This is the key that opens the door to the imbetween space the limbo of life and death
Steal This
MagaZine
VII “No One Survives Life”
VI
I
The Kopimashin Dilemma
“Why don’t you DIE live for the people”
II
V The Stigmatum of the Photograph
On How To Make Your Best Ghost Impression
III Social Media and the Uncertainty of Death
contributors
Sam Ogunnowo Yon Chau Emanuel Poche Andrea Riva Iñigo Baca Bordons Maria Esposito Gabrielė Žukauskaitė Lauren Baeriswyl Zaib Nasir Kyle Lovell
IV Drone Warfare: The Value of Life Behind The Screen
editor-in-chief
Axelle Van Wynsberghe
design director
Maria Velasquez
art director
Philippa Leigh
PROLOGUE I know this issue is about life and death, but if it’s possible I would like to tip toe into talking about something which I believe lies somewhere in-between. I would like to talk about that place that does not feel quite like life and is far less exciting than that other place they call death. We all know it’s very possible to feel one step behind life. Is it about doing? About being purposeful? About learning and improving? Ah well yes, probably, maybe. That sweet sensation, this firm grip of life, for some of us, can only be tasted at rather infrequent times, late in the evening perhaps (like me, on a Sunday night while writing this) or maybe while walking and suddenly something reminds us of something beautiful or sad or something both. If you are one of those lucky people who wake up in the morning, perhaps get dressed up by the birds who fly in through your window and, while they twist and turn, delicately place items of clothing on you and everything’s just great, then this is not for you, but I know for a fact that there are few of you out there. We do have these episodes and for those who have them consistently I doff my admiration cap. For those who infrequently experience these life affirming moments, it’s very difficult to come to terms with, and to quote a banger, ‘the middle place between life and no end.’ As ‘somebody’ we are distinguished from ‘something’ through action. It is action that brings about life. To act is to begin again, to take initiative, to set something in motion. ‘The fact that man is capable of action means that the unexpected can be expected from him, that he is able to perform what is infinitely improbable.’ There’s some pressure here. It’s tiring being aware of this but not being chirpy enough to do anything about it. But like many rare things, when it blooms it’s often a wonderful thing. Hold on to those moments when you feel really alive and those strange and rather annoyingly infrequent or just-about-to-go-to-bed-moments. Hang on to them and don’t forget them. They are special moments when life seems possible. This is a fucking scary place, we do so well to pass through it, let’s persevere. What’s the result of all these high and low moments? I’m not sure, but I reckon I’ve heard it gives us some strength. Writing this is my little act of life and in reading this I hope it is yours too.
Edmund Gritten
“Why don’t you DIE live for the people” “Why don’t you live for the people? Why don’t you struggle for the people? Why don’t you die for the people?” These are words from Fred Hampton, the former chairman of the Chicago, Illinois charter of the Black Panther party in the late 1960s. I know you’ve heard of Martin Luther King Jr and Malcom X. You might have heard of the Black Panthers, but Fred Hampton is someone who is criminally under taught. In the same decade as MLK Jr and Malcom X, Fred Hampton was murdered for his activism that was highlighting the injustice of society. In December 1969, Fred Hampton was just twenty-one years old when he was murdered in his sleep by Chicago Police Department, in conspiracy with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. His family later won a civil lawsuit against the Chicago Police Department in 1981 in which they settled for over 1 million dollars. What’s the first thing that comes to your mind when you think about the Black Panthers? Is it black clothing and violence? If so, why is that? Would it surprise you to read that the Black Panthers actually had several community programs such as free breakfast for children, health clinics and newspapers that informed the community about politics relevant to them? They believed in the education of people. Fred Hampton, in particular, was working to bring working class people of all races together before he was killed. He formed what was called a ‘Rainbow Coalition’. This included members of the ‘Young Patriots’ a group of poor white working class males who wore confederate flags while standing next to the Black Panthers and the ‘Young Lords’ a group of poor Hispanic working class. This is arguably what scared the government the most and why Fred Hampton was killed. Poor working class people of all races coming together because of unified goals against the ruling class and Fred Hampton was at the centre of it all. But Fred Hampton knew that death would be a consequence of enlightening and teaching the people.
