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The Good Terrorist
video and publication 2014 The project takes a look at different aspects of emigration in a Hungarian migrant housing community in London. Exploring the different methodologies of the Social Sciences, it is set up as an embedded research - the author/artist embeds herself in the immigrant community to be involved in a social setting, without disrupting it dynamics. Concealing her interest in the situation, she is just another migrant, searching for a job in the big city. The plot is based on a diary written during the stay, and different characters of the house intermingle with fictional or mass media figures. Marx, Engels, Wilhelm Reich also have brief appearances. |
SYNOPSIS: The decaying house, where the migrant community lives is explored In the narration in relation with the squatted house of Doris Lessing’s book, ‘The Good Terrorist’. Similarly banal issues arising in both cases: ‘who cleans’, who is responsible for what’, ‘ who fixes what’. In the immigrant house no one really cares – it is left to rot, even though it is the main source of profit for the company, which is catering to the floods of Hungarians leaving their country and try to settle down in London.
The character of the Good Terrorist (who is the protagonist of Doris Lessing book) is floating around among the different personalities in the house. In Lessing book, the good terrorist is a woman, who tries to create a community among the squatters, organize renovation, cleans, and by the end of the novel participates in a car bomb action of the group, blowing up a car in central London, sometime during the 80’s.
In the migrant house, the roommate of the artist/narrator strongly resembles of a recently captured German far right terrorist woman, some of the male visitors and residents have nationalist and far right tattoos. Another resident of the house, a woman who cleans and cares the most about the house, happens to be a negative character, occasionally stealing and bitching around constantly. A crime happens in the city – a corpse of a Hungarian woman found in a suitcase. She was killed in another migrant house. But inside this house, nothing really happens.
The character of the Good Terrorist (who is the protagonist of Doris Lessing book) is floating around among the different personalities in the house. In Lessing book, the good terrorist is a woman, who tries to create a community among the squatters, organize renovation, cleans, and by the end of the novel participates in a car bomb action of the group, blowing up a car in central London, sometime during the 80’s.
In the migrant house, the roommate of the artist/narrator strongly resembles of a recently captured German far right terrorist woman, some of the male visitors and residents have nationalist and far right tattoos. Another resident of the house, a woman who cleans and cares the most about the house, happens to be a negative character, occasionally stealing and bitching around constantly. A crime happens in the city – a corpse of a Hungarian woman found in a suitcase. She was killed in another migrant house. But inside this house, nothing really happens.