Claud Butler vs. Judith Butler

The other day, I entered a well-known chain bike shop, and speculatively asked about buying a new bike. 

My bike is a Frankenstein’s assemblage of long-forgotten mutant parts;  the handlebars are the only surviving component that haven’t broken and needed replacing*.  Although I thoroughly enjoy (albeit somewhat masochistically) the never-ending task of repairing my bike, I also dream of a far-off day where I’ll simply be able to ride it.  As Jerome K Jerome astutely wrote in ‘Three Men on the Bummel’ in 1900, “There are two ways you can get exercise out of a bicycle:  you can ‘overhaul’ it, or you can ride it…  The mistake some people make is in thinking you can get both forms of sport out of the same machine”. 

I enquired about frame sizes.  I explained to the man in the shop that I have relatively long legs compared to the overall height of my body.  This means that if that an average bike is adjusted to accommodate the length of my legs, I have to lean uncomfortably far forward to reach the handlebars.  So, I asked if they had any bikes with a compact geometry – ie which are comparatively tall compared to their length.

I asked about track bikes, which match this description.  In one Whitechapel bike shop, I had previously been told that a track frame wouldn’t help me, as they’re shaped to tip down towards the front (I think this claim is spurious), thus still putting strain on your arms, shoulders and back, and not solving my initial problem. 

Conversely, I was told at yesterday’s shop that, yes, a track frame was exactly what I was looking for.  He proceeded to show me a model he said was ‘based on’ track bikes, which he said was popular with people wanting a combination of courier chic (ie track bikes) with retro chic (ie road frames).  He went on to say that its ‘track bike’ attributes were that it was fixed-gear, while its ‘road bike’ features included… a frame that was longer than it is high.  In short, the exact opposite of what I had asked for. 

After about 15 minutes, I had established that all their road bikes were assembled according to the same height / length ratio.  This meant that bikes that were the right height were too long, while bikes that were the right length were not tall enough.  [At this point in the story, you need to know that I’m a man.]

Just as I was about to give up, the salesman casually mentioned, “The only other bikes we have in stock are these women’s bikes, which are designed to be slightly compact, so that they’re relatively tall compared to their length.” 

Given that this was what we had been discussing for the last 15 minutes, I was somewhat surprised that this was the first time he had mentioned it.  But, having raised the option of women’s bikes, he was rather disturbed when I suggested that I might try out one of the women’s bikes, and immediately tried to put me off the idea. 

He told me with a dismissive and vaguely disgusted expression that most women’s bikes come in pink, or have butterflies painted on them.  I replied that all the ones in the shop were either blue and white, or red and white.  In fact, they looked identical to the men’s bikes, and I’d never have known that they were designed specifically for women unless he had told me.  He shrugged. 

I can understand that it may not be commercially viable for a shop to stock frames that suit every possible variation of body size and shape, and why bike manufacturers and retailers would sell frames to fit an ‘average’ size and shape.  I also accept that men and women have different average body sizes and shapes. 

But I struggle to believe (correct me if I’m wrong) that the ratio of body-height vs limb-length is gender-specific.  Even if it were, it goes without saying that it makes no sense that this should prevent me from riding a women’s bike.  Why do we need separately marketed frames for men and women, given that they appear identical?  (At least to us mortals who don’t work in bikeshops?)

*****

The shopkeeper responded to my request to ride a red bike by absurdly invoking a phantom butterfly-adorned counterpart.  This comment arose not from the reality of the situation, but from a need to construct (or rather reproduce) socialised differences between genders, particularly through the marketing of gendered consumer goods.  Yet the patently absurd logic that yielded the shopkeeper’s ‘red vs butterflies’ comment is precisely the same as that which is deployed to re-invent divisions between genders every day – not based on physical necessity, but on cultural habit. 

*  Footnote:  I’m not exaggerating when I say that all the components on my bike, other the handlebars, have broken and needed replacing isn’t an exaggeration:   either in terms of the fact that I really have replaced said components, or the fact that I did so because each part broke – as opposed to hipster bike-upgrade vanity.   

True Lies - when is a trader not a trader?

