Oxford City Intervention

Firstly, I'm sorry this took a while. It was all done a couple of days ago but I had problems uploading the videos. OK, so my task was to see Oxford at night. I took photos and videos, as well as noted down a few words and observations. I visited the city centre, a supermarket car park, the BMW factory car park and took a little walk down a street at 2am. Most of it was unnecessary, I'll admit...

Oxford City Centre (weekday)

photographs (some used for poster) between 11pm and 2am approx

 I found the light in the college window a nice representation of capitalism itself- how it utilises light in dark places to draw us in. The cars at 2am, the taxis making the most of late night capitalism...people waiting for the bus home at 1am, a worker behind a bar calling out to us to come and spend money in the bar...'students, come on in!' he said... and two people walking a street during the early hours. They seemed to be talking about a friend of theirs...'but he said he'll be back by the end of next week, so we can get it sorted then.' They seemed very busy...something needed to be done, and they'd have to wait for someone else for that to happen. And then the way they were out so late, and not for drinks. They seemed to have, perhaps, just left a college, and my assumption was that they'd been doing work into the night. 


The poster: 

Putting them up was very awkward, and it definitely felt criminal! I put most of them in toilet cubicles- people have no other choice but to take a look then. I also put one out above the dryers. I also left some on a bench in an indoor centre to be taken as pleased, though I think they looked more like someone had unintentionally left them there as opposed to being there to take as people please. I returned the following day to find that my little children had vanished from the walls and bench- the cleaners, I imagine. I'm quite annoyed with myself for not making a better poster, however, but hopefully it made people think something at least. Most interesting was the lady who (after having looked at me funny) asked what I was 'campaigning for'. I told her about the project and she said that she wanted one (out of politeness mostly I think, but it was great that she took one). I then asked to take a photo of her hand as she took it, telling her that public interest was worth documenting. She seemed happy to do it but I was very reluctant to return to that centre just in case she'd reported me for acting shifty in public toilets. 

A video of the city centre...there is a clip of taxis waiting, open windows (they were having a sort of party up there but it doesn't really translate in the video), late-night orders, workers on a break, a bouncer and the streets in general. I apologize for some of the blur...also be aware of the laughing friend...can I also add that (if it is the same for you) I have no idea why those particular video suggestions appear at the end! I have never in my life watched vlogs on breastfeeding.

BMW Oxford

Just thought I'd visit the car parks etc at night...the video shows the cars of night shift workers, and the lights of the factory at work. I like the part at the end, where I pass the word 'years'...as if this will be going on for years, or has been going on for years. It sort of mentions the relations between time and capitalism. Also some of this video is silenced because the wind is too noisy. Again, the video quality isn't the greatest.

Supermarket car park 

Again not the main intervention setting, but I'd already done the video weeks ago and it's still good to see life in a supermarket car park anyway (also served Boots, Sports Direct, Mothercare, Burger King and M&S, but mostly used by Tesco) It was 11pm at the time, so not necessarily late-late, but still reasonably so. 

An Almost Silent Night

This next video is just a short reminder that there's always someone out and about somewhere...the road was a very silent 3am (usually very busy during the day) but one single car just whizzed past. I know it's pretty normal, but it sort of shows maybe, in a way, why we need things going 24/7 (even though the traffic lights clearly aren't needed in most areas at night). I wondered where the person was going, and why they needed to be there. Maybe someone was sick, maybe they had work duties. Maybe they were off home after work, or a night out (hopefully within the limit!) Either way, I don't think there's such a thing as a silent night anywhere in the Western world any more, and this experience showed that for me.