#geopolitics or what happens if we expand the definition of humanity

[madtomedgar]

Sometimes new parts of a series are like fanfic in that the older story was about something else, and the new part is about the story. If that makes sense.

[violetsystems]

#personal

I was invited the other day to join a community as a Creative Advisor from a survey I filled out for Adobe.  I made the choice last November to purchase Creative Cloud for an entire year at a discount.  When I worked at an art school I had all those applications free.  Anybody in the arts community will tell you that software is expensive.  I don’t necessarily feel too connected to the local arts community these days.  But being a Creative Advisor basically means I participate in focus groups and offer my opinions in writing.  It’s a not a bad way to stay active as a creator.  I bought a drone basically so I had 4k footage to mess around with in Premiere.  I am a YouTube Creator by definition.  Yesterday after posting a video of the stream there was another survey in the right hand corner.  I cautiously opened it and read through it.  It was an inclusion survey.  YouTube wanted information to help with their community.  The first question was what race I identify as.  I can’t really argue I’m not white.  The next question was if I identified as part of the LGBTQ community.  I don’t so I answered no.  The third question was what gender I identified as.  I said male because I’m cis.  I completed the survey and went on about my business.  A few minutes later another popup asked me how satisfied I was with the YouTube community after all this.  I answered Very Satisfied and closed the window.  I’m also part of a larger community here in Chicago.  This can be drilled down so far that you can find yourself standing in a lonely circle with a thousand fingers pointed back at you.  My immediate neighbors identify.  I wouldn’t know what specifically or why so I don’t ever really pry.  I live on a pretty diverse property when it comes to tenants.  That expands into a pretty diverse neighborhood with a pretty diverse set of issues when it comes to power sharing.  I live the mad max sort of mentality these days.  Think more Fury Road than Road Warrior.  Where he helps out then silently fades away to focus on his own car wreck of a life.  One winter while shoveling snow I discovered somebody had written something in front of one of my neighbor’s doorstep.  It said “gay people live here.”  I processed it, shrugged and shoveled it away.  I couldn’t tell if my landlord was supposed to discover it, if my neighbors actually wrote it, or if it was somebody being hateful.  I made a judgement call on the account of safety and made a mental note of it then made it disappear.  I cared enough to think about it no matter how much this entire process exhausts me.  People join communities for connection.  People seek out authentic communities for safety, pride and respect.  And people in America should be able to do this freely without being exploited, judged, watched, or compared.  Communities overlap and the geopolitics therein get a little tricky.  When you live in a city with so many different influences, cultures, and hang ups the fog of the ideological war muddles up everyone’s intentions.  I think we retreat to the sanctity of our own communities because they understand the narrative and context best.  I’ve been welcomed into many communities that aren’t my own.  But my circle is pretty small these days.  Mostly because for all the care and attention I apply to the concept of community, I’m often left out to fend for myself here in my bachelor Castle of Doom.  Communities do consolidate power for better or for worse.  Just like rich people hoard money and dodge taxes.  Communities have their own cultural queues and signifiers.  Communities in America have increasingly become more like tribes in the economic desert.  Impenetrable communes at war with myopic definitions and hidden rules that are meant to keep people out for resource sake.  So much so that the Road Warrior doesn’t seem like science fiction to me from personal experience.  

It was the great poet Lord Humungus who may have set it best.  Just walk away.  Safe passage in the wasteland they said.  Be your own boss.  Own your sexuality and answer for your horny crimes.  Shit, I don’t even know where to begin when it comes to where I belong in all of this.  For me things have become equally obfuscated and easy to understand at the same time.  I’m more of an anarchist these days than I would like to admit.  I don’t really want to be on Tucker Carlson’s radar.  Simply because everyone is looking for something to label you as so they can pass an easier judgement on you.  People want you to identify so they can fit you into whatever conversational hole they wish to project at you.  I run into my neighbors all the time.  I treat people like people.  Simply because I’ve been treated enough like shit to know I don’t want anyone else to experience that.  I don’t really want revenge.  I want all this nonsense to stop getting in the way of my pursuit of life, liberty and happiness.  And the constant arguing and debate team every step of the way is troubling.  It’s people with a beaten down sense of self confidence proving themselves in the arena of mob rule.  For all the chest beating online on twitter or facebook people are kind of shook in the streets.  It is a winner take all mentality.  And even the more valid sides of the fight have taken to dirty tactics leaving some of us in the middle of an absolute shit show.  Par for the course if you ask me.  There are plenty of opportunities to be the hero these days.  Not many to be acknowledged as one.  You can be you and still support people that think differently.  I had a dream about guns last night.  I don’t own a gun.  That’s not the right choice for a person like me.  It doesn’t mean I can make a sweeping generalization for the rest of America.  Neither do I actually care to.  I’m cis.  I don’t spend my time psychoanalyzing or judging gender or sexuality other than my own biases towards it.  This is to treat people better and learn respectful communication.  Communication is a two way street.  And some communication is blocked, obfuscated or hidden for it’s own protection.  It can also be self serving.  Some of my closest friends are behind infinite onion layers of identities.  Layers of firewalls that I pirouette through like a whirling dervish just to show I still care deeply.  We take the time to show love.  We take the time to understand the obstacles.  And we have patience to understand that we have to sacrifice things sometimes for the sake of change.  Make no mistake the way I see things on my own is fucked.  I am part of a community here on Tumblr.  A much wider community.  There are times when I don’t fit in.  When it’s not about me or you or whoever behind the screen.  It’s what we connect to and how we learn to respect each other as human beings first.  Not as names.  Or fame.  Who we really are behind all of this doesn’t really matter as much as the content and ideas we share.  Community has it’s own memory and it’s own duty to hold things sacred.  Some larger communities do a totally shitty job of understanding the needs of their ideological neighbors.  And passion, pride, and lack of patience can burn bridges more quickly than building them.  There are times when you realize you are part of a community that doesn’t honor your identity at the core.  Sometimes it’s worse.  You find you aren’t welcome in a community for whatever reason.  If you are an abuser this is a safety issue and not really up for argument or discussion.  But sometimes its far less deserving.  And it’s a game of musical chairs to understand where you fit in and where you aren’t welcome.  For me I’m part Swedish and also a minimalist in nature.  Just look at Ikea and my habit of rearranging furniture.  I grew more inward this year in terms of who I trust.  Now it’s just me and a small percentage of screen names that might be owned by the same person or people.  I identify them as my closest friends.  

The thing about community I’ve learned over the years is that it can always be infiltrated.  Trust can always be broken.  We find we don’t belong to the bigger picture because motives are out of place.  We long to just be normal and accepted for that.  It’s exhausting to have to identify every time you walk out the door.  I identify as human.  Mostly I identify as Tim.  Freedom in America is best summed up by a quote by my favorite person in the world.  She’s from China.  She said once she loved New York because it was the only place where she felt free to cry in public without anybody prying into why.  I’m paraphrasing.  But that shit has stuck with me like a knife for years.  That isn’t what America is about right now.  It’s almost like it’s looking for victims.  Looking for signs of weakness to trick into a confidence game.  It’s a setup on every corner.  A prank waiting to happen.  A constant obstacle to your main quest.  And this isn’t what America is about.  At least not the way I live it.  I don’t think I solve the situation with more policing.  I don’t think I solve it by doing anything other than continuing to live free. The challenge here in America is constantly evolving as it is around the world.  America’s idea of free isn’t always well thought out.  It’s riddled with paradoxes.  And yet this is all I really have.  I’ve seen enough people stalking me in the streets with shirts emblazoned with messages.  Freedom isn’t free.  Penetrate the world.  Blue lives matter.  Make seven up yours.  I’ve made statements too and found myself more and more alone.  And then I’ve started to realize geographically what’s worth fighting for.  I’m tied to an address.  That’s the address where the government sends my ballots and rejects my state taxes at.  That’s the address where the utilities are in my name and I pay my rent on time.  Sometimes even a month ahead.  I’m fiscally responsible for once in my life.  I’ve conquered years of societal glue that held me to mediocre and half assed standards.  I’m a diamond in the rough except I’m not really all the rough.  I’ve stood up for people who aren’t like me so much that I feel more isolated and weird every day.  And I learn that sometimes it’s better to shy away from places where you aren’t welcome than to make a scene.  I am stuck in my little hole here.  If the answer were getting out there and networking, I’d ask people to look at my passport.  It’s not good enough for the state to acknowledge as proof of my identity.  But I spent a lot of money going back and forth to Asia trying to do just that.  And I paid off all that debt awhile ago.  I know the world is bigger than me.  And I believe sometimes people think they’ve travelled the world in their computer.  They’re the authority on everything.  And here is the problem with freedom in America.  The authority isn’t always right.  This is why we seek out communities.  For democracy.  For peer review.  To have our narrative understood and respected.  And we need communities to be more about democracy and less about autocratic reactions to a zero sum game.  I think it’s okay to not be part of something you don’t belong.  And I also think it’s okay to respect people’s wishes to seek out where they do.  But we have to learn to live together in America despite of this.  And well this would require us as Americans to really look the beast in the eye.  And doing that alone is scary.  I should know.  I do it every day.  So much so that I’m literally not fucking around with much of anything other than what’s easy enough to read.  Even when it’s easy to read it doesn’t mean it’s done in earnest.  I can only really worry about the things I hold intimate and secret.  The creative culture I’ve salvaged with my bare hands.  I really don’t care if you don’t get who I am.  But I want you to know I care about the world being free.  At least for the people I care about.  If you ever catch yourself crying in public just remember I’m right there over your shoulder cheering you on.  I’ll fight for your right to cry about it and scare off anybody who interferes.  That’s just who I am and nobody will know or even acknowledge me by name.  Sometimes I do feel like a ghost.  I’m not trying to walk through walls people set up for protection.  But I will break down the barriers people put up to keep us from living together.  <3 Tim

[aion-rsa]

In 2020, The Deutschland Series is As Relevant As Ever

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

The final season of the Deutschland spy series begins with an ending. In the opening episode of Deutschland 89, the Berlin Wall falls, giving East German citizens free movement to West Germany and beyond for the first time in decades. What follows in the eight-episode final season is a social study in how different people react when their reality is suddenly and fundamentally altered. In the year 2020, as the world continues to reel from the seismic changes COVID-19 has wrought, it’s an unexpectedly relatable experience.

