Responses to the cloud
1
01 The Examined Sky Eleanor Zeichner
04 Unbalanced Formula(tions) Joel Spring
07 Tear Gas and Torture in Youth Prisons – State Violence Against Aboriginal Children Thalia Anthony
10 They Called It The Bush Stella Rosa McDonald
13 We All Together Jason De Santolo
16 Ascension in a Cloud of Smoke Nikki Lam
19 Below and Above Tom Melick
22 ‘More Powerful Than Any Bomb’: Investigative Journalism During Conflict Saba Bebawi
25 When is a Pandemic Like a Palestinian? Micaela Sahhar The Examined Sky ELEANOR ZEICHNER
The cloud is evasive. Ephemeral and ever Field causality is a useful frame for shifting, the cloud can disperse as quickly describing forms of violence that as it gathers. The captured cloud must are not ruptural, but rather slow and be proven through data: classification, continuous, without clear beginnings or motion tracking, meteorological survey, ends-those which might be considered photography. By the time it can be analysed, to constitute an endless war defined its trace may be invisible. In this way, the by the permanent clash of multiple cloud can become weaponised when it is forces.”2 not witnessed. As a subject, clouds exemplify the blurred For Forensic Architecture, whose boundaries of field causality, shifting the investigative model is predicated on the relationship between data points from linear notion that every contact leaves a trace, to relational. clouds challenge the forensic methods The investigations in Cloud Studies of capture and analysis. They test the span twelve years, four continents and limits of proof, described by the agency’s varied atmospheres in between. Their field founder Eyal Weizman as the threshold of causalities reveal the pervasiveness of state detectability: things that hover between violence, the porousness of global borders 1 being identifiable and not. and the corruptibility of the air. In Sydney, The grain of an analogue photograph where our air has been compromised since or the pixel of a digital image at a certain the beginning of the last bushfire season scale renders the exact object of interest (and, arguably, before that), toxic clouds – a person or a feature of a building – have already reshaped how we move indistinguishable from its surrounds, through public spaces. concealing them within the image. As clouds The responses collected in this disperse into the atmosphere, their trace publication constitute a new cloud atlas, may only be found in poisoned crops, in bringing localised perspectives and the trauma of survivors and or in the slow distinct contexts to Forensic Architecture’s decline of eco-systems. investigations. Just as Forensic Architecture In Forensis: The Architecture of Public draw on the cross-disciplinary tools of Truth, Weizman defines the concept of field their colleagues, the writers chosen for this causality to describe the multiple factors volume come from varied disciplines and that affect a site of investigation; through them new lines of enquiry emerge.
1 For all their ephemerality, clouds can be phosphorus in urban areas, but when news the most stable object on the horizon. In footage and photographs of the distinctive the 2017 investigation The Seizure of the tentacled clouds emerged in the media, Iuventa, Forensic Architecture used the the military claimed that its use was as position of cloud formations to dispute an a ‘smokescreen’ for troop movement. accusation by the Italian judiciary that the They discontinued its use following court NGO-operated ship Iuventa was colluding proceedings, with newspapers citing a with people smugglers. Analysing video shot general’s statement that, “white phosphorus during a mission to rescue migrants in the doesn’t photograph well”. Mediterranean, Forensic Architecture used In urban environments, the deployment the position of the clouds as the most fixed of chemical weapons creates two clouds object in a visual field without terrestrial – the literal cloud which can be measured reference points. Using motion tracking and experienced, and a cloud of images technology, they created a hemispheric and documentation created by the people radar image and placed the events on a targeted. In their 2014 investigation The verifiable chronology. Bombing of Rafah, Forensic Architecture Clouds evoke the limits of human collected hundreds of images and videos knowledge, as Tom Melick reminds us uploaded by civilians to social media in order in this publication, explaining their use to compare the shapes of smoke plumes. in the history of painting as expressions This allowed them to create a 3D model of “fiction whirling into fact, moods of the event, locating the exact munitions externalised, where weather and myth meet, used in the attack. Amnesty International and messages of all kind are sought, later identified this attack as a war crime. conjured, ignored and lost”. The investigations Triple-Chaser (2019) But clouds can conceal as much as they and Model Zoo (2020) used a bank of illuminate. In his essay in this publication, images scraped from social media to create Joel Spring considers the smoke from photorealistic environments in which burning lime kilns in colonial era Sydney; machine learning classifiers were trained to situating the built environment of Sydney track the use of tear gas against civilians: as a testament to the erasure of Indigenous synthetic images to trace synthetic clouds. sovereignty. The first cement rendered by Field causality blurs the boundaries colonisers was made from crushed and between injustices, highlighting existing burned middens of oyster shells on the site inequities as new ones emerge. In her essay where the Sydney Opera House now stands. in this publication, Thalia Anthony notes the The colonisers called this place Limeburners well-documented use of tear gas against Point, overwriting the Gadigal place name children in youth detention in Australia, Tubowgule – meaning ‘where the knowledge the vast majority of which are Indigenous. waters meet’.3 Further, the relational nature of field And clouds can herald a message or causality, involving “the spatial arrangement derail its intent. In the 2012 investigation of simultaneous sites, actions, and causes,”4 The Use of White Phosphorus in Urban allows for cross-border solidarity. “A Environments, Forensic Architecture were pandemic offers us some insight into life commissioned by the group Yesh-Gvul to on Gaza time,” states Micaela Sahhar demonstrate how the Israeli military’s in her essay – one calamity providing use of white phosphorus in Gaza was a new lens on another in different time indiscriminate in its deployment in civilian signatures and hemispheres. In his text, areas. Israel denied the use of white Jason de Santolo finds fortitude and lines
CLOUD STUDIES 2 of shared resistance between the Mapuche — Endnotes in Forensic Architecture’s investigation 1. Weizman, E. Forensic Architecture: Violence at the Oil and Gas Pollution in Vaca Muerta and Threshold of Detectability, Brooklyn, NY: Zone Books, 2017, p.20. Gudanji, Yanyuwa, Garrwa and Mara Elders 2. Weizman, E, ‘Introduction – Forensis’ in Franke, A, & protesting against the McArthur River Mine Weizman, E, Forensis: the Architecture of Public Truth, in the Northern Territory. Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2014, p. 27. 3. No author, Tubowgule, Sydney Opera House website. In their granular specificity – down to the https://www.sydneyoperahouse.com/our-story/sydney- scale of pixels and microseconds – Forensic opera-house-history/tubowgule.html 4. Weizman, E, ‘Introduction – Forensis’, p.27. Architecture’s investigative practices reveal our larger conflicts, spanning hemispheres and cultures. The cloud stands in for the whole, a synecdoche of violence on a grand scale. Together, the investigations in Cloud Studies demonstrate that the nebulous quality of clouds – veiled and shifting – is fitting for the multi-causal violence of our moment. The cloud evidences the past and is a portent of things to come.
Eleanor Zeichner is Assistant Curator, UTS Gallery & Art Collection.
