20181103: Graz | Priesterseminar

No functional electrical outlets meant no wifi in my room and the need to hunt down a power source to recharge my techno-trash: laptop, phone, computer. I camped out in the floor Clubraum from 9 am until noon.

From the size of Priesterseminar, the impressive repetition of windows and doors, the density of rooms per floor, I expected that several dozen people were inhabiting each floor and shared the kitchen. The first person I met was Daniel, an electrical engineering student. I introduced myself to him. We chatted a few moments; he went about making his breakfast and left. A little while later Emilia entered; a physics student, first year. I introduced myself and she ate and chatted with me and then left. In the afternoon a Zihua entered with the gaze of a person either lost or exploring his surroundings, I introduced myself. He was also an artist in residence, based in Canada. He left to further explore. An hour later Abraham entered; I introduced myself. He was eager for conversation and we chatted at length before he went about preparing his food, at which point I wondered how much of this introductory exchange was motivated by myself and whether the students would take the initiative to introduce themselves if I did not make a motion. So for the next three hours I worked at the table and simply said 'Hallo' when people entered, if they said 'hallo' to me, but none, not one, made took the initiative to introduce him or herself. I was curious of how the inhabitants of this shared space behaved by default. Not only did the students not converse much with me, but the commingling between those who were in the kitchen at the same time was very limited. It's hard to determine how much of this seemingly reserved disposition is due to the individuals who live here, the nature of Priesterseminar–it being architecturally and scholastically emphasized solitude–being culturally stereotypical, or a function of kids nowadays preferring to eat their food in front of youtube rather than hangout in a shared kitchen together. But in the end, very few–less than a dozen–students came into the clubraum, which confused me. Where was everyone else?

Abraham offered to give a tour of Priesterseminar. He showed me the laundry room, translated the operating instructions, and etiquette which directed the separation of the students who lived in one part of the building and the seminary students who lived in the other, and what parts of the drying room were reserved for which students, a large area was reserved exclusively for seminary students’ bedsheets. He showed me the fitnessstudio, which was a disappointment for me, since I had arrived to Graz with the knowledge that Arnold Schwarzenegger had grown up in the area. Most of equipment appeared to be from the 1990s, or even 1980s, and much of it was in pretty bad shaped. The room disorganized, with several machines inaccessible and/or obstructing the use of other equipment. I had no idea how to operate several of the machines nor what benefit was to be extracted from using them. The bright side was that it was free of charge and seldom used.

The bike storage was profoundly well organized. Each bike has a given parking spot, marked with a number, and vertically maintained with a wheel brace. Notably, the bikes were quite dated and also appeared in bad shape, but I've since learned most are functionally sufficient.

The last stop of the tour was the Gemeinschaftraum, or socializing/party-room. As Abraham explained it, it's where people can come or reserve a time to let loose. At first glance it looked like the basement den of a fraternity house: aged leather couches slumping from use; multiple coffee tables aligned for the purpose of stowing beer between swigs but almost impossible to circumambulate; a foosball table; dart board; a bar separated a drink-staging/kitchenette area, though not intended to seat guests; a refrigerator stocked with beer; a piggy bank to receive the suggested donation of €1/beer; and a room with a television, another couch, shopping cart believed to be used for beer runs, and a tree stump that looked as if some hand-sawing competition had been performed on it.

I'm a horrible foosball player, but my suggestion to play was to terminate the idling conversation with Abraham, and we began a longer debate about free will, politics, and the culture of Austrians. Abraham works as a math researcher; he's from Mexico and speaks perfect English with a German accent. He has an interesting perspective not only because being from Mexico at a time when Trump and US relations are particularly bad, but also because he shares a distrust for the media and American society. Specifically, he mentioned that he had the opportunity to study in the US but made the decision to come to Europe because he didn't want to be part of “that kind of society." Specifically he disliked the absence of a social safety net, the excessive environmental degradation and vapid consumerism.

Abraham's selection of topics personally resonated with me because they were so closely echoing things I had heard and thought about when I lived in Spain 15 years ago. Under the Bush administration, European criticism of the US was at an all time high, particularly a critique of unilateral war in Iraq. But the conversation with Abraham was different than the discussions I had with Catalans over a decade ago, in part because I now felt compelled to dispel some of the myths that people have about the United States. For example, his claim that there is no social safety net in the U.S. is simply not true: I was happy to concede that many European countries may have more, and that the benefits in the U.S. vary by state, but there are programs, which included subsidized housing and free healthcare for low income and elderly people. Not only did Abraham have misinformation about American unemployment benefits, but he had misinformation about European or Austrian unemployment benefits. He believed the benefits for the unemployed were perpetual, limitless. In fact, in NYS, a person is entitled to 26 weeks of unemployment benefits; in Austria 20 weeks.[1][2] I assume there are more nuances and limitations between each system, and I'm not certain that NYS offers better benefits overall (I'd be surprised if that's the case), but the fact there is such a prevalent misconception is curious. It may be that benefits are less stigmatized, or more easily accessible in many European countries than in many American states. But what's most interesting to me is that the European perception is still focused toward America, and not preoccupied with China, Russia, Brazil, Australia or even Canada.

Abraham stated that between Hillary and Trump he would have chosen Trump because he thought that Trump would cause the system to collapse more quickly. I wondered if he meant this as pure provocation, or if he simply does not understand the level of irresponsibility in his preference. I responded to his comment with a long-winded, historical romp from the fall of the Hapsburg empire, American imperialism, the White Man's burden, the shift in post-colonial studies to the One Belt initiative in China. I probably should have asked whether he was comfortable with people dying in order to collapse the system that he despises.

