I was not looking forward to my trip to the American consulate. Over the past years and through my various travels I had become accustomed to check lists, long lines, and arbitrary requests whether it be from the student visa office in New Zealand or tedious process of obtaining a work visa in Mexico. These bureaucratic institutions tended to treat people as paper work or as inhumane coded strings of numbers. The 'person' behind the ink is only granted legitimacy if the correct T's are crossed and i's dotted. The greatest sin would be to allow someone the tiniest inch of personhood or look behind a missing document for a life story. Even our Passport pictures try to drain any character from the represented. We sit blankly staring at a flashing camera which tries to capture an image so that security can confirm its really 'us'. There is no laugh behind our plastic smile or good memories in our eyes, no this is the photo of 'me' and all the world can confirm my face matches this picture. It is not my laugh, not not my smell. No, we are just a 2D generic image.
Thursday, November 5, 2009
A good ‘citizen’
I was not looking forward to my trip to the American consulate. Over the past years and through my various travels I had become accustomed to check lists, long lines, and arbitrary requests whether it be from the student visa office in New Zealand or tedious process of obtaining a work visa in Mexico. These bureaucratic institutions tended to treat people as paper work or as inhumane coded strings of numbers. The 'person' behind the ink is only granted legitimacy if the correct T's are crossed and i's dotted. The greatest sin would be to allow someone the tiniest inch of personhood or look behind a missing document for a life story. Even our Passport pictures try to drain any character from the represented. We sit blankly staring at a flashing camera which tries to capture an image so that security can confirm its really 'us'. There is no laugh behind our plastic smile or good memories in our eyes, no this is the photo of 'me' and all the world can confirm my face matches this picture. It is not my laugh, not not my smell. No, we are just a 2D generic image.
Thursday, October 8, 2009
Visit to the Turkish Immigration Center
From the outside, the building looked no different than the average brick apartment, but upon entering there was an immediate sense of warmth and welcome. The head of organization, Mustafa, met us in the doorway and guided our group in to the well lit spacious area. We seated ourselves around the large main table nestled among many smaller ones just like it. Without any explanation you could see how the set up fostered community and hospitality. One could not help but feel at ease surrounded by colorful paintings, idlic chess sets, a vacant ping-pong table and a long well stocked bar where radio in the corner sat blasting the latest hits.
Monday, October 5, 2009
place, pictures, and memory
Everyday I bike down the same narrow cobble street. I peddle amongst the now familiar buildings, hearing the everyday sights and sounds that are now nothing more than ordinary. Yet the ‘everydayness’ of the street can be and will be ripped away in an instant, torn from my routine the moment I leave Amsterdam and embark upon a new adventure. And then, later upon returning or ‘re’-visiting I am sure I will feel the urge to once again ride down the street. I will lust to relive what is now a routine experience.
I start with this example because it demonstrates the strange power of place and memory. And how it is not only until we leave or a place is taken away from us that we realize its value and function as a vault for the past.
A friend sent me this music video by a band called Death Cab for Cutie (yes-a melancholy band title for melancholy music) which I believe is a song about the fires in California.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmpMQA0qfuM
However what the video beautifully demonstrates is our reliance and relationship to place and pictures as fundamental links to our imagined histories. It’s funny the video at one point brought a tear to my eye. For me the point it was making was so potent. It’s not only the place that was being burned, but also the landscape’s embedded memories. The tangible places, pictures, and things have stories behind them, and entrenched in the stories are layers of emotion.
I cannot begin to describe the strange sensation of returning to a familiar place, whether it be a diner your family once stopped at during a road trip or the park you played at as a kid. The sights, smells, and sounds are a locus of the past, memorials to smiles, sadness and suspense that was once you. When re-visiting it you are overwhelmed with the feelings. At locations and within things we build up stacks of experiences. The more time we invest in a place or item the taller and fuller the sediment. It is only when you revisit these sentimental shrines that you can relive the sensation of what has been. Yet funnily enough often upon returning the experience does not add to those which were, but instead the tower of memories suddenly crashes and crumbles. You find yourself amid a pile of recollection rubble desperately scrambling to examine each piece and enjoy it as if within an ambiance associated with lost love.