My previous post concluded somewhat optimistically - perhaps even disingenuously so - that "No matter how crazy our world can seem at times – there are some things that still aren’t quite beyond parody.  (Yet.)"

We have since been confronted by the case of Alessio Rastani.

In case you haven't seen it, the BBC broadcast an interview earlier this week with a 'City trader', Alessio Rastani, who unexpectedly voiced some uncomfortable opinions.

When asked how we can avoid economic collapse in the Eurozone, his response was that his concern is how not how to resolve the problem, but how to profit from it - indeed, he does not perceive the situation as a problem that needs to be fixed at all.  "For most traders… we don't really care that much about how they're gonna fix the economy... our job is to make money from it.  Personally, I've been dreaming of this moment for three years...  I go to bed every night, and I dream of another recession."

 Interestingly he adds that "Anybody can... make money from a crash…  This isn't just for some people in the elite.  Anybody can make money.  It's an opportunity."  The triumph of the freedom delivered by the neoliberal dream. 

This somewhat touching remark reminds me of a time when my sister and brother both scribbled in blue permanent marker all over the piano when they were about four and five years old respectively.  When my mum went crazy at my brother – who, apart from being the elder of the two (should have known better), was usually the one responsible for such acts of mischief - he plaintively sobbed, "But I shared".  This wasn't designed to land my sister in trouble, but a genuine plea that he had been a good older brother by sharing the felt-tips.

Rastani’s logic also reminds me of a woman who once jumped in front of me in the toilet queue at Climate Camp.  When I pointed out that there was a queue, her response was to smile knowingly, and smugly explain the beauty of her autonomist anarchism - that, not only was she was free to jump in front of me in the queue - I too must realise my freedom to jump in front of others in the toilet queue.  Presumably this would lead to a utopian paradise where, just like on X-Factor, everyone has the opportunity to succeed in getting to piss, as long as they want it enough.

These anecdotes illustrate the difficulty with Rastani's ideology.  Not anyone can profit from a recession, because - by defintion - someone (indeed most people) will lose out, and end up with no job, a scribbled-on piano, or piss on their trousers.  At least my brother had the excuse that he was five. 

I digress.  The point about this incident isn't that his views are stupid and wrong;  anyone can see that.  The interesting thing was the response to the incident.

All over Twitter, and even in rightwing newspapers such as the Mail and the Telegraph - who would normally support the essential logic of Rastani's political standpoint - were accusations that the interview was a hoax.  Admittedly, there are strong physical similarities between Rastani and one of the Yes Men, the activist pranksters who have famously conducted hoax interviews on TV news in the past.

This was weird.  Because the view of the media seemed to be not that they were surprised by the content of his speech, but by the brutal honesty of it.  In other words, they acknowledge their habitual collusion in a political ideology that they recognised as appalling when held up to the light.  But, just like a market bubble, this narrative breaks down when one of the actors doesn't stick to their script, doesn’t hold up their end of the bargain to maintain a united front of brazenness.  The reason that characters like Rastani alarm the press is that their honesty isn't just self-destructive – it holds a mirror up to the whole sordid landscape.  In the words of Leonard Coen, everybody knows - and everybody knows that they know that we know. 

What compounded this weirdness was that the public consensus seemed to be that it didn't matter whether the interview was a hoax or not, since we all know that the sentiments expressed are those truly held by free marketeers in any case.  This constitutes not only an unflinching embrace of what Mark Fisher calls 'capitalist realism' – a permeating acceptance of the capitalist ideology on its own terms. 

It represents a total breakdown in the individual's ability to identify the difference between reality and fiction.  Or, perhaps it would be more accurate to suggest that people no longer see the point in making such a futile distinction.  That is, we not only live in a world where parody and reality are literally indistinguishable, it is no longer even meaningful to consider them as separate in principle - since they merely represent alternative stylistic approaches to a single narrative - that of the capitalist infiltration and domination of every aspect of society and the psyche.  This is surely the ultimate capitulation of society to the post-modern political and media culture. 