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[1] "Amount and Duration of Benefits," NOLO
https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/collecting-unemployment-benefits-new-york-32507-2.html
[2] "Unemployment Benefits in Austria," A-Kasser
https://www.a-kasser.dk/unemployment-insurance-in-europe/austria/

20181110 Schloßberg to Freiheitsplatz

Abraham invited me to scale the Schloßberg. The day was clear, the air was crisp but not yet cold. The topic of our discussions always slips into the gutter of geopolitics and economics, two themes we are both unqualified to discuss. He's a smart guy but I was curious to know where he got his information and what formed his perspective. As if in response and affront to our last conversation about the influence of media outlets on social perception, and alternative ways to learn about current events, he told me that he has no choice but to get his information from news media; he has no time to become an expert on the topics. That was his phrasing. He wouldn’t disclose the exact media names, which I noted in absentia. Still, he feels strongly about his perspective on geopolitics. It was a time when we all were expected to have a perspective.

Abraham recounted an anecdote about one of his colleagues gloating about being possibly hired by an American startup. Ultimately nothing ever formalized for her, but I got the impression that there is implicit prestige or explicit high-earnings in Silicon Valley were something that was both attractive to and disdained by him. As a mathematician, statistician and tri-lingual Mexican, Abraham could be a competitive candidate for many Silicon Valley startups. I suggested that he looked into jobs in the U.S. He retorted with the textbook answer of young men: “I never really think about making money. That’s not what interests me.”

I didn’t flinch at the answer because I’ve said the same thing, and still believed the same thing. I still gravitate toward the belief. But isn’t having a moonlight career the inherent excuse for not caring about money? But he isn’t moonlighting as a mathematician, he works as a mathematician. I mean, if you don’t have a passion that you’re pursuing while you gig and you’re just working, isn’t money exactly what you’re interested in, given the tasks being the same? Having walked away from my job, I demonstrated my belief. But I can’t lie to myself and say that money is not a high-priority in my life, not only in the lifestyle to which I’ve grown accustomed but the fact that, once I’d acquired some money, my perspective has shifted on many topics. (The latter is as predictable as Abraham’s and my answer.) But returning to the answer I wondered if he, or I, really could “not think about money.” As if, not having it excused him or I from the world around us.

Equally, I wondered, as Abraham had admitted, how much a luxury it was to not have to prioritize money. I contemplated this not only on an individual level–since both he and I are part of a small part of the world’s population that has completed post-secondary education–but also on a national level. The existence of some infrastructure–social, medical, environmental, criminal–allows us to not to seek out life-saving financial support. And if the capricious variable of where you are born offers this luxury, are there constituents to the geopolitical world that are requisite for this condition? More succinctly: What is wealth?

A siren sounds at 12 noon every Saturday, which dates back to the war days, as a test of the emergency communication program. The rooftop horn was at eye level as we descended the Schlossberg. The tone reminded me of the fire siren that sounded in Goldendale summers as a child. One long scream meant a fire in town; two long screams meant a fire out of town, and the volunteer firefighters would report for duty. I would always look out the sliding glassdoor to the porch, cast yellow by the corrugated plastic roof, to the backyard grass brown by summer sun, to the hedges and Rhet’s backyard, through the fence to the horizon for a distant signal. Sometimes I saw smoke.

The European Balcony project was scheduled at 16h at Freiheitsplatz in Graz. It is an international project intending to make European countries more united, the Freiheitsplatz was chosen in Graz due to its historical significance. Allegedly, a politician made the announcement from the balcony of the Schauspiele that the country of Austria was born, 100 years before, on November the 12, 1918. [1]

At the event I saw a few familiar faces: Marleen and Michael from Studio Asynchrome, Heidrun from Forum Stadtpark, and Stefan Schmitzer from Kork cafe. About forty people congregated and read from a page-length statement in German. For posterity, I filmed a few people who didn’t seem self-conscious of being recorded. After the short reading, Stefan generously explained the project and calculated its value and relevance in the larger European political context. The ensuing exchange, or rather expression of Stefan’s anxieties, about the future of Austria, the political right was entertaining. Some of his accusations were expected: the right-wing’s ignorant, anti-immigrant perspective; their cutting of social welfare programs; ethno-nationalist fervor. But his anxiety for his daughter’s future equality was unexpected and he explained it to me as part of the political right’s journey back to a traditional social arrangement with women pregnant in the kitchen, barefoot.

[1] "Zur Erinnerung an die Proklamation der Republik vor 100 Jahren," Tag Des Denkmal

https://tagdesdenkmals.at/de/objekte-2018/steiermark/graz-schauspielhaus-balkon-zum-freiheitsplatz/

20181111: Puntigamer | Dom im Berg

I went out to explore the city. Exploring an area that is already inhabited is essentially getting lost and locating oneself. Seeing things that many people have seen before, but vibrate with novelty to your eyes.

The southeast side of the city of Graz becomes Euro-suburban very fast: houses, some farm plots, automotive-dependent with islands of megastructures, inconsistent sidewalks, fences and driveways. It's quaint in size and aesthetic. It's tidy. It's sparsely populated by structures and I saw just enough people to not notice that it was abandoned.

I visited the Puch Museum, which is essentially a large garage of the myriad of the Puch products–mopeds, trucks, cars, bicycles–jammed into the center of the space, with little narrative consideration of how visitors actually see the works. This was a collector's museum, not a curator's museum. When Hitler annexed Austria, industry such as Puch was his primary target. That may explain the absence of the pedagogic narrative in this garage. Just imagine the third wall sign: "And here is when we made Nazi trucks." Not exactly a heart warmer. I was the only visitor, so maybe I was over-thinking the institution's rationale to obscure their past. The sole attendant occupied himself by spray painting something at the far north end of the garage. The fumes made their way to the middle of the garage around the time I decided to leave.

