216 Westbound

216 Westbound is a single screen film by Shona Illingworth, commissioned by Animate Projects and supported by an Individual Grant for the Arts from Arts Council England. It is part of a wider research project that involves working closely with John Tulloch, survivor of the 7/7 London Bombing (2005) to explore the long-term affects of PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) on his spatial orientation and capacity to navigate the city - in relation to the wider affect of media representations and State interrogation of the Bombings on collective memory. The film explores the complex intersections and instabilities between memory, history and subjectivity as they evolve over time and location, traced through John’s life as it moves through and is profoundly affected by this major historical event. Where an image of John emerging injured from the Underground, became a global iconic image of the attack, John’s PTSD amplifies another, less visible but equally powerful affect of the 7/7 bombings on collective memory: the mapping of a new topography of latent threat and fear onto space. Using experimental editing and sound composition, the contrast between the impact of media dissemination of the attack on the complex construction of collective and cultural memory, and the profound affects of an embodied experience of a traumatic event and its dispersal through the collective body politic is explored. Animation is used to disturb and interrupt the flow of images, offer counter narratives and amplify a deeper topography of emotion and affect. The project sets out to create an intricate mapping across the processes of state interrogation, media dissemination and powerful subjectivities, memory and experiences, which intersect across and through this major site of violence.

The wider research project draws on interdisciplinary dialogues with Martin A. Conway, neuropsychologist and one of the foremost international experts in the field of autobiographical memory, whose work explores the centrality of memory to our sense of self and Tobias Reichenbach, a biophysicist and auditory neuroscientist at Imperial College London, whose research uses ideas from theoretical physics, mathematics, and computer science to investigate how biological systems and the brain function. Together with the Centre for Blast Injury Studies at Imperial College he investigates the impact of blasts on hearing.