As soon as the bid to host the 2012 Olympics was won by London in 2005, and the plans to build the Olympic site in the Lower Lea Valley were announced, an inconspicuous yet steady stream of artistic projects started to interrogate the impact that the transformation of the area would have on its inhabitants, landscape and social life. This undercurrent of criticality, largely invisible to the mainstream, offered an alternative to the official account of the process – one that spoke of displacement, surveillance and the effacement of local history. Through a myriad of art works, images, events and discussions, an important space of dissent was produced in the lead up to the Games. The relational, collective and public dimension of these artistic practices is explored in the first part of this article, via an analysis of Jim Woodall's Olympic State project in Hackney Wick.