Scapegoat Architecture

Landscape
Political Economy

5 — Excess Publisher
Summer/Autumn 2 13 Scapegoat P
­ ublications

Issue Editors
· Etienne Turpin

Editorial Board
· Adrian Blackwell
· Adam ­Bobbette Copyright is ­retained
· Nasrin Himada by each ­author, d
­ esigner,
· Jane ­Hutton and artist
· ­Marcin ­Kedzior
· Chris Lee Toronto Office
· Christie Pearson 249 Bathurst Street,
· Etienne Turpin Toronto, Ontario,
M5T 2S4
Designers
· Chris Lee
· Raf Rennie Future Issues
×Mexico City
Copy Editor Winter/Spring 2 14
Jeffrey Malecki ¤Incarceration
Luke Summer/Autumn 2 14

Circulation Cover
Tings Chak tktktk, 2 13,
Prachi Kamdar
[email protected]
scapegoatjournal.org

1
 Table of Contents

9 Editorial Note
× Etienne Turpin

18 A Political Typography Manifesto

× Prachi Kamdar

Excess from the General Economic Point of View

26  Toward General Economy

× Stuart Kendall

34 The Economy Equal to the Universe

× Georges Bataille, translated by Stuart Kendall

38 Diagrams, Comfort and the General Economy

× Martti Kalliala

44 When Bataille Attacked the Metaphysical Principle of the Economy

× Jean Baudrillard, translated by Stuart Kendall

5 “Nous la forêt”
× An Interview with Épopée on the Québec ­Student ­Uprising

6 From the Dataset of the Multiverse

× Sam Leach

Inhabitations of the Earth

64 Quantum Violin
× Diana Beresford-Kroeger in Conversation
with Kika Thorne

76 The Spit
× Lisa Hirmer

9 Landings: On Sounding the Earth

× Natasha Ginwala and Vivian Ziherl

98 T
 hree Works
× Vicki DaSilva

1 2 Terra Vivos, or, the Reinforced Luxury of ­Post-apocalyptic Dwelling

× Erin Schneider

2 Scapegoat
1 6 Nitrogen, Addiction, and the Unlikely Relatively of ­Explosions
× Danielle McDonough

114 The Future That Never Happened

× Filipe Magalhães and Ana Luisa Soares (Fala Atelier)

124 I n Infinity, Eternity Performs

× Thomas Provost

Technologies of the Political

13 Proportionality, Violence, and the Economy of Calculations

× Eyal Weizman in Conversation with Heather Davis
with Dronestagram excerpts by James Bridle

148 Architecture of Destruction, Dispossession, and ­Appropriation

× Ariella Azoulay

17 Event Urbanism and the Politics of Enthusiasm

× Amanda De Lisio
with photography by Jon Pack and Gary Hustwit (­Olympic City Project)

18 Urban Temporalities: Jakarta after the New Order

× Abidin Kusno in Conversation with Meredith Miller & ­Etienne Turpin
with photography by David Hutama

2 6 Shame Totem 2.0/2.1

× Jennifer Jacquet

212 On Border Cultures

× Srimoyee Mitra

218 New Camelot:

The Unbearable Lightness of Canada’s
Twenty-First-Century Security Architecture
× Jeffrey Monaghan & Kevin Walby

226 Life is Not Fair

× A Cooperation between Hebbel Am Ufer & ­raumlaborberlin

Practices Before and After the Subject

234 Drool: Liquid Fore-speech of the Fore-scene

× John Paul Ricco
with images by pHgH

3 Table of Contents
242 The Museum as Archipelago
× Anna-Sophie Springer

254 Extrapolations on Deleuze, Groups, and Power

× An Interview with Sylvère Lotringer

266 Less Predictable Realities

× Stanisław Lem, translated by Joanna Zylinska

272 Considered Non-completion

× A Correspondence between Rick Prelinger and Sara Dean

28 On Fields of Practice that Make the World

× Justin Langlois and Hiba Abdallah

294 Mass Intimacy: Design by and for Dividuals

× Keith Peiffer

3 6 Prison America: On Summer of Hate

× An Interview with Chris Kraus

Nature Inside and Out

318 Obituary for a Psychiatric Center and its Shopping Mall

× Seth Denizen

328 Welcome to the Center for PostNatural History

× Richard Pell in Conversation with Emily Kutil

346 The Anthropozoic Era: Excerpts from Corso di Geologia

× Antonio Stoppani, translated by Valeria Federighi, edited by Valeria
Federighi and Etienne Turpin
with photography by Alex Berceanu

354 See Dick Hunt. Hunt Dick Hunt.

× Jason Young

364 This Garden of the Sun: A Report on Almería’s ­Miracle Economy

× Melissa Cate Christ

372 Xenotransplantations of the [In]Animate: A ­Speculative Dissection

× Emily Vanderpol

378 The Sight of a Mangled Corpse

× An Interview with Eugene Thacker

388 A Monument to Satan: Menz’s Teufel

× Kate Hutchens

4 Excess
394 Alternatives to Incarceration
× Raphael Sperry in Conversation with Tings Chak

Reviews

4 4 Kids on Buildings:
Zaha Hadid’s Eli & Edythe Broad Art Museum
× review by Emil

4 7 Infrastructure Critical: Sacrifice at Toronto’s ­G8/­G20 S

­ ummit
by Alessandra Renzi & Greg Elmer
× review by Scott Sørli

4 9 Carbon Democracy
by Timothy Mitchell
× review by Clint Langevin

411 Imagine No Possessions: The Socialist Objects of ­Russian Constructivism

by Christina Kiaer
× review by Maria Taylor

414 Kish, an Island Indecisive by Design

by Nasrin Tabatabai & Babak Afrassiabi
× review by Steven Chodoriwsky

5 Table of Contents
 Chapter Name

Distortion or warping W atermarked or

of the mark “ghosted” behind type
 Editorial Note

We don’t need to see anything out of the ordinary,

we already see so much.
—Robert Walser

Ours is unquestionably a time of excess. While currencies and com­

modities continue to circulate, reifying segregation and inequality
throughout the global political economy, excess leaks out in all direc­
tions, sometimes fostering movements of resistance, other times per­
mitting improvisational opportunism among often neglected actors,
and still at other moments irrevocably damaging ecologies and envi­
ronments which we humans precariously but ruthlessly inhabit. The
pleasures and perils of excess cross divisions of class, race, gender
and sexuality, while also reinforcing aspects of these and other iden­
tities. Can we design for, or among, the excesses of contemporary cul­
ture? How do practices of architecture and landscape architecture,
as well as adjacent practices of art, curation, philosophy, and typo­
graphy, suggest ways to amplify, capture, or redirect excess?

Peking Observatory detail, from Illustrations of China and Its People, Vol. 4, by John Thomson, 1874;
image courtesy Yale University Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, accessed through
­Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Visualizing Cultures.

9
In what follows—Scapegoat’s sixth issue— forms for relaying such urgent occupations,
we explore the productive, resistant, and actualize the potential of mass resistance
imperiling aspects of excess as an attempt to the current neoliberal agenda [Épopée,
to advance our project of emboldening theo- p. 50]. Even the construct of “the human”
­retical and historical modes of inquiry, schol- is opened to interrogation by the general
arly research, and design practice. It is a economy, as the excesses of human ex­cep-
vast conceptual terrain, but one that offers tionalism are challenged by artist prac­
many compelling perspectives. We contend tices [Leach, pp. 60, 113, 265, 387, 401] and
that in our anesthetized present, when many typographical militancy [Kamdar, pp. 18,
of the excesses of the global political econ­ 24, 62, 128, 232, 316, 402, 418]. Overall, then,
omy are dismissed within dominant cul­ the relationship between gene­ral economy
ture as necessary, developing new ways of and excess can be summarized, however
seeing what is normative, or in Walser’s provisionally, as follows: excess can only
words “ordinary,” seems fundamental to be excess within a restricted econ­omy.
the work of both politics and design. But, Through investigations of excess, we thus
just as significantly, as Walser reminds us, reveal the political, moral, and ecological
“we already see so much.” This sensuous- processes of restriction by which values
ly perceived “so much,” whether quotid­ are produced as valuable, or, more gener­
ian or exceptional, forms the content of ally, how the general economy is local­ized,
this issue. The movement from sensation, moralized, and subjugated to particular
inquiry, and investigation to description, political economic forces. To consider ex-
analysis, and conviction relies here on the cess is therefore also to question the legit-
reassessment of the terms of value them­ imacy of the values made possible by re-
selves. That is, this issue undertakes a re- ­striction; such considerations are the work
as­sessment of the general economic point of philosophy, politics, and design when
of view as a means to propel new ethical these practices aim to challenge the intol­
capacities for theory and design practice erable conditions of the present.
among the variously excessive instances
Inhabitations of the Earth
of the present, which forms-of-life struggle
to inhabit. Within the Anthropocene, the site of these
struggles, whether theoretical, ­political,
Excess from a General
biological, or aesthetic, is the earth itself.1
Economic Point of View
How can this earth, upon which we humans
To thoroughly situate this issue within depend, and from which we extract our
its historical point of departure, the first conditions of misery and progress, oppres­
section attempts to reiterate the theore­ sion and innovation, destruction and care,
tical backformation of our considerations suggest new ways of positioning architec­
of excess by directly presenting works by ture and landscape practices? We begin
Georges Bataille and Jean Baudrillard, both this section with a consideration of the
translated by ­Stuart Kendall. Kendall’s own forest and its communicative and curative
masterful introduction [“Toward General potencies—excesses which we are only
Economy,” p. 26] offers a more substan­ be­g ­in­n ing to understand and appreciate
tial and erudite reading of Bataille’s own [Beresford-Kroger and Thorne, p. 64]. Such
conceptual debts than this introduction views are tempered by the excessive evac­
can provide. Presently, we might say that uations of material, especially construc­tion
the opening texts from Kendall, Bataille, waste, which in its plentitude sustains new
and Baudrillard offer a formidable chal­ and unexpected ecologies and experiences
lenge to normative, restricted economies [Hirmer, p. 76]. Between the flourishing
of meaning and value. From the point of efflorescences of plant life and the mutat­
view of architecture and design practice, ing, ejected debris of the city, the sensuous
such normative values have lately relied sounding of the earth is made manifest
on a diagrammatic image of sustainability; through various instruments that are them­
nevertheless, such alibis also occasion seri­ selves the means by which both knowledge
ous cosmopolitical challenges [Kalliala, and violence are constructed and perpet­
p. 38]. These challenges occur within other uated [Ginwala and Ziherl, p. 90]. These
new diagrams as well, where taking and technologies come to fruition in both radi­
holding the street, and developing radical cal new art practices that call attention

10 Scapegoat
to the precarious realities of the human the inexorable violence of human inhabi­
[DaSilva, p. 98] and peculiar forms of lux­ tations, but it also beckons a consideration
urious apocalypticism [Schneider, p. 102]. of the future of settlement, whether in the
The explosive growth of the human, and form of the Modernist legacy of Metabo­
our common dependency on appropriated lism and the future that never happened
chemical capacities, also suggests a new [Magalhães and Soares, p. 114], or the spec­
way of reading the Anthropocene and its ulative futures of infinity and eternity, en-
unequal distribution of en­vironmental risks, twined as the horizon of cosmopolitical
benefits, and stimulants [McDonough, p. 106]. propositions [Provost, p. 124].
Of course, such a history calls into question

“From Hankow to the Wu-Shan Gorge, Upper Yangtsze,” from Illustrations of China and Its People, Vol. 4, by
John Thomson, 1874; image courtesy Yale University Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, accessed
through the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Visualizing Cultures.

Technologies of the Political

cal ends. Symmetrically,” according to
In his magisterial study of the history of Edwards, “it also means using political
climate science, Paul Edwards explains power strategically to achieve technical or
the movement from early theories of cli­ scientific aims.” 2 Understanding the speci­
mate to the contemporary understanding ficity of these symmetrical co-productions
of “general circulation” that relays and allows us to avoid the philosophical and
distributes the localized effects of global political pitfalls of both actor-network the­
climate, emphasizing the tremendous dif­ ory and object-oriented ontology; where
ficulties caused by a plentitude of techno­ the former approach valorizes the connec­
logical frictions. In parallel with these tivity of the network, and the latter posi­
fric­t ions, the development of the knowl­ tion emphasizes the irreducibility of nodes
edge of general circulation required, as (whether as objects or things) as the pri­
Edwards suggests throughout his study, mary constituents of the network, a more
various techno-political assemblages, or coherent and politically operative analysis
instances of technopolitics. “Engaging in requires a multi-scalar and multi-centered
technopolitics means designing or using approach, where agency is negotiated as
technology strategically to achieve politi­ a coproduction among vertical pressures

11 Editorial Note
(from above as much as from below) and lonial collaborations [Mitra, p. 212]. No
heterogeneous lateral affinities. less essential, however, is an understand­
Exemplary of such an approach to tech- ing of the extravagant expenditure of the
­nologies of the political, forensic architec­ State to maintain its image as a transpar­
ture has helped frame urgent reconsider­- ent and allegedly accountable institution;
ations of the multilateral violence modul­- while denouncing all excesses of security
ated by international humanitarian law, architecture and infrastructure is no doubt
environmental law, and non-human rights important, some instances, such as Cana­
[Weizman & Davis, p. 130]. 3 Still, catalog­ da’s so-called New Camelot, are more des­
ing and analyzing these forms of violence erving of ridicule [Monaghan & Walby,
has also exceeded architecture practices, p. 218]. The State’s image-making, whether
receiving critical attention through new by way of architectural façades or event-
media art practices [Bridle, pp. 130, 132, 134, driven activities, can be further interro­
136, 138, 140, 142, 144]. The technologies gated through cooperative practices that
of the political, especially those related to reconsider the pacifying role of the com­
the optics of violence, cast a long shadow modity spectacle and instigate new forms
and require a keen and attentive vision if of occupation through conviviality from
they are to be contested. Like architecture, below [Hebbel Am Ufer & raumlaborber­
images are neither ethically neutral nor lin, p. 226]. Finally, and certainly not least
politically transparent. The work of dis­ among the technologies of the politi­c al,
possession and appropriation, such as with are the community-produced icons of
the seizure of Palestinian villages and land, shame, which as processual group activi­
relies on images to recast the excesses of ties enable manifestations of anticolonial
colonial violence as the grand project of resistance [Jacquet, p. 206]. Importantly,
a modernizing statecraft [Azoulay, p. 148]. the historical analysis of such practices, in
Images of progress are also a key feature concert with the development of correla­
in fomenting the politics of enthusiasm so tive strategies, indicate ways of negoti­
often deployed as a means of “revitaliza­ ating both the politics of identity and the
tion” in the processes of event urbanism ethics of subjectivity.
[De Lisio, p. 170]; yet counter-practices, such
Practices Before and After the Subject
as those developed through the Olym­pic
City Project, also suggest alternative forms In the political philosophies of non-coer­
of reading the opportunism of spectacu­ cion and mutual aid that can be traced
lar, event-driven urbanism [Pack, pp. 171, back at least to Spinoza in the early mod­
173, 174, 176, 177; Hustwit, p. 178]. In addi­ ern period, and that connect diverse fig­-
tion, the practice of documentary photo- ures such as Emma Goldman, Rosa Luxem­
graphy, as a mode of description that reveals burg, Frantz Fanon, and Jean Genet, among
rhythms of violence, can be advanced to many others, the question of the subject as
critically engage the differential pressures the locus of political action is both decisive
of postnatural urbanism [Hutama, pp. 180, and deceptive. We could argue that the
185, 190, 195, 200]. political subject is both the product of
In addition to these counter-practices particular practices, as well as the medium
and their antagonistic images of ­various generating practices of collaboration, strug­
urban struggles, the city itself can be under­ gle, resistance, or revolution. Before and
stood as a contemporary locus of techno­ after the subject, then, there is an excess in
politics. In this regard, an archaeology of the form of general economy of agita­tion,
memory fragments that contests State his­ or, what queer theorist William Haver de-
tories and dominant narratives helps en- scribes as a condition of “general affec­
sure the heterogeneity of urban tempo­ tivity.”4 For Haver, “[b]odies and pleasures
ralities against the imposition of homo­ are always multiple, ambiguous, and anony-
genizing order, whether authoritarian or mous, and the principle of the conjugation
neoliberal [Kusno, Miller & Turpin, p. 180]. of bodies with pleasures is the circulation
Likewise, curatorial practices that bring of a general affectivity.”5 Because of this,
together artists contesting the dominant “[p]ersonhood and subjectivity, however
narratives of State security and its border­ conceived, do not supplant empirical sen­
land violence are essential to maintaining suousness. The intimate, radical imperson­
the vibrancy of intercultural and postco­ ality of bodies and pleasures withstands

12 Excess
all the seductions offered by concepts of fact that the whole country has, in fact, be-
person and subject. Indeed, not even that come one massive, open-air psychiatric
disintegration we call death is beyond the institution. Whether we are inside or out­
circulation of bodies and pleasures in a gen­ side of the asylum, then, becomes a mat­
eral (which is in no way universal) affectiv­ ter of a general economy of comportments,
ity.”6 The reconsideration of excess from dispositions, and affectations. As with the
the point of view of a sensuous, anonymous asylum, so it is with nature itself. In the
pleasure is perhaps nowhere more rigor­ first text in this section, the relations be-
ously argued for than at the beginning of tween nature as palliative scenography
this section, where the consideration of and the psychiatric institution as a model
the liquid fore-speech of drool sets the consumer society are brought together
fore-scene [Ricco, p. 234]. And, like the through the great literary tradition of
drool that traces the politics of sleeping the obituary [Denizen, p. 318]. However,
together, the cartographic impulse perpet­ as Rich Pell remarks in his conversation
ually thwart­ed by the realities of a shifting, with Emily Kutil, “[i]n a natural history
fluid reality finds its inverted complement museum they try to keep dead things dead
in new curatorial practices that evade the forever, which ends up being a lot harder
antinomies of reality and fiction [Springer, than you might think” [Pell & Kutil, p. 328].
p. 242]. But, “[s]ince each of us was sev­ The question of the boundary between the
eral, there was already quite a crowd.”7 inside and outside of nature is opened up
That is to say, as the fiction of the indi­ to a general economic reading through the
vidual cartographer or curator gives way work of the Center for PostNatural History,
to the multiplicities of coproduction, the which echoes and amplifies earlier claims
politics and power of the group beckons about the dramatic human effects on the
further consideration as well [Lotringer, environment made by the untimely Ital­
p. 254]. With these extrapolations of group ian geologist Antonio Stoppani [Stoppani,
power in mind, we can also productively Federighi, Turpin & Berceanu, p. 346]. Near­-
and speculatively reconsider the fictions ly one hundred years after Stoppani’s in-
of both human intelligence—imagined to sightful but then-unconvincing argument
be an outcome of evolutionary “reason”— for the introduction of an Anthropozoic Era
and the model—as that electable heuris­ into geological periodization, the concen-
tic device so relied upon by scientists and trated display of the earth’s most danger­
designers alike [Lem & Zylinska, p. 266]. Of ous and geographically distributed fauna
course, we are well aware that such intel­ finds it apotheosis in the towering moun-
ligent, model fictions are also maintained tains of taxidermy that indicate, through
through modes of greater and lesser coer­ a careful analysis, the macrophenomenal
cion, whether through the mass intimacy operations of Cabella’s, the “world’s fore­
of design by “dividuals” [Peiffer, p. 294], or most outfitter” [Young, p. 354]. Similarly, in
the more explicit violence and hate nur­ a report on the economic “miracle” of Alm­
tured by Prison America [Kraus, p. 306]. ería, Spain, we encounter the manic pro­
But, the fictive subject can also be produc­ liferation of a highly regulated, chemically
tively, and politically, re-appropriated; with managed garden of the sun [Cate Christ,
such ends in mind, both collaborative writ­- p. 364]. The boundary of what might be
ing, which affirms non-completion through considered natural is not only beginning
open-ended archival practices [Prelinger to blur, but proliferate; no longer a geogra­
& Dean, p. 272], and collaborative graphic ph­ic, extensive, or measureable border
design, which redacts world-making prop­ between the interior and the exterior, the
ositions to investigate their latent, alterna­ distinction between the inside and outside
tive assumptions [Langlois & Abdallah, p. of nature appears to be, in the Anthropo­
280], suggest viable practices for the per­ cene, more a question of zones of variegated
petual agitation of political subjectivity. intensity.8 The evidence for such a shift is
now almost an ambient condition, but a
Natures Inside and Out
focused instance makes the point clear: as
In a fashion exemplifying his singular, pro­ an act of speculative dissection, the archi­
vocative voice, Jean Baudrillard once an- tecture of the xenotransplantation lab­
nounced that the only reason America main- oratory—where organs are grown in the
tains its mental asylums is to disguise the bodies of non-human animals for extrac­

13 Editorial Note
tion and incorporation in human bodies— struggles over critical communications in-
proliferates the zones of intense, ruthless frastructure, especially in the wake of the
indistinguishability [Vanderpol, p. 372]. The Snowden revelations related to the mas-
catalogue of practices that would accom- sive Prism surveillance program [Sørli, p.
pany any account of the human project to 407]. No less essential for contemporary
manage Nature (to both take it inside and political economic considerations of human
take its insides)—or perhaps even more dependency on carbon-based fuels is Car-
audaciously, to manage Life itself—can, like bon Democracy, the most recent monograph
a mangled corpse, only horrify [Thacker, from Timothy Mitchell [Langevin, p. 409].
p. 378]. Even still, the contemporary horror Moving from infrastructural and extrac-
of philosophy is anticipated by the moral tivist excesses to the scale of and relation
perturbations of earlier epochs, including to the commodity itself, Chistina Kiaer’s
the turn-of-the-century enthusiasm for Imagine No Possessions challenges con-
Satan, a revolutionary figure as commit- temporary thing-theorists to consider the
ted to free thought and action as his divine political implications and potentials of the
enemy was committed to restrictive sub- socialist object [Taylor, p. 411]. Finally, the
jugation and obedience [Hutchens, p. 388]. offshore oddity of Kish, an Island Indecisive
Such excesses, however consequential for by Design, by Nasrin Tabatabai and Babak
speculative thought and historical under- Afrassiabi, is considered through its perfor-
standing, must also connect to the political mativity as a book, operating through var-
struggles of the present, not least of which ious attempts to blur distinctions between
is the struggle against the potent violence of form and content [Chodoriwsky, p. 414].
incarceration [Sperry & Chak, p. 394], a mat-
Inter-alia
ter of such urgent significance that it is the
theme of Scapegoat’s upcoming eighth issue. The philosophy of excess, as developed by
Georges Bataille and relayed through Jean
Reviews
Baudrillard and various other intercessors
In the wake of Detroit’s unelected “Emer- into contemporary design practice, affords
gency Manager” Kevyn Orr filing for Chap­- us now, in the Anthropocene, a decisive per-
ter 9 bankruptcy this past July, we begin spective—one that might best be described
our reviews section with another install- in the words of Benedict Anderson, who,
ment of Scapegoat’s Kids on Buildings col- supposedly following Melville, explicates
umn, in which Emil, age five, considers his work as “political astronomy.”9 In fact,
the excessive potential of Zaha Hadid’s it is just such a political astronomy that is
recent Eli & Edythe Broad Art Museum invoked by Walter Benjamin (who, before
at Michigan State University. Being some- fleeing Paris during the Nazi occupation
what less inclined than other recent crit- of France, gave his collected notes for The
ics to describe the newly Hadidified city Arcades Project to his friend Georges Bataille,
of East Lansing as a site of existential con- then a librarian at the Bibliothèque Nationale,
ditions remade by orthogonal geometries, to hide among the stacks). But it was be-
our columnist endeavours to find more prac- fore the war that Benjamin would write,
tical excitements among the curves of this between 1923 and 1926, a remarkable series
confounding, supernatural expenditure of long aphorisms, eventually published in
[Emil, p. 404]. Following the column, our 1928 as One-Way Street. In the final section
other reviews consider various themes of the text, “To the Planetarium,” Benjamin
that intersect with the theory of excess, offers a premonitory cosmopolitical pro-
including the practice of repression and posal for the Anthropocene that has many
the politics of resistance within neoliberal important resonances in the later convo-
regimes, the political history and dimin- lutes of The Arcades Project. The precision
ishing future of carbon-based fuels, the of Benjamin’s writing in this section of the
potential for radical comradely objects text makes careful, attentive reading espe-
under socialist modes of production, and cially necessary:
the peculiar indecision of islands. Ales- The mastery of nature, so the imperialists
sandra Renzi and Greg Elmer’s Infrastruc- teach, is the purpose of all technology.
ture Critical: Sacrifice at Toronto’s G8/G20 But who would trust a cane wielder who
Summit is an essential text for theorists proclaimed the mastery of child­ren by
and activists engaged in the contemporary adults to be the purpose of education? Is

14 Scapegoat
 not education above all the indispens- means, a relationship to the cosmos. Not-
able ordering of the relationship be- ing the emerging exploratory horizons of
tween generations and therefore mas- science for both interior and exterior nat­
tery, if we are to use this term, of that ures, that is, both the mind and body, as
­relationship and not of the children?
And likewise technology is the mas-
well as the universe, Benjamin then remarks:
tery not of nature but of the relation “The paroxysm of genuine cosmic expe-
between nature and man.10 rience is not tied to that tiny fragment of
nature that we are accustomed to call ‘Na-
Benjamin then continues (again with ture.’”12 Here it seems Benjamin is in radi-
gendered language)as follows: “Men as a cal agreement with Bataille, whose La part
species completed their development thou- maudite [The Accursed Share] was pub-
sands of years ago; but mankind as species lished just over a decade later (1949). How
is just beginning his. In technology a phy- then to characterize this “paroxysm of gen-
sis [nature] is being organized through uine cosmic experience,” which seems as
which mankind’s contact with the cosmos important for Benjamin’s political astro­
takes a new and different form from that nomy as for Bataille’s general economy?
which it had in nations and families.”11 Here For both thinkers, exposure to an “out-
it seems that Benjamin is suggesting two side” beyond the human offers an expe-
separate rhythms of evolutionary develop- rience that challenges the normative as-
ment: the first, “men as a species,” appears sumptions and “ordinary” situation of poli­
to mark the distinction of Homo sapiens, tics as much as it affords new and urgent
or humans as such; the second, “mankind perspectives on the values that shape our
as species,” is then correlative to the inter- lived realities within restricted econo-
species relationships available to the hu- mies. Likewise, the Anthropocene thesis,
man, including, through techno-political which suggests that the aggregate effect

Peking Observatory detail, from Illustrations of China and Its People, Vol. 4, by John Thomson, 1874; images
courtesy Yale University Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, accessed through the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology’s Visualizing Cultures.

15 Editorial Note
of human activity on earth has become ness within which tellurian, geological, and
so significant as to require a new geolog­ celestial orientations seem impious, if not
ical epoch, reminds us, as human agents, impossible. In one image, the excessive
of the massive destructive potential of extension of the universe is modeled by
our activities, whether intentional or not, technologies intended to enable stable and
conscious or unconscious. The thesis is predictable relations with the knowable
perhaps most effective not as a scientific cosmos—a telescopic restriction; in the
paradigm, but as a political construct. In other, the excessive finitude of the human
her own cosmopolitical proposal, Isabelle is defined by way of the camera’s capaci-
Stengers has developed a necessary femi­ ty to capture an image of overwhelming
nist reading of the Anthropocene. She con­ stability that is formidably diminutive—a
tends that, “feminism may indeed help to microscopic restriction. To remain vulner­
face what is threatening us because it dis- able, mobile, and lithe between these two
habituates and dispels the anaesthesia” restrictions and countless others, to lever­
produced by academic abstractions.13 To age them all against each other when nec­
dis-habituate patterns of violence, patriar­ essary, to operate among the multi-scalar
chy, and colonialism would be to simulta­ and multi-centered general economy, and
neously remember our locatedness within to use the excesses of the scale of the uni­
the earth and the cosmos, and to question— verse to counter-balance the excesses of
openly, curiously, and carefully—our sin­ the scale of the human—such imperatives
gular place within these ecologies. could comprise, were Bataille to have pro­
As the photographer John Thomson posed them, an agenda for the operative
made his way through rural China to pho­ use of excess to help produce the practices
tograph the lives of its inhabitants for his of theory and design in the Anthropocene.
massive, four-volume study Illustrations of But because he did not, it is up to us to con­
China and Its People: A Series of Two Hun- struct a cosmopolitics capable of sustain­
dred Photographs, with Letterpress Descrip- ing pleasure, passion, and conviction. f
tive of the Places and People Represented
(1873–4), the first work of its kind by any
European traveler, it seems that among the
many unprecedented scenes he encountered,
two especially compelling models caught
his attention.14 The first, the extremely well-
crafted instruments of the Peking Observa­
tory, were an indication of a sophisticated
relationship to the cosmos within Chinese
culture and politics. His remarks on the
instruments, despite his predilection for
European technology, testify to his impres­
sion that the cosmopolitical sensibility of
their makers was matched by the quality
of their design and construction practices.15
The second model, if we may call it that,
was the reflective capacity of the surface
of the Yangtze River itself, which, when
exposed to his modest but weighty cam­
era, created an image of deep, indelible
immersion. The sky and earth double on
the deceptively still surface of the water of
the Upper Yangtze, creating an inescap­
able scenographic frame resistant to any
human action. If the former instruments
suggest the navigational, calendrical, and
scientific ambitions related to locating the
human within a perpetually moving cos­
mos, the latter image captures, by way of
photographic technology, a moment of still­

16 Excess
Endnotes 13 Isabelle Stengers, “Matters of Immanent Composi­
tion: Cosmopolitics in the Anthropocene—
1 For a comprehensive reading of the history of the A ­Conversation with Heather Davis and Etienne
“whole earth” as both image and ideology, see Died- Turpin,” in Architecture in the Anthropocene:
rich Diederichsen and Anselm Franke, eds., The Encounters Among Design, Deep Time, Science
Whole Earth California and the Disappearance of the and Philosophy, ed. Etienne Turpin (Ann Arbor, Mi.:
Outside (Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2013). MPublishing/Open Humanities Press, ­forthcoming
2 Paul Edwards, A Vast Machine: Computer M ­ odels, 2013).
Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming 14 I would like to thank Anna-Sophie Springer for
(Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2010), 215. bringing this marvelous collection of images to my
3 The work that constitutes “forensic ­architec­ture” is attention.
already quite substantial, however, several texts are 15 While Thomson was willing to compliment the
essential reading for an ­understanding of the tra- design and construction of the instruments at
jectories of research in relation to curatorial prac- the ­Observatory, he was still extremely ­skeptical
tice, aesthetics, international humanitarian law, and of their accuracy, especially when unfavourably
environmental law; see especially: “Exhibitions, ­compared—at least, by Thomson—to European-
Forensics, and the Agency of Objects—Eyal Weiz- made t­ echnologies for astronomical observation.
mann in Cultures of the Curatorial, ed. Beatrice von
­Bismarck, Jörn Schafaff and Thomas Weski (Ber-
lin and New York: ­Sternberg Press, 2012), 85–95;
Thomas Keenan and Eyal Weizmann, Mengele’s
Skull: The Advent of a Forensic Aesthetics (Berlin
and New York: ­Sternberg Press, 2012); Eyal Weiz-
man, The Least of All Possible Evils: Humanitarian
­Violence from Arendt to Gaza (­London: Verso, 2011);
and Paulo Tavares, “Murky Evidence,” in Cabinet 43
(Fall 2011): ­101–105.
4 William Haver, “A Sense of the ­Common,” The South
Atlantic Quarterly 111, no. 3 (­Summer 2012):
­4 39–452.
5 Ibid., 440.
6 Ibid., 441; my emphasis.
7 Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand
­Plateaus, trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis:
­University of Minnesota Press, 1987), 3.
8 For a discussion of the intensive ­negotiation
of the Anthropocene, see Bruno Latour, ­Facing
Gaia: Six Lectures on the Political T ­ heology of
Nature, 2013 Gifford Lectures on Natural ­Religion,
h
­ ttp://­w ww­. b
­ runo-latour.fr/node/486; for a com-
pelling inversion of the borders and orders of geo­
logy and biology, see Ilana ­Halperin, ­Physical
Geology: A Field Guide to Body Mineralogy and
Other New Landmass (Berlin: Berliner Medizin­
historisches Museum, 2010).
9 Benedict Anderson, Under Three Flags: Anarchism
and the Anti-Colonial Imagination (London: Verso,
2007), 1–2.
10 Walter Benjamin, “One-Way Street,” in One
Way Street and Other Writings (New York:
Verso, 1997), 104.
11 Ibid.; it is worth nothing that Benjamin, originally
writing in German, here uses the words “Mensch”
and “Menschheit,” which—like “human” and
“humankind”—are not gendered terms, at least not in
the sense that we tend to think of such terms in the
English language. However, it is important to under-
line that, like many other texts either written by and
translated by European men, the operative use of
gendered nouns or pronouns is nevertheless exclu-
sionary and politically problematic. For further con-
siderations regarding the translation of such texts,
see, for instance, Lori Chamberlain, “­Gender and the
Metaphorics of Translation,” in Signs vol. 13, no. 3
(Spring, 1988): 454–472; Rosemary Arrojo, “Fidelity
and The Gendered Translation,” in TTR : t­ raduction,
terminologie, rédaction, vol. 7, no. 2 (1994): 147–
163; and, Uwe Kjær Nissen, “Aspects of translating
gender,” in Linguistik online no. 11, (2/02): 25–37.
12 Ibid.

17 Editorial Note
 A Political Typography Manifesto
by Prachi Kamdar

Money is to fundamentalists, what guns are to monkeys.

18 Project
Beauty and politics are rarely understood as complimentary ambi­
tions. As a visual artist, I have an innate desire to create beauty through
what I do. It was only a few years ago that I began to realize the ex­
tent of my discomfort towards the magnitude of problems in India;
I knew that the resulting unrest had to find its way into my visual
manifestations. My desire for beauty became political.
I see a persistent fabrication and manipulation of truth dissemi­
nated throughout society by hierarchical power structures, which
blur and distort our perception of the social, political, and econo­
mic order. However, we cannot underestimate the impact of the
public in any system, as seen in the recent Middle East uprisings
and the current revolt in Turkey. The strength in numbers speaks
louder than the authority of any regime. I understand my role as
a visual communications designer as contributing to the accurate
representation of the causes and effects of socio-political struggles,
and as a means of challenging misinterpretations of reality. If in­
formation and data become the currency of tomorrow, perhaps the
plutocracy will have to turn their power over to the info-techno­
crats. But information is also the key to economic superiority. Who
knows how soon oil will be traded for information? If the internet
is seen as a democratic system that can help dissolve oppressive
hierarchical structures by making important information more ac­ces­
sible to the masses, who in turn force governments to become more
accountable and transparent, this seamless access also makes in­
formation extremely vulnerable. Because of this, as a visual practi­
tioner I can take on the role of a critical designer and whistleblower
by making political content more legible and consequential to so­
cial thought and practice. This is my manifesto—to expose bureau­
cratic violence with work that incites informed discussion and con­
structive, transformative criticism of unaccountable governments.
Invariably, I see myself as part of a much larger framework, liv­
ing a life that is equivalent to a moment in an infinite time and
space. The questions of philosophy have become my questions: What
is it to be here and now? How does one aspire to make work and
life meaningful? Visual catharsis, spurred by my concern for micro-
­societal systems within a macro-cosmic network, epitomizes my work.

19
 About the featured typeface “Reed”

“Reed” is an attempt to create a culturally relevant and coherent

font palette of Latin and the vernacular Indian script, Devanagari,
which appear harmonious when used together in the Indian ­visual
lexicon. The design is essentially based on forms of Devanagari
script traditionally drawn with the reed pen (a slender wooden
pen with tip cut at a 45-degree angle), which gives the letters its
sharp endings and high contrast in its stroke width.

Bio

Born three decades after constitutional Indian independence to liberal-minded

parents, Prachi Kamdar was raised with the notion that creativity was a way of life.
She did her undergraduate in Visual Communications from The National Institute
of Design, India, and after internship with Jonathan Barnbrook in London, she real-
ized her immense affinity for type design, politically driven graphic design, and
opulent Indian visual culture. India is an extremely rich nation—both culturally and
traditionally, since antiquity—even as it is constantly battling issues like poverty,
social inequality, and political instability. Growing up, she could not remain sepa-
rated from the day-to-day concerns faced by its people at large. After almost five
years in a design studio in India, Prachi redirected her course of work to align more
closely with her goals as a visual practitioner. In 2012, she joined the Cranbrook
Academy of Art to pursue her political visual design ambitions. Currently, she is
in the MFA program at Cranbrook, where she continues to explore and express her
views through her work, which strives to be cultural, beautiful, and an instrumental
political agent of its time.

23 A Political Typography...
 Excess from a General
­Economic Point of View
Toward
General
Economy

by Stuart Kendall
Georges Bataille’s major contribution to the history of thought, if
not consciousness, consists in his transformation of Friedrich Niet­
zsche’s concept of general economy into a subtle tool for the criti­
cal analysis of expenditure in all of its forms at every scale, from
the atomic to the cosmic, by way of cells, organisms, and societies.
And expenditure takes many forms—eating, sex and death are only
three ways of expressing the processes of incorporation, accumu­
lation, transformation, reproduction, and dissemination that are
the passageways of energy in its peregrinations through matter:
each word expressing only a moment in the life of energy, a pause
or delay in the relentless process of becoming. We ourselves are
only a moment in the life of energy sent from the sun, a suspen­
sion of energy in liquid and mineral material coursing through the
depths of space.
Envisioning general economy requires within which we may act. And, through­
the deployment of another Nietzschean out the modern era—since Galileo, ­Bacon
con­cept—perspectivism—as a fundamental and Descartes—we have extended our ca­
gesture. The capacity to see the workings pacity for selection, our means of quanti­
of a specific economy from the outside, to fication, to almost every corner of our
see that any given economy is limited, or physical and social realities. But this re­
restricted, when measured against or rath­ ductive habit—measuring this but not that,
er within the more general processes of defining a system based on outputs with­
exchange at work in the universe as a out concern for inputs, selectively valoriz­
whole—this requires perspectivism, the ing some outputs over others—dissolves
capacity to shift one’s point of view radi­ in general economy, which is, as Bataille
cally and perhaps continually. This vision describes it, the proposal of an economy
looks at any given economy as if it were equal to the universe. Despite our biolog­
closed and set apart from other econo­ ical limitations and cultural habits, there
mies, though in fact only the cosmos as a are many reasons to believe that now, in
whole can be conceived as a closed system, our time, Bataille’s untimely notion of ex­
and even this is a matter for discussion at penditure, has come due.
the frontiers of physics. Every other sys­ The notion has already had a long his­
tem is a system within a system, stacked tory, even just within Bataille’s life and
upon and feeding off some other system. work. In the preface to his major work of
What looks like consumption from one general economy, The Accursed Share, Ba­
perspective is revealed as production from taille mentions the “18 years this work has
another. The waste of one system is inevi­ demanded of me.”1 Taking him at his word
tably—consciously or unconsciously—the and recalling that The Accursed Share was
food or fuel of another. Resources are res­ first published in early 1949, we may sur­
idues, and inputs are outputs by another mise that the project began for Bataille
name. in 1930 or 1931, during or immediately fol-
The basic structures of our biology and ­lowing the second year of the seminal jour­
neurology undermine our human efforts nal Documents or, at the latest, coincident
to perceive these things. Our eyes and oth­ with the beginning of his participation in
er senses serve as filters, selecting forms Boris Souvarine’s Democratic Communist
for perception from within the overwhel­ Circle and its affiliated review, La Critique
ming chaos of reality. Our minds—or brains, sociale. Bataille published his first book
if you prefer—synthesize these selective reviews in La Critique sociale in October
facts into the imaginary of a stable physical 1931. Two years later, in January 1933, La
world, through which we may move and Critique sociale nº 7 carried the first expli­cit

27
and extended elaboration of the theme of and Evil, a book that Bataille borrowed
expenditure, “The Notion of Expenditure.”2 from the Bibliothèque Nationale on 12 Ap­
The project nevertheless seems to have ril 1922, three years before his first expo­
roots that reach further back in Bataille’s sure to Mauss’s thought. In Beyond Good
life. Bataille’s close friend Alfred Métraux and Evil, Nietzsche develops his theory of
first introduced him to Marcel Mauss’s will to power as a strategy for understand­
theory of gift exchange in 1925. Métraux ing what he calls—only once but explic­
was then a student of Mauss, and Bataille itly—the “general economy of life.” 7 Thus,
and Métraux spent hours walking the while Bataille may have formulated the
streets of Paris, talking about Mauss’s laws of general economy through a reflec­
work. Despite this connection, or perhaps tion on Mauss’s description of potlatch,
because of it, Bataille did not borrow the he did so from a perspective deeply influ­
issue of L’Année sociologique containing enced by a prior reading of Nietzsche.
Mauss’s famous Essai sur le don (known The name Friedrich Nietzsche is never­
in English as The Gift) from the Biblio­ theless conspicuous in its absence from
thèque Nationale until May 1931. 3 In The The Accursed Share, Volume One. Nietzsche
Accursed Share, Bataille is clear about the does, however, appear as a significant ref­
derivation of his thought in this area: “Let erence in Sovereignty, the book that was
me indicate here that the studies whose to become volume three of The Accursed
results I am publishing here came out of Share, though Bataille did not see it pub­
my reading of the Essai sur le don. To be­ lished during his lifetime. This omission
gin with, reflection on potlatch led me to or concealment of Nietzsche’s influence on
formulate the laws of general economy.” 4 Bataille’s theory of general economy is par­
This claim is partially disingenuous in ticu­larly curious given his near omnipre­
at least two ways. First, it is disingenu­ sence in Bataille’s other works, most obvi­-
ous because Bataille borrows more from ously On Nietzsche (1945), wherein he
Mauss than his theory of gift exchange writes: “With a few exceptions, my com­
and potlatch. Bataille’s reading of Mauss pany on earth is that of Nietzsche…” 8 In
stresses the sacrificial moment of gift ex­ the aftermath of World War Two, the com­
change rather than the moment of recip­ pany of the German philosopher, still mis­
rocal return. For Bataille, the gift is, first takenly associated with the dark drives
and foremost, something one sacrifices. and legacy of National Socialism, may have
Ex­penditure is sacrificial expenditure. But been too controversial for inclusion in a
this notion, too, derives, at least in part, book Bataille took as seriously for its world-
from Mauss, from his “Essai sur la Nature changing potential as The Accursed Share.9
et la Function du Sacrifice,” co-authored Nietzsche does, however, appear in drafts
with Henri Hubert, first published in for the project where, for example, Bataille
L’An­née sociologique in 1898. 5 Bataille’s cites a portion of this passage from Thus
capacious view of the interdependence of Spoke Zarathustra:
elements of social reality also owes some­
How did gold attain the highest value?
thing to Mauss and his concept of the “to­ Because it is uncommon and u ­ seless and
tal social fact,” of which the gift is only the gleaming and gentle in its splendour; it
best example. A total social fact is a fact always gives itself. Only as the image
or practice that is personal, political, eco­ of the highest virtue did gold attain the
nomic, legal, and religious, among other highest value. Goldlike gleam the eyes
things, all at once. To perceive a total so­ of the giver…Uncommon is the highest
cial fact is to perceive things in general, virtue and useless; it is gleaming and
with multiple systems of meaning inter­ gentle in its splendour: a gift-giving
secting or layered on top of one another. virtue is the highest virtue. Verily I have
found you out, my disciples: you strive,
But Bataille’s claim that the thought of as I do, for the gift-giving virtue…This
general economy derives entirely from re­- is your thirst: to become sacrifices and
flections on potlatch is also disingenuous gifts yourselves.10
in another more significant way. Elsewhere,
Bataille remarks that his encounter with It is not necessary to interpret this pas­
the thought of Friedrich Nietzsche in the sage too deeply: Mauss’s social thought
early 1920s was, as he says, “decisive.” 6 meets Nietzsche’s poetic psychology in
That encounter began with Beyond Good Bataille’s general economy.

28 Scapegoat
 Despite the convergence of these power­ signatures on the “Note on the Founda­
ful influences, Bataille ruminated over The tion of a College of Sociology” in 1937. 11
Accursed Share for at least 18 years. In the Ambrosino also participated actively as an
late 1920s, following his encounter with auditor in both Acéphale and the College
Nietzsche, his introduction to Mauss’s the­- of Sociology. Ambrosino worked with the
ory of gifts, and his initial readings of both Commissariat à l’énergie atomique and,
Sade and Freud (including his unorthodox after World War II, became the director
experience with psychoanalysis under Ad­ of the Maurice de Broglie Laboratory in
ri­en Borel), Bataille attempted to elabo­ Paris and Brétigny.
rate a cosmology of solar expenditure and In a footnote to the preface to The Ac-
base materialism circulating around and cursed Share, Volume One, Bataille writes:
through several mythic figures: the solar
anus, the pineal eye, and the Jesuve. These Here I must thank my friend Georges
Ambrosino, research director of the X-
texts remained, for the most part, unpub­ Ray Laboratory, without whom I could
lished during Bataille’s lifetime, but they not have constructed this book. Science
certainly constitute his initial attempt to is never the work of one man; it requires
express the ideas developed most fully in an exchange of views, a joint effort. This
The Accursed Share. book is also in large part the work of
The earliest of these writings, “The So­ Ambrosino. I personally regret that the
lar Anus,” dates to 1927, though it did not atomic research in which he partici­
appear in print until late 1931, when the pates has removed him, for a time, from
Galerie Simon published it in a small edi­ research in “general economy.” I must
express the hope that he will resume in
tion illustrated by Bataille’s friend André particular the study he has begun with
Masson. The other manuscripts date to me of the movements of energy on the
1930, the year after Bataille came under surface of the globe.12
attack by André Breton in the Second Sur­
realist Manifesto, and the year Documents As this note makes clear, Ambrosino was
lost funding. These texts reflect that mo­ among Bataille’s closest intellectual col­
ment of polemic and pause, a moment in laborators, someone whose conversation
which Bataille seems to have been gather­ was crucial to Bataille’s own sense of what
ing his thoughts, drafting manuscripts he was doing. This is no small claim in rel­-
designed to articulate his position, a vi­ ation to the editor of Documents, Acé­phale,
sion directly in contrast to and in contes­ and Critique, the co-founder of Count­er
tation of the Surrealist vision. Attack, Acéphale, the College of Sociolo­
By late 1931, Bataille’s horizon of con­ gy, and other groups. ­A mbrosino served
cern had shifted away from Breton and a role in relation to energetics and atomic
the Surrealists toward Boris Souvarine’s theory analogous to Alfred Mét­raux’s role
Democratic Communist Circle and its as­ in relation to Mauss and soci­ology. During
sociated journal, La Critique sociale. He the mid-to-late 1940s, Bataille hoped that
continued to develop, and ultimately pub­- Ambrosino would co-­author The Accursed
lish, his theories of base materialism and Share, or at least parts of it, perhaps a vol­
expenditure, now against a backdrop of ume on energy, with him. Ul­t imately this
Marxism and far left militancy. Through was not to be.
the Democratic Communist Circle, Bataille Between 1939 and 1949, Bataille drafted
made another personal contact essential five different manuscripts for what would
to the development of his thought on ex­ become The Accursed Share. This was in
penditure, Georges Ambrosino (1912–1984). fact the book that Bataille was trying to
Ambrosino was a nuclear physicist of Ita­ write from 1939 to the Fall of 1941, while
lian descent already active in the Circle keeping the notebooks that he would later
when Bataille joined the group. The two publish as the first half of Guilty. In the
became close friends. Following the dis­ preface to Inner Experience, Bataille men­
solution of the Circle in 1934, Ambrosino tions The Accursed Share obliquely: “Three
continued to collaborate actively with Ba­ quarters finished, I abandoned the work
taille, first in Counter Attack and later in in which the solved enigma [of general
Acéphale. His name appeared as a direc­ economy] was to be found.”13 In the Fall
tor of the journal Acéphale when it was of 1941 his attention shifted to Inner Ex-
first announced in 1936 and among the perience, though not entirely. He rewrote

29 Toward General Economy

 parts of The Accursed Share in early 1942 cant in the postwar era.16 Ultimately, the
while working on Inner Experience, and article would not be published until July.
rewrote it again in 1943 while complet­ The book project would take even longer.
ing Guilty, The Little One, and The Ores- Ambrosino was pulled away by his re­
teia. The project nevertheless languished search, and Bataille opted to refocus his
as Bataille’s focus drifted toward other energies and drafts on historical and cul­
things. Manuscripts from the period of­ tural topics: on the Aztecs, Islam, Tibetan
ten include notes and outlines related to Buddhism, Capitalism, the Soviet Union,
several projects—of several types: poetry, and the politics of the Marshall Plan. He
fiction, philosophy—at once. published articles on most of these topics,
The book resurfaces as a central con­ which amounted to an entirely new draft
cern in September of 1945, when Bataille of the book, in Critique and elsewhere be­
mentioned it in a letter to his publisher tween May 1947 and January 1949, the year
Michel Gallimard: “The Accursed Share, The Accursed Share, Volume One finally ap­
on which I have been working for fifteen peared, eighteen years after its inception.
years.” He explains, “This is a work that I The project did not end there, however.
spoke to you about during one of our con­ At least as early as 1947, when it became
versations, that touches on a subject of clear that Ambrosino would not be able to
public interest, which will be easy, often participate as a co-author of the project,
even amusing to read, from end to end. Bataille began to see The Accursed Share
The work is already well advanced and as a multi-volume work. He hoped Ambro­
I think I can see the end within about a sino might yet be able to co-author a later
year.”14 At this point Bataille was living in volume devoted to the physical science be­
the somewhat isolated medieval village of hind the argument, but he also anticipat­
Vézelay on extended medical leave from ed other volumes. In a note to the preface
his job at the Bibliothèque Nationale and of volume one, Bataille wrote: “This first
increasingly desperate for money. There volume will have a continuation. Further,
is no doubt that he hoped The Accursed it is being published in a collection that I
Share would be both accessible to a wide direct, which intends to publish, among
audience and completed soon. others, works in ‘general economy.’” 17
Only a few days later he mentioned the The back cover of The Accursed Share,
project again, somewhat obliquely, in a Volume One announced a second volume
letter to his friend Roger Caillois. Caillois forthcoming under the title, De l’angoisse
had solicited a contribution from Bataille sexuelle au malheur d’Hiroshima (From
for a London-based journal associated with Sexual Anguish to the Misfortune of Hi­
the wartime resistance government La roshima). That volume recalls Bataille’s
France libre, or Free France, and Bataille efforts to write a phenomenology of ero­
promised to have something for him in a ticism in the late 1930s, a project in some
“month or two.” 15 That very month, Am­ ways related to the notebooks that became
brosino visited Bataille in Vézelay and the Guilty, as well as another project entitled
two men talked at length about the project. Sade et l’essence de l’érotisme (Sade and
The text Bataille sent Caillois: “Economy the Essence of Eroticism) from the late
Equal to the Universe: Brief notes preli­ 1940s. In late 1950–early 1951, Bataille fi­nal-
minary to the preparation of an essay on ly wrote a draft of the book, again based
‘general economy’ forthcoming under the on articles published in Critique and else­-
Title The Accursed Share.” Ambrosino pre­ where. The draft bears the title L’Histoire
pared notes for the text as well as making de l’érotisme (The History of Ero­ticism). He
extensive comments on it, though it did rewrote it in 1953–54 and again in 1956,
not carry his name as a co-author. before finally publishing the book in 1957
In February 1946, Bataille wrote to Cail­ as L’Érotisme (Eroticism, mistitled in the
lois wondering when the piece would be City Lights Books edition as Erotism). Ero­-
published, expressing his hopes that it ticism, in other words, is in fact The Accur­
would appear before April, reflecting both sed Share, Volume Two.
the urgency of his financial interest in its A third volume was anticipated in 1950
publication as well as his sense that the under the title Propos politiques (Political
content of the article, and hence of The Matters). This volume developed out of
Accursed Share, was profoundly signifi­ arti­cles and notes for other projects on

30 Excess
Niet­zsche, Camus, and Communism from His book Energy in Nature and Society:
the late 1940s, but Bataille did not prepare General Energetics of Complex Systems is
a final draft of the book until the spring of one of his many comprehensive works in
1953, at which point he worked on it for a this area.19 In Fire and Memory: On Archi­
year before setting the manuscript aside. tecture and Energy, Luis Fernández-Galeano
Some of the chapters had already appeared considers architecture, in theory and prac­
as articles, others would be published lat­ tice, as a multivalent mode of expenditure,
er in the same form. The book as a whole examining buildings for the physical and
was not published in Bataille’s lifetime. social energy that they embody in con­
We know it now under the title La Souver- struction and operation. 20 Kevin Lynch,
aineté (Sovereignty), but we can also won­ another architectural theorist, devoted
der not only why Bataille did not publish his last book, Wasting Away, to the prob­
this manuscript, but also what he might lem of expenditure: what is waste, how is
have envisioned in its place. it embodied, how can we see it, how can
The book series Bataille mentioned in we do it well?21
the first volume of The Accursed Share is Architect William McDonough and chem-
another largely phantasmic project. Pub­ ­ist Michael Braungart extend and trans­
lished by Éditions de Minuit, “L’Usage des form this inquiry in their attempt to eli­
richesses” (The Use of Wealth) included minate the concept of waste through what
only The Accursed Share, Volume One and a they call “cradle-to-cradle” design prac­
book by Bataille’s former brother-in-law tices in their now well-known book of that
and close collaborator, Jean Piel, La Fortune name.22 One core conceit of their proposal
Américaine et son destin (Ame­rican Fortune is that “waste equals food”—the outputs
and Its Fate). Other anticipated projects in- of one system, in other words, are food or
cluded a book by Mircea Eliade on Tant- fuel for another. The design process gives
rism and a book by Claude Lévi-Strauss on shape to the displacement and transfor­
potlatch, as well as works by Alfred Mét­ mation of energy as it moves from one
raux, Georges Ambrosino, and Alexandre form and one system to another. Their
Kojève, none of which came to light. These concept of cradle-to-cradle design recog­
anticipated volumes illustrate the extent nizes that no design solution—no building,
to which Bataille envisioned his work as product, or system—exists in isolation from
part of a larger community of dialogue in others, that all design solutions must be
the area of general economy and on the understood to exist in something like what
prob­lem of expenditure. Georges Bataille would have called a rel­
That dialogue never gained the momen­ ationship of general economy. Bataille’s the­
tum Bataille hoped it would during his ory of general economy is, in other words,
lifetime, but the posthumous legacy of The a theory for contemporary design. But it
Accursed Share and, more importantly, of is also more than that; by examining the
the notion of general economy has been means, both conscious and unconscious,
diffuse and pervasive. Georges Bataille through which expenditure shapes our
was among the foremost influences on the social value systems, Bataille’s theory of
generation of thinkers who followed his general economy calls on contemporary
own. Foucault, Derrida, Kristeva, Lyotard, designers to examine their potential for
Baudrillard, and other post-structuralists shaping the social and political realities
have all written in direct response to Ba­ within which their practices struggle for
taille, and often as an extension of his meaning.
work. The volumes of Foucault’s history
of sexuality, for example, are each exer­
cises in general economy, as is much of
Derrida’s own body of writing.18
Perhaps more importantly for design, a
substantial body of critical and theoreti­
cal literature has emerged from other dis­
ciplines that can be understood as extend­
ing the theory of general economy. Vaclav
Smil has devoted his career to the patient
analysis of physical forms of expenditure.

31 Toward General Economy

 Endnotes

1 Georges Bataille, The Accursed Share, Volume One:

Consumption, trans. ­Robert H­ urley (New York: Zone
Books, 1991), 12.
2 See Georges Bataille, Visions of Excess, Selected
Writings 1927–1939, ed. Allan Stoekl (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1985).
3 See Georges Bataille, Oeuvres complètes, vol. XII
(Paris: Gallimard, 1988), 577.
4 Bataille, The Accursed Share, 193.
5 See Henri Hubert and Marcel Mauss, Sacrifice: Its
Nature and Functions, trans. W.D. Halls (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1964).
6 Georges Bataille, Oeuvres complètes, vol. VII (Paris:
Gallimard, 1976), 459.
7 Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, trans.
­Walter Kaufman (New York: ­Random House, 1966),
§ 23. The passage concludes: “And yet even this
hypo­thesis is far from being the strangest and most
painful in this immense and almost new domain of
dangerous insights; and there are in fact a hundred
good reasons why everyone should keep away from
it who—can.”
8 Georges Bataille, On Nietzsche, trans. Bruce Boone
(New York: Paragon House, 1992), 3.
9 In fact, Bataille was so confident in the value of the
project he confided in Michel Leiris that he believed
it could lead to his being awarded the Nobel Peace
Prize. See Georges Bataille and Michel Leiris, Corre-
spondence, trans. Liz Heron (New York: Seagull Books,
2008), 183.
10 See Bataille, Oeuvres complètes, vol. VII, 513;
Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathurstra, in The
Portable Nietzsche, trans. Walter Kaufman (New York:
Viking, 1954), 186.
11 See Denis Hollier, ed., The College of Sociology, trans.
Betsky Wing (University of Minnesota Press, 1989),
3 ff.
12 Bataille, The Accursed Share, 191.
13 Bataille, Oeuvres complètes, vol. V (Paris: Gallimard,
1973), 11.
14 Georges Bataille, Choix de lettres (Paris: Gallimard,
1997), 247.
15 Ibid., 249.
16 Ibid., 268.
17 Bataille, The Accursed Share, 191.
18 For an outline of the key elements of this legacy, see
Arkady Plotnitsky, Reconfigurations: Critical Theory
and General Economy (Gainesville: University Press
of Florida, 1993).
19 Vaclav Smil, Energy in Nature and Society: General
Energetics of Complex Systems (Cambridge, Mass.:
MIT Press, 2008).
20 Luis Fernández-Galeano, Fire and Memory: On Archi-
tecture and Energy, trans. Gina Cariño (Cambridge,
Mass.: MIT Press, 2000).
21 Kevin Lynch, Wasting Away (San Francisco: Sierra
Club Books, 1990).
22 William McDonough and Michael Braungart, Cradle to
Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things (New York:
North Point Press, 2002).

32 Scapegoat
Target Eater, 2012–13, Oil and resin on canvas on wood
12 panels, each 50 × 50cm, 150 × 100cm (12 panels)
Courtesy the artist and Sullivan+Strumpf
The Economy Equal to the ­Universe:
Brief notes preliminary to the
­preparation of an essay on ­“general
e­conomy” ­forthcoming ­under the title
The ­Accursed Share

by Georges Bataille
translated by Stuart Kendall

Essentially wealth is energy: energy is the group whose mass increases). This fun­
basis and the goal of production. The plants damental law of life is not surprising. The
that we cultivate in the fields and the ani­ sums expended usefully permit life to cap­
mals that we raise are sums of energy that ture solar energy and this easily provides
agricultural work has made available. We the excess of the living world.
use, we consume these animals and these The green parts of the plants of land and
plants in order to acquire the energy ex­ sea endlessly implement the appropriation
pended in all of our labours. Even our in­ of an important part of the luminous ener­
ert products—a chair, a plate, a building— gy of the sun. In this way light—sunlight—
respond to the necessities of a dynamic produces us, animates us and engenders
sys­tem. The use of my muscular energy im­- our excess. This excess, this animation, is
plies a time of rest wherein I am seated the effect of this light (we are essentially
on a chair: the chair helps me to manage only an effect of the sun).
the energy that I expend now by writing… In practice, from the point of view of
wealth, the radiation of the sun distingui­
Surpluses of Energy Due
shes itself with its unilateral character: it
to the Action of the Sun
loses itself without taking account, without
It is not difficult for me to capture the en­ compensation. The solar economy is founded
ergy required for my life. I usually even on this principle. Usually, if one envisions
have a significant excess at my disposal, our economy on the ground, one isolates
and as a whole humanity has access to an it. But this is only a consequence of that
immense surplus. which engenders and dominates it.
But it is an error to attribute, as one usu­ If we force ourselves to grasp, setting
ally does, our excess of wealth to recent out from this principle, the economic move­
inventions, to the development of modern ments that animate us, we perceive at the
tools. The sum of energy produced is al­ same time the excess of production over
ways superior to that which is necessary the energy necessary and the general ef­
for its production. This is the principle of fect of this excess: if we produce more than
life, which generally confirms the ­actions we expend in production, the excess of en­
of plants and animals. The productive act­ ergy must be recovered in some way. If
ivity of a plant can be envisioned from one it is used, this can only be in the growth
side as an expenditure of energy, and from of the system that produced it. If not, it
the other as acquisition. If the acquisition must be destroyed. This energy in play in
was not greater than the expenditure, no our activity is not freed from its origins,
plant could grow. It is the same with ani­ though we forget this. Its operation in us
mals (animal growth is more difficult and is only a passage. We can stop the solar
often presupposes the assistance of adults: rays but for a time. The solar energy that
in this case it is the adult-young animal we are is an energy that loses itself. And

34 Excess
undoubtedly we can delay it, but not sup­ lize, in order to extend to the maximum,
press the movement that demands that it the too-full energy that the sun gives it.
lose itself. The system of which we are a The limit of growth is that of the possi­
part can stop the radiation if it accumu­ ble. Extension only stops when life has
lates it in growth, but it cannot grow end- invaded then filled up the accessible do­
lessly. At a given point in time, when the main. Not only does each species—plant,
growth of the system has reached its lim­ animal—occupy on its own account all
it, the energy captured can only resume space where it can live. But also living
its course and lose itself. The solar ray that nature itself, at the extremity, multiplies
we are returns in the end to the nature its forms to the point of finally reach­
and direction of the sun: it must give it­ ing the inaccessible (to that which up till
self, lose itself without taking account. A then had remained forbidden): the trunks
living system grows, or lavishes itself, with­ and branches of trees have raised green
out reason. foliage above the grasses, winged insects
and birds have filled the air with life. The
Individual Use of these Surpluses
same penetration exerts itself in the wa­
From this new perspective, it is necessary ters, in the mud at the bottom of the sea,
to envision the living world as a whole. If even within solid ground. There is no other
one envisions only a part, its extreme limit limit than a maximum of population, but
of growth only has a relative significance. life attains this limit. And if it attains it,
That an individual organism has had its even as it approaches it, life is in the state
fill and cannot henceforth grow more does of an individual who can no longer expend
not limit the stagnation of the rays of the to grow a constant surplus of energy: ex­
sun on earth nor the slow growth of the cess is always present, but energy recov­
mass of energy sunk there. The limit en­ ers its initial freedom. Life being unable
countered at a point, when the animal ap­ to endlessly invest itself usefully consumes
proaches maximum growth, permits the itself in pure loss.
observation of what happens once the de­-
The Use of Surpluses before the
ve­lopment of the individual no longer en­
Arrival of Human Beings
tirely absorbs the available excess of en­
ergy. The sexual explosion then comes It is difficult to follow the play of energy
into effect, and liberates a great quantity in epochs that precede the arrival of hu­
of energy. Seen from the point of view of man beings. At least the precise picture
the living world, this liberation assures of a group of movements demands the ap­
the extension, the duration of life. For the plication of very diverse disciplines, the
individual, it is a loss, pure and simple. basis of which undoubtedly exists, but
Sexual activity escapes at least for a flash the facts of which remain to be specified.
the stagnation of energy and prolongs the The livable realm must have been filled,
movement of the sun. On this topic, ­human life must have reached its limits, or there­
subjectivity provides information in agree­ abouts, long before human beings existed.
ment with the facts of general economy. How, in these natural conditions, was the
There is a shift between the immediate wasting of excess assured? Only the deep
impulse and its results. In human terms, studies of diverse biologists could respond
the domain of one is accursed, while re­ to this question. For now I must content
production, the growth of the species, is myself with general propositions. Excess
the object of a dominant solicitude. is the incontestable point of departure. The
surplus can only be invested from the
The Use of Surpluses in the
mo­ment when extension is no longer pos­
Extension of the Living World
sible. This implies a priori that great quant­-
and the Limits of this Use
ities of energy were available for the use
The activity of the living mass of the globe of those who had the strength to waste
in relation to the radiation of the sun only them. A certain advantage was given from
has a provisional and subordinated sense. the outset to beasts of prey. Carnivores of
Its opposition to the movement of the so­ various classes of animals not only had a
lar ray is no less constant and, for itself, position of privilege over herbivores: they
fundamental. The principle of this living responded poorly to the necessities of a
mass, on the surface of the globe, is to uti­ system excluding indefinite growth. A

35 The Economy Equal to the...

world of herbivores in which development date at which I will have lost or will lose
has encountered no other obstacle than a the surplus. My will decides the method,
scarcity of food is inconceivable. A per­ not the quantity of the loss.
manent scarcity of food cannot result in Without any doubt, the fact that a given
superabundance. And in the form of flesh, quantity of assimilated calories inevitably
excess was given to those who wanted it, corresponds to a determinate expenditure
on the condition, however, that it be wast- of energy is of fundamental importance.
ed. If carnivorous animals had been con­ However, if it is normally neglected, it is
stituted economically, if they had used the not because it has become clear, but it is
energy that belongs to them to its maxi­ going so well that no one, it seems, has
mum extent, making it return in volume paid attention to it. Precisely its (ineluc­
the same quantity that was prod­uced, by table) necessity permitted it not to be taken
assimilating the same quantity of energy into account. Whereas the problems on the
that the animals ate, the effect would have side of acquisition imply a possibility of
been weak. failure, those on the side of expenditure,
Ultimately, however, it is clear that the since it is inevitable…for all that it is not
waste of devourers did not suffice: even if always pleasant. And, in any case, a differ­
reproducing themselves slowly, they did ence must be marked between active and
not endlessly provide for the needs of the passive solutions, the latter possessing as a
globe—living to dispense with and to lose principle an inconvenience for those who
all that it can contain. submit to them (hence the solution of the
carnivore from the perspective of the herb-
Importance and Difficulties
ivore). If one admits in general the interest
of the Problem of Expenditure
of active responses, expenditure—when
To power the economic problem like this, the excess can be invested in growth—is
in the wrong way, I will undoubtedly pro­ as important, as difficult as acquisition
voke a hesitation. Not content to invert (Keynes’s bottles illustrate this principle).
the usual point of view, I push a principle The point of view of the surplus of energy—
to absurdity, going so far as to say: the globe which characterizes general economy and
needs to lose what it cannot contain. If one principally distinguishes it from classical
cannot contain, it is easy to lose… A ques­ political economy—assumes this reason
tion as mad as this has never been posed. not only in the human sciences but in the
I must therefore presently define my in­- general theory of evolution. The point of
tention as firmly as I can. The consequen­ view of the extension of the domain ac­
ces of so simple a principle have been poor­ cessible to life has been introduced (rath­
ly drawn up to this point. Every system er recently) in biology. That of surplus
with a certain quantity of energy available must be in its turn: the first is only, as we
to it must expend that energy. In that the have seen, a consequence of the second.
immediate perspective of human beings
Man as Response to the
is constant. Though difficult to acquire,
Problem of Extension
it is always easy to expend any resource
whatsoever—money, for example, which is Man offered the decisive response to the
only a form of energy—that may be avail­ general problem of surplus. Man brought
able to us. To the extent that the words a portion of a considerable possibility of
difficult and easy define current reactions, extension to living activity utilizing a share
this is accurate. Meanwhile, the effort of of the available energy. To an important
running quickly is no less evident than extent, he untied another share of num­
that of digging. In practice, the principle erous expenditures from the provisional
that I have defined signifies this: of a cer­ goal of extension. But saying “offered a
tain quantity of calories absorbed and as­ response” isn’t saying much: the response
similated by me each day, a certain part is man himself. The influx of solar energy,
was necessary to maintain my life; the the critical point of its consequences, is
surplus, if I do not get fat, must be entire­ humanity.
ly spent. I can come and go, speak, whis­ Man is an effect of the surplus of ener­
tle, work or laugh. I can set my money gy: the extreme richness of his elevated
aside, but not my vital energy. Only a brief activities must be principally defined as
period separates me from the expiration the dazzling liberation of an excess. The

36 Excess
energy liberated in man flourishes and not know what to do with the sums of
makes useless splendor endlessly visible. energy available to you. You can envision
But the surplus of energy would not have working less, but you cannot stop working
been liberated if it had not first been seized. and rest. You are only, if you must know,
Condensation was necessary for expendi­ an explosion of energy. You will change
ture. Human activity exploits the wealth nothing here. All of these human crea­tions
of the earth with the help of new means. around us are themselves only an overflow­
In this way it extends the domain of life. ing of vital energy. From the fact that you
Men do not limit themselves, like trees and have available all the resources of the world,
winged animals, to the occupation of spac­ since they cannot endlessly serve their own
es that are still free. There was not, in fact, extension, you must expend them actively,
when man appeared, any space that was for no other reason than the desire that you
not filled to the maximum extent with life. have to do so. If not, you must, passively, go
But by arranging new means, human be­ from starvation to war. You cannot deny it:
ings invested considerable quantities of en­ the desire is in you, it is keen; you can never
ergy in installations increasing their power. separate it from man. Essentially, the hu-
They grew and increased the living nature man being is here charged with expending
from arrangements of dead matter that gloriously what the earth accumulates,
should in the end be regarded as one of what the sun lavishes. Essentially, man is a
the modalities by which life is extended. being that laughs, dan­ces, throws parties.”
This language is clearly the only serious lan­
Man as Response to the
guage. Naïve human­ity, given to the prac­
Problem of Expenditure
tices of glorious expenditure, links that ex­
But one cannot grant major importance to penditure tragical­ly to the grandeur and
the means that man now has of extending meaning of man. Human nature is already
the domain of life—since, more and more, equal to the immense liberations of ener­
these means themselves increase the sur­ gy. Those who perceive it dedicate them­
plus. Undoubtedly there are periods of in­ selves to these liberations. The full fact on
vestment: in the end they only accelerate the earth of energy radi­ating from the sun,
things. Capitalist accumulation tended to they are charged with return­i ng it to its
slow the sumptuary expenditures of the initial li­berty. If they are betrayed by the
feudal world. Accumulation, in our day, can (provisional) weakness of human intelli­
be far from its limits: the problem of un­ gence, the rage of the sun at least will not
employment (a passive solution) neverthe­ fail them: through glory—in­tended—or hor-
less indicates that the investment of en­ ror—undergone—no proposed task was
ergy toward extensions already no longer more cer­tain of coming to be.
suffices to reabsorb the excess. Thus the
essential problem of life that man—actively
if he can, if not passively—must resolve, is
posed to our life in its plenitude.
The crisis is that much more acute since
human beings, in equal measure to the
worsening crisis, are distanced from its
active solutions. Sumptuary expenditures
are viewed negatively by the multitude:
they are habitually taken on by a few peo­
ple, despite the general misery. It is admit­
ted, still today, that the world is poor and
that one must work. Meanwhile the world
is sick with wealth. A contrary sentiment
about the inequality of conditions leads
us to judge as denying Pierre what is re­
ally only the surplus of Paul. What’s more,
the present shortage of food is the conse­
quence of a debauchery of energy. It is un­
doubtedly difficult to simply say: “If you
work, it is because without work you would

37 ...Universe: Brief Notes...

 Diagrams, Comfort, and the General Economy
by Martti Kalliala

The human animal is a warm-blooded, tropical mam-

mal. In a manner analogous to its taxonomical kin, this human
animal’s capacity to function and, essentially, to survive, depends
on her body’s ability to sustain a homeostatic condition, that is,
keeping it’s internal environment in a stable state regardless of
changes in the external environment.
The primary function of homeostasis is thermoregulation—re-
taining a more or less constant body temperature. The successful
colonization of the entire habitable surface area of the planet (includ-
ing areas climatically hostile to the chemical processes essential
to life) by a population of hairless mammals would not have been
possible without the prosthetics of clothing and shelter that mediate
the body’s relationship to various external worlds. In a manner
quite unlike any other species, instead of physiological adaptation,
human thermoregulation happens in a largely “voluntary” fashion—
through modulating the use of mediating external technologies like
going inside a building, removing one’s shirt, opening a window—
rather than through “involuntary” mechanisms, such as using the
body’s internally stabilizing processes of shivering, sweating, va-
soconstriction, and so forth.

The subjective experi- in the spirit of biological reductionism, to

ence of “comfort” is largely culturally con- define a universal standard of comfort, an
ditioned. What is too hot, too cold, or too “optimal” human condition.1 One could su-
humid to one individual is acceptable or mmarize the findings of this optimizing
desirable to another; notably, ­individuals inquiry as follows: the less our individual
living primarily in highly conditioned in- homeostatic mechanisms consume (where
terior spaces have developed a narrower individuals are imagined as passive recipi-
subjective range of acceptable conditions. ents of control technologies), the more of
However, the basic underlying process is our remaining energy, or labour, can be
persistent: the less we consume energy th- extracted for other productive activities.2
rough our bodies’ thermoregulatory mech- In other words, in exchange for our pro-
anisms, the more “comfortable” we feel. ductive capacity, our human-made envi-
When plotted on a chart, the paramet- ronment ought not to demand anything
ers of temperature, relative humidity, and of us.
air flow—within which the statistically de-
fined experience of comfort is achieved—
delineate a field we call the “comfort zone.”
The cultural variability of the phenome-
nology of comfort is reflected in the varying
sizes and locations of measured comfort
zones among different populations. How-
ever, much research has been conducted,

38 Project
 In its capacity to visually depict Unlike the canonized rules according to
the arrangement and distribution of pro- which one draws and is able to read an
grams on horizontal planes, the architect- elevation, plan, or section, the energy dia-
ural plan once functioned as the main tool gram should be read as an impressionistic
for designing built space. Exemplified by portrait of a possible canalization of matter-
the modern prison, hospital, school, and energy. The hue of the cold airflow’s blue,
other spaces of control, the plan was a de the size of the smiling sun, or the num-
facto instrument of management: of order- ber of raindrops falling from the stylized
ing, separating, and compartmentalizing cloud do not carry any measurable meaning
(re-)productive processes. 3 However, re- in themselves. Even more importantly, re-
cent advances in construction technology, gardless of the exact manner in which the
increasingly fluid forms of enterprise and dynamic variability of the flow of energy
their spatial analogues—from the “open” and matter ought to be retrieved, captur-
and “typical” plan to “any plan”—and a new ed, and stabilized, the underlying promise
managerial emphasis have shifted toward of the energy diagram is always the same:
the provision of a more general condition the production of an interior environment
of maximum flexibility. We have departed adhering to an obscure standard indexing
from compartmentalization towards the the naturalized notion of comfort.
smooth flow of activities on unobstructed
horizontal planes, with a far more total-
izing idea of a standard-ized, predictable
environment.
In connection to this transition, a very
specific type of architectural representa-
tion has become increasingly ubiquitous:
the diagrammatic section depicting the
energetic and material performance of a
building. A circuit of solar energy mediated
by wind, water, and photovoltaics, encap-
sulated in biomass and fossilized organ-
isms, and abstracted into electricity, rather
than representing mere extension (as in a
“bare” plan, section, or elevation drawing),
the energy diagram offers a snapshot of a
dynamic state or condition. This concept—
a dissection of architecture as a material
organization that regulates and brings or-
der to energy flows—is not new. 4 Yet, in
its present incarnation it is seen virtual-
ly everywhere an architectural project is
presented, even if this type of image does
not have a fixed, or widely agreed-upon
name (search for images of “sustainability
section,” “building energy concept,” or “su-
stainability concept” for a wide array of
examples). We will simply call it here the
“energy diagram.”
Without a doubt, the energy diagram’s
proliferation as a mode of architectural
representation is a direct result of a gen-
eral obligation to subscribe to a conduct
of “sustainability.” However, rather than
an instrument for evaluating the perfor-
mance of this ideological commitment, it
is essentially a logo-gram; the prime task
of the energy diagram is to associate a pro-
ject with the ethical code of sustainability.

39 Diagrams, Comfort...
40 Martti Kalliala
41 ...and the General Economy
 In his 1949 book military operations diagrams. Indeed, is it
The Accursed Share, Georges Bataille set not the case that the swirling blue, red, and
out to develop a theory of a “general eco- yellow lines, the arrows, and the symbols
nomy.” In opposition to the conventional of energy diagrams represent essentially
economic models based on scarcity and the same energetic wealth as those vectors
utility that describe the conditions under of force that attempt to map the theatre of
which seemingly isolated ecologies and war? In fact, we find that even the arched
particular entities (such as a person, build- lines tracing the trajectory of a leaping
ing, or city) exist, perform, and facilitate tiger, or the dissipating force of a blow to
exchanges, Bataille set out to delineate the the jaw illustrated with a swirl of jagged
fundamental movement of biochemical en- lines and stars in a Ligne claire comic, or,
ergy on earth, structured around the notion for that matter, any other swoosh, star,
of inescapable loss, or excess. According to arrow, or dotted line employed to visually
Bataille, for life in general (“life” should be reproduce the investment of an energetic
understood here in its barest form, that is, surplus, all share in the representation of
as the planet’s combined biomass) energy the general economy. What we have then
is always in abundance. This counterintui- is the basis of a new schematic—an aggre-
tive characteristic can be observed through gate diagram of growth, glorious incan-
the simple processes of growth and repro- descence, dissipation, and death that we
duction, neither of which would be possible can only begin to trace one line at a time,
if an organism did not have, after taking in an energy diagram of a world indiffer-
care of its own metabolic needs, a surplus ent to human comfort.
of energy to spend. It is the benevolence,
or imperialism, of the sun and its prodi-
gious gift of an infinite stream of energy
that charges terrestrial life with a problem
of luxury, the necessary expenditure of
an excess, the paradox of a profitless dis-
sipation. Accordingly, the fundamental
characteristics of a culture derive from
the ways in which it consumes this sur-
plus: as either growth (increasing its en-
ergy acquisition and physical extension)
or expenditure, which itself can be glori-
ous (inherently useless dissipations, gifts,
sacrifice, sex) or catastrophic (war).
From this perspective, even if comfort is
experienced as a sumptuous luxury, which
it surely would have been for many pre-
twentieth century human beings, the pro-
ject of comfort is, essentially, the project
of growth advanced by the increase of
human creative-productive faculties. But
what does the perspective offered by the
general economy bring to light in the archi-
tectural energy diagram? Emphatically,
with the aid of Bataille’s prescient analysis,
we can see that representations of the circu-
lation, exchange, and dissipation of excess
energy in varying forms could be seen not
just in architecture, but everywhere—often
in a strikingly similar visual language. It
would be difficult to miss the clear kinship
between the depictions of the circulation
of energetic and material resources in a
building and the cartographic depictions
of movement and material resources in

42 Excess
 Endnotes 2 Ibid., 2.
3 See, most especially, Michel Foucault, Discipline
1 This can be observed in the global convergence of and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan
interior conditions; see Emma Hinton, “Carbon, Con- ­Sheridan (New York: Vintage, 1979).
trol and Comfort: User-centred Control Systems for 4 Luis Fernández-Galiano, Fire and Memory: On Archi-
Comfort, Carbon Saving and Energy Management,” tecture and Energy (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2000), 4.
Environment, Politics and Development Working Paper
Series 30 (Department of Geography, King’s College
London, 2010), 18.

Bio

M artti Kalliala is an architect working between and beyond architecture, urbanism,

spatial strategy, and cultural analysis. He is the founder of the design and research
studio Pro Toto (www.pro-toto.eu), and the editor and co-author of Solution 239–246,
Finland: The Welfare Game (Sternberg Press, 2011).

43 ...and the General Economy

When Bataille
Attacked the
Metaphysical
Principle of
Economy

by Jean Baudrillard
translated by
Stuart Kendall
44 Feature
Continuity, sovereignty, intimacy, immanent immensity: a single
thought for Bataille, a single mythic thought behind these multiple
terms: “I am among those who dedicate men to other things than
ceaselessly increased production, who provoke them to sacred horror.”
The sacred is par excellence the sphere of the “accursed share”
(the central essay of the seventh volume of Bataille’s Oeuvres com-
plètes), the sphere of sacrificial expenditure, of luxury and death;
the sphere of a “general” economy that contradicts all of the axioms
of economy properly so-called (an economy that, in becoming
general, burns its limits and truly passes beyond political economy,
which traditional economy, and all Marxist thought, is powerless
to do according to the internal logic of value). It is also the sphere
of nonknowledge.
Paradoxically, the works gathered here are in some way Bataille’s
“Book of Knowledge,” in which he tries to buttress a vision that, fun-
damentally, does not need to be buttressed, whose drive toward
the sacred would even, in its destructive incandescence, deny the
type of apology and discursive declaration that The Accursed Share
and Theory of Religion are. “My philosophical position is founded
on nonknowledge concerning the whole—knowledge only ever con­-
cerns details.” One must read these apologetic fragments from the
dual aspects of knowledge and nonknowledge.
The Fundamental Principle
The central idea is that the economy that governs our societies
results from a corruption of the fundamental human principle,
which is a solar principle of expenditure. From the start, Bataille’s
thought attacks, beyond political economy proper (which, essen-
tially, is regulated by exchange-value), the metaphysical principle
of economy: utility. Utility is targeted at its roots—the apparently
positive principle of capital: accumulation, investment, depreciation,
etc.—as, in fact, a principle of impotence, total incapacity to expend,
which all previous societies knew how to do, an incredible deficiency
that cuts the human being off from all possible sovereignty. The
whole economy is founded on what can no longer happen, no longer
knowing how to expend itself, on what can no longer become the
stakes of a sacrifice. It is therefore entirely residual, a limited social
fact, and against the economy as limited social fact Bataille wants to
hold up expenditure, death, and sacrifice as total social facts—such
is the principle of general economy.

45 When Bataille Attacked...

 The principle of utility (use-value) is combined with that of the
bourgeoisie, with this capitalist class whose definition, for Bataille
(contrary to Marx) is negative: it no longer knows how to expend.
Similarly, the crisis of capital—its growing fatality and its immanent
agony—is not linked, as in Marx, to a history, to dialectical ups and
downs, but to this fundamental law of the incapacity to expend,
which delivers capital to the cancer of production and limitless repro-
duction. There is no revolutionary principle in Bataille: “The terror
of revolutions only subordinates human energy to industry better and
better.” But a principle of sacrifice—the sole principle of sovereignty,
whose redirection by the bourgeoisie and capital causes all human
history to pass from the tragic sacred to the comedy of utility.
This critique is not a Marxist critique; it is aristocratic because
it sees utility, economic finality, as the axiom of capitalist society.
Marxist critique on the other hand is only a critique of capital deriv-
ing from the depths of the middle class and the petites bourgeoisies,
which Marxism has served for a century with latent ideology: critique
of exchange-value but exaltation of use-value, critique therefore at
the same time of what still created the almost delirious grandeur of
capital and of what remains in it of secularized religion: 1 invest-
ment at any price, even at the price of use-value. The Marxist seeks
a good use of the economy. The Marxist critique is therefore re-
stricted, petite-bourgeoisie, another step in the banalization of life
toward the “good use” of society! Bataille, on the other hand, sweeps
this whole slave dialectic away from an aristocratic point of view,
from that of the master gripped by his death. One could present
this perspective as pre- or post-Marxist. In any case, Marxism is
only the disenchanted horizon of capital—everything that precedes
Marxism or follows it is more radical than Marxism.
What remains uncertain in Bataille (and undoubtedly this un-
certainty cannot be lifted) is knowing if the economy (capital)—bal-
anced by absurd but never useless, never sacrificial, expenditures
(wars, squandering)—is after all coursed through and through by
a sacrificial dynamic; is political economy fundamentally only an
inverse avatar of the only great cosmic law of expenditure? Is the
entire history of capital only an immense detour toward its own
catastrophe, toward its own sacrificial end? Since, in the end, one
cannot not expend. Perhaps a longer spiral sweeps capital beyond
economy, toward a destruction of its own values, or rather, are we
always in this denial of the sacred, in a stock vertigo, which signifies

46 Scapegoat
the rupture of the alliance (of symbolic exchange in primitive soci-
eties) and of sovereignty?
Bataille had been impassioned by the current evolution of capital
toward the buoyancy of values (which is not their transmutation)
and the drifting of finalities (which is, on the contrary, neither sove­
reign uselessness nor the absurd gratuity of laughter and death).
But his concept of expenditure did not permit an analysis of this:
it is still too economical, too close to the inverse of accumulation,
as transgression is too close to the inverse of a taboo.2 In an order
that is no longer that of utility, but a random order of value, pure
expenditure no longer is enough for the radical challenge, while
still retaining the romantic charm of a game that is the inverse of
economy—a broken mirror of commercial value, but impotent against
the mirror drifting from structural value.
Bataille founds his general economy on the “solar economy” with-
out counterpart, on the unilateral gift that the sun gives us of its
energy: cosmogony of expenditure, which is deployed in a religious
and political anthropology. But Bataille has poorly read Mauss: the
unilateral gift does not exist. This is not the law of the universe. He
who has explored the human sacrifice of the Aztecs so well should
have known, as they did, that the sun gives nothing, that it must be
continually nourished with human blood so that it shines. One must
provoke the gods through sacrifice so that they respond with pro-
fusion. In other words, the root of sacrifice and of general economy
is never pure and simple expenditure, wherein I know not what
drive toward excess comes to us from nature, but an incessant pro-
cess of provocation.
Bataille “Naturalized” Mauss
“Excess energy” does not come from the sun (from nature) but from
a continual overbidding in exchange—a symbolic process legi­ble
in Mauss, not that of the gift (this is the naturalist mysticism into
which Bataille falls), but that of the counter-gift—the sole, veri-
tably symbolic process and one which effectively implicates death
as a kind of maximal excess—but not as individual ecstasy, always
as maximal principle of social exchange. In this sense, one can
re­proach Bataille for having “naturalized” Mauss (but in a meta-
physical spiral so prodigious that the reproach is not one), and of
having made of symbolic exchange a kind of natural function of
prodigality, at once hyper-religious in its gratuitousness and still

47 ...the Metaphysical Principle of Economy

far too close, a contrario, to the principle of utility and the eco-
nomic order that it exhausts through transgression without ever
losing sight of it.
We reencounter Bataille “at the height of death,” and the real
question posed remains: “How is it that men have all experienced
the need and felt the obligation to kill living beings ritually? Having
been unable to respond, all men have remained ignorant of what
they are.” There is a response to this underneath the text, in all the
interstices in Bataille’s text, but in my opinion, it is in the notion
of expenditure and not in the kind of anthropological reconstruc-
tion he attempts to do starting with the “objective” facts of his
times: Marxism, biology, sociology, ethnology, political economy,
from which, just the same, I attempt to reassemble objective po-
tential from a perspective that is neither exactly a genealogy, nor
a natural history, nor a Hegelian sum, but a little bit of all of that.
But the demand of the sacred, itself, is undoubtedly mythic in its
assertion, and the didactic will is ceaselessly pierced by Bataille’s
fulgurating vision, by a “knowing subject,” always “at the boiling
point,” who realizes that even analytic or documentary consider-
ations always have this mythic force that realizes the sole—sacrifi-
cial—force of writing.

This text first appeared in La Quinzaine littéraire (June 1976) on the occasion of the
publication of Bataille’s Oeuvres complètes, vol. 7 (Paris: Gallimard, 1976), containing
The Accursed Share, Theory of Religion, and other related texts. The editors of
­S capegoat would like to thank Sylvère Lotringer for recommending that we translate
this text to accompany Stuart Kendall’s translation of Bataille for the issue; and,
thanks again to Stuart for his impeccable translation, in this case, of Baudrillard.

48 Excess
 Endnotes 2 Destruction (even gratuitous) is always ambiguous,
since it is the inverse form of production, and falls to
1 The “puritan rage for business” (money earned is the objection that in order to destroy one must first
earned to be invested…having no other value or have produced, to which Bataille can only oppose
meaning than in the endless enrichment in which the sun.
it is engaged) still constitutes a kind of insanity, a
challenge and a catastrophic compulsion—a kind of
ascetic rage—and is opposed to work, to the good
use of energy in labour and usufruct.

Baldessari Tribute Monkey, 2012,

oil and resin on wood, 50 × 40cm
courtesy the artist and Sullivan+Strumpf
  “Nous
la forêt”
A Conversation
with ­Épopée
on the Québec
­Student Uprising

50
51
Insurgence is a film by the Montréal-based collective Épopée, made
during the Québec student uprising that began in February 2012.1
By March, most student unions across the province of Québec, both
undergraduate and graduate, had voted to go on unlimited gene­
ral strike. This initiated an unprecedented student uprising—the
longest one in the history of student m ­ ovements in Québec.2
It is an impossible task to summarize the Québec student strike
in a few words. Indeed, the strike should not be remembered this
way, as an all-encompassing event representative of everyone who
experienced it. It is impossible to sum up something that feels
endless. General descriptions reduce the impact of its moment to
something ordinary. It is in this way that Insurgence succeeds where
other depictions have failed. The film induces—once again—the
sensation of another world coming to existence.
Insurgence feels like a film that was made specifically for those of
us who participated—who blocked classroom doors, 3 who attend­
ed the three-to-four-hour general assemblies every week, who spoke
out and confronted university officials, who walked the nightly dem­
onstrations,4 who spent time making red felt squares.5 The film is
especially for those who spent a night in jail, and consistently faced
police violence.6 For those who weren’t there, who don’t know, the
film might read as confusing, or simply boring.
Insurgence is not positioned to tell the story of what happened
and how, but to accelerate the impulse that conditions such a col-
lective gathering. The camera was consistently at the frontlines.
Its power is in how it moves. For those of us who were there, the
camera’s movement—its specific rhythm, speed, and force—is a trans­
lation of what inspired us to be involved in the strike. For others,
its movement is slow; this might just mean giving it time, sitting
with discomfort, letting it push against questions. The film requires
patience and openness to receive what is not immediately understood.
Insurgence does not try to document the development of the up-
rising in a linear fashion, from its source through to an end. Rather,
it makes us feel, again, what we had felt before—the acute urgency
of what is at stake, folded into what must go on. Insurgence is of a
pragmatist affiliation.7 The film relays the present to those who felt
it; it is a gift to us who endured.8

52
Scapegoat Says What is Épopée? a student protestor the week before, and
the largest student union c­ oalition, La
Épopée The word means “epic.” It’s a long Coalition large de l’association pour une
poem where reality and fiction are inter- solidarité syndicale étudiante (CLASSE),
twined, meant to celebrate a person or an had issued a call to attend the demo. Five
event. Épopée is an open collective. Our thousand people showed up. From then on,
first film project was with sex workers and it made sense to be in the streets.
drug users living in Montréal’s Centre-
Sud neighbourhood, east of downtown, SS How did you decide on the title of
an area we refer to as the “exclusionary the film? Why Insurgence?
zone.” Because the lives of the people
living on the streets are heroic, Épopée É The term came up to us intuitively,
seemed like a fitting name. although in French, the word “insurgence”
The collective was formed during the is not in common use. Etymolo­g ically, it
making of the documentary Hommes à comes from the Latin in­surgere, “to stand
louer (Men for Sale) directed by Rodrigue up, or to attack,” deriving from surgere,
Jean, which was made between 2005 and to arise, to emerge. This definition suited
2007. At the time, some of the film’s par- our purpose quite well. The film aims to
ticipants, male sex workers, said they’d stay as close as possible to the collective
had enough with being documented. and bodily process of political verticali­
They wanted to move on to fiction and zation, as experienced by protesters
create films themselves. We then set up swarming the streets. We describe the
the Épopée projet, which took two years discrete phenomenality of this political
to put together. The project’s first initia- passage to the outside, or coming-out, in
tive was to organize writing workshops our manifesto, “Nous la forêt.” Also, we
which involved 30 participants who were didn’t want to preclude or domesticate
made up of sex workers and drug users, in any way the incipient violence animat-
and took place at a sex workers’ drop-in ing the movement, as so many moralist
centre set up by RÉZO, a Montréal-based approaches do. In this regard, the word
men’s sexual health non-profit organiza- “insurgence” highlights the intermediate
tion. Épopée then developed a website or metastable state between the poten-
(epopee.me), where three hours of short tialities of collective emergence and the
films, written and interpreted by sex full-fledged explosiveness of insurrection.
workers and drug users, can be seen.
Two feature films—L’État du moment SS What does “Nous la forêt” mean?
and l’État du monde—were also created Why a manifesto? How is this mani­
at that time. festo complimentary to the film?

