Rooms – Page 9 – ________-Safe House-_________

Are we ever private?

Jake Robinson / February 26, 2013May 10, 2013 / CCTV, Home, Rooms

Our homes are the most private place which we inhabit. At home we can act as we please without the fear of being watched or judged. But what happens if a house stops being a private space, and becomes a space in which you are watched more than any other. Does it stop being a home? This is what has happened in our house on West Parade. The whole house is fitted with CCTV cameras. From the moment you walk in until the moment you leave you are under surveillance. The house is not private. Is this wrong, are there some places which should not be intruded upon and is a house, a home, one of them?

Perhaps some rooms in a house such as the living room and kitchen are not as personal, not as private as other rooms; such as the bedroom and bathroom. Perhaps it is possible to be under surveillance in the more communal rooms of the house without feeling invaded. Whereas being watched while “you are most vulnerable, asleep and unaware” ((Heathcote, E (2012) The Meaning of Home,London:Frances Lincoln p.71 )) in the bedroom is simply a step too far. There are groups who feel that being under surveillance at all is wrong. The Surveillance Camera players are a group based in New York who believe that surveillance cameras of any kind “violate our constitutional protected right to privacy” ((Surveillance Camera Players (2001) Who We Are & Why We’re Here, online: http://www.notbored.org/generic.jpg (accessed 25/02/2013))). They express these views by carrying out silent performances in front of surveillance cameras. These performances are rehearsed but are not announced or advertised.

The right to privacy which the Surveillance Camera Players talk about is most definitely broken in our house. It is impossible to get away from the surveillance and have a private space. Or is it? There are places which the cameras do not cover. For example both the toilet and the bathroom are not covered by the CCTV cameras. These spaces are ones which you would expect to be completely private, to film these areas of a house would certainly bring up an ethical debate. However there are also other, less obvious, areas which the CCTV cameras do not cover. There are black spots which the cameras do not pick up. For example in the bedroom if you sit or stand directly underneath the camera in the corner of the room the camera does not pick you up.

These areas away from the gaze of the CCTV could be very interesting for us to use in our performance. We may be able to demonstrate to the audience just how much they are being watched, this could make them feel on edge. I do not expect the audience to be pleased about being observed throughout the performance. It may therefore be interesting to introduce them to these places where they are away from the cameras. Whether they would feel more comfortable in areas where they know for definite that they are not being watched by anyone outside of the room they are currently occupying.

We have decided in the bedroom to seat our Voyeur in one of these black spots. They sit directly underneath the CCTV camera – they are therefore seen by nobody. We think this increases the power which the Voyeur holds, they are observing three people in a vunerable situation, two in bed and one in a cupboard and there is no understanding of that shown outside of the room. They are watching but in no way being watched.

Through this process I think they, the audience, will gain a new sense of appreciation for the privacy which we have become accustomed to, and now expect, inside our own homes.

Safe House

Lizzy Hayes / February 23, 2013May 10, 2013 / CCTV, Home, Rooms, Uncategorized

In getting a ticket for our performance our audience members fall subject to a false sense of security- they are welcome in the house because we have allowed them to be there but we do not actually live there. Is it really our home to invite them into? Are they really welcome? And are they really safe?

When I think of a ‘safe house’ I think of a discreet property that houses an occupant who needs to be kept safe from something or one. It is a temporary base for a hidden person. It is structurally a house, but very rarely a home, just as our property is, blending in nicely with the surrounding area.

Image by Jozey Wade 2013

In my experience of fictional ‘safe houses’ on television or in film the houses are very rarely safe and are often infiltrated by the enemy. While this is obviously for entertainment purposes the characters responsible for the victim are left shocked and confused as to how anyone could have seen past their high security system. But the answer is clear to me: a safe house is only as safe as or maybe even less safe than any other house on the street: it is just as easy to break into, just as likely to be burgled and because of its ‘secret’ resident, a much higher target of crime.

It is also easy to assume that those kept in safe houses are there under the protection of the law: someone in danger, someone on parole, someone whose identity is too precious to be introducing themselves to their neighbours without an alias. However, research has shown that ‘safe houses’ are often used against the legal system for other purposes. Human smuggling and trafficking for example require safe houses in which illegal migrants can be housed without being discovered. Leman and Jansses state that in some countries “large smuggling networks in which the victims have a long way to travel need safe houses to conduct their business.” (( Leman, J, & Jansses, S “The Various ‘Safe’-House Profiles in East-European Human Smuggling and Trafficking.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies Vol. 33, No. 8, November 2007, pp. 1380 )). It has been found that in these situations the safe houses may not only be used for temporary accommodation, but as a prison in which the migrants are held as hostage while their families are forced to pay more money for their safety or a brothel like establishment. Statistics suggest “that a minimum of 50 percent and upward of 80 percent of human trafficking victims worldwide are women (U.S. Department of State 2005; U.S. Department of State 2010). Seventy percent of female victims are trafficked into the sex trade…” (( Perdue, T, Williamson, C, Billings, M, Schart, J, & Boston-Gromer, R 2011, ‘In the Matter of Human Trafficking in Ohio: The Pursuit for Justice Continues’, Women’s Policy Journal Of Harvard, 8, pp. 4, viewed 17 April 2013. )).

