Movies that Matter 2012 II – Ai Weiwei: Making Matter Move

I am very happy that there are people like the Chinese artist/activist Ai Weiwei. The second film I watched at the 2012 Movies that Matter Festival, Alison Klayman‘s Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry (2011), follows his work.

A ‘parrhesiast’

Ai Weiwei is a classical example of what the Greeks in ancient times referred to as a ‘parrhesiast’. This denotes a person who ‘courageously speaks the truth’. By most of his art, Ai Weiwei endangers his own life by calling our attention to all sorts of deplorable situations in China. He comes across as fearless, but admits being scared with many of his actions.

For a long time, he managed to keep his balance on the ‘razor’s edge’. He seemed to get away with a good deal more than other Chinese dissidents. However, in early 2011, he was arrested for 81 days. Since then, many of his basic freedoms have been taken from him. In spite of this, his motto remains ‘never retreat, retweet’. If you and your browser read Chinese, you can follow him as @aiww on Twitter.

Going government’s work

A good deal of his work deals with ‘showing the unshown’. An impressive example is his work about the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, which killed around 90.000. This included thousands of children, to a great extent due to the poor construction of school buildings. One of Ai’s works consisted of creating a horrendously long list of all the children that died. It covered an entire wall of his office.

On top of that, he invited families to send him voice recordings of the names of their children. For an exhibition at the Munch Haus der Kunst, he covered an enormous wall with 7.000 schoolbags. The image read: ‘she lived happily for seven years in this world’. One commentator in the film says that he is doing the work that government should have done.

Publicising the self

His contribution is not appreciated. At some point, policemen break into a hotel room in which he is staying. He receives a serious blow to the head, for which he is eventually operated. Fortunately, he managed to take a picture of the event, just before being hit. He uploads it to Twitter, where is goes viral. His own case becomes a central node in portraying the misconduct of government and police. The pictures of his face after operation, and the occasional middle finger, are symbolic for the suffering many others.

Making things public

Image of crash investigation in Latour's introduction

The term ‘making things public’ is often used as a colloquial description of publicising, of showing the unshown. The French philosopher Bruno Latour (1947-) has given a twist to this term. He first started this in his introduction to the catalogue of the 2005 exhibition Making Things Public. Atmospheres of Democracy at ZKM in Karlsruhe. First of all, he focuses on the ‘thing’ that is made public. Often we are hardly aware of the role of material objects in creating public awareness, popular debate and democratic processes. Particularly in the case of art this is a major flaw. The long list of names, the voice recordings, the school bags, the images of his assault, all play a role in a much broader process.

John Dewey

The second element of Latour’s ‘twist’ is what it means to make something ‘public’. To make this clear, Latour refers to the notion of ‘the public’, which John Dewey (1859-1952) presented in his 1927 book The Public and Its Problems. A public is a group of people that is confronted with the negative consequences of something that is beyond their control. A public might organise actions to turn the situation for the better. Latour argues that such ‘publics’ often evolve around ‘things’ or ‘matter’. For example, a hazardous crossing in a domestic area can turn into a ‘matter of concern’, as Latour calls it.

Making matter move

I would say that a lot of Ai Wei Wei’s work can be described as making ‘matters of concern’. Given the setting of the Movies that Matter Festival, perhaps it would be more appropriate to speak of ‘matters that matter’. An important idea in Latour’s philosophy, is that ‘things’ or ‘nonhumans’ should also be regarded  actors. Normally, this privilege is reserved for people by modern philosophers. Latour shows that some ‘things’ are more influential than some people. He defines an actor as ‘that was was made to act by others’. To act is always a collective process. It takes more than just humans.

The film shows clearly how the pieces of art that Ai Wei Wei creates can move people. They are actors that are ‘made to act’ by Ai, his workshop assistants, a bunch of tools, thousands of years of Chinese history and the billion of Chinese now living.Together, they turn ‘matters of concern’ into ‘matters that move’.

A public of sunflower seeds?

Exhibition at Tate Modern

One of Ai’s most acclaimed works was his 2010 exhibition of a 100 million sunflower seeds at the Tate Modern in London. The sheer volume of seeds becomes even more impressive when you get to know that they are hand-painted pieces of porcelain. Sadly, the exhibition was changed when all the walking turned out to produce porcelain dusts that are harmful to people with asthma. It became a ‘matter of concern’, in its museum context. This piece of art created an unexpected public of its own.

Exhibition at De Pont

I went to see a smaller version of the exhibition in Museum de Pont in Tilburg, the Netherlands, a week ago. This ‘matter of concern’ has some very unfortunate side-effects. It looses all its playful seriousness. The seeds are ‘squared in’, and are constantly guarded. There is a one-meter-distance norm.

Karl Marx is said to have asked: ‘How can you have a revolution if you can’t get people to walk on the grass’. This piece of art is made to be tread upon. What are we supposed to do when we are no allowed? I wish I had had the courage to defy the guards, take off my shoes, and run barefoot across the sunflower seeds. I think Ai Weiwei would have.

Movies that Matter 2012 I – Bitter seeds, bitter questions?

