Too many zombies – Orchid, The Walking Dead, Jauch, Varoufakis

I’d like to thank everyone involved in another splendid fabulous ORCHID night – I could have played another few hours, felt so good. Thanks to Dennis STORIES/OF/A/STONER for djing with me and to the glorious helpers for decoration, bar and door!
Late, as so often, here’s the artwork:

orchid1510-webflyerblog

This time I picked a zombie theme but did not do a Romero and depict the zombies as the opressed. It reached its cynical peak in World War Z, which still echoed in a car ad by Audi that showed worker’s of independent car services as zombies in contrast to the safe large corporate-owned services. After that I don’t want to use this imagery this way round anymore. So for ORCHID I thought, what if we turn the perspective around and look at the cis-/heteronormative parts of society as the slow braindead beasts we have to struggle with every day. Even if it often seems sisyphos work and the rise of the far right right now is scary – we won’t be silent, we won’t hide, we won’t conform to appear straight, and: we will dance. You see, I like constructing my club nights as critical pop art. ^^

As I didn’t have the possibility to make little tamagotchi zombie homophobes – which I would have loooved! – I zombified some of my *favourite* german anti-queer propagandists and made collector cards:

zombiesammelkarten

The day after ORCHID I was appropriately binge-watching The Walking Dead while recovering. It’s a series I hate-love. The Michonne and Andrea storyline was great but got far too little room. The scene in which Michonne turns up with the two *slave* zombies on chains and saves Andrea is such a powerful image, and I wish they had made a whole season of those ladies’ adventures on the road. Instead of the Governor’s return. A whole episode dedicated to him? Please! Booooring. As if we needed any more stories about violent white psycho men depicted as troubled suffering souls… and not one, not two, no: three women following him and falling for him… zzzzzzzzz… More Michonne plz.

Anyways: That Gov’s return episode turned me off and I switched over to a recorded livestream of a Yanis Varoufakis talk at a Portuguese university I had bookmarked. I love watching his talks. For his ideas, his way with words and for the passion and charisma with which he delivers his message. In (economic) politics he is like what Michonne is in the battle against zombies, ever the outsider. And like what Guy Picciotto and Fugazi were for me as a woman in Hardcore/Punk back in the Nineties – not perfect, because I’d rather have seen more women on stage, but still helping to take so much of what held us down away. And being sexy, passionate and inclusive while doing so. Varoufakis is making politics a sexy threat again, he is trying to make political discussion everyone’s business again, taking down the expert myth that’s so dangerous for democracy, speaking up for solidarity, basically: trying to drag the European left out of its melancholy. We need more politicial non-politicians standing up to the zombie apocalypse. And it could become my favourite hungover late night pastime to transcribe at least parts of his talks, both to savour and to share them.

“I am tired of talk shows being used not to mediate but to put oil into the fire of public disputes and *fears*.”

 

höcke

Last night then, I experienced a real flash of fear turning my stomach when I saw Björn Höcke (AfD) given a platform to display his far right propaganda on Germany’s most-watched talk show, Jauch. The reach! Knowing how many of his followers out at the screens cheering him. Höcke even pulled out a little german flag as nationalist power gesture, bragging about his deep love for his country. Could only have been more dramatic/ridiculous if he had pulled it from his trouser fly. His speeches at rallies are quite something: Rants about protecting blond german women from refugees and about a 1000 year future of the Reich Germany. Some people have understandably compared his propaganda style to Goebbels. It is dangerous to give someone like him space on tv, especially with the political climate we have right now: Refugee homes burning, gallows for Angela Merkel and Sigmar Gabriel at PEGIDA rallies, a refugee-friendly politician in a coma from a knife-attack just this week-end. It is twice as dangerous if you don’t have a fierece zombie fighter – say, a competent host :eyeroll: – rebutting the nazi propaganda strongly. I am tired of talk shows being used not to mediate but to put oil into the fire of public disputes and *fears*. Höcke, especially in the first half of the show last night, definitely was a new peak in far right propaganda given place on public tv.

“Borders are an absurdity looked at from space”

Let me connect this back to Yanis Varoufakis: I loved how on BBC question time a few weeks ago (3:29min into the clip) he put the UKIP fearmonger into place with his rebuttal of anti-refugee propaganda (my transcription below):

 

 

Varoufakis: “Let me remind you, ladies that in general we’re all migrants and we’re all economical migrants. If I believe my anthropologist friends we’re all Africans actually who came to these parts of the world. A long time ago. But the notion that at a time when there are tens of thousands of desperate refugees being washed up at the shores of Greece and Italy, when there are 3.1 million refugees from that particular conflict in Jordan, in Turkey, in Libanon, and that these poor countries have opened their doors to these refugees and they welcomed them, they’ve sheltered them, they feed them, they make sure that they have water to drink – to have this discussion in Cambridge today of wether there’ll be ten- or twenty-thousand people were let in, to have this moral panic because a few wretched souls at the other side of the channel in Calais, this is not putting in good stead this country. This country deserves a lot better.”

Asked if he’d be for open door policy, letting everyone in:

“I have a tendency to say that I think that borders are an absurdity looked at from space. But we should have a robust debate on precisely the mechanics of dealing with this humanitarian crisis. To simply conjure up ridiculously pathetically low numbers – for a start we’re running a risk of running Mrs Merkel into the moral maiden.”

On the distinction between “humanitarian” and “economic” refugees:

“I make the distinction but at the same time I recognize that the distinction is rather blurred in many occasions because starving to death due to lack of economic opportunity…

Gets interrupted by Hartley-Brewer: “They’re not starving to death!”

V: “Well, some people are! With migrants from Africa who migrated to Greece under incredible circumstances because their kids were starving to death I can not easily say that these people are undeserving whereas others have deserved because they were shot at. You may make this distinction but I’m not going to follow you.”

“The problem with austerity is that it’s being used as a narrative in order to conduct a class war.”

And while I’m at it, here’s some more:

On austerity (at 20:45min):

“The problem with austerity is that it’s being used as a narrative in order to conduct a class war. And by that I mean … let me give you a very simple example: In Britain today, when you have the lowest percentage of public spending as a proportion of national income for the last 70 years, to be talking about reducing the state welfare when effectively what you’re doing is that you’re reducing taxes like inheritance tax and at the same time you’re cutting benefits: that’s class war. In the state in which Britain finds itself today.”

On cuts of National Health Service and education (at 56:17min):
“Allow me to look at this issue from the outside, being an outsider. This country has produced precious institutions, the NHS is one, the great universities another. Somewhere along the line you folks lost your nerve and you started questioning your own achievements, and this market fetishism entered realms in which it was never meant to be good at, like for instant the NHS or universities and you started to apply market solutions where they would never work. They resemble more like soviet planning with these market indicators, and trying to quantify the unquantifiable, the result of which of course is a loss of quality, both in the universities and in the hospitals. I think you should go back to the great tradition of public service. And public services provided by means of hierarchical institutions in which good people, dedicated to the task, do good stuff without having constantly to tot down and quantify everything they’re doing with the managers in the end taking a large part of the cut away from the doctors and the nurses.”