I
He said, “I don't believe that I'm going to die in a car wreck. I don't believe I'm going to die slipping on a piece of ice; I don't believe I'm going to die because I got a bad heart; I don't believe I'm going to die because of lung cancer. I believe that I'm going to be able to die doing the things I was born for. I believe that I'm going to be able to die high off the people.
I believe that I will be able to die as a revolutionary in the international revolutionary proletarian struggle and I hope that each one of you will be able to die in the international proletarian revolutionary struggle or you'll be able to live in it. And I think that struggle's going to come.” How many twenty-one year olds do you know that can wholeheartedly say they know why they are alive on this earth and what they would die for? In fact, how many people in general? Because I sure don’t know and people can go their whole lives without truly knowing but Fred Hampton knew and they killed him for it. In the words of Fred Hampton, “you can jail a revolutionary, but you can’t jail a revolution” and indeed they didn’t just jail him, they killed him. And for those of us that care about people it’s our job to make sure his legacy lives on. “Why don’t you live for the people? Why don’t you struggle for the people? Why don’t you die for the people?” Sam Ogunnowo Illustration by Yon Chau
On How To Make Your Best Ghost Impression
Breathing is a threat; every gulp of fresh air reminds me of a mob boss asking for his money back. We all die. The knowledge that we all die is something that follows every single one of us like an aggressively macho straight guy at a house party. In unrefined terms, it's annoying and I don't stand for it. My mother loves the idea of death. She lives her life as if it was going to be her last. She has been suicidal most of her life, stumbling over anything good that has happened to her as if it was a mistake. She decided a long time ago she was not destined to be happy. She couldn't leave her loveless marriage. She couldn't leave her room. She couldn't leave her body, dragging her spirit behind, shackled and fruitless. She was a stay at home mom for twenty years. She fought against the world, encasing herself in four walls for two decades, the purpose of which was to provide an illusion of defence. Her room had a window. She stared and leaned out of that window for hours on end. As a child, she talked about jumping out of it so much, I was sure she could fly. I knew she could land safely, my amazing mother, powerful in her own right.
II
On the day of my birthday, she told me she wanted to slit her wrists that morning. I've been told this so many times before, I just huffed and dug into my chocolate cake. It was her way of making small talk by then. She was flirting with death as the single woman she believed herself to be all along, married to the wrong man at the wrong time.
Our lives intertwine. My mother was being asphyxiated by strings of fate. You can be alive and wish for the eternal escape. Your lungs can suck in air while your heart is devoid of blood. I'm young, inhaling naivetĂŠ like ammonium, and I know little so far, but I want everything to be clichĂŠ and sparkles. Think buckets of glitter and cheap jewels. There's nothing stopping me so I refuse to stop. Emanuel Poche Photography by Andrea Riva
Through online social media we can (kind of) stay in contact with distant people we've met here and there along our lives. Even if we haven't spoken to them in years a new picture, a shared article or even simply liking something will appear on our screen and let us know, however vaguely, how their lives are going. There is a constant sharing of the present, no matter where you friends/followers are. But what about those people who you don't see on social media? Those people who deleted Facebook, who you knew from before you made an account or who you simply drifted apart from without sharing social media information? What about people you met online, maybe, who you have no mutual friends with? You’ve heard nothing from them in months, maybe years, and the fact that there is a real possibility that they might have died creeps up on you. Maybe they simply deleted you, or deleted their account, or they just never added you as a friend. Maybe they are doing just fine, just as fine as you. Or maybe one day they just died. Why not? How could you tell? What if you have no shared friends, no common acquaintances, no one knows that you knew each other? Without any third party to notify you, how could you possibly know if they are dead or alive? The lack of evidence is inconclusive and your friends cannot be said to be either dead or alive from where you stand (SchÜdringer’s friends?). Social media does a great job at letting you know that people are still around, to varying degrees of alienation or vagueness, but it cannot cope
Social Media and the Uncertainty of Death
III
with death. There is a sense in which social media is very new and mainly designed for the living. The dead have been sequestered from digital society, and the gap between the virtual representation of life and real life and death is very noticeable.
