If we had not been able to come closer to an understanding of affect at the reading club meeting, it came to me again in a recent text by another Brian (“The half-life of disaster“), where somehow the descriptive traversing of scales felt familiar, and of course it can hit us with as much impact as watching a slow-motion montage of the year in review, or Olympic triumphs, or yes, the touching moments and heroes of disaster. We should be immune already perhaps, cynical viewers whose forms of belief have decayed parallel to these half-lives, and yet even at standstill, reduced to its barest linguistic denominators, it could still be possible to induce a notion of affective scales on a billboard covering an urban construction site: “Grandpa lazing in the sun. Boys dancing hip-hop. Businessman checking e-mail. Woman carrying shopping bag.” She was kind of pissed off about this, about all that it left out or pinned down too characteristically in succinct world view, but it seemed also something more than ‘trace’ in a collective reading on media. This is an affect of the kind that Michael mentions, “understood as the embodiment of certain codes, to be read and embodied by a particular community”. Such embodiment is a continuous training, like watching these disasters in constant cycle, like urbanity itself. We learn to traverse the levels, moving from horror and shock at grand scale to human warmth and its accompaniments in the everyday heroes and miniature miracles that soothe a constant, half-toned fear.
Taking distance can occur in both directions, towards macro-scale world views or into the safety of the small moments in a day to day. What Massumi claims as a ‘trace-form anticipation’ singularly and collectively describes this back and forth motion; it is a kind of subjective being-in-motion that typifies our here and now condition. To make a hero of our friend A W W abroad stresses the silence nearby, it casts scales of individual activism helplessly against nameless foreboding forces at the state realm, naïvely paralleled by his name being coded “Love the future”. Larger and stronger pursuits of activism in the last years (in education, in the art world, the Middle East, the mid-West…) echo, or are symptomatic of such “affective conversion circuits”, but there remains to be seen what “alter-” could possibly step out of it. Should affect move out of affect? What lies outside of scale itself? The movements seem to encompass everything already, like fantastic ideas kept to oneself, like capitalism’s neverending ever in sight, like half-lives in decay.
—– * there was a thought at the beginning of writing this post that these photos bore some relation to the things i was going to say, but the distancing ended up there. there is a lot of ambivalent feeling in their transmission, but they speak of a relation…
The ‘Blood Real Estate Map’ which sparked huge interest online in the last months came to my knowledge in the real space of my living room. It’s kind of messy here these days, as preparations to move out of the small grounds at Xiaojingchang are underway for a lateral shift towards Beixinqiao, but a friend stopped by one evening with the kind of hushed urgency of a very important favour to ask. She was asked by a wishing to remain anonymous contact of hers to help translate a response text about his initiative documenting violent incidents linked to forced demolition and eviction. She needed my help for the translating and proofreading, and so another late night at HomeShop rolled cultural exchange, an attempt to map the current condition and maybe a little bit of exaggerated or not ballsy-ness (you have to keep quiet about this, he’s at a lot of risk and we don’t know what may happen) all into one.
The Blood Real Estate project, which was launched at the beginning of October, consists of two Google maps:
the revised version[note: use proxy to access], which is edited by the founder and shows only verified cases, and an open version[note: use proxy to access] that anyone can add to or edit. Little volcanoes represent sites where people were evicted violently, with water canons or Molotov cocktails. Beds indicate incidents that resulted in at least one death. [France 24]
The map maker felt a personal response to foreign media was necessary because of all the publicity generated by his work, and while proofreading his text I was surprised to find such an emotional personal declaration to clarify an action of anonymous digital tracking (though the wiki-version feels much more dramatic). The calm reflection he claims results from this project sounds more spiritual than practical, more self-intuited than strategically outlined. Not that anyone has any answers. Blow-up is blow-up, whether it is someone’s home, publicity or real and imminent threat.