“Deutschland 89 is really about how people have to reinvent themselves during a crisis,” says Deutschland series co-creator Joerg Winger. “So I think, in that way, it does reflect today, but that was not intentional.”

From the beginning, the Deutschland series—which launched in 2015 with Deutschland 83, continued in 2018 with Deutschland 86, and just concluded with Deutschland 89—has used history as a metaphor for contemporary politics. Because of this and because, as Faulkner famously wrote, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past,” it has never been hard to find topical parallels in the Deutschland story, especially when the world skews unfortunately closer to the historic tensions depicted.

“I still remember when Joerg and I first started working on Deutschland 83, thinking, ‘Maybe we’ll have to remind people of the Cold War. Maybe they won’t remember any of this,’” says co-creator Anna Winger (who also co-created Netflix’s 2020 German-American drama Unorthodox). “And then the tension with Russia began again, and there was this sort of egocentric writer moment where you’re like, ‘Did I write it and make it happen? Why is this happening again?’ … Certainly, we couldn’t have predicted tension with Russia coming back, but I think that the polarization definitely, the idea that you’re on one side or you’re on the other side, and that there is this kind of way in which the world has become divided, we were definitely exploring that.” 

Deutschland 83 follows East German kid Martin Rauch (Jonas Nay) as he is forced by his HVA agent aunt Lenora (Maria Schrader) and his estranged father Walter (Sylvester Groth) to become a spy in West Germany. Using the real-life Able Archer incident (which some historians believe is the closest we’ve come to nuclear war since the Cuban Missile Crisis) as setting, the first season is a fast-paced yet complex cautionary tale of what can happen when we lose track of the bigger picture in favor of political allegiances. 

On a more character-driven level, Deutschland 83 is the story of a young man caught between a desperation to stay alive so he can return home to his ill mother and pregnant girlfriend and a desire to keep the world from erupting into nuclear disaster. Because of this, much of the success of that first season and moving forward relied on the casting of the overwhelmed yet capable Martin. When Nay read the script for the Deutschland 83 pilot, he knew he wanted the part.

“I think that the first episode of the whole series is a masterpiece in throwing you directly into something,” says Nay. “I think, dramaturgy-wise, it’s really brilliant. For me, as a reader, I was so addicted. I immediately wanted to know where it went and I so deeply wanted to play that part of Martin.”

Later, Nay would find out that Anna Winger had his picture on the wall during the writing process, imagining him as Martin, but Nay didn’t know that when he went for the part.

“I hadn’t played something of that genre, or anything comparable to that before,” says Nay. “So I don’t really know where she had the impression from that this could be a part for me, actually. The things I shot before were more like society drama, feature films. It was really, really, really different.”

Joerg Winger says that Nay was always their first choice.

“There was a discussion we had at a later point with the directors in 83, who were thinking, maybe we need someone who’s more of a conventional hero, like a young James Bond kind of actor,” says Joerg Winger. “But I think, for us, it was really important that he has something vulnerable since one of the tweaks of the spy genre in Deutschland 83 is that it’s a spy show combined with a coming-of-age drama, and Jonas has the vulnerability and almost the boyishness and innocence. He’s a very good, solid person. And that translates also, I think, into his performance.” 

The initial idea for the series came from Joerg Winger’s own military service experience during the 80s as a conscripted Bundeswehr soldier in West Germany, intercepting messages from Russian troops in the German Democratic Republic. But, for many people watching the series who were born after 89, a divided Germany may be hard to imagine.

“With young people, it’s almost like what you learn in school ends with World War II, and then you never really got to the Cold War,” says Anna Winger. “So, for a lot of young people, at least in Germany, they would say to us, ‘This is like science fiction.’ It’s like, ‘Imagine a world, and there’s a wall that goes down the middle of Berlin, and West Berlin is cut off from supplies, and you can’t get across it.’ And you know, if you were to describe all that to anyone who was born in Berlin since 1989, it would sound absurd. It’s like, ‘And the dinosaurs roamed the earth.’ It’s very crazy to them. So, in a funny way, I’ve always thought the show is a little bit like the past as science fiction.”

Nay, who was born in 1990, days before the reunification of Germany, is one of those people.

“I think there’s actually a lot that changed my awareness of close German history, in particular the 80s, of course,” says Nay. “I remember that when I read the first series, the first question that came to my mind was: ‘Were we really so close to a nuclear war? Would anybody have told me if it was so close? Isn’t that crazy that nobody told me before? Is it real or is it just made up, to increase attention?’ I was like, ‘OK, it seems a little odd to me that we were close before to a nuclear war and I never heard that before.’ I’m really curious now what is going on behind closed walls, what I don’t know about nowadays.”

While all three seasons of the Deutschland series explores many of the same themes, the three-year time jump built into the fabric of the show means each season gets a soft narrative reset for its characters and setting. When asked about the choice to have three-year time jumps, Joerg Winger said it was somewhat incidental. Because of Able Archer and some of the Neue Deutsche Welle music circa 1983, the Wingers knew they wanted to start their story in 1983. They also knew that they wanted to do a trilogy and that it should end in 1989, with the fall of the Berlin Wall. Because of this, of the three settings, 1986 is the most random.

“I think it’s a little bit like the Buddhist wisdom: wherever you dig, if you dig for long enough, you’ll find something,” says Joerg Winger of the 1986 setting. “We were a little bit nervous about the 86 question. When we started 86, we were like, ‘OK, so what are we going to find in ’86?’ But then there’s just so much.”

When we catch back up with Martin in Deutschland 86, he has been exiled from East Germany for three years, living in Angola where he teaches English at an orphanage. While the other two seasons in the story keep their focus relatively tight on East and West Germany, Deutschland 86 expands its Cold War scope to visit places like Libya and Paris, where geopolitical tensions are manifesting in different ways but are still part of the same global story.

“We started writing 86 the day after the Trump election,” says Anna Winger, “and I remember feeling really focused on looking at capitalism, because the story of 86 is kind of about the capitalist core of the engine that kept the communist regime going. And you see all these guys who are holding on to what they’ve managed to build at all costs, even though it’s all really coming apart.”

The Deutschland storyline comes to fruition in Deutschland 89. Three years following the events of Deutschland 86, the East German government is in even more dire straits. They are out of money, and the people are protesting. The final season is set against the backdrop of the collapse of the East German government.

“People didn’t know what was going to happen for a few months, and that is a very unusual situation,” says Anna Winger of the time period. “And also, for all these spies, they were really good spies, and suddenly, they had no country, the goals were completely unclear, and they were in the same place. The crazy thing about people in Berlin who live on the East side is they haven’t gone anywhere, but everything else has changed. It’s as if their country completely changed, and they’re still living on the same piece of earth, and that’s wild.”

The Deutschland series may explore East German life in the 1980s at different stages of Communist collapse, but the parallels to the experience of living in today’s crumbling capitalism are striking.

“I think as we came towards the end of the arc of the trilogy, certainly we got deeper and deeper into exploring late-stage capitalism and how that’s the patriarchy holding onto power in any sort of regime,” says Anna Winger. “We’re writing a show about late-stage communism or socialism, but it still has a lot of parallels to late-stage capitalism.”

In the midst of it all, is Martin Rauch, an audience surrogate for an everyday person just trying to live a good life with the people he loves amidst political and social turmoil. By Deutschland 89, Martin is understandably much more jaded than his 83-era self, but he has also somehow held onto his humanity.

“What Anna and Joerg always told me was that when they created Martin and how they wanted him to succeed, he should always have this moral compass that he’s following,” says Nay. “In a big contrast to all the people around him, like [his aunt] Lenora or [his father] Schweppenstette, that they are following rules given from somebody else or they’re following their idealism, their socialist idea. Martin had the chance of getting a pretty uncolored picture of East and West, of both the states and both the sides. He had to find his own [way].”

Martin’s ability to hold onto his humanity, to maintain some kind of admirable moral compass despite all of the things he has been through, is where much of the optimism in the Deutschland series ultimately lies. 

“I always saw it like Martin being in the middle and people from left and right trying to pull him in directions and he’s always trying to see or weigh out which is best for him and also for people around him,” says Nay. “He’s like, yeah, it’s a hero thing I guess. I don’t know. Yeah, Joerg and Anna wanted Martin to keep that. So it was kind of a challenge to, of course, let Martin grow up and let him harden and let him be very, very suspicious, more and more, not trusting anybody because what he learns is that, if he trusts somebody, he’s going to be betrayed so he has to keep it in himself. That is the development that he goes through through all the seasons. Then, given this little lovable touch of hero-ness and moral compass, not losing that. It was kind of a balance act I would say. I gave my very best.”

Ultimately, the Deutschland series ends as it told its story: thoughtfully, and with a fundamental empathy that doesn’t guarantee a happy ending but rather something better. The possibility of holding onto one’s humanity through pain and suffering and amongst forces so much larger than any one person. In 2020, that may be the flavor of happy ending we need most of all.

“In 89, the shit’s hit the fan, and it’s really over, and people are scrambling to redefine themselves,” says Anna Winger. “But I suppose, if there’s a message to the whole thing, it’s that there are possibilities in chaos. And this is truly something I think we can learn from Germany: is that maybe there’s the possibility of reinvention that is positive, that there’s hope in reinvention, and that maybe when things come apart, there’s a chance for something good to come out of it.”

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

The entirety of the Deutschland series is now available to watch on Hulu.

The post In 2020, The Deutschland Series is As Relevant As Ever appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/2JLtG55

[carnivaloftherandom]

Art and consequences

Art is a mirror. Art is a lingua franca of our psychosocial selves, both individually and collectively. It can be aspiration or illustration, and it can also be invitation or incitement. What it cannot be, is neutral. All art comes from a point of view, it is inherently subjective (everything is, but if you haven’t familiarized yourself with inherent/implicit bias yet, you have Google,) and it can, in the best and worst ways, be dangerous.

Before anyone opens their mouths to cry, “Freedom of speech/expression,” I’m not saying people CAN’T make difficult art, or that anyone is excluded from tackling any subject. What I’m saying is: we need to stop thinking that just because we CAN, that we have the right to. Just because we can, doesn’t mean we should.

Alternative history, in fiction, is often predicated on specific points that are contentious in our contemporary lives. The big, “What if’s?” reduced to, “The Nazis won,” “The Conferedacy won,” “JFK weren’t assassinated,” and in America, yes, these are extraordinarily powerful cultural and historical moments, but there’s an inherent laziness to those questions that represents both a denial of our contemporary reality, and which almost always denies the voices of those marginalized by society who have also been the TARGETS of extreme violence, by the history that already exists.