People are already concerned about the fact that there will come a point when the dead will outweigh the living on Facebook. I think instead that the current relationship between social media and death is not one that has been given enough thought, and it probably will be improved (or at least they will attempt to “improve" it) in the next 10 to 20 years. How, I have no clue, but I do think there does seem to be a sense in which social media are clashing with and changing our social and cultural experience of death, and this is something we should not lose sight of. In the mean time, I cannot help but wonder what this kind
I’M WONDERING, MY TIME IS ALMOST UP, THIS VOID IS CLOSING AROUND, MY OWN UNIVERSE IS ALL IN ANOTHER TIME, BORROWED TIME, PAY IT BACK, I MISS THEM ALL, THE HALVES OF ME. I’M WONDERING. (ROSSETA - “ITINÉRANT")
of socialisation is keeping us in the dark from, I cannot help but wonder how many people who I have fond and distant memories of have died without me having the slightest clue. Although maybe this isn't really that big a deal. Before social media, people still got to know people and drifted away from them, to never speak to each other again. Maybe it is social media’s tendency to treat friendships and acquaintances as a cumulative good that makes distant death feel like such a loss. Maybe there is something else. Either way, I remain saddened by the deaths, both by the absence in social media, the lost friendships, and the real deaths that we may never confirm. Iùigo Baca Bordons Photography by Maria Esposito
Drone Warfare:
The Value of Life Behind The Screen
The first drone strike outside of a declared war zone occurred in November of 2002, in Yemen and was a CIA operation with the military, coordinated from the command center in Washington DC. Six people were killed, including an American citizen. Since then, Drone technology has become almost ubiquitous. The military operations that use it are hidden in plain sight, and contain almost no official documentation despite being one of the most covert of the US government. The advent of drone warfare makes the targeting of ‘terrorist’ individuals even more problematic due to its ability to wield death from not only a physical but also an emotional and mental distance. In his book and documentary ‘Dirty Wars’, journalist Jeremy Scahill outlines the gross human rights violations that U.S. military troops engage in whilst in countries such as Iraq, Afghanistan, and Yemen. American citizens have now been killed without due trial by drone attacks abroad; and this is illustrated by the case of intellectual Anwar Al-Awlaki, a Yemeni Imam and Islamic lecturer. His death was considered a lawful act of war by the US government when his religious and political teachings had started to attract Islamic Extremists, causing Obama to put him on a kill list. However, according to Jeremy Scahill, this killing was unlawful due to the fact that an indictment was not pursued and the reasons for targeting him were never made public. Three other Americans, as phrased by an Attorney General, were ‘not specifically targeted’ but were also killed abroad.
IV
‘The Drone Papers’, released on The Intercept, showcase that nine out of ten targets were not specific targets, and Edward Snowden himself made a twitter statement that this release marked ‘the most important national security news story of the year’. The process by which kill lists are compiled by the Obama administration has also been made public, exposing their ‘signature strikes’ policy, which permit the CIA and JSOC to kill without requiring the US administration to know who they kill. Unfortunately, these signature strikes are often the cause of civilian deaths, but these are considered the collateral damage of the war business. The Bedouin tribe’s local leader said: “If you kill children and call them terrorists. If you kill children and call them Al-Qeida, you’re all Al-Qeida. (…) To us, you’re the terrorist.” The intelligence gathered by these programs which aim to discern terrorist from civilian additionally rely not only on a broad surveillance apparatus but also on the careful filtering and combing on data, which is not always accurate. Fragments of data can easily make a a terrorist profile if one is looking for terrorists. Jeremy Scahill additionally poses the question: “How do you surrender to an authority when you aren’t responding to an indictment? (…) How do you surrender to a drone in the sky above you?”