3 THE EXAMINED SKY Unbalanced Formula(tions) JOEL SPRING
“There is no immediate ontological division between construction and destruction, we’re speaking about the political plastic as a category, includes both constructions and destruction. It is really the way in which political forces slow into form… It is simply the reorganisation of matter across the surface.” Eyal Weizman1
The history of architecture in so-called Cement mortar is used in the Australia, or at least a part of this history construction of masonry structures, in the south eastern coast, is a history of including the composition of the bricks cement, or more specifically CaO. themselves in some cases. It is also the CaO, also known as lime or ‘quick lime’, binding agent in concrete, which is the is the result of a process of simple lime most ubiquitous building material in the burning of limestone or other calcium rich world today. substances such as shell and coral. When In the context of the place we now know put under high heat, compounds made of as Sydney, this cycle operates at another calcium carbonate (CaCO3) break down into scale, when we think specifically about calcium oxide (CaO) and carbon dioxide where the lime came from and where it went. (CO2) that rises into the air as clouds of We all understand that people lived (and smoke, leaving behind ashy powder lime. prospered) here before the arrival of the first CaO when mixed with water forms calcium fleet and the formation of the towns and hydroxide, or hydrated lime Ca(OH)2 which cities we now inhabit. We all in composite with sand creates mortar. As understand that these peoples had their mortar dries it reforms into calcium oxide lands, livelihoods and even lives, stolen (CaO) absorbing carbon dioxide from the air -wrongfully and unlawfully as agreed to form calcium carbonate (CaCO3) returning by the Australian High Court in Mabo to a solid state and completing the cycle. v Queensland in 1992. When you walk
CLOUD STUDIES 4 through the city what do you see? How extractive practice as an exhumation. That is that perspective different to that of an the colonists described these structures as Indigenous Australian’s view of the same ‘kitchen middens’ or ‘discarded refuse’5 , urban landscape? This is a subjectivity reveals the apparent fungibility the colony continually marked as out of place, deviant afforded the ‘colonial other’ through or inauthentic in our cities.2 classification and naming. The British colonists invading Botany ‘we (white geology) recognise geologic Bay in 1788 brought minimal to no building material practices (oil and mineral 3 materials, anticipating limestone to be extraction) as explicitly tied up in the readily available along with other mineral realm of the political, the declared resources. In the meantime, manicured innocence of acts of description and forests along the coastline were felled for their historical inscriptions on bodies timber structures and the Sydney Cove and geographies are left unexamined.’6 landscape was denuded of useful timber. The reading of features in this landscape The settlers built improvised slab huts and by settlers as matter and material lead to early masonry structures but, being bereft this exploitation and destruction of vast of lime mortar, they did not stand up to the networks of middens and manicured forest. climatic and ecological tests of these storied Lime heap burning was materially intensive, landscapes. given the high amounts of fuel necessary Despite this, colonial settlement to burn in the open. But every builder in old persisted and through these insurgent Sydney town obtained building lime from moves the colonists set upon the the region’s approximately 200 shell lime bountiful, though unrefined, stores of kilns.7 calcium carbonate (CaCO3) that lined the Contemporaneous to these processes coasts and estuaries of so-called Sydney. undertaken by settler invaders on this These were the massive shell structures, country, the discipline of geology - which colloquially known as middens, although precedes palaeontology and anthropology to describe them as such limits the scope as a distinct academic discipline - was of their true intent. Quandamooka artist undergoing a shift. Geology moved from Megan Cope references the stories of a practice for determining localised strata middens on her country in her 2019 work for commercial purposes of extraction to a titled RE FORMATION, describes them temporal practice for determining the status as ‘monumental form(s) in the landscape, of bodies in time and theories of the earth.8 a 22,000 year old shell pile as high as a The lineages and limitations of geological building.’4 These shell structures contained thought are an epistemological base by within them complex systems of that which racial difference is consolidated signified climatic and temporal information in this country. I mean this both in the about a specific place and given their historical context of settler colonialism sustained presence in the landscape and in our contemporary articulations of represent sites of cultural significance the erasure of Indigenous cultures and to Indigenous people such as ceremonial narratives. and burial sites. This redefines the colonial
5 UNBALANCED FORMULA(TIONS) We can begin to picture this moment, — Endnotes not only as a scenario of apocalyptic 1. Weizman, E. 2017. “Forensic investigations of Designed violence against those peoples whose Destructions”. The Funambulist podcast. Podcast audio. https://thefunambulist.net/podcast/eyal-weizman- languages, cultures and meanings predate forensic-investigations-designed-destructions-gaza and endure colonial settlement. But also, 2. Porter, L. 2018. “From an Urban Country to Urban Country: this was the moment in which the structure Confronting the Cult of Denial in Australian Cities.” Australian Geographer. of one world was literally transformed into 3. Myers, P. (2000). The third city: Sydney’s original another. Picture Sydney Cove awash in monuments and a possible new metropolis. Architecture Australia, 89(1), 80–85. clouds of smoke as a multigenerational 4. Cope, M. (2020). Ground 1/3 Stone. Canvas Podcast. network of sites that carried cultural, Podcast audio. https://omny.fm/shows/canvas/ground-1- 3-stone geographic and climatic meanings built 5. Capon, J. (1988). God is in the Details. MA thesis in through millennia, were burned. Historical Archeology. The foundational actions of settler- 6. Yusoff, K. (2018). A billion black Anthropocenes or none. 7. Myers, P. (2000). The third city: Sydney’s original colonialism was conditional upon the monuments and a possible new metropolis. Architecture elimination of indigenous practices.9 Australia, 89(1), 80–85. 8. Yusoff, K. (2018). A billion black Anthropocenes or none. These smoke clouds contain more than 9. Wolfe, P. 2006. “Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of their chemical composition. The limits of the Native.” Journal of Genocide Research 8 (4): 387–409. what is possible to see, know and speak have continued to transform through 234 years. To reflect on the sheer scale of what is lost, the silence created in its absence.
Joel Spring is a Wiradjuri Masters of Architecture student and interdisciplinary artist currently focussing on the contested narratives of Sydney’s and so called Australia’s urban cultures and indigenous history in the face of ongoing colonisation.
CLOUD STUDIES 6 I would like to honour First Nations peoples across Australia and recognise that this always has been and always will be First Nations land; that sovereignty was never ceded; and that colonisation and resistance continue today. First Nations readers are advised that the following text contains the names of people who have passed, and involves violent incidents that may trigger trauma.