Below is the full version of his text “Believe in Tomorrow”, first published in an edited version at France 24 International News:
I recently ran into this mini project from students of FEI Jun‘s media lab at the Central Academy of Fine Arts (courtesy of NO+CH). They call them “micro-observations”, and according to the students, serve “not merely as a magnification of the thing itself, but as an enlargement of the act of noticing. ‘Micro-observations’ bring about not only a paying attention to the unnecessary, but in revisiting these objects the transformation of their semantic meaning.” Nice public intervention~
点击图片查看箭头指向的物体 Click on the images to see enlarged object
His name is Christian Nold and he has been working mainly on public space and particularily how “masses” use and move into space. As he says, nowadays, there are so many events happening already in the public space (for example, protests, etc.) that there is no need to organize events or performances. there is enough to observe already. what he has been mainly doing in recent years, is to produce subjective cartographies of areas, cities, etc. He made kind of emotional maps, for example, renaming all the subway stations, or he asked people to draw their neighborhood…in another project, he asked people to walk around with a kind of machine that measures stress (like a lie detector) and a gps, and afterward they discussed together to understand what were that main reasons for stress. actually his maps look like the one I posted last summer on our blog…
I think the whole point of his work is to give community a voice to express its own space, and to personalize maps instead of having objective, pseudo-neutral maps. somehow, I felt that his work is trying to put together the two dimensions of mapping and tracing…I gave him Petrescu’s paper, he was interested! His work goes sometimes a step further, in the sense that it is used by urban planners or local politics, who need to have a better understanding of the environment.
The work we did in Geneva was quite different though, and although i found it interesting, it was somehow too similar to what I’m used to do in social sciences. we chose an area we wanted to explore, describe and map, and we ended up working on the UN/international organizations area, which is a very special area in Geneva as it is very cold, unfriendly and unlively area. almost like the bad chinese new constructions you see everywhere.
well, so as we could feel it in the built environment, we tried to explore the connections/disconnections between this area, the people working in those IO and Geneva. Basically a lot of those people are expats, so they have a particular relation with the city, as expats have everywhere else in the world. but what at least for me is interesting, is that all those IO, NGOs, etc. are kind of acting for the world, that is, in a scale we all belong to. But as I showed on the pictures (the world upside down that I posted a few weeks ago) there is something very weird about the world they represent: something that is far, stranger, cold, that nobody seems to be able to appropriate, and this is strongly felt in the built environment. So during the workshop we got kind of stuck with this very huge topic of international organizations…and tried to map them, or at least tried to map their presence into the city, but we didn’t really have enough time to finish…so the result wasn’t that interesting. it was funny though to interrogate people about those IOs; we asked them to draw the people working there and get a bit into their imaginary of what those guys are (doing). I think it could have been funny to try to imagine the city actually without its international part and see what would be left…but I think these drawing and mapping techniques are definitely very interesting and could be something to explore in Beijing projects as well…
and here is my question, the post about electric palm tree is very interesting, how do you imagine we could get further on the co-existence discourse? do you already have some ideas in mind?
HomeShop invites Beijing’s Critical Reading Group to discuss two readings: Doina Petrescu’s “The Indeterminate Mapping of the Common” [download PDF here] and a selection from The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere by Jürgen Habermas. The Habermas chapter, entitled “The Polarization of the Social Sphere and the Intimate Sphere” [download PDF here], didn’t make it to the discussion for reasons of dryness and tardiness, but in about three hours, the group manages to make it through the difficulties of defining a trace, Shaanxi Mo King buns, mapping China, a bit of beer & sake and a curious visit from the local police.