I stopped by Schaumbad to look at Eva's studio as a possible site for interviewing Steve Weiss or Martin Regelsberger and Romana Ull. The studio was filled with epochs of art projects, research, production and life. It was hard to believe that Eva had been there less than a decade. A large light fixture with the word "over" sat perfectly in the corner. From what I'd gathered about the protest against the Murkraftwerk, "over" continued to bitterly loom over Romana and Martin. The space would do.

I made haste to another art event. The event in the Schlossberg was described to me as an artist who was going to bring together a descendant of the Archduke Ferdinand and the descendant of the Archduke's assassin, Gavrilo Princip, for a handshake. The location was a room in the Dom im Berg, a space that was hollowed out of the hill; it had to served as a bomb shelter during World War II. It was too fitting, too perfect to not attend.

The event began with a trio playing Serbian music followed by other musicians playing a royal Habsburg melody.The stage was set with the Austrian musicians stage left and the Serbian musicians stage right. In the center were two black leather, Scandi-chic couches. Igor F. Petković, the artist, sat in the center. After the music conclude he gave a long, contextualizing speech, of which I could only understand him mentioning the two songs, and made several references to "Kultur." It felt almost like he was giving a benediction for the music. He then invited two interlocutors on stage to discuss Kultur, immigration and how Central Europe is a mixing pot of cultures. By the time the third person had answered a question, it began to feel like a talk show. There was so much talking and lecturing that I wondered how this would be different as an "art event" in the U.S., or even if this was billed as an art event. Was this the performance? What introduction did such a symbolically-loaded gesture need? Austrian art events, I would learn, are usually predicated with a long, verbal introductions.

Part of the event included the ceremonial recognition of winners of the Alfred Fried Photography Award 2018, which had a theme of "What does peace look like?" The presenter, Lois Lammherhuber expounded on the topic of photography and peace at length, before a ceremonial lecturer, spot lit, reading from a clear acrylic podium, announced the winner with pomp. The ceremony went on and on and I was running out of abstract footage to film; I had thought the event may be visually interesting so I had brought my camera, but nothing visually interesting was happening on stage. I was shooting the ceiling lights, the wall, hands of people. Ultimately, I couldn't take it anymore. I had to leave before seeing what I thought would be money shot–the descendants shaking hands.

More interesting than the symbolic act was the intentional production of history-making, as opposed to placemaking, or (thing)making, which may be indicative of the kulturzeitgeist. There is so much talk about "Europe" here, which I'd taken as a juxtaposition or affront to what is "Austrian," given the Chancellor Kurz's politicking. Compounded with Brexit, Hungary, Poland, the perpetual and near concern of Russia, Crimea, and the Ukraine, striving for a critical distance, a point from which this whole mess–in its wholeness and messiness–can be seen, was comforting. As the liberal left–artists–contend against the populist (mostly non-creatives)–the importance of holding onto the production of history increases. The creation or recreation of historical events, the mode of producing history–texts, online archives, photos, video and social media can be a strategy to not only moralize about a historical past, but situate a historical present and predict a historic future. History is written by hands trembling to be shaken by the infirm memory of an Alzheimer future.

20181114: Innere Stadt | Puchstraße

Martin arrived punctually, wearing lederhosen, a black suede sports jacket, fashionable pointed-toed leather shoes, and long, thick socks. I didn’t notice the entire outfit until he was behind the lens; my attention was on his frizzled white beard; each hair seemed to be dislodged, present only by a range of knots that kept it from falling to the floor. His spirit was a brisk as a walk over the hills to a neighbors house for dinner. He exudes positivity; he glowed. Romana arrived shortly after; reserved and concise, she counter-balanced Martin perfectly. I had positioned a light fixture comprised of the letters "over" next to the futon on which they sat.

The Zentraler Speicherkanal (ZSK) along with the powerplant and other secondary constructions are collectively part of what’s referred to as the Murkraftwerk. My operating knowledge of the ZSK was primarily taken from my discussion with Steven Weiss. Martin and Romana were selected by Eva as representatives of the "activist" side of the ZSK story. Steven too had worked with them, and I was cognizant that the project so far was being propelled into a domain of political utility. Whom I was supplied as interlocutors would invariably bend the project into a realm of instrumentality from which I’m characteristically opposed.

The questions that I formulated in advanced were: When did their participation begin? What's the issue for Rettet die Mur? What's the goal of Rettet die Mur? Talk about tiny particulate matter. How did you feel when the hydropower plant was finally pushed through? What are the primary urban ecological issues facing Graz? Does sewage leaking into the Mur bother them? Is conservation or remediation occurring in Graz? What is the relation between industry and environmentalism in Graz? I was prepared but too ambitious.

With these question at hand I simply asked: What was Rettet die Mur trying to save? That is, what is the Mur to them? A river? Water? An ecosystem? A location? An entity frozen in time?

Romana recounted the deal protesters made with the hydropower plant. The power plant would replace 1.5 trees for each felled tree. But there was disagreement between the protesters and the power plant company as to what constituted a tree. The final decision was only trees larger than a certain diameter would be counted and replaced; understandably, the protesters felt cheated. 20,000 trees were cut, but only 6,000 old trees were counted.

The other problem was where the new trees would be planted. In order to filter air particulates and fulfill some of the function of the felled trees, the new trees must be near to where the pollution occurs, or where the polluted air is being inhaled by people. Since the Mur runs through the city, the area where the original trees were was ideal, for want of change: central, accessible and useful. It's expected that the new trees will be planted at the periphery of the city where they would be less instrumental for cleaning air.