Another aspect of drone warfare is also its reliance on technologies which allow the military to conduct operations from their bases in the US. In fact, many of the drone handlers recruited have an extensive experience in video gaming. The language of drone operations, which are imbued with a language of detachment and utilitarianism removes the perpetrator from the equation, making the strikes seem precise and necessary when they are obscure and in some cases unjustifiable. There is an disturbing Orwellian feel to these covert military operations, which take place under the guise of a liberal democracy, and remain largely unquestioned by the public despite gross violations of human rights, criticisms from non-governmental organizations, and in which the extensive collateral damage of innocent people is chalked up to those ‘not specifically targeted’. In this political and military order which is largely shrouded in secrecy, it is not even a case of preemptive arrests or raids but preemptive killings that we are faced with. The approbation of drone strikes and specific targets happen under secretive processes and without indictment or trial. As Jeremy Scahill makes clear: “Drones are a tool, not a policy. The policy is assassination.”.
“This is our destiny: subject to opinion polls, information, publicity, statistics; constantly confronted with the anticipated statistical verification of our behavior, and absorbed by this permanent refraction of our last movements, we are no longer confronted with our own will.”
In our virtual zine, created in creative partnership with Ben Chan, we address these issues of privacy and surveillance, and explore this theme in a context that is more personal. Based on a game environment, the participant can interact with their surroundings, which consist of familiar objects and social platforms which send notifications to disrupt gameplay. The game contains hidden books which, if approached, reveal quotes about the surveillance apparatus and modern society. The artwork starts by revealing small clues about how surveillance is embedded in our everyday lives — through our social media platforms, through our social institutions, and through the state. As Edward Snowden states: “Technology has changed. Instead of sending people to follow you, we use the devices that you paid for, the services and the systems that surround you invisibly every day, to watch you on our behalf. Metadata is the fact that a communication occurred” The in-game ‘Tinder app’ and rating system showcases how in the present day this has extended to self-surveillance. This is illustrated by the ominous ending, which reveals the living space to be a part of the Panopticon — we are all inextricably tied to and defined by surveillance practices.
Thinking about surveillance is important. Not necessarily because of what it represents but rather because of the implications is carries within the power dynamics that is currently exists in. The current application of surveillance organizations and policies allow some governmental and corporate bodies complete obscurity, whilst demanding that the public maintain transparency online and offline. Social media platforms are adept at framing the desire for transparency and ownership over user data as an altruistic and fair exchange. Edward Snowden reminds us all that: “Privacy is what allows us to determine who we are and who we want to be. (…) Arguing that you don’t care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don’t care about free speech because you have nothing to say.”
Axelle Van Wynsberghe
The Stigmatum of the Photograph
The photograph, through its indexical nature, captures the excess details of life. Whilst other forms of art copy life and interpret it in various ways the photograph is able to capture a true image of life. It is this excess of detail that scholars such as Roland Barthes and Susan Sontag have argued illustrates life but also the inevitability of death. In his melancholic musings, Camera Lucida, Barthes argued that photographs create a “certificate of presence” not only for life but also for death. Although life is the more predominant certificate, Barthes states that the underline certificate within all photographs is Memento Mori. In his writings Barthes obsessed over the inevitability of death within each photograph, his resolution resulted in its definition of the Stigmatum. A feature that is not prominent but always present; it is the feature of Noeme: that has been and that will be. The Stigmatum is the encapsulation of death, the detail that reminds the onlooker that death is present within life. Sontag agreed ‘all photographs are memento mori […] by slicing out this moment and freezing it, all photographs testify to time’s relentless melt.’ She goes on to argue that photographs illustrate ‘the vulnerability of lives heading toward their own destruction, and this link between photography and death haunts all photographs of people.’ It is clear from Barthes and Sontag’s discourse that the memento mori within photography is an aspect which haunts it. Some would argue that photographs can be staged and mediated, but the indexical nature of photography will always be present, it will always document life itself, it will capture was is and turn it into what has been and what will eventually be. Photographs are unlike art as their morbid indexical nature cannot be denied, only adhered to. Philippa Leigh
V
Photography by Gabriele Žukauskaite
The Kopimashin Dilemma:
What is the value of art in the digital space given its new accessibility? You might not hear the name Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi every day, but the website he worked on, The Pirate Bay, is not as easily avoided. Many people know TPB as a place to ‘download music, movies and books’ illegally, but how exactly does it work? Founded in 2003, The Pirate Bay is an index of magnet links and torrent files. These links and files facilitate so-called ‘peer-to-peer sharing’, a way to download files directly from someone else’s computer, as opposed to downloading them from a dedicated server. Peer-to-peer is an infrastructure that allows people to spread files quickly through the Internet without relying on one or more centralized servers, which are more difficult and expensive for individuals to set up and heavily moderated if they are owned by a company. In this way, peer-to-peer empowers the individual and smaller communities on the Internet. TPB and Peter Sunde chose not to restrict what kinds of files users share on the website and as such have little control over their content: They include music, films, books, articles, and, as with anything on the Internet, pornography. Despite not sharing copyrighted content himself, Sunde was sent to prison after a trial in 2009 and additionally owes the entertainment industry more than 2.5 million pounds in damages resulting from TPB’s activities. These numbers result from ‘unlawful sharing of copyrighted materials’, which the entertainment industry perceives as a direct equivalent to lost sales. Here is where the complications begin: In the digital space, artwork and music are infinitely reproducible. Unlike a physical DVD, CD or cartridge, there are no direct material costs involved in creating a ‘new’ file. Of course, there are still a lot of costs involved in the creation, marketing etc. of copyrighted material, so the question then becomes: What is the value of art in the digital space, given its new accessibility?