Tear Gas and Torture in Youth Prisons – State Violence Against Aboriginal Children THALIA ANTHONY
Tear gas has been repeatedly deployed to Detention of Children in the NT (2016-17). put down dissent by Aboriginal children The Royal Commission received extensive in Northern Territory (NT) youth prisons. evidence on the use of tear gas in 2014 The racist criminal justice stance in the NT and its adverse and ongoing effects for means that almost all children locked up are the Aboriginal children who were exposed, Aboriginal. 1 Aboriginal children’s dissent including blindness and respiratory illness. in detention stems from an oppressive Without any redress or remorse from the NT environment in which they are subjected to Government for this harm, the Aboriginal prolonged segregation, physical violence, children brought a civil claim off their own degrading treatment, excessive use of backs seeking damages. In 2020, the High restraints, hooding, forcible strip searching, Court of Australia ruled that the use of tear racist remarks and run-down facilities in gas in youth detention is unlawful in the what were previously adult prisons. Rather case of Binsaris & Ors v Northern Territory than decarcerate Aboriginal children2 or fix [2020] HCA 22. these conditions, the NT Government has The events leading up to the deployment backed the NT Police Territory Response of tear gas in 2014 involved the indefinite Group’s use of tear gas. On numerous segregation of a 14-year-old boy, known occasions, the police and the government by the pseudonym AD. The segregation has justified tear gassing children at Don unit at Don Dale is called the Behavioural Dale Youth Detention Centre in Darwin on Management Unit (BMU). It comprises the grounds that the children present a risk decrepit cells which made children feel like to staff and property. ‘a caged animal’.3 Young people conveyed to The use of tear gas featured on the the Royal Commission that being isolated in national broadcast of conditions in Don high-security cells for several weeks made Dale on ‘Australia’s Shame’, a Four Corners them feel like a ‘dog’ or a ‘rabbit in a cage’.4 program in July, 2016. It was also examined In 2000, 15-year-old Johnno Wurrambarrba and condemned by the consequent Royal died in an isolation cell in Don Dale. Commission into the Protection and
7 Indefinite detention in BMU triggered locked in his cell at the time of the gassing, trauma and depression among children. said he felt like he ‘was going to die’.11 One child stayed in solitary confinement After the gassing, the six Aboriginal for 39 days. AD was there for 17 days with children were ‘decontaminated’ with a no sunlight, exercise or human contact. He fire hose, although their clothes were continually asked when he would be let out. not replaced for several days. They were At no time was he told why he was placed hooded and shackled on their wrists there, on what grounds he would be allowed and ankles and forcibly marshalled (‘like to leave, or when he could leave. The only chickens’) to vans that transferred them way for children to contact the guards was to the maximum-security unit of the adult via a buzzer, which often went unanswered. prison.12 When asked why they were being Children would be left screaming for a glass shackled, a guard told them to ‘shut the of water, to use the bathroom, to receive fuck up’.13 For AB, the gassing resulted in help, or simply for human contact. ongoing health problems and self-harm. He After seventeen days in isolation, AD subsequently jumped off a roof because he decided that his survival depended on was ‘angry at Ken Middlebrook [Corrections escaping. This incident, on the night of Commissioner] about the tear gassing’ and 21 August 2014, set in motion a series of he ‘felt like no one was listening to me’.14 He events that would lead to the tear gassing of told the Royal Commission that being tear the Don Dale BMU. When AD attempted to gassed ‘was the worst thing that happened’ escape, he discovered, to his surprise, that and he still feels ‘really betrayed and let his cell door was unlocked. Nonetheless, the down by it’.15 riot squad was mobilised. Facing this force, The Royal Commission found that tear AD tried to de-escalate matters by asking gas was used ‘in circumstances where the guards to ‘talk it out’. He declared, ‘I give there were no guidelines, legislative or up’. The reply by a guard was that it was ‘too policy safeguards’.16 Recommendation 13.3 late’ and he would be pulverised.5 of the Royal Commission urged the NT Armed officers and the riot squad Government to prohibit the use of tear gas proceeded to fire CS tear gas, a prohibited in youth detention. The final report directed agent under the International Convention the government to address the underlying on Chemical Weapons, throughout the inhumane conditions that spurred the segregation unit.6 The gassing affected all unrest, and cited a youth detention review of the six children in the BMU. One of the that was conducted in the month following Aboriginal children, AB, who was playing the tear gassing: cards at the time, recalled that the guards It should be obvious to anyone that threw something like a ‘bomb’ into the if you treat youths like animals by 7 isolation unit that ‘exploded’. Despite not communicating, threatening, AB’s running to the other side of the cell belittling them, withholding food and and covering himself with the sheet and other entitlements they will react in an 8 mattress, he was ‘affected immediately’. aggressive way. Most of these incidents As with the others, AB felt his eyes and were probably entirely preventable with throat burning, found it hard to breathe, and the use of appropriate communication 9 developed a crushing headache. AB said and open interaction with the that the boys ‘started shaking each other’s detainees.17 hands and saying our goodbyes’.10 Dylan Voller, another Aboriginal child who was
CLOUD STUDIES 8 However, in November 2018 – on the – Endnotes one-year anniversary of the Royal 1. Virtually 100 per cent of children in Northern Territory Commission’s Final Report – tear gas was youth detention are Aboriginal and the perpetrators of the violence are almost all white males. Lorena Allam again deployed on Aboriginal children in (2019) ‘“System is Broken”: all children in NT detention are detention. It followed a protest against the Aboriginal, officials say’ The Guardian, 31 May - https:// inhumane conditions in detention that had www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/may/31/ system-is-broken-all-children-in-nt-detention-are- not substantively changed since the Four aboriginal-officials-say Corners program or the Royal Commission’s 2. Allam (2019) ‘“System is Broken”: all children in NT detention are Aboriginal, officials say’ The Guardian, 31 Final Report. Dylan Voller, who had since May been released from Don Dale, explained that 3. M. Mitchell, ‘Public Hearing Transcript’, Royal Commission 18 into the Protection and Detention of Children in the this was a “cry for help”. The NT Police Northern Territory: Transcripts, 11 October 2016,
9 TEAR GAS AND TORTURE IN YOUTH PRISONS They Called It the Bush STELLA ROSA MCDONALD
A DC-10 drops fire retardant on Mount Gillamatong, Braidwood. Photo: Luke McKee.
Braidwood is located on a high plateau on He says landscape, but admits that when he the eastern side of the Great Dividing Range was growing up, they didn’t call it that; they in NSW. It’s cold, and out on the plateau called it the bush. overcast skies break open to reveal deep Braidwood and its outlying villages were flat plains coloured by granite boulders. In built on the land of the Walbanga people of 1896, an observer commented that market the Yuin Nation. But we weren’t told that gardens, established by Chinese migrants growing up. We were told the place came during the gold rush years, were the ‘only about during the Gold Rush, when miners pleasant colouring in the whole landscape’.1 came and carved the land for fortune. We Photographs from 1890 show Braidwood were told it was old, but they didn’t get the as it is today - in 2006 the town and its numbers right. Not by a long shot. surrounds were theoretically fixed in time by We weren’t told what the place was called a heritage listing. The main street is wide, before the convicts, miners, squatters, nearly 40 metres, with 3-metre footpaths administrators, sheep and cattle farmers, on each side; a colonial facsimile printed on artists and writers arrived. We were left to the land by town planners who had served wonder at the quiet groves of eucalypts and in India and reimagined its wide avenues for the dark silhouettes of the Great Dividing the streets of NSW.2 and Budawang Ranges rising at dusk, like My family moved to the area in 1980. My hands against a lamp light. These things, father, who’d grown up as a Presbyterian and the silences, told us someone had minister’s son in Bourke and Sydney, wanted known this place before. to be back in the landscape.