The importance of "cleaner" water, i.e. less untreated sewer and storm water entering the Mur was unimportant to them in light of the trade offs. To them, the fact that the Mur had quite high organic matter in the water upstream of Graz didn’t rationalize a program for improving water quality. Paper mills, industry, and sedimentation from other dams meant that the untreated sewage water contributed only 2-3% of the organic load of the water. Nor were they convinced that the European Water Directive encouraged Graz to improve the Mur. On this point, I wondered again what it was that was trying to be saved.

The hydropower plant would also change the run of the river, dam up the water 6 meters. The habitat of the huchen salmon would be impacted, or destroyed. A snake that is near extinction may be quelled. So while the profit of the energy would be private; the destruction would be collective. Because the introduction of a hydropower plant would make the current sewer overflows non-functional as they would be below the raised level of the water, a suspicion of dependency arose: was the hydropower solving a problem of the sewer by partially paying for the Speicherkanal, or was the Speicherkanal necessary to solve the problem caused by the hydropower plant? The total cost of the Speicherkanal was 160 million euro, half of which was paid by the hydropower plant and half was paid by tax dollars. So this logistical order of operations was congruent to the financial suspicion of dependency: were tax payers bailing out a corporation or was a corporation paying for civil infrastructure? 


Martin opposed “end of pipe” solutions for collecting and treating water and believed that the amount of water that was to be collected by the ZSK could be percolated around the city. Historically, this is true for much of the time, but centennial floods, including the 1860 flood that took lives and motivated the covering of the Graz rivers, contests his calculations. Essentially, Martin and Romana thought of rainwater as a resource, not a problem. And it’s hard to argue with his main critique of urban life: Cities operate on linear relations to energy, food, water, and people, taking it all in and spewing it out. In contrast to the cycles with which nature works, which are local, the city itself sounds like a bad citizen, a dated machine or an insatiable digestive tract. “The city is a parasite on the landscape,” Romana told us.

Collectively, the characteristic of the Murkraftwerk gave everyone something to which to be opposed; concomitantly the storage sewer became a target of the activists as well. In a divergent strategy of divide and conquer, the activists multiplied their opponents from one, the hydropower plant, to four: Holding Graz, which was the city-owned private company that manages waste and sewage, Technische Universität Graz, which designed the Speicherkanal, Verbund, the electrical company who will operate the hydropower plant, and the Mayor Siegfried Nagl, who supported the projects.

There were four big demonstration of the opposition to the power plant and the Speicherkanal, in which 2-4,000 people participated. A public surveyed was conducted and revealed that the majority of the signatories were not in favor of the power plant. People protested the tree cutting by climbing the trees, building tree houses and gathering support. The mental image of people in trees reminded me of 1980s protest in USA (was this when and where the expression 'tree hugger' was developed?). But the day after a special election in which the Green Party separated from the reigning party, the Social Democrats, and another party joined them, the trees were cut in a militant manner. The protests were over.

But there were severe legal hurdles that plagued both sides of the project. The water rights of the river exist in a problematic juridical gray zone, having been passed from days of monarchic oversight directly into private hands without a presumption of public good, public use, or public access. They are bought and sold by hydropower companies who can only compensate fishing clubs whose river will be forever changed. The fisherman have no legal standing. Another regulation requires that a hydropower plant make use of the entire breadth of the river, rather than just half of the river. The interface of what’s legal and what’s political meant that Rettet die Mur could not find a law office that would take their case in Graz, so the protesters went all the way to Vienna for legal aid. For the powerplant, the local laws being bent by the Mayor could be corrected by Austrian or EU regulators. The evacuation of the tree protesters was subsequently determined to have been illegal.

Amidst the ecological questions in which both Romana and Martin were experts, and under the banner against which they had fought the project, they returned again and again to the political element: suspected corruption and blatant undermining of democratic processes. Later I learned that Romana was in the midst of a legal battle that could have a toll on her personal finances.

The tree cutting made timber of the public trust. The city’s own future planning had not included a power plant and the plan had been believed by its citizens. The communication of the Murkraftwerk was tardy, and when information was finally released, it was perceived as propagandistic and one-sided. Indeed, even the exhibition and informational space in Holding Graz was opened to the public, my first observation was that there was no mention of anything detrimental to the environment, as if the entire project had existed without serious opposition. The news media – Kleine Zeitung – television and radio is suspected of being an extension of city hall, ruled by money and personal interests.

Although the hydropower plant is, as of 2019, almost finished and expected to open in the spring, and that the Speicherkanal is nearly completed, Romana and Martin do not believe the fight is over. They hope to win in court and force the hydropower plant to pay for the entire storage sewer, and/or get Mayor Nagel pushed out of office. Even such a partial victory would be a smoke signal against future endeavors and a pivot toward the green and blue future that Romana hope to see grow.

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http://ec.europa.eu/environment/water/water-framework/index_en.html

Graz has the Stadtentwicklung-Konzept

https://www.graz.at/cms/ziel/7758015/DE

20181116: Hellweg | European Livingroom

Zihua and I set off at 9 in the morning to pick up supplies. The top of my list was an AC cable to replace the adapter. We first stopped at Hellweg, a domestic hardware store. While there were electronics, I didn't find the cable. I had stopped in several computer stores around the city, including Hartlauer, and home supply stores, like XXX Lutz and Möbelix, and even Libro. No success. All had some amount of techno-trash but none offered the low-level trash I needed. In fact, the tech they had was too sophisticated. We gave up and went to Boesners for art supplies.

In preparation for the Triple V Trip – Vienna, Venice & Vanesa – I picked up a second T Mobile data card for her. What I didn't know was that the network response and speed was functional only in Austria, not Italy, nor Germany, nor Spain. This is very strange since even the US TMobile card has some concurrence in Europe, albeit slower.

