The Time While Waiting
Film 31’ Wakefield, UK, 2022 Supported by Arts Council England, The Art House, Leeds Beckett University
Set in the backdrop of an asylum seekers accommodation centre opposite a high security prison in the city of Wakefield, the film invites displaced protagonists to record and evidence their time experiences since their arrival in the UK. The narrative unfolds through discussions and participatory activities based on the asylum seekers skills and pastimes.
This film project works with a group of asylum seekers and refugees over a period of three years that was interrupted by COVID 19. It explores the temporalities of displacement and borders, and the mechanisms that render the displaced experience in the host country.
The protagonists’ activities demonstrate subtle resistance practices as well as coping mechanisms during their time while waiting for settled status in the UK. Unknowingly, their stories expose how time is mechanised as a border, trapping people in the country’s legal system, while the city’s urban setting and support network become boundaries for both their legal and temporal confinements.
Collectively, the protagonists construct a timeline of refuge; its stages and daily experiences are anything but linear or homogeneous. The film also weaves a parallel timeline of legislation that shapes their experiences and dates back to the first UK immigration law in 1971 and ends with the latest Borders Bill in 2022. Textual amendments, enforcement and repealing of laws reveal the institutional evolvement of legislation text that at times grants rights and at other times revokes them.