Art can absolutely represent a danger to the status quo, but that danger is not singular in focus. The status quo may be a power structure which is abusive, or the fragile gains already made towards disrupting it. If we’re producing fictions which posit the victory of what the majority collectively accepts as evil (Hitler, the Holocaust, the Civil War, Slavery, et al,) or the eliminating an evil event, (the assassinations of JFK, MLK, RFK, etc,) we’re still, very often simply playing pretend in ways that don’t require us to truly confront either the roots of that evil or the fact that even avoiding what we view as turning points in our history, doesn’t change who we are now, nearly enough. Most of Alternative History in fiction, is a pulled punch.

A fictional lens of “Alternative History,” also ignores that we not only live in an era of, “Alternative facts,” right NOW, it completely elides that what we even call, “History,” is an extensively Bowdlerized, sanitized, often US or European-centric version of things, to begin with. The daily gaslighting of the current US administration, the convenient deletion of documentary evidence from the digital sphere, the competition for control of the narrative, these are neither new tactics nor do they lend credence to the assertion that fictions can be illustrative to the masses in a productive way, even with the best intentions. Which leaves me wondering why we don’t see more fictions that subvert what we think we know about history to begin with. The answer of course, is that those subversions would lead to questions which make us uncomfortable. If we looked at history and said, “What if people we think of as Other, were instead dominant, or even just important within the narrative as we know it, what does that look like?” Having non-white people or women or people with disabilities or Queer folks as central figures might be a little too dangerous to the power of the status quo. We’re waging daily battles for what is and isn’t true in the Now, and we’re not prepared to accept that everything we know and accept as true, might be wrong.

Within 24 hours, I witnessed HBO announce Confederate and a piece of DC Comics’ licensed Junior’s apparel bearing the Superfamily symbol in the colors of the Confederate Battle Flag, in a SW Pennsylvania Walmart. These things are not unrelated, and that is terrifying. Our present is the history of the future, and that present is full of a small, but incredibly vocal and violent group of people who want to be affirmed in being “Patriots,” who want a, “Race war,” who think that there’s no disconnect between, “Truth, Justice, and the American Way,” and the colors of an army who committed treason and sedition, and who LOST their bid to secede in order to preserve the enslavement of human beings to perpetuate their wealth and economic dominance. A piece of fiction that shows a contemporary or near future where they won, or at least won ENOUGH, not only validates their ideology but empowers it with the possibility that if it were fought again, they could indeed win, isn’t a deterrent at all. This, on top of the year and change of, “What if Captain America was a Nazi all along,” (spare me the party line on “Hydra aren’t Nazis,” we’re really not going to have that debate and I started reading comics in 1977, you are not in any way equipped to have that debate WITH ME, or my MOM who started reading comics in the 1950s. Shoo.)

I often write about the power of social inhibitors and the danger of social disinhibition. Media is a powerful vehicle for ideas, art is a powerful vehicle for ideas. Studies of how story can expand our capacity for empathy and alter our thinking and behaviors in daily life, back me up on this. When we internalize concepts, good or ill, they stick. If we collectively decide that we accept/don’t accept things, we exert pressure to conform. Sometimes we enact laws to that effect (the 13th amendment, with its infamous loophole, is a prime example of both the good/ill. Slavery is not acceptable, but punishment for a crime voids that.)

Sometimes, we simply exert gradual social pressures (It’s not acceptable for Non-Black people to use the N-word, and we respond to it negatively in most contexts,) which evolve over time, but where consequences are not legally enforced. It’s not illegal to be a bigot, outside of narrow definitions, but you may be ostracized for it. When that threat of being socially shunned disappears, as we’ve seen in the last couple of years, behavior changes. When a candidate/officeholder encourages bigotry, people become more willing to express their own bigotry without fear of consequence. We’ve had a rise in hate crimes, online abuse has skyrocketed, and policies which enable bigotry are being enacted daily.

Art is a mirror. It is a choice whether that mirror reflects a reality that validates our worst impulses or our better angels. Every single person who creates, has to make a choice about what they’re trying to say and how they say it, and most especially, whether THEY are the right person to say it. Once it is made and out in the world, you can’t take it back. That’s something that ought to give creators pause, when engaging in complex ideas: You can’t take it back, and you will be held responsible. It doesn’t mean don’t engage in those ideas, it means that if you think your intent and execution will be crystal clear, you’d damn well better talk it through with the people who will pay the price for it, if you’re not.

Art has consequences.

And with regard to the over reliance on genocidal history for alternative exploration, a personal note: it’s really easy to tackle those periods with the, “What if they won?” scenario. The conflicts are built-in. If you’re writing alt-history, you might consider what happens if these massive evils never existed at all. For example, What If:

- the transatlantic slave trade never happened

- the Roman Empire did not fall under the rule of despots. (Including the Roman Province in Africa)

-The Irish Potato Famine never happened

-The Black Plague never happened

-The Conquistadors were repelled by the Indigenous peoples.

-Columbus was lost at sea

-The Inquisition never happened

If you can’t look at the ripple effect of those events and work out the ways in which the world power balance, economic, social, religious, and scientific discovery shifts, along with the new conflicts that would arise on a geopolitical axis with their absence, perhaps you should rethink your qualifications to write alternative history at all because world-building is bigger than one thing.

*if you find any of my writing valuable in any way, the tip jar is: PayPal.me/kristenmchugh22

[drtanstravels]

In my last post we had spent a few nights in Vienna, Austria as Anna was a guest of Bayer at the 2018 Euretina Congress. We had always planned to have a holiday after the conference because it is kind of pointless to fly halfway around the world and not really see anything. Initially, we had decided on Poland because neither of us had been there before, but those plans soon changed when it became apparent that one of Bayer’s stipulations was that we fly with Turkish Airlines, with the flights to and from Vienna involving a layover in Istanbul, Turkey. Neither of us had been to Turkey either, but I went to university with a few Turkish people who were always saying how nice it was over there, an opinion echoed by a few other friends we know that have been, as well as a former student of mine who is now a pilot for Turkish Airlines. Turkey also often gets a bit of bad press, mainly due to what’s happening at the Syrian border, but we  wouldn’t be heading in that direction so we figured we had nothing to worry about. Instead, we would be spending one night in Istanbul, two nights looking through caves and underground cities, as well as exploring rock features in Cappadocia, another two nights checking out ancient ruins and salt mines around Izmir, then a final night back in Istanbul before flying back to Singapore. Let’s take a look back at that first leg of our Turkish adventure, our time spent exploring Istanbul, but be forewarned; a lot of this post — and the following posts from our Turkish holiday — may seem a bit like a history lesson, but that’s what happens when you go on personal guided tours through ancient cities.

Monday, September 24, 2018 By the time we had flown out from Vienna, landed in Istanbul, collected our luggage, and  arrived at the hotel, it was about 8:30pm. That didn’t really seem to be a problem, however, as people tend to do things late around here. A little bit of background information about Istanbul, a city we didn’t really know a whole lot about:

Istanbul, historically known as Byzantium and Constantinople, is the most populous city in Turkey and the country’s economic, cultural, and historic center. Istanbul is a transcontinental city in Eurasia, straddling the Bosporus strait (which separates Europe and Asia) between the Sea of Marmara and the Black Sea. Its commercial and historical center lies on the European side and about a third of its population lives on the Asian side. The city is the administrative center of the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality (coterminous with Istanbul Province), both hosting a population of around 15 million residents. Istanbul is one of the world’s most populous cities and ranks as the world’s 4th-largest city proper and the largest European city. Istanbul is viewed as a bridge between the East and West.

Founded under the name of Byzantion (Βυζάντιον) on the Sarayburnu promontory around 660 BCE, the city grew in size and influence, having become one of the most important cities in history. After its reestablishment as Constantinople in 330 CE, it served as an imperial capital for almost 16 centuries, during the Roman/Byzantine (330–1204 and 1261–1453), the Latin (1204–1261), and the Ottoman (1453–1922) empires. It was instrumental in the advancement of Christianity during Roman and Byzantine times, before the Ottomans conquered the city in 1453 CE and transformed it into an Islamic stronghold and the seat of the Ottoman Caliphate.

Istanbul’s strategic position on the historic Silk Road, rail networks to Europe and the Middle East, and the only sea route between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean have produced a cosmopolitan populace. While Ankara was chosen instead as the new Turkish capital after the Turkish War of Independence, the city has maintained its prominence in geopolitical and cultural affairs. The population of the city has increased tenfold since the 1950s, as migrants from across Anatolia have moved in and city limits have expanded to accommodate them. Arts, music, film, and cultural festivals were established towards the end of the 20th century and continue to be hosted by the city today. Infrastructure improvements have produced a complex transportation network in the city.

Sounds pretty cool to me so we checked into our hotel, Fer, took the bags up to the room, and then hit the town. The hotel was in a great spot, making it easy to just wander around the city, checking out the shops, markets, bars, and restaurants. We strolled past some mosques, the Column of Constantine, an old cemetery, and a lot of other ancient buildings, but they were all things we would be spending the bulk of the following day taking in on a guided tour. Tonight was going to be all about eating and drinking and one thing that didn’t even cross my mind until that point was trying Turkish delight, most likely because I hated it as a child. When you grow up in rural Australia, you aren’t exposed to many authentic international foods, but more to international-inspired Australian food — Dim sims, anyone? Quite often boxes of assorted cream chocolates such as Cadbury Milk Tray had a disgusting Turkish Delight flavoured one that was just awful, but fortunately for the sake of humanity, Milk Tray discontinued the Turkish Delight flavour, renaming it Exotic Delight in 2013 and then replacing it altogether in 2015 with the far more palatable Apple Crunch. Anyway, my family generally only bought these types of chocolates at Christmas or on a special Family Night where we rented a video and spent Saturday night together, but if you were too engrossed in the movie and weren’t reading the key to the chocolates, you could absentmindedly grab that Turkish Delight one and your night was instantly ruined, even if you had chosen the movie. This is coming from someone who once ate a handful of compost as a dare, I’m not a fussy eater, but I hated what I thought was Turkish delight so I was skeptical when we stumbled upon Hafiz Mustafa, makers of what are considered the best Turkish delights available. We went inside the store, tried some of the samples and it was, well, delightful! Turkish delight in Turkey is absolutely delicious; instead of the pinkish-coloured bitter snot coated in overly sweet chocolate that I was accustomed to, traditional Turkish delight is a gel made of starch and sugar, sometimes coating dried fruit or nuts and then dusted with icing sugar, an ancient treat that became the inspiration for the modern jellybean. The flavours available are really interesting too, such as rosewater or mandarin. We ordered a bunch of different Turkish delight and cake, some rose tea, and kicked back for a bit before buying some more to take away and hit the street again. Some scenes up until that point:

Looking down next to the elevator from outside our hotel room in Hotel Fer

Not sure who lives in there

Moseying into town

A giant mosque

And another

Passing an old cemetery

Outside the Atik Ali Pasha Mosque Complex

Just spotted Hafiz Mustafa

Anna’s happy to be here

Havin’ tea

Some of the Turkish delight available

More of their selection

The bag ours came in. Definitely need to buy a fez.

