CCTV Social: Re-generation. Manchester Arndale

Duration: 00:09:05; Aspect Ratio: 1.366:1; Hue: 90.978; Saturation: 0.011; Lightness: 0.500; Volume: 0.190; Cuts per Minute: 42.049; Words per Minute: 174.029

For CCTV Social, artist Shaina Anand collaborated with Manchester Metropolitan University and Arndale Shopping Centre to open working CCTV environments to a general audience. People normally 'enclosed' by these networks came into the control rooms to view, observe and monitor this condition, so endemic to the UK.

If the analog control room of MMU's Open Street Surveillance seemed "just like Nineteen Eighty-Four'", the CCTV control room of the Arndale Centre bore cold testimony to the much heard myth, 'the IRA bomb saved Manchester.' The mall was the site of the largest IRA bomb in the UK, (1996) and its rebuilding was the start of Manchester's regeneration program. Working with some members of the Livewire Youth Program at Cornerhouse, the team was able to make a 'public' request for the Mall's surveillance footage by using 'image-release' forms offered by documentary film-makers, combined with conditions of the UK Data Protection Act.

Jai Redman and Joe Richardson, two artists from Manchester's Ultimate Holding Company, came in to survey on day two. After an illuminating conversation with Gayle and others in the control room, the artists took a walk around the mall. This is the transcript of part of this conversation pasted over some of the footage released.

Jai Redman and Joe Richardson, having spent some time in the Arndale Center CCTV control room with Gayle, took a walk through the mall with Shaina Anand. This audio transcript forms part of their conversation.

Here, Jai gives us the background to the Road Protests in the nineties in the UK. He informs us about Thatcher's 'Roads to prosperity' white paper, which outlined a ten year road expansion programme, and the sustained series of 'road protests' sparked by the initial road expansions. Jai makes a crucial link to Reliance Security, the company that contracts and employs security staff at the Manchester Arndale. This is the company that supplied the security reinforcement as well. All Security staff at Reliance are contract workers.

Seen in the footage:
Arndale House Roof
60 degree pan from one of the external roof cameras at the Arndale. Panoramic view of the entire city surveyed.

Top of Service Road
Chris walks out of the CCTV control room. this is the back of the Arndale Centre, tucked away at the side of the service road.

Foyer
Marisa, George and Jon talk with the Arndale Staff in the reception area of the Arndale House.

Halle Square New Look.
George and Jon walk by the newly renovated part of Halle Square.

Halle Square
Which, in Gayle's words, is now dark and dismal and needs to be 'redone.'
George and Jon wait around for people to come and then approach them with the 'image release' form.
They stand by a board: All Stock 1/2 of Original Price or Less.
Jai: And there were three or four in the early nineties - one through Twyford Down (M3), and one specifically the M11 extension in London, which knocked through about three or four hundred houses.

Shaina: Wow!

Jai: And the community rose up and said, "Well we're not... You know... Hitler tried to bomb us in the second world war, but he didn't succeed..."

Shaina: Yeah.

Jai: "...We stayed. Look,we can live through this. We're staying. We're not moving." There was a huge squatter movement there, some massive evictions around Claremont Road, and Reliance were the security guards who were brought in along with the police to, you know, to bolster the numbers. There were hundreds of them, whole armies of them. And that became a feature of the Road Protest Movement - fighting with security guards. And there they had exactly the same situation that you've kind of got here, that it's their job and they don't question it. And they've got this ability in their mind; it's almost like what's going on in the shoppers here, they've got this ability in their mind to do one thing and absolutely not think about consequences whatsoever. They're not... There's absolutely no connection between actual, physical... Putting your foot in front of the other foot, and putting your money in their hand, and taking what you've been given. That is completely and utterly removed from any sense of its impact, or why you're doing it, or what it's for, or what other people might be doing, or what you could be doing instead. And that kind of thing goes on with the security guards that are in there, every day looking at that footage. And if you try and get one of the guards to say something about the political importance or the political significance of their Orwellian overall control of these peoples lives, it just won't occur to them. Because they've switched that part of their mind off.

Seen in the footage:

Bottom New Cannon St Mall
Chris drops his release forms, bends to pick them up and approaches people who walk by him. He looks a bit lost, and continues to accost people who have no time for him. Jon and George are talking to two young girls, they look up and point to the camera that has them close-up.

Halle Square New Look and Halle Square.
Tents and kiosks offering customised bears and paint-ball trials.

Cranes Ramp.
Shaina and Dan Williamson walking around. Shaina has a microphone in hand.

Food Chain Toilets.
Food Chain Staircase.
Shaina, Jon, George and Marisa come up the escalator to the food chain area.
Shaina: If you've nothing to fear, you've got nothing to hide...

Jai: If you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear. That's kind of fair enough, but you're putting your trust in the system; it's not based on anything which is to your benefit at all. It's crew-expendable, basically. It's like all these people, each one of these people, is an individual unit placing, you know, their faith in a system which means that they deposit money in a system that makes somebody else rich. The system's not there so you can have a customised bear or a paint-balling experience, or, you know, a new pair of trainers. The system's here to make someone else, not you, rich. And you're expendable. So why the hell, when you're at the bottom of the chain, do you think - are we really that sophisticated at marketing that every single person in this mall has been sold this lie? The lie that consumer is king. Everyone here really believes that they're at the top of the chain, when it is so blatantly obvious that it's the other way round.

Shaina: Yeah.

Jai: I mean that's... that's interesting, I mean, if you're talking about the queening analogy. You know, the whole sort of royalty, everyone here is treated like a God, they're treated like royalty. I mean, it's like everything is comfortable, everything is bright and shiny, we're here for you.