Yesterday was the first day of the annual Movies that Matter Festival in the Hague, the Netherlands. It was the beginning of  a week-long programme of films and debates on human rights issues. I attended Micha Peled‘s new film Bitter Seeds. It is the third installation of his globalization trilogy, also featuring Store Wars: When Wal-Mart Comes to Town (2001) and China Blue (2005).

The new film focuses on the suicide wave among Indian farmers. The challenge of keeping their families alive is immense. As a result of this, one farmer ends his life every 30 minutes. One while reading this blog, three while watching Bitter Seeds.

As in his previous films, Peled succeeds in presenting a compelling, personal story. The film follows Manjusha, a college student, in her efforts of providing journalistic coverage of the circumstances of the villagers in her surroundings. Peled is there at every step of the way, following the entire process from planting cotton seeds to selling the produce on the local market. It feels as if you could smell the soil, and feel the softness of the cotton on your skin.

A story of immunity?

Meet Bacillus thuringiensis

The film unfolds the connection between the suicides and the introduction of genetically modified (GM) seeds, by the US-based corporation Monsanto.

Meet the mealybug

This story reminded me of the work of the German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk (1947-). The notion of immunity is important in his latest books, as I noted in earlier posts. Monsanto claims that its genetically modified seeds make cotton ‘immune’ for attacks by certain insects. This is achieved by modifying the seeds with the Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) bacterium. Nevertheless, such Bt cotton is not resistant against the mealybug. This requires additional treatment with chemical pesticides, which are typically applied without any safety precautions. The film shows how the spray is dripping down on the farmer’s bare feet. Despite all this hard labour, many crops get infected and fail to produce. The pesticide market in the Indian village is also dominated by Monsanto products, as the film shows. Before the invasion of Bt seeds, cow dung was used for pest control, a much cheaper and organic alternative.

Immunity and destruction

Industrialised production

The problem is bigger than that, however. Cotton production as envisaged by corporations like Monsanto seems to be only viable in an industrialised setup. It would require much larger farms, mechanisation of work and crop rotation. This implies the complete modernisation, and effectively,  the ‘creative destruction‘ of traditional cotton production as a way of life (for a similar example see my earlier post on the documentary Garbage Dreams). Whatever your opinion on such developments, it seems that such a choice should not be made by American corporations.

The immunity of communities?

Traditional cotton production

The suicide wave is also related to India’s prevailing social system. The film focuses on one aspect: the dowry that is traditionally paid at weddings by the father of the bride. This system has existed for centuries. According to the film, it is no longer sustainable now that the costs of cotton production have increased with the introduction of genetically modified seeds. Fathers can no longer ‘afford’ to have daughters. Despair over outstanding debts is the main cause of suicide. It seems that the introduction of a seed that is not as ‘immune’ as it was supposed to be, is also messing with the ‘immunity’ of families and the social system as a whole.

Due to the complete take-over of the cotton seed market by Monsanto, farmers can no longer protect themselves. Attempts to bring back the seeds that preceded genetic modification fail, as the film shows. There are small scale initiatives to introduce organic farming to a few Indian villages, however, by people like Vandana Shiva. This requires major subsidies, however, which are hard to find. So far, there is often no way out.

Bitter questions?

After the film, I had a drink with mr. Peled and a manager of a company that focuses on organic fruits and vegetables. I asked a question, which seemed to be perceived as impertinent by the manager. I wonder if it was. I invite you to leave your thoughts below.

Earlier, the issue had been raised that a film ought to be made that portrays ‘the consumer’. I would surely welcome such a film. Over the past weeks, I watched about 15 documentaries dealing with the ethics of trade. I was surprised to find that the position of the consumer received hardly any attention at all. I suggested that such a film, if it were made, ought to portray the challenges that consumers face. Increasingly, individuals are made responsible for the working conditions at the other end of the world. Many have suggested that fairtrade consumption is a ‘fix’ that stems from a neoliberal mindset, even though we tend to think of it as an alternative. In one of his lectures, the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek argues that fairtrade is an example of ‘cultural capitalism’: by consuming, you do good while sustaining the system of global capitalism. There is a short video of the lecture, with wonderful animations, which I would recommend to anyone.

This was considered a ‘boring topic’ by the manager. I asked if they happened to have seen the documentary The Bitter Taste of Tea: A Journey Into the World of Fairtrade (Borgen & Heinemann, 2008). This controversial film suggests that working conditions on fairtrade tea plantations are often not much better than on non-certified plantations. Assuming this is true, what does this mean for consumers? Can we trust the certificates that are presented to us, or do we need to open every ‘black box‘ ourselves, to speak with the French philosopher Bruno Latour (1947-)? My comments seemed to offend the manager at our table. He replied, rightly I think, that improving working conditions needs to happen step by step. He suggested that we shouldn’t criticise those who try.

Was he right? I partly agree. We cannot expect the world to change at once. However, I would argue we need to have fair but critical investigations of the attempts we make. This does not need to result in criticism, but in a discussion nonetheless. To what extent is certification possible as a guarantee, as the logo promises? Is it perhaps partly a utopia, given the current governance of global trade? What does it mean for me, as a consumer? Can I rely on the fairtrade logo, or do I need to do more?