In the evening I went to a performance of European Working Title, which was 99% in German and I understood about 0.5% of the dialogue. The visual scenario included an artist who was be creating an artwork using string wrapped around a bookcase and other junk while a woman was soliciting something to/from him. Adjacent was woman dressed as a rabbit sitting at a writing desk. In the middle of the floor was a big blue plastic tarp that was later used for three of the characters to change costume. Two actors drank gallons of water. A man climbed a set of stairs and exposed his anus to both side of the audience, and later that same man interjected with the performance and started to engage the crowd, including asking me if I understood any of the performance. I denied knowing anything, which was 99% true, and he demanded that the entire play be translated into English for me. He then led me around the stage, which had been mostly demolished by performers prior to this segment and said I could do literally anything I wanted to do. It’s amazing how few desires one has when the mind is preoccupied with misdirection.

Later Iris told me that the crying during the performance pertained to someone learning about what happened in a television show and being deeply disturbed by what she had learned. It sounded interesting. Allegedly later performances adjusted to the audience’s reaction and walkouts and toned down some of the aggressiveness and intimidation on behalf of the Slovak, whose anus most spectators could likely identify in a police lineup. That is unfortunate because I saw this as a dramatic, PG-13 version of a Viennese Actionist performance and thought they should have gone in the other direction – even more extreme. I don't think the Actionists even reached the level of necrophilia, network hacking or national debt lending. What I mean to say is that there is room to grow.

20181130: Uni Graz | TU

Editing the footage of the interviews called for some sort of establishing shots to indicate from where these interlocutors anchored their expertise, and the consistency of a documentary element that I was so far constructing. Steven Weiss, a professor at University of Graz, was inadvertently filmed within my room at Priesterseminar, which was located next to the original university of Graz. Perhaps it was even more apt that it the interview was filmed at Priesterseminar, continued the tradition of the university and its staff acting under the influence of the Catholic Church. The establishing shot that I found to frame the segment with Weiss was a rack focus between a university sign on the Uni Graz campus and the building of Natural Sciences.

Günter Gruber worked within the department of water engineering at the Technische Universität Graz. The opposition between these two experts of different departments and different universities is not unusual but important to recall when the dogma of a political righteousness has formed. Even experts disagree.

20181206: San Francisco | London | Zurich | Berlin

I always wanted to get to know Christian Ebert better. During our overlapping time at San Francisco Art Institute and later during his six months marriage to Stephanie, which was terminated like an unwanted child in the second trimester, we crossed paths only long enough to get a sense that he was a great guy, but never enough time to get into the weeds. Stephanie lived in Berlin with her husband and children; instead, I reached out to Christian.

He suggested we meet at Hamburger Bahnhof. At first I thought he was making a joke about the Hauptbahnhof. I arrived two hours early and decided to see the show without him, once, so I wouldn't feel rushed or distracted. In the central Historic Hall was a four projection installation of Agnieszka Polska entitled, "The Demon's Brain." The screens shows footage of a devastated forest, dialogue between two people that are dressed to medieval period, a horse rider and a strange, hand-drawn animated owl, which I presumed was the demon. Between the projections were piles of foam core mattresses for visitors to sit on. The film follows "a young messenger tasked with delivering these letters on horseback. Along the way, the boy loses his horse and he gets lost in the forest. There he has an unexpected encounter with a demon, whose monologue fuses Christian theological ideas with today’s developments concerning resource consumption, environmental destruction, data capital, and artificial intelligence." [1] Thematically I really enjoyed the work, but I found that animated parts to be visually hard to swallow. The live film was UHD and cinematic while the animated interludes felt like moving clip art or cartoons. The white horse sequences, rendered in 1990s CGI style, were interesting. The audio was really great. I watched other visitors try to make sense of how to engage this, and most looked like I felt: lost. As a narrative in which there is something “to get,” and, by extension, a necessity “to follow” what is going on, the work may have been better suited for a sit and watch black box setting, rather than multi-channel, meandering format. But that’s another position in contemporary art.

I saw “How to talk with birds, trees, fish, shells, snakes, bulls and lions,” as well, but didn’t feel very much from it. Topically, I was very interested in:

“The emphasis on “speaking” or “talking” raises questions as to how meaning is created and conveyed, and for whom. The concept of “meaning” in Western science seems especially human, since most semiotic modes of communication presuppose a human mindset. And yet language is just one mode of expression in the planetary semiosis, and like other meaningful acts, it is rooted in the environment and all those dependent on it.” [2]

Visually, the show was boring maybe because it actually fulfilled the vision of the international artspeak statement. Don’t use ‘semiosis’ on a wall text. We get that you have a PhD. Also due to the disparate styles of the participating artists, in part due to the poor quality of the artworks. Nothing even slowed my meander through the space.

Christian punctually arrived and we took a coffee in the cafe. I shared with him my sense of never really having got to know him; he corroborated the feeling. Christian makes hard line, abstract paintings, most recently with geometric, triangle and parallelograms. The arc of the conversation bowed under the pressures we both felt to produce art but were a loss not only on how to make a financial foundation from it but how to make the next step in our careers. Painting world and the contemporary art world. Identity politics v. 2.0 and the rest. Positions. We talked about the illusion of teaching artist being outside of the gig economy within which most other artists exist, and the difference of New York and Berlin. It was a conversation that seemed to be on repeat with artists I knew, regardless of their level of “success,” i.e. exhibition history, gallery representation, number of sales or relationship with institutions. (Collectively, this could have been the conversation that bridged the emerging career to the mid-career. The illusion, I thought, was that the “emerging” is a gerund–the stage is one of a process, presupposing action and participation. Was mid-career also gerund? Perhaps it was just “exist early” and if you’re still alive later, there’s a chance of afterwards.) We all seemed to feel that there was more than what we had; and we all hoped that if we had more it would be fulfilling financially, artistically, professionally and personally. That is, we wanted our art practice to do everything for us, to be gesamlebenwerk.

