There's more in 8 street minutes than 80 movies

[imomus]

1. Andy Warhol's biggest unfulfilled ambition was to have a TV show called "Nothing Special". It would just be a camera pointing at a street corner or something, he said. Nothing is so special!

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2. There's a theatre company in Germany called Rimini Protokoll who think actors are boring. Instead, they build spectacles around what they call "experts in everyday life": ordinary working people. They don't like to call them amateurs, they're just professional in something other than acting. So far they've built productions around a failed German mayor, a Calcutta call centre worker, a Bulgarian lorry driver. "By allowing everyone to stand on stage as themselves and contribute something of substance as an expert, the Rimini Project takes on the character of a social experiment, a social utopia, a theatre in which every individual is interesting and valuable in their own way," said Theater Heute magazine.

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3. Recursive circle alert: if ordinary is the new special, then special is the new ordinary, which is therefore the new special, so we're back where we started, and special is the new special.

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4. "There are more truths in twenty-four hours of a man's life than in all the philosophies." The Revolution of Everyday Life, Raoul Vaneigem. "From now on the analysts are in the streets."

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5. "Everyday life invents itself by poaching in countless ways on the property of others". Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life.

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6. These two pieces of French theory have been plundered by the art world recently. They may well have been behind "Lovely Greetings", Erik van Lieshout's installation in the 2006 Berlin Biennial, a shipping container parked on Auguststrasse showing a video in which Lieshout gets to know Germany by bicycle. "He criticises a man on the street who appears to be out of work and yet owns an iPod; he gets beaten up; he worries about his pee being yellow."

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7. Gorgeous Indian Girls: Nameless Beauty is a rather wonderful "nothing special" sort of blog about Indian women glimpsed on the street and in public transport. "Gorgeous Indian girls and ladies pictures which are not aware about the camera and really have an Indian look." The understated, normal and badly-photographed women are somehow more exciting to look at than carefully-made-up, fully frontal Bollywood celebrities.

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8. My favourite YouTube channel is Hitodori: People in the Town. "Here is collection of videos taken from cities around the world. I record video on the street to see the people of the town," says its Japanese creator, who has assembled 366 fixed-camera "visual field recordings" of people passing on the street. Each recording lasts about eight minutes. I find them completely absorbing. Some are shot in my favourite people-watching spots, like this one at the entrance to Daikanyama Station:

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"Atmosphere of towns are affected by people," the filmmaker explains. "To record the atmsphere, I focus on people, not building and landscape. By these videos you can try... marketing reserch... to feel traveling a lot of cities... human watch to kill time... to recover your lonelyness heart... to get used to rush hour." I'd add: to play guessing games with your partner, to study the relative smileyness, fatness or wealth of people in various countries, to check pretty girls, to admire traditional costumes and condemn baseball caps and boring black jackets.

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Although this man has been all over the world with his camera (the tapes show Bahrain, Canada, China, Hong Kong, Italy, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, UK and US), he doesn't think they're anything special: "Attention: These are boring... just videotaped on the street and upload them... no editing and no story... they are different from TV program and movie that have a lot of interesting scene and exciting scene. Please understand they are just record, not entertainment."

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I love these things too - global people-watching from the comfort of the living-room, and in the case of van Lieshout, watching people watching people. Very mise-en-abîme. But I can't help feeling that it's something of a guilty pleasure, an indulgence in society-as-spectacle. Reality TV without the participants' consent.
- c

[alicetiara.livejournal.com]

The Indian woman blog is creepy and sexist. There's nothing wonderful about a guy publicizing his leering at random women as they go about their day.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

His tone is certainly a bit off-colour sometimes. But he's also touchingly wholesome and humanist: how about this one (http://gorgeousindian.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2007-10-23T22%3A53%3A00-07%3A00&max-results=2): "New Loving married couple going with each other. Lucky guy having beautiful and sexy wife. Really na..." And I like how he's so smitten with everyday normality, rather than celebrities. There's a kind of enchantment in his attitude. A trip to the corner fruitstall (http://gorgeousindian.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2007-09-12T02%3A23%3A00-07%3A00&max-results=2) can be pure enchantment for him when he notices an "aunty" "taking care of hawker while weight fruits wtih her nice hands. She have nice shaped fingers.Taking money out of her purse to pay for fruits." But then he has to go and spoil it all with: "Anybody can pay for her melons too."

