Beyond The Substrata

4K Video, 2020

A video artwork developed in response to a residency with Waltham Forest Council in 2019. This work was configured using an abandoned supermarket in Leyton as a means to explore the social and political issues affecting the wider area of east London relating to race, class, gender, and gentrification.

Through referencing the black body within a space that victimises it, in this case, the Western supermarket, the Western supermarket becomes a double entendre. 

Whilst the system of the supermarket is generally assumed to offer consumers a vast array of choice for everyone purchasing goods and services, the choices are rarely substantial and often sourced from a handful of many-faced corporations across clinical environments. 

Beyond the Substrata is an artistic act of counter-surveillance that plays on the all-seeing eyes and repressive structures that have become the norm in consumer culture and retail environments. 

The politicisation of and violence meted upon the black body is explored in the film through choreographed movements performed by dancer Kanika Skye-Carr.

Beyond The Substrata, produced with funding from Waltham Forest Council, WFCulture2019