The Subject of an Object

a certain object bangalore poster

Flyer: Goethe-Institut / a certain object

Subject | Object Formation

a certain object is a multifaceted collaboration between Alfons Knogl, Holger Otten, and occasionally Daniel Ansorge, each having a strong artistic presence in various mediums

Otten and Ansorge came together in 2015 for Perspektive 02, the second in a series of exhibitions curated by Otten and Lars Breuer held at the Ludwig Forum Aachen (Cologne). Otten sought to exhibit artists working in groups or fields not typically represented in the traditional gallery space. Perspektive 01 was a collaboration with a Dusseldorf publishing house and Otten felt the image based content from Magazine, a record label run by Ansorge, Jens-Uwe Beyer, and Crato would make an interesting continuum of the series.

Magazine

Unlike most record labels, Magazine began as a visual concept. The idea took shape in 2007 when Crato (John Harten), a graphic designer by training, wanted an outlet to recontextualize his vast image-based archive of objects, materials, landscapes, science-y things, film stills, photographs of artwork, architecture, the explosive, and the mundane. Images vastly different from one another yet united by a certain level of provocativeness.

Ansorge told the Bangalore audience that at that point the only solid idea was an archival aspect of a series, not necessarily a music label. Indeed one can imagine that Beyer, who operates under the alias Popnoname, was busy with Kompakt, the Cologne label that exploded the techno scene in the 2000s and Ansorge, best known as Barnt, was busy blowing dance floor minds with his DJ sets.

But Ansorge was taken with the tactility of the record and the cover. “An opportunity to do something, not just cover something,” he explained. This perfect square would act as a canvas for Crato’s recontextualized visuals, each release would be a reinterpretation of the exhibition, a new take on curation. Thus the conceptual dimension of Magazine evolved.

Beyer and Ansorge struggled to find the musical identity for the label and during the talk Ansorge implied that solidifying a particularly musical identity was eventually dropped, a point discovered by listening to each release; it is hard to ascribe a particular identity to the sonancy of Magazine.

Magazine 01 was released in 2010 and limited to 300 records. Keeping true to the concept, each record features a series of curated images on the record cover, with no reference to the artist. Textual presence is limited to a numeric indication of the record’s placement within the continuum of releases: Magazine 01, 02 and so on.

Anti-Relationship

In conversation with Otten and Knogl, Ansorge was asked about the collaborative aspect between the sound of a particular release and the image curation. Ansorge explained that Crato is given complete freedom over the album cover and often creates without hearing or knowing who the album artist will be. While there was an initial temptation to coordinate between the image and the sound, Ansorge and Beyer resisted. One audience member, trying to make sense of this, asked Ansorge if maybe Magazine was trying to create a juxtaposition between image and sound to which Ansorge responded no, we’re “not trying to juxtapose because then it would be a relationship.”

Such commitment to parallel artistic processes that come together only at the moment of release is reminiscent of Cunningham’s forced divergence between sound and movement, united only during the live performance in which Cunningham’s dancers, after rehearsing for months in silence, were suddenly confronted with both audience and a sound. One imagines that Cunningham too might have resisted the word juxtaposition, preferring instead the idea of chance.

In the case of Magazine I would argue that Crato’s choreography of images is what holds Magazine together best for it links incredibly diverse musicians and their albums to a larger archival project. The fact that this is a project, with a present, future and past was reinforced by Ansorge’s discussion of closure.

“When you do an archive or a magazine you also think about the end. Not just the moment, you think about the start, the moment, and the end.” A good curator knows the power of restraint, that by creating boundaries, criteria, and closure a freedom for experimentation, for finding similarity within the dissimilarity and vice versa, the archive begins to reveal itself.

Collector | Collecting

There is an intertextuality (though in this instance I’m referring to the visual) at play between the notion of collecting, curating, and representing that is present within the concept of Magazine. We have the Crato the collector of images who becomes the curator of his collection in order to put forth an archive that we, in turn will collect in the form of the physical record.

Walter Benjamin, himself a serial collector of both physical objects and conceptual ideas, wrote extensively on collecting and the Collector, arguing that collecting is childlike in the sense that one collects not for the commodity value of the object, but for the potential, which for Benjamin, had revolutionary power.

While I wouldn’t say that Magazine holds revolutionary potential by way of politics and society, it offers potential by way of thinking about ownership, aesthetic, and visual composition in an age of image based information and social identity circulation. Let me contextualize this with a completely different topic.

In this week’s NYT there is an important article by Britt Julious on the appropriation of a Michelle Obama image that became a public mural in Chicago. The crowd-funded mural was initiated by Chris Devin, an urban planner/artist who wanted to ‘inspire hope’ in Chicago youth. On the mural’s GoFundMe page, a different image of Michelle Obama was used than that which eventually became the mural. He referred to the final image as a reflection of how he sees Michelle Obama: “I wanted to present her as what I think she is, so she’s clothed as an Egyptian queen. I thought that was appropriate.” When images of the completed mural were circulated on the internet it surfaced that the image was not ‘created’ by Devin but came directly from the Instagram account of 24 year-old artist Gelila Mesfin without permission or acknowledgment. Mesfin, originally from Ethiopia, used a photo taken by NYT’s photographer Collier Schorr, and transformed Michelle Obama into a Nubian queen. She uploaded the recontextualized image onto her Instagram feed, crediting Schorr as the producer of the original image.

When Devin was accused of using Mesfin’s image without credit or permission, he explained that his team ‘found’ the image online and thought it perfect for the mural. Devin apologized to Mesfin and offered royalties.

Leaving aside the extremely pertinent conversation about race and gender raised by Julious, I want to draw attention to this aspect:

“Mr. Devins’s apology fails to address why his method of finding, reclaiming and editing images was so problematic in the first place. Users of social platforms like Tumblr, Instagram and Facebook regularly act as “curators,” picking and choosing images to create a particular narrative and online presence. They are often unconcerned about the intent or identity of the images’ creators. Instead, users care about how the images fit into their personal aesthetics, helping them make a statement or tell a story.”

Julious is describing the quotidian reality of image reproduction, collection, and curation today. A reality that harks back to a statement made by Benjamin almost a century ago. “The crises of artistic reproduction which manifests itself in this way can be seen as an integral part of the crisis in perception itself.”*

Benjamin’s context might be different, but the statement holds value. For example, visit Chris Devin’s website and learn that a service offered is ‘positive graffiti’ an art form to help businesses “cater to a hipper clientele.” While I’m hard pressed to think of a time in Western modernity in which artistic reproduction, (if we are to go off the writing of art historians) wasn’t considered to be in a crisis, a man offering stylized graffiti to corporates for a fee certainly seems like a good contender.

Mesfin, Devins, Crato, and social platforms broadly are collecting and curating images and more or less making an aesthetic statement. Some may focus on the plagiarism aspect of reproduction as grounds for differentiation between these, for lack of better phrasing, high and low art forms, but I am more tempted to focus on the question of intent (no less problematic than plagiarism) within the process of image recontextualization.