After a few cups of tea and plenty of Turkish delight, we headed back out to look at the shops in the area, as well as find somewhere to eat, but we accidentally found ourselves in a market area, looking at jewellery. Anna almost has a sixth sense when it comes to sourcing out rings when we’re overseas so it came as no surprise that she stumbled upon Sûfî, a small store that sold a lot of traditional handmade Turkish items, in particular one-off rings. The owner was a really funny, albeit extremely sarcastic guy, and Anna could’ve spent a small fortune in there, but she managed to limit herself to two really cool rings that she’ll never be able to find anywhere else. That’s how she justifies it to herself, anyway.

Next on the agenda was the main reason we had come out — Dinner. Anna managed to find an area of bars and restaurants so we strolled past the mosques, statues, sculptures, and fountains that we’d see in more detail the next day and decided where to hunker down for the night for a bite to eat and a few drinks. The entire street was bars and restaurants so we chose one that looked good, Duvares Cafe, and pulled up a seat. Most people think of Turkish food as being a lot of bread, ground meat, and cheese, and this is generally true, but because Istanbul is on the coast, there is some really good seafood there too. We ordered some prawns, beef and eggplant, and a few other dishes but then our waiter, always the showman, brought over a table with a fire on it and a large clay vase covered in foil. He then put the vase in the fire and started banging on the table with his cutlery while an older man with a drum came over and started singing. When the dish was ready, he cracked the bottom off the vase and poured a pretty special looking stew into a bowl for the diner who had ordered it. I think I’ll be ordering this at some stage during our time in Turkey:

We sat there, eating our food while still being a little envious of those who got the stew and the old guy singing and playing the drum continued to hang around our table, doing his thing. He was obviously working for tips, however, we hadn’t had a chance to get any Turkish lira, the local currency, out so we only had euros. Not to worry, the lira was in some serious trouble and still is to this date so it would probably be advantageous for him to receive euros, he could just take them to a money changer and cash in, but he still didn’t look particularly happy. We finished our dinner and it turned out that there was a shisha bar just down the road called Just Bar so we went in there and ordered an apple shisha. In the past we had ordered double-apple, but it had tasted like aniseed, something both of us can’t stand, but a guy who overheard us at the next table told us that regular apple doesn’t taste that way and he turned out to be correct. We sat around the rest of the night drinking, smoking our shisha, eating Turkish delight, and listening to some great music, Anna deciding the Turkish delights looked like the coals on the shisha. Our waiter from Duvares spotted her holding a piece out and cheekily came over, snatched it, and ate it, telling us that the ones from Hafiz Mustafa have always been his favourite. A bit of what we saw that evening in Istanbul:

We’d be doing a tour of this, The Blue Mosque, the following day as well

Making our way down into the market area

Heading to the bar and restaurant district

Now walking to another part of town

Anna with the owner in front of Sûfî, where she could’ve almost singlehandedly fixed Turkey’s economic crisis just by buying rings

Still going

There were some good choices for places to eat on this street

Post dinner drinks and shisha

Anna getting hungry

The drummer who couldn’t appreciate a stronger currency

In Duvares Cafe

Turkish delight does look like the coal, I guess

Hanging with my woman

It looks like they sell a fair bit of that stew

A closeup of the German Fountain when we were going back to the hotel

A cool building we passed on our way home

Tuesday, September 25, 2018 We managed to get up at around 8:30am, despite returning to the hotel only seven hours earlier and our private tour guide was waiting for us in the lobby of our hotel, keen to show us around town, however, she said there was going to be a lot of walking so she suggested we grab some of the free breakfast upstairs first. Once we had had our fill of food and coffee it was time to hit the road. When taking private tours like this around any city, you are absolutely inundated with information and it becomes a little difficult to recall exact details about locations so for this post, as well as subsequent posts from this holiday, I figure the best approach is to get the details about the location from Wikipedia and then add any personal stories from that leg of the tour, followed by some photos (provided I was allowed to take them).

We walked from the hotel, past some interesting buildings we’d seen on our way into the city the previous night, and then we were supposed to begin the tour by seeing Topkapi Palace, which was used by the Ottoman Sultans from the 15th to 19th centuries, taking in what is supposed to be an impressive collection of priceless jewels, crystal, silver and porcelain, robes worn by the sultans, and relics of the prophet Mohammed while we were there. We could even pay a little extra to enter the palace’s Harem, however, Topkapi Palace isn’t open on Tuesdays. Another chapter in the never-ending account that is the T-Factor? Perhaps, but instead our first stop for the day was Hagia Sophia and it definitely wasn’t a bad alternative:

Hagia Sophia is the former Greek Orthodox Christian patriarchal cathedral, later an Ottoman imperial mosque and now a museum (Ayasofya Müzesi) in Istanbul, Turkey. Built in 537 AD at the beginning of the Middle Ages, it was famous in particular for its massive dome. It was the world’s largest building and an engineering marvel of its time. It is considered the epitome of Byzantine architecture and is said to have “changed the history of architecture”.

From the date of its construction in 537 until 1453, it served as an Eastern Orthodox cathedral and the seat of the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, except between 1204 and 1261, when it was converted by the Fourth Crusaders to a Roman Catholic cathedral under the Latin Empire. The building was later converted into an Ottoman mosque from 29 May 1453 until 1931. It was then secularized and opened as a museum on 1 February 1935. It remained the world’s largest cathedral for nearly a thousand years, until Seville Cathedral was completed in 1520.

In 1453, Constantinople was conquered by the Ottoman Empire under Mehmed the Conqueror, who ordered this main church of Orthodox Christianity converted into a mosque. Although some parts of the city of Constantinople were falling into disrepair, the cathedral was maintained with an amount of money set aside for this purpose. Nevertheless, the Christian cathedral made a strong impression on the new Ottoman rulers and they decided to convert it into a mosque. The bells, altar, iconostasis, and other relics were destroyed and the mosaics depicting Jesus, his Mother Mary, Christian saints, and angels were also destroyed or plastered over. Islamic features—such as the mihrab (a niche in the wall indicating the direction toward Mecca, for prayer), minbar (pulpit), and four minarets—were added. It remained a mosque until 1931 when it was closed to the public for four years. It was re-opened in 1935 as a museum by the Republic of Turkey. Hagia Sophia was, as of 2014, the second-most visited museum in Turkey, attracting almost 3.3 million visitors annually. According to data released by the Turkish Culture and Tourism Ministry, Hagia Sophia was Turkey’s most visited tourist attraction in 2015.

Very few buildings can claim to have been both a Catholic cathedral and a mosque in its history, therefore it is understandable why so many people want to see this place so our guide got the tickets for us and we were inside Hagia Sophia. Fortunately we got there early so it wasn’t too crowded, we could check out all of the mosaics and domes unobstructed. After we had strolled around at ground level for a while and taken in the sights, we were led up a slippery, narrow corridor that would take us to the upper gallery, allowing us to look out over the floor of the museum, as well as over the coast outside. Once back down, we looked through some of the outdoor ruins before cutting back through to exit and moving on to the next stop of our tour. A look around Hagia Sophia:

Standing in front of Hagia Sophia

A cool little building we saw en route

The entrance to Topkopi Palace

Fountain (Şadırvan) for ritual ablutions

A small portion of ceiling

Had to wait until almost everyone had moved on to get this shot

Imperial gate mosaic (late 9th or early 10th century)

Panoramic shot once inside

A minbar, the pulpit where the imam delivers his sermon

Apse mosaic of the Virgin and Child (9th century) above the mihrab

Columns made of green Thessalian stone

A golden gate

Taking a slippery path upstairs

The ceiling in the upper gallery

Looking from the upper gallery

Panoramic shot from the upper gallery

The marble door

The Deësis mosaic (c. 1261)

The Comnenus mosaic (c. 1122)

The Empress Zoe mosaic (c. 11th century)

Anna in the slippery hall

Remains from the second Hagia Sophia

More remains from the second Hagia Sophia

Another part of ceiling

Southwestern entrance mosaic (c. 10th-11th century)

Now it was on to the next stop on the tour, the Sultan Ahmed Mosque, also known as the Blue Mosque due to its interior being decorated with 20,000 iznik tiles. Anyhow, this is what we would be occupying once we eventually entered the Sultan Ahmed Mosque:

The Sultan Ahmet Mosque is a historic mosque located in Istanbul, Turkey. A popular tourist site, the Sultan Ahmed Mosque continues to function as a mosque today; men still kneel in prayer on the mosque’s lush red carpet after the call to prayer. The Blue Mosque, as it is popularly known, was constructed between 1609 and 1616 during the rule of Ahmed I. Its Külliye contains Ahmed’s tomb, a madrasah and a hospice. Hand-painted blue tiles adorn the mosque’s interior walls, and at night the mosque is bathed in blue as lights frame the mosque’s five main domes, six minarets and eight secondary domes.

The Sultan Ahmed Mosque has five main domes, six minarets, and eight secondary domes. The design is the culmination of two centuries of Ottoman mosque development. It incorporates some Byzantine Christian elements of the neighboring Hagia Sophia with traditional Islamic architecture and is considered to be the last great mosque of the classical period. The architect, Sedefkâr Mehmed Ağa, synthesized the ideas of his master Sinan, aiming for overwhelming size, majesty and splendour. It has a forecourt and special area for ablution. In the middle it has a big fountain. On the upper side it has a big chain. The upper area is made up of 20000 ceramic tiles each having 60 tulip designs. In the lower area it has 200 stained glass windows.

