Gated Community Episode 1: The Lockdown.
Digital video, 23'30".

Gated Community Episode One – The Lockdown – was made during 2020 when we were confined to our houses due to the Covid-19 crisis. The community explored in this film is the only one I had access to at that point, largely contained within virtual space and the algorithmic architecture of social media platforms and news outlets. Here, the community is addressed through performing as three semi-fictionalised versions of myself, each based on reactions and responses to the crisis that was unfolding and circulating online: the ‘self-care’ of baking and skincare, the depression eased by self-medicating, the feeling that this was a world-changing moment, and that capitalism was going to fall. Other characters come in and out of the picture: gig workers summoned by apps; a filter bubble and an algorithm, shaping the communities I felt part of. This episode draws upon tropes found in sitcoms; a response to the ‘set’ that the home had become, and the reactions of an ‘audience’ accessed through a screen (this is reinforced in the film through the implementation of canned laughter).

To view the full film please visit here.