I met Katharina during Sound Development City. She introduced herself back then as an urban researcher; six years later she was finishing a PhD in Urban Planning and was quick to admit that she’d tired of academia and her thesis topic, which she refused to share with me. In the last six years, I had gravitated toward her specialty, probably because I’d been stuck in cities and, even when traveling away from New York, I ended up in another city. Her general focus was on immigration, which itself was a curious inclusion within the field of urban planning. Rather than strictly thinking about streets, infrastructure and zoning, the integration of the immigrant, the foreigner whose class and economic status is presupposed, into the urban plan suggested a further–literally transnational–extension of the focus of the biopolitical. That is, no longer were governing bodies concerned exclusively with their sovereign subjects but with the livelihood of those outside their sovereignty.

In a classic “urban” tradition, i.e. urbanization in the original form of which Ildefons Cerda conceived, the extension of the urban plan onto the rural can now include the projection of the immigrant, the foreigner, first into the urban fabric, localized into what is traditionally thought of as the “city limits” but also later into the suburb and the rural, ultimately “urbanizing” these areas ethnologically. I doubted that this exact theater of generations was what was feared in the political current of ruralites, who didn’t experience immigration and immigrants in the same way that urbanites did but fear them nonetheless. I expected that a more simplistic fear was at work, especially from a perspective of juxtaposition between where it was that people were coming. Which sociopolitical systems each country had and how immigration was seen to interface with it. i.e. Europeans that opposed immigration often did so on the grounds that the immigrants were believed to “exploit” existing social welfare systems, which suggested these systems were both definite and required exchange by paying into them before taking out of them.

“The American urban experience, of immigrants reviving aging inner-cities, sharply contrasts with that of Europe, where immigrants often cluster in large cities but remain marginalized economically and socially, imposing many costs and becoming seen as a long-term drag on growth and vitality.” [3]

These systems don’t exist in the same manner in the U.S., though some do and where they do, one could hear similar complaints of the exploitation of these systems. While in the U.S. the primary retort to immigrants was that they “stole jobs,” which suggested these Americans believed they had a right to access jobs, first or in perpetuity. What should have been noted was both of these systems–social benefits and jobs–were resources that may have been mitigated in the urban fabric, but not necessarily. While the vast majority of jobs or productivity occurred in cities and was from there leveraged for social benefits, many jobs still existed outside of the city. Increasingly the jobs were becoming virtual. How immigration to cities, which “it is safe to conclude that without a massive inflow of non-Americans, the biggest and most economically-vibrant American cities – New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Atlanta, Houston – would surely have stagnated or worse,” will resolve in an age of (potential) placelessness was yet to be seen, particularly when the jobs that required a person to be present (the immigrant?) were replaced by systems of automation. [4] Would we see Cyber Flight, a new version of White Flight, when the physical, cultural and economic infrastructure of cities was outpaced by the digital? I wondered how long people would continue to prefer NYC to LA, after a subway ride was no longer necessary, when remote work was the norm or when local taxation didn’t make sense, when the culture we prefered was online rather than in a museum or on the street. Was this happening already?

I met Jana at a fusion Vietnamese restaurant. It was fitting because I recalled that her father was a diplomat in Southeast Asia and had told me in 2012, also during Sound Development City, that the Vietnamese, i.e. Annam, were essentially Chinese fisherman who moved south down the coast. He was referring to the Lê Dynasty, based in Hà Nội. It made an impression on me, and by 2018, with some tiếng việt lịc sử I realized how contentious what he said really wa. Was referring to the Tang and successive dynasties, which conquered the Cham, or to the North which made a Communist state over the south.

Sound Development City was a three-part series of residencies of five days long, each part in a different city: Berlin, London and Zurich. 13 international artists met and explored each city through the framework of sound. At the time, my proposal had been to write a series of critical essays about cities; I had included my essay on the High Line and Ghost Capital as work samples.

The last time I met Jana she was self-identified as working in theater. Like Katharina, she expressed a sense of inferiority to the sound artists of Sound Development City. 2012 slightly predated a trend of institutions taking an interest in sound art; the trend has for the most part subsided, unfortunately, since I personally though it was more interesting in 2018 than before because sound was more widely in the use of sound in cinema (Hans Zimmer’s Blade Runner 2049), which may have been the last reason to see movies in the cinema, since an increasing number of people could afford inexpensive projectors for their home but few had sophisticated sound systems. Jana was writing scripts for television and web series. In 2012 she was just beginning her relationship with a Colombian; today she could appreciate the cultural differences in holidays and familiar relationships between Germans and Colombians. We agreed that the manner in which Latin families stay close was a technology in and of itself.

It was raining, cold and wet. Walking through the district I saw a synagogue with an armed guard, barricaded. It reminded me of the shooting in Pittsburg, the barricade around the Chabad Center for Jewish Discovery on 19th St. In 2010 I picked up a free book there, “Terrorism and Hostage Negotiations.” [5] Coincidences are a matter of time.

