Transdiscourse 2: Turbulence and Reconstruction 9783110470932, 9783110469813

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Edited by Jill Scott

Transdiscourse 2

Turbulence and Reconstruction Cultural Studies: An anthology of viewpoints on society from the arts and the sciences



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Foreword Sigrid Schade



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INTRODUCTION TO TURBULENCE AND RECONSTRUCTION Jill Scott



ART AND SOCIETY

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The Big Gap Johanna Lier / With Photos by Nurit Sharett

29 Identifying and Categorizing: Power, Knowledge, Truth and the Artistic Strategies of Guillermo Gómez-Peña and Fiona Tan Teresa Chen 47 Derealisation, Cinema and the Turbulence of Information Kit Wise 59 Imaging the Norm Ellen K. Levy 75 GALLERY A TURBULENCE curated by Susanne N. Hillman Dawn DeDeaux, Ziad Zitoun and George Osodi



DESIGN AND ECOLOGY

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Subsistence farming — the Survival Strategy Angelika Hilbeck and Herbert Hilbeck

107 Uncertainty, Utopia, and our Contested Future Patrick Moriarty and Damon Honnery

121 Redesigning Nature: Situating Art and Ecology Christoph Kueffer and Jill Scott 139

TURBULENT SOCIETIES, THE CHALLENGES OF DIGITAL CONTEMPORARY ARCHITECTURE Jan Słyk

157 GALLERY B Interrogating the sublime: reconstructions curated by Anna Achtelik Tamiko Tiel, Josephine Starrs and Leon Cmielewski, Eugenio Tisselli and Juanita Schlaepfer-Miller



TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY

169 Resilient Society Agnieszka Jelewska 185

EMPATHETIC THINGS Juergen Moritz

201 Paranoia at Play: The Darkest Puzzle and the Elegant Turbulence of Alternate Reality Games Hugh Davies and Vince Dziekan

217 Alternative Visions: Human Futures Boris Magrini

BIOGRAPHIES 233 Authors

FOREWORD Sigrid Schade

Transdiscourse is a series of books that represent the outcome of reflections and works of artists, PhD students and scientists crossing the borders of science and art within the broader field of cultural studies. The diverse aspects of such questioning and procedures have been at the core of the PhDprogram z-node, directed by Jill Scott, which the Institute for Cultural Studies in the Arts has hosted over the last twelve years. Transdiscourse is the appropriate term for such a quest since it signifies a crossing of the borders of limitations, regulated and regulating the very discourses, which according to the French author and historian Michel Foucault are the medial and material “substance” of all knowledge, in the daily life of societies as well as in the sciences and the arts. These discourses are deeply intertwined with the institutions in which they are (re)produced and at the same time (re)construct those institutions. The second Volume of Transdiscourse, with the title Turbulence and Reconstruction, shifts topics which had been featured in the first Volume, Mediated Environments, towards an even more complex field of questioning in which approaches of artists, scientists, sociologists and cultural studies intertwine. Since a dominant part of the power of discourses is their interest in (re)producing their power itself, we definitely need turbulences to transgress the borders and

the frames of the discourses of knowledge production in order to address the main political issues of today. Our specific profile at the Institute for Cultural Studies in the Arts invites investigations into environments and frames of acting, in forms of communication and representation, within societies’ constant levels of changes and networks. Our society continues to be confronted with migrations of people forced away from their homes by markets or wars, climate change and the need for sustainability and biodiversity and questions of survival of humans: their societies and cultures. The second volume of Transdiscourse contains contributions from former z-node PhD students, colleagues with whom we met at a visiting scholars’ project at Monash University in Melbourne Australia in 2011, and other academics and artists who directly address the topics we have been working on. I would like to express my gratitude to the editor and my colleague Jill Scott as well as to all other contributors to Transdiscourse II, without whose devotion and engagement, the book could not have been published. Sigrid Schade Head: Institute of Cultural Studies in the Arts, Zürich University of the Arts.

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INTRODUCTION TO TURBULENCE AND RECONSTRUCTION Jill Scott

This book had two inspirations: one was my coedited book, “Mediated Environments” (2012), the first volume in the Transdiscourse 1 series of which this is the second volume (1). The other was a visiting scholars project I organized in 2011, for my PhD students (from z-node in Zurich) to my own old school – Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. Although Transdiscourse 1 was devoted to the relationship between the media and environmental problems; the interplay between turbulence and reconstruction was the direction that occurred to me for Transdiscourse 2 when I revisited Monash University. In the late 1960s and 1970s, Monash University was the Australian equivalent of the Berkeley campus of the University of California, and my attendance then at the Caulfield campus of Monash not only alerted me – then a wide-eyed art student – to the necessity of confronting the Vietnam War, but provided exposure to broader discussions of the means and ends of replacing capitalism with more humane economic and value-oriented systems (2). Radical and often imaginative approaches to social problems were debated during this turbulent era. These passionate if sometimes naïve or idealistic discussions influenced me deeply. They helped set the intellectual course I have pursued over the intervening decades. I remain committed to some socialist goals – perhaps most simply defined here as a more equitable distribution of wealth and health – and to ecological practices

that would bring us into greater harmony with our global allies and with a planet suffering under our stewardship. Our understandings of the interrelatedness and complexity of our social concerns – whether categorized as media, art or science – have rapidly accelerated. They affect our approaches to pretty much everything we call human civilization: agriculture, urban planning, energy production and political relations to name just a few. The rapid expansion of our own species is the single constant in an era marked by an increase in ecological novelty from climate change and also the clash of the virtual and the embodied, at a time when the ultimate in embodiment, the genetic redesign of species including our own, coexists with the posthuman ideals of disembodiment inherent in the virtual realms of media and technology. I evoke the concepts of turbulence and reconstruction partly to problematize them, to save them from the overly simplistic meanings often imposed on them. Although turbulence has often been seen as a negative condition, some indispensible ideas have arisen from this state of emotion, for example, consider the status of women from the female Suffragette movements in the early 1900s or the relatively recent Occupy Wall Street movements that disrupted “business as usual”, both of which intended to shake up social norms. Construction, however benefits from a more positive reputation or connotation, which is not always deserved. For instance, solutions are sometimes proffered for

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problems and characterized as rebuilding a society or restoring some feature of the natural environment in a very superficial way. It is then that the backward looking character of the term’s prefix, “re”, becomes apparent. When the term is used as a synonym for building or construction, one must consider whether the retroactive “re” might be seen as a means of conferring dubious historical prestige, or an unfortunate set of developments that can produce chaos or violence, as with the so-called Cultural Revolution in China. Throughout these essays, the reader will find an uncharacteristically complex, less dualistic picture of the relationship between turbulence and construction, cause and effect. The “and” between the paired terms that comprise the titles of the three sections of the book – art and society, design and ecology and technology and society – are similarly intended to give pause, to invite reflection on these hybrid perspectives from the arts and the sciences in our current world where disorder often overflows into the world of order. All the authors in this book were invited to write the new works that have been anthologized in this volume, because of their shared social concerns. Each believes in the potential of the arts and the sciences to raise public awareness about sustainable futures, unpredictable outcomes and new approaches. Like me, most of them were radicalized by their interest in representation of and opposition to the current Neo-Imperialist adventures of our present global system. All have watched the regimes of both Eastern and Western countries ignore the idealism embodied in the United Nations Charter as well as related international

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conventions and laws. Instead, they have witnessed the denial of certain rights of individuals, the manipulation of fears of ethnic and religious groups toward one another, and the establishment of an order that regards the privations (and privacy) of non-elites as merely collateral damage en route to the new globalism. All the writers in this book should be considered as theorists who are concerned about this direction, theory being, fundamentally, an act of imagination, of revising or re-envisioning the world. Some, are artists conducting research that extends beyond the reach of their own disciplines to those of science and engineering, a practice of exploding the conventional boundaries of visual art that dates back to conceptual art. Others are scientists whose ideologies have emerged from those of the late 60s and allowed them to extend their gaze into the humanities. Sustainability, diversity and resilience are the current terms on every one’s lips. Transdiscourse 2 consists of 12 original essays and two gallery inserts produced by eighteen talented contributors. I am extremely grateful to them for their efforts and for working alongside Anna Trzska and I, to revise and develop their theoretical concepts. Let me now introduce them to explore the character of the book and the proposals, analyses and debates therein. Turbulence and Reconstruction is divided into 3 broadly thematic sections: “Art and Society”, “Design and Ecology”, and “Technology and Society”. In the Art and Society section each contributor is an artist who addresses the nature of identity, taxonomy and representation – post-modern

Inspired by her dialogues with people about changing religious lifestyles and her grandmothers “inner migration” from a Jewish community in Ukraine to Switzerland, Johanna Lier examines the process of reconstructing a life in a diverse society through both words (interviews she’s conducted) and images by her collaborator Nurit Sharett. In this situation the individual must necessarily adopt new rules and regulations, yet also negotiate the customs, conventions and degree of conformity that are comfortable or possible in a new locale. “Outsiderdom” offers a more detached and distanced perspective enabling reconstruction as well as the possibilities

for turbulence in the form of alienation and isolation. She learns that the sharing of similar problems might help to overcome these boundaries. Teresa Chen investigates the strategies of two artists who have migrated from their homelands to their long-time residencies abroad – Guillermo Gómez-Peña’s in San Francisco from his native Mexico, and Fiona Tan’s in Amsterdam from Indonesia and Australia. Both reflect the author’s experiences racially – as a Chinese-American who investigates Eurocentric anthropological discourses and their relevance to the work of these artists. Unlike the alienated subjects Lier discusses, performance artist Gómez-Peña revels in the outsider status that validates his construction of over-the-top, stereotypic “characters” that reveal and ridicule the status quo. If ever an acerbic and amusing solo voice has shaken things up, it is Gómez-Peña’s. Tan, too, is interested in lost ancestors and the representational depredations of colonialism, but her work is more related to family ties than the work of Gómez-Peña. Working in film and installation, her artworks of the past decade have grown increasingly narrative, employing scripts, voice-overs and professional actors. Her work is also a strategy to question the status quo of neoliberal classification. Similarly in his concern for more “real” relationships though cinema, theorist Kit Wise provides us with an overview of Paul Virilio’s notion of derealisation and applies it to artworks that address the surveillance and post modern appropiation of cities and city life. He is interested in how the remnants of information itself can expose colonialism and racism, and cites artists like Jordan Baseman

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Introduction to Turbulence and Reconstruction

concerns that have dominated art since the 1980s. Johanna Lier is a Swiss writer and journalist who ventured with a photographer, Nurit Sharett, to document the demographic imbalances of traditionalism and modernism in Israel. Teresa Chen is a Chinese-American Swiss photographer who works with representations and post-colonial discourse and Kit Wise references Paul Virilio to conduct his own analysis of the Overexposed City. Finally, Ellen K. Levy is an artist from the USA whose interest in the subject of attention has taken her into the realm of neuropsychology. These are anthropological, sociological and psychological concerns that carry stories about displacement, migration and mental health. As Arnd Schneider posits, instead of thinking of two separate fields: one being the investigatory field of science and the other being the passive object of research (art) both should be seen “as endeavours of knowledge production involved in setting experimental research agendas which can enter into a fruitful dialogue” (3).

and curators like Okwui Enwezor, as examples. His notion of the ‘remnant’ lies between the familiar (near) and the unfamiliar (far) forms of information. It is a kind of turbulence that might lead to interesting revelations, providing we give it the attention it deserves! In the next essay, Ellen K. Levy is an artist fascinated by “attention” as a subject in itself. Considered to be a “very chaotic and turbulent syndrome” the diagnosis of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder or ADHD and the representations accompanying this diagnostic category constitute the subject of her article. The medicalization of everything the pharmaceutical industry can appropriate is called into question as is the sometimes tragic unreliability of these categories and designations. “What is normal childhood development?” Levy asks in reference to definitions of ADHD characterized largely by their opposition to dubious “norms”. She looks closely not only at the diagnostic criteria attached to ADHD but to the drawings that often reveal children’s sense of themselves, as well as works by some contemporary artists addressing concepts of normality such as Robert Buck and Janet Biggs. These artists provide a sharp contrast to the tests designed for ADHD by neuropsychologists, whose tests fail to consider any graphic abilities or knowledge of art conventions of the subjects they are testing. The second section of the book, too, is the work of writers with hybrid professional callings (farming, ecology, art and architecture) situated at the intersections of Design and Ecology. Unlike the artists discussed above, their concerns are less directly connected with individual artists in many

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cases. They share an interest in trans-disciplinary education about the state of our urban or rural environment, as well as the way it is designed and managed. For example Hilbeck and Hilbeck (Father and Daughter) teamed up to comment on the value of learning more about subsistence farming, while Christoph Kueffer and I collaborated on art and science interventions about the redesigning of nature. New problems about the educational and digital goals of urban planning are addressed by architect Jan Słyk, and the issue of energy is debated by a prominent design and engineering team: Patrick Moriarity and Damon Honnery. For her investigation of agricultural land use policy in the former East Germany between 1950 and 1989, agricultural scientist, Angelika Hillbeck collaborated with her father, a former farmer in the GDR. Herbert Hilbeck began to advise Bonn – after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989 – about the redistribution of lands that had been appropriated by the former GDR government, but he has first-hand experience of subsistence farming that occurred alongside the commercial Eastern collective farming. Together, they explored the diverse and emotional affects of subsistence farming on communities and compared these results with Western and Eastern dominant commercial practices. Through their seminal interviews with East German farmers who lived through the Communist era, they suggest the emotional and communitarian benefits of the subsistence survival – a practice that has since been discredited for neo-liberal economic reasons. By unpacking an analysis of the pros and cons of energy solutions design/engineers Patrick Moriarty

Indeed, unprecedented human-initiated alterations in the world around us have, not surprisingly, focused attention on climate change, both within and outside the rapidly growing discipline of ecolology, as well as in the art schools where designers are challenged by societies’ needs. Ecologist Christoph Kueffer and I (artist/designer Jill Scott) focus on these changes in the urban environment and the growing number of collaborations between designers and scientists reflecting new thinking in this realm. Our own collaborative workshops are also local attempts to combine art, media and ecology, that seek to disrupt established concepts, blur disciplinary boundaries and encourage new thinking that reflects the changing face of our environmental practices, a relational approach may be more appropiate. Architect Jan Słyk interrogates the effects on architecture of the new focus on modular, and programmable solutions for our crowded urban environments. Working within Warsaw University, whose architectural labs exert significant influence on this fast growing metropolitan area, he

questions the pedagogical value of a near-exclusive orientation toward digital design methods. Although architecture seemingly benefits from its nature as an inherently slow-moving, future- and consensus-driven discipline, this can also compound the problematic character of developments within the field, such as that of the seemingly unstoppable, 20th century direction of dehumanizing, modernist architectural design. The impact of serviceable digital technologies on our lives is a widely and hotly debated subject today. In the Technology and Society portion of the book, hybrid theorists and media artists contemplate both the individual and social effects of technological capabilities as different as those connected with social media and the genetic redesign of species. En masse, the implications of them are so radical and far-reaching that they challenge our sense(s) of reality and imply the necessity of very unique sorts of relationships and identities for the future. Here writers Agnieszka Jelewska, Juergen Moritz, Hugh Davies, Vince Dziekan and Boris Magrini conduct some analysis into different areas of technological and artistic research that may shed light on future discussions. By confronting the turbulence of reality inside networked society, theorist Agnieszka Jelewska asserts the need for a redefinition of the concept of Resilience – frequently evoked in reference to the presumably durable and elastic character of the decentralized net – in the face of increasing corporate control of the online infrastructure. Social media might be used to enhance resilience and democratic features of network culture including

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Introduction to Turbulence and Reconstruction

and Damon Honnery share their concerns about climate change and fast-approaching resource and pollution limits. These signs of turbulent times ahead are embodied in their astute assessments of energy policy. They are not optimistic, suggesting that social attitudes toward energy consumption and energy-consuming lifestyles need to be radically altered – not merely tinkered with – in light of the anthropocene. They show how deeper analysis can help us to learn from the past, rather than the familiar reason we often hear in the media: that our energy use is greater than in the past.

accessibility and the potentials for community out-reach and political resistance, rather than their opposites. Can a kind of resilient mesh be built into our networks; a kind of alternative platform to help us navigate our way through social or environmental problems? Both human and specially-designed non-human agents may have to be involved in the reconstruction of our survival. Jelewska uses examples from gaming, wearable technology and internet-events to illustrate the potentials of such resilient networks. Jürgen Moritz, an Austrian media artist who lives in Thailand, for instance, references psychologists Jean Piaget and Sherry Turkle as well as the philosopher Michael Foucault, while examining our dependent relationships with electronic objects or “Empathetic Things”. He traces the shaping of our subjectivity that these inventions produce and highlights the deep psychological desire for self-mastering them and the ethical need to create a future where the care of ourselves is featured. While Moritz acknowledges the influence of technology as ubiquitous, he cautions that we need to remain critical in order to construct a future that does not imperil our understandings of reality and humanity. In their unusual approach to gaming, Hugh Davies and Vince Dziekan assert that serious games with a satirical approach might help “save the world”. Echoing a viewpoint originating with surrealism nearly a century ago, they argue that games disengage us from and disrupt normal perceptions, opening up more free-form, unconventional spaces for thought. Many typical augmented reality games encourage paranoid sensations of being the hunter

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or the hunted! In order to breakdown this rather dualistic design of gaming real-world situations Davies and Dziekan encourage emotional tags and associations that deal with the following question: Can real world problems ever be designed in games that are non-violent? To investigate this question they produced “The Darkest Puzzle”, an alternate reality game based on the 9/11 terrorist attacks, in which players can reconstruct and ameliorate turbulent social conditions and can alter the actual outcome, causing a simulated world to be a discussion for real-world problems. Art historian, Boris Magrini finds another aspect of our networks not so appealing – the replacement of human transactions by technology fed by the philosophers and theorists of trans-humanism. Looking back at previous utopian visions of society, he points out how three artists/groups are dealing with this thin line, the porous border between science fact and science fictions of “the future-body”. As Magrini and others – including many sci-fi authors such as Margaret Atwood – suggest, science fiction is a mirror of current hopes and fears for the future, which reflect the turbulence of the past. In an era of medical and genetic miracles, a future that obviates the burden of our bodies seems not just possible but inevitable, and has become a nearly ubiquitous trope in so much literature and art. Using unconventional artworks as case studies from Tobias Bernstrup, Špela Petricˇ and etoy.CORPORATION, Magrini compares their speculative vision with related discourses such as hypothetical mapping, elitism, technophilic elitism and environmental activism, and encourages more artists to contribute to any alternative visions of our future.

(climate change, biodiversity loss, feeding a growing population), technology (the steady acceleration of microchips and technology into our daily lives-More’s Law) and the market economy (globalization with neoliberal values).

Turbulence and Reconstruction was designed for an audience of educators and students of art, media, design, ecology and cultural theory interested in engaging in a transdisciplinary discussion that suits the daunting complexity of our everexpanding and inter-related problems. We seem to be ill-prepared for our current crisis of nature

References

These three crises raise a big, novel question: Is it possible to alter our out-dated modes of representation, categorization, social prejudice, environmentally-sensitive design and notions of physical survival now? And – the elephant in the room – is there really any alternative if our species is to survive? In that vein, I hope that these diverse essays and artistic interpretations variously provoke, inform and – especially – inspire further action by readers, artists and researchers who are interested in the current issues of cultural studies. One solution might be found in the prescription by the existentialist Albert Camus: “Real generosity toward the future,” he wrote. “lies in giving all to the present.” (4)

1. Gleiniger, A, Hilbeck, A & Scott.J , 2010, Transdiscourse 1, Mediated Environments. Springer NewYork/Vienna 2. Monash University History: http://www.lastsuperpower. net/Members/dmelberg/melbmaoists. Accessed 02.10.2015 3. Schneider, A , Wright, C 2013, “Art an Anthropology” in Antropology and Art Practice, Bloomsbury, UK 4. Campus, A , http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1957/camus-bio.html

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Introduction to Turbulence and Reconstruction

Of course, from my own long history I know that visual artists and writers communicate and contribute to these visions through different means. For this book, it therefore seemed important to allow additional artists – that is, those who are not represented by essays – to participate by contributing works rendered through their “language” of the visual. Therefore, two gallery spreads instigated by two curators are included in this book and they engage the themes of turbulence and reconstruction in varied ways. Art historian Susanne Hillman, who is interested in the after-effects of catastrophe, curated one gallery, which features reproductions of works on turbulence by artists Dawn DeDeaux, Ziad Zitoun and George Osodi. The dynamic works of these three artists about local environmental conditions speak for themselves. The second gallery is by educator Anna Trzaska, who selected the artists Tamiko Thiel, Juanita Schlaepfer-Miller, Josephine Starrs/Leon Cmielewski and Eugenio Tisselli, because they all explore what she calls a reconstruction or interrogation of the sublime. Here the applications of technology and biotechnology on our historical view of history and the grandeur of nature is explored as well as the communities that rely on nature for survival. It is a pleasure to be able to offer these social oriented artworks in a book that is not originally designed as an illustrated catalogue.

ART AND SOCIETY

The Big Gap Johanna Lier / With Photos by Nurit Sharett

Perhaps the most significant difference we have to deal with today might not be about religion and nationality but about identification with new communities. In the second part of the 19th century Jewish refugees took the long journey to Switzerland from present-day Ukraine and upon arrival had to assimilate totally in order to survive. This extreme transition was doubleedged a migration from their religion and also from their country. This article is reflective of my own similar ancestral background. As a writer who was researching a book on the subject, I wanted to investigate a possible mirror situation. What happens in Israel when one has an orthodox life, and how does it really feel to leave this lifestyle behind you, either on a voluntary level or because of difficult circumstances. This journey took me to the Haredi community in Bnei Brak near Tel Aviv, and to Givat Shaul in Jerusalem to explore these differences. About 550 000 Orthodox Jews live in Israel today, many of whom live in Jerusalem or in smaller villages in both south and north Israel. Bnei Brak, the northern most city from Tel Aviv and home to some 151 000 residents, counts as one of the largest Orthodox communities in the world. Rabbi Yitzchak Gerstenkorn and a group of Polish immigrants founded this village in 1924. In this article the gap within the Jewish population between the Orthodox, or Haredim, as they are called, and the secular, or Chofschim, is taken as an allegory for the conflict between the problems

of both traditionalism and modernity that shapes world politics today (Strenger 2006). Points of conflict include, among other things, the legal regulation of everyday life, the question of whether

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traffic should be stopped on Shabbat, if restaurants should be required to offer kosher foods, as well as questions of gender and, not least, of demographic imbalance. The situation is exacerbated by the dramatic reductions in the quality of life for the people of Israel over the last twenty years, thanks to an economy driven by neoliberal policies. Together with Palestinians, Orthodox Jews make up three-quarters of Israel’s poor. There is even talk in the country of “Haredi slums.” The Orthodox community, however, should not be confused with the Zionists, or so-called settlers, who with the large support from the current government, continue to expand their illegal settlements in the Westbank and who see it as their duty, based on their interpretation of certain passages in the Torah, to re-conquer the “Holy Land.” This is a more right wing, nationalist position from which Orthodox Jews are far removed. For Orthodox Jews, the territorial, geographical possession of the Holy Land would be equivalent to human arrogance, a betrayal of the Messianic ideal (1) (Alain 2002). “So you want to go to Bnei Brak?” the taxi driver repeats, for a moment remaining motionless. Outside the taxi, the steady rush of traffic – honking, hurried, aggressive. “Do you actually know what goes on there?” I respond, “Yes, I know.” He turns around and surveys me intensely, “At this hour? It’s six o’clock. It’s dark.” I point to the clock in the dashboard, signaling him to drive, “I’m running late.” He throws the car into drive, shaking his head, “Okay. I’ll take you to Bnei Brak.” He accelerates to merge into the heavy evening traffic clogging the Shderot Yerushalaim, every now and

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again attempting to make eye contact with me in the rear view mirror, “You want to immigrate?” “No,” I answer, “I’m visiting a friend.” He whips around to look me in the eye, “You have friends there?” “Yes,” I say, aghast, directing his attention back to the street with a gesture of my hand. We are near the outskirts of Tel Aviv. On the sidewalk an older man, Kaftan and long side locks. He walks quickly with a sunken head. The taxi driver points at the man excitedly, “You have friends like that?” “Yes,” I say. He continues, “And that’s not a problem?” “Do you have a problem?” I retort. “No,” he says, “To tell the truth, I like these people. You know, I like science fiction movies. Going to Bnei Brak is like a trip to another planet. These people are creatures from another world.” “What about politics?”, I ask. “Politics?” he repeats inquisitively. “Yeah, their privileges.” I clarify, “The Orthodox get welfare, lots of them don’t pay their taxes, they don’t have to serve in the army...” “You know,” he says, “that doesn’t bother me. It’s all the same to me. Everyone should live like they want to. There are so many minorities in Israel! Every group should live the way they want, and they should all have the same rights. That’s the only way Israel’s going to survive. If we can’t do that – then forget it!” We drive past store after store after store, but rarely see an advertisement. Just the name of the store and that’s it. Colorful spots – vegetables and fruits. Mountains of long, round-white and lightbrown varieties of bread – bakeries. Children run along the sidewalks of Rabbi Akiva Street, screaming and playing. The men travel in groups, hurried – some carry the Torah, praying under their breath, some adorned in enormous hats. The taxi driver searches for the street where my friend

I stare out the car window and remember the words of Paulina Ryklin, a secular acquaintance from Tel Aviv, a 40-year-old independent film producer who caustically remarked that for every secular family that produces two generations with an average of two children per family, there is a religious family that produces three generations with an average of eight. I remember, Paulina’s fury was directed at Palestinians as well, many of whom live traditional lives. She ranted, “They will outnumber all other groups when they leave the refugee camps!” In the streets young girls look tired and strain to push strollers, some holding as many as three children. Their gazes seem to consciously exclude all but what relates to the task at hand. Women schlepp copious, overflowing shopping bags, walking upright and with purpose toward their destinations.

ties? I let these questions swim through my mind and try to release my tension by looking at what is passing before my eyes as the taxi flits in and out of the city streets. The dominant colors – black, gray, brown, and lots of dark blue, despite the occasional turquoise or purple – create a rather subdued, even gloomy atmosphere. It is as if external appearances, surfaces didn’t matter; no need to put on airs or impress with fashionable looks. By contrast, my red blouse seems like a beacon, and I’m glad to still be in the taxi. The wind blows through the street lamps and yellow light flickers. We circle the city for an hour while, with a cell phone pressed to his ear, I hear Chawa Silberman’s insistent voice trying to give directions. Instead my frustrated driver simultaneously throws open the taxi door and bellows after a passerby for help.

“She would never ever shave her head and wear a wig or headscarf”, Paulina declared indignantly. In a majority rule democracy, she contended, the traditional populations would have also the say: “It was irrelevant if they came from Orthodox Jewish or Christian or Muslim Palestinian communities.” I remember the physical reaction of my muscles as they tensed in the face of Paulina’s anger. Her hatred of Orthodox Jews is a haunting reminder of European Anti-Semitism – and for us the Palestinian situation is a reminder of brutal, post-colonial policy.

Finally, we reach a better part of town, and the driver appears to grow less nervous. Customer in good hands, this must be the place. He stops, turns suddenly around and says, “I wish you a lot of love, yes, I wish you a lot of love, be careful!” I pay and get out of the cab. “Call me when you want to go back. Give me a call!” shouts the driver out of the nearly closed window, as he races away to the roar of the accelerating motor. Tall palm trees sway slightly in the wind. No street signs. No house numbers. Virtually no light. Windows covered by venetian blinds. “Hello?” a soft voice says and, in the halo of a weakly shimmering street light, appears the tall, thin, slightly hunched over figure of Chawa Silberman.

Is this the conflict between tradition and modernity that is tearing Israel apart more than the struggle between ethnic and religious communi-

The next day I travel to Bnei Brak a second time. In the daylight, the area seems friendly. Bright Jerusalem stone, lots of green, and the leisurely pace of

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Johanna Lier

Chawa Silberman lives, a complicated endeavor that prolongs our journey.

Fig. 1: Little boys wait eagerly on Rabbi Akiva Street – rush hour traffic in Bnei Brak. Photo Nurit Sharett 2010.

Fig. 2: Young women rush home, pushing their prams. Photo Nurit Sharett 2010 (Prams).

Fig. 3: Young women crossing a square in Bnei Brak. Instead of headscarves they are now wearing wigs. Photo Nurit Sharett 2010.

Fig. 4: On Shabbat: a young Haredi-man goes to the synagogue while a secular girl rides a bike to a coffee shop. Rothschild in Tel Aviv. Photo Nurit Sharett 2010.

people in the streets give the impression of petty bourgeois calm and order. Only a few squalid rear courtyards reveal the area’s rampant poverty. I sit in the foyer of the city administration building, waiting for Chawa Silberman and watching the people. Women in all variations of traditional clothing enter the hall, ascend the stairs, come back down after a little while and leave the

building. They intrigue me. I observe them carefully, longing to know more about the community my grandmother’s family elected to leave behind, to know more about the world embodied by these women, who one hundred years later, in a completely different world, pursue essentially that same lifestyle once rejected by my grandmother (2). I examine their bare ankles or covered legs;

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Suddenly, I am jolted from my thoughts by the entrance of a secular couple. She is tall, voluptuous and scantily dressed, he is dressed casually in shirt and shorts. They traverse the foyer, engaged in lively, intimate conversation. I follow them with my eyes and am briefly consumed by a flash of longing. I imagine at this moment that I am a Haredi teenager and that such sights would awaken in me the urgent desire to get out, to leave and lead a different life. But why? It’s not the clothes or the couple’s lightheartedness but rather the conversation: the intimacy between a man and a woman, displayed, lived out in public space, an intimacy not necessarily sexual but demonstrating their mutual respect and unencumbered communication. I’m surprised at the ease with which I admit idealizations of the scene, as familiar as I am with the reality behind the appearance. Chawa Silberman, who works as a public auditor in the

community’s administration, descends the stairs, greeting me with a smile and shows me around the building. Is she wearing a wig? Her hair seems to fall around her face so softly and naturally. With time, I notice that it doesn’t move in the slightest, that Chawa never runs her fingers through it nor plays with a single curl. Today, right now, in the hall of the City Council, contracts are to be awarded for a public construction project. The tables have been set up in a semicircle. At the head, sit the council members, men with kippah, beard and tallit, (3) while the businessmen from secular Israel wait impatiently, playing with their cell phones and increasingly becoming irritated. The Chairman of the Council flips through the stacks of paper in front of him, looks helplessly about the room and sinks into his chair with resignation, turning to the colleague sitting next to him and posing questions. His questions are answered with great patience and in equally great detail – time appears to be no consideration. The Chairman is apparently unaware what matter of business is on the agenda, which, judging from the reaction of the council members is nothing new. The businessmen grow increasingly more irritated, they look repeatedly at their watches, make phone calls, tap (demonstratively impatient) on the table, sneer at one another. The man in shorts even shows his middle finger, and the tall voluptuous woman laughs aloud, shaking her head in disbelief – all such behavior goes fully unnoticed or unremarked upon by the Orthodox city council members. Chawa leans over and whispers, “For a decision to be legally binding, three members of each com-

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some wear wigs, others caps, still others nothing on their heads at all; some wear short-sleeved t-shirts, others blouses buttoned to the neck. The standardized traditional woman doesn’t exist. Each has her own way of adhering to the rules in certain things and not in others. I decided then to adapt in some respects to my new surroundings: most important is the skirt, then the covered shoulders and the pulled back hair – the rest is not something I am prepared to compromise on. I roll up the sleeves of my blouse, I do not wear stockings or cover my head and I even smoke the occasional cigarette in public, which contrary to the predictions of my friends, did not provoke an aggressive response from Orthodox men. No, they check me out, unequivocally flirting with their eyes, only to look away at the very moment our paths intersect.

mission have to be present. Since this has not happened, the regulation was amended. If all required people are not present half an hour after the start of the meeting, everyone in the room will be made a member of the commission in order to meet the legal requirements. If no one comes in the next few minutes, you’ll be made a member, too!” When I asked why the businessmen were so irritated, when they knew what was going on, Chawa shrugged her shoulders, “Yeah, everyone knows. It’s a game. The businessmen get angry, the council members ignore them. We don’t have to like them, nor they us. We’re just doing business. But doing business with members of the Orthodox community, that’s difficult. Then you have to make sure you don’t make any mistakes at the interpersonal level. You have to like the people, or at least pretend to, otherwise there is bound to be conflict.” “The city councilmen seem to be more relaxed than the businessmen,” I remark. “Why should you bother with people who don’t belong to your community?” Chawa explains, “With your own people, though, that’s complicated. Before you know it, you’re in the midst of a big fight. One mistake and you’re out. Oh, he’s here! Now there are enough of us. Too bad, now you won’t get to be a city council member, after all.” Chawa reclines calmly in her seat. The meeting concerns the installation of recycling systems for PET bottles and waste baskets, as well as street cleaning and heating systems for the mikvehn, the ritual immersion baths. There’s a problem with the mikvehn in the community of Bnei Brak. In the courtyards and basements, rear buildings and gardens, in the synagogues and public squares there are countless numbers of mikvehn, whose rooms have to be cooled, but whose showers and immersion baths have to be

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heated. The old systems of now rusty and porous gas tanks, leaking fumes and fuel, have become a massive environmental problem. A company based in Tel Aviv has developed a green energy concept that uses the residual heat from the warm air given off by the air conditioners to heat the water for the city’s mikvehn. This proposal is to be discussed in today’s council meeting. “Do you go to the mikveh regularly?” I ask. “Yes, of course,” Chawa replies, “Why do you ask?” “Because,” I explain, “I’d like you to tell me about it, though I hesitate to ask. It’s so intimate, so personal, almost like sex. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean in the pornographic sense. It’s just that I’m asking a woman I only know through acquaintance about her body and her experiences with that body.” Chawa concedes, “Alright. Before you immerse yourself, you have to be clean. Women shower, wash their hair, clean and trim their nails, remove nail polish and make-up. It’s a ritual during which you devote your attention to your body in peace and quiet. Afterward you go naked to the mikveh attendant, who inspects your body to make sure there are no hairs or anything on you. When you immerse yourself, nothing, not even the tiniest piece of lint, is allowed to be between your skin and the water. Then you enter the water, say the blessing, and immerse yourself.” “What do you say?” I ask, pushing my luck. Chawa retorts, “Why does that matter to you? It’s none of your business.” “But, how do you manage to stay under?” I ask, slightly changing the topic, “I tried it once in a river and could hardly stay down. The water pushed me right back up to the surface.” Chawa laughs out loud, “In a river? I’d never tried that before! You only have to immerse for a second. You say the prayer, immerse for a second. That’s it. Pretty simple.”

Does the thread of time pass through the female body, preserving what has long been lost? Women’s bodies not only bring forth new generations but serve as vessels of history, sustaining our memories of past generations. “Why is the blood of women taboo? Is it because women bleed and their soul is in the blood and, out of respect for the other and one’s own protection, one shouldn’t come into contact with the souls of other people?” “No!” snaps Chawa, losing her patience, “That’s a simplification. It’s about remembering the temple. The law requiring women to purify themselves in the mikveh is important, because it is the only way to sustain what was once most important in the temple.” (4) Why, then, do men thank God every morning when they wake up that they were not born as women? Why are women asked to offer their bodies, the most personal, intimate possession of all, to the community as a medium for remembering that two-thousand-year-old temple? Why does it have to be the female body that serves

this purpose and not something else? “Seriously?” my secular friend Paulina Ryklin says as she shakes her head in disbelief, “Really, that’s what she told you? I can’t imagine that. It’s not about the temple, it’s about blood! A friend of mine made a film about it. She used to be secular, but now she’s ultra Orthodox… In childbirth, the father sits next to her and isn’t allowed to touch her. Imagine that! She gives birth to a child and he’s not allowed to touch her or his child! Because of the blood, he sits on the side of the bed and just looks at his wife and newborn child. Or, imagine, a couple might not touch each other for three weeks out of the month because the woman’s menstrual cycle is long.” Paulina reacts poorly, when I tell her about Chawa a few days later. She questions whether women were even permitted to enter the temple two thousand years ago. “Men were the only ones allowed in there. I can’t imagine for a second that women ever went in.” I meet Rafi Aloni, who looks like a farmer hiding another identity beneath his clothes, a patchwork person. He has a beard, wears a kippah on his head and a tallit around his waist. But his loose, checkered shirt is longer than usual, nearly covering the tallit, so that only the tassels are visible at the bottom. He clears the air right away by explaining that although he wears traditional clothing, he is a confirmed atheist. “And you better put your camera away right now!” He doesn’t want to be photographed. If the people from his village found out what he was doing in the middle of Tel Aviv – what a catastrophe! He looks at me sternly, “Me or the camera! You can’t have both.” “Then you, of course,” I say, trying to ease his tension. “Where

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Chawa gives me a skeptical look, as if to say, “Can you really understand, or are you only here to confirm your prejudices? Do you really want to know, or am I wasting my time?” She pushes a plastic cup of water toward me across the table and begins to speak, “Two thousand years ago, people were only allowed to enter the great temple in Jerusalem after ritual immersion in the mikveh. You didn’t go through a doorway, but through a mikveh. Since the temple was a place where people took care of lots of everyday things, they were always in the mikveh. When women went into the mikveh seven days after the end of menstruation and then could sleep with their husbands again, it reminded us of this lost tradition and the loss of the temple.”

shall we go?” – trying to check his insecurity with politeness. I explain to him that I want to meet people who have left the Orthodox community for secular society, people who have gone through an inner migration, an extreme migration, being radically cut off from the lives they had known until the moment they entered a world they knew little to nothing about. Rafi nods and glides through the small, dirty alleys surrounding the Carmel Market with its somewhat oriental feel. “I love this city,” he suddenly blurts out, widening his arms as if to embrace it. In Café Basta in Ha’Schomer Street, he greets the other guests with a handshake, young people. He likes to come here, he says, “totally unkosher, pork and all that stuff”. Here, in this café, everyone knows him and knows his personal history. “They take me as I am,” he proudly asserts. He introduces me to the others with grand gestures. They give a quick nod and turn back to their tables, signaling their lack of interest, as if my presence were something better overlooked. Is my desire to talk to them strange, even absurd, in their eyes? Or do they perhaps have ulterior motives? Rafi orders himself an Arak and, without asking, a coffee for me. “Do you want something to eat? The food here is fantastic! FANTASTIC!” Rafi is a computer scientist at an IT firm. His wife is a teacher, and they have six children and one grandson. He met his wife at the age of 5 in the sandpit. She was 4. They have been a couple since then. It is standard practice that a matchmaker, working on behalf of one of the couple’s families, finds a bride or groom, to keep the young people from making a mistake. After all, divorce is not desirable and very uncommon, not to mention a great disadvantage for the woman, since Rabbis

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tend to rule in favor of the man. It’s the matchmaker’s responsibility to bring two people together, who suit each other, though more often matches are made in the interest of the family: an excellent bride or groom is a status symbol and, ultimately, the match is about money. Rafi grows furious as he explains, “The couple is only allowed to see each other one, two, maybe five times before they’re married. Once they’re engaged, they’re assigned a mentor, a madrich, who is supposed to tell them all the secrets of marriage, even the marriage bed. If things aren’t working out, they’re supposed to call and ask him what to do.” Rafi says he hasn’t believed in God since he was a child. When he turned 30, he made his decision, but was consumed by fear and sadness that everything he had learned until then had suddenly become useless. “Not guilt, no,” he describes, thinking back, “No, not guilt, but a lot of regret.” He fought with his wife for 6 years and, in all that time, she never stopped hoping he would come back, while he wished she would be willing to make this momentous step to enter secular society with him, to move to Tel Aviv and live a normal life. A normal life – that’s what he called it even then. But then he realized the hopelessness of their battle and they gave up. “It was a very difficult time, but we made it through,” he recalls. Rafi feels compelled, however, to lead a double life, to go into “inner emigration”. “I had to convince [my wife] that I was staying out of love for her. She had always thought I had another woman in Tel Aviv, but why would I have stayed, if not out of my great love for her?” Suddenly in a dark mood, Rafi gazes through the window and orders another Arak. I begin to feel

Rafi returns to the table and continues his story. “The whole family comes together to celebrate on

the Shabbat. We talk and discuss, each of us tells each other about his week. I would never want to miss that. I speak the kiddush at these gatherings, the blessing, yeah, I do, no problem, it’s only a few words. I like to do it.” However, it makes him angry that you’re only allowed to say what is in the Talmud and the Torah, that it’s forbidden to express your own thoughts or try to discuss them. And he doesn’t understand the seculars who continue to call themselves Jews. “I am not a Jew,” he proclaims, emptying his glass of Arak in one swig. “A Jew is only allowed to be with other Jews, can only help other Jews. Maybe I’m an Israeli, but that’s something else.” Don’t these seem to be typical anti-Semitic arguments? Rafi chuckles, raising his hands and pointing to his chest. “Am I not allowed to say that? Anti-Semitism is when I’m ridiculed in the street because of my traditional clothing. When I act on the basis of well-founded and carefully considered arguments, that’s critique. Critique is good. It’s hate that makes the difference. Hate is always racist.” I ask Rafi if he is truly able to hide his identity in his village. “When I drink a beer with a religious person, I murmur the blessing, move my lips. When I enter a room where religious people are, I touch the Mezuzah and kiss my fingers” (5). His parents know, but can’t accept it, so they argue a lot. There are also families that don’t want their children to play with his. He had to fight for the right to send his children to the Talmud school. Two of his sons served their time in military service. An affront! “If you’re looking for great, dramatic reactions, for scandals, you’re going to be disappointed. It’s the small, subtle gestures in everyday life that make it clear, you don’t belong.” “Isn’t that even worse?” I ask. He shrugs his shoulders and shies from my

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uncomfortable, like I had created the mood by asking him to tell his story. I feel helpless, unable to console him, knowing that any attempt to do so could only be awkward at best. Still, I want to know more, because I’m convinced that lots of people of all ages and situations, time and places are experiencing or have experienced this same thing. That this kind of precarious, restless life of transition is more common now than the sense of continuity across generations, which is propagated in conservative circles as the ideal, if not simply a matter of course. I physically sense a kind of restlessness in my own body that is perhaps best conveyed with terms like agitation, mourning, hope and fury. These feelings are based on an age-old experience that cannot be located in any of my own concrete past. Finally, I ask him how he deals with traditional life when he returns to his village. “My wife lives the religious life and I do what I have to, to keep from drawing attention. I go to the synagogue, because she wants me to. Of the two hundred people on Shabbat I’m the only one who has a good reason to be seen.” I laugh out loud and Rafi gives me a wink. Contented, he looks through my papers, at the coffee cup, then wanders off into the café to take up conversation with someone at a neighboring table. I am left alone to think. I think about what he said, how the total break with his past would have made it seem like everything he had felt, thought and learned up to that point had been for nothing. I think about my own life, shaped as it is by radical breaks in my environment, and the dominant belief that such breaks are necessary to free oneself, to develop.

Fig. 6: Young man looking for religious literature in a bookshop in the neighborhood of Chawa’s house. Photos Nurit Sharett 2010.

Fig. 5: Kitchen in Chawa Silberman’s house. On the left side she cooks dishes with milk and on the right side only with meat. Photos Nurit Sharett 2010.

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Fig. 7: An emotionally turbulent encounter with the dog of a secular couple. Orthodox people believe that dogs are impure animals that must be feared. Photos Nurit Sharett 2010.

Friday afternoon. In Café Landwehr in Gan Meir Park on King George Street in the center of Tel Aviv an ample breakfast is being served. Rafi traverses the café with a bottle of self-made schnapps under his arm and places it resolutely on the table. Miron Sofer, startled by the noise, raises his head from his overfilled plate and acknowledges us with a friendly greeting. He’s wearing a polo shirt, white boxer shorts, tennis shoes and sunglasses. He gulps his food and talks with his mouth full. A crowd of people gather under the trees in the nearby park. Loud voices reverberate through megaphones, flyers are being distributed. Miron is a student in business administration, who left the Haredi community to join secular society. It felt to him, at the time, “like a secret with seven seals”. Religion, he says, has never interested him. Even as a child, he could tell that many in the community weren’t really religious but stayed because their grandparents and great grandparents had lived in the community. Staying was easy and comfortable. “Though, I like my people. Why not go to the syna-

gogue every now and then? But that’s not possible. It’s all or nothing here. Flexibility and mixing, like you see in Europe, America or Australia, is unthinkable here.” As a reflex, he looks repeatedly at Rafi for confirmation, who sluggishly, kindly nods his head and gets up from the table to make his way to the crowd assembled in the park to protest for the rights of children of undocumented guest workers from Eritrea. “Those are the real problems,” Rafi says with the wink of an eye and makes his way across the street. The worst thing about modern society is the loneliness. “There are some who can’t deal with it and commit suicide. We’re not used to being alone. The idea that someone would die and no one would notice until the apartment started smelling is absolutely unimaginable for the Haredim! If you’re sick, someone comes round straightaway to see how you’re doing, if there’s anything you need!” explains Miron. “Don’t you ever meet other ex-Haredim?” I ask naively. He chews quickly and swallows a spoonful of scrambled eggs, nodding his head, “Yeah, yeah, we see each other, if someone’s moving, it’s perfectly normal for someone to offer a car, an old refrigerator or a bed. Just say what you need, without having to ask. In a manner of speaking, it’s in our blood.” “What do you do to keep from feeling lonely?” I continue. “I watch TV, work, play on the computer, chat, read or listen to the radio,” Miron says. “And sometimes I meet up with other ex-Haredim.” It’s easier they say. They speak the same language, have the same humor. They talk about movies, music, work and their anxieties about love and sex. “But if a woman lays her hand on my knee, I don’t know what to do. If she kisses me, I don’t know what to do. If she

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gaze, “Maybe.” Now, more insistently, I add, “What about feeling lonely?” Rafi explains, when he goes to eat with his colleagues from work, the seculars among them, who he would actually like to talk to, send him to the Orthodox colleagues, with whom he can’t talk the way he would like to. Home is where he can be himself, with his wife and his older children, or in Tel Aviv, or in this café, where everyone knows him. “You want to know where I like to go best? To the lesbian bar! Right around the corner is a popular gay bar. They love me. They even made me an honorary member. I feel at home there. They exist on the margins of society and many of them lead a double life like I do.”

looks at me full of expectation, it’s a catastrophe. What does she want? How does she want it? Where does she want it? I didn’t even know that the man inserts his penis into the woman’s vagina. We don’t know anything.” “So how did you find out?” I ask, to which Miron responds with barking laughter, like an innocent child. “I figured it out on the Internet. Let’s just say I learned the technical aspect of sex online.” He speaks profusely. His openness surprises me. He treats me like an intimate friend. Is it the age difference? What does he want? He didn’t remove his sunglasses the entire conversation. His expressly sporty attire doesn’t really match his plump arms and legs. His skin is pale and seemingly soft. While I sit there wondering about the reasons for his candor, Miron leans over, takes hold of my arm and softly explains that he isn’t just doing this for me but for himself as well. Talking about it, again and again, is his therapy. With that he continued, “If a Haredi man comes home and hangs his hat in the bedroom or if he comes out of the shower with only a towel wrapped around his waist, his wife knows he wants to have sex. Those are clear signals we learn in the community. I am used to communicating essential information through signals. I can’t imagine articulating what I want. Expressing your needs, the psychological side of interpersonal relationships, is something completely foreign to us. We don’t know how to do it.” There are no statistics on how many Haredim have entered secular society, the subject is taboo among many families. Miron confirms, he is one of the lucky ones who was able to maintain con-

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tact with his family, although it is very complicated. For most, leaving the community means a radical break. Their families even hold a wake, a Schiwa, because for them, their son or daughter is dead. “Do you still consider yourself a Jew?” I ask. Miron wipes his hand across his mouth, an intimate question, with an answer that could be political dynamite! This is the question that may ultimately decide the fate of a democratic Israel. (6) In many ways, Israel’s legislative system still follows rabbinical rules. “If Israel were a secular state, there might be more peace between its various groups. Only then will Israel be truly democratic. But a secular state wouldn’t be a state for the Jews. I see it as an irreconcilable opposition. I admit, when it comes to the question of a Jewish State, I can’t manage to change my attitude.” “So what do you do on Shabbat?” I pose one final question. Miron grins playfully, “I eat pork sandwiches!” We walk down King George Street toward Carmel Markt. In less than an hour all the shops will be closed, the streets empty but right now the sidewalks are bustling. Everyone is rushing about, doing their shopping. You can hardly get through all the bicycles, strollers, and dogs. Miron stays close to me, making sure I don’t get lost in the crowd. It feels like he never wants to let go of this time together, as if he longed to continue our conversation forever. Every few feet, he greets someone he knows, exchanging a few words with each. “All ex-Haredim,” he explains, looking at me sideways. When he happens to run into so many people he considers friends in such rapid succession, his life seems anything but lonely, more full,

A few days later I return again to Bnei Brak with photographer Nurit Sharett. Chawa Silbermann has given us permission to take some photos in her house. Nurit is hesitant but finally agrees. As we drive along Rabbi Akiva Street toward our destination, Nurit is nervous. Her mood makes me insecure and I begin to question my plans to take pictures in Bnei Brak. Nurit tells some terrible stories on the way: “They yelled ‘You are a whore, a whore!’ as I walked through Bnei Brak, and threw stones at me. I was twenty, being harassed by a horde of teenage boys about 13 years old.” Then she tells the story of the young man on a motorcycle who fell victim to a wire some Orthodox had spanned across the street to keep people from driving in their quarter on Shabbat. He was decapitated instantly. We find a place to park and get out making jokes to ease the tension. Chawa opens the door. Her face brightens when she sees me standing there. Then she spots Nurit as she enters from the light beyond the dark entryway. Chawa’s face turns to a hard, ominous stare. She snaps at me in English, “Do you have former Israeli friends?” Taken aback by the sudden unwelcoming tone and brashness of her inquiry, I retort, “Yes. Do you think I should not?” In the course of the next few hours, the two women avoid one another. Nurit concentrates on her work and asks me what she is allowed to photo-

graph. Chawa leads me eagerly around the house, explaining everything about the kitchen, the Book of Esther, the Shabbat dishes, and the velvet sack her husband takes with him to the synagogue. The two women communicate through me to keep from looking at, much less addressing, each another. I, a stranger to both their cultures, have come to serve as the connective tissue mediating between two warring parties. Toward the end of our visit, Chawa invites us to sit at the kitchen table adorned with melon and incomparable, heavenly-tasting vanilla yogurt. She suddenly turns to Nurit and begins to tell her stories – of the abuse she has suffered at the hands of seculars. Nurit listens attentively, throwing the ball back in Chawa’s court with her own horror stories with the Orthodox. In time the duel evolves into a discussion and, finally, to points of intersection where they might meet to find a solution: What should one do when secular relatives come to visit on Shabbat on a motorcycle? Are you allowed to take an Orthodox relative to the hospital on Shabbat in the car? The melon and yogurt have been eaten. Meanwhile Nurit and Chawa’s conversation has arrived at private life: family, home, travel, food. Soon they have forgotten me entirely. Still tense about their explosive potentials, I observe the conversation and sense the extraordinary significance of what is happening, without realizing its future. In the summer of 2011, when secular Tel Aviv was shaken by protests sparked by the international Occupy Movement and protestors were camped in their tents on Shderot Rothschild for weeks, I received an astonishing email from Chawa. It read, “I met your photographer friend in Tel Aviv at the tent protest in Rothschild Blvd. Maybe you

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even overloaded. But the self-evident nature of love and family is different from the freedom we have with friends. I thank Miron for our conversation and begin to make my way toward Bus number 25 through Allenby Street toward Jaffa. He holds me back, “But what bus are you taking?” Then after a pause, “Never mind! I’ll go with you.”

have read about our social protest over the last two months. Your friend had some interesting suggestions. We have had a lot of intensive discussions.” That a Haredi woman was among the protestors, that she joined secular women in their tents to talk politics is, though small and inconspicuous, nothing less than a revolution. An involuntary, complicated encounter had created the possibility for two people, who would otherwise have hated each other, to squeeze together in a tent to fight for

a common cause. Such an encounter must surely feel turbulent to both parties, especially when thought of in terms of the synonyms of turbulence – namely unrest, tempest, and uproar. Perhaps the most significant issue that these communities have to contend with today might not necessarily be about different religious beliefs and nationalities, but about the need to identify and share the same problems with other concerned residents!

References —— Alain, G 2002, ‘Israel, Palestine. Vérité sur un conflit’, Librairie Arthème Fayard, Paris. —— Alfred, JK 2000, The Jewish Book of Why, Jonathan David Publishers, New York. —— Strenger, C 2006, ‘Israel – Einführung in ein schwieriges Land’ Jüdischer Verlag im Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main. —— Gershom, S, Haredim 1970, ‘Those who tremble (Hebr.). Chofschim: those who question (Hebr.)’ Über einige Grundbegriffe des Judentums, Edition Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main —— Chawa Silberman, 2010, Interview between the Author and Silberman in Bnei Brak and with Paulina Ryklin, 2010 in Tel Aviv, both in the archives of the author.

