A quarterly magazine of art and culture Issue 1 Winter 2000

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Cabinet Thank you for opening Cabinet
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Printed in Belgium by Snoeck-Ducaju and Zoon point. Each issue will feature a small section that addresses one
particular theme. In this issue, we explore languages that are
Editors-in-chief Brian Conley and Sina Najafi fictitious or invented as opposed to those that have evolved
Editors Saul Anton and Gregory Williams organically over time. Contributions to this section include an
Art Director Richard Massey article on Swiss psychic Hélène Smith's Martian languages, an
Editor-at-large Allen S. Weiss interview with an Esperantist about the fate of the world’s best-
Contributing Editors Joe Amrhein (New York), Mats Bigert (Stockholm), known planned language, and an essay by Christian Bök about
Molly Bleiden (New York), Eric Bunge (New York), Christoph Cox (Amherst), the alien language he was asked to invent for a Gene Roddenberry
Cletus Dalglish-Schommer (Los Angeles), Pip Day (Mexico City), television series. The related audio CD inside this issue contains
Steve Fishman (New York), Carl Michael von Hausswolff (Stockholm), sound pieces based on invented words that exist in no language
Dejan Krsic (Zagreb), Ilisa Lam (New York), Jesse Lerner (Los Angeles), other than the one constructed by the piece.
Tan Lin (Los Angeles), Roxana Marcoci (New York), Ricardo de Oliveira (New York),
Phillip Scher (Washington, D.C.), Rachel Schreiber (Baltimore), A regular series of columns opens each issue. "The Clean Room"
David Serlin (Washington, D.C.), Lytle Shaw (New York), Debra Singer (New York), is a column on science and technology, and "Ingestion" is on
Srdjan Jovanovic Weiss (New York), Jay Worthington (New York) food as a cultural practice with a philosophical dimension. For
Website Luke Murphy and Kristofer Widholm our "Colors" column, we ask a different guest writer each issue
Copy Editing and Proofreading Sara Cameron to respond to a specific color assigned by us. Different writers
Intern Kristen Dodge will also be invited to write on the cultural implications of various
forms of detritus and garbage for our "Leftovers" column.
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Cover: page from Öyvind Fahlström’s notes for generating his hybrid language
Whammo, 1962. Courtesy Sharon Avery-Fahlström
Contributors

Jonathan Ames is the author of two novels, I Pass Like ment of pure mathematics. His forthcoming books Dan Rosenberg is an Assistant Professor of History at
Night and The Extra Man, and the memoir, What’s Not to include The Math Circle (with Ellen Kaplan), Accessible the University of Oregon. His most recent publications
Love?: The Adventures of a Mildly Perverted Young Writer. Mysteries (with Ellen Kaplan), and Inspired Guessing. include works on Denis Diderot and the Hoover Dam.

David Batchelor is a London-based artist who exhibits Nina Katchadourian is an artist based in New York. Renata Salecl is a researcher at the University of
at Anthony Wilkinson Gallery. He is also an author whose Ljubljana, Slovenia. Her latest book is (Per)versions of
books include Minimalism and Chromophobia. Vladimir Kulic is an architect living in Belgrade. Love and Hate. Salecl is a contributing editor to Cabinet.
He is the co-editor of the forthcoming guide Belgrade
Charles Bernstein is the author of My Way: Speeches and Architecture. David Scher is a pencil holder, member of Subvoyant,
Poems and Log Rhythms, with pictures by Susan Bee. His founder of the Dept. of Lettering, and a clarinetist with
home page is among the authors at http://epc.buffalo.edu. Laura Kurgan teaches in the School of Architecture at Princ- Frank Noise.
He is Director of the Poetics Program at SUNY-Buffalo. eton University. Her work with digital information technol-
gies has been exhibited internationally. David Serlin is a contributing editor to Cabinet. His
Mats Bigert is one half of Bigert & Bergström, a Swedish forthcoming books include Artificial Parts and Practical
artist collaborative team whose work has been shown Justine Kurland is a New York-based photographer who Lives: Histories of Modern Prosthetics and Not Who
at the Venice and Kawngju Biennials. Bigert is a contrib- last showed at Patrick Callery Gallery. We Used to Be: Remaking the American Body in Postwar
uting editor to Cabinet. Culture.
Jesse Lerner is a critic and documentary filmmaker.
Naomi Ben-Shahar is an artist living in New York. His documentaries Ruins, Frontierland, and Natives have Sabira Ståhlberg has served as vice president of the World
screened at festivals internationally. He teaches media Organization of Young Esperantists from 1991-1993 and
A.S. Bessa is an artist and writer living in Brooklyn, NY. studies at the Claremont Colleges in California. Lerner is currently serves as editor-in-chief of the online Esperanto
He is co-editor of poetry for fahlström.com and is also writ- a contributing editor to Cabinet. magazine Kontakto.
ing a book on concretism in the work of Öyvind Fahlström.
Tan Lin is a poet and cultural critic. His latest book of poetry Srdjan Jovanovic Weiss is an architect from Belgrade
Xu Bing is a Chinese-American artist living in Brooklyn, NY. Lotion Bullwhip Giraffe was published by Sun and Moon living in New York City. He is a co-founder of Normal
Press and his writings have appeared in Artbyte and Purple Group for Architecture, a critical office for architectural
Christian Bök is the author of Crystallography: Book I of Prose. Lin is a contributing editor to Cabinet. theory and practice. He has taught advanced studios
Information Theory, a pataphysical encyclopedia nomin- in architecture at the Columbia University together with
ated for the Gerald Lampert Award (Best Poetic Debut, Steve McCaffery was a member of the sound text ensem- Homa Farjadi and he is one of the authors of the up-
1994). Bök has also written an academic treatise, entitled ble The Four Horsemen for nearly twenty years. He is coming book Harvard Guide to Shopping with Rem
Pataphysics: The Poetics of an Imaginary Science. co-editor of Imagining Language and the forthcoming Koolhaas and a group of thesis students. Jovanovic
book Prior to Meaning: The Protosemantic and Poetics. Weiss is a contributing editor of Cabinet.
Jon Dryden is a freelance musician and writer living in He is Associate Professor of English at York University in
Brooklyn, New York. He is currently working on an opera Toronto. Allen S. Weiss teaches at the Performance Studies and
based on Albert Camus’s The Stranger. Cinema Studies Departments at New York University.
Eben Moglen is a professor of law at Columbia University He is the author of numerous books, including Phan-
Carl Michael Von Hausswolff is an artist based in Stock- and general counsel to the Free Software Foundation. tasmic Radio. He is Cabinet’s editor-at-large.
holm. His work has been exhibited in many international
events, including documenta X, the Istanbul Binennial, Luke Murphy is a New York-based artist who last showed Gregory Whitehead is a playwright for the theater of the
and Site Santa Fe. Von Hausswolff and Leif Elggren are at Wynnick-Tuck Gallery in Toronto. invisibles. His research into the bone trade is the subject
the double monarchs of the Royal Kingdoms of Elgaland- of a forthcoming film Death and the Market. He is the
Vargaland. For more information on the kingdom, see Sina Najafi is co-editor in chief of Cabinet. co-editor of Wireless Imagination: Sound, Radio, and the
www.it.kth.se/KREV/. Von Hausswolff is a contributing Avant-Garde.
editor to Cabinet. Frank Oudeman is a photographer based in New York.
Gregory Williams is an art critic and historian living
Louisa Kamps was a 1999-2000 fellow at the National Arts Frances Richard is a writer who lives in Brooklyn. She is in New York. He is an editor of Cabinet.
Journalism Program at Columbia University. She has a frequent contributor to Artforum and the non-ficiton
published in The New Yorker, Elle, and Mirabella, among editor of the literary journal Fence.
other places.
John Roberts is the author of The Art of Interruption:
Robert Kaplan teaches at the Mathematics Department Realism, Photography and the Everyday and has
at Harvard University and is the author of the book written for a wide number of journals and magazines,
The Nothing That Is: A Natural History of Zero. In 1994, including New Left Review, Radical Philosophy and
with his wife Ellen, Robert Kaplan founded the Math the Oxford Art Journal. He is currently finishing his
Circle, a program open to the public for the enjoy- first novel.

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Contents

Columns
10 Leftovers Gregory Whitehead
11 The clean room David Serlin
13 Colors Jonathan Ames
15 Ingestion Allen S. Weiss

Random
17 Is chance possible? An interview with Robert Kaplan by Sina Najafi
21 Not just for silver foxes Louisa Kamps
22 Bingo in Swedish is bingo Mats Bigert
25 21 aphorisms John Roberts
26 Marilyn Monroe and I -Jesse Lerner
28 Marilyn Monroe y yo Fernando Sampietro
32 Trickster eye Frances Richard
36 Stalk photography Gregory Williams
39 Whitescapes David Batchelor
42 The city Justine Kurland
44 The encryption wars An interview with Eben Moglen by Jay Worthington
51 The love-bug Luke Murphy
52 Anachronistic modernism Tan Lin
57 1485.0 kHz Carl Michael von Hausswolff
61 My mother, my medium Jon Dryden

Invented Languages
62 Speaking Martian Daniel Rosenberg
70 The alien argot of the avant-garde Christian Bök
71 abs TruCt heh GarBagt Special CD insert
72 Himalayan journal Xu Bing
74 Öyvind Fahlström’s aviary A.S. Bessa
77 Esperanto An interview with Sabira Ståhlberg by Nina Katchadourian

War
80 Inadvertent memory Laura Kurgan
84 NATO as architectural critic Srdjan Jovanovic Weiss
89 Belgrade architecture and the war 2 Vladimir Kulic
90 On war and anxiety Renata Salecl

Etc.
0 Postcard project Luke Murphy
9 Flies David Scher-
96 Face David Scher
9 David Scher
Flies, 2000
Columns LEFTOVERS number of outstanding eyes bought from
the estate of a deceased client. Along the
The bone trade top shelf, up there, there are single eyes
Gregory Whitehead from Charlie Chaplin, Charles Dickens, and
Charles Lindberg—I call them the three
Author Gregory Whitehead poses some Charlies—and an unauthenticated (but
questions to Walter Sculley, a self- highly possible) complete set from Edgar
described “dealer in corporeal collectibles.” Allan Poe. Worth a fortune and a half, if the
tests come back positive.
So…. The “bone trade.”
Tests?
That’s correct. I suppose the more formal
designation would be something like The usual forensic processing, but in our
“the international market for corporeal case, we scrutinize not only the item itself,
collect-ibles,” but dealers usually just say but its “career path,” its provenance, so to
“the bone trade,” even though we deal speak. Obviously, absolute authentification
with much more than bones. The key word is often hard to establish, especially for the
here is market —that’s where the material flood of material coming in these days from
comes from, and, ultimately, that’s where Russia. I mean, I had a guy in the other day
it’s going. who says he used to be KGB, walks in here
with a bag full of bones of bigtime Bolshe-
How do you respond to those who condemn viks, Czars and what-not. Now, how am
the bone trade as a rationalized form of I going to check his story? In the end, it’s
grave robbery, or body snatching, selling hu- the market that makes the final decision of
man remains for profit? whether a story is good enough. We never
try to hide the question marks. We have a
I field such accusations all the time. What saying in the trade: “Never twist an arm to
can I say? Such materials exert a powerful sell a finger.”
fascination. That fascination creates a
market. I’m just here to serve the market. So how does the trade break down, in terms
I haven’t been anywhere near a graveyard of proportional sales?
in years! Living history from dead remains.
That’s what I’m selling, and that’s what Skulls, then eyes and fingers, then brain
people want. Contact with a dead person matter and blood—the “Big Five” I call
through a living artifact that happens to have them—unless it’s really something unusual,
once been part of the dead person. The only a famous tumor or something like that. All
thing more democratic than the free market other materials would fall into the category
is death, right? So here’s a business where of miscellany, and appeal only to very
the two go hand-in-hand. specialized collectors. Hearts are having a
bit of a run right now since the genetic test-
Can you say a word or two about how the ing of Louis XVII came back positive. I mean,
trade is organized? every sleazy pseudo-aristocrat on both sides
of the Atlantic wants a slice of that little
Pretty much along the same lines as most blueblood muscle. People often ask, ‘what
other collectibles markets, though each about genitalia?’ Well, I won’t tell
dealer may have his own reference system. you they’re not out there, but for my part,
I organize my offerings first by physical I consider it in bad taste.
category—fingers, skulls, brain matter,
blood samples, eyes, whatever—and But dealing Nazi blood and bones is not in
then by historical or cultural categories— bad taste?
American presidents, movie stars, Nazis,
outlaws, and so on. As in any market, the The Nazi trade is a tough one. A week
quality material pretty much sells itself, doesn’t go by where we don’t have some
and the rest, as we say, is best left to skinhead strutting in wanting to buy a skull
the birds. or two for the sake of nostalgia. Usually the
price of the stuff screens them out. But
I wasn’t aware that eyes were part of the anyway, I really can’t get into the meaning of
trade. the material. I can control the material, but
not the meaning.
Oh yes. Eyes are a very substantial market.
In the case over here, for example, I have a So what, then, would you say drives your

10 Columns
market? Obviously more than a simple Kennedy brain slide, but if all the brain sam- headed, and the stories they tell are full of
interest in history. ples in circulation were put back together surprises, not always what people want to
into a unified organ, you would need a tow hear. Think of the case of Vietnam MIAs.
True. If the interest were only historical, truck to transport the damn thing. And, of Up until a few years ago, various speculators
they would probably stick with documents, course, we get regular inquiries about the, were buying up all kinds of bones, no
autographs, icons, and the like. I don’t know, uh [gestures vaguely towards his waist]... questions asked. The hustlers had a field
it would certainly be easy to entertain cheap but my research indicates fairly conclusively day. Then the forensic anthropologists would
psychoanalysis, and a lot of people say, oh that he took that particular bit of his anatomy come in and tell some grieving widow who’s
right, it’s just necrophilia or what not. I can with him. just been given a small box full of
only tell you the kinds of things my clients remains supposed to be from her husband:
say when they contact me. Right. Well, I suppose you come into “Sorry, but these are the bones of a medium-
Now, these are very often men—and many contact with all kinds of cults. sized quadruped, probably a dog.”
women, I might add—of considerable
wealth but not a whole lot of cultural visibility [Laughs] Beyond belief. And more than I’m not sure I understand what you’re
or celebrity. Not much glamour. So for the enough counterfeiters to meet even the getting at.
right price they can have a little osteome- most kinky demands. By my last estimate,
mento from the body of Marilyn Monroe there were close to a thousand Hitler My point is that what’s legal is so often at
squirreled away in the safe, together, may- fingers on the shopping block. And you can odds with what people need to fill the holes
be, with a slide of Winston Churchill’s blood, imagine the number of people claiming to in their private lives, whatever their motiva-
or a slice off the presidential polyp. Some own the one and only Pelvis of Elvis. But tions. That’s where pornography comes in.
form of post-facto access to celebrities they these aren’t really serious collectors. What Now, is what I’m doing pornographic?
could never have in real life. I mean, look they are pursuing is something much closer Who’s to say? If people can find more
how excited people get about an autograph, to religion. I mean,the Lady Di stuff out meaning in the skull of a movie star than
say an autographed picture of Judy Garland, there is through the roof. And Argentina! in their own flesh and bone, who am I to
so imagine the excitement if you could buy Argentina really takes the cake for weird- judge?
the hand that wrote the ness: I’ve seen thousands of those tiny little
autograph! glass vials sometimes used for pharmaceu- Leftovers is a column in which a guest writer is invited
ticals, full of murky liquid and marked Sangre to discuss notions of waste and detritus from a cultural
You mean to tell me that Judy Garland’s d’Evita. Cult of Perón, I guess. Most of perspective.
hand is for sale? this kind of stuff just gets wholesaled to
the specialty medicine market in China.
I can’t say that it is or it isn’t—it was only an THE CLEAN ROOM
example. There has been a lot of Garland Specialty medicine? You must be joking.
material floating about recently, though. Producing surgery on the internet:
No, I’m not joking. I’m not one to indulge in is the rectum a cinema?
And what about the so-called “presidential China bashing. It’s a huge market for me, David Serlin
polyp”? but they do have some pretty unusual ideas
about medicine. And there’s always talk In Richard Fleischer’s 1966 film Fantastic
Well, yes, as you can imagine, at the time about what parts work best as aphrodisiacs, Voyage, an elite crew of medical techni-
of Reagan’s intestinal surgery, there were with different techniques for mashing them cians—including the buxom but brainy Cora
more slivers of polyp floating about than all up. That market exists just about every- Peterson (Racquel Welch)—is shrunken
chips off the Old Cross. And the prices! where. A lot of interesting items just end up down to microscopic size and climbs aboard
I mean, even dirty latex gloves used during in somebody’s digestive tract. To me, that’s the Proteus, a nano-sized submarine. The
the surgery were going for serious dollars. depressing. And now, with all the specula- crew’s mission: to use a modified laser to
I still don’t really understand the Ronald Rea- tion in human genomics stocks, all kinds of destroy a blood clot on the brain of a dying
gan end of the market. The only American choice items are starting to be sucked out scientist who holds important Cold War mili-
President who competes in price is JFK, and of circulation by the big bio-tech firms. Who tary secrets. Navigating their way through
you have to remember there was a lot more knows where that material will end up? the dark, dangerous world of multicellular
Reagan material available. Lincoln is a dis- I mean the whole bottom will drop out of the marauders and bacterial invaders, the crew
tant third, and that’s mostly because of Civil market if you can start to grow duplicate of the Proteus spends a good amount of
War buffs. On the international front, there organs out of soybeans or what-not. Scary. time on-screen peering out the windows in
are a lot of people waiting for Pinochet to hit awe of the human body’s oceanic interior.
the market. I get a lot of In the meantime, you seem very much at Just after completing their assignment, and
advance sales on Pinochet. home in the trade, despite having to operate with valuable seconds ticking away,
more or less underground. the crew of the Proteus is attacked by white
What is there currently available from JFK? blood cells. The survivors exit the body by
Hah! I’ll have to remember that one. Look. riding out through a tear duct, cushioned in
Oh, endless tissue slides, usually of brain The bone trade is unavoidably controversial, the saline safety of a single teardrop.
matter, most of dubious origin. I never touch intrinsically a little bit strange, and political
the stuff. When clients express by definition. Bones are loaded, no matter For all its retrospective camp value, Fantastic
interest, I tell them, sure they can have a where they’ve been, or where they’re Voyage is also a fascinating cultural hybrid,

11 O
the talented offspring of postwar American cal presentation of a human-created inner cinematic but from the much-vaunted (but
cinema and postwar American science. world: a final frontier, the dreamy stage sets unpersuasive) realm of digital realism. The
By the mid-1960s, the distinction between and evocative props of which trump even National Institutes of Health’s celebrated
cinematic representations of the body’s the most realistic depictions of the body Visible Human Project—in which the bodies
interior, and representations of the body generated by modern medical media. The of two anonymous male and female donors
generated by a new repertoire of visualizing film’s aesthetic sense bears a charming na- (one a doomed prisoner) have been cut into
medical technologies, was an increasingly iveté, not unlike Georges Méliès’s thousands of thin horizontal slices which
arbitrary one. In 1965, the year before beautiful images of the man in the moon have been scanned and digitized for public
Fantastic Voyage was released, Lennart made some 60 years earlier. access—provides a compelling view of the
Nilsson published the first microphoto- body’s interior. But such digital images,
graphs of fetuses in utero in Life magazine. Fantastic Voyage had clearly imbibed a broad while physiologically accurate, have lost
These interior shots of fetuses were range of cultural influences: from their artfulness in favor of digital realism,
medically “accurate”; yet, seen floating in Soviet-inspired espionage narratives, to the which gives us something that approxi-
soft and dramatic lighting, they seemed radical body manipulation found in Weird mates the human but is, like jazz on a com-
both transcendent and inhuman, not unlike Science tales of the 1950s, to the military- pact disc, not quite human at all. Computer-
the images of the ür-infant that would close industrial fetish for high-tech gadgetry enhanced medical imaging technologies
Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey featured in the early James Bond films. But may appear to offer a precise method for
a few years later. Fleischer’s film also by the mid-1960s, the increased blurring of capturing a Kodak moment in the interior life
tapped into widespread enthusiasms during realistic and symbolic representations of of the body. But even these “precise” images
the late 1950s and early 1960s for new the body in medical and cultural media sug- require sensitive technicians who are able
diagnostic technologies such as ultrasound, gested that there was no longer any con- to interpret, critique, and challenge every
echocardiography, electroencephalography, crete division between these two worlds. mysterious shadow or pixilated peculiarity
and computer-assisted x-ray scanning In this sense, Fleischer’s wide-eyed opti- that passes across the sterile surface of the
techniques, which paved the way for com- mism was neither naïve nor unfounded; camera eye. For all its technical advances,
puter-aided tomography (CAT) and magnetic Fantastic Voyage operated in an public envi- digital medical realism pales in comparison
resonance imaging (MRI) technologies in ronment where hyper-realistic medicalized to Fleischer’s vision, an anthropomorphic
the 1970s and 1980s. images were used increasingly in everyday world of luminous blood platelets and puffy
contexts, from cinema to television to the lung tissue resembling the costume shop of
Fleischer was fearless about his artistic avant-garde. Artists in the late 1960s and a Busby Berkeley production.
vision. The film’s opening credits offer a early 1970s as diverse as Marina Abramovic,
utopian manifesto, couched in the futuristic Chris Burden, and Carolee Schneeman One area where the cinematic has not
lingo of Cold War scientific prowess, which staged performances that mirrored this entirely disappeared is in the fast-growing
predicts a time when travel through both out- rapid diffusion of cinematic/medical images, medical sub-genre of on-line surgery. Many
er and inner space would be commonplace: offering violent public acts on their own surgical broadcasts on the Internet are not
bodies that were both highly realistic (as computer-enhanced digital products but
This film will take you where no one has well as graphic) as well as highly symbolic. are actual analogue videotapes that have
ever been before; no eye witness has Such performances ultimately inspired a been converted for convenience to a digital
actually seen what you are about to see. generation of artists to make profound archive. Because of their modest origins,
But in this world of ours where going to and disturbing statements about the subjec- these films come closest to Fleischer’s vision
the moon will soon be upon us and where tive uses—and institutional abuses— of a realistic yet cinematically complex inner
the most incredible things are happening committed against the physical body in world. At adoctorinyourhouse.com, viewers
all around us, someday, perhaps tomorrow, often quasi-medicalized contexts. In the can watch archival footage of the gastric
the fantastic events you are about to see case of Annie Sprinkle, even low-tech medi- bypass operation (originally broadcast live)
can and will take place. cal equipment such as a vaginal speculum performed on pop star and former talk show
unveiled and collapsed altogether the artifi- host Carnie Wilson. Wilson’s surgery, pro-
It was not that Fleischer and his colleagues cial distinctions between medical practice moted as “The Solution” for chronic obesity,
believed that they were depicting the “real” and artistic practice. was captured for posterity in August 1999
body. Instead, they believed that their film with the help of a tiny, flexible laparoscopic
served as a state-of-the-art cinematic dress Thirty years later, one would be hard video camera the aperture of which is no
rehearsal for visualizing technologies and pressed to find medical media that offer a larger than the hollow of a drinking straw.
medical advances that lay just around the vision of the body that is dramatically dif- When attached to a thin, microfiber cable,
corner. The rhetorical lure of medical “real- ferent from, or superior to, that rendered in the laparoscopic camera enables the surgeon
ism” was such that it affirmed science’s abil- Fantastic Voyage. The widespread use on to push the spaghetti-like apparatus through
ity—consequences be damned—to pene- the Internet of sophisticated imaging tech- tiny slits made in the skin surface in order
trate the unfathomable depths of the human nologies—in tandem with super-fast com- both to see the body’s interior and to avoid
body. Yet, even in 1960s cinema, special puter servers, web browsers, and Real traumatizing the body through full exploratory
effects like those in Fleischer’s film were Player viewers—confirms what Fleischer surgery. The premier web site devoted to
still artful creations of imperfect human already knew: in the future, medicine and this technology, laparoscopy.com, bills itself
animators, and not the cold digital products entertainment will be one and the same. In as a professional arena for students and
offered by industrial light and magic. As a contemporary medical media, what passes physicians who want to catch up on the latest
result, Fantastic Voyage is a highly theatri- for “realism” no longer borrows from the advances. More often than not, however,

12 Columns
the site traffics in a kind of competitive one- of neither early cinema nor the “medical questions about social practice and sexual
upmanship where one can witness spec- gaze” but of the expansive physical ex- identity to an otherwise abstract visual
tacular feats of surgical derring-do. Like their changes that routinely occur in S/M videos. image. Whose ass is this, we wonder, and in
prime-time equivalents RealTV or America’s I thought immediately of Pat Califia’s de- what erotic reverie did he—and it is
Funniest Home Videos, the site invites scription of her first experience in the 1970s almost certainly a he—lodge the (huge)
surgeons to send examples of their work “handballing” (i.e. fisting) a gay man of her object of his affection so deep inside of
and provides detailed instructions on how acquaintance. “I got into him easily, I can’t himself? In this sense, Foreign Body in the
to convert photographs or films into jpeg or remember how deep,” she recalls in an Rectum eschews the “universal body”
RealPlayer files. essay originally published in The Advocate in typically ascribed to the patient’s medical
1983. “It seemed like miles…. The walls case history by on-line surgical broadcasts.
The most cinematically inventive of those of his gut hugged my hand and forearm, The film’s final image demands implicitly
laparoscopic operations broadcast on smoother and softer and more fragile that we make a judgment about the
the internet are, surprisingly enough, proc- than anything I’d ever experienced. I think patient’s erotic desires that other laparo-
tologic in nature, if not in spirit. Perhaps I cried.” scopic images simply do not make on
this preponderance of films to watch a the viewer.
nuses by is largely due to the design of Califia’s narrative, both for its tactile and
the camera itself, which travels well through emotional resonances, colored my reaction Clearly, until we can find a model of repre-
the body’s more familiar entrances and as I watched laparoscopy.com’s un-ironic senting the body that is free of social
exits. In laparoscopy.com’s video gallery, 90-second film, Foreign Body in the Rectum, context, the beautiful inner world imagined
for example, viewers move at breakneck which must be seen to be believed. The in Fleischer’s Fantastic Voyage will have to
speed through the lower intestinal tract in laparoscopic camera focuses on the action stay on hold indefinitely. But there never
a “3-D colono-scopy.” Whether due to tech- of a tentacle-like hook device that the can be a body free of social context, despite
nological constraints, or because they bow surgeon manipulates to grasp at a round, the best intentions of on-line surgeons,
to the perceived objectivity of medical “ greenish-orange object stuck literally in medical imaging technicians, web
realism” implicit in diagnostic technologies, mid-rectum. Like a silent Jacques Cousteau designers, and universal humanists. Per-
such films on laparoscopy.com’s roster prefer film that savors the aquatic struggle between haps this is what was so fantastic about the
“authentic,” unmediated action to smoke a squid and a sea urchin, the film keeps the voyage of the Proteus in the first place.
and mirrors. Yet the eight second, 3-D jour- viewer at a remove from the action, though
ney along the smooth, gray-brown lining marveling constantly at the why and how David Serlin's column on science and technology appears
of the colon walls is clearly modeled on of the protagonists. The last twenty seconds in each issue of Cabinet.
Alice’s descent into the rabbit hole, and of the video are blurred and abstract, like a
not unlike the trip through the secret portal garbled message transmitted from the lunar
to celebrity consciousness in Being John surface, which transforms the scene into a COLORS
Malkovich. Such laparoscopic feats are less wild, neo-psychedelic tumult like that expe-
like Fleischer’s futuristic vision of life un- rienced by the crew in Fantastic Voyage. The Bice
der the microscope, and are more like the camera jostles violently as the hook Jonathan Ames
early cinema, such as the films of Méliès device fights to capture the elusive object.
and the Lumière Brothers, as well as other Finally, we see how the hook seizes the When I was a little boy, I liked to pick my
popular visual entertainments from the late obstruction and pulls it expertly from the nose. In fact, I’ve enjoyed picking my nose
19th century. These predominantly silent dark rectal tunnel and into the cold light of for most of my life. This is not something
spectacles were meant to stun the senses, day. Without any warning, the on-screen to be proud of, but telling you about my
amaze the eye, and transport the viewer to a image shifts from the laparoscopic interior nosepicking brings me to the word bice.
different world. to an exterior shot of the hook withdrawing Perhaps it’s not clear how this brings me to
an enormous green and orange dildo from bice, but I will try to explain.
Like early cinema, these laparoscopic broad- someone’s moderately hairy ass.
casts force the viewer to supply his or her The good and clever editors at Cabinet asked
own audio soundtrack, often only the sound The video ends, perhaps as the patient’s me to write about a color. I said I would do
of one’s own gasping. The RealPlayer movie doctor visit ended, with a heaving sigh of this. I am a writer and writers usually say
of endoscopic rectal repair, for example, relief. But whatever explicit story of struggle yes when editors offer them work. So the
splices together internal images of the and fortitude is told by that final exterior idea was that they would choose the color
rectum with external shots of the anony- shot stands in bold contrast to the highly for me and I was to respond. But they didn’t
mous patient whose exposed lower body is cinematic images provided by the laparo- give me the color right away, they told me
draped in green cotton sheets. In an instruc- scopic camera. The close proximity of the they would call me back in a few days. Fine,
tional moment, the external camera records tiny camera inside the living body denat- I said, and I looked forward to this. I saw it
a male surgeon shoving a long, black camera uralizes the content of the image and as a version of that classic word association
tube through the patient’s colostomy open- instead creates something amorphous and game—the pschia-trist says to you, “Just
ing (attractively described as a “mucus beautiful, like a Milton Avery landscape. tell me the first thing that comes to your mind
fistula”) as if he was putting a gasoline Unlike late 19th century cinematic spec- after I give you a word.” Then he says, for
pump nozzle directly into his Jaguar’s fuel tacles of oncoming trains or late 20th cen- example, “Cereal” and you say, “Morning,”
tank. Watching the penetrative power of the tury CAT scans of the brain, however, this and then he says, “Picnic,” and you say,
colonoscope reminded me, oddly enough, ass-drama tempts us to bring contemporary “Apples, no—copulation,” and nobody fig-

13 O
 ures anything out, but the game is fun to play. in the darkness, alongside this unlighted
So I waited for my color, to which I was lamp, and I would watch television all by
going to respond to with immediate first- my very young (six, seven, eight; this went
thought, first-feeling sensitivity and clarity on for years), lonesome, yet happy self. I
and enthusiasm. I did find myself, though, felt a solitary contentment in the darkness
cheating and mentally preparing my essay watching my programs before dinner, my
in advance, hoping for blue, about which I mother cooking in the kitchen beside the liv-
could write about my grandfather’s eyes, or ing room, and all the while as I absorbed the
red, the color of my hair, my son’s hair, my stories from the TV and soaked up the
great-aunt’s hair, my grandmother’s hair, radiation from that ancient, large contraption
numerous uncles’ and cousins’ hair, and (TVs, like cars, were made uniformly big
I envisioned an essay with the winning back then), I would pick and pick my nose
title A Family of Red Heads, or just Red and then wipe my small treasures in the
Heads. tubing and grooves of that long lamp. And no
one saw me doing this because I was
Then the phone call came. The Cabinet in the darkness. And the effect of my salty
editor said, “Your color is bice.” I was silent, mucous—like sea air on a statue—was
mildly ashamed at a deficient vocabulary, as that the copper lamp slowly, in streaky
well as a deficient knowledge of colors. spots, turned greenish-blue. To everyone
Blue and red were striking me as quite but me this was a mystery. “Why is this
pedestrian now. “Do you need to look it lamp eroding?” my father would sometimes
up?” asked the editor. “Don’t worry if you ponder.
do. I didn’t know it either. It was my
colleague’s idea... Do you want something On occasion, showing largesse, I would
easier? Like yellow?” put my snotty treasures on the underside
of the wooden coffee table in front of the
I felt tempted to say yes. My eyes are couch and our dog Toto, named by my older
often yellow because of a dysfunctional sister after Toto in the Wizard of Oz, would
liver, and I immediately thought about how come and bend his red and brown Welsh Ter-
I could write about my liver and about the rier neck and happily and aggressively
body’s humors. But steeling myself, lick up the snots. I can still see him in my
showing a flinty courage, I said, “No, bice is mind, craning to get under the table. And
fine. I have a good dictionary. I’m on it. You my parents and relatives would notice this
can count on a thousand words on bice and everyone thought that he must like the
from me.” taste of wood.