There is something beautiful about the process. It is a rare point where you can actually feel the future and past embrace and engage in a sweet melancholy kiss of memory. The experience is like a hug from a long lost friend; each person has long since gone in different directions and no longer knows one another. However in that moment of reunion you can feel the visceral warmth of meaning, as if there was no such thing as clocks, time, and change. The warmth of reminiscence suspends temporality and you are caught in-between the here-and-now and the there-and-then.
What I find interesting is the relation of pictures to place and people. I am fascinated by an image’s power to (re)make memory. Pictures are a sort of ‘liminal memory’, they are grounded in a moment but when we look back at the slice of reality our imagination takes care of the non-visual. I would argue our imagination even often intensifies the other senses and emotions. For instance I have very few pictures from when I was living in Mexico because I did not have a camera. Now when I recollect my time in Merida, I have a sort of emotional lack, I actually do not relate the place to a special spot full of fond of memories. I have memories, but they do not have the same energy of those from other travels. I think if I was physically back in Mexico I would be overwhelmed by and feel the phantoms of the past, but now the place and corresponding experiences lie emotionally dormant in my mind. Yet when I remember my time in India I experience an overwhelming sensation. I experience pieces of love, lust, and longing fitted as parts of a general memory puzzle. A puzzle of content, but always with a piece missing because I know I am somewhere else; thoughts of Varanasi are merely ghosts of encounters. However, I think this is due to the fact that I have framed India, isolated many of my daily experiences through photographs. I have taken many memories out of context and scrutinized and scrapbooked them so they stick out from the whirlwind of experience. Capturing the colors, creatively collecting the candor of everyday day life has allowed me to ‘create’ Varanasi, piece it together, and properly place emotion at each seam of events. I was in Mexico for a much longer period of time, but did not isolate items of remembrance through images (not having a camera). Instead they float along in a dream like state trapped within my imagination (although, perhaps the fact that I visited India for a shorter time prevented the place from becoming ‘everyday’, or ‘common’. In otherwords it still retained its spectacularness vs. perhaps Mexico became ordinary for me….). Nonetheless I think pictures through framing and isolation, create, enhance, and embalm rather than purely mirror memory.
Yet you could then argue that India is just a special place (I mean as a ‘westerner’ for me it was a ‘spectacle’, the ‘other’ and quite exotic), but then I think about Israel, which is less exotic. I was only there for 2 days, yet I still feel a connection to the short experience, I have tactile memories from the buildings, sights, sounds, and smells. The place/experience seems to have changed me, touched me, and been a trip I will remember well… yet I wonder if it is to do once again with the camera; that I took so many pictures have framed the place in my head so beautifully.
I think pictures purify experience; they isolate the visual. Seeing is captured and the other senses are filled in by the imagination. We restore in the smells, the sounds, the tastes, and touch of the air in our mind. And actually often the imagination does a better job than reality at recreating these feelings. It enhances sensitivity, lets us simmer in the imagined but once real sensations. ‘In’ an actual place we are ambushed by so many sensory inputs. We do not know which to focus on or if to focus at all, and instead let them all drizzle over us as part of the soft soothing soaking up of experience. But our imagination has an amazing power to ring them out, squeeze them of sensation and let us bathe in our human understanding. We add emotion to these feelings and package the pictures as memories to constantly recall and enjoy.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
What ever do I talk about! Conversations and meeting people.
-----“Where are you from”, I believe either the right or left side of my mother’s uterus. You see I was only a tiny zygote/embryo so I can’t remember which side had a thicker lining of blood and tissue…”
Have you ever stopped to notice what we actually talk about? Unless confined to solitude, the majority of us on a daily basis make conversation with one another. However what do we actually say or converse about? These questions are fresh in my mind as I am continually meeting new people here in Amsterdam. For instance yesterday evening, I once again was subjected to the ominous meet and greet activity.