There is a veracity behind Crato’s approach (and perhaps Mesfin as well), a sincere strive to find the potential within the reappropriated image and curation of images. Evidence of this can be found in an earlier project of his, Public Folder, a serial book, that also dealt with the re-reproduction of images and meaning. Below is a call for contributions:

“The fourth edition of the serial book project Public Folder is an artistic analysis of the 120 images, which are stored on the Voyager Golden Record and sent to space exactly 35 years ago. Every image is given to an artist and should function as a starting point for the artist’s own work. The collected artworks will be related to each other by the arrangement in the book–conceptual framed by the titel [Sic].”

While I can’t verify this, I believe Crato’s repertoire of images comes before the reign of Instagram. They were not tagged and loaded into Pinterest but rather cut, with physical scissors, from physical newspapers, magazines—those objects of the pre-virtual public domain. While the curation of these images is not as politically loaded or reconfigured as that of the German dada artists, there is an essence of assemblage that seems undeniably German in artistic tradition.

I think that is why these images, even when reproduced in an edition of 300 records or showcased in a Cologne art gallery, possess a physicality and weight to them that seems to rise above, or perhaps sink with a gravitational pull not found in the virtual domain.

Introducing the Object

Now, if we couple the weighty anachronisticity of the images with the heavy tactility that comes, of course, from the music, the record, we start to gradate from the concept to the object, the question of the object of sound, something Knogl, a sculpture by training, is particularly preoccupied with.

While Knogl is not directly affiliated with Magazine, he, like Otten, intercepts in various ways. Knogl, who is from Cologne and came to India as a Bangalore Resident in 2013, explained that by way of sculpture’s physicality questions such as what is the meaning of object, the meaning of material, what an object or material could be, can be explored.

Like Magazine, there is a weight that strikes you when viewing Knogls work. This weight is more obvious because it’s an actual object (often made of cement, marble) but there is an equal heaviness of concept, process, and idea. For example, in his series of sculptural coffee tables, Knogl explains that he was attracted to this form because they represented, in the aftermath of the world war, not so much a functional object but rather a shift in perception and new direction of intellectual thinking, represented by gathering around the coffee table.

Apart from his sculptures, Knogl also makes music and his increasingly occupied with the idea of the object of sound. “I had this tendency of doing music and always had this feeling that it was connected to the work as sculpture but rarely I put it out because of course you can make sculptures about sound but it’s not about that. It’s sculpture as music or music as sculpture, but it’s not a sculpture that makes music.”

a Certain Object: Goethe-Institut 24.3.2017

In February of 2013 Knogl performed with Otten and Ansorge for the first time. Knogl and Ansorge were friends from their time at the Academy of Media Arts (KHM) and had shown together at DREI; Otten and Ansorge met in 2008 while working as curators for Simultanhalle and started working together as musicians in 2011. Knogl was in the audience during their performance of Duett 13, which was part of a larger Stephen Print exhibition held at the Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne.

The 2013 performance, also held at the Kölnischer Kunstverein, featured The World in Pieces, a “musical reflection about the unrestrained and powerful transformation of Istanbul,” that Knogl created during a residency in the city. The World in Pieces was released a month later as a 12 inch on Kompakt. This performance saw Knogl and Otten founding a certain object, with Ansorge as an occasional collaborator.

When asked by the Deccan Herald what the intention behind the recent performance at Goethe-Institut was Knogl said the hope was that audience would experience the physicality of the sound, reflected in the name, a certain object.

Knogls explained that part of this is accomplished through the absence of a beat. While the absence of repetition, particularly one often set at 125 bpms, does lend itself to a new physicality of sound, I don’t think that should be identified as a criteria. For many of us who, on occasion, commit ourselves to that dark room, that unadorned object-space with the sole intention of listening, collectively, and looking, collectively, for sound, find and experience that physicality, that certain object. Instead, what a certain object offers that is different from other sound-based experiences is a more nuanced awareness of process, an awareness found in the sculptural work of Knogls, the curatorial work of Ottens, and the project of Magazine. All three share an openness, perhaps even natural commitment to multiple artistic mediums and practices in order to arrive at something, be it an object, sound, or exhibition that both blurs and defines assumed boundaries, an arrival that is experienced in real time during during the actual performance.

For this reason the evening left me wondering if perhaps it was a certain subject that preoccupies a certain object, the subject of physicality and object in the context of sound, the subject of the process of sound becoming an object which will, undoubtedly, continue to be explored in their upcoming album.

*Benjamin, W. (1968). Illuminations. Trans. Harry Zohn. Schocken Books: New York. pg. 187.

On Funeral Rites and Getting Fucked Over

Although I’m extremely comfortable with ambiguity and open-endedness in film, I’m still wrestling with the women characters in Thithi, the recent Kannada film set in Nodekopplu village.

First let me say that the film is, as indicated by the number of national and international accolades, a “must watch!” (thanks Aamir). It belongs to a growing number of Indian films that are difficult to genre-ize and, as a result, often reduced to ‘art house’, which is actually a quite inaccurate description. Unlike the Western conceptualization of art house, Thithi transcends cultural and class in a way no Miramax film ever achieved. Its experimentalism comes from the slight tweaking of the everyday, a slowing down of the already slow village ecosystem to the point that humor organically emerges. Perhaps this is art house for those in the West with the attention span of a fly, but I think for the Indian audience, for whom most will have some connection, no matter how remote, to this setting, the humor is accessible and relatable. Similar to films like Sairat and Court, Thithi is composed of a cast of non-actors and unites a diverse cinema-going audience by offering the poignant wit that arises from place specific language and environment.

Thithi and Court share commonalities beyond the obviousness of a white haired elder for a central character. Mostly, the fluid intertwining of humor and tragedy which is, in fact, so well integrated that it is impossible to distinguish. But while Court is pointing to the absurdity of an arcane legal system, Thithi points to nothing. Or does it point to everything? I left the theater content with a four way intersection between humor, tragedy, nothing, and everything. But how does that intersection hold up in the context of the women of the film?

While we see that the woman of the village are sharp tongued, hardened, and no nonsense, they are given very little substance. Now, I’m not asking for any contrived portrayal of strong village women nor am I demanding some 30% reservation of plot given to women. Thithi is not about women, nor the relations between men and women in the village. But something happened for me after Abhi has sex with Cauvery, which is shortly after he has stolen sheep from her uncle.

Why has Abhi stolen sheep from the sheepherder? Because he drunkenly gambled away all the money his father, Thammana, gave him so that he could buy sheep for the Thithi celebration. None of Abhi’s actions are particularly good, quite the opposite in fact. But like every character in the film, we are endeared to him simply because of his human-ness. He’s not a bad kid, just a bored kid.

