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Editorial

JORINDE SEIJDEL public space and for themselves, and ever more control over the (IN)SECURITY other. There seems to be a veritable obsession with security. This is the first issue of open to A fearful culture is being postu- come out in cahier form and to be lated, in which, however, little is published by NAi Publishers. The clear about the nature or the new open, redesigned by Thomas provenance of the threat. Is there Buxó, is published twice a year in really danger out there, socially, a Dutch-language as well as an politically or economically English-language edition. The speaking, or is the new fear coming cahiers are thematically arranged, out of a collective sense of being with art and public space as powerless to exert any influence on starting points – not as an everyday reality, for instance? isolated phenomenon, however, but Are there perhaps so many new struc- as a component of the cultural and tures and associations emerging in social developments that define the the pluriform, multicultural and dynamics of the current public global network communities as to domain, and in relation to relevant engender a universal perception of areas such as architecture/urban being uprooted and alienated, with planning, landscape architecture, all the feelings of unease that spatial planning and digital media. this entails? Has the gap between The new open strives more than in citizens and government perhaps the past to achieve a balance grown too wide as well? Or have the between theory and direct contribu- media, with their over-exposure of tions from actual practice. It is danger and their barrage of intended for all with an interest shocking images, become the primary in the function and organization of authors of our fear? the public space and/or the role of The issue of security seems to art within it. consist of a steadily condensing constellation of disparate as well open 6 is devoted to art, public as related socio-cultural, political space and security. Within today’s and economic factors, which is public domain, the call for more increasingly coming to dominate the protection, supervision and care culture. At all events, it is ques- dominates on all fronts. The in- tionable whether the solution lies dividual and the community are in the implementation of a society demanding maximum security for the of control, or in a capsular

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society in which everything and space in philosophy, art, architec- everyone is suspect and we move ture and media, while the essay by from one protected enclave to the art and culture theorist Thomas Y. other: the rhetoric of security is Levin examines how artists working not far removed from the rhetoric in the public space relate to the of danger. In any case, thorough panoptic surveillance society. In and critical analyses of the the articles by architecture current propositions on security theorists Harm Tilman and Mark seem to be in order. For the impli- Wigley, security and architecture cations of thinking in terms of take centre stage – in the former security for the public domain, for primarily in a Dutch context and in its organization, experience and the latter in direct connection use, are considerable. Neither the with the World Trade Center perception of nor the relationship buildings in New York. There is to the public as audience and the also an autonomous visual contribu- public as sphere, in the role they tion by artist/photographer Sean play in the theory and practice of Snyder in the context of his art and public space, can remain Temporary Occupation project. untouched. This open also includes a polem- open 6 examines what lies at the ical column by Hans Boutellier, root of the public yearning for author of De Veiligheidsutopie, security, of the cumulation of offering a personal view from his fear, and what new questions are specific expertise on the possibil- being asked of and by artists, ity of art torpedoing the vacuous designers, theorists, clients and order of the Security Utopia. In policy makers. Theoretical consider- addition there are contributions ations and scenarios from art, more directly connected to concrete architecture, philosophy and events, places or (art) projects, politics are reviewed, in an providing insight into the current attempt to uncover something of the aesthetics and ethics of security. current security paradigm, or to open 6 also includes the debut of propose alternative (conceptual) a book section, which will be models. expanded in the following issue Legal philosopher Gijs van Oenen with more reviews and reports. analyses the transformation of the public sphere into ‘the new secur- ityscape’, and art historian and philosopher Lieven De Cauter develops an initial ‘short archae- ology of the new fear’. Art critic Sven Lütticken considers fictitious and genuine models of the enclosed

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Gijs van Oenen transformation of the public sphere into an Languishing in obsessive medium of Securityscape security concerns.

The Interpassive Transformation of the Public Sphere

The issue of security in the public domain is not so much pre- cipitated by increased danger as primarily a problem of ‘inter- passive citizenship’, according to legal philosopher Gijs van Oenen. In the follow- ing piece he examines the conditions for the

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Safety first: on this demand for the public has been outsourced. Modern citizens no domain, modern citizens and their govern- longer believe that they can control them- ment agree, however much they may selves sufficiently to bear the responsibility disagree in other respects. Safety requires for civilized public interaction. They prefer action: tough measures, clear targets. Such to turn this responsibility and accountability targets include: suspicious immigrants, over to others: the government, the police, assinine behaviour in public, highway supervisors, providers, security guards. speeding, financial swindling, unlit cycling, These old and new managers of public hooliganism, urinating in public places, space are responding with a new kind of organized crime, terrorism, smoking, urban ‘civilitarianism’, re-educating the citizen in decay, unrepentant criminals, permissive a way that reflects present-day political culture. In short, everything and everyone anxieties; in other words, in a rather author- can become a target of ‘security concerns’. itarian and moralizing way. In my view, this One consequence of this obsession with exercise is doomed to fail. The attempt to security seems clear. We can forget about the rehabilitate ‘public man’ collides with a ideal of a civilized public sphere. That was phenomenon that I refer to as interpassivity, the optimistic idea that public confrontation following cultural philosophers Robert makes for better citizens – a classic repub- Pfaller and Slavoj Zˇizˇek. Involvement or lican ideal that, in the second half of the engagement is delegated, outsourced. We twentieth century, was advocated by people would like to get involved, but we no longer like Hannah Arendt, Jürgen Habermas and believe that we can; therefore we ask others Richard Sennett. Let us call this an ideal of to get involved, on our behalf. interactive citizenship, situated in what we This does not result, however, in might call an ideoscape: a field of human obedience or docility toward such others, as relations shaped through the incessant promoters of the new civilitarianism hope. exchange of opinions and viewpoints. Two characteristics of interpassivity stand in According to this ideal, people self-actualize the way here. To begin with, delegating not simply as private persons, but also and engagement does not cause interpassive especially through interaction as citizens. In citizens to forgo their self-will. On the this interaction nothing is ‘produced’, other contrary, they persist in an indifferent denial than a more sophisticated understanding of of their public responsibility, even and in what can serve as collective aims. fact precisely when called to account for it This interactive ideoscape of the public by those to whom they have delegated it. sphere, however, is undergoing a structural This is why we see so many manifestations transformation, to use Habermas’ classical of autistic behaviour in present-day secur- terminology. I propose that it is turning into ityscapes. an interpassive securityscape. In this medium, But in addition we are witnessing a less the primary quest is not for encounter or easily explained phenomenon. Interpassivity confrontation, but for security. The public also leads to an intense, almost compulsive sphere is turning into a security sanctum, fascination for those who have been which can be briefly defined as a space in entrusted with the care and responsibility which the concern for civilized behaviour for public affairs. An obsessive interest

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develops in the mechanisms of the system or something is watching on our behalf. to which the bearers of the delegated This was illustrated by an installation by responsibility are connected. This meta- Eija-Liisa Ahtila in 2002 at Tate Modern. involvement, an involvement in the involve- Video recorders and monitors sat on chairs, ment of others, explains the current rise of while visitors were required to stand. The fascination with (‘new’) politics. monitors, facing different directions, were What is the condition of the interpassive broadcasting their content oblivious to securityscape? How does it apply in the human attention. Sometimes they simply sphere of labour and that of politics? How just faced each other, explicitly declaring all has the public sphere turned into an inter- space in between mediated. The spectator is passive securityscape? There is a direct rela- either shut out, or caught in between, ‘inter- tionship between interpassivity, in essence passively’. The media enjoyed through the nothing more than a radicalization of the spectators, the spectators through the modern ideal of interactivity, and the trans- media, albeit indifferently. formation of the public sphere into an object The fact that media can enjoy them- of ‘security concerns’. selves, and each other, does not fully explain why we should delegate our enjoyment to The Principle of the Dromenon them. Why not just be content that media now seem capable of enjoyment? Why Robert Pfaller and Slavoj Zˇizˇek constructed project our enjoyment onto their the concept of interpassivity to explain how gratification? Pfaller explains this through some artworks and media endeavour to take the principle of the dromenon. This concept care of their own reception. In interactive generalizes mechanisms such as the video arrangements, the artwork delegates a recorder, or the Tibetan prayer wheel, portion of its actualization to the viewer. In another favourite example of Pfaller’s and contrast, interpassive arrangements adopt the Zˇizˇek’s. This prayer wheel, which ‘prays on very role normally fulfilled by the viewer, our behalf ’, serves to illustrate the namely the enjoyment or the ‘consumption’ perpetuum mobile quality intrinsic to inter- of the artwork. The spectator or consumer is passive media, or perhaps to all media. made redundant; or rather, his or her Aimless and vacuous as they are, their involvement in the realization of the work motion exerts a strong fascination on those has become superfluous. Apparently, the in whose service they operate. This fascina- artwork aims to consume itself, actively dis- tion does not affect the content, the interesting the spectator in its realization. broadcast or prayer for example, of what is The archetypal domestic example of televised, recorded, or otherwise ‘processed’. interpassivity that Pfaller and Zˇizˇek cite is Rather it is the sensation of permanent the video recorder. The VCR does more connection to a running medium that has a than record broadcasts when we are absent. satisfying effect, even obsessively so. It watches television, in our place, and more According to Pfaller we in fact delegate importantly, on our behalf. It delivers us our subjectivity to the aimlessly running from the need of watching TV ourselves. We medium (a pleonasm?). Consider, he writes, feel secure in the knowledge that someone how people watching a live football match

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Eija-Liisa Ahtila, The Present, 2001 / 5 x 70 ∂∂-120 ∂∂+ 5 x 30 ∂∂, DVD installation for five monitors and five TV spots with sound, 3 x 90∂∂ Courtesy Klemens Gasser @ Tanja Grunert Inc, New York / © Crystal Eye Ltd, Helsinki

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Eija-Liisa Ahtila, Me/We; Okay, Gray, 1993 / 35 mm-film and DVD instal- lation for three monitors with sound, 3 x 90 ∂∂ / Courtesy Klemens Gasser @ Tanja Grunert Inc, New York / © Crystal Eye Ltd, Helsinki

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on television often react awkwardly and tively analysed this process in his book The irritably if we speak to them or otherwise Corrosion of Character. The modern organi- disturb them. This is not primarily because zation of labour requires a ‘flexible human they are anxious they might miss a crucial subject’, that is, a human being that can moment in the match. More pertinent is adapt ever faster to the demands of the their desire to ‘languish’ in front of the tele- constantly reconfigured production process. vision. They want to ‘enjoy’ not in the sense Flexibility has been turned from a func- of having fun and being delighted, but in tional requirement into a new virtue. Well- the sense of ‘enjoying’ the protection from functioning institutions are being reorgan- the machine they have attached themselves ized incessantly, transforming flexibility to. This is the machine of the dromenon, ‘a from a means to an end. Employees are machine that runs of itself ’, a pure medium expected to eagerly anticipate a change of without a message, that ‘stands in’ for one’s function or location, even when there is no own subjectivity. The function of the genuine reason for such a change. dromenon is thus to provide ‘cover’ for the The inevitable result is a high level of spectator’s retreat into oblivion, or self- detachment. Every product imaginable can forgetfulness (‘Selbstvergessenheit’). now be manufactured, but employees have lost their affinity with any particular The Flexible Human Subject product. This is the process of interpassivity pur sang: a continual reinforcement of ‘inter- Interpassivity affects many domains of activity’, meaning an optimal interaction contemporary society and its institutions. between the functions of human and One prominent example is labour. There we machine in the production process, is see trends like flexibilization, outsourcement matched by a loss of involvement and and networking. Invariably, this involves a interest in the objective and the product of relationship between the structure of labour the process. At the same time, many and the experience of subjectivity of those employees seek compensation for the loss of who perform this labour. The substance of meaning in their work precisely in such the work, or of the product, is less and less intensified interaction. They have internal- important. For instance, large media ized flexibility as a virtue, as an expression conglomerates unashamedly refer to this of their own motives and goals. They thus substance as ‘content’: something, anything, suffer from the experience of an inner ‘flaw’, they can profitably haul through their which they frantically attempt to fill with expensive infrastructure. By contrast, mon- the very activities that have elicited this itoring, process control and supervision are experience. becoming ever more important. Hands-on Sennett illustrates this point with a has been replaced by, or is becoming the telling anecdote about a bakery in Boston, equivalent of, interfaced operation. In this which he visited during his field research. way, a single person can perform the most There was a Jamaican man working there diverse tasks. Or conversely, a particular task who had come to Boston at the age of 10, can be performed by anyone. and in more than 25 years had worked Sociologist Richard Sennett has percep- himself up from assistant to master baker

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and foreman. The bakery had done well even private bodies. Supposedly the relevant throughout those years, although it had activities can be better, more efficiently, changed significantly: everything used to be more cheaply or more reliably performed by baked the old-fashioned way, by hand, and private, or privatized, actors. Whether this is now the entire baking process was true or not, the oursourcing trend has computer-controlled. Instead of handling caused great damage to the authority of dough and operating ovens, employees now government. For it has created the impres- pressed buttons on computerized interfaces. sion that almost everything government does Despite the bakery’s economic prosperity, can be done better elsewhere. Worse still, new employees often quit after a short time. that hardly anything need be considered an As the foreman told Sennett, ‘When essential government or state task. Just somebody tells me there’s no future here, I about every government function can be ask what they want. They don’t know; they delegated. Therefore there is no longer tell me you shouldn’t be stuck in one place.’ anything intrinsically political that requires our commitment, as citizens. And converse- The Outsourcement of Politics ly, nothing to which we commit is intrins- ically political. A comparable form of implicit, interpassive This outsourcement of politics is fully frustration can be identified in modern in sync with the liberal credo of the politics. Here too, a loss of interest in the autonomous, self-assured citizen who takes final ‘product’ prevails. Involvement shifts care of his own affairs and should not be to the process of – interactive – ‘policy bothered by government. This citizen making’. Again, the focus is not on the considers himself a capable market operator, substance of any particular policy. What to be facilitated, not regulated, by govern- matters more is the reassuring sense of ment. More importantly, government agrees dwelling in the protective proximity of the with this view. In its increasingly ‘inter- ceaselessly running process of policy active’ form, it is continually engaged in production (PPP). This is the ultimate place opinion polls and other forms of monitoring where ‘third way’ politics and new forms of citizen’s preferences, rather than developing populism meet. Both promise citizens ever- and implementing substantive views on the greater proximity to the political process, interests of nation or society. The citizen, in and both are essentially uninterested in its turn, has unprecedented access to the policy content or results. Both are caught in an process, yet he has scarce interest in political interpassive fascination with political power. substance. Expectations and demands in Interpassivity in politics is the result regard to government are rising dramatically of a number of recent developments in – as dramatic as the decline in membership politics and society, including outsourcing, of political parties. as already mentioned. In line with current Such is the interpassivity of contempor- commercial fashion, governments are busily ary politics. A radicalization of interactivity sourcing out everything but their ‘core is matched by a loss of substantive interest. activities’. Former state agencies and Like labour, politics these days is mainly services are transformed into semi-public or about process control. The system is up and

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running; all it needs from people is ‘mon- Interpassivity & the Public Domain itoring’. Yet at the same time there is an intense sense of connection with the What about interpassivity in relation with political process, an interest that can almost security, and the public domain? Indeed I be called obsessive. The odd thing is that think the same mechanisms can be observed this interest is particularly present in those here. A recent minicontroversy, aptly who have developed distaste for the political analysed by Henk Hofland, the eminence system. True, they are prone to complain grise of Dutch journalism, can serve to illus- about the inconclusiveness of actual politi- trate this. Around Christmas 2003, 200,000 cians, but this merely reflects their virtually Amsterdam households received a question- limitless faith in politics’ potential. naire from the ‘Registratie Orgaan At the same time they envy politicians Nederland’ (‘Netherlands Registration their privileged position. Not because of Organ’). People were instructed to tick off their privilege of power or status, for politi- a box, stating whether they knew any illegal cians no longer enjoy such privileges – as immigrants, and if so, whether they were citizens know full well. No, it is about the willing to turn them in? This ‘organ’, privilege of interpassivity: the protection however, was not a government agency, but that they presume one enjoys in the vicinity a pseudonym for a project by artist Martijn of PPP, the constantly spinning policy Engelbregt, working in association with production process. Politicians are plugged the well-known political-cultural centre in to this process, and the angry citizens De Balie. This caused widespread outrage: suspect that this is the secret reason why partly because of possible associations with politicians enjoy their profession. The the deportation of Dutch Jews during World envious citizens want to be ‘plugged in’ as War II, this issue was widely considered too well. Not in order to participate in deciding sensitive to exploit for an art project. the content of politics, or – any more than But Hofland realized that an entirely with the football match on television – different sensibility is being injured here. As because they might otherwise miss vital he wrote, ‘Holland may be on a crazy indivi- moments. What they do want is simply the dualization course, out-of-control drivers protection of politics as dromenon. As may fire machine-guns at radar devices, bus political subjects, as citizens, they would drivers may well fear that they won’t make it prefer to experience oblivion, and any inter- home alive today (…) – but send a printed vention from the outside is perceived as questionnaire by mail, and things change a painful reminder of their existence as altogether. Authority still exists, you might concrete citizens, with concrete social say, but what authority.’ In my terms: duties. They yearn for the experience of Engelbregt offended interpassive sensibil- interpassive politics, not because of its ities. Citizens have no problem with practical policy effects, but because of the excessive, emotional behaviour in the public (temporary) release that it seems to offer sphere. They actually enjoy it. However, from their practical social responsibilities. the questionnaire touches on the even more excessive but secret enjoyment they experi- ence through their proximity to PPP. Filling

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out the questionnaire makes this proximity ever faster spinning circus of opinions, explicit and unveils the enjoyment it entails. which quickly lose their substance yet retain Thus Engelbregt’s interrogation in fact their fascination, as something ‘new’ is mocks the citizen. The questionnaire causes always being produced. The culmination him the embarrassment of being caught point is ‘breaking news’, which rarely indulging in this interpassive enjoyment, contains real live action, but which does his most treasured but most secret excess. create a sense of being intensely connected As a Lacanian like Zˇizˇek would say, more to the ‘news production system’. Like the ‘common’ public excesses exist only to cover PPP, this system runs at full tilt, without up this one most secret excess. however creating much interest in its aim or As discussed above, the modern public result. sphere originated through the principle of The ‘interpassivization’ of the public ‘interactivity’. Citizens used to confront sphere also means a reduction in the inter- each other publicly, in the press as well as in active capacities of citizens, threatening the the street. They not only let their opinions communicative quality of this sphere. The be known, they also created a new domain, problem is not so much that citizens cannot the domain of public opinion formation. recognize what standards and what Here opinions were not simply ‘aired’, but behaviour are necessary to maintain a discussed, defended, reviewed, and further civilized public space. They can. But they developed. The rise of the public sphere increasingly declare themselves incapable of thus bolstered not just individual but also acting accordingly. They simply no longer collective opinion formation. see themselves as having the required capa- Obviously, the public sphere has been cities of self-control and self-limitation. prey to many ‘colonizing’ tendencies and This is what the Netherlands Scientific interests, especially in the last century. Council for Government Policy, in its recent These have modified and restricted, but report on ‘social norms and values,’ called in a certain sense also radicalized it. For ‘the burden of behaviour’, thereby referring instance, it has long been under the to the fact that ‘a large and growing number powerful influence of financial interests, of people, in their behaviour, no longer live especially in the United States. In addition, by the values they claim to strive for’. it has been significantly ‘mediated’. Such The prototype of this citizen is the guy mediation created distortions and misrepre- who, when asked in court to account for his sentations, but more importantly, it fostered aggressive behaviour in public space, says: interpassive developments. The media – and ‘I just happen to have a short fuse.’ Rather particularly the mass media, such as televi- than reminding himself how to act in a sion – after all function in ways comparable civilized way, such a short-fused citizen to those described above for labour and prefers to cruise interpassively in public politics. They radicalize the interactive space. This attitude can manifest itself in nature of opinion formation, while simul- many different ways, which have ‘experien- taneously ‘formatting’ it in specific ways cing emotion’ as their common denomina- (think only of the term ‘infotainment’). The tor. Increasingly, contemporary society is spellbound tv-citizen is bombarded with an seen as a kind of ‘experience machine’.