55 jaar herinterpretatie van de Hongaarse revolutie

Mijn afstudeeronderzoek, in 2002, ging over de rol van intellectuelen in de Hongaarse revolutie van 1956 en de Praagse Lente van 1968. De opstandelingen waren gekant tegen de onderdrukking door het toenmalige regime.

Het Hongarije van nu staat weer aan de rand van de afgrond. Sinds 2010 heeft de rechts-conservatieve partij Fidesz een tweederde meerderheid in het Hongaarse parlement. Onder premier Viktor Orbán wordt in ras tempo een nieuwe dictatuur opgetuigd. Sinds zijn aantreden is een onvoorstelbaar aantal wetswijzigingen aangenomen, waarin bijvoorbeeld de vrijheid van de media en van religie ernstig worden beperkt. Veel wetswijzigingen kunnen alleen met een tweederde meerderheid ongedaan worden gemaakt. De kieswet is zo gewijzigd dat de herverkiezing van de huidige regering aanzienlijk meer kansrijk is geworden. Daarbij is Hongarije nagenoeg failliet. Orbán bemoeilijkt echter het proces om internationale steun te verkrijgen. Hij blijft fel nationalistische toespraken houden waarin internationale kritiek als poging tot kolonisering worden afgedaan.

In 2011 vond de 55ste herdenking van de Hongaarse revolutie plaats. Naar aanleiding daarvan heb ik een korte bijdrage geschreven in het jaarlijkse nieuwjaarsboekje van het Sociaal en Cultureel Planbureau (SCP), waarvoor ik werk. Mijn bijdrage is hier te lezen. Ik raad ook zeker aan om de andere bijdragen in het boekje te lezen. Dit is getiteld: Niet alle dagen feest.

Pictures of the defence

December 20, I defended my PhD dissertation, which can now be downloaded from Leiden University Library. If you are interested in a hardcopy, please send me an e-mail.

Below are some pictures of the defence.

Before the defence, with paranymphs

Awaiting the verdict

Receiving the degree

After all is over

December 20, 10 AM: PhD defense

Academy building

(voor Nederlands, zie hieronder)

The defence of my PhD dissertation (Subject of innovation, or: how to redevelop “the patient” with technology) has been scheduled for December 20, 10.00 AM. The defence will take place at the Academy building (picture to the left). As to provide a bit more information on the contents of the dissertation, I printed an abstract below (in both English and Dutch). Parts of the thesis were published in journals, or conference proceedings. These can be found in the publications section. Slides of a presentation that I held on the dissertation once can be found here.

Abstract

People are shaped in many ways: as subject of scientific inquiry, as part of a political category or in relations with others. Alternatively, they shape themselves. Michel Foucault examined such ways of ‘subjectivation’: the manner in which the human ‘subject’ is formed. He is most famous for his work on the role of surveillance in society. Contemporary critics argue that the surveillance he describes was only possible in the industrial era, in which people were often confined to closed spaces: schools, factories or hospitals. With the coming of the information era, however, the surveillance model is said to be defunct. People are much more distributed, to name just one distinction.

One way of assessing the value of Foucault’s work for present-day questions is to examine how ‘subjectivation’ relates to technology. His work on neoliberalism provides a starting-point. We do need to look further though, for example at Bruno Latour’s work. He claims that technologies are to people what ‘plug-ins’ are to the internet. The web is personalised by installing different plug-ins, add-ons or apps. Similarly, our subjectivity is shape by the technologies with which we engage. Question is how this turns out in practice.

Michel Foucault, 1926-1984

In order to take such a practical angle at these philosophical questions, this study examines the case of healthcare innovation. It articulates how patients are shaped in relation to technology. Technology is placed in a particular context when it is drawn into a discussion about innovation. The Dutch Electronic Health Record and the Personal Healthcare Budget are political designs that aim to foster innovation. Both policies started mid-1990s and were nearly abolished in 2011. What happened over the course of these one and a half decades?

Apart from these two policies, the study also covers other innovation-related developments in Dutch healthcare: the so-called Diagnosis Treatment Combinations, functional description techniques for health insurances, the Quality-Adjusted Life Years calculation and medical chat rooms.

It ends by examining the possibilities of democratising healthcare innovation, by investigating the example of ‘Living Labs’. These are local or regional platforms in which people are in some way involved in innovation processes. Just like for the different policies, the crucial question is: which role is attributed to the patient?

Nederlandse versie

De verdediging van mijn proefschrift (Subject of innovation, or: how to redevelop “the patient” with technology) staat op de agenda voor 20 december 20 om 10.00 ‘s ochtends. Het zal plaatsvinden in het Academie gebouw (zie het plaatje links boven). Om een beetje meer informatie te geven over de inhoud van het proefschrift heb ik hieronder een hele korte samenvatting gemaakt, met mogelijkheid om door te klikken naar Wikipedia. Delen van het proefschrift zijn gepubliceerd in wetenschappelijke tijdschriften of proceedings van conferenties. Deze zijn te vinden in de publications sectie. De slides van een presentatie die ik ooit over het proefschrift heb gehouden zijn hier te vinden.