But by the time sex has occurred, even though it is assumed consensual, it is clear to me that multiple violations are occurring. Or, to put it in colloquial terms, some people in this film are getting fucked over. Kamalakka, the money lender, Cauvery, and of course Thammana.

Because we know Thammana’s story so well we understand the various ways in which he is getting fucked over by the reappearance of Gadappa. But because we don’t know much about Cauvery’s story, nor Kamalakka’s, I think most film goers will not think much of it. Which is perhaps why some reviews are able to say the following:

“Abhi offers little commentary on the matter of the inherited land; instead, he’s consumed by more youthful activities, which Reddy treats with an appropriately affectionate eye by not forcing the youngest heir into the film’s greater conflicts.”

a gentle, playful comedy set in a small village in Karnataka…featuring a wonderful ensemble of non-professional actors that transports you to an Asterixian village in Karnataka.

I found the film deeply comical but I do not think the words affectionate nor gentle have a place. It is deeply comical but also darkly comical. I keep returning to this question of whether Raam Reddy, the film director (who is clearly a genius), is in some way making a statement on gender in the village, in which case it is achieved through a non-statement or subtleties that can make us think quite deeply. For example Gadappa’s story about his wife (which may also only be a dream), which perhaps affected his relationship with his father (Century Gowda) and his relationship with life. But while he has, essentially, renounced society, his wife renounced life. And what of his game of Tiger and sheep? At what point does this carefree spirit become the Tiger of the whole plot and village for that matter? How does Gadappa, though unconsciously, orchestrate the thieving to take place by buying the sheep herding men their alcohol, to which the women ask, “But who will watch over the sheep?” I can’t help but wonder if the film is, in one small way, projecting an attitude of boys will be boys and men will be men.

By the time everyone is sitting down to the fine meal of mutton it is evident that some men have come out on top, others not, but every female character have been fucked over in some form or another. Now, I’m not saying that I want to see some form of justice delivered, but if this is to be a new cinematic take on the village, it is still an old take on gender in the village.

I also wonder if a film like Thihi could be created in which all central characters were women. What I’m trying to say is that in Thihi the characters are substantial enough, there need not be a presence of women to enhance or give a fuller picture of the male characters or their place within society. Could the same be achieved if it was a cast of women characters? Could an entire 120 minute film carry the same level of humor, irony, and rich character development without reference to husbands, children, or cooking? Although Thithi in many ways revolves around the story of a family, family relations and duties, it is at the same time not at all about the family. We see each generation of men as autonomous characters so that the film is almost an anti-statement about familial relations. Could the same humor or essence be achieved if the cast were women and not men? I have no doubt it could, and that such a director exists somewhere, but the question is whether such a film would receive the same kind of attention and reception as Thithi.

The Future of the Festival?

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Something feels extremely afoul with Further Future (FF002), a self-proclaimed Music and Lifestyle Festival taking place about 40 miles from the Las Vegas strip the last weekend of April.

Perhaps anticipating the potential confusion a phrase like ‘lifestyle festival’ might create in a potential goer, FF002’s website offers clarification.

“Close your eyes. Imagine yourself surrounded by the people who inspire you the most: great friends, artists both new and established, musicians and performers, futurists and technologists; esteemed entrepreneurs, visionaries and thought leaders, all of you awash with new ideas and insights. You are dancing together deep in a remote desert; you are on the sands of a distant and untouched beach; you are on a mountain top looking across endless snow-capped peaks…We aspire to help seed the discovery of new knowledge and technologies to protect and heal our planet, our societies and one another, and to help us reach the next stage in our collective evolution. To constantly strive to improve; to become leaders in sustainability and resource efficiency, and in all that we do. We aspire to inspire…You… are the hero.”

If the description continues to puzzle, there are plenty of images to help better visualize what it means to be surrounded by the people who inspire you the most and, as it turns out, they are all white people! Not only that, they are slim, trendy, smiling, cheering, hugging, and doing yoga on several occasions. At Further Future, the future is so bright, (not a pasty-pink white bright but rather a nicely tanned, glowing bright) I definitely gotta wear shades. And they should cost at least $400 dollars.

Assuming you are white, or at least multi-culti, own a few pairs of Oliver Peoples, have the means to spend $350 on the event ticket, $150 a night on a gastro experience of your choice, $7,500 to sleep in a ‘Lunar Palace’ (or at least $750 for an Alpha), a plane ticket to Vegas etc. is not assurance that the mass of uninhibited, gyrating entrepreneurs, visionaries, and thought leaders will embrace you into this tribe of collective, feel good, evolution. Maybe that’s why the organizers have created a Pinterest page with suggested FF002 attire (“We’ve put together a Pinterest board for our inspiration on what we think a Further Futurist might wear“). Because if we are to go off the website’s aesthetic, the only way to aspire to inspire, is to know how to be sexy in the desert. In fact, that the Pinterest page is framed as a question (“Are you a Further Futurest?”) suggests that any truly conscientious festival goer will undergo a rigorous, in-depth, self-evaluation to determine whether or not he or she is aesthetically fit to attend.

But why does this matter? From Coachella to SXSW, festivals seem increasingly preoccupied on festival fashion (e.g. who’s wearing what?), sponsors, and venders (is it a Vitamin Water or Budweiser kind of affair?), often to the detriment of the music itself. In an age where otherwise uneasy bedfellows such as Snoop Dogg and Rand Paul are notable speakers alongside a robust line up of CEO bros, where the festival’s founding vision is regurgitated on social media in a guru-like fashion, the contemporary festival increasingly resembles a highly programmed, carefully packaged experience to be consumed by festival and non-festival goes alike.

But FF02 has the potential to take the insidiousness of American festival culture one step further in two ways. First, although the Festival is billed as an experience of “collective evolution” nothing about its orchestration suggests collective collaboration. Anyone passionate about techno, EDM and the like will find the musical line up drool worthy. Yet their individual and collective creativity appears forfeited to the Festival entity itself. This isn’t a question of selling out but rather a questioning of a format in which musicians are hired in the classic capitalist/ worker sense to perform (as cogs) in the production of a visionary ‘lifestyle’ that is mostly the product of Rob Scott, a member of the Robot Heart Burning Man camp, lawyer, and venture capitalist aficionado.

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Second is the conflation of lifestyle and ideology. Of course lifestyle has been a part of American popular culture for decades (first coined in 1976) and as its roots are firmly grounded in marketing, American consumerism, and ultimately economics, one might say that lifestyle has always been an ideology. Certainly there is evidence of this when the festival founder proudly states “We aspire to be a lifestyle brand, a way to exist not just via music experiences or speakers.” But this is a serious problem when such a Festival proposes to heal not only our society, but the entire planet while charging people up to $7,500 for two days of accommodation in the desert, accommodations that include air conditioning, “clothing rack and full-length mirror are also provided, to ensure you look your best,” and 24-hour concierge service. This lifestyle ideology is far closer to anarcho capitalism than sustainability.