SS How did you decide to start filming É “Nous la forêt” means “We the
the Québec student strike? What forest.” It evokes the power of anonym-
was the precise date or event? ity we found at the heart of the Québec
student strike. At first, we had the idea
É of writing a text that would have been
Every year in Montréal, on 15 March,
there is a demonstration against ­police read in a voice-over. But after we did the
violence, which we’d been going to for a first montage, we all felt that there was
few years. Usually a few hundred people no place for commentary in the film. The
gather, and the event is heavily repressed images could and should speak for them-
by the police. The 2012 demo was parti­ selves. Thus emerged the idea that the
cularly hyped-up because the police had, film could work as some sort of installa-
a few months prior, murdered Mario tion, in conjunction with an independent
Hamel, a homeless man. He was shot in text (the manifesto), as well as a website
the back. Another victim, Patrick ­Limoges, compiling a series of texts, films, and
got hit by one of the stray bullets and died. images that accompanied us through the
He was a nurse who had just finished his film’s conception.
shift at the nearby hospital. We also knew The manifesto envisages the protests
that the demo would be bigger than usual in the political present tense, so to speak;
this year because the police had wounded it is an infinitive account of the politici­

53 Nous la forêt...
zation process that withdraws from the with mass mobilizations. We wanted
temptation of retrospective interpreta- the film to stay as close as possible to
tion and any form of elucidation from the subtle process of creative involution
a privileged standpoint. As for the film, triggered by the spontaneous coming-
the manifesto celebrates the immediate together of people on the streets for
bodily presence, our capacity to collective­ months and months. This film works by
ly tune into the frequency of the negative, way of a subtraction that articulates, in
to produce zones of offensive opacity, and a sober way (i.e. avoiding riot porn), the
uncover the political frontline of our times bodies and gestures in time, producing
all the way down to the most intimate some sort of filmic trance that keeps
dimensions of our existence. It also fea- clear from any form of climax. The film
tures an important sentence from Jean thus can be envisaged as a plateau, fol-
Genet, which we chose to put at the end lowing Gregory Bateson and Deleuze
of the film: “All the spontaneous violence and Guattari’s use of the term: a continu-
of life that is carried further by the vio­ ous region of intensity that resists ex-
lence of revolutionaries will be just enough ternal interruption, just like the student
to thwart organized brutality.”9 movement did.
Insurgence works as a claustrophobic
SS Y assault on the senses. It’s a forced im-
 ou mentioned in an earlier conver­
sation we had that the principle of mersion into the inorganic body of the
filming Insurgence was based on ab­ walking crowd shouting, chanting, fight-
straction or immanence—can you ing. It’s a harsh and long movie, too long
elaborate on what that means? How according to many viewers. It is repeti-
did abstraction/immanence, in tive and doesn’t necessarily bring new
technical terms, become the princi­ information at every shot. It abrades the
ple of filming? Why was this import­ spectator on the thread of chronological
ant to you as an aesthetic position, time, making them go through a process
and how did that encapsulate the of temporal exfoliation. It’s thus a film
politicization of the film? that must be endured, just like the end-
less night protests that were carried on
É every night for over three months (the
We like to think of Épopée as some
sort of “dark precursor,” an expression strike itself lasted about eight months).
we find evocative for various reasons. In the film, time is the activator of le
First, it suggests for us an open-ended politique.
and non-voluntaristic proximity with Ultimately, we hope that, as Brian Mas­
the political potentialities of the strike, sumi suggests—commenting on the mode
a way of staying close to its undetermined of existence of plateaus—that the height-
aesthetic dimension. It also connects ening of energies produced by the film
with our intention to make a film that “is sustained long enough to leave a kind
bears witness to and cares for the fragile of afterimage of its dynamism that can
ambivalence vibrating at the heart of be reactivated or injected into other ac-
every nascent, anonymous gathering. tivities.”10
One of our main concerns has been to
produce a film that would insert itself as SS A
 s you mention, Insurgence chal­
seamlessly as possible in the process of lenges modes of representation. It
affective propulsion and resonance that refuses to adhere to a moralist pos­
moved Montréal in such unexpected ition, in the sense that the film does
ways during all these months. How could not narrate a story. And you deliber­
Insurgence increase the political power ately chose not to explain, describe,
and impetus of the viewers, be they in- or through commentary position
volved or not in the actual student move- the image within a representational
ment that transfigured Québec society? frame­work. Why did you decide to
We didn’t want to make a movie that do this?
would try to represent the event, or speak
in its name; and we also wanted to avoid É Insurgence is an offensive film, al-
the kind of climax-oriented epic narra- though it is quite abstract. It operates at
tives that are so common when dealing the immediate level of duration and sen-

54
sation, as we said earlier. It also seeks to the strikers became ever stronger. This
connect with and perpetuate, by means process of political conversion by means
of the moving image, the zones of offen­ of lived proximity and joyful refusal is
sive opacity produced by the student deeply moving. It informs Insurgence’s
strike. In other words, the deliberate filmic gesture, which modestly tries to
suspension of (linguistic) signification bear witness to this heterogenetic pro-
is aimed at fostering an art of immanent cess that escapes all possibilities of re­
attention. We did try at certain points to presentation.
introduce more information about what
is on the screen: the location of the pro- SS T
 he film was specific in its initial
tests, the time and date, etc. But it didn’t portrayal of a certain time, where
work. We felt like something was lost in you were present, where one’s pres­
the process. The fact that we are often ence, or present-ness, was felt by
slightly confused and lost about what the severity of police aggression.
is happening on the screen allows for a It’s obviously not trying to encapsu­
different way of experiencing the events. late the strike as a whole event, and
One starts to pay more attention to the it was obvious to me that it wasn’t
textures, the light, the movements, the going to be about the peaceful pro­-
gestures; one might even start thinking tests or the family-friendly demos.
about what is not shown, what is missing There was another aspect of the
from the screen. In this sense, the film strike that had to do with police vio-
really works by means of subtraction. lence that many protestors witnessed
Slowly, it empties out the clichés and or experienced.
preconceptions about what is “true” pol- In a previous conversation you
itical combat. The relative suspension of said: “We have to reintegrate this
signification allows the viewer to break notion of violence—the violence of
free from a linear understanding of the transnational capitalism—into the
event and allow more space for perceptual equation instead of remaining in a
ambiguities. And then, perhaps, from mode of perpetual political correct­
this concerted attempt at producing a ness. We could discuss the strike in
favourable context for filmic desubjecti- these terms—strike as lived abstrac-
vation, there might emerge a meaning so tion, by giving it a dark, speculative
unexpected, so thoroughly personal that dimension.” How do we then begin
it becomes anonymous. The anonymity to talk about violence in the sense
of the void is to be conquered through of (re)integration? How does the film
the first person singular, not to be con- inspire a dark speculative dimension?
founded with the plain, anaesthetized
anonymity of the “full,” which coincides É There is something profoundly un­
with the impersonality of the “they.” settling, and utterly fascinating about
This might seem nihilistic (in the lit­ the unlimited general strike. On the one
eral sense of emptying out), and this de- hand, it opens up a cyclonic vortex that
ceptive gesture could come across as an devours all economic rationality and
aestheticization of the movement. It is produces a sort of animated suspension,
not. It echoes deeply with one essential a temporality of its own. And on the other,
feature of the student strike: its capacity it appears as the culminating point of life,
to create a temporality of its own, irre­ its pure and glorious expenditure. Some
ducible to the manipulative modes of friends in Montréal like to talk about a
storytelling as concocted by the state “human strike.” They want to emphasize
through the mass media. The marching, the transformative power of the strike’s
the-people-in-the-making, progressively unboundedness. During the strike, they
moved away from any belief in or desire opened up a space called “La maison de
for media representation, assuming their la grève” to intensify it, and they are also
relative opacity or closeness as a neces- working on a book about it.11 In a way,
sary condition to sustain and nurture they are trying to live up to Bataille’s
collective action. As more and more political and mystical understanding of
people resisted the imagist temptation, intimacy: “Everything shows through,
the autonomous plane of consistency of everything is open and infinite between

55 Nous la forêt...
56
57 Nous la forêt...
 those who consume intensely,” as he puts were bound to pay close attention to the
it in The Accursed Share.12 affective ecology of practices and their
The vertiginous irreversibility and ex­ living interstices composing the move-
uberance that characterized the strike ment. We call this “care”—for the actual
as a radical political act needs to be ac- process of communization of experience,
counted for at a cosmological level, so to a cosmopolitical concern. It slows down
speak, or else its constitutive relation to for a moment and considers the complex
a living infinity is lost. During the making assemblage of forces in all its ambiguities—
of the film and up to now, we have been which is a turn away from the usual “call
caught up in a discussion about the ques- for mobilization.”
tion of active nihilism, and more precisely There has been a productive tension
about what Nick Land, Reza Negarestani, between an accelerationist inflexion
Mark Fischer, and others think of as the and a more cosmopolitical one among
question of accelerationism. Basically, the collective. This tension informs the
against what they identify as the left’s realization process. We could say that
defeatist and moralistic stance (what ­Insurgence is both about the “accelera-
Land calls its “transcendental miserabil- tion” or intensification of political anger,
ism”), they affirm that the anti-capitalist and a radical slowing down in relation
forces must reconnect with the resources to the perception of duration and the
of negativity: the “No” of hatred, anger, modes of involvement in the student
and frustration. strike movement.
We wanted Insurgence to channel, or
at least not preclude, this kind of energy, SS You’ve screened Insurgence a few
to open up the question of violence on a times now. Does any particular
fully vitalist and cosmic scale that breaks event stand out, or were you in­
with pacifying and moralist accounts of spired by a particular discussion
the strike. It’s a problem of scale, I guess. that you’ve had with the audience?
Violence is the horizon of degradation of
politics into police. Some people are just É In Montréal, our position was very
unable to acknowledge the magnitude of simple. We wanted to give something to a
this reduction. They are anaesthetized movement that inspired us, and in no way
by the domestic or economic regime of did we want to speak in its place, in its
governance and its fetishization of con- name. Outside of Québec, it’s been very
sensus. We wanted Insurgence to stay different. We are not only bringing a film,
faithful to all the people who have ex- but a vision of the movement to people
perienced the possibility of a greater life who, for a large part, are very well in-
through the strike. In a way, we could say formed about what has been going on in
that we wanted to stand up to Edmund Québec, but want to know “what it’s been
Burke’s sad political advice: “Unless you like from the inside.” And we have been
can produce an appearance of infinity by lucky enough to have Québecers in the
your disorder, you will have disorder only audience, often coming from very differ-
without magnificence.” ent positions, who include their voices
Accelerationism as a speculative poli­ in the conversation, making the film a
tical horizon is concerned with the pro- vector rather than a representation of
blem of communicating this kind of the movement.
burning grandeur and intensity. Its or­
giastic understanding of the body with­
out organs and incendiary effect is an
important ingredient in the actual com-
position of forces that might oppose
transnational capital. But dark specu-
lativism, with its grandiose ideas about
“non-trivial universalism” and post-
capital hegemony, tends to dismiss the
heterogeneous composition and irredu-
cible located-ness of the forces involved
in actual uprisings. As filmmakers, we

58
 Endnotes 7 The use of the concept of pragmatism here is
borrowed from Isabelle Stengers: “We don’t
1 Jean Charest, the head of the Liberal Party and know how these things can matter. But we can
the premier of Québec at the time of the 2012 learn to examine situations from the point of
strike, had proposed an 82 per cent tuition view of their possibilities, from that which they
increase per student over seven years. Student communicate with and that which they poison.
unions across the province opposed the deci- Pragmatism is the care of the possible.” See
sion calling for an unlimited general strike. The “The Care of the Possible: Isabelle Stengers
students demanded that Charest redact his interviewed by Erik Bordeleau,” in Scapegoat:
decision and called on the government to freeze Architecture | Landscape | Political Economy
tuition hikes. A previous general strike had 01-Service (Summer 2011): 12.
taken place in 2005. Led by L’Association pour 8 Interview and introduction by Nasrin Himada
une solidarité syndicale étudiante (ASSÉ)—a for Scapegoat. She participated in the eight-
grassroots student organization—this historic, month-long student strike, as both a part-time
seven-week strike managed to halt Charest’s professor and as a member of the graduate
decision to cut $103 million in student bursary student union.
funding in Québec. 9 Jean Genet, “Violence and Brutality”, in The
2 Student unions in Québec have often gone on Declared Enemy: Texts and Interviews, ed. Al-
strike since 1968, continually demanding a bert Dichy, trans. Jeff Fort (Stanford: Stanford
freeze on tuition fees and improvements to the University Press, 2004): 172.
loans and bursaries program. Because of the 10 Brian Massumi, “Translator’s Foreword”, in A
consistent student uprisings—that are more Thousand Plateaus, Gilles Deleuze and Félix
militant than moderate—Québec students have Guattari (Minneapolis: Minnesota University
been able to secure the lowest post-secondary Press, 1987): iv.
tuition in Canada. 11 Le collectif de débrayage, On s’en câlisse: Une
3 This was a tactic used by many students at histoire profane de la grève (Montréal: Sabotart,
Concordia University in Montréal. Students Genève: Entremonde, 2013).
used their own bodies to block classroom doors 12 Georges Bataille, The Accursed Share: An Essay
in order to prevent students and professors on General Economy, Vol. 1: Consumption, trans.
from entering. Many professors and students Robert Hurley (New York: Zone Books, 1991), 58.
refused to forcefully enter the classroom. But
many others tried, and in some instances
private security guards (hired by the university
administration during the strike) were called to
intervene.
4 Once classes were cancelled and the winter
term ended, striking students organized nightly
marches in order to keep the momentum going.
The first one took place on 24 April 2012. They
were organized for 8pm every evening at Place
Émilie-Gamelin, a public square located outside
a major subway stop in downtown Montréal. 1
August 2012 marked the hundredth consecu-
tive nightly protest, and they lasted throughout
the rest of the summer and well into early fall.
5 Le carré rouge, or red square, symbolizing the
student uprising was adorned by many across
Québec, pinned to jackets and backpacks. It
is inspired by the French phrase, carrément
dans le rouge, meaning “squarely in the red,” in
reference to growing student debt. See Stefan
Christoff, Le fond de l’air est rouge (Montréal:
Howl Arts Collective, 2013).
6 Over 2,500 people were arrested and ticketed
during the eight-month strike. Francis Grenier,
a striking student, suffered a serious eye injury
after police fired a stun grenade into a crowd
of protestors. The municipal police force, riot
police, and the Sûreté du Québec (provincial
police) were employed during the strike. There
was excessive use of flashbang grenades and
CS gas. Riot police beat up students on a con-
sistent basis, and protestors were often kettled.

59 Nous la forêt...
 From the Dataset of the Multiverse
by Sam Leach

Sebeok on Safari, 2013, oil and resin on canvas on wood, 24 panels, each 50 × 50cm, 200 × 300cm overall
courtesy the artist and Sullivan+Strumpf

Sam Leach was born in Adelaide, South Australia, in 1973. He

originally studied economics and worked for the Australian Tax-
ation Office in forecasting and econometric analysis before com-
pleting an MFA at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology.
His research has focussed on the emergence of modernism and
the legacy of the early enlightenment, sepcifically examining the
origins of modernity in the seventeenth century and linking them
with the paradoxes and ambiguities of late modernity. By explor-
ing the cultural and scientific structures we currently live with,
Leach’s work seeks to gain insights into contemporary society.
Leach’s pervious research looked at the ways that corporate
space, as exemplified by the foyers and conference rooms of cor-
porate offices, reflect societal anxieties about wealth and power.
His works have drawn on the history of painting, with particular
reference to seventeenth-century Dutch still-life painting, as a
framework within which to conduct the exploration of contem-
porary space. His more recent work has examined the tropes and
techniques of late twentieth-century formalism. The pared-down
experimentation with formalism is related to the reductive tech-

60 Project
niques required for scientific and economic modelling and the vi-
sual display of data. By placing formalist abstractions with both
real objects and realistic representations, Leach seeks to high-
light the paradox that simplification and reduction are among the
tools essential for developing a richer understanding of the world;
in so doing, he makes a link between the utopian urge and exces-
sive loss. [Because these connections are made with such exem-
plary force through his painting, Scapegoat is excited to feature
his work throughout this issue.]
Leach’s work has been shown has in numerous solo and group
exhibitions in Australia and worldwide, and has won several awards,
including the Metro Prize and the Geelong Gallery prize in 2006,
the Eutick Memorial Still Life award and the Siemens Art Prize
and travelling scholarship in 2007, and both the Wynne and Ar-
chibald Prizes at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 2010.
His work is held in public collections of the Art Gallery of South
Australia, the regional galleries of Geelong, Newcastle, Gold Coast,
Coffs Harbour, and Gippsland and the collections of RMIT, the
Latrobe University and University of Queensland. He is currently
completing a PhD in Fine Arts at RMIT in Melbourne.

61
Inhabitations of the Earth
Quantum Violin
Diana
­Beresford-­
Kroeger
in
­Conversation
with
Kika Thorne

64 Project
From a single pot on the patio to guerrilla actions on the roadside
commons, from backyards to national parks, scientist and author
Diana Beresford-Kroeger’s proposal “The Bioplan,” developed in
A Garden for Life and The Global Forest, lends us a scalar approach
for assisting the ecosystems within which we live. Her training
in classical botany, molecular biology, mathematics, and medical
biochemistry forge a type of “consilience,” Edward O. Wilson’s term
for the unity of knowledge. Her book Arboretum America reveals
the medicinal capacities of key tree species and their relationships
with the plant, animal, and fungi communities that trade with them.
Beresford-Kroeger’s capacity to witness the flows of chemical ex-
change beyond instrumentality can be credited, at least in part, to
her early training as the child of Druids, an ancestral line of Irish
scientists. Among the many attributes of this secret knowledge, she
credits the Druids with teaching her how to love. It is this gnosis
that fuels her quantum slide across the borders of disciplinary sci-
ence, as she draws on Indigenous, Druidic, and shamanistic ways of
knowing. She has parsed time-honoured observations—what many
call “folklore”—though contemporary research found in Nature, The
American Heart Journal, and her private research gardens.
Scapegoat asked me to meet with Diana Beresford-Kroeger be­
cause my practice—listening to the oak and walnut, the nettle and
dandelion—is filtered through sleep, and the just-waking, to pro-
duce forms both tensile and magnetic, geometries akin to the
­pictograms of chemistry.1
65
Kika Thorne The way your work weaves I am talking on the molecular level. The
together the disciplines is almost pre- first Western artist that came into this
modern, although you often return to conversation is Bertram Brooker; he
certain contemporary terms, such as showed the molecular structure of crys­
“quantum change,” which is certainly tals in his art, and if you want to look
not commonly associated with botany. even further, the molecular structure of
Could you let us in on this promiscuity? some protein-type interfaces. When you
look into it, you see multi-dimensions.
Diana Beresford-Kroeger My interest This is what we are finding in physics
is in chemistry, and in particular what is now, that the electron can go to the right
known as the “chiral” structure of chem­ or it can go to the left, and if you are
i­stry. 2 Within quantum physics—and thinking of electron movement and va-
let’s leap between quantum physics and lence structure, and valence movement,
organic chemistry—we have, within the when you look into the valence torque of
scientific community, knowledge of electrons, you can see Bertram Brooker’s
three-dimensional structures, of en­ paintings. So the artist was ahead of our
zymes and amino acids, and proteins. physics—the hunch of the artist feeds the
I see and understand the geometric form, hunch of the scientist.
and geometric positioning, in a sense
the architecture of the cell, and each cell KT You use the term “quantum change”
in its communication with another cell, to describe the action of the flavo­
and this cell in communication with the noid quercetin, when the oak ab­
skies and the earth. I see it all as a form sorbs the high energy of the light
of architecture. spectrum and resonates an excess.
Let us take, for example, the hydroxyl
group, which has an oxygen and hydro- DBK In North America, we have a unique
gen tail. It is soluble in water systems, situation. On the whole green mattress
and is possibly one of the most important of Gaia, if you want to think about it that
chemical structures within the living way, America, both North and South, has
world. It is a substructure of water, sug- a long, long face. It has the unique ability
ars, and amino acids, which means it has to pick up 20 per cent more solar expo-
the structural stability to build cell walls. sure than any other place in the world,
All of these things with oxygen tails can and by solar exposure I mean that it has
become soluble, in water, in the soil, and 20 per cent more ability to pull light out
in the sky. So, they are crucial for agri­ of the air. So we have a simplistic situa-
culture! It’s important to have the archi­ tion going on: we have the living earth,
tecture of the chemistry straight in your which is Gaia, our earth, Mother Nature.
mind because then you understand every­ And, in Mother Nature, we have a long
thing down to an atomic level. And when streak of a teardrop, which is the conti-
you get a very clear picture of what is nental surface. The sun produces these
happening, you can easily visualize pol­ massive flares, and the flares for us are
lutants: they are foreign compounds, something which are life-giving. They
sometimes having no ability to read are called photons, and one photon com-
into that hydroxyl group, and therefore ing from the sun would be about equiva-
run into our nervous tissue and become lent to one electron of energy on earth.
neural toxins. The photons come in a straight line from
The idea of chiral structure relates to the sun, but they also come in the form of
the idea of molecules with many sets of a wave—a sine wave (sinusoid). Einstein
interactive tails. It is the capacity of these thought that he understood the straight
tails to react with other molecules that line running from the sun, but he could
allows the material from trees—the aero­ never fathom the sine-wave movement.
sol molecules from trees—to float in the The sine wave is the wave of the sea: just
air, get caught with the water vapour, and think of a sea, an ordinary, choppy little
act as a seeding system for the atmosphere. sea. That photon comes from the choppy
This is how weather is born! little sea of the sun, down to earth.
So when I talk about quantum physics, Well, we have a set of circumstances
and when I talk about quantum activities, on earth that is totally unique. In the evo­

66 Scapegoat
lution of 400 or 500 million years, the structure of quercetin and quercetrin, just
earth in its great knowledge managed to long enough to form a cascade and jump
produce a thing called a tree, and out of that electron into the life of the tree. And
this system evolved an oak tree. The great­- there is your quantum change. It will pull
est number of oak trees in the whole of it out by van der Waals forces; it will pull
the world exists in North America. Oak it out by other forces, into the life-body
trees are extraordinarily smart creatures; of the tree.
they have a genome which is greater than In other words, the tree has its face to­
you or I, probably even greater than Ein- ward the sun, but it is using the quercitrin
stein, but who knows? The oak tree, and quercetin it produces as a form of sun­
quercus, has over time done something screen. Just as if you are exposed, you
extraordinary—it has evolved two com- put on para-aminobenzoic acid or some-
pounds called quercitrin and quercetin, thing like that. It’s a similar compound:
which are known as aromatic compounds. it mops up the spare electrons and rushes
They are five-ring structural compounds them off your skin. The tree does the same
that live in the skin of the tree, called the thing, but it feeds off those electrons and
cambium layer. (I believe the skin of the it takes those electrons and puts them
tree is not the skin of the tree; the skin of into other places where it needs them.
the tree is equivalent to your brain matter.
This is complex cambium tissue.) KT O
 ne of the actants in this narra­tive
So quercetin and quercitrin live there is the chloroplast, and its chloro­
in skin of the tree. And the tree faces the phyll… can we follow the chloro-
sun, the tree lives by the sun. The tree phyll? I’d like to under­stand its
has a set of leaves, and the leaves move architectonics.
by means of petioles, and they wave to­
DBK The structure of the chloroplast is
ward the sun because that tree is harvest-
ing photons, from morning to night. The based on genetic material that is provided
tree is in a system harvesting the energy by the genome of the tree. Your ­human
from the sun for the world, turning that genome holds the knowledge to produce
energy into thermodynamics, a form of hæmoglobin, and the genome of the tree
energy we call food. holds the knowledge to produce chloro­
So the tree takes the photons, in the phyll. They are almost identical. In your
presence of carbon dioxide, splits the blood, you have four porphyrin struc-
carbon dioxide into water and a little bit tures that are holding all kinds of other
of oxygen, and gobbles up the carbon, and bits and pieces around them, making them
makes even more muscles, more scleren- soluble. But the four porphyrin struc-
chyma, more tissue, growing year by year, tures hold a molecule of iron, which is
spring by spring, summer by summer, into capable of going into two or three quan-
something bigger, from carbon out of the tum states. In other words, it can look
atmosphere. like you, or it can look like your shadow—
What happens is this unique turn of the and you tick-tock, you into your shadow.
tides—the photon comes out of the sun and Now, in the tree, you have the same por­-
goes into the chloroplast, and the chloro­ phyrin structure, but at the centre of it,
plast contains chlorophyll, it tick-tocks instead of iron, there is magnesium; the
with time and pulls that carbon into it­ magnesium can also shift between two
self and then it manufactures these two quantum structures, the tree or its sha­
unique chemicals, quercitrin and quer­- dow. The shadow is just as real. And it
cetin. The tree, in order to survive in tick-tocks.
North America, has to manage an over-­ What you have in the hæmoglobin is the
exposure to the solar conditions. So, what presence of an electron; only one elec­t ron
the tree manages to do is to make this in blood will cause it to shift its valences.
series of aromatic compounds; what it In the tree, in the chlorophyll, there is a
does is pull all the excess electrons into photon, equivalent to an electron, and it
itself; it swings the electrons out of the too will shift valences.
sun, and out of the tree, and into a form That molecule, it’s a beautiful flat plane,
of electron known as a “pi” electron. The like a gorgeous solitary ring—in the cen­
pi electron bumps around the ring-form tre is the metal. And, the metal there,

67 Quantum Violin: Diana...

 Chlorophyll

Chlorophyll
Hemoglobin
Hemoglobin
that single atom, governs everything on thing is true with the tree. The tree feeds
the planet. That metal is the most extra­ off of these billions and quadrillions of
ordinary thing in the world for the tree, photons to make the tree a living species.
and the most extraordinary thing in the It is the most extraordinary thing that we
world for all mammals, all creatures, all have creatures on earth that would ac­
butterflies, all birds. It harvests electrons tually harvest the sun just like a farmer
for you, it harvests electrons out of your harvests his fields.
food, and your food depends on trees, and
for the tree it harvests the sun. What I am KT Then you eat the spinach…
saying is that the tree can survive with-
out you, but you cannot survive without DBK And then you eat the spinach…and
the tree. it descends into your alimentary canal,
down into your stomach and then we
KT C have got a whole other set of circum-
 an you talk about the moment
when the chlorophyll comes into stances in your stomach and in your small
contact with the haemoglobin? intestines and then again in your large
What happens? intestines. We happen to have a habitat,
an ecology of bacteria, and so if you think
DBK Within the chloroplast, you have this you are only made up of cells, of Diana
wonderful, flat planar molecule called cells for me, and Kika cells for you, well,
chloro­phyll, the magnesium in the centre, no, you’ve got assistants in every way pos­-
the pyrrole ring structures, the four of sible. You have the yeast in your mouth,
them around it. And this is what Einstein the right pH in your mouth for the main­-
simply did not know; he did not know the tenance of your yeast and the mainten­
implications of the photonic energy that ance of your teeth, and all of the bacteria
came in this wonderful sine wave all the in the digestive juices that come out of
way down from the sun, all the way to this your salivary glands. These start break-
flat planar structure of the chloroplast. And ing your spinach into a bolus of matter
it jumped and it jumped and it jumped, be­- that goes down into your intestines and
cause it hits it, it hits that flat planar struc- then what happens is that all the differ-
ture, and so it makes contact, because it ent bacteria in your intestines take the
has a very narrow plane to make contact. first choice of what is in your food; that
That’s called plasmonics! It’s the dance is probiotics, really, because it’s a helping
of the sun on the green leaf, and it’s that hand. They take what they need—electrons
short dance on the chlorophyll that makes to keep them going. They produce Niacin,
the contact. Because if it was a straight- they produce B1, the different B bacteria,
line vector, it would be just too long; but which your body actually needs. When
when you have dance movement, dance your body calls for these vitamins, then
movement, tick-tock, tick-tock, that is how they go across the abdominal wall. With­
the contact occurs. out your intestinal flora you would not be
The sun dances on the world. It is some­ very healthy, so then all of the spinach
thing we never see, but now we can under­- goes into your system and it really gets
stand it by way of quantum ­mechanics. It is de­g raded, cut into carbon fragments, into
an extraordinary thing, the most import­ oxygen fragments, into hydrogen frag-
ant equation of energy on earth, E=mc², ments, which go up into your respiratory
happening on a leaf. And everyday you chain and out again as carbon dioxide.
look at a leaf, every time you eat a bit of
spinach...that is the life-giving force of KT 
So is there any moment when the
the planet, which happens to be called a chlorophyll meets the haemoglobin?
thermodynamic reaction. Because the
thermodynamics, the energy force, the DBK Oh, the chlorophyll doesn’t meet the
energy phase of that electron, that pho­ hæmoglobin. The chlorophyll is broken
ton, is transferred into the tree. It is a down in your gut by the assistant bacte-
very small energy, but it’s like the hairs ria. In a lab, you can get the chlorophyll
on your head. Your hair, your coiffure, to meet the hæmoglobin. That actually
looks beautiful because it consists of could happen, they could look at one an­-
many millions of hairs, and the same other as twins and say, “My god, you look

70 Scapegoat
like me.” They are doppelgängers. But, it low, very small energy levels of hertz, a
is really the hand of the genome, because registration.
there is no excuse in nature, nature jumps I am just making a theory here, now:
in everywhere and uses every single frag­ the structure of a tree is made of a g­ iant
ment of energy for the manufacture of polymeric form of carbon, and this
everything we can ever even think about, polymeric form of carbon is a unity for
or not think about as the case may be. This the whole of the tree; the tissue is called
is the case with black matter, or dark mat­- sclerenchyma, and the sclerenchyma
ter, because we don’t even know how to of the tree is equivalent to your human
touch that—no matter what the Higgs bone structure. It makes the tree rigid
Boson says—we don’t even know how to and therefore able to grow to, if neces-
imagine what dark matter is. But, if you sary, about 360 feet. Sometimes the an-
go back to your hæmoglobin and your chlo­- cient trees were 400 feet tall. To hold a
rophyll, that is what makes the planet structure, and transport water and food
function, that is what makes us a ­living from the roots up to the top of the tree
planet. Just those two molecules, ­really, would mean they may travel 600, 700,
those two molecules functioning efficient­ maybe 800 feet from the tip of the roots
ly within each system. to the top leaves. Now, if you are playing
For me, it is an act of divinity; for me, it a violin string, if you are playing some-
is an act of the sacred. I think the ancient thing that has tensile strength in that
people on earth had some knowledge of polymeric structure, you get a resonance
this. They had some observational, intuit­ of pi electrons. You get a resonance, a
ive, instinctive knowledge coming from movement of resonance, a connection of
the art of their eye, the art of seeing. Be­ electron resonance, from one structure
cause these people had to survive by what into another, and it’s like music being
they observed, they were very clever in played on a violin.
what they saw. We don’t use our eyes to-
day in the way they used their eyes. They KT In each cell?
saw and almost smelled by way of their
intuition that there was something very DBK No, it would be in the connection of
important happening in trees, that there cell to cell to cell. Cellular structure, the
was something very important happen- lignans, the cell-wall structure, which
ing in nature, and they got close to our gives the rigidity to the tree, is almost
scientific understanding. like a violin; it is like the tuning of a vio-
lin in its great height. And, if you think
KT T of slight movements in the sway of the
 he sun dances on a leaf. There is
an excess of energy, too much solar canopy, then you get a tensile strength
power, and on the one hand you de­ movement, as if stringing a house like a
s­cribe the mopping up of excess violin, stringing the house from the top
electrons, but there is, on the other of the house to the bottom, you get some
hand, also the release of those elec- tip movement against that. The mathema­
trons. I am wondering if that is one tics is complex. I honestly don’t know if
of the forces, or if that is the force, this has ever been studied by p ­ hysicists,
used to manifest infrasound? but I don’t really think so. It’s the acou­
stics, the energy acoustics of the electron
DBK The generation of infrasound comes movement. I really don’t think it has been
from the size of the structure, I think. studied. But that is what infrasound is
The size of it, like an elephant, and the producing. It is heard by animals, it’s heard
force of movement of the tree itself… by some humans; it is felt as a very strong,
the size of the tree and its movement dense feeling in the chest, and of course
through air. We really don’t understand. we are built like a cello, so we can receive
We can measure infrasound. Infrasound those sounds. Dogs can, monkeys can,
is used as a measurement for meteorites bees can too. Because there are many
coming close to earth. These are very bees together and they function as one
large objects. Infrasound is not absolute- unit, thousands and thousands of bees
ly understood in the sense that you are together function as one animal, except
talking about. You are talking about very they are all separate little animals, but

71 Beresford-Kroeger in...
they go into that formation when they who you are and train it into absolute focus.
know there is danger coming. I think it’s A focus like on a camera! A focus as in
a very ancient form of the registration of read­ing. You are reading the words and
trouble to all creatures on earth. the words have meaning for you, you are
focusing your mind—it’s the same kind of
KT When humans experience this sound, thing. And, what you do when you have
do they register it as trouble? that kind of telepathy, you have a great
acquaintance with silence. The silence
DBK Some people feel it as oppressive, within yourself. You take the silence from
some people hear the infrasound when around you, put it into yourself and then
they attend a very large string orchestra. you focus your mind into meditation. And
They actually hear the lower notes of the it is then you can hear.
music, the infrasound of the music, as a
KT There is the same thing in art, one
heaviness in their chest. Other people
describe it as a feeling of ecstasy, or an can have a hunch…
out-of-body feeling, but I honestly think
DBK Aha, it’s the same thing!
we all feel that, or I think we are all cap­
able of feeling it. I think that some of us
KT One moves toward knowledge with
block these things out. I think that child­
ren feel it very strongly. Most children that hunch.
are born with a knowledge of infrasound
and an infrasonic connection to the world DBK One moves towards truth, and
itself. beauty is truth.
I think that children have extraordi-
nary gifts that are dismissed by society; KT Let’s say so, but I am going to avoid
society makes children throw these things those terms, as they induce too
away, but they are probably the most valu­ much debate.
able things we have. People who are art­
DBK Well, not for me they don’t…
ists have to keep them, and people who
are writers like me have to train that feel­
KT The hunch produces a question and
ing back into their body. I think that people
who are working on the land get the song one moves toward the question…
of the land. That long movement of the
land that you hear when you are alone, DBK You are in an out-of-state body when
there is a beat that comes off the land that you are in a hunch. When you allow your­
you can hear—it’s a sacred song of the land. self to separate yourself from yourself,
I know there are people who can hear that. and you run with a hunch, you run with
I think that people who are trained to lis­- something that is outside of yourself, and
ten to silence can actually hear the infra- you are disobeying the box which is your­
sonic tonation of everything. self. You have jumped outside of your box
and you need to have the courage to look
KT When you spoke about the Druidic at yourself and say, “This is my hunch.” I
knowledge and telepathy of the trees, am running with that hunch and nobody
I wonder, are we talking about the can interfere with that one thing because
same thing here? you are running outside of yourself, you
are running outside of your capacity, who
DBK No…for ancient telepathy, for the you are. And, you will find very often, if
ability to be telepathic, you have to train it is as strong as that, if that hunch is cor­
your mind into unity. You have to train rect, it will bring you to a solution. It will
your mind, to target and focus your mind bring you to a solution in science, in art,
on one single thing. It is the same as in and in life.
Tibetan Buddhism—you have to take all
KT In art, there can be a problem: if I am
your thoughts, and let’s say I train all my
thoughts on the chair, or all your thoughts driven by a question and I find the
on a god, or a pantheon of gods, or all your solution, the energy that produces
thoughts on some one thing. That is very, an art experience vaporizes. So, for
very difficult to do. To take the unity of instance, if we actually knew why

72 Excess
 t­ elepathy works, if we understood makes itself heard to the ear by silence.
this connection, this capacity to
KT We collaborate with plants, too, to
communicate with plants and ani-
mals…This is a crazy question, but make music, whether it is the harp,
is that our responsibility, to maintain pipes, guitar, or sitar. Is the tree still
the mystery? speaking through the instrument?
What I mean to ask is, when we go
DBK When you are running with a hunch out into the woods, some people can
in science, it evolves into an answer, and actually hear the plants...
there is immense satisfaction in it. When
you are running with a hunch in writing DBK Yes, we can, they speak to us in non-
or in art…I can talk about art because I verbal communication, and never forget,
used to paint. What happens, and it is the the plants are full of serotonin. Those are
same as with science—the hair stands up your receptors. Those are the receptors
on your arms, the hair stands up on your that the brain uses in the reception of
head, you know you are on to something. sounds. The plants are full of them—­
It is there, it is a gut feeling, it is there serotonin, tryptophol, tryptamine—all
right deep in you, and when you swim, of those compounds that make up the
it’s almost like swimming in a spiritual complexity of our neural pathways are
world, to come up to air, to come up to within the plants.
the answer, it is when you say, “I got it!”
It all comes together, “I got it right this KT So we are mirroring? Are we in a
time.” You may have had a thousand transmission-receiver communica-
times when you were wrong and you tion system?
didn’t get the hunch, but you got it right
this time. It is beautiful. DBK We may very well be. I can honestly
say, now I am a scientist speaking here
KT I am thinking about the c about something that is a puzzle to me,
­ onceptual
artist Robert Barry. In 1969, he did that I don’t have the answer. I do know
a series of works about the invisi­ble. that if you want to have a lot of serotonin
He started off with sound waves, but tomorrow, you eat a banana. Bananas, of
he had to label them, and people all fruits, have the highest serotonin levels
got distracted by the labels. He let in the world, and the banana comes from
noble gases into the air, and the a tree. The fruit and the nuts that you are
photographs of the event became eating are very high in serotonin. Why
the object. Finally, he made a piece would that be? Serotonin is also related
called Telepathy, in which he sent to the gibbane structure in gibberellic
a thought into the future. I think we acid, so there is a relationship there. And,
just heard it! What is this phenom- in the gibbane structure of g­ ibberellic acid,
enon? You have said that Druidic it is almost like a tiny violin, a molecular
telepathy is cultivated by the silence violin, a quantum violin; that is the com-
in you, but is there something about pound that hears you singing to the tree.
the hertz…Can you think it through That makes elongation. I think that the
radio dynamics, the electromagnetic trees are tuned to infrasound. The trees
frequency? Are you developing that hear the song of the earth through the
conversation? gibbane structure in gibberellic acid, the
universal growth hormone of the vascu-
DBK Let me just say one thing before we lar world of plants. This is the compound
continue on that question. The sacred that causes the leaf tips to elongate, and
space is in the Koran, the sacred space is this is the hormone responsible for fruit-
in Islamic writing. You can see this won- ing and seeding. That compound is very
derful featherlike writing in the Islamic similar to your sexual hormones. Your
buildings, on the tiles. The sacred space progesterone and your estrogen are like
is there within the letters. It is Mozart your flat plane structures, like that chloro­
being played, but in the silence between phyll molecule with all the little bits and
the notes. It is within the silence that bobs on it. The tree has different little
you hear music within the notes. Music bits and bobs on its sexuality, the gibbane

73 ...Conversation with...
structure, which is very close to your es­
trogen and your progesterone, and your
male carries the estrogen and progester-
one, in different ratios, and androsteriods
in different ratios, but that similarity is
there, and you hear through those struc-
tures in your body.
I could give a simple example. I wrote a
special piece for Archangel when I was
doing the Somatic Cloning Project; I was
asked to do very complex piece of writing
in a very short period of time and I went
out to my Elm tree and I sat at the base of
the Elm tree and I said, “I have very little
time, I have 10 minutes to get this written,
to get it on air, please help me.” And I sat
there, I went blank, I don’t know what
happened. And I came in here and I had
a magnificent piece of writing. I don’t
know where it came from.
KT Magic…

DBK But it isn’t magic, it is understand-

ing. I come from Ireland, and the Celtic
people had the Druids, and the Druids
were the scientists, and the scientists
were people who passed their knowledge
from generation to generation to genera-
tion. This is how Stonehenge came about,
and Newgrange came about, and all the
ancient knowledge. The trees were con­
sidered to be the sacred species on the
landscape. And, each tree was given a
certain symbol, and those symbols be-
came the Ogham script, also known as
the Celtic Tree Alphabet, a phonological
root of Gaelic. Traces of this are found in
the language we share today.

74 Scapegoat
 Endnotes Images
p 65, Diana Beresford-Kroeger’s drawing from
1 Eds. note: Scapegoat is interested in how ­Diana Kika Thorne’s notebook.
Beresford-Kroeger’s hybrid practice provides a pp. 69–69, diagrams by Jared Owen Hemming
model for architects and landscape architects
­approaching questions of excess and ecology
today. We are very grateful to Diana for ­accepting
our request for an interview and visit to her
garden, and to Kika for sharing this interview with
our readers and preparing the text for publication.
2 “Chiral” means of, or relating to, an organic
molecule that is not superimposable on its mirror
image; the chiral will not have an identical twin.

Bio

Jared Owen Heming received a B.S. in Architecture

from Washington University and an M.Arch from the
University of Michigan, where his thesis focused
on architecture’s relationship to ecologies of the
American Corn Belt and potentials for agency within
that diffuse territory. Professionally, he has worked
for HOK in San Francisco and Roderick James Archi-
tects in Totnes, England.

75 ...Kika Thorne
 The Spit
by Lisa Hirmer

The Leslie Street Spit is a long finger of artificial land that stretches
nearly five kilometers into Lake Ontario. Construction of the spit
began in the late 1950s as part of a never-realized scheme for a new
harbour planned in anticipation of increasing shipping traffic that
was expected to arrive through the newly opened St. Lawrence
Seaway. The spit was conceived as a breakwater to protect the new
harbour, its construction therefore was slated as the first phase of
the harbour project.
To build the spit a significant amount of infilling was required,
necessitating large quantities of readily available material that
could be dumped into the lake. The Toronto Harbour Commis-
sion resolved this issue by soliciting waste from developers, who
were busy with urban projects that generated unwanted material as
ground was excavated, streets torn up and old buildings demolished.
Concrete, brick, metal, glass, and other materials that could be clas-
sified as “clean fill” came from these projects to the spit, simulta-
neously providing the material needed for the new landmass and
a convenient disposal site for the remnants of urban fabric cleared
away to make space for new development.
Only a few years into the construction of the spit it became obvi-
ous that changes in transportation technology would move shipping
routes to the land and that the anticipated maritime traffic would
never arrive. The plans for the new harbour were abandoned. And
yet the expansion of the spit continued, sustained presumably by its
secondary purpose as a repository of development waste from the
city. The symbiotic relationship between the project and Toronto’s
developers had such momentum that though the need for a harbour
seawall had long since vanished, the dumping continued. In the late
1970s “endikement bays” were added to the sides of the long narrow
spine of the spit to hold the contaminated dredged material from
the mouth of the Don River and Toronto’s inner harbour, confirm-
ing the spit’s new purpose as a repository of urban waste.
Today the spit has a strange dual nature: an active dumping site
during weekdays—with trucks full of construction waste arriving
daily to add their load to the expanding landmass—and an urban
nature reserve accessible to the public during weekends and holi-

76 Project
days—a second, unplanned existence for the spit that emerged spon-
taneously through natural processes. After being covered by a thin
layer of topsoil, the finished sections of the spit were rapidly colo-
nized by vegetation and wildlife, including several rare plants and
endangered animal species that thrived on the spit for years before
they were discovered. Left alone, the spit became a hybrid urban-
wilderness where, amidst the rubble of brick and bent rebar, a new
ecology thrived. This state is one that has been fiercely defended
by the public, particularly in the 1970s and 80s when schemes to
develop the land were proposed. Public pressure has ensured that
the spit be largely left to develop on its own.
This second identity as an urban wildness reserve has allowed
the spit’s repository nature to remain throughout Toronto’s recent
development. It is clear that the continuous expansion of the spit
has no purpose beyond expansion itself, as a location to accumulate
Toronto’s excess urban material. The spit feeds on the waste of the
city’s development, ever continuing to expand as the city changes.
The metabolism of the city is imperfect, and the growth of the spit is
thus a measure of this flawed digestion. The unused and unneeded
will, of course, never disappear; they can only be rearranged. And,
into the lake, where the excess material of the city’s development
accumulates, old iterations of urban fabric are crushed and piled up
into landmass, half-digested fragments heaved into the water as a
sort of petrified urban vomit—the city as the earth…

Bio

Lisa Hirmer is an artist, writer and designer based in Guelph, Ontario, Canada. Her work
can be divided between two main practices, though the thematic overlap is significant:
She is an emerging photographer and writer producing work that reflects her background
in architecture and is primarily concerned with examining material traces found in com-
plex landscapes, especially those that act as evi­dence of unseen forces. She is also a
co-founder and principal of DodoLab, an experi­mental arts-based practice that has been
producing innovative public research and socially engaged projects since 2009. Dodo­
Lab’s work is focused on investigating, engaging and re­sponding to the public’s relation-
ship with contemporary is­sues. Hirmer has a ­M asters of Architecture from the University
of Waterloo.

77
78
79 The Spit
80
81 The Spit
82 Scapegoat
83 The Spit
84 Excess
85 The Spit
86 Scapegoat
87 The Spit
88 Excess
89 The Spit
 Landings: On Sounding the Earth
by Natasha Ginwala and Vivian Ziherl 1

Landings is a long-term research project developed upon the invi-

tation of Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art in collab-
oration with partner organisations Studium Generale Rietveld
­Academie, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, among others. In many
ways, this project is an exercise in reading the subjective conditions
by which landforms become materialized by time and socio-histor-
ical p
­ rocesses.
fig. 1

Questions of (and from) land have preoccupied us for

some time now. We consider land not simply from the perspective
of anthropogenic change—prescribing its new “­general” condition
therein—but more specifically as a key narrative subject in the for-
mation of modernity. These enquiries are cultivated by accessing
histories of land-use from social, cultural, and political perspec-
tives; by closely studying the manufacturing of “rurality” (repeat-
edly constructed as the spectral other of the “urban”) in the long
shadow of modern industrialization, the politics of land owner­ship
and resource extraction that reveal the complex of colonial legacy
and its continuing mechanisms.
Through public events, display segments, and research meetings
with artists, cross-disciplinary scholars, and filmmakers, Landings
attempts a trans-historical study of various “lands,” remaining in­-
vested in the circulation of Southern perspectives through alliance-
making and “de-linking” (a term borrowed from semiotician and
cultural anthropologist Walter Mignolo). At the same time, we query
recent attempts to yet again define the present condition of the earth
as the “Age of Man.”2

90 Project
 Imperial Pastoral ers. He does so by conceiving multiple
roles for the text; it is at once a technical
manual on pastoral industry and animal
husbandry, a guide for Roman soldiers
returning from battle to resume service
to the Empire in the fields, a bio-social
study of bee society as a potentially ideal
model for human social organization, and
a political treatise on how to confront the
hostilities of nature. To further plot the
anachronisms outlined in the politics of
imperial translation and the recurrence
of origins (already evident in the work of
fig. 2

a British official translating a Roman epic

and footnoting it with his own experien­
ces of colonial life in British Malaya), we
invited performance artist Olof Olsson
to make a live response to The Georgics,
engaging with the themes of ­forgetting,
reluctance, and delay. Additional elements
of the “Imperial Pastoral” episode of Land­
ings included art historian Brian Dudley
Barrett explaining his re­s earch on the
fig. 3

nineteenth-century rural artist colonies

of the North Sea coast, and a special lec-
This documentation, from the inaugural ture-presentation and archival display,
episode of Landings called “Imperial Pas- “People Are the Mountain,” by Filipa César,
toral: On Constructions of Rurality,” fea- who discussed her long-term research on
tured a display from the Tropenmuseum the role of Amilcar Cabral, agro­nomic engi-
photography collection and materials col­ neer, revolutionary leader, and key inspira-
lected from all the contributors of the at- tion to Guinean filmmakers such as Sana
­tendant colloquium. 3 In her keynote ad- N’Hada and Flora Gomes. She brought
dress, anthropologist Rosalind Morris pro­ together Cabral’s soil studies and land sur­
posed the term "imperial pastoral," which vey maps with archival film footage of his
she coined in her study of the colonial ad- political speeches in support of the liber-
ministration of British Malaya. The prin­ ation struggles of Guinea-Bissau (1963–
ciple figure in this study was L.A.S Jermyn, 1974). The Landings project is also cur­rently
, a British Malayan administrative official studying Mangrove zones; through this
who translated Virgil’s The Georgics into particular ecology of aerial rooting we
Malay, “in the last, doomed days of Brit- consider ideas of porosity, inversion, and
ish rule, thus providing an exem­plary dem- unauthentic belonging, concepts unfolding
onstration of a delirious and ultimately within our research exhibition current­ly at
destructive imperial fantasy in the moment Witte de With in Rotterdam.5
of its utter evacuation by history.That fan- As future iterations of Landings conti­
tasy rested on the conflation of the ideas nue to gather additional conceptual and
of “native” and “nature,” and it worked to material forces, with the remainder of this
hierarchize the populations of colonized essay we would like to locate such a cura-
territories in a falsely temporal­ized sense, torial project within a broader economy of
with rurality and peasantry assuming the sensations of the earth. If Landings posits
place of the primordial.”4 an iterative series of exhibitions, perfor-
In The Georgics—a didactic poem in hex- mances, and scholarship to provoke ques-
ameter composed of four books, most likely tions of how landforms become entangled
written after the Eclogues and before The in processes of cultural expression, what
Aeneid, around 29 BCE—the State-poet follows might be read as an itinerant prim­er
Virgil, writing in the service of Emperor on the becoming-sensuous of the earth.
Augusts, outlines for posterity the proper
relation between the Empire and its farm-

91
 The Singing of the Earth years. It has been described as the sound
of birds chirping, and it therefore also
known as the “Dawn Chorus.” Yet this
is no simple morning refrain of terrestrial
avifauna—so what we might feel compelled
to ask is: are we really hearing?? Chorus is
not an acoustic wave; it is an electromag-
netic emission, a phenomenon of energized
particles in the earth’s magnetosphere that
have encountered NASA’s RBSPs.8 It is the
fig. 4

simulation of a singular sound, arriving

from differing fields of energy becoming
Any image of the earth is only ever par- “attuned.” As a recording made in/of outer
tial, even those that appear to give a total space, it conveys the rhythms that surround
picture; fundamentally incomplete, every the earth as gauged by robotic circumam-
im­age of the assumed whole is pictured bulation. The singing earth—the circling
from an exclusive vantage point and in a of plasma waves crossing orbiting space-
particular time. It is from this state that craft, played back on the tellurian surface
it performs as an ideological image-tool, as the sound of understanding—works as a
mobilizing technopolitical, social, ecolo­ reduction of the Sun-Earth system to sono­
gical, and cultural movements that pro- rous human consumption.
claim various iterations of “globality,” and What is so compelling about this sonic
various modes of wholeness, on behalf of impression? Why does the phenomenon
the earth itself. However, the differences of attunement—when particles are brought
between night and day, between here and into a shared field of tonality such that they
there, between dormant volcanoes and live produce an “emission” that is rendered son-
oceanic plates, between drought-prone orous by robotic probing—capture the hu­-
lands, special economic zones, and artificial- man imagination so effectively? These
­ly irrigated deserts can never be ade­quate­ly questions demand that we attend more care­
articulated when the earth is “revealed” as fully to how human impressions of the
a cold sphere floating in outer space. phenomena of synthesis and synchronic-
A more subtle philosophy of optics would ity create novel ways of sensing the earth;
suggest that such whole images are ocular understanding this process also helps re­-
aberrations—misunderstandings of the com­- veal the discontinuities or dissonances of
pleteness of one’s visual grasp over an en- our planetary condition. Such acts of at­-
tirety—since the planet’s reality is unfolding tentive listening enable a “voicing” of the
on multiple planes that refuse to be gath- earth’s relation to humanity’s subjective
ered together within any single field of capabilities, establishing a multi-scaled
vision. It is therefore especially produc- site of inscription.
tive to consider the totalizing image of the
Sculpting Device
earth (such as NASA’s famous 1972 “blue
marble” photograph taken by the crew of Moving from the extra-terrestrial acous­
Apollo 17) as an “undecidable figure,” in tics of the earth, we might also consider
Gayatri Spivak’s sense of the term. As she modes of listening to the earth’s interi­or
notes, “to learn to read is to learn to dis- by looking at a common instrument, the
figure the undecidable figure into a respon- geophone, Fig. 05 which detects seismic re-
sible literality, again and again.” 6 In order ­sponses of the earth as “wave formations,”
to consider such a disfiguration, we must and converts them into electric signals and
first transition from the zone of sight to acoustics. Whether it is used to reveal the
that of sound.7 presence of minerals, the movements of
In 2012, NASA’s twin radiation belt storm an enemy in war, underground lakes, or
probes (RBSP) captured what is known as minor earthquakes, the geophone has long
“chorus,” the singing of the Earth caused proven to be a useful tool for human listen-
by plasma waves in the Earth’s radiation ers. Unlike the seismograph, the geophone
belts. Fig. 04 It is not an entirely new sound, does not contain a system of calibration;
as radio operators have heard it, at least instead, it can be considered both a vessel
in fragments of varying length, for many for apprehension and a sculpting device,

92 Scapegoat
 because it leads one to “construct” as one Geert Wilders, a populist, far-right Dutch
“hears” from the face of a mountain, the politician who throughout his time in
interior of a cave, or other irregular skins parliament has held political process, dis-
of the earth. While the tool of measure is course, and bodies hostage with his in-
solid, the act of measurement is liquid, as flammatory words and acts. Here we find
is the underground itself. him on a recent trip to Australia, where
protestors rallied against his visit. How
are we to read Wilders’ “forced embrace”
of this iconic koala? While the image could
be read as a gesture to claim an authentic
belonging through the emblematic use of a
naturalized “non-human,” we should stress
that in this image Wilders and the koala
are not captured with the frontal view that
generally records diplomatic history. The
facial profile of this koala is abstracted,
fig. 5

distanced from the typically charming em­-

blem of a nation. In this performance of
The geophone’s mode of apprehension human/non-­human diplomatic contact, we
embodies the double connotation of that are asked to view the scenario sideways
word: a suspicious or fearful condition and in ­close-up, as a tourist snapshot. Yet
when one is comprehending a scene. This with its elongated head and heavy paw
is especially evident in the records of the (with opposable thumbs), the koala seems
New Zealand Tunneling Company division uncanny, an intruder rather than suppli-
that arrived in France in 1916 to join the cant—an alien object. Can we escape the
Allied Forces in WWI: implied categorization of both Wilders and
the Koala as “natives?” It seems that the
To kneel or sit for hours at the end of a narrow category of alienhood may here invert con-
gallery out under no man’s land, in bad air, with
ventional constructions of “belonging.”
only a guttering candle as protection from the
ultimate dark, with every faculty concentrated Wilders’ xenophobic politics of introver-
on the sense of hearing alone to pick up the sion and exclusion, which seeks to convert
faint tap-tap of a miner’s pick, to separate that Dutch society into a paranoid condition by
sound from the innumerable others, men walk- which all foreign elements would be per-
ing on the trenchboards far overhead, a sentry ceived as a threat, is apprehended here
kicking his numbed feet against a firestep, the
crash of a [German trench mortar] or the rattle
between the human/non-human associa-
of a machine gun, or even the scurryings and tion, and suddenly encounters the added
love affairs of the trench rats.9 complication of borrowed authenticity—
authentication as a transaction between
It is strange to consider that the lives two bodies—thus doubling and reversing
of an entire infantry division depended both “belonging” and “alienation” as co-
on listening reports aided by a geophone, implied terms.
especially as they delivered incredibly cryp­ The second image, from the 1920s, is sim­-
tic empirical descriptions, such as, “Enemy ply labeled “Man with Geophone,” from
picking Intermittent Faint 18 deg.”10 the photographic records of the US Bureau
of Mines. In this juxtaposition, the geo-
fig. 7

phone and the koala may both be encoun-

tered as “sensing heads,” instruments used
for extracting a sense of place. The stetho-
scope-like geophone allows for the detec-
tion of the pulse of the earth’s inner body,
used pragmatically by the US Bureau of
Mines to detect underground lakes and
fig. 6

trapped miners. Viewing the image as a

corporeal layering, the geophone is also a
To further examine this obscure econo­- prosthetic extension of the human, a for­
my of extracting sense, we may consider ensic contraption ready-at-hand for the
this pair of images.Fig. 6, 7 The first de­picts practice of detection. Like Wilders’ sens-

93 Landings: On Sounding...
ing-head koala, the geophone and the al­- dragon’s jaw, and indicating the direction
legedly rational readings of the earth instru- of an earthquake. As it reaches one of the
mentalized by it are always prone to the toads, a sound is emitted. The toad is a bell
irrational and projective errors of “over- that becomes an alarm; the instrument thus
hearing.” doubles as both seismoscope and seismo-
Dragon Jar phone.
The name of the instrument, “Houfeng
Didong Yi,” translates literally as “instru-
ment measuring seasonal winds and move­-
ments of the earth,” based on the Eastern Han
Dynasty’s understanding of winds as both
oracles and causes of earthquakes. The in­-
strument bears this cosmological narra-
tive in its morphology, where dragons are
symbols of the sky and toads symbols of the
earth. Beyond this symbolic consistency,
however, the accuracy of Zhang’s earthquake
device translated into political advance-
ment within the court hierarchy, along with
fig. 8

a substantial rise in riches and influence.

Our path towards the becoming-sensu- In the last years of service under the Em-
ous of the earth also leads to more ancient peror, Zhang was promoted and became an
practices, including a device believed to advisor and governor, primarily in charge
be the first form of seismoscope, invented of administering river channels.
during the Chinese Eastern Han Dynasty The effect of the device in the contem-
(AD 25–220) by the polymath Zhang Heng, porary world is that of an imaginative pro-
a distinguished cartographer, mathemati- posal which once influenced the adminis-
cian, inventor, painter, and poet educated trative life of an empire. In contrast to the
in the moral and political philosophy of Richter Scale, Zhang's instrument contends
Confucianism. Zhang's earthquake-detec- that “magnitude” is not something trace-
tion instrument, commonly referred to as able within a visual diagram of wave-form
the “Dragon Jar,” operates as an anticipa­ registrations. Rather than anthropomor-
tory vessel. The eight toads at its base reach phizing the earth such that its persona is
backwards with their mouths gaping, poised “read” as with a heart-rate monitor, Zhang
in wait. Corresponding dragon heads ori­ remained committed to detecting tectonic
ent­ed to the cardinal points emerge from movements through changes in rhythm,
the girth of the bronze vessel, each bear- motion, and time. Such commitments are
ing in its jaws a single bronze sphere. But reminiscent of seventeenth-century Ger-
it is the concealed inner-workings of the man Jesuit polymath Athanasius Kircher,
instrument that have captured the atten- who also understood the subterranean
tion of scientists, with persistent attempts world as a series of discontinuities and
to re-construct the device throughout the molten excesses. For Kircher, “the whole
nineteenth and twentieth centuries, in­- Earth is not solid but everywhere gaping,
cluding British geologist John Milne in and hollowed with empty rooms and spaces,
1886, seismologist Akitsune Imamura in and hidden burrows.”11 Such an Earth re-
1939, and most recently in 2007 by Hong- quires an immanent contact and sensual
Sen Yan and Kuo-Hung Hsiao in Taiwan. geography, qualities afforded by Zhang's
The image Fig. 08 above depicts one of Dragon Jar.
the most credible propositions to date of
the instrument’s actual workings. The
water-filled jar acts as an amplifier of sub-
tle vibrations in the ground surface, upset-
ting an inverted pendulum and producing
a lateral displacement that triggers the re-
­lease of one of the bronze balls. The trans-
lucent pendulum marks a phantom moment
after the “act,” releasing the ball from the

94 Excess
 Overhearing of bodies into the mine; the exchange of
labour for the promise of precious metal—
all of these practices caught in a tangled
fig. 9 narrative of hearsay.

But overhearing the Earth’s interiors

through the geophone and detecting the
earth’s seismic intent with the Dragon Jar
also signals positions of privilege and ex­-
clusivity. Within this political economy of
sensing the earth, the bodies that labour in
the subterranean are also the most threat-
ened when sensing their surroundings. In
“The Miner’s Ear,”12 Rosalind Morris out-
lines the complex role of gold mining in
fig. 10

the modern history of South Africa and

its affective resonance in the figure of the
miner, developing a careful inventory of the In this stereoscopic photograph of hydrau­-
miner’s sense of the earth: “The Miner’s lic mining during the nineteenth-century
Ear is attuned to the sounds of catastrophe: California Gold Rush, Fig. 10 we can see how
sirens, rumblings, explosions, a gush of this process of extraction involves wat­
water where only a dripping should have er as a substance used to dislocate earth—
been heard, coughing, the burble of fluid to separate what is precious from what is
in the lungs or too much silence. […] The disposable, value from waste. It poses here
miner’s ear is attuned to what will destroy as a ghostly sound image. Doubled views
him, what is already destroying him in deliver the acoustics of high-pressure pipe­
the moment that he hears, if he hears.”13 lines coursing through the geographical
The miner is perennially in the process of terrain like veins under the skin. Hydrau-
going deaf. But this is not immediate, like lics have been employed to massively scar
the falling of a rock; it is the transforma- the land and remove overburden since Rom­-
tion of voice into mere sound, a peculiar an times; gold found in the veins of ex-
deafness that corrupts the capacity for dif- posed bedrock is extracted by diverting
ferentiation. The mine is the ultimate site the erosive faculty of water. At the same
of human sediment, mobilizing industrial time, thousands of acres of farmland have
value, channelized through the bodies com- also disappeared under mineral sediment
pressed between the unseen and the over- as part of the same process.
exposed. Yet, as Morris stresses, mining Notably, at least as far as historical con-
histories also call attention to symptoms tingencies go, the Brewster Stereoscope,
and gestures of overhearing: the rumour which greatly enhanced the spread of ste-
that there is gold to be found; the rush to reo photography, was invented in 1849, the
prospect, to speculate; the introduction year the Gold-seekers—the “Forty-Niners”—

95 ...the Earth
 came to California from all over the world. of his times and of the inextricability of
Offering an illusion of depth and the prom­ the mine from his life in photography. This
ise of rendering solid the act of seeing, this assumed posture is echoed in the still-life
invention performs a process inverse to portrait he makes of gold from El Dorado,
that of hydraulic mining: a liquid, sediment­ California.Fig.12 The gold’s body is postured
ary process confronting the Earth as a here as a vital suspension: no longer deep
simultaneous maneuvering of appearance within the earth, it is propped up as a prized
and disappearance. specimen, pure value and conductivity, gold
as standard. This co-picturing of land bod-
ies with imaging technologies conveys a
figural force that compels a reck­oning with
the laboured land, not as ab­stract view of
the human-made earth, but of interpene-
trating and durative states. Through such
composite modes of collaboration, image-
study, and archival research, Landings seeks
“Land” as a narrative protagonist of history
registered through the efforts of multiple
agents and their various approaches.
Figures

1 The interior of the earth, with subterranean lakes,

rivers, and pools of fire, according to Athanasius
Kircher, 1678. Public domain, http://commons.wiki-
media.org/wiki/File:Athanasius_Kircher_Interior_
of_the_earth.jpg
2 Display of archival materials at “Imperial ­Pastoral:
On Constructions of Rurality,” at Witte de With,
­Rotterdam, 9 March 2013. Photo credit: Cassander
Eeftinck Schattenkerk
3 Filipa César at “Imperial Pastoral: On ­Constructions
of Rurality,” Witte de With, Rotterdam, 9 March
2013. Photo credit: Cassander Eeftinck
­Schattenkerk
4 Also see: Timon Singh, “NASA Records Earth’s
‘Dawn Chorus’ Produced By The Planet’s Magne-
tosphere,” Inhabitat.com, http://inhabitat.com/
fig. 11

nasa-records-earths-dawn-chorus-produced-
by-the-planets-magnetosphere Image Credit:
NASA/T. T. Benesch, J. Carns, and NASA Goddard
Photo and Video, http://assets.inhabitat.com/wp-
content/blogs.dir/1/files/2012/09/Earth-magne-
tosphere.jpg
5 The geophone is used to establish the relative depth
of enemy installations. It was usually placed on the
tunnel floor. École de Mines, Supplément au Livre
de l’Officier, 1917, http://www.flickr.com/photos/
14538593@N05/4424169635
6 Man using a Geophone: NYPL Digital Library, http://
digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47d9-b49c-
fig. 12

a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99
7 Geert Wilders with Koala, http://www.telegraaf.
nl/binnenland/21304839/__Wilders_knuffelt_
koala__.html
The top photographFig. 11 was made by Carle­
8 Source: http://www.shkp.org.cn/kply/shdzkpg/
ton E. Watkins, one of the greatest photo- h000/h16/img200609180329411.jpg
­g raphers of the American landscape, par- 9 Fortune, African Gold Rush, October 1946
ticularly the Californian frontier in the 10 Pipes supplying water for hydraulic mining (ca.
1865). Source: NYPL Digital Library, http://tinyurl.
nineteenth century during the Gold Rush.
com/mvtbsfw
He made a special stereographic camera, 11 Primitive mining, the old rocker. C E. Watkins pos-
and on at least one occasion captured him- ing as miner, by Carleton E. Watkins. Source: NYPL/
self with it, posing as a “primitive” miner. Wikicommons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/
wiki/File:Primitive_mining,_the_old_rocker._C.E._
It was a self-portrait he made for his child­
Watkins_posing_as_miner,_by_Watkins,_
ren, most likely a performative sign, both Carleton_E.,_1829-1916.jpg
12 Source: http://ccdl.libraries.claremont.edu/cdm/
singleitem/collection/vdp/id/304/rec/4
96
 Endotes 6 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Death of a Discipline
(New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), 72.
1 This text is adapted from a presentation delivered 7 If the reader is so inclined, we suggest that this sec-
to the SYNAPSE International Curators’ Network at tion be read with the accompaniment of the sounds
the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, April 2013. themselves, available at http://www.youtube.com/
2 This is not to contest the paradigmatic significance watch?v=QVJwq3mH7so&noredirect=1.
of the Anthropocene, but to carefully consider the 8 RBSP operates as two robotic spacecraft released
subjective positions and socio-political response as part of NASA’s “Living with a Star” program,
mechanisms of human and non-human cultures which seeks to study aspects of the Sun-Earth sys-
within the geological contingencies before us. tem and its direct impact on human life and society.
3 “Imperial Pastoral: On Constructions of ­Rurality,” 9 “Listening Underground with a Geoscope,” New
Witte de With, Rotterdam, 9 March 2013. Guest Zealand History Online, http://www.nzhistory.net.
speakers: Brian Dudley Barrett, Filipa César, nz/media/photo/listening-with-a-geophone.
­Rosalind Morris, and Olof Olsson, with accompany- 10 Ibid.
ing displays, including materials from the Tropen­ 11 Athanasius Kircher, Mundus Subterraneus (1665).
museum, Amsterdam. 12 Rosalind Morris expanded upon this paper for a
4 Rosalind C. Morris, “Imperial Pastoral: The Politics conference organized by Landings as part of the
and Aesthetics of Translation in British Malaya,” 2013 Studium Generale, “Where Are We Going Walt
Representations 99, no. 1 (Summer 2007): 159–194. Whitman?” held at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in
5 “Sensing Grounds: Mangroves, Unauthentic Amsterdam. The presentation also drew upon her
Belonging and Extra-Territoriality,” Witte de With, ongoing collaboration with William Kentridge, “The
Rotterdam, as part of The World Turned Inside Out, Cash Book Project,” undertaken with support from
25 May–18 August 2013 (and onwards). Featured Seagull Books.
works by Roberto Chabet (courtesy of the Asia Art 13 Rosalind C. Morris, “The Miner’s Ear,” Transition 98
Archive), Bonita Ely, Rana Hamadeh, Irene Kopel- (2008): 96–115.
man, Tejal Shah, Lawrence Weiner, Terue Yamau-
chi and archival materials from the Tropenmuseum
(Amsterdam), the North Stradbroke Island Histori-
cal Museum (Dunwich), the Biodiversity Heritage
Library and the David Rumsey Map Collection.

Bios

Natasha Ginwala is an independent curator, researcher and writer. She is an advisor

and part of the artistic team of the 8th Berlin Biennale (2014). Recent projects include
“Landings” (Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art and Partner Organizations);
“The Museum of Rhythm” — a segment of Taipei Biennial 2012; “Kunstvlaai: Festival of
Independents”, 2012 edition (INexactly THIS). She has taught on the Masters of Artis-
tic Research (University of Amsterdam and Sandberg Institute) as well as the Studium
Generale Programme at Gerrit Rietveld Academie. Ginwala has been guest editor of TAKE
on Art Magazine, New Delhi (issue 5: Curation). Her writing has appeared in publications
such as Afterall Online, Art Agenda, C Magazine, e-flux Journal, Manifesta Journal and
Mint (The Wallstreet Journal), among others.

Vivian Ziherl is Curator at If I Can't Dance, I Don't Want to Be Part Of Your ­Revolution.
Independent projects include “Landings” (Witte de With Centre for Contemporary Art
& other partner organizations) and “StageIt!” (Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam). ­Vivian is
e
­ ditor of The Lip Anthology, Macmillan Art Publishing and Kunstverein Publishing in col-
laboration with Grazer Kunstverein. She led the summer school ‘A Present in Print’ at the
Copenhagen Contemporary Art Festival (2012) in collaboration with the Royal ­Danish
Academy of Fine Arts. She has been a contributing editor of Discipline, and her writing
has appeared in periodicals including Frieze, e-flux Journal, LEAP Magazine, ­Metropolis
M, Eyeline and the Journal of Art (Art Association of Australia and New ­Zealand),
among ­others.

97 Landings: On Sounding...
 Three Works
by Vicki DaSilva

With my light graffiti photography, I attempt to stage site specific

interventions. I manually draw written text with light in real time
and on site through the process of recording unique to photogra-
phy: single-frame time exposure photographs, created outdoors
at night, or in dark interior spaces, which then become individual
performances acted out before the camera. This is a way for me to
express an ephemeral message, similar to a headline.
My work is currently concentrated on raising awareness of social,
political, and environmental issues by sharing the images online
and creating a dialogue about the topics with which they engage.
When possible, my goal is to create a direct action of service by
offering digital downloads of the images in return for donations to
specific causes through the non-profit organizations I partner with.
These three photographic works reference the excesses of human­
kind, with both positive and negative connotations. The question
of excess continues to vex our collective priorities, our planet, and
the possibilities excluded or emboldened by our ethical behaviour.

98 Project
Guap (2013) was produced in a historic bank in Allentown, Pennsylvania, in front of a vault. The meaning of the
word guap is “a considerable amount of money, most often cash, indicating a high degree of purchasing power
for fast-depreciation consumer items such as luxury cars and electronics” (urbandictionary.com). In Span-
ish, guap also refers to a “pretty penny,” stemming from the words guapo (handsome) or guapa (beautiful). The
term was made popular by the hip hop star Big Sean and his song of the same name.

99
100
Scapegoat
I am Malala (2013) was created in my old high school, in Allentown, Pennsylvania. The photograph was conceived of in partnership with the UN (http://educationenvoy.org) and Gordon & Sarah
Brown’s organization (http://gordonandsarahbrown.com), and it is offered as a digital download for a direct contribution to the “I am Malala” campaign to end child labour.
101
Three Works
Anthropocene (2012) was created in a small cave on a beach in Inverness, Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, against the stratigraphy of the rock. Here my work engages with questions of ­geology,
climate change, erosion, water scarcity, rising sea levels, and urbanism—all concerns related to the Anthropocene thesis and what this geological epoch means for humanity.
 Terra Vivos, or, the Reinforced Luxury
of Post-Apocalyptic Dwelling
by Erin Schneider

Vivos Kansas Resort. Plan for a two-million-square-foot underground RV park in Kansas, where people
can drive in and park their own RVs among limestone pillars 130 feet underground.

When it comes down to it, what does one need to survive? Air, shel­ter,
water, food, sleep, sex. At Vivos, a multi-locational shelter system
for post-apocalyptic survival, you are promised these fundamentals
along with the “necessities” of showers, queen-sized beds, laundry
rooms, kitchens, and entertainment centres with cup holders and
flat screen TVs. As described on the television show, Extreme Sur-
vival Bunkers, Vivos will provide “10,000 square feet of reinforced
luxury.” 1

102 Project
 Robert Vicino founded Terra Vivos after receiving an apocalyptic
message (source unclear) in 1980 to build an underground shelter
for 1,000 people to survive an upcoming extinction event. 2 A for-
mer real estate mogul and inventor, he made a fortune from inflat-
ables, including the automatic co-pilot in the movie Airplane (1980)
and one shaped like King Kong he used to scale the Empire State
Building in 1983. Vicino has since invested all of his money into
Terra Vivos, “The Underground Shelter Network for Long-Term
Survival of Fut­ure Catastrophes.”3
When I first discovered Terra Vivos in 2010, while doing research
for my thesis about Cold War bunker reuse, the upcoming 2012
prophecy about the end of the Mayan calendar dominated the site.4
Now that the ominous 12/21/12 has come and gone, the website
warns of other threats that could send any concerned citizen under-
ground. Videos on the site feature drama­tic music and bold letters
listing potential world-ending situations: nuclear war, bio-chemical
war, terrorism, anarchy, electro-magnetic pulse, solar flares, polar
shift, killer comet, global tsunami, and Planet X.5 Though some are
more plausible than others, each scenario has an icon and explana-
tion about the potential effects of each situation, all leading straight
to Terra Vivos’ unmarked doors.
Membership is selective and expensive, though some (such as doc-
tors and the military) are admitted at discounted prices, depending
on their professional and survival skills. Otherwise, it costs around
$50,000 for adults and $35,000 for children, with a $5,000 down
payment; presumably these costs to go towards the $10-million
expense of each shelter (plus retrofitting), as well as future Vivos
installations.6 Due to their top-secret locations, members and the
media are not permitted to visit the sites. Other extreme survival-
ists have been threatening to destroy Vicino’s five-star enterprise,
though there have been no reported attacks on the bunkers so far.
Vicino claims that more that 100,000 people have applied, and at
least 1,000 al­ready own space in the shelters. As promised on their
website, “every detail has been considered and prepared for.” This
includes detention chambers for misbeha­ving occupants and freez­-
ers for members’ DNA samples. Ultimately, Vivos wishes you to join
them for the next genesis, though who will be in control of mating,
accommodation, and discipline remains to be seen. Assumedly, those
in power (Vicino and Vi­vos) will make the final decisions. As with
all survivalist situations, both fictional and real, the line between

103
utopia and dystopia can quickly become very thin.
The speculative real estate of annihilation taps into our elemen-
tal fears of survival, with this band-aid promising all the comforts
of a first-world home. By creating a space based on the fear of the
apocalypse while lining it with the luxuries of Western civiliza-
tion, the Vivos complex creates an extreme version of the privileged
lifestyle: the rest of the world may be gone, but you can subsist on
the luxuries that once defined a successful existence. Like the pha-
raohs, you’ll have access to the ex­cesses of the wealthy class to
carry you over into the afterlife. Even if you are locked deep in a
mountain with no access to the outside, at least you can theoreti-
cally live with hot showers and leather recliners. To what ex­tremes
would you go for the comforts of home while the rest of the world
perishes?
Regardless of one’s commitment to the Vivos lifestyle, at this time,
the bunkers are stocked with only one year’s worth of supplies for
“autonomous survival.” It is unclear what will happen after that. You
may have to find another cable provider. But remember, “It’s not a
question of if, but when!”7

Vivos Quantum Shelter. From the first page of a promotional pdf about private shelters that can be installed
in your backyard.

104 Scapegoat
 Endnotes

1 “Vivos Bunkers,” Travel Channel, http://

www.travelchannel.com/video/vivos-bunkers.
2 Austin Considine, “Home at the End of Time,”
Vice.com, http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/
home-at-the-end-of-time.
3 Terra Vivos, http://www.terravivos.com.
4 Erin Schneider, “Apocalyptic Architecture:
Cold War Bunkers, Reuse and the Everyday
Landscape,” 2010, http://www.academia.
edu/440251/Apocalyptic_Architecture_Cold_
War_Bunkers_Reuse_and_the_Everyday_
Landscape.
5 Terra Vivos, http://www.terravivos.com/
secure/movie.htm.
6 Considine, “Home at the End of Time.”
7 Terra Vivos, http://www.terravivos.com.

Bio

Erin Schneider is an artist and independent scholar living in Los Angeles, CA. She
adapted her Hampshire College thesis Apocalyptic Architecture: Cold War B ­ unkers,
Reuse, and the Everyday Landscape for this issue of Scapegoat, focusing on the
Terra Vivos bunker complex and post-apocalyptic excess. Her work explores the
built environment through research, performance and installation, creating alter-
native methods of understanding space and place and their social, political and
material histories. Recent works include An Antagonist’s Guide to the Assholes
of Los Angeles with the Llano del Rio Collective, a guided walk of Venice, CA with
Ken Ehrlich for Pacific Standard Time Presents: Modern Architecture in LA, and a
screening of films that use Frank Lloyd Wright’s iconic Ennis House at The Public
School LA.

105 Terra Vivos...

 Nitrogen, Addiction, and the Unlikely Relativity of Explosions
by Danielle McDonough

The relation to the earth as property is always mediated through

the occupation of the land and soil, peacefully or violently.
—Karl Marx

Introduction
man sustenance and its precarious chem­
Since the publication of Rachel ­Carson’s i­cal design.
Silent Spring, ethical considerations re-
Legendary Sustenance
­garding the consequences of human tech-
­nologies for the natural ­environment have According to Aztec legend, maize was given
proliferated. In particular, the continued to man as a gift of sustenance from the gods.
growth and development of mass-agricult­ The Legend of the Suns details its discov-
ural practices, inextricably linked to the ery in the following origin story:
development of technology to advance hu-
man domination of natural proces­ses, have The first two humans are made. But al­-
attracted considerable attention. Never- though they are whole and alive, they
theless, the cycles of agricultural growth, immediately start to flounder. They be-
including the replenishment of nutrients ­come weaker, and the gods realize that
the humans have nothing to eat. A red
for fertile land, remain somewhat obscure in ant comes forward with a few small
contemporary cultural discourse. Through kernels of maize and offered it to the
the extraction of resources, the invention hu­mans. The gods asked the ant “Where
of genetically modified seeds, and the mani- did you get these kernels?” And al­though
pulation of the capacities of the soil, agri- the ant did not want to say and refused
business has manufactured more efficient, to do so for a long time, it eventual­ly suc-
cost-effective, and produc­tive land by chem- cumbed to pressure and told the gods
ically redesigning the productivity of the that the mountain outside the boundary
ground itself, though not without serious of the city was known to some as the
Mountain of Sustenance and contained
associated costs. Be­c ause the explosive hoards of these kernels. One of the gods
growth of the human population is fatally decided to see the mountain for him-
tied to this artificial tellurian productivity, self. He became a black ant and traveled
this essay suggests several considerations into the depths of the Mountain of Suste-
that might emphasize the stakes of hu nance, where he collected some corn and

106 Project
 returned to the city. There he chewed on military strategies of occupation.2 How­ever,
it immediately and placed the paste from an econo­my of violence within a territory
the chewed corn on the lips of the hu­mans. must go further than a consideration of
They began to stir and become stronger. the division of the land; a deeper analysis
The gods set off, determined to tie up the
must go directly to the land itself, as a source
mountain with ropes and drag it to the
city, but, try as they might, the mountain of food, feed, and fuel that conditions the
would not budge. They decided that the various velocities of explosive growth.
only way to get the grain out of the mount­ Croplands and Biopower
ain was to split it open. And so they did,
exploding the mountain, and dispersing Whenever any citizen of the United States
the grains of maize into the city in order discovers a deposit of guano on any island,
to sustain future human life.1 rock, or key, not within the lawful juris-
diction of any other government, and not
This legend, while seeming at first to occupied by the citizens of any other gov-
belong to a lost, mythic past, epitomizes ernment, and takes peaceable possession
the contemporary territorial domination thereof, and occupies the same, such island,
of the earth and the insistent producti­v ity rock, or key may, at the discretion of the
demanded by human agents. In order to President, be considered as appertaining
begin to fathom the expenditure required to the United States.
to produce the fantastically productive soil —Guano Islands Act
of the Anthropocene, some more serious
considerations of the political economy The violence within agricultural practices,
of the earth are necessary.. In his article, deemed socially acceptable in the name
“Land, Terrain, Territory,” Stuart Elden of sustenance, entails the contemporary
argues for a better understanding of the overproduction of croplands. Because of
political economic agency of territory; he the success of new markets for corn grain
discusses the violence associated with ter- outside of foodstuffs, including ethanol-
ritories such as political borderlands and based fuel and plastics, the demand for

107
high-yield crops is constantly rising. The accounted for 22 per cent of the United
commodity market for corn is set for yields States’ commercial fertilizer usage in 1850,
of 300 bushels per acre in the coming years, and 43 per cent only ten years later, after
a significant increase since the late 1960s farmers had almost tripled their fertili­zer
when these new markets were opened.3 In consumption.5 It was such a lucrative busi­
order to reach these yield requirements, ness that the United States government
soils need to be constantly replenished of passed the Guano Act in 1864, which al­-
their necessary nu­t rients, the most com- lowed, as a means of encouragement, any
mon of which are pot­assium, phosphorous, citizen of the US who discovered an unoc-
and nitrogen.4 Of these three essential com- cupied island with deposits of guano to
ponents, nitrogen has proven to be the most claim it as US territory.
pertinent for the cultivation of productive Until the synthetic production of fertil-
crops within the United States. izers reached an industrial scale around
Although nitrogen is abundantly avail- 1913, the equally valuable caliche deposits
able in the atmosphere, organic matter can­ from saltpeter mines accounted for more
not directly access it for use as a soluble than 60 per cent of the world’s supply of
nitrogen compound; it must first be fixed nitrates through the end of the nineteenth
to another element to create a nitrogen com­ century. The Atacama Desert, where these
pound in order for uptake to occur within mines were located, is the only naturally
plant systems. Historically, nitrogen con- occurring deposit of nitrates in the world;
centrations were accessed by humans because of this, the exploitation of the land
through organic matter, including guano was immensely profitable to the miners
deposits located mainly in the pacific, and working it. Mines such as Humberstone
caliche deposits from Chilean saltpeter and Santa Laura Saltpeter Works, located
mines. The guano extracted from islands 48 kilometers outside of Iquique, Chile,
along the Brown Pelican migration route, thrived on the extraction of saltpeter and
particularly off the coast of Peru, was rich assisted in making nitrate fertilizers one
in nitrates, yet sources were rapidly de­- of the most significant economic drivers
pleted as miners took advantage of this in Chilean history.
scarce resource. In 1850, the Peruvian gov- Today, the Humberstone and Santa
ernment exempted guano from taxation Laura Saltpeter Works are the idle rep-
laws because it was so advantageous to the resentatives of the over 150 mining towns
country’s economy. These guano exports that once existed in the Atacama ­Desert.

108 Scapegoat
Humberstone now operates under the pu­r- 400 per cent greater than in 1940. Current­ly,
view of the UNESCO World Heritage Com- approximately 4.8 million tons of ammo-
mittee as a site where “the combined know- nia, containing 82 per cent nitrogen, are
ledge, skills, technology, and financial applied through direct injection or other
investment of a diverse society […] became means to the soil every year in the United
a huge cultural exchange complex where States.8 On average, a typical acre of corn
ideas were quickly absorbed and exploited. utilizes 200 pounds of anhydrous ammo-
[…] The saltpeter mines in the north of nia per year.
Chile together became the largest produc- Significantly, the capacities unleashed
ers of natural saltpeter in the world, trans- through such chemical manipulations were
forming […] the agricultural lands that be­n­ not exclusively related to food production.
efited from the fertilizers the works pro- As Peter Sloterdijk has noted, “During [WWI],
­duced.”6 That this site is now administered Prof. Fritz Haber (1868–1934) also directed
by UNESCO suggests the global importance a department for ‘poison gas studies’ at
of nitrates throughout the nineteenth cen- the War Ministry. […] His receiving of the
tury; what remains to be clarified, for our Nobel Prize for Chemistry for having dis-
purposes, is what came to replace this vol- covered a method to synthesize ammonia
uminous extraction for the agricultural provoked an outcry in England and France,
processes which had come to depend on where his name was closely associated
them. with the organization of chemical war-
fare.”9 While Sloterdijk goes on to expli-
Croplands and Chemopower
cate the development of chemical weapons
Liberated from the old biological con- advanced by Faber, including the eradica­
straints, the farm could now be managed tion of pests through “atmotechnical” means
on industrial principles, as a factory trans- and the use of Zyclon B as a poison in the
forming inputs of raw material—chemical gas chambers of WWII, the ability to fix
fertilizer—into outputs of corn. And corn atmospheric nitrogen was also implicated
adapted brilliantly to the new industrial in the development of incendiary explo-
regime, consuming prodigious quantities sives. Alfred Nobel’s greatest invention,
of fossil fuel energy and turning out ever dynamite, was replaced in the early 1900s
more prodigious quantities of food energy. with a mix of fuel oil and ammonia nitrate,
Growing corn, which from a biological per- whose combination produced more dev-
spective had always been a process of cap- astating effects at a lower cost. Since the
turing sunlight to turn it into food, has in development of the Haber-Bosch Process,
no small measure become a process of con- the use of ammonium nitrate in military
verting fossil fuels into food. explosives has equaled in appeal its agri-
—Michael Polan cultural applications.
As made brutally clear after the recent
As the global population continued to in­- explosion at a West Texas fertilizer plant,
crease, so did the use of fertilizers to stim- the amount of this product in the Midwest
ulate greater agricultural production; by is excessive, posing a potential immediate
the turn of the century, scientists began danger that conceals the slower violence
to worry about the depletion of naturally of its “proper” agricultural usage. This in­-
occurring nitrates for fertilizers. In 1910, cident is eerily similar to another explo-
however, German scientists developed a sion that occurred on 16 April 1947, which
major technological advancement that for­ killed more than 500 people in Texas City.10
ever changed the process of crop fertiliza­ While these two events demonstrate the
tion, and agricultural history. It was then explosive nature of the fertilizer itself, they
that Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch success- also suggest the huge amount of stockpiled
fully produced a chemically synthetic pro­- synthetic compound needed to maintain
cess to fix nitrogen to ammonia, thus achiev- artificially fertile agricultural soils. These
­ing, for the first time in human history, a spectacularly devastating events can be
means to capture the previously elusive juxtaposed with what Rob Nixon calls “slow
potential of this element.7 Produced using violence.” According to Nixon, acts of vio-
air, water, and natural gas, ammonia is the lence that take generations, or longer, to
most important source of nitrogen in fer- show the depth of their effects, are in need
tilizers today, with an application capacity of heightened representation in contem-

109 Nitrogen, Addiction, and the...

 Lock and Flow
porary society.11 Currently, the amount of
ammonia that we pump into the soil in order Within the United States, the importance
to grow these high-yield crops is exorbi­ of ammonia is everywhere in evidence, but
tant: nitrogen application to the soil al- it can be seen with particular clarity in
most tripled between 1960 and 2010. 12 examining the infrastructure of the am-­
Although it is known to the EPA that the monia pipeline. Operated by two indepen­
hypoxic zone in the Gulf of Mexico is caused, dent companies, Magellan Midstream Part­
in part, by the runoff of these nitrogen ferti­ ners and NuStar Energy, it extends over
lizers, their usage continues to increase to 5,000 kilometers, linking import and ex­-
the point of absurdity. As with Nixon’s port zones off the Gulf of Mexico to dis-
other examples of slow violence, in indus- tribution points throughout eleven Mid-
trial-scale agricultural practices it is dif- western states.
ficult to actually witness just what we are The pipeline pumps over 2.3 million tons
doing to the soil itself. Attending to the of anhydrous ammonia to these distribu-
slow violence of agriculture means reali­ tion points every year.13 These production
zing that there is more than one cataclys- zones, distribution centres, and transpor-
mic explosion at stake in the technological tation lines are essential for the mainte-
pursuit of sustenance. nance of the United States’ agribusiness
monopoly. As the historian of science Paul
Edwards has suggested, these infrastruc-
tures “constitute an artificial environment,
channeling and/or reproducing proper-
ties of the natural environment that we

110 Excess
find most useful. […] They also structure lease, “I especially want to express my
nature as a resource, fuel, or ‘raw mate- appreciation to the Agribusiness Associa-
rial,’ which must be shaped and processed tion of Iowa for its proactive private-sector
by technological means to satisfy human involvement in seeking out this discovery.”
ends. Thus, to construct infrastructures As explained by Iowa Secretary of Agricul­
is simultaneously to construct a particular ture Patty Judge, “This is an important dis-
kind of nature, a Nature as Other to soci- ­covery and one that will help in our continu-
ety and technology.”14 These massive con- ing fight against methamphetamine pro-
structions are monuments within our capi­- duction. Putting calcium nitrate into the
talist system to the need for higher yields anhydrous ammonia nurse tanks will ren-
and increased exploitation. Current fer- der them useless in making meth. This com-
tilization techniques, in addition to other pound will be a meth cook’s worst night-
technological advances such as genetically mare, but for the rest of us, it is a safe pro-
modified organisms (GMOs), drought-re- duct, and has no negative impact on our en-
sistant breeds, and high-yield seeds, are vironment, or farm equipment.” According
all employed to reach maximum outputs to research conducted by the US Drug En-
through technological mastery. Political forcement Administration’s forensics lab,
scientist James C. Scott describes this “meth cooks who use untreated Anhydrous
period of “high-modernist agriculture” Ammonia typically get a 42 per cent yield
as an era of control that has witnessed of pseudoephedrine for conversion to meth.
extreme cropland expansion through a However, that yield drops to two per cent
blind advancement of technology and sci- or less when the calcium nitrate inhibitor
ence.15 Processes that ensure the success is added.” The chemical lock created by
of crop yields, such as the introduction of cal­cium nitrate, which prevents the con-
fertilizer for nutrient-rich soils, are essen- ver­sion of anhydrous ammonia to pseudo-
tial to those mandated by manufactured ephe­d rine, allows us to consider the un-
markets. While the products of these pro- likely relativity of nitrogen-dependent ex-
cesses—namely, higher yields and the plosions.
great­er accumulation of profits—cannot If the explosive potential of nitrogen is
be explained as the outcome of a logical made explicit by its weaponized applications
necessity (i.e. we didn’t have to develop as much as by the occasional explosion at
our agriculture this way), their role within a fertilizer facility, the human popu­lation
the growth of the global human popula- explosion remains difficult to detect in any
tion has become contingently obligatory. immediate sense. Even as the slow but cer-
That is, even if this trajectory of industrial tain violence of a global population surpas­
agriculture was by no means necessary, it sing 7 billion is everywhere announced, our
cannot simply be “undone” because of it ability to make sense of this number is re­-
now obliges other processes of expansion, markably limited. Extensive quantitative
including the explosion of the human popu- measures, including the metrics of global
lation. population statistics, ring hollow in a world
On 9 October 2006, the State of Iowa’s of interlocking interdependencies and con-
Office of Drug Control Policy issued a tingent obligations; a more intensive carto-
press release with the curious title “Iowa graphy is necessary. To conclude, we can
Unveils ‘Chemical Lock’ to Clamp Down begin to speculate on such a cognitive car-
on US Meth Labs.” Even more curious tography, where explosions syncopate be-
for those interested in the proliferation tween nitrogen’s weaponized, incendiary
of nitrogen’s variously explosive capaci- applications and the relatively slower ex­­
ties was the fact that this “chemical lock” pansion of the population. Such an inten-
was to be applied not to the physical pipe- sive rhythm is evinced by the use and ab-
line—which had been subject to extensive use of nitrogen’s lesser known application,
tampering and hacking by so-called “meth meth­a mphetamine. At the scale of the
cooks” who were syphoning the ammo- individual user, and in smaller dosages,
nium nitrate to create methamphetamine— methamphetamine produces clarity, con-
but to the anhydrous ammonia itself. In centration, and energy; with larger doses,
the words of Iowa Governor Thomas Vil- extreme stimulation and euphoria. Pro-
sack, whose address to the “House Meth longed and excessive usage, however, is
Caucus” was excerpted in the press re- extremely addictive and tends to produce

111 ...Unlikely Relativity of...

excessive feelings of power and invincibil- pation of the soil has become increasingly
ity, which are accompanied by withdrawal violent just as the ration­a lizations for our
symptoms such as depression, violence, and industrial processes be­come even more
suicidal ideation. In this respect—between untenable, the chemical architecture of
the velocity of an incendiary explosion and our fixed nitrogen addiction finds its com-
the seemingly slow pace of the species’ popu- plementary opposite in the chemical lock
lation explosion—methamphetamine offers on pseudoephedrine; still, among the man­ic
a rare but focused image of nitrogen’s ex- proliferation of weapons and wheat fields,
plosive capacity at the scale, or speed, of we are inexorably a species committed to
the human mind and body. In our contem- keep smoking while the rock is hot.
porary croplands, where the human occu-
Endnotes 10 Dan Good, “Reflecting on the 1947 Texas City
Disaster,” New York Post, 18 April 2013,
1 “The Discovery of Corn,” MexicoLore, http:// http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/
www.mexicolore.co.uk/aztecs/stories/discovery- reflecting_on_the_texas_city_disaster_tn
of-corn. AmX90HgEGSJWxlQ8GOvI.
2 Stuart Elden, “Land, Terrain, Territory,” Progress in 11 Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism
Human Geography 34, no. 6 (2010): 799–817. of the Poor (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
3 Iowa Corn Growers Association, interview with 2011).
Shannon Textor, Director of Market Development, 12 “ Fertilizer Use and Price,” USDA Economic
October 2012. Resource Service, http://www.ers.usda.gov/
4 “Nutrient Science,” The Fertilizer Institute, http:// data-products/fertilizer-use-and-price.aspx#.
www.tfi.org/introduction-fertilizer/nutrient-sci- UZmOobUp-So.
ence. 13 Deborah Kramer, U.S. Geological Survey Minerals
5 Jimmy Skaggs, The Great Guano Rush: Entrepre- Yearbook (2000), 55–6.
neurs and American Overseas Expansion (New York: 14 Paul Edwards, “Infrastructure and Modernity: Force,
Palgrave Macmillan 1994), 5. Time, and Social Organization in the History of
6 “Humberstone and Santa Laura Saltpeter Works,” Sociotechnical Systems,” in Modernity and Technol-
UNESCO, http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1178. ogy, ed. Philip Brey, Andrew Feenberg and Thomas
7 Etienne Turpin, “Stratophysical Approximations: A Misa (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT University Press,
Conversation with Seth Denizen on the Urban Soils 2003), 189.
of the Anthropocene,” Organs Everywhere 4 (2012): 15 James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain
30–45, http://organseverywhere.com/pdf/OE_4_ Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have
Material-Shifts.pdf. Failed (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998).
8 Compressed Gas Association, The Handbook of
Compressed Gases (Springer, 1999), 247.
9 Peter Sloterdijk, Terror from the Air (Los Angeles:
Semiotext(e), 2009), 12.

Bio

As a recent graduate from the Master of Architecture program at the University of

­Michigan’s Taubman College, Danielle McDonough’s research has focused on the
intersection of geo-politics and spatial design, particularly with regards to the symbi-
otic ­relationships that arise from neo-industrial centres and cultural or public institu-
tions. Her research and spatial investigations have materialized through explorations
in ­architecture, writing, cartography, and fiction. Currently, Danielle is pursuing post-­
graduate research in Conservation and Museum Studies at the University of Michigan.

112 Scapegoat
Van Dalem in Dymaxion, 2013, oil and resin on wood, 34.5 × 27.5 cm
Courtesy the artist and Sullivan+Strumpf.
 The Future That Never Happened
by Filipe Magalhães and Ana Luisa Soares (Fala Atelier)

Introduction
In 1972, Kisho Kurokawa’s Nakagin Capsule Tower was advertised
in the media as signalling “the dawn of the capsule age.” The
building was a sum of individual, “plug-in” capsules, promoting
exchangeability and modifications to the structure over time, and
theoretically improving its capacity to adjust to the rapidly chang-
ing conditions of post-industrial society. The tower represented the
future of housing. The irony behind the story of the Nakagin Capsule
Tower is the fact that it became the last building of its kind to be
completed in the world. Today, it stands as a poignant reminder of
a path ultimately not taken.

A New Urban Condition

Forty years ago, this fallen hero was the tallest building in the
neighbourhood. It was visible from far away, and with its sci-fi
look seemed to be a strange machine from the future. Today the
tower is blocked out, hidden in the shadows of other skyscrapers.
It looks old and abandoned. Contrary to what was predicted, the
capsules were never replaced. Materials did not resist the passage
of time—nor were they intended to—and the problems increased:
rust, corrosion, and leaks are everywhere. There is no maintenance;
the building was recently covered with a safety net because small
parts started falling off. It is literally crumbling to pieces. The few
capsules that light up at night reveal the few people who still live
here, although tourists still try to visit the building every day.

114 Project
115
116 Scapegoat
 Common Spaces, Common Problems
It is a typical practice for inhabitants of the tower to appropriate
common spaces as extensions of their capsules. Down the staircases
one can find clotheslines, shoe lockers, or boxes filled with books
and personal objects. The original pipes were never replaced and
eventually became unusable. New pipes (for cold water only) were
placed in the corridors, and the capsule doors were sawn to bring
them inside. There is no hot water; a common shower on the en-
trance floor is the only place to bathe. Cracks and humidity dam-
age can be seen everywhere. The atrium serves the entire building
and is occasionally used as a meeting room by those who use cap-
sules as offices. A doorman is there during the day, but at night the
door is left open. The elevators still work.

Different Inhabitants, Different Opinions

Only a few people inhabit the tower; the vast majority of the units
are abandoned. The corridors are quiet. The few residents who
remain have different opinions regarding the future of the building:
some believe in rehabilitation, others want demolition; some even
talk about the replacement of the capsules with new ones. The
lack of consensus is one of the main reasons for the current condi-
tion of the building. Several capsules have rotted from the inside
and are now covered with moss and mildew; the inhabited cap-
sules, however, are usually in good condition. Most of the owners
have performed all kinds of interventions in their units—something
that the Metabolists would perhaps be proud of. Some residents
live in other cities and only use the building on the weekends; others
live and work here full-time. Overall, everyone is worried about
the future of the former icon, but in conversation with some
inhabitants, it is easy for us to understand the reasons for the dif-
ferent opinions about what should be done.

117 The Future That...

118
119
120 Scapegoat
121 ...Never Happened
 A Capsule As A House
Time has shown that the assumed perfection of the typology was
spoiled by the unrealistic idea of replacing the capsules every 20
years. Although the futuristic look generated by the capsules
distinguishes the building, this mutant condition proved to be fatal.
The capsules are small (8 metres sq.), but the space is enough and
adjusted to the needs of day-to-day life. Every detail of the original
project contributes to the success of the interior—the versatile and
integrated furniture, the ergonomic bathroom, the large window.
And, although living in the capsule alters the inhabitants’ percep-
tion of scale, the typology is a perfect answer for Tokyo’s urbanism.
More than 40 years after the opening of the building, the lifestyle
of the city and the local culture continue to suggest that capsular
space is an ideal solution; even if the future imagined by Kurokawa
followed a different path, today, while living inside one of the cap-
sules, it is still easy for us to understand why the Nakagin Tower
captivated the Metabolist imagination.