---

[1] "Agnieszka Polska: The Demon’s Brain," Hamburger Bahnhof: Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin, Germany, 27 September 2018 to 3 March 2019
https://www.smb.museum/en/museums-institutions/hamburger-bahnhof/exhibitions/detail/agnieszka-polska-the-demons-brain.html
[2] “How to talk with birds, trees, fish, shells, snakes, bulls and lions,” Hamburger Bahnhof: Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin, Germany 16 November 2018 to 12 May 2019
https://www.smb.museum/en/museums-institutions/hamburger-bahnhof/exhibitions/detail/how-to-talk-with-birds-trees-fish-shells-snakes-bulls-and-lions.html
[3] “Immigrants as urban saviors: When Immigrants Revive a City and When They Don’t - Lessons from the United States,” G. Pascal Zachary, Council of Europe, 2006
https://rm.coe.int/16804925d6
[4] Ibid.
[5] “Terrorism and Hostage Negotiations,” Abraham Miller, Westview Press, 1983.
https://www.amazon.com/Terrorism-Negotiations-Westview-National-International/dp/0891588566

20181209: Separating | Separated

While editing the Empire Kanal, I was reminded of Steven Weiss’s comment of how most European countries were shrinking in population, except Austria. Due to since it's wealth immigration had continued to drive its the population growth. But across Europe a reaction to this form of growth had taken hold in populist movements Hungary, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the UK, Austria and even in Spain. I was confused by the reaction and the portrayal of the each political argument in the media. Feeding on the debate, a division had been struck between opposing views. The trend was to label one party ‘far-right’ or ‘far-left.’ But mostly I was confused about each relationship to either political pole to labor.

During the 20th Century, the poles of right and left most coherently followed a relationship to labor with business owners to the right, and laborers to the left. In the 21st Century these two poles are complicated by a vigorous polarity of identity politics. In the US, the complication arose from the conservative party today being the larger supporters to end slavery, Radical Republicans introduced the 1866 civil rights bill, and predominantly supported the 1950s and 1960s civil rights acts. [1] The popular rebuttal to this confusing fact was that the motivation to end slavery was not an ethical decision, but intended to subordinate the power of slave states, which were expanding westward, motivated by the comparative fertility of the soil. That is, Lincoln and the Republicans were motivated by a relationship to labor.

The confusion continues in the history of labor unions and the socialist left. In the 19th and early 20th Century, labor unions were notoriously racist either by excluding blacks all together through constitutions or by-laws, or through the predominately white leadership. [2] [3] Not only were labor unions discriminatory against blacks but their growth during times of increased low-wage work supplied by immigrants equated to ethnic conflict.[4] It’s not hard to believe that many blacks were sympathetic to the Right to Work movements that sought to undermine the exclusivity of jobs to union contractors, although by the mid 20th Century, Martin Luther King Jr. was supporting union protesters.[5] [6] The current protest in populist movements seems vaguely familiar, but with a twist.

Democracy Now and the Financial Times, surrogates for the left and center of American politics respectively, portrayed the political party of Vox, from Andalucia, as “far-right.” The FT subtitle read “Extreme right energised by opposition to Catalan separatism and illegal immigration,” on their December post. [7] RT’s headline read “Right-wing ‘Reconquista?’ Anti-immigrant party enters parliament in Spain’s most populous region.” [8] Neither source actually engaged anyone from Vox, so I was curious to hear a spokesman of Vox denounce the label. [9] What is it meant by “far-right”?

The polarity of right and left in 2018 doesn’t follow the historic cogent divide based on a relationship to labor. “Far-right” and “far-left” became catch-all terms that described the subscription to or against the prioritization of an individual in their national state on economic terms but also how labor interfaced with social identities. The problem was exacerbated by the fact that a political platform or party couldn’t perfectly separate labor from identity. The result was first generation immigrants supporting Brexit, blacks who voted for Trump or Muslims who voted for Le Pen. [10] In the minds of their opposition, these individuals were gullible, confused, or traitors to their race. But in the race of identity politics, money always finishes first.

What’s more confusing is that even opposing poles may arrive to the same conclusion, in one or more of their sub-priorities, based on the success of another sub-priority. For example, Vox is, in part, a reaction to the Catalan independence events of 2017. Three of their four manifesto points reference a strong central state and Spain nation.[11] (A king, a dragon, a knight in shining armor?) But on the spectrum of polarity, if Vox was the far-right, then the Català independent movement was far-left? The autonomous region advocates immigration, the human rights of gender and sexual freedom, but curiously the strongest international supporters of the secession were Alex Jones, the Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, and Vladimir Putin. [12][13][14] Russian meddling aside, from a simpleton perspective: why would right-winger a left-wing movement? This isn’t to say that the Catalan movement is necessarily right-wing. The elements ethnic preservation of language and culture that justified secession for residents of Cataluña, mirrored the claims for ethnic preservation of “Western culture” in France, Germany and Austria, but also the ethnic element that made Vox far-right. Collectively, these were identity politics concerns and resulted in the creation walls and a march toward separation.

Our attraction to one of the ideals of a political pole, even by the slightest sway, we were supposed to conclude in a complete opposition to all of the ideals of the opposite end of the spectrum. The references were to point to the most egregious examples of politics in the 20th Century. But far-right and far-left were both simplification of belief sets. This was the perversion of the logical formula, with contradiction, all else follows. A series of sub-priorities arise from this subscription: pro- or anti-immigration; pro- or anti-ethnic diversity; pro- or anti-social roles; pro- or anti-gender roles; pro- or anti-anti-social welfare systems. But what’s curious is that, at least some these sub-priorities are read through the lens of labor, yet completely flip the political pole in terms of the 20th Century orientation. The segment of nationalism that is anti-immigration claim that they are motivated by national right to labor and, I suppose, by extension, labor rights. Those on the left would suggest that the real motivation of nationalists opposing immigration is due to racial discrimination against the brown and black people immigrating. The support for labor on the left is through unionization or strong labor laws, yet Trump, a nationalist, was pro-union.

