Stella Scott: To Spoor A Stockroom
To Spoor a Stockroom
11 mins
Self-shooting director and editor
Produced by Dorothy Feaver
To Spoor a Stockroom confronts the sanitised future and fetishisation of space in central London. In a condemned consumer environment, the spectre of desire flickers on. This film documents the traces of former workers in a condemned building, exploring changing consumer modes and was recorded in collaboration with Debenhams staff.
Pervilion at Silver Building 2019
”A reflection on the gentrification-led clean-up of London’s centre”
— iD, on To Spoor A Stockroom
”Filmmaker Stella Scott tracks liquid cycles that confront the sanitised the future and fetishisation of space in central London.”
- Twin magazine, on To Spoor A Stockroom
Created during the last days of Welbeck Street Car Park before its controversial demolition, the film reveals a hidden side of the brutalist landmark. The basement level was originally used by Debenhams as cold storage for fur. Gutted of goods and rails, the exposed walls carry graffiti expressing lust and frustration, left by stockroom workers over decades. One last deep clean sees the architectural skin sloughed and rubbed, releasing memories that bubble and sublimate.
Stella Scott, To Spoor a Stockroom I, II, III, 2019, C-prints on newsprint
Starring Florence Keith-Roach alongside Monika Blaszczak & Mateo Dupleich Rozo, who in a specially devised piece of choreography, explore the intense atmosphere and history of this subterranean space and its effect on the body. The film features a new installation by Katharina Dubbick, capturing the moment of exhaustion after a climax. As part of the collaborative production process, these artists were invited to propose site-specific responses to the transitional state of the space.
Anchored in a documentary approach, the promise of narrative supports a journey into a space that’s about to disappear. The voiceover concept is based on the historic graffiti, which was transcribed and recorded with Debenhams staff. This fragmented chorus of young voices marks a time of anxiety on the high street, with the passing of twentieth-century modes of consumerism. Just as the concrete facade is set to be torn down to make way for a hotel, the employees face an uncertain future as the department store goes into administration; the precarity of their employment in stark contrast to their predecessors.
Spent
As Welbeck Street Car Park neared demolition in March 2019, images appeared temporarily on the boarded up doors and windows at street level. Spent captures commuters passing by, oblivious. It marks a time of uncertainty over public space in central London, with consumer and working practices evaporating online.
Stella Scott, Spent, 2019, C-prints on newsprint
To Spoor a Stockroom, Pervilion at Silver Building, London 2019, exhibition view.
Pervilion at Silver Building explores states of dissolution, activating the defunct boiler rooms of a sixties office block. Working in scent, sculpture and film respectively, Katharina Dubbick, Jack O’Brien and Stella Scott propose ways in which the body registers, absorbs and releases tensions within the built environment. In concrete chambers, stripped of pipes and pistons, new works identify multiple tipping points at which experience condenses and evaporates.
Dorothy Feaver and Stella Scott, Wet Floor, 2019, Risograph print