Syndicate: indian non-summer viewed from paris autumn

["norman" <norman@wanadoo.fr>]

Hello fellow syndicalists. Reporting in from a scarcely survived maelstrom,
a long haul this summer that I missed. It's a mnemonic kaleidoscope, a
pirate mix of souvenirs: when was Cyberconf in the pig slaughter house?
Shimmering heat of the July Danube, crazy images of automobiles from every
plant on the planet, horsepower from east and west home's best spitting out
gases eating up the old walls of this once-still elegant city, the
infinitely respectable grace of an old lady who's seen many other times. I
found Budapest moving for indescribable reasons, maybe just the movement of
the water and the sun and the slow tides of people. Like the pitted
facades, it was ridden with images, black and white, of political events
viewed from my antipodean home a few decades back, which I remember trying
vainly to link to the new neighbours in my home town who'd just arrived
from Hungary... Monochromatic stills of impossibly old streets and
strikingly craggy faces that studded a world of blue Pacific skies and
evergreen coastal scapes. A vague ache about Cyberconf, about its
estrangement from energies sensed in town (we were located peripherally),
energies known through Syndicate postings, energies that didn't quite make
it to the surface. A perverse nostalgia for what might have been and, at
the same time, a "kick-yourself-you're-really-here" delight in being
somewhere so new that felt so oddly familiar. A weird, lasting image of
Esther Dyson triumphantly wielding a framed certificate won by the original
Stakhanovite of the local pig-killing squad, some guy who'd slaughtered
more pigs than anyone else. An unusual piece of fetishism that will no
doubt draw much attention in some drawing room in a land where pigs kill
people. 

Then in August putting and holding together a workshop in the intimacy of
the International Puppetry Institute in France, working intensely without
technology on simple gestures and objects and interactions, before crossing
the Rhine and investing the gigantic ZKM, with its Onyx(s) and
Medientheater and labs and gear. A culture shock with all its faltering,
its incomprehension, its tensions. An at times acutely painful lesson that
I didn't want or particularly need to learn again (and again and again)
about the problems of encounter. So many things that could and should have
been done, or done better, prepared and worked on in more depth, easily
identified with hindsight - and known in advance to be lacking, but no
resources to deal with them; the no-choice stoical conclusion is that I've
personally never experienced any truly experimental undertaking that occurs
in "ideal" conditions. Encouraging elements of our work were ultimately
discreet but solid acquisitions - a recognition by ZKM interface and
software wizards of gestural skills not previously encountered, of the
febrile representation and characterisation arts of puppeteers, generally
absent from the theatre/ technology arena; most important, a strongly
voiced wish from participants to go further, move on. Despite and because
of the contradictions: presenting workshop experimentation to a public was
tough in that it gave a production-oriented twist to our introverted labour
of love, sabotaging it in more ways than one. e.g. precious machine time
gets hogged if you over-emphasise "going public" rather than experimenting;
some of the richest investigation undertaken was still too subterranean
after just a few days with fully operational technology to stand up to
outsider scrutiny. Andreas B. and others rightly pointed out that
describing the technical set-up would have been useful and valuable for the
public. Funny situation - we hadn't had a single real run-through of the
fragments presented and I was counting on the 99.9% predictable technical
lags for playing this didactic role, then for some insane reason everything
fell smoothly into place. Thus too smoothly. Murphy's law put on its head.
And of course the inevitable more-or-less veiled criticism about our not
having done anything new, which amuses me. What's really new in theatre,
and who does it? George Coates alias the Broadway bunch or their hip
post-modern counterparts, those we see too often squatting prestigious
international festival circuits? So much of what people call "new" in
performance seems to boil down to premiering swiftly dated technology,
smart gadgets and snazzy tricks like the 19th century props and decor guys
who would do anything to get their new curtains and carpets and lighting
effects showcased in the latest big productions....in ways that testify
more to budgets and hard assets than to "soft" artistic reflection,
particularly in the intangible realm of performing arts. One of the pieces
we worked on that I found most theatrically potent involved no computers,
just a couple of string puppets, one wearing a "head-mount" hand cam which
allowed images of its puppet partner to be projected onto a
semi-translucent screen, these projected images being uncannily superposed
over the real puppets' shadows and the shadows of their handlers... Hard to
describe, but a sense of depth and duplicity of space and physicality that
withholds much potential, that points towards new dramaturgical
possibilities, even though technologically it's old hat. These are the
chinks in the door I'm stubbornly pushing at. Subtle but long-term
promising relationships between performers and objects, solid or screened,
that go unnoticed by trend-hunters waiting to pounce on some tupenny
novelty. Other responses warm and encouraging fortunately, people who
proved sensitive to the "fireworks", the disordered bunch of very different
ideas and foci that were touched on, who recognised the potential of this
mass of decidedly, deliberately unfinished material. And the risk we took
showing it ad hoc, rather than playing it safe by concentrating on high end
dazzle. Writing and analysis yet to be done, still dubious as to the
dramatic scope of motion-capture based research; my involvement last
September in a robotics installation theatre work in Imperia continues to
gnaw, won't go away, a very low cost low tech incursion into mixed species
drama which offered some highly significant pointers. Have to find it again
somehow. 