Furthermore, this carefully crafted lifestyle ideology has the power to resonate. I imagine this crowd awashing themselves in FF mantras such as the “The world of limitations is far away, judgments irrelevant and anything is possible” as they eat a curated oyster meal and decide they are doing the right thing by not judging the slightly overweight girl for not signing up for Kayla Itsine’s Bikini Body Guide prior to the event. That by doing an Ashtanga class in the morning and MDMA at night, by listening to lectures on technology, eating organic, and abandoning the Burning Man propensity for headdresses and nudity in respect for the Paiute Indians (whose reservation the festival is taking place on) they are somehow “heal[ing] our planet, our societies and one another.”

Fun, friendship, networking, relaxation will happen and maybe FF002 is correct, maybe this is the future format for developing leaders in sustainability and resource efficiency. But if it is, you should assume the future is Trump, maybe Clinton, but definitely not Sanders.

As the summer festival season approaches I’m left wondering what the further future of American festival culture might be. (Though many of us of original DEMFers have been wondering that for over a decade now.) It is probably safe to conclude that the general progression seems toward extreme exclusivity, seen most obviously in the ever-rising cost of tickets and wars over festival acquisition. But no matter how future forward these festivals seem to be, many continue to thrive off a Woodstock imaginary, be it through neo-hippy, urban boho fashion, the elimination of cash transactions (replaced of course by RFID wristbands) or feel good slogans of inclusivity and inspiration. Although a good number of free and open to the public festivals still exist, they are increasingly replaced by festivals that focus on a pre-meditated experience as opposed to an opportunity to experience. If FF002 is any indication, it seems the further future will continue to be pretty damn neoliberal after all.

The not-so-discrete choice of being a pedestrian in Bangalore

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When the program director explained that discrete choice economics was part of the PhD program my first thought was no big deal. See, I assumed he meant ‘discreet’, as in we’d learn economics in an unobtrusive kind of way, and then I had this train of thought where my mind replaced ‘choice’ with ‘charm’ and I naturally thought of Buñuel’s bourgeoisie.

10 minutes into the course I realized my mistake and two weeks later concluded that the whole thing was utterly uncharming. Not only because I found myself failing the first problem set on ordered logits and unable to grasp fixed effects, but because I struggled to believe that transportation, my subject of study, could be understood through binaries (or multinomials), reduced to probability models, and described through principles of utilitarian theory. In the end I mastered these techniques, passed the class, and aborted discrete choice theory as a way of understanding an individual’s transportation decisions.

Until now. My recent move to Bangalore and life as a pedestrian in this lawless land of piecemeal concrete and reckless driving has brought about a new kind of discrete choice economics.

Every night as I walk home from a neighboring Nagar I play a little (discreet) game with myself. The game is essentially based on whether I can accurately predict my decision to walk on the street or the footpath (the more common term for sidewalk), based on a set of observed variables, the most common being:

no footpath
an obstruction on the footpath
a broken footpath
non working street lights
an obstruction on the side of the street
shit (literal and figurative) on the side of the street
crazy-mad traffic.

Those are, for the time being, my working set of ‘external’ or independent variables. They arise unpredictably in the sense that I can walk 10 steps on a footpath and then halfway through my 11th step realize that this forward trajectory will not be possible once I begin that 12th. I must make a choice, a decision, quickly. And this decision, that is to walk forward on the footpath or transition to the street OR, conversely, to move from the street to the footpath, is based on this set of observable variables in which I must maximize my utility of being able to walk without being severely hurt or killed.

I’d like to think that my discrete (or rational) choice is ‘scientifically’ objective in the sense that it is based more on a mechanical, bodily reaction than self-reflection or subjective judgement as to where I should be walking.

I’d also like to think that this mental game satisfies most criteria for discrete choice model formation. For example, given that discrete choice is based in probability, it operates under the assumption that there is missing information. Meaning that my decision is based on observable as well as unobservable factors. Like those above my head. A coconut tree waiting to drop a big one on me, a bird’s nest of illegal wiring waiting to blow. These do not knowingly factor into my split second decision of footpath or street, but maybe they unconsciously do. As I write, I also realize that there are the ‘internal’ or imposed variables that I’ve created for myself. Two examples are:

whether or not I’ve worn closed or open shoes.
How late I am to get to where I need to go (and thus how much risk am I willing to take?).

I suppose hardcore modelers might challenge my desire to call my game an exercise in discrete choice theory. For example, the requirement that all categories are mutually exclusive is questioned when one considers that in several instances the footpath is the street and vice versa. After all, during rush hour, two wheelers drive on the footpath to avoid the gridlock traffic on the street. Cars park on the footpath and so, for pedestrians, the street becomes the footpath. I would have to ask a statistician, but I suspect this ambiguity might pose challenges for quantitatively minded.

In any case, I suspect that this small, insignificant game is one that over one million people, mostly women and the elderly, play here in Bangalore on a daily basis, most likely unknowingly and unwillingly. My guess is that people are less conscious of it then I am, and certainly more accepting of it.

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While the experience can be at times satirical, even surreal, unlike Buñel’s sextet, no aspect of this is imagined. The other week there were three separate accounts of women, all women, who tripped (on a pothole or uneven pavement) while walking and were killed by an approaching vehicle. In fact, the transportation situation in Bangalore is increasingly dire and it is the pedestrian population that is literally the worse hit. Being a pedestrian has allowed me to brush up on some of those long forgotten principles behind discrete choice theory but the best of probability models will not solve this mounting crisis. My advisor has recently starting using the acronym TINTA–There Is No Technocratic Answer. I’m pretty sure that is the best framework to have come from any economist in decades.

What does Modi mean by ‘women led growth’?

Women are the latest target in Modi’s attempt to regain his political mojo. While Modi is not the first politician in or outside India to call attention to the societal benefits of women in leadership roles, his justification is seasoned with that distinctly Hindu right, BJP ideology:

“A country is always empowered by its women. It is she who is different roles—as a mother, a sister and a wife nurtures citizens and these empowered citizens then play a role in building up an empowered society and country.”

Let me pause while I vomit and come back to express how offensive this is, or should be.

First, it operates under the assumption that there are three, and only three, roles that constitute or define women and all are in relation to the family. By default, the modus operandi of women is to nurture, nurture the individual who, under this care of mother, sister and/or wife will become an empowered citizen. Under the guise of empowerment and gender, Modi is putting forth two very patriarchal ideologies.

The transfer of nurture[ing] from woman to individual is not a closed circle for this conduit of nurturing is never circulated back to the woman. In fact, in many instances the only thing that is empowered is capitalism. Nurturing is passed from mother, sister, wife to individual and that individual, in turn, becomes a part of the productive labor force, which, in turn, produces the conditions needed to maintain a capitalist nation-state. This energy flow is of course one classic basis for the work of feminist economists who try to quantify the economic value of a society structured around unpaid nurturing.
In Modi’s scenario, woman is not considered a citizen. Of course Modi would dispute such a claim at face value but a nuanced reading of the statement suggests no direct relationship between nurturing a citizen and being a citizen. Nurturing an adorable puppy so that it can develop into a well domesticated dog does not, by default, make me a dog as well.