Last year’s MAIPR group and the new round of MAIPR students were introduced to each other in a modern little bar that is cozily situated in the little ally next to the Theater school. As we trickled in everyone, new and old, gathered along a long wooden table in a nice brightly lit room under tall ceilings and amongst trendy wall hangings. After the traditional round the circle “hi my name is” introductions we were faced with the strange task of ‘meeting’. What exactly do we try and achieve during this encounter?
I suppose the easy answer is ‘to get to know one another’, which in my experience is find out a few key facts in order to put people in a nice little box, wrap them up in a few stereotypes, bow on top, NEXT. Indeed last night there was this sort of urgency to ‘meet everyone’. After a few quick comments from a girl I met she said, “well I should probably be moving on and meeting the others”. It was if she was missing out on something if she didn’t gather a few quick facts from everyone. I thought, hmm either I’m boring or she really feels the need to thoroughly make the rounds. I’m hoping/guessing the second was the case because she only gave me the chance to explain where I was from and where in Amsterdam I was living. So is that what constitutes ‘meeting someone’? Why the necessity to ‘meet everyone’. Is this a competition? Should we be weeding out who is the most worthy to engage in conversation with? Yet how is that possible in the span of 5-10 minutes? I wonder during these mass meet-greet-forced socialization-gatherings if it would be more productive to say ok, right count off, and pair up. You have to spend the next hour speaking with this person and no one else. Then perhaps you could really have a chat. In fact a friend once said, “you know its best just to say to a girl you meet at one of these sessions-hey lets sit down and go for a drink and actually have a conversation”—nonetheless now considering this situation the reason his suggestion works is perhaps by switching the social setting to something that alleviates the pressure from ‘missing out on someone’ you can really talk with someone…( why cant you do it in the bigger group is still an issue). Yet moreover, what is this having a ‘chat’ all about. Would we ‘meet them’. better? What is this ‘meeting’? Do we tell stories about ourselves, engage in political debate, look for points of similarities, differences, comment about the structure of the room or everything: what is this ‘getting to know someone and where to start! I have noticed in most new situations the first question is notoriously “where are you from”. The question is simple enough and indeed so routine that we never even stop to ponder it. Yet who cares and why do we ask it?
The only way I can answer this is from my own perspective. Now, reflecting upon my own reasoning, I believe ask where people are from for two reasons. The first being so I can find a point of commonality and determine how to keep the conversation going. “Oh your from Finland wow so the weather here for you must be fantastic”. “Wow, Argentina what a long plane ride that must have been”. Now typing this I realize what a conversation killer this tactic really is. So I get two more lines out of the person, maybe a comment about their comfort or weather not but usually the comments are shallow “yah good, or it was fun” unless something really strange happened and you strike gold… to what extent am I asking just to ask a question…hear my own voice…or maybe I really do care? The second and probably more important reason I ask is so I can begin to gage/judge a person by comparing them to either, stereotypes of people from the country they have just announced, or previous encounter’s with others of the same nationality. As a result I can pretend to think I actually know something about them. And there is a strange sort of power in this knowing. What power though? So you know someone is from England; so they might like Cricket, they might spread Marmite on their bread, and have a past of living in eternally grey and gloomy weather. Yet they might not. The mere possibility of applying stereotypes gives us the idea that we know something about people and knowledge is power or better the feeling of power? However what happens when our assumptions don’t match up with our predications. “Hi I’m Ed, and I’m from Australia” a person says in a distinctly United States accent. Or how about a tall blond guy announcing he’s from Mexico. These answers of course confuse and intrigue people, oh wow you don’t sound like you’re form Australia. You don’t look like you’re from Mexico. Oh really (right like I didn’t know that I don’t fit the stereotype so thanks captain obvious!) …. Conversation dies. Yet I think it points to the bigger question of belonging, and how we ‘do’ belonging and why other people care if we fit these stereotypes. Or perhaps people really don’t care and they are merely just trying to find a way to keep the conversation going.
