editorial

JORINDE SEIJDEL ly deal with this flexibly in our daily lives, what is often left HYBRID SPACE aside in debates on environmental planning or on social cohesion, or Public Agency in the Network in cultural analyses, is the fact Society that the use of these wireless me- dia is changing the constitution of The philosopher Hannah Arendt de- public space. They can be deployed fined public space as a place where as new mechanisms of control, but people act to create a ‘communal also as alternative tools for en- world full of differences’. But larging and intensifying public ac- where does this space manifest it- tivities – whether it’s a matter of self today, that generally accessi- parties, events or meetings, or of ble domain where people meet one campaigns, riots and demonstra- another and create public opinion tions. Wireless media make a ‘mobi- and hence a form of political prac- lization’ of public space possible, tice? In physical places like both literally and figuratively, so streets, squares and parks? In mass that it is no longer static and can media such as newspapers and tele- be deployed by individuals or vision? Or on the Internet, in chat groups in new ways. Open 11 deals rooms and newsgroups? Publicness is specifically with the implications increasingly enacted in all these that these mobile media have for places simultaneously and in that public activities, and hence with sense has become supremely ‘hybrid’ the public dimensions of hybrid in nature: a complex of concrete space. The issue has been produced and virtual qualities, of static in collaboration with guest editor and mobile domains, of public and Eric Kluitenberg, theorist, writer private spheres, of global and lo- and organizer in the field of cul- cal interests. ture and technology. In his intro- The configuration of hybrid ductory essay he asks himself how a space is currently experiencing a critical position is possible in a powerful impetus thanks to wireless hybrid space that is characterized and mobile technologies like GSM, by invisible information technolo- GPS, Wi-Fi and RFID, which are mak- gy. Together with Howard Rheingold, ing not only the physical and the author of the renowned book Smart virtual but also the private and Mobs: The Next Social Revolution the public run into each other more (2002), Kluitenberg has also writ- and more. And although we apparent- ten a polemical piece about the

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B-Redactioneel EN02.indd 4 25-10-2006 14:27:39 right and the ability to ‘discon- zowska discuss the social possibil- nect’, that is to say, about not ities of wearable technology in being connected with the ‘network clothing. of waves’ as a form of acting. Noortje Marres’s column reflects New wireless, mobile media and on the public’s (in)ability to act hybrid space are being used experi- and the role the media plays in mentally and reflected upon on a this. The German researcher Marion small scale by a select company of Hamm reports on the Critical Mass artists, designers, architects and bicycle tour in London in 2005, a urban designers. In her essay for political demonstration against ne- Open, the sociologist and economist oliberal globalization, which was Saskia Sassen looks at ways that ar- experienced and prepared as much on tistic practices can ‘create’ a type the Internet, particularly by Indy- of public space within globalized media, as in physical space. network cities that can make visible The interview by Koen Brams and the local and the silenced. Dirk Pültau with the Flemish tele- On the basis of their projects vision maker Jef Cornelis is part for the Ruhr region in Germany, ar- of a larger research project at the chitects Frans Vogelaar and Elisa- Jan van Eyck Academy in Maastricht beth Sikiaridi provide an account about his work and also provides in Soft Urbanism of how urbanism the theme of Open 11 with a histor- and architecture can be combined ical dimension. The conversation with information and communication deals with the conditions of TV as networks. The researchers of the a public medium and the changes in design project Logo Parc critically urban public space that Cornelis analyse the ‘post-public’, hybrid drew attention to in his early South Axis area of Amsterdam and films such as Mens en Agglomeratie make proposals for experimental de- (1966) and De Straat (1972). sign strategies. This issue of Open includes the Assia Kraan writes about how CD-Rom Amsterdam REALTIME. Dag- ‘locative arts’ – art that makes boek in sporen/Diary in Traces, a GPS use of location- and time-conscious project by the artist Esther Polak media like GPS – can stimulate pub- in collaboration with Jeroen Kee lic acting in urban spaces. The and the Waag Society. Made in 2002, Droombeek locative media project is it deals with mobility and space discussed separately by Arie Alte- and has in the meantime become a na. Max Bruinsma analyses Optional- classic point of reference within Time by Susann Lekås and Joes Kop- ‘locative arts’. pers. Klaas Kuitenbrouwer looks at On the invitation of Open, the the cultural and social possibili- design and art collective De Geuzen ties of RFID. The artists/designers has contributed Mobiel Werk, which Kristina Andersen and Joanna Ber- is partly concealed in the cover.

Editorial 5

B-Redactioneel EN02.indd 5 25-10-2006 14:27:40 Eric Kluitenberg able, so making a critical attitude The Network more difficult. Eric of Waves Kluitenberg, re- searcher in the field Living and Acting of the significance in a Hybrid Space of new technologies for society and The emergence of guest editor of the digital media has present issue, draws meant that in recent attention to a years the use and number of activist significance of tra- strategies to en- ditional public courage public and space has altered private action in a radically. The new- hybrid space. est developments in information tech- nology make use of apparatus which is less and less notice-

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E1 Kluitenberg EN02.indd 6 25-10-2006 14:28:23 The office space above which I live, in a A few years ago ‘flash mobs’ received a corner house in the Indische Buurt, good deal of attention from the mass somewhere in Amsterdam East, used to media. Semi-spontaneous public gather- house a local police station. At that time ings of groups of people, hardly if at all I was not yet living there. The place was known to one another, nondescript, briefly in the national news because of a with no determining characteristics such fair-sized riot which took place there. A as banners, uniform or logo, briefly per- couple of Moroccan youths were formed some collective synchronous brought to the station for some minor action, and then dissolved back into ‘the offence. Their friends thought that this general public’. Directions and informa- was not right, so they followed the tion about the gathering were sent out police back to the station to besiege the by text messages, or e-mails, telling par- policemen there. It was not just a few ticipants where, when and what. These friends who ran after the policemen, but short messages could easily be sent on a much larger group which suddenly to friends and acquaintances with the turned up at the station, coming from aim of starting a chain reaction resulting nowhere at the precise moment that the in the appearance of an unpredictably youths were brought in. At that time large mob at a predetermined time and this phenomenon, later known as a place. ‘flash mob’,1 was still relatively new. The police on site 1. For a description, see Reclaim the Mall!! http://en.wikipedia.org/ were unpleasantly wiki/fl ashmob. surprised, and had The ‘flash-mob’ phenomenon is to issue a hasty call for reinforcements thought by some people to have origi- to negotiate with the besiegers. When it nated in a few relatively unmanageable was all over a police spokesman said actions in large shopping centres in that it was a disgrace that the Moroccan American towns, disorganizing them youths had used their mobile phones to temporarily and playfully. These actions mobilize a mob. How else could these generally had no political significance. youths all have known at the same time This all changed at the end of the 1990s. that something was going on at which The ‘Reclaim the Streets’ movement,2 their physical presence was ‘urgently highly active at the 2. Reclaim the streets web- desired’? And exactly where they time, which used to site http://rts.gn.apc.org/. needed to be? What the spokesman organize illegally orchestrated ‘street meant was that the youths had compiled raves’ in the public spaces of large mailing lists for text messages and then towns, made intensive use of text and e- used texting to get together as many mail address lists to organize quasi- people as possible as quickly as possible. spontaneous street parties. They did Texting with mailing lists was a popular however give these street parties a application, because at that time text layered political agenda. The parties messages could still be sent and received were generally given concrete political free of charge. and social themes and were linked to

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E1 Kluitenberg EN02.indd 7 25-10-2006 14:28:24 particular actions, such as support for a Traditional space is being overlaid by strike by London Underground staff. electronic networks such as those for The movement’s desire to also use these mobile telephones and other wireless actions to free public space from its eco- media. This superimposition creates a nomically determined function (for highly unstable system, uneven and instance transport, shopping or adver- constantly changing. The social phe- tising) was succinctly expressed in the nomena which occur in this new type of slogan ‘The streets for people!’. The space can not be properly understood parties followed a fixed procedure. The without a very precise analysis of the evening before, a sound truck with a structure of that space. generator, a DJ kit and a large number The way the Moroccan youths in of loudspeakers would park in a wide Amsterdam East used text message street. Shortly before the start a double address lists to mobilize themselves collision would be staged at the begin- rapidly and effectively against what they ning and end of the street. The crucial saw as unjustified police violence pro- factor here was the provision of infor- vides an interesting example of a social mation for the participants, who were, group which finds itself in a socially in principle, unknown to the organizers. segregated and stigmatized position Participants therefore received a short appropriating a newly available technol- message containing simple directions to ogy. Mobilization was possible because the place, the date, the time and a few at that time real-time mobile communi- instructions, such as ‘wait for the orange cation (texting) was available essentially smoke – that’s when the rave will free of charge. Shortly after that inci- begin’. The double collision meant that dent, texting became a paid service, at the agreed time the street was closed though the reasons for this were eco- to all traffic. The cars used were fitted nomic rather than political, and its use with smoke bombs which were set off for this purpose quickly lost popularity. by the mini-crash, producing enormous It was simply too expensive to send so plumes of orange smoke, visible for many messages at the same time. The miles around. This was the sign for specific relationship between time, space which the ‘Reclaim the Street’ mob was and technology, and to a lesser extent waiting. Suddenly the street was simple economics, determined the way flooded with people, sometimes more in which this social phenomenon mani- than a thousand at a time, while music fested itself. More than e-mails, which began to boom from the previously almost always have to be downloaded parked truck or bus. from a terminal or laptop (e-mailing on These examples demonstrate that we are a mobile telephone is extremely labori- living in a space in which the public is ous and inefficient), the brief phase reconfigured by a multitude of media during which text messaging served as a and communication networks interwo- free public medium provided an impor- ven into the social and political func- tant indicator to a changing relationship tions of space to form a ‘hybrid space’. in the use and organization of public

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E1 Kluitenberg EN02.indd 8 25-10-2006 14:28:24 space. The mobility and immediacy of The particularly striking thing about the medium gave birth to new social Castells’ theory is the strict separation morphologies, like the ‘flash mob’, between the two kinds of spatial logic. which still seem mostly to indicate a Whereas the space of places and loca- kind of mobile ‘just-in-time-commu- tions is clearly localized and associated nity’ in physical public space. with local history, tradition and memory, Castells sees the space of flows Places and Flows as essentially ahistorical, location-free and continuous. This last mainly The question here is what this new kind because it moves across every time zone of social morphology might mean. and so in some sense is not only loca- What lies behind the gimmick? What tion-free but also timeless.5 Castells social, economic and technological believes there is a 5. Consider for example the concept of the 24-hour transformations give rise to new phe- fundamental asym- economy. nomena of this kind? metry between the So far the most important sociological two kinds of space: while the vast theory about this is set out in Manuel majority of the world’s inhabitants live, Castells’ Rise of the Network Society, dwell and work in the space of places the first part of his trilogy on the infor- and locations, the dominant economic mation age.3 In it he describes the rise of political, social and ultimately also cul- flexible social 3. Manuel Castells, The tural functions are increasingly shifting Rise of the Network Society network connec- (Oxford: Blackwell Pub- to the place of flows, where they make tions which lishers, 1996). possible location-free ahistorical resulted from economic and social network connections, international transformations in late industrial socie- trends, power complexes and capital ties and were strengthened by the intro- movements. Only a very small part of duction and wide application of new the world population is represented in technology, primarily communication the bodies which take decisions about and information technology. Castells the organization and use of new loca- postulates that the network has become tion-free spatial connections. But the dominant form in a new type of increasingly the decisions made within society that he calls the network society. such self-contained systems determine He treats the influence of the network the living conditions in those places and form as a social organization in physical locations where the vast majority of the and social space and establishes a new world population attempt to survive kind of dichotomy. According to Cas- and where their knowledge, experience tells there are two opposing types of and memory is localized. Castells feels spatial logic, the logic of material places that it is not surprising that political, and locations (space of place) and the social and cultural bridges need to be logic of intangible flows of information, deliberately built between the two communication, services and capital spatial dynamics, to avoid society’s col- 4 (space of flows). 4. Ibid. lapse into insoluble schizophrenia.

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E1 Kluitenberg EN02.indd 9 25-10-2006 14:28:24 The attractive thing about Castells’ to the discontinuity of the ‘connectiv- theory is that it makes it possible to ity’ or degree of connection between the grasp and clarify a multiplicity of asym- multiplicity of communication net- metric social developments in a single works. After all, even the universal image – an image that has certainly not presence of a telephone connection can left popular culture unmoved. At the not be taken for granted. More impor- same time Castells’ suggested contrast tant still is the connection between local between physical locations and places social and electronic networks: who and the intangible space of flows is mis- communicates with whom, and in what leading and ultimately even counterpro- context, is determined differently from ductive for his political agenda: the one region to another, sometimes even deliberate building of bridges between from one day to the next. Because the physical space and informational space. space of electronic communication is Instead of a strict separation between rooted in local networks, it is also physical space and informational space, linked with local history. And questions all technological and social trends about who controls electronic space or clearly indicate that these two ‘spheres’ becomes familiar with electronic space are becoming more and more closely are by no means easy to answer. Ravi interwoven. A generic model of the sort Sundaram for example, co-founder of suggested by Castells is totally unsuited the Sarai new media initiative in Delhi, to the analysis of this closeness and to is constantly drawing attention to the gaining an understanding of how pos- coming into being of what he calls ‘elec- sibilities for public and private action tronic pirate-modernity’,6 which comes come about within it, the central ques- about when local 6. ‘Electronic pirate mo- dernity’: see also www. tion posed in the present issue of Open. groups or individu- sarai.net. What threats to the autonomy and invi- als, illegitimately olability of the subject, the group, the and without permission, gain access to community or cultural self-determina- television, telephone or the Internet – tion could possibly manifest themselves ‘Never ask permission, just appear!’. here and how can something be done Hybrid space is never exclusively local, about those threats? as in the case of the idyllic hippy commune at the beginning of the 1970s. Hybrid Space as a Multiform Concept Small local networks, hacked or not, never remain limited to the local bazaar Against the placelessness and continuity or the vegetable market in the next of Castells’ ahistorical ‘space of flows’ village. Local networks interweave with stands the discontinuity and multiplic- the international networks into which ity of hybrid space. The hybridity of they force their way. Thus, says Saskia this spatial concept refers not only to Sassen, the local is newly established as the stratified nature of physical space a micro-environment with a worldwide and the electronic communication net- reach. Free-software geniuses in Sao works it contains, but every bit as much Paulo’s favelas find no difficulty in

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E1 Kluitenberg EN02.indd 10 25-10-2006 14:28:24 downloading the results of the latest construction’ and Piero della Frances- interchange between the Amsterdam ca’s ideal city, both of which reflect a Waag (the Society for Old and New visual articulation of daily life suggest- Media) and the Alternative Law Forum ing that everything, social and public, is in Bangalore, but nobody pulls his or completely controllable and construct- her local roots out of the ground. ible. Although the unifying point of view of a linear perspective has long Diktat of Visibility been rejected, the street screens still stipulate for us a single perspective: a The thing that strikes one about current correct viewing distance and direction, discussion and the associated criticism while social relationships are radically of the rise of electronic media in public altered. space is the preoccupation with the The street screen is also the embodi- visual forms in which these media mani- ment of spectacle in its most repressive fest themselves, such as screens, projec- form. Today spectacle is no longer alone tions and electronic tagging.7 It is a sort in controlling the inner life, the interior of extended visual 7. See also www.urban- of the alienation of the average TV screens.org or the Logo criticism, closely Parc symposium held in junkie. The street, the classic stage of connected with a Amsterdam on 16 Novem- modern theatre, is overloaded with ber 2005, a cooperative tradition which project undertaken by the marching electronic screens and projec- Jan van Eyck Academy, the assumes that the Premsela Foundation and tions, so erasing the public functions of visual arrangement the Art and Public Space open space. Public functions become Lectureship (Rietveld of observable Academy and the Univer- blurred by the flow of light and images reality is a neces- sity of Amsterdam). drenching us in a fetish of alienating sary precondition for any ability to desires as we follow our necessary route exercise power over that reality. through the city, from A to B. However, the thing that stands in the way of this preoccupation with the Limitation of the Screen visual is a critical analysis of the more invisible processes which are rearrang- Another point of criticism of the new ing public space and imposing a differ- urban visuality is its inherent limitation. ent utilization logic. Relatively invisible Virtually every screen is rectangular and forms of social compulsion, which bring flat and has limited resolution (the these processes into play, may well have number of pixels which determine the a much greater significance for the way quality of the image). Media artists rec- in which public space can and may be ognized these limitations years ago and used in future. have, with varying degrees of success, The concept of the perfect visual developed a multitude of strategies to arrangement, expressing a social reality attempt to overcome those limitations in which power structures are com- by, for example, a spatial type of instal- pletely unambiguous and transparent, lation, interactive media in which the still always refers to Alberti’s ‘legitimate screen itself also becomes an object

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E1 Kluitenberg EN02.indd 11 25-10-2006 14:28:25 capable of being moved and manipu- recognized as being largely subject to lated, projection on walls, fabrics, limitations and conventions. curved screens, screens that are not rec- Ultimately the screen dissolves into the tangular,8 mirrored projections, moving architecture, becoming less a screen projections, projec- 8. These ‘shaped screens’ than a membrane between physical and do incidentally form a curi- tions on glass mate- ous counterpart to Frank medial reality. Here the ‘image’ func- rials and so on. Stella’s Shaped Canvasses. tions less and less as an autonomous Some artists, as for example the object, but increasingly coincides with members of the Knowbotic Research the architecture itself, its skin, its inner collective, even leave out screens life and its internal processes, finally entirely, replacing them by new haptic disappearing from the consciousness of interfaces and stereoscopic helmets the user of that architecture. The image from the Virtual Reality research labo- becomes subliminal, ‘vernacular’, com- ratory or, as during the 1996 Dutch monplace, merged with the environ- Electronic Art Festival, an installation ment, self-evident – in the end the on the roof of the Netherlands Archi- spectacle neutralizes itself. Media theo- tecture Institute, where network manip- rist Lev Manovich was still positive ulations translated into sound and about this new medially enhanced archi- stroboscopic light.9 Yet another example tecture in his essay entitled The Poetics of the movement to bypass the screen is of Augmented Space, that had Learning the Xchange 9. Anonymous Muttering: from Prada as subtitle and was based on http://www.khm.de/peo- 11 network, in which ple/krcf/AM/. the success of Koolhaas’s creation. By artists collectively now we know that 11. Lev Manovich, The 10. Website of the Xchange Poetics of Augmented explore the sonic network, http://xchange. the concept has Space: Learning from dimension of the re-lab.net. failed completely, Prada (2002), see www. manovich.net Internet.10 screens have disap- The new generation of media-architects peared from the scene or have been cut can learn from media art that the screen back to a minimum. The lesson of Prada is ultimately a dead end. It is interesting is that the strategy of visibility can to see how these attempts at icono- quickly turn into its opposite. graphic liberation keep on recurring. Avant-garde painters carried out endless The Problem of Invisibility experiments in their attempts to break away from the frame of the painting and In the present phase, the most important the surface of the canvas, their ultimate change in computer technology and its aim being to announce the death of the applications is that they are steadily ‘retinal’ object. This same death beginning to withdraw themselves from announcement is repeated by today’s sight. The European Union has for some media artists, but this time in relation to years now been subsidizing a wide- the screen. Media architecture again ranging programme of multidisciplinary venerates the screen as a window on a research and discussion with the space first seen as boundless, but later remarkable title The Disappearing Com-

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E1 Kluitenberg EN02.indd 12 25-10-2006 14:28:25 puter. This title alludes less to the disap- transmitters and receivers play a crucial pearance of computer technology than role in such enriched spaces. Objects are to its ongoing miniaturization and the directly linked with portable media. way that it is beginning to turn up eve- Chips are incorporated into identity rywhere. The programme is investigat- cards and clothing. Even one’s shopping ing the migration of electronic network is automatically registered by sensors. technology into every kind of object, to Screens and information systems are built environments and even to living switched on remotely, by a simple wave beings. The thesis is that miniaturization of the hand. Miniaturization, remote and steadily reducing production costs control and particularly the mass pro- are making it simpler to provide all duction of radio frequency identification kinds of objects with simple electronic (rfid) tags is bringing the age-old tech- functions (chips containing information, nological fantasy of a quasi-intelligent, tags that can send or receive signals, responsive environment within reach of identification chips and specialized func- digital engineers. tions in everyday objects). This is more Of course these applications are not efficient than building ever more exclusively neutral. Combinations of complex pieces of multifunctional appa- technologies of the sort described above ratus and mean the abandonment of the make it amazingly simple to introduce old idea of the computer as a universal new and infinitely differentiated machine capable of performing every regimes for the control of public and conceivable function.12 In fact, this is private space. The application to public how technology 12. The so-called Turing transport of rfid smart cards, which Machine, named after the becomes invisible. mathematician Allan Tur- automatically determine the distance A decisive step, ing – the machine that is travelled, the fare and the credit balance, capable of simulating any with dramatic con- other machine. still sounds relatively harmless. Fitting sequences for the way people think household pets with an identity chip the about and deal with spatial processes. size of a grain of rice, inserted under the This rise of computer technology in the skin, has become widespread practice. environment introduces a new issue: the Indeed most health insurance schemes problem of invisibility. When technol- for household pets prescribe the inser- ogy becomes invisible, it disappears tion of such chips as an entry condition. from people’s awareness. The environ- Recently, however, first reports have ment is no longer perceived as a techno- turned up of security firms in the logical construct, making it difficult to United States which provide their discuss the effects of technology. employees with subcutaneous chips Lev Manovich speaks of ‘augmented allowing them to move through secure space’, a space enriched with technol- buildings without the use of keys or ogy, which only becomes activated smart cards. Such systems also allow when a specific 13. Manovich, The Poetics companies to compile a specific profile of Augmented Space, op. function is cit. (note 11). for each individual employee specifying required.13 Wireless those parts of the building or object to

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E1 Kluitenberg EN02.indd 13 25-10-2006 14:28:25 which the employer has (or is denied) strategic significance. A tactical act of access, and at what times. spatial resistance, which is after all no It is not difficult to extrapolate these more than temporary, is hardly com- practices to society as a whole. Who has forting to anyone faced by such an infi- the initiative in such matters? If the ini- nitely diversified and adaptive system of tiative lies exclusively with the con- spatial control. New hybrid spaces must structors, the producers of these be deliberately ‘designed’ to create free enriched spaces, and their clients, then spaces within which the subject can the space we are living in is liable to withdraw himself, temporarily, from total authoritarian control, even if there spatial determination. Given the power is no immediately observable way in politics and the enormous strategic and which that space displays the historic economic interests involved, and the characteristics of authoritarianism. The associated demands for security and more widely the initiative is distributed control, it is clear that these free spaces between producers and consumers and will not come about by themselves or as the more decisions that are made at the a matter of course. I would therefore ‘nodes’ (the extremities of the network, like to suggest a number of strategies to occupied by the users) instead of at the give some chance of success to the crea- ‘hubs’ (junctions in the network), the tion of these spaces. more chance there is of a space in which the sovereign subject is able to shape his Public visibility: ‘maps and counter- or her own autonomy. The articulation maps’, tactical cartography of subjectivity in the network of waves The problem of the invisibility of the is also an opportunity for the last rem- countless networks penetrating public nants of autonomy to manifest and private space is ultimately insoluble. themselves. What can be done, however, is to remake them in a local and visible form, The Strategic Issue: ‘Agency’ in in such a way that they remain in the Hybrid Spaces public eye and in the public conscious- ness. This strategy can be expressed in The concept of ‘agency’ is difficult to ‘tactical cartography’, using the tools of interpret, but literally combines action, the network of waves (gps, Wi-Fi, 3G, mediation and power. It is not surpris- etcetera) to lay bare its authoritarian ing therefore, to find it applied as a stra- structure. An aesthetic interpretation of tegic instrument for dealing with these structures increases the sensitivity questions about the ongoing hybridiza- of the observer to the ‘invisible’ pres- tion of public and private space. Unlike ence of these networks. Michel de Certeau’s tactical acts of spatial resistance to the dominant utili- Disconnectivity tarian logic of urban space in particular, Emphasis is always placed on the right the action of this instrument in new and desire to be connected. However, in (‘augmented’) hybrid spaces has mainly future it may be more important to have

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E1 Kluitenberg EN02.indd 14 25-10-2006 14:28:26 the right and power to be shut out, to nomic scale would be and the information stored on them would make have the option, for a longer or shorter an outstanding them much too expensive, restricting their develop- time, to be disconnected from the instrument to thwart ment to specialized ‘niche’ network of waves. this ‘scaling-up’ markets. strategy.14 Sabotage Deliberately undermining the system, Accountability and public transpar- damaging the infrastructure, disruption ency and sabotage are always available as In the words of surveillance specialist ways of giving resistance concrete form. David Lyon, ‘Forget privacy, focus on Such measures will, however, always accountability’. It would be naive to provoke countermeasures, so that ulti- assume that the tendencies described mately the authoritarian structure of a above can easily be reversed, even with dystopian hybrid space is more likely to political will and support from public be strengthened and perpetuated than to opinion. A strategy of insisting on the be thrown open to any form of accountability of constructors and autonomy. clients of these new systems of spatial and social control could lead to usable Legal provisions, prohibitions results in the shorter term. In the post-ideological stage of Western society it seems that the laws and rights Deliberate violation of an imposed used to legalize matters provide the spatial programme only credible source of social justifica- Civil disobedience is another effective tion. But because a system of legal rules strategy, especially if it can be orches- runs counter to the sovereignty of the trated on a massive scale. Unlike sabo- subject it can never be the embodiment tage, the aim here is not to disorganize of a desire for autonomy. It can, or damage systems of control, but however, play a part in creating more simply to make 15. Examples of a new kind of civil disobedi- favourable conditions. them ineffective by ence include deactivating massively ignoring rfid tags with the aid of an adapted mobile phone, Reduction in economic scale them. After all, the hindering the operation of smart cards, regularly New systems of spatial planning depend public interest is the swapping client cards, de- on continuing increases in economic interest of every- liberately supplying false information when register- scale. To apply these systems to all one, and no other ing online and using ‘ano- nymizers’ on the Internet, market segments 14. The mass produc- interest weighs ‘encrypted’ (coded) mobile would require the tion of rfid (radio fre- more heavily.15 phones and local gsm quency identifi cation) blockers. production of an tags compelled producers to minimize the security enormous number provisions incorporated to The creation of new social and politi- allow the tags to be applied of instruments. cost effectively to virtually cal players – public action Thus the political any conceivable consumer ‘Agency’, the power to act, means product. A policy of giv- choice to deliber- ing priority to the safety taking action in some concrete form. ately reduce eco- and reliability of the chips The complexity of the new hybrid

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E1 Kluitenberg EN02.indd 15 25-10-2006 14:28:26 spatial and technological regimes makes it appear that the idea of action is in fact an absurdity. However, new social and political players manifest themselves in public space by the special way they act, by clustering, by displaying recogniz- able visuality, by evoking an individual ‘presence’ (in the Anglo-Saxon anthro- pological sense) in opposition to others. The manifestation of concrete action by new social and political players in public space is a ‘gesture’. The action, in this case, is the way the space is used, though there is still a difference between the use of a space and more or less public actions in that space. The use of space becomes an action when that use takes on a strategic form.

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E1 Kluitenberg EN02.indd 16 25-10-2006 14:28:27 Saskia Sassen of artistic practice to ‘make’ public Public Interventions space that can produce unsettling The Shifting stories and make Meaning of the visible that which is Urban Condition local and has been silenced. Saskia Sassen, professor of sociology at the University of Chicago, is special- ized in the infl uence that globalization and digitization processes have on the transformations of urban space. In this essay, she looks at the possibilities

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E2 Sassen EN02.indd 18 25-10-2006 14:29:03 The enormity of the urban experience, ways that take it beyond the fairly trans- the overwhelming presence of massive parent notions of high-tech architecture, architectures and dense infrastructures, virtual spaces, simulacra, theme parks. as well as the irresistible utility logics All of the latter matter, but they are frag- that organize much of the investments in ments of an incomplete puzzle. There is today’s cities, have produced displace- a type of urban condition that dwells ment and estrangement among many between the reality of massive structures individuals and whole communities. and the reality of semi-abandoned Such conditions unsettle older notions places. I think it is central to the experi- and experiences of the city in general ence of the urban, and it makes legible and public space in particular. While the transitions and unsettlements of specifi c monumentalized public spaces of Euro- spatio-temporal confi gurations. Archi- pean cities remain vibrant sites for tecture and urban design can also func- rituals and routines, for demonstrations tion as critical artistic practices that and festivals, increasingly the overall allow us to capture something more sense is of a shift from civic to politi- elusive than what is represented by cized urban space, with fragmentations notions such as the theme-parking of along multiple differences. cities. At the same time, these cities contain Here I examine these questions a diversity of under-used spaces, often through the actual making of public characterized more by memory than space and through the shifting meaning current meaning. These spaces are part of the urban condition. of the interiority of a city, yet lie outside of its organizing, utility-driven logics Public Making Against the Privatizing and spatial frames. They are terrains and Weaponizing of Urban Space vagues that allow many residents to connect to the rapidly transforming The making and siting of public space is cities in which they live, and to bypass one lens into these types of questions. subjectively the massive infrastructures We are living through a kind of crisis in that have come to dominate more and public space resulting from the growing more spaces in their cities. Jumping at commercialization, theme-parking, and these terrains vagues in order to maxi- privatizing of public space.1 The grand mize real estate development would be a monumentalized 1. There is an interesting scholarship on this issue. It mistake from this perspective. Keeping public spaces of the is impossible to do justice some of this openness might, in fact, state and the crown, to it. Let me just mention a few texts that show the make sense in terms of factoring future especially in former diversity of approaches: options at a time when utility logics imperial capitals, Richard Lloyd, Neobohe- mia: Art and Commerce in change so quickly and often violently – dominate our expe- the Post-Industrial City an excess of high-rise offi ce buildings rience of public (New York/Londen: Routledge, 2005); Annette being one of the great examples. space. Users do W. Balkema and Henk Slager (eds.), Territorial This opens up a salient dilemma render them public Investigations (Amsterdam/ about the current urban condition in through their prac- Atlanta: 1999); Mari

Public Interventions 19

E2 Sassen EN02.indd 19 25-10-2006 14:29:04 tices. But what Carmen Ramirez, Theresa described as public- Urbana, an organization Papanikolas and Gabriela that seeks to produce about the actual Rangel, Art (International access than public. public space by reactivat- making of public Center for the Arts of the The making of pub- ing such terrains vagues. Americas: 2002); George (see: www.m7red.com.ar/ space in these Yudice, The Expediency of lic space opens up m7-KUintro1.htm). complex cities, both Culture: Uses of Culture in questions about the the Global Era (Durham: 3. E.g. Arie Graafl and, The through architec- Duke University Press, current urban con- Socius of Architecture tural interventions 2003); Roger A. Salerno, dition in ways that (Rotterdam: 010 Landscapes of Abandon- Publishers, 2000); John and through users’ ment: Capitalism, the grand spaces of Beckmann, The Virtual practices? Modernity and Estrange- the crown and the Dimension: Architecture, ment (Albany: State Representation, and Crash Dwelling University of New York state or over- Culture (Princeton: Press, 2003); John Phillips, between mega designed public- Princeton Architectural Wei-Wei Yeo and Ryan Press, 1998); Kester buildings and ter- Bishop, Postcolonial access spaces do Rattenbury, This is Not Urbanism: Sout East Asian 2 Architecture: Media rain vagues has Cities and Global not. Constructions (Londen/ long been part of Processes (New York/ The work of cap- New York: Routledge, Londen: Routledge, 2003); 2002); Susannah Hagan, the urban experi- Joan Ockman (ed.), turing this elusive Taking Shape: A new ence. In the past as Pragmatist Imagination: quality that cities Contract between Thinking about Things in Architecture and Nature today, this dwelling the Making (Princeton: produce and make (Oxford: Architectural Princeton Architectural Press, 2001). makes legible transi- Press, 2001); Malcolm legible, and the tions and unsettle- Miles, Art, Space and the work of making public space in this in- City: Public Art and Urban ments. It can also Futures (New York/ between zone, is not easily executed.3 Londen: Routledge, 1997); reinsert the possibil- Peggy Phelan and Jill Lane Utility logics won’t do. I can’t help but ity of urban making (eds.), The Ends of think that the making of art is part of Performance (New York: – poesis — in a way New York University Press, the answer – whether ephemeral public that massive 1998); Thad Williamson, performances and installations or longer- Gar Alperovitz and David projects by them- L. Imbroscio, Making a lasting types of public sculpture, whether selves do not. The Place for Community: site-specifi c/community-based art, or Local Democracy in a ‘making’ that con- Global Era (New York/ nomadic sculptures that circulate among Londen: Routledge, 2002); cerns me here is of Andre Drainville, localities. Further, the new network tech- modest public Contesting Globalization: nologies open up wide this question of Space and Place in the spaces, constituted World Economy (Londen: making in modest spaces and through through the prac- Routledge, 2005); Linda the practices of people. One question Krause and Patrice Petro tices of people and (eds.), Global Cities: that might serve to capture critical fea- critical architectural Cinema, Architecture, and tures of this project is: How can we Urbanism in a Digital Age interventions that (New Brunswick, New urbanize open-source? Jersey and Londen: Rutgers are on small- or University Press, 2003). Architectural practices are central medium-level scales. here, specifi cally those that can take 2. For one of the best My concern here is treatments of such terrains place in problematic or unusual spaces. not with monumen- vagues see Ignasi de Solá- This takes architects able to navigate Morales, Obra, vol. 3 talized public spaces (Barcelona: Editorial Gigli, several forms of knowledge so as to or ready-made pub- 2004). For an example of introduce the possibility of architecture an intervention in one of lic spaces that are these terrains vagues, in in spaces where the naked eye or the this case in the city of actually better Buenos Aires, see Kermes engineer’s imagination sees no shape, no

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E2 Sassen EN02.indd 20 25-10-2006 14:29:04 possibility of a form, pure infrastructure directly in evictions or indirectly through and utility. The types of space I have in the market. This politicizing of urban mind are, for instance, intersections of space and its legibility is also evident in multiple transport and communication the proliferation of physical barriers in networks, the roofs of recycling plants erstwhile public spaces, perhaps most or water purifi cation systems, small pronounced in US cities, and most awkward unused spaces that have been visible since the attacks of 11 September forgotten or do not fi t the needs of 2001. US embassies worldwide increas- utility driven plans, and so on. Another ingly resemble medieval fortresses. In instance is a space that requires the work this context public-access space is an of detecting possible architectures where enormous resource, and we need more there now is merely a formal silence, a of it. But let us not confuse public-access non-existence, such as a modest and space with public space. The latter genuinely undistinguished terrain vague requires making – through the practices – not a grand terrain vague that becomes and the subjectivities of people. Through magnifi cent through the scale of its their practices, users 4. See, for instance the types of projects at www. decay, as might an old unused industrial of the space wind transgressivearchitecture. harbour or steel factory. up making diverse org The possibility of this type of making, kinds of publicness.4 detecting, and intervening has assumed In brief, several trends are coming new meanings over the last two decades, together, enabling practices and imagi- a period marked by the ascendance of naries about making, rather than merely private authority/power over spaces once accessing, public space. One concerns considered public. Furthermore, over the some of the conditions discussed above. last fi ve years especially, the state has Specifi cally, the fact itself of today’s sought to weaponize urban space and to wider unsettlements of older notions of make it an object of surveillance. At the public space. These unsettlements arise same time, the increasing legibility of from the limits of public-space-making restrictions, surveillance and displace- in monumentalized spaces as well as ments is politicizing urban space. Most from the shifts towards politicizing familiar, perhaps, is the impact of high- urban space and weakening civic experi- income residential and commercial gen- ences in cities. Both conditions produce trifi cation, which generates a openings to the experience and the displacement that can feed the making of option of making. a political subjectivity centered in con- A second trend is the option of testation rather than a sense of the civic making modest public spaces, which on either side of the confl ict. The physi- may well be critical for recovering the cal displacement of low-income house- possibility of making spaces public. This holds, non-profi t uses and low-profi t type of making was historically signifi - neighbourhood fi rms makes visible a cant in European cities and diverges as a power relationship – direct control by project from the making of grand monu- one side over the other as expressed mentalized spaces: it entailed making in

Public Interventions 21

E2 Sassen EN02.indd 21 25-10-2006 14:29:04 the interstices of the spaces of royalty existing formal systems: whether the and the state. Today this type of making electoral political system or the judiciary is geared to the interstices of private and (taking state agencies to court). Non- public power, and adds a novel dimen- formal political actors are rendered sion: the repositioning of the notion and invisible in the space of national politics. the experience of locality, and thereby of The space of the city accommodates a modest public spaces, in potentially broad range of political activities –squat- global networks comprising multiple ting, demonstrations against police bru- localities. tality, fi ghting for the rights of A third trend is the delicate negotia- immigrants and the homeless, the poli- tion between the renewed valuing of tics of culture and identity, gay and diversity, as illustrated in multicultural- lesbian politics. Much of this becomes ism, and the renewed challenges this visible on the street. Much of urban poli- poses to notions and experiences of the tics is concrete, enacted by people rather public. than dependent on massive media tech- nologies. Street level politics makes pos- Cities as Frontier Zones: Making sible the formation of new types of Informal Politics political subjects that do not have to go through the formal political system. The other side of the large complex city, Through the new network technolo- especially if global, is that it is a sort of gies local initiatives become part of a new frontier zone where an enormous global network of activism without mix of people converges. Those who losing the focus on specifi c local strug- lack power, those who are disadvan- gles. It enables a new type of cross- taged, outsiders, discriminated minori- border political activism, one centred in ties, can gain presence in such cities, multiple localities yet intensely con- presence vis-à-vis power and presence nected digitally. This is in my view on vis-à-vis each other. This signals, for me, one of the key forms of critical politics the possibility of a new type of politics that the Internet and other networks centred in new types of political actors. can make possible: A politics of the It is not simply a matter of having or not local with a big difference – these are having power. There are new hybrid localities that are connected with each bases from which to act. By using the other across a region, a country or the term presence I try to capture some of world. Because the network is global this. does not mean that it all has to happen The space of the city is a far more at the global level. Digital networks are concrete space for politics than that of contributing to the production of new the nation. It becomes a place where kinds of interconnections underlying non-formal political actors can be part what appear as fragmented topogra- of the political scene in a way that is phies, whether at the global or at the much more diffi cult at the national level. local level. Political activists can use Nationally politics needs to run through digital networks for global or non-local

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E2 Sassen EN02.indd 22 25-10-2006 14:29:05 transactions and they can use them for There are two issues I want to pursue strengthening local communications briefl y here. One of these is what it and transactions inside a city or rural means for ‘the city’ to contain a prolif- community. eration of these globally oriented yet The large city of today, especially the very localized offi ces, households, organ- global city, emerges as a strategic site for izations? In this context the city becomes these new types of operations. It is a a strategic amalgamation of multiple strategic site for global corporate capital. global circuits that loop through it. As But is is also one of the sites where the cities and urban regions are increasingly formation of new claims by informal traversed by non-local, including notably political actors materializes and assumes global circuits, much of what we experi- concrete forms. ence as the local because locally-sited, is actually a transformed condition in that Rethinking the Notion of Locality it is imbricated with non-local dynamics or is a localization of global processes. It will not be long before many urban One way of thinking about this is in residents begin to experience the ‘local’ terms of spatializations of various as a type of microenvironment with projects – economic, political, cultural. global span. Much of what we keep rep- This produces a specifi c set of interac- resenting and experiencing as something tions in a city’s relation to its topogra- local – a building, an urban place, a phy. The new urban spatiality thus household, an activist organization right produced is partial in a double sense: it there in our neighbourhood – is actually accounts for only part of what happens located not only in the concrete places in cities and what cities are about, and it where we can see them, but also on inhabits only part of what we might digital networks that span the globe. think of as the space of the city, whether They are connected to other such local- this be understood in terms as diverse as ized buildings, organizations, house- those of a city’s administrative bounda- holds, possibly on the other side of the ries or in the sense of the multiple public world. They may indeed be more ori- imaginaries that may be present in dif- ented to those other areas than to their ferent sectors of a city’s people. If we immediate surroundings. Think of the consider urban space as productive, as fi nancial centre in a global city, or the enabling new confi gurations, then these human rights or environmental activists’ developments signal multiple possibili- home or offi ce – their orientation is not ties. towards what sur- 5. Elsewhere I have shown The second issue, one coming out of in detail the complex rounds them but to imbrications of the digital this proliferation of digital networks tra- a global process. I and the material, and of versing cities, concerns the future of cities fl ows and places. Saskia think of these local Sassen, Territory, in an increasingly digitized and glo- entities as microen- Authority, Rights: From balized world. Here the bundle of condi- Medieval to Global vironments with a Assemblages (Princeton: tions and dynamics that marks the model global span.5 Princeton University Press, of the global city might be a helpful way 2006), chapter 7.