Endnotes 1 For Orthodox Jews, the territorial, geographical possession of the Holy Land would be equivalent to human arrogance, a betrayal of the Messianic ideal. 2 In traditional Jewish culture the 613 laws (Hebrew: Mitzwa/ Mitzwot), including 365 prohibitions and 248 commandments, are to be practiced each and every day. 3 A Kippah is a small hat or headcovering and is the traditional headcovering for men. A Tallit is a Jewish prayer shawl that men wear daily and use to cover their heads and shoulders during prayer. 4 The Jewish Laws of Niddah (a woman having her regular menstrual period) are based on a passage from Leviticus: “If a woman has an emission, and her emission in her flesh is blood, she shall be seven days in her separation…” Later Jewish law proscribes that the time of sexual abstinence shall last twelve days. The Laws of Niddah are a point of controversy among Jewish women. Many see them as a massive intrusion on their physical self and the self-deter-

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mination of their own intimacy. Others see them as a way to celebrate the female cycle, and to demand respect and consideration. Still others contend that they are a way of maintaining sexual desire. 5 After every activity or occurrence, a special blessing is spoken specifically for that event. A Mezuzah is a small capsule containing a piece of parchment with verses from the Torah. It is affixed to the right hand doorjamb of every room in the house. 6 In a program on Swiss Radio DRS 2 from 18 October 2011 in Bern, the journalist Naomi Bubis points out that this summer the author Yoram Kaniuk is the first Israeli to have been awarded Isreali citizenship without being Jewish. He is the first genuinely secular Israeli citizen. Bubis also reports that in the wake of protest movements in the summer of 2011 there is discussion in the Knesset about reintroducing civil marriage. Bubis sees both developments stemming from the rise of a secular class that had long been quiet, but which is now growing active again.

Identifying and Categorizing: Power, Knowledge, Truth and the Artistic Strategies of Guillermo Gómez-Peña and Fiona Tan Teresa Chen

Although categorisation or identification of things in the world is an important human trait for understanding the environment and its relationship to us, when combined with power inequalities to produce ‘knowledge’ about certain groups of people, this process can generate beliefs and actions that can have horrifying consequences. Here, I compare the strategic approaches of Guillermo Gómez-Peña and Fiona Tan in order to investigate the role of power, knowledge, and truth in classifying and identifying people. GómezPeña and Tan create visual art that reveal how systems of classification, as well as the mediums of film and photography, are invariably subjective. While Tan interrogates the validity or objective truth of systematic categorization, Gómez-Peña exposes our collective unconscious assumptions and associations about other cultures by using oversimplified classifications or stereotypes. Both artists have a personal history of multiple cultural identities and make work that critically challenges historical assumptions and consequences within the discipline of anthropology, including ethnographic methodologies. Although the works have similar themes and make critical references to the history of anthropology and its “crisis of representation”, the strategies and aesthetics employed by both artists are radically different. I will introduce some theoretical discussions about the correlations between

knowledge and power and how this affects classifying and stereotyping. 29

“In short, if I am inescapably Chinese by descent, I am only sometimes Chinese by consent. When and how is a matter of politics” (Ang 2001, p. 36). Cultural theorist Ien Ang’s quote not only reveals the correlation between the aesthetic and the political meanings of representation, it also affirms the personal and the political power in defining and identifying ethnic or racial difference. By rejecting essentialist categories, creative production of new meanings in representation can be inspired. Moreover, the power inherent in defining or controlling knowledge about who is different and why is also significant. In general, categorisation or identification of things in the world is an important human trait for understanding the environment and its relationship to us. However, as cultural theorist Stuart Hall observes in his filmed lecture Race, the Floating Signifier (1997), classifying things is a human impulse, one that is necessary to determine meaning and to understand the world around us. Nevertheless, a problem arises “when the systems of classification become the objects of the disposition of power” (Hall 1997) in the categorising of human beings; in other words, when these physical markers of difference become the reason one group of people receives more advantages than another. According to Antonio Gramsci’s idea of cultural hegemony (1), the dominating class retains its power with the consent of the subordinating classes by projecting its view of the world as ‘natural’ or ‘common sense’ which then becomes the consensus view. Following Michel Foucault (2), Hall has repeatedly emphasized the significance of hierarchies of power for defining or controlling knowledge or truth about who is different and

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why. The principal method for the classification of people is based on physiognomic factors where particular ethnic and racial signifiers are correlated to a set of meanings from specific social and historical contexts. As these definitions of difference are subject to power relations, one group with particular ethnic or racial signifiers has typically received more advantages than another. Therefore, although identifying and classifying things around us is important and practical, when combined with power inequalities to produce ‘knowledge’ about certain groups of people, this process can generate beliefs and actions that can have horrifying consequences including genocide and ethnic cleaning. In this essay, I examine and compare the artistic practices of Guillermo Gómez-Peña and Fiona Tan in order to reveal the correlations between power, knowledge and truth inherent in historical ethnographic practices which classified people. Although at first glance, Gómez-Peña and Tan seem to have little in common, both critically challenge historical assumptions and consequences within the discipline of anthropology and its ethnographic methodologies. While Gómez-Peña incorporates a strategy of “reverse anthropology” in his installative performances in order to expose the unconscious and invisible nature of stereotypes, Tan interrogates the ‘objectivity’ of categorization and depictions of people and cultures in documentary film and photography in her work. I contend that these artists challenge the assumptions which establish how people have been historically categorized and identified and thus stimulate us to reflect on and potentially reject these classifications as well as their representations.

Because the artistic approaches of Gómez-Peña and Tan are both influenced by the history of anthropology, it may be valuable to provide some historical background to this discipline and its ethnographic practices. The discipline of anthropology as a study of humans and society emerged during the European colonialist expansion in the mid-nineteenth century. At this time, unilineal evolutionary theories were popular and explained societal development in terms of cultural evolution, where societies began in a ‘primitive’ state and gradually progressed to a ‘civilized’ one. As each society in the world was believed to have progressed through similar stages of culture (Smith and Young 1997), Western culture was seen as the high point of social evolution and non-European people (particularly Africans) were positioned between the great apes and human beings of European descent. Charles Darwin’s theories about evolution and natural selection reinforced this idea. Correspondingly, British social anthropology concentrated on the exotic Other in the British colonial territories in order to discover ‘facts’ about these cultures and “liked to present itself as a science which could be useful in colonial administration” (Kuper 1996, p. 100). This perspective also prompted Bronislaw Malinowski, a Polish anthropologist who studied and taught in London during the early twentieth century, to pioneer a methodology based on ‘participant observation’ which still forms the basis for modern ethnographic practice. The assumption was that observation by a neutral, detached scientific expert would produce objective knowledge about other ‘exotic’ societies and cultures.

Representing ‘exotic’ cultures with displays of live non-white bodies for public entertainment in circuses, zoos and museums, as well as World Expositions, also became very popular in Europe and America during the nineteenth century. In these ethnographic exhibitions, the ‘natives’ would often live in ‘authentic’ villages and present ceremonies, dances, and tasks of their supposedly daily life (Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 1991, p. 406). The people would be classified based on the geography of the exhibition, or according to the prevailing common beliefs of their evolutionary condition (Greenhalgh 1988). The absurd and contemptible social evolutionary ideas of the time claimed that non-Western humans were inferior and closer to an earlier stage of human evolution than Western civilized societies. For example, in 1906, the Congolese ‘pygmy’ (3), Ota Benga, was put on display at the Bronx Zoo in New York City in a cage with an orangutan and labelled “The Missing Link”. Displaying live human specimens was not the only form of human spectacle at this time; often the dissected and embalmed remains of the ‘native’ body, particularly the skull, and sexual organs, were also publicly exhibited. In fact, many Western museums including the British Museum and le Musée de l’Homme, in France still have various body remains in their collections, which have also caused much public debate (4). Cultural differences were visually observed on the ‘native’ body, whether in live human exhibitions or in dissected body parts on public display. Both forms of spectacle served to confirm the fallacious view of Western culture’s superiority by presenting non-white cultures as being inferior and ‘primitive’. Whereas both Fiona Tan and Guillermo Gómez-Peña have created artwork that examines anthropology’s problematic

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Anthropology: Colonialist Heritage, Ethnographic Displays

history, Gómez-Peña established his key strategic approach to art by parodying and undermining the concept of ethnographic displays.

“Reverse Anthropology”: The Artistic Strategies of Guillermo Gómez-Peña In performance, impersonating other cultures and problematizing the very process of impersonation can be an effective strategy of what I term ‘reverse anthropology’. By ‘reverse anthropology’ I mean pushing the dominant culture to the margins and treating it as exotic and unfamiliar. Whether conscious or not, performance challenges and critiques the ideological products of anthropology and its fraudulent history and yet still utilizes parts of the discipline’s methodologies (Gómez-Peña 2005). In the above quote, Gómez-Peña describes his main artistic strategy for his performances from the last twenty years. What was historically seen as the ‘neutral’ standpoint of anthropologists observing ethnographic subjects is called into question and found to be highly subjective. Foucauldian power hierarchies or Hall’s argument of racial discourse and the cultural hegemonic ‘norms’ of the dominant culture influence and define the knowledge or the beliefs and values of the anthropologist himself, a profession that has been historically masculine and Eurocentric. Through an imitation of the ethnographic method of participant observation, where the ‘objective’ observer actually has subjective ‘knowledge’ of the Other he/she is observing,

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Gómez-Peña ‘reverses’ the awareness of what these fantasies are – they are no longer unseen, unconscious and mutually accepted categories of the dominant society, but instead they become clear, concrete, absurd realities acted out by Gómez-Peña and his colleagues in their performance installations. Therefore, his intention for his strategy of “reverse anthropology” is to reveal the dominant culture’s cultural projections as well as its problems in relating to other cultures rather than an attempt to represent the Latino Other (GómezPeña 2005). For example, in one of his earlier significant performance installations, The Couple in a Cage: Undiscovered Amerinidians (1992), Gómez-Peña together with Coco Fusco re-enacted colonial ethnographic display methods by dressing up as exotic tribal figures and presenting themselves in a cage as “specimens representative of the Guatinaui people” in several major cities (see Fig. 1). Using established museum presentation methods (explanatory texts, maps, etc.), Gómez-Peña and Fusco staged their own display by wearing absurd costumes and performing bizarre ‘native’ rituals. Similar to the live human displays of the past, Fusco and Gómez-Peña performed the role of the cultural Other for the museum audience. They presented exotic ‘native traditions’ such as sewing voodoo dolls or watching television. Museum guards from local institutions provided visitors with further (fictitious) information about the couple, passed bananas to the artists during ‘feeding time’, and escorted them to the bathroom on leashes. For a small fee, they would also pose for pictures. Some of the visitors in London, Madrid, and New York saw the irony, but more than half of them believed

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Fig. 1: The Couple in a Cage: Undiscovered Amerindians by Guillermo Gómez-Peña and Coco Fusco, 1992-93. Guillermo Gómez-Peña and Coco Fusco at the Smithsonian Courtesy Pocha Nostra Archives.

Fig. 2: The Temple of Confessions by Guillermo Gómez-Peña and Roberto Sifuentes, 1994-96. Roberto Sifuentes in The Temple of Confessions Courtesy Pocha Nostra Archives.

that the fictitious Guatinaui identities were real (Fusco 1994). Gómez-Peña had discovered a provocative strategy through his parody of ethnographic display methods in a performance which he continued to use for many of his next major performance works.

in a Plexiglas box posing as a “holy gang member,” the “El Pre-Columbian Vato” (5). His arms and face were covered with pre-Columbian tattoos and he wore a bloodstained shirt and he held a gun that he occasionally cleaned with an American flag (see Fig. 2). Behind him was a Styrofoam facade of a “pre-Columbian temple” with a neon sign displaying: “We incarnate your desires.” Opposite the Chapel of Desires was another Plexiglas box, the Chapel of Fears, where Gómez-Peña sat on a toilet bowl or in a wheelchair dressed in a “Tex-Mex Aztec outfit” as a futuristic shaman, “San Pocho Aztlaneca”(6), under a neon sign that read: “We incarnate your fears.” Two “chola/nuns”, one pregnant and the other dressed as “dominatrix/nun” with a moustache and goatee, performed the role of care-takers and encouraged visitors to “confess”. Wooden church kneelers and microphones were located in front of the Plexiglas boxes with the “santos” for recording the viewer confessions about their intercultural fears and desires. Those

Gómez-Peña’s next important project was the participatory performance, installation and exhibition The Temple of Confessions (1994-1996), which he produced in collaboration with Roberto Sifuentes. According to Gómez-Peña, they re-enacted the narrative of “two living santos [saints] from an unknown border religion, in search of sanctuary across America. People were invited to experience this ‘pagan temple’ and confess to the saints their intercultural fears and desires” (Gómez-Peña 2000, p. 35). The installation had three separate areas: the Chapel of Desires, the Chapel of Fears and a “sort of mortuary chamber in the middle.” In the Chapel of Desires, Sifuentes sat

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who were too shy to speak into the microphone could either write their confessions and deposit them in an urn or call a toll-free number after they left the installation. Gómez-Peña and Sifuentes would later choose the most revealing ones to be included on the soundtrack for future performances (Gómez-Peña 2000, pp. 35-41). There was an overwhelming, often very emotional, response to The Temple performances. The range of confessions included assertions of extreme violence and racism to expressions of solidarity or guilt. By confronting viewers with a variety of powerful cultural stereotypes in an exaggerated theatrical and religious setting, the artists triggered memories of buried stereotypes from the viewers. Shock, shame, anger, and resentment were expressed in the ‘confessions’ and the embedded fears and thoughts towards Mexicans, Chicanos, and people of other cultures were revealed. Some examples were: ‘Please don’t shoot me. I’m afraid of getting shot…by Mexicans, simply for being white.’ ‘Chicanos scare me. The men, they scream at me. When I see them, I think ‘rape.’ I feel this is wrong, but I can’t help it.’ ‘I am afraid that we will soon be outnumbered citizens.’ ‘I hate you precisely because I understand you.’ ‘Why the voodoo in your work? Many things in your culture scare people visually.

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Can’t you be more positive, more sensitive towards us?’ ‘I confess to listening to the real lives of Mexicans as if they were movies because they are so foreign to me that they don’t seem real.’ ‘I desire to fall in love with a Hispanic and be mistreated.’ (Gómez-Peña 2000, pp. 41-43). A related website was created where users could fill out a pseudo-anthropological questionnaire and ‘confess’ their fears about the Other online. In the first year, they received over 20,000 hits and the information collected provided GómezPeña with inspirational material for subsequent major performance installations including The Mexterminator Project (1997-99). In this installation, the performance space was dramatically lit and accompanied by loud music as well as recorded texts. Fake documentary films about a Second US/ Mexico war combined with filmed images of Mexican stereotypes on American television were projected in the performance space. Live human “ethno-cyborgs” were displayed on platforms with special gadgets and objects. Sifuentes played a “Cybervato”, a more technically upgraded “robo-gang member” which reenacted fears about the dangers of Chicano youth similar to his previous role in The Temple. Gómez-Peña played “El Mad Mex,” a transgendered Tex-Mex Shaman on a lowrider wheelchair with chrome fenders, in order to portray a spiritual healer, another stereotype of Mexican and other ‘primitive’ societies.

Gómez-Peña and his performance group La Pocha Nostra (roughly translated to mean “Our Impurities” (8)) have had a pioneering role in the realm of performance/installation with their creation of interactive “living museums” that parody colonial practices of representation including ethnographic dioramas and freak shows. These works were particularly powerful in America during the 1990s, when concepts of identity politics were still being encouraged in art discourse. His performance installation with Coco Fusco described earlier was also included in the highly controversial 1993 Whitney Biennial which had concentrated on overtly political art. His various activities that include performance, video, installation, poetry, and cultural theory have focused on the border cultures between North and South (Mexico and the USA) and are often based on his own personal experiences. In fact, Gómez-Peña, a prolific writer and charismatic culture figure and artist, states:

Teresa Chen

In their following performance installation, The Mexterminator Project (1997-1999), Gómez-Peña and Sifuentes designed visual and performative representations of fantasy Mexican and Chicano “ethno-cyborgs” based on descriptions from the “confessions”. Since a majority of the responses saw Mexicans and Chicanos as threatening Others, Gómez-Peña and Sifuentes used the name Mexterminator, in reference to the Schwarzenegger movies (7), and their superhuman robotic assassins (see Fig. 3). As Gómez-Peña writes: “Our goal was to incarnate the intercultural fantasies and nightmares of our audiences, refracting fetishized constructs of identity through the spectacle of our ‘primitive,’ eroticized bodies on display” (GómezPeña 2000, p. 49). Fig. 3: The Mexterminator Project by Guillermo Gómez-Peña and Roberto Sifuentes, 1997-1999. Guillermo Gómez-Peña as El Mad Mex Courtesy Pocha Nostra Archives.

“I only write or make art about myself when I am completely sure that the biographical paradigm intersects with larger social and cultural issues” (Gómez-Peña 2000, p. 8). Through these experiences and circumstances, Gómez-Peña has consistently and publicly positioned his artistic practice as politically activist with the aim to achieve political and social change through his work. Gómez-Peña’s primary method for resisting fixed identification categories has been his incorporation of over-exaggerated cultural stereotypes about natives, primitives, traditions, etc. in his performance installations. Stereotyping is a method of classification by dominant groups that

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uses extremely simplified definitions of difference. In his essay “The Spectacle of the ‘Other’”, Stuart Hall referred to film theorist Richard Dyer’s distinction between “typing” where “a few traits are foregrounded” and “stereotyping” which exaggerates and simplifies these traits and then reduces an individual or group to them, without any possibility of change (cited in Hall 1997, p. 258). When the link between ethnic or racial signifiers and other attributes appears natural and unconscious, racial or cultural differences are “fixed”. Dyer asserted that stereotypes function as “mechanisms of boundary maintenance, are characteristically fixed, clear-cut, and unalterable” (cited in Hall 1997, p. 258). Hall extends Dyer’s argument and contends that stereotypes create “a symbolic frontier between … what ‘belongs’ and what is ‘other’, between ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’, Us and Them” (Hall 1997, p. 258). Therefore, stereotypes are used by the dominant group to classify and exclude what is viewed as the Other. According to Dyer, hegemony or the establishment of normalcy (i.e. what is accepted as ‘normal’) uses stereotypes to construct an Other and make power inequalities appear natural and inevitable (cited in Hall 1997, 258). In this way, dominant Western representations of the Other are often stereotypes which continue to support and maintain unequal power relations. In art, both Stuart Hall and Lucy Lippard have noted that artists frequently incorporate stereotypes as a strategy to counter fixed assumptions; however, they have also both warned that this usage could also have the opposite effect (Hall 1997; Lippard 1990). Gómez-Peña’s parody of stereotypes is so extreme and exaggerated that the unconscious

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cultural associations are clearly made absurd and ridiculous for the viewer. Through a compilation of cultural projections, Gómez-Peña created absurd and grotesque Others, and thus exposed the existence of these views in the collective unconscious of Anglo-American society. Furthermore, GómezPeña’s criticism of the “fraudulent history” of anthropology popularized the problems and debates within anthropology at this time, which culminated in the “crisis of representation” in the late 1980s.

Anthropology and the “Crisis of Representation” In the late 1960s, anthropology’s duplicitous search for objective knowledge within a colonial power structure began to be denounced in several critical essays (Gough 1968; Lewis 1973). The critique culminated in 1973 with the seminal work Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter edited by Talal Asad. Following Foucault’s assertions about truth as a historical condition embedded within a given power structure, Asad and others argued that anthropology was deeply intertwined with the politics of imperialism and colonial practices and, in effect, helped maintain power relationships between the colonial regime and indigenous populations by representing them as inferior and Other. Similar to Edward Said’s claims in Orientalism (9), Asad criticized the constructed Western views of Others and the unquestioned acceptance of Western domination. By producing knowledge based on gender and racial power inequalities, Western hegemonic views of the Other were reaffirmed. These critiques about anthropology were a precursor to the “crisis of representation”, a term coined by Marcus and Fis-

A significant critic is the filmmaker and postcolonial feminist theorist Trinh T. Minh-ha who challenged the objective truths of anthropology and the “speaking for”, or representation of other societies, through the subjective racial and gendered lens of the Western male. Trinh pointed out that all discussions about native societies were limited to “mainly a conversation of ‘us’ with ‘us’ about ‘them’, of the white man with the white man about the primitive-nature man ... in which ‘them’ is silenced” (Trinh 1989, pp. 65-67). The ‘primitive’ Other does not speak; the anthropologist speaks for him. Moreover, Trinh criticized many of the ethnographic writings of Malinowski, whom she refers to as “The Great Master”. The anthropological “master” not only made assumptions, but also drew conclusions about the lives of other humans and societies based on his own experiences and his own subjective world view. That what was considered an objective and universal truth could actually be a subjective view was a radically new concept for many anthropologists at the time.

nography. Is it possible to be an objective observer? Does there exist one truth? Is authenticity represented or invented? Trinh challenged the concept of a single viewpoint with an ultimate vision of the world. There are instead always multiple realities, multiple standpoints, multiple meanings for the concept ‘Woman’. She argued that conventional ethnographic filmmaking did not objectively represent the Third World subject, and vehemently denounced the validity of ‘objective truth’: “There is no real – reality is something already classified by men, a ready made code” (Trinh 1991, p. 136). Using this code allowed writers and filmmakers to produce work that seemed ‘real’ because they followed the rules and expectations about what the ‘real’ should be or look like. Trinh’s first film Reassemblage (1982) contested these conventions and is both a commentary and a critique of ethnographic film practices. Trinh stated in an interview with Nancy Chen that her intention was “not to speak about/just speak near by”, which was a radical change to conventional ethnographic documentary film. Trinh also proposed that the audience construct “their own film” from the film they have seen (Chen 1992, p. 91) in order to create new meanings and experiences for the film beyond what the filmmaker may have intended. Trinh T. Minh-ha’s writings and films were important in including ideas of self-reflection to the discipline of anthropology where multiple perspectives and the subjective role of the observer should be taken into account. Moreover, other artists explored similar ideas in their work, such as Fiona Tan.

Trinh T. Minh-ha’s work in ethnography and film led her to challenge the prevalent concepts of eth-

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cher (eds. 1986, p. 7), that has affected many social sciences and still continues to haunt the discipline of anthropology. This paradigm crisis forced anthropologists to become aware of the power structures involved in representing various cultures as well as issues of race, gender and class. Many anthropologists and cultural theorists during this time critically examined questions of authenticity, truth, and objectivity embedded in the discipline of anthropology and its ethnographic representations (eds. Clifford and Marcus 1986; Rabinow 1985).

Fig. 4: May You Live In Interesting Times by Fiona Tan, documentary film, 1997. Courtesy of the artist and Frith Street Gallery, London.

Interrogating ‘Objectivity’: The Artistic Strategies of Fiona Tan Type, archetype, stereotype. An irrational desire for order; or at least for the illusion thereof. However, I am constantly reminded that all my attempts at systematic order must be arbitrary, idiosyncratic and — quite simply — doomed to fail (Tan 2002, Countenance voice-over). In the quote above, Tan explains her view about classification and typing as well as the arbitrary nature of attempting any systematic order. Her critical examination of any type of categorizing or ordering, especially of people or cultures, is an important theme throughout her work. Tan works with the mediums of photography and film and is interested in the roles of history and memory on the present and the future. Tan’s work is an extension of many of the concerns and concepts previously described in this essay from Trinh T. Minh-ha.

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Similar to Gómez-Peña, Tan has experienced a mobile and culturally hybrid background. She was born in 1966 in Indonesia to a Chinese father and an Australian mother, but due to racist policies against ethnic Chinese in Indonesia, she grew up in Melbourne, Australia. She moved to the Netherlands in 1988 in order to study art and currently lives in Amsterdam. Because of her personal background and her context, her focus is concerned with ‘East-West’ themes rather than ‘North-South’ border issues like Gómez-Peña. In the next few sections, I present five artistic pieces from Fiona Tan in order to analyze related strategies and ideas and compare these with work from Guillermo Gómez-Peña. For an early film, a TV documentary called May You Live In Interesting Times (10), Fiona Tan visited various Chinese relatives, who all lived in different places around the world in order to question ideas of origin and cultural identity. At one point, she visits the village of her ancestors where everyone has the family name ‘Tan’. In the resulting filmed ‘family portrait’, the artist smiles into the camera in the middle of all the other Tans, but still does not seem to ‘belong’ (see Fig. 4). In the film, she exposed her personal quest to understand her own cultural origins, as well as the contrived nature of her search, reminiscent of ideas from Trinh T. Minh-ha. In another important earlier work, Facing Forward (1999), Tan appropriated original early 20th century film footage from the Amsterdam Filmmuseum Archives (Cooke 2000; Godfrey 2006). The footage had been filmed in various non-western locations such as rain forests in Papua New Guinea or cities in Japan and South East Asia. Most of the imagery

is problematic, because it appears to be made for people who would find the subjects ‘exotic,’ and in some cases, it is also clear, the films were made to survey, classify, and control the people in front of the camera (see Fig. 5b). For example, tribes-people are often instructed to line up, face forward (also the title of the work), or turn around to present their sides and backs to the camera. Tan’s montage makes the viewer aware of the different aesthetics of filming and also manages to make the viewer quite uncomfortable at times. The two inserted scenes of a cameraman with his camera (see Fig.

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Teresa Chen

Fig. 5a and 5b: Facing Forward by Fiona Tan, video projection, 1999. Courtesy of the artist and Frith Street Gallery, London.

5a) from other archival footage are used in order to reveal another level to the filming process – who is filming, why is he filming, what do those feathers in his hair mean? With much of this material, one experiences a certain tension between the idea of observation and that of being observed. However, her critical approach also reveals poetic personal moments like two young girls who are smiling and laughing at the end of the film. Although the archival footage was originally silent, Tan wove a multi-layered soundtrack into her film. Sometimes she added natural sounds like animal or insect noises in the rainforest or instrumental music for atmosphere. In addition, there are two sections with voice-overs extracted from Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities (1978), narrating a hypothetical conversation between the Venetian explorer Marco Polo and the emperor Kublai Khan who asks “You advance always with your head turned back?” or “Is what you see always behind you?” or “Does your journey take place only in the past?” The voiceovers illustrated Tan’s interest in the crucial roles of history and memory of the past on the present and the future. With her editing of found archival film footage together with a soundtrack and voiceovers, Tan critically examined ethnographic film practices and documentary film’s authoritative voice and created a complex, critical and yet personal view of the colonial practices of categorization and identification. In this way, Tan’s editing process also implements a type of “reverse anthropology” strategy, like Gómez-Peña. Both artists make the viewer aware of the power imbalances involved in colonial ethnographic practices – the ‘objective’ ethnographic observer cannot and does not exist. Unlike Gómez-Peña, Tan’s method is not immediately confrontational or exaggerated;

instead she uses poetic, subtle imagery and film editing and sound to communicate her critical view to the viewer. For her installation Countenance (2002), Tan collected over 90 minutes of filmed portraits of approximately 250 people living in Berlin (Cotter and Nairne 2005) (11). The pictures were categorized according to the professions of the subjects and filmed in static poses so that the images seemed more like a series of photographs; however, the people’s slight movements suddenly brought the images to life and communicated a personal or human aspect of the subject to the observer. The black and white film was a conscious reference to August Sander’s portfolio work People of the 20th Century where he tried to categorize and photograph all the types of people living at that time in Germany. Sander’s long-term project began at the turn of the century and continued until the 1950’s, and consisted of more than 40 000 images. He attempted to record and archive all of German life and created his own pseudo-ethnographic categories based on his view of society’s hierarchy and its “portfolio of archetypes” consisting of: The Skilled Tradesman, The Woman, Classes and Professions and, his final category, The Last People (the sick, the insane) (Lange 2002). Tan transforms this investigation into a sociological study of people in Berlin. Tan recognised that her project, like Sander’s, was impossible, but she presented a comment on social order and classification and consciously created a tension between the supposed objectivity of Sander’s project and her own subjective approach. She filmed people, individually, in groups, in families and roughly followed Sander’s categories, except for her last category called “Others”, which included

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Fig. 6: Lapse of Memory by Fiona Tan, HD installation, 2007. Courtesy of the artist and Frith Street Gallery, London.

pensioners, the unemployed, drug addicts, politicians, curators and artists. However, the personal moments, the details, the passing of time, and the intimacy of the portraits were more important than the categories. In addition, Tan’s voice-over clarified her position that all attempts for systematic ordering are invariably subjective and can never be successful, and is also reminiscent of Trinh T. Minh-ha’s remark: “Despite our desperate, eternal attempt to separate, contain, and mend, categories always leak” (Trinh 1989, p. 94). Tan exposed the non-objective nature of categorisation while Gómez-Peña exaggerated the collective unconscious ethnic stereotypes of many Anglo-Americans: the concerns were similar, but the aesthetics and the outcomes were very different. In another work entitled Lapse of Memory (2007), Tan further examined questions of truth and fiction and how post-colonial history influence perceptions of the present and future. Tan constructed the identity of a fictional person: a confused, old man – Henry – who is living alone in a beautiful historical building and has not left for a long time (see Fig. 6). In the film, the camera

Teresa Chen

Fig. 7: Disorient by Fiona Tan, HD Video installation, 2009. Courtesy of the artist, Frith Street Gallery, London and Wako Works of Art, Tokyo.

follows his simple daily routine and his eccentric rituals. By describing the action happening in the film as a voice-over, the contrived nature of the situation and the character is emphasized. In addition to Henry, the viewer also sees fragments of a previously opulent interior décor, which is actually the Royal Pavilion in Brighton (UK), a strange colonial building with a classical Indian facade and interiors decorated in Chinese and Japanese style. Built in 1815 by King George IV, it is one of the best preserved examples of Chinese architecture and design in the world. However,

neither the king nor his architect was ever in Asia and the pavilion is a colonial fantasy, built completely on cultural projections of the Orient. Tan’s fictional character is a reflection of this strange building. Offered a variety of possible truths and possible fictions, the viewer must decide what has happened and who this person could be. In this piece, Tan examines the colonial situation, and reveals the role of fantasy which has constructed the exotic Other. There are clear similarities to the performance works of Gómez-Peña as he also explores and exposes ethnic cultural projections.

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However, Gómez-Peña seeks an emotional and cathartic effect with his confrontational manner and extreme exaggerations of stereotypes, while Tan gently prompts the viewer into questioning what could be involved in constructing cultural identities, hoping that each individual can recognize the history of colonial representation and its effects on the present as well as the future. One of Tan’s recent works is a video installation entitled Disorient (2009) (12) and composed of two screens facing each other. One large screen shows images from the interior of an exotic showroom where rows of objects are displayed including animals in formaldehyde, spices and foods, Asian decorations and other Oriental looking items (see Fig. 7). The other smaller screen on the opposite side presents contemporary images from various Asian countries including their inhabitants. Tan contrasts the alluring illusion of exotic merchandise where culture is commercial production with more documentary footage of poverty, pollution, landscape, and urban development. Also on the smaller screen, edited together with the contemporary documentary footage, are images of the exotic showroom space being dismantled. Whilst watching this film, it is revealed that the exotic Oriental storage area is actually an illusion, a stage set-up in the Dutch pavilion itself, with the closing shot a view of all the exotic objects, looking more like cheap junk, deposited outside the Dutch pavilion. A voice-over consisting solely of quotes from The Travels of Marco Polo accompanies the two videos describing his impressions from his journeys. In a previously described work Facing Forward (1999), Tan references Marco Polo by quoting Italo

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Calvino’s texts that described his travels. She also believes that Marco Polo represents an ideal traveler, and also that his seven-centuries old descriptions have greatly influenced how the west thinks about the east (Dutch Pavilion Press Release 2009). Furthermore, I claim that the title “Disorient” also contains several layers of meaning. The root “orient” refers to direction, position or orientation, but Tan is also clearly referring to the ‘Orient’. With the prefix “dis-” preceding “orient”, the ‘Orient’ as well as orientation is negated, revealing Tan’s intention to expose the distortion of Western cultural projections of the ‘Orient’. Tan has described her goal as to “continue to experiment and develop a filmic language that could perhaps be described as simultaneously constructing and deconstructing – employing the tricks of the trade and at the same time exposing them, laying them bare… I am also interested in the slipperiness of truth or truths” (Bos 2009, p. 23). Tan’s quote is similar to Trinh T. Minh-ha’s writings and films. Both use various editing techniques in order to present multiple perspectives and views, as well as to expose the subjective nature of what could be real or true. Similarly, Tan continued: “I want to empower the subject, empower the viewer, and to bring aspects to the surface, to create a certain visibility, if you like, to foster awareness of our interpretation of the images that surround us” (Bos 2009, p. 25). Both Tan and Trinh deconstruct the film-making process in order to expose the relationship between truth and fiction, and, at the same time, encourage the viewer to construct the meaning from what he or she has seen.

Through a comparative analysis of specific works from Guillermo Gómez-Peña and Fiona Tan, I have shown that there are many correlations in their respective artistic practices; however, there are still crucial differences. Despite their similar interest in borders, their references reflect the hemispheres in which they locate themselves: Tan often considers the relationship between East / West, whereas Gómez-Peña’s concern is mostly between North / South. Gómez-Peña’s experiences are connected to his Mexican background and the USA’s immigration issues with Mexico. Furthermore, as an artist, he has been influenced by the political and cultural atmosphere of the 1980s and 1990s when activist art and identity politics were important issues. Gomez-Peña is involved in an impressive variety of interdisciplinary cultural production activities, mostly in North America. Tan’s experiences have been quite different: she has been formed by a European and less politically confrontational environment, and her aesthetics and artistic approach seem to be more compatible to a mediation of the contemporary global situation as well as more conventional ‘art world’ exhibitions, albeit international ones. Gómez-Peña’s artistic strategy of “reverse anthropology” specifically aims to reverse concepts from anthropology and ethnographic methodology that previously defined ‘objective’ knowledge of the Other. In comparison, Tan’s approach corresponds to anthropology’s “crisis of representation” where ideas of authenticity, truth and objectivity were questioned and power structures in representations of cultures were revealed. Furthermore,

Tan’s work has correlations to writings from Trinh T. Minh-ha which emphasized ideas of self-reflection and the subjective role of the observer as well as the active role of the audience. Although her work could be seen as political in nature, it is also poetic and her intention is not specifically an activist one. Conversely, Gómez-Peña sees himself as a political activist, with a myriad of cultural activities and highly charged, provocative performances which are an extension of his own extravagant and extraverted personality. His strategy to present over-exaggerated stereotypes based on cultural projections is simple and direct. In contrast, Tan’s works are complex and involve the viewer intellectually; she interrogates concepts of objective truth and reality in order to expose subjective and historical connections between power and knowledge. Tan’s artistic strategies are inspired by the mediums of film and photography, and she often challenges the truth of images and representations. However, because of the complexity and the relatively subtle nuances of her critique, some viewers may not always recognize the ideas behind her works. In this essay, I examined the connection between Foucault’s concepts about power/knowledge in connection with anthropology’s colonial heritage by comparing the strategic approaches of Guillermo Gómez-Peña and Fiona Tan, two artists who have interrogated the history of anthropology in their art. The spectacle of exhibiting ‘native’ people in ethnographic displays in order to establish Western culture’s delusions of superiority motivated Gómez-Peña to create and produce several significant performance installations during the 1990s. Likewise, the “crisis of representation”

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Teresa Chen

Conclusion

where anthropologists became aware of the power structures involved in representing various cultures inspired Tan to critically examine questions of authenticity and objectivity embedded in the act of classifying people as well as their representa-

tions in film and photography. Thus, through their respective artistic practices, both artists expose the subjectivity inherent in ethnological practices and reveal correlations between power, knowledge and truth in discourses about the Other.

References Books and Articles —— Ang, I 2001, ‘Can One Say No to Chineseness? Pushing the Limits of the Diasporic Paradigm’ in On Not Speaking Chinese, Routledge, New York, pp. 37-51. —— Asad, T (ed.) 1973, Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter, Ithaca Press, London. —— Bos, S 2009, ‘Other Facets of the Same Globe. A conversation between Fiona Tan and Saskia Bos’ in Fiona Tan: Disorient, ed. M. Bloemheuvel, Kehrer Verlag, Heidelberg, pp. 22-27. —— Calvino, I 1978, Invisible Cities, Harvest Books, New York. —— Chen, N 1992, ‘Speaking Nearby’: A Conversation with Trinh T. Minh-ha’ in Visual Anthropology Review, vol. 8, no. 1, pp. 82-91. —— Clifford, J & Marcus, GE (eds) 1986, Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography, University of California Press, Berkeley. —— Cooke, L 2000, ‘Fiona Tan: Re-Take’ in van den Berg, M & Götz, GF (eds.), Fiona Tan – Scenario, Vandenberg & Wallroth, Amsterdam, pp. 20-61. —— Cotter, S & Nairne, A 2005, ‘Preface’ in Fiona Tan: Countenance, Modern Art Oxord, Oxford, pp. 5-7. —— Dutch Pavilion, 2009. Amsterdam-based film and video artist Fiona Tan represents the Netherlands at the 53rd International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia with a new audio-visual installation entitled ‘Disorient’. Press release, 18. May 2009, available at: accessed 10.02.2011. —— Foucault, M 1980, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972-1977, Pantheon, New York. —— Fusco, C 1994, ‘The Other History of Intercultural Performance’, The Drama Review, vol. 38, no. 1, pp. 143-167. —— Gómez-Peña, G & Sifuentes, R 1997, Temple of Confessions: Mexican Beasts and Living Santos, PowerHouse Books, New York. —— Gómez-Peña, G 2000, Dangerous Border Crossers: The Artist Talks Back, Routledge, New York. —— Gómez-Peña, G 2005, Ethno-Techno: Writings on Performance, Activism and Pedagogy, Routledge, New York.

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—— Godfrey, M 2006, ‘Facing Forward: Backwards into the Future’ in Coetzee, M & Lagos, L (eds.), Memorials of Identity - New Media from the Rubell Family Collection, Rubell Family Collection, Miami, Florida, pp. 132-146. —— Gough, K 1968, ‘Anthropology: Child of Imperialism’, Monthly Review, vol. 19, no. 11, pp. 12-27. —— Gramsci, A 2000, The Antonio Gramsci Reader: Selected Writings, 1916-1935, New York University Press, New York. —— Greenhalgh, P 1988, Ephemeral Vistas: The Expositions Universelles, Great Exhibitions and World’s Fairs, 18511939, Manchester University Press, Manchester and New York. —— Gómez-Peña, G, Gómez-Peña’s La Pocha Nostra, available at accessed 20. February 2010. —— Hall, S 1986, ‘Gramsci’s Relevance for the Study of Race and Ethnicity’, Journal of Communication Inquiry, vol. 10, no. 2, pp. 5-27. —— Hall, S 1997, ‘The Spectacle of the ‘Other’’ in Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices, Sage, London, pp. 225-279. —— Hall, S 1997, ‘The Work of Representation’ in Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices, Sage, London, pp. 15-74. —— Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, B 1991, ‘Objects of Ethnography’ in Karp, I & Lavine, S (eds.), Exhibiting Cultures: The Poetics and Politics of Museum Display, Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, DC, pp. 386-443. —— Kuper, A 1996, Anthropology and Anthropologists: The Modern British School, Routledge, New York. —— Lange, S 2002, August Sander - Menschen des 20 Jahrhunderts: Studienband (German Edition), Schirmer/Mosel Verlag Gmbh, Munich. —— Lewis, D 1973, ‘Anthropology and Colonialism’, Current Anthropology, vol. 14, no. 5, pp. 581-602. —— Lippard, L 1990, Mixed Blessings: New Art in a Multicultural America, Pantheon Books, New York.

Films —— Race, the Floating Signifier with Stuart Hall 1996, Film, Directed by Sut Jhally, Media Education Foundation. —— Reassemblage 1982, Film, Directed by Trinh T. Minh-ha, Women Make Movies.

Art Works —— Gómez-Peña, G and Fusco, C 1992, The Couple in a Cage: Undiscovered Amerinidians. —— Gómez-Peña, G 1997-99, The Mexterminator Project. —— Gómez-Peña, G 1999-2002, The Living Museum of Fetishized Identities. —— Gómez-Peña, G 1994-96, The Temple of Confessions. —— Tan, F 2002, Countenance. —— Tan, F, 2009, Disorient. —— Tan, F 1999, Facing Forward. —— Tan, F 2007, Lapse of Memory. —— Tan, F 1997, May You Live in Interesting Times.

Endnotes 1 Following Karl Marx’s ideas of society based on economic class hierarchy, Antonio Gramsci proposed that prevailing norms of a society are not natural and inevitable, but artificial social constructs used in social-class domination by the ruling class.

2 Michel Foucault’s theories addressed the relationship between power and knowledge and how they are used as a method of social control through institutional structures. 3 Pygmy is an English word indicating shortness of stature that was applied to indigenous ethnic groups, particularly in Central Africa, who were on average less than 150 cm tall. 4 A well-documented case concerns Saartje Baartman also known as “Hottentot Venus”, an African woman who was exhibited semi-naked in a cage at various freak shows in England and France during the early 19th century. Her “native” body had the enlarged buttocks characteristic for certain peoples of South Africa and confirmed ideas about the “primitive sexuality” of non-European women. After her early death in 1815, “scientists” dissected her body and displayed her preserved genitals and skeleton at the Musée de l’Homme in Paris until 1974. Her remains were finally returned to South Africa in 2002. 5 The word ‘vato’ is Chicano slang for guy or dude. 6 Roughly translated means ‘The Holy Americanized Mexican from Aztlan.’ 7 The  Terminator  films are a series of popular science fiction movies where the human race struggles to survive against an artificially intelligent machine network. Arnold Schwarzenegger portrayed the original “Terminator” character in 1984, a cyborg robotic assassin who is sent to terminate or destroy the future leader of the human resistance. He also starred in the sequels  Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991), and Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003) and Terminator 5: Genisys (2015). 8 According to Gómez-Peña, the term La Pocha Nostra is a “Spanglish neologism” meaning either “our impurities” or “the cartel of cultural bastards” (2005, p. 78). A Pocho or pocha, originally describing a fruit that is discoloured or rotting, is Americanised Mexican. The term is often used disparagingly for describing someone who has lost his/her Mexican cultural roots. 9 Edward Said’s seminal book Orientalism written in 1978, challenged Western perceptions and representations of the East. Said contends that the ‘Orient’ is constructed by and in relation to the West and exists as a mirror image of what is inferior, and alien or Other. 10 The title of the work has many layers and meanings. What sounds like a pleasant wish ‘May You Live in Interesting Times’ is supposedly an ancient Chinese curse, as Chinese people always want to have a very quiet life. However, no authentic Chinese saying like this has been found, leading many to believe that it actually originated from the English or the Americans themselves in the 1930’s. 11 First presented at the Documenta 11, Kassel in 2002. 12 First presented at the Dutch Pavilion at the 53rd Venice Biennial in 2009.

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—— Marcus, G & Fischer, M (eds) 1986, Anthropology as Cultural Critique, University of Chicago Press, Chicago. —— Orvell, M & Ibieta G 1996, Inventing America: Readings in Identity and Culture, St. Martin’s Press, New York. —— Rabinow, P 1985, ‘Discourse and Power: On the Limits of Ethnographic Texts’, Dialectical Anthropology, vol. 10, no. 1, pp. 1-14. —— Smith, S & Young PD 1997, ‘The Early History of Anthropological Thought: Unilineal Evolution and Diffusion’ in Cultural Anthropology: Understanding a World in Transition, Allyn & Bacon, Boston, pp. 70-106. —— Spivak, GC 1988, ’Can the Subaltern Speak?’ in Ashcroft, B & Griffiths, G (eds.) 2006, The Post-Colonial Studies Reader, Routledge, London, pp. 28-38. —— Trinh, TM 1991, When the Moon Waxes Red: Representation, Gender and Cultural Politics, Routledge, New York. —— Trinh, TM 1989, Woman, Native, Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism, Indiana University Press, Bloomington. —— von Bismarck, B 2002 ‘Of All the Images in the World, Which Am I then Left With?’ in Fiona Tan: Akte 1, De Pont Foundation for Contemporary Art, Tilburg, pp. 73 -97. —— Wiarda, A 2002, ‘Seeing, Observing, Thinking: On Time and Place in the Work of Fiona Tan’, A-Prior, no. 8, pp. 94-103.

Derealisation, Cinema and the Turbulence of Information Kit Wise

Paul Virilio’s essay ‘The Overexposed City’ (1984) provides a basic framework for an analysis of the turbulence of the contemporary city. His essay introduces the concept of “derealisation”, which he claims is a consequence of the flow of digital information as light. Virilio identifies a point where ‘the crisis of the dimension… appears as the crisis of the whole’: cities are extensions of our experience of the world, and they are no longer ‘real’. He describes this crisis as: ‘the phenomenon of “derealisation” which can affect our means of expression, our modes of representation and our information.’ Three aspects of this derealisation can be identified: The derealisation of means of expression (the collapse of language), The derealisation of the modes of representation (the overexposure of material/space ‘as’ light) and finally, the derealisation of information (globalisation and the legacy of colonialism). Of these three facets, the derealisation of information is the most troubling in regard to the turbulence of contemporary societies. For Virilio, derealised information is associated with a collapse of ethics: an inability to find stable ethical coordinates. Further, Virilio associates this collapse with the unreality of film or what he calls ‘cinematism’. Within this essay I will address this ethical turbulence, through the notion of the “remnant”.

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In The Overexposed City, Virilio describes an “aesthetics of the disappearance,” in which we experience space primarily through time-based media images, rather than corporeal reality. For example, TV news has come to create our spatial understanding of ‘the world’, rather than our actual travels or other first-hand experiences. He suggests that transmutation of representations has taken place From the aesthetics of the appearance of stable images, present precisely because of their static nature, to the aesthetics of the disappearance of unstable images, present because of their motion (cinematic, cinemagraphic). (Virilio 1984) What does Virilio mean by this transmutation, and why is it ‘cinematic’? To answer this question, I will consider the language and imagery of his essay in detail. Virilio begins with an account of the technologisation of the city in order to increase its security. The example he gives lists surveillance: counter-terrorist measures, such as CCTV and “the sudden proliferation of cameras, radar and detectors at mandatory passageways” (Virilio 1984). Virilio suggests that the movie camera is the ultimate form for these systems. He writes, “The camera has become our best inspector,” John F. Kennedy declared a short while before he was killed on a street in Dallas. Actually, the camera allows us to participate in – live on tape or computer – certain political events and optical phenomenon. For example, the phenomenon of breaking into effraction, in which the city lets itself be seen through surveillance, and the phenomena of breaking apart diffraction, in which its image is reflected beyond the atmosphere to the ends of space. This overexposure attracts our attention. [Emphasis in the original] (Virilio 1984)

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The terms diffraction, effraction and overexposure introduce key features of derealisation. Diffraction refers to a specific optical event, the apparent bending of light as it passes through small apertures. This can cause a single ray of light to appear to radiate in a circular pattern. Effraction literally means “a breaking into a house, store, etc., by force; forcible entry”, in the sense of a burglary, it also suggests the permeability of an object to light, but in the opposite direction: light breaks in, rather than out (1). This disrupts boundaries, and the criminal connotations of this are important to the understanding of a further key term, overexposure: Replacing the old distinctions between public and private or ‘habitation’ and ‘circulation’ is an ‘overexposure’ because the gap between ‘near’ and ‘far’ ceases to exist, in the same way that the gap between ‘micro’ and ‘macro’ can disappear through the lens of a scanning electron microscope. (Virilio 1984) For Virilio, the collapse of public and private can be understood as what happens when the private is exposed to the public; habitation violated by circulation. What is striking about Virilio’s description is that the transparency or permeability that diffraction and effraction create is aligned with crime or violation. The camera, as a machine that mediates light, is therefore a means to that end. Is film then a crime?

Once the polis inaugurated a political theatre, with the agora and the forum, but today nothing remains but a cathode ray screen, with its shadows and specters of a community in the process of disappearing. Is ‘cinematism’ really the last appearance of urbanism, the last image of an urbanism without urbanity, where tact and contact yield to televisual impact? (Virilio 1984) Unlike the democratic, civic and purposeful spaces of the classical city, the new overexposed city brings everyone together as a ‘shadow or spectre of community’, one that is already fading or ‘disappearing’. Indeed, urbanity, understood as a community with shared ideals of civilized behaviour, is replaced by its image: urbanism, a collection of people who share only their location. The implication is that society has dissolved and communal ethical coordinates have been lost. Cinematism for Virilio is therefore a collapse of the social order. Our understanding of cinematism is extended in the closing paragraphs of the essay: From the aesthetics of the appearance of stable images, present precisely because of their static nature, to the aesthetics of the disappearance of unstable images, present because of their motion (cinematic, cinematographic), a transmutation of representation has taken place. The emergence of form and volume intended to exist as long as their

physical material would allow has been replaced by images whose only duration is one of retinal persistence. (Virilio 1984)

Kit Wise

For Virilio cinematism implies a criminal act:

For Virilio, the “aesthetics of disappearance” is both the fleeting quality of moving, light-based images (such as cinema) as well as the disappearance of societal norms and expectations. A “transmutation of representation” has taken place: the transformation of architecture into film, and the cinematic has replaced the spatial. “Ultimately, it seems that Hollywood much more than Venturi’s Las Vegas, merits a study of urbanism.” (Virilio 1984) Let us consider an artwork, for example Xanadu, a high definition digital video that combined cinema with a sculptural component. The sculptural component was a curved lip, or lunette of mirrored glass; positioned at a 45-degree angle to the wall at the bottom of the screen. This mirror reflected the screen image above, and created an extension of the frame of the projection, thus the space of the film image was expanded. So when a waterfall was shown on screen, the mirror lip sculpture seemed to reflect a kind of liquid, giving the impression that the turbulent waters ended in a lake (2). Xanadu, a work of mine from 2010, can be understood as a work where spatial coordinates have been replaced by cinematic events. The work is a synthesis of numerous viewpoints and perspectives. Still-image components have been artificially unified through sleight of hand, tricking the eye into assembling a whole. The animated

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Fig 1 and 2. Xanadu: an Experimenta Festival Commission, Melbourne, 2010 by Kit Wise HD single channel video, 5’50”. Japan and Italy, found digital images and digital video from Getty Images.

sections – such as a flock of birds that fly across the scene – reinforce this sense of cohesion. Like Las Vegas, to which Virlio alludes, Xanadu compresses multiple iconic architectural and landscape features into a synthetic whole.

The city of living cinema where sets and reality, cadastral urban planning and cinematic footage planning […] merge to the point of delirium. (Virilio 1984)

The work extends the confines of the traditional rectangular frame of cinema into the space of the gallery, through the mirrored ellipse at the lower edge of the projection. The mirror uses reflection to stretch the space of the screen and in a Virilian sense, re-models the space through light. This is also the function of cinema, where artificial spatial effects are created through projected lightbased images. In Xanadu I do not supersede the physical space as completely as Virilio suggests the constructs of Hollywood and Cinecittà do, but it does suggest that:

However, as this performative perceptual derealisation suggests, it is important to consider the simultaneous ethical derealisation that he identifies in a discussion of Hollywood:

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Here, more than anywhere, advanced technologies have converged to create a synthetic space-time. The Babylon of film ‘derealisation,’ the industrial zone of pretence, Hollywood built itself up neighbourhood by neighbourhood, avenue by avenue, upon the twilight of appearance, the success of

Here Virilio’s language draws on notions of the nondead: “shadows and spectres of a community in the process of disappearing; the living and the living dead merge to the point of delirium; the ‘spectral’ character of the city and its inhabitants”. (Virilio 1984) Virilio implies a zombie-like quality for the city: an unreal, supernatural state that is without consciousness and therefore, without the capacity to think logically or ethically. This suggestion of an ethical void is reinforced by two striking references, to Babylon and to D.W. Griffith. The Biblical story of Babylon describes a magnificent city in which a tower high enough to reach the heavens started to be built as the myth suggests. Appalled by this attempt to compete with the divine, God scattered the people of Babylon to the corners of the earth and divided what had been a common language into many. The parable has a moral dimension, criticising the Babylonians for their vanity. Virilio’s analogy suggests that Hollywood is a similarly blasphemous construction. Secondly, D.W. Griffith was one of the founders of Hollywood. He produced the first feature length film, Birth of a Nation (1915). Famous for his spectacular productions and road shows, Griffith was also infamous for the film’s heroic portrayal of the Klu Klux Klan, as well as representing African American men as ignorant and sexually aggressive towards women. Again, Virilio uses this example

of the cinematic to imply a significant, indeed shocking moral lapse (3). Throughout his text, then, he hints at the overexposed city leading to criminality, the collapse of society and a resulting ethical void; and, that this is associated with its most complete form, cinema. However, while Virilio implies this lack, he makes no attempt to identify any new ethical framework. This ethical void he associates with the rise of cinematism is also found in his writing.

