POST-INTERVENTION THOUGHTS
What became clear through “Orange You Glad to See Me?” was that, while the station managers and employees act as part of the system that regulates our bodies and experiences in the London Underground, they are ultimately equally controlled by a system above them. They have a different role and type of agency in the Tube than we, the typical commuters, do, but their actions are also heavily policed and patrolled. As explained in the essay “Becoming Machinic” in our Theorising the Tube section, we witnessed firsthand the ways in which the Tube system has become less human and more machine.
While this intervention was not strictly successful in creating a feedback loop by entering into a mutual exchange through the CCTV cameras, it was successful in revealing more about the nature and functioning of the mechanism that is the London Underground. Additionally, it was successful in facilitating atypical human interactions in a space in which we—although constantly surrounded by others—isolate ourselves. Each time we stood with our signs to the cameras, passers-by turned towards us to see what we were doing. They asked us the next line of the joke, took photos, turned their attention to the CCTV camera at which our attention was directed, looked perplexed, laughed. If only fleetingly, their experience and awareness of the space was altered.
While this intervention was not strictly successful in creating a feedback loop by entering into a mutual exchange through the CCTV cameras, it was successful in revealing more about the nature and functioning of the mechanism that is the London Underground. Additionally, it was successful in facilitating atypical human interactions in a space in which we—although constantly surrounded by others—isolate ourselves. Each time we stood with our signs to the cameras, passers-by turned towards us to see what we were doing. They asked us the next line of the joke, took photos, turned their attention to the CCTV camera at which our attention was directed, looked perplexed, laughed. If only fleetingly, their experience and awareness of the space was altered.