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Which nowadays deals with interpassive without conflicts. The nature of the emotion experience: citizens literally let experience was less important than the yearning to ‘get to them’. This can be at a football experience it along with others in public match, a royal wedding, a mafia funeral, a space. commemoration, a demonstration. The For the modern citizen, participation in ultimate form of such collective emotional public sphere means collectively experien- experiencing is probably the ‘flash mob’: cing emotions. He wishes, as it were, to be people who respond to SMS instructions to plugged into the emotion machine that is gather, en masse, at some urban hotspot, to deployed in the public sphere. It is the languish there interpassively for a few public equivalent of plugging into a Discman, minutes, demonstratively and pointlessly. mobile phone or video recorder. People continually seek out the protection of the The Emotion Machine dromenon: the spinning object or process that simply through its proximity manages The public sphere increasingly becomes to provide us with the sensation of protec- a stage upon which interpassive roles and tion and oblivion – the ontological core of sentiments are played out. Emotions are what René Boomkens as far back as eight experienced, reputations flaunted and frus- years ago called the ‘security machine’, trations vented, de-subjectified and without ‘all those practices which in the absence of aim. The mood can be joyful or grieving, a a lively public domain (…) take care of the silent march or a loud display of aggression, protection and supervision of our daily lives’. and one can instantly change into the other. This does not imply that we are indeed Someone who happens to be ‘interactively’ protected from aggression or violence – far present in this space has no way of knowing from it. It means we feel liberated from the whether he will be perceived as a supporter necessity of taking responsibility for it. The or as an opponent. modern citizen feels both enthralled and A good example is provided by my own carried away by the collective experiencing experience on the late afternoon of 8 May process. Yet, that is too interactive a way of 2002, on the Coolsingel boulevard in putting it. The experience of such a citizen Rotterdam. Two days earlier the ‘revolution- more closely resembles a ‘testimony’. Like ary’ would-be politician Pim Fortuyn had an interpassive artwork, experiencing been assassinated, and many people were emotion in the public sphere can do without lining up in front of city hall to sign the the subjective input of the modern citizen. condolence books. From the shopping area On the contrary, it relieves him of his of the Lijnbaan, on the opposite side of the subjectivity. The citizen becomes purely a Coolsingel, a vast legion of Feyenoord stand-in in this process, a ‘fellow traveller’, supporters flowed across the street at the so to speak. The dromenon runs, and the same time, in festive anticipation of the citizen follows suit. Think of what the movie UEFA Cup soccer final later that evening. business calls a sequel: ‘coming soon!’, fascin- The two groups with their very different ating already, a must-see, ‘out-violencing’ emotions went together surprisingly well; any previous experience… they encountered each other effortlessly and This is the paradox of the dromenon: it is

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an ‘attachment machine’, the most import- ant product of which is, ironically, detach- Sources

ment. Citizens feel ever more deeply Eija-Liisa Ahtila, ‘Real characters, ‘involved’, but their commitment is in fact invented worlds’. Exhibition at Tate Modern, London, 30 April–28 July ever decreasing. Public demonstration 2002 Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at becomes a medium for oblivion. Once facil- Large: Cultural Dimensions of itating self-formation, the public sphere now Globalization. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis 1996 promotes self-forgetfulness. It enables us to René Boomkens, De angstmachine, De Balie, Amsterdam 1996 delegate our subjectivity to the interpassive Jürgen Habermas, Strukturwandel emotion machine. der Öffentlichkeit, Luchterhand, Darmstadt 1962 The ‘security issue’ in the public sphere H.J.A. Hofland, ‘Formulieren’, NRC Handelsblad, 9 January 2004 is thus to a large extent an issue of inter- Gijs van Oenen, Surplus van ille- passive citizenship. The modern citizen no galiteit, De Balie, Amsterdam 2002 Gijs van Oenen, Ongeschikt recht, longer feels capable of operating subject- Boom Juridische uitgevers, The Hague 2004 ively, or interactively, in public space. If Henk Oosterling, Radicale middel- required he can easily ‘plug in’ to PPP, the matigheid, Boom, Amsterdam 2000 Robert Pfaller, Interpassivität. always spinning public policy process, but Studien über delegiertes Genießen, Springer Verlag, Wenen/New York simultaneously he feels unable to intervene 2000 in that process. What the modern citizen Robert Pfaller, Die Illusionen der anderen. Über das Lustprinzip in der wants is not to commit, but merely to ‘join’. Kultur, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt 2002 Gerhard Schulze, Die Erlebnis- He does not want to act, but merely to gesellschaft. Kultursoziologie der appear. Whatever happens, he is neither for Gegenwart, Campus, Frankfurt/ New York 1992 (1997) nor against, but simply ‘present’. The Richard Sennett, The Corrosion of Character, W.W. Norton, New York contemporary citizen is, in short, a one- 1998 person flash mob. He seeks protection and Netherlands Scientific Council for Government Policy, Waarden, normen security, but in doing so only makes the en de last van het gedrag, Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam 2003 public domain more unstable and more Slavoj Zˇizˇek, The Puppet and the insecure. The enjoyment of the dromenon is Dwarf, MIT Press, Cambridge (Mass.) 2003 simultaneously the enjoyment of the loss of one’s own resilience, and that of the communicative quality of the public sphere. This explosive interpassivity is the real security issue of our society.

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Lieven De Cauter the new fear upon which this capsular- A Short Archaeology ization is based. Is it of the New Fear a frightening but fleeting hallucination, The Belgian cultural or does collective fear philosopher Lieven suggest a genuine De Cauter has written danger? extensively on the emergence of the capsular civilisation, in which public space is divided into mon- itored and enclosed, secure enclaves (gated communities, shop- ping malls, theme parks, camps, ghettos). In this article he makes an initial attempt at analysing

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‘Freedom and fear are at war, and there fearful animals. And who could blame will be no quick and easy end to this them? Fear is a survival instinct, in conflict.’ humans as well, although they are a species without instinct and therefore

(The National Security Strategy compelled to be free and unfettered. In of the United States of America, September 2002) this sense, the hypothesis could be turned on its head: humans are a fearful Collective fear is a large, partly invisible species precisely because of their intelli- continent that manifests itself through- gence. When one is constantly able to out entire epochs. In other words, fear is perceive all the possibilities and impossi- a historical constellation, often to a bilities, all the dangers and risks, one is large extent subconscious or repressed, quite likely to become nervous, that defines the consciousness of groups timorous or just plain afraid. and entire societies, yet it is also to a All fear is, ultimately, the fear of significant degree in its turn defined by death. Yet only humans feel death to be facts, rumours, moods, cultural expres- unnatural and conduct their lives in a sions, religious tenets or practices, negation of death. The huge numbers of customs, social rituals, and of course traces we leave behind and which we political manipulations. collectively call products of culture are But first: what is fear? Fear is a signal all, in their focus on durability (bronze, that communicates to a living organism marble, parchment), rebellions against that it may be in danger. Fear is one of finitude. The entire culture consists in the most important instruments to the incessant establishment, re-establish- guarantee the survival of an individual ment and handing down of traces, of member of a species, and therefore of monuments that ‘are more eternal than the species itself. For this reason, fear is bronze’. Culture, in this sense, is a catalogued as an affect that is closely negation of or symbolic victory over linked to the survival instinct. Fear, death. One might call it ‘immortality perhaps along with aggression and the drive’: a drive that manifests itself at the mating drive, is one of the most instinc- level of the individual as a quest for tive impulses in any living being. fame (in order to become ‘immortal’) Therefore fear is primarily a biological and at the level of the species as the rather than a psychological phenom- need to maintain and pass on the enon. But that is not the whole story, of meanings, the world of signs that define course. Fear moves inwards. One might the uniqueness of the human race as a even say that fear is the basis for the species. human capacity to think. That is perhaps Allthough fear originates in the going a bit far, yet ‘if not strong then be survival instinct, it is a poor counsellor – smart’ is a basic motto for a timorous certainly in its more intense form, which species (just as antelopes and rabbits we call panic. The more intense the fear, scrupulously live by the maxim ‘if not the poorer counsel fear provides. And strong then be fast’). Humans are once the suspicion has been aroused in

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the fearful that he has fallen prey to a sociological awareness, at the level of poor counsellor, that is precisely the the species, that the world is getting so point at which fear risks turning into overpopulated that we are as a species panic: a fearful person loses control, reaching the limits of our biotope, the because he is afraid of his own fear. In Earth. A fact of the twenty-first century that sense, we should indeed be afraid is that nine billion people will have to of our fear.1 Panic attacks are horrible. survive on this planet by 2050. This ‘It’s really a bad trip, 1. Wij moeten bang zijn van awareness results more in a sort of onze angst (‘We should be you know.’ A ‘bad afraid of our fear’) is the title of unease than in a knowledge. Sometimes trip’ is slang for a a manuscript by Frank Vande it is banal: the morning rush-hour traffic Veire, an opinion piece inspired hallucination. A by 9-11. jams. But the extraordinary succession hallucination is being awake and yet of problems is not at all banal: dreaming (this can be pleasant in a state shortages in drinking water, threats to of intoxication, even blissful – the bio-diversity, global warming, rising sea artificial paradises of Baudelaire and the levels, growing aggression, waves of like), but a waking dream usually turns migration, growing poverty, et cetera. sooner or later into a nightmare, as is Although warnings were issued as far the case in schizophrenia, paranoia, et back as 30 years ago (especially the cetera. And that might well be the case: report of the Club of Rome in 1972) humanity is ‘having a bad trip’. about the demographic explosion, it is We awake in a hallucinatory world, still not an issue of everyday discussion and however much we rub our eyes, nor, sadly, a top priority for the world’s we cannot drive away the bad dream: political leaders. The ecological, social, the twenty-first century looks bleak – economic and political consequences of somewhat spine-chilling, in fact. This is overpopulation are incalculable, because why we can speak of a new fear2. Texts of the many interactions among the and books are being 2. A few examples: René various factors. I have dubbed this con- Boomkens, De angstmachine 3 published about it. (1996), and very recently Alain stellation ‘the permanent catastrophe’. Let us attempt to de Botton, Status Anxiety As a poor counsellor, 3. ‘Die permanente Katastrophe. (2004) and Benjamin Barber, Thesen zur Globalisierung/ chart the continent Fear’s Empire (2003). fear might very well The Permanent Catastrophe. of the new fear and produce a brief, come to play a Theories on Globalisation’, in 48th International Short Film rough sketch of it, more as a ‘geology of significant role in the Festival Oberhausen, cat. Oberhausen 2002. Longer fear’ than as a genealogy of it. Or as a approach to global version in Dutch: ‘De perma- short archaeology, in the sense of the problems. At the nente catastrofe’, De Witte Raaf, no. 97, May-June 2002, science of strata. Let us begin with the same time, ecological p. 9-12. lowest stratum in this continental drift. or demographic fear might also push through the signal that humanity is in 1 Demographic or Ecological Fear genuine danger and that we must therefore take action. For the moment, My hypothesis is that the deepest layer it seems unlikely that sufficient energy of our new collective fear, barely detect- will be devoted to this. The Kyoto able at the surface, is the almost bio- accords getting torpedoed is a bad sign.

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One important consequence of the eration. One might call it the fear of on-going demographic explosion is acceleration: dromophobia. migration. And here we might just touch on the most volcanic aspect of the 3 Economic Fear new fear. From the deepest strata of the demographic/ecological fear, migrants Neoliberal capitalism has produced a represent, within the constellation of the society of winners and losers. The new fear, an all-too-visible bone of dismantling of the welfare state has contention, personifying unease about generated an unprecendented dualiza- an all-too-rapidly changing world. tion of society, a division between haves and have-nots. The fear of losing pros- 2 Dromophobia perity is enormous. Nothing is certain anymore: job security, social security, Just as invisible as demographic fear is health insurance, pension schemes are the pressure exerted by the third all in jeopardy. The celebrated flexibil- Industrial Revolution (a term no longer ization not only forces us to be flexible, in use, because the information-technol- it makes us fragile. One might call this ogy revolution seems to have acquired a stratum of our new collective fear semi-permanent character). Technolo- economic fear – the fear of a loss of gical changes are so swift and so drastic, security. We miss the family affection of the acceleration they generate is so the welfare state, and our house, our infernal, that people are kept in a con- household (oikos), is no longer secure. stant state of subliminal fear, a state we This fear can be seen as a problem of identify as stress. The acceleration of our luxury, but that does not make it any lives is, from first to last, a by-product of less real. ‘Privilege engenders fear’: our our technological extensions, of our privileged position and our unpreced- media. Yet are we afraid of technology? ented standard of living turns us into At first glance, it seems the era of fearful bourgeois. The dualization of technophobia is over. Unfortunately, our society is made most visible by and perhaps: there is hardly any resistance is projected onto the large groups of to technology anymore, or even migrants who are increasingly popul- criticism. An almost unquestioned ating our cities. This brings us, as sympathy predominates, a slavish mentioned earlier, to the most volcanic adoration of technology, expressed in stratum of our new fear. the thousands of consumer goods we purchase compulsively. We are 4 Xenophobia dependent on information technology: anyone unplugged cannot function in Xenophobia is, literally, fear of for- our new, much-vaunted information eigners. I make no pretensions of pres- society. Yet perhaps this new enting here an instant solution to the ‘technophilia’ is nothing more than a issue of racism and xenophobia, but the latent fear of falling behind on the accel- frictions associated with migrations are

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a historic and sociological, or even changing of our own street, our own anthropological, phenomenon, just as, city, our own culture into a multicul- conversely, all complex cultures are tural, eclectic, chaotic culture. The call products of mixing and not of purity – for ‘integration’, which is sounding from philosophy, which had Egyptian increasingly hollow (or, as with the ban astrology as one of its ingredients, to the on veils in schools, could even be coun- oh-so-native potato, which comes from terproductive) is based on a fear of South America. However, the pace at disintegration. I suspect that we shall which the West, and especially Western have to learn to live with this disintegra- cities, are having to cope with increas- tion; the era of the homogeneous civil ingly large groups of migrants is causing society (symbolized by the uniform a sense of alienation and fear. For many custom-made suit) is definitely over. people, it is very difficult to live with the We have arrived at a post-civil situation. fact that the street or the school that And that brings us to the fifth stratum was once ‘theirs’ has become ‘foreign’. of the new fear. I believe an entirely new kind of education is required to learn to live 5 Agoraphobia or Political Fear with this; political correctness, which immediately dismisses any expression The disintegration of the state is percep- of unease as racism and xenophobia, tible not just at the macro level, where makes any therapy for this deep alien- individual states are losing importance ation impossible. This alienation is of because of the globalization of the course dangerous, because it can indeed economy and the formation of supra- lead to xenophobic movements and national entities, but also at the micro parties such as the Front National in level: on the street, the monopoly on France, the Vlaams Blok in Flanders and violence of the police is increasingly the Lijst Pim Fortuyn (LPF) in the being challenged by an often diffuse Netherlands. Yet a problem does exist. aggression or simply acute violence. All the more because the migrants are Add litter, vandalism and decay and you alienated as well – what is the identity have all the ingredients for a new agora- of a second- or third-generation phobia, a fear of the agora (the public migrant? – and have great difficulty in space). Violence reaches into our sitting establishing an image of their own, with rooms through the evidently unstop- the result that sections of the migrant pable tide of ever more violent action population, primarily young people, are movies. Fear and aggression are increas- poorly socialized, create trouble, make ingly exploited as commercially neighbourhoods unsafe, et cetera. profitable forms of stimulation and Although the time is definitely past enjoyment. Perhaps this oft-lamented when such problems could be dismissed explosion of violence in our media and as racist fabrications, one cannot deny visual culture is nothing more than a that our fear of migrants is the fear of practice exercise for our new fear. our own migration or mutation, of the It cannot be denied: our world is

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becoming more chaotic. This tendency United Nations. This state of emergency toward chaos can partly be ascribed to is further demonstrated by refusing to the increasingly complex structure of recognize the International Court of our society. The network society – just Justice in The Hague, pulling out of the think of the World Wide Web – is Kyoto accords and installing camps all absolutely not hierarchical and ordered, over the world that are outside any legal but rather fickle, ‘rhizomatic’. The new jurisdiction, of which Camp Delta at imperial world order conceived by the Guantanamo Bay is but the most well- American think tank Project for the known. In their famous report New American Century (PNAC) and Rebuilding America’s Defenses in 2000, being implemented by the Bush admin- the PNAC, whose members include istration plays upon this increasingly American administration officials chaotic world and the disintegration of Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and states.4 And this brings us to the very Dick Cheney, wrote that their plans latest fear: the fear 4. See http://www.newamerican- could not be implemented without, and century.org. See also of terrorism. http://www.brusselstribunal.org. I quote, ‘a catalysing catastrophic event – a sort of new Pearl Harbor’. After 6 Fear of Terrorism 9-11, which must have been a godsend to them, they were finally able to imple- On the one hand, disillusionment with a ment their plans. What were these globalization that has for the most part plans? The PNAC’s objectives are passed them by and bitterness within unequivocal: achieving a ubiquitous Islamic communities about the Middle military presence through a technologic- East policy of the United States have ally revolutionized military; preventing created fertile ground for terrorism. On the emergence of a competing super- the other hand, the hegemonic claims of power and waging preventive wars the United States in general and the against any power that might threaten American war industry in particular American interests. The best catalyst for require a strong perceived enemy. the PNAC programme is fear. The Following the collapse of the Soviet American political scientist Benjamin Union, Bush Sr. gave the ‘war on drugs’ Barber has since given the new America a try, but now the time is ripe for the and the new imperial world order a real coup. Bush Jr.’s ‘war on terrorism’ particularly apt name: ‘fear’s empire’.5

is intended to bring about nothing less Yet the state of 5. Benjamin Barber, Fear’s Empire: War, Terrorism, and than a state of emergency, within emergency is sadly Democracy, New York/London America as well as on a planetary scale not a spectre that 2003. – within America through the curtail- will vanish after the nightmare of the ment of civil rights (Patriot Act), media neo-conservative Bush administration; manipulations, outright lies or censor- martial law is being imposed every- ship, outside America through the oblit- where. The measures contemplated by eration of the whole post-war system of the city authorities in Rotterdam to international law, symbolized by the make the city ‘liveable’ again, namely by

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barring any new migrants and poor Postscript: Futurology of an Ancient people (people under a certain income), Anger because the city already has too many migrants and too few well-to-do To be angry is to no longer be afraid. citizens, are a sign of the times. The I can only hope that humanity will proposal is of course to a certain extent become angry and say ‘no’ to exploita- a consequence of the Pim Fortuyn effect tion, to illegal wars, to crimes against and was in fact put forward by his international law, to limitations on free party, Leefbaar Rotterdam (‘Liveable expression of opinion through the Rotterdam’) but it was approved by the monopolization of the media (Murdoch, entire city council – and knowing the Berlusconi) or through outright lies and Netherlands, this is surely not composed censorship (the Bush administration), to only of racists or extremists. Although it the curtailment of fundamental civil is a direct violation of the right of any rights (the Patriot Act), to the ecological citizen to choose his or her place of catastrophe we are headed for with residence within a certain country, it open eyes, to poverty around the world, cannot therefore simply be swept off the to the cynicism with which the New table as absurd. It shows that people, in Imperial World Order is outfitting this case a city administration, for the global neo-capitalism with its attendant most part democrats wary of offending political structure, in short to the state voters, feel compelled, correctly or not – of emergency. We must stand up against that can be debated at length – to opt ‘the empire of fear’. Otherwise the battle for drastic measures and are evidently between freedom and fear will indeed be prepared to carry them out as well. Such long and difficult. emergency measures are a sign that we find ourselves in a sort of state of

emergency – or at least that we are In October 2004 NAi Publishers will publish Lieven De Cauter’s moving in that direction faster than we The Capsular Civilization. The had anticipated. City in the Era of Transcendental Capitalism. The world is becoming more inhospit- able all the time, and thus we shall have to learn to live with our new collective fear. And we must take care not to use this as a poor counsellor, but rather as a signal to carefully examine the causes of the fear and to draw careful but resolute conclusions – not become paralyzed or panicked, for that, as everyone knows, is the most dangerous of all reactions in a situation of genuine danger. And there is, unfortunately, genuine danger.

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Sean Snyder

Temporary Occupation, 2003

A Visual Essay by Sean Snyder

In 2003, Sean Snyder (USA, 1972) showed his project Temporary Occupation (DVD, 4∂ 33∂∂ , colour, sound) as part of the ‘Territories’ exhibi- tion at the Witte de With centre for contemporary art in Rotterdam. The military bases shown are temporary and scattered all over the world. They are enclaves offering all necessary faci- lities and services. They are constructed and outfitted in such a way that military personnel never need to leave the base, creating an illusion of security. For this

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project, Snyder made a video using images made available by the US Department of Defense and its imagery services. He mixed these images with photographs by (former) residents and with photographs he took himself of decommissioned bases redeveloped by local authorities. Snyder compiled a selection of photographs and video stills from this project especially for open.

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The term ‘military installation’ means a base, camp, post, station, yard, centre, homeport facility, ship, or any other activity under the jurisdiction of the Department of Defense.

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According to the Pentagon, the United States military currently maintains a presence overseas in 93 countries, forming a network of American dependencies. The existence of some bases is only speculated. Photo globalsecurity.org

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Private commercial intelligence companies that analyse geo-political currents are contracted by the US government to scope out prospective base locations in Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Republics in Central

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Asia and elsewhere. America subsidizes and invests in local resources and products in exchange for space and infrastructure. Photo Ikonos/Space imaging Inc.

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Detailed satellite imagery charts the processes of military worldwide. In US government circles, there is open concern about military security

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because of the democratization of imagery. Photo Ikonos/Space imaging Inc.

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Highly edited documentation of what goes on inside of the bases are made public through official agencies responsible for the diffusion of imagery, like CENTCOM, the Defense Visual Information Center, and

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various branches of the armed services. Photo Department of Defense Visual Information Directorate

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Photo globalsecurity.org

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Photo Department of Defense Visual Information Directorate

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The Army and Air Force Exchange Service operates a number of service industries that make it unnecessary for a soldier to ever leave the base. The vast majority of money paid to American soldiers and civilians is spent in the on-base shopping and social facilities. Before the end

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of the Cold War, US forces started using American contractors rather than local suppliers. Tax money spent inside the military facilities is meant to return to the US economy. Photo globalsecurity.org

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Many US military bases, containing enclaves of housing, commercial and recreational facilities, are temporary oases for military personnel within secure boundaries. To insulate personnel from the potential

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culture shock of overseas duty, the physical structure of the bases as well as the amenities and services are built in a way that is familiar to them. Photos globalsecurity.org

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Media run by the military, such as AFN (American Forces Network), broadcast television and radio programming wherever they go. The same

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mobile/aerial broadcasting equipment used to entertain the forces can be used for psychological operations. Photo globalsecurity.org

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The post-usage restructuring of military bases poses a difficult problem as well as a secondary base industry. Bases that are returned to local authorities are redeveloped to new uses; an old officer’s club might be used as a discotheque, fuel reserves might be used by a petroleum

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company, an airfield might be turned into a budget airline hub. Many facilities such as housing, administrative offices and storage areas may be reused immediately, while facilities like helicopter airfields and ammunition dumps lack realistic conversion options. Photo Sean Snyder

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Photo Sean Snyder

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• housing area • officers’ club • library • banquet and special event hall • 24-hour gas station • Armoured Division Museum • post office • commissary • medical and dental clinic • base exchange • optical shop • bakery • military clothing store • deli • clothing store • Pizza Inn • sports store • Taco Bell • gift shop with local items • Burger King • theatre • shwarma bar • 24-hour cinema • Popeyes Chicken & Biscuits • chapel • Baskin Robbins • off-base travel and entertainment • pub • hunting and fishing office • service club • safari park • shopette

**** SAMPLE LIST OF FACILITIES ON **** ***** AMERICAN MILITARY BASES *****

• laundry service • women’s sauna • bookstore • swimming pool • Box Office video rental • whirlpool • Toyland • aerobics centre • furniture store • fitness centre • shoe department • gym • jewelry store • community arts & crafts • Power Zone audio/video equipment • games tent • entertainment and gaming equipment • miniature golf course • garage and auto accessories • pool tables • hobby shop • bowling centre • flower shop • shooting range • garden centre • golf course • basketball court • camp ground • volleyball courts • outdoor barbecue area • men’s sauna

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Thomas Y. Levin In this way he has developed a strategy Surveillance and the for turning the Ludic Reappropriation panoptic effect of of Public Space security and surveil- lance by means of Based on the work cameras and facial of artists such as the recognition software Australian Denis back upon itself. Beaubois (1970), Thomas Y. Levin analyses the signific- ance and the effect of the ever-expanding system of surveillance cameras in the public space. Through performances in the public space, Beaubois plays a game with security devices.

