Camden Fringe: Humanity and Power behind Unity Arts Collective's 'Freedom'
Unity Arts Collective’s Freedom stages the disorienting reality of the UK asylum process through immersive installation and puppetry, though its choices raise questions about who – and what – gets to represent those whose voices are unheard. Part installation, part performance art, Freedom is set up as a labyrinth of posters, printed factsheets, dirt mounds and hefty cardboard-and-wood puppets. The layout is a visual representation of many migrants' experiences with the UK asylum system, focusing on five main steps: arrival, application, wait, decision, settle or deport.
Much of Freedom dwells on that middle step: waiting. This is most literally expressed through performer Surya Chandra's beginning position – on his side, watching dirt spill through his fingers – and his tentative plodding around the installation's pathways. Sound and multimedia by collaborators Jesu Piceno and Ester Ricci include live recordings of tinkling beads and metal pieces, and projection of a rippling bowl of water blooming with dye drops. These contribute an ephemeral, ambient mood, though the sound design occasionally overwhelmed Chandra’s plaintive, skilful singing.
Life-sized puppet figures are brought to life through Chandra's and puppeteer James Frost's manipulations. Frost’s craft is impressively detailed and articulate. However, the puppets’ inclusion raises a dramaturgical question: in a piece attempting to humanise a group often demonised by the media, why displace human presence onto non-human figures? At times, Freedom drowns out much of its humanity through statistics, emphasising the thousands of people entering UK immigration detentions, applying for asylum, and waiting for their decision. The numbers are meant to convey scale, but volume rarely illuminates the unique people within them. We are told that Freedom was made in consultation with refugees from Afghanistan, Syria, Sudan, Palestine and Ukraine, but we never come to know these collaborators personally – an absence that reads, unintentionally, as its own kind of erasure.
The performance's strongest image comes to life when audience members are asked to help a puppet traverse the maze, navigating stepping stones and a circling wooden shark. The tender, careful handling of the delicate figure – slow, attentive, cooperative – is a touching metaphor for collective care. This is the systematic change that’s needed. I’m personally wondering how (and hoping that) art can move the needle when those who hold power – like those who need ‘freedom’ most – aren't in the room with us.