[imomus.livejournal.com]

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[alicetiara.livejournal.com]

It just smacks of street harassment to me. I do understand that people obviously find aesthetic enjoyment in other people- girlwatching, boywatching, peoplewatching, whatever. But sometimes, as a woman, it's hard to accept that men's enjoyment in watching attractive women is harmless, because women have to deal with the implications of this all the time (being yelled at, catcalled, followed down the street, photographed against their will, etc.). The voyeuristic aspect of this to me feeds the discourse that women are objects for men to find pleasure in; which then prioritizes the men's pleasure over the woman's comfort. And of course part of this discourse is that if a woman objects to this she is humorless, or uptight.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I think the fellow's main crime isn't his interest in, ahem, melons and purses and so on (if this interest flags, the species dies) so much as the way he plays to the gallery. He talks about the girls he photographs (and if photographing in itself is intrusive, we have to say the Hitodori guy is problematical too, and anyone who takes photos on a street, including surveillance cameras) in the way certain men talk to certain other men about certain women. But then again, wouldn't it be worse if he used this tone to the women themselves?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Which reminds me of Germaine Greer's line: "Women spend the first half of their lives wondering why men are looking at them, and the second half wondering why they aren't."

[milgram.livejournal.com]

Wasn't Greer's point that it's depressing that we have gotten to this state where mature women consider this kind of harassment “normal”?
Guys like this instil that horrible feeling by judging you daily on the street. It's objectifying in the same way as immediate street harassment, which is not the same as the “voyeurism” of an indiscriminatory street shot or surveillance camera.

Re: "wouldn't it be worse if he used this tone to the women themselves?" why do you believe that he doesn't? anyway, would it be that different? here he's speaking to a wider audience of women and men and still encouraging this "women are objects for men to find pleasure in" idea.

horrible feeling

[pay-option07.livejournal.com]

The text is similar to a 15 year old discussing his hot friend and the male species projects this throughout his lifetime.
No need to worry old girl!

interest flags

[pay-option07.livejournal.com]

Aren't there any woman voyeurs represented here? I do not like the sexist note here and feel it pollutes this entire blog.

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

I agree. It feels predatory and at someone else's expense, not cheeky and playful.

(That said, I'm leering at your icon. Apologies.)

[microworlds.livejournal.com]

This reminds me of that hack you can use on Google to look at unsecured security cameras. There was one I saw where some Taiwanese children were doing PE, but I got bored after a while. I wonder if it still works.

[microworlds.livejournal.com]

It still does!

[thomascott.livejournal.com]

Testing, testing one, two.

human beings are not being there the same as reclining

[(Anonymous)]

am glad am alive to read and listen struggling not to finally give in a man or a woman its not so differant adam or yoko stevn or shaun after techno the extasys gone

Re: human beings are not being there the same as reclining

[microworlds.livejournal.com]

Re: human beings are not being there the same as reclining

[(Anonymous)]

lunatic fringe

Re: human beings are not being there the same as reclining

[microworlds.livejournal.com]

omg that was the name of the general discussion forum on billy boyd's old messageboards and now you've made me depressed ;____________;

Re: human beings are not being there the same as reclining

[(Anonymous)]

adam yookkoo steven or shaun after the techno the peeps ave all reclined to be inside the perpetul dawn....of boring electro and sad misodginy.

Re: human beings are not being there the same as reclining

[microworlds.livejournal.com]

Your words speak to my soul, anonymous. So much wisdom and truth! I wish I could be you.