Getting into this mosque seemed like it would be no easy feat, not because we aren’t Muslim, but because the line to enter was enormous. This would also be a time when we would discover that our tour guide, a local woman in her mid-twenties who was doing her master’s degree in Ancient History, could be exceptionally fierce! There were people trying to cut the queue, either by pretending that they didn’t realise that the hundreds of people lined up in front of them were also waiting to enter, a technique quite often adopted by members of foreign, particularly Chinese, tour groups visiting popular tourist attractions around the world, or locals spotting a friend further up the line, going up to chat to them briefly, and then taking the spot behind them in the queue. Our guide wasn’t buying this from anybody — She approached anyone who appeared to be cutting the queue and screamed at them in English or Turkish about what the rules were, that they were not special and the rules applied to them as well, and how one should conduct oneself in a crowded public environment. If they didn’t speak Turkish or English, she just kept pointing at their ticket and then to the back of the line with an extremely intimidating look on her face until they walked off with their tail between their legs and joined the end of the line. She was doing a better job than the actual security burdened with the task of stopping people cutting in line and in the process of doing so, she also managed to find an entrance specifically for groups of four or less people, allowing us to cut the queue. When we got to enter, we were required to take our shoes off, as is the case upon entering any mosque around the world, however, many people fear losing their shoes or someone else taking the wrong pair — I used to work opposite a mosque in Singapore when I was teaching and I remember going to get something for lunch one Friday, the Muslim holy day, and there were a pair of sandals among all of the other shoes out the front that had been fastened together with a bike lock! The staff at the Blue Mosque had already addressed this dilemma by providing everyone who entered with a bag in which to carry their shoes. We obliged and carried our sneakers in the bag, but security were getting annoyed with a woman behind us who happened to be from one of the aforementioned tour groups; apparently she had asked for an extra bag and then just tied them over her shoes while she was still wearing them, trying to justify not needing to take off her shoes due to them being covered. It just doesn’t work that way. The Sultan Ahmed Mosque was beautiful inside, but there were areas where you weren’t allowed to take pictures due to the camera flash potentially damaging some of the artwork, our guide loudly informing anyone who tried to discretely snap a shot of this fact. The photos we could take may not show the true detail of the thousands upon thousands of tiles inside, or the queue we had to conquer in order to see them, but they should give you the gist:

In the courtyard, a portion of the queue in front of us wrapping behind a fountain, with a minaret in the background

The line behind us

More of the line behind us as we were about to enter

Taking in some of the tiles and windows

Another angle

An area of preserved ceiling

The edge of the prayer area

A look at one of the domes

A small portion of the prayer floor

Looking back toward the entrance

Next on our tour was the Hippodrome, an area we had walked through several times the previous night, including taking photos of the German Fountain, but knew nothing about. Well, this is what the Hippodrome is:

The Hippodrome of Constantinople was a circus that was the sporting and social centre of Constantinople, capital of the Byzantine Empire. Today it is a square named Sultanahmet Meydanı (Sultan Ahmet Square) in the Turkish city of Istanbul, with a few fragments of the original structure surviving.

The word hippodrome comes from the Greek hippos (ἵππος), horse, and dromos (δρόμος), path or way. For this reason, it is sometimes also called Atmeydanı (“Horse Square”) in Turkish. Horse racing and chariot racing were popular pastimes in the ancient world and hippodromes were common features of Greek cities in the Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine era.

Now obviously we weren’t here for horse racing, but we found the answers to the questions we had about the structures we had seen the night before. Two of the first structures we encountered that were located close together in the Hippodrome were the Serpent Column and the Walled Obelisk. First, the Serpent Column:

To raise the image of his new capital, Constantine and his successors, especially Theodosius the Great, brought works of art from all over the empire to adorn it. The monuments were set up in the middle of the Hippodrome, the spina. Among these was the Tripod of Plataea, now known as the Serpent Column, cast to celebrate the victory of the Greeks over the Persians during the Persian Wars in the 5th century BC. Constantine ordered the Tripod to be moved from the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, and set in middle of the Hippodrome. The top was adorned with a golden bowl supported by three serpent heads, although it appears that this was never brought to Constantinople. The serpent heads and top third of the column were destroyed in 1700. Parts of the heads were recovered and are displayed at the Istanbul Archaeology Museum. All that remains of the Delphi Tripod today is the base, known as the “Serpentine Column”.

Our guide seemed more than a little bitter when she told us that another one of the serpent heads from the eight-metre high (26′) column is actually in the British Museum. Just behind the Serpent Column was the slightly less interesting Walled Obelisk:

In the 10th century the Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus built another obelisk at the other end of the Hippodrome. It was originally covered with gilded bronze plaques, but they were sacked by Latin troops in the Fourth Crusade. The stone core of this monument also survives, known as the Walled Obelisk.

We had taken a few photographs of both of these monuments at night and their appearance both in the light and the darkness is quite cool so here’s how we saw them on both occasions:

The Walled Obelisk in front of Hagia Sophia at night

The Serpent Column from a distance in the moonlight

Looking down into the up-lit remains of the Serpent Column

The Walled Obelisk from a different angle

The Serpent Column and the Walled Obelisk in the daylight

Without the lights

At the other end of the Hippodrome was the Obelisk of Thutmose III, also known as the Obelisk of Theodosius, which is in incredible condition when you consider its age:

The Obelisk of Theodosius is the Ancient Egyptian obelisk of Pharaoh Thutmose III re-erected in the Hippodrome of Constantinople by the Roman emperor Theodosius I in the 4th century AD.

The Obelisk of Theodosius is of red granite from Aswan and was originally 30m tall, like the Lateran Obelisk. The lower part was damaged in antiquity, probably during its transport or re-erection, and so the obelisk is today only 18.54m (or 19.6m) high, or 25.6m if the base is included. Between the four corners of the obelisk and the pedestal are four bronze cubes, used in its transportation and re-erection.

Each of its four faces has a single central column of inscription, celebrating Thutmose III’s victory over the Mitanni which took place on the banks of the Euphrates in about 1450 BC.

The marble pedestal had bas-reliefs dating to the time of the obelisk’s re-erection in Constantinople. On one face Theodosius I is shown offering the crown of victory to the winner in the chariot races, framed between arches and Corinthian columns, with happy spectators, musicians and dancers assisting in the ceremony. In the bottom right of this scene is the water organ of Ctesibius and on the left another instrument.

Some parts of the marble base aren’t original as is visible in these pictures, but I managed to snap a photograph of both the obelisk and a closeup of the pedistal from each angle:

Theodosius I offers laurels of victory (east face). Translation: “Though formerly I opposed resistance, I was ordered to obey the serene masters and to carry their palm, once the tyrants had been overcome. All things yield to Theodosius and to his everlasting descendants. This is true of me too – I was mastered and overcome in three times ten days and raised towards the upper air, under governor Proculus.”

The emperor and his court (north face)

Submission of the barbarians (west face). Translation: “This column with four sides which lay on the earth, only the emperor Theodosius dared to lift again its burden; Proclos was invited to execute his order; and this great column stood up in 32 days.”

The emperor and his court (south face)

We had one final stop on our tour before we had the rest of the day to ourselves; we were going to go underground and walk around the Yerebatan Underground Cistern, better known as the Basilica Cistern:

The Basilica Cistern is the largest of several hundred ancient cisterns that lie beneath the city of Istanbul, Turkey. The cistern, located 150 metres (490 ft) southwest of the Hagia Sophia on the historical peninsula of Sarayburnu, was built in the 6th century during the reign of Byzantine Emperor Justinian I.

Ancient texts indicated that the basilica contained gardens, surrounded by a colonnade and facing the Hagia Sophia. According to ancient historians, Emperor Constantine built a structure that was later rebuilt and enlarged by Emperor Justinian after the Nika riots of 532, which devastated the city.

Historical texts claim that 7,000 slaves were involved in the construction of the cistern.

This cathedral-size cistern is an underground chamber approximately 138 metres (453 ft) by 65 metres (213 ft) – about 9,800 square metres (105,000 sq ft) in area – capable of holding 80,000 cubic metres (2,800,000 cu ft) of water. The ceiling is supported by a forest of 336 marble columns, each 9 metres (30 ft) high, arranged in 12 rows of 28 columns each spaced 5 metres (16 ft) apart.

When we descended the 52 stone steps to enter the cistern, I had a strange feeling that I had seen this place before and I’d soon know the reason; our guide told us that the cistern was a location in From Russia with Love, the 1963 James Bond flick. I guess that was where I recognised it from. It might’ve been a bit damp down there, but it was incredible to see and impossible to comprehend how it was built. I especially appreciated the Medusa column bases:

Located in the northwest corner of the cistern, the bases of two columns reuse blocks carved with the visage of Medusa. The origin of the two heads is unknown, though it is thought that the heads were brought to the cistern after being removed from a building of the late Roman period. There is no written evidence that suggests they were used as column pedestals previously. Tradition has it that the blocks are oriented sideways and inverted in order to negate the power of the Gorgons’ gaze; however, it is widely thought that one was placed sideways only to be the proper size to support the column. The upside-down Medusa was placed that way specifically because she would be the same height right side up.

Add to this the Hen’s Eye column, a column decorated with the Turkish all-seeing eye, something you encounter everywhere in Turkey in order to ward off bad luck, and our little wander around underground capped off a great end to the day’s fascinating, yet exhausting, history lesson:

Upon entry of the Cistern

From another angle

A random square column for some reason

The Hen’s Eye column

Closeup of the Hen’s Eye column

A Medusa-head base

And another

The learning was over and the rest of the day was ours, however, our guide walked us back to the Grand Bazaar suggesting it and the surrounding area to be a good place to get lunch. Okay, the history lesson isn’t quite over, a little background information on the Grand Bazaar:

The Grand Bazaar in Istanbul is one of the largest and oldest covered markets in the world, with 61 covered streets and over 4,000 shops which attract between 250,000 and 400,000 visitors daily. In 2014, it was listed No.1 among the world’s most-visited tourist attractions with 91,250,000 annual visitors. The Grand Bazar at Istanbul is often regarded as one of the first shopping malls of the world.