Tokyo and the Derealisation of Information Instead, his derealisation of appearances has lead to the identification of an ethical void. However, this is most clearly manifest in the derealisation of information. I will now consider the link between these two forms of derealisation in another artwork, Nightengale. A project I made in 2011. Nightengale was a synthesis of imagery related to Tokyo: a combination of images and video footage taken by myself, with found images from the internet, as well as samples of its representation in films such as Godzilla, Bladerunner and Akira. The video component was back-projected onto a nine metre freestanding acrylic screen. Designed using hinged sections, the screen suggested a traditional Japanese byo¯bu, a mobile folding wall. In Nightengale, I utilized the visual vocabulary associated with Tokyo as found online and in popular consumer culture. This imagery was deliberately appropriated from the internet: commercial image banks such as Getty Images as well as open

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Kit Wise

illusion and the rise of spectacular productions (such as those of D.W. Griffiths) while waiting for the megalomaniacal urbanisation of Disneyland, Disneyworld and Epcot Centre. (Virilio 1984)

Figs. 2 and 3: Nightengale (video installation), Kit Wise, 2006. and Close up of the Video Installation, 2006.

Figs. 4 and 5: Tokyo=Fukushima, Jordan Baseman, 2011.

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Tokyo can also be understood as an example of the derealisation of appearances. As architect Franco Purini describes Tokyo in the following way:

I combined various depictions of Tokyo by identifying similarities in colour or subject matter in the source images. Through the familiar function of ‘cut and paste’, their individual identity and original significance was erased through assimilation into a new whole. This method deliberately suppressed consideration of the content of the imagery in favour of formal concerns. The resulting synthesised whole summarised the fictional stereotype of Tokyo in popular consumer culture: a futuristic, fantastical city (5). Tokyo is an important reference for Virlio and his understanding of the contemporary city. In The Law of Proximity, Virilio opens his essay with an extended quotation from “the vice-president of the research laboratory at Toyota,” comparing the form of the mosquito to the “micro-robots that will embark on exploratory missions within the human organism” (Virilio 1992). He also quotes Professor Fujita (University of Tokyo) describing the microprocessors and receptors that have recently been developed in nanotechnology. Finally, he also borrows a key phrase from an interview with the late Japanese architect Kazuo Shinohara who said, “The city of the future is the pleasure of the interval” (Virilio 1992. Quotation uncited in original) (6). It is significant to note that via Shinohara, Fujita and Toyota, Virilio’s paradigm of the contemporary city has its genesis in the futuristic technologies and cityscape of post-war Tokyo (7).

Today, fuelled by globalism, the endless Japanese metropolis has become the climax of a new cognitive and highly imaginative itinerary, a third Grand Tour, this time in the world’s most emergent area. […] In the end Tokyo is a simple city that is different from European and American cities only because urban planning is practically absent. If the former are cities of space, governed by the laws of perspective, then Tokyo is a city of situations. It is a city in which no two points are the same, which demands that those who traverse it develop dynamic, changeable mental maps where the interpretation of volumes, the intensity of relationships and the connection between distant and even opposite levels in the urban text assume an essential role. (Sacchi 2004) Like Virilio’s account of the overexposed city, Purini identifies a shift from the usual laws of perspective to new modes of representation, where unexpected connections are made between different points in the urban framework. This is literally a derealisation of pictorial appearance. However, in addition, in his reference to the tradition of the Grand Tour, Purini makes explicit the consumption of ‘Tokyo’ as an exotic Other. This can be understood in terms of postcolonial theory as the objectification and commodification of other cultures, through their simplification as stereotypes such as ‘the exotic’.

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source collections (The Internet Archive) and other web-based platforms were used to find the primary source material (4).

Therefore Purini’s text draws attention to the fact that the derealisation of modes of representation (this collapse of spatial parameters) leads to or is accompanied by a derealisation of information (the collapse of epistemological specificity). Consequently, spatial coordinates are collapsed in Nightengale, a collapse of the specific information associated with those coordinates. This information is not only spatial, but also cultural and historical. The collapse or derealisation of information is therefore the collapse of an epistemology of culture (8). To better understand these postcolonial concerns and how they relate to Virilio’s ethical void, I refer to a text by the theorist and curator Okwui Enwezor. In The Postcolonial Constellation: Contemporary Art in a State of Permanent Transition, Enwezor analyses the modes of cross-cultural or “multicultural” curatorial practice in contemporary museums. He cites the Tate Modern, the Georges Pompidou Centre and the Metropolitan Museum of Fine Arts as key examples (Enwezor 2008). He brings together artefacts or art works from disparate cultures (“in which the gap between ‘near’ and ‘far’ ceases to exist”, as Virilio would suggest). This has been common practice for museums, however it is a practice Enwezor strongly criticises. Like Virilio, Enwezor notes that globalization has led to a disruption of geographies  as well as changes in our ethical frames of reference: Contemporary art today is refracted, not just from the specific site of culture and history but also – and in a more critical sense – from the standpoint of a complex geopolitical configuration, its postcolonial transforma-

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tions, that situates what I call here “the postcolonial constellation”. Changes wrought by transitions to new forms of governmentality and institutionality, new domains of living and belonging as people and citizens, cultures and communities – these define the postcolonial matrix that shapes the ethics of subjectivity and creativity today. (Enwezor 2008) Given Virilio’s focus on the city (as well as the urban imagery in Nightengale) it is significant that Enwezor specifically identifies the urban character of these turbulent practices. He writes, The current artistic context is constellated around the norms of the postcolonial; those based on discontinuous, aleatory forms, on creolisation, hybridisation, and so forth, all of these tendencies operating with a specific cosmopolitan accent. (Enwezor 2008) (9) Enwezor is concerned by the ‘formal sensibility’ that governs the juxtaposition of artefacts, such as the arrangement by genre, subject matter and other formal affinities (Enwezor 2008). This prioritization of the formal negates its historical or cultural specificity, by removing these artefacts from their context. This lack of historical narrative disallows any tensions, conflicts, resistance or contradictions that the artefacts may generate. He identifies this with a very colonial impulse within Modernism, the whitewashing of history as a single seamless narrative, which he describes as: “a more disquieting quality of Modernism: its taste for appropriating or redeeming otherness, for

Enwezor identifies how vitrines used to display African sculptures alongside generic “Postcards from Africa” are of particular concern. These isolate as fetishized artefacts which were either artworks in their own right, worthy of placing alongside the non-vitrinised objects by Western artists, or tools of religious, ritual or other specifically designated cultural practice. Through their location within the static, objectified space of the vitrine, alongside unconnected objects from Western culture, the total assembly exemplifies Enwezor’s critique of the exhibition as a whole as ahistorical, with no semblance of the critical content of what Habermas calls the “philosophical discourse of modernity”. In fact, it was marked by a subjugation of historical memory, a savage act of epistemological and hermeneutic violence” (Enwezor 2008). However, in Nightengale, I used this formalist aesthetic deliberately to construct a view of Tokyo that is similarly ahistorical: a violation of the epistemology of the images it appropriates. By ignoring their origins, derealising their information, the discreet images combine in the ‘vitrine’ of an artificial whole. Therefore the work represents a colonising gaze to the viewer, one that erases historical specificity. This results in the Other being redeployed as a (Modernist) Western form. We now recognise that the ethical failure associated with the derealisation of information here operates in terms of postcolonial discourse. The civic lapse, which was hinted at by Virilio, has much more grave implications, as it leads to the oppression of other peoples, cultures and societies.

Turbulence and the Remnant How can we redress the epistemological violence found in my project, Nightengale and Virilio’s account of the overexposed city? In Remnants of Auschwitz: The Witness and the Archive, Giorgio Agamben examines their final outcome, racism. Agamben draws upon Foucault’s definition of the term in the essay, ‘Society must be defended’ (1976) when he states, “racism is precisely what allows bio power to make caesuras in the biological continuum of the human species, thus introducing a principle of war into the system of “making live”. Agamben similarly identifies racism as the means by which a system of power charged with maintaining life (to let live) is able to instigate the death of members of its population. He describes this as the distinction between a people and a population by “transforming an essentially political body into an essentially biological body.” (Agamben 1999). Racism is the mechanism by which the population is subdivided into peoples, through discrimination. Agamben continues to give an account of Hitler’s ultimate objective: to reduce Central-Western Europe to a ‘volkloser Raum, a space empty of people’ (Agamben 1999). Like the eradication of supposedly aberrant peoples from the population, he states that the project of the holocaust envisaged, “the driving force of the camp understood as a bio political machine that, once established in a determinate geographical space, transforms it into an absolute bio political space” (Agamben 1999). Through the removal of difference, racism in this context aspired to a space without distinguishable people: a single, homogenous population.

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constituting non-Western arts in its own image” (Enwezor 2008).

In countering this process of discrimination, Agamben develops a term that may provide the first word in the new ethical vocabulary. Virilio sought the remnant. Agamben identifies the remnant as a theological-messianic concept. The remnant is an undefinable quantum of the population, associated with the will of god and consequently unknowable to mankind. The term is used in Paul’s Letter to the Romans: “Even so then at this time also there is a remnant according to the election of grace”. (De la Durantaye 2009). Similarly, in Isaiah 10: 22: “For although thy people be as the sand of the sea, yet a remnant of them shall be saved” (Agamben 1999). As Agamben posits, “A closer reading of the texts shows that the remnant is closer to being a consistency or figure that Israel assumes in relation to election or to the messianic event. It is therefore neither a whole, nor a part of the whole, but the impossibility for the part and the whole to coincide with themselves or with each other” (De la Durantaye 2009). The remnant therefore offers a way to articulate a relationship between the part and the whole that does not depend upon a dialectical model. This is ‘precisely what prevents divisions from being exhaustive’: we are unable to definitely differentiate peoples amongst a population (Agamben 2005) In this sense, the population itself becomes turbulent, impossible to define or delineate, resistant to outline or simplification. One example of this manifestation can be found in a short film by the artist Jordan Baseman. Bateman’s film allows us to better understand how the remnant may manifest. Tokyo=Fukushima (2011) presents a series of views of Tokyo at night.

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Recorded with a fixed camera over long durations at different locations in the city, the footage has been greatly accelerated. Night trains flash by, car headlights become continuous streams of colour and office blocks flicker with activity. Most significant are the crowd scenes. Figures who stand and pause are identifiable but moving crowds blur into a heterogeneous mass; busy pedestrians become trails of light. Baseman’s film reveals Tokyo’s ‘turbulent’ population: recognisable but indistinct, shifting, briefly legible then dissolving into movement. We are able to sense, but not measure, the humanity contained by the city. In a similar way, the remnant disrupts the discrimination outlined by racism because the distinctions between identities cannot be precisely established. Here, turbulence becomes a means to resist the categorisation of peoples like that led to Nazism. As Agamben outlines in an interview with Hannah Leitgeb and Cornelia Vismann: “such a thing as an ethnic identity will never truly exist because there will always be a remnant […]. I think of the people as something to which a position can never be ascribed; it is neither majority nor minority. The people as a whole can never coincide with itself, and every attempt to effect such has resulted in catastrophe” (De la Durantaye 2009). The remnant for Agamben is what resists the attempt to categorically define every identity within a population, in order to create a single homogenous community. The remnant is the ‘irreducible disjunction’ that finally defeats racial discrimination (Agamben 1999). Here, a final important distinction can be made. On one level, Enwezor’s description of the subjuga-

be absolutely identified. This dilemma is not an aspect related to the trend of globalization, nor to the advent of new technologies, but rather a remnant is a deep part of the problems of colonialism and racism. Virilio’s overexposure to information does not lead to a space empty of people, but rather to the recognition and realization that we cannot overcome these remnants. Therefore, any collapse of society might also allow turbulence to be seen as a way to overcome these systems of racism and colonialism.

Agamben’s theory of the remnant allows us to better understand the subtlety of Enwezor’s argument. While they are grievous issues, here, Enwezor is not concerned that ethnic identities are stereotyped by the colonial in the guise of multiculturalism, nor that specific histories are overwritten by globalization. Instead, in this instance, he is concerned about the denial of the postcolonial condition. He describes this condition as ‘discontinuous, aleatory forms, on creolisation, hybridisation, and so forth’. Therefore, Enwezor’s argument hinges on the understanding that artworks and artefacts embody specific histories; but that these histories are dynamic, contested and in flux. They actually embody the turbulence of our societies. In conclusion, the term remnant is directly related to Virilio’s concept that the overexposed city is not only full of turbulence, but that the gap between near and far is a questionable construct. Furthermore, to break down this as a model, near can be understood as being the familiar. While far is often understood as other, and so cannot be precisely identified. Therefore, between these two definitions, a remnant exists that resists any classification. Consequently, turbulence can never

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tion of historical memory found in certain curatorial practices in order to establish a homogenous, international and ‘multicultural’ (Modernist) art history seems to correspond to this account of racism. However, on the other level, the erasure of populations of people under Nazism was pursued through the reverse of this subjugation: the attempt to exactly categorise people as specific ethnic subjects. Does Enwezor’s position potentially lead to more ‘racist’ discrimination?

References —— Agamben, G 1999, Remnants of Auschwitz: The Witness and the Archive, Zone Books, New York. —— The Time That Remains: A Commentary on the Letter to the Romans Meridian, Crossing Aesthetics 2005, Stanford University Press, Stanford, Calif. —— Bhabha, HK 1994, The Location of Culture, Routledge London, New York. —— De la Durantaye, L 2009, Agamben, G: A Critical Introduction, Stanford University Press, Stanford, Calif. —— Enwezor, O, 2008, “The Postcolonial Constellation: Contemporary Art in a State of Permanent Transition”, in Antinomies of Art and Culture: Modernity, Postmodernity, Contemporaneity, pp. 207-234. Available from Durham, Duke University. —— Foster, H 2002, The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture, New Press, New York. —— Manovich, L, 2001, The Language of New Media Leonardo, ed Malina, RF, MIT Press, Cambridge, London. —— Sacchi, L 2004, Tokyo City and Architecture, Universe, New York, N.Y. —— Virilio, P 1984, “The Overexposed City”, in Architecture Theory since 1968, ed Hays, MK, MIT Cambridge, Mass. —— Virilio, P 1992, “The Law of Proximity”, in Columbia Documents of Architecture and Theory, vol. 2, pp. 123-137.

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Endnotes 1 http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/effraction, accessed 10 September 2011 2 In this villa, the lake reflected light and images from the surrounding landscape. 3 These connotations are raised overtly in Virilio’s discussion of modernist narratives, immediately prior to his account of cinema: ‘If a crisis exists today, it is first and foremost a crisis of references (ethical, aesthetic), an incapacity to take stock of events in an environment where appearances are against us.’ (Virilio 1984, p. 549) Earlier, in reference to mass communication, he states ‘the… procedure heedlessly structures and destructures space-time, the continuum of society.’ (Virilio 1984, p. 548.) 4 These sources are also widely used by the advertising industries and web designers to generate content; their recycling of stock images – which Nightengale deliberately participates in – can be understood after the postcolonial theorist Homi K. Bhabha as a mode of stereotyping and commodifying the Other. Bhaba describes the continued commodification of the Other (here understood as the colonial practice of fetishizing ‘the exotic’ through romanticisation, stereotyping, appropriation, etc.) that, as Bhaba points out, continues to be ‘one of the most significant dis-

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cursive and psychical strategies of discriminatory power’. Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London; New York: Routledge, 1994), 66. The work is both an example of the stereotyping and commodification of contemporary Japan that Bhabha refers to a refusal of any epistemological content that may persist. It is significant to note that via Shinohara, Fujita and Toyota, Virilio’s paradigm of the contemporary city has its genesis in the futuristic technologies and cityscape of post-war Tokyo. Lev Manovich notes: “As Peter Lunenfeld has pointed out, Blade Runner (1982) and the Macintosh Computer (1984) ‘ – released within two years of each other – defined the two aesthetics that, twenty years later, still rule contemporary culture, miring us in what he calls the ‘permanent present’.” Lev Manovich, The Language of New Media, ed. Roger F. Malina, Leonardo (Cambridge, London: MIT Press, 2001), 63. Indeed, Tokyo has often been cited as the inspiration for futuristic works of science fiction. For example, Ridley Scott’s Bladerunner (1982) drew upon Kabukicho, the redlight district of Tokyo for aspects of the film’s street-scenes and ‘cyberculture’ aesthetic. The Postmodern Italian Condition, is a research project by architect Franco Purini at the 14th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia. Enwezor quotes from Édouard Glissant’s’ Caribbean Discourse to describe: “global modernity as essentially a phenomenon of the creolisation of cultures. […] Contemporary culture, for Glissant, is cross-cultural, reconstituting itself as a “flood of convergences publishing itself in the guise of the commonplace”. (Enwezor 2008, p.209)

Imaging the Norm Ellen K. Levy

Can images influence clinical classifications of illness and bring in alternative substantive considerations that bear on the assessment of the health of the attention system of the brain? Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is a common disorder; controversy surrounds its diagnosis and its common choice of treatment, methylphenidate. The periodically shifting boundary between adjudications of well-being and disease found in successive publications of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) with respect to ADHD behavioral symptoms may reflect conflicting power structures at work in society. How one defines norms of health and its divergences then become critical questions. To show how images indicate attentional pathology, one diagnostic examination of ADHD, the Clock Face Drawing Test, is analyzed and then contrasted with several artworks. The medical and artistic images highlight different aspects of the same problem – that of “picturing” behavioral norms. This text delineates some of the ramifications of images of a malfunctioning attention system in the context of different scales of effects – on the individual, the medical industry, and society at large.

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is a major disorder of the attention system; it is also symptomatic of society’s ongoing state of confusion about what constitutes normal behavior of the brain’s attention system. In light of the fact

that cultural considerations cannot be separated from ADHD, can the arts bring in alternative, substantive considerations that pertain to the medical assessment of the attentional system of the brain? This text constitutes an attempt to shed light on

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the role of images in experiencing and even adjudicating such disorders. The impetus to explore images in relation to the pathology of attention was spurred in part by models of activism in art, which intimate the power of images to question society’s values, goals, methods, and public policies. In addition, artists are often experts in attention. Knowledge and direction of “attention” characterizes the arts and are fundamental to an individual’s consciousness of herself and others. Controversy surrounds ADHD diagnosis and its common choice of treatment, methylphenidate. The periodically shifting boundary between adjudications of well-being and disease found in successive publications of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) with respect to ADHD behavioral symptoms may reflect conflicting power structures at work in society. How one defines norms of health and its divergences are critical questions. To what extent can images elucidate clinical classifications of illness? To show some of the ways they help determine if pathology is present, I analyze one diagnostic examination of ADHD, the Clock Face Drawing Test. I then compare it and projective drawing tests with several artworks. The medical and artistic images highlight different aspects of the same problem – that of “picturing” behavioral norms. The overarching consideration in all these accounts is the determination of what is normal and what is pathological. The ramifications of these decisions are viewed at different levels of the brain, the person, and society. Since I first wrote this text in 2012, many changes have impacted on ADHD’s treatment and diagnosis.

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These are partially reflected in the most recent Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) guidelines, issued in 2013. The DSM evaluates health in the U.S. and, with regard to ADHD, determines when the thresholds of attention can be judged defective on the basis of quantifiable parameters. DSM guidelines have fluctuated over time, raising doubts about their accuracy. The DSM defines ADHD as “a persistent pattern of inattention and/or hyperactivity-impulsivity that interferes with development, has symptoms presenting in two or more settings (e.g. at home, school, or work), and negatively impacts directly on social, academic or occupational functioning. The symptoms must be present before age 12” (1). The main changes that are reflected in the current version are the inclusion of adults, the number of symptoms used to diagnose the condition, and the creation of a new category of neurodevelopmental disorders that stresses the evidential basis of the diagnosis. The DSM’s definitions of abnormality continue to be subject to ongoing debates. ADHD has typically been understood as a spectrum of behavioral symptoms that reflects impulsivity, hyperactivity, or inattention to extreme degrees. The disputes surrounding its prognosis involve its legitimacy as a definable disease and concomitant concerns about the administration of a potent stimulant such as methylphenidate on a long-term basis to children and, more recently, adults. The presumption in the case of ADHD is that the common pharmaceutical intervention, methylphenidate, acts on an abnormality in the brain and then returns the individual to a “normal” or “natural” state.

Factors of race and poverty figure significantly in CDC charts. Some view the expansion into the population as Adult ADHD as signaling yet further “medicalization.” The views have by now become polarized; some view ADHD as a social construction that reflects primarily on parenting, the school system, and the pharmaceutical industry. Others conceive of it as a life-long disease with detectable abnormalities in the brain, resulting from genetics or from a combination of genes, environmental pollutants, and neurochemistry involving the cholinergic system. Sociologists have two main concerns: defining a medical norm may lead to social inequities and to intolerance of childhood deviance. Common sense suggests that the solution to the

problem of ADHD must address both medical and social factors. Neuroscientists Albright et al. summarized the status of neuroscientific attentional research in 2000, “As…arguments about anatomical substrata of psychiatric illnesses make clear, neural science in the long run faces problems of understanding aspects of biology of normal function and of disease, the complexity of which transcends the individual cell and involves the computational power inherent in large systems of cells unique to the brain” (4). In order to explore how images might reflect upon the diagnostic situation, I first looked at Clock Face Drawing Tests, which have sometimes been used to reveal deficits in planning/organizational skills in children with ADHD. They can serve as a diagnostic indicator for Alzheimer’s disease and other illnesses and are basically used in conjunction with additional tests. After briefly discussing these tests and related medical imaging, I explore several artworks that critique aspects of medical practice. The artworks place questions of attentional normality within a broad framework of theories of mind and agency. The overarching consideration in all these accounts is the determination of what is normal and what is pathological. The ramifications of these decisions are viewed at different levels of the brain, the person, and society.

Evaluating Attention with Drawings The Clock Face Drawing Test is generally used as one part of a comprehensive neuropsychological

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The controversy about the recent manual is one of diagnostic overexpansion; in other words, the diagnosis may overlap too much with life-as-usual. The acceptance of diagnoses in the U.S. of ADHD as reflecting its actual prevalence has been periodically challenged in light of the great increase of ADHD diagnoses. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) analyzed data from the National Survey of Children’s Health (NSCH) from 2003-2007 that showed unusual increases in diagnosis. The national estimate of children aged 4-17 years with parent-reported ADHD increased from 4.4 million in 2003 to 5.4 million in 2007, an increase of approximately 1 million children. The report stated, “The highest rates of ADHD diagnosis (ever) in 2007 were among multiracial children and those with Medicaid coverage” (2). More recently, the CDC stated that, in 2009-2010, 1 of 10 children 5-17 years of age had been diagnosed with ADHD according to the parent or knowledgeable adult in the family (3).

evaluation to diagnose ADHD. Studies have shown that different methods of classifying a diagnosis can have a dramatic impact on the prevalence of a disorder. Changes in DSM categories and items result in some changes of diagnostic assignments. The Clock Face Drawing Test more commonly diagnoses abnormalities apart from ADHD, including hemi-neglect in patients with unilateral brain lesions resulting, for example, from stroke and brain cancer. To convey neurological information about attention disorders, psychometric principles are applied to tests of psychopathology that purport to result in developmentally-sensitive diagnoses that define deviance within the context of age-specific norms. At issue in many of these studies is the selection of normal controls as well as the sensitivity and selectivity of the tests, themselves. In 1992 M. F. Mendez claimed that the Clock Face Drawing Test can measure visual-spatial skills and graphomotor abilities. The basic procedure is that the child or adult is asked to draw an analogue clock face, first by creating a circle and then positioning the numbers and setting the hands to a specified time; many variations exist. One task might require that a child only place numbers on a pre-drawn circle. Clock drawing performance in children with ADHD who did not have comorbid learning disabilities or psychiatric disorders was investigated by Stern et al. (1998). They found that children with ADHD, even those with adequate visual-spatial and graphomotor abilities, performed significantly poorer than “normative” children. Kibby et al. (2002) reported that the test is sensitive to language comprehension, visual-spatial retrieval and planning/execution. The test’s

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measuring of executive functioning makes it especially pertinent to diagnosing ADHD. Executive function generally refers to a variety of behaviors and abilities related to planning and to the maintenance of attention, in which individuals with ADHD are typically found to be deficient. Dilworth et al. (2004)found that drawing the clock from memory typically requires abilities mediated by the frontal and temporal lobes. Freedman et al. (1994) determined that some of the tasks necessitated by the test include comprehension, memory of instructions, visual memory of an analogue clock face, and executive abilities to plan and carry out the task. The Clock Face Drawing Test has been used for children since 1986 (and longer for adults), but a normative scoring system for children was first presented nationally in 1993. The scoring results from assigning points to a long list of various errors. These include omission, substitution or repetition of numbers, number rotation or reversal, deficits in spatial arrangement of numbers including neglect and poor planning, deficits in motor control (agraphia), incorrect sequencing of numbers, perseveration (numbering beyond 12), incorrect placement of hands to a specified time, and incorrect proportion of hour and minute hands. One of the chief advantages of the test is that it is easy and quick to administer and can make differentiations among controls and those with even mild impairment. In 2000, M. J. Cohen and his team investigated the development of clock face drawing in normal children from 6 to 12 years old (Fig. 1). In their cross-sectional study, they stated that the development

Fig. 1: Clock drawings of children aged 6, 7, 8, 10, and 12. Children were asked to place the hands to represent 3 o’clock. Photo: Cohen et al. (2000) and Child Neuropsychology Taylor & Francis Group.

of clock drawing abilities parallels age-related increases in executive function skills, providing support for empirical observations of multistage frontal lobe development. Their findings were that the ability to tell time by the hour, half hour, and minute increased significantly from 6 to 8 years old. The ability to construct a clock was recognized as requiring different abilities than telling time. Most 8-year-olds no longer exhibited neglect of whole quadrants during construction, and most 10-year-old participants were able to successfully construct a clock. Cohen’s sample consisted of 429 “normal” public school children 6 to 12 years of age. The researchers used a 13-point clock construction scale designed to assess visuospatial, planning/organization, and motor skills and a fivepoint time-telling scale with the aim of measuring clock drawing ability. They also qualitatively evaluated number reversals, spatial neglect, number spacing, and erasures. They explained that the

One consideration in applying these results to studies of abnormal children relates to the “normal” population selected. To select from among a normal population, Cohen et al. (2000) recruited children from two schools in Georgia. Once selected, teachers asked participants to complete the Clock Face Drawing Tests. To restrict the data to normal children, teachers were then instructed to remove drawings by children who were not reading at grade level or who had a history of grade retention, behavior disorder, learning disorder, or stimulant medication usage. As I interpret it, this method of selection (and almost any method) would pre-define a normal population in a way that involved some biases on the part of teachers (either the present teachers making the selection or past ones deciding impairment) – save for the factual criterion of grade level reading skills or stimulant usage. Cohen and his team, themselves, are well aware of the difficulties. They commented that they used the scoring system for adults, which may not be an entirely appropriate guide for grading children. One problem that became evident was that it was difficult to separate neuropathological factors from those that are developmental. As Cohen et

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procedure involved the children in three tasks. For the first, the participants were instructed to draw a clock face, numbers, and a time setting of 3:00. The second and third tasks involved depicting 9:30 and then 10:20 in predrawn clock faces. The examiners observed an improvement in clock construction related to age, and determined that, unlike 6-yearolds, the majority of the 7-year-old age group did not produce number reversals.

al. (2000) claimed, “Specifically, the data revealed that a greater percentage of normal 6- and 7-yearolds demonstrate a pattern of upper left quadrant neglect as opposed to lower left or lower right quadrant neglect. None of the children neglected the right upper quadrant. The progression in quadrant use suggests that neglect in young children is developmental in nature rather than neuropathological… The neglect is believed to result from poor planning skills since the part neglected was the top left quadrant of the clock face [presumably this was the last space that needed to be filled in]”(5). The team declined claiming that quadrant neglect at a particular age of development follows a normal pattern. They recognized the relative lack of information about typical development. Children as young as 3 years of age have exhibited hemi-attention as a developmental stage, confirming that it might be hard to distinguish from a pathological situation. In a subsequent report the researchers again identified what they suggested was a developmental pattern (as opposed to a neuropathological deficit) in quadrant neglect. They and other researchers again noted that these are difficult to distinguish from each other. Many researchers acknowledged that too little is known about typical attentional development. Little, too, may be known about the longitudinal relationship between early neuropsychological functioning and later clock drawing ability. Since longitudinal studies track the same people over time, valuable information might be gained by further research. To claim scientific validity about mental operations and physical skills, clock face drawings

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must be evaluated in terms of standards at specific stages of cognitive development. However, the areas of choosing normal controls and establishing norms of development for both children and adults with regard to ADHD have consistently offered obstacles, and the findings are open to interpretation. For example, pediatrician Lydia Furman pointed out in 2005 that some of the core symptoms of hyperactivity and distractibility could simply be at one end of a normal distribution of school-aged behavior. She further speculated that “overattention” and “hypoactivity” are rarely tested because these symptoms are unlikely to cause disruption and attract the notice of either teachers or parents.

Sensitivity and Specificity With respect to screening for illness, sensitivity is the probability that the test will correctly identify every tested person with the disease; 100% sensitivity means that there are no false negatives. Specificity is the probability that the test will not misidentify a normal tested person as having the disease; 100% specificity means that there are no false positives. Increased sensitivity of any test may come with a cost of decreased specificity, i.e., identifying as abnormal what in fact is normal. The questions that need to be answered are: Does a test show adequate sensitivity to diagnosing ADHD? Can it show specificity in distinguishing ADHD from normality or other deficits? Many publications about it have claimed some value of clock drawings for ADHD diagnosis but stress it be used in conjunction with other tests.

Visual culture theorists might find that the Clock Face Drawing Test raises interesting issues of representation. Like the emerging area of neuroaesthetics, it offers examples of how images might be accorded the status of knowledge. The basis of neuroaesthetics is the belief that we can learn something about the brain from analyzing the varied attentional responses elicited by different artworks, but there are important differences between the Clock Face Drawing Test and artistic drawings and paintings. A painting was designed by an artist to direct the viewer’s gaze whereas the Clock Face Drawing Test was executed according to a received instruction (e.g., “Set the clock hand to 8:15”) and not intended to have expressive content. In a way, the drawing test shifts the typical relationship between science and art. Science is, in the case of the Clock Face Drawing Test, assigned an interpretive function while the drawing of the Clock Face Drawing Test is used as an objective measure of cognitive function. Subjectivity rests with the doctors or neuroscientists involved in interpreting its results. Every effort is made to turn drawing, a typically qualitative process, into one that is quantitative, like data that can be objectively evaluated. One purpose of the Clock Face Drawing Test is to correlate the omission and rearrangement of clock numerals to malfunctioning sites within the brain. As is evident to the reader by now, the test may offer a great deal more information about the richness of cognitive function than one might have

imagined. The correlations and potential causality generated from the Clock Face Test also raise the question of whether it has been over-interpreted. It may be that, at times, both art history and neuroaesthetics over-interpret the information to be derived from images or imaging. However, there is a significant difference: drawing tests might have real-world consequences for patients in distress. As a result, physicians realize that the test cannot really stand alone as a diagnostic measure.

Brain Imaging Studies One might regard brain imaging studies as a way to circumvent some of the interpretive difficulties encountered. However, epistemic problems can also attend studies with functional neuroimaging, positron emission tomography (PET), and single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT). In the case of PET imaging, Jonathan Victor (2005) and Joseph Dumit (2004) have raised practical considerations about the ability to “normalize” data from voxels (volumetric picture elements) to decrease noise-to-signal ratios without affecting “partial-volume averaging.” Some imaging studies have been criticized for including within their control groups, individuals with symptoms overlapping the ADHD group. In addition, according to Duncan E. Astle and Gaia Scerif (2009), studies of executive attention have traditionally focused upon the age at which children achieve adequate performance on particular tasks. They believe that examining the course of changing abilities over developmental time is far more relevant than performance mile-posts.

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The Clock Face Drawing Test as Representation

Although fMRI studies are undertaken to inform our understanding of the neural mechanisms that underpin dysfunction, they instead realized that “…whilst these studies have enabled us to understand in more detail the neural differences which mirror behavioral dysfunction, Astle and Scerif are rarely developmental per se. That is, they rarely compare a group or sub-group over a period of developmental time. Instead, it is typically the case that control and experimental groups are carefully matched on the basis of chronological age, mental age, task ability, or gender…” (6). They also noted that the sample size of imaging studies of executive control in children tend to be smaller than is desirable.

Drawings by Robert Beck By contrast with the Clock Face Drawing Test, some artworks question the reliability of psychological testing. Artist Robert Beck (who later changed his name to Robert Buck) installed forty-four drawings in New York City (CRG Gallery) during 2007 in an installation. He undermined the idea that there are uncontested norms of behavior by appropriating and re-creating art therapy drawings within his own artwork. Each of Beck’s artworks included the re-drawing of a diagnostic response by patients of various therapists. As described in Leonardo Journal, the works by Beck questioned some of the underlying assumptions of psychoanalysis. Beck’s finished drawings involved the viewers in the process of reconstructing some of the historical medical records of psychological functioning and in assessing the judgments rendered by experts. In addition to the re-drafted

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Fig. 2: Robert Beck, Untitled (Carving Duck Decoys by Harry V. Shourds and Anthony Hillman/Telling without Talking: Art as a Window into the World of Multiple Personality by Barry M. Cohen and Carol Thayer Cox), 1996-2007. Acrylic paint, charcoal, conté crayon, graphite, ink, and latent fingerprint powder on paper 12 x 9 inches. Photo: Courtesy of the artist and CRG Gallery, NY.

drawings, each artwork included a typed excerpt of a psychoanalyst’s interpretation, suggesting that the medical evaluation was an important part of Beck’s content (Figs. 2-4). As noted in my Leonardo article in 2014, Beck re-drafted the appropriated work in charcoal, conté crayon, graphite, and ink. He also added latent finger print powder, which is used by

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Fig. 3: Robert Beck’s installation, “How Am I To Sign Myself?” (2007). Interpreting Children’s Drawings by Joseph H. Di Leo, M.D. in “Childhood Revealed: Art Expressing Pain, Discovery and Hope” ed. by Harold S. Koplewicz and Robin F. Goodman, 2000-2007. Acrylic paint, charcoal, colored pencil, conté crayon, graphite, ink, and latent fingerprint powder on paper, 9½ x 8 inches. Photo: Courtesy of the artist and CRG Gallery, NY.

Fig. 4: Robert Beck’s installation,“How Am I To Sign Myself?” (2007). Untitled (Assessing Personality Through Tree Drawings by Karen Bolander), 1999-2007. Acrylic paint, charcoal, conté crayon, graphite, ink, and latent fingerprint powder on paper, 12 x 9 inches. Photo: Courtesy of the artist and CRG Gallery, NY.

forensic investigators to recover finger prints at a crime scene, indicating that the drawings had been used as “evidence” of pathology. Beck’s installation raised questions about societal definitions of normality, involving issues of proof, interpretation, agency, and identity. Some of the works referenced drawings made by patients of psychoanalysts who had adopted methods related to John N. Buck. Buck’s manual, The Tree-House-

Person-Technique (1948), which called for patients to draw a tree, house, and person (to be described later). During his NYC exhibition, Beck covered the gallery floors with a text pattern in white chalk with repeating statements on the floor that included the title of the exhibition (based on a letter of James Joyce). A press release explained that there

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were multiple variations on how the letter was phrased, such as “saw myself signing.” As viewers walked through the exhibition, the words became unreadable. In looking at Beck’s entire installation, the viewer might become aware, as I did, of the alternating arbitrary and associative aspects involved in interpreting drawings, whether viewed with a clinical, or aesthetic eye. Buck’s imaginative juxtapositions unraveled a string of assumptions about images.

Do Art and Children Progress in Quantifiable Ways? Drawings of houses, trees, and persons were part of psychoanalyst John N. Buck’s projective personality test. It was intended to reveal children’s self-perceptions, and ways were developed to evaluate them. Children in a classroom setting were allowed five minutes to complete each drawing. The number of non-essential details were counted, and the relative heights of figures were measured. Four experts evaluated each of the children’s drawings. Items that did not receive total agreement were discarded in the final analyses. After completing house-tree-person drawings, the subject was generally asked a series of test questions such as “Is that a happy tree?” In the second phase, the subject was asked to redraw the drawings, and more questions followed. Both objective-quantitative and subjective-qualitative criteria were used. The scoring of projective tests has been challenged since it is not possible to prove that drawings are direct records of the psyche. (This question has come up before, for example in association with Pollock’s Jungian works when he underwent psy-

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choanalysis.) How does one determine what part of a drawing depends upon the artist’s unconscious and what depends on the artist’s graphic abilities and knowledge of art conventions? Many therapists have commented on the problem of differentiating increased size granted to a figure because of its contextual importance from socially-defined importance. The persistent question is to what extent such drawings can be legitimately used to assess the level of a child’s cognitive development. Violet Kalyan-Masih (1976) developed a pilot study for testing the cognitive development of children, assigning them a task of drawing a house with a tree behind it. The reasoning involved is thoughtful. The idea was that the conflict caused by attempting to visually represent relationships of front-to-back would indicate a typical age sequence in the development of a solution for depicting overlapping forms. A conceptual framework called the Luquet-Piaget sequence itemized five developmental stages involved in drawing (e.g., scribbling, fortuitous realism, failed realism, intellectual realism, visual realism). Kalyan-Masih pointed out that subjects functioning within the early three stages seemed largely unaware of the front/behind conflict, but those older subjects aware of the difficulty dealt with the problem in different ways. Kaylan-Marsh noted that some were dismissive, either refusing to draw, ignoring or changing the instructions, or drawing a distant tree. One compromise solution was to draw a tree so close to the house that it almost appeared partly hidden behind it. During the stage of intellectual realism, the child drew the tree trunk through the house. Finally, during the last stage of visual realism, the tree trunk was hidden and only the top of the tree was

Jean Piaget (1971) supported the belief that housetree drawings could represent cognitive development. Piaget incorporated some of Georges-Henri Luquet’s ideas into his own idea of developmental stages. Although many notable psychologists have stressed the cognitive underpinnings of art, including Rudolf Arnheim (1969) and Jerome Bruner (1985), Piaget’s concepts of stages have been controversial. Howard Gardner (1979) raised the issue whether the media and thought processes used in the arts can be fully commensurate with Piaget’s model of rational cognition. Gardner presented an overview of the relationship between drawing and cognitive development from early childhood through adolescence, concentrating on the role of symbols. The incorporation of Piaget’s paradigm in theories of developmental progress in art history such as that of Suzi Gablik (1977) was criticized by David Pariser (1983) because he believed that Gablik assumed, without sufficient proof, that a parallel exists between childhood cognitive development and cultural evolution. Sharon Perets-Dubrovsky (2010) claimed that having subjects aged 8 to 10 sequentially undergo a human drawing test and House-Tree-Person (HTP) drawing test could distinguish between subjects with ADHD as opposed to those with learning disabilities. His reasoning was that creating the more complicated HTP drawing placed greater attentional and emotional demands on those with ADHD. But the researchers involved

also acknowledged that inability on the part of the subject to complete the assignment satisfactorily might simply reflect a drop-off of interest on the part of the child. The assumption that cognitive and emotional values could be fully separated by their test has been challenged. Those with views stemming from cognitive developmental neuroscience such as Annette Karmiloff-Smith (1990) have interpreted changes in children’s drawings as part of their natural development and not just as a response to external influences. Among others, Gary Groth-Marnat and Lynne Roberts (1998) pointed out that projective drawings that reflect healthy levels of adjustment are typically less considered than those describing pathology. As with the Clock Face Drawing Test, one must re-examine the conceptual and experiential bases of the evaluations of these drawings. Thomas and Jolley (1998) concluded that much of the clinical use of drawing is not well informed by either research into drawing and contemporary cognitive or developmental psychology. Assessment difficulties are inevitably raised. Subjective scoring has been found to result in notable statistical error (Carpenter et al. 2005). Tools have been developed to help achieve the goal of objective scoring for today’s professional art therapist, including public domain image analysis software programs that have been developed to evaluate tests and complement subjective scoring. Nevertheless, the interpretation of drawings is unlikely to obtain an adequate measure of objectivity.

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visible. Drawing was regarded as representing one of five semiotic functions in child development: deferred imitation, symbolic play, drawing, mental image, and verbal evocation (7).

Fig. 5: Janet Biggs, BuSpar (1999). Still from a three-channel video installation. Photo: Biggs, 1999 Courtesy: Janet Biggs.

Fig. 6: Janet Biggs, Ritalin (2000). Still from a four-channel video installation Photo: Biggs, 2000 Courtesy: Janet Biggs.

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At just what point does impaired health start to become pathology? Visualizations of this boundary have been little-explored from the standpoint of art history. Starting in 1999, video artist Janet Biggs addressed the boundary between health and disease in several installations featuring medical states named after such drugs as Ritalin® (methylphenidate), BuSpar® (buspirone), and Risperdal® (risperidone). Her exhibition addressed issues of societal control, and one was led to understand that the term “normal” indicates a relational state. She specifically addressed the attentional system in her video essays, BuSpar and Ritalin. In preparation of BuSpar (named after the anti-anxiety drug), Biggs kept the medical records of a beloved aunt over decades as she became her aunt’s guardian. The aunt was diagnosed at different times by different physicians as having: autism, obsessive-compulsive disorder, ADHD, and apraxia (a disorder of the nervous system characterized by an inability to perform complex, purposeful movements) (Fig. 5). Biggs conducted extensive observations of the effect of different places of rehabilitation as her aunt was moved from one institution to another. This body of work, which includes Ritalin and Apraxia, reflected her ongoing concerns about gender, social codes, aging, values, and behavior in the context of the individual’s relationship to the medical industry and society at large. Biggs’s work developed as an empathetic response to her self-assumed role as her aunt’s protector, responsible for

her personal safety and social interactions as her aunt found it increasingly difficult to function in society. Biggs witnessed profound changes in medical treatment as her aunt was shunted from place to place. Her aunt was initially in an institutionalized setting, and the site of responsibility shifted from the professionals to the caretaker. In discussion with Biggs during 2008 it was apparent that in her videos, equestrian training (dressage) is often juxtaposed with the suffering of individuals, representing the constricting effects of social habituation and training on creating or disrupting physical and psychological balance. The boy in Biggs’ film Ritalin was a friend’s son who, in fact did not have ADHD (Fig. 6). Nevertheless, to characterize ADHD, the artist presented him as acting out in a flurry of wild activity. In Biggs’ interview with Andrea Inselmann, Biggs stated that, “Even though the boy is not actually on Ritalin, his drumming has an intensity and commitment that border on obsessive-compulsive disorder. Through editing and other post-production techniques, like altering sounds, I was able to set up a situation with so much input that individual components could no longer be isolated, thus replicating what it might be like to need Ritalin” (8). Biggs later added that she wished to create uncertainty about whether the boy was actually on the drug. I think this is significant because some artists have a unique ability to suggest how heath can masquerade and be mistakenly identified as illness. Ritalin and BuSpar situated the afflicted individual within a tangible, but minimal social context. Biggs’ videos avoid moralizing; they offer no answers to questions about the regulating of

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Art Projects Reflecting the Boundaries Between Health and Illness

human behavior through drugs. She has dealt obliquely with issues of free will, but for her, video is basically a way to examine systems of power and control, asking at what point our identities and autonomy become threatened.

Conclusion Projection tests are rooted in psychoanalytic theory, and the assumption appears to be that asking a child to draw a person will inevitably yield a picture that directly reflects his or her own selfimage. But the most basic problem is similar to that encountered in the Clock Face Drawing Test; sufficient information may not be known about the course of normal drawing development or to that individual’s own history to assign firm values to the inclusion, omission, or exaggeration of features. It is highly unlikely that there can be any fully reliable interpretation of a drawing. In 1998 Gary Thomas and Richard Jolly concluded that drawings should be used as only one slight indication among many other diagnostic tools and with an understanding of the limitations involved. What might art offer the medical field? The potency of artistic images can elicit a sense of the personal consequences involved as well as the turbulence echoed by society. Experience becomes palpable, and the mechanics of ambiguity and judgment may be revealed. But the medical tests also do not offer certainty. Magritte spoke of “the treachery of images”, and that can also apply to the interpretation of medical imaging. In addition, the Clockface drawings are insufficient for either diagnosis or expression. Analysis of some of the

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clinical drawing tests has demonstrated that a significant overlap in symptoms can issue from different causes (e.g., ADHD and neglect dyslexia). In addition health cannot easily be separated from pathology because of a lack of agreement as to what constitutes developmental norms. The interpretation of drawn images constitutes part of ADHD’s diagnostics. However, in the absence of demonstrable causal evidence of pathology for ADHD, the boundaries between health and illness may not be as rigid as they are often portrayed. Visual analysis of some of the diagnostic imaging and drawings might be helpful to redress the balance of categorical versus dimensional factors in medical classification of ADHD. As DSM critics Scott Danforth and Virginia Navarro (2001) concluded, a great deal rests on this balance. They declare that what is at stake is “…the issue of how a culture views individual difference and how it tolerates non-normative behaviors” (9). To this end, I have enlisted artworks in a range of media and genre to encourage considerations of social context and habit in determinations of the “norms of behavior.” Hopefully, continued public “airing” of attentional issues such as ADHD diagnosis through critical analysis of its associated images and imaging technologies may help raise awareness of some of the reasoning behind categorical judgments.

—— Albright, TD, Jessell, TM, Kandel, ER, Posner, MI 2000, ‘Neural Science: A Century of Progress and the Mysteries that Remain’, Cell, vol. 100, Neuron, vol. 25, pp. 1-55. —— Arnheim, R 1969, Visual Thinking, University of California Press, Berkeley. —— Astle, DE & Scerif, G 2009, ‘Using developmental cognitive neuroscience to study behavioral and attentional control’, Dev Psychol, vol. 51, no. 2, pp. 107-118. —— Bruner, J 1985, Actual Minds, Possible Worlds, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA. —— Buck, JN 1948, ‘The H.T.P. test’, J Clin Psychol, vol. 4, pp. 151159. —— Carpenter, M, Call, J & Tomasello, M 2005, ‘Twelve- and 18-month olds copy actions in terms of goals’, Dev Sci, vol. 8, no. 1, pp. F13-F20. —— Cohen, MJ, Ricci, CA, Kibby, MY & Edmonds, JE 2000, ‘Developmental progression of clock face drawing in children’, Child Neuropsychol, vol. 6, no. 1, pp. 64-76. —— Danforth, S, & Navarro, V 2001, ‘Hyper talk: sampling the social construction of ADHD in everyday language’, Anthropology & Education Quarterly, vol. 32, pp. 167-190. —— Dilworth, JE, Greenberg, MT & Kusché, C 2004, ‘Early neuropsychological correlates of later clock drawing and clock copying abilities among school aged children’, Child Neuropsychol, vol. 10, no. 1, pp. 24-35. —— Farone, SV 2000, ‘Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in adults: implications for theories of diagnosis’, Curr Dir Psychol Sci, vol. 9, no. 1, pp. 33-36. —— Furman, LM 2005, ‘What is attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)?’, J Child Neurol. vol. 20, no. 12, pp. 9941002. —— Freedman, M, Leach, L, Kaplan, E, Winocur, G, Shukman, KI & Delis, DC 1994, Clock Drawing: A Neuropsychological Analysis, Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York. —— Gardner, H 1979, ‘Developmental psychology after Piaget: an approach in terms of symbolization’, Hum Dev, vol. 22, pp. 73-88. —— Groth-Marnat, G & Roberts, L 1998, ‘Human figure drawings and house tree person drawings as indicators of self-esteem: a quantitative approach’, J Clin Psychol, vol. 54, no. 2, pp. 219-22. —— Heiligenstein, E, Conyers, LM, Berns, AR & Smith, MA 1998, ‘Preliminary normative data on DSM-IV attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in college students’, J Am Coll Health, vol. 46, no. 4, pp. 185-188. —— Kalyan-Masih, V 1976, ‘Graphic representation: from intellectual realism to visual realism in draw-a-house-tree task’, Child Dev, vol. 47, no. 4, pp. 1026-1031. —— Kaplan, FF 2000, Art, Science, and Art Therapy: Repainting the Picture, Jessica Kingsley Publishers, London. —— Karmiloff-Smith, A 1990, ‘Constraints on representational change: evidence from children’s drawings’, Cognition, vol. 34, pp. 57-83.

—— Kibby, MY, Cohen, MJ & Hynd, GW 2002, ‘Clock face drawing in children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder’, Arch Clin Neuropsychol, vol. 17, no. 6, pp. 531-546. —— Levy, E.K. 2014, ‘Sleuthing the Mind’, Leonardo Journal, vol. 47, no. 5 (2014), pp. 427-435. —— Machover, KA 1949, Personality Projection in the Drawing of a Human Figure, Charles C. Thomas, Springfield, IL. —— Mendez, MF, Ala, T, & Underwood, KL 1992, ‘Development of scoring criteria for the clock drawing task in Alzheimer’s Disease’, J Am Geriatr Soc, vol. 40, pp. 1095-1099. —— Pariser, D 1983, ‘The pitfalls of progress: a review and discussion of Gablik’s ‘Progress in Art’, Visual Arts Research, vol. 9, no. 1, iss. 17, pp. 41-54. —— Perets-Dubrovsky, S, Kaveh, MT, Deutsh-Castel, S, Cohen, A & Tirosh, E 2010, ‘The human figure drawing as related to attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)’, J Child Neurol, vol. 25, pp. 689-693. —— Piaget, J 1971, Biology and Knowledge, an essay on the relations between organic regulations and cognitive processes, Translated by Beatrix Walsh, University of Chicago Press, Chicago. —— Stern, C, Marcotte, AC, Cahn, DA, Kibby, MY, Wilson, JM, Feibrich, N & Hailer, S 1998, ‘Qualitative analysis of clock drawing in children with attentional disorders’, presented at the 106th annual meeting of the American Psychological Association, San Francisco, CA. —— Thomas, G.V.T & Jolley, R.P. 1998, ‘Drawing conclusions: A re-examination of empirical and conceptual bases for psychological evaluation of children from their drawings’, Brit J Clin Psych, vol. 37, no. 2, pp. 127-139.

Endnotes 1 American Psychiatric Association. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Fifth edition. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association, 2013. at: http://www.adhd-institute.com/assessment-diagnosis/ diagnosis/dsm-5tm/#sthash.ygimyja4.dpuf, as of July, 2014. 2 h t t p : // w w w . c d c . g o v /m m w r / p r e v i e w /m m w r h t m l / mm5944a3.htm as of July, 2014 3 http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/hus11.pdf, page 49 as of July, 2014. 4 Albright, TD, Jessell, TM, Kandel, ER, Posner, MI 2000, ‘Neural Science: A Century of Progress and the Mysteries that Remain’, Neuron, vol. 25, pp. S 17. 5 Cohen et al., 2000, p. 69. 6 Astle, DE & Scerif, G 2008, Abstract, p. 107. 7 Kalyan-Masih, V 1976, p. 1026. 8 Biggs, J & Inselmann, A 2002, ‘Interview’, in gallery catalogue, viewed 20 May 2011, . 9 Danforth, S, & Navarro, V 2001, p. 181.

