Re: <nettime> DECONtamination CONtagium

[eyescratch <eyescratch@terminal.cz>]

Having cut my finger while doing the dishes I write left handed.

I enjoyed your article very much. I remember doing an interview with 
Steve Mann at the Ars Electronica in 1997. When he spoke about the 
visual style of the system of surveillance and his counter-measure of 
wearing a camera, he spoke about cinema veriteé, which is not so 
düster as your experience suggests. Actually cinema veriteé created 
mobile systems as the act of reaching out to the everyday, inserting 
itself in the flow of life. Surveillance does the same, but as the 
passive-aggressive non-entity. The hope underlying it is that you 
wont step out of line, although there may be the deeper Baudrillard 
wish of the capture.

Here in New York there was an installation instigated by fakeshop 
(and pseudo) called the capsule hotel. A grid of cubicles with 
cameras based on the Japanese original capsule hotel seen in _until 
the end of the world_. Inside this technologically laced entity, the 
array created a set of stages for the bodies of the participants, 
finding recombinant pairings.

Just two days ago I saw the film _das experiment_ which is based upon 
a psychological experiment conducted at Stanford that went haywire. 
Groups of men were put in the roles of jailers and prisoners and then 
asked to spend two weeks together. Quickly you will see who is alpha 
and who is beta, even among the psychological staff. I dare say it's 
a matter of who aligns themselves with the  underlying principles and 
at what level. It is all a simulation on the highest plane, so why 
can't they all play basketball for two weeks remains the unanswered 
question, probably because no one would watch such a film or garner 
much knowledge from such an experiment. So in the interest of science 
and fiction the jailers assert themselves in more and more inhumane 
ways and the prisoners react to their subjugation rebelliously.

Ana, you seem to say though that the small victories of the 
subjugated become smaller and more personal. We spin our own fictions 
to remain outside, which reminds me of the Canadian film _cube_ of 
two years ago, a very dark metaphorical work about what happens when 
these small victories get in each others way. The system of 
subjugation has become too complex for any one participant to see 
through it.

In _das experiment_ the hero is a plant from the media whose wish is 
to agitate in order to get his story. Yet he is not able to see the 
dynamics of the inhuman interaction. Only another plant, from the 
military, is able to see the consequences of what is happening, 
making it clear to the media person that it is not a game at all. It 
is the what-is-known knowledge that is really scarry. Millions of 
people are jailed at this moment and few riot or find ways to resist. 
The media pays little attention to them (although I haven't seen 
_oz_). Instead the media remains part of the subjugation - pumped 
into their cells by television, creating the docile Mensch. Lots of 
time has passed since the Geneva conventions were written in a fit of 
humanism. It makes you wonder if the people playing guards in _das 
experiment_ had been better trained in conflict resolution and the 
most up to date science of subjugation, would there have been any 
resistance at all.

A friend of mine had the pleasure of going to navy boot camp. He 
spoke about those that had changed their mind about joining the navy, 
and that a way to get out of it was to do a bunch of hard drugs 
before going. All the people with drugs in their system were 
separated from the rest early on, yet were forced to go through boot 
camp all the same and THEN sent home.

The question remains: is it enough to simulate these atrocities to 
the human spirit or is there perhaps a way to step out of line and 
create spaces and situation laced with technology that spirits us to 
better understanding of ourselves?


Ā 9:16 PM -0400 le 9/26/02, Ana Viseu a écrit:
>[This article was first published on Mindjack
><http://www.mindjack.com/events/decon.html> Best. ana]
>
>DECONtamination CONtagium
>By Ana Viseu
>
>The invitation for DECONference: DECONstructing DECONtamination [1]
>(Toronto 29.08.2002) read: "Decontamination prior to entry. Complimentary
>attire will be provided. Bring no valuables." At 7PM around 60 conference
>attendees congregated outside a building in downtown Toronto and began
>submitting themselves to what would become a long line of bureaucratic
>procedures. The first one was familiar and benign: a line up. It took more
>than an hour for all of us to be registered, and sign a two page document
>waiving all our rights while attending the event.
>
>Each of us was then asked to take off the shoes, put them in a clear
>plastic bag and wear a "Evidence" tag which indicated the degree to which
>we were contaminated in four possible states: Minor, Delayed (can follow
>simple commands), Immediate (life threatening injury) and Morgue.

<...>



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