CLOUD STUDIES 10 The first fire started in Tallaganda radio coverage at all. In Braidwood, the National Park from a suspected lightning community FM radio station—The Barbed strike on Tuesday, November 26, 2019. It Wireless—had only just expanded its travelled east and burnt through 40,000 transmission range when the North Black hectares of National Park and State forest Range Fire threatened the town.8 before it reached the first house, then our The radio was the only channel fast place and then forked its tongue across enough to keep up with the pace of the land and property to jump the Shoalhaven fires. People had it on 24 hours a day. At and spread to within a few kilometres of the Nomchong Electrics on the main street, town. Our place was saved by a friend from portable battery-powered radios sold out. the other side of town who called in a fire The fires became hidden in a veil of smoke truck. The so-called North Black Range Fire and for many people the radio was their only burnt for 63 days.3 way of confirming where exactly it was. That same day, another fire began to Clouds are always double; seen from come east from the coast. It started as the outside they are measurable objects, seen Currowan Fire but, as it burnt for 74 days4 from within they are experiential conditions and spread across 499,621 hectares and of optical blur and atmospheric obscurity.9 various local government areas, it took on Running blind, the community fell prey new names; the Charleys Forest fire, the to rumour and panic on social media. Clyde Mountain fire and the Morton fire.5 Referring to the difficulty of finding reliable The 2019-20 bushfire season was unlike information during the fires, one woman any other in its scale and devastation. said, don’t believe your house is gone until Fires in NSW burned for 240 days – across you put your hand in the ashes.10. seasons and into a new year. In South East In late November 2019, station volunteers Queensland, rainforests burned for the Gordon Waters and Rod McClure began first time.6 306 million tonnes of carbon to broadcast emergency updates to the dioxide were emitted into the atmosphere. community. Through the station’s window, Canberra’s air quality, tested less than 100 in a donga overlooking the golf course, kilometres from Braidwood, was rated the they watched a DC-10 drop fire retardant worst in the world.7 on the transmission tower at Mount People in cities became viscerally Gillamatong. Without the tower, emergency connected to the reality of fire. Sydney services including the SES, RFS, police and filled with thick smoke that drove people community radio would have failed. indoors from November to January, the Gordon’s family has lived in the area for worst months of the fire season. Smoke generations. He knew exactly who lived from Australia’s east coast travelled 12,000 where and the unlikely pronunciations of kilometres. The sun, once an abstract threat, local place names like Jembaicumbene, burnt in ominous red and orange halos from Euradux, Ballalaba and Krawarree. The the east coast of Australia to Auckland, New size of the fires meant that some teams Zealand and Santiago, Chile. In Braidwood, on the ground were staffed by non-local it disappeared entirely. firefighters, with no local geographical Geographically, Braidwood sits between knowledge or any idea how to wrap their ABC Canberra 666, on the western side mouths around the landscape. of the Great Diving Range and ABC South At the Senate inquest into the 2019-2020 East on the coast. Because of the terrain, bushfire season, Gordon described the some parts of the area don’t get any ABC information community radio was able to
11 THEY CALLED IT THE BUSH provide as hyperlocal; it was specific to the empty. We called it the bush - and so it was terrain and was itself used to guide people untamed. We called it landscape – and so on the ground. it represented a place. We called it all these The dozer operators who were building things and drew a map to claim it, but we containment lines were listening to us never asked its name. in their dozers to know how far behind The North Black Range Fire was officially them the fire was or how far in front extinguished at 12 pm on Tuesday, January the fire was, because we were able 28, 2020. The Currowan Fire, and its many to give that local level of knowledge. names, was set out at 8pm on Saturday, Likewise, people in the RFS trucks out February 8, 2020. in the field, on western side of the fire, were listening because they wanted to Stella Rosa McDonald is Curator and know where the fire was on the eastern Manager, UTS Gallery & Art Collection. side. The level of local information we were able to present was being used — by people on the fireground at the time Endnotes they were fighting the fire.11 1. B. McGowan. “The Braidwood district’s Chinese heritage”, http://www.braidwoodmuseum.org.au/Chinese.html With little or no emergency broadcasting 2. NSW Government Office of Environment and Heritage, training, they worked to bridge the gaps ‘Braidwood and its surrounds’. https://www.environment. nsw.gov.au/heritageapp/ViewHeritageItemDetails. between the imaginary jurisdictions of the aspx?ID=5054706 RFS and well-intentioned misinformation 3. Weaver. M. “’After two long months’ North Black Range fire near Braidwood extinguished”, About Regional, 31 on the ground. They fought the firestorm January 2020. https://aboutregional.com.au/after-two- with a cloud of information. They gathered long-months-north-black-range-fire-near-braidwood- extinguished/ real-time verifiable data from the Rural Fire 4. “NSW South Coast fire finally out after burning for 74 days Service Public Liaison Officer’s [PLO’s], the across 499,621 hectares”, SBS News, 9 February 2020. Fires Near Me NSW app, the RFS Facebook https://www.sbs.com.au/news/nsw-south-coast-fire-finally- out-after-burning-for-74-days-across-499-621-hectares page for the Braidwood zone, and from 5. D. Dingwall. “The Currowan fire: a monster on the listeners calling in. They would leave the loose”, The Canberra Times, 11 January 2020. ://www. canberratimes.com.au/story/6575661/the-currowan-fire-a- studio in shifts, drive out to a fireground and monster-on-the-loose/ then phone in a report. They listened to the 6. J. Brownlie, M. Schubert. Senate Finance and Public Administration References Committee, ‘Lessons to roar of the fire and the sound of crashing be learned in relation to the Australian bushfire season trees, they felt the wind and traced the 2019-20’, Science & Technology Australia (STA) submission, fire fronts through the smoke. They didn’t 22 May 2020 7. “Canberra’s air quality is ‘the worst in the world’ as bushfire know it then, but the two of them would smoke shrouds capita”. SBS News, 1 January 2020. https:// do 14 days of near-continuous emergency www.sbs.com.au/news/canberra-s-air-quality-is-the-worst- in-the-world-as-bushfire-smoke-shrouds-capital coverage of the fires and 2 months would 8. J. Bisset. Senate Finance and Public Administration pass before a normal routine would return. References Committee, ‘Lessons to be learned in relation to the Australian bushfire season 2019-20’, Community 2019 was the hottest and driest year Broadcasting Association of Australia (CBAA) submission, on record and if you knew a place at all, 20 May 2020. 9. Forensic Architecture, Cloud Studies, 2020. Video, 23:28 you could tell the weather frequencies had mins shifted. Speed and scale were hallmarks 10. From the embers, Episode 1, “Radio saves the day”, of the 2019-2020 fire season; but fires are Community Broadcasting Association of Australia. Producer, Alice Ansara. acts of violence fast and slow. The story of 11. G. Waters. Senate Finance and Public Administration the fires began before the lightning strikes, References Committee, ‘Lessons to be learned in relation to the Australian bushfire season 2019-20’, 12 August 2020, with the shape of the terrain. And then, over p. 29-30. time, each idea of place cut the land to fit. My thanks to Gordon Waters, Roger McDonald, Damien Hart, We called it Terra Nullius - and so it was Bente Hart and Luke McKee for sharing their experiences.
