharf with development plans of the area are to relocate the fish market, eliminating a local business and community. The typology therefore connects with the idea of free zone by including in addition to storytelling chambers, a drama academy and theatres which support the funding and intensification of the act of story-telling; becoming a place for free-culture exploration. The Barter Archive supports the idea of ‘bartering’ - the sharing of stories in exchange for a piece of artwork, which the project responds to by allowing free-exploration and exchange of culture.