Public Interventions 23

E2 Sassen EN02.indd 23 25-10-2006 14:29:05 of distilling the ongoing centrality of We have diffi culty capturing this multi- urban space in complex cities. Just to valence of the new digital technologies single out one key dynamic: the more through our conventional categories: if it globalized and digitized the operations of is physical, it is physical; and if it is fi rms and markets, the more their central liquid, it is liquid. In fact, the partial rep- management and coordination functions resentation of real estate through liquid (and the requisite material structures) fi nancial instruments produces a become strategic. It is precisely because complex imbrication of the material and of digitization that simultaneous world- the digitized moments of that which we wide dispersal of operations (whether continue to call real estate. And the need factories, offi ces, or service outlets) and of global fi nancial markets for multiple system integration can be achieved. And material conditions in very grounded it is precisely this combination that raises fi nancial centres produces yet another the importance of central functions. type of complex imbrication which Global cities are strategic sites for the shows that precisely those sectors that combination of resources necessary for are most globalized and digitized con- the production of these central func- tinue to have a very strong and strategic tions.6 Thus, much of what is liquefi ed urban dimension. and circulates in 6. There are other Hypermobility and digitization are dimensions that specify the digital networks and global city; see Saskia usually seen as mere functions of the is marked by hyper- Sassen, The Global City new technologies. This understanding (Princeton; Princeton mobility, actually University Press, 2001), 2nd erases the fact that it takes multiple remains physical – edition. material conditions to achieve this and hence possibly urban – in some of its outcome. Once we recognize that the components. At the same time, however, hypermobility of the instrument, or the that which remains physical has been dematerialization of the actual piece of transformed by the fact that it is repre- real estate, had to be produced, we sented by highly liquid instruments that introduce the imbrication of the mate- can circulate in global markets. It may rial and the non-material. Producing look the same, it may involve the same capital mobility takes state-of-the-art bricks and mortar, it may be new or old, built environments, conventional infra- but it is a transformed entity. Take for structure – from highways to airports example, the case of real estate. Financial and railways – and well-housed talent. services fi rms have invented instruments These are all, at least partly, place- that liquefy real estate, thereby facilitat- bound conditions, even though the ing investment and circulation of these nature of their place-boundedness is instruments in global markets. Part of going to be different than it was 100 what constitutes real estate remains very years ago, when place-boundedness physical; but the building that is repre- might have been marked by immobility. sented by fi nancial instruments circulat- Today it is a place-boundedness that is ing globally is not the same building as infl ected, inscribed, by the hypermobil- one that is not. ity of some of its components/products/

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E2 Sassen EN02.indd 24 25-10-2006 14:29:05 outcomes. Both capital fi xity and mobil- intellectual property rights we see the ity are located in a temporal frame ongoing infl uence of the free software where speed is ascendant and conse- movement.7 Indy- 7. See http://www.gnu.org quential. This type of capital fi xity media gain terrain for more information. cannot be fully captured in a description even as global 8. Indymedia is ‘a network of collectively run media of its material and locational features, media conglomer- outlets for the creation of that is in a topographical reading. ates dominate just radical, accurate, and passionate tellings of the Conceptualizing digitization and about all main- truth’. See http://www. globalization along these lines creates stream mediums.8 indymedia.org. operational and rhetorical openings for The formation of new geographies of recognizing the ongoing importance power that bring together elites from the of the material world even in the case global south and north fi nd their obverse of some of the most dematerialized in the work of such collectives as Raqs activities. Media Collective that destabilize the centre/periphery divide.9 Digital Media and the Making Such alternative 9. See www.raqsmediacol- of Presence globalities are to be lective.net. distinguished from the common assump- New media artists using computer- tion that if ‘it’ is global it is cosmopoli- centred network technologies are enact- tan. The types of global forms that ing political as well as artistic projects in concern me here are what I like to refer a growing number of cities worldwide. to, partly as a provocation, as non-cos- What I want to capture here is a very mopolitan forms of globality. When specifi c feature: the possibility of con- local initiatives and projects can become structing forms of globality that are part of a global network without losing neither part of global corporate media or the focus on the specifi cs of the local, a consumer fi rms, nor part of elite univer- new type of globality takes shape. For salisms or ‘high culture’. It is the possi- instance, groups or individuals con- bility of giving presence to multiple local cerned with a variety of environmental actors, projects and imaginaries in ways questions – from solar energy design to that may constitute alternative and appropriate-materials-architecture – can counter-globalities. become part of global networks without These interventions entail diverse uses having to leave behind the specifi cs that of technology – ranging from political to concern them. ludic uses – that can subvert corporate In an effort to synthesize this diversity of globalization. We are seeing the forma- subversive interventions into the space tion of alternative networks, projects, of global capitalism, I use the notion of and spaces. Emblematic is, perhaps, that counter-geographies of globalization: the metaphor of ‘hacking’ has been dis- these interventions are deeply imbrica- lodged from its specialized technical dis- ted with some of the major dynamics course and become part of everyday life. constitutive of corporate globalization In the face of a predatory regime of yet are not part of the formal apparatus

Public Interventions 25

E2 Sassen EN02.indd 25 25-10-2006 14:29:06 or of the objectives of this apparatus ingly perhaps, a key council minutes, offi cial policy papers or visit (such as the formation of global markets focus has been the digital cafes and train and global fi rms). These counter-geo- increasingly restric- stations. See http://reinder. rustema.nl/dds/ for graphies thrive on the intensifying of tive regime for documentation; see the chapter by Lovink and transnational and translocal networks, migrants and refu- Riemens in Global the development of communication gees in a global Networks,Linked Cities (New York and London: technologies which easily escape conven- world where capital Routledge, 2002) for the full evolution, from tional surveillance practices, and so on. gets to fl ow wher- beginning to end of DDS. Further, the strengthening and, in some ever it wants. 12. An international media of these cases, the formation of new Organizations such arts festival. See http:// www.transmediale.de. global circuits are ironically embedded as Nobody is Ille- or made possible by the existence of that gal,13 the Mongrel 13. A campaign carried by autonomous groups, same global economic system that they web project,14 Mute religious initiatives, trade 15 unions and individuals to contest. These counter-geographies are Magazine, the support refugees and dynamic and changing in their locational Manchester-based undocumented immigrants. See http://www.contrast. features.10 10. They are also Futuresonic,16 and org/borders/ for more multivalent, that is, some information. The narrating, are ‘good’ and some are the Bonn/Cologne- giving shape, mak- ‘bad’. I use the term as an based Theater der 14. London based media analytic category to activists and artists. See ing present, designate a whole range of Welt,17 have all http://www.mongrelx.org. dynamics and initiatives involved in digitized that are centred in the new done projects 15. See http://www. environments capabilities for global focused on immi- metamute.com. operation coming out of assumes very partic- the corporate global gration. 16. A festival exploring economy but used for wireless and mobile media. ular meanings when purposes other than their In conclusion, See http://www. mobilized to repre- original design: examples both the work of futuresonic.com. range from alter- sent/enact local spe- globalization political making the public 17. A theatre festival. See struggles to informal http://www.theaterderwelt. cifi cities in a global global economic circuits, and making the de. context. Beyond the and, at the limit, global political in urban terrorist networks. kinds of on-the- space become critical at a time of ground work involved in these struggles, growing velocities, the ascendance of new media artists and activists – the lat- process and fl ow over artefacts and per- ter often artists – have been key actors in manence, massive structures that are not these developments, whether it is at a human scale, and branding as the through tactical media, Indymedia, or basic mediation between individuals and such entities as the original incarnation markets. The work of design produces of Digital City Amsterdam11 and the Ber- narratives that add to the value of exist- lin-based Transme- 11. The Digital City ing contexts, and at its narrowest, to the 12 Amsterdam (DDS) was an diale. But new experiment facilitated by utility logics of the economic corporate media artists have De Balie, Amsterdam’s world. But there is also a kind of public- cultural centre. Subsidised also focused on by the Amsterdam making work that can produce disrup- Municipality and the issues other than the Ministry of Economic tive narratives, and make it legible to the world of technol- Affairs it allowed people to local and the silenced. access the digital city host ogy. Not surpris- computer and retrieve

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E2 Sassen EN02.indd 26 25-10-2006 14:29:06 Howard Rheingold one by means of and Eric Kluitenberg electronic media – is necessarily a Mindful good thing. To Disconnection stimulate ideas, the authors propose a Counterpowering possible alternative: the Panopticon from a practice of the Inside ‘mindful disconnec- tion’, or rather the In this article, ‘art of selective media experts disconnectivity’. Howard Rheingold and Eric Kluiten- berg ask us to con- sider if unques- tioned connectivity – the drive to connect everything to everything, and everyone to every-

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E3 Rheinhold-Kluitenberg EN02.in28 28 25-10-2006 14:30:27 Although I have devoted decades to observing diminishes our power to control our and using participatory media – from tools tools. We are increasingly convinced, for thought to virtual communities to smart however, that we need to resist becom- mobs – I want to propose that disconnecting ing too well adapted to our media, even might well be an important right, philosophy, as creators. Perhaps tools, methods, decision, technology, and political act in the motivations, and opportunities for future. making the choice to disconnect – and Howard Rheingold perceiving the value of disconnecting in ways of our choosing – might be worth My involvement with new media arts and considering as a response to the web of tactical media initiatives such as Next 5 info-tech that both extends and Minutes has always insisted on the right of ensnares us. access and connection. The only practical The capacity and freedom to discon- form of resistance I can personally claim nect might well be necessary to prevent credit for is that to date I do not own, nor the intoxication of technology from have ever owned a mobile phone – quite out tipping into toxicity: it seems more of key with most fellow organizers in the cul- effective and more humane to resist tural social/political fi eld, but an immense technologies’ dangers through mindful- absolution from social coercion . . . ness, not through prohibitions, regula- Eric Kluitenberg tions, revolutions, or guardrails. It makes sense to expend intellectual Perhaps the act of mindfully discon- energy instead of fossil fuels, deploy necting specifi c times, spaces and situa- thought instead of bureaucracy, employ tions in our lives from technological awareness rather than confl ict. Mindful mediation ought to be considered as a disconnection doesn’t require a top- practical form of resistance – an act of down change in large-scale institutions will on the part of individual humans as or a redesign of installed infrastructure. a means of exercising control over the It only requires that enough people media in their lives. It remains uncer- make a decision and act on it tain whether it is possible or preferable Resistance to the pressure to adapt to disrupt the technological augmenta- ourselves to our tools is not a new idea, tion of human thought and communi- but neither Lewis Mumford, who traced cation that is becoming available to the ‘megamachine’ back to the ziggu- most of the earth’s population. We are rat-building potentates of the fi rst agri- not as convinced as others that technol- cultural empires,1 nor Jacques Ellul,2 ogy is only, primarily, or necessarily a who warned about 1. Lewis Mumford, The Myth of the Machine: Tech- dangerous toxin. There is a danger in the seductive mech- nics and Human Develop- locating technologies’ malignancies in anization of ment, (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovano- the tools themselves rather than the way humanity via ‘la vich, 1971). people use them and mentally distanc- technique’ in the 2. Jacques Ellul, The Tech- nological Society, Translated ing us from responsibility for the way early 1950s, before by John Wilkinson (New we use our creative products might there were more York: Knopf, 1964).

Mindful Disconnection 29

E3 Rheinhold-Kluitenberg EN02.in29 29 25-10-2006 14:30:28 than a dozen computers in the world, technologies that enable the growing nor William Irwin Thompson, who hyper-connectivity are microchips, per- called me out by name in the 1990s as sonal computers, the Internet, mobile an enthusiast for the demon of mind- phones, bar codes, video cameras, and less mechanization,3 could have fore- rfid tags. Such diverse social and eco- seen the complex 3. William Irwin Thomp- nomic phenomena as just-in-time man- son, The Americanization of battle we’ve Nature: The Everyday Acts ufacturing, virtual communities, online engaged ourselves and Outrageous Evolution of outsourcing, smart mobs, supply chain Economic Life (New York: in: the same tech- Doubleday, 1991). management, surveillance, and collec- nologies of freedom that make democ- tive knowledge creation are all human racy possible are also the technologies socioeconomic behaviours that weren’t of control that enable fascism. possible before connective technologies The questions that Mumford and made them possible.5 While the ena- Ellul asked were not about a mystical bling technologies 5. Howard Rheingold, Smart Mobs: The Next Social human essence that is endangered by have received Revolution, (Cambridge: our species’ proclivity for tool-making, intense attention Perseus, 2002). but rather they were attempting to since the ‘Victorian 6. Tom Standage, The Vic- 6 torian Internet, (New York: address the risk of losing autonomy, the Internet’ wired the Berkley, 1999). bedrock of liberty. Liberty is a political world at the end of concept that must be constructed by a the nineteenth century, less attention literate population, a Gutenberg-era was paid until the end of the twentieth expression of collective action that century to the social reactions of com- increases the range of control individu- munication-enabled populations. Per- als have over their lives.4 Autonomy, the haps most signifi cantly, Manuel Castells broad range of 4. Yochai Benkler, The pointed out recently that we live in a Wealth of Networks: How activities that an Social Production Transforms network society, not an information individual has, in Markets and Freedom, (New society:7 the Phoenicians at the time of Haven: Yale University theory, some choice Press, 2006), http://www. the invention of the 7. Manuel Castells, ‘Why benkler.org/wealth_of_ Networks Matter’, in: about, is fundamen- networks/index. alphabet or Euro- Helen McCarthy, Paul tal. If we gain php?title=Main_Page. peans after Guten- Miller and Paul Skidmore (eds.), Network Logic: Who health and wealth, amusement and berg were informa- Governs in an Interconnected World? (London: Demos, empowerment, through our use of a tion societies; 2004), http://www. tool or medium, how have we, by that humans are natural demos.co.uk/networklog- ic17castells_pdf_media_ use, acted to constrain or expand the social networkers – public.aspx. range of potential choices? cooperative defence 8. Robert Boyd, Joseph Henrich and Peter Richer- The matrix of change for global cul- and food gathering son, ‘Cultural Evolution of ture in the twenty-fi rst century is the is probably what Human Cooperation: Summaries and technology-mediated connectivity enabled out pri- Findings,’in: Peter Ham- merstein (ed.), Genetic and among people, data, media, products, mate ancestors to Cultural Evolution of Coop- processes, places, and devices that survive and thrive eration (Cambridge: MIT Press, in cooperation with began in the nineteenth century and in a predatory envi- Dahlem University Press, accelerated through the twentieth. The ronment.8 But 2003).

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E3 Rheinhold-Kluitenberg EN02.in30 30 25-10-2006 14:30:29 there are natural limits to who any per- England) would spawn a global, inter- son can network with, how many people connected, cctv web of spycams. How they can organize, spread over how much information about individual large an area, at what speed. The signif- data traces left by bridge toll transpond- icance of the global technological net- ers, credit cards, rfid tags, cctv work is precisely its ability to amplify cameras is captured, compiled and the scope, reach, and power ideation datamined? Who designs these connect- and socialization: the telephone, the ing technologies and makes decisions Internet, the digital computer combine about their implicit functionality, such to create a worldwide, powerful, inex- as the things they allow and restrain? pensive, radically adaptive amplifi er of Who controls the technologies and the human social networking capability. effects they produce? Who defi nes to The question to ask in this time of tur- which ends these connecting technolo- bulent social change is whether our use gies will be used, and what exactly they of connectivity increases or decreases will be used for – more specifi cally, to our autonomy. whom will these technologies mean One can sense a paradoxical infl u- increased freedom, and in what ways ence on autonomy – both the individ- will they be used for ever closer scrutiny ual device such as the personal and control over our movements and computer and the aggregated network behaviour? of the Internet provide more choices If we knew the answers to these ques- for more people. But the technologies tions, and didn’t like them, what could of connectivity have been evolving. we do about it? In a world of prevailing First, the network was tethered to desk- disconnectivity, to be able to connect is a tops, then it untethered and colonized privilege (e.g., the ‘digital divide). In a the pockets of billions, and next it is world of always-on connectivity, this rela- going to leap out of the visibility and tion might very well be reversed and the control of individuals as trillions of real privilege could then be the ability to smartifacts infi ltrate the physical world.9 withdraw and disconnect – to fi nd sanc- The technologies 9. Everyware: The Dawning tuary from eternal coercion to commu- Age of Ubiquitous Comput- that allow wide- ing, (New York: New nicate, to connect, or to be traceable. In spread creation of Riders Press, 2006). a society increasingly predicated on con- culture and political self-organization nectivity and real-time communication also support unprecedented surveil- and trackability, shouldn’t the ability to lance capabilities – surveillance not withdraw be enshrined as a basic right only by the State, but by spammers, for all? In other words, in a network stalkers, and the merely curious. society the right to disconnect should be Nobody thought seriously about spams acknowledged as a fundamental human and viruses when the Internet fi rst right, as crucial to our mental and physi- began to grow, and very few suspected cal well-being as the right to food, water, that the fi rst webcam (aimed at a cof- integrity of the body, or protection from feepot in a laboratory in Cambridge, political oppression.

Mindful Disconnection 31

E3 Rheinhold-Kluitenberg EN02.in31 31 25-10-2006 14:30:29 Without this right to withdraw/dis- yet the very possibility of seclusion connect, the network society indeed seems to be at stake in the networked, becomes an electronic prison of the device-pervaded, communication-and- type Gilles Deleuze muses about in his information-saturated, always-on society. ‘Postscript on the societies of control’, a We do not propose a fi nal answer society of constant and real-time scru- to the question about how we should tiny.10 In such a society, freedom, as fi rst go about growing a technology regime of all a particular 10. Gilles Deleuze, ‘Post- around disconnectivity, but rather that script on the Societies of state of mind rela- Control’, in: idem., we should begin by compiling exam- tively free from OCTOBER 59 (Cambridge, ples, and proceed inductively. If anyone Mass.: MIT Press, 1992), external coercion, 3-7. wants to transfer the preliminary list we cannot exist, and thus many of the compiled here to a wiki, that would be a other emancipatory claims made (by splendid way to build on this beginning myself and others) about the rise of net- – what follows is a collection of anec- working technologies and a networking dotes and tools related to the art and social logic are rendered failed enter- science of selective disconnectivity . . . prises. Foucault’s notion of the Panopti- con is too generic to be productive in understanding all of what is at stake and what could be an effective antidote. The question here is not about whether or not we are scrutinized. That is already a fait accomplit, whether you like it or not. The question is whether we can develop procedures, methods, pos- sibilities, spaces for ‘selective connectiv- ity’, which make it practical to choose to extract ourselves from the electronic control grid from time to time and place to place. Politically, the human right I propose is neither intrinsically a left nor right-wing question – rather it is a question of twenty-fi rst-century democ- racy. Only when people are free and able to choose can the choices they make be in any sense truly democratic. The right to withdraw from public life into the sacred domain of the private is constitutive of the democratic experi- ence – the seclusiveness of the private enables the public as an alternate role,

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E3 Rheinhold-Kluitenberg EN02.in32 32 25-10-2006 14:30:29 Resource List on the Art and Science of though he would receive letters to his Selective disConnectvity home address, he completely dropped out of my life – a peculiar experience.’ unconnected (http://tingilinde.typepad.com/uncon- Steve Cisler visits people and organiza- nected) tions not on the Internet. Cisler is a librarian and telecommunications tech- Bubl-Space nology consultant. Beep Free hr: ‘I fi rst met him online in 1985 Do you need a break from the daily when he was one of the fi rst librarians mobile soap? Surround yourself with to use the Well. Later, as one of the soothing space. Simply press your librarians at Apple, Computer, he pocket-size BuBL device. Release a organized meetings around the nascent bubble of silence. You’ll feel pleasantly community networking movement and isolated inside, even in a crowded place. was involved in the lobbying that led to Evaporate all phone signals up to 3 m the Wi-Fi standard. He has extensive around. Enjoy the silence. Create your experience with the use of Internet- Personal BuBL Space. Illegal as hell, but related technologies in the context of nobody has to ask why it’s so appealing. public information provision, such as This is a very funny art project by via libraries, but has also worked with Arthur Elsenaar and Taco Stolk, both many community groups on how they from the Netherlands. They created can use networking technology in their this battery operated pocket size gsm particular local context and geared to blocker that blocks wireless signals (it is their specifi c needs.’ also W-Fi compliant) in an area of A couple years ago, Steve attempted approximately 3 m around you. What it to get in touch with people who were does is send out white noise on the not or no longer connected to the required frequency bands – a mobile Internet in the usa, for whatever phone or other wireless device inter- reason. Some of these people might prets this as ‘no signal’ and switches never have been on-line, others off/disconnects – especially handy in dropped out for economic reasons, and public transport! One reason it is illegal still others deliberately went or stayed is that this device can also block vital off-line. The blog page contains travel communications (police, ambulance, stories, interviews, impressions and fi re fi ghters, emergency services, etcet- some pictures of the road trip across era). the continent that Steve made to talk to the ‘unconnected’. The Privacy Card ek: ‘When he did this he went off The Privacy Card action was an elegant line for a whole year. I had been in con- hack of the biggest loyalty card in tinuous but intermittent contact with Germany. The site of German artist him online, and now I am again today, Rena Tangens on which this event is but in this in-between phase, even presented, offers information and

Mindful Disconnection 33

E3 Rheinhold-Kluitenberg EN02.in33 33 25-10-2006 14:30:29 brings the fun back to resistance, but course they never were. Weeks after you also includes the current prototype of a could see them happily swinging to and game on data collection and privacy. fro, focusing on any passer-by – thus the This counter-card actually worked – and cam spotting action to show this broken still does. People can get their bonus promise. reduction without their data being col- (http://www.appliedautonomy.com/ lected. isee.html) (http://www.foebud.org/fruehere-pro- jekte/privacycard) Phonebashing This is a street action performance, i-See carried out when mobile phones fi rst ‘Now More Than Ever’ started polluting public space in The Institute for Applied Autonomy London – two guys in big mobile phone (usa) suits literally smash people’s mobile iSee is a web-based application chart- phones on the street, even in a café – ing the locations of closed-circuit televi- amazing!! Funny and subversive/con- sion (cctv) surveillance cameras in frontational – grainy but great videos! urban environments. With iSee, users (http://www.phonebashing.com/) can fi nd routes that avoid these cameras (‘paths of least surveillance’) allowing Internet Privacy Switch them to walk around their cities without Janos Sugar / Media Research Founda- fear of being ‘caught on tape’ by unreg- tion, Budapest ulated security monitors. A project proposal by Janos Sugar, a Check the videos on their site – they conceptual and media artist from Buda- are very funny and instructive! pest, Hungary and cofounder of the Also good about this project is that Media Research Foundation. In Buda- they extended the service for hand-held pest he worked closely together with devices so that people can invoke up-to- Geert Lovink for a number of years. In date paths of least surveillance, add to response to a discussion years ago about them on the spot, and share the maps disconnectivity he came up with the with other users. internet privacy switch, which is bril- This project was also implemented liant in its simplicity, it just disconnects in Amsterdam – with a cam-spotting you when you push ‘off’ – the button action in public space called ‘Spot the has the word ‘line’ written on both cam in Amsterdam’. For the wedding of sides of the switch so that when you crown prince Willem Alexander, an push it ‘on’ it says ‘online’ and when impressive range of remotely operated you switch it off it says ‘offl ine’. motorized cameras were placed on the roofs of buildings along the route of Janos Sugar - International Corporation the royal wedding parade. The promise of Lost Structures: was that these cameras would be http://www.icols.org/pages/Main- removed after the wedding, but of Frame.html

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E3 Rheinhold-Kluitenberg EN02.in34 34 25-10-2006 14:30:30 Media Research Foundation, Budapest: rfid Related Resources/Projects http://www.mrf.hu RFID Blocking Wallet tv Turnoff Week With the proliferation of rfid devices Adbusters/Media Foundation and related privacy concerns, it seemed ‘We’ve always known that there’s a due time to create the rfid Blocking lot more at stake than just getting Duct Tape Wallet. There are many ways people off their couches: tv Turnoff to prevent Radio Frequency id tags Week is all about saying no to being from being transmitted from devices. I inundated with unwelcome commercial often use my work badge and school id messages. Saying no to unfettered which both contain rfid tags. With media concentration. And challenging drivers licenses, credit cards, and cash the heavily distorted refl ection of the now beginning to contain rfid tags, world that we see every day on the why not create a protective wallet. screen. All of this is why, in the nearly (http://www.rpi-polymath.com/duct- 15 years since Adbusters launched tv tape/rfidWallet.php) Turnoff Week, it has grown into such a runaway success – such a success, in RFID pocket-replacement fact, that there are now literally dozens As rfid tags become more pervasive, of groups dedicated to promoting tv how does the consumer avoid being Turnoff, at the local level, in schools, tracked? One easy way to subvert the universities, malls and public spaces all technology is to build a homemade across the globe.’ faraday cage around your rfid tags. This is a ‘classic’ case of disconnec- This project describes how the average tivity, of course . . . But I think this is an person can rip out a pocket from a pair important campaign. Although it refers of jeans and replace it with a cotton like to an old medium (television), it rings fabric which contains enough conduc- true to the spirit of disconnectivty. tive material to block most rfid tag fre- (http://www.adbusters.org/metas/ quencies. psycho/tvturnoff/) (http://www.electric-clothing.com/rfi d- pocket.html)

Tag Zapper The TagZapper™ is being developed to be a light-weight, handheld device for deactivating rfid transmitting devices. This is intended to fulfi l consumer demand for a means to protect their privacy. (http://www.tagzapper.com/)

Mindful Disconnection 35

E3 Rheinhold-Kluitenberg EN02.in35 35 25-10-2006 14:30:30 i-See, The Institute for Applied Autonomy (usa) http://www.appliedautonomy.com/isee.html

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E3 Rheinhold-Kluitenberg EN02.in36 36 25-10-2006 14:30:30 RFIDWasher and/or change society and human ‘Don’t let rfid tags and chips breach interaction? How does it change the your privacy rights, get rfidwasher.’ concept of information and informa- ‘rfidwasher’ and ‘Be Free of rfid’ tion networks as we know them today? are registered trademarks of Orthic This reader compiles a number of Limited. All other trademarks are resources on the technical and philo- acknowledged. ‘Our Patented rfid sophical aspects of rfid. product allows you to locate rfid tags (http://www.mediamatic.net/article- and destroy them forever!’ 9691-en.html) (http://www.rfi dwasher.com/)

Chris Oakley’s short fi lm ‘The Catalogue’ ‘Crystallising a vision of “us seen by them”, The Catalogue explores the cod- ifi cation of humanity on behalf of cor- porate entities. Through the manipulation of footage captured from life in the retail environment, it places the viewer into the position of a remote and dispassionate agency, observing humanity as a series of units whose value is defi ned by their spending capacity and future needs.’ An amazing short fi lm of 5 minutes and 30 seconds made in 2004 that projects a near future in which rfid tagging and completely transparent databases merge to make unprece- dented on the spot profi ling of people possible. (http://www.cinematicfi lm.com/ the%20catalogue.html)

Reader for RFID Workshop A collection of projects, theory and crit- icism on rfid A growing number of logistical com- panies see the advantages and possibili- ties of rfid for managing large bodies of objects. But to what uses can this technology be applied that are not in the logistical realm? How can it serve

Mindful Disconnection 37

E3 Rheinhold-Kluitenberg EN02.in37 37 25-10-2006 14:30:30 Assia Kraan shared location is only the pretext or To Act in Public also the location for through social activity. Geo-Annotation

Social Encounters through Locative Media Art

Locative media art makes artistic use of location-aware and time-aware media to promote social encounters between users and locations. The social contact is usually experienced via a pc. Assia Kraan wonders whether the

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E4 Kraan EN02.indd 38 25-10-2006 14:36:33 During the last few decades, the use of share something the term locative media art is used in this essay to digital media has changed traditional special with one refer to artistic practices public space into a hybrid space, Eric another; their expe- that explore the use of locative media in hybrid Kluitenberg claims in the introduction to riences of a specifi c space. this Open.1 Electronic networks are inter- space. They give meaning to hybrid space woven with social, 1. Kluitenberg introduces and form social relations on the basis of the term hybrid space and political and physi- problematizes public that. A new form of public action in cal space, leading to action in it because of the hybrid space is manifested in the activi- increasing invisibility of a new dimension in digital technology. ties of these social communities that the use and experience of that space. The confer meaning through geo-annotation. new hybrid space also calls for new forms Locative media art makes use of loca- of public action.2 These can only be tive media to annotate space and to bring created and facili- 2. In this essay I use the people together. But what are the specifi c term public action to refer tated if the users of to public human activity characteristics of locative media, and why hybrid space learn in public space to bring are they suitable for public action in about a social effect. to see the infl uence hybrid space? A closer examination of of the relatively invisible digital struc- the concepts of space and location and of tures and appropriate their technology examples of locative media art with geo- where possible for alternative use. For annotation seems called for. example, the practice by which Google Maps,3 albeit from a commercial angle, Hybrid Space offers users a view 3. http://maps.google.com/ of the world that consulted on 25-08-2006. The new hybrid space calls for a different used to be the preserve of the us military, understanding of the concept of ‘space’. is a successful example of the appropria- Using Henri Lefèbvre’s notion of space tion of – in this case gps – technology. may help us to understand hybrid space Because of its more experimental and better.5 Discourse about ‘space’ today is critical explorations, locative media art infl uenced by his 5. Henri Lefèbvre’s La production de l’espace can bring new possibilities to light on this theory, introduced (1974) attracted the atten- front.4 By making use of digital technolo- in the 1970s, that tion of Anglo-Saxon theo- reticians after the gies for public 4. The term locative space consists of an publication of an English media was introduced in translation, The Produc- action, it can enable 2001 by the Canadian interaction between tion of Space, in 1991. the users to under- media researcher Karlis perceived, conceived Kalnins and published in stand hybrid space 2003 in the Acoustic Space and lived space, and that it is in motion. Reader (rixc Center for and bring about New Media Culture) as a Hybrid space could then be understood social activity. A test category for media art as a space in motion and an interaction that explores the interac- particular type of tion between the virtual between perceived, conceived, lived and space of Internet and locative media art physical space. The term virtual space. This space is formed not that works with geo- locative media is used only by materiality and social and politi- nowadays to refer to both annotation causes location-aware and time- cal actions, as Lefèbvre argued, but also aware media and to this communities of form of media art. This is by digital technology. users to form who confusing, which is why We try to understand the world

To Act in Public through Geo-Annotation 39

E4 Kraan EN02.indd 39 25-10-2006 14:36:34 around us from an elementary survival Mental Maps instinct, and then we act in accordance with the spatial concept that has been People form their spatial concept by formed in that process, according to the ordering public space and conferring urban planner Kevin Lynch and the meaning on it. It is important to make a social geographer Yi-Fu Tuan.6 This distinction between space and plek. probably also 6. K. Lynch, The Image of Anglo-Saxon theoreticians talk about the City (Cambridge: m.i.t. applies to people in Press and Harvard Uni- space and place. The Dutch word plek hybrid space. The versity Press, 1962); Y.-F. (plural plekken) will be used here Tuan, Space and Place distinction that (Minneapolis: University because the alternative ‘place’ does not of Minnesota Press, [1977] Michel de Certeau 2003). express its meaning adequately. ‘Place’ is makes between the used, for instance, to refer to the physical actual city (the physically experienced space of a settlement, while plek refers to and lived city) and the concept of the city the meaning that a physical space has for (the rational, ordered model of the city) is somebody. A plek can be described as a applicable here.7 With the transition from complex ensemble of physical characteris- traditional to hybrid 7. M. de Certeau, The tics, cultural experiences, history and Practice of Everyday Life space, the concept (Los Angeles: University personal logic. Geographers target the that people have of of California Press, [1984] navigational characteristics of plekken, 1988). the city, which is but the computer scientists Paul Dourish determined by everyday experiences, and Steve Harrison emphasize an aes- changes. It is precisely this that is prob- thetic quality. They recognize the func- lematized by the development by which tion of plekken in a creative appropriation digital technology invisibly infl uences the of the world and describe plekken as experiences of people in public space and ‘developed sets of behaviour, rooted in thereby affects the images that they form our capacity to creatively appropriate and their actions, without their being aspects of the world, to organize them, aware of the fact. When people learn to and to use them for our own purposes’.8 know and use the characteristics and The formation of 8. P.Dourish and S. Har- rison. Re-Place-Ing Space: working of digital media, they will have a a concept of space is The Roles of Place and better understanding of the character of essential for an Space in Collaborative Systems. Computer Sup- hybrid space and will be able to handle it understanding and ported Cooperative Work better. Their spatial concept is in need of appropriation of (Boston: acm, 1996). adjustment so that they can function hybrid space because on the basis of this better in the public space of today. concept the space acquires meaning and Opportunities for this lie in the alterna- the user can survive in it. The psycholo- tive use of digital technologies and in the gist Stephen Kaplan claims that users exchange of spatial concepts with others, organize information in a cognitive as this takes place in locative media art. (mental) map using the information- processing mechanisms that are theirs by nature. Back in 1913 the geographer Charles Trowbridge talked about imagi-

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E4 Kraan EN02.indd 40 25-10-2006 14:36:34 nary or mental maps. He had noted that technology that makes use of the hybrid some people are better at orientation character of the space. Locative media than others. He sought the explanation art offers such access. for this in their informal, imaginary maps, which were built up around the Geo-Annotation Reinforces Social location of their home. As long as they Contact remained on familiar territory (and thus on the imaginary map) they could fi nd Locative media art takes place in public their way. Trowbridge’s term ‘mental space and makes artistic use of locative map’ referred to the perceived space, but media. Locative media art with geo- according to Kevin Lynch it also consists annotation explores the possibilities for of conceptualized space. In his view, it is public action. Artists use locative media the two-way process between the resident artistically to get people to use technol- and his or her environment that forms the ogy and to annotate and exchange the mental map. The environment suggests meanings that they confer on plekken.10 distinction and relations, and the resident This can result in a 10. Following the defi ni- tion by Karlis Kalnins, selects, organizes and confers meaning better understand- locative media are on what he or she sees, on the basis of his ing of the nature and regarded as ‘location- aware and time-aware or her interests. A mental map is in a working of technol- media’, such as gps tech- nology, mobile and fi xed process of ongoing development from the ogy among users networks, in combination moment that the user is in relation to the and in the formation with pda, smartphone or laptop. space, and thus often from childhood.9 of a community For users to 9. I go in detail into the around the plek. formation of plekken by become aware of the individuals and the role The art and design theoretician infl uence of hybrid that locative media art can Malcolm Miles distinguishes the follow- play in that in my master’s space on public thesis, available at http:// ing forms of public art: integration art; www.assia.nl/docs/scrip- action, it is neces- tie_A.Kraan.pdf. handiwork in designing the built-up envi- sary to understand ronment; and intervention by artists in the character of that space. The tradi- public space.11 Locative media art could tional opportunities for public action are be regarded as a 11. M. Miles, Art, Space and the City (London: supplemented with the new ones offered form of intervention Routledge, [1997] 1999). by the current shift in the spatial charac- art. It intervenes in ter of the public domain. Where the tradi- public space to create environmental tional way of acting cannot deal with the awareness, that is, an attentive perception network of electronic elements, the public of the physical environment with a feeling should make hybrid space created by that for the meaning of plekken. shift operational by seeing that network In the project (Area)code (2004)12 by as a part of public space. The hybrid the artists’ collective Centrifugalforces, space can then become a part of every- for example, with the assistance of sms one’s mental cartography. What remains users discover mean- 12 http://www.areacode. org.uk/ consulted on for the users of public space is to gain ings of specifi c 25-08-2006. access to the new public domain through plekken in Manches-

