The Documentary Camera

Vol. 1 2018 \

An exploration of what documentary is, with an eye toward what it may become.

1 \ Volume 1 \

EDITOR GENEROUS SUPPORT PROVIDED BY Jason Fox Ford Foundation

PUBLISHING DIRECTOR VOL. I SPONSORS Christopher Cekay Allen Hunter IMA MFA The MDOCS Storytellers' Institute at Skidmore WEB EDITOR College Jenny Miller A PROJECT OF DESIGN & ART DIRECTION UnionDocs Center For Documentary Art Christopher Cekay Allen Alison S. M. Kobayashi World Records Journal Bartosz Gawdzik Volume 1 The Documentary Camera FRONT END DEVELOPMENT Copyright © 2018 Lukas Steinman UnionDocs Center for Documentary Art.

INTERACTIVE ARCHITECTURE Cover Design Danny Bowman Bartosz Gawdzik

GRAPHIC DESIGN World Records is published by UnionDocs Inc., Bartosz Gawdzik 322 Union Ave, Brooklyn, NY, 11211. Michał Dudek Single print volume $18 EDITORIAL BOARD Annual digital subscription (two issues) $28 Tarik Elseewi Institutional print subscriptions available Benj Gerdes Faye Ginsburg Subscriptions and correspondence to the Jennifer Hayashida Editors, [email protected]. Alexandra Juhasz Please correspond before submitting. Jonathan Kahana Alisa Lebow World Records is distributed by UnionDocs. Martin Lucas To place an ad in World Records Journal Scott MacDonald Contact [email protected]. Ivone Margulies Tess Takahashi World Records (Print) ISSN 2640-0030 ADVISORY BOARD Published Winter 2018 Josetxo Cerdán Cíntia Gil Carlos Gutierrez Rachael Rakes Lynne Sachs Shireen Seno Genevieve Yue

2 \ Volume 1 \ Table of Contents \

7 Introduction: What do Cameras Do? \ 101 Representational Regimes: Jason Fox A Conversation with Abounaddara Film Collective \ 13 Not at the Click of a Button \ Jason Fox Text: Ariella Azoulay Images: Aïm Deüelle Lüski 107 Technologies of Seeing and Technologies of Corporeality: 23 Beyond the Expedient: Currents in Nonfiction Virtual Reality \ An Interview with Isaac Julien \ Mandy Rose Ernest Larsen & Sherry Millner 119 Camera Ministry: A Conversation 31 iDocument Police: Contingency, with Khalik Allah \ Resistance, and the Precarious Present \ Emily Vey Duke, Cooper Battersby, Jeffrey Skoller & Vashon Watson

45 The Present Moment: 127 “Something is there”: A Conversation with Kirsten Johnson \ Filmmaking in Multiple Realities \ Pamela Cohn Lonnie van Brummelen & Siebren de Haan 53 Everything Can Be Optimized — Review, Comment, and Message 137 Targeted Killing: Ariella Azoulay Board as Proto-camera \ in Conversation with Miki Kratsman \ Benj Gerdes Text: Ariella Azoulay Images: Miki Kratsman 67 Archival Interventions: Cecilia Aldarondo and Thomas Allen Harris in Conversation \ 145 Action, Documentation, Documentary: Cecilia Aldarondo & Thomas Allen Harris The Early Photography of Allan Sekula, Martha Rosler, Fred Lonidier 77 “All of our grievances are and Phil Steinmetz \ connected”: An Interview with Huffa Frobes-Cross The Illuminator Collective \ Eli Horwatt Many of the images and film clips discussed in this volume can be 85 The Sublimity of Document: seen at worldrecordsjournal.org. Carl Akeley, the Habitat Diorama, and Dioramic Cinema \ Scott MacDonald

3 \ Volume 1 \ Contributors \

Cecilia Aldarondo is Assistant Professor of Jason Fox is the editor of World Records. Film at Skidmore College, and her award-win- ning films have screened at such venues as Huffa Frobes-Cross is a Core Fellow in the the Tribeca Film Festival, the Metropolitan Department of Art History and Archaeology at Museum of Art, and the public television series Columbia University. He received his PhD from POV. She is a 2017 Women at Sundance Fellow Columbia in 2016 and is currently working on a and was named by Filmmaker Magazine as one manuscript based on his dissertation, "Various of 2015's '25 New Faces of Independent Film. Representational Tasks: Art and Activism in the Early Work of Martha Rosler, Allan Sekula Ariella Azoulay is Professor of Comparative and Fred Lonidier, 1967-1976." Literature at Brown University and Modern Art, Culture, and Media at Brown University and a Benj Gerdes is an artist, writer, and organizer documentary filmmaker. working in video, film, and related public for- mats. His work focuses on the consequences Lonnie van Brummelen and Siebren de Haan’s of economic and state regimes, as well as the films explore cultural and geopolitical land- critical methods through which art and cultural scapes like Europe’s borders (Grossraum, projects can contribute to social change. Prior 2005), sites of resource production and to assuming his current position at LIU Post, global trade and (Monument of Sugar, 2007, Gerdes held positions at Cooper Union, Bard Episode of the Sea, 2013), the (non) sites College, and Parsons the New School for Art of cultural heritage (Monument to Another and Design. Man's Fatherland, 2008 and subi dura a ru- dibus, 2010). Their works have been shown Thomas Allen Harris is an award-winning film- at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Kunsthaus maker, transmedia artist, curator, educator and Zürich; Argos, Brussels; SMBA and De Appel the founder and President of Digital Diaspora Amsterdam; CCA Vilnius; the Shanghai and Family Reunion, LLC, a socially engaged trans- Guangju Biennials; IAC Villeurbanne, France, media project that employs touring Roadshows and the Museum of Modern Art. and virtual gathering spaces to invite individ- uals to explore and share the narratives found Pamela Cohn is a filmmaker, writer, programmer, within their family photo albums. With the and documentary consultant currently based in support of ITVS, the NMC as well as the Ford Berlin. and Wyncote Foundations, Harris is currently developing a television series entitled Family Aïm Deüelle Lüski is a photographer based in Pictures USA. Tel Aviv and a Professor at Tel Aviv University.

Contributors \ 4 Eli Horwatt has worked as the International Emily Vey Duke and Cooper Battersby are long- Programmer at the Hot Docs International term collaborators who work mostly in video. Documentary Film Festival and as a program- Their work has shown at the Whitney mer at The Toronto International Film Festival. Museum, the Walker Center, the Institute of He is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Film and Contemporary Art and the International Film Media studies at Colgate University. Festival Rotterdam, among many others. A book about their work came out in 2012. It is Miki Kratsman is an Israeli photographer, pho- called The Beauty Is Relentless. tojournalist and activist. Vashon Watson is an emerging media artist and Scott MacDonald is author of A Critical Cinema: musician studying in the Art Video program at Interviews with Independent Filmmakers, now Syracuse University. He splits his time between in five volumes from University of California Syracuse and New York. He won the Gold Key Press, which also published his The Garden in Scholastic Art and Writing award for his short the Machine (2001), Canyon Cinema: The Life film The Sky. and Times of an Independent Film Distributor (2008), and Adventures of Perception: Cinema As Exploration (2009).

Sherry Millner & Ernie Larsen are anarchist artists who produce STATE OF EMERGENCY, an interventionist video project, in collaboration with more than 15 artists. Larsen is also a New York based media critic, novelist, and filmmak- er. Millner is a Professor at College of Staten Island, CUNY.

Mandy Rose is an Associate Professor at the University of the West of England and a co-director of i-Docs: a bi-annual symposium dedicated to interactive documentary.

Jeffrey Skoller is a filmmaker, writer, and an Associate Professor of Film & Media at the University of California, Berkeley.

Contributors \ 5

\ Volume 1 \ What do cameras do? Lens-based recording devices are central to the work of documentary studies. Yet, this ostensibly straightforward question is of- ten sidelined. Ignored because it elicits dry, technical description, or because it suggests that cameras determine our actions a priori, before human perception and action occurs. One response to the question might come by way of the persistent cliché of the gun rights movement, that cameras, like guns, do not do anything. People do. In this view, both are technologies that may be employed in any number of different processes, but they do nothing independently of human use and hu- man will. As much as many might disagree with the politics of this stance as it pertains to gun rights, it is worth considering the ways that it too positions human agency entirely outside a INTRODUCTION \ technologically determined logic. In so doing, WHAT DO CAMERAS DO? its underlying assumptions preclude meaning- ful explorations of the imbrication of human JASON FOX actions within the socio-material technologies and environments that support those actions. This volume adopts an opposing perspective, framing cameras as technologies that are increasingly constitutive of our environment. Before the camera does anything else, it is conditional and recursive, providing and re- newing possibilities and limits for action within the ecologies in which we are enmeshed. “The Documentary Camera” explores cam- eras through the roles we attribute to them, and few analogies have been more durable over the past half-century than the compar- ison between cameras and guns. From the work of Newsreel to the writing of Solanas and Getino, and from Abounaddara to the activism surrounding the murder of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO, cameras are routinely invoked as an analogical tool of counter power in oppo- sition to the real violence of guns as a tool of the police, imperialism, and global capitalism more broadly. Though the usefulness of this direct analogy largely ends here, the compari- son is a helpful entry point to this volume that tracks the narratives—cultural, industrial, and political­—that adhere to camera technologies, especially as those narratives are informed by the tradition of documentary.1 The contributors

Fox \ 7 to this volume explore the relationship be- that approaches technologies as fixed ob- tween the camera and such documentary jects created by singular figures. In historian tropes as illumination, optimization, immersion Bertrand Gille’s observation, a “theoretical and excess, art, weaponry, and human rights formalism” always precedes practical design and religious witnessing. As our daily environ- and operation of any new technology.3 In other ments increasingly comprise cameras at every words, new technologies absorb the political turn, an examination of how these frames help and ideological contexts in which they are de- and hinder our understanding of the social veloped. Carolyn Kane explains that narratives relations that cameras engender takes on in- such as “profit, economic necessity, scientific creasing urgency. "The Documentary Camera," progress, efficiency, and rationality are already like the journal it inaugurates, insists that the inscribed into industrial and post-industrial field of documentary studies is uniquely suited practices [and] production processes” long to exploring a broad range of visual technol- before a new technology appears in the mar- ogies, their social and material environments, ketplace, conditioning a set of terms for their and their impacts upon individuals and cultural use.4 Add to Kane’s list unfulfilled desires and formations. unmet potentials, properties of any technology Many histories of cinema’s origins note a that are revealed in what Heidegger referred puzzling comment that accompanied the 1895 to as the “objectively present,” that moment patenting of the cinématographe, the first mo- when tools are seen for what they are once bile motion-picture recording and projection they fail to do the things that they were de- device, in Lyon, France. Louis Lumière, pio- termined to do.5 These thinkers see in new neer of the new device alongside his brother, technologies ways of ordering and externaliz- Auguste, reportedly described their creation as ing very human desires and goals that precede “an invention without a future.” Yet wherever new devices themselves and very often the this apocryphal quote is invoked, it mysti- humans who employ them. Looking beyond fies the scene of invention by intimating that technologies as black boxes and thinking past the Lumières, possessed by a mix of radical their inventors as singular creators allows an technical percipience and uncanny cultural ig- engagement with the ways that the camera, norance, stumbled by chance upon one of the as a sustainer of such worlds, weaves togeth- defining technologies of the century to come. er material histories, cultural narratives, and Several characterizations of his remark feature social desires. variations on a central theme: a brilliant inven- Compared to previous tools of image-making tor does not a visionary businessman make. So such as the magic lantern, the daguerreotype, myopic was Lumière, the story goes, that he and Marey’s chronophotographic gun, the mo- refused sale of a cinématographe to George tion-picture camera seems like a monumental Méliès out of respect for the integrity of the historical rupture. Indeed, it was. The Lumière’s celebrated magician’s career.2 Though Louis cinématographe shares many technological Lumière does not make it out of these origin similarities to Marey’s chronophotographe stories before being made into a punchline, that was developed twelve years prior, but by that punchline nevertheless rests on the setup adding a tooth and claw mechanism which of the genius inventor, a narrative framework would have already been familiar to anyone driven by a property form that treats technolog- with a sewing machine, the brothers solved ical breakthroughs as the products of a singular the problem of uniform movement from frame vision. It is also one that extends into contem- to frame and thus verisimilitude in motion-pic- porary accounts of Silicon Valley pioneers of tures was born. Yet, if the cinématographe is digital imaging. To invoke a mixed geographic placed within the broader commercial and metaphor, the Lumières may have been good social space in which it emerged, then mo- surfers, but they did not invent the wave. tion, at least through the Lumière’s eyes, Media archaeology tracks a different route, begins to look epiphenomenal. The family’s challenging the champion of history narrative notoriety was first guaranteed through their

Fox \ 8 development of light sensitive, dry-plate pho- in a world of constant illumination, are made tography that freed the act from the confines through hypnosis into perfect employees.9 The of the studio and the static subjects required text offers a reminder that another aspiration of long exposure times. inscribed into the camera and the emerging They envisioned themselves as suspend- discipline of psychology alike was to punc- ers of time rather than extenders of space, ture the most “absolute breaches in nature, marketing the “mastery of a minute,” as the boundaries between self and other.”10 The Tom Gunning describes, to upwardly mobile concepts of telepathy, solipsism, and hypno- Parisian families who might wish to mark their sis too were creative technologies of the late rising stock in the world, to stand outside of it, nineteeth-century, at once promising the fan- observe it from afar and to freeze it in time.6 tasy of effortless communion among citizens The camera offered a realignment of time, pro- by making the inner thoughts of minds ac- viding a radical re-visioning that paralleled the cessible to others and stimulating the fear of realignment of social structure in late nine- a new technique of social control.11 Jonathan teeth-century France. Simulating the laws of Crary observes the ways that Wells’ descrip- physics and continuous space through motion tions of hypnosis can just as easily stand in for was perhaps tantalizing, but not as compel- the cinema: ling as mischievously disobeying those laws, something light-sensitive film stocks already Just as photographic and cinemat- allowed with still photography, and something ic innovations in the 1880s and 1890s few others–Meliés was one­—had realized that defined the terms of an automation of motion could significantly build upon. perception, hypnosis too … was a tech- Another consideration: was the camera ini- nology that offered at least the fantasy of tially viewed as a tool for mimicry or mischief? rendering behavior both automatic and The consideration of the camera as a device predictable.12 for time travel means both, the stakes of which are determined by who employs it. HG Wells’ In the decade to follow, while hypnosis fell The Time Machine, also from 1895, features a from grace as a process of empirical endeavor, protagonist whose self-image aligns well with the motion-picture camera, and the industry the “technological elite” of the amateur pho- that it helped found, took on a dominant role tography clubs in which the Lumières were as an interpreter of dreams, desires, fears, immersed.7 His time traveler is thoroughly and frustrations. More than a century later, the modern, consumed by the utopian notion that anxiety and optimism of new media supporting industrial technology can be yoked by humans Wells’ writing looks both remarkably prescient to build from scratch the natures that peaceful and hopelessly overdetermined. A bulwark coexistence needs. He is only wrong by half, it against naïve exuberance in the potential turns out, when he journeys to a distant fu- of new technologies to solve social contra- ture in which the haves govern the have-nots dictions, he nevertheless recognized in the through lumenocracy, or rule by light. Wells camera the possibilities and practical gains likely wrote The Time Machine ignorant of the that come with the ability to freeze time. But invention of the cinématographe. Still, he was Wells also saw both hubris and horror in any a keen culture critic whose work expresses project that seeks to blur the boundary be- a realism of the potential, alternately critiqu- tween the transient and the eternal. ing the utopian narratives of progress and the One hundred and twenty-three years ago, fears of disengagement from the present that few could envision the economic and cultural buzzed in the background of the new imaging juggernaut of cinema that the motion-picture machine.8 camera would help usher into being. Nor could Four years later, Wells’ When the Sleeper many predict that the motion-picture camera, Wakes (1899) describes a twenty-second through its alignment with commercial cine- century dystopia in which child laborers, living ma, would become a staple of an expressive

Fox \ 9 mode of communication intimately linked not documentary studies is how to engage with with the dissolution of self, as those like Wells questions of what images mean when they and Henri Bergson feared, but rather with the seem not to mean at all and when camer- dissemination of information, entertainment, as’ mere presence in a place or as part of an enticement, and art. Today, however, the cin- instrumental process is as or more significant ema is but one small application in a rapidly than the meanings that are consciously con- expanding camera industry. structed through the images they produce. It The continued cultural impact of any tech- might strain the limits of disciplinary credibility nology depends in part on innovation, and and test the patience of scholars to insist that for the past several decades, camera mod- all of the methodologically, geographically, and els intended for cinematic applications have politically diverse ways that individuals act been the recipient of innovations in imaging through, come into contact with, and are acted technologies that were developed for non-cin- upon by cameras should be thought of under ematic applications. In 2016, the image sensor the umbrella of the documentary tradition. But market in the United States alone reached ap- by bringing together amateur cellphone vide- proximately twelve billion dollars in sales, with ography, video installations, forms of archival sensors for digital cameras, excluding camera activism, site specific guerrilla projection, phones, accounting for less than 10 percent photography, amateur discourses surrounding of that amount.13 The market continues to new camera technologies, and documentary grow, propelled by significant investments cinema through the articles, art, and conver- in power-efficient CMOS (complementary sations that follow, this volume emphasizes metal-oxide semiconductors) image sensor that none of these modes should be studied research from cell phone, automobile, military, independently of their position within broader and other industrial sectors that wish to fur- image ecologies. ther employ cameras in remote devices and At the same time that documentary has applications. The diminution of the cinema to a expanded well past the theatrical mode, footnote in the broader camera market cannot technologies that are being pioneered for be so neatly summarized by the phrase digital and by non-theatrical industrial applications revolution, although the expanding infrastruc- such as phones, automobiles, and industrial tures of digital technology have something to automation demonstrate both significant new do with it. So too does digital media’s empha- affordances and challenges for documentary sis upon “organization, power, and calculation” media makers working in more conventional- over “content, programs, and opinions.”14 ly cinematic forms. The emergence of lighter Wendy Chun’s Updating to Remain the Same weight, light sensitive, and more power-ef- (2016) expands upon this line of thought, ficient cameras amplifies one of the original arguing that contemporary digital ecologies edicts of the documentary tradition to employ structure interactions with media that are cameras as tools of publicity in support of the more habitual than cognitive, more organiza- democratic ideals of open access to infor- tional than expressive. Her anchoring insight mation, visibility, and inclusivity. Responding that “media matter most when they seem to the need to reevaluate and complicate not to matter at all” emerges from re-reading contemporary documentary’s relationship to through the lens of new media a chorus of these values, Jonathan Kahana’s Intelligence nineteenth and twentieth century theorists’ Work (2008) traces a genealogy of thought work on habit.15 New media, whatever else through the 1920s work of social theorists it refers to, signals the increased demands Walter Lippmann, John Dewey, A.D. Lindsay, emerging technologies place upon human and others, framing the intellectual envi- bodies. Digital devices, in concert with the ronment in which modern documentary was physical reactions they prompt, have become conceived as both a privileged means and for Chun second nature, or as she describes, mode of democratic publicity.17 He does so to “ideology in action.”16 Thus, a challenge for complicate the notion that documentary is a

Fox \ 10 meaningful stand-in for such an abstract cul- through those images.20 While photographs tural formation as representative democracy and films are seldom transparent stand-ins even as he highlights this formative impulse. for the realities they signify, they can frame For Jodi Dean, a contemporary surfeit of the social forces that co-produce the real, cameras and networked communications infra- including the camera as a terminal of the often structures have produced not more democracy invisible infrastructures that brings visions of but rather a highly unequal formation of com- the world into being. municative capitalism. Thus, socially engaged Rosler’s is an outlook that is not lost on the media makers must confront a double bind: corporations that are investing in new imag- contemporary ideals of publicity are often ing technologies. Few digital camera brands based on the digital technologies that prom- are vertically integrated. Thus, few brands ise political access to a democratic public at are actively involved in each step of the the same time that those technologies “drive manufacturing process, from research and de- an economic formation whose brutalities velopment, to design, manufacturing, assembly render democracy worthless for the majority and marketing. As a result, corporations often of people” they aim to edify.18 Still, respond- rely on third party component manufactur- ing in particular to ongoing racialized police ers whose profitability is determined by their violence and the more general sense that ability to successfully orient their assembly broadcast news media profoundly misread the lines to match decade-long trend forecasts. social climate that led to the recent election of Speculations on camera futures are being Donald Trump, significant recent investments made today by analysts who are at work di- in mobile and immersive video journalism and vining the very social forces and desires that smartphone documentation applications from Rosler addresses. The future then will reveal The New York Times, the Fledgling Fund, and the present outlook. What cameras will be in the ACLU, to name a few, suggest a renewed ten years and how and by whom they will be political purchase in the documentary camera used are being determined today. However, as a privileged form of publicity for a belea- speculating on the future is a dangerous game, guered populace. one that always contains the possibility of As it should. A challenge, though, is for anal- surprise. ysis to keep pace with the camera’s recursive relationship to the real. It has long been con- ENDNOTES ventional wisdom within documentary studies 1—Guns offer a direct route to power. The that the presence of a camera alters the real camera itself offers no power, only a link that it mediates, but less frequently addressed to a presumed social contract of justness is that the real is always already pre-condi- and justice ratified and enforced by the tioned by a camera’s potential presence. The worlds comprising those who are watching. possible presence of a camera regardless of actual circumstance long ago transformed the 2—In practice, the Lumière brothers real into a conditional medium, challenging were quite savvy entrepreneurs. In Erik the boundaries between public and private, Barnouw’s telling, they were quick to between nature, culture and technology, and establish foreign cinématographe pre- between perception and knowledge.19 Yet, mieres across Western Europe, the United such an acknowledgement does not signal States, and Northern Africa. They were the drowning of the referent in an infinite sea also exceptionally proprietary. Lumière of signs nor does it indicate a loss of elemen- operators dispatched across the globe tal relation to human nature. Rather, following were warned “to reveal its secrets to Martha Rosler, it suggests that when the no one, not even kings and beautiful camera suspends time by capturing an im- women.” Erik Barnouw, Documentary: A age, it also suspends an instant of the social History of the Non-Fiction Film (Oxford: and technological forces that are trafficked Oxford University Press, 1993), 11.

Fox \ 11 3—Bertrand Stiegler, Technics a centralized, exterior control and supply. and Time 1 (Palo Alto: Stanford 12—Jonathan Crary, Suspensions University Press, 1998), 26. of Perception: Attention, Spectacle, 4—Carolyn Kane, Chromatic Algorithms: and Modern Culture (Cambridge: Synthetic Color, Computer Art, and MIT Press, 1999), 68. Aesthetics After Code (Chicago: 13—Image Sensor Market by Technology University of Chicago Press, 2014), 4. (CMOS Image Sensor, CCD Image 5— Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, Sensor and Hybrid Image Sensor) for trans. Joan Stambaugh (Albany: State Aerospace, Automotive, Consumer University of New York Press, 2010), 6. Electronics, Healthcare, Industrial, Entertainment, Security & Surveillance 6—Tom Gunning, "New Thresholds of and Other Applications: Global Industry Vision: Instantaneous Photography and Perspective, Comprehensive Analysis the Early Cinema of Lumière," in Impossible and Forecast, 2016-2022” https:// Presence: Surface and Screen in the www.zionmarketresearch.com/ Photogenic Era, ed. Terry Smith (Chicago: report/image-sensor-market. University of Chicago Press, 2001), 74. 14—John Durham Peters, Marvelous 7—Ibid., 73. Clouds: Toward a Philosophy of 8—I borrow from McKenzie Wark who Elemental Media (Chicago: University suggests science fiction can be read as of Chicago Press, 2015), p. 7. a “realism of the possible,” helping us to 15— Wendy Chun, Updating To think the present through an imagined Remain the Same: Habitual New Media future. See McKenzie Wark, Molecular (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2016). Red (New York: Verso Books, 2015). 16—Ibid., 7. 9—See Wolfgang Schivelbusch, Disenchanted Night: The Industrialization of 17— Jonathan Kahana, Intelligence Work: Light in the Nineteenth Century (Berkeley: The Politics of American Documentary (New University of California Press, 1995), York: Columbia University Press, 2008). 134 n121. It is also with this condition in 18—See Jodi Dean, Publicity’s Secret: How mind that Baudrillard asks the rhetorical Technoculture Capitalizes on Democracy question, “can you imagine living in real (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002), 4. time?” For Baudrillard, such a condition signals an eternal daylight in which one 19—See, for example, Eyal Weizman’s is always identified with a public image of notion of “negative evidence,” through oneself. See Jean Baudrillard, The Perfect which Weizman argues that in the ab- Crime (New York: Verso Books, 1996). sence of photographic evidence, just because something cannot be seen 10— William James, The Principles doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist. of Psychology, Great Books of the Western World, vol. 33, ed. Robert 20—Rosler, quoted in Paula Rabinowitz, Maynard Hutchins, (Chicago: “Voyeurism and Class Consciousness: Enyclopaedia Britannica, 1952), 147. James Agee and Walker Evans, ‘Let Us Now Praise Famous Men,’” Cultural 11—Elsewhere: Schivelbusch remarks Critique 21 (Spring 1992): 147. that well into the late nineteenth centu- ry, bourgeois families refused gas light, opting instead for the warmth of candle flame. For Schivelbusch, the act marks a symbolic distancing of interior space from

Fox \ 12 \ Volume 1 \ Aïm Deüelle Lüski built his first camera in 1977 during his long stay in Paris. He named it Neighborhood Camera because it consist- ed of a conglomerate of camera units that comprise a neighborhood of sorts. This was a small object roughly embedded into the cov- er of a small box of Kodak photography paper. Nothing in the shape of this object reveals its essence.1 fig 2.1 – fig 2.2 If anything, its amateurish finish reminds one of architects' morphological sketches prior to the age of three-dimensional imag- ing. Nothing about it hints at being a camera, let alone the radical criticism it evokes. With multiple sides, fronts and apertures, Deüelle Lüski created an object whose mere existence undermines whatever—throughout the history of photography—has been institutionalized as a camera. 1977—the year he created the NOT AT THE CLICK OF A BUTTON Neighborhood Camera—could have marked the beginning of Deüelle Lüski's cameras project. TEXT \ ARIELLA AZOULAY fig 2.3 IMAGES \ AÏM DEÜELLE LÜSKI The boxes that Deüelle Lüski builds for his cameras are mostly black, but these are not black boxes. They are not packages of an instrument whose operating mode is known to its producer and operator and can be pre- sented and taught with relative ease in order to obtain foreseeable results. The photographs that these cameras cre­ate are not necessarily legible, and cannot be considered identified representations of people, environments, ob- jects or situations. Their certain abstractness bears traces of the environment in which they were created and invites a renewed view­ing in our encounter with the world without subju- gating this encounter a priori to the triple logic that holds the image as resource, private pos- session, and object of sovereign rule. fig 2.4 – fig 2.8 The photographs produced by Deüelle Lüski's cameras are not photographs of. . . for two reasons: they are not of the photogra- pher, nor of an object to which one could point as though it had been waiting there, already identified, for the photographer to come along. Photography is present as a plural event that can­not be sealed and signed under a heading. Compared to standard photographs, these look faulty. Had they been created in vertical pho- tography, they would be removed or retouched

Azoulay \ 13 in order to blur the traces of failure. But there ENDNOTES are no failures in Deüelle Lüski's horizontal 1—Images and text first pub- photography. Faults have always been a part lished in Aïm Deüelle and Horizontal of photography, a part of the event that would Photography by Ariella Azoulay (Leuven: not be controlled from a single point of view Leuven University Press, 2014). and therefore something was always missed, superfluous, or disrupting the desired result. 2—This color photograph taken by Thomas The photographer who acts by this logic must Sutton in 1861 following the procedure reduce the visibility of the failure, and thus proposed in 1855 by physicist Clerk preserve the doxa by which a photograph is Maxwell was considered a failure because produced at the click of a button without his it did not manage to blend the seams. interfering in the technology. The history of Only at the onset of the 20th century these efforts is as long as that of photogra- with autochrome and color cameras was phy. Thus, for example, Gustave­ Le Gray, active color procedure packed into a black box in the 1850s, secretly removed without a that did not require such great efforts to trace the seams that connected the two dif- disguise the difficulty in acquiring it. ferent negatives he used in order to create 3—On making the wonder present for seascapes (one negative was that of the sky the viewers through the zoetrope, see and the other, of the sea, and each required a Rosalind Krauss, The Optical Unconscious differ­ent length of exposure time). fig 2.9 (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1993). On the In 1861 Thomas Sutton and James Clerk abundance of these inventions see, Crary’s Maxwell failed colossally as they tried to book: Jonathan Crary, Techniques of the hide the seams between three separate col- Observer (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1990). or plates he used to produce a single-color image.2 However, hiding failure was not always handled in the dark. In the years prior to the invention of pho­tography and for a relatively short time afterwards, the process of removing rough seams through which the image took on its typical shape was open to viewing as a kind of wondrous entertainment, like the goofs seen on television programs in our days. This is how the stereoscope worked, for example, in which two separate images unite and make up a sin- gle three-dimensional image, or the zoetrope that connects several separate images into an image of movement. However these won­der- amusements, too, gradually disappeared for the sake of a switch that instantly provides the results of merging seams.3 fig 10 – fig 2.26

Azoulay \ 14 \ Volume 1 \ Figures

fig 2.1 A drawing of Neighborhood Camera, from The Surface’s fig 2.3 Unheimlich diary, p. 9, 22x28 cm, 2012. Hamidrasha Art School yard, 4x5 b/w negative, 2012.

fig 2.2 Neighborhood camera, 4x5 inches Ilford box, 10x15x15 fig 2.4 cm, 1977, photo: Miki Kratsman. A drawing of NESW Camera, from The Surface’s Unheimlich diary, p. 8, 22x28 cm, 2012.

Azoulay \ 15 \ Volume 1 \ Figures

fig 2.5 fig 2.7 North-East-South-West Camera, Wood and razor blades, Jerusalem Seamline (2/10), picture no. 2/10, 4x5 20x20x20 cm, 1993, photo: Matan Mittwoch. negative, 1992.

fig 2.6 fig 2.8 Jerusalem Seamline (1/10), picture no. 1/10, 4x5 negative, Jerusalem Seamline (10/10), picture no. 7/10, 4x5 1992. negative, 1992.

Azoulay \ 16 \ Volume 1 \ Figures

fig 2.9 Gustave Le Gray, The Great Wave, 1857. fig 2.11 Horizontal Camera II, mahogany wood, 10x10x15 cm, 2011, photo: Matan Mittwoch.

fig 2.10 A drawing of Horizontal Camera, from The Surface’s fig 2.12 Unheimlich diary, p. 105, 22x28 cm, 2010. Horizontal Camera I (open look), black carton box, 10x10x15 cm, 1998, photo: Matan Mittwoch.

Azoulay \ 17 \ Volume 1 \ Figures

fig 2.13 fig 2.15 The ENSBA school in Paris, 4x5 negative, 1998. The 1st picture with Horizontal Camera, the ENSBA school yard, 4x5 negative, 1998.

fig 2.16 72-Centimeters Clay-Wood Camera, wood and clay, 76 x 10 x 16 cm, 1994, photo: Matan Mittwoch.

fig 2.14 Self portrait, Paris, 4x5 Ektachrome, 1998.

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fig 2.17 The Tel Aviv museum square, b/w, full 120 Kodak Tri-X film, 2011.

fig 2.18 The Tel Aviv Municipality, b/w, full 120 Kodak Tri-X film, 1994.

fig 2.19 A drawing of Pita Camera, from The Surface’s Unheimlich diary, p. 45, 22x28 cm, 2012. fig 2.20 Pita Camera, Metallic painted casting, perspects, mahogany wood, 15 cm diameter, 2004, photo: Matan Mittwoch.

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fig 2.21 “Back-to-back”, Bitounia, # 2, 4x5 Ektachrome, 2004. fig 2.23 Cake Camera, Mahogany wood, 40 cm diameter, 2010, photo: Matan Mittwoch.

fig 2.22 Rothschild Blvd, # 1, Tel Aviv, 4x5 b/w negative, 2011.

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fig 2.24 fig 2.26 Kefar Shalem’s Ruins # 1/6, 4x5 negative, b/w, 2010. Kefar Shalem’s Ruins # 5/6, 4x5 negative, b/w, 2010.

fig 2.25 Kefar Shalem’s Ruins # 4/6, 4x5 negative, b/w, 2010.

Azoulay \ 21

\ Volume 1 \ From the very beginning of his career as a filmmaker, even before the seminal Looking for Langston (1989), in the films he made with the Sankofa Film Collective, Isaac Julien di- rectly problematized what he regarded as the compromised innocence of the gaze of the documentary camera, while proposing a new political aesthetics of the cinema. In his many films and installations since the early 1980s, Julien’s camera seldom, if ever, merely looks at or records the flow of situations and ac- tions. It might be said à la Langston to look for its subject, precisely to look for what in his view remained hidden from the conventional documentary camera. These projects—of- ten involving journeys to sites far-flung from his home in London, from Lampedusa to Shanghai—take off from a hard kernel of the real/the factual (an historical figure, a disaster, BEYOND THE EXPEDIENT \ a social crisis) and then through a palimpsest AN INTERVIEW WITH ISAAC JULIEN of research, questioning, and stylization take on the expansive faceted character of a sym- ERNEST LARSEN & SHERRY MILLNER phonic reworking of its original inspiration. This interview conducted via Skype in July 2017 attempts to reckon with a few of the risks and rewards of Julien’s undertaking. The two of us (SM & EL) have, to make the record clear, a long and valued friendship with Isaac and his partner Mark Nash, and I (EL) have written about some of his films. As filmmakers of a more anarchic persuasion, we have also built a dialogic relationship with Isaac—at times genially disagreeing about our mostly shared perspectives. The laughter we shared while conducting this interview has been left on the cutting-room floor, as it were (one of Isaac’s characteristic phrases). But I can still hear it.

INTERVIEW

ISAAC JULIEN I think the first thing to say is that because of the ways that digital technology developed from, say, the mid-1990s into the millennium, some of my developing ideas about montage and installation became inextricable parts of the process of building my more recent multi- ple screen works. For instance, I initially made three-screen works, but then when I began to

Larsen & Millner \ 23 experiment with the idea of making more than the work. But at the same time I think it was a three-screen work, that meant moving away ultimately based on the idea of the mobile from what I was calling the ontological gaze to spectator, putting that back into practice. Now something more immersive. whether that works or not is another ques- For example, my 2005 solo show Fantôme tion, audiences still like sitting down to view Créole at the Pompidou, curated by Christine works…(laughter) Van Assche, in which I was very involved, was Because of course you can make a work and a very interesting experiment around my four- people can view it and react to it how they screen work called Fantôme Créole. We put want to and, in a way, I’d say, old habits die all of the seats into the center of the gallery hard. People sometimes remain stationary. But space—the spectator was surrounded by all there's a way in which there's encouragement images on all four sides. The idea was that, in a for the spectator to be able to enjoy having sense, the spectators would become their own multiple perspectives to view the work—en- editors since they would not be able to see all couragement to be able to engage with the the screens at once. What actually happened work in this immersive manner. And so this is that the spectators came in and, since the became a kind of raison d’etre to the work and seats were moveable, they moved them to the part of that also connects to how you shoot furthest distance where they could have the the work because you also have to develop experience of being able to see all screens at the technique for shooting these different once–all four screens at once. perspectives. I shoot with several cameras at So what we decided to do then—this was once in a scene. And then being able to mon- back in 2005—was that it would be great to tage the work, which is a considerable but be able to make a work where the spectator exciting challenge for the editor, Adam Finch. didn't necessarily have that choice. In making So I must plan the whole development in a nine-screen work like Ten Thousand Waves both the sonic and the choreographic aspect (2006-2010), for example, the idea is that and their mutual relations. It's an experiment there are many points of views because the that you are able to undertake in a museum/ screens are double faced. In a way viewing be- gallery context as opposed to the classical comes a space where the spectator can never cinema context. This is something that has gaze between screens, looking at the back of been a very unique experience for one to the screen or the front of the screen. At the explore—and yet has also become part of the same time the work had to be precisely con- lingua franca of contemporary moving-image ceived in terms of how it was going to be shot work. There have been a few video artists and edited. All of these considerations had to that have also looked at my work and they've be specifically correlated, in aspects of shoot- attempted to also make this a part of their ing and planning the design of the installation. sort of language. I recognize that this way of So these aspects of the creation of the working has gained a certain currency. But at work came first and formed the model for how the same time, I think that that's just one way we would shoot the work (given the complex of working out the permutations of multiple technical requirements of making creative use screen installation work when you're interest- of the nine screens) and then how we would ed in choreography. This works best when the be able to conceptualize the sound design. relationship to sound creates the ambulatory The sound would have a sonic ambulatory possibility for the spectator’s experience, and aspect to it, where the spectator would be identification, rather than producing normative encouraged to move from one screen to the classical film approach. other because of how the sound was arranged and dubbed, or calibrated, across a 9.2 sur- ERNEST LARSEN round system in relationship to the mid-point That ambulatory aspect suggests that the to surround tracks for the work. And so all viewer is choreographing the situation him- of these things develop as we are making self/herself to some degree. Would you say

Larsen & Millner \ 24 in a way that notion enhances the "freedom" undo it or deconstruct it some way. of the viewer to make their own decisions? Is So I think through that relationship to the that a calculation? political, and try to make works that somehow respond to events in the world or respond IJ to events that affect one in a more intimate Well, I think all of these things are suggest- sense. When I think about questions, for exam- ed when you edit the work, but in practice ple, of migration, these are sort of questions how a spectator reacts to the work is really which we've been thinking about for a long very unique. I could say I encourage a more time. Take a work like Western Union: Small reflexive relationship to how I might want Boats (2007), which was made more or less the spectator to participate in viewing the ten years ago now. It was shown at the Royal work. Think, for example, of one of Bill Viola's Academy as a five-screen work. It has a very early quite famous works, Five Angels for the mixed economy: film projections, flat screens, Millennium (2001). It was a bit more didac- and light boxes, so actually it's a six-screen tic. Basically, the spectator had to wait for work, but as a hybrid. I think on the whole it's an irregularly scheduled event where a ful- a way of trying to take this question of migra- ly-dressed male character, or angel, would tion, which I was interested in and which was descend or ascend through water, etc., and I spurred on by a visit to Italy with my mother. think that was something that was event-driv- I was also in conversation with critics like en, but thrilling when it was made. Iain Chambers and Lidia Curti who teaches in Naples and looking at the changing population EL as I came to Italy. Now, of course, that situation Let’s take that point. Here's Bill Viola, who's has taken on international media attention but doing a lot of his work at least at that period when I initially made the work, it wasn't no- on impulses that we might call mythical, spir- ticed by anyone on such scale. itual, or even archetypical to some degree, So, I think there's a way in which the doc- whereas a lot of your installation work has an umentary impulse comes from wanting to originary documentary impulse. So how does document things but at the same time to not the structured configuration of screens com- document things in the way the dominant plicate or inflect where you start out, what the media documents such events. Then there is original documentary impulse is, the informa- the question of reconstruction: all of these tion on which to base the real, whatever that themes come into play; usually through fiction- may be from project to project? Do you have a al elements. All of this questioning of how the sense of how these original impulses devel- form of what a documentary imparts is some- oped or transformed based on your knowledge thing which also connects to the way in which of how you want to structure an installation? it becomes fragmented. For me, there has to be an alibi, a deeper motivation, as to why I IJ make works in the museum or gallery context Well, I think there was a factor that was neces- as opposed to a more documentary or tele- sary to, as you say, the documentary impulse or visual context and that's where the question the archival impulse, in the early works in '89 of multiple screens and the possibilities for or the mid-80s, such as Looking for Langston making those came up. I think you're right that (1989) or Territories (1983). My work, howev- there's a way in which I still want to engage in er eclectic, is working with this documentary the political. But I would say how I engage in impulse to undo what constructs these ethno- that political is often through a different strat- graphic codings around the documentary and egy, using documentary questions which are the realist impulses around documentary form. ordinarily dealt with in a more straightforward We want to undo that because we don't like manner, a realist manner. how the Black subject is being framed in these The idea is that you make works that various modes ethnographically. We want to hopefully live on beyond the expediency of

Larsen & Millner \ 25 something which is newsworthy and I think documentary work you always question or there is an open question as to what is news- subvert, again, the realist—the documentary worthy. Sometimes when news becomes really realist—form and take it elsewhere. So maybe very important you need it to signify beyond you could talk about that—what the camera its sell-by date which is nowadays instan- does, what you do with the camera and with taneous through social media platforms. . . . the staging that subverts, or at least questions, All of those things come into play. A work like again, the conventional documentary impulse. Western Union: Small Boats took 10 years before the work was shown in Britain, before it would IJ receive recognition. It recently won the Charles I think of films like Fanon: Black Skins White Wollaston Award at the Royal Academy Summer Mask (1996), and earlier works like Territories Exhibition where it was exhibited this summer. and Looking for Langston and I think all of It's interesting because I'm talking to you those works are about trying to create a dif- from Italy. I'm looking out on the Mediterranean ferent intervention into the film essay and to Sea on vacation, but I'm very aware that all of embolden that image with something which those journeys are still taking place now. They could be fictional, a tableau vivant, that could haven't stopped, only increasing. be imagistic, that could be all or any of these things. Quite often, audiences have felt as if EL the coding is very marked in relationship to No. the image, perhaps too coded. And I think those things are trying to bring IJ all of these different effects to the docu- I think it's very much about how can you make mentary and to question what that mode of work that transcends its moment and at the documentary visualization could be in terms same time is embedded in its original strategy of its form and in terms of how you might want that can resonate in some way. I think one of to think about presenting questions of this the things about making the multiple screen nature. It's been an interesting journey. I think works in terms of the documentary impulse about my work in relationship to how new is the way that you can enliven that impulse technologies impact upon making the work by making it become a sonic work which can in a particular context and how it resignifies somehow enable the actual documentation or in a gallery or museum context with precisely the way in which you may want to film certain this level of engagement. I can see that my elements. So, there's an element which could colleagues have been inspired by this when I be archival that could be mimicking docu- think about someone like John Akomfrah. I cer- mentary modes but highlighting the political tainly think that in The Unfinished Conversation aspect in them as a way of trying to charge (2013) . . . you know, John Akomfrah was not them with memorialization. All of that is cre- making three-screen works initially. (laughter) ated through the use of sound, through the use of montage and using these elements to EL dramatic effect, to try to create an interven- No he wasn't. tion into how these questions are ordinarily presented. SM I think that's really one of the ways that I've No, that's really interesting to watch. been working for quite a long time in relation- ship to the questions of documentary impulse, IJ and I think that is something obviously that So I think there has been a kind of move. Today other filmmakers have been involved in as well. I'm someone who really was pioneering that kind of move into the museum and gallery SHERRY MILLNER space but also we know that what becomes Even in your single channel work and your a way of thinking about making films, that in

Larsen & Millner \ 26 one context can be seen as fairly avant-gar- and voiceovers and, I have to say, its bravura de, can then become very normative, once use of archival footage, including key moments institutionalized. from Battle of Algiers (1967), we noted three I do think there is also a political moment shots from J’ai Huit Ans, the 1961 film by Yann around multiple screen works, with three- Le Masson and Olga Poliakoff. There's a series screen works in particular becoming a more that I suppose you would remember, a series normative practice. I think that’s happen- of three close-ups of three eight-year-old boys ing because there's been an opening up for who stare at the camera maybe blankly, may- these ways of working in the museum con- be defiantly. This is a film that Fanon himself text. Institutions take a long time to respond suggested to René Vautier, who then sug- and at the same time I think you know we can gested it to Le Masson and Poliakoff. The boys say that it’s became a certain lingua franca. whom Fanon in his working role as a psychi- Whether one has to move on. . . (laughter) atrist treated as a result of the trauma of the colonialist war. These sons of Algerian revo- SM lutionaries were filmed in Tunisia in a refugee But also you do move back and forth. You camp. So to us it was really startling in your reconfigure and rethink both the audience re-use of those shots, this decision accords and the space you're working in. The kind of so smoothly with your treatment of an idea as material you're working with, and you do move developed in your Fanon of the gaze. There back and forth among these kinds of different is a certain form of, let's say, direct address, viewing situations in your work. which your film theorizes in relation to the key text by Fanon in which for the first time he IJ sees himself being seen, called out as Black by I have lots of ideas of what I'd kind of like to do a French child in the street. So all of this for us in the future and when I talk to programmers comes together and we are wondering if you and things like that, they say to me, no, that's could talk a bit about how your understanding not possible yet, Isaac. (laughter) of documentary form crosses over this idea of seeing yourself being seen, especially in EL relation to trauma, and then perhaps you could Oh really? also comment more briefly on this structuring of the gaze, direct address,. It implies direct IJ contact with the viewer, especially in the un- But you know there are lots of things I wanted avoidable context of desire, or mutual desire, to do on Playtime, for example, which I think or cross-race desire. That's a lot but maybe in the future I might be able to program into a this could suggest some things to you. work but I won't be able to do it yet. IJ EL Well, I think you perfectly described some of I want to turn to a long, hopefully not overly the ideas from the Fanon film in your question. complex, question. We watched Fanon for the One of the things I've been involved in recent- first time in some years last week. ly with Mark Nash has been a project with the British Film Institute and our studio in order to SM revise Fanon. It will be released as a DVD/Blu- It struck us how it speaks to this moment. Ray in the fall. Mark has had to go back to the original negative and to a lot of primary sourc- EL es in the work. We did this because we wanted Yes. In the context of that film's use of inter- the work to resignify to a new audience. We views with Fanon's family members and with think it's very important that the Fanon film be theorists like Homi Bhabha and Stuart Hall and seen by an audience today. Maryse Conde and its stylized reenactments

Larsen & Millner \ 27 EL we react to the developments that have taken Yeah, I agree. place. Think about the relationship between Stuart SM Hall, when he talked about Fanon and the way That's great. . . in which Fanon was involved in the liberation of Algeria at a point when the country was IJ more secular, but that secularism didn't neces- In part, because of this moment of Black Lives sarily win out. I think we're still living with the Matter and broader questions around violence question of that vision of a more secular kind and around Arab-ness that surround it. These of future. And it just speaks about Fanon not are questions we were looking at when we really understanding the relationship between made the Fanon film. And so I think we were that vision and other religious forces at that very much interested in René Vautier's film time. I think that we're still there in that mo- that he initiated in Algiers, in which you have ment. In terms of crisis, different regimes want this sequence where the boys return the gaze. to exploit that to various ends. So I think that I think really a lot of the works in this partic- it’s very interesting how we think around this ular moment, as well as in earlier works have question of violence coming back to haunt the been about the return of the colonial gaze, metropolis. or the imperial gaze, and the direct look into And, how can we find the language for the camera. But I think at the same time the thinking about these questions? I believe that question of fracturing and of trauma and of the we can turn to some of Fanon for thinking way in which in Fanon's work he was trying to about these questions and we notice that the look at this question of violence and violence violence of the gaze and how that gets en- which is connected to the gaze to conflict in acted upon in militarization, in war, in police relationship to decolonization. methods, all of these tropes have come back These are still ongoing struggles and they really and have not gone away and have been have come back into the present in a very revisited back onto Black bodies in a particular particular manner. When we were making the manner which I think is not really the way we work, we were forced to come to terms with envisaged the future. what was happening in Algeria. We couldn't I think there's really a lot of work to do in travel there to film because it was too violent how we're going to think through and combat at that time. In the sequence at the end of these questions. We probably need to look at the work you have Fanon's son discussing the Fanon again in a slightly different articulation mysterious relationship between the army and from how we looked at Fanon originally, but crime and people not being quite sure where nonetheless it has its resonance. the violence was coming from. In terms of the terrorism that was beginning SM to take hold of the country in that particular Very much it's surprising how important that moment, it would be this very notion of terror- is. . . ism in a cathectic sense that would become the lingua franca. It would become the expe- EL rience in the first world metropolis The United Would you think of going back to the original States experienced September 11, but since material? Are you thinking of making a new then it has been much more an imagined psy- director's cut? A more expanded version or a chic reality, as opposed to something that has different version, or adding to it? been practiced in a different way in Europe. I think this question speaks to the unfinished IJ business of the way in which racial and reli- The version that most people have in the U.S. gious regimes haven't been contested as well is fifty minutes long, without the Maryse Conde as to what constitutes citizenship and how and Homi Bhabha interviews. We are also

Larsen & Millner \ 28 doing some work towards the DVD release, SM using the archive and other material such as They've got enough to think about! outtakes. We would like to go back to the old interviews and have it in a long form manner, EL etc. Mark [Nash] has done the most work on it. They have to sit down and listen and that's all. (laughter) EL A new book, as you probably know, is being SM translated into English, of Fanon's previously But the pleasure's in that. . . unpublished writings. . . IJ SM Well you know I'm not that laissez-faire. . . I think it's an important piece and I think that (laughter) you're absolutely right. That also gets back to the ways in which one images things and the kinds of questions it raises about desire, about the gaze, and about migration. These ques- tions speak to this moment. They're not fixed in any one moment. They're both very specif- ic but they open out they don't close down. It's not a biopic. That's one of the interesting things about Fanon. It gives a different view of Fanon than you are used to seeing. So it seems important to me that people do see that now and think about those questions in a different way.