Re: human beings are not being there the same as reclining

[(Anonymous)]

your my least favourite person

Re: human beings are not being there the same as reclining

[microworlds.livejournal.com]

Terrible enough for you not to care to spell "you're" correctly? Wow, I might as well quit the internet anonymous, because anonymous is the authority on everything. :(

Re: japan looks relax

[(Anonymous)]

the best films are when nothing happens

[ganatronic.livejournal.com]

I was about to reply with this anyway, since it seems appropriate. Here are a bunch of strings. Some of these cameras are controllable!

inurl:"ViewerFrame?Mode=

intitle:Axis 2400 video server
inurl:/view.shtml
intitle:"Live View / - AXIS" | inurl:view/view.shtml^
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inurl:ViewerFrame?Mode=Refresh
inurl:axis-cgi/jpg

inurl:axis-cgi/mjpg (motion-JPEG)
inurl:view/indexFrame.shtml
inurl:view/index.shtml
inurl:view/view.shtml
liveapplet
intitle:"live view" intitle:axis
intitle:liveapplet
allintitle:"Network Camera NetworkCamera"

intitle:axis intitle:"video server"
intitle:liveapplet inurl:LvAppl
intitle:"EvoCam" inurl:"webcam.html"
intitle:"Live NetSnap Cam-Server feed"
intitle:"Live View / - AXIS"
intitle:"Live View / - AXIS 206M"

intitle:"Live View / - AXIS 206W"
intitle:"Live View / - AXIS 210″
inurl:indexFrame.shtml Axis
inurl:"MultiCameraFrame?Mode=Motion"
intitle:start inurl:cgistart
intitle:"WJ-NT104 Main Page"

intext:"MOBOTIX M1″ intext:"Open Menu"
intext:"MOBOTIX M10″ intext:"Open Menu"
intext:"MOBOTIX D10″ intext:"Open Menu"
intitle:snc-z20 inurl:home/
intitle:snc-cs3 inurl:home/
intitle:snc-rz30 inurl:home/

intitle:"sony network camera snc-p1″
intitle:"sony network camera snc-m1″
site:.viewnetcam.com -www.viewnetcam.com
intitle:"Toshiba Network Camera" user login

intitle:"netcam live image"
intitle:"i-Catcher Console - Web Monitor"

[(Anonymous)]

The first thing that struck me while watching these is how civilized the Japanese people are. Makes me want to move there, but then I think foreign races would disturb the harmony.

Which city in Europe is the closest to Tokyo in this sense?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

That's a really hard question. Berlin has some of Tokyo's cleanliness and its subcultural energy, Paris its tiny flats, high density streetlife, fashion and elegance, Geneva its wealth and conservatism, Stockholm its kind liberal-collectivist values and tweeness, Frankfurt its salarymen and boxy office buildings, Amsterdam its land scarcity, London its high-gloss marketing and crazy prices, Warsaw its racial non-diversity, Budapest its bathhouses, Vienna its "civilized" feel, Milan its tiny hivelike workshops... But there's nowhere that wraps it all up in one city. There is no European Tokyo.

[akabe.livejournal.com]

Athens if they cleaned it up a bit and got rid of the relics.

[idletigers.wordpress.com (from livejournal.com)]

Moving away from image to sound -- I wonder if you know much about the 19th century composer Jean-Georges Kastner? He meticulously catalogued and transcribed, in something close to musical notation, all the different tradesmen's street cries in Paris and grouped them according to what was being sold (foodstuffs / clothing / trinkets / labour). This resulted in something called the "Grand symphonie humouristique: les cries de Paris"... and this all much much before Cage's ears preferring street corners to concert halls, or R. Murray Schafer musicalizing urban soundscapes.
Any way, the interesting thing is that it's itinerant tradesmen (or musicians for that matter) who are making all the noise, so his ears naturally catch on foreign / "other" sounds.
Can't tell you much else though because my French is awful.

Ross

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

Fascinating--I'll have to investigate. Thanks, Ross.

Funny we should bring up Paris, since this all evokes a kind of armchair flaneurie. The lack of editing makes it exciting, in that our windows on other parts of the world in most media are so heavily edited and mediated that we lack a real sense of the character of a place--its tone and tempo--until we actually visit.

Recursive circle alert: if ordinary is the new special, then special is the new ordinary, which is therefore the new special, so we're back where we started, and special is the new special.

