media technologies and sense perception… baudrillard and the precession of simulacra… ethnic cleansing vs frontpage aesthetics… representation of difference… where to begin?!

I am not sure of the day exactly but it was around the 19th, 20th of January that the blog was set up, so this is a six-month birthday and I want to give a few statistics. This blog came after the meeting of five people, including me. So far post are 41. This makes a frequency of 6.8 posts per month. The blog was announced in the MOO, emails were sent to the convenors of the 2 other MA’s of the film&media department so that more people come over from othar MA’s.

I lay now the hillarious search terms that attract traffic to this blog.

Search engine top termssince 19 january :

This post might be yet a bit more lyrical than analytical; however, as I have been pondering about it, this post shall become part of what I aim to think of today.

We already have one – or more of them. Aristea is writing about it in her thesis, Sam, her and I have one on top of this one, I even have several linked up somewhere in this worldwide community of text, sound, vision, sensuality and memory. It’s a blog.

If one thinks of the world wide web as a seemingly indefinite entanglement of words created over years and years by people (and possibly machines and systems) sitting in front of their computers, one can barely imagine the vast inheritance all of those people have left to those that are browsing the net day in day out.

As I am writing today, I am, again, contributing to the vast universe of words to be left in this virtual space. And yet, this post is still alive with all of the contributions on this specific mediajuice.wordpress.com blog. But – for how long? And what happens to it once we’ve left this space? Once there is nothing more but our thoughts and passions about each of our topics? Will it become like a treasured diary, once written in teenage years, put up in the attic when we moved out of home and to be rediscovered years after? We will sit in this virtual attic, smiling, wondering and grateful for our common memories. And yet – it is no diary. It is not stored somewhere only for the writers to read in. People will stumble upon this blog, hopefully while it is still alive (and yes, I am referring to this blog as something living…).

I have started thinking about it when recovering one of my older blogs earlier last month – thoughts, fears, a lot of excitement, memories are hinged together in singular posts that have been left untouched in over a year. I am fearful to delete it, as it has been part of me once. And yet, I cannot continue writing in it. I have left that place a long while ago. It is like a monument, telling me of old times, who I used to be and what I used to think some time ago. I cannot close it, I cannot store it away somewhere – it will never gather dust, it will forever be here, in this virtual, sensual space, joining all of the other more or less intimate blogs that have been written and abandoned at some point.

What will happen to them, I ask? What will happen to mine? Is this the heritage we will pass on to the next generations? Or will they be lost at some point, as a stone falling into a very deep lake, disappearing quickly and not to be found again lest someone remembers the web link to this so personal and yet so public space.

For the most part, I’m not personally interested in studies of subcultures or alternative factions of people within society. I tend to side with the argument that critical deconstruction primarily weakens these types of identities, de-mythologises them and leaves them mundane and phoney. I’m referring to the sort of studies by Richard Hoggart and Dick Hebdige, then right through to endless productions either indie or mainstream that approach cultural movements that are generally music-based, white, predominantly middle-class and invariably of American original.

That said, with this post I don’t want to provide a critique or a commentary as such, but just share a small collection of moments when forms of cultural movements seem to escalate beyond simple consumption or teenage self-identification. Here are a few examples of various ‘urban tribes’ in real, physical conflict; situations which seem like sci-fi films coming to life. I’m not necessarily saying that each of these scenarios is based on similar dynamics, but I do suspect that cultural sectarianism is something that will become increasingly prevalent in ever greater spheres of life, and increasingly important in the functioning of postmodern consumer capitalism.

Emo in Mexico vs. Punks, Rockers, Jocks… etc

A series of strikes and counter-strikes against one specific subculture, largely explained by Mexico’s conservation Catholicism and the emos’ “lack of ideology”.

“The trio of long-haired teenagers grasped the plaza wall to shield their bodies as hundreds of youths kicked and punched them while filming the beating on cell phone cameras. “Kill the emos,” shouted the assailants, who had organized over the Internet to launch the attack in Mexico’s central city of Queretaro. After police eventually steamed in and made arrests, the bloody victims lay sobbing on the concrete waiting for ambulances while the mob ran through the nearby streets laughing and cheering.”