CLOUD STUDIES 12
We All Together JASON DE SANTOLO
“The artwork illustrates how the resting place of the Rainbow Serpent looks now. It’s been smashed by McArthur River Mine. Country, torn open to make way for one of the largest lead, zinc and silver Image 1: Desecration of The Rainbow Serpent, Jack Green (2015). mines the world has ever seen. To do this they cut the back of our ancestor—the Rainbow Serpent—by severing McArthur River and diverting it through a 5.5 kilometre diversion cut into our country.” -Jacky Green.1
Our Ancestors forged determination in “When it comes to ceremony, we all our minds through their courage, driving together, doesn’t matter what tribe we. We us eternally to shield our homelands from all together, we must fight this thing [MRM]. colonisation and the extractive industry. In The ground here, look it for Mambaliya and the Gulf region of the Northern Territory Gundanji Country…We been start as one (NT) mining giant Glencore recently and we finish as one.” 4 received Government approval to continue Indigenous Storywork reveals new operations of one of the world’s largest zinc, sites of resistance as legacy in research lead and silver mines, the McArthur River and activism for our people in the Gulf. Mine (MRM) until 2047. Contamination Esteemed Elder scholar Jo-Ann Archibald monitoring will continue until 3037 - a coined the term Indigenous Storywork thousand years after digging stops.2 as a theoretical, methodological, and Elders like Jacky Green help us to pedagogical framework comprising of recognise the power of guardianship in seven principles: respect, responsibility, the Rainbow Serpent’s eyes and fathom reverence, holism, interrelatedness and the immensity of this destructive timeline synergy.5 It has informed conditions through actions, statements and resistance for cultural work that has galvanised, painting.3 documented and harnessed a shielding
13 force of guardianship where “culture is Gadrian Hoosan, an emerging Garrwa stronger than contamination” despite and Yanyuwa leader in this struggle, desecration.6 This response engages expects unity movements to recognise the forensic intent of Cloud Studies that to survive we must ensure Songlines investigations through Storywork principles come before Treaty; our songlines show of respect and inter-relationality. Here a us all the way forward they are the key vibrant combination of oral testimony, to protecting all our country. 12 In other resistance painting and image reveals major words, cultural lores/laws and practices limitations in the domestic application of will guide leadership and survival strategies international rights principles such as Free in Gulf Country and around the world. In Prior Informed Consent (FPIC).7 combining Indigenous design sovereignty, In February 2009, Midnight Oil’s sense making and citizen science, we will lead singer Mr Peter Garrett approved transcend this era of contamination in our the expansion and diversion of MRM homelands. These uncertain times focus into an open cut mine, one of his first our energies on a shared ceremony of acts as Commonwealth Minister for the guardianship that transcends time, borders Environment, Heritage and the Arts.8 This and cultures; we been start as one and we approval took place in defiance of long finish as one. Indigenous storywork allows term and public outrage expressed by for a vibrant relational expression of this as Gudanji, Yanyuwa, Garrwa and Mara Elders - global cultural resurgence led by Indigenous traditional owners who hold authority for the peoples.13 lands in the region affected. This significant We continue to condemn ‘The Polluters’ campaign led to successful Supreme court of the world, state actors and corporate rulings that initially ceased open cut mine mining companies that wreak havoc on our operations. Despite united resistance, lands and peoples. There are consequences mining operations continued. for desecration.14 We seek that which is In 2014 the waste rock mountain unseen and unheard in the testimony of spontaneously combusted with fire and all our relations, the fish, the birds, even toxic smoke that could not be extinguished the clouds.15 Eyes of united generations for over seven months [Image 2]. It took on eternally hold the legacy of sacred resting an unreal volcano-like lava quality and toxic places; Ngarngurr Jungkuryi Wankarlarnar - smoke that could be smelled by residents the cloud, was here since the beginning.16 in the Borroloola township, where most of the local community live, about 50 km’s away.9 The health impacts of the mine are Dr Jason De Santolo (Garrwa and still not clear, despite water contamination Barunggam) is a researcher and creative notices and major inquiries in and around producer. He is associate professor of Borroloola.10 Indigenous Research and Practice in the In the NT, the push for fracking and School of Design at UTS. Jason co-edited related infrastructure continues within an Decolonizing Research: Indigenous storywork historical context of oppressive military as methodology (2019) with Jo- Ann intervention. This includes a “gross absence Archibald and Jenny Lee-Morgan (Zed of FPIC in the process of issuing petroleum Books). His latest documentary Warburdar exploration permits in Northern Territory.” 11 Bununu/Water Shield (2019) explores The lack of respect for life has intensified water contamination in his homelands and in the past few years and in the pandemic Borroloola, Northern Territory. conditions of Covid19.
CLOUD STUDIES 14 Image 2: Self-Combusting Waste Rock and Toxic Cloud, McArthur River Mine 2014. Photo credit: Supplied by Dr Sean Kerins
— Endnotes 1. An Interview with Mr Jacky Green, Australian Institute 10. McArthur River Mine independent monitor (2009 of Aboriginal and Islander Studies (AIATSIS) Native Title – 2018),
15 WE ALL TOGETHER Ascension in a Cloud of Smoke NIKKI LAM
Wong Tai Sin Temple, photo: iStock Image
It was believed that Wong Tai Sin 黃大仙 In the suburb that bears the name of a Taoist locals were protected by divine powers that god, stands a century-old temple where night in August 2019. thousands visit every day. Within its incense A mask-less teenage boy was seen smoke filled complexes, fortunes are told; pouring water over a flaming canister. wishes are (sometimes) granted. Wong Tai Submerged in a cloud of smoke, the Sin 黃大仙, the Great Immortal Wong, the boy is in the foreground of the image, God of Health, is believed to have arrived in bending towards the canister. He colonial Hong Kong as a deity with a Taoist carefully poured liquid out of a plastic herbalist doctor at the turn of the 20th 1 water bottle. His studious black framed Century . Many who visited the herbalist glasses stood out on his bare face. were cured. The deity was rumoured to have His arms busy carrying an unopened miraculously survived a fire. A small shrine umbrella, and what seemed to be a was built for worship and later it expanded folded towel. I could not make out to the giant public temple that it is now. his expression, but his focus was Looking after those who enter the temple unyielding. He leaned forward. One arm with a kind heart and sufficient offerings, stretched out with precision in pouring Wong Tai Sin receives wishes often through angle and steadiness. I couldn’t see in metre-long incense sticks and thick, thick this image, but I assumed that he held smoke. this position until the water emptied.
CLOUD STUDIES 16 That night, when anti-riot police followed of self-defence. What is ordinary has the flowing protestors into the suburb, become extraordinary. The fish plate has hundreds of locals rushed to the street in been turned into a myth. 2 their evening gowns and broad shorts. An Shared on 4th August 2019, via attempt to defend their community from Telegram. A poster with Wong Tai Sin disturbance brought by the police, they were deity, wearing a 3M respiratory mask. quickly met with pepper spray and tear gas. A gold statue of Wong Tai Sin sitting Many of them mask-less and without any cross legged, a cloud of smoke in the protective gear, images showed they fought foreground. It could be incense or tear with household items. gas. ‘Expired smoke no more, Ta Sin Power ran through their blood, and for shall bring justice’. Calling for a city- one night they were invincible. wide strike and localised rallies, An upside-down metallic plate on the it states, ‘it is now or never’ ground. Bruised with burnt marks, the The next morning, many praised the bravery plate reflected yellow street lights that and miraculous skills of Wong Tai Sin locals. you often see in Hong Kong cinema. ‘We grew up with smoke from the temple. The livestream camera lingered on the Tear gas is nothing to us,’ many claimed that zing jyu dip—plate for steaming fish, they were in fact protected by Wong Tai Sin where the subtitles read ‘Live: Wong himself. They claimed the God of Health Ta Sin, police fired multiple tear gas could no longer stand by the mess created canisters’. by the Hong Kong government. The zing jyu dip 蒸魚碟, an old school Nothing is shocking anymore. It is as household favourite, is ubiquitous in Hong though they have been blessed by the gods Kong. Its quality in even heat distribution with tear gas as offerings. They strike, makes it a reliable piece of cookware. 12 protest and resist with force in the weeks minutes in the wok over the steaming rack and months following. In districts far beyond would make a perfect steamed fish. Over Wong Tai Sin, communities defend each high heat, no breaks. Steam gushes out over other with an armour of hope. They have the rims. The plate is extremely hot to touch, become virtuous. Tear gas, incense or smoke however it is perfect to keep the ginger and from a fire, it is not romantic with that stink spring onion in a boiling mix of soy and oil as in their eyes and that contraction in their it’s being served. Usually held with a special throats. But for a believer it is strength sent pair of tongs for the soft fingers, everyday from above. dishes are served on this plate every night in Halos were formed on the heads of restaurants and apartments. Steamed water front liners. Named Goddess of Liberty eggs, pork ribs with black beans, bitter and The Fire Magicians, protected by melon egg scramble, boiled prawns and Wong Tai Sin they were sent on a path many others. towards a welcoming change. An aura of As the post-Wong Tai Sin fish plate strength gleamed brightly where the crowd became a sort of tear gas shield, alongside gathered. Geared up with umbrellas, zing tennis rackets, leaf blowers and roadblock jyu dips and tennis rackets, divine powers cones, the transformation of its purpose had never been so accessible. Their glory signified the end of normalcy. The is written into songs, occupying airwaves expanding steam in a tiny kitchen no longer and filling people’s hearts. As the city went brought comfort. The anticipation of a home up in smoke, offerings were received from cooked meal has turned into the imaginary all directions. Tear gas and incense smoke
17 ASCENSION IN A CLOUD OF SMOKE connected a burning city with the heavens. Nikki Lam is an artist, curator and producer A mythology is being born and we are its based on Kulin Country. Working primarily witnesses. with moving images, performance and There will be prosperity for all, one installation, her work explores hybridity goddess proclaimed in her all black outfit often through studies of rituals, language and and yellow helmet, ‘after the revolution’. representations, as well as the ephemeral Gods were in the making, or rather, they medium of video. Born in Hong Kong, Nikki’s were already believed to be gods. work deals with the complexity of migratory expressions within and beyond the concept We still believe. of diaspora. With an expanded practice in writing, exhibition and festival making, she is 願榮光歸香港。3 co-director of Hyphenated Projects/Biennial and curator-at-large at The Substation. Nikki is currently pursuing a PhD (Art) at RMIT University.