Samenvatting

Mensen worden op verschillende manieren gevormd: als onderwerp van wetenschappelijk onderzoek, als deel van een politieke categorie of in relaties met anderen. Het alternatief is dat ze zichzelf vormgeven. Michel Foucault onderzocht dit soort vormen van ‘subjectivering’: de manieren waarop het menselijk ‘subject’ wordt gevormd. Hij is het bekendst voor zijn werk over de rol van toezicht in de samenleving. Hedendaagse critici stellen dat het toezicht dat hij beschrijft alleen mogelijk was in het industriële tijdperk, toen mensen nog vaak werden samengebracht in afgesloten ruimtes: scholen, fabrieken of ziekenhuizen. Met de komst van de informatiemaatschappij zou het toezichtmodel geen stand meer houden. Mensen zijn nu meer verspreid, om maar iets te noemen.

Bruno Latour, 1947-present

Een manier om de waarde van Foucault’s werk voor hedendaagse vraagstukken te bepalen is door te onderzoeken hoe ‘subjectivering’ verband houdt met technologie. Zijn werk over het neoliberalisme vormt hiervoor een aanknopingspunt. Toch moeten we verder kijken, bijvoorbeeld naar het werk van Bruno Latour. Deze claimt dat technologieën voor mensen zijn wat ‘plug-ins’ voor het internet zijn. Het web wordt gepersonaliseerd door verschillende plug-ins, add-ons of apps te installeren. Op vergelijkbare wijze wordt onze subjectiviteit gevormd door de technologieën waarmee we omgaan. Het is de vraag hoe dit in de praktijk uitpakt.

Om op een dergelijke praktische manier naar dit soort filosofische vragen te kijken wordt in dit onderzoek zorginnovatie als voorbeeld genomen. Zo wordt zichtbaar hoe patiënten worden gevormd in relatie tot technologie. Technologie wordt in een specifieke context geplaatst als het in een discussie over innovatie wordt genoemd. Het Nederlandse Elektronische Patiëntendossier en het Persoonsgebonden Budget zijn politieke ontwerpen die worden geacht innovatie te bevorderen. Beide beleidsontwikkelingen begonnen rond de helft van de jaren ’90 en werden nagenoeg stopgezet in 2011. Wat gebeurde er in de loop van dit anderhalf decennium?

Behalve naar deze twee beleidsterreinen gaat het onderzoek nog in op andere innovatiegerelateerde ontwikkelingen in de Nederlandse zorg: de Diagnose Behandel Combinaties, de functiegerichte omschrijving van zorgverzekeringen, de zogenaamde Quality-Adjusted Life Years berekening en de medische chat rooms.

Het onderzoek eindigt met het bestuderen van de mogelijkheden om zorginnovatie te ‘democratiseren’, door te kijken naar het voorbeeld van ‘Living Labs’. Dit zijn lokale of regionale platforms waarin mensen op de één of andere manier worden betrokken bij innovatieprocessen. Net als voor de genoemde beleidsterreinen geldt ook hier dat de cruciale vraag is: welke rol wordt aan de patiënt toegekend?

Cameras I: surveillance and human dignity

Cameras are important technologies when it comes to human suffering. They are used by violators, defenders and may also be the embodiment of human rights violations. How are cameras portrayed in human rights cinema? This edition focuses on surveillance cameras. Surveillance is generally perceived as an invasion of our private sphere. In a liberal mindset this equals an infringement of our human dignity. But is it that straightforward?

Turning the camera around

The documentary The Devil Operation (Boyd, 2010) shows how every minute of the life of Father Marco, a Peruvian priest, is captured by cameras. He is involved in peaceful actions that demonstrate the abuse of the local population by international mining companies. After a while, he becomes aware that cameras are pointed at him, and that they are controlled by a private security firm, which is hired by the mining companies. Marco and the people surrounding him are pursued and threatened. He is code-named “the devil” in this surveillance operation. Can we say that his dignity is violated? If so, cameras are used as a mediator. In an interesting turn of the movie, Marco turns the surveillance around. Acquiring cameras himself, he decides to follow those who follow him. If, indeed, his dignity is violated, we might argue that he re-established it, vis-à-vis the interrogators, by his course of action. This would show dignity as a condition that is actively developed in a relation between different actors.

An international fly on the wall

Unlike in the previous film, the documentary You don’t like the truth. 4 days inside Guantánamo (Côté & Henríquez, 2010) allows us to look through the surveillance camera ourselves. The directors came across footage that captured a four-day interrogation of 16 year old Omar Khadr by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS). Omar, a Canadian citizen, was taken to Afghanistan by his father after the war on terror had started. When he was fifteen years old, in 2002, he was captured by Americans after they attacked the house in which his father had left him. It was defended by Afghan fighters. He was found with two shot wounds in the chest. Omar was accused of killing an American soldier, for which he was interrogated and tortured by American officials. Afterwards, he was brought to Guantánamo bay. The low-quality footage of the surveillance camera shows how his Canadian interrogators try to blackmail and intimidate him. It is shocking to see such psychological abuse, particularly that it concerns a minor. The camera captures it all, also when the interrogators get angry with Omar for retracting his original confession, which he stated after torture. They claim that he is not speaking the truth now. His original story must have been correct. Sixteen year old Omar looks at them and says that he is telling them the truth now. They just don’t like the truth.