Goths in Britain vs. Chavs

An ongoing battle I’m sure anyone who was in any way ‘alternative’ during their youth can relate to. Chav (or townie, Gary, charva, ned) is perhaps more related as a category to class than consumption (to impose a false distinction).

“… the gang had turned on the young couple simply because they were Goths or “moshers” and dressed differently to them.”

“So you don’t think they attacked you because of how you were dressed?
I believe what was originally said was “Let’s get the moshers!” They just needed some kind of excuse to the beat shit out of us. I think it’s more about the kind of person that attacked us. There were several attacks that summer and if you look at the kids who were responsible you could cut them all out with a cookie cutter.”

A Local Precedent

Probably the most famous of inter-subculture battles, the mods and the rockers at Brighton Beach in 1964. Remembered now in a nostalgic, “where were you..?”, sort of way, that probably masks the deep violence from the period.

Rap Gangs in Liberia and Sierra Leone

This development is both the most surreal and the most terrifying. Following the influence of American gangsta rap and a massive influx of second-hand t-shirts sent as aid, West African militias began identifying themselves as, for example, the Tupac Army or the Butt Naked Brigade, led by General Butt Naked.

“In the late 90s, Sierra Leone (considered by the UN to be the worst place to inhabit in the world) took “thug life” to a new level… The indigenous rebel army, the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), began as a loose confederation of quasi-communists looking to liberate the enormous wealth of the local diamond trade and put it back in the hands of the common people… RUF members became easily recognized. They identified themselves as the Tupac Army by only wearing Tupac shirts. They smoked Philly blunts, sported gold hoops, and were often trailed by boombox-toting lackeys (children who’d been press-ganged into service). As “California Love” played in the background, villages were sacked and looted, women were forced into slavery, and the arms of would-be foes were hacked off to prevent them from exacting revenge.”

“The civil war [in Liberia], which killed an estimated 250,000 people in this nation of 3 million, was characterized by the eating of human hearts and soccer matches played with human skulls. Drugged fighters waltzed into battle wearing women’s wigs, flowing gowns and carrying dainty purses stolen from civilians.”

I am here referring to the Volker Schloendorff and Margarehthe von Trotta film and not the 1974 novelle by Heinrich Böll. Katharina, a woman that leads a quiet life, meets an anarchist -evidently linked to the Red Army Faction- and takes him to her house where they make love. After he escapes, her life is completely destroyed by the journalists and the police investigations.

Part of the New German Cinema of the 1960s, the film is the work of German filmmakers from the left who “challenged the Establishment history of the terrorist movement” (Hoerschelmann, 2001 : 86). I will not go into the theme of the imagined terrorism and the hysterical reaction of the state. I am more interested in the dualism ‘virgin-whore’ as that is represented in the film and the ideas of gender in general.

The ‘lost honour’ prompts to the loss of virginity since in patriarchical societies a woman is honoured when a virgin. In these societies the ‘honour’ of the woman has to be guarded by the men of the family, father and brothers so she can be handed intact to her husband. She may cease being a virgin but, once sex is performed within the marriage, her ‘honour’ is not lost. Katharina is divorced. She has an affair with a ‘gentleman’ whose identity she keeps secret. She has sex with the anarchist because she falls in love with him. She is a woman in charge of her sexuality. But she is nevertheless called ‘the nun’, not because she is prudent or cellibate, but because she refuses to have her bottom pinched or generally being touched be strangers during her work as a waitress. She is thus not a ‘whore’. One of her previous employers states that a waitress should look like a whore but not be one. He clearly puts Katharina in the honoured side of the divide.

Until the media and the state come. One of the first things a policeman tells her when the special forces have entered violently into her home, is ‘put something on, you do not want to give bad impressions about you’. And she responds, ‘I am in my home’, resisting verbally but not practically. throughout the film she is spitted upon, pushed around, beaten, mishandled and victimised. She always resists verbally, calling the media murderers because of their intrusion in her life and the effects of that. As soon as every intimate detail of her personal life is exposed, her ‘honour’ is lost. Her dignity as a citizen is shattered by means of sexualisationin the same way rape is used as a weapon of war. She becomes less than a citizen, less than a gendered person, she becomes the ‘whore’ in german common opinion. So the film does not direclty address the subordination of women, but it does it indirectly through the symbolic feminization of the citizen in a paternalistic state. This way the audience can easily identify with Katharina, she is the apolitic man or woman next door. In a paternalistic, authoritative state, everyone in the hands of the state-controlled media can turn into the state’s whore.