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References

Gallery A Susanne N. Hillman

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TURBULENCE Susanne N. Hillman

This selection of artists does not concentrate on the causes of turbulence, but rather on the effects of turbulence on communities. What I really wanted to do was focus on the effects of man-made disasters on societies. Energy, such as the gulf oil spill, ongoing Niger Delta oil disaster, or Fukushima, to name just a few, was of particular concern to me. The magnitude and complexity of recent disasters are mind-boggling; the global consequences are dire, such as increased levels of radiation being measured as far away from Japan as the California coast, and spreading. Some, like the BP Gulf spill, were getting more attention than others, such as the situation in the Niger Delta. A further central theme of current turbulence is the new wave of mass political uprising. It, too, is on a global scale: starting with the Arab Spring, which spread from Tunis to Cairo and beyond, to the Occupy Wall Street movement, to other mass demonstrations arising in countries across the continents. This uprising is defined by an increased call for economic equality, social freedom and democratic rights and has, as in the case of Syria, led to brutal conflicts with new records of displacements and refugees. The three artists which I chose for the gallery, Dawn DeDeaux, Ziad Zitoun and George Osodi, come from various parts of the world, yet they have in common their activist engagement and focus on the effects that disasters, as well as political and economic decisions, have on communities. What I particularly like about them is that their works are

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not agitprop, where straightforward ideological positions to complex problems mainly reinforce the support of an already informed public, but succeed in the rare and difficult task of creating complex and lasting artworks out of highly relevant and urgent content. Their aesthetic component is infused with vision not doctrines. As activist art-

Dawn DeDeaux, from the United States, is a well-established New Orleans multimedia public artist who has won several prizes and awards (4). Her work has maneuvered the cutting edge between technology CB Radio Booths (1975) (5), social engagement Soul Shadows (1990), TV Jail, Drive By Shooting: Indside. Outside. (1989) and environmental concerns with exquisite works about the destruction of nature and the paradoxical beauty found within nature’s wrath – a gestalt of life’s cycle with death. In this breadth, she takes on the entire kaleidoscope of the American experience. The 4 works by Dawn DeDeaux included here are Steps Home (2008), Glass Floor (2008), Project Mutants (2005) and Test Tubes: Family Legacy,

(2011). With global warming storm patterns have become more extreme. When Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans in 2005 and broke the federal levee system, a catastrophic flooding caused unimaginable destruction and suffering. In the aftermath, DeDeaux was struck by the beauty of the water surface in sharp contrast to the deadly ramification of the water’s force, and set out to create the broken glass and mixed media pieces, Hurricane Suite in 9 movements (2006-2007) and Glass Floor (2008) – a sharp, broken deadly mass of ground with a shimmering light surface. DeDeaux wanted to make something from the disaster, not just record it, and picked up on the swirls of a hurricane’s shape as well as on the masses of broken window glass caused by the rushing waters. Glass Floor is a stunningly beautiful work, where water is not illustrated with actual water, but rather the water’s reflection, its surface, is depicted with the promise of salvation covering-over the lurking depths. The tradition of the Zero art movement comes to mind, where light reflections were often used to make visible elemental powers. Formally this work is also tied into post-minimalism, where the irregularity and messiness of actual life replace iconic geometric shapes, while the materiality of the piece tie into arte povera and the tradition of Robert Rauschenberg’s use of found objects with the added twist of including actual broken glass found in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and constructing it within the remnants of a destroyed New Orleans structure. DeDeaux was also moved by the innumerable front steps that remained standing in the desolate landscape after the houses had been washed away by the storm (6). As a place where community life

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Gallery A / Susanne N. Hillman

ists they are to be situated within the rising number of post-autonomous artists, where the artists in the current late capitalist environment no longer see their activity as sequestered in the art world or white cube (1). Rather, they want their art to cause, in the widest sense, a change of current conditions or a change within the viewer. In addition to the aesthetic qualities and activist post-autonomous positions, these artworks function beyond that of jolting and elucidating the public to include a visionary dimension of what could be made better. A parallel world might even be suggested, which, as photographic curator Urs Stahel notes, documentary press photography for example can’t do (2). This visionary dimension, according to the philosopher Juliane Rebentisch, allows for a reflective experience of cultural and social horizons beyond immediate understanding or action (3). It is the freedom of art to pose questions beyond the doable in politics and public opinion.

played out in the south and now reminiscent of a tombstone, she reduced the shape to its essential lines and illuminated it, turning it into a solemn marker of loss as well as a lighthouse/beacon for finding the way back home. The Steps Home were shown as far away as Marfa, TX by the curator Dan Cameron. The illuminated steps displaced from New Orleans to the vast desert landscapes of Texas illustrates to me how far the displacement crossed the borders, (children were moved to other states after Katrina) while the juxtaposition of the desert landscape with the flooding recalls the imbalance of too much and too little as a result of turbulence. Steps Home in Texas was also installed in the desert near ancient Indian ruins and in this regard merged into the universal, cross-culturally shared condition of transience. Steps Home, another highly successful artwork, begins as a narrative, i.e. communal life as it once occurred, and continues within the formal tradition of minimalism as a primary material shape. New Orleans on the Gulf of Mexico and Texas are also associated with oil, where the man-made disaster of the BP oil spill occurred in 2010. After the explosion of Deepwater Horizon on April 20th, an estimated 4.9 million barrels of crude oil flowed unabated during a period of over 100 days into the ecosystem of the Gulf, destroying the habitat of wildlife, marine and local fisheries and causing disturbing numbers of mutated fish. DeDeaux’s Project Mutants and Family Legacy (Test Tubes) address her concern for the water quality in the Gulf after the BP oil spill polluted the area. She initiated Project Mutants as an ambitious collaborative art and science project with Tulane/Xavier Center for Bioenvironmental Research (8). As an

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education and civic engagement project a series of illuminated cell-like sculptures functioning as water sensors assessing the water quality were placed in various bodies of water and environments. For Test Tubes: Family Legacy DeDeaux created photo-sculptures portraying 18 members of a family where old and young float in vessels of water to illustrate our dependency on water both for now and for future generations. Test Tubes was part of a body of work titled UNSEEN, which also considers potential invisible threats. While perhaps out of sight, water care should never be out of mind, similarly to the invisible life-threatening properties of radiation. DeDeaux works on a macroscopic and microscopic level, so that the overwhelming events of the Hurricane and the oil spill find a way back to the personal realm where they can reverberate on an emotional level to generate a greater participation in lifestyle change for the safeguarding of the environment.

Gallery A / Susanne N. Hillman

Fig. 1: Project Mutants, Dawn DeDeaux, 2005.

Figs. 2-3: Test Tubes: Family Legacy, Dawn DeDeaux, 2005.

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Fig. 4: Steps Home, Dawn DeDeaux, 2005.

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Gallery A / Susanne N. Hillman

Fig. 5: Glass Floor, Dawn DeDeaux, 2005.

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Ziad Helmi Zitoun

is a young artist from Tunis, Tunisia living in Barcelona, Spain. He mixes activism and social engagement with art, especially border art and migrant aesthetics. His early works consisted of experimental videos, which then expanded towards photography, mixed media, and installations (such as Magrebi Sweet Dream, 2007 (9)). In 2008 he began his collaboration with the artist group “Proyecto Aur” which organizes collective exhibitions. Zitoun studied sociology, and has tried to combine his social science background with his art making. His topics have centered on migrant rights, trans-border movements and refugee history, as they speak about human rights and human conditions of people in movement. From personal experiences in the communities that have surrounded his life, and as a Tunisian immigrant child growing up in Europe, for Zitoun human rights are first and foremost migrant rights. In an interview he stressed these points that most migrants need to be seen as refugees and that since 9/11, migrant rights have been locked by anti-terrorist politics, reducing the fundamental human right of movement. Zitoun’s pictograms consist of clearly outlined messages, while the photographs have a hazy and the figures an ephemeral quality that pick up on Zitoun’s concept of “migrant aesthetics.” We wonder, what does the future look like from the perspective of the migrant. For Zitoun, art is a way of giving a voice in public (exhibition spaces, internet) to the clandestine existence of illegal migrants, their feelings and sensations suffering due to prejudice, discrimination, familial separation, and ghetto life.

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I’m always turning around the idea of border, the wall, the line. Adding textures helps me to explain feelings about these concepts. Using rock textures, iron fences, and wall pictures gives me the chance to transfer the feelings of someone who is in front of a wall. I wish to express feelings of someone in the situation of crossing a border. I try to express the difficulties that you can feel when you see something locked and when you try to overpass this situation. (10) Zitoun began his project Mediterranea, Shared & Divided: Visual project for hope in 2010. It centered around the Mediterranean Sea as a place for dialogue among communities sharing common backgrounds. He created a map of the Sea marking Tunis, Sarajevo, Istanbul, and Cairo, in order to emphasize the history of multiculturalism in the Mediterranean region and encourage a dialogue of visual artworks despite European migration politics. With Europe’s increased militarization of southern borders, the Mediterranean Sea has also become the place where thousands of refugees and migrants lose their lives when attempting the treacherous crossing by boat. The spark that set off the Arab Spring uprising for freedom and social justice across the Arab World in Northern Africa and Western Asia began in Tunisia on December 18, 2010, when a young man set himself on fire to protest police corruption. Throughout 2011 and continuing in 2012, the revolutionary spirit swept away repressive and corrupt régimes in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen, caused some governmental changes in Morocco, Jordan, Kuwait and Oman, massive protests in Algeria and Iraq, and civil war amidst horrendous crimes against

With the large increase of refugees from Syria as well as from Iraq, Afghanistan and Eritrea, and with the permanent refugee camps providing hopelessness and stasis, an increasing number of refugees have been trying to enter Europe. And while refugees have protected legal status since the 1951 Geneva Refugee Convention, the European Union policy has been to invest more into closing off its borders than in helping the resettlement of people fleeing warzones or persecution. The media caught this tragedy in one iconic photograph in 2015 of a three-year-old boy washed ashore on the beach in Turkey, after he drowned with his older brother and mother trying to reach Greece en route to

relatives in Canada (12). There is an uncanny connection between this photograph and a work by Zitoun from the Mediterranea – Shared & Divided series in 2010 (13). It depicts a beach with a man, presumably a father or relative, throwing a young boy high into the air and catching him again with outstretched arms. The young boy is around the same age and wearing the same clothes – red t-shirt and blue pants, as the dead boy on the beach. While Zitoun’s image of yellow sand, turquoise water, white clouds in a blue sky and high flying child exude joy and perhaps hope for a brighter future for the next generation of resettled immigrants, the future of the many tragically dead refugees has been abruptly taken. Some of Zitoun’s photographs are reminiscent of photograms, where an image is made directly on photo-sensitive paper by means of sunlight. This gives Zitoun’s photographs an indexical immediacy, and sunlight reflected on the Mediterranean Sea is also frequently depicted as a glittering, almost blinding, presence wherein the shadowy migrant figures partially dissolve. Depicting figures as shadows is also a pictorial device to underline their shadow existence with illegal migrant status. Other works refer back to the original meaning of photography, where the Greek word photos meaning “light” and graphe meaning “drawing, writing” or “drawing with light.” In this sense Zitoun is stretching and experimenting with the possibilities of the medium itself, while anchoring these formally exquisite works into the urgent global theme of the politics of mobility and migration, transit zones, geography of transterritories, transborder conflicts, refugee camps and displacement.

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Gallery A / Susanne N. Hillman

its population by the government in Syria. These formerly unimaginable changes were cheered by pro-democracy supporters, and the revolutionary spirit led to the Occupy Wall Street movement by September 2011, where tens of thousands gathered at Zuccotti Park in New York to protest the income inequality between the top 1% and the remaining 99% of the population, and the culture of corporate greed which led to large bank and corporate bailouts amidst the economic collapse of 2008. In this revolutionary spirit, Zitoun’s art project began just as these global turbulences emerged, and the dissolution of north African regimes, which had been willing to keep Sub-Saharan Africans out of Europe in exchange for large subsidies, has sharpened the problems surrounding European immigration policies. In the Mediterranean, the olive tree has been a symbol of peace since ancient times. But in Zitoun’s Where Olive Trees Have Grown, the barbed wire in Istanbul is a frightening symbol of how militarization causes insurmountable barriers in the current geography (11).

Figs. 6-9: Ziad Helmi Zitoun.

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Gallery A / Susanne N. Hillman

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George Osodi is an award winning Nigerian artist from the Niger Delta, now living in Lagos, whose photography ranges between photojournalism, artistic documentary photography and activism. He joined the Associated Press from 2001-2008. He has been published widely in local and international news outlets, and more recently his works were included in Documenta 12 and other exhibitions, and entered several collections and museums (14). He is also a member of Panos pictures, a photo agency specializing in global social issues (15). In his series Oil Rich Niger Delta 2003-2007, Osodi documented the effects that oil production has in the Delta region. As the area is densely populated, and was once dependent on fishing and agriculture to sustain its residents, its destruction through oil pollution has been devastating. People have no drinking water, no power, it is not possible to grow anything there or to catch any fish, and health problems are severe. Since these photographs were taken, the situation has gotten worse. Royal Dutch Shell’s operational oil spills doubled, for example, between 2010 and 2011. Shell routinely under-reports the amounts and durations of the spills, and blames sabotage and theft by militants for them, even though their modus operandi practically guarantees turbulence and conflict. They do not maintain their infrastructure (damaged pipes), do not clean up their pollution, and don’t compensate victims properly for damages caused. The tragedy of the situation is that Nigeria is a wealthy country; it is the sixth largest oil exporter in the world, yet none of this wealth trickles down to the poor population, and corruption prevents any other industry besides oil from gaining a strong foothold.

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Osodi works with very wide-angle lenses and gets very close, and he has good personal contact with his subjects and knows the rough areas well, as he grew up in the region. He likes to use color photography to give his images a greater immediacy and accuracy. His portrayal of the blackened oil-soaked ground, the continuous gas flares and smoke-filled skies, as well as the oil pipes cutting through forests, fields and villages, depicts a hot hell on earth, such as we can hardly imagine. Osodi said he always wanted to be an artist and be useful to society. As Osodi pointed out in an interview, his aim is to show this hell to the countries that profit from Nigerian oil, so that they become aware of the price that is paid in the Niger Delta, and start thinking about solutions to these problems (16). Osodi’s work can be placed in the tradition of Dante’s Inferno and Hieronymus Bosch’s Hell; the visionary aspect of these works are not utopian, but rather, profoundly dystopian. It is up to the viewer to fully grasp this misery and partake in its eradication.

Fig. 10: Oil Rich Niger Delta, George Osodi, 2003-2007.

Gallery A / Susanne N. Hillman

Fig. 11: Oil Rich Niger Delta, George Osodi, 2003-2007.

Fig. 12: Oil Rich Niger Delta, George Osodi, 2003-2007.

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Fig. 13: Oil Rich Niger Delta, George Osodi, 2003-2007.

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1 Die Kunst und das gute Leben: Über die Ethik der Ästhetik, Hanno Rauterberg, edition suhrkamp, p. 17. 2 ‘Prinzip Hoffnung mit Fotos’ Kurator Urs Stahel im Interview. Annika Wind, Mannheimer Morgen, 16. 09. 2015, online: (www.morgenweb.de/nachrichten/kultur/regionale-kultur/prinzip-hoffnung-mit-fotos-1.2428572). 3 ‘Das Potenzial des Ästhetischen’, Dominique Laleg im Gespräch mit Juliane Rebentisch, in: all-over. Magazin für Kunst und Ästhetik (10.22.2012), online: (allover-magazin. com/?p=1072). 4 Dawn DeDeaux, online: (www.dawndedeaux.com, arthurrogergallery.com/artists/dawn-dedeaux/). 5 Looking Back: Dawn DeDeaux, by Lauren Scarpello, Pelican Bomb, 3.30.2011, online: (pelicanbomb.com/art-review/2011/looking-back-dawn-dedeaux). 6 Art in Public Places – STePs Home: Sculpture Series, Dawn DeDeaux, online: (http://vimeo.com/10073408). 7 “The world according to New Orleans” at Ballroom Marfa, by Rachel Stevens, online: (www.fluentcollab.org/mbg/ index.php/reviews/review/169/352). 8 Project Mutants: Merging Art, Science, Education & Civic Engagement, by Dawn DeDeaux and Tulane / Xavier Center for Bioenvironmental Research, online: (www.dawndedeaux.com/files/MUTANT.pdf). 9 Ziad Zitoun, Magrebi Sweet Dream, 2007, online: (https:// vimeo.com/52071448). 10 Ziad Helmi Zitoun, Interview, Islamic Arts Magazine, 2010, Issue 4, p. 280-296. http://islamicartsmagazine.com/magazine/4/social_reality_through_artistic_concept/. 11 See also: Ziad Zitoun visual blogspot: (http://ziadhelmizitounvisual.blogspot.de/), Ziad Zitoun, Saatchi Art, online: (http://www.saatchiart.com/ZiadZitoun), Ziad Zitoun, ArtDoxa, online: (https://www.artdoxa.com/simbad38/large?) 12 Aylan Kurdi, photographed by Nilufer Demir, for Dogan News Agency (DHA). (http://www.firstpost.com/world/petrified-when-i-saw-the-body-woman-who-photographed-aylan-kurdi-2421228.html) 13 Ziad Zitoun, Mediterranea, Shared & Divided, 2010, online: (https://www.artdoxa.com/simbad38/large?page=8#45318), or https://www.facebook.com/142409842487898/photos/ a.697393610322849.1073741836.142409842487898/69739 3716989505/?type=1&theater 14 George Osodi, online: (www.georgeosodi.com/, http://georgeosodi.photoshelter.com/). 15 www.panos.co.uk/ 16 George Osodi, Interview, Kunstforum International 187, Sept. 2007, pp.452-457.

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Gallery A / Susanne N. Hillman

Endnotes

DESIGN AND ECOLOGY

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Subsistence farming — the Survival Strategy Angelika Hilbeck and Herbert Hilbeck

In this chapter, we provide an account of our collective personal, first-hand experience as time-witnesses spanning a period of over 80 years, and two generations in agricultural engineering and agricultural ecology. We share common ancestry (father and daughter) and have witnessed two breathtaking paradigm shifts/transformations in agriculture in Europe. We have first-hand experience with all agricultural systems from pre-war to present and across both, communist and capitalist, economic systems. We argue that subsistence agriculture still exists in highly industrialized countries and can have an important but undervalued, invisible role. We focus on Germany for our main case study. Exemplary subsistence farmers explain their motivations and the significance of their farming. Subsistence farming is critical in buffering turbulent times by providing people well-needed calories and a uniform diet when financial means are limited. Today it can serve as an entry point for the transformation of industrial agro-food systems into modern, sustainable systems where local food production takes center stage. These systems hold hotspots for diversity of seeds, flora and fauna and cultivation practices that can serve as source material or inspiration for the transformational processes ahead of us.

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Fig.1: Photo by Ruben Kretzschmar, 2015.

Subsistence peasants are people who grow what they eat, build their own houses, and live without regularly making purchases in the marketplace. (Waters 2007)

Subsistence Agriculture Subsistence agriculture has been commonly described as self-sufficiency farming, in which farmers focus on growing enough food to feed their families (1) (Waters 2007). The typical subsistence

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farm has a range of crops and animals needed by the family to eat during the year, and to produce building materials, textiles and fuel. Planting decisions are made based on the family’s needs, rather than market prices. However, for market-oriented economists, this is a state of existence that has been born out of necessity, is undesirable, and a country’s policies should aim to overcome this (backwards) state of development as quickly as possible. Subsistence farmers either should move on to more lucrative off-farm jobs, or adopt market-oriented principles and turn the farm into a mechanized, if possible, industrial operation. The

We postulate here that counter to such common beliefs, subsistence farming still exists, even in highly industrial countries such as Germany; in fact, it has an important but undervalued role for segments of societies living under precarious conditions to this day, in economic, health and socio-ecological terms. In particular, subsistence agriculture serves as a buffer in turbulent

times by either providing the needed calories, or complementing a uniform, non-diverse food spectrum. As hardly any monetary value is placed on this type of farming, no statistics exist. The hope is that by explaining and describing how subsistence farming helped to buffer turbulent times and reconstruct one of the richest, most highly industrialized countries of the world (Germany). This analysis may serve as encouragement for other countries who need to value their still existing forms of subsistence agriculture. These precious alternative sources of healthy foods, and biodiversity can help in building the basis for modern innovative, sustainable agro-ecological agricultural systems to develop. As explained in Transdiscourse 1 of this series, today we are faced again with the necessity to transform our agriculture and food production system (Hilbeck 2011; Löwenstein 2011). We argue here, that the potentials and values of subsistence farming systems can serve as a source of knowledge, inspiration and new material for contributing to the necessary, collective efforts of bringing the paradigm shift about in agriculture.

Case Study Over the past 100 years, Germany went through several periods of such turbulent times following WWI, WWII and the fall of the wall in 1990. In human terms, following the end of WWII, the scale of transformation, reconstruction and turbulence is almost impossible to imagine (Buruma 2013). Great cities around the world lay in ruins, their populations decimated, displaced and starving. Widespread food shortages soon followed

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primary function of an industrial farming operation is to generate monetary profits by producing raw materials as commodities feeding into industrial processing chains. The real harvested product, thus, is money and the raw materials extracted from soils are a means to that end. The products of these industrial processing chains can be edible foods, but this is actually rarely the case – mostly the end products are feed, fibre, and increasingly, fuel. So from the cash produced by an industrial farming operation, industrially produced foods can be purchased. Hence, in most industrial countries (including the European Union) a subsidiary system was installed that rewarded those farmers who consolidated their farms into such firms to produce the highest quantities possible of primary raw materials (Kirschenmann et al. 2008). Under this paradigm, the existence of subsistence farming is an indicator for the degree of industrialization and ‘development’ of a country. Ideally, in a fully industrialized country no subsistence farming would exist anymore – at least not out of necessity, and at best as a leisure time hobby. Hence in Germany, a highly industrialized country, there should be no subsistence farming, beyond some leisure hobby gardening which does not contribute anything substantial in monetary terms and could not be bought for less money in a store.

(Collingham 2012; Buruma 2013). Food production was disrupted due to the destruction of farmland, livestock, and machinery. In addition, labour shortages developed when the slave labourers who had been forced to work on German farms returned to their homes, while many German men had lost their lives in the war and did not return to their family farms leaving mostly women in charge to rebuild these farms. As a result, the output of German farms was sufficient to provide city residents with only 1,000 calories of nutrition per day (Collingham 2012). At this time, food supplies were also limited across much of Europe as a result of the destruction inflicted during the war, and food rationing was widespread. Rural communities buffered hardship that hit them in these times of high social and monetary insecurity through subsistence farming and local trading of foodstuffs for communal survival.

Past Paradigm Shifts in German Agriculture and Comparisons with Capitalist Industrial Agriculture There have been two past paradigm shifts in agriculture that occurred in Germany over the past 60 years of our collective lifetimes. This case study will illustrate and exhibit existing subsistence agricultural systems in Germany, with a focus on the rural regions in the federal state of Sachsen-Anhalt. After WWII, building on the enormous techno-scientific progress in machine engineering and chemistry (pesticides, fertilizers, etc.), resulting from military research and applications during the war (poisons and explosives), and with the help of

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cheap oil, small holder and family run farms were re-organized into mechanized industrial enterprises in both the communist East and some parts of the capitalist West in Germany. In both political systems the concepts for land use and agriculture were developed on purely economic – communist or capitalist – principles that overruled and equally ignored ecological rules and principles (e.g. Weber 1971, Bergmann 1992). While under the eastern communist system, restructuring of family farms was realized by brute political force (Schöne 2010a,b, Runnwerth 2010); under the western capitalist system, this was realized by brute economic force, thus giving it the disguise of a ‘voluntary’ choice (2) (Die Zeit 1960). Under the communist system, family farmers were simply dispossessed and their farms re-configured into large, state-run collectives or production cooperatives. Under the capitalist system, farmers were forced through politically enabled economic incentives to swallow smaller farms and grow into larger, more ‘efficient’ units. Thus, ‘dispossession’ simply took another form: by pressuring holders of smaller farming units under threat of economic ruin into selling their land and operations to those with more capital and economic power. Between 1949 and 1991 in the west, farms with a size of 10 ha or smaller declined by 75-81% and those smaller than 20 ha by 53% (Bergmann 1992). The threshold of economic viability in 1991 was 40 ha. Only holdings above 40 ha have been increasing in numbers since 1981 in the west (Bergmann 1992). While the industrialization of farming in East Germany was completed within a decade, the dying of farm holdings (‘Bauernsterben’) smaller than 40 ha took several decades in West Germany and still continues today.

Often these farming operations were transformed into corporate entities with collective, yet, profitoriented organisation. Interestingly, they were mostly kept in the hands of old East German cadre (Gerke 2010). However, this way, they could maintain the benefits derived from the economies of scale of industrial systems, and as a collateral effect, it paved the way to corporate investment by following the same business model that became known as the ‘land grabbing’ model in developing countries (Voss 2014; Schumann 2013; Rossbach 2013). During the 1950’s the ruling SED (Socialist Party) launched the slogan “modernization, mechanization, and automation” to emphasize the focus on technological progress that was to be implemented by technologies and industrialization like in the West. Their plans committed East Germany towards accelerated efforts in agricultural collectivization (Schöne 2010a). By 1958, the agricultural sector still consisted primarily of the 750,000 privately owned farms that comprised 70% of all arable land; only 6,000 Agricultural Producer Cooperatives (ACP) (Landwirtschaftliche Produktionsgenossenschaften LPG) had been formed. In 1958-59 the SED subjected private farmers to quota pressures and sent agitation teams to villages in an effort to encourage “voluntary” collectivization. In November and December 1959, resisting farmers were arrested by the state security police (Staatssicherheitdienst SSD). As a consequence of these threats, most remaining owners of mid-sized to large farms (50-100 ha or more) fled to West Germany, allowing collectivization to accelerate. By mid-1960, nearly 85% of all arable land was incorporated in ACPs; state farms

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Based on the personal experience of one of us (HH), whose life-time profession it was to ‘consolidate’ these ‘inefficient’ smallholder farms into large units, the overwhelming majority of smallholder farmers were forced economically to resign, and were coerced into selling their farms. The process was far from what a conservative leading political news outlet ‘Die Zeit’ coined as ‘structural change’ that was “rational under economic aspects and only gratifying under social aspects”(ibid). In hindsight, the defense of the West German agricultural strategy was just as politically motivated as the propaganda from East Germany. We both experienced this first-hand on both sides of the iron curtain. Both political systems shared similar visions of industry-scale, centralized agriculture production systems, involving only a handful of bred-to-yield commodity crops that feed a likewise centralized industrial food processing value chain. In the communist system, this was simply state-controlled instead of corporate-controlled as in the capitalist west. Therefore, it was after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1990 when East German industrial agriculture was transformed into privately owned agricultural systems integrated into the western capitalist system. However, this was primarily an economic and administrative transformation, not necessarily an agronomic one. All small-scale family farming structures had been long destroyed in East Germany, and often their original ‘owners’ were hard to find as they either had been forced to escape to the West long ago, or had passed away (Runnwerth 2010). Thus, the existing industrial scale of the East German farming operations was largely kept intact with little changes in farming practices.

comprised another 6%. By 1969, at completion of collectivization, the socialist sector produced 93% of East Germany’s agricultural products, and consisted of 9 386 ACPs averaging 361 ha in size (Weber 1971, Bergmann 1992) with some ACPs operating on well over 1000 ha of land (Gerke 2010). However, like the capitalist farms in the West (with which the east competed) farms in the communist Eastern system (eventually all Eastern European countries under Soviet influence) were soon faced with the same problems resulting from massive disruption of ecological processes and environmental degradation (Beleites et al. 2010; Kovach 1994). The only difference between the systems was the timing, which was largely due to the degree and speed of industrialization and intensification at particular locations and regions (the East was faster on both accounts), industrialization and the onset of problems. However, the ecological rules of the planet do not discriminate between political, or economic systems. In a similar way to capitalist systems, the communist farming model succeeded in some places, but failed spectacularly in others.

cide treadmills, soil depletion and erosion, water pollution, and loss of functional biodiversity all leading to severe degradation of the environment.

Industrial agriculture under communist and capitalist economic systems seem to end up in the same place. They both relied on the generous and subsidized use of inputs, such as fossil fuel, synthetic pesticides and fertilizers to support the large scale production of a few commodity crops. These crops had been bred primarily, if not exclusively, for increased yields with little consideration for adaptation to local conditions and evolution of resistance against pesticides in pests, weeds and diseases. The resulting problems of this production were strikingly similar: pesti-

Already by the late 60’s, the state planned centralized industrial agriculture system implemented in East Germany failed to generate and provide the necessary diversity and amount of produce to its citizens. Food security became precarious, although officially this fact was never admitted (Miller 1962). Luckily, it did not cause serious food shortages and hunger, but the diversity and quality of foods on offer did certainly not meet the expectations and demand of the East German population. Centralization in the hands of huge cooperatives suffered from inefficient produc-

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Part and parcel of industrial farming is the ‘vertical integration’ of production steps, which, as in other manufacturing operations, are divided into small sub-units that can easily be executed by unskilled labourers on demand who earn only minimum wages. This leads to the situation in which a ‘farmer’ becomes a ‘technician’ on his/her own land working under the contracts of large national or transnational corporations, or as in the East under state rule. Both structures determine exactly how much and with what methods certain standardized, uniform farm products are produced. Time Magazine in 1992 termed such contract farmers as ‘serfs on their own land’. Lyson et al. (2004) stated, ‘All local business transactions will be made with distant supply chains, the benefit accruing not to local rural communities but likely to shareholders who live in far-off places’. We would add that shareholders often lack knowledge about agriculture and its socio-environmental context.

of fruits and vegetables, 8% of potatoes and 6% of meats (Eulenstein 2004). The ensuing massive transformation of East German planned economy – including the incoporation of its industrial agro-food system into the western market-based economy-brought, once again, turbulent times, characterized by loss of employment, income and labour opportunities, and broad economic insecurities. Due to these problems, the rural population was forced to leave. This process was met by varying degrees of willingness and enthusiasm. Meanwhile young people were, and still are, migrating to the industrial centres in search for more and better employment. Village life suffered from shrinking, aging populations and a declining supply system for food, medical care and transportation. Local subsistence farming and gardening became significant again, or remained significant for food security of this population; it continues to be highly under-appreciated to this day.

Real Stories Due to lack of real statistics, we decided to collect voices as evidence. Our family roots lay in one of the least populated, rural areas in former East Germany (Sachsen-Anhalt). Using our personal integrity and the trust that we enjoy in these communities, we discussed the issue of subsistence farming with many of our relatives, family friends and neighbours. We also carried out a survey in separate, personal meetings with some subsistence farmers that involved at least one hour of intensive discussion followed by lengthy visits to their gardens and farms.

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tivity, mismanagement, and lack of flexibility to adjust to changing consumers demands. Individual foodstuffs were often only available in limited supply, so people had to buy what was available in the shops at any given time. In an attempt to diversify and complement the range of foods on offer supplied by the ACPs, the government first encouraged and then requested its citizens to produce vegetables and fruits in their available home gardens. City-dwellers were therefore even allotted garden plots in peripheral urban areas. Based on these allotted areas, quotas were issued for fruits and vegetables that were bought up by governmental buyers for fixed prices that were meant to serve as incentive. Sometimes this fixed price exceeded the shop price of the same produce 3 to 4 times! Similar mechanisms were installed for animal production. Every fourth household in East Germany kept small livestock (rabbits, ducks, geese, chicken, goats, sheep) for sale to the government. Hence, the additional income option was widely used. However, this element of free enterprise was not met by proper marketing structures, as they were set up inside a pre-planned and inflexible system that could handle storable goods but not perishable produce. Hence, the government moved away from central collection points, and allowed the produce to be delivered directly to local stores whose owners were allowed to pay the producer. Ultimately, this measure did improve the food situation in terms of diversity and quantity (Zietze 1989). In the rural areas, this call for subsistence production fell on fertile grounds, as historically subsistence production had proven highly effective in surviving post war depressions. By the fall of the wall (1989), these types of subsistence production still covered 36% of eggs, 27%

Our anecdotal, ad-hoc interviews do not meet formal standards of sociological inquiry, but this was not our intention. Instead, we intended to build on our lifelong collective experience and first hand observations of the farming activities around us, and were particularly interested in original voices. Our more in-depth interviews yielded authentic, meaningful, and honest information worth telling. Everyone highly appreciated our interest. Here we will present the outcomes from four different case studies on subsistence farming. Case 1 is a 3-generation household with roughly 15 ha agricultural land – most of it leased to the local agricultural cooperative created after the fall of the wall. It is located in a small village with less than 100 inhabitants. Subsistence production still occurs on the land immediately surrounding the farmstead (ca. 300 m2). Case 2 is a family who are the owners of a small enterprise in the next small town. They recently leased ca. 1000 m2 of garden land nearby to produce organic food for the family. At that time only 150 m2 were under production, but more land was under preparation for use as a garden (fallow land). Their goal was to become independent regarding the supply of fresh produce. Case 3 is a married couple, still professionally active for extra income, who used to farm ca. 25 ha land, but now also lease it to an agricultural cooperative. Land immediately adjacent to the farmstead is farmed for home consumption (ca. 400 m2). Case 4 is a retired, married couple that used to farm on 40 ha of land, which is now leased to an agricultural cooperative. The land adjacent to the farmstead is now used for subsistence production (2’500 m2, including fruit trees and animal grazing ground).

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In-depth Interview Questionnaire Type of production: a) What food is produced? b) How much food is produced and is production recorded in any way? c) What percentage of home consumption is covered by subsistence production? d) What are the external inputs for production? e) Do they have a “production philosophy”? Motivation for subsistence farming: a) Appreciation by society? (family, friends, neighbours) b) Government support? (expected or desired) Personal judgment: a) Is subsistence farming increasing or decreasing in their area? b) How many people in their area engage in subsistence farming?

Outcomes of interviews I. Type of production We discovered that all farmers produce traditional vegetables and small fruits typically grown in the region. This includes at least 20 different types of vegetables and the primary staple crop potato, 10 types of fruits, 5 types of herbs, and – where animal husbandry is carried out – 4 species of animals (chicken, geese, ducks and pigs). Additionally, some producers also raised specialty produce and animals. These include asparagus for home consumption and sale to the local store, or sold directly to the wider community, and some raised game animals like deer or rabbits. None of the interviewed households kept track of production or even had formal book keeping

All interviewees estimated to cover at least 80% of their own needs in produce and meat. Some reported to meet their needs by 90-100% with no purchases of fresh produce or meat. All reported that 10-20% of their production was given away to relatives or sold. They mostly purchased 80-100% of their vegetable seeds but some do recycle their own seeds and two reported to produce 20-50% of their own potato seed tubers. All used some form of home produced fertilizers – either compost or animal manure. On occasion, mineral fertilizers were bought but would not exceed 20% of all fertilizer use. All interviewees declared that their aim is to use as little pesticides as possible; with one respondent refusing to use synthetic pesticides. However, except for the declared organic producer, all others did not claim to follow any defined or certified production method but to use ‘common sense’. They stated that if pest problems became too big they would use synthetic pesticides in small amounts. II. Motivation for subsistence farming All interviewees declared that one motivation for doing subsistence farming is the quality and taste of food. They insisted that their products are far

superior in taste compared to the foods they get in the local supermarkets; they had little trust in products sold in supermarkets. Tradition and responsibility for the land were stated by most to be another motivating factor for keeping their land under useful production. Leaving good and productive land fallow was considered inappropriate and a sign of irresponsibility. The elderly couple considered subsistence farming as a meaningful and healthy activity for retirees and a way to remain productive members of the larger family and community. It does significantly reduce the family budget and adds to the income. However, most noted that this is not necessarily the prime motivation as one could also pursue other means of income. A prime motivation is that subsistence farming is a ‘good’ way of adding to the household income. All interviewees found the work hard but they enjoyed the occupation. III. Appreciation While the norm in rural populations, subsistence farming is largely unknown beyond the rural communities. None of the interviewees expected urban communities to know or appreciate their farming activities. It is customary in rural communities to give away and exchange food for favours, neighbourly assistance, or as gift for hosts of family gatherings and festivities. For example, asparagus (fresh or preserved) and game meat qualify as generous gifts. Also no government support or subsidies are expected nor explored because subsistence farming is considered to be a private decision of no interest beyond their own families and communities. The modesty of these small scale farmers and their broad

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files. However, all had some grasp of what they produced over the entire year. Regarding animal husbandry, on average 5-10 chickens, 8-10 ducks and 8-10 geese were slaughtered for home consumption per year. If pigs were kept, usually 1 was slaughtered for home consumption per year.

acceptance that urban, better educated communities would view their farming as inferior, is as stunning as it is revealing of our current urbanrural disconnection. IV. Personal judgment While two parties responded that subsistence farming has increased at a low level, one party stated that it is declining, yet another stated that while animal production would decline, plant production would remain stable although at a lower level than during East German times. Although farming is enjoyed and could potentially deliver significant income compared to minimum wage jobs, lack of social security payments and pension funds makes people choose off-farm employment.

Conclusions Interviewees estimated that about 50-60% – at least half – of their community engage in some form of subsistence farming. They stated that everybody who owned some land, would use it in one form or another – linking again to a deep sense of responsibility for the land and enjoyment of farming. In eastern German rural areas, land area around houses is often not in limited supply, hence, there is ample flexibility to increase or decrease or experiment in home food production. While in East German times, outright food shortages and limited diversity was experienced as the downside of state-monopolized industrial farming, it is now under a corporate-monopolized capitalist system that a limited and pseudo-diversity of foodstuff is deplored by rural communi-

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ties. Furthermore, repeated reports about tainted foods, or food fraud in the food industry caused the trust level in the nutritional value of supermarket industrial foods to drop which was re-enforced by their own experience of lack of taste, quality, and affordability in comparison to their own, produced foods. Regardless of the possibilities and opportunities for off-farm employment, the farmers in this small survey, and those in other conversations we have had over many decades, stated that they enjoyed carrying out subsistence agriculture, and tried to maintain it to the degree they could, long beyond and above the threshold of necessity. Most stated that they would only give up subsistence farming if forced to by external necessity, e.g. if the time required for farming would jeopardize their prime source of income and social security. Certainly, for the low-income classes with low levels of education who live in rural communities, farming activities are more rewarding and self-determined than working in mindless, minimum wage, off-farm jobs. From our life-long experience with these communities, we are quite convinced that this attitude holds true for the vast majority of the rural communities that we know. This stands in contrast to the narrative that is typically communicated to the public by mainstream agricultural economists.

New roles for Germany Small-scale subsistence farming in modern, industrialized countries like Germany has no economic or political weight, at least not yet and, thus, is

In short, peasants resist the siren song of the economists’ models, ... and are relatively immune to its enticements. .... Subsistence peasants, while vulnerable to catastrophe, were more independent of the marketplace than we moderns. If markets failed, life on the farm was more uncomfortable, but there was still food to eat, and a place to live. In the modern market though, market failure means that unpaid workers are evicted from their houses or unable to buy food. The growing numbers of jobless and homeless in the streets of many capitals in the developed world of North America and Europe are the cruel proof of the collateral damage when the rural to urban migration has failed. In the developing world, small holders are being pushed from their land to give way for large agro-industrial firms that only rehire a fraction of those as unskilled, minimum wage labourers. All others migrate to the growing urban areas in search of low paid jobs. When economic hardship hits, they are the first to be laid off and in the streets again. The latest examples of this phenomenon can be found in those EU countries that are hardest hit by the financial crisis, like Greece (3), Portugal (4), or China (5). In Portugal, the government set up programs to encourage and assist jobless city-dwellers to re-settle in the rural areas and take up subsistence farming (6).

While in China urban-rural return migration of millions of factory workers was acknowledged to have ‘buffered’ hardship, the concerns are about declining productivity in industrial farming – as the land is now being used for subsistence, which is considered economically inferior than industrial farming (7). As we are today faced with the challenge to transform industrial agriculture into a sustainable system, food production must take centre stage again. Farmers must take on an educational role that bears positively on the health of the consumers and the environment and strengthens the local communities (Lyson 2004). According to Lyson, the competing paradigms in industrial vs. alternative, non-industrial agriculture can be synthesized into six major dimensions: 1) centralization vs. decentralization, 2) dependence vs. independence, 3) competition vs. community, 4) domination of nature vs. harmony with nature, 5) specialization vs. diversity, and 6) exploitation vs. restraint (Lyson 2004). Remaining subsistence farms in industrialized, developed countries also hold inspiration and unconventional knowledge for developing novel, innovative ways of producing diverse foods, maintaining genetic diversity of produced crops, in addition to connecting the local flora and fauna of these regions. From our observations, a potential diversity hotspot of germplasm in traditional varieties and ecosystem services still exists in these low-input, highly diverse systems of production. In many of the gardens in the areas that we come from and know, we observed and were shown, old and often unnamed varieties of fruit trees (e.g.

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never properly measured nor acknowledged. As everywhere else in the western world, subsistence farmers are effectively invisible because they primarily produce outside the global market (Waters 2007). Thus, they frustrate mainstream economists, as Tony Waters posits:

apples, plums, cherries) and other crops. Likewise, due to some recycling of seeds – e.g. tomatoes, beans and cucumbers – the farmers may have developed local varieties that are uniquely adapted to that particular environment and undescribed. All of this goes unrecognized, unappreciated and underexplored in the current mainstream agriculture policies that remain – either by choice or sheer ignorance – largely oblivious of these hidden riches. In almost all developed countries today, surveys among consumers document that a growing number of citizens are concerned with the industrially produced foods on offer in regular supermarkets, and alternative organic food is on the rise. Bringing farming to the cities is becoming a booming field of activity (8). These alternative types of food production include community-assisted agriculture (9), and a multitude of marketing forms of organic farm produce in basically all European countries and North America (10). While a lot of knowledge and proven methodologies for alternative, sustainable forms of agricultural and horticultural production has been generated and continues to progress, these developments are not met by the necessary degree of support from economic and political actors. The necessary transformation towards sustainable agricultural systems will only be successful with a similar concerted effort of science, research & technology in conjunction with adequate economic reward systems and politics, and an important shift in the way people think. This will include newly negotiated re-distribution of roles, capital and power. This process will likely be tough and messy but as the author Löwenstein (2011) stated it in his book The Food Crash, “either

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we will feed ourselves organically in the near future or we will not eat at all anymore.”

Angelika Hilbeck and Herbert Hilbeck Figs. 2-7: Examples of typical subsistence gardens in Lindstedt (Altmarkkreis Gardelegen), Volgfelde (Kreis Stendal) and Messdorf-Biesenthal (Kreis Stendal), Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. Photos by Ruben Kretzschmar, 2015.

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References —— Buruma, I 2013, Year Zero : A History of 1945, The Penguin Press, New YorK, USA. —— Collingham, L 2012, The Taste of War: World War Two and the Battle for Food, Penguin Books, London, UK. —— Der Spiegel 1963, ‘Bauernsterben’, http://www.spiegel.de/ spiegel/print/d-45143746.html —— Die Zeit 1960, ‘Es gibt kein ‘Bauernsterben’ in der Bundesrepulik Deutschland’, http://www.zeit.de/1960/15/ es-gibt-kein-bauernsterben-in-der-bundesrepublik. —— Eulenstein, D 2004, ‘Die Ernährungsweise und –situation in der DDR und die Veränderung nach der Wiedervereinigugn am Beispiel Thüringens’, Magisterarbeit, GRIN Verlag, Norderstedt, Germany. —— European Commission (EC), Standing Committee on Agricultural Research (SCAR), 2011, Foresight Exercise (3rd), ‘Sustainable food consumption and production in a resource-constrained world’, https://ec.europa.eu/ research/ agriculture/scar/pdf/scar_feg3_final_report_01_02_2011.pdf —— Gerke, J 2010, ‘Die Auswirkungen der DDR-Agrarstrukturen auf Landwirtschaft und ländliche Regionen in Ostdeutschland nach 1990’, in Beleites, M, Graefe zu Baringdorf, FW & Grünbaum, R, ‘Klassenkampf gegen die Bauern’, Metropol Verlag, Berlin, pp. 87-107. —— Löwenstein, F 2011, ‘Food Crash. Entweder wir ernähren uns ökologisch oder gar nicht mehr’, Pattloch Verlag. —— Lyson, T 2004, ‘Civic Agriculture: Reconnecting Farm, Food, and Community’, University Press of New England, Medford, USA, pp. 136 —— Miller, D 1962, ‘The Food Situation in East Germany’, Open Society Archives (OSA), http://osaarchivum.org/files/holdings/300/8/3/text/24-5-79.shtml —— Rossbach, H 28. Dezember 2013, ‘Landgrabbing in Deutschland – Der Wettlauf ums Land’, Frankfurther Allgemeine Zeitung, Wirtschaft, http://www.faz.net/aktuell/ wirtschaft/unternehmen/landgrabbing-in-deutschlandder-wettlauf-ums-land-12728635.html —— Runnwerth, E 2010, Entwicklung der bäuerlichen Landwirtschaft in der DDR bis zur Vollkollektivierung im sozialistischen Frühling 1960, Books on Demand, Norderstedt, Germany, pp. 188 —— Schöne, J 2010, ‘Die Kollektivierung der DDR-Landwirtschaft’, in: Beleites, M, Graefe zu Baringdorf, FW & Grünbaum, ‘Klassenkampf gegen die Bauern’, Metropol Verlag, Berlin, pp. 19-31. —— Schöne, J 2010, ‘Frühling auf dem Lande? Die Kollektivierung der DDR Landwirtschaft’, Ch.Links Verlag, Berlin, Germany, pp. 332. —— Schumann, H August 12, 2013, ‘Landgrabbing in Deutschland – Kaufen Spekulanten den Osten auf?’, Der Tagesspiegel, http://www.tagesspiegel.de/politik/landgrabbing-in-deutschland-die-lpg-kader-haben-agrarkapitalisten-den-weg-bereitet/8621948-3.html. —— Waters, T 2007, The Persistence of Subsistence Agricul-

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ture: Life beneath the Level of the Marketplace’ Lexington Books, Lanham, MD, USA. —— Voss, E 2014, ‘Landgrabbing in Deutschland – Investoren eignen sich Ackerland an’, OYA 26, http://www.oya-online. de/article/read/1304-landgrabbing_in_deutschland.html —— Zietze, HJ 1989, ‘Gelenkte Ernährung – die DDR auf dem Weg zur gesellschaftlichen Ernährung’, Lang, P Frankfurt am Main, pp. 369.

Endnotes 1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsistence_agriculture 2 “Im ganzen wird durch diese zahlenmäßige Verschiebung – weniger Zwergbauernbetriebe, mehr mechanisierungsfähige und deshalb rationeller zu bewirtschaftende Vollbauernstellen – ein Stück des Strukturwandels deutlich, der unter wirtschaftlichem Aspekt als vernünftig und unter sozialem Aspekt nur als erfreulich gelten kann.” Die Zeit 8 April 1960 “In total, through these numerical changes – less dwarf farms, more full farming operations amenable to mechanization and thus more efficiently manageable – structural change becomes visible, that is rational under economic aspects and only gratifying under social aspects.“ Die Zeit 8 April 1960 (Translation) 3 “As Greece’s blighted economy plunges further into the abyss, the couple are joining with an exodus of Greeks who are fleeing to the countryside and looking to the nation’s rich rural past as a guide to the future. They acknowledge that it is a peculiar undertaking, with more manual labour than they, as college graduates, ever imagined doing.” New York Times, 8 January 2012 (http://www.nytimes. com/2012/01/09/world/europe/amid-economic-strifegreeks-look-to-farming-past.html? pagewanted=all) 4 “In a country where unemployment is at an all-time high of 14%, the minimum wage is ¤485 and the minimum retirement pension is ¤254, cultivating a vegetable patch has its attractions. Joao Fernandes, 72, said he easily saves up to ¤150 a month on his plot in Quinta da Granja, a green haven in Lisbon. “Instead of buying stuff, I have here what I need,” said Mr Fernandes, a former cook, as he passed on gardening advice to a neighbour grower. For an annual fee of €50-80, plus the cost of seeds, tools and fertilizers, one can rent 150 sq. meters of land, wood-fenced all around. Woodshed and water supply are included. “I plant beans, tomatoes, peas, potatoes and cabbage. It is all for personal consumption, for myself, my wife and my two sons,” he said.” RTE News, 19 April 2012 (http://www.rte.ie/news/2012/0419/tired-of-austerity-many-portuguese-returning-to-the-land.html) 5 “…launched an initiative to map the country’s unused land and terrain that does not have a known owner, with the aim of making it available to be rented to those who want to work it. The government has also approved a land exchange

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scheme by which private owners of unused land will win tax benefits if they make their properties available to be rented by farmers.” RTE News, 19 April 2012 (http://www. rte.ie/news/2012/0419/tired-of-austerity-many-portuguesereturning-to-the-land.html) 6 “… The government is trying to get others to follow in his footsteps. In February it launched an initiative to map the country’s unused land and terrain that does not have a known owner, with the aim of making it available to be rented to those who want to work it. The government has also approved a land exchange scheme by which private owners of unused land will win tax benefits if they make their properties available to be rented by farmers. Around 1.5 million hectares are expected to be made available through the scheme.” RTE News, 19 April 2012 (http://www. rte.ie/news/2012/0419/tired-of-austerity-many-portuguesereturning-to-the-land.html) 7 “In statistical terms, no less than 15 million rural migrants (more than 10 per cent of total migrants) returned to rural villages in 2009. About 80 per cent of them went back to the rural farming sector, where they worked, on average, for 52 per cent of the year. … Based on our findings it is probable that the rural agricultural sector provided the employment buffer for return migration and rural off-farm employment during the global financial crisis. Because of this buffer effect, no open unemployment was observed. This is certainly a good thing for political stability, but also means a reduction in agricultural productivity. In the long run, small-scale farming will inevitably give way to large landholding and higher agricultural productivity. This will naturally lead to the consolidation of farmland, and many small landholders will need to sell their land. For these workers, then, future employment shocks will have to be cushioned by other means.” East Asia Forum, 1 September 2010 (http:// www.eastasiaforum.org/2010/09/01/the-impact-of-theglobal-financial-crisis-on-chinas-migrant-workers/) 8 http://www.brighthub.com/environment/science-environmental/articles/39036.aspx 9 http://www.makinglocalfoodwork.co.uk/about/csa/index. cfm 10 http://www.organic-europe.net/

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Uncertainty, Utopia, and our Contested Future Patrick Moriarty and Damon Honnery

Forecasting the long-term future has never been easy, but in the coming decades it will get much harder. Although science and technology have greatly expanded the possibilities open to us, Earth is now approaching a number of resource and environmental limits. Technological fixes will thus become increasingly ineffective (because progress in solving one problem will often make others worse). Also trying to make sense of the long-term future is becoming more difficult. Not only might the palette of technical options for the future become smaller than we hope for, but as the politics of climate change has already shown, achieving consensus on a preferred future in one country, let alone the world as a whole, will become more complicated. The main change that we see occurring in the coming decades will be the end of economic growth, both global and national. This could result from a serious global financial meltdown, or from rising constraints on resource use and emissions. Alternatively, this could happen because we plan for it, as promoted by the proponents of degrowth. A global economic contraction would most probably entail radical changes to our economic system, perhaps with an end to the present reliance on markets.

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The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be. (Douglas Adams) Everyone knows that you can’t know the future. As is often stated, there are no future facts, and similarly, there are no choices still open in the past. But a few seconds thought shows that a future that was completely open to us, would be a nightmare world. For a start, we rely heavily on the predictability of the physical world to provide a framework for our future plans. The laws of nature appear to be constant, although one physicist, Lee Smolin (2014) has suggested that even they change slowly over billions of years. We all assume the sun will rise tomorrow – you can’t get good odds on bets that it won’t. Scientists explain this regularity as a result of two factors: First, the power output of the sun is stable, and won’t suddenly switch off. Although it is presently 30% higher than it was at the formation of the solar system, the change over the past 200 millennia of our species has been infinitesimal. This constancy is to be expected of a main sequence star in its mid-life period, such as our sun. (It is also interesting to note that only about one part in two billion of the solar output is intercepted by our planet – the rest of the sun’s prodigious output radiates into the vastness of space). Second, the angular momentum of planet Earth is conserved: the Earth will continue to rotate at nearly constant speed on its axis, barring a direct impact by a very large asteroid. Such an asteroid

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would need to have a significant fraction of the Earth’s mass, and no such object has been sighted by astronomers on a collision course with Earth. But the laws of the biophysical sciences are not the only near certainties we rely on. Societies also have a vast number of human-made laws to regulate behaviour. Thus in Australia, all cars are expected to drive on the left-hand side of the road – and do. Worldwide, a red traffic light requires motorists to stop. In addition, we usually abide by complex arrays of social practices and etiquette that are not subject to formal laws. We greet people when we meet them, we queue for service, we thank people for their help. Such legally or socially imposed regularities make prediction of human behaviour easier. Energy utilities can estimate fairly accurately what energy consumption will be a week from now, traffic authorities can similarly estimate traffic levels a week hence. They can do this by relying on habitual behaviour; for example, traffic levels are highest when the economically active section of the population are on their way to work, lowest in the early hours of the morning when most people are asleep. But, of course, social change does occur, partly as a result of advances in science and technology. Our views on sex, religion, and the status of women are very different from what they were a century ago – and our laws have changed accordingly. Another more-or-less fixed star to guide us on our journey into the future is the built environment we live in. Like our laws and social habits, this is – literally – another human construction. Well-constructed buildings and infrastructure for energy, water or transport provision can last a very long

Given our undoubted increased understanding of the laws of nature, together with the regularities of human behaviour (and perhaps even some advance in the social sciences) and the relative constancy of our built infrastructure, shouldn’t forecasting the long-term future be getting easier? We argue here that in the ‘full’ world we now inhabit (with 7.3 billion people in 2015), in contrast to the (relatively) ‘empty’ world of a century or so ago (1.7 billion in 1900), the Earth is approaching a number of resource and environmental limits (Steffen et al. 2015). It follows that technological fixes will become increasingly ineffective (because progress in solving one problem will often make others worse). A related point is that trying to make sense of the long-term future is becoming more difficult (Moriarty and Honnery 2015). Before we develop this argument, we will first briefly examine the approaches to the future that are popular today.