– Endnotes 1. Billinge,T. 2017, Wong Tai Sin’s Birthday: How did the mysterious god of health end up in Hong Kong, Zolima City Mag [https://zolimacitymag.com/wong-tai-sins-birthday- how-did-the-mysterious-god-of-health-end-up-in-hong- kong/] 2. Tong, E. 2019, Chaotic showdown in Wong Tai Sin as angry residents clash with Hong Kong riot police firing tear gas, Hong Kong Free Press [https://hongkongfp. com/2019/08/04/chaotic-showdown-wong-tai-sin-angry- residents-clash-hong-kong-riot-police-firing-tear-gas/] 3. Glory to Hong Kong is the unofficial protest song of Hong Kong Anti-Extradition Bill movement. Public display of this song’s content is now restricted under the National Security Law. Full song: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=y7yRDOLCy4Y&ab_channel=Dgxmusic More about National Security Law: https://www.amnesty. org/en/latest/news/2020/07/hong-kong-national-security- law-10-things-you-need-to-know/
CLOUD STUDIES 18 Below and Above TOM MELICK
Aby Warburg, Kriegskartothek, 1914-18, Warburg Institute Archive, T 4632. Photo: The Warburg Institute, London
Let’s say, putting reason aside, that we of weather – and constantly changing in could divide the history of clouds in two: shape and colour before the eyes – but also those who find themselves below the because they seem so close to the quality clouds, and those who choose to live above of a dream or thought—real but elusive, them. This history would be as eccentric prone to dispersing as quickly as they form, and dangerous as any other, and perhaps connected and disconnected from the earth, even more so, since the fate of those who obscuring and then revealing a view. Is it find themselves underneath the clouds is for this reason that clouds often appear to continually look upwards into the glare, in pictorial histories as expressions of the inventing ways to anticipate and predict who painter’s inner life, fiction whirling into fact, or what might fall from above, while the fate moods externalised, where weather and of those above is to continually look down, myth meet, and messages of all kinds are wondering if or when they might, at any sought, conjured, ignored and lost? moment, need a place to land. Those below The history of being below or above is live without knowing whether the clouds will also a history of travel, not only through bring misfortune or relief. Those above live the clouds, but on them. Painters from the without knowing what plans are being Middle ages on often depicted clouds as made on the ground, and what they may transports for angels, cherubs, or saints, be missing out on. who visit the earth with messages or deeds, This history becomes less hypothetical before returning to heaven. This tradition when we turn to pictorial traditions, which lives on in video games and cartoons, have allowed the imagination to ascend where a cloud becomes a trampoline and descend long before it became (for bouncing) or a vehicle (for flying), or technologically possible for bodies to do a shorthand for conflict (as in a cartoon so. Clouds were surely events for the most brawl). In this tradition, the cloud allows for ancient imaginations, not only for the movement, sometimes battles, between the obvious reason that they are harbingers world above and the world below.
19 This makes clouds into sites where animals, to be everywhere, above and below, and objects, goodies and baddies meet, become even in what we might call “secularised entangled, and sometimes swap roles. Or, clouds.” This is how John Ruskin, writing is it helpful to think of clouds, as the art in the nineteenth century, was thinking of historian Aby Warburg wrote in a different them. Not much escaped the classification context, as “bewegtes Beiwerk” (moving or impulse during Ruskin’s time, including animated accessories)? Similar to fluttering clouds, and the critic was a keen observer garments or curtains, flying carpets, or of the sky, seeking to ascribe a new visual hair caught in a gust of wind, clouds add language to clouds befitting of his time.4 affective intensities and drama to an image, “Whereas the medieval never painted a breathing motion, action and agitation into cloud but with the purpose of placing pictorial space.1 an angel upon it…,” he wrote in Modern If you enter the Basilica of Saint Francis Painters, “we should think the appearance of Assisi, for example, look closely at of an angel in the cloud wholly unnatural, Giotto’s fresco depicting the death and and should be seriously surprised by ascension of Saint Francis (c.1288–92). meeting a god anywhere…We have no belief Above a crowd of friars gathered around that the clouds contain more than so many the body, Francis can be seen again from inches of rain or hail…”5 But even Ruskin the waist up, palms raised, rising on a had a hard time shaking the demonic. When wind-swept cloud with the help of winged he delivered his famous 1884 lectures “The angels. This cloud is notable not only for Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century” its introduction of weather into European some critics thought he was blaming pictorial space, but also for the appearance air pollution on the devil, while others of a face (possibly with horns), visible within believed he was referring to the devil of the cloud.2 If Giotto (or one of his students) industrialisation.6 As Ruskin’s observations did indeed hide a demon in there, it points to of the sky revealed, classifications would long traditions of clouds as mimetic forms need to contend with new clouds, brought capable of shape shifting. It also shows about by a “plague-wind,” that “looks partly the cloud as a dialectical device, where as if it were made of poisonous smoke” and rising to heaven is not without its risks, “partly of dead men’s souls… flitting hither for who knows who else may be hitching and thither, doubting themselves, of the a ride. It is for this metamorphic quality fittest place for them.”7 that clouds were sometimes associated Maybe this sounds all too Victorian with demonology. Michael Psellus, an to our ears, an instance of trying to eleventh-century Byzantine monk, equated make moral sense, from below, of the the bodies of demons and spirits with cloud changes happening above. Or maybe it is formations, writing in his Dialogue on the confirmation that clouds, too, are always Operation of Daemons: “Whence, just as up reflections, changing those who observe there in the air we observe the clouds on the and represent them, and bringing down semblance and form, now of men, now of from on high what, in fact, may have bears, now of dragons, now of other sorts of originated below. animals; thus also the bodies of spirits do.” 3 And if one of the defining qualities of clouds is their constant morphing, Tom Melick co-edits Slug (slug.directory), becoming this and then that, it is worth and publishes small books and pamphlets asking how today’s clouds differ to those with Stolon Press. of yesterday. At this point, demons seem
CLOUD STUDIES 20 Cartoon brawl from The Loud House (2016), created by Chris Savino, for Nickelodeon.
