I am currently focussing on the question how to live in times of converging global crises and extensive chaotic change. How to be and come together? In what world do we want our kids to live? Tony Judt provides some answers, as does Akzo-Nobel board-member Tex Gunning.
Theatreplay The Last Fish.
Research for project on modern day slavery.
We are living in turbulent times. I could not help but coming to a selection of films screening at IDFA that not even make the point we are on a tipping point for our survival as a species, but rather depart from that point. Are we living in The End Times, as Slavoj Zizek puts it? The Four Horsemen in Ross Ashcrofts’ 2011 film are mere indicators for the tipping point we reach; banking crisis, terrorism, inequality and a resource crisis (see presentation below).
But will our civilization end? Ashcroft pictures a set of indicators that can be found with us just as with other falling empires: excessive distraction in sports, sex, apathy, inequality, and some more. I am following his argument.
The financial system is at the heart of the systemic crisis here. For me it became clear that power of course goes with money, and the highest money concentration in individual hands can indeed be found in the banking sector. The film ends with hopeful words from all but doesn’t elaborate on how to remove power from those with excessive wealth without a (violent) revolution.
Inside Job (Ferguson, 2010) tells how the American political-economic system is highly corrupted because former financial sector personnel is hired as White House staff. As a result the financial system had been able to build increasingly volatile structures which had to fail and did so in 2008. No one has been held accountable, it is suggested because of the political power of those that were in charge. On top of that, even the economic educational system seems to be corrupted.
Surviving Progress (Mathieu Roy, 2011) adds the perspective of how mankind as a species is hard wired as a hunter-gatherer and is not fit to survive in todays complex world. Or will biogenetics be able to save us?
The Kingdom of Survival (M.A. Littler, 2011) consists of conversations with people like Noam Chomsky and country artists, and not surprisingly circles around the idea that every power structure has to be questioned constantly; especially the neoliberal paradigm.
With Into Eternity, Michael Madsen writes a letter into the future. He beautifully portrays the cold and creepy structure of a nuclear waste disposal site. The underground site is constructed to be able to last 100.000 years, because that is the time nuclear waste needs to lose its toxic radiation. Four thousand metres under the earth he wonders if people a thousand generations from now will find and open the place, if they will understand us, if they will still understand our signs warning them for the deadly contents of the burial site. As it is the only structure that is now built to last such a long time, it might well be the only thing left of us in the year 102.011. Beautiful.
Why focus on fish? Because I can stand for an hour at a fish market, just to look at the beauty of these animals. But also because fish as a ‘resource’ poses a serious environmental threat. Take a look at Jason Clay’s (WWF director) TED talk, at about 9’20″.
REplace: idea, journey, film, installion, theatre, exhibition, research, debate and more about African migrants coming to Europe – if they make it.
Eyewitness Auschwitz – Filip Müller (1979). Cicago (1999), Ivan R. Dee.
It’s only one scene that really touched me – so far. The scenes at the gas chambers at Auschwitz, where Filip has worked for three years, are far too horrible to comprehend. It’s merely interesting to see how much distance I feel between me and the events described.
The one scene that lingered is that where a young Czech girl convinces Müller that he has to go on living and working burning bodies. He has gotten himself into the gas chamber because he has lost the will to live. Hearing his countrymen singing his national anthem just before being killed makes him realise how alone he is and will remain. The girl eloquently tells him that his death will be pointless, that he serves much better if he will be able to get the stories out. And so in the end he does.
How do people react as death becomes apparent? Fearful, mostly. A group of Gypsies merely cling to each other, men clinching onto their women and making love for the last time in the face of death.
It’s – how to say this – interesting, and unbelievable, to note how with time the Nazi’s developed sophisticated methods to deceit people of their approaching ending; an appalling number of lies was invented to prevent revolts in the face of death which would slow down the destruction. Lies ranging from neat signs reading “disinfecting area”, the urge to remember the number of the hook you would have to put your clothes on, to given words of honor that you would really go on transport the next day. In ashes, that would be.
I wonder what it will bring me. I feel urged to read all the atrocities, even feel myself paying particular interest in the methods of torture and killing that *people* like Hauptscharführer Moll employ. *Games* like swim-frog (making prisoners swim around croaking like frogs until they drowned) or brick-bashing (dividing the prisoners into two teams, making them bang together two bricks until they were broken into peaces, hurting themselves along the way of course), pushing people into burning crematorium pits alive and killing babies by throwing them into pans of boiling human fat. All this is so far away from me that I can feel either curiosity or nothing. What is this curiosity? If circumstances would force me, because I otherwise had to kill my child, for example, would I be able to be a Nazi killer? Would I be able to endure working in the gas chambers for years, like Filip Muller did?
Would you?
There is one scene in the book that reminded me slightly of practices on board of a fishing vessel I visited recently:”From time to time SS doctors visited the crematorium, above all hauptsturmführer Kitt and Obersturmführer Weber. During their visits it was just like working in a slaughterhouse. Like cattle dealers they felt the things and calves of men and women who were still alive and selected what they called the best peices before the victims were executed. after their execution the chosen bodies were laid on a table. the doctors proceeded to cut pieces of still warm flesh from thighs and calves and threw them into waiting receptacles. the muscles of those who had been shot were still working and contracting, making the bucket jump about.”
I saw such buckets. I got buckets moving after I threw in freshly disemboweled fish. This is not to condemn the fisherman; I did it just like them.
We are all killers. It’s in us. We all have the potential. The trick might be how to deal with the killer in ourselves. Is this the truth no-one wants to know about when Von Trier said “I am a Nazi”? That it’s not about who is or isn’t Nazi, but about how we can collectively keep the Nazi part constrained within ourselves?
Just look at Rwanda. How many did unexpectedly participate? How many Dutch citizens participated in the exclusion and subsequent deportation of so many Jews? Global heating is one thing; how about this for an inconvenient truth?
Hooggeëerd Publiek:
Wij gaan dood. Soms sneller dan anders. Roken scheelt drie tot zes jaar. Maar dodelijker is: je ongelukkig voelen. Wel of niet gelukkig scheelt al snel een jaar of negen.
De gelukkige, gezonde roker is dus echt zo gek nog niet.
Relaties maken ons gelukkig. Geld ook. En een betekenisvol leven, dat vervult en richting heeft.
Wat? Een betekenisvol leven, dat vervult en richting heeft. Wat is dat, betekenis? Een gevoel? En richting? Is het einde van de geschiedenis dan uitgesteld?
Relaties hebben we in Nederland, en geld vaak ook. Maar betekenis en richting? Waar zou je die nog kunnen vinden?
En wannéér maakt geld gelukkig?
Als je er ervaringen mee koopt.
Welke ervaringen?
Zelfs Geert gebruikte film voor het overbrengen van betekenis.
Waarom zou juist nu de kunst met 45% worden gekrompen?
Laat de ziel niet sterven.
Leef!
Bronnen o.a.:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/happiness_formula/4783836.stm
Otto Karl Werckmeister divides two different image sferes in the context of the medialandscape. One he calls the informative image sfere (informative Bildersphäre) and the other one is – according to him- the operative image sfere (operative Bildersphäre). The operative one is the archive of images which virtually exist, but which would never reach the broad public. The informative image sfere is the name for the published images which are used for the news and displayed without limitation. (more…)