The icing on the cake came when it transpired that Rastani was neither truly a trader, nor a hoaxster.  He makes a living by speaking about the market to anyone who will pay him, while not actually conducting any significant trading himself.  he is a self-publicist, speaking in order that he may create the opportunity to speak some more, about an entity that is so nebulous one could continue to talk about it for years on end without ever saying anything about it.  This gloriously reflexive and cloudy status, an eloquent example of an existence somewhere between reality and fiction, is surely the perfect vindication of those who see no-difference between parody and truth. 

So maybe, whilst remaining disingenuously optimistic, the statement that "some things aren't beyond parody" is, contains a sense in which it is not entirely inaccurate after all.

Life neutral?

We all know about offsetting our carbon emissions to balance out the harmful effects of our consumptive lifestyles.  (As Joss Stone said during the 2007 Live Earth concert, “Plant a tree, it’s that easy…”  Ahem.)

So, what if you’re an arms dealer with a conscience (bear with me here), and you want to alleviate the consequences of selling bombs and killing people?

Help is at hand.  Life Neutral Solutions is a consultancy that allows arms companies to ‘offset’ the civilian deaths they cause, by sponsoring western families to have babies.

Luckily for everyone’s sanity, Life Neutral isn’t real.  It was a hoax perpetrated by activist group the Space Hijackers, in order to raise public awareness of the world’s largest arms fair (Defence Systems and Equipment International – ‘DSEi’), which takes place in East London every two years.

Arms dealers, military officials, and civil servants from around the globe, haunt the ExCel Centre to tout every conceivable tool of destruction available to modern military science.  In previous years, this has included banned cluster bombs and torture equipment.  Delegates include those from regimes with the worst records for human rights abuses.  It is heavily subsidised by the taxpayer, mirroring the £700m annual subsidy received by the UK arms industry.

But, despite priapic displays of military muscle – one worker from the neighbouring University of East London tweeted that the battleship HMS Dauntless was parked outside her office window – the event’s organisers are, unsurprisingly, keen to stay out of the media spotlight. There was almost zero press coverage of DSEi in the run-up to the exhibition.  During the 2009 arms fair, the host venue went as far as to erect signposts claiming that it was closed for refurbishment.

Enter the Space Hijackers.  A group of ‘anarchitects’ with a penchant for subverting the corporate domination of public space, we also have a history of resisting DSEi – notably in 2007, when the Hijackers bought a tank, drove it to the arms fair, and ‘auctioned’ it off to the public.

We thought that the merchants of death deserved to receive a little more attention for their activities, and used Life Neutral to provoke interest in the issue by stirring up a bit of controversy.  We simultaneously hoped to scratch away some of the banality that shrouds the defence industry, by parodying the absurdly hygienic and neutral corporate rhetoric.

While studying for a Masters a couple of years ago, one of my lectures was attended by a clique of half a dozen engineers from BAE Systems, who dropped by for a spot of CPD.  When the topic of environmental sustainability was raised, they entered into an earnest conversation with the lecturer about improving the eco-friendliness of their weaponry.  They were particularly interested in removing lead solder from the electronic circuitry in their missiles, to reduce the impact of heavy metal contamination of the soil in warzones.  (When I accidentally laughed, the lecturer and all the BAE staff turned and glared at me;  the lecturer said gravely, “This is a very serious issue”.)

The Hijackers took to the streets of Islington, to entice families into signing up for Life Neutral sponsorship.  After causing suitable outrage among the citizens of North London, we set our sights on wooing the media.  Eventually, a Life Neutral spokesman was invited to interview by the BBC World Service – only to be ‘outed’ as an activist prankster midway through the recording.  This bizarre conversation, which was broadcast on Friday 16 September, is now available online.

Far from being disappointed though, we were relieved to be rumbled as a hoax.  As well as getting an audience of thousands to hear about the arms fair for the first time, it proved that – no matter how crazy our world can seem at times – there are some things that still aren’t quite beyond parody.  (Yet.)


This is cross-posted from a piece that was first published at the Comment Factory.  

Riders in the abyss

Mark Danielewski’s House of Leaves is a tale of a haunting.  A house is infested with voids that exist between its walls;  the adventurer who enters them finds a parallel universe of eerie nothingness, which slowly but brutally consumes the inhabitant through its very lack of spatial and temporal substance.  These non-spaces are an affront to the ‘legitimate’ sites of domesticity, which characterise the rest of the ‘normal’ rooms in the house. 