I had also received this message the previous night from my friend Yarny, the one that was on Masterchef: Singapore:

We were definitely in the right place for it as the Grand Bazaar had endless stalls selling spices, as well as jewellery, food, souvenirs, tiles, antiques, and copious amounts of counterfeit goods. In fact, before we went to Hangzhou, I never thought I’d say that there was far more fake shit available in Turkey than in China, but it was simply the truth. Sure, we encountered fake and counterfeit items while we were in China, but nowhere near to the extent that we did in Turkey and you’ll find that this will be a bit of an ongoing theme over the course of my posts based throughout the country. We picked up the spices for Yarny and also grabbed a bag for ourselves and I have to say that that stuff is delicious, especially on fish because it’s kind of citrusy. But despite the fact that the bazaar boasts over 4,000 stores, it all gets a bit the same after a while, plus you’re constantly being hassled to come into people’s shops and you have to barter and haggle for anything and we just weren’t in the mood for it. One thing we weren’t expecting to find in the Bazaar, however, was the restaurant of Nusret Gökçe, A.K.A. “Salt Bae” (above, right). Anyone who has logged onto the internet even once in the past 18 months would more than likely have encountered at least one meme of this douche and his salt. Well, one branch of his chain of steakhouses, Nusr-Et, was located in the Grand Bazaar and it looks exactly what you’d expect from this self-righteous sociopath, despite the fact that it has received generally mixed reviews for both its food and its politics, with the general consensus being that it is overpriced for rather average food. In fact there was a review earlier this year for the New York branch in The Observer entitled “My Disappointing Meal at Salt Bae’s NYC Restaurant Cost $1,400.” Anyway, if you had to picture in your head what his restaurant would look like, your mental image is probably correct. This pretentious tool has stencils from the meme on every possible surface, as well as a life-size wax model of himself at the entrance in his signature pose. I honestly could not stop laughing and almost felt bad for the guy if it weren’t for the fact that his chain has been valued at $1.5 billion. Oh well, he can go cry into a pool of money. Some scenes from the Grand Bazaar, including Nusr-Et:

Anna loved these tiles near the entrance

Where we entered the Grand Bazaar

It begins…

Oh, God!

He��s really milking that meme

If only it were a voodoo doll

More of the Bazaar

Anna and a shisha shop

I wasn’t kidding when I said it all seems kind of the same after a while

If you look closely, there are some crazy shoes in that cabinet

Our bag of pul biber

We still hadn’t eaten lunch and there was no way I was going to blow over a grand on a steak unless it came from a thylacine or some other similarly hard-to-come-by being so we left the Grand Bazaar and decided to explore a bit more of the city. Before long we found a strip that was all coffee shops and stalls that served massive amounts of meat and kebabs so we pulled up a stool and gorged ourselves on a mixed-grill platter and some rice things that were wrapped in vine leaves. Nobody really has a name for them, but they are delicious! Once lunch was done, we crossed the Galata Bridge over the body of water known as the Golden Horn and entered the Beyoğlu district of Istanbul, technically leaving Asia for Europe. All of the little neighbourhoods in Beyoğlu have a far more cosmopolitan vibe than those in the old city, with trams traveling along the avenues, while the backstreets and laneways are full of shops, patisseries, cafes, and a whole heap of pubs and wine shops. There are also a lot more foreigners in Beyoğlu, mostly European, and we later found out that it is Istanbul’s arts hub. We spent a couple of hours wandering around the painfully steep, narrow streets, looking through the shops, and playing with the dogs around town. One thing we learned about Turkey is that there are a lot of stray dogs around the streets, but they are clean, playful, extremely well-looked after, and even vaccinated. In fact, a tag through the dog’s ear signifies that it has had its complete round of rabies shots. I found this interesting in a mostly Islamic city, because Muslims in Singapore are generally terrified of dogs and believe that any wet part of a dog is Satan’s saliva, however, we were later told that Sunni Muslims apparently have a different, more affectionate approach to canines than Shiite Muslims, although I’m not quite sure how accurate that statement is.

After strolling through Europe, it was time to cross the Galata Bridge back into Asia, past the rows of men fishing from the bridge in the increasingly terrible weather, battling the wind and drizzle in order to land a catch. There must be something decent in those waters because not only was there a ton of fishermen, but there is also a decent stretch of seafood restaurants along the bottom of the bridge on the side of the old city. Once closer to home we had a look through the Egyptian Bazaar, stocked with the standard spices and fake goods, before stopping off at a bar for a bit. Here’s how the remainder of the afternoon looked once we had left the Grand Bazaar:

Meaty

It doesn’t get much more Turkish than a bunch of dudes sitting around and drinking coffee

Lunch

Fisherman doing their thing

Now in Europe

I wasn’t kidding when I said these streets were steep

A tower at the end of another small street

A massive stray dog just chilling

Anyone need a mace?

Going downhill this time

A little provocative

Those are some massive loaves of bread!

The seafood restaurants under the bridge

Back in Asia again

In the Egyptian Bazaar

Seems legit

Our stay in Istanbul had come to an end, as we had to return to the hotel to get our luggage and take our shuttle to the airport to catch our 9:30pm flight to Cappadocia so we could spend the next few nights staying in a cave and exploring the area, hopefully by hot-air balloon at dawn (the title probably gives away how that went), but that’s all a story for next time. Stay tuned for Part 2!

Climbing, Caving, and Canceled Ballooning in Turkey, pt. 1: Istanbul In my last post we had spent a few nights in Vienna, Austria as Anna was a guest of…

[dorcasrempel]

Letter to the MIT community regarding the MIT Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing

The following email was sent today to the MIT community by President L. Rafael Reif.

To the members of the MIT community,

The 2010 history, Becoming MIT: Moments of Decision, credits MIT’s record of rising impact to turning points when, responding to new challenges, MIT stayed true to its mission with a calculated change of course.

Today, at a turning point of equal consequence, we launch the MIT Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing.

This new College is our strategic response to a global phenomenon — the ubiquity of computing and the rise of AI. In this new world, we are building on MIT’s established leadership in these fields to position the Institute for decades to come as a world hub of education, research and innovation, and to prepare our students to lead in every domain.

To state the obvious, AI in particular is reshaping geopolitics, our economy, our daily lives and the very definition of work. It is rapidly enabling new research in every discipline and new solutions to daunting problems. At the same time, it is creating ethical strains and human consequences our society is not yet equipped to control or withstand.

In response, we are reshaping MIT.

By giving MIT’s five Schools a shared structure for collaborative education, research and innovation, the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing aims to:

foster breakthroughs in computing, particularly artificial intelligence — actively informed by the wisdom of other disciplines;

deliver the power of AI tools to researchers in every field; and

advance pioneering work on AI’s ethical use and societal impact.

Most distinctively, by adding new integrated curricula and degree programs in nearly every field, the College will equip students to be as fluent in computing and AI as they are in their own disciplines — and ready to use these digital tools wisely and humanely to help make a better world.

To be clear: In this pivotal AI moment, society has never needed the liberal arts — the path to wise, responsible citizenship — more than it does now. It is time to educate a new generation of technologists in the public interest.

You can read more about the vision for the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing here, and you can find answers to questions of interest to faculty, students, staff and alumni here.

How did the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing come to be?

More than a year ago, inspired by the remarkable tide of student interest in majors with computing in the title, we began a process of assessment and exploration with the Executive Committee of the MIT Corporation. This quickly expanded to include faculty leadership in every department, including department heads, the School Councils and Academic Council. Faculty Chair Susan Silbey deserves immense credit for the nature and success of this consultative process. We have also gained key insights from Corporation members, students, staff and alumni. Together these conversations crystallized the need for bold action, at scale and with speed.

And so we arrived at the idea we announce as the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing — the most profound restructuring of MIT since the early 1950s. This $1 billion commitment will include a dedicated new building on campus, a new dean and a near doubling of our academic capability in computing and especially AI, with 50 new faculty positions located within the College and jointly with departments across MIT.

Such a bold step requires a bold partner. We are extremely fortunate to have the encouragement, insight and visionary support of one of the world’s most farsighted investors, Stephen A. Schwarzman, chairman, CEO and co-founder of Blackstone. His magnificent generosity — a gift of $350 million — gave us the power to take decisive action.

What happens now?

Both the MIT Corporation and its Executive Committee recently approved the establishment of the new College.

It is still, however, a very young idea ­— a prototype we are improving day by day. Its success will depend on thoughtful refinement and creative problem-solving from people across MIT. To jumpstart that feedback process, we have scheduled a number of forums:

Faculty Forum October 18, 5:30–6:30 PM Bldg. 32-123

Student Forum October 25, 5:00–6:00 PM Bldg. 32-123

Staff Forum October 25, Noon–1:00 PM Bldg. 4-270

In the coming days, we will schedule a forum for alumni in the metro-Boston area, as well as one or more webcasts to reach alumni in other regions and time zones.

Every forum will include lots of time for questions. To focus the conversation and guide our thinking, I hope that you will let us know here what questions interest or concern you the most.

In addition, faculty will receive an email from the Provost today describing the next steps in implementation and our search for a dean. The October 17th Faculty Meeting will also include discussion of the new College.

*                *                *

As we begin this fresh chapter, I offer thanks to everyone who helped bring us to this day. For shepherding the development of this transformative idea, we owe special gratitude to Provost Marty Schmidt, Dean of Engineering Anantha Chandrakasan and Executive Vice President and Treasurer Israel Ruiz.  

If we hope to make a better world, we must constantly work to make a better MIT. As humanity faces the opportunities and risks of the digital future, the reshaping we begin on campus today will challenge us to think deeply about how the technologies we invent can best serve, support and care for our global human family.

I look forward to joining you all in this profoundly important work.

In enthusiastic anticipation,

L. Rafael Reif

Letter to the MIT community regarding the MIT Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing syndicated from https://osmowaterfilters.blogspot.com/

[derechointernacionalpublico]

Antarctic Environment Protocol Challenges and Achievements: 20 Years in Force

Antarctic Environment Protocol Challenges and Achievements: 20 Years in Force

Introduction

On 4 October 1991, almost 27 years ago, negotiation of the Environmental Protocol to the Antarctic Treaty (the “Protocol”) finished in Madrid. On 14 January 1998, two decades ago, the Protocol made its entry into force. Now, the Protocol is compulsory for 40 States.

Considering the seriousness of the threat to the Antarctic environment, it is a good time to reflect on the rules that were created to protect it, and how they are now being applied.

Preliminary considerations for an assessment of the Protocol

It is not easy to carry out an objective assessment of the Protocol. There are several causes for this, and I would like to highlight three of them.