the notes below are simple tags to help you find your way —- the meeting in full is recorded below; skim through and hopefully find something interesting for you, or try playing them all at once and listen to the signal-to-noise ratio…
ON “THE INDETERMINATE MAPPING OF THE COMMON” | 3′ 23
contradicting, controversy of social mapping, a solipsistic position, Deligny, “the marker of a hidden ontological data”, do they share that relationship with the people imbuing meaning into their normative behaviours?, common to him, loss when you bring in language, discursive things…
MAPPING and TRACING | 7′ 11
GPS versus tracing, locative mapping versus tracing as invocation of essence, tracing has no purpose as such, tracing as the “way of doing it”, intention, Situationist, surprising within everyday life, not about finding something extraordinary, mental maps, how people live space, a minefield of gestures, a social mapping entanglement, ontological presence that you can’t really touch, anthropomorphism, common ground, tracing as creative process, anthropological process, fraught with danger, Sichuan, daily subjectivities within a larger urban plan, practical application, their locomotion, more aesthetic than logical, magnetic waves…
A LATECOMER, INTRODUCTIONS | 4′ 27
as little disturbance as possible, bad theory joke, angie – california, berkley, arts, bea – swiss, phd, geography, anthropology, urban planning, sean – toronto, phd, critical sports theory, olympics, collin – colorado, caijing, not where my interests are exactly, julia – contemporary art history, southern california, chinese, three shadows, elaine – texas, artist, freelancing, hence this, chris – artist, brooklyn, shanghai, theory, hanora – consulting, also not my main area of interest, matthew – long walks on the beach, capricorn, photographer, film, documentary, we’ve been on and off for awhile…
BALL, ANOTHER ARRIVAL | 4′ 06
Deligny, aqueducts, Berkley cognitive science professor, Himalayan graphic image of ball rolling forward, Buddhist monks, physical difference in brains, gravitational differences, dirty your floor, katie – come with duck and things, awkward being in the middle, other vegetables, open the sake, have at it, that’s all i’ve got, i like your haircut, rain, panic, panic, anyway…
THE OTHER | 10′ 12
theories of gravity, Tibetan monks, post-structuralist utilization of the Other, all this other without a kind of an object, autistic kids and Tibetan guys, rationalist flaw, let’s find an Other, ben stiller, line of crisis of modernity, our cities are poorest, flexible spaces, borders keep moving, the softness of cities has come to the fore, meditating, Edward Said’s “Orientalism“, hegemonic white male, Benedict Anderson‘s flaw, concrete Marxist ideals, is it a flaw or a mechanism to understand, language inherently leads to Otherness, polarizing nouns, Deligny breaking down polarization, everyday dispositions, a bridge, tracing that evokes a common space of understanding, describing, the limitations of the cartographic model, alternative models, trace as action, intense attention to something else without explaining, “a seeing that is not related to thinking, a gaze which does not reflect”, shooting for something passive, describe something in its own terms, ton of criticism, not completely there…
DEFINING MAPPING AND TRACING | 9′ 58
weakness of this article, juxtaposition, boundaries not clear, GPS locative mapping versus non-intentive walking, leaving realm for possibility in the act of doing, subjective process, walking as beginning of architecture, gesture as beginning of utterance, speech, writing, tracing as embodied communication, trace to map is shift of sensory focus to intense bias of visual, corporeality, knowing oneself in the world, trace as remnant, left behind, pinpointing, everyone in this room is constantly tracing, tracing as production of space, GPS is inherent map, imposing trails upon places already there, walking through this room, remainders, plotted footprints, embodied act becomes a leftover, mapping as judgmental or critical, tracing ontological, mapping and language, deterministic, mapping as reflexive practice, mapping: scopophilic, hegemonic, totalizing, problematic, tracing: nice, soft, centering closer to the abstract, foucault, approaching the liminal?, the approximation of a definition, never access through language, Deleuze & Guattari, affect before thought, codify affect to thought and thought to language, tracing as affective, embodied experience, codified in language, another way of saying mapping…
TRACING BEIJING OLYMPICS, 警察来了, 就是朋友 | 8′ 16
Does tracing have anything to do with how Beijing was radically altered in advance of the Olympics?, Yuan, Ming, Qing, buildings wiped out, how modern Beijing has been built, tracing like breathing, because the development’s there I go to it, pathways through hedges, desire paths, Beijing is meant to control that, you can never control that, space for improvisation, mapping consciousness versus social consciousness, opposite the hutong vibe, tracing in hutongs, structure businesses, houses, lives, dream of the architects, 没有，就是一些朋友过来吃饭，在北京工作，这个我帮一个朋友, did someone call?, the station’s just down the street, maybe we just carry on like everything’s cool, an example of control, exercise machines, follow that grid exactly, social control built, who you guys were, state-prescribed exercise equipment, 20th century history of hutongs not existing prior to 1949, talking about fashion or something, multiplying things over…
