Camila Kh
@camilakh
Camila Kh
There is also plentiful evidence of members’ utter dedication to the club through the decades; when times were hard, it kept going largely thanks to their efforts. Building walls, laying lawns, clearing scrub, selling geraniums, mending deck chairs, re-tiling roofs, fixing frozen pipes, designing diving boards, establishing native plants and trees,... See more
New book celebrates 100 years of Henleaze Swimming Club – Outdoor Swimming Society
The homo faber model was essentially atomistic. That is, it envisaged society as a collection of private individuals intent on maximizing personal profit as the ultimate end of existence. In this scheme of things leisure is narrowly conceived as relating primarily to those interests and activities pertaining to recharging the energies of the... See more
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Allotments are sanctuaries for growing, often on the fringes of suburbia, where life is getting ever more stressful and expensive. Here, a simple urge to grow-your-own or become self-sufficient, brings us closer to a community of people, wildlife and plants that are often more diverse than the cities and towns that surround them. An allotment is a... See more
The Allotment | Colin Ward, David Crouch | London Review Bookshop
by the term is socially conditioned, which makes conventional associations of'freedom', 'choice' and 'self-determination' with leisure insupportable. Leisure studies, I contend, is not so much about the examination of integrally constituted physical space or 'natural' segmented time and 'free' experience. Rather it is about what freedom, choice,... See more
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But the most important space of the house is at its center: the swimming pool. Lit by zenith light, it has the peculiarity of being perforated by a series of windows that connect the pool with the living room. Observing Joséphine’s body, with her dark, glowing and flawless skin moving naked in the water flooded in light, was an experience that, to... See more
A HOUSE FOR THE BLACK VENUS
These are unique and precious forms of public space where the body in relation cannot be forgotten.
The architecture of swimming – Outdoor Swimming Society
Bathing spaces work directly and evidently with the body, it is a direct relationship, response. At the swimming you become conscious, self-aware because of your lack of clothing but also because of the architecture. This self-awareness doesn’t happen so much in natural swimming spots, at the beach, by the river, the pond… because in that situation you are focusing on the natural environment more than yourself, there’s a much larger distraction. The pool is inherently a stage, a performative platform for the swimmer to stand out.
In 1937, the LCC leader Herbert Morrison planned to make London “a city of Lidos”. This ambition was squashed by the Second World War (1939–1945), which forced a change of priorities. Later, under Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s, London’s councils were pressured to cut costs. Lidos steadily disappeared. In 1950, Greater London had 70... See more
London’s lidos are swimming in history
The girls performed scenes of caretaking that became actual caretaking: feeding each other, brushing each other’s hair, walking arm in arm. I intended for them to playact a state of communal bliss. As it turned out, the girls were enthralled just by being together and making pictures. They jumped and half-skipped around each other every time we... See more
Justine Kurland on the Girl Picture Problem
performance as a way to create reality, world-building, world-creating
Female swimming pioneers are sometimes called “swimming suffragists,” since their presence in the pool was analogous to their presence at the polls. But many were straight-up suffragists as well. “The physical freedom of women’s bodies in swimming went together with the political freedom of seeking the vote for women in the 1910s,” writes Linda... See more