If political actions speak as loud as political rhetoric than we can assume that Modi’s parlance of “building an empowered country” translates into building a powerful nation-state, viz a viz strong military (just look at the new budget), robust private sector, and nurturing FDI. In other words, empowering a patriarchal, paternal model of capitalist democracy.

At present, most of Modi’s tangible execution of empowerment has not benefited any members of society beyond the business elites who, as desirable citizens, are fit to build an empowered nation-state, which essentially means the ability to shape global economics and geopolitics. For this to occur, the traditional capitalist-patriarchy structure needs to survive and again that structure begins with a household structure in which mothers, sisters and wives nurture. Increasingly, women are permitted to be part of that productive labor force, so long as it does not take away from their role as nurturer, nor their role as the upholding the modesty of the household and the nation.

While modesty has a very firm place in the constructed imaginary of ‘traditional’ Hinduism mythology where women like Sita and Draupidi are revered for maintaining their modesty in the direst of circumstances, because in today’s context a woman’s place might be both reproductive and productive (read: nurturing and income generating) it is paramount that modesty is upheld. Because if modesty is not upheld, it suggests that nurturing might be threatened.

Just look at so many of the legal discourses pertaining to women. Most have a basis in modesty. Laws around stalking, teasing, harassment originate from “outraging the modesty of woman” (see Section 354, 354D, 509 of the Nirbhaya Act). Not ‘a woman’, not women-as-individual-citizens but rather “modesty of woman.” I’d argue this is Mother India modesty or modesty of an imagined universal mother, sister, wife. This is further exemplified in workplace documents founded on protecting women workers (not dignity or rights of women in the workplace but perhaps the dignity of the company), accusations of rape (where in some instances, women undergo virginity testing to, essentially, determine if she was ‘modest’ before the attack), and even in rape prevention campaigns where men are encouraged to think of every woman they see as being someone’s mother or sister (but not a wife!).

Anti rape protest copy

Photo credit here.

My lamentation is not new, a refrain of many feminists, even non-feminists in India, but in this current global climate of frightening nationalism, religious, racial, caste intolerance, the sacrifice of social welfare for military growth, it is important to carefully read the nuances within the message of women led development (note in several instances of Modi’s speech, growth and development are used interchangeably), who is espousing it and why.

I am certainly for women led development, but not under such conditions. I believe Modi’s vision of women led development is one of carefully packaged patriarchy. His vision of an empowered country is one in which the nurturing of citizens by mothers, sisters, and wives will be reciprocated back to the that mother, sister, wife only in the form of laws and policies that protect the collective image of women as modest, women as nurturer, but do not empower her as an individual citizen. Perhaps my reading of Modi comes across as too Western a reading of what conditions should constitute women led development; I hope not. Modi is not the only political leader to have a double tongue when it comes to this subject, and thankfully India is ripe with activists, public intellectuals, and individual citizens who will challenge him on this.

Wheels and Tracks

Same destination but different mode. Why one would chose train over bus travel in India–anywhere for that matter*–hardly warrants explanation. But let me try. I finished Paul Theroux’s The Grand Railway Bazaar while traveling from Delhi to Bombay, down the coast of Maharashtra and yes, eventually to Goa. It was a mixed modes approach of bus, rail, and one flight.

Reading a travel book while traveling is obviously cliché, but then to read a travel book while performing the regiment of everyday life is possibly to induce despair. Although my two week hiatus hardly compares to Theroux’s half year journey, it did allow me to reflect on a few things that have been brewing for some time, such as the gendered nature of adventure travel (and writing) and how the interior spaces of India’s overnight buses compare to the train journeys.

Inner-urban transportation in India is pretty gendered, from the subtle hand-painted portrait-of-a-lady on the side of Mumbai’s crumbling yet delightfully efficient suburban rail system to the ‘women on wheels’ pink taxis. Light rail and metro systems have whole compartments reserved for ‘ladies.’ In Delhi, this is indicated by a Barbie pink coloured sign complete with your classic stick-figure-in-a-dress and white flowers blooming around her body.

But inside the compartment of the long distance trains, gender differentiation evaporates. Of course there is the list outside the car, dutifully telling the name, sex, and age of each passenger, but within the car your cubicle of six berths, geometrically lined up and magically suspended by some cable that has been carrying the weight of human travellers since Gandhi, has no explicit demarcation for gender, personal space, and perhaps even class for the matter.**

What is it about this temporary communal space, a space within a contained vessel in motion, that allows things like concern for personal security to evaporate? I tried bringing up this question several times while doing research interviews with those who work in the field of urban public transportation. No one had ever given it much thought, and with the exception of times of social upheaval, no one could think of an instance when a woman rail passenger had been violated, nor any public demand for gender segregated compartments.

It is hard to convey the feeling of this tiny, 50 square foot, six berth space that is created on the long distances trains. A similar feeling does not exist on overnight buses, or international flights. I’ve tried to identify certain qualities–the freedom to move within and between cars, the open doors, the tiny table at the end of the lower berth where one can set their namkeen, chai, oily IRCTC breakfast. Is it the fact that there is a communal space? That everyone starts the journey sitting on the lower berth, a padded rectangle that eventually becomes someone’s bed and ends up in some contorted position with a wad of of stiff wool blanket wrapped around some part of the body? Is it the sounds and smells outside the rail station, the situated historicalness of rail travel itself? While there are a great number of rail travelogues, I’m hard pressed to think of any involving buses (that aren’t tied to some self-depreciating, down and out character), and certainly none written by women.

*I suppose in the US you could argue that there is hardly a lesser evil between Amtrak and Greyhound.

** Of course the compartments are organised according to class, but unlike air travel, where a curtain and several stewards and stewardesses are strategically placed to ensure no trespassing between first class, silver elite, gold and the masses in economy class.

Ce n’est pas une neoliberal agenga

Semiotics. No doubt that stuff is complicated. So is international policy. Sometimes I think they’re more or less the same thing, but try telling that to a macro economist. “Stop with the semantics,” I hear professors working with large data sets telling confused PhD students. “Just tell me plain and simple, what is it you are trying to say?”

Given the extent to which the data inclined are Derrida adverse, I find the UN’s recent discursive shift from Millennium Development Goals to Sustainable Development Goals quite interesting. Is this linguistic turn as arbitrary as Saussure’s arbre? Is the __DG format indicative of a signifier without a sign? Well, no. I’d say the transition from MDGs to SDGs is hella loaded. It’s loaded with the ideological baggage and political power of 193 member states.

