I mentioned this in another post, where I pointed out some of the difficulties of running that workshop, particularly regards my own inexperience re. working with BSL interpreters and deaf participants. However now that the films have been edited and screened, some other things came to mind.

The first thing is about how I would approach the workshop next time. As I was watching, I suddenly realised that I could have structured the workshop around the whole group, instead of taking different groups off to film individually. We were in the Soho theatre, it was very hot under the lights, and I was wary of the time, but I’d arranged the workshop in such a way that I hadn’t introduced the participants to the camera, or to some of the conventions of working on a film set (albeit a very small one.) It’s funny how the way you structure a project eliminates certain possibilities. But as I watched the films back, it occurred to me that it would have been interesting to have the participants in the frame. Given that I was not trying to make a polished film, but a kind of documentation of ideas / how people processed their ideas / what visual possibilities lay therein, why stick with the conventions of ordinary filmmaking?  There could have been more intra-group collaboration too, but it’s tricky: given the panic the idea of presenting an idea visually caused in some people, I am not sure having them then take charge of directing / presenting is a good idea, especially with such limited time. Then again, some people might have preferred to stick with looking down the lens rather than standing in front of it.

The whole time, I had Mysterious Object at Noon in the back of my mind. Although the films produced for Centred do not tell a coherent story, I hope that one day the result of the workshop will be a kind of patch-work of whatever event had been organised: a combination of direct feedback and personal response, plus ideas for the future. And I also hope to achieve some of the anarchic pleasure of A Mysterious Object.

The concerns I have about Apple have not gone away. I still don’t believe the hype and never will. What concerns me is that Stallman and others like him might be principled, but they’re not particularly clever. A friend was staying a few nights ago and made a very good point about this in relation to art: why are leftists, artists and social activists always the victims of the state? Put another way, why are people such as myself who are concerned about technology and its uses always arts/humanities students? Can we call ourselves intelligent when we focus all our energy on learning to master tools that make us victims of the future?

When I was exploring Stallman’s site, I thought it was a relic of a bygone era, and that he has done nothing to progress. The people currently making millions from technology have. The internet is not the place it was. For one, it’s very beautiful. Two, it’s very insidious. Three, the rhetoric of ownership has entered a space that was once considered free. Stallman is correct in maintaining that liberty and freedom are principles worth being ostracized for. But I do not believe that ostracisation must be the result of refusing to own a phone and shouting at your potential allies. Nor does that ostracisation have to stem from being twenty years behind technology and out of the social loop. How about being ostracized because you’ve come up with cleverer, freer, more humane, tools for the future?

It seems to me that part of Apple’s success is their ability to change the way we think, and to incite an eagerness to learn something new. When I try a new device, I’m keen because I think this is something worth learning. It’s worth understanding and adapting not only to how that technology has been built, but the corresponding psychic shift that occurs. My mother can’t use computers very well because she doesn’t have an intuitive understanding of how they work; most people between early teens and late thirties do, because we’ve learned each new device as it’s (rapidly) come along. How we use those devices has then shaped other devices – so we’re part of the mental and physical history behind the technology we use now. How can you understand things if you never use them?

This will sound a lot like the “incite change from within” argument, but actually I am an English graduate anxious about her own irrelevance, who is simultaneously excited and horrified by personal technology. These little white devices (yes, all my devices are white) titillate the aesthete in me, but I am repelled by the idea of being yet another drone thumbing away at the screen on the tube. I still refuse to use my phone in high-density iphone scenarios as a matter of misplaced pride, but when it’s actually useful – when I am using the maps or watching TED on a five hour bus ride – I can’t help but give props to whoever developed the base technology, and to whoever made it beautiful. The fact that we have a device we can write on, take pictures with, create media with means the future must contain a progression of that. This is problematic, but I think it can be addressed creatively. Once again, Ivan Illich’s “The Right to Useful Unemployment” comes in handy. In 1978 he wrote:

No governing elite nor any socialist opposition can conceive of a desirable future that would be based on per capita energy consumption of a magnitude inferior to that which now prevails in Europe.

And,

A future in which the world market of capital and goods would be severely reduced is as much a taboo today as a modern world in which active people would use modern convivial tools to create an abundance of use-values that liberated them from consumption.

By convivial tools, he means tools that are primarily used to generate use-values that are “unmeasured and unmeasurable by professional need-makers.” It’s funny because I think a lot of popular technology is doing that (i.e free tools for communication), but, as has been shown by the recent legal moves by Instagram, the idea of free use persisting is horrifying to those who believe that the supreme end of any technical achievement should be profit. Illich calls this impoverishing wealth – both in terms of personal and spiritual impoverishment, but also because relatively speaking, it impoverishes others. A collective effort by people who have not been schooled by computer scientists, but who have ideas about how computers might be used, can change the way things are going, and address the consequent resource consumption and pollution of technologies – and attitudes – that will be upgraded in less than a year.

