Night Haunts
Their working conditions veer on the dismal. And yet, perhaps because of their wavering accents, or the general pall of disrepute that hangs over them, and despite recent regulations that mean they must fill out reams of paperwork to prove they're not illegals, they are dismissed as qat chewers, stubby lechers, illicit sharks, conmen who fiddle the companies for whom they work as well as their hapless passengers. They will never appear in tourist brochures or in cameo parts in trans-Atlantic romantic comedies. Their Social Critiques, hopes and dreams will never be echoed or celebrated by newspaper columnists. — Sukhdev Sandhu on Mini-cab Drivers in Night Haunts
Sukhdev Sandhu journeys across the city to find out whether the London night really has been rendered insipid by street lighting and CCTV. Night Haunts seeks to reclaim the mystery and romance of the city—to revitalize the great myth of London for a new century.
- Paperback: 144 pages
- Colour
- ISBN: 9781844676552
- Hardback: 144 pages
- Colour
- ISBN: 9781844671625
- Cover design and photography: Eggers + Diaper, Berlin
Nights of London
Running for just over a year, Nights of London was a thread of projects exploring the nocturnal life of the city. It ran through cinemas and galleries, was hosted on websites, burned onto CDs, written into letters, performed in nightclubs and broadcast via radio channels, before concluding in an old East End town hall that – for one night only – was filled with bat experts, musicians, cabaret artists and paranormal researchers. We heard stories from the unorthodox side of nightfall. We learned about ways of life that, despite their physical proximity, are all but invisible to most of us, most of the time.
Nights of London projects include:
Sandhu simultaneously builds up and dispels the mythology of London. Its more seductive qualities are revealed to be the workings of a great machine, devoted to the accumulation of capital and supported by legions of people who are there to mop up the aftermath.— Daniel Trilling, New Statesmen
Sukhdev Sandhu
Sukhdev Sandhu
Sukhdev Sandhu worked with Artangel on Longplayer Assembly – joining 23 other participants in a non-stop 12-hour conversation relay presented live online on 26 September 2020, marking the twentieth anniversary of Longplayer.
Sandhu is an Associate Professor of English and Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University, where he founded the Center for Experimental Humanities and runs the hugely popular and wildly eclectic Colloquium for Unpopular Culture. He publishes and edits the imprint 'Texte und Tone' and is the author of London Calling: How Black and Asian Writers Imagined a City; I’ll Get My Coat; Other Musics; and Night Haunts: A Journey through the London Night for Artangel.
The former chief film critic for the Daily Telegraph, he now lives in New York and London and has written for numerous publications including London Review of Books, Suddeutsche Zeitung, Frieze, Art in America, Artforum, Times Literary Supplement, Du, Sight & Sound, The Wire, Bidoun, and The Guardian.
Selected Press
Night Haunts is grounded in satisfyingly solid, real-world research. Sandhu has spent much time staking out territory, following leads and rumours, interviewing prospective subjects. His adventures have taken him into some dark and difficult terrain. He has sometimes been threatened with violence, and on one occasion, was shot accidentally in the hand while trying to kill vermin. [...] However, this project goes beyond the simple recording of facts and impressions. Although it looks at specific Londoners and their lives, it engages with deeper themes, asking searching questions about the nature of night, of cities, and of Britain today.— SF Said, The Daily Telegraph, 3 February 2006.
With a writing style that mixes down- to-earth reportage with lyrical flights of fancy, Sandhu simultaneously builds up and dispels the mythology of London. Its more seductive qualities are revealed to be the workings of a great machine, devoted to the accumulation of capital and supported by legions of people who are there to mop up the aftermath. — Daniel Trilling, New Statesmen, 13 September 2007.
He is a sympathetic listener, but does not leave his own urban concerns or political beliefs at the door. These essays are thoughtful engagements with reality, not just exercises in topographical style. While many see the metropolis today as a global financial centre, where dreams of unlimited accumulation are embodied in brilliantly lit towers, Sandhu explores life below. Large swathes of poverty and unhappiness are revealed, and inequalities thrown into sharp relief, in the 'anti-modernity of the night. — Ken Worpole, The Independent, 16 November 2007.
You come away in awe at all that goes on in the capital on an average evening - and full of respect for an author who has left the study to discover how things really work. – Alain de Botton, The Observer, 25 November 2007
Credits
Night Haunts was made possible with the generous support of Mala Gaonkar. Artangel Interaction is funded by Arts Council Lottery, the generous support of Vincent and Elizabeth Meyer and the John Lyons Charity.
Artangel is generously supported by Arts Council England, and by the private patronage of The Artangel International Circle, Special Angels, Guardian Angels and The Company of Angels.
