Originally a coping mechanism for an artist housed in a Direct Provision Centres while seeking asylum in Ireland, Asylum Archive has become much more than that. In 2018, it is now a collaborative archive, interactive and intermedial online document, and a scholarly research project. This iteration includes five new images of Railway Direct Provision Centre in Kiltimagh

Nedeljkovic, Vukasin

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Arrow@TUDublin

Technological University Dublin ARROW@TU Dublin Articles Graduate School of Creative Arts and Media 2018 Reiterating Asylum Archive: documenting direct provision in Ireland Vukasin Nedeljkovic Follow this and additional works at: https://arrow.tudublin.ie/gradcamart  Part of the Photography Commons This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School of Creative Arts and Media at ARROW@TU Dublin. It has been accepted for inclusion in Articles by an authorized administrator of ARROW@TU Dublin. For more information, please contact arrow.admin@tudublin.ie, aisling.coyne@tudublin.ie, gerard.connolly@tudublin.ie. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 License Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found athttps://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=crde20Research in Drama Education: The Journal of AppliedTheatre and PerformanceISSN: 1356-9783 (Print) 1470-112X (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/crde20Reiterating Asylum Archive: documenting directprovision in IrelandVukasin NedeljkovicTo cite this article: Vukasin Nedeljkovic (2018) Reiterating Asylum￿Archive: documentingdirect provision in Ireland, Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre andPerformance, 23:2, 289-293, DOI: 10.1080/13569783.2018.1440202To link to this article:  https://doi.org/10.1080/13569783.2018.1440202Published online: 10 Apr 2018.Submit your article to this journal Article views: 1229View related articles View Crossmark dataReiterating Asylum Archive: documenting direct provision inIrelandVukasin NedeljkovicDublin Institute of Technology, Dublin, IrelandABSTRACTOriginally a coping mechanism for an artist housed in a DirectProvision Centres while seeking asylum in Ireland, Asylum Archivehas become much more than that. In 2018, it is now acollaborative archive, interactive and intermedial onlinedocument, and a scholarly research project. This iteration includesfive new images of Railway Direct Provision Centre in Kiltimagh.KEYWORDSArchive; detention;deportation; direct provision;IrelandFrom April 2007 to November 2009, I was housed in a Direct Provision Centre (DP) whileseeking asylum in Ireland. Introduced in November 1999, the Direct Provision system pro-vides asylum seekers with accommodation, access to medical care and a small living allow-ance; it also provides children with access to mainstream schooling. Well, that is the officialversion. The reality is that, as I have written elsewhere, the more than 150 centres arelocated outside cities – in former convents, army barracks, and hotels – on the peripheryof society (see Nedeljkovic 2015; 2016). Residents live in dirty, cramped conditions, withfamilies often forced to share small rooms. Managers control every aspect of their lives:meals, mobility, access to bed linen and cleaning supplies.1Critics like sociologist Ronit Lentin have described DP as ‘holding camps’ and sites of‘deportability’ which ‘construct their inmates as deportable subjects, ready to be deportedat any time’ (2012). Likewise, Dublin’s Free Legal Advice Centre has stated that these pri-vately owned centres ‘operat[e] as an industry rather than a means by which the govern-ment is fulfilling its human rights commitments’ (2009, 11). In historical terms, the schemecontinues Ireland’s shameful tradition of confinement, whether through borstals, laun-dries, prison, mother and baby homes, and lunatic asylums. In theoretical terms, thesecentres resemble what sociologist Erving Goffman termed a ‘total institution’, which aredefined by three main characteristics. First, ‘all aspects of life are conducted in the sameplace and under the same authority’ ([1961] 2007, 6). In addition, each ‘daily activity iscarried on in the immediate company of others, all of whom are treated alike and… dothe same thing together’ (6). Lastly, ‘the day’s activities are tightly scheduled [and]imposed from above’ (6). Total institutions are, according to Goffman, ‘forcing housesfor changing persons; each is a natural experiment on what can be done to the self’(12). Though it was first published over 50 years ago, in 1961, it would be hard to find amore accurate account of these centres (Figures 1–5).© 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis GroupCONTACT Vukasin Nedeljkovic asylumarchive@gmail.comRIDE: THE JOURNAL OF APPLIED THEATRE AND PERFORMANCE, 2018VOL. 23, NO. 2, 289–293https://doi.org/10.1080/13569783.2018.1440202Other ways of framing direct provision might draw on sociologist Marc Augé’s term‘non-place’; centres are ‘non-places’ for those who, according to the government, are‘non-people’ (Augé 1995). Or we might look to philosopher Emmanuel Levinas and saythat DPs are ‘the absence of everything… the place where the bottom has droppedout of everything, an atmospheric density, a plenitude of the void, or the murmur ofsilence’ (Lévinas 1987, 46). Or we might turn to art, as I have in Asylum Archive. Whatstarted as a coping mechanism has now become the primary focus of my research, aspart of my PhD at the Dublin Institute of Technology. It was, and is, directly concernedwith the realities and traumatic