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Sometime in 1996 the Australian artist the Amnesia performances, this primary Denis Beaubois embarked on a series of audience was, as Beaubois put it, ‘the performances which took place through- surveillance camera (or those who out the city of Sidney in public spaces monitor them)’. The character of the spec- marked by the more or less visible tatorship of this particular ‘audience’ – presence of the increasingly ubiquitous which will be dealt with at greater length surveillance camera. Arriving on the scene below – is highly teleological: scanning the three days in a row unannounced and scene with a ‘watchdog consciousness’, it without having solicited or received measures all behaviours against a template permission to do so, Beaubois simply posi- of norms and responds pre-emptively tioned himself in direct view of the camera against any violations. For someone in its whose impassive gaze he returned in kind. field of vision this means that by ‘citing’ Armed with an unusual capacity for willed any of the profiles in its database (by immobility (thanks to training in Butoh means of one’s appearance – race, fashion, performance technique), his ostentatious etc. – or behaviour) one can readily stasis and ocular fixity sooner or later ‘become’ a suspect and provoke the provoked some sort of response. Some- system to focus its attention on oneself. In times it was so swift that Beaubois was so doing, however, the apparatus could ‘escorted’ off the ‘public’ premises only also be said to become part of the minutes after his arrival, the ‘explanation’ performance. For Beaubois the conse- being that he was disturbing the peace, or quence of this proleptic character of lacked a permit, or some equally inconse- surveillant observation (i.e. the fact that quential – and symptomatic – bureaucratic it already knows what it is going to see) banality. On other occasions, where his is a mutually ideal condition: from the stoic performances were graciously (even perspective of the camera, it effectively if often uncomprehendingly) tolerated by ensures that he will be read and attended the authorities, it was the passers-by who to as suspicious; and from the point of became engaged by his presence, inter- view of the performer/suspect, it guaran- rupting their purposive passage to stare tees that he will be accorded an attentive and inquire in an attempt to establish and vigilant audience. what exactly was going on. But if the camera and/or camera- What exactly was going on here? operator and the ‘suspect’ are both part of According to Beaubois, these perform- a collaborative performance, for whom is ances – entitled In the event of Amnesia, the this event taking place? Enter the notion city will recall… – posed a series of of the secondary audience: this largely questions to the site which explored the contingent and spectatorially uncommitted dynamic between what he calls the group is a function of the deeply trans- ‘primary’ and the ‘secondary’ audience. itory locales (malls, passageways, etc.) The primary audience, as in the classical which were chosen as the performance performance situation, is the ‘targeted’ sites. It consists of the chance community, collective which is both willing and eager passing by en route to various places and to watch and interpret. In the context of tasks, who find themselves fascinated by

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Denis Beaubois, Amnesia performance, Sydney, 1996 © DV Rogers

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Denis Beaubois, Amnesia performance, Sydney, 1996 © DV Rogers

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Stills from video of the Amnesia performance in Sydney, 1996, by Denis Beaubois

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the curious spectacle and stop, if only for recasting of the Russian formalist notion a moment. Perplexed by the inscrutability of the ‘laying bare of the device’). This of Beaubois’s encounter with ‘his’ primary gesture is equally evident in other more or audience, they suddenly become aware less contemporary works by Beaubois not only of the presence of the (previously which also pointedly refunction (and unseen even if not hidden) camera but thereby also expose) different sorts of also, possibly, of the ‘other actor’ in this surveillant devices imbedded in the collaborative performance, i.e. the surveil- texture of daily life: typical in this regard lant agency exposed by the readable is the ATM Family Portrait (1996), in which dynamic between the frozen Beaubois and Beaubois exploited the hidden transaction- the seemingly ‘active’ observation recording camera in an automatic bank apparatus. It is, as Beaubois suggests, an teller machine located in the Kings Cross economy of the glance encountering the section of Sidney as a means to produce spectacle of the gaze – as is rendered a group photograph of the artist and his strikingly evident in a later staging of the parents. In another similar project called Amnesia performance in Cleveland, Ohio Red Light Camera Portraits (1996) (1997), where Beaubois’s static stance at Beaubois carefully positioned himself the entrance to the wonderfully panop- at an intersection known for its photo- tically named ‘Tower City’ shopping graphic ‘infraction’-recording device and complex catches the attention and then had a colleague drive through on red to opens the eyes, as it were, of two inner- trigger the apparatus, the ‘proof’ of the city youths to the surveillance system they ‘transgression’ here being recast as an had never noticed despite their extensive urban portrait generated by the state for a familiarity with the mall. fee (i.e. the cost of the fine for the traffic violation). Exposure Both the ATM and the Red Light are very much in the tradition of a still largely But just how is this spectacle staged? First unknown body of work that has engaged and foremost simply by standing with questions of surveillance from a variety of intensely focused attention, in an ironic perspectives for many years. Most immedi- inversion of Walker Evans’s famous ately, the playful ingenuity of Beaubois’s admonition to the potential surreptitious projects recall the brilliant Fonce Alphonse photographer: ‘Stare. It is the way to (1993) by the Paris-based photographer educate your eye and more. Stare, pry, Jeff Guess, in which the American artist listen, eavesdrop. Die knowing something. and his partner raced down a Lyon street You are not here long.’1 Beaubois is indeed known to have a radar speed trap en route staring, but in a way 1. Walker Evans, Walker Evans at to their marriage ceremony and then Work, Harper & Row, New York that serves to ‘expose 1982, p. 160. waited for home delivery of the police the apparatus’ in the tradition of the ideo- image (complete with date and time logically critical and technologically stamp) that would constitute their sole involuted left-wing film practice of the wedding photograph. post-May ’68 Dziga-Vertov Group, (itself a Similarly, at its most basic level,

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Stills from video of the Amnesia performance in Cleveland, Ohio, 1997, by Denis Beaubois

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Stills from Red light camera portraits, Sydney, 1996, by Denis Beaubois

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Jeff Guess, Fonce Alphonse, 1993

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Beaubois’s Medusian gaze in the Amnesia England, where the absence of almost any project also invokes a number of earlier legislative constraint had already then works in the history of critical artistic made possible an unparalleled prolifera- encounters with surveillance. It renders tion of CCTV systems in ‘public’ spaces, explicit, for example, what was already this gesture was hardly inconsequential. implicit in Michael Klier’s important film A similar impulse is also readable in the Der Riese, the almost feature-length com- manner in which the footage that Naldi & pilation of footage taken entirely from an Kirkup ‘harvested’ from the police surveil- encyclopaedic catalogue of public and lance system was then presented – not as private surveillance cameras, whose sheer some sort of fascinatingly ominous range itself already indicated the extent to montage but rather as a series of punctual which such visual tracking technology was TV spots, brief 10-second silent black-and- already fully in use by the time the white interruptions on the local Tynes TV calendar actually made it to the allegorical network, a strategy that they employed year of 1984 in which the film was again when they re-staged the project at released. Klier’s brilliantly simple move – the 1996 Adelaide Telstra Arts Festival in to gain access to and just quote (i.e. Australia and then broadcast their (now reproduce) the output of various opera- full-colour) footage as a series of 15 10- tional surveillance systems – is then second sequences on Festival Television’s echoed almost a decade later in the work Channel 7.2 This intermittent rupturing of of the British artist duo Pat Naldi and the normal televisual 2. See Helen Caldwallader, ‘Pat Naldi & Wendy Kirkup, “Search’”, Wendy Kirkup, albeit inflected through a flow – a strategy in: Locus+ 1993–1996, Newcastle upon Tyne: Locus+, 1996, p. 12- somewhat different strategy of appropria- which Beaubois also 17; rpt. in: Julian Stallabrass, tion. Making effective use of what one employed to dissemin- Pauline van Mourik Broekman & Niru Ratnam (eds.), Locus Solus: could call the strategics of aesthetic drag ate some of the Site, Identity, Technology in Contemporary Art, Black Dog Press, (i.e. using the pretence of an ‘art project’ Amnesia performances London, 2000. to undertake a political action that would, – almost seemed to if recognized as such, most likely be suggest the continuous presence of this impossible or much more difficult to do), economy of visual tracking ‘behind’ or Naldi & Kirkup gained access in 1993 to ‘beneath’ the seemingly harmless the 16-camera system installed by the continuum of daily programming. As Northumbria Police in the city centre of such, it performatively invoked the Newcastle-upon-Tyne in order to stage a constant lurking omnipresence of the ‘synchronized walk’. Like Beaubois’s surveillance system which was both the catatonia, the very triviality and aesthetic project’s condition of possibility and the formalism of this flaneurial gesture, which then still largely invisible fact that it served may have enabled them to undertake the to expose. project in the first place, also serves to shift attention away from the artists as the Guerrilla Strategy ‘subjects’ of the work and onto the very means of production – i.e. the CCTV Considered in terms of classic panoptical system – itself. In a country such as dialectics, such ‘exposing’ of the surveil-

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Still from Der Riese (82∂ 00∂∂ ) by Michael Klier, 1984 Collection of the Netherlands Media Art Institute, Montevideo/TBA

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Pat Naldi and Wendy Kirkup, Newcastle-upon.Tyne, 17 May 1993

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Pat Naldi and Wendy Kirkup, Newcastle-upon.Tyne, 17 May 1993

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lant system is at some level, of course, not the ticket booth, the Surveillance Camera only compatible with its successful Players employ the anti-mimetic vocabu- operation but in fact actually promotes it: lary of the protest movement (placards on the more people know of the existence of sticks, masks, and mock-acting) and then the surveillance the ‘better’ it functions as simply disappear, if they have not already a social technology. Since this is always been ‘asked’ to leave by the ‘forces of more or less the case, the question is order’. Like Naldi & Kirkup, the Surveil- rather exactly what it is that any interven- lance Camera Players also hijack sites of tion exposes. In the case of Naldi & quotidian transience for their surveillant Kirkup what is interesting is that in their performances, but unlike the former, the performance of the CCTV system, their colour and synch-sound record of their controlling of the control space, they fore- actions is produced by filming (in continu- ground both the space of the image (they ous time) the monitors to which the signal ‘become the subject’ of the tracking) and of the cameras send their output. the structuring of the images (the site of Texts also play a role in the Amnesia their production, selection, examination – performances, albeit in a slightly different i.e. the police’s surveillant control booth). manner. Having captured the attention of In so doing they both point to the space of both the ‘primary’ and ‘secondary’ daily life as the site of this new form of audiences (i.e. the surveillance apparatus urban spectacle, and to the surveillance and the bystanders) by means of his inter- apparatus as the locus of a new sort of rogative corporeal fixity, on Day Two audience. This gesture is subsequently (indicatively titled ‘the introduction’) literalized and activated in the late 1990s Beaubois begins holding up in front of his by the New York-based neo-situationist stomach a series of white sheets with anarchist performance collective known as printed texts, starting with one that the Surveillance Camera Players. contains only his name. Willingly proffer- Eschewing the guise of aesthetic drag in ing to the system information which it is favour of a guerrilla version of the more meant to establish against one’s will is, as classically Brechtian intervention, they such, already deeply suspicious, which in stage their telegraphically reduced render- turn only makes the performer/suspect of ings of literary works such as Orwell’s greater ‘interest’. Having thereby further 1984 by simply barging in and appropriat- riveted the attention of one (if not both) ing extant public surveillance systems such of his audiences, the silent Beaubois then as those present everywhere in the suddenly shifts registers. On day three of Manhattan subway system.3 In their this silent performance (entitled ‘the commandeering of the 3. Their rendition of Alfred dialogue and the response’) the text sheets Jarry’s Ubu Roi took place in ‘live’ closed-circuit Manhattan’s Union Square begin to invoke their media-historical video transmission Station, Edgar Allan Poe’s The antecedents – the intertitles of early Raven and Samuel Beckett’s loop between a fixed Waiting for Godot at the Astor Place cinema – not only formally qua text frames Station, and 1984 at the IRT camera and a ‘captive’ Station on West 14th St. Further that interrupt the ‘action’ of the perform- (and usually singular) information on the group can be ance, but also functionally in that, like these, found on their home page at surveillant viewer in http://www.notbored.org/ the texts now also begin conveying crucial the-scp.html. 66 Open 2004/No. 6/(In)Security

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Performance Surveillance Camera Players, Times Square New York, 2002

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narrative information. ‘May I have a copy on taping: that the camera may not even of the video footage?’ the next card be manned, i.e. that it simply may be inquires, indicating, through instructions recording without anyone watching in so- spelled out on the two that follow, that called ‘real’ time. Since we cannot know a positive answer is to be indicated by for sure we must assume there is, but a moving the camera up and down, while response to such a query would neverthe- a negative response is to be conveyed by less be an ambivalently welcome corrobo- moving the camera side to side. ration that our ‘performance’ does indeed have an ‘audience’. And it is just such a Panoptic Anxiety confirmation of his worst panoptical suspi- cions that Winston gets during the routine This hilarious interpellative moment – morning sessions of the Physical Jerks: which is then literally performed in the ‘Smith!’ screamed the shrewish voice from Cleveland Amnesia when one of the youths the tele-screen. ‘6079 Smith W! Yes, you! turns to the surveillance camera and Bend lower please! You can do better than repeatedly asks ‘where my tape, man?’– that. You’re not trying. Lower please! also expresses a classically panoptic That’s better, comrade. Now stand at ease, anxiety: when staring into that unblinking the whole squad and watch me.’5 surveillant lens, who has not wondered The implicit ocular 5. Ibid., p. 39. whether there is somebody actually out reciprocity with which this admonition there observing him right now? As concludes (‘watch me’) is of course a Orwell’s Winston Smith understood all seductive figure of speech: the one thing too well, there was, of course, no way of that Winston – or anyone else – cannot do knowing whether you were being watched is return the gaze of the tele-screen. The at any given moment. How often, or on phantasmatic possibility of a dialogic what system, the Thought Police plugged relation with the surveillant apparatus that in on any individual wire was guesswork. it invokes, however, is precisely what is It was even conceivable that they watched staged in the Amnesia performance, everybody all the time. But at any rate through what one could call the semanticiza- they could plug in your wire whenever tion of the PTZ [Pan, Tilt and Zoom] they wanted to. You had to live – did live, camera. Ingeniously recasting the mechanics from habit that became instinct – in the of the apparatus as a semantics, i.e. as a assumption that every sound you made meaning-bearing economy, we see the was overheard, and, except in darkness, camera pan from side to side ‘in response’ every movement scrutinized.4 to Beaubois’s request. The hilarious Indeed, Beaubois’s 4. George Orwell, 1984 [1949], anthropomorphization which is the request for a copy of Penguin, London 1989, p. 4-5. condition of possibility of reading this the ‘footage’ points not only to the fact – ‘denial’ of his request would seem to quell and general unavailability – of surveillance all panoptical doubts (and in this case also as taped record, but also to the concomitant thespian anxiety): if I was concerned and uncomfortable possibility which before that nobody was actually watching always haunts surveillance systems based me, I can rest assured, since the discursive

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character of the camera movement, the which subsequently could be appre- semantics of the mechanics, clearly hended, it did mark the first highly public confirms that we are dealing with some employment of a technology that has long form of agency. But does it really? Given been used by casinos to identify con- the irreducible dimension of projection artists, by the welfare department to detect involved in such a dynamic, how can we ‘double-dippers’, and by motor vehicle deny the possibility that the seemingly so bureau’s to nab license forgers. Less than expressive PTZ movement was in fact six months later, the city of Tampa Florida totally random and (in this case) fortu- installed a similar ‘Smart CCTV™’ system itous? If this were so, then we would still in conjunction with a network of 36 state- not know for sure whether there was of-the-art surveillance cameras in the Ybor someone in the tower, as it were (even as City section of town (a popular but crime- we would have to assume that there was). ridden night-life district which regularly enjoys between 75,000 and 150,00 visitors Facial Recognition Software during the evenings and on weekends). Here the images captured are analyzed in The foregrounding of this undecidability real time by a biometric software program is one of the key elements of Beaubois’s called FaceIT™, manufactured by the Amnesia performance, which as such Visionics Corporation, which breaks presciently put its finger on a panoptic down every face into 80 salient data tendency that, while long in the making, points in order to compare it with a has only very recently begun making its database of 30,000 ostensible ‘criminals’. first tentative – and highly controversial – As Tampa is the first city in the US public appearances. On Sunday, 30 where such a system has been installed – January 2001, the 100,000 fans who and it is only on loan from the manufac- crammed into Super Bowl XXXV in turer on a trial basis – the national media Tampa all had their faces captured by a have been following its employment – and video surveillance system which then public reaction to it – quite closely. While digitized them in the stadium’s ‘law FaceIT™ so far has yet to produce a single enforcement control room’ so that – arrest, a few weeks after it was installed, without their knowledge – they could be there was a – surprisingly modest – public cross-checked against a biometric database protest, at which demonstrators, some of containing the facial data of 1700 known them with bar codes on their faces, others ‘criminals, terrorists and con-artists’ from wearing gas masks, objected to such the Tampa Police Department and the public digitization. But by far the most FBI.6 While the facial recognition software revealing response came in the wake of by Graphco 6. The story, first reported by the city’s presentation of the new system Robert Trigaux (‘Cameras Technologies scanned faces for criminals’, St. to journalists. A random image taken from identified only 19 Petersburg Times, 31 January 2001) the system’s cameras to demonstrate its was then picked up by the Los people with ‘insigni- Angeles Times on 2 February 2001 capacities – of a man seated at a café in (‘Criminal Faces in the Crowd still ficant’ criminal elude Hidden ID Cameras the Centro Ybor entertainment complex – histories, none of Security’). For a useful introduc- was published widely as an illustration for tion to the subject, see the special section on ‘Biometrics: The Future of Identification’ in the February 2000 issue of Computer, esp. 46. 69

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the reports on this latest biometric devel- Rhetorical Question opment. Upon seeing it in U.S. News and World Report, a woman in Tulsa, The possibility of real-time biometric Oklahoma, ‘recognized’ her ex-husband, processing of visual surveillance data has who was wanted on Federal child neglect dramatic consequences, of course, for the charges, and called the Tampa police. seemingly ‘dialogic’ dimension of When they went to arrest the man, Beaubois’s Amnesia performance. In however, it turned out that he had never response to the ‘refusal’ of the request for been married and had never been to a copy of the video tape – which at first Oklahoma – in short, they had identified glance would seem only to confirm the the wrong guy.7 What is at stake in the imbalance of power characteristic of the dissemination of this 7. Amy Herdy, ‘“They made me surveillant dispositif – the final text frame feel like a criminal”: He was just story, of course, is the having lunch in Ybor City when a retrospectively reveals that this was, in comparative fallibility surveillance camera captured his fact, a strictly rhetorical question. image. Weeks later, the police of human face recog- show up’, St. Petersburg Times, 8 ‘Warning,’ it reads, ‘you may be nition capacities (the August 2001. photographed reading this sign.’9 Indeed, wife who mis-recognized her husband) Beaubois is not really 9. This sign subsequently reappears in another Beaubois when compared to that of the newest asking, since he is performance entitled The Accidental state-of-the-art biometric software: humans not according the Contract, which took place on Eddie Ave. Central in Sidney in make mistakes, while biometric programs apparatus the meek 1996. Here Beaubois again employed the strategy of a signify- such as these – with a capacity of 15 acquiescence it ing stasis in a public space, albeit million searches per minute per CPU and assumes (and all too this time staring directly at a wall only a few inches from his face as an ‘equal error rate of 0.68% on standard often gets). On the a steady stream of pedestrians 8 passed by behind him. Below the databases’ –generally, so it is claimed, do contrary, Beaubois has warning sign attached to his not. While all such 8. Publicity sheet handed out at instead answered the perfectly still back Beaubois held the Visonics Stand at the 2001 two imaging devices: one, a still systems include CEBIT Technology Convention, question in advance, camera, would take random shots Hanover, Germany. of the pedestrian landscape which human monitoring at and in the affirmative: Beaubois himself could not see. some point in the chain, they do, however, he has no need to wait The other, a video camera, provided a continuous record of raise the spectre of the ultimate prosthetic to be given a copy of the street dynamics and was complimented by another panoptic eye – one that never sleeps and the surveillant video (manned) video camera across the is capable of the most astonishing feats of footage because he street which effectively provided the ‘reverse shot’. In gallery instal- parallel processing and facial recognition. himself is taking that lations of the project, the still images would be accompanied by As described by the manufacturer: footage himself, the two video feeds presented on ‘FaceIT™ can find human faces anywhere ‘shooting back’, as it either side of a room, placing the viewer in the force field of the in the field of view and at any distance, were, to use the original ‘secondary’ audience. and it can continuously track them and phrase so aptly crop them out of the scene, matching the invoked by the Toronto-based digital face against a watch list. Totally hands off, media activist Steve Mann to describe his continuous and in real-time.’ In short, we counter-surveillance practices. In fact may be noticed, followed and even Beaubois’s video records of his Amnesia identified by a ‘primary audience’ which is performances in Sidney involve quite a lot nevertheless entirely algorithmic. of shooting, a three-camera set-up which

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includes one behind and on the same plane as Beaubois that provides many of the ‘establishing’ shots, one located above the surveillance camera (thus able to invoke, even if it cannot exactly reproduce, the latter’s high-angle optical vector), and one wide-angle camera attached to the performer’s chest. The carefully edited and elegantly structured video that serves as the record of this performative détournement of the panop- ticon – and circulates in an art-world economy – reveals that both Beaubois’s primary and secondary audiences must in fact be understood as components of a performance which is staged, one could say, for the tertiary audiences in galleries, museums, and at film- and video-festivals. Here, at least from time to time, there is actually somebody watching.

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Sven Lütticken societal form these places conjure up Park Life for us is in fact safer.