To Act in Public through Geo-Annotation 41

E4 Kraan EN02.indd 41 25-10-2006 14:36:34 ter, which can be experienced in a very Rauschenberg and Robert Whitma aware way as a result. Locative media art brought technicians and artists together not only shows the environmental aware- to work on performances that incorpo- ness of users, but is itself environmentally rated new technologies. e.a.t. realized aware too. This is its strength: it can that artists could contribute to the devel- determine the spatial position of the user opment of technologies and developed and relate it to other locations and loca- interdisciplinary projects in which artists tive information. and technicians participated. In the 1970s Besides the artistic use of technology, the emergence of hardware technologies the interactive way in which users collab- in communication, data processing and orate to produce the work of art is also a data control led to a new generation of characteristic of locative media art. The software systems in which artists were role of the artist as initiator and the trend interested. to let users take part in the work of art There is no conventional classifi cation can be historically derived from the hap- of types of locative media art, but terms penings. A happening is a specifi c dra- such as geo-annotation, geo-tagging and matic activity that originated in the work collaborative mapping are used on an of Dada in 1916-1921 and in the Surreal- occasional basis to refer to locative media ist art that came afterwards. The work 18 art projects. In the case of geo-annota- Happenings in 6 Parts (1959) by the us tion, locative media are deployed artisti- artist Alan Kaprow was seminal for this cally to establish a link between public artistic movement and defi ned the ele- space and the users, between hybrid ments of a happening: the public is both space and mental space. The world is spectator and participant; actions and made legible via a transparent interface events happen simultaneously just as they between the spatial object and the spatial do in life; the ‘stage’ of the performance metadata that are linked to it. Users are is virtually infi nite and the acting is given locative media to annotate the largely improvisation. Early happenings meaning that they give to plekken. Image, were focused on person-to-person inter- sound and text are linked to the geo- action, but the introduction of technology graphical coordinates or positions in the into performances led to a person-to- digital network by storing everything in a machine interaction. database, often on a website. This loca- The use of (locative) media technol- tive informative is made accessible in a ogy in works of art has its roots in the map that is placed on the website and is activities of the us collective Experiments accessible to all. Annotations are linked in Art and Technology (e.a.t.) (1966), one with other information, thereby acquiring of the fi rst initiatives in which artistic context. Users can view annotations on experiments were conducted with tech- the website using a pda, smartphone, nology and in which the interaction laptop or pc. between people and machines was explored. The engineers Billy Klüver and Fred Waldhauser and the artists Robert

42 Open 2006/No. 11/Hybrid Space

E4 Kraan EN02.indd 42 25-10-2006 14:36:35 Place-Based Authoring specifi c experience of the space (such as the quality of the asphalt). Socialight In short, the meanings of plekken can be (2004-now)16 not only allows users to recorded with geo-annotation and then pluck annotations 16. http://socialight.com/ shared with friends and strangers. The art from the website, consulted on 25-08-2006. project City Songlines (2003)13 by Karlis but also bombards them with reports Kalnins and others 13. http://www.gpster.net/ when they are on a specifi c location. songlinesredux.html con- is an example of sulted on 25-08-2006. Whenever someone is in a sticky shadow geo-annotation. In (a specifi c geographical location), he or this project a map of Utrecht (the Nether- she receives a report with information lands) was formed on the basis of shared about that location. These sticky shadows annotation. Users could make an interac- (annotations) are added to the website by tive map on the website of City Songlines the users themselves. and link image, sound and text to specifi c The position of the user in the public locations around the Central Museum in space is important in geo-annotation. It Utrecht. Users in the physical space had can be traced using a variety of tech- access to the reports through their PDAs niques. In the case of Cellspotting (2005- and smartphones. now),17 it is done on the basis of the The research studio Proboscis project position in the 17. http://www.cellspot- ting.com consulted on Social Tapestries investigated the advan- mobile network, the 25-08-2006. tages and costs of locative mapping and cell where the user is sharing information. On the basis of its located. This project by Carl Johan fi ndings, it designed the software plat- Femer helps friends to spot one another form Urban Tapestries (2004-now),14 and provides users with location-bound which has since been 14. http://urbantapestries. information. Plazes (2004-now)18 traces net/ consulted on the basis for many 25-08-2006. users on the basis of 18. http://beta.plazes.com/ test versions of their internet con- consulted on 25-08-2006. place-based authoring. This annotation nection and does not distinguish between system emphasizes the thread formed by pc or mobile media users. On the basis of a series of annotations, by which insight the location of the user, information can be gained into their context. The about that particular location can be project GeoSkating (2005-now)15 by Just made available, such as who is in the van den Broecke is 15. http://www.geoskating. neighbourhood and how often it has com/ consulted on built on the software 25-08-2006. already been visited. platform GeoTracing and works like City Songlines and Urban Joint Cartography Tapestries. Skate routes are mapped on the website, and locations on them are Cartography is a familiar device to make annotated with image and text. The location-bound information tangible in a unusual feature of this project is that spe- visual representation. The Situationists cifi c users of public space, namely skaters, experimented in the 1960s and ’70s with are given the means to annotate their recording the personal experience of

To Act in Public through Geo-Annotation 43

E4 Kraan EN02.indd 43 25-10-2006 14:36:35 space in alternative cartography. Their their own map on the website. Locations practice was called psychogeography, and are drawn in the same type of map and their products psychogeographical maps. annotated with specifi c symbols. A title, Today Lori Napoleon is one of those description, photograph and/or video can occupied in exploring personal cartogra- then be added in defi ned fi elds. phy. In Mapsproject (2004)19 she docu- Annotations of public space generate ments personally 19. http://www.subk.net/ reactions, discussions and conversations, maps.html consulted on hand-drawn paper 25-08-2006. in short, social contact between users. As maps that describe a media theoretician Lily Shirvane claims, route or say something about how their there is ‘a potential for the space between maker experiences the space. Julian individuals and their environment to Bleecker’s art project PDPal (2002-now)20 become a location for spontaneous for- is an artistic explora- 20. http://www.pdpal.com/ mations of collective activity’.23 Experi- consulted on 25-08-2006. tion of alternative ences that people 23. L. Shirvanee, ‘Loca- tive Viscosity: Traces Of cartography in the service of geo-annota- have in their famil- Social Histories In Public tion. Using locative media, users of iar environment may Space’ Leonardo Elec- tronic Almanac MIT Press. PDPal make a multimedia representation be a pretext for vol.14 issue 03 (2006), http://leoalmanac.org/ of the city. In the fi rst project this meetings not only journal/Vol_14/lea_v14_ resulted in a visual haiku with text, but with acquaintances n03-04/lshirvanee.asp consulted on 25-08-2006. the following projects had increasing ‘in the street’, but recourse to characteristics of Cartesian also with strangers. Collective activities cartography to give the personal maps a can lead to communities around a specifi c common denominator on the basis of plek. Projects such as GeoSkating, for which they could be merged. In the example, create a community of skaters second project the product was a digital who exchange information about skate schematic map with a grid, and in the routes. Droombeek24 and The Former- third project users could only link audio Resident-Project 24. For a detailed account of the Droombeek project reports to geographical locations but no (2006) also bring see the article by Arie longer represent them on a map. people together, but Altena in this Open. PDPal illustrates the choices that this time around a shared (former) place artists have to make between the per- of residence. In the fi rst project, residents sonal character of the user’s annotation and former residents of the Roombeek and the shared character of the joint map. district in Enschede (the Netherlands), Once the idea is to exchange annotations where there was a devastating explosion among users, they will have to be made in in 2000, share their recollections and accordance with a pre-arranged system. experiences; the latter project is about Jason Wilson’s Platial21 and John Geraci’s New York City. Foundcity22 work 21. http://www.platial. The practices of conferring meaning com/splash consulted on with an annotation 25-08-2006. carried out by these communities are system. Users can 22. http://www.foundcity. forms of public action. Meaning is anno- net/ consulted on make use of limited 25-08-2006. tated and distributed within the commu- possibilities to make nity. The exchange of spatial concepts

44 Open 2006/No. 11/Hybrid Space

E4 Kraan EN02.indd 44 25-10-2006 14:36:35 leads individuals to form a community formed around a website about a particu- that experiences that hybrid space differ- lar plek, where members enter into ently, and possibly understands it better. contact with one another via their pc. The Familiar Stranger Project (2003)25 is However, we should not forget that media based on the fact 25. http://berkeley.intel- are only devices for representing mental research.net/paulos/ that we make use of research/familiarstranger/ maps so that locative experiences can be the public space with consulted on 25-08-2006. exchanged and experienced together. A other people. Elizabeth Goodman and plek is still best experienced, however, on Eric Paulos do not focus on the formation the physical location itself instead of of a community of acquaintances, behind a pc. The represented mental map however, but on that of familiar strangers: on the website can not replace the far those strangers we regularly meet in richer, genuine mental map, but only public space, but whom we choose to offer a shared language for communicat- ignore and by whom we are ignored. The ing about locative experiences. In order mobile application, called Jabberwocky, is to experience plekken in a genuinely based on Bluetooth technology.26 When shared way, there is thus no point in only two people who both 26. http://www.urban- chatting about annotations in the virtual atmospheres.net/Jabber- have a mobile tel- wocky/ consulted on space via websites, but the physical loca- ephone fi tted with 25-08-2006. tion has to be taken as the starting point. Bluetooth approach one another, the Jab- It is important to take this step after berwocky software detects the other’s forming a representation of mental maps. presence and indicates it as a red square. But online digital media are in the last The other person’s unique characteristics resort perhaps not the most suitable are recorded, and at the next meeting instrument for promoting social contact they are recognized and visualized as a on the basis of the experience of space. green square. This colour code shows The locative character of locative media whether you are passing familiar stran- may offer many more opportunities for gers whom you have seen before or not. contact in hybrid space. Unlike online This project illustrates both the impor- digital media, locative media generate tance of the other in the experience of communication about space on location. public space and an unusual form of By means of locative media, members of social contact between strangers on the communities can recognize one another basis of the use of space. in physical space. Moreover, the user can scan the environment on the plek itself Public Action: Online Media or for the presence of members and Locative Media? exchange locative information. There is more point to the exchange of location- Geo-annotation projects promote social bound information on the plek itself than contact between users of a plek, but they on a website. Information about a loca- do not bring them together in that physi- tion can best be experienced and dis- cal space. Using online digital media cussed on location, in the physical (fi xed network and pc), communities are proximity of other users.

To Act in Public through Geo-Annotation 45

E4 Kraan EN02.indd 45 25-10-2006 14:36:36 Strangely enough, there are hardly any ence of plekken. To sum up, this takes art projects that deploy locative media place in three ways. First, users make use instead of online digital media to bring of locative media to link multimedia people in physical space into contact with information to a geographical location. In one another. Still, there are a few exam- this way the meaning of a plek is recorded ples of commercial projects, including and represented on a digital map. Second, Sensor27 by the Nokia telephone locative media are used to request anno- company, in which 27. http://europe.nokia. tations when you are on location. The com/A4144923 consulted this does happen. on 25-08-2006. user accesses the locative information by When users are accessing the website or subscribing to a distant from one another within a par- news service. Third, locative media could ticular radius, messages can be exchanged be deployed to inform users when they via Bluetooth and contact is possible. The are near to one another, so that they can content of those messages can come from meet physically and exchange their expe- a portfolio compiled beforehand, or be rience of a plek. created on the spot. Since the portfolio is As far as the last possibility is con- only kept on the mobile phone and not on cerned, artists still seem to make use of a website, it can only be exchanged with online media and not locative media on other people in a physical space. It is thus the whole. Social contact is brought about personal information, not location-bound while the parties concerned are not in information. Other commercial applica- close physical proximity to one another, tions are Streethive28 and Dodgeball,29 in but behind their PCs. It is striking that which location- 28. http://www.streethive. none of the art projects mentioned makes com/home consulted on bound information 25-08-2006. use of locative media to bring about is exchanged. Users 29. http://www.dodgeball. social contact on location, while some com/ consulted on of Streethive indicate 25-08-2006. commercial projects do exactly that. Loc- on a digital map ative media seem pre-eminently suitable (from their pda or smartphone) where for this purpose of geo-annotation. In the they are, and can also see which fellow case of social contact on the basis of users are in the vicinity, with a view to an online digital media, the point that gives actual meeting. Moreover, plekken can be rise to the contact – the plek – is not a annotated and gain visibility on the map. meeting place but only a theme. Dodgeball brings people together by Locative media should be deployed in informing them with text messages about locative media art to bring about social other users who are geographically close contact in physical space. The location of on the basis of their position in the a plek is important for social contact mobile network. because meaning is annotated to that Projects like Droombeek and plek on the basis of it. Presence on loca- GeoSkating demonstrate that geo-annota- tion offers a richer experience of the tion with locative media offers experi- contact about that plek. In addition, the mental and artistic opportunities to make character of locative media does justice to social contacts on the basis of the experi- the hybrid character of the public space.

46 Open 2006/No. 11/Hybrid Space

E4 Kraan EN02.indd 46 25-10-2006 14:36:36 By deploying locative media, physical, digital, social and mental space can be linked with one another. It can be a chal- lenge to make optimal artistic use of the character of locative media to confer meanings on hybrid space and to exchange them with one another. Loca- tion must also have a metaphorical place in a genuine social public action in public space.

To Act in Public through Geo-Annotation 47

E4 Kraan EN02.indd 47 25-10-2006 14:36:37 Poster for Julian Bleecker’s PDPal project. www.pdpal.com

48 Open 2006/No. 11/Hybrid Space

E4 Kraan EN02.indd 48 25-10-2006 14:36:37 To Act in Public through Geo-Annotation 49

E4 Kraan EN02.indd 49 25-10-2006 14:36:37 Klaas hoe individuen Kuitenbrouwer zeggenschap kunnen krijgen over welke rfid & agency privacy zij wanneer met wie willen Culturele en delen. Als burgers maatschappelijke meer toegang mogelijkheden krijgen tot bepaalde van RFID delen van rfid- implementaties, rfid (Radio kan rfid ook een Frequency drager worden voor Identifi cation) vindt andere, maatschap- in hoog tempo pelijk interessante nieuwe toepassingen. waardensystemen. Dit veroorzaakt Recente ontwikke- civiele onrust over lingen in de online de privacy bedrei- cultuur leveren hier- gende effecten. voor opwindende Daarom is het nuttig ideeën. na te denken over

50 Open 2006/Nr. 11/Hybride ruimte

E5 Kuitenbrouwer NLDEF.indd 50 25-10-2006 15:07:52 Wie rfid googelt krijgt bij de eerste tien Radio Frequency Identifi cation (RFID) hits een paar links naar grote logistieke technologie bestaat uit drie compo- bedrijven en consultants (aim, rfidInc.), nenten. In de eerste plaats uit RFID- voor wie rfid een droom is die werke- labels, meestal tags genoemd. Dit zijn lijkheid is geworden; een droom van kleine microchips met radio-antennes beheersbaarheid, transparantie en effi - die een kleine hoeveelheid data dragen ciency als het gaat om het wereldwijd en een uniek identifi catienummer hebben. traceren van goederen. Vijf van de eerste Van sommige chips zijn de data over- tien hits zijn links van organisaties die de schrijfbaar. De tweede component is de invoering van rfid ter vervanging van de RFID-lezer. Deze zendt een radiosig- barcode als de grootst mogelijke bedrei- naal uit waardoor de RFID-tags worden ging zien van de privacy van gewone opgeladen en hun unieke nummer wordt mensen. rfid als zoekwoord geeft meer uitgezonden naar de lezer. Om een RFID- dan honderd miljoen hits, rfid+privacy tag te lezen hoeft de lezer alleen in geeft bijna vijftig miljoen hits. Kortom: de buurt te zijn van de tag, er hoeft rfid-chips zijn als we google als norm 1 niks gericht te worden, en het signaal hanteren ‘spychips’ . 1.http://www.spychips.org dringt door alle soorten materiaal epcGlobal Inc. is een organisatie die heen behalve door metaal. Als de chip wereldwijd het gebruik van rfid-stan- het toelaat kunnen via dit radiocon- daarden propageert en ondersteunt. epc tact de data op de chip ook veranderd staat voor ‘electronic product code’. Wal- worden. De RFID-lezer is gekoppeld aan Mart is de grootste Amerikaanse super- een computer met database – de derde marktketen – qua omzet het grootste component. Daarin is de informatie bedrijf ter wereld – die van zijn 300 opgeslagen die hoort bij de identifi ca- voornaamste toeleveranciers geëist heeft tienummers van de RFID-tags. dat ze voor het eind van 2006 al hun De tags kunnen in principe op van alles pallets met een epc standaard rfid-chip worden aangebracht: dingen, plekken, uitrusten. Het Amerikaanse ministerie dieren, mensen. Ze kunnen naast hun van Defensie eiste in 2004 hetzelfde van nummer soms een behoorlijke hoeveelheid zijn leveranciers. Door de keuze van Wal- informatie bevatten, en bijvoorbeeld Mart en van het ministerie van Defensie een eigen krachtbron hebben, waardoor voor rfid is deze technologie ineens in ze hun signaal actief kunnen uitzenden het centrum van de wereldeconomische en ze op veel grotere afstand leesbaar aandacht komen te staan. Wal-Mart tergt zijn. De RFID-lezers kunnen zwak of de rfid-critici vooral met de geplande krachtig zijn, waardoor tags op kleine en op bescheiden schaal al geïmplemen- of grote afstanden gelezen kunnen teerde invoering van rfid op productni- worden, en de databases kunnen klein veau op de schappen van de supermarkt zijn en alleen lokaal toegankelijk, zelf. Zo kunnen met individueel getagde maar ook enorm en via internet vanuit artikelen de route en het koopgedrag van de hele wereld te bereiken. klanten door de winkel exact getraceerd worden en kunnen in real-time speciale

RFID & agency 51

E5 Kuitenbrouwer NLDEF.indd 51 25-10-2006 15:07:52 persoonlijke aanbiedingen gedaan worden Ook is de technologie eenvoudig te aan klanten met een specifi ek profi el. In ‘hacken’. Het is dus essentieel om het de woorden van Joseph Turow, professor omgaan met persoonlijke levenssferen in aan de Annenberg School of Commu- verband met rfid scherp in de gaten te nication: “Dit mag vanzelf spreken voor houden. Maar om rfid te reduceren tot verkopers – maar voor de rest van ons is ‘spychips’ belemmert het zicht op andere het alsof de buurtsuper verandert in een interessante culturele en maatschappelijke bazaar waarvan de handelaar ons dagboek effecten die rfid kan hebben. heeft gelezen en wij over de prijs moeten onderhandelen met een blinddoek om, Agency achter een gordijn en via een tolk.”2 In de epc/Wal- 2.http://www.nocards.org/ De meeste critici gaat het niet om Mart versie van rfid news/index.shtml#b&c het koste wat kost handhaven van een is sprake van een wereldwijde standaard eenduidig gedefi nieerde privacy rondom voor het beheer van de unieke identifi - autonoom gedachte individuen, maar catiecodes van goederen, die door rfid- om het afdwingen van onderhandelbaar- lezers met groot vermogen tot op een heid in de wisselwerking tussen gewenste afstand van vier meter in de eu en tot verbinding met communicatienetwerken acht meter in de usa kunnen worden aan de ene kant en privacy aan de andere. gelezen en die via dure ‘middleware’ aan Dit vraagt om fl exibele manieren om grote zwaar beveiligde databases worden privacy te defi niëren: rfid-critici willen gekoppeld die wereldwijd toegankelijk dat individuen zelf zeggenschap hebben zijn via internet. Grote bedrijven kopen over de mate van privacy die zij wensen toegang tot deze standaard en rollen ten opzichte van welke (markt)partij op zo hun via rfid permanent ge-update welk moment. Die mate van privacy ‘supply- and value-chains’ uit over de hele kan gerelateerd zijn aan de diensten of wereld. producten die die marktpartij kan leveren. Er is geen enkele reden om aan te Bijvoorbeeld, wie een persoonlijk toege- nemen dat een grootschalige imple- sneden dieetadvies wil ontvangen, zal de mentatie van rfid geen serieuze bedrei- gegevens die voor zo’n advies nodig zijn ging vormt van dat wat er nog rest aan moeten verstrekken. Maar de mate van privacy van supermarktbezoekers. Het privacy kan ook aan een lokale context is makkelijk om scenario’s te voorzien, gekoppeld worden, of aan de tijd van de waarin bijvoorbeeld geprivatiseerde ziek- dag.3 Het debat gaat uiteindelijk dus niet tekostenverzekeraars toegang hebben tot om het beschermen 3.Het concept voor rfid- privacies werd vooral dieetinformatie via databases die door van privacy, maar om ontwikkeld door Rob supermarkten worden bijgehouden over het bevorderen van van Kranenburg en stond centraal in de Mediamatic het koopgedrag van op postcode, sekse ‘agency’ bij burgers: workshop rfid & Privacies 2004 en leeftijd gesorteerde klanten, zodat de het vermogen tot in augustus . betrokken data voor de wet nog net geen bepalend handelen. persoonsgegevens zijn, met de speciale De analyse van de mogelijke distri- verantwoordelijkheden die daarbij horen. butie van ‘agency’ in relatie tot de

52 Open 2006/Nr. 11/Hybride ruimte

E5 Kuitenbrouwer NLDEF.indd 52 25-10-2006 15:07:52 Preemptive Media, Zapped!, Sissende kakkerlakken uitgerust met RFID-chip, 2004.

Stichting z25, Dat-a, Huis aan de Werf, Utrecht, 2005.

RFID & agency 53

E5 Kuitenbrouwer NLDEF.indd 53 25-10-2006 15:07:53 verschillende rfid-componenten biedt De makers bouwden zelf de compo- interessante middelen om de culturele en nenten van hun rfid-installatie. Alle sociale betekenissen van rfid in beeld te bezoekers van Huis aan de Werf werden krijgen. In het epc/Wal-Mart scenario uitgerust met tags, en hun bewegingen zijn alle rfid-componenten in handen in het gebouw werden minutieus gere- van de marktpartijen. Zij controleren gistreerd en geïnterpreteerd tot een wat er ‘getagd’ wordt, zij bepalen waar opdringerig gepresenteerd persoonlijk- 5 de (vaak onzichtbare) lezers staan en wat heidsprofi el. 5.http://dat-a.z25.org daarmee gelezen wordt, ze hebben de In The Box in Liverpool werd recent exclusieve toegang tot de databases en een artistiek rfid-experiment gedaan, zicht op de manier waarop die reageren. getiteld Attention Please!, door Sara 6 Mensen zijn er in dit scenario alleen om Smith, waarin 6.http://attentionplease. wordpress.com/tag/exhi- ‘getagde’ producten te kopen en om zo precies de Wal- bition/ zelf gelezen te worden. Mart marketing- Preemptive Media – kunstenaar-acti- fantasie met bijbehorende distributie visten uit New York – bekritiseert dit van ‘agency’ werd gekopieerd, maar dan type toepassing van rfid en is doelbewust in de context van een kunstruimte. De en expliciet subversief. Ze ontwikkelden bezoekers kregen een ‘getagde’ kaart een paar aansprekende instrumenten in die als indicator werd gebruikt om hun het kader van hun Zapped! project dat aandacht voor een videoloop te regi- zich speciaal op rfid richt. Zo rustten zij streren. De loops reageerden op de lengte onlangs een fl inke groep sissende kakker- en de frequentie van de aandacht die lakken uit Madagascar uit met rfid-chips ze kregen. Als één video veel aandacht en lieten deze los in Wal-Mart fi lialen, kreeg, begonnen de andere video’s zich waar ze op eigen houtje, vooral ’s nachts, luidruchtiger te gedragen om meer databases vervuilen met ruis en storende aandacht te krijgen. boodschappen.4 Zapped! ontwierp onder De tot dusver genoemde projecten meer ook een zelfbouw rfid-tracer, die staan in een retorisch kader van rfid als waarschuwt als er 4.http://www.zapped- ‘Bigbrotheriaans’ instrument en leveren een rfid-lezer in de it.net/devices.html conceptueel vrij eenduidige projecten buurt is, die dan vervolgens omzeild kan op. Interessanter wordt het als de makers worden, of vernield. Ook ontwierpen geïnteresseerd raken in andere soorten ze speciale kleding en tassen die voor deelname van aanwezigen en andere radiosignalen ondoordringbaar zijn. De soorten toegang tot rfid-systemen. Als zij consument krijgt zo zelf de keus of hij hun rfid-applicaties niet als hermetische deelneemt aan het rfid-scenario van zijn machines presenteren en de toegang tot supermarkt of niet. de componenten ook aan anderen dan Een Nederlands project dat op een de makers wordt verleend, dan wordt kritische manier op het spychips-scenario een rfid-systeem meer een platform dat reageert, is Dat-a van Stichting z25, uitge- ruimte biedt voor verschillende soorten voerd in het kader van het festival Huis ‘agency’. rfid wordt dan een potentieel aan de Werf in Utrecht in november 2005. communicatiemedium.

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E5 Kuitenbrouwer NLDEF.indd 54 25-10-2006 15:08:12 Los van waar je rfid voor zou kunnen geschreven door mensen als Bruce gebruiken, maakt het de unieke draadloze Sterling, Julian Bleecker en anderen.7 digitale identifi catie van fysieke voor- Slechts enkele 7.http://www.purse- lipsquarejaw.org/2006/03/ werpen en plekken mogelijk. ‘Getagde’ elementen van de internet-of-things-working. objecten kunnen een computer denkbare mogelijk- php geprogrammeerde handelingen laten heden zijn zichtbaar gemaakt in verschil- verrichten. Alles wat een rfid-tag kan lende projecten. Zo heeft Nokia bij dragen kan tegelijk bestaan in de fysieke wijze van experiment in 2005 één van èn in de digitale online werkelijkheid. haar telefoonmodellen (de Nokia3220) Welke mogelijkheden zijn er als de uitgerust met een rfid-lezer. Bij aanschaf toegang tot componenten van rfid- krijg je er tien vierkante stickertjes met infrastucturen (tags, lezers, databases) niet rfid-tags bij. De stickers kunnen vrijelijk is voorbehouden aan de makers alleen, als buiten, in huis of waar dan ook geplakt mensen zelf dingen en plekken kunnen worden.8 Met behulp van de telefoon ‘taggen’, en/of als ze zelf lezers hebben kunnen de tags 8.In Japan zijn zes miljoen telefoons uitgerust met waarmee ze informatie uit databases zowel gelezen als rfid-chips waarmee auto- kunnen halen, en/of als ze zelf databases beschreven worden, matisch betalen mogelijk is voor gebruikte diensten, kunnen vullen? In de eerste plaats worden met telefoonnum- mits een rfid-lezer geïn- andere vormen van interactie met een mers, smsjes, url’s of stalleerd is. computer mogelijk dan via een keyboard kleine commando’s die de telefoon kan of muis. Verzamelingen zelf-‘getagde’ uitvoeren. Timo Arnall, ontwerper-onder- voorwerpen kunnen gaan werken als zoeker aan de School voor Architectuur computerinterface. En als we genet- en Design in Olso experimenteerde werkte computers beschouwen, dringt ermee.9 Hij plakte ‘getagde’ stickies in zich ineens de verwantschap op tussen een grid op zijn 9. http://www.elasticspace. com/2005/12/address- de mogelijkheden van rfid en een aantal werktafel en gaf book-desk grote ontwikkelingen in de onlinecultuur ze allemaal een van de afgelopen jaren: social software, eigen speciale functie: ‘Bel Jack’, of ‘Bel waardetoevoeging door sociaal book- Mama’, of ‘sms het kantoor dat ik thuis marken, bloggen en andere vormen van ben’. Hiermee veranderde wat voorheen door gebruikers gecreëerde en gedeelde duim- en beeldschermhandelingen waren inhoud. Naast foto’s, video’s, playlists en in ruimtelijke gebaren. Elke vriend of url’s kunnen ook fysieke locaties en alle- elk familielid had een eigen plek op zijn daagse of bijzondere voorwerpen worden bureaublad, zodat er een betekenisvolle gebookmarked, getagd, beoordeeld, en ruimtelijke relatie ontstond – wie ligt gedeeld. er in het midden? Ook telefoonfuncties kregen een eigen plek op het bureau. Het internet der dingen rfid werkte hier als een manier om met computers te interacteren via beli- Onder de noemer ‘internet der dingen’ chaamde ruimtelijke vormen van cognitie. wordt over de betekenis van rfid veel Een ander rfid-project dat is georga- en inspirerend nagedacht, gepraat en niseerd rondom lichamelijke cognitie is

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E5 Kuitenbrouwer NLDEF.indd 55 25-10-2006 15:08:12 de Symbolic Table, de interfaceloze medi- willekeurige cijfer en lettercombinatie) en aspeler van Mediamatic.10 Gebruikers die melden bij de ThingLink.org database. kunnen hun eigen 10.http://www.media- Butterfl y Works, een innovatieve matic.net/article-11344- objecten ‘taggen’. en.html ngo uit Amsterdam, ontwikkelt op dit Er is geëxperimen- moment een project waarin een combi- teerd met plastic dieren, ansichtkaarten en natie van uniek ontworpen producten delftsblauwe molentjes. Aan deze objecten uit ontwikkelingslanden met rfid of een konden zij hun eigen beeld- of geluidsbe- andere vorm van digitale unieke identifi - standen verbinden. De computer speelde catie, ertoe leidt dat de herkomst van het het beeld of geluid zodra het ‘getagde’ product makkelijk online traceerbaar is.13 object op de Symbolic Table werd gezet. Tevens kan zo een verzameling verhalen ‘Getagde’ objecten kunnen zo fysieke worden aangelegd 13.http://www.butterfl y- dragers van herinneringen worden, of over de verschil- works.org bijvoorbeeld de sleutel tot een favoriete lende stadia van productie en de reis van fi lm, of een stuk muziek. de producten. Het geheel kan ingezet Een toepassing van de combinatie van worden als marketinginstrument, maar uniek geïdentifi ceerde voorwerpen met ook als middel om inzicht te krijgen in blogging en social tagging, is ontwikkeld de productieomstandigheden of in de door Ulla-Maaria Mutanen, onderzoeker milieubelasting van de producten. aan de Universiteit van Helsinki. Zij Studenten aan het instituut voor inter- ontwierp de ThingLink.11 Zodra platen of actieontwerp ivrea in Milaan ontwik- 14 boeken, hoe obscuur 11.http://www.thinglink. kelden het scenario voor Sharer, een org. De ThingLink werkt 14 de uitgaven ook niet met rfid, maar met het vernuftig systeem .http://people. meer algemene principe interaction-ivrea.it/ mogen zijn, online op buurtniveau, v.venkatraman/projects/ van unieke identifi catie, 2 2 vermeld worden, waarvoor ook andere waarmee dingen die b b/b b.htm en daarmee voor methoden te bedenken zijn. mensen weinig gebruiken ‘getagd’ worden Google vindbaar zijn, blijkt dat er ook en in online databases aangeboden. wel ergens op de planeet inhoudelijke Iedereen kan lid worden, en dingen lenen belangstelling voor bestaat, en vaak zelfs tegen een kale verbruiksvergoeding. ook kopers.12 De ThingLink is bedoeld Kluisjes op het postkantoor werken als als een manier om 12.Google query: The Long fysieke knooppunten in dit ruilnetwerk. unieke handge- Tail Mobiele telefoons lijken de aange- maakte (‘gecrafte’) producten die nu wezen apparaten om een publieke vrijwel onzichtbaar zijn, online vindbaar rfid-infrastructuur te dragen; ze zijn te maken door ze unieke digitale identi- alomtegenwoordig en vormen de tech- fi catie te verlenen. Hiermee kunnen die nische schakel tussen plaatsen, voor- ‘gecrafte’ dingen het object worden van werpen en wereldwijde datanetwerken. online discussie, waardering, beoordeling Als mobiele telefoons op grote schaal en verkoop. Sterk aan het idee van de rfid-lezers gaan dragen, kan het niet ThingLink is, dat het volkomen bottom- missen of getagde voorwerpen en plekken up werkt. Iedereen kan zijn zelfgehaakte worden nieuwe domeinen voor een heel gitaarhoes een unieke id geven (een universum aan digitale subculturen. De

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E5 Kuitenbrouwer NLDEF.indd 56 25-10-2006 15:08:13 Nokia met RFID-lezer in gebruik.

RFID & agency 57

E5 Kuitenbrouwer NLDEF.indd 57 25-10-2006 15:08:13 Website ThingLink.

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E5 Kuitenbrouwer NLDEF.indd 58 25-10-2006 15:08:17 onooglijkste plekjes kunnen toegang spelen, zal de opmars van rfid voorlopig bieden tot de meest interessante online niet tot stilstand komen. De weerstand ervaringen – maar alleen als je er bent! hiertegen vanuit consumentenorganisa- Getagde kleding biedt geheel nieuwe ties heeft vooral te maken met het gemak virtuele en digitale dimensies aan mode- waarmee iedereen privacy bedreigende ontwerp. Tattoo’s worden gecombineerd scenario’s kan verzinnen in een van met een onderhuidse tag, die bij licha- rfid vergeven wereld. Tegelijk speelt de melijke contacten speciale ervaringen volstrekte veronachtzaming door de grote ontsluit. rfid kan het fysieke hier en nu marktpartijen van mogelijke zeggen- aan een digitale herwaardering helpen schap bij consumenten en burgers over de – een ontwikkeling die in tegenge- invoering en toepassingen van rfid een stelde richting beweegt van het online belangrijke rol. paradigma ‘anytime, anywhere’. Een uitweg kan zijn om na te denken Ook kan een ‘internet der dingen’ over andere mogelijke distributie van de beleefde waarde van voorwerpen ‘agency’ van deelnemers aan rfid-toepas- vergroten. ‘Getagde’ dingen kunnen hun singen. We kunnen dit overlaten aan geschiedenis gaan bewaren. Objecten de marktpartijen, maar het is beter dit verzamelen gedurende hun bestaan toege- zelf te doen. Zoals het internet na de voegde waarde online. Zo zullen met dotcom-implosie toch nog het domein behulp van rfid hele nieuwe categorieën is geworden van democratische media- van hybride voorwerpen en ervaringen productie, zo kan een grootschalige rfid- ontstaan. Er zal dan voor wat betreft de implementatie (na het struikelen van distributie van ‘agency’ rekening moeten rfid 1.0 over privacy issues) het terrein worden gehouden met een nieuw type worden van een publieke sfeer die zich speler: het ‘gescripte’ object. De bank bottom-up ontwikkelt. Niet alle inhoud in mijn woonkamer zou zelfstandig per daarvan zal relevant zijn, maar belang- sms de groeten kunnen gaan doen van rijker is dat rfid-2.015 een netwerk biedt mijn vorige gast aan de huidige, als uit voor nieuwe relaties 15. Analoog aan Web2.0, het internet van de de adresboekjes in hun telefoons blijkt tussen mensen en sociale software en de dat ze elkaar kennen. Mijn werktafel kan dingen, nieuwe user-created-content. Zie: O’Reilly - What is Web besluiten op bepaalde tijden niet toe te manieren om waarde 2.0? staan dat ik er achter mijn laptop werk, toe te kennen en en hem telkens uitschakelen. Misschien te herkennen, nieuwe hypes, nieuwe goed bedoeld – omdat de kinderen naar schaarsten, nieuwe vormen van spel, bed moeten bijvoorbeeld – maar het kan die nuttig kunnen zijn en nieuwsgierig ook nukkigheid zijn door gebrek aan maken. aandacht, omdat ik al de hele week aan de keukentafel heb zitten werken. Met dank aan de gesprekken met Rob van Door de grote belangstelling voor Kranenburg en Pawel rfid vanuit alle bedrijven waarvoor Potutyci en aan Patrick Plaggenborg en zijn rfi d- ‘tracking’, ‘tracing’ en de unieke identi- onderzoek aan de hku. fi catie van objecten een belangrijke rol

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E5 Kuitenbrouwer NLDEF.indd 59 25-10-2006 15:08:17 Koen Brams en Dirk Pültau

“Als het weg is, kan je het niet meer terughalen”

Interview met Jef Cornelis over de televisiefi lms Mens en agglomeratie (1966), Waarover men niet spreekt (1968) en De straat (1972)

De Vlaamse televisiemaker Jef Cornelis onderzoekt al vanaf begin jaren zestig de condities van de televisie als pu- bliek medium. In een aantal van zijn vroege fi lms poneert Cornelis een visie op de veranderingen van de stedelijke openbare ruimte. Reden voor Open om een interview met hem te publiceren, door Koen Brams en Dirk Pültau, als onderdeel ook van een onderzoekspro- ject naar diens werk.