IJ Yes, the thing is to make it work in terms of a new audience. One could think about it as a multiple screen work. But of course I wouldn't do anything like that. We have an ambition for it to be shown in the cinema again. So, the film will be launched at the London Film Festival this year and subsequently in different film festival contexts but will also be available on DVD and Blu-ray.

SM The film does make an argument. And you do demand, in a sense, that the audience be able to follow the path of that argument. So it seems important­—

IJ Yes, we don't want them to be ambulatory. . .

SM Exactly (laughter)

Larsen & Millner \ 29

\ Volume 1 \ Video/sound recorders with high data storage capacities, high-resolution and low light ca- pabilities of miniature high-definition tapeless cameras, solid state surveillance cams, dash- board and body cameras, and most crucially, the ubiquitous smartphone with capabilities for live streaming via social media are trans- forming the dynamics of the interactions between law enforcement officials and citizen- ry in the United States. That both public and private law enforcement officers in the United States are almost always armed in their con- frontations with citizens is deeply connected to the often antagonistic and violent history of American law enforcement. The emerging con- tinuous, single shot, digital video documents that people are self-streaming and recording as protection when encountering the police and other figures of state authority have be- iDOCUMENT POLICE \ gun to transform the national discourse on CONTINGENCY, RESISTANCE, police violence. These videos are documents AND THE PRECARIOUS PRESENT whose narrative directions are still evolving in the moment of recording, so outcomes and JEFFREY SKOLLER meanings of the events seen and heard can- not be neatly narrated. Instead, they reveal the immediate present as an unfolding problem for representation, which is often incomplete and always contingent. Thus the very indeter- minacy of outcome caused by the presence of the cameras becomes a stage for resistance to state authority. What the recordings document gives insight into what I am calling the time of resistance, a performative mode in which the technology allows the filmer to destabilize the temporality of their interaction with au- thority by shifting the dynamic of power in the interaction and, in the process, momentarily denaturalizing the terms of power.

PRESENT-TIME

The historical turn that dominates much the- ory and practice of contemporary avant-garde film and documentary in the last twenty years is perhaps part of a response to fin du ving- tième siécle, postmodern claims of the “end of history,” a sense of a loss of collective his- torical memory, the eternal now of consumer culture and the inability of traditional forms of historiography to adequately address the

Skoller \ 31 fragmented experience of representing re- an interface, as a form of self-protection or lationships between past and present. The resistance in situations in which they are con- historical turn in some of the more sophis- fronted by state authorities—such as police, ticated contemporary documentary theory Homeland Security, border guards, etc. These and practice has focused on retrospective happenstance filmmakers create a new cin- time and the problems of narrating events ema of present-time, often by turning on the of the past and its documents. This work on camera and placing it between themselves the archive, the indexical trace, and its digital and figures of state power and authority – loss, questions of memory, trauma, testimony, sometimes destabilizing the power dynamic in re-enactment, creating previously unheard of situations they are witnessing or engaged in cinematic hybrids between documentary and and at other times highlighting the asymmet- avant-garde media practices, have changed rical relations of state power and the citizens the language of cinema. they are meant to serve. Often the filmers have But, something quite different is happening little time to pay attention to their recording’s outside of these discourses and practices that composition, exposure, focus, coverage of the also needs to be given attention. Outside of scene, or sound quality. Instead, the camera is them is an explosion of the present. The pres- simply turned on and left to run until the hard- ent is in the endless recordings that are given drive or chip is full. These recordings are then to us immediately, through the technology we privately uploaded to the web, or released to access constantly, in every waking moment of advocacy or news organizations and, depend- our lives. So present-time is constituted in this ing on how spectacular the recording is, they surfeit of mediation, at high speed, in which circulate virally. every moment is transformed into an event de- As cinematic works, I’m interested in the manding to be paid attention to. We are drawn ways these durational recordings shift our to one event and instantly to the next, often attention from the highly wrought crafting of making it hard to know what is significant retrospective time to the documentation of the about the present as an experience. Clearly contingencies of present-time and the ways this isn't a new revelation in relation to modern these often unanticipated recordings create life. Cultural critics have been commenting on new forms of attention through performance, the loss of an ability to experience the present drama, and character identification, as well as at least since the late nineteenth century. But new forms of witnessing and documentation today there is an even more complex kind of that might be capable of transforming public transformation happening with the emergence discourse and the political landscape. of new digital imaging technologies and high- These self-documenting and witness videos speed communications. How are we to discern have become a significant form of activism. the importance and value of an archive of re- Such recordings have given rise to a new gen- cordings that document every single moment of eration of media activist organizations such the day? What is useful? What do such record- as Black Lives Matter, Copblock, WEcopwatch, ings make happen as they become part of the Cop Block, NY Resistance, and other commu- very events being documented? Who is making nity groups that inform and instruct people on those kinds of judgments of their value? how to use their cameras and what their legal Watching documents of events as they rights are when confronted by state authori- unfold, unedited, has created an overwhelm- ties. Through the activity of video recording, ing sense of the present tense in our daily laws are being learned, challenged, and clari- lives. Beyond the ubiquitous documentation by fied in very public ways as a result. legions of professional journalists and anony- These videos take a number of forms and mously mounted surveillance cameras, there have a range of purposes. But the ability to is an emergence of a wide range of recordings publicly post the videos online is implicit to by non-journalists who have begun to use the performances as they are taking place. their smartphones or mini-digital cameras as Often, these documents are posted unedited

Skoller \ 32 as raw footage. Others have been extensive- to document being stopped by police has ly post-produced and include voiceovers or become an essential form of self-protection intertitles with explanations and analysis of and documentation for many, but in particular what occurred and often function as rhetorical African Americans who are routinely pulled evidence of the abuse of power by the state over in traffic stops and arrested at high- and/or the demonstrating of racism and racial er rates than other communities in the US.1 profiling by authorities. Others are instruc- Increasingly, African American drivers are tional, demonstrating how to approach state mounting cameras on their car dashboards or authorities when challenging their demands. they begin recording with smart phones when At times, the very same videos that are used stopped. Clearly visible to the police officers, by progressive and civil rights groups appear the continuous real-time recording of the stop on right-wing libertarian sites such as Honor at once serves as a third term witness and Your Oath, Live Free or Die or Check Point USA, allows the driver to raise questions about what to show how the liberal authoritarian state is is occurring in the moment. With emerging real violating the constitution with illegal stop and time, live-feed applications such as Facebook searches without probable cause, in violation live stream broadcasting, they can be in con- of the Fourth Amendment. tact with others when alone in the car while These videos can be distinguished between being confronted by officers. self-documenting performative videos in which the filmer is in direct contact and con- LIVENESS / TELEVISUAL / STREAMING frontation with authorities and by stander videos recorded by happenstance witnesses While present-time documentation of events who are not involved but stop to document po- in real time as part of televisual broadcasting lice confrontations with others. In these cases, has gone on for decades, this personal live the act of recording often pulls the filmer into streaming from within the event is something the event, either by being confronted directly quite different from the TV crew that arrives at by the police, or through ways the filmer be- an event that is already in progress and turns comes a protagonist in the event as a witness it into a story. Live television, Mary Ann Doane or interlocutor. In the case of some police has suggested, “organizes itself around the shootings, the documenter has become as event [and] fills time by ensuring that some- controversial as the event s/he has recorded. thing happens.” The name and fate of the filmer becomes part What happens is that the event be- of the story. Many of the men who recorded comes televisual, as the referent becomes the high-profile police killing of unarmed men inseparable from the medium. Television’s themselves became victims of police and state conceptualization of the event is dependent harassments: Feidin Santana, who filmed upon a particular organization (or penetration) the police shooting of Walter Scott in South of temporality that reduces the different ways Carolina in April 2015, Ramsey Orta, who filmed of apprehending the event.2 By contrast, in Eric Garner’s death in Staten Island in July the self-documenting recordings the event is 2014, and Kevin Moore, who filmed the arrest the person who is filming and the presence of of Freddie Gray in Baltimore in April 2014. All the camera itself, as much as it is the object became part of the event, both as witness or event being recorded. The act of filming to what was happening in the moment of becomes an integral part of the event as it filming and then again as protagonist in the is emerging—and shapes and reshapes it shaping of how the event is understood and in real time. Often, people begin filming as a responded to after the fact. This seems largely form of self-protection in contexts where the unprecedented. authority’s lack of accountability is obvious, The emergence of the pocket-size digital before anything explicitly damaging has even camera/phone with large data storage and happened. In these cases, recording begins high resolution/low light recording capacities before the unfolding interactions even become

Skoller \ 33 “events.” The recordings thus reveal how Reynolds speaks of how common it is for something unfolds in time; the event is not African Americans to be stopped by the police just what happened in front of the camera, it and that she turned on her camera just af- is also the act of recording itself and all that it ter Castile is shot: “I knew that people would places in motion. choose sides and I know they wouldn’t see me In July 2016, the continuous live-streamed as being the person who was telling the truth video on Facebook by Diamond Reynolds re- . . . By recording I know I would have my side veals a horrifying scene as she is sitting inside brought to the table.” a car beside her dying boyfriend who has just been shot at least four times by a Minnesota THE LONG TAKE: DURATIONAL & SLOW CINEMA police officer. Reynolds films in real-time her interactions with the police, showing that I am struck by the way these new kinds of re- the police make no effort to save the life of cordings might reshape modes of attention in Philando Castile as he is bleeding to death. the documentary form itself, as they focus our Reynolds is at once part of the event and eye- attention on the precariousness of moment witness narrator explaining to the camera what by moment shifts in power dynamics between is occurring as it is unfolding. As she records, people: what exactly is said and how; how the police officer points his revolver through things move toward violence or escape it. Can the open window of the car. We see from these videos point to an approach to non-fic- moment to moment her attempting to prevent tion observational forms that allows for the the situation from escalating as the police provisionality of the present to emerge within officer becomes increasingly agitated. In this representation? Is this form a way of engag- extraordinary recording, Reynolds is at once ing events that are unfolding in the present calming her four-year old daughter who is in moment, where their direction is not yet the backseat, trying to keep the officer calm so determined and where their dynamics are not he won’t shoot at them again, and narrating for yet understood? the camera what is unfolding as precisely and In cinematic terms, these recordings might objectively as possible. She is giving as many be understood in relation to the durational facts about their situation to whomever may and real-time practices of the Modernist film be watching the event online. As she contin- avant-garde and the more recently acknowl- ues filming, she is ordered out of the car and edged stylistic category of “slow cinema” confronted by additional police officers with rather than to live-television or documentary guns drawn. She continues speaking as she is journalism to which these recordings might forced to her knees and her camera/phone is more intuitively be associated. By linking thrown to the ground. The camera continues the recordings with such highly formalist to record as it is pointed to the sky while the practices, an awareness of other narrative voices in the chaotic interactions between possibilities begin to emerge as alternatives police, Reynolds and her daughter continues to the linear contrivances of narrative emplot- off screen. ment. These alternative forms can give access Once Reynolds is placed into a squad car to a broader range of temporalities in daily life with her phone back in hand, she continues such as randomness, chance, repetition, stasis to narrate, describing the officer who shot and drift. Such durational and real-time cinema Castile in detail and gives the intersection attempts to equalize each moment as part of where this is taking place. She asks for those the continuous flow of time, allowing the view- who may be listening to come and help her er to find the meaning in an event in relation to before her camera/phone loses charge. In their own perceptions and intellectual pro- subsequent interviews she is asked over and cesses. It provides an ethical dimension to the over—largely by white interviewers—how she recording of an event by making time notice- had the wherewithal to begin filming and how able as a material aspect of an event. In the she was able to be so calm in her narration. durational films of Andy Warhol such as Poor

Skoller \ 34 Little Rich Girl (1965), for example, the continu- has not yet been determined. Such documen- ous recording of events produce drama out of tary form claims authority through its ability the uncontrollability of the changes that occur to convincingly represent an event through over time. At the same time, the entire first temporal condensation, and the shaping of reel of the film was accidentally shot out of narrative exposition into linear and compre- focus and was only noticed after the film was hensible series of highlights. These direct the processed. This too, becomes a document of viewer to certain aspects of the event often the contingency of the mediation of the event, creating a seamless sense of a whole picture, its realism now located on the actual surface often closing down an awareness of the mo- of the film and in its duration, not just in the ment by moment process of how something profilmic image.4 happens as it does. Similarly, the contemporary, durational Pier Paolo Pasolini argued that the sub- digital single-shot recordings in which a pro- stance of cinema is an endless long take, tagonist and person recording are one and which, like lived reality, is endless time filled the same, allows an unmediated access to the only with contingency—therefore meaningless indeterminacy of the present moment. In these and unreadable. That is, it is unreadable until recordings, nothing has been determined to there is a cut, the cut that when connected to be unimportant or unnecessary ex post fac- another shot it “renders the present past.”7 to. Many things are seen to be happening at The cut, for Pasolini, stabilizes the images by once and the outcome of the encounter is as placing them into history, or what he called an yet undetermined. As such, it is still an event historic present. The cut thus ends the shot, no containing a multiplicity of possibilities in longer recording each instant of the present, which some things happen and others do not. but instead making it the past. The time of the Each moment in the continuous shot con- shot is now shaped by its relation to the other tains the possibility of having meaning and shots that surround it. For Pasolini, it is mon- contains what Russian narratologist Mikhail tage that places time into sequence, and gives Bakhtin called eventness. For Bakhtin, certain what he called the “meaningless present” a kinds of narrative emplotment close down an form, “converting our present, which is infinite, awareness of the moment by moment process unstable, uncertain, and thus linguistically of how something happens in an event and indescribable into a clear stable, certain and "life comes to resemble a finished product, thus linguistically describable past.” But to the in which everything is fixed."5 As Gary Saul contrary, I argue, rather than unreadabilty and Morson describes Bakhtin’s eventness: meaninglessness, the real-time single take shot reveals eventness—the intensity, drama Eventful events are performed in a world and political power of the present precisely in in which there are multiple possibilities, its revelation of contingency and the aware- in which some things that could happen ness of the present moment as always having do not . . . The eventful event must also the potential for something meaningful to be unrepeatable, that is its meaning and occur. These documents address the actuali- weight are inextricably linked to the mo- ty of an event that is unfolding in the present ment in which it is performed. Choice is moment, its direction and outcome is not yet momentous. It involves presentness.6 determined, its dynamics not yet understood or able to be narrated. Its presentness is pre- Like other forms of durational and slow cine- cisely the emergence of the event, and how in ma, these recordings can be seen as a counter the present moment, it defies immediate un- form of documentary narration that disrupts derstanding and coherence since there are so and undermines the mass-media temporalities many things happening at once. But here, the of journalistic and documentary film exposition, goal of knowledge is not closure, but rather which are always already shaping outcomes what is going to happen next, something that while creating the impression of a process that the viewer must grapple with.

Skoller \ 35 In general, the uninterrupted shot is not only videos, the state’s system of authority is dis- about time, but also about construction of the rupted by the presence of the camera and the space of the present. Because the cameras re- chance that it will catch the police in illegal cord only what is in front of them, often from a behavior while at the same time controlling the fixed position, there is no perspectival element camera emboldens the filmer to step out of, that can create an impression of a possible and disrupt that system’s discourse of unques- ubiquitous view of the event. More specifical- tioned authority that it presumes. ly, in these digital videos, the single camera, We can see in these uninterrupted record- which is often static, at times the image de- ings the ways the camera becomes a catalyst framed—with little attention to or control over for disrupting constructed temporal systems. where the camera is pointed—at times out of In videos where motorists record themselves focus, or moving uncontrollably, renders just a refusing to submit to what they understand partial view. Much is happening in the frame, to be illegal questioning and searches at but clearly even more beyond it. We become Homeland security checkpoints, north of the aware of this not by what we’re not seeing, Mexican border, we see how their refusal to but through implication, not through narrative submit to questioning, and arguing the illegal- isolation, but through narrative absence, thus ities of the stop with the patrol guard disrupts the static camera embodies and clarifies the the time it takes to make the inspection. The partial perspective and situated knowledge submission to the questioning succeeds with that is the present. threats of being detained and schedules dis- The fascination of the present moment in rupted. The refusal to answer instead disrupts these long duration recordings is that anything the procedural process as cars begin to back can happen or nothing at all. Ironically, The up, unable to proceed. What is a rather mean- unbroken linearity of these recordings exposes ingless and often illegal bureaucratic action the present as a point of rupture and discon- of inspecting each car becomes a long wind- tinuity that has the potential to destabilize ed and laborious action, and a test of wills, the verisimilitude of linear time. Present-time between officer and driver as everybody’s simultaneously poses the threat of mean- activity slows to a halt. Everybody—driver, inglessness and of pure and uncontrollable officer, motorists behind them, the view- contingency. Both meaninglessness and con- er—becomes aware that resistance to this tingency destabilize the narrative coherence questioning changes the time it takes to pass and rationality of social control. As Mary Ann through.9 Even more importantly, they reveal Doane has suggested in her work on cinemat- the power of the state as a performance of au- ic time and contingency: "The present can be thority and intimidation, and its limits. These figured as a point of discontinuity (and hence videos reveal instant-by-instant, micro-shifts the condition of the possibility of chance) in and changes in the interactions between an otherwise continuous stream of time.” She each player in the scene as they react to the continues, “The present as a point of dis- changing power dynamic between officers continuity marks the promise of something and the filmers. The chance that resisting other, something outside of systemicity or an authority will erupt into violence, or that it will anti-systemicity.8 be resolved by the officer admitting that s/he Systemicity, for Doane, refers to the regu- has no authority to detain the driver and let- larized and systemized structuring of time in ting them proceed—both are seen in a range capitalist economy in the domain of work and of videos – is unpredictable. The present leisure. One could add to that the systemicity becomes the point of undecidability. Nothing of state control—of information and popula- is inevitable, so narrative has no form. Each tion. The contingency that is constituted in instant is the disruption of another. every present moment can be seen as having Like an irritant placed between driver and the potential for disrupting the systemicity of inspection officer, the camera opens a space state power. In the case of these single-shot for confrontation that would be unlikely to

Skoller \ 36 happen without its presence. The camera as a original footage. As Hamid Naficy writes: third term can reveal how systems have al- ready broken down within the social order, as The repeated screening of dissected we see police illegally intimidating or acting images turns them into abstractions, into outside the law with impunity. Not only are the images without referent, into simulacrum. acts of violence themselves being document- The spatial and temporal integrity that in- ed, but the possibility of it being recorded formed the images is vitiated . . . Through itself now becomes one of the contingencies abstraction, absence, and voicelessness, that these documents reveal. This is not to the subject of both the video and the claim that the ubiquity of cameras will end the court, in effect, disappeared.10 violent abuse of the citizenry, especially the abuse of African Americans by a militarized The disappearance of the subject of the vid- and self regulating police force, but it is to say eo through its analytical fragmentation—what that these recording practices are changing Naficy calls “dissected vision,” allows for any the terms of the discourse, making clear that narrative or racial stereotype to be grafted such abuse by the state is murderously real onto the images. Similarly, the continuous and occurring on a daily basis. surveillance video that recorded the police At the same time, the videos themselves do shooting of 12 year old Tamir Rice in Cleveland, not guarantee that the actions recorded will Ohio, in November 2014, was used to create a be read as irrefutable evidence that the event series of six still frames that became the basis took place as it is seen in the recordings. One of a debate between prosecutors and defense only has to remember how the Rodney King about the captions that were applied to the tape was successfully read against itself by still frame. The successful acquittal of the po- the defense as evidence of police restraint, lice officers was based not on the video itself even as the video documents King’s brutal in the which we see the boy being shot, but beating by Los Angeles police officers. While the written captions that were applied to the the prosecution argued that the indexicality still frames taken from the video.11 of the eighty-one second video speaks for In a further attempt to understand the King itself, showing in real-time the brutal beating verdict, Judith Butler goes deeper, exploring of a defenseless man by at least four police ideology in the very of act seeing in the ju- officers, the defense lawyers successfully ar- ry’s response to the video. She attempts to gued that the document of the beating had no understand the King video within “a racially inherent meaning, but could only be read con- saturated field of visibility” that allowed the textually. By breaking up the continuous flow astonishing verdicts. Butler speculates on the of time in the low-resolution video recording “racial schematization of the visual field” in into short discontinuous fragments, at times which the very “disposition of the visible is slowing down the motion or showing series racist,” making the Black body always already of freeze frames, the defense constructed an criminal and therefore a threat to the police, alternative reading of the video and argued despite the visual evidence in the tape to the that one could see how King was resisting and contrary. She writes “the visual field is not even attacking the police who were doing their neutral to the question of race; it is itself a job making the arrest. They further argued that racial formation, an episteme, hegemonic and the officers were actually exercising restraint forceful.”12 In both cases, the King and Rice in their attempts to subdue him and were juries didn’t see the videos, but rather read justified in protecting themselves from King’s them. Despite the images of King being gross- assaults. ly outnumbered and beaten to the ground by By removing the images from the contin- baton wielding police, and of Rice, a twelve- uous flow of time and performing a close yet year-old child waving a toy gun in a park, the decontextualized analysis, they created a sec- jurors read the police as a bulwark, protecting ond text of fragments and still images from the them against out of control Black bodies.

Skoller \ 37 THE TIME OF RESISTANCE see how this will resolve. The officers grow impatient as they continue to insist that he What do these video documents reveal about roll down the window. The scene is nearly the complexity of resistance to state power? silent until one of the officers walks up to the These durational recordings demonstrate a car, suddenly punches in the window with his mechanics of resistance. Powerfully, they re- fist, opens the door and drags Trudell out of veal how resistance takes time—how energies, the vehicle. Trudell is thrown against the car, affects, and forms of negotiation are produced, handcuffed and led away. The camera in the built upon, or dissipated. The cameras and car continues to run as various officers peer phones with large digital storage capacities into the car, rummaging through the back seat allow for unprecedented, uninterrupted shots. and trunk. The camera continues to record un- In these durational shots, often nothing hap- til the SD card is full, and shuts down. Trudell pens for a long time before something does. was held for ten hours and released without One sees and hears moment by moment the charges. Trudell’s strategy of passive resis- dynamics that give rise to resistant action, tance reveals the violence of the state when very often at the risk to the personal safety of the officers reassert their control over the situ- the filmer. ation through physical force. In one video, Robert Trudell from Yuma, The resistance seen in videos like this one Arizona, documents himself challenging the is not only about defying police authority. In legally questionable stop and searches that more general terms, these are performances of he endured each time he passed through the possibility of resistance within the society Homeland Border Security checkpoints be- of control, with its overwhelming technolog- tween his home and work (the checkpoints are ical intelligence and militarized apparatus often fifty miles or more from the Mexican bor- directed at its own citizenry. The camera der). In one continuous video recording from allows the filmer to use the act of filming as a a camera mounted on his windshield lasting way of challenging the relations of power that over thirty minutes, Trudell uses time itself to allow the police to intimidate and brutalize transform the power dynamics of these check- with impunity. In so doing, the anticipated but points by refusing to engage with officers on unknown outcomes witnessed in the record- their terms.13 While he stops his car, he ignores ings create new forms of drama and character the officer’s request to roll down his window identification, effectively transforming public and show ID. Instead, he stares blankly while discourse and the political landscape. multiple officers come to the car window and Trudell understands his white privilege in attempt to engage him. Trudell sits impassively this context and starts to use it in an increas- for minutes staring back at them. Time slows ingly more self-conscious performance art and to a halt as a queue of cars forms. Occasionally, begins arriving at these Homeland Security he photographs the officers with a still camera checkpoints in costume, performing different while they decide what to do. The officers try characters as a way to highlight the absurdity waiting him out. The unbroken duration of the of these stops and searches through humor camera’s recording continues to build ten- and creative performance. His characters en- sion. There is the suspense of brinksmanship; gage the officers and satirize the idea of alien who will act first? Trudell’s time of resistance suspects passing through the checkpoints. transforms the temporality of the checkpoint There is the Yuma Yuman Man, complete with by enacting the temporal disruption of non-co- scuba goggles, snorkel and webbed-hand wet- operation. After twenty minutes, Trudell finally suit, a construction hardhat, and GoPro video complies when the officers ask him to move cameras mounted all over his body. Ein Berliner the car from the middle of the road to a sec- 9 is a golden-caped alien in Mexican wres- ondary inspection spot on the shoulder. Trudell tling tights, sweatbands and a GoPro mounted still refuses to speak to them, continuing to on his wrestling headgear. Other characters photograph. Tension mounts as we watch to include the Global Hippie with Afro-wig, yellow

Skoller \ 38 tinted John Lennon glasses and Hazmat Man which the officers are unable to compete and replete with gas mask, hard hat, and hazmat are seen to be inarticulate and reactive in the suit.14 In all cases, Trudell reverses checkpoint face of Thomas’s quick-witted rhetoric. His surveillance of the drivers onto to the check- footage offers close-ups of officers’ increasing point officers, by mounting video cameras all humiliation and lack of control, as Thomas’ off- over his car and body to document every angle screen voice goads them by challenging their of the officer’s inspection. When asked to professionalism. identify his name and citizenship he repeats The camera seems to allow Thomas to his alter ego names Yuman Man, Yuman Man, I fearlessly taunt the officers into the choice of am a Yuman Man, or ein Berliner 9, ein Berliner either walking away or arresting him without 9, etc. He recites poems and sings songs cause. The exhibitionist confrontation pro- instead of answering the inspector’s ques- duces a brinksmanship drama. Thomas serves tions. Checkpoint officers typically respond himself up as at once aggressor, victim and with bemusement when they stop and ques- tragic masculinist hero through his willingness tion him, but then wave him through as if he to provoke the police to violence, to expose were too weird to be an alien. By transforming how unstable the officer’s authority is, and each encounter into a performance art work, hence how violence becomes central to main- the behavior of the security inspection offi- taining his authority. cers in turn is seen to be equally performative. In a nearly ten-minute single shot, Thomas Trudell’s videos reveal that while the check- is on the Utica Avenue subway platform, re- points might be valuable tools of intimidation, cording a police officer guarding a young they serve few other purposes other than to African American man who is handcuffed on intimidate the local population who are pass- a bench. After several minutes another offi- ing through them. cer appears and they begin interrogating the In New York City, African American video young man until the officer sees Thomas down activist Shawn Thomas plays a more danger- the platform recording the scene, when he ous game when he uses his camera as a stage takes out his own smart phone and begins from which to perform his legal knowledge videoing as he walks toward Thomas. Thomas and quick thinking in order to question and tells the officer that he is more than thirty feet destabilize police officers’ authority. He al- away and has a right to record the scene. They lows himself to be drawn into a confrontation are circling one another sticking their camer- as a witness who refuses to move away from as in each other’s face as Thomas taunts the the scene or show an ID when confronted by officer. This time the officer breaks and grabs police for filming. Some of his videos begin as Thomas and wrestles him to the ground.15 a bystander witness, documenting how easily Where these confrontations lead from mo- he is drawn into a situation when police con- ment to moment is often highly unpredictable. front him for videotaping. Thomas will refuse to The presence of the camera changes the scale give identification when asked, instead de- of power relations between the citizen and the manding the officers give him their ID, badge police, causing the gaze to become bi-direc- numbers, and precinct. Thomas understands tional rather than singular. The videos reveal police procedure and what the officers must the precariousness of the image of state reveal when asked. We see from Thomas’ point authority, laying bare the histrionic and often of view as he turns the tables on the officers violent nature of its power by destabilizing the by insisting that they are public servants who police’s performance of authority. The camera work for him and it is the officers who must do as a third term can reveal how systems have what they are told. He exposes not only their already broken down within the social order, limited knowledge of procedural law but also as we see law enforcement officials acting the degree to which that ignorance is seldom outside the law themselves. The recordings challenged. These assertions lead to dramat- also show the possibility of disrupting or even ically competitive verbal sparring matches in transforming these systems of authority and

Skoller \ 39 control. Not only are the acts of violence them- into something violent and is more amused selves being documented, but the presence than agitated throughout the encounter. of the camera itself allows for the staging of While her gender and femininity play a role a kind of political theatre in which the filmer in the white officer’s willingness to peace- serves him/herself up as performer, a provoca- fully tolerate her defiance, such tolerance is teur now shielded, if not always protected by not universal. A very different outcome re- the presence of the camera. sulted when the late Sandra Bland, an African Individuals like Trudell and Thomas use the American woman, defied the white officer who ability to make long-take video recordings as stopped her for failing to signal when making a a way provide a stage to perform aspects of lane change. The police dashboard cam re- their personal identity, most frequently though cording of the incident that led to her arrest on not always, their masculinity. Thus, the videos July 10, 2015, shows that the officer becomes can be seen as a kind of character study, as livid when Bland becomes indignant that she exercises in the exploration of the limits of the has been stopped for such a trivial matter and filmer’s courage, fear, authoritativeness, capaci- refuses his order to put out her cigarette. They ty for self expression, even competitiveness. To argue about her rights until he becomes out- defy the orders of an officer not only calls into raged, draws his gun, opens the car door and question the authority of the state, it becomes threatens to “light her up.” As he drags her to a personal challenge to the masculinity of the the curb and out of frame, Bland directly chal- male officer, who is humiliated by the refusal to lenges the officer’s masculinity by asking: obey his authority. The videos reveal the com- plexities of the ways in which racial and gender Why are you arresting me . . . you scared positions structure all police interactions. of a female? . . . You feeling good about This racial and gender structuring is also yourself? . . . You want me to sit down evident in another US Homeland Security now, or are you going throw me to the inland immigration checkpoint refusal vid- floor? Will that make you feel better about eo made by a young white woman with long yourself? . . . That’ll make you feel real blonde hair, in which she is being questioned good won’t it, fuckin’ pussy ass. Fuckin’ by a similarly young white Homeland Security pussy . . . . For failing to signal you’re officer who is shocked by her refusal to follow doing all of this? You a real man now, you his orders, to show ID, and to allow her car to just slammed me, knocked my head on be searched.16 The recording of the officer’s the ground.17 face reveals a whole range of emotions from incredulousness that this young women is de- Bland’s head then hits the ground as the po- fying his orders, to smiling bemusement at her lice officer throws her down. She is then taken brazen refusal to cooperate as he insists that to the Waller County Jail in Hempstead, Texas, he has the authority to detain her, to humilia- where she was found hanged to death in the tion and anger as she stands her ground and jail three days later. Each of these videos tells him what he is legally able to ask of her. reveal from moment to moment the complex The young officer sees this as a slightly playful intersectionality of race, gender, and state situation, but loses his footing when he real- power. These dynamics register in the ways izes she won’t back down. Clearly he doesn’t officers and the detained speak to each other, know how to deal with a young woman’s refus- the ways resistance to authority is both tested al of his authority and ends up walking away as and received, and as well, the uneven stakes they wait for other officials to arrive. Finally, an of these encounters for men and women, older officer arrives and confronts the young whites and people of color. woman more aggressively; still she holds her Bland did not record herself with a camera ground and he finally lets her drive on. While as a form of witness in the process of ques- the young woman remains defiant, she seems tioning the officer the way the others did, but to have little concern that this will escalate the video of her arrest joins the other videos

Skoller \ 40 in featuring the performance of resistance as domination and resistance circulate as part it also highlights the highly uneven stakes of of the same network.” Domination and resis- such performance for different individuals. tance, Caygill writes, “can be understood as The difference between the intentional perfor- coefficients of the structure and density of mativity of Trudell and Thomas, who are both a technological network.”19 In these record- performing for their own cameras, and Bland ings, one can see power circulating across who has no idea she is being filmed, is large. and through various technologies, from gun But it is clear that Bland was aware that other to camera, and from phone to database. Just police had arrived and that there were other as subjects are targeted by these visual tech- on lookers who are told to leave the scene. In nologies as used by the state, those subjects all of the continuous videos, all parties be- are turning the same technologies back on come actors in these dramas of resistance, the state while reveling in the experience of abuse, and arrest. resisting state authority and control, at times As harrowing as some of these videos are, performing those pleasures even as they risk they also contain a sense of creative ener- freedom and bodily integrity to do so. While gy that these characters exude as they are these smartphone cameras are not an end in pulled into situations that test their own re- themselves, the videos can, however, show solve against state power. As performance, it cases of individual resistance, their micro-na- is at once a private game of brinksmanship ture revealing from moment to moment, larger and evidence collection for an imagined future structures of race, class, and gender at work spectator. Some of the videos feature a pres- as they come into contact with state power ent-future dialectic as the encounter unfolds. with varying consequences. In the process, The actions of the present are building to- they shift the terms of struggle, revealing both ward a future in which the event will have a the potency and the precarious nature of that second life online and even in the courtroom state power. as a record of the interaction. In this sense, Since its beginnings, film has been the me- the recordings are exhibitionistic, rather than dium that created some of the most profound voyeuristic.18 The desire to show becomes a modern images of mass resistance and col- central catalyst for the performative acts of lective struggle. No less so, the contemporary resistance that the cameras enable. Active media forms explored here are extending this resistance in these police videos is not just legacy by revealing something about the rela- about resisting the police. In more gener- tionship between power and resistance in the al terms, they are about showing models of present. That resistance here takes an individ- resistance through personal performance and ualist form of the smartphone is emblematic of exhibitionist spectacle. our neoliberal period. Thus it is not surprising that the contemporary image of resistance TECHNOLOGIES AND RESISTANCE is seen in individual encounter and action. Watching these recordings leads to critical Thinking about these recordings and what questions: can this selfie-resistance in which occurs in the spaces between the camera and people film themselves performing acts of the bodies around it raises larger questions resistance brought about through increasing- about the relationship between technology ly individualized technology lead to profound and resistance. The overflow of technology in social change? Do these technologies bring encounters between individuals and the state us closer to the kinds of mass movements is staggering. The cameras, smart phones, that can break the flows of the technological high tech surveillance and communications network? Can this kind of individualized tech- equipment, guns, other weaponry, and giant nology help us successfully mobilize the larger databases are part of what British philoso- forms of resistance necessary to transform pher Howard Caygill calls a “network,” which the precariousness of lives not valued? These he sees as a technological “milieu, in which questions remain to be answered.

Skoller \ 41 My thanks to Damon Young and Erika Balsom for present moment was also an aspiration of their close readings and astute comments and an observational documentary cinema in suggestions in the early versions of this essay. which the camera could capture the pro- Also thanks to journalist Debbie Nathan, for cesses and contingencies of an event with generously sharing her research on grassroots minimal interference or alteration by the borderland and resistance activities. presence of the filmmaker. This reached its apotheosis in American Direct Cinema For Chuck Kleinhans—in memoriam of the 1960s with its sync-sound porta- ble hand held cameras, despite the fact ENDNOTES that the films were highly edited and often dramatically shaped to create a suspen- 1—See: Sharon Lafraniere and Andrew sion of disbelief similar to fiction films. W. Lehren “The Disproportionate This form of observational cinema came Risks of Driving While Black,” New under immediate criticism as a practice York Times, October 24, 2015. that was ethically questionable in the 2—See Mary Ann Doane, “Information, ways it created the impression of an un- Crisis, Catastrophe.” New Media, Old Media: mediated view of an event. The seeing A History and Theory Reader, eds. Wendy eye of the cameraman remained an absent Hui Kyong Chun and Thomas W. Keenan presence, structured within the narra- (New York: Routledge, 2005), pp. 251- tive to be ignored rather than taken into 52. In her essay, Doane focuses on three consideration or understood as a third different temporal modes of apprehending term and a problem for representation. an event that structures time in live-tele- 5—Gary Saul Morson, Narrative and vision—information, crisis, and catastrophe. Freedom: The Shadows of Time (New “Information is the steady stream of dai- Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), 21. ly 'newsworthy' events characterized by their regularity if not predictability. The 6—Ibid., 22. content of information is ever-changing 7—Pier Paolo Pasolini, "Observations but information, as genre, is always there, on the Long Take," October 13 a constant and steady presence.” Crisis (Summer 1980): 3–3. involves a condensation of temporality, it names an event of some duration which 8—Mary Ann Doane, The Emergence of is startling and momentous precisely Cinematic Time: Modernity, Contingency, because it demands resolution within a The Archive (Cambridge: Harvard limited period of time. The crisis com- University Press, 2002), 106. presses time and makes its limitations 9—Many of the Homeland Security check- acutely felt. Catastrophe is the most crit- points are set up as far a hundred miles ical of crises for its timing is that of the from the Mexican border in California, instantaneous, the moment, the punctu- Arizona, and Texas catch undocumented al. It has no extended duration (except, immigrants and drug smugglers. Officers perhaps, that of its televisual coverage) stop each car and ask each driver if they but, instead, happens “all at once.” are US citizens. If they reply yes, and there 3—Diamond Reynolds interview is no further suspicion of illegal status, with George Stephanopoulos, ABC they are waved on. Protesters see these TV News pub, July, 16, 2016 stops as illegal harassment or racial profil- ing since they are not border inspections 4—See Tiago de Luca and Nuno Barradas nor is there probable cause to be stopped Jorge, eds., Slow Cinema (Edinburgh: and questioned. For a full description Edinburgh University Press, 2016). The of these security checkpoints, listen: desire to capture the contingency of the

Skoller \ 42 Debbie Nathan “The Border between essay, in which he argues that cinematic America and America,” This American fascination in early cinema and its re- Life, NPR broadcast. Nov. 21, 2014. emergence in the modern avant-garde film, lay in the harnessing of visibility 10—Hamid Naficy, "King Rodney: The and “exhibitionist confrontation” rath- Rodney King Video and Textual Analysis," er than the “diegetic absorption” of in The End of Cinema As We Know It: storytelling forms. Tom Gunning, "The American Film in the Nineties, ed. Jon Cinema of Attraction: Early Film, Its Lewis (New York: NYU Press, 2001), 301. Spectator and the Avant-Garde," Wide 11—Mychal Denzel Smith, "Why Angle 8, nos. 3 & 4 (Fall 1986): 64. Video Evidence Wasn't Enough to 19—Howard Caygill, On Resistance: Get Justice for Tamir Rice," The A Philosophy of Defiance (London. Nation, December 29, 2015. Bloomsbury, 2013), 200-202. 12—Judith Butler, “Endangered/ Endangering: Schematic Racism and White Paranoia” in Reading Rodney King/reading Urban Uprising, ed. Robert Gooding-Williams (New York: Routledge, 1993), 16-17. 13—Robert Trudell, "Citizen's Refusal at United States Border Patrol Inland Checkpoint, Pine Valley, California," YouTube, August 14, 2014, https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=lkb6qo1NwdM. 14—Robert Trudell, "U.S. Border Patrol Checkpoint Adventure Ride Film - "ein Berliner 9" sparks laughs," YouTube, April 8, 2013, https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=BkVz63bQrg4&list=PLw-R8R- JCNtj9SDnhRARCjmoqTzGCvVUnM. 15—Shawn Thomas, "NYPD Assault on African American Citizens Caught On Camera," YouTube, February 17, 2014, https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=JJH0pIXL2ak. 16—Policecrimes.com, "Cute Girl Exerts Her American Rights to Tell Off Border Patrol Police," YouTube, September 20, 2013. 17—Photography is Not A Crime, "Sandra Bland Traffic Stop (Raw Uncut)," YouTube, July 21, 2015. 18—The distinction between the exhibi- tionistic and voyeuristic in these videos resembles Tom Gunning’s formulation of the Cinema of Attraction in his famous

Skoller \ 43

\ Volume 1 \ Most of us have become increasingly adept at navigating the abundance of what we ex- perience daily as images—framing, capturing, and transforming fragments of our lives into networkable moments. Like loose snapshots thrown into a junk drawer, the images that in- undate daily life are not really actively thought about or engaged with on any profound lev- el. In fact, these images are seldom given a second thought and rarely resurface for fur- ther investigation, further interpretations of meaning. When one’s job is to frame and capture moments that are meant to transcend the processes of abstraction that are embedded in any image creation, documentary production, and circulation, one might reflect quite deeply and profoundly upon how particular imag- es can still retain their force and specificity. THE PRESENT MOMENT \ Kirsten Johnson has spent the last twenty-five A CONVERSATION WITH years working as the director of photography KIRSTEN JOHNSON on a long roster of significant documentaries including Derrida (2002), Lioness (2008), The PAMELA COHN Oath (2010), and Citizenfour (2014). The force and specificity and, most importantly, the im- pact of the images she frames and captures have become all-consuming issues for her. Johnson’s most recent film as a director is Cameraperson (2016) made with the aid of editor Nels Bangerter. The film is visual memoir wherein she has carefully curated a handful of moments that, as she describes, indelibly marked her and changed her life forever. In her treatment of the images that she recorded for other directors’ films, she brings new life and context into some of the footage she’s shot over the course of a career, most of which has been filming various people in extremis. In this conversation, which stems from our decades-long relationship forged through a mutual devotion to constantly define what we do and why we do it in the realm of documen- tary storytelling, we hope to further investigate the challenges of searching for new ways to validate that work. Here, we talk further about the ways in which we are pushing ever harder for forward momentum in an increasingly noisy and over-stimulated world.