BTW: His appearance on BBC Question Time seems to have left quite an impression on some UK youth:

varoufakis-bbc

(After seeing one tweet like this popping up I did a Twitter search, that’s the result. ^^)

P.S.: Favourite album du jour:

BLUE DAISY – Darker Than Blue
It’s fully streamable (and purchasable) on bandcamp.

Journalism and the longing for authentic truth – German media scepticism

“To them each editorial choice means a bending of the truth”

In Germany since a few years journalism has been battling against a surprisingly big part of the public talking about how mainstream press can not be trusted. Coming from ‘the left’, I first did not take it too serious because we are a media-critical scene, too – comes with the anti-authoritarianism, I guess. So you take the news with a grain of salt, do not believe in a single truth anyways, you get interested in a bit of media and identity theory, and knowing from which paper an article comes you try to distract the bias to approach that wibbily wobbly timey wimey sexy little thing called truth. What I am talking about here is different though. This new wave of media criticism comes with a lack of interest in how journalism works. When these people think of press as lying they mistake ‘constructed’ for ‘lie’. Consequently to them each editorial choice means a bending of the truth, moving a step away from what ‘actually’ happened.

What makes things worse: It comes with an unhealthy dose of anti-intellectualism. The class and education gap between journalists and a big part of their audience might play into this dissonance. And it is hard bringing up even basic De Saussure to people who insist on common sense and gut feeling as weapons of choice to approach truth.

“tech people’s dreams and the anti-intellectual media scepticism both show a longing for objectivism and authentic truth to tame the scary fluidity of life.”

“Words are perceived as an obstacle to honesty, rather than a means of delivering it”, William Davies explains in an article on the rise of wearables, Facebook and Amazon. I think it is the same longing for authenticity and truth and the same (mis)understanding and disconnection from theory that leads to both: to this special kind of media scepticism and to what Zuckerberg is on about when he dreams of unfiltered telepathic communication as the future:

“We’ll have AR [augmented reality] and other devices that we can wear almost all the time to improve our experience and communication. One day, I believe we’ll be able to send full, rich thoughts to each other directly using technology. You’ll just be able to think of something and your friends will immediately be able to experience it too if you’d like.This would be the ultimate communication technology.” (William Davies quoting Zuckerberg, The Atlantic)

It is quite telling that the man who is in charge of the social network that mediates communication most is dreaming of unfiltered communication. (If you need a quick entertaining counter stance, try ‘Greeks bearing gifts‘, an episode of Torchwood about a telepathic wearable. I wonder if it is more or less worrying to think these tech guys never seem to have thought of how heavily everyone would have to police their thoughts to make this work as acceptable everyday way of communication.) Those tech people’s dreams and the anti-intellectual media scepticism both sound a bit like “reduce us to biology, plz, theory and language is too slippery”. Biology to the one means the taming of the body with tech, to the other it’s the taming of knowledge about the world with common sense and gut feeling. Both show a longing for objectivism and authentic truth to tame the scary fluidity of life.

“The cultural shift from an openly controlled society like the GRD to a society in which you have a mix of more freedom but also lots of concealed control might make a bigger difference than we thought.”

But back to that german scepticism for journalism. Yesterday for my birthday I had a little coffee party with family and such. One guy started talking about how media pictures always show women and children refugees while he knows from someone working in a city council that in their city there are 90% male refugees. I said, ( regretting that I had no numbers at hand), that the logic might be: we had a rise of anti-refugee protests and crimes, and racist people perceive refugee men as much more of a threat than women or children, so the press might hope to rise empathy instead of fear. That’s what turned the talk to news being “made”, crafted. He said, he doesn’t get why the news does not just show what’s really there and let’s people do their own interpreting. I gave him a basic “news can never be objective, because you always pick something for a story and leave something else out”. A picture is always just showing a snippet of a scene, ripped out of context: it doesn’t show what’s outside of the frame, it doesn’t show what happens before and after, it doesn’t show why the editor picked that photo etc. He then told me about how a friend of his who works for the city council and was one of the emergency folks who were sent to help arriving refugees at some train station last week, when the german gov let all refugees in for two days. There she was ordered, as part of her job, to hold up or put up banners with a “refugee welcome” message. While not being anti-refugees, this reminded him too much of his youth in former East Germany, of how they were forced to wave flags at events staged for state-controlled media. Looking into his eyes when he told that for the first time I understood that there is a huge sensitivity about things like that which I guess West Germans can not really grasp. While I was aware of the distrust in journalism being stronger in the former Eastern German part of the population somehow for the first time this really clicked for me. The cultural shift from an openly controlled society like the GRD to a society in which you have a mix of more freedom but also lots of concealed control might make a bigger difference than we thought. That concealed kind of control is what of course many west germans also criticize but I don’t think we really get how different our cultural background makes us.

“The social web shattering the myth of impartial objectivity leads to a feeling of betrayal that spreads distrust, and this distrust leads to the erosion solidarity that we experience hate messages all over the web and on the streets.”

Add to this the cultural shift that came with the mainstream population entering the social web over the last few years and discovering that there is a multitude of perspectives to the same events out there. The social web shattering the myth of impartial objectivity is one of the big topics of our time and it echoes through so many parts of our lives. The dangerous rise of scepticism against journalism is just one of those ripples. I am no big fan of the gatekeeper mechanism of old media because it only amplified the perspective of a very narrow spectrum of people as status quo. Yet I think its loss without a new, more diverse mediating mechanism for the controversial voices that make up a society is dangerous. We need mediating tools, mechanisms, forums, etc. to get to a societal consensus but it needs to be more democratic, interactive and diverse than the old gatekeeper-journalism. Else this feeling of betrayal that so many seem to suffer from will keep spreading. And it will keep spreading distrust that leads to the erosion of solidarity that we experience in hate messages on the web and on the streets.

“This feeling of distrust is what a surge of new small viral media exploits: Jung&Naiv, Ken.FM, Ruplty – all on different levels”

This feeling of distrust is what a surge of new small viral media exploits: the common sense journalism of Jung&Naiv is not really that far away from Ken.FM’s conspiracy show. Or bloody Ruptly, acting as if it was unfiltered by any agenda. They all got this truther pose: We give you the real thing, we are authentic news, we unveil the secret agenda of the powerful. Of course they will never satisfy this hunger because there is not one big secret agenda just as there is not one objective truth. But people keep hanging on their lips, hoping of every layer that gets exposed that it could be the final one that exposes what really is behind it all. The one simple fix truth that heals them from the horrible everchanging complexity of the world. What those small viral media outlets do is basically an endless strip show, appealing to and profiting from constant arousal but not interested in solutions and giving people knowledge that doesn’t overwhelm them. They exploit the longing for authenticity and truth that is a mark of our times, from digital detox to organic food.