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I-Interview11 NLDEF.indd 60 25-10-2006 15:09:08 Jef Cornelis (1941) is van 1963 tot 1998 werkzaam geweest als realisator bij de VRT, de Nederlandstalige Belgische publieke omroep. In die vijfendertig jaar heeft Cornelis meer dan 200 televisiefi lms gemaakt, vooral over archi- tectuur, beeldende kunst en literatuur, maar ook over sociale, cultuurfi lo- sofi sche en -sociologische thema’s. Het kortste fi lmpje, over de Belgische schilder Raoul De Keyser (1971), duurt 2 minuten en 52 seconden; de langste fi lm, die niet toevallig De langste dag (1986) als titel heeft en die de opening van de Gentse kunstmanifestaties ‘Chambres d’amis’ en ‘Initiatief 86’ in beeld brengt, duurt 6 uur, 15 minuten en 48 seconden. Een bijzondere eigen- schap van Cornelis’ werk is de haast permanente refl ectie op het medium televisie. Een voorbeeld hiervan is het maandelijkse magazine De IJsbreker (1983-1984), waarin telkens personen met elkaar in dialoog gingen over cul- turele onderwerpen (zoals mode, literaire tijdschriften, tatoeage, enzovoort); de personen bevonden zich evenwel niet op dezelfde locatie: de communi- catie – vaak het tegendeel daarvan – kon enkel tot stand komen via talloze camera’s en televisiemonitors. Het oeuvre van Jef Cornelis heeft enige erkenning gekregen in binnen- en buitenland. Voor één van zijn eerste fi lms, Abdij van ’t Park Heverlee uit 1964, ontving Jef Cornelis de Grote Prijs voor de Documentaire Film, uitgereikt op het Festival van de Belgische Film. In 1973 kreeg Cornelis de Grote Prijs La Prague Dorée, uitgereikt op het 10de televisie-festival van Praag voor de samen met architectuurtheoreticus Geert Bekaert gereali- seerde fi lm De straat uit 1972. Onder impuls van het Maison de la Culture et de la Communication de Saint-Étienne dat in 1991 een tentoonstelling en een reeks screenings van het werk van Jef Cornelis organiseerde, kreeg zijn werk bekendheid in andere Europese landen, waaronder – naast Frankrijk – Duitsland en Polen. Naar aanleiding van de tentoonstelling werd een catalogus uitgebracht. In de Jan van Eyck Academie te Maastricht, postacademisch instituut voor onderzoek en productie op de terreinen beeldende kunst, ontwerpen en theorie, wordt sedert enkele jaren onderzoek verricht omtrent het werk van Jef Cornelis. Het onderzoek richt zich op drie terreinen die tot op heden onontgonnen gebleven zijn: 1) de door Jef Cornelis ontwikkelde dissonante televisietaal, de bijzondere stilistische eigenschappen van zijn oeuvre, de problematiek van de representatie van kunst en cultuur op televisie; 2) de documentaire waarde van zijn televisiefi lms; 3) de uitzonder- lijke productievoorwaarden waaronder deze televisiefi lms konden worden gerealiseerd. Wezenlijk onderdeel van De eerste resultaten van het onderzoek zijn gepubliceerd in de nummers 117 en 118 van het Belgische tijdschrift De het onderzoek betreft een publiek Witte Raaf (www.dewitteraaf.be). Meer informatie over Jef discursief programma van lezingen, Cornelis en het onderzoeksproject is te vinden op: www. janvaneyck.nl. De fi lms van Jef Cornelis worden geconser- interviews en debatten. veerd door Argos te Brussel (www.argosarts.org).

Interview met Jef Cornelis 61

I-Interview11 NLDEF.indd 61 25-10-2006 15:09:09 koen brams/dirk pültau De fi lm De straat, die in 1972 voor het eerst op antenne komt, is niet je eerste project over de openbare ruimte en ruimtelijke ordening.

jef cornelis Dat klopt. Mens en agglomeratie, mijn eerste fi lm over die problematiek, dateert al van 1966. … Mens en agglomeratie, dat is geen titel van mij, maar dat zal wel het verhaal geweest zijn. Alleen al het woord ‘agglomeratie’ jaagt mij de kast op.

Hoe was je bij dat project betrokken geraakt?

Ik was erin gegooid! Ludo Bekkers, programmator bij de dienst Artistieke en educatieve uitzendingen van de toenmalige brt, had me samengezet met een architect, Walter Bresseleers. Samen moesten we een fi lm maken over de nieuwe ideale stad, met Dubrovnik en Stockholm als voorbeelden. In Stockholm was de binnenstad helemaal verkeersvrij gemaakt; de auto was uit het centrum verdreven. Het leek dé oplossing voor het probleem van de stad na de Tweede Wereldoorlog… de ontploffi ngsmotor is inderdaad zonder meer een dramatische uitvinding.

Wie was Walter Bresseleers?

Hij werkte in het kantoor van Léon Stynen, een van de meest prominente vertegenwoordigers van de ciam in België. Bresseleers was Stynens lieveling, maar een vennoot van hem is hij nooit geworden. In ieder geval putte Bresseleers stevig uit het ciam-repertoire voor de fi lm die ik met hem maakte.

Waarom Dubrovnik en Stockholm?

Tot in de late jaren zestig fungeerden die steden als model. Ik heb die steden geprospecteerd in de winter, en opnames gemaakt in de zomer. Toen ik aan het monteren was, werd me duidelijk dat ik met de tekst van Bresseleers niet uit de voeten kon. In feite viel Bresseleers terug op een model dat eigenlijk al voorbijgestreefd was. Ik was medespeler in een project waar ik amper iets over wist. Vergeet niet dat ik nooit een univer- sitaire studie heb genoten.

Wat heb je gedaan om het probleem op te lossen?

Ik heb hulp gezocht, onder anderen bij Frans Van Bladel. Ik heb ook

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I-Interview11 NLDEF.indd 62 25-10-2006 15:09:09 Geert Bekaert gevraagd om na de tweede of derde montage eens een kijkje te komen nemen. Frans Van Bladel en Geert Bekaert schreven op dat moment voor bladen zoals Streven en De Linie. Walter Bresseleers was eigenlijk heel aardig en hij heeft die correcties voor lief genomen want anders zou hij geen toelating hebben gegeven om bij hem thuis opnamen te maken voor Waarover men niet spreekt.

Waarover men niet spreekt is jouw tweede grote project over architectuur en stedenbouw, ditmaal in samenwerking met Geert Bekaert.

Ik ben door Geert eigenlijk op het goede pad gebracht. Ik heb ontzettend veel aan hem gehad. Hij heeft me veel geleerd; er waren maar weinig mensen van wie ik verdroeg dat ze me kennis bijbrachten. Waarover men niet spreekt was ons eerste gezamenlijke project.

Waarover men niet spreekt, uitgebracht in 1968, bestond uit drie delen, telkens van om en bij 35 minuten.

Home sweet home, het eerste deel, gaat over de illusies van het individuele wonen; Alice in Wonderland handelt over de stedenbouw- kundige situatie in Europa; en in het derde deel, Een hemel op aarde, worden een aantal stedenbouwkundige situaties in Italië, Zwitserland en Nederland in beeld gebracht. Waarover men niet spreekt vormt het begin van heel wat televisieprogramma’s die je gerust als een reeks mag zien: Bouwen in België (1971), De straat (1972), M’Zab, stedelijk wonen in de woestijn (1974), Een eeuw architectuur in België (1976), Ge kent de weg en de taal (1976), Vlaanderen in vogelvlucht (1976), Vlaanderen 77 (1977) en Rijksweg N°1 (1978).

Je zou kunnen zeggen dat De straat stilistisch heel dicht aanleunt bij Waarover men niet spreekt.

Ja.

Je zou bijna kunnen stellen dat het de vierde afl evering is van Waarover men niet spreekt.

Inderdaad. Wat ik zonet geprobeerd heb te zeggen, is dat die fi lms deel uitmaken van een serie die in feite bekroond wordt door Landschap van kerken (1989), de laatste fi lm die ik realiseerde op basis van een tekst van Geert Bekaert.

Interview met Jef Cornelis 63

I-Interview11 NLDEF.indd 63 25-10-2006 15:09:09 Stilistisch is dat evenwel een heel andere fi lm.

Ik werd ook wat ouder.

Propaganda

Wanneer heb je met Geert Bekaert voor het eerst kennisgemaakt?

Mijn vader had een abonnement op Streven. Het kan dus niet anders of ik moet teksten van Bekaert onder ogen hebben gekregen. Ik denk dat ik hem voor het eerst gesproken heb toen mijn fi lm over de Abdij van ’t Park (Heverlee) vertoond werd in Antwerpen, in november 1964. Ludo Bekkers heeft mij aan hem voorgesteld.

Zou het kunnen dat Bekaert en Bekkers al plannen hadden om fi lms over architectuur en stedenbouw te maken?

Dat weet ik niet. Het is zeker niet onmogelijk. Bekaert heeft alleszins enkele televisieprogramma’s over architectuur gerealiseerd zonder mij.

Wanneer ontstond het idee om samen met Geert Bekaert als tandem te gaan werken?

Ik denk dat Bekkers daar een rol in heeft gespeeld. Ik was bijzonder blij dat ik Geert leerde kennen – dat gesprek, die dialoog met hem, ik had iemand om mij aan vast te grijpen.

Hoe is Waarover men niet spreekt tot stand gekomen?

Ik wilde korte, gebalde fi lmpjes maken over architectuur en stedenbouw, variërend in lengte, van 5 tot 20 minuten – propagandafi lmpjes die tussen stukken van Bonanza moesten worden gemonteerd, ter vervanging van de reclameboodschappen die in Amerika werden uitgezonden. Ik wou eigenlijk scoren in de populaire sfeer… niet om populair te zijn: ik wou er letterlijk tussen zitten. In die jaren keek heel Vlaanderen naar dat Amerikaanse feuilleton. Ik herinner me dat we over dat concept een keer hebben samengezeten in Knokke, tijdens de zomervakantie, Bekaert, Bekkers en ik.

Ludo Bekkers heeft dat idee proberen te slijten bij zijn oversten. Hij schreef destijds: “De verschillende aspecten aan dit nieuwe idee van urbanisatie

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I-Interview11 NLDEF.indd 64 25-10-2006 15:09:09 dachten wij te behandelen in 21 uitzendingen. Een aantal van deze uitzendingen, waarvan de duurtijd zou lopen van 3 tot 30 minuten, zouden als het ware opgevat zijn als ‘commercials’. Wij gaan hier van het principe uit dat we een product moeten aan de man brengen. In casu ‘urbanisatie’. Op stuk van het onderwerp moeten we van de veronderstelling vertrekken dat het publiek inert is.” Wist Bekkers van jouw idee om de ‘commercials’ tussen delen van Bonanza uit te zenden?

Dat weet ik niet. Over het algehele concept waren we het zeker eens.

Uiteindelijk is er van het plan niets in huis gekomen. Wat is er misgelopen?

Er is heel veel over gedebatteerd, ook met Jozef Coolsaet die verantwoor- delijk was voor de programmatie. In de openbare omroep genoot ik op dat moment een zekere achting, omdat fi lms zoals Alden Biezen (1964), Abdij van ’t Park Heverlee (1964) en Plus d’honneur, que d’honneurs (over het kasteel van Westerlo) (1965) zeker niet onsuccesvol waren geweest, maar het plan voor de reeks fi lmpjes hebben we niet kunnen realiseren. We waren naïef om te denken dat het ons zou lukken om de program- matie onderuit te halen.

In de plaats daarvan hebben jullie Waarover men niet spreekt gemaakt, drie fi lms van iets meer dan een half uur. Wat de trilogie gemeen heeft met het oorspronkelijke plan is de dwingende, haast agressieve manier waarop het onderwerp wordt aangepakt. Vooral in de eerste twee delen van Waarover men niet spreekt worden de architectuur en de stedenbouw snoeihard bekritiseerd. Of zoals het in de eerste zinnen van Home sweet home wordt gesteld: “Waarover men niet spreekt? Over de droom waarin we willen wonen, over de droom waarin we kunnen leven, onszelf zijn. Het huis in mijn hoofd, niet dat van de architecten of urbanisten.”

Home sweet home, het eerste deel, is bijzonder platvloers. Ik wou de illusies van het individuele wonen doorprikken. We wilden onderwerpen aansnijden ‘waarover men eigenlijk niet spreekt’, een verwijzing naar de eerste seksuele voorlichtingsfi lms.

Op de meest negativistische wijze wordt betoogd dat het wonen in de armen van het spektakel en de markt is gedreven. Het cultuurpessimisme is extreem, haast hysterisch: het is allemaal naar de vaantjes.

Je mag het gerust propaganda noemen.

Interview met Jef Cornelis 65

I-Interview11 NLDEF.indd 65 25-10-2006 15:09:09 Bij het begin van deel 1 focust de camera op een deurklopper. Er wordt op de deur geklopt, en onmiddellijk daarna zijn beelden gemonteerd van een ijsrevue: je komt niet in de woning maar rechtstreeks in het spektakel en in de televisie terecht.

‘The medium is the message’…

Waarom ligt de nadruk op de vermarkting en de spectacularisering?

Het ging voor mij over de consumptiecultuur en de defi nitieve verdwijning van het authentieke. De eerste episode is een ‘blind’ deel. Het gaat over de volkswil, de wil van het volk. In alle klassen zie je trouwens hetzelfde, het gaat niet alleen over diegenen die een kanarievogel hebben.

De eerste twee delen van Waarover men niet spreekt berusten heel sterk op de montage, minder op de tekst of de soundtrack. Het is de opeenvolging van de beelden die het argument levert, zoals we aangaven met de beeld- sequentie met de deurklopper. De beelden van de ijsrevue worden bijvoor- beeld gevolgd door shots vanuit een auto die traag achter een fanfare rijdt. Daarna gaat het plots over de Sjah van Iran “die nog in staatsiekledij voor de televisie de plechtige ogenblikken herleeft waarop hij zichzelf en zijn beminnelijke echtgenote de keizerlijke kroon op het hoofd zette”.

Zoals ik al zei: het gaat over iedereen. Maar eigenlijk ben ik niet educatief, ik wil niet uitleggen. Ik leg toch niet veel uit? Als er al onenigheid is geweest tussen mij en Bekaert, dan heeft dat te maken met mijn weerstand tegen pedagogie, waartoe Bekaert veel meer neigde. Bekaert is iemand met een overtuiging, om het woord ‘wereldverbeteraar’ niet te gebruiken.

Welke mentaliteit heeft dat soort fi lms mogelijk gemaakt? Kan je daar iets over zeggen? Wat was de heersende idee over wonen en stedenbouw in 1966 en 1967?

Er was geen debat; voor een debat was er geen platform. Uiterlijk was er niks aan de hand. Vlaanderen werd op een ongelofelijk tempo vol gebouwd.

Was er geen debat?

Nee. Als er al een debat werd gevoerd, dan was Bekaert erbij betrokken,

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I-Interview11 NLDEF.indd 66 25-10-2006 15:09:09 Home Sweet Home, deel 1 van Waarover men niet spreekt

Interview met Jef Cornelis 67

I-Interview11 NLDEF.indd 67 26-10-2006 15:13:19 of Karel Elno, maar die was meer bezig met design. Wij keken op naar wat er in Nederland gebeurde. Daar vond wel een debat over stedenbouw plaats?

Absoluut, dat kan ik zonder meer bevestigen. We wilden de stilte in Vlaanderen doorbreken. En daar zijn we ook in gelukt. Er is over Waarover men niet spreekt heel wat geschreven, zowel in de populaire als in de gespecialiseerde pers. Mijn werk heeft nooit zoveel belangstelling gehad als op dat moment.

De straat

De fi lm De straat gaat gedeeltelijk over hetzelfde als Waarover men niet spreekt.

Bekaert was de opvatting toegedaan dat we het niet moesten hebben over het gebouwde, maar over datgene wat niet gebouwd is: die lege koker die een straat in feite is. Het moest niet gaan over de zijkant, dat gebouwde vlak – alhoewel het trottoir, daar kan je over discussiëren – maar over datgene wat door die zijkanten wordt gedefi nieerd. Dat publieke dat niet fysiek is, daar moest de fi lm over gaan. Ik weet niet of we dat hebben waargemaakt.

De straat wordt evenwel gefocust op één aspect, namelijk op de gevolgen van het gemotoriseerde verkeer op de stedenbouw. Of zoals de tekst in de fi lm aangeeft: “Van de straat is niet veel meer overgebleven dan een verkeersweg – een bewegingsmachine, zoals Le Corbusier ze beschreef, uitgerust als een fabriek om een snelle verplaatsing mogelijk te maken; een machine, die zoals elke andere machine, enkel haar eigen wetten kent en niet het minst rekening houdt met wat buiten haar bestaat.”

Vanaf het moment dat mobiliteit een individuele aangelegenheid wordt, verandert de straat. De niet gebouwde ruimte is weg. De straat is riskant geworden. De stations, de winkelgalerijen, dat soort plekken zijn schuilplaatsen geworden. Maar het zijn ook eenzijdige, monofuncti- onele plekken. In de galerijen wonen geen mensen meer, er zijn alleen winkels.

Er zitten heel veel contrasten in de fi lm, tussen plaatsen waar de authentieke straat nog wel zou bestaan, in Alberobello en in Locorotondo in Italië bijvoorbeeld – een straat die verbonden is met de gemeenschap, waar

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I-Interview11 NLDEF.indd 68 25-10-2006 15:09:10 de huizen en de straat in elkaar overgaan – en onze steden waar de straat ‘verdwenen’ is. De fi lm is een aanklacht.

Een aanklacht is geen goed woord, vind ik, maar toch… Laten we zeggen dat De straat een tendentieuze fi lm is, met succes trouwens, in Frankrijk bijvoorbeeld, toen de Groenen begonnen op te komen, vooral in het zuiden, onder andere in Aix-en-Provence en in Avignon. De fi lm is ook in een aantal festivals getoond, op uitnodiging, en er is ook een Engelse versie van gemaakt. Hij heeft lang gelopen, ook in Italië.

Op het 10de televisie-festival van Praag kreeg je de ‘prix principal’. De fi lm is ook in de openbare omroep goed gevallen, want je ontving de Bert Leysenprijs, de grootste onderscheiding die de BRT aan eigen producties gaf. En dat voor een fi lm die extreme tegenstellingen evoceert!

Het festival in Praag was het belangrijkste festival van het toenmalige Oostblok. Die prijs was zeer gegeerd.

Het is interessant dat het Oostblok en de groene beweging belangstelling hadden voor de fi lm.

Dat kwam hen klaarblijkelijk goed uit. Alsof er iets veranderd kon worden. Er kan helemaal niets veranderd worden! Geert Bekaert zag dat misschien iets positiever.

Als je dan toch zo oppositioneel denkt, tussen die ideale leefvormen en de stad die verloederd is door het verkeer, waarom heb je dan niet meer ingezet op de contestatiebeweging? Met het in beeld brengen van het Conscienceplein in Antwerpen doe je dat slechts op een zijdelingse manier. VAGA, de Vrije Aktie Groep Antwerpen, in juni 1968 opgericht, bekwam dat het Conscienceplein autovrij werd.

Het Conscienceplein is voor mij een ruimte die nog een stedelijke kwaliteit heeft. Die acties van vaga, met Panamarenko en consorten, stelden niet veel voor. Ik heb dat deels met mijn eigen ogen gezien. Men was zich amper bewust waarom men op straat stond, om het zacht uit te drukken. Alles was al naar de knoppen toen ze op straat kwamen in Antwerpen.

Als je de tekst van De straat hoort, dan beluister je eigenlijk een pamfl et van 1968. Maar waar zijn de beelden van de betoging van 1968?

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I-Interview11 NLDEF.indd 69 25-10-2006 15:09:10 Ik heb wel beelden uit Parijs gebruikt, 28 seconden, als ik me niet vergis. Maar ik ben nooit toegewijd geweest aan 1968. Ik was in 1968 in Parijs. Die straatbezetting vond ik… een mooi stuk theater. Er was niet veel te beleven. Na de manifestaties gingen de communisten gewoon weer werken, en de studenten terug naar school. Ik denk dat de vakbeweging op dat moment zijn doodsstrijd heeft gevochten. Ze heeft te snel toegegeven. 1968 heeft niet veel opgeleverd.

Waarom heb je in de fi lm niet met foto’s gewerkt?

Ik vind dat verschrikkelijk. Ik doe dat niet graag. Ik ben eerder geneigd om documenten te gebruiken die al in het journaal zijn geweest, zoals de opstand in Londonderry.

Als gevlochten draden keren in De straat dezelfde statements en dezelfde beelden terug. Er zijn vele herhalingen. Maar de tekst en de beelden hebben een verschillende impact. Het cultuurpessimistische discours is haast onverdraaglijk. Puur fi lmisch ligt dat anders. De beelden zijn nooit volledig eenduidig.

Omdat je als kijker een veel grotere rol krijgt toebedeeld. Om die reden vind ik cinema interessant; beelden zijn meerduidiger dan teksten.

Complex en gelaagd is met name het einde van fi lm.

Je weet toch waarom ik Chambord heb gekozen?

Nee.

Ik heb twee échte frustraties in mijn leven, twee projecten die ik graag wilde doen en die niet van de grond zijn gekomen: een fi lm over het Palais Stoclet in Brussel, en een fi lm over het kasteel van Chambord in het Loiredal. Robert Delpire, fi lmproducent, onder andere ten dienste van de cineasten van de Nouvelle Vague, wilde dat ik die fi lms zou maken.

Laten we het einde van de fi lm even in detail bekijken. Voordat de laatste minuten aanvangen, wordt de camera gericht op een straat met herenhuizen. De tekst buiten beeld gaat als volgt: “Nu we voorlopig niet meer in staat blijken een eigen leefruimte en nieuwe straten te ontwerpen, willen we dan tenminste de bestaande straten bewaren met de zoveel

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I-Interview11 NLDEF.indd 70 25-10-2006 15:09:11 ruimere mogelijkheden tot leven dan nieuwe wijken en gebouwen zonder verbeelding doorgaans bieden.” Het is een pleidooi voor het behoud van het bouwkundig erfgoed.

Ja, liever een status quo dan iets wat nog erger is… De moderniteit krijgt een slag in het gezicht.

Voor je De straat realiseerde, maakte je een aantal kortere fi lmpjes voor het culturele programma Zoeklicht, telkens van rond de 5 à 10 minuten, over de Cogels-Osylei in Antwerpen, Art Nouveau in Brussel en het Patershol in Gent. Telkens wordt er gepleit voor de bescherming van het bouwkundige erfgoed.

Nu klinkt dat vanzelfsprekend, maar dat was het op dat moment allerminst. Na Waarover men niet spreekt waren wij er meer dan ooit van overtuigd dat het behoud van de oude en goede architectuur en stedenbouw de beste optie was.

De laatste twee en een halve minuten van De straat beginnen met een frontaal zicht op het Centraal Station van Antwerpen; vervolgens maakt de camera een beweging van 360 graden, weg van het station en er opnieuw frontaal op uitgevend. Op het moment dat de camera tot stilstand is gekomen en het station opnieuw frontaal in beeld wordt gebracht, wordt het beeld van het station gevolgd door het beeld van het dak van het kasteel van Chambord. Het Centraal Station van Antwerpen en het kasteel van Chambord spreken dezelfde architecturale taal. Het is een beeldrijm.

Koning Leopold II doet inderdaad hetzelfde. Dat zijn 19de-eeuwse fantasmen.

Je hebt destijds moeten motiveren waarom je naar Chambord wou. Een citaat: “(…) waar het dak van het kasteel een utopische straat laat zien (…) zoals die in vele voorstellingen uit die tijd werd weergegeven.”

Inderdaad, het kwartier van de mansardes. Er leefden mensen op het dak, die op afroep naar beneden konden worden ontboden. De vrouwen waren aan de heer en de rest overgeleverd. Leuk was het daar niet.

De camera rijdt op het dak van het kasteel, langs de torens die het kasteel bekronen, langs de torens die ramen en deuren hebben, naar de toren van de kapel van het kasteel; terzelfder tijd weerklinkt het geluid van de

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I-Interview11 NLDEF.indd 71 25-10-2006 15:09:11 De straat

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I-Interview11 NLDEF.indd 72 25-10-2006 15:09:11 Interview met Jef Cornelis 73

I-Interview11 NLDEF.indd 73 25-10-2006 15:09:12 lancering van een raket, en worden de eerste verzen van de Genesis in het Engels – Amerikaans-Engels – voorgedragen.

De tekst is natuurlijk een verwijzing naar Stanley Kubricks 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Met de soundtrack compliceer je de beelden van die mansardes. Het lijkt erop alsof de mythe van de gemeenschap naar een galactische verte wordt weggeschoten.

Het is geen utopie, het is een onwezenlijk moment.

Het is een negatieve utopie.

De hemel bevindt zich niet op deze wereld.

Het is niet de enige fi lm die op een spectaculaire én geheimzinnige wijze eindigt. Neem bijvoorbeeld Landschap van kerken waarin op het einde de Basiliek van Koekelberg behandeld wordt. De fi lm eindigt met een droste- effect: de camera cirkelt rond de maquette van de basiliek die in de basiliek staat opgesteld.

Die kerk is blijven steken in het model! Het probleem van het einde van een fi lm is interessant. Een van de mooiste kunstwerken vind ik een schilderij van Ruscha: The End. Maar ik kon mij dat niet permitteren, zo’n bord met ‘The End’. Vroeger kon elke fi lm zo eindigen, maar we zijn dat kwijtgeraakt. Je moet op zoek gaan naar een einde… zoals ik ook vind dat je een begin moet hebben. Een generiek als begin vind ik verschrikkelijk.

Het einde van De straat is iets anders dan een conclusie. In de fi lm wordt de boodschap tientallen keren herhaald: door de auto is de straat niet langer een oord van en voor de gemeenschap, maar enkel een verkeersweg. De fi lm is volstrekt transparant, zeker de tekst, maar in wezen ook de beelden; het einde is dat echter hoegenaamd niet. Het is enigmatisch. Je verwijst nu zelf naar 2001 van Kubrick maar in jouw archief is er een document waarin gerefereerd wordt aan David Lamelas. Bij de passage over het Centraal Station en Chambord staat er ‘zie Lamelas’. Wat heeft dat te betekenen?

De fi lm zit vol met dat soort persoonlijke zaken, De Keyserlei, de Paarden- markt, het Conscienceplein. Lamelas heeft statige beelden gemaakt, vanuit

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I-Interview11 NLDEF.indd 74 25-10-2006 15:09:13 verschillende standpunten, met het tijdstip van het fotograferen erbij weergegeven. Waarschijnlijk is dat blijven hangen.

Vorm van samenleven

In jouw archief zit een ongedateerd tekstje, een soort schets voor het programma over de straat, dat als volgt gaat: “In het programma 1971- 1972 heeft het Van Abbemuseum te Eindhoven een tentoonstelling gepland over de straat als vorm van visueel environment. Met deze tentoonstel- ling schakelt het museum zich in in een internationale trend, die een hernieuwde belangstelling voor de straat als leefmilieu manifesteert.”

Dat tekstje is van de hand van Geert Bekaert.

Het is wellicht geschreven na juni 1970.

Als er geen datum op staat, dan weet ik het niet. Was Harald Szeemann nog bij het tentoonstellingsproject betrokken?

Ja, Harald Szeemann en Jean Leering worden expliciet genoemd als de organisatoren. Bekaert stelt verder dat er in de tentoonstelling vier onderverdelingen zijn. Hetzelfde wordt door Jean Leering uiteengezet in een tekst van 1970, gepubliceerd in Museumjournaal.

Dan zijn die contacten intens geweest. Dat is interessant. Maar ik weet niet meer zoveel over de concrete omstandigheden. Wie heeft wie beïnvloed? Ik heb Geert altijd bewonderd voor zijn vermogen tot synthese, wat ik bij Leering niet in die mate aantrof. Leering is altijd heel snel geweest om iets van iemand anders op te pikken.

Bekaert geeft ook enkele redenen om tot samenwerking te komen tussen het museum en de openbare omroep: “De tentoonstelling blijft niet beperkt tot de muren van het museum, maar wordt tot het televisienet uitgebreid. Omgekeerd wordt de televisie bij een concreet maatschappelijk proces betrokken (hetgeen totnogtoe alleen maar in de amusementssector gebeurd is).” Jullie wilden niet langer verslagjes over tentoonstellingen maken, maar jullie wilden de openbare omroep en het museum met elkaar verbinden.

Dat voorstel wijst in feite vooruit naar de reeks De IJsbreker, livepro- gramma’s die ik in 1983 en 1984 realiseerde. Telkens werden verschillende locaties met elkaar en met de televisiestudio verbonden.

Interview met Jef Cornelis 75

I-Interview11 NLDEF.indd 75 25-10-2006 15:09:13 Uit een passage in een notitieschriftje van Jean Leering blijkt dat de openbare omroep hierover positief was: “Gesprek met Bekaert. Heeft medewerking Belgische televisie aan De straat toegezegd gekregen, bijvoor- beeld voor opnamen te maken, die ook voor de tentoonstelling zelf van nut kunnen zijn.”

Ik denk dat Jean Leering, Geert en ikzelf verschillende keren aan tafel hebben gezeten.

Dat blijkt uit een van de notulen van de vergaderingen van de werkgroep die de tentoonstelling ‘De straat, vorm van samenleven’ voorbereidde. Met potlood is een verwijzing naar een voorstel van jou aangebracht. Er staat: “voorstel Cornelis: continue life-projectie”.

Dat herinner ik me niet, maar het is wel een idee dat ik op verschillende andere momenten heb gelanceerd. Ik had bijvoorbeeld een gelijkaardig voorstel ten tijde van de opening van de manifestatie Antwerpen 93. Ik wilde werken met alle politiecamera’s van de stad. Maar dat is niet doorgegaan.

Wat wilde je dan precies doen?

Ik wilde op de televisie gedurende één uur de beelden uitzenden van de veiligheidscamera’s die op Antwerpen gericht waren. Er waren net camera’s geïnstalleerd rond de autostrade en bij de tunnels, wat fascinerende beelden opleverde. De politie was akkoord, maar de juridische dienst van de openbare omroep wilde er niet van weten. Men stelde dat de toestemming nodig was van al de mensen die op het scherm zouden komen.

De samenwerking met het Van Abbemuseum is niet tot stand gekomen. Op 29 september 1971 hebben jullie elkaar getroffen in Breda. “Samenwerking tentoonstelling – T.V.-programma blijkt niet volgens de vroeger voorgestelde opzet te kunnen worden gerealiseerd. T.V.-fi lm moet nog in 1971 worden opgenomen,” staat er in het verslag van de vergadering.

Het was inderdaad de bedoeling dat we de fi lm zouden maken in 1971. Op 22 oktober 1971 fi atteerde Bert Janssens, programmadirecteur van de brt, de productie van de fi lm. Ik wou fi lmen in Italië van 19 november 1971 tot 9 december 1971. Ik moest de reis echter afgelasten in verband met sociale rellen in Milaan en de onverwacht vroege winter. De straat is een moeilijke bevalling geweest.

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I-Interview11 NLDEF.indd 76 25-10-2006 15:09:13 In de notulen staat ook dat jij kritisch stond ten opzichte van het opnemen van een fi lm in een tentoonstelling. Maar dat is niet de reden waarom het niet tot een samenwerking is gekomen. In het archief van het Van Abbemuseum bevindt zich een ongedateerde en ongesigneerde brief, gericht aan Tjeerd Deelstra, voorzitter van de werkgroep die de tentoonstelling heeft gerealiseerd: “Jef Cornelis van de brt meldde mij dat hun televisiepro- gramma De straat van januari naar juni verschoven is. Zij maken van 22 maart tot 14 april opnamen in Italië, waarvan hierbij het geplande reisschema. Erg jammer dat we dus van hun fi lmopnamen geen gebruik kunnen maken.” De tentoonstelling wordt uiteindelijk geopend op 2 juni 1972 en loopt – na een verlenging – tot 24 september 1972. De fi lm wordt op 14 september 1972 uitgezonden.

De tentoonstelling en de fi lm zijn totaal verschillende projecten.

Dat is juist: in de fi lm wordt trouwens ook nergens naar de tentoonstel- ling verwezen, en vice versa. Ook inhoudelijk worden er andere klemtonen gelegd: in de tentoonstelling wordt ergens gesteld dat de straat enorm getransformeerd is door het verkeer, terwijl dat in de fi lm de centrale these is.

Leering wou de straat terug veroveren. Onze analyse was anders: als het weg is, kan je het niet meer terughalen.

Je kan alleen behouden wat goed is?

De tijd dat het nog duurt.

Transcriptie: Iris Paschalidis Redactie: Koen Brams Met dank aan Argos, Geert Bekaert, Diane Franssen (Van Abbemuseum), Albert Maene (VRT-archief)

Interview met Jef Cornelis 77

I-Interview11 NLDEF.indd 77 25-10-2006 15:09:13 column

NOORTJE MARRES A first rough indication that publics that are capable of action PUBLIC (IM)POTENCE represent a riddle is that, as long as we follow everyday logic, Phrases like ‘they finally gave in such entities appear to be a prac- to public pressure’ or ‘public tical impossibility. The notion of opinion responded unintelligently’ a public endowed with agency are pretty standard utterances. brings together two contradictory The normalcy of such expressions demands. On the one hand, ‘action’ may easily obscure the fact that requires that there is an identi- they evoke a mysterious entity. fiable actor, and preferably an Indeed, the conjuring up of a individual, that can be said to do public that is capable of perform- the acting. This is clear from how ing acts, such as ‘exerting pres- we deal with questions of justice, sure’, inevitably involves a for instance. To establish that a certain amount of wizardry. But particular deed has been done, this wizardry often goes unappre- whether bad or good, we customar- ciated. Those who want to support ily require that there is a spe- a given public will want to affirm cific doer who can be associated its reality. Accordingly, they with this doing. A bottom line of have little interest in acknowl- our everyday logics is that there edging the magic involved in its is no deed without a doer. But, on manifestation. And those who are the other hand, it is an important critical of a particular public characteristic of a public that it are likely to follow the strategy cannot be reduced to an identifi- of showing that this public is not able actor. As a rule, a public a real public. They will want to must consist of more than a known demonstrate that in fact we are set of individuals. When it is dealing here with little more that revealed that behind a public a few actors with dubious inter- there is merely a particular ests: just business people, or social grouping, its status as a leftists. That is, they will try public is challenged. When it can to kill the magic. But an appre- be said: these are only the envi- ciation of the wizardry involved ronmentalists making a fuss, then in the emergence of publics is we are only dealing with a special crucial, it seems to me, for a interest group. When it is good appreciation of what they may revealed that ‘it was the politi- be capable of. cal campaign team that directed

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K-Column EN02.indd 78 25-10-2006 14:41:03 the crowd into the hall, to cheer emergence of agency in the absence during the candidate’s speech’ we of a specifiable actor behind the speak of a scam. A public must action. thus satisfy two demands simulta- To speak of the formats that are neously: it must be capable of available for organizing the agency, but it must not be reduc- public, is also to say that media ible to an identifiable agent. have a special role to play in all How could such an impossible this. To begin with, the media are combination of demands neverthe- sometimes held responsible for less come to be accepted as nor- bringing about the radicalization malcy in many contemporary of democracy mentioned above. cultures? Crucial in this respect According to some political theo- is a particular commitment that is ries, it was an effect of the rise peculiar to advanced democracies: of print media that the public came the commitment not to accept, as to be understood as an audience matter of course, that if a public endowed with a voice. Media must is to act, then a representative then be held responsible for a must do the acting for the public. certain loss of respect for repre- Indeed, one could say that radical sentative democracy, for instance democracies are defined by the for the idea that it is sufficient requirement that it should be for a public to act through indi- impossible to trace back a public’s vidual representatives. Thus, actions to one (or a few) identi- according to the philosopher fiable social actor(s). To sustain Kierkegaard, ‘the Press’ was to this demand, to perform a deepen- blame for the fact that the public ing of democracy beyond represent- in his time had become an abstract ative democracy, all sorts of entity. He observed that in ancient formats have been developed that times, ‘men of excellence’ could enable the public to express stand in for the public, but after itself, and potentially, to the rise of print media, the public acquire agency in the process. The had taken on the form of ‘a mon- mass demonstration is one solu- strous abstraction, an all-encom- tion, the opinion poll is another, passing something that is nothing, and then there are the spectacular a mirage – and this phantom is the protest event and the media public.’ Intriguingly, one of debate, and so on. These formats Kierkegaard’s main problems with can be regarded as attempts to this media-based phantom public was make the riddle of an acting that it was incapable of action. public workable: to produce a However, a few decades after capacity to act without producing Kierkegaard made his gloomy obser- an identifiable agent. That is, vations, the American public these formats are to enable the intellectual Walter Lippmann

Public (Im)potence 79

K-Column EN02.indd 79 25-10-2006 14:41:03 developed the argument that media That is can exert such force, provide crucial instruments for however, is clear from phrases the evocation of phantom publics, like ‘they were obliged to respond including phantom publics with a to public pressure’. Thus, the capacity to act. According to question that remains open after Lippmann, writing in the 1920s, Lippmann is that of the forces media like the daily press, the that publics may unleash. radio and the telephone are indis- To appreciate this force, I pensable for the organization of would say that we should at the publics, that is, for the produc- least recognize the following: the tion of a non-actor that can nev- agency of the public derives in ertheless act in certain ways. For part from the fact that this him, publicity media make it pos- entity is not fully traceable. sible to produce the public as an That is, the force of the public effect. As they report conflicts, has to do with the impossibility provide forums for debate, and of knowing its exact potential. poll audiences, Lippmann argued, And this for the following reason: media enable the expression of when a thing is publicized in the publics. In these ways, namely, media, whether a person, an object media give direction to the indef- or an event, this involves the inite and multiple concerns of an radical multiplication of the open-ended population. They potential relations that this channel these concerns into a entity can enter into with other current with a definite charge, things and people. Thus, when that of being for or against a something starts circulating in given position, decision, inter- public media, this brings along vention. the possibility, and indeed the By redefining the public as an threat, of an open-ended set of effect of media circulation, Lipp- actors stepping in to support this mann went some way towards solving entity, and to make it strong. The the riddle of the public. The fact that the public cannot be trouble with his solution, definitively traced back to a however, is that by reducing the limited number of identifiable public to an effect he made the sources is thus crucial to the public look quite weak. For Lipp- effectiveness of the public: this mann, to make a public emerge is is what endows publics with a dan- to extract a definitive ‘no’ or gerous kind of agency. ‘yes’ out of content and sentiment This also makes it clear why the circulating in media. It is hard wish to concretize the public, to to see what could make a public boil it down to the real actors that obeys this description strong that constitute it, involves a enough to be able to exert force. misunderstanding of the public. In

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K-Column EN02.indd 80 25-10-2006 14:41:04 relating to publics, and in per- forming ‘the public’, the point should be to try and work with the threat of a partly untraceable potential of connections, and not to dissipate it.