We rang off. I was clandestine in my actions, but I didn’t

feel too much shame about any of this—
I opened my dictionary—it’s an OED for the nose picking was too much something I had
field, so to speak; it’s about the size of the to do. But as I got older, the lamp was looking
Bible, as opposed to the colossus numerous- more and more terrible, and there was talk
volume regular OED. I found bice, though, of throwing it out. I secretly tried to clean
out of curiosity, I checked my American it, but the blue-green streaks would not go
Heritage Dictionary, and there was no bice. away. But I didn’t want this lamp to be
Good thing I have my Junior OED. What I en- forsaken by my family; things back then,
countered in the dictionary was this: objects, were nearly animate to me, dear
“pigments made from blue, green, hydro- even, and to lose a thing from the living
carbonate of copper; similar pigment made room, my special room of TV and darkness,
from smalt, etc.; dull shades of blue & green would be terrible. I wanted everything to
given by these.” stay the same forever; and, too, I felt horribly
guilty that I was killing this lamp. So I pleaded
Well, my immediate response to bice was with my parents on its behalf, told them I
straight out of the ethers of my long ago loved the lamp, and it wasn’t thrown away.
childhood; it was Proustian; it was tactile; it With this reprieve, I tried not to wipe my
was visual; it was beautiful, sad, and lonely. snots on it anymore, to only coat the bottom
It was better than blue or red or yellow. of the coffee table and feed my beautiful
What I saw in my mind’s eye, my soul’s dog, but sometimes I would weaken, and
heart, was the standing, tube-like copper I’d find a new unstreaked spot—I could feel
lamp, which used to be beside the couch in them with my fingers—and so I’d make my
the living room of the house I grew up in. mark, my hydrocarbonated snot—there
And every night, I would sit on this couch must be hydrogen and carbon in my mu-

14 Columns
cous, all the elements of the world must be anced the communality, seduction, and my- seductive, and most especially contingent.
in me, in everyone—would mingle with the thology of gastronomy. In order to Gilles Deleuze claimed that his preferred
copper and make a union, a new thing, reveal the discursive basis for their evalu- foods were brain, tongue, and marrow. This,
alchemically, chemically, pigmentally. And ations, food critics should therefore be coming from a philosopher, seems too per-
that thing was the color bice, a good color, required to submit such a culinary alphabet. fect. There is no need to seek a rational,
I think, because it has brought back to me coherent structure to taste; what is crucial
that TV and darkened living room and child- A is to identify such boundaries, and establish
hood and lamp and coffee table and beloved techniques for exploring culinary immanence
dog—all things gone a long time ago. All Aversion would seem to indicate the antith- and transcendence.
things that didn’t last forever. esis of gastronomy. As a small child I did
not want to eat at all, except for a very few B
Colors is a column in which a guest writer is asked to re- favorite dishes. The favorites or nothing. As
spond to a specific color assigned by the editors of Cabinet. my culinary field expanded, certain foods Blanc d’Abymes. White of the Abyss. This
incited conscious aversion, establishing oenological entry is here for its name alone,
personal taste, protected by a borderline of irresistible in all that it evokes, a veritable
INGESTION rejection. (Of course, many things edible in epigraph to the author’s philosophical project.
certain cultures and contexts are unimagina-
A personal gastronomic alphabet ble in others. There was no question about C
Allen S. Weiss even thinking of eating locusts, for example,
thus no rejection. I had yet to learn the joys Cookbooks. Given the fact that they are
The publication of M.F.K. Fisher’s An of asceticism.) The major instance of such read far more for pleasure than for practical
Alphabet for Gourmets in 1949—the post- aversion was my profound disquietude, reasons, may certainly be considered to
war moment when an increasing number indeed anguished repulsion, at seeing beef constitute a literary genre, however minor.
of Americans were discovering the subtle tongue. For years I had innocently enjoyed Therefore, all hermeneutic techniques
but sure joys of French cooking—was a gas- this cold cut, even calling it by name, but, should be applied in their analysis (semiology,
tronomic landmark, since for perhaps the in a strange feat of dissociation, I never deconstruction, reader response, etc.)
first time in the English language a managed to relate word and object. When I
popular and talented writer dealt with finally saw one, a whole one, in the butcher D
cuisine in the full range of its interrelated shop, recognition coincided with the crush-
literary, historic, aesthetic, and autobio- ing weight of retrospection, and I almost Decoration. Probably the most visible new
graphical contexts. Given the state of theory fainted. Afterwards, the very thought of eat- style of culinary decoration during the past
at the beginning of this millennium, an argu- ing tongue gave me the chills, and triggered decade was the dusting of all sorts of
ment for the role of personal voice within a choking reflex. This disgust certainly had powdered spices across very large, very
critical discourse no longer implies a radical multiple psychological roots, probably not white plates—paprika, chili powder,
epistemological position. As many of the without interest concerning my subsequent chopped nuts, sea salt, exotic pepper, dried
major “crises” in the humanities have career as a writer and public speaker. crushed herbs, powdered crystallized citrus
been articulated in works written, fully or peel, cocoa, flavored sugar, etc. If one were
partially, in the first-person singular Aversion, like passion, is the very guarantor to trace modern culinary decoration from
(Nietzsche, Freud, Artaud, Bataille, Barthes, of taste, marking its limits and establishing the epoch of Antonin Carême through to the
Geertz), the rhetoric of the intimate has the borders of the personal gastronomic present, the comparison between a (maxi-
become an integral part of contemporary field through hyperbole and inversion. Taste mal) nineteenth-century decorative pièce
hermeneutics. The reason that this is is simultaneously subjective, objective, and montée and such (minimal) fine dusting
crucial in the gastronomic sphere is that it qualificative. According to context, taste would perhaps be equivalent to comparing
permits us to situate and express that most variously signifies: the sense by which we art pompier to modernist abstraction, white
elusive of qualities, taste, with all of its distinguish flavors; the flavors themselves; background (wall, plate) and all. Even admit-
psychological, symbolic, and sociological im- an appetite for certain preferred flavors; the ting that there is much bad abstraction, it
plications. Only then can a common ground discriminative activity according to which an is difficult to understand why this dusting
be established for gastronomic discourse, individual either likes or dislikes certain technique has raised the ire of so many food
and, more immediately, only then can we sensations; the sublimation of such value critiques; and it is even more difficult to
match our taste against another’s, and judgements as they pertain to art, and ulti- understand the general lack of comprehen-
establish some meaning in our praise and mately to all experience; and, by extension sion of its vast practical benefits. Many food
disputes. For taste constitutes a sign and ellipsis, taste implies good taste and professionals to whom I have spoken see
of individual style, a mode of constituting style, established by means of an intuitive this as pure decoration, and never imagined
the self, a mark of social position, an faculty of judgement. Taste is a dynamic that these dustings may simply be used as
aesthetic gesture. While inaugurating the principle—not a static qualification or a less rigid means of seasoning. For one of
most intimate pleasure, cuisine simultane- attribute—the origins of which are lost in the most delicate gustatory thresholds
ously offers an incontrovertible cultural fa- pure contingency. Ultimately, the most relates to salt and spices. Whether a chef
çade. Hence, against the solipsism, satisfying means of estimating gastronomic might wish to utilize subtle nuances or to
narcissism, and phantasms of what would values, of considering the question of taste, foreground the flavor of a certain spice, the
be the incommunicable idiosyncrasy of pure is through a “Proustian” digression: lengthy, optimal dosage differs from person to person,
subjective taste, must be counterbal- sensual, detailed, eloquent, due to differences of taste (physiological,

15 O
psychological, sociological). The salt and disputing taste,” or “I don’t know if it’s good, thus suggesting a reordering of the
pepper shakers that are nearly ubiquitous but I know what I like,” and “it pleases me, relations between the five senses, and
in European and American restaurants take therefore it is good.” Kant’s theory is consequently a more noble role for the
into account this very small realm of culinary based on the notion of a subjective univer- “arts of the table.”
virtuality. The field is often expanded, how- sality: the claim that beauty functions in a H
ever slightly, with paprika shakers in Hungar- rhetorical mode as a demand, establishing
ian restaurants, jars of chicken fat in Eastern a universal validity which is nevertheless Herbs. In the U.S., one recent change in
European Jewish establishments, bottles of without any regulating concept. Taste thus food presentation is emblematic. For de-
nuac mam in Vietnamese becomes a universal voice speaking in the cades, the most common culinary decora-
restaurants, salsa in Mexican luncheonettes, imperative mode, implying the possibility of tion was that infuriating, inedible sprig of
etc. The dusting technique simply communicating private sensations, repre- parsley set alongside the main dish. In
expands such virtuality. sentations, and judgements; it proffers the recent years, this herb is often presented
seemingly paradoxical universality of a deep-fried (a Southern touch), transmuting
E singular judgement. Yet Kant’s examina- scant decoration into delightful food. This
tion of judgements of taste, while being transformation of the commonplace reveals
Eloquence. Consider the following quali- logically subtle, is rhetorically and lexically a vast range of possibilities. There exists
fications: “flavor-packed,” “rich, lusty,” “a impoverished: the question of taste is in the exotic in space and the exotic in time.
showstopper,” “a flamboyant statement,” fact considerably more complex, admitting During the Renaissance, spices constituted
“an earthy enchantress,” “a tangy succulent the intricacies of monologue and dialogue, the point at which rare, exotic ingredients
delight,” “lip-smacking,” “more refined but theory and poetry, explication and seduc- entered French cuisine, to a great extent as
equally appealing.” The stylistic paucity of tion, obscurity and contradiction. Kantian a sign of ostentation, given their exceedingly
much, even most, food criticism suffers aesthetics must be supplemented by a high cost: they tended to be used flauntingly
from an overdose of hyperbole mixed with historicized rhetoric, in order to integrate and in complex mixtures. As spices became
an occasional zest of irony (for the negative the singularities of enunciation and situation more readily available at the time of the
moments) and a plethora of clichés. The into aesthetic judgment, all the while weigh- Enlightenment, their role diminished, only
rhetoric of this discourse is highly dependent ing the structures of the aesthetic (culinary) to recently reappear, either in more simple
upon adjectives, which are most often facile object and its variegated history. Subjective uses designed to foreground their distinctive
substitutes for knowledge. The above universality must be counterbalanced by an qualities, or in multicultural postmodern
quotations, quite typical in both tone and existential historicity; taste must indeed be mélange. Today, herbs, flowers, and rare
vocabulary, come from a single review! discussed and disputed, as it is a profoundly species of wild vegetables play a similar
Though the “but” in “more refined but dialogical form of experience. role, in which the symbolic register of
equally appealing” gives a sense of the ecological exoticism is not without a certain
reviewer’s populist sensibility, this should F influence. (Bras, Marcon, Roellinger, Veyrat,
not be taken as a marker of class, for the Vongerichten...)
adjectival riot is typical of all levels of restau- Fire. One evening I received a bill at Quilty’s,
rant reviewing. A very modest proposal: an excellent upscale-downtown Manhattan What is wrong with the preceding paragraph?
either limit the number of adjectives in food restaurant, on which the first item was: 1 Quite simply, that it serves as a culinary
reviews, or eliminate them altogether. This Fire—$0.00. Computer error or Nabokovian screen memory. One should remember that
practice has been of inestimable help to joke on the chef’s name, Katy Sparks? the first Spring menu of The Four Seasons,
modernist poets. G which opened in New York in 1959, offered
nasturtium leaves, dandelions, primrose
In both Kantian metaphysics and everyday Gardens were the sites of the first veri- beignets, and rose petal parfait—all written
discourse, the ellipsis “taste” always implies table Gesamtkunstwerk, the great courtly (more or less) in English!
“good taste,” never “bad taste.” The ques- festivals in which all the arts were staged
tion of taste therefore entails the existence in complex interaction. In this context, a Allen S. Weiss's gastronomic alphabet will continue over
of a discursive community motivated by history of the great garden feasts and famed the next two issues of Cabinet.
an aesthetic imperative, and not the sheer picnics is yet to be written. Such
negation of value (couched in a naive rela- a study would transform both the history
tivism) so often imposed by the tasteless. of gardens and that of gastronomy.
Taste demands engagement, not disengage- Consider, for example, one of the most
ment. It is precisely at the intersection of celebrated meals in courtly history, that
rhetoric, poetics and philosophy that a new offered by Louis XIV at Versailles on 18
sort of culinary expression “defamiliarizing July 1668, where during the course of an en-
and destablizing” will reveal unexpected tire night his guests were entertained
depths and possibilities of taste. In The by promenades, theater, ballet, water-
Critique of Judgement, Kant proposes a works, fireworks, and a sumptuous feast.
solution to the problematic of taste (i.e., the This baroque intermingling of the arts
antinomy of the judgement of taste), most (described by André Félibien, the court
useful in an attempt to answer the frustrat- historiographer, in Relation de la fête de
ing commonplaces posed by the tasteless: Versailles) implied an aesthetic logic
”each to his own taste” and “there is no revealing the synaesthetic essence of all art,

16 Columns
Random Is chance possible?
An interview with Robert Kaplan

Robert Kaplan teaches at the Mathematics What is a random number and how does
Department at Harvard University and is the mathematics define randomness?
author of the best-selling book The Nothing
That Is: A Natural History of Zero. Sina The most important point is this: we haven’t
Najafi talked with him over the phone to even a good definition of random numbers.
find out how a mathematician approaches And there is no such thing at this point as a
games of chance, numbers stations,1 and random number generator because however
other apparently random phenomena. one tries to generate random numbers there
is no guarantee that you will not find a pat-
tern in the sequences.

Does seeing patterns that would allow you

to predict the next number in a sequence
offer any useful definition? Is that predictive
ability different from the ability to find a pat-
tern after a series has been finished?

The latter is so much easier, but both are

difficult problems. But here is an interesting
way of approaching the question. I’m going
to give you a number, which is neither zero
nor not zero. Ready, here it is. Zero point
zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, zero,
zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, zero,
zero—bored yet?—zero, zero, zero, zero,
zero, zero. Eventually you’ll say, “Are they all
zeros?” and I’ll say “I don’t know. I’ve only
gotten to the fifty-eighth decimal place.”
Maybe after the ten-thousandth decimal
place, it will turn out that the number isn’t
zero after all but at this point this number
has a weird status. It’s neither zero nor not
zero. And this bears on the whole issue of
an incomplete string of numbers. Because it
is incomplete, you can’t look back on it and
say “Ah, I see.” This is the position of people
who think mathematics and numbers exist
in time—that they are not timeless—that if I
want to tell you one-half in decimal form,
I can’t just say point five and all zeros. I’ve
actually got to go through it and tell you all
the zeros. How do I do that? I don’t have
the time.

The best thing you can do faced with a giv-

17
en string of numbers is to try every single
pattern you know on it. There are a lot of
patterns around, but a point comes when
for all intents and purposes, you say I can’t
find a pattern there. But of course there
might be one. Our definition of random-
ness is basically negative. Random means
“no discernible pattern as far as I’m
concerned.”

17 ‡
Relatively recently, the attempt to make a Of course. I’m an optimist by default. There’s a website (www.fourmilab.ch/
random number generator has been shifted One cannot help but think causality. Kant hotbits) that claims to produce completely
to using the background radiation of the describes this perfectly. Causality isn’t random numbers based on a random decay
universe to produce pure randomness. But something we think about; it’s something box. I understand that computers are
there too, if you hook up your computer to we think with. Just because I have not been incapable of producing random numbers
this radiation, we will find a Gaussian curve. able to find a pattern, or even if no living since they are operating according to an
They are waves; there’s nothing we can do human has found one, it does not mean algorithm, albeit a complicated one. But has
about it. A Gaussian distribution is a bell- that some incredibly clever, malign figure the idea of a random decay box also been
shaped curve where the peak of the curve in the universe hasn’t hidden a pattern in discredited?
shows us what will most often happen and there. So in that sense, I’m also a pessimist.
the ends show us the rare and infrequent. Quantum mechanics predicts, a strange
I think this speaks to something very deep But it’s also an essentially paranoid view of word to use here, behavior well. So did a lot
in the human mind—our obsession with pat- the world, where beyond every event is a of medieval theories, as did the theory that
tern. We are creatures who survive by hidden guiding hand orchestrating all of it the sun goes around the earth. If you only
seeing, making, and thinking pattern. toward one specific end. add enough epicycles to it, you can get the
right prediction. Quantum theory has two
In a perfectly random distribution, we would There are two aspects to that paranoia; basic positions: either Heisenberg’s, where
have a straight line as opposed to a Gaussian one is teleology and the other is Missouri. he says there may be no randomness there
curve because every single point would Let me give you an example. Do you hear but that every time we look, our looking
receive the same number of hits. When you the sounds in the background over the makes it unpredictable; or Bohr’s position,
say that there is no such thing as random- phone? I think it would be very hard for which is that there is randomness. After
ness, are you saying that when we throw a you to guess what the cause of the sounds all, why should we, with our puny, causal
die 15 million times, we will not get a is, and if there is a pattern to them. It is in minds, reflect the way things are, especially
perfect straight line? fact the sound of the mailman dropping in at the quantum mechanical level. But any
the mail through the slot. I can predict definition of randomness is still one we
If it’s a fair die, of course you would get them because I can see what’s going on, make with our causality-drenched minds.
a straight line. It is not the beginning of but you can’t. As far as you know, these It’s a wonderfully paradoxical position. One
Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, are random sounds of the universe but wants to feign utter chaos. When Einstein
where 89 throws of a coin have come up in fact there’s definitely a pattern to them. says to Bohr that “God does not play dice,”
heads because Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern That’s why we are compelled to find a he’s responding to precisely these questions.
are dead. In pure randomness, one would teleology. Now I see there is a letter from
get the odds so arranged that, yes, some- Cabinet here for me. It must be from you. There could be two versions of your position
thing would not happen more often than also. Is your argument that there is random-
something else because of a preponderance Actually, that’s no coincidence. I’ve coordi- ness in the universe but we cannot see
built into the system. But in heredity, for nated everything with the mailman so you’d it because of the human desire to see
example, if A and B are mating, each with get it in the middle of our talk. If you open structure, or the stronger claim that there
his or her plus and minus. You’re going to the envelope, you’ll find my next question simply is no randomness in the universe?
get a plus and minus, and a minus and plus, in it.
which will outweigh the two pluses, on I would not even use the word ‘desire.’ I
the one hand, and the two minuses on the You see, there’s nothing random in the would put it in Kantian terms. Kant says
other. You get a 1-2-1 distribution. That’s the world! The other thing is people from Mis- just as space and time are not out there
Gaussian curve. The Gaussian distribution is souri, who say “you have to prove it to me.” but are our ways of making jigsaw puzzle
a sign of a kind of ruled randomness. The feeling there is that despite my best pieces that our perception can put together,
feelings that there is a cause, I’m not going so too causality is our way of taking those
So the problem would then be that no throw to believe it until you prove it to me. Both space-time pieces and fitting them together.
of the dice is random; it’s just that we don’t components are strongly at work in us. These causal chains have neither beginning
have enough data about the exact position nor end, so arguments for a first cause or a
where the dice are released, the force it God will always fail. To think of randomness
was thrown with, etc. If we did, we could is terrifying to us; the difference between
predict accurately where the dice would end structure and randomness corresponds to
up every time. This is an optimist’s view of the Kantian difference between the beautiful
the world. and the sublime.

18 Random
When does mathematics first begin to take
randomness as a formal problem?

It begins with Pascal. He comes up with

Pascal’s triangle, which indicates how things
will fall out given a distribution of chances.
Buffon, the French naturalist, found that
if you take a needle (it’s called Buffon’s
needle problem) of, say, one unit and draw
a series of parallel lines on a board that are
just a little more than one unit apart, and
throw the needle down on the board and
count the number of times it lands across
a line, as opposed to the number of times
it doesn’t, you get a remarkable ratio which
is a fraction of pi. It turns out to have to do
with the radius of a circle. After this, theo-
ries of randomness are developed in Eng-
land by nineteenth-century scientists and
mathematicians interested in statistical
behavior and hoping that if you can’t see
how individuals are behaving, at least you
can see rules to the mass.

The best examples in mathematics of

randomness are prime numbers, which are
the building blocks of our numbers, and
have defied our understanding. We simply
don’t know the pattern of the primes. Given
one, we simply can’t predict the next. It’s
been a problem for two thousand years.
When I say, we don’t know the pattern, I’m
assuming there is one, but there might be
none. We do know something statistically,
something which Gauss discovered in the
early nineteenth century. As you go out into
higher and higher numbers, the number of
primes gets closer and closer to n over log
n, the natural logarithm of the number. That
gives a statistical grasp of what we still have
to understand individually.

But if you ask a mathematician about

primes, he’ll probably say, “We just haven’t
found the pattern yet.” Do you know about
the Chudnovsky brothers who are counting
pi to enormous lengths? They converted
their home in New York into a giant computer
lab and their only purpose is to find the
next decimal place of pi. Pi is an irrational
number, which means that it not only
goes on forever but that it does not have a
repeating pattern. They now have billions of
decimal places.2

19 Thomas Ruff ‡
Stern 17h 51m - 22,1990
Courtesy Zwirner + Wirth,
New York
I know you’ve been researching the 1 Numbers stations are shortwave stations which consist
anonymous number stations on shortwave solely of apparently random strings of numbers being read
radio. Is there a method to their madness? out. There are hundreds of such stations in many different
languages. No one is certain as to who is responsible for
These aren’t random numbers. There are these stations or what their function is, but most listeners
many conjectures as to their purposes: that agree that they are related to espionage. A four-CD set
they are for spies communicating (These of recordings is available from Irdial under the name
transmissions continue before, during, and “The Conet Project.” Their very informative website at
after the so-called Cold War.); that these are www.ibmpcug.co.uk/~irdial/conet.htm also has some
smugglers communicating information; that sample recordings posted. Simon Mason’s book Secret
it’s diplomatic traffic. It is conjectured that Signals, The Euronumbers Mystery is now out of print but
the Federal Emergency Management is available at www.btinternet.com/~simon.mason/page30.
Agency (FEMA) may be responsible, as are html. Donald Schimmel’s book The Underground Frequen-
the National Communications Agency and cy Guide: A Directory of Unusual, Illegal, and Covert Radio
the KKN, which is apparently part of the Communications (Solano Beach, CA: Hightext, 1994) is in
State Department. There are hundreds of print and can be ordered through the web.
them; some of them are live voices, and 2 The current record is held by Yasumasa Kanada and
some of them are generated voices. Daisuke Takahashi from the University of Tokyo with 51 bil-
lion digits of pi. An article called “The Mountains of Pi” on
Apparently, if you find countries in which the Chudnovsky brothers appeared in The New Yorker
the Voice of America is broadcast, there are issue of March 2, 1992.
sometimes number stations on a frequency
close to the Voice of America frequency, or
sometimes, as in the case of Liberia, they
will be packaged in on the same frequency.

Without actually deciphering the code, how

can you be sure that they are not random
numbers?

For a number of reasons. They are expensive

to produce, and expensive means probably
government support, which means purpose.

There are also certain stations that broad-

cast single letters again and again. They are
called SLHM, Single Letter High-Frequency
Monitoring. One conjecture is that they are
keeping the channel open for possible later
transmission of code, because there are
apparently occasional bursts of code. A
second conjecture is that they are naviga-
tional markers. Another conjecture is that
they are weather data transmitters, or mea-
surements of water levels.

So you would wager on a pattern being

there because you think there’s an “author”
behind the stations. It reminds me of the
film Pi. Did you see it?

No, I was told to avoid it.

20 Random
Not just for silver foxes
Louisa Kamps

If bingo still conjures the image of some slowly—and steadily draining the pockets says the first number, it goes dead quiet” in
twenty-odd snowbirds, huddled around of its 40,000 daily patrons. Mike Holder, V.P. the hall, “like a library,” he says. “Then
rickety card tables in the church basement of bingo operations, waxes enthusiastically when someone calls out ‘Bingo!’—shoosh!
or Elk’s Club on Tuesday afternoon, perhaps about the financial and social “value” of The sound goes right back up.”) For Oddo,
you don’t get out as often as you should. playing bingo at Foxwoods: “You can sit at a the biggest thrill is calling the annual Fire-
Small-scale games are stronger than ever, slot machine, drop all your money in half an cracker Bingo game on July 1, the anniversary
and bingo has even reached the big time, hour. But with bingo, you can buy in at $10 of the opening of the casino, when the
in Vegas, Atlantic City, and, most dramati- to $500, sit there for four hours and have a prize payout is a million dollars. Whenever
cally, Mashantucket, Connecticut, home of good time with your friends.” (When I ask the prize is $5000 or higher, Oddo tries to
the Foxwoods casino and America’s largest if I’m detecting a little friendly rivalry with interview the winner, inviting them up onto
bingo hall. Seating up to 3,200 players at a Foxwoods’ brisk slot business, Bruce Mac- her podium. “You try to ask the patron their
time, Foxwoods’ bingo parlor is jumbo-jet- Donald, the head of P.R. for the Tribe, who’s name, where they’re from, what they’re
hangar. It is both vast and equipped, as one listening in on my call, can’t help laughing going to do with the money. Maybe they’ll
of the hall’s managers points out, with such nervously, “That’s fair! That’s fair!” He say pay the bills, buy a new car, or go
amenities as a new, state of the art smoke- seems relieved when Holder explains that gamble. With the Firecracker, though, you
sucking system (“When you used to have the relationship between bingo and slots at usually can’t interview the winner, because
3,000 people out there, and 1,000 of them the casino is actually symbiotic. “There was they’re so stunned they’re just off in their
were smoking, it would look like a cloud a concern at one time that slot machines own world.” Because she watches bingo
across the room.”); waitresses serving would kill bingo, but it’s had the opposite day in and day out, I have to ask Oddo the
“coffee, tea, and choice of soft drinks”; and effect,” Holder says. “Slot players sit down obvious question, Does she ever takes a
“very clean, comfortable cushioned seats.” to play the slots, and they see the bingo and busman’s holiday and play bingo herself?
The extra padding might be a positive become interested in it. Bingo drives the Oddo can’t help laughing, “In a blue moon!”
incentive for senior citizens, who flock to slot business, and vice versa.”) Then she takes a second to think how to
Foxwoods on buses from all over the North- put it diplomatically. “It’s something that
east, but, as officials at the casino are proud Robin Oddo, a former waitress in the bingo just doesn’t grab me. I guess I’m protective
to report, the bingo hall’s latest improve- hall who’s worked as a bingo caller for the of my dollars; me, my child, and my grand-
ment—a video arcade where players can last six years, expresses similar excitement daughter come first. I’m just a cautious
mark their cards by touching a computer about the game. The variety of games person by nature.”
screen—is even luring young technophiliacs played at Foxwoods, she tells me, is virtu-
to the game. Given that ancestors of the ally “limited by the imagination. There’s Full
Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation, which Card; Double Bingo, where you’ve got two
owns Foxwoods, were once violently driven rows side by side; Hard Way, where you can
from the land around the casino by colonists use the middle free space. There’s Small
(the Indian population in the area dropped Picture Frame, Triple Bingo, and Four
from approximately 8,000 in 1600 to 151 by Corners, as well as letter patterns, like ‘T,’
1774), it’s tough to begrudge the Tribe the ‘L,’ and ‘X.’ Then there are the ‘quickie’
voluminousness of their present-day gam- games, where you call the numbers
bling operation, which, having expanded fast—they get the blood flowing!” Though
exponentially since it opened in 1992, now she says she occasionally has to soothe the
looms like a shimmering mini-Monte Carlo frayed nerves of players who think they’ve
over the green fields of eastern Connecti- won when they haven’t, Oddo says the
cut. Still, the vigorous bingo boosterism I atmosphere in the room is generally genial.
encounter when I call up to speak to casino Patrons, many of whom bring along Beanie
employees about the game suggests that Babies and troll dolls (“you know—the little
Foxwoods must always do a tricky dance to ones with purple hair”) for good luck, cheer
distract from the fact that it has built its multi- each other on. (Here MacDonald, listening
billion dollar success on slowly—or not so in, again pipes up: “As soon as the caller

21 ‡
 Bingo in Swedish is bingo
Mats Bigert

On my way down to the bingo hall, I ran into any other geometric excesses mean
a little armada of walkers parked beside the immediate disqualification. You can rent a
entrance. How the owners of these vehicles pencil for about a quarter.
had managed to get down the remaining
steps is a mystery: these ancient clients are I wait until an older man’s orgiastic scream
worthy of archaeological research. brings the game to a finish and I focus on
the next round’s virgin numbers. When
If you want to do some time-travel back to the caller announces the new game, and
the 60s, this is the place to visit. Only the the first number hacks its way through the
staff belongs to a younger generation, and smoke to me, I disappear into complete and
they look like they were born right there and total concentration. It turns out that I need
then, in the bingo cradle of the utopian all my faculties as a sentient being to keep
Swedish welfare state. The staff move up with listening and checking to see if the
between tables full of fossilized people. The ephemeral numbers being droned have any
scene calls for the kind of whispering usually relevance for my little card. The physical
reserved for churches. In here, you talk environment disappears and I enter the
quietly. The only thing shattering the abstract kingdom of real numbers. I listen
oppressive- silence is ecstatic screams of and cross out, listen and cross out. For a
“BINGO!!!” which occur about every three millisecond I contemplate whether circles
minutes. I am guided to a seat beside an old are a more efficient way of marking, if the
lady, and I sit down and scan the room. The added length of the strokes of the cross are
first and most striking impression is of the longer than the circumference of the circle.
smoke—everyone here is puffing away. At Plus, you don’t need to lift your pen from
a time of anti-smoking fascism, the bingo the paper, which is clearly a waste of time.
hall turns out to be a natural preserve for the But the cross does feel more aggressive
worst ravages of nicotine. On my left I and better suited to the tense mood that’s
notice a glass-enclosed chamber to which suddenly overtaken me, and I quickly give
non-smokers are banished. They seem dis- up my side thoughts. This subliminal digres-
connected from the rest, and it’s not often sion is enough for me to miss a number.
that you hear a bingo scream from in there. Desperate to catch up, I turn to my table
companion who turns out to be a quintes-
I buy a bingo card for about three dollars. sential example of programmable humanity.
It’s made of thin, pink paper with the word Without lifting her glance, she gives me
BINGO printed horizontally and a series of the last five numbers in rapid succession.
five-by-five squares with numbers between She seems to have noticed how flustered
one and seventy-five running vertically. I am and has pegged me as a beginner.
Across the other side of the smoking cham- “Don’t start playing this game,” she says,
ber is a raised platform where a bingo caller still with-out letting her own bingo card out
is sitting behind a microphone. His voice of her field of vision. “I’ve been here since
is the bingo player’s North Star that guides ten in the morning without getting a single
the lucky winner toward a crossed-out line row. See that envelope over there? I was
of numbers. The voice is monotonous and on my way to the bank to pay the rent but I
nearly hypnotic as the caller shouts outdated made the mistake of passing by the bingo
Swedish men’s names to indicate which hall. I thought I’d come in for a couple of
letter column the number is in: “Gustav 12, games but I’ve been sitting here, what’s
a one and a two……. Ivar 27, two, seven…… the time?… Jesus, 4 o’clock… for six hours
Nils 33, double 3…..Oskar 60, a six and an now… and I only have half the rent left. Now
O……“ To get a bingo you have to fill in a I need to win big to get out of this hole!”
horizontal row, and then there are more
prizes for two, three, and four filled rows. Nevertheless, I’m surprised about how
Filling in the whole card is our final destina- long it takes to gamble away all your money
tion, and the largest prize goes to anyone through bingo. In most modern games of
who can do that before the bingo caller has chance, this can happen pretty quickly, but
shouted out 59 numbers. Only crosses and here whole days could pass before you’re
circles are allowed for marking the numbers; completely wiped out. It seems to go with

22 Random
the territory: the slowness, the monotony,
and the control that comes with pitching
in 2–3 dollars per game. You can’t trump
your way out of this swampy existence by
suddenly raising the stakes. Everything in
this bingo hall seems to be a relic from the
golden age of social democracy and solidar-
ity, where everyone was supposed to have
the same conditions and the same right
to a slice of the big social pie, for better or
worse. And if for some reason you end up
doing so badly that you get caught in the
number loops and lose all your hard-earned
retirement savings and social security money,
it’s for a good cause anyway. Ninety-five per
cent of all the money accumulated by the
Swedish government through bingo goes
directly to the good fairies running communal
athletic organizations.

If we look for the roots of bingo, we end up

going back a long time, to Italy. Gioco del
Loto, “a game of lots,” which eventually
became bingo, was invented in 1576 by a
nobleman in Geneva by the name of
Benedetto Gentile. He developed a game
with five numbers between 1 and 90 which
is still played in Italy today. The game spread
all over Europe, gave birth to many variants,
and eventually ended up in the US. In 1929,
the American gaming company E.S. Lowe
launched the version of bingo that we know
today. The word bingo is of unknown origin,
but according to one story is a mutation of
beano, which in turn is supposed to come
from the beans used to mark the cards.
During the Depression, the low-cost game
spread like wildfire over the American conti-
nent, only to be hurled back at Europe in its
new form during World War II.

I get in touch with the director of the bingo

hall, Krister Fredriksson, who has run bingo
halls since the early 60s, and ask him how
the game ended up in Sweden. At the en-
trance to the bingo hall where Fredriksson
has his office, there are two doors side-by-
side. It turns out that one is for smokers and
one for non-smokers, another example of
the nicotine segregation that runs so deep
in the world of bingo.

So how did bingo end up in this long, skinny

Nordic country saturated with Lutheran
morality?

23 Photographs: ‡
Mats Bigert
“In the 60s, the game was imported to Take the letters for example. In Uppsala, hall to look after, if someone has bingo,
Sweden by a small communal athletic they say Olle instead of Oskar for the O!” which prize it is, and so on.”
organization in Gunnarstorp, in the south
of Sweden. They were in England on a fact- I go out into the hall and listen to the caller I heard that you and your colleagues use
finding trip, and they discovered the game’s to see if I can tune in to her distinctive numbers as names. Do you ever use your
potential for scraping together money for character. Unlike other halls, here the caller real names?
the new Swedish athletics movement that sits at a podium with no glass, which gives
shorter work hours and newly won leisure the shout a familiar ring. The shout is clear “No, just numbers that are changed every
time had given rise to. Raffles and yard and measured, but soon becomes too day. But actually we have talked about
sales were given up for bingo halls, the new perfect. I decide that in a real bingo hall the sticking to specific numbers. Today my
poison. Since being introduced, the number call has to come from a hermetically name is 5 and tomorrow maybe it’ll be 2.”
of game halls has multiplied like rabbits. In sealed box from which no false sense of
1974 the turnover was around 100 million familiarity can leak out. We’ve now gone a few more steps up the
dollars. Today, it’s almost 300 million ladder of abstraction and I begin to wonder
dollars.” I go to Las Vegas Bingo in downtown quietly if this bombardment by numbers can
Stockholm and find what I’ve been looking be good for anyone. In one pro-bingo article
And what about the technical side? What for: a real hardcore bingo hall. This is where I read, the writer claims that the game
did bingo hardware look like in the the professionals come. When I speak prevents senility, but only if you play three
beginning? with Pia Carlstedt, who has worked in the cards at once. However, the pace of the
hall as a caller for twelve years, she keeps numbers makes anything more than four
“At first, there was a set of balls in a bag that talking about “the big players.” cards a mental impossibility, he says. OK,
you shook, and took out a number that you but what good does a mathematically alert
called. Then came what’s called the “The big players come here every day, mind do against heart attacks, lung cancer,
bingo cage, where you put the numbers in seven days a week. We open at ten in the and thrombosis? On closer examination,
what looks like a large hamster wheel. morning and close at twelve at night. bingo turns out to be one dangerous
We have one here in case the computers Some of the big players sit here all day; occupation.
crash, or if we have to play without they even bring their own chairs. We know
electricity.” most of them well and they don’t hold “Yup, a few people have died here. Gotten
back from shouting and screaming if one heart attacks or strokes and fallen off their
I envision a dark cellar where ghost-like of the personnel makes a blunder or calls perches. We also have problems with
figures lit by candles play bingo the old- too quickly.” junkies who come down and go berserk,
fashioned way, while bombs are falling break chairs, and then all of the old women
outside…. Is it important then to mind your step? It end up in huge fistfights. It’s busy around
can’t be easy rattling off numbers forever. here alright.”
“After the drum came a variant where table
tennis balls were put in a plastic container “Someone like me who’s been working
with a vacuum cleaner motor attached to here for so long can now manage the
it, which makes the balls shoot up one at a numbers nearly perfectly for about half an
time into a tube. And in the 80s the Swedish hour, but when I step down…it’s like I’ve
Lottery Commission finally decided to been…I’ve been…somewhere else.”
computerize the whole thing because of
cheating.” It sounds like a kind of meditation, as if
you’re detaching your consciousness.
But they still use people to call out the
numbers, which is nice. It’s really interest- “Of course it can be relaxing, but then
ing to listen to how different callers sound. you have to be really used to it. You do
Some of them “sing” out the numbers, for have the satellite halls to keep an eye on
example. Are there trends within this field? as well.”

“I think I can assure you that no one in our The calls from the city center are transmitted
hall ‘sings.’ But every hall usually develops to five unmanned halls out in the suburbs of
its own character where the callers take Stockholm.
after one another. If you go to Gothenburg,
there’s a really huge difference between “You hear those other halls in your earphones
how they sound compared to Stockholm. all the time. And then you have your own

24 Random
21 aphorisms
John Roberts

1 There are no errors in art, only various forms of corrigibility.

2 There are only errors in art, only they are disguised as various forms of incorrigibility.

3 In art we should not confuse errors with mistakes. Just as mistakes are not accidents, accidents are not
failures, and failure is not incompetence.

4 To fail in art is to be neither incompetent nor in error, but to fail in art is no excuse for incompetence or error.

5 Some accidents in art demand the undivided attention of the artist; this is because the best accidents are
the result of ambition, the worst of incuriousness.

6 Authentic accidents in art are found not made, but what is found is always made.

7 For the artist to recognize an unintended consequence as meaningful is to bring back into reflection the
force of the artist’s critical powers. To recognize an unintended consequence, therefore, is to already have
taken value from it.

8 Assimilating the unintended consequence is what drives the risk of meaning.

9 Fashion a coin from every mistake, said Wittgenstein; but this is only worthwhile if you have something in
the bank already.

10 In psychoanalysis, to talk of mistakes is to give the inconscient speech; in art, to talk of mistakes is to give
the inconscient work to do.

11 The pleasures of recognizing the accidental are not to be confused with the pleasures of interpretation.
Rather, they are a recognition of the point where power convulses itself.

12 To grasp the meaning of an error is to grasp the instructiveness of failure, but there can be no instructive
failures without the desire to avoid errors.

13 Accidents are what reason leaves unguarded, not what makes reason lose face.

14 Artists cannot make mistakes; however, they can mistake what they think is unmistakable.

15 Acting on errors in philosophy allows thought to reestablish its critical responsibility; acting on accidents
in art allows art to recover its future.

16 To know the truth of the accidental is indivisible from self-will.

17 To admit one’s errors from a position of power is to give moral authority to intellectual ambition. To transform one’s
errors into an aesthetic is to lose all intellectual ambition.

18 For the philosopher the threat of incompetence is a crisis continually stalled. For the artist the threat of
incompetence is a crisis continually performed.

