In September 2007 in Trafalgar Square, London, a trafficked woman’s ‘room’ was recreated as part of an exhibition, The Journey, organised by UN.Gift on raising public awareness of the condition of trafficked women for sexual...
moreIn September 2007 in Trafalgar Square, London, a trafficked woman’s ‘room’ was recreated as part of an exhibition, The Journey, organised by UN.Gift on raising public awareness of the condition of trafficked women for sexual exploitation. A blood-stained bed moving up and down automatically, a brush and perfumes, a small mirror with ‘help me’ written on it, and a blonde wig were all the details of that tiny unglamorous room shown to the public.
The function and scope of the exhibition was far from ‘artistic’. The exhibition aimed to raise consciousness that human beings, mainly women, are trafficked into rich destination countries, like Britain, to be used in the sex industry as sexual objects to be consumed cheaply. For some time, this form of transnational crime had been seen as a violation of immigration laws and a fault of countries of origin – similarly to the production and exportation of illicit drugs. Recently, the United Nations (UN) adopted a different slogan: “Trafficking: a crime that shames us all” (UN.gift initiative). With this change, the emphasis on responsibility is put on the demand side, the destination countries. This exhibition had the primary aim to raise awareness and reach the British demand side, the customers and the public of the destination country of those trafficked people. If these women are imported in Britain is because there are people willing to ‘consume’ the cheap and exotic product. In all this, the moral community has remained largely sheltered – in their own country – by knowledge of human traffic and fate of these women.
The ‘room’ of the exhibition becomes the iconic place where the victim is held prisoner to perform sexual duties under duress. The room therefore functions as a crime scene as well as prison: this contained physical space is the prison of an enslaved human being, repeatedly abused physically, sexually and mentally.
However, the room is not a ‘crime scene’, understood in a classical way. It is a recreation of a ‘crime scene’ that is not considered forensically and legally a crime scene per se. This is an imagined crime scene that operates as a ‘message board’. The message on the mirror says: “help me”, and the receiver of the message, the viewer, is requested to internalise it and understand that a human being was kept enslaved and forced to satisfy whatever sexual request the dozens of clients had. But, how is the reconstruction of this crime scene perceived by the public as such? The exhibit can evoke different responses. Viewers (visitors) animate the space with imagined crimes (repeated violent crimes, rapes, etc.), and can imagine as much or as little as they want / can, based on their knowledge.
This research will try to uncover the different images evoked by the viewers, using, among other more established academic sources, notes posted on
www.the-journey.co.uk and Youtube. E-viewers’ number and comments of videoclips of the ‘room’, and the celebrities’ involvement in this project to raise public profile will also inform this paper.