The need to keep out the big, bad, unsafe world is growing, as evidenced by the increase in enclosed spaces. Using the concept of the ‘human park’ intro- duced by Peter Sloterdijk in 1999, as well as old and new examples from film, architecture, art and television, Sven Lütticken wonders whether the new

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Contemporary space is quickly becoming modern nation state, 2. Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus (1980), less homogeneous. ‘Gated communities’ although it may have transl. by Brian Massumi, The Athlone Press, London 1988, and other closed, fenced-in spaces are seen internal spatial p. 212. proliferating. This is not, of course, coherence and conti- unprecedented. We are dealing with nuity as an ideal, is itself a fenced-in piece a return of something that modernity of land that people from other countries seemed to eradicate bit by bit, but this cannot enter at will. return occurs from within capitalist Some of the new closed spaces, those modernity (or postmodernity) itself. The intended for recreation or leisurely living, modern age held out the promise of a take the form of parks. Up to and well continuous space that does away with old into the nineteenth century, access to privileges and restrictions (based on class, parks was often restricted to a select elite; religion, property or ethnicity). During not everyone was deemed fit for a taste of the French Revolution, a proposal for a Arcadia. But the nineteenth century also new map of France was drawn, with a saw an increase in public parks, in theory structure of provinces that had the shape open to all. Before the French Revolution, – at least in the first, most ‘ideal’ drawing – Marie Antoinette had a little Disney-like of perfect squares.1 The whole of France village constructed in the park of was turned into a 1. Daniel Nordman, Marie-Vic Versailles, the Hameau, where she could Ozouf-Marignier, Atlas de la perfect grid. This Révolution Française 4: Le territoire pretend to lead a bucolic life – away from proposal, which was (1): Réalités et représentations, the stifling court, but also free from Éditions de l’École des Hautes soon diluted until the Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris confrontations with any real peasants or grid structure was 1989, p. 29-30. paupers. The age of the Hameau seems to barely recognizable, shows modern, have returned, not so much for individual disenchanted, abstract space in a terrify- queens as for a small bourgeois upper ingly radical manner. In somewhat less class. This tendency is reflected in symp- spectacular ways, this development of tomatic fictions like Peter Weir’s film The modern space meant the erasure of the Truman Show (1998), whose protagonist is old legal and physical boundaries living in a small town that is in fact a between the town and the countryside, huge, domed TV-studio – a simulation of as town walls were torn down and life. The scenes that show this town, replaced by a less drastic transition. But Seahaven, were filmed in a real Florida the current segregationism, which appears town, Seaside, a neo-Victorian fantasy for to reverse that process, is in fact an effect the wealthy. Seaside, built between 1984 of capitalist modernity itself. ‘Geometry and 1991, has also inspired Disney’s more and arithmetic take on the power of the recent Celebration development – a town scalpel. Private property implies a space completely controlled by the Walt Disney that has been overcoded and gridded by Corporation, where everything is banned surveying’ – and, elaborating on Deleuze that might be a blemish on this idealized and Guattari, if the scalpel cuts deep ‘small town America’. Celebration, like enough, the homogeneous, gridded space Seaside, defines the good life in terms of a of modernity is cut into pieces.2 The secession from the rest of society. The big

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bad world has to be kept at bay. A theme- Imperial Now-Time park town such as this demonstrates that the real and fictional fenced-in spaces Sloterdijk perceives a similar conflict cannot be kept neatly apart; Celebration between word and image in ancient is a phantasmagorical reality. If The Rome, where the theatre (by which he Truman Show is ‘just’ fiction, and non- means gladiators and similar brutal enter- Disneyfied gated communities ‘just’ a tainments) triumphed over the culture of social and political reality, they nonethe- the classical orators, with well-known less all function in the symbolic register of consequences. Taking ancient Rome as an contemporary culture. example of what happens to a culture The rationale behind these settle- when it becomes decadent may be a ments, with their varying degrees of familiar trope of conservatism, but fictionality, can be elucidated by the term Sloterdijk is original insofar as he sees the human park, which was introduced by decline of ancient Rome in terms of a Peter Sloterdijk in his notorious lecture clash between media – the spectacular Rules for the Human Park (Regeln für den medium of gladiatorial fights versus the Menschenpark). At the end of this lecture, medium of writing. ‘As the book lost the given in 1999, Sloterdijk made some fight against theatre in antiquity, so the references to genetic engineering that school could now lose the fight against were ambiguous enough for many critics indirect forms of violence, in television, – Jürgen Habermas among them – to in the cinema and other disinhibiting assume that he advocated some sort of media.’3 Sloterdijk might have paused to eugenics in order to ‘improve’ the human think whether he did 3. ‘So wie in der Antike das Buch den kampf gegen die Theater race. Indeed, Sloterdijk seems to take it not project a post- verlor, so könnte heute die Schule for granted that genetic engineering Gutenbergian view of den Kampf gegen die indirekten Bildungsgewalten, das Gewalt- might really control such a complex affair the central role of kino und andere Enthemmungs- medien verlieren, wenn nicht as human behaviour; an assumption that ‘the book’ on ancient eine neue gewaltdämpfende might as well be criticized for its culture, and whether Kultivierungstruktuur entsteht.’ Peter Sloterdijk, Regeln für den scientific naiveté as for its political impli- it is helpful in the Menschenpark, Suhrkamp, cations. Sloterdijk’s remarks about present situation to Frankfurt am Main 1999, p. 46. genetic engineering were triggered by his complain about the decline of writing and despair over the state of the ‘humanist’ accuse image culture as such of being tradition. In his view the humanist dehumanising; it is however remarkable Schriftkultur is threatened by the that the visual culture attacked by Dionysian mass media, which appeal to Sloterdijk actually seems to mirror itself in the beast in man. Whereas traditional ancient Roman spectacles. Bildung, with its emphasis on text, has One of the biggest blockbuster films of represented a humanizing, civilizing recent times is Gladiator, in which the impulse, image-saturated mass media decadence of imperial Rome and its loosen inhibitions. addiction to cruel spectacles are depicted in lavish detail, resulting in a violent spectacle that Sloterdijk would no doubt

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Hameau de la Reine, Versailles, 1783.

Jim Carrey in Peter Weir’s The Truman Show (Paramount Pictures, 1998) Photo Melinda Sue Gordon

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Still from The Truman Show (1998), filmed in Seaside, Florida. Seaside is an example of a gated community for the wealthy.

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disapprove of. Whereas Walter Benjamin task.’6 Traditionally, parks are pieces of stated that the French Revolution saw tamed, ‘refined’ 6. ‘Seit dem Politikos und seit der Politeia sind Reden in der Welt, itself as the Roman Republic returned, nature, spots where die von der Menschengemein- re-actualizing that era in a state of revolu- nature has been made schaft sprechen wie von einem zoologischen Park, der zugleich tionary now-time (Jetztzeit), today’s culture suitable for human ein Themen-Park ist; die Menschenhaltung in Parks oder seems to have a privileged link with the consumption. Plants Städten erscheint von jetzt an als Roman Empire rather than with the have been carefully eine zoo-politische Aufgabe.’ Sloterdijk, op. cit. (note 3), p. 48. republic.4 Our now-time is an imperial grouped and now-time, not unlike 4. Walter Benjamin, Über den groomed; if there are animals, these are Begriff der Geschichte (1940), in: that of the French Rolf Tiedemann, Hermann either domesticated or – as in the Tierpark Second Empire and Schweppenhäuser (eds.), or zoo – put in cages. In theme parks, Abhandlungen: Gesammelte of Victorian England: Schriften, vol. I.2, Suhrkamp, nature and its dangers are tamed by simul- with a mixture of Frankfurt am Main 1991, p. 701. ating them in all sorts of thrilling ‘rides’; pride and fear of decadence and fall, these a visit to a theme park is presented as an societies and their artists and architects adventure, but as safe as a visit to the zoo mirrored themselves in (especially the to see lions and tigers. In the ‘human late) Roman Empire. This passive and park’ theory of society, society is a kind of doom-laden now-time of empire cannot zoo for people, where their dangerous live up to Benjamin’s criterion that the instincts have to be curbed. Sloterdijk sees momentary link forged in Jetztzeit people as ‘animals under the influence’ of between present and past is transformat- culture; the guardians of the park have to ive, active and revolutionary. But for be careful to make sure that these influ- 7 some, this now-time of empire can also ences are beneficiary. 7. ‘Zum Credo des Humanismus gehört die Überzeugung, dass give rise to a new revolutionary now- It was the question Menschen “Tiere unter Einfluss” time, in which the early Christians, espe- how stability inside sind das dass es deswegen uner- lässlich sei, ihnen die richtige Art 5 cially Paul, appear as contemporaries. these parks can be von Beeinflussungen zukommen zu lassen.’ Ibid., p. 17. Although his view 5. See Alain Badiou, Saint Paul. maintained now the La fondation de l’universalisme, on contemporary Paris: Presses Universitaires de influence of the Dionysian mass media is society is dominated France, 1997; Slavoj Zˇ izˇek, The growing that led Sloterdijk to his remarks Fragile Absolute, or, Why Is the by comparisons with Christian Legacy Worth Fighting on genetic engineering. The polemics For?, Verso, London/New York Rome, Sloterdijk’s 2000. over this aspect of his speech have tended conception of society to obscure the fact that Sloterdijk’s text, as a ‘human park’ has a pedigree leading for all its phantasmagorical aspects – or back to Plato. But in his discussion of this indeed because of them – has the virtue ‘pastoral’ take on society, references to of making a pervasive tendency in today’s phenomena much closer to home seep in culture explicit. Sloterdijk may refer to as well: ‘Since the Politikos and since the Plato, and his technocratic paternalism Politeia there have been writings which may also remind one of the modern state speak about human society as if was a in its various guises (communist, fascist, zoo that is also a theme park; from that democratic welfare state), but his text is moment on the keeping of people in above all marked by contemporary pre- parks or cities seems like a zoo-political occupations. Sloterdijk is closer to Disney

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than to Plato, though Sloterdijk’s vision 1960s and early 1970s, Robert Smithson and Disney’s urbanism of exclusion can attacked the nature park ideology, then both be seen as the return of a past that getting a new impetus from the counter- was never really superseded. The new culture. In his view, conservationists comes in the shape of a return of the traded one myth (the myth of progress) ancient. With Celebration, the Walt for another (the myth of ‘untouched Disney Corporation has created a resid- wilderness’). Smithson advocated a dialect- ential theme park where the disintegrat- ical approach to parks, in which the ing tendencies of a society that is seen to human and the natural, the modern and succumb to Dionysian Enthemmungs- the ancient co-exist and interact. medien are locked out as much as possible. Frederick Law Olmsted, the creator of And Celebration is not unique: it is just Central Park in New York, was the master one famous example of a new kind of of this ‘dialectical landscape’. Central Park urbanism in which towns are created as is an artificial creation, a wasteland turned a refuge from a larger community, from into a superior ‘new nature’ which kept society. If the big human parks that used evolving through the decades. Smithson to be called nations have become unman- described how in the early seventies the ageable, than smaller, safer human parks part of the park which is called The must be created for those who want to Ramble – with winding paths intended live a quiet life. However, reality has a for thoughtful walks – teemed with way of kicking in, and Celebration has ‘hoods, hobos, hustlers, homosexuals,’ had its share of crime. whom he apparently regarded as the equivalents of wild animals: ‘Olmsted has Jurassic Park brought a primordial condition into the heart of Manhattan.’8 Whereas commun- In the nineteenth century, a new concep- ities like Celebration 8. Robert Smithson, ‘Frederick Law Olmsted and the Dialectical tion of the park was born in the United are be based on the Landscape’, in: Robert Smithson, States: the National Park, where a large premise that society The Collected Writings (ed. Jack Flam), University of California area of nature is placed under protection. as a whole (the big Press, Berkeley/Los Angeles/ In this kind of park, it is no longer man human park) has London 1996, p. 169. who tames nature and hence protects evolved into a scary place full of ‘hoods, himself from the wilderness; it is rather hobos, hustlers, homosexuals’, Smithson nature which is protected from human delighted in a dialectical park that was far interference. The park is, however, in from ‘well kept’. principle open to ‘the people’, as long as Smithson’s critique of the ideology of they follow certain rules. This kind of progress in postwar American culture park has become ever more dominant; went hand in hand with a fascination for nature has to be left untainted and pure, the ‘primordial’, the prehistorical. The and if there is none left it has to be kitschy dinosaur paintings by Charles R. created (like the areas of pseudo- Knight were as compelling to him as authentic ‘new nature’ being created in anything in ‘official’ modern art (‘Note Holland). In his writings from the late impressionistic treatment of water’).9

9. Robert Smithson, ‘A Museum of Language in the Vicinity of 78 Art’ (1968), in: ibid., p. 85.

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Picture postcard with a painting by Charles R. Knight from the collec- tion of the American Museum of Natural History, New York, reproduced by Robert Smithson as an illustration in his A Museum of Language in the Vicinity of Art, 1968.

Stills from Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park, 1993

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Stills from the Robert Smithson film Spiral Jetty, 1970

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Smithson did not so much oppose the outside world. When it became apparent ancient to the contemporary as try to that there were difficulties and that the show how and when the present strict criteria (for instance with regard to becomes posthistorical, postapocalypic. ventilation) could not be met, the press He wanted to identify points where the turned against the project and its backer. limits of the conventional view of histori- Matters only calmed down when cal progress are exceeded, so that a post- Columbia University took over the plant historical state and promised to run it by strict scientific is created that becomes one with its standards (recently, the university opposite, prehistory, which is also outside announced the end of the project). the bounds of conventional history. The Whatever may be the scientific merits of industrial ‘monuments’ of Passaic, New Biosphere 2, it captured the media’s Jersey, provided examples for this attention because it was (also) something approach: ‘River Drive was in part bull- more than science: it was a phantas- dozed and in part intact. It was hard to magorical New Eden, the promise of a tell the new highway from the old road; healthy, balanced ecosystem. If it were they were both confounded into possible to create a stabile ecosystem in a unitary chaos. Since it was Saturday, greenhouses, in an enclosed, park-like many machines were not working, and space, then perhaps it does not matter so this caused them to resemble prehistoric much if the real biosphere – the global creatures trapped in the mud, or, better, nature park, which mankind has managed extinct machines – mechanical dinosaurs rather badly – goes to the dogs. New stripped of their skin.’10 In Smithson’s paradises could be created on other view, opposites 10. Robert Smithson, ‘A Tour of planets once this one is defunct. The ideal The Monuments of Passaic, New always converge and Jersey’ (1967), in: ibid., p. 71. human park in the age of ecological no enclosure can awareness would have to be a nature park ensure purity – whether it is ‘pure nature’ as well: Paradise Regained. or an idealized reconstruction of small- The ultimate – fictional – nature park town America. of the last decade is Steven Spielberg’s The last decade has seen the rise of a Jurassic Park (1993) and its sequels. widespread fascination for amalgams of Smithson would probably have been high tech and nature, of cutting edge mesmerized by this film, written by technology and the primeval. However, Michael Crichton: after all, the theme this development has been marked more park entrepreneur in Jurassic Park uses by the dream of a perfect convergence advanced technology to re-create than by Smithson’s insights into complex dinosaurs from their genetic material. and messy co-existence. The Biosphere 2 Instead of creating peaceful inhabitants complex, a system of linked greenhouses for the human park, as Sloterdijk hoped it with a variety of climates, became a huge would, the genetic revolution results in a media hype when a group of scientists new prehistoric age. This theme park is tries to live there autonomously in the on an island, because the dinosaurs must early 1990s, without contact with the under no circumstance leave their park

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(the inhabitants of, say, Celebration closed because the town of Rotterdam would not be amused if a T-Rex stalked insisted that the buildings and restaurant through their town). Of course the island in AVL-Ville met its regulations (thus soon becomes a deadly trap for the making explicit the fictional status of people on it, as the dinosaurs start AVL-Ville as a state). Drawing from the breeding and take over ‘their’ theme park. bag of ‘radical’ theoretical concepts, one The park management has screwed up, might opt to characterise AVL-Ville as a and Spielberg can stage a virtual heterotopia, one of the divergent, marginal bloodbath which would probably have spaces that Foucault contrasted with the thrilled the Roman audience in Gladiator. abstract, homogenizing space of capital- Since dinosaurs first became the subject ism – or as a TAZ, the Temporary of science and of the popular imagination Autonomous Zone posited by Hakim in the mid-nineteenth century, they have Bey.12 But for all the differences between often been used to comment on human these notions, both 12. Michel Foucault, ‘Of Other Spaces’ (1967), Diacritics 16, society; hence it is hard not to see Jurassic heterotopias and 1 (1986), p. 22-27; Hakim Bey, Park as a human park in disguise.11 After TAZs are in this T.A.Z. The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic all, the dinosaurs’ 11. On the dinosaur in modern abstract space, a part Terrorism, Autonomedia, New and contemporary culture, see York 1991, p. 95-134. voraciousness and W.J.T. Mitchell, The Last Dinosaur of it; they introduce greed is matched by Book, The University of Chicago difference, but they are not closed off. Press, Chicago/London 1998. the ruthless park The fact that Van Lieshout envisaged a director and his financial backers. They network of AVL-Ville ‘franchises’ are true creatures of capitalism. And how throughout the world could be linked to could new nature created by humans be Foucault’s conception of a network of anything else but a human park? heterotopias, but by staging a secession from society in the form of a ‘free’ state, A Franchised Free State Van Lieshout effectively copied the logic of gated communities and other human For a few months in 2001, the ‘free state’ parks. of AVL-Ville existed in Rotterdam. AVL- AVL works like the Atelier des armes et Ville was founded by Atelier Van des bombes (a shed for making bombs) Lieshout, the art/design/architecture have led critics to comparisons with the studio headed by Joep van Lieshout. The reactionary American Militia movement main part AVL-Ville was the studio as well as with the Unabomber: deluded compound in the Rotterdam harbour attempts to stop the permanent revolu- area, which was sealed off by a wall tion of global capitalism and to recreate consisting mainly of containers. On the some ‘normal’, stabile society. AVL-ville lot itself there were various structures has also been compared to David scattered around in a rather haphazard Koresh’s compound in Waco, Texas – fashion – including a field hospital and a another secession from society, and a car turned into a chicken coop. There particularly ill-fated one. At the opening was also a farm nearby, called AVL-Ville ceremony AVL-Ville turned out to be 2. After less than a year, AVL-Ville was much more festive and friendly. But as a

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small settlement that takes the form of a the next countries. Multinationals are demarcated compound, AVL-Ville is, after all the true nomads; in the past however closer to Waco than to, for decade it has become clear that perhaps instance, Constant’s New Babylon project only capital lives up to Deleuze and from the 1950s and 1960s, which took Guattari’s romantic theory of nomadism; the form of plans for immense structures only capital is always on the move, that would have done away with the without any definitive ‘reterritorialization’ need to stay in a fixed place. Constant’s taking place. In Asia, this has led to the vision could not be further away from establishment of ‘free-trade zones’ where Sloterdijk’s view of society as a ‘human normal law is suspended: in these zones, park’ which has to be kept in order, corporations (or rather their contractors) although Constant’s Roussauist view of can pretty much do what they want human nature may be as problematical as (which includes barely paying their Sloterdijk’s conservative one: Constant workers).13 A discussion of AVL-Ville in foresaw a nomadic homo ludens engaged this context may seem 13. Naomi Klein, No Logo, Flamingo, London 2000, in a perpetual dérive. Between New strange, as AVL-Ville p. 195-229. Babylon and AVL-Ville, something funda- was not about exploit- mental has changed: models for social ing workers or evading taxes. It tried to reform (or revolution) are no longer use the human park approach to society aimed at society at large, but at small against its aims, but it did not actually secessions from this society. break with this approach. It was a human In the final analysis it is not Waco that park dressed in the garb of a ‘pirate comes to mind in the case of AVL-Ville, utopia’. but Celebration, as incompatible as Van Lieshout’s libertarianism may be with Even more than books, films or inhabited Disney’s paternalist social vision – and as theme parks (whether by Disney or by much as it may be inspired by commune Van Lieshout), it is the medium of tele- experiments of the late Sixties and vision that has exploited the fact that we Seventies, which also followed the logic have come to think of society as a human of secession. Both Celebration and AVL- zoo. One successful ‘reality TV’ format Ville are small human parks that have was a show where a group of carefully split off from a society that is seen – selected people live with each other on although for different reasons – as a large an uninhabited island, a Jurassic Park for human park that is run in an unsatisfact- humans. In the even more popular Big ory manner. Both use the status of private Brother, the human park was been property in the modern state to split a reduced to tiny dimensions: one house piece of land off from the state, to turn it with cameras everywhere. It is the into a micro-state. The concept of ‘fran- ultimate secession, the private home, chises’ is also obviously derived from turned into a peepshow. Meanwhile, corporations such as Disney, who can reality soaps about Ozzy Osbourne and effectively blackmail national govern- others reduce boredom by focusing on ments, because they can always hop to bizarre and famous individuals, rather

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General plan drawing of AVL-Ville, Rotterdam, Atelier Van Lieshout, 2001

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AVL-Ville flag, Atelier Van Lieshout, 2001. Photo D.J. Wooldrik

AVL-Ville, Atelier van Lieshout, 2001. Photo D.J. Wooldrik

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than on assorted nonentities. Having lost the faith in the manageability of society we watch how, in this microcosm, people just barely manage to get along; we watch how the secluded little human park turns out to be just as complex and unmanageable as the big human park that once used to be called society. As in Jurassic Park, the enclosed space turns out to be a trap rather than a way out.

This essay previously appeared in the New Left Review, no. 10, July/August 2001, p. 111-118 and has been specially revised for Open.

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Harm Tilman ment of a society of control in which the Architecture in Control issue of security is high Societies on the political agenda has opened the way for Security as a Selling Point this in the Netherlands.