“It is a fine line between mediating different perspectives on an event and shaping opinions for what the government thinks is appropriate as societal perspective on an event.”

Then, of course, there are times when media indeed gets used to shape opinions. It is a fine line between mediating different perspectives on an event and shaping opinions for what the government thinks is appropriate as societal perspective on an event. (If in doubt, I’d apply the simplest satire rule: Top-down is a no-go.) Again, an example from the treatment of refugees: For a while german news were dominated by stories about aggressive anti-refugee protests and arson attacks on refugee shelters, and very disconnected from the perspective of refugees. Fear and hate thusly got perceived as the common german reaction to refugees. Racists celebrated it as display of their power, numbers and success. Then there was a huge press shift to counter this with news about solidarity, showing refugees’ stories, showing how many people in Germany welcome and help refugees. Thus displaying solidarity with refugees as societal consensus. When journalism still had its gatekeeper role it was the only window through which people could look onto events. Back then such a shift would have worked as “ah, german’s have changed, now they are in favour of refugees”. Today, such a shift also gets noticed as “erm, why this sudden new focus in all the papers while there still are arson attacks on refugee shelters?” Doing the “look over there, a solidarity squirrel!” doesn’t work that well anymore. Thanks / Blame to social media the public is more aware that this story only could be told this way because Merkel helped turning it into a reportable emergency situation. The weary long term help for refugees is too boring to report, no one would read it. To make it worth attention, we need crisis moments, pictures like those train stations.

“I’m still angry at those few days in which Merkel used human beings as tactical gaming pieces.”

I’m still angry at those few days in which Merkel used human beings as tactical gaming pieces. Human beings who already are in the worst situation, driven from their homes, ending up in inhuman camp situations, often for years, that get sold as big-hearted aid from saviours. If this use of people, their situation and emotions is what governing in social data/media times looks like we might have soe highly entertaining years ahead. Bread and games 3.0.

I’ll stop this blog post here because I got work to do and can’t think of a fancy end anyways but I won’t end without mentioning one of the tweets that kickstarted me into writing this up (and thusly without mentioning the fabulous #Hameron #piggate etc.) :

“So the newspapers are going to run with “top button undone” as news, but not “pig-fucker in chief”, and still claim not to be biased?” Huw Lemmy (who’s book Chubz I still haven’t reviewed here but trust me and just go get it – it’s great.)

(For non-Followers of #Hameron / #piggate: He contrasts the way Corbyn gets slammed by the UK press for nothings with the way Cameron can fuck a pig to get into a student club that basically helped him to get to the position he now is in and still gets treated with gloves.)

This and a few other UK tweets reminded me of how I have not yet heard about a similar anti-trust-in-journalism movement from other countries. I wonder if there is, and if so, what its specifics are (same longing for authentic truth? same anti-intellectualism? a north/south thing that might be similar to the east/west german difference in this? other things?)

ORCHID – We’re all prostitutes!

“We’re all prostitutes” 
The Pop Group

Eigentlich wollte ich noch einen ausführlichen Blogpost dazu schreiben, warum ich den Erlös der ORCHID Party diesen Samstag, 1.8.16 im Zentralcafé, an Kassandra e.V. spenden möchte, aber die Zeit rennt mir mit Party-Vorbereitungen und Musik aussuchen davon, also nur die Kurzfassung:

Aus dem konservativen Lager wird in den letzten Jahren wieder lauter gegen uns Queers und gegen Sexarbeiter*innen Stimmung gemacht. Deswegen möchte ORCHID – auch in Erinnerung an früheres Zusammenstehen (ich sag nur “Schwulen- und Hurengala” 1990 im KOMM) – ein kleines queer-feministisches Zeichen der Solidarität setzen und etwas Geld für die knappe Kasse des engagierten Kassandra-Vereins erfeiern, ganz im Geiste einer Repolitisierung des CSD: Sexarbeit sollte nicht stigmatisiert werden und die Idee eines Prostituiertenmeldegesetzes ist einfach nur krank und gefährlich. Sex work is work.

Ich wünsche allen morgen einen großartigen CSD und eine rauschende Partynacht!
Unten dann noch etwas mehr Info.

luvluv,
eve massacre
x

Was ist der Kassandra-Verein?
“Kassandra ist Ansprechpartnerin für Sexarbeit und Prostitution. Wir setzen uns dafür ein, dass Menschen in der Sexarbeit mit Respekt behandelt werden und der Wert ihrer Arbeit für die Gesellschaft anerkannt wird. Die rechtlichen Rahmenbedingungen für Sexarbeit müssen so gestaltet werden, wie sie auch für andere Tätigkeiten gelten.”
www.kassandra-nbg.de

orchid1508-webflyer

Noch etwas genauer, was mit dem derzeit geplanten Prostitutionsmeldegesetz droht: Totale Rundumüberwachung und drohende Kriminalisierung durch örtliche Meldepflicht (das hieße zum Beispiel: wenn du in Nürnberg gemeldet bist, wäre ein Kundenbesuch in Fürth ohne Ummeldung illegal). Die Meldepflicht soll auch für Gelegenheitsprostituierte gelten. Eine Meldepflicht übrigens, die es in dieser Form seit 1939 nicht mehr gab, wie J.R. Henning erwähnt. Dazu käme der Zwang zum ständigen Mitführen eines Nachweisdokuments. Jährliche obligatorische “medizinische Beratung”, während eine staatliche Behörde die “Einsichtsfähigkeit” von Sexarbeiter*innen überprüft. Erlaubnispflicht für “Prostitutionsstätten” samt Zuverlässigkeitsprüfung (z.B. auch wenn zwei Frauen zu gegenseitigem Schutz zusammen eine Wohnung nehmen, nicht erst bei großen Häusern). Jederzeitige, unangekündigte und verdachtsunabhängige Polizeikontrollen für die kein richterlicher Durchsuchungsbeschluss nötig ist. Ach ja, und Kondomzwang.