I kinda think of the UN as a monolithic ersatz linguistic department that has been given the task of creating a New World Order, but can use neither physical or political coercion, only semiotics. By New World Order I mean Human Rights as a framework for global cooperation and by semiotics I mean the constant coding, recoding and transmission of ideologies through acronyms in the hopes of getting genuine commitment from the individual and institutional powers behind the ether of the neoliberal agenda.

When the Brundtland Commission defined sustainable development as “development which meets the needs of current generations without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs,” it was equally applauded and criticized for its vagueness. There were just so many interpretations. That was 1987. By 2000, international political support for sustainable development was waning. But, thanks to the private sector, concepts like Energy Star, LEED design, green architecture, fair trade, and buy one give one allowed sustainability to became big business.

Perhaps taking cue from the private sector’s ability to turn a vague concept into a profit margin, that same year, the UN announced its Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), a set of eight goals (‘Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger’, ‘Improve maternal health’) and countless targets to be achieved through through the commitments and financial investments of states, corporations…and celebrity benefit concerts in which attendees Buy the Impact!

Example 1:

Person A: “Let’s get tickets to the Eliminate Poverty benefit concert, our money will go to a kid in Africa who lives on less than a dollar a day!”

Person B: “Wow! If my ticket is $54 dollars, it’s like I’m giving that kid 54 days of help and happiness!

Example 2:

Person A: “Let’s get tickets for the sustainable development concert, our money will go toward furthering the concept of sustainable development and the idea that we should live in such a way that our present actions aren’t at the expense of untold generations to come!

Person B: “But how do I know if the decision to take my pill during Tiesto’s set so that I can be seriously rolling for Jay Z will have an effect on global warming and the lives of others?”

I believe the linguistic shift from sustainable development to MDGs and the campaign to end poverty was motivated not by words, language, or meaning but rather by numbers and their ability to be arbitrary yet full of (financial) value. Numerical outputs taken from rigorous statistical analyses involving hundreds of independent variables, scrupulously examined for any kind of heteroscedasticity ensured that the global discussion was on whether or not poverty was increasing as opposed to the question of what poverty actually meant.*

See, until these new SDGs were announced, I thought sustainable development, like Ecstasy, was waning in popularity. I mean, this post isn’t about questioning the meaning of sustainable development or the utility of the SDGs but rather why the words keep changing and whether this has any impact on the ideologies behind them.

Writing on the immutability and mutability of the sign, Saussure tells us: The signifier, though to a appearances freely chosen with respect to the idea that it represents, is fixed, not free, with respect to the linguistic community that uses it. The masses have no voice in the matter, and the signifier chosen by language could be re placed by no other (General Course, 71).

Okay. A simple set of words are created to capture a political and policy agenda. The first set was too vague and so a second set was created, this time incorporating the word ‘goals’ so as to encourage quantifiable targets and thus dissolve any conceptual ambiguity. When these targets are not met by a set date (i.e. 2015), the international community falls back on a critique of the concept, the meaning of these words (e.g. are we talking about work or livelihoods? What is included in ‘maternal health’?) and the difficulty of financing such a project. The outcome is a new set of words that incorporates one (or two) from each iteration to thus reflect the revision of that agenda. And we begin, afresh.

Today is a beautiful October day, that time of warm, muted colors, when fashion magazines announce the ‘return’ of some classic and everyone runs to Soho to buy a new version of an old classic. Ever since the establishment of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, I can’t help but feel that the UN and its various institutions have put all their energy into rebranding a classic that everyone keeps forgetting. I think part of the problem is the lingering idea of progress–that hangover of modernism we still wake up to and, of course, development–that stepmother of colonialism. These two concepts, I believe, are a true detriment to the actuality of human rights, because both make easy bedfellows of the neoliberal agenda.

* I’m not suggesting that this conversation was or is absent from UN publications or the concern of individuals. Only that this type of discussion doesn’t lend itself to donors.

1/2 Chapter

Like a written note to a friend, I feel the need to open with I-have-not-written-for-a-long-time. Although my posts serve a different function than a letter, the excuses are nearly the same. It’s not that I haven’t thought about writing or wanted to write. Somehow, the stamina and ability to follow through has not been. Every idea, remembrance, observation remains too isolated from the other, the work it would take to connect them recedes as the banal yet necessary routines of every day life wash in.

A PhD entails writing–it is a prerequisite as well as a necessary outcome and yet PhD students are notorious for not writing, which leads to not turning anything in, which leads to not finishing. When I started the program, (three years ago), I thought surely I would be exempt from such an issue. I have learned many things during my PhD but somehow I have unlearned how to write. To write without thinking too much, without reading too much, without guilt that it may have no practical relation to my dissertation.

Now, after a long hiatus, a failure to remember my wordpress password, I realize how my interests have changed, that I’m no longer intrigued by the idea of utopia. That my original motivation for writing, even Benjamin’s dialectical image, seem so trite in the face of the RIGHT NOW. The state of the world has caught me like a deer in headlights. There is so much to write about, I don’t know how to bracket, where to focus. I increasingly feel like Kat, the main character in the fourth chapter of Julian Barnes’s A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters, who sets out to sea on a life raft believing the world to be in a state of nuclear holocaust.

I’m definitely out at sea.

I would however, like to briefly credit Francisco Goldman’s latest book, The Interior Circuit, with motivating me to revisit this site. His ability to seamlessly integrate the personal, world events, investigative reporting, and reflections on life came at the right time. What resonated the most was the sense of urgency he conveys, in terms of the actual act of writing as well as the content that emerges. Let the writing take over, get it out of your system–perhaps a form of blood letting? This thing that is a part of you but poisonous to your existence if it just stays within, maybe that’s what compels us to write?

Dream Spheres and Urban Development

When she first told me her apartment complex was off NICE road I thought I heard ‘a nice road’. “Oh, great!” I replied, trying to show enthusiasm for surface pavement, “But what is the name?”

“NICE”, she said again, “The toll road, about 3 kilometers from Electronic City.”

There is a lot of ambiguity in India but I can’t say the same for subtlety, especially when it comes to new development. California County, Wall Street II, Prestigious White Meadows, Dream City…these are just a handful of communities I have come across in the past week.

Like many former British colonies, English street names and districts are common in urban India (e.g. Richmond Town, Frazier Town) but it seems, to me at least, that there might be a correlation between the liberalization of India’s economy and the rise in gated communities that make literal references to lifestyles specific to particular geographies. J. Naigar’s and John Stallmeyer’s excellent works on Bangalore helped me understand the city’s explosive growth, particularly in terms of human population and kilometers of land but neither prepared me for the flood of speculative real estate development I have encountered.

Some highlights below:

-Billboards testimonials. These are particularly popular along Bellary Road, from the airport into the city, but also on any toll road—such as the NICE ring road. These testimonials include a picture of an individual in some expressive gesture, such as a head cocked to one side. “I chose to relocate from _______ to Bangalore, and it was the wisest decision I’ve ever made.” A simple, straightforward affirmation. The logic of someone beyond middle age. It seems to recall Bangalore’s former identity as a ‘pensioner’s paradise’, namely because of the year-round good weather. The word is relocate, but the assumption is retire. Retire and invest.