As city authorities are confining themselves to their basic tasks and citizens are compelled to take the care of their living environment into their own hands, ‘gated communities’ like those becoming increasingly common in the United States may not be far off for the Netherlands, according to Harm Tilman. The develop-

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Your problem and everyone’s problem in this Amsterdam city alderman’s visit to the pros- village is that you think you have a right to be titution zone on the Theemsweg. These are safe. You all know each other, and you’re always exercises that are meant to banish evil from telling each other everything. You all went to the our midst. Together they define a communal same school and you shop in the same shops, and inner space that can be called secure. The two you know each other’s parents and grandparents processes are closely connected. Sloterdijk sees and great-grandparents. You all arrange every- these efforts as attempts to create a safe thing among yourselves. You think that because distance between the immune space of the you go to school, and to your work, and pay your group and its banished spoilers. Security is a taxes and don’t break the law too blatantly, necessary ingredient for a society that has nothing can happen to you. And when something become highly individualized. does happen, you’re outraged. And then a scapegoat has to be found. It’s time you woke up, Societies of Control Tessa. Just because you shower every day doesn’t mean you can’t get dirty. The current growing focus on security or insecurity coincides with the transition from Kristien Hemmerechts, a disciplinary society into a society of control, Donderdagmiddag. Halfvier, Atlas, Amsterdam/Antwerp 2002 as analysed two decades ago by the French philosopher Michel Foucault. The former Not long ago, a village near the city where I type of society reached its high point at the live was shaken by the brutal murder of a beginning of the twentieth century. A charac- petrol station owner. The loot totalled 100 teristic of this is that the individual moves euros and a few packets of cigarettes. The between closed environments, each with its young perpetrators turned out to live around own patterns, which succeed each other in a the corner and were quickly apprehended. A set order, from the family to the school, the week and a half later, the village turned out military barracks, the factory, the hospital, for a silent march, yet another protest against the prison and the retirement home. In random violence in the public space. It was Foucault’s view these environments slowly not the first and probably not the last demon- became mired in deep crisis. Well-intentioned stration against reprehensible behaviour in but ineffective reforms are an expression of public. They express a ‘high level of common this. The school system in the Netherlands, anger against the presumed and actual causes for example, has been radically transformed of evil’ and constitute an escape valve for a various times since the implementation of society that is no longer what it was. educational-reform legislation in 1968, with In the recent book Sferen (‘Spheres’) the little result. German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk analyses The considerations developed by the various forms of anger in solidarity.1 Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben in the Sloterdijk argues that 1. Peter Sloterdijk, Sferen, II. Globes, book Homo Sacer outline the consequences of macrosferologie, Boom, Amsterdam these are partly repre- 2003. the emergence of a society entirely based on sented in scandals and control.2 According to Agamben the distinc- expressions of indignation. This can even tion between biological 2. Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer. De soevereine macht en het naakte leven, include the collective fuss about a former life (zoe) and the translation by Ineke van der Burg, Boom/Parrèsia, Amsterdam 2002. Architecture in Control Societies 89

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Silent march in Charlois, Rotterdam. Photo ANP

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qualified life of the citizen (bios) have disap- Therefore, Davies argues, the use to which peared, and all that is left is bare existence. a space is put should be made into the Therefore it is no longer the city, but the starting point. The public domain (the prison) camp in which life can be controlled down to dictates the private domain (the personal the smallest detail, that forms the paradigm everyday meaning) only superficially. In the of contemporary politics. The camp has spatial organization of the public domain, embedded itself firmly in the city, according however, the centripetal and the centrifugal to Agamben. At airports and stations, in coexist, making its entrances and exits coincid- shopping centres and asylum centres, a state ental. This means that all spaces are insecure of emergency is increasingly in force. Such and therefore in one way or another hostile. ‘non-places’ are the epitome of modern We can see this reflected in the behaviour of camps, Agamben says. ‘In all these cases an urban dwellers in the public space. People ostensibly secure place actually marks off (…) make a detour if they do not trust a situation, a space in which the normal order has effec- or come to arrangements with neighbours tively been suspended and the extent to which and friends, for instance. ‘Space is imagined, outrages are committed depends not on law, put into place, and resisted. The meaning and but only on the decency and morality of the use of space are everywhere subject to police temporarily exercising sovereignty.’ strategic negotiation.’ A new urban reality is emerging. According to Paul Virilio, cities are being The Netherlands is Slowly Being Secured turned inside out, with sections of the public space becoming private and the private space The promotional campaign ‘Nederland becoming more public.3 The design of the veilig’ (‘Netherlands secure’), a joint initiative urban space is having to 3. Paul Virilio, L’espace critique: Essai, of the ministries of Justice and of the Interior Christian Bourgeois Éditeur, Paris deal with demands for 1984. and Kingdom Relations aptly plays into this. social safety. Insecurity In it, the government is making it known is no longer confined to known bad neigh- that security is important for everyone. bourhoods; it can be experienced anywhere Exasperation about robberies, violence, and at unexpected moments. Conversely, the vandalism and intimidation has reached home, under the influence of the media, the unacceptable levels, as well as the resulting computer and global communication, is damage, according to the promotional turning into an increasingly public space. The message. By 2006, crime in and around traditional opposition of valuable public contemporary non-places, such space versus secure private space has lost some as stations, parking garages and shopping of its importance. The sociologist Ioan Davies centres, must be reduced by a quarter. More makes this clear using the example of the police officers and more security personnel prison.4 In prison there is no distinction must ensure more security in the streets, as between inhabitable 4. Ioan Davies, Writers in Prison, must surveillance cameras. Citizens are also and hostile space, as Basil Blackwell, Oxford 1990. being marshalled into the effort ‘toward a introduced by the French philosopher Gaston safer society’. Official certifications, ‘neigh- Bachelard. This space is both familiar and bourhood watch’ projects and informant insecure. telephone numbers, including the option of

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Henrik Plenge Jakobsen, ANGST, mural, 1999, 50 Lower Hall Lane, Walsall (UK). This artwork, according to the artist, addresses ‘the condition of

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our societies, which undergo so many political, historical and especially economic changes’. Photo Peter Baker. © Smith + Fowle

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Public-service advertisement: ‘We’re going to be checking more. You stay alert as well.’ Promotional campaign by the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations, published among others in NRC Handelsblad, 10 January 2004.

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reporting crimes anonymously, offer diverse moving in earn at least 120 percent of the possibilities. minimum wage), strong-arm measures against Security is saturating the micro as well as illegal tenants and dodgy landlords, alloca- the macro sphere. The official police tion of housing in problem areas through certification ‘Politiekeurmerk Veilig Wonen’ positive balloting and the establishment of on house security is intended for owners and economic development zones in which tenants of existing dwellings as well as new- private parties receive tax benefits in return build houses and flats. By bringing the for investments. dwelling into line with the standards of this The growing emphasis on security is also certification, residents can be one step ahead reflected in the use of security impact reports, of burglars. To achieve this they must adapt comparable to environmental impact reports. their windows and doors and change the These are tests on social safety for construc- locks on the front door and windows, to make tion plans and urban projects. According to them more difficult to force. They are also Tobias Woldendorp, social safety design urged to change their behaviour by locking consultant with Van Dijk, Van Soomeren and their doors at night, keeping their keys safe, Partners, the design of a sustainable city falls shutting windows at night and making within the jurisdiction of urban planners, arrangements with neighbours. All of these architects and landscape architects. If the measures are meant to result in a higher level latter neglect security and liveability, a of security in the home. This idea was derived defensive-looking environment emerges, in from ‘Secured by Design’ in England. New- which the degradation of the public domain build dwellings that meet the security can only be turned back through ad hoc inter- standards are granted a certification. In ventions. Woldendorp therefore calls for England this proved an effective concept, by every step in the planning process – from the reducing the chances for home invasion and Document on Basic Principles to the turning out to be a selling point for potential Definitive Design – to include a brief security house buyers. test. He also wants to link a bottom-up But the security policy is now extending approach to security improvement. The revit- to the urban level. In Rotterdam, the city alization of city centres and neighbourhoods executive has developed an action programme after all requires the participation of intended to put an end to the deterioration of residents. so-called disadvantaged neighbourhoods. According to the city authorities, these Toward an Ecology of Fear include those areas where too many poor, low-skilled people are settling and which too The character of the city is changing. During many well-off, highly skilled people are the riots in the black ghettos in American leaving. This is said to be placing a heavy cities, the mayor of Philadelphia observed burden on facilities as well as resulting in a that ‘from now on, state borders go through concentration of poverty, nuisance and illegal cities’. The obsession with social safety and activity. Key elements of the action with the guarding of these societal boundaries programme are stringent residency require- is part of the ‘zeitgeist’ of urban restructuring. ments (such as the requirement that people One no longer enters a city via a station or a

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boulevard. Residents and visitors are now containing minorities within various ghettos. subject to systems of permanent surveillance. As far back as the 1980s, Hollywood This phenomenon is particular prevalent in films, such as Running Man, Blade Runner, Die American cities, where one third of all Hard and Colours, showed to what extent the suburbs are enclosed by security walls. St. theme of security had displaced that of social Andres, for instance, a ‘gated community’ in integration. Security is what the economist Boca Raton, Florida, spends more than one Fred Hirsch calls a ‘positional good’,6 a good million dollars a year on surveillance. Anti- defined by the extent to 6. Fred Hirsch, Social Limits to Growth, Routledge & Kegan Paul, terrorist barriers in the road surface are which people have London/Henley 1977. beginning to be part of the standard equip- access to private ‘protec- ment of American residential communities. tive services’ and secured residential enclaves. The obsession with security is greatest in Los Moreover, social safety is a self-fulfilling Angeles, the city of freedom. Insecurity is not prophecy. As the sociologist William H. only related to vandals and street gangs, but Whyte once said, ‘Fear proves itself’.7 We can also with the significant segregation that now see this in the 7. William H. Whyte, The City, Rediscovering the Center, Doubleday, characterizes the city. Netherlands as well. New York 1988. Mike Davis, author of the book City of Although the statistics Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles have not changed dramatically, the suddenly (1990), has aptly characterized this phenom- increased perception of threat is dictating the enon in ‘the ecology of fear’.5 Davis based this measures now being taken in the area of on the diagram used by 5. Mike Davis, Ecology of Fear: Los social safety. The military phraseology used Angeles and the Imagination of the sociologist Ernest Disaster, Metropolitan Books, Henry makes references to potential violence and Burgess to represent the Holt and Company, New York 1998. alludes to imaginary dangers. urban dynamics of Chicago in the 1920s. Around the Loop, Burgess drew concentric The Design of New Collectivism zones where processes of invasion and displacement were operating. Accessibility This places repairs to the most intimate of and property value are determinants in this spaces high on the agenda. This is coupled, as scenario. Davis adds the factor of fear to this made clear by Sloterdijk, with an expansion diagram. The Loop has evolved into a ‘core’ of the private sphere. This is also happening within which undesirables are placed in in the Netherlands. Does this mean that the ‘homeless containment zones’. The inner city, Netherlands, like the United States, will see in the Chicago of the 1920s a ‘melting pot’, is ‘defended neighbourhoods’ and ‘gated now a disadvantaged area in which the police affluent communities’? The question is not systematically scour alternating ‘drug-free whether, but rather how this phenomenon zones’ for set periods of time. This core is will manifest itself in the Netherlands. The ringed by the ‘blue-collar suburbs’, where Dutch housing market has changed from a citizens provide for their own security by supply into a demand market, and security is means of ‘neighbourhood watch’ an important ‘positional good’ in this market. programmes. Further out are the ‘gated This will also find expression in design. affluent suburbs’. In the periphery of this The role of security is different on the city, there are various opportunities for outskirts of cities than within existing cities.

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Mike Davis, diagram representing the ‘Ecology of Fear’

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Example of a ‘gated community’ in the United States Photo from Mutations, Bordeaux

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Example of a ‘gated community’ in the United States Photo from Mutations, Bordeaux

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Individual subdivisions in Vinex develop- ity the neighbourhood or the building is ments distinguish themselves through great enclosed by walls and the area within the physical and cultural homogeneity. This is walls is fully private (and thus not semi- reinforced by the name or metaphor which public). The residents themselves are respon- lends the subdivision its own identity. This sible for the arrangement and maintenance of allows these subdivisions to exude a strong their domain. Life is subject to strict rules of sense of unity, which gives ‘undesirable behaviour, which must be accepted upon visitors’ the impression that they do not purchase. Municipal democracy has been belong here. The villa subdivision Park eliminated in these enclaves. It has not come Boswijk in the Vinex development of this far in the Netherlands yet. Even when Ypenburg, for example, stands entirely alone. neighbourhoods are walled in, they are not It has its own identity, primarily one of closed off. Yet we are moving in that luxury. The high prices that must be paid for direction, as municipal authorities are the parcels and dwellings do the rest. limiting themselves to their ‘core activities’ Haverleij, near Den Bosch, goes a step further. and citizens have to care for their own living It consists of islands of luxury dwellings in an environment. Thus we will not have to wait attractively designed landscape. Here, cultural long for this phenomenon. homogeneity has also been physically expressed, in that the ‘manors’ are walled in. In inner cities, large, ‘thick’ buildings are being created, which can be closed off entirely and offer residents a sense of safety and security. The core here is a collective (or semi-public) space that functions as an inner world within the complex and forms the link between dwelling and city. This collective space provides a controlled oasis or resting place within the dynamics of the big city. It is usually designed as an inner garden, but it can also be a swimming pool or a tennis court. Spectacular examples of this form of housing include the building by Neutelings Riedijk Architecten on the Mullerpier in Rotterdam, KCAP’s ‘Commissaris’ in Venlo and the Baekelandplein project by Paul Diederen of Diederen, Dirrix van Wylick Architecten in Eindhoven. These complexes offer the target group of senior citizens the quality of a ‘protected community’ within an urban environment. There are as yet no ‘gated affluent commun- ities’ in the Netherlands. In such a commun-

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Diederen Dirrix van Wylick Architecten, Baekelandplein, Eindhoven (project architect Paul Diederen). The location forms a link between the centre and the former working-class neighbourhood of Woensel-West, which is now seen as a disadvantaged area with high levels of crime, immigrant numbers and prostitution. In the project, the accumulation of the diverse programme components, conflicting in themselves, is used to create a special cohesion between the building and spaces. The plan is organized around a collective space positioned four metres above the surface level and providing access to all the components.

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Park Boswijk, Ypenburg, The Hague, design by RBOI

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Mark Wigley that architecture is not neutral, they Insecurity by will keep on build- Design ing new targets.

WTC New York

The idea that architecture keeps danger out seems a fable since the attacks on the World Trade Center buildings in New York. Therefore, architects should stop pretending architecture offers security and protec- tion. So long as they refuse to see

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A very tall building absorbs a plane and disease, and genocide. Nor is it simply collapses after 105 defiant minutes, the terrorist assault on a large metropol- having watched its twin suffer the same itan building. Buildings are constantly fate. Everyone sees it. Again and again. being targeted. Yet while the front pages It captures every eye and ear in stunned of newspapers regularly feature the amazement. lethal rubble of flattened modern When the towers fell, the world buildings, none of these collapses has shook. Nobody could accept what they stimulated any kind of debate about saw. Such a vertical drop seemed impos- architecture. Only with the destruction sible. And no amount of analysis of the of the World Trade Center have the mechanics of the collapse, the simple designers and critics swarmed down like way the attack was carried out, or the vultures to pick over the site of collapse, strategic mission of the attackers can unable to offer much because the ease the incredulity. The event remains ancient intimacy between architecture unbelievable, surprising even to those and violence has for so long been off- who initiated it. limits in their discussion. People turn to architects for answers. Surely those responsible for shaping A Reassuring Witness structures could help explain the meaning of this traumatic event. Emerging from To grasp the event, we need to appreci- relative obscurity, architects were ate the intense fantasies people have featured in magazines and extensively about buildings in general and the twins quoted in newspapers. They appeared on in particular. To begin to understand the television talk shows and were inter- depth and complexity of the reaction, we viewed on news broadcasts. It was hard need to go back to the simplest level. In for any designer or critic to remain the simplest terms, buildings are seen as thoughtfully silent. Yet so little is said in a form of protection, an insulation from the end. Everyone pretends to find in the danger. To be hurt by a building is unac- event the clearest evidence for what they ceptable. Even the most minor fragmen- have been saying all along. Mainly it is a tation of a structure is front-page news. kind of disciplinary therapy, a reassertion And fatal collapses are international of the traditional figure of the architect as news – death by architecture is intoler- the generator of culturally reassuring able. Furthermore, buildings are tradi- objects, an ongoing denial of the fact that tionally meant to last much longer than architects are just as confused as the people. It is the sense that buildings traumatized people they serve. outlive us that allows us to have a life. Why did our seemingly hyper-aware Buildings shelter life by sustaining a and congenitally paranoid world become collective sense of time, a form of so shocked? Not because of the number cultural synchronization. Buildings act of people killed. Such numbers are tra- as a reassuringly stable witness of gically all too common on a planet whatever we do by surviving longer than routinely tormented by starvation, war, us and evolving more slowly.

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This sense that our buildings are our The Humanity of Buildings witnesses depends on a kind of kinship between body and building. Not only The attack on the towers was an should buildings protect and last longer extreme yet textbook example. What than bodies, they must be themselves was unique was the size of the audience a kind of body: a surrogate body, a and therefore the size of the threat. superbody with a face, a façade, that Symptomatically, the video statement by watches us. We use buildings to the structural engineer Osama Bin construct an image of what we would Laden refers to striking the ‘softest like the body to be. Buildings are spots’ of America, its ‘greatest thereby credited with considerable buildings’, and not the people within representational force. This force can be them. The real threat is to the architec- seen in the everyday notion that the ture, or rather to an architecture that place where you live continues to represents a much wider population represent you when you are hidden than its physical occupants. In a classic within it, away, asleep or dead. Like sense, the targeted buildings represent your clothes, your building projects some the bodies of a global constituency, kind of stable image regardless of what assuming the humanity of all those who you are doing or feeling. watched. Again and again, the towers Terrorists know this, have always are described with the same terms used known this. They play with these basic for suffering people. In the grieving for fantasies about architecture, wounding those who died, there is also grieving for buildings as often as people. Damaged the buildings themselves. In all the buildings represent damaged bodies. improvised memorials and media And it is the representation that counts. coverage, images of the towers’ faces Terrorism is not about killing people, but share the same space as images of the about dispersing the threat of death by victims’ faces. The buildings became producing frightening images. Particular victims, and in so doing victimize those sites are targeted to produce a general who watch them suffer. unease. If you can identify with the If everyday cultural life makes an target, then your own buildings become unconscious association between body unsafe, and everybody becomes vulner- and building, it is enormously frightening able. This tactical use of images of when the confusion becomes literal. The assaulted buildings plays with precisely devastating spectacle of September 11 the representational capacity of was a simultaneous destruction of body buildings that architects have devoted and building and the distinction between themselves to for millennia. In this, the them. ‘He became part of the building terrorist shares the expertise of the when it went down’, as one distraught architect. The terrorist mobilizes the parent lamented. The buildings became whole psychopathology of fears buried lethal elevators, dropping in on them- beneath the architect’s obsession with selves at the same speed as any object efficiency, comfort, and pleasure. free falling in the air. No resistance: 415

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meters of structure compressed into 20 rooms on the other side of the world, the meters of rubble in 10 seconds, generat- Twin Towers had an eye on us. But ing a level of energy comparable to there is now a palpable sense on the nuclear blasts or volcanic activity. island of having lost a crucial witness Buildings and bodies were instantly that could see you wherever you were: compacted into an extraordinarily dense an architecture of image that was under- pile or dispersed to the wind. In lieu of stood, and enjoyed. remains, family members received small This popularity was never understood boxes of the dust. The bodies them- by architects, who are now being asked selves were mainly lost, and even the to talk about buildings they never number of victims stayed a mystery. embraced. Indeed, the Twin Towers The few bodies that were found were were mercilessly slammed by architec- kept invisible. Despite all the intense tural critics, particularly those who led and endless media coverage, no bodies the support for so-called ‘postmodern’ were shown. No broken, bloody, burned, architecture. For them, the towers or fragmented people. Just the desperate personified the inhumanity of modern flight of those who could choose to jump, architecture. Ironically, the critics spoke and the shocked, dust-laden bodies of in the name of popular sensibility. But in the survivors. the end ordinary people simply had Millions streamed downtown to look, stronger feelings about the buildings partly driven by the voyeuristic compul- than architects, to whom they rarely sion to see the site of such a huge crash listen anyway. The Twin Towers played and partly like loving family members of a much bigger role in everyday experi- the buildings themselves who needed to ence than in architects’ discussions. At see the actual body of the buildings to some level, an extraordinary identifi- accept their loss. cation with the buildings took place that exceeded the expectations of both the Perplexing Popularity boosters of the project and the architec- tural critics. Precisely because their The towers had of course been designed brutal scale did not fit into their to produce such a global audience. The surroundings, they perfectly belonged in whole point was for them to rise up a city of refugees and misfits of every above the city at the end of the island kind, the city that is at once the most facing Europe to capture world and the least American. attention. Which they did. They were The key symbolic role of the World the centrepieces of billions of images. Trade Center, the rationale for both its More postcards were sent of the towers design and its destruction, was to than of any other building in the world. represent the global marketplace. In a And what was constantly looked up at strange way, super-solid, super-visible, by so many was also looking back. super-located buildings stood as a figure Whether we were on the streets of for the dematerialized, invisible, Manhattan or watching TV in living placeless market. In this, architecture

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was surely a vestigial symbolic system, invisible collective network that may be as demonstrated by the fact that the made visible on a particular site by a markets reopened within days after the building. attack. Supposedly fragile digital The shiny glass ‘curtain wall’ is not a patterns have long assumed the solidity showcase revealing the workers inside. once associated with buildings. During the day, reflections usually Electronics have taken over from archi- render the interior mysterious. At night, tecture as our primary witnesses and when the interior becomes visible, it is storehouses of collective memory, the horizontal grid of fluorescent lights allowing buildings to assume new roles. visible through the vertical grid of the Not by chance were those who first façade that is put on display, not the described the architectural role of elec- workers. The fluorescents, which are tronics in the 1950s and 1960s also never turned off, are more important those who insisted that buildings should than the workers. Not by chance is the become as expendable as dishwashers corporate office building one of the first and toasters. Yet the traumatic reaction building types to be routinely to the loss of the towers themselves, photographed at night by architectural beyond the terrible loss of life, shows publications. Of course, there are that even the vestigial system of archi- internal spaces occupied by workers, tecture had more force than anyone and a whole range of tactical design expected. Still, it is as yet unclear what strategies for accommodating them, but it means to threaten a building in an this remains subordinate to the polemic electronic age. of the outer screen. At the ground level, the façade is thinned down to the Representation absolute minimum and the resulting walls of glass invite the eye and body in. We need to look more closely at exactly But all that is revealed is a huge lobby how this seemingly outdated representa- space that usually continues the pattern tional system worked. The World Trade and materials of the exterior plaza. Center was a hyper-development of the What promises to be the interior turns generic postwar corporate office tower. out to be an exterior bathed in eternal The corporate building provides a fixed artificial sunlight and inhabited only by visible face for an unfixed, invisible and the elevator core. The elevators are the carnivorous organization. Typically, only substantial objects. If you look up, there is no sign of the company on the you don’t see the solid underbelly of the building. The lack of a literal sign building’s main volume but an artificial becomes the sign that the corporation is sky, a continuous, brightly glowing, hori- nothing more than an open network. As zontal surface that veils even the shape is written into the very word, the ‘corpo- of the fluorescent tubes that activate it. ration’ is an abstract body, a corpus The hidden office floors above often composed of many bodies networked have the same kind of singular glowing together into a single organism. It is an ceiling. And even when the fluorescents

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View of the World Trade Center, New York. Photo Martien Mulder

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are discrete fixtures arrayed across an above, framed by communication opaque surface, workers do not inhabit networks binding the structure to the rooms but are distributed across a city and the rest of the planet. In the ‘landscape’. In the most fundamentalist space of production in between, the two sense, the corporate building has no shafts, the body simply disappeared. interior. Tourists rocketed through it in America’s largest and fastest elevator, suddenly The Neutral Screen aware of the inside of their own flesh but oblivious to the spaces and people that The Twin Towers took this to the limit, surrounded them. perfecting the logic of the ‘neutral’ Even the workers did not simply screen, stretching it to the clouds and enter or appreciate the space. Isolated exemplifying the culture of the invisible in their express elevators, they went to body. The towers were at once sealed separate sky-lobbies from which they yet porous, intimidatingly heavy yet took local elevators to their respective floating. The twins were at their most floors. Yet in the deluge of countless beautiful at night as a complex pattern images of the building in loving reaction of lights hovering above the city, framed to their unbelievable disappearance, it by the sky-lobbies and observation levels was symptomatic that not one showed which turned into thick dark bands. The the interior of the workspaces. lights simulated occupation, but not by The design of these hidden spaces people. For the first decade, 23,000 was celebrated in the press as highly fluorescents always remained at their innovative when the buildings first went posts, working around the clock. There up. The invention of sky-lobbies had were not even light switches in the freed up an unprecedented amount of towers until 1982, when the endless usable floor area. Concentrating all the stacked layers of light started to structure into a tight ring of huge fragment into an elusive and seductive columns around the elevator core and figure. another heavy ring around the outside of The two mysterious, gargantuan the building made the workspace shafts connected a vast, crowded, hori- column-free. Starting with their own zontal slab of shopping and eating in the choice of lighting pattern, each of the ground to equally crowded platforms for huge number of tenants could organize viewing, eating, and drinking in the sky. their slice freely and differently, setting Below the shopping level was a physical up a whole array of different relation- communication hub that radiated ships to the famous façade, a hetero- multiple underground rail systems. geneity that was masked by the unified Above the viewing level was an elec- exterior, and only subtly implied by the tronic communication hub that radiated different intensities and rhythms of the television, telephone, microwave, and light pattern at night. radio. The result was a density of bodies The towers had no front, back, or in the spaces of consumption below and sides. Each face was the same.