Here we might recall the previous film, in which it seemed that dignity was dismantled and reassembled in the reversible interaction between the one that watches and the one that is watched. For the present film, it is not clear whether the boy feels that he re-captures a bit of the dignity that had been taken from him. In the end, he looks defeated. Unlike father Marco, he did not have the option of inverting a camera: the camera was already pointed at the interrogators as well. On the other hand, the camera did enable Omar’s dignity to be construed in the relation between himself and his international audience. By showing his interrogators’ dislike of the truth, we might say that he established himself as an incredibly dignified teenager. Moreover, this might apply to the Canadian parliament as well, for which the film was screened. Again, we are faced with a relational, technology-mediated conception of dignity; but, one that works somewhat differently than in the previous film.

Ignorance is bliss

A last case, in which surveillance cameras take on an entirely different role again, is shown in one of my favourite shorts: A boy, a wall and a donkey (Abu-Assad, 2008). The film is only just over 4 minutes, so you may want to watch it (below), before reading on. We are presented with three Palestinian boys, who are desperately trying to shoot a movie. They have a crime story, they have guns, but they lack a camera. First, they squat the doormat of a sizable villa, using the camera of the intercom to record their masterpiece. We, as spectators, have the privilege of seeing the uncut “footage” it produces. During the first scene, a lady opens the door and throws a bucket of water on them. Soaking wet, the bravest boy demands the tape. To his great surprise he is explained that this camera doesn’t film anything, but just shows who is outside. Nevertheless, we, as spectators, do get to see what it “records”. Perhaps, a bit of their dignity as promising film makers is lost in this communication. This doesn’t stop them from mounting their donkey – three boys on one donkey (an unintentional pun on the symbol of the knights Templar?) – to march to the Israel-Palestine wall, where an actual surveillance camera is installed. Rather than showing what is “outside”, this camera seems to show what is “inside”. The same scene is re-enacted. This time, however, the boys need to act while shuffling sideways, according to what the ever-rotating camera points at. All of this to the background of the imposing concrete wall. Before reaching the end of the scene, a violent siren interrupts them. As a border patrol car speeds in their directions, one of the boys contemplates to his peers that it may be bringing their tape. Their dignity seems to be unaffected. This probably does not apply to other Palestinians when they approach the wall.

Human dignity as a relational, technology-mediated construction

On the basis of these cases, it seems clear that we cannot derive a general understanding of human dignity by examine a number of cases. Nevertheless, it seems promising to adopt a constructivist perspective on human dignity, as long as we take into consideration that it is constituted in relations that are likely to be mediated by technology.

New publication: Constituting the “good patient”

Our paper (with Frans Birrer), Constituting the “good patient“, was published in the proceedings of the 2010 conference of the International Society for the Study of Argumentation (ISSA). Also here, the question is how innovation is related to the subjectivity of the patient, as Michel Foucault would put. The Dutch Personal Healthcare Budget – receiving “cash-for-care” instead of a treatment “in kind” – is presented as a scheme that ought to enhance innovation. By getting patients to control the budget, they are expected to become rational consumers who only spend their money on innovative care providers. This way of reasoning is often criticised. However, the discussion is built up around a large number of arguments, which make up a cluster that is hard to penetrate. Effectively, criticism is often evaded in these types of debates, as we show in the paper. The question is how this relates to political accountability. With respect to the patient, we may wonder if (s)he wil really turn out to be a “good patient”:

‘Is (s)he indeed a cash-supported, rational sovereign, who constantly shuffles elations with care givers and is putting pressure to break rigid healthcare institutions? On the basis of the problems that participants in the policy discussion raised, another image of the patient-subject appears. It could also be an overburdened individual, constantly involved in unequal power relations, suspect in the eyes of government and society, and, therefore, increasingly constrained. This points at an entirely different type of subject, a “problematised subject”, so to say’.

Hurricane Katrina II: fighting for immune systems

In last week’s blog, I made a case for applying Peter Sloterdijk’s ideas on immune systems to the aftermath of hurricane Katrina, which hit the American gulf coast in 2005. In this week’s blog, I draw on examples from the fictional HBO TV-series Treme (Simon & Overmyer, 2010-11), a documentary of two prankster activists The Yes Men Fix the World (Bichlbaum, Bonanno and Engfehr, 2009) and Spike Lee’s second Katrina documentary If God is Willing and da Creek Don’t Rise (Lee, 2010) to show how this could be a way of examining practical politics.

City immune systems

The immune system of the city as a whole is targeted by a character of the first season of the popular HBO TV-series Treme: Creighton Bernette (John Goodman). Bernette is a writer with writer’s block, and a professor of literature at a local university. Befitting his societal status, his wooden house with a gigantic porch was built on higher grounds and was left untouched. His notion of space is the entire city, and its protection again future storms. He spends most of his non-writing time giving furious interviews to different kinds of journalists. Most of them concern the US Army Corps of Engineers, which were, and are responsible for the levees that need to be higher to maintain the city’s immune system. He only finds the proper medium to suit his voice when discovering YouTube. In one of his videos, he rants that ‘a bunch of idiot planners are busy running around putting green dots on maps deciding which neighbourhoods they think should return to cypress swampland’ (see last week’s blog for en explanation of the green dots). Bernette tries to accommodate to the space of the new city, taking part in mardi gras and community life, but cannot cope. His own living space is increasingly small: he withdraws to a dark room in the garden house and ends up sleeping on the porch. At the end of season one, he commits suicide, in the wide open of the Mississippi river, jumping off the ferry.