Cohn & Johnson \ 45 INTERVIEW to use the footage and we did adhere to all the legal parameters already established around PAMELA COHN the ownership of the images, but part of what After all these years of watching and writ- I’m deeply interested in questioning is, can ing about documentary filmmaking, I’m still images be “owned”? As the cameraperson for grappling with the dichotomy between this hire, I don’t believe I own the footage I shoot. supposed transparency of what’s being sought Cameraperson is a film in which I claim some from a subject, a topic, and the various agen- right to ownership of what I filmed. That is das being brought to bear on that subject or one part of it; but the other part of it is, what topic. And while you certainly grapple with this about the people filmed? One’s relationship too in Cameraperson, there is also the strong to how one is comfortable with one’s image thrust of craft in making a formally rigorous being used changes over time and cannot be artistic manifesto. I think all of this, in some foreseen. Even when a person signs a release respects, has become harder and harder to un- form one day, circumstances may change the pack than it ever has been, so let’s start with next day so that they may wish they had nev- the finished film and scroll back through time er signed away the right to use their image. about the experience of making it. Even your own capacity to assess whether giving someone else permission to use your KIRSTEN JOHNSON image in whatever way they want is always You know, I still don’t recognize it, this film. It compromised. I wanted our film to speak to doesn’t seem like it comes from me; and yet, this in some way. Once we had gotten legal it is obviously mine. We were formally interest- rights and permissions from the directors I had ed in the idea that the audience could share worked with, there was no legal onus on us to the experience that I have as I film. But what I get permission from the people depicted in experience as a cameraperson is informed by the footage to use their image in a new con- who I am internally. And yet, the audience can text. But of course I see an ethical question in only experience what's in my mind based on this. So we contacted and got permission from the accumulation and contrasts of the footage many of the people depicted in the footage in we had to work with. We wanted to allude to this new context, but at a certain point during all that cannot be said and all that cannot be our work it became clear that it would be im- known. Between our wondering about how to possible for us to get the permission of every give the audience as much access to my expe- single person I had filmed. In order to complete rience as possible and the constraints of the the film, I would have to bear the responsibil- footage, we made a film that felt transgressive ity of using other people’s images for my own and full of discovery even to me. purposes without their knowledge. I realized that this implicit conundrum expresses one PC of the deep complexities of documentary What, specifically, was transgressive about it filmmaking. for you? PC KJ Part of your innate talent as a camerperson is I was hired by directors making their own films your distinct ability to nonverbally ask permis- and was working on behalf of their visions sion from whoever is in the room. After all, it’s and ideas. In this film, I used that footage for not like you’re moving around incognito. another purpose, that of telling my own sto- ry, on my own behalf. I went through so many KJ conversations with Marilyn Ness, the producer, No, quite the opposite. There is something about whom we needed to ask for permission fierce in the intensity of my engagement in order to make this movie. We did succeed because I receive a lot of stimulation from all in getting the permission of all of the directors the information coming in, so I really am trying

Cohn & Johnson \ 46 to connect and communicate with people as much time do I have to identify what’s really much as possible while I film. But there is so at stake? What are our subjects experiencing much going on that every day I film I have this that is not immediately obvious? This is where sense that there’s a novel that could be writ- I try to pay attention and stay open to all of ten about just that one day. My imagination the various themes the film is preoccupied by. goes to the level of a novelistic exploration Let’s say that some of the film’s themes are from the people I encounter. This happens class divide, human disconnection, and sym- within the first couple of hours of filming with metry. I might try to see if all of those themes someone. I’m plunged into a complex reality can be found in a single shot. This is what de- I’ve never imagined before. Body language, termines whether it’s a wide or medium shot, spoken language, the clothes they’re wear- where I position myself in relation to the peo- ing—all of it gives me so much juicy, vital ple being filmed, or the proximity between the information. As I learn more about the context camera and those I’m filming. I will load shots after the fact, more about the stakes, it’s then or frames with as much information as can that I start to feel really struck by these more be found. Hopefully this is not something I’m difficult and profound challenges of how in- imposing, but what I find there that will serve complete the depiction of people always is. what we, as filmmakers, want to explore. What I experience while shooting is an avid search for clues to what I am missing. PC I want to discuss a scene you chose to include PC in Cameraperson, the one with the girl whose Do you think you might have a tendency some- face we don’t see in the abortion clinic. It times to over-see? raises my hackles a bit when a subject is being quite specifically directed in the midst of going KJ through an exceedingly painful moment—and No doubt! Usually I think through what’s hap- then on top of it, we can’t see her face. Her pening around me in relation to myself in a physical representation is truncated in the way very concrete way. How am I able to move you’re framing her. So I’m interested in your physically in the space? What are the limita- take of what’s happening there when the di- tions of the space and the light and how can rector is literally feeding her the line she wants I help us all move forward to get to what we her to say. What questions did you want to flag want revealed? I am actively trying to avoid by including this segment? making assumptions and I’m scrambling to manage many constraints, including the tech- KJ nical ones, as well as to simply keep up with The director, Dawn Porter, asks the young what’s happening as it’s unfolding. Having said woman to start her sentence with, “If this clin- all that, I will often realize that I thought that ic was not here . . .” and then wanted her to what was happening was not happening at all! explain what she would do. When I’m in a sit- I might be falling for a person when everyone uation like that, I know the director is making around me is aggravated or having less pos- a film with very explicit intentions to express itive feelings. But that’s interesting to me, as something very clearly about a system. It is not well—the times when everyone around me is her intention to just speak about a person’s resisting something and I’m being drawn in. emotions, but to contextualize how a person is I can only know the moment I enter a situ- caught within that system. As well as being a ation, so I don’t know if the beginning of the lawyer, Dawn has a deep understanding of the scene that will eventually be cut has already way racism relates to our nation’s stance on happened or if it’s about to happen. One thing reproductive rights. I always attempt to assess immediately is It was completely exhilarating to see the how much time I have in a particular situa- precision of Dawn’s mind at work in that con- tion. How much time do I have to search? How text. She was very explicitly trying to gather

Cohn & Johnson \ 47 what she would need to make a clear argu- box. I don’t want to say that I necessarily knew ment emerge from the very complicated and this at the time, but by filming those moments muddy political landscape in which abortion in the way that I filmed them, I internalized clinics are being attacked in such underhand- them. When I was filming the chain in the ed and deceptive ways. Dawn was searching courtroom scene with the lawyers, I was so for ways to reveal something that is purpose- frustrated. I felt I was filming it inadequately. I fully hidden, particularly by state legislatures. was thinking to myself, the carpet was ugly, my She needed that young woman to speak ex- frame isn’t right; the plastic box doesn’t have plicitly about how she would be impacted if no a gravitas that matches the enormity of the abortion clinic existed. crime. But then when I heard the chain going I believe my role is to support a director’s back into the box, I felt something that I have needs and visions. But also, sometimes, my never forgotten. What I thought I remembered role is to support the person I’m filming in and couldn’t forget are the images I saw in the relation to the director’s needs. I’ve seen many evidence book. But when I went back to the directors torn by what they are asking of their footage, I realized how deeply that sound of subjects, especially if there is a serious con- that chain going back into the box was buried straint on how much time they get to spend in me. Because it had entered me so profound- with someone. These negotiations are fraught ly and was so disturbing, I realized that I had with conflict. I have great empathy for the many buried it away from my conscious mind. That’s constraints directors face. They have to be how painful that was. So while the material I aware of time and to push in certain ways that I chose indicates ideas and questions or areas don’t have to push. I have choices about whom of thought within documentary, as I say in the I am advocating for in any given circumstance. beginning of the film, all of what you see in the In this case, what the young woman ended up film marked me. That’s what makes it my mem- saying—that if the clinic had not been there, oir. It transformed me as a person. she would have given the baby up for adop- tion—was what the film exactly did not need in PC this incredibly charged political context. There were many attempts and failures of putting this series of intense moments into a PC narrative. When you finally met Nels, you de- You mentioned that you feel like you could cided that he would be a trusted and expert write a novel out of a day’s shooting. Cinema miner, ultimately enabling you to make a film is not literature and while it can have literary that is open-ended, elliptical, and spacious conceits, it can never offer what literature enough for multiple interpretations. does. But we also talk about one single frame sometimes being able to hold a story that has KJ the sensation of something one might find in a Before Nels came on board the first thing I novel, an unnameable emotion that is evoked. experimented with extensively was the use of my voice. The impossibility of what I needed to KJ express in words became very apparent. I so Yes, exactly. That is what had happened in the badly wanted to include the breadth of what act of filming the scenes that I chose to put I had experienced. The amounts of time, the into my own film. Those experiences continued quantity of places, the aftermath of the number to live inside me long after they were record- of genocides . . . I needed to express something ed. The sensual, pleasurable moment of that specifically about the scale and multiplicity of sunset on the side of that mountain in Bosnia; what I had encountered. That was really im- or the self-punishment of the young woman in portant to me. Needless to say, the film became the abortion clinic; or the horror of the sound wallpapered with words in a way that made any of the chain that had dragged a man to his entry into the film impossible. I became un- death being dropped back into an evidence bearable in my explanations of context. In the

Cohn & Johnson \ 48 many attempts at voiceover I tried, I could never three-to-two plug for the oxygen machine is succeed in expressing all I had felt as well as all an incredibly brutal detail that I really wanted of the connections I saw. It was impossible to to share with the world. I knew I had to give up verbally express all of the context. what, to me, were critically important details like that one because it wasn’t in the footage. PC When Nels and I first started working togeth- What changed in terms of that context then er, I told him stories like this and I would get when you wanted to use those scenes as ele- extremely emotional because when I tell that ments in creating your memoir? story of the maternity ward, I’m back there. I’m stepping in the blood. Nels could quickly parse KJ it all and would say to me, “Well, we see that When I film, I always have this incredibly com- and we see that and we see that and we hear plex internal monologue going on about what that . . . and what else did you want to say?” I think might be happening and what the film (laughter) He could deflate my grandiose no- wants to follow. What’s the storyline? We’re tion of wanting to express the forty things that in a maternity ward in Nigeria. We’re follow- were going on in my mind when I was filming. ing a story of a woman who’s pregnant with He’d tell me, “We can see thirty-nine of those. twins and one of them is breech and there is Is that fortieth one so important?” no doctor. We want to show how perilous it can be for a woman to have children in a place PC that is under-resourced. I am thinking about The way scenes are juxtaposed with oth- my own wish to have children and how differ- er scenes—the old woman in Bosnia, Sejio ent it would be for me if I were in an American the driver, Velma the translator, the women hospital having children. I am having feeling in Darfur, even Derrida—all are, in some way, for this woman who may lose one baby but still proxies for you, all become your narrators. have a baby at the same moment I fear I will never have a baby. I feel shame for even think- KJ ing such a thought while she is fighting for her I would say that the role of proxy is mutu- life and the life of her baby. I’m thinking about al—they can be seen as my proxies, but I am the blood on the floor and I’ve just learned also theirs. We have shared the experience of that the patient who is bleeding has HIV and acknowledging what has happened, or what I’m wondering if I’ve cut my body somewhere is happening. And we share that experience because I often bump into things and scrape from completely different positions. In most myself when I film and I’m not always aware of these cases, what we’re sharing, simply, is of that. I’m thinking about the battery running impotency, the utter impotency in the face of out. I’m wishing I had the three-to-two plug how horrible the world can be, how terrible life that would make the oxygen machine work. Is can be. None of us wants what is happening to there time to send the driver home to get it? be happening. This is why I feel like a novel could be writ- In the hospital in Nigeria, we all wanted ten almost every day that I film. I thought I that baby to live. We all knew that baby was could tell the audience all of that. All of that a healthy baby an hour before and that he stuff I just told you? I could keep talking for should have lived. The father, the mother, the another hour about what was going on in that midwife, the director, the sound person, me, maternity ward for every thirty minutes we the grandmother, all the nurses—we all shared were there. I really thought I could put all of that knowledge. But there was no outlet for that into a film! But I finally realized that it was the oxygen machine and there was no doctor a hopeless cause. What surprised me about who came who could have, and should have, giving up on a voiceover was to see how much done the C-section. We sat with the midwife of what I wanted to express verbally was actu- while she waited knowing that, at a certain ally in the images. Not all of it, of course. The point, if she didn’t pull the baby out, both

Cohn & Johnson \ 49 mother and child would die. We all sat watch- context of what you’ve been doing with a cam- ing the clock tick while she knew no doctor era for decades. was coming. So who’s a proxy for whom in that situation? We are all impotent together and we KJ have witnessed one another being impotent. Yes, but another question viewers ask that has We also witness one another each doing what everything to do with the person operating the we can do given the circumstances. For that camera is: Why are they allowing that to hap- reason, how the father, the mother, and the pen? In other words, where’s the intervention? midwife behave are heroic to me. For some Sometimes not knowing how to, or whether, reason, I actually thought that by filming all of one should intervene is absolutely unbearable! this, maybe everything could be okay. So that’s Years after the events, I am still contending an instance of downright delusional thinking with the choices I made there. We filmed that because we came to this hospital knowing baby struggling to live for thirty hours. That’s that it has one of the highest maternal mortali- obscene. But at a certain point, the father of ty rates in the world. Our purpose was to show that baby didn’t want us to stop filming. I inter- the world this so that, maybe, the world would preted his smiles, his touch and his presence respond to this crisis. as his need for us to continue. But I could have In principle, you’re there for the future. But been totally wrong about that. That’s how I when you get there, you’re in the present. The interpreted it and that’s why I continued. I also reality of the present is that the midwife puts think I continued simply out of my own hope numbers on her chart of how many women that it would turn out okay. It wasn’t finished. died that week and how many babies died that What we did learn after the fact was that the week. She was there for all of those deaths. hospital put extra effort in trying to get that And she’ll continue doing the same thing week baby to live because we were filming. after week. This is the reality she knows and Let’s imagine the scenario in which I only that she is staying in—whether she’s being blame myself for continuing to film. It would filmed by me or not. I am discovering that re- appear that my presence caused doctors to ality, coming into that with no defenses. Hers be pulled off of other patients who needed are built because she needs to enable herself them and that I gave hope to a father in a to continue to do her work. Maybe that’s why hopeless situation, that my presence forced I feel that it’s part of my work to render visi- that midwife to keep trying despite the certain ble what I am seeing for others because my outcome that was so obviously a lost cause to defenses aren’t built up since I don’t have to her. We could even say my presence prolonged stay there. In Q&As after screenings of the the suffering of the child. There are ways one film, people have asked why the midwife didn’t could interpret all of that to be true. My inten- walk faster, as if that would have changed tions, we could say, were decent intentions. I the outcome. That’s what I had to learn to did not intend to harm anyone by filming. But own during the process of making my own the thing I don’t know about life is what did film: that I could be misunderstood, that the that mean to the midwife to be given more young woman seeking the abortion could be time and space to contend with the slow dying misunderstood, Dawn Porter could be misun- of that baby? If I wasn’t there, she would have derstood, as could the midwife. Intentions and walked away from that situation as soon as she feelings of empathy do not supply actions or had assessed it—as she does most days of her outcomes, nor do they mitigate unintended working life—meaning in the first minutes after consequences. Those things are separate and pulling the baby out of the mother. interact with each other. PC PC She does walk away. This question: What can the camera do? is something you’ve been grappling with in the

Cohn & Johnson \ 50 KJ about you: “She sees everything. She’s blind.” Yeah, and she came back because we were When you talk about your time in Nigeria and there. The camera forced open time. Its pres- that shoot in the maternity ward, you said ence forced certain interactions between that in principle, you’re there for the future, the key players, including myself. It forced but when you get there, you’re in the present. all this unknowingly. In that forced open How then does this change the relationship space—which I’ve experienced many, many of making this kind of work, work that expos- times—some very painful and some very beau- es this kind of footage in specific contexts tiful things have happened. I value and honor to viewers? What about this expectation that that, the not–knowingness of whether that’s some kind of direct action should be tak- right or wrong. If the images I create of that en when they see it? We become witnesses experience continue to live in the ways they too in the act of watching it. This is a time of seem to live, that situation echoes. This is not taking to the streets, a daisy chain of protests a scene one can forget easily after seeing it. I by massive amounts of people against what have no idea where that sits on a moral scale they perceive as being damaging not only to of good or bad. Being there with my camera is themselves as individuals, but to the whole of what made that play out as it did. That’s all I humanity. We are able to also now see vid- know. eo of someone being murdered in cold blood embedded right in our Facebook feed. That’s PC documentary, isn’t it? Are the same social doc- You could have made a whole movie based on umentary imperatives that have been in place all those moments you’ve experienced in that for decades still relevant in this climate, with way. these new modes of communication that are immediate and quite brutal? You don’t have to KJ be a journalist moving yourself to a war zone Yes, an unwatchable one. (laughter) several continents away. People that live in that war zone are documenting themselves PC living in that war zone. And still nothing much I feel in this bid to always make context king, seems to happen in terms of what we could sometimes a distinct lack of context is the term “social change.” more appropriate way to encounter all the bi- zarre things that happen. This lack of context KJ enabled me to connect more readily to what I think that the imperative has become to might have been happening with you emotion- acknowledge that you can, and you must, ask ally while filming. all of these questions of yourself. Why are you there? Are you hurting people? How are you KJ representing people? What do you think you’re Nels and I found our way to a place where we making? These can all be really troubling wanted certain things to function with the questions. The time of hiding from any of these least amount of context possible and still find questions must be over. I do not deny that a way for it to be accessible. We went as far some of these questions are in deep contra- as we could with that. At one point, it was my diction to one another. One might say there’s voice as wall-to-wall narrator to explain every- no need for any person to leave their country thing. And then we thought we’d need a ton of origin to make a film. That’s an important of cards to explain everything. Then we would perspective to address given the history of need the names of all the movies for which the who’s made images of whom and in service footage had been shot as signifiers. It was a to what. I think the capacity to explore such process of paring away all of that. questions in the context of identities and their PC relevancy is a critical piece of the puzzle. If we Derrida nailed it. As you’re filming him, he says hide relationships of power and identity that

Cohn & Johnson \ 51 are a part of a film, that is a disservice to us all. You cannot go to a place and pretend that it doesn’t matter that you’re a foreign person making the film. If you are putting your life at risk or putting the lives of the people you’re filming at risk, or the ones helping you make the film at risk, you have to own it. Maybe you are making something that has a very particular agenda, one that is much dif- ferent than the people there would make, and that’s incredibly valuable. You could be wrong about those reasons. You could be wrong about those choices, but you must own all of it. Every single one of us has to own all of who we are in this world of image-making.

Cohn & Johnson \ 52 \ Volume 1 \ During the Cambodian crisis in 1969, the school was shut down. The arts faculty, because they trusted their students and worked with them, kept the art depart- ment open against the general trend. We were kind of a media center for a lot of movement stuff. We did posters, graphic art, utilitarian stuff for the great move- ment. One of the problems was that there were all these instantaneous courses and it was a real problem letting people know where they were. Someone suggested the idea of setting up a string of video monitors with a camera and a roller kind of thing to announce these meetings and have them on continuously. We set this up and in the process, borrowed some cheap Sony equipment: a single camera with a 14 modulator strung to 6 RF mon- EVERYTHING CAN BE OPTIMIZED — itors up the column where the elevator REVIEW, COMMENT, AND MESSAGE was, which went to all the lounges. I BOARD AS PROTO-CAMERA became fascinated with the image. When the meeting was really crowded we put a BENJ GERDES camera and a mike in there to cablecast. I just became fascinated with the image on the screen, I would sit by the screen and stroke it. —Dan Sandin, Inventor of the Sandin IP Video Synthesizer

In the summer of 1997, I “borrowed” a Super 8mm camera and an issue of Norwood Cheek’s Flicker zine from a girlfriend who had pur- chased them while living in Athens, Georgia.1 To expose film the camera needed a discontinued mercury light meter battery. I made a few in- store inquiries, then turned to my other growing love: the internet. After scouring overpriced vintage camera websites, I discovered the mes- sage board for an online community of camera enthusiasts.2 A collector on the Isle of Jersey, certain of availability in the UK, offered to send batteries in exchange for a single-use Kodak camera model exclusive to the United States. This barter, occurring not in a course, workshop, or cine club but instead in rela- tive isolation and supported by an otherwise stranger, allowed me to shoot my first roll of film. Prior online and written exchanges—pen pals, zines, and nascent email friends—now

Gerdes \ 53 culminated in a physical exchange solving a next generation of practitioners. The scale of problem both technical (camera needed a bat- these discussions suggests engaged prac- tery), economic (scarcity pushed discontinued titioners and teachers must consider their back stock into premium pricing), and regula- ideological implications. I write from the po- tory (discontinuation of mercury batteries in sition of a university media production and US). Suddenly, new artistic processes outside studies professor informed by classroom of the dominant norm opened to me, supported experiences where camera and editing skills by a communication network offering solutions present necessary technological compe- more economical than that offered to me as an tencies, a cluster of potential only activated individual consumer.3 through a particular project’s specific ap- This account, unremarkable in many ways, proach to its topic, audience, and context.7 points to a condition of emergence for a par- As an educator and media maker invested in ticular mode of production: camera operations radical experimental traditions of documentary informed by specific online communities, vis-à-vis pedagogy, advocacy, and activism, reviews, message boards, and hacks. Across my ambivalence focuses on the predominant- geographic and political boundaries, a mix- ly non-hierarchical discourse of commenters, ture of romance, opportunism, generosity, tutorials, reviews, and forums privileging and access signaled the promise of online and furthering certain modes of production. communities as alternatives to passive com- Specifically, these networks broadly favor mercial consumption of camera technologies.4 the emulation and recuperation of dominant It marked the potential for dialogue and mu- mainstream forms and relationships rather tually supported experimentation outside of than signaling a difference or departure from manufacturers’ prescribed uses and outside them. To revisit many of the revolutionary of capitalist teleologies of technological ad- twentieth century aspirations for film and then vancement and marketplace adoption.5 video, placing the technology affordably in Readers of a certain age likely recall the the hands of the many does not yet seem to initial promise of digital video and, in the form have fomented the social or political change of MiniDV, the dramatic reduction of production anticipated on a mass scale. What then is the costs when coupled with firewire connec- horizon for this collective work around camera tions to personal computers: the first editing technologies emanating from these impas- systems capable of running on personal com- sioned online communities today? puters without expensive third-party hardware In the late 1990s, new platforms emerged boxes. Documentarians and video artists for alternative film and video production dis- quickly adopted certain cameras, owing to the cussions. Email lists and usenet groups, the portability and image quality they delivered latter a precursor to the message board, with at a fraction of the cost of larger professional groups categorized via directory by interest offerings.6 While online camera support com- (for example, arts groups were a subgroups munities emerged with the rise of the internet, of the “recreation” directory at rec.arts.X), they found their raison d’etre with the com- marked some of the first steps toward a truly mercial introduction of these consumer and open, online space for technical and critical prosumer digital video cameras. They oper- discussion. On the experimental film discussion ated as a collective means of parsing out the listserv Frameworks, an earlier generation of proliferation of models amid corporate market practitioners shared (and continues to share) diversification strategies, particularly those mostly generous advice and observations with aimed to retain a professional market while students and other aspirants.8 This group re- offering versions of the same technology that mained, in fact, predominantly male, territorial, could develop and meet growing consumer and frequently combative, but the intentional demands. mixture of students, professors, professional Online communities now overwhelm the film programmers, enthusiasts, and film- and academy’s reach in terms of educating the videomakers of all ages still stood in contrast

Gerdes \ 54 to preceding hierarchies of experimental me- opens up access to those educationally or dia practice (if not a comprehensive revision). geographically on the “outside,” but in a less For many years, I subscribed to the net art palpable manner than the subcultural politics list Nettime-L but found it too serious to even of Frameworks as a self-imposed limit, the contemplate posting, while Frameworks felt a sharing of technologies as a basis for relating little softer and embracing of the hippie/freak appears to close down other possibilities as trajectory of image experimentation. While well, particularly questions about the goals for transnational in scope, Frameworks emerged these tools as well as critiques of their exist- from a US/UK-dominated model out of exist- ing dominant usages and user demographics. ing cities, regions, and institutions with viable User forum sites such as DVinfo.net or physical experimental film scenes and pre-ex- CreativeCow.net (the latter initially stand- isting relationships or affinity groups anchoring ing for “Creative Communities of the World”) the terms and tone of discussion. also emerged to become vital resources for a Discussions of 8mm and 16mm-specific growing community of desktop video editors zines also carried well into the 2000s. In ad- attempting to sort out technical workflows dition to Flicker, Brodsky and Treadway’s Little across a spectrum of proprietary, and often Film Notebook offered a more comprehensive incompatible, technologies. Both sites began source than anything online. For years, the as support communities for specific technol- listings of specific labs, repair services, and ogies in the mid 1990s and grew into broader purveyors of stock and used gear I found here discussions, with message board function- were my true guides; the internet discussion ality implemented by 2001.10 In both cases, methods were for very specific questions and these forums and their widespread user base problems. This, of course, speaks to the de- preceded more camera-specific discussions. cades of community circulation of photocopies Importantly, these discussions covered issues and self-published materials offline, a tradition related to overall workflow. of which Frameworks feels specifically like a Recording, digitizing tape over firewire to continuation. In contrast, the more profession- external hard drives, editing, and outputting to ally-oriented rec.arts.cinematography group tape or DVD were part of this new ecosystem, allowed for very detailed discussions of film with each query representing an instance of stock, lenses, and repairs that had little to do breakdown in the chain. I witnessed exam- with scenes or education and instead drew ples of these discussions as a crowd-sourced loose affiliation based on a shared technical attempt to formulate new, effective, and language and investment.9 While an email cost-efficient workflows, albeit one neglecting listserv archive typically remains searchable, to evaluate end goals other than to frame the the odd public/private hybrid of the message issue. board offers a specific textual mode—posters Many in that moment posited the and personalities engage and reply directly to employment of cheaper things toward expen- each other in a linear and ordered public view. sive-looking projects as punkishly political, a Distinguishing this hybrid mode of address participatory democratization of production. from the broadly similar Twitter or Facebook It marks a shift, at least in the worlds I inhab- messages (directed, but public), the struc- it, from opposition to enthusiastic emulation ture facilitated conversational responses but of mainstream production values. Amateurs, supported much lengthier writing. In the latter part-timers, and aspiring professional who case, the nature of the public reply in a setting suddenly felt they could afford to get in on the of shared affinity encouraged posts infused ground floor interacted with seasoned profes- with a sensibility of direct reply intended for sionals who delighted in lower-cost, smaller group edification (offered in a spirit of gen- rigs. The emergence of these new affinity erosity, this nonetheless can be coded as a groups signaled a crisis in the professional and kind of cantankerous white male pontification). consumer camera divisions of the big three In theory, this latter mode of communication Japanese electronics conglomerates, who

Gerdes \ 55 feared the collapse of two distinct markets. this hurdle remained small enough to protect To expand into potentially larger consumer their professional sales. The price, portability, electronics markets, video camera manufac- and look of the camera—that it could pass for a turers competed with their own departments tourist shooting and thus fly under the radar— as much as they did with external competitors, appealed to me. A committed group of users aiming to strike a balance between entry-lev- posted to the now defunct HV20.net, parsing el expansion and protection of professional out footage transcoding and trick methods for lines. Consider, for example, the omission limiting certain auto exposure characteristics of professional audio inputs to differentiate to preserve maximum image quality. I had no lower-priced cameras (with similar imaging contact with anyone on this list I would have capabilities) from their professional counter- otherwise encountered in art, experimental, parts. This condition created an animosity with documentary, or political media circles, and I makers, particularly on the lower end of the would have had no idea how to work with this pricing scale, which continues today, where camera successfully without this online forum. the suspicion is often that sensors or cameras Prior to the introduction of HD video DSLR are capable but features are disabled or pre- (digital single-lens reflex) cameras, the first vented. Users feel limited by and reliant upon mass-produced cameras capable of high res- the very companies that they rage against. In olution video and still photography, message almost all cases, specific forums and commu- boards for video topics remained a specific nities came into being to discuss, debate, and sub-community that potentially intersect- optimize these cameras (for example, DVXuser. ed with still photography only on a personal com is still active today), and more recent ex- level. The introduction of HDSLRs signaled a amples like reduser.net are quite active. Here mass convergence between previously differ- we witness a split in the aspirations of forum entiated fields of still/moving production as cultures: some from a DIY ethos, particularly an experienced photo user base that already with regards to software, needed profes- subscribed to particular lens systems—blue sional advice and were off and running, less chip camera brands like Canon or Nikon—met interested in “professional” results than their advanced video capabilities for the first time. own cultivated affordable working methods, This moment of convergence broadened a whereas the aspiring low budget professionals discourse of usability, availability, and possi- themselves began to constantly kick at the bility for new users, incorporating a potentially door, convinced that cheap models could be wider set of interests and applications while augmented to rival their costly counterparts, setting up a turf war between different modes especially when both bore the same brand of production. Tracing shifts in online dia- name on the body. logue and expressions of desire around this In the summer of 2007 I purchased a small widening of moving image practices proves plastic camera that looked like a toy. The more interesting than tracking the competing sensor captured 24 frames a second of pro- camera systems or technical shifts in image gressive video (also known as 24p), the first production alone. The tenor of these online such camera available for less than a thou- conversations shifted, with new voices fan- sand dollars.11 With this model (the HV20), ning the flames of techno-desire around these Canon offered its consumers a devil’s bargain. ungainly lumps of high tech planned obso- To prevent competition with their own more lescence, the conversations alluding to the expensive professional line, these progres- attractions of DSLRs and the approaches to sive frames had interlaced frames inserted at production now most prominent within this periodic intervals.12 One needed to then con- shared project. vert the footage and “extract” the true 24p material. Canon offered no software or guides, This camera is so easy to use—that you leaving it up to the user and presumably hop- can work incredibly quickly, mostly hand- ing the percentage of users willing to navigate held—without a huge production—and

Gerdes \ 56 using natural light—ergo you don’t need misunderstands the premise of Vimeo, for a huge budget and tons of preparation example, but states, “I’ve already pre-ordered anymore . . . forget the lighting trucks and not one, not two but FOUR of these cameras.” generators that take up entire city blocks Several commenters declare the camera a . . . . This camera will sell for approx. complete success or failure based on Laforet’s $2,700—and perform better than many praise and description of the camera’s capa- $100K plus video cameras out there… bilities. The breathless excitement of Laforet’s Photojournalists in particular—will be blog post foreshadows the tone of many vid- able to take full advantage of this cam- eo DSLR conversations in subsequent years. era’s strengths—because they are used Much like the Sandin Image Processor, a ma- to walking into any room, and finding chine about synthesizing new possibilities, the best natural “available light” in the no response to the initial post discusses an room—or knowing how to add a single actual project. Instead, this moment expresses light source to make it pop… they are an engagement with the possibilities of the used to working quickly and with small or camera’s sensor technology coupled to video, no budgets . . . which is something this potentialities rather than linear causalities. camera is begging you to do . . . It has the Finally, this telling exchange: potential to change our industry. MAX ODEN In a September 20, 2008 blog post entitled As a staffer for a daily newspaper that “Something Very Interesting is coming . . . both requires I shoot video for nearly every to this blog and to our industry,” photographer assignment, in addition to stills . . . this is Vincent Laforet wrote of the pending online one of the most encouraging things I’ve release of a narrative short shot with a camera read. I will definitely be buying one. announced just three days prior: the Canon Also, Vincent, do you see video produc- EOS 5D Mark II.13 The resulting film, Reverie tion becoming something you do on a (2008), circulated as a story of numbers: shot regular basis when on assignment? with a budget of $5,000 and no plan in under 72 hours, using one battery, the first widely VINCENT LAFORET viewed film shot in 1080p on the Canon 5D Max—I don’t plan on shooting a single MKII, and viewed over 2 million times in the assignment solely with stills ever again… first week of its release.14 Laforet states he shooting video with is [sic] camera over had never made a film before. Reminiscent of a the weekend ranks up there as one of classic Mentos commercial, the clichéd imag- the most fun things I’ve ever done in my ery and recording of his “cinematic” test shoot career . . . . I can’t wait to get my hands at the wrong frame rate and shutter speed on this camera again.”16 attest to the preliminary nature of his moving image practice.15 Laforet’s comments exemplify the online hy- Unlike a more commercial-minded teaser, perbole and technophilia commonly attributed Laforet’s initial blog post identifies legitimate to fanboys of various stripes.17 Perhaps sur- technical issues delaying the release of the prising in this context, Laforet’s prior career video; at the time of his writing a video host- highlights included the Pulitzer Prize awarded ing issue remains unresolved. Beyond the in 2002 to the New York Times photography fervor of his enthusiasm as quoted above, the staff “for its photographs chronicling the pain comments section of this post is telling: sev- and the perseverance of people enduring pro- eral photographers voice their displeasure at tracted conflict in Afghanistan and Pakistan.”18 Canon’s inclusion of video on what was until I read his review as symptomatic of cultural then a still photo line, others offer advice on and professional upheavals leading a pho- what nascent video hosting sites support full tographer distinguished through international HD streaming capabilities. Laforet possibly coverage of post-9/11 US military actions,19

Gerdes \ 57 for example US-led airstrikes in Afghanistan late 1990s, some DV features such as infrared in October of 2001, to in 2008, state that a “night vision” found their way onto mid-grade weekend shoot with a new camera constitut- cameras. In a similar sense, Canon’s DSLR di- ed “one of the most fun things I’ve ever done vision deemed it necessary to incorporate the in my career.”20 Perhaps unfairly to Laforet, continuous readout of the digital SLR sensor to this line of reasoning traces one such shift an LCD display (“live view”) to attract users of away from documenting global conflict and lower-end cameras that already boasted simi- toward becoming a global brand ambassador. lar functions.25 Many of course sought cameras While Laforet’s initial review highlights the like the 5D Mark II specifically for its video camera’s specific potential for photojournal- features, but it’s worth considering the num- ists, Reverie and subsequent related projects ber of people who may found these products a sought instead to utilize Canon’s offering as a gateway into the “prosumer” video world.26 low-budget narrative filmmaking tool. In either case, this created a much broad- The professional practice of war photog- er cottage industry in tutorials, reviews, and raphy yields straightforward assumptions release notes for these products, particularly regarding its resultant psychological effects, given the technical limitations and issues with but, two months prior to the election of Barack much HDSLR video.27 For those of us immersed Obama might we draw a broader conclusion in a changing field for some time, witnessing regarding a set of practices arriving out of specialist conversations becoming mainstream an exhaustion at the end of the Bush era? concerns proved notable. At the same time, Would it be unfair to ascribe certain feelings the years since then undoubtedly introduced of hope and potential to a given cultural mo- a level of complexity and variation into pro- ment, to understand enthusiasm for a camera duction processes even for professionals. As sensor arriving at least in part conjoined to a these issues now appear tied to consumer broader (US-centric) discourse of “hope and product cycles, with shorter timeframe for change?” Correspondingly, given the political planned obsolescence (camera updates, lack and cultural moment we now witness (2017), of ongoing support for older models), all prac- both globally and in terms of the United States, titioners have likely relied on online sources what sort of image and what sort of camera to sort out production and post production should we be clamoring for today?21 issues related to some aspect of 3D, VR, RAW Panasonic, Canon, and Nikon’s investment (uncompressed) footage workflows, the dif- in the HDDSLR boom of 2008-2009 stoked ferences between 8/10/12-bit compression a significant expansion of video production and HD/4K/6K/8K, external LCD screens as at the amateur and prosumer level. Notably, viewfinders, high bitrate video recording on cameras from Panasonic and later Sony invited external devices, double system sound for vid- online discussions, reviews, and second-hand eo, and/or color grading. resale markets for the resuscitation of old- Paradoxically, as cameras untethered from er lenses via their newfound adaptability to the material basis of film as a distinct analog these cameras.22 This moment also marked technology and instead integrated into digital the introduction of the iPhone 3GS with vid- production, storage, manipulation, and circula- eo capabilities in 2009.23 In both cases, a tion circuits, the camera as a system refracted consumer base of millions bought a phone to a consideration of its technical capacities or still camera and gained the “value-added” alone. Many discussions reflect this con- feature of a high-quality video camera. While sideration in a highly reductive manner: the critical accounts of digital imaging often as- dynamic range of a sensor, the encoding and cribe technological trajectories as a downward algorithms for digital video, and the method of deployment from laboratory and/or military reading the pixels of the video frame off the applications to professional industry and then sensor.28 The optical performance of a partic- consumer level, there exist smaller histories ular manufacturer’s lens offering once held of consumer features migrating up.24 In the more sway than a camera body’s capabilities

Gerdes \ 58 in a photographic context. The photochemi- and (often white) masculinity.32 Here, cameras cal “sensor” of a 35mm or medium format film as complete systems are understood less as camera, i.e., film stock, varied through chem- holistic entities and more as assemblages of istry but remained constant in the camera’s individually-optimized constitutive elements. mechanical intake of it.29 Similarly, analog and NoFilmSchool.com, founded by Ryan Koo in early digital video standards were normalized 2010, features a more diverse staff of emerg- across a manufacturer era of cameras, with ing writers and filmmakers. The site covers the particular models holding currency as flagship developments of the camera industry along- or mid-range standard-bearers for sever- side screenwriting and financing tips, and al years running. The contemporary reversal presently appears less focused on reviews and serves sales, with optics now subservient to instead in presenting informative and aspira- sensors, speed, and encoding; the “read” of tional content for new/younger media makers. the sensor delivered via processing power Impressively, its content conveys an interest and algorithmic compression metonymically in narrative, documentary, and experimental replaces the camera system as a whole. As a cinemas. The blend of helpful forms—lists, result, the reorganization of the contemporary tutorials, and commentary—resembles the digital camera market resembles automobile long-defunct Super 8 Filmmaker magazine manufacturing and its model year convention and its editorial scope, where articles such more closely than prior logics of still, video, as Lenny Lipton explaining 3D filmmaking, a and film camera introduction.30 tutorial demonstrating title shooting, and an The coincident rise of DSLRs with the late interview with a filmmaker about filming guer- aughts cultural move away from earlier prom- rillas in the Philippines could exist side by ises of a post-identity internet of reinvention side.33 and toward one of self-branded “influencers” Despite the pedagogical approach of and prominent blog personalities positions NoFilmSchool.com, it operates as a consum- the primary beneficiaries of this camera revo- er-driven site with sponsored content and lution within a reconsolidation of white male almost exclusive attention to commercial offer- expertise over a more redistributive or ex- ings.34 There are several more pedagogically pansive project.31 Thus, the introduction of oriented blogs that devote significant attention the 5D MK II and similar video DSLRs marks to post-production, such as Stu Maschwitz’s the acceleration of a meta-discourse around prolost.com and Sareesh Sudhakaran’s wolf- camera technologies and techniques that has crow.net (“workflow” spelled backwards), or unfolded on an unprecedented scale. I term the camera tests and commentary of Andrew it a meta-discourse as it focuses in conver- Reid at EOSHD.com. Aimed at more sophisti- sation on the conditions and possibilities of cated users, their level of detail and generosity production rather than principally a discussion differentiates these from industry-minded about what has been or is being produced sites like redsharknews.com and provideoco- with this equipment. At the same time, these alition.com that repackage industrial coverage information networks constitute an aspect of of broadcast video production gear. the conditions of production, not parallel or To date, the revolutionary rhetoric of new ancillary but literally as a support structure. digital image technologies, at least as it is Elaborating on these discursive communities refracted through these examples, exem- as meta-discourse, perhaps we can even con- plifies the move away from decentralized, sider an intermediary form of production where leaderless sites toward editorially curated and the following practices are electronically con- personality-driven review sites with attached joined: discussions, reviews, empirical tests, discussion forums.35 Despite the open and instructional videos, product placement, viral democratic premise of many of these com- advertising, corporate bureaucracy, search munities, and the ultimate attention paid to engines, Moore’s law, overseas manufacturing amateur scientific testing of sensor and video and global trade logistics, as well as sexism codec performance, the overall ethos remains

Gerdes \ 59 consumer driven. Witness the oft-repeat- difference between acclaimed cinematogra- ed trope of commenters hoping, begging, or pher Roger Deakins writing in detail for paying demanding corporations incorporate specific members on a blog about techniques and features in future camera updates and re- insights gained through feature film produc- leases. While dispersed globally, these voices tion,37 and the commissioning of short films by typically do not represent the working poor, noted professional photographers (with large marginalized, or underrepresented, but instead blog/review followings) by companies such the educated global middle classes eager to as Canon and Panasonic offers a clear exam- immerse themselves in the latest electron- ple.38 If the first illustrates a prior model of ics product cycle. More likely to be electrical camera and lighting technique in the service engineers than electricians, they rarely seek of storytelling, the second points to a world of alternative modes of production. cameras themselves as anticipatory, always Optimization represents a cultural logic already in a constant state of emergence and of rankings and metrics, the identification of hence as potential yet to be fulfilled, one in empirical winners via general attributes and which the celebrity endorser is often commis- outside specificities of utilization. Optimization sioned not on the strength of their creative also entails the minimization of risk and, in projects but number of followers. Yet, to re- a broader frame, the programming out of duce these shifts merely to contemporary cultures, a turn away from the hoped-for dy- capitalism seems to overlook the degree to namics of participation and contestation many which the scales have tipped in favor of cam- attached to shifts in widespread image pro- era fascination. In a moment where many may duction and distribution technologies. The have engaged and lost their way, staying in beneficiaries of a plethora of consumer choic- the weeds of lens reviews rather than actually es and conveniences inhabit contemporary engaging the variegated terrain of a wider field social media and online camera cultures, with speaking to the issues and inequalities of the the advertised freedom of “choose choice” present. I write this essay partly out of concern often belying more brutal structures of so- of becoming one of them. In the end, what cial control, surveillance, and exploitation good is the optimal camera system in a world at play in adjacent contexts.36 Caught in a doing badly? circuit of aspirations and entanglements, a I began with a favorite quote of mine from circuit oscillating between the pure potential the video pioneer Dan Sandin. One the one of contemporary technology and the rapidity hand, he invented an open source video syn- of revision and displacement, exploration and thesizer that created new possibilities for discussion of these choices too easily enacts the video image. I have used one, they are a feedback loop. In this essay’s title I invoke amazing; tactile, organic, fucked up, unpre- the term “proto camera” to foreground the dictable, and fun.39 On the other, he started anterior logic of these discussions, a shaping out working to support student protests and of image-making priorities and techniques ended up fixated on a video screen. He may via (decentralized, extra-institutional) online have put that fixation to better ends than discourses, but moreover the possibility that most, but to me this quote always provokes a practices and productions perpetually flounder profoundly ambivalent reaction, one I think of in the continual exploration of these choices in frequently when reading camera reviews. How isolation. The field of professionals now earn- much is too much information? Whereas once ing a living through camera review and testing it was very useful to befriend the technician activities breaks from an external emphasis in your film department, or to know someone on addressing the lived and/or imagined so- at a rental house who had conducted side- cial world (however flawed or compromised by-side tests of lenses or cameras, we’ve this address may become) toward an internal all become that person, the amateur sensor address confined often to the camera (and scientists whose research appears to offer then the camera’s sensor) in its technicity. The no end in sight. Symptomatically, Dan Sandin

Gerdes \ 60 made generative machines more than he made ENDNOTES videos. The only video I’ve actually seen by 1—http://www.javaphoto.com, Java him remarkably anticipates generations to Photo Athens, GA. Their website re- come. Here on camera stands the artist-in- mains an eclectic hodgepodge, true ventor-dude in 1973, wearing a viking helmet to the spirit of the late 1990s web. while demonstrating what his machine can do.40 2—It’s likely this was not a motion picture specific usenet group, as in that moment many of the regular 8mm and Super8mm resources were supported by “antique camera” enthusiasts. Alternately, it may have been alt.movies.cinematography. super8 or rec.arts.movies.tech but I’ve been unable to locate my post in either. 3—Consumerist desires were of course present in this barter, particularly in the collector’s interest in overcoming Kodak’s market differentiation between US and UK disposable camera models. Literally, this consisted of different printing on the card- board that wrapped the plastic innards. 4—I also note the attendant educa- tional and class privilege of an in-home desktop computer with free dial-up university internet access through my mother’s job at this time. 5—Consider this final term in valences of intimacy, elective choice, and force. Technologies are “adopted,” but the act connotes that which we choose to incor- porate into pre-existing social structures and that which begins outside those struc- tures. The term “consumer adoption” then reads as a forceful insertion of capital into familial structure and social relations. 6—Examples include the Sony VX1000 (1995) and VX2000 (2000, appropriate- ly), Canon XL1 (1997) and XL2 (2004), the Sony TRV900 (1998), the Panasonic DVX100 (2002) and its HD successor, the HVX200 (2006), and the HDV Canon HV20 (2007). At some point, each of these cameras touted a technical feature nev- er before available at its retail price, and each found a committed set of users. The DVX100 was in particular a watershed mo- ment as it allowed for shooting cinematic progressive scan video for under $4000

Gerdes \ 61 when other options started at $20,000. of analog film cameras’ rendering of mo- Tape-based cameras on a spectrum of tion. For an explanation of the difference consumer or hobbyist to “prosumer” or between progressive and interlaced vid- entry-level professional comprise this eo standards, see: https://us.en.kb.sony. list, with the exception of the HVX200 com/app/answers/detail/a_id/42932/~/ and its proprietary flash memory cards. what-is-the-difference-between-inter- laced-and-progressive-scan-video%3F 7—However thoroughly student-debt generating, ethically compromised, and 12—Technically, this allowed 24 frames- neoliberal in orientation we find high- per-second to be recorded in a then more er education, the classroom setting common 29.97 frames-per-second con- still supports (unevenly) practices, en- tainer. No practical reason exists for such counters, and lines of questioning that a confusing setup outside of marketing. I consider young people, at least, highly 13—Vincent Laforet, "Something Very unlikely to encounter in other spaces. Interesting is coming…both to this 8—Legendary in some circles for its mo- blog and to our industry," vincent- ments of in-fighting and cattiness, I lost laforet.com, September 20, 2008, more than one day of my life to the results https://blog.vincentlaforet.com/ of flaming and other hostilities. Female something-very-interesting-is-coming- posters describe even harsher responses. both-to-this-blog-and-to-our-industry/. 9—There were similar rec. or alt. 14—The edited 2-minute HD video was usenet groups dedicated to film pro- then originally hosted on the blog of Don jectors and Super8mm as well. MacAskill, founder of photo site SmugMug. com before Canon asked for the file to 10—See Chris Hurd’s history of DV Info be taken offline, a sign that Canon was Net on the about page: http://www.dvinfo. unprepared for the video feature of their net/about, as well as Kathryn Lindeboom’s new camera to generate this level of ex- similar history of Creative COW: https:// citement (and in particular for it to post www.creativecow.net/page/about. a threat to their dedicated profession- 11—The development of progressive al video cameras, many of which now standards like 24p, 30p, and 60p and looked worse by comparison). Canon did their deployment in consumer equip- not sponsor Reverie but loaned a camera. ment represents a watershed moment Tellingly, marketing departments brought in the convergence of cinematic modes this approach in-house for subsequent of video production. For readers unfa- model launches, producing showcase miliar with this distinction, progressive videos in collaboration with prominent video records the equivalent of individu- blogger and reviewer filmmakers. al full frames in a manner akin to analog 15—Visually evident to viewers fa- film, whereas older broadcast standards miliar with similar distinctions, rate of employed interlaced video with odd/ 30 progressive frames per second in- even fields deployed as alternating half stead of the more cinematic emulation frames. Interlaced video overall includes of 24 frames per second. He also likely the jagged edges that once character- overlooked the most common cinema ized video as video. It’s hard to explain equivalent shutter speed of 1/48 second. but if you’re old enough, the jittering of a paused VHS tape demonstrates inter- 16—http://blog.vincentlaforet. laced video’s lack of actual individual com/2008/09/20/something-very-in- frames. Progressive video generally offers teresting-is-comingboth-to-this-blog- a more fluid image and often an emulation and-to-our-industry/#comment-877

Gerdes \ 62 17—“Fanboys” are often accused of a 22—Owing to a smaller sensor size or blindered brand loyalty as this term is tied shorter “flange” distance between mount to a brand or genre (Apple, Nike, K-pop). and sensor (a hallmark of mirrorless cam- Correspondingly, as a professional pho- eras vs traditional DSLRs), these lens tographer Laforet was already a Canon mount standards can accommodate a “Explorer of Light” when he made Reverie. broader range of proprietary lens mounts: See Shirley Y.Y.Cheng, Tiffany Barnett from manual focus 35mm SLR lenses to White, and Lan Nguyen Chaplin, "The lenses originally manufactured for Super- effects of self-brand connections on re- 16/16mm, broadcast, and CCTV purposes. sponses to brand failure: A new look at the 23—In many ways, these years are consumer–brand relationship," Journal of interesting as they signal a massive prolif- Consumer Psychology [pub name in italics] eration but also divergence: the 5D Mk II 22, no. 2 (April 2012): 280–288. https:// may be the high water mark of cross-pol- www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/ lination between amateur and pro, hacker abs/pii/S105774081100057X?via3Dihub. and technological conservative, while 18—Laforet is pictured receiving a Pulitzer at the same time the smartphone cam- on behalf of the New York Times: http:// era represents a slick but impenetrable www.pulitzer.org/winners/staff-54. This interface: it works without any interfer- page also shows the winning photo- ence, Apple’s hallmark “closed system.” graphs, including many of Laforet’s. 24—While the military roots of many 19—Image captions for Laforet’s winning imaging applications remain both well photos include “Fazal Muhammad, 42, who known and always in need of further lost his son in a U.S. air attack on Kandahar coverage, there exist similar histo- in the previous week, is treated in Quetta, ries of niche industries—such as the Pakistan, for an eye wound in October casino industry’s deployment of face 2001” and “The mother of Hamid Ullah, detection software–that later found 13, grives over his body in an ambulance wide consumer applications. For exam- after he was killed, with three others, in a ple, see: Phil Levine, "Face-recognition demonstration in Kuchlak, Pakistan, against ID system marketed to hotel-casino se- the American-led strikes on Afghanistan.” curity departments," Las Vegas Sun, October 1, 1999, https://lasvegassun. 20—The emphasis on camera technolo- com/news/1999/oct/01/face-recogni- gy as a qualitative underpinning for the tion-id-system-marketed-to-hotel-casin/. success of a given project illustrates one such shift. I find no discussion of the 25—Prior to this point, the LCD screens 2002 Pulitizer that emphasizes cameras on the back of DSLRs commonly only or a role beyond normative assumptions display a photo after an exposure was for them in this exemplary body of work. taken, relying instead on the viewfinder alone for framing. Point and shoot cameras 21—Given that camera and lens sales used different, lower resolution technol- are roughly shared between US, Asia, ogy and could more readily incorporate and Europe, this is perhaps too US- a moving LCD viewfinder on account of centric. I base these questions on less information per frame to read out Laforet’s connection to Canon USA and, and no mechanical shutter mechanism. given the pre-existing commercial US- based networks for global export of 26—This trajectory now includes pop- visual cultural, online and otherwise, it ular wearable action/sports cameras is no surprise that the corresponding like GoPro, delivering a constrained but “DSLR boom” was driven initially by a high-quality image at a similarly unprec- consumer base in the United States. edented price point, as well as consumer

Gerdes \ 63 drones and the widespread recent interest 31—The former, more optimistic vantage in “entry-level” aerial cinematography. point may be exemplified by the work of Lisa Nakamura, among others. See 27—Moiré, rolling shutter issues, the best Digitizing Race (Minneapolis: University “flat” camera profile settings for lat- of Minnesota Press, 2007). A degree of er color grading, and bitrate complaints amateur scientificity now saturates the were all sources of much discussion. discussion forums and message boards An overabundance of information al- related to video cameras, obscuring the ready exists online if any of these larger racial and gender politics of these terms are unfamiliar to the reader. spaces which often range from (mere- 28—Typically, still images occupy larger ly) regressive to (directly) troubling. The pixel dimensions than those of the video class politics remain easily recuperated frame. Different technical methods—some within the awe of capital’s daily deliveries, of which produce visible artifacts—exist those of middle class consumer gain rather for contorting one standard to the other than works that look toward restitution or in many mirrorless and DSLR cameras. redistribution (think duty-free shopping disguised as Tarkovsky). One need not look 29—While Zeiss and Leica, in particular long to come across the warnings signs. now sell more lens coatings or design Noted photographer and lens reviewer Ken collaborations as high-end brands, look no Rockwell’s early aughts pages include a further for the triumph of processing over tongue-in-cheek reference to “New York optics than the fact that the major inroads City folk hero Bernie Goetz.” (http://www. in new camera technology have been kenrockwell.com/tech/is-it-worth-it.htm). made by major electronics and computing Another otherwise serious and overly corporations like Sony and Samsung, on technical lens review features a sample the one hand, or companies with broad- photo captioned with a joke regarding cast video hardware backgrounds like the “juggs” of a woman in the photo, Blackmagic Design. Compare this to the which I could not relocate for this essay. “failings” of video integration in cameras by Pentax and Nikon, with their decades 32—In our specific cultural moment, we of highly developed lens design experi- must add the broader neoliberal tenden- ence but weaker computing integration. cy to optimize or customize, to seek out “the best” in every detail, often with a 30—There are aspects of this phenom- segmentation or modular approach tied enon that are distinct to visual digital to metrics. Food (ingredients, recipes), media—while pro audio and music record- bodies (sex, exercise, sleep patterns), ing discussion forums remain every bit as electronics (replacement of individu- entrenched as their video counterparts, al components, optimization of listening and digital audio development contin- to compressed digital audio with high- ues at a similar pace, the most popular end headphones), transit routes (map microphone designs are rooted in the the most efficient paths), and so on. 1950s and 60s (for example, condens- ers like the Neumann u67 and u87) and 33—All examples of real content. sought-after preamplifier designs date to 34—The aspirational nature means the 1970s (API and Neve). While there that while it covers a range of emerg- exists a cottage industry both in cloning ing and established practices, much of the originals and in digitally emulating the content affirms the norms of exist- them, the conjoining of digital and analog ing industry as goals for their readers, audio technologies still occupies a longer rather than serving as a forum for re- temporal arc than video camera cycles. imaging these strictures. If lower costs