19 The artist wants to resist what is taken for competence, but does not want to be taken to be incompetent.

20 To know the truth of incompetence is to know that art cannot speak from where it is most knowledgeable.

21 The performance of incompetence is the victory of failing over the failure of beauty.

25 ‡
Marilyn Monroe and I
Jesse Lerner

In the fall of 1999, a major retrospective of painted a steel press from an auto assembly and roll, so recurrent in Sampietro’s poem,
Andy Warhol’s art filled Mexico’s Palacio de plant merging seamlessly with a stone idol an import that was nationalized at the level
Bellas Artes, the country’s most important of the Aztec deity Coatlicue. The culture of of both consumption and local production.
art space. Facing the deco-Maya masks the industrial age is merged with an older, Contrary to the criticisms of more orthodox
by Federico Mariscal that adorn the build- stronger Pre-Columbian tradition, creating a Marxists, this imported style represents not
ing, Warhol’s Cow Wallpaper (1966) stared new synthesis. The technology of the the triumph of cultural imperialism but a
blankly across the building’s marble rotunda. capitalist oppressors is salvaged and re- reflection of youthful dissatisfaction with a
It might well have been a scene out of the oriented toward worthier goals, but their repressive state, especially in the aftermath
late experimental filmmaker and painter arts go into the dustbin of history. of the 1968 government massacre of student
Fernando Sampietro’s book-length 1983 demonstrators in Tlatelolco Square. The
poem “Marilyn Monroe y yo” [Marilyn In fact, the culture of the North is often discourse of cultural imperialism only
Monroe and I]. In that poem, an excerpt of depicted as bearing reactionary values served to reinscribe the boundaries of the
which is reprinted here, the narrator and the antithetical to the revolutionary process. nation-state in its moment of gravest crisis.
actress wander through a hyper-Mexican Consider Josep Renau’s embittered series Sampietro’s poetry begs for an understand-
landscape crossing paths with the likes of of collages entitled “The American Way ing of culture as process, in which signifiers
Dali, Warhol, and Duchamp. Together, the ofLife.” A Spanish Communist exiled in can change meanings in anarchic, unpredict-
Mexican artist and the Hollywood screen Mexico, Renau gathered images from Life able ways. Rather than an annihilation of
goddess attend meetings of the Communist and Fortune magazines, which he would the local in the face of the bombardment of
International, grope each other on the stairs then reassemble into a damning critique of imports, the foreign becomes indigenous in
of Chichén Itzá’s “observatory,” and capitalism’s inner mechanisms. Fragments the moment of consumption. Any lingering
struggle to overcome the language barrier lifted from the free market’s propaganda sense of an authentic point of origin is lost.
that separates them. More than simply a machine are deployed to critique the system
paean to frustrated male desire, the poem that created them. In “The American Way of Sampietro’s films similarly exemplify a
functions as an allegory of the conflicted Life,” Marilyn appears juxtaposed with piles relationship to imported mass culture more
relationship between US mass culture and a of decaying corpses of war dead, capitalists ambivalent and complex than that of Renau
generation of avant-garde artists of the Latin shitting gold coins, nuclear weapons, and and Rivera, one that reveals much about the
American left, and anticipates much of con- the sanitized, sunny images of fifties contradictions negotiated by his generation
temporary Mexican culture. American advertisements. Owing more of small-gauge experimental filmmakers in
than a little to photocollagist John Heartfield, the 1970s and early 1980s. Known as the
A marginal figure within a marginal cinema, whose work for AIZ first awakened Renau’s superocheros, because of their preference
with “Marilyn Monroe y yo,” Sampietro interest in collage, “The American Way of for super-8 film, this part of the national
emerges from obscurity with a witty tale of Life” redirects the seductive gloss of the cinema relates less to the contemporaneous
globalization and longing in the postmodern original ads toward ends that are diametrically nuevo cine mexicano, and its preoccupation
age. Earlier generations of Latin American opposed to it. Renau’s attitude toward Mari- with feature-length narratives, than it does
leftists did not share Sampietro’s fascination lyn could not contrast more dramatically to the experimentation going on elsewhere
with the goddesses of Hollywood’s Olym- with Sampietro’s. Her close-up in the pho- in the visual arts. A part of Sampietro’s
pus. The Frankfurt School’s hostility to the tocollage Hollywood Moloch makes it clear interest in cinema clearly stems from a War-
culture industry combined with cultural na- that for Renau she is unequivocally part of holian fascination with celebrity. Standing
tionalism to make for a damning perspective the bread and circuses designed to distract in front of posters of Humphrey Bogart and
on this sort of import. Emerging from the the proletariat from the contradictions of Charlie Chaplin, he addresses the
decade-long civil war that was the Mexican capitalism. Sampietro’s crude animations, camera directly in one untitled short, stat-
Revolution, the prevailing leftist perspec- also employing appropriated images taken ing: “I want to be an actor, but that’s just
tive frankly admired the technological ac- from mass circulation periodicals, send a fantasy, a fantasy that I am fulfilling at
complishments of the industrial north, but Marilyn careening through scenes from the this very moment.” Just as Warhol could
viewed the cultural context that produced Cuban Revolution and Coca-Cola ads, elevate his troubled coterie to celebrity
such great wealth with more caution. The creating juxtapositions reminiscent of those status with the designation “superstar,”
aesthetic project emerging from the Revolu- in his poem. Sampietro inserts himself into the inner
tion promised to reconcile the mechaniza- circles of Hollywood by sheer force of will.
tion of mass production with the cultural tra- However, in the generation separating In his short, unadorned, nearly structuralist
ditions of indigenous America. For example, Renau and Sampietro, the meaning of US films, he presents himself as a postmodern
in his grand mural for the 1940 Golden Gate pop culture for the youth of the Latin Ameri- flâneur wandering through public spaces
International Exhibition in San Francisco, can middle-class changed dramatically. with a head full of anarchist notions. Though
Pan American Unity, also known as Marriage Imported styles and systems of signification at one point he collaborated with the
of the Artistic Expression of the North and became the preferred language of rebellion. pioneering conceptualist Felipe Ehremberg
South of This Continent, Diego Rivera The prime example of this is, of course, rock on a film performance (which was interrupted

26 Random
 by a police arrest), for the most part he
worked alone, independent of movements
and groups. It is perhaps why today, years
after Sampietro’s death, many of his films
read as private rituals, defying attempts
to impose meaning on them. His films are
filled with ambiguous images: beer bottles
that arc into the frame and smash against a
wall; long, deadpan takes of national petro-
leum industry facilities; and Magritte-like
allegories of landscape and its representa-
tion. “Marilyn Monroe y yo,” however, offers
a rich set of clues that reveal much about
his preoccupations.

Travel forward in time eleven years after the

publication of “Marilyn Monroe y yo,” to a
Chiapas coffee plantation not far from the
Chamula, Tzeltal, and Tzotzil villages where
Sampietro obsessively filmed all the Coke
and Pepsi signs. In a 1994 photograph by
Oscar Meneses, we see four Warhol silk-
screened portraits of Marilyn in a revoutionary
scenario unimaginable for Sampietro or
Renau. Meneses’s documentary image
records the take-over of a Chiapaneco
coffee plantation owner’s dining room by
Zapatista rebels. Here, Pop enters the Ma-
yan world, like the Coca-Cola bottles that so
impressed Sampietro in San Cristobal de
las Casas. Here, Marilyn becomes a trophy,
a symbol of surplus value, expropriated
by the landowners and then reclaimed by
armed revolutionaries. The silkscreen, like
the soft drink or Monroe herself, is once
again recast and reinterpreted by active
consumers with their own agendas. Perhaps
the superficiality of celebrity interests these
indigenous socialists less than the staking
of a proprietary claim. Marilyn functions
as stage prop for the photo-op of media-
conscious native revolutionaries. The older
model of cultural imperialism is eclipsed by
a more dynamic process that refashions

27
cultural content according to specific
historical contexts, and Marilyn Monroe is
liberated from the dogmatic interpretations
offered at the “international meeting of
communists” that she attends in the poem.
Free at last, she reinvents herself, along
with Fernando Sampietro, as a Mexican
anarchist.

27 Fina Liquidambar, Angel Albino Corso, ‡

Chiapas, 1994.
Photo by Omar Meneses / La Jornada
Marilyn Monroe y yo
An excerpt from a new English translation
of Fernando Sampietro’s poem

To all the Surviving is what’s important,

clochards of the world surviving to be able to live
and also for those who believe in this chaotic world,
they know more than I do. we change our ideology,
What does it matter if you’re an anarchist?
In the future there will be no more private property! What does it matter if you’re a communist?
I see Marilyn Monroe, What does it matter if you’re a fascist?
she is on sale, she is on a poster, What does it matter if you’re a nihilist?
I buy it without thinking twice about it. That’s our ideology,
to adapt to reality.
One night I dreamt that she and I were To adapt to the surroundings
sitting on the sand on a calm beach as chameleons do.
by the calm sea, illuminated by artificial light,
in a bright blue swimsuit she smiled. To be a good anarchist is a great responsibility.
One strange day we arrived, Marilyn Monroe and I,
When I awake Marilyn is no longer in the bed, like the birds that fly south in winter to
nor in the house, I look through the window, a meeting of anarchists. I didn’t know
Marilyn Monroe is outside, I run out to see her. that anarchists met on strange days.
How fun it is when we throw the bathing suits We talked about the mess the world is in,
onto the ground and go in to swim naked! we left at dawn. The following year we didn’t return,
To embrace and kiss the naked Marilyn Monroe in neither the year after, we never went back.
the water is something unimaginable.
While we dry ourselves in the sun Tobacco kills us
lying on the sands I recite two poems to her: if we smoke more than
“Sensation” by Arthur Rimbaud we can take,
and “Like a Rolling Stone” by Bob Dylan, we like tobacco.
she smiles again.
We don’t know why
We met Pablo Picasso, we were in a magnificent
“when painting one must get sparks out of ice” international meeting of communists,
this was his painting, this is his painting, we felt as if we were international anti-communists,
this will be his painting. we who at that time
were international communists,
We also met Duchamp, his name was Marcel, that’s what always happens to us
he was called Marcel Duchamp, he died on when this happens to us.
October the second nineteen sixty eight,
he died in his sleep, he had worked that day. We don’t know why
To understand all we were in a magnificent
Marcel Duchamp’s work international meeting of fascists,
one must have thought we felt as if we were international anti-fascists,
beforehand in the air. we who at that time
were international fascists,
that is what always happens to us
when this happens to us.

28 Random
One of the greatest Andy Warhol came to our house one Sunday,
pyramids in Chichen Itza and in the whole world he brought along his Polaroid camera,
is the observatory pyramid, he took a few pictures of us,
going up the narrow staircase behind her, we served him a whisky without ice but cold,
I couldn’t resist the temptation of sliding my as he knows he likes,
hand between her legs, she didn’t stop, we drank purified water,
we reached the top as if we hadn’t gone up, we brought out the papers where we had written the poems,
the landscape is dull, the sky covers everything, he kept one
there are no stars to be seen, or we gave it to him,
time went by without our realizing he wanted to make an airplane
until the sky was covered with stars, and we told him how,
the moon appeared and we returned quickly by motorcycle. he is going to launch it from the top of the Empire State Building,
he told us that he won’t
Without wanting to we arrived at a meeting of pacifists, forget us,
first we told them that what was important was to take we had a lot of fun with his newly taken photos,
an almost non-existent decision: “Peace for all men, he left without saying good-bye.
and also for all women.” Then we didn’t say anything
and they didn’t talk either, we arrived as we left, Luis Bunuel knocked on the door one night,
we left as we had arrived, thinking about peace, we didn’t know if we were
wishing only for peace, though this means in the house
war with ourselves. only he found out.

Marilyn went to a meeting of feminist women, At the end of the long inside staircase
to tell them that meetings are useless one level below the base of the pyramid of
to liberate women, the Temple of Inscriptions,
that they should stop having meetings, this is in Palenque,
because each woman is there is the most spectacular burial crypt in
able to liberate herself without pre-Hispanic America in colors,
the help of others, outside the pyramid
and so liberated them from having meetings. we ate some mushrooms,
we felt like angels,
San Cristobal Las Casas, we felt we were flying,
is another place in Mexico a man was sweeping the steps of the pyramid
where they keep up native traditions when we were leaving and we had gone.
while drinking Coca-Cola.
We went up a hill near this folkloric town, We don’t believe in God,
only the wind in the trees could be heard, both of us are atheists,
we got there because we must always be somewhere, Marilyn is the worst,
we don’t infringe on the landscape, I’m the worst.
one can be here,
we forgot the others,
we remembered the Martians that don’t exist,
without our realizing a
couple of natives go by,
he is carrying a machete,
she doesn’t see us,
when we went down the hill
we didn’t remember that
we had seen them from up close,
we didn’t remember until
we remembered them.

29 ‡
 No God created us,
we created the Gods,
mankind has created all its Gods
in search of an absurd refuge.

We understood classical music

after hearing rock and roll,
“Get Off My Cloud” by the Rolling Stones
impressed us as much as
the unique “Ninth Symphony” by Ludwig Van Beethoven,
one mustn’t confuse one type of music with another,
every single piece has
its time to be listened to or not.

To the pyramids of
Teotihuacan she didn’t want to go,
Marilyn told me she’d already seen them
on a postcard.

We don’t believe in God,

we are both atheists,
Marilyn is the best,
I am the best.

Each has
created himself
and herself,
as he or she is.

We are used to reading newspapers,

the red criminal section of
yellow tabloids makes us
black with anger.

Christopher Columbus discovered America,

Hernan Cortes conquered Mexico,
Hidalgo made Mexico independent,
I was born in Mexico.

Mexico is in America, America is on

Earth and Earth is in the solar system and in the Universe,
and the Universe is unknown; if it has a limit,
we don’t know where it is.

30
30 Josep Renau
Hollywood Moloch, 1965
Salvador Dali doesn’t want She bursts out laughing.
to be in this book, That laugh sounds strange
but we want in the dark room.
him to be here. We remain silent for a moment.
Night has fallen,
We are still that type of person I barely make out the pale mark of her face.
who when we hear the Her black dress blends in with the shadow
sound of an airplane, which invades the room.
we look up to see it. I take the cup where there is still a little
tea and bring it to my lips.
Karl Marx was a Marxist, The tea is cold.
Lenin studied Marx, I feel like smoking,
Mao was a Chinese, but daren’t.
Che Guevara lived. I have the painful impression
that we don’t
It’s strange that Marilyn have anything to say to each other.
was also a little girl, Still the day before yesterday
it’s strange that I I could think of so many questions:
was also a little boy. where she had been,
what she had done,
whom she had met.
It interested me only to the extent in which
Marilyn had given herself
with all her soul.
I was no longer curious:
all the countries and
all the cities where she had been
and all the men
who have courted her and whom
maybe she has loved,
don’t matter,
deep down all that is indifferent to her:
sparkles of sun on the surface of a dark and cold sea.
She is before me,
I can’t recall when we last met
and now we don’t have anything to say to each other.
For the first time I feel lonely and Marilyn
is lonely like me
and there is no solution because there is no problem.

Translated by Jesse Lerner and Isabelle Marmasse

Special thanks to Carlos Sampietro, Jaime Sampietro, Rubén Ortiz Torres, and
Rita González. The poem in its entirety can be found at www.immaterial.net/cabinet.

31 ‡
 Trickster eye:
some thoughts on ocular prostheses
Frances Richard

Grandiosity and depression are inversions of a profound cosmetic, a meta-corporeal trick.

each other. Fantasies of extraordinary Of course, to the person using one, the
potency and sensations of nagging lack are prosthesis is a fact of life, not a critico-
linked phenomena in the psyche, and so it cultural bibelot. But in navigating trauma
follows that a similar polarity might arise in and reconstruction, in learning to compen-
the somatic imagination, between extra- sate for lost binocular vision and depth
sensory ability and sensory wounding. In perception, and to carry off the artificial as
this light, consider the glass eye. Or rather, natural, perhaps the wearer2 becomes as
the artificial eye, for contemporary versions much a trickster—a player in the realm of
are rarely made of glass. Merging intimate interpretation, appearance, and desire—
bodily function with highly artificial fabrica- as the ocularist who moulds, fits, and paints
tion; representing both use-value and deco- the eye.
ration; versions of which have been made
for thousands of years although science Coyote was going along and as he came
continues to experiment with radical tech- over the brow of a hill he saw a man taking
nologies: the ocular prosthesis, obviously, his eyes out of his head and throwing them
originates in response to injury. Its presence up into a cottonwood tree. There they
denotes an irreparable damage to the sense would hang until he cried out “Eyes come
most privileged in Western phenomeno- back!” Then his eyes would return to his
logical tradition. But as a screen or decoy for head. Coyote wanted very much to learn
lost sight, the unseeing, removable eye this trick and begged and begged until the
becomes a node around which paradoxical man taught him. “But be careful, Coyote,”
ideas about vision crystallize. the man said. “Don’t do this more than
four times in one day.” “Of course not. Why
A false eye is not prosthetic in the way a would I do that?” said Coyote.
wooden leg is—it cannot replace lost func-
tion. That is, it cannot replace it for the When the man left, Coyote took his eyes out
wearer. A false eye does remedy harm done and threw them into the cottonwood tree.
to vision, but it is other people’s vision of He could see for miles then, see over the
the wearer that gets corrected. The low hills, see where the stream went, see
appearance of the world is not preserved the shape of things. When he had done
for the one whose sight has been impaired, this four times, he thought, “That man’s
but that person’s appearance is restored in rule is made for his country. I don’t think it
the eyes of the world. And so on. Contem- applies here. This is my country.” For a fifth
porary ophthalmic prosthetics achieve a time he threw his eyes into the tree and
high degree of naturalistic illusion, so much for a fifth time he cried “Eyes come back!”
so that “after” photos in the brochures of But they didn’t come back. Poor Coyote
ocularists are themselves rebuses for tricks stumbled about the grove, bumping into
played by appearance. Following the circular trees and crying. He couldn’t think what to
narrative of these medical information do, and lay down to sleep. Before too long,
sites1 (which look as much as is profession- some mice came by and, thinking Coyote
ally seemly like ads for contact lenses— was dead, began to clip his hair to make a
those transparent, innocently functional nest. Feeling the mice at work, Coyote let
cousins of the false eye) we understand his mouth hang open until he caught one
that a wound to vision can be made by the tail.
invisible, and furthermore, that we are
looking at a picture offering visual proof of “Look up in that tree, Brother Mouse,” said
that invisibility. Coyote, talking from the side of his mouth.
“Do you see my eyes up there?” “Yes,”
Such shimmering oscillations in meaning said the mouse. “They are all swollen from
are the bailiwick of cultural tricksters, and the sun. They’re oozing a little. Flies have
they seem endemic to thoughts about the gathered on them.” The mouse offered to
disembodied or unseeing eye. Vision/blind- retrieve the eyes, but Coyote didn’t trust
ness, body/object, concealment/display: the him. “Give me one of your eyes,” he said.
false eye is trompe l’oeil to the nth degree, The mouse did so, and Coyote put the little

32 Random Naomi Ben-Shahar

Fragmented Photo 1, 2000
black ball into the back of his eye socket. dissolving his bodily borders. Because he is the socket; a shell covers the globe’s
He could see a little now, but had to hold a trickster, he recuperates some vision, surface. The shell signifies importantly, but
his head at an odd angle to keep the eye although his own matter remains displaced. has no physiological impact. Globes, how-
in place. He stumbled from the cotton- Absence is not erased, but an image/object ever, are medically necessary. An empty
wood grove and came upon Buffalo Bull. from the external world is brought to reside socket causes facial muscles to sag, and
“What’s the matter, Coyote?” asked the within it. The wound is decorated, filled, the patient often suffers from headaches;
Bull. The Buffalo took pity on him when he adjusted, soothed. eyelashes can become ingrown, and the
heard the story, and offered one of his own tear ducts, which lubricate the conjunctiva
eyes. Coyote took it and squeezed it into This basic craving to imagine ways of “knit- tissue of the eye region, may atrophy.
his left eye socket. Part of it hung out. It ting together” and embellishing the ban- There are two ways of introducing a globe
bent him down to one side. Thus he went dage has generated millennia of ocular into the body. In the more radical procedure,
on his way. 3 disassembly-and-replacement. As early as called enucleation, the eyeball is entirely
the fifth century B.C., Egyptian and Roman removed. If the sclera (or white of the
As told by mythographer Lewis Hyde, this physicians devised painted clay plaques to eye) is relatively undamaged, the eyeball
Navajo story contains both the promise be worn on a string over the closed eyelid; may be left but hollowed out, with the
of fantastic sight and the trauma of ocular ancient prostheses were also made in gold implant inserted inside the slip-case of
injury. Removable eyes, injured eyes, and and colored enamel. By the sixteenth century, natural tissue. This is called evisceration,
prosthetic eyes all appear here. Such tales, they were made of Venetian glass, and by and its advantage is that ocular muscles
according to Hyde, are meant to be funny. the eighteenth, Bohemian glassblowers had remain attached to the sclera, allowing
But they are also “a kind of medicine. ‘Eye- established dynastic monopolies that re- the artificial eye to move naturally in the
juggler’ is not just a critique of Coyote’s main palpable in the industry to this day. socket. To achieve similar range of motion
egotism; its telling plays a role in any healing Immigrant German artisans brought their for enucleated patients, the surgeon must
ritual intended to cure diseases of the eye... craft to the US in the 1850s, founding firms attach the muscles to the implant. Shells
As entertainment, the story stirs up a fan- like Mager & Gougelmann and Richard Danz, can also be attached with titanium pegs to
tasy of amusing disorder; as medicine, Inc., which still operate in New York City. the conjunctiva tissue, which allows even
it knits things together again after disorder Established on Van Dam Street in 1851, more naturalistic eyeball control. The pupil
has left a wound.”4 Peter Gougelmann touted himself as the and iris, of course, can only “move” in the
first American ocularist to fabricate custom manner observed in all painted portrait
The ethereal medicine of storytelling admin- prostheses rather than fitting his patients eyes.
isters itself via imagination, and the artificial with “stock eyes” from drawers organized
eye is an imaginative object twice over. by color and size. Peter’s great-grandson Ophthalmic surgeons perform the enuc-
On some level, all prostheses require the Andrew Gougelmann now manages the leation or evisceration, but the ocularist
“as if” belief that enlivens surrogates, business in partnership with siblings David exclusively makes shells. As Andrew
but—as Elaine Scarry describes—vision and Laura, all of whom learned their craft Gougelmann explains, patients arrive in his
is uniquely linked to imaginative powers. from their father Henry, who was taught by office perhaps one month after surgery.
Imagination, like the replacement eye, in- his father Pierre. Gougelmann takes an impression of the
trudes upon the body’s borders, because socket with a malleable “alginate material,”
through vision Stock or custom, nineteenth-century glass and fashions a trial eye. Using this model in
eyes required considerable skill to make— a positive/positive casting process, he
one seems to become disembodied, and to use. They were full orbs, hollow, and forms the prosthesis in methacrylic resin;
either because one seems to have been so fragile that they were known to implode on subsequent visits the “blank” is tried,
transported hundreds of feet beyond the if the wearer progressed too quickly from fitted, and polished. Finally the patient sits
edges of the body out into the external hot rooms to freezing weather. (And yet: to have his or her iris and pupil painted from
world, or instead because the images what other body part could conceivably be life. What makes a convincing eye? Atten-
of objects from the external world have substituted in glass?) It was not until after tion to average pupil dilation, sunbursts or
themselves been carried into the interior W.W. II, when German exports were either striations in the iris, odd flecks of color,
of the body as perceptual content, and unavailable or under boycott, that American reflection patterns, and the sclera’s dis-
seem to reside there, displacing the and British army researchers developed tinctive tint (yellow, pink, blue, or green).
dense matter of the body itself.”5 acrylic eyes.6 Strands of red silk are laid into the surface
to represent the patient’s individual vein-
In the surrogate eye, the line between “per- In terms of durability, acrylic represented ing pattern, and the whole is lacquered to
ceptual content” and material existence a great leap forward. But the essential achieve a translucent “wet look.”
blurs. Thus Coyote can “see the shape design concept has not changed since the
of things” only because he has scattered 1890s: artificial eyes consist of a two-part Maintenance is low, and the patient is
himself, disarranged his perception by system, globe and shell.7 A globe fills encouraged to “forget it’s there.” Shells

33 ‡
 must be removed for cleaning and re-
polishing twice a year, and the National
Examining Board of Ocularists recommends
a new one approximately every five years—
though some patients have made shopping
for ocular parts a more frequent pastime.
Gougelmann has filled orders for multiple
prostheses in assorted colors; he once
fixed a cubic zirconium into a false
iris, to make it sparkle. (“I thought it looked
weird. Not that natural.”) He has made
smiley-face and 8-ball shells; one man, after
a golfing accident, requested a golf-ball
eye, presumably not for everyday wear.
(“Had the Titleist logo across the center
and everything.”)

These exuberant people, like Coyote, are

enjoying trickster opportunities. In their
play between impairment and exaggera-
tion, they occupy a boundary-zone between
shock and revelation, a trickster-realm in
which imaginative transgressions lead to
creative progress. The art these people
make of their misfortunes might be called
“abstract” in relation to the “realist”
work preferred by patients with mimetic
shells. But in both instances the wearer—
collaborating with the ocularist—enacts
an elaborate ruse. Swapping his or her
organic-but-dead eye with a nonsentient-
but-dynamic piece of plastic, the user
activates a potent little sculpture, a sort of
fake readymade signifying visuality and
resemblance.

A sign is everything which can be taken

as significantly substituting for something
else...Thus semiotics is in principle the
discipline studying everything which can
be used in order to lie. If something can-
not be used to tell a lie, conversely it
cannot be used to tell the truth: it cannot
in fact be used “to tell” at all.8

False eyes “tell” about vision in a way nor-

mal eyes cannot; their woundedness and

34 Random Photograph by
Frank Oudeman (2000)
artificiality become necessary conditions for transporting the external object world into 1 See www.ocularist.org, an all-purpose information site
understanding what it means to see. Usually the sentient interior, that interior gains for the industry.
such telling circulates metaphorically, in a some small share of the blissful immunity 2 The firm of Mager & Gougelmann list in their promotional
familiar panoply of literary and pop-culture of inert, inanimate objecthood; and con- literature “a few prominent patients” : Alfred I. DuPont, Jay
tropes. There is the blind sage, possessor versely, by transporting pain out onto the Vanderbilt, Joseph Pulitzer, Hellen Keller, Paul Muni, Sam-
of inner visions, whose avatars range from external world, that external environment my Davis, Jr., Peter Falk, Hume Cronyn, Senator Thomas
Sophocles’s Tiresias in Oedipus Rex to is deprived of its immunity to, its unmind- Gore, and Jose Feliciano.
Stevie Wonder. There are Cyclopes, yogis fulness of, and indifference to the prob- 3 Lewis Hyde, Trickster Makes This World: Mischief,
with third eye-consciousness, the All-Seeing lems of sentience... It is part of the work Myth, and Art (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998),
Eye of God on dollar bills. Coyote’s magic of creating to deprive the external world of pp. 3-4
eye reappears frequently—in cartoons, for the privilege of being inanimate.9 4 Hyde, p. 12
example, when the character’s eyes zoom 5 Elaine Scarry, The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmak-
out on strings of muscle, to demonstrate When the power of imagination incorpo- ing of the World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987),
how far ahead of reality his lust takes him— rates and sees through the artificial eye, p. 165.
or in The Terminator, where the invincible the scary/delicious implication—common, 6 Due in part to the power of the glassmakers’ lobby, glass
Schwarzenegger calmly sits down with an probably, to all prosthetic situations— prostheses are still made in Germany.
Xacto-knife to eject, repair, and reinsert his is that flesh has achieved symbiosis with 7 State-of-the-art eye-replacement includes something
own palpitating organ. All virtual vision inanimate stuff. The body is made death- called the “Bio-Eye”—an implant made of hydroxyapatite,
technologies—from infrared scopes and less through a fantasy of union, an omnivo- a mineral derived from coral whose chemical structure
surveillance apparatus to magnetic reso- rous engagement with the universe of mat- mimics that of human bone—and experiments with
nance imaging and x-rays—are metaphoric ter. I am glass, I am plastic, I am metal, I electronic sight. Researchers at Johns Hopkins opine that
eyes, as are more mundane inventions am wood, I am electricity: I am endless, such “retinal prostheses” or “intraocular chips” may be-
like mirrors, eyeglasses, and of course, boundless, incalculable, one. And “what come available by the numerologically appropriate
cameras. In each of these, however, the split happens after this plenitude, this ‘chaotic year 2020.
between sensory ability and extrasensory Everything,’ appears?” Only discernment, 8 Umberto Eco, A Theory of Semiotics, quoted in Hyde,
insight is mediated by immateriality. Oedi- interpretation, insight—the trickster’s p. 60. Italics are Hyde’s.
pus and Tiresias have the Delphic Oracle gifts—can make sense of such promiscuous 9 Scarry, p. 285. Italics in the original.
to clue them in; Stevie Wonder expresses possibility. “The revelation of plenitude calls 10 Hyde, p. 295.
vision musically. The Terminator perceives for a revelation of mind.”10 
via computer.

But the prosthetic eye remains particular

in its overwhelming, simple materiality. It
is not a metaphor—semiotic agility not-
withstanding, its relationship to the seeing
individual is absolutely direct and literal. It is
not a story or a machine, but a solid object,
a chip of the exterior world brought into and
housed by the body. Because it is opaque—
because the brain cannot look through
it—the false eye becomes a lens traversed
exclusively by the imagination. In this sense,
it manifests an essential aspect of creativity:
a sensualizing of the inorganic.

Thus, the reversal of inside and outside

surfaces ultimately suggests that by

35 ‡
Stalk photography
Gregory Williams

He’s all face and no name and he’s been the insinuated himself into my life, I hardly know group as possible. Asked what Vance’s role
bane of my existence for over a year now. A him at all. in the line-up might be, she claimed that
full-frontal square-jawed yuppie with a bul- he was there to present a “hip, downtown
bous forefinger jutting out over the street, This comes as no great surprise since Vance look.” This gave me pause. What is particu-
this human cipher sucks in all the winds of belongs to that ever-growing segment of larly downtown about him? Okay, he’s
anxiety that blow down Seventh Avenue and the population: the stock photograph model. wearing a black turtleneck, but the beatnik
sends them through my window. With his We see them everywhere, from billboard era is long since over and black turtlenecks
holier-than-thou expression, tasteful black advertisements to magazine illustrations are worn across the country. No, it had to
turtleneck and air of financial stability, I have and web-site thumbnails. Typically they are be something else. It had to be his hair. Cut
thought of him as Vance. so generic in their poses, so utterly banal stylishly above the ears with just the right
with their standardized facial expressions, amount of teasing, Vance looked like a bru-
But today is a day for rejoicing. The construc- that we hardly take note of their presence. nette who’d been given a frost job. Yet what
tion workers just lifted Vance from his They are meant to look familiar and, at the really set him apart were his eyebrows. In
perch, revealing him to be nothing more same time, to disappear behind the signifi- the black-and-white photograph their blond
than a plywood-and-plastic cutout of a man, cance of whatever product they are pro- coloring merged with his skin tone to make
mere billboard ornamentation. And he moting. Indeed they are so unremarkable them appear to be shaved off. The effect
wasn’t alone. For far too long the scaff- that the term “stock photography” does not was disconcerting: the more I looked at
olding across the street from my apartment appear in a single index of any of the major him the more he seemed a cross between
has supported a heterogeneous cast of photography history books I consulted. a Goth and an alien, both of which might, in
characters, including a friendly Asian- This is a terrain that reeks of obviousness fact, qualify for hip and downtown.
American woman on the corner, a Dalmatian and would hardly seem to warrant serious
dog, a cat, two or three couples of various scholarly consideration. Yet the very ubiquity Next on the list of contacts was Lanny
ages and ethnicities, an African-American of stock photographs at least begs reflection Lambert, co-owner of Chavin and Lambert,
woman, and a white man who presided on the way that they clutter up the visual a New York-based ad agency. They had
over the corner of Seventh Avenue and 25th field and subtly stimulate desire. conceived the project to decorate the
Street until today. Their home has been the Mercantile’s “shed,” (the trade name given
Chelsea Mercantile, just one of countless Or sometimes not so subtly. The particular to the construction of scaffolding, wood
“luxury condominiums” to spring up in gesture of Vance, also known as the planks and electric lighting that protects
Manhattan in recent years. Products of our Pointing Man, is openly assertive, even pedestrians walking next to a building site)
obscenely fast-paced economy, these aggressive. The model that plays Vance has and so I figured they’d have some insight
buildings represent—at least to those of a pronounced forehead and chiseled fea- into Vance’s origins. Mr. Lambert had little
us with more moderate incomes—a tures that suggest a man who means busi- patience for my line of questioning, though
constant reminder of our tenuous status as ness. His upraised right arm is bent at the he did put a different spin on the gesture.
island dwellers. elbow and held in tight to the body, so that He explained that they were looking for
his clenched fingers form a muscular ball out stock images with implied motion, a sugges-
Vance has been a constant companion of which the offending digit protrudes. Star- tion of the three-dimensional, as if the
since last summer, when construction went ing daily into his eyes, I began to wonder figure were “pointing out the features of the
into full swing. My desk faces windows what kind of message the Rockrose Devel- apartment.” This interpretation backed up
that look out onto Seventh Avenue and any opment Corporation intended to get across. Ms. Scott’s claim that in tracking the num-
time I looked up from my computer screen Obviously they wanted to project financial ber of walk-in visitors, they found that the
I was met by his withering gaze. Having stability and give a signal to other profes- highest percentage entered the building in
stared into Vance’s eyes for so long (like sional types that the Chelsea Mercantile response to the sign. Vance’s forceful
the Mona Lisa, they follow you around the was a hot ticket in the world of condominium finger-jabbing now needed to be thought of
room), he became something of a baro- living. But were there other motivating as cheerful beckoning.
meter of my sense of self-worth. In certain factors that might explain the low-grade
moments of triumph—after finishing an hostility emanating from this sign? My un- While pondering this new angle on my
essay or meeting a deadline—he made me wanted proximity to Vance clearly called neighbor, the ugly side of the shed zoomed
feel like “the man.” I could almost picture for a little investigative journalism. back into focus. It was an extremely
him reaching across the divide of the street blustery day in mid-January, with the winds
to give me a high-five. At other times, how- The first call I made was to Cantor and howling down the street and office workers
ever—while experiencing writer’s block or Pecorella, Inc., the sales agents exclusively struggling to hang onto their briefcases.
procrastinating—his aggressive pointing representing the developers. Agent Kathleen Speaking on the phone with a friend, I was
gesture might be read as outright condem- Scott confirmed that the images on the absentmindedly gazing out the window
nation and/or taunting disapproval. Yet of scaffolding were chosen based on demo- when a massive gust of wind unhinged the
course no matter how deeply Vance has graphics; they wanted to have as diverse a friendly Asian-American woman from her