Neighbourhood immune systems

Another character, “big chief” Albert Lambreaux (Clarke Peters), also “acts on” the green dots, but in an entirely different manner. He is not concerned with maps or the internet, but with the fenced off housing projects that he sees close to his own house, which was ruined in the storm. His politics concerns the issue of people not being able to come home. Unlike Bernette’s city-focus, he is concerned with the immune system of the space that used to house communities that are now dispersed across the land. With the aid of friends, he cuts through a fence and squats one of the sealed off houses. By breaking the “isolation” of the fence, he changes the ontological status of the housing project. In a single unitary space within a fence, he unveils the lot of micro-spaces that used to be people’s homes. By occupying such a house, he transforms it into a living space. His example is followed by others. Before long, the police remove him with disproportional force, in front of a large public of bystanders and TV cameras.

The two activists that call themselves the Yes Men perform a similar disclosure of green-dotted neighbourhoods. With one of them pretending to be a representative of the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), they stage a hoax at a prestigious conference. Speaking after then-mayor Nagin, he announces that HUD is aware of its mistakes, and that he is proud to present that all the fenced-off housing projects will be ceremonially opened that afternoon. On top of that, Shell and Exxon will fund the renewal of the wetlands. The hoax is discovered, but not before they manage to hold a ribbon-cutting ceremony at one of the projects. Media try to make them look bad by arguing that they played a cruel joke on all the people who were “not allowed to come home”. Interestingly, by such statements, media actually take over the activists’ slogans. Interviews with attending citizens, however, show the opposite. The Yes Men’s hoaxes usually meet wide support of the disadvantaged. Rebuilding an immune system, in this case, required creating the hope of a community. A small public was formed by “two guys in cheap suits”, as they describe themselves, but it will take more to “fix the world”. The documentary was a worldwide success.

House immune systems

When neighbourhoods are rebuilt, it is often through the introduction of “mixed housing”. This pushes up rents to such levels that the original inhabitants can no longer afford to live there. In this respect, the action of Brad Pitt’s Make it Right project, as described in Spike Lee’s documentary, is highly interesting. Even though it targets green dotted neighbourhoods, the focus is on the immune systems of family houses. In sharp contrast with government- or market-driven building projects, the project constructs affordable, environmentally sustainable and storm-resistant houses. This extends beyond building houses on poles, capturing a holistic immune system’s view. Features included: green roofs, rainwater harvesting, pervious concrete, raingardens, tree-planting & protection (for water absorption) and porous streetscape. They are not over-isolated: all of them have escape hatches to the roof. From the point of view of micro-space immune systems, it is interesting that the project is criticised for being no more than ‘a few individual houses in a sea of empty lots, there are no sidewalks, schools or shops’. We are back to Sloterdijk’s islands. Perhaps they lack co-isolation.

Individual immune systems

For the individual level, we leave the green dots and return to the Yes Men. They crash another conference, this time dedicated to technologies for flood-victims. To their surprise, the tools offered would be more suitable for surviving heavy warfare than a storm. This brings them to stage their own (fake) technology, the SurvivaBall. The concept seems to draw on Sloterdijk’s work almost literally. The title of their presentation is “What Noah knew”, explaining that by creating the space of the ark, Noah effectively became ruler of all animals. The ball represents a one-man ark. Sloterdijk uses arks as an example of completely isolated islands. On top of that, the Yes Men show in their presentation that the balls can even connect to form a larger, co-isolated, foam-like organism that can float across a sea, like an actual island. To their surprise, their presentation is received with great approval by the audience.

Hurricane Katrina I: immune systems and green dots

Last year, Amnesty International presented its report – entitel Un-natural disaster. Human rights in the gulf coast – on the aftermath of the 2005 hurricane Katrina. Amnesty argues that ‘returning home is a human right’. Many former residents are still dispersed over a range of different states. The trauma that the storm caused to the United States is reflected in the number of films that cover it. In next week’s blog, I draw on the fictional HBO TV-series Treme (Simon & Overmyer, 2010-11), a documentary of two prankster activists The Yes Men Fix the World (Bichlbaum, Bonanno and Engfehr, 2009) and Spike Lee’s second Katrina documentary If God is Willing and da Creek Don’t Rise (Lee, 2010). Before that, a short tale of how to understand green dots and other spaces.

Immune systems

Peter Sloterdijk’s notion of “spheres” is helpful for understanding the aftermath of Katrina. Sloterdijk attempts to bring the notion of space into philosophy more explicitly. Our “private sphere”, office spaces, homes, islands and cities, all are spaces that have their own characteristics and manners of sustaining. The first part of the trilogy that he composed on the topic encompassed micro-spheres, the second macro-spheres. The former applies to “interior spaces” (bells or bubbles) in which intimate human cohabitation unfolds. The latter extends the borders of such private spheres to spaces of living together (globes) villages, cities, empires and universes. In the third part, he attempts to show how all these spaces are interconnected, in a continuously transforming whole that is as liquid, bubbly and changeable as foam. Foam city is the culmination of urban forms of space-configurations. Sloterdijk argues explains that cities are:

‘co-isolated islands, interconnected to a network, which briefly or chronically ought to form medium or large structures with neighbouring islands – a national assembly, a club, a freemasons’ lodge, a gathering of co-workers, a shareholders meeting, an audience in a concert hall, a suburban neighbourhood, an accumulation of motorists in a traffic jam, a congress of tax payers’ (Spheres III)[1].