Literature: Søren Kierkegaard, ‘Two Ages: The Age of Revolu- tion and the Present Age. A Literary Review’, in: Kierkegaard’s writings XIV, edited and trans- lated by Howard Vincent Hong and Edna Hatlestad Hong (Princeton: Princ- eton University Press, 1978) Walter Lippmann, The Phantom Public (New Brunswick and London: Transaction Publishers, [1927] 2002)

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K-Column EN02.indd 81 25-10-2006 14:41:04 Elizabeth Sikiaridi and Frans Vogelaar

Soft Urbanism

Neighbours Network City (NNC) in the Ruhr Region

Elizabeth Sikiaridi and Frans Vogelaar of invOFFICE for architecture, urbanism and design in Amsterdam are investigating the interaction between the physical and the digital public domain in contemporary urban networks. They are interested in the way that the built environment relates to the space of mass media and communication networks and how these infl uence each other. On the basis of the project Neighbours Network City for the city of Essen in the Ruhr region, they reveal how this design research is taking shape.

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P1 Sikiaridi EN02.indd 82 25-10-2006 14:41:41 Situated in the west of Germany not far from the Dutch border, the Ruhr region is part of the West-European urban network. The urban structures of the Ruhr echo the industrial networks that shaped this cityscape: the hidden patterns of the underground mining galleries and the logistical systems of waterways, railways and roads that cut through the urban landscape. In pre-industrial times, this region was so sparsely populated that it was unaffected by the urban forces that led to the emergence of the historical compact city in other parts of Europe. Unlike the traditional European city, the Ruhr developed from the beginning of the nineteenth century, with the rise of industrialization, until the middle of the twentieth century, expanding into an urban network on a regional scale. In the post-industrial era, with the closure of the mines and the demise of heavy indus- try, this urbanized landscape became more and more fragmented as manufactu- ring sites were abandoned and city populations steadily dwindled. As a result, the cityscape of the Ruhr is today characterized by fragmentation and gaps in the urbanized suburban peripheries. In order to understand the highly complex patterns in this cityscape, it needs to be read as a network of overlapping and interweaving traffi c arteries, water- ways and media connections. To get to grips with this dynamic urban fabric, to comprehend the forces at work within it, one has to appreciate the relations inhe- rent in this fragmented networked landscape. It is a question of understanding the systems that give this splintered landscape its complex – and dynamic – open structure.

Communication Model/Circuitry

It is essential that we comprehend this networked cityscape as part of our con- temporary urban condition. In the words of Vilém Flusser (1920-1991), philosop- her of communication: ‘In order to understand such a city at all, one must give up geographical notions and categories in favour of topological concepts, an underta- king which is not to be underestimated. One should not think of the city as a geo- graphically determined object (like a hill near a river, for example), but as a bend, twist or a curvature in the intersubjective fi eld of relations.’1 According to Flusser, this ‘topological thinking’, thinking in (spatial) relations and not in geo- metries, implies that ‘the architect no 1. Vilém Flusser, Vom Subjekt zum Projekt. Menschwerdung (Frankfurt/Main: Fischer Verlag, 1998), 53; fi rst published in longer designs objects, but relationships. Mannheim: Bollmann Verlag, 1994. . . . Instead of thinking geometrically, the architect must design networks of 2. Vilém Flusser, ‘Entwurf von Relationen’ (interview), equations.’2 ARCH+, no. 111, March 1992, 49. In Flusser’s (ontological) vision, the new city would be ‘a place in which “we” reciprocally identify ourselves as “I” and “you”, a place in which “identity” and “difference” defi ne each other. That is not only a question of distribution, but also of circuitry. Such a city presupposes an optimal distribution of interpersonal rela-

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P1 Sikiaridi EN02.indd 83 25-10-2006 14:41:41 tionships in which “others” become fellow human beings, “neighbours”. It also presupposes multi-directional traffi c through the cable of interpersonal relation- ships, not one-way as in the case of television transmissions, but responsive as in the telephone network. These are technical questions, which have to be resolved by urbanists and architects.’3 Flusser describes the city in terms of 3. Vilém Flusser, ‘Die Stadt als Wellental in der Bilderfl ut’, in: idem, Nachgeschichten. Essays, Vorträge, Glossen (Düssel- this communicative model: ‘Geographi- dorf ,1990). cally, the city will therefore take in the entire globe, but topologically, it will remain, for the time being, a barely notice- able curvature in the wider fi eld of human relations. The majority of interperso- nal relationships will lie outside it (in contemporary civilisations).’4 Hence, the plexus of interpersonal relationships lies 4. Flusser, Vom Subjekt zum Projekt, op. cit. (note 1), 57. in other communication systems outside the urban setting, such as the media net- works. The physical cityscape is therefore only a particular instance of communi- cation space. It has to be developed by an integrative approach, which addresses both urban and media spaces of social interaction. Placing the issue in a general model of communication, as Flusser does, allows the urban discourse to be shifted from the morphological level of a formal (‘geo- graphical’) description of the fragmented cityscape to a ‘topological’ understan- ding of the relations and networks that pervade it. Here the term ‘urban’ describes an overlapping and superimposing of communication spaces and net- works, a superimposing of interpersonal relationships and dialogue.

Hybrid Space/Soft Urbanism

Today, media networks (Internet, telephone, television) are infl uencing and inter- acting with ‘real’ places. The emerging space of digital information-communica- tion fl ows is modifying not only our physical environment but the social, economic and cultural organization of our societies in general. Examples of this hybrid space can be found everywhere in our daily lives. Take, for instance, the private (communication) space of mobile telephony, creating islands of private space within public urban space. Or monitored environments where cameras keep watch over open urban areas. More examples can be found in our private environments, as our homes become ‘smart’ and our cars become networked spaces with, among other thingss, GPS navigation. Physical space and objects should not therefore be looked at in isolation. Instead, they should be considered in the context of and in relation to the networked systems to which they belong and with which they interact. These hybrid, ambivalent spaces are simultane- ously analogue and digital, virtual and material, local and global, tactile and abstract. The relationship between the physical and digital public domain is becoming more and more of a design challenge for architects and urban designers who are

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P1 Sikiaridi EN02.indd 84 25-10-2006 14:41:41 The layered, networked space of Neighbours Network City for the Ruhr region. © invOFFICE for architecture, urbanism and design, Amsterdam, 2004

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P1 Sikiaridi EN02.indd 85 25-10-2006 14:41:42 assigned the job of defi ning and realizing space for social interaction. They have to explore how the ‘soft’ city relates to and interconnects with its fi nite material counterpart, the living environment. They have to develop interfaces between the ‘virtual’ and the material (urban) world and devise hybrid (analogue-digital) communicational spaces. The new interdisciplinary fi eld of Soft Urbanism researches these transformations in the architectural-urban space of the emerging ‘information-communication age’ and explores the dynamic interaction between urbanism and the space of mass media and communication networks. Soft Urba- nism deals with information-communication processes in public space, the soft aspects overlying and modifying the urban sprawl: the invisible networks that act as attractors, transforming the traditional urban structure, interweaving, ripping open and cutting through the urban tissue, demanding interfaces. Soft Urbanism is not therefore about determining places, but about creating frameworks for processes of self-organization. Soft Urbanism not only intervenes in the realm of infrastructure, it adopts its concept and follows its paradigm. It represents an inherently fl exible approach by expanding the possibilities of social interaction and opening new paths of urban development. invOFFICE fi rst formu- lated these themes when working on the Public Media Urban Interfaces project.5 The theme was further developed 5. See, for example, a publication in Dutch in the architectu- ral journal de Architect, June 1997, cover page and pages 42-47 during a series of projects geared to or a web publication in English: http://mailman.mit.edu/ developing ‘soft urbanism’ strategies pipermail/leaauthors/2005-July/000038.html. which can steer and support the ongoing growth, transformation and recycling processes in the urban landscape. Such strategic intervention is achieved by exploiting the forces at work in the urban networks.

Neighbours Network City

The Neighbours Network City, a project developed by invOFFICE in 2004 for the city of Essen and the Ruhr region in Germany as the Cultural Capital of Europe 2010, is based on and addresses the networked structure of the Ruhr Valley. The nnc project operates on the scale of the agglomeration comprising 4,435 km2 and over 5 million inhabitants; for, in 2010, the Cultural Capital of Europe will not be a city but a region: the Ruhr Valley. The nnc proposes an infrastructure that can be decentrally deployed and is open for bottom-up development. This infrastructure will help to create openings to initiate and support urban cultural self-organizational processes. As the inverse of cnn, the nnc project develops synergies in the many local forces in the urban network to create an open Gesamtkunstwerk, the Cultural Capital Ruhr. The goal of the nnc is to strengthen the public space of the network city of the Ruhr, which is in danger of steadily disintegrating into socially and ethnically segregated areas. Nowadays, when addressing public space, one has to consider not only urban public space, but the media public space as well. In fact, the tradi-

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P1 Sikiaridi EN02.indd 86 25-10-2006 14:41:47 tional functions of public urban space are being taken over by telecommunication networks, where topical issues are disseminated and discussed and merchandise is showcased and sold. Whereas, in the past, the settings for recreation and festi- vities were provided by public space, they are now being increasingly provided by radio, tv, telephone or Internet. The nnc focuses on both media and urban public space, creating interfaces between the physical space of the city and the spaces of media communication. It activates both urban and media public space and devel- ops scenarios to reinforce the public space of the fragmented urban landscape of the Ruhr. A true inverse of cnn, it uses the potential of communication techno- logy to embed the global media space in the local public space of the city. The nnc proposal consists of a series of interconnected subprojects, each of which addresses a different layer of the urban network and thus follows a diffe- rent ‘network logic’. However, these subprojects are also interwoven, in the sense that they activate and strengthen the ‘knitted networks’ of the cityscape.

Urban Dinners

‘wir ESSEN FÜR DAS RUHRGEBIET’ (We’re eating for the Ruhr region) is a German play of words on the slogan of the Cultural Capital project ‘ESSEN FÜR DAS RUHR- GEBIET’ ([the city of] Essen for the Ruhr region). The ‘wir ESSEN FÜR DAS RUHRGE- BIET’ project proposes that urban dinners be held simultaneously in neighbourhoods throughout the Ruhr Valley on the longest day of the year. The urban dinners are organized decentrally by and for the neighbourhood residents and the users of the city. Travellers, tourists, down-and-outs, commuters and business travellers are also welcome to participate and dine. The many different cooking cultures, refl ecting the multicultural character of the region, fuse and combine to create a new hybrid cuisine. The tables are laid in derelict spaces throughout the region, the wasteland of the cityscape. Temporary occupation and habitation of this no man’s land reinte- grates this space in the regional mental maps and turns the borders of the urban landscape into communicative seams of the cityscape. Theatrical and musical ensembles and other cultural groups from the region roam around on that evening, going from table to table and performing small artistic intermezzos. At exactly the same moment, throughout the whole of the Ruhr Valley, a million voices join in a toast: ‘wir ESSEN FÜR DAS RUHRGEBIET’! The urban dinner event is organized with the aid of an Internet platform and local media, integrating a diversity of local institutions and activity groups, from ethnic associations to parishes and small cultural communities. Its success as an integrative project is measured by the multiplicity of the forces and networks it manages to bring together. It is a process-oriented project with a bottom-up approach, whereby many local forces within the cityscape are activated. The locally embedded Internet communication platform grows and mutates during

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P1 Sikiaridi EN02.indd 87 25-10-2006 14:41:47 wir ESSEN FÜR DAS RUHRGEBIET, or urban dinners. © invOFFICE for architecture, urbanism and design, Amsterdam, 2004

P1 Sikiaridi EN02.indd 88 25-10-2006 14:41:48 P1 Sikiaridi EN02.indd 89 25-10-2006 14:41:57 this process. The urban dinner, as an ‘inverted event’, is above all an impulse for developing the Neighbours Network City of the Ruhr. A second urban dinner will be held along the A40/B1 motorway, the basis of an important network in the Ruhr region and the backbone of the cityscape.

Water Mobili

The post-industrial landscape of the Ruhr is crisscrossed by a complex system of partly derelict waterways. The regional initiative Fluss Stadt Land (River City Land) was set up by 17 cities in the north-east of the Ruhr to upgrade this dense system of rivers and canals, left over from industrial times, into a leisure land- scape. The Water Mobili project that we developed for this regional initiative addresses this waterway network. It envisages an array of leisure elements to sti- mulate the ‘acupuncture points’ on this networked landscape and open it up for leisure society. Given the high unemployment rates, ‘leisure society’ in the Ruhr is primarily a society of involuntary leisure. The project provides simple modular building components that fi t easily into containers which can be moored at specifi c spots in the water landscape. The modular components can be assembled in all sorts of ways to make camping rafts, fl oating bars, fi shing points, kiosks, exhibition decks, picnic places, fl oating water theatres, storage or toilet units, cabins, relaxation decks, roofs, swimming pools or other imaginative compositions yet to be discovered. These pieces of mobile water furniture serve as places for recreation. They are small, fl oating constructions that add recreational possibilities to the abandoned industrial network of the waterways, thus activating the post-industrial water landscape of the Ruhr.

Hybrid Emscher Landscape

Another important player in the network city of the Ruhr is the Emschergenos- senschaft (Emscher Association), founded in 1899 and responsible for water management. It owes its name to the Emscher River, which was used as an indu- strial sewer. Running through the north of the cityscape, the Emscher sent a stench across the entire industrial hinterland of the Ruhr region. At present the Emscher Association is working on a project to clean and trans- form the Emscher into a ‘blue river’ that will fl ow through the cities and neigh- bourhoods and be enjoyed by the local inhabitants. The sewage and industrial waste will be diverted underground. Nearly all the sewage from the Ruhr region will then pass through a 51-km concrete pipe which is currently being laid 40 m underground, parallel to the Emscher River. A swimming robot will function as an ‘automatic inspector’, monitoring, cleaning and carrying out repairs inside this underground sewage pipe. The pipe will be accessible via entry points distributed

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P1 Sikiaridi EN02.indd 90 25-10-2006 14:42:00 Modular components of the Water Mobili project. © invOFFICE for architecture, urbanism and design, Amsterdam, 2004

Soft Urbanism 91

P1 Sikiaridi EN02.indd 91 25-10-2006 14:42:00 Water Mobili, part of the Neighbours Network City project. © invOFFICE for architecture, urbanism and design, Amsterdam, 2004

The space of SubCity: communal urban substrate. © invOFFICE for architecture, urbanism and design, Amsterdam, 2004

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P1 Sikiaridi EN02.indd 92 25-10-2006 14:42:05 at regular intervals along its length. Our proposal is to upgrade the entrances, which are located at points in the cityscape frequented by many people, into public facilities and exhibition spaces. Together these will form the Emscher Access Pavilions Project. With the aid of these access facilities, the two linear systems – the open stretches of the newly ‘blue’ Emscher and its counterpart, the underground tube – will be connected with the public places and the open spaces of the surrounding cityscape. These Access Pavilions, designed as special architectural follies, represent the engineering achievements of the Emscher Association and concentrate on exhibi- tions around the theme of water in general. The Access Pavilions are hybrid spaces, combining architecture and media, and also function as interfaces to a virtual Emscher landscape: one can pay a virtual visit to the amazing under- ground artefact of the endless concrete tube or fl y over and grasp the urban land- scape of the Ruhr in a bird’s-eye dynamic simulation. Water stories, urban management news and other local water news also feature in the pavilions pro- gramme. The Pavilions connect the physical linear space of the Emscher River with the Emscher information space. This hybrid environment can also be entered by remote access. Urban, physical and media systems are thus interwoven into a single, large urban network.

SubCity, the Big Urban Game

Like no other region, the Ruhr region has been defi ned by its ‘underground’, its sub-city. The coal seams were the determining factor for industrialization and hence urbanization. The patterns of the cityscape were based on and shaped by the complex underground networks of mine galleries and shafts. The region is highly conscious of its sub-layers as the foundation and the driver of its cityscape. The memories of this, however, are ambivalent. The deeper layers contain for- gotten mining galleries, inaccessible shafts and groundwater lakes, and these are regarded as a threat, reminding people of the many disasters that took place in the past. The SubCity game, which we proposed as part of the nnc project, deals with the sub-layers of the city. Using mobile devices, SubCity can be played individu- ally, in groups or even by large communities. The Zollverein colliery in Essen, a World Cultural Heritage site, offers access to the virtual reality of SubCity. Here, in the only remaining functioning entrance to the underground network, one can enter a three-dimensional, interactive media simulation, take part in the networ- ked space of SubCity’s urban dreams and interact with the communal urban sub- strate. The game reinterprets and recodes this communal urban substrate. Via a simulation the inhabitants and the visitors of the Ruhr can recreate the deep

Soft Urbanism 93

P1 Sikiaridi EN02.indd 93 25-10-2006 14:42:16 layers of the cityscape. They can dig virtual shafts and galleries, develop and revi- talize an urban underground and live there with their revelations and dreams.

---> roaming the urban network, searching for connections to the SubCity ---> the keyholes to the SubCity are spread around the cityscape: you have to fi nd them ---> the moment you pass through a keyhole you become an actor in SubCity ---> you communicate with your fellow actors and their dreams ---> you exchange and interact using the SubCity tools ---> while interacting you defi ne your avatar, the actor of your dreams ---> you search for new keyholes ---> the moment you pass through another keyhole you become a new actor ---> you redefi ne your character by interacting with the help of the SubCity tools ---> you pass through the next keyhole ---> you exchange information ---> in search of your docking elements ---> in search of your home

Physical, technical, urban, socio-cultural, virtual and imaginary networks knit the tissue of the Ruhr region. The network city as an open Gesamtkunstwerk.

Neighbours Network City: a project proposal for the city of Essen and the Ruhr region in Germany as the Cultural Capital of Europe 2010 by invOFFICE for architecture, urbanism and design, Amsterdam, 2004. Project leaders: Elizabeth Sikiaridi and Frans Vogelaar Collaborators: Chloe Varelidi, Nina-Oanna Constantinescu and Katy van Overzee.

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P1 Sikiaridi EN02.indd 94 25-10-2006 14:42:16 SubCity, the big urban game. © invOFFICE for architecture, urbanism and design, Amsterdam, 2004

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P1 Sikiaridi EN02.indd 95 25-10-2006 14:42:17 Marion Hamm

Reclaiming Virtual and Physical Spaces

Indymedia London at the Halloween Critical Mass

Using the Halloween Critical Mass bike ride as an example, Marion Hamm analyses how cyberspace overlaps the physical space of a protest demonstration on the street and how a construction of what she calls ‘geographies of protest’ is developing. Marion Hamm is affi liated with Indymedia, a worldwide network of independent media centres.

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P2 Hamm EN02.indd 96 25-10-2006 14:43:00 London, Halloween night 2005. The Embankment under Waterloo Bridge is packed with devils, wizards, vampires, witches, ghosts, pumpkins, clowns and fairies on bicycles. To the sounds of drumming, whistling and deafening sound systems the ride takes off over Waterloo Bridge, along the Strand and into Trafalgar Square, then down to Parliament Square, where the festive mood reaches its peak. As the fi rst riders complete a lap to big cheers and the sound of ringing bike-bells, hundreds are still pouring in. The sheer number of cyclists brings it to a halt. Most sit down in the roads, many lift their bikes into the air, some dance to the sounds set up outside Big Ben. Meanwhile, the chat room of Indymedia uk is buzzing. A dozen people are glued to keyboards, screens and telephones. They receive a steady stream of text messages and phone calls from the streets, which are added to a website. The excitement from Parliament Square spills over into the chat room:

[10/28/2005 08:19 PM] parliament sq!!!!!!!!!!! [10/28/2005 08:19 PM] they are there? [10/28/2005 08:20 PM] YES!!!! A participant from Birmingham sums 1. Indymedia uk: Massive Critical Mass Defi es socpa Exclusion Zone, 28 Oct 2005. http://www.indymedia.org.uk/ it up: ‘It’s a friday night, it’s en/2005/10/326614.html, accessed 24 April 2006. rts stands for like a fucking party, it’s like an ‘Reclaim The Streets’. RTS on bikes!’1

This montage was taken from reports about the Critical Mass bike ride in London during Halloween Night 2005. With 1200 participants estimated by the police, it was the biggest ever Critical Mass in London since the monthly bike rides started in 1994. Bike couriers and anarchists, environmentalists and mps, cycling Londoners, party crowds, skateboarders and alternative newsmakers staged a public, popular and non- commercial event in central London, without central organization and without a budget for pr. A ‘Critical Mass’ occurs when a group of cyclists moves slowly through busy urban streets, taking over from motorized traffi c, thus appropriating public space in a way that sits between ‘being traffi c’ and ‘being a demonstration’. These bike rides have become part of the repertoire of political articulation used by the transnational movements against neoliberal globalization. In 2000, Naomi Klein described how they relate to the Internet: ‘The movement, with its hubs and spokes and hotlinks, its emphasis on information rather than ideology, refl ects the tool it uses – it is the Internet come to life’. With the worldwide network of Independent Media Centers (also known as ‘Indymedia’), these movements have created their own platform on the Internet. They are using it for more than exchange of information or production of counter- information. Through a constant process of using and developing web-based tools, they are creating parts of the Internet as socially constructed spaces.

Reclaiming Virtual and Physical Spaces 97

P2 Hamm EN02.indd 97 25-10-2006 14:43:01 The montage above illustrates how appropriations of physical and virtual spaces can occur in close interaction especially during big or locally meaningful mobilizations – not only at the same time, but mutually infl uencing each other to the extent that the boundaries between the virtual and physical worlds are dissolving.2 This is different from earlier conceptu- 2. Some examples in: Marion Hamm, ‘A r/c tivism in Physical 1990 and Virtual Spaces’, on the webjournal: republicart.net 09/2003. alizations of the Internet. In the s, it http://www.republicart.net/disc/realpublicspaces/hamm02_ was widely seen as a kind of parallel uni- en.htm, accessed 10 April 2006. Published in German in: Gerald Raunig (ed.), Bildräume und Raumbilder. Repräsentationskritik in verse, complete with virtual cities and Film und Aktivismus (Vienna: Turia & Kant, 2004), 34-44. shopping malls. Social movements started to experiment with the Internet as an addi- tional space to articulate political dissent. The Critical Art Ensemble (cae) declared in 1994: ‘The new geography is a virtual geography, and the core of political and cul- tural resistance must assert itself in this electronic space.’3 Consequently, they called for a strategic move away from the streets: 3. Critical Art Ensemle, The Electronic Disturbance (New York: Autonomedia, 1994). http://www.critical-art.net/books/ted/ ‘Resistance – like power – must withdraw ted1.pdf, p3, accessed 24 April 2006. from the street. Cyberspace as a location 4. Critical Art Ensemble, Electronic Civil Disobedience & Other and apparatus for resistance has yet to be Unpopular Ideas (New York: Autonomedia, 1996), 20. http:// www.critical-art.net/books/ecd/ecd2.pdf, accessed 24 April realized. Now it is time to bring a new 2006. Also see Geert Lovink, ‘Radical Media Pragmatism Strate- model of resistant practice into action.’4 gies for Techno-Social Movements’, in: Infowar (Ars Electronica catalogue, Linz, 1998). http://www.aec.at/en/archives/festi- This type of analysis was widely discussed val_archive/festival_catalogs/festival_artikel. 8436 24 2006 and put into practice. Hackers, artists and asp?iProjectID= , accessed April . activists started to experiment with elec- 5. For examples and a critique see: autonome a.f.r.i.k.a gruppe, 5 ‘Stolpersteine auf der Datenautobahn’, in: Marc Amman (ed.): tronic civil disobedience. Websites were go.stop.act. Die Kunst des kreativen Straßenprotests. Geschichten - Aktionen - Ideen (Frankfurt: Trotzdem Verlag, 2005), 194-209. ak hijacked, blocked or fl ooded with DoS- 490 (2004) http://www.akweb.de/ak_s/ak490/06.htm, acces- attacks in online-demonstrations and sed 24 April 2006. virtual sit-ins, online petitions started to appear, banners campaigning for a wide range of issues spread around the web. By the late 1990s however, the streets were far from being abandoned as a site of political protest. The practices of an informal network of transnational movements against neoliberal globalization with its globally synchronized days of action and carnival-inspired direct actions, suggested a ‘renaissance of street protests’ (Schön- berger). At the same time, web-based tools from mailing lists and forums to websites and chat rooms and later collaborative content management systems (Wikis) and media streams were appropriated with breathtaking speed. Indymedia as a worldwide network of roughly 160 mutually linked alternative open publishing news websites uses a back offi ce that includes a wide range of these tools. Combined with more tra- ditional communication channels like printed media, fm-radio shows or fi lm scree- nings, and in convergence with various forms of street protest, this extensive use of information and communication technologies creates temporary geographies of protest that are changing spatial and temporal perceptions. But how exactly does this twofold appropriation of virtual and physical spaces work? How are they put into interaction, which practices are involved? A closer look

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P2 Hamm EN02.indd 98 25-10-2006 14:43:02 at the Halloween Critical Mass bike ride in London can give us an idea about the construction of these evolving geographies of protest through discourses and practi- ces both online and offl ine. To understand this process, it is necessary to explore both online and offl ine practices. Refl ecting on a sociological interpretation of information technologies, Saskia Sassen argues that ‘a purely technological reading of technical capabilities inevitably neutralizes or renders invisible the material conditions and practices, place-boundedness, and thick social environments within and through which these technologies operate.’6 The Halloween Critical Mass bike ride 6. Saskia Sassen, ‘Towards a Sociology of Information Techno- 50 2002 3 365 388 366 allows the exploration of both online and logy’, Current Sociology ( ) , - , . offl ine practices, as embedded in a thick social environment. It was fuelled by local knowledge as well as popular, political and subcultural practices. Volunteers from Indymedia London produced an extensive report on the alternative news website Indymedia uk in a chat room, parallel to and in interaction with the event in the streets. Based on alternative media online publications as well as my participation in the Indymedia reporting effort, I will fi rst outline a broad debate in webforums, blogs, chat rooms and alternative news websites which preceded the event. I will then explore how the stage was set for this performance of dissent through choices of place, time and action, and how media technologies were used in the streets. From there, we move to the practices in Indymedia uk chat rooms. Finally, I am trying to describe the temporary geographies of protest using the theoretical concept of deter- ritorialization.

Civil Liberties, Critical Mass and socpa Legislation: Negotiating the Demonstration Exclusion Zone

In April 2005, the uk government passed a new legislation as part of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act (socpa). In London, a central area up to 1 km around Parliament Square was declared as a demonstration exclusion zone. This includes many London landmarks where protests traditionally take place, for instance Whitehall, Downing Street, Trafalgar Square and Parliament Square. For any demonstration in this area, notice must now be given six days in advance. This legislation fi rst affected activist Brian Haw, who in 2001 started a permanent protest against the sanctions against Iraq and later the Iraq war in London’s Parliament Square, where he has been camping ever since. Paradoxically, he is now (after a court case) the only person legally entitled to protest in Parliament Square, while other people can be arrested for activities as innocent as a Sunday afternoon picnic. The legislation was widely discussed within civil society. It was criticized by civil liberties organizations and Members of Parliament. Alternative as well as corporate media, campaign websites and bloggers reported debates, actions and court cases. According to journalist George Monbiot, the new measures ‘have the effect of

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P2 Hamm EN02.indd 99 25-10-2006 14:43:02 banning any spontaneous protest outside Parliament or in Trafalgar Square, and of permitting the Secretary of State to ban demonstrations in places “designated” by him “in the interests of national security”.’7 Among the events affected was the 7. George Monbiot, ‘Protest as Harrassment’, The Guardian, 22 February 2005. http://www.monbiot.com/ monthly Critical Mass bike ride. Often archives/2005/02/22/protest-as-harassment-/, accessed 24 described as ‘unorganized coincidence’ April 2006. rather than a demonstration, Critical Mass (cm) takes place ‘when a lot of cyclists happen to be in the same place at the same time and decide to cycle the same way together for a while’. Quoting from a report from indymedia.org.uk: ‘On Friday 30th September, those who joined London’s monthly Critical Mass ride, found themselves being issued with letters from the Metropolitan Police, threatening arrests at future Critical Mass rides, unless the ‘organizers’ give notice of the route at least six days in advance, and warning that the police can impose restrictions on the rides once the advance notice has been given.’8 Giving notice of a Critical Mass route 8. Indymedia uk, London Critical Mass under threat. 4 Oct 2005. http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2005/10/324919.html, in advance would be diffi cult, as one of accessed 24 April 2006. the foundations of this cheerful tradition is that the route develops spontaneously. The (now defunct) London cm website stated: ‘Nobody organizes cm in the sense that they control the event – what happens at the ride is up to all the individuals. However, as with any project, some individuals are usually more involved than others, for example in printing and distributing leaf- lets and other publicity, or maintaining this website. However, they only do the work, and don’t have any authority over anybody else – their only power is to make suggestions.’ In response to this incident, cyclists announced ‘London’s biggest ever Critical Mass bike ride’ for the Friday before Halloween. The leafl et stated: ‘Critical Mass in London has rolled on since 1994 without police threatening to use the poa to impose conditions. Why invoke it now when there’s been no need up to now? Why are they wasting time threatening innocent cyclists? Car drivers fl ock together to block the roads on a daily basis commuting to and from work. We don’t block the traffi c – we 9 ARE the traffi c!!!’ 9. Ibid. Jenny Jones, an mp and member of the Green Party, informed the Metropolitan Police Commissioner in a public letter that she intended to participate in the next cm, and explained that ‘many people do not see Critical Mass as a demonstration, but more like a hundred people getting on the same train at London Bridge.’10 The campaign against cctv surveil- 10. Indymedia uk, Letter from Green Party to Met. police, 6 uk October 2005. http://www.indymedia.org.uk/ lance in the looks at the wider implica- en/2005/10/325044.html, accessed 24 April 2006. tions of the socpa legislation: What applies to the Critical Mass bike riders, will also apply to anybody thinking of, for example, driving down Whitehall past Downing Street, to protest about Fuel Tax or Prices, or the London Congestion Charge.11

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P2 Hamm EN02.indd 101 25-10-2006 14:43:03 These negotiations were embodied in a 11. http://www.spy.org.uk/parliamentprotest/2005/10/criti- cal_mass_monthly_cycle_ri.htm, accessed 24 April 2006. This more practical manner in the ‘networks of campaign website also gives a roundup of other protests against alternative communication’. Leafl ets the socpa legislation. appeared in bike shops, health food shops, or social centres. The editors of the long- standing alternative newssheet ‘Schnews’ invited readers to ‘get on yer bike’. People reported on Indymedia uk about the threat against Critical Mass. Several threads on Brixton based urban 75 community webforum12 discussed the politics of cycling as well as practical issues about Critical Mass 12. Several threads on http://urban75.org/bulletins are dedica- in general. Starting in early October, syn- ted to the October Critical Mass. chronized local solidarity rides were planned from Bristol to Glasgow. Levels of excitement rose ‘on the day’, when people shared their preparations for the Hallo- ween bike ride on the forum: a cold gets in the way, arrangements are being made to leave work early or to meet up in town, a broken bike needs fi xing, last minute infor- mation about the location is being exchanged. The London Halloween Critical Mass was a culmination of complex negotiations about the right to protest involving parliament, the courts, civil liberties groups, media and grassroots movements. A vibrant public sphere opened up, made up of interventionist practices, discourses and competent use of communication channels. Critical Mass with its hybrid meaning between legitimate transport, use of urban public space and demonstration is predestined to push the boundaries of legislations like the newly introduced exclusion zone. While being in a legal grey zone, it consti- tutes a statement of dissent fi rst of all against the priority given to cars, but also against the privatization and commercialization of urban space.

Setting the Stage: British Empire, Carnival and Halloween

On the day, the Critical Mass by far exceeded the 100 participants expected by Scot- land Yard.13 Ignoring the socpa legislation and unhindered by police, an estimate of 2000 cyclists moved slowly through the 13. ‘Cyclists to defy police in pedal power revolt’, The Guardian, 7 October 2005. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/ Central London exclusion zone. story/0,3604,1586675,00.html, accessed 24 April 2006. The stage for this performance of dissent was not only set by a debate in the public sphere in a traditional sense. Cruci- ally, the debate was embodied through the choice of symbolic place, time and action. It is no coincidence that the Critical Mass reached its climax at Parliament Square, with no need for any prior agreement. This highly symbolic space was loaded with meaning about the relationship between government and citizens long before it was put in a demonstration exclusion zone. Situated in the vicinity of Westminster Abbey, the houses of Parliament, Whitehall, Buckingham Palace and Big Ben, it denotes the heart of the British Empire: Government, Parliament, Anglican Church and Monar- chy. The right to stage protests in this green square directly in front of Parliament stands for the right to free speech. Those meanings of Parliament Square are inscribed in a collective popular memory

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P2 Hamm EN02.indd 102 25-10-2006 14:43:11 in London. London’s grassroots movements are well aware of the symbolic meanings of Parliament Square: When ‘Reclaim the Streets’ faced criminalization and a vicious campaign in corporate media after the ‘Carnival against Capitalism’ on 18 June 1999 (another early globally synchronized protest), they chose Parliament Square to stage a peaceful ‘Guerilla Gardening’ complete with saplings and maypole dancing on Mayday 2000. On this occasion, the fi rst independent media centre was set up in the uk with a public access point right in the middle of the action. The Critical Mass in the socpa zone coincided with Halloween. This was taken up as a welcome link to the relatively recent popular (and commercial) practice to cele- brate Halloween with decorations, ‘trick or treats’ and fancy dress parties. Combined with the carnival spirit that has become so crucial for direct action movements in the uk and beyond,14 the connection to Halloween allowed for an extra festive atmosp- here, as many cyclists turned up in fancy 14. See Sonja Brünzels, ‘Reclaim the Streets: Karneval und Kon- frontation’, Derive 2 (2000). http://www.derive.at/index. dress. php?p_case=2&id_cont=291&issue_No=2, accessed 24 April 2006. Media Technology Goes to the Streets

Apart from symbolically meaningful timing and choice of space, and the use of a tactic situated in a legal grey zone, oscillating between legitimate use of public space and direct action, technically mediated practices were involved in setting the stage. This included the creation of a soundscape made up from bicycle bells, singing, the rhythms of resistance Samba band and several sound systems. On Indymedia uk, Bazmo reports: ‘I was Djing on the “Pedals” sound system – a 180 litre volume high- tech wooden loudspeaker cabinet towed behind a metallic green tandem. We towed pedals from London to Scotland in June 2005, part of the G8bikeride, a 60 strong cycle protest. The pilot sits at the front, the dj at the back. I play tracks off my mp3 player, hyping the crowd with a microphone. Its an open mic giving us an interesting mix of protest & party announcements, points of view, rallying cries, songs & confu- sed burbles. I play a mix of music – Drumnbass, Breakbeat, Breakcore, Blues, Jazz, Protest Tunes, RocknRoll, Heavy Metal, Funk, Reggae, Ragga, Dub, Hiphop, Folk, Psychadelic Trance, BreakCore. I try to ensure there’s something for everyone. Judging by yesterday’s smiling faces & bouncing front wheels, it went well.’ This account shows fi rst the combination of almost archaic technologies – a wooden loudspeaker cabinet on a tandem – and the latest mp3 technology. Second, the reference to the G8 bike ride shows that the practice of disseminating tunes via mobile sound systems is an established practice within social movements, at least for this particular reporter. Looking at the amount of pictures and reports on Indymedia uk, several blogs and the free image website fl ickr, it can be assumed that large numbers of people brought their cameras to take pictures. This should not be taken for granted: Early camcorder activists in the 1990s, like for example the uk-based group Undercurrents, were often faced with plain hostility when fi lming during actions and demonstrati-

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P2 Hamm EN02.indd 103 25-10-2006 14:43:11 ons. Today, producing and uploading protest reports has almost become a routine for many of those who participate in demonstrations. The emergence of the worldwide network of alternative news websites Indyme- dia marks a change of attitude towards media technologies within social movements since the late 1990s. The fi rst ‘Independent Media Center’ (imc) was set up 1999 to report about the protests against the World Bank meeting in Seattle. It consisted of a physical space and a virtual space. In a shop front packed with old computers, Inter- net access was provided for hundreds of instant journalists. Photos, videos, audio- and text fi les could be uploaded to a specially designed open publishing website, www.indymedia.org.15 No registration was required for the website. Equally, every- body was free to use the physical space. Being both a web-based and an urban hub, this model provided more than a news resource: Indymedia became an interface between the events in the streets and the 15. For a report about the imc in Seattle 1999, see Indymedia, ‘precursors and birth’, in: Notes from nowhere: We are everywhere Internet. (London/New York: Verso, 2003), 230 - 243. The commitment to openness and a participatory, consensus-based style of collaboration resonates both with the free software movement and the 1990s grassroots movements. The Indymedia model was reproduced all over the world. Today, there are roughly 160 Indymedia websites, each run by a local collective. Technical resources, knowledge and media-making skills are being shared both locally and globally. The Indymedia collective in London, for instance, has been sharing minidisk recorders, microphones, network cables, a video projector and laptops. It has often used these appliances to bring media technologies to the streets, as public access points or physical media centres. The website indymedia.org.uk is hosted on a server in the usa. The software is maintained by an international working group. Communication among and between the Indymedia collectives takes place in a ‘back offi ce’ consisting of roughly 900 mailing lists, an ever growing wiki, and at least 80 chat rooms. This back offi ce is a crucial infrastructure when media techno- logy goes to the street in events like the Halloween Critical Mass bike ride. Along with many other activist online projects, Indymedia is building an infra- structure for electronic communication among and beyond social movements. Servers need setting up, software needs to be developed and tweaked, wikis, chat rooms, mailing lists and websites need to be hosted, content needs to be produced. Cyberspace has become something that needs to be ‘made’ as well as a space where political interventions can be effectively staged. The practices involved have become part of a culture of protest, and they are playing an important role in the emerging geographies of protest. Like any technology, information technology is socially con- structed. Taking a mailing list as an example: What is it for – extensive discussions, short announcements? Is it public or private? Who can subscribe to it, who has admin rights? Or the use of indymedia irc-chat rooms: Can they be used for decision making, or does this exclude too many people who don’t have powerful web-access? Use of technological tools is constantly under negotiation, raising questions of hier-

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P2 Hamm EN02.indd 104 25-10-2006 14:43:11 archies, collaboration style and transparency.