Bios

Filipe Magalhães graduated in architecture at Faculdade de Arquitectura do Porto,

Portugal, and at Fakulteta za Arhitekturo v Ljubljani, Slovenia. In 2011, he completed
a thesis titled “Between the Abstract and the Figurative.” He has worked with Harry
Gugger in Basel, and SANAA and Sou Fujimoto in Tokyo.

Ana Luisa Soares is a graduate student at Faculdade de Arquitectura do Porto,

­P ortugal, and Tokyo University, Japan. She has worked with Harry Gugger in Basel
and Toyo Ito in Tokyo.

122 Excess
123
 In Infinity, Eternity Performs
by Thomas Provost

100 Antipodal Towers

Plotted along a great circle connecting antipodes Bogota and Jakarta, this colossal monument to ­humanity exists as a
perfect geometry in the present; when Pangaea reunites, the human order succumbs to forces greater than our own.

Here, nonetheless, lies a great drawback: there is no progress. […]

What we call “progress” is confined to each particular world, and
vanishes with it. Always and everywhere in the terrestrial arena,
the same drama, the same setting, on the same narrow stage—a
noisy humanity infatuated with its own grandeur, believing itself
to be the universe and living in its prison as though in some im-
mense realm, only to founder at an early date along with its globe,
which has borne with the deepest disdain the burden of human
arrogance. The same monotony, the same immobility, on other
heavenly bodies. The universe repeats itself endlessly and paws
the ground in place. In infinity, eternity performs—imperturb-
ably—the same routines.
—Louis Auguste Blanqui, L’Éternité par les astres (1872)

124 Project
Humanity is a small flare, a minor vector. of time in two directions, the squander-
Consider, for example, how Earth’s con- ing of history and of potential futures, the
centric cousin, Pluto, will have only trav- evacuation of temporalities through the
eled one-third of its way around the Sun in immediacy of spectacle—all of this is char-
a human lifetime.1 We humans are floating acteristic of the Anthropocene. As cities
in a vast, ever-expanding (or contracting) become concentrations of the sediment of
universe. During the twentieth century, spectacle, we are reminded that, as Walter
astronomers calculated the universe to be Benjamin warned, those societies which
14 billion light years wide, a figure revised are incapable of responding to new tech-
in the twenty-first century to 15 billion. 2 nical abilities with a new social order are
While present-day computational proces­ destined to a monotonous repetition of
sing power allows for a remarkable preci- injustice and suffering.
sion in gauging these unreachable cosmic The dust of this planet that allowed gases
boundaries, they remain wonderfully spe­ to harden into Earth—folding upon itself
cu­lative given the impossibility of appre- over its 4.6 billion-year lifetime—can be
hending these scales through either per- thought of as the origin of all tellurian mat­
cepts or concepts. It is within this vast, erial transformation. Mythical beliefs root-
unknowable cosmic arena that the stag- ­ed in these geological processes are what
gering and equally incomprehensible ex- make landscape interventions, such as the
tension of humanity takes place. Uffington White Horse or the Nazca lines,
A beam of light projected from the top and inhabitations such as the mona­stery of
of the Luxor hotel in Las Vegas: it is said Skellig Michael, the focus of anthro­po­logic
to be the most powerful on the planet, vis- studies; these human-geolo­g ical op­er­a­
ible from the moon.3 This expenditure of tions depict a temperate Holocene mood.
capital is excessive not only in its claim on They are works made with both ad­ditive
extra-planetary space and perception, but and subtractive material methods at a monu­-
also in its abuse of time; the domination mental scale. By contrast, our contempo­ra­-

The Moon, 3000 AD

Post-lunar-occupancy.

125
 ry processes and the monu­ments they pro­- criticized the common practice of reduc-
duce are all too expeditious, due, most espe- ing existence to the scale of the human in
cially, to extensive technological sys­tems order to maintain a “here-and-now” mind­-
which coordinate operations among any set of one lonely century. one lonely cen-
material state or scale. Geology, as the form- tury. As the era of the Anthropocene pre-
al record of a select group of practices and pares to witness a dramatic warming of
processes on earth, collects the traces of the planet, it seems necessary to at least
human existence with­i n its ­s tratifying recognize that the condition of the planet
sediment. Does this geological trace have we have come to inhabit, or “life-as-we-
any way to record the experience of human know-it,” is a post-glacial affair. The longue
wonder? Can geo­logy somehow remember durée of the post-glacial era is now a con-
the human de­sire, now all but extinct, to cern, a fear, and an open question.
celebrate the mysteries of the universe— The Anthropocene—a yet-to-be-con­
not through mastery, but as fes­ti­val? firmed stratigraphic designation—specu-
Although humans can perceive the moun- latively demarcates the trace of a velocity;
­tains and stars as models of ­majestic stasis, that is, it imagines the future trace of the
we must know that the Earth’s crust trans- rapid changes to the Earth caused by hu­-
forms ceaselessly under our feet, while the man agents and their harnessed, if unpre-
firmament sweeps us along in a cyclone of dictable, forces. Given the incomprehen-
stars. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin first rec- sible scale of the earth, that the aggregate
ognized the collective disregard for this effect of human activity should alter the
seemingly benign yet incredibly theistic geology of the planet itself in only a few
measure of the grandeur and complexity hundred years is a staggering realization;
of the cosmos.4 His proposition—to align the consequences are dramatic not least
human ethics with a cosmic sensibility to because they offer a golden spike of rec-
relieve some of our deep confusion over onciliation to the once divided languages
existence—predates the contemporary dis- of nature and culture.6
cussions, instigated by Bruno Latour and But, in this now untenable divide be­tween
others, of a new spiritual-scientific alli- nature and culture, where human activity
ance in the Anthropocene.5 Perhaps Char- produces not only atmospheric change but
din held a clue to satisfying the excessive also geological transformation, where does
spiritual absence of modernity when he architecture appear? Can architecture enter

Gravitational Construct
A global, celestial columbarium existing as a human order outside of habitable space and time.

126 Scapegoat
the Anthropocene? As the construction of and out of sequence—can begin also to con-
perspective, How will architecture frame nect to the cosmos. As Walter Benjamin
the infinite by challenging the here-and- wrote of the doctrine of antiquity, “They
now quality inherent in contemporary alone shall possess the earth who live
modes of production. I contend that an from the powers of the cosmos.”7 Perhaps
architec­t ure driven by the desire to radi- through an architecture of the Anthropo-
cally in­flect the perspective of the human cene, the powers of the cosmos might help
with a geo­logic sensibility—through nar- us discover that to “possess the earth” we
rative, serial production, and atypical suc- must first recognize ourselves as indeli-
cessions of scope and purpose phasing in bly part of it.

Endnotes 5 Bruno Latour, Facing Gaia: Six Lectures on the

­Political Theology of Nature, 2013 Gifford Lectures
1 Phillip D. Stern, Our Space Environment (New York: on Natural Religion, accessed 15 May 2013, http://
Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1965). www.bruno-latour.fr/node/486.
2 Brian Swimme, The Hidden Heart of the Cosmos 6 Jonathon Keats, Virtual Words (New York: Oxford
(Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2005). University Press, 2011).
3 Paul Virilio, A Landscape of Events, trans. Julie Rose 7 Walter Benjamin, Reflections: Essays, Aphorisms,
(Cambridge: MIT Press, 2000). Autobiographical Writings, edited by Peter Demetz
4 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man, (New York: Schocken, 1986), 92.
trans. Bernard Wall (New York: Fontana, 1959).

Bio

An architect-in-training, Thomas Provost (M.Arch, Detroit) is most often found theorizing

the interstices of architecture, geology, and theism in various post-industrial laboratories
that expose the discrepancy between the human and superhuman scale. His work is col-
lected at www.11235.ca.

127 In Infinty, Eternity Performs

Technologies of the Political
 21 DEC 2012

H
 assu Khel, North Waziristan,
Pakistan

Three reported killed in the Mir Ali area.

On the same day, a US drone crashed in
South ­Waziristan.

130
Proportionality,
­Violence, and
the Economy
of Calculations
—Eyal
Weizman in
Conversation
with
Heather
Davis

Dronestagram ­images
and captions courtesy
131 of James Bridle.
 24 OCT 2012

Tappi Village, Pakistan

3–5 reported killed, 1 civilian reported killed,

2–4 reported injured. Three missiles fired de­
stroying a house and a vehicle. Three cows in­
tended to be sacrificed for Eid were also killed.

132 Scapegoat
The Guardian recently reported that the US has set up a predator
drone base just outside of Niamey, Niger, extending its surveillance
regime while providing another base for extra-judicial killings and
internationalized terror.1 Meanwhile, US Secretary of State John
Kerry is trying to reinvigorate peace talks between Israel and Pale­
stine amidst rumors of a new intifada and renewed rocket fire from
Gaza. To confront these realities without accepting their terms as
given, Eyal Weizman’s work as an architect, professor, ­t heorist,
and activist addresses the use of systems of surveillance, ­mapping,
NGOs, and international human rights law. His ongoing work and
collaborations with artists, architects, and theorists in F ­ orensic
Architecture (FA), the Decolonizing Architecture Art Residency
(DAAR), and the Centre for Research Architecture, navigate cur-
rent political realities through a direct engagement with, and elab-
oration of, incommensurable positions. This is precisely why his
work is so compelling. Weizman’s concept of forensic architecture
analyzes the contradictory role of critical thought within inter-
national humanitarian law, using the tools of journalistic inves-
tigation and the humanitarian figure, that he himself critiques.
In both his writing and ongoing architecture projects, Weizman
demonstrates that the division between amelioration and revo-
lution is false; instead, his practice shows that we must learn to
negotiate intense and radical contradictions in order to restruc-
ture our political reality. He insists on a political strategy that
names specific individuals for their culpability in the deaths of
others in ongoing colonial and frontier wars, while at the same time
articulating the ways in which force, materials, and nonhuman ac-
tors diffuse and exacerbate these differential conditions. Weizman
and his wide network of collaborators use counter-sur­veil­lance
methods and the figure-ground relation as the beginning of a new
topological articulation, linking cracks in architecture to geological
fissures, within the field of immanent power.
After a series of advanced seminars at Duke University in mid-
February 2013, and in the midst of his busy schedule, Eyal gene­
rously agreed to sit down with me to discuss his recent work on
forensic architecture, international human rights law, and the rela-
tion of critical thinking and artistic practice to political interven­
tions. A partial transcript of this conversation is included below.

133 Proportionality, Violence...

 21 MAR 2013

Datta Khel, Pakistan

A drone strike near the Afghan border kills at

least three people. Possible houses or vehicles
hit on the road to Datta Khel, with conflicting
reports of the target.

134 Excess
Heather Davis
How has your thinking and oriented understanding of space, as well as
approach to the neocolonial occupation of an understanding of the immanent power
Palestine by Israel changed over time? I am of constant interaction between force and
particularly interested in the movement form. Across what I described as the “poli­
of your thought from Hollow Land (2007) tical plastic,” space is continuously in trans­
and its elaboration of the “political plastic” formation. This was a politics of space, and
to your more recent development of foren- here I mean material space as something
sic architecture in The Least of All Possi­ that acts. War is a dynamic process of space-
ble Evils (2011), Forensic Architecture (2012), making. Frontier colonization is a slowed-
and Mengele’s Skull (2012), where the sub- down war, but still very elastic; the frontier
ject as witness is being replaced and sur- is very different from a city like Paris, which
passed by an emergent forensic sensibility, has figured as the imaginary for a lot of spa­-
an object-oriented juridical culture. How tial theory, and is often misplaced and ap­-
much of this movement is influenced by the plied to the frontier. Paris is a planned city,
changing situation itself? a very hard city, and its hardness has haunt-
ed the imagination of some spatial schol-
Eyal Weizman
I think the latter works are ars studying very different things today. I
to a certain extent a set of methodological thought we had to get rid of Paris to libe­
reflections on Hollow Land. I had to find rate Palestine. And then I kept pushing to­-
the language to understand—and it took ward the idea of immanent materiality on
some time and effort—in what ways mate- different scales; not only on the scale of the
riality and territoriality participate in shap­ territory, but on a micro-scale, through the
ing conflict, rather than simply being shaped details and substances—water, fields, for-
by it. Hollow Land was already structured ests, hills, valleys—which all play a role in
around various material things at different shaping conflicts, and therefore have an
scales, so the logic of a kind of f­ orensic in­- effect on the forensic imagination.
vestigation was essential. I guess I was So, to refer to an idea you brought up in
personally attracted to the investigative an earlier conversation, the idea of elasticity,
intensity in forensics, less to the legal con­ or what you called plasticity—ending at a
text in which its findings are present­ed, moment of a bomb blast—I would say that
which are oftentimes, especially in an in- I think that a blast is simply an acceleration
­ternational legal context, quite skewed, of relations of force and form in the same
as I showed in the latest books. And yes, way that wars in the city are an actualiza­
the shift from Hollow Land to The Least of tion and acceleration of the latent and slower
All Possible Evils also marks a shift in my processes of conflict and negotiation that
attention from the West Bank to Gaza. This define the city. I think it is more interesting
has obviously been shaped by events. In to think of the continuities between elas-
Gaza, one can notice a system of rule that ticities and explosions than about the dif-
is based more on humanitarian violence ferences. I was working very closely with
through the modulation of supply, the ap- analysts of bomb blast sites, and you see
­plication of standards of the humanitar- millisecond by millisecond—there is a des­
ian minimum, and the seeming conduct cription of this in the last chapter of the
of war by human rights (HR) and interna- Lesser Evil book—what happens to a build-
tional humanitarian law (IHL) principles. ing when it is bombed. It is like taking on
So some of the attention shifted from ter- 15 years of gradual disintegration, which
ritoriality to principles of “humanitarian” is what every building is undergoing from
government. Although, of course, materi­ the moment it is built, in 5 milliseconds.
ality entered in a different way—I tried to
HD
show how it interacts with law through So what you have called “the pyramids
forensics. of Gaza” are just the sped-up force of
In any case, the investigation that cul- the “natural” collapse of a building? 2
minated in my recent work started with a
EW
certain refusal of spatial research method­ The collapse of a refugee house is the
ologies, commonly held at the time, derived making of the pyramids of Gaza. There are
mainly from certain readings of Henri Le­- many pyramids throughout the strip, mainly
febvre. I thought they needed a more dyna­ in the camps and neighbourhoods that ring
mic, elastic, topological, and force-field- Gaza City and along the short border to Egypt.

135 ...and the Economy of...

10 MAR 2013

Datta Khel, Pakistan

2–3 killed by a strike in North Waziristan on the

Afghan/Pakistan border, riding horses or motor­
bikes. Identities unknown. Rescue work was
reportedly delayed as drones hovered over the
area after the strike.
They are a new typology that has emerged vations—for a biblical history project under­-
out of the encounter between a three-story taken directly beneath the Palestinian neigh­-
residential building, of the kind that pro- bourhood of Silwan in occupied Jerusalem—
vides a home for refugees, and an armored generated cracks that travelled from bedrock
Caterpillar D9 bulldozer. The short shovel formations through the voids of the under-
of the bulldozer can destroy only the col- ground archaeological sites, to roadwork,
umns closer to the façade of the building, to walls within the interior of buildings.
but the single centre column is left intact, Crack appear and disappear, translating
and it makes the peak of the pyramid. The force into the lines of least resistance. In
fact that the centre column remains is what this case, they also have a political and legal
makes this new type of ruin; it is important meaning. They testify to an underground
because one can actually enter—very care- colonization, and each material they go
fully, as some forensic architects have done— through—asphalt, concrete, plaster—could
the ruin itself. But not only is this a new be unpacked as a different architectural,
typology, there are important differences geological, and political layer.
within it, i.e. irregularities which register
HD
differences in the process of construction, In an interview with Robin Mackay in
the uneven spread of concrete, or the vari- Collapse, you said in relation to the oc-
ous modes of destruction such as the in­- cupation of Palestine by Israel: “Every form
ability or reluctance of the bulldozer oper­ that the occupation has taken since 1967 has
ator to go completely around the building. been presented as an attempt to end the oc­-
A particular irregularity could be the re­- cupation. Perhaps the only constant thing
sult of a previous firefight, for example, about the occupation is that there are al­ways
which would then become an important attempts to end it. […] The occupation is fin-
aspect in the investigation. The task is ob- ally nothing but its constant end. […] There-
viously to connect the differences in the fore we need to be suspicious of anyone that
patterns of concrete to a general history of runs under the slogan ‘end the occupation’—
war—or in this case, an attack on Gaza—to they must have yet another spatial appara-
connect the micro-details to a larger, sys- tus in mind.” 3 In Decolonizing Architecture
temic violence. (DAAR), a residency project started by Sandi
Here is another example where such Hilal, Alessandro Petti, and yourself in Beit
analysis is crucial: geological formations Sahour, you take the approach that the occu-
exist both inside and outside buildings. pation, and its interminable end, should be
They are obviously in the ground on which reconfigured as a question of “decoloniza­
buildings stand, but are also integral to tion.” Can you say more about what you mean
construction materials, even the gravel by decolonization here? Toward what kind
within concrete, so we need to see how of a future does a practice of decolonization
rocks behave in order to undo a certain move if there is no end to the occupation?
conceptual gap between geology and archi­
EW
tecture. A denser concentration of mine­ I think that one of the biggest prob-
rals within a rock will often become the lems in thinking about the future of Pal-
line of least resistance, along which a crack estine, a problem that somehow defines
will tear it, and the building, apart. So one’s “camp” within the Israeli or Pales-
cracks are extremely interesting because tinian anti-colonial left, is defined by what
they connect the geological, the urban, “state” you support as a solution. So we get
and the architectural. Cracks are a fantas- the positions of one-statists versus two-
tic demonstration of a shared material- statists versus no-statists, and a lot of very
ity of the planet—moving from geology to important and creative discussions are
architecture—and studying cracks, which organized in relation to that. Surely, think-
is a task of forensic architecture, demon- ing politically, we are one-statists, but in
strates the necessity to rid our thinking of DAAR, the studio that Sandi, Alessandro
the borders between objects and the fig- and I set up, we try to propose a different
ure-ground relation of a building sitting on relation to the future, articulated through
a landscape. the process of decolonization. 4
For example, Dara Behrman, a member To do architecture in an area of such in­-
of the Centre for Research Architecture, tense conflict is always to engage in a less-
looked at how pirate archaeological exca- than-ideal world. This has to do not only

137 ...Calculations — Eyal Weizman...

 29 NOV 2012

S
 hin Warsak, South W
­ aziristan,
Pakistan

A strike near Wana, capital of South W ­ aziristan,

close to the Afghan border. Pakistan media
reports up to four unnamed deaths, and more
injured. The first strike in Pakistan in 36 days. A
military intelligence official told The Long War
Journal that “it certainly wasn’t due to a lack of
targets. Pakistan is a target-rich environment.
We’re only scratching at the surface, hitting
them in the tribal areas, while the country re­
mains infested with al Qaeda and their allies.”

138
with the violence that contaminates every facing was that the land division in the
aspect of life there, but also with deter- West Bank and Gaza is such that most of
mining the point from which speculation the land is private (and for many differ-
could begin. Conflicts create a sense of ent reasons, not just the system of Israeli
postponement and hence these future pro- domination), it is owned by private fami-
jections; we wait for the post-conflict to lies, and people do not sell land, so to have
begin imagining. But the Palestine con- the settlements evacuated would give a
flict is an endless conflict, so we feel that precious basis and infrastructure for a set
the “x-state solutions” are trapped in a of common areas. So this was the idea we
top-down perspective. We did not start were working with. Sandi, Ale, and I were
the project from the utopia of an end state working a lot with NGOs. They function as
in order to move backwards to the pres- a kind of government, because the military
ent; instead, we started from “real exist- rule doesn’t want to deal with the occu-
ing colonialism,” from the trash, buildings, pied population and the Palestinian gov-
infrastructure, and law that it creates. Our ernment is very absent and incompetent,
approach has been to reuse, rather than so a network of NGOs somehow emerges
reject, the material conditions of the pres- to fill in, and it was really with those
ent. So we want to mobilize architecture NGOs that we were deciding the uses of
as an optical device through actually exist- land. And then there is another aspect, I
ing structures—such as a military base, mean, what you plan is one thing and what
a settlement, the Palestinian parliament happens on the ground is often another. In
building, a particular Palestinian house in the end, the settlement was destroyed, so
Battir, different houses in Jaffa in what is we could not repurpose the buildings. We
called ’48 Palestine—to study the conflict did other things.
and to act within it. But there was a lot of resistance to this
project, which was not really surprising.
HD
Can you talk a little more about the Many Palestinians said Israel should “dis-
project where you proposed to repur- mantle the houses and take them away.” Or
pose an evacuated settlement for public use they wanted to “have a big bonfire,” which
by Palestinians? One of the things that I am at DAAR we thought was great, because
especially curious about is how you decide access to the colonies or military outposts
what kinds of public spaces might be use- should be experienced differently by all
ful. In the refugee camps, where most “pub- people who were at this place at that time.
licness” has been eliminated, how do you This popular impulse for destruction sought
rebuild? What sort of community consulta- to give a sense of relief; architecture had
tion does DAAR engage in? to burn. Through this process of reposses-
sion we were experiencing a radical con-
EW
The project started with the Palestin- dition of architecture—the moment power
ian Ministry of Planning in 2005, which is unplugged, when the old use is gone and
had to advise on the fate of the settlements new uses are not yet defined. It is the limit
that were about to be evacuated in Gaza. condition of architecture. But whatever
The Palestinian Ministry of Planning be­- may happen on the ground, the possibil-
came the centre of intense meetings be- ity of further evacuation should be con-
tween Palestinians and a variety of NGOs, sidered. We were also worried that the
different UN agencies, the World Bank, infrastructure would simply be reused to
foreign governments, and international reproduce colonial power relations: colo-
investors, all of whom outlined their pro- nial villas to be inhabited by new financial
posed uses for the evacuated settlements. elites, etc. In this sense, historical decolo-
I was called on to advise. At the time we nization never truly did away with the spa-
did not know whether they were going to tialized power of colonial domination. So
be evacuated intact or whether they would we acted according to a different option
be destroyed. We thought, or assumed that sought to propose subversion of the
at least, that they would be left intact. originally intended use, repurposing it for
The ministry wanted experts, or quasi- other ends.
experts—architects—to partake in these
HD
discussions that were otherwise p ­ olitical The artist Adam Harvey has developed
and diplomatic. The problem we were what he calls “Stealth Wear”: he mani-

139 ...in Conversation with...

 9 DEC 2012

L
 ocation: Tabbi, North Waziristan,
Pakistan

3–4 killed by a drone strike in a village north

of Muran Shah, 10km from the Afghan border.
Reuters reports that one of the casualties was
Mohammed Ahmed Almansoor, a midlevel al
Qaeda commander. The Pakistani Express Tri­
bune reported that the three others were mem­
bers of his family.

140
 HD
pulates the double ability of fashion and In The Least of All Possible Evils, you
clothing to both reveal and conceal, creat- identified a shift from thinking about
ing clothing that shields the wearer from genocide through primary effects toward
drone attacks by using a reflective material the secondary effects outlined in a number
that effectively seals in the heat of the body of cases. I see this as a particularly power-
so that it cannot be detected from the air. 5 ful way to think about the relationships of
You write that all architecture is a process complicity in warfare and of escaping some
of making and unmaking, an ideological of the problems of “acceptable” deaths—be-
restructuring of surface, yet so much of your cause they have been calculated in advance—
work seems to be about making things vis- in acts of war. It also opens up the possibi­lity
ible, bringing injustices to light. Is it some- of thinking about environmental catastrophe
times more desirable to create a surface of as a type of inflicted and purposeful geno­-
invisibility? cide. Can you talk about this framework and
how Forensic Architecture takes it up through
EW
Yes, I understand what you are saying. the project on oceanic forensics and the “left-
I think that rather than operating on a sin- to-die boat?”
gle trajectory of increased visibility, map-
EW
ping is always an intervention in the field You are referring to the work of Charles
of the visible. What is being foregrounded, Heller and Lorenzo Pezzani, who worked
what is being shown, and what is being with Situ Studio on this project. Charles
“un-shown”—these are choices that we had and Lorenzo are PhD students at the Cen-
to make when making every map. When tre for Research Architecture and research
one thinks about the logic of sensing and fellows on the Forensic Architecture proj-
aesthetics, one understands the logic of ect, and Situ Studio is an emerging archi-
disappearance as an aesthetics as well. For tectural firm in New York. Together with
example, the resolution of commercially FA, they have set up an important project
available satellite imagery of the kind we of accountability in the Mediterranean.6
see in newspapers, such as suspected nu­- The “left-to-die boat” that Charles, Lorenzo,
clear sites in Iran or destroyed villages and Situ have been mapping and writing
in Darfur or Gaza, are limited to a resolu- about has become an issue within IHL be­-
tion of half a metre per pixel, which means cause, to a certain extent, it is the first time
the size of a pixel is exactly the size, or the the trace of a boat on water has been mapped.
box, in which a human body fits. Within Things moving in water usually leave no
that logic of visibility, there is also a struc- trace. The team discovered GPS coordin­
tured, built-in lacuna: the loss of the figure, ates by tracing phone calls and then worked
or the human. with an oceanographic institute to re-create
When one looks at facial recognition the drift pattern of the Mediterranean. The
software, one understands that there are migrants on board were drifting in one of
pretty simple ways of creating camouflage the most cluttered parts of the Mediterra­
that is no longer a visual camouflage for nean, in the middle of a siege with a lot of
the eye, but camouflage from algorithms, military and NATO vessels—and nobody
which are now doing a lot of the seeing. intervened. So their idea was to reverse the
There are ways in which algorithms can be regime of surveillance: if West­ern states
disturbed and confused with techniques claim this is the most surveyed sea in the
that a human eye might have picked up on, world, they also have the respon­si­bility to
but that an algorithm cannot discern. For protect those people who drowned. Ac­cor-
example, there was a very strange acci- ding to international laws of high seas, if
dent in Dubai in 2010 where Israelis were you hear an SOS call you must intervene.
trying to kill a Hamas operative who was So, there is a series of legal chal­lenges now
using camouflage from the eye and from a based on the very unique ability to trace
certain face-recognition algorithm. Hamas the movement of the boat in the sea.
thought they were camouflaged against one This research represents an important
algorithm without realizing that the algori­ and paradigmatic moment in the forensic
thm had changed! The Dubai police used dif- architecture project that I run with a great
­ferent software and they were exposed. There team of artists, architects, and filmmakers—
are all sorts of counter-forensic practices. including Susan Schuppli and Thomas
Keenan—in which various fellows, students,

141 ...Heather Davis

 13 APR 2013

Location: Pakistan

4–6 killed. Tribesmen reported as many of six

drones circling the area during the afternoon
“spreading panic among the residents”. One
drone fired two missiles around sunset, hit­
ting a house. The bodies were too burned to be
identified.

142
 and Situ Studio are developing different abi­- tics of international humanitarian law.
lities to visualize, map, and sense events, We know that human rights forensics can
as well as advance political and legal claims, become an extension of western surveil-
or political claims in the form of legal claims. lance practices. We have seen the way
Our method of investigating this particu­- in which the HR and the legal process
lar complex field involved two things that can be abused by states to amplify vio-
were both interdependent and contradic- lence. We assumed, however, that the only
tory. On the one hand, we practiced foren- way to conduct critical research in the
sic architecture, which means that we world today is in close proximity to, and
conducted spatial research in the fields even complicity with, the subjects of our
and forums of contemporary conflicts; investigation. Like the traditional Opera­
on the other hand, we conducted a criti- ist motto, we wanted to act inside and
cal and theoretical evaluation of the very against!
assumptions, protocols, procedures, and
HD
processes of knowledge production of There seems to be a tension in your
forensic practices. In short, we both used work between wanting to mobilize in-
and examined the tools we were operating vestigative journalism to denounce individ-
with and within. This doubling was essen- uals publicly, as in the case of the Guatema-
tial, but it also posed the danger of render­ lan genocide when you listed the accused
ing the two parts mutually ineffective. (José Efraín Ríos Montt, Héctor Mario López
When standing in the forums to defend Fuentes, Óscar Humberto Mejía Victores,
our findings as “solid facts,” our oppo- and José Mauricio Rodriguez Sánchez), but
nents could surely point to our writing on also to articulate the diffused networks of
the elastic nature of facts, and when we responsibility, across human and nonhuman
were among more critical thinkers, they actors, through forensic architecture. When
would rightly point out that we were com- thinking about whether you are going to
plicit with the very processes that are the take one tactic or another, is it just a ques-
problem. tion of the particular forum in which you
Still, this approach challenges a form are presenting?
of aesthetic practice within human rights
EW
and politics. With some important excep- This issue has already erupted in the
tions, like Trevor Paglen, artists are con- context of my previous work on critical
ventionally asked to simply add affect to theory in the military. In 2008, one of the
the investigative reporting of human rights military commanders I was writing about
groups. Artists usually reflect an earlier hired one of the largest legal firms in Israel
conception of human rights, one that is ad­- to threaten me and my publishers in Israel
vocacy-based and emotive. But we think for libel. The accusations were frankly ridi­-
that the aesthetic field should be seen as culous and concerned with technical mat-
a mode of inquiry that is both integral to ters.7 I had research to support my allega­
knowledge production and representation tions, but the real aim, I think, was to scare
but also to questioning the politics of know­ me and my peers from further publishing
ledge gathering and production. The main critical material that involved such detailed
question is: how can architects and artists analyses of the military that named names
do forensics? and suggested personal responsibility and
As critical scholars and practitioners we even liability. What this suit did was to
arrived at this project armed with critique. remind us in the anti-colonial Israeli left
We felt confident in our ability to detect, un- of the power of this type of investigation.
­veil, and analyze instances where power Indeed, within the controversy that ensued,
is camouflaged as benevolence. Not only one of the things that was brought to the
in the fields in which we investigated war forefront was our tendency to generalize
crimes, but in the operation of the forums and concentrate analysis on depersonal­
that administered this evidence and arbi- ized large systems—the military, the state,
trated on the basis of it. We have no illusions etc.—rather than concentrating our atten-
about the forums: we know they internal- tion on the role that certain characters
ize the power field external to them, and might have within these systems. It is exact­-
that they are skewed towards the power- ly this interaction between larger forces
ful. We have no illusions about the poli- and individual intention that is necessary

143 Proportionality, Violence...

to examine. We thought that we needed to forestation, flooding, etc. Instead of the fig­
have two machines, so to speak, to o ­ perate ure, we have the ground that now stands
simultaneously in one’s text; a t­ heoretical for the condition of the human. This chal-
one and a journalistic one, with the latter lenges an important principle within HR
ferociously investigating certain issues and work, which is traditionally about the human
then placing them within a large theo­re­ti- (state of the individual) by the human (testi­
cal frame of the former. But we did not have mony). Given that viewing is now not only
the legal infrastructure, nor the money to undertaken by prosthetic sensors, but in­ter­
defend ourselves (even against the most preted by algorithms, it is no longer strict­ly
spurious of libel claims), for the journalis- by the human. So, by inverting figure and
tic machine to work. ground in this gestalt, we have turned the
So this connects to your question about ground into the object of study. We have
forensics and the relation between the indi­ “figured” the ground.
vidual and larger, shaping forces. Human In our analysis of Operation Sofia—what
rights have what we call a figure-ground is called “the last Indian massacre”—during
problem. On the one hand, human rights the Guatemalan Civil war in the early 1980s,
discourse operates very much through a our team (including Situ Studio, Paulo Tava-­
process of foregrounding individual vic- res, Daniel Pasqual, and myself) has sought
tims and perpetrators. It is a conception to extend the understanding of genocide by
that is based on a single human figure who shifting our attention to the ground con-
is tortured or killed, repressed by an autho­ri- dition, using maps and remote sensing of
tarian regime. This is a process of figur­ation, the region. We are trying to produce maps
the extraction of a figure from a political of the processes of large-scale deforesta-
background. The individual is the subject tions, of road-building, and concentration-
of human rights analysis and her or his tes- towns, of destruction of the villages of the
timony is the way of getting into the logic native Ixil people, of fencing and “privati­
of the event. Retribution is too often seen zing” their mode of cultivation in fields that
as the punishment of individual perpetra- were common property, to account for the
tors, rather than as the dismantling of all changing of plant species, especially maize,
structural shaping forces within which that led to the massive destruction of this
injustice is perpetrated. This is figuration. protected group and their way of life. We
An individual extracted from a political seek to account for the reorganization of
field and history narrated as a crime—as people and material that has resulted in the
if it were a “simple” criminal case. destruction of the conditions that would
However, war crimes investigations call sustain life. Indirect killing, which occurs
for a more complex analysis than those in more slowly and not by direct trauma such
the context of domestic criminal law. War as bullet holes or machete wounds, chal-
crimes, like other wartime events, are pro- lenges traditional forensic work.
duced by a multiplicity of agents woven This is what we call field causality, which
together by networks that further distri- is tied to debates around the entanglement
­bute action and responsibility, using tech- of politics and the environment. Unlike the
nologies that now increasingly have semi-­ direct linear causality of criminal law, field
autonomous decision-making capacities. causality does not seek to connect a chain
For example, militaries are themselves dif- of events. Instead, causes are understood
fused bodies that are, in turn, governed as diffused aggregates that act simultane-
by political, institutional, and administra- ously in all directions. They are s­ haping for­
tive logics. ces and they affect the formation of larger
On the other hand, current human rights territories and larger political events. In
techniques have shifted attention to the other words, rather than looking simply
ground. Satellite imagery, as Laura Kurgan at mortality, we take an epidemiological
beautifully shows in her new book, has be­- approach and look at patterns.
come a relatively recent tool for HR inves- From the mid-nineteenth to the begin-
tigators.8 In satellite imagery, we no longer ning of the twentieth century, the most
see figures. What becomes visible in these important foundation of forensic science
images is the background to human action— was the understanding that every contact
the land, the landscape, the built fabric, the leaves a trace and therefore if something
destroyed buildings, the burnt fields, de­- touches something, one can actually rec-

144
reate the moment of encounter. Adrian I think that this is the frontier of conflict
Lahoud, my successor at the Centre and investigation, and the consequences of
member of our research team, has con- such development could be felt in differ-
tinuously insisted that we must look at ent forums, as you say, not only in legal
the ways in which contact and trace have ones. Field causalities have a very differ-
become separated and scattered, that is, ent implication than direct causes for the
that an action might happen in a certain way the forums have been made. Indeed,
place—an emission, for example—but its field causality could be the bastard’s best
consequences might be felt across oceans defence in court. It would be what every
and air currents. perpetrator would like to claim in order
This goes beyond the simple gestalt that to avoid conviction, and is therefore not
concentrates on the human figure. We have enough as a single line or argumentation;
lost sight of the ground, the political and we need to learn how to link singularities
environmental context; but while looking to structural conditions. However, it is
at the ground, we have lost the figure, as very important to insist on this because
in the lacunae in satellite surveillance that field causality describes a political dia-
I mentioned earlier. The task is to articu- gram that must be dismantled, and not just
late new relationships between figure and by courts. It does not necessarily imply a
ground, to find ways of understanding and judgment, but rather a more radical action
illustrating rapid shifts in scale and the in changing the political force field.
importance of events.
HD
In the case of Guatemala, as in previous Have the kinds of arguments developed
work on Palestine, this brings in all kinds through forensic architecture been used
of different actors—architects, road build- outside of the context of recent genocides
ers, agriculturists, farmers, bankers—who and IHL? This kind of analysis, for exam-
are all a part of a much more diffuse respon­ ple, could do a lot of justice in the context
sibility that must be addressed in a fashion of the ongoing genocide of indigenous peo-
outside of the usual legal system. Indirect, ple in North America—how governments
aggregate, or field causality seeks to undo and industry force people into settlements,
another important distinction between dif­ the ongoing contamination of lands, and the
ferent kinds of values we attach to death. hazardous exploitation of resources through
There were people that were killed and oil and mining practices, etc. Has the proj-
people that died. To die, in this discourse, ect of FA been advanced in these situations?
implies a secondary, non-intentional death.
EW
Recently, more work has been undertaken The senior person on our project,
by epidemiologists in relation to non-direct Susan Schuppli, is a Canadian theorist and
mortality in wars. There was even an attempt artist, and she is looking at new claims
by Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the first Prosecu­ brought up by indigenous communities in
tor of the International Criminal Court, northern Canada and the new forums that
to include indirect mortality figures in his have emerged to deal with these issues.
controversial charging of the president of She is also helping convene a group of M.A.
Sudan, Omar al-Bashir, with genocide in members at our Centre who are working
Darfur. with the American NGO, Three Degrees
Warmer, on a case brought by the Native
HD
It is an incredibly poignant argument Village of Kivalina, Alaska against Exxon
to say that genocide is not just the bar- Mobil Corp. These are, strictly speaking,
rel of a gun, but that it involves, instead, a net- outside of the legal frames of human rights
work of diffused responsibility; still, aren’t and international humanitarian law, but
there only a few legal venues to en­force these as other members in our research groups
arguments? It makes me wonder what ave- have shown, and as I briefly alluded to
nues for redress there could be. above, environmental issues are increas-
ingly resembling states of conflict. And,
EW
I agree. Moreno-Ocampo faced huge environmental law increasingly resembles
criticism for his decision to do that, as well the laws of war.
as accusations of “inflating numbers” in the
HD
context of a very politicized campaign In The Least of All Possible Evils, you
against Sudan. And I partially agree, but explain that part of the justification for

145 ...and the Economy of...

the use of drones is their “emotionlessness”; justify the use of a lesser violence to pre-
as Ronald Arkin, an American scientist and vent the excesses you mentioned. This is
a leader in the field of weaponized robotics the principle of proportionality, which is
explained, robots have no joy in violence. It about the “too much” of war, without ever
seems to me that part of the ongoing justi- saying how much is too much. So, the argu­
fication for extra-judicial killings by states ment conjures a cold calculus, a kind of econ­
rests not only on processes of rationaliza- omy of ethics where good and evil are traded
tion, but also the diminishment of excess. like commodities, and speculated on in the
There is, then, the fantasy of the elimination financial economy. But economies are dan-
of the excesses of war. What has become gerous and volatile, as we have seen again
distasteful to certain forms of state power recently. So, proportionality always has a
in late capitalism is not “evil” or “violence,” relation to the disproportional, or the ex-
but excess, Arkin’s “joy in violence.” To a cess you mentioned. Violence beyond rea-
certain extent, the materials you are dealing son, beyond calculation, the war of the mad,
with in forensic architecture, as in any envi- like the one Israel declared when it said
ronment, are inherently excessive, they spill that they were going to apply dispropor-
over their boundaries and defy easy classifi- tional violence to Lebanon. In other words,
cation. How does your work negotiate these they were going to break the law to main-
two different ways of dealing with excess? tain it. But disproportional violence is also
the violence of the weak, those who cannot
EW
Yes, in The Least of All possible Evils, calculate, or wish not to, and those who are
the argument is that dealing with the ex­- kept outside the economy of calculations.
cesses of war, rather than its more struc- This violence is disproportional because
tural political causes, could be abused by it cannot be measured or calculated, and
militaries and states. The calculated con- because, ultimately, when justice is not an­-
ception of violence it puts forth can justify swered by the law, violence will continu-
almost any atrocity. In this way the logic of ously seek to altogether restructure the
the “least of all possible evils” is invoked to basis of law.

Endnotes only nine of the migrants survived. In several inter­

views, these survivors recounted the various points
1 Craig Whitlock, “Drone Warfare: Niger Becomes of contact they had with the external world during
Latest Frontline in US War on Terror,” The ­Guardian, this ordeal. This included describing the aircraft
26 March 2013, http://www.guardian.co.uk/ that flew over them, the distress calls they sent out
world/2013/mar/26/niger-africa-drones-us-terror. via satellite telephone and their visual sightings
2 For a detailed description, analysis, and illustra­ of a military helicopter which provided a few pack­
tions of the “pyramids of Gaza,” see Eyal Weizman, ets of biscuits and bottles of water, and a military
Forensic Architecture: Notes from Fields and Forums ship which failed to provide any assistance what­
(­Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2012), 4–5. soever.” For their complete analysis, see Forensic
3 Eyal Weizman, “Political Plastic (Interview),” ­Oceanography, http://www.forensic-architecture.
­Collapse VI (January 2010): 279–80. org/­investigations/forensic-oceanography.
4 For a full list of DAAR projects, as well as ­theoretical 7 For a complete analysis of these events, see David
reflections on those projects, see http://­w ww­.­ Cunningham, “Walking into Walls: Academic Free­
decolonizing.ps/site. dom, the Israeli Left and the Occupation within,”
5 This project can be found at http://ahprojects.com/ Radical Philosophy 150 (July–August 2008): 67–70,
projects/stealth-wear. http://www.radicalphilosophy.com/news/walk­
6 “In the case of what is now referred to as the ‘left-to- ing-into-walls-academic-freedom-the-israeli-left-
die boat,’ 72 migrants fleeing Tripoli by boat on the and-the-occupation-within.
early morning of 27 March 2011 ran out of fuel and 8 L aura Kurgan, Close Up at a Distance: Mapping,
were left to drift for 14 days until they landed back Technology, and Politics (Cambridge, Mass.: Zone
on the Libyan coast. With no water or food ­on-board, Books, 2013).

146
 Bios

Heather Davis is a researcher and writer from Montreal. Her current work, as an FQRSC
Postdoctoral Fellow at Duke University, investigates friendship and relationality in social
practice arts under the pressures of its increasing popularity in both the art world and as
a surrogate for social services otherwise funded by the state. She explores and partici­
pates in expanded art practices that bring together researchers, activists, and community
members to enact social change. She has written about the intersection of art, politics,
and community engagement for Fibreculture, Public, Politics and Culture, Le Merle, and
No More Potlucks.

James Bridle is an artist, writer, and publisher based in London, UK. His work, ­including
A Ship Adrift commissioned by Artangel, and The Iraq War Historiography, have been
shown in galleries and museums internationally and seen by hundreds of thousands
online. His formulation of the New Aesthetic research project has spurred debate and
­creative work, online and off, around the world. Bridle also writes for publications such
as Wired, ICON and The Observer, where he publishes a regular column. He is a partner
at the Really Interesting Group, a design partnership based in East London. His blog is
http://www.booktwo.org.

147 ...Calculations — Eyal Weizman...

 Architecture of Destruction, Dispossession,
and Appropriation
by Ariella Azoulay

The ruined landscape visible in the photographs assembled here

is the most compelling testimony to the fact that what occurred
between November 1947 (after the Partition Plan) and March
1949 was not a war but rather policy, carried out by many and
various means.1 The policy readily evident in the photographs is
one of destruction—the destruction of Palestinian society, habitat
and landscape, together with the destruction of the delicate forms
of cooperation that were gradually constructed, to different de-
grees of closeness, between Jews and Arabs from the nineteenth
century to the end of the 1940s. The massive destruction shown
in the photographs is not the result of a war for survival, of battles,
of existential distress. This destruction was unnecessary, inten-
tional, straightforward, systematic, utilitarian, harsh, alienated,
premeditated, indifferent, and, in particular, intended to socialize
the population to the new political regime.
From its inception until today, as the state of Israel continues to
demolish Palestinian homes with a wave of its hand, this unnec-
essary destruction has been understood as a legitimate means
in “special cases,” in a manner which conceals the fact that it is an
end in itself. The reasons and justifications put forth to socialize
the country’s Jewish citizens to view this destruction as a legiti-
mate means were many and varied: the buildings were oc­c upied
by “terrorist cells,” they were on the verge of collapse, Palestin-
ian construction does not meet modern standards, they were not
hygienic, immigrants needed to be absorbed, Jews have different
requirements than the locals, and there was the threat of refu-
gees returning—the “infiltrators,” as the Palestinians expelled af-
ter May 1948 were called—if their homes are left standing. A few
of these reasons, if offered off-handedly and in particular and
limited cases, might seem to be to the point, but when they are
repeated again and again they can only be direct expressions of
power, violence, and racism. They were freely substituted for one
another as needed, and the sum of them transformed the brutal,
unnecessary destruction of people’s homes into an available tool
that many were authorized to employ. In that sense, destruction
was an excellent means of socialization for Jewish citizens whom
148 Project
the regime wished to turn into collaborators with its actions, to
make them accept the destruction and recognize its necessity.
Not only was the dispossession of the Palestinians from the land-
scape of their lives written on the surrounding desolation, but also
a fundamental basis of the Jewish citizens’ habitus—wrapping the
disaster that befell others in an array of justifications and argu-
ments that made it bearable and, usually, seeming other than it
was. In a few cases, Jewish citizens actively participated in the de-
struction, but they usually found themselves looking at mounds of
what-once-had-been-homes. It was sometimes difficult to recon-
struct the living room wall from the stones removed by schoolgirls
sent to the “abandoned villages.” ( 36) The “abandoned”
home in Ein Karem that was given to new immigrants
seemed to them like a miracle, and the question of who
had been the previous owners was only irritating. ( 31)
Elsewhere, existential needs were so urgent that
questions about the destruction simply did not arise.
The massive destruction took place in a brightly illuminated arena,
so it was impossible to deny or assign responsibility for it to others
(as blame for the “refugees” was assigned to “Arab states”).
(­ 7, 24) The destruction required a new vocabu­
lary from which its unbearable aspect had
been removed, one that normalized it. De­
struction and more destruction and more destruction, and as it
continued the initial, hesitant questions were no longer asked,
those that had no answers were forgotten, and as time went by it
became part of a past there was no point in awakening. Thus the
demolition of a house whose inhabitants had been expelled or who
had fled no longer sent a chill down the spine and raised no moral
quandary. The justification ceased to be a problem; destruction be-
came part of the landscape. Everyone helped remove the rubble:
kindergarten children, elementary and high school pupils, labour-
ers and volunteers, all were enlisted to build the country. Clearing
the rubble of demolished Arab homes simply became synonymous
with building the land. ( 32)

149
1
Ayn Karim. Ein Karem. The official JNF
caption: “Ein Karem Jeru­sa­lem—Kibbutz
artists’ course in Ein Karem.” So many
buildings in each village had been de­
stroyed that the few which remained
standing were now iso­lated jewels from
the past which could be reset in what had
become “new.” Since most of the country’s
villages had been depopulated or de-
stroyed, Ayn Karim, whose buildings
were left standing, sur­v ived as a pearl
from days gone by. So, despite the fact that
Jews were already living in the homes
of those who had been expelled, artists
could come and paint in an au­t hentic
Arab village. In the 1970s, when I studied
art in high school and we were asked to
look at this landscape, it no long­er signified
an Arab village. We were asked to paint a
view of Jerusalem, inspired by the Jewish
artists who had done so before us.
PHOTOGRAPHER: WERNER BRAUN,
JNF ­P HOTOGRAPHIC ARCHIVE, 1 JULY 1950

2
Salama. The village is already deserted
and emptied of its inhabitants, who were
expelled, and there is no one left to ask,
“Who moved into my house?” No one will
intrude on the picture-postcard scene of
a desolate village, the background to a
meditative portrait of an unobstructed
view all the way to the horizon.
PHOTOGRAPHER: BENO ROTHENBERG, ISRAEL
STATE ARCHIVE, PROBABLY LATE APRIL/­
EARLY MAY 1948

3
Salama. 6,670 Moslems and 60 Christians
lived in the village before it was captured.
Ben Gurion arrived immediately after it
fell; to emphasize that it had been emptied
of Arabs he noted in his diary that, other
than an old, blind Arab woman, he did not
see a living soul there. How many other
old women or men who could no longer
see anything (or report what they saw)
were still at that moment in the village,
which was starting to look like a stage
set ready for dismantling, its dilapidated
buildings to be replaced by new construc-
tion? Soon they were also removed from
their homes and their lands were swal-
lowed up by the development of Tel Aviv.
PHOTOGRAPHER: BENO ROTHENBERG, ISRAEL
STATE ARCHIVE, PROBABLY LATE APRIL/EARLY
MAY 1948

150 Scapegoat
4

Salama. The Arab house with the arches, the hoe (the implement, but also the use of its
Arabic term turia), the phonograph the soldiers removed from one of the houses, folk
dances, including those of the Bedouin and the Arabs, the large clay storage jar (again,
the implement, but also the Arabic term jara)—all these, chosen sparingly, combined with
“their own western” culture, signify to them authenticity. Thus, the new urban textures
they had a hand in creating on the ruins of the villages they had a hand in des­troying will
not appear hollow, but will possess historical depth. With the help of these attributes,
the expropriated history will be transformed into a signifier of the past deprived of history.
PHOTOGRAPHER: BENO ROTHENBERG, ISRAEL STATE ARCHIVE, PROBABLY LATE APRIL/EARLY MAY 1948

Salama. Not a soul lives here. The Arabs have been expelled and Jews have not yet been
permitted to move in. The place has been designated a closed military area because of
fears of looting and uncontrolled expropriation of property by individuals, but, as the
picture shows, large numbers of Jewish visitors streamed in to view the place that news-
papers had for months described as a “village of murderers.” They were very surprised to
find the same things they would expect to find in normal homes: a phonograph, records,
newspapers, dolls and toys, pictures hanging on the walls, schoolbooks, cups of coffee,
dough that had fermented and risen, attractive dishes, furniture and clothing. In order
to ally any suspicion that these 800 houses were not simply dwellings for 6,730 people,
but military outposts, the walls had “This courtyard was inspected by the N. bomb squad”
written on them. When the bomb squad had finished, the civilians in charge of distrib-
uting the property “fairly” among Jews began their work, and wrote on buildings not
slated for demolition, like the one at the left, “Jewish house.”
PHOTOGRAPHER: BENO ROTHENBERG, ISRAEL STATE ARCHIVE, PROBABLY LATE APRIL/­E ARLY MAY 1948

151 Architecture of Destruction...

6
Yafa/Yafo. This is what a ghetto looks
like. Those imprisoned behind a fence
smile and wave at people looking at them
from outside, hoping this time to be res-
cued; among those on the other side are
people for whom this sight seems natural
or justified.
PHOTOGRAPHER NOT IDENTIFIED. WITH THE
COMPLIMENTS OF “THE JAFFA ARAB COMMITTEE
(­A L-RATBA ‘­ L RA’AYIT SHA’UN ‘ARAB YAFA), 1949

Haifa. The destroyed city shown in the photograph recalls Dresden, bombed for three
consecutive days until its buildings were in ruins, pulverized into stones that blocked
the streets. Haifa, in a series of photographs (one of which is displayed here) also has
that appearance. But this scene of destruction is inconsistent with descriptions of the
battle for Haifa, and is the result of a political decision by a leadership determined to
erase the Arab towns so that refugees expelled from them would have nowhere to
return to and those who remained would feel like strangers. Many workers and many
days were needed to clear the rubble left from the merciless destruction of 220 build-
ings in Haifa’s old city. Jewish workers were not enough. They were joined by Arabs,
most of them from Haifa, who came to work each morning from the newly created
ghetto in Wadi Nisnas that had been established for them after they had been expelled
from their homes. Isolated structures were seen as less threatening, which was how
the Carmelite Monastery or the circular building in the centre was saved. When the
new regime’s institutions moved into these ancient buildings, they were able to impose,
on those who accepted it, an authority that was at least partially based on some
abstract ancient past.
PHOTOGRAPHER: JIM PRINGLE, ASSOCIATED PRESS, APRIL 1948

152 Excess
8 9

Yafa/Yafo. In the absence of any justi- Yaffa/Jaffa. Had these buildings been
fication based on reasons of security or spared from destruction, Jewish artists
settlement, they talked about “safety”— would probably also have been placed in
the buildings were defined as slums them, painting typical Jaffa cityscapes.
and marked for demolition. The experi- Captions such as the one that accom-
ence gained from dynamiting tens of panied this photograph, “A Moroccan
thousands of buildings during the war immigrant is happy to move out of these
created a body of new knowledge. The dilapidated Jaffa neighbourhoods,” pre-
“Mishor Ltd.” cooperative, established pared both the ground and the hearts for
by demobilized soldiers, used explo- their demolition.
sives to demolish neighbourhoods and PHOTOGRAPHER: TEDDY BRAUNER, NATIONAL
villages, saving, they claimed, dozens PHOTOGRAPHIC COLLECTION, 1 OCTOBER 1949
of man-days. The destruction of unique
neighbourhood fabrics, like that in the
picture, which tour­ists from all over the 10
world drive on narrow, winding roads
to see, was described by members of
the cooperative as fulfilling “extremely
important, constructive goals.” After 18
mosques and entire city neighbourhoods
were destroyed, it was a simple matter to
seal Yafa’s fate as an Arab town and an-
nex it to Tel Aviv, for reasons like those
stated by the Minister of the Interior:
“Yafo played no role in world history, nor
in the history of Israel; it has no ancient
cultural remains from any period.”
PHOTOGRAPHER: TEDDY BRAUNER, G
­ OVERNMENT
PRESS OFFICE, 1 OCTOBER 1949 Saris. The caption of the photograph in
the Palmach Archive reads, “Capture
of Saris; sappers ‘deal with’ the houses.”
Linking the capture of Saris to “dealing
with” the houses is part of a systematic
effort to portray the destruction of Arab
villages as a necessary consequence of
the war, and to conceal the political rea­s­
ons of state which motivated it. The “sap-
pers” in the photograph do not appear to
be “dealing with” the houses, but gather
for a group portrait at some distance
from them, against the backdrop of the
village from which smoke still rises.
Those who sent them to “deal” with the

153 ...Disposession, and Appropriation

houses included some who already saw that a new Jewish locality would arise on the
ruins of the village, for whom the village and its homes and mosques represented “an
important location from the security standpoint.” When this photograph was taken, the
residents evacuated from Saris were waiting not far away, after having been taken from
their homes as “the houses were cleared one by one,” and had become unwilling observ-
ers of their own disaster.
PHOTOGRAPHER NOT IDENTIFIED. PALMACH PHOTOGRAPHIC COLLECTION (ALBUM OF THE HAR’EL
­B RIGADE, FOURTH BATTALION. PHOTOGRAPH PROVIDED BY MEIR BAREKET), PROBABLY APRIL 1948

11
Salbit. The third soldier from the left
puts his hands over his ears to muffle
the sound of simultaneous explosions
at a number of locations. He and the
other “sappers” (khablan is how they
are described in the original caption in
the Palmach Archive, and that is what
we have learned to call them, so that we
do not get confused and forget they are
not the same as terrorists, or mekhabel,
Hebrew variations on the same word)
are watching the success of their opera-
tion. This apocalyptic scene of burning
villages and earthshaking explosions is
also visible to the inhabitants of nearby
villages. It complements the rumours
soldiers whispered to some of their resi-
dents after the villages were captured
but before the inhabitants were expelled,
so they would leave on their own and the
claim could be made that they had fled.
PHOTOGRAPHER NOT IDENTIFIED. PALMACH
PHOTO­G RAPHIC COLLECTION (ALBUM OF THE
HAR’EL BRIGADE, FOURTH BAT TALION),
PROBABLY APRIL 1948

12
Bisan. Bedding that has not been brought
back inside is still airing in the window.
The house, like the rest of the city, has
already been emptied of its inhabitants.
The official caption that reads “Beit
She’an abandoned” does not refer to
what the photograph shows, but to the
achievement that created a “valley that’s
entirely Jewish.” The two women in
the photograph do not give the lie to
that description, for they are present as
internal observers sharing the field of
vision with the authors of the official
caption which serves to display for us a
town abandoned, rather than one whose
inhabitants are to be returned, a town
that no longer belongs to those who built
it or who, until yesterday, lived there.
PHOTOGRAPHER NOT IDENTIFIED. PALMACH
­ HOTOGRAPHIC COLLECTION (ALBUM OF THE
P
YIF TAH BRIGADE, THIRD BAT TALION), NO DATE

154 Scapegoat
13
Bir al-Sabi’e/Be’er Sheva. The actual
capture of the town during what is of-
ficially described as a “war” was only the
first in a series of non-military occupa-
tions that validated the army’s behaviour
and played their part in expropriating
the town from its residents. These began
with the caption’s official wording that,
in one version or other, was on everyone’s
lips—“The town is empty of inhabitants”—
until, a few days later, this building be-
came the JNF House. The owners of the
shops on the ground floor, like the own-
ers of the apartments above, must have
been among the 450,000 refugees who in
the 1960s filled out property-claim forms
for the UN Reconciliation Commission
that prepared an estimate (published on
28 April 1968) of the value of “abandoned”
Arab property. There is no need to men-
tion that Israel rejected the document
and ignored its implications.
PHOTOGRAPHER NOT IDENTIFIED. PALMACH
­PHOTOGRAPHIC COLLECTION (ALBUM OF THE HAR’EL
BRIGADE, FOURTH BATTALION), JANUARY 1949

14
Yazur. Jewish immigrants sent to live
in Yazur worked to transform it into
Azur. The photograph shows two of
them building a new house for them-
selves. Construction of new housing
units, while others stood empty nearby
(most had been demolished because they
had been classified as failing to meet
Jewish building standards), was part of
the systematic effort to transform the
landscape and destroy the characteristic
form of the Arab localities so refugees
would not be able to return, not only be-
cause of Israel’s refusal to let them back
but because the country would no longer
be the same as one they had left. Various
activities were undertaken to completely
transform the landscape—a confusing
mixture of construction and destruction.
There were concrete structures built
by Arabs in Yazur prior to its destruc-
tion, before that material had become
identified with the expansion of Jewish
construction in the 1950s.
PHOTOGRAPHER NOT IDENTIFIED. GOVERNMENT
PRESS OFFICE, 20 JUNE 1949

155 Architecture of Destruction...

15

’Aqir. The series of protests by the British and by MAPAM members against evacuating
the village did not help the 3,000 inhabitants confronting those imposing the transfer
policy on the complex set of relations between Jews and Arabs. Later protests by the
Ministry of Minorities against moving immigrants into the village did not help either,
and it was made ready for Jewish settlement. As part of the preparations for populating
the village, the new settlers were required to remove piles of rubble that seemed to be
part of the new settlement’s inventory, and bore no indication they had once been peo-
ple’s homes. The language of the official caption is spotlessly clean: “New immigrants
remove broken stones from the abandoned village of ’Aqir.” “An abandoned village,” its
land covered with “broken stones,” becomes yet another entry in the glossary of neigh-
bourhoods. In those days the use of the term “abandoned” sometimes still preserved
traces of the violent transformation required to turn an inhabited locality into one that
is “abandoned”: “The [military government] wishes to turn it into an abandoned place.”
It did not take long for “abandoned” to be used as an adjective describing the physical
condition of buildings and environments.
PHOTOGRAPHER: ZOLTAN KLUGER, GOVERNMENT PRESS OFFICE, 1 OCTOBER 1949

16
Tabariyya/Tverya. 2,500 Arabs and
1,000 Jews lived in the old city of Tabari-
yya before it was destroyed (the total
population of the town included 4,000
Arabs and 6,000 Jews). At first a small
number of buildings were demolished
“for security reasons” (even houses that
belonged to Jews). The Jews who wanted
to return to their homes were prevented
from doing so with the excuse that their
houses were unsafe. These houses, too,
had suddenly become an obstacle to im­
plementing the army’s plan for trans-
forming the face of the city. Generals do
not like ancient towns in whose winding
streets they find it hard to get a foothold.
Very soon the ancient buildings were re-
placed by a broad avenue, around which

156 Excess
a new urban fabric developed, more transparent to the military gaze. The Jewish inhab-
itants of Tabariyya had from the beginning opposed the military operation, including
the expulsions and demolitions, that had been imposed on them and carried out on their
behalf as Jews. They, like the Arabs, had also been dispossessed, but unlike them, had
been given in exchange homes belonging to Arabs in other neighbourhoods in the city.
PHOTOGRAPHER: BENO ROTHENBERG, ISRAEL STATE ARCHIVE, APRIL 1948

17
al-Majdal. The orders not to demolish
holy sites was widely disseminated, but
the fact that dozens of mosques were in
fact destroyed indicates that their more
important purpose was to publicize
the message that Israel did not damage
holy sites. Of 160 mosques found in the
area that became part of the state of
Israel, about 40 remained standing. “Our
soldiers don’t destroy mosques” became
a kind of leitmotif in the purity-of-arms
legend. In December 2008, the Israeli
government was still considering (with-
out deciding) whether to rehabilitate 18
of the mosques it had partially demol-
ished in 1948 and then done nothing to
preserve so their condition had further
deteriorated. Although the al-Majdal
mosque had been severely damaged
and its dome was gone, its walls and
their treasures were not damaged: the
prayer niche to which the inscription
refers (“While Zecharia visited her at
the al-Mihrâb”) and the Minbar (the
small platform on which the imam stood
to preach) were still there and could be
rehabilitated.
PHOTOGRAPHER: FRANK, IDF AND DEFENSE
ARCHIVE, 10 JUNE 1949

18
Saris. A martyrs’ forest (a memorial to
Jewish victims of the holocaust) stands
today in place of the village of which the
demolished house in the picture was once
a part, but there is no longer any other
indication that it ever existed. Inspired
by those who sent them, the soldiers
who “cleared” (as they said) the village
from house to house saw a strategic site
“important from the point of view of
security and of settlement,” rather than
a village where people live. The justifica-
tion for bombing the village in April 1948
was that otherwise its buildings would be
turned into a “fortified position.” Sitting
for a photo­g raph, their backs to one of the
demolished buildings, the soldiers can en-
joy their view of the other buildings they

157 ...Disposession, and Appropriation

destroyed, and point out to each other the marks they left on them and on the landscape.
PHOTOGRAPHER NOT IDENTIFIED. PALMACH PHOTOGRAPHIC COLLECTION (ALBUM OF THE HAR’EL
­B RIGADE, SIXTH BATTALION, PROVIDED BY DOV KEREN, C. GLICKSON), 1948

19
Bayt It’ab. The 626 residents of the vil-
lage were expelled, and nothing remains
of it but a ruin that was spared. What
probably saved it from destruction was
the belief that it is a Crusader structure,
and the desire to preserve the “location’s
historical past.” The vast amount of in-
formation the fighters collected about the
villages during the 1940s allowed them
to carry out “pinpoint” or “intelligent de-
struction,” damaging only what was nec-
essary. That is how 193 houses were care-
fully blown up, while this distinguished
structure was preserved. Historians later
argued over the attribution. Today, in any
event, as it stands solitary on the hill, this
ruin has already accumulated sufficient
historical value even if it turns out to be
“only” a native Palestinian house.
PHOTOGRAPHER NOT IDENTIFIED. PALMACH
PHOTOGRAPHIC COLLECTION (HAR’EL BRIGADE
ALBUM, OBTAINED FROM MEIR SHAMIR), 1948

20
al-Khisas. A few broken-down shacks
and a few buildings were destroyed while
the people living in them were still inside
as an “act of reprisal” for the attack on a
member of kibbutz Ma’ayan Baruch, who
died later from his wounds. It cost twelve
dead including four children. Throwing
grenades into a house in which a baby is
crying (as reported by one of the partici-
pants), a person has to make a great effort
to convince himself in the justice of “acts
of reprisal.” Shortly after the “reprisal,”
it was discovered that the attackers were
not from al-Khisas. An improvised field
tribunal does not need proof in order
to do justice. Contradictory evidence
sometimes strengthens its authority and
encourages turning more hypotheses
into facts: “It is very unfortunate that
children are to bed in this small military
outpost and fall victim to this kind of
attack” (senior member of the H ­ aganah,
a few days after the massacre). At a meet­
ing with Ben Gurion, in response to criti­
cism of the attack, Moshe Dayan and Yigal
Alon formulated Israel’s political strat-
egy: “Expressing a desire for peace will
be interpreted as weakness.” Afraid to

158 Scapegoat
be suspected of weakness, Israel continued attacking. When the fighters had completed
their work, one of them took out a camera and documented the house; the photo in the
archive still bears the initial caption: “A building blown up in an act of reprisal.” In June
1949, the residents of al-Khisas, Qitiyya and al-Ja’una were expelled. In response to a
question in the Knesset about the reasons for expelling the residents of these villages,
who had “always been friendly,” Ben Gurion replied: “Only the residents of Khisas de-
serve to be described in the terms used by the questioner…and even so, the headquarters
of the northern command had sufficient military justification for transferring them.”
PHOTOGRAPHER NOT IDENTIFIED. PALMACH PHOTOGRAPHIC ARCHIVE (YIFTACH BRIGADE ALBUM,
­P ROVIDED BY YISRAEL RASHTIK), 18 DECEMBER 1947

21
Bayt Mahsir. This village had 2,784
inhabi­tants living in 654 houses. Almost
all the village buildings were destroyed
“immediately following its capture,” ac­
cording to the official caption, and the
few that remained standing were incor-
porated as jewels from the past in the
new plan for the Jewish settlement of
Beit Meir. The expelled villagers have
lived since then in refugee camps outside
of Israel. Their dispossession from their
homes began a few years before they
were expelled when, in the guise of lov-
ers out for a stroll, or classes on nature
walks, members of the Haganah went
around openly with cameras (and some-
times with concealed cameras), collect-
ing information and photographing the
village’s buildings and residents. Their
homes were transformed into strong-
holds “having strategic and tactical topo-
graphical and political significance.”
PHOTOGRAPHER NOT IDENTIFIED. PALMACH
PHOTOGRAPHIC COLLECTION (HAR’EL BRIGADE
ALBUM, PROVIDED BY DUDU SHENI), MAY 1948

22
Tel Aviv. Scouts who took the Haganah’s
training courses learned many skills,
each of which was linked to an item
whose ex­plicit purpose was to generate
information: a camera (photography),
compass (navigation), ruler (diagrams
and cross-sections), pencil (preparing
maps) or binoculars (field-craft). But all
these tools notwithstanding, any one of
which could have indicated their profes-
sion, they chose something else for the
class photograph—the kaffiyeh—which
was central to their being, existentially.
Though they used it as camouflage, it
served them even more importantly as a
way to “know the enemy” and draw close
to him. Excitement shows on their faces
and each tries to find the right expression.

159 Architecture of Destruction...

The kaffiyehs they are wearing connect them to the image of the Arab that fired their
imagination, simultaneously an authentic local figure and a potential enemy. The photo­
graph presents what is almost a primer to the variety of textiles and the ways of wrap-
ping them around the head, as if it were intended as a guide—who wears which cloth,
in what fashion, when it should be worn. As they work their way into the Arabs’ lives
in order to prepare the “village files,” they will display their expertise in wearing kaf-
fiyehs and making coffee. That will help them get friendly with the Arabs and collect
personal information about the inhabitants and their lives—“how they go back and
forth to work,” “political opponents,” “ethnic groups,” “titles and nicknames.”
PHOTOGRAPHER NOT IDENTIFIED. HAGANAH HISTORICAL ARCHIVE, 1944

23
Salama. The fact that this photograph
was taken in order to prepare a “village
file” (prepared by the Haganah contain-
ing social, geographic and strategic in-
formation on each Arab village) explains
why the photographer “failed” to centre
the subject in the frame, and “failed” to
focus correctly. A souvenir snapshot
from a trip camouflages the fact that the
photographer is really interested in the
main street running through the village,
how the village space is organized, how
people move through it. Photography
was studied together with camouflage in
the Haganah scouts’ course, and could
provide valuable topographical informa­
tion that would be used “when the day
arrives.” The slight deflection of the ca­m-
era away from the subject, to the main
street, might not be noticeable to the un­
trained eye. A few years later, the infor­
mation collected in Salama’s village file
helped capture the village and expel its
residents.
PHOTOGRAPHER NOT IDENTIFIED. HAGANAH
HISTORICAL ARCHIVE, 1945
24

Bayt Natif. Most buildings were not blown

up haphazardly. Each demolition had its
own justification, one that allowed ordi­
nary people to destroy the homes of others
without this being too much of a problem
for them. In the absence of such justifica-
tions, it is likely that at least some of the
soldiers who were part of these actions
would not have participated in them. The
justification was not always “justice.” From
the moment the Palestinian house lost its
right to exist in and of itself, and was per­
ceived only in relation to Israeli needs, a
phrase like “expanding the transportation
corridor to Jerusalem” was enough to eli­
minate any doubt regarding demolitions.
Each explosion and each destruction

160 Excess
required redrawing the map. And so, little by little, over the course of almost two years, a
new map was created, reflecting not only a change in land ownership but a total transfor-
mation of the face of the country.
PHOTOGRAPHER NOT IDENTIFIED. PALMACH PHOTOGRAPHIC ARCHIVE
(HAR’EL ­B RIGADE ­A LBUM), NO DATE

25
Bir al-Sabi’e. Veteran residents, the people
who gave the order to blow up ­buildings
in Bir al-Sabi’e and elsewhere in the coun­
try, are the same ones who later chose
their own homes from among the few
they hadn’t destroyed, later to be valo-
rized as “ancient.” Intimate familiarity
with them will lead some of these resi-
dents to develop an interest in architec-
tural preservation and in later years even
sue in the High Court of Justice to pre-
vent the demolition of buildings “dating
from the Ottoman period,” and organize
guided tours of these neighbourhoods.
Nonetheless, these precious houses will
never be described as “Palestinian.”
PHOTOGRAPHER NOT IDENTIFIED. PALMACH
­P HOTOGRAPHIC ARCHIVE (YITZHAK SADEH
­A LBUM, RECEIVED FROM YORAM SADEH),
NO DATE

26

Bir al-Sabi’e. Many accounts of Bir al-Sabi’e’s capture describe plunder and looting. Ben
Gurion and the Custodian of Absentee Property were among those criticizing looting
of homes. But everyone was silent about the systematic plunder of land and buildings.
Imagine the urban landscape shown here, dating to the beginning of the twentieth cen-
tury, preserved and transformed into the ancient centre of a cosmopolitan, multicultural
Be’er Sheva.
PHOTOGRAPHER NOT IDENTIFIED. PALMACH PHOTOGRAPHIC ARCHIVE (NEGEV BRIGADE ALBUM), 1948

161 ...Disposession, and Appropriation

27
Bir al-Sabi’e. Military occupation was not
enough to turn Bir al-Sabi’e, which was
to have been included in the Arab state,
into a Jewish town. Civil occupation was
also necessary. Beginning in October
1948, after extensive areas had been
captured in military operations in the
south and in the north, feverish discus-
sions were held regarding the appropri-
ate procedure for taking over Arab land.
These discussions occurred in various
committees established for that purpose—
the Transfer Committee headed by Yosef
Weitz, the Ministerial Committee for
Abandoned Property, the Committee for
Distributing Lands, the JNF—as well in
conversations and discussions between
the Prime Minister and his associates.
The solution eventually found, after many
revisions, was for the state to “legally” sell
the “abandoned” lands to the JNF as part
of a “development plan” so that the rights
of the original owners would allegedly be
preserved. In May 1949, when Israel was
accepted as a member of the United Nations, the hairsplitting ceased, and all the territory
which was “held” became part of the sovereign state of Israel. It was now important to
quickly get the buildings ready for new Jewish immigrants. During the early years, the
state used DDT to fumigate both the bodies of Jewish immigrants from North Africa so
they would not transmit disease, and the walls of the Arab houses before the Jewish im­
migrants moved in. If the boy has already learned Hebrew and knows how to ask what
the man holding the large, noisy apparatus is doing, the proud reply would certainly be
that he is preparing a lovely, disease-free home for him.
PHOTOGRAPHER NOT IDENTIFIED. GOVERNMENT PRESS OFFICE, 1 JUNE 1949

28
Bir al-Sabi’e. Something of the excite-
ment one feels in moving into a new house
comes through in this photograph: the
be­longings scattered about, the pic­t ures
and other evidence that the new occu­pants
are making it their home. Some­t hing on
the order of, “Here, we’ve only just ar-
rived in this desolate town and we’re
already overcoming all the difficulties,
improvising ladders out of barrels, and
even establishing a local labour exchange
to provide welfare services to the new
residents.” It was only natural to locate
government offices in the old buildings
in order to give the new regime an ap-
pearance. The clerk places the sign on
the outer window ledge, which seems
to him as if it had been constructed for
that purpose. One day someone might
tell him, or his superiors, that it is totally
absurd for the sign to conceal the build-
ing’s beautiful arch. The sign will be moved elsewhere, and everyone will be amazed
at the handsome structure. But they will forget how beautiful it is when someone asks
them about Palestinian culture before 1948, and reply, “No, no, most of the people here
were primitive fellahin.” And, of course, no one knew the name of any of the Palestinian
architects who designed the various buildings, in different styles, that existed here, of
which only a few traces remain.
PHOTOGRAPHER: ZOLTAN KLUGER, GOVERNMENT PRESS OFFICE, 30 APRIL 1949

29

Umm al-Zinat. You can see a new settlement, Elyakim, springing up de novo beyond the
sign. If you look at the piles of earth along the road, you can see that they are mixed
with the rubble of Umm al-Zinat’s 209 houses, crushed into bits after their 1,470 resi-
dents were expelled. Beginning in the 1930s, the JNF’s Names Committee took steps
to Hebraize the country’s map, with Ben Gurion’s enthusiastic support: “Just as we
refuse to recognize Arab political ownership of the land, we also refuse to recognize
their cultural patrimony, or their place names.” Had it been solely up to the Commit-
tee, Arab names would have been completely erased from the lexicon: “Since the places
referred to no longer exist, the names of these places are also to be eliminated.” But
how could the history of the “War of Independence” be written if the names of villages
in which the soldiers fought were completely erased? How will new immigrants find
their way when old-timers, a significant part of whose lives were connected to a de-
tailed knowledge of Arab Palestine, still referred to the villages by their original Arab
names? In 1950, Yemenite immigrants, who a year earlier had settled on the lands of
Umm al-Zinat, could erect a sign at the entrance to the village on which both names ap-
peared. Since 1952, thanks to an intensive “informational and educational” campaign,
the Hebraizing project had been successful and the new names took root. Signs that
bore Arabic names were removed. Old-timers would pronounce the Hebraized names
of certain locations as if they were in Arabic in order to identify themselves as natives
(for example, “Zakkariya” rather than “Zecharya”).
PHOTOGRAPHER: TEDDY BRAUNER, GOVERNMENT PRESS OFFICE, 1950

163 Architecture of Destruction...

30
al-Yahudiyya. When these immigrants
registered at the local branch of the
Workers’ Party of Eretz Yisrael (MAPAI),
they probably had not yet become aware
that the country’s workers’ movement
had been completely transformed from
one based on class and concerned with
workers throughout the world (“Unite!”)
into a national movement that dispos-
sessed most of the country’s Arab farm-
ers and workers from their lands and
their jobs. Nor did the veteran Jewish
members of MAPAI consider this trans-
formation—“from a class to a nation,” as
Ben Gurion memorably characterized it
in 1947—nor what transpired in its after­
math and in its name (the dispossession
of the Arabs from their land and the ex­-
propriation of their property and their
means of production) to be a w ­ atershed
moment, a shock, or a betrayal of the ori­gi­
nal idea. The many moralizing a­ rgu­ments
that accompanied this crime, always focus­
ing on issues that were marginal to the
main criminal act, served to legitimize
it and made it part of the local socialist
discourse. How could the new immigrants
have even noticed anything if the previ-
ous signs, which must have been written
in Arabic, had already been removed from
the lintels of the buildings, and no trace
of them remained? A new sign, smaller
than its predecessor, replaced them, an-
nouncing the socialist future and even
expressing concern for the welfare of the
new immigrants.
PHOTOGRAPHER: BENO ROTHENBERG, ISRAEL
STATE ARCHIVE. PHOTO TAKEN AROUND THE
TIME THAT PEOPLE MOVED IN

31
Ayn Karim. Not knowing the local lang­
uage, children by their side, with large
suitcases and blankets tied in bundles
indicating that this is not their first stop
in Israel, these new immigrants wait to
receive the housing they have been
pro­mised by the Jewish Agency, which
encouraged them to come and handled
their immigration. A long, burdensome
process, uncertainty about their future
here, the children’s com­plaints, thirst,
harsh sunlight, urgent quest­ions like
how will they earn a living, what will
they eat. They were not aware of the
reservations that were expressed (and

164 Excess
re­jected immediately) about the ­decision to allocate houses to them in Ayn Karim. Their
present distress, the result of their immigration and their having to make their way in
the new country, certainly left them no time to wonder for themselves at gaps in the
story they had been told regarding the partially furnished homes (much of the furni-
ture had already been looted or distributed in an organized and “legal” manner) they
were moving into. While waiting to be taught how to work the plots of land adjoining
their houses, so they could also participate in the general effort to increase Jerusalem’s
food supply, they will enjoy the abundant fruit growing in the surrounding orchards.
They and the other families who came with them will move into 150 of the 555 houses
in Ayn Karim whose inhabitants had been expelled, houses which the army did not de-
stroy, unlike its usual practice. Two new settlements were established on the village’s
lands: Beit Zayit and Even Sappir.
PHOTOGRAPHER: HUGO MENDELSON, GOVERNMENT PRESS OFFICE, 5 JANUARY 1949

32
Rantiya/Rinat’ya. From the time the
state of Israel was established until the
end of 1949, approximately 200,000
immigrants arrived, and they had to be
housed. The hairsplitting over how to
legalize using the “abandoned” or “emp-
tied” Arab houses was overtaken by the
need to deal with urgent practical issues
related to the immediate settlement of
immigrants and their inclusion in the la­
bour force. The photograph shows a busy
con­s truction site in Rinat’ya, a mo­shav
whose previous Arab name was Hebra­
ized by slightly altering its pronuncia­tion.
Rubble from the destruction of most of the
Arab village houses is mixed to­gether with
new building ­materials, al­lowing the new
immigrants from Mo­rocco to build their
homes with their own hands as well as
par­ticipate in the new economic order in
which both they and the state make their
living from pro­perty that does not belong
to them. A few of the buildings were ori­gi­
nally Arab (they were given new concrete
roofs). Most are new, with one or two
walls constructed of local building stones
that could still be used after the Arab
houses were demolished.
PHOTOGRAPHER: ZOLTAN KLUGER, GOVERNMENT
PRESS OFFICE, 1 NOVEMBER 1949

33
Tarshiha. The official caption describes
the villages in which the immigrants
settled as “abandoned,” as if this was
a characteristic they possessed rather
than the result of policy. But in the case
of Tarshiha, there is an additional reason
why the description is incorrect: some
of Tarshiha’s residents were still living
there when the state brought immigrants
from Romania to move into their homes.

165 ...Disposession, and Appropriation

Testimony from local residents describes how the Arab inhabitants were removed from
their homes, gathered together in one area, and forbidden to leave it while their homes
were given to the Jewish immigrants. The new immigrants benefited not only from the
houses but also from the commercial infra­structure that included carpentry shops, iron­
working establishments, and garages serving the inhabitants of the entire area from
Akko to Safed. The new workers could now dress up to celebrate May 1st, the workers’
holiday, while the Arabs remained sub­ordinated to military rule that imposed severe
restrictions on their lives. Eventually, when the immigrants left Tarshiha and sold their
houses, Arabs would be allowed to buy them.
PHOTOGRAPHER: ZOLTAN KLUGER, GOVERNMENT PRESS OFFICE, 1 MAY 1949

34
Tarshiha. Tarshiha’s few remaining Arabs
were gathered in a closed area and placed
under military rule. Most of their homes
were given to Jewish immigrants. When
they were allowed to move around in pub­
lic they could read, in their own language,
that they lived in “A socialist society, today,
in Israel—Toward peace.” In some towns
the Arabs were even allowed to carry signs
themselves on the workers’ holiday, de-
manding equality for all workers.
PHOTOGRAPHER: ZOLTAN KLUGER, GOVERNMENT
PRESS OFFICE, 1 MAY 1949

35
al-Makr. The number of inhabitants in
al-Makr, Judayda, Sha’ab, Wadi al-Ham-
am and ’Akbara even increased because
of the presence of internal refugees who
found temporary shelter there. The state
built new housing units for these refu-
gees, like those shown in the picture, in
order to settle them in villages not their
own. The refugees wanted to return to
their homes, but their return implied
a threat: the possibility that the clock
might be turned back, if only slightly. To
prevent their dream from being realized
they were required to sign a document in
which they relinquished any future claim
to return to their villages. On the left are
some of the dozens of houses a private
entrepreneur constructed for the state to
house refugee families who were permit-
ted to live in them only if they came to an
“arrangement.” Resettling the internal
refugees in villages other than their own
was part of a general policy.
PHOTOGRAPHER: FRITZ COHEN, GOVERNMENT
PRESS OFFICE, 10 MARCH 1950

166 Scapegoat
36 “Abandoned Arab village.” When a vil-
lage is completely transformed, and its
population replaced by others, it loses
its unique characteristics and its name
and can be more easily represented as
an “abandoned Arab village.” Youths
were mobilized to complete the job, to
advance the enterprise and bring about
progress. The picture shows young girls,
“Gadna” members, clearing “the rubble
of an Arab village” (created, as it were,
by natural forces), so that immigrants to
Israel could be absorbed.
PHOTOGRAPHER: ZOLTAN KLUGER, CENTRAL
ZIONIST ARCHIVE, SEPTEMBER 1949

37
Suhmata. The 1,200 inhabitants expelled
from the village left behind 200 homes, a
mosque, a church, modern olive presses,
schools, two pools, flour mills, and a ceme­
tery. Most of the North African Jewish im-
migrants who arrived in the village were
housed at the foot of the hill, where a tent
city had been erected for them. Within a
year all the village buildings had been de-
molished, and Tzuriel and Khosen were
established on its ruins. The time has come
to designate the entire village, with its 200
unique buildings—walls made of flint,
roofed with oak planks covered by a layer
of plaster that was refreshed each year—
as an historical preservation site. As Isra­eli
preservation methods based on rehabili­
tating damaged structures are not appro­-
priate for completely destroyed structures,
the Japanese approach would be adopted:
preservation not only of buildings as ob­-
jects, but also the skills—or “intangible cul-
­t ural properties”—that were needed to
construct it. Since some of Suhmata’s for­
mer inhabitants are still living, including
those who are internal refugees, now may
be their last opportunity to teach ­others
these skills, so they can be used to con-
struct a similar village on the nearby hills
for themselves, their descendants, and
others. The 60 years that have passed
since those expelled wrote to the state
institutions have not at all blunted the
validity of their demand and the obliga-
tion to grant it: “We hereby request you
to give us a place to live, return us to our
homes and enable us to work our lands.”
PHOTOGRAPHER: ZOLTAN KLUGER, GOVERNMENT
PRESS OFFICE, 1 JUNE 1949

167 Architecture of Destruction...

 Intangible cultural properties

Many tangible Palestinian cultural properties in what became the

State of Israel were destroyed. Most of the beautiful Palestinian
villages (some of them can still be seen in photographs) had been
blown up, destroyed, wiped off the face of the earth. In a “state of
all its citizens,” this tremendous loss might not be completely irre-
versible. The architectural structures are lost, but what the Japa-
nese preservation law terms “intangible cultural properties” still
exist and can be restored through practice.
This distinction between the tangible and the intangible in rela­
tion to cultural properties designates as worthy of preservation
not only objects but also special skills: what is called “living trea-
sure.” Structures, no matter how unique, can always be rebuilt,
their architectural design and construction materials recreated—
that is, if the skills required to rebuild them still exist. Japanese
preservation efforts are, therefore, also devoted to ­transmitting
the construction expertise used to erect the buildings that were
destroyed. Indeed, the Japanese might demolish in order to re­
build; thus the skills are preserved. In Israel, where destruction
is already a fait accompli, and where most of the skills and tech-
niques can be found today only among the refugees—the living
keepers of this knowledge—the adoption of this approach to pres-
ervation might mark the beginning of a process of reparation and
recompense for the refugees’ loss of their place in their world. Not
from the perspective of restoring lost physical objects, but instead
from that of restoring the conditions for renewing a space where
the promise of a viable future might be renewed for the entire gov-
erned population.
The passage of time has made some buildings and groups of
buildings worthy of preservation. These may be individual struc-
tures or entire villages. The past cannot be restored. Nor can the
villages be brought back as they once were. We can only demand
a different kind of participation and cooperation across space and
time. Cooperation and participation not only in the present, using
what exists, that which violence has created, but also with the past,
or at least by presencing the past in order to create the possibility
for a different kind of participation and cooperation in the future.
The Palestinian multi-layered presence here, which was violently
erased, should be restored—refugees, homes, mosques, churches,

168 Excess
olive presses, enterprises, partnerships, urban fabric, and language.
Not a nostalgic, impossible return that restores everything to its
original location, but returning a former rich presence to today’s
uni-dimensional national landscape. Human skills, which built the
shared world in which we necessarily live, are never simply tech-
nical skills. Those that are needed even more, though some may
disappear or be replaced, are often skills relating to the manner in
which people become citizens, find their place in the world, and
develop ways of cooperating with each other. Many of the refugees
who were dispersed in all directions are still alive. They have pre-
served the knowledge and skills required to recreate many of the
Palestinian architectural styles, to situate them as facts in the Ju-
daized space whose continued development will have to take them
into consideration. This could be still another claim, one of many
to be submitted to history’s tribunal—a joint civil action by Pales-
tinians, refugees, their descendants, and Israelis of Jewish descent
who cannot conceive of continuing to live in Israel without rectify-
ing the crime their parents committed.
Endnote Pluto Press, 2011). S­ capegoat would like to thank
Ariella for her generous contribution to this issue, and
1 [Eds. note: This text and the series of photos which Liat Eiten for her preparation of the permissions for
accompany it are taken from Ariella Azoulay, From the publication. Scapegoat would also like to thank
Palestine to I­ srael: A Photographic Record of De- Pluto Press for permission to reprint text and images
struction and State Formation, 1947–1950 (London: originally published in From Palestine to Israel.]

Bios

Ariella Azoulay teaches in the Department of Modern Culture and Media, and the Depart-
ment of Comparative Literature, Brown University. Her recent books include From Palestine to
Israel: A Photographic Record of Destruction and State Formation, 1947–1950, (Pluto Press,
2011), Civil Imagination: The Political Ontology of Photography (Verso, 2012) and The Civil
Contract of Photography (Zone Books, 2008). She is the co-author, with Adi Ophir, of The
One State Condition: Occupation and Democracy between the Sea and the River (Stanford
University Press, 2012). She is also a curator and documentary film maker; her recent
projects include the exhibition Potential History (2012, Stuk / Artefact, Louven), and the film
Civil Alliances, Palestine, 47–48 (2012).

169 ...Disposession, and Appropriation

 Event Urbanism and the Politics of Enthusiasm
by Amanda De Lisio
photography by Jon Pack and Gary Hustwit

Contemporary cities are in a state of constant flux due to the perpet-

ual negotiation, by various actors, over what can be done in a city, by
whom, and to what ends. Not unlike what occurs after human-made
or so-called “natural” disasters, the staging of a sporting mega-event
exacerbates this state of urban contestation with the construction of
new, ultramodern athletic facilities. More often than not, as the liter-
ature on the subject suggests, event-related construction demands a
minimum level of urban erasure. The site of a new stadium becomes
what Yates McKee, in his article on the post-hurricane Katrina res-
toration of New Orleans, describes as an “ecological tabula rasa,” a
return to the backformation of the heavily designed, controlled, and
scripted spaces of everyday life.1 A month after Hurricane Katrina
hit the Gulf Coast, Richard Baker (a Republican politician and then
representative for the Sixth District of Louisiana) shamelessly said
on national television: “We finally cleared up public housing in New
Orleans. We couldn’t do it, but God did.” Given the consequences of
disaster capitalism—or, what we could call “event capitalism,”
in the case of the sporting mega-event—we ought to reconsi­ Faliro Olympic Beach Volleyball Center. The site is currently unused, though there was talk that it

der the parallels between the bioremediation of our cities and

fantasies of urban erasure: both offer a false sense of natural­
ization that is imagined to cleanse the land, and the bodies
within it, but do so in favour of an homogeneous vision for
our collective future. The vision of mega-event-driven urban-
ization has failed to reconcile the extreme inequalities that
had been sold to an American company. Photograph: Jon Pack

increasingly afflict our supposedly global cities; in fact, as I

argue below, the reification of extreme urban inequalities
relating to the access to public space, exposure to environ-
mental risk, and autocratic forms of decision-making and
implementation are the repeated outcomes of the politics of
enthusiasm driving event-­led urbanism.
To develop a more critical theory of event- crisis, can facilitate the implemen-
led urbanization and its attendant social tation of a neoliberal “shock doc-
and political economic legacies, it is use- trine,” guided by extra-legal forms
ful to reflect more attentively on Naomi of governance that facilitate the per-
Klein’s well-known notion of “disaster capi­ manent redistribution of the social
talism,” which illustrates the parallel man­- spaces within local communities. Re-
ner in which a mega-event, like an urban cent critical work done on the effects

170 Project
171
of mega-events has clearly demonstrated mega-events that also demand the recon-
how the processes of event-led urbaniza- figuration of political processes by using
tion work to physically entrench social in- a doctrine of shock, and enthusiasm, to
equalities in the urban form. The excessive institute new policies and their spatial real­
policy manoeuvres, pushed through local izations in the city. At the heart of disas-
governments in a moment of celebration, ter and event capitalism, then, is a need to
share with Klein’s shock doctrine the di­- facilitate capitalist accumulation by under-
mension of necessity—in order to respond to mining, or outright destroying, existing
a disaster, or to host a world-class mega- social relations. This is not a new idea. As
event, certain transformations of the city Klein has noted, the exploitation of crises
are presented as both imperative and inevi­ has long been the mantra of Milton Fried-
table. Shock is thus used to rationalize poli­ man, pundit for unfettered capitalism and
tical economic restructuring at the level popularizer of the free market. In the ten-
of policy, as well as the construction of new dentiously titled, Capitalism and Freedom
leisure and consumption facilities, the ultra- (1962), he wrote: “Only a crisis—actual or
modern sanctuaries for bourgeois urban perceived—produces real change. When
bodies. As Klein explains, the use of shock that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken
is a technique to impose a particular ideo- depend on the ideas that are lying around.”3
logical goal, typically part of the neoliberal, But even Friedman cannot claim to be the
corporatist impulse. The shock doctrine is inventor of this crisis-driven doctrine. As
therefore a practical tool for the analysis early as 1867, Karl Marx remarked that
of mega-event urbanism because it can be “[f ]orce is the midwife of every old soci-
used to effectively illustrate the aggres- ety which is pregnant with a new one. It
sive implementation of radical (i.e. free- is itself an economic power.”4 It was Marx
market-fundamentalist) policies without who articulated the value of crises as a capi­
requiring democratic consent. The result, talist mechanism, one that could restruc-
according to Klein, is disaster capitalism, a ture and renew economic realities. As such,
form of capitalist accumulation that relies crises were considered an essential com-
on large-scale crises to create economic ponent to the dynamics of reproduc-
opportunities. tion. For Marx, much like Friedman,

jumps. I visited Sarajevo during Ramadan, which lasts there for 40 days, instead of the more custom-
As a prime illustration of this economic an effective form of force and the Olympic Ski Jumps, Igman Mountain. A man prays beneath handmade Olympic rings on one of the
shock therapy, Klein reviews the case of sense of shock it created would lend
post-coup d’état Chile, which, under the to the extra-legal context needed
dictatorial control of the US-backed General to r­ efashion cities in an authorita­
Pinochet, undertook the “most extreme ca- rian, anti-democratic manner. La-
pitalist makeover ever attempted anywhere,” ter on, Marx­ist geographer Henri
one that, under the direction of Milton Le­febvre adapted this logic with his
Friedman, created a “rapid-fire trans­for- “­theory of moments,” based on cri­-
mation of the economy—tax cuts, free trade, ses; a “moment” marked a signifi-
privatized services, cuts to social spending cant period in which existing ortho-
and deregulation,” facilitated by the speed, doxies stood trial and could be
suddenness, and scope of the economic shift radically overturned and altered.
that followed the violent overthrow of so- In disrupting the everyday, a sense
cialist President Salvador Allende in 1973.2 of shock created an extra-legal
According to Friedman’s logic, in order to context, thereby opening new
restructure the dominant socialist econo­ ­possibilities.
mic model, some form of shock therapy or In line with the recent work of
major collective trauma was needed to tem- Georgio Agamben, mega-events
porarily suspend the democratic process, can be said to create a “state of
ary 30. Photograph: Jon Pack

or block it entirely, consequently and per- exception,” a theoretical concept

manently transforming the environmental, that can be used to frame newly
social, and political tenor of local commu- imposed strategies of (de)legaliza-
nities. If this case and its Cold War polit- tion crafted in moments of urban
ical stakes are somewhat extreme, there catalytic intervention such as inter­
are, nevertheless, similar if somewhat smal- national sporting events. In rela-
ler-scale political actions taken in the midst tion to the Olympic movement, the
of environmental accidents and sporting literature has vividly illustrated

172
173 Event Urbanism...
Olympic Bobsleigh and Luge Track, Trebević Mountain, Bosnia and Herzegovina. As I was taking photos, my
guide made sure to remind me not to wander off the concrete path, as active landmines from the war are still
­buried ­throughout the area. Photograph: Jon Pack

Olympic Ski Jumps, Igman Mountain, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Photograph: Jon Pack

174
the obvious state of exception created as tem of law that operates autonomously and
a result of increased fragmentation and independently from national legal sys­tems.
privatization imposed on behalf of the In- In such a context, mega-events can con-
ter­n a­t ion­a l Olympic Committee within tribute to the trans-nationalization of the
host cities—before, during, and in the wake legal system, acting in favour of an elite
of an event. As seen in the cases of former few who are destined to profit from such
host communities, non-governmental and events. This arbitrariness—initiated through
private agencies invested in the event de- the onslaught of private and pub­lic collabo-
cide the vision for urban revitalization and rations—has further constructed de-legal-
leave few opportunities for the public to ized geographies, imposed architectural
parti­cipate in processes that will drastic­ and urban design redundancies, and made
ally trans­form local communities. In addi- the term urbanization synonymous with
tion, there is also a discussion emerging gentrification.
within the legal community regarding the The efforts of municipal parties in power
tension between internationalism (i.e., the to criminalize homelessness have often been
need for international sports to operate cited as an inevitable outcome of event-led
under a consistent, worldwide legal frame- urbanization. Activities otherwise as­serted
work) and nationalism (i.e., the desire of as a basic human right, such as sitting, sleep­
each nation to preserve its sovereignty and ing, and bathing, are heavily regulated in
en­sure that its athlete-citizens are protec- host cities during and after their mega-
ted by its laws). A “state of exception” is event. Under new anti-homelessness pol-
thus seen to unfold as the interests of pri- icies, the homeless are increasingly at risk
vate parties are positioned outside the tra- of harassment and illegal arrest.5 There is
ditional rule of law. The International also an intensified investment in surveil-
Olympic Committee and those affiliated lance technologies and personnel, while
with the Olympic Movement, as established urban architecture (even in spaces deemed
within the Olympic Charter, secure the public) is used to reinforce the law—park
command of event-led urbanization and benches are shortened to hinder excessive
thus create the conditions under which loitering, retail doorways are gated, and
they can man­oeuvre within the economic, public toilets are removed.6

to open and close the stadium roof. Now it’s used solely to house the roof and keep it from ­collapsing
Verso: Montreal Tower, Hochelaga-Maisonneuve. Designed by Roger Tallibert. It was ­originally built
social, and political urban terrain—without In Atlanta, over 9,000 homeless
strict adherence to the law. people, mostly of African-American
It is especially troubling that this con- descent, were arrested for activi­
centration of power awarded to sport gov- ties such as sleeping in parks, being
erning bodies helps create an entire “zone on the street, or entering a parking
of arbitrariness” in which the universal lot without owning a car parked
sovereign law (such as a national consti­ there. These behaviours became
tutional act) is dismissed in favour of poli­ criminal in 1996, directly before
tical economic and social irrationalities, the Summer Olympic event. In
like hosting a billion-dollar party for ur- 2000, Athens authorities estab-
ban elites. The Court of Arbitration for lished a law that would allow land
Sport (CAS), a private, international arbi- to be seized from communities for
tral body based in Lausanne, Switzerland, Olympic-related construction.
established by the International Olym­pic These regulatory strategies, im­-
Committee in 1983, was designed to pro- posed prior to an internationally
vide a forum for resolving sports-related recognized event, disproportion-
into the stadium. Photograph: Jon Pack

disputes. The Swiss Federal Tribunal has ately impact the poor, homeless,
ruled that the CAS has the same force and and otherwise marginalized and
effect as a judgment rendered within a sove­ disadvantaged groups. Temporar-
reign court. But the CAS is not an inter- ily restructuring the urban land-
national court of law; it is an arbitration scape to appease an elite few has
tribunal beholden to interested private a permanent effect: cities become
parties. The globalization of sport has shift­- physically altered, and so do the
ed the legal regulation of international bodies that are marginalized in
sport governing bodies to private authori- the process. The outcomes of this
ties. This growth in private self-governance process are remarkably difficult to
has led to the development of a global sys- reverse once they are written

175 Event Urbanism...

176
177 Event Urbanism...
 Jesse Robinson Olympic Park, Compton. Jesse Robinson was president of the Southern Pacific Association of AAU,
the Southern California governing body for all amateur sports and an advocate for local athletes in Compton. When he
passed away in 1987, this small park off the 91 Freeway was named in his honour.
Photograph: Gary Hustwit

into the le­gal system, physically rendered be accepted as a necessary phase of urban
in stone, steel, and glass and cemented in (re)development? How can this logic of
the urban psyche. erasure for profit, and the neoliberal trans­-
The globalized sporting specta­- formations sport has helped mobilized,
built to open and close the stadium roof. Now it’s used solely to keep the roof, which is no longer
Recto: Montreal Tower, Hochelaga-Maisonneuve. Designed by Roger Tallibert. It was originally

cle is a reflection of the broader be contested? Like the athlete injected with
political economic order, illumina­ stanozolol, a sports mega-event is an in­-
ting the same asymmetrical agen- jection of the neoliberal, corporatist im-
da designed to glorify human strug- agi­n ation into the urban environment.
gle and com­petition. Indeed, the Described by Guy Debord in The Society
territories attacked on the field or of Spectacle, the form of collective enter-
the court—spaces where powerful, tainment that results from such capitalist
retract- able, from collapsing into the stadium. Photograph: Jon Pack

sculpted bodies move and enter- accumulation does little more than pro-
tain us—are visual demonstrations vide a social opiate. In the context of event-
of the contestations some have to led urbanism, the politics of enthusiasm
deal with or avoid in their every- reverses this pacifying trend, creating in-
day lives. But while many re­main stead a group of citizens actively cheer-
oblivious to the manner in which ing for the erasure of others in the name
heavily corporatized sport sta­diums of a more capitalist urban vision. It is this
reify boundaries, those ex­cluded peculiar investment—a desire to mar­vel
from the spectacle cannot avoid it. at the high-functioning athleticism of for-
For some, struggle is neither cho- eign bodies staged to compete for our at-
sen nor celebrated; it is the conse- tention and enthusiasm—that conceals the
quence of a gluttonous few. The more fundamental contest over the fu­ture
question haunting these transfor­ of the city itself.
mative processes is whether or not
event-led urbanization can treat
com­munities—with their complex
local memories, histories, and so-
cial rela­tions—as erasable. Should
the notion of an urban tabula rasa

178
 Endnotes

1 Yates McKee, “Haunted Housing: Eco-­Vanguard­

ism, Eviction, and the Biopolitics of Sustainabi­lity in
New Orleans,” Grey Room 30 (Winter 2008): 84–113.
2 In his book Capitalism and Freedom (1962), ­Milton
Friedman advocated for minimizing the role of gov-
ernment and liberating the market as a means of cre-
ating political and social ­freedom. An economist and
professor at the University of Chicago, Friedman
acted as an adviser to General Pinochet.
3 Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom (1962), ix.
4 Karl Marx, Capital, Volume I (1990 [1867]).
5 Helen Jefferson Lenskyj, Inside the Olympic Indus-
try: Power, Politics, and Activism (Albany: State Uni-
versity of New York Press, 2000).
6 Don Mitchell, “The Annihilation of Space by Law:
The Roots and Implications of Anti-Homeless Laws
in the United States,” Antipode 29, no. 3 (1997):
303–335.