Gerdes \ 64 or new tools open participation to new makers and forms, why is it still easier to imagine a site called NoFilmSchool. com than NoFilmIndustry.com? 35—In some ways, this move toward conglomeration mirrors trends in the camera industry, with long-time in- dustry leaders such as Canon or Nikon today outmaneuvered by even larger corporations with backgrounds in com- puting, smartphones, etc (Sony, Samsung, Apple) entering camera markets. 36—https://vimeo.com/105361913, the “Choose Choice Anthem” was featured in the 2015 advertising cam- paign for the Moto X cell phone. 37—https://www.rogerdeakins.com, See Noah Gallagher Shannon, "Master of Light," Paris Review Blog, May, 9, 2017, https://www.theparisreview.org/ blog/2017/05/09/master-light/. 38—These include Canon’s subsequent commissioning of short films by Laforet tied to the release of specific camera models: Nocturne (2009) for the 1D Mark IV and Mobius (2011) for the C300 cine- ma camera, as well as similarly prominent photo-blogger Philip Bloom’s Genesis (2012) using the Panasonic GH3 ahead of that camera’s announcement at the Photokina trade show in 2012. In both cases manufacturers facilitated access to pre-production cameras for videos tied to the announcement or release of the corresponding camera models. 39—You too can apply to the Signal Culture residency in Owego, NY, if these things interest you: http://signalculture.org 40—Dan Sandin, Five-minute romp through the IP, VDB 1973 http://www.vdb.org/ titles/five-minute-romp-through-ip

Gerdes \ 65

\ Volume 1 \ If the twentieth century was characterized by a need to archive objects, then we could say that the twenty-first century is characterized by a rather different relationship to materiality, one of waste management.1 The acceleration of planned technological obsolescence, glob- al anxieties over toxic substances, and the widespread recycling of personal effects all indicate that ours is an age in which materiali- ty exists along a multidirectional continuum of usage and disposal. Objects fall in and out of favor, and as they do, they find their way into private homes, museums, landfills, shopping malls, and other archives. As Aleida Assmann puts it, institutional archives have a “reverse affinity with rubbish dumps,” such that “ar- chives and rubbish are not merely linked by figurative analogy but also by a common boundary, which can be transgressed by ob- ARCHIVAL INTERVENTIONS \ jects in both directions.”2 Perhaps now is a moment to pay attention to the archive’s back CECILIA ALDARONDO AND doors and exits, its failures and losses. THOMAS ALLEN HARRIS IN If objects are at increased risk of aban- CONVERSATION donment, then we must ask new questions around the politics and ethics of their care: Who has the power to determine what ob- jects are worthy of preservation? How should such custodianship be defined? Is this work reserved for a specialized class of caregivers (archivists, for example)? How does such insti- tutionalization perpetuate the exclusion of the powerless from historical remembrance, and how can we resist such erasures? In our respective filmmaking practices, both Thomas Allen Harris and I have concerned ourselves with personal, intimate photo- graphic archives as fertile sites for historical excavation and political intervention. While the camera played a key role in documenting and provoking the last century’s events, its byproducts now generate equally significant practices, ones that are predicated more on performativity than on representation. In what follows, we discuss archival exclusions, rethink the amateur archivist, and propose a model of the artist as irreverent custodian of the mate- rial past. —Cecilia Aldarondo

Aldarondo & Harris \ 67 INTERVIEW training, then returned to engage South Africa militarily. After doing training in East Germany, CECILIA ALDARONDO Lee came to the United States and majored in We've both made documentaries animated by journalism at Temple University, followed by amateur archives that have been produced and library studies at NYU and ultimately worked in maintained by people of color. How does the the United Nations Anti-Apartheid Radio. From amateur archive figure in your filmmaking? all these experiences, he had amassed this amazing archive of his life and the anti-apart- THOMAS ALLEN HARRIS heid movement. The first time I started working with the ar- My stepdad died in 2000. At his funeral in chive as a kind of animating force was in my South Africa, I realized that the stories I had 2001 film E Minha Cara/That’s My Face. I had heard about the group leaving South Africa had used bits and pieces of the archive in earlier all these holes in them. All of a sudden, with projects, but with That’s My Face I began to the discovery of his archives and speaking engage in the archive in a structural way, as with the surviving comrades, I was able to fill opposed to using it illustratively. I had gone in the gaps and tell the story of the first wave to Salvador da Bahia, Brazil with two Super 8 of exiles who left Bloemfontein, South Africa, cameras looking at my roots by documenting and kept the anti-apartheid movement alive the Afro-Brazilian religious festivals that cli- for over 30 years. maxed in carnaval. My mom had made a similar I decided to take Lee’s archive back to quest when she took me and my brother to live South Africa and use it to recreate his journey in East Africa in the 1970s. In part she went on film. I hired young South Africans to join because my grandfather's dream was always me in this journey, and the film moves be- to go to Africa, but he was never able to go. tween documentary and dramatic recreations. I didn't have any footage of her journey, so I What was amazing was that Lee’s archive, kept struggling to figure out how to tell a story and the film that resulted from it, filled in a that seemed to span three generations. Maybe gap in the South African consciousness about a year and a half into editing the Super 8 this first wave of exiles from the Free State, material I shot in Brazil, I had a waking dream. the birthplace of both the ANC and the heart I recalled my grandfather screening home of Apartheid. Through the film, this group movies for us when we were kids. I was aware of exiles became known and celebrated in of his extensive photographic archive—his South Africa as the Twelve Disciples of Nelson framed photos decorated the walls of our fam- Mandela. ily homes—but I’d forgotten about his home Although these archives were produced by movies. I flew from San Diego to his basement non-professionals, I don't feel like the word in the Bronx, where I found over six hours of amateur applies to them. Like many people Super 8 home movies. These films (along with of color, my grandfather and stepfather were his 10,000 color slides) documented of our keenly aware of documenting and preserving family, as we rose from a colored, Negro aes- untold stories within a racialized society. They thetic to a Pan-African aesthetic. well understood the politics of representation. The search for my mother’s journey in That’s This line of inquiry led me to deeply engage My Face led me to my stepdad's own home with the work of artists and scholars like movie archive, into which I delved when I be- Dr. Deborah Willis, who has spent a lifetime gan researching my 2005 documentary Twelve documenting and writing African-American Disciples of Nelson Mandela. My stepfather, photographers and photography into history. B. Pule Leinaeng (Lee), was a South African Because I had previously made these personal freedom fighter living in exile and joined our films mining the archive, Dr. Willis invited me family when I was nine years old. Lee had left to make a filmic interpretation of her landmark South Africa in 1960 with eleven other com- book Reflections in Black: Black Photographers rades, most of whom went to Cuba, got military from 1840 to the Present (2000), which

Aldarondo & Harris \ 68 became my 2014 film Through A Lens Darkly: beginning. And in my case, the project be- Black Photographers and the Emergence of a gan with this archival discovery. I wasn't just People. tracking down my uncle's partner and anyone who might have known him; throughout this CA search, I was also looking for pieces of another My film Memories of a Penitent Heart (2016) archive. also began from the archive, as it were. I was I began with my family archive, with the doing my PhD in Cultural Studies, and writ- things that had been kept by three gener- ing a dissertation that was concerned with ations of women. My grandmother was the the archive as an ideological construct. I was family archivist. She was an inveterate scrap- interested in the way that archives can po- booker, she was meticulous about hanging on lice history; archives are these entities that to the stuff of Miguel’s life: his obituary, the are animated by whoever is charged with the prayer card from his funeral, etc. But the more safe-keeping of material remains. So I was I discovered within this archive, the more it already thinking about the archive as an idea felt terribly incomplete, symptomatic of what when my mother called me one day in 2008 as was missing from my family memory. I wasn’t she was cleaning out her garage. She was a finding Miguel, but rather tracing the contours pack-rat, and it'd taken years for her to final- of a terrible emptiness, a memorial black hole ly tackle her messy garage. In doing so, she where his life as a gay man should have been. found this box full of 8mm films and slides. The dominant frame we have for documents Knowing I loved film, she offered me a deal: if I is that they are simply evidence of provable put them on DVD for her, I could do whatever I facts; documents only matter according to wanted with the originals. I don't think she had their relative empirical value. But I believe that any idea at the time where that gesture would archival remains are in actuality far slipperier. lead. They can be just as symptomatic of what is The 8mm films and slides documented my missing as what is present, of what has been mother's childhood in Puerto Rico from the lost as much as what has been found. Archives 1950's up until the 1970's. As I looked through are tangled up in memory, rumor, and hearsay: these images, I started remembering stories they are staging grounds for speculative his- about my uncle Miguel, who I had only met a tories. In the case of Memories of a Penitent couple of times before he died in 1987. The Heart, it often felt like the remains of Miguel’s family legend was very cliché in a lot of ways. life were sort of lying in wait for someone to He was this charismatic actor, his life was trag- intercede on their behalf. And that someone ically cut short at the peak of his artistic talent, turned out to be me. he would have made it to Broadway, etc. At the In 2012, after searching unsuccessfully for same time, I started thinking about this story him for years, I finally met my uncle's partner that I had heard growing up, the unofficial fam- Aquin for the first time. At our first meeting he ily history: Miguel was gay and had a partner showed me the contents of this cardboard box who disappeared after he died. As I thought he had kept in a closet for 25 years. It wasn't about it, this seemingly benign story felt symp- just photographic material: it was my uncle's tomatic of something bigger. Memories of a wallet, love notes that they'd exchanged, Penitent Heart began with the discovery of clothing that my uncle had worn. We sat to- this one shoebox of home movies and photo- gether for three days, working our way from graphs. It catalyzed a search, a detective story object to object as Aquin told me his version of of sorts. the story of their relationship. Theirs was a full I think we all sometimes have these origin partnership, to the point where they wore rings stories of our films and "where it all began." and lived together for years; when Miguel got In the case of That’s My Face, I think it’s in- sick, Aquin was his primary caretaker. And yet, teresting that the archival images that you as far as my family was concerned, Aquin was were seeking were eluding you, at least in the little more than a footnote in Miguel’s life. I

Aldarondo & Harris \ 69 mean this quite literally: Aquin is completely CA erased from the family archive. He’s not men- Why do you think we have this cultural as- tioned in Miguel’s obituary; Miguel’s death sumption in the United States that people of certificate euphemistically states that he died color don't document? of natural causes instead of AIDS; my grand- mother kept no photos of the two of them. TAH On one hand, amateur archives can resist I think that it's a holdover of segregation. The official institutional histories that are racist, conventional notion is that people of color classist, sexist, and exclusionary. On the oth- haven't achieved and haven't created strong er, my family’s amateur archive reproduced institutions. But if you actually look at the the homophobia of the institutional archive. archives of people of color, then you start to Aquin’s counter-archive—full of photos and see Black photographers all over the coun- love notes between him and Miguel—functions try, you see multiracial communities, you see as the repressed excess of my grandmother’s women who are pillars of the community and archive, the resistant material that refuses to strong hard working men who take pride in disappear. their families. You see a variety of different Memories of a Penitent Heart tries to ex- socioeconomic narratives. Doing the research cavate another history, that of Miguel’s for Through A Lens Darkly I saw many exam- non-biological chosen family. But this is a ples of Black folks who pulled themselves up messier task. Often, amateur archives of mar- by our bootstraps, and were already emanci- ginalized people are not properly preserved, pated prior to the Emancipation Proclamation. maintained, catalogued, or tagged. They aren’t Abolitionists like Frederick Douglas document- kept in cold storage. They are subject to itin- ed themselves through photography. erancy and precarious living. In Miguel’s case, my family's relative social power over Miguel’s CA chosen community meant that my family ar- I think that this has to do with deeply rooted chive was relatively intact, whereas Miguel’s assumptions that in a racist culture people of gay archive was totally dispersed. It requires a color are always working class. But my fam- particular kind of activist mentality to go and ily’s home movies document vacations and chase it down and put it together. moments of leisure, everybody dressed im- peccably in their Sunday best. These images TAH tell a story about Puerto Rico that is almost There's a tendency to replicate institutional never depicted. My family is the product of the assumptions and normalize ignorance along mid-20th-century American colonial project in the lines of gender, orientation, or a particular Puerto Rico, in which the US government forc- race. But amateur archives like the ones you ibly developed Puerto Rico from an agrarian and I are working with allow us to resist the society to an industrialized one. This project distorted histories promoted by institutional permeated every aspect of Puerto Rican life, archives. Case in point: I got a call just a week from employment (moving people from subsis- or two ago by someone who's doing a project tence farms to factories and cities), to public about Super 8. He said, "Oh I'm doing this proj- health programs (such as the forced steril- ect and I want to include some people of color ization of thousands of women), to mandatory in it. I know that very, very few people of color English instruction in schools. Developing a engaged in Super 8 home movies, and I think robust middle class was central to this project, it was because of the expense." But actually and my grandparents were very emblematic of that's not true. A lot of the people I know have the 1950s American capitalist ideal. My grand- families that have been shooting home movies father was the first Puerto Rican to receive on Super 8mm, some dating back to the 1940s his PhD in Psychology. He became the head in the South. of the College Board, developed the Spanish SATs, and became this eminent figure in Puerto

Aldarondo & Harris \ 70 Rico. And so, when I look through the archive, TAH I see my family enacting a Puerto Rican panto- For me, it became really important to allow mime of the prototypical, mid-century nuclear for folks, everyday people, to engage their American family. archives more deeply. A lot of my work with communities combines activism, art, and per- TAH formance. I come from an activist family, and We see the same in our Super 8 archive. I early in my career I produced groundbreaking remember on Easter or other holidays we all television shows around HIV and AIDS. In the went out looking our best, and everything had 1990s I taught performance at the University to stop so that my grandfather could actually of California San Diego. A lot of my film work capture this particular moment. provides a platform for people to engage with their archive in unusual and empowering ways. CA This is reflected in Digital Diaspora Family In this sense, Super 8 was both the democra- Reunion. A transmedia project created in paral- tized medium that was accessible to a lot of lel with Through a Lens Darkly, Digital Diaspora people, and yet it signals a kind of luxury to be reframes the narratives around their family able to have access to film stock and develop- albums. ing. It was a leisure hobby in a way. Although Digital Diaspora Family Reunion was initially developed as an online project, TAH I got commissioned to do a live version of it. Yeah, but I would say that it was a choice. It is Through performance, Digital Diaspora be- a leisure hobby, but there are people I've met comes a people's history. I think a lot about who range across class and education levels, Eduardo Galeano’s trilogy Memory of Fire who made a choice to invest in documenting (1985 - 1988), in which he does this reading when they had a little bit of discretionary in- of the origins of the Americas through people come. I'm not sure how it shifts in terms of the who are anonymous and yet are within the Puerto Rican landscape, but certainly within archive. He extrapolates these short chapters the African American landscape, my grandfa- moving from indigenous folks, to colonizers, ther and parents were working class. But they to Africans. Digital Diaspora is working from a were also educated teachers for whom money similar impulse, providing a space for people to was not the first priority. Sometimes communi- collectively wrestle with the meaning of their ty was more important. images by moving them out of private and into public space. And it's not just any public CA space. It feels like in some ways a little more I wanted to ask one other question about the sacred: a sacred public space. role of the amateur archivist, the amateur This sacred public space enables people maker of history, be it through a film, or a book, to engage in their archive with compassion. or whatever might result from the archive. In It relates to the title of the film Through a my case, I come from a long line of amateur Lens Darkly, a riff off of the First Corinthians’ archivists. I started this project as an amateur Bible verse on how we see God, "through a before I became professionalized as a film- glass darkly." People can actually begin to maker by making Memories of a Penitent Heart. see something that ruptures narratives of In your work, you're engaging with people who difference of all kinds: racial, gender, sexual are not filmmakers, who are not profession- orientation, or even geographical difference. alized. Could you talk a little more about the The archive, specifically the amateur archive, role of the amateur in all of this? What does is definitely a kind of activist archive. It allows it mean for everyday people to engage in the people to find a voice, to value the energy of archives that are before them? their archival work.

Aldarondo & Harris \ 71 CA over again. Sometimes it was me asking peo- I think that in many ways my grandmother ple for their stuff, saying to them, "Can I keep would be horrified by the way that I have this? I promise I'll take care of it." Sometimes chosen to reinterpret her family history in people would just hand things over to me. By Memories of a Penitent Heart. On one hand, the end of making the film, I had an entire room I feel very indebted to her. She had a huge full of Miguel’s personal effects. I felt so bur- influence on me morally and spiritually. And yet dened by this weight of responsibility; I felt I at the same time, I disagree with just about had to become a proper archivist and tend to everything she believed. these things in a more careful and systematic Take, for example the role of religion. I way. At a certain point, I began to joke that I think my grandmother felt very much like her just wanted to end the film by piling the archive responsibility was to be a living, breathing onto a raft and setting it on fire in the middle of representative of the Vatican. And so in that a lake. I wanted an archival funeral pyre. sense she felt very much like her role in being the keeper of the family history was to rein- TAH force a very particular dogmatic understanding I think that we are living in the age of the of what it meant to lead a moral life. archive; what you're experiencing, everyone is So if you look at, for example, the scrap- experiencing in some way or another. I've seen books that she made, she didn't just keep people in Digital Diaspora who have begun family photographs: she captioned them, she books, made films, or started other kinds of ge- edited them, she organized them thematically. nealogical journeys in response to the archive. She would cut out little phrases from maga- In about 2012 we went to Brooklyn College to zines, little catch phrases like 'I'm here with do a big Digital Diaspora roadshow. As we gave God" or "A Spiritual Day!" and she would attach the first seminar around the importance of the them to the photographs. To me, what that archive, a junior teacher at Brooklyn College constituted was a way of framing this oth- came to us in tears. He had just inherited two erwise brute evidence; she was interpreting boxes of photographs from his great-aunt, those images and turning them into her own but didn't know who the people were in the version of history. images. He's a young father with two young In terms of activism, I decided that it was kids, living in a small New York apartment. He my responsibility to try and dismantle my was overwhelmed, so he threw them out. He grandmother’s frame on behalf of my uncle. put those photos on the raft without engaging There's a way that Miguel’s sexuality could them. He did not know the value in them, or become a cheap rumor: "Oh well, we all knew where they would take him. In engaging with that he was gay." That kind of offhanded dis- Digital Diaspora for just a few hours, suddenly missal becomes a really terrible way to reduce he was filled with regret. I think that people somebody. For me, an important goal of the need to have a sense that it's a responsibility. film was to capture little details and banalities When you choose to take on the archive, or an of Miguel’s life: the contours of his sense of archive chooses you, it becomes a journey. humor, his hobbies and interests, the impact With each of my films I say, "this is the last he had on others. In other words, I think part of film where I'm going to do any kind of archival excavating queer history is not reducing peo- family work." And yet I find new material, either ple to their queerness; it is giving them space in the archives that I already have, or in dis- to exist in all of their nuance. It requires con- covering new archives. It happens regardless sideration, time, and effort. of the project’s subject matter. I don't know It also involves responsibility. The film began if there is really an end in sight. I am regen- with the discovery of this shoebox and a form erating an archive for my future self in ten or of active custodianship; my mother literally twenty years, and for whoever might inherit it. handed this box to me and said, "keep it." Over time, that moment was reproduced over and

Aldarondo & Harris \ 72 CA shared in Digital Diaspora or our new TV show, It's a difficult quandary. On the one hand, Family Pictures USA. I wonder how to have I think you're right. The act of ditching or a irreverence, the irreverence of the artist torching the archive can have terrible conse- who treats archival material as pliable, who quences—irrevocable consequences. But on makes it possible for us to use it in new ways. the other hand, there's this risk of reproducing I have been making art from the archive for or being entirely too slavish to conventional over two decades, going back to my first fea- history. I'm thinking of Friedrich Nietzsche’s ture documentary Vintage: Families of Value essay "On the Utility and Liability of History (1995), which uses Super 8 and photographs for Life." Nietzsche is charting what he feels to explore the theme of LGBT families. So for to be his contemporary Germans’ attitudes twenty-five years, the family archive has been towards history. One of the modes of history my hidden treasure. Many other documen- that he identifies is the antiquarian mode. He tarians come from families of means. I come rails against his fellow Germans, who he feels from a working class family; I have no trust are so terribly fetishistic about keeping every- fund. But what I do have—and what has been thing from the past, they eventually become passed down—is this archive. It has allowed completely submerged. For Nietzsche, the me to tell my and others’ stories in a way that Germans become automatons, slavishly repro- disrupts mainstream, hegemonic narratives ducing what they think their ancestors would around identity and history. That has been so have wanted. The antiquarian devotes himself empowering. For example, if it hadn’t been to a mummification of everything that came for Deborah Willis curating the work of these before him; "the human being envelopes him- black photographers, if it hadn’t been for my self in the smell of mustiness."3 And Nietzsche stepdad, Lee’s thirty year visual narrative of finds this to be terribly dangerous. exile and the emergence of the anti-apartheid One of the things that I have been interest- movement, I wouldn't have been able to tell ed in for a very long time is how artists and these stories, or to inspire others to under- activists can engage with the stuff of history stand the importance of their narratives and in a way that accommodates a certain amount their archives. of loss, even forgetting. For me, the imperative I'm also doing it with other people's ar- to preserve can, in fact, be very brutal. It can chives, through both Digital Diaspora and my mean elevating the needs of previous gener- new show Family Pictures USA. It's not just ations over and above those of the present, about excavating these images, but also allow- or reproducing the overarching ideological ing people to have a certain irreverence with power rather than questioning it. It’s like that their archive, to be playful even as they might relative who might exclaim, "you can't say that publicly celebrate their family stories. because of the church!" or "what would your mother say?" These sentiments have a way of CA suppressing social change and maintaining I think of the word conservative, for example. the status quo. If you keep everything, then The word conservative has a double mean- there is no way to interrogate history. It can ing. On the one hand, to conserve is to keep become a terrible burden. Instead, I want to something as it is, to keep it for the future just ask what are the spaces where we can create, because you might need it in exactly that form. where we allow for a degree of speculation, On the other, to be conservative is also to be myth-making, or storytelling? How do we ideologically resistant, to say that we don't be- cultivate a version of the truth that is, in fact, lieve that things should change. I think there's animated by loss? a powerful political orientation to the archive that runs through both of our projects. There is TAH a way in which we are not remaining trapped That's something I struggle with, particularly in history, as it were. On the one hand, you're with other people's archives that have been encouraging people to understand and honor

Aldarondo & Harris \ 73 what precedes them, yet not to remain trapped contentious because of its lack of inclusion of by one’s ancestry. For example, what does work by people of color. it mean to be a queer person who wants to continue to respect their parents, yet also fight TAH to redefine how they are seen? What does it This is the reason behind Visual AIDS‘ recent mean to use that history and fight against it in commission of eight African American art- a way that is productive? ists to make short films around AIDS and HIV, around communities of color affected by the TAH ongoing epidemic which will be shown at the Take the recent controversy at Georgetown, Whitney on International AIDS Day in 2017. I am where a dossier proved that the Jesuit univer- one of the artists and I‘m focusing on a series sity profited from slavery. Or the scandal at Yale of public affairs programs around HIV and AIDS University, and their initial refusal to rename that I produced twenty-eight years ago as a Calhoun College—a name that celebrated a young producer at WNET/Thirteen. This series slave master—despite the students’ furor. At of broadcasted programs were pioneering in the same time, there is a new generation of their exploration of how HIV/AIDS impacted my archivists who are calling these institutions communities—groups usually marginalized by to task, and who are looking to filmmakers mainstream culture—queers, people of color, like us to help them step outside of an official, women, artists, activists, youth—and how how static interpretation of the archive, to make it they responded to the AIDS crisis. Somehow more pliable, to bring in those narratives which this perspective keeps getting left out of the have historically been suppressed by the larger conversation. mainstream. Artists help to unearth these other nar- CA ratives, the histories that grandmothers like If you're trying to excavate a buried history of yours might consider dirty laundry. Some the people, or of a minority community such as people don't want them to be seen, because queer people, there is always a risk of repro- it's painful to relive them. My grandmother ducing the same silences of dominant history. didn't. She said, "why should I communicate I think that right now we're at risk of produc- that pain to you?" For some, it might just be ing a mainstream AIDS history that is—in its easier to allow for the dominant narrative to exclusion of people of color, of women, and of be maintained. non-Americans—maybe more straight than it is queer. But if we ask the right questions of CA institutions, if we constantly look for a count- Every family has things that are better left er-archive, we can prevent this process. I unsaid. In Spanish, the phrase that comes to believe that's one of the things that activists mind is: hay cosas que no se hablan—there are and artists can do. We can excavate histo- things you don't talk about. People who do this ry and resist it at the same time. And I think work, and want to do it deeply, have to have that's a very powerful tool. this particular combination of curiosity and irreverence. As you talk, I’m also thinking of TAH the fact that we’re living in the age of the AIDS There is so much potential for dialogue within archive. We're a generation out from the crisis, the archive, but it’s so critical that we take a and we're starting to see a mainstream nar- dialectical approach rather than re-inscribing rative of AIDS history emerging. AIDS is being hegemony, or insisting on one correct narrative historicized at the same time that, particular- over another’s. With my films it’s important to ly for communities of color, AIDS is still very me to leave them open for the next genera- much a crisis in the present. tion to take and remix them. I wish to have a Our AIDS America, the exhibition that trav- dialogue with others, to allow for that space of eled across the United States, was very mystery.

Aldarondo & Harris \ 74 ENDNOTES 1—See Jacques Derrida, Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression, trans. Eric Prenowitz (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), and Pierre Nora, "Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Memoire," Representations [italics] 26 (Spring 1989): 7–25. 2—Aleida Assmann , "Beyond the Archive," in Waste-Site Stories: The Recycling of Memory, eds. Brian Neville and Johanne Villeneuve (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2002). 3—Friedrich Nietzsche, "On the Utility and Liability of History for Life," Unfashionable Observations Vol. 2, trans. Richard Gray (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995).

Aldarondo & Harris \ 75

\ Volume 1 \ For five years, The Illuminator has facilitated graffiti-like seizures of institutional architec- tures to engage in original and timely public interventions and collaborations with activist projects around the world. The non-hierar- chical collective designed a relatively novel tool—a high lumen projector mounted atop a Ford Econoline cargo van, capable of shin- ing messages, images, and video into public spaces, often onto the very institutions under scrutiny. In the essay “Towards a Semiological Guerrilla Warfare,” Umberto Eco calls for “non- industrial forms of communication . . . [that feature a] constant correction of perspectives, the checking of codes, the ever renewed in- terpretations of mass messages. The universe of technological communication would then be patrolled by groups of communications guer- ALL OF OUR GRIEVANCES ARE rillas, who would restore a critical dimension CONNECTED \ AN INTERVIEW WITH to passive reception.”1 The Illuminator appeals THE ILLUMINATOR COLLECTIVE to both the romantic and radical tone of Eco’s essay; deploying a vigilante posture that re- ELI HORWATT AND calls the superhero, the graffiti artist, and the THE ILLUMINATOR COLLECTIVE guerrilla. The Illuminator’s emergence is linked to a pivotal moment of political mobilization on November 17th, 2011, to project the Occupy Wall Street Bat Signal, later re-mounted when the collective had properly formed. The simple but effective graphic “99%” was initially pro- jected onto the “Verizon Building” overlooking the Brooklyn Bridge while it was populated with 20,000 protesters commemorating the two-month anniversary of Occupy Wall Street. The collective engages in both self-direct- ed actions as well as collaborations meant to amplify the voices of a variety of local and international activist groups. They have worked with activist groups like Occupy Wall Street, Global Ultra Luxury Faction (GULF), Hands Up United, Black Youth Project 100, and Dalit Women Fight, as well as broader initiatives surrounding abortion rights, student debt relief, the flow of petro-capital into museums, and anti-gentrification organizing in Brooklyn, New York. “All of our grievances are connect- ed,” a motto that has guided the collective, centers their project as a collaborative plat- form for speaking truth to power.

Horwatt \ 77 When engaging with site-specific projects, Jan Verwoert argues institutional critique the collective transforms institutional façades “has now turned into an immanent component into auto-critical screens. When it was re- of documentary practice, due to a widespread vealed that Citibank paid no taxes in 2013, the sensitivity of artistic producers towards the collective collaborated with Molleindustria, political quality of forms of representation, a which designed a detourned version of the practice in which assertions, images, displays, classic 1978 video game Space Invaders called and cartographies relating to reality are me- Tax Evaders, which was played and projected thodically questioned while being produced.”3 onto the Citibank building in Manhattan on tax In contrast to historic models of institutional day in 2014. People passing on the street were critique, which operate within institutional treated to a deft comic spectacle while the contexts, the collective’s resolutely outsid- outrageous fact that Microsoft and Citibank er positioning divulges a more antagonistic pay less in taxes than poor Americans loomed relationship. The result effectively collapses large. documentary imperatives into direct actions In many projects, the presence of The and renders the fortifications of power in late Illuminator’s projector-beam announces both a capitalism into heralds of their own undoing. desire to shed light on invisible inequities and The projector-beam crystallizes a set of power is itself a form of direct action. In one defin- dynamics in the space of the street, producing ing instance, the collective collaborated with an unusual concatenation of protest strate- the Crown Heights Tenant Union for a project gies, where organizing, educating, and action called Where in Brooklyn do Vultures Roost? converge. Created in response to the ongoing displace- The use of this technology allows activists ment crisis in the Crown Heights neighborhood to spontaneously and peripatetically hijack of Brooklyn, as well as The Brooklyn Museum’s space within the urban landscape, announc- role within this crisis, the project allowed ing a different kind of protest model which tenants to speak back to exploitative property time may show has unexplored potentials. For management companies.2 Using a tool devel- example, in April of 2015, a bust of Edward oped by the collective called “The People’s Snowden was placed on the perimeter of the Pad” (which is a free, downloadable, and Prison Ship Martyrs' Monument in Fort Greene non-proprietary software), tenants were able Park in Brooklyn. Titled Prison Ship Martyrs to handwrite messages projected onto the Monument 2.0 (aka The Edward Snowden facades of apartment buildings. In this way the Bust), the statue was quickly covered and collective creates a flexible interface with local removed by NYC Parks officials hours after it activist initiatives. was erected. That evening, The Illuminator The inclusion of The Illuminator in a journal projected the visage of Snowden onto the site dedicated to documentary may appear to be an of the removed bust utilizing a cloud of smoke, aberration, but it is not without intention. The temporarily returning the monument albeit collective’s concentration on site specificity, through an ephemeral action that officials had corporate identity-correction, and amplifying no recourse to interrupt. activist projects evokes the philosophies and Despite the unauthorized use of the projec- practices associated with institutional critique. tor beam to broadcast messages, the group’s Insofar as The Illuminator produces truth-tell- tools remain outside of a defined legal frame- ing spectacles that transform institutional work. At the moment, the legislation of beams architectures into screens, important elements of light remains largely off the law books, and of the documentary impulse come into play. if the van is legally parked, police and other However, the collective’s emphasis on the officials have little legal recourse to prevent projector-beam, which paints onto the world, their projections.4 rather than the camera which takes in the This interview is the result of a month-long world, announces a marked deviation from how exchange with the collective in June and July we think of documentary. of 2017.

Horwatt \ 78 INTERVIEW At that time the primary goal of the project was to keep the Occupy movement alive and ELI HORWATT expanding as long as possible. Mobile projec- I’d like to start with the genesis of The tion was seen as a tactic that might be useful Illuminator collective in relation to the Occupy in this regard. The intention was to draw peo- movement. Could you describe how the initial ple in with spectacle—the 99% Bat Signal of idea of mobile projection evolved? The logis- course, but also cartoons and short films—and tics of mobile projection are themselves quite then talk to them about Occupy Wall Street complex—had members already conceived of and distribute literature from our mobile library. or developed methods to achieve this? What Obviously such an effort required a great deal were the collective’s goals when embarking on of coordination and a substantial number of creating the 99% Bat Signal? volunteers. To initiate this process, Read put out a call to various working groups within THE ILLUMINATOR COLLECTIVE the OWS movement—the People’s Library, The 99% Bat Signal action was the work of outreach working group, arts and labor work- Mark Read, who pulled together an ad-hoc ing group, etc.—inviting people to join in a team that included Max Nova, JR Skola, Chris collective that would operate The Illuminator Jordan, Jeanne Angel, Aaron Kuffner, and horizontally, per the values and practices of Brandon Neubauer. Read was working within a OWS itself. coalition of activists organizing a large scale More than five years have passed since rally and march on November 17th in New York the inception of the project, and much has City. That coalition was comprised of labor changed. The makeup and mission of the col- organizers, who had initially put out the call lective has shifted considerably, as the Occupy for the rally, as well as an array of communi- Wall Street’s moment has passed and new po- ty-based organizations, and a contingent of litical realities have emerged. We continue to Occupy Wall Street activists. The goal of that adapt and evolve to meet current conditions, action was simply to inspire the thousands of and are always developing new tools that can people that we knew would be walking across be utilized to voice dissent and foster dia- the Brooklyn Bridge on the pedestrian walk- logue, which is ultimately what the project was way. As fate would have it, this action took initiated to do. place two days after the eviction of Liberty Square (aka Zuccotti Park), so the messaging EH became even more powerfully resonant than How did the horizontal organizing strategies it might have been otherwise. In addition to of the Occupy movement influence the devel- the “Bat-Signal” itself, messages such as “Do opment of The Illuminator collective? Describe Not Be Afraid,” “Another World is Possible,” the collective’s non-hierarchical model? and “We Are a Cry from the Heart of the World” were displayed, to the delight of the crowds TI and the press. Coming out of the Occupy movement, which Subsequent to that action, Read met and adhered strictly to non-hierarchical principles, began talking to Ben Cohen (co-founder it was a natural choice for The Illuminator to of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream), who agreed to be structured to work this way. Our collec- fund the creation of a video projection “Bat tive practices a consensus decision-making Mobile” that would later become known as The process similar to that used by the general Illuminator. Read contacted Chris Hackett and assembly of Occupy Wall Street; a process Gaylen Hamilton of The Madagascar Institute which traces its roots back to the feminist to lead the complex design and fabrication of movement of the 1960s. We rotate various the customized van. After troubleshooting nu- roles and responsibilities that are integral to merous problems, the team was able to create the functioning of the project (gear mainte- a highly effective and durable machine. nance, communications, etc), while allowing

Horwatt \ 79 some roles (video editing, etc) to be optional/ bleaker. Global warming is too big for one per- voluntary based on interest and skills. Any son to fix; political corruption is too much for member can propose a project or collabora- one person to take on; and how does a person tion, and all members weigh in on whether we spit in the eye of a faceless institution? A hero agree as a collective to support a given cause with superpowers is needed. or position on an issue. Like any horizontally We like the fact that superheroes are fre- organized project, we do our best to deal with quently rogue characters who play by their the inevitable challenges of listening, trusting, own rules and invent their own tools. Our and working together. With five years as a col- hometown of NYC has a rich history of playing lective under our belt, we must be doing some fictional host to superheroes, or being rescued things right. from disaster. The horizontal functioning of the collec- The thing that sets our superhero persona tive is subject to the fluctuation of individual apart from others is that the script is flipped - members’ time and energy. The work is also we are the ones signalling the populace. We’re dependent on personal preferences and skills, here, jumping into action, pushing for change, as we mentioned above. These factors, in turn, and letting others know not to give up hope. affect the way our collective is perceived from Our projector-beam is a shining reminder that the outside, giving more visibility to certain people are still fighting injustices, and that it members. Outsiders find it easy to assume that hasn’t all settled into status quo and fast food our group is led by straight, white, technolog- ads just yet. ically savvy men. To try to counter the skewed perception that there is any one “leader,” less EH visible members have been taking a larger role Site-specific projection (and by this I mean in representing the collective at conferences, projecting directly onto the institutional fa- panels, and workshops over the last couple cades of the organizations you are protesting of years. We continue to work on being more against) has become a key component of many democratic, through skill shares and internal of the collective’s collaborations over the last initiatives. These changes are largely due to five years. Could you talk about some of the more women joining the collective in the last early experiences with this and what kinds of couple of years, who are more keenly aware of logistical challenges they presented? What and interested in changing the collective’s ineq- is The Illuminator’s strategy for dealing with uities. At this point we’d like to state the names policing around these organizations during of the members: Emily Allyn Andersen, Zoe demonstrations? Bachman, Rachel Brown, Kyle Depew, Grayson Earle, Anna Ozbek, Mark Read, and Chris Rogy. TI When we project directly onto the façade of EH an institution whose policies and actions we The Illuminator has deployed the language and stand against, we know that we are working visual culture of the superhero. Could you de- within a set of constraints that require precise scribe the attraction to these quintessentially planning and rapid adaptability. We know that American myths for the project? if they become aware of our actions, institu- tions will work quickly to remove any type of TI critical messaging from association with their Superheroes appear in times of trouble, to building. We also know that the police and swoop in and fight large and seemingly in- other security forces will likely be extremely domitable forces. It’s no surprise that the responsive to the requests of these pow- same figures popular in WWII and the Great erful institutions. In practice, we have seen Depression have reappeared in our movie the- that projections on certain very high profile aters, seemingly to stay. The present political surfaces, such as the United Nations build- circumstances often seem bleak, the future ing, generate an extremely aggressive police

Horwatt \ 80 response. We have to plan our exact position sexual and domestic violence on campus. The and our timing very carefully, as we are always projection was timed to interrupt a prospec- aware that we may be shut down in a matter tive student tour of the Columbia University of minutes. Trust and efficient communication campus led by school administrators. As the between the members of our team is essential prospective students exited the building, they in these scenarios. Swift documentation of encountered No Red Tape members unfurl- the action is crucial to extending its lifespan ing huge banners and the words “Columbia beyond this fleeting time frame, especially Protects Rapists” projected onto the frieze when we attempt to leave prior to any secu- of the iconic Low Library. Though one school rity mobilization. As with many direct actions, administrator stood in front of the projector these projections necessitate the presence of for a period of time to block the message, a designated contact person who can speak campus security officials seemed reluctant to with the police, ideally delaying the shutdown get involved. In this case, the institution likely of our work in the process. We recognize that made the decision that a loud public confron- as a largely white collective, our bodies are not tation with student protesters would not work subject to the same immediate police brutality to improve its image with the prospective as groups where the majority of members are students, or with the media documenting the people of color. action. This further highlights the importance Generally speaking, there is no law against of timing, setting, and audience. what we do, other than parking restrictions This sort of cat-and-mouse game with the and some municipal violations about permits. authorities comes with the terrain of guerrilla However, this usually does not stop the police projection. Our strategy for dealing with it is from intervening in our projections. relatively straightforward. Never ask for per- Two years ago, during a collaboration with mission beforehand, and stop when a police the group Occupy Museums, we interrupt- officer asks you to stop. There isn’t much to ed a dinner party thrown in celebration of a be gained by getting into an argument with an $60 million donation from David Koch to the officer over operative legal statutes. Metropolitan Museum of Art. The target of the The most important piece of advice we projection was the Met itself, where the gala would give to others trying to do this is to was located. Two of our members, along with make sure to get the most critical content up one member of Occupy Museums, were arrest- and on the building as fast as possible, with a ed after projecting “The Met: Brought to you photographer in position to get the shot. Even by the Tea Party” and “Koch = Climate Chaos” in the diciest of situations you can usually get onto the facade for less than 5 minutes. The 30 seconds to a minute. If you’re really pre- cops on the ground spent a good amount of pared and have a plan, that 30 seconds is all time on the phone with NYPD Legal and ul- that you’ll need to capture the image you want. timately were instructed to charge us with “Unlawfully Posting Advertisements” (New EH York Penal Law § 145.30). The Illuminator often acts as an amplifier That law specifies commercial intent and for other activist organizations. Additionally, affixing something to the building, which were projects like the Snowden Hologram and the both patently misapplied. With the aid of our People’s Pad channel lost or hidden expres- lawyer, Sam Cohen, we successfully defended sions and offer a medium for those unable to the charge. A few weeks ago we also settled be present. Could you speak to this unique a civil suit with the NYPD over this arrest, for position wherein the collective acts as a con- False Arrest, First Amendment Violation, and duit for the ideas, beliefs, and expressions of Prior Restraint. others? In April 2015, we collaborated with the Columbia University group No Red Tape, a TI student organization dedicated to ending As a project that emerged out of the Occupy

Horwatt \ 81 Wall Street movement, The Illuminator collec- holding signs that spoke to the anti-protest tive has always understood itself to be, at least laws and the struggle that elicited them. A in part, stewards of a movement resource. In more recent iteration of the project was cre- this sense we are simply the keepers of a kind ated for an exhibition at Colgate University, of illuminated megaphone for the voices of which allows for signs to be created on-the- the 99%, which we understand to mean a set spot by gallery participants. Visitors simply of intersecting struggles for social, economic, create a sign, scan it, and witness a 3d avatar racial, and environmental justice. We some- holding their sign join a projected protest. times imagine ourselves as municipal workers The case of the Snowden Statue is related providing a vital city service akin to keeping to this mission of amplification, but within a the subways running, taking out the garbage, unique context that required a unique strategy. or putting out fires. This identity is reflected Other artists had anonymously installed the in the motto that is written on our utility work statue of Snowden in order to make the point shirts: “To project and serve,” a tongue in that, far from being a traitor or an enemy of the cheek reference to the motto of the NYPD. United States, Edward Snowden ought to be Quite early on in the life of the project, we seen as a patriot and a hero of the people. Our began to explore techniques by which we collective had done earlier work to address the could better—more directly, more vividly— issue of NSA surveillance and feels strongly amplify the concerns of those most directly about this set of issues. When the statue was impacted by the intersecting crises that we (remarkably quickly) removed by the NYPD, we currently face. The People’s Pad and the saw an opportunity for a counter-maneuver Protest Generator are two innovations in this that would further amplify the original intent regard. Technology offers a means of circum- of the action. In creating an on-the-fly DIY venting draconian restrictions on political hologram of the Snowden bust, we were able expression. to keep the story alive for another news cycle The People’s Pad consists of a box, a and draw more positive attention to the heroic webcam, some paper, a marker, and a non-pro- actions of Snowden. prietary software. The sum of its parts allow In an effort to equip more people with an for a low-tech interaction in which anyone opportunity to creatively and directly engage can intervene on the visual environment. This with the visual environment, our website fea- has taken the form of tenants writing their tures a tools section which provides compiled demands directly onto their homes, the mu- applications and source code for the projects ralists of 5 Pointz recreating their art on a mentioned above, and more. We are commit- white-washed building, students sharing their ted to providing free software for the purposes frustrations with the educational debt crisis, of counter-hegemonic cultural production, and more. By giving someone the ability to proud to join a legacy of free software for free participate in, or to occupy, the urban land- people. scape, they are themselves transformed from spectators into artists and activists. The Protest Generator was created in re- sponse to anti-protest laws in Montreal, which were the state’s response to massive stu- dent demonstrations against tuition hikes in 2012. Essentially, the municipal government outlawed protests involving more than fifty people. We recorded students walking on a green screen holding signs, digitally re-com- posited, so that they could be made visible again, in the streets, despite the law. We pro- jected processions of hundreds of students,

Horwatt \ 82 ENDNOTES 1—Umberto Eco, Travels in Hyperreality (New York: Harcourt, 1986): 135. 2—The Brooklyn Museum hosted a real estate summit in November 2015, just a few weeks prior to opening a show titled Agitprop!, dedicated to art for so- cial change. This initiated protests and a renewed conversation around the rela- tionship between art and gentrification. 3—Jan Verwoert, “The Expanded Working Field of Documentary Production,” in The Need to Document, eds. Vít Havránek, Sabine Schaschl- Cooper, Bettina Steinbrügge, (Zürich: JRP Ringier, 2005), 81. 4—There are some municipal codes that are legally enforceable by the NYPD to prevent these projections.

