StoryFutures/Presents with Anagram
StoryFutures/Presents
A platform showcasing novel and timely perspectives from makers and researchers across the expanded immersive field.
StoryFutures/Presents #5: ‘Your future in the hands of your face’ - an encounter with the theatre of security
Thurs 28th Jan 4pm-5pm GMT
Speakers: Anagram, co-directors Amy Rose and May Abdalla
Host: Åste Amundsen, StoryFutures Doctoral Researcher in Personalised Interactive Performance
The Home Office requires those who want to stay in the UK to perform their stories correctly. As new technologies are being integrated into the policing of borders, how will the machines judge us? A Face to Open Doors is an interactive installation commissioned by IWM London for their Refugees Season (2020/21). Inspired by technological trials within the real world immigration system, this future artifact houses a corporate Al guard who makes decisions based on your emotional responses. This talk unpicks the design process and discusses the power of experiential narratives to reveal the politics of how we live, think and feel.
ANAGRAM is a multi-award-winning female-led creative company specializing in interactive storytelling and immersive experience design. Their work typically combines expertly crafted experiential storytelling that blends fiction and documentary, rigorous and painstaking research, and an ingenious approach to integrating recently possible technologies into the heart of an experience. The unique element that lies at the heart of every Anagram project is a deep and playful approach to participatory storytelling - we believe that everyone can get involved, if they’re asked in the right way. Anagram were named in the Createch 100 ones to watch for2020 by the Creative Industries Council.
The project A Face To Open Doors will be open when the IWM opens its doors - you can check on when that happens here: https://www.iwm.org.uk/events/a-face-to-open-doors-iwm-london
Here is the link to the excellent UN Human Rights Council report on racial discrimination and emerging digital technologies - written by the UN’s special rapporteur on racism, racial discrimination xenophobia and related intolerance, Prof Tendayi Achiume and published in November 2020
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_X7F4wZXaKKFSJiybRPJoUVOFsTpiTvf/view?usp=sharing
From (European Digital Rights Network) EDRI their report detailing some of the impact of technologies on displaced people "Technological Testing Grounds"
https://edri.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Technological-Testing-Grounds.pdf
Highly recommend Borderline Justice by Frances Weber detailing how the legal system around migrants and refugees in the UK has transformed over the last 30 years to create obstacles to justice in the process. on https://irr.org.uk/product/borderlinejustice/
Excellent in depth ethnographic study from criminologist Mary Bosworth of six immigration removal centres in the UK where uncertainty and exhaustive bureaucracy confuse both the prison guards and the detainees. The current system is not inevitable, and so, she argues, we need to spend more time thinking about why we detain foreigners and treat them in the way we do.
https://oxford.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199675470.001.0001/acprof-9780199675470
Find out more about the Centre for the Study of Emotion in Law here: http://pc.rhul.ac.uk/sites/csel/ The centre explores complex links between ‘emotion’ and the law including how ’emotion’ affects individuals and their fair treatment by legal frameworks, institutions, bureaucratic structures and processes. They will also be running an evaluation on the project when its back open to the public which we will share through our newsletter.
weareanagram.co.uk