Co-isolation is the idea that neighbouring bubbles in the foam share a “wall”: the indoor wall of my private space might be the outdoor wall of yours.

The next point that Sloterdijk makes is that all these different bubbles, globes and spaces have their own immune systems. Partly, this is to be understood metaphorically. For instance, how do we protect the invasion of our private space from intruders? At the same time, it is translated to concrete material manifestations of architecture and urban planning. Pointing at technological advances such as climate control and air conditioning, he shows how modern houses have their distinct immune systems to make the space inhabitable.

We could regard politics in post-Katrina New Orleans as a debate about spaces and their immune systems. The system was tested by the storm, and failed. 53 levees that were to keep the water out collapsed, many long before the fury of the storm was at its peak. It was the water that destroyed the city, rather than the wind. Roughly 80% of the city was under water, sometimes up to 20 feet. Close to 2000 people died. Tragically, this was also due to “over-isolation”: many people were trapped in their attics, dying of heat and lack of water.

It was also the immune system of particular neighbourhoods that did not hold up, or even that of individual houses that had not been elevated properly. Some areas on higher grounds –built before 1900 – were safe. All these spaces are interconnected. Houses, some even sharing walls, are connected to particular neighbourhoods, all of which constitute the foam of the city, which was seriously shaken up by the storm. These spaces provide us with a more systematic approach to our search of publics and their problems.

Green dots

The term “green dot” is notorious for New Orleanians by now. Planners look for ways to improve the sustainability of the urban environment. Billy Fields shows that one of the tools that is popular in green urbanism is the notion of “greenways”: open spaces that function as a ‘buffer between ‘nature’ and urban areas’ . In Sloterdijk’s terms, such an “artificial” green zone can be regarded as an example of strengthening the co-isolation of nature and human space. In principle, it seems reasonable to argue for such an approach in New Orleans: a major reason for the severity of the damage was that the wetlands that had traditionally functioned as a buffer had slowly but surely been urbanised and economised during the 20th century. Fields speak of ‘the “conquest of wetlands within the city limits”’. Also the doings of major oil companies like Shell and Exxon contributed to destroying wetlands, as John Manard Jr. and others add. The expanded island was not protected well.As Fields shows, the idea of greenways was finally accepted in New Orleans. The idea that preceded it was less successful, however.

The Bring New Orleans Back (BNOB) plan was presented to the public early 2006. A local newspaper ran an article in which the initial proposals for creating green spaces were represented as green dots on a map. These spaces did not relate to buffers between nature and urban areas, but to the more general notion of green spaces in a city. The map led to instant fury, considering that the green dots covered whole neighbourhoods. Maria Nelson and others argue that ‘[m]any residents understood that all green areas were slated for green space, and the green dot became a threat to neighborhood residents’. What is more, the dots generally covered low-income, black neighbourhoods. Planners stressed that no form of discrimination was intended. Nevertheless, they add that ‘“recommendations to reduce flood risk equal ‘ethnic cleansing’”. Intentional or not, the dots became political actors.

Next week’s blog will continue the discussion of immune systems in the aftermath of Katrina, showing examples in documentaries and TV-shows.

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[1] All quotations by Sloterdijk were translated from Dutch to English by the author. No English translation is available so far

IDFA Special II: The Most Dangerous Man in America

The 23^rd edition of the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) is just over. In this special, I look back at some of the human rights films in which technology played a special role.

Pentagon Papers vs. WikiLeaks

The Most Dangerous Man in America (Judith Ehrlich, Rick Goldsmith, 2009) won the Special Jury Prize at IDFA 2009 and was screened again this year. The film shows how Daniel Ellsberg leaked the 7000-page Pentagon Papers to the press in 1971. These papers contained a study by the department of defense, which documented how the public and congress had been lied to about U.S. involvement in the Vietnam war. By now, it is almost a cliché to compare these events to the recent circus around WikiLeaks, especially from the point of view of technology. It is a case in point to show how technological progress has changed the work of whistleblowers and of activists in general.

Daniel Ellsberg used a Xerox machine, then a cutting-edge technology.  By now, “to xerox” is a verb. Julian Assange, the “face” of WikiLeaks, uses “the internet”, another technology that allegedly “revolutionised” the world. In an interview with the Christian Science Monitor, Ellsberg says:

‘I’m glad to see that new technology being exploited here. I couldn’t have released on this scale 40 years ago. In fact, I couldn’t have done what I did do without Xerox at that time. Ten years earlier I couldn’t have put out the Pentagon Papers’.

We still tend to look at technology as a meteorite that simply enters our atmosphere at a certain point. We split history in the “time before impact”, and the “time after”. The line that divides Ellsberg and Assange is the transition from the Industrial Age into the Information Age. What if we don’t look at technology from outer space, however, but from where they are, right on our desks, or kitchen counters?