Back to Stallman. His argument is “Don’t use it!” when really the argument should be “Here’s a cleverer tool to get around this.” The reason I say all this is because, as I mentioned, I am an anxious English graduate, and I am concerned that the mental shift caused by the introduction of new technology is not matched by the public’s (read: my own) general understanding of these technologies. More importantly, I feel that the people most able to critique these mental shifts, and potentially create alternatives, shoot themselves in the foot by not being able to actually put anything forward. Because I have read Frankenstein I am capable of picking apart a doomed monster/master scenario when I see one. But that’s it. And because I prefer to abstain from the modern world, when the shit hits the fan, I am liable to be drinking mead while copying out medieval poems on vellum, as my rights are signed away.

On another side of the dice, Stallman is very much involved in technology, but he didn’t seem to understand the psychological importance or impact, which is why his campaign is so dreary. The idea that we must face a future without the things we’ve invented (as a species) is horrifying. So increasingly, I feel compelled to drop the books and start consciously using the devices, programmes and software that is changing the world around me. I am taking baby steps: I have an old iphone 3 I intend to pull apart, started learning Java and am going to attempt the nand2tetris course. People often say that you shouldn’t study English because there’s nothing for you to do besides teaching or academia – I think our role hasn’t been invented yet.

In which the pig goes about her daily chores.

So, the latest Poetry Review comes out soon with a cover of my own design. Edited by Bernardine Evaristo. Dec 14th. Look out.

The imprisonment of Mohammad Al-Ajami – sentenced to life imprisonment for writing a poem that insults Qatar’s emir – brings up two things for me. First, it raises the ever-ugly head of media hypocrisy: Qatar based Al Jazeera, which I watch often, did not report on the case despite reporting on human rights violations elsewhere. Second, it raises the issues I felt when I was in Singapore – and continue to feel – about writing truthfully and critically. Realistically, nothing as bad as what has happened to Al-Ajami is going to happen to me, but then I suppose Al-Ajami did not believe such a thing would happen to him.

In Al-Jazeera’s case, the editors refuse to report on what happens at home; in my case, I found it problematic to report on what was happening abroad. As a visitor to Singapore, in receipt of a very generous residency at the National University, I was aware that outright criticism would be biting the hand that feeds me. At the same time, I mostly associated with queer people, fringe organisations and attended gatherings that were usually in tense situations with the authorities. I never did go to any fancy hotels, or eat at particularly swanky places, or spend much time in the severely air-conditioned malls that characterise every neighbourhood. I spent my time – and my money – in places like the Pigeonhole (which is sadly shutting down after two years), 40 Hands, Books Actually and the Substation.

It bothered me that as an ex-pat and writer-in-residence, I was a) immune to a lot of the problems forward-thinking Singaporeans face, b) being paid by a public body to improve a literary culture that is stunted by the country’s own philosophies, and c) situated in one of the few countries in the region where you could drink the water and catch a properly metred taxi.  The infrastructure is excellent, but, like Britain, like everywhere, the rate of economic success is not matched by any progressive or radical ideas about how to live. While I support development, I do not support developing the right to shop, the right to pollute and the right to participate in an election in which the same party always wins. Nor do I support a system which demands that artists “apply” to the government for a license to run an event.

Without mentioning any one else’s names, I was involved in two events which had problems with the MDA (Media Development Authority). The first related to the inclusion of work in my exhibition “I See You” by a known activist who had been imprisoned for his activities. I was curating the event and wanted to include him because his work was great. The second event involved my work, at an exhibition called “Landing Places”. In this case, the MDA refused to give a license before vetting the images of people featured in my piece. I was still working on the piece when the request was made, so dramatically reduced the number of people I would cut out and stick down. I also decided to make them very, very small. They were never going to be very large or very numerous, but I did find it satisfyingly hilarious when it was reported that the woman who’d made the request wrote back saying she could barely see anything. More seriously, another artist’s animation had to be omitted from the exhibition because a huge financial request was made: to screen the animation legally, $10,000 had to be paid, because it was classified – by the MDA – as NC-16. As is noted in the linked article:

The MDA are more concerned with regulating art than maintaining it. The authorities also make the common mistake of thinking that art can be ordained from above. No matter how many residencies you fund, or programmes you run, or students you send to liberal arts colleges abroad, or Western professors you employ, you will never have a truly world-class arts scene unless people are free to make what they please and share it with others without restriction of any kind. Spaces which attempted to do that, such as the Pigeon Hole which I mentioned earlier, receive no protection and cannot survive the market forces which privilege swank and suffocate citizen ingenuity. Equally, I don’t believe a thriving arts scene can exist as long as people obey the rules. It can only be the responsibility of artists to liberate themselves.

I always knew this, but it didn’t dawn on me until I had many conversations about what it means to improve an arts scene, and what it takes to do so. The gulf between understanding something in theory and enacting it in practice has oft been pondered upon, but it’s different when you have the issues of citizenship and nationality preventing you from taking action. Singapore does everything it can to maintain the line between citizen and non-citizen; the ex-pats have hives in Dempsey Hill and Holland Park; non-Singaporeans are banned from participating in protests and demonstrations (but, certainly in my case, do so anyway); the basic artistic questions of how to live, how to run a society, how to think, act and grow as human beings are figured as questions of difference: how to think, grow, act as Singaporeans, as opposed to any other nation. So a direct challenge to the state because of activities which are despicable in ALL states, is taken as a specific challenge to Singapore, and therefore a sign of disrespect. For example, a friend who consistently criticises all bullshit education policies was fired from her job tutoring kids, because a parent complained about a video she posted online. From what I’ve seen of her activities, she is among the more hardworking and committed teachers I’ve met, but the word “radical” angered a parent who took it as a sign of “anti-Singaporeanism”, and, since it is an institution run for profit, the school decided that they could not take financial risks in favour of educational integrity.

