Bubbles

I am an immigrant who has always had to rely on precarious jobs for survival, of course I am also a tenant. One of my jobs that left me particularly scarred was an agency job, for home care services not for cleaning but some central elements prevail. I remember the winter months of hurrying up to get to a visit on time and waiting in the freezing cold outside, hiding in people’s closes when I had gaps in my schedule. Working fifteen hours a day but being paid for only a fraction of that, because my employer’s business had to keep raising profit. Being surveilled by the company at all times whilst trying my best to be a caring human. Enduring xenophobia and racism from the mouth of a person whose behind I was cleaning. All of that to stay in the country, to have a place to live, to pay my landlord and keep up with the rent increases. She was a lovely middle class lady who was a head of HR for a big corporation and who inherited the flat but moved in with her even wealthier husband. And the market was changing, she needed to listen to the market and raise the rent, we should understand.

I am fascinated by the space that the servants of the wealthy people occupy in their private places, in their lives. The mix of disdain and dependency keeps their world spinning. I am also interested in the ways in which their circumstances force working class people to not realise their condition, and finally, what is unleashed when that spell is broken. It examines the absurdities of a system in which it is not unlikely that the person who exploits you at work is also profiting from your living situation. In a world where a landlord evicting their tenants is seen as a legal right, and not as an act of violence of forcing people out of their home, we delve into the dynamics that are its beating heart - the master and the servant, the employee and the employer, the landlord and the tenant.