Suspended Agency (2019)

Suspended Agency: The state of paralysis mirrors the national socio-political climate between 2016 and 2019—the stagnant, uncertain interim period between the Brexit referendum vote and the UK's actual departure from the European Union. The film uses this physical "stuckness" along underpasses and transit lines to channel a collective numbness, anxiety, and suspended agency felt by a population waiting for an unpredictable future.

By having the characters break character to recite lines from Jean-Luc Godard’s 1965 sci-fi noir Alphaville, the film deliberately blurs the boundaries of reality. Alphaville features a society ruled by a computer logic that outlawed emotion; overlaying this text onto modern Dagenham implies that a sterile, technocratic, or rigid political ideology has similarly hollowed out the agency of the local people.

The piece acts as a speculative critique. It suggests that the promises of political self-determination have instead manifested as isolation, cultural stagnation, and a loss of personal control—trapping ordinary citizens in a loop of an eternal, unmoving present.