A major London trend this year has been the glut of tech-enhanced immersive exhibitions, that have typically taken some great historical disaster – the sinking of the Titanic, the eruption of Vesuvius – and made it ‘fun’ via AR, VR, film and other such gubbins. They’re certainly more appealing to kids than the average British Museum exhibition – but they are of course also basic as hell.
That’s not the only way to use tech to craft an exhibition, though. As you’d probably gather from the title, The Museum of Austerity is an altogether more sober affair. A collaboration between the Young Vic, English Touring Theatre, Trial and Error Studio and the National Theatre, it contains accounts of the last days of those who died in Britain's so-called ‘austerity’ era after having their benefits cut by the DWP.
Although there are a few facts and figures on the sterile white walls erected within the Young Vic’s Maria studio, the meat of the ‘exhibition’ is an AR experience in which you don a helmet that reveals eight virtual figures dotted throughout the space. Walk up to one and it triggers the testimony of a member of the subject’s family on the circumstances that led to their loved one’s death. Although the subjects and details vary, the stories are depressingly similar: the person was vulnerable or very ill; they died either because their benefits were cut as a result of the clampdown instigated by the Cameron government (most commonly by suicide), or their last days were simply made vastly more anxious and miserable.
Many of their relatives took the DWP to court: we get detailed accounts of a cruel, capricious and unfeeling system that drove people to their deaths and often tried to weasel out of the blame afterwards.
It’s bleak. What does it add up to? These are powerful testimonies about people whose lives mattered. The show goes some way to restoring the dignity that was taken from them in their last days. But it feels somewhat diffuse: there are snatches of politicians grandstanding over benefits, but there’s not really a huge amount of context here. I think if you went in knowing very little about any of this, you’d find the stories individually horrifying but struggle to grasp the bigger picture. And if you didn’t read the timeline at the end you might not get the fact that not a lot has changed since the Cameron era.
Technologically it’s certainly interesting, although after the first few minutes the simplistic AR isn’t hugely edifying to look at (the figures don’t move or anything). There’s also the peculiarity that the 35-minute experience only leaves time for five-and-a-bit stories: given there are only eight in total, why not just make it 50 minutes long? Or at least ensure that the last story doesn’t fade out without hearing its conclusion.
All in all it feels like technologically transitional work: in five years time there will doubtless be something out there that’s like this, but better. Still, it could do with sharper storytelling, that tells a bigger story about austerity Britain. But it’s a bold idea, and the individual accounts within are powerful.