lives of asylum seekers. It aims to collaborate withasylum seekers, artists, academics and activists to create an interactive and intermedialdocumentary that records accounts of exile, displacement, trauma and memory. For themost part, this documentary exists as a website (www.asylumarchive.com).However, it has also been exhibited at the Galway Arts Centre in Galway in 2015and the NCAD (National College of Art and Design) Gallery in Dublin in 2017 and pub-lished in TransActions, an online publication dedicated to transdisciplinary artistic prac-tices, in an issue about socially engaged art (Nedeljkovic 2015). The following year itFigure 1. Railway Direct Provision Centre, Kiltimagh, County Mayo, Ireland.Figure 2. Railway Direct Provision Centre, Kiltimagh, County Mayo, Ireland.290 V. NEDELJKOVICFigure 3. Railway Direct Provision Centre, Kiltimagh, County Mayo, Ireland.Figure 4. Railway Direct Provision Centre, Kiltimagh, County Mayo, Ireland.RESEARCH IN DRAMA EDUCATION 291was published on the University of Oxford Faculty of Law’s Border Criminologies blog(Nedeljkovic 2016). In each reiteration, Asylum Archive takes on a slightly differentquality. In the exhibition at Galway, photographs could appear alongside videos andfound objects. In addition, the gallery hosted a discussion panel, which was in turnrecorded and made available online (http://www.create-ireland.ie/audio/on-soundcloud-asylum-archive). The same happened at the NCAD Gallery and in bothinstances, the white cube emphasised the archive’s artistic qualities. By contrast, myaccount in TransActions emphasises the project’s resistant qualities, arguing thatasylum seekers resist the DP centres, which have been designed as sites of detentionand exclusion, by reclaiming them as sites of collectivity and solidarity. Similarly,Asylum Archive resists the artistic convention of ‘humanising’ asylum seekers throughstorytelling by refusing to include any humans at all in the images. Lastly, theBorder Criminologies version includes by far the most images, almost as if the art hasto become evidence in a legal context.Taken together, these reiterations of Asylum Archive document, analyse and theo-rise experiences of power, authority, detention and supervision. Asylum Archiveserves as a repository of asylum experiences and artefacts and it has an essentialvisual and educational perspective, accessible through its online presence to anyfuture researchers and scholars who may wish to study the conditions of asylumseekers in Ireland.In this iteration for Research in Drama Education, I have included five new images offormer Railway Direct Provision Centre in Kiltimagh in County Mayo. Railway Direct Pro-vision Centre opened at the end of 2003 and subsequently closed in the summer of2009. It was located in Kiltimagh, a small rural town in the West of Ireland. The capacityof the Centre was approximately 90 people; women, men and children. The residents ofthe Centre have integrated in to the local community, they attended different activitiesand classes. After the closure the residents of Railway Direct Provision Centre were dis-persed across other different Centres in the Republic of Ireland. I gained access to theCentre in 2018 and was able to photographs what one community has left behind;their belongings, traces, signs, memories and remnants.Figure 5. Railway Direct Provision Centre, Kiltimagh, County Mayo, Ireland.292 V. NEDELJKOVICNote1. Versions of the following two paragraphs have appeared previously (Nedeljkovic 2016, 2016).However, the images of the Railway Direct Provision Centre have not been previously pub-lished nor has my commentary on them.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.Notes on contributorVukasin Nedeljkovic is an independent artist, researcher and curator. Among his recent multidisci-plinary projects is Asylum Archive, which was initiated through his own experience of the Direct Pro-vision system and has since extended to include digital, material and visual materials from asylumseekers in Ireland.ReferencesAugé, Marc. 1995. Non-places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity. Translated by JohnHowe. London: Verso.FLAC (Free Legal Advice Centre). 2009. One Size Doesn’t Fit All: A Legal Analysis of the Direct Provisionand Dispersal System in Ireland, 10 Years On. Dublin: Free Legal Advice Centre. http://www.flac.ie/download/pdf/one_size_doesnt_fit_all_full_report_final.pdf.Goffman, Erving. (1961) 2007. Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and OtherInmates. 2nd ed. with a new introduction by William B. Helmreich. New Brunswick: TransactionPublishers.Lentin, Ronit. 2012. “Anti-Deportation Ireland: End Deportations.” Ronit Lentin, October 4. http://www.ronitlentin.net/2012/10/04/anti-deportation-ireland-end-deportations-now/.Lévinas, Emmanuel. 1987. Time and the Other, and Additional Essays. Translated by Richard A. Cohen.Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press.Nedeljkovic, Vukasin. 2015. “Direct Provision Centres as Manifestations of Resistance.” Transactions:Dialogues in Trans-Disciplinary Practice, June 9. http://issue1.transactionspublication.com/2015/06/09/direct-provision-centers-as-manifestations-of-resistance/.Nedeljkovic, Vukasin. 2016. “Asylum Archive: An Archive of Direct Provision in Ireland.” BorderCriminologies, May 4. https://www.law.ox.ac.uk/research-subject-groups/centre-criminology/centreborder-criminologies/blog/2016/05/asylum-archive.RESEARCH IN DRAMA EDUCATION 293

Reiterating Asylum Archive: documenting direct provision in Ireland

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