Metal

Justin Hopper is a writer, artist, and curator based in Pittsburgh, USA. His work borrows from an extensive past in journalism, using high- and low-tech to haunt locations with site-specific and documentary poetry. Hopper's recent writing includes two artist's books of site-specific poetry based on historic Pittsburgh (Public Record) and the city's Croatian immigrants (These Golden Legends). As a dual US-UK citizen, Hopper's other primary interest is in the landscape, memory, and myth of Britain’s under-culture - the topic of an in-progress nonfiction book (The Old Weird Albion) and a curated show of new artwork by London writers (The City & the City, Wood Street Galleries, Pittsburgh, fall of 2012).

At Metal, Hopper will create a version of his highly regarded multimedia project Public Record specific to the Chalkwell Park area. Using text sampled from primary-source 19th-century documents, Hopper will create poetry about calamitous events from the period of Southend’s Victorian history that saw rapid change to the city’s population and economy. Audio versions of these poems will be accessible by mobile phone in the locations where the events originally occurred.

It is often only through instances of calamity and crime that ordinary people referenced in the historic record. By siting these real-life characters in a poeticized present, Hopper excavates the archaeological layers of memory upon which contemporary Southend is built. His work reclaims otherwise forgotten souls from the dustbin of history and brings them back to haunt the modern city.