A Sleazy Tour of Soho and Fitzrovia, 2023

Performance lecture and walk about the hidden HQs of tech companies in central London.

Commissioned by Photographers’ Gallery and Fotomuseum Winterthur for their Screen Walks series; uncovering the locations of the numerous multinational media-industrial-entertainment complex companies that have (usually extremely low-profile and hidden away) HQs in London’s West End. Sony, Palantir, Meta, Google, King and Outbrain are just a few of them. There are also connections to be found with the Soho of old, back when the area was all about sex work, organised crime and offline pornography instead of WeWork, organised crime, and online pornography. More information and background can be found in my earlier post about it.

Thanks to Sam Mercer and Marco de Mutiis for the photos.

Here we are at the start of the tour, at The Photographer’s Gallery in Ramillies Street, just behind Oxford Street.

Outside Sony Europe’s building.

Some counter-surveillance.

Soho Square, domain of the content factory formerly known as 20th Century Fox, the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC, AKA the British Board of Film Censors), and Palantir, among others.

21 Soho Square, now a WeWork, used to be a “high class magical brothel.“

Some fine gesticulation, outside the King building, home of Candy Crush, etc., ad infinitum.

… and some declamation too, in the area plastered with signs about loitering round the side of King because you know obviously they hate people who waste time because Candy Crush is super productive. Luckily I wasn’t loitering, I was critiqueing.

Just look at this wild gesturing now. I’m in the middle of impassioned improv about the importance of Games Workshop and Warhammer to the UK economy. Tottenham Court Road.