Tiger Bay
Exhibition Artes Mundi 5
Location National Museum, Cardiff, Wales
Year 2012
Curator Ben Borthwick
Courtesy The artist
Photo Apolonija Šušteršič
Content Video installation constructed of a wooden platform covered with artificial grass; video projection on a building site billboard; seating elements; TV monitors showing documentary films borrowed from the ITV archive which follows the process of the Cardiff Bay development.
Video The Tiger and the Mermaid (HD, PAL, 20’).
Archive BBC Wales documentary films
Talk Show, an event performed on the green platform with Gareth Jones (BBC Wales) and invited guests: Ken Poole, Roger Thorney, Sian Best, and Katie Jo Luxton, key actors in the video The Tiger and the Mermaid.
Concept: Change usually implies a process of becoming different. However, the phrase “the situation has changed” doesn’t tell us how it has been changed: for better or for worse. When we think of producing change we think about a progressive change: things have to change for the better! The idea of progress has too often been associated with the Western notion of monotonic change in a straight, linear fashion without considering other concepts of change. The progress associated with the changing of our living environment under the name of urban development is most often a planned change which must manage a complex set of political, social and economic conditions.
Politics “In Space” is the title of my long-term research that investigates the grey zones of political action and re-action within the urban development.
The Tiger Bay Project is a new case study within the above-mentioned research. When I started to examine the Cardiff urban situation I became fascinated by the process of the city development in-between the sea and the land, the building of an immense structure of the barrage and the public protest that this urban development provoked.
What is interesting for me in this situation is the way that the politics have been performed. The UK government has developed a generic model to regenerate the derelict industrial waterfronts all over the country by setting up so-called City Development Corporations, which are a type of QUANGO (Quasi-Autonomous Non-Governmental Organisation), performing the governmental responsibilities but usually having no obligation to consult, negotiate or encounter with the local representatives and the local public.
In the case of the Cardiff Bay Development, the city demanded its involvement, however, in reality that brought them very little room to negotiate. The other objectives that seem to be ignored or dismissed in the Cardiff Bay Development project is the history of the place as well as its social, cultural and environmental context. The development provoked a huge civil protest, the longest in the history of protests in the UK.
The original mudflats of Tiger Bay were a very important littoral zone for wading birds largely from northern Europe who overwintered there. The whole area was therefore designated as a Site of Special Scientific Interest – SSSI, entitled to protection from damage or destruction. History also tells us the story of Tiger Bay as “the place of Wales’ oldest multi-ethnic community. Sailors and workers from over 50 countries settled here. Some of the largest communities included the Somalis, the Yeminis, and the Greeks. Residents of many races and backgrounds socialised together and intermarried, creating a distinct community and atmosphere to the place.” All that is gone now. Today, what you can see when visiting the bay is mainly chain cafés and restaurants, generic clubs, 30-minute boat trips around the lake, and the edutainment type of Hollywood experience. And in the middle of this entire almost unreal environment sits the new Welsh parliament, Sennad, a wonderful piece of architecture that ironically represents the voice of the people transformed into a public roof – the sky, a place for everybody, anybody …
The Tiger and the Mermaid video was shot in the Sennad. I invited both promoters and protesters of the Tiger Bay development project to talk about the history, the present and the possible future, while sitting in the People’s Gallery overlooking the main Chamber of the Sennad. Although I talked to each of them separately, in the video they appear to communicate with each other.
For the Talk Show, I invited some of the same people to meet in life for the first time in front of the public, on the green platform within my installation to re-examine the case of Tiger Bay. The moderator of the event was Gareth Jones who did a documentary in 2010 titled Starbucks and Stadiums where he critically reviewed the development of the Cardiff Bay (among other sites in the city), emphasizing the lack of public voice and public participation within city development projects.