Wasi Daniju

A photography project scrutinising elements of the asylum process.

In seeking asylum, or attempting to, people are scrutinised while being held in limbo, their lives surveilled and forced into stasis, sometimes for years, as they wait for their fate to be decided. Lunar House is a building of the UK Border Agency (UKBA) where people are required to apply for asylum, report weekly or fortnightly while they wait for a decision, and undergo interrogations and generally hostile dissections of their lives.

The video quite literally looks back at this site of surveillance and violence, engaging in sousveillance [watching from below] to turn the scrutiny back on the scrutinisers. It pans the building three times, with different elements showing as the video progresses, such as quotes from the Lunar House website, and figures on the profit being made by UKBA from those seeking asylum.

For the main part, the video consists of one still image, that of Lunar House, being appraised by the camera. Pictures that break through this image are of V, who continues to experience feelings of limbo in this enforced waiting, uncertainty in her status and in her feelings of being here, away from home.

The title comes from what I was told by one of the (three) security guards who came out while I was taking photos.