Participating by Reporting: Indymedia uk

On the day of the Critical Mass bike ride, Indymedia uk produced up-to-the-minute reports. The featured report on the Halloween Critical Mass on the indymedia.org. uk website was produced in the course of four hours of intensive collaboration. As people returned from the bike ride, they fi lled the open publishing newswire with additional reports including many photos and two video clips as well as dozens of mostly euphoric comments. All these were linked to the feature. More than two dozen people with various degrees of involvement in Indymedia participated directly in the electronic arm of this local action. Indymedia volunteers located in bedrooms or social centres in London, Birmingham and Germany con- verged in a dedicated irc chat room to ‘do dispatch’ online. This means to process incoming news that arrives via phone, sms, chat, the Indymedia open publishing newswires, or by messengers, and to upload it onto the Indymedia website. Live reporting has become a crucial part of many mobilizations and events. Indymedia volunteers tend to regard it as ‘participating in’ rather than ‘reporting about’. By 7pm, the reporting machine was in full swing. Breathless chitchat in the chat room produced background information about the socpa legislation and Critical Mass in other cities as well as information about solidarity bike rides in the uk. Every few minutes, people called in from the streets. The messages were typed into the chat room and added every few minutes to a timeline. When the Critical Mass reached Parliament Square, the excitement from the streets spilled over into the chat room, when anap, phunkee and ionnek each received phone calls within four minutes:

[10/28/2005 08:19 PM] parliament sq!!!!!!!!!!! [10/28/2005 08:19 PM] they are there? [10/28/2005 08:20 PM] YES!!!! [10/28/2005 08:20 PM] 8-) [10/28/2005 08:20 PM] 8:20 mass has arrived IN par- liament . . . [10/28/2005 08:23 PM] wow [10/28/2005 08:23 PM] just had a call. [10/28/2005 08:23 PM] cycling round and round parliament square [10/28/2005 08:23 PM] cheers so loud i could hardly under- stand! . . . [10/28/2005 08:25 PM] 2000 people rising their bikes [10/28/2005 08:25 PM] <> people are lifting their bikes in the

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P2 Hamm EN02.indd 105 25-10-2006 14:43:12 air [10/28/2005 08:25 PM] yes that’s what i menat [10/28/2005 08:25 PM] meant [10/28/2005 08:25 PM] i could hardly hear anything! [10/28/2005 08:25 PM] wow . . . [10/28/2005 09:11 PM] looks like the movement has ¿ nally found a medium that’s effective again :)

As one of the participants in the chat room, checking and updating the website and receiving phone calls, I experienced an immediacy, urgency and intensity not unlike the atmosphere reported from the streets. In the sequence quoted above, my heart- beat accelerated, my face was smiling while my fi ngers were typing. Participation in such events triggers emotional and physical responses, whether they are transmitted through keyboards, wires, software and boxes or the sounds of a samba band or the physical experience of cycling in a Critical Mass. Social interactions in chat rooms, sometimes called co-present interactions, like greeting each other, toasting, even dancing are more than a simulation of their face-to-face equivalents: Sometimes they are even transferred from the chat room back to real space.16 A translated version of the English language reports on the Halloween Critical Mass appeared on the German Indymedia website almost at the same time as the ori- 17 ginal. For Indymedia volunteers in 16. Examples in Marion Hamm, ‘Indymedia – Concatenations of uk Physical and Virtual Spaces’. On: republicart.net 06/2005. Germany, the Indymedia chat rooms http://republicart.net/disc/publicum/hamm04_en.htm, acces- are only one click and a language away. sed 24 April 2006. In German: ‘Indymedia - Zur Verkettung von physikalischen und virtuellen Öffentlichkeiten’, in: Gerald Being part of the same project, with its Raunig and Ulf Wuggenig (eds.), Publicum. Theorien der Öffentli- 2005 176 186 own communication codes and rules of chkeit (Vienna: Turia & Kant, ), - . conduct, many imc volunteers are moving 17. imc germany, London/uk: Critical Mass - 28.10.2005. http:// de.indymedia.org/2005/10/130845.shtml, accessed 24 April with great ease between chat rooms of 2006. various countries. Especially when ‘geographies of protest’ are emerging at times of large mobilizations, news and information are travelling fast over long distances. Is ‘doing dispatch’ reserved for technically savvy people? And if not, how do people learn the basic technical skills needed to participate? Here is an example. During the Critical Mass dispatch, there was time to share some basic html know- ledge on the side. Ionnek, who is editing the feature article for the website, wants to know how to make a word appear in green colour. Skep replies.

[10/28/2005 08:44 PM] there are a few hundred people on roller skates travelling the opposite direction to parliament sq!!!! [10/28/2005 08:44 PM] *phunkee this is fucking nuts [10/28/2005 08:50 PM] how do i html something green? [10/28/2005 08:50 PM] 4 people phoning me sound deliriously happy

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P2 Hamm EN02.indd 106 25-10-2006 14:43:12 . . . [10/28/2005 08:51 PM] ionnek_326610, I don’t know if uk imc blocks certain html-tags, but normaly you could do it via ‘test . . . but I think the software blocks that.

While we are using the electronic networks for communication and reporting, we produce more than counter information. We are also involved in the very process of building the technical base by further developing the software, supporting each other in the improvement of hardware, and building a network where knowledge is being produced and shared in everyday practice. An example for the innovative potential of the Indymedia model is the code base used for the websites themselves: It was developed within the local Sydney activist community in 1999, at a time when the ability to update websites via a browser with only basic knowledge of the html pro- gramming language was very rare. With their chronologically displayed newswire entries, each with its own url, Indymedia sites are basically forerunners of the now widespread weblogs.

Geographies of Protest: Emerging Hybrid Spaces

Social scientists and web-theorists have been tackling the complex interactions between the digital and material worlds for over a decade. When looking at the implications of new technology use, they have identifi ed a process of social, temporal and spatial reorganization, a ‘hybridization’ of physical and virtual spaces. The blur- ring of traditional boundaries has been described as ‘deterritorialization’, while emerging new boundaries are pointing to a process of ‘reterritorialization’. For the social construction of geographies of protest, deterritorialization means that notions of proximity and distance are not solely defi ned by miles and kilometres, accessibility of transport or the borders between states. Traditional temporal defi nitions where a protest is followed by reports are collapsing into each other, when events are repor- ted by activists live on the Internet through websites, blogs and streams in a collabo- rative social process. This does not only change the subjective experience of those who participate online. It can also provide a navigation system for those in the streets. Deterritorialization through geographies of protest also affects notions of identity. Markers like gender, age, class or ethnicity are less obvious in cyberspace, although they are by no means irrelevant. Online communication channels allow offi ce workers to participate in protests even when they are confi ned to their work- place – the boundaries between work time and ‘own’ time can dissolve. At the same time, new boundaries are reterritorializing the emerging hybrid space: Access to and familiarity with technological tools and online communities are becoming important for a person’s social positioning both online and offl ine. The speediness of real-time online tools creates a sense of immediacy and urgency. Online behaviour becomes an identity marker in addition to traditional signifi ers.

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P2 Hamm EN02.indd 108 25-10-2006 14:43:12 Emotional and embodied responses adjust to the online environment, while typical online behaviour can be found in material encounters. Within the Indymedia network, the process whereby virtual and physical spaces are merging into ‘networks of alternative communication’ is taking place every day. But the geographies of protest are most tangible during big mobilizations like the G8 in Scotland in 2005, or locally signifi cant actions like the Halloween Critical Mass. The story about the Halloween Critical Mass shows that such interactions are not restricted to technologically advanced settings like, for instance, corporate video conferences. Social movements with their do-it-yourself approach to information and communication technologies are competently mixing old and new technologies, thus integrating virtual and physical spaces. The 1996 Zapatista call for ‘networks of alternative communication’ is a poetic expression of a concept that imagines the Internet neither as restricted to a site of protest nor as an additional journalistic outlet. Spatial metaphors are used to evoke a vision of future communication practices: ‘Let’s make a network of communication among all our struggles and resistances. An intercontinental network of alternative communication against neoliberalism . . . (and) for humanity. This intercontinental network of alternative communication will search to weave the channels so that words may travel all the roads that resist . . . [it] will be the medium by which distinct resistances communicate with one another. This intercontinental network of alterna- tive communication is not an organizing structure, nor has a central head or decision maker, nor does it have a central command or hierarchies. We are the network, all of us who speak and listen.’18 This call doesn’t even mention the technological tools. They are embedded in daily practices of resistance. Day-to-day use of online technologies – predominantly in, but not confi ned to industrialized 18. Quoted in: Greg Ruggiero, Microradio and Democracy: (Low) 1999 43 countries – includes regular email chec- Power to the People (New York: Seven Stories Press, ), . king, chatting, and contributing to forums, blogs, and websites. During events like the London Critical Mass bike ride, cyberspace can merge with the physical space of street protests, thereby creating socially constructed, temporary geographies of protest that add a layer of meaning to both physical and virtual spaces.

Protecting Virtual Spaces?

The London Halloween Critical Mass as a classic intervention in urban public space, connected to digital channels of alternative communication, illustrates how physical and virtual spaces are intersecting to form a hybrid communication space. ‘Weaving channels, so that the words may travel all the streets of resistance’ means opening up spaces of resistance, temporary autonomous zones as well as ongoing technical infrastructure. Examples from the Indymedia project show that both are within the reach of state authorities: The physical independent media centre for the protests against the G8 in 2001 was brutally raided by the Italian police. A

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P2 Hamm EN02.indd 110 25-10-2006 14:43:15 court case against the police is as yet ongoing. Two Indymedia servers in London were seized on request of the fbi in 2004, only a few days before the European Social Forum started in London.19 These servers were hosted by a subsidiary of a us-based Internet Service Provider. The request for data on them was initiated by Italian aut- horities, who requested ‘mutual legal aid’ from the fbi, which then bypassed the British authorities and seized the hard 19. See ‘Ahimsa Gone and Returned: Responses to the Seizure of us Indymedia Harddrives’, Indymedia uk, 9 November 2004. drives in London via the -based http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2004/11/300886.html, headquarters. The legality of this opera- accessed 24 April 2006. tion, requested by us-based authorities and carried out on uk territory, is still in doubt. Deterritorialization here as well: Traditional legal structures, bound within the confi nes of national boundaries, are becoming dysfunctional. Jebba, a tech-acti- vist in the Indymedia network, comments: ‘The Empire stole our harddrives.’20 These are only two examples of real power structures that are catching up with cyberspace. Sometimes such attacks have even strengthened the networks of alterna- tive communication: The London server 20. See also his blog: http://jebba.blagblagblag.org/index. 107 24 2006 seizure, for example, has lead not only to php?p= , accessed April . technical improvements, but also to numerous new connections between Indymedia and trade unions, advocacy groups and civil liberty organizations. In a speech titled ‘Freedom and the Future of the Net: Why We Win’,21 Eben Moglen, lawyer of the Free Software Foundation, stated that there is no such thing as cyberspace. He uses the telephone as an example: if someone makes a fraudulous phone call, nobody would say it is 21. Eben Moglen, ‘Freedom and the Future of the Net: Why We Win’. Speech held at New York University, 2002. http://punk- a crime committed in phonespace. It is a cast.com/156/moglen1_24k.mp3, accessed 24 April 2006. crime committed in the real world and someone used a phone. Similarly, the Internet exists in real space, where there are laws and land and switches and societies. It is in this real space that we are using, developing and defending our intercontinental networks of alternative communication.

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Hybridity of the Post-Public Space

Logo Parc and the Zuidas in Amsterdam

At the Jan van Eyck Academy in Maas- tricht, a research project is underway, on the public space of the Zuidas business district in Amsterdam. This project, entitled Logo Parc, looks into the value of the Zuidas as a ‘symbol’. In addition, proposals are being developed for a conception of the public space as a new type of space. The present essay, along with its accompanying pictorial material, is one of the results of the project.

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P3 Velden EN02.indd 112 25-10-2006 14:43:55 The Zuidas (‘South Axis’) in Amsterdam is the new economic heart of the Neth- erlands: no other district has such a high concentration of bankers, accountants, business consultants and attorneys. In the main, two sorts of information are available about what has been built there thus far: promotion and cynical com- mentary. As regards future developments, castles-in-the-air scenarios and prophe- cies of doom are making the rounds. Bank skyscrapers have been erected, like the ing House and the headquarters of abn Amro, and business conglomerate buildings, like ‘Vinoly’ – more often dubbed ‘the corporate crack’ because of the painstakingly stylized and lighted fault line that bisects the building’s façade – and the ‘Ito Tower’. These two buildings, by architects Rafael Vinoly and Toyo Ito, respectively, are part of an urban development called ‘Mahler4’. According to the City of Amsterdam’s Physical Planning Department, the Zuidas is the ulti- mate implementation of Berlage’s Plan Zuid (‘South Plan’), which included a ‘highly situated, imposing South Station’ 1. See City of Amsterdam Physical Planning Department, with a ‘Minerva axis’ leading to it.1 Plan Amsterdam brochure no. 4, 2004. At the end of 2004, almost 1.5 million square metres of offi ce space in Amster- dam stood empty.2 There is therefore no need for the Zuidas, as supply is amply suffi cient. Comparable space with the 2. Het Financieele Dagblad, 19 October 2004. same modular ceilings, along the same ring motorway, can also be rented else- where. As a fi nancial, economic and legal business centre, the Zuidas violates one of the fundamental rules of economics. Yet the Zuidas is managing to attract busi- nesses that used to operate in the old Amsterdam-Zuid area or in the historic city centre (for instance on the Leidseplein or along the canals). This would be impossible without symbolic compensation in the Zuidas for the absence of city- centre attractions, provided by trendy lifestyle chains such as Wagamama (restau- rants) and Club Sportive (fi tness), for example. This compensation is symbolic precisely because it is not complete. It doesn’t quite succeed – and any visitors to the Zuidas can see this with their own eyes – in bridging the gap between a gigantic business estate and a lively new urban dis- trict. The Zuidas has no traditional urban fabric, nor a strong interweaving of housing and employment, nor any informal quality that would make it possible for one to feel at home there. Much of the intended ‘dynamism’ of the Zuidas relies on conventions and codes.

Conventions

The Zuidas houses many banks and law fi rms. Both professions value the absence of surprises. When a bank takes fi nancial risks on the stock market, the external system within which such risks are taken is suffused with confi rmation. Professionals recognize one another not only by their knowledge and experience, but also by their company cars, suits and footwear. These conventions centre not so much on ‘lifestyle’ factors (fashion sense or hipness), as on quality, although

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P3 Velden EN02.indd 113 25-10-2006 14:43:56 the two concepts are probably increas- 3. See also Camiel van Winkel, ‘Koning Midas in Wonder- ingly intertwined.3 The practice of law land’, de Witte Raaf, January 2001. also exists by the grace of conventions on representation, which must be perpetu- ated by the appearance of every legal professional. Thus there are many of the same kind of people at the Zuidas. And why would they bother one another? Whereas the traditional street is the place where they disagree, where they run into one another, the Zuidas is the place where they agree and yet don’t run into one another. After all, if at all possible, the public space is avoided. The representatives of banking and legal service provid- ers come out onto the street mainly to make phone calls and to smoke: both activities fall outside the conventions agreed upon in the offi ce. If they’re phoning in the street, it’s not ‘for business’, but ‘personal’, and if they’re smoking outside, it’s because smoking ‘on the job’ is not permitted. In the meantime the Zuidas is trying to show that it is possible to do more here than just work. On the one hand, food courts – an analogy to the airport and the shopping centre, but also a (subconscious) reference to the law (‘see you in court’). On the other hand, the noodle bars, the health clubs, a bookshop with cookery and design books, and a range of ambitions including a design museum, hotels and apartments. These ambitions are translated into the presence of ‘hip’ spots that – in the Zuidas vision – stand for cosmopolitan dynamism. In an artist’s impression, an anonymous digital artist has plastered, in a newspaper-style type- face, the word ‘Traiteur’ on a building on the Mahler4-plein.

Creative Zuidas

The dynamism the Zuidas is hoping for is reminiscent of the ‘creative city’. The American economist Richard Florida has become the centre of a debate about the ‘creative class’, which seeks out and produces style-conscious, information- and culture-intensive, but also open and informal urban environments in major Western cities. The ‘creative class’, as it has been embraced by politicians and business, is the social embodiment of a synergy between creativity and econom- ics. The ‘creative class’ designs or produces goods and services both material and immaterial, the added value of which consists of their injected creativity. In an extension of this, politicians make no secret of the fact that they see in the ‘crea- tive class’ the post-industrial successor to the ‘working class’. This is not the venue for refl ection on the ‘creative class’ and the disappearing act it implies. The working class was represented by collective bargaining agree- ments and trade unions, and the right to strike afforded it a political instrument to champion its own position. The ‘creative class’, on the contrary, is scarcely rep- resented,4 cannot make collective bargaining agreements about minimum com- pensations and rates (this would violate 4. This problem is also being seen in a broader context. Recently, the organization ‘Alternatief voor Vakbond’ the right of competition), cannot strike (‘Alternative to Trade Union’) began in Amsterdam, at the

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P3 Velden EN02.indd 114 25-10-2006 14:43:56 effectively, has no protected titles, initiative of Mei Li Vos, specializing in representing free- lancers and the self-employed. In the profi le of this new- builds up little or no pension fund, and style trade union, no specifi c emphasis is being placed on so forth. Viewed from this reality it is not the creative industry. See http://www.avv.nl. diffi cult to understand why the centre-right of the political spectrum is welcom- ing the ‘creative class’ with open arms. It suffi ces here to posit that the Zuidas, for several reasons, is not this ‘creative city’, and that therefore the concepts of urban dynamism and trendy nightlife and entertainment venues derived from the ‘creative city’ do not apply here either. The main reason is that renting workspace at the Zuidas is too expensive for the ‘creative class’. The rental prices are so high that ‘creativity’ is too insubstantial a fi nancial footing. The second reason, related to this, is that in Florida’s vision the ‘creative class’ produces the trendy urban areas on its own, by reanimating former ‘no-go areas’ and making them socially acceptable: all the hip districts in New York, London and Paris started out as places where artists and intellectuals would settle until they became truly popular and unaffordable. At the Zuidas the exact opposite is taking place: a hugely expensive business centre is installed fi rst, in the hope that the ‘creative class’ will call it home of its own volition. At the same time, the Zuidas, its ambitions notwithstanding, isn’t even urban. The Zuidas will rebut this with an appeal to a characteristic typically understood as urban: ‘accessibility’. The Zuidas is hoping to become a city by the mere fact of its position straddling the A10 motorway. Yet good accessibility is, in fact, the predicate of the periphery, the Vinex suburb and the industrial estate. The Amsterdam Zuid/wtc station is the future Amsterdam stop for the high- speed rail line. This is a place that is already a mere six minutes from Schiphol Airport. Here too, what is in fact not in evidence – urban quality – is symbolically compensated by short lines and having everything close by. But here, ‘close by’ means the proximity of far-away places, reached by high-speed train, by motor- way with a car, and from Schiphol by plane. This proximity is primarily a business and professional asset, which has nothing to do with the needs of ordinary city residents. The Zuidas is superbly accessible from Dubai, but it is miles away from Amsterdam. We observe that while in a formal sense two crucial urban criteria seem to have been met – functional mix and accessibility – in fact something else is unfolding before our eyes. We can speak of a new sort of space, which through a lack of courage and vision is not being labelled as such. Pi de Bruyn – the architect and urban designer who developed the fi rst master plan for the Zuidas – argues that someday homeless people will be roaming the Zuidas.5 This, in his view, represents an urban adaptation scenario, in which the dynamics of housing, work and leisure will evolve into manifesta- tions of the ‘undesirable’. The irony is 5. Pi de Bruyn, ‘Creating City Culture’ in Creativity and the City: How the Creative Economy is Changing the City, Refl ect #5 that the post-war apartment blocks of (Rotterdam: NAi Publishers, 2005). Buitenveldert start fewer than a

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P3 Velden EN02.indd 115 25-10-2006 14:43:56 Logo Parc, visualization of the Zuidas research, 2006.

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P3 Velden EN02.indd 117 25-10-2006 14:44:02 hundred metres away – housing built as part of an ideal that everyone should have a roof over his or her head. A lot of criticism, such as that fi red at the Zuidas by the activist collective ‘Loesje’ through posters, is directed at the refl ective high-rises. However charm- ing it may be, this criticism is too light, and it also ignores the as yet unnamed essential characteristics of the Zuidas as a new type of space. In the context of globalization, this could be a space in which the old patterns of the city do not apply. In other words, a space with new features rather than bad features. We attempt to outline a few of these features below. Inevitably these are linked to the unfulfi lled hope that the Zuidas will become a real public space – read: a real city.

Extra-Societal, A-Social, Post-Public

The law, fi nancial and administrative services and banks are socially visible sectors. In parallel to a broadly shared societal interest in money matters (meas- ured for example by the popularity of such periodicals as Quote and Miljonair Magazine) top attorneys and top bankers have become public fi gures. As a busi- ness centre, the Zuidas has primarily attracted banks and law fi rms – to a place, or space, actually situated at a distance from the society in which the law and capital exercise their infl uence. The quality of a city like Amsterdam was always that the top banker would enjoy the sandwich s/he’d bought from the local baker ‘on the canal’, alongside the squatter, the Rastafarian and the artist. Now entire professional groups are being transplanted to a place where such confrontations no longer take place. In fact lawyers, bankers and accountants are being shipped to a reservation, where, among their peers, they are no longer bothered by society. One could argue that at the Zuidas it is not so much the city as the society in all its diversity that is dispensed with. Not only is there no one walking around there without a professional interest or objective, but even the future ‘housing functions’ of the Zuidas are being laid out in a direct extension of the spending patterns of bankers and lawyers. Work will be done under the concept of ‘living as in a hotel’, in which completely self-suffi cient apartment complexes (compara- ble to Detroit and Boston on the recently redeveloped Oostelijke Handelskade in Amsterdam’s Eastern Harbour District) are open for tenancy, with built-in parking, laundry facilities, swimming pools, health clubs and grocery delivery and other shopping services. People are working and living in an enclave that has become far more than a city in itself – an extra-societal service centre. An abn-Ville. You can lounge and drink cocktails far removed from everyone, surrounded by top design. Meanwhile the urban quality produced by this vision is in fact a-social, in the sense that when users of the space choose the public domain, it is their second

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P3 Velden EN02.indd 118 25-10-2006 14:44:08 choice. People spend time on the street in order to smoke, or to make a personal phone call. According to Maarten Hajer and Arnold Reijndorp, the public domain is created by confrontation: ‘Different groups are attached to a particular place, and one way or another they have to come to an accommodation.’6 By this defi nition, the Zuidas is not public domain, 6. M. Hajer and A. Reijndorp, In Search of New Public because no negotiation takes place Domain (Rotterdam: NAi Publishers, 2001). about the use of space. One cannot consider the lawyers and bankers as different groups, because by ‘difference’ Hajer and Reijndorp meant social classes, ethnici- ties and age groups. Because the Zuidas is not private domain either, we shall have to accept the area as a new form of space, which we will provisionally call post-public. As in post-punk, there are all sorts of elements that are reminiscent of the previous, obsolete stage, and it is precisely these elements that continually obscure per- spectives onto new opportunities the Zuidas entails as a hybrid space. The Zuidas is fi rst and foremost a policy city, and the policy ambition of creating public space may confl ict with the most important function of the Zuidas: keeping Amsterdam on the map for the international business world. Investors and others with interests tied into the Zuidas will violently disagree with this. In fact every discussion about the Zuidas bogs down the moment we – or others – draw any sort of conclusion from the current state of affairs at the Zuidas. According to the partners and investors of this mega-project, any such conclusion is by defi nition premature: even though the Zuidas has been opera- tional for years, it is still, they say, a work in progress. In their study, Hajer and Reijndorp cite Marc Augé, who coined the infl uential term non-place for the featureless, relationship-free, ahistorical spaces of mobility and consumerism. ‘The space of non-place creates neither singular identity nor 7 relations; only solitude, and similitude.’ 7. Ibid. A crucial point is that Augé presents the absence of ‘relations’, connections, as a criterion for a non-place. This of course begs the question of whether the Zuidas meets all the criteria for a non-place, the way industrial estates and shopping centres do. The answer is that the Zuidas may not have a history, but it does have connections. The Zuidas is permanently linked to the global fl ows of money and information, for example. It is a place that is alienating for Amsterdam, but very familiar when seen from New York, London and Singapore. This place is anchored within a network.

Characteristics of the Post-Public Space

Architect and researcher Lara Schrijver poses the question of whether public space is an ‘active’ or ‘passive’ concept: ‘Ultimately the street itself is not always considered a vital part of the public space – this simply begins where the private

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P3 Velden EN02.indd 119 25-10-2006 14:44:09 space ends . . . whereas actual public- 8. Lara Schrijver, ‘From Public City to Publicity . . . and Back Again? Collectivity in the Twentieth Century’, Oase 59 ness, or the public domain, traditionally (Amsterdam: sun, 2002). begins where we engage in formal contact with others.’8 Post-public space ‘appears’ when an urban inventory stands at the ready – rubbish bins, bicycle racks, public greenery, public art, street lighting and even shops – yet is hardly, if at all, used in the presumed or prescribed manner, or when the use of it produces no more than the sum of its parts. Such space is only public in a passive sense: all the conditions are met, except actual use – contact and therefore confrontation with others. Now that we have defi ned the post-public space as a space ‘in a certain state’, we can ask ourselves whether the Zuidas is not in fact pre-public. Isn’t it after all a work in progress? This is certainly its ambition. But this ambition is not always propagated with equal enthusiasm by all parties involved. Even in the promotional material, dif- ferences in emphasis can be found. All the parties want the Zuidas to be fantas- tic. But the emphasis on the public space – including photomontages of busy plazas – is only present in advertising material signed ‘Zuidas’ and on the website Zuidas.nl. These make references to terraces, future festivals, the street lighting and the high-quality materials used to pave the streets: Belgian bluestone cobble- stones and veined granite, tested for durability: ‘Test subjects included women wearing various types of shoes and a wheelchair user.’9 The project developers of the build- 9. See City of Amsterdam Physical Planning Department, ings – including Fortis and ing Vastgoed Plan Amsterdam, op. cit. (note 1). – place the emphasis on entirely different things. Lifestyle and individualism strike the predominant note here. Notwithstanding such hopeful terms as ‘shop- ping’, ‘strolling’, ‘lounging’ and ‘dining’, no promises are made with regard to a public domain. These are the same words the in-fl ight magazine Holland Herald uses to lure a tourist to Barcelona. ing Vastgoed, according to Renée Hoogendoorn, is mainly interested in the value of the real estate, and ‘culture’ is employed to calculate this value: ‘From the start we were conscious of the fact that culture was crucial for the image of the project area. Since we know that real estate in the vicinity of cultural institu- tions such as museums usually represents a somewhat higher value, we declared ourselves ready to contribute this future surplus value in advance, as part of the foundation costs for the development of a museum . . . and the result is that we 10 are now getting Platform 21.’ 10. In B. van Ratingen, ‘Ik zie ik zie wat jij niet ziet’, Real Estate Magazine, May 2006. Quality of Buildings and Public Space

The non-use of the public space is in itself the result of relationships and connec- tions becoming virtual, whereas in a more traditional concept of the city they

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P3 Velden EN02.indd 120 25-10-2006 14:44:09 were still tangible. The hybridity and computerization of the post-public space is thus expressed in desolation. In the Amsterdam Creative Index Maarten Hajer is quoted as calling the Zuidas a ‘blank zone’, ‘with no identity, and therefore a place no one wants to visit’.11 The author, Jaap Huisman, notes that 11. J. Huisman, ‘Harmony and dissonance’, in: Amsterdam everyone agrees that the ‘quality’ of the Creative Index 2006 (Amsterdam: BIS Publishers, 2005). public space and the architecture of the Zuidas will be a decisive factor in its success. The Amsterdam professor Robert Kloosterman says: ‘Have Koolhaas design a museum, or mvrdv. The masses will fl ock to it.’12 ‘Quality’ in architec- ture thus seems to be measured by the 12. ibid. name recognition of an architect. This has already been exploited by naming the eye-catching buildings of the Zuidas after their architects. ‘Quality’ coincides with the most dominant convention of this district: the status of the builder. But how do we measure the ‘quality’ of public space? Ruwan Aluvihare, of the Physical Planning Department of the City of Amsterdam, is the landscape archi- tect who designed the public space of the Zuidas, and in his case neither his fi rst name (as in ‘Rem’) nor his last name (as in ‘Koolhaas’) suffi ces as proof of ‘quality’. ‘The streets running north to south will be tree-lined; those going east to west will be narrower, with trees on the north side only. All will be green lanes that serve to relieve the glass and steel 13. J. Huisman, ‘The art of compromise’, in: Amsterdam mass of the offi ce blocks.’13 The green- Creative Index 2006 (Amsterdam: BIS, 2005). ery is intended to ‘undo’ the buildings! Ruwan Aluvihare has 109 Google hits. He is, among other things, the designer of the Zuidplein – the fi rst public work to be completed in the context of the Zuidas. A brochure published by the City of Amsterdam on the occasion of the Zuidplein’s completion contains several noteworthy remarks. Such as: ‘In the plans for the Zuidas, the Zuidplein will become a lively abode . . . where people spend time, meet one another, and where strangers get acquainted.’14 The planners know that only then will 14. See City of Amsterdam Physical Planning Department, the Zuidas become public domain. And: Plan Amsterdam, op. cit. (note 1). ‘There is room for market stalls and other ambulatory trade.’15 Yet whatever ‘ambulatory trade’ might be, you fi nd no market stalls on the Zuidplein. ‘Cafés, a supermarket, a hairdresser’s, a dry-cleaner’s, a bookshop and a wide array of smaller shops make for a lively atmosphere.’16 The liveliness of the dry-cleaners has yet to be proven. ‘The newly constructed buildings on the west side of the plaza, with a height of 104 metres, provide a metropolitan atmosphere, one of the characteristics of the new Zuidas city district.’17 The metropolitan atmos- phere as an a priori characteristic of the Zuidas is pure suggestion. But: ‘The role of the greenery in the densely built-up Zuidas is crucial, as the district will include many high-rises. Therefore it has been decided to give the greenery a vital role as a counterpoint to the built environment.’18 And: ‘The Zuidas will . . . 19 become a landscape.’ But: ‘The trees 15, 16, 17, 18, 19. ibid.

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P3 Velden EN02.indd 121 25-10-2006 14:44:09 will be replaced once they get too tall, and a warranty period of 10 years has been agreed. The growing conditions selected stipulate that the larger species of 20 trees never reach full size.’ 20. ibid.

Logo Parc: A Design Challenge for the Post-Public Space of the Zuidas

The ‘quality’ of the architecture of buildings proves entirely incomparable to the ‘quality’ of the public space. That of architecture begins with the contribution of an architect to the image of the Zuidas – whereby a less tangible quality like a ‘brand’ is meant as well (see Koolhaas, mvrdv) – which in and of itself generates streams of visitors. The quality of the design of the public space is based on con- crete objects with intrinsic qualities, such as market stalls, greenery and durable street paving. Aside from the irony in the designers wanting to create a market square across from the World Trade Center, we have already noted that the post- public space emerges when an inventory of the classic public space is made ready as a matter of policy, and this is then not used, or not used with the expected con- sequences. The question is: doesn’t the post-public space entail a new design challenge? The project Logo Parc is an attempt to give shape to this challenge. The project began with a critique of the Zuidas as a symbol, in a historical comparison with the architectural representation of political ideas, as seen in the parks of Ver- sailles and La Villette. At Versailles, the territorial power of France and Louis xiv;21 at La Villette, the intended ‘confrontation’ in deliberately uncomfortable 22 pavilions of revolutionary aspect. At 21. C. Mukerji, Territorial Ambitions and the Gardens of Ver- sailles (Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge University Press, the Zuidas – which embodies the power 1997). of the economy – a designed representa- 22. See Y. Futagawa, GA Document Extra 10: Bernard Tschumi tion of an idea is missing. The analysis (Tokyo: a.d.a. edita Tokyo Co., Ltd., year). of the Zuidas along these lines continues, but the project is now concentrating on an overall, critical look at the public spaces of the Zuidas. As we have seen, this space is complex because public life is uncommon there. The present public space of the Zuidas has been developed based on concep- tions of as well as calculated in the direction of forms of ‘desirable’, and therefore traditional, city life. It seems this choice was made in order to forestall a potential doom scenario: that the Zuidas should become a costly but moribund offi ce park, deserted after fi ve o’clock in the afternoon. In contrast with a more traditional critical outlook toward the Zuidas, Logo Parc is not concerned with softening or turning back the Zuidas into a traditional city. Our research shows that ‘quality’ for architecture and public space is inter- preted in highly divergent ways. The architecture at the Zuidas is overloaded with authorship – important buildings are named after their architects – while the identity of the public space emerges anonymously. Various architects proposed public works for the Zuidas in its planning stages, but none of these were imple-

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P3 Velden EN02.indd 122 25-10-2006 14:44:09 mented. In at least one case, that of the Zuidplein, a simpler plan was inserted into the process by municipal architects and implemented. Challenging new ideas are therefore badly needed at the Zuidas. Certainly if the intended use of public space and the urban expectations for the district do not go according to plan. This has led to the introduction of the term ‘post-public space’, where a clear lack of urban street life is not interpreted as regressive or ‘under construction’, but as a departure point for new urban strategies. Logo Parc views its own proposals as derived from four programmatic layers that have been given little chance in the current design yet are essential ‘public domain’: landscape, communication, social life and virtuality. These elements, which range from the concrete to the intangible, are essential ingredients for a twenty-fi rst-century post-public space, in which an overabundance of digital technologies and networks develops in parallel with an increasing physical dis- tance from the historical city centres. This creates different forms of public behaviour. The public space represents, in potency, the symbolic dimension of this behaviour.

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P3 Velden EN02.indd 123 25-10-2006 14:44:09 Max Bruinsma

Play with Time and Space

Optionaltime by Susann Lekås and Joes Koppers

In Almere’s new city centre, Susann Lekås and Joes Koppers are creating a work of art entitled Optionaltime, which plays a fascinating game with time. The screen is literally a hybrid space and mirrors both the real and the virtual surroundings. On screen, they are mixed together.

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P4 Bruinsma EN02.indd 124 25-10-2006 14:44:55 ‘Time is a measurement generally considered to be linear and we believe that this perception is limiting.’ Susann Lekås and Joes Koppers open the introduction to their collaborative project Optionaltime (2002-2006) with a slightly bold statement. The project aims at creating ‘a non-linear and therefore less limited experience of one of our most infl uential navigation systems: time’, using new media in public space. At stake is nothing less than neutralizing the absolute difference between past, present and future in the experience of time in public space. Thereby, a characteristic aspect of virtual space (computer, fi lm, narration) in which, as we know, time can be stopped, slowed down, rewound and fast-forwarded, is introduced into ‘real’ reality. Can this be done? For that we need, according to Koppers and Lekås, new tools and a new, hitherto undefi ned, medium: ‘interactive fi lm’. The fi rst ‘installment’ of Optionaltime (2002) was an installation in a small con- fi ned space in De Paviljoens, Almere. On one wall, an image was projected of people apparently standing in an elevator, waiting to arrive at their fl oor. Visitors saw them- selves as in a mirror, entering the ‘elevator’ and waiting alongside others. Without knowing it, the viewers’ movements controlled the speed and direction of the digital video (the ‘mirror’), as a result of which, as one visitor remarked, ‘we (the visitor and his “mirror image”) did not move at the same pace. That is impossible, I said to myself and looked again. Now we were synchronous.’ That, most probably, was because the visitor stood still with amazement, triggering the video to play at ‘normal’ speed. In Optionaltime 2 (2004), visitors of Nemo in Amsterdam positioned themselves before a large screen on which a scene was projected which was recorded in the same space. Various people enter the image, exit again, talk with each other or do some- thing. But when walking in front of the screen, or moving more than normally, the viewer sees some actors walk backward or faster forward, while others move on in ‘normal time’. Three timelines, in fact three separate digital video tracks, are seam- lessly mixed and can be separately speeded up, slowed down or played backward, dependent on the movements and position of the viewer in front of the screen. Those who fi gured it out unconsciously started to dance in front of the image to try and see which movement would infl uence which part of the video in which manner. In their proposal for Optionaltime – Public Expanse, the audience sees itself refl ected in a large mirror in a public space – a station, a waiting room, a lobby, a public square. The ‘mirror’ allows who’s in front of it to interact by moving, to manipulate one’s own image and that of others, now, a while ago, to change the pace of people who have actually left the space, or who are just passing by while one’s own image of a minute ago is standing alongside them. Beneath all of this – but visually seamlessly merged within the same space and undistinguishable from the other image layers – is a layer prepared by the makers of the installation, a fi ctional story which is mixed in with the feeds from reality and also reacts to the movements of the audience before the screen. In all cases, the image does not comply with the laws of linear time. Koppers and

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P4 Bruinsma EN02.indd 125 25-10-2006 14:44:55 Lekås want to make this virtual experience conceivable in the ‘real’ world. The pro- posal for Optionaltime – Public Expanse won a second prize in the international FusedSpace competition for ‘new technology in/as public space’ in 2004.