36 Random
corner post and flung her far out over the at, for example, Pastis, the heart of Meat- pictures to all corners of the world and
intersection. Had someone been standing Packing District hipness, while dreaming onto the Internet. Paul Norlen, a kind staff
in the wrong place in the crosswalk, he or about one’s unused, but always shiny and member, explained that they were not the
she would have been brained by a flying available, kitchen unit, is to know that one actual image-makers and put me in touch
stock photograph—a most unglamorous has made it. The construction sheds serve with CMCD, the client that had created
death. The Mercantile’s workers quickly hus- the valuable purpose of separating the Vance. Founded in 1993 by Clement Mok,
tled her off to the side of the building and all losers from the winners in the battle over a graphic designer in San Francisco, CMCD
lawsuits were averted. Four months later I property rights. was among the pioneers of the latest
saw a pair of pliers drop through the shed revolution in a not-so-revolutionary field:
planks onto the sidewalk, narrowly missing The condition of being powerless over real the royalty-free stock photograph. The
a man who barely stopped long enough to estate in New York might at first be thought scourge of the industry, these images cost
acknowledge his good fortune. I can only of as analogous to the lack of authorial the same amount whether they are used
imagine how many other near-disasters took control possessed by the stock photographer. for a freeway billboard or on a web site that
place while I wasn’t looking. Whether entirely dependent on the needs gets ten hits per month. Furthermore, once
of the marketplace or giving up royalty rights buyers purchase either a single photograph
But a more happy coincidence soon followed. to image suppliers, the producer or an entire CD-ROM, they can use them as
A graphic designer friend who had seen of stock photographs is unlikely to become many times and in as many contexts as they
Vance from my apartment, called one day choose, all for one fee. CMCD and its com-
to say that she had found his image on a petitors are despised by the legions of stock
CD-ROM full of stock photographs of photographers who have long relied on
people. Within minutes she had e-mailed years of residuals flowing in from old work.
me his picture along with a series of thumb- As the enormously helpful Carrie O’Neill
nail shots of him in different poses. And described it, they were one of the first com-
here I saw even more sides of Mean Man, panies to remove the photograph’s back-
Sarah’s moniker for Vance. Far more than ground and leave spaces open within the
a confrontational jerk, he could be alternately picture (newspapers and books, for instance)
coy, puzzled, pensive and bored, among in order to better accommodate the insertion
several other comparatively positive traits. of their images into carefully chosen scenes
Why did I get stuck with a year’s worth or to facilitate the inclusion of other elements
of aggression? Which forced me to pose in their own pictures. In other words, they
another question: Was there not some- were established to take full advantage of
thing to be gained from the prolonged digital culture.
encounter with Vance? What is it exactly
about him that made me feel intimidated Stock photography had always been per-
and threatened? a household name.Yet this is scarcely ceived as the embarrassing relative of fine-
the goal in the first place. As the experts art photography, as the form whose name
The shed at the Chelsea Mercantile was Ann and Carl Purcell write, “It is important should not be spoken. Then along comes
designed to speak to two seemingly con- that you sell your pictures to make a profit digital technology and the trade attains
trasting impulses: a desire for domestic and not for the satisfaction of seeing another level of hyper-reproducibility. With
comfort and a determination to conquer them in print.”1 Here they are writing about cheap images in high demand for web sites
the world. These needs are opposite sides the traditional stock photographer, the and home pages, the Internet made it more
of the same coin that has formed the cur- person who one day shouts “Eureka!” while lucrative for a company to sell pictures sin-
rency of life in Manhattan at all points in looking through old snapshots: “Pictures gly and in CD-ROM collections for multiple
its history, but especially at the present that stay in your files or on your shelf in applications without needing to pay royal-
moment. When fused properly, high-end yellow boxes may be worth thousands upon ties or renegotiate usage fees. This lead
domesticity and global-economy profiteering thousands of dollars.”5 Thus the importance stock agencies to seek out less expensive
can produce a thoroughly shrill expression of authorship becomes a non-issue as models in order to lower their production
of self-entitlement. The LED sign that greeted monetary gain outweighs the benefits of costs. As is common today, Vance was
southbound drivers on Seventh Avenue attaching one’s identity to an image. given a reasonable one-time payment for
left no ambiguity regarding the success of posing before the camera, with no option to
the Mercantile’s clients; one message that I began to wonder how the system really receive royalties and, of course, no control
scrolled across periodically stated some- works. Who was responsible for the first over the placement of his face. Ms. O’Neill
thing along the lines of, “We’re installing step in Vance’s journey to my neighborhood? explained that her models were all found
state-of-the-art gourmet ovens, not that I called Photodisc, the Seattle-based either on the street or by asking friends for
you’ll ever use them.” To have one’s supper company that distributes heaps of such recommendations. Once deemed photo-

37 “Vance” as he appears in ‡
Photodisc’s catalogue of
stock photographs.
Courtesy Photodisc
genic, they had to fill out “humongous” the vast wealth that permeates much of James has had relatives and friends from
release forms before entering the studio. the Northern California coast. James is around the globe tell him they’ve encoun-
This was the first time I properly considered skeptical, though not pessimistic, about the tered his image in all kinds of random
the fact that Vance may not have even been prospect of making a living from his looks. places. The more his portraits proliferate,
aware of the Chelsea Mercantile or his role His involvement with stock photography has the more versions of James there will be to
in promoting its development. simply opened a door to one possible career describe. As any short stroll through any city
option; he has no illusions about the odds of will demonstrate, the world is full of fake
While recovering from this rather obvious becoming the next big thing. characters like Vance who get in the way of
revelation, the saga took a new twist that real people like James. Which is not to say
forever altered my relationship with Vance. During my chat with James it became clear that Vance does not actually exist and won’t
Imagining the prospect of meeting my that in spite of its cheap artificiality and continue to haunt my dreams. But at least
nemesis, I asked Ms. O’Neill if she could shameless commercialism, stock photogra- now Vance has a competitor: his name is
put me in touch with the model. Before she phy is one of the purest forms of realism. By James and I’m sure he would make a very
attempted to contact him, however, she this I mean that its reception is intimately nice neighbor.
gave me enough information to completely attached to everyday, lived experience; one
undermine my conception of the Mean almost never voluntarily views a stock 1 Ann and Carl Purcell, Stock Photography: The Complete
Man. At the time of the original photo shoot, image as one would a painting in a museum. Guide (Cincinnati, Ohio: Writer’s Digest Books, 1993), p. 2.
“Vance” had never modeled and was work- We happen upon them and they help to 2 Ibid., p. 1.
ing as an oyster farmer in Tomales Bay, define the parameters of daily existence in a 3 Joe Farace, Stock Photo Smart: How to Choose and Use
California, a mere two-hour drive from my way that is rarely matched by acknowledged Digital Stock Photography (Gloucester, Massachusetts:
own hometown. Besides being one of the works of art. Indeed, it seems almost point- Rockport Publishers, 1998), p. 18.
nicest people they had ever worked with, less to discuss these ubiquitous pictures in
she described how he had sung a beautiful any other form than through the telling of
rendition of “Day-O” while they had applied an anecdote. Of course one can elaborate
makeup to his attractive face. Naturally it on the mechanisms of the marketplace, the
was a little disappointing to find out that he means by which the stock photograph
was not the CEO of an Internet startup or an participates in the system of commodi-
executive film producer. How could I possi- fied desire and, most recently, how digital
bly hate a singing oyster farmer? technology has “a single, but glaring, flaw:
lack of exclusivity.”3 But what really matters
I finally reached him yesterday. He is actually is how Vance affects my trip to pick up the
called James and we had a completely laundry or my reading about current events
un-Vance-like, half-hour phone conversation. in the newspaper.
James told me the story of his work with
CMCD. Two years ago, having had no If the traditional discussion of realism
serious modeling experience, a photog- within visual culture centers on the
rapher friend called him at the last minute construction of the image, on examining
to participate in a photo shoot in San the artist’s attempt to avoid worn-out,
Francisco. James barely made it through formal clichés and say something relevant
the heavy Bay Area traffic in time for his about contemporary social conditions, I
turn. Arriving somewhat agitated, the staff would propose reading the stock photo-
responded to his energy and the session graph as always-already-constructed. The
went well—perhaps the stress he felt found interesting thing about these pictures has
its expression in the Pointing Man shot. less to do with how they came into being
Other details had been provided by Ms. than the fact that they are such powerful
O’Neill: his hair color is natural, he has very empty vessels. Once in circulation, they are
striking features and he is a joy to be around. infinitely capable of taking on the wealth
Today James no longer trolls the waters of of meanings ascribed to them by the pass-
Tomales Bay; he has gotten into other lines erby or reader. As much as the advertising
of work, including a fledgling modeling agency endeavors to project a particular
career with an agency and a portfolio message about the product of its client, the
(I’m sending him shots of the shed to stock photograph’s proximity to all aspects
supplement it). He and his wife work of turn-of-the-millennium life guarantees
extremely hard to support their young that they will be interpreted in a highly
daughter and neither of them benefit from unpredictable manner.

38 Random
 Whitescapes
David Batchelor

This is roughly how it began: sometime afford. It was a strategic emptiness, but it
one summer during the early 1990s, I was was also accusatory.
invited to a party. The host was an Anglo-
American art collector, and the party was in Inside this house was a whole world, and it
the collector’s private house, which was in was a very particular kind of world, a very
a city at the southern end of a northern Eu- clean and very clear and very orderly uni-
ropean country. First impressions on arrival verse. But it was also a very paradoxical,
at this house: it was big (but then so were inside-out world, a world where open was
the houses around it, so it didn’t appear that also closed, where simplicity was also
big). It was the kind of area, a wealthy area complication, and where clarity was also
of a rich city, where only small or shabby confusion. It was a world that didn’t readily
things looked strange or out of place. The admit the existence of other worlds. Or it
house looked ordinary enough from the out- did so grudgingly and resentfully, and abso-
side: red brick, nineteenth century or early lutely without compassion. In particular it
twentieth, substantial but not ostentatious. was a world that would remind you, there
So, there was the outside, big but fairly or- and then, in an instant, of everything you
dinary; and there was the front door, which were not, everything you had failed to
was just ordinary; and then there was inside. become, everything you had not gotten
Inside was different. That was the point. In- around to doing, everything you might as well
side was something else. Inside was on its never bother to get around to doing because
own. Inside seemed to have no connection everything was made to seem somehow
with outside. Inside was, in one sense, inside beyond reach, like it is when you look
out, but I only realized that much later. At through the wrong end of a telescope. This
first, inside looked endless. Endless like an wasn’t just first impressions, this wasn’t
egg must look endless from the inside; end- just the pulling back of the curtain to reveal
less because seamless, continuous, empty, the unexpected stage set, although there
uninterrupted. Or rather: uninterruptable. was that too, of course. This was longer
There is a difference: uninterrupted might lasting. Inside was a flash that continued.
mean overlooked, passed-by, inconspicuous, Inside was: WHITE.
insignificant. Uninterruptable passes by you,
renders you inconspicuous and insignificant.
The uninterruptable endless emptiness of in-
side was impressive, elegant, and glamorous
in a spare and reductive kind of way, but it
was also assertive, emphatic, and ostenta-
tious. This was assertive
silence, emphatic blankness, the kind of
ostentatious emptiness which only the very
wealthy and the utterly sophisticated can

39
39 ‡
There is a kind of white which is more than Herman Melville’s great Albino Whale, this ing translucent red, or spray-painted enamels
white and this was that kind of white. There white paled. Or next to the deathly obses- with galvanized steel, or whatever there
is a kind of white that repels everything that sive white that insinuated its way into the was. In truth the colors of minimal art were
is inferior to it and that is almost everything. dark heart of Joseph Conrad’s Captain often far closer to that of its exact contem-
This was that kind of white. There is a kind Marlow, this white was almost innocent. porary, Pop Art, than anything else. Which is
of white which is not made by bleach, but Admittedly there was some Conradian resi- to say, found colors, commercial colors,
which itself is bleach. This was that kind of due in this shallower white: “Minimalism,” industrial colors; and often bright, vulgar,
white. This white was aggressively white. it seemed to say, “is something you arrive modern colors in bright, vulgar, modern colli-
It did its work on everything around it, and at, a development of the sensitivity of the sions with other bright, vulgar modern colors.
nothing escaped. Some would hold the brain. Civilization started with ornamenta-
architect responsible. He was a man, it is tion. Look at all that bright color. The minimal To mistake the colorful for the colorless or
said, who put it about that his work was sensitivity is not the peak of civilization, but white is nothing new. However, it is one
“minimalist;” that his mission was to strip it is at a high level between the earth and thing not to have known that Greek statues
bare and to make pure, architecturally the sky.” But this wasn’t spoken with the were once brilliantly painted, it is another
speaking; that his spaces were “very direct” voice of a Marlow, it contained no irony, thing not to see the color when it is still
and “very clear,” and in them there was “no no terror born of the recognition that what- there. This seems to speak of a different
possibility of lying” because “they are just ever appeared before you now had always psychological state, of a different level
what they are.” He was lying of course, ly- seen you before it a thousand times already. of denial. Not perceiving what is visibly
ing big white lies, but we will let that pass Rather this was the voice of one of Conrad’s there: psychoanalysts call it negative halluci-
for the moment. Some would hold this man Empire functionaries, one of those stiff and nation. But we have to tread carefully here,
responsible for the accusatory whiteness starched figures whose certainties always and we should be especially careful not to
that was this great hollow interior, but I sus- protect them from, and thus always propel get drawn into seeing color and white as
pect it was the other way around: I suspect them remorselessly towards, the certain opposites. White was sometimes used
that the whiteness was responsible for this oblivion that lies just a page or two ahead. in Minimalism, but it was mostly used as
architect and for all his hollow words. a color and amongst many other colors.
What is it that motivates this fixation with Sometimes it was used in combination with
This great white interior was empty even white? other colors and sometimes it was used
when it was full, because most of what was alone, but even when used alone it remained
in it didn’t belong in it and would soon be First of all let’s get the term “minimalism” a color; it did not result, except perhaps in
purged from it. This was people, mainly, and its careless association with whiteness LeWitt’s structures, in a generalized white-
and what they brought with them from out of the way. In reality it didn’t happen ness. In these works, white remained a
outside. Inside this great white interior, few very often at all, at least in the minimalism material quality, a specific color on a specific
things looked settled and even fewer looked which was the three-dimensional works surface, just as it always has done in the
at home, and those that did look settled of art made during the 1960s, mostly in paintings of Robert Ryman. Ryman’s whites
also looked like they had been prepared: New York. Certainly there are a good many are always just that: whites. His whites are
approved, trained, disciplined, marshaled. skeletal white structures by Sol LeWitt. And colors; his paintings do not involve or imply
Those things that looked at home looked Robert Morris was suspicious of color— the suppression of color. His whites are
like they had already been purged from so he painted his early work gray, but not empirical whites. Above all, his whites are
within. In a nutshell: those things that white. Dan Flavin used tubes of white plural. And, in being plural, they are, there-
stayed had themselves been made either light—or rather daylight, or cool white— fore, not “pure.” Here is the problem: not
quite white, or quite black, or quite gray. which is to say whites, not white—but his white; not whites; but generalized white,
This world was entirely purged of color. work was more often than not made in because generalized white, whiteness, is
Specifically: all the walls and the ceilings pools of intermingling colored light: red, abstract, detached, and open to contamina-
and the floors and the fittings were, of blue, green, yellow, orange, and white. tion by terms like “pure.”
course, white; all the furniture was black; Carl Andre: intrinsic colors, the specific
and all the works of art were gray. It’s true. colors of specific materials—woods and Pure white: this problem is certainly a West-
metals in particular—no whites there to ern problem, and there’s no getting away
Not all whites are as tyrannical as this one speak of. And Donald Judd: sometimes from it. Conrad and Melville were both ruth-
was, and this one was less tyrannical than intrinsic colors, sometimes applied, some- less analysts of the metaphysics of white-
some: “Is it that by its indefiniteness it times both together, sometimes shiny, ness. For both, annihilation and death lurked
shadows forth the heartless voids and im- sometimes transparent, sometimes polished, behind the shroud of purity. But the virtuous
mensities of the universe, and thus stabs us sometimes matte. Dozens of colors on whiteness of the West also conceals other
from behind with the thought of annihilation, dozens of surfaces, often in strange combi- less mystical terrors. These terrors are more
when beholding the white depths of the nations: polished copper with shiny purple local and altogether more palpable; they are
milky way?”1 Next to the white that was Plexiglas, or brushed aluminum with a glow- terrors, mainly, of the flesh.

40 Random
Melville’s great white whale is, conceivably, Bakhtin’s description of the classical body of Culture. The Bible, again: “Though your
a monstrous corruption of the great West- also describes with uncanny accuracy the sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as
ern ideal of the classical body. This body, at art collector’s “minimalist” interior, where snow.”6 We can’t escape, but, as Conrad
least in its remodeled neo-classical version, everything was finished, completed, and and Melville have shown, sometimes it is
was of course a pure, polished, unembel- strictly limited in a closed individuality that possible to unweave whiteness from within.
lished, untouched, and untouchable white. was not allowed to merge with the world Henri Michaux, artist, poet, and acid head,
For Walter Pater, writing on the neo-classi- outside. The idea that anything might pro- writing in “With Mescaline”: “And ‘white’
cal scholar Winkelmann and classical sculp- trude, bulge, sprout, or branch off from this appears. Absolute white. White beyond all
ture sometime between the publication sheer whiteness was inconceivable. The whiteness. White of the coming of white.
of Moby Dick and Heart of Darkness, this inner life of this world was entirely hidden: White without compromise, through exclu-
“white light, purged from the angry, blood- nothing was allowed to spill out from its al- sion, through total eradication of non-white.
like stains of action and passion, reveals, lotted space; all circuitry, all conduits, all the Insane, enraged white, screaming with
not what is accidental in man, but the tran- accumulated stuff which attaches itself to whiteness. Fanatical, furious, riddling the
quil godship in him, as opposed to the rest- an everyday life remained concealed, held victim. Horrible electric white, implacable,
less accidents of life.”2 A few pages on, this in, snapped shut. Every surface was a closed murderous. White in bursts of white. God
light loses its whiteness and re-emerges as impenetrable façade: cupboards were of “white.” No, not a god, a howler monkey.
“this colorless, unclassified purity of life” disguised as walls, there were no clues (Let’s hope my cells don’t blow apart.) End
which is “the highest expression of the or handles or anything to distinguish one of white. I have the feeling that for a long
indifference which lies beyond all that is surface from another; just as there were time to come white is going to have some-
relative and partial.” In his elision of white- no protrusions, neither was there a single thing excessive for me.”7
ness with colorlessness and transparency visible aperture. In this way openness re-
and purity, Pater is at least following the ally was an illusion maintained by closure,
logic of the great neo-classical scholar simplicity was ridiculously over-complicated, 1 Herman Melville, Moby Dick, or, The Whale (London: Pen-
Winkelmann, for whom the ideal beauty of and unadorned clarity was made hopelessly guin, 1992), p. 212.
the classical form is “like the purest water confusing. You really could become lost in 2 Walter Pater, The Renaissance (London: MacMillan, 1961),
taken from the source of a spring...the less this apparently blank and apparently empty p. 205.
taste it has, the more healthy it is seen white space. In its need to differentiate itself 3 Quoted in Alex Potts, Flesh and the Ideal (New Haven and
to be, because it is cleansed of all foreign from that which was without, nothing could London: Yale University Press, 1994), p. 164.
elements.”3 And Winkelmann, in his turn, be differentiated within. This space was 4 Martin Jay, Downcast Eyes: The Denigration of Vision in
is following the example of Plato for whom clearly a model for how a body ought to be: Twentieth-Century French Thought (Berkeley and London:
truth, embodied in the Idea, was, as Martin enclosed, contained, sealed. The ideal body: University of California Press, 1994), p. 26.
Jay has put it, “like a visible form blanched without flesh of any kind, old or young, 5 Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, trans. H. Iswol-
of its color.”4 beautiful or battered, scented or smelly; sky (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984), p. 320
without movement, external or internal; 6 Isaiah, ch. 1, v. 18.
It was this classical body, further purified without appetites. (That is why the kitchen 7 Henri Michaux, “With Mescaline” , in Darkness Moves:
and further corrupted in Stalinist “realism,” was such a disturbing place—but not nearly An Henri Michaux Anthology 1927-1984, trans. D. Ball
that Mikhail Bakhtin counterpoised with as disturbing as the toilet.) But perhaps it (Berkeley and London: University of California Press, 1994),
the altogether more fleshy and visceral “gro- was more perverse than that; perhaps this p. 198.
tesque realism” of the medieval body. For was a model of what the body should be like
Bakhtin, the classical form is above all a from within. Not a place of fluids and organs
self-contained unity, “an entirely finished, and muscles and tendons and bones all in a
completed, strictly limited body, which constant and precarious and living tension
is shown from the outside as something with each other; but a vacant, hollow, whited
individual. That which protrudes, bulges, chamber, scraped clean, cleared of any evi-
sprouts, or branches off [...] is eliminated, dence of the grotesque embarrassments
hidden or moderated. All orifices of the body of an actual life. No smells, no noises, no
are closed. The basis of the image is the color; no changing from one state to another
individual, strictly limited mass, the impen- and the uncertainty that comes with it; no
etrable façade. The opaque surface of the exchanges with the outside world and the
body’s ‘valleys’ acquire an essential mean- doubt and the dirt that goes with that; no
ing as the border of a closed individuality eating, no drinking, no pissing, no shitting,
that does not merge with other bodies no sucking, no fucking, no nothing.
and with the world. All attributes of the
unfinished world are carefully removed, as But still it won’t go away. Whiteness always
well as all signs of its inner life.”5 returns. Whiteness is woven into the fabric

41 ‡
42 Justine Kurland ‡
The City, 2000
43 ‡
The encryption wars
An interview with Eben Moglen

In just the past few months, online secrecy There’s a tone of exhortation that seems to Do you think ten years from now we’ll see
and security have gone through several run through your writing on encryption. Do maps published showing the version of the
upheavals. After ten years of trying to use you see some civic obligation to encrypt? United States that’s being released now,
arms export laws to regulate the spread of with these abrupt transitions from crystal
Pretty Good Privacy (PGP), the most com- I guess. This was particularly true during the clarity to fog?
monly available form of personal, high- state of affairs in the fall of 1998, when I
grade encryption, at the end of 1999 the gave a talk at NYU called “So Much For Mapmaking is a very interesting subject in
U.S. government abandoned its efforts. Savages.” There was a feeling then that the general, because when everybody in the
At the same time, the DVD Copy Control United States government might actually country is carrying GPS equipment, one
Association, an organization representing continue export controls, so it was people’s kind of mapmaking that will be absolutely
Hollywood’s major studios, filed a lawsuit civic responsibility to take advantage of the possible consists of the whole structure of
against Internet providers offering links to fact that the controls no longer rested on what we think of as free data. That is to say,
DeCSS, a freeware program which allows a technical basis, and the American secret people voluntarily walking around with GPS-
viewers to break the encryption on DVDs world and other secret police no longer had equipped cell phones donating the stream
and copy them on their home computers. any actual control over end-to-end encryption of their information to a mapping database
One of the lawyers representing the web of the net. The hypothesis of “So Much For which will be a very accurate map of every-
sites in the DVD case, Eben Moglen, has Savages” was essentially that the determi- where all the time.
been thinking and writing about these is- nation of whether to make an end-to-end
sues for many years. General counsel to the encrypted Internet now belonged to the Have you heard of any project like this
Free Software Foundation (developer and members of the Internet community. today?
distributor of GNU, the core of the Linux
operating system) and a professor at Colum- The encryption export controls were lifted in I’m not aware of any. But you can see that
bia Law School, he has written numerous the fall of 1999? it will happen. Data streams will exist, and
articles about the Internet (many are avail- there will be a kind of decentralized geo-
able at http://old.law.columbia.edu), and he That’s right. graphic information service structure. But
is at work on a book, The Invisible Barbecue, like a lot of free-software activity, this will
analyzing the political and legal forces at play Do you think that’s a battle the government self-organize as people perceive the need
in the evolution of information technologies. has given up on? or the possibility. It won’t organize ahead
Jay Worthington met him at Columbia Uni- of that perception. In our movement, we
versity in early May for a conversation on the Well, I don’t think their answer is, “There’s get accustomed to the idea that what people
deep implications of these technologies for nothing we’re going to be able to do about think is neat or needed, they’ll do. As the
the cultural and social fabric of today’s world. it,” but rather, “We are no longer attempt- net makes various kinds of collaborations
ing to delay the adoption of strong encryp- possible that have never been possible
tion technology by United States export before, people will do things collaboratively
controls.” You’ll notice that they took the in new ways. Part of what I’m trying to do
error out of the Global Positioning System. myself is to understand the political
economy of a world full of that kind of
So Iraq is now going to be able to target its content sharing.
cruise missiles precisely on top of the
Washington Monument and not 50 meters
away?

Yes. The military says they will continue

to provide wrong information in just those
places that are absolutely important, but I
don’t think that means the White House or
the Washington Monument. It means
missile silos in Montana.

44 Random
But let’s return to encryption. Yes, it’s cor- What’s your quick list of these consequenc- At the same time, encryption is at the
rect, the United States government effec- es, good and bad? heart of current mechanisms for extracting
tively resigned from certain kinds of control revenue from copyrighted streams of
activities in the past year. That represents When you do the social accounting, you information on the net.
the end of Phase I of the crypto wars, which can’t treat it as though we all live in Lake
was a public law controversy about govern- Forest, Illinois. Some of us live in Baghdad That’s precisely why we now find ourselves
ment control over cryptography. Phase II of or Beijing or various other places. In those in disputes over whether cryptanalysis can
the crypto wars began with the DVD case at places, the balance of power between civil be controlled by intellectual property law as
the end of last December. This is a private society and government is quite different cryptography was controlled by arms-export
law controversy over cryptanalysis in which from what it is in the United States. The Iraqi law. Rather than thinking about government
people are now attempting to control other or the Russian gulag will be more difficult to control over whether we can encrypt, we’re
people’s ability to understand encrypted erect in the twenty-first century. You can still now thinking about private power control
material. So we have now moved quite have an empire of fear, but you have to base over whether we can decrypt without per-
sharply from one stage to another stage that empire of fear more on networks of per- mission, and that’s a different war, with a
over the controversy about encryption in sonal surveillance and informers than on the very different legal feeling to it. The eight
society. In phase one, we fought over interception of communication. largest movie studios in the United States
constitutional and other public law rights can, paradoxically, spend a whole lot more
to encrypt things ourselves. The leading And domestically? money litigating these questions than the
forces against encryption and cryptography United States government ever could spend
were policemen and spooks. Over the past People are beginning to see they might litigating export control regulations.
decade, from the moment that PGP was have a stake in the right to anonymity and in
distributed on the net until the government’s what we now call privacy, the control over Do you think the lines here are as clearly
change in regulations late last year, the personal information. Both depend upon drawn?
question was: Were people going to be encryption-based solutions. If we are going
allowed to keep secrets or were cops and to have the ability to read what we want No. Here we have two different structures
spooks going to be able to control the without being surveilled, it will be because of the distribution of cultural products. You
development of the technology? we are using agents to do our reading which have a set of people who believe cultural
are unidentifiable and which restore content products are best distributed when they are
That question has now been answered. to us in an encrypted stream. That’s how owned, and they are attempting to construct
If the NSA can develop quantum comput- we get around people who establish surveil- a leak-proof pipe from production studio to
ers—if somebody figures out a way to factor lance blockages or interception points to eardrum or eyeball of the consumer. Their
very large numbers—things like that might find out what we’re reading and whether goal is to construct a piping system that
destabilize this new environment in a deep we’re paying for it, doing something seditious allows them to distribute completely de-
way, but as things now stand, cryptography because of it, just looking at naked people, physicalized cultural entities, which have zero
wins over cryptanalysis in civil society for or whatever. marginal cost and which in a competitive
one set of applications, which is the mainte- economy would therefore be priced at zero,
nance of privacy in personal communica- but they wish to distribute them at non-zero
tions, and that will have a series of social prices. They are prepared to give on price,
consequences. but at every turn, as with the VCR at the
beginning of the last epoch, their principle
is that any ability of this content to escape
their control will bring about the end of

45
civilization. This is an absurd claim. Nobody
it but studio executives.

45 ‡
There is, of course, an alternative economy And how are producers compensated? What if Disney targets not its customers,
trying to grow up. With respect to software, Through the kinds of informal systems and but the programmers who make Napster
it’s happened already. It’s been demonstrated prestige that commentators have observed possible?
that zero-marginal cost products collabora- in the free software movement?
tively developed on the net have measur- But, in the end, of course, that turns out to
able functional characteristics so that one They may very well be, and we have to be the customers. The problem here is that
can say in an objective way this is better or ask how the producer gets paid, but at the the people who have made free distribution
worse and is better produced anarchistically moment we can understand that the dis- systems have not used free software to do
than they are in a proprietary mode. This is tributor who wants to do the same thing in it, and this is the difference between Napster
what GNU and Linux are about. You can have a property way will fail. The market will satu- and Gnutella. Once the free distribution
more people doing more work, contributing rate with non-property distribution. structure is free throughout and the soft-
more rapidly, fixing more bugs at the point ware is free, there is no centralized server
of discovery, and you have Lamarckian Unless people are willing to pay for certain anymore, and no point of contact between
evolution of software so that all favorable proprietary content that can be defended… Disney and the distribution system it is at-
characteristics are inherited and you get tempting to suppress. The consumers then
very rapid development. That’s why the Absolutely. The point is only that the distri- constitute the distribution system.
development curve on free software prod- bution structures have an advantage when
ucts has been so staggering to commercial it is free. But free production structure has And the people who write the free software
producers who didn’t know how these things no advantage, so there’s nothing to prevent that makes this distributed network of rela-
could have roared up out of nowhere. Warner Brothers from producing better tionships possible?
music than a garage band that gives it away
This is the hypothesis of “Anarchism for free. So, if there were no attempt to Absolutely. All of this depends upon that.
Triumphant,” and part of what I’m writing make what I would call monopolistic
about in a book called The Invisible Barbe- decisions, there’s no end in sight to the Are there ways for the proprietary distribution
cue. We’re going to have a competition in coexistence of the free cultural properties camp to approach or attack this system?
certain sectors of the economy between market and the fee-based proprietary cultural
property and non-property production, and properties market. They would exist What we are going to see is a strong effort
non-property production is going to win. But independently of each other for the foresee- on the part of the content industry to at-
the same can’t be said when the goods are able future. What is happening now in the tack free software centrally. In the pipelines
not functional and there is not an objective lawsuits against MP3.com and Napster is they’re trying to build the switch between
evaluation of good or bad, and where the that the content industries are saying that their pipe and your eyes and ears; your com-
level of collaboration in production is lower. you’re not allowed to have a non-property puter is the weakest link in the chain. You
With such goods, there’s no inherent reason distribution structure. The reason you’re not control the operating system kernel of that
why non-property production drives out allowed to do this, they’re saying, is that computer, and if you control that operating
property production. However, non-property even if you have non-property goods to dis- system, then you can say, “Hey. On the way
distribution drives out property distribution, tribute, the mere fact that you could also be to the sound card, drop this where I want it
and the reason is simply that non-property distributing proprietary goods through such put.”
distribution propagates at the speed of a structure means that the whole structure
personal recommendation. is contributory copyright infringement and So the real civic obligation is to download
should be suppressed. Linux?
Assuming decryption…
What do you think will be the long-term out- The real civic obligation is to use free soft-
Absolutely. Non-property distribution as- come of that particular struggle? ware. That’s correct.
sumes music you can copy as many times
as you please and give to whomever you You’d have to put every teenager in the How do you proselytize that?
want, changing it however you like. world in jail, and you can’t do it.
If you’re a capitalist and you have the best
goods and they’re free, you don’t have to
proselytize, you just have to wait.

46 Random
How long would you say Linux has been Don’t you think it’s increasingly difficult to Civic duty is, therefore, to learn what you
the best operating system? Five years? It resist Windows? need to learn in order to make decisions in
seems like there’s a whole world of con a democratic society in a grown-up way.
sumers out there who don’t feel them Well, maybe. But when my two-and-a-half That’s the same civic duty that Thomas
selves capable of judging whether Linux is year old nephew is fifteen, is he going to Jefferson or George Washington believed
a better good at all. want to use an operating system he can’t in. Most importantly, we have a duty to look
change? After a whole decade-and-a-half of at our educational system to find out if it
There are two possible ways of thinking life with computers, he’s just got to accept teaches people what they need to know in
about this question. One is, how long does computers as formlessly, seamlessly, totally our society.
it take the current user base to get to free incorporated, like his father’s Oldsmobile?
software, and the other is how long does it That’s just not the way society is going to I made a proposal to the Israeli government
take the current user base to be replaced exist. The number of people who are going a year ago that went like this: Take every
by another user base? It’s a transitional issue. to demand control over their environment is computer that you threw away in the state
In 1979, when I was working at IBM, I wrote going to be very large. last year, just the ones you scrapped, and
an internal memo lambasting Apple’s Lisa, put free software on them. They are now
its first attempt to adapt Xerox PARC tech- You mean demanding to have access to the routers, bridges, switches, and email
nology, the graphical user interface, into a source code, to tinker with it, and share it servers for an entire free broadband net-
desktop PC. I was then working on the with others? Is that how you’re defining work for all of Israel. The only thing you don’t
development of APL2, a nested array, controlling their environment? have is the cable. But you have required
algorithmic, symbolic language, and was annual military reserve duty. Take one cycle
committed to the idea of making languages Absolutely. In the same way, kids wanted and say everybody not performing militarily
that were better than natural for procedural the engines of automobiles to be malleable. essential service is laying fiber, for one year.
thought. The idea was to do for whole You are now done. Free software, scrapped
ranges of human thinking what mathemat- What fraction of Americans actually knew computers, one year of conscripted labor,
ics has been doing for thousands of years in how to tinker with the insides of their cars? plus the physical cost of the fiber and you’re
the quantitative arrangement of knowledge, done. You have a broadband network in a
and to help people think in more precise and The answer would be an interesting one. I little, demographically-concentrated coun-
clear ways. What I saw in the Xerox PARC don’t know, but it’s an important question in try with a highly educated population. And
technology was the caveman interface: you the historical sociology of the American when I talk about building a network I mean
point and you grunt. A massive winding relationship to the automobile. After World on the West Bank and Gaza too, and then
down, regressing away from language in War II, when a high-school-to-factory attitude you say, “This is a gift. We’re leaving this
order to address the technological nervous- prevailed about where the good working here. This is a little bit of what we need to
ness of the user. Users wanted to be infan- class life was, what proportion of those kids, do, two states, one network.” And you know
tilized, to return to a pre-linguistic condition mainly boy kids, grew up messing with au- what, nobody will ever bomb that network,
in the using of computers, and the Xerox tomobiles? tear it up or throw it away, because that’s
PARC technology’s primary advantage was how, if you’re in Gaza or the West Bank, you
that it allowed users to address computers What civic obligations do we have today? get out to the world. That’s how you free the
in a pre-linguistic way. This was to my mind a people you have been chaining up all these
terribly socially retrograde thing to do, and I The digital divide is a serious issue today. If years.
have not changed my mind about that. we made a list of the eight or the ten most
important political issues in this society, my But the truth is that what the digital divide
guess is that three or four of them would be means, what inequality of access means
issues that you can’t understand, let alone now, primarily, is a series of decisions about
have a good opinion about, unless you know the allocation of hardware and software
a good deal about technology. In these, coming home to roost. We have all the
people are getting rushed out of the issues, computers we need. We have more com-
because the guys who know are racing to puters than we need. Giving every kid in the
lock it up before everybody else figures out country a computer? That’s nothing. We’re
what’s going on. scrapping the stuff. And software? We can
provide free software to everybody. That’s
no problem. Our movement is built for that.

47 ‡
What we don’t have is a telecommunica- Our whole political structure and legal struc- At the end of “Anarchism Triumphant” I say
tions infrastructure that is free. What we ture is making this possible: the ease of that this is the big political issue of our time,
don’t have is the time, the online hours. getting patents, the giving away of spectrum and aristocracy looks set to win. I mean, they
This is why we need to use the spectrum in the 1996 Act to people who already had are in control. They have all the money; they
to create a free net—an uncharged, birth- spectrum in order to build an HDTV system have the politics; they have the shape of
right-bandwidth system. I propose a simple, that they’re not building. The Federal Com- things to come in their own view. The force
birthright-bandwidth structure, using just munications Commission’s fundamental is with them. When I say there are these
the current analog television frequencies strategy is to permit duopolies in whole areas reasons why things ought to be different,
broadcasters have already promised to give of their traditional regulated fields so long as I’m talking in the way people were talking in
up under the 1996 Telecommunications Act. these duopolies then go out and compete European rathskellers in 1848. “There ought
It’s good spectrum. It goes through walls against other duopolies. All these structures to be democracy; there ought to be liberal-
very nicely. It does all the things we need. are for sale because our politics is for sale. ism; there ought to be freedom; aristocracy
We could give everybody who is here 400 The law’s power to create property is now in ought to go; the ancien régime ought to
megabits of bi-directional bandwidth.Maybe use in a very heavy way. disappear.” I end with Chou En-Lai talking to
we could go to 600. You’re not a television Oriana Fallaci: “What’s the meaning of the
broadcaster, but you’re a radio station, and Alan Greenspan says we should beware of French Revolution?” she says; “Too soon to
if you and your friends get together, two or government regulation and interference in tell,” he says. This is a long-term question.
three of you, you can be a television station. the market, and that government should Are Rupert Murdoch and Michael Eisner
My proposal is that bandwidth is personal limit itself to creating and protecting prop- going to prevail in the short term? Yes. Are
to you. It’s in a box like your cell phone. You erty, real and intellectual, as though there they going to prevail fifty years from now?
take it to work in the morning and contribute weren’t regulation and intervention in the I don’t know.
that bandwidth to your employer. You take market already. We have massive market
it to church, to your clubs, your bowling intervention by legislators who have the But what kills ancien régimes is not that they
league, wherever you go. The idea is that power to create property rights through law are reactionary. What makes the ancien
civil society is constituted around the notion and who are selling that power for bribes we régime fall is that it is modernizing. This is
of an equality of access to communications. call campaign contributions. We can’t create the problem of the French in the 1780s; this
We should be living in an environment in a free anything, because it is ideologically is the problem of the Iranians in the 1970s;
which the recognition is that the building of and politically ineffective for things to be this will be the problem of the Chinese in
the public infrastructure allows us to render free. Making things free doesn’t bring in the next decade. When you modernize, you
connection as completely and obviously campaign contributions. begin the process of change and enable new
a personal right as driving on the street or forms of human growth and expression. It’s
walking in the park or drinking the water or And yet you seem to feel that, ultimately, difficult to keep those processes under con-
breathing the air. free software and free cultural distribution trol. The processes now being lit as human-
will simply happen as a result of the ity comes into a new relationship with itself,
What do you see as the immediate cultural increasing ease of communication, and of a world where everybody is connected to
and political roadblocks in the way of that creating cooperative, information-sharing everybody else without intermediaries,
kind of a birthright re-conception of band- communities. that social structure, that condition of
width? massive interconnection that we call the
Internet, changes everything in profound
The answer is “the invisible barbecue,” the ways. They are modernizing this regime.
way our politics is owned. That’s the prob- They think they are going to control it, that
lem. That’s why I am writing about a three- property relations, legal relations, technology,
cornered entity: technology, law, and politics Lawrence Lessig’s “code doing the work of
in this age of corruption. That’s what we law” kind of idea, that all of this is going to
have. We’re making land rushes. We’re make them stable. But it is not going to do
trying to turn everything into property. that, in my opinion. It is going to produce
That’s the conceptualization. The relevance the hunger for the various kinds of freedom
of encryption is that encryption is a device and liberation that the net makes possible.
for turning bitstreams into property by creat- If they stand between the people and that
ing the power to exclude. In order to have freedom, they are going to be pushed aside.
the right to exclude from bitstreams you Now, they have money; they have power;
need encryption. they have thought; they have influence. It
does not have to happen to them.