Foretelling the Future Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future. (Niels Bohr) Human societies have known for millennia about at least some of the cyclic patterns of the natural world. Night follows day, tides rise and fall, seasons follow each other in a regular pattern. These observed regularities were the beginning of science. However, different civilisations, and different eras, have held very diverse notions about the future, both about our ability to forecast it and to direct it. Some traditions, such as the ancient Hindu culture, perhaps influenced by astronomical cycles, saw history as cyclical, with alternating good and bad eras. Another important shaper of people’s views of the future were prophecies. Wikipedia (2014) gives scores of examples of failed prophecies, mainly from the Western tradition. Despite some prediction successes, many longterm forecasts from the 20th century have proved wildly inaccurate. Where is the energy from nuclear fusion, the undersea cities and so on, promised us by the year 2000? Who foresaw the end of the Soviet Union? Even short-term economic forecasts made before the Global Financial Crisis in 2008 proved greatly in error for the years following this crisis (Energy Information Administration (EIA) 2013). And the world did not end with the ‘Mayan apocalypse’ in late 2012, as others forecast. Given this history of failure, it is reasonable to ask why we persist. The short answer is simply that we really have no alternative. Consider the building of a major infrastructure project, such as a large

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time. Some of these structures are still in use after thousands of years, for example the Grand Canal linking Beijing and Hangzhou, parts of which were in operation 25 centuries ago, or for a less practical use, the even older pyramids of Giza. Some cities are also thousands of years old, but even in newer cities, a map of any large city from several decades ago is still recognisably the same city. Residences and commercial buildings have average lives of half a century or more, so turnover is usually slow. Infrastructure is expensive to build, and especially compared with modern information technology, becomes obsolescent only very slowly, so there is little reason for rapid change.

hydro dam, a major new international airport, or a private toll road. From initial planning of the project, to the start of operation, could take a decade or more. The project may have an expected life of half a century or even more. Justification of the project will usually be based on comparison of the construction and operation costs with the expected stream of revenues and other benefits from its lifetime operation, so assessing project feasibility therefore requires estimates of revenues for up to a half century into the future. We will argue below that because we live on a planet with finite resources and pollution absorption capacity, the ability for technological innovation to continue satisfying genuine human needs will be progressively constrained in the future. Forecasting has two important components, as can be illustrated by asking what Earth’s climate will be in the year 2100. The first component is science-based – getting an accurate picture of the climate and other effects of a given increase in CO2 and other greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere. This is difficult enough, given the interactions between the atmosphere, the oceans, the biosphere, and so on. But the second component is even more difficult: How will humans respond to the risk of radical climate change, how will they alter their practices – in particular, their use of fossil fuels? Further, how will events not directly related to climate change – pandemics, social upheavals, economic crises etc. – affect our emissions?

of road traffic trends into the future will factor in growth in population, income, car ownership, and so on. Extrapolation can also accommodate cyclical fluctuations, such as the seasonal variations in ice cream or sunscreen sales. This approach is the basis for a variety of forecasts, such as for transport, population, the economy, energy consumption, and company sales. Extrapolation should obviously be more successful for short-term forecasts, but in some cases it has been fairly accurate for long-term forecasts as well. Some national and global forecasts made up to half a century ago for the year 2000 have turned out to be reasonably accurate, because the critical underlying socio-economic conditions did not change much. The approach used – which we might term ‘modified business as usual’ – assumed, implicitly or explicitly, that further growth in population and Gross Domestic Product (GDP) would occur, that neither resource problems nor environmental pollution would pose serious constraints, and that (for Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries at least) no political upheavals would occur, and that economies would remain predominantly market-based. These assumptions were largely justified over the period. We would argue that although global resource depletion and pollution absorption limits are already serious, payment of ecological debts can be (and have been) postponed, and resources consumed with no regard to future generations. But this overshoot cannot continue for much longer.

A very popular method of forecasting is to extrapolate from the past. Extrapolation is a prediction method that assumes that past trends will continue over the forecast period. The extrapolation

In recent decades, scenarios have become a very popular way of apprehending the future. A scenario can be simply defined as a plausible, internally consistent narrative about a possible future.

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Even though most forecasts today are unlikely to give a single value for a numerical future prediction, the range considered by the scenarios often yields useful insights into the hopes of the forecasters (or, more importantly, their sponsors). It is widely accepted that the global human family needs to rein its numbers, and official forecasts (e.g. UN 2014) reflect this desire, with a peak value

forecast later in the century. In recent official energy projections, declining future energy use is foreseen as likely in a number of OECD countries, and indeed is already occurring in countries like the UK and Japan (BP 2015). Such a decline is ‘acceptable’ because their authors consider that the energy intensity (energy needed divided by GDP) of all economies will decrease in the coming decades (e.g. Van Vuuren et al. 2011). Economies can still grow, even though energy use is declining; economic progress is preserved. What no official scenarios show, even their most pessimistic ones, is a decline in GDP, either nationally or globally. The EIA (2013) forecasts out to 2040 are typical: the Low Growth scenario for the world overall merely shows a somewhat lower average annual rate of growth (3.1%) than the Reference scenario (4.0%). Very low global economic growth rates, let alone negative ones, are unthinkable. Only the Club of Rome’s best-selling 1972 report The Limits to Growth, foresaw collapse of the global economy as a serious possibility, either from resource depletion or limits to pollution absorption (including greenhouse gases) (Randers 2012). More recently, the ‘degrowth’ movement in Europe, particularly in France and Spain, has called for a planned reduction in economic output as an alternative to an unplanned collapse, which they see as possible – or even inevitable. Even a planned reduction would inevitably face many difficulties, but degrowth advocates also see it as opening up new possibilities.

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Often, in numerical projections of the future, only three scenarios are considered: a medium scenario together with a high and low one. For example, the UN (2014) gave high, medium, and low variants of global 2050 population as 8.342, 9.551, and 10.868 billions respectively. The median scenario is often equivalent to the ‘Base Case’ or ‘Reference Scenario’, and so considered to be the most likely future outcome. In some cases, though, a large number of scenarios may be considered, corresponding to different assumptions about socio-political futures. From a cynical viewpoint, one enormous advantage of having a broad range of future numerical values, for energy use, for example, is that forecasters are far less likely to be embarrassed when the prediction year comes to pass. Like extrapolation, numerical scenarios rely heavily on relevant numerical data, both present and past. It follows that these numerical approaches were not possible in the past when national, let alone global, statistics were unavailable. Nevertheless, Seligman and colleagues (2013) have argued that humans have always used prospection, the representation of possible futures. They have always drawn on past experience to evaluate possibilities for the future – even those that have never occurred. Scenarios are not a new idea.

Our Contested Future The best way to predict your future is to create it. (Abraham Lincoln) Those who study the future often find it useful to distinguish between possible, probable, and preferred futures. Clearly, probable and preferred futures must be drawn from the list of possible futures. As already noted, advances in science and technology are presumed to expand the future options that are possible. We might imagine a fan of options, so that the further we look into the future, the more these options will broaden, because of cumulative scientific/technical advances. Paradoxically, scientific progress in the past was often achieved by formulating laws telling us what we can’t do. We can’t travel faster than the speed of light, we can’t get more energy out of a device than we put in, we can’t build a 100% efficient heat engine, we can’t shield against gravity, and so on. But such apparent constraints can lead to science progress by helping researchers avoid unproductive lines of research – like perpetual motion machines as a source of energy. Similarly, working out what is most unlikely to be possible in the future can direct us into more productive directions. Determining probable futures is necessary when we can’t influence the outcome (or shouldn’t, in the case of sporting events!). As discussed earlier, for short-term forecasts, extrapolation of the past into the near future can often be successfully used, since structural change in the underlying variables is unlikely. But very often we cannot

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just let a probable future play out. For instance, with AIDS, early projections showed rapid worldwide growth in the cumulative number infected. But because such growth was (mostly) perceived as undesirable, policy measures were instituted which helped to reduce infection rates. The idea behind these policies to prevent undesirable outcomes (or encourage desirable ones) has been formalised in the term backcasting. With backcasting, we actively plan for the future we want, whether it is lower energy use or greenhouse gas emissions, more use of public transport, or the global elimination of smallpox. But who exactly are ‘we’? Nowhere is the dilemma clearer than with global warming. Although in OECD countries, the majority of the population – along with nearly all climate scientists – think global climate change is a serious problem, influential groups in the business community actively oppose meaningful action. Until mid-2014, Australia had a modest carbon-tax in place, as a first step toward reducing CO2 emissions. Such a tax, supported by the former government, was to be progressively raised over time. The new government, fulfilling an election campaign promise, has now rescinded this tax. Roughly half the nation voted for parties that supported the carbon tax, the other half didn’t. So instead of planning that led to a more predictable future, it has thrown this future into confusion. In contrast, where general consensus reigns, as with the withdrawal of leaded petrol or vehicle pollution reductions, a published timetable can usually improve future predictability. ‘We’ don’t have to agree on everything: cultural differences will still remain, and such diversity is welcome. But we cannot afford to disagree

Increasingly, even consensus on a desirable course of action, by a nation or even the whole world, may not help us achieve our aim. The reason is that it may not be feasible: it may be a desirable future but not a possible one. We would argue that such is the case for various tech fix scenarios for climate change (see next section). A somewhat different problem is, we may be far from certain in some cases that the workable policies that we all agree on, will in fact produce the desired outcome. There is still much controversy over the precise value for the climate sensitivity – the average temperature in the lower atmosphere from a doubling of atmospheric CO2. This is partly because less than half the CO2 released into the atmosphere remains there; the rest is absorbed by soils or plants, especially forests, or in the oceans. The fraction remaining in the atmosphere is changing in ways that are hard to predict. Furthermore, a number of feedbacks operate in the climate system. Many of these are positive feedbacks, amplifying the climate effects from rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations. In the Arctic, rising temperatures could lead to unfreezing of permafrost soils, releasing the CO2 and methane – another greenhouse gas and the main constituent of natural gas – trapped in them. Thus the climate change effects of CO2 release from fossil fuels burning are magnified: rising fossil fuel CO2 release leads to rising Arctic temperatures, which release CO2 and methane from tundra soils, which lead to further global and Arctic temperature rises…and so on in an upward spiral.

Technology’s False Promise The sleep of reason produces monsters. (Goya) We can best illustrate the dangers of over-reliance on tech fixes by examining various proposals for successfully mitigating climate change. As an example, van Vuuren et al. (2011) assumed that an ambitious global policy initiative involving a combination of renewable energy, nuclear energy and energy efficiency, together with carbon capture and sequestration, could restrict global temperature rises above pre-industrial times to 2°C. This limit is widely regarded as enabling Earth to avoid the most serious consequences of anthropogenic climate change. These proposals should have broad appeal for all energy interest groups, insofar as it foresaw fossil fuel, nuclear and renewable energy sources all experiencing growth (even if only low growth for fossil fuels). The authors also assumed that economic growth would be greater than in scenarios that countenanced temperature rises well beyond 2°C (van Vuuren et al. 2011). Here we use this research to illustrate the point that in a world nearing multiple limits, you can’t just do one thing – a tech fix to one problem often pushes us nearer other limits. Nearly everyone is – in principle at least – in favour of both renewable energy (RE) and increased energy efficiency, if not nuclear energy, the other energy alternative to carbon-based fossil fuels. Van Vuuren and colleagues assumed an especially important role for biomass energy. Even though modern biomass energy (ethanol and biodiesel for transport, biomass for electricity generation) is only about

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on globally vital issues such as climate change or resource depletion.

one percent of global energy consumption, it has already exerted upward pressure on global food prices, because biomass liquid fuels are presently all made from foodstuffs. Further, the EU push for increased RE in the form of biodiesel for transport is leading to Indonesian forests being cut down for palm oil plantations. Indonesia was recently clearing more forest area annually than Brazil. The EU is now worrying that diesel fuels for transport, once promoted for vehicle efficiency, produce emissions that have serious health implications. Hydroelectricity, the leading source of renewable electricity today, has its own problems. Not only is expansion limited because of lack of suitable sites, but most of the remaining potential is in tropical countries. Flooding of tropical forests under hydro reservoirs results in release of both methane and CO2 from decaying vegetation. In some cases, the greenhouse gas emissions in the early years can rival those of gas-fired electric power plants of similar output (Moriarty and Honnery 2011). The theoretical potential for solar energy is very high, given the vast amounts of insolation the Earth receives daily. However, in 2014 solar energy only accounted for 0.8% of all global electricity, and hence a far smaller share of total energy use (BP 2015). It will take many decades for solar to be a major energy source. As the output of solar and other renewable energy sources rises to replace fossil fuels, many unwanted effects, such as use of scarce materials, and toxic wastes will become more apparent (Moriarty and Honnery 2012). Indeed, Van den Bergh et al (2015) talk about environmental rebound when discussing the unwanted consequences of very high levels of solar energy.

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Even though nuclear power output globally has declined since 2006 (BP 2015), the EIA scenarios assumed that output will rise in the future. Almost 80% of nuclear power output is presently from reactors in the OECD, but nuclear power faces strong opposition in many of these countries. For nuclear to play a major role, output will have to grow rapidly in countries outside the OECD, raising fears of both weapons proliferation, and increased risk of nuclear accidents. Sooner or later the problem of permanent waste disposal will have to be addressed – at present there are no such permanent disposal sites anywhere, and high-level radioactive wastes continue to build up. Decommissioning a wind turbine or a solar energy plant is trivial compared with a reactor: decommissioning the Sellafield plant in the UK will cost £80 billion, and could take decades (Pearce 2015). The theoretical potential for energy efficiency improvements is large, and further can often be achieved at low or even negative cost. But we cannot rely on efficiency gains to deliver absolute cuts in either global energy use or CO2 emissions, for several reasons. First, efficiency gains are subject to the energy rebound effect. If the energy efficiency of a device (e.g. cars, lighting) improves, it becomes cheaper to operate, so either its overall use will rise, or the money saved from reduced operation costs will be spent on other goods or services, with their own energy costs. Second, other efficiency measures or even quality of life considerations can conflict with energy efficiency. Faster (i.e. more time-use efficient) transport modes are usually less energy efficient than slower modes. Intensive agriculture has a high output per hectare (and is therefore more land-use-efficient,

Improvements in device efficiency (power stations, vehicles etc.) may in future be negated by increased energy input costs for a given energy output. As an example, a liter of petrol produced from Canadian tar sands needs much higher energy inputs than a liter produced from conventional oil. Improving car efficiency will reduce fuel use and CO2 emissions per km of travel, but this will be partly, or wholly, offset as global depletion of conventional oil forces the world to use more unconventional oil, with their higher emissions per liter of petrol in the fuel tank. Fourth, efficiency often gets in the way of economic growth and profits. Car travel is better for economic growth than public transport (or walking) but less energy efficient. Finally, the tragic shooting down of the Malaysia Airlines MH17 flight over the Ukraine in July 2014 shows that saving energy can even conflict with human safety. Another technological fix promoted for stopping global warming is carbon capture and sequestration (CCS), which involves capturing CO2 from power station smokestacks, compressing it, then burying it in underground reservoirs. The first stage is capture of CO2 emissions from concentrated sources of emissions such as large coal-fired power plants. CO2 concentrations in the exhaust stacks of power stations are several

hundred times larger than those in ambient air, making its collection much easier and cheaper in both energy and money terms. The collected CO2 is then to be either compressed or liquefied and sent by pipeline to the sequestration site for permanent burial. Possible sites for disposal include disused oil and gas fields and salt mines, deep saline aquifers (including sub-sea ones) and even in the ocean depths themselves (Moriarty and Honnery 2011). The proposal is not without its problems. As is also the case for geoengineering, it only addresses the climate change problem, not the fossil fuel depletion problem. Probably only about 40% of CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion could be feasibly captured – it would be very difficult to capture the CO2 from the exhaust gases of road vehicles (let alone aircraft), for example. Further, we need to consider CO2 emissions from land use changes (e.g. deforestation) and emissions of other greenhouse gases. Thus perhaps only the equivalent of a quarter of all greenhouse gases could be potentially captured – emissions to the atmosphere would still rise in a business-as-usual world. Further, there are still high energy costs involved in capturing CO2 at power plants. A variant of CCS would capture CO2 directly from the atmosphere. While in principle CO2 levels could be drawn down to any level considered desirable, the energy costs of capturing atmospheric CO2, at an atmospheric concentration of only 0.04%, would be enormous. There are also doubts about both the technical feasibility and public acceptance of underground storage (Moriarty and Honnery 2011b). Storage is mainly planned for sedimentary basins in the US,

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which is important since agricultural land carries an actual or imputed rent). This high-yield agriculture comes at the expense of high-energy inputs: fertilizer, irrigation, and agricultural machinery. Noise abatement measures near airports can require aircraft to ascend more rapidly than fuel efficiency would dictate.

Fig. 1: Colour schlieren image of a turbulent under-expanding supersonic jet in which the complex shock structure can be seen. Image supplied by Damon Honnery, Daniel Edgington-Mitchell and Jens Kanje: Laboratory for Turbulence Research in Aerospace and Combustion.

quester this carbon in soils and biomass. Not only are its costs regarded as much cheaper than the mechanical air capture and sequestration discussed above, but it is a more natural solution, and helps restore the status quo ante. But this historical loss of forests not only led to vast CO2 emissions, it also increased Earth’s albedo – the fraction of the incoming solar radiation which is reflected directly back to space. For Earth today it is about 30%. Reforestation would on the one hand dampen global warming by drawing down CO2 from the atmosphere, but on the other promote global warming by decreasing the albedo in high latitude regions (Keller et al. 2013). Reforestation or afforestation may still be good ideas, but we cannot expect these policies to help much in arresting climate change.

but the thousands of boreholes drilled annually in these basins for shale gas could compromise their future use for CO2 storage (Moriarty and Honnery 2014a). Further, deep injection of ‘fracking’ waste water appears to cause numerous small earthquakes (Hand 2014), which together with those caused by CO2 pressurized injection itself, could reduce capstone integrity, and so allow escape of CO2. The world in 2013 emitted 35.1 billion metric tons of CO2 from fossil fuel combustion alone (BP 2015), yet only about 10 million metric tons (0.03%) were sequestered in various pilot schemes. Given the long lead times for implementation, and its high costs, CCS will probably never be more than a marginal mitigation technology.

An even more ambitious mitigation proposal calls for geoengineering – the manipulation of the physical environment on a very large or even global scale to achieve some defined aim, in this case, global (or regional) temperature reductions. The idea is gaining popularity, and even cautious official backing from groups such as the Royal Society in the UK, as a solution to anthropogenic global climate change. Although the fourth report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2007 barely made mention of geoengineering, the fifth report in 2013 discussed it at length – without however, assuming its deployment in its various scenarios (Stocker et al. 2013).

Over the past two centuries, a huge amount of carbon has been emitted to the atmosphere from forest trees and their soils, as forests were cleared for agriculture. Reforestation promises to re-se-

Proposals for geoengineering go back at least four decades, but interest accelerated after the publication of an influential article by Paul Crutzen, a Nobel Laureate in atmospheric chemistry (Crutzen

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To understand the most popular geoengineering approach, we need to look at the effects of major volcanic eruptions. The 1991 Pinatubo volcanic eruption in the Philippines ejected vast quantities of sulphate aerosols (about 10 million metric tons) into the upper atmosphere. In the following year, global temperature reductions of about 0.5 ºC were found. The finely divided aerosol particles had acted to block out some of the incoming sunlight, thus lowering daytime temperatures. Crutzen’s proposal was to produce a more permanent reduction in global temperatures by continuously placing aerosols into the upper atmosphere, perhaps using large naval guns on ships in the tropical oceans, or by releasing sulphate aerosols from commercial or military aircraft. Any level of global warming could in principle be rapidly negated by varying the aerosol load placed in the atmosphere.

The claimed advantages are several: 1. The monetary costs of aerosol placement were estimated to be small compared with more conventional methods of carbon mitigation (Moriarty and Honnery 2014a) 2. Temperature reductions would occur within a year of aerosol placement 3. Not only could aerosol placement be swiftly implemented, but the project could be ended equally swiftly if undesirable side-effects occurred, because without continuous replenishment of aerosols, the aerosol particles would soon settle out of the atmosphere.

But the already known drawbacks of the approach are serious. Our planet faces two CO2 problems, not one. Nearly half of the emitted CO2 does not remain in the atmosphere, but enters the ocean surface waters, where it increases the acidity of the world ocean. Unlike global warming, there is no controversy about this, there are no acidification denialists. As acidity progressively rises with CO2 emissions, marine organisms such as coral, foraminifera and some plankton will experience progressive difficulty in forming calcareous shells, with catastrophic, consequences for ocean ecosystems (Stocker et al 2013). Another difficulty: it turns out that it is not possible to offset both the temperature and the hydrological consequences of global warming. If we wish to offset temperature increases, global precipitation will most probably fall, which could prove disastrous for a water-short world. Then there are the foreseeable political problems. Geoengineering will inevitably produce winners

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2006). While recognizing the dangers, he reluctantly supported the geoengineering option because more conventional methods for climate mitigation (such as use of alternatives to fossil fuels, and energy efficiency measures) together had almost no effect on stemming the CO2 build-up in the Earth’s atmosphere. For instance, while it might be thought from the publicity they receive that alternative energy sources are rapidly taking over from fossil fuels, the reality is that fossil fuels’ share of the global electricity market was appreciably higher in 2013 than it was in 1995 (BP 2015). Rather than de-carbonizing, we have since the mid-1990s witnessed a modest re-carbonization of global commercial energy supply. We might talk renewables, but we use fossil fuels.

and losers among the world’s nations – with the nation(s) initiating geoengineering presumably not wishing to be among the net losers – so it is difficult to see international agreement for its implementation on a global scale. The history of weather modification for military purposes (as happened in the Vietnam war) will inevitably fuel further suspicion concerning the motives of the geoengineering nations. We must also consider unanticipated effects – we simply do not understand the climate system in enough detail to determine exactly what will happen. It might be thought this doesn’t matter, given that aerosol placement can be easily reversed. Still, imagine that we have been implementing geoengineering for some decades, but serious side-effects emerge which now require us to discontinue aerosol placement. What will happen is that with the artificial suppression of temperature rise no longer in place, temperatures will rise rapidly to the levels that would have occurred without geoengineering. The unprecedented rate of temperature increase could prove disastrous to many ecosystems, which would not have enough time to adapt to the rapidly changing conditions. Overall, reliance on technology to solve the climate change problem is unlikely to help much.

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Discussion: The Need for Social Change Facilis descensus Averni (easy is the descent to Hell). (Virgil) So how do we get a handle on our global future? What can we know about the year 2100? As we have emphasised, attempting to follow a modified ‘business as usual’ policy, where we place our hopes on technical progress to solve our mounting environmental and resource problems, is a sure road for future disaster, an easy descent to hell. In the past, in an ‘empty world’, this approach often worked; in future it will simply multiply our problems. We have to not only recognise the environmental, and resource limits of our finite planet, but also to remove the ‘mind forged manacles’ (as the poet William Blake termed them) – the artificial constraints on possible future socio-economic systems. Some writers (e.g. Van Parijs 2013) would argue that humans need a utopian view of the future to sustain us, a positive image of the world to come. We tend to think of utopias as the stuff of imaginative fiction, such as Thomas More’s Utopia, or small intentional communities (such as the 19th century Oneida Community in New York state, and numerous modern-day small communes). However, even the American colonies of Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Georgia were planned as utopian settlements. And for Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, the Garden of Eden (as an Earthly paradise), and heaven, can be regarded as utopias. Bret, Didier and Dufaux (2012) have even argued that liberalism and neo-liberalism – the dominant political philosophies in the West – also qualify as utopias. We must also consider technological utopias, par-

Imagining, discussing, researching new utopias – and even trying to implement them – will be a vital task for the future. We think that a minimum vision, an ecologically sustainable and just future, even our very survival, may no longer be compatible with a continuation of a growth-oriented market economy as the dominant shaper of human societies. If our economic system changes, clearly all forecasts based on its continuation will be useless. Two distinct arguments can be made against its continuation. First, although economists often stress that GDP is merely a measure of economic activity and its growth, and never intended to be a national or global welfare measure, in practice both national governments and organisations like the OECD ignore this caveat. Continued economic growth is part of the OECD charter, and OECD countries often cut welfare spending to promote economic growth. Ecologically-minded economists like Herman Daly have proposed a number of alternative indicators which better measure human welfare. One, the Human Development Index, developed by the UN Development Program, even has some official status. Kubiszewski et al. (2013) have tracked a related index, the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) over time for a number of countries, and for the

world overall. They found that, globally, although GDP/capita has continued to rise, GPI/capita has slowly fallen since the mid 1970s. The divergence was particularly marked for wealthy countries; for industrialising countries like China and Vietnam, GPI/capita is still slowly rising. For currently wealthy countries at least, the heavy focus on continued economic growth cannot be justified on welfare grounds. The second argument against the market-oriented growth economy is that we are already approaching a number of resource and pollution absorption limits, even though only a small fraction of the world population enjoy an OECD standard of living. Raising all the world’s population – projected by the UN (2014) to reach 10 billion or more after 2050 – to OECD material standards would require global economic output to increase several-fold. To illustrate present world inequality, electricity consumption per capita varies a thousand-fold between the countries with the highest and lowest use, and per capita CO2 emissions by almost as much (BP 2015; UN 2014). As the previous section argued, there is unlikely to be a technical solution, which can give the world both ecological sustainability and a high material living standard. We conclude that placing more stress on social change and less on technical change is not just wishful thinking. Technology driven by the search for private profit will produce dwindling benefits for humankind. Social change is risky – it can be negative as well as positive – but in the search for a sustainable human future, we are rapidly running out of options. We must seek answers to the question, how do we plan ahead when the past is increasingly a poor guide to the future?

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ticularly those based on the convergence of nano-, bio-, and information technologies (Moriarty and Honnery 2014b). Given that ‘blueprint’ utopias can turn into dystopias, it is better, as Levitas (2010) has argued, to use utopian thought as a method rather than an endpoint in envisioning a better future. Backcasting, in a modest way, is based on trying to reach such a future.

References —— BP 2015, BP statistical review of world energy 2015, BP, London. —— Bret, B, Didier, S & Dufaux, F 2012, ‘Utopias as a tentative horizon for spatial justice’. Available from (http://www.jssj. org/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/JSSJ5-1-en1.pdf) [23 July 2014]. —— Crutzen, PJ 2006, ‘Albedo enhancement by stratospheric sulfur injections: a contribution to resolve a policy dilemma?’ Climatic Change, vol. 77, pp. 211-219. —— Energy Information Administration 2013, International energy outlook 2013, US Dept. of Energy, Washington, DC. (Also earlier editions.) —— Hand, E 2014, ‘Injection wells blamed in Oklahoma earthquakes’, Science, vol. 345, pp.13-14. —— Keller, DP, Feng, EY & Oschlies, A 2013, ‘Potential climate engineering effectiveness and side effects during a high carbon dioxide-emission scenario’, Nature Communications, vol. 5 (3304) (DOI: 10.1038/ncomms4304). —— Kubiszewski, I, Costanza, R, Franco, C, et al. 2013, ‘Beyond GDP: Measuring and achieving global genuine progress’, Ecological Economics, vol. 93, pp.57–68. —— Levitas, R 2010, ‘Back to the future: Wells, sociology, utopia and methods’, The Sociological Review, vol. 58, no. 4, pp.530-547. —— Moriarty, P & Honnery, D 2011, ‘Is there an optimum level for renewable energy?’, Energy Policy, vol. 39, pp. 2748-2753. —— Moriarty, P & Honnery, D 2011, Rise and fall of the carbon civilisation, Springer, London. —— Moriarty, P & Honnery, D 2012, ‘Preparing for a low-energy future’, Futures, vol. 44, pp. 883-892. —— Moriarty, P & Honnery, D 2014, ‘Future Earth: Declining energy use and economic output’, Foresight, vol. 16, no. 6, pp. 512-526. —— Moriarty, P & Honnery, D 2014, ‘Reconnecting technological development with human welfare’. Futures, vol. 55, pp. 32–40. —— Moriarty, P & Honnery, D 2015, ‘Reliance on technical solutions to environmental problems: caution is needed’, Environmental Science and Technology, vol. 49, pp. 5255−5256. —— Pearce, F 2015, ‘New delays hit Sellafield clean-up’, New Scientist, 24 Jan. 2015, pp. 8-9. —— Randers, J 2012, ‘The real message of The Limits to Growth. a plea for forward-looking global policy’, GAIA vol. 21 no. 2, pp. 102–105. —— Seligman, MEP, Railton, P, Baumeister, RF ,et al. 2013, ‘Navigating into the future or driven by the past’, Perspectives on Psychological Science, vol. 8, no. 2, pp. 119–141. —— Smolin, L 2014, ‘Time, laws, and the future of cosmology’, Physics Today, vol. 67, no. 3, pp.38-43. —— Steffen, W, Richardson, K, Rockström, J et al. 2015, ‘Planetary boundaries: guiding human development on a changing planet’, Science vol. 347, 1259855 (10pp).

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—— Stocker, TF, Qin, D, Plattner, G-K, et al. (eds) 2013, Climate change 2013: the physical science basis, CUP, Cambridge, UK. —— United Nations 2014, World population prospects: the 2012 revision. Available from: (http://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/ index.htm) [15 July 2014]. —— Van den Bergh, J, Folke, C, Polasky, S, et al. 2015, ‘What if solar energy becomes really cheap? A thought experiment on environmental problem shifting’, Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, vol. 14, pp. 170–179. —— Van Parijs, P 2013, ‘The universal basic income: why utopian thinking matters, and how sociologists can contribute to it’, Politics and Society, vol. 41, no. 2, pp. 171–182. —— Van Vuuren, DP, Edmonds, J, Kainuma, M, et al. 2011, ‘The representative concentration pathways: an overview’, Climatic Change, vol. 109, pp. 5–31. —— Wikipedia 2014, List of dates predicted for apocalyptic events. Available from: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_ of_dates_predicted_for_apocalyptic_events) [29 July 2014].

Redesigning Nature: Situating Art and Ecology Christoph Kueffer and Jill Scott

In this chapter an artist and a natural scientist explore the turbulences that disrupt our traditional ideas about nature, the relationship between nature and humans, and how nature might be imagined and shaped in the future. Our goal is not a nostalgic attempt to restore the past nor to naively endorse a replacement of nature by technology or through some other means, but to nurture a discourse that might affect our view of the “natural.” We offer a dual approach: first, a discussion of new concepts of nature and the shaping of it, based on recent thinking in ecology, conservation and in art and design. Second, we touch on historical metaphors or notions that attempt to describe current attitudes towards nature like ecologist Nigel Dudley who asserts that we need to understand how ecological function, resilience and persistence occur in natural and cultural ecosystems by a re-focus on the “authenticity in nature” (Dudley 2011). Our own approach is to build knowledge from trans-disciplinary sources, a methodology that considers humans as part of nature not as a disturbance from the outside. We ask, what are the on-going turbulences in nature and some of the different disciplinary perspectives on nature itself? What specific metaphors or ideas can attempt to define new ways of engaging with nature? The chapter ends with a discussion of “The Grand Redesign of Nature.”

The following conversations have grown out of two case studies wherein we worked together with

scientists and science students to investigate the relationships between nature, art and design.

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CONVERSATION 1 Our turbulent relationship to nature

because these were rare, they were only a blip in the overall self-organization of nature.

Christoph Kueffer (CK): We ecologists see turbulences in nature, itself, while artists or designers often seem to see turbulences in the way we “feel about” nature. But we both have to build on the opportunities of these turbulences as a door to innovation, or perhaps oppose them where they are seen as a danger.

JS Your emphasis on the scale of disturbances and the time for adaptation leads to the question of whether humans in the past had a different kind of relation to nature. It could be argued that the relationship of indigenous people and even traditional European rural societies to nature were restricted in space, of small magnitude and allowed for enough time for nature to adapt and reorder according to the new species – humans – that entered the ecological theatre. We were once part of the natural order.

Jill Scott (JS): Yes, artists and designers think of nature in our times as increasingly being forced from a state of order into disorder but our perspectives on turbulence seem to differ. I want to ask you what ecologists see as the reasons for an increase in this level of turbulence. Nature is dynamic and disturbances such as volcanic eruptions, extreme climate events, fires, or outbreaks of pests and diseases have always occurred. It seems that turbulence is mostly the rule rather than something new. CK That’s right. Nature is dynamic. But as ecologists we see a fundamental difference between past disturbances in nature and the current ones resulting from human action. In the past, these dynamics were encompassed within a larger order of nature formed through the long-term coevolution of species and the evolutionary adaptations of species to their environments. Species had time to adapt: in environments characterised by frequent fires species have adapted to fire; in dry or cold climates, species have adapted to these extremes. There were, of course, unexpected disturbances such as the outbreak of a new pest or disease or a volcanic eruption. They put local species communities and ecosystems into a state of disorder. But

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CK In contrast, now we live in an era of human omnipresence and dominance of nature – ecologists call our era a new “geological” age, the Anthropocene (Steffen et al. 2004). Ecologists see fundamental shifts in the relative importance and quality of human disturbances of the natural order (Kueffer 2015a). First, humans are now an omnipresent disturbance in nature making major disturbances the rule rather than the exception. Second, the types and places of human disturbances constantly change making them notorious surprises often undermining adaptation. Third, many disturbances are simultaneously happening at all levels of biological organisation and this can result in a “perfect storm” of multiple and mutually reinforcing crises. JS And what happens when all barometers of the status quo are disrupted at once? CK You mean what happens if all major chemical, physical and biological characteristics of the planet

JS

Do these changes also lead to new life forms?

CK We humans are already changing genomes and species, and some people think that such manipulations of life forms are necessary to adapt to the new life conditions of the Anthropocene. It seems critical that we understand these manipulations in the context of the broader ecosystems and landscapes. We must in our understanding integrate lower levels (the genes or species traits) with higher levels, like interactions between organisms, or how organisms and abiotic factors change the functioning of whole ecosystems. All levels, and their interrelationships, can be simultaneously put into turbulence, and through very different processes and disturbances. The most important factor to consider is that the magnitude and speed of the disturbances are increasing, resulting in irreversible changes, including regime shift, the crossing of thresholds or even of ultimate boundaries of ecosystems or indeed, the whole planet as a life-supporting system. This might be a good moment in our conversation to introduce the perspective of designers and artists. How have they pondered such matters?

JS Back in the 1960s, the American architect, designer and visionary Buckminster Fuller proposed what he termed Synergetics: transformative holistic and interdisciplinary systems thinking (Fuller 1960) (1). He argued that if we continue to see ourselves as separate from nature, we will be divorced from our place as a species in nature. He encouraged artists and designers to base their structures on natural forms. Actually, his own Biospheres are based on the triangular division of the Tetrakaidecahedron, a 14-sided Polyhedron. This shape can be found in the dynamic and strong design of the human cell and though the cells formal ability to attach itself to other cells, to form the basis of all higher cellular life forms. Another influence comes from literature, for example, in 1989 environmentalist Bill McKibben wrote the controversial “The End of Nature” (McKibben 1989). He claimed our attitude is often to control nature as it were a naughty child, loving it when it “behaves” and fearing it when it disrupts. This idea of “control” also affects our design concepts. Some designers focus on ideals of purity and beauty in nature, others on unpredictable turbulence and fear. Still others question if a designed world could better replace our own broken natural one. For Mc Kibben the very survival of the planet is dependent on a fundamental philosophical shift in the way we relate to nature. He offers two paths forward: the first is not to respond by developing better ways of managing the world and the second is to adopt a “more humble” way of living with much less than we are used to! While humans already manipulate nature to suit our own needs (hydro dams or the city of Venice etc.), many designers of artefacts still do not see themselves as either defiant custodians or humble caretakers of nature.

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change? We simply don’t know. With the start of the industrial revolution, and much more rapidly since the mid-20th century, we have simultaneously altered the climate, the nutrient regime and the species composition of ecosystems all at once. These fifty years of rapid change are novel disruptions for ecological systems and we cannot expect to understand, or even to have observed, all the consequences yet. Consider this: the last glaciation ended about 12’000 years ago, but tree species in Europe have still not completely recovered from it!

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CCHAPTER HAPTER33 · · The TheAnthropocene AnthropoceneEra: Era:How HowHumans Humansare areChanging Changingthe theEarth EarthSystem System

Anthropocene Era: How Humans are Changing the Earth System

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3.4 · Putting Human-Driven Changes into an Earth System Perspective 3.4 · Putting Human-Driven Changes into an Earth System Perspective

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Fig. 3.66. The increasing rates of change in human activity since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Sharp changes in the slope of the curves occur around the 1950s in each case and illustrate how the past 50 years have been a period of dramatic and unprecedented 3.4 ·Commission Putting Human-Driven Changes change in human history. (US Bureau of the Census 2000; Nordhaus 1997; World Bank 2002; World on Dams 2000; Shiklo-into an Earth Sy manov 1990; International Fertilizer Industry Association 2002; UN Center for Human Settlements 2001; Pulp and Paper International 1993; McDonald’s 2002; UNEP 2000; Canning 2001; World Tourism Organization 2001)

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population and global economy,” selected from Steffen W, Sanderson A, Tyson PD, Jäger J, Matson PA, Moore III B, Oldfield F, Fig. The increasing change human activity since beginning of Industrial Revolution. changes in Fig.3.66. 3.66.K, The increasingrates rates of change in human activity sincethe theGlobal beginning ofthe theand Industrial Revolution. Sharp changes inthe theslope slope Richardson Schellnhuber HJ,of Turner IIin BL, Wasson RJ (2004) In Change the Earth System:Sharp A Planet Under of ofthe thecurves curvesoccur occuraround aroundthe the1950s 1950sin ineach eachcase caseand andillustrate illustratehow howthe thepast past50 50years yearshave havebeen beenaaperiod periodof ofdramatic dramaticand andunprecedented unprecedented Pressure. Berlin, Germany. change in changeSpringer, inhuman humanhistory. history.(US (USBureau Bureauof ofthe theCensus Census2000; 2000;Nordhaus Nordhaus1997; 1997;World WorldBank Bank2002; 2002;World WorldCommission Commissionon onDams Dams2000; 2000;ShikloShiklo-

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JS Our idea is often to gather knowledge about nature and abstract its representation, trying then to design for more bio-diverse corridors through our urban jungles. Some of us think that by filtering, communicating or translating ecological evidence we might be able to cause an increase in local stewardship among the public. But we are a little naïve about ecological collapse; the scale is too big to think about it clearly. So we have to work with ecologists, who are also aware that anthropogenic environmental changes are ongoing and that novel abiotic conditions are occurring on a global scale and that these conditions are new to our planet’s history. On a local level, if we learn about urban ecological corridors that already exist and their novelties, we might be able to redesign them better. CK Due to the fact that we are overusing the earth’s natural capital, humans are rapidly degrading the services that ecosystems provide. We need to understand that we need to work in teams with experts of design to tackle the reconstruction of this natural capital. JS Yes and for this natural capital, we may need to revisit high school science: how the four life systems – the geosphere, the atmosphere, the hydrosphere and the biosphere – interact on our planet, and so are dependent on each other. We want to think more holistically and there you can help us. However, this requires a less egotistical way of thinking about our roles, as well as the forming

Christoph Kueffer and Jill Scott

CK So how do some designers or artists envision “re”-design of nature as a means to “re”-claim a place for us?

Fig. 2: Geodesic Dome originally designed and constructed by Buckminister Fuller for Expo 67. Now Science World in Montreal Canada. Reconstructed for Expo 86 by Bruno Freschi, Photo: Jill Scott.

of artist and design groups, which may be able to contribute to the communication of scientific consensus in a unique way. CK Communication is something we both learn about but our methods differ so much. What do you think would help scientists understand different approaches to communication by artists and designers about the re-design of nature? JS Actually, it might be useful for them to learn something I call eco-semiotics, in other words a study of signs, symbols and systems at the intersection of society and ecology. Semiotics is an analysis of basic signs and symbols of design and this analysis is influenced by two facts: (1) meaning always changes with cultural difference and contexts, and (2) emotive associations can be generally predicted from what we learn as children. But besides the basic design concepts of Semiotics like line, shape, direction, size, texture, colour and

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space – designers are beginning to be more interested in the second set of principals – ones that are more pertinent for eco-design or the redesigning of natural formations. These are balance, proximity, alignment, repetition and contrast (Crow 2010). Nature is famous for providing stability and structure through balance; creating relationships between elements that are visually connected in some way; creating interdependence between elements that are visually and conceptually connected; constructing order and organisation by aligning elements to grow or using repetition to strengthen and tie individual elements together or create rhythms or organized movements. Contrast is the juxtaposition of opposing elements (opposite colours on the colour wheel, or value – light / dark, or direction – horizontal / vertical). Contrast allows us to emphasize or highlight key elements in any design concept. CK This is fascinating. I start to see how teams of artists, designers and ecologists might come up with new design principles that contribute to a better understanding of what Nigel Dudley (2011) called “authenticity in nature”. By this he means that all ecosystems have been modified and the idea of places ‘untouched by humans’ is a myth. But there are large differences in the degree of modification and levels of naturalness. In fact, as ecologists, ultimately we also hope to uncover the design principles that nature uses, but because of the huge variability in nature this is extremely difficult. A very important concept for us is the value of diversity. We believe that diversity can in many ways lead to more resilient and productive ecosystems. Resilience for instance relates to functional redundancy: if one species cannot deal with some distur-

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bance, a similar one might be able to take on its role in an ecosystem. But eco-semiotics is about more than only understanding what makes good design. It is about changing people’s behaviour, isn’t it? JS Well the big challenge is to change people’s everyday behaviour, recycling, energy consumption, etc. One of the most well known eco-semiotic designers was Victor Papanek who made an assault on the capitalist values of consumption. In a seminal book called ‘Design for the Real World’, he stated: “The process of consumption is, and has always been, motivated by complex emotional drivers, and is about far more than just the mindless purchasing of newer and shinier things; it is a journey towards the ideal or desired self, that through cyclical loops of desire and disappointment, becomes a seemingly endless process of serial destruction” (Papanek 1971). Papanek likened endless consumption to the tragic psychic loop of Sisyphus and instead he encouraged designers to look at the formal wonders of how nature survives and its changing states of sustenance, ethology, anthropology and morphology. He believed in abstracting the best inspirations from natural systems, away from tragic missteps of human capitalism. For example, he cites how the bionics of birds wings can help designers understand how to build powerful motion with the least effort, or how genetic formulas like those found in the growth of peas in a peapod can inspire recyclable protective packaging, or how species interaction incorporates ecological diversity and at the same time creates inter-dependant reliance. Now, there are whole educational programs in design research devoted to new materials for people based on natural forms with natural materials. (2)

JS In advertising, Green-washing mostly comes from a trick: how to combine emotion with ignorance! In advertising or what we call visual communication, it is known as “visceral” manipulation that sells well. But Green-washing can be much more insidious – like BP’s misleading and selective truth telling in info-advertisements on how they’ve cleaned up the Mexican Gulf! In yet another example a company like Monsanto uses these tactics on their own web site. It would be good if scientists learnt more about these tactics. CK In reverse then, can we also use these insights to encourage activism, so that more people understand eco-semiotics to communicate critique and make people think? For instance the Yes Men, with their clever satirical aims to cause public discussions, come to my mind. (3) JS This is media activism or Tactical Media, but there are many artists with many strategies to think about. Some seem to be more concerned

about the future of nature, while others are focused on giving specific communities new tools and materials to help people re-think our relationship to nature. For example, like the work of the Wertheim twins, who raise consciousness about the bleaching of coral in the Great Barrier Reef by inviting artists from around the world to design and crochet the coral (and learn a new hyperbolic algorithm to do it) simultaneously point us to its demise and to new creations fashioned from it (Figs. 3-5: Wertheim Sisters ongoing). Eco-artists like these provide strong metaphors for the problems with geopolitics. Philosophers like Bruno Latour suggest that our global “out of nature” problem is leading us into a “war of the worlds”, a war in which humans are against all other earthbound creatures and that this attitude is neither harmonious nor has any predictable outcomes (Latour 2013). CK Indeed, it seems to be time for us to choose and make a stand in geo-politics. In order to do so, both artists and scientists need to move from the idea of bio-mimicry of the 70s and 80s into brainstorming together about the production of alternative ways of living and consuming. Design needs to prioritize nature-friendly interpretations inspired by real life forms. Maybe what we can work on is an eco-semiotic set of strategies and poetic metaphors to engage with the public and hope to mentor a change in the way we think. JS So we come to the question of the redesign of nature – that needs a plan for another lifestyle of restraint and humility. Here the concept of redesign is certainly not a displacement nor replace-

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CK Now we are shifting from a discussion about how to shape nature to a discussion about how to change society and why change is needed as an inspiration that can help us to improve society and technologies. Perhaps one of the artists’ roles is to teach us how eco-semiotics can be important for us to inform society and contribute to the shaping of it. But I also see high risks especially when rhetoric can trump evidence (Kueffer and Larson, 2014). For example, how do you as an expert of visual communication see the risk of visual manipulation such as green-washing? I suspect that sometimes nature informs only the shape but not the actual sustainable functioning of a product.

Fig. 3: The Green Reef, by the Institute For Figuring. Photo ©Institute For Figuring, by Margaret and Christine Wertheim.

Fig. 4: Margaret Wertheim drawing hyperbolic diagrams in the Math Chapel of the Institute For Figurings’s exhibition, Reefs, Rubbish, and Reason at Art Center College of Design.  Photo © Institute For Figuring (by Cameron Allan). Christine Wertheim.

Fig. 5: The Toxic Reef, by the Institute For Figuring, crocheted from plastic bags, videotape and other plastic detritus. Photo © Institute For Figuring, by Margaret and Christine Wertheim.

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Fig. 6: Marta de Menezes; “Nature?” Live butterflies with modified wing patterns; Bicyclus anynana butterfly, mutant comet; with 2 extra eyspots.

CK You touch upon a critical and highly controversial point of the debates among ecologists and nature conservationists. The question for both fields is: do we have to embrace the on-going changes in nature triggered by human action or can and should we oppose them? There are those that say that opposing them is unrealistic and a waste of resources, and others that fear that if we as nature’s advocates embrace these changes – that often are nothing else than a massive degradation of nature – we only contribute to an acceleration of exploitation of nature. I think our conversation points towards a solution here. The problem might have been that we separated our investigations of how to shape nature and those on how to shape society. So, yes we will have to take emerging ecological novelties seriously, but we should not endorse them as an unchangeable result of modern capitalism. We will often not be able to restore natural ecosystems, and we will therefore have to envision new ecological states that differ from the past. In other words, we need to fashion a sustainable relationship with nature and mirror this in society, in our urban environments in particular. But what ecological novelty we want will depend on the values that are affected. We need to envision ways of living with nature that consider unavoidable changes as well as our ability to contain, control and mitigate the effect of ecological novelty, and – most importantly – our need to re-shape society so that a new and long-term sustainable relationship with nature might become possible.

CONVERSATION 2 Direct engagement with nature and its materials JS Indeed, and this leads our attention to the invention of more appropriate metaphors that might help to engage with nature in new ways and actually shape it. In other words, let’s move from conservation of nature as a design concept to the idea of re-designing nature! How do you think we can begin to build on these opportunities as a door to innovation, without forgetting that these turbulences can also be a danger? CK When one thinks about intervention in a so-called natural place, one first thinks of conservation. But this is a 20th century concept based on the conservationist assumption that there is a pre-human state of nature that should be preserved in its entirety and without amendments by protecting it from any human influences (Kueffer and Kaiser-Bunbury 2014; Kueffer 2015b). The primary tool of traditional nature conservation was a protected area like a National Park from which humans were excluded, but this often led to major societal conflicts between sometimes nonlocal conservationists who wanted nature without humans and local people’s livelihoods, which depended on the same nature for survival. The associated ecosystem management’s paradigm was that of restoring nature back to a pre-human, ‘pristine’ state so that “nature” was only disturbed by “nature”. In such a framework, human disturbances were seen as rare and single events resulting in management strategies that focused on identifying and removing these individual disturbance factors one-by-one, for instance non-

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ment of nature, but a wake up call (Scott 2010). We have to move beyond the older predefined state of existing organisms and look more closely at the novelties and local scenarios.

native species that were “accidentally” introduced or wastewater that caused pollution. JS This form of conservation has become unrealistic. But meanwhile disturbances are common and many happen in parallel so we all have to think of new concepts, right? CK Indeed, currently, in ecology new concepts of intervention are being developed, and some even use the term “intervention ecology” (Hobbs et al. 2011). Disturbances are seen as requiring continuous intervention, sometimes considered to be a form of adaptive management (i.e. management that is adapted in the light of learning experiences). According to these authors, old types of intervention are characterised as ‘reactive’ and contrasted with active or proactive management. Active management aims at increasing the resilience of an ecosystem to multiple stresses, while proactive management tries to prevent stressors and their negative impacts. Management interventions are defined at a systemic level, attempting to shape the whole ecosystem. Consequently, important research questions seek to understand how problematic stressors and ecosystem changes can be detected early on, and how risk management should be enlarged to encompass new magnitudes and different types of stressors. However, increasingly conservationists acknowledge that interventions aimed at maintaining ecosystems in a pre-human state through targeted interventions are an illusion. So alternatives are currently being discussed to embrace the change and human influences of natural ecosystems, or else resurrect prehuman ecosystems through more drastic interventions that resemble the form of artificial design you

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might attribute to architects rather than surgeons. JS Ha! So this is why you hear about the idea of how embracing anthropogenic change might be a viable alternative, especially through concepts such as ‘assistance’, ‘embracing novel ecosystems’, or ‘reconciliation ecology’. CK Yes ‘assistance’ means that humans help species to adapt to the new, human-made ecological realities, for example by moving species from one place to another where the new climate, under climate change might suit them again. ‘Embracing novel ecosystems’ means that new, human-made ecosystems – called ‘novel ecosystems’ – are studied and assessed in their own rights. These qualities can be the same as those of the pre-human ecosystems, thus qualities that survived the major human-triggered changes, or they can be new ones that the pre-human ecosystem never had in the first place. ‘Reconciliation ecology’ acknowledges that certain forms of human land-use have also in the past promoted biodiversity and ecosystem functioning rather than threatened it. Human omnipresence is not per se seen as problematic, but it is acknowledged that there are better and worse forms of living with nature. JS Certainly some of these interesting terms, such as ‘resurrection’ or ‘re-wilding’, reiterate the idea of restoring ecosystems back to its pre-human functioning. But it’s impossible because such re-instated ecosystems might never have the same species composition as the pre-human one. CK There is indeed the concern that when you reintroduce species that have been lost from the

JS Well they may be non-native to the region and have never ever occurred there. Again humans are attempting to control nature, assuming that these species were lost through the extinction of a previous native species. CK It has even been suggested that the African mega fauna – such as elephants and lions – be introduced to the mid-Western plains of the USA to restore the ecological functions lost through the extinction of the North American prehistoric mega fauna (Donlan et al. 2005). The point that these ecologists make is that it is less important whether a species is native or non-native – i.e. has previously occurred naturally in a place – but more important that the ecological functioning of an ecosystem is maintained or restored. JS Well at this point I would like to talk about how this kind of manipulation of life forms is also being explored in Bio Art. Such artists do not see themselves as science communicators and are more interested in a type of provocation that relates to the ethical manipulation of nature. By redesigning life as we don’t yet know it, by manipulating living tissues, plant substances or the DNA of organisms they want to question the processes of “natural” evolutionary life forms. For example, Portuguese artist – Marta de Menezes (Fig. 6), created live butterflies whose wing patterns were

modified for artistic purposes (Menezes 2003). Such changes were achieved by interfering with the normal development of the wing, inducing the development of a new pattern never seen before in nature. Along these lines, other young DIY (do it yourself) bio-lab groups (makers and fab-labs) like Hackteria in Switzerland have formed to organize laboratory space with some biotech equipment. These bio-hackers are interested in synthetic biology for libertarian Marxist motivations that can promote do-it yourself science. CK Is this because the provocations of re-wilding and assistance also appeal to them or are they more interested in criticizing science but not necessarily to make sense of it? It seems that some artists and hackers are interested in the question: what controversies about nature do such manipulations produce? JS They are all dedicated to raising questions about human intervention, learning about life science and working with hands-on engagement. Some artists – I call them eco artists – believe that “Art has a job to do!” and they tend to cultivate particular strategies and community activities. Amy Lipton actually once used the term “ecovention” for this set of artists because they design their artworks with some intended ecological betterment, for example, creating new bee colonies in an urban environment (Lipton, 1999). Their main aim is not only to raise people’s awareness, but also to be “assistant ecologists” through direct engagement with nature. This group has a long history of local intervention – for example, in 1990 in a project called “Rival Field”, artist Mel Chin and scientist Rufus Chaney at Pigs Eye Landfill, Saint Paul,

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ecosystem or the region to an ecosystem, you may create many problems. Such re-introduction of lost species is called ‘re-wilding’, and there is even a discussion to resurrect extinct species with modern biological techniques such as cloning from DNA samples.

