Good Neighbours

Good Neighbours was an immersive storytelling project about citizen surveillance in neighbourhoods. It wove together live performance, technology and placemaking in a location-specific artwork.

Our goal with Good Neighbours was to spark more nuanced public conversations about community-making amidst the meteoric rise of domestic surveillance technology. We explored how surveillance platforms like WhatsApp, Ring doorbells and Nextdoor can potentially disrupt a sense of belonging in a community.

“After living in this neighbourhood and doing this experience it has definitely changed my view on these groups”
— Justin, participant in Good Neighbours, Amsterdam
“It’s like being in The Truman Show, feeling as though everyone is an actor.”
— Freya, York Mediale (UK)

Good Neighbours responded to three key research questions:

  • How do fear, paranoia and prejudice circulate in communities through mobile technology?

  • How are ‘our’ spaces claimed or reclaimed through technology?

  • What are the politics of mobility in neighbourhoods?  

Performance
Good Neighbours live performance was an immersive experience with a mobile chatbot app at its core. It played out in the streets of a neighbourhood where residents and visitors were invited to join a weirdly familiar neighbourhood watch group on WhatsApp. They were led on a surreal and surprising walking journey that included live actors, provocative storylines and surveillance technology. Participants walked through a carefully designed neighbourhood route while responding to the characters in the app. At the same time performers interacted with participants along the way, amplifying the narrative in the app and blurring the line between fiction and reality. The location-specific production featured at select arts-culture-technology festivals. The live performance premiered in York (UK) in 2020, followed by Amsterdam (NL) May 2021 and Utrecht (NL) for The Netherlands Film Festival in September 2021.

“It makes you look at everything differently.”
— Tim, York Mediale (UK)

Research
Each edition of Good Neighbours was preceded by months-long in-depth research into the neighbourhood where the productions took place. The narrative and characters were uniquely inspired by the location. Our research activities took place in collaboration with various international universities, where we taught students from around the world on the topic of social design. Our research also included public workshops and collaborations with leading urban-studies scholars as part of our extensive research into citizen surveillance and (WhatsApp) neighbourhood-watch groups in multiple countries including South Africa, The Netherlands, England, United States and Brazil.

affect lab may also undertake site-specific research at the invitation of a city or embedded cultural festival/biennale to develop a more in-depth picture of citizen surveillance within a particular context.

In 2021 Good Neighbours won the Dutch Design Award (Design Research) and was nominated for a Gouden Kalf award (Digital Culture) at the Netherlands Film Festival.

Good Neighbours was supported by the City of Amsterdam, the Creative Industries Fund NL and the Amsterdam Fund for the Arts.

 
 

The admin of the Neighbourhood Watch Group welcomes visitors at the Good Neighbours immersive performance in Layerthorpe, York. Photo: Esme Mai.

 

Performances

Layerthorpe, York (York Mediale, October 2020)

Lombok, Utrecht (The Netherlands Film Festival, September 2021)