Donna Carmens J.R. Henning erklärt im junge-welt-Interview warum es zu einer solchen Kriminalisierung des Prostitutionsberufes kommt:
“Aus herrschender Sicht ist Prostitution das Einfallstor einer als unerwünscht geltenden »Armutsmigration«. Die Einwanderung geringqualifizierter Menschen erscheint als unzumutbare Belastung der verbliebenen Strukturen des Wohlfahrtsstaats. Hinzu kommt, dass der bürgerliche Staat sich immer weniger imstande sieht, Risiken und Folgewirkungen prekärer Beschäftigung seiner Staatsbürger dauerhaft zu kompensieren. Daher müssen die Lasten sozialer Verwerfungen wieder stärker auf Familien und familienähnliche Partnerschaften abgewälzt werden – Sozialstrukturen, die auf serieller Monogamie und damit auf der Einheit von Sexualität und Liebe beruhen. Prostitution aber steht für eine dezidierte Trennung von Sexualität und Liebe. Sie basiert auf dem Einvernehmen der Beteiligten, dass bezahlte sexuelle Dienstleistungen nicht mit verpflichtenden sozialen Bindungen einhergehen.”

Prekäre Arbeit, Diskriminierung aufgrund von Transsexualität, Stigmatisierung wegen einer Sexarbeit-Vergangenheit, zu niedrige Renten, zu teures Studium, kein Recht zu Arbeiten wegen Migrationsstatus – niemand bestreitet, dass es x Gründe gibt, der Menschen in die Sexarbeit treibt, die lieber etwas anderes täten, aber: Wenn wir für Sexarbeiter*innen etwas zum Besseren ändern wollen, dann müssen wir die Arbeits- und Lebensbedingungen für alle verbessern und sie nicht verschlimmern, wie es das Prostitutionsmeldegesetz tun würde. Wird, wenn wir nicht breit darauf aufmerksam machen und protestieren.

Falls du etwas spenden möchtest, kannst du das entweder einfach heute am Einlass tun, oder per Überweisung:
Kassandra e.V.
Sparkasse Nürnberg
IBAN: DE74 7605 0101 0001 3390 48
Swift-BIC: SSKNDE77XXX

Hier jetzt noch ein paar Links, Videos, Twitter-Accounts zum Weiter-Informieren über das Thema Sexarbeit:

How LGBT Liberation Connects to the Oldest Profession
Rather than ignore the centuries-long relationship between sex work and queer liberation, we should embrace it, writes editor at large Diane Anderson-Minshall.

Sexarbeit ist kein Verbrechen
Amnesty International kämpft für die Straffreiheit von Sexarbeit. Prominente wie Meryl Streep oder Alice Schwarzer kritisieren das in einem offenen Brief – sie liegen falsch damit. Ein Gastkommentar von Alexandra Belopolsky

»Meldepflicht für Sexarbeiterinnen hatten wir zuletzt 1939 unter den Nazis«
Der Entwurf der SPD für ein »Prostituiertengesetz« fällt noch hinter die Adenauer-Zeit zurück. Ein Gespräch mit Juanita Rosina Henning

„Prostituiertenschutzgesetz“: Ein schäbiges Gesetz
Eine Analyse von Doña Carmen e.V.Frankfurt, 17. Juli 2015 (PDF)

Prostitutionsdebatte: Wie Sexarbeiter*innen und Betroffene von Menschenhandel gegeneinander ausgespielt werden, von Sonja Dolinsek

Prostitutionsgesetz: Zurück in die dunklen Ecken (ausführliche Erläuterungen zu vielen Punkten)

Almut Wessel: Offener Brief an Manuela Schwesig: Ihr Plan ist ein Frontalangriff auf das sexuelle Selbstbestimmungsrecht ALLER Frauen

Laurie Penny: The most harmful effects of prostitution are caused by its criminality. Sex work isn’t stigmatised because it is dangerous. Sex work is dangerous because it is stigmatised.

Laurie Penny on sex work: The Soho raids show us the real problem with sex work isn’t the sex – it’s low-waged work itself. The moral crusade against the sex trade, whether it is pursued by the police or by high-profile feminists who have never done sex work, serves the same function that it has always served

“Why Amnesty International Must Hold Firm in Its Support for Sex Workers”

Amnesty International für die Menschenrechte von Sexarbeiterinnen und Sexarbeitern

How LGBT People Would Benefit From The Decriminalization Of Sex Work

Ein ganzer Blog zu Sex Work Research:

Auf Youtube:

“Sexarbeit als Weg der sexuellen Emanzipation” @courtisane_de
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dl4ejMQA2lI)

“A Swedish sexworker on the criminalization of clients” Pye Jacobsson

Wenn ihr auf Twitter seid, folgt zum Thema Sexarbeit doch zum Beispiel einfach:
@sonjdol
@melissagira (Melissa Gira Grants Buch “Playing the whore: The works of sex work” sei auch empfohlen! Auf deutsch: “Hure spielen: Die Arbeit der Sexarbeit“, Nautilus Verlag, 192 S.)
@pastachips
@courtisane_de

rbrbrb

Und als Bonus hier noch ein Clip von Nick Cave über den The Pop Group Song “We’re All Prostitutes”, der das Motto dieser ORCHID Nacht ist und das Thema natürlich weit über den Sexarbeitsbereich hinausträgt.

 

It’s time to be afraid of Germany again

I have never felt much as a german. I had the luck of growing up in the 80s, with a lively subculture that defined being german as not ever wanting to become german again. The only way to come to terms with my national identity to me still is ex negativo. Yesterday’s treatment of Greece has taught me one more lesson in this. “European” sometimes seemed an idea that was open, fluid and diverse enough for me to embrace it as identity. In its best moments it carried a hope of international solidarity.

Yesterday I have read Wendy Brown on “left melancholia”. She writes: “it’s a Left that has become more attached to its impossibility than to its potential fruitfulness, a Left that is most at home dwelling not in hopefulness but in its own marginality and failure … , whose spirit is ghostly, whose structure of desire is backward looking and punishing.”

Syriza in Greece brought back flesh to this ghost in Europe, they have woven the courage to try an alternative approach into a face, a shape. Though raised by pure desperation it gave many of us hope that more social politics could be possible after all. I am thankful for that. Well, this hope has been crushed over the last weeks. It has got stomped in the face while lying on the floor by a german boot – sorry: government that I have not voted for but still feel co-responsible for. Ex negativo. Shame on “us”. What we see now that the dust has settled is a project Europe that stands for a system of economic nationalism, ruled by its financial elite, ruled through fear and bullying, keeping its weakest members weak by default. “What we’ve learned these past couple of weeks is that being a member of the eurozone means that the creditors can destroy your economy if you step out of line,” Paul Krugman sums it up in the New York Times (“Killing the European project”).
Europe – it’s time to be afraid of Germany again, or as Heiner Flassbeck has put it, rougly translated by me:

“What’s even worse is the intellectual isolation into which Germany is steering with this. Rational human beings all around the globe will ask how it is possible that a whole nation (incl. the biggest part of its media and science) resorts to such a political ghost ride. There will be questions asked that reach far into the past. Questions of which we thought they had been answered but to which we will need to find new answers should it turn out that 85 years were not enough to turn Germany into a cooperative and regularly amenable member of the international community.”