Minnesota designed a test to see what types of plants could absorb toxins from a polluted site. CK I imagine that local intervention is a pivotal strategy because of the need to raise people’s awareness of situations and demystify science for local populations. It seems strange to re-green our urban environments without understanding what might survive there! For example the group Guerrilla Gardeners in London and elsewhere use seed bombs as activist’s actions to green urban wastelands but they only use seeds from local native plants, although we may have to set our sights much higher than just sprouting flowers where we are not supposed to. JS Yes, that is why the strategy of education about the health of ecosystems is also a key factor for redesign. Here I think that construction might be either a fabricated model or an actual intervention in the environment itself. For example, in one of my own interactive works called “Dermaland”, I attempted to make an artwork about the extent of UV damage on the topsoil in Australia and at the same time to show how UV affects our own skin. Here the viewers can trace and compare the cellular/ molecular levels of damage on either surface, through an interactive learning process. All the images are from actual tissue and soil damage found in science laboratories and the processes of these discoveries are documented in a book called “Neuromedia” (Scott and Stoeckli 2012). One example of an actual intervention in the environment comes from artist Aviva Rahmani who explored older notions of restoration of a coastal wetland that was damaged, by using scientific

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methods of applied nucleation, which involves planting small patches of trees as focal areas for recovery. Once planted, these patches, or nuclei, attract dispersers and facilitate establishment of new woody recruits, expanding the forested area over time. CK Interesting, we used the same strategy of nucleation to promote threatened species in novel tropical forests on the oceanic islands of the Seychelles (Kueffer et al. 2010). These interpretations of ecological knowledge are sorely needed because they provide a more positive role for the viewer to be locally engaged in relation to the scale of the problem compared to feeling so remote from the problem. JS Yes it seems that both eco artists and bio artists are very inspired by research inside the life sciences so that they can design their own works around your knowledge. While the bio artists may be more interested in creating ethical interpretations about life forms, the eco artists want to re-design nature as part of their investigation into the problems of living in the Anthropocene. However, because both, artists / designers and scientists want the public to also have debates about ecological strategies and definitions of “life” on a deeper level, it is essential that we work together more!

Working together on “the grand redesign of nature” Our conversation grew out of two collaborative projects in which we attempted to build workshops for scientists and artists. Both were workshops

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Figs. 7a and 7b Dermaland. UV Damage on the Skin and the Soil. Interactive media sculpture. Kulturama, Zurich Switzerland. Jill Scott 2012.

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involving biological researchers from the ETH in Zurich (Institute of Integrative Biology) and artists from the Academy of Arts Zurich ZHdK (artists from the Z-node Program). Their purposes were to shift the existing conditions of art and science education, to offer ways for participants to think outside their “boxes” and to catalyse new dialogues. The first artistic intervention was staged at the conference “Ecological Novelty” in Monte Verità (2011), a former centre of utopian thought with a man-made ecosystem as a garden near Locarno, Switzerland. The conference brought together many leading ecologists and social scientists working in conservation. The aims were to open up conversations between scientists of different disciplines and to offer a way to communicate scientific information in a different way. Three artists offered workshops for the scientists who were attending the conference. The first was a drawing workshop by Juanita Schläpfer-Müller that appropriated a sociological methodology called Rich Pictures; the second was a performance experience called Performing Ecology by Aviva Rahmani and the third was a film session called Storyboarding Science with film educator Marille Hahne and Jill Scott. Although the other workshops were successful in their distinct ways, here we will only comment on Storyboarding Science, because of its focus on film eco-semiotics. In the Storyboarding Science workshop the scientists were given the challenge of trying to make a 3min story about their research based on information given to them about semiotics from film theory. Then they were asked to try to illustrate their stories with clear concepts and images. Through this method, they quickly found that images from documentaries are made in very

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different ways to send turbulent or constructive messages about environmental issues. They were taught how to use personal stories to communicate a message with the creative aspect of tangibility, and how to make clearer conceptual visual images while staying aware of how viewers can be manipulated. Even though they all found it hard to come up with an interesting story and to make storyboards about their ideas, they found it refreshing to try to apply semiotics and communication theory to their own research. They all thought that novelty and balance in moving images might create new ways to share scientific research in “nature’s novelty” with “non-scientists” (4). This workshop led us to another that was designed for young environmental science students at ETH Zurich in 2014. For it we proposed these questions: How can we introduce alternative sets of methods to explore concepts of re-designing nature? What can art offer science in terms of different kinds of knowledge and levels of experience in relation to natural systems? What might scientists need to know about design and communication to cause deeper reflection and share futures about “nature” with the general public? The 21 science students formed five working groups which were given a basic set of design principles in drawing and the mapping out of stories based on the semiotic principals of balance, proximity, alignment, repetition, proximity, contrast and space. Each group then chose an image of degraded landscapes (forest, parkland, mountains, farms, rivers). The working groups were asked to map their plans to ‘assist’, ‘embrace novel ecosystems’, or ‘reconcile the ecology with humans’ there. They were asked to scale up, brainstorm

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Fig. 8a: One of the examples from a student group 2014. Reconstructing the site of a toxic river. Redesigning Nature Workshop. Scott and Kueffer.

Fig. 9: Storyboarding Science Workshop 2013. An intervention by Scott and Hahne at the Ecological Novelty Conference, Monte Verità. IBN-ETHZ.

Fig. 8b: Students in the workshop: Redesigning Nature. 2014 ETH Zurich, Christoph Kueffer and Jill Scott.

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by drawing and then redraw these landscapes and particular symbols and colours to identify eliminations and additions. The re-designs were then hung and discussed based on four criteria: Intervention Ecology, Re-wilding, Resurrection Ecology (or Assisted Migration), and Reconciliation Ecology. These discussions were based on a unique socio-discourse methodology called the Fishbowl Methodology where three people sit in the middle discussing these topics while there is a fourth chair that can be occupied at any point by someone who wishes to intervene in the conversation. The results highlighted the importance of working through discourses in a unique way. In summary, art and film methodologies can synthesize and convey complex scientific information, humanize science and promote new ways of looking at issues (Hall et al. 2015). As has been verified in other similar case studies conducted by Science Museums these results are beneficial to both disciplines (Curtis et al. 2012). In turn, artists can learn about the importance of evidence and scientists about the power of poetic visual metaphors. Such workshops can play a role in helping us understand each other and grapple with the abstraction of ecological concepts.

Conclusions Through our experiments between scientists, artists and students, we explored the “redesign” of nature by comparing older concepts with new, more flexible solutions. We also sought coherence and a consensus between design and ecology definitions of redesigning nature, underlining the complexity

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of these ecological and social issues and the need for transdisiplinary cooperation and collaboration. Also we came to value the importance of envisioning constructive solutions to raise awareness about climate change. Ecologists are essential to artists not only to assist them in thinking clearly and objectively about evidence but also to think “differently”. Through this chapter we hope to encourage the addition of “unnatural nature” to that which we seek to preserve. Well-protected places that host species that are unique to a defined geographic location are important, but rambunctious gardens (Marris 2011) and other forms of novel but authentic ecosystems (Dudley 2011) are crucial too. We simply hope that any redesign related to conserving, restoring and sustainably managing ecosystems could better render the services that nature already provides. However, we do caution against making intelligent-design-like arguments that would dispense with ecology, to replace it with something simpler. As Shahid Naeem so aptly posits: “Nature without ecology is like biology without evolution; neither is viable, neither makes sense” (Naeem 2011). If a very “unnatural nature” is the desirable result of our redesign, then we may not change our behaviour or our bodies fast enough to accommodate such an environment. Let’s hope we can convince others to be educational activists and use the platforms they have to re-design a paradigm shift in the same direction!

—— Curtis, DJ, Reid, N 2012, Communicating ecology through art: what scientists think. Ecology and Society, vol 17, nr. 2 , pp. 3. http://dx.doi.org/10.5751/ES-04670-170203 —— Donlan, J, Greene, HW, Bock, CE, Bock, JH, Burney, DA, Estes, JA, Foreman, D, Martin, PS, Roemer, GW, Smith, FA, & Soulé ME 2005, Re-wilding North America. Nature 436, pp. 913-914. —— Dudley, N 2011, Authenticity in nature: making choices about the naturalness of ecosystems, Earthscan, London. —— Hall, M, Forêt, P, Kueffer, C, Pouliot, A & Wiedmer, C 2015, Seeing the environment through the humanities. A new window on grand societal challenges, Gaia vol. 25, nr. 2, pp. 134-136. —— Hobbs, RJ, Hallett, LM, Ehrlich, PR & Mooney, HA 2011, ‘Intervention ecology: applying ecological science in the twenty-first century’ , BioScience vol. 61, nr. 6, pp. 442-450. —— Kueffer, C 2015, ‘Ecological Novelty: towards an interdisciplinary understanding of ecological change in the Anthropocene’. In Greschke, HM, Tischler, J (eds) Grounding global climate change. Contributions from the social and cultural sciences. Springer, Berlin, pp. 19-37. —— Kueffer, C 2015, ‘Natur-Diskurse in einer Zeit der Krise. Von einem konservierenden zu einem regenerativen Verständnis von Naturschutz’. In Hennigfeld, U (ed) Lazarus, – Kulturgeschichte einer Metapher, Winter-Verlag, Heidelberg, in press. —— Kueffer, C, Kaiser-Bunbury, C 2014, ‘Reconciling conflicting perspectives for biodiversity conservation in the Anthropocene’. Frontiers in Ecology and Environment vol. 12 nr. 2, pp. 131-137. —— Kueffer, C, Larson, BM 2014, ‘Responsible use of language in scientific writing and science communication’, BioScience vol. 6, nr. 4, pp. 719-724. —— Kueffer, C, Schumacher, E, Dietz, H, Fleischmann, K & Edwards, PJ 2010, ‘Managing successional trajectories in alien-dominated, novel ecosystems by facilitating seedling regeneration: a case study’, Biological Conservation vol. 143, nr. 7, pp. 1792-1802. —— Latour, B 2013, Latours Lecture: ‘Once Out of Nature’ – Natural Religion as a Pleonasm at the University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK. —— Marris, E 2011, Rambunctious Garden. Saving Nature in a Post-Wild World, Bloomsbury New York, NY. —— McKibben, B 1989, The End of Nature, Random House, New York. —— Naeem, S 2011, ‘Ecology: Redefining nature’, Nature 477, pp. 29-30. —— Papanek, P 1971, Design for the Real World, Academy Chicago Publishers, Chicago, USA.

—— Scott, J, Stoeckli, E 2012, Neuromedia: Art and Science Research, Springer, Heidelberg, Germany. —— Scott, J 2010, Artistsinlabs: Networking in the Margins, Artists who Care, Springer. 66-73. —— Steffen, W, Sanderson, A, Tyson, PD, Jäger, J, Matson, PA, Moore III, B, Oldfield, F, Richardson, K, Schellnhuber, HJ, Turner II, BL, Wasson, RJ 2004, Global Change and the Earth System. A Planet Under Pressure, Springer, Berlin, Germany. —— Stengers, I 2010, Cosmopolitics, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, MN.

URLs —— Margaret Wertheim: Coral Reef Project http://crochetcoralreef.org/index.php —— The Earth systems components: Semiotics – The design basics http://boxesandarrows.com/semiotics-a-primer-for-designers/ —— Nature? By Martha Menezes http://martademenezes.com/portfolio/projects/ —— Do-it-yourself (DIY) biotechnolgy groups http://diybio.org —— Amy Liptons Ecovention http://greenmuseum.org/c/ecovention/sect11.html —— Mel Chin work: Revival Field http://greenmuseum.org/c/aen/Issues/chin.php —— Guerilla Gardening https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guerrilla_gardening —— Aviva Rahmani The Ghoastnets Site http://avivarahmani.com/creative-work-samples/2

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References

Endnotes 1 Since Fuller built the biosphere, geodesic shelters have been built all around the world in different climates and temperatures and they have proven to be the most energy efficient human shelter one can find. For more information see: https://bfi.org/about-fuller/big-ideas/geodesic-domes (Accessed 2015) 2 For example, today the bio-designs from Material Ecology are lead by Neri Oxmen – whose group at MIT’s media department works on a biomimicry project called Monocoque: a technique that can support heavy structural loads with the same object’s external skin. https://www.media. mit.edu/people/neri (Accessed 2015) 3 This type of activity is called Tactical Media by Geert Lovink. The following reader is an overview of this movement: http://www.networkcultures.org/_uploads/%237reader_ Wikipedia.pdf For the lab and community of the Yes Men see: http://yeslab.org/index.php ( Accessed 2015) 4 Our intervention was funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation as an art and science intervention. All these results by the students and the scientists are based on questionnaires collected by Scott at the Conference on Ecological Novelty and at the workshop at the ETHZ Summer school and held in the archives of Jill Scott and the Swiss National Science Foundation ( Accessed 2015).

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TURBULENT SOCIETIES, THE CHALLENGES OF DIGITAL CONTEMPORARY ARCHITECTURE Jan Słyk

How are the changing methodologies of design being affected by societies interest in modular, customized and programmable solutions in our crowded urban environments? Can these pressures of growing urban populations be met by reinforcing digital methods in the study of architecture? Is our contemporary architecture for urban environments actually benefiting from the utilization of this form of design? Warsaw is one of the fastest growing cities in the Eastern block of Europe. The new laboratories in the Department of Architecture at Warsaw University face unprecedented challenges to design for this future and experiment with the changing urban infrastructure of this city. In this light, one of the most valuable developments is the invention of new digital design methodologies in specialized labs in the educational sector. Can the turbulent needs of a growing urban population meet the reinforcement of digital methods that are used in architecture today?

In this essay I will mainly address the next digital generation of young architects – those that have just finished high school and entered universities equipped with new skills and new sensibilities. These young designers not only challenge educators to define the future of this profession, but together they must face the changing landscape of urban development and confront the related eco-

logical issues of such development. These issues are explored by using Warsaw as an example of research and correlated with recent experiments that were carried out by the author within the didactic activity at the Department of Architecture in Warsaw. Our own experiments were conducted through international co-operations but also through concrete design projects for environments and buildings.

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Our current goal is to create tools that will enable the public to better understand the environmental implications of urban architectural activities. In this country, which, after many years of stagnation, undergoes a period of rapid growth, there is a need for new measures to strengthen the sense of common responsibility for the consequences of transformations that have been implemented too quickly. We believe that the role of schools of architecture should be to create more analytical tools to support the design of buildings and public spaces. Thanks to these tools, the designers’ consciousness can become more complete! Simulation is replacing the older methods of long-term learning by experiment, which in our country was weakened by Communist central planning systems. Today, it seems that the debates in contemporary architecture are more radical than ever! The very transformation of creation techniques has brought the terms “revolution” and “paradigm shift” into this discussion about what to build and how to build it. Many architects are still struggling to understand these changes, unsure about these new terms. Did they ever exist in the history of design about the shaping of space? “Inertia” is a generic characteristic of architecture, but could the method of designing everything through a computer possibly lead to any danger? In this article I suggest that when the environment changes quickly, discontinuity often occurs and the evolution of shaping forms may become very compromised. Rapid population changes cause thresholds, accumulations, and turbulences to occur, but eventually these transitions themselves, may help us to overcome design barriers.

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In the past, there have been significant examples of turbulence that have effected architectural representation, technical methods and symbolic interpretations. In the middle ages, Robert de Grosseteste’ applied an absolute, stimulated descriptive geometry as a reaction to the chaotic urban surroundings he lived in. The method was then applied to define complex vaults and encourage traceability. Later on architects began to design with an interest in perception, influenced by the re-discovery of Greek perspective, which blossomed into Renaissance architecture and became appealing to the upper classes (1). Baroque architects utilized turbulence to pursue designs of curved-linearity that benefited from the invention of relational mathematics by Leibniz, Descartes and Newton. In fact it was mathematics, in the 19th century that pushed modernists towards topological forms and reinforced the study of recurrent proportionality (2) as well as the interest in providing simple structural housing for poorer city workers.

Digital Design Today Today, digital designers in contemporary architecture are mostly inspired by the potential for the viewer to be embodied inside a buildings’ physiognomy, before it is actually built. However, after these changes are made in the design process, the builders have to follow them. This process is now being transformed by the digital age: a transition caused by social pressure for modular, customized, and programmable solutions in space. This pressure is expressed by an interest to participate more in the actual process of design: a desire to use the tools for the individual shaping of space both in the

Jan Słyk

virtual and in the real world. Everyday experiences are being transferred from the field of design into the field of architecture. Customers now demand personalized products, hoping to improve the quality of their lives this way, and above all – to be creative in a world of common solutions. As a result, educator’s needs, roles and processes of creation are changing. One catalyst that pushed the evolution of architectural creation onto this new track was the increase in communication between the architect, the contractor and the user. Such levels of improvement in communication have changed the role of digital media communication on a social level. Once architectural communication was unidirectional: the architect designed a 3D virtual model that was understandable to the recipient by thinking about the use of the building, the spatial form and the symbolism. Evaluation and reaction would only indirectly influence these design activities – as an impulse to modify future projects. This changed when the digital models of buildings could be disseminated via the Internet, and also digitally manufactured as models. In other words communication starts to happen through digital channels and this opens up the dialogue. This digital dialogue includes the modular structure of the messages, the automatic relay of the answers, the potentials of variability and the ability to transcode the information (3). These days visitors to the Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart or the Pompeii archaeological park in Italy, receive a digital device along with their tickets. From the moment they put on the head-

Fig. 1: Augmented motorsport exhibition in Mercedes-Benz Museum, Stuttgart. Design: UN Studio 2006.

phones, they can not only gain access to contextual information associated with the location but can also save notes about their tour on cloud networks and iPhones. This exploration in networked environments is based on the rules assigned to the content. In this way, the message is permanently associated with the site. In more complex applications, the choices of the user, the sequence of moves or the amount of time elapsed between the network contacts, may even affect how information is conveyed to the senses. For example, in the Mercedes-Benz Museum, the role of technology is emphasized and so proximity sensors make exhibits come to life when visitors are detected nearby. Even the ceiling in the main exhibit hall of cars is interactive, with a simulation of the dynamic image of the sky and

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the roar of racing engines strikes your ears as a projected wave of light moves along a virtual track (Fig. 1). In these types of exhibits, the quality of the experience is dependent on the embodiment of the viewer and the space is designed to make the viewer feel immersed, engaged and finally convinced of the value of the product itself. In these examples, the message is to use communication options to impress the viewer that are predesigned or invented and verbalized within the available conventions. However, I claim that the message corresponding to the specifics of the digital environment does not have to have such predetermined contents. In these cases the architecture was designed for the interaction process, with information set by parameters that reveal themselves at a specific time and place. Creating such messages is based on presuming what kinds of experience will impress the users, but as well can control the rules and the effective implementation of the information technology itself. From the point of view of information about the physical space, these methods have proved to be particularly useful, because they created an opportunity for the emergence of multidirectional associations by the viewers. Furthermore, they provide feedback to the interdisciplinary team of designers (structural and mechanical engineers, planners, historians, sociologists, etc.) and this in turn reinforced the need to implement more decision-making processes in the architects design solutions. When Antonino Saggio (4) described interaction as a catalyst for a new architectural era, we thought of it as a primary cause to redirect evolution. Interaction can cause turbulence in

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individual and social consciousness, a factor that remains relational to the spectacular symptoms of digital architecture.

Folded, Parameterized Form For an architect, the visual experience is a consequence of the mechanisms of perception, (5) and the modern blossoming of curvature and linearity (curvilinear) is often referenced to an acute observation of and abstraction of “nature” as philosophers like Gilles Deleuze once posited (6). Slowly it has become easier to use digital tools imbedded with modern geometry, to create narrative experiences that are based on the continuity of curved surfaces. As Spengler has noted: “every age leaves a heritage consistent with the concept of representation of the world”. For example, in the realm of mathematical formalization, Guarini applied geometrical techniques to determine the curvature of the baroque vaults of churches, and in the 17th century, Newton invented calculus which Guarini then utilized to deal with the accuracy of construction (7). Today, designers often look for very complicated patterns of curvilinear construction, which in turn cause an increase in the search for more information capacity. How can the above interests translate into workshops for young designers? Firstly, it is the parameterization of these geometrical definitions that must be addressed. If growing urban environments like Warsaw, as seen as a set of information problems that constitute a system, need to be described as models;

Mathematics – particularly polynomial descriptions and calculus – are not easy for those who are trained in the arts. However, Bezzier curves and NURBS surfaces can provide a means to explore curvilinearity and have already been implemented in digital architectural software. Recent inventions often provide even more of these techniques for the architect. The actual volumetric definition of space can give any designer the chance to represent some kind of irregularity in the world, and in a manner consistent with the sense of proprioception or how the body behaves in a given environment. Exploring the relation between the spatial environment and the human form has now become a very popular sampling method. The viewer can become very familiar with the surroundings in a high-resolution computer model, and even explore points of view by not only using sight, but also touch, hearing and balance. Afterwards, this experience can even be encoded back into the model, through the use of geometrical concepts. Similar languages like c+, can extend conventional use of the coding. Furthermore, Volumetric recording is another form of coding analogous to digital photography. Here the message encodes information not only about the presence of the viewer but character-

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these models will require parameterization. Many spatial forms and processes that occur in the city have a curved character. These curvatures need to be applied to the terrain, the roads, the traffic patterns and the distribution of characteristic values in space. In order to create useful tools to predict environmental affects, it is essential to start by defining the complex geometric forms present at the level of the architectural model. Fig. 2: The result of Volumetric building, Kama Kos´ ka, MA Thesis, 2012.

istics of matter surrounding them, and therefore, the space becomes divided into voxels that designers can assign information to. The shape and the size of voxels affects the resolution, as well as the resultant 3D matrix and the amount of information that can be cross-connected. A sample of these results can be seen in the model of my students work in a building designed by volumetric recording (Fig. 2). In fact, volumetric coding systems can alter the definition of the resultant forms as well as create new processes of transformation. Instead of using geometric operations (isometrics, projections) they used algebraic operations – that can add as well as subtract material. This process of shaping is more akin to natural human gestures like modeling, sculpting, and honing. Further, new interface devices can assist in the process, like haptic manipulators equipped with force feedback. Thus, for the first time, volumetric recording methods allows one to “touch” the matter on the screen, as if you were touching real sculptural materials.

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Immaterial Space This development of volumetric space would not be possible without the invention of alternative labs in architectural schools in order to develop innovative ideas. While digital CAD tools, information on planned and operated buildings, have already been integrated into such a system, it is on the Internet where such geo-information systems can be shared. The work of today’s architects is focused on the digital representation of natural environment and forms, often embedded with geographicaly specialized coordinates, as well as physical plans and social data, on the same map. This shared network has created two new types of immaterial space for designers. One is a virtual reality, or an alternative environment to experience mental and physical impressions of our urban design, allowing users to immerse themselves in imaginary worlds. This has required the architect to produce new tools that can communicate with other active users of the same project, re-enforcing the real-time rendering and simulation of physical characteristics. However, when only a selected fragment of reality is visualized, then elements of the real static environment can more easily be reconfigured, within some limits of freedom, defined by the architect. Another field of immaterial space is augmented reality. Each digitally controlled component, related to what is built in the environment can be overlaid to create a chance to enrich the users knowledge and functionality. This challenges designers with the implementation of a parallel digital architectural space: one that can allow any user to open the windows of augmentation at any time. Thus augmentation can expand the informa-

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tion through visual signals or even overlay physical changes onto the environment. When designing a modern city, composite architectural visions can be built of realistic objects, but the data assigned for each location, creates interaction scenarios that will certainly challenge the programming abilities of designers in the future!

Architect vs. Society This is the very same immaterial space that Alvin Toffler’s futuristic vision predicted in the Third Wave (1980). Also the clients that architects now work with are familiar with these computer tools. Therefore, programs like VR and Augmented Reality blur the boundaries of expertise and clientele. Furthermore, each member of this information society can gain access to knowledge through access and can actively expand their knowledge. These days the designer has to see the consumer as an equal partner who can participate in the manufacturing process as well as have strong opinions about solutions for specific needs. In other words, we are witnessing closer collaborations between consumers and architects. Today, a consumer can not only “experience” the quality of spatial solutions before their implementation, but also use their own sensory perception of touch and sound to do so. While CAD editors offer VR visualization, which enable the user to walk through simulated homes, game engines are employed to created more dynamic explorations of the environment. For example, H.P. Duarte (2001) introduced a customer to the emerging environment of an architectual project by using the VR interface devices, but 15 years

Distribution of Global Archetypes As I have already indicated, once the distribution of knowledge was a local phenomenon, or it was performed through clearly defined information channels (books, academic networks etc.). Education, practice, experimentation, discussion and comparison of results were major strategies to improve ones knowledge. One of the major influences on the development of a more communicative strategy in education came from Cybernetics. In Norbert Wiener’s original cybernetic group London, he instigated a two-way flow of information in order to build a basic psychological rela-

tionship between human beings and the environment. Weiner focused on the creation of awareness and social relations. “Life is efficient”, he claimed, “for one living with adequate information.” (9) This statement formed a fundamental philosophical basis for our current educational context. In our own digital workshops we believe that we cannot be limited to the traditional processing methods of architecture. Instead, we think that the best collaborations emerge from the networked social environment. However, this environment is, as Wiener (1956) suggested, not a disciplinary platform but a networked node where relationships, interdependencies and information can flow easily. The challenge is to design the flow of information in “real time” and exchange this information with the environment. The effectiveness of the exchange not only depends on the access rights and the ability to establish contact, but the sharing of an informed product that extends the field of architectural design. In other words, the result will be a multi-threaded environment: a knowledge base in itself but one that is variable in form and content. The aim is to create network node capable of delivering and also of absorbing and sharing relevant information.

Experimentation Recently, the scale and sustainability of the works of architectural design has become a new area of architectural research. In fact there have been very few laboratory situations where solutions to these problems could be tested on a 1:1 scale. One of the major influences on the tools that could be used in

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later the options are much more developed (8). Is the architect losing control over the effect of his or her actions? Analysis of the experiences from other fields of art suggests that the uncontrolled incorporation of chance is not a preferred option. In the post war years, John Cage made many experimental compositions but only his later works remained in mainstream music as innovative. These later compositions did not supplant the arbitrary decision of the author, but they were seen to greatly enrich the realm of musical interpretation. The same can happen in architecture. Designers may move away from a focus on permanent solutions from the past onto providing users with much more personal and individual experiences in space. When the author retains a global vision, then the recognition of the work will be remembered either in a subtle way or become a valuable addition to a family of solutions. In other words, this process can ensure freedom of interpretation, but within prescribed limitations.

Fig. 3: Inverted structural model – the optimization method introduced by Antonio Gaudi (1898-1915).

such a 1:1 scale lab came from Bacon, Locke and Hume (10) who favored the application of induction or orientation to deal with this lack of knowledge. However, now in a potential that came from IT integration, we have laboratories in a 1:1 scale. Therefore, through a number of trials, the efficiency of inference has now been increased. Even though optimization tasks and simulation models are still used today to support the creation, communication, interdisciplinarity, fabrication and use of buildings, I claim that digital turbulence has finally met up with the digital reinforcement of methods. So for the first time in the history of architecture, digital design solutions can be completely verified before the application of physical production. Today, the designing of immersive habitats in the context of a city like Warsaw, with its growing density can be aided by this highly efficient, conclusive tool. In Warsaw the housing estates of the seventies and eighties arose from alternative

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motives, which now could be called a “concern for sustainability”. For example, Ursynów – “a band estate” for more than 100 thousand inhabitants – was designed with an aim to eliminate communicational contamination (buffer car parks and subways). The design was based on the concept of differentiated, prefabricated housing, equipped with an innovative system of educational services and biologically diverse systems of “green nature”. Then there was no way of checking all dependencies of how such a complex organism could function as a system. Today, via digital technologies, the vehicular or pedestrian traffic, the plant growth over time, and even the migration within the settlement could be simulated. In our work we are trying to convince that these new technologies cannot only help with the design, but also to manage existing resources and ecologies. Therefore, we have created a laboratory where these effects are visible and allow for previously characterized user-collaborators to become participants in the creative process. However, this process also has an interesting history of its own. When Antonio Gaudi designed Santa Coloma de Cervello church in Barcelona, he used real, static models as part of the design process (11). For examples, he filled group braided cords with sand bags, and studied what happened to the shape of the structure under the influence of gravity (Fig. 3). Another architect, Frei Otto checked the effect of wind on the design of roof surfaces before working on the design of the Olympic complex in Munich (1972) (12). His models were placed in a wind tunnel, loaded, and photographed to study their deformation. In both cases the designers gathered empirical data and their experiments were planned in

Because digital models can now represent architectural objects much more precisely, they can allow for multiple variations and similar automatic performative tests. Most importantly, the integration of complex information in a common database, gives designers the chance to examine many environmental affects on the structure at once. By using a 1:1 scale lab, modern buildings can achieve form and function that can then be optimized for the desired effects. However, as I mentioned earlier in this article, this knowledge and technical capabilities have also become public commodities. The consumer now wants to create his or her own habitat and if he or she is endowed with programming capabilities, digital media, and technology that enable interaction what kind of designs can he or she create? This accessibility to “design your own abode” has been reinforced by industrial designers and developers who offer DIY kits for personalized spatial solutions. By publishing their programs on the web, the consumer can reconfigure structures within his or her limits of technical and economical constrains. DIY interfaces can also improve consumers knowledge, take for instance, sandbox type computer games like Minecraft, which had over 100 million players in 2014. These structural games coax children, middle aged and elderly users to build imaginary worlds just to enjoy their beauty, uniqueness, and functional efficiency, but

I claim that architecture requires a level of perceptual experience that exceeds the simple checking of traits through an interactive game. Unlike the days of specialist CAD design, there are no longer so many barriers between the author/ operator and the consumer of the product. Even architectural firms transfer part of their activities to the networked environment. Some are even setting up design offices in Second Life where the consumer can virtually experiment in a completely intuitive way on a preliminary model that was once made by an architect. Walls and ceilings can be moved, thus changing the proportions of enclosures, and then examined if sensations are consistent with expectations. What is happening to the role of an architect, when these user-centered and created, community-driven virtual worlds have already become another virtual job market?

Education Even though many designers and consumers are using digital methodologies, the majority of practicing architects still place more trust in established workshop systems. Every architecture department now is witnessing a shift from teaching design to educating programmers who also know about building. The professors in architecture now face the necessity to react to and create new roles in a novel future. Their ordering of this digital turbulence requires an ability to interact, to simulate and to program architectural space in ways never before imagined. Helping students with digital skills to think critically and responsibly will have to become a major focus.

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detail then tested in a series of trials to ensure that their observations were correct. When an architectural laboratory is carefully prepared, then the physical models can faithfully represent how the final building will behave.

Even though the Architecture Department at the ETH Zurich in Switzerland was the first to use CAD software and hardware from Autodesk IT, the Department of Architecture at Warsaw University of Technology used mathematical traditions that were rooted in the achievements of the Warsaw – Lviv School (1915-1939). Then our interests were affected by the IT driven engineering division at the Warsaw University of Technology, where a Computer Aided (CAD) Architectural Design studio was led by Professor Stefan Wrona. This was a time when computerization was a very uncertain option to pursue in architecture. Implementing self-made software and / or engineering solutions overcame the imperfections and beta glitches of the hardware and software. In these early days, simple workshop tools were tested and configured in student’s projects, diplomas and in the professional practices of team members. As Computer Aided Design became an interdisciplinary branch of the built environment, the research at the Warsaw CAD studio focused on mathematics, creation and engineering, interdisciplinary communication in the new media environment and digital reinforcement for cultural heritage protection. These trajectories were disrupted and discontinued by occupations from our own twentieth-century Polish history. Warsaw has undergone multiple periods of rapid growth and recession. By organizing these historical observations, we can learn about the mechanisms that damage the city. Today, digital tools can allow us to reinforce our own education about heritage through reconstruction, the study of creative methods, and above all, through the creation of knowledge bases. I once made a virtual reconstruction of these huge urban projects

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from the seventeenth to the twentieth century that allowed you to conclude that such large-scale projects in areas of controlled property always cause conflicts (13). On the contrary, projects in the public sphere, about the ordering of infrastructure, parceling, improving living conditions and the standard of the common space, can contribute to long-term rational growth of a city like Warsaw. Such historical studies often yield unexpected up-to-date observations that can be useful to shape contemporary habitats. The interwar years in Warsaw was a time for the needs of residents to be considered, and for the realization of an environmentally friendly city. These needs unnderpined the concept of sacjalnych settlements, such as . WSM (Warsaw Housing Cooperative) in Zoliborz and Kos´ ko. Designers focused on the rational use of space, the biodiversity and ventilation of pollution in this city, as well as public transport and the control of common communication. Many of these issues overlap with the contemporary image of sustainable development. Thanks to this study, an environment of digitally-based tools were developed, and we established a continuity with this intellectual tradition, which was once present in the architecture of Warsaw and which had been lost. In this context, our case studies in augmentation, visualization, interactive space and optimized form and structure, were developed by our own studio here in Warsaw under the banner of the Architecture for the Society of Knowledge (ASK).

Augmented Project Presentation; Digital Modeling Course WAPW 2014 The first example of our methodology was a modeling course carried out during engineering (bachelor) studies. The students’ task was to create and present models of architectural objects from a set prepared by the guiding team. These were based on single family dwellings with special qualities, modern award-winning projects and buildings designed by distinguished Warsaw architects of the Interwar period. The object selection was random and the students worked in teams of two or three. The models were created in the digital environment but we required a presentation that took on a physical form, one that would interact with the senses. The course ended with a public exhibition in which the results of the works were evaluated by the whole faculty community and invited guests. Here the new methods developed during the course included the integration of all available

We believe that the results of our experiences expanded the consciousness of our students who participated in the course. In addition to the technical and architectural modeling issues, they investigated the intellectual basis of these socially-oriented projects, their justification and their impact. All this information was assigned to architectural components, thereby increasing the social usefulness of the work of an architect. Examples draw attention to environmental conditions as the resultant realizations taught the students to be concerned about energy consumption as well as the rational use of materials and their resources.

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Fig. 4: Augmented project presentation; digital modeling course, 2014.

forms of information in a common model environment and the use of parameterized means to reproduce the traditional techniques of design. The visualization was made in a virtual environment with augmented reality. Digital prototyped models, anaglyphs, animations, and AR devices were also used. These latter methods are beneficial, prompting the students to interact and to change the traditional behavior of materials and forms. Applications were embedded into the network, which we prepared for the course. Recognizable markers were incorporated with graphics boards. The location of these markers related to the camera of the mobile device (smartphone, tablet) and affected the dynamics of the spatial projection. Through the use of augmented reality, students could present the ascension process, the internal structure and the historical and technical information that was related to the building. By linking the projection of animation, dynamic architectural features were shown, such as how the fabric could wave in the breeze (Fig. 4: Curtain Wall House designed by Shigeru Ban).

Fig. 5: Data visualization through 3D mapping; Reconstructing Progress workshop in Kopenhagen, 2013.

Models based on historical social housing from the interwar exhibitions, highlighted the role of the architect to create a vision of a modern habitat. Furthermore, the final exhibition attracted digital media coverage and this allowed for the students’ knowledge to reach a broader social context.

Data visualization through 3D mapping; Reconstructing Progress workshop in Copenhagen I organised another project, ‘Reconstructing Progress’, in Copenhagen. For our part in the project we sought to visualize information that related to three participating cities: Zurich, Copenhagen and Warsaw. The participants in this transdisciplinary initiative included architects, urban planners, natural scientists, visual communicators, and artists.

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During a two-day session, this team discussed the determining factors and affects of rapidly growing urban organisms of society. We sought to identify urban, social, economic and natural mechanisms and we tried to determine the course of action, which would reduce hazards and increase social acceptance for balanced development and sustainability. The method, which we developed to support this interdisciplinary discussion, was to utilize data visualization in universal, understandable ways. Therefore, our group, Architecture for the Society of Knowledge (ASK), prepared schematic physical models of the cities (Warsaw, Copenhagen and Zurich) on the same scale. A low-resolution pixel array was digitally printed in 3D of each city. By placing these on the ground next to each other, we projected areal information about urban, infrastructural, demographic, natural or dynamic characteristics. (Fig. 5). Based on our previous experiences, we recognized that the link between a traditional medium (physical model) and a digital medium (3Dmapping) allows you to speed up the transfer of information and creates a sense of tangibility of presented facts. In this case study, the workshop participants interacted easily with the model, stimulating a long exchange of ideas that related to the functioning of cities. Even though a simplified version of the installation was built for the workshop’s needs, it allowed us to realize differences in the physical, infrastructural and historical substance of cities. Thus, a variety of concepts concerning the reconstruction progress of cities could be associated with the projections and cross correlations that were understandable for everyone were presented in a multi-layered and dynamic character.

The essence of any architectural experience is also the assessment of it: one involving the actual users of the space designed for them. In one such experiment, a pavilion was constructed to study this interaction entitled: ASKtheBOX. This system consisted of a smoothly shaped, digitally produced enclosure equipped with a sound-generating system that reacted to user activity (Fig. 6). The pavilion was built by a group of master students that participated in an experimental design course. We tried to keep experiment in accordance with the guidelines of empiricism: the theory that knowledge comes only or primarily from sensory experience. Therefore we saw this as a laboratory, where prototype solutions were tested and perfect solutions were not designed. Instead, we searched to find possible interactive rules of the phenomenon we were studying. Consequently, we implemented an educational process that might try to keep all components understandable, or better still – self-made and evident. This is a particularly difficult goal if the subject requires the use of technical components associated with reactivity. Students of architecture, despite having basic programming and digital control skills, are not necessarily able to create complex mechatronic structures. Taking this into account, we simplified the ASKtheBOX sensors and the analysis of motion was done indirectly – through reading the image of the shadow on the translucent wall of the pavilion. Participants were illuminated by a reflector, which was located inside the pavilion and cast shadows. A simple

Jan Słyk

ASKtheBOX Pavilion, Exterior and Interior

Fig. 6: ASKtheBOX pavilion, exterior and interior, 2011.

USB camera conveyed a low-resolution image to the computer and there a program written in processing language analyzed the location and density of the shade. It used this information to restructure the user actions. Further, this digital feedback loop could be controlled by an interface that provided the user with various interaction scenarios. By using simple drag/drop/scale operations the participant could tune the active zones and change the method of reaction. When the pavilion was opened to the public during the Long Night of Museums opening, we gathered the most research material. Students analyzed the scenarios that were preferred by numerous users and their patterns of behavior. The results raised the students awareness about the changing role of the architect. Also, the interaction within the design team and the meeting of a wide group of visitors, allowed us to observe

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some characteristic expectations and behavior when participants are immersed inside a digitally enhanced architectural object. We found that between the author (designer) of the work and the final interactive user there is a new role – the control person: the one who programs the installation. In the case of ASKtheBOX this controller had a prepared interface at his or her disposal. He or she might not change the essential parts of the object but can certainly alter the functioning of the results. In the context of a growing need for individualized solutions, controlling architecture might well become one of the essential roles and even turn into a digital tool to implement functional requirements in the future.

Interactive Simulation Tool and Curtain Wall Designed Through Interactive Optimization Process: Marcin Brzeski’s MA Thesis The premise of Macin Brzeski’s thesis was to develop a tool that envisages static effects about the form-making processes conducted by the architect. Brzeski developed a software program and checked its functioning by designing a structural bridge that linked two parts of an actual historic building of the Department of Architecture in Warsaw. The thesis included studies on the methodology of design, prototype program, the results of application tests and final project of the object. The novel approach moved away from traditional methods of working in a project team. Instead, the architectural concept was the starting point, or the structural design, installation project, and other engineering branches referred to as “the architec-

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tural blueprint”. The coordination process started as soon as disciplinary elaborations were ready to present. In the digital age sequential processes are fast becoming replaced by networked cooperations. This desire for interaction in real time grows with the spread of interaction techniques. The program written in C++ by Marcin Brzeski evaluatated the stresses in the spatial triangular web, and functioned according to this logic. Thus the architect can change the form of the free NURBS surface by manipulating standard procedures. The program could tessellate surfaces to elements subordinated to the initial assumptions, an interaction that took into account the types of materials used (length of rods, glass area). The structure was then subjugated to the established load and analyzed by the internal forces using FEM methods. In the end – maps and rods with color information about the state of stresses (Fig. 7) could be seen and finally an array of precise information regarding internal forces could be generated. Marcin Brzeski’s work constitutes a contribution to design methodology because it shifts the focus from visual/structural expression towards focusing on the efficiency and rationality of solutions. What is more, it does so in a manner appropriate to the attitude of the users of modern digital tools. The mechanism of work does not rely on arduous linear sequence of analyses. Instead, it provides a tool, in which the decision-making process takes place through real-time interaction. A key component of our curriculum is to prepare the architecture students for a more conscious participation in the processes that are specific to our information society. Graduates must be

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Fig. 7: Interactive simulation tool and curtain wall designed through interactive optimization process, MA Thesis, Marcin Brzeski, 2010.

equipped with the ability to understand and control digital messages so that they can cooperate better in this interdisciplinary dialogue. With the implementation of digital analysis tools, they are ready to accurately interpret natural and ecological conditions. By algorithmic control of the embodiment factor in design they can contribute to a coherent implementation of this new level of structuralism. Perhaps they can create a novel sense of the value of new architectural works: an important goal that may anticipate the affects

of the changing ecosystem on the future of the structures that we live in. At ASK we strive for the right balance between research topics, environment, architecture and the needs of the information society – our new clients. We also aspire to support the local context around us whose main value is the sharing of knowledge and the ability to communicate. The possibility to obtain information describing the effects of architectural actions allows us to create solutions that are both useful and not damaging to the environment.

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From Computer Aided Design to Computer Aided Theory Harking back to the DIY issues I mentioned earlier, hardware and software have had to provide access to a programmatically unprepared, wide range of users. While technology that supports this DIY trajectory is good, access to this computing layer is now veiled by intuitive interfaces that drastically simplify the essence of architectural tasks. These tasks are based on a flexible and variable set of rules that allow consumers to automate them. However, what concerns me is that these consumers are unable to properly reflect on the theoretical phenomena of multi-layer digital models nor their impact on design. For these consumers, I suggest that humanities and computer science students might be kept at a safe distance from each other, because computers are often based on loose, open sets of rules and this database of comparative cases will never fill the entire set of possibilities available from trained designers. While computer aided methodology has certainly been implemented in the disciplinary fields of humanities and natural sciences, a completely different set of reasoning often occurs in architecture, one that is based on collection of subjective as well as reductive, objective data. In the application of computers to architectural design the knowledge base tends to contain a multiform collection of standard information. However, analysis, inference and the shaping of hypotheses still remain in the domain of research labs. Perhaps I can draw on an analogy here from the theory of music. When the medieval monk Guido of Arezzo utilized a pseudo-algorithm for the composition of

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choral melodies in the instructions for his singers (14), such applications of formulas were able to produce a functional tool for automatic composition of minuets and trios (Musikalisches Würfelspiel). Later on this very same strategy was used by contemporary composer David Cope in his automatic music compositions (15). Thus emphatic opportunities are often developed over time with formalized theoretical analysis learnt from in-depth reflections inside a particular discipline’s historical context. The point is that structural rules, present in groups of stylistically coherent strategies, can sometimes lead to the creation of efficient mechanisms for analysis elsewhere. In the field of architecture and urban planning, records of historical treaties can be combined with contemporary application results to define the general principles and goals of design. These results can be found in the more experimental forms of buildings that represent various epochs and stylistic trends, as well as coherent and orderly images. For a long time the theory of architecture, was primarily associated with historical methods of analysis but here I have argued for continued research into computer aided architecture and design, so as to re-think the discipline of architecture itself. Tools, such as Planmaker and Facademaker (16) were able to generate new projects in line with systematic rules. Also, for Hersey and Freedman an automatic generator of projects was actually not their focus. Instead, their own experiential knowledge of design led them to experiments that could verify the accuracy of their hypothesis. The use of computers as a tool is not an end in itself, but architects have achieved the possibility to reconstruct some of

As I have shown in the music analogy, the very evolution of digital methodology can later end up supporting new theories. From the technical role of collecting data by managing text and information, technology has evolved into an arrangement of various forms – including spatial patterns. Technology has the ability to analyze this material through various programmable processes. The impact of technological evolution on society is huge, but it comes with a delay and it is difficult to confidently predict the effect. Digital reinforcement of the analytical capability of a man described by Mitchell (17) as an extension of mind, increases the independence of individuals and weakens the sense of authority. While such approaches could positively influence the rationality of individual decisions, it could also weaken the sense of community. In architecture, theoretical support helps to fill ta gap, which for centuries was not very precise. In this way, Hersey and Freedman (1992) verbalized thoughts not written down by Palladio. If digital extensions are kept within the limits set by humankind’s ethical priorities, knowledge, accelerated reasoning and experimentation might be fruitful and perhaps even provide hints for problem-solving. Risks created by IT in the social sphere are often related to loss of control and digital diseases that affect the digital part of our hybrid mind (as they are described by Stanislaw Lem (18) and William Mitchell (19)). In the social sphere, such problems can affect the decisions of the community by filtering and calibrating the messages. Even in

heavily oriented areas, such as architecture, web portals can already shape our sense of taste, standards and prestige. In the global sphere will we be threatened by the domination of a new social force of conformity? What would be the theory and pragmatics of the impact of artificial intelligence on these social communities and their housing? In architecture we strive to design new, expanded environments and we need precise, programmable tools to do it. More importantly, we have had to change our ways of communicating about space and the application of networks. Furthermore, digital media, and the method of recording the architectural idea is slowly coming closer to the way a musician designs a musical composition – by defining or expanding the limitations that are creatively set by the author. Designing space with electronic implementation provides a multitude of representations and it also generates space for interpretation. Opening up access for students to spatially receptive simulation tools – even to buildings that do not exist – may change the interactive potentials of different spaces and our relationship to them. These new concepts include telepresence, remote participation discourses, questions about the control of traditional architectural parameters, and the need to interactively modify scenarios of usage. In this chapter I have speculated that the relationship between the architect and the client will change and that DIY competence may even replace industrial specialization! Through the process of digital creation and fabrication, perhaps the architect will expand his or her roles to include those of manager, programmer and coordinator. But who knows what roles he or she will have in the future?

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the rules and, to ascertain whether they form a coherent interdependent system.

References

Endnotes

—— Deleuze, G 1997, 'Postscript on the Societies of Control' in Leach, N (ed.) Rethinking Architecture, London. —— Gibson, JJ 1950, The Perception of the Visual World, Houghton Mifflin, Boston. —— Hersey, G, Freedman, R 1992, Possible Palladian Villas (Plus few Instructively Impossible Ones), Cambridge. —— Le Corbusier 2000, Le Modulor and Modulor 2, Birkhäuser Architecture. —— Manovich, L 2002, The Language of New Media, MIT Press . —— Saggio, A 2010, The IT Revolution in Architecture. Thoughts on a paradigm shift, New York. —— Słyk, J 2012, Z´ródła architektury informacyjnej, Warszawa. —— Spengler, O 2006 The Decline of the West (Abridged), Oxford University Press. —— Wiener, N 1956, The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society, NewYork . —— Wittkower, R 1998, Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism, Wiley.

1 Saggio, A 2010, The IT Revolution in Architecture. Thoughts on a paradigm shift, New York, pp. 89-90. 2 Le Corbusier 2000, Le Modulor and Modulor 2, Birkhäuser Architecture. Manovich, L 2002, The Language of New Media, MIT Press. 3 Manovich, L 2001, The Language of New Media. MIT Press. 4 Saggio, A 2010, The IT Revolution in Architecture. Thoughts on a paradigm shift, New York, pp. 94-96. 5 Gibson, JJ 1950, The Perception of the Visual World, Houghton Mifflin, Boston. 6 Deleuze, G. 1997, 'Postscript on the Societies of Control' in Leach N. (ed.) Rethinking Architecture, London, pp. 292-299. 7 Słyk, J. 2012, Z´ródła architektury informacyjnej, Warszawa. 8 Duarte, JP 2001, Customizing mass housing: a discursive grammar for Siza’s Malagueira houses. Doctoral Thesis at MIT, Cambridge. 9 Wiener, N 1956, The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society, NewYork. 10 Herrnstein, R, Boring, E 1966, A source book in the history of psychology, Harvard University Press, Massachusetts. 11 Crippa, MA 2003, Antonio Gaudi, 1852-1926, from Nature to Architecture, Koln, pp 43. 12 Otto, F 1959, Dachy wisza¸ce: forma i konstrukcja, Warszawa, pp 89. 13 Słyk, J 1999, Znaczenie zespołów urbanistycznych duz·ej skali dla kompozycji funkcjonowania i rozwoju s´ ródmies´cia Warszawy w latach 1700-1999. Doctoral Thesis at FA WUT, Warszawa. 14 Loy, G 2006, Musimathics – the mathematical foundations of music, MIT Press, pp 286. 15 Cope, DH 2000, The Algorithmic Composer, Madison, pp. 25. 16 Hersey, G, Freedman, R 1992, Possible Palladian Villas (Plus few Instructively Impossible Ones), Cambridge, pp 108. 17 Mitchell, W 2004, Me++. The cyborg self and the networked city, MIT Press. 18 Lem, S 1974, The Futurological Congress, Seabury Press. 19 Mitchell, W 2004, Me++. The cyborg self and the networked city, MIT Press.

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GALLERY B Anna Achtelik

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Interrogating the Sublime: Reconstructions Anna Achtelik

The “sublime” was a term used by American critics to describe the vastness and emotion of landscape paintings in the beginning of the 19th century. These artists like Asher Brown Durant, Albert Bierstadt and William Hardt from the USA and Caspar David Friedrich in Europe focused on the mastery of humans over the landscape and at the same time the insignificance of humans embodied in nature. Here they explored a romantic reconstruction of nature and simultaneously, because of the Industrial Revolution, a disorder or turbulence that underlay their investigations. The “sublime” embodied nature is conceived as having a great, overwhelming and mostly dangerous capacity to simultaneously evoke awe and fear. Nature within these paintings was seen as the untouched natural utopia, which has the capacity to overwhelm the individual through its unpredictability. The pastoral and sublime grew out of the Dutch and Italianate landscape tradition of the 17th century. While the pastoral created a safe and escapist view of the progress that surrounded the time, the sublime broke with this safely constructed utopian view, of calm nature without human influence. Due to the industrial revolution, landscape painting inhabited these two distinct spheres, which mirrored human thought about nature and their resultant place within it. The pastoral, with rolling lush landscapes showed us a tame version of the natural, a nostalgic and symbiotic view of our environment. Its definition aligned with a

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very romantic, utopian and peaceful harmony. The other sphere was the untamed, uncontrolled natural space, or the wild, symbolizing a loss of control from human interference. The sublime landscape became in a sense a new form of the memento mori or vanitas, where there is a sense of our own frail and entropic eventuality (1). Today, utopian awe and unpredictable fear, are still two sides of the “sublime” natural world, which artists are still exploring today. This includes the navigation of our abilities to control and restructure chaos, through technology and social constructs,

For example, a causality that Tamiko Thiel and the artist group T+T investigated was based on the history of the Berlin Wall. As is well known, the Berlin Wall stands for a man-made division from turbulent times. As a virtual enactment and tribute to this disorder, T+T (media artist Tamiko Thiel and architect/media artist Teresa Reuter) created Virtuelle Mauer/ReConstructing the Wall. This work is an interactive 3D virtual reality installation “on” the Berlin Wall and the surrounding street and landscape directly next to the section. The location primarily centred on Heinrich-HeineStrasse to Engelbecken. All three share a common interest in artistic interventions in the public domain by comparing the virtual with the real – and in creating spaces of memory to explore cultural, social and political issues (see Figures 1-3). The resultant work is a pioneering, virtual bodily experience to augment a set of dramatic and poetic capabilities of interactive reality as an experiential and participatory Gesamtkunstwerk. Based on Reuter’s architecture and urban planning studies in Berlin, where she examined the effect of the Berlin Wall – and later its disappearance – on the

fabric of the city, the work explores themes of cognitive mapping, appropriation and identity. When I personally explored the work in Thiel’s studio, it was on a regular computer screen, in Munich. I was struck by how real the experience became in the instant that Thiel asked me to approach the boundary line in the East. The format I explored was not the original full dark room installation, where even the height of the projection was taken into consideration to give the effect of walking into the space of the Berlin Wall. Even on a computer screen in full daylight, I became aware of apprehension, and surprisingly even panic while “walking” up to the guards. I am aware that my own background and growing up in Warsaw, Poland, does contribute to this. Thiel explained that it was not uncommon for people with no ties to this history, to react with a sense of self-preservation, aligning their identity to a new experience; learning through an experience which promotes “false memory construction”, the hidden and unwritten rules of survival on both sides of the Wall. In addition to the creation of a fully interactive space, the artists (with T+T group member Sabe Wunsch), also created 2D digital paintings so as to distort the landscape, compress time and space or to draw single images from complex histories. “We created these images partially because 2D allows the artist to collapse time and space into a single, pregnant image in a way that the interactive experience of the Virtualle Mauer itself only unfolds over time.” Thiel (June 2015). This work uses the seduction of virtual reality to explore the interactive memory space of communication, time travel and dialogical city walks with residents, children and contemporary witnesses in Berlin.