– Endnotes 1. Warburg saw depictions of movement and windblown 3. See Michael Psellus, Psellus’ Dialogue on the Operation of accessories not as decorative vagaries but as the “afterlife Daemons, tans. Marcus Collisson, Sydney: J. Tegg, printed of antiquity,” first discussed in his dissertation on Sandro by D.L. Welch, 1843. Cited in ibid, Frugoni, ‘Playing with Botticelli’s Birth of Venus and Spring, completed in Clouds’. 1891. “Sandro Botticelli’s Birth of Venus and Spring: 4. Both Luke Howard in England and Jean Bapstiste de An Examination of Concepts of Antiquity in the Italian Monet Lamarck in France applied a Linnaean method to Early Renaissance.” The Renewal of Pagan Antiquity: study clouds, and it is Howard’s system (cumulus, stratus, Contributions to the Cultural History of European cirrus and so on) that remains with us today. See Luke Renaissance, trans. David Britt, Los Angeles: Getty Howard, Essay on the Modifications of Clouds, London: Research Institute for History of Art and the Humanities, John Churchill & Sons, 1803; see also: Richard Hamblyn, 1999, pp. 80–159. See also: Margareta Ingrid Christian, The Invention of Clouds: How an Amateur Meteorologist “Aer, Aurae, Venti: Philology and Physiology in Aby Forged the Language of the Skies, London: Picador, 2002. Warburg’s Dissertation on Botticelli, PMLA, Vol. 129. No.3, 5. John Ruskin, Modern Painters, vol. 3, New York: John Wiley May 2014, pp. 399–416; Georges Didi-Huberman, The & Sons, 1879, p.251. Surviving Image: Phantoms of Time and Time of Phantoms: 6. For a discussion on this see Brian J. Day, ‘The Moral Aby Warburg’s History of Art, Pennsylvania: Penn State Intuition of Ruskin’s “Storm-Cloud”’, Studies in English University Press, 2016; Philippe-Alain Michaud, Aby Literature 1500–1900, Vol. 45. No. 4, Autumn 2005, Warburg and the Image in Motion, trans. Sophie Hawkes, pp. 917–933; Katherine Anderson, “Looking at the Sky: New York: Zone Books, 2004; Kerstin Schankweiler and The Visual Context of Victorian Meteorology,” The Philipp Wüschner, “Images that move: Analyzing affect with British Journal for the History of Science, Vol. 36, No. 3, Aby Warburg,” Analyzing Affective Societies: Methods and September 2003, pp. 301–332. Methodologies, ed. Antje Kahl, London: Routledge, 2019. 7. John Ruskin, The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century, 2. See Chiara Frugoni, ‘Playing with Clouds,’ The Burlington delivered at the London Institution on February 4th and Magazine, vol. 153, No. 1301, August 2011, pp. 518–20. 11th, 1884. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1884. Frugoni writes that this discovery came to light, in part, due to the observer being able “to climb, virtually, onto the medieval scaffolding.” Ascending towards the cloud, as it were.
21 BELOW AND ABOVE ‘More Powerful Than Any Bomb’: Investigative Journalism During Conflict SABA BEBAWI
‘The media are the most powerful institutions on earth – more powerful than any bomb, more powerful than any missile’1
The media shape narratives of conflict, and Interestingly, ‘[t]he mediation of global their power lies in their ability to do so. Yet conflicts not only impacts how they are investigations, such as those conducted conceived by a global audience, but also in Cloud Studies by Forensic Architecture shapes and determines the dynamics of the (2020), evidence that perceptions of reality conflict itself’.3 On this, Simon Cottle has created by the media can be challenged. argued that ‘global crisis reporting serves Forensic Architecture’s assertion that ‘each to reproduce the voices of the powerful chemical bomb is also an information bomb’, […] that surround, shape and inform crises made in reference to their investigation into clearly [and which] constitutes an important, chemical attacks in Douma, Syria, illustrates though often overlooked, dimension of the this. This collaborative investigation with the media’s role in global crisis reporting’.4 New York Times and Human Rights Watch Investigative journalism is one way media led to uncovering evidence that counters power’s ability to falsely construct social claims made by the Syrian regime in a report reality can be challenged. By definition, ran by Russia Today, that the bombs were investigative journalism ‘is a branch of planted as opposed to being dropped. The journalism practice which seeks to uncover media, therefore, play an important role in important and crucial happenings and influencing public opinion, and in turn hold occurrences that cannot be ignored or significant power in shaping political, social, undermined’.5 Investigative journalism can and ideological views and positions. be regarded as a form of ‘democratising’ ‘Media power’ is regarded as the power power which counters the media’s ability to construct social reality—that is, the way to construct one reality over another. people see the world around them. Through Investigative journalism plays an essential media power, the media provides symbolic role in bringing to light new facts and resources through which conflicts are relations. With this in mind, ‘investigative perceived and understood,2 and is even reporting has the potential to play a vital role more significant in influencing global crises. in informing the public, pressuring those
CLOUD STUDIES 22 who are hiding the “secret”, and, ideally, Today, despite the interruption of the leading to change’.6 Syrian civil war, investigative journalism in Historically, governments across Syria is slowly continuing. At the opening the world have sought to construct the of a national workshop, held on the 25th truth, especially during times of conflict. May 2015, and co-organized with the Hugh Miles notes that in the case of the Syrian National Committee for UNESCO Middle East, Arabs have learnt to ‘distrust promoting investigative journalism in Syria, everything they heard, read or saw in the Information Minister Omran al-Zoubi said: media’.7 To them, the media was seen ‘as ‘The extraordinary circumstances in Syria appendages of the government, which stress that investigative journalism is a need only ever echoed, never investigated or now more than any time before’ in light of criticized, what their leaders said’.8 However, the various forms of misinformation and investigative journalism in the Arab region, falsification that have targeted the Syrians especially in areas of conflict such as Syria, since day one of the crisis.10 This statement Libya and Iraq, has in fact been on the rise is a reflection of the power the media hold in as a response to lack of media coverage times of conflict in asserting the truth. pertaining to political corruption, war crimes Investigative journalism, be it and misconduct against society. independent or not, is finally having a Just prior to the start of the recent voice in the Arab region. That officials are Syrian civil war there were a number of recognising its importance, genuinely or investigations that were conducted as a not, is an achievement in its own right and result of a few Syrian journalists receiving a recognition of the hard work and courage some training in investigative reporting. Arab journalists are displaying in the face of However, there were limitations on what challenging old discourses of media power could be reported, as long as it did not in the Arab world. directly criticize the state. Nonetheless, investigations which were related to the people’s wellbeing at a grassroots level were Saba Bebawi is a journalism and media tolerated. An example of these successful researcher who has published on media investigations is one that was conducted power and the role of media in democracy- by a young journalist in Syria on negligence building, in addition to investigative in local hospitals, prior to the civil war. journalism in conflict and post-conflict The publication of the investigation led regions. She is author of Media Power and to an intervention from the government Global Television News: The role of Al Jazeera and a local commission that was set up to English (2016); Investigative Journalism in the deal with the matter. The success of this Arab World: Issues and Challenges (2016); and investigative story was seen as a mini ‘media co-author with Mark Evans on The Future revolution’ in the Syrian media landscape. Foreign Correspondent (2019); in addition to And Syrian reporters realised that they co-editor of Social Media and the Politics of could hold official authorities accountable Reportage: The ‘Arab Spring’ (2014) and Data on local issues that affected the people9: Journalism in the Global South (2020). there was a glimmer of hope and a sense of excitement.
