VIRTUAL IAS Festival: H is for Hostile Environment

Edwin Mingard and Keren Weitzberg conceived of a moving-image piece that would explore migration and asylum seeking in East London. Whilst the project was borne from overlapping professional interests, they also saw it as a chance to work in a mutual way with partners whose lives and work had been shaped by the UK’s border regime, providing a platform to tell a story with multiple voices and narratives. The piece has been co-produced in close dialogue and collaboration with those who have first-hand experience of migration as well as those who are actively challenging the Home Office’s draconian and surveillance-intensive policies. The themes and topics that emerged from these collaborative sessions came to dramatically reshape the piece. What emerged was differing stories of navigating life in East London, carving out spaces and forcing open pathways amidst xenophobia, bureaucratic pressures from the Home Office, border violence, and loss and nostalgia for ‘home’. Some of these stories are intergenerational; some are set in the past; others focus on the present. They speak to the tensions between hostility and hospitality that have long shaped and reshaped East London. We see this work as a way of turning the lens on the hostile environment policy, which has brought devastation to so many and is increasingly outsourcing immigration enforcement onto society at large. But rather than telling a story of assimilation or multiculturalism (a story of minorities ‘fitting into’ East London), this piece is focused on the ways that London itself is remade in spite of barriers to inclusion. Migrants, asylum seekers and their advocates are envisioning alternative futures for Britain, actively wrestling with the hostile environment policy, and trying to find more just, if messy answers to the question of who is welcome.

About satellite films

Satellite is an award-winning production company specialising in artists' moving image. Our work is socially engaged, with a focus on the intersection between technological and social change. Our portfolio includes short and feature length film and video work, as well as moving image installation, documentary and music video. www.satellitefilms.org

About the Director

Edwin is an award-winning visual artist with ten years' experience delivering high quality moving image work. Alongside working at satellite, Edwin maintains a solo artistic practice that crosses illustration, photography, print and installation. Edwin holds a Philosophy degree from the London School of Economics and Political Science, and is a Fellow of DigitalCity, Teesside University's digital arts leadership programme. He curates moving image, and designs collaborative organisations in the arts sector.

About the Academic Collaborator

Keren Weitzberg is an interdisciplinary historian who works at the intersection of science and technology studies, migration studies and critical race studies, and a Visiting Research Fellow at the IAS. She examines problematics related to mobility, digital identity and biometrics. Her recent work explores the history of biometric identification in Kenya and the impact of new digital identity systems on those at the political and economic margins. Her work has been funded by the British Academy/Leverhulme Trust, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Fulbright Program and the Alan Turing Institute. She has also done consultancy work for Privacy International and Amnesty International.

All welcome. Link to join the event will be sent one hour before the event.

This talk forms part of the IAS five-year anniversary festival on the theme of ‘Alternative Epistemologies’.

Please do not hesitate to contact us if you need assistance on the day, and follow this FAQ link for more information and to read our virtual events code of conduct. All of our events are free, but you can support the IAS here.