COMMUNITY, CHINA, URBAN ENVIRONMENT | 14′ 42
what’s impossible about community in Beijing, generational differences: Long March survivors, Cultural Revolution generation, first benefits of kaifang, one-child only generation, communications technology generation, how do you resolve disjointing ideas of what community is, what recreation is, fundamental approach to living, what is comfort, what is entertainment, nationalism at its highest, what happens after the Olympics, falls out over the next year, huge economic fallout, currency fluctuations, Chinese community formed on basis of socio-economics versus family, growing middle class, growing upper class, more than any top-down policies, do away with the hukou system entirely in the next few years, 1,000,000 empty apartments, 15 new Shanghais across the interior, 90 new airports, huge headwall in terms of natural resources, employment, pollution, energy use…, the world can’t handle it, 1.2 billion in China living like we do in the U.S., the horror of seeing another United States, consumer model carrot of the Communist Party, house with 3 cars, all the way from Sichuan to work, migrant workers in Africa, promise of increased material wealth, social unrest in countryside, Henan, Hubei, their vision of what it means to be modern and successful, xiaokang shehui, top-down vision, Three Moderns: sewing machine, refrigerator, tv second wave, cell phone third wave, directly equated with happiness, what material wealth means, three C’s in Japan, equal rise in urban and rural dwellers over last 20 years, but skyrocket of urban in last five years, decline just outside of major metropolitan areas, living on site right off Wangfujing, things just don’t seem to be improving, not reported widely at all, trying to negotiate with 15 new Shanghais, exacerbate all the existing problems, Neville Mars’ new book, every book is “this is China’s downfall” or “this is China’s great rise”, high levels of politburo, how is policy implemented in such a fractured manner, rethinking how people live in urban areas, disaster waiting to happen, that book is big…
EVEN-ING, DEVELOPMENT, CHINA AND AMERICA | 11′ 07
world is becoming more even, places look like Nairobi, shoddy worksmanship, infrastructure, Lagos as THE model megacity, general call for alarm, what’s new, every emerging developing nation, an egalitarian peak, a lie, less mobility now than before, 1968 was last year in U.S. where blue-collar worker could sustain a family of five in comfortable middle class lifestyle, accumulation of capital among top 2%, Guilded era in the states, shifting ways in which we assess, we’re making new maps by talking about it new ways, money being available for everyone, renting, property ownership will evaporate, easy for Chinese to get a loan and by a house, China’s American dream, ethnic differences with socio-economic differences, going to hell, we are setting a horrible precedent for the developing world and the developed world, clean-up, rate of growth, Chongqing, Guangzhou, Pearl River Delta, runaway rapacious development, manufacturing sector dying, biggest open pit in China, Tianjin waterfront like Chicago, river-cruise in Chongqing, a complete mess…
CHANGE, PRECEDENT, ADVERTISING, CONSUMPTIVE PATTERNS | 12′ 29
post-War, west Virgina, where my people are from, the ‘Burg, today very difficult for people to buy a home, terrible precedent, cusp of massive wealth transfer, dying babyboomers, money you didn’t work for, young people of floating network, media perpetuation, service and information economy, how does the precedent change?, a missing piece, production and consumption habits, avoiding talking about China as a monolith, splintered, how an individual will accept, opportunity to change things or for further decadence?, is China really looking to America as as an example, consumption, Hong Kong developers, healthcare system based on U.S. system, countryside, basic medical care yes, emergency response is bad, advertising, consumptive patterns are what will be really detrimental, extremely misleading, setting into motion fast consumer cycles, apple juice, technology, two-month cell phones, clothing, 50’s American, education, willingness to be swayed, propaganda, global production of advertising, new millenium techniques with 1950’s propaganda, a technique that works gets disseminated in a month, black & white televisions, separation from reality, no conclusion…
This activity of the HomeShop Games 2008 project was organised by HomeShop and Angie Baecker. Thank you to all who showed up despite the summer rains…
Beijing, CN weather for 12 august 2008: sunny with blue skies, afternoon chance of scattered clouds, high 30° C – low 22° C.