Manipulation

Since then Susann Lekås has developed the concept further on her own. Meanwhile, the City of Almere, via art space De Paviljoens and supported by skor, has commis- sioned a version of the project to be realized in the public space of the to-be-built new town centre, on a public square in front of the projected Urban Entertainment Centre. A large screen, designed by npk, looks like a windscreen in front of the centre, but will partially serve as projection surface on which Optionaltime will show a manipulated refl ection of the backdrop: passers-by, people who have just sat down on one of the benches in front of it, kids skating on the square, combined with previ- ously made footage of actors in the same space . . . The project will most probably be fi nished by the end of this year or the beginning of next year. But what can already be said is that it ‘makes the temporal character of (public) space visible and fosters the questioning of our naive understanding of the linearity of time and space in a meaningful way.’ That was media-artist and -designer Joachim Sauter’s comment, one of FusedSpace’s jurors. The project shows what is going on in the mind of a ‘passer-by’, or Baudelaire’s fl âneur: A non-linear to and fro of actual experience, marginal musings connected to it and recurring images from our not yet organized short-term memory occasionally linked to associations with older memories or fantasies. The déja-vu ratio of such mixed and undirected reveries is quite high (have I seen this person before, or did he just step into my fi eld of vision?), and makes one constantly shift between actual observation and a kind of mental replay. The design of Optionaltime complicates that internal mix-up of seeing/being seen by adding an external version of it – a public expanse of an inti- mately private space. The design is interactive in that it challenges passers-by to both mentally and physically take part in it, even if they don’t master all the controls. This participation makes the viewer aware of another aspect of today’s public space: that he is constantly watched and recorded by surveillance cameras. Optional- time’s makers want to be ‘transparent’ about that: ‘what is recorded is shown and nothing is archived. All images are being processed in real-time by a computer.’ And manipulated real-time by the viewer/fl âneur. Lekås wants to overcome the feeling that quite a few public spaces are non-places, with little or no spontaneous interac- tion; ‘The moment a person realizes that his movements have a visual impact on the mirror image of a stranger and decides to play with it, that stranger might be looking in the mirror too. A moment of contact that may be continued . . .’ Optionaltime 3 is a hybrid space in the most literal sense, a spatial object, which not only refl ects the fl ow of its surrounding reality, but also that of a virtual world and of interaction. The windscreen – that is the main recognizable form of the mate-

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P4 Bruinsma EN02.indd 126 25-10-2006 14:44:56 rial object, which only on closer look becomes a projection screen – is an apt meta- phor for this hybrid space: it literally screens off (the space behind it remains visible, but is not directly accessible anymore), but at the same time, it allows you to experi- ence the fl ow behind it without actually getting sucked into it. That condition, again, is characteristic of that of the fl aneur, the disengaged pedestrian who mirrors himself in anything he sees around him – participant, and not. In spite of the general push towards immersion, this is an aspect of any mediation: a form of detachment, which makes participants of even the most interactive of environments at least also observ- ers. It is this refl ective potential that Optionaltime 3 uses in part explicitly and in part implicitly. In the form in which it will be realized now – announced as an ‘interactive movie’ – only part of Optionaltime’s medial quality is expressed: the awareness of ‘seeing/being seen’ mentioned earlier, and the interactive manipulation of time in various layers of images. But it doesn’t take much imagination to see that, as a medium, the hard- and software used for the project has a lot of potential for chang- ing the small public space in front of Almere’s Urban Entertainment Centre into a veritable hybrid space. In principle, it can offer an interface with similar spaces else- where and it is capable of mixing a great variety of combinations of information and visual entertainment. I therefore see Optionaltime 3 mainly as a fi rst version – test case and promo at once – of a merging of medium, content and hybrid space. I’d be happy to see a good curatorial strategy being developed for this medium on this spot, that over the next few years will use the full potential of this hybrid space.

links: http://optionaltime.com, http://fusedspace.org

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P4 Bruinsma EN02.indd 127 25-10-2006 14:44:56 Optionaltime 1, Joes Koppers and Susann Lekˆs. Joes Koppers and Arijen Keesmaat (programming), with the cooperation of Therese Nylen; Yafi t Taranto (styling); Kirsten Hermans (costume); Hadar Kadman (make-up/stills); Jonas Olsson (sound); Tobias Hirdes (set); Kirsten Hermans (image material).

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P4 Bruinsma EN02.indd 128 25-10-2006 14:44:56 Optionaltime 2, Joes Koppers and Susann Lekˆs. Susann Lekˆs (concept); Joes Koppers (technical concept); Arjen Keesmaat and Joes Koppers (programming) with the cooperation of Zara Dwinger, Esgo & Jori Groenendijk, Jeroen Koop, Niki Mens, Angelique Piovillio, Rutger Prommenschenckel, Marianne Stevens; Brigitte Hendrix, Maaike van Spanje (styling); Katerina Brans (makeup); Tobias Hirdes, Daan Swart (set); Loek Geradtst (light) Kirsten Hermans (image material).

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P4 Bruinsma EN02.indd 129 25-10-2006 14:45:02 FusedSpace submission by Joes Koppers and Susann Lekˆs. Joes Koppers and Susann Lekˆs (text); Susann Lekˆs (concept); Joes Koppers (image material, technical concept).

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P4 Bruinsma EN02.indd 130 26-10-2006 15:28:55 Play with Time and Space 131

P4 Bruinsma EN02.indd 131 26-10-2006 15:29:01 Design for Optionaltime 3, Susann Lekˆs (concept); Thomas Gresch and Arijen Keesmaat (technical concept); Joes Koppers (original technical

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P4 Bruinsma EN02.indd 132 26-10-2006 15:29:04 concept); Thomas Gresch, Arjen Keesmaat and Patrick Machielse (programming); Kirsten Hermans (image material).

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P4 Bruinsma EN02.indd 133 26-10-2006 15:29:15 Arie Altena

Publishing, Everywhere and Anywhere

Droombeek in Enschede

In 2000, an explosion in a fi reworks factory wiped out the entire Roombeek district in the city of Enschede. Stichting Droombeek [Droombeek Foundation] responded with a digital project that enables individuals to call up memories of the area with the click of a mouse. Using digital technology, residents add their own images and stories to the website, which can then be accessed by visitors to the digital district, who may in turn add their own experiences to the mix. By linking the present to the past in this way, the website becomes a ‘lived’ space.

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P5 Altena EN0.indd 134 25-10-2006 14:47:08 Events and places are inextricably linked to one another. Something happened here, or there. Sometimes we erect monuments, cement a memorial stone into a wall (‘On this spot Wim van Est fell into the ravine’), or carve names into a bench or a tree. Places have memories. Nearly everyone has at one time or another wondered what a place looked like in the past and wanted to see and hear how it was in days gone by. The Droombeek project aims to record and make accessible the past and the future of Roombeek, the Enschede residential development that has been built on (part of) the site of the fi reworks disaster of 13 May 2000. On the website we read: ‘Each place has its own memory. The physical space of the city provides us with a peg on which to hang our recollections. But what if the place is no longer there? What happens then to the memory of that place?’ In Enschede the place – Roombeek – was violently obliterated, not gradually transformed in the usual way of inner-city locations. The fi reworks disaster struck a deep wound in the soul of Enschede, which makes the ques- tion, ‘what was it like here?’ all the more poignant. As such, Roombeek differs from all those other new housing developments being built on virgin polder land. How many legible memories are stored in a place that has evolved ‘nor- mally’? The age of the vegetation (tree rings), the weathering of a wall, fading graffi ti. These are physical traces. But isn’t it more a question of feeling than of a readily legible memory? The memory of a place is also stored in stories – for which we have language. Or in images – photos, for example. It is the task of historiography to make that past accessible and to allow it to live on and be revived. Which is why Droombeek collects stories about the Roombeek dis- trict. Or, as the site puts it: ‘Together the residents have a story to tell about the district: from the shoe box in the attic and their own memory. Here these stories are unlocked and shared, in a joint venture for writing history and plan- ning for the future.’

Embedding

At fi rst glance, digital Droombeek is reminiscent of the neighbourhood web- sites set up in parallel with a particular housing development in order to get future residents involved with their new neighbourhood at an early stage. The other association that springs to mind is with story networks like Geheugen van Oost, in which the stories of residents of Amsterdam East are linked on the basis of meta-information. Neighbourhood websites and story networks both rely on the contributions and involvement of residents; they are out-and- out community projects. Their success depends on a number of factors, like design, the balance between the freedom to make individual contributions and editorial control, and embedding in existing structures. This last is one of the

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P5 Altena EN0.indd 135 25-10-2006 14:47:09 reasons why they often collaborate with schools, local associations and old people’s homes. Droombeek, too, is fi rmly anchored in the local community. It collaborates with, among others, local museums and the Enschede ‘House of Stories’, a pastoral care project established by Enschede churches in the wake of the fi reworks disaster. Droombeek is trying, as it were, to encapsulate the virtual ‘genius loci’ of Roombeek. And, like many other neighbourhood websites, it is also attempt- ing, as Michel de Certeau would have it, to turn the empty place (‘lieu’) into an inhabited social space (‘espace’).1 Its ambition is to transform the barely inhab- ited new-build district into ‘social 1. Michel de Certeau, ‘Spatial Stories’, in: The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, space’ by the act of sharing stories. 1984), 117. Droombeek is pursuing a dual strategy; even a triple strategy, in that it can also be an instrument for helping former residents to cope with the traumatic history of their district. Private stories become public and part of a political act. After all, in the classic view of things, making something public is a condition for political action. Because of the way the various collaborating bodies operate (the museum and the school ‘ask’ whether you would like to contribute) it looks like a top-down political action. Yet this is not the case. Rather, it should be seen as a fi rst phase, a sot of ‘kick-start’, which will eventually result in resi- dents contributing of their own accord. Moreover, residents don’t have to write (or take photos or make videos) specifi cally for Droombeek; just linking content, which may well already be available elsewhere, to Droombeek is suf- fi cient. Once all this has been achieved, Droombeek will be a meeting place for the history of a place and a wellspring for the future fi lling-in of that place. The voices that will speak there will be the voices of the residents, voices from within the district; not voices sanctioned by a historian, not the voice of the mass media. Droombeek is ‘common history’, a place for the collective memory. Or, to cite de Certeau again: ‘[S]tories are becoming private and sink into the secluded places in neighborhoods, families or individuals, while the rumors propagated by the media cover everything.’2 2. Michel de Certeau, ‘Walking in the City’, in: ibid., 108.

Well-Thought-Out

As a story network on the web, Droombeek still has some way to go, however. There are not enough stories and the content categorization needs a bit more fi ne-tuning. But the latter only makes sense with a greater quantity of content. Nonetheless, it would be a grave mistake to dismiss the project as ‘an excellent concept, reasonably well executed, but . . .’. The real signifi cance of Droombeek lies in the technical execution and its consequences. These are extremely interesting. Droombeek is above all a well-thought-out ‘locative

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P5 Altena EN0.indd 136 25-10-2006 14:47:09 Photo Edward Mac Gillavry

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P5 Altena EN0.indd 137 25-10-2006 14:47:09 media project’. Each story in the Droombeek database is supplied with geo- graphical coordinates; it is localized information. Those submitting a story can ‘pinpoint’ it to a specifi c location. Anyone who has a laptop with wireless Internet connection and a gps receiver will in future be able to enter Roombeek and call up stories, images and sounds associated with the particu- lar spot on which they fi nd themselves – and even add to them. Not all that diffi cult, you might think. Most of the technical infrastructure is already present. Assigning coordinates to objects in a database is easy, it is meta data, just like ‘date and time’, ‘permalink’ (the permanent Internet address of, say, a text), ‘author’ and ‘title’. You could, for argument’s sake, use GoogleEarth for the purpose. As long as you have wireless Internet access, of course. This is something of a stumbling block at present because, unlike the mobile phone network, it is not universally available. Many of us carry devices around with us that can register our location, and increasing numbers of enthusiastic walkers, long-distance cyclists and gadget junkies own gps receiv- ers. The integration of the various technologies into one handy device is still a problem, however. And that limits the scope of projects like Droombeek for the time being.

Framework

At this point in time (2006) Droombeek consists primarily of a website that was developed as a pilot project. Efforts are now under way to ensure that from the beginning of 2007, visitors to the various museums in the area will be able to borrow a handheld computer (pda) with inbuilt gps receiver which they can then take along with them on a ‘digital’ stroll through the district. The pda would contain some thirty stories and fi ve videos made by students of the local Academy of Art and Industry (aki). That is in itself enough material for an attractive digital walk. But to generate the links that are needed for person- alized walks, the content will have to grow considerably. And that may take years. The fact is that Droombeek was not created as a fi nished project but rather as a framework to be fi lled in by users. When the database contains thousands of stories, comments, videos and sounds, navigating or clicking through the stories will be a bit like logging on to the spirit of the place. Right now, however, there is little difference between that localized information and a virtual, on-the-spot information board. Within a few years that will change and information will also be location- sensitive as a result of ‘Geo Tagging’ (adding geographical coordinates to infor- mation). That location-sensitive information will be supplied by anyone and everyone, so it is to be hoped that it will not take the form of unsolicited content (turn on the spam fi lters, please!) but of information that you have asked for – for example, by indicating during a walk through Roombeek that

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P5 Altena EN0.indd 138 25-10-2006 14:47:13 you would like to read or hear the Droombeek stories. Droombeek would then be a fi lter, or meta tag. You would give permission for content with those char- acteristics to appear on your computer pod while you are walking through the neighbourhood. If an Internet connection is not available everywhere, the content you download might take the form of an annotated gps walk, a collec- tion of ‘waypoints’ with related information.

Possible Future

For the time being, Droombeek is just a website and a digital walk. But it also affords a glimpse of a possible future in which we will all be linking our stories, comments and ‘tags’ to places, quite literally laying a network of text, image and sound over the entire globe in what could be called a form of ‘ubiquitous localized publishing’. It is vital to start developing projects and applications capable of conveying a meaningful experience in such a situation and in so doing become a form a public action, as virtual graffi ti (carving your name vir- tually on a place the way people now do on information boards) already is and as story projects like Droombeek have the potential to become because – in theory at least – they turn a place into a lived space. It is possible that we have always done this: we tell stories in order to create space – the aboriginals used ‘songlines’. The difference is that in future we will be able to ‘tune in’ on any street corner to the murmurings and sounds of the place we are in, to its history, associated desires, irritations, traumas. Whether you want to hear that ‘ubiquitous localized history’ will – hopefully – be up to you.

Droombeek was developed by Map&Movie (cartographer Edward Mac Gillavry and documentary maker Peter Dubois) in collaboration with the Telematica Institute. The pilot project in the spring of 2005 was partly fi nanced by Digitale Pioniers. The project proper commenced in May 2006 and will run until 2007. It is jointly fi nanced by VSB Fonds, Prins Bernhard Cultuur Fonds, the City of Enschede, the Domijn and de Woonplaats housing corpo- rations, Rijksmuseum Twenthe and Stichting Enschedese Aannemers.

http://www.droombeek.nl

Publishing, Everywhere and Anywhere 139

P5 Altena EN0.indd 139 25-10-2006 14:47:13 De Geuzen

Mobile Work / Travail Mobile

The artists collective De Geuzen, consisting of Riek Sijbring, Femke Snelting and Renée Turner, is con- cerned with the social implications of new media like the Internet, mo- bile telephony and GPS systems. One of the projects they are working on at the moment is De Leeszaal [The Reading Room], commissioned by the AFK, in which historical stories can be downloaded on a mobile telephone. It was for this reason that the edi- tors of Open asked them to contri- bute to this issue. Their contribu- tion is based on a workshop held in Brussels during the digital meeting days, the so-called Digitales.

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R1 De Geuzen EN02.indd 140 25-10-2006 14:48:02 R1 De Geuzen EN02.indd 141 25-10-2006 14:48:07 Today you’re expected to be mobile and flexible, but are you really equipped to work in cars, trains or aeroplanes? Can any public space be converted into a mobile desk? How does someone who is always ‘in transit’ find temporary anchors in a world of constant flow? Where do you put your computer, your mobile and other attributes like cables, adapters and portable memory modules?

These were the issues addressed during a workshop at Digitales, an annual Brussels event that operates at the intersection of digital technology and feminism. With pens, paper and photocopies, eight participants prepared themselves for a future on the move.

R1 De Geuzen EN02.indd 142 25-10-2006 14:48:08 R1 De Geuzen EN02.indd 143 25-10-2006 14:48:09 R1 De Geuzen EN02.indd 144 25-10-2006 14:48:10 R1 De Geuzen EN02.indd 145 25-10-2006 14:48:11 R1 De Geuzen EN02.indd 146 25-10-2006 14:48:12 Images and snippets of dialogue: Josee Descamps, Fatou Faye, Anne-Christine Fonseca, Georgette Migliore, An Mertens, Patricia Monteagudo, Stéphanie Moriau, Lylie Wembo. www.geuzen.org/mobile

With grateful thanks to: Elena Lanzoni, Interface3 and Constant vzw.

R1 De Geuzen EN02.indd 147 25-10-2006 14:48:13 Kristina Andersen and Joanna Berzowska

Worn Technology

The Alteration of Social Space

Clothing and accessories have always served as a membrane between the outside public world and the inside private world of our body. But what happens when you put the mediated outside world on your skin and so largely do away with the boundary between public and private? Kristina Andersen and Joanna Berzowska, two artists and research workers, use their wide experience of working with wearable technologies – ‘wearables’ – to speculate on the nature of the experiences created by this increas- ingly permeable membrane.

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R2 Andersen EN02.indd 148 25-10-2006 14:49:45 Yesterday night, at the Wearable technology can be defi ned to include every- Depeche Mode concert, thing from the newest mobile computing devices, like I was wearing silver sti- the Blackberry, to the oldest man-made textiles, like letto heels and black Chinese silk, produced by spinning and weaving the se- slacks with lots of zips. cretions of silkworms. Midway between those two ex- My friend Vanessa was tremes come electronic textiles, whose close also in black, with cop- relationship with the fi eld of consumer electronics sug- per-coloured heels, and gests all kinds of different applications and lines of re- both of us were wearing search. old-fashioned leather By ‘electronic textile’ we mean a knitted or woven jackets with lots of metal substrate that combines capacities for sensation, com- trim. I don’t normally munication and power transmission, and also embodies dress like that. This was the technology required for ‘interconnectivity’, allowing a personal fashion show, sensors and processors to form a network within a fab- a bit of performance art ric. This usually involves the use of conductive yarns or that I thought appropri- threads incorporating a small amount of conductive ate for this kind of nos- material (such as strands of silver or stainless steel) talgic event. My outfi t let through which electricity can fl ow. In this way electron- me get into the spirit of ic fabrics are able to allow low-level computer process- the performance, take an es to take place on the body. active part, have fun, Electronic textiles have many applications, such as cross boundaries and military-funded research into dynamic and interactive generally behave quite camoufl age clothing, biometric sensors made of con- unlike a professor. ductive yarns woven directly into training suits, and soft control keys for iPods, built into the sleeves of Bur- ton jackets. Artists and designers are also working on reactive clothing, ‘second skins’ that adjust to the envi- ronment and the individual, as for example dresses that change shape or colour to conceal or emphasise, to re- inforce and reshape one’s clothing.

My baby likes to sleep in The clothes we wear enable us to build microstructures public places, safe in her that function on many levels, social, cultural, and psy- pushchair. The move- chological. Clothing is an artefact for disguise and per- ment of walking has a formance, allowing us to create short-term scenarios calming effect on her. and capable of giving rise to deep-rooted subcultures. I do my work on park The fact that it is such a powerful medium is hardly sur- benches, at bus stops, in prising. Designers and users of fashion have become alleyways, always on the expert in employing these different levels of communi- lookout for a quiet spot; cation by using shape, colour, structure, texture, and looking for shelter when patterns to manipulate.

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R2 Andersen EN02.indd 149 25-10-2006 14:49:45 Digital technology and electronic fabrics give us more midday exhaustion, be- ways to design and process this communication to re- yond the power of coffee fl ect the more subtle – or more poetic – aspects of our to fi x, strikes again. identity and background. Thus our gestures and life sto- Walking through the city ries can be manipulated, reproduced on fl exible dis- with my voicemail/Inter- plays built into fabrics, and so be made observable. A net device set to mute/vi- piece of fabric turns into a site for data processing: dig- brate in my back pocket, I itally enhanced garments can change and infl uence the can use my touch screen possibilities of social interaction. and keyboard; I can write, email and look things up . . . but what I really want to know is where are you (you, who are not present)? Are you awake? Are you all right? Are you hungry? Do you still remember?

Mobile technology creates invisible communities which These days I can think of ignore spatial and geographical limitations. The Italian nothing but my new sociologist Fortunati sees the use of devices like the lover. When we are apart mobile phone as part of the ongoing destruction of the I think of him and know separation between intimacy and outward behaviour, he is thinking of me; if between public space and private space.1 We allow bub- only we could be together, bles of intimacy to erupt in the street and on the train. with our arms around The need for intimate communication overrides any each other. I miss him so concerns we might have about where we are or the peo- badly that a text message ple around us. The mobile phone, even 1. L. Fortunati, is completely inadequate when it is not in use, is a constant sym- ‘Stereotypes, true to express what I need to and false’, in: J.E. bol of our connectedness with a select Katz and M. Aak- say to him. The smell of community, indicating by its presence hus (eds.), Per- his skin drives me crazy. petual Contact: that we and that community are con- Mobile Communi- I need to feel him next to stantly available to one another. This cation, Private me. Talk, Public Per- makes the act of giving someone your formance (Cam- number an intimate gesture of accept- bridge, Mass.: Cambridge Univer- ance and friendship. sity Press, 2002).

Electronic fabrics make it possible for us to enhance Under my black slacks our garments with technology derived from current re- and leather jacket I am search into human-computer interaction in the fi eld of wearing frilly black lace

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R2 Andersen EN02.indd 150 25-10-2006 14:49:46 underwear. Earlier telematic availability and cooperation, research that today, at the gym, I was has as its aim the promotion of communication and so- wearing a comfortable cial relationships. Projects such as inTouch, undertaken stretch bra. Both of them by Hiroshi Ishii’s Tangible Media Group at the MIT made me feel good, but in Media Laboratory, can give people at two separate loca- different ways. Each one tions the impression of touching one another (force and suited my body for the feedback).2 The LumiTouch project allows individuals particular occasion. to use ambient light to sense one anoth- 2. S. Brave and A. They smelled different er’s presence.3 All over the world, stu- Dahley, ‘inTouch: A Medium for Hap- too. One smelled of per- dents in new media courses are busy tic Interpersonal fume, the other of sweat. creating innumerable remote communi- Communication’, in: Extended Ab- cation devices to indicate someone’s stracts of CHI’ 97 presence or emotional state. Vibrating (New York: ACM Press, 1997). cushions, pebbles that emit light, key rings that heat up and globes that change 3. A. Chang, B. Resner, B. Ko- colour may indeed sometimes be frivo- erner, X. Wang and lous, but have the merit of fl irting with H. Ishii, ‘Lumi- Touch: an Emo- the boundaries imposed by physical tional Communi- space and breaking through the bounda- cation Device’, in: Extended Ab- ries created by space and time. It will not stracts of CHI’ 01 be long before these kinds of communi- (New York: ACM Press, 2001). cation devices become an integral part of our technology and so eventually are built into our clothes, making it possible for us to create private sen- sual structures containing tactile channels for physical communication.

A small group of children Because it is so close to our body, clothing witnesses are playing with an in- our most intimate behaviour. It registers our fear, ex- stallation consisting of citement, stress and tension, by collecting sweat, skin electronic textiles. A cells, stains, and tears. It becomes worn and bears small boy, about four signs of our identity and our history.4 The body itself years old, is carefully ex- mediates between our internal and ex- 4. J. Berzowska, amining a man’s hat. ternal experiences, and everything we Memory Rich Clothing: Second The hat makes a singing wear is part of that mediation. The fi rst Skins that Com- sound that changes pitch fi ve centimetres around our body is municate Physi- cal Memory, Pro- when the hat is moved. where we wear fabrics and leather, jew- ceedings of the 5th He plays on his own for a ellery and fi nery. It is the space closest conference on Creativity and while, slowly turning the to us, a space in which we allow very Cognition (New hat and shaking it, and few others, and at the same time a prac- York: ACM Press, 2005). listening to the different tical space for utilitarian things like

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R2 Andersen EN02.indd 151 25-10-2006 14:49:46 Joanna Berzowska, Hanna Soder, Marcelo Coelho, Kukkia, 2005.

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R2 Andersen EN02.indd 152 25-10-2006 14:49:46 Joanna Berzowska, Shirley Kwok-Choon, Marcelo Coelho, Intimate memory shirt and skirt, 2005.

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R2 Andersen EN02.indd 153 26-10-2006 15:30:51 mobile phones, watches and earphones. 5. G. Simmel, The sounds it makes. Then he Everything that ‘decorates’ can be Sociology of Georg goes back to where he left Simmel (New ranked on a scale of closeness to the York: Free Press his shoes, picking up fi rst body, from tattoos to clothes, from jew- of Glencoe, 1950). one shoe, then the other, ellery to gadgets.5 Clothes come some- 6. S. Stewart, On turning them over slowly where in between. The same can not be Longing, Narra- and shaking them, to see tives of the Mini- said of tattoos. Stewart, a professor of ature, the Gigan- whether he really has a tic, the Souvenir, English language and literature, de- new magi- 7. K. Andersen, ‘It the Collection felt like clown scribes tattoos as an extra surface of (Durham: Duke cal power sparkles’, interac- University Press, the body; the message, expressed in gen- to make tions vol. 11, no. 5 1993). erally understood symbols, is fully in- sounds.7 (New York: ACM Press, 2004). corporated into the skin.6 A pendant or gadget, a closed object standing out from the body, always runs the risk of being lost. The addition of folds and pockets to clothing adds depth to the space immediately around us, rather than surface area, forming a kind of intermediate zone, not clearly belonging to the body, the intimate self, or to the public, communal self. This transitional area, with its hidden recesses, symbolizes, as it were, our power to direct our gaze inwards, at our personal thoughts and refl ections, but also outwards. We could merge the lay- ers and folds in the material with our personal technol- ogy, so creating a hybrid fabric which could both protect and expose us, helping us to concentrate on our inner being and at the same time to communicate with others.

It is important to think carefully about magic and en- My favourite coat is com- chantment. The surfaces and materials we weave give ing apart at the seams. I us magical powers which we previously lacked. How can’t bring myself to will we use them, for good or for evil? Wallace and throw it out. I can’t stop Press, two British research workers at 8. J. Wallace and wearing it. It belonged to Sheffi eld University’s Art and Design M. Press, All This my mother when she was Useless Beauty. Centre, have pointed out that in principle Finding Beauty very young and now it is magical properties and properties of en- through Craft and mine. Its value increases Digital Technol- chantment can also create doubt, frus- ogy, Proceedings with every experience it tration, distrust and fear.8 We are of Pixel Raiders shares. By now I have re- conference 2, Ab- enchanted when our possessions not erdeen, 2004, w. made every seam; soon it only respond to us but do so in the voice shu.ac.uk/schools/ will be the turn of the cs/cri/adrc/re- of someone we love. But what if the search2/Pixelraid- buttonholes. When I can voice is that of a stranger? Bennett, a po- ers2.pdf fi nd the right thread. I

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R2 Andersen EN02.indd 154 25-10-2006 14:49:56 remember repairing it litical scientist, describes the experience 9. J. Bennett, The when I was still a stu- of enchantment as one of being ‘both Enchantment of Modern Life: At- dent, and here I am moved and swept along’.9 McCarthy et tachments, Cross- again, searching for al., British researchers in the fi eld of ap- ings, and Ethics (Princeton: Princ- thread of the right colour. plied psychology, cultural studies and eton University computer science, have written that ‘en- Press, 2001). chantment does not necessarily imply 10. J. McCarthy, P. that the object that enchants us must be Wright, J. Wallace and A. Dearden, novel or extraordinary, rather that we ‘The Experience see how rich and extraordinary the eve- of Enchantment in Human–Computer ryday and familiar can be. In the prosaic Interaction’, in: world in which we live, all encounters Personal Ubiqui- tous Computing contain the possibility of something un- (London: Springer expected.’10 Verlag, 2005). It is precisely these unexpected and poetic possibili- ties that we want to explore. Starting from the defi ni- tions given by McCarthy et al., we will fi rst try to understand the specifi c sensory potential of active ma- terials, physical materials that have the power to change with time and be controlled electronically, to recognize and address the whole person with its de- sires, feelings, and anxieties, to create a sense of play- ful involvement, to provide scope for paradox, openness, and ambiguity, and to recognize the transfor- mational character of experience.

The edges of my scarf Stewart has defi ned memory as both impoverished and glow slightly as I walk enriched, something that presents itself as a measuring out into the darkness and device, a ‘ruler’ to set against stories. We make special try to remember where I use of this tool in connection with the history of cos- left my bike. It makes me tume, to determine the extent of adjustments, repairs, smile; I know you are alterations and changes of ownership. Mutanen, a re- waiting for me and eve- search worker at the University of Helsinki, writes: rything is fi ne. It makes ‘Things that people make themselves have magical me feel safe. It leads me powers. They have hidden meanings that others can not home. The noise of the see.’11 Each hour spent on a garment adds value and as- concert lingers in the fab- sociations and, more important still, last- 11. U. Mutanen, ric, completely in tune ing and tangible aids to memory. ‘Crafter Mani- festo’, Make04, with the slight ringing in A question that arises in connection www.makezine. my ears; soon, when I with electronic materials and the con- com/04/manifesto, 2004. dump it on the kitchen tinuing advances in potential memory

Worn Technology 155

R2 Andersen EN02.indd 155 25-10-2006 14:49:56 capacity, is what is happening to the design of memory- counter, it will go on rich materials and forms. How can we show their po- buzzing for a while, re- tential? What memories will be used in the design of a minding me of where technology whose purpose is to remember? With tradi- and how. tional materials, coffee stains and the smell of smoke are short lived and so quickly erased from memory. How long is the short-term memory of active materials? Will they buzz with feedback or whisper repeated scraps of conversation? How can we build memories with the current generation of electronic fabric and wearable computing technology? And above all, how can we build in the need, capacity and desire to forget?

156 Open 2006/No.11/Hybrid Space

R2 Andersen EN02.indd 156 25-10-2006 14:49:57 Kristina Andersen, Ensemble. Photo Chris Rogers

Joanna Berzowska, Hanna Soder, Marcelo Coelho, detail Kukkia, 2005.

Worn Technology 157

R2 Andersen EN02.indd 157 25-10-2006 14:49:57 book reviews

The Lost Voyeur René Boomkens, De nieuwe wanorde. Globalisering en het Dieter Lesage einde van de maakbare samen- leving, Amsterdam, Van Gen- nep, 2006, 328 pages, isbn 90-5515-650-7

In the introduction to his book entire book, however, Boom- domain’ should be created, for The New Disorder. Globaliza- kens leaves his options fairly example. By this he presuma- tion and the End of the Makea- open as to whether the so- bly means, after a suggestion ble Society, René Boomkens called end of the makeable by Jürgen Habermas to which announces that he will be society is a good thing or not. he refers elsewhere in his book, defending two propositions. For the most part one has the that a public culture of debate First of all he contends that feeling that, all in all, that ‘end’ should be created at the Euro- ‘globalization is accompanied has had positive effects. In par- pean level – and to this end, by a radical change in our ticular, Boomkens sees a lot of according to Boomkens, ‘our social world and our way of freedom, more and more of it national governments’ should life, a change that until now is in fact. ‘The qualitative decline be coerced. While one could mainly evident in vehement of public life has, however, not also wish for something of this cultural confl icts and consider- so far led to a loss of freedom – sort from the European Union, able panic in political and certainly not in many people’s he prefers, as a writer in a intellectual circles, not only in daily experience.’ With these country where a referendum the Netherlands but elsewhere sorts of remarks Boomkens’ about the European Constitu- as well’. Boomkens’ second arguments at times take on a tion produced a devastating proposition immediately puts more than left of centre tinge. No, to back ‘our national gov- the weight of the fi rst proposi- At the same time, towards ernments’. These three words tion into perspective: ‘The the end of the book, it is poli- immediately reveal how much actual problem lies elsewhere: tics after all that is meant to courage this Dutch intellectual what we’re experiencing under shape society, preferably at a is willing to display in the local the banner of “globalization” is global level. You can’t get debate about globalization and a silent and gradual, but for much more leftist than that. As politics. In other words, none. that reason no less revolution- it happens, I and many others The centre-left intellectual ary departure from modernity think the same, but Boomkens with a sporadic leftist refl ex as the age of makeability.’ Poli- continually gives the impres- remains on good terms, after tics and science are no longer sion that society is (self-evi- all, with the proponents of the exclusive sources of infor- dently) no longer shapeable on national sovereignty. mation and inspiration for a national level. He fails to suf- In the book’s three central organizing society, argues fi ciently explain the connection essays Boomkens deals with Boomkens. between the impossibility of ‘issues and areas that are either The title of the book refers shaping society on a national well-nigh invisible and remain to ‘disorder’, which moreover level and the necessity to ignored in current research and is ‘new’ and whereby, in con- (therefore) fashion society on a dominant political discussions, nection with ‘globalization’, global level. What’s more, he or are grossly underestimated the ‘end’ of something is also remains ambiguous about the and misunderstood’. His inten- announced, namely the ‘make- political ambitions that one tion with these essays is mainly able society’, an archetypal can cherish on the global level. to outline a picture of the glo- Dutch theme. Throughout the ‘A serious European public balization of the everyday, and

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Y-Boeken EN02.indd 158 25-10-2006 14:50:41 he makes a case for deploying by any means fulfi l his episto- Finally, the third essay on pop- non-academic forms of knowl- mological promises. While he ular culture deals much less edge in each of the essays. The raises the expectation that his with pop music than with the fi rst essay about dwelling ‘leans observations about dwelling diatribes of the notorious con- on philosophers who thought will draw from poetry, stories servative intellectuals George that poetry and narrative are and daydreams, the essay all Steiner and Roger Scruton, the most important sources if too soon gets bogged down in with whom a former professor we want to acquire an ade- an utterly academic discussion of pop music can of course quate insight into what dwell- among Heidegger exegetes engage in a nice controversy. ing, the consciousness of about the Bauen Wohnen But what’s happened to pop “being at home”, entails’. The Denken lecture. Hilde Hey- music as an alternative source second essay is about the city nen’s interpretation (which of knowledge is a question that and primarily comments on plays off the utopian-nostalgic remains unanswered. ‘images by city photographers conception of Christian Nor- Even more of a problem who have documented every- berg-Schultz against the radi- than Boomkens’ epistemologi- day urban experience in all its cal-critical one of Massimo cal showing-off, which is una- inexorable momentariness and Cacciari) is confronted with ble to substantiate what it evanescence’. A third essay on the interpretation by Eric Bolle proclaims, however, is his con- popular culture ‘interprets pop – not forgetting the interpreta- ceptual plebeianism. In his songs as the soundtrack of a tions by Kenneth Frampton, observations about dwelling he worldwide, everyday popular Christopher Alexander, Peter puts, sparingly at best, Bache- culture that is at once local and Eisenman and other Dal Cos. lard’s notion of ‘housewifely global’. Following an introduction in care’ in inverted commas. His The dwelling, the city, pop- which he seriously criticizes comments on the city are all ular culture – Boomkens has academic philosophy, Boom- about ‘seeing and being seen’ – been writing about each one of kens gets involved in the most whereby one has diffi culty sup- these themes for much longer, academic way in an academic pressing a yawn – while his of course, even before there dispute among academics, history of popular culture was the need to avail oneself of which makes one wonder begins with Elvis Presley and the word ‘globalization’ in such whether what is at stake here is culminates, in self-evidently writings. Most probably not so much everyday dwelling qualitative terms, in the post- because it was too stylistically as professional positioning. revolutionary work of Bob uncomfortable to insert the The second essay, about the Dylan and The Band. The fashionable new word every- city, in which Boomkens unrefl ected, subjective per- where between the text of pre- mainly addresses the photo- spective on which the writing viously published essays, an graphic work of Aglaia Kon- is based and which irrevocably introductory and a concluding rad, Beat Streuli, Gabriele comes to the fore is that of the chapter have been added, Basilico and Piet-Hein Stule- ‘white Anglo-Saxon male which, together with an actual meijer, appears unable to talk chauvinist gaze’. Of course introduction and conclusion, about the city without exten- that perspective also has a go a little bit deeper into the sively citing academic studies right to its own triviality and theme of globalization than, in or criticizing government plans this may also underlie the writ- the fi nal analysis, the three like the 1991 Fourth Memo- ing. But when that writing central chapters themselves do. randum on Physical Planning continually puts its own sub- In reading this book one gets Extra (better known as vinex). jective perspective between the feeling that not only has Here, too, the otherwise appo- quotation marks, the impres- Boomkens re-framed, as it site refl ections accompanying sion is raised that it is saying were, older work, but also that the small section of photo- something about everyone’s the frame does not quite suit graphs in the book ultimately commonplace experiences. In the work. get bogged down in a polemic itself, there’s nothing wrong More problematic is the against an outdated govern- with making the history of pop fact that Boomkens does not ment policy document. music begin in the year you

Book Reviews 159

Y-Boeken EN02.indd 159 25-10-2006 14:50:42 were born – which coinciden- ronment. In general we too knowledge in order to legiti- tally is what Boomkens does – scarcely know our nearest mize himself, all in all a very and then to make it culminate neighbours, we hardly ever recognizable confl ict for many in the year that you presuma- walk through our own district academics. One can’t get rid of bly bought your fi rst record, nor do we maintain much con- the impression that Boomkens but I wish he would deal a lit- tact with important organiza- is one of those who are under tle more refl exively with his tions in our neighbourhood, pressure every day within the own perspective and hence his party because we’re just as academy to justify why they myopia. If you begin the his- often somewhere else.’ ‘Speak should be given research fund- tory of pop music on the day for yourself’, is the fi rst ing, why they should be that shrewd marketing men thought that comes to mind entrusted with teaching assign- realized that you could only when reading a tirade like this. ments, and who are expected get a white public to buy black But assuming that this is all to provide this justifi cation music if you worked with a true for the one who is hiding according to criteria that are white star, then you also cover here behind the plural form, becoming more and more up the all but explicit racism of what does the everyday life of a bureaucratic, which all too this marketing strategy. Others professor indeed look like? soon robs many of any desire have written alternative histo- Boomkens may well situate (to teach, or to do research). ries of pop music, in which dif- all experience as an irreplacea- Against his better judgment, ferent information surfaces ble source of knowledge in a however, Boomkens com- than the so-called knowledge class of its own next to and pletely omits any reference to about the history of pop music compared with academia, but work and its conditions in his supplied to us completely free he seldom or never writes on comments on ‘the everyday’, of charge by the music indus- the basis of that experience. so that the everyday can be try and consumed somewhat Boomkens is continually play- conceptually ‘rescued’ as ‘the too eagerly and unthinkingly ing hide-and-seek behind the age of fun’. by Boomkens. high backs of the great writers In the everyday life of a When he does manage to and their commentators, the professor, however, whether refl ect just for once about his great photographers and their one is a professor of pop music own point of view, this refl exiv- critics or the great singers and or a Shakespeare specialist, ity is merely intended to imme- their criticasters. And thus it there is little fun to be had. If diately sweep the reader along happens that, in this book you happen to go out for a in the moral decay. ‘[We] about our everyday life in the drink, the pub is almost empty, hardly complain about villagers age of globalization, the quo- apart from a local prole, Ali, or city dwellers behaving tidian life of professor Boom- Mohammed, Marie and the exactly like typical suburban- kens is discretely suppressed, student who lives upstairs. ‘Are ites – after all. We don’t like to but at the same time it keeps you still busy with that book complain about ourselves, cropping up, like a symptom. about, what was it now, sado- since we, that is we writers, The most important motif that masochism or something?’ And artists, essayists, photogra- refers back to this quotidian then you remember that phers, scholars, journalists, we life is the writing subject’s tomorrow you should really ask “metropolitans”, we don’t live struggle with ‘the university’. the faculty’s webmaster to in the suburbs. But we’re of He keeps harping on the legiti- fi nally correct the announce- the same species: network citi- macy of a knowledge that is ment of the book on the site, zens, radical individualists with different from scholarly knowl- which still says ‘The lost no really meaningful relation- edge, yet at the same time he voyeur. Globalization and ship with our immediate envi- continually cites scholarly identity (forthcoming).’