Horwatt \ 83

\ Volume 1 \ In other words, rather than limit con- sideration to the obvious contemporary examples of immersive and interactive spectating, it’s more important I believe to search for historical precursors and architectural spaces that have informed current screen practices and technologi- cal attractions. —Alison Griffiths, Shivers Down Your Spine.1

Perhaps the term is unsatisfactory, but for me the distinction between the words document and documentary is quite clear. —Joris Ivens, The Camera and I.2

Those of us who are veterans of the arrival of cinema studies in American academe during the late sixties and early seventies brought with us not just a fascination with film and a THE SUBLIMITY OF DOCUMENT \ hunger to know more about film history, but a CARL AKELEY, THE HABITAT demand that cinema and cinema studies be DIORAMA, AND DIORAMIC CINEMA useful, a force for social and political progress. We felt we were in the midst of a cultural rev- SCOTT MACDONALD olution and cinema seemed a part of this. The half-century of dominance of Hollywood enter- tainment that preceded this moment made our excitement about the movies feel like a guilty pleasure: conventional entertainment, we’d realized, was propaganda for the status quo. Not surprisingly, we admired European (and Indian and Japanese) art cinema and what was coming to be called American art cinema because these films seemed more than just entertainment; they were forms of cine-nar- rative that built on the centuries-old tradition of literary narrative that had contributed to our awareness of human psychology, dramatized social issues, and often modeled progressive human development and action. Many of us were also becoming fascinated with what was variously called “experimental film,” “under- ground film,” “avant-garde film” because it offered in-theater critiques of conventional film and television entertainment: my coining of “critical cinema” for a series of interviews with these filmmakers reflected a need to see their films as both aesthetically and politically progressive. The flowering of new forms of documenta- ry filmmaking during this same moment also

MacDonald \ 85 seemed to require a justification, which was of other cultures."6 Even if those who concep- provided by a still-standard distinction (at tualized and constructed life groups were, in least in cinema studies) between “document” general, striving for ethnographic accuracy, and “documentary”: “document” refers to it seems obvious to us now that Griffiths is the camera’s mechanical/electronic ability to correct: the life groups themselves and their record what is in front of it; “documentary” has arrangement within museum spaces demon- been understood as something more: as an ar- strate that the museum spectator is culturally ticulation of recorded image and sound into an superior—more fully evolved—than the cul- “argument” that provides a thoughtful vision of tures represented in the life groups. Indeed, the world and, in one way or another, declares this seems so clear to us now that the very its support for what the filmmaker understands idea of a life group tends to cancel whatever as progressive social and/or political change.3 informational or aesthetic value any particu- For Bill Nichols, documentary’s ability to forge lar life group might have. The life group has an ideological point of view was what made it become an exhibit not so much of indigenous distinct from both scientific evidence gather- lives, but of problematic ideas about culture ing and what Tom Gunning named the “cinema and race. of attractions”—films that took delight in the The effect of a habitat diorama of animal life sensationalism of the exotic and bizarre.4 In within a museum space seems fundamentally scientific film and the cinema of attractions, different from the implicit cultural imperial- “the voice of the filmmaker was . . . noticeably ism of the life group: we are interested in the silent.”5 As useful as the distinction between facts of animal life and do not bring to a hab- document and documentary has seemed, it itat diorama cultural baggage about animal has allowed us to undervalue the cinemat- ways of life versus our own. The “argument” of ic relevance of developments that formed a the habitat diorama is simply that, as human context for the arrival of cinematic document beings living in a modern society, we should at the end of the nineteenth century, among know that these other creatures also live in these, the habitat diorama of animal life, our world. Of course, the fact that the human which I believe offers a framework for helping population explosion increasingly threatens to recognize the accomplishments of various animal habitat and the diversity of species forms of film document that have often been makes a consciousness of the variety of ani- under appreciated. mal life valuable in an environmentally political For my purposes here, it is important to sense. Nevertheless, at least in the work of distinguish between the habitat diorama of an- Carl Akeley, the most prominent American imal life and “the life group.” In her Wondrous contributor to the development of the habitat Difference: Cinema, Anthropology, and Turn- diorama, no overt polemical statement frames of-the-Century Visual Culture Difference what we see. And this suppression of polemic Alison Griffiths explores the evolution of the allows us to consider the accomplishments life group: basically a habitat diorama that of particular habitat dioramas and to see that attempts to create a simulacrum of an in- the habitat diorama can be seen as a premoni- digenous people. Griffiths demonstrates the tion of a wide variety of accomplished motion many ways in which museum life groups pictures that resist explicit ideology in favor of incorporated conflicted, often problematic showing us elements of the animal and human assumptions about other cultures: "merely by worlds that the filmmakers believe we need to traversing the ethnographic exhibition halls see, whatever ideological ramifications these of such grandiose public buildings (e.g., the sights might ultimately have for us. American Museum of Natural History in New York), museum spectators entered into an CARL AKELEY AND THE DIORAMA ideologically loaded space that elaborated the metanarratives of Western cultural superiority Carl Akeley is widely known for his transforma- via multisensory accounts of the primitivism tion of the craft of taxidermy and for his crucial

MacDonald \ 86 role in the development of the habitat diorama, dioramas Akeley created for Chicago’s Field which he is widely thought to have invented.7 Museum were the product of four years of His muskrat case, designed for the Milwaukee planning and development; they became avail- Public Museum in 1890, was a prototype for able to the public in 1902. Currently they are the habitat dioramas that are now ubiqui- located within the Wilderness Walk section of tous in museums of natural history.8 Akeley is the Field Museum, just off the main hall, across not widely understood as a crucial influence from the two Akeley fighting elephants and the on the history of cinema—except for his de- Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton known popularly velopment of the Akeley “pancake” camera, as “Sue.” They are surrounded by other, more which revolutionized camera design and was recently constructed dioramas and are easy to used by Robert Flaherty to shoot Nanook of miss within the visual and auditory clutter of the North (1921) and by Harry Perry to shoot the Wilderness Walk. The four dioramas are or- the aerial footage for William Wellman’s Wings ganized seasonally and arranged in what was (1927), the first Oscar winner for Best Picture.9 then, and remains, an unusual organization: Akeley’s habitat dioramas, however, can be un- as a cube. Each diorama forms a two-sided derstood works of aesthetic accomplishment corner of the cube, and each inner corner is as well as a premonition of developments in shaped into a curved panoramic background. both early and modern cinema. Each side of the cube reveals two dioramas: Classic habitat dioramas of animal summer/fall, fall/winter, winter/spring, spring/ life—epitomized by those in Akeley’s fi- summer. In order to see all four in seasonal nal masterwork, the Akeley Hall of African order, one must circle counter-clockwise. Mammals at the American Museum of Natural Akeley was obsessive about detail, both as History in New York—include three com- a taxidermist and in his creation of the envi- ponents. Carefully prepared taxidermic ronments in which his taxidermic animals are specimens of particular animals are placed arranged. As Emily Graslie explains on the Field within a foreground that includes painstaking- Museum’s The Brain Scoop, Akeley even “paid ly arranged details of the landscapes where attention to how . . . (the deers’) fur would these animals are normally found in the wild, have looked after walking through the trees.” backed by a curved, panoramic painting that The spring, summer, and fall dioramas include helps to provide the illusion of deep space, as 17,000 leaves, each of which was fabricated well as geographic context. Like the imagery in from a hot-wax mold and painted before being Daguerre’s Diorama shows, the source of the attached to a bush or a tree or arranged on term diorama, the scenes in habitat dioramas the forest floor. Rather than filling the season- are lit by light sources usually meant to be al dioramas with all the species that might invisible to the viewer and are sometimes pre- move through such an environment during a sented in dark or low-light spaces.10 Walking given year, Akeley was interested in evoking, into the darkened space of the Akeley Hall of as nearly as possible, real natural spaces as African Mammals, viewers find themselves, as they might be experienced in real time. Most James Lippitt Clark has explained, "in the deep of those who walk by the white-tailed deer mysterious lighting of an African jungle. Not a dioramas merely glance at them as they pass, single light opposes the eye, while the groups but a more careful examination offers subtle themselves stand out in a blaze of sunlight, rewards: the discovery of lizards nearly hid- as if one were looking through open windows den in the underbrush in spring and summer, across a torrid veldt."11 for example, and a cicada on a tree branch in In general, the habitat diorama has been summer. seen as a form of scientific documentation, What seems most unusual about the rather than an aesthetic form—but particular white-tailed deer dioramas, however, is what habitat dioramas are both historically pivotal we moderns/post moderns might call their within the evolution of the form and aesthet- self-reflexivity. Whereas Akeley’s muskrat case ically sophisticated.12 The white-tailed deer in Milwaukee and the dioramas in the Akeley

MacDonald \ 87 Hall of African Mammals seem designed to panorama via a staircase in the center of the function as windows into realistic illusion, the panorama floor; then circled the outer wall that white-tailed deer dioramas are obsessively presented the painting.13 The white-tailed deer accurate depictions that make only the most dioramas form an inverted panorama around limited attempt to create illusory realities. The which visitors can circle. four dioramas are clearly rooms. Of course, By the mid-1910s, as he was formulating his this is evident in the fact that each diorama plan for the Hall of African Mammals, Akeley is a corner of the cube: we see into the space had decided to combine these two forms of from either of two sides; but within the de- spectatorship within an epic construction. The picted scenes, the trees do not reach the tops elephant group in the middle of the bottom of the cubes, but are truncated some inches floor of the Hall can be circled—and, of course, below the ceilings, which are crisscrossed by the centrality of the elephant in Akeley’s think- wooden molding. Similarly, where the uneven ing about Africa (and about inroads into animal terrain of each diorama reaches the glass walls habitat taking place in Sub-Saharan Africa through which spectators observe the scene, during the early twentieth century) is obvious. a cross-section of the terrain’s fabrication is But the diminished lighting in the Hall is de- visible in silhouette. signed to attract spectators to the outer walls Akeley’s focus on the white-tailed deer was of both the bottom floor and the second-floor an early environmental gesture, since at the balcony, where 28 brightly-lit dioramas offer a time this species of deer had become endan- considerable range of visual experiences that gered—for Akeley, taxidermy and the habitat are implicitly cinematic in a variety of ways, diorama were means to record the realities of most obviously perhaps in the fact that most traditional animal life on a planet quickly trans- spectators move from one diorama to the next, forming as a result of the population explosion as if experiencing a meta-montage of African and its ever-growing demands on resources. animals and biotas.14 Whereas the white-tailed His habitat dioramas were an expression of re- deer dioramas at the Field Museum focus on a spect for animal life and his concern that it not single general location and a particular spe- be obliterated by modern developments. The cies, the Hall of African Mammals proposes to overall trajectory of the Akeley dioramas from reveal an encyclopedic panorama of sub-Saha- the muskrat case to the white-tailed deer ex- ran African locations representing hundreds of hibit to the Hall of African Mammals reveals an thousands of square miles. ongoing interest in experimenting with ways of As is true in his earlier dioramas, the individ- representing time and space. ual dioramas in the Hall (envisioned by Akeley From our vantage point, the muskrat case and constructed mostly by others after his seems a premonition of television, even death) offer a range of experiences.15 Some of three-dimensional television—though the these, like Daguerre’s Diorama, involve what “movement” in this diorama is that evident in might be called a slow reveal, as we scan the many paintings: the spectator looks from one various elements of the space to see what all area of the diorama to another to see what is represented there. In some instances this appears to be occurring simultaneously within slow reveal has a narrative element; in the this frozen moment. Akeley’s white-tailed deer white rhinoceros diorama, for example, viewers dioramas are “motion pictures” that put the are not immediately aware that the movement spectator into motion: in order to fully expe- of a trio of rhinos toward a waterhole has been rience these dioramas and the changes they halted by a small, feisty, bristling porcupine, depict, one must move around the cube and almost invisible, at first, within the grass—the back and forth from one diorama to another. slow-reveal discovery of the porcupine gives The white-tailed deer cube is an experience the diorama elements of suspense and humor. that is related to the painted panoramas that The hunting dogs diorama, where a pack of fascinated nineteenth century audiences: dogs, halted near to us on a rise, are intently visitors to the panorama buildings entered the focused (and focus us) on a distant group of

MacDonald \ 88 ungulates, is particularly dynamic. The posi- with the capability of the Cinématographe to tioning of the dogs creates a clear sense that create the illusion of three dimensions, caus- we are seeing them at the split second before es the Lumière films to seem evocative of the they will be moving into the space to track and habitat diorama as well—and, like the habitat attack one of the distant animals. The move- diorama, a premonition of classical and mod- ment of the spectator’s eye from left to right ern “dioramic cinema.” predicts the movement of the dogs. The Lumières filmed scenes and activities The spectator’s relationship to the animals that they assumed would demonstrate the within particular dioramas varies a good deal. capabilities of the Cinématographe, elements The organization of a few dioramas suggests of their cultural surround that they felt view- that the spectator has just come upon the ers might agree were worth looking at, might animals, interrupting what they were doing produce pleasure simply by being seen. Their and causing the animals to look at the intrud- films reveal a point of view in only the sim- er: this is true, for example, of the gemsbok plest sense: they reveal what the Lumières diorama. Here, the breaking of the fourth believed was worth recording and presenting (glass) wall is a form of self-reflexivity where to audiences. Though their (and their cinema- gaze meets gaze.16 Generally, however, the tographers’) instincts for careful and engaging animals look at each other or are involved composition is nearly always in evidence, one in their own activities; and even when their would be hard-pressed to see an argument, in gaze is directed through the glass, these “off- the Nichols sense, in any particular selection screen” gazes seem meant to suggest the of these films. For the Lumières, and for the wider environment of which the animals are other filmmakers who have produced instanc- part. In some cases, it is particularly tempting es of what I am calling “dioramic cinema,” to read an “off-screen” look as a metaphor for this lack of argument has been freeing, since the changing world impinging on an animal’s it allows filmmakers to believe that merely traditional environment. The male gorilla in the representing certain places, animals, people, mountain gorilla diorama seems to be sensing activities might be of value for a wide range of possible danger. That Akeley died on a safa- spectators, regardless of particular attitudes ri to do final research on this diorama after or political beliefs—just as Akeley believed having persuaded King Albert I of Belgium to that representing as exhaustive a panorama of protect the area depicted from further ex- African wildlife as he was capable of imagining ploitation (it is now the Virunga National Park might be valuable in a wide range of ways for a in the Democratic Republic of Congo) makes considerable range of spectators. the gorilla diorama particularly poignant—es- Flaherty’s use of the Akeley camera for pecially since this protected area remains Nanook of the North doesn’t necessarily mean under attack (see Orlando von Einsiedel’s he was familiar with or influenced by Akeley’s documentary, Virunga, 2014). work as taxidermist or designer of habitat dioramas, but the structuring of the individual CINE-HALLS OF GLOBAL HUMANITY sequences of Nanook has much in common with the habitat diorama. Though it is tempt- The non-argumentative combination of de- ing to read a kind of narrative into Nanook tailed, precise documentation and panoramic (“Nanook” et al., do this, then this, then this), vision that characterizes the Hall of African in fact, Flaherty’s film is a panorama of par- Mammals characterizes the early Lumière films ticular moments, each of which is presumably as well. For obvious reasons we have usually an ongoing part of Inuit life—modern (a visit seen the Lumière films as motion photographs; to the trader’s, the arrival of the phonograph) but the early fascination with capturing and or more traditional (fishing, building an igloo, exhibiting typical moments in both familiar and checking a fox trap). Like the various dioramas exotic cultures within a series of extended sin- in the Hall of African Mammals, the several se- gle shots (sometimes with slow reveals), along quences of Nanook are part of the fabric of life

MacDonald \ 89 in a particular region at a particular historical reflected Jones’s focus on his own congrega- moment. tions. Nevertheless, the evidence of the films Further, just as Akeley’s interest in the suggests what can now seem surprising: that white-tailed deer and in African mammals there were areas of the nation, of Oklahoma, was instigated by his sense that the worlds where African-American life was essentially depicted in his habitat dioramas were on the no different from the life of any American town wane, transforming as a result of the on- or rural area. We might assume that racism slaught of modern life, Flaherty’s interest in must have affected the lives of the men and producing Nanook (and apparently “Nanook”/ women Jones recorded, but nothing of this Allakariallak’s interest in collaborating with is evident in the films themselves. That is, no Flaherty) was instigated by a sense that the particular cinematic argument about racism is traditional Inuit ways of doing things were evident. The men and women we see are not being replaced or transformed by modern depicted as victims, just as people Jones felt technological developments, including film- were worthy of being recorded on film: devout, making itself. Flaherty is more explicit about economically successful members of their this in Nanook (the early sequences at the communities—farmers, owners of businesses, trading post create a modern context within skilled laborers and professionals, devoted which Flaherty’s subsequent demonstrations family members—people given to celebrating of traditional Inuit ways are revealed), than their lives in a wide variety of ways. Akeley is in his dioramas—though Akeley was Jones’ methods of representing his com- very conscious that his killing animals in order munity often parallel Flaherty’s methods of to find adequate specimens for the dioramas representing what, given his sense of Inuit life, was part of the ongoing decimation of African he felt was important to record. For example, in wildlife. Like the animals in the Hall of African both reels 5 and 6 of Jones’ films, printed signs Mammals, Allakariallak sometimes seems to function in precisely the way Flaherty’s interti- meet the spectator’s gaze, though what was tles function within Nanook and Moana (1926): his collaborative gaze at Flaherty seems quite they concisely identify what we are seeing. different from the startled looks of the animals. Jones’s films develop motifs—parishioners On the other hand, Flaherty’s presentation of leaving church; portraits of individuals and “Nanook” as the greatest hunter in his re- individual families, usually on the move; pa- gion does seem an echo of Akeley’s desire to rades down main streets on special days—and, represent each animal in the Hall of African as Flaherty focuses on Nanook’s hunting abil- Mammals with the taxidermic epitome of that ity, Jones, in an understated way, sometimes species. focuses on individuals of special accomplish- The urge toward the “dioramic” that is ment. A series of signs in reel 5, for instance, evident in Nanook can also be seen in oth- indicate that we are seeing “DEA. & MRS M. er regions of American cinema of that era. C. BROWN’S/FIRST FARM HOME”; then the The Smithsonian Institution’s new National Browns “AT THEIR DAILY/OCCUPATION”; then Museum of African American History and “THEIR SECOND/FARM HOME”; then “THEIR Culture (NMAAHC) has recently acquired a col- FIRST/OIL WELL/2,000 BARRELS/DAILY”! lection of films made by the Reverend Solomon It is precisely because no overt argument is Sir Jones in east central Oklahoma during the made either by Flaherty in Nanook or by Jones period 1924-1928. The NMAAHC website calls in his community home movies that the doc- Reverend Jones’ films home movies, though uments these filmmakers recorded remain as they are more precisely community movies: powerful as they are—and in a very similar way. documents of the lives of African Americans Flaherty doesn’t tell us that he is doing battle in the several towns in which Jones preached. with the racist clichés about native cultures so That, judging from the evidence of the films, common in his era, and Jones doesn’t preach these seem to have been African-American about how his parishioners are accomplished towns and rural areas may simply have professionals who have created successful

MacDonald \ 90 American towns within a nation that, in large of the painstaking production process used for part, seemed to be living under the illusion Akeley’s habitat dioramas. that African Americans were incapable of pre- Fricke’s World-films, Baraka (1992) and cisely what his films reveal. Both filmmakers Samsara (2011), circle the globe, providing carefully documented what they saw around privileged glimpses of spiritual sites and them, on the assumption that simply seeing activities in dozens of countries, filmed with these realities might be useful for, in Flaherty’s a Panavision 70mm camera, custom built for case, the public audiences for cinema that had the time-lapse shooting-in-motion that Fricke developed by the 1920s; and in Jones’, the pioneered. Fricke is drawn to spectacular hundreds of men, women and children who products of culture, from the performance of were his parishioners and who would presum- Kecak, the Balinese Monkey Dance in Baraka; ably enjoy these records of themselves and to the creation and destruction of the elab- their communities. orate sand painting made by Buddhists in The non-argumentative approach of the Nepal that frames Samsara; to aerial photog- habitat diorama of animal life remains evident raphy of rural Myanmar where an astonishing in a wide variety of modern films. They include, richness of temples punctuates a gorgeous not surprisingly, some “nature films” (or “wild- landscape (Samsara), to the dance of pris- life films”), as well as the “World-films” of Ron oners in the a maximum security prison in Fricke (his term), several of the cultural doc- Cebu Province, Philippines (Samsara); to the uments of the Austrian Nikolaus Geyrhalter, astonishing imagery of the Hajj in Mecca, and recent formalist landscape films by Sharon as thousands of pilgrims circle the Kaaba Lockhart and James Benning. Most of the films (Baraka, Samsara)—in Samsara filmed in ex- that fall within the category of nature or wild- treme long-shot presumably from the Makkah life films are closer to informational lectures or Royal Clock Tower Hotel. Some critics have narrative entertainments than to the approach found the Fricke films frustrating; Gerald Peary of the Akeley dioramas, where the assumption complained that in Samsara, “no shot has any is that spectators should feel comfortable to purpose,” and warned readers, “if you are visually explore the scenes depicted without seeking, as you might, content or meaning, constant interpretation or narrative develop- look elsewhere than this ponderous and point- ment. However, Claude Nuridsany and Marie less collage.” But the purpose of the Fricke Pérennou’s Microcosmos (1996), one of the films, like the Hall of African Mammals, is not to films that brought nature film back into first- provide meaning, but to offer opportunities to run theaters, is particularly close to the habitat see representations of aspects of culture that diorama tradition. otherwise we might never become visually Microcosmos avoids interpretation: two aware of. brief, poetic passages of narration frame the Baraka and Samsara reflect Fricke’s fas- film, but otherwise, the film’s panorama of -in cination with the manifestations of spirit: in sect life is presented without comment (other Buddhism “samsara” is defined as the con- than the implicit “comment” supplied by music tinual repetitive cycle of birth and death that and sound design). As in the Hall of African characterizes earthly life; in Islam “baraka” Mammals, the species of insects included in is the divine force that flows through people Microcosmos represent a particular geographic and objects attuned to God. Nowhere else in region (here, pastoral southwestern France), the history of cinema have films so lovingly and all receive basically equal treatment—just documented the plethora of spiritual sites and as the majority of the dioramas in the Hall are activities that are on display in Samsara and one of two sizes. And the painstaking work of Baraka. Fricke’s commitment to the perfect the two filmmakers, who must find represen- illusionistic rendering of an epic, global pan- tative instances of many species and invent orama is analogous to the obsessive labors ways to film them within an accurate fabrica- that were required to create the Akeley hab- tion of their pastoral environment, is an echo itat dioramas, where the emphasis is on the

MacDonald \ 91 spectator’s exploration of the scenes depicted Whereas Our Daily Bread is essentially de- in the dioramas, rather than on the presenta- tached from the processes depicted and from tion of verbalized information. In Baraka and the workers recorded (the film includes no Samsara, the places and activities we see are interviews), Elsewhere is consistently intimate. not identified until the final credits. The Fricke Within each section Geyrhalter focuses on an films might be called the Cine-Halls of Global individual, a family, or a small group—inter- Spiritual Sites and Cultural Rituals. cutting between the individuals doing daily Nikolaus Geyrhalter is best known for Our tasks and facing the camera to speak about Daily Bread (2005), his elegant and surre- their lives. Throughout Elsewhere the sounds al depiction of industrial food production of the diverse environments create a sense in Europe, shot in Austria, Belgium, Croatia, of immersion, as if we are sharing moments Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Hungary, with the individuals Geyrhalter films and talks the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, and Slovakia. with—we can sometimes hear Geyrhalter, or a Alternately reassuring (in the precise organi- translator, in the background. In a sense, the zation, apparent efficiency, and cleanliness of various segments of Elsewhere are the inverse many of the operations filmed) and terrifying of the ethnographic villages that were assem- (in the immensity of the animal life processed), bled for world’s fairs in the nineteenth century, Our Daily Bread explores food production of all where visitors could gawk at native groups kinds: the raising and harvesting of vegetables from around the world who had been brought and fruits, the raising, killing, and slaughter- to the fairs to perform their normal activities: ing of beef, pork, chicken, and fish—using Geyrhalter travels to where his subjects live a rigorously formal approach. Symmetrically and records not just what they look like, but composed shots of extended duration create a what they say about their lives. cine-meditation on the panorama of industrial The communities that Geyrhalter films were processes that sustain modern life. Geyrhalter once living essentially in isolation from oth- reveals how fully separated we’ve become er parts of the world, but are now feeling the from the processes that keep us alive. Indeed, impact of the population explosion and mod- the immensity of the industrial establishments ernization—that Geyrhalter’s presence does filmed can cause Our Daily Bread to seem like not seem particularly unusual to any of his science fiction. subjects suggests this impact throughout the Geyrhalter’s epic Elsewhere (2001) is a film. Elsewhere is essentially an elegy for indi- study of life at the outposts of modern life. viduals and small communities: “things used During the year 2000 Geyrhalter traveled, to be better in the past” is a motif in the film. month by month, to locations around the globe, In Greenland two men discuss Greenpeace removed, as far as possible, from the world and Brigitte Bardot’s animal rights activism: depicted in Our Daily Bread: a sub-Saharan “they’ve hurt our livelihood”; in Siberia a fam- village; the northern reaches of Finland; a ily is moving because “The oil workers flooded remote Namibian village; a jungle in Indonesia; the rivers with oil, up to the Ob River. Nearly all Siorapaluk, Thule, Greenland (on its web- the fish have disappeared”; and a teacher on site, called “the northernmost community in Falalap, Woleai Atoll, is concerned about Polar the planet”); a corner of Australia’s Northern ice melting and flooding her island. Of course, Territory; a tiny Himalayan village in India; a there are also aspects of modern life that town in northeastern Siberia; a tea farm in seem attractive to many of the protagonists. China’s Yunnan province; a tiny peninsula on The women in Thule, Greenland, wish their the west coast of Sardinia; a Kwakiutl vil- men had cell phones so they didn’t have to lage in British Columbia, Canada; and a tiny worry about whether the men are safe. Micronesian island in the Pacific Ocean. Each Like Akeley’s Hall of African Mammals, of the twelve sections of the four-hour film cor- Elsewhere is fundamentally an act of respect responds to a month of the year. Each section for endangered ways of life and an attempt at lasts just slightly less than twenty minutes. using visual art as a way of honoring a world

MacDonald \ 92 in the process of transformation. Geyrhalter film—indeed, it evokes the panoramic back- assumed that the film would be shown at festi- ground paintings of desert landscapes in some vals and in cinemas, but, “Most of all I had the of the Akeley dioramas in the Hall of African feeling that I was doing this film for the human Mammals—but after a few minutes of our con- archive. In a hundred years I think Elsewhere templating the distant mountains in gradually will be valuable as a mapping of the state of changing light and the desert breeze moving the world during this specific year.” Akeley nearby plants, a distant train whistle is heard, might have said virtually the same thing about followed by the first of thirteen trains that roll the Hall of African Mammals. through the image from right to left or left to Recent films by Sharon Lockhart and James right. Benning offer a very different way of relating Unlike most of the films I’ve mentioned to the tradition of the Akeley habitat diora- here, Double Tide and BNSF are not tributes ma. Akeley’s approach to representing animal to ways of life on the wane. Jen Casad’s clam- life was characterized by a careful, even ob- ming is certainly not a part of an industrial sessive, attention to detail: finding the right process, but individuals do continue to harvest specimen to represent a species and as- clams in areas where clams are plentiful, re- sembling the most precise representation of gardless of what other methods for producing the habitat of that species was the work of food are currently operative. And the railroad a lifetime. And this commitment was made landscape we see in BNSF may be invisible so that Akeley could offer those who would to most people these days—older genera- experience the finished dioramas not just an tions will remember the ubiquity of trains in opportunity to glance at other lives, but to the landscapes and cityscapes of their child- experience an extended, precise examination hoods—but in fact the network of railroads of the depicted reality: Akeley’s obsessive that crisscross the United States is as funda- attention was in the service of works that he mental to modern life, and as invisible to both hoped would engage the in-depth, at-length our daily experience and in our film, television, attention of spectators. and new media platforms, as the food pro- Lockhart’s Double Tide and Benning’s BNSF cessing systems Geyrhalter reveals in Our Daily offer visual (and auditory) experiences that Bread. What is on the wane that an experience challenge viewers to take looking and listen- of the Lockhart and Benning films makes ob- ing as seriously as Akeley hoped spectators vious is the ability to pay sustained attention would take their experiences of his dioramas. to the world around us. Both films document Both films present scenes and activities that what the filmmakers see as significant scenes the filmmakers believe are worth our sustained and activities and simultaneously function as attention. Double Tide is what seem to be training exercises for more committed looking two 45-minute shots of a woman (Jen Casad) and listening. clamming in a cove on the coast of Maine, In the films I’ve described here as modern during the rare day when a double tide makes instances of the kind of representation that clamming possible in the morning and the Akeley’s habitat dioramas made available to evening. In each of the shots Casad’s careful audiences, cinematic document itself enriches exploration of that portion of the cove framed our experiences. There are, of course, many by the camera is contextualized by subtle other films that could be discussed, produced changes in the light and continual transforma- by filmmakers using a wide variety of ap- tions in the soundscape she is working within. proaches. Notable recent instances include In BNSF—the title is the abbreviation for the such disparate films as The Prison in Twelve Burlington Northern and Santa Fe railroad com- Landscapes (2016), in which Brett Story docu- pany—viewers are challenged to see and hear ments various situations, challenging viewers what seems to be a single shot of a desert to imagine how her panorama of “landscapes” landscape in Southern California for 194 min- relates to the American prison system; and utes. At first BNSF appears to be a landscape the controversial of the North (2015), for which

MacDonald \ 93 Dominic Gagnon collected short videos and that seem unfair. Tobing Rony and Tobias, passages of music posted on YouTube and among others, have read the early sequence in other online sites by individuals in the Arctic Nanook of the North where Allakariallak reveals north (mostly in Canada, but in other locations that he is puzzled by the trader’s phonograph as well) and organized these documents of (and the opera that was apparently playing self and place into a postmodern meta-docu- on it) as patronizing—a joke on a “primitive” ment that provides not so much a panorama of Inuit’s inability to understand modern, civilized modern life but of modern online self-repre- life. But this sequence is just as easily read as sentation, across a particular region. Flaherty’s attempt to suggest that Allakariallak is momentarily confounded by a technology CRITIQUE new to him—just as we’re puzzled by each new technological “wonder.” Some viewers In recent decades, the Akeley dioramas and would be sure to find Reverend S. S. Jones’s the early Flaherty films have been critiqued depictions of community problematic: the in ways that are relevant for more recent various social and religious rituals revealed in instances of dioramic cinema as well. In her his films often seem to make clear a gender wide-ranging essay, “Teddy Bear Patriarchy: hierarchy—as do so many films of all kinds of Taxidermy in the Garden of Eden, New York that era. City, 1908-1936,” Donna Haraway argues that The attitudes encoded in more recent Akeley’s pursuit of perfection in his African instances of dioramic cinema can also seem dioramas resulted in a gender hierarchy within problematic. Microcosmos can be critiqued for individual species: “for the typical animal in its its romanticism (two snails seem to make love, perfect expression: it must be an adult male.” accompanied by opera!). Baraka and Samsara Fatimah Tobing Rony, building on Haraway’s reveal an orientalist fascination with the ex- argument that taxidermy is “a means to pro- otic. All these films can be read as forms of tect against loss, in order that the body may be cine-colonialism, instances of technological transcended,” argues that therefore, to make imperialism. Despite their limitations, however a visual representation of indigenous peo- (and all cultural productions are limited), these ples, “one must believe that they are dying” films are as notable for their accomplishments and sees Flaherty’s “Nanook” as essentially as for their failures. The “romanticism” of a corpse, comparable to the animals in the Microcosmos creates a more complex sense of Akeley dioramas. Ronald B. Tobias, building on our natural environment and reveals the film- both Haraway and Tobing Rony, argues that the makers’ fascination with and empathy for all animals in the African Hall are a reflection of the creatures it houses. The cultural artifacts the eugenics discourse of Akeley’s era: and rituals represented in Baraka and Samsara “Akeley’s animals had to be gods and god- are a cine-cabinet of orientalist wonders—but desses of their breed, so they would inspire they can be understood as more than simple awe in anyone who looked upon them.” Tobias spectacle. Seeing the Hajj in Baraka and es- concludes that the American Museum of pecially in Samsara forces viewers to consider Natural History “is, in many ways, America’s what it might mean that they have not seen hunting lodge, similar to the trophy rooms of the epic immensity of this ritual so clearly kings and magnates who mounted their keep- before. sakes in displays of overwhelming dominion, Recent years have also seen a variety and the educational lessons created within its of cinematic and photographic critiques of rooms are as social and political as they are the habitat diorama and dioramic cinema. biological.” James Benning’s natural history (2013) is a That the Akeley dioramas and Nanook of the series of cine-dioramas, filmed in Vienna’s North can be read as confirmations of attitudes Naturhistorisches Museum during times and historical events that we find problematic when the museum is closed. His sixty-three is obvious—though this has led to readings single-shot images focus on the various

MacDonald \ 94 technological systems that create the built have been committed to the idea that the environment in which the museum’s natural world is a wondrous immensity, full of places history specimens are presented and stored— we’ve never been and peoples we’ll never as if these systems and spaces themselves encounter—but who remain our neighbors on are museum exhibits. In Benning’s rendering, the planet, people affected by what we do. The the museum is a kind of haunted mausoleum. Hall of African Mammals, Nanook of the North, Portuguese filmmaker Sandro Aguilar’s diptych, Reverend Jones’s home movies, and the more Jewels (2013) and False Twins (2014), dra- recent dioramic films traffic primarily in what matically expands on the creepy nature of the the filmmakers understand as the sublimity of exhibition of natural history specimens, evok- what is and cinema’s distinctive capacity for ing the implicit horror of killing living things in revealing it. In our more-or-less post-colonial order to “preserve” them. and endlessly troubled world all pleasure is, On the other hand, the photographs in to some extent, guilty pleasure—but the di- Hiroshi Sugimoto’s Dioramas (1974) reveal oramic cinema can help us see what humans his fascination with the “extraordinary visual in the past have accomplished and are ac- qualities” of habitat dioramas and their ability complishing (and/or not accomplishing) now; to shine a light on “the interstice between life it may assist us in interrogating suppressed and death.” Sugimoto’s photographs of classic prejudices. And, of course, this cinema of habitat dioramas in the AMNH (and elsewhere) document—like documentary, like narrative fic- seem to be images taken from life; according tion—has the capacity to invigorate us in our to the artist, they “bring time to a halt . . . for considerations of how we can best function as a second time”: “All over the planet, nature is citizens of the planet in the time that we have being transformed into un-nature at breakneck here. speed. My life is part of natural history. I long to know where that history came from and ENDNOTES where it is going.” 1—Alison Griffiths, Shivers Down Your Any cultural production is doomed to incor- Spine: Cinema, Museums, and the porate, at least to some degree, the ideologies Immersive View (New York: Columbia of the moment when it was produced. Our University Press, 2008), 2. enlightened critiques of the past and present will, in time, seem equally reflective of current 2—Joris Ivens, The Camera and I (New cultural assumptions, some of which are sure York: International Publishers, 1974), 137. to be questioned by our descendants. Once 3—For a discussion of the history of “doc- particular political arguments have come to ument” and “documentary,” along with seem out of date, the supportive documents related terminology, see Philip Rosen, used by a documentary become suspect: one “Document and Documentary: On the must wonder if these documents were chosen Persistence of Historical Concepts,” in ed. primarily on the basis of confirmation bias (of Michael Renov, Theorizing Documentary course, once documentary arguments become (New York: Routledge, 1993), 58-89. outdated, the documentaries themselves become documents of a different kind). On 4—Nichols: “Documentaries seek to per- the other hand, a photographic or cinematic suade or convince us: by the strength commitment to document itself often produces of their argument or point of view and results that continue to become more valuable the appeal, or power, of their voice. The as more time passes. voice of documentary is the specific The dioramic cinema reveals what the film- way in which an argument or perspec- makers have believed we need to see, what tive is expressed.” See Bill Nichols, only they have been willing to use the most Introduction to Documentary (Bloomington: advanced moving-image technologies avail- Indiana University Press, 2001), 43. able to them to help us see more clearly. They

MacDonald \ 95 5—Ibid., 86. market the Daguerrotype) to refer to his “Diorama,” an early form of moving-image 6—Griffiths, Shivers Down Your Spine, 11. entertainment that involved paintings on 7—The development of museum dis- both sides of fabric that could be translu- play is too complex for us to say that cent or opaque when lit either from behind Akeley was the inventor of the habi- or from the front by light sources not tat diorama. Alison Griffiths discusses visible to the audience: during a Diorama some of the developments that preced- show in Paris or London, the audience ed Akeley’s contributions in Chapter would watch each of two images (usually 1 of Wondrous Difference—including of spectacular environmental and archi- British collector E. T. Booth, who be- tectural sites) for about fifteen minutes, gan mounting bird groups in 1858. during which a complex system of lights, screens, shutters, and curtains allowed 8—Carl Akeley’s Africa: The Account of each image to mysteriously transform. An the Akeley-Eastman-Pomeroy African Hall excellent discussion of Daguerre’s Diorama Expedition of the American Museum of is available in Richard D. Altick’s The Natural History (New York: Dodd, Mead, Shows of London (Cambridge, MA: Harvard 1929), by Mary L. Jobe Akeley, Akeley’s University Press, 1978), chapter 12. second wife; and Jay Kirk’s Kingdom Under Glass (New York: Henry Holt, 2010) are the 11—James Lippitt Clark, in “The Image most extensive discussions of Akeley’s of Africa,” from The Complete Book work on the Hall of African Mammals at of African Hall (New York: American the American Museum of Natural History. Museum of Natural History, 1936), 73. Useful general background on Akeley is Lippitt was Director of Arts, Preparation available in Douglas J. Preston, Dinosaurs and Installation at the Museum. in the Attic: An Excursion into the American For information about and extensive il- Museum of Natural History (New York: St. lustration of the habitat dioramas at the Martins Press, 1986), chapter 7; Joseph American Museum of Natural History, and Wallace, A Gathering of Wonders: Behind the Hall of African Mammals in particular, the Scenes at the American Museum of see Stephen Christopher Quinn, Windows Natural History (New York: St. Martins on Nature: The Great Habitat Dioramas Press, 2000): chapter 1; and Melissa of the American Museum of Natural Milgrom, Adventures in Taxidermy (Boston: History (New York: Abrams/American Houghton-Mifflin, 2010), chapter 3. See Museum of Natural History, 2006). also Mark Alvey’s overview of Akeley’s life and career, “The Cinema as Taxidermy: Carl 12—That Akeley saw himself as an artist Akeley and the Preservative Obsession," in as well as a kind of scientist is obvi- Framework 48, no. 1 (Spring 2007): 23-45. ous when one examines the three large bronze sculptures he created for the Field 9—Information about the Akeley cam- Museum the year before his death. “Lion era is available at www.gmcamera.com/ Spearing” portrays two moments within blog/2011/08/the-akeley-35mm-mo- an implicit narrative. “The Charging Lions” tion-picture-camera-no-158/. This site and “Facing the Charge” reveal a male includes excellent illustrations of the and a female lion confronting three men camera and its innovations. See also the prepared to attack them. “The Requiem” video by Sam Dodge on YouTube www. depicts the same three men with a dead youtube.com/watch?v=jgfTWkS9Gvw. lion at their feet. It seems clear from 10—The term “diorama” was coined during “Lion Spearing” that Akeley had come the early decades of the nineteenth cen- to see himself as an artist in the classi- tury by Louis Daguerre (who would later cal sense—and perhaps that he hoped

MacDonald \ 96 that his dioramas might be understood as meeting, the moment of truth, the original evidence of his artistry as well as of his encounter. The moment seems fragile, the adventurous life, his knowledge of ani- animals about to disappear, the commu- mal life, and his mastery of the craft of nion about to break; the Hall threatens to taxidermy. Though these sculptures are dissolve into the chaos of the Age of Man. currently arranged in an order that seems But it does not. The gaze holds, and the to impede the temporal order Akeley ap- wary animal heals those who will look.” parently meant to suggest, they represent See The Haraway Reader (Routledge: New the before and immediately after of a York, 2004), 156-57. Haraway’s descrip- dynamic moment, what in cinema would tion is engaging, but not accurate—very be called a dialectic juxtaposition between few of the dioramas include animals that an event about to happen and its result. are clearly looking at the spectator. 13—For information about the history 17—Douglas Preston reminds us that when of the 360-degree panorama (and the Akeley returned to Africa in 1926, he was moving panorama) see chapters 10-15 shocked to see how much had changed of Altick’s The Shows of London; Stephan since his 1921 safari and that the destruc- Oettermann’s The Panorama: History of tion of wildlife was occurring at a much a Mass Medium (New York: Zone, 1997), more rapid pace than he had previously and Bernard Comment’s The Painted thought possible. “I have not appreciated,” Panorama (New York: Abrams, 2000). he wrote to the Museum’s Director during a convalescence, “the absolute necessity 14—The fact that the first sponsor of of carrying on the African Hall, if it is ever African Hall dioramas was George Eastman, to be done, as I do now after this painful who had developed the flexible roll film revelation. The old conditions, the story necessary for extending the temporal of which we want to tell, are now gone, duration of works of cinema, is evidence and in another decade the men who know of a fundamental historical connection them will all be gone” (Akeley’s emphasis). between cinema and the habitat diorama. See Preston, Dinosaurs in the Attic, 84. 15—The Akeley Hall of African Mammals 18—The design of the Hall of African opened to the public on May 20, 1936. Mammals is panoramic, on both the bot- At the time, 15 dioramas (of the planned tom level and on the balcony. On both 28) had been completed. Of those, Akeley floors, the doors at either end of the hall had provided the taxidermy for only the are flanked by larger, “wide-screen” di- mountain gorilla diorama and for the oramas that tend to reveal scenes of okapi diorama (the bull only). Dozens broader scope (“Waterhole Group,” of other craftsmen saw to the taxider- “Plains,” “Upper Nile Region”) or larg- my, the foregrounds and backgrounds er animals (“Black Rhinoceros,” “White of the dioramas, all of them completed Rhinoceros”). The five dioramas on each between 1934 and 1942. For details, side of the Hall on both main floor and see Quinn, Windows on Nature, 166. balcony are somewhat smaller and, in 16—In “Taxidermy in the Garden of general, devoted to a single species. Eden, New York City, 1908-1936” Donna The larger dioramas are set at an an- Haraway describes the shared “gaze” gle between the doors and the long side between “animal” and spectator: “Each walls, so that a curve is roughly evoked diorama has at least one animal that at each corner, echoing the panoram- catches the viewer’s gaze and holds it in ic painting at the rear of each diorama. communion. The animal is vigilant, ready 19—Boston Phoenix, September 4, 2012. to sound an alarm at the intrusion of man, Review available. My reading Peary’s but ready also to hold forever the gaze of

MacDonald \ 97 brief review and seeing that he had giv- as unlawful cultural appropriation and en Samsara only 1½ “stars” was one implicitly a way of demonstrating cultural of the instigations of this essay and superiority, or at least cultural insensitivity. a larger project of which it is part. Much has been made of what these critics see as stereotyping: for example, there are 20—Particular sequences in both Baraka a number of scenes of drunkenness—by and Samsara seem conscious references my count seven shots in the roughly 200 to habitat dioramas. The opening se- shots of the piece—but I don’t read these quence in Baraka, of monkeys soaking in moments as a stereotyping of Indigenous a hot spring, seemingly in the Himalayas, people but as a representation of a wide- is clearly a habitat-diorama-in-motion. spread, indeed cross-cultural, tendency of And in Samsara Fricke’s depiction of a young people using cell phones to make group of Africans near a grass hut seems and post YouTube videos of embarrass- a conscious (or unconscious) reference ing moments. That Gagnon did not get to the tradition of the “life group.” permission from the YouTube posters to 21—The ethnographic villages at world’s re-use their work raises a familiar issue, fairs, controversial then and now, were though to deal with it we would need to closely related, as a form of exhibition, to question whether other contributors to the museum life group and to the hab- the history of found-footage film—Esfir itat diorama. In Wondrous Difference Shub, Joseph Cornell, Bruce Conner, (see note 23) Alison Griffiths provides Jennifer Proctor, Bill Morrison—should a painstaking overview of the debates have searched for the producers of materi- surrounding ethnographic villages and al they assumed was in the public domain. explores related forms of exhibition. 26—Haraway, The Haraway Reader, 169. 22—Unpublished interview 27—Fatimah Tobing Rony, The Third with Geyrhalter, 2017. Eye: Race, Cinema, and Ethnographic 23—In fact, each 45-minute “shot” is Spectacle (Durham: Duke University made up of several shots, though the eli- Press, 1996), 102, 115. Tobing Rony’s sions between them are virtually invisible. assumption that, in order to represent an Indigenous people, one must be- 24—Benning: “my camera can hold two lieve they are dying is unconvincing: S x S Cards (Sony 32GB memory cards), one must believe they are changing, each can record about 58 minutes, so that traditional ways are disappearing i had to reload the cards to get over 3 and that those traditional ways remain hours. but i can exchange a card while worthy of respect and representation. the other card is recording so that’s no problem. but my battery was getting low 28—Ronald B. Tobias, Film and the after about 2 hours so i had to change American Moral Vision of Nature: batteries once, which meant a 10-second Theodore Roosevelt to Walt Disney break which is hidden by a dissolve, so (East Lansing: Michigan State it’s technically two shots but there’s no University Press, 2011), 144. need to admit to this for it’s negligible”— 29—Tobing Rony, 112; Tobias, 165. Bill email to the author, August 19, 2014. Nichols confirms this reading: “When 25—The controversy about of the North Robert Flaherty films Nanook biting into is a function of its focus on the YouTube a phonograph record to see what kind postings of Indigenous individuals in of thing this strange disc that produc- northern Canada. Indigenous (and other) es sound is, the inclusion, duration, and critics of the film see Gagnon’s recycling specific placement of the shot . . . re- of indigenously produced YouTube videos veal a willingness on Flaherty’s part

MacDonald \ 98 to let Nanook be the butt of a joke: 32—The length of Benning’s shots in Nanook ‘erroneously’ uses his mouth natural history depends on the mathe- where he should use his ear”—Nichols, matical concept of π, which has always Introduction to Documentary, 44. fascinated Benning: each successive shot in the film corresponds to the suc- 30—Fricke: “The first time I worked in cessive numbers of π: 3.1416… Mecca was through the Saudi Ministry of Information. I believe I was the first west- 33—Hiroshi Sugimoto, “Unnatural erner to enter and film (certainly with Nature,” the introduction to Hiroshi an Imax camera) at the Masjid al Haram Sugimoto: Dioramas (New York: Damiani mosque. I returned to Los Angeles with and Matsumoto Editions, 2014). all the 65mm negative we shot and had it processed at MGM labs in Culver City”; “The second time I worked in Mecca was during the shooting for Samsara, and I was only able to shoot from rooftops. This was during Ramadan, which takes place all day and night, when there are about two million pilgrims in the mosque. I had to move around underground and stay off the streets—Mecca has an intricate un- derground tunnel system connecting all the hotels near the mosque. Our fixer got me on top of the new Ben Ladin Tower, which was under construction at that time, right next to the mosque; now it’s part of the Makkah Royal Clock Tower Hotel. I’m setting up to shoot when Osama Bin Laden’s older brother, the Shiekh, arrives on the roof and wants us removed im- mediately—because our fixer didn’t get permission for us to be there from the Bin Laden family, only from the build- ing manager. I’m able to explain to the Sheikh that the world needs to see how beautiful this event is. There’s a long, pregnant pause, wrapped in the aro- ma of pachuli oil; then the Shiekh says, ‘You’re welcome. Come back when we finish praying. You are welcome’”— Fricke, unpublished interview, 2017. 31—Glyn Davis in his essay, “Dead Time: James Benning, Taxidermist,” current- ly unpublished, explores natural history and the way Benning transforms the mu- seum itself into a dioramic panorama of the spaces in the Naturhistorisches Museum that are normally not seen by visitors to the museum’s exhibits.

MacDonald \ 99

\ Volume 1 \ We live in a world filled with images that are captured, edited, and published at hyper speeds. Images referring to images. Our political, ethical, and intimate lives are constructed around images, through images, and in images.1

The Abounaddara Film Collective, an anony- mous group of Syrian filmmakers that emerged alongside the onset of the country’s civil uprising in 2011, drafted these lines as the preface to their brief 2014 “concept pa- per for the coming revolution.” In the paper, they claim a “right to the dignified image,” a transnational civil protection that the col- lective wishes to see amended to the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Maintaining that such a protection is essential to preserve the dignity and integrity of Syrians REPRESENTATIONAL REGIMES \ as images of their abjection circulate the globe A CONVERSATION WITH THE with increased frequency, the right to a digni- ABOUNADDARA FILM COLLECTIVE fied image has emerged as an integral corollary to the collective’s prodigious video output JASON FOX AND ABOUNADDARA over the past six years. Abounaddara insists that it is time to re-evaluate the role and value of atrocity imagery in wartime reporting and humanitar- ian campaigns. In the intensifying circulation of audio-visual media through the digital networks of global communication, the col- lective challenges a conventional notion that recording technologies are tools added to con- tiguous, pre-existing physical spaces. Instead, their frame encourages us to see cameras, the images they produce, and the networks through which they circulate as constitutive parts of virtual geographies, or spaces linked by the vectors of information that transmit images of events across the globe. For the collective, the ongoing war in Syria is an inter- national event in that journalism covering the war produces a feedback loop between the physical sites of conflict and the virtual sites of mediated encounter. Wherever the violence depicted is framed in sectarian and geopo- litical terms, media coverage retroactively supports President Bashar al-Assad’s contin- ued rule as the Assad family have long framed their sovereign claim in Syria through their unique ability to manage a diverse population.