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as well as how nature, ecology, and technology are positioned within societies to create new orders or chaos. While turbulence and reconstruction are not limited to positive or negative aspects, the affects of new technologies on artistic production are still interesting for artists to explore. The artists in this gallery were chosen because they believe in confronting the reality of our current issues or satirizing this “sublime” escape, to create a complex causality and confront the affects of our technologies seriously.

Fig. 1: Virtuelle Mauer / ReConstructing the Wall by Tamiko Thiel, Teresa Reuter & Sabe Wunsch, Berlin, 2008.

In doing so it investigates a novel mix of nostalgia “the sublime” and “pregnant” reconstructions of the negative affects of restrictive urban division. The sublime in this case is not the overpowering and uncontrollable effects of nature by the individual, but a human construction that grew wildly and ended evoking both awe and fear. In another project called Dancing with Drones a project by Josephine Starrs & Leon Cmielewski, these urban divisions are

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becoming more porous with the invention of new technologies like Drones. With drone survelliance, the main question is: who is controlling the gaze and who becomes the subject? In Dancing with Drones, Starrs & Cmielewski integrate drones, cinema, theatre and live choreographed dance performance. In their documentation on Vimeo, https://vimeo.com/115416708, a theatrical version of the performance, the choreographer and dancer Alison Plevey exhibits a range of different emotions, including curiosity, agitation, engagement

Gallery B / Anna Achtelik

Fig. 2: Border Soldier Luckauerstrasse, Tamiko Thiel, Berlin 2008.

Fig. 3: Tunnelflucht Sebastianstrasse, Tamiko Thiel, Wunsch and Reuter, Berlin 2008.

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and resignation. Meanwhile on the back wall we see a projection of her dancing with a drone in a sublime natural setting, as we hear the constant whirring of the drone’s propellers. Slowly it becomes evident that the original dance in nature was actually filmed using a drone, as the viewpoints shift to show Alison Plevey precariously shot from above. Simultaneously, on a second covered stage, she takes on the character of the drone – an object that ‘sees,’ and is both part and separate from the gaze of Alison Plevey on the stage. Thus, the multiple observation potentials and danger of the drone is personified. The viewer is left contemplating if the gaze of the drone is a controlled human extension, or if it is purely an uncontrolled technological force exerting its influence onto its subject. Therefore, this interesting media art performance is situated at the juncture of cinema as a window onto a reality that has become a new wilderness: one that is interlaced with technical surveillance and the connotations of drone warfare (see Figures 4 and 5). Dancing with Drones is one aspect of a larger project, Augmented Terrain, a set of immersive video installations documented on the web, that re-imagines the relationship between the self, nature and our technical culture. Many media artists utilize web platforms to document, share and widely disseminate their interests, demands, opinions and aspirations, some even provide actual platforms for communities to create their own artefacts and comments about turbulence and reconstruction (2). In 2011 Eugenio Tisselli, made the first artistic intervention with other collaborators (Hillbeck and 162

Schlaepfer-Miller) that has actually enabled smallscale farmers in Tanzania to collaboratively create a community memory about their knowledge and practices related to agriculture. Since then, the participants of Sauti ya wakulima / The voice of the farmers have used smartphones and a web platform to document, share and widely disseminate their interests, demands, opinions and aspirations. The project may be openly accessed at http:// sautiyawakulima.net (see Figures 6 and 7). By using an open source software toolkit for the collaborative creation of community memories, The ojoVoz project, Tiselli has collaborated to carry out extended workshops in small-scale farming communities in other parts of the world. By applying this technology in small-scale farming communities he not only strengthens their reciprocal practices while amplifying the voices of their members, but also questions the role of information and communications technologies in contributing to the creation of environments in which subsistence farmers may exercise their own values and make their voices heard. Artists like Eugenio are clearly interested to encourage technological appropriation, induce reciprocity and amplify voice under certain sociotechnical conditions and environmental hazards like climate change. Similarly, they fit within a context of other eco-artists like Juanita Schlaepfer-Miller, who are looking at the future design of nature in our urban environments when climate change is a “given”. In Climate Hope Garden (2085) we, the embodied viewers, are faced with a paradox: the need to change our environment to suit the changes wrought by the climate crises, which is, in turn, a disaster of our own making!

Gallery B / Anna Achtelik

Fig. 4: Dancing with Drones Josephine Starrs & Leon Cmielewski, with Alison Plevey (performer) 2015.

Fig. 5: Dancing with Drones: Josephine Starrs & Leon Cmielewski, with Alison Plevey (performer) 2015.

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For Juanita Schlaepfer-Miller, The Climate Hope Garden (2085) brings climate scenarios to a human temporal and spatial scale, and considers the role of science and culture in imagining our future green cities, landscape and agriculture. She introduces the project by asking, How would a summer feel in the Swiss lowlands in 2085? What will our grandchildren grow in their gardens that year? For many people it’s hard to imagine what a few degrees difference will make to the discussions around climate change, which don’t only centre on the facts of our changing environment but should focus on the emotions of fear, denial and acceptance of our precarious position. Furthermore, by concentrating on a specific location like Zurich, the project becomes a more tangible and culturally relevant way for local communities to reconsider their own “agency”. We hear about the likelihood of extreme weather events and global average temperature changes of 1.7 to 6 °C, but what does this mean for Switzerland? The Climate Hope Garden (2085) brings together expertise from the natural sciences, humanities and the arts to engage the public in events and dialogue around plants in a changing climate. Her hope is to produce a manual for other communities around the world to create a Climate Hope Garden (2085) based on their own downscaled scenarios. For example, in Zürich ryegrass, clover, sunflowers, wheat, maize and chard, will be grown in two greenhouse compartments. One was set to the temperature of the A2 business as usual scenario, and the other was set to the representative concentration pathways (RCP3PD), or the best case scenario. Half the plants in each compartment were given 8-28% less water as defined by the scenarios (Meteoschweiz/ETH CH-2011) (see Figures 8 and 9).

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The Climate Hope Garden (2085) also incorporates storytelling and poetry in the garden, workshops on “How to eat from the wild” and a post-carbon survival skills brochure. Here we see the possibility for a controlled utopian vision that is ironically derived from our dystopic natural future: one where we might still have some control over the smallness and precariousness of our own existence in an ecosystem that is not ideal to sustaining our own existence. I see this work as the new pastoral, a very controversial comment on the future of sublime elements in nature. Why are artistic interventions like these important? These works all address the uncanny issues of “authentic” nature and the realities of a technology that can negatively, positively or educationally affect us and how our behaviour and how our attitudes toward nature might need to be re-thought. These artists focus on the use of technology to redesign nature, to survey or destroy humans, to raise awareness or to offer the hope of representation and local exchange and reciprocity; at the same time, they address the insignificance of the human embodied inside nature. In this light, they are an interrogation of the sublime.

Endnotes 1 Momento Mori, or Vanitas, is the label used for the Dutch paintings from the 17th century for images that were paradoxical, for example a rich bowl of ripe fruit with a fly. Other symbols included candle flames, clocks and skulls to represent fragility and paradox. 2 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/

Gallery B / Anna Achtelik

Fig. 6: Participants of Sauti ya wakulima receive training by Eugenio Tisseli on how to use the ojoVoz mobile app. Bagamoyo, Tanzania, January 2011.

Fig. 7: Participants of Sauti ya wakulima gathered around the local project coordinator in Chambezi, Bagamoyo, Tanzania, March 2011. Photo credits this page: Juanita Schlaepfer-Miller. License: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License (CC BY-NC-ND). 165

Fig. 8: The Climate Hope Garden (2085) Juanita Schlaepfer-Miller. Swiss Federal University-ETH Zurich, 2014. Plot 1 the best-case scenario was set at 21°C and 45% humidity. Plants used in the experiment included: feed grass – Festuca pratensis feed grass – Festuca rubris emmer – Triticum dicoccum wheat – Triticum aestivum L. lucerne – a forage crop Medicago sativa maize – Zea mays swiss chard – Beta vulgaris sunflower – Helianthus annuus cucumber – Cucumis sativus

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Fig. 9: The Climate Hope Garden (2085) Juanita Schlaepfer-Miller, ETH Zurich, 2014. Plot 2: The worst case scenario of no emission controls was set at 24.9°C and 30% humidity. As the plants died in this climate chamber they were replaced by their cyanotype images.

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TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY

Resilient Society Agnieszka Jelewska

The aim of this text is to raise questions about resilience as a category that describes how people can adapt to the changing modes of existence within technological systems; these systems not only include animals, plants, minerals, chemicals and atmospheric particles, but also fragments of codes and information. Thus resilience can be applied not only on a social and ecological level, but also on a technological one. From this perspective, resilient life forms are linked together by a deep interrelated mesh: one that requires new forms of transdisciplinary research in science, humanities and art. This resilient mesh could include the organizational capacity of individual bodies to navigate their way through both social and ecological problems. These issues might be evident for example in studies on various “at risk” populations, such as: demobilized young soldiers, high school dropouts, urban poor, and on a broader scale, human and non-human displacements caused by climate change. On the technological level, resilience could be seen as a socially and politically constructed pressure. This pressure constantly responds in feedback loops to the network of collective human and nonhuman agents. As in all life formed systems, connected and disconnected scenarios have tipping points that fluctuate between turbulence and reconstruction, corresponding to human and non-human states of being. My brief examples include wearable technology (as new devices for monitoring a social state of alert), resilience in a network society (the role of Anonymous in the Arab Spring) and the resilience in education (The World Peace Game). 169

Those who don’t feel in their bones that they might lose the world, must have difficulty feeling alive. B. Latour (1) In his most recent publications such as World at Risk (2009) and Weltrisikogesellschaft: Auf der Suche nach der verlorenen Sicherheit (2007), Ulrich Beck, one of the most quoted sociologists dealing with risks, focuses on new definitions of disasters and threats, that according to him, reconfigure the modern dimension of development and coming into being of societies. In which these societies moreover anticipate profound changes in how the individual is defined. The new types of risks are triggered by expected and forecasted global disasters. According to Beck, a vital role in world risk within a society is played out by the “staging of risk”. The “staging perspective” is premised on the inaccessibility of an “objective” risk, one that we cannot know for certain. This is caused for example by the fact that risk is a category which factors in both present and future events; it is therefore linked to an anticipation of a disaster. According to the author, “risks are invariably future events that may happen to us, and may threaten us” (2). On these grounds, we assume that there are reasons for prognosticating future risks; however, we may only stage the risk in question. Therefore risk can become a social construct, used to cognitively understand particular threats, which in turn are analysed descriptively: “Global risks have the ability to press-gang, so to speak, an unlimited number of actors who want nothing to do with one another” (3). The nature of these world risks make them into objects of political activity, but only at the cosmopolitan level. Therefore risks are treated as activators of a new social order.

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A major element of ‘global risk’ is the creating of global conflicts, where risk is defined, and various ways of dealing with the conflicts are negotiated. The lines of these conflicts go beyond traditional political divisions and national state borders, forcing the emergence of new coalitions that focus on danger. This is precisely how I wish to demonstrate the emergence of a new type of society, the resilient society: one which not only has to continually learn how to survive catastrophes but is also subject to on-going anticipatory training. As Julian Reid observes: “Policy-makers engaging in the discourse of resilience do so in terms which aim explicitly at preventing humans from conceiving danger as a phenomenon from which they might seek freedom from and, in contrast, as that which they must now expose themselves to.” (4)

What does resilience really mean? Resilience is a term and concept, but also a kind of toolbox for designing a modern society. It takes advantage of many sciences: from ecology, climatology, through the social sciences, to technologic engineering strategies, including molecular biology and genetics. For example, in metallurgy, resilience denotes the sturdiness of a given material, or the ability to offset the shock of a sudden change of temperature and state of matter. In general biology, the term is applied to the adaptive skills of species and their ability to counter adverse environmental conditions in order to survive and defend themselves in any situation. In turn, in ecology the term is used to describe the ability of the ecosystem to sustain all vital functions in situations of disruption, and to subsequently return

Resilience is also a term that is deeply intertwined with system theory: a view of life that is made up of systems and the ability of those systems to survive disturbance. It is with this aspect we should see the connections between the concept of resiliency and cybernetics, and specifically to second-degree cybernetics; where the system is deeply connected to its surroundings, and the notion of codependence is understood as a process of cognition, and where the ethics of sustainability replaces the moral philosophy of rights (Maturana and Varela 1972) (6). Moreover, we may remember Félix Guattari and his way of redefining and extending self-organization – which Varela only reserved for the biological world – into the world of inorganic matter and machines. Some of the major examples of classical activities within the field of bio-machine resilience systems, are the first experiments with environmental intelligence carried out in the 1950s by Heinz von

Foerster, the founder of the Biological Computer Laboratory (BCL), a research unit at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering at the University of Illinois (7). Most of the studies conducted at BCL focused on systems theory, in particular the possibility of combining the biologic with the electronic. The scientific objective of the laboratory was to analyse, formalise and implement biological processes in technological solutions, and the other way around. However, first and foremost BCL tried to comprehend the adaptive processes of species in the face of all kinds of risks, threats and catastrophes. Many of the prototype projects embodied systems of self-organisation, observed at the level of biology and physics. During the first conference on self-organisation, still in the late 1950s, von Foerster tried to win over his colleagues to this idea, indicating that all living organisms, like other compiled systems, consume energy from the environment, and order themselves in contact with the surrounding environment. He thus invoked the second principle of thermodynamics as well as the interpretations of entropy; according to which life is a constant shift from the state of chaos to equilibrium. This interaction between global chaos and local environments was, according to von Foerster, the essence of self-organisation at the biologic, chemical, physical and other levels. The bio-computers he prototyped in his laboratory aimed to operate according to this fundamental function of the universe. Electronic feedback and loops would react to the states of chaos and order; the paths of interactions at various levels of understanding and defining life. This was one example in laboratory conditions, which as early as the 1960s, began to develop the principles of translation between bios and techné. The two were becoming increasingly interlinked via

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to equilibrium. This concept of resilience was first introduced by Crawford Stanley Holling in the early 1970s. It was defined as the persistence of natural systems in the face of change within ecosystem variables, due to either natural or anthropogenic causes (5). In ecological discourses, another dimension appeared some time ago that was relevant to the design of a resilient society. It referred to the absorption of adversities and the reorganisation of the system at the time of crisis. Thus the resiliency of the system is not so much a return to the previous state, one from before the emergency happened, but rather to a shift in the system’s endurance via similar mechanisms, and its “openness” to the new potential risks.

feedback models, self-organisation and resiliency tests within system activities. One of the major projects to be tested in von Foerster’s laboratory, the famous Adaptive Reorganizing Automaton, did not measure or calculate anything. It was an embodiment test about the adaptive capacities of an entire system of self-organisation and recurrence. I refer to this project at length because it is a clear signal, one of the many from that period that begins to act on techno-biological organisms. It is proof of the strong resilient interconnections between the biological and the technological even in the 1950s and 1960s. The translation of the ways of operation of one system (based on technology and information) into the other one (biological, social, and cultural) generated crucial problems we still grapple with today. These problems arise within the framework of what we can define as a resilient society project, where individuals and social groups are subject to specialised procedures, and are prepared for beingat-risk. The bio-political aspect of this situation is stressed in studies by Julian Reid (2012). In The Neoliberal Subject. Resilience and the Art of Living Dangerously, Reid indicates that still deeper levels come out of the resilient society projects like the growth of molecular biology. Indeed, the very idea of life as a phenomenon of finitude, vulnerability, and exposure to danger has been valorised by molecular biology throughout its history, as a condition of possibility rather than an obstacle, for human development. To the extent that theories of economic growth have, over the last ten years, tended to merge and benefit from their intersection with theories of how life grows and develops, especially at the molecular level, through exposure to danger (8).

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As Reid stresses, a significant impact of research and theoretical concepts is especially related to molecular biology experiments conducted in the 1990s when the biologists introduced social sciences and humanities into their general discourse and this redefined the bio-political. This significance was addressed among others by Michel Foucault, who revealed that social life was shifted towards a state of being that is now permanently exposed to dangers that are not only beyond the abilities of the individual to overcome, but necessary for the prosperity of life and wellbeing (9). Within experiments on environmental intelligence and deterministic evolution theories, from Reid’s perspective of molecular biology: The exposure to danger is a constitutive process in the development of living systems, and thus their problem is never how to secure themselves from it but how to develop the resilience which enables them to absorb the perturbations, disturbances, and changes in their structure which occur in the process of their exposure to it. And so the human, conceived in accordance with the laws that determine the life of other living systems, must develop the selfsame capacities for resilience, enabling it to avoid the temptation to secure itself from danger, exposing itself in contrast to danger, while learning how to absorb the perturbations that occur to it in that process of exposure (10). In the many varied contemporary discourses, resilience has also become a practical tool: some tools consist of psychological training (therapies) or physical training (e.g. military and survivalist). In all of these fields the term has a common denominator that refers to the strategies of flexibility of human life and experience. These all focus on the

Designing the resilient society Designing the resilient society occurs concurrently at two levels – at the level of resiliency (i.e. instantaneous actions-reactions triggered in response to a crisis), and anticipation (i.e. ongoing preparation for crisis and trauma management). As Loup Francart (2010) observes, “resilience is the ability to create a structure such as crisis or shock, even—or perhaps especially—when it is completely

unpredictable, can be withstood by a company, perhaps to the extent that the company could even be stronger after the event. Thus we see the existence of organisational resilience. Karl E. Weick referred to highly reliable organisations as those capable of revising their routines whenever they are confronted with new, insurmountable problems. For him, analysis and identification of resilience factors in such highly reliable organisations would eventually lead to identification of a structural model that could be transferred to others.” (11) From this perspective, the structures of resilience, as Loup Francart stresses, may be divided into a few stages of operation: 1. Anticipation: Ongoing preparation for a crisis, anticipating possible negative impact and designing measures to neutralize it. 2. Planning: Developing procedures and preparing technical and linguistic operations, allowing for an immediate creation of crisis management centres; such as field hospitals, centres of alternative energy production, etc. 3. Communication: Designing communication me-thods effective in emergency situations. In line with the analysis of data from past ecological disasters, or terrorist attacks; the part of the population at risk of insufficient information becomes easily pessimistic, and mistrustful towards the environment and assistance measures. 4. Simulation: Full-scale simulation exercises engaging many actors from various social milieus and groups in a staged crisis situation.

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constant return to the state of equilibrium in a situation of crisis, catastrophe and trauma. Resilience is a method of coping with an emergency. Resilience is seen also as a management strategy, here the management of life and a sense of psycho-physical stability of the individual and community should be properly set into motion in case of emergencies. Resilience should propose how to cope with a trauma/crisis in a way preventing a secondary impact of negative effects. A lack of the return of trauma is precisely one of the most crucial features, which differentiates resilience between other concepts of crisis management. In practice, resilience mainly becomes a feature acquired over time during a process of all kinds of psychophysical training sessions and might be, consciously or otherwise, a behavioural reaction of the body or an affective feature of a new society. Another crucial question arises when considering that conditioning via resilience may take place at the individual level and as well be incorporated as a form of meta-structure in larger units: communities and all their operating systems. Thus resilience is an integral part of our global sociopolitical reality.

5. Cooperation and coordination is seen at all levels: efficient and tested management patterns streamline the collaboration of different services, groups and communities. 6. Reactivity: The technological society sees communication as the fundamental value; the same is true about reactions to situations that violate the equilibrium. Therefore postponing decision-making and action taking profoundly affects the neutralization of crises. (12) A structurally implemented resilience mechanism (in individuals, groups and societies) has a preventive and stabilizing impact. However, one has to keep in mind that within the strategies and actions covered by the umbrella term “resilience” we can discover a complex tangle of political and economic situations. All of these situations have their roots in the experience of both world wars, in the risks of a potential use of nuclear arms, in the currently mounting postcold-war conflicts in Europe, and in global terrorist activities. Alternatively the roots of resilience also stem from natural disasters and changes in the ecosystem, which include: climate change triggered by emissions from technological advances and hyper-consumerism. We should also take into consideration the problems of bio-technological engineering and bio-politics, “dictated by the fundamental law of ‘emergence’, which requires that they engage in a continual process of exposure to danger even to the point of potential catastrophe.” (13) Thus our reflections on a present-day resilient society enter the zone of designed and developed consciousness of contemporary neoliberal entities. Thus “the problem becomes not how to secure

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the human, but how to enable the system to outlive its proclivity for security: how to alter its disposition in relation with danger so that it construes danger not as something it might seek freedom from, but which it must live in exposure to.” (14) In relation to our online society, the practices of resilience are global. As Beck observes, these practices simply demand global solutions and immersion in the world, where we anticipate successive disasters at all levels, and in various fields of life. In the hybrid systems of communication the “performance of life” is taking place in these technologically mediated global systems combining the human and the non-human into the same possible apocalypse and a permanent premonition.

Resilience as a new simulation anthropotechnique In his book You Must Change Your Life Peter Sloterdjik (2013) describes the human species as the one which has, from the very start, subjected itself to all kinds of anthropotechniques; which condition it, but without which individuals would be unable to develop (15)(16). As demonstrated by this text, in the core of every human, there is an element of self-creation. A person’s activities incessantly affect them: the work affects the worker; the communicated affects the communicator; the emotions affect the emoter. The notion of anthropotechniques can also affect resilient techniques as seen in the simulation, the anticipation and the preparation of people via training sessions to cope with imminent disasters. The problem is tied to the concept of a new post-technological society, where

Agnieszka Jelewska

Fig. 1: U.S. President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden, along with members of the national security team, receive an update on Operation Neptune’s Spear, a mission against Osama bin Laden, in the Situation Room of the White House, May 1, 2011. They are watching live feed from drones operating over the Bin Laden complex (public domain).

Fig. 2: Fitness Tracking Wearables. “You just have to take care of your body regularly and pay attention to what it needs“ – new anthropotechiques. Photo: Ariel Zambelich/Wired (CC BY-NC 3.0).

technological tools are not only used to develop more advanced training methods, but initially enter the bio-political zone, connected with the reception of data about the psycho-physical fitness of individual entities.

of a present-day training for society. The devices that keep us abreast of our health status and physical fitness motivate us to a consistent realisation of the personal training regime, regulating sleeping patterns and responsible consumption of wholemeal products. Coupled with mechanisms of gamification that trigger competition and urge us to constantly improve our results, they create a society intent on increasing efficiency (at the level of physical fitness, professional quality and satisfaction with one’s personal life). Concrete sensors placed on the body, be they watches, rings, bracelets, or bands collect thousands of biometric data points on our behaviour. They analyse our biological condition on an ongoing basis, pinpointing us onto a map via GPS technology and remembering the tiniest details of our life rhythm. The question of access to this data and its storage is unclear. Without a shadow of doubt, servers of many compa-

Somatic technologies and wearables that receive data from our private environment may be used for a host of different purposes. On the one hand, they may meet the demand to construct a healthy life, filled to the brim with friends we are in constant touch with. On the other hand, they may be a resilient mechanism, preparing society for new forms of flexibility. These members of culture try, through a healthy body, to participate to the full in different forms of the economy of experience. The rather obsessive idea of a healthy lifestyle is a feature of the consumer culture. This preoccupation of the population also facilitates the construction

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nies store our biometric copies and weave all these pieces of our biologic activity data together. On the social perspective, this helps to create health and physical activity profiles for entire societies. Constant monitoring becomes a bottom-up element of the resilience culture of a society, which can itself start to create an exercise and training program. Within this complex node of issues it is evident how well the resiliency practices can embody the present-day individual, who is not only subjected to strategies imposed from above, but they themselves take on these strategies to be continued and developed.

World Game, or resilience as anticipation and planning One of the major strategies that fit into the framework of the resilient society project and originate in cybernetic thinking about the resilience of the system and anticipation of risks was developed by one of the most important twentieth-century architects and engineers, Buckminster Fuller. In the 1960s, he described the earth as a system closed as to its organisation, yet open as to its function (in that it was part of the cosmos and utilised solar energy). Fuller imagined that at the basic level of organisation, just like in the first cybernetic circuits and feedbacks, the earth should be observed and managed by the elite, via a cutting-edge computer-based calculation strategy. This elite would be able to predict all kinds of risks and prevent them with accessible technology. Even when a disaster occurred it could be restored by the functionality and operability of the system. According to Fuller and to many other architects, ecologists

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and scholars with a systemic provenance, in order for the human race to survive we had to understand that our planet is not infinite. Its resources are dwindling while population is on the rise. This rather apocalyptic position was also characteristic of many other scholars of that time. Through this position, a present-day approach to the earth’s situation as a planet was anticipated by the activating artists, architects and scholars who lent their support to develop the ecosystem. This state of emergency was supposed to set new creative and vital forces into motion with a view to prepare people for various scenarios of the earth’s annihilation. At the same time, such a situation augmented a sense of awe, entanglement and enclosure within the system; but it was also inspirational for many artists and architects. Unless they adopt Fuller’s and others’ directives, people may be doomed to imminent death. Peter Anker, who analysed the popularity of this metaphor, highlighted that it has now become a key term in the UN dictionary, especially after UN Secretary General U Thant used it during a conference held on Earth Day in 1970. He said: “Spaceship Earth is left without central guidance and stewardship” (17). As an answer to this, we were to take some resilient action to prevent a disaster or to return it (as the human race of the earth) to the state of equilibrium before the catastrophe took place. Anker believed that, with the use of concrete procedures and learning techniques, students like future architects, engineers, planners, and artists would be able to act on a global scale with what he himself dubbed as “world planning”. Global planning was the preparation of humanity for the possible scenarios of the end of the earth, including

In the 60s outer space exploration, affected new designs and developments in science, and this enthusiasm was transferred to the fact that our earth should be treated as a spaceship – one that must also create conditions for survival of the entire ecosystem. At the same time, Fuller used game theory, a familiar discipline in the US context, as part of his education activities. These activities were supposed to become new training workshops for the chosen ones to offer them resilient strategies. Game theory is basically understood as the study of strategic decision-making. It was considered to be a very important way of coping with different scenarios of the post-war nuclear threat. The strategies of games were part of the resilient approach and were mostly underpinned by the mathematical and economic models of von Neumann and Morgenstern (1944). These procedures were also used during the war in Vietnam where calculations of computer algorithms were designed to provide reliable data on victorious battles. In the 60s, game theory was also developed by the famous American private think-tank, the RAND Corporation, in response to the armaments race of the Cold War. Fuller, however, wanted to use games to teach people how to preserve the environment and to test and “manage” the changes that were taking place on “Spaceship Earth”. He therefore used dymaxion

Agnieszka Jelewska

those where he suggested settling other planets. This concept of the exodus was strongly underpinned by resilience, in the sense that the human race had to undergo training in order to survive and return, or to develop new survival mechanisms in different extreme conditions.

Fig. 3: Situation Room: Walt Rostow shows President Lyndon B. Johnson a model of the Khe Sanh area, 15 February 1968 (public domain).

maps as a sort of set of command centres, which he hung in university halls and discussed the strategies of salvaging “Spaceship Earth” from possible destruction. He moreover constructed a model of the earth, a so-called mini-Earth and filled it with diodes, hooked it up to a computer and assigned it the task to better visualise particular hubs of risk-connected data, which was then re-processed by computer software. One could thus experiment with, and test, different disaster scenarios such as the lack of energy, water, or crude oil in particular areas. Fuller called this strategy the “World Game” and its “players” were located in different parts of the globe. Fuller often travelled and talked to other “players” about vicariously, algorithmically, and systemically solving the earth’s problems. This level of resilience and preparation were the cornerstones of Fuller’s thinking. Anticipation, the simulation of crisis situations, and the negotiation of remedies for them within theoretical concepts, were seen to be connected to technological

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solutions and systemic activities. A major element he introduced was a new form of global communication and designed methods of contact and patterns that might solve worldwide crisis. Fuller was committed to the idea that a simulation of risks would engage actors from a range of different sciences, engineering disciplines or political circles, who would then respond to a given crisis. Today this model continues to be one of the main practices of an anticipatory strategy, one often used by resilient societies to solve global conflicts and catastrophes. Another perfect example of the past’s implementation of resilience into the present day education system in neoliberal societies was John Hunter’s The World Peace Game. The World Peace Game is a hands-on political simulation that gives players the opportunity to explore the connectedness of the global community through the lens of the economic, social, and environmental crises and the imminent threat of war. The goal of the game is to extricate each country from dangerous circumstances and achieve global prosperity with the least amount of military intervention. As “nation teams,” students gain greater understanding of the critical impact of information and how it is used. As their teams venture further into this interactive social setting laced with highly charged philosophical issues, the skills needed to identify ambiguity and bias in the information they receive will be enhanced and more specifically they will rapidly perceive that reactive behaviour not only provokes antagonism, it can leave them alone and isolated

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in the face of powerful enemies. Beliefs and values will evolve, or completely unravel, as they begin to experience the positive impact and windows of opportunity that emerge through effective collaboration and refined communication. In essence, as meaning is constructed out of chaos and new creative solutions are proposed, World Peace Game players will learn to live and work comfortably at the frontiers of the unknown (18). John Hunter’s game realised all the mechanisms of resilience, starting with anticipation and planning, through communication, simulation and management to coordination and reactivity enhancement. Hunter also changed the manner of education, because on the one hand he sensitized pupils to the possible ways and strategies for negotiating resilient practices. On the other hand, he intensified and highlighted the simulation effect. This was a viable base for the development of our present-day society-at-risk.

Resilience in the Total Peace society In our current post-cold-war situation in Europe, Russia, and the United States, the resilient society may have to return to the strategy of pre-empting a disaster and its partial prophesying. These are, of course, the principal players since the situation concerns the entire power field within the geopolitical global network of interdependencies. In his 1975 book Bunker Archaeology, Paul Virilio analysed this war space as a constructive foundation of the forces that were easily transported and placed into contemporary times (19). According to

In this sense, the French scholar defines the space of the contemporary human as being immersed in a constant war, one that is dependent on relative movement and on the strategic and variable speed of this movement. As Ian James (2007) observes, this has nothing to do with connate knowledge that is contingent on sensory perception or orientation, but rather with the planning and organisation of the environment according to military require-

Agnieszka Jelewska

Virilio, being in the state of war triggers a unique and specifically understood “mobile space”, not only organised by fixed architecture but also by the flow of arms, armies and information. Invariably, all of this “mobile space” has irreversible consequences for the development of public, social and political spheres. In his theory, Virilio referred to the architecture of post-war bunkers, which he listed on the map of Europe, especially highlighting the Nazi fortification networks that were constructed on the Atlantic coast. According to him, modern wars and conflicts have become the cause of a strategic use of space. They play a fundamental protective role for man to learn how to prevent a disaster, or even return to life following tragedy through the means of man-made transformations of the environment. Often the need to concentrate people in a given area, or the need to seek new survival forms for humanity is tied to a planned military conflict! At the same time, the military projection of space is organised around the possibility of movement during the assault, or the use of the terrain, which would block the enemy’s advances and protect entry into inhabited areas. Is this then the essence of war: the relativity between the speed of assault and inertia or the blocking of access to the masses?

Fig. 4: Trinity Site explosion (nuclear test), 0.016 second after explosion, July 16, 1945 (public domain).

ments and needs (20). Each war may therefore be viewed from the perspective of the speed that is gauged by dodging and inertia, as well as from elaborate systems of developing the technology of survival and annihilation. In his Bunker Archaeology, Virilio also described the concept of “total peace” – a dream for today’s world, in particular how this dream was related to the cold war period with its nuclear experiments. The advent of the A-bomb and the ongoing threat of its use ushered in, according to Virilio, a time of “Total Peace”. But it also allowed for a continuation of the war of air strikes, and a constant, incessant preparation for catastrophe. In other words: a simultaneous development of resilience strategy. As Virilio suggested in a 1997 interview, “…the Second World War never ended … There’s no state of peace. It isn’t over because it continued in ‘Total Peace,’ that is, in war pursued by other means.” (21) The new war has become a technological one, with increased speed, force, and ways of penetration through all kinds of weaponry. According to Virilio, even if both these states were obviously divergent,

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Fig. 6: Demonstration in support of the Tunisian protests in Nantes, France, 15 January 2011, Photo by: Romain Bréget, (CC BY 3.0).

Fig. 5: Anonymous Manifesto 2011: A Message to the People of Tunisia (public domain).

the nuclear experiments still generate a constant risk, not only for those who inhabit a given area, but also for the entire globe. This type of risk prevented the possibility of delineating a clear borderline between the state of peace and war. Virilio even renamed the state of “Total Peace” in a later work as “Pure War”. So he shifted from a model where space was generated by the state of war, to the situation of the late 20th century, wherein the vision of the military and of technological combine to become one space which can impact the entire dimension of our comprehension of reality (22).

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In the last few years, we see the proof of this shift as Europe, Russia and the United States keep designing resilient societies, which have to be always alert and ready for a war disaster and ready to survive it. The media, the social networks, and even the authors of documentary and fiction films sanction these awareness trainings. The medium is the message, as Marshal McLuhan claimed. Media is just another method to model humans as resilient subjects who are constantly tested and exposed to neoliberal policies and driven forward by their anticipation of oncoming disasters.

Resilient subjects Resilient subjects, as Reid defines them, are those that have learnt lessons about the dangers of security, in order to live out a life of permanent exposure to dangers, especially those that are beyond their abilities to overcome, but also those that are

However, there is a possibility that the issues of the resilient subject, can be viewed in a broader context and provide an impetus for the emergence of new responsibilities and reactions within totalitarian societies. This resilient subject may also be “designed” by the neoliberal society, and within mechanisms that assure flexibility and resilience to variously defined states of risk and violence. However, being in the state of threat may also generate bottom-up movements that can develop new mechanisms of reaction to crisis situations. As Beck posits, “Global risks open up a moral and political space which may give rise to the civil culture of responsibility, moving beyond borders and adversities.”(24) An important example of this international grass-roots resilience movement was Operation Tunisia, carried out by the hacktivist group Anonymous. During the first events of the Arab Spring in Tunisia, Anonymous conducted a series of remote hacking interventions, which followed many government reprisals towards the protesters and attempted to block their internet accounts, including the theft of their passwords and the prevention of access to online banking. Interestingly enough, the hackivist group claimed that they had no vested interest that could directly explain its involvement in the local conflict and furthermore no evidence was found that any of the direct participants of the riots in Tunisia in 2010 and 2011 were closely tied with the group. But by means of

remote cybernetic activities, Anonymous launched a series of DDoS (Distributed Denial-of-Service) attacks against government websites. Additionally, they provided protesters with documents that they needed to take down the incumbent government, as well as distributing care packages that included Tor (The Onion Router), and a grease monkey script to avoid proxy interception by the government. They also aided in passing information about the protests in and out of the country. Not only did Anonymous focus on transmitting this vital strategic information sent via different channels, but also they provided instructions for administering first aid, reacting to affects of tear gassing and chemical weapons and treating burns. Through the use of many communication channels, including another anonymous Tor network, a.k.a. the darknet, Anonymous assured that a logistical and communications base was streamlined about the coordination of militant groups’ activities in Tunisia. To a large extent this dispatch of advice, instructions, and direct online actions created a system of communication in an extreme case of emergency. This greatly increased the reactivity of the protesters’ individual actions, and stirred a widespread sense of international responsibility about the Arab Spring.

Conclusions This resilient society project is an extremely complex confluence of phenomena related to many areas of everyday life. When new technologically mediated anthropotechniques risk-simulation strategies are added to planned global communication preparatory procedures and those procedures,

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necessary for the prosperity of their life and wellbeing. In this sense, resilience represents a significant extension of the bio-political debate and suits the drivers of neoliberal modernity (23).

which are efficient for overcoming traumatic experiences caused by different disasters, then new definitions are reached with new outcomes. A resilient society project may also provide opportunities to be creative retroactively, and to generate a civil culture of responsibility. As artist, engineer and inventor, Natalie Jeremijenko, wrote in her notes – Resilience. A Journal of the Environmental Humanities (2014), resilience means “response – ability, or a systematic capacity to respond in ways that improve shared environmental health. Resilience is not a one-time testable parameter, but requires systems of experimenting that foster the capabilities of response.” (25) From this perspective resilience should be understood as a mode of seeing, describing, and analyzing the transformations of the present-day neoliberal subject who is continuously exposed to danger. This relates back to the connections between the human, biological and technological, where the subject becomes entwined within the directives of evolutionary determinism. This view is in line with the biological maxim that “Without that exposure to danger, living systems it is said, cannot evolve, and those which do attempt to disconnect themselves from their dangers will lose touch with their own powers of propagation, to the extent that they will finally wither away and die (26).” Therefore, bio politics is expanded by the counter strategies of hyper-consumer culture, and in a way our consumer oriented “buying frenzy” tends to eliminate its own designed objective, as in the case of wearable technology. However, in many aspects, resilience techniques and strategies are simply the one and only way of societies’ coping with disaster-related traumas, inevitable risks either politically,

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economically, culturally, and individually, which we are unable to disentangle from. As McKenzi Wark suggested during one of his seminars, “salvation is unthinkable, resilience is all about survival.” Our resilient society must therefore pose new questions that create new forms of communication, collaboration and coordination, which will be indispensable for transcending and overcoming different traumas. On the other hand, the resilient society must question and negotiate the need for, and have a sense of all kinds of risks, simulations and anticipations. In the neoliberal system of Euro-American culture, we think that we choose a life of personal self-steering, or rather we have a sense of personally being able to make the choice about this life model. It depends on the way in which this mechanism is designed. Within the model of the Soviet Bloc societies, for instance (still present in many Eastern European countries) “risk” was designed to be one of the main elements for social conditioning, and this in turn created a unifying system that was forced upon all citizens. In contrast, neoliberalism offered a virtual choice, where the sense of responsibility for making it is also a manipulated design. Resilience seems to be a feature of all present and future societies, but it is a greatly dynamic and complicated construction. It offers a theoretical guarantee of equilibrium, it is a social exercise that might assure a stable state and overcome risks, both from the outside (deriving from other cultural and social models), and from within (in-house extremism). For all the prognostication and analysing, the question of how the resilient society would behave in the future, is still open. We

system. One role of a resilient strategy may well be to maintain this paradox. As McKenzi Wark (2014) described in his pessimistic style, the situation reminds us of a vicious circle. He wrote, “Resilience is government under conditions of constant apocalypse. It’s a temporality, which disperses apocalypse, but also takes away its redeeming power. It is to be endured. (...) Salvation is unthinkable, resilience is all about survival.” (27)

References —— Anker, P, 2010, From Bauhaus to Eco-House: A History of Ecological Design, Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge. —— Beck, U 2012, Critical Theory of World Risk Society: A Cosmopolitan Vision, 2009, Blackwell Publishing Ltd. —— Beck, U 2012, Społeczen´ stwo S´wiatowego ryzyka w poszukiwaniu utraconego czasu, trans. B. Baran, Scholar, Warszawa. —— Beck U, Latour B, & Selchow S, Die Apokalypse duldet keinen Sachzwang, in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, No. 112 (15.05.2014), accessed 11 May 2015 http://www.faz.net/ aktuell/feuilleton/debatten/ulrich-beck-und-bruno-latourzur-klimakatastrophe-12939499.html —— Francart, L 2010, What does resilience really mean, accessed 10 May 2015 http://www.diploweb.com/What-does-resilience-really-mean.html —— Holling, CS 1973, ‘Resilience and stability of ecological systems’, Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics, no. 4, pp. 1–23. —— James, I 2007, Paul Virilio, Routledge, London-New York. —— Jelewska, A 2013, Ekotopie. Ekspansja technokultury, AMU Press, Poznań.

—— Jeremijenko, N, ‘Manifestos’, Resilience. A Journal of the Environmental Humanities, accessed 13 May 2015 http:// www.resiliencejournal.org/what-resilience-means/manifestos/ —— Maturana, HR, Varela VJ, 1972, Autopoiesis and Cognition. The Realization of the Living, Reidel, D, Boston-London. —— Reid, J 2012, ‘The Neoliberal Subject. Resilience and the Art of Living Dangerously’, Revista Pléyade, no. 10, pp. 143-165. —— Sloterdijk, P, 1999, Regeln für den Menschenpark. Ein Antwortschreiben zu Heideggers Brief über den Humanismus, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt/M. —— Sloetrdijk, P 2013, You Must Change Your Life, Polity Press, Cambridge. —— Virilio, P 2008, Bunker Archaeology, trans. G. Collins, Princeton Architectural Press, New York. —— Wark, M, ‘Heidegger and Geology’, accessed 4 August 2015 http://www.publicseminar.org/2014/06/heidegger-and-geology/#.Vci7gUVR1FQ —— The World Peace Game, accessed 10 May 2015 http://www. worldpeacegame.org/world-peacegame-foundation/aboutthe-game

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cannot easily foresee the consequences of all the strategies that are designed to neutralize calamities and conflicts and those that create the sensation of a total and permanent threat. Both are an integral part of everyday reality. Without a shadow of doubt, this is a polarized society for which the fear of a disaster is one of its driving forces and motivations. Perhaps the removal of this fear might deconstruct the entire cultural and social

Endnotes 1 Beck U, Latour B, Selchow S, Die Apokalypse duldet keinen Sachzwang, in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, No. 112 (15.05.2014), accessed 11 May 2015 http://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/debatten/ulrich-beck-und-bruno-latour-zurklimakatastrophe-12939499.html. 2 Beck, U, 2012, after the Polish translation of the World Risk Society: Społeczen´stwo s´wiatowego ryzyka w poszukiwaniu utraconego czasu, trans. B. Baran, Scholar, Warszawa, p. 29. 3 Beck, U, 2012, Critical Theory of World Risk Society: A Cosmopolitan Vision, 2009, Blackwell Publishing Ltd., p. 6. 4 Reid, J, 2012, ‘The Neoliberal Subject. Resilience and the Art of Living Dangerously’, Revista Pléyade, no. 10, p. 145. 5 Holling, C S, 1973, ‘Resilience and stability of ecological systems’, Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics, no. 4, pp. 1–23. 6 Maturana, HR, Varela VJ, 1972, Autopoiesis and Cognition. The Realization of the Living, D. Reidel, Boston-London. 7 The Biological Computer Laboratory was opened by Heinz von Foerster on January 1, 1958. This marked the beginning of a completely new branch of research within the university and within the department of electrical engineering. Foerster was the leader of the research team between 19581974. The prototypes developed at the BCL over the course of its history included for example artificial neurons, the Numarete device, the social interaction experiment, and the dynamic signal analyzer, described in 1965. In 1966, the Visual Image Processor was presented. In 1967, a speech decoder and a real-time speech processor were mentioned. Roughly, the machines built at BCL in the 1960s could be described as “perception machines”, accessed 11 May 2015 http://bcl.ece.illinois.edu/mueller/. 8 Reid, J, 2012, ‘The Neoliberal Subject. Resilience and the Art of Living Dangerously’, Revista Pléyade, no. 10, p. 147. 9 Reid, J, 2012, ‘The Neoliberal Subject. Resilience and the Art of Living Dangerously’, Revista Pléyade, no. 10, p. 145. 10 Reid, J, 2012, ‘The Neoliberal Subject. Resilience and the Art of Living Dangerously’, Revista Pléyade, no. 10, pp. 147-148. 11 Francart, L, 2010, What does resilience really mean, accessed 10 May 2015 http://www.diploweb.com/ What-does-resilience-really-mean.html. 12 Francart, L, 2010, What does resilience really mean, accessed 10 May 2015 http://www.diploweb.com/ What-does-resilience-really-mean.html. 13 Reid, J, 2012, ‘The Neoliberal Subject. Resilience and the Art of Living Dangerously’, Revista Pléyade, no. 10, p. 147. 14 Reid, J, 2012, ‘The Neoliberal Subject. Resilience and the Art of Living Dangerously’, Revista Pléyade, no. 10, p. 145. 15 Sloetrdijk P, 2013, You Must Change Your Life, Polity Press, Cambridge. 16 Sloterdijk, P, 1999, Regeln für den Menschenpark. Ein Antwortschreiben zu Heideggers Brief über den Humanismus, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt/M. 17 Anker, P, 2010, From Bauhaus to Eco-House: A History of

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Ecological Design, Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge, p. 97. 18 The World Peace Game, accessed 10 May 2015 http://www. worldpeacegame.org/world-peacegame-foundation/aboutthe-game. 19 Virilio P, 2008, Bunker Archaeology, trans. G. Collins, Princeton Architectural Press, New York, p. 46. 20 James, I, 2007, Paul Virilio, Routledge, London-New York, p. 72. 21 James, I, Virilio, P, Routledge, London-New York, p. 77. 22 James, I, Virilio, P, Routledge, London-New York, p. 79. 23 Reid, J, 2012, ‘The Neoliberal Subject. Resilience and the Art of Living Dangerously’, Revista Pléyade, no. 10, p. 145. 24 Beck, U, 2012, Społeczen´stwo s´wiatowego ryzyka w poszukiwaniu utraconego czasu, trans. B. Baran, Scholar, Warszawa, p. 111. 25 Jeremijenko, N, ‘Manifestos’, Resilience. A Journal of the Environmental Humanities, accessed 13 May 2015 http:// www.resiliencejournal.org/what-resilience-means/manifestos/. 26 Reid, J, 2012, ‘The Neoliberal Subject. Resilience and the Art of Living Dangerously’, Revista Pléyade, no. 10, p. 147. 27 Wark, M, 2014, ‘Heidegger and Geology’, accessed 4 August 2015 http://www.publicseminar.org/2014/06/heidegger-and-geology/#.Vci7gUVR1FQ.

EMPATHETIC THINGS Juergen Moritz

In recent years we have been facing a new model of computation: smart technologies that help people to take care of themselves through the collection and quantification of data. These technologies are personalized and present themselves as being able to read and understand the conditions, situations and actions of their users. Such ‘empathetic things’ will not only pose novel new challenges for their future technological development using neuro-science, cognitive-science and nano-science. These devices will also pose an ontological challenge for us as human beings. They will have the potential to profoundly influence how people think about human development, intelligence, and intimacy. Health and fitness devices are currently among the most popular tools, but self-monitoring practices can be found in many areas of everyday life – including culture, work, and learning. They have the management of life as their focus, and play an important role in a broader trend towards self-improvement and self-cultivation – often framed as ‘quantified self’, ‘the good life’, ‘sustainable lifestyle’, ‘healthy living’, and ‘work productivity.’ Leveraging the deep psychological desire for selfmastering and self-optimization, they urge individuals to understand their bodies, and habits as something that can be measured and transformed. As such, these relational technologies function as prototypical technologies of the self (Foucault 1988) and change the dynamics of producing and expressing subjectivity.

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An Empathy Box, he said, stammering in his excitement, is the most personal possession you have. It’s an extension of your body; it’s the way you touch other humans, it’s the way you stop being alone. Philip K. Dick (1968)

In the past few years, information technology has become increasingly personal and social, and has reshaped how we perceive our environment and ourselves. The emergence of objects we can see today, whether ‘wearables’ or other ‘enchanted things,’ are the logical next steps in an evolutionary development toward computers that are better able to show empathy in relation to people: even more human-oriented, anticipative and ubiquitous. This new wave of devices seems to better understand human needs and behaviors, and engages individuals in more intimate, even symbiotic, relationships with the technological artefacts in their lives. At its root, empathetic computing is the desire to have technology that responds to the user with a minimum of direct input. Google CEO, Eric Schmidt, has called this ‘Augmented Humanity’ where networked devices “just work and understand autonomously” (Gannes, 2010). From a design perspective, these smart technologies are often developed by drawing on both technological expertise, and work in the behavioural sciences. Therefore, they are frequently designed explicitly to suit specific human cognitive processes (Verbeek, 2009). Empathetic technologies are defined by the International Consortium Of Computer Scientists, IWEC,

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Fig. 1: Google Glass, Image: P. Wattanakittiul, 2015.

a collaboration of experts in the fields of affective computing, Internet of Things, as ambient intelligence, sensor networks and psychology: Empathic computing systems are software or physical context-aware computing systems capable of building user models and provide richer, naturalistic, system-initiated empathic responses with the objective of providing intelligent assistance and support. We view empathy as a cognitive act that involves the perception of the user’s thought, affect, intention or goal, activity, and/or situation and a response due to this perception that is supportive of the user. An empathic computing system is ambient intelligent, i.e., it consists of seamlessly integrated ubiquitous networked sensors, microprocessors and software for it to perceive the various user behavioural patterns from multimodal inputs. (Dulvestein, et. al. 2014, p. 7) As the technology develops, these digital objects communicate and react with each other to create a smart ecosystem, which influences or even determines our interactions with reality (Dulvestein,

Juergen Moritz

Fig. 2: Wristify, Image: Embrlabs, 2015.

Fig. 3: GlowCap, Image: Vitality, 2015.

et. al. 2014, p. 17). They have the management of life as their focus and as such they install a new kind of ‘automatically reproduced background’ to everyday life (Thrift and French 2002, p. 309). For example, the Google Glass prototype complements the physical world that we observe around us by adding digital layers of information and mediates between the user and the environment.

pulses of hot or cold waveforms at its wearer’s wrist to help them maintain thermal comfort.

The Wristify is a thermoelectric bracelet that monitors air and skin temperature, and sends tailored

The GlowCap stands for a new approach to the management of medication through reminders, social feedbacks, financial incentives and automatic refills. Inside the cap, a chip monitors when the pill bottle is used and wirelessly relays alerts by a flashing light when it is time to take the medication. The cap refuses to open if the user has already taken their medication. If the patient has

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failed to take the medication at the correct time, the device is able to send an alert to the user or perhaps to a caregiver, depending on the seriousness of the situation. A study of 200 female users of the wearable activity-tracker Fitbit, conducted in Australia (Duus and Cooray, 2015), showed the deep attachment that users had to the device, with 77% of respondents going back to retrieve it and 45% stating they felt incomplete when not wearing the wristband. But users also seem to treat it as an ‘other’. They anthropomorphized the device, as 68% referred to it as a friend and 33% felt the device made them feel guilty for not completing tasks. A sense of loss was felt when the device was taken away with 43% stating that their exercise became a wasted experience after removing the device. Such technologies can make self-tracking alluring and remind us to improve ourselves. As Gary Wolf, one of the founders of the Quantified Self Movement states: “Automated sensors do more than give us facts; they also remind us that our ordinary behaviour contains obscure quantitative signals that can be used to inform our behaviour, once we learn to read them” (Wolf 2010). In this chapter I will explore how this new generation of surveillance-based, relational technologies become actively involved in the creation of novel forms and formats of subjectivity when they help individuals to engage in self-care and self-governance.

