The Milton Keynes Project | Mitch Karunaratne

Exhausting Milton Keynes

One weekend in October 1974, George Perec sat in Place Saint-Sulpice and recorded everything that happened around him – not the history of the square, but “that which is not noticed, that which has no importance, what happens when nothing is happening other than people, weather, cars and clouds”. This work was published as Tentative d’épuisement d’un lieu parisien (An Attempt at Exhausting a Place: Paris), in 1975. 

MAP6 were drawn to celebrate Milton Keynes 50th birthday, drawn to the historic event, drawn to the celebration of community and architecture, of the realization of town planners dreams and the creation of the epic. Mitch Karunaratne wanted to find the lived Milton Keynes, the banal, the obvious, the ordinary, the Milton Keynes of our everyday lives. Inspired by Perec, she sat at the Station Square for 3 days and observed underneath the epic - towards what’s really going on as we live our lives.