I thoroughly enjoyed my time in Asia, but I don’t know if I can ever accept a position from a state-funded body again. Nobody censored anything I wrote, but that’s because I was only ever going to be around for a year. (Anyone who has left a country after their VISA expires knows how aggressive and intolerant the agencies can be.) Of course, that cancels out bodies such as the British Council, and complicates my relationship with projects that receive Arts Council funding. I wouldn’t go so far as to reject those (because I am a citizen, who has the power to affect them) but I don’t know if I could accept such opportunities from other countries. Cultural exchange is brilliant, but I think its lasting impact is only felt when done autonomously, without cash or surveillance. It cannot be a space in which state surveillance is lifted for the sole purpose of “proving” that the state is liberal and open to new ideas, when such freedoms are not extended to those outside of the funded project or its own people.

In theory there is nothing stopping me from submitting a script. But two things occurred to me. First, I wondered about the purpose of the talk. It was a room of two hundred, listening to a man say that every season they get upwards of two thousand scripts; of those two hundred make it to the final reading and receive feedback; of those virtually none will be produced by the BBC. Every now and then someone without credits will have their script made. But in general, you must go elsewhere and get credits, then, maybe, possibly, the BBC will hire you. So the purpose of the talk, I suppose, was to tell people that a) their ambitions are likely to be thwarted and b) they have to find other organisations / companies / production teams to begin fulfilling those ambitions anyway. I can see that it is good for a monolith like the BBC to provide tips free of charge, but like all big institutions, it creams off talent that was practically nurtured elsewhere. And this ‘elsewhere’ struggles to get the money and resources to properly compete; if it could, it might nurture a different kind of story.

The second thing that struck me was the nature of the film clips Henry showed. All had male characters at the centre. All had white characters at the centre except two – a clip from Paul Abbot’s State of Play showed a black boy running who was then shot dead, and a clip from Mad Men showed a black waiter being patronised by his boss then mined for folk knowledge by an advertising executive. Henry’s examples of “good” did not involve me in any way. In fact, although I am sure he is a very nice guy, he is the antithesis of who I am and a gatekeeper of the opportunities I’m looking for. I do not believe the days of absolute upfront rejection of an individual based on their non-male/straight/whiteness exists in the same way it once did. However there are still deep aesthetic issues; everyone is required to write in the same way. Actual, genuine creativity (as is appreciated in literary fiction) is not acceptable. The accepted genres have become genres precisely because of how the characters, locations and actions are figured. Characters hitherto unseen on screen do not fit in to those genres. Therefore unusual characters, scenarios and relationships are either poorly / awkwardly squished into familiar conventions (Lip Service) or not screened at all.

The more he talked, the more I thought about Mysterious Object at Noon, and the conversation we’d had about it. I’m a writer, young by industry standards, by no means a great achiever compared to others, and I realise the reason I hardly bother with submitting things to the BBC, Channel 4 etc is because I see no evidence of a change in broadcasting conventions to increase the number and range of voices in the content they produce, and because I see no evidence that my ideas will ever be taken on board. True, there is a trans comedy award running at the moment, with 5k for the winner, and there is a very worthy contest in association with Amnesty International. But how far will the winners of these competitions take their subjects? And to where?

Mysterious Object is excellent because it proposes a different way of constructing a film narrative. Instead of a script, Weerasethakul travels around Thailand asking people to continue a story that has already been started – like the surrealist game the Exquisite Corpse. It’s a very different depiction of Thailand – largely ignored by the Thais – but beautiful to anyone willing to give it some time because it’s an example of ordinary people and a clever idea in aesthetic harmony. One of the big points made in these sort of writers talks is that the audience must be grabbed within the first ten minutes. Obviously this is true for the kind of prime time TV the BBC accountants love, but I see no outreach for high quality work that a sizable minority might enjoy. I am as turned off by non-linear, jump-cut, shaky-cam as the next person, but I am all ears for television that takes me on a different aesthetic journey. I don’t believe I am alone in this, and I don’t believe pursuing this line would result in the alienation of the general public.

Equally, I wonder what would happen if a major broadcaster called out for content that was presented online. Why do iplayer and 4OD have to contain only what was put on TV? Wouldn’t it be more helpful to new writers if there was a serious, consistent avenue for new scripts? Why not something like the pamphlet series run by major publishers, which consistently seek out and produce new voices? Why not have a page that is purely for programmes that will be shown online? Why not take some creative risks with those programmes and, in doing so, develop new audiences?

http://www.afropunk.com/profiles/blogs/brit-n-that-skate-skool-n-all-that

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