Final report by Sasha Burkhanova-Khabadze and Amanda Newell, PhD students at CSM and Chelsea
Funded by the Post-Grad Community Project Fund
Hotel Jaguar was created by Amanda Newall (PhD student, Chelsea) as an immersive installation, which took her audience to the setting of a family-run hotel — hosted by Exposed Arts Projects, just a minute away from busy High Street Kensington. There were two options for people: if they wanted to they could take part in the project themselves: to take a position of either a hotel guest, or a member of staff. The storyline, created by Newall, expanded around them accordingly. The hotel itself looked like a semi-fictional historical-futuristic situation, where the time scales, visual references in design and style, as well as the overall “atmosphere” was not pointing to one particular period, but merged the experience of deja-vu with a dream setting of a place that has never existed (yet nevertheless seemed eerily familiar, according to the guests’ feedback). 
The activities that were held at the hotel (during the exhibition) were inspired by the stories and objects Newall found at Exposed as she was working on the project. Those, with which the artist emotionally resonated herself: including personal belongings, workwear, postcards and engineering tools left behind by the staff of the old Jaguar dealership (that resided in these premises for the last 90 years, before Exposed ArtsProjects moved in). Resurrected, appropriated, and functional once again, these things inspired Newall’s characters, who represented the staff of Hotel Jaguar.
While the staff was primarily enacted by the artists, invited by Newall (including Antti Sakari Saario, Linda Persson, Cameron Brott and many others), the guests were “recruited” from the audience: those, who were interested to have a spend a night at Hotel Jaguar and exchange the experience in the morning — during the social dreaming matrix guided by Dr. Julian Mantley, one of Newall’s collaborators. For the sleepover (8 hours), the participants were dressed up in the costumes, designed by Newall — to be fully integrated into the environment that she created. In the morning after the sleepover, psychologist Dr Julian Manley ran a dream-sharing event, called a “matrix”, inviting the participants to communicate their real night time dreams, images, and associations. These dreams were not interpreted by the matrix conveners; instead, these were allowed to gradually accumulate and transform in the course of the matrix. In this way, the main purpose of the social dreaming experience — and Newall’s artwork accordingly — was to provide a forum for sharing the hidden or unspoken thoughts and feelings about the social circumstances of the participants, enabling them to create new perceptions of, and solutions to the world that they share.
During the show, we enjoyed the attention of wonderful audiences: students from UAL and other art schools of London, artists, people from the neighbourhood and passers-by payed a visit. there were many questions and some great feedback that opened up the new direction for the project’s perception and interpretation. As intended by Newall, the “hotel” itself was turned into the venue for discussion, addressing the social agenda of its participancts, characters and viewers.
The show was also include in the Kensington and Chelsea Art Weekend, and got reviewed by Contemporary Hum and Eye Contact.
Participation – PG Community and others: The project was created in collaboration with Cameron Brott, Dr Julian Yves Manley, Garth Cartwright, Antti Sakari Saario (aka Huume), Linda Persson, Olav Westphalen and Lars Arrhenius, Anna Kinbom, Ulrika Flink, Meryem Saadi, and Vlada Yershova.
The project was curated by Sasha Burkhanova-Khabadze, a current PhD student at CSM UAL.
Project links:
http://www.exposedartsprojects.com/hotel-jaguar-show
http://eyecontactsite.com/2018/08/amanda-newalls-hotel-jaguar
https://www.artsy.net/show/exposed-art-projects-hotel-jaguar
Photographs by Unai Mateo Lopez