Rotherhithe Tunnel: on a wing and a prayer. Image: The Open University. All rights reserved.On the 17th of August 2015 Abdul Haroun, a Sudanese refugee, walked the 31-mile Channel tunnel to Britain in order to reach safety in the UK. Artist Alia Syed read the news reports of Abdul Haroun walking through the Channel Tunnel and was astonished that somebody could survive walking through the tunnel. She was further surprised that having survived the journey, he was then arrested at the other end. Why can some people swim across the Channel and be rewarded for that with a gold medal, or even swim the Channel to raise money for refugees, while Mr Haroun walks through the Channel Tunnel only to find himself under arrest? Syed wanted to make visible the contradictory ways in which different people are allowed – or not allowed – to travel across geographies, highlighting how borders prevent some from travelling, but not others.
What are the artistic and ethical challenges to engaging with refugee experiences such as Mr Haroun’s? Inspired by Mr Haroun’s case, Alia Syed filmed herself crossing the London Rotherhithe tunnel by foot. Her film ‘On a Wing and a Prayer’ is shot using two Go Pro video cameras attached to her body. The view offered is the “imprint" of Syed’s body’s movement through the tunnel creating a sensation akin to “vection: locomotion caused by visual perception alone.” (The Philosophy of Computer Games). A soundscape created solely from the reverberations within the tunnel is interspersed with a voice over of extracts of ‘A View From Dover’ written and read by David Herd. This simple gesture towards Haroun’s journey ends with a rendition of the Malicious Damages Act, showing the beginning of another journey, this time through the English judicial system.
Why can some people swim across the Channel and be rewarded for that with a gold medal, while Mr Haroun walks through the Channel Tunnel only to find himself under arrest?
