Critical Spatial Practice

not nothing (August 2019)
  • Ella Parry-Davies and Ann | Holland Park, London

  • Entrance to Holland Park, photograph by Ella Parry-Davies, August 2019
  • not nothing (August 2019)
  • Ella Parry-Davies and Ann | Holland Park, London
  • ‘While I’m hearing this story, I put myself into the shoes of the listener, and not the one who’s really telling the story. I feel proud of myself. If I would be the listener and I can meet this person, I can tell her: ‘you made it, I’m proud of you, you made it, you’re so strong.’ I’m proud of myself.’
    Amara, soundwalk-maker and migrant domestic worker


    This soundwalk and text are collaborations between Ann, a migrant domestic worker and Ella Parry-Davies, a theatre and performance researcher. The soundwalk is one of a series that Ella is making with Filipina migrant domestic workers in the UK and Lebanon through her postdoctoral project ‘Home-Makers’. The soundwalks invite listeners to return to significant places chosen by participants, and listen to conversations recorded on location and edited by the participants themselves (who learn audio editing software as part of the process). 

    Migrant domestic workers work (and sometimes live) in the homes of others, often with limited or precarious domestic space of their own, doing labour which is considered ‘unskilled’. These soundwalks show how they are nonetheless experts at creating a sense of home on the move, through forming meaningful relationships to spaces and communities in new locations. 

    In making this soundwalk, Ann chose to return to Holland Park in London, the place where she decided to escape from abusive employers, to prove that she is ‘not nothing.’ She is a brave woman and mother, fighting an extremely difficult situation. Ann is also speaking to people in the UK and especially the Government, to let them know that the abuse she experienced at the hands of her employers is happening in London, both to herself and others whose voices are not heard here. She is currently in the National Referral Mechanism (NRM) set up to identify, protect and collect data about victims of modern slavery and human trafficking in the UK. Under the NRM she does not have the right to work, which makes her feel like a criminal. She receives just £5 per day living allowance, but does not want to receive support: she is able to work, and wants to earn money to give her family a future. 


    Biography

    Ann is a migrant domestic worker from the Philippines, and a mother of four children. She speaks Ilocano, Tagalog, Arabic and English. She is a member of the Filipino Domestic Workers Association and has completed a three-week course in entrepreneurship at Imperial College London and photography training through the charity Hestia. She is proud that, despite her difficult migratory situation and not having seen her children for four years, they have grown up as good people, thanks to her teaching as a mother. 

    Ella Parry-Davies is a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama and prior to this was a Visiting Scholar at De La Salle University, Manila. Her research is on theatre and performance in migratory contexts. She has shared her work and the experiences of her collaborators through national media including the Guardian and BBC Radio 3 as a BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker for 2019.


    Practices

    Signifying an expertise that exceeds waged domestic labour itself, ‘home-making’ is life-sustaining for many migrant workers. We might consider it a critical spatial practice that aims to transform the world as well as inhabit it, through an everyday performance that is creative, embodied and collaboratively supported. It knits dwelling and travel together in the experience of home, and constitutes an enormous effort to make ‘hostile environments’ (in literal terms) hospitable. The Home-Makers soundwalks aim to make this expertise sensible, inviting the listener to enact a critical spatial practice herself in experiencing spaces with and through the voices of others.


    Keywords
    soundwalk, migration, domestic work, memory, home

    References

    A key reference in the conception of soundwalks as a research practice was the RoRo methodology of research travel. See Jazmin Llana, ‘A Sea of Stories: Archipelagic Gatherings and RoRo Journeys’ in Performance Research 23.4-5 (2018) pp.256-61.

    On modern slavery in the UK, see Alicia Kidd, Elizabeth A. Faulkner and Lorena Arocha, ‘The UK asylum system has created the perfect conditions for modern slavery to thrive’, The Independent, 8 April 2019.


