ACTING ON ORDERS

Barend de Wet, Douglas Gimberg and Christian Nerf discuss acting on orders with Johan Kritzinger, Dr Nuno Sacramento, Ronan Xavier, Ruth Sacks, Samuel Herzog, Takuro Kotaka, Ron T Beck, Francis Burger and Sebastian Charilaou.

Johan Kritzinger: We were certainly not expecting the types of responses to our orders that you presented to us. Please can you provide a little insight into the interpretation you have taken with regards to the commands that you received?
Douglas Gimberg: Just because you’re saying ‘please’ doesn’t mean that you haven’t just given us another command.
Sebastian Charilaou: I think you fucknuckles have been ‘acting out’ versus ‘acting on’. Giving in to the desires that are forbidden by your Super egos and yet desired by your Ids. Naughty boys!
Douglas Gimberg: Insurgent – “A person who rises in active revolt against authority; a rebel, a revolutionary” (the new shorter oxford dictionary 1993). The definition appears to have changed somewhat since 1993 though. Subsequent to 2001 the term has been used consistently in the media to describe the people fighting against the US army’s invasions in the various Middle Eastern “conflicts” comprising “the [new] long war”. Those fighting against the US in the context of the “Global War on Terrorism” cannot be insurgents because the term by the above definition implies that the US forces have a legitimate authority over those citizens of the invaded states.
Ron T Beck: Forward planning and several open supply lines will always facilitate a smooth transition of power. In most cases a deflective strategy at the outset will lure the opposition forces into a series of needless engagements. While this is in progress you can protect the specific brand equity of the geographies in question. Maintaining value while occupying the attentions of the opponent defence systems. What has changed so much since Rogers took over is that war is now no longer ‘the continuation of politics by other means’ (as Carl von Clausewitz suggested all those years ago) but rather an extension of commerce as a result of structural necessity.
SC: What is rather interesting is that the Wikipedia definition, which has been updated subsequent to 2004, is rather comprehensive and describes tactics and methodologies that are not at all dissimilar to those of “terrorists”, immediately stripping them of any of the righteousness associated with “revolution”. The term is not actually one that should be used as a descriptor outside of the context of a civil war or coup d’état, in this instance the implication of the term is that the Iraqi’s are illegitimate in resisting US occupation and brutality.
Christian Nerf: When one tells someone what to do one has already a picture in mind and perhaps a little prejudiced is forming.
Barend de Wet: No expectations make for better reward.
Samuel Herzog: Big expectation though seem more approbate when one is thing about New York. The City represents somehow THE big expectation since the time of the early colonials.
DG: People like rewards.
DG: There are many different kinds of apples.
CN: The fact that you [looking at Douglas] are 14 years younger than me and I am 14 years younger than you [looking at Barend] played a major role in our decision-making, yes?
DG: I have a problem with authority at the best of times.
DG: I love operating within hierarchical structures because one needn’t accept responsibility for any of ones actions! Take that Barend!
BdW: haha
SH: But the first decisions Americans make has already to do with some alienation: If one decides that he is a first world citizen - than he tells himself to some extend what do be (and ergo what to do). Its not only a world classification - it's first of all a self classification. And it's a heavy decision - like a boxer who decides that from now on he will win all the fights - imagine the total panic when he feels his loosing power. Loosing a fight is one thing - if your live concept is threatened that is something else.
SC: Howzit Takuro. Eish, I hear you had a car accident while travelling with Potato?
Takuro Kotaka: Now, me and Potato are in Namibia. Moving by hitchhiking. We did some troubles. Our cars taken crash accident. And, everyone was injured. I was safely, but lost the Potato. Then, We were looking for Potato, and We are able to found the Potato. I am very glad.
DG: And I was lying about my age. I’m really 33.
DG: In 1986 Norman Borlaug established the World Food Prize (no comment about the motives) to recognise individuals who have improved the quality, quantity or availability of food around the world, do you think that Takuro should be eligible?
Tom Waits: Once Kissinger said: “we have no friends, America only has interests”…
CN: Yes, we were very conscious of the divide between the Americans and us when we formulated this interaction. Americans see themselves as first world citizens and find themselves in the enviable position of deciding who is third world.
Ronan Xavier: Standing in the face of a primal urge will get you hurt. Moreover, if you roll over like a dog you wake up with globalization. Screw the meek!