Fox \ 101 For the collective, the right not to live under is it a response to particular conditions that the conditions of a brutal dictatorship is inte- emerged later? grally linked to the right to a dignified image. Over the past three years, I have pro- A grammed Abounaddara’s videos and Abounaddara was born out of a need to liber- participated in public events with the collec- ate ourselves from the dominant images that tive’s spokesperson. This conversation with tend to reduce Syrians to a function of either Abounaddara took place by email in Fall, 2017. geopolitics or religion. Our first films released in 2010 show Syrians in their daily lives, neu- INTERVIEW tralizing the geopolitical or religious context that has been plastered all over their faces. JASON FOX There was a claim to dignity to the extent that, Four years after Abounaddara emerged along- in accordance with a precept by a certain Mr. side the onset of the Syrian Revolution, the Kant, we represent our own with the consid- collective asserted a claim for a right to a dig- eration that as human beings they must not nified image. What does the claim call for? be treated as means, but rather as ends in themselves. ABOUNADDARA COLLECTIVE In 2011, when the popular uprising erupted Since 2011, the screens of the world have ex- onto the streets, we published a statement hibited Syrian bodies marked by indignity while calling for an aesthetic translation of the call the citizens of democratic states are protected for dignity declared by the peaceful protestors. from being exhibited in such a way. We launched ourselves into the production of Faced with this form of segregation, what short weekly films aimed at conveying a sen- is to be done? How can a regime of represen- sory counter-information while deconstructing tation that undermines the principle of dignity the geopolitical or religious frame that dis- and the idea of a common world be remedied? tanced Syrians from the common world. In 2013, we published an article titled But we realised that this aesthetic struggle “Respectons le droit à l’image pour le peuple could not succeed without questioning the syrien” (Respect the Right to the Image for the regime of representation in a juridical sense. In Syrian People), and in conjunction we circu- addition, we used the platform provided by The lated a short film denouncing the spectacle of Vera List Center for Art and Politics in 2014 to indignity. But since our call fell on deaf ears, advance our critique of the media and develop in 2014 we proposed a critique of the media, a legal proposal. as well as a legal approach with the help of a Syrian lawyer and legal scholar. And since JF 2016, we have pursued this critical reflec- Following Serge Daney’s argument in the con- tion in the framework of a course at the Royal text of the live tele-visualization of the 1990-91 Institute of Art in Stockholm. invasion of Iraq, “We are no longer the witness- In short, we call for the recognition of every es of the world, but rather the witnesses of the human being’s right to enjoy a dignified image images of the world,” the Abounaddara collec- on the basis of existing provisions in inter- tive seems to suggest that the desire to report national law. This is to reaffirm the principle live and “from the inside” marks a fundamental of dignity in the face of those who abuse the transformation in the relationship between war representation of the world’s most vulnerable and its media coverage. individuals in the name of freedom, solidarity, or compassion. A We discovered Serge Daney’s work thanks JF to Dork Zabunyan, a film theorist whom our Did this claim inform Abounaddara’s practice collective has been in dialogue with since from the earliest days of the collective, or 2011. The discovery was also made following

Fox \ 102 a crucial meeting with Osama al-Habaly, an context, or a cover story, for the conditions of activist who delivered a short anonymous war reportage that you critique? testimony to us about his experiences with the international media a few months after the A beginning of the uprising. Let’s be precise. The regime has always strict- Osama—who disappeared into regime de- ly controlled the entry of journalists to the tention in 2012—taught us that the images of country. It’s possible to argue that every article war from the inside broadcast on TV were no or report published by the international media longer being filmed spontaneously by activists. since 1963—the date the Ba'ath Party seized These images were rather directly or indirectly power in a coup—has been produced by jour- produced by the media who conceal their own nalists who could only report in the country involvement in order to evade any ethical, legal under strict escort by the regime’s secret or political obligations. In other words, we are police. So in 2011, Bashar al-Assad only had to no longer dealing with a mode of image pro- reinforce a rule that had long existed, accord- duction based on the figure of the professional ing to which images of Syrian society had to journalist, but rather on the local informants be produced under state control. called citizen journalists. But the media could no longer afford to After having produced independent images accept such a rule while the state launched a in the service of the popular uprising, these war against society. There was an obligation to citizen journalists find themselves employed find an alternative in order to dodge any sus- as subcontractors at the mercy of TV channels picions of complicity when other images were which demand ever more sensationalist foot- being produced (note, in passing, that there age in order to satisfy the internal competition has been a rapid return to the prior situation: between channels, as well as between TV and foreign journalists are once again queuing up other media platforms. They find themselves to interview the head of state, despite the fact trapped, forced to sanction a pornographic that in the meantime he has become a sus- form of representation of war that, in focussing pected war criminal). on dead and disfigured bodies, grants specta- It is in this context that TV channels seize tors the private enjoyment of the pain of others. hold of the activist images creating a buzz on In the end, war from the inside represents social media. But in attempting to compete the alignment of the realm of television with with social media, TV channels have defused the realm of social media, where war can the disruptive force of these images while cel- seduce unfettered. This is an historic turning ebrating them together with the entertainment point in which images are produced by the industries. same actors engaged in war and not by pro- But the widespread use of activist imag- fessional reporters. More than ever, “images es has become catastrophic since it hasn’t of war are images that wage war,” to quote yielded credible information. It has become Serge Daney. a guarantee for the confusion that benefits By entrusting war coverage to actors the Syrian state at the expense of society. But engaged in warfare we undermine the founda- could it have been otherwise in such a dramat- tions of a truth regime built by generations of ic state of war? journalists and professional reporters. This has In 2014, we published an article in the press become grist to the mill of post-truth, a weap- as a reminder that alternatives exist, refer- on wielded by all the political and economic ring in particular to One Minute for Sarajevo, powers eager to rid themselves of any count- a daily chronicle of the lives of the inhabi- er-power that stands in their way. tants of the besieged city, broadcast daily by a European TV network. We even went so far JF as to agree to work with a European televi- How does Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s sion network proposing to program our work restriction on foreign journalists provide a in its geopolitical slot, contrary to our fiercely

Fox \ 103 anti-geopolitical position. Our challenge was The images of atrocity fall under the latter to construct an alternative within the existing category: the images of war. And when utilized framework. As a result, we complied with the on a large scale by the Syrian and foreign codes of the TV documentary format by mak- media, these images reduce society’s struggle ing a 52-minute-long feature. But we did our to bloody chaos. How can one believe in the best to subvert the format through a disruptive revolution if, while demonstrating peacefully, aesthetic that switches between the codes of Al Jazeera and CNN exhibit your corpses, and cinema, video, and reportage. Syrian TV exhibits the corpses of the soldiers you’re supposed to have murdered? JF Multiplied by screens, death has invaded At the heart of the collective’s claim to the the space of our daily lives. It was all the more right to dignified images is an assertion that difficult to resist this daily flow of deathly photographic representations of war, and images because sometimes one was obliged especially representations of atrocity, do not to pore through them in the hope and fear of remain in the realm of representation. Rather, finding a missing loved one. Syrians ended you seem to argue that they have the capacity up traumatized by their own image. As for the to do material, physical harm to Syrians. But distant spectators, they found themselves this may be a difficult assertion for many peo- at best in the same shoes as Barack Obama, ple to accept. to whom we devoted an article entitled "The Honest Man and the Fratridicial Communities:" A in 2011, he admired the transition to democracy In mid-March 2011, despite the brutal mobi- in Syria; in 2016, he could only see religious lization of regime forces, a handful of young communities killing each other. Syrians take to the streets shouting Dignity, A more conventional response to negative Freedom or The Syrian people will not be hu- representations might be to argue that the miliated. Images of these events spread like same technologies of open communication wildfire via social media. They rapidly mobilize harnessed by corporate media formations other demonstrators across the country, and in their wartime reporting can also be har- reveal the contours of a national community in nessed by those who wish to offer alternative the process of liberating itself and assembling representations. Cell phones, video hosting around democratic values. platforms, and the internet offer alternative Shaken by the images, the regime reacts routes to power outside of the corporate media with the voice of Bashar al-Assad denouncing landscape, resources that Abounaddara al- a conspiratorial war against Syria. Immediately, ready employs. state media begins to manufacture images of war, images of masked men firing at the army, A corpses of soldiers supposedly murdered by This is not a problem of negative representa- demonstrators described as Zionists from tions, but rather a regime of representation that within. Anonymous videos surface simultane- flouts the dignity of the weakest and bolsters ously on YouTube showing scenes of torture, the dignity of the strongest. What happened in humiliation or killing, attempting to spread Syria is that cameras were given to people who the idea that the country is prey to chaos and demanded dignity, while being told: “If you want barbarism. a place of your own on the screens of the world, So we are dealing with the confrontation of if you want recognition, you have no choice but two sorts of image that aim to produce con- to film your own indignity. For the more stripped crete effects on Syrians: on the one hand, of dignity you are, the more the world will look images of uprising calling for people to take at you and even help you.” to the streets to weave new social ties; on the This spectacle of indignity has ended up other, images of war seeking to encase them confining Syrians to the role of the subhu- in fear and isolation. man or, at best, the Elephant Man. Certainly,

Fox \ 104 it is possible to resist by producing dignified JF images. This is what we’ve been trying to do For some, there is legal protection. Can you ourselves for years. But what chance do films comment on the ways that many corporate like ours have on the screens of the world media outlets who are financially invested in governed by today’s law of blood (“if it bleeds, Syrian reporting are able to rely on intellectu- it leads”) and market algorithms? al property laws to prevent others from using In reality, the law of blood and algorithms their own images, content, and branding how- only benefits the strongest. Which is actually ever they see fit? the case in Syria. The regime itself authorized Facebook and YouTube access after years of A blocking access. It did this in February 2011, No comment. even though social media was supposedly the Arab Spring’s greatest ally. JF Why does the collective turn to the United JF Nations, and the Universal Declaration of Does advocating for the prohibition of Human Rights as the most meaningful legal certain types of media circulation risk advo- and ethical framework to enforce the right to cating for censorship? the dignified image?

A A It is not a question of prohibiting anything, Abounaddara was born in 2010, under a veil of but rather of applying the same rule to all. anonymity. We were suspicious of the engaged Censorship is an argument often deployed by filmmaker, the posture adopted by our elders. the promoters of the spectacle of indignity. We thought it best to develop a filmmaking But no one talks about censorship when TVs practice that could inspire people with the refrain from showing footage of US victims on minimum discourse necessary. 9/11, or when YouTube removes footage of the But it turns out that we are dealing with a re- beheading of James Foley. Even the leader of gime of representation that drapes itself in the the French far right, Marine Le Pen, doesn’t cloak of the universal, invoking freedom while dare mention censorship when forced to practicing segregation. This is why we have no take down the photos of the beheading from choice but to oppose it with a higher principle, her Twitter account. She’s sooner judged for invoked spontaneously by Syrians themselves, re-circulating those images, her parliamentary and recognized as such in the Universal immunity withdrawn because of this attack on Declaration of Human Rights, namely: dignity human dignity. defined as the condition of possibility for the Apart from that, the challenge is to defend enjoyment of our human rights. human dignity without endorsing the notion of the unrepresentable. Saying that something JF cannot be represented is contrary to the ethic The collective’s interest in the United Nations of the filmmaker who must be able to represent framework might imply an interest in a univer- anything at all with the tools of art. But death is salist framework. not just anything. It is a subject that engages humanity’s most fundamental values. Which is A why we must represent it in the throes of fear We are engaged in a struggle that is part of a and trembling, to use an expression adopted by universal history—of social struggles led by Jacques Rivette in his essay “On Abjection.” the anonymous, by pariahs, by outsiders. But We have already attempted to do this in some the screens of the world enclose us in a sin- of our films, such as the Absence of God or gle geography: the Middle East of Orientalists, Apocalypse Here. And we will continue to do so despots and Islamists. as long as it’s necessary. The only universal framework that matters

Fox \ 105 is that of the social struggles we feed on and ENDNOTES that we have a duty to feed in turn. It is only in 1—Abounaddara Film Collective, “A this context that we seek to develop our prac- Right to the Image for all: A concept pa- tice of filmmaking while sharing our work with per for a coming revolution,” 2014. the citizens of Syria and the world. As for the United Nations, its only interest to us is as cus- todian of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which grounds our common world on the principle of dignity.

JF Conventional approaches to human rights video suggest that international communities of humanitarian monitoring, including the UN, rely on broadcast media representations to transmit images of atrocity across the globe in order to mobilize shame and compel interna- tional actors to intervene.

A We are image makers. Our job is not to de- fend a cause, no matter how just, but to use the tools of art to reveal the world in all its states. It turns out that we’ve been driven to defending a cause—the right to a dignified image—because the current regime of repre- sentation undermines the possibility for us to accomplish our task as image makers and to enjoy our fundamental rights as humans.

JF What kinds of engagements have Abounaddara had with the United Nations in support of the collective’s proposed amendment?

A We have not proposed an amendment. And we hope that more qualified people than us will do so as soon as they finish reading this interview.

Fox \ 106 \ Volume 1 \ In the late 1980s, a number of entrepreneurs in San Francisco’s Bay Area were working on the development of technology that could bring what we now call virtual reality to the commer- cial market. In a 1990 essay, John Perry Barlow —Grateful Dead lyricist and later founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation—wrote an account of what it felt like to use one of those systems:

Suddenly, I don’t have a body anymore. All that remains of the aging shambles which usually constitutes my corporeal self is a glowing, golden hand floating before me like Macbeth’s dagger . . . . In this pulsat- ing new landscape, I’ve been reduced to a point of view . . . At least I know where I left my body. It’s in a room called Cyberia in a building called Autodesk in a town TECHNOLOGIES OF SEEING AND called Sausalito, California. Planet Earth. TECHNOLOGIES OF CORPOREALITY \ Milky Way. So on and so forth. My body is CURRENTS IN NONFICTION cradled in its usual cozy node of space- VIRTUAL REALITY time vectors . . . But I . . . or “I” . . . am in cyberspace, a universe churned up from MANDY ROSE computer code. . . 1

Barlow’s description of this nascent media hinges on his surprising experience of corpo- reality. He finds himself feeling detached from his physical form, his senses contracted to the act of looking only. He sees in cyberspace, while his body resides elsewhere. That same year, Randal Walser, a member of the team that built the Cyberia virtual reality (VR) platform that Barlow describes in this passage, pub- lished a paper which set out his own vision for VR that centers on a new experience of embodiment.

Whereas film is used to show a reality to an audience, cyberspace is used to give a virtual body, and a role, to everyone in the audience. Print and radio tell, stage and film show, cyberspace embodies . . . A spacemaker sets up a world for an audience to act directly within, and not just so the audience can imagine they are experiencing an interesting reality, but so they can experience it directly. 2

Rose \ 107 These two passages appear to express deeply and feminist studies, provides a significant contradictory visions of VR. In Barlow’s experi- resource. At the same time, the forms of expe- ence, the move into a virtual world is based on riential engagement involved in VR challenge a form of disembodiment. Meanwhile, Walser analytical tools of visual culture. A hermeneu- differentiates cyberspace from previous media tic approach has limited value in addressing an forms precisely through reference to embodi- experience which has more in common with a ment. For him, it is the virtual embodiment that video game than a movie. Phenomenology and VR provides that is the gateway to an experi- experience design may have more relevance ential engagement with a new dimension. A than textual analysis to address these forms quarter century later, after the false start of where storytelling gives way to what some are second wave VR in which Walser and Barlow calling storyliving.5 Scholarship in interactive were key players, developments in hardware documentary has begun the work of address- and software have made VR accessible as a ing these hybrid forms. Now, VR demands a mass market proposition, and the platform is next generation of research. Acknowledging emerging as a significant force in the cultural this wider context, this article seeks to provide landscape.3 In an unanticipated development, an initial mapping of the landscape of nonfic- this third wave of VR has been eagerly adopted tion VR through the ways these works engage by nonfiction media makers. A raft of docu- the body. In addressing this arena of work, I am mentary VR projects continue to appear at film also signaling the need for the development of festivals and the platform has been harnessed more agile critical frameworks for the analysis by both old and new journalism including the and critique of these technologically mediated Guardian, New York Times, PBS Frontline, and encounters, ones that are equally responsive Vice News. to textual effects and immersive engagement. Surveying the contemporary nonfiction work being developed within the framework FROM SEEING TO PRESENCE of VR, an opposition emerges between the promise of VR as Perry Barlow’s escape from Documentary is a malleable form. From the materiality and Walser’s promise of corporeal birth of film sound through the invention of engagement. In this article, I consider how this sync sound to the launch of the handicam, opposition between embodiment and disem- new technologies have been harnessed by bodiment manifests in some recent projects. documentarians for what they might offer the By grounding my analysis through reference to project of reflecting and critiquing our shared the imaginary of these VR pioneers, I explore world. One of the drivers of experimentation how VR nonfiction reflects divergent currents, in and uptake of new media technologies has engaging “technologies of seeing” with a been an interest in their capacity to provide lineage going back to the Renaissance while ever more immersive, lifelike experiences for introducing novel “technologies of corporeal- audiences. The rapid embrace of 360° video, ity” and ask what is at stake for documentary also known as spherical video and cinematic epistemology in these developments.4 VR, originating with the launch of the Oculus This new field where VR and nonfiction -in Rift developer kit, can be situated within this tersect demands analysis and theorization, yet context. it presents a variety of challenges for docu- While the coming of sound and later the mentary scholars. As an emergent medium in a capacity to capture image and sound in sync process of rapid development, with producers on location deepened the immersive potential experimenting with diverse platforms, diver- of cinema, VR brings about a novel relationship gent affordances and vocabularies, VR invites to the moving image as the audience sitting multiple avenues of enquiry. Scholarship on in the dark watching a movie is replaced with VR nonfiction is only just beginning, although a lone participant in a headset interacting critical work prompted by second wave VR in with a computer system.6 The use of the term contexts including art history, cultural studies VR today obscures what are in fact divergent

Rose \ 108 platforms with distinct affordances. What the United Nations. The series comprises por- they have in common is the nature of immer- traits of a Syrian child in a Jordanian refugee sion produced within a headset. Where the camp, a Palestinian mother living in Gaza, and experience of watching a movie or looking an Ebola survivor in Liberia. Produced within at a painting has been compared to looking the remit of the UN’s Millennium Campaign through the Renaissance scholar Alberti’s objectives, the credits explain that the works window, the experience of VR has been com- seek to “call attention to the world’s most pared to falling through that window so that pressing challenges and bring citizens’ voic- one feels as if one is situated within the es into the decision making processes that frame.7 This feeling of being inside the events affect their lives.” These VR projects have depicted in VR is known as presence—an premiered at major film festivals including optical illusion which can be seen as fitting Cannes, Sundance and Tribeca, were featured within the cinematic tradition that exploits “a at the World Economic Forum in Davos, and peculiar ability of the human eye to deceive have played a significant role in encouraging the mind.”8 While cinema viewing is based on the uptake of 360° video for journalism, docu- a series of still images which are interpreted mentary and humanitarianism. as movement by the viewer due to the per- The third portrait in the series, Waves of sistence of the optical image on the retina, Grace (2014), portrays Decontee Davis, a sur- VR rests on the illusion that—if a computer vivor of the Ebola virus who takes advantage displays a panoramic 3D image which chang- of her immunity to work with the sick and with es in a lifelike way as the participant turns her children orphaned by the disease. Like all of head—her visual experience suggests that the pieces produced by Milk / Arora in part- she is in the place she sees, even though her nership with the UN, Waves of Grace involves bodily sensation (proprioception) tells her a form of observational documentary with a that she is in situ where she put the headset voiceover from the subject’s point of view. It on. The feeling of presence created by this was devised, a caption explains, from con- illusion is the characteristic sensory experi- versations with Davis and voiced by an actor. ence of VR.9 YouTube videos began to appear A series of long static shots reflect everyday in 2014 that showed people trying VR for the scenes—the market, the school, the burial first time. Their reactions illustrate the impact grounds. Davis is shown in the hospital tend- of presence and the paradoxical nature of VR ing to a sick child, working with orphans, at a participant experience—the optical illusion of church service. The camera is mostly an unac- being there within events depicted while at knowledged observer, while the actor’s voice, the same time being fully aware of not being speaking in the first person, recounts the story there. of Davis’ near death and recovery from Ebola. Reviews of Waves of Grace are telling for SPHERICAL VIDEO - VISUAL IMMERSION their accounts of how presence is experienced in this 360° video. Erin Spens at Creators.Co Within months of the 2014 Oculus Rift devel- describes her encounter with the project: oper kit’s release, nonfiction experiments with VR began to appear. That year, Chris Milk and On a sunny day in Venice, California I find Aaron Koblin, both award-winners for their myself in the Vrse.works offices with innovative interactive work, formed a new enti- Samsung Gear, a virtual reality headset, ty, VRse.works (since rebranded as Within). strapped to my head and noise-cancel- They began to produce immersive nonfiction, ling headphones on. Within minutes I’m quickly gaining partners including the New in Liberia listening to Decontee Davis, an York Times, Vice News and NBC. VRse.works Ebola survivor, offer up a prayer for her drew attention through a series of 360° vid- country . . . As the narrator of this virtual eo projects produced by Chris Milk with Gabo reality film, Decontee takes me to differ- Arora, until recently the Creative Director at ent parts of her village where I can see

Rose \ 109 the aftermath and slow reconstruction of 360° video by situating it within a long history a society that’s been devastated by the of immersive image making. He illustrates the worst Ebola epidemic in history. 10 longevity of that project by citing the wording of the 1787 patent for the Panorama, or “La John Jurgenson at The Wall Street Journal nature a Coup D’oeil”—Nature at a glance— writes that “the new virtual reality film Waves as it was originally known: “La nature a Coup of Grace gives viewers (a) jolt of proximity by D’Oeil,” the patent reads, “is intended, by essentially embedding them with an Ebola drawing and painting, and a proper disposi- survivor in Liberia.“11 The language of immedi- tion of the whole, to perfect an entire view of acy—of meeting Davis, of being embedded in any country or situation.”14 Uricchio points out Liberia—is common in reviews of this and oth- how, in a remarkable pre-echo of the language er 360° video pieces. The accounts of these now being used in relation to 360° video, the reviewers also show how the experience of patent explains that the panorama is intended presence brings with it an intense emotional “so as to make observers feel . . . as if really on involvement. Angela Watercutter reports, “it’s the very spot.” As well as locating 360° video a powerful message even when read on paper, on a continuum with experiences that have but when heard while standing amongst the sought to immerse the viewer in a simulation orphans themselves and the graves of some of of the historical world, Uricchio also points to the more than 4,800 lives Ebola has claimed in another form of continuity, noting that 360° Liberia, it’s downright heartbreaking.”12 Here, video extends a long trajectory as a recording we can see how presence operates in the technology. “As the photograph and painting context of these nonfiction works as a sense are to their panoramic counterparts,” he ar- that the participant is witness to unmediated gues, “so is video to 360° video. Stereoscopic reality; that they are at the scene “among” the depth, immersion in a seamless world - the documentary subjects rather than engaging illusion is solid, and so are the assets.”15 As in critically with a creative documentary work. the case of the panorama, the participant in It is also remarkable how, while reviewers spherical video has a fixed position within a talk of being there, at the scene of the film- scene, and a fixed experience—the videos are ing, the body of the participant wearing the solid—defined at the point of recording and headset is ignored. While Barlow’s cyberspace will play the same every time. Uricchio thus adventure cited above involved an excursion suggests how the technical characteristics of into a world constructed from computer gen- spherical video situate it within another histor- erated images, his experience and that of the ical continuity, as a form of optical media in a reviewers of Waves of Grace are in other re- lineage with photography, cinema, television— spects similar—involving being “reduced to a those forms which Brian Winston has called, point of view”; “present” at the filmed scene “technologies of seeing.” through vision and hearing only. It is symp- While recognizing that as a recording tech- tomatic of the primacy of seeing in Western nology, 360° video resides within the lineage culture that an experience involving the dis- of optical media, and that as a wraparound embodied eye in which an inert body plays no visual experience, it has cultural precursors role can be discussed so readily as an experi- going back to the eighteenth century, it is still ence of the self. instructive to pay attention to the participant William Uricchio argues that to make sense experience of 360° video as it suggests the of what’s at play in the fast-moving field of VR, significant ways in which the platform is none- and to enable the development of the nascent theless novel. Reflecting on Waves of Grace in medium, it is necessary to “disambiguate the relation to Real Violence (2017), a piece with concept and its underlying technologies.” Only controversially brutal subject matter that was then, he suggests, “can we take the next step installed in the 2017 Whitney Biennial in New of developing new expressive vocabularies York, scholar Homay King notes the visceral and techniques.”13 Uricchio contextualizes response produced by 360° video and the way

Rose \ 110 that presence plays out for the participant experience of viewing VR, so, as Phillip Doyle within a journalistic context: has pointed out, the filmmaker is disembodied at the scene of the recording.18 We follow (Decontee Davis) through This raises significant issues for documen- these spaces where we truly feel in the tary. The presence of the filmmaker in the middle of it, not observing from a safe social space of the recording, while not a uni- distance. The possibility of any kind of versal fact, has been a central proposition for masterful gaze genuinely feels some- the ethical contract between producer, sub- what undone by the fact that we’re in a ject, and audience. In the space of filming, the 360° space.16 relationship between filmmaker and subject is negotiated (whether explicitly or tacitly), and Here, King draws out the implications of the whether the subjects are engaging with the frameless visual space that the format pro- filmmaker overtly while the camera rolls, or vides. Her reference to the “masterful gaze” ignoring the camera and crew, the texture of invokes Laura Mulvey’s 1970s analysis of that negotiation is, I would suggest, inscribed the male gaze as a structuring principle in in the footage. When it comes to the work of Hollywood film 17 and invites us to consider representing human subjects, the quality and how 360° video breaks with the structuring nuance of that interaction determines, con- of the gaze brought about through editing in sciously or not, the way that a documentary linear documentary. In 360° video then, while is judged by the viewer. Taking the filmmaker the point of view (the place where the cam- or their proxy, the cameraperson, out of that era is set up) is pre-determined, the direction equation destabilizes the contract between of view is open. Within the constraints of the producer and subject, and between subject selected shots and camera positions, the par- and audience. It is contradictory that a media ticipant decides where to look. The openness technology being heralded for its prosocial of the image combined with the feeling of potential should efface the social engage- being there which presence produces is, King ment between producer and subject that has suggests, a new experience for the participant historically been at the heart of documentary which, in this particular case, leads to an unfa- filming—following a logic of surveillance rather miliar sense of vulnerability. than one of dialogue. While this hybrid platform may reconfig- Chris Milk, co-producer of Waves of Grace, ure the documentary gaze, offering a novel influentially, if contentiously, argues that VR experience to the audience / participant, it is an “empathy machine.”19 To challenge this is worth considering what implications cine- claim, Kate Nash interrogates the “belief in the matic VR might have for the other parties in connection between immersion, empathy and the documentary triad of producer, subject, a moral orientation towards distant others,”20 and audience. While the camera lens has been which she suggests has driven VR video pro- understood as a proxy for the human eye—ap- duction in both humanitarian and journalistic proximating the human field of vision—the contexts. To do that, she considers the ways unbroken panorama produced by spherical vid- that factual media have been understood as eo is that of a machine. This 360° vision has facilitating an attitude of moral responsibility implications for the filming situation. As the within the audience, towards the events they filmmaker or camera person would inevitably witness, and asks what differentiates the na- be captured by a 360° view, the VR video cam- ture of witness within VR. Nash argues that in era is generally left to record unattended. It is any factual media “the experience of witness a paradox that the immersive feeling created as moral response-ability is necessarily frag- by 360° video in the participant is not mir- ile.”21 In the case of VR, the simulated nature rored by an equivalent immersion at the filming of the medium and the sense that presence scene on the part of the producer/filmmaker. produces of being involved in events rather Just as the participant is disembodied in the than just observing them across space and

Rose \ 111 time carries with it a risk of “improper dis- Bajau “sea nomads,” the Maasai, and tance.” This pertinent concept is one which Mongolian herders, through long takes and Nash draws from Chouliaraki, who challenges without commentary, the series encourages “practices of communication that subordi- not intense emotion but thoughtful reflection nate the voices of distant others to those of in the viewer/participant on the act of observ- the West while distancing the Western spec- ing the lives of distant others. Collisions (2015) tator from their own position of privilege.”22 is a 360° video documentary featuring Nyarri Improper distance, Nash argues, is a risk in Morgan, an elder of the Martu tribe in Western relation to presence, with its tendency to Australia’s Pilbara desert, who, in the 1950s, elicit strong emotion in the participant. Proper before the tribe had contact with Western cul- distance, Nash argues, involves a sense of ture, witnessed one of the British atomic tests. proximity combined with sufficient critical re- In the production process, the director, Lynette move that the viewer can shift from their own Walworth, enlisted Morgan as a co-creator, affective response to an engagement with the inviting him to engage with the 360° camera reality of the subject. Nash’s argument draws as he chose, and to include only content that a useful distinction between experience and he deemed appropriate to share. Morgan takes consciousness on the part of the participant in up the invitation to perform his story for the VR. Without a conscious awareness of being a camera and the finished work moves back- viewer of VR material, the illusion of proximity wards and forwards between past and present, that presence involves risks being a barrier to between 360° video and CGI created visual- empathy rather than an open door. isations of his account. Walworth’s approach Brian Winston asserts that the “basic invokes an alternative tradition to that of the illusionism” of technologies of seeing “dis- observational documentary. She turns instead guises their artifice, their cultural formation to the tradition of cinema verité, of filmmaking and their ideological import.”23 Over time, he as a Rouchian joint undertaking in which the suggests, they “bring us closer and closer to subject influences the filmmaking process and a sort of Borgesian map of reality—one which outcome. In Collisions, performative engage- corresponds at all points with the external ment on the part of the documentary subject world—but as they do so, they do little to help provides a strategy that takes advantage of us understand their own historical and social presence, while also foregrounding the fact of realities.” Winston’s argument is extremely filmmaking, producing a reflective position in pertinent to contemporary uses of cinematic the viewer—less a feeling of being there, more VR which foster an impression of documen- a close attention to the point of view of those tary material as unmediated reality, impeding who are there. a critical response in the viewer. Most of the If Walworth’s reflexive approach evokes 360° video pieces made to date have pursued the cinéma vérité of Jean Rouch, it is equally this illusionistic agenda, enlisting presence possible to be reminded of Direct Cinema’s and an observational style of filming to offer claims on the real by the illusionistic current the participant a sense of unmediated access within cinematic VR. As those two documen- to locations and social worlds remote from the tary movements tussled over the implications Global North. of handheld sync sound around 1960, so doc- However, it would be overly deterministic to umentarians today bring divergent politics suggest that a 360° camera leads inevitably to and philosophies to the potential of VR. While a particular kind of footage or audience re- cinematic VR develops themes with a long his- sponse—that is, instead, a matter of directorial tory in documentary, other VR platforms open approach. While Felix and Paul’s Nomads (2016) up new practices and debates. As documen- series reflects an interest in the exotic which is tary begins to intersect with technologies that common within 360° video production, its aes- allow multi-sensory engagement, new possi- thetic strategy provokes a different effect. bilities emerge for the documentary project of Portraying everyday life among Borneo’s convening reflections on the historical world.

Rose \ 112 MULTI-SENSORY IMMERSION central to VR development at that time. While Barlow’s first reaction to the platform empha- While producers of 360° video have harnessed sizes his visual experience, he also describes this technology of seeing for bearing virtual how he wears a so-called DataGlove that picks witness to the social world, other nonfic- up his movements, so that, “the relationship tion producers have been exploring how VR between my hand and the eyephones is pre- platforms might allow encounters with as- cisely measured by the two trackers so that my pects of our shared world through forms of hand appears where I would expect it to. When technologically mediated embodiment which I point or make a fist, the fiber optics sewn engage beyond the audio-visual. Marshmallow into the DataGlove convert kinesthetics into Laser Feast is a British design studio whose electronics. For a decisecond or so, my hand commercial work for blue chip companies disappears and then reappears, glowing and supports their artistic practice. Underpinned toon-like, in the appropriate shape.”26 by environmental concerns, their VR trilo- While Barlow’s experience of virtual embod- gy-in-progress—In the Eyes of the Animal iment proves to be glitch-prone and limited, (2015), Treehugger (2016), and a third piece subsequent developments in optics, haptics in development—explore VR as a platform to and positional tracking now allow for systems engage multiple senses in order to provide a which are subtly responsive to the movements fresh encounter with aspects of the non-hu- of hands, eyes, and bodies. These technologies man world. can facilitate modes of sensory engagement The first work in the trilogy, In the Eyes of with documentary subject matter; both types the Animal, arose from a residency supported of interactive engagement which are novel in by the Abandon Normal Devices Festival in the context of non-fiction and the reconfigura- Grizedale Forest in the English Lake District. tion of familiar sensory stimulation. Marshmallow Laser Feast’s Robin McNicholas In other recent projects, it is the sonic explains how the team sought to “explore the dimension of experience that is finding new sensory perspectives of the animals that lived expression through uses of positional au- there . . . by taking physical samples for the dio. Into Darkness (2016) is a VR experience headsets, sonic samples for the soundtrack, linked to the award-winning feature docu- and a 360° lidar scan—a digital sample of the mentary Notes on Blindness (2016), about environment too.”24 The resulting experience John Hull, a theologian who, during the 1980s, offers an expressive interpretation of the kept a record of the process of going blind in perspectives of four forest species—mosqui- the form of an audio diary. The VR work of- to, dragonfly, owl, and frog. To experience the fers the participant visceral insight into the work, the participant dons a headset and a experience of the visually impaired through subpack—a device worn as a backpack which the use of extracts from Hull’s diary entries, converts audio into tactile outputs. Particular illustrated by computer generated animation vibrations, for example, produce the embodied and binaural audio sound effects. In one mem- sensations of a mosquito. While employing VR, orable sequence, Hull describes why windy In the Eyes of the Animal is better described as and rainy weather have become welcome to a Mixed Reality (MR) experience, as it inter- him after his loss of sight, as those elements mingles the virtual and the material world. put contours and a horizon into his otherwise Designed to be experienced in the forest at featureless world. As the sound of wind blows the conclusion of a nature walk, it is meant to within the darkness of the headset, the partic- simulate “the feeling of the forest under your ipant turns towards the source of the sound, feet, the additional sounds . . . the smell . . . and outlines emerge out of the blackness indi- it gives the physical elements to the virtual cating things heard in the physical world. Here, world, and that was important to us as well.”25 rather than being told about how blindness As Randal Walser’s 1990 account of VR feels to Hull, VR allows an embodied impres- makes clear, kinaesthetic experience was sion of the experience being described.

Rose \ 113 These contemporary explorations of VR go Typically, de la Pena’s work is grounded in his- some way to answering critiques of the me- torical reality through vérité audio recordings dium which were articulated in response to which run uncut in real time, while her visuals the kinds of experiences offered within the are created in CGI. For de la Pena, the capacity second wave. In Technologies of the Gendered of the participant to move within the work is Body (1997), Ann Balsamo addressed second critical to the form of embodied presence that wave VR in the context of a feminist investi- she is seeking to engender. gation of the way the female body was being Importantly, these sensations of presence reconfigured and re-imagined through and can only be achieved if the changes in the vir- with technology across a variety of sites and tual environment happen in real time, that is, if practices including cosmetic surgery, repro- the viewer participant is allowed to move freely ductive technology, body-building, and science while the digital environment changes visually fiction. While her account is historically spe- and aurally in exact keeping with gaze, location cific, Balsamo’s analysis of virtual reality as a and body position (jumping, squatting, bending “technology of corporeality” is highly relevant etc) . . . By using both the body and the kairos today. “In efforts to colonise the electron- of a real time delivery to create an empathetic ic frontier,” she argues, “the material body connection, a new embodied digital rhetoric is repressed and divorced from the locus of emerges for framing persuasive arguments.28 knowledge . . . the body, as a sense apparatus, In Hunger in LA (2010), the participant feels is nothing more than excess baggage for the as if they are standing in line at a Los Angeles cyberspace traveller.”27 While this claim cer- food bank. When one of the people queuing tainly resonates with Barlow’s 1990 account of goes into a diabetic seizure, participants re- venturing into cyberspace by sloughing off the mark on the physicality of their reaction—it is “aging shambles” of his body, it is still perti- common for people to reach out to help the CGI nent to today’s cinematic VR experiences in avatar, for example. Here, despite images which which, despite the discourse of being there, are not life-like, the participant may experience the disembodied eye is the locus of knowl- a form of corporeal realism. The technologically edge while the body is redundant. However, mediated embodiment which is the experience in contemporary experiments like In the Eyes of Hunger in LA stands in sharp contrast to the of the Animals and Into Darkness we can see disembodiment which is the hallmark of partic- contemporary VR technologies of corporeality ipant experience in cinematic VR. reclaimed for their potential as routes to en- Producers interested in VR for embodiment gage embodied knowledge. today can look to rich precedents in second Movement is, of course, a fundamental wave VR. In the 1990s the artist Char Davies means through which we inhabit and explore turned from painting to VR to make work that the world around us. Positional tracking now could provide an alternative to the Cartesian allows for virtual environments to be mapped mind/body split that she saw as the dominant onto physical space, so that a participant model within VR development at that time. can move around while in VR, and the virtu- As a realm ruled by mind, virtual reality—as al world will respond to their real world (RW) conventionally constructed—is the epitome of actions. Immersive journalism pioneer Nonny Cartesian desire, in that it enables the con- de la Pena has been experimenting for nearly struction of artificial worlds where there is a decade with the potential for fully embodied the illusion of total control, where aging mor- media experience—bringing participants into tal flesh is absent, and where, to paraphrase a relationship with a particular historical mo- Laurie Anderson, there is no “dirt.” I believe ment by putting them, virtually, in the middle of such desire to escape the confines of the body events in such a way that they don’t just see and the physical world is symptomatic of an a virtual world but feel as if they are moving almost pathological denial of our embodied around within it, as their surroundings re- embeddedness in the living world.29 spond to the movements they make in the RW. In two major works—Osmose (1995) and

Rose \ 114 Ephemere (1998)—Davies integrated full body accompany Pinchas Gutter, a Holocaust survi- immersion, interactive 3D imagery and sound, vor, on a virtual rendering of his final pilgrimage with navigation controlled via a breathing to Poland’s Madjanek concentration camp, interface. In these works, the participant— where he was incarcerated, and his family mur- dubbed by Davies an “immersent”—navigates dered by the Nazis, over seventy years ago. through her awareness and manipulation of Uricchio suggests that with works in which her own breathing and balance. Inspired by the algorithms drive three-dimensional renderings phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty, here Davies of RW people and places we enter uncharted sought to facilitate, “a temporary release from ethical and epistemological waters. One re- our habitual perceptions and culturally-bi- sponse to the multiple unknowns involved in ased assumptions about being in the world, to working with these emerging creative tech- enable us, however momentarily, to perceive nologies is to see them as arenas of possibility ourselves and the world around us freshly.”30 that need to be explored in a dialogue be- While contemporary producers are begin- tween documentary producers, subjects, and ning to engage with the phenomenological stakeholders. In a talk at the IDFA DocLab potentialities of VR first explored in the second conference in Amsterdam November 2017, the wave, the last half decade has also seen the producer Yasmin Elayat presented The Racial emergence of a new generation of illusionistic Terror Project (working title)—a VR work in image making which is finding its creative ex- development which seeks to address the lack pression in VR. A variety of volumetric capture of acknowledgement of the history of racial technologies are developing fast and moving injustice in America by centering on the brutal into mainstream use, allowing the digital ren- spectacle lynching of Claude Neal in Marianna, dering of three-dimensional environments Florida in 1934. This work, which will take the and living things. Like photography and film, form of a room-scale VR installation, is being these digital samples of real world (people and developed as a research project through the places) have an indexical relationship to the MIT Open Documentary Lab’s Co-Creation physical world, but, crucially with these new Studio. technologies, they aren’t fixed at the moment Within the framework of what she called of recording as photography and even 360° a magic realist aesthetic strategy, Elayat video are. Instead they can be rendered in described how the production team are response to the actions of participants within employing volumetric capture to render inter- media experiences. These recording tech- views as well as sites relating to Neal’s torture nologies include lidar scanning as used by and killing which are known to local people Marshmallow Laser Feast in In the Eyes of the but have gone unmarked by any memorial. Animals, holographic capture, and photogram- Imagining bringing participants into visceral metry. In these recordings, as William Uricchio encounters with 3D representations of these describes it: spaces of terror impressed on me the poten- tial and also the responsibility relating to the Clouds of fixed data points enable re- use of these new technologies of documenta- al-time rendering of visual artifacts that tion. Elayat and her collaborators are intensely can be seen from any position: the virtual conscious of the multiple questions around world responds to the gaze of the viewer representation, ownership, and agency raised . . . . The modeling is based on rendering by their subject matter. They are approaching algorithms that can be designed to do these ethical challenges by undertaking the just about anything, including mimicking project in a dialogic process with partners the rules of everyday physics.31 in Florida including descendants of Neal’s, so that the work becomes a joint process of Documentary projects involving volumetric enquiry into both the representation of this capture are just beginning to emerge. In The difficult history and the application of these Last Goodbye (2017) the participant is invited to emerging technological capabilities.

Rose \ 115 CONCLUSION ENDNOTES 1—John Perry Barlow, “Being in VR today encompasses divergent platforms Nothingness” (1990) accessed and experiences, extending visual practic- October 1, 2017 https://w2.eff.org/ es—technologies of seeing—within a lineage Misc/Publications/John_Perry_Barlow/ going back to the Renaissance, and incubat- HTML/being_in_nothingness.html. ing multi-sensory practices—technologies of corporeality—which might be expected to 2—Randal Walser, “Elements of a become central cultural modes of the future. In Cyberspace Playhouse”, quoted in the latter, we can begin to see forms of tech- Howard Rheingold, Virtual Reality (New nologically mediated embodiment that can York: Simon and Schuster, 1991), 192 open up alternatives to a Cartesian model of 3—There isn’t yet an established mode knowledge, and which can allow new dimen- for referring to the phases of VR develop- sions of engagement with social reality. ment. By first wave VR I mean the era of Meanwhile, the emergence of technolo- Ivan Sutherland’s invention of the head gies of corporeality demands a shift within mounted display in 1968. Second wave VR documentary scholarship from questions of can be seen as starting with Jaron Lanier’s representation to questions of embodiment. coining of the term virtual reality in 1989. Research is needed to develop methods that The third wave dates from Palmer Luckey’s can unpack the meaning of these experienc- development of the Oculus Rift in 2011. es along with the creation of a shared critical vocabulary that addresses the ramifications, 4— Brian Winston, Technologies of potentials, and pitfalls of these embodied Seeing: Photography, Cinematography, practices. and Television (London: BFI, 1996); Where VR and nonfiction intersect Anne Balsamo, Technologies of the participants can expect to encounter both ex- Gendered Body: Reading Cyborg Women periences of embodiment and its opposite. As (Durham: Duke University Press, 1996). technological innovation presents new affor- 5—The notion of storyliving gained traction dances to documentarians, it’s as ever not the in 2017 among brand marketeers. In "From technology in itself but the purpose and ethics Storytelling To VR 'Storyliving': Future of their use that matter. Marketing Communications," a July 2017 The plethora of novel creative technolo- article in forbes.com, Michelle Greenwald gies referenced within this article reflects suggests that the term was coined by a context of perpetual innovation which is Google Zoo—Alphabet’s think-tank—in now the condition of the media landscape. the context of audience research on VR In this setting, ethical considerations cannot journalism, but it can be found more widely be postponed while documentary makers get in discussions of brand management and to grips with new creative media technolo- immersive media https://www.forbes.com/ gy. The Racial Terror Project points towards a sites/michellegreenwald/2017/07/31/ production model appropriate to this state of from-storytelling-to-vr-storyliving-fu- permanent innovation. Here, experimentation ture-marketing-communications. with a new technological platform provides the occasion for producer, subject, and partic- 6—As of yet there is no agreed name for ipants to work together, exploring a pressing the one audience member who engages contemporary theme while also interrogating with virtual reality. The term user is com- how the new platform can contribute to the mon, but I generally resist this, as, while project of convening critical dialogue about it evokes an active mode, it has a dehu- our shared world. manizing quality. For the purposes of this article I’m adopting the term participant, which feels apt for experiences where

Rose \ 116 there is significant interaction, although conference at MIT May 6 2015. it might be argued that the word over- 15—Uricchio, “VR is not a states the agency available within the film. So what is it?” experience of 360° video, where viewer might still be a more appropriate term. 16—Shari Frilot and Homay King, “Virtual Reality in Real Time: A Conversation,” 7—I draw the notion of falling through Film Quarterly 71, no. 1 (Fall 2017). Alberti’s window from Jay Bolter and Richard Grusin’s Remediation: 17—Laura Mulvey, "Visual Pleasure Understanding New Media (Cambridge, and Narrative Cinema," Screen 16, Mass. The MIT Press, 1998) no. 3 (1 October 1975): 6–18. 8— Laura Mulvey, Death 24x A Second: 18—Phillip Doyle, "Embodied and Stillness and The Moving Image Disembodied Voice: Characterizing (London: Reaktion, 2006), 30. Nonfiction Discourse in Cinematic VR," in Interactive Storytelling: 10th 9—I am following Jonathan Steuer in International Conference on Interactive identifying presence as the defining Digital Storytelling ICIDS 2017 characteristic of VR. The experience Funchal, Madeira, Portugal, November of presence is common across a wide 14–17, 2017, Proceedings, eds. variety of VR technical platforms Nuno Nunes, Ian Oakley, and Valentina from Google Cardboard to HTC Vive. Nisi (New York: Springer, 2017). Jonathan Steuer, "Defining Virtual Reality: Dimensions Determining 19—Chris Milk, "How virtual reality can Telepresence," Journal of Communication create the ultimate empathy machine," 42, no. 4 (Autumn 1992): 73–93. filmed March 2015 in Vancouver, Canada, TED video, 10:18, https://www.ted.com/ 10—Erin Spens, “The Virtual Reality talks/chris_milk_how_virtual_reality_can_ Revolution: Will VR change how we watch create_the_ultimate_empathy_machine. movies?” accessed December 6 2017 https://moviepilot.com/posts/3847187. 20—Kate Nash “Virtual Reality Witness: exploring the ethics of mediated pres- 11—John Jurgenson, Visit an Ebola ence.”Studies in Documentary Film Hot Zone In the Virtual Reality Film 12, no. 2 (2018): 2. http://www. ‘Waves of Grace,’" Wall Street Journal, tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.108 September 1, 2015, https://blogs. 0/17503280.2017.1340796 wsj.com/speakeasy/2015/09/01/ visit-an-ebola-hot-zone-in-the-vir- 21—Ibid., 6 tual-reality-film-waves-of-grace/. 22—Ibid., 13 12—Angela Watercutter, “This Ebola 23—Winston, 118 Documentary Shows VR Film’s Radical Potential”, Wired Magazine 09.01.15 24—Robin Mcnicholas, ITEOTA Behind accessed December 10 2017 https:// The Scenes Part 1: Into the Forest, www.wired.com/2015/09/vr-ebola-film/ https://vimeo.com/174734638. 13—William Uricchio, "VR is not a film. 25—Ibid. So what is it?," Immerse, November 8, 27—Balsamo, 125. 2016, https://immerse.news/vr-is-not- film-so-what-is-it-36d58e59c030. 28— Nonny de la Peña, "Towards Behavioral Realism: Experiments in 14—William Uricchio, “Putting VR in Immersive Journalism," in i-Docs: Perspective,” a keynote at the Virtually The Evolving Practices of Interactive There: Documentary meets Virtual Reality

Rose \ 117 Documentary, eds. Judith Aston, Sandra Gaudenzi, and Mandy Rose (New York: Columbia University Press, 2017), 241. 29— Char Davies, "Virtual Space," in Space: In Science, Art, and Society, eds. François Penz, Gregory Radick, and Robert Howell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 3. 30—Ibid., 2. 31—Uricchio, "VR Is not a film."

