Trends in office rents in the City of London: 1867-1959

This paper details the construction and analysis of a dataset of office lettings, which is used to produce a rent index for the City of London spanning the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It advances prior research through application of a modern version of the repeat measures technique and in coverage of years where office rents have not been previously measured. Results show that there has been no real growth in rents over the period as a whole. However, there have been distinct phases of rental growth and decline that correspond with the wider economic fortunes of the City.

Parallel editing, multi-positionality and maximalism: cosmopolitan effects as explored in some art works by Melanie Jackson and Vivienne Dick

Garfield produces a critique of neo-minimalist art practice by demonstrating how the artist Melanie Jackson’s Some things you are not allowed to send around the world (2003 and 2006) and the experimental film-maker Vivienne Dick’s Liberty’s booty (1980) – neither of which can be said to be about feeling ‘at home’ in the world, be it as a resident or as a nomad – examine global humanity through multi-positionality, excess and contingency, and thereby begin to articulate a new cosmopolitan relationship with the local – or, rather, with many different localities – in one and the same maximalist sweep of the work. ‘Maximalism’ in Garfield’s coinage signifies an excessive overloading (through editing, collage, and the sheer density of the range of the material) that enables the viewer to insert themselves into the narrative of the work. In the art of both Jackson and Dick Garfield detects a refusal to know or to judge the world; instead, there is an attempt to incorporate the complexities of its full range into the singular vision of the work, challenging the viewer to identify what is at stake.