Firstly, because the Protocol is highly symbolic, and it is never easy to adopt a critical approach when most people think that something is very good or very important. However, such a critical approach is essential to improve the Antarctic environmental protection.

Secondly, because the Protocol’s application is an unfinished and ongoing process. Every day it faces new challenges, some of which were not even considered in 1991.

Thirdly, because it is necessary to draw a distinction between the diplomatic, legal and practical perspectives. From a diplomatic point of view, it is a major achievement. Its negotiation was very successful, even considering the disagreements and geopolitical problems that it has had to face. From a legal perspective, the Protocol has secured important achievements, and it has been the starting point for other areas of international law, such as the regulation of mineral activities in the seabed. But, at the same time, it has some significant weaknesses, such as the lack of effective control mechanisms or those of a liability regime. Finally, in respect of its application, each State has different procedures: there are several aspects not fully developed in national law and practice, and there is not enough information to make a general assessment.

Scope of the Protocol’s application

There are several limits to the Protocol’s application, which reduce its effectiveness.

Beyond the academic discussion about whether or not the Antarctic Treaty System is an objective regime or if its rules are part of international custom, the Protocol is only compulsory for States that have voluntarily assumed its obligations. Even then, not all of the Antarctic Treaty Parties are part of the Protocol: at present 13 of them are not committed to the Protocol. In total, 73% of the Union Nations’ States are not committed to the Antarctic Treaty, although it should be noted that the Antarctic Treaty Parties do cover 66% of the world’s population.

A further limit is that the geographical area of the Protocol’s application is south of the 60º south latitude. This delimitation is inadequate if we consider the objective and purpose of the Protocol: “the comprehensive protection of the Antarctic environment and dependent and associated ecosystems”. These extend to at least the Antarctic Convergence, the irregular and changing boundary between the Southern Ocean and the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian oceans. Annex IV of the Protocol, on the prevention of marine pollution, and some of the agreements adopted at Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meetings, do support the idea of extending the Protocol application to that limit. Some authors also support this position, reasoning that this is the Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources criteria.

Finally, there are several activities that are not covered by the Protocol’s protection, although they are carried out in the Antarctic area and they affect its environment. The most important of these exceptions is high-sea navigation, although the definition of what the ‘high-sea’ is in this region is not clear. The Protocol is not applicable to overflight nor other aerial activities where they do not land in the Antarctic.

Further, sealing, fishing, and whaling are excluded from the protective scope of the Protocol because these activities are regulated by their own conventions. This is so in spite of the fact that these other international agreements do not have proper environmental protection rules.

In conclusion, the Protocol is only applicable to scientific and touristic activities, and to other activities that the Antarctic Treaty Parties should give notice of in advance.

Main achievements

The Protocol has several merits that must be highlighted.

The first is the recognition of environmental protection as a leading principle of any activity done in the Antarctic Treaty area. These activities must be planned and conducted – even modified, suspended or cancelled – to ensure the effective protection of the Antarctic environment, its dependent and associated ecosystems, and the intrinsic value of Antarctica.

The second achievement, even if not every State applies it in the same manner, is the duty to conduct a prior environmental impact assessment for activities planned to be conducted in the Antarctic and under the Protocol’s scope.

A third achievement of the Protocol is institutional: the foundation and active working of the Committee on Environmental Protection.

A fourth success has been the establishment of Antarctic Special Protected Areas (72) and Antarctic Special Managed Areas (6), plus Historic Sites (87), which form a network of representative environmental-worth places. This kind of nomination began before the Protocol, but the Protocol’s Annex V has consolidated it as an instrument of environmental protection.

A fifth achievement has been to make the process for entry into force of the measures adopted by the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meetings on environmental matters easier and faster. The Protocol establishes a system of tacit approvals. At present, most of the measures in force are on environmental matters.

A sixth success, although its efficacy could be debated, is the environmental inspections of the Antarctic infrastructure and activities that the States do amongst one another. Its main weakness is that it is not compulsory to solve the observations made in these inspections.

Finally, a seventh achievement of the Protocol is the ban on any activity related to mineral resources, other than scientific research. This prohibition is indefinite but it is revisable, and it is possible that scientific research could be conducted to make an inventory of resources that in the future could be exploited. Some States have openly acknowledged their interests in this future exploitation of Antarctic minerals.

The Protocol does not have a set term, and it can be modified only by consensus. But from 2048 onward, and provided that certain requirements are fulfilled, it could be modified by the majority of the Consultative States. From a political and legal point of view, this is a huge change. Maybe nothing will happen that year, but it is a date to have in mind.

Main challenges

Environmental protection faces new challenges every day. These come from an interrelation between Antarctic activities and certain global processes.

Among the key local challenges are: waste accumulation and the impact of different activities conducted in Antarctica; the increase in the number of people going there (scientists and researchers, support personnel or just tourists); the proliferation of Antarctic stations and the access to still spotless areas; the introduction (voluntarily or not) of non-native species by people; and, the pressure exerted by, and for, commercial activities.

The main global factors are: climate change; marine and atmospheric pollution; the weakness of the ozone layer; the “natural” introduction of non-native species; and, the changes in the oceans.

It would be absurd to demand a response for every one of these challenges. Some of them go beyond the Protocol’s regulatory scope and others go even further than the law. But in several areas it is expected (and required) that the environmental protection regime increases the level of protection from that given in 1991. For example: applying a precautionary approach more clearly; considering the accumulative impact; increasing the control mechanisms; enacting an environmental damage liability regime; and, standardizing domestic legal procedures on Antarctic environmental protection.

A huge political and legal challenge is to find a way to increase environmental protection when the heterogeneity of the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meetings makes achieving agreement more complex each time. In fact, since 1991 when the Protocol and its five first annexes were adopted, no other substantive legal instrument has been agreed (Annex VI was adopted in 2005 but is still not in force). At the same time, Antarctic activities have been expanding and diversifying.

Conclusion

25 years after the adoption of the Environmental Protocol, and 20 years after it entered into force, it is clear that the Protocol is a huge achievement in the history of the Antarctic Treaty System. But it has several challenges ahead. The Antarctic environmental protection is a daily task and a duty for humanity and for the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Parties in particular. From an international law perspective, we must contribute to this effort: but the main responsibility belongs to politics, from where it is necessary to promote several legal, economic and social changes, especially in our approaches to, and perceptions of, the fragility of this unique environment.

[via EJIL: Talk!]

https://www.dipublico.org/110214/antarctic-environment-protocol-challenges-and-achievements-20-years-in-force/

[national-theatre-scotland-blog]

Circles of tragedy and How To Act

Clare Finburgh, Senior Lecturer in Drama and Theatre at the University of Kent, responds to How To Act.

A circle. Anthony Nicholl, the “successful theatre director in his fifties” invited in Graham Eatough’s How to Act to give an acting masterclass, asks members of the audience to remove their shoes, which he then places centre-stage to form a circle. Nicholl marks out the circular space in which his participant, the young female actor Promise, will do improvisation exercises based on her own past.

According to Friedrich Nietzsche The Birth of Tragedy (1872), tragedy pulls “a living wall … around itself to close itself off entirely from the real world and maintain its ideal ground and its poetic freedom”.

[1]

Since its ancient Greek origins, tragedy has demarcated itself clearly as an art form distinct from the lives of the audience members watching it, a feature that the circle in How to Act recreates. In this, and in other respects, How to Act returns to the vast scope of the Classics. At the same time, How to Act expands classical tragedy in order to speak eloquently both to theatre today, and to politics today.In a number of respects How to Act, like the “prize-winning tragedians of ancient Athens” to which Nicholl refers, foregrounds its own status as art. Like a classical tragedy, How to Act features a chorus. The chorus self-consciously draws attention to the fact that what the audience is watching, is a piece of theatre. In addition, according to the French cultural theorist Roland Barthes, the chorus constitutes the very definition of tragedy, since it draws attention to the tragic dimension of the play by remarking on it.

[2]

How to Act differs, though, in that the members of an ancient chorus tend to pass judgement on the proceedings in the play, whereas Eatough’s chorus involves clapping and movement, which are performed in the circle. But in the extent to which ancient plays themselves featured song and dance,

How to Act does inherit from classical tragedy.Predating Nietzsche by over two millennia, the first theorisation of tragedy in theatre was provided by Aristotle, whose Poetics stated that the central tenet of tragedy must be one single, unified, clearly defined plot – what Nicholl in How to Act describes as “Proposition – dilemma – response. The fundamental building blocks of drama.” The circular space in which a tragedy is performed becomes a kind of boxing ring, a scene of combat in which conflicts are battled out until their final dénouement. Within the circle, the two conflicting worlds of Nicholl and Promise – male and female, European and African, older and younger, coloniser and colonised – clash. However, the plot in How to Act is far from straightforward. Eatough introduces a play-within-a-play device, where Promise, following Nicholl’s instructions, enters the circle and conducts drama exercises in which she enacts scenes from her childhood in her native Nigeria. When Promise reveals that Nicholl, who had formerly travelled to Nigeria to conduct research for his theatre practice, had no doubt had a brief affair with her mother, it is not clear if she is enacting a fiction, or whether she has actually come in search of the man who might be the father she never knew. Like the French author Jean Genet’s The Maids (1947), where two maids play at being a maid and her mistress; or indeed the most famous play-within-a-play of all, The Mousetrap in Shakespeare’s Hamlet (1599?), levels and layers of fiction in How to Act become entangled, as it is never quite certain on whose behalf the doubled characters speak. Like Shakespeare before them, generations of playwrights have abandoned the unity of an Aristotelian tragic plot in favour of multiple interweaving narratives. Indeed, the mid-twentieth-century German playwright, director and theatre theorist Bertolt Brecht, to whom I come presently, argues that today’s world is far too complex to be encapsulated in a singular dramatic plot:

Petroleum resists the five-act form; today’s catastrophes do not progress in a straight line but in cyclical crises; the ‘heroes’ change with the different phases, are interchangeable, etc.; the graph of people’s actions is complicated by abortive actions; fate is no longer a single coherent power; rather there are fields of force which can be seen radiating in opposite directions.[3]

“The truth is that theatre is dying and we all know it”, declares Nicholl in How to Act. 