RTB: In a world afraid there are fewer escape routes. The screen, flickering in the corner of your lounge 24 hours a day, has been colonised to become the primary mechanism for delivering instantaneous and globalised fear. These screens are also the means for controlling vast geographic tracts in a most efficient manner, because they compress the geography of their broadcast space. This geography is inhabited by disbursed and frightened individuals either contained within the perimeter or outside of it. Those within the perimeter, the citizens, have a strong need to feel safe and are protected by a myriad of systems. The ones who dwell beyond the perimeter either physically or theoretically are regarded as others. They are apart from the inclusiveness of the perimeter and they exist in a zone where everything has been outsourced or ‘EXCLUDED from multipolar internationality…’ (p109 Virilio, P. City Of Panic. 2007. Berg, New York)
Francis Burger: I’m not so sure, I don’t know how seriously you mean that but in any case the idea of a ‘primal urge’ is ridiculous, I mean who positions the primal, maybe Barend?
BdW: hihi
DG: Some of my best friends are meek. Hey, Barend, are you okay?
FB: Exactly, its yesterday’s news. But on the subject of first and third world, I’d have to agree with Christian, although I don’t think that the desire to designate a position on the podium is restricted to American citizens. I mean, people who dig in bins are also seen as victims by those on the upper floors, it’s the same sort of sympathetic gesture that keeps the other at a safe distance, like people who throw sweets at kids who beg at car windows. I wouldn’t say that the first world is solely responsible for sustaining the distinction either. The whole thing relies on a mutual performance, concessions from both sides, we put flies on our eyeballs and sit in the sun, we do the jig. The first and third world is there for them and us to maintain a fantasy, both psychic and economic, that’s supposed to be good for all of us.
[Silence]
Ok maybe not flies, sorry, I’ll just listen.
CN: Hahaha, the fox and the flies on our eyes. Things in our collaborations got more complex once they included signs even though they are not essential reading matter to engage the work.
DG: Is Barend ill? Why was he saying ‘hihihi…’ just now?
CN: Exactly, check out what went down with the Mental Pictures installation.
[laughter]
RX: Mental Pictures? Oh...right.
DG: They’re similar to metal pictures, only they’re different.
CN: We do translate messages in a different way add to this all the mumbo-jumbo connected with us Africans it would seem obvious that we would envision things differently. Maybe?
DG: Something that was obviously uncommon.
SH: I like the word "mumbo-jumbo" - pronounced like a German word it's very picturesque.
RTB: A degree of opacity may always be a prerequisite vis a vis the unified strategic direction of the combatant forces; their operation under unified command; and for their integration into an efficient team of land, naval, and air forces.
FB: Desire might be a constant force, but it’s supply that produces demand, that’s Andrea Fraser, paraphrasing Lacan.
Belle and Sebastian: But if you are feeling sinister
Go off and see a minister
He'll try in vain to take away the pain of being a hopeless unbeliever…
CN: [turning to Dr Sacramento] Thanks [for the Jagermeister]. Jacques [Coetzer] said it's so hard to be a middle-class guy. How did things work out in Scotland for them and you all?
Nuno Sacramento: I tell you what. Being middle class is hard, but being a Portuguese-Mozambiquean middle class curator in Scotland is much, much harder!!! Is Scotland a middle ground between ZA and the US? Can you pass the me the bottle of Jager, please?
BdW: sigh
CN: Loosing control?
BdW: hoho
CN: Ja, descending into an alternate thinking doing state, embracing some god-free force to direct us. Does it mean we are out of control?
BdW: yoyo
[laughter]
NS: Sorry guys, I came into the discussion quite late. Can you please tell me WHO IS YOUR CLIENT? Really?
JK: People were also a little surprised that the orders have been withheld from the public. Do you plan to release these commands?
DG: You are assuming that we actually make plans.
DG: There are just so many of them. Every time you turn on the tv, radio, look out the window…
BdW: either or neither nor not only but also.
CN: Never.
RTB: Orders may be delivered down a continual supply chain or by asymmetrical mechanisms. In all cases the integrity of the communications needs to be authenticated by means of reverse triangulation.
DG: Are you sure we shouldn’t call a doctor or something for Barend?
DG: yes, never, what would be the value of the information?