48 Random
What if it turns out that people are content Won’t some kinds of cultural production Of course technological change changes the
with the level of freedom that Windows simply fall by the wayside in a world of free forms of art. There’s no question about it.
2010 provides them? What if some minimal distribution? And the social environment too. Americans
level of the kind of freedom you’re talking listen to music today. They don’t make
about is enough to create satisfaction? Of course, but look, the same is true with music. That’s a whole profound change in
respect to pyramids. Without hydraulic des- one generation in the history of music in the
Of course, in the meantime, in that world potism and the divine right kingship of the world. Music was a thing people made; now
of 2010, we’ve moved towards being a pharaoh, we will underproduce pyramids. it’s a thing we hear. I am a non-maker, just a
pay-per-use society for culture. The book Now, we’ve been underproducing pyramids listener to music. I have an enormous privi-
publishing industry hasn’t stood still. It’s for three thousand years, and pyramids are lege, as I see it, to live at the beginning of
selling e-books per read. The music industry beautiful but it isn’t hurting us that we don’t the digital era, when music from all over
is trying to sell you songs per listen. What make them anymore. Sure, the structure of the world is available, before it has all been
you have in mind is a bargain in which we art and expression is related to the material homogenized and paved over.
sort of stay the same as we migrate techno- understructure of society. You don’t have to
logically. When we look at how it really func- be a Marxist to think that. In a world of really Necessarily homogenized?
tions—technologically, politically, economi- free stuff, I think there would be a lot fewer
cally—we find ourselves moving in a world Arnold Schwarzenegger movies, but I think There are a zillion different things that could
in which we can have many different things, $100 million movies don’t represent a par- happen. The next great oud virtuoso may be
but staying the same is really hard. From ticularly good form of free stuff. a fifteen-year-old Vietnamese girl who has
the point of view of the copyright industries, never seen an oud and who has never been
the culture manufacturers, the limited term Any sort of high initial-capital-cost cultural in the Middle East, but who is listening to
of copyright is unacceptable. What Disney production would seem hard to justify. Blade one of the great oud virtuosi from the Sudan
went through to keep the mouse from Runner probably doesn’t get made either. or from Iraq, and decides to play that thing
expiring is just the beginning of that issue. herself. I can now listen to a choral musician
Limited term is not acceptable. The first Absolutely. On the other hand, we’re going from Senegal playing with a Norwegian
sale doctrine is not acceptable. Fair use to have a golden age of poetry such as the vocalist and a mouth harp player. It isn’t
rights are not acceptable. In the world of world has not seen in a thousand years. necessarily homogenizing, but there are
the electronic, absolutely free, frictionless Even traditional art forms may do very well. forces for homogeneity doing very well at
copy, they need to move more and more The literature for two pianos is due for an the moment. It is their activity that we are
towards a controlled environment. The logic enormous revival. Fifteen years from now primarily talking about. They are the people
of the situation compels them to all or nothing the dominant form of two pianos literature who want to encrypt and to own. Musicians
solutions, and I think they’re going to get is going to consist of one live and one dead all over the world looking for an audience
nothing instead of all. pianist. The whole ability for us to engage in don’t show as their primary concern that
jamming with Sidney Bechet, for instance, they want to encrypt their music and keep it
But they are groping. I don’t think all of has only begun to be discussed. What Bill away from people. Ownership and homog-
this is going to be done in a ham-fisted and Evans did in Conversations With Myself enization have a relationship to one another.
thoughtless way. Jack Valenti has to die. is going to become conversations with They’re not just casually, contextually found
You can’t go into the twenty-first century everybody. The only problem will be that in the same places. The goal of reaching the
with Jack Valenti as the only face you have, if I want to jam with Sidney Bechet I can’t, mass audience and getting paid for each
because nineteen-year-olds are not going to because somebody owns Sidney Bechet’s and every eardrum is also the goal of homo-
accept that. There’s going to have to be a dif- music. There are ranges of collaboration, genization.
ferent way to do it. They need somebody as new forms of art, new ways of making and
good as Chuck D, and they don’t have that delivering everything, including dramatic
yet. But there will be an attempt, there will video, that will come up, and there are art
be lots of attempts to find a way. forms whose names we don’t know yet that
are going to happen. You meet people who
say, “If there weren’t property, then nobody
would make the Flintstones.” To that, you
have to say, “Well, what do we get on the
other side? What’s the name of all those art
forms that we can’t have now and that we
will have then?” The social accounting is
done in a funny way.

49 ‡
What kind of penetration does free software Or the question might be, how do you know But money is also a real problem. There are
need to have before competing processes there’s not going to simply be a permanent billions of people all over the world who
start to organize themselves? 10%, or whatever percentage, of the deeply need computers and software and some
technologically literate, and everybody way to connect. This is a major issue of
It has it now. Under the skin of the beast, else? economic resources. How can free software
free software is everywhere. The real ques- not win? Where’s the money going to come
tion is: What’s the difference between the I believe that kids growing up with com- from to buy all those Windows licenses?
technologically clued-in and the technologi- puters are going to want to know how to We are, after all, engaged in a capitalist
cally checked-out? The answer is: what change them. enterprise on a bad business model. If they
they use. How big does the technologically want everybody to use it, at a minimum the
clued-in population have to be before new I hope that’s true. price has to be zero. At a minimum…I don’t
ways of thinking about politics and econom- know whether it takes fifteen or twenty
ics and society take hold? Quite large. But But you’ve expressed some doubt about years to do Microsoft in, they’re eventually
we’re going there. We’re going to a society that and that’s the experiment we are con- going down. You can’t make inferior stuff
which is not this one. We are standing in the ducting. We will find out which of us is right and sell it at high prices indefinitely when
middle of a tidal wave and trying to figure about that in another ten or fifteen years. the good stuff is free. For different users
out how wet we are around the ankles. It A lot rides on it. The whole point of free is there are different answers to these ques-
just doesn’t matter very much. One of the freedom to change, not low cost. In the world tions, But an awful lot of people all over the
many lessons I’ve learned from Richard we are moving towards, the primary power world need software. They are not going
Stallman over my years of working with him distinction, the class line, is between people to pay $90 for an operating system which
is that I have strategic views, and I would who know how to change the behavior of doesn’t work but is compatible with all the
say, “Richard, we need to have this. We computers and those who don’t. Because other non-working operating systems all
need to have that. We need to do this or this that kind of knowledge, in particular the over the planet. Instead, they’ll produce
to meet the current situation.” And Richard ability to interact with complex technological something else, and it will be free. And then
would say, “What needs doing will get done. systems to alter their behavior, is power they’ll have an investment in free. Sooner
What people need, what people want, over ordinary daily life in a profound way. or later, somebody somewhere will begin to
they’ll make.” recognize that societies pay pretty heavily
for Windows too.
That seems to be GNU’s organizing principle.
We’ll see. We should have this conversation
That’s an important lesson. We will get twenty years from now.
where we are going when the people who
need to be there are around. I don’t know Oh, we’ll all be having this conversation
how long that takes. I don’t know exactly constantly.
what the numbers are. I don’t worry that
they won’t show up, and maybe the ques- The full text of this interview and an update

tion “How many?” is really “How do you on developments in these areas is available at

know they’re all going to show up sooner or www.immaterial.net/cabinet.

later?”

50
50
 The love-bug
Luke Murphy

Two of the biggest computer stories this MS Outlook and also the Windows Registry.
year are the Microsoft anti-trust suit and the The Registry is that particular file that
advent of highly malicious viruses spread by Windows uses to keep track of what pro-
email. These are related much more closely grams are installed, where they are on the
than might first appear. Microsoft has be- hard drive, and critically, what particular
come the most pervasive software supplier types of files are associated with those pro-
in the world with the unique position of grams. Because of VBS permissions,
supplying not only the operating system for the “LOVE-LETTER-FOR-YOU.vbs” virus
most computers manufactured today, but was able to mail a copy of itself to the Out-
supplying the key business software to run look mail list, alter the registry, and replicate
on those same machines. The pervasive use itself by replacing every file with the exten-
of Microsoft products and the demands we sions .jpg, .mps, and .js (as well as files
have for software has directed development with the .css, .js, .vbs extensions and others
of much more tightly integrated programs. in variants of the virus) with a copy of itself.
In order for us to fully manipulate files and Now this could only occur in an environment
jump from program to program and flow where scripts that normally have very few
our data, Microsoft had to open the barriers permissible activities have been enabled
between programs and the operating sys- with extensive control over other programs
tem. This combination of tightly integrated and the operating system software itself.
software with a ubiquitous operating In other words, to accommodate the fluid
system has left our critical and personal installation of plug-ins, games, download-
information susceptible. The “I-Love-You” able upgrades, and certain programs
and “Melissa” viruses have highlighted this through the browser, scripts such as VBS
new condition. have been given the ability to directly in-
struct the operating system to perform
The embedding of pictures in email is no critical tasks and affect key parts of the sys-
different from the embedding of scripts in tem. The “I-LOVE-YOU” virus exploited all
other programs. The scripts, like the pro- those open doors between the internet, the
grams they run on, can have access to global browser, Outlook, and the operating system.
properties of your computer. Scripts are
small pieces of computer code that instruct The VBS of the love bug highlights what
other programs to perform certain tasks or is going to happen more and more. When
to automate certain functions. MS Word the technology is perfect for having a little
“Macros,” which generate windows that icon of a Visa card on your desktop that you
pop open during web surfing, are scripts. merely drop on a web page to buy a product,
The sorting of file views in Windows use a porous operating system is needed to al-
scripts. Some of these scripts have become low programs to talk to each other in a fluid
very sophisticated “languages,” and are key way. Quick and clean integration is a solu-
to the fluid automation and integration that tion—but the trade off is security. The love
is found in such groups of programs as MS bug augurs just one of the most obvious
Office Suite. They also enable sophisticated holes right now. Currently, our systems are
interaction of online content and services. very exposed. This precarious situation is
Playing music or automatically installing the directly the result of our impulse to connect
files necessary to do this are all script-driven. as much as possible with each other and to
The “I-Love-You” virus took advantage of make our systems as integrated as possible.
this integration and exposed how this has It is our demand for convenience, flexibility,
extended to critical parts of the operating integration, and automation that drives com-
system as a whole. When the virus was mercial developers to make highly integrated
clicked on, it booted up a piece of software software suites. Of course, it is also a big
called “Windows Scripting Host,” which payoff for these companies because the
allowed Visual Basic Scripts (VBS) to run. more pervasive and extensive their product,
The virus is able to run independently of the more we are committed to their world.
such related programs as Internet Explorer.
Because the virus was written in VBS, it had
access to the email and address book of

51 ‡
Anachronistic modernism:
numbers stations, static, and the
Cold War of poetry
Tan Lin

Like radio and telegraph mediums—as well as digital transmission No filter. Highly inefficient encoding (which becomes its opposite
formats and pulse code modulations that were developed to ensure (valorized) in a ‘poetic’ (outdated) medium). Maximum attenuation
the secrecy of transmitted messages—number stations are an of signal. Maximum phase shift. Hence a technology biased towards
archaic survivor of espionage practices dating from WWI and con- noise over a linear channel. Most recent “experimental” poetry is
tinuing in the post-Cold War era. As such, numbers stations broad- political ideology reconfigured as disco party with no noise. Noise
casts bear an uncanny resemblance to another anachronism: mod- is random. A filtered signal suggests where it is going and what is
ernist literature, or what might be more aptly deemed the Literature coming next. “How can we represent or encode messages so as to
of Information, itself conditioned by early technological develop- obtain the fastest possible transmission over the noisy channel?”
ments in radio transmission and encryption. (Shannon) One of the speakers is dead. One of our presidents is
being shot. The specter of JFK haunts Ashbery’s poetry more
In 1939 Ernest Vincent Wright published a 267-page novel, Gadsby, than any other contemporary poet with the exception of certain of
where the letter E was completely eliminated: Warhol’s factory goers, and other poets glued to that aura. Let me
pretend for a minute to be Gertrude Stein, who is no longer living
Upon this basis I am going to show you how a bunch of bright young or thus speaking to you but exists now like a former president, i.e.,
folks did find a champion.... an endless sound recording, a transgendered or homoerotic gramo-
phone of herself speaking to herself, especially in her monstrously
The following was produced by feeding words from a biography of long book called The Making of Americans, which Edmund Wilson
John Cage into a language-generating program that replicates what said was very queer and very boring and confessed to having not
Clyde Shannon calls second-order word approximation: read. The book should be mandatory reading for presidential hope-
fuls. The best kind of writing creates a similar deeply repressed
Automatic some of which is a method for arriving at the sound track of layered and transexual voicings. The greatest poems
summer of 1949. are psychotropic poems that cannot be read but only listened to.
His sixtieth the image without looking.
He songs disjunction the wife. Tennyson was the first to transform his voice into a live mechanical
Some of which its theatre eliminates. recording instrument in In Memoriam and to induce a trance state of
Some of which are its other concerts. automatic listening. Unfortunately, no one has studied the relation
And reawakened retrospective upon which it is drawn. of twentieth-century literature to the repetitive drone of mid-70s disco
music or its logical antecedent, the gramophone, along with the
Like much recent experimental poetry, numbers channels empha- pre-recorded and mechanical music pressed into wax cylinders (1891)
size concealment and high information compression. Both mediums and the early Edison discs, whose invention in 1912 coincides with
tend to disguise a conservative heritage and a romantic ideology T.S. Eliot’s promulgation of a timeless and impersonal modernism,
behind 70s bell-bottoms, mirror balls, Jimi Hendrix riffs and outra- one marked by the disintegration of voices into background music or
geous hair. Literature is nothing but the residue of an old technology sound, a peculiar recording of voicelessness that one hears in both
in the process of reinventing itself as static. Such static compre- The Waste Land and Four Quartets as well as in much electronica.
hends the (defeated) lyricism of the Cold War, with its suggestions
of meaningful and private messages (encrypted), i.e., voice. It alone . . . . .. .. . . .. . . . . . . . . .. .. . .. .. . .. .. . . . . .. .
constitutes, even as it cloaks, the attack of the psyche by an outside
party (squelch factor) or by those in control of the channels of trans- Most experimental literature of the twentieth century was beset by
mission (broadcast and print media, generally). In John Ashbery’s po- noise, i.e., a form of preserving uncertainty vis-à-vis a (weak) signal
etry, the noise created by eavesdropping, code cracking, and other source and a signal’s “lost” meaning. Not surprisingly, in the twenti-
forms of electronic surveillance have been coded as a very late form eth century an entire body of literature has emerged out of social
of four-on-the floor disco-romanticism, which is to say, all Cold War and technological practices considered outmoded: the uncrackable
political undertones have been squelched and transmuted into the code, a.k.a. noise, secret telepathic communications, the trance
insidious laugh track from a gay television sitcom. communiqué (usually via a medium and originating with the“dead”).
Numerous poetic works provide a corollary to the numbers stations’
It really get to me. This is a glove broadcasts. All were premised on receiving signals or messages
It do something to me. or a book from a book club from a distance, or transcribing voices into the present in a disguised

52 Random
technological form perceived as moribund. Hence the presence of information (recycling) should be kept relatively constant, which is
ghostly or quasi-spiritual voices interjected into the corpse of poet to say it approaches the limit imposed by nature: the due sum of all
or tradition: Jack Spicer’s radio broadcasts/receptions wherein the sound signals sent to the ear. At this point all sorts of mistakes occur
poet functions as a damaged radio; Bob Brown’s reading machines and it is hard to tell if they are occurring in the signal source or in the
designed to transfigure the master tapes into new visual (twittering) receptor. Such mistakes ought to be manifested as jerks of the eye
forms of poetry; T.S. Eliot’s cryptogram of disguised (indistinguishable, on the page, otherwise known as saccadic movements. At the
hence voiceless) voices known as The Waste Land; Stein’s repetitive center of the eye’s vision there is clarity but beyond a one-degree
sentence patterns; John Cage’s vertical hieroglyphs and lectures on angle from this foeva centralis everything else is in linguistic blur.
nothing; and more recently the machine-based protocol-languages
of Michael Palmer and John Ashbery, where information networks For example, John Ashbery’s finest works suggest that a poem
and neural-processing systems are subject to compression and ought to be written in discrete 8-track production. Because of that,
overload. it constantly exceeds Muller’s magic number seven. In such cases,
poetry is on the verge of becoming linguistic noise, just beyond the
.... .. .. . . ... . . ..... . . . .. . . ... . .. ... . fringes of memory (hence consciousness). In a very fast poem, and
John Ashbery has written the fastest poems of the century, one
is reading ahead of oneself to get one’s bearings, reading through
Most experimental writers, like proponents of information theory the blur of musical strains (late Romantic TV, made-for-movie
such as Clyde Shannon, stress the production and reproduction of soundtracks) and dull 70s reportage (chronicler of suburban angst,
non-systemic, phenomenal or extra-literary material, material that parking lots, and blow jobs, picnics, recycled airforce photos, etc.)
verges on linguistic noise and that exists just beyond the fringes of That is why his work sounds like very fast French to an American ear.
memory (hence consciousness). It is a saw of information theory Thus, one reads peripherally if one reads at all: non-reading, a look-no-
that the meaning of the message is fundamentally irrelevant to any hands skimming rapidly over material without having read it; words
scientific study of information flow or capacity. So, too, with much are not read they are seen as they are flipped through. The only way
modern experimental writing, where the content of the message, to read is acrobatically, fast and with lots of background noise (disco
i.e., the meaning, is virtually impossible to nail down. This brings music or television), for that encourages more speed and more rapid
us to a second idea that underlies most theories of information: processing of the information that cannot be processed except as a
information is only valuable if it conveys something new. What was function of peripheral seeing and distracted absorption. One reads
a poem for Marinetti? A poem that made the noises of war. How To rapidly from one point of fixation (visual) to another, and what con-
Write, by Gertrude Stein, is best understood as an attempt at cod- ditions the speed or shift of visual focus (the saccade) is predicated
ing and uncoding a linguistic message wherein a pattern or code of on the movement from the last visual focus. One is a magician or
meaningful utterances is suggested, but without ever uttering the a charlatan in this respect, or one is moving at the speed of chatter
meaningful message itself. All linguistic utterance was beset by and gossip, realms where processing information instinctively and
such unresolvable tensions between sender and recipient. Much of quickly is essential. To read poetry carefully and slowly is to miss the
Stein’s writing functions as a partially encrypted and hence infinitely point, which is the blur. The blur makes Romanticism possible again.
suggestive “message text” between language (sender) and its user But one wishes for more blur and less Romanticism. That is why
(recipient). No longer is language, in Stein, a clear case of one person many recent experimental poets are Romantics at heart or modernists
using language to communicate with another, but rather it was an who still pursue notions of aesthetic autonomy. As usual, the poet
instance of language sending a message, via writing, to a listener struggles to blur his own worst impulses, which he or she regards as
incapable of reading. his or her best.

Noise (plagiarization) Unlike Stein, where reading backwards is enforced continually in

Text a grand predecession of American English becoming a monolithic
rest-stop, in Ashbery and other experimental writers, there is not
. .... . .. .. . . ..... .. ... ..... .. .. ....... ... . . . . .. . . . . enough time to turn back. To turn back would mean to be caught by
one’s own act of reading. To be comprehended by one’s own act of
Pater was wrong. Baudrillard came too late. All poetry (repetition of reading would mean the death of one’s volubility and suburbanite
numbers) aspires to the condition of static. The rate of intake of lyricism, i.e., the perceptual rate of information intake has been

53 ‡
pushed to its outer limits and one reaches a point where the recep- writing causes so much pain, and listening so much pleasure. That
tor’s discriminatory powers of selection have been virtually turned again is why listening is more important than writing. [CONTINUE
off. This too is a binary system with nearly every switch thrown off, BEFORE A] That is why playback is primary and recording mode
and progress controlled barely by some feedback response in which sticks to the unimportant. [That is why sound] is superior to language
the preceding jerks in the eye’s movement condition the next series and talking. When conversation becomes [sound as it does] in Stein
of visual leaps. “The average television receiver carries signals of it becomes [valuable] [In the shopping mall where I am sitting B-C]
about 200 million bits per second capacity. “ The eye is capable of it helps to BEGIN HERE: with [Listening always] recedes [before
4.3 million bits per second, which explains why watching TV is so writing] and never the other (way around). That interruption is what
relaxing from a visual standpoint . makes some writers more interesting than others. A good poem is
an elision of typos. A great poem interrupts itself constantly and it
O N LY P O E T RY CA N BE T RU LY M O R E R EL AXI N G THAN TV does so by entering the listener’s head mechanically and all pauses
are typos of sorts. The great poem is a very short poem that pretends
. .... . . .. .. . . . ...... . ... . . .. .. ... .. . .. . . . . ... .. . ... to be very long or a very long poem that pretends to be very short.
It is likely that the poems that need to be written today are the short
Truly great poems, like Stein’s, contain sentences that allow a 1 bit- ones, or at least the ones that appear to be short. In this sense not
per-second retrieval rate, i.e., the slowest in the century. Ashbery’s only must the words be short today, but the poem, if it is long, must
poems (they are to be gulped down in one sitting) allow a 900 be divided into smaller units. This unit today is the couplet and it
million rate, probably the highest in the century. Once one gets past is unlikely that anything written in anything but the couplet will be
the noise one enters a state of deep relaxation. What is redundant truly forgotten. The couplet is the most versatile and fluid of forms.
in Ashbery’s signal source? Unlike Stein there is paradoxically very It contains language without ever containing it. It recedes from view
little redundancy and that should lead to slower (French) reading but the minute one fills it with words. It is far easier than the sonnet. It
paradoxically it doesn’t. Everything is redundant in Stein and this is easier than any number of fixed forms such as the sestina and the
leads to a clotting of the visual sense and a retardation of reading pantoum, though those forms offer particularly severe breathing
itself. In Stein, one’s reading turns to mud. This is known as mind or exercises that are useful in the composition of poetry, and can train
rather language in mind to be distinguished from language had in the poet for a difficult ride. It resembles the news byte and the
mind. No language has a mind. I repeat: no language no mind. binary constructions of computing language. It correlates with an
attention span that favors brevity and monotony over all else. It
So Stein not only created genre-less writing (a major accomplish- reinforces true multiculturalism and not its various and sundry false
ment) she also created language-less writing (a miracle) and she platitudes. It is the most American of forms. It pretends to nothing
created the generic sound of all previous and future written languages except what it is not. In so doing it frees the negative mathematics
(more than a miracle.) These three accomplishments are even great- in all of us.
er to the extent that they cancel one another out. They are all, like
numbers station broadcasts, forms of interference transformed into The following exemplifies a stochastic process, i.e., a series of
coding, and what is interfered with is the ‘practice’ of writing. words or letters where each new entry is determined by the signs
immediately preceding it: “A sentence is made by coupling mean-
To diagram that electrical circuit will be the main task of poetry readers while ride around to be a couple there makes greatful dubeity named
(listeners) who are future writers. For it is ultimately the practice of atlas coin in a loan.”Unlike Ashbery, this is a very slow message
writing near, and not writing itself, that Stein is critiquing. The prac- transmission, where redundancy (i.e. a function of probability) does
tice of fever in writing is a professional and a male thing. The writing not, paradoxically, work to reduce errors in transmission but rather
and unwriting of writing unwriting is an amateurish and female thing. increases them. With a Morse code transmission, maximum occur-
It is a leap and fuss. Stein preferred the latter even when she pre- rence (redundancy) = little information. In sharp contrast to a Morse
tended the former, which is today a way that Stein was ventriloquis- code transmission wherein the most frequent letters are transmitted
ing sex in her writing. Why she pretended sex is a very great mys- with the shortest dot-dash symbols, here we get slow transmission,
tery to which we will never know the answer because Stein herself maximum redundancy, and maximum information/compression.
did not know the answer. [CONTINUE FROM A AT THIS POINT B This suggests early twentieth-century speculation on telegraphy,
IN THE TEXT]: Once we understand [that], language becomes which suggested to some a spiritual transmission of information
infinitely easy to listen to but infinitely harder to [write]. [That] is why over a distance. Unlike television broadcasts, such a transmission

54 Random
 (like numbers broadcasts) suggests mass amounts of information
transmitted at enormously slow speeds over an antiquated medium
(crowded channel, i.e., low channel capacity). The following could
be said to function like a very primitive version of an image distribu-
tion device known as television. What image? In order to transmit
a “specified amount of information,” a definite entity [bandwidth +
time] is mandated.

3 P H O T O G R A P H S O F T H I N G S I H AV E B E E N T H I N K I N G A B O U T

T H E H U M A N B O D Y C O N TA I N S A N U N L I M I T E D N U M B E R O F E M O T I O N S

EVERY PERSON’S STRUCTURE OR PICTURE CAN EVOKE A DIFFERENT FEELING

IN TWO DIFFERENT PEOPLE

. . . .... ..... .. . .. .. .. ....... ... . ... .. . . . .

Style is only poorly communicated in writing compared with speech,

so it must be replaced by quantification and counting. Style should
be the census of the words I have used. Particular words are less
important than how they are counted by the sentence that contains
them. In America, the counting of speech (American speech) is
decidedly non-specialized, one-on-one, pioneering, down-to-earth,
pragmatic even as a distinct form of literary speech. It obeys certain
quaint laws of averages, that is why it repeats so many words which
we speak. The great American poem should be hopelessly redun-
dant. It erases styles as easily as it disposes of conventional genres.
All accents of American speech become simply abstract parts of
speech. Emphasis and affective logic which gives rise to it comprise
the underlying code or meaning, and rarely is that affective logic
made to extend beyond the length of a sentence, which is to say it
manifests itself not as logic but as occurrence. As Gertrude Stein
remarked, sentences are not emotional, paragraphs are. In such a
way, all genres should be multifarious and virtually unrecognizable.
A genre is a truth masquerading as a lie and what one wants is the
opposite. This is a lie: repetitions should not extend beyond the
microscopic level of the books that contain them. This is a lie: I want
to write a poem like a box or like The Making of Americans which can-
not really be read, just as an oeuvre (Stein’s body) of writing ought
to be something that cannot be read. The time for reading and espe-
cially for reading individual works is over. Individual works can only be
sampled, and subjected to statistical analysis. A massively parallel
computing system could have a field day with the collected writings
now being assembled within this computing device or poem.

Cabinet’s website at www.immaterial.net/cabinet offers a recording of numbers stations

made by Peter Lew in the early 70s.

55 David Scher ‡
Untitled (1996)
56
56
1485.0 kHz
Carl Michael von Hausswolff
assisted by MSC Harding

Both Guglielmo Marconi and Thomas and painter, and shortly afterward he moved notice at this time some quite strange
Edison believed in the possibility of using to Berlin for more studies. Here his tutor was phenomena; inexplicable fade-ins and fade-
new recording devices to contact the dead, the bass singer Tito Scipa. Scipa, a Jew, fled outs on the tapes; abstract visions and tele-
or the “living impaired,” to use Edison’s un- to Palestine in 1932 and Jürgenson accom- pathic messages. Jürgenson understood
canny twenty-first century term. Sir William panied him, staying for six years. During this that these events were produced by his
Crooks, President of the Royal Society and period, while still studying, he made a living highly developed aural and visual senses
inventor of the cathode ray tube, and Sir as a singer and painter, and some predicted a caused by his artistic prowess.
Oliver Lodge, one of the leading contributors successful career for him in opera.
to radio technology, believed the other world In the following year Jürgenson had his first
to be a wavelength into which we pass 1938 –1957 major exhibition amidst the ruins of Pompeii.
when we die. In the 1950s, Friedrich Jür- In 1938 Jürgenson left Palestine for Milan
gensen, a painter, archaeologist, and for more studying and performances. In Back in Stockholm his telepathic contacts
former opera singer living in Sweden, found 1943, when he went to visit his parents, continued:
traces of extra voices on tapes with which the colder climate caused him serious
he was trying to record birdsongs. Over health problems and his voice was partially “I sat by the table, clearly awake and
the years, Jürgensen made thousands of damaged. Jürgenson decided to give up his relaxed. I sensed that soon something was
recordings of the voices of the dead, ranging professional opera career to concentrate going to happen. Following an inner
from his family and friends to people such entirely on painting. He was a realist painter, pleasurable calmness, long sentences in
as Vincent van Gogh and Himmler’s mostly doing portraits, landscapes, and English appeared in my consciousness. I
masseur. These are claimed to be the still lives. did not perceive these sentences acousti-
world’s first recordings of Electronic Voice cally but they formed themselves as long
Phenomena (EVP), the paranormal appear- Driven out by war in that year he moved to phonetic sentences and after a closer study
ance of strange voices on magnetic tape. Sweden. Located in Stockholm, he married I couldn’t conceive the words as correct
The following is a sketch of Jürgenson’s life and became a Swedish citizen. Here he also English but in a disfigured almost alphabeti-
and his remarkable and persistent “audio- learnt his tenth language. During the follow- cal way—completely deformed. I did not
scopic research” into contacting the dead. ing years he painted portraits of wealthy hear a voice, a sound, or a whisper. It was
Some of the recordings from Jürgenson’s Swedes and of the town of Stockholm. In all soundless.”
vast archive have recently become available 1949 he visited Pompeii in Italy and in order
on the CD Friedrich Jürgensen: From the to get easier access to the buried city he Later he also recalled that in the spring of
Studio for Audioscopic Research (Ash showed some of his work to the Vatican. A 1959 he “got a message about a Central
International).1 Sample tracks are available few days later he received a proposal: the Investigation Station in space where they
at www.immaterial.net/cabinet. Vatican recognized his talents and asked conducted profound observations of
him to catalogue their archaeological works Mankind. […] My friends spoke about
1903 –1938 buried beneath the Holy City. He returned certain electro-magnetic screens or radars,
Friedrich Jürgenson was born in Odessa on the following year and for four months sat in that were frequently transmitted, day and
8 February 1903. His mother was Swedish this damp underworld, painted, and contracted night, in batches of thousands to our
and his father was of Danish descent, pneumonia. The Vatican medics cured him three-dimensional life levels and, like living
practicing as a physician in Odessa where and when Pope Pius XII saw the results of beings, had a mission as mental messengers.
the family had moved from Estonia. After his work he asked Jürgenson to paint a por- Undoubtedly one could see these radars as
living through World War I and the Russian trait of him. In all, Jürgenson produced four half-living robots that, remote controlled, had
Revolution as a child, Jürgenson trained as a portraits of the Pope. Now he had full access the ability like an oversensitive television or
painter at the Art Academy, and as a singer to Pompeii as well, and he returned there radio to correctly register and transmit all
and musician at the Odessa Conservatory, many times to paint. our conscious and unconscious impulses,
where he was a contemporary of the concert feelings, and thoughts.” Jürgenson knew
pianist Svjatoslav Richter. In 1925 the family 1957 –1987 that these fantastic facts really belonged to
was allowed to move back to Estonia where In 1957 Jürgenson bought a tape recorder science fiction but he continued hoping to
Friedrich continued his training as a singer to record his own singing, and he started to capture these messages on tape.