But after all, Katharina is not an academic, not middle class like the ones she work for, and she is not a marxist. The eminent middle class politicians, lawyers and so on, whatever their past, marxist or nazi, are not hunted down in the end. Katharina is used by all of them and her only means of ethical survival is to get a life for a life. Ultimately, her ‘honour’ is regained when, at the verge of being raped by the main journalist, she inverts the symbolic phallus that has caused her such distress, and shoots him.

aristea 08

Discourses surrounding a person’s body and how to stay fit and healthy have not only swamped tv, but also pretty much any other medium I can think of. One recent, rather funny element of the whole health frenzy, I think, is Nintendo’s wii console where people can exercise playing virtual golf or doing a boxing exercise. The pinnacle, however, is the new wii balance board, enabling people to do pushups in their living room on this board while keeping the balance and, at the end of the exercise, measure their weight “more accurately than with a typical bathroom scale.” You can ski on the board, too. What once was a game console for people / teenies and 20/30 somethings has evolved into a DIY fitness studio.

While being able to smile about the wii and its new gadgets, I recently received an email from a concerned mother talking about the new health passport introduced into the school of her child. On this passport the children have to tick if they have washed properly and when and how long they exercise each day. They need to list their attendences at sports clubs and night exercise (night exercise? hello…kids?) activities while also stating how many hours they sleep a day. Progress in any of these activities needs to be listed and goals need to be fixed.

Whilst a healthy lifestyle (whatever that is) seems to be a good idea in general, this government-introduced health passport seems to be yet another step into the self-surveillance panopticon that Foucault initially described in Discipline and Punish. I am not going to talk about the child as the “other”, the more vulnerable here in whose surrounding it seems even more absurd to introduce a measurement like this; but I’d like to contemplate a bit more on the discourse on the human body and health as well as the idea of self-surveillance actually making tamer citizens than putting them into prison when crimes are committed (Ruddock 2001).  Foucault is quoted in Ruddock stating that “the development of discourses around military training, health, sexuality and crime [are] aimed at social control centred on the body and ‘its disciplining, the optimization of its capabilities, the extortion of its forces, the parallel increase of its usefulness and its docility, its integration of efficient economic controls’ (Foucault 1976: 139).”

Actually, the latter idea with self-surveillance seems to be rather self-evident. If I had such a passport and were asked to fill in all of this data, I’d be occupied gathering data and writing reports about my activities all day. I probably wouldn’t even think about “being naughty”, but possibly also lose out on time exercising because of all of the list keeping.

One might even take a political economy approach at this: how much of the government’s money might be saved through the introduction of this health passport? Not only are the kids occupied filling in the blanks of their bits of paper, giving away personal data for free for the government and (who knows what) other bodies to analyse, but they also spend less time playing. They will be preoccupied brushing their teeth and exercising at the “Night Owl” in order to be able to tick another cross in their passport. If I were a bit more cynical here, I’d say: less money to be spent on playgrounds, public transport (as healthy kids walk longer distances with their parents), and most of all national health services.

The mum sending me this passport also told me that she had a row with her child that night it came home with the passport. Mum didn’t approve of the child’s eagerness to diligently implement the passport in her life. Two questions that could be further discussed here are: how far do we as adults go in our eagerness to count, measure and fill in data on ourselves when it comes to proving our level of health and fitness? And how does this lead to social exclusion – not only of the child that might be the only one in her class not dealing with the passport properly – but also to those who either don’t like, aren’t bothered or can’t afford all of the gadgets out there to strengthen our health?

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And in a very different tone, the 37th edition of the disability blog carnival. Enjoy!