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Furthermore, the buildings had no building encapsulated in a lonely porous depth. There was no simple view of screen whose subtly grafted curves may them in perspective. The smaller well have become the most famous buildings ringing their base blocked the architectural detail in history. view upward, and the windswept plaza on top of the shopping mall was typically Haste deserted. The buildings were meant to be seen from a distance, as pure façade. The eventual demolition of this poign- They were made to seem flat, as can be antly defiant screen was itself foolish seen in the architect’s original render- and painful. There was an obscene ings. Each typical view, the cliché haste to remove all the traces and embedded in a worldwide consciousness, rebuild in a desperate attempt to fill had two seamless screens side by side: the void in so many hearts and bank each a shimmering blend of aluminium accounts. But the question of how to and glass, subtly modulated by the replace nine million square feet office of Gothic- and Arabic-inspired details of space is irrelevant. If anything, the issue the stretched floor heights at the bottom is how to replace the more than two and the top, and the even subtler million square feet of façade – those change of dimension produced by two vast, uncannily duplicated screens. sky-lobbies. The curved grafting of the When the facades came down, the faces columns at the base could be read from of the invisible occupants who were lost a distance, but the details in the higher came up, filling the vertical surfaces of floors were so discrete that only their the city in pasted photocopies and effect was visible, and then only just. covering the surfaces of televisions, Setting the glass back in the recesses computers and newspapers all around between the huge columns meant that the world. They formed a new kind of the colours and texture of the face façade, a dispersed image of diversity in changed continuously with each new place of the singular monolithic screen. angle of view or sun – a minimalist In contrast, survivors were covered with composition that achieved a maximum dust, all differences between them array of effects. concealed by a uniform coating, The Twin Towers were a pure, un- screened by a thin layer of the building. inhabited image floating above the city, The old façade still at work. It was an image forever above the horizon, in precisely those who were missing, those some kind of sublime excess, defying our the buildings did not protect, who had capacity to understand it. The unfath- their horrifying disappearance marked omable trauma of their destruction by a sudden visibility. When architecture simply deepened the mystery. And rises again, it will probably rebury what despite the earthshaking intensity of the was exposed. Another defensive screen collapse, the dust finally settled to reveal will be placed between us and our fears. large sections of the façade improbably This new screen, even, if not espe- left standing, the whole spirit of the cially, that part of it devoted to

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‘memorial’, will insulate us from what may have more to do with no longer happened. A city that was able to so being able to repress certain aspects of completely forget that a third of it was contemporary life. Things that we have destroyed by a deadly downtown fire in been living with for some time were 1776 (‘a scene of horror beyond descrip- disturbingly revealed. The everyday tion’ said the newspaper of the day) and idea that architecture keeps the danger forget that a quarter of it (700 buildings) out was exposed as a fantasy. Violence is was destroyed by another downtown fire never a distant thing. Security is never in 1835, will be able to forget this latest more than a fragile illusion. Buildings trauma remarkably quickly. The whole are much stranger than we are willing to financial district that acted as the site of admit. They are tied to the economy of the latest catastrophe was itself entirely violence rather than simply a protection built within a year of the 1835 fire – the from it. first architect having been hired only a When the design of the twins was day after the fires were put out. Surely first revealed in 1964, the architect said a city shaped only by greed will once that they would be a physical manifesta- again find ways to profit quickly from its tion of ‘the relationship between world pain. Appeals to memory and solidarity trade and world peace’. Did we really will be but excuses for multiple forms of think that the emergent forces of global- local and global restructuring. New ization were so innocent, and that archi- shapes of building and social control are tecture could embody that innocence? easily promoted in the guise of healing Did we really think that buildings could the physical and psychological wounds. be in any way neutral? Or did we just agree to pretend? The rationalizations of The Illusion of Security the rebuilding are just as naïve – and just as successful. Once again, business Before any such talk about rebuilding, will appear to be separated from there should have been a patient memory, a clear prophylactic line will be attempt simply to understand exactly drawn between ‘memorial’ and routine what happened. After all, what occurred industrialized spaces for offices, shops or is not simply the tragic loss that we can residences. We will again pretend to point to, no matter how dramatic and understand the structures we occupy clear-cut it seems. Nothing was easier to and observe. The only challenge will be point to than the Twin Towers and their to select the collective forms of denial. collapse. Yet amidst the obvious horror, And in burying our fears so earnestly, there is another level of trauma that is we also bury our pleasures. Architecture even more challenging because we are will be neutralized and returned to the unwilling to acknowledge it, let alone background. comprehend it. For what might be really Architects are in fact filled with horrifying in the end is precisely what doubt, and often share it when they was already there. The collective sense passionately discuss their designs that everything changed that morning amongst themselves, but they are called

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Elevation of crown detail between the 108th and the 110th floors (working drawings for the North Tower) © Yamasaki and Associates

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Elevation of ‘tree’ detail between the 6th and the 9th floors (working drawings for the North Tower) © Yamasaki and Associates

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The subtle widening of the columns between the 41th and the 43rd floors and between the 75th and the 77th floors (working drawings for the North Tower) © Yamasaki and Associates

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Section showing the uninterrupted slice of office space between the elevator core (right) and the fa˜ade (left) (from the architect’s set of working drawings for the North Tower) © Yamasaki and Associates

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on to exude confidence in public. If our buildings are meant to give us confid- ence, their producers apparently have to embody it. But if architects are not used to bringing their doubts about the status of buildings into public discourse, they are unable to contribute to the much- needed discussion of architecture’s intimate and complex relationship to trauma. All they can do is once again collaborate on the production of images of security, comfort, and memory. The embarrassing truth is that the traditional architect is empowered rather than chal- lenged by such events. Architects are in the threat management business. For all their occasional talk about experimenta- tion, they are devoted to the mythology of psychological closure. But the only architecture that might resist the threat of the terrorist is one that already captures the fragility and strangeness of our bodies and identities, an architecture of vulnerability, sensitivity, and pervers- ity. Ignoring this, architects will unwit- tingly get on with the job of making the next targets.

This text is a version, specially adapted for Open, of a text previ- ously published in: Michael Sorkin, Sharon Zukin (eds.), After the World Trade Center: Rethinking New York City, Routledge, New York 2002.

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column

HANS BOUTELLIER focus on the Fall and on the unmasking of beauty as kitsch, of CREATION love as a trap and of human motives as terror. I realize We live in a time without illu- general statements about art are sions. Its utopian yearning is for dilettante-ish and criticism of security. Fear and unease are so modern art practice quickly smells prevalent that we can think of of grousing. And yet I am often nothing else but fighting them. unable to shake off a feeling of The police and the criminal disillusionment upon visiting a justice system have become the museum of modern art. A lot of agents of our yearnings, and we concepts but little inspiration. cannot get enough of this. We are In essence there are three trapped like a rabbit in the head- sources for providing impulses to lights: paralyzed with fear and a culture devoid of illusions. We unable to get away. I expect cannot expect this of politics – artists to manage to escape the the first candidate. Its pragmatic powerlessness of the present time. and mediagenic course can no Art does not have to please, but longer be turned back. Something it could offer some support. similar applies to the second A few months ago I saw a perform- candidate, religion. Religious ance of the oratorio Die Schöpfung faith is an individual matter and by Haydn at the Finlandia Hall in will not experience a revival as a Helsinki. The musical composition cultural factor. From the Muslims of the Creation story was simply we would prefer no organized overwhelming. But what especially religious movement. struck me was the unembarrassed When it comes to inspiration, I sense of jubilation about the still base my hopes most on the beauty of nature and of humanity. art and culture sector. For a long It dawned on me that the power, time – too long – this has been the joy and the solace this compo- dominated by the motif of sition expressed are out of date. unmasking. The inquiry into the I think few artists these days deepest if not the lowest motives feel compelled to celebrate of human beings (Bataille!) seems Creation in such an exuberant way. to me to have been sufficiently But why? It seems art is being carried out by now. Indeed, if we guided by the idea that there is look at some commercial television little to celebrate. It prefers to programmes, the results of this

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examination have become common property. The inquiry into human perversion has made it commonplace and thereby become superfluous. Pornography and violence have become normalized and thereby have acquired a new significance. They abnormalize restraint, vulnerabil- ity and the inquiry into moral- ities. This is not a call for decency in art or for a reintro- duction of hypocrisy. It is, however, a plea for a new cultural élan, which must come from the people who have traditionally dared to venture down unbeaten paths. I yearn for new (or in fact old) representations of – ahem – love or reformulations of the battle between good and evil. The old culture has been suffi- ciently dismantled to look for new potential in its foundations. This requires time (and means), which might best be used in studying texts and images that have survived, or in fact in making new ones that have not yet been appro- priated by the culture of security. In the current utopian yearning for security lurks the danger of a totalitarian dream of power, but also a spark of hope. I yearn for the hope of creation.

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Jouke Kleerebezem

Beware of the Dog!

The Public Domain in the Information Society

Fear is a poor counsellor if we want to examine the potential of the information society. If we let ourselves be led by it we will remain stuck in a mass-media society, in which obsolete systems of power and knowledge still operate.According to Jouke Kleerebezem we must above all be vigilant ourselves and test the limits of the possibilities offered to us in a network society.

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At the first ‘Doors of Perception’1 conference in Amsterdam in 1993, Bill Buxton, at the time a software engineer with the 1.The ‘Doors of Perception’ conference was initiated by the former Design Institute in Amsterdam and is now an independent foundation under the Xerox PARC research laboratory, intro- directorship of John Thackara.The conference, bringing together interested duced a powerful mantra when he participants from the design, media and business worlds, has been held altern- ately in the Netherlands and India since 2000. explained what his interest in ubiquitous computing, better known as ubicomp, is based upon. Buxton’s ‘I want my desktop back’ became a modest hit in Mediamatic’s version, on the CD-ROM issued as a report of the conference.2 The encroachment of the computer out of its beige plastic housing, to occupy other parts of our physical envir- 2. Doors of Perception CD-ROM, produced independently and bundled with Mediamatic vol. 8, no. 1,Amsterdam 1994.This highly praised conference onment – ‘in the woodwork’, as Buxton put report offers the user the possibility to put together his own Doors using it – has always been the goal of ubicomp.The lectures and contextually relevant content. No longer available. computerization of the everyday environment is drawing the networks out of the house and office and into the street.The Internet and the telecommunications networks connect people and places on a rapidly expanding scale, creating new public and private spaces.Activities that used to take place primarily in the domestic environ- ment, such as telephoning with a ‘fixed’ telephone, have become public.Activities that used to require visiting public places, such as obtaining information from government authorities or in libraries, on the contrary have moved into the private environment. With the rapid increase in so-called ‘hot spots’,3 the streetscape is increasingly being taken over by not only the mobile phone 3.‘Hot spots’ are locations in the public space where, within the range of a wireless network, one can get access to the Internet. Some of these places are but other portable digital devices as well. publicly available; others, for instance private or commercial networks, The architectural, landscape, and informa- are mapped and publicized by network nomads. See for instance http://warchalking.org; http://wirelessbandit.nerdsunderglass.com. tion spaces are beginning to overlap. In optimal mobility, we are expected to communicate as much as possible. Commerce and industry are expending great effort in making all digital products and services available in any location.The advent of communication networks, in which public infrastructure has ended up above ground rather than below it, has ushered in a new era in the Early Information Age. Computerization is moving forward unabated, without taking on the form of our familiar computer – box, screen, keyboard. Unlike what happened with the personal computer, the new computerization is geared to the computerization of the everyday physical environment and incorporates various objects and environments in digital networks.A habitat rich in data is put at our disposal, in which a dense network of connections encompasses and provides access to our everyday environ- ment.The design of the public space, however, is still scarcely adapted to the manip- ulation of a flow of information.The woodwork offers sufficient space for processors, screens and simple control panels, yet it neither reflects nor facilitates in a more considered form the gradual emergence of what I call an information habit.4 The public space does not yet really provide room for 4.‘Remember Home?’ (1994) for Doors of Perception 2 ‘Home’: ‘Communication media pierce our dwellings to facilitate the settling of home the public collection and production of in information technology.The poetics and politics of home in the age of information will equally guide the architecture of built and electronic space. information.To genuinely be able to speak The memory of architecture will model electronic space to the same extent of an ‘information society’ in terms of as the hot links of new media will model different buildings.Thus a new set of practices, which will be known as our information habit, will come into being.’ (http://nqpaofu.com/nqp/ciw_nqp6.html#rememberhome) Beware of the Dog! 123

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meaning as well as function, this will have to change.We will not only have to have the option of collecting information in any location, we also have to be able to produce it.To this end, the nature of the transaction must be clearly readable from the activities undertaken and therefore from the technology used. Sometimes the means of communication vaguely recall the unwieldy boxes that once gathered dust on or under our desks.Thanks to miniaturization the new devices have become elegant and highly fashion-sensitive gadgets.We find adapted versions of screen, keyboard and track ball (a classical mouse turned upside down) in mobiles, personal digital assistants, GPS scanners, automatic tellers, dashboards, kitchen appli- ances, remote controls, video and photo cameras, portable and household audio and video appliances, game consoles and of course in the laptop as well.The connecting networks are for the most part wireless and can find us anywhere.With the devices mentioned, information (sometimes co-ordinated by satellite and thus location- specific) is received by us and potentially made available to the network.‘Computing’ is no longer something we do exclusively in our places of work or in our hobby rooms, at times set for the purpose.These days we ‘compute’ day in and day out, during work and in our free time.Thanks to the connecting networks we leave behind trails of information through physical reality.

Different Speeds

Information moves at the speed of light. Products and services that enrich our daily lives will try to accelerate to this standard.We want our wishes attended to.‘Click and Go’. But physical reality is slow. Our own mobility and that of our goods is stuck at best at the speed of sound, and that, since the Concorde has been retired, is reserved for such professional speed demons as jet-fighter pilots and astronauts.The rest of us move slowly around the world, covering long distances over many hours and at the cost of a huge expense of energy. Our information is always one step ahead of us. Reservations precede us, our presence is widely announced in the network that organizes our movements and reported at the destination. Once we arrive we are logged into new networks, our mobile phones adapt to another environment, in which our credit cards are also accepted.While we get over jet lag with a fuzzy head and unsteady stomach, our chips are already fully at home in their new surroundings and working for us.The professional staff treats us with international courtesy, but the glances we exchange in the street are still somewhat uncomfortable. Meanwhile the local ubicomp has accepted our devices without distinction as to origin. Our data is absorbed into new databases.At each new contact with the network, they are recog- nized and fitted in without any problem.

In Bruce Sterling’s Islands in the Net, and in Neal Stephenson’s The Diamond Age, the main characters live in parallel realities in real time, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. They are never disconnected from the information network that tracks them, makes

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them visible and makes contact with others possible.5 The science fiction of the last 10 years is fast becoming everyday reality. Our 5. Bruce Sterling, Islands in the Net,Arbor House, New York 1988; Neal presence is being reported and processed Stephenson, The Diamond Age, Bantam, New York 1995. beyond the flow of information we set into motion ourselves. Surveillance cameras watch us as we go in or out, and the cameras of fellow travellers repeatedly record us and send these images on to other public environments.We are no longer merely anonymously present in holiday photo albums with a limited distribution; we appear increasingly on holiday and other personal websites, in weblogs and photologs – thus in the public information space. Mobile phone cameras have already been banned in many swimming pools, and in some countries, including Saudi Arabia, a general ban is even in place.The democratic potential for producing information in picture, sound and text, and its distribution to (semi-) public popular media perhaps challenge the norms of our privacy more than the ubiquitous surveillance cameras in the urban 6 environment. 6.A new sort of street theatre is operating in New York,the Surveillance The information society is a society Camera Players: see http://www.notbored.org/the-scp.html. in which the citizen consumes and produces information in equal measure. He or she is as much the object of uninterrupted observation by digital devices as the author and distributor of digital information.‘Look up and smile’, read the headline, in Wired in November 1999, to an article about low-orbit surveillance satellites.7 But a Siemens MC60 or Nokia 7600 gets a lot closer. 7. For more information on the technology used, see for instance http://www.notbored.org/surveillance-technologies.html or Every day thousands of private lives are http://www.spaceimaging.com being recorded in tens of thousands of photos in photologs and made public on the web.8 Communications networks are always 8. See for instance http://www.fotolog.net. open to traffic, without applying particular demands on the message, or checking its content.The Internet is no ‘sir’, as the newspaper once was.The network merely links the many ladies and gentlemen who are individually using information.The mobility of ‘our’ data – both in the sense of actively generated by us and passively applicable to us – knows no limits in speed and aspect. Our personal information is instantly available all over the world and we can be traced anywhere.Already, some products and services are also moving at the speed of information – products and services that can be computerized, such as text, images and sound, but also products and services that materialize virtually ad hoc, for instance ‘rapid prototyping’ or three-dimensional print processes.9 Any material that can be read or written through the intervention of 9. For ‘rapid prototyping’ see for instance digitization can thus move just as fast as the http://www.cc.utah.edu/~asn8200/rapid.html. information with which it is written (coded). In this way a physical, everyday reality accompanies us to some extent, and environments adjust to our presence. Ubiquitous computing plays a role in this. Environments become interactive. Although our velocity does not increase, the adjustments of our environment to our presence make it relative.After all, we prefer to be where our information is, and at the moment it gets there, as well.This is the fulfilment of an ‘information habit’.

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The illustrations are by the Indian artist Abhishek Hazra. Abhishek attempts for a praxis that locates its conceptual trajectory within the interstices of theoretical discourse and visual arts. His affiliation to the discipline of his training – graphic design – finds expression in

Abhishek Hazra, Infobot. ‘We are at home with our information.’(JK)

Abhishek Hazra, Gesturemask. ‘Identity and anonymity are measured in visibility.’ (JK)

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the formal language that informs his work. Abhishek works with the Center for Knowledge Societies, a Usability and Ethnographic Research organisation based in Bangalore, India. (see http:/www.ict4d.info).

Abhishek Hazra, Mining, ‘Our data are our greatest possession.’ (JK)

Abhishek Hazra, Memoryblog, ‘The access to our own and others’ memory is formed by interaction.’ (JK)

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Anonymous or Public/Seen or Unnoticed

To be seen or to remain unnoticed – that seems to be the question.Yet it will not be easy to remain unnoticed in a network society.The relationship between identity and anonymity is once again relevant, and the advent of so much new technology is making it the focus of debate. Unease and irrational fears arise because information and everyday experience are not synchronous.The confusion between ‘real’ and ‘virtual’ is leading many critics of new media and the Internet to spurious conclusions. For example, a virtual world is supposed to be lonely and antisocial, the Internet is supposed to be dominated by commerce or to primarily provide outlets for criminal activities. But at the same time the positive achievements of the Internet are generally grossly exaggerated. Making this confusion the subject of debate, however, is the last thing we should do.After all, the condition of the information habit is ‘real’.The conjunction of the architectural, landscape and information spaces is real.The confusion between private and public is not only real but also fruitful and can have emancipating developments. Our traceability is real as well, and the need to produce and consume information in equal measure is definitely real. If social and instrumental conditions do not develop to address this, we will never live in an information society, but in a tradi- tional twentieth-century mass-media society, in which we once again get mired in traditional fears about already obsolete power mechanisms. Fears that are naive in a general, radical computerization, because they entail far too mechanical an idea of the organization of power.While the threats remain the same – discrimination, domination, exploitation, assault, extortion – in short, abuse of power – the form in which great and small evils touch us is continually changing.Traditional authoritarian power was often embodied by institutions and could be identified – and fought – through its central location and the apparatus of its domination.We should not forget that the forerunner of the Internet, the ARPAnet, was designed to make the military machinery and the military intelligence of the United States less vulnerable.10 However, in distributing the intelligence and the machinery of power we 10. For the history of the ARPAnet, see for instance http://www.zakon.org/robert/internet/timeline/ or also distribute the danger, just as, according http://www.netvalley.com/intval1.html. to Paul Virilio, we designed the crash when we designed the aeroplane.11 A network society offers neither the stability of the insti- tutionalized good, nor a clearly localized 11. Paul Virilio,‘Le musée de l’accident’, in Un paysage des événements, Galilée, evil. Knowledge and power are no longer Paris 1996 concentrated in institutions and then distributed.They merely form occasionally recog- nizable patterns in the network.The individual development of an information habit will have to adjust to this kind of organizational and logistical innovations.

Investigating Possibilities

General information skills can certainly be learned. If they are not yet taught in tradi- tional educational institutions, which mainly teach goal-oriented, training-related

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applications, they must be picked up in practice.This practice offers, as we have seen, a highly varied landscape of new conditions, in which the public and the private spaces are tested against one another, in a physical as well as an informational sense. Our use of and behaviour in these spaces is not without risk – but there is no alternative. Computerization is expanding at all levels of society.This does not mean that no altern- ative applications of our new environments should be attempted.They should be used and abused to investigate new possibilities and testing their limits.As producers more than as consumers of information, we shall have to realize that we are our own guard dogs here, that we must be alert users.The ‘we’ and the ‘here’, however, are relative concepts within a network, constantly in motion and constantly changing in composi- tion and location.The integrity of our alertness is thus less dependent on a set group or a set place; in other words, it is not dependent on ‘institutionalization’: alertness means the openness with which we engage individually with constantly changing groups in constantly changing locations. Even our alertness is thus becoming mobile. After all, in the information society my data are my greatest possession.They are the building blocks of a society that still has to be invented. It is precisely this awareness that must be safeguarded from systems that fail to appreciate an informed and informing consumer as a full-fledged producer.