Bios

Amanda De Lisio is a doctoral student in the Department of Exercise Sciences at the

University of Toronto. Her work addresses questions concerning human natures and social
life under capitalist urbanization and how, specifically, these are reconfigured in the wake
of a sport mega-events. Her previous graduate research, conducted at the University of
British Columbia, evaluated the impact of school-based health policies—legacies of the
2010 Winter Olympics in the province of British Columbia—on student. Her current Ph.D.
research considers the construction of the West Don Lands, the future home of the 2015
Pan/Parapan Athletes’ ­Village in Toronto, Canada, as a case study to examine how event-
led urban renewal pro­c esses pressurize socially just and environmentally sustainable
development for host ­communities.

Olympic City Project

In the Olympic City project, photographer Jon Pack and filmmaker Gary ­Hustwit work to
share the physical and cultural legacies from former Olympic host cities around the world.
Pack and Hustwit have travelled to and photographed Athens, Barcelona, Beijing, ­B erlin,
Helsinki, Mexico City, Moscow, London, Los Angeles, Montreal, Lake Placid, Rome, and
Sarajevo. The first book from their collection illustrates the tension between two disparate
ideas—decay and rebirth—and how either is realized in host communities, post-­Olympic
event. Through the visual demonstration of the effects of event-led urbanism on local com­
munities, the book has also drawn attention to the lived condition and begged the ques-
tion of how people are transformed in the hosting of an internationally-recognized sporting
event. Rather than side with mere critique, the project is a testament to the illusion of dec-
adence so often purported in event hosting, and an attempt to record the repercussion on
host cities, whether positive or negative. For more information on the project or to order a
copy of the book, visit olympiccityproject.com.

179 Event Urbanism...

Urban
Temporalities
—Jakarta
After the
New Order

Abidin Kusno in
Conversation with
Meredith
Miller
and Etienne
Turpin
As part of the Architecture + Adaptation research initiative, we
brought Professor Abidin Kusno to the University of Michigan
for a lecture and a workshop on the politics of spatial justice in
Jakarta. Following these events, Professor Kusno generously agreed
to an interview with Etienne Turpin and Professor Meredith Mil-
ler, who focused on some of the philosophical issues that have
emerged from his research on Jakarta and Indonesia, such as the
relationship between time and space in the cultural, political and
physical history of Jakarta, the agency of the urban poor in the
politics of the city, and the specific force of capital in the formation
of the city. What follows is a partial transcript of the conversation,
conducted in February 2013, in Ann Arbor, Michigan. We are grate-
ful to the International Institute, Center for Southeast Asian Studies,
and the Taubman College of Architecture + Urban Planning of the
University of Michigan for their support, which made these events,
and this interview, possible. A very special thanks to Professor Kusno
for his intellectual mentorship, generous advice, and contagious
conviction about the value of political engagement in Jakarta. Addi-
tional parts of this conversation are published in the book Jakarta:
Architecture + Adaptation (Depok: Universitas Indonesia Press, forth­-
coming 2013), edited by Adam Bobbette, Meredith Miller, and
Etienne Turpin.
Temporal Coordination

Etienne Turpin Your work is based on a coordination of time and

space, which serves as a framework for your analysis of Jakarta.
Could you tell us something about how you read this coordination?

Abidin Kusno While every aspect of our activities is largely governed

by time, we are in many ways constructing it as well, in social and
political ways. We invest time with narratives that gives meaning to
our lives. The state, too, invests time with a narrative that gives life
to the nation. The state therefore always seeks to control time. The
whole ideology of development during Suharto’s era (1966–1998), for
instance, is based on a temporal assumption drawn from modern-
ization theory. There were a series of five-year plans of development
that would eventually lead Indonesia to lepas landas (take off ) like
an airplane. Lepas means free, and the plans were to lead to freedom
from poverty, so as to achieve the national goal of “a society that is
just and prosperous.” To arrive at the platform for take off, the whole
society would have to follow the order of the state, as development
needs political stability—or so the story goes. The whole nation here
is thus given a homogenous notion of time centered on the idea of
development.
As a member of a generation who grew up in the time of Suharto,
I was given the idea (via school and the media) that we were moving

181
 upward as long as we follow the orders of the state. Yet, it was unavoid-
able that we saw things that contradicted this linear development.
I moved to Jakarta in the late 1980s, and anyone who was in the city at
that time witnessed not only progress, but also contradictions. This
was the time of a construction boom, when capital accumulation and
authoritarianism came hand in hand, moving forward frantically in the
form of city-building to outpace the growth of kampung settlements.
This is an example of a contradiction in the time of development.
I have since then sought to understand such contradictory expressions
in the city; an analysis of space offers such an opportunity. Unlike
time, space cannot be fully controlled, and reveals the contradictions
of development-time. There seems to be a gap between time and
space, which the state has sought to deny by seeing it as a transitional
phenomenon. Yet such a gap never seems to go away. I became inter-
ested in seeing how such a gap shapes the subjectivity of the people
who are living there. Specifically, how did the state, professionals, and
citizens respond to the contradictions brought by development?
ET How has the ideology of development changed, or how do you see
it as having changed, since the Suharto period?
AK I am not sure if the ideology of development has changed since
Suharto. Development has a history longer than the Suharto regime.
We could even trace the idea back to the colonial period. Is there a
new construct of time after the end of Suharto’s New Order? My work
on the post-Suharto era is an attempt to answer this question. What
have time and space done to each other after the New Order? This
is not just a research question, but also a moral and political issue.
When we analyze the Suharto era, we assume an “anti-authoritarian”
position without much difficulty, but how about today, fifteen years
into the reformasi? How should we develop a critical relation to the
new construct of time?
Framing the post-Suharto era within a new relation of time opens
up many ways of conceiving power and constructing possibilities. I
remember at the beginning of the reform era, the keyword then was
rakyat (the poor). Perhaps because of democratization, the notion of
rakyat suddenly appeared everywhere. The rakyat seemed to be the
majority at a time when the middle class found themselves in decline
as they lost their jobs following the financial crisis. Rakyat seems to
not only represent the new time, but it has survived the New Order.
The development ideology of Suharto was supposed to have emanci-
pated them, but after more than 30 years, the rakyat remain poor and
marginal. Perhaps the emergence of this concept in the post-Suharto
era represents the failure of developmentalist ideology. This has led
me to consider how the rakyat were situated in the time of Suharto—
were they outside the hegemonic time of development?
I feel that there are at least three interrelated temporalities that
we have to recognize to grasp the present. The first one is the longue
durée (from Fernand Braudel) of colonial VOC history.1 This produced
Batavia/Jakarta and connected the city to global commodity supply
chains and the international division of labour. Within this long time
frame, the developmentalist time of Suharto and its contemporary
incarnation is just part of the longer history of capitalism.
The second temporality is the developmentalist time of Suharto,
which emerged out of the “revolution” against communism and Suk-
arno’s time. It is still an influence today, haunting like a ghost, even
though people want to leave behind Suharto time. Communism is

182 Scapegoat
 still a negative reference, and the perception is still there that all
Chinese are rich and can be squeezed for money. In other words,
whole categories constructed as the New Order’s internal other are
still working to define national identity.
The third temporality, which I mentioned earlier, refers to the time
of rakyat, which continues to exist as the other within development-
alist time. The rakyat, the kampung, and the informal land market
occupy a central place at the margins of capital and the state. The
production of space in the post-Suharto era needs to be set against
these three interrelated temporalities.

The Autonomous Rakyat

ET Let’s discuss the third temporality. Is this time of rakyat a time

of informality? Is it included in the other two times or is it pro-
duced by them? Or does it produce itself? This is really a ques-
tion of how autonomous informal time is, which is a distinction
made by AbdouMaliq Simone, who suggests that the informal is
extremely autonomous.2
AK Simone used to work for international development agencies and
knows very well the limits of the developmentalist paradigm, which
assumes the poor as a subject in need of guidance. He is interested
in the idea of the irreducibility of the human subject. His work puts
an emphasis on the agency of the urban poor who are irreducible to
the homogenizing onslaught of developmentalist time. His position,
however, is not a romantic one. There are images of violence and
vulnerability that accompany the vitality of the urban poor. They
are autonomous yet dependent on the contradictory structure of de-
velopment. This approach is useful as it moves beyond the narrative
of victimization, yet it shows how the urban poor are always located
in a contingent and precarious—but also productive—network that
they help establish. In this sense, the urban poor do not resist the
developmentalist time which exploits them (they could not afford
to resist), but they also make use of the contradictions embedded in
development, which needs the cheap labour power of the informal
sector. In this sense, the rakyat are simultaneously within and outside
the time of capitalist development. While the agency of the poor is
an important subject, I am more interested in looking at how elites
and the government have legitimized their power after the downfall
of Suharto, specifically through the category of rakyat.
ET The elites may imagine the poor in a singular term, but as you
pointed out there are hierarchies within the category of the poor.
The card-carrying poor of Jakarta (Jakarta residents) have more
social capital than the migrants who do not have Jakarta ID cards,
and the latter are often be exploited by the former. 3
AK Yes, the government can exclude those who are not Jakarta resi-
dents from its system of governance. One could say that the migrants
with no ID have a broader sphere of autonomy because they escape
from regulation (as well as benefits), but they are also very vulnerable
and easily exploited and criminalized, not least by residents of Jakarta
who are equally poor. I suspect, although I don’t have the data, that a
large number of workers in Jakarta today are those who do not have
Jakarta ID cards. One could assume that many of them used to work

183 Urban Temporalities...

 in the peri-urban factories and took up residency there, but the dis-
appearance of secure jobs in the manufacturing sector has forced them
to turn to the city and work in the informal sector. In any case, post-
Suharto Jakarta is marked by the proliferation of both non-card-
carrying workers and poor residents of Jakarta. They are the rakyat.
They have become more visible and yet they are denied their right
to live in the city. One area of my research concerns the responses
of the elites—ranging from the government and business groups to
middle-class professionals (such as architects and urban designers)—
to the appearance of the rakyat in the city. Indeed, the emergence of
populist politics today can be connected to the emergence of the rakyat.

Informality

ET NGOs, too, must have responded to the appearance of the rakyat

who (re)turned to Jakarta to survive the impact of the financial
crisis. Back then, you participated in a workshop organized by
the Urban Poor Consortium (UPC) to conceptualize the idea of
informality.4 How was it analyzed then?
AK That was a time when Jakarta was still heavily affected by the
influx of people from peri-urban areas, who lost their jobs due to the
closing or scaling down of factories there. 5 Sutiyoso aggressively
tried to stop them from coming in by evicting those from informal
kampungs.6 We were wondering if informality—the condition of living
in the informal sector—would create an identity for the urban poor,
which in turn would shape their struggle for their right to live and
work in the city. We were also wondering how this informality could
be understood intellectually, morally, and politically. Were they vic-
tims? Were they collaborators with capital? Or were they leading an
autonomous existence? Little did we realize that we were also trying
to give the post-Suharto period a name: can it be called the era of
rakyat and the time of informality?
There is a feeling that the workshop was an inquiry into a possibility
of producing a collective identity for the urban poor to stage their
struggles. The term “informal,” then, could be understood as a pol-
itical construct, like the idea of the autonomous subject. I think we
tried to show first, the positive contribution of the informal sector
to the economic life of the city, and second, that the informal is not
a transitional feature. Instead, it is a permanent feature of our city.
Such a formulation is intended to register the idea that the informal
has the right to stay in the city. This politics of value contains a
temporal dimension because it requires patience to trace and show
how the economic network of the poor is not only autonomous and
self-referential, but also relational and tied to the formal social and
economic life of the city. The weakness of this formulation is that
it suggests that the government could just sit back, letting the poor
help themselves within their own network.
ET Mike Davis says this about the UN and its concern for housing
when he considers the valorization of the slums: “Look how they
work so well. They are so great. We don’t need to build housing.
Look at their ingenuity.7 ”
AK Yes, we can say that he problematizes the idea of community resili-
ence and the UN’s self-help assessment because it frees the government

184 Excess
185 ...Jakarta After the New Order...
 from responsibility. The neoliberals have easily appropriated this idea
to further the agenda of relieving the state from the responsibility
of taking care of the poor. The state can then say that the survival
of the poor is their own responsibility, and it is all about them de-
veloping their own network to survive. The state may give them a
reward by acknowledging their “autonomy,” but that does not mean
that they won’t be evicted.
ET In the end, it’s up to you. You decide whether or not you will survive.

AK Yes. But we should also note that while the neoliberal idea is quite
influential in Indonesia, the state is still aware that it cannot leave
the poor alone because the rakyat embodies the moral economy of
the Indonesian state. There are thus always programs to manage
the rakyat, either by transmigrating them to the outer islands, or
“allowing” them to survive in the city through the provision of the
informal land market. It is important for the state to domesticate the
notion of rakyat by showing care through programs, even though such
programs often privilege only one section of the rakyat. For example,
in the case of housing for the rakyat in Jakarta, the target group is
those who have IDs and, ideally, those with stable incomes to qualify
for state subsidies. While the programs may look inclusive, the re-
quirements often discourage the extremely poor from participating.
The state, too, cannot always use violence to evict people, especially
today. The method of relocating the poor seems to have become
more subtle, by way of land certification. As the affordable, informal
land market disappears through land titling, there will be fewer and
fewer people living in the city.

Cosmopolitanism

ET Could the scenario that Mike Davis suggests, that is, the rise of
fundamentalism, take place in Jakarta?
AK It is possible that a time will come when the urban poor start to
feel that they are not cared for, that they are outside, and that they
could create an alternative worldview for themselves. When the urban
poor begin to feel that they are really not connected to the ideology
of development, when they say: “We won’t be able to move up, no mat-
ter how hard we try,” then they will search for new values, or a new
ideology. Davis makes it clear that an extreme version of religious be-
liefs may come in as this new value. 8 We are not sure whether this
could happen in Jakarta, as it seems to me the ideology of development,
the dream of becoming middle class, and the image of the “wheel of
fortune” are still alive. While nationalist ideology may no longer sell
in Jakarta, the city is still perceived as a space of opportunity, where
you don’t need committed ideologies or values, but creativity and
inventiveness. This attitude may continue to prevent Jakarta from
moving toward religious fundamentalism.
ET Is there still a significant residue of the promise of development
from Suharto’s time?
AK There is an afterlife of Suharto’s promise of development, but gene-
rated by the market rather than the state. The capital city continues
to be promoted as a site of modernity. Thanks to capitalist modern-

186 Scapegoat
 ization, the city encourages you to be secular, rather than continuing
with your rural ideals and religion. Jakarta is still a symbol of modern-
ity, national development, and the site for identity transformation; it
is a place to take refuge from traditionalism. To become urban is to be-
come a supra-local cosmopolitan Indonesian subject.9 In some ways,
this prevents religious fundamentalism from taking hold in Jakarta.
If you look at the geography of the city, the impact of religion is only
quite widespread in the peri-urban areas, but not so much in the city.
So that counters Davis’s idea; it is probably the power of the urban
that prevents religious fundamentalism from replacing the ideology
of modernity.
ET Jakarta also has a lot of “modernization,” at least relatively speak-
ing, compared to Davis’s examples like Kinshasa and other ex-
tremely impoverished cities with massive slums. As much as the
kampung fabric is wound through Jakarta, there is far more de-
velopment and potential. Even if you cannot move up in obvious
ways, there are a lot of ways to try.
AK Right. Even though we talk about the superblock as excluding the
poor, it is not entirely true. If we look at the staff, shopkeepers, and
service workers who work in the shopping malls, we know they are
from the lower-middle class. There are also a lot of women working
there, too. Of course, they could be seen as being exploited with low
salaries and long hours of work without proper housing, but there
are still more opportunities that the city offers. In some ways, this
prevents hardline religious or traditional communities from taking
over the city. This characterizes the “cityness” of Jakarta.
Meredith Miller I am wondering how that complicates the idea of
the autonomy of the urban poor. When you consider it spatially—in
the sense that there may not be enough of a concentration of kampungs
to cultivate a religious fundamentalism, as they are strung throughout
the city, coexisting with and sometimes relying on the superblocks
for jobs—is that a kind of spatial difference, as well as a social one?
AK You are right. The idea that Jakarta is a divided city consisting of
kota and kampung—the dual city—fails to capture their intertwined
sociality and overlapping territories. The idea of autonomy is also not
really a satisfactory concept for understanding the work of the urban
kampung in Jakarta. So far, the super-development of Jakarta is still
sustained by the surrounding kampungs, even though there are fewer
opportunities for workers to live in the city due to the shrinking of
kampung areas and the expansion of land certification.
So, how do we account for the idea of autonomy of the urban poor
when the kampung-kota interaction has been quite intensive? I think
it may be more productive to think of this idea contextually.
Historically, the urban kampung was the first site for migrants to
become urban subjects. There they were socialized, learned how to
survive, and became connected to urban networks of all kinds. The
issue here is that many of these kampungs are either disappearing be-
cause of new mega projects or undergoing a process of formalization
via land titling. While the urban form of Jakarta may still give an
impression of a big kampung, it has become more and more difficult—
and expensive—to live in the existing urban kampungs, and work-
ers are increasingly finding themselves living farther and farther
away from their workplaces. This displacement has contributed to the

187 ...Abidin Kusno in conversation...

 end of an era when the kampung served as a space of urban pedagogy.
The displacement of workers to peri-urban areas may shape the way
workers think about themselves: “Am I still an urban subject when
I could not even find an affordable place to live in the city where I
work?” When the workers who serve the city find themselves living
farther away from the city, this is the beginning of the end of “city-
ness.” This could lead to a feeling of exclusion and worsen the anti-
urban sentiment among the marginal who have no alternative but to
live in the peri-urban.

The Peri-Urban

ET Do you think an anti-urban morality could emerge in the peri-

urban? Could you say more about the politics of morality in the
peri-urban?
AK First of all, the moral economy of the Indonesian state has histor-
ically sought to bring justice and prosperity to society. The Agrarian
Law of 1960, for instance, embodies such a morality, stating that while
an individual can own land, it is the state that controls it. The existence,
and to certain degree persistence, of informal land markets could
be seen as an in-kind contribution of the state to the urban poor so
that they can live and work in the city. However, this approach is
being challenged today as the state becomes more committed to the
World Bank’s idea of land certification in Jakarta to further expand
the formal land market, an idea that could be traced all the way back
to Hernando de Soto. This move will eventually eliminate informal
land markets and make living in the city impossible for the poor. We
can thus say that the dissolution of the informal land market means
the disappearance of the state’s moral economy.
Meanwhile, the disillusionment with the promise of development
institutionalized under Suharto, as well as the process of democra-
tization and politics of decentralization, have opened up all kinds of
possibilities for different values to develop. Some of them are pro-
gressive, but a lot of them are extremely conservative. So, this is the
moment of openness that we are now trying to grapple with; the
looseness in the centre has opened up a space for new investments in
ideologies and contestations over values and worldviews. And space
is highly implicated in this kind of struggle.
We only have to remember when Jakarta had its first election for
the position of Governor in 2007. The Islamic political party—Partai
Kesejahteraan Indonesia (PKS)—were actually hoping to control Ja-
karta. They had their own candidate, and it was not entirely impos-
sible that the Islamic Party would become highly influential in the
city. All the other political parties, suddenly realizing how danger-
ous it would be if the Islamic Party were successful, all supported
Fauzi Bowo, who is quite secular and open to multiculturalism. His
election victory showed that the majority of people in Jakarta want-
ed to keep the city secular and cosmopolitan. However, the PKS was
quite successful in winning elections in the surrounding regions of
Jakarta.
ET They moved out to the surrounding areas of Jakarta?

AK Yes, as the PKS moved into Depok, for example, alcohol started dis-
appearing from stores. At a conference at Universitas Indonesia that

188 Excess
 I attended, we had difficulty finding beer. Our international friends
were better prepared: they brought beer from their home countries.
One even brought whiskey and put it in an empty water bottle.
[Laughter]
ET Do you think the “voluntary” relocation of workers to the peri-
urban would subject them to fundamentalism and extremism?
AK I do not know for sure, but hypothetically speaking, as mentioned
earlier, those who were displaced to the peri-urban may feel that the
“cityness” of Jakarta is not for them. Instead, the city is seen as a place
for the upper-middle classes only. This is why I thought we had to
criticize the massive land acquisition for superblocks and the unavail-
ability of affordable housing for the poor and low-income workers
in the city. We also had to problematize the World Bank’s formaliza-
tion of the informal land market by way of land titling because I think
such practices will only create more landlords and strengthen the
hegemony of homeownership. All the land will just end up in the hands
of the rich, and rental costs will go up. We should ask ourselves the
question: what is going to happen if there is no space for the urban
poor to live in the city? What is going to happen if we continue to
displace the urban poor to peri-urban areas? We can imagine a dys-
topian scenario where marginal workers displaced to the peri-urban
could be subjected to an anti-urban politics of morality.
MMIf you are talking here about eliminating that boundary and
inviting the periphery in, or encouraging the urban poor back into
the city as a way of breaking up that type of morality, could we also
ask about creating other kinds of centres outside Jakarta? Could the
peri-urban be made more cosmopolitan?
AK It would not be fair to say that the peri-urban areas are less than
cosmopolitan and underdeveloped. There are new towns with first-
rate facilities. They have people from different ethnic, religious, and
regional backgrounds. They have been absorbing more and more
people from Jakarta and other rural areas. And they are trying to
become centres of a certain kind, but with decentralization, each of
the regions around Jakarta has become interested in capitalizing on
difference—from Jakarta, with their own cultures and values, etc.
Religion and ethnicity have become a major source for the construc-
tion of identity. Whether the peri-urban can be made cosmopolitan
would depend on how the region defines itself. Of course, we hope
that they would create a form of “cityness” that is more inclusive and
progressive than Jakarta. But so far, looking at the emerging politics
of morality and the “gated” new towns built by developers from Ja-
karta for residents in the peri-urban, it would be a challenging task
to make the peri-urban more cosmopolitan.
ET Pushing out the urban poor also connects to the discourse of green
governmentality, which you have analyzed.10 In fact, there are
so many things pressurizing these displacements: rising property
values, real estate investment, N-11, Goldman Sachs’, and Price
Waterhouse Cooper’s investments in Jakarta, etc. The pressures
on the city to exclude the urban poor seem quite severe.
AK Investment in financial capital is different from investment in
the manufacturing sector, as factories need cheap labour to remain

189 ...with Meredith Miller and...

190 Scapegoat
 profitable. In this sense, enterprises would welcome the informal
sector so that the cost of labour can be kept low. Running an office
for financial capital does not require a pool of cheap labourers, but
rather technology, communication, and a Central Business District
(CBD) sustained by high-tech infrastructure and populated by well-
paid financiers and managers. This group prefers a quality of en-
vironment, which brings us to the green discourse that demands a
particular urban form with almost no connection to the informal
sector. The interesting thing to consider is how the green discourse
and lifestyles of Jakarta’s middle class intersect with the need in the
city to build a first class infrastructure for financial capitalism. How
will this intersection create a new geography for the city?

Wish-Images

ET All six sites that we researched for the first phase of the project
are affected by the World Bank’s Urgent Flood Mitigation Plan.
One thing that we are really interested in is the rhetoric of that
plan: that there will be some visionary technological solution that
will just make everything work. The German philosopher Walter
Benjamin said that if you propose a technological solution for a
social problem, what you are proposing is a “wish-image.” I feel
like your writing about the “new” waterfront—and the way in
which Jakarta is turning back around to face the world, as you
say—relates to this idea of the wish-image. The city had turned
away from the coast, and now it is turning back toward the inter-
national with new technological solutions.11
AK Yes, the wish-image is a useful concept to show that the line dif-
ferentiating speculation from imagination is very thin. Indeed, the
urban problems of Jakarta, developed out of earlier wish-images,
could supposedly be erased or forgotten by creating another wish-
image on the coast. I was asking whether the coast is the beginning
or the ending of capitalist development in Jakarta. The waterfront
proposes a new beginning for a global Jakarta, proposing a “tech-
nical solution” to the infrastructural problems of the city. But, it is
also conceived in an ideological manner where one could see (as in the
Nusantara Corridor waterfront project) the unfolding of a “mythical”
glorious past from colonial times to independence and the new global
era. It is conceived as more than a technical solution for the urban
centre; there is a narrative of national origin and destiny for what is,
after all, a project of capitalist speculation. I sought to problematize
all these ideological constructions. At the end of my story, there is
an image of inundation and the sinking of the whole world. To me,
that is the most likely destiny of the city. That piece is, in some way,
an attempt to wake up Jakarta to realize that that profit-oriented
development and ecology do not always work together.
ET The gateway too, in a way, is a wish-image. These developments
are not going to solve any social problems. But do you think the
wish-image of the Regatta, or these other excessive developments,
represent an ideology that still has some effect on the urban poor?
Are these forms charged enough that even the poor are willing to
believe in them as wish-images?

191 ...Etienne Turpin

 AK Projects such as the Regatta could be seen as wish-images of the
upper-middle class who seek to transcend the deteriorating city. The
branding of this high-end residential complex incorporates the image
of the world. It wants to be an icon of the city, but it is directed to upper-
middle-class consumers who are looking for a new wish-image. It
is not like the city-nation building of the Sukarno era, nor is it a public
monument to glorify national achievements. Projects like the Regatta
show quite bluntly the leadership of the private business sector in
bringing Jakarta to the next level of development.12 It is a private
enterprise, and its selling point is its secured location, bordered by
the sea, in a gated compound within a gated community. On the sea-
wall leading to Regatta are signs saying “don’t sit here,” directed to
the lower classes who are often in the neighbourhood because they
work there. It is also a common sight, however, to see them ignoring
these signs. They go on dates there, occasionally picnic, and even
take their pictures with the Regatta as the background. How can we
understand this kind of practice? Is the Regatta a wishimage for the
lower classes who work in the neighbourhood?
The wish-images of the Regatta and its kind are constructed on
the basis of a distinction—a wish-image to consolidate class identity.
But, such an identity is marked by contradictions. Most of the daily
activities of the people living in a place like the Regatta are sustain-
ed by the services provided by lower-class communities. The gate
that restricts the movement of the lower classes never quite works,
but it works as a wish-image, as reflected in the project’s amazing
architectural style.
ET But the wish is, in a way, also part of the integrity of the city.

AK That is an interesting proposition. The wish-image that used to

be produced by the state under “nationalist urbanism” is being pro-
duced and reproduced by capital, as well as by citizens. It takes a
range of images from those associated with the world city, those of the
green environment, and the religious city. The nationalist ideology
is no longer there to unify perception, and this opens up possibilities
for different wishes, as well as new dreams and nightmares. For con-
servative and religious people, their wish may well be turning Jakarta
into a more religious place. But, there is also the wish of the cosmo-
politan class and the environmentalists. There is the whole idea of
the green city. And there are populist politicians. So there are many
wish-images waiting to be represented that have given Jakarta a
life based on wishing. The city has a lot of energy and people who
still want to dream. What is interesting is to see whether there is a
shared dream that everyone can identify with, such as that packaged
under the nationalist urbanism of the previous era. But, perhaps this
is less important than the fact that people still have wishes and that
this possibility gives Jakarta its integrated “cityness.”
ET How about the wish-image of the poor?

AK In my opinion, it would be the possibility of upward mobility toward

becoming urban middle class. The city would need to preserve such
a possibility to allow the rakyat to feel that, in some way, the city is
something that they can continue to believe in, or something they can
be led to believe in.13

192 Excess
 ET But Benjamin says that to posit a utopian future it is necessary to
transform the act of wishing into action.
AK Action, according to Benjamin, stems from waking up from the
dream world of commodities. The commodities that flooded Paris did
not emancipate the poor who dreamed of becoming middle class to
carry out a revolution. In the Indonesian case, commodities did not
reach everyone in the same way, and national development did not
lead to the emancipation of the poor. And once the construction of
wish-images was stalled by the financial crisis, the city exploded not
by revolutionary force, but through reactionary acts which targeted
Suharto’s internal others, such as the urban poor, ethnic Chinese,
and women.
However, there has been a shift in the mode of governance that, in
some ways, has allowed the country to renew itself. The construction
of a new sense of time is helpful, even though it continues to be
shaped by the past. In Jakarta today, it is the city government (in-
stead of the state) that is under huge pressure to perform. It has to
work with the private sector to rebuild Jakarta so that it will not just
create more wish-images. It has to take the rakyat into consideration,
even though space for the kampungs is shrinking. It has to come
up with a series of progressive, populist projects. Take, for instance,
Sutiyoso’s busway, Fauzi Bowo’s green discourse, and Jokowi’s series
of pro-poor programs, including his plan to stop the construction
of more shopping malls because he believes that commodities and
consumerism cannot emancipate people.
ET It is about a dream that could not be fulfilled by commodities. This
is very interesting now, if we go back to what you were saying
about Batavia under the VOC as being only a place for commod-
ities to pass, but never really a place of its own. So, in a way, some
critical perspectives towards commodities are a kind of wake-up
call for a city shaped by their circulation.
AK Jakarta has been part of the international commodity chain since
colonial times. It built Amsterdam, one could say. As such, its history
is inseparable from the history of capital. But capital did not come
only to exploit; it came with ideologies and wish-images. The colonial
government started a new kind of uneven development and filled
the city with social problems, while making it the centre of almost
everything, including commodities. The wish-images are a product
of capital and they, in turn, reproduce capital. But this process is not
totalizing, for it carries with it cleavages, gaps, and contradictions
that allow critical perspectives to come and go.
ET But the project of wealth accumulation becomes a virus. Mrázek’s
book, in a way, is really about how the Dutch colonial disposition
toward modernization is very contagious.14 It is hard to resist!
AK Yes, capital accumulation can be taken over by postcolonial subjects.
Today, capital also moves around the city by leap-frogging from one
profitable area to another, leaving gaps and cleavages in the city. For
instance, after exhausting the central part of the city, capital intends
to jump over to the northern cost to build a waterfront city. It may
yet come back to the city to take over the remaining kampungs. But
Mrázek also mentions in his book how the Dutch in the early twenti-
eth century always felt that Jakarta was constantly on the move. The

193 Urban Temporalities...

 city belonged to “the age in motion,” though compared to Surakarta,
its movement was less threatening to a colonial order. 15 Today, we
seem to be seeing Jakarta undergoing another age of motion.

Memory

ET I want to connect this back to the question of memory, something

that your work has in common with Engineers in Happy Land,
which begins, as you know, with the Proust quote about extracting
memory from objects.16 It seems to me that you do this through
the city itself. Could you talk about this as a strategy and what it
means to “reactivate” memory?
AK The issue is how to bring space into a dialogue with time so that
memories lost to history can be retrieved as a political project. In
principle, the built environment (the object in Proust’s terms) keeps
and releases the memories of people living in it. It often takes the
form of ruins (following the flight of capital) that not only express
the wish-images of their time, but it also represents the efforts made
to shape society.
ET Benjamin takes this idea from Proust. I think the idea of retrieving
certain forms of agency, or of delaminating them, from national-
ist narratives is really important. I think this is the other revolu-
tionary agenda in your book. You accept that, through appearance,
the activation of memory can be through something that was con-
nected to nationalism, but not necessarily connected to national-
ism, in the same way as in Benjamin’s reading of Paris, a city of
nineteenth-century capitalism that reveals other struggles.
AK Time cannot always domesticate space, and space, in turn, can
haunt time. This makes memory work important, especially when
history is colonized by the state. If history has been hijacked by official
nationalism, then to rewrite the history of Jakarta is to re-activate mem-
ory with the aid of the built environment. And, as I indicated earlier,
there is the contradiction of developmentalist time, which finds expre-
ssion in space. These are some ways to make memory a political project.

The Times of Banjir

ET Where does banjir [flood] fit into the diagram of space-time

­relations?
AK Flood has a temporal dimension because it occurs at certain times,
such as high tide and the rainy season. The spatial dimension can
be found in words such as banjir kiriman (flood caused by rain from
upstream) and daerah rawan banjir (flood-prone areas often asso-
ciated with the kampung). It reflects the spatial order of the city.
When some parts of the city are flooded, people often ask if the major
thoroughfares such as Sudirman Street, or elite housing areas such
as Pondok Indah, or the presidential palace, are inundated. The scale
of the disaster is measured by whether these elite areas are flooded.
It will not be an item of major news if only the kampungs are flooded.
Flooding visits Jakarta so often that it that does not seem to warrant
a serious response. We can find accounts on banjir in early twentieth-

194 Scapegoat
195 Foreclosure...
 century literary and popular representations, where it was represented
not only as a threat or a disaster that causes misery, but also as an
adventurous, festive or even humorous event. It is very contradictory.
There is also a mysterious feeling surrounding banjir. Why was one
area flooded last year but not this year? Banjir comes and goes bringing
misery, critical awareness, and fortunes to some who make money
from the disaster.
MMHow has banjir shaped people’s behaviour?

AK Historian Restu Gunawan wrote a wonderful book about canals

and banjir in Jakarta.17 One interesting depiction is that when banjir
comes, people all escape, and when banjir is over, people come back
again. People know that banjir will come back, but they never seem to
forget that it will go away too. There are three types of people. First,
those who are flooded. Second, those whose houses are not flooded,
but who do a lot of helpful things for those suffering, ranging from
distributing food to providing shelter—but like the first type, they
never protest. The third type includes those who make money from
flooding by charging (a lot) for the services they provide to the victims,
such as transporting them to safe areas. So banjir produces different
types of subjectivities. It would be interesting to see how the World
Bank’s flood mitigation plan could end banjir and alter or eliminate
these subjectivities.
ET It is also interesting with respect to Bangkok, another city where
people say, “Well, it happens and we move out of the way, people do
different things than they normally do, then the water goes away
and we go back to normal time.” In a way, it has an almost religious
temporality, like a religious calendar. It is like this week: you have
Mardi Gras, and then you have Ash Wednesday, and then you go
into a different kind of time, a theologically intense time. I think
it is interesting that ecologically, up to a certain point, you can
have a displacement of normal time that is almost theological.
Banjir comes, banjir goes.
AK Like a ritual of renewal?

ET But at a certain point, it becomes more serious, and people say,

“Okay, we can’t get rid of banjir, but we have to mitigate the scale
of its effects.”
AK The scale of its effects points to the question: who are the victims?
People who live in the kampungs are not only seen as the victims, but
also as contributors to banjir. They built houses and settlements along
the riverbed, which over time has narrowed the river, and they throw
garbage into the river (similar to the dumping of industrial waste by
enterprises), so they were thought to be the cause, the perpetrators.
Both as victims and agents of banjir, residents of the kampung are
subject to what Foucault would call “regulatory discipline” or the
“regulatory framework,” and they become docile subjects. When there
is a flood, the government comes in and gives them “everyday needs”
like rice, and even the middle class and the rich donate a lot of money
toward this. This allows the victims to feel that the state is still pro-
tecting them. They also become the subject of disciplinary practices
because they are said to be perpetrators too, which gives justification
for the state to relocate them. It allows the state to say, “You should

196 Excess
 be away from the riverbank; it is dangerous and is actually causing
flooding in the city.” This opens up a space for “technical solutions.”
ET So it allows people to assert that the poor pose a danger to the city?

AK Yes and no. Yes, because the government and the middle class
continue to blame the urban poor. They say, “You narrowed the river,
you threw garbage in the river,” but there is nothing new in this
charge. People are getting tired of it. Nowadays, people know that
there are other practices that cause the flood, such as the rich build-
ing their villas upstream, in water catchment areas where water is
held before it goes down toward the city; now these areas are dis-
appearing to make space for the villas. People in Jakarta today are
aware that the causes of banjir are multiple. And there is an increas-
ing awareness that the business elite who built superblocks and new
towns in catchment areas are the main contributors to banjir. Blame
is also being directed to city hall for its inability to mitigate flooding.
The latest banjir has really removed the association of banjir with the
kampung, because several rich areas were badly inundated,18 including
Menteng (in the city centre), Pluit (in the north), and even Sudirman
Street, where the government displays its spectacle of economic
development. Here, banjir has created a new spectacle of dystopia.
ET You cannot blame that scale of banjir on the kampung! In the pub-
lic consciousness and in the mass media, who is to blame for the
recent flood?
AK The coverage on the recent flood has been quite comprehensive.
It had the courage to tease out issues of land use violations by de-
velopers, the shrinking of water catchment areas, the narrowing of
rivers (caused by irregular settlements), the poor maintenance of
embankments, pumps, and dams. The problem is no longer just the
irregular settlements at the riverbank (although this contributes to
the narrowing of river), but all sectors (including developers, the
government and the upper-middle class) that lack environmental
consciousness. While local factors have received attention, trans-
local forces like climate change have also been highlighted.
ET Sure, there is the upstream developments, deforestation, the ex-
ponential increase in impervious surfaces in the city…
MMRight, but the collective consciousness is also related to the physi-
cal infrastructure itself, such as in the map you showed us where all
the floodgates in the city are independently operated. Maybe the cause
of banjir cannot be traced precisely, but the effects of it, the distribution
of the floodwaters, is something that—with access to the right infor-
mation—you would be able identify with the floodgates’ operations
and determine why the water is here and not there.
AK In Jakarta, you have all these rivers coming in, and the whole
canal system and all the gates are supposed to channel the flows and
control the volume of water that goes through the city. The task is to
keep the balance in such a way that certain places will not be fully
inundated because you can redistribute the flow here and there. And,
of course, there are political decisions involved, because you have to
preserve the Menteng area and keep the presidential palace dry—un-
less you have no choice, and then you have to open the gates there.

197 ...Abidin Kusno in conversation...

 So human intervention is involved, but what is happening now with
banjir is that this intervention is no longer enough.
For instance, during the last flood, President Susilo Bambang
Yudhoyono gave permission to open the gate that caused flooding in
the presidential palace. This kind of decision is needed to moderate
flooding in other areas. We do not know the system of control, but
we know that the areas prone to flooding do not follow the contours
of the city. While the design of this floodgate system was engineered
based on calculations, its operations are inseparable from social and
political considerations. It has been like this since it was constructed
by Dutch engineer Hans van Breen to make sure that the Menteng
neighbourhood where Europeans lived would never be inundated.
Not surprisingly, the Manggarai central floodgate located in the South
of Menteng has been guarded by police since the colonial period.
Again, while the floodgate system can shape the distribution of
water in Jakarta, it can’t save Jakarta from flooding. The capacity of
the city’s water infrastructure to mitigate floods not only depends
on a range of other parts of the system, but it also faces a major chal-
lenge in the continuing development of mega-projects, which neglect
the ecosystem of the city. The uncoordinated urban renewals and
development of mega-projects like superblocks and new towns have
overwhelmed the canal system. These projects create for themselves
their own system of flood mitigation such as levelling the ground
of the property in such a way so that water would flow out of the
property to the surrounding, lower areas. The centralized floodgate
system is still playing a role in flood distribution but its effectiveness
has been compromised by the ad hoc development of the city.
MM And is the infrastructure management not coordinated at all?
Is it completely ad hoc and decentralized?
AK I think it is fragmented by capital, which advances without the
support of a coherent infrastructure. It is common to hear developers
seeking ways to maximize gains by requesting that infrastructure be
provided by the government. Yet it has never been clear who should
take care of what. There is some confusion, too, between the central
and the local government when it comes to infrastructure provision,
so in the end Jakarta is left with an ad hoc system of infrastructure
management.
MM Does anyone know about the floodgates and the decision mak-
ing process?
AK Interesting question, but I don’t know the process.

ET We need to interview some controllers, we’ll give them a bottle

of whiskey and get them talking. [Laughter]
AK I think they would say that better gate management would not
help much anymore because all the infrastructure that supports
the gates is deteriorating. The embankments are collapsing, and the
pumps need maintenance. They are all old. As a matter of fact, the
scale of the recent flood is largely a result of the poor maintenance of
the embankment and pumps; a canal wall collapsed and water went
into Menteng, and Pluit, which is below the sea level, was flooded be-
cause more than half the pumps there were inundated. The gates dis-
tribute the water, but the flood has a deeper cause. Now, we should

198 Scapegoat
 add, as pointed out earlier, that the mega-structural superblocks and
new towns, along with their self-centered localized system of flood
mitigation, have made Jakarta more susceptible to banjir.
To go back to the six projects that you picked up from World Bank’s
flood mitigation initiatives, I don’t think they will help much since
they overlooked changes in Jakarta’s urban form. The city has been
fragmented by capital, which circulates without a coordinated infra-
structure. Perhaps it is within this pattern of fragmentation that the
new Governor, Jokowi, has proposed a deep tunnel system to resolve,
once and for all, Jakarta’s flooding problem. But it is not clear whether
his project will just become another of the wish-images we talked about.

Climate Change

ET I want to go back to the question of the banjir and how the causes,
previously understood to be informal settlers, now include the rich.
I am curious about climate change, both in the discourse around
spatial justice and the discourse around the recent flood. The
United States is the country that believes in climate change the
least in the world, and then Australia, I think. I am curious about
Southeast Asia; is there an increasing discourse about unequal
exposure to climate change risks? Are some poorer countries
making claims, like, “We should receive more development money,
aid, loans, etc., because we have to deal with it, but we did not
create this problem. Affluent countries are responsible, and we
are the ones who deal with the results.” Is this being articulated?
AK I have not had a chance to get to know the Indonesian response
to this debate, but if I am not mistaken, President Susilo Bambang
Yudhoyono has stated his commitment to follow the Kyoto Protocol
and help tackle climate change. But, of course, there is also a deep
commitment to pursue economic growth. The Indonesians’ take on
this whole issue is to follow “ecological modernization.” There is still
a belief that you can continue to have economic growth without
damaging the environment. To this end, the issue of climate change
could be resolved through technology, and the whole discourse on
“green architecture,” for instance, embodies this paradigm of “eco-
logical modernization.”
ET But the green discourse is more about lifestyle. The “go green”
paradigm is not an environmental project as much as it is a life-
style project where people can say, “We want to be in a park, it’s
nice and fresh.”
AK I guess your question is whether there is a systemic response to
climate change issues?
ET Well, we could see, in a certain sense, that an abstraction related to
the rakyat and this question of how a certain set of class demands,
like a class consciousness, could be connected to an environmental
consciousness. It is not just the poor people of Jakarta, it is not
just the poor people of Bangkok, it is not just the poor people of
New York—it is the global poor who will suffer the most. So, in
the Benjaminian way, maybe, the articulation of a certain project
connects to a threat—the threat of erasure.

199 ...with Meredith Miller and...

200 Excess
 AK You mean a transnational consciousness among the urban poor
in the region who see that climate change will have an enormous
impact on them?
ET Right, and while the banjir in a certain rhythm provides oppor-
tunities, at a certain threshold, it becomes much more dangerous.
It becomes an irreversible threat.
AK Could the ecological threat be translated into a struggle for the
poor to survive? It is an interesting line of thought. Elsewhere, I wrote
about how the “green” turn—the wish-image of the middle class—
has been used by the urban poor, with the help of NGOs, to claim
their right to live in the city. The Urban Poor Consortium (UPC)
tried to frame the everyday life of the urban poor in terms of their
ecological practice. They tried to show that ecological living is, in
fact, a part of the urban poor’s life and without knowing it, their lives
are quite “green.” The urban poor live with many recycled things
(this is just one example), and they are already participating in green
discourse, even though they do not articulate it in that manner. This
discourse stems from the affluent middle class, as do the ideas of
climate change and ecological awareness. The main concern for the
poor is really how to continue to live. It is still difficult to see how
climate change movements could be coming from the poor.
ET The example you just mentioned shows how the green discourse
can be constructed for a political project.
AK It is a political construct, yes, for the urban poor want to be allow-
ed to remain in the city. Green becomes the rallying point, with the
idea that they should not be relocated because they have contributed
to greening the urban environment. However, even though this has
been quite a substantial claim, it is largely ignored by the authorities.
The poor continue to live under threat of eviction no matter how
green they claim to be.
ET It does not matter how green you are!

AK On the issue of climate change, it is difficult to imagine how the

poor would come together behind that idea when they need to think
about their survival the next day. Climate change may become a
rallying point for the urban poor if an understanding is formed be-
tween the middle class and the government that banjir, for instance,
and potentially larger catastrophes, are issues of justice (not only issues
of engineering), and thus inseparable from global injustice. The North-
South debate can then be put on the table.
The North-South debate, I think, is quite substantial, for it acknow-
ledges the history of colonialism and the contemporary unevenness
of global power relations. As you point out, the North knows that
the problem of climate change cannot be resolved without cooper-
ation from the South, and they blame it on the South. The North says:
“They are developing too fast. It is true that we were responsible in
the past, but now they should not repeat what we have done.”
ET So now it’s the South’s fault.

AK Yes, but it is also linked to the fact that corporations continue to

externalize environmental costs. They continue to build with what

201 ...Etienne Turpin

 they call “green technology,” but they assume no ecological cost. The
mega-projects we discussed could introduce “green superblocks,”
build “green new towns,” and plant more trees—which is not a bad
contribution—but they are not addressing the environmental deg-
radation of the city. It is interesting to follow Governor Jokowi, who
has instigated the idea of “no more shopping malls.” When it comes
to the scale of climate change, this proposal is probably insignificant,
but the local politics embedded in his argument are more to the
point. What is important is the emergence of a critical consciousness
that the environment can only be sustained by limiting consumption
and the accumulation of capital.
ET The question is, if you can use the climate change discourse stra-
tegically, as a political construct, then can you still force conces-
sions? Maybe you do not solve it completely, but you still move in
a productive direction…
AK I think these issues have to be part of a global struggle. The world
must demand that capital internalize ecological costs: “If you want
to continue to expand, you will have to assume the costs to the en-
vironment.” This would mean that capital would not be able to profit
as much anymore, which would therefore lead to new ways of think-
ing about development. It would no longer be a model based solely on
economic growth, which is the current World Bank ideology, but it
would have to look at something called justice.
MM
But how does the idea of justice work in relation to overcoming
the problem of climate change?
AK The Global North (after years of capital accumulation) is aware of
the fact that they owe the Global South for the environmental costs
from their enterprises operating there. The United States continues to
deny climate change, because their capital accumulation is at stake. If
we can’t make enterprises pay, what options does a place like Jakarta
have? Cities in the Global South such as Jakarta have engaged in
inter-city competition to attract foreign capital investment to achieve
economic growth. To win the competition, a friendly investment cli-
mate is often offered to investors, and this may include no environ-
mental considerations. Suppose that if cities in the Global South
begin to impose regulations on enterprises such that if they want
to invest, they have to pay for environmental costs. This would be a
starting point for sustainable development. The Global South would
be promoting a completely different system of development that no
longer depends on the endless accumulation of capital without eco-
logical limit. The problem is that the Global South is always badly
positioned when competing for foreign investments.
ET It is a race to the bottom in that sense. But there is a very important
history in Indonesia, and in the region, which began with the
Asian-African Conference. In the Bandung Museum of the Asian-
African Conference, there is an amazing collection of newspaper
front pages from the North, saying: “How dare these people meet
without us? We weren’t invited? How rude!” It is amazing, this
sense of moral indignation, like: “How could you not invite France?
How could you not invite America?” This question of Sukarno and
the idea of collective action, of the global margins—it had a huge im-
pact. This was an engine for the decolonization of the Global South.

202 Scapegoat
 We could say that one of the most significant global movements
that we could look to as an example today comes out of Indonesia.
It is a utopian project.
AK Such a moment requires a strong sense of collective subjectivity
that would say: “This is who we are. You want to deal with us, fine.
But it will be on our own terms.”
ET On our own terms…this is the position of Frantz Fanon as well.

AK Yes, but Asia today seems to have little capacity to produce a col-
lective subjectivity. It is economically and politically divided. Can Asia
unite with a collective voice to save the environment and to stop com-
peting for foreign capital investment? It would be a major step towards
addressing the problem of climate change, but would require structur-
al transformation—not just mitigating flooding, even though this can
be a strategic starting point for dealing with climate change.

Endnotes
10 Abidin Kusno, “Green Governmentality in an Indo-
1  ereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie, or Dutch East
V nesian Metropolis,” Singapore Journal of Tropical
India Company. Geography 32, no. 3 (2011): 314–331.
2 AbdouMaliq Simone, City Life from Jakarta to Dakar: 11 Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project, trans. Howard
Movements at the Crossroads (New York: Routledge, Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin (Cambridge: Belknap/
2010). Harvard University Press, 1999).
3 The Kartu Tanda Penduduk (KTP) is the Indonesian 12 Abidin Kusno, “Runaway City: Jakarta Bay, the
identity card, which among other things indicates ­Pioneer and the Last Frontier,” Inter-Asia Cultural
place of birth and place of issue. Studies 12, no. 4 (2011): 513–531.
4 The workshop was called “Informality in Motion: 13 James Siegel, Fetish, Recognition, Revolution (New
The Urban Poor’s Struggle over the Urban Space Haven: Princeton University Press, 1997).
in Indonesia,” Urban Poor Links and Jakarta Urban 14 Rudolf Mrázek, Engineers of Happy Land: T ­ echnology
Poor Consortium, Bali, September 9, 2006. and Nationalism in a Colony (Princeton: Princeton
5 See Abidin Kusno, “Whither Nationalist Urbanism? ­University Press, 2002).
Public Life in Governor Sutiyoso’s Jakarta,” in The 15 See Abidin Kusno, “Colonial Cities in Motion: Urban
Appearances of Memory (Durham: Duke University Symbolism and Popular Radicalism,” in The Appear-
Press, 2010), 25–48. ances of Memory (Durham and London: Duke Univer-
6 Sutiyoso was governor of Jakarta from 1997 to 2007. sity Press, 2010), 155–181; and Takashi Shiraishi, An
7 Mike Davis, Planet of Slums (New York: Verso, 2006). Age in Motion: Popular Radicalism in Java (Ithaca:
8 Mike Davis, “Planet of Slums, Urban Involution Cornell ­University Press, 1990).
and the Informal Proletariat,” New Left Review 26 16 Mrázek, Engineers of Happy Land, xv.
(­March­–A­ pril 2004): 5–36. 17 Restu Gunawan, Gagalnya Sistem Kanal:
9 Jakarta still holds a place in Indonesian society that ­Pengendalian Banjir Jakarta dari Masa ke Masa
Pramoedya Ananta Toer wrote about in the 1950s: (Jakarta: Penerbit Kompas, 2010).
“The wind blows through the provinces whispering 18 Jakarta was extensively inundated ­throughout
that one cannot be fully Indonesian until one has seen ­January 2013. For a comprehensive report on the
Jakarta.” In “Letter to a Friend from the Country,” in 2013 flood in Jakarta, see the special issue of
From S­ urabaya to Armageddon, ed. and trans. Harry Tempo, 28 January–3 February 2013: 44–57.
Aveling (Singapore: Heinemann Books, 1955).

203 Urban Temporalities...

 Bios

Meredith Miller is an Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan, Taub-

man College of Architecture and Urban Planning, where she entered as an A.
Alfred Taubman Fellow. Her coursework and writing explore the influences of
other environmentalisms on the forms and practices of architecture. She is
co-director of Architecture + Adaptation, a collaborative research initiative and
design pedagogy that works toward a more consequential role for architec-
ture within and among the hypercomplex conditions of postnatural Southeast
Asian cities. Meredith received a Masters of Architecture from Princeton
University School of Architecture and a Bachelors of Science in architecture
from the University of Virginia. She is a licensed architect and co-founder of
MILLIGRAM-office, a design practice and research platform based in Michigan
and New York.

David Hutama is currently the Chair of the Architecture Department, Uni-

versitas Pelita Harapan, Jakarta. After graduating from the Master Degree
Program of Toyohashi Univeristy of Techonology, Japan, David worked as an
architect in Jakarta and part-time teaching staff at Universitas Indonesia until
200. He moved to Universitas Pelita Harpan, where he has been teaching until
now. David was also part of the Steering Commitee for Jakata Architecture Tri-
ennale [JAT] 2009, and Art Director in Rubber Wood Exhibition 2010 at Pacific
Place, Jakarta. In 2013, he was invited to participate as a mentor in the Vertical
Housing Masterclass workshop, Jakata. Among his recent publications, he is
co-editor of Studio Talk ‘HOME’ on UPH Press.

204 Excess
205 Cosmopolitan Temporalities
 Shame Totem 2.0/2.1
by Jennifer Jacquet

Fig. 1 The earliest recorded sighting of a carved pole. From the journal of Bostonian fur trader John Bartlett
when he visited a Haida village on Langara Island in 1791. Reproduction from the original in the Peabody
Museum, in John Frazier Henry’s Early Maritime Artists of the Pacific Northwest Coast (University of Washing-
ton Press, 1984); courtesy of UBC Special Collections/George Dyson.

Although the days of whipping poles, dunce caps, and hot-iron

branding are over, shaming still lives on in our contemporary cul-
tures. For instance, at any given moment in New York City, about a
dozen inflatable giant rat balloons are puffed up outside buildings
signifying that union workers and an employer could not come to
an agreement. Occasionally, prominent people are hit with a cream-
filled dessert while making contentious statements or appearances,
like the economist Milton Friedman, who was pied during a 1998
conference on the privatization of public education. This year in
Japan, the publication of a photo showing a 20-year-old pop star
with her 19-year-old boyfriend led her to shave her head and issue
a tearful apology because the photograph provoked so much shame
(Japan’s norms dictate that pop stars project an image of austere
morality, and her band had taken a vow against dating). Inflatable
rats, cream pies, and tabloid photographs: contemporary shaming
takes on strange forms.
206 Project
Among these various forms, my research on the upside-down face of former longtime
shaming has been especially stimulated by Exxon CEO Lee Raymond, sporting a Pin-
shame totem poles. Carved from red or yel- occhio-like nose.
low cedar or Sitka spruce trees, totem poles We should not let the provocative aes­the­
are mnemonic objects only fully understood tics of shame totem poles distract us from
by those who possess the relevant cultural their purpose—the collective exertion of so­cial
knowledge. Because their meaning is diffi- control to establish, or re-establish, social
cult to discern without the requisite sym- norms. As settler culture was establishing
bolic points of reference, totem poles have its various forms of government to moder-
typically been appreciated by settler cul- ate the vicissitudes of human activity, West-
tures for their magnificence and beauty. ern colonial governments had their own
Fortunately, we know something of these shaming practices. A brief glance at this
poles from the oral history of native com- history evinces the serious harm effected
munities, as well as from early ethnographic by State shaming. The most compelling ar-
studies. This evidence indicates that carved ­g ument against this State practice is perhaps
poles originated with the northern peoples of that of the legal scholar James Whitman,
the west coast sometime in the eight­eenth who contends that the State is tasked with
century, then spread south and up the ma­- alleviating citizens of their impulse and/or
jor river valleys of British Columbia. There responsibility to punish others, not to invite
are eight different types of carved poles de­- them to partake in more retribution, which
scribed in the literature: house posts, from is arguably the point of shaming punishments.
which all totem poles may have evolved; house Another persuasive position on the sub-
frontal poles, often erected at a house entrance ject is advanced by philosopher Martha Nuss­-
(the form of the earliest recorded sighting of a baum, who argues that State shaming is at
carved pole); memorial or commemorative odds with the State’s role in protecting human
poles; poles to honour the deceased; mortu- dignity. Nussbaum’s objections to sham­i ng
ary poles (which actually contain the body do, however, leave an opening for the pos-
or ashes of the dead); grave markers; wel- sibility of shaming particular groups, par-
come poles (often erected on beaches to ticularly those legal individuals we refer to
welcome canoes); and shame poles. From at as corporations.
least the eighteenth century on, most indig- This argument, which allows for sham-
enous nations of the northwest coast (with ing corporations for their flagrant transgres-
the exception of the Coast Salish) erected sions, on the ground that we do not need to
shame totem poles to signal to the commu- worry about issues of dignity, led me to con­-
nity that certain individuals or clans had sider the possibility of reformatting the
transgressed cultural norms or values. shame totem for the twenty-first century as
For instance, one alleged shame pole form­ a means to expose some corporations (as
erly on display in Sitka, Alaska, was carved opposed to individuals) that have most neg-
to include a likeness of Alexander Baranov, atively affected society. Like clans, which
the chief manager of the Russian-American had specific symbols that were appropriated
Company, perched on top. It is supposed by and turned against them, corporations have
scholars to be a shame pole because Baranov logos and iconography that can also be de-­
is nude. Another more famous shame totem ­tourned.
example includes three frogs said to rep- Shaming has a democratic nature. If an
resent three women from the Kiksadi clan entity is exposed and the group does not con-
(whose totem is the frog) who were alleg- cur that the act was wrong or the exposure
edly living with a different clan. When the was justified, shaming does not work very
Kiksadi chief was presented with a bill for well. With this in mind, rather than choos-
the keep of these three women, he refused ing the most wrongful corporations myself,
to pay; the pole was carved with the hope of in August 2011 I used an online survey to
encouraging reimbursement. The theme of ask 500 anonymous Americans to select the
debt runs through many shame poles, and 10 firms that had most negatively affected
some are even referred to as “debtor poles.” society from a list of the 50 biggest publicly
More recently, in 2007 Mike Webber carved traded corporations over the last ten years. I
a totem that was put up in Cordova, Alaska, then aggregated that data and used the top
to shame Exxon for failing to make ­payments 15 or so to inform the pole’s content.1
for the Valdez oil spill. The totem includes

207
 Fig. 2 Shame Totem v.2.0 (2011), by
Oscar Baechler, soundtrack by Brian Eno.
Fig. 03. Detail of Shame Totem v.2.0 (2011).
Fig. 5 Installation of Shame Totem v.2.1 (2013)
in Astoria, Queens.
 Using the logos of those companies (which In January 2013, I again surveyed 500
were all modified to prevent copyright in­- Americans using a different list of the big-
fringement), I worked with Oscar Baechler, a gest corporations; this time I only included
3-D digital artist based in Seattle, to render US corporations (no BP) that were still in
the Shame Totem v.2.0. We tried to follow business (no Enron). There were differences
some design principles common in trad­i­tion­al in the most shameful companies:2 Wal-Mart
shame poles. For example, the figure at the took the lead, and Apple moved onto the
top must be an animate object, so we chose pole. Artist Brendan O’Neill Kohl designed
an eagle to represent the United States. I had this latest version, called Shame Totem v.2.1.
also read and seen photos that suggested In First Nations communities, shame poles
carvers sometimes turned a person or crest were usually displayed in prominent areas
upside down as a sign of shame, and so the where clan members, potlatch attendees,
smiley face, which evokes the Walmart logo, and trading partners would see them. For
is upside down. Faces with red nostrils and our digital productions, I have visions of pro-
ears signified stinginess; these were easy jecting them onto the Washington Memo-
to add to Ronald McDonald. There were rial or in Times Square. In the meantime, the
other modern quirks, too, including the eg­- work will be exhibited in digital public space,
regious headlines that run across the tele­ i.e., online.
vision playing FOX News. Near the top of the If the debt that led to a shame pole was
pole was the corporation with the greatest paid, First Nations tradition often allowed
number of votes: British Petroleum (the Deep­ the debtor’s family to burn the pole in a ges-
water Horizon catastrophe was still in the ture that suggested the restoration of rep-
minds of many Americans). My personal utation. However, like many other totems,
favourite (and Baechler’s idea and design) shame poles were often simply allowed to
is the pig with five ties that each represents rot in the damp northwestern climate. This
a bank on the list. eventuality baffles historians: how there
The result was a modern, garish, digitally could be so much effort put into something
rendered 3-D shame pole, which was pre- that occasioned so little effort toward pres-
sented at the Serpentine Gallery’s Garden ervation? This suggests, at least in part, that
Marathon in October 2011. There, I had the the production and carving of totems was
chance to meet and collaborate with artist, more significant than their perpetuity, and
activist, and musician Brian Eno, whose perhaps, that the act of their creation might
sound­t rack for the shame totem combined have possessed as much in terms of a thera-
slowed-down indigenous hymns, financial peutic value as their iconographic referents
data from NPR, and his own creations. did in terms of public shame.

Endnotes 2 Top 15 from January 2013: 1. Walmart (311),

2. ­E xxonMobil (279), 3. Bank of America (250),
1 Top 15 from August 2011 (with number of votes in 4. Goldman Sachs (234), 5. J.P. Morgan Chase
parentheses): 1. BP (361), 2. Enron (306), ­3 . Exxon­ (191), 6. Fannie Mae (183), 7. Philip Morris (166),
Mobil (260), 4. AIG (232), 5. Walmart (230), 6. Philip 8. ­Freddie Mac (166), 9. Chevron (138), 10. Apple
Morris (217), 7. FOX News (211), 8. McDonald’s (136), 11. Wells Fargo (123), 12. Comcast (116),
(208), 9. Bank of America (195), 10. Fannie Mae 13. Dow (114), 14. Citigroup (111), 15. Coca-Cola
(192), 11. Shell Oil (172), 12. Goldman Sachs (167), (101)
13. Lehman Brothers (155), 14. Dow Chemical (141),
15. Chevron (131)

Bio

Prior to joining New York University as a Clinical Assistant Professor of Environmental

Studies in 2012, ­Jennifer Jacquet spent seven years at the University of British Colum-
bia, where she was a PhD student and post-doctoral researcher. She is interested in large-
scale co-operation dilemmas, such as overfishing and climate change, with a particular
interest in the role of social approval. She is ­currently writing a book about the evolution,
function, and future of shame, to be published by Pantheon Books.

211 Shame Totem 2.0/2.1

 On Border Cultures
by Srimoyee Mitra

Leila Sujir and Maria Lantin, My Two Grandmothers/

Cycling Through Leiden/ Tulipmania, 2009–2012
Beginning this year and extending to 2015 with a series of three
exhibitions, Border Cultures is a curatorial experiment and an exhi­
bition-in-progress at the Art Gallery of Windsor, whose objective
is to examine the complex and shifting notions of national bound­
aries through contemporary art practice. It is a platform to engage
in a dialogue, using a range of critical perspectives, ideas, and scholar­
ship on national boundaries in our contemporary, networked, global
world. Artists are the key agents; using the exhibition as a forum
to expand research and present ongoing bodies of work in various
stages of completion, they position the exhibition space as a place
of production and activation. In this way, the exhibition follows a
multi-layered, multi-centred approach where audiences are equal
participants in furthering the distribution and discussion of border
regions throughout the world. By bringing together research-based,
conceptual artworks, artists, and scholars from different parts of
the country and across various borders, the overall goal of Border
Cultures is to help build a discourse that expands mutual under­
standing and respect for diverse cultures, communities, and people
subject to the violence of powerful, enduring fictions that consti­
tute the narratives of nation-states. Following an invitation by
Scapegoat to comment on my curatorial practice in the wake of
212 Project
the first part of the exhibition, in what follows I locate the work
of Border Cultures within the broader context of curatorship as a
political practice engaging with the coercion of nation states, the
brutality of colonialism, and the potential for experimental affini­
ties and collaborative engagements to confront these forms of vio­
lence, both inside of and beyond the gallery space.

I began working on this exhibition series countries is rooted in the mistrust and vio­
a few months after I arrived in the small lence bred by the imposition of a division
industrial city of Windsor, Ontario, located that obliterated the social fabric of former­ly
near the southern-most point in Canada, vibrant communities. The propagation of
across the river from Detroit, Michigan. hatred along sectarian lines, and along
As I settled in to my position as curator borderlines, has radically shaped my own
at the Art Gallery of Windsor, and into a worldview and informs the urgency of dis­
Riverside Drive apartment facing Detroit’s mantling such violence through my cura­
skyline, I met artists, colleagues in the arts torial practice.
community, and familiar strangers in cof­- Mea nwhile, in Windsor a nd
fee shops who shared anecdotes and per­ Detroit, the respective state governments
spectives—variously personal, political, and pride themselves for maintaining one of
banal—on the border. As a newcomer to the busiest border crossings in North Ame­-
the region, I was amazed at how eagerly rica—both the bridge and tunnel are pivo­
my new acquaintances shared their know­ tal thoroughfares carrying roughly one-
ledge and experiences of living on the bor­ third of all Canadian and American trade
der. I began to recognize some similarities, in goods. Yet, the hostility and suspicion
and key differences, between these nar­ people are often subjected to while com­-
ratives of displacement, belonging, and muting between the two cities has in-
statelessness, and those that I was more creased. Occasionally, populist politicians
familiar with from other geographical con­ threaten to build a wall between Canada
texts. I also found striking how the excess and the US to further divide these adjacent
of information, emotions, and histo­ communities. The scholar Wendy Brown
ries evoked my experiences of border­ has written extensively on the increased
lands. As a curator, I wanted to explore phenomena of wall-building and increased
the possibility of developing a curatorial border security in the twenty-first century;
framework that would build on the spirit in her estimation, during a period of grow­
of trust, discussion, and exchange I first ex- ing global interconnectedness, these se­c-
perienced in my conversations in Windsor. ­uri­t ized barriers epitomize the contradic­
Antithetical to border policies de­signed tions between national sovereignty and
to discriminate and dispossess, Border globalization. The city of Windsor embod­
Cultures was designed to surpass the boun­- ies these tensions: at once fluid and imper­
daries of working in a gallery space with vious, a national barrier and point of entry/
a limited number of artists, activists, and exit, harmonious on the surface and deep­ly
social workers, even when they are from fragmented at the core.
different parts of the world. The goal of The first exhibition in the series—Border
the exhibition series is to generate momen­ Cultures pt/1 (homes, land)—began with
tum and solidarity among those who are an examination of the multiple meanings
and continue to be marginalized and crim­ of the notion of home, moving from a phys­
inalized for crossing borders or enabling ical, geographical, and architectural space
others do so. toward a state of mind conveying a “sense
Growing up in Mumbai in the aftermath of home.”1 Similarly, the notion of land re­-
of the Partition of India and Pakistan, which turns to the many histories of peoples,
led to extreme and enduring violence, I migrations, colonization, and war, while
always saw the border as a place of fear, suggesting a sense of place in the contem­
intimidation, and terror. More than 60 years porary context from which we can examine
later, the recurrence of major riots in both our relationships to fundamental re­sources

213 On Border Cultures

such as soil, air, and water. How do ques­ of personal, communal, and Indigenous
tions of home and land factor into our under- significance in their respective cities, while
standing of a nation and its boundaries? also collecting oral histories from their
Why do some societies and people have elders about important sites that have never
better access to the fundamental resources been registered in the official accounts on
required by all living beings in order to sur­ either side of the border. This ongoing proj­-
vive and thrive? Who is allowed to move ect has the ultimate goal of enabling the
from one place to another in order to bet­ youth from both sides to cross the border
ter their odds of not being left out? These to pursue these practices of collection,
questions demand a critical investigation there­by using the tenants of social practice
of the assumptions of homogeneity, citizen­ to navigate and subvert the restrictions of
ship, and security, as well as the accepted border control.
notions of nationhood and the nation-state. In dialogue with Miner’s immersive proj­-
By reconsidering and reimagining the ect was Windsor-based artist Christoph­er
structures of inclusion and exclusion cen­ McNamara’s work, which explored local
tral to nation-states, we can begin to rad­ histories of the region by highlighting
ically transform both the conceptual and the erased legacy of Japanese-American
physical infrastructures of border cultures architect Minoru Yamasaki, who won the
by encouraging bridges to be catalysts ra­- commission to build the World Trade Cen­
ther than hyper-securitized barriers and tre in 1962. McNamara invited viewers to
dead-ends. remember the racialized constructions of
The gallery is a testing ground for these nationhood, as Yamasaki was consistent-
experiments. In pt/1, the artists offered ly targeted and racialized for his ethnici­t y,
alternate models of mobility, sometimes even though he was an American citizen.
by returning to historic flows of people With the spectacular destruction of these
and trade routes, and in other instances landmark towers, Yamasaki’s contribution
by considering current methods of record­ to the American Dream has largely been
ing and archiving border crossers. Work­ forgotten and erased from local knowledge
ing in collaboration with the prolific artist and history. Using pop culture aesthetics
Dylan Miner, we launched a multi-year proj- while appropriating the visual grammar of
ect to work with First Nations’ youth on the propaganda poster, McNamara used
both sides of the river to re-map the bor­ nostalgia strategically to provoke questions
derlands through their hand-built mobile of collective memory and homeland.
print labs. These mobile border labs were The work of Mexican artist Marcos Ramí­
built from two cargo tricycles, each equip­ rez Erre expanded on the agency of the in-
ped with a screen-printer used to print over dividual, highlighting the networks of ex-
300 pennants indicating the directions change and information sharing that have
from Detroit to Windsor (and vice versa) existed for generations. Postcards from the
in Anishinaabeg.2 For months leading up Edge is a series of large-scale postcards
to the exhibition, Miner worked with youth that assemble images from the built envi­
in Windsor and Detroit to collectively build ronment of Tijuana from 19963 to the pres­
one tricycle in each city and embellish them ent with personal, together with notes
using traditional practices like beading and from people in the city, family members,
contemporary street art like graffiti. While friends, and lovers living across the bor­
the youth from Detroit were not permit­ der. Meanwhile, Pakistani-American art­
ted to travel to Windsor—they did not have ists Iftikhar and Elizabeth Dadi cautioned
access to the legal documents that would viewers of the homogenizing tendencies
permit them to cross the border—Miner of simplistic notions of national identity
brought the tricycle to Windsor. As a fully often presented in mesmerizing and at­-
functioning screen-printing studio, it was tractive modes with a new series of work
used in the gallery to print t-shirts and titled Efflorescence. The work was com­
posters with the audience. Upon comple­ prised of seductive neon signs in the form
tion of the exhibition run, the tricycles were of flowers symbolizing national emblems
returned to the partnering community from North Korea, Palestine, Sudan, and
centres in Windsor and Detroit. The youth Ireland—all states that continue to reckon
who participated in building the trikes will with the violence of separation and division.
continue working with them to map places Toronto-based artist Ed Pien created a

214 Scapegoat
 haunting installation to explore the plight imagine their homeland in this context,
of illegal immigrants as they traverse vast as well as in the different timeframes arti­
territories and work in our societies as un­- culated through the real-time audio and
known and unacknowledged peoples. In video recordings in the installation. From
Memento, every audience member was in- another perspective on mobility, the art­
vited to imagine walking in the footsteps ists and architects from Campus in Camps
of migrants whose lives are filled with un- allowed for the possibility of re-imagin­
certainty and turbulence as the face the ing one’s fragmented surroundings in the
threat of being caught and deported at any severe conditions of the large Shu’fat Ref-
moment. Combining nets, intricate paper ugee Camp in Jerusalem. Built as a tem­
cuttings, sound, and video projections, Pien porary shelter for Palestinians in 1964,
provoked a contemplation of the visibility four decades later the camp continues to
and invisibility of migrants in affluent soci­ exist with limited supplies and an over­
ety while enabling audience members to flow population. In this context, the col­
develop their own understandings as they lective worked with residents of the camp
made their way through a web of knotted to find ways to re-imagine their social re­-
ropes. The project underscored the con­ lations, spatial distributions, and political
stantly shifting and changing conditions economic conditions; the refugee was not
of both home and land in this context. treated as a victim, but rather as an agent
Leila Sujir and Maria Lantin also ex- with a vision of the future. As plans to build
­plored this permanent ephemerality with the first girls’ school in a refugee camp
an interactive video installation that cuts have developed, Campus in Camps solicited
across space and time through personal viewers to engage with architectural mo­d­-
histories of migration along historical and els, provoking a re-consideration of as-
colonial trade routes. Developed using sumptions and complicity through this
gam­i ng and surveillance software, their participation.
piece used these expensive and inacces­ Northern Irish artist Willie Doherty’s
sible technologies for democratic purpo­ black-and-white photographs use image
ses, developing a game that has no win­­ners and text to capture the tension and trauma
and losers. Instead, the project asked par­ of sectarian violence that has ravaged and
ticipants to move freely from one part of divided his home town of Derry, and the
the world to another, from one era to the country as a whole. His intriguing photo­
next, bereft of barriers and security checks. graphs of barbed wire fences, brick build­
Each viewer was able to construct and re- ings, and desolate alleys bereft of human
Dylan Miner, Re-mapping the Illegitimate Border, 2012

215 On Border Cultures

 Christopher McNamara, Minoru series, 2012

216
Ed Pien, Memento, 2010

Excess
presence draw viewers in and push them goals of nation-states and economic out­
back out to remind them of the silencing comes; our goal was to lead both the view­
and fear of the border that has crippled ers and artists toward building bridges
his homeland for generations. Finally, the and dismantling barriers in order to inter­
Broken City Lab and Sanaz Mazinani force­ rupt the neoliberal and conservative mod­
fully brought seemingly polar opposite icons els where borders serve as profit-making
from pop culture together and drew out engines for powerful multinationals and
their commonalities in witty and innova­ government elites. The struggle to re-ima-
tive ways. They subverted the excesses of gine the border as a liminal space, an inter-
images and documentation of extreme reli­ stitial organism carrying a palimpsest of
gious and political beliefs to form abstract histories of arrivals and departures is a de-
and aesthetic works of art that reached colonizing exercise. Border Cultures is a
out from the white walls of the gallery and search to produce new forms of represent­
reflected the viewer’s image back on them­ ing the border that move beyond the static
selves, testing the boundaries between self and normative paradigms of national iden­
and other, the personal and political, out­ tity, citizenship, and progress. Part Two
sider and native. (work, labor) and Part Three (security, sur-
To develop a series of exhibitions titled veillance) will deepen this exploration and
Border Cultures in a public art gallery meant extend it to a broader space that functions
to completely re-imagine borderlands as a catalyst to transform the binaries of us
through multifarious lenses, sensitive to and them, centre and periphery, to embody
and mindful of the diverse inf luences, the complex interweaving histories and di-
desires, and needs of both the marginal verse knowledge systems that form pres­
and mainstream that exceed the simple ent-day society.
Endnotes Potawatomi, and Odawa, who formed the Three
Fires Confederacy, a cultural and political pact
1 Border Cultures pt/1 (homes, land), curated to protect the community. Walpole Island is an
by Srimoyee Mitra, Art Gallery of Windsor, 24 unceded territory and actually encompasses six
­January–31 March 2013. islands, of which Walpole is the largest.
2 T he present-day Indigenous community is 3 Since the mid-1990s, the US Border Patrol has
located between Ontario and Michigan at undertaken major wall-building projects near
the mouth of Lake Michigan and is known San Diego to reduce crossings by ­Mexican
as Bkejwa­nong, “the place where the waters migrant workers; see Wendy Brown, Walled
divide.” It is also known as Walpole Island States, Waning Sovereignty (New York: Zone
and has been occupied by Aboriginal people Books, 2010), 35.
for thousands of years, primarily the Ojibwa,

Bio

Srimoyee Mitra is curator and writer. She joined the Art Gallery of Windsor in July
2011 after working with the South Asian Visual Arts Centre in Toronto where she
was Program Coordinator from 2008 to 2011. She has also worked as an art writer
for Time Out Mumbai, Art India Magazine and the Indian Express daily news in
Mumbai, India ( 2004-2006). Mitra’s curatorial practice is invested in ­exploring
the impact of globalization and migration on our society and contemporary ­culture.
Her curatorial approach draws links between artists and art practices, curators and
writers working locally and in various national and international contexts to expose
audiences to diverse perspectives and promote global understanding through
contemporary art practices. She has been invited to speak in many conferences
including the Cross Cultural dialogues in Curatorial and Artist Practice, ­organized
by the Ontario Arts Council and OAAG in Toronto, March 2013; Reconciliation:
Work(s) in Progress – An Innovation Forum, Algoma University (Sault St. Marie,
Ontario), Simon Fraser University and Kamloops University, 2012 as well as at the
The ‘Creative Turn’: A Summit Exploring the Conditions of Creativity Education, the
Centre for Media and Culture in Education (CMCE), at the Ontario Institute for Stud-
ies in Education, University of Toronto and the Zurich Institute of Art Education at
the University of the Arts, 2012 and was Keynote Speaker at Connect/ Reconnect
Symposium, York University, Toronto, 2012 She graduated from York University’s
MA Program in Art History (2008) and currently lives and works in Windsor.

217 On Border Cultures

 New Camelot: The Unbearable Lightness of Canada’s
­Twenty-First-Century Security Architecture
by Jeffrey Monaghan and Kevin Walby

The Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC) is

Canada’s foreign signals intelligence (SIGNIT) agency. Its clos-
est counterparts are the National Security Agency (NSA) in the
United States, the British Government Communications Head-
quarters (GCHQ) in the UK, the Government Communications
Security Bureau (GCSB) in New Zealand, and the Defence Sig-
nals Directorate (DSD) in Australia. CSEC’s mandate is to en-
crypt government communications and collect foreign signals
intelligence. Until recently, CSEC occupied a non-descript of­-
fice building in the south of Canada’s capital, Ottawa. You would
have never guessed that the country’s most secretive and power­
ful security intelligence agency did most of its work there.
Under the banner “Project Camelot,” CSEC c­u rity headquarters has changed signifi­
is erecting a new state-of-the-art techno­ cantly in recent decades. Unlike the many
logy centre to house its thousands of spies. bunker-style predecessors, CSEC now de­
Taking a cue from ancient British folklore mands a symbolically open public profile
of the mysterious Arthurian castle, the new for its headquarters while, at the same time,
“Camelot” is an enormous 72,000-square- it demands greater powers and increased
metre complex with an $880-million (CAN) secrecy. In mirroring the paradoxical ex-
price tag. Because the building is the equi­ perience of contemporary “surveillance
valent of a 90-storey skyscraper turned on societies,” this new security architecture
its side, various proposals for the complex articulates a spatiality of openness while
have included a host of luxury items such concealing its role in the shadows of the
as hockey rinks, basketball courts, custom-­ post-9/11 intelligence world.
made filtered water fountains, and gas fire­-
CSEC, A Rising Force
places in central atriums. While many of
these excesses have been repudiated fol­ In 1946, CSEC (then called the Communi-
lowing criticism in the media, the final cations Branch of the National Research
design remains—like the agency itself— Council) was established after Canada was
shrouded in secrecy. Aside from the osten­ drawn into collecting SIGNIT with the UK,
sibly wonderful environmental qualities the United States, Australia, and New Zea­
of the building, little is known about the land during the Second World War. This
design of this nearly $1-billion complex. alliance was referred to as the British-US
CSEC claims that the new “Camelot” Agreement. Since 1961, the agency has been
is needed to facilitate the functionality of located in the unspectacular Sir Leonard
intelligence gathering and improve their co- Tilley Building. In 1975, the agency was
vert activities. Yet, the extravagance of the renamed CSEC and moved under the ad­mi-
new complex will hardly make intelligence nistrative control of the Department of Na-
more efficient, objective, or reliable; in- tional Defence (DND). SIGNIT at this time
stead, the design of the new “Camelot” focused on Cold War consulate spying and
springs from a desire to remodel the im- CSEC worked closely with the NSA in the US.
age of the agency. By examining the plans CSEC was (and still is) involved in prevent­
for CSEC’s new “Camelot,” we argue that ing wiretaps at Canadian consulates, pre-
the symbolism of the architecture for se­ ­vent­ing interceptions of communications

218
on Parliament Hill, and encrypting govern­ nificantly enhanced the operations of the
ment computer systems. CSEC staff are agency, as CSEC’s budget has grown from
trained in encryption, decoding, languag- ap­proximately $45 million in the late-1990s
es, engineering, and information technol- to over $275 million by 2010–2011; CSEC’s
ogy. The secretive nature of CSEC means workforce has also doubled from 900 em-
that as an organization it is subject to in- ployees in the late-1990s to 2,040 in De-
adequate accountability measures. More cember 2012.
recently, changes to the National Defence
Act and the Anti-Terrorism Act have sig- ↙ Fig. 1

While CSEC has been named a “rising construction of new “Camelot” as a moment
force” of surveillance and security in Can­- of excess. We contrast the thick, concrete
ada, many of their activities remain high­ brutalism characteristic of Cold War sec­­uri-
ly secret. Gathering data using the Access ty intelligence headquarters and federal
to Information Act (ATIA), newspaper re- buildings, with the unbearable lightness of
ports, and online publications, we have in­ what we call “new security ­a rchitecture,”
vestigated the publicly known elements of which deploys the modern tropes of open­
the new “Camelot Project.”1 A leading ra­ ness and transparency, costly form­a lities
tionale for the new facility, often repeated that attempt to distract from the actual, on-
by CSEC in internal documents, is “CSEC’s going transformations in the role of secu-
major shift in operational focus post-9/11, rity intelligence in federal g­ overnment.
Can­adian involvement in Afghanistan and
The New Camelot: Excess and the
the explosion in cyber threats to key govern­
­Unbearable Lightness of New
ment communications infrastructure.” Now
­Security Architecture
with over 2,000 employees and claims of
pro­cessing more data on a daily basis than In the post-9/11 context, CSEC’s dramatic
all of Canada’s major banks combined, escalation in resources is best appreciated
CSEC’s security intelligence operations in relation to the dramatic expansion of
have accelerated, not declined, since the security bureaucracies at the federal level.
end of the Cold War. 2 It is at the intersec­ Across the public sector, the ­acceleration
tion of CSEC’s expanding security practi­ of security spending has been ­staggering:
ces and the architectural demands of their in the 10 years following 9/11, an addition­
new complex that we can investigate the al $92 billion (CAN) in national ­security

219
 spending has been allotted over and above identified and catalogued through a series
the amount it would have spent had bud- of “risk workshops” held in the Spring of
gets remained in line with pre–9/11 ­levels.3 2008 with approximately 30 experts from
In this environment of widespread secu- DND, Defence Construction Canada, De-
ritization, CSEC has been a major benefi- partment of Justice (DOJ), CSEC, and in-
ciary in terms of both resource allocation dustry con­sultants. Covering a vast array
and public profile. of potential problems that could harm the
As the mission and purpose of CSEC has spy building, the specialists produced a risk
greatly expanded, the agency has demand­ matrix containing 170+ risks and grouped
ed a new complex to fulfill their SIGNIT these into four categories: 1) Procurement
duties as well as complement their new and Approvals risks; 2) Design and Con-
profile as Canada’s premiere spy ­agency. struction risks; 3) Building Services risks;
A briefing note on the new complex claims and 4) IT Equipment and IT Services risks.
that it will “distinguish Canada as a lead- After several years of risk matrix meetings
er among its intelligence [name redacted] and Monte Carlo simulations, construction
allies for this type of showcase facility. Can­ finally began in 2012. In designing the new
ada obtains enormous benefit from CSEC “Camelot,” CSEC planning represents what
through this alliance, [redacted]. This pro­ Bent Flyvbjerg calls a “Machiavellian Mega­
ject will demonstrate Canada’s conti­nued proj­ect,” rife with government overspend-
commitment to contributing to its inter­ ing on top of an excessive original budget.4
national intelligence partnerships.” To
ful­f ill these new responsibilities, CSEC
under­took preparations to build its new
“Came­lot” in the Spring of 2006.
Funded as a Public-Private Partnership
(PPP), the project was known originally
as the Long Term Accommodation Project
(LTAP). Canada’s Department of Nation-
al Defence outlined a comprehensive risk
analysis in order to devise a work sched-
ule. The excessive risk ­a nalysis added to
the extreme cost of the ­project. Risks were ↙ Fig. 2

220 Scapegoat
CSEC’s new venture will result in some- of co-operation between the two ­agencies
thing resembling the functionality of the at the Blair and Ogilvie location,” points
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) cam- out a memo released through the ATIA.
pus in Langley, Virginia, which is exces- CSEC’s “Project Camelot” is a marked
sive in its own right. While CSEC has not departure from the architectural style of
been forthcoming about many of the sub- security intelligence headquarters and fe­
stantive aspects of the Camelot complex, deral government buildings erected in
a request for proposals issued by Defence North America during the 1960s. Many
Construction Canada details how the fa­ state buildings erected during the Cold
cility space will be split into two main War in Canada were notable in terms of
functions: an office area “that generally their brutalist design. As an architectu­
encompasses the typical open and closed ral movement and style, brutalism in Can­
offices, support spaces, meeting rooms, ada was marked by stark exhibitions of
training rooms, etc. required to accom- almost fortress-like structures, barren sur-
modate management and office adminis- ­faces, weight and massiveness.6 This style
trative functions,” and a “Special Purpose of brutalism distinguishes many security
Space” that would include areas required intelligence headquarters around the globe,
for “special operational functions” such including the Federal Bureau of Investi­
as a data centre, electronic labs, comput- gation (FBI) headquarters, built in the
er rooms, fabrication shops, secure areas, 1960s in downtown Washington DC. Bru­
as well as facilities like loading docks, tal­ism makes for blunt, concrete compounds
building entries, cafeterias. that are intimidating and defensive; it ex­-
Original plans for the Camelot Project hibits an symbolic display of force and se-
shown to CSEC employees noted that the crecy typical of Cold War state complexes.
complex would be equipped with a hock- The excessive costs and consumption of
ey rink, basketball and volleyball courts, public space of Communications Securi­t y
and a bank. The diagrams also showed Establishment Canada’s “Project Came­lot”
hiking trails, as well as a hobby garden (to are exemplary of what we refer to as the
be used by the spy agency’s “Horticultur- unbearable lightness of new security archi­
al Society”), coffee bar, cafeteria, kitchen- tecture. Grace, unblemished thin lines, and
ettes and showers. Some items have been the use of materials such as glass that in­di-
dropped, according to CSEC, after media cate openness and transparency mark the
reports and negative public reaction.5 Yet, new security architecture. The planning
while CSEC tries to deflect the excessive documents and pro­motions for CSEC’s “Pro-
cost and amenities within the facility (dur- j­ect Camelot” sug­gest that CSEC grounds
ing these times of so-called austerity), they will be open to the public and that they
also promote their need for excesses to have nothing to hide. This is precise­ly why
lure the best talent. CSEC’s new “cutting- the lightness of the design is un­bearable:
edge facility,” according to an internal the archi­tecture and its sym­bolism come
memo, will “[enhance] CSEC’s appeal to at the very moment when CSEC is furti­
the best and brightest technical, linguis- vely overreach­ing into glo­bal communica­
tic, mathematics, computer science, and tions like never before.
network defence capabilities experts.”
Appealing to the need for more securi-
ty resources in the context of the “war on
terror,” CSEC has promoted the Camelot
Project as a “one-of-a-kind facility with
an adaptable work environment that will
enhance CSEC’s ability to respond quick-
ly to critical events or attacks and coordi­
nate with multi-agency responses.” More
specifically, CSEC has promoted the close
proximity of the new complex to CSIS—
Canada’s other spy agency—and a proposed
skywalk to link the facilities of the sister
spy agencies. “The heads of CSIS and CSEC Fig. 3 ↗
have committed to a skyway as a symbol Fig. 4 →

221 New Camelot: The Unbearable Lightness...

222 Excess
 Canada’s Green Governmentality Coda

CSEC’s “Project Camelot” is also said to Using CSEC’s “Project Camelot” as a case
be environmentally friendly. The complex study, we can contrast the brutalism of
is billed as eco-friendly (where “Nature Cold War security intelligence headquar-
Meets Technology”) and as “a new state- ters with the unbearable lightness of what
of-the-art technology centre” to support con­ we call the new security architecture, which
temporary intelligence-gathering needs. To gestures toward openness and trans­par­
maximize potential returns (and public ency, revealing with these tropes new el-
dollar savings) through the PPP, the risk ements of both security and architecture
determination “was made based on the concerning state complexes. Rather than an
perceived ability to make assumptions re- architecture of fear that promotes division
garding the risk’s outcome in terms that and suspicion, the new security archi­tecture
could be translated into dollars.” While a attempts to counter this intimidating style
public sector union representing workers with an inviting, open design and translu­
inside CSEC has dubbed the “Taj Mahal” cent surfaces.8 Paradoxically, the symbol-
because of its excess, CSEC has empha- ism of openness communicated by the glass
sized the environmental features of the edifice of this security intelligence head-
new building.7 Camelot is “a modern, in- quarters pulls a beguiling veil over the clan­
telligent building,” claims a promotional destine practices that transpire inside.
guide from Plenary Properties, the private Functionally, the architectural move to­
firm who will design, build, maintain, and ward openness and visibility is ­i nversely
project finance the complex. Plenary also proportional to the proliferation of sur­veil­-
notes that the complex will employ “in- lance assemblages we witness today, mak­-
novative design features to ensure that ing the new “Camelot” emblematic of sec­
CSEC remains at the forefront of mecha­ ur­ity regimes that function as “a power
nical, electrical, security and information without an exterior.” 9 Yet the regimes of
technology.” While most of the details of surveillance associated with CSEC and
the project have been shrouded in secre- Can­ada’s security intelligence assemblage
cy, CSEC has touted how Camelot will be are accompanied by significant social con­
designed to achieve LEED Gold certifica- sequences. Most directly, we can cite the
tion and meet BOMA BESt certification. immediate impact that practices of sur-
Celebrating a few solar panels that aim to veillance agencies have had on Arab and
provide 35 per cent of the energy needed Muslim populations in Canada: renditions,
to operate the shipping and receiving room, secret trials, and racial profiling have been
CSEC can ignore the colossal environmen- extensively detailed and, given the conti­-
tal impact of their enormous facility and nued acceleration of security resources,
claim that the new complex “displays and will likely intensify. Second­ly, we would
demonstrates CSEC’s commitment to stew­ point to the expansion of “coun­ter-terror-
ardship of the environment by incorpo- ism” to other realms of pol­icing such as
rating sustainable design principles and surveillance efforts that target indigenous
prudent use of natural resources.” peoples and various social movements.10
While CSEC may not have direct involve-
ment in domestic surveillance projects, the
architectures of security—both physical and
bureaucratic—have facilitated the amass-
ing of vast public resources to cast the lens
of the state over an increasing area of the
social field.
The renown of King Arthur’s Camelot
has little to do with stones and ­mortar;
its mythic influence stems from both mys-
­tique and eminence, a testament to its power.
Likewise, the new security architecture
of Project Camelot no longer relies on the
fortress-like symbolism that marked many
federal state buildings in Canada and the

223 ...of Canada’s Twenty-First-Century...

US. Instead, it is designed as a model of
eminence: lightness and visibility are its
symbolic hallmarks, transforming a hyper-
secretive organization into a celebrated pub­
lic showpiece. While CSEC now promotes
the symbolism of lightness, the shadow
of an expanding security state is the inde­
lible imprint of this new regime of govern-
mentality. As "security" increasingly comes
to govern the social field, the "New Came-
lot" stands as a monument to the excesses
of the security industrial complex. ↙ Fig. 4

Bios

Jeffrey Monaghan is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Sociology, Queen’s

University, where he is a researcher with the Surveillance Studies Centre.

Kevin Walby is Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at the Univer-

sity of Victoria, Canada, specializing in surveillance, security, and policing. He
has authored and co-authored articles in Policing and Society, British Journal of
Criminology, Punishment and Society, Sociology, International Sociology, and Cur-
rent Sociology. He is the Prisoners’ Struggles editor for the Journal of Prisoners on
Prisons. He is co-editor with Mike Larsen of Brokering Access: Power, Politics, and
Freedom of Information Process in Canada (UBC Press, 2012).

