Redacted – excerpts from the Domestic Extremist Database

Jess Hurd and Jason N. Parkinson with their work – ‘Redacted’ – We Could Not Agree, Q Park, Cavendish Square. London. © Tracey Moberly

‘Redacted’ – a collaborative work by Jess Hurd and Jason N. Parkinson exhibited at We Could Not Agree, Q Park, Cavendish Square. London.

Redacted – excerpts from the Domestic Extremist Database

– a collaborative work by photojournalist Jess Hurd & her partner in crime, video-journalist Jason N. Parkinson shown publicly for the first time at the We Could Not Agree exhibition Q Park, Cavendish Square.

Jason Parkinson and Jess Hurd are well respected, professional, NUJ accredited journalists yet they find themselves sharing a police database with other, mostly unknowing UK citizens who have had information gathered on them in the interest of ‘national security’.

These include activists, journalists, comedians, politicians and other ‘subversives’.

This sinister, secret state surveillance has been going on a long time, but now we get the chance to examine our files, well the sections that the police allow us to look at – we suspect large swathes are redacted.

Often people say “if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear”, but what if inaccurate, subjective, bias builds up a profile of you that is shared with other agencies, you are targeted whilst working, singled out, even blacklisted and assaulted.

This has happened and will continue to happen unless it is challenged.

Secret police, covert surveillance, secret courts, we are not creeping towards a police state, we have arrived.

© Jess Hurd/Jason N. Parkinson

Image with the kind permission of artist/curator Tracey Moberly