Whereas Nietzsche entitled his major work The Birth of Tragedy, George Steiner in the twentieth century announced The Death of Tragedy (1961) – the name of his important study. Steiner argues, “tragic drama tells us that the spheres of reason, order, and justice are terribly limited and that no progress in our science or technical resources will enlarge their relevance”.

[4]

For Steiner and other Marxist theorists and theatre-makers, notably Brecht, the incontrovertible fate in tragedy is incompatible with a political commitment to the radical transformation of society: tragedy in art is anti-progressist because it reinforces political fatalism in life. It is important to note that Aritotle’s Poetics does not in actual fact mention fate, although ancient tragedies do often submit tragic heroes to their destiny. Sophocles’s Oedipus is the classic example: before his birth it was predicted that Oedipus would murder his father and marry his mother; and despite his and his parents’ lifelong efforts, this is precisely what takes place. The circle in Eatough’s How to Act thus denotes the inescapable circularity of fate.

The Algerian playwright Kateb Yacine, many of whose works were written during the Algerian War of Independence (1954-62), named his tetralogy of tragedies, which was inspired by Aeschylus’sThe Oresteia, the Circle of Reprisals (1950s). In this series of plays, as in Aeschylus’s House of Atreus in the Oresteia, a closed circuit of violence, an ancestral cult of violence, reprisals, revenge, fatality and failure, become inevitabilities for all of Algeria’s population. Kateb writes:

For me, tragedy is driven by a circular movement and does not open out or uncoil except at an unexpected point in the spiral, like a spring. […] But this apparently closed circularity that starts and ends nowhere, is the exact image of every universe, poetic or real. […] Tragedy is created precisely to show where there is no way out, how we fight and play against the rules and the principles of “what should happen”, against conventions and appearances.[5]

This resignation to a doctrine of circular fate is illustrated when Promise in How to Act says:

It’s all been written for us hasn’t it? Sometime in the past. Before we met anyway. Before you met my mother even. None of it could have been any other way. You thought you could make a difference. Control things. Control the story. But it’s not yours to tell. You’re just a part of it. Like we all are. You’re just in it. Subject to it. It’s all been decided. Who we are. What we mean to each other. How this turns out. I was always going to find you. Come back to you. Like a curse. Show you who you really are. A liar. That’s how this ends. There’s no escape.

It is precisely this belief in the circle of fate and the absence of a possibility for escape from this circle, that has been rejected by Marxist playwrights and directors like Brecht.

Instead of submitting to a destiny of suffering, for Brecht, characters – and the audience – must seek to understand the reasons for suffering, and to redress the social and economic injustices that cause that suffering. Marxist cultural theorist Walter Benjamin, Brecht’s contemporary, explains how Brecht’s politics distinguish between simplicity and transparency. Simplicity denotes the defeatist acceptance of misery and resists challenge to the status quo: “That’s just the way it’s always been”; transparency, on the other hand, rejects the mystifications that lead society to believe that suffering is universal and eternal. Erwin Piscator, a Marxist dramaturg who was also contemporary to Brecht, summarizes how tragedy is the result not simply of fate, but of political and socio-economic circumstances:

What are the forces of destiny in our own epoch? What does this generation recognize as the fate which it accepts at its peril, which it must conquer if it is to survive? Economics and politics are our fate, and the result of both is society, the social fabric. And only by taking these three factors into account, either by affirming them or by fighting against them, will we bring our lives into contact with the “historical” aspect of the twentieth century.[6]

In How to Act, the causes of suffering on the African continent, notably in Nigeria, are given clear explanations by Promise. As Brecht highlights in the quotation to which I have already referred, “petroleum” is one of today’s most pressing and complex problems. Promise explains how, in spite of Nigeria’s vast oil wealth, it has been crippled by “debt to western governments and the World Bank.” In addition, she describes how “western oil companies” such as “Shell, Exon, Chevron and Total” have not only made many billions of dollars of profits out of Nigerian oil and gas and massively expanded the west’s consumption of energy and goods while their employees live on “less than a dollar a day”. In addition, these oil companies have committed human rights abuses by encouraging the Nigerian government to execute activists campaigning for social and environmental justice. These perspectives provided by the play engage directly with current geopolitics, since in June 2017 the widows of four of the nine activists extrajudicially executed in 1995 by the Nigerian government for campaigning against environmental damage caused by oil extraction in the Ogoni region of Nigeria, launched a civil case against Shell, accusing them of being complicit in the torture and killings of their husbands.[7] While inheriting from classical tragedy, How to Act conducts, in parallel, a typically Marxist analysis that seeks out the causes for suffering, rather than submitting to them. “[Y]our having everything depends on us having nothing.”, admonishes Promise.

In Theatre & Ethics, Nicholas Ridout defines ethics by posing the question, ‘Can we create a system according to which we will all know how to act?’

[8]

By admitting to the reasons for social, economic, gender and environmental injustices, we can strive towards an ethics of “how to act”, as the title of Eatough’s play suggests.

In some respects How to Act could be described as a postcolonial play, or at least a play that examines and exposes the afterburns of British colonial occupation in Nigeria. The Nigerian playwright and Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka, rather than dismissing tragedy outright, argues for the “socio-political question of the viability of a tragic view in a contemporary world���. For him, as he demonstrates in some of his great tragedies, notably Death and the King’s Horseman (1975), the theosophical school which would accept suffering and death as the natural order of things, and the Marxist school which insists that the historical reasons for human suffering must be explored, understood, and rectified, can indeed be encapsulated in the same play (1976: 48). Graham Eatough demonstrates, as Kateb Yacine and Wole Soyinka have done before him, and as authors such as the Lebanese-born Quebecan playwright and director Wajdi Mouawad continue to do today, that tragedy is an enduring form that can not only affirm the inevitability of suffering and injustice, but can also candidly expose the reversible reasons for that suffering. There are economic, social and political reasons for tragic suffering which must be comprehended and apprehended, in order to effect change. These artists replace circles with spirals, and spirals have an end.

[1] Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, trans. Shaun Whiteside, London: Penguin, 1993, 37-8.

[2] Roland Barthes, “Pouvoirs de la tragédie antique” [1953], in Ecrits sur le théâtre, Paris: Seuil, 2002, p. 44.

[3] Bertolt Brecht, Brecht on Theatre, trans. John Willett, London: Methuen, 2001, p. 30.

[4] Steiner, George. The Death of Tragedy. London: Faber & Faber, 1961, p. 88.

[5] Kateb Yacine, “Brecht, le théâtre vietnamien : 1958”, Le Poète comme un boxeur : Entretiens 1958-1989, Paris: Seuil, 1994, p. 158, my translation.

[6] Erwin Piscator, The Political Theatre [1929], trans. Hugh Rorrison, London: Methuen, 1980, p. 188.

[7] Rebecca Ratcliffe, Ogoni widows file civil writ accusing Shell of complicity in Nigeria killings, The Guardian, 29 June 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2017/jun/29/ogoni-widows-file-civil-writ-accusing-shell-of-complicity-in-nigeria-killings.

[8] Nicholas Ridout, Theatre & Ethics, Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2009, p. 12.

HOW TO ACT Written and directed by Graham Eatough.

Internationally-renowned theatre director Anthony Nicholl has travelled the globe on a life-long quest to discover the true essence of theatre. Today he gives a masterclass.  Promise, an aspiring actress, has been hand-picked to participate. What unfolds between them forces Nicholl to question all of his assumptions about his life and art.

https://www.nationaltheatrescotland.com/content/default.asp?page=home_How%20To%20Act

[kyilliki]

(1/2) Tbh I'm deeply resentful of how Euro-centric Twilight is. Less Christian areas—hell, areas less impressed with the Enlightenment—are bound to see magic/vampirism and ordinary life as compatible. The Volturi's opinion on vampirism and humanity aren't universally applicable, and I can't imagine Kenyan or Brazilian covens being okay with being monitored by a bunch of European vampires who know nothing about their culture/relationship with vampirism.

(2/2) Basically, I imagine that there are dozens of huge ruling covens scattered across the globe. There are at least three in China alone that monitor long stretches of land to make sure no one is getting overzealous. There's definitely one that grew from the wildness of Russia and ended up ruling the entire Eastern Bloc. Which lends itself to my headcanon that the Volturi have very complicated treaties with all of these covens.

I love this comment and will offer it my hand in marriage shortly. But, more seriously, I agree entirely. 

As you point out, questions about vampires and souls or vampires and secrecy haven’t been answered unanimously by every culture across the globe. In this response, I reference folklore from Ukraine and Romania (both majority-Christian, European nations) which accepts vampires as members of society. Annoying members, for sure, but a tolerated facet of life. You don’t exactly have to travel far the Volturi’s definitions to lose relevance. Likewise, Islamic teachings acknowledge the existence of djinn, spirits of fire who have their own social order, help or hinder humanity as they choose, and are subject to divine judgment. If the Volturi are claiming that mass pandemonium will break out if people start believing in a separate, hidden, powerful species living among them... well, they’re just wrong. Because that’s already happened. 

In short, the Volturi’s  view of vampire/human relations is constructed within a certain era and location; exporting it globally is both nonsensical and can read like a colonialism metaphor, which I touch upon here.

I echo your view that there are ruling covens scattered over the globe, administering their regions using methods which align with contemporary culture. But, to be honest, I’m almost glad that SM didn’t go there and largely limited herself to North America + Western Europe. As I’m sure you’ve encountered with your headcanons, coming up with vampire geopolitics is complicated, research-heavy, and probably demands a colour-coded spreadsheet. China contains 56 distinct ethnic groups, 19 of them with memberships of over 1 million. How is that reflected in the composition of the ruling coven(s)? How did the Eastern European coven quell its subjects’ fears about being governed by a seemingly-Russian power, with the history of communism and empire-building being what it was? How did African covens negotiate their territory, what with national borders being frequently and sometimes arbitrarily redrawn? I’m not sure I want SM answering any of those questions.

I love your headcanon about various vampire covens forming treaties and co-operating and building a society, deeply imperfect though it would be. I suspect that something like this would never make it into Twilight canon because it makes the Volturi and their red-eyed international associates too useful. At the end of BD, we’re intended to believe that the world would be better without vampire rulers (or with the Cullens in charge God forbid). Making leadership complicated and collaborative and with centuries of historical precedent would undermine that theme. 

As ever, I’m stuck between two feelings: the Twilight expanded universe has so much potential, and I’m simultaneously enraged that we never see it canonically explored and relieved that it’s left to our imaginations.