Rose \ 118 \ Volume 1 \ When we brought Khalik Allah to speak to our students at Syracuse University last spring, he was enthusiastic about everything, and brought with him several pairs of spotless sneakers. He had boundless patience and so- licitude for our students, who adored him and hung on his every word. He came to show his formally inventive and emotionally harrowing documentary Field Niggas (2015). We had sought it out on YouTube after reading about it in an online ex- perimental film forum, where it was described with the kind of hushed reverence usually reserved for flickering abstraction. Field Niggas is a 60-minute documentary in which glowing, brilliantly colored faces float across the screen in slow motion. The subjects are the denizens of 125th and ­­Lexington, a storied corner in Harlem. They are largely dis- CAMERA MINISTRY enfranchised, mostly addicts, exhaling clouds of K2 or Spice, the “synthetic marijuana” also COOPER BATTERSBY, EMILY VEY DUKE, known as bath salts. Allah turns his lens on AND VASHON WATSON IN CONVERSATION them in love, inviting viewers to see them with WITH KHALIK ALLAH love too. Allah grew up on Long Island. He was held back a year in middle school because he was skipping classes to breakdance and study at the Harlem headquarters of the Five-Percent Nation, a group founded in 1964 by a former student of Malcolm X. The Five Percenters teach that the Black man is God personified, and that members of the Nation have a re- sponsibility to bring light to the rest of the world. It’s a group that places tremendous value on scholarship, and Allah was drawn to it by interest in “discipline, self application, [and] a recognition of internal power and a responsi- bility to educate one’s self.” At nineteen, he began an influential rela- tionship with several members of the Wu-Tang Clan. In 2008, Khalik was the tour cinematog- rapher for GZA, a notable member of the group. His work has been screened prodigious- ly these past few years, winning awards at Pulse Films, Brit Doc, Sarasota Film Festival, Rencontres Internationales du Documentaire de Montreal, and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, among others. October 2017 saw the pub- lication of his book Souls Against the Concrete University of Texas Press.

Battersby, Vey Duke, Vashon & Allah \ 119 Now he is deep in the process of making EMILY VEY DUKE his next film, Black Mother, shot in Jamaica, Black Mother? That film? where his maternal grandfather lived and died. While Field Niggas was made entire- KA ly outside of the independent documentary Yeah, definitely. It’s coming together. I’ve been industry, he is making his new film as part of doing a fellowship with Sundance for doc- the Sundance Art of Non-Fiction Fellowship, umentaries that are exploring more unusual along with fellow creators Kitty Green (Casting approaches to filmmaking. You know, kind of JonBenet), RaMell Ross (Hale County, This what like Field Niggas was. Morning, This Evening), Brett Story (The Prison in Twelve Landscapes), and Kirsten Johnson CB (Cameraperson). One of the things that I’m interested in hear- We interview him here with Vashon Watson, ing more about is your concept of the Camera an emerging filmmaker and musician who Ministry. It makes this claim which is so un- splits his time between Syracuse and the usual for documentary: “that the subject of the Bronx. documentary is benefitted immediately,” rather than in some kind of “the viewer will see it, INTERVIEW and then maybe it’ll improve the life circum- stances of the subject” way. COOPER BATTERSBY We’ve got Vashon Watson with us, one of our KA students. You met him last spring when you Right. Well, whether it’s photography or film- were here in Syracuse. making, it was always about me wanting some sort of therapy in the shooting. The first job KHALIK ALLAH that I had, while I was making Field Niggas on Yeah I remember him. What’s up, Vashon? 125th [Street in Harlem], was in a place that was really limiting on my creativity. I was basi- VASHON WATSON cally a control operator. I was just watching Hey, how you doing? Nice hearing from you commercials every day, making sure that they again. were playing properly. I was inundated with so much material, and I was desiring just to get KA back to my element, you know, to be around Doing well, bro. Yo, I remember, man. people that are struggling, that reflect more how I came up, as opposed to all the stuff I VW was seeing at my job. Um, do you though? Are you sure you remem- So first it was a therapy for me just to ber me? go out shooting. I wasn’t really speaking to people more than “can I take a photograph.” KA But then it became something deeper, where Yeah, you were quiet. I remember everybody. I started to see that, yeah, this is helping me out, I’m getting to reconnect with a part of VW myself that I just felt like I was disconnected Yeah, that’s me. I’m that guy. (laughs) from. And then it took on another turn, after I CB kind of got what I wanted, which was just So what are you doing right now? that feeling back, of being in the streets. And I started just to recognize how much help KA people really needed. What I was able to give I’ve been hibernating this past couple of people at that time was attention. And that months, just trying to edit this film. became an exchange.

Battersby, Vey Duke, Vashon & Allah \ 120 So I may ask somebody “can I take your before, because, when you make a film called portrait?” And they may say “why”, and that Field Niggas dealing with people in the hood, may go into a discussion that lasts a while. you’re walking that line whether it’s exploita- And I always came with the level of “yo, you tion or not. You know? I’ve been to screenings may be struggling now, but you could change, where the audience has been a hundred per- or things could change in your life.” And that’s cent Black. And I’ve been to screenings where when I began to call it Camera Ministry. the audience is a hundred percent white. And The actual trigger which made me think usually I get the same questions. And usually about that was the light itself. [I was] shooting people laugh at the same time if they laugh at at night time, being forced to use whatev- all. And usually people have a similar response. er little light I can­—a lamppost, a storefront, You know? whatever—the light pouring out the windows. And I really like showing it to white people And just telling people “walk with me into the anyhow. Because I want them to understand light.” And after saying this so many times it the suffering. You know? Right now, the reason just clicked in my head that that is a meta- why white privilege is the way it is is because physical statement. there’s a lack of understanding as to Black So I began what I was doing like I was on a under-privilege. mission, I kind of felt like De Niro in Taxi Driver. Sometimes white audiences have said to me “I didn’t know that these people had that VW much character. Had that much depth.” And Just hearing you talk I was just having so many that’s a little unfortunate, that people might thoughts. And when you were here last year I think that people don’t have character based had questions I didn’t ask you . . . off living in the street. But if I was able to change their mind I’m happy about that. KA Ask them, brother. Feel free. EVD I think part of Vashon’s question is—do you VW think that art audiences that are so largely How effective do you think your film Field white have responded so well because they Niggas would have been if your audience was think the subjects are exotic? only people from the hood? KA KA Well, perhaps that may be true. People fear Effective in what sense? You mean making what they don’t understand, and a Black hood them stop using drugs? has always been feared. It’s an illusion though. Black people are criminalized, but many are re- VW ally in a powerless position in the hood. Many No, not making them stop using drugs. I feel are really financially suffering, nutritionally like you were exposing them to an audience suffering. that wasn’t primarily Black. The content was exposing how the hood actually is, and what CB actually goes on there. So how do you think I see your work as having two goals, the first that film would be received by the people who one is your immediate relationship to the peo- are doing drugs, or are actually living in those ple who are right in front of the camera with neighborhoods. you, through camera ministry. The second one is your desire to make some sort of document KA of the encounter that will be interesting to the Well they’ve seen it. The people on 125th have other people, that are going to see your films seen the film. Most of the people that are in later on. Are those goals ever in conflict? How the film have seen it. I’ve gotten that question do those goals interfere with each other?

Battersby, Vey Duke, Vashon & Allah \ 121 KA KA Good question. I feel like all of us in our es- Yeah, but also I’m being ministered to in sence are innocent regardless of whatever we Jamaica, so it’s kind of flipped. In Black Mother think we did to make us guilty. This goes for there’s prayers throughout the film, and to- people that are drug addicts, people who are wards the end of the film there’s a prayer living on the street, who just got out of prison delivered to me, and I felt really uplifted and and can’t get a job. What I’m trying to do is go ministered to, but ultimately that’s me creat- beneath the surface with my work and use em- ing another work to take out into the world, to pathy to get deeper access. To me that’s what release this prayer on the world. camera ministry really is. I continued in the tradition that I began So I don’t think that the things are in con- in Field Niggas of filming at nighttime on the flict at all. I’m looking at everybody like God, streets in different hoods in Jamaica. In that like everybody is God ‘cause I’m seeing process of shooting at nighttime, I had to stop God within then. I can’t divorce my spiritual many people, similar to Field Niggas, and some practice from what I do, and part of my under- of the people that I stopped were like “yo, standing is that this life is an illusion and in nobody has spoken to me like a man in ten that we’re dreaming, and therefore we have years—nobody has shook my hand.” dream roles. We’re playing the roles of differ- But the other part of your question, about ent characters and sometimes the script that the Five-Percent Nation, of course that has a we write is a fucked up script. tremendous influence on me. Just growing up within the Five-Percent Nation, and also being EVD a hip-hop head and studying the way that hip- Do you have any history with faith based min- hop is depicted visually, all of that ties into my istry or social work that gave you the skills to work of course. work this way? We’re thinking partly about your history with the Five-Percent Nation. CB In your film Khamaica (2015), your grandfather KA says “thank you for this grandson of mine, that No, I don’t. I grew up in a family that was has come to look for me in my old age.” When Baptist Christian. My father coming from Iran, you went there to make that film, was it one of he was a Muslim, but he really wasn’t prac- your first trips to Jamaica? ticing Islam, and my mother was Jamaican. Jamaica has more churches per square mile KA than any other country in the world, per the I’ve got a really tight relationship to Jamaica. Guinness Book of World Records. But grow- I've been going back since I was three years ing up with my grandmother gave me a sense old, since 1988. My grandfather lives in the of ministry, a sense of, like, everything is al- countryside. If you were to look at a map of right. I grew up in a household where I had my Jamaica and you put your finger to the direct grandmother and yet I would be in areas where center of the island, that’s where his home is. people didn’t have either of their parents and He’s passed away now, but in 2011, I recog- where everything seems to be really fucked nized that my grandfather, he was ninety-six up, so I just felt the need all my life to lift peo- years old and just for archival purposes, I said ple up in whatever way I could. I need to document him. So I just went to Jamaica to do that, to document him. I didn’t EVD know what that film was going to be. That film Do you feel like you’re continuing with camera was just a freestyle. Back then I didn’t have ministry while you’re shooting Black Mother in any attention so Khamaica went straight to Jamaica? Youtube. His home was like a monastery. All my life I’ve been able to leave New York and go and

Battersby, Vey Duke, Vashon & Allah \ 122 spend like a week or two with him and just get which I’m trying to use in a way that I don’t to that wisdom and that instruction, to be a think it’s been used before. There’s actually a better man. To grow up into more righteous liv- film that I greatly appreciate called Into Great ing. That’s what he gave me. He was a Baptist Silence (2005) about these monks in France, Deacon and he was always a great example in Carthusian monks. It’s practically a silent film. my life. I’m getting inspiration from that.

EVD CB That still from Black Mother you sent us is so Your distribution model has changed sig- beautiful. nificantly since you were first starting out with Khamaica or Field N–, which both first KA appeared on YouTube. Has the change in When I’m making a film I’m making it so that audience and distribution channels that are I’m satisfied. With any film the director has to available to you now changed the work that give himself the liberty to make a film which you’re able to make or the work that you can people may not like. I set out with Field Niggas, imagine making. especially with that title, feeling that a lot of people would reject it. KA The same thing with Black Mother. It’s got You know, no matter what I’m making, I like to a very heavy Christian vibe. Jamaica is a nu- think of it as if I were to release this thing right cleus of spirituality. It just so happens that onto Facebook or right onto YouTube right now, Jamaicans were controlled by the British how would it be received? But also I’m not and the British had indoctrinated through really trying to consider it too much. That can Christianity the people who were slaves. Same be a distraction. I had to really get to a quiet thing in America, you know, force feeding a re- place, man, where I could just focus on the ligion to people. But the thing is the spirituality details. My work is all about the minutiae, from is so vital for the people that it doesn’t really frame to frame to frame, every snap of audio. matter what their religion is. It doesn’t really What’s being said is very important. matter what the container is. Especially now after I traveled the world with Field Niggas and had no expectation of CB going to these festivals and going to these In your previous work the image has often schools, so now working on my new project it been in slow motion and there’s been non- was like, I don’t know if that’s necessarily gon- sync sound. So it has created this feeling that na happen. I know people are interested in my there is a great distance between the reality work, but it also changes the way that this is of what we are seeing but also this intense gonna be distributed because this new project closeness created by the audio. It is really is not going straight onto YouTube and Vimeo. quite a powerful experience. Are you going to I’m learning more about longevity and deepen- be using a similar technique in Black Mother? ing my roots within documentary. You heard what I said earlier I’m not trying KA to invest too much in worldly things, but you Aesthetically, yes, its related where you have need to have one foot in that dimension at the slow motion, you have a lot of portraiture, same time. Otherwise you’ll end up being a and you have this intimacy that I’m trying to sucker. achieve. But I’m also trying to take it to some other places. I’ve been using a lot of differ- EVD ent formats. Some of it is shot on 16mm film, The thing is that your voice is incredibly im- there’s a lot of Super 8 film. I’ve been using portant. People will quickly allow you to be digital equipmnt as well. There’s also more marginalized if you don’t fight your way into silence. There’s a lot of silence in this film, the center. I feel that way as a woman too. I

Battersby, Vey Duke, Vashon & Allah \ 123 want my voice to be heard and you want your I respect her very much. voice to be heard. It will be a huge loss if you don’t make sure your work receives the widest VW audience possible. I was just wondering—do you ever struggle with being pretentious in your films? is it KA like— Thank you, thank you. Without belittling the work or without asking for unnecessary things. KA I’ll just take what I need. When it comes down No. to making a film, I made Field Niggas with hardly any money, this new film I didn’t have VW a $500,000, $250,000 budget, I had around Do you have to balance having your philoso- $120,000, $125,000, which to me is a lot of phy with not pushing your philosophy onto the money. I’m gonna have a colorist, a proper col- audience? I’ve also tried to put my philosophy orist. With this project I’m starting to open up, and my ways of thinking inside my films and I delegate a little more. have trouble balancing putting my belief sys- tem onto people. How do you find that balance? CB That’s great. KA I don’t put it onto anybody. At the end of the KA day when the film is done it is out of my hands But it definitely gets expensive. if somebody is going to consider it pretentious. That has happened with Field Niggas. 90 EVD percent (of my write ups) have been positive, But it’s great also because that means that but there were a few people that felt that you are not only feeding yourself as a creative there was too much of an inclusion of the di- person, you’re able to pay other people to do rector and the director’s voice, but that’s okay creative work that they’re excited about. too because you know these films are time- stamped. When you look at Field Niggas that’s KA the summer of 2014. If you go back on that Definitely. I’m still assembling my crew. Some same corner right now it’s a lot different. of my work is so singular, but it’s mainly been When you go into creation you have to have my little brother and my sound guy on this a lot of confidence in what you’re creating. I project I worked with two people, on Field think that’s what makes Field Niggas what it is. Niggas I had my man Josh Fury who is a pro- But that confidence also came with the lack of ducer from Canada, up in Calgary, and I also understanding that the film would travel so far. brought the Disciple from Wu-Tang, so it’s a Maybe if I knew it would be seen by so many little army. people I would have curtailed certain elements of myself in the film. EVD Khalik, you need to work with some women! EVD There’s a moment in Khamaica where you ask KA your grandfather what he thinks about fame, I know, I know, I know, I need to work with and it’s totally surprising and reveals so much some more women. I would love to work with about you as the filmmaker, and he’s got a more women. There have been some women great answer that basically is what you just that I’ve worked with, but in different ways. I said: that fame is in service of the ego, and showed Hannah Buck an early cut of the film that it is ultimately going to burn you. But I last January and even though she wasn’t work- really love it in Field N– that you appear in the ing directly on the project. She’s an editor who mirror, and that we hear your voice so much.

Battersby, Vey Duke, Vashon & Allah \ 124 KA I felt it was important to work with myself with Field Niggas that way, even my person. To me that was very important, because again flying back to the idea of exploitation, I wanted to be just another character in the film. Why have I been able to tell this story? Because I’m in- grained within this environment. It’s not just a film­­–these people know me, we’ve developed real relationships. I’ve helped people get jobs. I’ve driven people home in my car. I’ve been to the hospital. I feel including myself kind of brings enough of that to the top.

CB In Field N– the subjects’ identities are re- markably fluid because the voices have been disconnected from their bodies, but you of course see them as individuals, and hear their voices as being tied to the specific individuals. What were you hoping to achieve by separat- ing the voices from the bodies, and are you worried that your subjects are going to lose their specificity for the viewer?

KA The goal is to highlight the truth, not the indi- vidual. I’m OK with them losing their specificity. More than anything I was trying to capture an energy, and that energy is not contained by one individual. That was what the film was predicated on: the common energy that they’re all experiencing. There’s no forced narrative in that film where people’s names come up in text at the bottom of the screen. Once we get past the superficial ego identifications then you start recognizing a person off of what they said and what they said alone. Ultimately it was about showing unity, and part of that is not showing the differences but focusing on the similarities.

Battersby, Vey Duke, Vashon & Allah \ 125

\ Volume 1 \ “Man himself is just one fact among oth- ers, to whom no pride of place should be given a priori.” —André Bazin1

In 2008, Ecuador was the first nation to adopt a new political constitution that acknowledges the juridical personality of non-human entities. Trees, stones, and rivers were granted rights of their own, similar to people. The new law was based on the worldview of Ecuador’s indig- enous population for whom a “community” necessarily includes both human and non-hu- man constituents. The Law of the Rights of Mother Earth was passed in Bolivia two years later, which places the earth deity Pachamama at the center of all life. Then this year, the New Zealand Parliament passed a bill, which declared the Whanganui SOMETHING IS THERE \ river a “living entity” with inherent rights. The FILMMAKING IN MULTIPLE REALITIES bill was the outcome of a long battle by mem- bers of a Māori tribe who perceive the river as LONNIE VAN BRUMMELEN AND their ancestor.2 A few days later, the ruling of a SIEBREN DE HAAN high court in India established two more rivers, the Ganga and Yamuna, as “living entities.” These new laws hint at the possibility of an extended democracy in which non-human entities can participate. However, while aiming to protect the ecologies of the earth against the damages caused by ongoing resource extraction, the laws have not been able to halt the industries in their tracks. The rights of nature prove to be difficult to implement in a globalized world order, where “business as usual” prevails. This reminds us that change is not brought by courts alone. It requires sub- stantial public pressure. Nowadays, it seems easier to picture the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism. Thinking about change therefore starts with the imagination. What could a world look like that lies beyond the grid imposed onto reality by the dominant systems of pow- er? This is what artists, filmmakers, academics, and other cultural producers can help to envision. The film Citizens of Nature, which we have been working on for nearly three years, seeks to reproduce how Surinamese communi- ties that live in the Guiana Shield rainforest

Van Brummelen & De Haan \ 127 organize the participation of other-than-hu- with multinational firms who capitalize on the man entities in their daily processes of natural resources on their ancestral grounds. decision making.3 As Dutch nationals we To our surprise, we discovered that we too are historically linked to these communities. were agents of the trickery system of accumu- The land that is now Suriname was explored lation by dispossession, and not by the deeds and conquered by different European pow- of our forefathers, but by the very act of mak- ers before coming under Dutch rule in the ing this film. seventeenth century. Suriname gained inde- As artists, we have not been disciplined by pendence in 1975, but maintained strong ties the division of labor of the film industry. We with its former colonizer. Dutch is still the offi- have had the privilege to work with no boss to cial language, and almost half of the country’s obey. But realizing a film in the rainforest does population lives in the Netherlands. require a budget. We therefore applied for a In the Dutch classrooms where we received special grant that aims to stimulate artists to our education, Suriname was mainly discussed produce a feature film.7 The funders of the as a colony that had not been very profitable. grant required that we would adopt the proto- The wealth of Amsterdam’s canal houses, cols of feature film production. A film producer however, seems indicative that this narrative is had to be in charge both financially, creatively, incomplete. What was also left out of the story and legally. As artists we were required to sign was the misery that our forefathers caused to over our rights. the hundreds of thousands of West Africans A business model aimed at generating whom they shipped across the Atlantic to work profit was now imposed onto the film project. on Suriname’s plantations as slaves.4 Some The producer created an inflated budget with of these deported were able to free them- a complex recoupment scheme. Substantial selves. Building on their African knowledge, parts of our labor were listed as “deferment.” they founded new communities deep in the It meant that the work would be paid once the rainforest.5 box-office money came through. The chance of To get a glimpse of the cosmology of these us actually receiving this postponed fee was Guiana maroons, we spent eight months in nil. After all, artistic documentary experiments situ. Village elders, but also younger men and are usually no blockbusters. Nonetheless, the women explained to us in detail how they lived producer charged a full commission over the with the forest. They patiently demonstrated value of our unwaged labor.8 the procedures to consult ancestors, gods, and Reproducing the radical democracy of the forest spirits. Meanwhile we learned simple forest communities from within the confines of wisdoms, such as that there are no useless this top-down model proved to be a challenge. plants, only uninformed people.6 The producer sent us into the forest with a Every now and then one of our maroon stack of releases to be signed by all those collaborators would say: “something is there,” participating in the film. By signing the con- referring to the presence of an unknown entity. tract, our collaborators would transfer all their Whether it was a deity, an animal, or something rights regarding their appearance and con- else would remain unclear. These presences tribution “completely and irreversibly” to the were undetectable for us so-called moderns. production company so that the producer can We came to understand this as the expression “exploit the film.”9 There were no contracts for of a worldview in which humans share the rocks, ancestors, or forest spirits. That oth- world with other subjectivities, and not-know- er-than-human entities might have rights too ing is a way of acknowledging that condition. had apparently not yet been internalized by But during these conversations we also heard the film industry. another tale, one of ongoing exploitation and The first captain to read the release was so struggle. In the times of slavery, the maroons angry about its content that he threatened to battled fiercely against the Dutch colonial op- advise all his clan members not to participate pressors. In current days, they are confronted in the film. Only after extensive negotiations

Van Brummelen & De Haan \ 128 with all parties involved we were able to find 1. NONGO an ambiguous middle ground.10 The image is almost abstract. No vegetation. Based on the discussions and the stories No details. White shards of fog float in opposite that our collaborators had been willing to directions. Rock formations vanish and emerge. share, we composed a script. In the film, mem- They seem black, a rusty brown color, or red- bers from different villages present the scenes dish. Geological strata can be read from their before the camera, while vegetation, clouds, surface. We appear to look into an abyss of time streaming waters, and rock formations perform and fail to grasp the scale of things. as fellow actors.11 “If nature put it there, art has no business VOICEOVER removing it.” This is what Roberto Rossellini It happened in the year when Agbago was replied, when a cameraman proposed to installed as gaama, that someone delivered move a boulder that was disturbing the com- a message to us in nongo [the language of position.12 Critical circumstances, however, metaphor] that we did not understand. He said sometimes require that one takes the boulder that the message had come to him in a dream from its place and carries it up the mountain, and was intended for all descendants. They, hurling it down at the right moment to smash and with that he meant the spirit world, had an opponent. This particular insurgent action told him that they had seen a great sea, whose was put into execution by maroon ancestors water was rising higher each passing day. The when one of their villages was attacked by creeks were full, but it did not rain. The water colonial troops. in the rivers had risen so much that not even To express such different modes of involve- the birds had a place to live anymore, because ment, the film alternates between two visual all the treetops were submerged. The fish died regimes: receptive observation and manipula- and a famine broke out, because the sea had tive intervention. For the most part, the camera swallowed all the arable land. A great number will stand on its own legs, calmly observing the of people were surprised by the water during scenery with deep focus, wide framing, slow sleep. We had to hurry to leave. Where we panning. Such camera work, we feel, allows should go we did not know, because the water the parliament of things to present itself.13 had us surrounded. Each chose their own way. But the film also stages the perspectives Families were divided. And so it remained. The of possible subjectivities by re-appropriating sea remained.15 dynamic camera techniques from narrative The sun tries to burn a hole into the dense cinema. Occasionally, the camera-eye may layer of fog. A silhouette appears. It is a boy, seem possessed by a Maroon ancestor who is inspecting his nets. The sun breaks through. preparing a battle action. The next moment it can incarnate as an undefined outsider, prowl- 2. THE LIMITS OF WHAT CAN BE TOLD ing around with dodgy intentions: perhaps a The camera slowly pans through an idyllic land- colonial forefather, or a concessionaire looking scape. In the distance we hear a discussion. It for profit, or us bakra’s (westerners) capturing appears not intended to be overheard by out- images in the rainforest.14 It might also change siders. The pan ends up with a group of people into a jumping forest spirit or a bellbird and fly in the shadow of a tree. We see them from afar. away. OLD MAN 1 Written in between two shooting periods. The part that I know, is there. Lonnie van Brummelen and Siebren de Haan, Yet I do not want to tell it. Amsterdam, June 23, 2017 OLD MAN 2 EXCERPT FROM SCRIPT Well, not everything can be said. WITH CAMERA NOTES An oath has been made that certain things should remain secret.

Van Brummelen & De Haan \ 129 YOUNG MAN Medium-wide shot, long lens, from a distance. They won't force you to. Certain things we The persons who participate in the conversation won’t tell them. can be seen and heard more clearly.

OLD MAN OLD MAN 2 We’re not allowed to tell things that we don’t We know what we should tell, what we are know well. allowed to tell, and how far we can go.

YOUNG WOMAN OLDER WOMAN That’s true. I don't like: "that's what I've heard." Don’t make waves like a motorboat. I do like: "this is what I myself have seen." OLD MAN 3 OLD MAN Never send the boat directly downstream. Yes, but the story that they call history, the things of the past, that is mostly a matter of: "I OLD MAN 1 have heard . . . " Do not blow the horn. Close-up of old man, long lens, lengthy silent OLD MAN 3 shot. We have already poured out libations, because Wide shot, the conversation continues. only the gods know better. These people may have come with bad intentions. They may YOUNG MAN be fooling us. But you and I have no way of In any case, I have cleaned out my ears to hear knowing. clearly what will be told.

OLD MAN 1 5. ENCOUNTERING WAMBA Never tell more than half of what you know. Tilt down from the sky to the branches of a tree. Especially not about our sacred things. A second smaller tree sprouts forth from the trees crown as if another entity has settled in. OLD MAN 2 The tree is located at the banks of the river. A Of course there are people who will tell ev- man is standing in its shadow. At first we see erything, but the tradition is that we are him in a wide shot, then in medium-close. He tight-lipped. narrates.

OLD MAN 3 NARRATOR The Awonenge, the old people who have heard The atmosphere on the plantations was agi- the guns of war, when you are in real trouble, tated. There were insurrections going on. The you call out their name. slave masters had brought warriors from Africa who were meant to control the slaves. Our OLD WOMAN ancestor was one of them. He also was a slave, That’s right. The Awonenge give you strength. but he had the job to liaise with other planta- tions. Which is why he rode a horse. OLD MAN 3 On one of the plantations that he used to If you reveal their secret, you will break the visit, he had a lover. She was from the African bond with these spirit elders. So we cannot do Kingdom called Dahomey. This woman worked that. in the house of the slave master. Most slaves worked on the plantation, but the young, pretty YOUNG MAN women would work for the plantation master One cannot tell everything to an outsider, but as his mistresses. It was impossible for a slave what we will tell, may help us and may help the to have a woman who worked at the house forest. of the white master as his lover. This is what

Van Brummelen & De Haan \ 130 angered our ancestor. VOICEOVER On the plantation where she worked, it was We and the forest live together in a certain the black men and women who planted the way. One of the rules is that if you go into the sugar cane, it was them who ground the sugar forest with the intention to live there, you raise cane, but the whites were the owners of the the azan: you put the young, yellow leaves of a sugar cane juice. Black people weren't allowed particular kind of palm tree upright and place to drink that juice. a lump of chalky earth underneath it. This is a One day our ancestor arrived there on way of contacting a local deity. After that you horseback. The woman took the white man's say a prayer and then you leave. glass, poured it full of sugar cane juice, and When you return, you will learn if the forest gave it to the black man. Our ancestor drank agrees with you or not. Sometimes the forest the juice from the glass of the white man. Mind is negative, and the place rejects you. When you, not a drop of the sugar cane juice is al- that is the case, the spirit throws the chalk to lowed to touch the lips of a slave. But here he the ground. was, drinking a whole glass until it was empty. Our kin group had to ask four times in this Someone saw it, and told the slave master. manner if we could settle in the place where That white man desired the black woman, but our village is now located, before the forest he did not see her as a woman he loved. That finally allowed us to stay. And that same god she gave cane sugar juice to our ancestor frus- that rejected our village three times, it took trated him more than the love he felt for her. possession of my grandmother. Its spirit pre- He whipped that woman until she died. Then pared the way for others, to also enter her. they brought her dead body to our ancestor. Eventually that woman was possessed by no “Here is your lover,” they said. Following this, less than seven gods. they beat him, too, until he passed out. They The young man building the azan arch looks left him to die. up and enters into dialogue with the voiceover. After a while our ancestor became pos- sessed by the spirit of the deceased woman. YOUNG MAN He cried “Meuhmmm!” and ran off into the People from the land of whites will never un- forest, crying out her great name. derstand this. Are we not going to talk about The forest god that is called Wamba re- the teachings of the apunku [forest spirits]? sponded to his calls. The god guided him to a group of Indians.16 They welcomed him, bathed VOICEOVER him, gave him food. They cared for him until he Okay. If you fell a tree in which an apunku was cured. Then he travelled further upstream. houses, or if you kill an animal inhabited by It was Wamba who led him here. Wamba was an apunku, you disrupt that spirit in the place the first god by whom our ancestor became where he resides. The spirit will then go look- possessed. Wamba. ing for a new home. It will not move into a tree The narration is interspersed with images of or an animal anymore. It will move into some- the overgrown waterfall Tapawatra. Water flows one in your environs: your cousin, your son, through the dense mass of entangled plants. At your grandmother. the end of the tale the camera slowly descends When you receive a spirit, your life pattern from the tree. It wanders along the waterside changes, because a spirit now joins your own and retreats into the dark forest. spirit. You share your body with that spirit. You will go on together. 12. GOD OF THE PLACE Perhaps you received the spirit of an aira [a In an open spot in the forest, a young man is rodent]. The aira likes sugar cane, so you will setting up a gateway. He cuts branches from a eat this often. maripa palm and uses them to make the span. If you received the spirit of a cayman, you The camera observes the construction work in will be able to dive for catfish lying under the wide overviews and in medium-close framing. rocks, because the cayman knows that method.

Van Brummelen & De Haan \ 131 By using herbs, we are able to speak with FEMALE VOICE 4 (OFF SCREEN) your spirit. It then tells us its rules. This way The animals take off, because if you get rid of we also find out if your spirit is male or female. all trees, there are no more fruits for them to And we gain access to its wisdom. Because an eat. apunku knows much of the forest. Slow fade out of image. Slow fade out of The young man departs. The azan stays in forest sounds. the forest. An unknown entity roams about. Water drops arise spontaneously on the leaves FEMALE VOICE 3 (OFF SCREEN) of a plant. A deer stands stock-still and watch- The trees that they don't need, they leave in es the scene. the forest to rot away. They tear them down, but don’t use them. That is destruction. 25. CONCESSIONS In black, in silence. An abundant vegetable garden in the forest. Banana trees, cassava plants, bitter melon. FEMALE VOICE 1 (OFF SCREEN) While female voices testify, the images reveal There are spirits living in those trees and that not human experience but plant life is the rocks. What do you think happens if that rock subject of the scene. is bulldozered? If that tree is chopped down? Wide overviews and close-ups of foliage and Those spirits will avenge. fruits. Women are cutting, picking, and sooting, obscured by the plants and trees. Quietly, we hear the sounds of their manual labor.

FEMALE VOICE 1 (OFF SCREEN) The children came to tell us that there were Chinese people in the forest. They had placed heavy machinery and containers in my veg- etable garden. I told them: “I am working here.” But they replied: “we have the proper documents.” My peanut plants had all been destroyed. There were fallen banana trees everywhere. I do not know how much was lost, because as forest persons we do not have the habit of counting the crops in the field.

FEMALE VOICE 2 (OFF SCREEN) The Chinese practice clearcut logging. They cut down every tree. From kankantrie to kwa- takama, they fell them all. They even remove the smallest twigs. Often one cannot tell where trees have been felled. The trunks are pulled from the ground, with roots and all.

FEMALE VOICE 3 (OFF SCREEN) They block the creeks, so that their bulldozers can pass. We drink water from those creeks, so this leaves us without drinking water. The forest turns into a swamp.

Van Brummelen & De Haan \ 132 ENDNOTES multiple victories to the Netherlands during the Anglo-Dutch wars in the sev- 1— André Bazin, "An Aesthetic of Reality: enteenth century, be celebrated with a Neo-Realism," in What is Cinema? mausoleum, statues, street names, and (Volume 2), trans. High Gray (Berkeley: blockbuster films, while he also contrib- University of California Press, 1971), 38. uted significantly to the slave trade? 2—It was Paulo Tavares of the World of 6—The descendants of these people Matter research project, who brought speak their own creole tongue: a mix- this inspiring example of a democracy ture of words appropriated from the that is extended to the non-human to different European languages that were our attention. Also see Arturo Escobar, spoken by the slave masters: Portuguese "Latin America at a Crossroads," Cultural Jews, the English, and the Dutch. Studies 24, no. 1 (January 2010): 1–65. 7—This particular phrase we bor- 3—Eleanor Ainge Roy, 'New Zealand riv- rowed from Richard Price’s, Travels er granted same legal rights as human with Tooy: History, Memory, and the being', The Guardian, March 16, 2017; African American Imagination (Chicago: and Ananya Bhattacharya, "Pure waters, University of Chicago Press, 2007). , but India’s sacred rivers now have human the wisdom was passed on to us by the rights", Quartz India, March 21, 2017. Aucan Stefano Damba, from Moengo. 4—The term maroons, derived from the 8—The grant called De Verbeelding re- spanish word for “escaped cattle,” is wards two projects every two years. The considered dehumanizing by some of the funding is contributed by the Mondriaan Surinamese forest communities. They Fund for the Arts and the Netherlands prefer to call themselves Businenge [forest Film Fund. Each of these state funds con- people]; Lowema [people who walked]; tributes 50 percent of the grant money. or Fiima [people who freed themselves]. Nonetheless, Film Fund regulation prevails. 5—The black pages of our colonial histo- 9—This commission does not de- ry have only recently become the subject pend upon the film’s success. of an intense public debate. The annual protests against the practice of blackfac- 10—Literal translation from ing during Sinterklaas, and the disputes Dutch quitclaim. surrounding the commemorations of 11—To achieve this, we had to renegoti- statesmen and generals from the colo- ate with the funders and switch producers. nial era, cranked up the discussion. Does The new producer-trio, VRIZA, Ideal Film, governor general J.B. van Heutsz deserve and seriousFilm, were more attentive to a statue for pacifying Atjeh in Indonesia? the specific conditions of this project. All Or should he rather be defamed as a war in all, the shuttling back and forth between criminal for killing thousands of civilians opposing systems caused a year’s delay. during his efforts to break the resistance against the Dutch colonial occupation? 12—Initially we wanted to shoot the Can a school or tunnel be named after Jan film on analogue film stock but anoth- P. Coen, while this Dutch governor gen- er prerequisite of the grant was that eral was responsible in the seventeenth the film production needed to be in- century for killing thousands of inhabi- sured. Insurance protocols prescribe tants of the Banda Islands in Indonesia to that analogue film footage has to be de- restore the Dutch monopoly on nutmeg? livered to a film lab within forty-eight Can admiral Michiel de Ruyter, whose hours after the shoot. These require- strategic insights and bravery brought ments could not be met in the jungle.

Van Brummelen & De Haan \ 133 13—Martin Walsh, "Political Formations The conversations were moderated and in the Cinema of Jean-Marie Straub," mediated by Dorus Vrede, Hugo Jabini, and Jump Cut 4 (1974): 12–18. Tolin Erwin Alexander. Additional moder- ators: Paitoja Saaki and Duncan Prijor. 14—The expression "the parliament of things" is borrowed from Bruno Latour, We Translation of the conversations from Have Never Been Modern, trans. Catherine Saamaka and Aucan into Dutch: Porter (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Vinije Haabo, Annelies den Boer Press, 1993), 142. ‘things’ refers here Aside, Suedy Mauricio, Erik both to human and to non-human entities. Brunswijk, Kensly Vrede, Amayota 15—Bakra refers to a white person Weewee, Kashmindra Vrede, Roxan but is also used to indicate western- Rahaman, and Andoime Seedo. ers, and other outsiders and intruders. Translation of the script into 16—The nongo is extracted from the English: Thijs Vissia. memory of Mr. Amoni from Grantatai, Books that also inspired the script: Bendikwai, to a dream recounted to him by Papa Awinga from Old Lombe in 1951. Dorus Vrede, Ron het sterfbed van mij Also see Erney R.A.O. Landeld, Alles is dorp (Paramaribo, Suriname: PAS, 1986). voor eeuwig weg (Paramaribo: Bureau Carlo Hoop, Verdronken land, verde- Conos, Centrum voor de Ontwikkeling van wenen dorpen (Alkmaar, The Netherlands: de Onderwijs en Samenleving, 2009). Stichting Bewustzijn, 1991). 17—Maroons in Suriname address in- Richard Price, First-Time: The Historical digenous peoples as Ingi, or Indians. Vision of African American People (Chicago: The Surinamese Ingi are main- University of Chicago Press, 1983). ly from the Arawak, Carib, Akurio, Trió, Warrau, and Wayana tribes. Richard Price, Rainforest Warriors: Human Rights on Trial (State College, PA: CREDITS University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011). The script is based on conversations Erney Landveld, Alles is voor eeuwig with: Bernhard Bodji, Pantooli Doekoe, weg: de transmigratie van de marrons Elizee Jemisie, basia Esinoh Amania, in historisch perspectief (Paramaribo, Joney Doekoe, basia Alingo Doekoe Suriname: Bureau Cosmos). (Edje), Oni Doekoe, Alfons Doekoe, cap- tain Wazen Eduards, Albert Aboikoni, Fergus MacKay, De Saramaka en basia Tablet, basia Elie, captain Bappa hun strijd om het bos (Amsterdam: Humphrey, Rudy Komada, Kaje Akobe, KIT Publishers, 2010). captain Nicolaas (Stiefen) Petrusi, Erwin The script was composed by Lonnie Fonkel, Eddy Poeketti, basia Wee Wee van Brummelen & Siebren de Haan, Toboo, basia Nettie Kobita (Maa Tooy), adopted for the screen in collabo- Dinda Linga, captain Wee Wee Sofesie, ration with Darek Szai Szendel. captain Naldo Finki, Theo Maai, basia Joseph Adrie Prijor, Alfred Dirk Prijor, Translation of the script into Eersteling brothers, Alida Adjoeba, Amoida English: Thijs Vissia. Soeje, Sajee Baabo, basia Djansi Dodo, Produced by Ideal Film, VRIZA, seri- Abioni Dodo, Grieselda Waandels Snel, ousFilm, Van Brummelen & De Haan. Nora Pamarie, Elmond Finisi, Thomas Finki, Petrus Adjako, captain Pomba Adjako, Line production in Suriname by Ann Sylvi Adjako, Oom Pei, basia Luben. Hermelijn, ACO Multi service, Paramaribo.

Van Brummelen & De Haan \ 134 Financially made possible due to the generous support of De Verbeelding (Mondriaan Fund and the Netherlands Film Fund); AFK; Fonds 21. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS To cope with the two antagonistic systems that are active in this film we compiled a team of collaborators who know these structures from the inside. Theatre mak- er Tolin Alexander, lawyer Hugo Jabini, Saamaka linguist Vinije Haabo, and poet Dorus Vrede—Surinamese maroons from the Aucan and Saamaka tribes—mediated between the local communities and us, white outsiders. In dialogue with the direc- tor of commercials and film producer Darek Szai Szendel we unraveled the power structures of the film industry and devel- oped the different audiovisual approaches for the multi-perspective narrative. We thank Berry Vrede, Corine Spoor, Marcel Pinas, and Erney Landveld for their support and advice during the research, and Patricia Pisters and Darek Szendel for their feedback to the introduction.

Van Brummelen & De Haan \ 135

\ Volume 1 \ A portrait is considered to be the depiction, the representation, the likeness of an individ- ual. The relation between the portrait and its object cannot exist unless someone identi- fies the depicted person as that individual for whom the portrait stands. A portrait, however, is not only of someone or by someone: it is a complex arena in which different and some- times contradictory forces come into play. A firm decision or resolve—what we might call high resolution—is needed if one is to stand in front of a portrait and say, “This is X.” Such resolution is difficult to achieve when the visible components of the portrait are poor- ly rendered, presented in low resolution. The gesture pointing to it and saying, “This is X ” is then hesitant or unresolved. In our era, excessively rich in technological devices, “taking a photograph” with a camera TARGETED KILLING \ ARIELLA is just one among many other procedures— AZOULAY IN CONVERSATION WITH such as screen capture or downloading digital MIKI KRATSMAN files—available for producing images. Low- resolution portraits in the form of blurred TEXT \ ARIELLA AZOULAY impressions are often created without the IMAGES \ MIKI KRATSMAN physical presence of the portrayed individual, a product of the technological features that allow the viewer to single out an individu- al from a crowd, to foreground her or him by encircling the face or body in an oval frame or pointing to it with an arrow indicating, “This is X.” The resolution involved in transforming these unrecognizable impressions into identi- fied portraits is achieved not by increasing the clarity of visual details but rather by a com- bined effort of different observers and agents who manipulate and decipher the visually encoded information and identify it as the portrait of X. Similarly, information contained in a high-resolution portrait of an individual can be obscured and made unrecognizable when the person photographed is captured under what I suggest calling “the resolution of the suspect.” Singled out, taken out of context, she or he no longer appears as an individual but rather as an outsider, a threat, present- ed as encapsulated information that can be acquitted—if at all—only through systems of detection programmed by a specific military logic.

Azoulay & Kratsman \ 137 Lifting a camera is a very violent act. The your own, whereby you actually, as it were, turn camera hanging on your neck or shoulder your back to the Palestinian? is reminiscent of a Hitchcock film—soon we’ll use a weapon. This is how one MK wordlessly obtains the agreement of This photograph could only be taken while the whomever is being photographed. The Palestinian did not know I was photographing act of lifting a camera is very violent, and him. No collaboration could take place here. every time anew I feel like skipping it. It Nor do I communicate with him, or even main- has many answers. Here I go exposing tain eye contact. you. Here I go looking at you. When you ride a bus, you notice the gaze of whoev- AA er looks at you. Few people have the guts Still you are not the soldier, nor do you wish to still keep looking. Here I am like some- to be. So can one assume that even if certain one on a bus, telling people that I do not clauses of the contract between you and the lower my gaze. And through the camera Palestinian are not kept, other elements are yet, which makes things even easier. being maintained in a way that distinguishes —Miki Kratsman1 fig 14.1–14.2 you from the soldier? What are they?

INTERVIEW MK Due to my long-lasting relations with Uncharacteristically for the general body of Palestinians prior to this project and sub- Kratsman’s work, in this photographic series sequent to it, I felt I could produce these one could say he managed to skip this act of photographs. This gives me some moral right, “lifting a camera” and in return being seen let’s say, not to include them as partners here. pointing that camera at someone, seen looking at her or him. He achieved this by choosing AA to photograph Palestinians from hundreds of You trust them to trust you? yards away, with the photographed persons usually unaware that he was there. MK Yes, out of some common bond we have. ARIELLA AZOULAY Is this in fact the first time that the Palestinian AA is not at all your partner, is even unaware of What would you do if a Palestinian were to see the situation in which you photograph him? you, standing close to you but outside the dis- tant field of vision of the lens? MIKI KRATSMAN He could not be my partner. This project re- MK quires distance from him. One could look at There were Palestinians who saw me photo- it and say, “You pretend to be a soldier.” And graphing and gave me strange looks. I think my answer would be, “Yes, I am a pretender.” they thought I was some kind of construction When I pretend to be a soldier, I am an “un- inspector. dercover soldier.” And as such, I cannot be a Palestinian’s partner. AA Who would come to demolish their home be- AA cause its construction was illegal, etc. . . . In all other situations, the Palestinian has always been your partner. Even when the sol- MK diers covered his head, you acted as someone I take this picture from my work place at who keeps his contract with him. And here you Bezalel (Academy of Arts and Design). I arrive carry out a kind of small research endeavor of wearing a shirt, ready for class. I don’t look like

Azoulay & Kratsman \ 138 a press photographer, but rather like a clerk. I histories have enabled the rise of a whole don’t even carry a photographer’s case. I leave realm of narrative about those who became it in the car. oppressed minorities from which the perpetra- tors of oppression are often absent. It is as if AA dispossession and oppression were produced And you continue? without agents who should be confronted with their deeds and made to account for them. MK Perpetrators hardly appear in such histories, It was unpleasant. Often when I got such a either as objects of research or as researchers look I stopped photographing for that day and and agents of change who might exert their came back another time. I felt it was pointless right to abandon the position of perpetrator to stretch it out. I took photos this way for a and instead collaborate with oppressed groups long time, about a year. It’s not easy to catch in demanding to change the rules of the game. people this way. One can find moral fault in Those rules, inherited from perpetrating an- nearly every work of this type, and you can’t cestors who created the colonial reality of come clean. I don’t want to do work that takes oppression, continue to shape our world today. no risks. It’s terribly degrading. fig 14.3–14.4 The implications here are obvious: Palestinians, and those Jews who oppose the There is a long tradition of colonial photogra- Zionist regime and narrative and policies such phy of persons subjugated and exploited by as the perpetuation of Palestinian expulsion, the very group to which the photographers participate in reconstructing the common belonged. This has engendered a critical dis- ground from which non-Zionist narratives can course that regards photographs taken under emerge by depicting Zionism from the point such conditions as relatively simple expres- of view of its entire population, starting with sions of the unequal power relations between its victims. Such narratives begin with Edward those who controlled the means of represen- Said’s ground-breaking essay from 1979, tation (the camera) and those who became the “Zionism from the Standpoint of Its Victims,” objects of that representation (the subjugat- followed by Ella Shohat’s “Sephardim in Israel: ed). But photographs are not representations. Zionism from the Standpoint of Its Jewish Recent revisionist histories of photography Victims,” which depicts the narrative of the have emphasized the participation of photo- dispossession and oppression of Mizrahi Jews graphed persons in the photographic event, by the same regime. These narratives tell the in a way that makes obsolete the idea of pho- story of the dispossession of Palestinians as tography as an expressive tool in the hands the major event in the implementation of the of the photographer who used the photo- Zionist regime in 1948.2 The Nakba, the term graphed subjects as his raw material. It is used as early as 1948 to describe the ruination still commonly expected of those belonging of Palestine and the expulsion of Palestinians to the occupying, colonial, or exploiting side from their homeland, cannot be written as an to retreat and make room for those who were exclusively Palestinian history. Only once it is exploited, allowing the latter to speak in their acknowledged as an essential part of the his- own names and tell their own tales. After years tory of Jews living in Palestine (and, after 1948, of oppression, dispossession, exploitation, and in Israel) can one hope to change the political exclusion, it seems this has become an aspect framework that perpetuates the consequences of necessary affirmative action. of the Nakba and continues it in other ways. I would argue the opposite. History can- In like manner, Kratsman’s photographic not be so neatly partitioned, and the cruelty confrontation with the Israeli gaze—that of of governing peoples differentially should the occupier in general and of the soldier in be accounted for in common narratives, not particular—can be read as part of our under- reproduced as if victims and perpetrators live standing that the history of the Occupation on separate planets. The resulting warped begun in 1967 cannot be told either strictly

Azoulay & Kratsman \ 139 from the Palestinian’s point of view or out of and makes us face the ease with which we identification with it. The circumstances under can participate in turning each moment in a which the Jewish Israeli’s gaze has been con- Palestinian’s life into a suspicious one, there- stituted and replicated through the years must by transforming the Palestinian into a target be deeply examined. Kratsman’s project, which of justified killing. The technologies used by risks repeating the soldier’s instrumental gaze, the army to collect remote information about illustrates the extent to which maintaining a Palestinians (and then to execute those it has critical distance from the usual position of the designated) are a combination of popular- Jewish Israeli partaking in the Occupation is ly available technologies and other specific a necessary, but certainly not sufficient, con- professional developments, information about dition for partnership with Palestinians—for which is incomplete and somewhat vague. In creating alliances, building shared archives, this series Kratsman seeks to image the way in researching visual space, and imagining a which the Palestinian appears on the various different future. Replication of the instrumen- screens used by the military at the decisive tal gaze through photography, in a way that moment preceding targeted killing. The pho- is not followed by a violent action, is part of a tographs were taken from his place of work process of undoing what has become nearly at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design on second nature: seeing the Palestinian under Mount Scopus in Jerusalem. Topographically, the resolution of the suspect merely because this viewpoint overlooking the Palestinian he or she is Palestinian. fig 14.5–14.6 village of Issawiya embodies the spatial power relations common to the possession and control AA of land in Israel and the Occupied Territories. What makes you want to experience the sol- Positioned at his window, Kratsman installed dier’s gaze, to simulate turning the Palestinian a type of lens commonly used on unmanned into a suspect? aerial vehicles (UAVs), whose focal length greatly exceeds that of a “normal lens” used MK for street photography (about 1000mm versus Reading the image I produce when I expe- 50mm). The combination of altitude and lens rience the soldier’s gaze interests me more allowed him to remain invisible as he erased than its actual production. I am interested in the hundreds of meters’ distance between the soldier who has to read the image, who himself and the persons he photographed. has to say “it is he” or “it is not he,” “it is At this remove, these individuals easily be- now” or “it is not now,” “click” or “do not come “suspects.” One photograph shows a click.” I am interested in an image that pro- woman walking (see p. 123 in The Resolution duces immediate action, not an image that lets of the Suspect); another, a place that looks one wait, move away, and come back later. It like an abandoned construction site (see p. is a kind of image of a decisive moment. It is 124); and a third, a man either disembark- not a decisive moment regarding the act of ing from or climbing into a car (see p. 125 in photography, but rather regarding what is to be The Resolution of the Suspect). The photo- done with this person: is it or is it not he, is he graphs dissolve the ne line that separates the inside the car or not, are there people around Palestinian’s full existence as a human being him who might get hurt or not, is he to be and turn him into a wanted man, an object of killed or not? Presumably, on most occasions targeted killing. when cars are targeted, the soldiers know that Unsurprisingly, since technology can turn the driver is inside the car but do not see him. a full existence into a unit of information, That is the moment that interests me. many of the photographs Kratsman created resemble verbal descriptions found in vari- This series of black-and-white photographs ous documents describing targeted objects. A examines the capacities of the medium to cre- description of a gure holding a weapon could ate the ultimate suspect out of the technology apply to several of the photographed persons:

Azoulay & Kratsman \ 140 someone who happened to be holding some MK insignia cant object, a construction work- I can’t estimate with any certainty, but some- er holding a pipe that suddenly looks like a thing between 800 meters and one kilometer. shoulder-mounted missile. fig 14.7–14.8 What you see in the photos is not something you could normally see with your bare eyes. AA Your choice of a UAV lens in the context of AA research for targeted killing is understandable. If the soldier were near you, would you dare lift But how did you choose your subjects? such a sizable lens?