I’ve read and watched a lot this week-end and thought why not share the most interesting stuff as reading list here:

“By infantilising Greece, Germany resembles a child who closes its own eyes and thinks we can not see it. We can. The world is watching what is being done to Greece in the name of euro stability. It sees a nation stripped of its dignity, its sovereignty, its future.”
The euro ‘family’ has shown it is capable of real cruelty, Suzanne Moore, Guardian

“Five months of intense negotiations between Greece and the Eurogroup never had a chance of success. Condemned to lead to impasse, their purpose was to pave the ground for what Dr Schäuble had decided was ‘optimal’ well before our government was even elected: That Greece should be eased out of the Eurozone in order to discipline member-states resisting his very specific plan for re-structuring the Eurozone.”
Yanis Varoufakis announces a text by him that will be published in Die Zeit on Thursday

“What they’ve arguably got is a global reputational disaster: the crushing of a left-wing government elected on a landslide, the flouting of a 61 per cent referendum result. The EU – a project founded to avoid conflict and deliver social justice – found itself transformed into the conveyor of relentless financial logic and nothing else.
Ordinary people don’t know enough about the financial logic to understand why this was always likely to happen: bonds, haircuts and currency mechanisms are distant concepts. Democracy is not. Everybody on earth with a smartphone understands what happened to democracy last night.”
Paul Mason in his Channel 4 blog (over the last few days, well, weeks this blog was a great source of info broken down into easy but not oversimplified pieces.)

“For Germany the euro is a simple national interest weapon. … Anyone staying must adhere to German rules and anyone leaving must be destroyed to deter others from doing do. ”
Greece brought a latte to a gun fight by Yves Smith (Naked Capitalism)

“Varoufakis thinks that Merkel and Schäuble’s control over the Eurogroup is absolute, and that the group itself is beyond the law. ….
“So,” Varoufakis said, “What we have is a non-existent group that has the greatest power to determine the lives of Europeans. It’s not answerable to anyone, given it doesn’t exist in law; no minutes are kept; and it’s confidential. No citizen ever knows what is said within . . . These are decisions of almost life and death, and no member has to answer to anybody.””
Exclusive: Yanis Varoufakis opens up about his five month battle to save Greece, Harry Lambert (New Statesman)

“’European leaders and the West in general are criticising Greece for failure to collect taxes,’ Stiglitz said. ‘The West has created a framework for global tax avoidance… Here you have the advanced countries trying to undermine a global effort to stop tax avoidance. Can you have a better image of hypocrisy?’”
Germany showing ‘lack of solidarity’ over Greece – Joseph Stiglitz (Dunya News)

The Children of Austerity – debt creates a future of always paying for the past, Johnna Montgomerie (The Sociological Review)

“To know the history of the Global South is to know that the continuing demands of austerity placed upon Greece are not the solution to the crisis; they are the crisis. It is to know that plans to liberalise the economy and cut public spending in favour of debt repayment are not designed to help the Greek people but to create spaces of minimal regulation, relaxed environmental controls, low corporation tax and stripped worker protections, a space where the 21st Century laissez faire capitalism can be fully unleashed.”
Greece and the underdevelopment of Europe

Die Deutsche Ideologie – Überwachen und Strafen
Robert Misik (8min video)

Last Exit Europe – Titel Thesen Temperamente von gestern (ARDmediathek (höret und staunet, spätnachts gibt es dann auch mal so eine kritische Perspektive auf diesem Sender. 30min video)

Man spricht deutsch. Trotz seiner NS-Vergangenheit ist Deutschland in Europa dominant
Ingo Stützle, Analyse & Kritik

“Noch schlimmer aber ist die intellektuelle Isolation, in die sich Deutschland damit begibt. Vernunftbegabte Menschen auf dem gesamten Erdball werden fragen, wie es möglich ist, dass sich ein ganzes Land (inklusive des Großteils seiner Medien und der Wissenschaft) auf eine solche politische Geisterbahnfahrt begeben kann. Man wird Fragen stellen, die weit in die Vergangenheit reichen. Fragen, die man eigentlich für beantwortet hielt, für die man aber neue Antworten finden muss, wenn sich zeigt, dass 85 Jahre nicht ausreichten, um Deutschland zu einem kooperativen und normal ansprechbaren Mitglied der Völkergemeinschaft zu machen.”
Die bedingungslose Kapitulation, sonst nichts!, Heiner Flassbeck

So scheitert Europa, Eric Bonse (Lost In Europe)

„Das ist staatliche Entmündigung, keine europäische Demokratie“ Interview mit Sven Giegold (cicero)

Und es ist ein guter Zeitpunkt, um Die Anstalt zu Griechenland vom März (noch mal) anzusehen:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qm84EHi1nA

 

EDIT 13.7.15 afternoon:

“Seen as a sort Helm’s Deep, this defeat for the Greeks is monumental, irredeemable. It is the “all is lost” moment. Seen as one opening battle in much larger war, it is hugely valuable. It has drawn the enemy out into the fore, exposed its strengths and weaknesses. It has provided intelligence to others, in Spain and Portugal and Italy, which will ensure they’re better prepared. It has been bravely fought. And smartly, because Greece gets to live to fight another day.”
Alexis Tsipras: Hero, traitor, hero, traitor, hero, Alex Andreou (Byline)

“Im griechischen Referendum konnten wir einen ersten zaghaften Ansatz zur Formulierung einer Alternative erkennen. Und durch das Referendum erlebten wir erstmals eine Solidarisierung (und Polarisierung) der Menschen quer zu den europäischen Nationalstaaten …. Syriza hat das Projekt Europa aus seinem Dornröschenschlaf geweckt.
Ein solches Projekt kann nicht von oben installiert werden, wie dies in den fünfziger Jahren des vergangenen Jahrhunderts noch möglich schien. Sollte dieser veraltete Politik-Ansatz jedoch weiterhin versucht werden, … wird der Aufstand der Griechen nur der Anfang der kommenden Aufstände gewesen sein.”
Wie Europa wirklich entsteht, Wolfgang Michal

Nope – a quick comment on “Can we turn off email?” by Charles Arthur

When I read “Can we turn off email?” by Charles Arthur today I thought it mixes privacy and ephemerality up a bit but I couldn’t exactly put my finger on it. Here are a few quick thoughts:

Matter of privacy: If any msg gets taken out of its original context (time, recipients) it is a breach of privacy – no matter which tool we used. Can happen with email as well as with messaging apps, even Snapchat (screenshots). That’s why I wouldn’t see it as argument against email.

Matter of ephemerality: Messaging apps or platforms like Slack are good for conversation that is closer to oral culture. That is not archived. Or: that makes the archiving invisible, like lots of digital communication tools and social media do.

