'It would be a totally different experience'
216 Westbound
John Tulloch: “Yeah, well, I happened to become one of the three major iconic images of 7/7, quite inadvertently. I'd, the emergency workers took a long time to come in to rescue us, about an hour or so and when eventually we did come out at the triage place at Marks and Spencer’s in Edgeware Road, there were photographers there and my experience from then on was a kind of ironic one, because I found a lot of journalists came to see me because they're intrigued by this fact that I was into risk sociology and media and that I got caught up in this, this, you know very risky event. The irony was that, that that drew them to me but then they didn't take any notice of it. In other words, they were interested in me just as a victim, one particular identity and I wanted in the many interviews I did on television, radio and the press to try and use my competence as well.”
Shona Illingworth: “In 2007, I had, I was showing a piece of work at the Welcome Collection as part of their War and Medicine exhibition, and it was an artwork called The Watchmen, which is a big video installation, video and sound installation. And in connection with that exhibition, I wanted to hold or I held an interdisciplinary forum discussion forum called The Memory Forum, it was part of a series I've been running since 2006. And I worked with Kate Ford, who was a curator at the Welcome Collection. And we invited a whole series of, um, different people from different disciplines to come and meet and discuss questions around memory and conflict. And John was one of the people we invited to come and take part in that. I think that was when we first met?”
John Tulloch: “Yes, that's, that is right, and I was very taken with the, the film that Shona showed at that forum. It was about her father and, and the trauma of a man who went into as a very young, barely a boy, in the British Army into the concentration camps in Germany just after Second World War, when they're just opened and the terrible trauma for him.”
Shona Illingworth: “I think it was probably about two years after that that that John and I, we kept in touch and we met for a coffee and conversation and then, then I proposed that we make this work together. One of the things that I really wanted to do with the work was to, to really open up questions, to open up a kind of dialogue between different areas of expertise, lived experience and the public and to, to question the forms of representation for an event such as 7/7 and also the longer-term impact. So very often you know a new, you know, an event like this will happen, there will be a lot of news and, and media response and then we move on to the next event. So, I think, I was particularly interested in the kind of long-term impact of such an event, not just on the individual but also on the kind of invisible architectures, if you like, of control and state power.”
John Tulloch: “I was relying a lot on Shona’s creativity, which, which I'll talk more about in a second, but her she was she had ideas or she simply say, “Can we take a photograph of your ear close up?” So it was, it was at that kind of very technical level which would turn out to be incredibly important in the film. So, I, I didn't know what was going on in some ways, there was one shot she did of my back, now I'm not an actor, but no actor thinks they can act with their back. Well, not many who can, but I didn't really know what was going on there but I, I trusted her; I'd seen her earlier work.”
Shona Illingworth: “I would say yes, I would say something more about that in that there was a kind of overarching structure for the work. There was this move if you like from the individual impact of the explosion and then and, and in quite simplistic terms, moves through to the exposure and use of John’s image by the media and the, and then the film moves into the, well, it moves into the control orders. So, you read every single control order in the film; you're made to read every single one.”
John Tulloch: “I think what artists like Shona are trying to do is work at a language that can open this space up again, find forms in this multi-layered way that she deals with colour and image and time and space and so on. And, and because in half it's an elusive poetic film, it does open that space. If it was only the, the terror, the anti, the 90 days without charge terror legislation orders throughout, it would be seen as a bit of doctrinaire propaganda from a particular political position, but because there are this, this interweaving of inner and outer spaces and time zones and inner and outer space and all of that stuff, then she's, and all the different identities, actually, I think inviting audiences in to interpret in new ways.”
John Tulloch was sitting on board a tube train at Edgware Road Tube station on 7 July 2005 when an explosion tore through the carriage.
An image of him, bloodied and injured, on the street outside of the station became one of the iconic photographs of the 2005 London bombings. The Sun newspaper would later use one of the images taken of him that day on its front page with the headline “Tell Tony He’s Right”, accompanying an article backing legislation proposed by the government of Prime Minister Tony Blair that would allow terror suspects to be detained for 90 days without charge.
John, an academic with expertise in media and risk sociology, was against the legislation.
‘But there right next to my mouth, “Tell Tony He’s Right”. So that was the complete signifier of my control by the media and I was trying to break out of that,’ he said.
John wrote a book about his experience and participated in media interviews. In 2007 he met artist Shona Illingworth, whose work has explored issues of memory and trauma. They kept in touch and two years later, Shona suggested they collaborate to create a piece exploring John’s experience – but also the impact such events have on society at large.
‘And then I think what’s also very important, for me, about the way that I work with people is that I develop or we develop a piece of work over a long period of time. So dialogue that has the space and time to evolve and deepen over a long period of time is very important to me,’ said Shona.
John added: ‘I actually never had any difficult actually going back and relooking and in this case I knew from seeing this earlier film of Shona’s it would be a totally different experience, I would learn new things from it as well as say things.’
The film 216 Westbound is the result of their collaboration.
In the film, John talks about his personal experience of being caught up in the attack as well as the effect it has on his life – from physical injury to living with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
But as well as exploring how major events can affect an individual, the film also looks at the impact it has on communities, media and society.
Shona said she wanted the work to open a dialogue between different area of expertise, lived experiences and the public.
‘Very often an event like this will happen, there will be a lot of news and media response and then we move onto the next event. So I think I was particularly interested in the kind of long term impact of such an event. Not just on the individual but also on the invisible architecture of control and state power,’ she said.
Clips from 216 Westbound 2014, Shona Illingworth. Courtesy of the artist. Comissioned by Animate Projects.