While this statistic is disturbing, it appears that one room in our house has accidentally created a performance that could, when paired with the title of our piece, have a deeper meaning than was previously intended. The set up of the sexual element of the bedroom piece could easily represent not only a sex slave in terms of a BDSM arrangement but also a hostage situation in which a woman kept as a sex slave in a ‘safe house’.

While the bedroom is perhaps the most controversial room in our house, I’m not sure our audience will feel safe in the hostile living room environment or the peculiar child’s room environment either, especially considering that the technology normally used for a persons security is being used to scrutinise their every move.

Cot room- my first steps

Angela Michelle Graham / February 22, 2013May 10, 2013 / Rooms

My initial reaction to the cot room was that it was creepy, purely due to my prior knowledge of the use of the space. The room doesn’t have heating, the wall papers peeling and there is only a cot inside, not forgetting the mould, I fear for my health. How long does it take for black mould to kill you?

The thought of anyone, let alone a child, being expected to live in this space (I wouldn’t call it a bedroom) is despicable. This led me to thinking about how our bedrooms are our sanctuary as Heathcote dictates “of all the rooms in our house, it remains the most intimate, the most private and the most precious” ((Heathcote, Edwin. (2012). The meaning of home. London, Frances Lincoln Ltd.)) but when we’re children this isn’t true as our parents come and go as they please, they choose the furniture, and they choose what’s no longer wanted. The room isn’t the child’s, but what the parent decides it’s going to be, pink for a girl, blue for a boy, dinosaurs, princesses or spaceships, most of this is chosen before the child is even born, so how can they call it their own?

I was lead to consider how a child makes their own spaces, yes, that’s right I made my own den in the cot room. I began by simply lying beneath the cot but it felt too exposed I felt more trapped than hidden, almost imprisoned which linked well with the houses purpose. But not the sense I was aiming for so I decided to hide more thoroughly (well if I was a child I’d believe I was better hidden) I achieved this by putting a bed sheet over the crib and shimmying, not very elegantly, back underneath and all of a sudden it was a different atmosphere as if I couldn’t see out they couldn’t see in. I felt shielded protected and with just my feet poking out,

hidden as if I had gathered some power from this place which I had created. I remember having that same feeling when I was young after putting four chairs into a square and stealing the bedding off of my parent’s bed to cover it. They don’t know if your there or if you’ve left this den for them to discover as people realised when entering the cot room, as I managed to pull my feet under the crib with me (which was surprisingly comfortable), people were then unsure as to whether I had left or not. I let them know by grabbing their ankles, muhahahahaha; Conan was wise and asked from the door if I was still within my room.

After my return to the real world from my den I looked back on my initial feelings of being trapped within the cot and based on its and the rooms aesthetics it made me think of prison. It made me think of how people within their cells try to claim it as their own, even though it very much isn’t, this can be linked to children and when they make dens. I also thought children and prisoners linked through the fact they are both trapped. A child in the sense this is their family and they are to remain with them till they are old enough to look after themselves (except in extreme circumstances). However for prisoners it is a form of punishment in order to act as a deterrent for future bad behaviour, but after reading John Podmore’s “Out of sight, out of mind Why Britain’s prisons are failing.” ((Podmore, J. (2012) Out of sight, out of mind Why Britain’s prisons are failing. London: Biteback Publishing Ltd.))

After reading this I realised this isn’t always the case and that some criminals become complacent in prison, even continuing their illicit activities from behind bars, their complacency however is similar to that of most abused and neglected children. These children don’t accept what is happening is wrong and put their heads down and do their “time” without complaint, even twisted into believing they deserve it. And I wonder could we force are audience to feel trapped? Force them into thinking if their quiet and do as their told they’ll leave without any harm done to them? Put them in a place of stress forcing them out of their comfort zones and into the mode of what the house is used for, pretending to be a house of neglect and abuse?

Human Space? Heart Space?…..or rather OUR Space!

Samuel Davis / February 22, 2013April 8, 2013 / Documentation, Home, Research, Rooms, West Parade

“So we ask, what does homeliness mean and how is it created?” ((Bollnow, O.F (2011) “Human Space” London: Hyphen Press p.142.))

This is an interesting thought, how does one create homeliness? If we apply this notion to the house on West Parade, we can look at the aesthetic and objects of the house. Most room’s contain furniture to identify the use of each space (i.e. bed = bedroom, sofa = living room) however would these room’s still create that sense of homeliness without the furniture? In the living room we have experimented with the feel of the room, simply by moving the sofas into different positions has made us feel more relaxed and made the room more homely.