57 ‡
58 ‡
59 Friedrich Jürgenson ‡
at an international press
conference, Mölnbo,
Sweden, June 1963
On 12 June 1959, Jürgenson and his wife At this point Jürgenson abandoned painting In spring 1960 one of the voices told him to
Monica went to visit their country house to for his audio recordings and in 1964 he “use the radio” as a medium and this was
enjoy the warm summer. Jürgenson brought published Rösterna Från Rymden (The Voices the technique he used until his death. He
his tape recorder to record the singing of wild From Space, published by Saxon & Lindström connected a microphone and a radio receiver
birds, especially the chaffinch. Förlag in Stockholm). to the tape recorder and in this way he
could have a real-time conversation with
Listening to the tape he “heard a noise, “My love for the arts was still alive now as his “friends.” Usually he set the radio recep-
vibrating like a storm, where you could only ever, and I asked myself if it was the right tion in between frequencies where there is
remotely hear the chirping of the birds. thing for me to abandon the art of paint- generally a variation of noises. Later, he
My first thought was that maybe some of ing—a creative occupation to which I had fixed the receiving frequencies to around
the tubes had been damaged. In spite dedicated my whole life.” Later, he writes 1445–1500 kHz (1485.0 kHz is now called
of this I switched on the machine again and “Instead, I was sitting here with an enormous the Jürgenson Frequency).
let the tape roll. Again I heard this peculiar jigsaw puzzle brooding in despair over the
noise and the distant chirping. Then I heard problem of whether one could assemble a In 1965 Jürgenson took up painting again
a trumpet solo, a kind of a signal for atten- more complete picture from all these frag- but recording remained his main activity.
tion. Stunned, I continued to listen when ments. And, likewise... I had never before At this time he also revisited Pompeii and
suddenly a man’s voice began to speak been so touched and captured by any other found that the site was being mistreated.
in Norwegian. Even though the voice urgencies than by these mystical connec- Sponsored by Swedish National Television,
was quite low I could clearly hear and tions, literally floating in the ether.” he made the documentary film Pompeii: A
understand the words. The man spoke Cultural Relic That Must Be Preserved, in
about ‘nightly bird voices’ and I perceived Now located in Mölnbo, south of Stockholm, 1966. A vast output followed in the en-
a row of piping, splashing, and rattling Jürgenson held his first press conference.The suing years from this highly energetic and
sounds. Suddenly the choir of birds and the Swedish press was stunned by Jürgenson’s creative figure.
vibrating noise stopped. In the next moment scientific approach to these matters, and
the chirping of a chaffinch was heard and was understandingly critical. The International In 1967 his book on EVP, Sprechfunk Mit
you could hear the tits singing at a distance— Paranormal Societies, as well as the Max Verstorbenen, was published by Freiburg’s
the machine worked perfectly!” Planck Institute, the University of Freiburg, Verlag Hermann Bauer KG. In 1968 Jürgenson
and the Parapsychological Association in made four documentaries: The Temples
From this point Jürgenson continued to the USA, also took a keen interest. Others, at Paestum and the City of Temples and
investigate these phenomena and at first like Konstantin Raudive and Claude Thorlin, Graves, a film on the ancient Greek city
he thought it was his “friends from outer came to visit and began to work with tape south of Salerno; The Death of Birds In Italy,
space,” but very soon he began to believe recorders. about the purposeless killing of birds in
that these voices were “from the other Italy; The Miracle of the Blood of St. Gennaro,
side,” or the “Voices of the Dead.” Was At first Jürgenson only used a microphone about the famous blood phenomenon in
he close to solving one of the fundamental and a tape recorder. He simply set up the Naples; and a film documenting Jürgenson’s
mysteries of death? microphone, set the recorder on ‘record,’ own archaeological diggings at Pompeii.
and spoke clearly into the room, leaving In 1968 his third book was published in
At this moment Jürgenson experienced space for voices to respond. This was a bit Swedish: Radio och Mikrofonkontakt med
a remarkable event that would change his tricky for Jürgenson, since he always had de Döda (Radio and Microphone Contact
life: to play back the tape, sometimes at a with the Dead, published by Nybloms in
lower speed, to hear the voices. These Uppsala). Rome was impressed with
“I was outside with a tape recorder, record- voices spoke in a combination of various lan- Jürgenson’s documentary output. The
ing bird songs. When I listened through guages —Swedish, German, Russian, result of his work at Pompeii was another
the tape, a voice was heard to say ‘Friedel, English, Italian—all languages that mission for the Vatican, and in 1969 his
can you hear me. It’s mammy. ...’ It was Jürgenson knew and could speak. He documentary The Fisherman from Gallilee:
my dead mother’s voice. ‘Friedel’ was her called this new mixture of languages “poly- On the Grave and Stool of Peter was finished.
special nickname for me.” glot,” or, “many tongues.” For this, Jürgenson received the Order of

60 Random
 My mother, my medium
Jon Dryden

Commendatore Gregorio Magno from the I never met my grandmother, who died oblivious to any unearthly happenings taking
hand of Pope Paul VI. Shortly after, he also when I was three, but my father has given place below. He now claims he had no real
made a film about the life of the Pope, and me a fairly good idea of what it was like to interest in the ghostly proceedings going on
Paul VI’s high regard for this film prompted have a mother who doubled as a spiritualist below, nor had he reason to doubt the
him to contact Jürgenson again. Jürgenson medium. In the late 1930s, when Grandma’s authenticity of Grandma’s communications.
then painted three portraits of his second powers were at their peak, the public’s People were often affected by the inter-
Pope. Around this time he was also per- interest in spiritualism had waned consider- action with their dear dead ones and altered
mitted to conduct his own archaeological ably. Still, this didn’t stop her from renting their lives if they felt that the spirits wished
diggings in Pompeii and he dug out the nighttime space from the Niagara Falls Uni- it. Dad was just assuming that all families
large house of the governor in Pompeii. tarian Church and proclaiming her spiritualist had some maternal figure that drenched
sect “The White Rose of the Free Psychic herself in the preternatural.
In the 1970s, Jürgenson continued to record Truth.” My grandfather acted as church
and paint. Moving from Mölnbo to Höör in manager and sang duets with Grandma, Grandma ceased her psychic actions some
Skåne, southern Sweden, he found a more accompanying her on piano or organ. time in the early 1940s, citing a distrust of
peaceful place for his work. Age began to her power and its source as her reason for
take its toll and Jürgenson spent more time Cryptic titles aside, she gathered multitudes abandoning her contacts with the dead.
with his recordings at home, making an of friends and family who sought to connect Still, Grandma would read people’s tea
occasional trip to Italy. There was also to their dead loved ones in the supernatural leaves on occasion, pronouncing the future
serious talk about founding an EVP research world. Through the wisdom of the spirits, of the tea drinkers, sometimes to their great
institute in Italy. In 1978 he held his third it was thought that questions or problems dismay. The family joined the Presbyterian
press conference and gave a large number in the corporeal world could be answered. Church and lived out the rest of their lives
of lectures. Here he predicted that we will Entering a mild trance, she gained access as otherwise normal, first-generation
soon be able to receive messages through to the spiritual realm, basically acting as a immigrants in a rapidly changing physical
television as well. He labeled the work modem-cum-portal to the World Wide world.
“Audioscopic Research.” His German book Web of the paranormal. A piece of clothing
was translated into Dutch, Italian, and would be handed to her and she would be
Portuguese at the beginning of the 80s. In told who among the recently departed
1985 he held his last press conference in had owned it. The cloth acted as a sort of
conjunction with a nationwide television URL for the spirit in question, and various
appearance. questions would be answered. Interpreta-
tion was key on Grandma’s part, as the
Friedrich Jürgenson died in October 1987 thoughts, feelings, or images she received
and left several hundred tapes of recorded from the spirit would have to be depicted
material. in terms the material world could under-
stand. There didn’t seem to be any grand
1 Ash International and the Parapsychic Acoustic Research ceremony assisting her logging on and off
Cooperative (PARC) have also released The Ghost Orchid: to the various sites of the undead.
An Introduction to EVP, which draws heavily on the work of
Raymond Cass. For more information about both CDs, see Somehow my father, then a young boy,
Ash’s website at www.touch.demon.co.uk/ash.htm. PARC’s perused comic books in the balcony,
website can be found at http://parc.web.fm.

61 ‡
Invented Languages Speaking Martian
Daniel Rosenberg

Monday, November 2, 1896. – After For half an hour, the sitters waited as Smith’s
various characteristic symptoms of the “calm sleep gave way to agitation…with
departure for Mars…Hélène went in a sighs, rhythmic movements of the head and
deep sleep.… [Léopold] informs us that hands, then grotesque Martian gestures…”2
she is en route towards Mars; that once Smith murmured softly in French to Léopold,
arrived up there she understands the describing to him the scene arrayed before
Martian spoken around her, although she her. Then suddenly Léopold gestured with
has never learned it; that it is not he, Léo- Smith’s arm, indicating to Flournoy that the
pold, who will translate the Martian for time had arrived to place his hand once again
us—not because he does not wish to do on Smith’s forehead. This time, Flournoy
so, but because he cannot; that this trans- uttered the name of Esenale, to which
lation is the performance of Esenale, who Smith responded in a “soft, feeble, some-
is actually disincarnate in space, but who what melancholy voice,”
has recently lived upon Mars, and also
upon the earth, which permits him to act Esenale has gone away…he has left
as interpreter.…1 me alone…but he will return,…he will
soon return…He has taken me by the
This passage is drawn from notes taken by hand and made me enter the house.…
the psychologist Théodore Flournoy during I do not know where Esenale is leading
a séance held in his study at 9 rue de me, but he has said to me, “Dode ne
Florissant in Geneva and later described in haudan te meche metiche Astane ke
his book From India to the Planet Mars: A de me veche.…”3
Study of a Case of Somnambulism with
Glossolalia. “Hélène” is Hélène Smith, There was a pause in the séance and then
pseudonym for Catherine-Elise Muller, a new movements signaling Esenale’s return.
young medium who, from 1894 to 1901, This time, he went more slowly, translating
gave séances for a group that included each word as he proceeded. He said,
Flournoy and several other academics inter-
ested in spiritual phenomena. “Léopold” …dode, this; ne, is; ce, the; haudan,
is a reincarnation of Joseph Balsamo, house; te, of the; meche, great; metiche,
physician and lover to Marie Antoinette man; Astane, Astane; ke, whom; de,
and Hélène Smith’s primary spirit-guide. thou; me, hast; veche, seen.4
“Esenale” is a reincarnation of Alexis
Mirbel, deceased son of one of the sitters With Smith’s left middle finger, Léopold
in Smith’s circle and primary interpreter of directed Flournoy to remove his hand from
the Martian language. Hélène’s forehead. After a period of
agitated muscular contractions and several
The scene introduced by the passage above lapses in and out of the trance state, Smith
is typical of what Flournoy referred to as returned to consciousness confused and
“the Martian cycle,” those séances in unaware of the events of the previous
which Smith’s trances took her to the planet scene.
Mars. First there was vertigo and affection
of the heart, symptoms of the arrival of the The careful ritual worked out by Flournoy
trance. Then, following a method worked and Léopold, the strange cataleptic behavior
out over the course of two years of séances, of Smith in her trances, and the narrative
Flournoy touched Smith’s forehead, in order of Mars and its various characters together
to call forth Léopold, who functioned as a frame the most remarkable fact of all,
kind of gate-keeper to the worlds of Smith’s Smith’s ability to speak and to write the
trances (what Flournoy called “romans”). Martian language. Of course, not everyone
At this point, Léopold signaled sternly by who heard her believed that she was speak-
Smith’s left hand that the proper time was ing an actual extraterrestrial language, and
not yet upon them. Speaking now, he Flournoy himself was among the skeptics
directed the sitters to move Smith from her on this point. Nonetheless, the medium
usual wooden chair to an easy chair across seemed sane, well adjusted, and genuine.
the room. The transformation of her personality during

62
the séances was astonishing. And her years, since her first introduction to spirit- until he could get a more learned opinion on
trance tongues, strange as they were, truly ism and the discovery of her talent for the matter. For this, he called in, among
did sound like language. It is also the case precognition and her remarkable spiritual others, Ferdinand de Saussure who was the
that Smith was sought out by the psycholo- sensitivity. Over the course of those two Oriental language specialist at the Université
gists and the linguists and not the reverse. years, her main contact was the spirit of de Genève at the time. Flournoy referred
She did not come to Flournoy with a problem Victor Hugo who often composed verse for to this set of stories and personae as the
to be solved. And, although he disagreed the group.9 “Hindu” or “Oriental” cycle.
with the medium about the meaning and
source of her otherworldly tongues, Flournoy Shortly before Lemaître and Flournoy joined Finally, and most spectacularly, there was
made no concerted attempt to change her the circle, Victor Hugo lost his dominance the “Martian” cycle in which Smith de-
mind about what she was experiencing, in Smith’s trance communications to a spirit scribed the environment and inhabitants
nor did he prescribe a therapeutic correc- named Léopold, who, over the course of of the red planet and communicated on
tion. Instead, he sought to understand her several months, struggled actively with other their behalf. In her visions, Mars appeared
trance behaviors in a broader psychological trance personalities, chasing some away as a world populated by humanoids of
and historical light. As he indicated in the entirely. One September evening in a poor roughly Asian physiognomy, who used vari-
subtitle of his study, Flournoy regarded humor, Léopold even went so far as to ous futuristic devices such as self-powered
Smith’s Martian as a kind of “glossolalia.” unilaterally terminate a séance by pulling vehicles and aircraft. Other interesting
In this category, he also included her “Hin- the chair out from under the seated Mlle. features of Mars included dog-like creatures
du,” “Ultra-Martian,” and the other extrater- Smith.10 But by the time of Flournoy’s with heads that looked like cabbages that
restrial tongues that she would later speak. arrival, Léopold had grown comfortable with not only fetched objects for their masters
the group and with his role in it. His relation- but also took dictation. The Martian cycle
“Glossolalia” (or “speaking in tongues”) ships with Smith’s other trance contacts eventually gave way to a related “roman”
is a term used by Paul in First Corinthians mellowed, and he had gradually begun to that occurred in a place called Ultra-Mars,
to name speech that is spiritually inspired reveal more about himself. Léopold, it perhaps another part of the planet. Ultra-
but unrecognizable as human language. 5 turned out, was another name for Joseph Martians resembled trolls more than they
In Western literature, it has been described Balsamo, the late Count de Cagliostro. His did human beings. They had a language
countless times and places from Corinth connection with the medium thus spanned different from that of the Martians and
to Loudun to Los Angeles, often during more than one century: he had been her employed an ideographic rather than a
religious revivals. 6 The nineteenth century lover in a previous life when she herself had phonetic script.
saw its share of these. Among the most been incarnate as Marie Antoinette.11 In
spectacular was the sudden explosion of addition to speaking in the voices of the In late 1899, Flournoy published his study
tongues that rocked the city of Topeka, fated queen and her lover, Smith produced From India to the Planet Mars and managed
Kansas on December 31, 1899 and that letters (via automatic writing) in distinctive to alienate Smith entirely. In it, he argued
served to inaugurate the modern Pente- handwriting attributed to each of them. that Smith’s trance personalities and
costal movement. 7 The fin de siècle also Flournoy referred to this group of characters tongues were the product of subconscious
saw the first systematic studies of the sub- and stories as the Royal cycle or “roman.” fantasies and represented a variety of
ject, of which Flournoy’s From India to the regressive behaviors. He argued further
Planet Mars was among the most influen- Smith soon revealed that hundreds of years that, far from indicating their truth, the
tial. It was widely discussed in both profes- prior to her incarnation as Marie Antoinette, very complexity and foreignness of the
sional and popular arenas. And it produced she had walked the earth as the Princess trance narratives demonstrated the
such a stir that it was quickly translated Simandini, eleventh wife of Prince Sivrouka medium’s subconscious desire to satisfy
into English and Italian. Soon after, Carl Nayaka of India. It was in these sessions the imagination of her auditors.12 From this
Jung wrote to Flournoy for permission to that the special character of Smith’s capabili- point on, Smith refused to admit Flournoy to
translate the work into German, but was ties became clear. While sometimes Léo- her séances. Nonetheless, throughout the
disappointed to learn that a translation had pold was able to describe what Smith was next year, Flournoy received reports of con-
been contracted and was already feeling when she was overtaken by the tinuing developments in the seance room.
underway. 8 spirit of Simandini, typically, Simandini In an article he wrote in response to his crit-
would announce herself directly, speaking ics a year after his book was published, he
The story of the case is as follows: in 1894, through Smith in a language that Léopold describes the advent of still more extrater-
Auguste Lemaître, professor of psychol- identified as “Ancient Hindu.” While restrial “romans” (Uranian, Lunar and oth-
ogy at the College de Genève, introduced Flournoy considered it improbable that ers), each bringing with it a completely new
Théodore Flournoy who was professor of a young woman from the working class language and system of writing.13
psychology at the Université de Genève neighborhood of Plainpalais might actually
to Hélène Smith’s spiritual circle. Smith be speaking Sanskrit, as he was no Sanskrit In the years that followed, Smith received
had been giving séances for about two scholar himself, he reserved judgement a generous sponsorship from an American

63 ‡
Detail from Ultra-Martian landscape painted by Hélène
64
Smith. Courtesy Olivier Flournoy.
65 ‡
spiritualist and turned toward a Christian In the medium’s own terms, there was a or by subconscious design, some Sanskrit
spiritualism with extraterrestrial elements. straightforward reason for this: Léopold elements were consistently present. Some
During this period, her estrangement from could not speak Hindu. And so, when of this could be explained by the predomi-
Flournoy was intensified by a sometimes Princess Simandini would speak through nance of certain vowel sounds in Sanskrit
public struggle over rights to proceeds Smith, Léopold himself could not under- and in Hindu which vastly increased the
from the sale of From India to the Planet stand the words. His interpretations were chance of the sounds of Hindu coalescing
Mars, which Smith insisted was as much based on “the innermost feelings of Mlle. fortuitously into actual Sanskrit words.
the result of her work as it was of his. For Smith” with which he was “perfectly famil-
a time, she considered writing a sequel to iar” in moments of shared possession such Some other aspects were much more
Flournoy’s book giving her side of the story. as those occasioned by Simandini’s arrival.18 difficult to explain. Strangest was the total
Over the course of the next two decades, Moreover, it was Simandini’s spiritual mes- absence of the sound “f” in either tongue.
Smith gave fewer séances and devoted sage and not the language of its transmis- This feature of Hindu seemed to argue
much of her time to painting. Eventually, sion that was Léopold’s first concern. strongly in favor of a deeper relationship,
this work too attracted significant attention, and it occasioned a number of arguments
including that of André Breton and the In this respect, Flournoy’s interest diverged among the scientists. Perhaps Smith had
Surrealists. At her death in 1929, nine sharply from that of the spectral gatekeep- once read a book containing a transliteration
years after Flournoy’s own passing, the er. And his method diverged as well. While of a Sanskrit passage and this regularity had
Geneva Art Museum sponsored a retrospec- Léopold employed an empathetic technique sunk in. Perhaps there was something about
tive of her work.14 In some ways, the shift for understanding Simandini, Flournoy the “f” sound that was antipathetic to the
away from a verbal and toward a visual me- engaged the most modern methods of glossolalic process. The linguist Victor
dium itself constituted a new language for linguistic analysis. And he did so with re- Henry offered the following suggestion:
Smith and a further repudiation and a markable persistence. He began by sending “If one general thought completely pre-
distancing from Flournoy. On the other transcripts of Smith’s Hindu to a number of occupies Mlle Smith’s subconscious at the
hand, neither move was total. In important eminent specialists in Oriental languages, time she is assembling the sounds of San-
ways, by 1901, Catherine-Elise Muller had including Auguste Barth and Charles skritoid or Martian, it is surely that ‘French’
become Hélène Smith, and while she dis- Michel, in hope of learning more about its must be entirely avoided.… Now the word
agreed with Flournoy’s book, she also nature and its origins. He eventually went ‘French’ begins with an f, for this reason, f
recognized its value as a testament to all so far as to bring Ferdinand de Saussure must appear to her as the ‘French’ letter par
of her accomplishments. And, although into the séance room itself in order to excellence, and thus she avoids it as much
she continued to use the name Muller, to observe and to listen first hand.19 There is as she can.”21 As the critic Mireille Cifali has
the end of her life she also used the name a dreamlike character to the responses that pointed out, f was also the first sound of the
that Flournoy gave to her.15 Flournoy received: academic language name “Flournoy.”22
peppered with phrases channeled by the
The drama of the psychologist and the psychic; as-if languages described as if With time, Flournoy’s fascination with the
medium begins with the appearance of they were languages, annotated and ety- specifically linguistic character of Smith’s
Hindu and with Flournoy’s rapture at the mologized by the august faculty of Europe’s Hindu contributed to the development of
beauty of this strange psychological artifact. great institutions of learning. What is more, a new dynamic in the sittings. In his cor-
Hindu was Smith’s first trance tongue. the analyses made by the linguists were respondence with Saussure, he dwelled at
And, as Flournoy recounts, it proved quite themselves strangely ambiguous. On the length on linguistic issues, and the sittings
difficult to decipher. While one could one hand, they asserted that Smith was not came to reflect his obsession.23 These
usually count on Léopold to give a gloss speaking Sanskrit, or any other recognizable were, after all, séances and not psycho-
of a Hindu passage, to his frustration, language. On the other hand, they argued analytic treatments. And Flournoy’s
Flournoy discovered that these interpreta- that whatever Smith was speaking re- approach, in contrast to the method of free
tions were nearly always given in general sembled a language to a remarkable extent. association developed during the same
terms. They were, in Flournoy’s words, They pursued analyses of Smith’s Hindu period by Breuer and Freud, was to engage
“free translations.”16 This is not to suggest in almost delirious detail, combing the the medium on her own ground. Flournoy
that Smith’s Hindu utterances conveyed transcripts for linguistic evidence. Sau- conversed freely with Smith’s trance
no meaning, but rather, that they participat- ssure, in particular, argued that the “words” personae and frequently pursued avenues
ed in an expression that was not easily that Smith articulated were constructed “in of conversation even against the resistance
confined to statements. The séance was some inexplicable manner, but not neces- of his immaterial interlocutors. For Flournoy,
a scene of gesture, physical contact, and sarily false.” Indeed, he would even go so the key question was how to understand the
play, and very often the sense of a session far as to say that Smith’s tongue never had “languages” of the trance.
was most clearly conveyed through these an “anti-Sanskrit character.”20 That is to say,
other means, through what Flournoy called while her vocal production turned out not But how could Hélène Smith’s somnambu-
the “pantomime.”17 actually to be Sanskrit, whether by accident listic vocalizations have been heard as

66 Invented Languages
language in the first place? After the initial Flournoy thus sought to map the history change: as much as the spirit behind the lan-
possibility of true xenoglossia (speaking in of Smith’s trance tongues onto a history of guage, in her trances, Smith was coming to
unlearned foreign tongues) in the case of psychic events. At several points, he even incarnate the spirit of language itself.
Hindu had been dispatched, the concept attempted directly to use Smith’s auto-
that Flournoy invoked in order to system- hypnotic states in order to evoke clues as to Flournoy recognized that what he had called
atize Smith’s utterances was that of infantile the occulted origins of the trance narratives, “glossolalia” was perhaps a mixed phenom-
or primitive language, “that general func- in order, as he put it, “to obtain a confession enon, and that for some reason over time
tion, common to all human beings, which from Hélène’s subconscious memory, and Smith’s vocal performances had come to
is at the root of language and manifests it- persuade it to disclose the secret.”28 But at sound less and less like poetry and more
self with more spontaneity and vigor as each attempt, he was repulsed by Léopold and more like grammar. The cause that he
we mount higher towards the birth of who refused to relinquish his own position identified was what he called “suggestibilty.”
peoples and individuals.” 24 To Flournoy, as interpreter. This early conflict between According to Flournoy, the premise of the
Smith was a poet, “in the original, the most Flournoy and Léopold over the authority to entire Martian narrative arose from Smith’s
extended, acceptation of the term.” She interpret laid the foundation for a dynamic subconscious desire to address a fancy that
was a language-maker.25 that characterized the séances thenceforth, one of the sitters had expressed fleetingly
a dynamic in which the problematic of trans- some months before when he had mused
If this was not entirely clear in the case of lation belonged as much within the drama of aloud about the possibility of life on other
Hindu, when it came to Martian, Flournoy the seance as without it. planets. Suggestibility also accounted for
argued, this was not in doubt. Martian had the appearance of Mme. Mirbel’s son,
all of the characteristics of a language. If the task of the translator was fundamental Alexis, on Mars in the person of Esenale;
Moreover, over the course of seven years even to Hélène Smith’s early glossolalia, and it explained the identity of Léopold and
of seances, it remained strikingly stable it was to become still more central as the Joseph Balsamo, a response to the persistent
and structurally consistent. But while its séances proceeded. Along with word-for- questions of a sitter interested in the life of
structural characteristics closely followed word correspondence with French, Martian Marie Antoinette.29 In this instance, “sug-
those of the French language, its vocabulary brought with it Esenale, a character specifi- gestibility” explained the growing linguistic
proved something of a mystery. On cally fit for the role of translator of languages. content of the séances given in the pres-
the one hand, as a dictionary of Martian A Swiss reincarnate on Mars, Esenale ence of the psychologists and linguists.
words began to come together, it became spoke both Martian and French. Indeed,
clear that Martian had a close correspon- he was tri-lingual, since he was also fluent But there was more at work here than just
dence with French. On the other hand, in the Ultra-Martian language. His appear- suggestion. The séances were scenes of
Flournoy found it difficult to find any ance marked the completion of a shift in dialogue and reciprocal influence. And,
grounds on which to link its lexicon with the structure of the séances. Not only were indeed, the larger organization of Smith’s
that of the speaker’s native tongue. The his translations linguistic in the mundane trance narratives foregrounds the interac-
Martian vocabulary resisted Flournoy’s sense, at their limit, they were nothing but tion of speakers from different worlds and
best attempts at decryption. 26 In his translation. The ritual by which Ultra-Martian
reconsideration of the case, Victor Henry would be interpreted, it turned out, always
claimed to fare better. By admitting the involved an intermediary translation into
influence of several languages other than Martian, thus converting the role of the
French upon the Martian vocabulary, he latter into that of a linguistic go-between.
was able to produce plausible terrestrial
etymologies for nearly every Martian word. In a way, nothing could have suited Flournoy
Flournoy accepted the breakthrough and better. After years of work with the medium,
used Henry’s observations to confirm his the glossolalist’s secret appeared to be
own suspicion that the sub-personality coming clear: analyses had been made,
responsible for Smith’s trance languages correspondences found, and vocabularies
was a regressed version of her own per- translated. And Flournoy was employing
sonality around the ages of ten or twelve, these linguistic observations in order to
a period in which he hypothesized that draw up a kind of index to Smith’s psychic
Smith was exposed to some spoken history. But in another way, this turn in the
Hungarian as well as to Latin and Greek.27 seances complicated things. As the seances
Drawing upon Henry’s etymological went on, Smith’s tongues continued to
decryption of Smith’s tongues, Flournoy grow in number and in the complexity of
speculated that the very syllables of Smith’s their relations to one another. And while
glossolalic utterances could be assigned Smith continued to occupy the accustomed
dates and provenance. role of the medium, the role itself began to

67 Above right and following page: From the seven-part series ‡

“The Materialization of the Girl of Jairus“ by Hélène Smith.
illustrates the many ways in which influence whimsical, capricious, and jealous Oriental possess . . . the signs of our language.”34
may pass from one sphere to another. Not despot.30 The linguists offered Smith a metaphor, lan-
only was there a permeability among trance guage with a determinate, lowercase “l.” In
narratives, the séances involved complex It is interesting to note that Flournoy’s her glossolalia, it came to embody an entire
passages into and out from the world of openness to Smith’s performances ended drama of foreignness and understanding.
the trance itself. On the one hand, it was pos- exactly here. While he normally referred to
sible for a character from the world of the the séance narratives as “romances,” this The story of Hélène Smith is in ways an old
sitters to enter the trance narrative, as did turn was strictly low comedy. And, while one, a romance and a struggle between
Alexis Mirbel. On the other hand, it was the trance tongues were serious business, mysticism and reason with the medium
possible for trance personae to enter the this was merely a “prank.”31 It is doubly and the professor playing the expected
material world, as one of the Arab slaves interesting to observe the evacuation of the roles: she who speaks and he who writes
from the Hindu narrative did when he “I” in Flournoy’s own language, a process and interprets. It is a story that has been
attached himself to the body of a sitter that resembles the fragmentation of the repeated many times over centuries of
named Seippel, and as Prince Sivrouka speaking subject characteristic of the lan- confrontation between mystics and their
often did when, according to Smith, he guage of possession.32 (friendly or unfriendly) interpreters. And,
incarnated in the body of Flournoy himself. whether in order to vindicate Smith or
Flournoy writes, While Flournoy focused his critical attention Flournoy, their relationship has very often
on the psychological mechanisms of sug- been understood in this light. For the his-
…It is difficult to understand why the gestion, Smith’s performances continually torian Michel de Certeau, for example, the
hypnoid imagination of Mlle. Smith gave emphasized the possibility of translations story of Smith and Flournoy is that of glos-
itself up to such pranks, and distributed between worlds and of passages open in solalia itself in miniature. It is the story of
as it did the roles of this comedy.… M. two directions. After all, it was not an acci- an original misrecognition, of speech taken
Seippel…has nothing about him of dent that, even very early on, the crucial for language.35 For de Certeau, the very
the Arab, and still less of the slave, figure in Smith’s “romans” was a translator. identification of a vocal practice as glos-
neither in outward appearance nor in Nor was it an accident that as the séances solalia constitutes a powerful step in this
character; and as to myself, let us say proceeded, the styles and mechanisms of direction. Although the term enforces a dis-
here, M.F.–if I may be permitted to translation present became both more tinction between tongues and languages,
substitute harmless initials for the sophisticated and more pivotal in the narra- at the same time, it locates the vocal act in
always odious “I”–as for M.F., there is tive of the “romans” themselves. Translation relation to a positive field of linguistic un-
generally to be met with in him, under in the Hindu mode was not precisely linguis- derstanding. And, in doing so, it calls into
some diffidence, a certain mildness of tic. Léopold translated on the basis of mean- play the force of the various social and in-
manner and disposition which would ing conveyed by the feelings of Mlle. Smith, tellectual institutions (theology, psychology,
scarcely seem to predestinate him to the which he knew “perfectly well.” That eventu- hermeneutics, etc.) that ground linguistic
energetic and wild role of a violent, ally the Martian cycle produced translation meaning. According to de Certeau, it calls
of the more usual linguistic sort is testament into play forces that militate against the
to Smith’s translation of the interests of originary joys of the expressive vocal act.
Flournoy, Lemaître, Saussure, and the others
into the terms of the “roman.” Certainly, there is something of this dynam-
ic at work in the drama of interpretation that
As it turns out, the “Martian-French diction- Smith’s tongues inspired. In the case of
ary” so coveted by Flournoy was developing Hindu, for example, it is clear that while
in two different registers.33 On the one hand, Smith and Léopold concerned themselves
an actual written dictionary was emerging principally with the “innermost feelings”
from the continuing series of that they were charged with expressing,
seances: eventually there were even Flournoy and his associates concerned
sessions devoted almost exclusively to themselves with the means by which these
trans-lation. And, over the course of seven expressions took place. But the questions
years, hundreds of words were catalogued do not always divide so neatly. And in the
and substantial progress was achieved. On case of Hélène Smith’s extraterrestrial lan-
the other hand, a drama of translation was guages the distinctions are particularly hard
being enacted within the “roman” itself. It to make, for here, it is clear that Smith’s
was more and more the subject of the trance trance personalities assented at least in
communications rather than merely their part to the ideas of the scientists. For Es-
means. “Do not worry,” Esenale reassured enale, as much as for Flournoy, the truth
Flournoy one difficult day, “soon you will ... of tongues lay in an understanding of the

68 Invented Languages Top: Samples of Martian writing produced by Hélène Smith during one of her séances: (left to right)
Traveler, Lodger, Runner, Dowser, Guide, Hole Digger (continues on p. 69)
plurality and the specificity of languages. 1 Théodore Flournoy, From India to the Planet Mars: 23 See their correspondence in O. Flournoy, 1985, pp. 175-
And foreignness itself, even in its greatest A Study of a Case of Somnambulism with Glossolalia, 211. Such was the extent of his obsession that we even find
generality, owed not to the obscurity of the trans. Daniel B. Vermilye (New York: Harper & Bros., 1900), Flournoy correcting the spelling in a piece of Smith’s auto-
transcendent but to that of language itself in pp. 165-6. English translations taken from Vermilye with matic writing. Flournoy, 1900, p. 210.
its density, materiality, and autonomy.36 minor modifications. 24 Flournoy, 1900, pp. 258-9.
2 Flournoy, 1900, p.166. 25 Ibid., pp. 258-9.
From this point of view, Smith and her in- 3 Ibid., p.166. 26 Ibid., 1900, p. 252.
terpreters look less like antagonists than 4 Ibid., p.166. 27 Henry, 1901, pp. 6-7, and Flournoy, 1901, pp. 144-6.
uneasy collaborators. It may be true that in 5 Emile Lombard, De la glossolalie chez les premiers chré- 28 Flournoy, 1900, p. 295.
ways Flournoy and company constrained tiens et des phenomènes similaires. Etude d’exegèse et de 29 Outside of the principals, all of the names given here
the medium, forcing her into routes that psychologie, (Lausanne: Imprimeries Réunies, 1910), are the pseudonyms given by Flournoy in From India to the
she would not otherwise have taken, and pp. 1-48. Planet Mars.
emphasizing the linguistic as opposed to 6 On the historical functions of glossolalia, see the in- 30 Flournoy, 1900, pp. 337-8.
the vocal character of the tongues. At the troduction to Michel de Certeau, The Mystic Fable, vol. 31 Ibid.
same time, it is certain that Smith’s own un- 1, tr. Michael B. Smith (Chicago: University of Chicago 32 “We can find a common trait by isolating the texts re-
derstanding of language influenced and con- Press, 1992 [1982]). Antoine Compagnon argues that the porting the speech uttered by the possessed, the discours-
strained them in turn. Above all, it is clear reason why there is no record of glossolalia among the es in “I.” They all affirm, ‘Je est un autre.’ . . . The exorcist
that the desire that Smith manifested in the ancient Greeks is that their notion of logos admitted no or doctor engages in determining who this ‘other’ is by
later séances was not an unfettered desire gap between the language of people and the language placing him in a topography of proper names and by nor-
to speak but rather a desire to speak lan- of gods. Without the possibility of conceptualizing a lost malizing once again the connection of the speech act with a
guages, and that the transgressiveness of “Ursprache,” glossolalia fades into the indifference of social system of statements.” De Certeau, 1988, p.255.
her performances lay not in their trajectory barbarian language. Antoine Compagnon, “La Glossolalie: 33 Flournoy, 1900, p. 167.
out of language and toward pure vocalization Une affaire sans histoire?” Critique 35:387-8 (August/Sep- 34 Ibid., p. 218.
but in their repeated competence at produc- tember, 1979), pp. 824-38. 35 Michel de Certeau, “Vocal Utopias: Glossolalias,”
ing convincing simulacra of language out- 7 To believers, the very strangeness of tongue speaking tr. Daniel Rosenberg, Representations 56 (Fall 1996), p.
side of the legitimate places where language bespeaks its truth. Glossolalia is by its very nature incom- 33. See also idem., “Discourse Disturbed: The Sorcerer’s
ought to have been. If, as de Certeau prehensible, wrote Edward Irving, founder of the revivalist Speech,” in The Writing of History, tr. Tom Conley, (New
argues, there are joys in the pure vocality of Irvingite movement, “otherwise nothing would indicate York: Columbia, 1988 [1975].
glossolalia, Smith’s speech embodies some- that it is the Spirit that speaks and not a man.” Lombard, 36 See Linda Dowling, Language and Decadence in the
thing different: a joy in translation and in the 1910, p. 16. Victorian Fin de Siècle (Princeton: Princeton University,
position of the intermediary, a joy in the for- 8 See Carl Jung, “Preface,” in Flournoy, 1995. 1986), p. xiii, and Michel Pierssens, The Power of Babel: A
eignness that is language itself. 9 On Lemaître, see Cifali, 1994. Study of Logophilia, tr. Carl R. Lovitt (London: Routledge,
10 Flournoy, 1900, p. 83. 1980 [1976]).
11 See Terry Castle, “Marie Antoinette Obsession,” Repre-
sentations 38 (Spring 1992), pp. 1-38. Extra references and resources for this article are available
12 Flournoy, 1900, pp. 266-7. at www.immaterial.net/cabinet.
13 Théodore Flournoy, “Nouvelles observations sur un cas
de somnambulisme avec glossolalie,” Archives de Psy- Drawings by Hélène Smith reproduced in Waldemar
chologie I (December 1901), pp. 101-255. Deonna, De la planète mars en terre sainte: Art et subcon-
14 See Waldemar Deonna, De la planète mars en terre scient, Un médium peintre: Hélène Smith (Paris: De Boc-
sainte: Art et subconscient, Un médium peintre: Hélène card, 1932).
Smith (Paris: De Boccard, 1932).
15 On the names of Hélène Smith, see “Une glossolale et Samples of Martian writing reproduced in Théodore
ses savants: Elise Muller, alias Hélène Smith,” in La Lin- Flournoy, “Nouvelles observations sur un cas de somnam-
guistique fantastique, ed. Sylvain Auroux (Paris: Denoel, bulisme avec glossolalie,” Archives de Psychologie I
1985). (December 1901).
16 Flournoy, 1900, pp. 330-1.
17 Ibid.
18 Ibid., pp. 317-8.
19 See Flournoy, 1900, pp. 314-36 and idem., 1901, pp.
211-16. See also O. Flournoy, 1985 which includes letters
between T. Flournoy and Saussure, Barth, and Michel.
20 Flournoy, 1900, pp. 316, 326.
21 See Henry, 1901, pp. 21-5.
22 Cifali, 1994, p. 286.