The fear of being trapped in a parallel world, where one can see – but not be seen by – the familiar, is a potent one, which has been repeatedly articulated in popular culture.  Honey I Shrunk the Kids, 1960s TV series Randall and Hopkirk Deceased, and Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere, all feature protagonists who can look in on the real world they have left behind, but who are invisible to their loved ones. 

Neverwhere is particularly important, because it draws an explicit political link between invisibility and powerlessness.  The unseen inhabitants of Gaiman’s ‘London Below’ represent the homeless and otherwise disenfranchised poor of the city, whose plight is ignored both by the authorities, and by individuals whose personal circumstances create them as ‘recognised’ citizens. 

It is also this expression of powerlessness that makes tales of being ignored such an important theme in children’s books, such as David McKee’s Not Now Bernard, which play on children’s sense of insignificance in an adult-dominated world. 

The same logic is seen in the shanty towns on the outskirts of cities in developing countries.  Vast groups of people dwell in un-titled properties, in places that are not bestowed with legitimacy by the authorities, and that rarely even feature on official maps. 

But every day, all urban cyclists become Bernard;  become Hopkirk;  are thrust into London Below, and into the abyss within the walls of the House of Leaves;  occupy uncharted shanty-territory.

Our mental constructions of road-space divide our streets into different regions.  One region is the large block of space in the middle of each lane, which is used predominantly by motor vehicles.   Collectively, motor vehicles dialectically create this space as legitimate, whilst individual drivers simultaneously become the beneficiaries of this legitimacy whenever they inhabit that space as they use the roads. 

The two other regions of the roads are the space between the kerb and the nearest car, and the gap between the cars in adjacent lanes.  In other words, these regions are defined as the spaces in between motor traffic;  not as a space in their own right, but as a region that lacks traffic. 

It is these regions – undocumented, unlegitimised, even non-extistent - that are, necessarily, inhabited by cyclists.  (They are given short shrift if they cycle in the middle of the lane;  besides, it is the area next to the kerb that contains the cycle lane.)

One of the main reasons given by motorists for cutting up, knocking over, and otherwise besmirching cyclists, is that they did not see them.  Public information campaigns urge motorists to be vigilant, and ‘look out for’ cyclists;  others entreat cyclists to make themselves more visible to motorists, either by making themselves brighter (through hi-vis apparel and lights), or by staying out of motorists’ blind spots. 

But until we collectively reconfigure the way in which we conceive the physical space of the roads, cyclists will, by definition, remain in a permanent blind spot.  Not a bind spot created by the positioning of wing-mirrors, but by inhabiting a part of the road that simply does not exist. 

Cycling through Kafka's Castle:

Why cyclists bend the rules

Motorists don’t like cyclists breaking the rules.  They argue that cyclists will only garner respect on the roads when they stop jumping reds and riding on the pavement.  Many cyclists take the reverse stance, demanding equal respect with motorists before they conform to the same strictures. 

This is a manifestation of the classic ‘rights vs responsibilities’ argument – the idea that your ‘right’ to express certain freedoms, and to be treated to a certain standard, should be in direct proportion to how well you discharge your ‘responsibility’ to behave as a good citizen.  

But this line of reasoning is misleading.  The idea that everyone should be expected to behave (and be treated) in the same way is based on the false assumption that everyone inhabits the same road.  They do not.  Motorists and cyclists have fundamentally different experiences of using the road, which inevitably leads them to develop very different road-use behaviours.  These are rarely examined outside the confines of moral notions of how either party should behave, obscuring the real issues at play.

It is a truism that our cities are designed for cars.  However, while a great deal has been written about the implications for city-wide mobility, consumption, class and gender, etc, little has been said about the environment within roads that distinguishes between their various inhabitants. 

When drivers get behind the wheel, they find themselves in a seamless landscape.  Roads all join up with each other.  Signs always point in the right direction.  Maps all show you exactly what roads you can go down, and which direction you can go in.  (Albeit with the odd glitch in new satnav technology in recent years.)  The most difficult obstacle encountered by motorists is probably finding where they are allowed to park, in the case of zones requiring residential permits – but even parking is usually pretty clearly signalled with lines painted on the roads. 