224 Scapegoat
 Figures Endnotes

1 Tilley Building 1 Colin Freeze, “National Security ‘Up For Sale,’

Sneaky Buggers… we thought it was a Zamboni Public-service Union Charges,” Globe and Mail,
­Factory! Source: Google. 15 January 2011, A8.
2 Construction of the new “Camelot” 2 Ibid.
Making Up New Security Architecture. 3 David Macdonald, The Price of 9/11: Tracking
Source: ­O ttawa Citizen. the Creation of a National Security Establishment
3 Camelot exterior artistic rendering in Canada (Ottawa: Rideau Institute, 2011).
The Public Aura of New Security Architecture. 4 Bent Flyvbjerg, “Machiavellian Megaprojects,”
Source: Plenary Group. Antipode 37, no. 1 (2005): 18–22.
4 Camelot interior artistic rendering 5 David Pugliese, “A Camelot for Canadian Spies,”
The Clean Excess of New Security ­Architecture. Ottawa Citizen, 9 October 2012, A1
Source: Plenary Group. 6 Réjean Legault, “The Idea of Brutalism in
5 Camelot interior ­­C anadian Architecture,” in ­Architecture and
More Clean Excess of New Security the Canadian Fabric, ed. Rodri Liscombe
­Architecture. Source: Plenary Group. (­Vancouver: UBC Press, 2011).
7 David Pugliese, “New Spy HQ to Get Filtered
Fountain Water,” Ottawa Citizen, 19 December
2009, A4.
8 Nan Ellin, ed., Architecture of Fear (New York:
Princeton Architectural Press, 1997).
9 François Ewald, “A Power Without an Exterior,”
in Michel Foucault: P­ hilosopher, ed. T. J.
­Armstrong (New York, Harvester Wheatsheaf,
1992), 169–175.
10 See Jeffrey Monaghan and Kevin Walby,
“­M aking up ‘Terror Identities’: Security
Intelligence and C ­ anada’s Integrated Threat
­Assessment Centre,” Policing & Society 22,
no. 2 (2012): 133–151; and Andy Crosby and
Jeffrey Monaghan, “Settler Governmentality
and the Algonquin of Barriere Lake,” Security
Dialogue 43, no. 5 (2012): 420–437.

225 ...Security Architecture

 The World Is Not Fair: The Great World’s Fair 2012
A Collaboration between Hebbel am Ufer
and raumlaborberlin

Over the last few years, debates about cultural politics have shown
local policy makers in Berlin to be completely focused on “com-
petitive exhibitions,” which they believe will bolster the city’s im-
age as an international cultural metropolis. Cultural politics in
Berlin, it seems, have become increasingly entangled with city-
branding—a neoliberal instrument of urban development. Politi­
cians are eagerly selling off urban space, foreclosing on non-market-
based social and creative possibilities, and reconfiguring it to
attract and facilitate touristic consumption habits, which the city
is counting on in times of scarce public funding. It is within this
cultural context that politicians have begun to re-animate an event
format with a highly dubious history—the World’s Fair.
226 Project
The historical relationship between the ry. About a hundred years later, at Expo
violence of imperialist colonization and 160 67 in Montreal, the formal legacy of the
years of World’s Fairs is obscure, though “Crystal Palace” and its transparent archi-
several moments are instructive. The “Great tecture was revived with Buckminster Ful-
Industrial Exhibition of Berlin” of 1897—at ­ler’s design for the American Pavilion—an
the height of European colonialism—was imposing steel honeycomb made out of pre-
staged beyond city limits, on the grounds fabricated acrylic material forms a geode-
of what is now called Treptower Park, and sic dome, reaching a height of 62 metres
showcased the period’s most advanced in­- and a width of 76 metres. A 36-metre-long
dustrial technology and commodities. In escalator in the middle served as an effi-
the exhibition, so-called “human zoos,” cient transport system, providing access to
which had already been around for 20 years the four great theatrical, thematic worlds
through the activities of the Hamburg bu­- on seven levels. After a turbulent history
si­nessman and zoo founder, Carl Hagen- of damage and repair, the building now
beck, were included as a feature. More than houses the “Biosphere,” an interactive en-
a hundred inhabitants of German colonies, ­v ironmental museum. Much more freq-
including five Herero and four Nama people uently, however, the ambitious exhibition
from what is now Namibia, were placed in a projects have landed in the rubbish heaps
so-called “Negro Village,” exposed to the of history. The grounds of the New York
exoticizing gaze of an audience curious to World’s Fairs held in 1939–1940 and 1964–
witness the spectacle of traditional craft 1965, the “Exposición Universal” in Seville
production by people wearing costumes in 1992, and Expo 2000 in Hannover are
inappropriate for a central European cli- today abandoned or half-heartedly dis-
mate—indeed, exposure would eventually mantled wastelands, eloquent witnesses
kill some of these captive actors. of past dreams of the future, remnants of
Another destructive register of the fairs an almost categorical belief in economic
was manifest in the intrusions into the expansion and technological progress.
local urban infrastructure of the host cit- Such futuristic buildings set an ideal stage
ies and their effects on the lives of the peo- on which to present the most advanced
ple living there. We can look to the Vienna developments of the burgeoning commo­
World’s Fair of 1873, for which the course dity capitalism to a mass audience, com-
of the Danube River was altered to make posed mainly from members of the working
place for the expansive exhibition archi- and the middle class. “World exhibitions,”
tecture. Today, with streamlined branding wrote Walter Benjamin in The Arcades
and a focus on “sustainability” (the key to Project, “glorify the exchange value of the
a vision of the future), whole new urban- commodity. They create a framework in
isms are rapidly emerging in metropolises which its use value recedes in the back-
all over the planet—tokens in an interna- ground. They open a phantasmagoria which
tional race of ideas to provide humanity a person enters in order to be distracted.
with an image of a better world. Recently, The entertainment industry makes this
in Shanghai, in order to make room for the easier by elevating the person to the level
construction needs of a large-scale exhi- of the commodity.”1 So, despite (or because
bition called “Better City, Better Life,” of ) such visionary and groundbreaking
around 8,000 families were forcibly evac- architecture, the greater underlying force
uated, and then, as paying guests, loaded of the World’s Fair serves to deeply impli-
onto tour buses and carted back in to their cate consumers within the dubious logic
now radically restructured living quarters. of capital.
Often, however, such exhibitions have Considering such excesses of capitalism
given rise to fascinating and visionary archi- and urbanism, and the collateral damage
tecture. The Victorian “Crystal Palace,” cre- they cause, the architectural collective
ated by Joseph Paxton for London’s “Great raumlaborberlin, in cooperation with Heb-
Exhibition” in 1851—the first-ever World’s bel am Ufer, created a counter-proposal to
Fair—remains well known to the present the format of the “Expo” in Berlin. Under
day. The technological breakthroughs of the title “The World is Not Fair—The Great
the industrial revolution made possible World’s Fair 2012,” an exhibition with 15
the construction of a steel-and-glass monu- pavilions, was set up for exploration on
ment supported without structural mason- the grounds of the former Tempelhof air-

227
port, from 1–24 June, 2012. These pavilions interpret it.
were not to be understood as state agents The architecture of the pavilions can
for nation-branding, but instead as places be understood as a contribution to a dis-
of highly subjective artistic and political cussion about the sensible management of
reflection. Beyond the boundaries of cul- resources—cultural, natural, and spatial.
tural disciplines, architects, theatre art- A third of the exhibition spaces involved
ists, and visual artists sought to examine reconfigurations of existing facilities at
ideas, systems, and phenomena by which the former airport. Other structures were
even the most peripheral cultures are now erected from modules that were used in
connected across the globe. What was ex- the summer of 2011 for the “Über Lebens­
hibited was not the world as it is or should kunst” festival at the Haus der Kulturen
be, but how we perceive, understand, and der Welt. Only three pavilions were new

228 Scapegoat
 structures, and these only to a limited de- of the earliest representatives of contem-
g­ ree. The following five examples provide porary documentary theatre, created a
some detail on the ways in which this project living sound installation in an antenna
challenged the tradition of the World’s Fair. building and focused on the military’s his-
In an architectural structure reminis­ tory of using forced labour at the Tempel-
cent of the damaged reactor blocks in Fuku­ hof Airport. The video artist, performer,
shima, the playwright and director Toshiki and activist Tracey Rose, with the help
Okada, together with his theatre troupe of non-professional actors, staged a soap
chelfitsch, examined the abstraction and opera that spanned the duration of the exhi-
immeasurability of the catastrophic events bition. Her stage was an oversized recon-
in a language of reduced gestures and lim- struction of a black-and-white Blaupunkt
ited words. Hans-Werner Krösinger, one television, which had provided her family

229 The World is Not Fair...

in South Africa with access to world events a festival centre from found materials. For
during Apartheid. Berlin-based filmmaker three weeks, this hybrid cultural space
Harun Farocki showed the first part of a served as an event space and a place of
long research project titled Vorbild/Nach­ meeting and exchange for visitors of “The
bild, examining the role of computer ani­ma- World Is Not Fair.” A comprehensive pro-
tion in simulation systems and prognostic gram of lectures, discussions, film screen-
services. It concerns the global circulation ings, and concerts was also carried out here.
of air, fire, and water—and the desire to Tempelhof Field has a variable and var-
control a world that is marked by a grow- iegated history: a former drilling ground,
ing instability and unpredictability of sys- the site of early aviation experiments and
tematically defined events. The Stuttgart thus a prominent node in a nascent glo-
architecture collective Umschichten built balized commercial network, the base for

230
Nazi aerial warfare and a key locus for the Expos, the site offers an unfamiliar per-
arms industry during Hitler’s regime, and ception of depth, allowing us to reflect on
later, most famously, the stage for the his- the proportions of cultural plans in rela-
toric airlift between Berlin and West Ger- tion to the normative and topographic
many, a symbol of the Cold War and the frameworks for which they are designed.
politics of Western alignment. It was thus In essence, it was a contribution to a debate
an ideal site for our counter-exhibition that has been ongoing since the fall of the
project. The size of the grounds provided Berlin Wall about the cultural use of build-
a scale that diminished the kind of monu- ings and spaces that have lost their ori­-
mental architecture and competitive spec- ginal functions, as well as an opportunity
tacle familiar to past World’s Fairs. While to apply to them a poetry of failure, ulti-
these grounds would dwarf even some of mately—if temporarily—making productive
the most ambitious structures of recent the contradictions that have since arisen.

Endnotes

1 Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project, ed. Rolf

Tiedemann, trans. Howard Eiland and Keven
McLaughlin (Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press,
1999), 17.

Bios

With its participation in the “Volkspalast” project, Hebbel am Ufer entered into a
discussion about fundamental questions of urban planning, the use of public space,
and a considered approach to historical structures. Several productive artistic col-
laborations between Hebbel am Ufer and raumlaborberlin have recently taken place,
such as “Fassadenrepublik,” where visitors could explore the flooded “Volkspalast”
in small dinghies, and the “Dolmusch-Xpress,” which used the idea of collective
taxis for theatrical expeditions of urban space in Kreuzberg.

raumlaborberlin has been working at the boundaries of architecture, art, and

urbanism since 1999. Strategies for urban restructuring are examined in interdis-
ciplinary working teams. Rather than thinking of a city in terms of inclusion and
exclusion, raumlaborberlin is on the lookout for a city of possibilities. In terms of its
practice, architecture is a labour of experimental, collaborative, passionate action
in urban space. Construction is thus not so much to be understood as working on
an object, but as developing narratives that become part of a place.

231 ...The Great World’s Fair 2012

Practices Before and
­After the Subject
Drool: Liquid ­
Fore-speech
of the
Fore-scene

by John Paul Ricco

For many years now I have been interested in, and written on,
sleep: its erotics, its existence at the limits of perception and rep­
resentation, its occurrence in various works of modern art, liter­
ature and film (e.g. Warhol’s Sleep, Duras’s The Malady of Death,
Breillat’s Anatomy of Hell), and more recently, through my reading
of Jean-Luc Nancy and Roland Barthes—the former in his little
book, The Fall of Sleep (2007), and the latter in one of his lectures
from his course at the Collège de France on The Neutral (1978).1
Where sleep and drool meet in this corpus that bears upon our discussion of excess,
of material is a chapter titled “Self from is the point about space as (the projection
Absence to Self,” in an extended essay by of) extension (of the psychical apparatus),
Nancy on sleep. In it, he draws upon the which in turn echoes, and is in tension with,
image of a little saliva leaking out of a Descartes’ res extensa as opposed to the
sleeper’s mouth in order to analogize the thinking human subject as res cogitans.
withdrawal of self from I, into self. A fall Obviously, this is why the final line of
into self that is not so much the enuncia­ Freud’s posthumous note appears in the
tive “I am” of either a waking conscious­ final chapter of Nancy’s book on Descartes,
ness or dreaming unconsciousness, but the titled “Unum Quid,” given that the ­latter
excessive and residual trace of the fall into is a meditation on the mixed union of body
self that is the fall—or what we might call and soul as presented in the Sixth Medi­
the drool—of speech. Here is the passage: tation (around 1640), as well as in a famous
letter of Descartes’ to Elizabeth, from 1643,
“I am,” however, heard murmured by the in which he broaches the topic of the union
unconsciousness of a dreamer, testifies of body and soul.
less to an “I” strictly conceived than to a
“self” simply withdrawn into self, out of
In and around 1978, Roland Barthes was
reach of any questioning and of any rep­ delivering his lectures on the Neutral, one
resentation. Murmured by unconscious­ of which featured a section on sleep that
ness, “I am” becomes unintelligible; it is remarkably close in its theorization to
is a kind of grunt or sigh that escapes from Nancy’s own thinking as presented in The
barely parted lips. It is a preverbal stream Fall of Sleep. But prior to all of this, in 1976,
that depo­sits on the pillow a barely visi­
ble trace, as if a little saliva had leaked Sarah Kofman wrote a note she classifies
out of that sleeping mouth. as a “fragment of analysis” titled “‘My Life’
and Psychoanalysis” that was also only pub­
It is apparent from this passage that Nan­ lished posthumously, and is dedicated “To
cy is intervening in at least two related dis­ Jean-Luc”—Jean-Luc Nancy that is. 3 In
courses—one Cartesian, the other Freud­ that note, Kofman theorizes the mouth
ian—and because of this, my reading has of her body as not constricted to the do­
necessarily led me back to several of his main of mastery and the self-enunciation
earliest publications, namely Ego Sum, his of a logical narrative recounting of one’s
book on Descartes, and “Psyche” his one- life. Rather, the mouth is the place and
page essay on a posthumous note of Freud’s source of surprise (“I can’t believe I just
that has remained a constant point of ref­ said that!” or, “What did you just say?!”).
erence for Nancy up to the present, and Drawing from the metaphor of a cave, Kof­
which in his book Corpus (2006) he posits man’s is a generous mouth and one that
as one of Freud’s most crucial statements. at the same time mimics the other erog­
In it, Freud writes: “Space may be the pro­ enous zones of the body: the penis (“spill­
jection of the extension of the psychical ing its offerings of semen”); the intestines/
apparatus. No other derivation is prob­ anus (“constipated”). So we read:
able. Instead of Kant’s a priori determi­
What my discourse had undoubtedly also
nants of our psychical appa­ratus. Psyche wanted to dissimulate is that the mouth,
is extended; knows nothing about it.”2 at different moments of the analysis, can
One of the many things about this state­ mimic the other erogenous zones of the
ment that drew Nancy’s attention to it, and body: that it can consecutively or simul­
opposite page: Untilted (Leaker No. 02B);
235 courtesy of pHgH.improbableporomechanics.org
 taneously be mouth, sexual organ, anus. Nan­cy speaks in terms of an overflowing
And not simply in an analogical manner: fulfillment and once again resorts to imag-
I knew that if, for instance, on a given day es of the mouth. This is where a more com­-
I was constipated, I would not be able to plete and queer reading of bodily fluids
“talk” on the couch either, that “it” would properly begins…
not produce anything, that nothing
Overflow is the source and fulfillment
would pass.4
of a body’s sense. Not only of a body’s sense
If you are familiar with Nancy’s book on of fulfillment (as we might say), but also
Descartes, you know that in its final chap­ of fulfillment as the sense of sense—the
ter he locates the extension of exteriorized overflowing that sense is. There are bodies
exposure that the body-soul union is, right and there is sense, and together, in the over­-
at and on the mouth, or bouche, of the body. flowing of their inextricable mutuality—
For Nancy (and for Sara Guyer and Peggy of bodies overflowing sense and of sense
Kamuf, both of whom have written beau­ filling up bodies—is fluidly traced the archi-
tifully on this topic in Nancy), the mouth spacing of existence right at, along, and just
is the place of the subject in its exorbitance, over the openings and gapes, holes, slits,
which is to say, as that which at once ex­ and orifices of bodies. Thereby ­existence’s
ceeds and exists prior to enunciation (for bodily sense is fulfilled.
instance). At once prior to, and in excess Neither inner nor outer edge nor ­outline,
of speech (and phenomenon), this ­spacing, this archi-spacing of existence is simply the
as Nancy has repeatedly pointed out, ex­ edge and line of what “can simply, imper­
ceeds analysis, including the one dedicat­ ceptibly, surpass the brim, as water com­
ed to psyche, who, as you recall, Freud pletely filling up a cup forms a slight bulge,
tells us lies outstretched and extended and a thin convergent meniscus that rises high­
knows nothing of this spaced-out expo­ er than the edge of the glass. The filling
sure to what, drawing from Bataille, we up trembles, it is fragile.” 8 In this quota­
can only call “non-knowledge” or, “the tion, from a short essay originally written
know­ing which begins by articulating it­ in homage to Roland Barthes in 2009 and
self on the basis of its own abyss,” as Nan­ included in his recent book Adoration in
cy put it in his essay on Badiou. 5 a section titled “Everyone/Fulfillment (le
Of course, this notion of the ­exteriority comble),”9 Nancy uses the word “conver­
of the exorbitant subject being at once out­ gent” to describe the meniscus or crescent
side of and prior to the self is something moon-shaped curved upper surface of the
that we also encounter in Derrida’s book on water as it “simply, imperceptibly, surpas­
Husserl—Speech and Phenomenon (1968)— s[es] the brim” of the glass.10 It is a curi­
which Nancy considers to be Derrida’s most ous, and I would argue important, choice,
interesting, and one that he has drawn from which in its possible explanation will pro­
for many of his own principal notions and vide us with a further understanding of
terms. Buried at the end of a long footnote the sense and spacing of existence and bod-
in the chapter “The Voice that Keeps Sil­ ­ies not in terms of lack and perhaps not
ence,” Derrida writes in a formulation that even so much in terms of excess, but rath­
is by now utterly familiar to us: “This being er as fulfilled in their overflowing, and over­
outside itself proper to time is its spacing: flowing in their fulfillment.
it is a proto-stage [archi-scene].” 6 In other Like pretty much any curved surface,
words, this anterior-outside-spacing is what there are two forms that the crescent shape
I am calling the fore-scene, its own proto- of a meniscus can take: concave (in which
stage or archi-scene, as the place and “ori­ the edges of the water touching the sides of
gin of sense,”7 of which drool is the liquid its container rise higher than the middle)
fore-speech, the trace of this opening and and convex (in which the middle of the
retreat, irreducible to substance and to any water’s surface rises higher the edges of
of the various topologies of substance the water touching the sides of the ves­sel).
(struc­ture, history, fiction, imaginary, sym­ Technically speaking, therefore, there is
bolic, etc.). no such thing as a “convergent meniscus.”
Drool is the evidence of this exorbitance, However, I want to suggest that in descri­
and in a recent short piece in honour of Rol­ bing what is clearly understood to be a con­
and Barthes and a chapter of his A Lover’s vex meniscus formed at the very brim of
Discourse on “fulfillment” (comblement), a glass as “convergent,” Nancy is positing,

236 Scapegoat
Untilted (Leaker No. 02 & No. 09);
courtesy of pHgH.improbableporomechanics.org

at once, an overflowing of the perceptible that Nancy provides us with an image—

and measurable difference and division by way of analogy—of existence as fulfill-
between interior and exterior—their con­ ing, to the precise extent that its sense is
vergence or touching—and the convergence overflowing. Such that existence is under­
of the rising upward or the caving down­ stood as precipitously fragile as the menis­
ward of the surface tensions of the convex cus of a liquid formed by a filling up to and
and concave menisci, respectively. Which imperceptibly surpassing the line or edge
is to say, the indistinguishable convergence of existence—its brim.
of inner and outer pressures on the surface Nancy’s reading of and response to a
and shape of the water as it is contained by chap­ter of Barthes’ A Lover’s Discourse
and fills up the glass or cup. devoted to the word comblement (fulfill­
I want to suggest that it is in this way ment),11 while part of his theorization of

237 Drool: Liquid Fore-speech...

“adoration” as a relational exposure to the therefore of buccality rather than orality;
outside and the open, is also one of the that might be said to stage a scene of writ­
most recent occasions in which he pro­ ing in sleeping that is neither the inscrip­
vides us with a language for theorizing tion of the dream nor its transcription as
that which is at once anterior to, and the dream-work, and hence defies or resists
retreat and withdrawal of, the temporal- analysis and is the exposure to non-know­
spatial punctuation of the phenomenolo­ ledge. In turn, as neither metonymy nor
gical, philosophical, and psychoanalytic “I,” metaphor, drool is not of the figure or the
ego, subject, and identity, through a voca­ face, but is without-figure and (self-)effac­
bulary of the mouth as the very place of ing; and in the elliptical or extended pe­
the overflowing of sense in its opening, gap­ riodicity of its trace, can be thought of in
ing, and—as I will discuss below—drool­ing terms of the spacing of the “with.” Drool
fulfillment. So, for instance, in the open­ is a pre-verbal stream that traces a path
ing lines of Nancy’s text we read: that flows towards nothing except con­
senting to the overflowing sense of bod­
A condition of adoration: anteriority to ies (“everyone”) and the ­inappropriability
“I”…to “I” itself and to its punctual loca­ of their finitude, which is simply to say, the
tion, which remains a position none­ sovereignty of their fulfillment (in love,
theless, though fleeting and without thinking, adoration).
dimension. This takes place further And, as Nancy states in the short piece
upstream: the opening opens behind on Barthes we have been quoting from,
me, before I open my mouth. “I” could
happen in this opening, but does not yet
fulfillment is neither satisfaction nor satu­
appear, not for the moment; there is only ration, either in the form of ferment or dis­
the circle or ellipsis of the mouth, which gorging. Which, in the context of our dis­
has not yet been spoken, which precedes cussion, we can take to mean that drool,
not only the sound of words but silent as one of the fluids by which the body is
intention too.12 fulfilled precisely to the extent that it re­
mains inassimilable (non-fermented) and
I theorize drool as that bodily fluid which non-projected/expressed (disgorged), must
in the fleeting and dimensionless surpas­ be distinguished from both saliva and spit.
sing of the brim of the mouth—specifical­ly If we were to resort to a language of mea­
during sleep and in leaving a trace (per­haps sure, we might say that drool is at once
imperceptible) on the pillow—outlines an “more” than saliva, given that it is the very
“ellipsis of the mouth” as the extended pe­ overflow of the latter, and “less” than spit,
riodicity (not punctuation) and spacing of given that it is not a violently expelled ex­
sense and existence as that which “takes pression. In this way it is the “evidence”
place further upstream,” prior to the open­- of extension and exteriority due to fulfill­
ing of orality or enunciation, speech or even ment rather than lack (the mouth’s filling
“silent intention.” It is in this way that I theo­ up and overflowing of saliva), yet an expo­
rize drool as the liquid fore-speech of the sure to the outside that is at the same time
fore-scene. withdrawal and retreat (unlike the projec­
In doing so, I also think of the line or path tile of spit). No wonder then, that while
of drool as tracing the incommensur­ably saliva and most especially spit/spittle have
shared space of ego/psyche/soul/body’s found a place in various theoretical, artis­
extension and exposure,13 to which Nan­ tic, psychoanalytic, and cultural discours­
cy’s thinking has been devoted to now for es of bodily fluids, abjection, performance,
over 30 years, since at least the late-1970s obscenity, and subjectivity, drool has rare­
and his writing on Descartes and Freud, ly entered into the intellectual landscape.
and with which he remains occupied up So, not only is this not an ontologizing
to the present.14 of the void, either as ground or ­unfulfilled
So while Nancy only explicitly refers to end, it is also not about the empty; it is
drool or drooling on a couple of occasions, rather of emptying (kenosis) right at the
nonetheless, there are many instances in overflowing (excessive, supplementing)
which this particular bodily fluid can come edge and line—the retracing of this retreat­
to name that “something” that he has en­ ing, that requires us to de-ontologize ex­
abled us to think is irreducible to substance; istence and to speak less in terms of ­either
that is pre-enunciative or pre-verbal and being or becoming, but of existence as un­

238 Excess
Untilted (Leaker No. 08 & No. 13);
courtesy of pHgH.improbableporomechanics.org

becoming. In other words: for the ­expo­sure Substance has no extension, but is a di­m­-
that existence is, there is no schema, and ensionless point. As extended liquid/saliva
this outside spacing borders not on the emp­- of the body, drool is that sub-ex of sub­
ty but can instead be said to be simply sup­ stance that affirms that a body is irreduc­
ported by nothing—no sufficient reason or ible to substance.15 The nearly impercep­
principle of existence. Just as we have tible stream of drool traces the extended
learned to question each figure of onto- periodicity of existence and the body’s in-
theology and onto-typology, we must also ­finite finitude—its exposure (­ontologically
continue to question every onto-topology, speaking). This is existence’s elliptical—
including each topology of substance. and hence overflowing—spacing and sense.

239 ...of the Fore-scene

This is beyond any “discourse” (philoso­
phical or otherwise) of bodily fluids, but
instead lies at the fore-scene of fore-speech,
a preverbal opening or gaping of the mouth
(béance), and thus an outside anterior to
any intentional enunciation.
Drool is the soul of the body, of the body
as always already outside itself (ex ­corpore),
as something other than mass and pure
substance. Nancy: “[I]n expelling, the body
gives itself form” infinitely,16 and senses
and feels it is a (finite and self-­separated)
body. Another name for this sensing of
the body is “soul,” and this mixture, ten­
sion, and union of body and soul, is the
tensing, sensing, and spacing of existence—
the outline, trace of its being there—this
body, here, now, in retreat. In a variation
on Nancy: If I drool, it is a drooling soul.17
Drool is the liquidation of “substance,”
and the “substantiality of an accident,”18
in which life is defined as a happy accident
and surviving or living on as a happy sur­
prise. It is in terms of this ontological in­
substantiality that life is further under­
stood to be neither an “event” nor a “gift.”
Sleep: what we share in common in the
sense of “the ontological impossibility of
a common substance” (and principle). 19
As liquidation of common substance, drool
is the trace of this ontological impossibil­
ity—its elliptical sense. The body is the in­
truder, and drool, like every other bodily
fluid, is an index of this intrusion.
As the liquid fore-speech of the fore-
scene, we might say that drool is the pre-
cum 20 of a buccal murmur and groan, and
imagine that with the lightest of touches,
as though with the tap of a finger, this fluid
is stretched out and extended, and in its
extension (ex-posure without in-tention)21
traces the tenuous and fragile yet remark­
ably resilient tensile line of the “with” of
our shared existence, body to body. As
though at that sleeping mouth a non-sal­
vific path was opened up by drooling, and
in that fall of sleep that is at the same time
the fall of speech, one hears the “with” of
being-with or being-together. As exgested
substance, or more properly, as sub-ex, drool
is a menstruum universal or “universal sol­-
vent” of sleeping together as being-together—
everyone, fulfilled co-somnum—beyond the
double-binding violence of the subjective-
collective. I drool therefore I am.

240 Excess
 Endnotes 11 Roland Barthes, A Lover’s Discourse, trans. Richard
Howard (New York: Hill and Wang, 1977), 54–56.
1 This is a version of a paper presented at the Ameri­ 12 Nancy, Adoration, 84.
can Comparative Literature Association conference, 13 As we shall see, all of this along with his thinking
April 2013, Toronto. It preserves some of the and writing on: corpus, enunciation, sleep, touch
rhetorical form and references of that particular and non-knowledge.
presentation. A much longer version of this essay 14 See, in particular, Ego Sum (Paris: Flammarion,
is forthcoming in a special issue of the journal of 1979); The Birth to Presence, trans. Brian Holmes
queer studies inter/Alia, on “Bodily Fluids,” edited et al. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993);
by Michael O’Rourke, Karin Sellberg, and Kamillea Corpus, trans. John D. Caputo, ed. Richard A. Rand
Aghtan. (New York: Fordham University Press, 2008);
2 From 22 August 1938 and published posthumously. and, with Antonia Birnbaum, L’Extension de l’âme:
Freud died on 23 September 1939. Descartes = “Exister, c’est sortir du point”, Carnets
3 Sarah Kofman, Selected Writings, ed. Thomas (Strasbourg: Le Portique, 2003).
­Albrecht, Georgia Albert and Elizabeth G. 15 Sub-ex is Nancy’s term for the deconstruction of
­Rottenberg (Stanford: Stanford University the relation between enunciation and substance
Press, 2007). that structures the Cartesian figuration of the
4 Ibid., 250. subject.
5 Jean-Luc Nancy, “Philosophy without Conditions,” 16 N ancy, “On the Soul,” in Corpus, 127.
in Think Again: Alain Badiou and the Future of 17 Nancy and Birnbaum, L’Extension, 141.
Philosophy, ed. Peter Hallward (New York & London: 18 Ibid.
Continuum, 2004), 49. 19 Nancy, Corpus; see especially the 30th index for a
6 Jacques Derrida, Speech and Phenomenon, trans. statement on the intruder, but also the 41st on the
David B. Allison (Chicago: Northwestern University questions of indices, per se.
Press, 1973), 84. 20 In describing drool as the pre-cum of buccality, the
7 Ibid., 85. outside and futurity (spatial and temporal opening)
8 Jean-Luc Nancy, Adoration: The Deconstruction of are understood as the provenance of speech and
Christianity II, trans. J. D. Caputo, ed. J. McKeane enunciation, and drool once again is more than
(New York: Fordham University Press, 2013), 86. simply metaphorically conceptualized. For, given
9 This according to a footnote stating: “The first ver- that the Latin root of the word provenance (its prov-
sion of this passage was written for a day of homage enance) translates as forth (pro) + come (venire),
to Roland Barthes organized by Julia Kristeva drool as pre-cum can be said to trace a forth-
in 2009, whose proceedings are to be published” coming futurity and fore-coming outside, neither of
(Ibid.). which are either initial or destinal, but a forth and a
10 “ Meniscus,” from the Greek mēniskos (crescent), fore anterior to any origin or end, including even to
and diminutive of mēnē (moon), is the word that any “pre-coming.” Such is the anarchic and a-telic
names and describes the crescent moon-shaped scene opened up by drool and pre-cum.
curved upper surface of a liquid in a tube, cup, 21 H ere we take Nancy’s notion of a “tension without
glass, or other such container. intention” to mean both non-phenomenolo­gical, as
well as absent of desire, predicated upon a notion of
“lack” (value calculated as “not enough”).

Bios

John Paul Ricco is the author of The Logic of the Lure (University of Chicago, 2003) and
the forthcoming, The Decision Between Us: Art & Ethics in the Time of Scenes (University
of Chicago, 2013). He is currently completing a third book titled, Non-consensual Futures:
Pornographic Faith and the Economy of the Eve. He is Associate Professor of Contempo-
rary Art, Media Theory and Criticism, and Graduate Professor in Comparative Literature
at the University of Toronto.

pHgH is the emissions-aggregator of the Institute of Improbable P

­ oromechanics,
a ­research and design platform committed to exploring, promoting and curating
­enthusiasm about and through urban leakage.

241 ...of the Fore-scene

 Example of a “Meddo,” 160 cm, from Captain Winkler, “On Sea Charts Formerly Used in the Marshall Islands, with
Museum

Notices on the Naviagtion of These Islanders in General,” Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian
Institution, 1899, 2. vols. (Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 1901), 1: 487–508, esp. pl. VIII.

by Anna-Sophie
as
Archipelago

Springer
The
 I imagine the museum as an archipelago.
—Édouard Glissant
In 1948, the geography department at Harvard University was shut
down for being “hopelessly amorphous” and for failing to produce
“a clear definition of the subject” or to “determine its boundaries
with other disciplines.”1 This essay emerges from a much newer
discipline, one that, in contrast to geography, has only just begun
to exist as a proper academic field, but that is nevertheless enjoy­
ing its precocious status and attracting increasing theoretical inter­-
est. Within the upstart discipline of “Curatorial Studies,” curatorial
practice departs from the idea that curating historically entails car­
ing for artifacts within the institution, enabling the current dis­
course to turn its attention toward investigating and contouring
forms of creative and critical agency, thus resulting in the production
of knowledge with a performative element that has been called “the
curatorial.” Like geography’s struggle for a convincing self-defini­
tion in the 1940s, curatorial practice today struggles with its own
fluid boundaries. This fluidity, however, is the field’s strength; in
what follows, I argue that far from being conceived of as a weakness,
the openness of contemporary curatorial practice finds a retroactive
and productive affirmation in the geographic and spatial theories
that distinguish between settler and indigenous cartographies.2
Machining Knowledge the map both anticipated and actual­ized
processes of human cultural intervention,
The island was spread out under their rendering them conceivable and action­
eyes like a map, and they had only to able. Despite this material actualization,
give names to all its angles and points. however, it is important to stress that maps
—Jules Verne are, in a large part, fictions of factual con­
ditions; as human-made interpretations
Most fundamentally, a map is an eidetic— of the world, they foreground certain ele­
visual, but also mental—representation ments while leaving out others. What this
of an area. Such a form of representation means is that a map is not simply a mirror
is connected to an activity of production, image of the world but a creation with “sem­-
including navigational devices and ­models antic, symbolic and instrumental” content.7
of surroundings, that is nearly as old as Therefore, maps do not represent anything;
recorded history.3 But maps, whether we instead, they produce effects by organiz­
look at Roman, Greek, Chinese, or early ing knowl­edge and constructing perspec­
European explorers, have also been im­ tives. They are performative tools that can
portant “weapons of imperialism”4 and both frame and undo territories; read opti­
“tools for projecting power-knowledge,”5 mistically, every map has the potential to
enabling and expanding the scope and produce a new and different world.
violence of countless colonial endeavours. One such example is R. ­Buckminster
In fact, it was during the colonial scramble Fuller’s “Dymaxion Map” of 1943. While
of the nineteenth century that “a pen ac­ross our common Mercator projection privi­leges
a map could determine the lives and deaths Europe and North America through orien­
of millions of people.” 6 In this in­stance, tation and distortion, Fuller’s proj­ection

243
Australian, and Pacific Societies, Vol. 2, Book 3, (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1998): Plate 14.

Lewis, eds., Cartography in the Traditional African, American, Arctic,

Koryak Dancing Coat made of reindeer skin. The bleached disks sym-
the summer Milky Way. Image from David Woodward and G. Malcolm
bolize the stars and constellations of seasonal skies, the waistband

Draft version of Cahill-Keyes “Real-World” Map, 1984. Actual scale of original digital image
is 1/100 million. This map is adapted from B.J.S. Cahill’s octahedral “Butterfly” projection,
published in 1909. The graticule was newly devised, computed, and drawn by Gene Keyes
in 1975, along with the coastlines, boundaries, and overall map design. Image courtesy of
Gene Keyes.

244 Scapegoat
unfolds the earth into a ­poly-directional the trips but studied and memorized prior
icosahedron, depicting the seven conti­ to departure, and the navigator would lie
nents as a chain of islands (“one island down in the canoe during the voyage to
earth”) and the oceans as a connected, feel how the boat was moved about by the
fluid mass. The triangles of the map can underlying ebb and flow. While this prac­
be rotated towards each other in differ­ tice makes the map a bio-geographical
ent ways, each time offering a radically tool, rendering it personal and idiosyn­
different but always valid configuration, cratic, it nevertheless suggests that these
making the Dymaxion Map a rare speci­ personal cartographies were crucial de­
men of a world map that does not depend vices for creating a network of inter-island
on a predetermined perspectival ­centre.8 communication.10
It is exactly this kind of approach to map­
Voyages and Charts
ping that Deleuze and Guattari encourage
in their ground-breaking text “­R hizome,” Perhaps there never was a very first
in which they use the concepts of map voyage that scattered the seeds of hu-
and rhizome almost i­ nterchangeably over man habitation in the world’s space.
­several passages: But we do know of the last of them, of
poles conquered, deserts crossed, wil-
Make a map not a tracing! […] What distinguish­ derness invaded. This is the end of all
es the map from the tracing is that it is entirely voyages. All possible encounters have
oriented toward an experimentation in contact been accomplished, undertaken, end-
with the real. […] The map is open and connect­
ed, foreclosed. The cycle is completed,
able in all of its dimensions; it is detachable, re­
versible, susceptible to constant modification.
the map of the earth has covered the
It can be torn, reversed, adapted to any kind of earth. Space is inscribed upon the
mounting, reworked by an individual, group, or charts. The globe is perceived as a ball
social formation. […] The map has to do with per­ in a net of latitudes and longitudes.
formance, whereas the tracing always involves —Michel Serres
an alleged “competence.”9
The tension between “voyages” and “charts”
According to Deleuze and Guattari, a is well documented by David Neufeld, a
tracing is nothing more than a reductive historian of the Western Arctic and Yukon
reproduction of given assumptions. Mak­ Territory. His text “Learning to Drive the
ing a map, on the other hand, becomes a Yukon River: Western Cartography and
productive and often physical engagement Athapaskan Story Maps” examines how
with a territory that conditions the rhyth­ artifacts and landscapes necessarily em­
mic relations of time and space. body different, possibly conflicting, cul­
Deleuze and Guattari’s laudatory esti- tural narratives, and questions how to
mation of the practice of mapping finds deal with these differences productively.
ample support within the history of carto­ Through his estimation of cartographic
graphy. The Polynesian stick chart, for difference, the practice of the curator
example, emphasizes subjectivity, embo­- finds especially valuable clues. By remain­
di­ment, direct experience, and connectiv­ ing particularly sensitive to the idea that
ity. Used at least until the end of World different peoples’ stories and histories
War II to canoe from atoll to atoll and “have shaped the way they experience,
island to island in the Marshall Islands understand, and respond to the physical
region of the Pacific Ocean, these maps world,” 11 curators can unfold new rela­
were constructed as open frameworks tions to previously discounted modes of
from coconut fronds and tiny seashells to knowledge production and dissemina­
symbolize ocean swells, and the wave and tion, and the values that attend to them.
crest patterns of the ocean surface. Made Neufeld uses a comparison between set­-
by the navigators themselves, these maps tler and native mapping techniques from
reflected their individual, physical experi­ the Dawson City region as a means to dis­
ence in the open sea, varying so much in cuss issues of identity and cultural and
interpretation and form that they were environ­mental coexistence in the area
readable solely to the author-cartographer. of the Yukon River. The quintessential
Contrary to many other navigation tech­ experience that he recounts from his field­
niques, the charts were not taken along on work revolves around the oral instructions

245 The Museum as...

 Clement Valla, “Postcards From Google Earth
(33°52'37.41"N, 118°11'22.05"W)”; courtesy the artist.

Excess
“Victor Henry’s Map, July 2006,” photo
of the yard which the river man dabbled
with his stick to explain the moving is-
lands to historian David Neufeld. Photo:
D. Neufeld.
A Burmese map of the world, showing traces of Medieval European map-making. From R.C. Temple,
The Thirty-Seven Nats: A Phase of Spirit-Worship Prevailing in Burma [1906]. Chromolithograph.
Asian and Middle Eastern Division, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations.

246
given to him from an indigenous elder on ultimately bear within them an emblem of
how to navigate the site of his historical violent colonial conquest.
and anthropological research. When con­ Like maps, curatorial projects are social
sulted, the man uses a stick to scribble a constructions—“narrative spaces”—that
pattern of a crucial part of the Yukon River— shape our understanding of place and space.
a conglomeration of sandbars and islands— In Boris Groys’ estimation, “Every exhibi­
into the ground. To the historian, these tion tells a story by directing the viewer
signs are as cryptic as the advice he is sent through the exhibition in a particular
on his way with: “Just watch [the island in order; the exhibition space is always a
front of you], when it starts to move, turn narrative space.”16 From this perspective,
and head towards the next island. […] And we can see how Neufeld’s description of
when that island starts to move, turn away the two histories of map-making also sug­
and you’re through.”12 When Neufeld and gest two approaches to curatorial practice.
his team reach the area by boat the sand­ If traditional museums have organized
bars do indeed appear, shift, and disappear artifacts according to a particular history—
in the water. But by following the instruc­ in fact, using the artifacts to support and
tions the boat actually makes it through represent that very history and construct
the tricky area without running aground. a particular identity17—contemporary cura­
In retrospect, Neufeld tries in vain to torial practice can work to become more
find a rational explanation for the encoun­ vulnerable and attentive to radically dif­
tered phenomena and states instead that ferent, and differentiated, decisions and
the elder’s experiential description is less actions that create meaning and place. This
about objective investigation than “about trajectory finds a compelling resonance
journeys and the relationships exercised with Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of a
during travel.”13 While the First Nations “smooth” space, particularly when curato­
river man’s story-map of “moving islands” rial projects are designed as “an amorphous
conveys his knowledge as conditioned by collection of juxtaposed pieces that can be
a participatory relationship with the land joined together in an infinite number of
(in the sense of a “co-production of a shared ways.”18 Operating from within the tenta­
world”), the settler approach is historically tive territory of a smooth space, a curator-
grounded in scientific, mathematical data- cartographer can partake in making palp­
collection and guided by the endeavour to able worlds moved by fluxes and intensities
master the surrounding world; it is detached more than by clear-cut, easy-to-grasp
through an aerial perspective and oriented subject-object relations.
toward future outcomes such as “settlement,
Moving Islands
development, and production.”14 While the
indigenous map is based on an engagement The matter at hand is: things that
with a particular place in a specific time, resist discourse, things that cut our
creating a sense of vibrant geography ac­ tongues, and for which we have no
tualised through the act of travelling, set­ words—things whose only spectator
tler cartography assumes that the objects is a savage.
in the world are real when they are object­ —Vincent Normand
ive and independent from the cartograph­
er, leading to maps that are “ethnocentric The exhibition Journeys: How Travelling
images […producing] an empty land […] of Fruit, Ideas and Buildings Rearrange Our
unexploited resources and opportunity.”15 Environment, held at the Canadian Cen­
This notion of neutrality is, of course, an tre for Architecture in 2010–2011, is an
illusion that relies on a colonial ideology. exemplary case of a curatorial approach
Since the mid-nineteenth century, the long­ that amorphously juxtaposed a number
itudes and latitudes of the common, abstract of different spaces—a thematic exhibition
grid have been modelled according to physi­ with different rooms and sub-topics, a
cal space/time synchronization with the book composed of theory disguised as
chronometer on the Greenwich prime me­ short stories, a web platform and a series
ridian at the Royal Observatory in London. of live events—while fostering a sense of
The grid is thus a direct historical outcome both navigational openness and concep­
of colonial British maritime power; instead tual connectedness. Curated by Giovanna
of territorial neutrality, the settlers’ maps Borasi and designed by Martin Beck, Jour-

247 ...Archipelago
 Scapegoat
­ ieutenant I.
Cook; Discovr’d by Captn.

1767.” Rare Map Collec-

tion of the State Library
or Otaheite Lying in the
of King Georges Island

­Wallice the 19th June,

of North South Wales,

James Cook, “A Plan
“A Map of Vesuvius Showing the Directions of the
Streams of Kava in the Eruptions from 1631 AD to

South Sea, by L
1831 AD,” John Auldjo, Sketches of Vesuvius: With
Short Accounts of its Principal Eruptions, From the

Sydney.
Commencement of the Christian Era to the Present

248
Time, (Naples: G. Glass, 1832). Houghton Library,
Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.
neys confronted the phenomenon of global a frame—a grid structure—that signifies
transformation and hybridization precisely the affirmation and unification of certain
by examining the production of space ideas and values by excluding a great num­
through displacement, dislocation, and ber of others. This exclusionary aspect
movement. Borasi and her curatorial team is something the feminist thinker and
considered how our physical surroundings curator Lucy Lippard has confronted in
are incessantly subjected to exchange pro­- her curatorial work. Reminiscent of the
cesses occurring across architectural, en­- “vibrant geography” acknowledged and
vironmental, and geo-political planes, produced through indigenous mapping
triggering material changes which ultim­ techniques, Lippard’s practice sees sites
ately feed back into shaping the realities and places as crucial elements of meaning­
of the people affected. In order to invite ful art prac­t ice. In her words,
visitors to navigate this assemblage, the
exhibition was organized as a compilation Art that illuminates its location rather than just
occupying it is place-specific […], incorporating
of 15 thematic narrative zones visually
people and economic and historical forces as
distinguished by a colour scheme and well as topography. It usually ‘takes place’ outside
mapped out according to a glossary of 15 of conventional venues that entice audiences
concepts serving as frames for the case through publicity and fashion. It is not closet­
studies. The exhibits themselves included ed in ‘white cubes,’ accessible only when admis-
a diverse array of archival documents, mu­ sion is paid or boundaries are breached. It is not
seological and mundane objects, antique readable only to those in the know. […] It makes
books, maquettes, maps, plans, videos, il­- places mean more to those who live or spend
lustrations, art photography and, faithful time in them.”20 Like in the two types of map­
ping described by Neufeld, or the concepts of
to its title, even a coconut drifting through
smooth and striated space in Deleuze and Guat-
ocean currents. It was through this divers­ tari, the difference for Lippard is signalled by
ity and unconventional composition that the her emphatic refusal of the alleged objectivity
exhibition could provoke discoveries based or neutrality of the gallery space.
on tensions, correlations, and curiosities.
While Deleuze and Guattari were dev­ In comparing the roles of the cartogra­
eloping their innovative spatio-philoso­ pher and the curator, we might now ask
phical concepts of smooth and striated more directly: what does Antillean phil­
space in A Thousand Plateaus, the differ­ osopher Édouard Glissant mean when he
ence between the ideology of the modern­ says, “I imagine the museum as an archi­
ist White Cube (as articulated by Brian pelago”? Essential to Glissant’s notion of
O’Doherty) and the decentring strategies the archipelago is the idea of a fragmented
of Lucy Lippard (based on the work of Dan territory that cannot be reconciled under
Graham and Robert Smithson, among a collective identity but which instead
others) was being argued in the realms of must accept individual identities as the
art theory and scholarship. Echoing the diverse multiplicities which they always
critique of the illusionary construction of are. Like a Dymaxion Map, a “moving
settlers’ maps, O’Doherty argued in a series islands” story map, or a Polynesian stick
of essays published in Artforum that the chart, the curator operates on the institu­
White Cube of the modernist gallery space tion to make it leak; curatorial practice, as
is built upon an illusion of neutrality: “The a cartography of the fluid, works to create a
white wall’s apparent neutrality is an illu­ decentred space that does not operate ac-
sion. It stands for a community with com­ cording to absoluteness, objectivity, or
mon ideas and assumptions. […] The deve­ synthesis, but rather invites a multiplicity
lopment of the pristine, placeless white of interconnections brought about by con­
cube is one of modernism’s triumphs—a jecture, memory, sensation, excess, and
development commercial, esthetic, and reflexivity. In moving toward this curator­
technological.”19 Accordingly, the art dis­ ial invitation, we could do worse than to
played in the context of this “void” is set appropriate James Corner’s description of
apart from the world and can seemingly mapping as our own cartographic guide:
take on its own life, existing independently
As both analogue and abstraction, then, the sur-­
from social, historical, or political contin­ face of the map functions like an operating table,
gencies. What really is the case, ­however, a staging ground or a theatre of operations upon
is that the architecture of the cube ­becomes which the mapper collects, combines, connects,

249 ...Archipelago
 Excess
Bartholomeo Eustachi, Tabulae anatomicae, Table
18, engraved anatomical plates, 1783. US National
Library of Medicine, Bethesda, MD.
Untitled world map on a double hemisphere polar
projection with each hemisphere drawn onto 36
gores by Antonius Florianus, estimated before

250
1566. Rare Map Collection of the State Library of
North South Wales, Sydney.
 marks, masks, relates and generally explores. cartographer establishes an attitude to­
These surfaces are massive collection, sorting wards the world that partakes in ­making
and transfer sites, great fields upon which real the world. Like a voyage through interm­
material conditions are isolated, indexed and inably moving islands, curatorial practice,
placed within an assortment of relational struc­-
to be effective as a navigational practice,
­t ures. 21
would necessarily become vulnerable to
If the curator acts as a cartographer, then physical contact, improbable exchange,
mapping becomes her technique, and the and collaborative experimentation; such
map can be understood as the product of vulnerabilities would undoubtedly lead
her work. This would not be limited to floor the curator far from the safety of the illu­
plans, didactics, or curatorial statements; sory horizons of representation, which is
such a method is inclusive of the curator­ all the better for her construction of fic­
ial practice as a mode of knowledge pro­- tions, both real and imagined.
duction. In other words, the curator as

“Plate XI: Section from a Chart of 324,198 Stars on an Equal Surface Projection”
from Richard A. Proctor, “Statement of Views Respecting the Sidereal Universe,”
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 33, no. 6 (1873): 547.

251 The Museum as...

 Endnotes 10 See Dirk H.R. Spennemann, “Traditional and
Nineteenth Century Communication Patterns in
1 See Trevor Paglen, “Experimental Geography: From the Marshall Islands,” Micronesian Journal of the
Cultural Production to the Production of Space,” in Humanities and Social Sciences 4, no. 1, (2005):
Experimental Geography, ed. Nato Thompson (New 25–52; a less academic treatment of the stick
York: iCi, 2009), 28–30. charts can be found in a section about mental maps
2 See, for example, Irit Rogoff, “Smuggling: An in Ken Jennings, Maphead (New York: Scribner,
Embodied Criticality,” European Institute for 2012), 20–21.
Progressive Cultural Policies, 2006, http://eipcp. 11 David Neufeld, “Learning to Drive the Yukon River:
net/dlfiles/rogoff-smuggling; and Maria Lind, “On Western Cartography and Athapaskan Story Maps,”
the Curatorial,” in Selected Maria Lind Writing, ed. Rachel Carson Center Perspectives 4 (2011): 22.
Brian Kuan Wood (Berlin/New York: Sternberg Here I also want to express my gratitude to the artist
Press, 2010), 63–66. For positions that specifically Charles Stankievech, not only for introducing me
address the relationship to artistic practice, see to part-time life in the Yukon, and to David Neufeld,
Beatrice von Bismarck, “Curatorial Criticality: but also for the many inspiring discussions we had
On the Role of Freelance Curators in the Field of while I was writing this essay.
Contemporary Art,” Oncurating 9 (2007): 19–23; 12 Ibid., 26.
and Boris Groys, Art Power (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT 13 Ibid., 36.
Press, 2008), 43–52. 14 Ibid., 35.
3 T he oldest preserved world map originates from 15 Ibid. See also Harley, “Maps, Knowledge and Power,”
Babylonia, ninth ­century BC. 303: “Maps as an impersonal type of knowledge
4 J.B. Harley, “Maps, Knowledge, and Power,” in The tend to ‘desocialise’ the territory they represent.”
Iconography of Landscape, ed. Denis Cosgrove and 16 Groys, Art Power, 43.
Stephen Daniels (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer- 17 See, for instance, Tony Bennett, “The Exhibitionary
sity Press, 1988), 282. Complex”, in Thinking About Exhibitions, ed. Reesa
5 James Corner, “The Agency of Mapping: Specula- Greenberg, Bruce W. Ferguson and Sandy Nairne
tion, Critique and Invention,” in Mappings, ed. (London: Routledge, 1996), 58–79, for a seminal
­Denis Cosgrove (London: Reaktion, 1999), 213. text that critiques the traditional museum institu-
6 Harley, “Maps, Knowledge, and Power,” 283. tion as a bourgeois tool for producing certain
7 Corner, “The Agency of Mapping,” 216. desired social values and ideals within its viewing
8 See R. Buckminster Fuller, Critical Path (New York: public. Bennett shows not only how the arrange-
St. Martins Press, 1981). A predecessor of the ment of objects but also their display architecture
Dymaxion Map is the Butterfly Map developed at and viewing rituals are directly connected to a
the beginning of the twentieth century by Bernard rationalist approach and identitarian and territorial
J.S. Cahill. politics of representation.
9 Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand 18 Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 476.
Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. 19 Brian O’Doherty, Inside the White Cube: The Ideo­
Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: Minnesota University logy of the Gallery Space (San Francisco: The Lapis
Press, 1987), 12. Press, 1986), 79.
20 Lucy Lippard, Longing and Belonging: From
­ araway Nearby (Santa Fe: SITE Santa Fe,
the F
1995), 114.
21 C orner, “The Agency of Mapping,” 215.

Bio

Anna-Sophie Springer co-directs K. Verlag, an independent press exploring the book

as a site for exhibitions, in Berlin. She has an MA in Contemporary Art Theory from
Goldsmiths College London and is currently completing the programme “Cultures of
the Curatorial,” Academy of Visual Arts, Leipzig. She has worked for several years as an
editor at the pioneering German theory publisher Merve Verlag, where she is editing a
forthcoming collection of texts on art by Hélène Cixous. She also works as an indepen-
dent curator and is a 2013 member of SYNAPSE, the International Curators’ Network at
Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin. Besides many contracts as editor and translator in the
art field, her essays and interviews have appeared in C Magazine, Fillip, Rheinsprung11,
and Scapegoat.

252 Scapegoat
253 ...Archipelago
ded
at

paces

Extrapolations on
Deleuze, Groups,
and Power
—An
Interview
with
Sylvère Lotringer

254
255
Sylvère Lotringer is the General Editor of Semiotext(e), Professor
Emeritus in the Department of French and Romance Philology at
Columbia University, and a Professor of Foreign Philosophy and
Jean Baudrillard Chair at the European Graduate School. In both
his work as editor and in his own writing, his has been a key voice
in relaying the insights of French theory to America and developing
their implications in the registers of culture, art, and philosophy.
Following his lecture on the consequences of indebtedness for art-
ists and the professionalization of the art world during the LA Art
Book Fair in February 2013, Scapegoat met with Sylvère at his home
to discuss theories of excess, group dynamics, and the legacy of
Deleuze in architecture culture. What follows is an edited tran-
script of our conversation.1
Scapegoat Says into English. 3 Foucault’s books were not
The question of ex-
cess is everywhere in evidence. I was translated either, so we were interces­
just reading this morning about a wild sors in the sense that there were no texts
monkey attack in South Sulawesi, Indo- available in English. We were short-
nesia, where people—who are en­croach- circuit­ing the whole academic project.
­ing more and more on the habitat of the We just intro­duced the work to people
monkeys—were attacked during a serious who didn’t real­ly have the context and
rampage through the village. didn’t know what it was about. So, in that
sense, we were intercessors because we
Sylvère Lotringer That is where politics just allowed something to happen—but it
starts… didn’t work!

SS Before we get to politics of this schizo- SS But the historical argument being
eden, can we start with some history? made, at least by Brott, is that there
There has been a lot of work on Deleuze is a clear connection from Semio­
lately, including some texts that have text(e) to Zone Books, Sanford Kwin­
tried to historicize the project of Semi- ter, Jonathan Crary, etc., ­people who,
otext(e) as an intercessor of Deleuze, in her estimation, are well-known and
which is the claim made by Simone read in the world of architecture.
Brott. 2 While much of this work fails
SL Of course there is this connection.
to address the depth of Deleuze’s
philosophical project, it nevertheless Kwinter, as you know, was one of my stu-
brings up the question of Deleuze’s dents and I knew him well. Zone people
relationship to architecture and the are a bit more problematic because when
broader forms of cultural production I knew them, at first, they were more in-
and discourse related to architecture ­terested in Derrida. Zone was really the
today. Putting aside the philosophical antithesis of Semiotext(e); it was rich,
questions for the moment, historical­ly beautiful, and full of money. I had a dis-
speaking, would you agree that Semi- cussion with one of the founders who
otext(e) was an intercessor for Deleu- laughed at me because, he said at the time,
ze in architecture? Deleuze was of no importance. It was the
same way that people from the Frankfurt
SL School said that French thought was of
Well, it depends on what you mean
by the term “intercessor.” Obviously, I no importance whatsoever. But Kwinter
realized this yesterday, because when went back to France, took Deleuze’s clas­
we did the Schizo-Culture conference, ses and became a total Deleuzian, which
Anti-Oedipus had not yet been translated is okay. But, all these people, including

256 Scapegoat
Sanford [Kwinter] and Jonathan [Crary], books. It is true that many people had no
I had them in class and there was a con- idea what they were about, but, still today,
nection there, but when I knew them they wherever I go I meet people who read this
were not interested in architecture. theory for the first time in the 1970s and
1980s. Obviously, I guess, architects were
SS C
 oming out of the deconstruction there too.
culture that focused so much on Der-
rida, it took some time before the SS You published On the Line and
material and political dimensions of Nomad­­ology before the translations
Deleuze were really engaged. Did by Minnesota Press came out. 4
this happen through architecture?
SL Rhizome came out in France imme-
SL diately after Anti-Oedipus. There was pres-
It took a long time. Derrida started
in 1966, at Johns Hopkins, and it quickly sure to publish more, and they also wrote
became part of the golden triangle of de- Kafka, which is an even better book.5 Still,
­construction—Hopkins, Yale, Cornell. there wasn’t the same interest in archi-
I participated in that, but I was never real- tecture at the time as there is now.
­ly a part of it. In 1972, I went to a confer-
ence at Cornell, and everyone was very SS In 1989 you published Foucault Live,
excited there even though it was a rela- in which he says there is no such thing
tively small group, but none of them were as liberation through architecture. It
architects. They became disciples of Paul is a passage that is very important
de Man, and this went up to the 1990s. for architects to consider:
I do not think that there is anything
S S Even now, with eco-deconstruction that is functionally—by its very nature—
and eco-criticism, there is still a clear absolutely liberating. Liberty is a prac-
emphasis on Derrida and de Man. t­ ice. So there may, in fact, always be
a certain number of projects whose
SL I think it was really an accident that aim is to modify some constraints, to
ended it—the discovery of Paul de Man’s loosen, or even to break them, but
anti-Semitic past; that really did it for him none of these projects can, ­simply by
in America. As soon as there is something its nature, assure that people will
a little dangerous, academia says no, Am­er- have liberty automatically, that it
ica says no, and that’s that. But, it had no- will be established by the ­project
thing to do with deconstruction itself. We itself. The liberty of men [sic] is never
could have hoped that deconstruction assured by the institutions and laws
would just deconstruct itself, but it didn’t intended to guarantee them. This is
happen that way. why almost all of these laws and insti-
tutions are quite capable of being
SS In the context of the various lines of turned around—not because they are
French theory, do you think Semio- ambiguous, but simply because “lib-
text(e) had more influence on archi- erty” is what must be exercised. 6
tecture than other areas or discours-
SL
es? There was an architecture issue What he means is that everything
of the magazine…it was the biggest is reversible. That is what capitalism is
book Semiotext(e) ever did! about—creating ambivalences.
SL That was a bit blind, maybe. But ar- SS During your talk at the book fair, you
chitecture was not connected to the other said that when you had a good re­-
arts until the mid-1980s, or even the late- sponse from your readers to a parti-
1980s. There was maybe a gallery or two cular issue of the magazine you would
who would show architecture as an art change your course, or the trajectory
object, and then, like photography, archi- of the project, because you didn’t
tecture came into the art world. Semio­ want to maintain an authority. Was
text(e) had a wide audience that was not this a way, in the Foucauldian sense
limited to any one discourse. People who I just mentioned, of provoking prac-
were interested in ideas were reading our tices of liberty?

257 Extrapolations on Deleuze...

SL that we should not have introductions
Well, of course this is part of it, but
our strategies came mostly from Deleuze. because people would fight over them.
First of all, it is not about subjects—or the Because of that, there were no introduc-
Subject. Semiotext(e) is about how to deal tions for most of the books.
with culture, how can we create groups
within a culture, and what is the forma- SS So that no one could be the inter­
tion process; I have always been very in- mediary?
terested in the concept of the group. I was
very close with Guattari at the time. But S L No, the problem we had was that
it was not just Guattari, because I have I was the highest ranking in the group
been involved in groups since I was 9 or because I was an Assistant Professor.
10 years old! I was in a youth movement, The others were graduate students. At
a Zionist political movement, then when first, I had the idea that it didn’t matter,
I was at the Sorbonne I was among the because we were all equal—but we were
“leaders” of the movement there; I have not all equal. So, we needed a way to en-
always been organizing and working in sure that the black hole of power remained
groups, but with a kind of ambivalent empty. I wanted to take care of this place
relationship to the group. The group is of power; the constant problem was to
always something that gives ideas new make power something that was not, and
potential and new energy, but it is also is not, desirable. And, to make it impos-
very dangerous and volatile. I was always sible. After a while, I said, I will be the
very aware of this with Semiotext(e), so general editor—my idea was that I owed
I was constantly trying to prevent the everything to everyone. I couldn’t do the
group from becoming a group. design, I couldn’t do all the work of pro-
duction; it wasn’t about money, because
SS By constantly reinventing it? no one had money. So we never had a prob­-
lem with money.
SL But, to go back to Schizo-Culture 1, we
I wasn’t thinking this so precisely at
the time. But, for example, after Schizo- were working with artists, some from
Culture 1, we were supposed to do another uptown and some from downtown. The
issue; it’s announced on the back cover. uptown artists started to get uptight
I said, “No, if it works for the first one, because the issue wasn’t accepted by
we shouldn’t make another because that Richard Serra. Kathryn Bigelow was
is what people expect.” There was some part of this episode, too. Anyway, they
arrogance in this, too, but because we came to the meeting and said that Serra
knew that we were in New York, and didn’t like it, so it was shit. I thought they
people had their eyes on us, we would wanted to work on it, but they also really
not give them what they wanted. In the wanted it to pay off somehow. When the
United States, if you give people what payoff wasn’t there, they walked out. But
they want they just spit on it! a friend of mine, the girlfriend of Sol Le-
Witt who introduced me to all the older
S S So, then you did the issue on the artists, and who was older than the others
­Italian Autonomia? 7 in the group, sent me a note that said,
“Don’t worry, I’m with you!”
SL A few days later, Kathryn came back.
We did Polysexuality, then the Italian
issue. 8 The idea was to move the bigger Serra had apologized and said he liked the
group, the group of our readers, but also issue, but he didn’t know why he hadn’t
to make sure that we couldn’t solidify, that been invited! So, the artists were happy
we couldn’t stratify inside our smaller and wanted to immediately work on the
group. Even the first issue of Semiotext(e) next issue. I decided to wait a bit, and we
was actually the second issue. The first moved on to Polysexuality instead.
issue was stolen! Kidnapped, actually. It I was trying to make sure there was
was just a mimeographed copy, so not no concentration of power. Of course,
really anything important, but I went I freaked out when I realized the art
to Mexico and left it. When I came back, world was with me! And, the art world
the issue had been published—with a was even nice at the time—there were no
foreword—and that is when I realized threats and no luxury, like now. But, from

258 Excess
the beginning, I knew it was a bad idea to S S The Intervention Series cultivates
be indebted to someone or something that this as well. I’d like to talk about the
wants you to keep repeating yourself. relation of these texts as contempo-
rary interventions to the broader proj-
SS 
Moving to your more recent Interven­ ect of Semiotext(e).
tion Series, I am curious if these pub-
SL Tiqqun’s are good books that sold
lications, like those by Tiqqun, have
found any place in the art world today?9 well. I wasn’t crazy about the Bloom book
because it is heavily on the post-Situation­
SL I met Tiqqun a long time ago and I ist side of their work.10 I make a few con-
was thrilled that there was something cessions once in a while, and that was one.
happening in France; intellectually, it The Femicide Machine is another story. It
had been a desert for a while. I liked their is an amazing book, and the intellectual
style, even though I didn’t care for the framework is careful and thorough. Sergio
conspiratorial, small-sect kind of thing [González-Rodriguez] was there, in Mexi­-
they promoted. I also didn’t like their co, and he risked his life for it, so it is import-
direct references to Situationism. I dis- ant that he synthesized these experiences
covered Situationism in the US. Every- and that we could publish it.
one thinks it was so influential in France,
in 1968…I was there, and I never heard S S Did ATTA receive any of the critical
of it. My teacher, Lucien Goldmann, was attention that came with The Coming
attacked by them and I didn’t even know! Insurrection, given its discussion of
No one read the Situationists in France. It America’s war on terrorism?11
is only through the art world, when they
were aestheticized because there was no SL No, not at all. But, to first answer
longer any hope for an avant-garde, that another question you mentioned in our
the Situationists were brought in as the correspondence, about the “small series”
avant-garde that might have been. So, of Intervention books, part of it has to do
when I realized that Tiqqun was using with Hedi El Kholti. We, Semiotext(e),
them, I was concerned because the whole are trapped with MIT. Hedi and I have
political context the Situationists tried to tried to make something that could move,
develop isn’t of much use! but MIT moves very slowly. This was
But, to return to the question of the something that started with Semiotext(e)
impact of Tiqqun, I think it had more of early on. The Man Boy Love issue was
an impact on students. It was the repres- done because François Peraldi was taking
sion of the group and the reactionary ages to finish Polysexuality; he was delay-
position of Fox News that made it polit- ing the issue, and, in the meantime, I start­-
ical in the US. The public that read The ed another issue on polysexuality, Man
Coming Insurrection was much broader Boy Love. We did it in two weeks! It was
than the art world. It is, interestingly, monumental, in a small way, and people
what we always wanted to have: a young, took what they wanted from it.
activist perspective.
You used to be able to find this perspec­ SS Some of the books in the series sug-
tive in academia—people who were part of gest a strong connection to Jean
the institution but not totally integrated— Baudrillard. They are not just in a
and this was something I found with my Deleuzian lineage; instead, they use
own students. I discouraged them from be- fatal strategies!
­coming academics, even though I was one
myself! I love working with undergradu- SL We don’t have a Deleuzian lineage;
ate students because they have an open- the Deleuzian lineage is in the organiza-
ness, inventiveness, and enthusiasm that tion and existence of Semiotext(e). But,
they lose when they become grad students that is why I can integrate Baudrillard
invested in the institution; they are then so and Negri, etc. I don’t want Semiotext(e)
careful, so manipulative, and so strategic. to be a part of any lineage. So, the idea
So, yes, there were the punks, the young ac- is to read theory and to keep the edges
­tivists and the young artists, and that was fuzzy. I don’t want it to be part of that
it; it was interesting to work with them. kind of theory group. I would say the more

259 ...Groups, and Power...

theory the better, within a certain range, time is the essence of control.
and we were never trying to be exclusive, Another thing I emphasized in my talk
except for the latest return of the Althus- the other day was that the death of a maga­-
serians, and Badiou’s work, which I just zine, the death of an enterprise, is not the
didn’t like. Within a certain range, that death of you! I have been hoping this proj­
doesn’t mean we agree with everything ect would get off my back, so that gives me
we publish. I thought the last chapters of a lot of latitude. Similarly, I don’t want to
The Coming Insurrection were irrespon- know what people think about it—it is not
sible, and I was hesitant about it—not about opinions. Hedi is great because he
that I wanted to censor it. has a sense of the covers, of design, of
what should be done and what should
S S Still, you did two of the three major not, but I am too lazy. I was a student of
collections of Deleuze’s interviews [Roland] Barthes, and he was very lazy
and writings, and the film... too! I do my thing, but I don’t want to
compare it to what is being done at the
SL time. I have an idea, and as long as the
I have said that Jean-Luc Godard
makes films, but they are scripts. I want­- idea works, then it works.
ed to have the Deleuze film, just like that,
as a script. I was trying to get it, but it took SS You have recently selected some very
15 years. By the time we put it out, he was specific translations from Peter Sloter­-
already everyone’s love. But, I wanted to dijk that introduce his work to an Eng-
put it out because it shows how Deleuze lish-speaking audience. Of course, as
was a philosopher even when he is not we know, there are many disagree-
talking about philosophy. That is exactly ments between Sloterdijk, Tiqqun,
the kind of philosophy I like, and the the Deleuzians, etc. So there’s more
kind of philosophy he liked—philosophy to the story about breaking up the
for non-philosophers. When it finally lineage, is there not?
arrived, the film didn’t have the effect
I had hoped for earlier on. I was trying SL There are stories within stories, yes.
to cut off the Deleuzian appropriation, I I read about Sloterdijk in Italy. They were
suppose, which was also why I published reading him there in pirated copies that
the book French Theory, with Sande were translated and they told me about
Cohen.12 I was for and against it. him. It wasn’t translated in French. I read
some Italian, so I could read it and I was
SS You were against the appropriation of excited by his work. So, the situation is
Deleuze by academics and your own like that of Deleuze. I ask myself, “Why
attempt to re-appropriate Deleuze didn’t I publish Anti-Oedipus?” I could
from them? have published it for a fee of $750.00.
Right? But, it was a huge translation. We
SL weren’t equipped to do that, or to even
I don’t think there is a p
­ ossibility of
not re-appropriating. You cannot avoid it. publish it, really. So, Deleuze was pub-
If there is Schizo-Culture 1, then no Schizo- lished by Les Éditions de Minuit. But, a
Culture 2. You can’t avoid it. I knew 15 few years later, all the presses that didn’t
years ago that Guattari would have his want Deleuze were industrializing their
day, too, and it has been going on for five production! So, I made a special effort
or six years. That is a nice thing about and we published the last two books of
America—it is very predictable. Deleuze, not because we had just become
From the beginning, I have to say, I interested in Deleuze, but I wanted to
worked against the pace that is imposed. make sure that because we introduced
There is nothing you can do about the him, we would also put out these works
appropriation of Deleuze by academics, which are serious too.
you have to let it pass. Some of the things So, to come back to Sloterdijk, we are
I do now have taken over 20 years. I am going to do the rest of the Spheres, too. We
not dead yet, but the film took almost 20 thought, why not break the house? It is
years. The return of the Italians took 30 expensive!
years. I was always in favour of this, though,
because time is not the essence; in Ameri­ca, SS Architects love it…

260 Scapegoat
SL I was hoping so! SS Do you think the re-issuing of the
other magazines, such as the Italian
SS It is very spatial; it is almost too easy issue, with a new preface, is part of
for architects. They are ready to ap­- this struggle for context?
propriate it, and they have already
SL
started to use him, for example, to ex- The preface for the Italian issue was
plain their love of spray foam. written at the time of the original issue.
I was desperately trying to attract atten-
SL I think Sloterdijk is an original think- tion to the issue, but no one wanted it. So,
er. The Left in Germany hates him because we published it as a context in the re-issue.
of it, but he also makes these terrible goofs.
You know? About taxes, all of that. We SS Outside of Semiotext(e), you have
don’t condone that, of course, but other­ written quite a lot as well. What are
wise, it gets so stuffy with another book you working on now?
by Badiou, etc. We can feel good about
this book by Sloterdijk because it is very SL I am working on three books. One on
creative and it makes you want to think. Cioran, but in French, because no one
That is the important thing. We don’t reads him here!
want to be in a lineage, but we want to
publish people who allow us to think SS I have been reading Cioran myself
about how to change life, change politics, over the last few years; I think people
and he does that. So, I think it was a good must be reading him in English, but
idea, even though in France the whole he is so incredibly hard because he
series is entirely published already and it provokes such incredible doubt.
didn’t make any impact.
SL Like Baudrillard plus! But, I am very
SS What about Schizo-Culture? Is it interested in his fascist years, as a way of
coming out again? thinking about nationalism and how one
becomes a fascist. Also, there is a piece
SL he wrote in the 1970s about the Jews,
It will be out in Fall 2013. It is a double
volume: the issue itself, and then we collect­- called “In Praise of the Jews.” That trig-
ed, transcribed, and edited all of the other gered my interest; of course, I knew Cio-
lectures that were given there, and reac- ran, but that text is just so twisted. So I
tions of people who attended. I was busy have been working in Romanian libraries,
today because there is an artist in Chicago and doing so many other things. Unfor-
who is restaging the panel with R.D. Laing tunately, when I start a book, there are a
and Foucault, and we were just finishing million things that are waiting. So, I pub-
it this week. I made a video introduction lish an article, and I say I will get back
for it. to it, but I never have time. It is the same
Hedi said it would only interest a few with the Foucault-Baudrillard essay, which
academics, but I have been wanting to I am working on as a book, including more
do it for years. I wanted more! Not just on Deleuze. It is really a way of t­ alking
the issue, but the context. So, it’s coming about Deleuze and Guattari, whom I have
out, and I have been working with a young never written about! Did you know that?
English graduate who is going through
the archive, even though there is no visu­- SS Maybe not directly.
al documentation.
But, if you look at the footnotes of Fou- SL Sure, Semiotext(e) was enough, it was
cault Live, for example, you can see that my Deleuzian project. But, it is not a com-
I introduced some things to make people mentary, or, perhaps it is a commentary,
curious about it, even if it couldn’t be the kind Deleuze would have liked? Have
found. You have to prepare a long time, you read Lazzarato’s The Making of the
20 years is nothing. But, everyone wants Indebted Man?13
it now, and it will be completely institu-
tionalized. SS Not yet, just The Violence of Financial
Capitalism so far. 14

261 ...An Interview with...

SL You should read it! It is a good book. If you start with debt, like Deleuze and
I mention him because he is of the new Guattari, and Nietzsche, that is one direc­
generation of Italians. Lazzarato takes tion; Baudrillard is also Nietzschean, but
hints from Deleuze, and he splits from for him, debt is not given, it is created.
Negri to open up a reading of the present. The goal is to dissipate it or burn it out to
It is not commentary. He takes a central make sure it doesn’t infect everything else.
passage from Anti-Oedipus where they There is a parallel between them, but it is
mention Nietzsche’s concept of debt, and the exact reversal of approach.
he opens it to the present debt-economy.
It is interesting because he shows that SS In your introduction to The Agony of
debt precedes exchangeability, which is Power, which is such an excellent
not so for Baudrillard, who thinks it is reading of the problem of power, you
the reverse. discuss Étienne de la Boétie and
explain how Baudrillard takes up his
SS At the book fair, you said that the pro­ notion of servitude through an argu-
fessionalization of art as competen- ment about the dissipation of power.
cy is fine, but professionalization as
SL
debt is a serious problem because it Thank you for saying so; not so many
ensures that your competencies can people read my work. I am not really
only be expressed to pay down your known as a writer. But that text is only
debt. This guarantees the present will a beginning, an introduction to a book I
reproduce itself in the future. wanted to write, but I had a death in my
family and I could not go on writing it.
SL Exactly. When I met Negri, Bifo, and Still, I am not known as a writer of philo­
the others, they were against the trade sophy.
unions. The unions represented power,
and so they were against the unions. In- SS When will you finally bring all your
stead they wanted cottage industries, self- texts together, so we can read them
valorization, smaller work that was special- in one place and see how persistently
ized, and over the years, that is exactly you have been writing about these
what happened. They had announced questions?
post-Fordism! Their ideal was pre-post-
capitalist. They think the General Intel- SL I am working on it now, but it doesn’t
lect is great, but it is totally ambivalent. connect enough yet. I am editing it, add-
Virilio showed that, and, if you read Bau- ing some things, trying to make it connect.
drillard, from the very beginning, he It will be called Extrapolations. It starts
shows that this ambivalence is what capi- from architecture, then moves to Lefebvre,
talism produces; everything is reversible. Baudrillard, and Virilio, as it tries to move
through French Theory in some way.
SS The early work of Baudrillard also
gives us an important theory of SS In the introduction, you also give an
excess. important reading of Pierre Clastres
when you say, “Contrary to the sove­
SL Baudrillard is the thinker of excess. reign, the Indian Chiefs are remark-
He knew that when you move from sub- able for their complete lack of author-
sistence to industrial production, there ity. The only power they own resides
is a surplus. He was from a peasant fami­ly in the palabra, in their capacity to
and he knew that well, what the difference maintain by their speeches an equi-
was. In The System of Objects, which I have librium within the group.”15
been writing about again, he shows that
when things become exchangeable, there SL That’s me, maybe?
is a surplus. He was thinking of Mauss
and Bataille, obviously. There was a great SS Maybe Palabra should be the title of
article he wrote about Bataille that criti­ your book?
cized the cosmic reach of the general econ­-
omy, but he was the one who really worked SL A good idea.
on this problem!

262 Excess
SS Clastres, in the Society Against the being mentioned because we know it
State, makes an argument about the doesn’t matter, but I still notice. The point
dissipation of power; I think Semio- is to have a project, like an artwork. You
text(e) accomplishes this through pub­- don’t make it in order to please people or
lishing. That is what the project is to compete with someone. Everything
about, at least in part, isn’t it? else that comes in the way of the project
you have to push out. Again, it is not be­-
SL It’s true. I met Pierre through Félix, cause I want to impose authority, but be-
but when he was very young he had a car cause the project has to be there. You have
accident and he died. But I thought his to create walls to make sure you are not
ideas were great. I thought to myself from tempted by power. It is a matter of strat-
the very beginning about how I could be egy, which is all from Deleuze and Guat-
a chief and have no power. I needed every­ tari. In a way, it is also from Kafka, from
one for the project to work, and I had to “A Report to the Academy”…
help them in other ways, with fellowships,
funding, references, and I tried to be an SS “Esteemed Gentlemen of the Acade­-
intercessor of the group itself. my! You show me the honour of call-
Also, there is an idea that is very diffi­ ing upon me to submit a report to the
cult for Americans to understand: it is Academy concerning my previous life
the project that counts. I have made films, as an ape.”16 The ape reports on his
and at the time of the credits, there is no progress of becoming human to the
fa­t her, no mother, no brother—you kill! academy not because he wants to
We co-made a film about sex, Chris and I, be human but because it is his only
called Too Sensitive to Touch. It was for the means of escape! This is precisely
Nova convention. I made it with Michael why Deleuze is a philosopher of life,
Oblowitz, who is a good friend of mine and and why his work is so much more
Kathryn’s. Even though he was a student important than any academic or pro-
of mine, a friend, and we had worked to­- fessional concerns and ambitions.
gether, I was in France at the time when
SL
he did the credits, and he was going to Yes, exactly. I am like that ape, I
junk me! I know, now, that there is al­- want a way out, I want a way out of aca-
ways a problem with acknowledgements demia, I want a way out of the art world,
and credit. I want a way out of life. But, I don’t want
So, I have to try constantly to make sure to be dead before I die—it is as simple as
the question of competitiveness doesn’t that. And, if that is the Deleuzian lineage,
come in, even my own! I don’t mind not then that’s fine…

263 ...Sylvère Lotringer

 Endnotes 8 François Peraldi, ed., Polysexuality (New York:
Semiotext(e), 1981).
1 Scapegoat would like to thank Sylvère for his gener- 9 Tiqqun, The Coming Insurrection (Los ­Angeles:
osity and mentorship, both during this conversation Semiotext(e), 2010); Tiqqun, This is Not a ­Program,
in Los Angeles and over the last four years, during trans. Joshua David Jordan (Los Angeles:
which time he has helped shape the project of this Semiotext(e), 2011); Tiqqun, Preliminary Materials for
journal and the personal projects of its editors. a Theory of the Young Girl, trans. Ariana Reines (Los
2 Simone Brott, “Deleuze and the ‘Intercessors,’” Angeles: Semiotext(e), 2012).
in Log 18 (Winter 2010): 135–151. 10 Tiqqun, Preliminary Materials for a Theory of the
3 Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus: Young Girl.
Capitalism and Schizophrenia was first published 11 Jarett Kobek, ATTA (Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), 2011).
in French in 1972, and in English in 1977. 12 Sylvère Lotringer and Sande Cohen, French Theory in
4 Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, On the Line, trans. America (New York: Routledge, 2001).
John Johnston (New York: Semiotext(e), 1983); Gilles 13 Maurizio Lazzarato, The Making of the Indebted Man:
Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Nomadology: The War Ma- An Essay on the Neoliberal Condition, trans. Joshua
chine, trans. Brian Massumi (New York: Semiotext(e), David Jordan (Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), 2012).
1986); Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand 14 Christian Marazzi, The Violence of Financial
Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Brian Capitalism, trans. Kristina Lebedeva (Los Angeles:
Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Semiotext(e), 2010).
Press, 1987). 15 Sylvère Lotringer, introduction to Jean ­Baudrillard,
5 Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Kafka: Towards a The Agony of Power, trans. Ames Hodges
Minor Literature, trans. Dana Polan (Minneapolis: (Los ­Angeles: Semiotext(e), 2010), 26. Pierre Clastres
University of Minnesota Press, 1986). (1934 –1977) was a French ethnographer and theorist
6 Michel Foucault, “Space, Knowledge, and Power,” who is best known for his field research among the
in Foucault Live: Michel Foucault Collected Inter- Guayaki (known also as the Aché people) in eastern
views, 1961–1984, ed. Sylvère Lotringer (New York: Paraguay. The concept of the "palabra" is based on
Semiotext(e), 1989), 335–347. his ethnographic study of how speeches are used as
7 Sylvère Lotringer and Christian Marazzi, eds., Auto- a mechanism to disseminate, rather than concentrate,
nomia: Post-Political Politics (Semiotext(e): New York, power.
1980). 16 Franz Kafka, “A Report to the Academy” [“Ein Bericht
für eine Akademie” (1917)] (New York: Schocken,
1995), 250–258.

264 Scapegoat
Monkeys in Water, 2013, oil and resin on wood, 50 × 40cm
Courtesy the artist and Sullivan+Strumpf.
 Less Predictable Realities
by Stanisław Lem
translation and introduction by Joanna Zylinska

The Polish writer Stanisław Lem is best known to English-speaking

readers as the author of the 1961 science fiction novel Solaris, adapted
into a meditative film by Andrei Tarkovsky in 1972, and remade in
2002 by Steven Soderbergh. Throughout his writings, comprising
dozens of science fiction novels and short stories, Lem offered
deeply philosophical and bitingly satirical reflections on the limi-
tations of both science and humanity.
In Summa Technologiae—his major work of non-fiction, first pub-
lished in 1964 and now available in English for the first time—Lem
produced an engaging and caustically logical philosophical treatise
about human and non-human life in its past, present, and future
forms. After five decades Summa Technologiae has lost none of its
intellectual or critical significance. Indeed, many of Lem’s conject­
ures about future technologies have now come true: from arti-
ficial intelligence, bionics, and nanotechnology to the dangers of
information overload, the concept underlying internet search en-
gines, and the idea of virtual reality. More important for its continued
relevance, however, is Lem’s rigorous investigation into the parallel
development of biological and technical evolution, and his conclu-
sion that technology will outlive humanity itself.
Preceding Richard Dawkins’s idea of evolution as a blind watch-
maker by more than two decades, Lem posits evolution as opportu-
nistic, short-sighted, extravagant, and illogical. Strikingly original
and persistently contemporary, Summa Technologiae resonates with
a wide range of contemporary debates about information and new
media, the life sciences, and the evolving relationship between
technology and humanity.
Intelligence: An Accident morphosis—these are just selected exam-
or a Necessity? ples. However, the regulatory mechanisms,
determined by genetic information, can
“Nonintelligent” animals and plants are only cope with the kinds of changes by
capable of adapting to changes caused by which they themselves had been selected
environmental factors—for example, by during thousands of previous generations.
seasons of the year. The evolutionary cata- The precision of instinctive behaviour be-
log of homeostatic solutions to this prob- comes ineffective when the need to find
lem is enormous. Temporary loss of leaves, new solutions arises, solutions that are not
spore dispersal, hibernation, insect meta- yet known to a given species and are thus

266 Project
 not fixed genetically. A plant, a bacterium, the organism does not achieve adaptation
or an insect, as “homeostats of the first and becomes extinct.
kind,” all have built-in ways of reacting to Organisms of the first type “know every-
changes. Using the language of cybernetics, thing in advance”; those of the second type
we can say that such systems (or beings) still need to learn what to do. An organism
are civilizations in the universe “progra- pays for the comfort of the first solution
mmed in advance” when it comes to the with its narrowness, of the second one with
range of the possible changes they should risk. The “channel” through which here-
overcome through regulation if they are ditary information is transmitted has a
to continue their existence—as well as that limited capacity, as a result of which the
of their species. Such changes are mostly number of preplanned activities cannot
of a rhythmic nature (change from day to be too high: this is what we mean by regu-
night, seasons of the year, high and low latory “narrowness.” One knowledgeably
tides), or at least of a temporary nature assumes the existence of a preliminary
(being approached by a predator, which period, during which an organism is parti-
mobilizes the innate defense mechanisms: cularly prone to errors. The cost of such
fleeing or freezing suddenly “as if one was errors for the civilizations in the universe
dead,” etc.). When it comes to changes that can be quite high and can even include
would knock an organism out of its envi- the loss of life. This is probably why both
ronmental equilibrium by “programming” of these types of regulators have survived
some unforeseeable instincts into it, the in the animal world. There are environ-
answer of the “first-order regulator” turns ments in which typical behavior, learned
out to be unsatisfactory—which results in “from the cradle,” is a more economical
a crisis. On one hand, the mortality of non- option than having to cope with the dif-
adapted organisms suddenly increases, ficulties and cost of learning from one’s
while at the same time, selection pressure mistakes. This, incidentally speaking, is
privileges some new forms (mutants). This where the “wondrous perfection” of in-
can eventually result in reactions that are stincts comes from. All this sounds fine,
necessary for survival being inscribed into but what does it mean for the general laws
“genetic programming.” On the other hand, of encephalogenesis? Does evolution al-
an exceptional opportunity arises for or- ways eventually need to produce powerful
ganisms endowed with the “second-order “second-order regulators” such as large
regulator,” that is, the brain, which—de- brains in primates? Or, if no “critical ch-
pending on the situation—is capable of anges” take place on the planet, does this
changing the “action plan” (“self-program- mean that no brains emerge on it—since
ming via learning”). There probably exists they are not needed?
a particular type, speed, and sequence of It is not easy to answer a question posed
changes (we could call this sequence “laby- in this way. The cursory understanding of
rinthine,” after the mazes in which sci- evolution usually results in a naïve idea
entists study the intelligence of animals, of progress: mammals had “bigger brains”
such as rats) that cannot be matched by than reptiles, which means “greater in-
the evolutionary plasticity of genetically telligence,” and this is why the former
determined regulators or instincts. This ultimately drove out the latter. Yet mam-
privileges the processes of the expansion mals coexisted with reptiles as marginal,
of the central nervous system as a “second- minor forms for hundreds of millions of
order” homeostatic device, that is, as a years, while reptiles reigned supreme. It
system whose task consists in producing has recently been confirmed once again
test models of various situations. The or- what amazing intelligence dolphins have in
ganism then either adapts to the altered comparison with other oceanic creatures.
environment (the rat learns how to find Despite this, they did not take control over
the exit from the maze) or adapts the en- the water kingdom. We are inclined to over-
vironment to itself (man builds civilization) estimate the role of intelligence as a“value
—and it does this “by itself,” without re- in itself.” Ashby comes up with a number
lying on any pre-prepared action plans. of interesting examples here. A “stupid”
Naturally, there also exists a third possi- rat, which is unwilling to learn, carefully
bility—that of losing, when, after having samples the food it encounters. A “clever”
created an incorrect model of a situation, rat, having learned that food is to be found

267 Less Predictable Realities

 always in the same place and at the same We should nevertheless refrain from turn­
time, seems to have a greater chance of sur- ing this “gravitation toward intelligence”
vival. Yet if this food is poison, the “stupid” into a structural tendency of evolutionary
rat, which “is incapable of learning any- processes. Certain factors connected with
thing,” will beat the “clever” one in the sur- the use of “materials,” or with the initial
vival stakes thanks to its instinctive lack stage of the “construction process,” can
of trust, while the “clever” one will eat its limit evolution’s future capabilities in its
fill and then die. Not every environment early days and determine its development-
thus privileges “intelligence.” Generally al threshold to such an extent that “second-
speaking, the extrapolation of experience order regulators” will not appear at all.
(its “transfer”) is extremely useful in the Insects, which are one of the oldest, most
terrestrial environment. There are, how- vital, and most fertile animal strains, serve
ever, some other environments where this as a good example here. There are over
trait becomes a disadvantage. We know seven hundred thousand species of insects
that an experienced strategist can beat a on Earth today, compared with eight thou-
less experienced one, but he can also lose sand species of all vertebrates. Insects
to a complete cowboy because the latter’s take up over three-quarters of the animal
actions are “unintelligent,” that is, comp- kingdom as a whole—yet they did not pro-
letely unpredictable. It makes one wonder duce intelligence. They have been in exis-
how evolution, which is so “economical” in tence for approximately the same period
every area of information transfer, produ- of time as vertebrates, so—from a statis-
ced the human brain—a device with such a tical point of view (if it was to be decisive)—
high degree of “excess.” This brain—which, owing to the tenfold size of their popula-
even today, in the twentieth century, copes tion, they should have ten times as much
very well with the problems of a large civi- chance of producing “second-order regula-
lization—is anatomically and biologically tors.” The fact that this has not happened
identical with the brain of our primitive, clearly demonstrates that probability calcu-
“barbarian” ancestor civilizations in the uni­ lus is not a determining criterion in psycho-
verse from a hundred thousand years ago. genesis. And thus the latter is possible yet
In what way did this massive “poten­t ial not inevitable; it is one of the better solu-
of intelligence,” this excessiveness which, tions but not in all cases, and it is not the
from the early days, seemed geared to build most optimal one for all worlds. To con-
a civilization, emerge in the course of the struct Intelligence, evolution must have
probabilistic evolutionary game between at its disposal diverse factors, such as not
two vectors: mutation pressure and selec- too strong gravitation, the relatively con-
tion pressure? stant strength of cosmic radiation (which
Evolutionism lacks a firm answer to this should not be too powerful), environmental
question. Experience demonstrates that the variability that is not just cyclic, and many
brain of virtually every animal is charac­ other, probably still unknown ones. Their
terized by significant “excess,” which mani­ convergence on the surface of the planets
fests itself in the animal’s ability to solve is most like-ly not an exception. Despite
the tasks it does not encounter in every­day everything, we can thus expect to find In-
life when it is presented with them by a telligence in the Universe, though some of
scientist conducting an experiment. The the forms in which it will manifest itself
universal growth of brain mass is another may defy all our contemporary ideas.
fact: modern amphibians, reptiles, fish, and,
by and large, all representatives of the ani-
mal kingdom have bigger brains than their
ancestors from the Paleozoic or Mesozoic
eras. In this sense, all animals have “be-
come cleverer” in the course of evolution.
This universal tendency seems to prove
that, provided the process of evolution
takes a long enough time, the brain mass
must eventually exceed a “critical quanti-
ty,” which will initiate the rapid progress
of sociogenesis.

268 Scapegoat
 Models and Reality
ity of output parameters in both systems,
Modeling is an imitation of Nature that the neural and the electric, has increased.
takes into account few of its characteris- Yet this similarity has only increased with
tics. Why only few? Is it because we cannot regard to the corresponding “inputs” and
do better than that? No, it is mainly because “outputs.” The similarity does not increase—
we have to defend ourselves against the and does, in fact, decrease—if, alongside
excess of information. Such an excess can the dynamic “input–output” relation, we
actually signify inaccessibility. A painter take into account the entire structure of
paints pictures, yet, even though he has a both systems (i.e., if we take into account a
mouth and we can talk to him, we are not higher number of variables). Even though
going to find out how he does it. He does the electric brain now has “volition” and
not know himself what is going on in his “memory,” the actual brain does not have
brain when he is painting. The information either an accidentality generator or a sep-
is contained in his head, but it is inacces- arate memory bank. The closer this model
sible. In modeling, one has to simplify: a moves toward the original one within a
machine that is capable of painting a very range of certain imitated variables, the
poor picture will tell us more about the further away it moves from that original
material, that is, cerebral, foundations of model within a range of others. If we also
painting than the “perfect model” of the wanted to take into account the changeable
artist—his twin brother—would. Modeling excitability of neurons, which is condition-
practice involves selecting certain vari- ed by the existence of its limit point, while
ables and ignoring others. There would every organism achieves this state through
be an ideal correspondence between the the very biochemistry of its transforma-
model and the original if the processes tions, we would have to equip each of the
of both were identical. This is not the case. switch elements (“neuristors”) with a sepa-
The results of model development are diffe- rate electrical system, and so on. However,
rent from those of any actual development. we consider variables that do not manifest
This difference can be caused by three fac- themselves in a modeled phenomenon as
tors: the simplification of the model in insignificant. This is a special case of the
relation to the original, the model’s own general mode of information gathering,
characteristics that are lacking in the origi- one that assumes that an initial selection
nal, and last but not least, the indetermina- always takes place. For example, for an ordi-
cy of the original itself. When we imitate nary person speaking on the telephone, the
a living brain with an electric one, we must crackling sound counts as “noise,” where-
consider a phenomenon such as memory as for a communications engineer who is
as well as consider an electric network that examining the line, certain information
represents the neural network. A living can be conveyed precisely by such noise
brain does not have a separate memory con- (this example is provided by Ashby).
tainer. Actual prolegomena to omnipotence If we thus wanted to model any phen-
neurons are universal—memory is “dis- omenon by taking into account all of its
seminated” all over the brain. Our electric variables (assuming for a moment that this
network does not manifest any such chara- would be possible), we would have to con-
cteristics. We thus have to connect special struct a system that would be more exten-
memory banks (e.g., of ferromagnetic kind) sive than the original one, as it would be
to the electric brain. Besides, an actual equipped with additional variables that
brain shows certain “randomness,” an in- are characteristic of the modeling system
calculability of actions, while an electric itself but that the original one lacks. This
one does not. What does a cyberneticist do? is why, as long as the number of variables
He builds a “generator of accidentality” is small, digital prolegomena to omni­po­
into the model—which, on being switched tence modeling works well. On increasing
on, sends randomly selected signals into their number, this method quickly reach-
the net. Such randomness has been pre- es the limit of its applicability. The model-
pared in advance: this additional device ing approach therefore has to be replaced
uses random number tables, and so on. by a different one.
We have thus arrived at what looks like In theory, it is most efficient to model one
an analogy of “incalculability” or “free phenomenon with another identical phe-
will.” After taking these steps, the similar- nomenon. Yet is this possible? It seems

269 Less Predictable Realities

that to model man, it is necessary to con- information from outside? This would be
struct him; to model bioevolution, it is a true informational perpetuum mobile!
necessary to repeat it on a planet that is Unfortunately, this issue cannot be re-
exactly like Earth. The most perfect mod- solved on the basis of current information
el of an apple is offered by another apple, theory. The amount of information is great-
of the Universe by another Universe. This er the lower the probability of the arrival
may sound like a reductio ad absurdum of a given signal. This means that if a mes-
of imitological practice, yet let us not be sage arrives that stars are made of Emmen-
too quick in passing such a verdict. taler cheese, the amount of information
The key question is as follows: is there received will be truly enormous because
something that, in not being a faithful (mo- the arrival of such a signal is extremely un-
del) repetition of a phenomenon, contains likely. Yet an expert will accuse us here, and
more information than this phenomenon? justly so, of confusing two different types
Absolutely: a scientific theory. It covers a of information: selective information—that
whole class of phenomena; it discusses every is, information that can be drawn from a
single one but, at the same time, all of them. set of possible signals (stars made of hydro-
Of course, a theory does not take into ac- gen, of entelechy, of borogoves, of cheese,
count many variables of a given phenome­- etc.), which has nothing to do with the
non, yet, owing to the goal that has been correctness, or appropriateness, of inform-
set, these variables are not significant. ation about a certain phenomenon—and
We are faced with a new difficulty here. structural information, that is, information
We should ask whether a theory contains that is a representation of the situation.
only as much information as we ourselves And thus the sensational news about the
have introduced into it (having created it cheesing of stars contains a great amount
on the basis of observed facts as well as of selective information and zero struc-
some other theories, e.g., measurement tural information because it is not true
theory) or whether it can contain more in- that stars are made of cheese. Perfect. Let
formation. The latter is impossible, you say? us thus take a look at the theory of physical
Yet it was on the basis of the theory of a vacuum. It shows that beta decay happens
physical vacuum that quantum field the- in such and such a way (which is true) as
ory predicted a number of phenomena. well as that an electron’s charge is infinite-
Alongside the beta decay theory emerged ly great (which is not true). The first result,
the results of the theory of superfluidity however, is so valuable to a physicist that
(liquid helium) and also of the solid state he is prepared to make up for it with inter-
theory. If a theory is largely supposed to est paid on the incorrectness of the second
predict phenomenon x, and then it turns one. Yet information theory is not interest-
out that some other phenomena that have ed in the physicist’s choice because this
been deduced from it—whose existence theory does not take into account the value
we did not know about before —also take of information, even in its structural state.
place, where did this “additional” infor- Besides, no theory exists “on its own”; no
mation actually come from? theory is “sovereign”: it is partly derived
It came from the fact that, generally sp- from other theories and partly combined
eaking, there exists a continuity of trans- with them. And thus the amount of infor-
formations in the world. It came from their mation contained in it is very difficult to
feedback. We have “guessed” one thing, measure, since, for example, information
and this one thing has subsequently “led” contained in the famous E = mc 2 formula
to the others. “gets into” this formula from a whole lot
This sounds convincing, but how does of other formulas and theories.
this information balance actually work? Yet maybe it is only today that we need
We have inserted x bits of information into theories and models of phenomena? Maybe,
the theory, and then we get x + n? Does this on being asked such a question, a wise man
mean that if a system is complex enough from another planet would silently hand
(the way the brain is), it is capable of creat- out a piece of an old shoe sole picked up
ing additional information, more extensive from the ground to us, communicating in
than the information it possessed in the this way that the whole truth of the Uni-
preceding prolegomena to omnipotence verse can be read from this piece of matter?
moment, without receiving any additional Let us stay for a moment with this old sole.