23 MORE POWERFUL THAN ANY BOMB — Endnotes 1. Listening Post, Al Jazeera English, 25th February 2007. 2. Couldry, Nick (2000) The Place of Media Power: Pilgrims and Witnesses of the Media Age, Routledge: London; Boyd-Barrett, Oliver (2002) ‘Theory in Media Research’, in The Media Book, Chris Newbold, Oliver Boyd-Barrett and Hilde Van Den Bulck (Eds), Arnold: London, pp. 1 – 54 3. Bebawi, Saba (2016a) Media Power and Global Television News: The Role of Al Jazeera English, I.B. Tauris: London, p.2. 4. Cottle, Simon (2009) ‘Global Crisis in the News: Staging New Wars, Disasters, and Climate Change’, in International Journal of Communication, Vol. 3, pp. 494 – 516, p.38. 5. Bebawi, Saba (2016b) Investigative Journalism in the Arab World: Issues and Challenges, Palgrave Macmillan: London, p.2. 6. Bebawi, Saba (2016b), p.2. 7. Miles, Hugh (2005) Al-Jazeera: The Inside Story of the Arab News Channel that is Challenging the West, Grove Press: New York, p.25. 8. Miles, Hugh (2005), p.25. 9. Jerichow, Anders (2014) Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism (ARIJ) Board Member, Interview with Saba Bebawi, Amman, Jordan, 6 December 2014. 10. Said, Haifa (2015) ‘Information Ministry vows support to investigative journalists to fight crisis opportunists’, in Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) [Online] https://www. sana.sy/en/?p=42241, accessed 1st December 2019.
CLOUD STUDIES 24 When Is a Pandemic Like a Palestinian? MICAELA SAHHAR
Warren Armstrong, 'Images from Gaza 1:1 - The Names Postcard', 2014.
My father is as far from me as two people Pandemics are as indiscriminate as aerial might be. As far as a national flag with assaults on Gaza. At that scale, people are nowhere to go. As far from me as the moon. hardly people at all. It is too long since we When he saw Larissa Sansour’s Palestinian have been understood as people, and now astronaut anchor her flag on the moon, he perhaps everyone else has felt what it is to wept. They’ve got nowhere else to put it, be made miniscule. We experience Israel he said. There is art and there is life, but for with the fear and uncertainty of a pandemic. Palestinians this work is not magical realism. Maybe, in a pandemic, when a woman In March, before our separation describes a bomb, you imagine after all that in Melbourne is legislated, he says: it could be you. Pandemics remind us of the Palestinians know they’re not special. It artifice of borders. Remind us that we share could happen to you at any time. the same air and sky. A pandemic offers us Over the months of our enforced some insight into life on Gaza time. absence, I return to this phrase. I wonder if The bombing of Gaza has become a a pandemic teaches other people this same certainty. I have heard that in Gaza, life lesson; if they wake into the knowledge that is measured by the reality of bombing, pandemics don’t work by selection or care. interspersed by the fearfulness of bombings Say a woman, who witnesses a bombing to come. Gaza was groomed by Israel as a at Rafah tells you that this kind of rocket place of criminality, long before the cameras could cut you in half. Does she mean you were turned its way. This occurred in the when she says it? dark as grooming does, while they smiled
25 and shook our hands on the lawns of the It begins dismantling field clinics for Covid White House. Israel always has an eye as to testing in Occupied Palestine. It seems what photographs well. Israel has been omniscient for so long that After the Siege of the Church of the it believes it can control a pandemic as if it Nativity, twenty-six Palestinian men, were a Palestinian. In dismantling clinics, described as militants, were exiled to Gaza. Israel makes its own risk a certainty. Can But if the militants were inside the church, a pandemic teach an oppressor that their with monks who remained to enforce their lives, and our deaths, are connected? sanctuary, then who performed the siege? When Israel assaults Gaza from the sky, it These answers are always obscured as warns the residents. This is important from they are reported in news and mediated by a moral perspective; the morality it touts as English. each successive investigation of war crimes A map produced to remember the is made to die on the vine. One warning is dead after Operation Protective Edge, called a ‘knock on the roof’, an innocuous superimposed one place over another: linguistic disguise wrapped around small Gaza inserted over Melbourne. My father explosions. and I live half of the length of Gaza apart What choice do you make at 3am, asleep by road. Right now, we live just as far as if in your house at the sound of a knock on the we were residents of Gaza. It is more than roof? In Melbourne, a pandemic shrinks the seventy years since maps indicated time in horizon and formulates a paradox between Palestine. It is not the road or a river that our instinct to run and new boundaries divides us this year, but the impossibility around our lives. For Gazans this is old news; of movement and our humility towards a for Gazans there has been nowhere to run pandemic in whose wake we appreciate that for more than thirteen years. we are not special. In Gaza, there is no right action; when Sometimes on the phone I read my father you stay, you are stripped of civilian status, sections from Arabic for a Shilling. I cannot a transformation that takes approximately speak Arabic and Dad cannot speak Arabic ninety-seconds. Israel’s military doctrines without an interlocutor. There are fewer now are always transforming Palestinian bodies who can recall the dialect of Jerusalem in into hostile entities: Gazans are punished the year of his birth. for Israel’s failure to extinguish Palestinian We laugh over the entry ‘at the dealer’s identities. After ninety-seconds a resident is in oriental objects’. We laugh at the men no longer a resident. After ninety-seconds, of His Majesty’s Forces in the Middle even at 3am, a resident is no longer East, for whom Steimatzky prepared the innocent. guide, saying ‘we have not yet seen any In six months, Melbourne has not lost old pottery’ and ‘have you any carpets’? half the number of Gazan civilians killed by We laugh, at the quaint orientalism of the Operation Protective Edge, which lasted not people who orientalised us. even one month. Achille Mbembe observes that in the Today I hear rain on my roof and on my wake of this calamity ‘many states will father’s down the phone line. We cannot seek to fortify their borders in the hope of see between the clouds, where one ends protecting themselves from the outside’.1 and another begins. We will not see the He observes ‘they will also seek to conceal moon tonight I think, which often holds us the constitutive violence that they continue together although we are apart, under the to habitually direct at the most vulnerable’.2 same sky. Israel does not wait for the pandemic to end.
CLOUD STUDIES 26 Dr Micaela Sahhar is an Australian- Palestinian writer and educator. Her research interests include narrative appropriation, identity, indigeneity, and questions of resistance in settler-colonial societies. She lives and works on the lands of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation.
— Endnotes 1. Mbembe, Achille. ‘The Universal Right to Breathe’, Critical Enquiry, April 13, 2020. Trans. Carolyn Shread. 2. Mbembe, A. ‘The Universal Right to Breathe’.
27 WHEN IS A PANDEMIC LIKE A PALESTINIAN? CLOUD STUDIES
Texts commissioned by UTS Gallery on the occasion of the exhibition Cloud Studies by Forensic Architecture
Curated by Stella Rosa McDonald and Eleanor Zeichner
22 September – 13 November 2020
Authors Thalia Anthony, Saba Bebawi, Jason De Santolo, Nikki Lam, Stella Rosa McDonald, Tom Melick, Micaela Sahhar, Joel Spring and Eleanor Zeichner
Editors Eleanor Zeichner and Stella Rosa McDonald
Design Daryl Prondoso
With thanks to Eyal Weizman, Samaneh Moafi, Sarah Nankivell, Francesca Hughes, Anthony Burke and the authors for their generous contributions.
Public Program partner SCCI Sherman Centre for Culture & Ideas
Access partner Centre for Social Justice and Inclusion, UTS
Published by UTS Gallery & Art Collection University of Technology Sydney Level 4, 702 Harris St, Ultimo NSW 2007 art.uts.edu.au
ISBN 978-0-6481354-8-7
UTS acknowledges the Gadigal People of the Eora Nation and the Boorooberongal People of the Dharug Nation upon whose ancestral lands our campuses now stand. We would also like to pay respect to the Elders both past and present, acknowledging them as the traditional custodians of knowledge for these lands.
29 TEAR GAS AND TORTURE IN YOUTH DETENTION