Catalogue > At random

At the end of 2014 the Ministry of Justice released an announcement stating that from January 2015, “ every prisoner coming into custody will be asked if they have been a member of the armed forces ” and that “ prisons will be given new guidance about helping them during their sentence”. The announcement followed wide debate over the percentage of veterans in prison. Behind these policy contexts there also sits a wider public perception of the identity of the “ veteran ” which exists in tension with the notion of the “ offender ”. The Separate System was collaboratively produced by veterans through workshops at two local prisons with artist Katie Davies. The piece investigates the spaces of the military, custody and “ civilian ” life through the notion of work, an everyday activity that unites these worlds and is familiar to us all. The film communicates what we, as a civilian audience, perhaps do not understand about the unique set of relations, actions and responsibilities held by the people within these spaces. Created through FACT`s Adults Learning Programme, our work within the criminal justice system aims to approach the context of the prison system from a critically engaged position.

Katie Davies is a video artist exploring the construction of identities, their reflections and manipulations. Nationalism, violence and democracy form a central critique for her videos and installations, often focusing upon individuals and communities whose identities are dictated by the state; their agency to self-identify snared between political agendas and Sovereign violence. Katie is a Royal West of England Academician and was nominated for the 2016 Paul Hamlyn Award. She is a Jury member for the International competition, Short Film Festival Oberhausen, 2018 and has exhibited nationally and internationally including FACT Liverpool 2018, Kassel Dokfest, Bratislava International Film Festival and Oberhausen International Film Festival 2017 & 2015, Sarajevo Film Festival 2015, Border Visions, Connecticut, USA 2012 and The Istanbul Biennial 2009. She has contributed to several publications and her writing on practice-led research has been included in US and British publications. Katie is Senior Lecturer in Media & Cultural Production at The University of The West of England.