270 Excess
This anecdote can have some amusing con- the possibility of synthesizing a hundred
sequences. Please take a look at the follow- elements all the way through to the pos-
ing equation: 4 + x = 7. An obtuse student sibility of constructing systems that are a
does not know how to access the x value, trillion times more spiritual than man).
although this result is already “entailed” in We could also deduce all that is unrealiz-
the equation, but it remains hidden from able from it (sweet kitchen salt NaCl, stars
his misty eyes and will only “reveal itself” whose diameter equals a quadrillion miles,
after a prolegomena to omnipotence basic etc.). From this perspective, matter already
transformation has been performed. Let entails as its foundational assumptions all
us thus ask, as righteous heresiarchs, whe- those possibilities as well as impossibili-
ther it is not the same case with Nature. ties (or prohibitions); we are just unable
Does Matter by any chance not have all to crack its “code.” Matter would thus be
of its potential transformations “inscrib- a kind of mathematical problem— with us,
ed” in it (i.e., the possibility of construct- like that obtuse student mentioned earli-
ing stars, quantoplanes, sewing machines, er, being unable to get all the information
roses, silkworms, and comets)? Then, tak- out of it, even though it is already con-
ing the basic building block of Nature, the tained within it. What we have just said is
hydrogen atom, we could “deduce” all those nothing else than tautological ontology...
possibilities from it (modestly starting from

Endnote

1 Both of the texts below are excerpted from Summa

Technologiae with the permission of University of
­Minnesota Press.

Bios

Stanisław Lem (1921–2006) was the best-known science fiction author writing
outside of the English language. His books have been translated into more than forty
languages and sold over 27 million
copies worldwide.

Joanna Zylinska is Professor of New Media and Communications at Goldsmiths,

University of London. Her own books include Bioethics in the Age of New Media and
The Ethics of Cultural Studies.

271 Less Predictable Realities

fig. 1
 Considered Non-completion:
A Correspondence Between Rick Prelinger and Sara Dean

Rick Prelinger is an archivist, teacher, writer, lecturer, and film-

maker. He is founder of Prelinger Archives and co-founder (with
Megan Shaw Prelinger) of Prelinger Library, an appropriation-
friendly research library open to the public in San Francisco. Sara
Dean is a spatial and graphic designer who works, often through
collaborative structures, through design, fabrication, and curator­
ial practices. Last fall, both participated in an event, Lost and Found
Detroit, which featured Rick’s film Lost Landscapes of Detroit and
Sara’s work with the group 1/X, Anecdoted City. This led to a con-
versation about the role of iteration and collaboration in their prac­
tices and imaginations. What follows is an edited transcript of their
correspondence.
Sara Dean
When I saw Lost Landscapes continuously and re-edit regularly. When
of Detroit, I was struck by how the film it is time for a screening, I stabilize the
communicates as both an artifact of a edit and present its current state, which
time and place that is considered and functions as a snapshot of a continuously
complete, and also as a work of inten- evolving text. I say “text” rather than
tional non-completion, inclusive of the “matrix” or “database,” as I don’t know
footage that was missing—footage that if that deep structure actually resides
is not yet included, or cut, or never col- within a work itself or within a collec-
lected. The film feels simultaneously like tion of material. Certainly films and other
a completed project and a work in prog- texts possess perceptible (and sometimes
ress, which it is. For me, this is exemplary less apparent or even covert) structures;
of a database mentality. You design with such structures support narrative strat-
the cultural tools afforded by the data- egies that are quite often extrinsic to the
base—filter, order, array. In one iteration, images and sounds contained in the films
a film is place-based and shown chrono- and exist largely to guide them through
logically; in another screening, it is pre- narrow and judgment­al channels of dis­
sented thematically. This works be­cause tribution. We know about narrative “arcs,”
of the careful consideration you give each conflict and resolution, ending on an opti­
film. Through your recognition of an mistic note, and so on. But we know much
excess of available information, infor- less about deep structure, and I would
mation yet to be found, and a nearly infi- contend that deep structure is as much a
nite narrative potential, the iterative film perceptual construct as it is said to be the
has a digital cultural mentality, even in premeditated work of an artist.
its analogue and artifactual medium. I Take, for example, the evolving state
am interested in exploring this schism of the database in the realm of informa-
between the analogue physicality of the tion technology. Once synonymous with
image, and our iterative, constant-refresh structured arrangements of i­ nformation,
understanding of the world. databases are evolving (or perhaps more
precisely, devolving) into minimally ar­­
Rick Prelinger
My archival films, espe- ranged collections. The intelligence once
cially the urban histories of Detroit and embodied in data structures is s­ hifting
San Francisco and my new film on auto- into the “queries” that interrogate the data­
mobility (No More Road Trips?), are in base. Google’s “Bigtable,” for example, is
constant process. I source new m­ aterial described as “a sparse, distributed, persis­

273
 fig. 2
tent multi-dimensional sorted map. The evaluation through use. The meme is a
map is indexed by a row key, column key, great way of looking at the validity of ex-
and a timestamp; each value in the map is periential and subjective narratives as a
an uninterpreted array of bytes.”1 Pars- way of engaging the socius. The meme is
ing and interpretation are accomplished an individualized response within a very
by translating a user entry into a sophis- specific framework. It is a cultural con-
ticated database query that becomes the versation channelled through an infor-
means by which structure meets data. mational platform.
I liken the dumbing-down of the data-
RP
base and the growing sophistication of And yet memes, queries, languages, and
the query to the emerging shape of the perceptions are so often born in multi­ples.
film-text, to the process by which the con­ So many of our individual inputs simply re-
temporary observer and user of culture enact each other or repeat mass-produced,
ingest pre-existing material, and p ­ erhaps pseudo-individualized memes. We can-
even to the process by which we now ex­- not easily tell what is new in what we say,
perience the city. Not just digital data, but yet in a few years machines will be smart
geography and geographical experience enough and fast enough to distinguish re-
themselves are raw material which we in­- ­petition from originality. But like anti-
terpret and narrativize through a fuzzy spam filters spooked by random text in
series of ideological and experientially mass emails, the machines may not be
determined frames. If this hyper-subjec- able to distinguish human contributions
tive mode of apprehending the informa- from those generated by cultural s­ ystems
tion landscape reeks of postmodernism, it and submitted by humans. I am there-
also speaks to how permeable data and en­- fore worried about the durability and
gineering are to philosophical constructs. survivability of iteration when what we
iterate with is so often repetitive. For
SD
The move from hierarchical databases iteration not to spiral inward, we need to
to the flattened search structures of the constantly generate surprises and monkey-
Internet is itself a move to responsive and wrench systems. I have convinced myself
open-source structures. The Internet as that an orderly environment helps me
query-able material gives its content an think in disorderly and exciting ways,
iterative and adaptive character. Where but can we thrive in rectangular build-
the database predicts hierarchy and signi­ ings and on streets placed at right angles
ficance, the query produces i­ nstantaneous to one another? And can bytes—the most

274 Scapegoat
universally reductive information medium, told us stories about the objects and their
next to atomic and subatomic particles— own lives in Detroit. The multiplicity of
be fuzzy enough to permit true iteration? the city that was presented had a strange
Or are we just pretending? and fleeting but historic longevity; it was
specific to a person, or neighbourhood, or
SD
I am curious about what digital tech- city. A Marvin Gaye studio recording
nology has structured culturally, and receipt sat next to a locally picked apple,
whether or not the appearance of digital an earring found on the street, and a
participation is a guise; maybe it is an es­- locally patented depth gauge. While the
pecially convincing guise because we all show was tactile and physical, it relied
know it is nothing more than that. Our upon a digital priming of the public to a
collective cultural understanding of a crowd-sourced, aggregate understanding
digital participation methodology has of the world.
primed new ways of engaging analogue
RP
practices. As methodologies such as con- While we can’t fulfill this a­ mbitious
stant iteration and multi-authorship move participatory, deconstructive, and recon-
out of their assumed technologies into structive agenda alone, I eagerly look for-
design practice, I think they can become ward to the kind of collaboration that
actionable in the analogue world. al­lows exercises to end and the commons
The constant-iteration structures that to be born. We take it on faith that rep-
we understand digitally are very similar resenting a desired reality sets in motion
to structures that we construct in our re- some sort of chain of events that, if al­lowed
­spective practices through analogue media. to successfully sprout and fledge, brings
Multi-authorship and anonymous contri­ about this reality. And yet we are rarely
butions to work corrupt, or at least ques­- able to move beyond representation into
tion, narrative hierarchies. This is true for the world we would most like to live in.
digital platforms and for cities. Crowd- Can we employ design so as to move be-
sourcing, like querying, can be part of a ­yond a designed world? Can tricksters
creative practice because it creates a struc­ and designers authentically collaborate?
ture for creative inquiry but doesn’t guar- How can we make design actionable?
antee a formal result. Crowd-sourcing And how can we employ design and its
allows for unexpected additions and even toolsets as temporary expedients, means
unexpected priorities in the system. Anec­ to desired ends that we will discard when
dotal, qualitative, and peripheral informa­ ends are reached? Can design be like the
tion thrives within this type of system. skin that moults when no longer needed?
This type of practice moves the designer I value non-completion, but there should
from a formalist to a structuralist or post- come a time when we are clear that we
structuralist position. I’ve called this a have reached a plateau.
move from form to platform. In the col-
SD
lection that I co-curate as a member of Tricksters are great collaborators for
the group 1/X, Anecdoted City, we are gauging designed actionability because
interested in how to collect memory of they tend to have their own agendas.
a place through objects and stories. We Maybe if we look again to digital struc-
staged an exhibition as a method of col- tures to find ways of talking about the
lection in last year’s Detroit Design Festi­ analogue, we could use the separation
val. The exhibit opened empty and a call of database and interface as a means for
was put out for people to bring in an ob­- thinking about these questions. In digi-
ject that represented the city to them, to tal design there is a complete separation
add to the collection. We had no idea what between the collection of information
objects and stories we would collect, or (the back-end) and the means through
what the formal character of the show which it is seen and accessed (the front-
would be. Our role as designers was to set end). They are independent. And we, as
the stage; we structured the collection. designers, generally build up the back-
And I think a digital understanding also end to be able to work on the front-end,
structured the public to react. or the form that a work takes on. To col-
During the course of the show, people laborate with the trickster, I think the
brought things in, picked things up, and designer needs to develop the back-end

275 Considered Non-completion:

 fig. 2

as a design in itself, understanding that where I would like to go. And to move in
their interpretation of its merit is one of a specific direction is best accomplished
many. The relinquished control over sub- by imagining that one is already there.
ject is one of the products of open-source While it is difficult to build institutions
systems. Really, this is the archive as a whose models depend on conditions that
design project. have not yet arisen, it is a simple matter
to tweak and even monkey-wrench the
RP
It is true that open-source platforms conditions by which films are made and
or datasets, which barely exist (ours is shown. My current model mobilizes some
a modified, “lite” version of open source very old tricks in order to point ahead.
due to its reservation of certain rights It asks the audience to behave much as
and formats), imply that data and infor- the rowdies in the Elizabethan theatre
mation function as an infrastructural audience behaved, or to mimic the partic-
commons upon which users may build ipant/observer role we see in contempo-
layers of their own, public and private. rary sports audiences, who act­ively follow
In general, this confirms my conviction the progress of a contest, speak­ing loudly
that archives must reach out to the pub- to one another and to the players.
lic and push information in the direc-
SD
tion of a public. Participation is key to Yes, and the way that you structure
this belief, but our sense of what consti- the film screenings also acknowledges
tutes true participation in a commons- there are always more stories to tell about
based information scheme is embryonic the footage and the city, and more people
and, I believe, still has to evolve. At pres- to add to that telling. They embrace this
ent most of us probably construe partici- excess of information, acknowledging all
pation as commentary, posting to social of the footage, objects and narratives yet
networks and uploading content to pri- to be included. This designed non-comple­
vately owned web services. Schemes of tion, although formal, artifactual, and
social organization that might embody directly designed, highlights the system
purer forms of participation arise rarely, that created it, the filter that narrowed
and typically as proofs of concept floated the search. In Anecdoted City, our design
by artists that fail to escape the sandbox effort focused on designing the engage-
in which most contemporary art seems ment of the public with the show. We
to play. But your description of my archi- wanted to create a space for a conversa-
val mentality is an accurate indication of tion about Detroit as it is. Your films do

276 Excess
that by allowing the audience conversa- Non-completion is not a style; it is the
tion to complement, complicate, and aug- recognition of certain real limitations.
ment the work being seen on screen. Non-completion is walking away from
Your films show the artifactual quality the coyote who has taken your house cat.
of information, and the cultural impor- I am aware that this is not a new idea and
tance of our ability to be excessive, both that much contemporary art and para-
digitally (in our ability to store, share, artistic work (such as social practice)
and collect endlessly) and in our p ­ hysical already operates with these assumptions.
lives. I think this is a changing understand- And I am acutely aware that very little
ing of design and practice, the prac­tice of art leaves much impact upon the commu-
collecting, filtering, curating, preparing, nities it seeks to influence. But I strongly
priming for design, as a way of setting the believe that committing to collaborative
stage for interventions in that system. work with audiences and those affected
by the work initiates a process that is
RP
I respect your practice of making an hospitable and may ultimately be utopian.
open framework, a framework that is not And, perhaps not so constructively, I’d
purpose-built to confine its contents, a conclude by suggesting that the sense of
structure that aims to liberate. A scheme, privilege implicit in the act and d
­ iscourse
perhaps, where the structure of informa- of design might lead us to thinking about a
tion is co-equally as important as what- new set of terms that ride over and beyond—
ever information the structures may without erasing—such words as object,
contain. Who said that, “as the metadata agent, goal, environment, and require-
increases in detail, it approaches and ulti- ment. I want to set up an equivalency
mately exceeds the value of the data?” be­t ween trusting the evidence, the infor-
mation that floods into our projects and
SD
The value of design is moving, as it practices, and trusting the audience,
should, from the ability to control and those who live and work with the materi-
contain, to the ability to leak and adapt. als, tools, projects, and communities we
The co-equal structure is very important. design. In my films, I let the evidence play
We structure the work of 1/X as a space with minimal editing, expecting that the
for a conversation, both on the subject audience will successfully parse, interpret,
matter of the work and also with our col- and contextualize it. I trust the audience
laborators. Although, in the end, my prac- to come up with a variety of interpreta­
tice produces physical objects, I work on tions, some facetious, others a­ ggressive,
the structure for the broader project and others perhaps more reasoned. But in
try to let the outcome be responsive to essence I throw the film out to the audi-
that. Through this mentality, I don’t pri- ence for them to consume, reproduce,
oritize a medium. The medium that the rework, and remix. Some of this occurs
work takes on then becomes a mode of in real time, some in contemplative time
dissemination in itself. after viewing the work. Hopefully some
of what the viewers do with the film hap-
RP
I see suggestions of a growing divide pens to be actionable. And for me the
between what designers do and daily value of a work is best determined by
human experience. Consequently, my its resonances outside it, the ripples it
hunch is that we need to let go, to relin- spreads into the world.
quish much of the control that we habit- Informational excess, like ambition, is
ually seek when we make work, projects, a great servant and a bad master. In some
and communities. This is not to say that situations an excess of information func-
we should simply adopt passive, observa- tions as a defense against problematics.
tional roles, but that we might perhaps An obsession with earlier configurations
consider ourselves as arrangers rather of a city in great detail—simply document­
than authors, as toolmakers rather than ing where the old movie theatres were
artisans. The appearance of completion exactly located, for instance—tends to
is, quite often, a distortion enabled by crowd out consideration of more com-
stylistic flourishes. We should not seek plex and troubling ideas that don’t easily
stylistic expertise that enables us to cre- resolve into positivistic tidbits of knowl-
ate the appearance of non-completion. edge. Trivia crowds out imagination. It is

277 ...A Correspondence Between...

important to know when to stop the flood Figures
of facts, in life as well as in film.
Finally, it takes a secure artist or designer 1 Detail from Anecdoted City, Detroit;
c
­ ourtesy of 1/X.
to recognize that problems and mysteries 2, Stilla from Lost Landscapes of Detroit;
do not have to be solved. It helps to be skep­ 3
­courtesy of Rick Prelinger.
tical about simple truths and organized
Endnote
efforts to escape doubt, and it also helps
to appreciate diversity and polyculture. 1 Fay Change et al., “Bigtable: A Distributed Storage
None of these acts are necessarily simple System for Structured Data,” Google Inc., http://
for audiences and citizens; it helps to step research.google.com/archive/
bigtable-osdi06.pdf.
back before designs are complete and give
affected subjects a real role in determining
the content, organization, and ex­pression
of an idea.
SD
Given the embryonic stage of col-
laborative practice that you described
earlier, perhaps these types of design
interventions can be considered as relays
within an open conversation about how
design, curation, and archival practices
can learn from a mentality of considered
non-completion. Designing in a hyper-
connected world requires rethinking the
practice and the role of the designer. We
need to consider what design practice
could learn from informational excess.

278 Scapegoat
279 ...Rick Prelinger and Sara Dean
 ON EXCESS
& FIELDS OF
PR ACTICE
THAT MAKE
THE WORLD
by Justin Langlois and Hiba Abdallah

280
 ART
& EXCESS

ARTISTS ARE NOT EXCESSIVE ENOUGH.

ARTISTS ARE NOT EXCESSIVE ENOUGH.
ARTISTS ARE NOT EXCESSIVE ENOUGH.

ART IS NOT EXCESSIVE ENOUGH.

ART IS NOT EXCESSIVE ENOUGH.
ART IS NOT EXCESSIVE ENOUGH.

281
 ARCHITECTURE
& EXCESS

ARCHITECTS ARE NOT EXCESSIVE ENOUGH.

ARCHITECTS ARE NOT EXCESSIVE ENOUGH.
ARCHITECTS ARE NOT EXCESSIVE ENOUGH.

ARCHITECTURE IS NOT EXCESSIVE ENOUGH.

ARCHITECTURE IS NOT EXCESSIVE ENOUGH.
ARCHITECTURE IS NOT EXCESSIVE ENOUGH.

282
 CULTIVATION
& EXCESS

CULTIVATORS ARE NOT EXCESSIVE ENOUGH.

CULTIVATORS ARE NOT EXCESSIVE ENOUGH.
CULTIVATORS ARE NOT EXCESSIVE ENOUGH.

CULTIVATION IS NOT EXCESSIVE ENOUGH.

CULTIVATION IS NOT EXCESSIVE ENOUGH.
CULTIVATION IS NOT EXCESSIVE ENOUGH.

283
 DESIGN
& EXCESS

DESIGNERS ARE NOT EXCESSIVE ENOUGH.

DESIGNERS ARE NOT EXCESSIVE ENOUGH.
DESIGNERS ARE NOT EXCESSIVE ENOUGH.

DESIGN IS NOT EXCESSIVE ENOUGH.

DESIGN IS NOT EXCESSIVE ENOUGH.
DESIGN IS NOT EXCESSIVE ENOUGH.

284
 DISSENT
& EXCESS

DISSENTERS ARE NOT EXCESSIVE ENOUGH.

DISSENTERS ARE NOT EXCESSIVE ENOUGH.
DISSENTERS ARE NOT EXCESSIVE ENOUGH.

DISSENT IS NOT EXCESSIVE ENOUGH.

DISSENT IS NOT EXCESSIVE ENOUGH.
DISSENT IS NOT EXCESSIVE ENOUGH.

285
 ECONOMIES
& EXCESS

ECONOMISTS ARE NOT EXCESSIVE ENOUGH.

ECONOMISTS ARE NOT EXCESSIVE ENOUGH.
ECONOMISTS ARE NOT EXCESSIVE ENOUGH.

ECONOMY IS NOT EXCESSIVE ENOUGH.

ECONOMY IS NOT EXCESSIVE ENOUGH.
ECONOMY IS NOT EXCESSIVE ENOUGH.

286
 HISTORY
& EXCESS

HISTORIANS ARE NOT EXCESSIVE ENOUGH.

HISTORIANS ARE NOT EXCESSIVE ENOUGH.
HISTORIANS ARE NOT EXCESSIVE ENOUGH.

HISTORY IS NOT EXCESSIVE ENOUGH.

HISTORY IS NOT EXCESSIVE ENOUGH.
HISTORY IS NOT EXCESSIVE ENOUGH.

287
 PLANNING
& EXCESS

PL A NNER S A R E NOT EXCESSI V E ENOUGH.

PL A NNER S A R E NOT EXCESSI V E ENOUGH.
PL A NNER S A R E NOT EXCESSI V E ENOUGH.

PL A NNING IS NOT EXCESSI V E ENOUGH.

PL A NNING IS NOT EXCESSI V E ENOUGH.
PL A NNING IS NOT EXCESSI V E ENOUGH.

288
 SCIENCE
& EXCESS

SCIENTISTS ARE NOT EXCESSIVE ENOUGH.

SCIENTISTS ARE NOT EXCESSIVE ENOUGH.
SCIENTISTS ARE NOT EXCESSIVE ENOUGH.

SCIENCE IS NOT EXCESSIVE ENOUGH.

SCIENCE IS NOT EXCESSIVE ENOUGH.
SCIENCE IS NOT EXCESSIVE ENOUGH.

289
 THEORY
& EXCESS

THEOR ISTS A R E NOT EXCESSI V E ENOUGH.

THEOR ISTS A R E NOT EXCESSI V E ENOUGH.
THEOR ISTS A R E NOT EXCESSI V E ENOUGH.

THEORY IS NOT EXCESSI V E ENOUGH.

THEORY IS NOT EXCESSI V E ENOUGH.
THEORY IS NOT EXCESSI V E ENOUGH.

290
 USE
& EXCESS

USERS ARE NOT EXCESSIVE ENOUGH.

USERS ARE NOT EXCESSIVE ENOUGH.
USERS ARE NOT EXCESSIVE ENOUGH.

USE IS NOT EXCESSIVE ENOUGH.

USE IS NOT EXCESSIVE ENOUGH.
USE IS NOT EXCESSIVE ENOUGH.

291
 Bios

Justin Langlois is the co-founder and research director of Broken City Lab, an artist-led
interdisciplinary creative research collective working to explore locality, infrastructures,
and creative practice leading towards civic change. His work has been presented and
exhibited throughout Canada and the US, and supported with grants from the Canada
Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, and the Social Sciences and Humanities
Research Council. He is currently an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Culture +
Community at Emily Carr University of Art and Design.

Hiba Abdallah is a Research Fellow of Broken City Lab, an artist-led interdisciplinary

creative research collective working to explore locality, infrastructures, and creative
practice leading towards civic change. Her work has been exhibited throughout Canada,
and supported with grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts
Council. She is currently the Program Director of Civic Space in Windsor, Ontario.

292
293
 Mass Intimacy: Consumer Design by and for Dividuals
by Keith Peiffer

The instrumentalization of data is a powerful, generative force that

manages contemporary society by shaping the various environ-
ments we encounter every day. The Kroger Company, the larg­est
grocery store chain in the United States (second only to Walmart in
volume and sales among general retailers), owes much of its mar-
ket dominance to this technocratic paradigm of administration by
data.1 Both the retail store and the datacentre are critical compo-
nents in the architectural infrastructure of Kroger, enabling com-
prehensive and effective consumer modulation. While architecture
is necessary to facilitate control, it is not the architect who deter-
mines the character and quality of the infrastructure of these
highly calibrated retail environments; rather, consumer data is the
designer of the Kroger Company’s architecture.
Administration by Data
According to Paul Virilio and Benjamin Bratton, “the production of
logistical space as a Modern administration horizon” began in 1790
with the French Army of Engineers.2 From its beginnings as a military
innovation, “administration-by-calculation” has ascended, 200 years
later, to a dominant place in everyday life.3 In our contemporary con-
trol society, this managerial paradigm has extended from the military
to businesses seeking to modulate consumer behaviour.4
Electronic data is the medium through which embodied people
are instrumentalized by corporations. Acting through an elaborate
apparatus, the big-box grocery store chain capitalizes on the body
as spatially extended cyborg—a body of both “bits and atoms” 5 —by
desubjectifying individuals in order to reconstruct them as members
of a consumer subject group.6 Rendered as bits of data, individuals
become “dividuals” that are aggregated into abstract groups called
samples and markets.7
Marketing is an “instrument of social control” designed to specifi-
cally target these consumer subjects and spur on consumption.8 It has
been joined with consumer data in the field of predictive analytics,
where data is collected and analyzed to gain insights into the identities
of consumers; such insights form the basis for the effective marketing
of consumer products. The data-mining firm Dunnhumby, in conjunc-
tion with the Kroger Company, has developed a proprietary approach
to predictive analytics that strives to deliver the personal connec-
tion of a mom-and-pop store while operating with the efficiency of a
global big-box retailer. This approach has been called “mass intimacy.”
The Kroger Company relies on the “honesty and…immediacy” 9 of
consumer data to “get to know” its 42 million shoppers.10 To achieve
intimacy on such a massive scale, Kroger collects as much data as pos-
sible; the analysis of such transactional data is replacing the friendly
banter between shopper and local shopkeeper, who recognizes the
faces, and concerns, of his or her most frequent customers.

294 Project
 Mass intimacy does not concern itself with issues of privacy. Unlike
paper currency transactions, credit card-based consumption makes
anonymity impossible, as each swipe of the card is correlated to a spe-
cific consumer subject. The consumer is uniquely identified by the
16-digit passcode detected through a barium ferrite strip embedded
in a 3⅜-by-2⅛-inch piece of plastic. Since they are linked to a specific
consumer, the particulars of each transaction—time of day, frequency,
type of items, location of purchase, etc.—achieve greater significance.
By looking at the transaction patterns of consumers over time, Dun­
nhumby identifies important trends and preferences of consumption.
Notably, retailers like Kroger have crafted especially innovative
modes of data collection that conceal the specific instances of this
surveillance while simultaneously reframing them as a service to their
customers.
As William Burroughs suggested in his influential essay on control
societies, effective control is a delicate balance of trying to achieve
as much influence as possible without resorting to complete authori-
tarianism, which could lead to a rejection of the system of control.11
Seamless, unnoticeable tracking is key; information regarding 40 bil-
lion purchases in Kroger stores during four billion unique shopping
trips is collected through point-of-sale equipment, credit card termi-
nals, and Kroger Plus loyalty cards in an opaque process of which most
people are unaware.
By analyzing this data of dividuals, Dunnhumby and Kroger have
derived seven main sample groups; these are broad shopper segments
with titles like “budget,” “family-focused,” and “watching the waist-
line.” 12 Strategic “persuasions and concessions”13 are directed toward
these group subjects that encourage consumers to comply with con-
trol because it appears mutually beneficial. For example, Dunnhumby
and Kroger have developed the Loyal Customer Mailer (LCM) cou-
pon program as “truly a one-to-one communications vehicle—deliv-
ering 9.5 million unique versions to 9.5 million customers several
times throughout the year.” 14 The LCM is tailored from customer
data to offer coupons that are relevant and personalized to each shop-
per, achieving a peculiar intimacy between customer and corporation.
Coupon redemption rates and returns on investments in coupons have
risen rapidly since the introduction of the LCM in 2005.15
A Container for a Body
Despite the prominence of data, architecture remains significant for
big data corporations like Kroger; in fact, it is critical for the achieve-
ment of an optimal LCM interplay. Local retail stores, corporate
headquarters, distribution centres, manufacturing facilities, and data-
centres are all material instantiations of the immaterial data body that
modulates the consumer. Collectively, the architecture of the Kroger
Company is the site of $82 billion in sales per year. To move people,
products, and money on such a massive scale, in such a short time,
Kroger’s designs act more as conduit than container, blurring the lines
between infrastructure and architecture.16 For example, Store #605 in
Ann Arbor, Michigan and Datacenter101 in Columbus, Ohio, both serve
as channels for flows, but these two different types of architecture per-
form in very different ways.
Store #605 evinces an architecture designed especially for the flow
of corporeal bodies. Sensor-activated automatic sliding doors respond
to the approach of the human body to regulate the movement of peo-
ple in and out of the architectural enclosure. Its exterior envelope and
building systems offer a dry, well-lit, and well-tempered ­environment

295
 KEITH PEIFFER

O
SWISS ROLLS

2
BACK ELEVATION

CHECK-OUT AISLE

SWISS ROLLS
BACK ELEVATION
CHECK-OUT AISLE

KEITH PEIFFER
 MEAT BODY SPATIALLY EXTENDED CYBORG BODY

1
2
3
4
5

CONSUMER/CARDHOLDER

MERCHANT TERMINAL: 82 STORE: 605

TRANS.: 199 OPERATOR: 999

#605

TOTAL: 1.50
MERCHANT ACQUIRER LINE OF CREDIT #

CARD ASSOCIATION
CONVEYOR BELT

CARD ISSUER
 KEITH PEIFFER

C
contractual
requests relationship product given
1 purchase initiated by to cardholder 7 FOUR-PARTY NETWORKS - TRANSACTION
consumer

3 1363 M
I A
KROGER
5 1363 M
I
2 619
MI
submits signs up
authorizes the
2 request to merchants to 6
transaction
acquirer accept cards
6 619 M
I
B

GLOBAL ENTERPRISE PAYMENTS

provides

KEITH PEIFFER
XXXX XXXX XXXX 1758
KEITH PEIFFER
XXXX XXXX XXXX 1758

merchant
accounting
sends system (MAS) authorization
3 request to provides code sent to 5
authorize processing acquirer
services

MASTERCARD

CITI CARDS
checks for fraud

verifies line
4 of credit is
sufficient for

1
2
3
5
6
7

1 secs
2 secs
3 secs

0 secs
purchase

CONSUMER/
CONSUMER/CARDHOLDER MERCHANT MERCHANT ACQUIRER CARD ISSUER MERCHANT ACQUIRER MERCHANT CARDHOLDER
01101011 01100101 01101001 01110100 01101000 00100000 01110000 01100101 01101001 01100110 01100110 01100101 01110010 00101100 00100000 01101101 01100001 01110011 01110100 01100101 01110010 01100011 01100001 01110010 01100100 00100000 00110101 00110100 00110110 00110110 00110001 00110110 00110000 00110011 00110001 00110011 00110001 00110000 00110001 00110111 00110101 00111000 00101100 00100000 01100101 01111000 01110000 01101001 01110010 01100001 01110100 01101001 01101111 01101110 00100000 01100100 01100001 01110100 01100101 00100000 00110001 00110010 00101111 00110001 00110100 00101100 00100000 00110001 00110010 00110011 00101100 00100000 00100100 00110001 00101110 00110101 00110000 00101100 00100000 00110000 00110001 00101111 00110010 00110101 00101111 00110010 00110000 00110001 00110010 00101100 00100000 00110000 00111000 00111010 00110010 00110011 00100000 01010000 01001101 00100000 01001011 01110010 01101111 01100111 01100101 01110010 00100000 00100011 00110110 00110000 00110101

619 MILES
619 MILES

1363 MILES
1363 MILES
terminal: 82 store: 605
trans.: 199 Operator: 999
FRONT
ELEVATION kroger plus customer
xxxxxxx7530

018 kroger #605

2641 PLYMOUTH RD
ANN ARbor MI 48105 A STORE #605 B CITI GROUP C CITIBANK D PROCESSING CTR
mastercard purchase 2641 PLYMOUTH RD. 1 COURT SQUARE 701 E. 60TH ST. 1500 BOLTONFIELD ST.

3 3/8”
xxxx xxxx xxxx 1758 ANN ARBOR, MI 48105 LONG ISLAND CITY, NY 11101 SIOUX FALLS, SD 57104 COLUMBUS, OH 43228
total: 1.50
ref #: 99523P
01/25/12 08:23PM 605 82 199 999

2 1/8”
 KEITH PEIFFER

C
contractual
relationship
cardholder
initiated by 8 FOUR-PARTY NETWORKS - SETTLING
is billed
consumer

2 1/8” A
KROGER
stores day’s
5 9 1 purchase
MI 15 2 619
M I
subtracts
sends batch
4 9
15 M signs up discount
I to acquirer
2 merchants to rate and pay 7 7 619
to receive M
accept cards merchant the I
payment

3 3/8”
remainder B

6 549 MI
GLOBAL ENTERPRISE PAYMENTS
KEITH PEIFFER
XXXX XXXX XXXX 1758

BACK batch sent provides

3 549 MI
ELEVATION through merchant
routes
card network accounting
KEITH PEIFFER 3 system (MAS)
D amount to 6
to request
the acquirer
XXXX XXXX XXXX 1758 payment provides
processing
services

MASTERCARD subtracts
interchange
fees, transfers 5
distributes CITI CARDS amount
4 transaction
to issuer

5
6
7
7

1
2
3
1 days
2 days
3 days

0 days
CONSUMER/
MERCHANT MERCHANT ACQUIRER CARD NETWORK CARD ISSUER CARD NETWORK MERCHANT ACQUIRER MERCHANT CARDHOLDER
01101011 01100101 01101001 01110100 01101000 00100000 01110000 01100101 01101001 01100110 01100110 01100101 01110010 00101100 00100000 01101101 01100001 01110011 01110100 01100101 01110010 01100011 01100001 01110010 01100100 00100000 00110101 00110100 00110110 00110110 00110001 00110110 00110000 00110011 00110001 00110011 00110001 00110000 00110001 00110111 00110101 00111000 00101100 00100000 01100101 01111000 01110000 01101001 01110010 01100001 01110100 01101001 01101111 01101110 00100000 01100100 01100001 01110100 01100101 00100000 00110001 00110010 00101111 00110001 00110100 00101100 00100000 00110001 00110010 00110011 00101100 00100000 00100100 00110001 00101110 00110101 00110000 00101100 00100000 00110000 00110001 00101111 00110010 00110101 00101111 00110010 00110000 00110001 00110010 00101100 00100000 00110000 00111000 00111010 00110010 00110011 00100000 01010000 01001101 00100000 01001011 01110010 01101111 01100111 01100101 01110010 00100000 00100011 00110110 00110000 00110101
0.7 MILES

549 MILES
915 MILES
915 MILES
549 MILES
619 MILES

619 MILES
terminal: 82 store: 605
trans.: 199 Operator: 999

kroger plus customer

xxxxxxx7530

018 kroger #605

2641 PLYMOUTH RD
ANN ARbor MI 48105
mastercard purchase
xxxx xxxx xxxx 1758
total: 1.50
ref #: 99523P
01/25/12 08:23PM 605 82 199 999
 for comfortable accommodation of the physical body. With many
products that meet basic human needs, the commodities themselves
also directly impact the physical body and its relative health, influ-
encing weight, cholesterol levels, energy levels, caffeine levels, arte-
rial clogging, etc.
In Store #605, the individual exists as a person within a body of
flesh moving through time and space and is fully contained by archi-
tecture for completing certain transactions. Datacenter101, however,
is evidence that a single building cannot hold the individual strolling
through Store #605. While the datacentre requires a handful of people17
to operate the facility, it is an architecture designed especially for the
data portions of millions of bodies. Individuals linger in these spaces as
dividuals, thereby simultaneously occupying radically distinct spaces.
Dividuals traveling as radio waves or electrical pulses penetrate the
architectural enclosure, although not through the typical thresholds or
apertures derived from the dimensions of the physical body. This archi-
tecture is a conduit for the storage and retrieval of data.
The interior is a highly controlled environment, but it is not designed
to accommodate physical comfort based on the psychometric chart; at
Datacenter101, the concern is the protection and optimization of the
servers. The interior layout is determined by the modules of 42-inch-
deep server racks, with alternating hot and cold aisles on either side
of them. Cool intake air is pulled in from the cold aisle, heated up as
it moves through the servers, and discharged as hot exhaust air in
the hot aisles. Aisle widths are carefully calibrated to optimize cool-
ing and heating, and a flexible, raised-floor system allows for the effi-
cient movement and delivery of conditioned air.18 Building systems
are highly redundant and reliable, rivalling the sophistication of those
used in life-critical architecture like hospitals. Two separate power
feeds from two different utility companies enter the building from
opposite ends. An on-site diesel generator functions as the third of
the “three independent power sources” and is sized to carry 100 per
cent of the electrical load.19
The datacentre is a functional architecture of protection with little
concern for aesthetics, as it receives very few physical visitors. Main-
taining secure access to the data is of primary concern in these facil-
ities. Datacenter101 uses “a multi-layered approach to access control”
that begins with a gated entrance and includes “key card access, pin
code entry, scramble pad, biometric screening, true mantrap design,
and CCTV/DVR monitoring.”20 At Datacenter101, the dividual exists
as bits of data housed in technical equipment and available for itiner-
ant access. The dividual will remain in this place until the server is
decommissioned.
The Products of Data
In the same way that the bits and atoms of the body are inseparable,
the retail store and the datacentre are inextricably linked as a con-
duit within a single architectural infrastructure. While it is immedi-
ately obvious that the datacentre is a product of the collection of data,
the local retail store architecture of Kroger is just as much so because
the insights gained from data analysis provide constant feedback into
the details of the retail architecture. Ultimately, Store #605 is a pack-
aging machine that communicates through the construction of expe-
rience, an extension of the packaging and branding of products, and
continually redesigned to sell even more.21 In this way, architecture
becomes a tool for modulation, creating a compelling consumer expe-
rience as a form of control.

300
 Control is a situation that is self-perpetuating, as Burroughs well
knew: “Once embarked on a policy of control, the leaders must con-
tinue the policy as a matter of self-preservation.”22 Big-box tecton-
ics follow the logic of the market, while signage and branding are
layered onto “blank, expressionless containers”23 to create the aura
and experience around the banal architecture of the warehouse. In
Kroger’s architecture, production and consumption overlap within
the same logic. Kroger fulfills the prophecy of Archizoom’s No-Stop
City by creating, in Pier Vittorio Aureli’s words, a bad infinity “in
which human associations are ruled only by the logic of economy and
rendered in terms of diagrams and growth statistics.”24 Like No-Stop
City, Kroger’s architecture “has ensnared humanity within the logic
of indefinite growth as a means of development, constantly aspiring
to the new and different, and thereby forcing humanity to identically
repeat its own condition.”25 The consumers within Store #605 help
construct this bad infinity with every swipe of their credit cards.
Shelves, barcode scanners, checkout lines, signage, floor materials,
shopping carts, product packaging, credit cards, and currency are all
elements of a carefully considered architecture that facilitates trans-
action. Many of these fall outside of the traditional purview of the
architect, but they are incredibly consequential aspects of retail space
and facilitate the production of consumers as subjects. Through their
data collection and analysis, Kroger and Dunnhumby have accommo-
dated combinations of mass consumers as samples (the seven shop-
per groups previously mentioned) by creating five store prototypes:
“value,” “upmarket,” “Hispanic,” “mainstream,” and “family.”26 Each
one features a flexible space that can expand or contract in square
footage as needed to accommodate programmatic elements. All of the
special services for the store (sushi bar, Starbucks cafe, bakery, etc.),
determined through data analysis, are clustered together within this
space. The specific character of each store is thus evident upon entry.
In this way, programmatic selection, distribution, and adjacencies are
a direct result of demographic and transactional data.
Even the most mundane infrastructural components of the Kroger
Company are highly dictated by data. Radii and catchment areas are
key in determining placement. Each element is connected to corpo-
rate headquarters through both data transfers and the movement of
products, over wires, cables, and highways. Zip code profiles within
the ideal radii of 2–2.5 miles27 are cross-referenced with Kroger stores
688, 707, and 605. The store prototypes and the services they offer are
a direct reflection of local demographics.
Data-Agency and the Technocratic Limit
As an architect, I have greater agency over the architecture of the
grocery store as I swipe my credit card than I could ever have with
my professional stamp. Insights from “honest” data have supplanted
the experience and expertise of architecture as a professional disci-
pline, and the habits of consumers have become the new architects for
consumable reality. Predictive analytics provide seemingly unques-
tionable insights from real data to inform decisions about lighting con-
cepts, materials and finishes, adjacencies of programmatic elements,
product inventory and selection, shelf layout, and program elements.
Practicing architects have relied on their cultural role as intellec-
tuals who offer “informed judgment”28 to make thousands of deci-
sions throughout the design and execution of a building. The promise
of objective data assaults professional agency by replacing educated
and experienced judgment (aesthetic or otherwise) with immutable

301 Mass Intimacy: Consumer...

 DunnhumbyUSA - Portland

DunnhumbyUSA - Portland

McKee Foods Kingman, LLC

McKee Foods Kingman, LLC

CItiGROUP - CitiBank
 CItiGROUP - CitiBank

CItiGROUP - CitiBank
McKee Foods

McKee Foods

DunnhumbyUSA - Chicago

DunnhumbyUSA - Chicago

DunnhumbyUSA - Cincinnati
McKee Foods The Kroger Company

MasterCard
DunnhumbyUSA - Processing Ctr
- Cincinnati
McKee Foods The Kroger Company

MasterCard - Processing Ctr

McKee Foods

McKee Foods

DunnhumbyUSA - New York

CITIGROUP - GLOBAL ENTERPRISE PAYMENTS

DunnhumbyUSA - New York

CITIGROUP - GLOBAL
DunnhumbyUSA
ENTERPRISE- PAYMENTS
Boston

DunnhumbyUSA - Boston
 “truths” derived from numbers.29 While the Kroger Company intensi-
fies the agency of data for producing architecture, grocery retail envi-
ronments are not the only architecture designed by data-streams. The
impact of this paradigm is far-reaching; because architecture is inex-
tricable from the logic of the market, clients are always looking for
ways to reduce their risks when investing in the building of a struc-
ture, and data analysis leads to seemingly sound business decisions.
The discipline has responded to this technocratic paradigm by
attempting to establish legitimacy for the work on its own terms. For
example, architecture’s current fetish for info-graphics and mapping
enrols graphical representations of data to “prove” the efficacy of the
design. Contemporary architects unwittingly agree to use data both
as a generator for design and a justification for design decisions. We
must recognize this prevailing paradigm of administration-by-data as
a powerful force in the production of architecture before we can intel-
ligently form a response to it.
Burroughs recognized the inevitable advancement of a control
apparatus. In an effort to prevail in intensely competitive markets of
low profit margins and shifting consumer loyalties, corporations will
surely continue to approach the limits of control in an effort to protect
their fragile positions of relative advantage. However, the very pro-
cesses of sophistication and proliferation of a control machine make it
increasingly vulnerable. By understanding architecture’s relationship
to the excesses of the spatially extended data body, architects can work
to produce dissident interference rather than compliance, embolden-
ing the agency of design for future cultural productions.

304
 Endnotes 9 Martin Hayward, Any Colour You Like, As Long As
It’s Any Colour You Like (Dunnhumby, 2009), 12.
1 The Kroger Company, 2010 Fact Book (Cincinnati, 10 According to Dunnhumby, in 2009, 42 million ­people
OH: The Kroger Company, 2010), 1–56. held Kroger Plus loyalty cards.
2 Benjamin Bratton, “Introduction: Logics of Habitable 11 William Burroughs, “The Limits of Control,” in
Circulation,” in Speed and Politics, Paul Virilio, ­Schizo-Culture, Vol. 3, ed. Sylvère Lotringer
trans. Mark Polizzotti (Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), (New York: Semiotext(e), 1978), 38–42.
2006), 12. 12 Hayward, Any Colour, 19.
3 Ibid. 13 Burroughs, “Limits,” 38–42.
4 Gilles Deleuze, “Postscript on Control Societies,” 14 John Butler and Mark Wilmot, On Relevant
in Negotiations, 1972–1990, ed. and trans. Mar- ­Communications (Dunnhumby, 2010), 14.
tin Joughin (New York: Columbia University Press, 15 Ibid.
1995), 177–182. In 1992, Deleuze identified his own 16 Jesse LeCavalier, “All Those Numbers: Logistics,
time as one in which “control society” was replac- ­Territory and Walmart,” Design Observer, http://
ing Michel Foucault’s “disciplinary society.” Two places.designobserver.com/feature/walmart-
decades later, we find ourselves fully engrossed logistics/13598.
in this control society. In each of their respective 17 As a comparable facility, the 125,000-square-foot
epochs, these societal paradigms have had signifi- datacentre built by Walmart in Jane, Missouri requires
cant implications for the structure of everyday life 15–20 people to operate.
in Western society, defining the interplay between 18 See http://www.42u.com/cooling/hot-aisle-cold-
institutions, people, architecture, and material cul- aisle.htm.
ture on such a vast scale that it becomes difficult to 19 See http://www.datacenter101.com.
step outside of their purview. In the shift from a dis- 20 Datacentre101, http://www.datacenter101.com.
ciplinary society to a control society, the business 21 Studio Sputnik, Snooze: Immersing Architecture in
replaced the factory as the dominant institution Mass Culture (Rotterdam: NAi Publishers, 2003), 1–10.
of power. Both factories and businesses construct 22 Burroughs, “Limits,” 38–42.
interactions between people and institutions—the 23 Andrea Branzi, No-Stop City: Archizoom Associati
factory is concerned with confinement, while the (Orleans: HYX, 2006).
business deals with modulation. 24 Pier Vittorio Aureli, The Possibility of an Absolute
5 William J. Mitchell, Me++: The Cyborg Self and the Architecture (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2011),
Networked City (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 20–21.
2004), 3. 25 Ibid.
6 Giorgio Agamben, What is an Apparatus? And Other 26 Hayward, Any Colour, 26.
Essays, ed. David Kishik and Stefan Pedatella 27 Dunnhumby, Fact Book
(­Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009), 1–24. 28 Dana Cuff, Architecture: The Story of a Practice
7 Deleuze, “Postscript,” 177–182. (­Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1992), 102–103.
8 Ibid., 181. 29 See Theodore M. Porter, Trust in Numbers: The Pursuit
of Objectivity in Science and Public Life (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1995).

Bio

Keith Peiffer is a registered architect at Ziger/Snead Architects in Baltimore and found-

ing member of STUD10, a design research collective. Keith has a B.Arch from Penn State
University, and a post-professional MS.Arch in Design Research from the Taubman Col-
lege of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Michigan. His work, through
various formats, explores embodied experience, disciplinary agency, and the instantiation
of ideology in material assemblages.

305 ...Design by and for Dividuals

Prison America
—A Conversation
with Chris
Kraus
on Summer of Hate

306 Section Slug

 It occurred to Catt that the epistemological groundwork for the
war in Iraq had been laid by Paris Hilton's anal sex video. (27)

scapegoat says I find this statement devastating because it

gives this precise feel to what American politics were then,
and still are today—excessively dangerous and ludicrous. While
it’s so provocative, it’s also slightly perplexing. I would love to
know more about what you meant by this statement? How did
it come to you?

chris kraus The passage goes on to explain that they were similar
cynical scripts—the “leaking” of soon-to-be-famous Paris Hilton’s
“secret” sex video, and the Easter egg hunt for WMDs leading up
to the US invasion and occupation of Iraq. Years later, George W.
Bush would mime the “search” for WMDs under tables in a skit
performed for a journalists’ dinner. Throughout the process, he
knew what the outcome would be. And this became the new nor-
mal. The search for WMDs completely deflected debate away from
the prudence and implications of the invasion, in media outlets
from the New York Times to Fox News.

While Homeland Security made pre-emptive arrests, any attempt

at addressing the present, right down to this statement itself, now
felt sadly pre-emptive. (77)

Catt sensed that all cultural dialogue was really a cipher…for

something else…a means of obscuring the thick toxic cloud under
which we were all living. Everyone acting, for professional reasons,
as if these things matter. But even now, two and a half years since
the Iraq invasion, you can't raise your eyes without seeing Ameri­-
can flags and lapel pins, even in cities. The endless debate about
“prisoner abuse”(only the hard-core leftist blogs called it torture)
halted, to everyone’s great relief, by the Abu Ghraib show trials.
This is what Catt wants to talk about with Tobias. Pregnant with
Charles Graner's baby, Lynndie England lost her plea bargain when
she naively remarked that she didn't know her actions were wrong.
She'd gotten off-script. (149)

307 Prison America

 Yesterday while they were juicing carrots and complaining about
their respective careers, Terry had stopped and looked at her ob­
liquely. Isn't it weird, how nothing coming out now even mentions
what's going on? And Catt knew. It was like they'd had to leave the
country in order to say it.
At least ten times a day for the past two or three years, Catt's
thoughts hit the same wall as Terry's. To speak them out loud was
completely uncool, because where would you start? God Bless Our
Troops, hanging chads, Saw 2, Janet Jackson’s wardrobe malfunc-
tion? Do not expect truth. Nazism permeated the flesh and blood
of the people through single words, idioms, and sentence struc-
tures which were imposed on them in a million repetitions and
taken on board mechanically and unconsciously, wrote Victor
Klemperer, the Jew who'd remained in hiding in Berlin through-
out the Holocaust. In the summer of 2006, six thousand National
Guardsmen were presidentially dispatched to patrol the Arizona/
Sonora border. Guantanamo Bay had been closed to journalists,
human rights monitors, and the Red Cross after two prisoner sui­-
cides that vice President Cheney described as“acts of asymmetri-
cal warfare.”Deprived of even the right to define their own deaths,
hundreds of prisoners languished there, chargeless. (194–195)

ss How does the book construct an image of the political econ-

omy of war, which is the landscape of America in Summer of
Hate? Can you speak more directly to how that conditioned a
certain type of censorship for cultural workers and artists?

ck My memory of that period is the utter hopelessness of any re-

sistance, not that “resistance” as exercised by a Los Angeles writer
would be particularly meaningful. The polarization in the US at
that moment was complete, between the “losers”—vegans with
cars covered in bumper-stickers—opposing the war, and everyone
else. The “everyone else” included not just the activist right, but
the “creatives,” the art world, people who just wanted to live their
own lives in the spaces outside the corporate mainstream and be
left in peace. The Occupy movement, if nothing else, changed this
culture of silence.

ss Inthe novel, you make critical associations between events

that contextualize the politics of 9/11 during the Bush era.
Moving beyond the mania of the “war on terror,” the narrative
of war-making accentuates the growth of the prison-industrial
complex, and the sentiment of a newfound nationalist fervour
increasingly colouring the landscape. Summer of Hate reveals

308 Scapegoat
 the severe crackdown, initiated by the Bush administration,
on “illegal” immigrants, intensified by police procedures that
criminalize people of colour and the poor. What you directly
deal with in the book, as Catt travels from LA to New Mexico,
from Baja, Mexico to Arizona—a state under the reign of Joe
Arpaio, the Arizona chief of police infamous for the “tent city”
outdoor prison extension where he forced inmates to live in
140-degree weather—is how the excesses of American over-
zealousness are conjured through the contradictions present
in the ecology of the American penal system.
The effects of systemic punishment leave their mark on
Paul, the former prisoner that Catt meets and hires to look after
her buildings in Albuquerque. The contradictions inherent in
the US prison culture that Paul faces as an ex-prisoner create
a situation where life chances are impossible to resurrect. At
the beginning of Summer of Hate, we get a glimpse of Paul’s
situation while he and Catt are shopping for “fiestaware.” Catt
asks if they should get turquoise or orange-coloured dishes.
“Not orange,” Paul says.

“I've got some pretty bad memories of that particular color.”

And then he tells her everything—the drunken binge, the fuel
credit card, the public defender, prison—or almost. He can't tell
her everything. Bad enough he's a convicted felon.
Catt steps into a cloud of compassion. So this is what she heard
in his voice, that first time they talked on the phone when she was
in Flagstaff. She cannot imagine spending even one day in prison.
She's never done anything she couldn't talk her way out of. Paul
spent sixteen months in state prison for defrauding Halliburton?
Of less than one thousand dollars?
Meanwhile, she's amassed tens of thousands by working within
the tax code's gray zones. Unaware of his former employer's mas-
sive war crimes, Paul seems ashamed of stealing less than an art
gallery spends on an after-party. (133)

ss Paul is doomed, trapped in a cycle of poverty. As you write,

“If you punish the poor by making them poorer the cycle is
endless” (160). Paul is trying to pay off his debts, his prison
and parole fees; and at the same time he’s trying to find hous-
ing and a job, which are hard to come by because he’s forever
labeled a felon. The book suggests there’s no real way out for
Paul; if he wants to make a better life for himself, someone

309 Prison America

 like Catt is necessary. Catt has money. She helps him pay
off what he owes that keeps him from getting a loan to start
school; she offers him a job and housing.
The absurdity and extremity of American penal culture is
visualized so precisely in the book, not letting us forget, for
instance, Arapaio’s chosen penal aesthetics: pink handcuffs
and pink underwear that inmates are made to wear. Inmates
and ex-prisoners are bound up in a cycle of humiliation, degra-
dation, and endless forms of punishment, however literal or
symbolic.

ck Yes, that’s true. And sadly, not much has changed even now in
2013: Arpaio won re-election last November, and there isn’t an ac-
tivist group whose members dare put their names on the group’s
Facebook page. Arapaio’s impunity from retaliation against his
opponents is legendary. Mary Rose Wilcox, a Democratic County
Supervisor who dared to oppose him, was indicted by a grand jury
on dozens of charges. Eventually she prevailed, but at what cost?
What you say about Paul’s situation is crucial. One of the things
I was trying to do with the novel was to show in this case study,
with some specificity, exactly what a person who’s been through
the system is facing when he or she is released. People have re-
marked that Summer of Hate is clumsily focused on numbers: how
much did the lawyers cost, how much interest on the restitution,
how much for the urinalysis, etc.? But that is the point! Adding it
up, in Paul’s case, it took about $85,000 for him to erase the dis-
advantages of two decades of poverty and begin a new life. And
clearly, that’s not going to happen most of the time.
Similarly, the social service agencies serving the homeless in
various programs in downtown LA spend tens of thousands of dol-
lars to stabilize a handful of clients. The neglect and punitive treat-
ment of these people is so severe, remediation is almost impossible.

ss These issues—related to poverty, mass incarceration, deporta-

tions, and perpetual war—are still with us today and are getting
worse under the Obama administration. In an interview I read,
you said, “I think that if we don’t try and process, both for
ourselves and publically, what’s happening in the present, it’s
a very great loss.” How does Summer of Hate try to process the
present? Perhaps the context of Paul and Catt, their present,

310 Excess
 resounds so well in ours, even though you’re referring to past
events—2005–2006—and because of this affinity, between
the past and the present, Summer of Hate feels devastating
in the sense that we are still living in the residue of it all. We’re
living in Catt and Paul’s future political climate. How do you
think things have changed?

ck I didn’t exactly set out to publish a book about events in 2006

in 2012. I would have liked for the process to be faster. But it takes
me a long time to write a book, and then there is the lead-time
involved in publication. So it is a weird gap, a half-decade or so.
Kathryn Bigelow’s film Zero Dark Thirty deals with events at a
similar proximity and people seem to find this very disturbing. But
I think it is way more interesting to deal with the present and re-
cent past than fetishize revolutionary moments of the past.
Many of the draconian measures taken during the Bush era
have become the new normal, despite a less toxic rhetoric. The Pa-
triot Act is still law, one in a hundred Americans are incarcerated,
and we have accepted surveillance in all areas of our lives.

At the end of Joe's first week on the job, thinking he'd keep him
on the crew, Paul asked Joe if he had any references. And Joe said
no. Then he confessed that he'd just gotten out of prison. Unfazed,
Paul replied,“Oh. Which one?”and Joe said,“Las Cruces.”Paul
didn't ask what the charge was. Instead, he told Joe that he'd
spent time himself in Las Lunas. Joe knew right away that Las
Lunas was Level III, and he knew then that Paul knew Las Cruces
was Level V, maximum security. So he told Paul:
“After getting divorced, I was sharing a place here in town
with my mom and my sister. One night, my sister's ex-boyfriend
showed up there drunk, wanting to talk to her. He had a gun he
was waving around. My sister and mom were both there in the
room, and I didn’ t think twice. I had a knife and I went for it. I did
fourteen years. The public defender pled it to manslaughter.”
Looking over the table, Catt realizes that everyone here except
for herself and Tommy has been incarcerated, homeless, or both.
When Titus and Sharon moved down from Sonoma, they lived in
their van for two months, both working full-time until they could
save up enough for an apartment. Cops in his small Texas town
showed up at Evan's mom's house on his eighteenth birthday to
arrest him for assault. At 16, he'd gotten into a fight with a class-
mate, but they'd deferred the charges two years so he'd go to jail,
instead of receiving probation as a juvenile.
“Yeah man…happy birthday! I'd just finished high school, and
the guys they locked me up with were really scary.”Evan, his

311 Article
Prison America
Slug
 mom, and his three-year old son moved to Albuquerque just to
get out of Texas. His son's mom stayed behind. She was, like
Brett's ex, a meth addict. Brett—who still hasn't decided whether
to turn himself in on the warrant—lived alone on the beach in
his van when he was 16, with an eight-month old infant. The
Victorville painter, Jason's son Matt, spent part of his teens in San
Bernadino County Juvenile Hall for spray-painting graffiti. Even
the vendors she's hired have records! Zack, the artisan hippie
who built a straw bale wall for them at Tulane, remembered Paul
from the Farm. Zack had served 18 months for Possession With
Intent To Sell—a few marijuana plants in his back yard. Was this
Prison America?
Catt never set out to do social work, but apparently everyone
outside the art world has either lived in a van or been incarcer-
ated. None of these people see any connection between their sad,
shitty stories. Instead, they're ashamed. Except for Paul, who
blames The Disease Known as Alcoholism, they put it down to
bad luck and misfortune.”(143–144)

ss What is Prison America?

ck Prison America is where we are living now, where relatively

few people know what goes on, on the other side of the mirror.

ss  id you do research in order to write the characters intro-

D
duced in your book, like the ones mentioned above? How did
you initially come up with the idea for the book? What drove
you to write it?

ck You know, like Catt in the book, I’m not very good at making
shit up. All of the people named in that passage and their stories are
real, with the names changed around. Like Catt, I lived through
this experience. Unlike Catt, I decided to turn it into a book. As
these things were happening, many of them painful, I was aware
that through this important knowledge, that through these events,
I was being offered a glimpse of the web that enmeshes us, outside
of the bubble. And it seemed very important to be able to write
about this, that I would be able to do this as a novel and convey the
interior lives of the characters.

As each new case is called, Catt observes that the leg unshack-
ling-and-reshackling procedure takes only slightly less time than
the hearings. While a bailiff reads out the charges—possession
of crack cocaine, grand theft auto, receipt of stolen property, crimi­-

312 Section Slug

Scapegoat
 nal mischief, dishonored checks—each prisoner stands in front of
the judge, eyes looking down toward cuffed hands. Why are the
prisoners cuffed? Catt remembers a TV Guide cover she’ d seen
as a child, a court drawing of Black Panther Bobby Seale shackled
and chained to a chair in front of Judge Julius Hoffman. At the time,
this was widely deemed shocking. Of course Seale was on trial in
front of a jury, and these are just hearings. None of the inmates
in Judge Sherry's court will ever be going to trial…Instead, im-
prisoned but not yet convicted, they'll receive continuance after
continuance until the DA finally arrives at a plea.
Paul doesn't look at the guys in the dock. He has to stay posi-
tive. Their sorry-ass plight reminds him how much he owes Catt.
Blinking back tears she wonders, can anyone locate the point where
this present begins? Before Abu Ghraib, before Guantanamo Bay…
Was it the soft bans on public assembly? The laws against second-
hand smoke, the DUI limit lowered to one glass of wine? Parks
allowed to degrade until everyone wanted them closed, the de-
funding of public transportation, bottles of water that cost more
than half the hourly minimum wage? For quality and training
purposes, this call is being recorded and monitored…the first
clause now mostly eliminated because it is no longer necessary.
(239–240)

ss  you think the American class structure is changing drastic-

Do
ally? Is Prison America creating an underclass? Are the differ-
ences becoming extreme because of the prison-industrial
complex? If America is Prison America, then I feel the land-
scape you point to in Summer of Hate is conditioned by prison
culture as it conditions poverty. Paul suffers from this. The fear
and anxiety he feels is made very real in the novel; it drives the
noir element of the narrative. The anxiety that haunts Catt is
associated with being a famous writer, managing her finances
and investing in property, and running away from her killer
whom she met through an online S/M site. Later she leaps into
this world of mayhem associated with fear and violence on this
other, real level. She becomes this character that really steps
up, offering support in a direct and personal way. Would Catt
have done this if Paul wasn’t her lover? How would you des-
cribe what the ethical concerns are for Catt? Was Paul simply
lucky to have met someone like her? Is survival reduced to luck
in the novel? If Catt didn’t exist how would have Paul survived?

ck Great questions. I’m a great believer in luck, charmed coin-

cidence, which is probably why I’m a writer, not a public policy

313 Prison America

person. It’s very unlikely Catt would have done this for Paul if they
weren’t connected on this intimate level as lovers. Really, there is
no altruism; it just isn’t very realistic. There is definitely an under-
class in the US that has replaced working-class culture. And that’s a
consequence not just of the prison-industrial complex, but so many
things: the impossibility of single-wage households for all but the
rich; the fact that businesses cannot pay living wages and benefits
and still be competitive; the replacement of most regional culture
by corporate media.

ss Why the title Summer of Hate?

ck The story takes place in that freakishly hot summer of 2006…

and it’s the opposite of the 1960s, the “Summer of Love.” I couldn’t
believe no one had used that title! But actually, there is a metal
band of that name.

ss  an interview you mention that fiction carries with it this

In
real possibility of being able to “describe the world.” Is this
related to what poet Eileen Myles has called a “cunt exege-
sis?” Myles was referring to your work in I Love Dick. What
is a cunt exegesis, and does it apply to Summer of Hate?

ck Well, actually, I think that was “dumb cunt exegesis.” It is a

phrase I used in I Love Dick…the idea was that the “dumb cunt”
might actually narrate her own story, on her own terms. The phrase
was hyperbolic, of course, but—apparently even now—not inaccurate.
It’s the idea that women and girls might have a less institutional
form of “discourse,” of emotional thought, that is rarely respected
within our culture.

Bio

Chris Kraus is a Los Angeles-based writer, art critic, curator, and filmmaker who teaches
writing at the European Graduate School. Her critically acclaimed first novel, I Love Dick,
came out in 1997, followed by Aliens and Anorexia in 2000, and Torpor in 2006. Kraus has
published two prominent collections on art criticism, Video Green: Los Angeles Art and
the Triumph of Nothingness (2004), and Where Art Belongs (2011), and is the co-editor
of the powerful anthology, Hatred of Capitalism (2001). Kraus is also the co-director of
the press Semiotext(e), where in 1990 she launched the imprint Native Agents, which
introduced radical forms of writing that combine elements of theory, fiction, and auto-
biography. The imprint has published the work of such influential writers as Kathy Acker,
Fanny Howe, Ann Rower and Eileen Myles.

314 Excess
315 Prison America
Nature Inside
and Out
Obituary for a
Psychiatric
Centre
and its Shopping
Mall

by Seth Denizen
318 Feature
Just as the sleeper—in this respect like the madman—sets out on the
macrocosmic journey through his own body, and the noises and feel-
ings of his insides, such as blood pressure, intestinal churn, heartbeat,
and muscle sensation (which in the waking and salubrious individual
converge in a steady surge of health) generate, in the extravagantly
heightened inner awareness of the sleeper, illusion or dream imagery
which translates and accounts for them, so likewise for the dreaming
collective, which, through the arcades, communes with its own in-
sides. [...] Of course much that is external to the [individual] is internal
to the [collective]: architecture, fashion—yes, even the weather—are,
in the interior of the collective, what the sensoria of organs, the
feeling of sickness or health, are inside the individual. And as long
as they preserve this unconscious, amorphous dream configuration,
they are as much natural processes as digestion, breathing, and the
like. They stand in the cycle of the eternally selfsame, until the col-
lective seizes upon them in politics and history emerges.
—Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project

Built in 1977 in downtown Baltimore, the that would be awake at night, sentinel-like,
Walter P. Carter Center began with a clear keeping their family members out of harm’s
mandate to get the mentally ill out of pri- way, and out of the prison system. Every
sons and emergency rooms, off the streets, obituary should begin with the dream of
and into community-based treatment pro- the deceased.
grams. Named for the local civil rights act-
ivist who conceived of this approach, the

Walter P. Carter Center,

building was intended to act as an enor-

Photo: Seth Denizen

mous switchboard within which the un-

1977-2009
insured urban poor could be connected to
mental health services provided by the
state, or by specialized non-state provid-
ers, housed on one of its seven floors. Its
original plans included a shopping mall
full of restaurants and shoe stores on its
ground level that would create a porous bor- Walking through the building just be-
der between the Carter Center and the city, fore its closure in 2009, it was clear to
allowing patients to venture out and the me that the twentieth century had been
city to enter in.1 Each level of the building hard on this dream, which was itself al-
would be organized in order of increasing ready fragile and full of contradictions. 2
acuity, with the most disturbed patients on The building seemed to keep a good record
the seventh floor, where they could enjoy of these contradictions simply in the way
the view from the hydro-therapy pool. it had been constructed, renovated, and
More than just a hospital, the Carter Cen- occupied. The ground floor, intended orig-
ter would fill a huge and growing gap in inally as a shopping mall, was occupied
the city’s social services and, for the first by a small lobby and a large methadone
time, give the police something to do with clinic. The series of generous balconies that
the mentally ill other than incarcerate them. marked the exterior of the building turned
Its porous borders would extend into the out, upon closer inspection, to be roofs in-
legal system, and in this way the poor and accessible even to the staff. The centralized
predominantly Black and Latino communi- climate control system was notoriously out
ties of Baltimore would have an institution of step with reality, and since the windows

319 Seth Denizen

 on the wards could not be opened for safe- If clients were not found competent, and in-
ty reasons, there was nothing that could stead in need of psychiatric services, then
be done to moderate the indoor tempera- the judge could order their return to the
ture. Just underneath the mechanical room Center until they recovered. Once recov-
housing this system, a long forgotten bra- ered, they could then be sent back to tri-
nch of the Jones Falls River was discovered, al and made to serve time for the original
which occasionally escaped its pipes and offence. Within this logic, recovery is not
flooded into the basement. considered a cure, but rather an abatement,
or diminishing, of one’s acuity level, which
means a return to some kind of stable state.7
balcony constructed as a roof

By the time it closed its doors, the only le-

Walter P. Carter Center,

Photo: Seth Denizen

gal differences between the Center and

a prison were that at the former clients
could be forced to take medi­cation invol-
untarily, and they could also be denied a
request for solitary confinement, which in
prison can requested for safety reasons.8
Looking back on the life of the Carter
Center and its slow decline into a more
The most bitter defeat of all, however, nineteenth-century form of confinement,
was that the Carter Center had become the it is important to notice how the abandon-
prison it meant to replace; the evidence of ment of the shopping mall as a model marks
this transformation could be seen clearly a significant transition. Standing in the
in the seemingly endless ad hoc retrofits patio on the seventh floor, the idea that
that the building had endured since the the normative symbolic order and all the
1970s. As if under siege, metal bars had affective tricks of a shopping mall would
been welded onto exterior fences, small be enlisted to blur the border between rea­-
gaps had been sealed with concrete, Plexi- son and un-reason, inside and outside, with
glas had been added to the inside of windows, the intension of creating an indeterminate
and a metal cage had been placed over the space of new social encounters, seems re­
outdoor patio after a patient broke his legs markably utopian. Or more precisely, it
trying to escape. The “clients”3 were all ac- seems as utopian as the golden toilets of
tually serving time in one way or another. Thomas More’s Utopia, wherein a double
reversal of symbolic meaning creates the
implicit promise of new social relations.
The mall may or may not have created new
Walter P. Carter Center,
Photo: Seth Denizen

social relations, but at the very least, its

outdoor patio

design was optimistic about the way the

city might be made available to the men-
tally ill and cannot, on these grounds, be
accused of the cynicism that arrived later.
relaxation room with water theme
Walter P. Carter Center,

Most were awaiting the results of a pre-

Photo: Seth Denizen

trial competency evaluation, meaning that

a judge would decide whether or not they
were mentally competent to stand trial. If
the crime they were being tried for was
minor, such as breaking a window, loiter-
ing, or assault, they were sent to the Carter
Center for evaluation.4 In 2009, the aver-
age length of stay for clients awaiting this
evaluation was 49 days.5 If they were found The dream of a shopping mall that makes
competent to stand trial and convicted of no distinction between the mad and the
an offense, the time they spent in the Center nonmad, the asylum and the city, consump­
would be subtracted from the sentence.6 tion and treatment, was clearly not real-

320 Scapegoat
Eastern Shore Hospital Center Treatment Mall. Left to right: Food Court, Main Mall corridor, and Snack Bar.
Photography is not allowed at ESHC, images are from Maryland Department of Mental Health and Hygiene website:
http://dhmh.maryland.gov/eshc/SitePages/treatment.aspx

ized by the Carter Center. However, it is The differences between the shopping
far from forgotten in the State of Mary- mall at the Carter Center and the one real-
land Department of Health and Mental Hy- ized at the Eastern Shore Hospital Center
giene. Twenty-four years after the Center are important. In the former, the mall was
was opened, the new, $22.8-million-dollar transplanted without modification, where-
Eastern Shore Hospital Center became as in the latter it has been reinterpreted
the first state hospital in the country to from within, almost beyond recognition,
successfully design and build a mall for to give expression to entirely new social
the explicit purpose of psychiatric treat- forms. Perhaps any resemblance between
ment. 9 Hailed as a national model at the the two malls is superficial, an irrelevant
time, each of its linear residential wards overlap in dream imagery. The main evi-
opens at one end onto a mall that orga- dence that the two shopping malls are re-
nizes every aspect of daily life at the hos- lated comes from the fact of their shared
pital. 10 At 9:30 a.m., the mall opens and paternity in the community-based treat-
the clients can leave their ward to begin ment model developed in the mid-1960s,
shopping for group therapy. Each group which continues to shape the language
therapy session takes place in a room locat- used by the psychiatric profession to ex-
ed off the main mall promenade. Examples plain the adoption of the American mall
of group therapy sessions include: “Under- as a therapeutic space: “The goal was to
standing My Diagnosis,” “Relapse/Reco- create pleasant, community-like spaces
very,” “Money Management,” and “Mall and destinations within the mall, through
Walking.” Clients can shop for therapy by which participants could move safely and
looking in the doors and windows of the as independently as possible, with the least
Treatment Mall, or simply temporarily try- amount of staff intervention.”11 The cre-
ing out a session. Clients then earn a wage ation of “community-like” spaces within
by attending group therapy, which is dis- the institution continues to be the “hetero-
persed in “Mall Money,” based on their topic” project expressed in the literature on
“Group Participation Average” (GPA). This treatment malls, which emphasizes the
metric is not based on mental ability but double benefit of having to spend less time
rather on performance, which is relative directly monitoring patients while simulta-
to the client and rated on the basis of nine neously providing therapy.12 The therapy
criteria. This rating is then electronically is an architecture which approximates the
communicated to the pharmacy, which can kind of exchanges the clients will have to
use it to alter dosages in the client’s med- engage in outside of the institution—the
ication. Mall money is redeemable in the world as mall—and creates the conditions
food court and gift shop, which also ac- under which the clients can habituate them-
cepts cash that the clients can withdraw selves to those kind of exchanges while
from the Treatment Mall Bank. Food and on medication—the world as ward.13 The
snacks are most frequently bought in the hope is that clients will become capable
food court, whereas phone time and AA of living within the new rhythms intro-
batteries are popular items at the gift shop. duced into their life by their medication,
Fifteen-thousand dollars is raised each in a kind of psychopharmacological dress-
year to pay the wages, in Mall Money, of age, and that these rhythms will be strong
the clients; this fundraising is accomplished and stable enough to maintain their tem-
through a “Walk-and-Run” in the Fall, and poral integrity against the rhythms and
a golf tournament in the Spring, both or- structures of life outside the institution.14
ganized by volunteers. At this point the state would no longer need

321 Obituary for a...

to pay their hospital bill—a shift in fiscal could have been realized in their former
responsibility which has effectively replac- building. Just a few miles down the road
ed “the cure” as the end goal of treatment. from the new Treatment Mall, the former
That the architecture of the American shop- Eastern Shore State Hospital for the Insane,
ping mall was the chosen approximation built in 1915, consisted of separate pavilions
of reality for these state psychiatric hos- arranged along the shoreline of the beau-
pitals to help produce the essential set of tiful Choptank River. In order to fund the
rhythms for the mentally ill to master construction of the Treatment Mall, in the
needs to be accounted for if the dream of mid-1990s the state sold the waterfront
the treatment mall is to be interpreted. property to Hyatt, who developed it as a
It seems clear that the treatment mall 400-room hotel, 24,000 square-foot confer-
finds its affinity with the American shop- ence centre, 18-hole golf course, and 150-
ping mall not simply because of its formal slip marina. “We ended up with a first-class
resemblance. While its familiarity is clearly resort and a state-of-the-art hospital,” said
important to practitioners at the Eastern Maryland Governor Parris Glendening.17
Shore Hospital, there also seems to be a That this kind of scenic beauty could have
more fundamental hypothesis at work: been reserved for the “insane” in 1915 is
mental illness is essentially a problem of an indication of the magnitude of the dif-
exchange. The hypothesis is a compelling ferences that lie between the two treat-
one. According to British psychotherapist ment programs.
Adam Phillips, “madness is when you can’t
find anyone who can stand you, [and] if
you can’t find anyone who can stand you,
you can’t find anyone who believes you’ve
got anything they want.”15 If “madness” de-
signates a category of people from whom
we want nothing—with whom there can
be no exchange—as Phillips insists, then
the forms of exchange offered by the Treat-
ment Mall are revealing of the way in which
state psychiatric centres dream of how we Postcard of Eastern Shore State Hospital for the Insane,
might one day want something from the built in 1915, showing the location of the Choptank River
mentally ill, thereby offering them a mo- Image from: www.asylumprojects.org

ment of normative recognition. This dream The original Eastern Shore Hospital was
consists of three forms of exchange: con- built to take advantage of its view of the
sumer choice, wage labour, and perform- river, its picturesque woods, and first-class
ance pay. Through them, Eastern Shore farmland. In the nineteenth century, mad-
offers its clients two moments of recogni- ness came from civilization, or the social
tion: first as an employee, and then a con- conditions and everyday rhythms that had
sumer; the architecture of the American come to characterize life in a European
mall offers the shortest possible distance city.18 The location was crucial for its cure,
between these two subject positions. Phy- as the “inalienable nature of reason” in the
sical distance is no small architectural patients of the nineteenth-century asylum
concern at Eastern Shore: in order to make “slept beneath the agitation of their mad-
a phone call, clients must first attend group ness.” 19 Treatment was to awaken this
therapy to make money, then go to the bank slum­bering reason by relocating the mad
to withdraw the money earned, then go to the natural beauty of the countryside in
to the gift shop to buy a phone card, and order to sever their relationship with the
then use the phone card in the designated social conditions and everyday rhythms of
phone room. This is probably why Mary K. life in the city. According to American med-
Noren, CEO of the Eastern Shore facility, ical historian David Rothman, if there was
emphasizes the relation between architect- ever some doubt among European doctors
ure and activity: “We wanted the building in the nineteenth century as to whether
to reflect our treatment program.”16 civilization was the cause of madness, this
Given the architectural requirements of doubt simply did not exist in the United
this approach to treatment, it is difficult States, whether in the general public or
to imagine how any part of this program among American medical superintendents,

322 Excess
 The building should be in a healthful,
pleasant and fertile district of country,
[…] the surrounding scenery should be
of varied and attractive kind, and the
neighborhood should possess numerous
objects of an agreeable and interesting
character. While the hospital itself
should be retired and its privacy fully
secured, it is desirable that the views
from it should exhibit life in its active
forms, and on this account stirring ob-
jects at a little distance are desirable.24

The Eastern Shore State Hospital for the

Insane was built on these basic principles,
with one exception: by 1915, the general
opinion was that the most violent patie-
nts should be physically separated from
the others, rather than kept in the same
The Kirkbride plan, from On the Construction, corridor, and this meant splitting up the
Organization and General Arrangements of Hospitals wards. The treatment program of the first
for the Insane, by Dr. Thomas Story Kirkbride (1854).
Eastern Shore hospital, as it was designed
prior to the Civil War.20 As the cause of in- in 1915, continued the Jacksonian commit-
sanity was understood to be environmen- ment of caring for the mentally ill in a the-
tal, the solution that presented itself in ra­peutic landscape of beautiful scenery,
the Jacksonian era was architectural. 21 “stirring objects,” and agricultural rhythms.
The result was that professional publica-
tions of the period, such as the American
Eastern Shore State Hospital for the Insane,

Journal of Insanity, were largely devoted

built 1915, showing the location of the
Choptank River and separate wards

to architectural questions. No detail of the

(Sanborn Map from 1930)

new asylum was beyond medical scrutiny.

The definitive work on the Jacksonian asy-
lum, On the Construction, Organization and
General Arrangements of Hospitals for the
Insane, written by American medical super-
intendent Dr. Thomas Story Kirkbride in
1854, is divided equally between the archi-
tecture of the building and its management;
that is, between the width of corridors, lo-
cation of pipes, ventilation ducts, gas works,
speaking tubes, and dumb waiters in the
first half, and the management of physi- While Kirkbride and the American me-
cians, supervisors, seamstresses, farmers, dical superintendents were debating the
carriage drivers, and night watchmen in design of buildings in the landscape, con-
the second.22 The plan Kirkbride pioneered temporary figures like Andrew Jackson
took the distinctive form of a long, linear, Downing and his protégé Fredrick Law
double-loaded corridor that stretched ac- Olmsted debated how to build the lands-
ross a ridge or vantage point. Known as the cape that would provide the therapy. Some
linear plan asylum, Kirkbride’s design is of the clearest explanations for how views
still a familiar form in many American cit­- of the countryside cured madness came
ies, with somewhere between 38 and 41 build from Olmsted as he tried to convince city
ings still in existence; as many as 32 have governments of the effectiveness of his
been demolished.23 The linear form of the landscape designs. These were principles
building was intended to provide each pa- he would apply equally to his design for
­tient with a view of the countryside, which Kirkbride’s Buffalo State Asylum for the
would itself treat both the causes and symp- Insane (completed in 1871), and New York’s
toms of insanity. A ­ ccording to Kirkbride: Central Park (completed in 1873). From Olm-

323 ...Psychiatric Centre...

sted’s explanations for his work in the con- were largely warehoused during the first
text of the history of the Eastern Shore half of the century, and then made home-
Hospital, it becomes clear the extent to less by deinstitutionalization in the latter
which the mall in the new hospital was a part of the second. In this sense the Treat­-
complete reversal of everything the first ment Mall is a return to the point where
building sought to achieve: the Jacksonian asylum left off, once again
filling its own professional psychiatric lit­e-
Of this class of evils [of town life] there ­ra­t ure with architectural plans and sec-
is one rapidly growing in Boston, in con- tions.26
tention with which nothing has yet been Despite the appearance of sophisticat-
accomplished. It is an evil dependent on ed drugs and management techniques for
a condition involved in the purpose of their administration, the return of architec­
placing many stacks of artificial conve- ture in the production of sanity is a return
niences for the interchange of services
closely together. It may be suggested if
to the same alliance that medical super-
not explained (for evils of this class are intendents have always made with design:
seldom fully explainable) in this way. A with the power of walls and doors comes
man’s eyes cannot be as much occupied repetition, and repetition is a fundamental
as they are in large cities by artificial aspect in the production of subjectivity. 27
things, or by natural things seen under The ways in which one repeats, the things
obviously artificial conditions, without one does over and over again in the asylum,
harmful effect, first on his mental and are not the same activities witnessed in the
nervous system and ultimately on his nineteenth-century facility; more funda-
entire constitutional organization. […]
An influence is desirable, however, that,
mentally, the transcendental power of this
acting through the eye, shall be more repetition to produce a “cure” no longer
than mitigative, that shall be antitheti- shapes the ideal subject the asylum is tasked
cal, reversive, and antidotal. Such an with producing. The shared insight of both
influence is found in what, in notes to operations, however, is that the spaces people
follow, will be called the enjoyment of inhabit give meter to the diverse rhy­thms
pleasing rural scenery. 25 that form their lives, rhythms within which
ideas about the meaning and consistency
Standing in the relaxation room of the of life are formed. The changing architec­-
Walter P. Carter Center, it seems clear that ture of asylums is thus a continuing con-
the twentieth century has thoroughly dis- versation between medical practitioners
credited this view as a treatment for mad- over how best to design the outcome of
ness. It is also clear that the twentieth- this process. The power of architecture
century strategy of filling asylums with to shape the rhythms of our life is a power
artificial conveniences for the exchange to determine the ways in which we repro­
of services would have deeply shocked duce social relations. If it was so clear to
Olmsted and the American medical super- the CEO of the Eastern Shore Hospital that
intendents of the Jacksonian era. Never- the architecture of the building needed
theless, these two diametrically opposed to change in order to reflect her treatment
moments in the history of treatment, sepa- program, it was because the repetitions her
rated by some 150 years, share a common patients lived out in that building were
belief in the power of architecture to pro- not the ones needed to survive without
duce subjects, a view completely abandon- the support of the state at this historical
ed in the intervening years. The resurrec- moment. The rhythms that the present gen­-
tion of architectural solutions to problems eration is faced with mas­ter­ing are exactly
of mental illness comes at a time when the ones identified by the mall at Eastern
this belief is at an all-time low outside of Shore, and the subject­ivities that are made
the medical profession. Very few archi­tects in this historical moment will always con­-
today are willing to claim that their designs front the employee and consumer on this
could make people better, wiser, more rea­- unequal ground. That this unequal ground
sonable, or sane. During the height of the is an outcome of design is well worth re-
psychopharmacological turn in the mid- membering in an obituary for the death of
twentieth century, the medical establish- a psychiatric centre and its shopping mall.
ment was unwilling to make this claim
about their buildings. Instead, the mad

324 Scapegoat
 Left: Bartolome Esteban Murillo, Boy with a Dog (1650) Right: Salvatore Rosa, Landscape with Man and Tree (c.1649)
In Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening (1850), Andrew Jackson Downing gives a helpful
­explanation for how the picturesque was also a psychology:
“Some of Raphael’s angels may be taken as perfect illustrations of the Beautiful. In their serene and heavenly
countenances we see only that calm and pure existence of which perfect beauty is the outward type; on the other hand,
Murillo’s beggar boys are only picturesque. What we admire in them (beyond admirable execution) is not their rags
or their mean apparel, but a certain irregular struggling of a better feeling within, against this outward poverty of
­nature and condition.”

Endnotes 10 “ This is a national model for innovative mental

health care,” Maryland Governor Parris Glenden-
1 The original plans have been lost. This description ing, quoted in Chris Guy, “Mental Health Center Eyes
comes from an interview conducted by the author New Treatments on Eastern Shore,” The Baltimore
with Walter P. Carter social workers. Sun, 16 August 2001.
2 The Carter Center was closed in October of 2009, 11 Steven L. Webster, Susan H. Harmon and Betty T.
due to state funding cuts. Paesler, “Building a Treatment Mall: A First Step in
3 The psychiatric profession now prefers the term “cli- Moving a State Hospital to a Culture of Rehabilita-
ents” to “patients.” tion and Recovery,” Behavior Therapist 28 (April
4 People accused of more serious crimes were sent to 2005): 71–77.
the Clifton T. Perkins maximum-security facility in 12 It is heterotopic in that these community spaces
Jessup, Maryland. produce an “elsewhere” within an institution which
5 Archie Wallace, former Carter Center CEO, personal is already an “elsewhere.” For Foucault’s six princi­
communication, 2009. ples of heterotopia, see Michel Foucault‚ Of Other
6 According to Wallace, 49 days is frequently a longer Spaces, trans. Jay Miskowiec, Diacritics 16, no. 1
amount of time than the average prison sentence his (Spring 1986): 22–27.
clients receive in court. 13 For a glimpse at the small but growing literature on
7 Archie Wallace, personal communication, 2009. treatment malls, see F. A. Ballard, “Benefits of Psy-
8 Safety is a serious issue in mental health facilities. chosocial Rehabilitation Programming in a Treat-
There have been two murders of patients by other ment Mall,” Journal of Psychosocial Nursing and
patients reported at the Perkins facility since 2010. Mental Health Services 46, no. 2 (February 2008):
Since the closure of the Carter Center, Perkins is 26–32; Joy Holland, Clotilde R. Prandoni, Michael
the only state facility for completing competency R. Fain, Jacqueline E. Richardson and Paul Mon-
evaluations available to the city of Baltimore. See talbano, “Moving Beyond Ward-Based Treatment:
Justin Fenton, “Patient Killing at State Psychiatric A Public Mental Health Hospital’s Transition to a
Hospital is Second Since 2010,” The Baltimore Sun, Treatment Mall,” Psychiatric Rehabilitation Journal
22 October 2011. 28, no. 3 (Winter 2005): 295–297; K. A. McLough-
9 Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, lin, T. Webb, M. Myers, K. Skinner and C. H. Adams,
Treatment Mall Program, http://dhmh.maryland. “Developing a Psychosocial Rehabilitation Treat-
gov/eshc/SitePages/treatment.aspx. ment Mall: An Implementation Model for Mental
Health Nurses,” Archives of Psychiatric Nurs-
ing 24, no. 5 (October 2010): 330–338; and, Ste-

325 ...and its Shopping Mall

 ven L. Webster and Susan H. Harmon, “Turning the 21 According to Rothman, these years amounted to
Tables: Inpatients as Decision-Makers in the Treat- a “revolution in social practice,” in which the build-
ment Mall Program at a State Hospital,” Psychiatric ing of penitentiaries and asylums became for the
Re­habilitation Journal 29, no. 3 (2006): 223–225. first time (and perhaps since) a large-scale public
14 For a rhythmanalysis of dressage, see Henri Lefebvre, project. Prior to 1810, Virginia was the only state to
Rhythmanalysis: Space, Time and Everyday Life, support a public asylum, whereas by 1860, 28 of 33
trans. Stuart Elden and Gerald Moore (London: states had public institutions for the insane. Ibid.,
­Continuum, 2004). 130.
15 Adam Phillips, Equals (New York: Basic Books, 22 Thomas S. Kirkbride, On the Construction, Organiza-
2003), 87. tion, and General Arrangements of Hospitals for the
16 Mary K. Noren, personal communication, May 2009. Insane (Philadelphia: Lindsay and Blakiston, 1854).
17 Guy, “Mental Health Center.” 23 For a list of cities with Kirkbride buildings, see Ethan
18 See Michel Foucault, History of Madness, trans. McElroy, “Kirkbride Buildings,” www.kirkbridebuild-
Jonathan Murphy and Jean Khalfa (London: ings.com.
­Routledge, 2006). 24 Kirkbride, Hospitals for the Insane, 7.
19 Ibid., 473. 25 Frederick Law Olmsted, “Boston Parks and Park-
20 “ Before the Civil War, practically no one in the ways—A Green Ribbon, Seventh Annual Report of
United States protested the simple connection the Board of Commissioners of the Department of
between insanity and civilization. Despite the tenu- Parks for the City of Boston for the Year 1881,” in
ous quality of the evidence, Americans accepted Civilizing American Cities: A Selection of Frederick
the conclusion without qualification. […] Ameri- Law Olmsted’s Writings on City Landscapes, ed. S. B.
can medical superintendents demonstrated none of Sutton (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1971), 24–28.
the circumspection of their European counterparts. 26 See, for instance, the speculative design in A. D.
The connection of civilization to insanity fit well Dvoskin, S. J. Radomski, J. A. Olin, R. L. Hawkins, L.
with their preconceptions and perspectives.” David A. Dotson and I. N. Drewnicki, “Architectural Design
Rothman, The Discovery of the Asylum: Social Order of a Secure Forensic State Psychiatric Hospital,”
and Disorder in the New Republic (Boston: Little, Behavioral Sciences and the Law 20 (2002):
Brown and Company, 1971), 113–114. 481–493.
27 Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, trans.
Paul Patton (Columbia University Press, 1994).

Bio

Seth Denizen is a writer and landscape architect, currently teaching at the

University of Hong Kong.

326 Excess
327
 Welcome to the Center for PostNatural History:
Rich Pell in Conversation with Emily Kutil

Description at the entrance:

Welcome to the Center for PostNatural History. More than 10,000

years ago, humankind first succeeded at raising wild plants and
animals in captivity. By breeding plants and animals for traits that
we desire, humans have also influenced their evolutionary path,
altering the form and function of the living world in surprising
ways. The word “postnatural” refers to the living things that have
been intentionally altered by human beings, through domestication,
selective breeding, induced mutation, and genetic engineering.
These include familiar entities such as farm animals, pets, food
crops, racehorses, decorative flowers, and laboratory organisms.

328 Project
Unlike the life forms on display in a natural history museum, post-
natural organisms can also be viewed as instruments of culture.
They are living embodiments of human desire, hunger, power, and
fear. Please continue on the self-guided tour. Questions and sug-
gestions may be addressed on the blue cards available near the exit.

Emily Kutil
First, could you describe postnatural history?
How does it differ from natural history?
Rich Pell
The postnatural includes all the living things that were
intentionally shaped by people in some heritable way. We have
defined this idea not so much as a geological period, or anything
that has a hard dividing line; the postnatural goes back all the way
to the dawn of domestication and selective breeding, and continues
through to contemporary genetic engineering and synthetic biology.
An organism crosses over from the natural to the postnatural at
the moment it begins to share its habitat with us—when we move
in together. When dogs stopped living out on the prairie and started
living in town. The other, more extreme component of this trans-
formation is when we take responsibility for the sex life of that
organism. This is where selective breeding comes into play. When
we begin to decide who gets paired off, who is included and who
is not, these organisms begin to change dramatically. And those
changes are quite often a reflection of human desires. They’re
cultural choices, based on aesthetics and taste, and even sport,
­entertainment or religion. This extends
to industrialized animals. In the US,
we breed our chickens for uniformity.
We also breed them for fat content
and things like that. But above all else,
they have to be virtually identical so
that they fit into the machines that
we’ve built to process them.
We look at the postnatural world
similarly to how one might look at
the architecture of a civilization,
and try to infer things about the val-
ues of that civilization. We’re looking
at how that civilization has shaped
its world.

329
EK
It’s an investigative process, then, in a sense?
RP
It is. We put things under the microscope; we research the
context, the circumstances that created what we are seeing. We
are always reverse-engineering the things we are looking at. We
start off with something that seems incredibly boring on the sur-
face, and it often leads to really extraordinary stories.
EK
One of the most striking things that I saw in the museum
was the collection of books of standards of different species.
You talked a bit about industrialization, the desire to standard-
ize things. But some of the books were for show animals. It
seems that there is almost a desire to fix the animal in a cer-
tain moment of development.
RP
Absolutely. This is a very Western way of looking at things, to
create hard and sharp categories that separate, for example, five
different kinds of “poodle.” We codify exactly what the traits are
that define each of those different kinds.
At one point we had an exhibit of publications such as The Ameri-
can Standard of Perfection, which the poultry industry has used
for 100 years, and Variations in Dog Breeds, which the American
Kennel Society put out in the 1960s. For almost every breed, there
is some kind of publication that tries to be the standard-bearer of
what is and is not good within that breed.
This crosses over into laboratory sciences as well. We have quite
a lot of publications called the Mouse News Letter, which goes
back to the 1950s. Mouse researchers all over the world used this
to compare notes, describing the mice that they had in their col-
lection, and the sorts of mutations that were arising. This is how
standardized names started to appear for laboratory animals.
EK
 Is the postnatural being discussed in contemporary zoos
and museums of natural history? How do organisms like
this fit within the taxonomic systems used by these kinds of
institutions?
RP
A lot of people haven’t noticed this absence, but natural
history museums tend to avoid or downplay domesticated ani-

330 Scapegoat
 mals. If they are there
at all, they are a kind of
a footnote or sideshow.
Museums almost en-
tirely ignore twentieth-
century laboratory
organisms. There are a
few reasons, I think, for
this. One of them was
exemplified by an ex-
hibit over at the Carnegie Natural History Museum which descri-
bed what an “artifact” is. They said that an artifact is a man-made
object, and so they showed an iPod. “Is this an artifact? Yes.” And
next to it they showed a raccoon skull. “This is not an artifact.”
That’s where we differ, and where we show up. I’m willing to go
along with the raccoon skull, but I would put that alongside a
Chihuahua skull. I would say, “This is an artifact.” Prior to human
intervention there was nothing in the wild that looked like a
Chihuahua. A Chihuahua is a long way from a grey wolf. This layer
of human intervention is what defines the postnatural for us.
There is also the issue that natural historians are asking a dif-
ferent set of questions. They want to know about ecology, evo-
lutionary history, perhaps climate. Animals that were raised in
captivity, from their perspective, are almost like bad data. Also,
on an intuitive level, natural historians find animals raised in
captivity to be incredibly boring. I found this attitude across the
board, whether I was talking to reptile people, mammal people,
bird people, or plant people. The kinds of organisms that I was
researching were just beyond the pale. “How could you...why
would you...?” If I asked people who have spent their whole lives
studying squirrels about laboratory rats, they would just shake
their head in disbelief.
You asked about taxonomy. The whole project of the Center for
PostNatural History started from a taxonomic perspective. Initially,
I was reading a lot of evolutionary history at the same time as I was
reading about synthetic biology. I was reading about how we map
out the evolutionary tree by looking at genes, and I was learning
about how we take genes and add them to different species where
they haven’t originated. And I started to think, how does that affect
the shape of the tree? Is there a way that we could map out these

331 Welcome to the Center for...

changes? We’re taking a leaf of the evolutionary tree over here
and duct-taping it to a branch over there—what does that look like?
I found that there really isn’t a vocabulary for doing that. Even
among scientists themselves, each lab has a different system for
describing organisms. There was no system that could put them
onto a larger evolutionary tree. Our first project was to try to fill
in that space.
It proved to be a much larger space than we expected. There are
hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of new, genetically modified
varieties all over the world, too many to track. I was intrigued by
the near impossibility of creating such a system. Various proposals
have been made along the way to try to classify these transgenic
organisms as sub-species; people have developed acronyms, so you
would have genus, species, and then a long hyphenated thing after
that. But these names are cumbersome, and nobody really uses them.
There is also the issue of visuaizing this tree. What shapes does
the tree take? Our logo is a binary tree (an evolutionary tree is
almost always described as a “binary tree”) with an arrow going
from one branch to another, representing
transgenic gene flow, and also sort of
completing the tree.
EK
 So is there a taxonomic ambition
for this museum? And what would
that taxonomy actually be?
RP
We’re open to a taxonomy emerg-
ing from the bottom up, from the collec-
tion. We’re continually discovering the
postnatural to be larger and more com-
plicated than we had anticipated. If we came up with an over-
arching scheme of representation, it would constantly be broken.
But we are also surprised by the common threads we find in the
collection. One of the first things we did was build a database of
genetically modified organisms, the genes that had been added to
them, and where those genes came from. Just by entering maybe
50 organisms into the database, we realized that the genes were
actually coming from a very small subset of organisms. They
were coming from E. coli, the plant arabidopsis thaliana, on occa-
sion from mice, from the C. elegans worm, from drosophila (fruit

332 Excess
fly), from zebrafish. These are all considered model organisms.
They’re what we use in the lab, so they’re the organisms that we
know the most about. And as a result, they’re the organisms that
we take our genetic “parts” from. We found an unexpected taxo-
nomic order already in place because of the relationships to these
organisms that humans had already established over the last 50
years or so in the lab. And the reason we had each of these organ-
isms in the lab in the first place was because of the relation­ship
we had to them for maybe the previous 100 years. Hobbyist
breeders were breeding lab mice and lab rats for different coat
­colours before anyone even understood how Mendelian genetics
worked. The tobacco plant is also a standard model organism
because humans have been breeding it for so long, and we’ve been
breeding it for so long because we like tobacco.
Every time we tried to map out an overall taxonomy, it started to
look like culture more than it looked like the natural world. If we
were to map out where these organisms live, they all, not surpris-
ingly perhaps, would map out primarily to urban places, and also
to ports. They map out to universities quite often. Almost any
angle we take leads us to a cultural frame.
Our taxonomy is still in process, and probably always will be.
We’re using a system now where we just give objects numbers
based on the day they’ve been added to the collection. We’ll prob-
ably revisit that at some point when we have a large enough collec-
tion to come up with a more general picture.
EK
 ould you give an example of how the process of genetic
C
research works?
RP
We have an exhibit of fruit flies that were engineered in a
lab in upstate New York. Fruit flies are important for genetic re-
search because they have a short lifespan. Scientists can tweak a
gene and fairly quickly have a full-grown adult animal that will
express that gene. These fruit flies were all bred just to figure out
what a single gene does. The scientists micro-injected a bunch of
fruit fly embryos with a certain muscle gene, raised them to adults,
and then dissected them for that muscle gene. It’s sort of a mechani-
cal, reductive approach to looking at genetics. Those tiny flies are
dissected under the microscope just to get one muscle fibre out. As
a result of this experiment, we discovered that the muscle gene

333 ...PostNatural History

controls their wing muscles and makes them really weak. They
never develop into the adult stage, so their wings fall off.