    Other projects
  • Visible vs Invisible, (2022–)
  • Naisten Kaupunki – Työkaluja oman tilan valtaamiseen, (City of Women — Tools for Occupying Space) (2022) 
  • Moonfuture: Migration, Images and the Geological Interior (2022)
  • Dissolving the Dwelling (2021–2)
  • Washing White (2021)
  • Um Slaim Collective (2021)
  • Sonic Acts of Noticing (2021)
  • MGM_OurStarterCulture_5
    Our Starter Culture, (2021)
  • Milan Gender Atlas, (2021)
  • Making Map I: Animals and Anachronistic Architectures, development in progress (2021–)
  • Collateral (2021)
  • The Wandsworth Food Bus, (2020)
  • Progetto Minore. Alla ricerca della minorità nel progetto archiettonico ed urbanistico (2020)
  • 1-DMZ
    Architecture and Co-Existence: DMZ as Site, (2020)
  • Time on Site (2019)
  • Stori Mwd (A Story of Mud), (2019)
  • not nothing (August 2019)
  • Hungry Mothers, En La Frontera (2019 – present)
  • Exchanging Values at Bank (18 October 2019)
  • Cybiog: locating the digital self, (2019/20, 2 mins 45 secs)
  • Civic Pedagogy, learning as critical spatial practice (2019)
  • An Independent and Flexible and Precarious and Overworked Rehearsal, (January – December 2019)
  • An environmental history of La Guajira (2019)
  • A Weird-Tender in progress (2019)
  • Cecilie Sachs Olsen
    A walk in your words (25.01.2019)
  • Portal Zaryadye: A Portal Not Only to Heaven, But Aslo To Hell (24 July – 12 August 2018)
  • Text-isles: sowing an idea, October (2018)
  • Gilly-image-1
    Silent Conversation, (2018 – ongoing)
  • Objects removed for study (2018)
  • Female Futures Lexicon on Space (2018/2019)
  • 5, Big Bang 2 / Mid Graemetruby
    Bank Job, (2018–2020 and beyond)
  • Natalia Irina Roman, Tick Tack, Berlin (2019). Photographer: Natalia Irina Roman
    Along the Lines (2018–)
  • windwoundweatherwovenwirewoman [performance] (2017)
  • Viscous Myths (2017/2018)
  • The Pass (October 2017 – June 2018)
  • The House Alice Built (2017/2019)
  • Productive Withdrawals: Art Strikes, Art Worlds, and Art as a Practice of Freedom (December 2017)
  • Request for the unrequested voluntary interlinguisticality (2017)
  • Caring for Communities (2017 – 2019)
  • Bodies + Borders (2017 – present)
  • a place called … (Spring 2017)
  • Uppland (2016 – 18)
  • Music for Masterplanning (2016 – 17)
  • P | A | N – Proyecto Amasandería Nacional (2016)
  • Make Me Yours: How Art Seduces (2016)
  • Island Icarus (2016–2019)
  • In My Mothers’ Garden: Memories and practices of Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp (2016)
  • Having not felt like eating, but eaten, I sat down to eat / tea … (2016)
  • Desiring the Dark: Feminist Scenographies, the City and the Night, (2016–2019)
  • Bamboo dialogues (2016)
  • ASSET ARREST (2016)
  • Alternative Arrangements: Walking the Border in Ireland (2016 – ongoing)
  • Matter of the Manor (2015 – 19)
  • The First World Congress of the Missing Things (2014)
  • Private Choices, Public Spaces (2014)
  • Hanging Matters (2014)
  • Act#5 & Act#6: What does Mai Mai Mean? (March 2014 – December 2016)
  • 03-FLATS (2014)
  • (small memorials), 2013–15
  • Mount Patawerta
    Gardening for Untold Ecologies: A Manual for Making an Arid GARDEN Out There, (2013)
  • A Game of Dominoes (2013)
  • Lina & Gio: the last humanists (February – June 2012)
  • Learning-through-Touring (2012)
  • Empty Words Build Empty Homes (2012)
  • Ridley’s (2011)
  • Hustadt project, 2008 – (2011)
  • Palimpsest Performances (2010 – 2014)
  • Negotiating Conflict: Bordering Practices in a Divided Beirut (2010 – 2014)
  • Expanded Architecture (2010 – 2014)
  • Unfixing Place: A Study of Istanbul through Topographical Practices (2008)
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