Shaina: It's safe.

Jai: It's safe. You're the most important thing. But then none of these people are important. They're just either in the way or they're blind cows in some kind of consumption. I guess you know if you're always kept happy and you're always kept safe, you don't see many, you don't see many chickens or cows rioting do you? I just suppose everyone's quite comfortable really. Not necessarily happy but just quite comfortable.
The 'queening' analogy here refers to an unused part of the conversation. Earlier in the day, as the BBC played on the middle screen of the Arndale Control Room, we watched the Queen of England greet Sarkozy on his first State visit to the UK. As the BBC relayed this entire pomp and parade live, with the bobbies and the security, Shaina shooting the screen from behind Gayle's back; Gayle with her watchful eyes on her monitor and her alert fingers punching numbers into the control pad, manoeuvring the joystick, her red work jacket matching the jacket of the Queen - I couldn't help but imagine a twisted 'feminazi' 'Nineteen Eighty-Four,' if you will. IngSoc meets CapitalRegen circa 1996. An empire, a queen, A-bombing her subjects and people. Symbolic control over that which she surveyed.

I was also reminded of an earlier conversation with Graham Harwood (mediashed/ mongrel.co.uk) who said that one reason why this endemic video surveillance was so passively accepted and allowed to deepen its roots and branches was because, unlike other countries in Europe and other parts of the West, in England, you were never a citizen, you were a subject; the land wasn't Public, it was the Queen's land, where you as a subject was allowed to pass, graze on a common.

Jai: We were just talking to 'XXXXX' (Gayle) and they campaigned and voted to get this bridge not reinstated when the bomb blew up in this part of the Arndale. They didn't want this bridge between that building and this building cause it's too much trouble for them, too much hassle. It's like... This is like the draw bridge, the boundary of her kingdom, if you like. You know she really doesn't like this, and she listed of a whole load of reasons why she doesn't like it. This has become some sort of hate figure.

Shaina: It's the back alley.

Jai: The boundary of her kingdom has become this kind of thing she hates. I mean, look at it, it leaks, it collects litter, you know, its ugly - she had a whole list of things. When we were showing on the camera, she was kind of trying not to show it by moving away at the side and like that.
Manchester, Arndale Center
During UHC's previous meeting with Gayle, she had taken them on a 'virtual' tour of the mall, all the while jabbing her finger onto the screen and pointing out problem indices. Here Jai replays what she said.

see here

The footage shows

Halle Mall Marsden way
The camera zooms down the corridor to a transparent bridge that connects the Arndale to Marks and Spencer Plaza.

Corporation Street o/s Cam
The camera zooms into the red pillar box which survived the 1996 Bombings.

Jai: It's like I wanted to come here because this is where, I mean... This is where the bomb went off. I mean, the post box which is the only thing that survived. It is like ground zero.

See
IA/00:06:37.920
Jai: Like we talked about the Prayer Room, and I was really interested in the Prayer Room, ah, 'cause...

Shaina: Ah, there is a prayer room! Go pray five times a day but come out and shop!

Jai: Yes! They had what she called a problem with unofficial praying! People who go shopping and then they decide that they needed to pray. And she was saying this is of all faiths, not just people who had to, but people who felt like it. They'd find them in corners, praying, and she said it was like a fire risk, it was an obstruction. So they built a special room to get them. It wasn't that they wanted to give them somewhere to pray, it's that they didn't want them to pray here. And interestingly, it is right next to that corridor which is the only place in here that has a 'blind spot,' right in front of the prayer room. I mean, you can see the door to the prayer room. But just, maybe, six to seven meters into the Arndale, there are two static cameras, the only two static cameras in the whole of the Arndale!

Shaina: Wow!

Jai: And they have a triangulation, which means there's a...

Shaina: There's a cone that's... Yeah, yeah.

Jai: So you could walk down that corridor and ascend; you could reach enlightenment and disappear up, and they could never see you.

See
IA/00:03:22.400

Shaina: Leak - that's an interesting metaphor as well, right? Like, everything needs to be insulated.

Jai: Yeah, water-tight.

Shaina: yeah, things shouldn't leak out.

Jai: The way her mind works is very much... She can identify on every different level, on a micro level or on a macro level, everything that's occurring within her sphere of influence, which is either detritus or some kind of unwanted - permeable layers they don't like, multiple access they don't like... Kept going on about doors, this door, that door, control this door, lock down. You know, (ones who) stand blocking doors, there's detritus basically. There's rubbish people, rubbish stuff, unwanted stuff that gets in their way. And she referred to like the general public who intervene on the side of other members of the public as their worst enemy! And she is fighting a war against the people who are kind of undesirable, but she's filtered through in her mind about being politically correct, like she won't make any judgement about who's litter and who isn't litter.

Shaina: Yeah.

Jai: Everyone is basically litter. In the way, until you know, until they kind of find a way of dealing with them. So basically all these people are being shunted in and out. The second they just stop shunting in and out, they become litter.

Jai: And i think that the artistic generation that we are surrounded by is exactly the same, you know. It's been brought up in a world where dissent hasn't actually succeeded. And making an effort doesn't actually get you anywhere. I mean, after the Gulf war, and a million people marched around White Hall, and nothing happened!

Shaina: Yeah.

Jai: I think you know in this country, in this twentieth century, there are a couple of really key moments that have destroyed youth movements. One is the abolishing of state grants for universities. The other is the Nuclear Bomb. And most recently is the failure of any protest to stop the war in Iraq. A whole generation of kids have grown up, you know, knowing that the world could end any moment, knowing that the people pressing the button are not listening to you, and not having the time or the resources to spend any time thinking about it 'cause they all have got to pay off their loans.

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