VI
Now out of prison, Peter Sunde has created an ‘art installation’ named ‘Kopimashin’ that attempts to give an answer to said question. ‘Kopimashin’ consists of a Raspberry Pi computer, so small it can easily fit in the palm of your hand, combined with a tiny screen. It has been programmed so that every second it is turned on, it creates and later deletes ~100 copies of the Gnarls Barkley song ‘Crazy’. The screen displays a continuously rising ‘total’ of money lost by the industry through the unpaid reproductions of the song, which amounts to roughly 10 million dollars per day. The point he is trying to make is simple: If each ‘stolen’ copy of a song really creates a loss for the music industry, then poor Gnarls Barkley and their label would easily be bankrupt by now through Kopimashin’s actions alone. That is clearly not the case, and so there might need to be some rethinking as to the basis of his 2.5 million pound charge. Peter Sunde’s proposed answer to the question is obviously flawed, though that might very well be part of the point: It is less of a philosophical statement and more of a sarcastic sneer at his charges. And while proving that creating copies doesn’t cost any money doesn’t take into account lost potential sales for artists, it’s important to have a strong opposition to the industry’s dangerous one-to-one rhetoric. The Internet is new ground for everyone, and at the end of the day, Peter Sunde and TPB have been turned into a scapegoat for challenging industry control and trying to preserve freedom and dialogue. They’re not facilitating piracy as much as they are leaving the question up to their users: What is art worth to you? Laurent Baeriswyl Illustration by Zaib Nasir
“No One Survives Life”
- Sarah Kane
The twin beasts of suicide and genius have been entwined in the public eye since the death of Thomas Chatterton, a talented yet tragic figure of the 18th century. After an author’s death, a spotlight is cast upon their work, stimulating critics and academics alike to evaluate and interpret the corpus left behind. The individual’s life can therefore be seen as a veil over the light, shading themes from view while highlighting others of interest. And this contrast is never sharper than when the individual has delivered themselves into Death’s embrace. Equally, it is a Romantic myth that those with talent must sacrifice their brilliance before passing through their later years, and this myth fits perfectly with the narrative told of Sylvia Plath and Sarah Kane. Bursts of creativite brilliance that were to birth their aweinspiring works, Ariel and 4.48 Psychosis, came only a short time before their deaths. In both, the authors explore and discuss suicide in detail. Yet to assume that we can read these works as prophecies of their later decisions, or as the last gasp of genius before they died, is misguided. To explore a concept is not equal to fufilling it, and it seems unlikely that Plath and Kane had nothing left to say after these final pieces. For us to attempt to apprieciate any writer in their full glory, we must remove the veil and consider the aspects of both life and work in their entirety. The concept of suicide is undoubtedly important to understanding any individual who has considered it, yet to believe it is the only matter of importance in that person’s life is unfair to both them, and us.
Kyle Lovell Illustration by Zaib Nasir
VII
Don’t open the door Don’t open the door Don’t open the door Don’t open the door Don’t open the door Don’t open the door