I fail to see this oscillation between the ordinary and the special as an either/or thing. Nothing is the new anything, and never was: sometimes the special feels ordinary, and vice versa, depending on content and context. It's fluid, not mechanical. They co-exist.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

These "recursive" paradoxes -- the fallback tic of journalists, mostly, but also Christians who preach that the meek shall inherit the earth, the poor are really rich and so on -- seem to promise to catapult us into a new world where values have been radically transvalued (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transvaluation_of_values). In fact, they leave us squarely in the world created by the definitions we already know and agree on. "Theft" property is still property-not-theft, "special" ordinary is still ordinary-not-special, and so-trad-it's-avant is still trad, not avant.

But if you're happy with failing to "transvaluate all values" in the Nietzchean sense then yes, the best we can say is that "sometimes the special feels ordinary and vice versa". The important word there is "sometimes", because this is allowed to happen on condition that it doesn't disturb the prevailing semantics. It leaves the either / or intact, failing to replace it with and / and or neither / nor. In other words, failing to transvaluate means failing to make the case that something might be special and ordinary at the same time, forever, or that something might be neither special nor ordinary, ever. Those are the real refusals of binary logic, and they take us to a place of quantum strangeness where the pocket watch of thought as we know it melts into, yes, something fluid.

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

" Recursive circle alert: if ordinary is the new special, then special is the new ordinary, which is therefore the new special, so we're back where we started, and special is the new special."

This would make sense if there was a fixed, specific definition of ordinary and special, but there isnt. I also think you're missing the point slightly by reducing this to binary.

A famous quote from Sans Soleil (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sans_Soleil) -- the "lonely traveler" writes to her that he is no longer interested in the special only the ordinary, but throughout the film we see many curious, "special" sights from arid African landscapes to a manekineko shrine where people are praying for the safe return of their cat. Don't be fooled that this is just fascination with novelty however.



One of the key points made by this film is that we create our own realities. The avant garde has always been strongly linked to this idea. Finding new ways to see the world is the aim of all avant garde art. That doesnt mean the special becomes ordinary and vice versa, it means looking closer at things around us. No "reversal", just broadening of view.

[akabe.livejournal.com]

and this is where the farce (and lacanian analysis ) begins. it's really about the 'other's' ordinary. (not ordinary at all)

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

Seems you've made that recursive circle of yours into a knot. Progress?

beatitudo, happiness

[pay-option07.livejournal.com]

What has commonness done to anything but make everything in our lives lose it's value. The recursive paradox is the medium itself.

more people walking down the street

[peacelovgranola.livejournal.com]

[akabe.livejournal.com]

of course the real challenge would be for all those creative ideas people to start seeing themselves as just ordinary people.

[vonbruckhousen.livejournal.com]

making just ordinary people quite special of course

Nothing Special

[19091977.livejournal.com]

Seems the USA & the UK have fulfilled Warhol's television dream, of course, only the police watch this new show.
(http://www.flickr.com/photos/katiepipu/2213011313/)

Re: Nothing Special

[count-vronsky.livejournal.com]

Tink says -- "meow meow, momus.... surrender! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxMXsWTUDkY)"

Re: Nothing Special

[cap-scaleman.livejournal.com]

[(Anonymous)]

Have you tried looking out your own window for a similar experience or do you have to view it online to legitimise it. Of course if nothing happens outside your window, does that make it more special?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I have white sheets over my window so I can't see out, and so my neighbours can't see in. I'm on the ground floor. It isn't a street view, but an extremely quiet courtyard where there's no visible life apart from some plantlife and the occasional human dropping rubbish into the recycle bins.

It's a pretty high density environment out there -- windows stacked up row on row -- but I don't see any people. Sometimes an old sea captain type walks past with a clinking bag of beer bottles. He always greets me, one Old Salt to another. Sometimes a Turkish woman is smoking with her kitchen window open. She does more of a stare, if I'm playing with my rabbit or throwing open my window to listen to the rain. Sometimes the cooks from the community centre are smoking by the door that leads towards the street, or someone's tinkering with a bicycle (the hof is full of them).

[standard-grey.livejournal.com]

Given my love (and limited yet fun experience) with sound art via field recording, i found the pieces were more active for me when I wasn't watching, but listening instead. Hmmmm.
Still interesting to view, though.

Anyone else into phonography out there? Soundtransit.nl, Framework on Resonance FM and Seattle's Phonographer's Union are all worthy listens...