This short video, entitled ASBO (Antisocial Behaviour Order) is a commentary on estates and council housing in the UK. Grand utopian projects often turn out to be the opposite of what they were supposed to be. The sense of community there is romanticised and the complexity of the problems forgotten. An ASBO is a legal order restricting the activities or movements of someone who has repeatedly behaved in a way that upsets or annoys other people. Breach of an ASBO is a criminal offence. The archive footage used is from three estates: the Ferrier Estate, Thamesmead and Grenfell (all household names in the UK).
This piece was created to explore the core ideas of ownership and responsibility. I never actually grew up on an estate, although many of my friends did and so I experienced first hand both the negative and positive results of the construction of these concrete jungles. Often council-estate life is fetishized by people who romanticise poverty and the sense of community, and I have tried to answer to this reaction by demonstrating the lack of control that residents have. They are at the mercy of the council, and the council is often underfunded and ill-prepared to deal with the basic needs and requests of their residents. These estates were built to provide homes to the many, but became spaces that were poorly cared for and where crime was rampant.
I also don’t own the images used, they are archive taken from YouTube – promotional videos created by the council, news reports and footage filmed on mobile phones. The footage is sometimes shocking, sometimes created as a promotion. The question is which is more shocking? Watching a clip of a building burning down, knowing that there are people inside the room, or watching a promotional video created by the government designed to convince poor and underprivileged people that this where they want to live, with the knowledge that it was made from such cheap material that it may one day burn to the ground? And what about the middle-aged woman, who almost seems to play a central role in ASBO (Antisocial Behaviour Order)? She is the only recognisable face. Perhaps she was an actress, perhaps she was a resident, but now she has almost become a poster girl for the future of the estate. A recognisable face we can blame for its demise.