Cyclists are not afforded such luxuries.  Bike lanes frequently stop dead at physical obstructions, or just disappear without warning.  (This phenomenon is so prevalent that whole books have been published containing nothing but pictures of absurd cycle lane cock-ups.)  Blue signposts marked ‘Quiet route’ lead unwary cyclists into backstreet shortcuts – only to leave them stranded in the middle of nowhere when the breadcrumb trail of signs runs out.  Standard A-Z maps (as opposed to specialised bike lane maps) display areas prohibited to cars – but don’t include contra-flow cycle lanes down one-way streets, or alleys that cyclists may (legitimately) cut through.

Parking is a minefield.  Street cycle racks are rare, meaning that street furniture must first be scouted out, and then assessed for its probable legality (“Am I allowed to chain my bike to these railings?  How about these ones…?”);  its security (“Could my bike be lifted over the top of this sign…?”); and finally its physical availability, as you embark upon a grim bodily struggle with a street lamp that’s just too thick to wrap your lock around.

The upshot is that motorists never have to think about the space they move through.  They never have to make split-second decisions about how to interpret mixed messages about how they’re expected to drive along a particular road – everything is handed to them on a plate. 

Cyclists meanwhile are forced to constantly question how they are going to navigate an obstacle;  to second-guess whether a cycle lane that directs them from the road onto the pavement will lead to them being shouted at by pedestrians 50 yards down the line;   to query every few minutes what is being asked of them by the authorities, and whether they are responding in the correct way. 

Cars drive through cities designed by Euclid.  Cyclists ride through cities that were designed by MC Escher, and which are administered by Franz Kafka. 

This article is not a straightforward justification of law-breaking by people who have been hard done-by.  It is a critique of those who get surprised when cyclists behave as though they exist below the radar.

When a group of people inhabits a world that demands constant reflection on what behaviour is required of them, they inherently develop a more fluid and immediate form of cognitive and physical engagement with their surroundings.  This blurs – even transcends – the more bureaucratic elements of the laws that are designed to govern the presumably legitimate heirs of this landscape. 

Campus news

The campus of the university I work at has been chosen as the location for not one, but two films, to be shot this summer.

In one film, we'll be the set of the MI5 headquarters.  In the other, we are the scene of a futuristic secret-police headquarters  in some sort of Blade Runner dystopia....  Spot the connection?  When K-Punk described our campus as Ballardian, he wasn't wrong. 

In other news, these recent additions to some of our buildings appeared last week - a pleasing counterpoint to our very own No No No sign. 

Fennesz, Philip Jeck, and Old Apparatus

at St Pancras Parish Church, Friday 20 May 2011

St Pancras Parish Church provided a fitting backdrop for this evening’s artists;  its towering ceilings and marble columns, offset by the closeness of its mezzanine galleries, combined to create a space that imparted an imposing Georgian grandeur, yet with a sense of intimacy and warmth. 

First up were Old Apparatus, recent additions to Mala’s Deep Medi label, who gave a remarkably assured performance in what was only their third ever live show. 

Moving effortlessly between sonic themes with subtlety and poise, sounds would emerge, shift ground, and then recombine to coalesce into something new.  Distant rumbles, clicks and whirs, sinister hollow waves.  The listener would at points become suddenly aware that they had with been transported from a hazy dronescape, into a track with a powerful two-step beat, without quite knowing how, like a child being lifted from a car whilst asleep.

Despite a scarcity of explicit drum loops or bass lines, the audience’s active attention was held constantly by an innate sense of musicality, a pervading sense of rhythm and sonic cohesion.  In this way, Old Apparatus managed to pick out a delicate path between all-out asbtract drone, and something more akin to dubstep;   by carving out this space predominantly through the interweaving and development of different textures, the possibility of melody seemed almost crass.

One of the most interesting points in set was when a cacophony of unimagined factory assembly-lines emerge, with enough rhythm to satisfy rather than jar, but with enough robot complexity to make it tantalisingly difficult for the listener to pin down whether or not it forms exactly a ‘beat’. 