Email in work situation still totally makes sense for conversations that you need to be able to look up again, to archive. I wouldn’t want to miss it in my job.

But email sucks whenever a conversation is closer to chatting, to oral culture, to “social”. Then picking a subject line and a recipient is inconvenient and archiving doesn’t make sense. The mere awareness of it being archived can take the flow and openness out of such conversations.

Typing s.th. into a room/group on Slack/WhatsApp/Telegram is so much better for this. Not just because of the ephemeral feel but also bc of what Daniel Miller called “scalable sociality” a few days ago.

If we imagine two parameters – one consisting of the scale from private to public and the other from the smallest group of two up to the biggest group of public broadcast – then as new platforms are continually being invented they encourage the filling of niches and gaps along these two scales. As a result, we can now have greater choice over the degree of privacy or size of group we may wish to communicate with or interact with. This is what we mean by scalable sociality.

Today’s tools are still about checking out the possibilities in how to handle this best and it’s far too soon to tell what will stay and what won’t.

I think email isn’t over but there are better tools for any kind of conversation that doesn’t need to be archived. What we definitely need are more choices in archiving or not. That should be a just as lively area as all the possibilities of organising whom we adress and how public or private we want a coversation to be = possibilities of scaling sociality.

If it was about optimising our communication needs, more options for self-destructing, ephemeral messaging would seem far more “natural” for many platforms than all their (invisible) archives. What I want: Ephemerality as the default setting with an extra “archive this!” switch that I can turn on like a red “this is going on record!” signal. BTW this is what I find crucial about only using so-called “free” communication tools: those are dependend on archives of our data when they are financed by advertising, and that clashes with user interests.

Social photography: Bitter equality lolz

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The rise of the amateurs

My thoughts about photography have started with a sued street photographer, a case I’ve written about here and here, and strayed on here. The street photographer as one example of a special professional someone we needed for the documentation of our times might become – if not obsolete – just one in a crowd. What the flood of digital and social photography has done to the value of the single picture, the rise of the amateur photographers does to the photographer’s status. In the case I have written about one point that the plaintiff (who had sued Eichhöfer, a street photographer, because she didn’t want her picture to be publicy displayed) brought up against him was that his photos should not be considered art but luck because he had shot 1.600 photos and there were only 12 he found good enough for the exhibition.

So, what’s art, what’s luck? Of course quantity is a poor argument against art but it is quite common and shows the devaluation of professional photography since it has become a mass product. Chances are that a lot of people would get 12 artworthy pictures if they shot 1.600. If not: There’s always filters and Photoshop, technical skills getting replaced by technology. The photographer’s lament about this does not differ much from the vinyl dj who complains that the automatic beatsyncing of the laptop dj is nothing but cheating. For a person who enjoys looking at the photo or who is shaking their bootie on the dancefloor it is irrelevant.

Chances are that people who pay the photographer’s loan find 12 cheap photos among 16 million pictures that have been uploaded to social networks or photography platforms. Even the biggest media outlets sometimes use snaps that someone had posted on Twitter instead of using the expensive work of a professional photographer who wasn’t at the right place at the right time. “Eyewitness media can often be the best visual a news organisation has from the scene of a story.” With that reasoning a german news organisation, Deutsche Welle, introduced an app for geo-located push alerts for eyewitness media.

Photo blogs and networks like 500px or flickr also have narrowed the gap between the professional and the amateur artist. The maximization of idea-to-monetization speed has contributed to this too, just think of Tumblr’s Creatr Network that is built to close the gap between amateur artists who post on the network and brands who could be interested in buying their work for (in-platform) advertising or design. The old school street photographers might moan “but true quality and professional training”. Well, there might be a lot of uninspired photography on the web but there also is a lot of uninspired photography in galleries or newspapers and magazines that only makes it there because the photographer has the right connections.

Bitter equality lolz

The sheer mass of online photography and ever becoming better filter algorithms might change the game. Imagine a future of photography that no longer belongs to having the best connections in the industry network but to the possibilities of finding the most interesting or relevant fresh content with minimum effort and expense. A future that outsources decisions about whom to hire for what to algorithms. Algorithms that are not built to consider gender and race and education and background but that just pick the best product/picture. Algorithms, will the white men cry, they get sold to us as objective, neutral, while really they are built by humans to get rid of the final frontier: loyalty! Digitalised hypercapitalism might free us of old white boys networks. Imagine a capitalism that will hurt us all the same. Bitter equality lolz.

Today you can see people from a wide range of professions struggle against amateurs and minorities and machines for a privilege they feel slipping away . You can hear this fear between the lines of feuilleton conservatives ranting against women and queers coming for their family values, you can hear it in the overgeneralizing moans against internet mobs and shitstorms. If you look close you can see it jumping up and down behind all the “future of journalism” stories and you can hear it in the street photographers’ laments. Digitalisation is coming for your jobs and status. That is, as long as the networks and algorithms do not include the very same biases in their structure as the people who build them have had for far too long. It is important to consider with what on mind they get build because if profit is the major goal and social considerations are only considered as mechanisms that help binding people to it, they might multiply injustices in new ways that stay invisible and incomprehensible to most. We can’t celebrate it as democratization if platform owners make most of the money of content that gets shared on them. Take a photo platform like 500px and their slogans: “Find the perfect royalty-free photos on 500px Prime”, “Photography enthusiasts – Share your best photos and get exposure”. Or think of music streaming services that seem even more greedy in cashing in on artists than big record labels are.

How do we judge value?

The rise of amateurs raises the question: Whom do we consider an artist or a journalist when we all can do it? It is not just a question of jobs, it also is about artistical value and special rights, like freedom of art and press. To stick with the example that got me started: The picture of the street photographer as an artist who deserves a special status and protection has become a bit dusty. We freed us from a fixed definition of art, and we can no longer draw a clear line between a professional and amateur, or between commercial and artistic photography. In a text about the Eichhöfer-case Meike Laaff asks, what exactly is higher interest about art, and: Should judges be the ones to decide about the artistical value of a work of art? Who is to decide who deserves the special artistic freedom? Artists themselves? The people who have become objects of a picture and see their privacy threatened? Curators, critics, social media companies, judges? Or potentially everyone?

Is it just the context in which a picture gets displayed? As it has been written about Richard Prince putting up other people’s instagram pictures in an art gallery and selling them for $90.000 each? I think that case is a bit more complex as he has not just used the picture but displayed the instagram surface and comments with the picture, so you could argue that this is a kind of social media street photography: The screenshot of a digital public space as street photography. Basically with the same “public’s public” logic with which news sites make whole articles consisting of embedded tweets or social network pictures. I’d love to read an essay on copyright ethics and who’s got the right to profit, comparing these two examples, Prince and journalism that embeds public social media content. And to go even further: Self-representation on- and offline increasingly melt together – how long will will we make a difference anymore? If we demand copyright for our self-representation online, when will we start to argue for it for our offline self-representation?