N.B. Recent thematic projects on the integration of the information space and public infrastructure include Fused Space (Stroom, SKOR and Premsela, http://www.fusedspace.org) and Ubiscribe at the Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht (http://www.ubiscribe.net). Fused Space is a competition, open to artists, designers and architects for ‘inspirational applications of new technology in the public space’. UbiScribe is a research project in which the limits of ‘publishing’ personal information in a network environment are examined.

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Willem van Weelden

Insecurity as Absolute Zero

by Jan van Grunsven and Ineke Bellemakers, Kanaleneiland, Utrecht

The project by Jan van Grunsven and Ineke Bellemakers is being conducted in the Utrecht problem area of Kanaleneiland, a place where insecurity is readily linked to immigrants. attempts to make young people aware of the role of the media and, in Willem van Weelden’s words, ‘enables them to effect an expressive correction to the images pandered by the media, which represent this “insecurity” ’.

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It is remarkable that almost no opinion piece published about the so-called immigrant issue broaches the question of how a sense of insecurity, threat, intimidation or outright fear are experienced among immigrant sections of the population – all the while the social debate, in a pseudo-logical conglomeration of concepts, regularly lumps ‘insecurity’ together with the ‘immigrant problem’. For, these days, as an average Moroccan, you need not, in essence, have commit- ted any crime to elicit significant ‘insecurity’. The ecumenical miracle of the insecurity hysteria is that there is no difference between the native-born and immigrants in how they must adapt to the monumentality of this one-sided combination of quantities. Meanwhile, the thought that this same Moroccan, perhaps with better reason, may be terrified by intimidation, by discreet and bureaucratic racism and by economic and political inequality, is difficult to reconcile with the usual discussion of the issues. It seems the phenomenon of ‘insecurity’, difficult to grasp yet ubiquitous, is thought about in extremely secure terms. The fact that this new course, in which security has become the spearhead of policy, is primarily seen within the same social debate as a statistical given, indicates that there is an urgent need for ‘objective’ and ‘hard’ information. Surveys and samplings regularly come out, using fresh data to unearth the confirmation of something that has already been demonstrated: the significant cause for ‘a sense of insecurity’ is the presence of immigrants. The principle of the self-fulfilling prophecy is nowhere so efficient as in statistics and expert rhetoric. The hardening of society, violence in the street for no apparent reason, brutal acts of destruction and intimidation, rising racial hatreds easily buttress a repressive trend in policy, which definitely can count on broad public support after the murder of Fortuyn. In this repressive scenario there is little room for nuance and inquiry into motives, for ultimately these can only show up a guilty conscience. After all, despite all the decisive language and propaganda in favour of an active, problem-solving policy, people quietly assume that the problems can at most be regulated, but certainly not resolved. Let alone that from a broader perspective any thought should be given to what is causing this hardening and this sense of insecurity. Just as in the management of the traffic congestion problem, the management of the ‘sense of insecurity’ is intended to reduce this socially undesirable phenomenon to a tolerable quota of incidents, or, in a Newtonian exercise (cause-and-effect thinking) to make the case that the policy has caused the freezing of a previously measured percentage. It might be acknowledged behind closed doors that a deeper set of problems underlies these inventoried incidents and percentages. In an atmosphere of zero tolerance, however, delving into the unfathomable depths that lie hidden behind these numerical translations of expertly dissected Volksempfinden would be media and political suicide. Policy, after all, is not based on inquisitiveness but on numbers.

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The politics of combating ‘insecurity’ have become a mathematical equation approaching zero.

Insecure Governance in Repressive Times

At an unsafe distance from the general debate, entirely different problems apply to municipalities that must formulate local policy for (immigrant) problem areas. Percentages and rhetoric apply here as well, but compared to the national government, there is greater urgency to gauge the effectiveness of policy. The popularity of the issue is not congruent with the resources that are devoted to the policy – certainly not when a radical, multi-million-euro restructuring of such an area seems the only solution to the problems. Often, the problems in these areas are the result of years of delay in tackling degeneration, the collapse of the socio-economic infrastructure, the exodus of better-educated residents, problems in education – problems that, certainly in combination, engender gigantic costs. Yet delay does offer some solace. Indeed, from a ‘silent reserve’ standpoint, these degenerated city areas offer potential for further urban development within the existing city limits. In an adapted variant of the slum-creation theory, one might speak of a strategy of pauperization in order, subsequently, to legitimately demolish and (prestigiously) rebuild – with the hope that this will also instantly ‘solve’ the socio-cultural problems. Financing for such prestigious projects can be found, not by applying to the national government, but to the private sector. This has turned public housing into a market-driven component of city policy and thus removed it from the sphere of social policy. Utrecht has just such a prototypical problem area: Kanaleneiland. Once a model of modernist urban planning and architecture, it has long since become an impoverished enclave, wedged in between the prestigious Leidsche Rijn Vinex development and the old city centre. When the area, with its high concentration of immigrants, gets any media coverage, it is invariably negative in the extreme. One of the problems the city has with this is that it is difficult to contradict this negative coverage. The city has been promising for years to improve the living climate in this area, and has demonstrated its readiness to provide needed maintenance to its buildings and surroundings. However, it has failed to demonstrate any effort to actually address its problems, other than by coming up with a restructuring plan for Kanaleneiland as well (which has, admittedly, now been postponed again). For this restructuring of Kanaleneiland, Utrecht has signed a covenant with several housing corporations to carry out demolition and new-build plans for 2,400 dwellings in Kanaleneiland-Noord over a period of 15 years (‘The Utrecht Project’, 2001). It is thus no surprise that this plan is founded on a predominantly technocratic approach, primarily inspired by administrative and market standpoints. Indeed, the city will have to allow the corporations to build

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dwellings in a higher market segment with a large profit margin, and they can even keep a sizable portion of the profits from the land development. In return, the city is asking the corporations to take over the arrangement and management of public facilities (parking garages, pavements, et cetera). The dependence of municipalities on private capital for the development and management of such restructuring projects has become standard practice, and is definitely not unique to Kanaleneiland. It is telling that at a study day organized by the Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment on components of its big-city policy, only the issues of management technique in such covenants were highlighted by municipal officials. Covenants may well address the technical aspects of a restructuring project; the final responsibility for the quality of the living environment is difficult to pin down in such arrangements. Let alone there being any room for specifying an integral framework to serve as a guiding principle, which not only addresses issues of management technique but also formulates a social vision. The role of government as designer of the socio- cultural structure of the built environment seems to have been played out once (public) housing construction was turned over to the market. Even if the city of Utrecht, in a nostalgic burst of visionary social policy, were to come up with a sound social plan, its signing of the covenant has reduced its field of operation to that of rhetoric and the slippery terrain of image-making. A thankless task it prefers to relegate, as a recent example has shown, to the visual arts.

Art as Development Cooperation:

The city of Utrecht’s policy document Stedelijk Ontwikkelingsplan (‘Urban Development Plan’) (1999) formed the Cultural Affairs Department’s framework for formulating the question of whether, in addition to physical possibilities for art in Kanaleneiland, there were also opportunities for art to enter the socio- cultural context of this post-war area. The city described this as ‘employing art to improve the image of Kanaleneiland’. With the prospect that structural improve- ment in the area would take years, the department grabbed the opportunity to do something immediately in terms of image-making and public opinion. It is remarkable that the city of Utrecht is giving the arts, of all things, the honour of changing this negative image. Art as a deus ex machina, unexpectedly engaging with the sensitive domain of image- and opinion-making. In a place where the government has failed to build up the confidence of residents by providing a positive vision of the future, the visual arts are being pressed forward as a relatively cheap alternative instrument that, based on public participation, must care for a new sense of collectivism and a fundamental upgrade in the experience of the area. Comparable projects in other cities, such as Jeanne van Heeswijk’s project De Strip in Vlaardingen, apparently provided the inspiration for this administrative solution. As far as organizing the necessary support to

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generate this participation, the Cultural Affairs Department could offer little more than a few telephone numbers of community workers and steering committees and a gratuitous assurance of cooperation. Following an exploratory assignment, the project was launched within this loose set of parameters. The project, a work in progress by Jan van Grunsven and Ineke Bellemakers, extends over several years (2003–2007). The approach they have planned is based on the integration of those two tracks: the physical-spatial and the socio-cultural. Using a series of studies, explorations of the area and participation projects with residents, they intend to create not only a better picture of the problems in the area, and what the actual experiences of the residents are, but also offer alternative solutions along the way. For does not consider the restructuring project to be necessarily what will rescue the area. These solutions may in fact be related to physical-spatial problems, for example the concrete design of solutions for run-down rest areas, but can also address the desires and future expectations of residents and be used in designing new forms of public space, in which a new collectivism is expressed. The plan upon which is based is predicated on the capacity to learn of the project group as well as of the residents and the relevant institutions. Each project component forms the teaching material out of which the next project section will be constructed. This vision and approach is based on the ambition of to make an in-depth investment in the socio-cultural structure of the area. In this series of project sections, takes a ‘mediating position’ each time – as a mediator between area residents and the experts and professionals involved in the project (such as designers, architects, journalists, stylists or curators). In an atmosphere of cultural segregation, permanent negative media coverage and a decimation of basic facilities (for instance secondary schools deserting the area) being granted this mediating position is by no means a given. During an exploration project – one of the project sections – there was obvious suspicion, especially among young people of immigrant backgrounds, when one of the researchers took out a camera to take some pictures. One Moroccan boy vehemently explained that they were sick of random Moroccan youths being photographed for newspapers and magazines in which captions would say that these were criminal problem kids. It took some time and persuasion to reassure the lad that this was not the case this time. In this first phase of the project, it was made clear that organic forms of cooperation were to be sought out, which could only emerge through slowly gained trust. Creating support, a prerequisite to gaining access to the other face of the area, turned out to take more than good intentions and exciting plans. Only by acknowledging the sensitivity concerning this point could the plan have any chance of success. Therefore it was decided to consider the public visibility of the project primarily in conjunction with projects that were conducted in cooperation with residents.

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Photographs taken by pupils of De Kaleidoskoop primary school, research group 1, 2, 3.

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Photographs taken by pupils of De Kaleidoskoop primary school, research group 1, 2, 3.

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Photographs taken by pupils of De Kaleidoskoop primary school, research group 1, 2, 3.

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Preliminary field research by pupils of De Kaleidoskoop primary school. Videostills by Erik Weeda/dc158.

Pupils of De Kaleidoskoop primary school carrying out field research. Videostills by Erik Weeda/dc158.

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Processing of the data and evaluation of the field research by pupils of the De Kaleidoskoop primary school. Video stills by Erik Weeda/dc158.

Pupils preparing for the interview they are going to record. Video stills by Erik Weeda/dc158.

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This made the legitimacy of as a ‘product’ no longer the formal representation of third parties (for example the client, in this case the Cultural Affairs Department), but the contributing to making visible those who in an atmosphere of insecurity are increasingly less visible.

Diane project

One of the projects adopted by , in part in order to build support, is the Diane project. This is a national education project begun four years ago. It is an initiative of the HHIT (Expertise Centre for Education and Information Technology of the Hogeschool Holland). Participating school classes (starting with Year 5) conduct research into the liveability of the school’s immediate sur- roundings. The research area is one square kilometre. Topographic maps of each of these quadrants are made available. The data provided by the children are cen- trally processed for the Netherlands Internet@tlas, which is also available online. To gather the information, the pupils must carry out field research, includ- ing conducting interviews with residents and taking photographs. found several primary schools in Kanaleneiland were prepared to participate in this project. In addition they are also prepared to work with , which aims to use the Diane project as a lever for image-making projects involving the children. These are workshops (led by Joke Roobaard, among others) in which the pupils are asked to contribute to the production of a picture archive. This consists of pictures of the pupils themselves, through which they wish to present themselves to the outside world. They will look into whether the image that others have of you can be influenced by your own intervention. The workshops are about more than simply a form of re-styling: they are about ‘image-making’ and what you yourself can do about it; they provide direction for the development of a visual idiom of and for the area. From the reactions of the schoolchildren in the first phase of the project it was clear that they were highly reticent to conduct so many interviews with residents, but also to be photographed themselves. After a little practical experience the fear turned into enthusiasm. This project, which is to continue for several years and follow the pupils through secondary school, can be the beginning of a media emancipation that is currently lacking. It can make the young residents of Kanaleneiland media literate, which seems to be a requisite for survival in the present ‘mediacracy’. It can enable the kids to effect an expressive correction to the images pandered by the regular media, which represent this ‘insecurity’. For the politics of ‘insecurity’ are primarily the politics of the image.

Sources

Jan van Grunsven, ‘De noodzaak van een tegenbeeld, in Kanaleneiland’, Lucas x, no. 1 2004, p. 28-40. 140

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Q.S. Serafijn

Emotional Landscapes in the City

D-Tower in Doetinchem by Q.S. Serafijn and NOX/Lars Spuybroek

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D-Tower measures the emotions of the inhabitants of Doetinchem. D-Tower measures hate, love, fear and happiness and draws the emotional map of the city. D-Tower includes three podia: a survey, a website and a physical tower.

The project is based on the map of the city and its division into postal code areas. In each postal code area, a cross-section of the population particip- ates over six months in a survey totalling 360 questions and statements. The questions and statements are general at the start (‘I am afraid’) and become more specific over the course of the survey period (‘I am afraid (a) that something will happen to my lover (b), my lover will get sick (c) and will die of cancer (d)’). Every six months a new group of participants are commissioned for the survey.

All participants are given a password that allows access to the survey. Each password is linked to the individual postal code of the participant. In this way, D-Tower can localize emotions on the map of the city down to the street level: ‘In the Korte Kapoeniestraat people like pets, and dogs the most.’

D-site displays answers on to the lists of questions as ‘emotional land- scapes’. In hand-drawn animations the results unfold in peaks and troughs across the screen. Each landscape visualizes the ‘emotional score’ by subject, by postal code, by street.

The emotional tics of the city are entered into a database and transmitted to the physical tower. The physical tower is a semi-transparent ‘polyp’, 12.5 metres high, at the edge of the city centre.

Each emotion is linked to a colour: hate is green, love is red, happiness is blue, fear is yellow. Depending on the ‘score’ of the day, the tower glows red, yellow, blue or green. If the tower was blue, people in Doetinchem were happy. If the tower was red, Doetinchem was full of love.

Every visitor can send D-Tower a letter or participate in a discussion. In cases of explosive hate, extreme fear or total absence of happiness or fear, D-Tower sends a bouquet of flowers with a card to the relevant address.

Project details: D-Tower (1998–2004) Design: Q.S. Serafijn & NOX/Lars Spuybroek Commissioned by: City of Doetinchem

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D-Tower: Blue Happy © Q.S. Serafijn and NOX/Lars Spuybroek

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Insecurity is an Economic Impulse

00 A significant portion of the world is designed for the daytime. Therefore a significant portion of the world is perceived as unsafe at night. This is good for the economy. Insecurity is an economic impulse.

01 Public space is a territorial space. In the past, city ramparts, city watch- towers and military units protected the territory. Now public space is pro- tected by legislation and jurisprudence. Criminals are testing the limits of the legal state. Public space is a legal space.

02 Virtual space initially seemed untouched by legal space. Now it erects firewalls and bolts its digital ramparts with passwords. Not just in terminol- ogy, in regulation and behaviour as well, virtual space is becoming more and more a copy of the physical public space.

03 City ramparts, watchtowers, legislation and jurisprudence are territorial markings of the power that protected the community as a collective. In the screen culture the protection is individual and private.

04 A friend once described his worst nightmare to me. He was a pea in a jar of peas. The fact that he was a pea in jar of peas did not worry him so much. The fact that as a pea he was not ‘by the window’ was his nightmare. The idea of spending his life in the dark centre of the jar frustrated him.

05 The fear that haunts people in a screen culture is the fear of not sitting ‘by the window’. The attention and space that media (TV, magazines, news- papers, Internet) devote to the average citizen is an answer to this fear. Those sitting by the window of the media imagine or consider themselves safe. Whereas security was once linked to invisibility and going underground, at present security seems increasingly linked to visibility and being out in public.

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06 As a vertical tower symbol, D-Tower recalls the longing for collective security. As a horizontal medium, D-site projects the fears and triumphs of the individual citizen. The community of Doetinchem has placed itself as a collective sum at the window. By making itself visible in this way, the community of Doetinchem keeps watch over itself without mediation by the government or other parties.

07 D-Tower is the interactive heart monitor of Doetinchem. Arjen Mulder wrote about this interaction between man and machine: ‘Yet interactive art does not flow unilaterally from man to machine, but in reverse as well. It is after all the machine that is meant to inspire the visitors to all manner of actions, ideas and experiences. By providing answers – honest or not – about your relations with yourself, your family, your lover(s), your pets, et cetera, you change the tower. But when the D-Tower turns green or yellow (much fear or hate), this might well elicit reactions from others that would rather see it coloured red or blue. You can become afraid of that weird D-Tower, or hate it, or love it, or be very happy with it. The D-Tower measures emotions and sets off emotions.’1

1. Arjen Mulder, De emotionele toren van Doetinchem/de toren van emotioneel Doetinchem, City of Doetinchem, 2000.

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D-Tower: Green Hate, Red Love, Yellow Fear © Q.S. Serafijn and NOX/Lars Spuybroek

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The following questions and statements were submitted to the residents.

… … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … Are you happy? Do you like pigeons?

… … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … Are you afraid? Are you afraid of dying of AIDS?

… … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … Do you feel hate? Are you depressed about the world and the environment?

… … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … Are you satisfied with Is your IQ between 120 and 140? your free time?

… … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … Does your religion make you happy? Does being creative make you happy?

… … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … Do you like dogs? Are you troubled by constipation?

… … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … My partner and I have good sex. Are you jealous of people with money?

… … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … Are you happy as a Have you and your partner been housewife/husband? happy together for more than 15 years? … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … Are you dissatisfied because you Are you jealous of people who are smoke too much? more beautiful than you?

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… … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … My friendships last longer than five I hate it when I get aggressive after years on average. I have been drinking.

… … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … I earn more than 25,000 Euro after- I am afraid that my partner will die tax per year. I am happy with that. in a traffic accident.

… … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … Do you feel good because you do I work 40 hours a week in paid not use medication? employment and I am happy with that. … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … Are you afraid that foreigners in the Do you hate the children when they city are contributing to crime? are boisterous and loud?

… … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … Do you have more than two friends? Does walking and/or cycling make I am afraid of rats. you happy?

… … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … We are happy that our children are Do you like to tell jokes? going/went to college.

… … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … Do you go through life with a smile? Are you a fan of German cars?

… … … … … … … … … … … … Do you love yourself because you are well-endowed?

… … … … … … … … … … … … Are you (too) much concerned with your own happiness?

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Screenshots of D-Tower website, design by Q.S. Serafijn and NOX/Lars Spuybroek

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Mark Wigley

Cabin Fever

The Home of the Unabomber

At the end of the 1990s, the Unabomber was put on trial in the United States. His defence team tried to present his cabin as one of the most significant pieces of evidence of his insanity. The strict aesthetics of simplicity, natural materials, craftsmanship and geometric purity have since become symbolic of disturbing acts of terror, forever blemishing the image of the idyllic little house on the prairie.

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December 2nd 1997. A small hut that had been hidden in the sparsely populated woods of Montana is lifted onto a flat-bed truck, covered with a black tarpaulin and transported 1100 miles to Sacramento. Shadowed by a caravan of photographers and a swarm of helicopters, it takes three days for the 10 by 12 foot wooden box to make the epic journey from isolation to metropolitan centre. For the first time, a whole building is to be presented as evidence in a court case. Architecture is brought to trial. A seemingly innocent structure is accused of sheltering the target of the biggest manhunt ever, the infamous Unabomber who had terrorized the nation for 18 years. Not much for the jurors to look at, though. Everyone can picture the building before seeing it. Any child could draw it. Indeed, people are always drawing it, dreaming about it. The simple form plays a key role in the American imagination. The cabin in the woods is the generic retreat that is meant to tame restless city dwellers and has long been institutionalized in the camp hut, the holiday house, the fishing lodge. In fact, the Unabomber’s building is a copy of the cabin in which Thoreau so famously withdrew from the city between 1845 and 1847. It self-consciously participates in a long cultural tradition. Yet the unique power of this form is precisely that it is not seen as a cultural artefact. It is understood to be the form that precedes the arrival of culture. The retreat is always a retreat in time, a withdrawal to a lost simplicity, purity, immediacy, harmony... a lost beginning. In the romanticized national mythology of the immigrant pioneer, the domestication of the wild by the independent settler begins with the construction of a simple domestic space using primitive means. The wooden box with a pitched roof symbolizes the moment of settling down, the erection of an isolated house in the wilderness that precedes collective settlement. The cabin is that which precedes pattern, a solitary point in an unmapped terrain. Indeed, it is the pattern of the house itself, the newly defined limits of an interior carved within an unlimited and threateningly mysterious space, that makes possible the domestication of territory and the eventual rise of settlements. This is not simply an American fantasy. It is a generic fantasy about a generic form. Each culture dreams of the mythical isolated hut, and each has its symbolic retreats, its designated sites of withdrawal from the dominant patterns. It may not even be possible to think about the patterns without thinking of these sites. Settlement is always conceived in terms of its other.