-Radio. “Ooh gawd, Shriti,” begins one radio ad I heard approximately every five minutes for one entire weekend, “I’ve missed the real estate expo and now I’m back to driving all across the city looking at places.”

“Don’t worry Ashita, the expo has been extended for one week more!” Like all classic infomercials, we are told to ‘hurry’ because this ‘opportunity’ ‘won’t last.’

Another personal favorite is one in which a metaphor between finding the perfect wife and finding the perfect property is utilized. By doing his research, and refusing to settle for anything less than perfect, the man gets both the woman and the two-bedroom flat.

Or, here are some favorite snippets from the August 23^rd real estate section of the Times of India (Bangalore edition):

Toast, Cereals and Conversations: Nitesh Cape Cod is located just off the Sarjapur-Marathahalli Ring Road and within walking distance of leading IT offices.

-Niteshestates.com

Get ready to Start your Second Innings at your Own British Colonial Bungalow (sic): Fresh forest oxygen; Zero carbon footprint

-legacyhomes.in

Innovative aquafront: Where happiness Reflects. Exactly Facing the Lake

-innovativeconstructions.in

-Comment: This is not EXACTLY what I would call a Lake, nor is it exactly attractive.

Neo Bangalore—An Address you can flaunt about

Your property can help you fulfill your dreams, just like your family.

-HSBC

Even since my trip here last summer I feel what was a craze has now become an epidemic. That said, it’s hard to know what is aggressive advertising and what is reality. As an employee working in Electronics City, I’m amidst the target population of this advertising. And yet real estate has yet to become the topic of any lunchtime conversation. So is this ‘Exactly facing the Lake’ this ‘Toast, Cereals and Conversation’ a myth?

Regardless of whether or not Innovative aquafront actually faces a lake the reality of this city is uneven development. Bangalorians often talk about how just 20 years back all this area was scrubland. Aside from being called a pensioner’s paradise, Bangalore was also—and is still somewhat—referred to as India’s ‘Garden City’, an image the real estate industry loves to invoke. But can the legend of Bangalore’s garden paradise peacefully co-exist with the reality of high population growth? Can the city successfully attract people, development, and maintain ‘pristine natural surroundings’?

The directions for getting to my co-worker’s apartment were simple. After getting off the NICE toll road I was to turn left at the petrol station and continue down the winding road until I arrived at ‘Sabah Sunscape’.

The thing was, after a few hundred yards from the petrol station the road went from paved, to dirt, and then back to paved. We passed cows, pockets of dense forest, and area cleared for future development. We came to a fork in the road. The driver stopped a man in a white dhoti who seemed to be walking without purpose. “Where is Sabah Sunscape?” he asked in Kannada. The man gestured straight with a good deal of indifference. After a few minutes we came to a gate and two high rises. I got out of the rickshaw and walked toward the security station on the other side of the gate and told the guard the name of my friend. He checked the roster and shook his head. No one of that name lived there. After a few minutes of debate we solved the problem. I was at Sabah Sunbeam, NOT Sabah Sunscape. I walked back to the rickshaw. We continued driving until we finally arrived at an even larger gate set between two concrete pillars. We had arrived at Sabah Sunscape.

Later that night, coming back to Electronics City, I started to wonder what makes a city. If Electronics City does not include electronics manufacturing nor does it constitute an actual city, why does it have the name that it does? Electronics City is supposedly the ‘place’ that put Bangalore in the global marketplace, but for the first 15 years of existence it was considered to be outside the city. Now, Bangalore’s development stretches even further south. Was Sabah Sunscape and its environs really part of this Bangalore city? Historically, Bangalore has always been a low-density city. But that did not mean, I thought to myself, that some gated high-rise apartments located in the middle of nowhere could be part of the city, even if the city boundary will eventually give way and include it. Then again, what right did I, a child of Detroit, have to conclude what is urban and what is not?

Is urban the same thing as city? What is a city anyway?

Sometimes my grandfather likes to tell us about the first house he and my grandmother bought. The street on which the house was built wasn’t completed; they were the first homeowners on the block and because of this, my grandmother got to name the street. She chose ‘Devonshire’ because she thought is sounded very sophisticated.

It’s easy to be cynical of the HSBC quote about family and property, but the fact is that for many people this relationship and its connection to something loosely defined as a dream is very much a reality. Cities are also spaces/places of dreams, or where people go to fulfill something that might be described of a dream. Cities are constantly expanding in order to accommodate all those individuals, all those families, and all those dreams. So, I suppose when I think of it that way I can accept Sobha Sunscape as part of Bangalore and yet, when it comes to the reality of this piecemeal development, these self-contained bio-spheres of swimming pools and tennis courts cropping up in the middle of nowhere, claiming to have the amenities of both urban and suburban life I can’t help but think that these real estate dreams must be destroyed, as the future of the city depends on it.

Intertextual styleee

Intertextuality is a word used to describe the experience of finding one text within another; it is the rejection of closure and the championing of an open, iterative process of dialogue and meaning. I’ve long convinced myself that intertextuality did not come from Julia Kristeva nor Mikhail Bakhtin, but rather King Tubby. I’d argue that the inventor of dub reggae is the real father of deconstruction, the original palimpsest rocker. A radio repair technician by trade, King Tubby begin experimenting with the B-side instrumental tracks of Jamaican 45s, distorting the sounds beyond recognizability and thus, essentially, creating a ‘new’ sound. I think literary theory could learn a thing or two from dub and that cultural studies should give a big up to the pliability and constant evolution of Jamaican music.

Photo of King Tubby from the National Library of Jamaica.

My supreme love and massive respect for Jamaican music was part of the reason I decided to take an impromptu trip to the island this past January. A second reason was a long-standing, school girl crush on Michael Manley and his commitment to democratic socialism. But, there are others: Trevor Munroe (The Politics of Constitutional Decolonization), Eric Williams (Capitalism and Slavery), Walter Rodney (okay, technically not Jamaican), Obika Gray, Louise Bennett…I could go on. My point however is that the Jamaica I wanted to visit had nothing to do with beaches or Club Med and everything to with the urban political, language, and the aural.

The funny thing is, I never made it to Kingston. See, I arrived at a very special place and, even after ten days had passed, I still found it impossible to leave Great Bay in St Elizabeth Parish. The Jamaica that captured my heart had a lot to do with the (clearly un-urban) landscape, even more to do with the wonderful people I was able to meet, and the vernacular-ness I was able to experience.

A quick detour…

Many of us are exposed to Jamaica via online advertisements for holiday destinations. Book a flight to anywhere in North America in the middle of winter and, inevitably, an ad for a Caribbean vacation will appear in your side bar. Mind you, it’s generally not a flight but an inclusive package. The idea, no, fact of Jamaica as a unique, small-island nation quickly evaporates under more general concepts of ‘cheap’ ‘luxurious’ and ‘getaway.’

