London has been invaded again! 27 new Space Invaders massed on our boundaries in December, a 16% percent increase in the mosaic forces stationed across the city. This stealthy wave of new Space Invader recruits, the 21st London wave, is characterised by altitude, popular appeal, great context, collaborative influences and posh addresses.
Invaders arrive incrementally and imperceptibly, they certainly aren’t there one moment, the next they are flickering at the margins of perception, unseen by the vast majority.
The invasion was lightening fast, but in the words of another contemporary conquering invader, months of planning but decisions only made at the last moment. Keep them guessing.
There is a classic pomp and circumstance photo-op through the window on the Buckingham Palace balcony behind the royal family doing their limp wrist waggle at the oiks and plebs below. That pink tarmac road bedecked with Union Jack flags is Pall Mall. Even closer, just the other end of Whitehall, past Downing St, is the Houses or parliament. This is where LDN_185 will have its diamond eyes clapped on the next Red Arrows flypast. Rattling pixels at an overseas sovereign democratic state with a weird monarch overlay can hardly get closer to the heart of the establishment than this.
A number of invader’s bring fictional characters to London’s streets. The British Film Institute has some nice premises on the riverfront at Southbank, behind the BFI an oversize Clockwork Orange droog in an Invader wasty jacket and pixellated cod-piece tools up with droog buddies for a day’s casual ultraviolence.
Although it is quite elementary you may see but you do not observe that LDN_173 is close to 221B Baker Street, the Holmes residence. Nothing is more deceptive than an obvious fact.
One that absolutely echoes its “real life” cartoon role model is the Waterloo Where’s Wally which most noticeably no one notices. It’s on Westminster Bridge Road everyone, giving a wave to about 650 wallies on the other side of the river in the Houses of Parliament.
Jack Skellinton’s Santa buddy Sandy Claws is bringing Christmas to Holborn on a year round basis, a prospect relished by this select Flasharazzi.
China seems to be mounting an invasion with one piece is Soho and one on that featureless boarder zone between the City and Hoxton both disguised as Chinese lanterns.
All invasions require a decent financing plan and Invader has stashed some loot underneath Waterloo train station, numerous police vans have been spotted whizzing past searching for the great train robbery swag.
This invasion came within weeks of the opening of Triple Trouble, an exhibition of mainly collaborative art by Space Invader, Shepard Fairey and Damien Hirst. This has influenced some of the invaders in this wave. INVADE in Spitalfields has mimicked the style of Shepard Fiarey’s iconic OBEY while up near Goodge Street the Shepard Fairey fleur-de-lis and OEBY face are incorporated as decals into a larger Invader monitoring the fate of the huge community mural overlooking Whitfield Gardens (see also top image).
On a minor biographical note I am particularly fond of LDN_177, in the building in the background on another planet a long long time ago I used to gaze out of those 1st floor corner windows as lecturers droned on about ships and maths and engineering at an undergraduate whose mind was usually elsewhere.
Intelligence operatives confirm the presence of a new Invader with certainty by their registration on a multiwavelength scanner called the Flash Invader App. The first wave of spies eagerly scouting for new Invaders found that these devious arrivals could not be detected. Only when the whole wave was on station was a master switch flicked in some galaxy far far away, a stealth shield dissolved and the Invader hunter could rack up the Invader I-Spy points. However “saved” flashes pending activation were rendered null and void, that dedicated and highly trained cadre of crack flashers working substantially in co-operative mode had to retrace their orbits and re-flash. Apart from a few cunning smarter sleuths who fell back on an older technology thought long dead.
Key invasion locations on this wave are Shoreditch, Soho and Waterloo though there are some remote exceptions. There are a not inconsiderable 920 points available, sufficient for some shuffling of the top ten on the leader board – congratulations to upwardly mobile Mr Steam – at least until all the other leaderboard toppers have done the new wave. Sufficient also to boost this author’s rank by a pretty awesome 3613 places. However, laurels cannot be rested upon in this game and even this action has not restored the heady levels achieved after a visit to another solar system in 2024 saw this flasher reaching the giddy heights of 24,534. Perhaps that story will be told one day.
Invadewr news and experiences from past years aplenty HERE
All photos: Dave Stuart