Social photography – the rise of the amateurs: No scarcity, no masters

noscarcitynomasters

(dieser Text auf deutsch)

No scarcity, no masters

Just a few thoughts. The NSA has involuntarily given us the credo of our time: “Collect it all!” We snap away, freeze moments into pictures, store countless photos and videos on our hard drives and smartphones, we add to endlessly growing archives of pictures on other people’s hard drives (clouds and social platforms). Cheap storage, digital cameras on the same phone on which you have free social sharing apps, affordable mobile connections in many countries – this has changed and still is changing the cultural meaning and function of photography deeply. One point is that it has turned documentation into something we have lost all sense of scarcity for. The Wired editor Joe Brown even pledges for that ethos: “I made a pact with myself: I don’t delete photos anymore. I got the largest-capacity iPhone, upgraded my Dropbox account, and uploaded every pic I could find.” His goal? An “honest record of my life”. The single photo in its function as representation for something bigger is no longer enough. For someone like Joe Brown the single photo is like one in a million frames that could make up a film of his life.

Endless desire for human interactions breeds endless archives of our lives

I share the opinion that we are on the verge from archives to ephemerality if it comes to our “socially” shared media as they have become more about communication as about documentation. Some even are about participation, take the #sleepingsquad kids who livestream themselves to each other on YouNow while they are sleeping. As so many other owners of social platforms who don’t get their products YouNow’s maker explains #sleepingsquad with internet and social media addiction, but Katie Notopoulos nails it in her text about that phenomenon: “The aching desire to cut through the tedium of daily life with human interaction is the driving force of everything on the internet.” Or as Nathan Jurgenson doesn’t get tired to explain: We are not addicted to smartphones, we are addicted to each other. And to be honest, if I was a teen these days I totally would powerlivestream with my friends 24/7, too. I remember very well how I wanted to be constantly connected with my friends. The old cliche of the teens who after having just finished chatting on their way home from school, first thing when they came home called each other on the phone to chat on? Me, every single day.

But right now, of the big public social platforms not even those with a more oral feel, like Twitter, are ephemeral. Right now our archives grow. Our endless desire for human interaction breeds endless archives of our lives. If we were constantly aware of what we have posted years ago and that it is still visible online, that anyone can find it via search or per infinite-scrolling their way into our pasts – it would drive us mad and we’d feel the instant need to explain how we were different back then. We would long to give a context, explain how we changed. The faux ephemerality of the timeline stream on social networks are a way of not letting these archives overwhelm you. You post a photo, some people react to it or not, the photo disappears out of our sight when the next things get posted, the photo gets forgotten. Your focus is (glass half full:) on the human interactions it inspires / (glass half empty:) on the metric gratification that makes you come back for more – yeah, 5 new likes or favs! Your focus gets nudged away from what you have documented, from the archive you build. Even photography platforms like Flickr or Google Photos have chosen the infinite-scroll stream and more and more “social” elements (sharing, commenting, liking) to showcase our content.

There is a dissonance: A lot of today’s documentation of everyday lives results from the wish for short-term social interaction but grows into huge archives. Searchable archives. Archives, that have become not only searchable by tags of your choice: “Intelligent”, learning search functions also help you find pictures by recognizing faces. You can search for photos of someone by uploading a picture of their face. You can type “cat” and it will show you pictures of cats. (Okay: and of things that are vaguely shaped like cats, as it doesn’t work that well yet. The more input they get the better they will become though and we feed them just as well as our cats.) Even mapping is possible: the search thing is supposed to recognize places, even from pictures that are not geo-tagged. These huge archives of amateur photography have become wonderful and fascinating galleries and an important source of photography. Even if they might not have been made for a lasting documentation purpose a lot of these pictures get used for it. And this mosaic of a billion pictures gives a far deeper impression of our everyday lives as street photographers ever could capture.

When blogging was the democratisation of publishing, social media has brought us secularisation

When years ago blogging became a thing, many people first reacted as if it was blasphemy that people simply put their opinions, knowledge or everyday experiences out there. Even last year I still got a comment on my blog that was like “What qualifies you to publish this?” trying to cut down my voice. When social networks reached the mainstream you heard similar voices calling out the banality of the content that people shared: How dare you document things as banal as your meal publicly? What does your blurred photo of a sunset add to the already existing millions of pictures of sunsets out there? Do you think you’re so special that someone wants to see your selfie? “Banality” misses the point though. Publicly publishing photos has become about something new: Not to universalise the object of a picture, not to document something of importance for posterity, not as a work of art, no, while all of that might be true too, the most important factor for shared photography is social value. Communication, and often: communication of emotion. What is a boring photo of a meal to one person, to another might be a loving glimpse into how a friend feels about it. The photo of a freshly cooked meal is not just about the meal, it communicates the happy feeling of having succeeded in preparing it, it’s a way of sharing the pleasant anticipation of eating it. #feelings. One lesson the social web taught us is: Just because something is not important to you doesn’t mean it isn’t relevant to someone else for reasons you don’t know.

When blogging was the democratisation of publishing, social media has brought us secularisation, and photos are a major example for this. The aura of photography has been ruffled hard by its heavy use on social platforms. The hierarchy of gatekeepers who decide whose pictures deserve getting publicity, which pictures are of value, it has been shaken. Big parts of the press still wonder about why sometimes a cat picture is more important than their well-crafted latest piece of serious news. Other parts of the press and of course marketing profits from the knowledge that emotionally agitating content “works”. Their pictures have to compete with people’s personal content on social platforms, so they do not hesitate to exploit what “works”. (I’ll have to come to an end with this blog post now as I’m running out of “””s.) The idea that only pictures that have an objectifiable value should be published has withered. The whole idea of objectifiable value has withered.

When a professional documenter isn’t a special snowflake artist anymore because everyone documents everything anyway, when we have endless archives of everyone’s photos that get increasingly better searchable – are drifting towards a new understanding of documentation? Hive documentation? I wonder in which ways social platforms change how we see photography in documentation, and art, and street photography which is a bit of both. As I still have a few days off, this wild theorising will hopefully be continued tomorrow. If I’m not too hangover. Recommendation if you’re in Nuremberg tonight: Beat Thang has invited DJ Slow.

Street photographer’s nostalgia – part 2: Privacy in public

Espen Eichhöfer, a German street photographer, was sued by a woman who was the object of one of his pictures and – (spoilers!) – she won. Kind of. The discussion that surrounded the case, has been rather one-sided: “OMFG, freedom of art! The future of street photography is doomed in this country!” In news media, blogosphere and social networks hardly anyone cared about the woman’s position. As things never are that simple I got curious and started a bit of reading and got drawn in. The disputes around street photography make tensions visible that have risen with our increasingly surveilled and digitally augmented lives. While some street photographers argue that the laws for our right of publicity is dated, it could actually be them who are.