EK

What is the motivation behind discovering what this one
muscle gene does?
RP
It’s really just about understanding gene function, understand-
ing how this one part works. It’s impossible to study that one part
by itself—it’s like trying to study what a car part does without
knowing anything about the rest of the car. So maybe we’d make a
car that doesn’t have that part, and then maybe we’d make a car that
has too many of that part, and then we would use the results to infer
what the part might be doing. This is how a lot of genetics works.
It’s reductive. We make a million of something in order to guess.
It’s a very noisy, random process. With bacteria, it’s very easy
to use something like electroporation to try to get a gene into a
million cells at once. We know that one of them will work, even if
we’re only interested in that one. But with something like a goat or
a sheep the process is long and expensive, and it makes a lot of
damaged goat embryos before it makes one that works. We’re add-
ing a part, but we don’t have a lot of control as to where it goes in
the machine. We’re adding a carburetor, and most of the time it ends
up on the backseat. Sometimes it’s hooked up to the horn, and
sometimes it’s in backwards...
EK
 We’re trying to work on it like it’s a machine, but it’s not
actually a machine.
RP
The whole idea behind synthetic biology is that we look

334 Scapegoat
at living things through the eyes of an engineer. Synthetic biol-
ogy uses all kinds of machine metaphors—for example, the host
organism will often be referred to as a chassis. But things don’t
always work in the ways we expect them to.
EK
 So we have to work at massive scales in order to get the results
that we’re looking for.
RP
More and more now, we’re able to do these things with
some care. We’re not just adding one gene; we’re adding a kind of
constellation, a program of genes that turn each other on and off.
These genes are substantially different from how they exist in
nature. They’re created by a DNA printer, a big machine that has
four jars, literally labeled A, G, T, and C. The machine just squirts
out different gene sequences.
EK
 So in order to make a GloFish® we wouldn’t have to borrow a
gene from coral; we could make our own glowing gene?
RP
Exactly. Then we might make different versions of that gene
to see which ones are the brightest. Then we might add them to
bacteria, and then we might expose the bacteria to radiation to
create mutations in the gene, such that every now and then the
colour changes a little bit. Eventually what was green is now blue.
EK
Your exhibit about lab rats is
really amazing, and I was won-
dering if you could talk a little
bit about the ways that lab rats
and mice are used to stand in
for humans, both genetically
and behaviourally.
RP
Lab rats have a really interest-
ing history. As I mentioned, they
were raised for fancy coat colours
in the nineteenth century. Prior to
that, they were raised as a part of a
blood sport called rat-baiting, where
you’d have 100 rats against one dog,

335 Welcome to the Center for...

and people would bet on how long it would take the dog to kill all
the rats. But when we use them in the lab, we’re basically using
them as miniature people, as stand-ins for us. In terms of behav-
iour studies, we put them in situations where they’re either b­ eing
denied food or something else that they want and we study how
they respond to it. We change their genetics to map human g­ enetic
conditions so that they develop human diseases: cancers, o ­ besity,
etc. Researchers use those animals as the model stand-ins for people
to develop treatments that are subsequently used on humans. We
also engineer lab rats and mice to develop human conditions like
baldness, things that aren’t necessarily a health problem but that
are considered a cultural problem for some people.

EK
 id the use of rodents emerge because there was simulta-
D
neously a need to avoid using human subjects, and a need
to study a lot more.
RP
Yes, using human subjects gradually became unacceptable, and
for related reasons, after dropping the atomic bomb in the Second
World War, we needed to know how dangerous radiation was, and
what it was good for.
EK
Locality is a recurring theme in the museum. Many of the ex-
hibits tell you how far away the organism is from Pittsburgh,
and you have also done some locally focused exhibits. There
was one about New York State, and one about Southern Cali-
fornia. I’m interested in the interplay between this idea
of locality and the massive scales of production of some the
corporations that develop genetically modified organisms.
What role does locality play in the postnatural?

336 Excess
RP
Particularly when we’re talking about genetically engineered
organisms, habitat is defined in a really interesting way. It has
nothing to do with ecology, or with any of the ways that one
would typically define a habitat for an organism. It’s defined by
policy. It’s defined by where the organism is legally allowed to live.
This differs from country to country, and even from state to state—
in the US, you have to get permits if you’re going to move an
organism that’s genetically engineered across a state line. So when
we do an exhibit like “Genetically Modified Organisms of New
York State,” that state border isn’t just an arbitrary designation of
place, it’s a specific definition of habitat. These are the things that
are allowed to be here and perhaps not allowed to be in Pennsyl-
vania. Similarly, the European Union has its own mechanisms of
control. There are organisms there that don’t exist here; there are
organisms here that can’t be taken there in their living form.
As a function of our collection, for the most part we deal in
dead organisms, because they’re not controlled in the same way.
Once it’s dead, it’s not able to reproduce—that’s the main concern.
You asked about the interplay
between large corporations and
place. When corporations like
Monsanto or DuPont come up
with a new variety of genetically
modified corn, they apply for a
federal permit, which is issued
on a state-by-state basis. Initial­
ly they’ll file for a permit only in
Iowa and possibly Hawaii, where
they’ve got their two experimen-
tal stations. Maybe a few years
later, if this particular variety is
successful, they’ll apply for a
general release permit so that
they can take the corn to market
in whichever state they want.
This phenomenon becomes for us a kind of vista, a way of look-
ing at the world of genetically modified organisms that are other­
wise fairly indistinguishable. They often look exactly like their
un-engineered counterparts, which is why genetic engineering
remains largely invisible. Looking through the federal permit data­

337 ...PostNatural History

bases, we start to see unexpected places appear. For example,
Hawaii and Puerto Rico are really important sites for corn and
soy beans. Hawaii is not normally considered part of the Corn
Belt, but it absolutely is if you look at it over the course of the last
10 years. It plays a role in containing the upstream experimental
parent seed of genetically modified corn. Both containment in
a biological sense, where a small patch of corn is surrounded by
almost a kilometre of dirt so that it can’t cross-breed with any
other plants, but also containment in a cultural sense, in terms
of keeping out people that might want to sabotage those fields for
political, economic, or ecological reasons. Again, cultural factors
define postnatural places. In this sense, islands serve as a bunker
of protection for industrial crops.
Farmers sign license agreements, like the Monsanto Technology
Stewardship Agreement in our exhibit. In that case, the technology
is the seed and the farmers are stewards, meaning they don’t own
it. They’re just taking care of it for Monsanto. Monsanto owns the
technology, but the farmers assume all the responsibilities. It’s kind
of like a software license agreement. You agree to those terms by
opening the bag of seed.
One of our exhibits is a little plot of Monsanto corn that we
managed to acquire without opening the bag of seed. We wanted
to have specimens of the corn for our collection, but how would we
get them without violating these terms and inviting their attorneys’
wrath? We went to the pet store, bought pet food that had corn in
it, like bird seed and squirrel food, and sprouted the corn seed in
the front window for a couple of months. Then we sprayed it with
Round-Up. About a third of the plants died immediately, and the rest
of the plants were fine. Those were obviously owned by Monsanto.
EK
 Monsanto is the only company that has plants that are...
RP
“Round-Up Ready,” yes. In these federal permit databases,
there’s often a designation for species and for genes that says C.B.I.,
which stands for “confidential business information.” This is a way
that a company can protect its confidential information. It’s the
black marker that crosses out the name that people are not sup-
posed to know about. Presumably the federal government knows
about it, but that information is redacted for the public. The govern-
ment allows for a certain amount of anonymizing the nature of

338 Scapegoat
the organisms that are being engineered in order to protect the
intellectual property of the companies.
In the database, C.B.I. shows up as a species in the list of all the
different varieties: corn, potatoes, C.B.I.... It’s also a gene. It starts
to take on the quality of a character, the unknown organism.
That’s why we gave C.B.I. its own exhibit here at the museum. Its
specimen is a little sign that says “specimen not available.” It’s a
species of conjecture.
EK
I n that vein, you must have
some interesting stories
about obtaining specimens
for the museum. What are
some of the complications
of collecting postnatural
objects?
RP
There are a number of complications. Genetically engineered
organisms are not allowed to leave the lab alive. There are a lot of
containment policies in place to prevent that from happening. As
a function of collecting, these organisms have to be killed before
they leave the lab. That job sometimes falls to me. I’m not an ex-
pert in killing; actually, I’m not an expert in virtually any aspect
of this—it’s all on-the-job training. I collected mosquitoes from
a lab at UC Irvine that was trying to genetically engineer them so
they couldn’t carry malaria or dengue fever, with the hopes that
the natural world could be repopulated with these mosquitoes.
In that case I was left with a collection of living mosquitoes in
ice cream containers, and some weird tools like a bucket of ice
and a tank of carbon dioxide. I had no idea how all of these things
worked together, so I ended up with dead mosquitoes and then
pinned them to a block of Styrofoam. Later I learned that no ento-
mologist would pin mosquitoes. They’re far too tiny, and the pin
is almost exactly the same size as they are, so it rips them apart.
You’re actually supposed to glue them to a tiny slip of paper and
then pin the paper.
In maintaining the collection over time, the goal is to remove a
living thing from the economy of food. Every living thing is also
food for some other living thing. In a natural history museum they
try to keep dead things dead forever, which ends up being a lot

339 Welcome to the Center for...

harder than you might think. The Smithsonian has elaborately
sealed rooms and white steel cabinets, so they can very quickly
see if there’s any kind of infestation going on. If an insect got in
and ate some of their collection, that animal, that specimen, would
be returned to the economy of food, which is also intimately con-
nected to the economy of shit. You know you have an infestation
when you see tiny piles of poop near your specimens.
I became aware of this when I left to work as a fellow at the
Smithsonian for almost a year, and then came home and checked
on my mosquito specimens. Half of the pins were bare. At the
base of each pin were tiny specks, little poops. I eventually found
the culprit: a little worm curled up in the corner of the lid. I put it
under the microscope and found out that it was a dermestid beetle.
The natural history museum keeps a living colony of these—they
are used to clean the flesh off of bones for their collections.
Natural history museums have a love-hate relationship with this
particular bug, which otherwise is not from the region and might
not even be able to live here if they hadn’t brought it. My mosquitoes
were eaten by a dermestid beetle, and it actually felt good in a way,
like my collection was worth eating, just like the Smithsonian’s!
So it wasn’t all a loss. We did keep that dermestid beetle as a mascot
for a few months. I named him Ringo.

EK
Y
 ou explained how the territories of postnatural organisms are
controlled with permits and licenses, and how the term “C.B.I.”
is used to protect intellectual property pertaining to genetically
modified organisms. Are there any other ways that the post-
natural world is regulated and controlled?
RP
We haven’t even talked about patents. Our first major publi-
cation, U.S. Patents on Living Organisms, 1873–1981, documents

340 Excess
every patented living organism, from Louis Pasteur’s beer yeast all
the way through to General Electric’s bacteria for breaking down oil.
EK
This is every patent for every living organism?
RP
We got the list from the G.E. archives. When they tried to
patent a species of bacteria they had made that was supposed to
break down oil, the patent office denied them on the grounds that
you can’t patent a living thing. G.E. took the case to the Supreme
Court. There are two important things to point out here: one is
that their bacteria didn’t actually work. They were more interested
in the exercise of expanding the idea of what commercial owner-
ship could involve. In their argument to the Supreme Court, G.E.
presented a list of patent numbers that they claimed were patents
for living things, going all the way back to Pasteur. We took that
list of patents, found all of the actual patent documents that go
along with them, and put them in a book together. We refer to the
book as Volume 1. Volume 2 would be the collection of patents
that came after the Supreme Court decision [in favour of General
Electric], which was really the moment the biotech industry was
invented. Many companies were poised to profit from biology
prior to 1980, but there was a fundamental problem of ownership.
When your product makes copies of itself for free, how do you keep
selling it? This Supreme Court decision was very significant. It
ruled that companies could not only own an organism but could also
own its entire offspring, its entire chunk of the evolutionary tree.
EK
 And that’s when the experiments limiting reproduction in
different ways come into play.
RP
Exactly. This led to our second publication, something we
call Strategies in Genetic Copy Prevention, which is a collection
of different techniques, contemporary and historical, that people
have developed to stop life from doing the thing that actually
defines it: making copies of itself. The book includes spaying and
­neutering; castration of pets, farm animals, and people; cross-
breeding; and hybridizing (like creating a mule that can’t repro-
duce itself). Hybrid­izing produces seedless watermelons: crossing
two species of watermelon such that the next generation doesn’t
produce seed. The book also includes the famous terminator gene

341 ...PostNatural History

that companies like Monsanto use to keep their crops from pro-
ducing a second generation. This gene is not actually on the mar-
ket, because it has drawn a lot of resistance. It will probably be
approved eventually, but it hasn’t at this point.
EK
 The illustration for the terminator gene looks a lot like
your logo.
RP
One of the things that we’re trying to show with the terminator
gene is that it’s not a single gene; it is more like a genetic machine.
It’s made of many different genes taken from many different parts
of the evolutionary tree. So we depict them in that way. Some of the
genes come from bacteria and viruses, some come from Arabidopsis,
and they’re all used to produce a feedback loop. This feedback loop
essentially kills all reproductive abilities when the plant reaches
puberty, unless it’s bathed in an antibiotic called tetracycline. The
tetracycline bath would allow Monsanto to keep propagating its
seed internally. But like I said, this gene is not actually on the market
yet. It’s in the lab, but there has been too much resistance for its
use to be approved.
EK
Legal resistance?
RP
Yes, largely from agricultural and ecological activists con-
cerned that this would be a tool for very rapidly creating a monopoly.
Imagine you’re a developing nation. Your crops fail, or for whatever
reason you need help, and the US gives you a bunch of seed. Imagine
the US gives you Monsanto seed, and imagine those seeds have
the terminator gene such that the next season, you won’t be able
to plant that crop again. You will now be dependent. There has
been a lot of resistance for reasons such as this. But it’s interesting
to note that historically, environmental activists often lobbied for
the development of the terminator gene, arguing that if we were
going to be developing genetically modified organisms, there had
to be a mechanism...
EK
...to stop it.
RP
Yes. It’s important to see the ways these technologies operate
in relation to power. Technology doesn’t have a built-in moral or

342 Scapegoat
ethical “thumbs up” or “thumbs down.” Its uses are very situational.
And they’re also very difficult to predict. What makes sense in one
context might have wildly unpredictable consequences in a dif-
ferent one.
EK
 I have one more question about the design of the museum.
It seems to take cues from early cabinets of curiosity; there’s
a sense of wonder and mystery about the place. How does
that relate to the tone the museum is trying to create, and to
the imagined audience of the museum? What are you trying
to get at here?
RP
We’re trying to get at a lot of
things, not any one thing—differ-
ent things to different people.
Aesthetically, we do reference the
nineteenth-century cabinets of
wonder and the traditional natural
history museum, in part because
it’s a familiar way for people to
look at dead animals. It’s a familiar
frame, and one in which people
don’t expect things to move very
quickly. We want time to slow
down here in the museum—not tele-
vision speed, not internet speed—
so that we can tell stories that
sometimes take a while to unfold.
But we also take aesthetic cues
from the biotech industry—from
twentieth-century science, as opposed to nineteenth-century sci-
ence. Another frame at work is that of the hobbyist. We often con-
duct our own experiments when we’re trying to figure out how to
preserve a certain kind of organism: how to preserve flowers, for
example, such that we can keep their colour and their shape. But
we keep those experiments where people can see them. We’re very
open about the fact that we’re not experts, so we invite experts to
come talk with us, work with us, and share their knowledge.
The other aspect of the cabinet of wonders idea is related to your
previous question about taxonomy. Cabinets of curiosity in the

343 Welcome to the Center for...

seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in particular, before Linnaeus
created the biological taxonomy that we use today (genus, species,
etc.), were organized by free association. Things were put together
because they had the same colour, or the same shape, or were from
the same place. Or maybe they were put next to each other because
they were really different. It was wide open—a curator would
visually craft a narrative by putting constellations of objects to-
gether. That idea is really important to us because we don’t have
a hard and fast taxonomy. We’re not illustrating an evolution of
complexity, or anything with an obvious beginning and end. We rely
on each exhibit being different from the ones that are right next
to it, so that the concept of what is postnatural is constantly being
challenged and expanded. I think that’s actually what wonder is:
the feeling that the world is a little bit larger than it was just a mo-
ment ago. We’re not trying to convince people of anything; we’re
just trying to open up the realm of possibility a little bit further.

Bio

Emily Kutil is a recent graduate of the University of Michigan’s Taubman College of

Architecture and Urban Planning Master’s program, where she studied architecture
and museum studies. Emily's thesis explored architecture's relationship to the history
and future of zoo design. She received a thesis award for her work. She recently co-
edited and designed two publications: Dimensions 25, the student journal of architec-
ture at the University of Michigan; and StudioAfrica, a book commemorating ten years
of the University of Michigan's Ghana study abroad program. Emily is currently an
intern at the Museum of Jurassic Technology in Los Angeles, California.

Richard Pell works at the intersections of science, engineering and culture. He is

the founder of the Center for PostNatural History, an outreach organization dedicat-
ed to the collection and exposition of life-forms that have been intentionally altered
through selective breeding or genetic engineering. The Center for PostNatural His­-
tory operates a permanent exhibition facility in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and pro­
duces traveling exhibitions for museums and galleries. Pell is also a founder of the
internationally acclaimed collective, the Institute for Applied Autonomy, and is an as-
sociate professor of Electronic and Time-based Arts at Carnegie Mellon University.

344 Excess
345 ...PostNatural History
 The Anthropozoic Era: Excerpts from Corso di ­Geologia
(Miliano: G. Bernardoni E. G. Brigola, Editori, 1873)
by A
­ ntonio Stoppani, translated by Valeria F
­ ederighi,
­edited by Valeria Federighi and Etienne Turpin
­photography by Alex Berceanu

Introduction
by Valeria Federighi and Etienne Turpin

The Italian geologist Antonio Stoppani is a remarkable but little-

known figure in the history of science and the theoretical humani-
ties.1 Recently, following debates about the Anthropocene initiated
by the Dutch chemist Paul Crutzen, some scholars have returned to
Stoppani’s writing for its eloquent argument regarding the appear-
ance of human activity in the archive of deep time—the earth. Born
in Lecco in 1824, the young Stoppani studied to become a priest of
the Rosminian order, and was ordained in 1848. In the same year,
Stoppani participated in the resistance during the Cinque giornate
di Milano (Siege of Milan), where he both fought on the barricades
and, fantastically, invented and fabricated aerostats that were used
to communicate with the periphery and the provinces, sending re­
volutionary messages to the countryside from inside a barricaded
Milano. In this endeavour, he was helped by the typographer Vin-
cenzo Guglielmini, who worked with Stoppani to ensure that the
aerostat balloons would travel from the Seminario Maggiore di
Porta Orientale over the walls erected around the city (and the
Austrians trying to shoot them from the sky) to encourage Ital-
ians to revolt against the Austrian Empire.
Following this siege, Stoppani also parti­cipated in subsequent con-
frontations, but following the Battle of Novara in 1849 he returned to
the seminary as grammar teach­er. This return was short lived, how-
ever, be­cause Stoppani’s patriotic past and poli­tical ideas remained
unwelcome by the Church. Following his expulsion from the sem-
inary, he began to study geology, and, while his religious convic-
tion is clear and consistent in his writings on geology, it is for his
advances in understanding terrestrial affairs, not theological dogma,
that he is best remembered. Notably, after the liberation of Milan,
Stoppani’s merits were acknowledged and his old titles reinsta­ted.
In 1867, he was appointed Professor of Geology at the Politecnico di
Milano, where he also helped to found the Museum of Geology, and

346 Project
acted as president of the Geological Society. An experienced alpin-
ist, in 1874 Stoppani became the first president of the Milan section
of CAI (Club Alpino Italiano).
In the late 1880s, Stoppani would return to and confront his theo-
logical roots, publishing Gli intransigenti—a book critical of the Cath-
olic Church and its resistance to political and social change—which
prompt­ed attacks from L’Osservatore Romano. Later, in his ethno-
graphic study of the various places and populations that inhabited
the recently unified Italian territory, Il bel paese, Stoppani would
wonder at the diversity of tellurian physical expression: “Italy is
almost—I don’t stammer in saying this—the synthesis of the physical
world.” The excerpt below, translated from Stoppani’s three-volume
Corso di Geologia of 1873, is exemplary of its breadth of knowledge,
courageous imagination, and com­pelling but accessible rhetorical
inventiveness. Nearly 13 decades before Crutzen’s coinage of the
Anthropocene, in this text we find an untimely assessment of the
human relation to deep time; perhaps, in the wake of these more
recent debates and the more evident excesses of human productiv-
ity, we finally have ears to hear him.
The Anthropozoic Era
proportion, whereas those terrains add lit-
Excerpts from Corso di Geologia
tle more than a small fraction to the great
by Antonio Stoppani
masses that compose the history of the
Those formations, which are about to pres- earth’s crust, and represent a very short
ent us with a great new era, are for geol- period in the history of the world. Much
ogists nothing more than a last, minor more indignant will be those (they are not,
ap­pendix of Quaternary terrains on which by good luck, those who have greater voice
we have founded the Neozoic. I anticipate in the matter) that declare the tertiary
there will be an outcry; they will protest man, and in the sovereign creature of the
against a supposed violation of all laws of universe only see the base descendant of

347
 an ancient quadrumana. To answer only world, a new element, a new telluric force
the former (those that will be scandalized that for its strength and universality does
because I propose to raise to the dignity not pale in the face of the greatest forces
of an era a period that would escape rec- of the globe.
ognition by its tenuity, when, for instance, Geology, too, feels thrust onto a new
compared to the Paleozoic era), I will refer path, feels that its most powerful means,
them to what I said at the beginning of the its surest criteria, fail; it becomes, too, a
previous chapter. new science. Already the Neozoic era forced
Whenever, I repeat, have epochs been it to walk a very different path than that
divided based on their sheer length? Is it which it had walked when it only narrated
not true, as I said, that for divisions in his­ the most ancient events. The science of an-
tory, not the period’s duration, but the im- cient seas was already destined to become
­p ortance of its happenings, has always the science of new continents. But even
been the meter? Reinforcing the compari- this road cannot lead geology to its desti-
son between history and geology, and speak­- nation. It is not enough to consider earth un-
ing of the Anthropozoic era in particular, der the impetus of telluric forces anymore:
it is necessary to reflect on how the intro- a new force reigns here; ancient nature dis-
duction of a new element, a new force—that torts itself, almost flees under the heel of
gave humanity or a nation a new input, that this new nature. We are only at the begin-
separated the new from the old, building ning of the new era; still, how deep is man’s
on the ruins of an ancient political, intel- footprint on earth already! Man has been
lectual, or moral edifice the foundations of in possession of it for only a short time; yet,
a new one—served especi­a lly for the pur- how many geological phenomena may we
pose of dating the epochs of both universal investigate, not in telluric agents, atmo-
and particular histories. sphere, waters, ­animals, but instead in man’s
I recall with pleasure the event which intellect, in his in­t ru­d ing and powerful
we believe opened the vulgar era. When will? How many events already bear the
was it that (more for a necessity as felt by trace of this absolute dom­inion that man
the universe, than for a convention ac­cept- received from God when, still innocent,
ed by historians of all nations) we began to first heard those words: Be fruitful and
count years anew, and we established the multiply, fill up the earth and subdue it; and
two eras in which we partition universal rule over the fish of the sea, the bird of the
history? This happened when in the world sky and every living thing that moves on the
resounded the great Word; when, in the earth, and when, guilty, he heard said: You
bosom of the aged fabric of ancient pagan will earn your bread with your sweat?
societies, the Christian ferment was intro- To understand how deep the changes
duced, the new element par excellence, that brought about on the globe by this new ele­
substituted ancient slavery with freedom, ment are, and how new, consequently, the
darkness with light, fall and degeneration criteria that guide science should be, it
with rebirth and the true progress of hu­- should suffice to make a comparison be­-
manity. tween so called virgin lands (if there are
It is in this sense, precisely, that I do not still any that deserve that name) and those
hesitate in proclaiming the Anthropozoic that have been cultivated for centuries. Let
era. The creation of man constitutes the us look at Europe, where man has pushed
introduction into nature of a new element his dominion most forward and where, al-
with a strength by no means known to an- though recent, his footprints are the deepest.
­cient worlds. And, mind this, that I am talk- If his power could do nothing against
ing about physical worlds, since geology the strength of the winds, which lead sea-
is the history of the planet and not, indeed, waters into the fields that he farms, none-
of intellect and morality. But the new being theless he extends his dominion over the
installed on the old planet, the new being waters themselves as soon as they sprout
that not only, like the ancient inhabitants from the cumuli that wander in the atmo-
of the globe, unites the inorganic and the sphere. From the humble brook, that springs
organic world, but with a new and quite from cliff to cliff, to the river that widens
mysterious marriage unites physical nature its mouth as it debouches into the sea, all
to intellectual principle; this creature, ab­- flowing waters, oblivious of ancient laws,
solutely new in itself, is, to the physical beat the path that man has traced for them.

348
The old alluvial expanses, already beaten by ing in the bowels of the earth oxides and
them with whirling winding, and drowned metallic salts; and man, tearing them out
by their overflowing floods, subtracted by of the earth, reduces them to native met-
force to their capricious domain, are con- als in the heat of his furnaces. In vain you
verted into greening meadows and fertile would look for a single atom of native iron
fields, periodically mowed by their new in the earth: already its surface is enclosed,
owner. Where natural valleys truncate, arti­ one could say, within a web of iron, while
ficial valleys begin that man traced, guid- iron cities are born from man’s yards and
ing gigantic banks along lines as long as float on the sea. How much of the earth’s
are those dug by the slow labour of centu- surface by now disappears under the mas­
ries; and if a river, in the end, finds anew ses that man built as his abode, his plea-
the bosom of the ancient sea, it will be sure and his defense, on plains, on hills,
through a different mouth. Waters are not on the seashores and lakeshores, as on the
safe, even when they flow furtive under- highest peaks! By now the ancient earth
ground. Man chases them, catches them, disappears under the relics of man or of
then fountains and rivers, on which man his industry. You can already count a se­ries
imposes the name of wells, quench the of strata, where you can read the history
flock’s thirst and irrigate the desert. At of human generations, as before you could
the same time he severs springs to the exu- read in the amassed bottom of the seas the
berant superficial waters, and disperses history of ancient faunas. To the archeo-
them into his cisterns. lithic strata, where human relics appear
Already there are new mountains, where as buried among cut firestones and the
old valleys used to be: already the irreg- bones of disappeared animals, terramare
ular soil is drawn into wide plains where superimpose, and pile dwellings; this is
waters extend into a thin veil. Already the where the progress of human race is testi-
impenetrable Alps have heard the chisel fied by bronze forged into exquisite weap-
and the mine resonate in their bosom, and ons and tools. Yet we have not come to see
nations have kept a lookout in order to the soil imprinted upon by Etruscan art;
brotherly shake hands. Everywhere, the and to find ourselves on our own, we have
bosom of the ancient Mother discloses, and to cross the immense stratum that carries
the shadows, broken by vagrant splendours, the mark of Roman genius. The rivers, al­-
resign to man treasures that were hidden most oblivious to old granite and porphy-
by centuries. At times you can see this Pro- ­r y pebbles, learned how to roll pottery and
metheus awaken fire from the bowels of crockery. In the end, approximately 300
the earth, and guide it to his furnace. Rival million are the men that work, bent and
of the potent agents of the internal world, sweaty, from morning until night, on the
man undoes what nature has done. Nature soil of this small parch of the earth’s sur­
has worked for centuries at agglomerat- face that is called Europe. England, where

349 The Anthropozoic Era: Excerpts...

human industry is the most fervent, crum­ bridism, while others lie with the flowers
bles and caves in, everywhere eaten through and fruits that grafting created. Botanists
by insatiable coal, rock salt, limestone, and can only look into the furthest depths, into
metal miners. What will happen, when Eu- mountains’ fissures, on the highest peaks,
rope will all be worked through as England, for the untamed daughters of virgin nature,
and the whole world as Europe? Further- which carry unaltered the features of their
more, man’s influence is not limited to dry Mother.
land. The very sea cannot escape his domi­ One of the laws that gave geologists the
nion. It recedes already, pushed back by surest criteria to understand conditions of
obtrusive dams, pumps, and joints that steal the earth in ancient eras, and that seemed
from it arms and lagoons and swamps to to be even stronger in the current era be­-
make fields. Neither is its immensity of any cause of the stricter partitioning among
help in dividing land from islands, islands lands and climates, is by man powerfully
from continents, as thousands and thou- violated. I am talking about the geograph-
sands of ships have opened the way through ical distribution of plants and animals.
which nations can embrace, and lands ex­- Torn away from native soil, servant to the
change products of the three kingdoms in needs and pleasure of he who holds em­pire
mutual tribute. Even the unexplored depths on earth, how many plants were brought
of the ocean were forced to act as inter- to usurp, through forced theft, our native
cessor, in order to put in contact the peo- plants’ place! Without coming to a very
ples of the two worlds. And man invades late age, we witnessed the arrival, in Eu-
the atmosphere as well, and not content to ­rope, of many of them, and many others
only pour, as animals do, the products of were seen by just past generations, which
his respiration into it, he also pours vast wondered at the discovery of a new world.
amounts of the products of his industry, Many of these imported ones have already
gases from his fires and his grandiose lab- overcome the indigenous rulers of the soil.
oratories. A century, or just a year, since a Huge expanses of our fields are covered
family of men settles onto virgin soil, and in corn (Zea maïs), originally from South
everything is changed, everything breathes America; in potatoes (Solanum tuberosum)
with the strength of human intelligence. from the same region; in tomatoes (Lyco­
So man dominates over inorganic mat- persicon esculentum) that with his vulgar
ter and over forces that alone had governed name, similar to that of Tomats that car-
him for innumerable centuries; but his yoke ries in its native land, recalls Mexico, from
does not spare the other, nobler kingdoms. where, in exile, it came to us. North Amer-
The iron law that his sin brought upon him ica gave us false acacia (Robinia pseudoaca­
made man essentially, among other div­ cia) and spina Christi (Gleditsia triacanthos,
erse names, a farmer. Here he razes woods; or honey locust), naturalized to the point
there he covers bare lands with woods; of becoming a pest to our own. To these
wood is turned into tools; logs into poles; plants of North America we should add
deserts become meadows; squalid moors, maple (Negundo fraxinifolium).
verdant fields; nude hills, vineyards and Other species came from the farthest
gardens. Greens are not allowed to grow regions of the ancient world in times so
haphazardly any longer, nor to agglomerate remote that no one can suspect them not
into messy and nameless groups. Arranged to be our own since they have been with
in rows, seeded in beds, grouped in woods us for so many centuries. Amongst these,
that take their names from the essence that beans (Phaseolus vulgaris) with their infi-
man planted there, cut, pruned, tormented nite variations, and pumpkins and melons
in innumerable guises, fed by artificial heats (Cucurbita maxima, C. pepo), also well var-
and waters, they testify everywhere that ied, came from the Eastern Indies. Asia
man has taken full control of that kingdom also provided us with fava beans (Vicia
which God has allocated him for food and faba) and spinach (Spinacia oleracea). From
shel­t er. Neither, under his irresistible the plateaus of Central Asia came common
strength, have plants only submitted to a garlic (Allium sativum): from China, with
regime that nature had not imposed; but, silkworms, the mulberry tree (Morus alba);
oblivious to their own primitive nature, bow­- from the East, probably from Persia, the
ing to forced matrimony, new species are peach tree (Persica vulgaris); from Asia and
simulated under the horrific mask of hy- northern Africa, the almond tree (Amyg­

350
dalus communis); from Asia also, Indian and meadows, we can count the Erigeron
chestnut (Aesculus hippocastanum); from canadensis and Stimatix annua, which came
Japan, Paper Mulberry (Broussonetia papy­ from North America. From North Amer-
rifera), which now grows spontaneously ica also came, on ships that carried timber,
along creeks and among rubble; from Asia the Elodea canadensis that took over fresh
Minor, the grape vine (Vitis vinifera), which, waters throughout Europe, and recently
grown everywhere in its infinite varieties, pushed its invasions to the rivers and chan­-
now also sprouts independently in woods nels of Belgium, France, Germany to such
and along bushes. For his pleasure, then, a point that is often makes boats go aground.
man transplanted roses from Asia (Rosa European man, on the other hand, al­most
centifolia, damascene, indica); from Peru to compensate for his thefts, disseminates
the sunflower (Helianthus annuus); from elsewhere those plants through which he
Mexico the dahlia (Dahlia variabilis); from has, in every way possible, enriched his
the Orient lilies (Lilium candidum); from soil. Many species, indigenous to Europe,
India touch-me-nots (Balsamina hortensis); found themselves in this way cultivated
from the Cape of Good Hope geraniums in large scale in other parts of the world,
(Pelargonium Zonale, inquinans, etc.). What and the new continent was opened to all
will happen now that exotic plant export the plants that inhabited the old. In this
has become an extremely active branch way rice, sugarcane, coffee, indigo (Indi­
of commerce, favoured by all these recov- gofera anil), beans, fava beans, wheat, rye,
eries in speculation, science, and luxury? coming from various countries, were har-
Now that our greenhouses present us with vested there. Oats (Avena sativa), carried
as many glimpses of the torrid zone, and to Montevideo, found the soil so propitious
that our gardens disdain every flower that that they grew in vast grazings very much
does not carry a foreign name? Not always similar to sewn fields. The endless p ­ ampas
has man been a voluntary tool of such a were covered in cardoons (Cynara cardun­
radical revolution in the geographic distri- culus) and thistles (Carduus marianus and
bution of plants. He carried rice from the others). Violets (Viola adorata), borage (Bo­ra-
Eastern Indies; and, immediately among ­go officinalis), marrubium (Marrubiumvul-
our own paddies an Indian flora sprouted, gare), nettles (Urtica urens, dioica), mal­lows
which had followed furtively the main plant (Malva sylvestris, rotundifolia), ac­company­
on its far exile. Many times indeed man ing man in his fortuitous peregrinations
made complaints over this potency of his across the Atlantic, grew abundantly in the
that so widely exceeded his own will. Am- colonies of South America, where they pro­-
ong the seeds that he, oblivious, transports pagated to the detriment of not a few indi­
with wools, timber, with every good, how genous species. Thus, a little at a time, local
many became pests! Among the most com- floras are substituted by a universal flora,
mon grasses that are a blight to our fields deriving from their mixing. It is a new event

351 ...from Corso di Geologia...

in the history of the world, of which the our cities with the sewer rat (Mus decum­
geologist cannot find any explanation in anus) from America, but too soon prolif-
climate conditions, in the nature of soils, erated among us, with the extermination
nor even in the laws dependent on a primi­ then complete of our old rats (Mus rattus).
tive act of creation, but in the boundless Animals, too, like plants, go to European
influence that, whether he likes it or not, man, who has become a cosmopolitan man,
man exercises over telluric nature. becoming universal on earth. The silkworm
The same dominion, maybe even more and the bee thus propagated everywhere;
effective and absolute, man exercises on horses and oxen of the ancient world wander
the highest of nature’s three kingdoms. in endless herds in a state of semi-freedom
From the first moment of creation, with throughout the immense pastures of South
sovereign gaze, he reviewed earth’s beasts. America. Along with man, the pig, the sheep,
In animals he only saw the usefulness or the goat, the rabbit, the dog, the cat, also be-
the damage that they could bring him. He came cosmopolitan beings. In every part
threatened extermination for the ­harmful, of the earth, in human settlements pigeons
and serfdom for the useful. European man, nest, and in the United States as well as in
immigrant from Asia, carried with him Australia, sparrows proliferate on our roofs.
without exception (zoologists agree on this) And not only are animals of the earth
all domestic animals, the use of which is and the sky subdued by man, but also the
lost in the darkness of prehistoric eras. Their inhabitants of the water: man chases and
relics are only found alongside the relics of kills the sperm whale in the boiling waters
man. Those domestic animals—under the of torrid lands, as well as whales and seals
different influences of climate and other among the horrid dance of mountains of ice;
local conditions, and more yielding to man’s he kills elephants, gazelles, and ostriches
creator strength, multiplying out of all pro- in blazing deserts, and wolves, bears, and
portion on our soil—underwent so many chamois on Alpine snows. Fish farming,
modifications that European fauna (differ- which repopulates our rivers’ and lakes’
ently from ancient faunas of every land) waters, offers one taste of that dominion
presents us rather with a world of varieties that man will increasingly exercise over
more than with a series of species. Suffice fish, as he has done for a much longer time
it to recall by imagination the most domes- with the mammals and birds that are his
ticated animals: they have such different companions, servants, tools, and food. No­-
forms, dimensions, colours, instincts and thing, in the end, is safe from this intruder,
habits that we strive to distinguish them who exerts his robbery and extends his
through various appellatives and nouns. power over land, air, and water.
The naturalist will count species on the We are talking about European man, be­-
fingers of his hand, while we dish out a dic- cause Europe, more than other regions, feels
tionary of names and adjectives: we cite a man’s sovereignty. Home to ancient civili­
hundred species of domestic dogs, while zations, occupied by powerful nations, by
he only recognizes one dog, as he only does men used to multiplying time through the
one cat, one horse, one chicken, one pi­geon. zeal of labour, Europe has felt more than
New species were recently introduced main­- other places the deep footprint of the earth’s
ly from America—for instance the turkey, lord. But the ancient civilizations of Asia
native of North America—not to mention and Africa preceded the ancient civiliza-
the abundance of species that go natural­ tions of Europe. The civilizations of Peru
izing in the order of thousands, introduced, and Mexico have been lost in the mists of
as we mentioned with regard to plants, by time. Europe, as by regurgitations, now
speculation, science, and luxury. In this case, flows over the lands from which its own
too, innumerable are the species that came people originated, and over those that our
from Asia, Africa, and America, through fathers didn’t even know existed. For a
man’s indirect industry. The world of for- long time now this wave of people goes,
eign insects is the one that most forced comes, returns, bumps, and overlaps as
man to accept a dire tribute. There is no sea waves on the surface of the land. Let
house in Europe now that is not haunted us not forget, then, that man has been,
by the cockroach (Blatta orientalis) from since his inception, cosmopolitan. Unlike
the Orient; and talking about more eleva­ the speechless animals that preceded him
ted animals, a true blight was brought upon on the surface of the planet, he knows no

352
geographical confines, he makes no dis- human spirit. At this condition, as we, for
tinction of zone or of climate; rivers, seas, instance, explain the mounds of terrestrial
valleys, and mountain crests are no obsta- animals’ bones in the deeps of the sea, he,
cle to him. As he has been wandering for too, could explain the mounds of sea shells
centuries, naked, through the arenas of that savage prehistoric men built on the
the boundless desert, so too, covered in coasts that they inhabited. But if current
skins torn from animals mild and ferocious, geology, to understand finished epochs,
for centuries he has been driving his sled has to study nature irrespective of man, fu-
on the horrid labyrinth of polar ices that ­ture geology, to understand our own epoch,
reflect the meek glow of the northern lights. should study man irrespective of nature.
European man already cast his eye on the So that future geologist, wishing to study
heart of this desert, to make an oasis for our epoch’s geology, would end up narrat-
himself, and is about to drive his banner ing the history of human intelligence. That
on the North Pole—the same banner that is why I believe the epoch of man should
already waves on the highest Alpine peaks. be given the dignity of a separate new era.
A day will come, when the earth will be Geologists should not be reluctant in
but a seal of man’s power, and man a seal ac­cepting this foundation for the only rea-
of God’s, who, giving man his own image, son of the brevity of time currently encom-
almost gave him a portion of his own cre- passed by it. The Anthropozoic era has
ative will. begun: geologists cannot predict its end at
A new era has thus begun with man. Let all. When we say Anthropozoic, we do not
us admit, eccentric though it might be, look to the handful of centuries that have
the supposition that a strange intelligence been, but to those that will be. Nothing
should come to study the Earth in a day makes us suspect that Adam’s seed might
when human progeny, such as populated be close to extinguishing; for humanity is
ancient worlds, has disappeared completely. too young if compared to that ideal of per-
Could he study our epoch’s geology on the fect civilization of which mankind’s first-
basis of which the splendid edifice of gone born has planted the seed, surely not in
worlds’ science was built? Could he, from vain. Although contained by a brief num-
the pattern of floods, from the distribution ber of centuries, God is willing to concede
of animals and plants, from the traces left to the triumph of intelligence and love that
by the free forces of nature, deduct the true, the earth will never escape the hands of
natural conditions of the world? Maybe man if not thoroughly and deeply carved
he could—but always and only by putting by his prints. The first trace of man marks
in all his calculations this new element: the beginning of the Anthropozoic era.

Bios

Valeria Federighi is a practicing architect and a PhD student in Architecture at

the Turin Polytechnic, Italy, where she also completed her MArch (2011); she also
completed a Master of Science in Design Research from the University of Michi-
gan (2012). Her research has dealt with the possibility of designing for incremen-
tal building in Dharavi, Mumbai, and with the role that mediatization plays in the
perception of spaces, with a focus on the city of Detroit and the practice of “ruin
porn” photography. Valeria’s PhD research analyzes practices of living that exploit
the slack that exists both in physical, planned space, and in the legal system that
attempts to regulate it. Valeria work experience includes internships in San Fran-
cisco (AndersonAndersonarchitecture), Mumbai (URBZ), Turin (Isolarchitetti),
and an ongoing collaboration with StudioPomero, Turin.

Alex Berceanu is a photographer, graphic designer, and creative director born in

Bucuresti, Romania and currently living in Toronto, Canada, where she is complet-
ing the undergraduate program for Architectural Design in the Daniels Faculty of
Architecture, Landscape and Design, University of Toronto.

353 The Anthropozoic Era...

 See Dick Hunt. Hunt Dick Hunt.
by Jason Young

354 Project
1 I have never killed an elephant.
Had I killed one, this diorama of Africa in the northern apse of the
Dundee, Michigan, Cabela’s store would certainly transport me back
in time to that fateful moment. Had I become a big game hunter,
I’d stare into the glassy eyes of the elephant ­taxidermied and on
display and think to myself, it is here that I killed an elephant and
felt the enchantment of a perfect garden.1 Such a communion with
nature, had it happened, would deserve its own commemoration,
perhaps with a monument such as this one honouring the difficulty
we have remembering what it feels like to be as real and alive as we
are when we kill such a beautiful and awesome creature as the Afri-
can elephant.
But I never killed an elephant, and I hope wooden plaque within the diorama.
never to kill one. In fact, I have only ever As it turns out, Dick Cabela killed this
seen “real” elephants in circus acts, at the elephant on 1 August 1998 while on safari
zoo, and on TV. I have not studied the ani- in Matetsi, Zimbabwe. The small plaque
mal in its natural habitats, and I don’t know offers this aphoristic ­h istorical admission
the first thing about how to track, hunt, or alongside a photograph of Dick standing
kill elephants. The thought of killing one alone in front of the fallen animal at the site
has never even crossed my mind. Even so, of its death. Dick looks pleased with him-
this taxidermied elephant’s glassy eyes and self, as well he should be with his manhood
visually perplexing skin magnetize me and so recently confirmed. He might even look
command my attention. slightly relieved. Of course, very few details
As I approach the diorama, I meet the are given here in the diorama about the cir-
charge of the elephant with my gaze. The cumstances of this kill. This has the effect
elephant bull’s ears are standing ­outward. of leaving me, and the four million other
His tusks, forward, offering a close-up view annual visitors to this Cabela’s store, to ima-
of the risk-reward contract of the hunt. As gine for ourselves how menacing and breath­
my gaze arrests the elephant’s charge, I not­ice takingly dangerous the elephant must have
the position of his trunk and the dimensions been as Dick tracked it through the plains,
of his gait. He is not so much charging as perhaps from a watering hole of some sort,
he is walking deliberately, bothered and in into the bush.
an annoyed hurry. The elephant must know In the photograph, the elephant lies limp
that I am here and he is not happy about on its side in the dry grass of the savannah.
that. All things being equal, it seems like the It is still significantly larger than Dick,
elephant could just walk on by me, spare me even as it has been reduced to a breathless,
his wrath, maybe simply scare me off and mostly horizontal vestige of itself. The ele-
then return to whatever he had been doing phant’s tusks appear domesticated now that
before our meeting. I guess the same could they are parallel to the ground. It is easy
be said for me. Caught up in the moment of to understand the ivory as a commodity in
the encounter, I wonder why I had to kill this image, now that its status as tusk has
him. Couldn’t simply experiencing the ani- been defeated. It is through the obtuse ma-
mal’s majesty and awesome beauty have been gic of the photograph, and perhaps the en-
enough? Or does our communion have every­ tire diorama, that these props make it easy
thing to do with the ­inevitability of killing? to imagine the danger those tusks must have
Am I obliged, now that I am actually face presented as they closed in on Dick, his
to face with the animal, to pull the trigger? weapon drawn in a frantic moment of fate
Just then my hallucinatory trance is bro- produced by the hunter and the hunted.
ken by a Cabela’s Associate who, noticing Yet, that sense of danger is supplemented
that I’ve taken an interest in the taxidermy by a feeling of distance from any real dan-
display, directs my attention towards a small ger in the store. There are plenty of guns

355
and ammo here, but it is hard to imagine Still, the power of the encounter with the
that any will be discharged inside Cabela’s. diorama offers some sort of analogous kill, a
There is a complex sense of imminence— virtual kill, or an unleashing of the virtual
of the kill and of all the danger implicit in dimensions of the actual kill to be experi-
killing which plays on the experience of being enced, now, as a relay or surrogate reality
entertained by that imminence and its sim- that cancels out the real danger of the hunt
ulation. while preserving the possibility for real
The animal is down, defeated, and now danger. In this sense, the taxidermy here is
contained by the image. Dick is the only one impossible. At the same time, experiencing
upright within the frame of the photograph, the diorama is as visceral as the possibility
standing firm as the elephant lies limp. As of the kill, though in its own analogous way.
the viewer of this image, now in a wooden Along with the elephant, the diorama in
frame in front of the taxidermied elephant, the northern apse contains taxidermy spe­
I assume the position of the one taking the cimens of all of the so-called “­dangerous
photograph, though I can verify nothing of five” considered the pinnacle of big game
what lies at my back nor beyond the instant for the most discerning hunters. The rhino,
that the image was captured. My attention taken by Dick Cabela on 27 August 1999
is divided between this photograph of the from Zululand, South Africa, is here bear-
elephant, the mesmeric taxidermy in front ing down on a rather small-looking lion,
of me, and the imagination I have for the farcically poised to hold its ground through
moment Dick, as a surrogate of who I could counter-aggression towards the rhino, who
have been, triumphs over a menacing, wild looks completely undeterred. A leopard,
nature. For me, viewing the photograph is killed in Rungwa Ikili, Tanzania, is repo-
analogous to taking it. Shooting the ani- sitioned here on the prowl, high in a tree,
mal with a camera is analogous to shooting swatting and lunging at a couple of baboons
it with a gun. And the taxidermy has a way who look intent on holding their position
of making all of this seem even more viv- on the branch. On the opposite side of the
idly possible. By virtue of the switch logic elephant, there is a common eland taxider-
within this analogous structure of relation- mied as a carcass—a moment of the taxider­
ships, I have now killed this elephant. But mist doubling down—that serves as both a
I know I did not kill it in any real sense. break from the pedagogy of the “big five”

The elephant’s glassy eyes and mesmeric skin.

356 Scapegoat
 and as a reminder of the cycle of life. The whose futurity stems from expressing a fun-
common eland is host to a small flock of sca­ damental vision of a vanishing, threatening
vengers who are sure to be displaced by the scene.2
approaching hyenas. A young jackal grasps If not the whole of the diorama, then cer-
the eland's ear as a suggestion to viewers of tainly the immortalized elephant is part of
what is surely to happen next. Uninvolved what I have termed the “MacroPhenome-
and walking away from that ensemble is a nal.” A latent yet strong characteristic of
cape buffalo, killed as it were by Dick on 31 post-city conditions of urbanism, the Mac-
Aug­ust 1994 in Fort Ikoma, Tanzania, with roPhenomenal is that quality within things
the help of famed hunting guide Cotton (objects, spaces, and relational assemblies)
­Gordon. The nonchalance and indifference with which one has definitive experience,
of this buffalo contrasts the predicament even as that experience is predominated by
of a second one in the apse, on the verge of the dotted lines of escape that pull away from
succumb­i ng to the tactics of no fewer than the thing’s quiddity, pushing experience
three African lions closing in on the beast. towards the macro conditions that shape
There are a total of five lions in the diorama. and contour its presence. First catalyzed
The proudest looking of all of them is unin- by the vitality of the things themselves, the
volved in both the downing of the buffalo dimensions of the MacroPhenomenal stem
and the cat play with the rhino. This lion, from those moments when experience is rel­
with its iconic mane, seems to be walking eased towards the relational systems that
out of the painted scene of the savannah delivered the thing to us in the first place.
that extends the space of the diorama deep- With the taxidermy elephant, everything
­er than its physical dimensions. There is we cannot know about this potent object
no information on who killed any of the intervenes in our understanding of it. We
lions. I assume it was probably Dick Cabela, experience the elephant, for sure, but that
though he often hunted with his wife Mary, experience is predominated by the relation-
and she very well could have taken any of ality of that which is no longer there.
them. All of the animals in the diorama are
impressive, both as specimens of the wild
and as trophies made with exquisite crafts-
2 Self-titled the “World’s Foremost Outfit-
manship. While the leopard in the tree ter,” Cabela’s is a hunting, camping, and out-
establishes one of the edges of the half cir- door wear superstore located in the United
cle, the lions and their assault on the cape States. It sells hunting, fishing, camping,
buffalo mark the opposite edge of the apse. archery, boating, and all-terrain vehicle
Near the geographic centre stands the ele- accessories, along with footwear and cloth-
phant, who no doubt marks the mythologic ing for these cultural activities. Thus, the
centre of the diorama. company promotes and outfits the lifestyle
None of what I imagine in the gaze of this of the outdoorsman, an elusive identity em­-
elephant’s glassy eyes can be verified through bedded deep in the imagination Americans
my experience in Cabela’s. Of this much, I have about themselves and their nation.
am sure. Yet, the virtualities catalyzed by The company got its inauspicious start in
the potency of the objects in this diorama do 1961 when Dick and his wife Mary began
not aspire to speak to our contemporary cul- offering five hand-tied flies free to anyone
ture of scientific verification and statistical who would send them 25 cents for postage
validation. Rather, the diorama asserts itself and handling through an advertise­ment in
as a desire-machine: one that combines the the magazine Field and Stream. While each
shifting status of man’s self-identity with sale produced a very modest return on Dick’s
the virility and vitality of a nature that must investment in the product, Mary began typ-
be confronted. To this complex mixture, the ing the names and addresses of those inter-
diorama adds the production of permanence ested in this bargain on recipe cards that she
that stems from the deployment of trophy- filed in a shoebox.3 This loose aggregation of
mounted taxidermy. The diorama as desire- cards became the first of many data caches
machine produces its own time: a now set that would later drive the wildly successful
aside from the moment of actual confronta- hunting superstore.
tion thus rendering the virtual dimensions With each order filled, the Cabelas would
of it more potent than the contours of the include a mimeographed catalogue that
original moment, now escaped; and a now presented their customers with ­additional

357 See Dick Hunt...

products on offer. As soon as 1968, ­Cabela’s catalogue, through the development of that
reached the milestone of $1 million in an­nual medium and the sophistication of telephone
sales. Its remarkable growth put pres­sure and computer networks, and towards the
on the analogue bias of its ­operation and in cultural role of the credit card provider and
1975, the company invested in the emerg- the wide world web and all of its attendant
ing computer systems from which most cor- informational infrastructures, we can see
porations are now indistinct. In 1995, the Cabela’s maturing as a technological com-
corporation supplemented its extensive cir- pany that is both defining its market as it
culation of printed product catalogues by becomes inseparable from it. In a 2006 arti-
launching www.cabelas.com, a web-based cle, The Economist reported that America’s
interface that promised to expand its data- 40 million hunters will spend $4 trillion
base operations exponentially. Cabela’s web­- over their lifetimes on hunting.5 With this
page, schematically understood, brings a sort of future economy predicted and there­
database of some 90,000 products into con- fore addressable as potential—informed by
tact with another vast database of discre- statistical analysis and backed by the feed-
tionary income and credit card potential. back loops within a digital database of the
Aware of the theoretical­ly limitless poten- total hunting market—there is no wonder
tial of their technological expansion, it may why companies like Cabela’s would invest
come as no surprise that in 2001, Cabela’s in performances involving the imminence
expanded its operation, now fully ­d igital, of the kill that I referred to above. The taxi-
by establishing its own bank. “The World’s dermy diorama produces a strange inver-
Foremost Bank” was Cabela’s means to gain sion of time and remembrance, a futurity
more control over the totality of its financial that relies on a past you may have never had.
environment. If founding their own bank
can be seen as the penultimate step in the 3
exponential development of the corporation, In an online video featuring Dick and
the final one was taken in 2004 when it pre- Mary Cabela being interviewed by Wayne
pared an Initial Public Offering and became LaPierre, the executive vice president of the
publicly traded, joining the New York Stock National Rifle Association (NRA), on the
Exchange.4 occasion of their corporation’s fiftieth anni-
In the movement from the mimeographed versary, there is agreement that the most

Meet the charge with your gaze.

358 Excess
 dangerous of the so-called “Dangerous Five” artificial, neutered, and denatured simula-
game to hunt is the African elephant, espe- tion inside that Nebraska retail showroom.
cially when hunted in the rainforest. In this As the account of that particular day in
interview, Mary tells the story of a partic- the rainforest draws to a close, Dick offers
ularly trying safari in Ethiopia where we a circumspect moment of reflection worth
learn that Dick was under the duress of a citing here. He writes:
charging elephant, which he ultimately shot
and killed from a dramatically close range of Many people cannot understand why
five yards.6 That particular elephant, Dick someone would want to hunt an elephant.
adds to the end of Mary’s narration, is now It is not in my power to suffi­ciently ex­-
on permanent display in the Cabela’s store plain. I can say from experience, the
dead, soulless existence of city living
built in Sidney, Nebraska in 1991. This store,
shields most of us from truly knowing
while not the company’s first retail space, what we are made of. In our daily grind,
can be seen as a prototype for the character we have largely forgotten where we
and quality of some 32 stores built around come from, ignoring the things which
the United States since its completion. The connect us to the land. All I can say
presence of an elephant in the store is no is there have been few days in my life
less a prototype for Cabela’s retail strategy. where I have felt more alive.9
There are as many as 17 elephants currently
sited in the 34 Cabela’s stores, each one As if Dick was anticipating the magnet­ic draw
immortalized by the process of taxidermy.7 of the taxidermy with which he would go
With the help of their son and author, on to populate the company’s retail stores,
David Cabela, Dick and Mary have published his description of a lost connection to the
their hunting stories in a book entitled Two real seems prescient, if not prophetic. What
Hearts, One Passion: Dick and Mary Cabela’s seems less certain is if Dick ever once thought
Hunting Chronicles. Written as first-person about the MacroPhenomenal nature of the
accounts from the alternating perspectives subsequent, fully capitalized experiences
of Mary and Dick, the book provides nar- that companies like his would proliferate
rative context to the now-taxidermied ele- outside the city’s “soulless existence” and
phant as part of their company’s emerging corrosive “daily grind.”
retail strategy. According to the book, Dick Inside the Sidney, Nebraska store, the full-
and Mary were on safari in Ethiopia from body trophy is part of a taxidermic monu-
4 February to 10 March 1989. There were ment to that elephant and the thrill of ­killing
rumours among big game hunters that ele- it. There is no attempt to recreate the scene
phant hunting would be shut down for polit- of the kill in the small diorama that contains
ical reasons, and Dick wanted to kill before the elephant. Rather, there are just a few
it was too late. On the safari, Mary killed sprigs of grass and a few rocks in the sand
first, stopping an elephant bull with mod- that is now under the feet of the mighty ani­-
estly sized tusks exactly one day before Dick mal. The elephant’s trunk is raised and his
triumphed over the elephant now on dis- ears are standing straight out from his head,
play in Sidney. Of the moments just after he making his massive tusks appear threaten­
shot the charging bull elephant, Dick writes: ing. The elephant mount, consistent in pos-
“Emotional dissonance bombards your senses ture to the story of the hunt, is on the charge
at such moments—brief instances in time. It here. But the setting has been completely
is overwhelming. With the snap of a finger, changed. No longer in the Ethiopian rain-
it can whisk away your mental and physi- forest, nor inside an attempt to replicate
cal energy. Allowing your guard to subside that environment, this elephant is now cap-
in even the least degree can be fatal.”8 His tured within a varnished wooden handrail
discipline, focus, and control in the face of that both allows visitors to the store to lean
such charged moments must be among Dick’s in and take in the majesty of the beast at the
most redeeming characteristics, but I am same time they are held at a safe distance.
only speculating. It is likely something simi- Although, this distance is closer than that
lar to these measures of good character that from which Dick shot the animal sometime
we conjure in our minds, for the benefit of near Valentine’s day in 1989 while on safari
our own self worth, when we take up Cabe- with his wife, assisted by an expert hunting
la’s invitation to engage this particular ele- guide and his staff of trackers, bearers, and
phant, frozen as it is now in a completely skinners.

359 ...Hunt Dick Hunt.

 Dick Cabela on 1 August 1998.

As I mentioned above, the 1991 retail store eastern Wyoming. These aquariums make
is significant because it served as a proto- explicit the pedagogical mission of the re-
type for the subsequent retail store expan- ­t ail store and help accentuate the ways in
sion undergone by Cabela’s from 1998 to the which stores like Cabela’s are now operat­
present. The taxidermic pachyderm is but ing as institutions in the post-city landscape.
one of a number of educational and enter- Educational field trips to Cabela’s among
tainment-related interventions in the retail elementary school students eager to learn
space that make shopping at Cabela’s an about nature and the outdoors can form the
excursion in its own right. In addition to basis for many return trips during a child’s
the display that features this elephant, the lifetime, which is marked now with a po­ten­
store has an artificial mountain landscape tially expansive appetite for outdoors activi­
adorned with some 40 trophy mounts of ties like camping, hunting, and fishing. And
North American game. The taxidermy spec- for those children who might turn their
imens are displayed so as to render the plen- back on such activities, Cabela’s can still
itude of the outdoors as real as its average play a role in their subject-formation by
consumer might tolerate given that any providing the experiences which form that
ac­t ual danger inside the store is less prefer- aversion.
able to the simulation of that danger. This There is also a Gun Library set amongst
comprises one of the many reference points the store’s inventory, stocked with antique
in the store for what is currently not part and collectible firearms, many of which are
of the experience. Here, one can imagine for sale. The Gun Library provides the cus-
the hunt, as well as practice the ritualistic tomer with a curatorial experience much
silence and stealthy movements that make it like that of a museum by helping form the
possible to slip into place and ply the crafts basis for how it is that one looks at the arti-
of mastery and control. ficial mountain landscape, the taxidermy
Supplementing the taxidermic museo­ within it, the specimens in the aquarium,
logy of the interior, there are four aquar- and by extension the products on the store’s
iums, each averaging 2,000 gallons in size, racks. This blending of allegedly low-culture
stocked with living game fish and predator consumerism and so-called high-culture
fish indigenous to western Nebraska and pedagogical spectatorship is evinced in the

360 Excess
Gun Library at the precise moment a cus- 4 At the time this essay was being ­written,
tomer buys a 1956 Smith & Wesson Model 29,
the .44 magnum gun made famous by Clint Cabela’s had just launched a television ad­-
Eastwood in the movie Dirty Harry. Here, vertisement campaign that featured the
discretionary income and pre-approved cre­ tagline, “It’s in your nature.” The ­campaign,
dit are the only things standing between the called “the Cabela’s Anthem,” has a 60-second
aura of curated artifacts of history and your commercial spot featuring a series of beauti-
possession of them. ful landscape scenes shown in sequence, one
Generally speaking, the store’s organiza­ after another, nine in all, that were filmed
tion mimics that of the Cabela’s ­catalogue. across the United States.10 Within each dis-
Each of the departments is clearly ­delineated, tinct setting there is the awesome landscape,
allowing the possibility for calculated and the implication of a technological ­product
efficient circulation through an “access copy” that subdues and instrumentalizes that land­
of the database of products. While the cat- scape into a discreet experience that every-
alogue uses images and narrative descrip- one with a similar gizmo could have, and
tions, the store is able to re-frame products the superimposition of a short statement that
with the promise of a corporeal performance. occupies the TV screen itself. The state-
As you navigate through the store you are ments play a particularly important narra-
able to physically re-enact the catalogue and tive role, as each begins with, “It’s in your,”
the itinerary of desire it has facilitated large­- and ends, variably, with terms like, “family
ly in absence of the activities themselves. tree,” “unspoken friendships,” “traditions,”
And this is an important aspect of experi­ “forever,” “second language,” “goosebumps,”
encing the store as well. Like the c­ atalogue and finally, “nature.” These statements build
and the website, it makes present as a simu- upon one another as they work with the
lation what each customer purportedly yearns landscape scenes and the depictions within
for: namely, the feeling of pure freedom and of Americans fishing, hunting, cooking on
the fresh air of the outdoors. It is just one of an outdoor fire, riding in a pickup truck, etc.
the concessions of the experience offered The statements also play an interesting, and
by the store that to satisfy this desire for perhaps unintended structural role, as the
freedom and fresh air, you have to go indoors, text on the screen has the effect of ­making
into a retail environment, to get reconnect­- the work of the screen itself explicit. The
ed with the outside world. The work done TV screen is the cultural device that both
by the simulation within the interfaces of allows for the imaginative occupation of the
Cabela’s—the website, the catalogue, and the scenes within the commercial, and blocks
store itself—makes the violence and vivid- the viewer from the actual experience of
ness inherent in activities such as hunting the outdoors. Participation in the ­campfire,
and killing animals somehow more viable for example, is both promoted by the screen
as an idea and certainly more attainable as and also disallowed. This advertisement
a desire. renders the paradoxical nature of the tele-
There is a significant gap between the vision viewer, even if we admit that the com-
experience of killing something and the en­- mercial is designed more to foment desire
tertaining ambulation through the apparel for the landscape experience than it is to
section of Cabela’s, with its 60 different pat- actually get the viewer outside.
terns of camouflage. And, it is fair to assert All the scenes in the commercial are filmed
that the ideological and nationalistic nar- either just at sunrise or sunset, which lend
ratives surrounding access to nature and an amazing, amber glow to each scene, im-
the weapons needed to keep it under per- ­buing them with the sepia tone of things
sonal control rely on this mediation for their old, fading and distant, but also lasting. To
potency as much as anything. These are my eye, everything is perfect and imper-
among the “dotted lines of escape” that make fect in these scenes. Things are rustic and
up the MacroPhenomenal experience of the simple. Idealized, and thus rendered more
Cabela’s stores. real than the reality of those activities. My
favourite scene within the advertisement
occurs when an older man and his ­hunting
dog are riding off from the field, after an
afternoon hunt, in a Chevy pickup truck.
The camera is positioned in order to give

361 See Dick Hunt...

us a view from outside the passenger win- this scene. The old truck, the old man, the
dow looking into the truck, across the bench rough roadway, the companion hunting dog,
seat and towards the driver. The dog is sit- the rubbing of his ears, the silence between
ting close to the hunter as he drives and rubs them. Like the taxidermied elephants in­side
the dog behind the ear. The dog’s eyes are the Cabela’s stores, this scene is powerful
fixed on the country road ahead. The only in its effect of ­capturing an intangible some-
sound in this scene is the noise of the truck thing beyond words that purportedly lurks
slowly creaking along the road. As the scene deep in the excessive myth­ologies of being
nears its end, the words, “It’s in your unspo- American.
ken friendships,” appear on the screen. I “get”

Endnotes
4 “Cabela’s Inc., IPO,” NASDAQ, http://www.­
1 Much of how I’ve unpacked my experience at nasdaq.com/markets/ipos/company/cabelas-
the ­Cabela’s store has been inspired by Donna inc-600278-38467.
Haraway’s powerful essay entitled, “Teddy 5 “Hunting, Shooting and…Shopping,”
Bear Patriarchy: Taxidermy in the Garden of The ­Economist, 19 December 2006, 79.
Eden, New York City, 1908–1936,” Social Text 6 “The Cabela’s Discuss Their Lives, Passions,
11 (­Winter 1984–1985): 20–64. For example, and Pursuits, Parts I,” YouTube, ­http://­w ww.
on page 25, she uses the phrase “the enchant- youtube.com/watch?v=KOhqiZsXKNE.
ment of a perfect garden” to describe the site 7 The number of taxidermied elephants within
and event of the taxidermist Carl Akeley’s first Cabela’s holdings is estimated from research
gorilla kill. She speaks also of “­communion with I’ve done on the company’s website, www.­
nature” through killing, and of the relationship cabelas.com. It is not a scientific survey, but
between hunting with guns and cameras, all rather based on the information they reveal
of which have impacted my writing in import­- about each store for the purposes of retail
ant ways. t­ ourism.
2 Ibid., 37. The notion of “a vanishing, threatening 8 David Cabela, Two Hearts, One Passion: Dick
scene” is a direct citation. and Mary Cabela’s Hunting Chronicles (Sidney,
3 This historical narrative of the company is drawn NE: Cabela ­Publishing LLC, 2005), 176.
from the book written by David Cabela, ­Cabela’s: 9 Ibid., 178.
World’s F­ oremost Outfitter: A History (Forest 10 T he various versions of this advertisement
Dale: Paul S. Eriksson, 2001), 13. ­campaign can be viewed at http://www.cabelas.
com/assets/collections/IIYN/itsinyournature.
html.

Bio

Jason Young is Associate Professor of Architecture at Taubman College and

2012–13 ­Helmet F. Stern Professor at the Institute for the Humanities, Universi-
ty of Michigan. Young maintains a wide stance in the discipline of architecture,
working through a design+build practice at a small, intensive scale at the same
time that he is engaged in research on extensive contemporary conditions of
American urbanism. Young has published and lectured on his work internation-
ally and is contributing co-editor of Stalking Detroit (Barcelona: ACTAR, 2001).
His current book project, tentatively titled Skirmishes with the MacroPhenom-
enal: Letting Go of the City, explores post-city urbanism through the plushness
of its contingencies.

362
363
 This Garden of the Sun: A Report on Almería’s Miracle Economy
by Melissa Cate Christ

fig. 2

fig. 1
fig. 3

When the human desire to have the food we want whenever we

want it is coupled with industrial production processes that benefit
the world’s most af­fluent, a global chain of political, economic, so-
cial, and environmental causalities is set in motion. At this moment
of extravagant consumption, we often forget that food was once
intimately and precariously tied to seasonal avail­ability, local cli-
mate, and cultural heritage; it is only recently that food itself began
to appear as just another commodity, delivered by way of refrig-
erated containers in a logistically optimized global transportation
network. In re­sponse to the technopolitical advances in optimized
yields and maximized capacities, many regions have moved to in­-
crease the exploitation of natural and human resources to further
capitalize on their localized advantages for industrial food produc­
tion.1 Because of global market transformations, such local produc-
tion is required to satisfy out-of-season desire. Exemplary of an
area marked by this global shift towards omni-seasonal availabil-
ity is the province of Almería in Andalucía, southern Spain.
364 Project
fig. 4

When viewed from a satellite, the ex­panse strong Mediterranean winds, and an aver-
of greenhouses in Almería resembles a age of 18 degrees Celsius in the winter, its
monochromatic patchwork quilt, stitched climate is a formidable lure for mass agri­
together by roads and punctuated by the cultural production. As these optimal cli­-
rectangular balsas (swimming pool-like res- matic coincidences were matched with rel­-
ervoirs) that hold pumped groundwater atively simply greenhouse construction
in reserve for on-demand irrigation. From tech­niques, an accessible groundwater sup­
the ground, however, this apparent conti­ ply to offset the less than 300mm average
nuity disappears, revealing instead a land- annual rainfall, a precarious immigrant la­-
scape of stark contrasts, exemplified by bour force, and the continuing appropria-
the route I followed from the 2249m-high, tion and deployment of advanced techno-
goat-strewn Sierra de Gádor mountains, logical innovations, the so-called el milagro
through fields of reflective white plas­t ic de Almería (the miracle of Almería) has
on the Campo de Dalías, a burgeon­i ng emerged in less than 40 years.
company town called El Ejido, boom-era With nearly 27,000 hectares of green-
condos and high-end golf cours­es, and end- houses, located primarily in the low-alti-
ing at the glistening blue of the Medi­terran- tude plains of the Campo de Dalías, and in
ean. While this area can easily be mistaken the higher Campo de Níjar, this so-called
as one giant vegetable factory due to the “plastic sea” produces almost 3 million tonnes
greenhouses’ dramatic aesthe­tic figuration of vegetables per year (2009), half of which
on what was once a barren desert back- are exported.3 These exports comprise 50
ground, the totalizing view from the sky un- per cent of the peppers, 25 per cent of the
der estimates the heterogeneous, con­ti­nuous, tomatoes and cucumbers, and significant
and intensive human agency required on the quantities of eggplants, zucchini, green
ground in order to produce tender crops like beans, and melons for the major supermar-
tomatoes, even with the unique geographical ket chains in Europe.4 Such a scale of pro-
and climatic conditions specific to Almería. duction is praised for contributing almost
2 billion euros per year to the struggling
El Milagro de Almería
Spanish economy.5 In total, the 13,500 fam-
Before visiting, I was confronted during ily-owned greenhouse operations directly
my research with a wealth of superlative employ 40,000 people, while their agri-
claims: Almería is, by turns, home to the business cluster of over 500 supporting
largest concentration of greenhouses in industries, such as plastic manufacturing
the world, the driest area of Europe, the and recycling, vegetable packaging and dis­
primary source of Europe’s winter salads, tribution, and seed production and seed-
home to the largest population of foreign- ling breeding employs 19,000.6 In addition,
born residents in Spain, and the site of the the area provides itinerant employment
largest desalination plant in Europe. This for an estimated 100,000 migrant workers,
collection of descriptive extremes—scalar, primarily from northern and sub-Saharan
geographical, industrial, economic, tech- Africa.7 The rapid expansion of this vege­
nological—nevertheless allow Almería to table economy is reflected in the 75 per cent
be compared with other industrial land- increase in the province’s population since
scapes of extraction and production devel- 1981, when there were only 7,000 hectares
oped to exploit a region’s natural resources. of greenhouses and the province was one
What is especially unique to Almería, how- of the poorest in Spain;8 comparatively, in
ever, is that the foundation of the explo- 2012, Almería’s GDP per capita ranked
sive growth of the horticulture industry is third in the country.9
the climate itself. With anywhere between
3,200 and 3,500 hours of sunlight per year,2

365
 fig. 6

fig. 8
fig. 5
ing practices of over-exploitation. Exces-
sive extraction has led to a 15m drop in
groundwater levels in 15 years, and helped
produce an average rate of 5mm of subsid-
ence per year in some areas of the prov-
ince.11 In the Campo de Dalías, where the
majority of the oldest and least technolo­
gically advanced greenhouses are concen­
trated, horticultural practices have led to
the Norias lagoon, which emerged as early
as 1998 in a lutite quarry. This remarkable
site is assumed to be the result of a com-
fig. 7

bination of subsidence, increased waste-

water discharge, the shallowness of the
unconfined aquifer below and the de­crease
Water, Waste, and Labour
in extraction due to the decline in the water
The success of this solar-enabled, desire- quality because of saltwater contamina­
fueled horticultural production is not with­ tion.12 The lagoon is currently being pumped
out attendant costs— externalities riddled for treatment and reuse, as well to reclaim
with contradictions and violence. The most flooded land formerly home to makeshift
serious impacts to the environment in­clude housing for workers, ramshackle greenhous-
the depletion of the region’s aquifers and es, and industries such as waste manage-
their contamination through polluted waste- ment; it is also used as an informal dumpsite
water discharge and salt-water intrusion. for construction, and plastic and vegetable
Although the adoption of drip irrigation, waste. Ironically, it is the only “naturally”
enarenado artificial soil layering, and soil- vegetated area amidst hectares of closely
less substrates such as perlite or coco-peat, packed greenhouses, with successional
were intended to reduce water use through vegetation filling the abandoned parral
decreased evaporation and direct applica­ structures and water edges. Because it
tion of water and fertilizer to the plant roots, remains somewhat secluded, this postnat-
these effects have not been fully realized.10 ural site has become a popular fishing spot
In­stead, the reliance on vernacular practi­ for migrant workers and home to a diverse
ces of overwatering and the high cost of population of local and migrating birds.
using deep-well (confined aquifer) water, Officially, the increasing amounts of pest­
recycled wastewater, or desalinated water icides and chemical fertilizers, contami­
from Carboneras, contributes to continu- nated vegetable waste— over 700,000

366 Scapegoat
tonnes per year—and garbage plastic are
collected for “recycling,” which tends to
include various combinations of compost-
ing, burning, and shredding. In actuality,
substantial amounts of these waste prod-
ucts often end up illegally dumped in the
Norias Lagoon, vacant lots, or ramblas
(stream beds) to be washed into the sea 13
by the infrequent but often devastating
autumn gota fría (torrential downpours);
much of what is not washed into the sea is

fig. 9
left instead to slowly leach toxins into the
groundwater.14 Aside from the excessive production of
As the industry has grown, plot sizes solid waste, which stubbornly refuses to
and the number of crop turnovers per year be dreamt away, the most pressing issue
have increased two- to three-fold, forcing in Almería is the dwindling supply of fresh,
the traditionally family-run farms to rely clean water. In addition to the 700m-deep
more heavily on paid labour, which is both confined aquifer well drilled in 1985,19 and
their highest cost (46 per cent as of 200515) the Benínar Reservoir, the largest source
and the area where they can most increase of fresh water is the desalination plant
profits by paying lower wages to legal and in Carboneras, completed in 2005 on the
illegal migrant workers. Almería has the eastern coast of the province, in the mid-
highest population of immigrants in Spain, dle of the Cabo de Gata-Níjar Natural Park.
over half of whom work in intensive, horti­- Although this desalination plant is current-
culture-related industries.16 Some of the ly working at only 15 per cent capacity, it
social and political economic consequences meets the needs of all the greenhouses in
of this demographic shift reported in recent the Campo de Níjar (some 7,000 hectares)
years include the sub-standard working and in so doing suggests that the seeming-
conditions and subsistence-level wages ly infinite supply of the Mediterranean it-
of many underpaid migrant workers.17 The self is yet to be fully exploited. The Carbon­
influx of migrant settlements has also led eras plant has positioned the desalinated
to labour disputes and race riots, parti­ water supply as the miraculously “sustain­
cularly in 2000 and 2008. Worker illnes­ able” future of the region, despite a cost of
ses linked to long hours in excessive heat 1.5–4 times above that of pumped water20
breath­ing chemically tainted air in insuf- and the enormous amount of energy need­
ficiently ventilated greenhouses have also ­ed for industrial processing.21
dramatically increased. Undoubtedly, technical innovations in
In response to these attendant realities water recycling processes have been im­-
accompanying the miracle economy, a num­- plemented as partial solutions to the dwin-
ber of corporate, academic, governmental, dling, and therefore increasingly expen-
and community programs have been ini- sive, water supply. In the most technically
tiated, spinning off other new industries, advanced, multi-tunnel, rigid plastic green­
products, and research. The dream of trans­ houses, computer-controlled passive ven-
forming these social and environmental tilation and water recycling systems are
contingencies into neoliberal opportuni- employed to monitor and control nutrient
ties for profit has many variations here, and salinity levels, adding fresh water and
including the development of the saline fertilizer depending upon the needs of the
water-tolerant “RAF tomato,” a French vari­ plants. To promote the adoption of new
ety developed in 1969 and sold as a luxury techniques and the potential of the indus-
product to high-end restaurants for 10–15 try to become more productive and sus-
euros per kilo. Another variation of this tainable, the Andalusian Medal-winning
dream is vegetable waste being used to vegetable producer Clisol Agro stocks their
generate energy by being processed into show greenhouse with over twenty variet-
fuel briquettes, assuming that the entan- ies of colorful tomatoes and provides tours
gled plastic from the twining vines can be and educational talks to tourists. Accord-
efficiently removed to prevent the release ing to my guide, Lola Gómez Ferrón, who
toxic fumes when it is subsequently burned.18 is also the founder of the company, in the

367 This Garden of the Sun: A...

Clisol show greenhouse, recycled water ing within a limited economy. Harnessed
comprises 30 per cent of the total irriga- by global capitalism, omni-seasonal desires
tion requirement, with the remaining 70 have enabled the extreme manipula­tion of
per cent made up from groundwater (in Almería’s landscape; reading such a land-
this case extracted from the confined aqui­ scape requires an equally dramatic shift
fer well).22 The company also employs inte­- in logic—a movement from a restricted (no
grated pest management, as well as “nat- matter how it is traded-off ) to a general
ural” chemicals such as sulphur dust, to economy. The transformation of the prov-
manage the spread of tomato diseases. ince—from a poor, under-populated desert
The proliferation of unintended extern- to one of the most economically produc-
alities is essential to consider for under- tive regions in Spain—through the expe-
standing Almería’s peculiar overdevelop­ dited exploitation of its natural resources
ment. As an especially telling example, the demonstrates the potential to capitalize
vernacular tradition of whitewashing the on localized climate conditions and har-
plastic roofs of the greenhouses in the sum­ ness all adjacent industries to intensely ex­-
mer to reduce solar gain inside has been pand the horticulture industry. While each
linked to a three-degree Celsius decrease component of the process has been iso-
in the areas’ median temperature. In this lated, mechanized, and streamlined, there
regard, the dense expanse of greenhouses, is no escaping the essential fact: such an
capable of harnessing the energy of the investment must be spent within a general
sun to produce vast quantities of vegeta- economy, either gloriously or catastrophi-
bles, could also be credited for their role cally. My experience in Almería—witness-
in countering the effects of global climate ing the struggles of immigrant labourers
change.23 Yet, for each example of a positive, who work for such low wages to deliver
if unintended, externalized outcome, there perfect tomatoes to the tables of Europe’s
is a nagging caveat to be reported as well. most affluent consumers—suggests little
For example, the use of expensive, desal- in the way of glorious expenditure; instead,
inated water and recycled water has only I witnessed vast quantities of light, labour,
reduced, rather than replaced, the amount and land squandered for the production
of groundwater bought from the govern- of an image, and a taste, of the omni-sea-
ment or pumped from small and sometimes sonal salad.
illegal wells. The combined effect of such
Gracias Difunta Correa
practices is that the full extent of water
scarcity is not acknowledged, let alone Situated at the edge of a carbonate cliff
fully known, and a long-term management dividing the windsurfer destination of Al­-
plan for the province’s water resources has merimar from the greenhouse-engulfed
yet to be completed.24 Although there have town of El Ejido, a tiny shrine sits behind
been several efforts to engage stakeholders a pile of two-litre plastic bottles filled with
and the local community through educa- water. It is the lone human construction in
tional publications and GIS-enabled on­line a land­scape of tough native plants capable
mapping and documentation initiatives, of sur­viving, without human intervention,
budget cuts associated with Spanish aus- the harshest of conditions. A sign, now
terity measures have slashed the funding knocked to the ground, provides the shrine’s
for these pedagogical projects.25 dedication: “Gracias Difunta Correa.” Pat-
When viewed on a global scale, cover- ron saint of farmers, travellers, and the
ing the ground with plastic and drawing desert, the historical figure of Difunta Cor-
water from the sea could be seen as “pro- rea is reputed to have followed her abduct=
gressive” moves because these practices ed husband into the deserts of Argentina
reduce the heat island effect and the con- with her infant son. Although she was found
sumption of irreplaceable water resources dead by soldiers some time afterwards, her
from confined aquifers. Read more care- infant was still alive, sucking her still full
fully, however, “progress” is simply the act breast even after her torturous death in the
of exchanging one finite resource for an- desert sun. There can be no better pa­tron
other; even if the Mediterranean is rarely of the desire that fuels Almería’s develop­
conceived as a finite natural resource, the ment, and series of superlatives that ac-
energy required to desalinate its water company its growth than, Difunta Correa,
must inevitably be understood as a operat- especially considering the offerings she

368 Excess
receives: water to calm her eternal thirst.
The shocking satellite image of green-
houses in Southern Spain may stand in well
for the processes playing out in and among
them. However, when seen as a source and
solution to problems such as seasonal in­-
consistency, economic instability, global
climate change, and environmental deg-
radation, industrial-scale food production
is far more than an image; this intensive
human, mineral, and vegetable assemblage
reproduces social and environmental re­la-
tions, normalizing the processes and prac­ti­-
ces that characterize industrial hor­ti­cul­ture
and the standing-reserve of commo­dities it
affords. Devotion to the Ar­gentin­ean popu­-
list saint Difunta Correa—whose shine it-
self is made up of the twin necessities of
the milagro de Almería, namely, water and
plastic—speaks to the hopes of a re­g ion
both blessed and tortured with over 300
days of sunshine every year. Her desire
for devotees to quench her eternal thirst
is indelibly related to her suffering under
the solar resource powering Alme­ría's mi­-
racle economy; how long she can sustain
her own miraculous sating of the parched
desire for earthly, maternal plentitude is
strictly a matter of faith.
fig. 10

fig. 11

369 ...Report on Almería’s Miracle...

 Figures Endnotes

1 “Taster” tomatoes at Clisol’s show greenhouse. Special thanks to Balbino Fernández Revuelta, Issac
2 1.5ha plots, each with a balsa to store pumped Frances Herrera, Lola Gómez Ferron and Jesus Contre­
groundwater. Image: Jesus Contraras ras for their hospitality and generous conversations
3 A parral-type greenhouse growing melon in spring. during my stay in Almería.
4 Campo de Dalias and El Eijido
5 Drip irrigation system at Clisol 1 Historian of science Paul Edwards describes “techno­
6,7 Anthropogenic Norias lagoon. politics” in the following terms: “Engaging in techno­-
Image: Jesus Contraras politics means designing or using technology strate­
8 Worker housing. Image: Jesus Contraras gically to achieve politic ends. Symmetrically, it also
9 Carboneras desalination plant. means using political power strategically to achieve
Image: Jesus Contraras technical or scientific aims.” See Paul Edwards, A
10, Shrine to Difunta Correa Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and
11
the Politics of Global Warming (Cambridge and Lon­
don: MIT Press, 2010), 215.
2 José A. Aznar-Sánchez and Emilio G ­ aldeano­-­­Gómez,
“Territory, Cluster and Competitiveness of the Inten-
­sive Horticulture in Almería (Spain),” The Open Geo-
graphy Journal 4 (2011): 103–114.
3 Ibid, 103.
4 Robert Tyrell, El Milagro de Almería, España:
A Poli­tical Ecology of Landscape Change and Green-
house Agriculture (2008, unpublished thesis), 39.
5 Junta de Andalucía, Consejería de agricultura y
pesca memoria anual: 2009 (Sevilla: Servicio de
Publicaciones y Divulgación, 2012), 12.
6 Aznar-Sánchez and Galdeano-Gómez, “Territory,
Cluster and Competitiveness,” 110.
7 Although there is no official census of migrant work­
ers, this number is an estimate based on ­c alculating
that 40,000 greenhouses need 2–3 outside labour­
ers each. The portion of this number made up by legal
immigrants is estimated to be betwen 10,000 and
40,000 of the total. See George Prior, “The Green­
house Effect in Andalucia,” SUR in E ­ nglish, http://
www.surinenglish.com/20110609/news/andalu­
cia/greenhouse-effect-almeria-20110609
1703.html.
8 Almería’s population has increased from 405,000 in
1981 to 704,000 in 2012, 155,000 of which are prim­
arily immigrants from northern and sub-Saharan
Africa. The exponential growth is relatively recent:
close to 200,000 people were added in just the last
10 years. By contrast. Spain’s population as a whole
only increased 25 per cent, from 37,741,000 in 1981
to 47,190,000 in 2011. See Instituto Nacional de
Estadistica (Spanish Office of Statistics), http://
www.ine.es/en/inebmenu/mnu_cifraspob_en.htm,
and Gemma Quinn, “Almeria Exceeds Population of
700,000 for First Time,” Leader.info, 10 April 2011,
http://www.theleader.info/362/article/28168/
almeria-exceeds-population-of-700000-for-first-
time.
9 Cynthia Giagnocavo, “The Almería Agricultural Co­-
operative Model: Creating Successful Economic
and Social Communities,” (paper presented at the
50th Session of the Commission for Social Develop­
ment, UNHQ, New York, NY, 1–10 February 2012), ii.
10 In the 1960s the industry began its transformation
through the adaptation of basic technological im­-
provements. Existing grape trellises (parral) were
covered in newly available polyethylene sheeting
in order to insulate the enarenado soil, a layering
technique first employed in the 1920s. Still in use by
over 80 per cent of the region’s 1.5-hectare parcels,
the native soil is topped by a 15cm layer of clay, a
5cm layer of compost and then a 10cm layer of sand.
This technique reduces evaporation and salt uptake,
as well as water loss through the rocky, nutrient-poor
soils. The other 20 per cent of the greenhouses use

370
 substrates such as bags of perlite or planters of shred­- 20 Elena López-Gunn, Marta Rica and Nora van Cau­
ded coconut fiber (commonly sourced from India) in wenbergh, “Taming the Groundwater Chaos,” in
order to reduce soil-borne diseases. Water, Agriculture and the Environment in Spain:
11 Antonio Pulido-Bosch et al., “Identification of Poten- Can We Square the Circle? ed. Lucia De Stefano
tial Subsidence Related to Pumping in the Almería and Manuel Ramón Llamas (Leiden: CRC Press/
Basin (SE Spain),” Hydrological Processes 26, no. 5 Balkema, 2012), 237.
(2012): 739. 21 Although increasingly supplied by renewable re-
12 A . Vallejos et al., “The Intensive Exploitation of Aqui­ sources such as wind or solar power (e.g. as pro­
fers and Its Implications for Sustainable Water Mana­- moted by ACCONIA, the supplier to Acuamed, who
gement in a Semi-Arid Zone,” Groundwater Inter- runs the desalination plant at Carboneras [Acconia,
national IAHR Symposium: Flow And Transport In “ACCIONA Will Supply Electricity to Acuamed for
Heterogeneous Subsurface Formations: Theory the Third Year Running,” ACCONIA Press Release,
Modeling And Applications (Istanbul: Bogaziçi 19 June 2013, http://www.acciona.com/news/
Universitesi, 2008), 661, http://nevada.ual.es/
­
acciona-will-supply-electricity-to-acuamed-for-
proyectoexcelencia/docs/23.pdf. the-third-year-running]), energy requirements for
13 In March 2013, one of 1,000 remaining sperm whales seawater desalination range from 12,000–18,000
in the Mediterranean was found washed up on a beach kWh per million gallons. See Heather Cooley and
on the southern coast of Spain with 17kg of plastic Matthew Heberger, Key Issues for Seawater Desali-
waste clogging its stomach, the majority polyester nation in California Energy and Greenhouse Gas
sheeting, speculated by scientists to have origin­ Emissions (Oakland: Pacific Institute, 2013), 8,
ated from the “plastic sea” in Almería. Giles Trem­ http://www.pacinst.org/reports/desalination_
lett, “Spanish Sperm Whale Death Linked to UK 2013/energy/energy_full_report.pdf.
Supermarket Supplier’s Plastic,” The Guardian, 22 Lola Gómez Ferrón (founder of Agro Clisol) in
8 March 2013, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/ ­discussion with the author, March 2013.
2013/mar/08/spain-sperm-whale-death-swallowed- 23 Pablo Campra, Monica Garcia, Yolanda Canton and
plastic. Alicia Palacios-Orueta, “Surface Temperature Cool­
14 Luis Molina-Sánchez et al., “Agricultural Waste ing Trends and Negative Radiative Forcing Due to
Management and Groundwater Protection,” (paper Land Use Change toward Greenhouse Farming in
presented at the 38th IAH Congress, Groundwater Southeastern Spain,” Journal of Geophysical Re-
Quality Sustainability Conference, Krakow, Poland, search: Atmospheres 113 (2008).
12–17 September 2010). 24 See N. Font and J. Subirats, “Water Management in
15 Nicolas Castilla and Hernadez Jaquan, “The Plastic Spain: The Role of Policy Entrepreneurs in Shaping
Greenhouse Industry of Spain,” Chronica Horticul- Change,” Ecology and Society 15, no. 2 (2010):
ture 45, no. 3 (2005): 18. 25, http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol15/
16 Estimate calculated from Quinn, “Almería Exceeds iss2/art25 for an account of the history of water
Population,” 2011, and Felicity Lawrence, “Spain’s ­policy development in Spain, and López-Gunn et al.,
Salad Growers Are Modern-Day Slaves, Say Chari­ “­Taming the Groundwater Chaos,” for a discussion
ties,” The Guardian, 7 February 2011, http://www. specifically about the status and management of
guardian.co.uk/business/2011/feb/07/spain-salad- the aquifers in Almería.
growers-slaves-charities. 25 T he Universidad de Almería’s Centro Andaluz para
17 See Ibid., and the Belgian documentary El Ejido, la la Evaluación y Seguimiento del Cambio Global
loi du profit, directed by Jawad Rhalib (France: Arte, (Andalusian Centre for Assessment and Monitoring
2006), for recent accounts of the working conditions of Global Change), directed by Hermelindo Castro
of migrants in Almería. Nogueira, is still in existence, but significant projects
18 A . J. Callejón-Ferre and J. A. López-Martínez, “Bri­ including community engagement and outreach act­
quettes of Plant Remains from the Greenhouses of ivities (such as CAMP, see http://camplevantedeal­
Almería (Spain),” Spanish Journal of Agricultural meria.com/en/content/camp-levante-de-almeria)
Research 7, no. 3 (2009): 525–534. have been put on hold over the last three years due
19 Tyrell, El Milagro de Almería, 26. to budget cuts. See http://www.caescg.org for the
Centre’s objectives and ongoing projects.

Bio

Melissa Cate Christ OALA, CSLA, ASLA is an Assistant Professor of Landscape Archi­
tecture at the University of Hong Kong and a founding principal of transverse ­studio.
A registered landscape architect, her design research and practice concentrates on
contemporary mechanisms of urban intervention at the juncture of landscape, culture,
urbanism, and infrastructure. Prior to teaching at HKU, Melissa was a designer and
project manager at Gustafson Guthrie Nichol Ltd; an urban designer at DuToit Allsop
Hillier; and an instructor and design critic at the University of Toronto and University of
­Washington. Melissa has a Master of Landscape Architecture from the University of
Toronto and a Bachelor of Liberal Arts from St. John’s College. (transversestudio.com)

371 The Garden of the Sun: A...

 Xenotransplantations of the [In]Animate:
A Speculative Dissection
by Emily Vanderpol

We are experiments; at least let us want to be them.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

The gurney functions as both a scale model and a one-to-one model. It serves
as a proposed method of building within the site—the rails representing the
­surrounding buildings—but it is simultaneously suggestive of an operating
­theatre for surgery on the non-alive.

372 Project
The deer head springs from the gurney, stretching the energy contained inside,
an animal trying to escape. The inner animal stretches to form an inhabitable
space, providing a building within the energy of the site, potentially unbeknownst
to inhabitants as an animal.

373
The building model sets the stage for the operating theatre, test tubes with build-
ing parts, pills, and entrails surround the built form; other material palettes for
objects linger close by. The operating theatre teaches surgery on the inanimate,
but calls to attention the life in any object on the table.

374 Scapegoat
Xenotransplantation offers a method of design in which every space
and object has life-like qualities, whether latent or apparent. This
project uses the idea of xenotransplantation on all levels: as pro-
gram, scale, siting strategy, and in terms of the behaviour of objects
themselves. In this design experiment, objects are treated as alive,
dissected, and rebuilt. This disciplinarily transplanted architec-
ture can play a particularly vital role in the dissection of taboo
spaces controlled by the field of medical research.

Xenotransplantation: The transplant of organs or tissues from a non-

human animal to a human. Xeno­t ransplantation of organs is typically
unsuc­cessful, but if successful, could alleviate the stress of finding the
amount of human organ donors needed to meet the organ demand.
— Wikipedia.org

The Centre for Research in Xenotransplantation (TCRX) propos-

es, as its site, a vacated 30-acre pharmaceutical research and de-
velopment complex that has been devoid of human habitation for
several years. In the absence of human security, local fauna stand
guard, circulate, and stop to stare at more recent intruders.
The building no longer wants to be a building (to echo Coop
Him­me(l)blau); instead, it wants to choose its own site. Psycho-
geographic maps of the building’s dérive across the site examine
both daytime and nighttime site conditions. Small black specks
each represent a potential landing ground, as the building ex-
plores the complex for the best place to site itself. The site condi-
tions don’t rely exclusively on vacant space and topography, as
they often do in institutional architecture. The building’s dérive
takes into account other life on the site, including deer and other
animals that currently inhabit the space. The research cen-
tre eventually ne­stles itself into a hallway between an existing
mechanical building, known as Building 80, and an empty but
­suggestive, three-story laboratory, with a vivarium in the base-
ment. Building 80 sits on a busy street and operates non-stop.
Daylight shows Building 80 as a reflective box with constant
noise, while at night a transparent three-story box with visible
moving parts is revealed. The xenotransplantation facility wants
to be in plain sight while remaining somewhat hidden and cen­
sored, allowing visitors to choose whether to ignore or address
the spatial and bioethical con­troversies that the building contains
within. The architecture of medical research facilities is heavily
institutionalized, controlled, and sterile, while the practice of

375 Xenotransplantations...
medical research itself is often ethically questionable. Bioethical
issues linked to medical research practices raise eyebrows, arouse
polemi­cal opinions, and intimidate non-participants. If the field of
bioethics is defined as the philosophical study of the ethical con-
troversies brought about by advances in biology and medicine, and
if spaces and objects all possess life-like qualities, what then are
the bioethical issues of architecture itself? It follows that privi-
leging human-centred design over design that accounts for all
animals and objects is potentially unethical. Xenotransplantation,
as an appropriated concept, questions the ethical implications of
space between the animate and inanimate; rather than providing
a solution, the work of an architectural xenotransplantation ex-
plores the nature of the argument, suggesting new methods of
design and dealing with core issues of the human psyche with re-
spect to the life in non-human and inanimate objects.
The animals that provide the most suitable organs and tissue for
human use are baboons and pigs. Accordingly, TCRX needs to ac-
commodate scales of inhabitation and modes of interaction for the
various species involved, including the deer and other species on
the existing site. The building becomes an animal that is part of
the ecosystem, wrapped up in the interactions among species. Ex-
ploring the different inter-species relationships that are formed
helps to elucidate the role of the building in the system. Since the
building, at least in part, is the mechanism separating the “captive”
from the “free,” is the building itself captive or free? How does it
interact with its inhabitants and surrounding species? These ques-
tions need to be addressed when considering the bioethics of a
space within the general economy suggested by a larger, multi-
centred ecosystem.