69 Top: Samples of Martian writing produced by Hélène Smith during one of her séances: (Continued from
‡
p. 68) Town Crier, Bearer of Sacred Water, Dog Breeder, Guardian, Virgin Girl, Fiancée.
The alien argot of the avant-garde
Christian Bök

Atlantis Productions commissioned me in 1997 to design a credible not describe a universe that exists beyond the character of language
language to be spoken by the extraterrestrials on the new, sci-fi TV itself: there are no things that endure (no “states”); there are only
show, Earth: The Final Conflict (the latest series of programs imag- traits in action (only “events”)—no existing, only becoming. The
ined by Gene Roddenberry). The Hollywood producers wanted me aliens have no concept of representation. For them, things do not
to create an ethereal language that would be spoken by a race of “imitate” each other; instead, they “connect” with each other. The
“electroplasmic superorganisms”—aliens who embodied an inhu- painting of a rose does not depict a flower; instead, the aliens say
man science of enlightened tranquility. I was bemused by the fact that the painting strives to become a flower.
that years of both academic experience (as a doctorate) and artistic
experience (as a soundpoet) had now finally made me uniquely The alien argot is defined in part by the following qualities:
qualified to be a linguistic consultant in the world of science-fiction, Predicates are not composed of nouns and verbs; instead, every
creating a successor to Klingon. sentence is reducible to a word that synthesizes noun and verb into
a kind of “adjectival infinitive” (not unlike a gerund in English: for
Earth: The Final Conflict presumes that, in the near future, Earth example, thinking, dreaming, etc.). Such a “nounverb” is a trait in
has been visited by the Taelons, a race of celestial Buddhists, who action, referring simultaneously to a quality and its conduct. The lan-
alleviate our social misery, although their motives for saving our guage has no notion of a complete sentence: there are only intran-si-
planet seem esoteric, if not inimical, and thus a distrustful billionaire, tives modified by various affixes that inflect some quality, according to
Jonathan Doors, forms a rebel group of humans who vow to resist a logic that at first seems more associative than designative.
the seductive despotism of these benign aliens. Shot in Toronto
(a futuristic metropolis by any American standard), the show has Predicates do not index a temporal relation. Sentences, for example,
enjoyed modest success in the States, where TV Guide has men- have no tense, except the present tense. There is thus no way to
tioned my involvement, describing me as “the noted linguist, express an action that takes place in a yesterday or a tomorrow.
Christian Bök” (even though this linguistic reputation has only been Instead, the aliens express the passage of time in terms that evoke
earned by virtue of my being “noted” in TV Guide). a state of mind, like a mood: the future tense is expectant (the present
act of hoping for an event to happen); the past tense is nostalgic
Klingon represents the most successful invented language in history, (the present act of pining for an event to return). Time, for the
since more people now speak the alien argot than speak Esperanto. aliens, is defined not through a “sequence” of causalities, but
Darren Wershler-Henry in his book Nicholodeon has even gone so far through “rhizomes” of coincidence.
as to translate a poem by bp Nichol into Klingon, producing a lautge-
dichte as nonsensical as any Dada poem by Hugo Ball. Wershler-Henry Predicates do not index a contrary relation. There are no antonyms
reports that he has had to make some allowances for poetic usage: that designate an opposition between one concept and its other ex-
“Since Klingon contains no equivalent for the word ‘car,’ [...] this text treme: no words for non-, anti-, etc., only inflections of an idiom that
reads ‘primitive shuttlecraft.’” Klingon is, however, nothing more translates (inadequately) as “and/or” or “eitherboth.” Taelons make
than a simple cipher for English with a reverse grammar and a Ger- no distinction, for example, between subject and object, between
manic emphasis. Since fans of Star Trek are unlikely to learn cause and effect, etc., since they use only one word to designate
another language so similar to one already learned, I have tried to both terms at the same time. There are few anthropic analogues for
imagine a truly alien argot with no earthly cognate. this principle of synthesis, except maybe for the Tao of Buddhism or
the Advaita of Hinduism.
The Taelons speak a whispery language that often seems nonsensi-
cal when translated into English, largely because the alien argot Predicates do not imply a singular relation. Whereas English
lacks many of our own grammatical constraints: for example, there presumes by default that a noun is singular, unless modified by a
are no nominative nouns, no transitive verbs, etc.—moreover, every plural suffix, the alien argot presumes by default that a “nounverb”
word is ambiguous and polysemic, with subtle nuances of meaning is multiple, unless modified by an affix that denotes a singular, the
that often seem contradictory. The language abounds in poetic “one among many.” The Taelons consider the plurality of cases
notions that are concocted and dissolved in a moment, according before they consider the specialty of one case: the word for an event
to aesthetic necessity. The aliens do not even believe that they use is thus always plural (unless modified) since the aliens regard each
their language; instead, they say that the language uses them. It is, event in terms of all its cases: e.g., the “table” as it has
for them, an entity with a life of its own. It is not a tool used to become, as it might become, etc….
express ideas; instead, they see it as an ideal virus that uses their own
minds as a means for replicating itself through the act communication. Premises such as these can provide the basis for an alien idiom
with its own grammar and lexicon: for example, the sentence “We
The Taelons subscribe to a Philosophie des Als Ob, in which reality come in peace” can be translated into the phrase sinaüi ëuhur¨a
is more exigent than existent: there is never only one possible state (pronounced: “shee-nha-wheeee, yhoo-hurrr-rha,” with the letter R
of the “as is”; there are only many potential states of the “as if.” The trilled, and the vowels aspirated at the back of the throat). The
Taelons have no cognate for the word “reality,” except a gerund that expression translates very literally into the phrase “arriving as if
roughly translates as “thinking” or “dreaming.” The language does fierce and/or serene.” The aliens draw no distinction between

70 Invented Languages
 abs TruCt heh GarBagt
CD insert with works by Charles Bernstein,
Christian Bök, and Steve McCaffery

antonyms; hence, their idiom for “making peace” is the same as Each of the pieces on this audio CD reinvents poetry by making
their idiom for “making war.” In both cases, the two possible mean- works of words that exist in no language other than the one con-
ings are always presumed to be implied in the statement itself, as if structed by the poem. For the twentieth century, the inaugural work
to suggest the multiplicitous possibilities of every initiated encounter. of this type is Kurt Schwitters’s sound poetry masterpiece, The
“Ursonate” (1922-1932), the full text of which is available in pppppp:
Working on a dictionary plus a grammar text for the show, I edited poems performance pieces proses plays poetics, edited and trans-
all Taelon speech in English and translated dialogue into the alien lated by Jerome Rothenberg and Pierre Joris (Temple University
argot, creating other neologisms whenever necessary (such as the Press, 1993). Starting unexpectedly with a prelude that begins:
“skril,” a symbiotic laser; and the “synod,” an alien judiciary, etc.); “Fumms bö wö taa zaa Uu, pö giff, kwi Ee,” the work is composed,
moreover, I wrote riddles and prayers in the language, plus an alien like a traditional sonata, in four movements. Christian Bök’s dynamic
fable, entitled las̈amali (pronounced: “lah-shammah-lee”). Based performance of the work is twice as fast as Schwitters’s own ver-
upon the story by Aesop about the race between the turtle and the sion, discovered only after Bök had begun to perform the work.
rabbit (except that the two characters, las̈a and mali, can be function- (Schwitters’s performance was first released as a Wergo CD in
ally interchanged in order to convey more than one moral point), the 1993.)
fable refers to the act of “transcending oneself through struggle”—
an act that fuses riskiness and discipline: las̈amali. The two charac- “Azoot D’Puund” was written by Charles Bernstein in the late 1970s,
ters satirize a pair of pets owned by my friend Natalee Caple. appearing as part of a collection called Poetics Justice, which was
reprinted in Republics of Reality: Poems 1975 -1995 (Sun and Moon
Earth: The Final Conflict aspires to be an intelligent contribution to Press, 2000). While the poem uses no English words, English speak-
the genre of science-fiction (although the show does liberally mix its ers will likely hear it as quasi-English, since it resonates with various
merits with its faults—much like the premiere episodes of Star Trek). kinds of accents and slangs, taking off on its own sonic riffs, but
Poets wishing to learn more about the alien argot are encouraged to always staying close to the intonational and grammatical patterns of
consult the web site at www.taelons.com, where they might find a “the American.”
more extensive monograph about the language, plus an exhaustive
vocabulary, including examples of Taelon speech. Like the poet The final five pieces are by Steve McCaffery. “Shamrock,” “Mr. White
Jackson Mac Low (who has performed vocals for the aliens in the in Panama,” “The Multiples,” and “Natural Histories 6 and 7” all date
movie Men In Black), the avant-garde has had to make a modest living from 1981, while “First Random Chance Poem” dates from 1982. All
in the oddest venues—almost as if poetry itself has become so het- five pieces are taken from a sound/text project “The Body Without
eroclite in the modern milieu that it is now nothing more than an alien Writing.” McCaffery’s interest in sonic renditions of imaginary lan-
idiom that has no real home except in the world of science-fiction. guage is to work the threshold that demarks the difference between
sound and meaningful sound. He notes that St. Augustine recorded
las̈amali : A Taelon Fable that his own experience of hearing a dead language stirred in him
omr̈uvala once upon, what if... the desire for the will to know the meaning. Imaginary languages are
similar purveyors of virtual significations.
las̈a qiloüi mali nimbly, daring, gently
viloüi z̈ava by comparing The CD was mastered by Scott Konzelmann at Chop Shop.
las¨a viloüi nimbly, faring
s̈oloüa as if fast
mali viloüi gently, faring
s̈oloüa as if slow

las̈a nimbly
ëeve ne-üevama early, free of caring
mali gently
ëeve ne-üevama later, full of caring

las¨a ëulumi nimbly, languishing

tolova as though finishing
teüe tolova without finishing
mali meneli las̈a gently, vanquishing, nimbly
mali tolova thus gently, finishing

üe-üevama moral: to cherish

teüe tolova thereby to finish

71 ‡
72
73 Xu Bing ‡
From The Himalayan Journal, 1999
 wor
the
write,
I
more
The
in sight.
peak is
a bit of the
Right now,

fog
My writing gets worse. fog
Once again,
something
pokes out of
the clouds. f
fog
Here the fog lightens.
fog There, the thick fog covers it all up.
fog in fog.
A snowpeak is visible,
fog covered but not clearly.
was A little mo
fog ridge
this A little peak
before, Beneath here,
fog
Moments
all colors darken. Ridge

white cloud Another cloud Ridge

sharp.
White fog
and
is clear
Dense white fog Ridge
there,

ridge, A cloud bunch white cloud

do not know what.
That White snow here but I
There is something
The brown of the A A distant hill in fog.
brown A distant hill
mountainside is
rock long
sharp and full – rock brown Couldn’t
write /draw Yes
a silhouette. A patch of brown this. This hill is brown and red
rock There are snow clouds. white because it lies above
brown Here is a snow cloud. the treeline.
white cloud There is a snow cloud. line almost
chicken
because But rolling hills are dark,
I Chinese in sight. Brown, that
ordered yellow, and a is
haven’t it
Beneath here, green begins to appear. I What? little bit shiny. resembles Here
eaten way. Treeless.
But only a little. yesterday.
meat a
just Chinese
in a
shower in waterfall cliff
three
food
days. warm Misty clou
prepares cliff
I a
Green tree
did, find cook
White snow rising the
however, cliff
that
seems There is a clearing up, but it clouds
Green tree over again.
It It changes so swiftly.
lodge. I want better language to
White snow rising Green tree describe it. But, now, I forget
Nepali so many characters.
this They move to th
within Green tree
from
out A white cloud and a green tree
gaze Green tree
We
A white cloud and a green tree
Green tree
 fog

fog fog
my
rse
writing fog fog
fog fog fog
becomes.
fog

fog snow Now, the view is clear.

The mountain
snow shows Nothing can be done.
itself once again.

fog The ridge shows

Ridge
itself once again.
No need to draw it.
Snowy mountaintop Only sight will do.
Limited
pokes out of the clouds. Writing, too,
Too much change. cannot describe it.
Hard to capture Peak Peak
ountain can be seen.
in words. Ridge
And so beautiful Ridge Foggy
that characters mountain
Ridge
Ridge do not capture it.
Capped
What can be done?
once again.
up… Now nothing
up, can
Ridge
up, be seen.
Rising Fog
After lunch this ink has darkened.
Fog rising. Cannot see clearly.
Fog
Fog Black peak capped by fog

distinguished.
be
cannot
in a cloud there
lies It changes so fast,
I cannot catch it
what in words.
and Can’t catch it.
It is entirely There, alone, lies a little
black, covered again. shadow.
So little.

uds move to the right.

he right
Öyvind Fahlström’s aviary
A.S. Bessa

“Monster languages” is the expression Although Fåglar i Sverige was performed by

Swedish artist Öyvind Fahlström (1928- Fahlström in the radio studio with the aid of
1976) used to refer to his experiments in a sound technician, it still comprises several
creating new languages: “birdo,” based “voices.” These voices are mainly recordings
on American bird sounds; “fåglo,” based (of Basil Rathbone, Jan Lindblad, and a
on Swedish bird sounds; and “whammo,” sample from Puccini’s Suor Angelica) that
based on onomatopoeic expressions complement Fahlström’s narration. They
in comic books. Of the few works that add color by contrasting with the flatness
Fahlström produced employing “monster of Fahlström’s narrative and are thus the
languages,” the 1963 radio play Fåglar i equivalent of arias, duets, and recitatives.
Sverige [Birds in Sweden]1 is the most While Fåglar i Sverige also makes two clear
ambitious. references to operas (Suor Angelica and
Wagner’s Siegfried ), it is impossible to read
The first thing that might strike the listener a coherent story into this work. The action
about Fåglar i Sverige is how lovely it sounds. jumps back and forth between places that
This is partly a result of its operatic struc- are only suggested, and the characters, if
ture, which allows the work to unravel an we can accept them as such, are equally
entire web of references. Opera played a obscurely defined.
significant role in the work of Fahlström,
either because of its combination of words, One gets the sense that in Fåglar i Sverige
music, and imagery, the use of dramatic Fahlström grasped a concept too huge for
conventions to address historical events, him to communicate in an orderly way, that
or simply because of its extravagant ex- the syntax available to him was inadequate
plorations of language. Its combination to address his subject, hence the recourse
of language and music provided Fahlström to a collage of sound. The principle of col-
with a highly complex organizing principle lage (splicing, sampling, quoting) will then
that allowed him to fully explore the per- become the very syntax of this work as well
plexity of language and its conflicting as part of its subject matter. Thus, every-
elements. Fåglar i Sevrige mimics opera thing in Fåglar i Sverige is borrowed from
at the same time that it reflects on the other sources.
genre and expands its vocabulary. The fact
that Fahlström needed an organizing princi- Within this structure of collage in Fåglar i
ple in order to elaborate his work is evident Sverige, there are hints of birds becoming
in the many essays that he wrote on art. machines, of machines as extensions of
It is most clearly outlined in his influential natural organisms, and, ultimately, of nature
“Manifesto for Concrete Poetry”2 (1953), being superseded by technology. This
the first attempt to adapt Pierre Schaeffer’s3 mimicry becomes particularly disturbing
ideas on musique concrète to the realm during “The Raven” section due to the
of poetry. encoded meaning that Fahlström extracts

74
74 Birdo > ‡
75
75 ‡
76 ‡
76
 Esperanto: still alive and kicking
An interview with Sabina Ståhlberg

from a specific group of words. This opera- engender misreading, decontextualizing, The Esperanto language was created in
tion is twofold: In the first part Fahlström and hybridization. The general structure is 1887 by the Polish linguist and doctor
isolates a cluster of words from Edgar Al- primarily related to opera, but it also draws L.L. Zamenhof (1859 -1917). During the third
len Poe’s The Raven and translates it into from radio dramatization in the tradition of week of July 2000, the week-long Esperanto
one “whammo.”“Whammo,” like its sister Orson Welles’s War of the Worlds, and Cultural Festival took place in Helsinki,
“monster languages,” is basically the trans- from documentary styles. From the start, Finland. Sabira Ståhlberg (originally from
lation of each syllable of a word into its Fahlström borrows studio technical devices Helsinki and now living in Bulgaria) has
onomatopoeic simile. For instance the word such as “sound effects” and sampling to spoken Esperanto the better part of her life.
“Re-mem-ber” becomes “ring-munch- create atmosphere, and “real” informa- She has also been heavily involved in the
brru(p).” In this process each word is then tion in the form of reportage. To complicate Esperanto community, serving as the vice
distorted and morphed into an entirely things further, he distorts these elements president of the World Organization of
new word through the mere mimicry of its with complete disregard for the conventions Young Esperantists from 1991-1993 and
sound: of each style. currently as editor-in-chief of the online
magazine Kontakto. Nina Katchadourian
remember ringmunchbrru(p) Fåglar i Sverige is a highly allegorical work met her to find out about the Esperanto
December dringsmekbrru(p) that performs its narrative while linking our community and the problems and misper-
ember hm-brru(p) cultural past to our contemporaneous tech- ceptions facing it.
floor f(e)h-oww nological environment. The replacements
morrow mmmrrrowroww and displacements performed on The Raven How did you come to be involved with
borrow brr(p)rrowroww are carried out in order to illustrate the pro- Esperanto?
sorrow zzzrrrowroww cess through which words mutate. On the
Lenore kli(p)unghoww other hand, they also are the technique by Sabira Ståhlberg: When I was 13 or 14, my
evermore wham-moo-oww which Fåglar i Sverige is constructed. In the mother bought a book. We were very inter-
double mirror that is Fåglar i Sverige, not ested in languages and I had seen some
However, new words are not allowed to even the image of the poet is left out of the films about Esperanto. My mother went
remain meaningless indefinitely. The next frame. Hence Fahlström’s image emerges out to buy a book about Saami (the Lappish
phase strives to restore their signification. as “the operator,” camouflaged as a DJ in people) and came back with a book about
Each new word is translated again, but this a studio of the Swedish Radio performing, Esperanto instead!
time into sounds recognized by the listener, sampling, cutting, splicing, scratching,
with each word corresponding to a composite mimicking in bird language the major works Did the whole family learn Esperanto
of two or three “natural” sounds, one for of other poets. together?
each syllable:
1 A bilingual book-plus-CD edition of Fåglar i Sverige has Yes…We used to sit in the car on our way
ringmunchbrru(p) telephone-munching-machine gun recently been released in conjunction with excerpts from to the countryside and practice Esperanto.
dringsmekbrru(p) telephone-smacking-machine gun another radio-play, Den Helige Torsten Nilssen. See Teddy
hm-brru(p) humming-machine gun Hultberg, Öyvind Fahlström i etern—Manipulera världen Last night, I noticed that various accents
f(e)h-oww snow shoveling-elephant / Öyvind Fahlström on the Air—Manipulating the World sometimes came through in the way some
mmmrrrowroww kissing-cat-elephant (Stockholm: Sveriges Radios Förlag & Fylkingen, 1999). people spoke Esperanto. Is there a particular
brr(p)rrowroww machine gun-cat-elephant 2 An English translation of the “Manifesto for Concrete Po- correct pronunciation?
zzzrrrowroww snoring/sniffing-cat-elephant etry” is available at www.fahlstrom.com. The term concrete
kli(p)unghoww bowling-groan-elephant poetry was coined simultaneously and independently in Zamenhof established the correct pronunci-
wham-moo-oww car crash-cow-elephant the early fifties by Eugen Gomringer in Switzerland and by ation using phonetic indications. But I think
Fahlström. it depends how much you travel with
Although Fåglar i Sverige delivers no specific 3 Pierre Schaeffer (1910-1995) was the inventor of musique Esperanto, because the more you travel,
message, it does reveal the operation of a concrète, which he first performed publicly in 1950 in Paris. the more you learn an international pro-
system of messages that is hilarious and nunciation.
touching, half intuitive and half constructed, Samples of Fåglar i Sverige are available at www.immate-
part natural and part historical. The lack of rial.net/cabinet. Are there sound recordings of him speaking?
one unequivocal message in the piece does
not imply that there is nothing in it for the Pages from Öyvind Fahlström’s notes for generating his Yes, there are, from 1905. And he speaks
listener. Once past the disorienting sheen of hybrid languages Whammo (cover), Birdo (p.75), and Fåg- very clearly, very fluently, and very beauti-
its initial impression, the listener is suddenly lo (p. 76), 1962. Courtesy Sharon Avery-Fahlström. fully.
drawn into a sphere where language oper-
ates in an almost purely mechanical way—
where repetition, sampling, and quoting

77 < Fåglo ‡
Did the Esperanto he spoke then sound like introduce Esperanto as the official first Has there been a steady curve up in number
an older Esperanto compared to today? language in schools in China. But there of speakers, or have there been periods of
were political problems and it didn’t work out. greater and lesser interest?
Yes, not so much phonetically, but in the
words he uses. We use other words now Esperanto has a European language base; Yes, there have been many highs and lows.
for certain things, and new words have is it easiest to learn it coming from any par- There was a peak in the 1890s, and lots of
come into use as well. ticular language? people who learned went on to become
intellectuals. Then the World War One came,
How do words get added to the language? Mostly people who speak some Italian, or and the Esperantists did a lot of work
Spanish or Portuguese get into it the fast- obtaining information about people in
In the same way as in every other language. est… but they also have the worst time camps and in prisons, like a kind of Red
People start to use some form of a word, sorting out which words belong to which Cross. The Red Cross got a lot of ideas
and then there are people who think of how language! from the Esperanto movement of this time.
to make new words in accordance to the The low points came after the Second
rules of Esperanto, and figure out how we How did Zamenhof go about making World War because Hitler used to send
can establish a word that’s easy to use. Esperanto? Esperantists to camps from the 30s on.
They were really suppressed in the 40s.
Is there an official body that approves new He started as a ten year old boy, making a But there are stories about German soldiers
words? language, but then this father burned the not telling their bosses that they speak
papers since he thought it was a waste Esperanto and saving French soldiers. And
There is an academy, and it’s based in the of time. Zamenhof said afterwards that this of course there was a split in the Esperanto
countries where the academicians live. was good, because he had to start from movement during the Cold War. The people
Officially I think it’s based in Switzerland, scratch. So for 10 years or so he worked on in the East could not communicate,
but the President of this academy is in this, and found that it was easiest to skip all although in Eastern Europe Esperanto used
Brazil, the Vice President is in Sweden, and the genders and the indefinite articles. This to be state-supported. So I would say that
the Secretary is in Italy! They usually talk makes it very easy. He spoke Polish, Russian, the Esperanto movement is very dependent
over the net. and Yiddish himself, but he put all the lan- on what is going on in the world. And
guages he had learned and a few others I would say that this is quite normal, be-
I’m curious if anything like an Esperanto together, and made huge lists of languages cause Esperantists are just ordinary people
national anthem exists, for example, or a and checked to see where words over- who live in one more world, or one more
national poet? lapped. He worked the language out statisti- dimension.
cally, in a sense.
There is a song by Zamenhof—it’s a poem Would simply being an Esperanto speaker
he wrote which was set to music—which Within his lifetime, how far had Esperanto be enough to be sent to a camp?
is the official anthem. There have also been managed to go?
jazz and blues versions of it! Mostly it’s Yes. Esperantists used to have a lot of
played during the international meetings. Zamenhof died in 1917; he managed to par- friends all over the place and having contact
ticipate in a few conferences, and he also with foreign countries was not legal after
How many speakers are there worldwide? saw the growth of a huge literature. He did 1935, I think. Alexander Solzhenitsyn says
a lot of writing and translation himself. inGulag Archipelago that the first to be sent
It’s very difficult to say because there’s no It had developed pretty far…plus, the first to Siberia were the Esperantists and the
state body to count them. Some people say couple had married in 1899 because of Tartars because they had contacts and
it’s a few million, some people say 10 million. Esperanto! friends. There were lots of Esperantists in
I’d guess a few million. Russia. But the interesting thing is that they
Did Zamenhof speak it at home? started teaching Esperanto in Siberia, so
Is there a sense of where people are lots of people came back from the camps
clustered? Yes, his children spoke Esperanto and his speaking it.
daughter Lydia wrote a lot in Esperanto. But
At the moment, the countries where the then World War Two came and the family
numbers are growing are Brazil… South was Jewish. Lydia died in Treblinka. Lydia’s
America in general is growing fast. Another brother wife was saved and her son is now
part of the world where it’s growing is active in the movement.
Vietnam and also Korea. They are teaching it
at universities there. There was a Minister
of Education in China in 1912 who wanted to

78 Invented Laguages
Are there places in the world now where to have it to use. He was, I think, very disap- And other misconceptions?
there are political consequences for pointed in politics. Poland was part of Russia
speaking it? and his father was a censor. What Zamenhof It’s probably the question of “artificiality.”
wanted to do was to give a tool to ordinary Someone made the point that every language
North Korea. I was in China in May, and they people to be able to communicate. There is artificial—it just depends how many
used to send Esperanto magazines from was a period in France at the beginning of people create it. Bahasa Indonesia is also
China in unmarked envelopes and they the twentieth century where they said Espe- invented but by a group. Esperanto was
are being returned. They don’t know if ranto would be everyone’s second language, created by one guy. This concept of an
these people have died or if they’re being and would be the world language. But this “artificial language” has now been changed
controlled. Some Arab countries are did not come from Zamenhof; it was from into “planned languages.”
sometimes difficult because they think it’s the French connection, and these ideas are
some kind of Jewish idea to overthrow the still part of the outside perception of There have been other planned languages
world, and so on, but the International Con- Esperanto. Some Esperantists also still too, one based on a more Germanic root.
gress is in Israel this year, and right now believe this, but I think most are pretty real-
they are meeting in Jordan with various istic. Some people use it for their own Yes, it’s called Volapük. But this language
academics and politicians. personal pleasure, others are satisfied just has died out—it was too difficult, and the
writing letters once in a while, and then founder began changing it himself. Zamenhof
What do you think are some of the most there are people who want to consume was very good about this; he said, “OK I’ve
common misperceptions of the community culture and literature who see it as a chal- published the book, I’ve made the Funda-
or the movement? One thing, for example, lenge. Now there is a growing conscious- mento. Now it’s your turn.” and he gave it
that I may have been wrong about is that ness about having the same quality in to the speakers to do what they wanted.
it was meant to become the world’s Esperanto culture and literature as in any There is a small offspring of Esperanto called
language. other language. And this is good because it Ido and there are a few hundred people who
used to lag behind in the 50s and 60s. speak it. Mostly, they are Esperantists! The
Zamenhof said he wanted to make a base is more Romanic. It was a French
language which would be easy to learn— So Zamenhof had an idea, that people group again. It sounds like really funny
which he did—and he wanted to have a tool speaking this common language would Esperanto. “Edo” means “offspring.”
for direct communication. He saw too much communicate better, and that this might
ethnic violence and he wanted people to engender peace, But there are plenty of If you have children will you speak Esperanto
have a common language to speak. This is people who do speak the same language at home with them?
very much in line with the nineteenth century, who are fighting all the time. Is Esperanto
with everyone looking for a utopian solu- different because people who choose to Yes, of course. In my family, we all speak
tion. But he was very concrete about this. learn Esperanto do so in a spirit of goodwill Esperanto, so it’s the natural choice. But our
He spoke Latin and Greek and so on, but he to begin with? children will probably be multi-lingual.
didn’t think people should learn them—they
were too difficult, and you can’t speak I think people who learn Esperanto, already Esperanto’s world organization, The Universal Esperanto
them. have some idea of mutual comprehension Association, has a website at www.uea.org. To hear a
and internationalism and so on. Of course song in Esperanto by Jomart kaj Natasa, a duo originally
I think one misconception that one encoun- there are also people who learn Esperanto from Uzbekistan and now living in Stockholm, visit
ters is, “Why didn’t it become the world who have racist ideas or something, but Cabinet’s website at www.immaterial.net/cabinet.
language?” The thing is, “the world lan- there are fewer of them…Esperantists are For more music in Esperanto by other bands, see
guage” was a utopia from the previous usually very tolerant, and this shows in the www.sciuro.demon.co.uk/rokgazet/.
century. Maybe that will happen some day, fact for example that there are many blind
maybe there will be a common language people who speak Esperanto. They have
for the world… their own movement. Some people’s per-
ception of the world changes internally,
But was that really one of his goals? especially those who learn it in their teens
and travel to sing songs with people from,
Not a political one. He did want it to be the like, 60 different countries and your. The
International language, or an International Esperantists are helping each other in
language, if not the first language people Kosovo now, the Albanians and the Yugo-
spoke then perhaps a second language. slavians. The Koreans and the Japanese are
He did not specify ways that it should be doing similar things.
implemented politically, however. First and
foremost, he wanted people to speak it,

79 ‡
War Inadvertent memory
Laura Kurgan

Between March 22 and June 11, 1999,

the commercial French SPOT satellites
aimed their sensors at this site 42 times,
collecting data on the ground from an alti-
tude of 822 kilometers above it. Thousands
of megabytes of data about war, displace-
ment, and destruction, because—not by
accident—the satellites were passing over
Kosovo. Their 10- and 20-meter resolution
data were immediately stored and made
available publicly, directly from an active war
zone, on almost every day of the NATO air
campaign. Permanent digital records, creat-
ed at the speed of light: across sixty square
kilometers, in a matter of seconds, the satel-
lites recorded what was happening in the
‘scene’ below, gathering information on the
landscape of ethnic cleansing and war.

“Kosovo” names, among other things, the

conflict in which classified NATO overhead
images were finally released to the public.
And they were not simply pictures of the
conduct of the war but of its ostensible
reasons. This time, in addition to footage of
bombs and missiles, the public could see
ethnic cleansing in progress: high-resolution
imagery of mass graves, refugees in the
mountains, burning mosques and villages
and organized deportations. It was the war
in which satellite images were used as a
way of forming public opinion. The manner
in which they were released, however—as
pictures—showed less the facts-on-the-
ground than the ability of the technology
to record, in minute detail, these facts. No
data, strictly speaking, were forthcoming
at press briefings, and certainly not the raw
data available commercially. “I won’t talk
about what kind of imagery that is,” said the
Pentagon spokesman.

This past decade has been one in which

satellite data have become more and more
accessible to a general public, at higher and
higher resolutions. As of January 2000, we

80
can purchase images covering nine square

80
 miles at one meter per pixel resolution from
the Ikonos satellite for $1000 (if the terri-
tory is in the United States) or $2000 (if it’s
somewhere else), and more satellites will
soon be launched by governments and
corporations eager to compete. During the
% cloud coverage

war over Kosovo, however, aside from the

copies of satellite imagery released at the
NATO and Pentagon briefings, and archived
on their websites, images from the SPOT
satellites were the highest resolution (ten
meter) data available to the public.

SPOT scene 083-264, pictured here, sixty

square kilometers of Kosovo, roughly
centered on Pristina: this is just one scene
from the vast quantity of images which the
03.24 to 04.06 04.07 to 04.20 04.21 to 05.04 05.05 to 05.18 05.19 to 06.01 06.02 to 06.10
satellites record daily and store in databases,
ready to be browsed and bought. Every
week 1 + 2 week 3 + 4 week 5 + 6 week 7 + 8 week 9 + 10 week 11 + 12 three days, the whole globe is pictured
again by the four French satellites. And
SPOT is just one of the satellite systems—
Landsat, Sovinformsputnik, and Ikonos
(Space Imaging), to name only three—which
are continuously orbiting the globe, sens-
ing and recording and transmitting and
archiving. Millions and millions of pixels,
stored in memory, waiting in databases.
For a little more than eleven weeks, this
area was examined with almost every
technology available to the military, govern-
ments, civil society, and the news media.
Here is a graphical snapshot of a tiny part of
the SPOT database, counting the passage
of the satellites over one particular piece of
ground which during the NATO air campaign
came into broader focus: a place to watch
over for some, a target for others.

Eighty-one days, forty-two images, most of

them were cloudy.

Excerpted from a larger project investigating satellite

imagery of Kosovo during the war. To view the project in
more detail go to www.virtualmanifesta.com.

81 ‡
1990329.JPG 1990402.JPG 2990406.JPG 1990408.JPG 4990409.JPG
Date: 03/29/99 Date: 04/02/99 Date: 04/06/99 Date: 04/08/99 Date: 04/09/99

4990410.JPG 2990411.JPG 1990413.JPG 4990415.JPG 2990416.JPG

Date: 04/10/99 Date: 04/11/99 Date: 04/13/99 Date: 04/15/99 Date: 04/16/99

2990417.JPG 1990424.JPG 4990425.JPG 1990429.JPG 4990430.JPG

Date: 04/17/99 Date: 04/24/99 Date: 04/25/99 Date: 04/29/99 Date: 04/30/99

2990501.JPG 1990503.JPG 4990510.JPG 49C0510.JPG 4990511.JPG

Date: 05/01/99 Date: 05/03/99 Date: 05/10/99 Date: 05/10/99 Date: 05/11/99

2990512.JPG 1990513.JPG 4990515.JPG 2990518.JPG 1990519.JPG

Date: 05/12/99 Date: 05/13/99 Date: 05/15/99 Date: 05/18/99 Date: 05/19/99

1990520.JPG 4990521.JPG 2990522.JPG 4990526.JPG 4990527.JPG

Date: 05/20/99 Date: 05/21/99 Date: 05/22/99 Date: 05/26/99 Date: 05/27/99

82 War
1990529.JPG 1990530.JPG 4990531.JPG 4990601.JPG 2990602.JPG
Date: 05/29/99 Date: 05/30/99 Date: 05/31/99 Date: 06/01/99 Date: 06/02/99

2990603.JPG 29906C3.JPG 4990605.JPG 4990606.JPG 2990607.JPG

Date: 06/03/99 Date: 06/03/99 Date: 06/05/99 Date: 06/06/99 Date: 06/07/99

29C0607.JPG Date: 06/10/99 49C0611.JPG

Date: 06/07/99 End of war Date: 06/11/99

No image

83 ‡
NATO as architectural critic
Srdjan Jovanovic Weiss

Destruction as Classification faced a problem of identification: how to of Belgrade particular buildings were antici-
Is it possible to recover a historically inflected read architecture that neither looked pated to be likely targets. “Most people
reading of the Serbian government buildings Stalinist nor had the classical aspirations of believe that the urban centers will be
destroyed during NATO’s 78-day “bombing the Third Reich. The empty administration ‘cruised,’ and official propaganda does as
for peace”? Part of any effort to do so buildings in downtown Belgrade in the much as possible to support this belief.
would have to provide evidence that this vicinity of hospitals and schools, the empty Indeed, civilian casualties would be a
nation’s role in modern history is not Federal Ministry of Internal Affairs and tremendous boost for the Serbian govern-
entirely nefarious, as it may seem today. the empty Army Headquarters built by a ment’s propaganda war against the rest of
A large part of that history is strictly archi- recipient of the Gold Medal of the Royal the world.”5 This is a sentiment that could
tectural. In contrast to other communist Institute of British Architects, all bombed by be read in an analysis published on the
nations like the Soviet Union, which under NATO, were important examples of Serbian Internet in October 1998, half a year before
Stalin chose a Neo-classicist style over post-war modernism.1 The result was NATO bombing began. The government’s
Constructivism to represent the state, that during the air campaign NATO unwit- position was possible in part because it has
Yugoslavia constructed its post-war image tingly demonstrated excellent taste in not expressed any ambition to create its
through experimenting in modernism. placing architectural landmarks from this own architectural rhetoric. Fully appropriat-
Devoid of national symbols and represen- century on its target list.2 As part “of a ing the previous communist buildings and
tations of power, architecture in Yugoslavia new struggle against fascism,” NATO infrastructure, in its ten-year rule the gov-
went through a process of programmatic selected to destroy the very buildings ernment has neither built nor commissioned
yet intuitive, and at times metaphorical, constructed in the post-war period to sym- a single piece of architecture, except for a
appropriations of the Western avant-garde. bolize the struggle of a “stubborn nation recent Neo-classicist monument which
This style is evident in institutional buildings against fascism.”3 While modernism that celebrates the one-year anniversary of the
ranging from government offices to came from the West was bombed, some end of NATO bombing. Therefore the
museums, hospitals and schools. The conservative examples were “preserved.” current regime had no difficulties sacrificing
construction of an architectural identity in Beli Dvor for example, or the White Palace, these buildings to NATO.
Yugoslavia had to follow an ideological shift an eclectic Palladian-type villa built in the
away from the centralist Eastern bloc toward 30s, where Milosevic, like Tito before him, Army Headquarters:
liberal Western democracies. National archi- normally greets guests but does not live, The Void as National Identity
tects learned how to suppress expressionism was considered off-limits as a target because Had NATO wished to destroy a building
deriving from their pre-war educations and of a Rembrandt canvas kept on its first with more Western influences, it could
previous experiments in national styles. floor.4 In history books, Fascist architecture not have found a better target than the
Cubist and Expressionist buildings—for such as the Third Reich’s is always under- Army Headquarters, also known as the Min-
many a true national sensibility—were stood in relation to its conditions of creation. istry of National Defense. The leveling of
dressed to look functionalist and interna- The architecture used by the current state Vukovar, the siege of Sarajevo, and the
tional. This process marked the post-war in Serbia was built before the world found random bombardment of Dubrovnik were
boom in construction all around Yugoslavia. the Serbian state to be nationalist, but in believed to have been ordered from this
Variations on the curtain wall as seen in the bombing Serbia, NATO also branded exam- Army Headquarters in Belgrade. In the
Seagram building by Mies van der Rohe and ples of Serbian post-war modernism as press briefing by NATO the morning after
Phillip Johnson in New York, on the repeti- Fascist. Once caught in the fire of the global the night attack, this remarkable post-war
tive mullions of the Pan-Am building by media, this architecture, built under a pro- modernist building is referred to as the
Walter Gropius, on rows of horizontal win- Western liberal influence, is now in danger “heart of the war machine.” Given this
dows, and on patternless stone replaced of being branded as Fascist, of being characterization by NATO, will this building
pre-war decorative academicism and its remembered in relation to its conditions of now be remembered in relation to its
classical look. destruction. creation or to its destruction?