CN: On second thought everything is for sale in America…
[laughter]
…so make us an offer!
BdW: hehe
[laughter]
SH: You could also sell some third-world-rights (like the right to loose a fight).
DG: Cash only, please.
BdW: People must do what they want.
NS: By the Way (BdW). Can you tell me who your client is?
SH: Maybe you try to FREE America - that's a nice idea.
DG: So long as it’s very close to what we want too.
DG: Or what somebody else tells them to do. “Satan told me to kill the children”. The parents, of course, blame Slipknot.
CN: Maybe Jesus told them? Anyways we have withheld all of the real evidence regarding our escape to Robben Island.
DG: Ah, good choice of words there, it implies that we actually did it! Excellent.
NS: I am sorry to say the only time you were to Robben Island was in a tourist boat. Not on that sculpture.
BdW: ..........................................................................
DG: Fucking hell! Now he’s spewing full stops! Quick, we’re got to get him some help.
JK: Your participation in Emergence relied heavily on an innovative use of internet technology to interact / present the work. The internet allows for global communication and information sharing but below the surface there is always the challenge of defining authenticity and the spreading of 'mis-infomation'. How has technology and these challenges influenced your work?
[laughter]
DG: Aaaah, technology. Technology and Progress, don’t they just go hand in hand, they certainly both hinge on communication. Better lives for all ahead! A friend of mine, Inge Papp, recently made the mistake of saying that the truth was what separated people from animals. Yes I said, the difference between the two is that only the humans can lie.
CN: Wiki says Misinformation is wrong or inaccurate information. It is distinguished from disinformation by motive – misinformation is simply erroneous, while disinformation, in contrast, is intended to mislead.
SH: Some years ago I tried to put an article about a fictitious island (a old project of mine) on Wiki. It began with the sentence: "Santa Lemusa is a fictitious island..." The Wiki-community discussed the case. Some found a fictitious island had no relevance on Wiki - others found that it was a kind of misinformation. And two said that I should simply leave out the word "fictitious" and try again.
DG: The line from the movie V for Vendetta springs to mind: “artists use lies to tell the truth while politicians use lies to cover the truth up.”
BDW: Authentic and unauthentic mixed.
RTB: Well you should never believe your own mythology, this tends to be a common tactical error in these kinds of situations.
CN: The experiment was conceived to come alive online.
DG: Like the porn industry.
BDW: Where does truth begin and end?
DG: It is all in the motive.
CN: Anyways, back to JK's question of defining authenticity.
David Byrne and Brian Eno: This groove is out of fashion…
DG: Except for all that stuff that we accidentally leaked all over the Internet that was the gospel truth.
BDW: mumble mumble
NS: Sorry for being so persistent. I see you guys received orders from afar. Some you followed closely and to some others you said ‘Get the fuck!’. This is a freedom that the Guild artists of the medieval and academy artists of the renaissance times never had. They had to use very very subtle symbolism to take the piss out of their masters and clients. The church and the aristocracy of those days were contemporary US of today. All powerful or at least they thought so… while it lasted! As time went by, and with the appearance of photography, depiction of clients did not really fall in the hands of artists anymore. They had to re-invent painting, which was by now a clientless art form. One of the people in charge of that, painted with light (like photography), isolated himself in France, chopped his ear off (no Belle and Sebastian for Vincent) and drank himself to death (No Jagermeister, Absinth it was!). He was responsible for the clientless art of the 20th Century. The autonomous art that hid itself behind walls in white galleries…
Meanwhile two wars and the large advance of industry joined creativity and client in the emerging art of Design. Americans and Germans were amazing at it. At the end of last century this was the scenario: a decadent but clever clientless art and an often basic and streamlined art of designed client consumption. You guys are somewhere in between and this marks a time, even a shift in paradigm. You receive orders like medieval and renaissance artists and deliver them as you wish and according to your own principles like little Van Goghs. What are you really, and who the fuck is your client?
Now go make a fire and ignore the questions that really matter. And pass me the absin… Jagermeister again!
CN: OK, shall we make a fire?
BDW: Yes please.
SC: I am going home to watch Dr Zhivago. Do you remember the line ‘No doubt they will sing in tune after the revolution’?
TK: Potato and I will come with.
DG: Shall I go buy the meat and some hot dog rolls?
DB&BE: These beats are 20 years old…

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