The diaristic sketchbooks of Derek Jarman tell the story of a live-wire creative mind in this photo series, ahead of the forthcoming exhibition Pandemonium at King’s College London, courtesy of the King's Cultural Institute. The show marks 20 years since the artist died of an AIDS-related illness, and reflects on his fascination with London’s abandoned docklands. Jarman's figure looms large over the film and art worlds. He played a big hand in the careers of Tilda Swinton and composer Simon Fisher Turner—below, the latter reminisces on his time spent with his influential old friend. 

Whenever Derek was working on something he’d have his amazing books lying around everywhere. All of his diaries are just beautiful art works. He made them pretty meticulously every day—ideas just popped out of him all the time. He was an impulsive and positive artist, he loved to work and got really excited. It was like we were terrorists, film terrorists. I remember being down at his place in Dungeness in Kent in Army uniforms and balaclavas with machine guns and cameras, attacking a man dressed as a woman. 

We were fighting against the pricks, and he had his political and sexual agenda. It was very punk: it was definitely fuck Thatcher, fuck BFI, fuck everybody because nobody was giving us any money. I first worked with him as an extra on his 1978 film Jubilee, and later scored his films Caravaggio, The Last of England, Blue and others. I’ve never met anybody who wrote, painted, filmed and drew as much as him. He opened my mind completely, to art and politics. As a friend he was certainly the biggest influence of my life.

I have contributed a piece to the exhibition called “Silence”. It’s a recording of him that I made a sound collage around. He was very ill at the time and had become quite frail. He talked to me about the only time in his life that he could remember silence. It was during a total eclipse of the sun, when the lights went out: the birds stopped singing, and everything went completely quiet. When an eclipse happens, they think it’s night so they all just switch off. Life stops.

Pandemonium runs at Inigo Rooms, Somerset House East Wing, Strand Campus from January 23. Derek Jarman's Sketchbooks edited by Stephen Farthing and Ed Webb-Ingall is published by Thames & Hudson.