All that feels close and far now; has since been buffered by e.g. the
unforgettable Solar installation at Ars Electronica which eclipses as is
its wont less powerful experiences - i.e. most. Marko Peljhan and his
friends even programmed the full moon to sit between the towers and
moonlight the satellite dish. Cosmic piracy. Still can't quite believe it
happened. That and Scanner's night on the Super Collider where every time I
tried to leave the sound would suck me into another transformation vortex.
Spellbound. Infowar debate to be rethought, it's happening, but I wish
Solar could be set up somewhere so I could go periodically and tune in to
the stars to get things into perspective. Good energy in the Brucknerhaus
that hummed in the openX and audio/radio spaces. Jumpy static. 

The burlesque Russian speaker with his fall of the US empire predictions,
his asides about the openness of the Russian official websites (as opposed
to closed French networksâ?¦) which drew hoots of laughter when his
government page click was denied accessâ?¦ The Chinese speaker who quite
clearly evaded all questions, all discussion. George Stein, the American
Air Force Academy representative who launched all statements and answers
with "Speaking as a civilianâ?¦". To the point that one began to wonder who
the hell classifies as military in the States, or is everybody a just
civilian doing secret service Swiss army style. Some flagrantly obsolescent
military philosophy dished up patronisingly, with easily revealed
contradictions for anyone who scratched the surface. e.g. Stein's OODA
loop(Observation, Orientation, Discussion, Action) : queried as to what
constitutes a sufficiently verifiable observation to proceed with the next
steps in the loop, Stein replied that Americans are not philosophers, that
they don't read Heidegger and are not hung up like the French with
formulating a Weltanschauung before proceeding with action, that they're
pragmatic, their philosophy being "if it works, use it". This response does
not seem to be a very sound basis for constituting the first two three
components of the OODA loop. The validity of which I'd query anyway. As
probably would a lot of infometrics and AL researchers, and even military.
But Stein's brash misinformation tied in nicely and predictably with Peter
Arnett's. The Khartoum story testifying admirably to Steinian "pragmatics".
And as Michael Wilson (7 Pillars) pointed out in another session, bombing a
makeshift training camp devoid of heavy infrastructures with some of the
most expensive weapons on the planet is logically and tactically and
financially questionable. The Virilio show was depressing as his doomsday
revelations usually are and have been over the past few years. With
farcical relaying of questions and deformed translations apparently
imputable to horrific acoustics. Pain in the arse. The human species as the
summit of life, about to blow itself to smithereens. Armageddon seen by our
friendly local predicator. Distressing â?? his lectures at the Institut
Français de l'Architecture back in the seventies used to be lively and
provocative. He could and would pack a punch. But the Brucknerhaus pulpit
had another ring to it. A ring that resounded via Arnett and Virilio.
Talking down (to) everything/ everyone. Ensconced in some self-righteous
supremacy that exonerates them from notions of individual responsibility or
even commitment. Virilio has resigned, long ago, tragically â?? it's not just
because he was born in 1932 and has decided to give up â?? many people born
still earlier are not curling into this species of doomsday discourse. 

As a postscript, here's an original INFOWAR story that I find refreshing in
its primal violence.  Tumatauenga is the Maori god of war and technology, a
fierce dimension of humankind in this rich cosmogony. The Polynesian
creation myth tells how Tane, god of the forests, and his siblings, were
stifled and cramped by the embrace of their parents, Rangi the sky father,
and Papa the earth mother. So Tane stood upright and wrenched his parents
apart to make room for their offspring. Whence the birth of the world. One
of his brothers, Tawhirimatea, the god of winds and storms, was against the
ripping asunder of his parents, and he sought revenge on the newly created
world by smashing the trees and stirring up the oceans, whirling and
howling in the new void where his parents had once ensured shelter. The
land and sea gods cowed under Tawhirimatea's attacks, seeking refuge in the
entrails of the earth and in the marine depths. Tumatauenga despised them
for this cowardice, and debased them by turning them into food and
implements : Tane's children in the forests were dug up and turned into
boats and spears and lines with which Tumatauenga fished up the children of
Tangaroa, the sea god. He dug up others of Tane's children and ate them.
Tumatauenga is one of the most fiercely ambivalent Maori gods, and his dual
role as founder of technology and warfare is perhaps worth remembering when
we embark on these purist debates about good guys and bad guys in 20th
century Infowar. Maori battle strategies are formidable, including in the
espionnage and deception areas, outwitting the enemy and duping him in
estimates of opponent force, etc. But I guess this kind of archaic, heavy,
heady, Infowar is too far away from the radiant crowd-pulling histrionics
of a big-time conference circuit. Infowar toys for boys? No way. The haka
you hear at international rugby matches was created by a woman who shielded
the hunted chief Te Rauparaha in a foodpit. A Maori elder who scared the
shit out of her adversaries with the sheer energy of her rhetoric. And
there are many more where she comes from.

Kia Ora

Sally Jane Norman
48, rue de l'Ourcq
75019 PARIS
Tel (33) 1 40 38 22 12
Cell phone (33) 6 08 32 22 38
Fax (33) 1 42 09 96 07
Norman@wanadoo.fr
http://uchcom.botik.ru/~norman