On Friday (9th May) I went to see Control at the Duke of York’s cinema in Brighton. I went with a keen movie-going friend of mine. My interest in the film was piqued by the fact that I’ve been impressed with some photography I’ve seen by the director Anton Corbijn. I’ve also seen one video by Anton Corbijn which I really liked. This was not a music video but rather an artistic video build around an interview with the alternative pop/rock icon Captain Beefheart. Anyway this was Anton Corbijn’s first feature film and is focussed on the short life of Ian Curtis, lead singer with the late seventies group Joy Division.

I was a teenager during the time that Joy Division was releasing records. I never became interested in them although I was well aware it was very a cool group to be into.

There were great things about this movie but for me some things prevented it from being a great movie.

I loved the depiction of Manchester. The whole feel of Manchester and the understanding of that which Manchester represents in the culture of the UK is central to the story. I was in Manchester in the early eighties, a few years after Ian Curtis had taken his life. Manchester has a very distinct and rather likeable identity in the UK. It is the second largest city but unlike London it forms one society, whereas London of course is made up of many smaller societies. So, I feel that the society of Manchester is the biggest in the UK. There is a comment in Control made by Factory record label owner Tony Wilson (Craig Parkinson) to the group that ‘this is the republic of Manchester’.

The sets and props were very enjoyable for me. I remember those plates they had, the ashtrays seen in the pubs, many of the ornaments and general decoration in the houses are ones that formed the real life backdrop of that period. Anton Corbijn captured the late seventies very well indeed. The seventies that we love to hate ‘the decade that taste forgot’ actually ended in about 1977. 1977 to 1980, the period of Joy Division, was not one in which taste was once again remembered but rather a time, I think, when beige and mediocrity ruled. It was as if the vivid designs of the early half of the seventies had such a glare that people needed to recover at the end of the decade. They did this by purchasing items for their household that made no statement whatsoever. The vast city of Manchester became extraordinarily beige in the late seventies. My own feeling is that groups like Joy Division arose out of the desire to not be beige as much as a rejection of the forms of popular music that preceded them.

I wouldn’t have thought late seventies Manchester a particularly photogenic subject but the imagery in Control is quite superb, it is an undivided joy to the eyes.

Ian Curtis is depicted as a very complicated character and difficult to unravel. The other group members appear quite basic in comparison and their lack of sophistication is used as a springboard for humour. They are simply adolescents and they misunderstand the world in adolescent ways. One of them talks about love, he tells us that you can love a car as much as a girl. If someone were to kick his car he would react as strongly as if they’d kicked his girl.

My primary criticism of the film is that it has been made by someone caught up in the aura of Joy Division. Anton Corbijn is a fan of the group and so wants the Joy Division phenomenon to spring from them, to have been created by them. It is true Ian Curtis apparently fulfils the requirements of a highly creative type, he is troubled and difficult, he has epileptic fits and very tragically he commits suicide. However there are many troubled and difficult adolescents. Many people have epileptic fits and terribly many commit suicide. Corbijn doesn’t do anything so crude as to suggest: troubled + fits + suicide = tortured artist, however some aggrandisement is performed in the story telling. Tony Wilson, Factory manager, is shown literally signing the contract in blood for this group. It’s a funny scene but it isn’t true. In the film Ian Curtis is depicted as the force that propels the group into fame. I think he is one of the players in their rise, but, just say Ian Curtis had never existed and in his place is another. Well I think that had that group fulfilled the look and feel that Tony Wilson was after they might will have still shot to fame. However if Tony Wilson hadn’t existed I doubt Joy Division would be known about today.

Tony Wilson is entertainingly a bit old and out of place amongst these post-punks. His TV appearance looks very cheesy today but his role in this story in reality was much greater than depicted in this film I feel. In this film he is a conduit, in reality he was doing it.

I think that a group like this one is elevated by its fans. It is the fans that fuel the thing. They have a desire for a group that will be a mascot for their identity. They project onto the group their wishes. The do love the group but like all lovers they create the thing they love and place it upon the subject. The emotionally frail Ian Curtis wasn’t suited to this attention.