To bring out the

life-like qualities of the building, the visceral aspects of anatomy
and life cycles need to be understood. In gen­e­ral, the act of
build­ing is related to some effort to improve the human condi-
tion; TCRX allows for the beings found in buildings' surround-

376 Excess
 ings to participate in the process. The assumption that the users
and sole beneficiaries are human, though, needs to be shed.
­Instead, the viscerality of life comes to the forefront, while
the institutional formations of architecture shrink into the
­background.

The research facility,

while nestled behind a constantly breathing and moving building,
is opportunistic, and lurks in the shadows of this movement. The
quest­ionable practices of the inside are not closed off to passers-
by, but instead arouse curiosity; the visceral pro­g ram and its at-
tendant apparatuses often intimidate humans, as the sec­urity of
the building becomes indistinguishable from the activities of sur-
rounding deer.
In the introduction to the Neoplasmatic issue of Architectural
Design (2008), Marcos Cruz discusses the architecture at stake
in fusing the live and the un-live. Cruz suggests that the un-live
could be alive, once cells were grown onto it. Perhaps more pro-
vocatively, however, Xenotransplantation contends that “un-live”
agents do not need any injection of biological material to exhibit
the qualities, and defects, of life. Xenotransplantation suggests
instead a non-institutional method of design to be imposed upon
institutions. Accepting that life exists in every object, animate or
inanimate, the question for designers becomes how to both account
and design for the efflorescences of life. Outside of its in­tended org­-
anism, a xenotransplanted architecture is made vulnerable to its
own becoming-other, a body-without-organs willing to risk the
success of the architect to enliven the experiment.

Bio

Emily Vanderpol graduated from Oberlin College with a BA in mathematics and

psychology and then went on to earn an M.Arch from the Taubman College of
Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Michigan. While there, her
studies focused on making through the exploration of different materials and their
properties. Vanderpol brought this interest to her current position as Outreach
Exhibits Coordinator at the Museum of Mathematics, New York, where she designs
interactive exhibits that show visitors the beauty and wonder of mathematics, which
aren’t typically addressed in traditional education.

377 Xenotransplantations...
The Sight of a
­Mangled Corpse

Correspondence
with
Eugene ­Thacker
Eugene Thacker is the author of a number of books, including In The
Dust Of This Planet: Horror of Philosophy Vol. 1 (Zero Books, 2011)
and After Life (University of Chicago Press, 2010). His most recent is
the forthcoming Excommunication: Three Inquiries in Media and Me­
diation, co-authored with Alexander Galloway and McKenzie Wark
(University of Chicago Press, 2013). Thacker also writes an online col-
umn for Mute Magazine called “Occultural Studies,” and he teaches
at The New School in New York.
As consummate fans of horror and avid readers of Eugene’s writing,
Scapegoat asked the author to engage our issue on Excess by respond-
ing to a series of questions that address the philosophical lineage of
horror and its relation to speculative thought. What follows is an ed-
ited version of our correspondence.

Scapegoat Says In his Confessions, Roger Corman, Mario Bava, and Teruo
St. Augustine poses the rhetorical Ishii. But what I find interesting about
question, “What pleasure can there the horror genre is not any of the elements
be in the sight of a mangled corpse, that make it a genre—the characters, plot,
which can only horrify?” As if to take setting, or style, nor the gore, the mon­
up and pervert this very point, your sters, or the genre conventions. What I find
work as a philo­sopher, especially in interesting are the ideas embedded in
your recent book In the Dust of This these stories. These are stories that are
Planet, takes a certain pleasure in concept-driven, rather than being driven
the horror of thought. 1 In fact, the by character, plot, or genre expectations.
“horror of philosophy”—a phrase Bat­- Lovecraft is a great example, though he
aille used to characterize the fear felt took much of what he learned from the
by specialists when making more ab- likes of Poe, Machen, Blackwood, and
stract claims of thought—is a concept Dunsany. In a Lovecraft story you rarely
entangled in many of your recent get fully developed, well-rounded char-
essays. What, in your estimation, is acters; in fact, you rarely give a damn
the horror of philosophy in contem- about the characters at all. But at the core
porary thought? of these stories you find a funda­mental
question about the fabric of real­ity and
Eugene Thacker Well, yes, the phrase the impossibility of ever fully ­knowing
“horror of philosophy” is meant to be taken or comprehending it. Supernatural hor-
in a couple of ways. Initially, I set out to ror moves away from human-centric con­
write a book about the horror genre, and cerns over psychology, desire, motive,
in particular about what H.P. Lovecraft free will, and the like, and towards a view
called “supernatural horror.” But very of a world that is either against the human,
quickly the book became something else. or in many cases indifferent to the human.
In asking myself why I found the horror So what was a philosophical question then
genre so interesting I was eventually led becomes a religious question...
to consider philosophical questions, which Augustine’s words are especially apt in
is a bit odd, since the horror genre has his­- that he assumes that pleasure cannot be
torically been very low-brow and unintel­ said of something for which we feel hor­ror,
lectual. It is only recently that we now dread, or fear. And yet that almost exact-
see the likes of Lovecraft enshrined in ly describes what the horror genre is all
the Penguin Classics or Modern Library about—and it extends back to the earlier
editions. The origins of genre horror have fascination with gothic novels, graveyard
always been low, from the s­ ensationalism poetry, and the like. Ultimately, for me, it
of the gothic novel to pulp magazines like extends back to pre-modernity, to mysti-
Weird Tales and cult film directors like cal texts that discuss shadows and dark-

379
ness, to the political theology of demonic contradictions inherent in the concept of
possession, to the sanctified grotesque of “life” in philosophy and theology. Many
the suffering body in religion, to “divine of the twists and turns of the concept de-
darkness;” there is a religious intuition rive from Aristotle, for whom the issue of
here that I have always found fascinating, “form” was all-important. Form-giving
and it connects modern genre horror with is not only part of the life-principle for
philosophy, and in particular religious and Aristotle, but forming and in-forming are
mystical philosophy. also part of life processes, and this led
But going back to the “horror of philo­ him to his natural philosophy work. But
sophy”—this also means, in a more banal there is also de-forming, and even un-
sense, the sort of allergic reaction many forming as well. In much supernatural
of us have to philosophy with a capital P. horror—particularly in the weird fiction
I include myself in this group. I did not of Lovecraft and his circle—you get “mon­
major in philosophy as a student, in part sters” that are atypical in that they defy
because I was utterly bored with the not only existing categories of life, but
analytical logic-chopping that seemed they seem to defy conceptual thought
to constitute most of the discipline. It is and language, as well. You either have to
also quite intimidating, what with mas- question the more basic presuppositions
sive Germanic tomes of systematic theo- (for instance, about the division between
ries-of-everything filled to the brim with the organic and inorganic), or you can
obscure French jargon, complete with just ignore it and invent a new category,
good-old American pragmatic applica- a new name. Interestingly, we can still
tion (usually to politics or ethics). I also see this today in the sciences, with so-
never bought the big claims philosophy called “extremophiles,” organisms liv-
often made (and makes) to know every- ing in conditions in which life was not
thing, to figure everything out. There is thought to be possible.
a bit of the know-it-all in philosophy that Monsters are, of course, everywhere
I am always skeptical of. in the horror genre. But they also have a
So the phrase reflects the ways in which way of becoming quite tame and domes-
the horror genre interrogates philosophy, ticated within the confines of the genre
just as much as the way that philosophy through sheer repetition. There was a
comes in to “explain” or help us under- time when I was interested in the figure
stand the horror genre. I often teach Noel of the zombie, but at this point we have
Carroll’s book The Philosophy of Horror, all been so inundated with zombies every­
a book I admire very much, and the simple where (a perfect example of allegory) that
reversal came to me as an apt title for the last thing I want to read about or
the series. write about is yet another example of the
living dead as metaphor for otherness or
SS Near the conclusion of “Clouds of the multitude. The same has happened
Unknowing,” your preface to In the with other monsters, many of which have
Dust of This Planet, you explain how been repeated so often and with such lit-
the genre of horror takes aim at some tle imagination that the only avenue left
of the central presupposi­tions of open is snarkiness and satire (e.g. the tir­-
philosophical inquiry, not­ing that ing reiterations of the vampire in pop
horror “makes of those blind spots culture).
its central concern, expressing What is interesting is that, arguably,
them not in abstract concepts but this is what happens in the history of the
in a whole bestiary of impossi­ble natural sciences surrounding monsters.
life forms—mists, ooze, blobs, slime, A monster is never just a monster, never
clouds, and muck. Or, as Plato once just a physical or biological anomaly. It is
put it, ‘hair, mud, and dirt.’” 2 How, for always accompanied by an interpretive
you, does this collection of impos- framework within which the monster is
sible life forms relate to the practice able to be monstrum, literally “to show”
of thinking the world-without-us? or “to warn.” Monsters are always a mat-
ter of interpretation. They may be taken
ET Well, the idea was drawn from After as manifestations of religious prophecy,
Life, where I was interested in tracing the or they may be taken as a demonstration

380 Scapegoat
of the unceasing creativity of nature, or the language breaks down and you get
they may be taken as curiosities and enter­ lost in it, as if Proust were a systems engi­
tainment (today we should also add the neer. At other times he is enamoured of
interpretation of monsters as “errors” in the poetics of technical language—of
biological information). There is one view what most of us call jargon—and it almost
which argues that monsters are a threat becomes an exercise in sculpting nonsense
to the status quo; another view could (which is why I think the diagram works
argue that monsters are precisely what well within the context of his writing).
hold up the status quo, and the moment The thing that I don’t understand is the
the monster appears it is recuperated reception of his work. Many readers seem
and designated, given a name—even if to forget that so-called theory-fiction has
that name is “the unnameable.” A great always been a part of the philosophically
case study is the now-forgotten field of fringe anti-tradition. What is the bulk of
teratology, which was influenced by bio- Kierkegaard’s works if not theory-fiction,
logical classification and natural history, with his fake professors writing treatises
but attempted a classification system for that footnote each other? To say nothing
monsters—those beings that, by definition, of Nietzsche, who has, if nothing else,
could not be classified. Geoffroy Saint- mapped out the stylistic terrain of theory-
Hilaire’s Histoire générale et particulière fiction, from the aphorism to the fable to
des anomalies de l’organisation chez the prophecy. And the literary examples
l’homme et les animaux (ca. 1832–37) is a are innumerable, not to mention the way
fascinating exercise in futility. that early-twentieth century thinkers
like Bataille, Blanchot, and Klossowski
SS It seems that a common trajectory blurred the line between philosophy and
among the various lines of inquiry literature. I’ve also always admired Pierre
that comprise the philosophical ten- Guyotat’s unreadable en lange novels.
dency known as speculative real- Closer to our time, a whole group of post-
­ism is the movement toward a non- structuralist experiments in textuality
anthro­p omorphic philosophical are important to recognize here, from
perspective. The specificity of this Derrida’s Glas to Irigaray’s Marine Lover
trajectory is, of course, quite various, to Barthes’ experiments in autobiogra­
from object-oriented ontologies, to phy. And in the 1990s we had the “hyper­
a new Naturphilosophie, to the more stition” of Warwick anti-philosophers
radical anti-genre of horror fiction, like Nick Land (an influence on Reza),
as in the work of Reza Negarestani. the Virtual Futures anthology, the Ctheory
Notwithstanding the innovative journal, and the hyper-theory of Arthur
philosophical contribution of these and Marilouise Kroker (one colleague de­
other threads of speculative real- scribed Kroker’s writing to me as “Adorno
ism, it seems your own work is most on speed,” but I don’t think it was a com­
closely aligned with the excessive pliment). This is all to say that Reza’s
strangeness of Negarestani. 3 Was Cyclonopedia is amazing, but that it also
this a motive behind the Leper participates in a broader anti-tradition.
Creativity symposium and publica- Actually, I also like Reza’s earlier works,
tion?4 Can you say a little about the like GAS (on the corpse of Deleuze), as
“conceptual persona” of Negarestani well as the various Warwick experiments
and his role in the development of from the 1990s like the CCRU (Cyber-
the horror of philosophy, and a phi- Culture Research Unit).
losophy of horror? I think it is safe to say that “speculative
realism” is more an act of branding, or self-
ET I have always liked Reza’s works and promotional historicizing, than ­a nything
his particular way of doing “theory-­fiction.” else. Don’t get me wrong—I do find the “spe-
There is always a tenuous balance in his ­culative turn” interesting, I love the job
prose between, on the one hand, being Robin MacKay is doing with Urbanomic
articulate and precise, and, on the other and Collapse, and I often find myself re-
hand, developing a poetics of t­ echnical turning to books like Nihil Unbound. But
language. This is part of the play of Reza’s it has also become so self-absorbed that
prose. Sometimes he is so precise that you feel like the speculative blogosphere

381 The Sight of a Mangled...

has eclipsed or become equivalent to the step further, where he suggests that the
activity of “doing philosophy.” Maybe it thought of the end of all thought is really
has. But then again, isn’t that how “The the pinnacle of humanism, in which even
History of Philosophy” is written? People the possibility of human extinction is
in certain positions simply enact, by divine recuperated by the heroic capacity of
fiat, a movement, a program, and a pedi­ human beings to think it, to comprehend
gree. I find the works associated with Spe­- it, to understand it, maybe even to accept
culative Realism interesting, but I also it. Thus the speculative opportunity of
think it’s important to note that it’s not extinction becomes, ironically, a form
the only game in town—there is a whole of therapy. This is what we see happen-
world of philosophy out there beyond the ing in culture today, where speculation
narrow confines of four or five books. We about extinction is rampant, from pop
are just beginning to examine the space science books about “the world without
between analytical and continental phi­ us” or science documentaries on “life
lo­sophy (an unfortunate split largely the after people.” Even the discourse around
result of the academy), and we have yet to climate change and sustainability plays
seriously explore the question of a com- into this. It’s been interesting to see it
parative philosophy (beyond an Oriental- shift in subtle ways. At one point not so
izing relation to Zen or Sufi mysticism). long ago, the rhetoric was about chang­
ing our habits so as to change the planet—
SS To return to your bestiary of the little changes resulting in big changes.
impossible, I would like to ask about Now it seems that it’s too late. We’ve pret­t y
another aspect of the horror of much fucked things up, and watched our­
philosophy in relation to specula- selves do it. So the rhetoric has changed
tion and extinction. You take up the from “saving the planet” (a ridiculous
scientific concept of extinction, as and naive proposition—that the planet
explicated by Georges Cuvier and needs to be saved by us is the height of
the Comte de Buffon, noting that Cu- human presumptuousness), and more
vier’s advocacy for “catastrophism”— towards a new rhetoric of ­minimizing
“the theory that the Earth is periodi- the negative effects, doing the least
cally visited by sudden, cataclysmic amount of damage, living in the “least
events that not only radically alter worst” of all possible worlds. A strange,
the Earth’s geological composi- compro­mised pessimism. Arguably we’re
tion, but the organisms living on the even moving into a further stage of the
Earth as well”—leads to a strange discourse, where it’s not just that we’ve
problem, namely, how to conceive of destroyed the planet (for ourselves), and
extinction. 5 As you note, Kant’s take not just that we try, in our neo-hippie
on the problem in “The End of All artisanal ways, to do the least amount of
Things” is to insist that any postula- damage, but a real confrontation with
tion about absolute negation can the possibility that it just doesn’t matter.
only be speculative. How would you This is the question of nihilism, and it’s
characterize the “value”—in terms a question that Nietzsche posed over a
of ethics, philosophy, pleasure, or century ago. Of course, this isn’t to advo-
anything else—of such a speculative cate anything in particular. It’s not to say
enterprise? we should all participate in a mass, col-
lective suicide. It’s not to say we should
ignore the science and pretend like noth-
ET I am tempted to say that the “value” ing has changed. And therein lies the dif­
is absolutely null. Not only because such ficulty. There’s nothing to do. And yet we
a thought—the thought of the end of all keep on doing stuff, we wake up and go
thought, as it were—entails the foreclo­sure to sleep, we write books and occasionally
of any value “for us” as human beings, but read them, we talk and sometimes listen,
also because the very endeavour of such a we eat food and shit it out, we make plans
speculation is, at best, a speculative fail­ and try not to think of the disappoint-
ure. Kant seems aware of this in his short ment that might follow—all of it mostly
piece, which has a bit of satire, even sar- out of habit, perhaps out of conviction
casm, about it. Nietzsche takes this one or belief, perhaps out of the need to feel

382 Excess
 that every little bit we do makes a differ- our individual dynamics of hope, fear,
ence, according to some kind of self-help desire, and such to larger scale of envi-
version of the butterfly effect. The more ronmental and planetary, and ultimately
we know about the planet and its ecology, cosmic, dynamics of the same order. Ba­
the more we become aware of exactly taille’s insight is that this c­ onnection to a
how insignificant we are, no matter how scaled-up non-human world is not sim­ply
many “footprints” we excitedly make a way of making us feel cozy and more
upon its shores. This is the “planetary friendly with the world “out there”—quite
paradox.” The more we learn, the more the opposite. It incites in us a kind of fas-
we learn that it doesn’t matter. What cinated dread, a recognition of the stark
becomes more and more apparent is the differences between our everyday world
indifference of the planet to us. This is of “discontinuity” of individuals, mine
what is so alarming about our new, cha- and thine, and so on, and an anonymous,
otic order of extreme weather and natu- indifferent world of “continuity” (these
ral disasters—the seeming arbitrariness are Bataille’s terms). That sense of a
of it all, in spite of our attempts to be pre- fas­cinated dread Bataille connected to
­pared, to safeguard our lives, to make mysti­cal traditions, particularly those
meaning out of the persistence of the that cul­minate in self-abnegation, and
­human. It’s as if we’re living in two par- the ambivalent sense of this continuity
allel worlds, one which is the world “for He sometimes referred to as “divinity.”
us,” a human-centric world for human Now, whether this scaled-up conscious-
beings, blissfully deaf to the silent caco­ ness of the non-human is “helpful” in
phony of the non-human world around any way is another question. True, it may
us, a world “without us.” help us see things differently, but to me
that’s far from being helpful.
SS In your commentary on “The Subhar-
SS To come back to your image of the
monic Murmur of Black Tentacular
Voids,” you take up Bataille’s estima- “bestiary of the impossible” once
tion, from The Accursed Share as again, I’d like to ask about The Global
well as (somewhat more poetically) Genome, which remains, to my know-
from his lesser known essay “The ledge, one of the most comprehen-
Congested Planet,” that the problem sive political economic analyses of
of scarcity is a false problem; or, bioinformatics out there.7 While it
perhaps more accurately, scarcity is is clear that there is a political and
a human problem, and thus indicates ethical motivation behind the work,
the weakness of an anthropocentric what specifically led you to this re-
conception of the universe.6 Does search? Since its publication in 2005,
Bataille’s cosmic libidinal material- have you continued to follow the vicis­
ism suggest, in your view, ways we situdes of the biotech industry and
might begin to think about clima- its cata­loguing of genetic informa-
tological chaos, or, more recently, tion? Has the industry developed as
the geological reformation of the you anti­cipated, or are there areas
Anthropocene? of un­ex­pected new research? For
example, in the innovation by John
ET The first thing I should say is that Gurdon and Shinya Yamanaka to de-
the discussion about Bataille is not meant velop re-programmable adult stem-
to suggest a solution to a problem as mud­ cells (for which they won the 2012
dy and complex as that of climate change. Nobel Prize in medicine), it seems
The question of whether Bataille himself that the potential for bio-informatic
thought so is open to interpretation. His industrial applications is mutating;
late turn to the questions of ecology and and, it seems that the public, in a
the planet are fascinating to me, in part broad sense, is quite comfortable
because they are an extension of his earli­er with the notion of biological life as a
interests in eroticism, m­ ysticism, and “platform” for a scientific reprogram-
corporeality. And Bataille does highlight ming.
the problem with anthropocentric think­
ET
ing, the way we routinely fail to connect Thank you for saying so. I had a

383 ...Corpse: Correspondence...

 great conversation with Arthur Kroker artifacts at once biological and techno-
once, and he nailed it when he told me logical. Foucault’s genealogy of “popula-
that The Global Genome was really a tion” as a proto-informatic entity was
book about death, and in particular, the one way into this, as was Marx’s insight
political economy of death. That’s spot that the “natural” was natural precisely
on, and I very much had Baudrillard’s through its ability to be instrumental-
Symbolic Exchange and Death, as well ized. While I was, at the time, interested
as Bataille’s work, in mind when I was in autonomist thinkers like Lazzarato
writing it. Both Biomedia and The Global and Negri, this was not something I found
Genome are the result of my own, perhaps accounted for in their theories of “im-
peculiar, science fictional approach to material labour” and biopolitics. All this
science. I remember feeling that, in some is reflected in the book’s over-arching
ways, the best science fiction was being structure, based on political economy—
done in the sciences, and they were doing production, exchange, consumption; en­
it in very material, artifactual ways, by coding, recoding, decoding.
building DNA chips, molecular databases,
vat-grown organs, and so on. The very SS If we were to distinguish the horror
existence of these strange entities seemed of philosophy from the horror of
to call into question all sorts of concep- already-existing political economies
tual and philosophical dichotomies—the of bioinformatics, how would you
boundary between life and death, the describe the latter? In his proj­ect
natural and the artificial, the organic The Center for Postnatural His­tory
and the inorganic, “data” and “flesh.” (CPNH), Rich Pell explains that the
Of course, it is not only in our era that scale of genetic manipulation (spe-
this has happened. This is arguably the cifically as it is imposed by humans
history of the life sciences itself, going onto animal species) exponentially
back to Aristotle’s first attempts to stra­tify exceeds our assumptions, but his
and classify the flora and fauna around work, including the design of the
him on the island of Lesbos. But in order museum portion of the CPNH, is, at
to undertake this project, it seemed that least in part, about encouraging a
I needed to do more than simply rely on confrontation with this reality. Do
critical theorists and their general claims you see The Global Genome as a pro­
about science. It seemed that I needed to ject about “making things public,” to
actually understand, to the best of my borrow from Bruno Latour’s lexicon?
ability, what the sciences were doing, in
addition to considering them from the ET Well, this goes back to the previous
more distanced, critical standpoint of question a bit. The short answer is, no,
theory, media studies, science studies, I haven’t really kept up with developments
and so on. So both of those books contain in science and technology since The Glob­al
relatively little “theory” and a lot more Genome and The Exploit. And no, I do not
close attention was paid to the material- really have any illusions about those books
ity of the artifacts. The artifacts them- being part of some imagined pub­l ic
selves seemed to defy these conceptual sphere—which to me really means iso-
categories, and I wanted to stay true to lated academic conferences and publica-
that. The “theoretical” arguments were tion of anthologies that even libraries
actually embedded in the artifacts them- don’t purchase. If people happen upon
selves. That said, the real theoretical the books, read them, and find them in­
experiment in The Global Genome was teresting, then I’m glad to hear it. But
to create some type of hybrid of Foucault I don’t feel the need to imagine a non-
and Marx—specifically Foucault’s later exist­ent community of readers in civil
lectures on biopolitics and Marx’s early conversation because of that. I suppose
writings on “species being.” It seemed to if I were a different kind of writer, I
me that if there was something unique would leverage the work I did in these
about the current moment, it was the early books and stay with it. But I’m not.
way in which the technical concept of As a writer I tend to work on discrete
“information” was mobilized and made projects and then move on. There is con-
flesh, as it were, in a range of scientific tinuity to be sure, but I’m just not inter-

384 Scapegoat
 ested in being that kind of academic that ing this historical account? Do you
milks one idea for the rest of one’s life, think, from this historical perspec-
and I’ve realized I’m also not the kind of tive, that we need to reconceive of
scholar that does that really deep work “life” within the context of contempo-
on a single, specific topic that writers rary political economic regimes?
like me rely on. I think I got a lot of this
from my background in philosophy and ET Well there is a clear through-line
comparative literature, at a time when from Biomedia to After Life, and that is
I was especially interested in writing the way that life—and more importantly
that combined experimentation in form the concept of “life itself”—is variously
with experimentation in content. I was defined, redefined, and deployed in dif-
reading Plato and Kant, but also, on my ferent ways. But with After Life, I wanted
own, Breton and Soupault’s Les Champs to address the question head-on, and
magnétiques, Burroughs and Gysin’s The for a long time I had been wanting to
Third Mind, Bataille, Blanchot, Cioran, do a more straight-up philosophy book.
and Lautréamont. And my first publica- Although, I consider each book I have
tions in college were more in the vein of written “philosophy,” even though I’m
“experimental fiction” or “theory-fiction,” probably the only one who does. At any
published in various now-forgotten ’zines— rate, one of the interesting problems
when ’zines were actually in print. To me surrounding “life” is that it is never clear
this notion of experiment applies as much if we are talking about a concept or the
to nonfiction as it does to fiction. One thing itself. “Life” has a strange status in
should utilize the form of the ­expository philosophy; it is not quite a foundational
essay only if it makes sense for the proj­ metaphysical concept, like “substance”
ect. So for me, Biomedia, The Global or “cause,” but it is also not simply a sec­
Genome, and the essays from that period ondary concept relegated to ethics, poli­
formed part of one project—at one point tical philosophy, or logic. In fact, even in
I was going to call it all “The ­Q uestion Aristotle there is this slippage. Aristotle
Concerning Biotechnology” and assem­ feels compelled to use one term when
ble a third volume with that title. There describing animal life, and then another
I was doing “close readings” of science term to describe the life that is common
artifacts and adopting the science fic­ to animals, plants, and human beings.
tional view of science. And then The “Life” seems to be one of those concepts
Exploit, the “Networks, Swarms, Multi­ that disappears when you look at it di-
tudes” essays, and some other bits are rectly. What philosophers typically do is
part of another project (borrowing from simply swap out one concept for another.
Deleuze, I was referring to this project The question “what is life?” usually sup-
as “The Life of Ensembles”). There the plants some other concept—form, time,
writings are more in a modular form of spirit—for “life” and thereby just begs
“nodes” and “edges.” There’s another the question. The modern variants of
group of writings on biopolitics, the body pantheism, vitalism, Lebensphilosophie,
politic, and zombies, which was a project process, becoming, information, and so
that never really coalesced into a book. on, simply repeat this same move. I was
And then the more recent work around also struck by the pervasiveness of the
After Life and the question of the ontol- problem in contemporary theory, with
ogy of life, and the Horror of Philosophy... all the talk of “bare life,” “precarious
Anyways, it goes on. Plenty of ideas, little life,” “liquid life,” etc. It seemed to be
time to carry them out. a place-holder for so many things that
the term itself was buried beneath them.
SS In After Life, you turn your atten­tion To me this is precisely the moment one
to the history of p­ hilosophy, from should undertake a serious investigation
Aristotle to Kant (and Ba­taille), in of a concept, that is, at the moment when
order to investigate the philosophi- it is eclipsed by other concerns, and there­
cal problem of life as such. You write, fore is taken for granted.
“‘Life’ is not only a problem of philos- Such a project is ridiculously ambi-
ophy, but a problem for philosophy.”8 tious, so I had to make a number of deci­
What led to your interest in develop- sions to make it workable. I had to stay

385 ...With Eugene Thacker

 ET
within the Western philosophical tradi- I don’t know. I just don’t think of
tion, although I tried to at least gesture it in those terms. Certainly reading a
toward the need for a comparative philo­ philosopher or a book of philosophy can
sophical approach. I also decided to help a person understand something. I
begin with Aristotle rather than, say, don’t deny that at all. But to me the most
Linnaeus, Darwin, or the modern life interesting books are those that are un­
sciences. This was because I think the helpful, if only because they operate in
problem is identified as a philosophical a different register or in a different key.
problem by Aristotle, not only in his Recently I had the opportunity to write
term psukhê (which might be translated the forewords to the Arcade editions of
as “life-principle”), but in the way he Cioran’s works, and it gave me the ex-
stratifies particular instances of psukhe. cuse to dive back into his writings, which
The way Aristotle frames the problem I have always found fascinating. I don’t
can still be seen today in discussions of think Cioran would put the question in
biopolitics, neo-vitalism, and the post- terms of being helpful. Not simply be­
secular turn in philosophy. Aristotle was, cause he is being a misanthrope, or be­
of course, central for medieval and early cause it is not cool to help. But there is
modern thinkers; what they do is extend something in Cioran’s work that miti­
his categories, blending them with a whole gates against philosophy in the key of
host of influences, from Neo-Platonism philosophy. That is a good definition of
to Scholastic theology to Christian mys- “pessimism” to me—the philosophy of
ticism, or life conceived in terms of form, the futility of philosophy. Cioran takes
time, and spirit. This passage is n­ ecessary up this thread from other thinkers to be
because it sets the stage for Kant’s articu­ sure—Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Lichten­
lation of a contradiction at the core of berg, Leopardi, Pascal, the French moral­
thinking “life itself,” forever split between ists. His writing itself works against the
a thinking human subject that is “living” presuppositions of grand, systematic phi-
and a background continuity of “Life” losophy, composed as it is of fragments,
that is never itself lived. And that was aphorisms, stray thoughts. It is refresh-
where I was really interested in going, ing to read his work today, especially
toward the notion that in order to think against the mania for systematicity in
“life” philosophically one has to also think philosophy textbooks or the so-called
it through a logic of contradiction. This speculative realist treatises. But Cioran’s
is, of course, also the terrain of horror writing is not without rigour, quite the
authors like Lovecraft... opposite. There is a subtractive rigour to
this kind of pessimism, what Nietzsche
SS If there is one figure with whom we called the rigour of the “unfinished
could associate the most emphatic thought.” Cioran appeals to the secret
horror of existence, and one who voice inside all our heads when we read
pushes the hardest against any philosophy, or science, or psychology,
resolution to the problem of “life,” it or self-help: “Really? You really think
might be E.M. Cioran. By way of a we can just figure it all out?” Cioran’s
conclusion, then, in his magisterial works call the bluff on phi­lo­sophy, and
essay, “The Temptation to Exist,” he in particular on p­ hilosophy’s three main
offers the following lines: “We must functions: a therapeutic func­tion (philo­
learn to think against our doubts and sophy is there to help us live our lives); a
against our certitudes, against our descriptive function (philo­sophy’s job is
omniscient humors, we must above to provide an accurate, truthful account
all, by creating for ourselves another of the state of things); and a hermeneutic
death, one that will be incompatible function (philosophy’s job is to make
with our carrion carcasses, consent meaning of it all for us as human be-
to the undemonstrable, to the idea ings). I have never believed any of this,
that something exists.” 9 Does Cioran’s and the books of philosophy I like are not
estimation of “another death” suggest, because of these reasons. Perhaps, in spite
for you, a way of approaching the of all the books that have been published,
excess of horror, and life, today? we still lack an unhuman philosophy. Whe­-
ther we require it is another question.

386 Excess
 Endnotes 7 Eugene Thacker, The Global Genome: Biotechnology,
Politics, and Culture (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press,
1 Eugene Thacker, In the Dust of This Planet: Horror of 2005).
Philosophy Vol. 1 (Winchester and Washington: Zero 8 Eugene Thacker, After Life (Chicago: University of
Books, 2011). Chicago Press, 2012), x; also see Eugene Thacker,
2 Ibid., 9. “After Life: Swarms, Demons and the Antinomies of
3 Reza Negarestani, Cyclonopedia: Complicity with ­Immanence,” in Theory After “Theory,” eds. Jane
Anonymous Materials (Melbourne: re.press, 2008). Elliott and Derek Attridge (London and New York:
4 Ed Keller, Nicola Masciandaro and Eugene Thacker, Routledge, 2011), 181–193.
eds., Leper Creativity (Brooklyn: punctum, 2012). 9 E.M. Cioran, The Temptation to Exist, trans. Richard
5 Thacker, In the Dust of This Planet, 9. Howard (New York: Quadrangle/The New York Times
6 Thacker, In the Dust of This Planet, 133–159; see also Book Co., 1968), 222.
Eugene Thacker, “Spiritual Meat: Resurrection and
Religious Horror in Bataille,” Collapse VII (2011).

The Thinking Object, 2011, Oil and resin on wood, 35 × 27cm

Courtesy the artist and Sullivan+Strumpf
 A Monument to Satan: Menz’s Teufel
by Kate Hutchens

In 1892, the Trinity Episcopal Church of Detroit inhabited a grand

new building. Designed by architectural firm Morgan and Rice
in the English Gothic style, the exterior featured gargoyles on
both its east and west façades. In his account of it, commissioned
by Trinity Church’s Ladies’ Aid Society, James E. Scripps warily
rationalizes the presence of these “grotesque” creatures:

 he question is often asked, what [is] the significance of these

T
monsters in a Christian church[?] The writer is unable to answer
authoritatively, but presumes that they symbolize evil spirits fleeing
from the holy precincts, for it will be observed they all point in
a direction away from the center of the church, and are found, I
believe, in old churches, mainly on the exterior of the edifice.1
Thirteen years later and less than two newspaper clippings, letters, and even a
miles away, the German-born stonecutter script of a play devoted to Menz’s endeav-
and ex-Episcopalian Herman Menz donned our—to the University of Michigan’s Laba-
the top of his small workshop at 308 Stan­ton die Collection. A scrapbook was compiled
Avenue with his own statue of the De­vil. On and titled, in embossed gold leaf, Menz’es
his 71st birthday, 5 November 1905, Menz Teufel [sic.] (Teufel being German for “devil”).
hosted a small gathering at his home, to This scrapbook chronicles the Teufel’s scan­-
which the workshop was adjoined, to un­ dalizing career and offers a peculiar win-
veil and celebrate his Luciferian chimera.2 dow into religious and political life in Ame-
The inscription at the base of the sta­t ue rica during the peak of Progressivism.
read (in what one contemporary report­er This period, particularly from the mid-
called “dog-Latin”), Homo non est creatio, 1880s to the mid-1910s, has also been called
sed evolutio. Deus non fecit hominem, sed the “golden age of free-thought” in Ameri­
homo fecit deos (“Man was not created, ca.2 Religious authority (and its symbols)
he evolved. God did not make man, man was slowly unravelling, while Robert In­
made the gods”). ger­soll—the so-called “Great Infidel”—ral-
This incident, and Herr Menz’s subse- lied crowds at lectures across the country,
quent notoriety, might have been lost to as he commended and was condemned by
us but for the self-archiving impulse of various newspapers. Rachel Scharfman pos­-
Menz and his friend, physician and fellow its that the “escalating labor strife and
free-thinker Dr. Tobias Sigel. Over the fol­ class conflict influenced many freethink-
lowing three years, Menz relented in his ers’ increasing attention to religion’s im-
need to display the statue on his property, precation with capitalism. But advances
sold Satan to a State Fair exhibition, cam- in scientific theory were what most drama­
paigned for City Alderman on a platform tically revolutionized post-bellum free
of “raising hell” in city hall, recovered his thought.”3 As Darwinism and social sci-
devil when it was discarded as a cursed ence gained credence, the churches’ por-
object, and unveiled the Devil anew on his traitures of Satan as the terrible source
74th birthday. All the while, he received of damnation were losing their hold on
letters and newspaper coverage ranging in the popular imagination. Atheist leftists
tone from enthusiastic support to seething found small spaces in the rhetorical envi-
condemnation, from Detroit to ­Paris. In 1931, ronment in which they could audaciously
Sigel donated a collection of documents— and publicly revere the image of the great

388 Project
rebel angel. However, no sooner had these the Modern World, Jeffrey Burton Russell
radicals employed this potent Lucifer myth analyzes, among his other modern guises,
than the power of the icon began to be- Satan’s characterization by the Romantic
come diluted. If Satan, like God, was not Movement. Russell posits that the Satan
to be feared, then he, too, could be mocked of John Milton’s Paradise Lost and the title
and dismissed, along with those who her- character from Johann Goethe’s Faust (a
alded his likeness. devout disciple of the Devil) were both
At the time Menz’s monument was un- ideal Romantic heroes: “individual, alone
against the world, self-assertive, ambitious,
powerful, and liberator in rebellion against
the society that blocks the way of progress
toward liberty, beauty, and love.”5 Though
Satan’s significance was not thereby fixed or
codified for all to share, Romantic litera­ture
and art was so prominent in Europe and the
United States that one can assume a gene­
ral awareness of this characterization.
Russell also describes the significant
role played by Satan (figuratively, of course)
in the French Revolution of 1798, a major
milestone in Western political history:

 s political reactionaries made common

A
cause with Catholics against the Revolu-
tion, republicans and revolutionaries at­-
tacked Christianity and rallied to the
standard of its opponents—the greatest
of whom was Satan. Christ is King, but
kings are evil, and the greatest king is
the greatest evil. Revolutionaries tended
to perceive Satan as a symbol of rebel­-
Photo Reads: HERMAN MENZ; Eccentric Stanton lion against the unjust order and tyranny
avenue resident who declares he will make things hot of the ancien régime and its institutions:
for anybody who molests his monument to the devil.
church, government, and family.6
veiled, the struggle over the meaning of
this icon gave rise to complex and varied In addition to a stance against tyranny
invocations towards diverse and divergent (and therefore, by default, for democracy),
aims. The Devil still appeared in religious another key aspect of the symbolic rever-
campaigns, dolling out the fire and brim- ence for the Devil was his desire for man
stone. Conservatives and reactionaries “to obtain knowledge by his own efforts
used labels like “devil” and “Satan” to den- rather than to receive it by grace.”7 The
igrate leftist agents, and it could be ar- Romantics’ merging of the characters of
gued that the embracing of this character Prometheus—who, out of his love for mort­
was primarily an attempt to spin these in- als, bestowed upon humanity the techno-
sults positively.4 Furthermore, the social logy of fire denied them by the gods—and
leftists of the time were not universally Satan—who, out of his anger towards a ty-
anti-religious, as is evidenced, for example, rannical and fickle God, bestowed upon
by the large and vocal Catholic presence humanity knowledge of good and evil—
within the Knights of Labor organization. was a “crucial symbolic transformation.”
However, examples drawn from both the Russell asserts that this melding allowed
scrapbook and its contemporary context “the positive elements of Prometheus to be
show that Satan was touted often and free- transferred to Satan, so that the Devil might
ly, and with strong philosophical backing, also appear as a noble liberator of human-
as a champion of outspoken freethinkers, ity.”8 It was this amalgamated Romantic
anarchists, and other social leftists. Devil who was so useful to atheist leftist
Some further background is useful here voices in the American political arena.
regarding popular conceptions of the Devil. Menz crafted his Teufel of stone and
In his book Mephistopheles: The Devil in perched him high on a pedestal, looking

389
 the Christians asserted and more domestic
than the freethinkers attested. In the rela-
tively amoral world of modern commerce,
the devil was popping up in various roles:
a savvy consumer endorsing products, a
graphic novelty, and a commercial spec-
tacle. Posters and advertisements showed
Satan enjoying wine, ink, clothing, and
elixirs for his health.11 Two postcards in-
cluded in the Menz’es Teufel scrapbook
show mischievous images representing the
word “devil,” as in “We had a [drawing of a
Satan-like character] of a time!” and “You
saucy [devil image], you’re hot stuff!” And
when the controversy over Menz’s Teufel
grew to be too much for him (or, perhaps,
when it grew enough to fetch the decent
price of $40), the stone carver sold the
statue to a proprietor of a State Fair exhi-
bition called “Inferno!”12
At least one bit of ephemera found in the

MONUMENT TO SATAN AND ITS BUILDER

The good people of Detriot are so worked up over what
they declare is sacrilege that police have been com-
pelled to guard the statue. Herman Menz, the man
who honored the Evil One, declares he will defend the
fourteen-foot monument to the end.

down upon the passersby, evoking regular

references in newspaper accounts and il-
lustrations to those much more famous
stone-carved creatures of Notre Dame.
Thus, consideration of this Teufel requires a
look at the cultural resonances of those chi-
meras that came into being while Europe
was embroiled in another upheaval. 9 As
part of his restoration of the Paris cathedral,
Eugène Viollet-le-Duc began designing the
gargoyles and chimeras to adorn the balu- BOYCOTT! THE DEVIL!
strades in the midst of France’s February He doesn't Pay Living Wages. The WAGES of SIN is
DEATH; But the Gift of God is ETERNAL LIFE through
Revolution, part of the broader European Jesus Christ our Lord --Rom. 6-xxiii.
revolutions of 1848. Time and circumstan- BOYCOTT THE DEVIL
ces rearranged these devils’ meanings, too: He Brings Doubt, Darkness, Destruction, Death and
­Damnation to those who serve him.
these demonic figures were conceived in
a time of democratic possibility, as part of scrapbook makes use of both the leftist
Viollet-le-Duc’s notion of a grand church invocations of Satan and emerging propa-
of secular liberty. However, by the time ganda/advertising featuring the devil at
the statues were finished, the milieu of the same time. A small card, about three
the reactionary Second Empire had ren- by five inches, exclaims “BOYCOTT!” at
dered them residual symbols of violence the top. The date and origin of this card is
and fear.10 unknown, so it is hard to speculate what
In the broader context of early-twentieth- the most immediate resonance might have
century popular culture, Lucifer was also been for its recipient, but the style echoes
gaining face time in visages less dire than fliers used in the period for commercial

390 Excess
boycotts. The second line of the card names  e 950 years of age and was dead 20 years
b
the boycott’s target: “The Devil!” The twist before he died.
that connects directly to leftist labour move-
ments of the day is in the third line: “He By employing the Devil as the instrument
doesn’t Pay…Living Wages.” The card then undercutting the coherence of the religious
cites the Christian scripture “The wages text and, by extension, the legitimacy of
of sin is death” and lists the ills that befall religious authority, Menz and Sigel paint
those who follow Satan. Presumably, this Satan not only as the liberator of Adam
card is meant to speak to, and thus simul- and Eve, but also as the rescuer of them-
taneously implicate and evangelize, those selves and their audience from ignorance
sympathetic to leftist labour activities. and obedience to God.
Returning to Menz’s Teufel, the pronoun- Still, the veneration of the Devil by anti-
ced admiration for the devil in this case religious leftists came in varied forms. In
was very much rooted in the Promethean 1907, Maxim Gorky, the well-known Rus-
Satanic myth. Though the anti-religious sian playwright and champion of the pro-
inscription on the statue itself does not letariat, published a short piece in Emma
reference the Devil at all, both Menz and Goldman’s monthly magazine Mother Earth.
Sigel had put forth laudatory statements In the story, Gorky himself interviews Satan
at the unveiling of the Teufel, accepting amidst the dead souls of the powerful men
as given the apocryphal Miltonian under- of history and, to the narrator’s delight, the
standing of the serpent in Eden as a mani­ Devil reveals that he is really a revolution-
festation of Satan, and generally commend- ary Socialist at heart.13 With a similar con-
ing the speaker of truth and rebellious viction, Johann Most, the leader of a large
agent of human empowerment. This senti- anarchist circle in late-nineteenth-century
ment was echoed consistently throughout New York, named his second son Lucifer.14
the correspondence Menz received from an- At least three anti-clerical newspapers
archistic and atheistic supporters around circulating in the US at the time named Lu­-
the country. However, Menz and Sigel took cifer as both their figure- and masthead.15
a bizarre and literalist approach in the spe­- Moses Harman, a freethinking anarchist
cifics of their analysis of the Genesis story, very likely known to Menz and Sigel, was
and in so doing furthered the malleability editor of the most prominent of these, more
and utility of Lucifer’s significance by ren­ than twenty years before the Teufel ap­-
dering him as the antagonist of the Bible peared. Beginning in 1881, Harman edited
itself. They reasoned that it was not only the Valley Falls Liberal, from Valley Falls,
the encouragement to eat of the Tree of Kansas. The renowned radical paper was
Knowledge that made Satan the real hero dedicated to the denunciation of religion
of the story, but also that he was, strictly and government, with an uncommon focus
speaking, more truthful than God had on women’s rights. After two years, Harman
been. According to their reading of the changed the name of the paper to Lucifer,
text, Lucifer told “the first truth” in cre- the Light-Bearer,16 and the first issue bearing
ation. As Sigel explained (in greater de- the new title carried an explanation for the
tail than did Menz): amendment. Harman very practically sta-
ted that wider circulation beyond Kansas
 od allmighty lied […] “the day thou shalt
G called for a less localized name, but went
eat therefrom, though shalt die,” but the on to assert the good fit of this particular
devil said “God knows that the day thou moniker:
eateth therefrom thou shalt have the
knowledge of good and evil, and be like  reethought, in its character of “World’s
F
God and live.” […] As far as we know Savior,” proposes to redeem and glorify
through the holy book, edited by God the name Lucifer, even as it has r­ edeemed
Allmighty, and every word of which we and made illustrious the names “Infidel,”
must believe or be damned, the words of “Freethinker,” “Atheist,” etc. While we do
God wer[e] not true; for the voracious not adopt the reputed character of any
Eve, not only got her “Belly full” of the man, god, demigod or demon as our
forbidden fruit, but stuffed Adam full of model, yet there is one phase of the
it also, and both throve well on it. Hurrah character of their Lucifer that is also
for the forbidden fruit! According to appropriate to our paper, viz: that of an
Chapter 5, verse 3 and 5, Adam lived to

391 A Monument to Satan:

 Educator.
 The god of the Bible had doomed
mankind to perpetual ignorance—they
would never hav[e] known good from evil
if Lucifer had not told them how to be-
come as wise as the gods themselves.17

Harman’s invocation of Satan, while

subtly different from a philosophical per-
spective, shares the fundamental argu-
ment made by Menz and Sigel. For those
opposed to a reverence for God living in
a milieu that predominantly ascribed vera­
city to the Biblical texts, pronouncing ap-
preciation for the Devil was a strong rhe- MENZ DEFIES CHRISTIANITY
WHILE REVIVAL STIRS CITY
torical act. Harman’s denial of adopting a Menz Will Erect Three More "Devils"; Forty Converts in
character as a model, which of course would One Church Last Week.
have been just another form of religiosity, "Read My Letters and Be Ashamed of Christianity," Says
Menz—Real Religious Awakening Spreads to Churched of
is paralleled again by Russell’s interpreta­ all Creeds.
tion of the Romantic Lucifer: “Their admi­ra-
tion for Satan was not Satanism, however— hot” for the seated council—with mockery.
not the worship of evil—for they made the As one article published in 1908, after the
Devil the symbol of what they regarded as second unveiling of the Teufel, remarked,
good.”18 “[t]here are ‘sermons in stones,’ and this
Then again, Harman was writing in the particular piece of stone ought to preach a
early 1880s, and Menz displayed his Teufel sermon of tolerance toward an old man’s
more than two decades later, at a time when foibles that can harm no one.”19
spiritualism and a general interest in the As outrage towards Menz’s public pro-
“occult” were also on the rise. But, even in nouncement of Satan as superior to God
the two years between the Teufel’s initial withered, so too wilted the political pro-
appearance and its second unveiling, and paganda that was meant to accompany it.
through Menz’s intervening attempt at Indeed, when admiration for the Devil no
public office, the tone shifted from outrage longer carried with it the threat of per-
to amused dismissal. Most reporters cover- secution, the monument as a rhetorical
ing Menz’s campaign for Alderman treated manoeuvre seemed to lose its power. The
his threats—to “raise hell” and “make it devil, so it seems, is in the details.

392 Scapegoat
 Endnotes 12 “ Menz’s Devil Comes Back: Electric Park Decides
that Freak Statue is a Sure Hoodoo.” News­paper
1 James E. Scripps, Descriptive Account of the New clipping, publication unknown, date unknown.
Edifice Erected for Trinity Church, Detroit (Printed Found in Menz’es Teufel scrapbook, 7.
on Behalf of the Funds of the Ladies’ Aid Society of 13 M axim Gorky, “The Masters of Life: An Interview
Trinity Church, 1892), 7–8. with Maxim Gorky,” Mother Earth 1, no. 11 (January
2 In architectural terms, a stone figure emerging from 1907): 47–54.
a building is only considered a gargoyle if it contains 14 Tom Goyen, Beer and Revolution: The German
a spout and is designed to redirect water away from Anarchist Movement in New York City, 1880–1914
the building. A purely decorative, free-standing (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2007), 101.
statue is a chimera. Interestingly, Most wrote a pamphlet in German
3 Susan Jacoby, Freethinkers: A History of American entitled Die Gottespest, or The God Pestilence.
Secularism (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2004), In 1932, Tobias Sigel translated this pamphlet into
149–185. Esperanto and published it in Detroit.
4 Rachel Scharfman, “On Common Ground: 15 Harman’s paper was the first to use Lucifer in the
Freethought and Radical Politics in New name, followed by Lucifer’s Lantern, an anti-­Mormon
York City, 1890–1917,” (PhD diss., New York paper edited by Theodore Schroeder in Salt Lake
U
­ niversity, 2005), 19. City, 1898–1901, and Lucifer, a freethought
5 For example, Emma Goldman was often associated ­periodical published in German by M. Biron, in
with Satan in printed accounts. See Richard Drinnan, ­M adison, Wisconsin, early 1880s(?)–1896.
Rebel in Paradise: A Biography of Emma Goldman 16 In 1907, after his imprisonment for violating the
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961), and Comstock Law, brought about by the publication
James Edwin Miller, T.S. Eliot: The Making of an of a story detailing and railing against marital rape,
American Poet, 1888–1922 (University Park, Penn.: Harman changed the name again, this time to the
Penn State Press, 2005). American Journal of Eugenics. His views on sexual
6 Jeffrey Burton Russell, Mephistopheles: The Devil in politics and the modern endeavour of human self-
the Modern World (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, improvement led to a firm belief in the eugenics
1986), 175. movement.
7 Ibid., 169. 17 Moses Harman, “Change of Name,” Lucifer, the
8 Ibid., 59. Light-Bearer 1, no. 16 (August 24, 1883): 2.
9 Ibid., 175. 18 Russell, Mephistopheles, 175.
10 Michael Camille, The Gargoyles of Notre-Dame: 19 Newspaper clipping, title unknown, publication
Medievalism and the Monsters of Modernity unknown. Date assumed based on article’s mention
(­Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 19–25. of Menz’s 74th birthday. Found in Menz’es Teufel
11 Gilles Néret, Devils (Paris: TASCHEN, 2003). scrapbook, 6.

Bio

Kate Hutchens is the Reader Services Coordinator for the University of Michigan’s
Special Collections Library. She has a Master’s in Information Science (2010) and a
Bachelor’s in English and Theatre (2006), both from the University of Michigan.

393 ...Menz’s Teufel

 Alternatives to Incarceration:
Raphael Sperry in Conversation with Tings Chak

Typical Cell, Pelican State Prison Security Housing Unit, Crescent City, California.
Image Credit: Katherine Fontaine (ADSPR)

Raphael Sperry is an architect and activist based in San Francisco,

California. He is also the president of Architects/Designers/Plan-
ners for Social Responsibility (ADPSR), a non-profit organization
dedicated to peace, environmental sustainability, and social justice.
He has led ADPSR’s work on prison issues since 2004, when he
launched the “Prison Design Boycott/Alternatives to Incarceration”
campaign. He currently leads the effort to amend the AIA Code
of Ethics to ban the design of buildings intended for executions or
prolonged solitary confinement.1 I interviewed Sperry about some
of his thoughts on the prison-industrial complex, ADPSR’s position
on prison building, and how they intersect with the design disci-
plines and the theme of excess. What follows is an edited tran-
script of our interview.
394 Project
Tings Chak
Since the Reagan-Bush era, munity needs like education, emploment,
we have seen the prison industry ex­p and and space for civic life. Our critique is
exponentially across the United States. based on that opposition. First, we rec-
In California alone, where your work is ognize that money and design talent spent
based, there was a doubling of prisons in on prisons is not being spent building
the 1980s. What gave rise to the prolifera- something beneficial, like affordable
tion of prisons? housing. But even more importantly, we
recognize that prisons actively degrade
Raphael Sperry
The proximate cause the communities already suffering most
was changes in sentencing and criminal from disinvestment—typically poor com­
law including mandatory minimum sen- munities of colour. We propose that com-
tences, the “war on drugs,” three-strikes munity reinvestment will not only be more
laws, 2 and changes to parole. If you have fair, but will actually solve the problems of
an unchanged crime rate but give longer crime that prison construction has mani-
sentences, you will end up with a larger festly failed to solve.
prison population—that’s just math. In the past year we have focused on the
To gain a deeper understanding, we worst abuses of the prison system, as seen
should ask what was behind that whole through the lens of human rights. The two
legislative project. Here you see the move human rights abuses of execution and
by right-wing politicians to use tropes torture, in the form of the death penalty
such as “law and order” and “tough on and solitary confinement, are common
crime” to demonize the left-wing social practice in the US. Both of them require
movements of the 1960s and 1970s and to specific architectural spaces to be real-
put people of colour “back in their place” ized: execution chambers and supermax
after gaining Civil Rights. Michelle Alex- prisons, respectively.3 Both are designed
ander describes this “Southern ­­stra­t­egy” and built in the US, and our objective is
very well in her incredible book, The New to stop this practice. When we r­ ealized
Jim Crow. This was in turn part of a lar- that the AIA Code of Ethics already man­
ger culture of fear used to justify truly dates that “members should uphold human
excessive budgets for war abroad and mili­ rights in all their professional endeavors,”
tarized policing at home. we decided to push the AIA to make the
The architectural dimension, of course, protection of human rights enforceable
is that massive prison construction was in the design of buildings. Right now we
a necessary (but not sufficient) condition are focused on that campaign, reaching
for implementing these strategies. Before out to the architectural profession, com-
the 1980s, many states had at most four ponents of the AIA, and partner organ-
prisons: men’s, women’s, high-security, izations dedicated to stopping solitary
and low-security. In the boom, California confinement and the death penalty.
built over 20 new large complexes, while To be clear, we are not trying to de­
Texas built over 100 smaller ones. monize architects who designed these
buildings in the past. The UN position
T
C 
What is ADPSR, and what is its posi­ was only clarified in 2012, and the psycho-
tion on prisons? How does the organi­ logical research on how damaging solitary
zation fit into the prison justice confinement is has only been collect­ed over
movement? recent decades. But knowing what we
know now, ADPSR truly hopes that AIA
S
R ADPSR has been around for over 30 will not continue to license designs that
years, but we started looking at prisons cause such intense suffering and death.
as a leading social justice issue about 10 The first goal is to stop the expansion
years ago. Our members are architects and of execution and solitary confinement.
design professionals, so we approach pri­ Whenever building projects for these
son justice by analyzing the role of the ­pur­poses are proposed, we want AIA
built environment in creating the massive architects—who are generally those in
problems we are now living with. We the larger firms equipped to design them—
speak for architects who are shocked at to tell their clients that they will not design
the amount of resources spent on the pri-­ them and that they need to find alternative
son system at the expense of pressing com­- ways to respond to the issues. With our

395
amendment in place, architects can have affordable housing, school facilities,
that conversation without fear of being community centres, medical clinics, and
undercut by other architects with lower open public spaces are some of the mis-
standards. sing pieces. Architects would welcome
As the public is still largely unaware of the chance to work on these projects,
issues concerning supermax prisons, this but funding priorities (primarily public,
campaign aims to raise broader aware- but also pri­vate) and the broader social
ness as well. AIA can only address the concerns that drive them have been mis-
construction of new prisons going for- directed into the prison system. Building
ward, but there are growing social move- prisons for people in poor neighbour-
ments to end executions and the use of hoods has reinforced the narrative of
solitary confinement. We want architects fear used to criminalize poor commun-
to be on board with that. If we can help ities by implying that poor people are
challenge the legitimacy of the harshest inherently dangerous to “mainstream”
parts of the prison system, maybe we can society. This has made architects’ engage-
inspire people to look more critical­ly at ment with those communities even more
the whole enterprise and discover many remote.
of the other problems it is causing, as well
T
as the injustices it is part of. C 
The “supermax” security prison is a
relatively recent model that is being
T
C 
Ruth Gilmore describes prison expan­ exported to countries around the
sion as a “geographical solution to world. This model is characterized by
socio-economic problems.”4 Can you extreme isolation and criticized for
elaborate on how the prison-industrial its excessive use of violence. What
complex can be seen as a response to is the significance of this trend? And
the excesses of capital and labour? what is ADPSR’s response?
How does architecture play into this?
S
R ADPSR is very concerned with super-
S
R There is a strong link between rural ­ ax prisons. In fact, we (along with many
m
prisons in the US and the urban g­ hettos other human rights advocates, and the
where prisoners overwhelmingly come UN Special Rapporteur on Torture) con-
from. The “Million Dollar Blocks” study sider prolonged solitary confinement a
by the Center for Justice Mapping multi­ form of torture that is banned by inter-
plied the number of men from each cen­- national treaties. That’s why we are pe-
sus tract in Brooklyn who were held in titioning the AIA to address the human
upstate rural prisons by the costs of in­ rights problems associated with that pri-
carcerating a prisoner in New York State.5 son type by banning their design.
They found many instances in which the Proponents of supermax prisons justi­
state was spending over one million dol- fy the need to separate “the worst of the
lars to take the “trouble-makers” out of worst” from the general prisoner popula-
a public housing block and put them in tion in order to allow the larger system
prison. The obvious question is: what to function with less violence and disrup­
could be done if that $1 million was spent tion. Many observers have pointed out
on crime prevention and community in­ the obvious flaws in that argument. For
vestment instead of punitive measures. instance, when the State of Mississippi
The policy response to poverty and un- recently closed its supermax prison and
employment in poor neighbourhoods in dramatically reduced the use of isolation
Brooklyn (and elsewhere) has not been to there, violence throughout the prison
address the legacy of discrimination and system went down dramatically. In New
structural inequalities troubling those York State, advocates have documented
places, but rather to round up large num- people being sent to isolation for trivial
bers of individuals and ship them away. rule violations like having too many
Architecture is also implicated by stamps in their possession, or refusing
virtue of what has not been built. The to stop a conversation when instructed.
socio-economic problems that Gilmore The real significance of supermax is
refers to require new community infra- twofold. First, supermax prisons (along
structure as a piece of the solution: with the death penalty) embody the tough­-

396 Scapegoat
est aspect of a system intended to be puni- ADPSR’s response has been to propose
tive. Even though solitary confinement that the AIA Code of Ethics add a rule pro-
was widely rejected by the end of the nine­- ­hibiting members from designing spaces
teenth century in the US, supermax marks intended for prolonged solitary confine-
a return to horrifying institutional con- ment. This would help prevent the further
duct. This is one of the reasons why super- expansion of the supermax institution,
max prisons attract so much criticism. and also serve in both cultural and legal
Second, supermax is the logical exten­ discourse to delegitimize the use of soli-
sion of the desire to render prisoners and tary confinement.
prison operations invisible. They are lo-
T
cated in extremely remote rural locations, C How does the architectural industry
allow virtually no press access, and have contribute to the prison-industrial
very strict visitation procedures, even for complex and other systems of op-
families. They shield prisoners from each pression?
other and also from guards with their
S
remote-controlled doors and empty halls. R The prison-building boom took pri­
They have generally been built with little son design from a rare project type that
or no public input, and the procedures for architecture firms wouldn’t really invest
who gets sent to them, and what happens in to a growth industry where specialized
to people there, have largely resisted legi­ expertise could be marketed and earn sub­
slative and even court oversight. This is stantial returns. The fact that some archi­
a very disturbing trend from the point of tecture firms devote a sizable share of their
view of democracy: our federal govern- activity to the prison business is not deba­-
ment and some 40 state governments all ted: you can open Corrections Today—a
have these almost invisible, unaccount- trade journal for prison administrators—
able institutions that are among the most and see advertisements from architecture
punitive places in the country. It exposes firms and profiles of architects. So in that
the deep connection between “law and sense, the relationship is really pretty ba-
order” rhetoric and authoritarian forms sic: to expand mass incarceration, pri­sons
of power. need to be built, and architects participate

SQ New Injection Room, 2010. San Quentin State Prison, Marin County, California.
Image Credit: California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation

397 Alternatives to Incarceration...

by providing design and construction tions) and put prisons out of sight and
services. hence out of mind. As the security level
But architecture is an especially signi­ of prisons increases, the opportunity to
ficant component of the prison-industrial visit or communicate with prisoners is
complex—without physical buildings the reduced in terms of visiting hours, num-
basic functions of the prison could not be ber of phone calls per month, etc. At the
executed. For instance, you could imag­ine extreme, the regime of solitary confine-
prisons without a third-party company ment in supermax prisons reduces inter-
providing a specialized inmate clas­sifica­- personal contact to a minimum (in fact,
tion database, but not without the prison to less than the minimum needed for psy­-
building itself. William Nagel, a former chological survival), creating an even
correctional superintendent who became deeper form of personal invisibility—if
the foremost national expert on prison everyone around you refuses to see you,
design, actually called for a moratorium are you even there?
on prison construction in the early 1970s,
T
based on many of the same points ADPSR C Prisons have become a “natural” feat­
is making today: when prison beds are ure of our built environment, and it
available they will be filled, but when pri- is hard for most to imagine a social
son beds are in short supply, judges and structure without it. What does a world
prosecutors will find ways to divert people without prisons look like to you?
towards community programs, impose
S
fines, or use other alternative sentences. R A world without prisons would bet­
One unique aspect of the architecture- ter address social and economic problems.
prison relationship is in the area of prison This world would include food, housing,
reform. As Foucault already noted in the education, health, and community life
1970s, prison “reform” is not a response to being more accessible to everyone. Resto­
specific failures but rather a process that rative justice would replace retributive
has continually accompanied the use of justice, so that instead of responding to
prisons from their inception.6 Architec- law-breaking as the biggest problem, the
ture plays a central role in this process, justice system would address the causes
as each generation of prison “reform” de­- of harm and attempt to heal injuries as
mands a new geometry that provides a its first priorities. People would be pre-
visually legible contrast with previous pared to resolve their conflicts without
designs but preserves the fundamental violence, which would require a dramatic
power and surveillance relationships be- shift in our culture and education.
tween guards and prisoners. The prison This is actually the core vision of inter­
boom of recent decades was also a re­ national human rights, which in­cludes
sponse to the success of prisoner rights rights to food, shelter, education, em-
litigation that delegitimized the condi- ployment, and even participation in the
tions of the previous generations of arts and sciences, which has special res-
pri­sons. While addressing some of the onance for architecture. Human rights
concerns raised by prisoners—such as groups have been very concerned about
overcrowding and insufficient h ­ eating prison conditions from the inception of
and ventilation—the new designs are prisons. Human rights programs, how-
also structured to keep prisoners from ever, have also validated prisons by taking
independently organizing in large groups a reformist position, describing accept-
and implement a more thorough level of able ways in which they can operate. But
surveillance, which preserve the essen- I think these two visions of human prog-
tial principles of the institution. ress can converge over time, as human
Design and planning also play a key role rights activists become more aware of
in the way that prisons render prisoners the fundamental problems with prisons,
invisible, deepening their marginaliza- and as prison abolitionists make more
tion. Prison planners have worked to site use of human rights as an organizational
prisons in increasingly remote locations, and strategic tool.
which helps keep visitors away (a policy Architecture is significant here because
reinforced by numerous official restric- it is a field where the “negative” goals of
tions on prison visits and communica- human rights and prison abolition—elimi­

398 Excess
nating prisons that violate human rights, positive alternatives. A world without pri­-
or eliminating prisons more generally— sons is one way to think about a future
can be coupled with the “positive” goals where human rights are universally re-
of expanding housing, education, etc., spected. It will require a lot of work by
without compromising either side. ADPSR architects to get there, both in designing
believes that by exposing and challenging buildings for a new world, and in advocat-
the negative aspects of the prison indus- ing for the broader shifts in culture, soci-
try, we are at the same time reinforcing ety, and government that must precede it.

Endnotes 3 “Supermax” or super-maximum security prisons

usually consist of solitary confinement cells ex-
1 The American Institute of Architects (AIA) is clusively. Solitary confinement is the practice
the main professional association for licensed of isolating inmates long-term in closed cells for
architects in the United States, with approxi- 22–24 hours a day, virtually without human con-
mately 80,000 members. They maintain a Code tact and under constant surveillance. “Segrega-
of Ethics and Professional Conduct that mem- tion” cells are referred to as Security/Special
bers must adhere to or face possible censure Housing Units (SHUs), Intensive Management
or expulsion. ADPSR’s campaign can be found Units (IMUs), Restricted Housing Units (RHUs),
at www.adpsr.org/home/ethics_reform. Sperry or Communication Management Units (CMUs).
encourages readers to join ADPSR’s petition to 4 Ruth Gilmore, “Globalization and US prison
AIA at www.tinyurl.com/aiaethics. growth: from military Keynesianism to post-
2 So-called “three strikes laws” give increas- Keynesian militarism,” Race and Class 40, no.
ingly longer sentences for repeat offenders, 2/3 (Oct 1998–Mar 1999): 174.
typically with a 25-years-to-life sentence for 5 “Million Dollar Blocks,” Spatial Information
a third serious conviction. Critics counter that Design Lab and Justice Mapping Center, http://
acts as minor as shoplifting a pair of socks can www.spatialinformationdesignlab.org/projects.
be counted as “strikes” and result in excessive php?id=16.
punishment. 6 Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish, trans.
Alan Sheridan (New York: Vintage, 1977).

Bio

Tings Chak is an M.Arch candidate at the University of Toronto, and an artist

and migrant justice organizer based in Toronto, Canada.

399 ...Raphael Sperry in conversation...

Therefore an attack on ­architecture,
whose monumental productions
now truly dominate the whole earth,
grouping the servile multitudes
under their shadow, imposing
admiration and wonder, order
and constraint, is necessarily, as it
were, an attack on man. Currently,
an entire earthly activity, and
undoubtedly the most intellectually
outstanding, tends, through the
denunciation of human dominance,
in this direction. Hence, however
strange this may seem when a
creature as elegant as the human
being is involved, a path traced
by painters — opens up toward
bestial monstrosity, as if there
were no other way of escaping the
architectural straitjacket.
— Georges Bataille, “Architecture”
Sleeping in a Constructed World, 2011,
oil and resin on wood, 40 x 40cm
Courtesy the artist and Sullivan+Strumpf
Reviews
 Kids on Buildings:
The Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum,
Michigan State ­University, East Lansing, MI
Architect: Zaha Hadid

reviewed by Emil

Emil 
This place is good because every
superhero would like something
different, like outside or inside.

Which superhero would like what?

E
Well, we don’t have to worry about
the Beast, he can climb anywhere
and sleep on any ceiling. And we
don’t have to worry about Night-
crawler because he can just whip
around onto any place—it doesn’t
matter where.
I think Antman would like climb-
ing up that place [the concrete slope
on the outside of the building] when
he was small because it would be
like a big play structure. He can
turn ­ant-sized and use it as a huge
slide. But it’s not good for the ants,

404
 because they are sticky, and would
have to walk and it would take them
a long time. I think it’s fun
sliding down.
What does this building look [S
li
like to you? di
ng
E 
I think it looks like a big U, we are do
inside of a big U. Also a bunch of wn
squiggles. ].
You try it.
What are the best shapes
for b
­ uildings?
E 
I think the coolest would be all the
3-D shapes connected. Then you can
go in one shape, and then go up the
stairs to another shape and another
shape.
E
This park is part of the museum, too.

How do you know?

E 
Because of the sideways benches.
No one else would think of a sideways
bench. No one else would think of a
sideways bench except someone that
wasn’t working because they have
time to think. And all of these lines in
the sidewalk are sideways. They are
saying: “This way to the museum.”

How do you sit on this bench?

E
You sit on it like
this. It kind of
makes you slide
like the building.
But this is the
place that’s for
sitting.

Who else would like this building?

E 
I think Kid Flash would like it in here
because it would be like a big ramp.
He wouldn’t even have to climb
because he would just run up. Maybe
he could even just walk up.

What about non-humans?

Would any ­non-humans like it?
E 
Monkeys. There is a bunch of climbing to do. They would climb
around outside. But if they swung around inside, they would
kick the monkeys out and tell them to swing outside.

405 Reviews
 Is it better for robots or dinosaurs?
E
It’s better for robots. They are
invented, so they could be invented
to reach all the places people can’t
reach here. There would be places
just for the robots. Dinosaurs would
just slip in the building and fall down.

What is your favourite part of it?

E
Sliding outside is my favourite.

What about the stuff inside?

E
 mm…the bench where you look
H
down, upstairs. You can see everyone How can you tell that something
walking in, and it’s cool to sit there. is a work of art?
E
I can tell because if it wouldn’t have
been art then it wouldn’t have paint
on it.
It would have just
been all white.

Is this building
a work of art?
E
Actually, yes. Because
if it wasn’t, it wouldn’t
be a good building and
they wouldn’t have
made it. It wouldn’t
be there.

Bio

Emil was born in New Orleans, where he developed a love

of heat and noise. He has lived in Beijing, where his name
is Ai Me’ar, and in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he currently
studies breakdancing and science. In June 2013, he com-
pleted kindergarten.

406 Scapegoat
 Infrastructure Critical: Sacrifice at Toronto’s G8/G20 Summit,
Alessandra Renzi and Greg Elmer, Arbeiter Ring Publishing, 2012,
139 pp.

review by Scott Sørli

Network diagram showing interlocking directorate between various US corporations and institutions,
and the Council on Foreign Relations, 2004.

On 17 May 2013, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper re­-

hearsed a tactical argument in front of a sympathetic audience
at the neutral- and august-sounding Council on Foreign Relations
in New York City. Starting off his speech with what would usually
be a warm-up joke, he mocked the Keystone XL pipeline protest-
ers barricaded outside. “It is not a matter of just getting on a street
corner and yelling, and that will somehow lead to a solution,” the
Winnipeg Free Press reported. He continued, “These are real chal-
lenges where environmental needs intersect and often appear to
be at cross-purposes with economic and social development. And
unless we realize that and take these things seriously, we’re going
to keep talking around the real issue. I think if we admit there are
real problems with real difficult solutions and real difficult choices
that have to be made—that everybody has to contribute to—then I
think we’ll make progress.”
This storm we call progress will be made in clear terms: economic growth trumps
up of “real difficult solutions.” 1 The rhe- environmental collapse, and while the air
torical alignment of social development we breathe just passed 400ppm of carbon
with economic development orthogonal to dioxide for the first time since the mid-
environmental needs frames the problem Pliocene, we can all breathe easier because

407 Reviews
at least it smells like money. This socio-eco- and those who suffer through them has,
nomic bon-vivant atmosphere is, to quote in previous epochs, earned a more direct
Harper, real, real, real, real, and real. name: class struggle. For Renzi and Elmer,
Harper’s quintupled reality is made mani­ the question of class composition is less an
fest through the policies of austerity. And, issue than the more fundamental problem
although the “real difficult solutions” will of politicization. How does state repres-
be borne by us, the “real difficult choices” sion, such as that which occurred during
will be made for us; they will be realized Toronto’s 2010 G8/G20 summit, offer an
through an involuntary consensus. Notably, important backformation for activists and
our contributions toward realizing Har­- organizers to recuperate? Given that most
per’s plan of austerity are not shared equal­- public demonstrations against austerity
ly; they will be exacted from each accord- measures are increasingly met with exces-
ing to her ability and distributed to each sive exercises of state violence, Renzi and
according to her work.2 “In this sense,” Ales­- Elmer ask what can be built—what social
sandra Renzi and Greg Elmer state, “the relations, technical capacities, and oppo-
concept of sacrifice—unlike austerity— sitional compositions—between volleys of
expands our analytical lenses to investigate chemical munitions, and, more important­­ly,
the struggles among the powerful who, in how these infrastructures can be protect-
the attempt to accumulate in relation to ­ed, maintained, and emboldened through
each other are sacrificing smaller players activist practices.
and reconfiguring the fabric of society and It is among the itinerant manoeuvres in
the body politic of a nation.” (120) intensified spaces of austerity that Renzi
Sacrifice, as Renzi and Elmer demon- and Elmer see a different future:
strate in Infrastructure Critical, is a con-
The [Occupy] camps’ alternative structures
ceptual gift to activists that realigns the for education, food security and assem-
ostensible social equivalence of austerity bly, together with the resistant subjectivi-
into differential power relations, transfers ties that populate them hold the potential
of wealth, and distributions of the sensi- to reorganize the city, especially public
ble.3 Using Toronto’s 2010 G8/G20 summit space, as platforms to forge and foster dif-
as a case study of repression, the authors ferent connections among individuals. The
lay bare the operative mechanisms of the reclaimed spaces can be sites of a counter-
unfolding military-prison complex. Accor­ biopolitics—literally spaces of politicization,
of encounters among groups that have long
ding to Renzi and Elmer:
been involved in social justice activism and
As threats materialize, all violent abuses of individuals who take to the streets for the
power and illegal procedures are re-actual­- first time. (126)
ized as necessary lesser evils—votive offer-
ings auspiciously pointing towards future While it is clear that the goal in policing
security and growth. In this context, all dis- these actions is to intimidate, as thoroughly
ciplinary measures like the PWPA [the then- as possible, all protesters and allied mem­-
secret Public Works Protection Act], the bers of the public, while further en­trenching
security fence, the “free speech zone,” the the state security and surveillance appara-
kettling and mass arrests of protesters, the tus, for Renzi and Elmer, by defending the
new legislation on masks and protests should
critical infrastructures pro­duced in these
be seen as part of a concatenation of elements—
a sacrifice series—held together in the name
confrontations, activist practice can mobi-
of post-crisis wealth and stability. (123)
lize to confront the sacrifi­c ial political
economy of austerity.
The progress offered by austerity policies—
according to which everyone must con-
tribute equally to ensure a better collec- Bio
tive future—is a lie sold to the many who
will be forced to sacrifice for the benefit Scott Sørli has received professional degrees in
process control engineering and in architecture,
of the very few. A representative example
and a post-grad in design research. His practice
of the very few makes up the Council on is operative across scales and among disciplines.
Foreign Relations; those “getting on a street He is also co-curator of convenience, a window gal-
corner and yelling” represent the very many lery that provides an opening for art that engages,
experiments, and takes risks with the architec-
others. This relation between those who
tural, urban, and civic realms. His current design
profit—massively—through austerity cuts research tries out saying it like it is.

408 Excess
 Carbon Democracy, Timothy Mitchell
Verso, 2011, 288 pp.

review by Clint Langevin

In Timothy Mitchell’s Carbon Democracy, it is almost too obvious

that a British-born political theorist who teaches Middle Eastern
Studies at Columbia University and has spent several years living
in Egypt is able to implicate oil as the protagonist in the formation
of democratic society. In fact, Mitchell’s expertise in the history
of the oil industry in the Middle East allows him to make connec-
tions that would be otherwise impossible. From the perspective of
an expert witness, he unpacks the creation, formation, and limits
of our democratic society through an in-depth historical analysis
of the production, circulation, and use of fossil fuels, particularly
oil. Mitchell’s goal—to “intricately” link two things most people
think of as separate, oil and democracy—is achieved convincingly
through the argument that democratic politics were “co-assem-
bled” with the energy from fossil fuels. (5)
Mitchell’s thesis is developed by exposing arming of the Taliban, I would be called
the connections of events, such as the strikes a conspiracy theorist; this is not the case
by coal workers in Britain, the creation by here. Mitchell refrains from any embellish-
postwar US economists of an economy ment of the facts, making the content all
based on the principle of infinite growth, the more shocking. It would be difficult
and the rise of Islamist political move- to disprove any of the information he pre­
ments in the Middle East, to democracy sents, as the majority of the claims he makes
and oil. He makes these connections by in the book are based on historical events
focusing his analysis on the material pro- and backed by a staggering amount of re­-
cesses and distribution networks of the search.
oil industry, tracing how connections are While reading the latter part of the book,
built, where they are vulnerable, and how I found myself reminiscing, attempting to
they are controlled. This is the key inno- recall my thinking at the time during the
vation of the book: “In tracing the connec- events Mitchell was describing. The mo­-
tions that were made between pipelines ment that stands out the most occurred in
and pumping stations, refineries and ship- 2003, when George W. Bush accused Sad-
ping routes, road systems and automobile dam Hussein of hiding WMDs, which he
cultures, dollar flows and economic know­ used as a justification for the Iraq invasion.
ledge, weapons experts and militarism, one As a teenager, I remember seeing this on
discovers how a peculiar set of relations the news for the first time and being un­-
was engineered between oil, violence, fin­ convinced because Iraq seemed uncon-
ance, expertise and democracy.” (253) nected to America and the September 11
A refreshing aspect of this book is how attacks. Some people, including myself,
matter-of-factly atrocious crimes commit­ knew we were being misinformed, but I
ted by the US and British governments are had no idea how to articulate an argument
presented. If I were to tell people in Amer- for protesting the invasion. Mitchell links
ica that the CIA supported the funding and the emergence of the neoconservative Bush

409 Reviews
 from a political movement built with the Carbon Democracy is important because
“help of the windfalls reaped by American it provides non-specialists in political
oil billionaires from the 1973–74 rise in oil economy, such as myself, with multiple
prices,” (223) to a pre-planned invasion of examples of how democracy is involved in
Iraq, in response to an impasse reached at the process of producing and using carbon
the end of the 1990s following the failure of energy. Understanding democracy as a
a US plan to turn “Iraq’s wartime depen- political tool of oil unsettles and reframes
dence on its support into a long-term eco- some of our most precious political
nomic and political relationship.” (216) Most assumptions. However, Mitchell makes no
people know that the September 11 attacks recommendations on how to create more
were used to win support for the invasion, egalitarian forms of democracy. Indeed, it
but I am not certain they know why the is highly uncertain that the vulnerabilities,
invasion happened; without understand- both environmental and economic, inher-
ing the connections to oil, the reasons for ent in new forms of oil exploration, such as
invasion are not as obvious. In a similar the tar sands and deep-ocean drilling, will
vein, Mitchell also clearly and powerfully lead to new forms of democracy.
reconstructs the fundamental links be-
tween the Iraq invasion, OPEC oil embar-
gos, and the Israel and Palestine conflict.

Bio

Clint Langevin received his M.Arch from the University of Toronto in 2011 after complet-
ing an undergraduate degree in Civil Engineering at Syracuse University. His graduate
thesis research culminated in a conceptual pilot project called The Tar Creek Supergrid,
a habitable solar energy generation structure situated among dozens of massive waste
rock piles in the town of Picher, Oklahoma. The project has been exhibited internation-
ally at the 2012 International Architecture Biennale in Rotterdam and Arup’s Phase 2 Gal-
lery in London, and featured in publications such as Volume 31: Guilty Landscapes, and
BRACKET [at extremes]. Upon graduating from the University of Toronto, Clint founded
the research and design studio Captains of Industry, with his partner Amy Norris. Their
work focuses on the problems and potentials of our industrial heritage on a variety of dif-
ferent scales. They are currently designing an installation focused on water monitoring at
the Alberta Tar Sands for an upcoming exhibition titled Rapid Response: Architecture Pre-
pares for Disaster, which opens in Toronto in June 2013.

410 Scapegoat
 Imagine No Possessions: The Socialist
Objects of Russian Constructivism,
Christina Kiaer, MIT Press, 2005, 344 pp.

review by Maria Taylor

Christina Kiaer proposes that the Russian Constructivists of the

1920s, such as Aleksandr Rodchenko and Vladimir Tatlin, advanced
a concept of the “co-worker” or “comradely” object, which aimed
to supplant the capitalist desire for commodities in a new socialist
society. Until this society was realized, they hoped to create objects
so utilitarian, produced through such decisively socialist produc-
tion methods, that commodity fetishism could be averted. Kiaer
argues against the more traditional his­toriographic narrative that
suggests the early avant-garde efforts retreated or were interrupted
during the New Economic Policy, instead asserting that the Con-
structivists’ later interest in the production of everyday objects was

411 Reviews
fully in keeping with their ideological and artistic commitments.1
While the details of Kiaer’s analysis are of interest to architectural
and art historians of interwar European Modernism, her work
de­mands to be read by a more diverse audience, especially those
interested in material culture or material agency, the recent turn to
“thing-theory,” and the relationship of the commodity-object to social
change—including design’s relationship to practices of “sustainability.”
The interwar eruption of ­Constructivism NEP differs from that of other theorists
and other Russian avant-garde movements and historians of the avant-garde such as
is the primary point of reference for most Peter Bürger, Boris Groys, Christina Lod­
people who know something about Rus- der, and Paul Wood (a historiographic in­-
sian or Soviet art and architecture but do tervention that Kiaer describes explicitly
not work in this field. For specialists, the in chapter one).
corresponding literature is voluminous. Kiaer also looks at the “self-conscious-
Imagine No Possessions, which was award­ed ly transitional objects” designed and con-
a Wayne S. Vucinich Prize Honourable Men- struct­ed by an expanded cast of Construc-
tion by the American Association for the tivists, including Tatlin (pots, pans, men’s
Advancement of Slavic Studies, is neither clothing, stoves), Liubov Popova and Var­
the newest nor the most comprehensive vara Stepanova (whose “flapper” dress was
addition to this historiographic excess. one of the few such mass-produced con-
What sets Kiaer’s work apart from the structions), Rodchenko and Vladimir Ma­-
many earlier studies and exhibition cata- yakovsky (for their joint work on various
logues is her careful, theoretically subtle, advertising campaigns), as well as Rodchen­
and lavishly illustrated analysis of Con- ko’s “Worker’s Club” interior built for the
structivism’s internal logic of the useful International Exposition of Modern In­-
object. dustrial and Decorative Arts in Paris (1925).
The book’s title, appropriated from John Her roughly chronological treatment of
Lennon’s “Imagine” lyrics of 1971, sets up the these artists and their objects ends with
fundamental position in Kiaer’s argu­ment: the “final, valedictory resurgence” of the
“Constructivist dream of the comradely ob­-
Constructivism is unique among the politi­ ject” as manifested in El Lissitzky’s 1929 set
cally engaged avant-gardes of the twentieth designs for a never-performed eugenic play,
century because it imagined “no possessions”
Sergei Tret’iakov’s I Want A Child! (244)
both from the perspective of an achieved
so­cialist revolution that made such imagin­
Boris Arvatov, who was also “reclaimed”
ing more than utopian dreaming and—at by Kiaer in a separate article in October, is
the same time—from within the commodity introduced early on as the main theoreti-
culture of NEP that forced that imagining cian of socialist objects.2
to contend with the present reality of com- Another major move distinguishing this
modity-desiring human subjects. (26) book from its peers is Kiaer’s use of a psy-
choanalytic lens to discuss the oral and
Rather than being an inhospitable envi- anal fixations, gender anxiety, and depic-
ronment in which the utopian ideals of tions of violence and sexuality in the work
Constructivists withered (as others have of Rodchenko and others. The status of the
argued), Kiaer sees the revived market act­ Constructivist “comradely commodity” as
ivity of the NEP period as a “crucible” for a “transitional object” thus exhibits a dual
Constructivist theories of the object, dur- character: it is the utilitarian object that
ing which time these “artist-engineers” did will allow the mass consumer to progress
not retreat from their utilitarian art-into- from capitalist desire for the commodity-
life ideals, but instead applied themselves fetish, and the psychoanalytically potent
all the more passionately to their realiza- “transitional object”—analyzed variously
tion. (26) This is one of Kiaer’s main inter- by Sigmund Freud, Melanie Klein, and Don-
ventions in the literature, as her portrayal ald Winnicott—though which individuals
of the Constructivist trajectory during the express their inner states.

412 Excess
 Throughout the book, Kiaer’s focus alt- dictions between the Torgsektor trading
er­n ates between these two explanatory kiosks and Socialist anti-commodity ide-
frame­works: the tension between the ima­- als that comprised the Soviet exhibit itself.
ginative-utopian significance of theory and It is obvious enough to recommend this
the material, quotidian limitations of pro­- book to anyone interested in the works and
duction. The tension between these two inner worlds of these artists in particu-
frames is, in this case, an especially pro- lar, or early Soviet modernism and the so-
ductive method of analysis. For example, called Cultural Revolution more generally.
in her convincing case study of Tatlin’s However, a more consequential connection—
efforts to design supremely functional ev- albeit one left unstated by Kiaer—can be
eryday objects, Kiaer proposes that these discerned between these early Soviet theo­-
prototypes were seen by Tatlin and his fel­- ries of the affective, transformative capac-
low Constructivists as an advance in their ity of everyday objects and recent work in
design strategies, rather than a retreat from cultural anthropology and related fields on
the utopian ambitions of his higher pro- the bundled qualia, social lives, and agen­-
file designs for the Monument to the Third cy of things and objects. As a premonitory
International and his flying machines. For study, Imagine No Possessions might find
Kiaer, “Tatlin refuses to concede to the a welcome place in a reading list on mate-
commodity desires of modernity. Instead, rial culture, in addition to works by Dan-
he imagines that his active socialist objects iel Miller, Alfred Gell, Bruno Latour, Web
can organize a modern form of everyday Keane, Bill Brown, and Jane Betton, among
life that will be free of such desires” (87). others. In this context, Kiaer’s study not
In the case of Rodchenko and the Work- only opens a new line of inquiry for those
er’s Club, Kiaer presents close readings uninitiated in the internal logic of Soviet
of Rodchenko’s letters home (in which he Constructivism, but also helps balance the
expresses simultaneous desire for the styl­ claims of novelty that afflict many contem-
ish modernity of Paris and revulsion at his porary thing-theorists; with Kiaer, we dis-
weakness of character for feeling such de­- cover that long before “thing-power” was
sires). This account compliments Walter lauded as a novel form of reading micropoli­
Benjamin’s roughly contemporaneous de­- tics, the Russian Constructivists were pro-
piction of Moscow with a new perspective ducing comrade-objects in the service of
on the familiar foldable chairs and chess socialism.
tables, and greater attention to the contra-

Endnotes

1 The New Economic Policy (NEP) period of Soviet

history (1921–929) was characterized by a limited
return to non-state market activity. Initiated by
Lenin and abandoned by Stalin with the advent of
the first Five-Year Plan, the NEP reversed some of
the more radical policies of the preceding period of
“War Communism.” For a concise introduction, see
Lewis Siegelbaum’s “Seventeen Moments in Soviet
History,” http://www.soviethistory.org.
2 Christina Kiaer, “Boris Arvatov’s Socialist Objects,”
October 81 (1997): 105–118.

Bio

Maria Taylor is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Architecture (History/Theory)

at the University of Michigan. Her dissertation research examines Soviet urbanism of the
1950s–1970s, looking in particular at city-nature entanglements and the interconnec-
tions between place, plan, and professional practice in Siberian city building. Taylor has
lived in a variety of U.S. cities as well as Budapest, St. Petersburg, and Krasnoyarsk, Rus-
sia, where she will spend the 2013-14 academic year doing fieldwork thanks to Fulbright
and SSRC grants. She has a Master of Landscape Architecture from the University of
Washington and a Master of Arts from Stanford University in Russian, East European, and
Eurasian Studies.

413 Reviews
 Kish, An Island Indecisive by Design,
Nasrin Tabatabai and Babak Afrassiabi
NAi Publishers, 2012, 160 pp.

review by Steven Chodoriwsky

A book as an island is a promising analogue, beginning with the

cover, which suggests peering landwards from the boat offshore. It
is a rare reading experience to turn to page one and have the pag-
ination affirm your actions, but there it is, “001,” at bottom-centre
like an anchor, paired with the word “Geography” directly above,
both in Times. A hand-drawn historical map from the pale green
cover reappears, albeit with a legend and location plan. Under-
neath the map, two sketch elevations of the island of Kish appear
to confirm that I’m still on the boat offshore. Captions, dating the
drawings to 1941, are in Courier at bottom-right. There’s something
happening with the pages: they are not all the same size, and I catch
a glimpse of 003 and 005 already, out there at the margins. I ignore
this alluring prospect for a moment and shut the book.
Back out on the cover—in case the title was amounting to exactly one quarter of its
not a weighty enough proposal—a publish- content, one spread out of every four. Is it
er’s voice draws the outline for where a only a coincidence that the first adjective
reader might follow the authors: to a place mentioned in Kish is “elliptical?”
“where the extremes of politics, architec-
ture and urban design visibly collide,” a
“stage of conflicting desires” which give it
a “misplaced historical disposition.” On-
line, I obtain an even drier inventory: “The
book brings together a recent essay with
images of past and present states of the
island, clippings of magazines and other
publications, a transcript of a film, inter-
views, and material from past exhibitions.”
Between these two briefs—and indeed ris-
ing above them—is the elegant physical
object itself, with my left hand holding
the spine and right thumb poised to flip
through with curiosity.
One flip past the cover, I land not at the
beginning, but already on pages 004–005; I jump straight to the back cover, where
next flip comes 012–013; then 020–021 and page 160 is also, oddly, paginated though
its gauzy photographs of futuristic mod- otherwise blank. Its central purpose is
ern architecture foregrounded by fashion pragmatic: to affix the 20 stitch-sewn sig­-
models, with magazine copy, in French, in n­atures to the cover. At this point it be-
italics. At this rate it takes only seventeen comes clear to me that the cover has to be
more skips to get through the slim volume, torn off—title, green-on-green imagery,

414 Scapegoat
and the publisher’s blurb would need to be
jettisoned in order to get inside. I expected
this to be a messier affair, but the adhe-
sive peeled off easily, and the excess gum
rolled into a tiny oval that vaguely and
pleasingly resembled the island’s shape at
miniature scale.
Taking a moment to consult the inter-
net again, a glum dictionary entry tells me
that Kish, 10 miles off mainland Iran in the
Persian Gulf, is “almost without vegeta-
tion,” with only “stunted herbage;” further
along, a tourist bureau site pronounces it I stick around, but I cannot really get
a “flat land devoid of any significant eleva- lost in here; it is an island, after all. I am in
tion.” I have returned to the book numer- a book on a desk and there are clear sight-
ous times over the past weeks in various lines in all directions. Walk straight long
states of mind. Despite its clear, tripartite enough and hit a coastline. Is it possible
structure, and no doubt due to its idiosyn- to design a book that succeeds in reading
cratic design, each return feels only mod- me, in watching me? This is the opposite
estly more successful than the last; I have of being lost, where every detail registers
been unable to navigate myself through and grates. I turn to compiling with hys-
the stunted herbage on repeated attempts. terical exactitude, which spills into the
Once inside and fumbling around, it is not reading, stains all its content, and threat-
just navigation that falters but also stable ens to damage the reviewing process: How
memory that lapses. Kish resists intimate many times is there a photograph of a set-
knowledge, such as the joy of turning a ting sun? Why do so few Kish locals make
page knowing this or that illustration will an appearance? Is it just coincidence that
be there in wait. Instead there is a sort of the total number of bound signatures equals
flat threat throughout. Reading Kish con- the tally of credited photographers? Which
founds and confides. It rewards a very pa­- image appears at the book’s heart? One
tient reader with images and reading sen- unwitting miscalculation runs the risk of
sations. The authors and designer have getting every square millimeter of the
travelled great lengths to show, in pains- thing wrong.
taking detail, that Kish too might be like It takes a long time—too long, certainly—
that—less, in the end, about describing a to wrap my head around the fact that there
where than demonstrating a how. Island are just two different sheet sizes compris-
and book: their readings exhilarate, ener- ing the book. They are equal in width but
vate, and exhaust because I am both here twenty millimeters different in height.
and also there, in a chair staring at this The squatter of the two is shifted laterally
ragged atlas on my desk, and on a boat off- twenty millimeters, so when the sheets
shore, staring at a flat land devoid of eleva- are collated, folded, and bound, the spine
tion, views and scales collapsing together is dislodged from its typical symmetry and
in deep focus. creates four unique spread shapes in each
Corners are not where I expect them, signature, sequentially recurring. To recap:
and the extra split-second it takes me to 20 signatures of eight enumerated pages
find them pulls my eyes off whatever I each, equalling 160 pages, four spreads, two
was looking at (or for), and sets the whole authors, and one designer, names buried
enterprise swerving toward the margins. deep in the fine print of the colophon. And
Attention to overlaps and purposeful mis- one first-person narrator-who-is-not-the-
alignments give the edges tactility, a brit- authors, one “I,” an able guide through
tle sharpness, taunting me to leave the Kish’s history, but otherwise oddly reti-
book altogether. cent. How reliable is this “I?”
After determining the economy of the
paper sizing, I convince myself that there
are further truths and auspicious geo­
metries afoot, a collected knowledge that
designer, authors, and island are all col-

415 Reviews
 luding to employ. I am not especially prone Emboldened, I hurry the pace of my ac-
to conspiracy theories, but my mind has a c­ ounting. I measure each of the spreads,
tendency to wander. In fact, it was an odd comparing areas of “primary surfaces” to
empirical observation from page 044 that the “excess surfaces” (edges of pages al-
sent my analysis reeling. Our narrator, “I,” ready flipped past and those yet to come)
is speaking about the “Greek ship,” a cargo salvaged from the ingenious staggering
vessel stranded off the south-eastern coast technique. There must be an adequate point
since 25 July 1966, the genesis event, “I” of entry, some rudimentary navigational
believes, of Kish’s modernity. Now a tour- tool, to be able to read Kish the way its au­-
ist site, it also “prophesied what would thors strove to read the island. It turns out
become Kish’s awry odyssey” through dec­- that not only do the four spreads each com-
ades of indecision, uneven development, prise a different square-millimeterage, but
and political uncertainty up to present-day. their shapes each hold unique barycentres
“I” muses: which, when plotted together, result in a
quadrilateral hovering around the spine,
I once calculated that if I were to walk from pointing east-northeast. I felt like someone
the spot where the Greek ship was stranded gave me a compass. The trajectory of the
all the way to the opposite side of the island, hovering quadrilateral and the trajectory of
in a straight line exactly aligned with the
the Greek Ship were identical and therefore,
ship’s axis, I would end up at a curved tip on
the north-eastern shore renowned for being
in my mind, emphatically pointing towards
the best spot from which to view the sun- the top-right corner of the page where my
rise. […] The development of the resort began thumb rests, eager to turn to the next one.
right at the foot of this spot. Against my better judgment, against the
odds, Kish has come to this.

I follow the imperative; I turn the page, mercifully relent, giving way to the single
into the heart of the central essay. Amidst dusky image where I can finally take a mo-
seven consecutive pages of images, up-to- ment to lie down and rest.
then unprecedented, there is a 2012 pho-
tograph of the Shah’s Palace, built in 1972, Bio
shown here half-abandoned, its once-prim Steven Chodoriwsky has held research positions at Jan
garden now teeming with overgrowth. Uni­ van Eyck Academie and the Center for Contemporary
que for Kish, it is both uncaptioned and Art in Kitakyushu, and was educated in architecture at
unpaginated. The washed-out white sky the Tokyo Institute of Technology and the University
of Waterloo. His practice employs installation, perfor-
of the digital photograph merges with the mance, built form, photography, and text. He was born
blank parts of two excess margins, result- in Englehart, Canada, and currently teaches at Cornell
ing in a complete, uninterrupted, full-bleed University.
experience. The waves of staggered sheets

416 Excess
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