Keeping the doors shut moves onto another factor that adds to the feeling of homeliness, warmth. Feeling cold instantly changes the mood and feel of a room, I think this is perhaps why the ‘cot room’ creates the opposite feeling of homeliness as there is no radiator meaning it is always cold which makes people feel uneasy. ‘What does homeliness mean?’ – Personally, I think it is a dwelling in which you can feel comfortable, relax and be yourself. However, I think this is only possible if the environment can totally put the individual at ease. “Warmth, seclusion, size, security, stability, history and objects” ((Bollnow, O.F (2011) “Human Space” London: Hyphen Press p.144.)) are all factors that have the potential to make a space feel homely. It is these factors that we want to weaken to challenge the notion of home and make the audience distinctly aware that this space is not a home.

“One must also be able to see that the room has been lovingly cared for. But even though disorder and neglect have a disquieting effect, an excess of orderliness is also oppressive, because one is afraid of disturbing the order. The room must also show that it is lived in, and this means that certain signs of life – a book that has been laid aside, work that has been begun – should be recognizable in it.” ((Bollnow, O.F (2011) “Human Space” London: Hyphen Press p.144.))

This stimulus is at the very heart of what our group intend to create as we plan to play on the fact that a room should be lived in by placing stacks of empty pizza boxes and alcohol bottles all around the room.

The living room of the house on West Parade showing pizza boxes, beer bottles and other materials. Photograph by Sam Davis. (Please click on the picture to view the Living Room page to learn more about our performance ideas)

Using this as an extreme of a home that has been lived in, will subvert the audiences thinking of how a home should be presented and feel. The living rooms aesthetics already provide a contrast to the belief that a home should be cared for, the wallpaper is stained and peeling.

Creating surroundings that show they have been cared for and lived in will always be artificial in a performance. This is typified from the history and the use of West Parade house as it is set up to represent a certain dynamic. However our space can be changed and moulded to present a different home artifice. An artifice that says: “Everything looks okay on the surface, but is it ?”

Photograph from Human Space book cover. ((Bollnow, O. (2013) Human Space. [image online] Available at: http://www.mottodistribution.com/shop/publishers/hyphen-press/human-space.html [Accessed: 22nd February 2013].))

Homely Home.

Tiffany Abatilda Thompson / February 21, 2013May 12, 2013 / Home, Performance process, Rooms, West Parade

Many of have good and bad memories of home and different ideas on what home is and should be like. Home for me is feeling safe and comfortable with the people around me I love and care about. Also the feeling of being at home with items around you that gives you a sense of comfort such as, pictures, smells, certain ornaments and furniture. Many people don’t have that, children in care and homeless people on the street. Homeless people have nothing just a place where they can sit and sometimes take shelter from the cold and rain. Children in care have a home and shelter but does it feel like home not having parents or people they love around them.

The house on West Parade is a shabby neglected house with peeling wallpaper, shabby furniture and old decor, there’s no feeling of homeliness we should get in a house. It’s hard trying to adapt our feelings we all have of home into a house that looks so neglected.

Living Room Wallpaper. 19/02/2013

‘Man can lock the door of his house from the inside, but he is not for that reason locked into his house’ (( Bollnow, O.F (2011) “Human Space” London: Hyphen Press p.147.)). Shutting a door in the house or knowing you have the door locked you feel so much safer, one can feel at ease and totally relax when they know they are ‘Free from attack’ ((Little, W (1969) “The Oxford Universal Dictionary” London: Oxford University Press. )).

‘Bare rooms have a chilling effect’ (( Bollnow, O.F (2011) “Human Space” London: Hyphen Press. P.144. )). The living room is the heart of the house where you can feel most safe, this is normally crowded with friends and family who sit and be social. The Living room feels warm and safe where you can relax and be yourself. Feeling at home is when you are around everyone and feeling safe also feeling that you belong somewhere. The living room on West parade is small, cold and hardly has any furniture this make’s the room un- homely as it doesn’t feel warm, cozy and safe like a living room should.

When in a session in the house just moving the furniture around so the sofa and chair facing the TV/middle of the room it felt a lot more homely. Myself, Lauren and Sam were thinking about home and about the safety of it where your free from intrusion, but what if you were intruding in your own house? The thought of watching something you shouldn’t such as peeping through a key hole, watching someone in the bath or watching someone getting changed. Are you safe in your home? Having this idea and the idea that the TV center’s the living room, why don’t we put inappropriate things on TV to watch.

With the seed planted, i was thinking what if we had videos of people having a bath upstairs being streamed on to the TV downstairs, watching something so personal so openly in the living room where everyone gathers. In the bathroom in the bath or having a shower you are most vulnerable were you think you’re safe.