In war, the time of destruction is also the There is, however, a complication in laying The building of the Army Headquarters
time of classification. In its role as a bomber sole responsibility for the bombing of these coincided with the construction of the post-
targeting a selection of urban artifacts, NATO particular buildings on NATO. On the streets war national identity in Yugoslavia shortly

84 War
 after the break from Stalin in 1948. During
the spring of 1954 the Yugoslav Army
invited nine Yugoslav architects to compete
for a new building complex. Already quite
old, Josip Plecnik, an established academic
from Ljubljana, was also asked to elaborate
a solution outside of the competition and
advise on the questions of urban analysis
and composition. The others were
asked to participate anonymously. One
of them was Nikola Dobrovic, already
known in leftist circles of the European
intellectual avant-garde for his modernist
work.

Even before the competition, Theo van

Doesburg, the Dutch modernist, had
singled out the work of these two architects
in explaining the “construction” of Yugoslav
national identity. His view was that both
architects had developed their styles thanks
to conflicting influences mainly arriving
from Western Europe. Both were pioneers
in resisting the influence of tradition.6
These two architects had nevertheless
developed entirely different, if not opposite,
vocabularies of formal expression. Van
Doesburg described Plecnik’s approach
to “constructing” identity as the practice
of an “honest” Neo-classicist. On the other
hand, even though he criticized Dobrovic for
being “a true academic [not capable] in
his work of formulating the constructive
system of a building,” the Dutch painter
praised him as one of “the first voices
to be liberated from the limiting ties of
Yugoslav tradition and to reach out toward
mutual innovation in the art and architecture
of Middle and Western Europe.”7 Plecnik,
the “honest” Neo-classicist, was there
in order to legitimize the government’s
project of reconfiguring this important part
of the city, and Dobrovic, an “academic”
with a “liberating voice,” was there to serve
as proof of the recent shift in Yugoslav
politics towards a pro-liberal image endorsed
by the West.

85 Army Headquarters in Belgrade ‡

after NATO bombing.
Courtesy City Assembly of Belgrade
 Plecnik submitted three different schemes
for the site, which measured 270 by 100
meters and was divided in two by a large
street. Plecnik derived his schemes from
an earlier design for a Slovenian Parliament
in Ljubljana in 1947, a polemical yet well-
known Neo-classical proposal. In spite of
the jury of generals in Belgrade praising his
efforts as the best urban concept, they
decided to find the winner among the anon-
ymous entries. The pro-liberal experiment
that was Yugoslavia after the break with the
Eastern Bloc was unlikely to favor Plecnik’s
Neo-classicist variations on national identity,
especially since Stalin had already appropri-
ated the Neo-classicist image for the com-
munist state. The undesired proximity of
Plecnik’s use of the vertical column and a
classical volume to the triumphalistic style
of, for example, Ivan Zholtovsky, one
of Stalin’s favorite architects, was perhaps
too unappealing in the eyes of the pro-lib-
eral Yugoslav jury. Yugoslavia was about to
choose a new image for its Army Headquar-
ters and Nikola Dobrovic knew that very
well. His idea of symbolizing the Army
within such a transitional society was not
to be literal, by, for example, “placing tanks
on top of Neo-classical buildings,” like his
counterpart in Russia Lev Rudnev had pro-
posed for the Army Headquarters in
Moscow.8

In contrast, Dobrovic won with a scheme

stripped of any classical representations
of power. Not even a single modernist
round column survived his very personal
concept of “engaged volumetric shaping”
and his painterly methods of achieving
“visual dynamics.” The changes and
the liberalization of a transitional state
such as Yugoslavia were to be shaped into
a volume, not expressed as a narrative.
The street front across the site had already
been filled with pre-war representational
buildings in a variety of academic and
Neo-classical styles. Dobrovic’s proposal

86 War Top Bottom

Dobrovic’s Bergsonian The Army Headquarters.
drawing for the Army Photograph by
Headquarters. Vladimir Kulic.
connected the two divided areas of the were to be triggered by movement through The Army Headquarters,
site by proposing a long and narrow volume the void of the proposed building com- The Heart of the War Machine
from one end of the site to the other with plex. The character of the void keeps it If Josip Plecnik had won the competition
a full length of 250 meters, thus keeping visually inseparable from the two parts of for the Army Headquarters with his “honest”
a space open for the street coming up the the building. The diagrams depicted four Neo-classical proposal, would NATO have
hill from the main railway station to the variations on visual engagement: “sym- had the audacity to destroy it? Would it have
city. By setting this volume back from the metrical,” “asymmetrical,” and two labeled been spared from destruction on grounds
line of the crossing street, Dobrovic created as “extravagant.” The jury was fond of the of “cultural preservation,” in order to “pre-
a 270-meter wide field open for experiments symmetrical one. serve national culture and identity” as seen
in elevation. The void in that elevation from the sky? Would Plecnik’s columns,
evoked a canyon and Dobrovic imagined These diagrams demonstrated the shift spanning from the base to the cornice and
the void as an integral part of his new image in the role of architectonics when the task thus defining the height of the building, his
of national identity. at hand was to represent a state. For large circular tower with the cone-shaped
Dobrovic, the architectonics of his roof, and the generous public colonnades
“Visual, mobile, and transitional” was “engaged space” was analogous to a surrounding the public squares in front of
Dobrovic’s description of the new individ- musical score being played continuously his building have been enough to remind
ual capable of negotiating this new form of by the listener.10 A viewer for Dobrovic is NATO’s cultural advisers of the possibility
architecture. As an academic, he attempt- someone who finds an imprint of his or her that it belongs to Culture?
ed to translate a philosophical speculation self in “the voids [that] acquire their visual
into form. For the 270-meter elevation existence and belonging” through this To the press, NATO explained its five-step
plane, he created a series of diagrams that very act. target selection procedure as follows:
he called “Bergson’s diagrams,” referring 1.Targets are suggested at NATO’s head-
to the French philosopher Henri Bergson. There are no records of diagrams of spatial quarters in Brussels as well as in Germany
The focus of all the diagrams was “the conditions in the works of the French and Italy.
void,” somewhere in the middle of the philosopher. Bergson died in 1941. It is 2. A cell in Pentagon called J-2T studies
elevation plane. In the circles of Belgrade possible that Dobrovic, led by intuition feasibility of the target.
intellectuals these, by now mythic, “Berg- and an unrestricted desire to absorb and 3. The planners measure the strategic value
son diagrams” defining the visual dyna- work from Western ideas, created and of a target against the drawbacks.
mism and tension in the main elevation of named the “Bergson diagrams” himself. 4. Lawyers at the Pentagon and at NATO’s
the complex were used to construct the A possible justification for him doing so headquarters work on justifying the targets.
visual identity of a winning nation from can be found in a book about Bergson 5. Presidents of major NATO countries
World War II. Dobrovic characterized these written by Gilles Deleuze.11 This book review the target list.12
diagrams as the depicting “the engage- called Bergsonism was published in 1966,
ment of space, that new visual order, that only two years after the completion of Since it was already anticipated as a target
new, powerful fluid architectonics of the Dobrovic’s Army Headquarters building. by Belgrade’s citizens, it would be a surprise
formally created environment.” 9 The dia- The thesis of Deleuze’s book is that Berg- if the Army Headquarters did not appear
grams formalized the idea of the “visual sonism is an intuitive but rigorous practice early on the list in Brussels. The feasibility
dynamics” of a building complex built to of appropriation as a valid kind of discovery. of targeting a large building in the heart of
be visually experienced by a contempo- This speculative claim may uncover, but the city was itself not enough for the deci-
rary citizen always on the move—”Homo also justify, Dobrovic’s lavish appropriation sion, however. The critical moment arrives
spatiosus” was his name for this person of Western architecture as actually being with the strategic evaluation of the target
conscious of his continuous motion. his discovery. His intuitive takeover of and and of its importance within the war ma-
Dobrovic’s contemporary individual could the transfor-mation of Bergson’s ideas on chine. It is also the moment of testing the
not stand still. Dobrovic based his idea of space and mobility may place the Army extent to which the target can be justified
“engaged space” through motion on the Headquarters building among the rare ex- through the creation of public support in
presence of the void. Changing perspec- amples of this appropriative tradition, the media. NATO had to present the war
tives, visual depths and visual layering if not the only such example. machine to a public that identified the targets

87 ‡
as the “organs” of an anthropomorphic World War II, it was in fact the result of an 1 The massive and monotonous Federal Ministry of Internal
enemy. The combined rhetoric of “heart” academic architectural operation—the Affairs, one of the few built examples of Social Realism in
and “brain” freed NATO from having to intuitive and speculative transformation of Belgrade, was built by Slovenian architect Ludvik Tomori.
deal with the specificity of the architectural the philosophy of Henri Bergson into The Ministry of National Defense in was built between
targets. Projecting the effects of destruc- “dynamic” diagrams that “shaped” the 1954 -1963 by architect Nikola Dobrovic.
tion, the classification of good or bad nomi- void, the only recognizable symbol in the 2 Vladimir Kulic, “Balkan War Reports,” April 3, 1999,
nees on the list of bombing targets liberated complex. The identity of the nation was to Ctheory (www.ctheory.com/e77).
NATO from responsibility for creating a sys- be found in the void, in non-matter, and in 3 Quotes by Tanja Damljanovic from Belgrade Architecture,
tem of values that was essentially opposed the action of the individual moving through eds. Vladimir Kulic, Mirjana Roter Blagojevic, Aleksandar
to culture. the void. Ignjatovic, Tanja Damljanovic, Renata Jadresin and Ana
Radivojevic, scheduled for publication in winter 2000.
During the bombing NATO continually pre- The circumstances that made it possible 4 Steve Erlanger, “The Targets; NATO Strikes Serbian TV;
sented the procedure behind its choice of to destroy architecture born in the struggle Casualties Seen,” The New York Times, April 23, 1999.
targets. In the international press, General against Fascism in the name of the global 5 Aleksandar Boskovic, “Belgrade Burning? Report from
Wesley Clark divided the targets into policing of Fascism have yet to be studied. Belgrade,” October 12, 1998, Ctheory.
“strategic” and “tactical.” Besides air In the meantime architects from Belgrade, 6 Theo van Doesburg, “Jugoslavija: Suprostavljeni uticaji:
defense, military forces, supply roads, and including Tanja Damljanovic and Vladimir Nikola Dobrovic i Srpska tradicija” (Yugoslavia: Conflicting
command and control objects, strategic tar- Kulic, have faced the current situation and Influences: Nikola Dobrovic and the Serbian Tradition) in
gets included “sustaining infrastructure and are adapting the content of their forthcoming Milos R. Perovic and Spasoje Krunic, eds., Nikola Dobrovic:
resources.”13 This comprised not only urban guide to the architecture of Belgrade to Eseji, projekti, kritike (Belgrade: Arhitektonski fakultet
targets, infrastructure, bridges, electrical include the images of the new ruins. This Univerziteta u Beogradu & Muzej arhitekture, 1998),
plants, oil refineries, but also administrative guide juxtaposes the original building and pp. 214-216.
buildings. But what can be the strategic the ruin, and thereby merges opposite 7 van Doesburg, ibid., p. 215.
value of a highly visible large building in the methods of architectural classification, one 8 Dobrovic refers to Frunze Military Academy in Moscow
center of the city, especially after being historically critical and based on the creation by Lev Rudnev, a project from 1932-37. See Nikola Dobrovic,
emptied of its personnel and equipment? of the building, and the other realistic and “Pokrenutost prostora—Bergsonove ‘Dinamicke sheme’:
Physically, its strategic value is zero. The post-critical based on its destruction. Nova likovna sredina,” in Eseji, projekti, kritike, op. cit.
only possible strategic justification for the 9 Dobrovic, p. 116.
destruction of this building was its symbolic In the case of the Army Headquarters, both 10 Dobrovic, p. 131.
disappearance from the skyline. methods, however, are relevant. That is 11 Gilles Deleuze, Bergsonism, tr. by Hugh Tomlinson and
because trying to understand the future Barbara Habberjam (New York: Zone Books, 1988).
But national symbolism was precisely what condition of Yugoslavia’s national identity 12 Eric Schmitt and Steven Lee Myers, “Crisis in the
could not to be found in the Army Head- now asks that we think of two voids in Balkans: The Bombing. NATO Said to Focus Raids on Serb
quarters. NATO’s late decision to bomb the relation to each other: one created by Nikola Elite’s Property,” The New York Times, April 19, 1999.
building, more than a month after the air Dobrovic within his Army Headquarters and 13 Article by General Wesley K. Clark, SACEUR, “Effective-
attacks had started, may have been the the new one created by NATO’s bombs fall- ness and Determination,” published in the international
effect of this low level of symbolism: no ing on the building. The answer seems like a press, June 2, 1999. The article is also available on NATO’s
exposed columns, no ornamental narration delayed dilemma about which void to iden- website at www.nato.int/kosovo/articles/a990602a.htm.
of history, as might have been present in tify with, which void to remember. Nikola Dobrovic, Bergsonian Drawings for the Army Head-
Stalinist architecture. For NATO it may have quarters. Reproduced in Nikola Dobrovic: Eseji, projekti,
been easier to classify the Army Head- kritike (Belgrade: Arhitektonski fakultet Univerziteta u Beo-
quarters if the symbol of power had been gradu & Muzej arhitekture, 1998)
a physical entity attached to the building
rather than the void between the two parts
of the complex. Evocative of the Sutjeska
canyon, the place of one of the greatest
battles against the Fascist occupation in

88 War
 Belgrade architecture and the war 2
Vladimir Kulic

On June 12, the president of Serbia, Milan

Milutinovic, inaugurated a monument in
New Belgrade’s Park of Peace and Friend-
ship commemorating the end of last year’s
NATO bombing of Yugoslavia. The 27-meter
high white, concrete obelisk supports a gas
torch with an eternal flame whose effect
is reinforced at night by four powerful spot
lights directed upwards. The inscription on
the monument was conceived by Mirjana
Markovic, the leader of the small but very
influential neo-communist “Yugoslav Left”
and the wife of Yugoslavia’s president
Slobodan Milosevic.

Set among the trees in the flatland of New

Belgrade, the monument is not very present
in the cityscape, either through its location
or its design. However, what makes it inter-
esting are its contextual references. Its
style, in particular, is reminiscent of Socialist
Realism, a totalitarian version of Neo-
classicism imported from the USSR and
imposed by the Yugoslav state during its
short period in the Eastern block.

The obelisk is situated between the

complex of the Federal Government of
Yugoslavia and the bombed tower of the
Central Committee‚ two buildings that
exemplify the abandonment of Socialist
Realism after the break-up with the Soviets.
They were both initially designed in 1947 in
a monumental Socialist Realist style, but
were later re-designed to look as modernist
as possible in step with the new vision of
progress propagated by the state. Thus the
current monument completes a full circle
from Socialist Realism to modernism and
back.

Another reference is to one of Belgrade’s

symbols, the statue of The Victor by Ivan
Mestrovic (1928) in the castle grounds over-
looking the city from across the Sava river.
The obelisk’s shape is evocative of the
column on which The Victor stands, but the
tiny flame, which by night looks like any
orange streetlight, is not a sufficient counter-
part to Mestrovic’s sculpture. The monu-
ment thus resembles a victory without a
victor‚ which is a perfect description of the
victory that the state propaganda machine
claims Yugoslavia won against NATO last
year.

89 Monument recently erected in Belgrade ‡

to celebrate the one-year anniversary of
the victory of Serbia over NATO.
Photograph: Vladimir Kulic
 Something where there should be
nothing: on war and anxiety
Renata Salecl

We live in an age of anxiety but a particular affect, more horrible than fear precisely
problem of anxiety applies to modern military because it is unclear to us what provokes
warfare. The media often reports on cases it. This definition of the difference between
of soldiers’ psychological breakdowns on anxiety and fear corresponds to what we
the front and their continued traumas after think we experience in our daily lives. Psycho-
the war. These breakdowns have had differ- analysis, however, gives a more complicated
ent names through history. After World War view of this difference. Freud pointed out
I, for example, which was fought primarily that anxiety is a state of affect that has been
with artillery, psychologists referred to the provoked by excitation. He had two theories
trauma as “shell shock.” The Vietnam War of anxiety: one which links anxiety to an
introduced the concept of “post-traumatic excess of libidinal energy that has not been
stress disorder,” still in wide use in the discharged, and another which takes anxiety
categorization of depression, anxiety attacks, as a feeling of an immanent danger to the
and nightmares suffered by soldiers after ego, thus pushing the subject into a state
experience in combat. This term was in- of panic. He also pointed out that anxiety is
vented in an attempt to rid the soldier of linked to a special state of preparedness: it
guilt—his condition was no longer caused looks as if the subject is defending himself
by his psychological predisposition but by against some horror with the help of anxiety.
external circumstances.
When French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan
For decades, military psychiatrists have speaks about anxiety, he first introduces
tried to understand what incites such the problem of castration and the subject’s
breakdowns in the middle of combat and relation with what he calls the Other.2
why many veterans continue to have night- However, it is not that the subject has some
mares, depression, or panic attacks for kind of a castration anxiety in regard to the
years. How do breakdowns in war usually Other, i.e., that he or she takes the Other
occur? A soldier is often able to engage in as someone who might take something
combat for a considerable time, under con- precious from him or her. Lacan points out
ditions of extreme danger and discomfort, that the neurotic does not retreat from the
until an event takes place that the soldier’s castrating Other, but from making of his
defenses cannot encompass. As one own castration what is lacking in the Other.
psychiatrist explains: “The actual events var- What does this mean? When psychoanalysis
ied tremendously, ranging from things claims that the subject undergoes symbolic
as simple as a friendly gesture from the castration by entering language, this must
enemy or an unexpected change in orders, be understand as the fact that the subject
to the death of a leader or a buddy.”1 In all of per se is empty, nothing by him- or herself.
these cases, the soldiers were faced with All of the subject’s power comes from the
a situation in which their perception of the symbolic insignia that he or she temporarily
situation radically changed and they were takes on. Here we can take the example of a
unable to continue fighting. These soldiers policeman, who might be a nobody—a bor-
did not suddenly become cowardly; rather, ing, insignificant man—until he puts on his
they experienced a special state of anxiety uniform and becomes a person with power.
that is radically different from fear. The subject is therefore castrated, i.e., pow-
erless by himself, and only by occupying a
The usual perception is that we fear some- certain place in the symbolic order does he
thing that we can see or hear; i.e., something or she temporarily acquire some power or
that can be discerned as an object or a status.
situation. Fear concerns that which can be
articulated; that about which we have the The subject is also always disturbed by the
ability to say, for example, “I have a fear of fact that the Other is inconsistent, that the
darkness,” or, “I fear barking dogs.” In con- Other is split and non-whole, which means
trast, we often perceive anxiety as a state that, for example, one cannot say what the
of fear that is objectless, which means that Other’s desire is or how one appears in the
we cannot easily say what makes us anxious. desire of the Other. The only thing that can
Anxiety would thus be an uncomfortable guarantee the meaning of the Other (and

90 War
provide an answer to the question of the War, Ami felt as if he was a tourist observing the side of the id. The fading of the subject
desire of the Other) is a signifier. Since pretty villages, mountains, women, etc.… can thus be understood as the collapse of
such a signifier is lacking, the missing place the ego, as the collapse of the subject’s
is occupied by a sign of the subject’s own But at some point, the fantasy of being on a self-perception.
castration. To the lack in the Other, the sub- tour or in a movie collapsed. This happened
ject can only answer with his or her own when Ami witnessed massive destruction Anxiety is also linked to the desire of the
lack. And in dealing with his or her lack, as in the Lebanon War and was involved in Other—the fact that the desire of the Other
well as with the lack in the Other, the sub- heavy face-to-face fighting. The scene that does not recognize me provokes anxiety,
ject encounters anxiety. However, anxiety triggered his breakdown happened in Beirut but even if I have the impression that the
is provoked in the subject not by the lack, when he saw stables piled with corpses of Other does recognize me, it will never
but because of the absence of the lack, by Arabian racehorses mingled with corpses of recognize me sufficiently. The Other always
the fact that where there is supposed to be people. The scene filled him with a sense of puts me into question, interrogates me at
lack, some object is in fact present. apocalyptic destruction, and he collapsed: the very root of my being.
“I went into a state of apathy, and I was not
One of the ways the individual manages his functioning.” Ami explains the process as In the cases of breakdown in war, we also
or her anxiety is to create a fantasy. Fanta- follows: “In the Yom Kippur War, I put my find a specific problem that the subject has
sy is a way of covering up the fundamental defense mechanism into operation and it with the desire of the Other. Psychiatrists
lack by creating a scenario, a story that worked fantastically. I was able to push a have, in the past, taken into account the
gives his or her life a perception of consis- button and start it up…. In Lebanon, the fact that soldiers’ breakdowns are often trig-
tency and stability, while he also perceives picture was clearer. In the Yom Kippur War, gered by changes in the basic pattern of the
the social order as being coherent and we didn’t fight face-to-face or shoot from soldier-group relationship. “This might be an
not marked by antagonisms. Fantasy and a short distance.... If I saw a corpse, it was actual change in the structure of the group,
anxiety present two different ways for the a corpse in the field. But here [in Lebanon] or something affecting the individual directly
subject to deal with the lack that marks everything was right next to me.... And of and subsequently his relationship with the
him as well as the Other, i.e., the symbolic all things, the thing with the horses broke group. In either case he lost his place as a
order. If fantasy provides a certain comfort me.... A pile of corpses...and you see them member of the team; alone now, he was
to the subject, anxiety incites the feeling along with people who were killed. And overwhelmed and became disorganized.”5
of discomfort. However, anxiety does not that’s a picture I’d never seen in any mov-
simply have a paralyzing effect. The power ie.... I began to sense the reality [that] it’s In traditional war, the group provided the
of anxiety is that it creates a state of pre- not a movie anymore.”4 most important basis for the subject’s
paredness so that the subject might be psychic stability as well as for his motivation
less paralyzed and surprised by the events Anxiety emerges when, at the place of the for fighting. Some military theorists there-
that might radically shatter his or her fanta- lack, one encounters a certain object that fore conclude that “the men were motivated
sy and thus cause the subject’s breakdown perturbs the fantasy frame through which to fight not by ideology or hate, but by
or an emergence of a trauma. the individual previously assessed reality. regard for their comrades, respect for their
For the soldier Ami, this happened when leaders, concern for their own reputation
Fantasy, however, also helps prevent the he saw the pile of dead horses. If Ami was with both, and an urge to contribute to the
emergence of anxiety, i.e., the emergence able to observe dead soldiers on the field success of the group. In return, the group
of the horrible object at the place of the lack. through the distance of a fantasy frame, provided structure and meaning to an other-
Here we can take the example of the Israeli which made him believe that he was an out- wise alien existence, a haven from an
soldier Ami, who had served both in the Yom sider just watching a movie, the emergence impersonal process apparently intent on
Kippur and in the Lebanon Wars. Ami had of the unexpected object—the horses— grinding the life from all involved.”6 This
been an avid filmgoer in his youth and dur- caused his fantasy to collapse and incited group relationship very much involves the
ing the Yom Kippur War he felt as if he was Ami’s breakdown. desire of the Other. The soldier thus wonders
playing the part of a soldier in a war movie. what kind of an object he is supposed to be
This fantasy sustained him throughout the With fantasy, the subject creates for him- or for the desire of the Other when he questions
war: “...I said to myself, it is not so terrible. herself a protective shield towards the lack, his role in the group.
It’s like a war movie. They’re actors, and I’m while in anxiety the object which emerges
just some soldier. I don’t have an important at the place of the lack devours the subject, Studies in military psychiatry have shown
role. Naturally, there are all the weapons i.e., makes the subject fade. Anxiety is first that the soldier who has suffered break-
that are in a war movie. All sorts of helicop- the response to the most original danger down is best treated near the battlefront
ters, all sorts of tanks, and there’s shooting. (Hilflosighkeit )—to the absolute distress of where he is close to his comrades. Soldiers
...[But] basically, I felt that I wasn’t there. the subject’s entering the world. But subse- who have been removed from the war-zone
That is, all I had to do was finish the filming quently, it is taken up by the ego as a signal or sent back home suffer longer from their
and go home.”3 Later, in the Lebanon of the slightest danger of the threats from breakdowns. Paradoxically, the Soviet army

91 ‡
92 War Peter Lew
Untitled #23 (Pig Blood Series) (1999)
in World War II, which kept the soldiers on and depression when they returned from was later proclaimed fake, but it nonethe-
the front no matter what and did not the front. Wendy Holden points out that less determined the perception that psycho-
acknowledge psychological breakdown as peacekeepers suffer from the fact that they logy was needed to incite aggression in the
an excuse from battle, suffered a smaller must observe atrocities but are helpless to soldiers. In the early 40s, the British army,
number of long-term psychiatric casualties fight back or to defend properly those they for example, introduced special “blood
than other armies that tended to send the have been sent to save. “Proud to become training” and “battle schools.” “Animals’
troubled soldiers out of the war zone. professional soldiers and keen to fight a war, blood was squirted onto faces during bayonet
they are, however, distanced from death drill; men were taken to slaughterhouses
But if military psychiatry at the time of and the reality of killing. They are members and encouraged to test the ‘resistance of
World War II was still considering group of a society that finds fatalities unimaginable. a body’ by using their ‘killing knives’ on the
relations as the most important for the When presented with the unimaginable, carcasses; and ‘kill that Hun...kill that Hun’
soldier’s endurance of the war situation, they crack.” 8 British peacekeeper Gary was chanted from the loudspeakers as
later, in the case of the Korean War and Bohanna came to Bosnia with a belief that soldiers waded through water and mud pits,
especially in Vietnam, the military embraced a peacekeeping role is better than war in were shot at with live ammunition, and fired
the idea of individualism. The soldier was which colleagues get killed. But he quickly their own weapons at three-dimensional
trained as an individual who could be placed became disillusioned when he saw numer- imitation Germans and Japanese.”10
into a group for a short time, and quickly ous civilians killed, women raped, and
removed from it when necessary and placed whole families slaughtered. For him the To teach soldiers how to kill and to incite their
into another one. At the time of the Korean most traumatic event, which precipitated his desire to do so, it was therefore important
War, psychiatrists thus started talking about breakdown, was when he saw a young girl to create an artificial fantasy scenario, i.e.,
“short-termer’s syndrome” and “rotation who had “shrapnel wounds in her head, killing needed to be presented in light of a
anxiety.” With the disruption of group sup- half her head was blown away. Her eye story with which the soldiers were able to
port, combat now became an individual was coming out of its socket and she was identify. One possible scenario was to
struggle and the short-term soldier felt very screaming. She was going to die, but present killing as a hunt for animals. An
much disengaged from his comrades. I couldn’t bear her pain. I put a blanked over Australian training instruction pamphlet
Similarly, in Vietnam, psychiatry used the her head and shot her in her head. That was reads, “The enemy is the game, we the
term “loneliness disorder” to describe all I could do.”9 Here again we find a case hunters. The Jap is a barbarian, little better
states of apathy, defiance, or violent behavior of the soldier who comes to the war with than an animal, in fact his actions are those
that emerged among the soldiers on the the protective shield of a fantasy—this time of a wild beast and he must therefore be
battlefield. In Vietnam, the military used it is a fantasy that he is actually coming to dealt with accordingly.”11 This training tried
twelve-month rotation, which meant that do good deeds and is not fully engaged in to incite the subject’s inner aggressiveness
individual soldiers were injected into a war war. However, this fantasy quickly collapses and to control his anxiety and guilt. Some of
zone as individual replacements and after when an event undermines the story he the trainers who had had some contact with
a year they were also individually extracted— was telling himself beforehand. psychoanalysis also tried to present killing
often they were deposited back into normal the enemy as a mythical rite in which the
civilian life within 24 hours after they left Since fantasy protects the subject from death of the leader of the enemy-group is
base camp.7 The Vietnam veterans also anxiety, military psychiatry in the past has celebrated in “an orgy of displaced violence.”
encountered enormous public antipathy in tried to use its power to incite soldiers to Since this slaughter satisfies “deep-seated,
their home towns, which took away the possi- engage in combat. The Allies, for example, primitive unconscious strivings derived from
bility of finding some moral “repayment” for tried to artificially create fantasies that early childhood fantasy...The enemy
their actions by perceiving it as something would help the soldiers be willing to engage is a sacrificial object whose death provides
that was done for the public good. in killings in the first place. This need for deep group satisfaction in which guilt is
psychological training in aggression was excluded by group sanction. Combat is a
Similar problems occurred with the peace- especially strengthened when military ritualistic event, which resolves the precari-
keepers that recently served in Bosnia. The theorist Colonel S. L. A. Marshall reported ous tension of hatred created by the long-
Canadian media reported that their soldiers that almost three-quarters of the soldiers drawn frustrations of training. Without
who acted as peacekeepers in Bosnia suf- were not willing to kill in combat. This figure these frustrations, a group would not be a
fered from numerous attacks of anxiety

93 ‡
military force.” 12 The incentive here is themselves for a higher cause. The paradox This trend to make war anxiety-free para-
supposedly to recreate, in reality, the is that soldiers responded to this explana- doxically goes hand in hand with today’s
Freudian theory of the killing of the primal tion by creating their own fantasies of killing. attempts to make wars independent from
father (in the guise of the enemy leader) In the memories of the bayonet killing that political struggles. In the way the West
and the establishment of strong brotherly never took place, it is crucial that the enemy assessed the whole situation in former
bonds among the soldiers. recognizes the killer with his shocked gaze, Yugoslavia, we can see how political di-
but by pitchforking the enemy, the killer mensions of the conflicts were constantly
While military psychologists tried to artifi- then tries quickly to get rid of this gaze. This overlooked or too quickly historicized. Many
cially create fantasies with which the soldiers example shows that soldiers also have no Western observers often still cling to the
would identify, the soldiers actually created desire to give up the feeling of guilt for their view that Yugoslavia collapsed because
their own fantasies. Soldiers in their diaries actions. As military psychologists were ex- of the separatist tensions of Slovenia and
often reported on how they killed someone plaining to soldiers that they are not respon- Croatia and that some European states
with a bayonet and how just before dying sible for their killings, the soldiers insisted contributed to the collapse by too quickly
the victim looked into the attacker’s eyes on their guilt to the point of inventing crimes recognizing the independence of these
with dismay, as if shocked to see who the they had never committed. two republics. These observers forget that it
killer was. This memory of being recognized was Milosevic’s assumption of power in the
by the victim is quite common among If in past wars there was still minimal mid-80s that actually incited the secessions,
soldiers; however, military statistics show engagement between the soldier and the and that Yugoslavia collapsed not because
that the bayonet is rarely used in war and victims on the battlefield, in recent wars centuries-old nationalistic hatreds suddenly
that most of the killing in war is done from the soldier is often just a distant actor who resurfaced, but because Milosevic’s political
a distance where the killer remains anony- shoots from afar and does not even know bid for power incited these hatreds.
mous. It is thus obvious that the memory of what happens on the actual front. Contem-
the bayonet killing is in most cases a fantasy, porary wars are supposed to be aseptic, so The problem with the interventions that
a scenario produced by the soldier himself. that American soldiers might fly for a couple NATO made in the past few years in the
This fantasy is obviously extremely valuable, of hours to drop bombs over Kosovo and former Yugoslavia is that they were publicly
since even in today’s armies, where one then return home to watch the football game presented as simple humanitarian missions
cannot expect many one-on-one battles, on TV. For those soldiers who will still need that had nothing to do with the political
soldiers are still extensively trained in to engage in direct fighting, military psych- situation in the region, and that did not admit
bayonet killing. However, by World War I iatry is trying to invent special medication the West’s strong economic interests in
military instructors already had great trouble which will alleviate any possible anxiety and the Balkans. This ideology of humanitarian-
teaching soldiers how to use the bayonet turn the soldiers into almost robotic creatures ism goes hand in hand with the way the war
properly. Most soldiers had the strange idea who will not be emotionally engaged in the has been presented in the media. On the
that they needed to toss the bayoneted atrocities they are committing. One theory one hand, we get pictures of the interven-
enemy over their shoulder. Many accounts why it is necessary to invent such drugs is tion that present war as a simple computer
of combat in popular literature also depicted that the war has become too horrible for the game in which the soldiers dropping the
scenes in which a soldier bayonets an enemy human mind and body to realistically tolerate. bombs from the air are completely detached
and hurls him over his shoulder, “just as a Military psychiatry therefore has an expecta- from the reality of the situation on the
man might toss a bundle of hay with a pitch- tion that in the new types of war, anxiety ground. On the other hand, we get images
fork.”13 will just be too overwhelming and paralyzing, of suffering victims of the war in which we
and a chemical substance will be necessary can see the most horrible distortions of
Soldiers claim that they prefer bayonet to alleviate it. So far all attempts to create villages; numerous people killed; wounded
killing to anonymous killing because it is such drugs have failed. The anti-anxiety and dead bodies exposed on the screen;
more personal and the responsibility is drugs used on the front not only did not and so on. It is as if in contemporary war
clear. Military psychologists have tried to alleviate anxiety, but they produced numer- everything can be seen regarding how the
convince soldiers that war is just an imper- ous side-effects that made soldiers zombie- victims of the nationalist conflicts suffer
sonal game in which they are not responsible like creatures, barely able to function and on the ground, while the machinery of the
for their actions since they have sacrificed perform war duties. Western intervention into the conflict looks

94 War
like a distant computer game. This over- 1 Lawrence Ingraham and Frederick Manning, “American
visibility, on the one hand, and complete Military Psychiatry,” in Richard A. Gabriel, ed., Military
invisibility, on the other, are very much Psychiatry: A Comparative Perspective (New York: Green-
linked to the fact that the economic and the wood Press, 1986), p. 43.
political logic of the war remained unraveled. 2 See Jacques Lacan, “Anxiety” (unpublished seminar
1962-63).
The attempts of military psychiatry to alle- 3 Zahava Solomon, Combat Stress Reaction: The Enduring
viate soldiers’ feelings of anxiety go hand-in- Toll of War (New York: Plenum Press, 1993), p. 77.
hand with these trends in today’s wars. The 4 Ibid., p. 78.
ideal soldier will be completely detached from 5 See Ingraham and Manning, p. 44.
the situation (an outsider not really present 6 Ibid., p. 45.
in the war) and will neutrally observe the 7 Ibid., p. 55.
atrocities going on in the war. The problem 8 Wendy Holden, Shell Shock: The Psychological Impact of
with the military’s attempts to find War (London: Channel 4 Books, 1998), p. 171.
anxiety drugs is that rather than preventing 9 Ibid., p. 172.
the soldiers’ anxieties, such drugs actually 10 Cf. Joanna Bourke, The Intimate History of Killing (Lon-
help to incite new ones. While it is unclear don: Granta, 1999). Bourke quotes from Norman Demuth,
how much the military has actually tested Harrying the Hun. A Handbook of Scouting, Stalking and
such drugs on the battlefield (for example, Camouflage [1941], p. 84; Major M.D.S. Armour, Total War
at the time of the Persian Gulf War), soldiers Training for Home Guard Officers and N.C.O.s [1942], p.
have indulged in numerous conspiracy 46; and “Realism in Army Training: The Spirit of Hate,” un-
theories. A whole set of new anxieties is dated newspaper clipping in PRO WO199/799; “Realism in
emerging in regard to the scientists who are Training,” The Times, 27 April 1942, p. 2.
supposedly testing dangerous drugs on the 11 Cf. Bourke. Bourke refers here to Colonel R.G. Pollard,
soldiers, and in regard to the paralyzing side “6th Aust. Div. Training Instruction No.1 Jungle Warfare,”
effects these drugs have. The ultimate 27 March 1943, 1 in Lieutenant General Sir F.H. Berryman’s
trauma for the soldiers becomes a fight papers, AWM PR84/370, item 41.
against the hidden enemy among those who 12 Cf. Bourke, ibid. Quote from Major Jules V. Coleman,
have sent him to war in the first place. “The Group Factor of Military Psychiatry,” American Jour-
nal of Ortopsychiatry, XVI (1946), p. 222. The soldiers also
selectively incorporated the psychological theories they
became knowledgeable in. They especially liked to identify
with theories that present killing as a natural instinct and
which helped soldiers to perceive killing as an emotionally
transient event. The soldiers thus liked to say that they
were nor really killing since they were just temporarily taken
over by a murderous zeal and later returned to their normal
selves.
13 Cf. Captain Frederick Sadlier Brereton, With Rifle and
Bayonet. A Story of the Boer War [1900], p. 271, quoted in
Bourke, op. cit.

95
95 ‡
96 Etc. David Scher
Face, 2000