In 1989 The National Black Business Report covered Prime Minister Manley’s press conference addressing the state of Jamaican tourism. Tourism was the subject of a much larger conversation around the need for foreign direct investment, which was at an all time low. Manley’s Democratic Socialism, his belief that “A country like Jamaica cannot become a just society if you don’t redistribute some of the wealth and some of the benefits, and we’ve begun some of that redistribution,” and the actions he would take to go about achieving this (e.g. education for all, nationalizing utilities, redistribution of land to small farmers) did not sit well with the US, nor did his relationship with Castro. Between 1972 and 1976 Manley raised taxes on family incomes above $12,500 to 44 percent. The middle class was keen to leave and the US was all to happy to invite them to places like Miami and New York. Until the mid-1970s, the US received most its bauxite from the Caribbean, more specifically Jamaica. When Manley decided to raise taxes he didn’t just tax the middle class, he taxed bauxite in such a way that it became the most expensive exporter of bauxite in the world. In addition to driving out the middle class, he also drove away foreign investment. Furthermore, by the early 80s, the US significantly reduced their annual amount of USAID, from roughly 13 million to just under four. This is why, going back to this press conference, Manley is making the connection between foreign direct investment and tourism.

Anyway, I don’t wish to linger too much in the fascinating climate of 1970s and early 80s Caribbean politics but I will just say that, by the mid 80s, a number of factors, including the rising popularity of mass tourism led many small island states to believe that international tourism was the best way to go about achieving international investment. What distinguished Jamaica from some of the other islands was its image as an incredibly violent place, something that would, and continues, to influence visitors to the country.

In that 1989 conference Manley explains to the audience that Jamaica “Has a duty to their guests to make them safe and to help them feel safe…In fact Jamaica is a safe destination but no one could really say there isn’t the sort of incident you might find in New York, or all over the place…we are concerned about some problems we inherent, like harrassment…but the fact remains, and forgive me for having to say this, but I think Jamaica might be just about the most fantastic vacation product in the world.”

There are some (including myself) who believe that much of violence in Jamaica can be traced back to the US, who, in attempt to thwart the country’s relationship with Cuba and the Soviet Union by dismantling the Manley regime, facilitated the entry of arms into the country in order to not only encourage violence and political opposition, but also create an image of violence that would discourage Americans from taking holiday vacations in the country.

The perception of Jamaica as a violent and dangerous place continues to persist today. My point is neither to support or deny violence but rather focus on the how that perception influences tourism within the country. People buy all-inclusive packages because it is easy, but do they also do it because it is perceived as ‘safe’? Either way, I would argue that the experience of Jamaica becomes somehow reduced to the image of the beach, Bob Marley, the Jamaican flag, and a bottle of Red Stripe.

I’m quite sure American travelers to Jamaica have been briefed on the violence within the country, but do they make the connection between politics, tourism, and ideologies of power?

Jamaican music of this time period sure did. And not just in terms of lyrical content, but even more so in terms of structural form. Let me quote en masse from the master theorist of subculture himself, Dick Hebdige:

“Reggae draws on a quite specific experience…It is cast in a unique style, in a language of its own–Jamaican patois, that shadow form, ‘stolen’ from the Master and mysteriously inflected, ‘decomposed’ and reassembled in the passage from Africa to the West Indies. It moves to more ponderous and moody rhythms. It ‘rocks stead’ around a bass-line which is more prominent and more austere. Its rhetoric is more densely constructed, and less diverse in origin; emanating in large part from two related sources–a distinctively Jamaican oral culture and an equally distinctive appropriation of the Bible. There are strong elements of Jamaican pentecostal, of ‘possession by the Word’, and the call and response pattern which binds the preacher to his congregation, is reproduced in reggae,” (Hebdige, 31).

Now, since I mentioned my love for King Tubby, let me quote again:

“Reggae began to slow down to an almost African metabolism. The lyrics became more self-consciously Jamaican, more dimly enunciated and overgrown until they disappeared altogether the in the ‘dub’, to be replaced by the ‘talk over’. The ‘dread’, the ganja, the Messianic feel of this ‘heavy’ reggae, its blood and fire rhetoric, its troubled rhythms can all be attributed to the Rasta influence….It was during this period of growing disaffection and joblessness, at a time when conflict between black youths and the police was being openly acknowledged in the press…With dub and reggae, this rebellion was given a much wider currency: it was generalize and theorized,”(Ibid, 36-7).

In his article “The Popular Culture of Illegality: Crime and the Politics of Aesthetics in Urban Jamaica (2012), Rivke Jaffe makes an insightful connection between the dons (informal political leaders…somewhat akin to Italian mafia or Japanese Yakuza) of Kingston and soundsystem culture. Jaffee attributes the ‘almost supernatural’ or iconic status of dons to a unique urban aesthetic of performative music culture. What I would like to focus on is the unique structure of having both a DJ and a selector.

Growing up in Detroit, I had my own unique experience with DJ culture, particularly through Detroit techno. This form of dance music is also, in my opinion, about intertextuality where no one DJ is Author. Rather, each DJ acts as an author of an experience–a single moment in time and space. A track may be reproduced, but it is never repeated. History then, becomes layered, textual, but never linear.

The early reggae records contained one side with lyrics and the other was the instrumental version. This was so that the track could be played live, with the DJ adding his or her own lyrics according to the context, the atmosphere of the moment. Jaffee points out that DJs will often, in the middle of a track, give a big up to a celebrated don of the neighborhood. Sometimes, the lyrics become a story or a narrative of how that don came to power.

What I found interesting about my encounter with the Jamaican soundsystem was just how much I liked the talkativeness and performative within DJ culture. Here in the US, I’ve never liked MCs (Beastie Boys excluded, obviously). I find it jarring, disruptive and often in bad taste. I think, as I reflect on this, it’s because the MCs I hear have nothing substantive to say. Not that their Jamaican counterparts always have something substantive to say–but whatever they do say always sounds good. You can literally slurp down the riddims cause they are that smooth. I think it’s because they remain situated within the context, by context I mean the situation, the audience, the moment. So although many Jamaicans are critical of the direction reggae music has taken in the past decade (e.g. dancehall is all bling with no substance)–coming from my perspective I found Jamaica’s music scene ripe with substantial lyrical style. Music is, I feel, about communication. Watching the unspoken communication between the DJ and the selector, between the selector, the DJ and the audience, was really an amazing experience. A friend of mine explained that the job of the selector is to size up the audience and make sure everyone in the room gets at least one song. You feel it. There is the collective that is constantly dancing, but sometimes, depending on the call outs and the track, there are some who come into the foreground and then recede again into the background so that what you feel is both fleeting and steady.

Utopiography

psychogeography, utopia, and the dialectical image