Ellsberg vs. Assange?

First, let’s look at this issue a bit closer from the point of view of the people involved. Ellsberg is typically presented as Assange’s historical predecessor. How correct is this observation though? Assange does not leak information. He is publisher and editor-in-chief of information that others leak to him, as he keeps on repeating. Bradley Manning, an ‘unparalleled hero’ to Assange, was working in Iraq as an intelligence analyst for the U.S Army. He was arrested in May 2010, and hasn’t been released since. Then, it makes sense to establish a historical connection between Ellsberg and Manning. Who was Assange’s 1971 counterpart? Neil Sheehan, perhaps? The journalist of the New York Times who received Ellsberg’s copies? Or Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, the Times’ publisher at the time?

A question of time: 7000 Xerox-pages and a Lady Gaga song

Let’s focus on Ellsberg and Manning for now, and try to feel what must have gone through them while they had their hands on their technology.

The 1971 scene is described in a publication of the Beacon Press:

‘Having decided not only to photocopy, but to leak the papers, Ellsberg enlisted the aid of Anthony Russo, a former Rand associate. Russo had a friend with a Xerox machine in a Los Angeles office. Mid- photocopying, the men heard a knock at the door: it was the Los Angeles Police Department. Assuming the worst—that the government had already tracked them down—Russo thought to himself, “God, those guys are good.” In reality, the coconspirators had accidentally tripped the building’s burglar alarm, and the police officer departed after an explanation from the office owner, who was on-site to assist Russo and Ellsberg’ (Trzop, 2007, p. 18).

The film on Ellsberg does a good job in using animation for this scene. We see the policy officers peaking in through the blinds, expecting Ellsberg to be caught red-handed. Particularly the image of his 11-year old daughter Mary sticks in your mind. I imagine how the beam of the officer’s torch would catch the large and shiny pair of scissors in her hand, with which she was just about to cut off the words “top secret” from another page. There were over 7000 of these pages. It took them months to do it.

How different this was for Bradley Manning. Let’s see how he supposedly described the scene in a chat on May 22 with former hacker Adrian Lamo, who reported him to the U.S. Army. This is what the Guardian reported on December 1, 210.

(1:54:42 pm)Manning: i would come in with music on a CD-RW
(1:55:21 pm)Manning: labelled with something like “Lady Gaga”… erase the music… then write a compressed split file
(1:55:46 pm) Manning: no-one suspected a thing
(2:00:12 pm) Manning: everyone just sat at their workstations… watching music videos / car chases / buildings exploding… and writing more stuff to CD/DVD… the culture fed opportunities
(2:12:23 pm) Manning: so… it was a massive data spillage… facilitated by numerous factors… both physically, technically, and culturally
(2:13:02 pm) Manning: perfect example of how not to do INFOSEC
(2:14:21 pm) Manning: listened and lip-synced to Lady Gaga’s Telephone while exfiltratrating [sic] possibly the largest data spillage in american history

Just a note: different versions of these logs circulate.

Activism, clicktivism and ethical reflection

This comparison is interesting from the point of view of what is called “clicktivism”, or “slacktivism”. Many fear the decay of “courageous” forms of activism, due to internet-based causes that can be supported by “one click of the button”. Critics argue that if you sign petitions, wear ribbons, or join a Facebook group, it rather serves your personal sense of self-respect than that it serves the actual cause. Clicktivism is said to replace activism.

No one would claim that what Bradley Manning did was not courageous. He is certainly no clicktvist. Still, he noted himself how easy it was to do what he did. This is particularly apparent in comparison with Ellsberg’s case.

Recently, concrete technologies are said to stimulate ethical reflection. Dutch philosopher Peter-Paul Verbeek shows how ultrasound images during pregnancy “make” the foetus a person. This creates a new relation between the unborn child and the future parents. On the one hand, any serious disease that is detected on an ultrasound might probe parents to consider abortion. On the other hand, the newly established relation may also be a factor against abortion. Technologies can make us think.

Something similar happens here, but in an entirely different way. As the comparison of the Ellsberg/Manning cases shows, the concrete technologies with which they interacted changed the “time of activism”. The Xerox machine did not allow Ellsberg to cover more than a certain number of pages per night. Manning’s clicks to copy and paste allowed him to store thousands of documents in the time-frame of a Lady Gaga song.

Ethical reflection takes time. I am curious to know what went around in the minds of these men. Certainly, Ellsberg had more time to think things over. More time to establish for himself that he would risk imprisonment for what he did. Can we say that time was on Ellsberg’s side? Or was it on Manning’s? Would Manning have gone through with his leaks if it had taken him months? Would he have considered the consequences of his deeds differently? Once again, he is no less courageous or heroic this way. It’s just that time does funny things. Unfortunately, he has his time to think, in prison. Thinking about clicktivism this way, the time spent does become a crucial factor. Probably even more so than the question of being courageous.

In line with the view of technology as something that stands on your kitchen table, rather than as some meteorite from outer space, let’s end with a remark by Daniel Ellsberg. When questioned whether he envied the technological advantages of preset-day whistle blowing, he answered: ‘Actually, I’m envious of the new Xerox machines. They collate, and they staple. They do everything for you. I could have saved a lot of time’.