In the U.S.A there is no way to look. You can be Asian-American, Hispanic-American, African-American (but what do any of those terms really mean anyways ‘asian… Indian? Japanese? Philipino? Chinese?). Regardless your nationality will be accepted as long as you sound American. Sound and sight seem to be the only two categories we place people by. “Wow you certainly smell like a Canadian” is definitely something I’ve never heard before. But when the person doesn’t ‘fit’ these stereotypes or have an ‘socially unified’ identity they have to wear this non-conformity like a badge, a yellow star pinned to their coat I am from here: but I’m physically, auditorily, religiously, etc. different. Once again this returns to the big interesting idea of identity. Or how about when you have a mixed background. Well… I’m from where to start. People don’t seem to like this answer. It doesn’t give them a nice neat one line summary or provide that ‘power’ of unified knowledge and easy categorization. In my own case I always start out by saying the “U.S.A” which given the size and diversity people usually pry for a more specific answer… and that of course gets a bit tricky…(I’m form Hawaii but do not look like a pacific islander then because my parents wanted to teach me about climate diversity i.e. the weather equivilant of heaven and hell I moved to buffalo NY from there just hopped over to NZ for a few years, after that well here there and everywhere… as the list grows to me it seems people stop really listening unless they hear a country that interests them). I think from now on when asked where I’m from I’m going to say: well the specific location? I believe either the right or left side of my mother’s uterus. You see I was only a tiny zygote/embryo so I can’t remember which side had a thicker lining of blood and tissue…I might get a pity laugh or perhaps a confused stare which I probably would interpret as the person thinking I’m crazy. Or if I said ‘I’m from god” or “The rib of Adam” I think I’d freak most people out unless I happen to be striking up a conversation with a religious enthusiast.
Well what is a more appropriate question to get to ‘know someone’, or is our geographic background sufficient? What if we started by asking, “what has been the most life changing experience” or “what is a traumatic event that really effected the way you see the world”. Yet these topics usually require easing into and might seem a bit too ‘confrontational’ for a first encounter. Or how about a completely nonsense question like: “if you had to live on a desert island for the rest of your life what two things would you take with you?” or “if you had to eat one food for the rest of your life what would it be?”
Still why do we need to know anything about the person at all? To be honest the best meet and greet experiences I have had have started with little or no forced personal information. Facts about ‘identity’ and the ‘meeting’ usually come naturally. I remember one of the smoothest (vs. awkard) meetings I’ve ever had was at a talk. I sat next to this average sized dark curly haired young kiwi guy called Mike. He appeared to be nothing out of the ordinary wore a shirt, vest, jeans, sneakers, carried a backpack (ya- a real rebel!) and seemed relaxed considering the circumstances (I guess he was one of the only guys at a talk hosted by Rape Crisis Dunedin…so his very presence made him a bit intriguing). The first thing he said to me was merely an observation about his interests, something like, “I really enjoy the way this room is cozy. It really is welcoming for being a lecture hall”. I agreed, discussed, and we went on to have a discussion about lecture halls, moving on to university students and slowly the conversation blossomed and began to address many attractive topics. I didn’t even find out his name until later when my friend asked how I had found ‘Mike’ her ex flatmate. To this I replied, “wow I didn’t even know his name was Mike or one single fact about him but we had a fantastic time chatting”. Unfortunately though Mike and I never ran into each other again, but I do still remember many of the ideas and the thoughts he left me.
Another example has a 'happier' (more 'complete?') ending. This person I now consider to be quite a good friend. During this case our relationship initially began by email. My now friend sent a message about an article I had written for the Critic (our student magazine) concerning the illegal organ trade. It began about the original topic but our email exchange soon ballooned and led to many a discussion about ethics and more particularly provocative as well as hugely humorous enjoyable emails. Yet, I do not think it was until the fifth or sixth email of a fantastic and interesting debate, did I find out anything out about him!
Thus I wonder about this ‘natural’ tendency to get to ‘know’ someone by gathering personal facts. I think our eagerness to construct an identity often is built on hollow scaffolding, the person hands us the pieces but ultimately we create our own ‘structure’ of ‘them’ using tools we already had in the shed. I wonder if we gave the person more room to create their own home in our head, and allowed identity to emerge as thoughts, opinions, shared silliness, laughs, likes and little jokes, later supplemented by direct personal facts, would we have deeper and more meaningful encounters.