above: Are Fuwa dolls allowed to speak on the job? Only if you look them in eyes. “你那里面热不热？“ “还好！“
“In the field of telecommunications, a communications protocol is the set of standard rules for data representation, signaling, authentication and error detection required to send information over a communications channel.” (wikipedia)
above: the “Official Spectators’ Guide”
Thinking of protocol in terms of means, ways of doing… de Certeau’s perruque [1] implies a way of using time within the standards of protocol. What loopholes do we find as individuals, within the “Official Spectators’ Guide”？
above: Volunteers make arrangements for people who need to change their seats at Olympic events.
Where do we abide by a protocol, but where do we always end up finding our own ways of getting there, of doing this or that? As we said before, this is by no means a way to pursue subversion—-we laugh in ignorance at the same time as we act. Living in beijing as 老百姓 laobaixing, as everyday citizens, what modes of protocol do we embody, and where do we meander without noticing?
above: Portable cutlery and chopsticks are not allowed on the Olympic green. You can check them in, however, with a simple sticker purchased from any local stationery store and an identifying signing of whatever you want.
above: Lip gloss is allowed, so long as you put it on before you enter the stadium.
The trace has a very distinct path, a protocol of following someone else’s footsteps or keeping to the line that has been set before… But it is only a slip of the hand, a slight nudging off the solid foundation of following, that sets us into a realm of possibility. Deligny does not neglect his own presence as tracer within the mapping of the traced. Nor can we deny responsibility as creators or thinkers upon those that we engage with, no matter what exchange may be made, or not. Is it a nothing to take notice? Is possibility too open a format? No. Because the protocol is always there; there are hundreds of routine paths and familiar faces that pass here everyday.
———————
[1] “…la perruque is the worker’s own work disguised as work for his employer…” (Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life)
This question involves communication with other humans, but also with our surrounding environment. Which means also to consider how we orient ourselves in our environment. We talked yesterday about how autistic children seem to feel natural phenomenon such as magnetism and water, which could mean that they somehow communicate with their environment through the perception of signs or feeling that we don’t necessarily perceive. Yet, and this is very much obvious while we visit foreign countries, and especially, for western people, countries like china or Japan, where you can’t understand most of the urban signs and sometimes the urban structures, which capacities are involved, which signs are being read, recognized, interpreted, how is urban environment read? And how are people getting the resources to orient themselves? How do they communicate with surrounding environment, with signs, with humans, with maps? And also, how do the learn to cope with the feelings that disorientation creates?
I certainly feel that the capacity of observing, guessing, reading the urban environment has been strongly developed during my trips in china. It’s a very simple example, but when I was in Istanbul and Italy with my friends, I could feel the difference between us by the way I could easily find what I was looking for, by constantly reading the signs, etc. This capacity of keeping my eyes open comes essentially from chinese experiences.
Are we allowed to get lost? 迷路了吗 ?
Yet, the question is what is going to happen with GPS becoming popular? Are we paradoxically going to lose completely our capacity to orient ourselves? Because we’ll become lazy, will we lose this capacity to read our environment? And will we lose also these unexpected encounters, the serendipity that is somehow allowed by disorientation and that constitutes the core of urban life? Disorientation isn’t a way to keep out of routine, a way of looking at things in a pretty different way? Getting a fresh look on things and allow us to be surprised. Maybe the possibility // the ability to get lost is the difference between traces and maps.
all photos by 曲一箴 Twist QU*
时间 posted on: 22 April 2011 | 
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above: Are Fuwa dolls allowed to speak on the job? Only if you look them in eyes. “你那里面热不热？“ “还好！“
above: the “Official Spectators’ Guide”
above: Volunteers make arrangements for people who need to change their seats at Olympic events.
above: Portable cutlery and chopsticks are not allowed on the Olympic green. You can check them in, however, with a simple sticker purchased from any local stationery store and an identifying signing of whatever you want.
above: Lip gloss is allowed, so long as you put it on before you enter the stadium.