Today Amy Winehouse is in the news a lot for excessive drug abuse and other misbehaviours. Her fans love her, they tell her she is a very talented individual. She ‘sings those songs like no other can’. However Amy Winehouse is in reality a pretty average person. I don’t wish to insult her, I am a pretty average type as well. She might be under the misapprehension that she has some great talent but this is because her adoring fans keep telling her this is so, so she has made an understandable mistake.

There is a parallel between Amy Winehouse and Ian Curtis. Amy Winehouse is heralded as a brilliant singer with a superb voice whereas in reality she is, I guess, okay at singing with a voice that is reasonably well suited to it. Ian Curtis was felt to be a tremendously creative individual, whereas in reality he was I feel probably just a bit more creative than his peers.

In their respective spheres Amy and Ian are people who are/were perhaps just a bit better than average. It is their fans that build/built them into idols with supposed great skills.

I don’t think pop music record company ‘talent scouts’ actually look for talent but rather for individuals that look like they will fill the current pop industry’s demand whatever that may be. There is something a bit pimp-ish about these ‘talent scouts’ and I thought there was something a bit pimpish about Tony Wilson.

My hope is that for her own good Amy Winehouse will see through the bogus world of the pop music industry and get out of it before it gets her.

I went to the Wild Park at Moulsecomb last night and had a multi-sensory experience with the ‘Periplum with the World famous The Bell‘, which, for those who missed it, is repeated tonight. There is no way one person or small party of people, can have the same experience as another in this kind of event. Begginning with the way you reach the place the event takes place:

I went there on bike departing from Norfolk square, crossed the city centre and the hordes of drunk pedestrians through north rd, then on the fake-bike-mostly-pavement-road on the right of the Victoria gardens to reach lewes rd. Riding along my friend was hard firstly because of the people walking all over, secondly cause we only had a front light and a back light for two bikes. We had to meet three friends at Wild park who were going there by car but being late as ever, we missed each other in the dark and crowded lawns. Buses were aggressive, unusual numbers of 49 buses were really eager to reach the venue on time and were sticking their smelly fronts behind my back to rush me out when approaching bus stops. Nevertheless, many people walked there from some point after and it was beautiful to see people walking together towards the unknown.

The ‘promenade performance’ meant that the centre of audience attention shifted between considerable distances in space and one would better walk along to get the most of it. I did it for a while but there are limitations to where and how you can get to the spot you want each moment because of the rest of the people around you who also want to get to their ideal spot. So I went up to the small hill on the right were the grass is 30cm high and humid and managed to grasp a slightly more complete idea of the sound, smell, narrative, image.

What was missing for this experience to encompass all senses and claim maximum satisfaction is taste. And i don’t mean this metaphorically, on the contrary. Having grown in a country were outdoor art events and theatre in particular are an everyday summer practice, I missed the smell and taste of freshly prepared candy on stick (which I haven’t seen in this country so i do not know the name of it) and barbecued corn that, even though I understand are not exactly what the anchient greeks used to provide, they do however echo the paradigm of ‘bread and events’ (that keeps citizens content and away from thoughts of overthrowing regiments).

To be sure, having any kind of food or beverage provided in the event described would spoil the free character of it and would certainly bring consuming hues to it, let alone the garbage afterwards. Nevertheless, even though one comes to appreciate cultural events according to lived experiences of the past and the new experience is limited to generic expectations(a walking outdoor performance), the way space and spatial relations are negotiated in such events always has an element of surprise that adds to the satisfaction.

post-publishing thoughts: I re-read the post trying to be critical about my able-ism. I kind of undersatnd the preference of the word ‘promenade’ to ‘walking’ which seemed strange to me at first. ‘Promenade’ is more like ’strolling’ which does not suggest the need of feet, it is more ‘βόλτα’ in greek. Apart from my repeated use of the word ‘walking’, I talk about the combination of all senses -and even more actually-in order to achieve maximum satisfaction, as if just being there and listening or just smelling or just seeing or just feeling the random touch of people around you (if you can tolerate that) or sensing the grass and mud would not be satisfactory enough. Which makes me reflect on how spoiled I am, asking for more. The other thing is how far I appreciated the word ‘free’ (without limitations) used in the brighton Festival catalog, that I actually used on my title. And that’s all I can spot now.