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Human-Technology Relations A child goes forth every day / And the first object he looked upon / That object he became. Walt Whitman, (1881-82) Leaves of Grass In their book The Meaning of Things: Domestic Symbols and the Self, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Eugene Rochberg-Halton (1981) posit that there is a mutual shaping process taking place between material environments and the human self. Their arguments imply that men and women ‘retrieve their self’ through their relations with the material world, and that these interactions strongly determine the kind of self that emerges. In a similar point, Hannah Arendt in her book The Human Condition states, “Against the subjectivity of men, stands the objectivity of the man-made world rather than the sublime indifference of an untouched nature” (Arendt 1958, p. 137). As Tirrell (2010) puts it, this imbrication of the self in a network of constructed objects that Csikszentmihalyi and Rochberg-Halton identify, underlies the structures of information-intensive environments presented in the vision of empathetic computation. Consequently, Julian Bleecker (2004) describes the vision of Empathetic Things as more than a world of RFID tags and networked sensors: Once “Things” are connected to the Internet, they can only but become enrolled as active, worldly participants by knitting together, facilitating and contributing to networks of social exchange and discourse, and rearranging the rules of occupancy and patterns of mobility within the physical world. “Things” in the pervasive Internet, will become first class citizens with which we will interact

Sherry Turkle’s research on anthropomorphism explores how objects, like these new technologies, change the way we think and how the constructions of our identities are informed by our relationships and interactions with these objects. Turkle came to the conclusion that the computer is “an ideal medium for the construction of a wide variety of private worlds and, through them, for self-exploration. Computers are more than screens onto which personality is projected” (Turkle 1984, p. 15). Here, smart technologies are not only a projective medium, but also a medium which allows the self to come into new and different relations with the self. This is a peculiar quality of these technologies, which qualifies them as being an evocative object, which not only mediates the world for us, but which further brings us into critical relations with both that world and ourselves (Turkle 1984). In the 19th century, Ralph Waldo Emerson (1832) wrote that we often tested ourselves through our interactions with our dreams and beasts to find the secrets of nature and ourselves. Turkle (1995) sees

new technologies as our test object for the 20th and 21st centuries, upon which we seek answers to understanding ourselves. Turkle suggests that technological objects are “notable for their concreteness, intimacy, fluidity of roles, emotional force, libidinal charge, uncanniness, and irreducibility to familiar schisms such as natural/artificial and human/inhuman” (cited in Harman 2008). In 1976 Joseph Weizenbaum developed a computer program, ELIZA, based on the conversational strategies of a Rogerian psychotherapist, rephrasing statements from human “patients” back to them as questions, thus supportively reflecting their thoughts. For a user input of “My mother is making me angry,” for instance, the program might return, “Tell me more about your mother” or “Why do you feel so negatively about your mother?” Weizenbaum was deeply surprised by some of his students exhibiting strong emotional connections to the program; some actually wished to be alone with it. For Weizenbaum, however, rather than signaling the success of the project, this led to some consternation: “ELIZA shows, if nothing else, how easy it is to create and maintain the illusion of understanding… a certain danger lurks there” (Weizenbaum 1976, pp. 42-43). Weizenbaum had unexpectedly discovered that, “even if fully aware that they are talking to a simple computer program, people will nonetheless treat it as if it were a real, thinking being that cared about their problems – a phenomenon now known as the Eliza Effect” (cited in Billings 2007, p. 3). Sherry Turkle states that when confronted by these kinds of technologies “we cannot but develop some

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and communicate. Things will have to be taken into account as they assume the role of socially relevant actors and strong-willed agents that create social capital and reconfigure the ways in which we live within and move about physical space (Bleecker 2004, p. 2). As William Mitchell comments, these technologies “change the fundamental mechanisms of reference – the ways in which we establish meaning, construct knowledge, and make sense of our surroundings by associating items of information with one another and with physical objects” (Mitchell 2003, p. 120).

sort of ‘cyber-intimacies’” (Turkle 2006). Turkle identifies two key features of cyber-intimacies: 1) They help us to better understand human psychology and human vulnerability. What really matters about the new generation of smart technologies is not their AI (artificial intelligence) but their ability to push the user to start, develop, and maintain a meaningful relationship with the computational object/subject. 2) A second principle is that the interaction with computational objects is moving from the psychology of projection to the psychology of engagement and object relations. These cyber-intimacies point out important ramifications for the type of relationship that people develop with these machines. There is not just a mediation of the self, but a significant, self-conscious and directed expansion of the self. Following this line of thought, Turkle considers how these objects look from the perspective of self psychology and refers to Heinz Kohut, who describes how some people may shore up their fragile sense of self by turning another person into a ‘self object,’ where the other is experienced as part of the self (Turkle 2004, p. 3). For Turkle, the next generations of empathetic devices could have the potential to take on this role of ‘self object’ in the near future. These technologies have a number of specific characteristics that distinguish them from other types of technology. First, they are designed to be embedded in the surroundings of our everyday lives. Second, they proactively interact with us and provide us with personalized specific services. Third, they could therefore be said to care for us. Fourth, they

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adapt to our personal desires and needs. They conduct activities and tasks that were previously the domain of human beings, and take over various responsibilities from us. In this vision of intelligent objects we see a transition to a world where human action is coordinated with complex virtual/actual environments characterized by flows and relations between many different agents, including non-human ones, tied together through distributed cognitive networks (Galloway 2004). Lynn Spigel (2005) terms this form of social interaction ‘post-human domesticity’ – by which she means a mode of domestic subjectivity based on the melding of silicon and flesh – a lifestyle where everyday human experience, in the smart environment, is orchestrated by telerobotics and intelligent agents. The smart environment is understood as “a sentient space where human subjects and domestic objects speak to one another via intelligent agents and internet connections” (Spigel 2005, pp. 403426). In sum, ‘post-human domesticity’ describes a movement towards a human-machine collaboration that doesn’t delegate work to robots, but instead allows people to work hand-in-hand with them. Kent Larson states that “it may become a reality that advanced systems will be self-programming with the environment melding ever more intimately with the individual over time” (Larson 2000). The idea of self-programming systems raises significant concerns considering not only identity, but also agency. His use of the term ‘melding’ is also significant, as the thrust behind this view is that the use of smart technologies is

Here the traditional dichotomy between individuals and technology becomes significantly blurred; not only as the person is more ‘integrated’ into a material circuitry, but also insofar as the person’s subjectivity – in terms of both their self-awareness and their identity becomes mediated by the empathetic technology in particular ways. The blurring boundaries between people and things described above are also one key concern raised by Verbeek (2005). On the one hand, technological environments respond to people with a form of intelligence that is usually only ascribed to people; on the other, these technologies have such a profound influence on human actions that the question looms of who, or what is ultimately the actor here. Although people are generally seen as active and intentional, and things as inanimate and mute, new technologies seem to urge us to cross this boundary. After all, these technologies make decisions, respond to their environments and interfere intensively with our behaviour (Verbeek 2005, p. 242). Here, users voluntarily submit themselves to an external system of rules – often framed as playful activities – in the hopes of improving themselves. As such, these technologies function as prototypical technologies of the self (Foucault), allowing their users to ‘take care’ of themselves with the help of quantified data.

The Care of the Self The term ‘care of the self’ is found in the later works of Michel Foucault (1988). According to Foucault, the possibility to ‘care for oneself’ became “intensified and widened” (Foucault 1988, p. 28) in the first and second century A.D. through the use of notebooks and journals in private and administrative areas. Referring to this early use of technologies of the self during the Hellenistic age in Ancient Greece, Foucault described how writing about the self could be understood as an important aspect of taking care of oneself. Writing was used in “taking notes on oneself to be re-read, writing treatises and letters to friends to help them and keeping notebooks in order to reactivate for oneself the truths one needed” (Foucault, 1988). These processes of outsourcing personal data to material memory supports enabled new practices of mental exercises and inspection of one-self and were termed ‘hypomnémata’ (Foucault 1997). Foucault understands this approach as a philosophical investigation whose “object was to learn to what extent the effort to think one’s own history can free thought from what it silently thinks, and so enable it to think differently” (Foucault 1985, p. 9). Foucault follows here the Socratic phrase, ‘know thyself’ – that one must care for oneself and know oneself, arguing that through this self-reflection and care, individuals come to see themselves as responsible for constituting themselves as moral subjects. Each individual, according to Foucault, is expected to be taking care of his or her self: there

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a process of ‘losing control’, as the technologies take over increasingly the decisions about various aspects of our environment. In this sense, it can be seen that such technology works on the assumption that human behaviour is disciplined, and that it is patterned and expresses routine.

is no age, not a moment or a situation more appropriate than another; it must be a perpetual exercise. It is possible to point to three main components of this care of the self (epimeleia heautou): (1) knowing how to live without luxury, through abstinence; (2) regularly subjecting oneself to a thorough examination of one’s conscience; and, (3) being in constant control of oneself. It is not difficult to see the similarities to many of the smart applications we can find today. As Dervin and Abbas states, these ‘technologies,’ theorized by Michel Foucault, seem to fit well with the investigation of the contemporary ‘living webs’ (i.e. the internet of things and all the ‘smart’ technologies attached to it). Without wishing to engage with exaggerated comparison, the link with the possibilities of interpersonal spaces created by web 2.0 and 3.0 technologies is clear, as more and more people (rich and poor, female and male, educated and non-educated…) take care of themselves with these technologies (Dervin and Abbas 2009). Similar to the ancient practices, the new technologies of the self of today build upon the psychological desire for self-mastery and self-improvement (Kim 2009, 2010). Together with self-tracking movements such as the ‘quantified self,’ empathetic computing participates in a broader trend of self-improvement and self-cultivation, often framed as ‘the good life,’ ‘sustainable lifestyle,’ or ‘work productivity.’ Self-monitoring practices can be found in many areas of everyday life, and are not confined to health and fitness – these include culture, food, learning and work. There are apps to track all

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aspects of our lives from sleep (SleepCycle), to finances, to mood (Happiness or MoodPanda), to blood pressure (Withings). As the owner of the AskMeEvery site explains, daily tracking keeps us self-aware; “We want to make the best decisions, yet we lack the appropriate data to guide us.” These practices depend increasingly on what Albrechtslund (2008) calls participatory surveillance – users willingly engage with these tools and techniques as new ways to reflect upon themselves, thereby translating their bodies, habits, moods and thoughts into traceable data ready to be mastered and reshaped. As seen in the examples of Foucault above, gaining ‘self-knowledge through numbers’ (Wolf 2010) is not new, but the dynamic and interactive processing of the data today essentially changes the field of possibilities and presumes what Tennenhouse (2000) describes as pro-active computing, diminishing as far as possible any human intervention: The idea is that users need not provide deliberate input as in the case of interactive computing, but are ‘read’ by the environment that monitors their behaviour. To adapt seamlessly the environment, users cannot wait for a human interpreter but need profiling machines that draw their own conclusions about what users prefer when, and where, hoping to thus solve the problem of endless choice and deliberation (Hildebrandt 2007). The concept of ‘profiling’ is central to the use of empathetic computing in everyday situations. Profiling technologies are the crucial link between an overdose of trivial data about people’s movements, temperatures, and interactions with other people

I move now to consider the concept of reference groups, and how, coupled with our investigation of profiling so far, it can be employed to explore in more detail the ‘co-constitutive’ nature of empathetic technologies specifically. The term ‘reference groups’ refers to the sources of values selected by an individual for the guidance of his behaviour, especially in cases where a choice has to be made. Reference groups may be groups of which the individual is a member, but sometimes they may not. In all cases they provide direction for the behaviour of the individual concerned, and so constitute important sources of social control (Shibutani 1962). Hence, reference groups can be redefined more precisely as: that group whose presumed perspective is used by an actor as the frame of reference

in the organization of his perceptual field (Shibutani 1962, p. 3). This does not entail that only particular kinds of organized groups can play the role of reference groups. A reference group could be one person, for instance, as long as that person plays the part of an audience, who is assumed to have certain values or expectations, which the actor seeks to meet. The notion of reference groups is further developed from the actual groups of which one is a part, to the possible groups of which one could be a part: The concept of reference group points more to a psychological phenomenon than to an objectively existing group of men; it refers to an organization of the actor’ s experience. In this usage a reference group becomes any collectivity real or imagined, envied or despised, whose perspective is assumed by the actor (Shibutani 1955). A reference group could further be completely imaginary, or it could be ‘any group or object’ (Shibutani 1955, p. 563) that plays a role in creating ‘frameworks of meaning’ and identities in individuals. Therefore, it is possible that particular kinds of technology can play the part of a reference group, and hence, help us to develop our identities, when people engage with them in particular ways (Hildebrandt 2009; Van den Berg 2010). Empathetic technologies and many of their predecessors would seem a good example of an object that could play the role of a reference group for an individual. Insofar as these technologies could be constantly present and distinctive in her or his experience, and significantly smart technologies

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or things, and the applicable knowledge about our habits, preferences and the state of the environment. Hildebrandt states that “Only after using data mining techniques on the interconnected databases can the things in our environment become smart things and start acting like agents in a multi-agent network (MAS)” (Hildebrandt 2007, p. 7). Profiling has an interactive quality, as it can ‘learn.’ Applying such qualities, empathetic computation moves far beyond the traditional role of domestic technologies. Here code as ‘grammar of action’ (Galloway 2004; Kitchin and Dodge 2011) adds layers of meaning to everyday situations and structures the field of possible human behaviour. In the words of Verbeek: “a part of our conscience is deliberately placed in the material environment, and that environment forms not only the background of our existence, but educates us too” (Verbeek 2009).

would be experienced both as watching and monitoring the individual. Furthermore, these devices would be experienced as evaluating or judging certain kinds of behaviour (Van den Berg 2010). In this sense, it is both possible and meaningful to consider certain types of new technologies as playing the role of reference groups for individuals in practices of use. It is also important to note that the function of reference groups, in co-constructing identities of people in everyday life is often a tacit process, which is mostly unremarked and unnoticed. The awareness of being profiled does not need to be of conscious awareness (Hildebrandt 2009). Recalling the goals of algorithmic-profiling, I would argue that without users being aware of the process, these technologies might install a vision of the ‘good’ life – fulfilling their role as powerful instruments in the hands of corporate interests and governments (Fuchs 2008; Fuchs et al. 2011).

Technologies of Power It seems to me the question of the self must be posed in terms of the technical and material framework in which I arose. (Foucault 1985) Throughout this text I have used Foucault’s thoughts on the care of the self as a way to demonstrate how these technologies exert a sense of power over us, but also have the ability to set us free. Foucault looked at technologies in a much broader sense as a “matrix of practical reason,” rather than simply ‘hard’ technologies that we

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might associate with the term. For Foucault (1988), the constitution of the subject is comprised by the interplay of various “technologies”. He summarizes these technologies as four types: (1) technologies of production, (2) technologies of sign systems, (3) technologies of power and (4) technologies of the self (Foucault 1988, p. 17). Technologies of power and of the self were considered the most important by Foucault, which he describes as: “technologies of power, which determine the conduct of individuals and submit them to certain ends or domination, an objectivizing of the subject,” and “technologies of the self, which permit individuals to effect by their own means or with the help of others a certain number of operations on their bodies and souls, thoughts, conduct, and the way of being, so as to transform themselves in order to attain a certain state of happiness, purity, wisdom, perfection or immortality” (Foucault 1988, p. 18). Foucault notes that technologies of power and technologies of the self rarely function independently of each other. Anonymous technological structures, networks of knowledge, all embody, as well as produce, the structural environment of the subject. All those structures shape people’s life and set the rules or procedures to be followed; they “determine conduct of individuals (Foucault 1988, p. 17). Foucault writes on the interplay of arrangements of power, the artefactual environment and individuals: Power has its principle not so much in a person as in a certain concerted distribution of bodies, surfaces, lights, gazes; in an arrangement whose internal mechanisms

willingly in order to maintain or augment social perks… The data we willingly divulge are used to ‘serve us better’ (Whitson 2015).

When Foucault talks about power in this sense, he is not talking about a formal structure of government, but rather the forces that govern human life itself. For Foucault, governance is a productive activity that the governed willingly enter into, aligning the interests of both. With the rise of bio-politics, surveillance provides the means for control, by tracking individual users and breaking them down into bits and bytes, patterns can be found in the aggregate whole. By understanding individuals’ motivations and desires, the governors are able to herd the mass into willing enrolment.

Therefore, Whitson argues, that the adaptive and pro-active qualities of these new technologies move us beyond production and consumption. Instead empathetic technologies enable “a new modality of governance that leverages a new set of desires – exploration, curiosity, self-mastery – that characterizes our relationship with smart technologies” (Whitson 2015).

Today, perhaps, the problem is not so much the governability of society as the governability of the passions of self-identified individual and collectivities. Individuals and pluralities should not be shaped by the citizen-forming devices of church, school and public broadcasting, but by commercial consumption regimes and the politics of lifestyle. The individual is identified by allegiance with a plurality of cultural communities (Rose 1999). Many writers have argued that Foucault’s productive governance has been transformed by these technologies into governance by consumption (Stiegler 2010; Deleuze 1992). Populations are not motivated by conformity, but instead by desire. In this sense, surveillance becomes a way to seduce individuals into the market economy. Empathetic technologies not only survey users’ consumption habits, but nudge users to consume more. “We monitor ourselves or submit to monitoring

What makes the next generation of technologies such strong instruments of governance is their anticipatory design – the collection, processing and recombination of the knowledge of those that are governed. These practices create spaces that: “make new kinds of experience possible, produce new modes of perception, invest percepts with affects, with dangers and opportunities, with saliences and attractions” (Rose 1999, p. 32). The management of life through code seems to be directed at individuals who favour autonomy, freedom, and self-regulation to govern themselves. As stated by Rose: The individual is to adopt a new relation to his or her self in the everyday world, in which the self itself is to be an object of knowledge and autonomy is to be achieved through a continual enterprise of self-improvement through the application of a rational knowledge and a technique. To live as an autonomous individual is to have learned these knowledgeable techniques for understanding and practicing upon yourself. Hence the norm of autonomy produces an intense and contin-

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produce the relation in which individuals are caught up. (Foucault 2000, p. 202)

uous self-scrutiny, self-dissatisfaction and self-evaluation in terms of the vocabularies and explanations of expertise (Rose 1999).

Self-Practice – Towards an Ethics of Care This leads me back to Foucault’s concept of ‘selfcare.’ In the ‘governance of the self’ empathetic technologies can be seen as persuasive instruments to create a neo-liberal society of workers and consumers that align their self-care with the interests of the state. Foucault understood the subject as a being-in-the-world, rather than “set against the world” (Gordon 1999, p. 5). Therefore, Foucault also saw that ‘self-care’ had the potential to resist these attempts at conformity. Mark Bevir (1999) points out that in his later works Foucault defends human agency in some form, namely, to ask what kind of suitable forms of agency might be given to ‘normalizing’ the effects of social power. Hence, the ethic of care for the sense becomes tied to the project of creating a kind of agency that can resist the coercive powers of modernity, and point towards something ‘better.’ Foucault thus opposes morality (the imposition of restrictions) with ethics (a practice through which to negotiate a relationship to such restrictions). As Foucault (1997) argued: “among the cultural inventions of mankind there is a treasury of devices, techniques, ideas, procedures, and so on, that cannot exactly be reactivated, but at least constitute, or help to constitute, a certain point of view which can be very useful as a tool

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for analyzing what’s going on now – and to change it.” For Bevir (1999), this underlying idea of freedom of interpretation is linked to the project of creating a kind of ‘space’ for the emergence of such an ethic in contemporary society. This ‘space’ is not limited to the private sphere, but rather, is necessarily orientated to both the private and significantly public spheres. The rejection of the normalizing effects of contemporary technology hence becomes a precondition for an aesthetic relation to the self. That self is constituted actively through a process of taking care of the self. This means being able and willing to use social resources, and exploring the ‘authorized limits’ of subjectivity. Hence, people are free insofar as human beings in their everyday social praxes can be in a state of ‘permanent critique’. For Dorrestijn (2011) this leads to the conclusion that “behavioural constraints by technologies should not be seen as replacing moral law, but as part of the hybrid character of the self that one can problematize and actively shape. Ethics is then not about obeying, subjecting to technology, but about concern for the influences of technology and the wish to give style to our hybrid form of existence” (Dorrestijn, 2011). Hence, freedom is not the absence of factors that steer and shape the subject, but rather the subject’s very relation to these factors. Freedom is a practice that is co–organized by the technological infrastructure of our existence, and which forms one turning point for the shape that our subjectivity takes. The subject, in Foucault’s words, is a form that always needs to get shape in concrete “self practices” (cited in O’Leary 2002). However, it is

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not necessary to understand this ‘shaped’ subject as a counter-position to the autonomous subject. The general implication of this view is that it is both possible, and ethically desirable, for the subject to engage in a care of the self through the engagement with various kinds of technology in the contemporary world. The mediated nature of the subject is a natural starting point for such an ethical self-practice. In contemporary society, technology both permeates our everyday lives and is a key factor in shaping our subjectivity. Embracing an ethic of ‘care of the self’ would therefore imply not resisting the role or presence of technology, but rather, engaging with it in an open-ended way, with an emphasis on developing a kind of personal aesthetic (Verbeek 2009). This then connects us to one of the central questions for Foucault, of what sort of subjects people aspire to be. He asks, “Do we want to become pure, or immortal, or free, or masters over ourselves?” (Foucault 1997).

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Freeman, ISBN 0-7167-0464-1. —— Whitson J. R. (2015), Foucault’s fitbit: Governance and gamification, in  “The Gameful World”,  edited by  Deterding S, Walz S., MIT Press. —— Wolf, Gary. (2010) The data-driven life. New York Times, May 2. Available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/02/ magazine/02self-measurement-t.html. Accessed January 12, 2015.

Websites —— Google Glass Webpage, accessed 10 July 2015 http://www. google.com/glass/start/ —— Wristify Webpage, accessed 20 May 2015 http://www. embrlabs.com/ —— Vitality - GlowCaps Webpage, accessed 20 May 2015 http:// www.vitality.net/ —— Fitbit Fitness Tracker, accessed 15 May 2015 https://www. fitbit.com/ —— AskMeEvery Website, accessed 10 January 2014 https:// www.askmeevery.com/ —— Sleep Cycle Sleeping Device, accessed 12 September 2014 http://www.sleepcycle.com/ —— Happiness Tracker Device, accessed 10 June 2015 https:// www.trackyourhappiness.org/ —— Mood Panda Mood Tracker, accessed 20 June 2015 http:// www.moodpanda.com/ —— Withings Health Mate, accessed 10 June 2014 http://www. withings.com/en/app/healthmate

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—— Mitchell W. J. 2003. Me++ The cyborg self and the networked city, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. —— O’Leary, T. ( 2002 & 2006). Foucault and the Art of Ethics. Continuum, London & New York. —— Rose, N. (1999). The Powers of Freedom: Reframing Political Thought. Cambridge, UK:Cambridge University Press. —— Shibutani, Tamotsu. (1955) “Reference groups as perspectives.” The American Journal of Sociology vol. 60, no. 6): 562-569. —— Shibutani T.  (1962)  Reference  groups  and  social  control. Rose AM (Ed.), Human Behavior and Social Processes, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, MA. —— Spigel, Lynn (2005). “Designing the Smart House: Posthuman Domesticity and Conspicuous Production.” European Journal of Cultural Studies. 8(4). pp. 403-426. —— Stiegler, B. (2010). Desire and knowledge: The dead seize the living. Elements for an organology of the Libido. Available at: http://www.arsindustrialis.org. —— Tennenhouse, D. (2000). “Proactive Computing”, Communications of the ACM 43 (5): 43-50 —— Thrift, N. and French S. (2002). The automated production of space. Transactions in Human Geography, 27: 309-335. —— Tirrell, J.W. (2010). Dumb People, Smart Objects: The Sims and the Distributed Self http://www.jtirrell.com/jtirrell/ dumb people, last accessed October 12th, 2010. —— Turkle S (1984) The second self: Computers and the human spirit. Simon & Schuster, New York. —— Turkle S. (1995) Life on the screen: Identity in the age of the internet. Simon & Schuster, New York. —— Turkle S. (2004). ‘Whither Psychoanalysis in Computer Culture?’  Psychoanalytic Psychology: Journal of the Division of Psychoanalysis, American Psychological Association, Winter 2004. —— Turkle S. et al (2006) Encounters with kismet and cog: Children respond to relational artifacts. In: Messaris P, Humphreys L (eds) Digital media: Transformations in human communication. Peter Lang, New York, pp 313–330. —— Van den Berg, B. (2010). The situated self. Nijmegen: Wolf Legal Publishers. —— Verbeek, P. P. (2005). What Things Do. Philosophical Reflections on Technology, Agency, and Design. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. —— Verbeek, P. P. (2006). ‘Persuasive Technology and Moral Responsibility. Toward and Ethical Framework for persuasive Technology’. [Online}. Available: http://www.utwente. nl/gw/wijsb/organization/verbeek/verbeek_persuasive06. pdf. Accessed March 21, 2011. —— Weizenbaum J. (1966): “ELIZA – A Computer Program for the Study of Natural Language Communication between Man and Machine,” Communications of the Association for Computing Machinery 9 36-45. —— Weizenbaum J. (1976) Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgment To Calculation, San Francisco: W. H.

Paranoia at Play: The Darkest Puzzle and the Elegant Turbulence of Alternate Reality Games Hugh Davies and Vince Dziekan

The Internet’s inherent paranoiac logic is inscribed into its very materiality. This chapter explores how Alternate Reality Games (ARGs) expose the reality of networked complexity. Through examining paranoid tendencies in contemporary visual culture, the historical foundation of games to disrupt perceptions of the world alongside creative considerations involved in producing an ARG (such as The Darkest Puzzle), we posit that ARGs are the ideal medium for reflecting upon and critiquing the contemporary conditions of hyper-connectivity, surveillance and control. For its part, The Darkest Puzzle puts the intuitive sense of interconnectedness exemplified by Salvador Dalí’s paranoiac-critical method into practice; asking: Can paranoia be applied productively to reformulate how we regard reality itself? Can so-called “serious games” respond to the ethical implications of a real world tragedy? While not designed with the intent of uncovering definitive answers, The Darkest Puzzle poses questions about the efficacy of ARGs and explores their paranoid aesthetics and logic. By drawing upon a combination of theory and practice, this research argues that both paranoia and games emerge as useful filters through which societal conditions of turbulence can be viewed and reconstructed.

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Paranoia is nothing less than the onset, the leading edge of the discovery that everything is connected.
 Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow Inscribed with a self-referential paranoid logic, the Internet is a truly nervous system. Originally developed as a secretive tool of military communication and surveillance, the technology that has become the World Wide Web has emerged as the binding medium for all social, economic and cultural interactions. Its ubiquity and interconnectivity has given credence to a mantra that reverberates from conspiracy theories to new age spirituality: “everything is connected”. Paranoia, too, has become central to contemporary existence. But far from being symptomatic of personalized psychological disorder, paranoia – this text argues – offers a new perspectival logic for the digital age. Reversing the past five hundred years of linear perspective that has favoured the view of the individual looking out at the world, the scopic regime of paranoid perception sees the outside world looking back at the individual. Just as linear perspective was predicated upon a measured, single vantage point capable of reconstruction through the apparatus of the camera. The paranoiac view resembles the networked perspective of the Internet: anamorphic, fragmentary and reconstructed from multiple viewpoints looking inwards, a reversed panopticon giving rise to an enveloping, omnipresent sense of paranoia. Conspiratorial thinking becomes the inevitable human response to finding oneself in the situation of simultaneously having access to too much information and yet not nearly enough. Under contemporary networked conditions, existing in a state of paranoia becomes not the exception, but rather the rule.

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Through the process of digitalisation, previously separate media typologies (print, television, music, video, film) are aggregated, enabling vast reserves of content to be accessed via a single platform – the Internet. The result is a nebulous mist of cross-references that can legitimise or undermine virtually any position. Complete and complex alternate realities can be hewn from its dense mediascape. Alternate Reality Games (ARGs) take advantage of this pervasive data thickness by creating experiences that dance along the edge that delineates entertaining, playful fiction from paranoid reality. Indeed, ARGs are renowned for intentionally dissolving the border between real and game worlds. While predominantly delivered online, integral game elements are often spread across a wide array of commonplace, everyday media communications (that may include telephone calls, email messages, letters, packages, posters). This interweaving of reality and fiction across virtual and physical stages is central to their appeal. More strategically, when employed as part of their game design, this technique can bring about intense player involvement in a game’s complex illusions of reality. ARGs are designed to be ubiquitous, highly immersive and emotionally engaging experiences. This chapter explores how paranoia features in Alternate Reality Games. Through examining paranoid tendencies in contemporary visual culture and their historical foundations alongside creative considerations involved in producing an ARG (The Darkest Puzzle), we will posit that through the paranoid aesthetics they exemplify, ARGs are an ideal medium for reflecting upon and critiquing the interconnectedness of contemporary conditions. These ambitions were the driving forces behind

Productive Paranoia in Alternate Reality Games Games possess the capacity to disrupt perceptions of the world. This feature came into public attention in the nineteenth century with Victorian parlor games offering players an opportunity to playfully challenge the restrictive societal codes of that era. In From Diversion to Subversion: Games, Play, and Twentieth-Century Art, David J. Getsy (2011) traces the evolution of these game types to the aesthetic practices of the twentieth century avant-garde, while Mary Flanagan’s Critical Play (2009) gives considerable attention to Modernist

attempts to subvert prevailing reality by providing ‘playful and utopian visions and revisions of the world’ (2009, p. 149). Like the Dadaists before them and the Situationists that would follow, artists of the Surrealist movement positioned themselves in constant revolt against “civilised society”. For the Surrealists, games afforded a unique means of accessing the mind by provoking “automatism”: automatic and irrational responses capable of releasing the rich and chaotic imagery of the subconscious (Stern 2009). Automatism provided the Surrealists with a poetic tactic against capitalism’s stronghold over everyday life. Inspired by Freudian psychoanalytic techniques, games of free association such as cadavre exquis and dessin successif were taken up as procedures to cajole the mind into revealing alternate associations beyond the conscious imagination. Notably, Salvador Dalí’s paranoiac-critical method encouraged the creative utilisation of apophenia: an individual’s recognition of random patterns as intended information (1). Dalí believed that paranoia was not a perceptual error, but rather a natural expression of subjectivity. By discrediting the world of reality (as dictated by science, church and state), he hoped his creative works could ultimately contribute to dismantling the institutions behind its false appearance. Although Dalí borrowed from psychoanalysis in conceiving of his creative method, he never intended it to contribute to the psychoanalytic canon. Psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, however, was fascinated by Dalí’s ideas and in his 1932 doctoral thesis the influence of the infamous Surrealist is strikingly apparent (Greeley 2001). For both Dalí and Lacan, paranoia not only over-

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the development, production and realisation of The Darkest Puzzle (2011); a game developed by Davies inspired by the notion of using ARGs in an attempt to address real-world problems through play proposed within an online forum in the wake of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers a decade earlier. Set in retrospect around the traumatic and contested history of 9/11, The Darkest Puzzle wove a fictional narrative from existing historical content examining the search for explanation and meaning following the attacks. Drawing upon a combination of theory and practice, our research proposes that paranoid interpretation cannot be dismissed as either an aesthetic style or a pathological condition. Instead we argue (explicitly in critical commentary and implicitly through praxis) that under contemporary conditions of hyper-connectivity, surveillance and control, both paranoia and games emerge as useful filters through which turbulent societal conditions can be viewed and reconstructed.

turns conventional notions of reality, but also reveals reality as a psychic construct. The potential of this understanding is twofold; not only can paranoid delusions come to resemble reality, but also the reverse: reality can be affected by experiences of paranoia. By invoking states of paranoiac perception, one’s delusions may be brought into reality. Paranoia, as Freud noted, becomes a world-building tool (Freud 1914). This comes as no surprise in the present information age when the use of fear to subdue populations and shape consumption is widespread. Paranoid thinking underlies the geo-political and economic relations that have structured the balance of power globally throughout the twentieth century, revealed most clearly during the Cold War era. Much has been written concerning the paranoid “style” and its increasing presence in politics and culture in the twentieth century. In his seminal essay, The Paranoid Style in American Politics, Richard Hofstadter (1964) documents the heated exaggeration and overwhelming air of suspicion and conspiratorial fantasy that has plagued political discourse reaching back to the 1700s (Hofstader 1964); while John Farrell’s Paranoia and Modernity (2006) tracks the gathering velocity of the paranoiac mode in literature that immediately followed the Second World War (Farrell 2006) (2). The visual arts, too, have responded in conceptual and aesthetic ways to perceptions of conspiracy and paranoia. The early video works of Bruce Nauman recreate mediated society in an almost clinical manner, using imaging technologies to diagnose the implications of electronic connection and emotional disconnection. More recently, the

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work of “post-internet” artists such as Josh On, Deb Sokolow and Paolo Cirio unearth and bring to light the links that permeate across the global ruling class. On’s They Rule (2004) reveals how hyper-powerful transnational corporations share many of the same board directors. Through complex plots told in text, images, mapped flow charts and false artifacts, Chicago artist Deb Sokolow probes the growing obsession with conspiracy theories. Her illustrations (literally) draw connections between observation, suspicion and guesswork. The activist quality of Italian artist Paolo Cirio’s transmedia work combines commentary upon the Machiavellian workings of transnational networks, disputed realities and paranoid perception. Described by some as an alternate reality game, Cirio’s The Big Plot is a ‘recombinant fiction’; a multifaceted narrative of interwined paths that weave through websites, social media, and real life (3). These practices make a case for fictional and paranoid interpretations that expose the reality of networked complexity. Film historian Thomas Elsaesser has argued that paranoia can be regarded as an appropriate and even productive pathology in response to contemporary networked conditions (Kallay 2013, p. 26). Paranoic perception, Elsaesser argues, allows for an increasingly complex view of the world. The paranoid individual is able to discern abundant and hidden connections whereas the perception of others is governed by linear logic and limited to rational explanation. What has become clear since the turn of the new millennium is that obsessive paranoia becomes the logic for explaining a multitude of global calamities. As a procedure to interpret the convo-

Designing for Playful Paranoia Paranoid hermeneutics are integral to the enigmatic quality of ARGs. Game designers instil and embrace coincidence in order to provoke the players’ sense of indeterminacy to such a degree that any serendipitous idea or occurrence holds the potential of being interpreted as forming part of the game world. Game designer Marcus Montola states that, ‘players become paranoid, suspecting that everything relates to the game’ (Montola, Stenros & Waern 2009, p. 123). Likewise, digital humanities scholar Steven E. Jones (2006) has observed that ARGs nurture a

‘more or less playful paranoia’ in which participants are enticed into hermeneutic interactions with the narrative fragments they uncover (IGDA Alternate Reality Games SIG 2006). According to game designer and scholar Jane McGonigal, ARG’s are themselves ‘benevolent conspiracies’ (McGonigal 2005) that exhibit paranoia’s opposite disposition: pronoia or ‘the suspicion that the universe is a conspiracy on your behalf’ (4). While for game designer and critic Ian Boghost, the procedural rhetoric of excavating and connecting information that ARGs foster, exerts a persuasive influence on players’ ideas (Boghost 2007). The common argument here is that ARGs encourage a kind of mental hyperlinking, a building of associations between subjects and ideas that ultimately shapes the way we think. As an emergent narrative form, ARGs are deeply based on the possibilities and ubiquity of the Internet. The Internet serves as the “central binding medium” that provides both the technological platform and hyper-textual thinking from which ARGs have grown (Haring 2011). According to Jordan Weisman (the designer of what is popularly held to be the first ARG, The Beast): ‘The experiment was to develop a narrative structure that was organic to the web’ (5). The Beast embraced the Internet’s ‘chaotic and frustrating nature’ (Haring 2011) by encouraging connection making and navigational thinking. As ARGs are native to the Internet, they are extremely well placed to reflexively critique that technology. Discussing the use of ARGs as marketing devices, researcher Chad Vollrath suggests they unintentionally evoke parallels between the in-game webs

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luted galaxy of interests, twisted allegiances and ideological turns behind global business, politics and terrorism, the explanations arrived at by conspiratorial thinking can be legitimated at least as easily as the accounts forwarded by “reputable” journalists and “trustworthy” politicians. Following the attack on the Twin Towers, the prevailing rhetoric of conspiracy became 9/11’s dominant narrative. The rise and spread of this way of interpreting reality closely resembles Dalí’s paranoiac-critical method with its intuitive sense of interconnectedness. For its part, The Darkest Puzzle puts this paranoid mode of thinking into practice: Can paranoia be applied productively to reformulate how we regard the world and reality itself? Can so-called “serious games” respond to the ethical implications of a real-world tragedy? While not designed with the intent of arriving at definitive answers, the game did pose questions about the efficacy of ARGs as serious games and explored their paranoid aesthetics and logic.

of conspiracy and parallel networks of collaboration integral to the games production. Thereby creating turbulence between the two realms. By looking “behind the curtain” at the conditions of a game’s production, players find themselves confronted with “a web of actual corporate relations that mirrors, perhaps uncannily, the fictional map of corporate conspirators” (Vollrath 2008). In such a way, Vollrath explains: “real corporate relations, which are ‘masked’ by the advertisers themselves, are able to be mapped using strategies learned in the game”. This manoeuvre forces players into a position in which “the real world must be read through the lens of a fictional conspiracy” (Vollrath 2008). The experience of playing these games is not one of immersion in fiction, but of recognising the resemblance of reality to fictional conspiracies, and the paranoid sensation that unseen forces control reality. Paradoxically, ARGs hidden “puppet masters” actually do fabricate a fictional reality, a phenomenon mirroring what many already perceive to be occurring in the real-world. By creating promiscuous parallels between real and fictional worlds, the conspiratorial networks presented in celebrated games such as The Beast and Majestic open fissures through which reality can be understood. Their ludic structure relies on the creative paranoia of players, and their propensity for recognising patterns and identifying hidden connections. The transformative potential of ARGs may well be found in how such conspiratorial perceptiveness can be applied outside the games space.

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The Beast, Majestic and the Cloudmakers The year 2001 marked the release of the two most influential and genre-defining ARGs: The Beast and Majestic. In the lead-up to the Kubrick/Spielberg blockbuster film AI, Artificial Intelligence, Warner Bros. teamed up with Microsoft to create an immersive marketing campaign surpassing any previous interactive entertainment experience. The Beast: a monumental “who-dun-it” involved secretive messages (relayed through email, fax and phone calls) and puzzles hidden on posters, newspaper ads, television commercials, movie trailers and websites. Nothing in the real world, it seemed, was impervious to the games reach. According to its lead creator Alan Lee: ‘Over 3 million people actively participated from dozens of countries around the globe. Web communities assembled to play, discuss, and solve the game’ (42 Entertainment). Most prominent amongst these groups were the Cloudmakers, a group that formed online in an attempt to solve and explain random clues they had each discovered that alluded to the mysterious conspiracy of the game (6). For twelve weeks across the spring and early summer of 2001, the Cloudmakers unravelled the mystery of The Beast by cracking complex puzzles, translating texts and deciphering codes. Just as The Beast concluded, Electronic Arts released its own purpose built pay-to-pay ARG, Majestic. With its narrative drawing upon pre-existing alien conspiracies, government misinformation and political intrigue, the game was designed to take full advantage of popular conspiracy theories and paranoia and the hyper-networked capabilities of the Internet. Its tagline (“It plays you”) left little uncertainty over the game’s paranoiac intent.

Majestic was paused in reaction to the terrorist attacks on Manhattan, and subsequently discontinued completely. Meanwhile, messages of sorrow and condolence trickled into the Cloudmakers’ forum in the hours shortly following the attacks. Discussion grew amongst the player community about the possibility of using their diverse skills to uncover the perpetrators; to “solve the puzzle of who the terrorists are”. It is not surprising that within such a large group of problem-solvers the seed of the idea to undertake a “gamic” investigation designed to uncover the identity of the attackers might arise. While moderators effectively managed to separate the traumatic reality of 9/11 from the realms of game play, the mythology of the Cloudmakers would eventually outgrow the facts. This set of events, as well as the conspiracy theories that the 9/11 attacks stimulated became the inspiration for my own game (Fig. 1).

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As it would transpire, the realms of fact and fiction collided on the morning of September 11, 2001.

Fig. 1: The Darkest Puzzle, Home Page. Design: Noko Washiyama, 2011.

The Darkest Puzzle

acknowledges the controversy of its proposal, and the potential of its theme to cause offense (7). Therefore, rather than seeking to attract a wide audience, the game sought to engage principally with players and designers from across the global extent of the ARG community. While the game itself received some encouraging press, it also drew criticism of being in poor taste (although the glib gamification of tragedy was one of The Darkest Puzzle’s central statements).

Commencing on Monday the 22nd of August 2011 and running for ten weeks, The Darkest Puzzle was an ARG set against the historical backdrop of 9/11. Influenced by a decade’s worth of conspiracy theories that followed the downing of the Twin Towers, the game aimed to provoke (in the real world) and present (in the realm of the fictional) a meta-discussion around the role and agency of paranoid aesthetics and the ethics of creating ARGs that take up a real-world calamity as their cause. As speculative design, the work fully

The Darkest Puzzle was conceived, designed and delivered by myself, Hugh Davies and was created and delivered by a small team of developers, designers, and puppet masters. Noko Washiyama created the visual design for the websites, which were developed by Richard Dean and Simon Young. A larger team of collaborators assisted the game delivery by creating videos and contributing web and real world content, as well as planting and posting physical clues in a variety of locations globally. The game was set within the factual informa-

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tion and existential uncertainty of the 9/11 attacks and the transnational war on terror that followed. ARGs blur reality and fiction by presenting information that could be mistaken for either. Yet, in creating The Darkest Puzzle, the aim was certainly not to confuse reality further; in truth, given the nature of its subject matter, it would appear virtually impossible to do so. Every conceivable delusion, plot line, conspiracy theory or tangent had been exhausted already in blogs posts, forum discussions, books and films. Therefore, rather than adding to this cacophony, the work’s fictional narrative was woven around the extensive archive of existing cultural output. Drawing upon Marcel Duchamp’s notion of the readymade, The Darkest Puzzle appropriates the over-production of conspiracy theories about the 9/11 attacks and recontextualises them not as art, but as a gamic database to be navigated. With this Duchampian gesture, I intended for The Darkest Puzzle to make a statement on how context defines content – in this case how real-world events could be recontextualised as a game – and the subsequent political, playful and ethical impact of this reframing. The game does not represent this recent past in a linear way, but instead layers alternate and counterfactual histories and offers points of divergence between narrative pathways. In this way, The Darkest Puzzle represents the first decade of the new millennium both as a game to play, and as a game that had already been played.

Replaying the Past By reducing the fateful events that spiraled out from September 11 to a “good-versus-evil” nexus,

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Western leaders limited their responses to the same fundamentalist architecture of meaning as the attackers. This failure of meaning making by officials left the global public with little resort but to formulate its own, often-fictive explanations from collaged-together snippets of paranoia, politics and popular culture. Adding to the multitude of unauthorised suspicions – of New York real estate conspiracies, US Black Flag operation and CIA cover-ups – were the official theories: of Iraqi WMDs, of Chinese, North Korean and Iranian involvement. This fractured logic was worsened by television networks repeatedly replaying the horrific footage of the planes slamming into the Twin Towers – in the days and weeks that followed, the buildings were destroyed not once, but millions of times over. The traumatic moments of impact (the melding of airplanes with glass, steel and bodies) was too compelling, symbolic and powerful not to be rescreened, but each replay brought new meanings, possibilities and interpretations for those viewing. Contradicting the US administration’s insistence that nobody could have predicted the attacks were its countless precursors in fiction. For decades portents of such a catastrophe had been rehearsed in popular entertainment, all of which could be retrospectively read as premonitions. Films including Die Hard (1988), The Siege (1998), Armageddon (1998) and Final Impact (1991) had visually detailed the destruction of downtown Manhattan, images that now provided entry-level conspiracy theorists with a wealth of information to interpret. Not surprisingly, then, television viewers who watched Flights AA11 and UA175 sink into the towers could be forgiven for assuming that they were only watching a movie. With the popular cinematic destruction of

So why did I respond to this confusion by designing a game that blurs rather than clarifies the situation? The most salient question explored through this counterfactual history was not how The Darkest Puzzle would have been played, as this activity had effectively already occurred. Instead, the extensive speculation and conspiracy theories that followed the attacks can be read, it is argued, as the replayability of the events following the 9/11 attacks as a game (8). This replaying of events allows them to be understood in different ways, to be analysed and comprehended, and ultimately to be overcome. But my intentions went further than this. As a field, games have evolved from pure entertainment to become cultural objects capable of eliciting a range and depth of experience. As an emerging art form, games afford the same scope of impact and affect as other visual and performing arts (cinema, theatre, visual art, design) through their ability to inflame passion, convey discomfort, offer insight and create effective and intelligent metaphors for the world. Writing on Surrealism’s automatism games, Kanta Kochhar-Lindgren has observed that: “whenever humanity tries to really grapple with the deep issues – life, death, taxes, you name

it – it becomes a game” (2009, xi). Games aren’t just capable of resembling reality; they reconstruct reality by co-existing in the same tangible realm as us. Spanning business, entertainment, culture, science, education, politics, and military training and simulation, the ever-expanding games-space has transcended the frame – prompting McKenzie Wark to remark that “Reality TV doesn’t look like reality, but then neither does reality. Both look like games” (2007, p. 7). According to Gonzalo Frasca, designer of the game September 12: A Toy World, games have become the avant-garde medium of transmission: “for political video games, September 11 was the trigger. If it had happened in the sixties, people would have grabbed their guitar and written a song about it. Now they’re making games” (McClellan 2004). As sophisticated forms of communication, games are capable of engaging with and eliciting response from their audience in multiple ways, including politically. The potent capabilities of games to ground criticality with interactivity have never been more needed. As Nikos Papastergiadis has remarked: “September 11 and the ‘war on terror’ have provided a stark reminder of the need to re-think the connections between art and politics. This profound challenge requires us to recognise that both political forces and cultural identities are caught in turbulent patterns of interconnection and displacement” (2011). While games emerge as the medium best equipped to deal with conditions of contemporary calamity, ARGs arise as the type best suited to tackle the networked conditions of paranoia and conspiracy. In light of the tragic subject matter, I fully recognised the nature of the game-interaction design conceived for The Darkest Puzzle could

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New York suddenly manifest as reality, the immediate reaction was conspiratorial. Popular culture had provided an extensive cache of clues to decipher. Hints could be found everywhere from television shows, games cards and advertisements. Clues were even detectable in folded dollar bills and the shape of the smoke that poured from the wounded buildings. The enigmatic experience of falling through the rabbit hole into an ARG could now be experienced collectively and on a global stage.

not be dismissively fun or playful in any conventional sense. If the reality being dealt with was to be framed as a game, its interaction should be nothing less than highly challenging, complex and disquieting; while explicitly inviting engagement, it should implicitly frustrate its own playability through “unusability”. Unusability is a theoretical concept found in some educative, serious and tactical media games. While, according to Hamburg-based lecturer and game designer Wey-Han Tan, unusability provokes players with a gridlocked set of options that frustrate and restrict any successful outcome they hold educational potential by raising: “critical awareness about preconceptions towards games and media in general, and they also present instances of content clashing with its own medial frame, rendering it ‘unusable’ unless resolved through an alternate intervention” (Tan 2011). This trope upsets the game’s entire ludic system. The only productive option available to the player ultimately is the decision to abandon the game altogether. The Darkest Puzzle works dissuasively. Not intending to present easy answers nor even pose easy questions, the point was to reconstruct something of the intense complexity of the real-world conditions of its subject. While striving to achieve a state of dissuasive unusability, the interactive logic of ARGs – outlined by Jane McGonigal in her Curious Interface Design Manifesto (2003) – was adhered to, with obstinate devotion. The manifesto calls for multiplicity and open-endedness in interface design, and promotes the use of ambiguity to

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encourage player perception and interpretation over clear directions. Principles such as these are designed to provoke users to become strategic, resourceful and poetic actors (9). By adhering to McGonigal’s principles, I designed The Darkest Puzzle to evoke an historical sense of how ARGs were played, while guaranteeing its own dissuasive unusability in the present. Unusability was reinforced through a series of international “dead-drops” (in-games artefacts deposited in physical locations by puppet masters to be recovered by players). Acknowledging the problem of setting the game in any particular geographic location, The Darkest Puzzle was set in such a way as to resemble the transnational realm of the Internet and reflect the global repercussions of the 9/11 attacks. With help from a team of collaborators, I planted eight physical clues hidden across four continents – in a manner akin to “geo-caching” (10) – with the game’s main website serving as the channel for presenting short videos that revealed the actual locations where they could be uncovered. From New York to Copenhagen, Berlin, Sydney, Tokyo, Istanbul, Shanghai and Kuala Lumpur, each “dead-drop” contained handwritten notes in Urdu, Arabic, Japanese and Chinese. Because of their analogue format, online translation tools offered little help with deciphering their contents. Soliciting the complicit assistance of native speakers/ readers of the respective languages was therefore a necessary playing action (see Figs. 2–3). A variety of packages were also sent by post directly to potential players, as well as to key figures affiliated with ARG communities in Germany, Japan and the USA (see Figs. 4–5). These packages

Hugh Davies and Vince Dziekan

Fig. 2: The Darkest Puzzle, Clue in Chinese left in Sydney dead-drop. Design: Hugh Davies, 2011.

Fig. 3: The Darkest Puzzle, Clue in Urdu left in Kuala Lumpur dead-drop. Design: Hugh Davies, 2011.

contained clues stored on out-dated media formats corresponding to the year in which the particular story element was set, for example: floppy discs for 2001, zip discs for 2002, CDs for 2003, DVDs for 2004, memory sticks for 2005, memory cards for 2006, etc. The use of obsolete media formats was an integral part of the game-play. This dissuasive strategy was designed to challenge the players’ resourcefulness, and resolve, by rendering key pieces of information inaccessible (at worst) or unreliable (at best).

as invitations to play an ARG, and provided links to the game’s website: thedarkestpuzzle.com.

In addition, a cautionary note (Fig. 6) was included with posted clues to brace those who felt confident of their ability to deal with the difficult themes, and to discourage those who did not from participating at all. Together, these clues announced themselves

The website provided an explanation about the game itself and its ethics (11). The purpose of these notifications was to remind players of the intensity of the subject matter, and to involve them in the process of self-reflection, ultimately in the hope that players would question their own involvement. These caveats were designed to invite participants to “perform belief” in recognition of the real-world context in which the game was set: While we encourage you to play “As If” the game story were real, keep in mind that the game is set in the real world, and all real-world rules and conditions apply. Its like playing with a Frisbee in the street – you still have to watch out for cars.

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Fig. 4: The Darkest Puzzle, Clue on Floppy Disc. Design: Hugh Davies, 2011.

Fig. 6: The Darkest Puzzle, Printed insert accompanying posted clue. Design: Hugh Davies, 2011.

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Fig. 5: The Darkest Puzzle, Clues sent to ARG players. Design: Hugh Davies, 2011.

The Internet’s inherent paranoiac logic is inscribed into its very materiality. Our online searches and interactions inevitably produce a trail of personal footprints (or “breadcrumbs”) that betray our acquaintances, beliefs, thoughts and consumption habits. These traces provide ripe information to serve the interests of hidden agencies, from commercial enterprises to military intelligence. The data gleaned from our interactive activities algorithmically authors an intimately personalised world that constellates around us, individually. From the position where each and every subject finds themselves occupying an absolute centre, we are marked as being interested in purchasing a certain brand of products (narcissistic pronoia), or potentially complicit with the motivations of a violent brand of terror (conspiracy paranoia). Pronoia and paranoia are fully rational responses to finding ourselves swept along in powerful currents of the turbulent world we are living in. The inevitable psychosis arising from this structure compounds an already highly developed existential uncertainty that has gestated throughout the twentieth century. This was fuelled by new technologies, corporate and political projects, and postmodern fictions across global media forms. We now see the world in paranoid terms. ARGs – like the structure of the Internet through which they are partially delivered – are sprawling, distributed, fragmentary and complex. With their deliberate blurring of the lines demarcating reality from fiction, ARGs represent a kind of ludic trompe l’oeil in which the player is routinely confused by playful artifice. The existential problem

of playing these games is not of the paranoiac fictions they present becoming too believable, but of reality becoming absurdly unbelievable when fictional conspiracies become actualized. In this way, the Internet reinforces narcissistic and paranoiac world-building pathologies. The Darkest Puzzle was instigated by an idea spawned on the Internet: that approaching 9/11 as a gamic puzzle to be solved could unearth the shadowy machinations behind the attacks. While the moderators of the Cloudmakers’ forum dissuaded against this approach when it was first voiced in their game forum, its underlying proposition became a more widespread reality, as evidenced by the resulting geopolitical climate of widespread paranoia wrought by a decade of intense conspiratorial thinking. While drawing on the actual paranoid conspiracy theories that surround this subject, I did not create The Darkest Puzzle to provide answers or conclusions to this dilemma, but instead opted to explore the creative possibilities of paranoia/pronoia that the breakdown of linear logic gives rise to. This objective was met by challenging a group of players to question the ethics and efficacy of “serious games” for solving real-world problems through play. Ultimately, paranoia and pronoia are two sides of the same narcissistic syndrome: both depict the world as looking at an individual with absolute interest, be it conspiring on their behalf, or against them. In this way, as represented through this account of ARGs and The Darkest Puzzle, paranoia attempts to offer a new logic of perspective for the digital age.

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Conclusion

References —— 42entertainment.com, 2015, 42 Entertainment. [Online] Available at: http://www.42entertainment.com [Accessed 17 Jun. 2015]. —— IGDA Alternate Reality Games SIG 2006, 2006 Alternate Reality Games White Paper. [Online]. Available from: http://www.christydena.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/11/ igda-alternaterealitygames-whitepaper-2006.pdf [Accessed 7 Mar 2013]. —— Boghost, I 2007, Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames, MIT Press, Cambridge Mass. —— Dunne, A, Raby, F 2013, Speculative Everything, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass. —— Farrell, J 2006, Paranoia and Modernity: Cervantes to Rousseau, Cornell University Press, Ithaca and London. —— Flanagan, M 2009, Critical Play, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass. —— Freud, S. 1914, ‘On narcissism: an introduction’, S.E., London: Hogarth 14, pp. 73-102. —— Getsy, D 2011, From Diversion to Subversion: Games, Play, and Twentieth-Century Art, Penns