I will post some humble thoughts on a few aspects of this huge topic in a 3-4 parts series this week as it got too long for one. This is the second part. (Part 1 is here.)
(German version here. Photos by me.)

streetphotographersnostalgia-pt2-1 Privacy in public

Let’s take a closer look at the verdict of the Eichhöfer case in which many German papers and blogs have seen the end of street photography dawning. The verdict says that even though the plaintiff was in a public space while the picture was taken, she obviously was in a purely private life situation (meaning: not as part of a big crowd in a public event, like a street festival, protest or sports event). It has been ruled that in this case your privacy, your right of publicity, deserves protection even if you are aware that as soon as you enter public space you potentially could be under some kind of media surveillance. (BGH v. 17.2.2009, VI ZR 75/08, juris Rn. 13) The reason the judge gives for his decision is: It would mean a considerable constriction of your right to free development of the personality if you can not move uninhibitedly in public just because of the possibility that you could get photographed without a possibility to say no. As the lines between the photo’s function as art, documentation and advertising are blurred, I think it is important to mention that the verdict does not argue this point about the picture in the gallery’s art context but because the woman was presented larger than life-sized on a poster in a big busy street to a broad public and thus got torn out of her anonymity against her will.

I understand that photographers are not happy with this decision but I actually consider it fair. The consideration “in a purely private life situation” shows respect for contextual integrity and cares for consent. It expresses that even if you opted in to this state’s terms of service by living here, you get a chance to fight back if someone abuses their freedom to potentially hurt you. To decide something like this does deserve a careful singular decision instead of the general fair game rule in favour of street photographers. That would be nothing but an “if you do not like to be photographed, simply stay at home” middle finger straight in every citizen’s face.

“Public” as in “deanonymized”

In urban space, the default setting used to be anonymity.  That was an important factor of what generations of young folks were looking for when they left rural areas for the big cities. The power to chose who gets to know us and who doesn’t. The sweet scent of freedom to explore that anonymity promises. Before social networks and smart image search engines fleeting recognizability on a street photograph wouldn’t have mattered that much. Today we no longer are a crowd but we are a lot of singular faces that can be identified by some software. Of course the more people get tracked and surveilled, the more they long for anonymity. That is why I think the verdict in the Eichhöfer case was fair: This was not about “public vs private” as in “crossing a public street vs sitting in a living room” (as the street photographer’s and their advocates want to make it look). This was about “public” as in “deanonymised”.

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Nostalgia for the silence of the common people

The digital augmentation of our lives of course brings about a new jungle of rights and wrongs, and it is hard to appropriately readjust laws in the middle of those big changes. As Sixtus writes, in street photography it has led to a kind of legal vacuum. It has a lot to do with people finally realizing that online and offline just as private and public are deeply interwoven. If you post a picture from your bedroom on Facebook – is it private or is it public? Does it depend on who took it? Or under which privacy setting it was posted, as Facebook wants you to think? Or on the context in which it was taken? Sixtus laments, that, as laws are getting increasingly complicated, people turn to “esoterics”. I would strike “so er” from “esoterics”, buy an “h” and solve to apply the term “ethics” instead. Ethics have a “felt truth” quality and are build on a societal consense and change easier than laws. They are more fluid than laws but to belittle them as esoteric does not do them justice.

To exploit legal inclarity for a “can do, will do” behaviour and shrouding it in “freedooom!”-blurbs that would make Mel Gibson look pale, reminds me of the cyberspace wild west romance talk you hear from the old tech elite about a golden age of the internet. They seem to be similarly blind to systemic injustices and inequalities. Street photography never has been unproblematic, it’s just that now we are at a point at which its objects’ voices get heard, too. Street photographers and journalists complain about those pesky people who once were quiet audience or honored to be objects of their work. This nostalgia for their past authority, as gatekeeper and as experts who are the only ones who know how to catch the world in a picture as it “really” is, is nothing but nostalgia for the silence of the common people. If I have learned one thing from reading articles and blog posts for this piece here it is: Street photography is far more about narcissism than selfies could ever be. It is not about what you see on the photo, it is about what its purpose for one’s status is.

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Public space has changed

We are still at the beginning of the digital revolution, especially in Germany with all its technophobia. It doesn’t exactly help that street photographers and journalists who both make up a part of the digital elite are trying to set their status quo as new norm while there are still so many out there who don’t trust new tech (yet) because they are scared of surveillance and big data. Street photography has a lot to do with those fears and this longing for privacy but it does not like taking them serious. “Today, photography – and street photography in particular – is a contested sphere in which all our collective anxieties converge: terrorism, paedophilia, intrusion, surveillance. We insist on the right to privacy and, simultaneously, snap anything and everyone we see and everything we do – in public and in private – on mobile phones and digital cameras. In one way, then, we are all street photographers now, but we are also the most-photographed and filmed global population ever”, writes Sean O’Hagan, not getting beyond “public” and “private” as oppositions. Putting the wish for anonymity on a level with censorship, Sebastian Graalfs, Espen Eichhöfer’s lawyer, says: “It is also about the question if this society still allows a public space in which art – for example street photography – can take place. Or if this public space gets atomized into a million little spheres of privacy. That would be the unleashing of an almighty privacy-censorship that would make this kind of exhibitions and a whole genre of art impossible.” Georg Diez registers a “rising hostility towards [street photography as] art, a distorted image of the public that is garnished with distrust, and the extension of the private until it usurps even the last street corner. The city as a stage disappears in this argumentation, the idea of the street as a place of equality, visibility, every day life, social reality, the writing of history, memory, art, it disappears.”

What they seem to forget is that the city as urban public space already has lost a lot of these qualities due to surveillance, commercialization and forceful urban planning to make some city-as-a-brand vision come true. Cities are increasingly becoming standardized for global consumerism and the public space does no longer resemble the romantic picture of an open zone for social interaction and local developments. People’s distrust has risen for reasons. As the architect Selena Savić writes in an essay on defensive architecture: “contemporary urban space is becoming micro-zoned for singular use-scenarios only. … Ultimately, unpleasant design or defensive architecture doesn’t defend us from real threats: a systematic decay of privacy and anonymity in public interactions; overall surveillance and tracking; misuse of meta-data and other types of private information; structural threats to civil liberties through coupling of private interests and weak public institutions. These are the real threats to our society today.” This is the public scenario the street photographer enters today and to the changing realities of which he simply has to adapt, just like everyone else.

If at all, street photography is endangered by its democratization. More about that tomorrow.

TO BE CONTINUED.