Technology as the Enemy

The Unabomber used his settler’s cabin to unsettle the dominant pattern. His carefully written manifesto on the horrors of industrialized life condemns the modern city for its stressful, crowded existence in which people are kept prisoner under constant surveillance by police, cameras, and the manipulations

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of social programming. The enemy is technology, as exemplified by the computer that has united the world into a single social and spatial organization. The best solution is to go back to the purity of ‘wild nature’ in the age of the humble log cabin. Everyone should withdraw from the computer to the cabin. Within such a retreat, sixteen bombs were built and targeted with deadly effect against symbols of the technological order: computer scientists, airline executives, biogeneticists, electrical engineers. The point of the violence, said the ex- professor of mathematics, was to break society down into small units, to break the pattern. The cabin itself is a manifesto, a puritanical polemic. No electricity or water softens the bomber’s life or connects it to the national infrastructure. The only furniture is a single chair, a small table and a bed made of a sheet of plywood covered with a thin layer of foam. There are two tiny windows. Neither provides a scenic view. One is at the top of a wall and offers a square of sky. The other, a little lower on the facing wall, monitors the access path. There is a single door at the centre and a storage loft suspended under the roof. Built by its occupant with simple tools and reused wood from an abandoned cabin, the house is immaculately constructed. The dark stained wall boards are neatly matched. Roof joists are rhythmically arranged. Windows, door and air vent are triumphs of minimalist anti-detailing. Every nail pinning down the green tar paper on the roof is exactly spaced. The house is a display of control – even if it was never meant to be seen by anyone other than its reclusive occupant. Likewise the bombs. They had exactly the aesthetic of the house they were built in. Most were hand-crafted boxes that were carefully carved, sanded, polished and repolished – even if they would only be seen for a few moments by the victim before their devastating disintegration. Each was repeatedly taken apart, rebuilt and refinished with fetishistic but deadly care. The mechanism of the fifth one did not work and the ninth one looked suspicious, so the boxes survived. X-rays revealed that their delicate interior organization was assembled out of recycled materials held together with handmade screws and fittings. Many of the key parts were made of wood. The rest were reworked household items – untraceable because generic. The everyday as a weapon. Symptomatically, the cabin too had to be x-rayed for fear that it was booby-trapped. Every surface was scanned for ‘secret spaces’. After all, no piece of wood could be trusted. Two of the most deadly bombs had been designed to look like simple blocks. For days, the cabin could not be entered normally. Robots were sent in through the end walls to scan each of the 700 objects found inside and, sure enough, detected a finished bomb ready for delivery. The very technologies that the Unabomber rebelled against were brought to bear on his hideaway.

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The Unabomber’s cabin is stored in a warehouse in Sacramento. Photo Richard Barnes

In 1998, the whole cabin was packed up and transported from the woods of Montana to Sacramento. Photo Richard Barnes

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A Symbol of Urban Fear

Even the woods were scanned. The FBI had taken detailed pictures from a spy satellite and laced the trees with motion detectors, microphones, television cameras and infrared scopes before waiting two months for their chance to move in. This was not simply the sudden intrusion of contemporary technology into an isolated place. Retreats are already part of the technological network, part of the pattern they seem to have escaped. Thoreau was never really isolated. On the contrary, his withdrawal was a very public act described in a best-selling book. The ideology of his cabin was actually constructed in the urban milieu. The settlement always includes within itself what it nominates as its other. ‘Isolated’ is an urban concept. It is a product of the city. To leave the map behind is a uniquely urban fantasy. It is those at the centre of the pattern that talk the most about escaping it. But their escapes are usually just extensions of the pattern, demonstrations that the city knows no limit. [This has become ever more obvious today with the rise of ecotourism, off-the-road vehicles, and wireless communication links to any point of the globe. All interiors – whether of a suburban house, a university, an airliner, or the jungle – are interconnected in multiple ways. Radical disconnection from the networks can of course occur, but anywhere, by definition. It is not a matter of leaving the city but of using the gaps in its fabric.] The cabin in the woods is actually at the centre of the city. Far from disconnected, the terrorist ruthlessly exploited the ever-present intimate ties between isolated cell and dense urbanization. His frightening talent was the ability to hide his points of connection. While refusing to attach himself to the telephone, water and electricity lines that were only a quarter of a mile away, he kept his rural mail box on the roadside nearby, using the mail network to distribute his terror and get his manifesto published in national newspapers. This is why a seemingly isolated hut could exemplify one of the greatest fears of urban life. The cabin has always belonged to the downtown to which it was eventually brought. It is quite at home in the public spaces of the media, including the pages of this journal. In the striking images by Richard Barnes that are presented here, the anti-technological wooden house has been lit by electronically controlled lights and photographed with a computerized camera. Every detail is ruthlessly exposed. The Sacramento warehouse in which the building still remains has been blackened out. This remobilizes the house, sending it on countless more epic journeys as we can easily see it standing on any of the sites where the archetypal form has typically been installed – whether real or imaginary. But the all-important interior remains hidden, mysterious, threateningly obscure. The photographer, like all the journalists visiting the original site, was not even allowed to look through the windows. In over 25 years, the bomber had

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Exterior of the cabin in the Montana woods the Unabomber built and operated from for years. Photo Richard Barnes

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Exterior of the cabin in the Montana woods the Unabomber built and operated from for years. Photo Richard Barnes

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let only two people see inside. And it would be the interior that was on trial. The terrorist’s lawyers wanted to exhibit the actual cabin to demonstrate his insanity. They rejected the prosecutor’s conventional scale model, arguing that to be taken inside the brutally minimalist building was to be taken inside a deranged mind. The prosecutors were going to counter with photographs of the space at the time of the arrest. It was, they said, as well organized as an all-too-sane calculating mind. But the defendant preferred to plead guilty than be judged insane. The cabin was not entered and no images were ever released. The interior escapes us. To look at these photographs is to scrutinize the exterior surfaces of an archetypal architecture for clues as to its explosive contents. The rigorous aesthetic of simplicity, natural materials, craftsmanship, and geometric purity has become an unsettling agent of horror.

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bookreviews

Slow-Motion Film with Crash- Internet Art, The Online Clash of Test Dummies Culture and Commerce Julian Stallabrass Willem van Weelden Tate Publishing, Londen 2003, ISBN 1854373455, r 30,95

It has become the norm to judge an open connection to the end world attempts to ‘brand’ the a work of art on the connections user, must be interactive. In the culture of activists, hackers and it has with ‘lifestyle’, ‘identity’ or world-cum-market you must be net artists as art, but also shows ‘ideology’. The work of art is able, just as in love, to merge as a that this alternative culture is in seen as a ‘product’ that derives lovesick mortal with your sweet- turn hostile and evasive toward meaning and effect not merely heart. This form of emotional the archaic, elitist and appropriat- from strictly formal character- and economic swindle is called ing practices of the art world. istics, but also from the way in branding. The question of whether which is communicates an In the introduction to his Stallabrass is making a more identifiable vision or identity recently published book Internet cunning attempt to brand this within a specific context or Art, The Online Clash between volatile phenomenon must be market. Viewed in this way, the Culture and Commerce Julian weighed against the evidence he artwork, in the first instance, Stallabrass describes how submits and the argument he communicates its brand quality. ®™Mark (http://www.rtmark. develops. The brand is a closed system of com), a group of ‘anticorporate’ What counts in Stallabrass’ values that primarily refers to this saboteurs operating in the grey favour is that he is thoroughly self-assigned and designed area between activism and conscious of the unstable ‘identity’. In regular marketing it performance art, responded to its character of what can be defined has long been recognized that a selection for the prestigious as Internet art. He makes a product cannot be sold purely on ‘Whitney Biennial’ in 2000. The reasonable case for the proposi- the basis of its strictly formal invitations sent to ®™Mark, tion that this instability is not characteristics. A successful including the accompanying just the result of the deliberately product must communicate a letter which stated that the group evasive tactics of its makers, but message and appeal to a recog- now belonged to the elite of the is also determined by the nature nizable identity. It must be an American art world, was put up of the Internet itself, as a highly incarnation of an ideal world, for sale by ®™Mark on the changeable technological which becomes accessible by Internet auction site eBay. The communication platform. In the purchasing it. By buying a auction raised $4,000, which first two chapters, he delves into product (a logo) one shows that ®™Mark immediately put into its the structure of the Internet and one identifies with the identity project fund. The group’s action of data. In doing so he does not that the brand expresses. This left the Whitney Biennial institu- allow himself to be seduced by principle has by now been so tion completely perplexed about idealistic futuristic visions, as is thoroughly developed that a whether this act was part of a the case in a lot of cyber theory. brand is designed as if it were a serious artistic concept, or a clear He primarily attempts to reflect flesh-and-blood human being. It act of sabotage, or perhaps on the potential contained in the must prove and fulfil its credibil- simply a tasteless joke. Stallabrass phenomenon. His assumption is ity at all times. Its users or buyers describes this incident as ‘symp- that this ‘art’, from a conceptual not only expect the brand to tomatic’ of the dispute between and social point of view, is the have human qualities, but also to the complacent art world and most evolved and contemporary. be able to come into contact online activists. In his view, it Amazingly, in this context, he with it. The product must have demonstrates that the official art insists on confining himself to

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‘fine art’. Stallabrass argues that ous history of online art. Yet activists and the established art ‘fine art’ has condemned itself to what is very regrettable in his world is akin to a slow-motion marginality (in contrast with story is his need to apply the old film with crash-test dummies. literature, music and film) and parameters of ‘art’ to Internet Sterile, and completely outside that the Internet is the ideal art, with considerable confusion actual practice, with all its coinci- medium by which to escape the as a result. What he particularly dences, static and everyday archaic shackles of the traditional seems not to understand is that delusion. His case, despite all his production and distribution of many of the groups and projects attempts to call attention to the artworks. For Stallabrass, art will he describes are deliberately phenomenon of Internet art in only become socially relevant ambiguous. In virtually not a an enthusiastic way, is neverthe- again once art has emancipated single instance is it something less dominated by a concession itself from the ‘old economy’. In that the makers unequivocally to the established art world and itself this reasoning still makes intended as art. For ®™Mark, for its problems in classifying and sense, but it is disturbing and example, it is just as important conserving net art. A conserva- confusing to find the author that business magazines or online tive attitude that, given the seems not to be conscious of the sport fanzines write about them history of the innovative and the fact that if this reason for as renowned art journals. critical – whether in art or not – existence is genuinely under- ®™Mark’s projects are after all is hardly new. Stallabrass seems mined, then the whole idea of about resistance to global capital- not to realize that the conflict he ‘fine art’ no longer exists – ism, and whether some see them presents between net art and the something that should not have as an activist or anarchist group, established order has already to matter anyway. and others as art, or even as net been undermined from the inside In the chapters on the political entrepreneurs, makes no differ- out, and that changes usually character of Internet art and the ence to them, as long as it con- occur not in great collisions, but tradition of media tactics that is tributes to their objective, and through stealthy infiltrations, inextricably linked to it, he shows this is not to rescue ‘art’: that which destabilize the established himself to be reasonably up to seems to be mainly Stallabrass’ order, causing it to continually date, and in this light his book is own quest. Stallabrass’ treatment mutate. a handy overview of the illustri- of the clash between net artists,

Das war einmal New Commitment: In architec- ture, art and design Max Bruinsma Reflect #01, NAi Publishers, Rotterdam, 2003, ISBN 90-5662-347-8, r 19,50

The new NAi series Reflect, a than in the past, that is, in the of the vast majority of the series of ‘books without precon- 1960s and 1970s.’ articles: ‘After postmodernism, ceived notions’, aims to address a Franke summarizes it well: for engagement as in the 1960s is no demand for reflection on meta- the majority of the writers in this longer possible. That engage- questions left unaddressed or collection the 1960s are the ment was after all based on merely mentioned in passing in problem of contemporary naiveté and we are not naive many other books on architec- engagement. Seldom have I read anymore.’ I’m summing it up ture. In his introduction to the such agreement among such somewhat crudely, but that is first instalment, on engagement divergent authors in relation to a what I got after reading this first (or commitment), publisher concept open to so many inter- instalment of Reflect. Simon Franke reveals the conclu- pretations. This like-mindedness In the opening essay René sion straight away: ‘Commitment has less to do with the forms of Boomkens describes postmod- is difficult, so much becomes engagement described in the ernism as the neurosis of a gener- clear after reading the articles in book – these vary significantly – ation of spoiled airheads, who this book; much more difficult and more with the general tenor find a refreshing sense of ‘new

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seriousness’ in ‘new engage- Henk Hofland, the journalistic In the Netherlands ‘engagement ment’. Based on his mistaken conscience of engagement in the has now penetrated into every notion that ‘engagement is not Low Countries. He is also the facet of society’, Lucas Verweij an individual choice, but the only one who gives it a genuine and Ton Matton observe. ‘It is a expression of collective commit- definition, and one still quite fixed component in diverse ment to a crucial movement or applicable: ‘Commitment, in the government bodies, in associa- development’, Boomkens gives original sense of the word, means tions, foundations, political ‘the errant individual’ one last being rationally involved in the parties and subsidy providers. hope: a new kind of collectivism, world in which one lives, appreci- Urban renewal, public safety which actually implies an accept- ating the human condition and, policy and the Dutch govern- ance of the dissolution of the consequently, taking sides.’ Clear. ment’s “Postbus 51” central individual, as we thought we And he concludes: ‘New commit- information services are all semi- knew him, into a kind of collec- ment rests in (...) the outline of institutionalized forms of engage- tive individuality entirely put a new Utopia in which, in the ment that flowed from a process together from the shelves of the first instance, those capable of of engagement’s social embed- consumer society. In opposition independent thought will break ding.’ And more particularly in to this stands the individual scep- out of the prison into which they, reference to the arts, Jeroen ticism of what used to be called as consumers, have locked them- Boomgaard remarks: ‘Commit- the ‘establishment’, now consist- selves.’ ment has become so general in ing of Baby Boomers disap- This is a simultaneously encour- form and content that it lends pointed with their own 1960s aging and discouraging conclu- itself without any difficulty to engagement. The disillusionment sion. Encouraging, because the a prestigious existence in the of these ex-revolutionaries old man, virtually alone, adopts official arts circuit.’ And he goes expresses itself as scepticism an actively critical attitude toward on to remind us that art institu- toward any form of enthusiasm the consumer society, an attitude tions and engaged art have and thus erodes the seed-bed of one also finds among the newest always had very difficult relations. any personal engagement. generation, whereas the interven- Is there hope? Is there really a Boomkens goes rather far, but ing generation of Baby Boomers ‘new engagement’? From this his linking the ‘failure’ of 1960s surrender, disillusioned, to the book, I wouldn’t know. For engagement with the resulting inevitable triumph of the intellectual debate it is of course quasi-impossibility of engage- shopping culture. Because, alas!, good that more questions are ment in the present is echoed Utopia, the Blochian ‘noch nicht’, raised than answered, but I repeatedly by this congregation, the distant vision of man would have liked to have seen which consists for the most part liberated! If one thing is clear more variation. Or a glimmer of of (post-) Baby Boomers. Lieven from the articles by Hofland’s analysis of contemporary engage- De Cauter: ‘Perhaps even this juniors, it is that we should in ment, instead of yet another nail new commitment is no more fact be liberated by now from in the coffin of the engagement than a trend...’ Hilde Heynen: such illusions as ‘Utopia’ and of the past. For the moment, as ‘...a theme that seems to have ‘liberation’, and that engagement far as the present is concerned, it been out of sight for long has become an institutionalized basically comes down to ‘we enough for it to be presented as consumer product. There seems don’t really know what to do, something fresh and new today’. little hope that Hofland’s but if we don’t do anything it’s Ole Bouman: ‘...how architec- ‘prisoners’ will revolt. The ‘revolt going to get a lot less pleasant, ture, after years of postmodernist of the masses’ has been turned so “new engagement” will do...’ dis-engagement, of philosophical into a mass of lifestyle rebels. A rather meagre sequel to the deconstruction and digital experi- The uneasy engagement of the ‘doom thinking’ of the 1970s, ments with form, can recover Benetton generation, let’s say. which at least still offered hope some measure of social signifi- The institutionalization of social of (radical) change and improve- cance’. The only one who makes involvement is a potentially ment. Is this all the result of the a brave attempt to formulate the suffocating factor for the rise of a postmodern thinking that has conditions for a renewed engage- ‘new engagement’, not just in declared ideology dead and ment is the pre-Baby Boomer the form of consumer idealism. proclaimed irony as its new idol?

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Probably. When the only one know irony and disdain for Hofland says, to ‘take sides’. who dares to use the word ‘liber- ‘dogmatic do-gooders’ of the Putting off this choice in favour ation’ in the context of renewed past only as historical pheno- of an endless rehashing of the engagement is a man around 80 mena. Why should we keep on disappointment with what 40 years of age, I fear for my own whinging about an unresolved years ago was as beautiful as it generation and pin my hopes on trauma from the ‘failure of ’68’, was impossible, is worse than the newest generation, who when the present compels us, as repression – it is denial.

A Call for a New Relationship One Place after Another. Site between Art and Place Specific Art and Locational Identity Miwon Kwon Mariska van den Berg and MIT Cambridge Mass., Londen Dees Linders 2002, ISBN 0-262-11265-5, r 43,69

In her book One Place after paradigms, in which she attempts between subject/object and Another: Site Specific Art and to sum up history and the place. Locational Identity (2002) present. The first, ‘phenomeno- Because her theory encompasses Miwon Kwon outlines a unique logical’ paradigm is related to the not only the artwork but also the view of the evolution of ‘site original site-specific art of the artist’s practice, this leaves room specific art’ from the 1960s late 1960s and early 1970s, in for experimental artistic practices onwards. The way in which she which the ‘site’ was the starting that, measured by traditional lumps the most divergent art point and reason for being of the criteria of artworks, fall outside practices with a conscious rela- artwork. The physical place and the boundaries of art. tionship to ‘place’ into the ‘site- artwork were inextricably linked. Three extensive case studies, specific’ category takes some Within the second, ‘social’ or Richard Serra’s Tilted Arc, a getting used to. In the process ‘institutional’ paradigm, ‘site’ is John Ahearn commission for she uncovers a complex battle- formed by a much broader South Bronx Sculpture Park, and ground of the evolution of the framework, with the focus on the the exhibition ‘Culture in Action’ concept and practice of ‘site social, economic and cultural- (1993, Chicago) bring Kwon to specificity’. After a fascinating political conditions in which art call for a reconsideration of historical description, she turns is produced and presented. The previously outlined models of to the development of site- dematerialization of the ‘site’ and ‘site specificity’. The cases show specific art in the public domain. of the artwork which begins here the precarious relationship of the She relates her research and her continues in more recent art art projects to a stubborn findings to urban theory, post- practices, summed up in the practice within the public modern criticism in art and archi- third, ‘discursive’ paradigm. domain. To Kwon, treating tecture, and especially the Within this, artists expand their ‘community’ as a social present-day debate on the field of operation, in the sense of coherence is a serious misconcep- vanishing city and the unstable location, form, content and tion. This misconception is due relationship between place and function, far beyond the context to the failure of many of these identity: the ‘disappearance of of art. Often social issues are the interactive practices. site’. Kwon makes clear the focus. ‘Site’ can now also be an She elaborates this using the importance of art’s relationship area of knowledge, an intellectual exhibition ‘Culture in Action’ by to place. And with a thorough exchange or a cultural debate. Mary Jane Jacobs, to her a analysis, she hopes to create Kwon sums up the evolution she textbook example of the political room for the representation of describes as a shift from a and activist ‘New Genre Public new coordinates for the relation- sedentary model to a nomadic Art’, which lays a strong ship between art and ‘site’. model, a shift from a close rela- emphasis on interaction between Kwon describes the development tionship to a steadily looser, artists and ‘communities’. The of ‘site specifity’ using three more unstable relationship practice of New Genre Public Art

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is based on a protest against the makes a stand for the further she seems to bring out the tradi- exclusion of individuals and development and reconsideration tional, presumed expertise of art: groups. A political aspiration to of ‘community art’, but it is too ‘Thus, in its final pages the book democratization is of fundamen- early to speak of a new model. can only conjure up the critical tal importance here, ‘to empower In the closing chapter Kwon capacity of intimacies based on the audience’. Art should also draws a direct link between the absence, distance, and ruptures become the property of the man disappearance of the physical of time and space.’ Does she in the street: ‘real place’, ‘real place in ‘site-specific’ art practice mean the presumed capacity of people’, ‘real problems’. It is a and the unravelling of the rela- art to reinforce emotions and form of public art that, at this tionship between subject/object experiences to the point that can level and with this political as- and place. Kwon sees a task for be exercised within the ‘safe’ area piration, is inconceivable in the art to fulfil within the problems of art? Is she identifying an art in Netherlands. In her analysis of of contemporary existence and the public space that, through the eight projects comprising the significance of the modern models, can teach a critical ‘Culture in Action’, Kwon thus city against the background in attitude toward the proximity of focuses acutely on the way in which this unravelling is taking absence, distance, ruptures in which the relevant groups/ place, as long as art is capable of time and space? That would be communities were assembled, inventing a new model for the worth reflecting upon. But is this defined and approached by the art-place relationship. Site- in fact what she has in mind? Her artist, curator or art institution. specific art can function as a examples, after all, show that art Was the group approached as cultural mediator, although is not easily tolerated in the socially coherent? To what extent Kwon is also conscious of the risk urban public space, and perhaps did a reductive picture of the of interpreting site-specific art as cannot help developing as a identities of the participants a melancholic discourse: the ‘democratic art’. And does this emerge, whereby essential differ- recognition of the loss of ‘place, not mean that, by definition, art ences, particular characteristics but no solution for the loss of must sacrifice its instability, and interests were left out? place’. unrest and unease in favour of Difference, heterogeneity and According to Kwon, it seems accessibility – qualities that are instability, to Kwon, are by historically inevitable that we characteristic of a nomadic definition intrinsic to every discard the nostalgic notion of constellation? community. This realization must ‘site’ and identity, connected in Kwon’s exposition elicits yet serve as the basis for any inter- essence to an actual place. more questions. For instance, action between art and a commun- At the same time, the yearning does she not excessively ascribe ity. for this close constant relation- her theory to a supposed Based on this realization, Kwon ship, which is related to the practice? It is also odd that proposes a different model of experience of identity and safety, Kwon’s research into art practice collectivism and ‘belonging’, will never go away. The model stops in 1993, while she is conceived not out of ‘common- that Kwon proposes for art proposing a different model for being’ but out of ‘being-in- therefore encompasses the art in the public space based on common’. She outlines a collec- nostalgic yearning for ‘place and this research in 2002. In that tive artistic practice she dubs identity’ as well as the recogni- intervening decade, in facet, an ‘Projective Enterprise’: this is also tion of an unstable (nomadic) entirely new model for art and predicated on the groups relationship between subject and participation has been developed assembled for the occasion, place: the notion of ‘the wrong by a new generation of artists whereby she calls for the people place, belonging in transience’, and theorists such as Nicolas involved to be constantly ‘to be out of place with punctu- Bourriauld, Hans Ulrich Obrist, conscious that every aspect of the ality and precision’. Rirkrit Tiravanija, Jeanne van interaction is constructed and So far Kwon’s proposal is easy to Heeswijk, Alicia Framis, Marius mediated. However, Kwon’s follow and interesting. From this Babias, Florian Waldvogel, to ‘Projective Enterprise’ seems point, however, her argument name but a few. closely modelled on New Genre becomes unclear. To apply this Nevertheless Kwon’s book offers Public Art as she describes it. She model within the public domain, clarification and food for

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thought, especially in relation to interactive/participative art and public space. Perhaps her method of ‘Projective Enterprise’ and her essential model of ‘the wrong place’ is not suited to the great public urban domain; perhaps its potential rests primarily on small communities, in fact.

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