The music was tied together by visual projections, which were controlled live onstage.  But this was not the drab Winamp-skin wallpaper that is familiar to so many electronic artists - rather, it was deployed as an extra instrument.  Harsh arrays of sounds - metallic clacks, hisses, howls and clangs - suddenly swing sharply into cognitive focus, when imagery is introduced containing pistons, crank-shafts, jets of steam. 

And while this example may read on paper as a rather obvious juxtaposition, its effect is powerful.  This is particularly so in the case of the piston episode, because of the introduction of the image after the musical scene has already been set.  It feels somewhat like a naming of your extant but unspoken thought, in the same way that Doris Lessing describes the seductive potential of your character being ‘named’ by a suitor:  pinning down a vague sense that you had already been incubating but not assigned a category to, and haven’t even realised you have been incubating until this revelatory point. 

These hauntological motifs of Old Apparatus operate in the same territory as a Magnus Mills creation, or the creature in Wallace and Gromit’s ‘Grand Day Out’ – the figure is unknown, does not belong to an identifiable category, yet speaks to a half-understood aesthetic sensibility that sits just on the tip of the tongue; a semi-formed childhood memory; an itch that cannot be located.  Mark Fisher has described this unattainability as “The sonic equivalent of the 'corner of the retina' effect that the best ghost stories have famously achieved”.  Quatermass groans emanate from the boiler room of a Ballardian nightmare;  a Cronenberg photocopier stalks Jacob Epstein shadows across the derelict corridors of a Victorian workhouse. 

Philip Jeck contrasted the previous set with warm analogue tones, like butter melting on crumpets, his sound constructed entirely from live vinyl sampling and effects.

This was a more stately affair than the previous act, Jeck allowing himself time to linger over passages, savouring smooth trains of sound that extended over periods of several minutes, their momentum carried along by only the most delicate of tweaks.

As well as a suspicion that this is something that arrives with the confidence and comfortableness that arrives with age, there is an element of the sonic output here that arises from the physical apparatus of his methods.  While it may smack of generalisation and nostalgia, there is something intuitively calming about seeking out suitable records, homing in on just a few seconds-worth of material, and expanding on them for extended periods, experimenting to bring new perspectives the fore.  In the dexterity and care required to manipulate the vinyl, imperceptibly adjusting dials to hone their form like a woodturner, slowly yielding a pulsating seascape of sound.  

This suggestion could seem to be merely a fetishisation of ‘retro’ technology.  It is also tempting to dismiss the ‘calmness’ notion by pointing to flaring among turntablists.   We could also argue that vinyl sampling was merely a precursor to the ‘shuffle button’ generation, flitting through Youtube amputations like ADHD butterflies. 

But Jeck’s approach  is surely the antithesis of Youtube surfing.  Because, whereas Simon Reynolds writes about the effects of the proliferation of the world’s music at the click of a mouse making for commodification and ephemerality, Jeck’s music takes a small, carefully selected nugget and considers it, examines it, and (crucially) prolongs it over time – swimming against the current of the attenuation of our collective attention spans.

Christian Fennesz began his set in the well-trodden territory of effects-laden guitar loops.  It was pleasant;  but for all the fuzz and delay, he never managed to lift this element of his performance above the prosaic, and the set really stepped up a notch when he put down the guitar and picked up the laptop, and began to work from a broader palette.

The performance contained extensive passages of sublime mastery of his material, with overlapping themes sculpted and embellished upon.  His peak moment was when he stripped away all of the layers to zoom in on a single tone, which he then manipulated for several minutes, exploring its possibilities in detail, before re-expanding the scene by re-building the structure from the ground up. 

But, lacking the assured consistency of Jeck’s work, Fennesz hopped between sounds too readily, with an uneven, plum-pudding assortment of tricks.  Like the Robert Green of drone, you could never tell when he would rudely intrude upon your reverie with a too-obvious transition, or a pre-heated Ikea synth line. 

Fennesz established an even keel in the final third of the set though, with floating, glassy waves that approached something of a digital Jeck.  This was a thoroughly satisfying conclusion to the evening, as we were enveloped by a luxuriantly textured fog;  a modernist lullaby;  a cold, yet soothing ambience that moulded perfectly to the flagstones and oak of our surroundings.