Karen Mirza and Brad Butler: On resistance and non participation

"The Thames has a language of its own, from the ancient, frequently bastardised names of its tributaries, creeks and reaches to the plosive obscenities of Victorian watermen. As Peter Ackroyd observed, the Thames is a river of two distinct halves, like English culture itself: the upper river is bucolic, arcadian, a place for the dream-fugue and childhood idyll. The tidal, estuarine Thames is mercantile, at the historic heart of an often cruel empire, corrupt, brooding - its wide skies and indifferent waters leading to fears of the dissolution of self. Each makes its own weather."