160 Open 2006/No. 11/Hybrid Space

Y-Boeken EN02.indd 160 25-10-2006 14:50:42 In Discussion with Public Martijn Engelbregt/egbg, Dit is Opinion Nederland, de Dienstcatalogus, Amsterdam, Valiz Publishers, Max Bruinsma isbn 90-78088-02-8, a 9,90

A progress bar on the weekly implicitly asking ‘whether the be realized in or around the multimedia commentary page person completing the form Logement. The fact that one of 4 October 2005 on the was prepared to cooperate with of the nine ‘democratically Volkskrant website het Oog [the the execution of government selected’ works happened to Eye], says ‘the commentary policy’. In this way ‘what was be by Engelbregt himself pro- on your current affairs is being often tacit approval . . . was vided material for criticism loaded’. It’s taking a while, turned into a question about and debate (‘a put-up job!’), so in the meantime I have a actively contributing to this even involving questions in look at Martijn Engelbregt’s policy’. The difference between the House, but in any case site – he produced the present this and the offi cially proposed Engelbregt was fi nally able to instalment. As Engelbregt telephone number for report- convince his clients that eve- Gegevens Beheer Groep [egbg, ing benefi t fraud was marginal, rything had been done with Engelbregt Data Management but the ‘emotional difference’ ‘total transparency’. Thus at Group] he has been providing turned out to be enormous. the beginning of this year the a viciously ironic commentary The press hyped ‘Hunt for four-year project reached its on our culture’s obsession illegal immigrants as a Work of festive conclusion with the with facts, data and statistics Art’; Engelbregt was dubbed a unveiling of the nine works of for years. Sometimes to the Nazi, and worse. art and the presentation of a point of cynicism, as in the All this in no way pre- book in which the whole proc- much discussed research into vented the government from ess was described in the fi nest illegal immigrants in Amster- inviting Engelbrecht to make a possible detail. dam, carried out in 2003. proposal under the percentage The Dienstcatalogus, Under the offi cial sounding rule (a percentage of the build- though somewhat chaotically name ‘Regoned’ (an acronym ing sum is reserved for art) designed, is a treasury of data for Netherlands Registration for the rebuilding of the old and information. As a rever- Organization), egbg arranged Logement van de Heeren van beration of all the correspond- to have more than 200,000 Amsterdam in The Hague into ence, consultation, papers, forms sent round the capital an annex to the Lower House. recommendations, meetings, asking about such things as the Engelbregt set up De Dienst parliamentary questions, press legal (or illegal) status of the to look into the relationship reports, reviews, discussions, person completing the form between art and democracy e-mails and so on, it is unsur- and whether he or she would and to put the available passed. It contains illustra- be prepared to report any ille- 160,000 euros – roughly one tions and discussions of all gal immigrants known to him cent for each resident of the 522 works of art and, if I may or her. In my view, the project Netherlands – under the com- say so, gives a rather humili- was a patently obvious and plete control of every citizen. ating picture of the popular biting commentary on the Ver- One of the things that De view of contemporary artistic donkian obsession with round- Dienst did was to use a website production. ing up and doing away with to organize a competition for In one of the accompany- actual or possible non-Dutch- art for the new building; 522 ing essays, art historian Brigitte men, but many people allowed entries were submitted. These van der Sande writes: ‘The end themselves to be provoked by were judged, fully in accord- result of Engelbregt’s Dienst Engelbregt’s practical joke. His ance with normal procedures, research yielded terrible art, key question ‘Are you willing by a variety of committees and often no more than a frivolous to report these actual or pos- experts, and fi nally a selection idea. . . . Must we conclude, sible illegal immigrants?’ was of nine works was chosen to then, that art chosen by demo-

Book Reviews 161

Y-Boeken EN02.indd 161 25-10-2006 14:50:42 cratic methods can never ever selves. As an artist he stands at sion has some signifi cance. Is it be sparkling, provocative, the centre of public debate, not a matter of comparative scale, unexpected or innovative? I’m only about art, but about eve- as measured by population, afraid we must.’ I support this rything that touches us deeply, area or gdp? However that view, except for the qualifi ca- and enters into discussion with may be, the colouring forces tion ‘provocative’; the majority public opinion. Nor does he one to face the fact that politi- of the entries were deliberately simply reproduce it – egbg’s cally and economically the provocative, varying from the fi ltering of data, and the well- Netherlands can be considered up-thrust middle fi nger (a nigh Machiavellian pleasure a marginal part of Germany gigantic limp prick as a sculp- with which he edits the ques- and that therefore 16 million ture for the Binnenhof) to the tions which generate these Dutchmen would be advised instructive insult (Why don’t data, complicate the apparently not to be too arrogant. Which you listen for once!). The democratic content of his is something that they certainly project convincingly demon- projects and allow his own are in this book, so the attempt strated that if you ask the pub- voice – that of an artist/ to put things into perspective is lic ‘what kind of art would you designer with an opinion of his by no means superfl uous. want our representatives to be own – to be heard in full detail. Meanwhile, the progress confronted with, day by day’, it However much the idea may bar on the Volkskrant website turns out that the public is have been to let ‘the voice of continues to read: ‘the com- more interested in confronta- the people’ be heard, egbg mentary on your current affairs tion than in art. The pictorial manipulates not only what that is being loaded’. It looks as if it result of egbg’s research may voice says, but also how the will go on for ever and we will perhaps not be good art, but it results of his surveys are inter- never know the result in full. is certainly a telling illustration preted, with his combinations In its simplicity, the work to accompany the Fortuyn- of data, the design of his lists reminds me of a saying by esque analysis that the public of questions and data (labyrin- Montaigne: ‘Who would deny feels that its voice is not heard. thine, viciously circular) and that commentary only But what about Martijn his typography and presenta- increases uncertainty and igno- Engelbregt himself? Is he a tion (apparently simple, some- rance? . . . The hundredth good artist? Is his Dienst a times to the point of commentator passes on the good piece of art in public awkwardness, but well struc- book to his successor with even space? And is the Dienstcatalo- tured and consistently more complications than had gus a good book? I am pre- designed). The cover of the already been found by the pared to say: yes. Engelbregt Dienstcatalogus is a case in fi rst.’ Like Montaigne, Engel- has turned the area of tension point: the main colours are bregt cannot leave things between (cultural) data and its those of the Federal Republic alone. (culturally determined) inter- of Germany (black, red and pretation into material for his yellow), while the Dutch tricol- www.egbg.nl work, and uses it to make what our is limited to the margin www.de-dienst.nl are sometimes corny, but much and the spine. Because Engel- www.volkskrant.com/oog/client/ more often highly acute ‘por- bregt is crazy about data, I index.php?artworkId=12 traits’ of the way we see our- have to assume that this divi- maxbruinsma.nl

162 Open 2006/No. 11/Hybrid Space

Y-Boeken EN02.indd 162 25-10-2006 14:50:43 Mapping Else/Where: How to Janet Abrams en Peter Hall Wipe Something off the Map? (eds.), ELSE/WHERE: MAPPING – New Cartographies of Net- Willem van Weelden works and Territories, University of Minnesota Design Institute, 2006, isbn 0972969624, $ 49,90

Cartographically speaking, and technology is simply to re- effects. The ‘objective’ world we’ve lost our bearings for evaluate our awareness of the that modernism attempted to quite some time. Long before essence of space and time. perfect turned out to be some- the invention of postmodern- In addition we had post- thing that only existed in one’s ism there were already multi- modernism pointing to the cri- head; a product of our imagi- disciplinary scholars who, sis of legitimization that had nation. standing at the cradle of com- arisen in philosophy and sci- Here we have all the ingre- puting science, argued that the ence as a result of the loss of dients for a GPS nation physi- map should not be confused all ‘grand narratives’ that were cally enjoying the metaphorical with the territory it represents; able to interpret and unambig- principle of ‘anything goes’, in other words, that a name is uously explain the relation but now with free phone min- not the same thing as that between thinking about the utes and credit at the bank. We which is named. It was an world and the world as a physi- are mobile, we have a mobile insight that dealt a hard blow cal phenomenon. As a cultural phone and a credit card and to traditional cartographers, for movement, postmodernism can thus go anywhere we want. does not traditional cartogra- symbolized a growing disbelief The world is completely phy exist by the grace of an in objective legitimacy. It was a opened up, both as an infor- inalienable connection between thinking that brushed absolute mation space and as physical information (data) and visual statements aside with an ironic space. Even though we might representation (the map)? The gesture. Every assumable posi- not have a developed sense of information used to make the tion from which the world direction at our disposal and map consists of empirical, vis- could be viewed was consid- our knowledge of topography ible and verifi able quantities. ered equally ‘true’ or ‘valid’. is extremely rudimentary, there The map is a means of orienta- This neo-liberal principle of is nothing wrong as long as we tion in physical reality, on the ‘anything goes’ opened the keep moving and communicat- basis of a recognizable code door to disorientation and ing. Trusting all our technolog- chosen by the map-makers to eclecticism. The gospel of ical appliances like TomToms, represent this reality. Once postmodernism demanded that mobile telephones and the like, understood, the code can be ‘goal’ and ‘destination’ – in we eventually get home safely, used to open up any territory. terms of both space and time – as though we’d never been The map is therefore a sort of should be quickly erased from away. And in moving from mirror of nature, which tries to our consciousness. Such place to place, what counts is question the relationship notions, after all, thoroughly that all these technological between reality and map as lit- stood in the way of the free interfaces and medial interven- tle as possible. The bottom has market, freedom of movement tions allow us to experience the fallen out of this relative and aimless experimentation. journey as comfortably virtual. uncomplicatedness as a result The popular credos of tradi- The starting point of the of the increasing mediatization tional science, such as ‘to recently published book Else/ and democratization of digital measure is to know’, were dis- Where: Mapping by Abrams (communication) technologies. missed by the ‘pomos’ as hilar- and Hall is the idea that ‘map- Notions such as scale, dis- ious misunderstandings. The ping’ is a necessary means of tance, vicinity and space are world became a theatre of not getting lost in the dense now being defi ned completely simulacra; a make-believe information landscape in which differently. The effect of media world consisting of mediatized we exist on a daily level. The

Book Reviews 163

Y-Boeken EN02.indd 163 25-10-2006 14:50:43 authors see mapping as a sort but just as much with the user. fairly removed from the ways of conceptual glue that tempo- The term launched by Abrams that the public at large deal rarily examines and clarifi es and Hall in this connection is with information on a daily connections between the tangi- that of ‘user cartographer’. The basis. In this sense the book’s ble world of buildings, cities space that the ‘user cartogra- pretensions are not really sub- and landscapes and the intan- pher’ maps can vary from stantiated. Projects like Mark gible world of social networks information space (under- Hansen’s Listening Post – pre- and electronic communities. standing patterns in large sented by the editors in their An artistic glue that, in the amounts of data) to physical ‘Mapping conversations’ sec- eyes of Abrams and Hall, space (navigating in cities, tion and winner of the Golden needs to be manufactured and regions or across the globe) Nica at the 2004 Ars Elec- applied not by traditional car- and social space (representing tronica Festival in Linz – is a tographers but by enlightened power structures within and three-dimensional installation designers. This is utterly in the between organizations). In par- of a sea of led screens generat- style of the approved postmod- ticular, it is the conceptual ing texts from Internet chat ernist thinking: even though overlapping between these dif- rooms, combined with a this grand project might not ferent ‘spatial’ domains that soundtrack composed by completely succeed, traditional designers could turn into a new Hansen. Using a specially writ- cartography should be wiped workable synthesis. For the ten programme, Hansen makes off the map! The mapping that fact is, Abrams and Hall see the raw material from the chats Abrams and Hall are advocat- this critical mapping as a key pass before our eyes in various ing is not a question of produc- creative quality and activity of forms. But however much sci- ing perfect maps that once and designers, whom they regard as ence may be required for this for all defi nitively indicate rela- cultural agents in possession of intervention, the fi nal result tionships, connections and the multidisciplinary qualities mainly evokes a reverie and ratios based on a standardized needed to function as informa- emotion that is more related to perspective, but the unfi nished tion guides (‘editorial design- art. The work does not help process of mapping itself. They ers’) by providing new ways of insight to be gained on a prac- see mapping as a new cultural making complex, context-rich tical level into the complex language that invites people to information visible and inter- dynamics of Internet chats. offer their own temporary, vis- pretable. Published by the And this limitation applies to ual solutions and orientations University of Minnesota the majority of the projects regarding the daily stream of Design Institute (where both dealt with. The practical utility disoriented information. This Abrams and Hall teach), this of the experiments and new type of ‘mapping’ thus shifts book refers to a wide range of (mostly digital and carto- attention from the complete graphic and industrial design graphic) technologies proves representation of the tradi- projects, art, architecture and on closer examination to be tional map to an understand- technology; a cross-section of slight or even absent. The ing of the differences between what is happening in the area many critical essays that could database, interface and user. of this new cartography. have been used for putting this Mapping, in this sense, enables Like other forms of infor- artistic research into a social different representations to be mation design, mapping is thus context also tend not to seek created from the same data, released from any claim to out a confrontation with the each of which in turn empha- objectivity. But the question daily practice of navigation and sizes different ways of seeing, raised by the book is what the working with new metaphors interpretations and usage. character is of the collection of for the graphic and interactive Comparable with the thrust of projects that Abrams and Hall representation of physical the postmodernist Roland Bar- are offering on the basis of space and ‘info-space’. If one thes’ famous essay announcing their postmodern insights. On of the book’s pretensions is to ‘the death of the author’, the closer examination they seem want to be helpful in relation responsibility no longer simply to be mainly projects that to the major social issue of lies with the maker of the map, come very close to art and are guaranteeing free access to

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Y-Boeken EN02.indd 164 25-10-2006 14:50:44 available information, then the modern condition, but also we’re still waiting for a genu- editors could also have selected and in particular with the pro- inely democratic opening up of projects that don’t hide behind found awareness that – in these social differences. But in the context of research and/or terms of information and inter- order for this to happen per- art for a change. face design as well – we have haps the oppressive academic For is it not the case that, already discretely made a men- postmodern perspective fi rst in the daily confrontation with tal map of a lot of social differ- has to be wiped off the map. information begging to be ences and instabilities? Despite ‘processed’, we are not only Abrams and Hall’s informative amply familiar with our post- and enthusiastic contribution,

Shifting between Rigid Analysis Sven Lütticken, Secret Public- and a Residual Utopianism ity. Essays on Contemporary Art, Rotterdam/Amsterdam, NAi Jan Verwoert Publishers/Fonds bkvb, isbn 90-5662-467-9, a 26,-

Art criticism becomes produc- choose or negotiate between developing a method of con- tive when it goes beyond the two perspectives opened up by stant shifting between rigid declaration of judgements and the history of modernism: analysis and a residual utopian- instead develops its own ques- rational analysis and radical ism in his writing. tions and criteria. Sven Lüt- negation on the one hand – As Lütticken’s arguments ticken’s writing has this quality. and the creation of a new myth unfold, Debord comes to fi gure Secret Public, a comprehensive for a counterculture or ‘secret increasingly less as a particular collection of his essays (pub- public’, as he calls it, on the person and more as a principle. lished between 1999 to 2005), other. The two fi gures who It is the principle of a categori- is enjoyable to read because it embody these perspectives in cal critique of the culture of allows you to follow the proc- Lütticken’s discourse are Guy capital that, without mercy, ess in which Lütticken continu- Debord (analysis) and Georges denounces the commodifi ca- ously builds up and expands Bataille (myth). In his writing tion and co-option of any cul- his apparatus of criteria from Lütticken talks as much to as tural artefact or practice by the text to text. The question that through their voices, without logic of capital and only emerges as a key motive behind however, ever entirely siding accepts practices and positions his studies and investigations with one of them. At times he as legitimate that stay away concerns the methodology of a plays one against the other, at from and refuse to be made critical practice: How can art times he makes their voices compatible with the logic of challenge the culture of capital- complement each other. While capital. Lütticken therefore ism? Is it through a founda- the analytical approach is used invokes the Debord principle tional analysis that leads up to to target the romantic delu- when he seeks to draw a line a radical rejection of this cul- sions of countercultural between legitimate (that is crit- ture? Or is it through the con- mythologies, the utopian drive ical) and illegitimate (that is stitution of a counterculture of the desire to create a differ- co-opted and commodifi ed) that competes with the mythi- ent art and public is acknowl- art. The righteousness and Sta- cal images consumer culture edged to be the force that linist rigour of this terminology perpetuates by inventing its keeps the whole project of criti- subsequently is always present very own alternative mythol- cism alive and going at the end in Lütticken’s writing. At times ogy? For Lütticken, the project of the day. So if there is an it comes to dominate the tone of a contemporary left-wing answer to the question of the of a text. Mostly, however, the criticism in general and critical proper method of critical prac- Debord principle comes into art practice in particular is tice, Lütticken gives it perform- play as a criterion around therefore defi ned by the task to atively, between the lines, by which a discursive space is

Book Reviews 165

Y-Boeken EN02.indd 165 25-10-2006 14:50:44 opened up for the negotiation versive force in its early days. It of transient communities.6 of the ambivalences of certain could have provoked the excess Despite these momentary artistic practices and positions. of overspending which, Bataille glimpses of hope, the overall In the essay The Art of Rev- believes, can pus economies to tone of the collected essays olution Lütticken, for instance, a point of breakdown. Pop Art remains largely apocalyptic. remarks about a museum ret- in the days of Jeff Koons, how- Lütticken most of the time por- rospective of the Situationist ever, has become a form of trays the situation of contem- International (at the Centre excess that the system can eas- porary art practice as an Pompidou in 1989, after that in ily cope with and co-opt. endgame scenario in which London and Boston),) that the The outlook for a critical critical practitioners fi ght a des- show co-opts and commodifi es practice is less bleak when perate fi ght against the overly the elusive work of the SI by Bataille fi gures as the spiritus powerful opponent of the mar- turning it into just another set rector of an essay like Secret ket. Throughout the entire 4 of museum 1. Sven Lütticken, Publicity. 4. Ibid., 21-42. book I in fact kept choking on exhibits.1 At Secret Publicity – With a great First published in the lines I read on the very fi rst Essays on Contem- New Left Review the same time porary Art love for detail, no. 17, 2002. page of the 7. Ibid., 7-20. he concedes (Rotterdam/ for instance, Introduction:7 ‘For the contem- Amsterdam: NAi that it is only Publishers/Fonds Lütticken recounts how porary art world, however, self- by putting the bkvb, 2005), 43-54. Bataille assembled a clandes- criticism and complexity have SI in the First published in tine circle of intellectuals become unique selling points De Witte Raaf no. museum that it 109, 2004. around his journal Acephale in that have turned art into a suc- can today be the hope of creating a new cessful up-market branch of made accessible to a broader myth for the left in this secret the culture industry at large, audience. While this dialectical society. Yet this text is also and therefore part of the reversal makes it almost seem marked by the melancholy present society of the spectacle. possible that an idea might sur- admittance that Bataille’s uto- In this situation, art criticism vive its absorption by an insti- pian project was untimely, serves as a discursive dressing tution, Lütticken’s overall quixotic and bound to fail. A for the choices of the real deci- position tends to be that the similar love for the quixotic sion makers – the collectors, fi nal commodifi cation of art shows when Lütticken explores curators and gallery owners.’ can rarely be avoided in the the contemporary signifi cance Why would you open up a crit- long run. In this sense he of conspiracy theories in The ical discourse with words that argues in Appropriation Mythol- Conspiracy of 5. Ibid., 191-204. deny its very possibility and ogy that Appropriation Art may Publicness.5 On First published in potential relevance? I cannot Open no. 7, 2004. have served as an effective the basis that help but hear the voice of a approach for analysing and any political theory must make prophet of doom here who subverting the logic of capital- sometimes unwarranted con- begins to speak by announcing 2 ist culture. 2. Ibid., 83-104. nections to get the bigger pic- that the end has come. Since it has, First published in ture, he proposes to redeem Why take such a position New Left Review however, today no. 36, 2005. some of the speculative ele- today? If anything, the current been catego- ments of such theories for an opening up of the art discourse rized as the textbook example unruly form of political think- towards Eastern Europe, for for ‘critical art’ its critical edge ing in the spirit of William instance, has shown that the has been co-opted and the crit- Burroughs. In Bik Van der model of monolithic market icality associated with it Pol’s Repetitions he embraces a domination may apply to the become a mere myth. Pop Art, return of the Situationist spirit usa, but not to the chaotic Lütticken claims in The Utility in the improvised scenarios new European art topography of Expenditure, suffered a simi- Liesbeth Bik 6. Ibid., 155-164. in which the West European lar fate.3 Its exuberant over- and Jost Van First published in patchwork of commercial and BikVan der Pol – affi rmation of 3. Ibid., 139-154. der Pol create with love from the public institutions now begins consumption First published in for the tempo- kitchen (Rotter- to interlace with art contexts De Witte Raaf no. dam: NAi Publis- made it a sub- 82, 1999. rary gathering hers, 2005). in which markets practically

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Y-Boeken EN02.indd 166 25-10-2006 14:50:45 do not exist. I believe these power to power by allowing sis) and towards the invention developments force us to the thought of its dominance of ideas and concepts that abandon monocausal types of to govern its discourse. I could empower difference. I structural analysis in favour respect the analytical rigour realize that I sound like one of the more complex models with which Lütticken works of the ‘freestyle Deleuzians’ of understanding the multiple through his arguments and here that Lütticken continues relations between sub-con- voices his unconditional scep- to mock in his writing. Maybe texts that post-structuralism ticism. At the same time, I rightfully so. Still I feel that his provides. And why honour would maintain that it is one writing provokes me to take the market by investing belief of the most eminent tasks of that position. Which is a way in its symbolic power? Being criticism today to work against of saying that in the end I fi nd a bit of a residual modernist the closure of discourse (even the book enjoyable because it myself, I also strongly believe and also when it is effected provokes you to take positions. in Adorno’s insistence that by the totalizing account of a And very little criticism man- critical theory should not give monocausal sociological analy- ages to do this.

The Visual Ecology of Edward J. Valauskas (ed.), Public Space Urban Screens: Discovering the potential of outdoor screens for Marc Schuilenburg urban society, First Monday, Special Issue #4, issn 1396– 0466, University of Illinois at Chicago Library, 2006. (url: http://fi rstmonday.org/issues/ special11 _2/)

Who is not familiar with the schools, shopping malls, con- lic space. The fi rst question image of the electronic bill- ference centres, hotels, theatres is of social signifi cance, the boards on Times Square in and cinemas. second has a political dimen- New York? Ever day over 5,000 The issue featuring urban sion. So where do the two lines ads pass by, dominated by the screens has no introduction connect up? show of neon lights, texts and highlighting the importance of Images have always been advertising for Roxy Deli, Her- addressing the theme. That is part of society. But in the shey’s, Cup Noodles, Coca odd. Yet, as you read, two lines worldwide occurrence of digital Cola and Cadillac. Companies stand out. The fi rst relates globalization, which Peter like hbo and Kodak pay over to the creative scope of the Sloterdijk describes in his study $150,000 a month for the screens for behaviour in the Sphären as the third stage in exposure. The publication First public domain. Do they have the globalization process, the Monday, a ‘peer-reviewed open suffi cient potential to intervene status of the image has risen, access journal’ on and about meaningfully in that space? So, literally and fi guratively, to the Internet, has devoted a spe- we would like to know how great heights. Everywhere cial issue to these urban the screens infl uence social images fl ash at us from news- screens, as they are called. The relationships embarked upon papers, magazines, books, electronic screens are fi lled in public space. The second computer and television with advertising, news and line reveals that the screens screens, and especially from entertainment and are spring- also have a repressive side. billboards in the city. What ing up in all shapes and sizes. A reactive force that can be effect does imagery have on the They not only defi ne the public interpreted in terms of surveil- dynamics of the street, the domain – the appearance of lance. So one wonders what birthplace of modernistic ideol- squares and streets – but they impact urban screens have on ogy? Scott McQuire refers in are also found in museums, managing and controlling pub- his article to a ‘media city’. In

Book Reviews 167

Y-Boeken EN02.indd 167 25-10-2006 14:50:45 his view the term is preferable ever more diaphanous and has become the message. Yet to the ‘informational city’ con- transparent society. this First Monday issue about ceived by Spanish sociologist Urban screens show things urban screens does signal prob- Manuel Castells, because it to passers-by, giving up-to-date lems. Not only do these screens places less importance on ict information on the weather, provide creative possibilities, and more on the role of the soccer results and share prices, but they have repressive conse- media. The media city is a rela- for example. But electronic quences as well. Only a few tional space, one which has urban screens are more than authors elaborate on that given. been stripped of inherent quali- modern town criers. Several In the article ‘The poetics of ties and stable structures. Rela- authors correctly make men- urban media surfaces’, Lev tional space is instable, shifting, tion of the 59th Minute project. Manovich writes about perme- contingent. According to That enables artists to display ating physical space with vir- McQuire, the heterogeneity of their work in the last minute of tual data fl ows. Information is relational space is a key experi- every hour on the Panasonic not only added to the space ence in present-day globaliza- screen (Panasonic being the (electronic displays), but also tion. It requires new ways of major brand of the Japanese extracted from it (surveillance). thinking about the spaces we Matsushita, the world’s biggest To be sure, the structure of share and ways to constitute electronics manufacturer) in public space is occupied virtu- collective experience. Times Square. Well-known art- ally. But Manovich does not The history tracing the start ists like Jeremy Blake, Fischli & provide suffi cient insight into of life-size screens dominating Weiss and Carlos Amorales the political impact of data the urban street scene goes have availed themselves of that extraction by means of surveil- back to mid-nineteenth century platform. It is one way for art lance. In other words, what are Paris. There, the organization to escape from the museum. the critical limits to the repre- of public space was ruled by By using the available media sentation or visual ecology of glass architecture. The depart- platforms, it succeeds in pene- public space? ment store with its huge win- trating public space. That question is important dows displaying its wares for With respect to the social because public space has long passers-by to see is, unques- relationships entered into in been thought of as a combina- tionably, one of the fi rst urban public space, both Julia Nevá- tion of static objects and screens in the public domain. rez and Rekha Murthy observe mobile subjects. However, the For many years, glass was the that the embedding of the static objects are linked obvious material for separating screen in the city has brought increasingly with technology indoors and outdoors, but about dialogue and involve- equipment. Mike Davis refers today the electronic billboard ment, Murthy speaks of a in his classic works on public serves that purpose. After all, ‘reclaiming of community’. space in Los Angeles, City of architecture and media tech- However, the article does not Quartz and The Ecology of nology are clearly becoming specify the way that occurs and Fear, to the phenomenon of increasingly integrated. Urban the form the ‘community’ rational buildings: buildings screens are becoming an ele- takes. The author does make it that are fi tted with sensitive ment of urban architecture clear that it is not about con- equipment and heavy weap- which in turn, Tore Slaatta structing an image or an object. onry, instantly ready to scan, concludes, is itself becoming When artists create artistic identify and, if necessary, bar media infrastructure. A new interventions in the public visitors. But to my mind there aspect is that the electronic domain, they are seeking to is something more important façade enables the building to shape, substantialize and direct than combining the electronic merge into its surroundings. social relationships. display surface with the build- The building, with a front ele- Weighty words. And elec- ing’s architecture: in a media vation consisting of pixels, can tronic urban screens do indeed city, or mediapolis, the scope adapt to the place or location have creative potential. Not the of the media is permeating eve- where it is. Not glass, but the medium, as Giselle Beiguel- ryday life. Surely one of the screen is the medium of an man writes, but the interface most noticeable urban screens

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Y-Boeken EN02.indd 168 25-10-2006 14:50:46 is the display of our mobile become a wide, shared social So the First Monday issue fea- phone. Few authors write responsibility, in which the turing urban screens demon- about the consequences of public plays an important strates that the combination such mobile screens – to which part. More and more crimes of artistic interventions and the burgeoning iPod and pda are being solved using photos heightened surveillance is the might be added – for the issue taken with mobile phones. The success formula for the devel- of managing and controlling police have produced a data- opment of public space. The public space. bank from photos and fi lms of cross fertilization between the When addressing the mat- citizens in suspicious circum- two lines will, however, also ter of surveillance, it is inter- stances, hold-ups and assaults, mean that the system of social esting to note that the mobile using them to track down relationships needs reinterpret- phone screen has become the suspects. That demonstrates ing. What new kinds of com- medium with which citizens how the conception of public munity are created? What can do their bit for crime pre- space has changed since the values or convictions for cor- vention. In that strategy of advent of urban screens and rect behaviour and responsibili- ‘responsibilitization’, fi ghting information technology. In a ties does it take to shape those and preventing crime are not media city, literally all space is communities? Who will be only tasks for the authorities now public. There is no longer excluded? One of the next or the police. Crime preven- any distinction between private issues will have to address tion is decentralized, has and public space. those questions.

A Better World on the Horizon Kas Oosterhuis, Lukas Feireiss (eds.), Game, Set and Match II: Omar Muñoz Cremers On Computer Games, Advanced Geometries, and Digital Technologies, Rotterdam, Episode Publishers, 2006, isbn 9059730364, a 40,-

The question that has preoccu- That variety is refl ected in the themes: play, geometry and pied us since the turn of the topics that the authors deal open source, although the dis- millennium loomed up and with. In his presentation and tinctions are not necessarily raced past is: where has the foreword, Kas Oosterhuis, the strictly applied. future gone? The future as an project’s initiator, suggests that So what is the relationship idea, a positive entity. As we the publication will examine between games and architec- leafed through the exhaustive the relationship between archi- ture? Up till SimCity, buildings collection of essays Game, Set tecture and computer games. in games were mainly for and Match II, we found the Oosterhuis, with his contribu- destroying. Inevitably, there- answer: in architecture. The tion ‘Swarm Architecture II’, is fore, there is an article survey- book shares the same title as the fi rst to practically ignore ing SimCity, that highly the follow-up conference that relationship. In this publi- popular planning simulator organized by Hyperbody cation, ‘game’ has two mean- that has generated a whole Research Group at Delft Uni- ings – fi rstly in the narrower games subculture around versity of Technology. It sense (the role of computer urban planning issues and their presents an abundance of games) and secondly in the effects on social structures ideas, research results, building wider sense of architecture as a (even at a planetary level). proposals, history lessons, game in search of new rules: Many of the authors have essays and proclamations – a rules of aesthetics, of technol- problems concretizing that veritable upturned theoretical ogy or of geometry. And relationship in a similar way. toolbox, derived indiscrimi- accordingly, the contributions Katie Salen suggests in ‘They nately from various disciplines. ultimately fall into three Must First Be Imagined’ that,

Book Reviews 169

Y-Boeken EN02.indd 169 25-10-2006 14:50:46 with games being designed and ular space (which in turn cor- know, but where we can enter- tested more collectively these respond to specifi c levels of tain (in rigorous fashion) gen- days while the game is already interaction). erative hypotheses of how being played, it might produce It is a recurring theme in worlds could be if we altered a change in the way interactive the book – the idea that archi- their basic assumption.’ In this experiences are designed out- tecture should be less rigid, context, art gives science ‘a side the digital fi eld. De Jong should move towards open- free rein’ enabling intuitive and Schuilenburg elaborate ness, should allow more room leaps to be made, a fusing of further on that idea, as a shift for subjectivity. Ralitza Boteva the two into a serious game. in creative practice from genius draws inspiration from multi- As is often the case, the to scenius, from an individual player games to describe a impression Game, Set and designer to a network of crea- form of architecture that inter- Match II leaves behind is that a tivity, with consumers and pro- prets space not as a container, fi ner, better world is on the ducers designing products in a but as a medium that can be horizon, because, even though communal process. shaped according to the sub- most authors repudiate old- In some texts, architectural ject’s wishes. The farther you fashioned optimism, a hint of metaphors are applied to read in the book, the more the utopianism can always be per- games, as in Laurie Taylor’s contributions ignore the games ceived in the return of spheri- criticism of the current ‘sand- aspect and focus on practical cal shapes, attention for open box’ metaphor for the contem- proposals for architecture in a communication, renewed aes- porary games world. That network society. As Raoul theticization of everyday life, approach imagines the game as Bunschoten aptly comments: a pleas for softness, plans for a sandbox, an environment digital data storm is raging holistic and sensual buildings. that can be manipulated in through urban spaces and rap- Sometimes the latter have which players have a large idly uprooting all kinds of already been built (for exam- number of toys they can use to aspects of urban life. That ple, the naturally-ventilated engineer the game world to storm must be contained and Kanak Cultural Center or, their liking. Taylor proposes its positive aspects exploited. closer to home, the Hessing ‘garden’ as a more comprehen- The most remarkable Cockpit near Utrecht, the sive metaphor, combining the example of a proposal of that Netherlands), but more often ideas of sandbox, labyrinth and type is the AlloSphere: a three- than not they are just out of maze which, in her opinion, storey spherical space built on reach, a mixture of fi xed forms are too limited on their own. the campus of the University of and extremely fl uid informa- ‘Garden’ captures the scope of California in Santa Barbara. It tion fl ows which is still hard to several levels, types and use of is intended to promote interac- conceive. In other words, a space more effectively. Norbert tive experiences, open up the welcome respite from the reign Streitz elaborates further on fi elds of mathematics, nanote- of concrete terror that has this in his discourse on cooper- chnology, the worlds of defaced the living and working ative buildings, a form of intel- extremely small and large, of environment in recent decades. ligent architecture that adapts exceptional speeds and One important question still to changing situations with the unknown dimensions. Marcos has to be answered: where will computer disappearing in the Novak praises the AlloSphere we be able to see that game building. In the ‘ambient in visionary terms: ‘[It is an] architecture? In the palaces of agora’ he has conceived, games instrument for what can be multinationals and stark Prada as such do not play a part, but called “experimental artifi cial boutiques? Or will a counterat- something resembling a digital cosmogony and cosmopoetics” tack be launched against the garden comes about, stimulat- – a place for transvergent fortifi cation of public space ing communication, data “worldmaking”, for inventing and, as an ever-related compo- transfer and informal contact and evolving new species of nent, the increasingly strait- by means of ‘calm technolo- “worlds” as science and art, a ened human psyche? gies’ which react to the varying place where we can not only positions of people in a partic- visualize or simulate what we

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