Saturday, September 12, 2009
Anti-Nationalism Pride?
First reactions to Amsterdam
“Excuse me can you define performance art?”
Answers:
“A bunch of weirdos who love to get naked and scream about leftist politics.” (Yuppie in a bar”
"Performance artists are…bad actors." (a good actor)
"You mean, those decadent and elitist liberals who hide behind the art thing to beg for government money?" (Politician)
"It’s…just…very, very cool stuff. Makes you…think, and shit" (my nephew)
"Performance is both the antithesis of and the antidote to high culture" (performance artist)
“I’ll answer you with a joke: What do you get when you mix a comedian with a performance artist?...A joke that no one understands” (a friend)
Answers:
“A bunch of weirdos who love to get naked and scream about leftist politics.” (Yuppie in a bar”
"Performance artists are…bad actors." (a good actor)
"You mean, those decadent and elitist liberals who hide behind the art thing to beg for government money?" (Politician)
"It’s…just…very, very cool stuff. Makes you…think, and shit" (my nephew)
"Performance is both the antithesis of and the antidote to high culture" (performance artist)
“I’ll answer you with a joke: What do you get when you mix a comedian with a performance artist?...A joke that no one understands” (a friend)
What are 5 things that bother you?
Now i'll indulge in my answers:
Five favorite things (thus far):
1. everyone says hello to you on the street
2. The diversity--within 5 sq meters you can hear at least 10 languages. Apparently (according to Amsterdam Uni) The city is the most diverse in the world with regards to population :: ethnicity ratio. Walking through the streets the various types of restaurants and shops pay homage to this fact. One can wonder down the frustrating U shapes (the streets are all horse shoe shaped which makes finding your way nearly impossible!) and see an 'Egyptian' Sex shop, next to a South Indian Cafe, besides an Aboriginal Instrument Store, across from an Argentinean steak shop, where out front a man is selling falafel and behind him you can sign up for cheap hula lessons.
3. Everyone stares at you. There is no shame. Every one is different and the difference is celebrated by the characteristic curiosity 'stare'. "Hey I'm looking at you and you know what it's cool because you're looking at me too".
4. The smooshed buildings and small windy streets. Everything is so...cozy. The whole city is filled with little coffee shops, cafes, stores etc. There is barely any room for cars to drive down the streets. When walking through the city I feel as if I am constantly in an 'embrace' from the buildings; hugged and loved by the mere close quarters.
5. The size of the city. It is not too small, and not too big (I feel like i'm part of the three bears describing a public space porridge). It's Juuuussstttt right--landing somewhere in between the space of boston and NYC. I feel like Amsterdam is one of those never ending 'places'. Places where even when you think you've mastered the rhyme and rhythm of the street's beats... a new rap comes along and throws your mental map
Five things I dont love:
1. The U-shaped streets. I cant find my way anywhere. I miss the nice grid system of NYC-like modernism--I can not tell you how many times i've ended up exactly where i've started after following a slowly slanting road for an hour.
2. The prices--everything food, coffee etc is the same price as in boston BUT IN EUROS. Going out to eat in a small cafe (not even a restaurant) cost me 12 Euros --about the same as say Panera Bread...but that's really 18$ ...Dayh-UM!
3. My living quaters. I live in a room out of a hallway. Its hard to meet people because where i'm living resembles an industrial style freshman year american dorm. The buildings are lovely known as the 'containers'.
4. The dutch language. This is in part due to my cultural/linguistic inadequacy of being a native English speaker. Although many do speak English I think many people are embarrassed/afraid to speak improper english to a native speaker and thus avoid doing so. And Dutch is like the German language but appropriately stoned and on Mushrooms. The words are chalk full of vowels and too many consanents making it impossible to even guess how something should be pronounced. And i had trouble with spanish... so dutch is a whole other ball game.