The relation to labor is, more profoundly, a relationship to production, where and how goods are produced. But again the distinction falls short. How would right-wing nationalists aim to preserve jobs for locals or how would left-wing activists garner support for unions are both antiquated models that percolate differently in a world of trade. In some countries nationalism equated to libertarian solution while other countries nationalism looked to centralized regulation. But then in a global, international context the reverse became true. Nationalists stood for de-regulation. Trump stood against free trade, having pulled out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership. This was a flip-flop position of Clinton, and a partnership supported by Obama. Later Trump flip-flopped in responding to the OBOR with trade competition, “‘The new economic vision is obviously targeting China and the ‘Belt and Road Initiative’, and will further complicate US-China relations,’ said Pang Zhongying, a Beijing-based international affairs analyst.”[15]

Hungary’s nationalist Prime Minister strongly supported the One Belt project stating, “Hungary has always been a supporter of the most possibly free and fair global trade network and we have always been supporters of the Eurasian cooperation. That is why we are absolutely interested in the success of the One Belt One Road Initiative and that is why we were the first European country to sign the bilateral cooperation agreement about its implementation.“[16] Does Eurasia include Syria, and would cooperation include housing refugees? Or was Orban a neo-liberal who believed in the movement of material goods and money but not people?

Under the belief to have a more reciprocated trade relationship than the decades of “free trade,” Madrid’s socialist President, Sanchez, also signed onto the One Belt Initiative.[17]

I heard a knock at the door and met Kseniya who had been working all day and had cabin fever. It was Sunday and the only establishment that was open was UP 25, a cocktail bar that was completely empty except for a couple who were holding anchor at the bar. We sat in the non-smoking section. A dart board and a disco-ball created the illusion of activity. I ordered a White Russian, believing it fitting of the anecdotes of Ukraine that Kseniya was recounting. She ordered the same. They were perfectly mixed, shaken, not stirred. A froth on top that permeated the blend. I drank mine before it separated.

---

[1] How Republicans went from the party of Lincoln to the party of Trump,” Andrew Prokop, Vox, November 10, 2016https://www.vox.com/2016/7/20/12148750/republican-party-trump-lincoln

[2] “Black Workers & the Unions,” Ray Marshall, Dissent Magazine, Winter 1972.
https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/black-workers-the-unions

[3] “Up from Exclusion: Black and White Workers, Race and the State of Labor History,” Eric Arnesen, Reviews in American History, Volume 26, No. 1, March 1998.
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/28968/summary

[4] “Labor Unrest, Immigration, and Ethnic Conflict in Urban America, 1880-1914,” Susan Olzak, American Journal of Sociology, Volume 94, No. 6, 1989.
https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/229156

[5] “Martin Luther King Jr. Championed Civil Rights and Labor Unions,” Berry Craig, America’s Unions, April 2, 2018
https://aflcio.org/2018/4/2/martin-luther-king-jr-championed-civil-rights-and-unions

[6] Keith Lumsden and Craig Petersen posit that Right to Work laws had little to no effect on unionization in the United States.

“The Effect of Right-to-Work Laws on Unionization in the United States,” Journal of Political Economy 83, no. 6, 1975. Pp. 1237-1248
https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/260392?journalCode=jpe

[7] “Extreme right energised by opposition to Catalan separatism and illegal immigration,” Ian Mount, Financial Times, December 3, 2018
https://www.ft.com/content/9353854a-f681-11e8-8b7c-6fa24bd5409c

[8] “Right-wing ‘Reconquista’? Anti-immigrant party enters parliament in Spain’s most populous region,” RT News, December 4, 2018
https://www.rt.com/news/445505-spain-anti-immgrant-vox-andalusia/

[9] “Could the rise of Vox bring fascism back to Spain?” Ivan Espinosa de los Monteros, TRT News, December 7, 2018
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=feLlL0GGCf8

[10] “Marine Le Pen’s surprise supporters,” David Patrikarakos, Politico, January 23, 2017 https://www.politico.eu/article/marine-le-pen-surprise-muslim-islam-supporters-national-front-banlieues/

[11] “Nuestro Manifesto,” Vox, Spain, 2018.
https://www.voxespana.es/manifiesto-fundacional-vox

[12] “Breaking: Catalan Parliament Declares Independence from Spain,” Alex Jones, InfoWars, October 27, 2017.
https://www.infowars.com/breaking-catalan-parliament-declares-independence-from-spain/

[13] “Hungary to ‘respect’ will of people in Catalonia vote,” Jacopo Barigazzi, Politico, September 18, 2017.
https://www.politico.eu/article/hungary-to-respect-will-of-people-in-catalonia-vote/

[14] “Putin Backs Spanish Integrity Amid Russian Meddling Claims in Catalonia,” Sputnik News, May 26, 2018
https://sputniknews.com/russia/201805261064832813-putin-spain-catalonia-vote-claims-meddling/

[15] “US competes with China’s ‘Belt and Road Initiative’ with US$113 million Asian investment programme,” Shi Jiangtao, Owen Churchill, South China Morning Post, July 30, 2018
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/economy/article/2157381/us-competes-chinas-belt-and-road-initiative-new-asian-investment

[16] “Speech of Viktor Orbán at the first China International Import Expo (CIIE),” Cabinet of the Office of the Prime Minister, Hungary, November 7, 2018.
http://www.kormany.hu/en/the-prime-minister/the-prime-minister-s-speeches/speech-of-viktor-orban-at-the-first-china-international-import-expo-ciie

[17] “China, Spain pledge 'more balanced' trade ties,” France 24, November 28, 2018.
https://www.france24.com/en/20181128-china-spain-pledge-more-balanced-trade-ties