Though hard-hitting and well-intentioned, this mixture of static holograms and verbatim stories of the harm caused by UK government austerity programmes is flawed and troubling. Small groups of audience members wearing virtual reality headsets are invited to view squalid tableaux of disabled, disturbed or otherwise disadvantaged people – in hospital beds, barefoot under coverless duvets, collapsed in the street – while family members narrate how they suffered and died under labyrinthine benefits assessments.
You can’t hear all of the eight featured case studies in the 35-minute visiting slot, and it’s up to you how much or little of each you listen to. Doubtless this is part of the point that director Sacha Wares and her co-creator of this experience, John Pring of the Disability News Service, are making. We choose to pay attention to human suffering, to ignore it, or to dismiss those in need as “scroungers”.
