Peripheral porn (in Hartlepool)

Israeli sociologist Erik Cohen once defined tourism as involving movement from the cultural centre to the periphery.

In the North Sea port town of Hartlepool, England, park up on the edge of town, pass under a railway bridge, head towards the sea and you fall across this:

It's called Steetley Refractories.

The site of a factory that once extracted magnesia from the sea and reacted it with dolomite deposits in giant tubs, tanks and kilns.

This is what the site looked like in the 1960s.

And this is it today, a floor show of vast blue lagoons that push for attention as land art.

The BBC reports that there are plans to turn the site in to luxury flats.

But for the moment, it remains a classic English example of what Matthew Coolidge, founder and director of  The Center for Land Use Interpretation calls the contemporary landscape as museum.

And a way better piece of cinema than either Mongol or Prom Night.

For directions, go here.