This week we’ve been watching ‘the destructors’ (2019), a powerful film installation by London-based artist Imran Perretta exploring personal and collective experiences of marginalisation and oppression from the perspectives of young Muslim men living in the UK. the destructors is currently screening at The Whitworth (@whitworthart) in Manchester until October 2021.
Drawing on the artist’s own experience as a young man of Bangladeshi heritage, ‘the destructors’ follows a group of young people as they navigate the social pressures of growing up in a society that has come to view them as both a physical and ideological threat.
Shot on location in Tower Hamlets, East London and set against a backdrop of economic inequality and targeted abuse, the characters reflect on their lives and experiences through a series of poetic monologues informed by conversations with young Muslim men about the issues affecting them.
“and
as he moves in
i breathe out
praying he’s
looking for someone else
though
i know already its me”
From the destructors (2019) by Imran Perretta
Presented across two screens with immersive surround sound and obscuring the characters’ full identities, the film alludes to the institutional surveillance of British Muslims under the UK government’s anti-terror strategy, and the deterioration of public spaces for working-class communities of colour.
“I wrote this work from an embodied point of view, a first-hand testimony that is specific to the body that I inhabit, so the narrative could only truthfully reflect the particular forms of structural violence that I have experienced myself in a post 9/11 world.” - Imran Perretta
Imran Perretta (b. 1988, London) lives and works in London. Encompassing moving-image, sound, performance and poetry, Perretta’s work explores ideas of biopower, marginality and the (de)construction of cultural histories.