MK MK I photographed everything: anyone or any- Yes. I don’t care if an Israeli soldier comes and thing moving in the street. I ran an Internet asks me why I’m photographing. I have been in search for information on the targeted killings. more complicated situations with soldiers. I wasn’t interested in what kind of weap- ons were used but rather in what situation AA the person was in when shot, where he was, When you lift such a lens, do you not feel what he was doing at the time. The choice of threatening, threatened, as if you are doing frames was made accordingly. I wanted them something that could get you in trouble? to suit existing narratives of killings. Thus, for example, according to testimonies of people MK whose window was entered by a missile while Yes, I do have a sense of doing something they were at work, I photographed the win- problematic. It’s the first time I felt that wield- dow of an office building. In another instance, ing the camera resembles wielding a weapon. I tried to photograph someone who was hold- ing something that looked like a weapon but AA was not a weapon. When I read the testimony I recall interviewing you for my film The Angel given by the widow of Dr. Thabet Thabet, shot of History in 2001. You said that for you, hold- while coming out of his house heading to his ing a camera is like holding a gun. . . . car, I suddenly recalled a photograph I have of someone getting out of a car. MK Here the sensation is much stronger. There AA is nothing closer to shooting than aiming the Did you use only information of the Israeli- lens from such a distance at a single person. Palestinian context? It’s like a telescopic sight on a rifle; only the crosshatch is missing. It’s a different per- MK spective than the one I’m used to while taking No. There are, for example, these two people photos. A totally different field of vision. walking down a street. It reminded me of a photograph of a killing in Baghdad. My photo- AA graphed persons were walking just like them. In what way? Elsewhere I read the testimony of a woman who (based on the long-range photo image) MK could have been a man. The area within which you photograph is extremely narrow. The slightest movement of AA the lens makes you lose the person. The per- How distant are you from the photographed spective is very flattening, and whatever is in parties? front and in back gets very confused. That’s what a long lens does—it flattens things terri- bly. I increase this even more afterwards, when

Azoulay & Kratsman \ 141 I photograph all these photos again from a it from the screen. Each of these procedures screen. I want to enhance even more the sight intensifies the conclusion that in order to that the soldier faces when he decides. In this appear as the ultimate target, the photo- context I am less interested in what the soldier graphed person must be designated a priori as sees when he photographs. [Instead,] I try to a suspect. Technology provides a seemingly get close to the picture that the soldier looks objective framework for his or her appear- at as he decides whether or not to kill. ance, but this series exposes the extent to which the control achieved from the position AA of a fly on the wall, the invisible eye, conceals Are you sure these are two different soldiers— the fact that the judging eye is activated by a the one who photographs and the one who technology that makes the Palestinian “suffi- looks and decides? ciently suspect.” Even if the processes used by Kratsman to produce these photographs are MK not identical to those used by the army, the I don’t know. Perhaps they’re the same one. images he created make the places, situations, Fig 14.9–14.10 and photographed persons look like abstract units of visual information: they have lost their The use of a UAV lens that serves in a target- specificity and unique character through a ed killing enables one to reconstruct what series of distancing, alienation, mediation, and a soldier sees while making the decision to replication processes. fig 14.11–14.12 eliminate someone. The soldier is assisted by preexisting information about the wanted man, ENDNOTES which is supposed to turn a frame like those 1—From a conversation with Miki Kratsman in this series of Kratsman’s photographs into recorded in the film The Angel of History, the last link in a chain of information collected directed by Ariella Azoulay (2001). from various sources, which together empow- er the soldier to make the decision to execute Text and photographs are reproduced the wanted man. From a civil point of view, by permission from “I. The Lethal Art of such “information” should be rejected out Portraiture” and “Targeted Killing” from of hand as the basis for deciding to execute Miki Kratsman, The Resolution of the someone. If there is truth in such information, Suspect (Cambridge, MA: Peabody Museum a case to be made, it belongs in the judicial Press and Santa Fe, NM: Radius Books, system, which is supposed to handle it just as 2016) © 2016 by President and Fellows it would information about any other citizen. of Harvard College. Text © 2016 by Ariella Information isolated through the lens of a UAV, Azoulay. Images © 2016 by Miki Kratsman. whose very focus places the subject in the Courtesy Peabody Museum of Archaeology resolution of a suspect, should not be used and Ethnology, Harvard University. as evidence for an in-the-field court martial 2—Mizrahi Jews or Oriental Jews are resulting in execution. Kratsman’s use of such those descended from local Jewish a lens, even apart from the ideological appa- communities in the Middle East. ratus that presupposes the Palestinian to be suspect, reveals how perfectly the technology acts and reinforces the ideology. The question of whether or not the Palestinians seen through this lens are “sus- pect enough” is answered by Kratsman’s use of additional procedures to ne-tune the precise image of the ultimate target: black- and-white photography, scanning of the image, projecting it on a screen, and rephotographing

Azoulay & Kratsman \ 142 \ Volume 1 \ Figures

fig 14.1 fig 14.4 Miki Kratsman, 2016. Miki Kratsman, 2016.

fig 14.2 fig 14.5 Miki Kratsman, 2016. Miki Kratsman, 2016.

fig 14.3 fig 14.6 Miki Kratsman, 2016. Miki Kratsman, 2016.

Azoulay & Kratsman \ 143 \ Volume 1 \ Figures

fig 14.7 fig 14.10 Miki Kratsman, 2016. Miki Kratsman, 2016.

fig 14.8 fig 14.11 Miki Kratsman, 2016. Miki Kratsman, 2016.

fig 14.9 fig 14.12 Miki Kratsman, 2016. Miki Kratsman, 2016.

Azoulay & Kratsman \ 144 \ Volume 1 \ On May 4, 1972, a group of 1,200 peo- ple marched on the 11th Naval District Headquarters in downtown San Diego, ac- companied by “several musicians [and] some federal and local agents."1 The event, which was part of a “nationwide moratorium called to protest Nixon’s escalation of the war in Indochina,” was timed to coincide with the second anniversary of the Kent and Jackson State shootings.2 After they reached the Naval District Headquarters “nearly a hundred of the protestors sat down in the entrance, blocking it.”3 A few hours later, the police “declared it an unlawful assembly” and told the crowd to move on. When the protesters refused, the police began arresting them. In the words of one reporter, “With a crowd of 200 cheering them as they were led into a County Sheriff’s bus and SDPD paddy wagons, those arrest- ACTION, DOCUMENTATION, ed were taken to the county jail and charged DOCUMENTARY \ THE EARLY with trespassing on federal property, unlawful PHOTOGRAPHY OF ALLAN SEKULA, assembly and failure to disperse.”4 The artist MARTHA ROSLER, FRED LONIDIER, and current University of California, San Diego AND PHIL STEINMETZ MFA student, Fred Lonidier was there, having participated in the march, but he did not join HUFFA FROBES-CROSS those who blocked the entrance to the head- quarters. He had his camera with him, as he nearly always did. At the time, he was also a few days away from hanging his MFA thesis show. As the police descended on the pro- testers, Lonidier was neither concerned nor surprised. By 1972, he says, “This has become a regular thing, the police knew what to ex- pect and so did the protesters.”5 Lonidier had been both attending and photographing demonstrations since the mid-1960s and was well acquainted with their almost ritualized rhythms. One part of this familiar routine was the police documentation of those arrested. So, as Lonidier tells it, “When I saw a police- man lining up to take photographs, I wondered what would happen if I took the photos. So, I decided to step behind him and start taking photographs myself.”6 He began shooting with an unused roll of 35mm film and stopped when the roll was finished. The contents of that roll would be displayed days later at his thesis show as 29 Arrests: Headquarters of the 11th Naval District, May 4, 1972, San Diego (1972). Positioned behind the officer, Lonidier used

Frobes-Cross \ 145 his camera to intervene within the relationship school, and making performative protest works between the protesters and their recording by since his years as an undergrad at UCSD. the police, providing an opportunity for them Sekula, Rosler and Lonidier became artists to appear in something beyond a criminal da- as activists, not so much pursuing these two tabase. The work proposes new relationships engagements side by side as pulling each between Lonidier, the police officers, the pro- through the demands of the other. They sought testers, and when later displayed in the UCSD to speak intelligibly within the discourses of gallery, another viewing public. Since 1969, leftist activist movements, making work legi- UCSD had been a major site of anti-war activ- ble alongside underground newspapers, flyers ism, with nearly continual protests throughout and protest placards, and remain legible within each school year, including building occu- the institutional spaces of the gallery and the pations, marches and student strikes. By modern art museum. In their early attempts displaying 29 Arrests on campus, Lonidier was to mediate between the demands of these making those protesters visible to those who discourses they turned increasingly towards would identify and sympathize with their actions. historical forms and methods drawn from doc- In 29 Arrests, the act of documentation un- umentary photography. dermines the representational authority of the Working in a university context, relative- police by producing the protesters as subjects ly isolated from the central hubs of the art for the public that passes through the gal- world, the group developed a model of politi- lery.7 The work utilizes the same documentary cal artistic practice that was distinct from the function of the photograph that underlies the self-critical explorations of post-Minimalism, police archive, but places his subjects before Conceptual art, and what would soon be- a sympathetic public engaged in the anti-war come institutional critique. The UCSD Visual movement, where they can appear, not as pet- Arts department, which had accepted its first ty criminals, but as protestors. students only a few years earlier in 1967, was At the time he produced 29 Arrests, Lonidier one of several programs offering MFA degrees was one of the core members of an infor- founded throughout the UC system in the mid- mal working group made up of students and to-late 1960s.10 The head of the department, faculty at the UCSD Visual Arts program that the poet and critic David Antin, actively en- also included Allan Sekula, Martha Rosler and couraged interdisciplinary programs of study, Phil (later Phel) Steinmetz. Sekula and Rosler focusing much less on developing specific entered the UCSD MFA program in 1972, the artisanal skills than providing a broad, intellec- same year that Lonidier graduated and joined tually rigorous education. The group embraced Steinmetz on the Arts faculty. The group met this vision, taking classes across a range of nearly every week for several years, critiquing departments, and developing connections each other’s work, discussing potential proj- both on and off campus among radical journal- ects and just generally “batting ideas around,” ists, feminist groups, and leftist scholars, as in Rosler’s words. 8 Film critic and UCSD pro- well as other artists. Rosler and Sekula partic- fessor Manny Farber referred to them as “that ipated in a literary theory reading group run by Marxist cabal” down there in the darkroom.9 Fredric Jameson, and both were close with the They coalesced around a shared interest in philosopher Herbert Marcuse. All four artists imagining artistic practice as political prac- attended dozens of lectures by visiting artists, tice. With the exception of Steinmetz, each scholars and filmmakers including Jean-Pierre had begun producing photographs and making Gorin, Louis Marin, and Angela Davis, among art from within the antiwar, labor, civil rights, many others. Rosler was a member of the San and women’s liberation movements. During Diego-based Women’s Liberation Front (WLF) the same period, Rosler had been making and contributed some of her photomontag- photomontages that she distributed as flyers es to the local feminist publication, Goodbye at marches. Sekula, the youngest of the core to All That!.11 The artists also were friendly group, had been attending protests since high with the editorial staff of the Street Journal,

Frobes-Cross \ 146 an important underground newspaper based little connection to the production or exhibi- in San Diego.12 The public that gathered for tion of art. their campus shows were made up of activists Photography, as Sekula would argue, is from the San Diego area, as well as students defined through the “various representational and faculty in the humanities, social sciences tasks” it comes to serve.15 As he articulated in and visual arts. With the exception of a few his 1981 essay, “The Traffic in Photographs,” faculty members, influential members of the photography is constantly channeled through commercial art world, whether gallerists, crit- incompatible discourses, functioning at one ics or prominent artists, rarely attended their moment as scientific fact and another as aes- exhibitions. thetic expression.16 Nowhere was this more In part responding to the demands of this evident than in the constantly shifting status diverse public and drawing on their wide rang- of documentary photography. As both Sekula ing intellectual background, these artists were and Rosler would argue, the formalist, modern- less concerned with exploring the conditions ist appropriation of documentary photography of possibility, and attendant limitations, of art carried the danger of obscuring the work’s production within the institutional art world other social functions.17 However, if the docu- than with finding ways to dislodge its place as mentary photograph’s aesthetic existence is an exclusive and determining site. They sought not seen as exclusive, and if its other functions models of aesthetic practice that existed are somehow made visible even within the between multiple sites and multiple publics. gallery, its intelligibility within and beyond the Some of their earliest projects eschewed the discourses of art carried the potential to reach gallery space entirely, but they increasingly ex- a disparate set of publics. Thus, while critical plored ways to produce work that would exist of the modernist erasure of a photograph’s between the gallery and other sites, speaking instrumental uses, these artists saw documen- to art world insiders, activists, and academics. tary photography as a way of making work that Documentary photography held a unique could exist between its multiple uses, using appeal for these artists because of its complex the documentary form to speak within several and contradictory status, as a practice defined discourses simultaneously. both by its various pragmatic, social, politi- These artists’ shared embrace of documen- cal uses, and, increasingly, by its integration tary first emerged from a struggle to mediate into the canon of modernist art. Photographs between their political activism and artistic made for the Farm Security Administration practice. This interest can be traced through- (FSA) as part of the United States govern- out the period between 1970 and 1972, from ment’s response to the Great Depression and the time of Sekula’s first protest pieces at for the housing and labor reform movements UCSD, which also involved Lonidier, through of the early 1900s had entered the collection the critical three pieces Sekula produced as of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), not a student in Steinmetz’ photography class in as historical documents but artworks valued the winter term of 1971-1972, and Lonidier’s for their formal innovations.13 Simultaneously, 1972 MFA thesis show in which 29 Arrests was artists like Lee Friedlander, Garry Winogrand, first shown. In looking at this work, some of and Diane Arbus, who were all featured in the earliest produced during the group’s time the 1967 MoMA exhibition New Documents, together, it is possible to observe the emer- were appropriating the methods and forms of gence of documentary methods that would these earlier documentary photographs in the characterize much of their output throughout production of work destined primarily for art the 1970s. publications and gallery walls.14 Documentary photographs, and their aesthetic norms, had Early in the morning of May 26th, 1970, Lonidier become legible within galleries and museums remembers walking across campus when as artworks, regardless of their other lives as “Allan [Sekula] grabbed me . . . and hauled part of practices and within institutions with me over to [Visual Arts professor] Newton

Frobes-Cross \ 147 Harrison’s studio.”18 At the time, UCSD was in Plaza was perhaps the most frequent site for the midst of perhaps the most turbulent month campus activism, and body bags, caskets, in its short history. The entire University of and coffins had been used in antiwar and civil California system had been officially shut down rights protests around the country for years.23 by Reagan and unofficially shut down by stu- In fact, caskets were part of a small protest dents striking across the state and the country on Revelle Plaza just a few days before Body to protest Nixon’s decision to invade Cambodia Bags. and the subsequent shootings at Jackson and At the same time, the work spoke intelligi- Kent State. Throughout May there had been bly within the language of contemporaneous nearly continual eruptions on campus. Sekula, avant-garde art. In a generic sense, it was a Rosler and Lonidier had been involved in many typical example of the participatory perfor- of these events, and Lonidier correctly as- mative art prevalent on university campuses sumed that Sekula was pulling him into some during these years. Allan Kaprow’s ideas, as sort of political action. well as those of fellow Fluxus affiliated art- When Lonidier arrived at Harrison’s studio, ists Robert Watts, Alison Knowles, and Ken the floor was covered in plastic sheeting and Friedman, about the artwork as an open ended, littered with rags, paper and splashes of vari- often collaborative event, were central to the ous viscous substances. Sekula, Harrison, and flowering of arts education at newly founded several others, “egged on” by social theorist universities around California in the late 1960s Anthony Wilden, had begun coating thirteen and early 1970s.24 Kaprow had taught at UCSD military uniforms in paint and mud and stuff- before taking a position at CalArts in Valencia ing them with paper, sand, and “reeking cow and created several works on campus through- guts” procured from a local slaughterhouse.19 out the late 1960s and 1970s. By redeploying Delivered on gurneys, the loaded bags were the relatively familiar form of late 1960s partic- laid out in a neat row in Revelle Plaza at ipatory performative art, Body Bags functioned the center of campus, “as if they were body as a protest, while articulating itself intelligibly bags to be dropped off or picked up by a as an art work. Neither of these roles were helicopter.”20 stable nor definitive. Body Bags’ public was As people began to notice the piece, ac- merely all those who encountered it as they cording to Harrison, they were horrified. “Who walked across Revelle Plaza, itself a site of did this? It’s awful,” one exclaimed. Another protests, performances and memorials, which apparently threw up.21 Authorities eventually provided no clear frame through which to view dismantled the piece, carting the impromptu the work. sculptures to the university’s cadaver locker to Although Lonidier did not consider himself make sure they weren’t human corpses. Once a participant in the piece at the time, it is only it was clear that only cow carcasses were through his photographs that the work remains involved, they were thrown into the university more than a fleeting trace in the art historical incinerator. The sand melted into liquid glass archive.25 The work may have appeared on and destroyed the machine.22 Revelle Plaza already as, among other things, The next day a sign was placed on the plaza art, but it is visible as such today due, in that read, “A SCULPTURE WAS REMOVED FROM large part, to these images. This relationship THIS AREA BY THE POLICE AFTER MIDNIGHT ON between a performance, event, or construc- 5-26-70. THE SCULPTURE OFFENDED HEALTH tion located in a specific space and time AND SAFETY CODE 4475-76 - - SO DOES WAR.” and its documentation was intrinsic to much In front of the sign were a series of rectangular post-Minimalist, performance, and Conceptual chalk outlines marking the spots where each art. Perhaps the most well-known description bag had sat. of this idea was Robert Smithson’s notion of Body Bags (1970) would have been imme- site and non-site. diately intelligible to any member of the UCSD Smithson’s writing was familiar to Sekula, community as an antiwar protest. Revelle who noted that the older artist’s work

Frobes-Cross \ 148 impacted Sekula's early thinking about sculp- or the boundaries of private property. However, ture.26 Lawrence Alloway later described the they only became publicly visible through site/non-site relationship as essentially the their documentation. They inverted the terms relationship between a signifier and signified.27 of Body Bags, which played a public, political The site only comes to meaning, to enter into role during its temporary existence on Revelle discourse, through the creation and display of Plaza with no planned public display of its the non-site. Site-specific works, conceptu- photographic documentation. al gestures, and fleeting performances were The third piece made during this period was given more permanent form through their pho- Untitled Slide Sequence (1971). For this, Sekula tographic documentation, which, within the drove to the San Diego General Dynamics exhibition context became synonymous with Convair Division factory, about fifteen minutes the work itself. from UCSD campus. General Dynamics was a Sekula would explicitly adopt this strategy founding funder of UCSD, and recruited active- in three works that relied on this definition of ly at the university, and occasionally offered the work as split between site and non-site, faculty dual appointments at the company.31 As signifier and signified.28 These pieces both a weapons manufacturer, the company was at consisted of nearly private actions, which were the center of ongoing protests around UCSD’s then photographed for later exhibition. Unlike involvement in the Vietnam war. Body Bags, they had no public prior to their Arriving in the late afternoon at “the end of existence as photographs, and their reproduc- the day shift,” Sekula stood, as he later said, tion was not a secondary act beyond the works “on a pedestrian overpass . . . more or less themselves, but the sole way in which they where a militant selling newspapers would would appear. The documentation of the work stand."32 He then began photographing the had become the work itself. workers as they left the factory, and continued In Box Car (1971), Sekula played the role of to do so until he was kicked out by security. He a hobo riding a train taking photographs out explained later that he had hoped to provoke of the open door of “a rail-freight wagon as this interruption. He stood not only in the place it passed near a chemical research and de- of a “militant” but also, as he said, “inside velopment plant” where he had worked as a company property, so that the project ended technician in 1969. For Meat Mass (1971), the when the guards detected my trespassing.”33 second of the two pieces, Sekula took on the Sekula instrumentalized the threat his camera role of a thief, going to a local Safeway and apparently posed, producing a document not stealing some of their most expensive cuts just of everyday factory work, but of the resis- of meat, later throwing them onto a freeway. tance such documentation produces from the At the time Safeway was facing boycotts by agents of that factory’s disciplinary regime. In the United Farm Workers for selling produce Untitled Slide Sequence the action and docu- picked by non-union scabs.29 Meat prices mentation are no longer split, rather it is the were also at historic highs, due to both infla- documentation that constitutes the action. tion and decreased supply.30 Sekula targeted Unlike Meat Mass and Box Car, Sekula does a commodity being sold by a company fight- not directly appear in any of the images and ing against labor rights and whose price had the events being documented are not primar- become subject to the seemingly irrational ily of his own creation. As Sekula would later effects of global markets. Robbed of their recall, at this point, “documentation was more role in earning income for Safeway, they were interesting than the action itself.”34 If Meat transformed into minor obstacles to the flows Mass and Box Car reversed the terms of Body of transit upon which the California economy Bags, making documentation primary rather depended. It was a rigorous, if entirely sym- than secondary, with Untitled Slide Sequence bolic, anti-capitalist gesture. In Box Car and the nature of that documentation begins to Meat Mass, the acts themselves constituted a shift. This is no longer simply a document- minor disruption of either capitalist exchange ed performance, but the documentation of

Frobes-Cross \ 149 an event that was only partially provoked by That mediation, its form as a kind of docu- Sekula. Here, the documentation begins to mentary, is now constitutive, not only of its art become something like documentary: “I be- historical, but its political existence. Lonidier’s came less interested in the petty criminal and documentation of the social relations between transient as romantic disguises, and more himself, the police and the protesters both interested in documentation, especially in the serves to produce the work and functions as ambiguity of the documentary function and an intervention within those relations. the esthetic modesty and worldliness of the photograph.”35 In the four years after Untitled Slide Sequence In this quote Sekula charts the development and 29 Arrests, Lonidier, Rosler, Sekula, and of his work between 1971 and 1972 in the Steinmetz made an array of projects that semantic shift between “documentation” and engaged with documentary forms and meth- “documentary.” The use of photography as ods. Steinmetz would produce a long series documentation of nearly private “action-art” of photo-text works including Indian Fighter opens onto the possibility of documentary. (1973), Oil, Profit, Control (1973), and his vast Body Bags relied on, without integrating, later autobiographic, autoethnographic study of his mediations for its continued visibility. In Meat family Somebody’s Making a Mistake (1976). Mass and Box Car this mediation becomes Sekula would make his own autobiographic, integral, but the acts being documented are autoethnographic work Aerospace Folktales produced only for their latter photograph- (1973), and two other important photo-text ic existences. With Untitled Slide Sequence, works Meditations on a Triptych (1973-1978) the photographs no longer merely document and This Ain’t China (1974). Rosler would pro- an individual private act, but the results of duce The Bowery in two inadequate descriptive an event only partially produced by Sekula’s systems, whose juxtaposition of alcohol-relat- presence. They are the trace of a conflict ed slang and photographs of empty storefronts between antagonistic social forces, between on the Bowery explicitly engaged with the long Sekula as the alleged trespasser and potential history of reformist documentary in New York political troublemaker and the security re- City. Finally, Lonidier would complete Health gime of a military-industrial facility. Sekula has and Safety Game (1976), a photo-text work moved from using photography to document incorporating extensive research and origi- his own actions, in the vein of contemporane- nal fieldwork that documents the attempts of ous Conceptual and post-Minimalist artists, to those suffering from workplace injury to get using photography to document the complex health care and compensation, and which was social forces in the world around him, en- exhibited in both galleries and union halls. In gaging and conceptually expanding the long most of these cases, the work’s incorpora- tradition of social documentary photography. tion of documentary photography opens the Three months later, Lonidier would extend way for its intertwined role in specific political this logic in 29 Arrests. The production and struggles and the institutional art world. Health exhibition of the work serves to undermine and Safety Game, for example, used documen- the authority of the police photographic ar- tary photographs and accompanying text to chive, and give those arrested another public provide an informational resource for workers within the gallery. This is an integral part of 29 trying to deal with the bureaucracy surround- Arrests’ intervention in the conflict between ing workplace injury. At the same time, its police and protesters. 29 Arrests utilizes pho- photo-text format situated it securely within tographic documentation as a way to establish the realm of contemporaneous photography a relationship between the exhibited work and and Conceptual art. the public that passes through, what Smithson The established appropriation of otherwise would call, the non-site of the gallery and instrumental photographs into the archive of those at the site of its creation. It acts as a the modern art museum opened an avenue form of mediation between sites and publics. for imagining another kind of political artistic

Frobes-Cross \ 150 practice. Rosler would later describe her work the systematic photographic series of both as “a series of decoys; a work briefly masquer- Ruscha and Bernd and Hilla Becher. As Rosler ades as one thing, following a given form, until later put it: you soon realize that something is amiss.”36 Documentary had appeared within the muse- From its inception I felt that The Bowery um as a kind of decoy, even if it was not always was a work for art galleries and muse- presented as such. This provided an alterna- ums . . . It was meant as an art work, tive way of thinking about a relationship to the hanging on the wall—why else would I art institution, as a place to exhibit, but not as bother calling it "inadequate?” Who cares a place through which one’s work is entirely about inadequacy of representation? The defined. Rather than trying to disrupt or re- general public doesn't care about inade- make the institution, they attempted to fit in, quacy, the art world and artists care about or perhaps better, sneak in, so that, under the adequacy of representational systems.38 guise of recognizable current art something else might be going on. In choosing to photograph the Bowery, and Rosler’s The Bowery in two inadequate to allude to the problems of alcoholism and descriptive systems, a piece made specifically dispossession, Rosler was tying her work to made for the gallery-going public, is perhaps some of the first examples of social documen- the clearest example of this strategy.37 It con- tary, in particular Jacob Riis’ late nineteenth sists of a series of photographs, largely of shop and twentieth century photographs of the fronts in the Bowery in downtown Manhattan downtown New York poor, and Hine's later set next to photographs of typewritten pag- work in the same area.39 The Bowery’s tran- es filled with slang terms for drunk, alcoholic, sient population had remained a subject of and empty bottles of booze. It evoked es- documentary photographers into the present tablished forms of both modernist-approved day, with Michael Zettler’s sentimental series documentary photography and Conceptual art. The Bowery published as a successful book Her direct shots of storefronts recalled Walker in 1975.40 Rosler would identify much of this Evans’ 1930s photographs as well as Evans’ work as the “find-a-bum school of photogra- recuperation within Friedlander’s more recent phy.” As Rosalind Deutsche and Cara Gendel work. Although not as precisely organized as Ryan argue in a 1984 essay that also includes either photographer’s images, Rosler’s pho- a brief early mention of The Bowery, the bum tographs similarly utilize the flat planes of is a an often aestheticized, and depoliticized building facades and their attached signs to figure, whose naturalized, mythic representa- create geometric compositions that juxta- tion of poverty moves “poverty itself . . . out of pose the more abstract forms of blank walls our field of vision.”41 The process of gentrifica- with the textual markings of signs and graffiti. tion, which necessarily displaces the poorest, As the sequence progresses, as in books like “useless” residents of a neighborhood, “is Evans’ American Photographs (1938) or Let aided and abetted,” Deutsche and Ryan ar- Us Now Praise Famous Men (1941), there is a gue, “by an ‘artistic’ process whereby poverty formal and thematic development between the and homelessness are served up for aesthetic photographs, which become gradually more pleasures.”42 Moreover, this process of gen- and then less cluttered before ending on two trification, as Rosler would later describe in shots, not of storefronts, but empty bottles on detail in her 1990 book If You Lived Here and the ground. The Bowery also closely adheres to her 2013 essay collection Culture Class, was the generic confines of the photo-text work, a both driven by and partially responsible for the form which had been recognizably established transformation of neighborhoods into centers since the late-1960s work of conceptualists of art world activity.43 The Bowery erases this like Joseph Kosuth. As an extended set of di- mythic image of the bum, replacing it with an rect, repeating photographs largely of a single unfolding list of slang terms related to drinking element of the built environment, they echoed and the empty shots of storefronts. The viewer

Frobes-Cross \ 151 is given no overarching category through such an existence as only one of its “various which to frame these two “inadequate de- representational tasks.” Escape is not the scriptive systems.” The words and images, as goal, but rather the ability to exist always be- Steve Edwards has discussed at length, do not tween determinations. inform one another like a typical photograph and its caption, but instead undermine one ENDNOTES another.44 Between these two mutually under- 1—Daniel Buchbinder, “85 Arrested in War mining descriptions, we are left not with an Protest,” Triton Times, May 5, 1972; “Before image, but a challenge to construct one. The the Bust,” Triton Times, May 9, 1972. representation of “the Bowery” and its popu- lace becomes a problem, and a problem with 2—A few days or weeks earlier there had immediate social consequences.45 been a meeting on campus called by the In The Bowery, not only the production of Women’s Liberation Front (WLF) during the image but its specific existence within the which the “35-40” participants decided galleries of the current institutional art world to make May 4th “a day of resistance and are integral to its political aims, turning an struggle against the war.” It is possible engagement with the history of documentary that this was the origin of the May 4th and the modish theoretical question of the protest. However, there is no further in- “adequacy of representational systems” into a formation on the planning of the protest, way of confronting a public directly implicated beyond this article reporting the meeting, in the displacement of the poor. so it is impossible to say with certainty. In January 1975, Sekula published “On Rosler was, of course, a member of WLF, the Invention of Photographic Meaning” in and may have been at the meeting. Artforum. He wrote the essay, in part, over the Although I was unable to confirm whether winter, during which time he was living with or not that was the case. Rosler in New York while she was making The “Anti-War Coalition,” Crazy Times, 1972; Bowery. Photography itself, as Sekula de- “Arrested Group Releases Statement,” scribes in the essay, is not inherently located Triton Times, May 19, 1972. within a single discourse, nor does it, in and of Buchbinder, “85 Arrested in War Protest.” itself constitute a single, unified language or medium. Its function is dependent on its use 3—Ibid. and legibility in those particular discourses in 4—Ibid. which it comes to serve as an utterance and to those particular publics to which it becomes 5—In fact, five Vietnam veterans had been addressed. The production of the photograph arrested at the headquarters just a few is thus always already a statement thrown out weeks earlier after declaring themselves into a heteroglot environment, what he calls to be war criminals and demanding a re- the “photographic discourse . . . within which sponse from the Naval authorities. the culture harnesses photographs to various “Five Arrested At 11th Naval District representational tasks.”46 The problem that Headquarters,” Triton Times, April 25, Sekula identified with an “esthetist” approach 1972; to photography was its attempt to draw a Lonidier, Interview with author, 2014. “clear boundary . . . between photography 6—Lonidier, Interview with author, op cit. and its social character” in order to establish it “as an art.” In turning toward documentary 7—Benjamin Young convincingly ar- photography, Sekula, Steinmetz, Rosler, and gues that in reversing the “hierarchy of Lonidier sought to take advantage of pho- the police photographic situation,” 29 tography’s heteroglossia, which estheticism Arrests relies on the logic of civil dis- suppressed. They pursued this not in order to obedience. “Parallel to but distinct from negate its existence as an art, but to imagine police photography, another circuit of

Frobes-Cross \ 152 counter-publicity is set up between the 13—These included FSA photographers sitters and the activist photographer like Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, and (and implicitly the viewer), one that turns Russell Lee, as well as earlier social reform the sitters’ public law-breaking and ar- photographers like Jacob Riis and Lewis rest into an occasion to denounce the Hine. war and the military-police state.” For a lengthier investigation of the rela- tionship between photography and the Benjamin Young, “Documents and modern art museum see: Documentary: San Diego, c. 1973,” in Christopher Phillips, “The Judgment The Uses of Photography: Art, Politics and Seat of Photography,” in The Contest of the Reinvention of a Medium (San Diego, Meaning: Critical Histories of Photography, California; Museum of Contemporary ed. Richard Bolton (Cambridge, Art San Diego; 2016), 131. Mass: MIT Press, 1989), 14–47. 8—Benjamin Buchloh, “A Conversation 14—John Szarkowski, MoMA’s influen- with Martha Rosler,” in Martha Rosler: tial Director of Photography, organized Positions in the Life World (Cambridge, the New Documents exhibition, as well as Mass.: MIT Press, 1998), 32. exhibitions of earlier documentary photog- Other artists associated with this raphers like Evans. With a nod to Clement group for shorter periods of times in- Greenberg’s self-reflexive modernism, clude Brian Connell, Adele Schaules, Szarkowski argued that any photogra- Steve Buck, and Marge Dean. phy could be appreciated for its formal engagement with the medium of photog- 9—Steve Edwards, Martha Rosler: raphy itself, regardless of the reasons for The Bowery in Two Inadequate its production, or its subsequent uses. In Descriptive Systems (London: The exhibitions like The Photographer’s Eye MIT Press, 2012), 133 n. 89. (1964) and From the Picture Press (1973), Rosler also worked as a teaching assis- images were drawn from disparate fields, tant for Farber during her time at UCSD, some by trained artists, some by ama- a position that gave her exposure to teurs, many by professional photographers a wide range of contemporary film. with little relationship to modern art. As Szarkowski wrote in his introduction to The 10—These included the arts programs Photographer’s Eye, “The pictures repro- at UCSD, University of California, Irvine, duced in this book were made over almost and University of California, Santa Cruz. a century and a quarter. They were made 11—Between 1970 and 1971, she for various reason, by men of different con- published her photomontages “Tron” cerns and varying talent. They have in fact (Amputee) (1967-1972) and little in common except their success, and a shared vocabulary: these pictures are “Vacation Getaway” (1967-1972) in unmistakably photographs. The vision they Goodbye to All That!, a feminist publi- share belongs to no school or aesthetic cation founded earlier that year by theory, but to photography itself.” John some of the women who worked Szarkowski, The Photographer’s Eye (New at the underground San Diego York: Museum of Modern Art, 1964), 2. newspaper Street Journal. 15—Allan Sekula, “On the Invention of 12—For more on the relationship between Photographic Meaning,” in Photography these artists and the underground press Against the Grain: Essays and Photo Works of the period see, Young, “Documents 1973-1983 (Halifax, N.S: Press of the and Documentary: San Diego, c. 1973.” Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, 1984), 2–21. Originally published in 1975.

Frobes-Cross \ 153 16—Allan Sekula, “The Traffic 9. Two years later, a particularly ambitious in Photographs,” Art Journal 41, protest by students and faculty at MIT no. 1 (Spring 1981): 15–25. involved the creation of 1000 inflatable bodies to match the then current 24-hour 17—Sekula, “On the Invention of kill rate in Vietnam. Photographic Meaning.” Tom Wells, The War Within: America’s Battle Martha Rosler, “Lee Friedlander’s over Vietnam (Berkeley, CA: University of Guarded Strategies,” Artforum 13, California Press, 1994), 438-444; no. 6 (February 1975): 46–53. “MIT Group Making ‘Bodies’ to Protest War,” 18—Lonidier, interview with the author. Boston Globe (1960-1984), May 6, 1972. 19—Lonidier explained that Wilden was 24—The development of Fluxus itself visiting at the time from Simon Fraser was strongly intertwined with the his- University and can be seen in some of his tory of arts education in the university, photos “bent over the ‘bodies’ while they with much of the early development were being worked on.” Harrison, when of the movement occurring at Rutgers asked if Wilden participated in the per- University during Kaprow and Watts’ time formance said he was likely just “egging there. For more on the connection be- everybody on. He was an egger-onner.” tween Fluxus and the university see: Lonidier, Interview with author. Geoffrey Hendricks, ed., Critical Mass: Newton Harrison, Interview with author, Happenings, Fluxus, Performance, 2014; Intermedia, and Rutgers University, Allan Sekula and Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, 1958-1972 (New Brunswick, N.J.: “Conversation between Allan Sekula and Rutgers University Press, 2003); Benjamin H. D. Buchloh,” in Allan Sekula: Performance Under Working Conditions, Joan Marter, ed., Off Limits: Rutgers ed. Sabine Breitwieser (Wien: Generali University and the Avant-Garde, Foundation, 2003), 30; 1957-1963 (Newark, N.J.: Rutgers Young, “Documents and Documentary: University Press, 1999). San Diego, c. 1973,” 127. 25—Lonidier has repeatedly stated that he 20—Harrison, Interview with author. did not consider himself one of the collab- orative participants in the piece. This may 21—Ibid. have been because he was not present 22—Harrison claims that the damage cost during the class in which it was originally around $100,000. conceived. Sekula, by contrast, does cite Lonidier as a co-participant. Lonidier, Interview with author, Lonidier. Interview with author. Harrison, Interview with author, Sekula and Buchloh, “Conversation

between Allan Sekula and Benjamin Karen Moss, “Beyond the White Cell: H. D. Buchloh,” 21–52. Experimentation/Education/Intervention in California Circa 1970,” in State of Mind: 26—Sekula and Buchloh, New California Art circa 1970 (Berkeley: “Conversation between Allan Sekula University of California Press, 2011), 158. and Benjamin H. D. Buchloh,” 21. 23—Just a couple of weeks earlier, pro- 27—Lawrence Alloway, “Sites/ testers carried caskets during the largest Nonsites,” in Robert Smithson: march against the Cambodian invasion Sculpture, ed. Robert Hobbs (Ithaca: that year, held in Washington, D.C. on May Cornell University Press, 1981).

Frobes-Cross \ 154 28—These works may have been made for ‘Institute of Mechanics’ at the La Jolla a photography course taught by Steinmetz. campus is adequately implemented.” Karolina Ziebinska-Lewandowska, “A When, in 1958, there was controversy Short Autobiography de Allan Sekula,” Les surrounding the campus’ location, General Cahiers Du Musée National D’art Moderne, Dynamics told the San Diego Union that no. 130 (Winter -2015 2014): 17. their gift was dependent on the campus being built adjacent to the site of their 29—The boycotts, lead by Cesar Chavez new General Atomics subdivision. UCSD and the United Farm Workers, continued in also received a $1.5 million gift from the various forms from 1970 through 1974. Atomic Energy Commission in 1960. “Chavez Calls for Boycott of Chain It is also worth noting that the first two in Lettuce Dispute,” Los Angeles chancellors of UCSD, William J. McGill and Times, September 21, 1970; Herbert York, had been involved in nucle- Harry Bernstein, “Farm Workers Will End ar science research. The first chancellor, Safeway Stores Boycott: AFL-CIO in Return York was a veteran of the Manhattan to Back Drive Against Grapes and Lettuce Project and the former head of Lawrence BOYCOTT,” Los Angeles Times, April 9, Livermore Laboratories. In part, these sorts 1974; Rosler, Interview with author, 2014 of resumes were a necessity, because the chancellor had to have a high secu- 30—Inflation had become so extreme that rity clearance in order to manage much President Richard Nixon had introduced of the research going on on campus. It is price controls in August of the previous important to note that Rosler, as well as year. Safeway would even take out an ad many artists and activists in and around around this time encouraging consum- UCSD, viewed York and McGill differently. ers to buy things other than meat, what it In Rosler’s words, York was a “pretty good called “inflation fighters . . . [that] can be guy,” while McGill was an “operator.” substituted for more expensive foods.” Nancy Scott Anderson, An Improbable Richard Nixon, Richard Nixon: Speeches, Venture: A History of the University of Writings, Documents (Princeton California, San Diego (UCSD Press, 1993), 72; University Press, 2010), 217; Rosler, Note to author, 2018. “Two Supermarket Chains in the Capital Join Drive on Meat Prices,” 32—Debra Risberg, “Imaginary Economies: New York Times, March 26, 1972. An Interview with Allan Sekula,” in Dismal Science: Photo Works, 1972- 31—The university’s first round of funding 1996 (Normal: University Galleries, came in the form of a $1 million grant from Illinois State University, 1999), 241 General Dynamics, the San Diego-based military contractor featured in Untitled The date is included in the wall text Slide Sequence, the university’s found- for the piece and in the final page of ing was first justified through its ability its reproduction in Dismal Science. to supply an educated workforce for the 33—Risberg, “Imaginary Economies,” 241. country’s military-industrial complex. 34—Sekula and Buchloh, “Conversation The original offer from General Dynamics between Allan Sekula and Benjamin was made in 1956 to be given, in the H. D. Buchloh,” 21-22. words of General Dynamics president John Jay Hopkins, “over a period of the next 35—Sekula and Buchloh, few years provided that the University’s “Conversation between Allan Sekula proposed plan to establish an ‘Institute and Benjamin H. D. Buchloh,” 24. of Pure and Applied Physics and an

Frobes-Cross \ 155 36—Martha Rosler and Jane Weinstock, York: Drake Publishers, 1975). “Interview with Martha Rosler,” 41—Rosalyn Deutsche and Cara Gendel October 17 (Summer 1981): 77–98. Ryan, “The Fine Art of Gentrification,” 37—It is important to note that Rosler’s October 31 (Winter 1984): 110-111. piece was published as a book before it 42—Ibid. was presented in a gallery. The book, 3 Works, was published by the Novia Scotia 43—Martha Rosler, Culture Class College of Art and Design whose reader- (Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2013). ship was largely, if not exclusively, made Martha Rosler, If You Lived Here (New up by a gallery-going public. Therefore, in York: The New Press, 1998). both its published and exhibited forms it was constructed around the shared dis- 44—Edwards goes farther in his ar- courses of an art-world public. I would gument to claim that The Bowery “is a like to thank Katherine Bussard for desperate attempt to clear a path - it is a pointing this out in conversation at the degree zero artwork.” For Edwards, who Reinventing Documentary Photography in adopts his notion of degree zero art- the 1970s conference earlier this year. work from a reading of Barthes’ Writing Degree Zero, Rosler’s work is an attempt Martha Rosler, Martha Rosler: 3 Works to negate both the metaphorical figura- (Halifax, N.S: The Press of the Nova tion of the word and and the metonymic Scotia College of Art and Design, 1981). figuration of the photograph. In doing so, See also Katherine A. Bussard, Unfamiliar Edwards argues, Rosler is attempting to Streets: The Photographs of Richard return to a kind of blank slate in which a Avedon, Charles Moore, Martha Rosler, new language, in particular, a language and Philip-Lorca Dicorcia (New Haven: in which it would be possible to imag- Yale University Press, 2014). ine a new collectivity, could be created. 38—Benjamin Buchloh, “A Conversation Edwards, The Bowery in Two Inadequate with Martha Rosler,” in Martha Rosler: Descriptive Systems, 101-112 Positions in the Life World (Cambridge, 45—If documentary, as William Stott Mass.: MIT Press, 1998), 44. argued in his influential 1973 book 39—For more on the history of social Documentary Expression in the Thirties reform documentary see Maren Stange, America, is a way of coming to “grips Symbols of Ideal Life: Social Documentary with neither permanent nor necessary Photography in America 1890-1950 conditions of a certain time and place,” (Cambridge University Press, 1989). Rosler takes on the central role of doc- umentary in The Bowery, even while Riis’ How the Other Half Lives, originally renouncing its legacy of representing published in 1890, is perhaps the most the poor as objects of compassion. well know publication from this era. William Stott, Documentary Expression Jacob A. Riis, How the Other Half and Thirties America (Oxford: Oxford Lives (SMK Books, 2012). University Press, 1973), 20. 40—Rosler reproduces the cov- 46—Sekula was particularly interested in er of this book in her 1981 essay the work of the Russian linguist Mikhail “In, Around, and Afterthoughts (on Bakhtin, who is closely associated with documentary photography),” the notion of heteroglossia. Bakhtin ar- Martha Rosler: 3 Works. gued for an understanding of any given language as never simply a unitary code, Michael D. Zettler, The Bowery (New

Frobes-Cross \ 156 but the always emerging and changing result of dialogue between speakers and writers. For Bakhtin, an utterance does not simply make use of an already ex- isting, stable langue, it is a negotiation about the terms of the language itself between disparate interlocutors. To un- derstand language in this way, as what Bakhtin calls dialogic is to understand every moment of speech as a temporary, “contradiction-ridden, tension filled unity.” Sekula, “On the Invention of Photographic Meaning,” 5. M. M. Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, ed. Michael Holquist, trans. Caryl Emerson, Reprint edition (Austin: Unversity of Texas Press, 1982), 272.

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