Imran Perretta: The Destructors

In Imran Perretta’s film, a group of young men narrate their experiences of Islamophobia, state surveillance and austerity in the years after the September 11 attacks. Inside a decaying community centre, peeling paint and upturned chairs reveal the decline of civic space. Water and smoke seep into the building, adding to an atmosphere of threat.

The film follows Perretta’s subjects closely. Their bodies appear cropped, as if protected from the camera’s gaze. They describe the emotional toll of navigating a hostile society that continually perceives them as violent. The welfare state has become the ‘warfare state’, one of the men says, where ‘brown life can both cost too much and seem so very cheap’.

Filmed through the artist’s own embodied view, the destructors draws upon Perretta’s personal experiences, while inviting us to move through the space with him. The title is taken from Graham Greene’s 1954 short story about a gang of boys who plan to destroy a beautiful old house, which Perretta discovered as teenager.

The artist explains: ‘What struck me was the parallelism betweenGreene’s narrative about a gang of teenagers known solely for their capacity for violence, and the media portrayal of young, brown men like myself around the advent of the War on Terror.’

Born in London in 1988, Perretta examines marginality and cultural histories through moving image, sound, poetry and performance.