Ownership & Ethics

Sunday, October 5th, 2008 | Ownership & Ethics | No Comments

The Thorncliffe is a drab, 1970s-built hotel, set back from the Great West Road, which was once the main traffic artery connecting Heathrow to the centre of London. The hotel is small in comparison to the Marriott and other testaments to London’s “world city” that have more recently spring up around it. It’s now used as emergency accommodation for people seeking asylum in the UK, who have claimed asylum at one of the three BAA-run airports orbiting London: Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted. In 2000 I produced a photography project involving a contracted artistic team and the hotel’s residents, who were very temporary, and likely to be put onto coaches and ‘dispersed’ to other parts of the UK at any moment, which compounded the collective sense of high anxiety. The workshop programme was chaotic. We were over-run by enthusiastic participants, particularly young children, who we never pitched the project to, but had to accommodate somehow. The core artistic team tightroped their way through workshops they led with groups containing over different 20 languages each time. They were supported by (largely voluntary) translators - though because we never knew who would be able to attend, we couldn’t book the right translators in advance. I remember, vividly, a heady mixture of gesticulation, repetition, spontaneous improvisation and resilient friendliness.

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Tags: art, Emmy Minton, ethics, Evelyn Wilson, LCACE, ownership, rights, sex workers