Since its early days the Cyberspace, or what is called the electronic frontier, has often been compared to New America.
In his essay “Settlers, Indians, and the Cavalry, or: How to Subvert Electronic Identities”, Oliver Marchart refers to this as: An always receding horizon/frontier which has to be discovered and at the same time protected in its untouched innocent state. …… it won’t surprise that we can observe the revival of social roles/characters/personae such as that of the cowboy, anarchists and terrorists, liberals, Indians or the United States Cavalry.[1]
Marchart, however, brings about the argument of why this new America is yet unapproachable. Citing Stanley Cavell for one of the answers he says, ““It is unapproachable if he (or whoever belongs there) is already there (always already), but unable to experience it, hence to know or tell it; or unable to tell it, hence to experience it.” Cavell touches with this passage at something we could call the logics of the always already, which is central in any meaningful conceptualization of the discovery of new continents.”
Since its emergence in early 1990s, different people – and here we want to talk particularly about writers, artists and activists – have tried to “experience” the electronic frontier in full, and “tell it” in different modes and manners. The 5th Womanifesto is one such occasion. The organizers, Varsha Nair and Katherine Olston, invited fellow artists to contribute to an on-line project, to tell about “No Man’s Land”. Hence this raises multiple questions: what is No Man’s Land, what is virtual space, and what is No Man’s Land in virtual space? Some try to tell about No Man’s Land using the cyberspace, and some use No Man’s Land as a metaphor to tell about cyberspace or vice versa, and some try to tackle multiple questions.
Taking “New America” as a metaphor. Barbara Lattanzi reconstructs the Western movie “The Invaders”, made in 1912 by Thomas Ince, about the building of transcontinental railways. The movie, set in the 1860s, tells the parallel stories of Native Indians and European settlers, “the Invaders”. Lattanzi sampled 20 frames from each minute of Ince’s 40-minute film and extended each sampled minute to one hour. By doing so, this project entitled “Optical De-dramatization Engine (O.D.E.) applied in 40-hour cycles to Thomas Ince’s The Invaders 1912”, invites viewers to experience and expose themselves to a time when everybody shared the romantic dream of potentiality of a new continent, and to all the characters of the new frontier: the cowboys, anarchists and terrorists, liberals, Indians and the United States Cavalry, in an uniquely cyber manner.
In a message on Womanifesto’s web-board, Lattanzi describes the film as, “a romance between a native-American woman and a European-American surveyor for the transcontinental railroad is the basis for the drama. …. the film helps to produce a context in which the engineering of geographical connection is perceived to fundamentally depend upon the enforced condition of social and cultural separation.”[2] This “engineering of geographical connection” has had totally different significance in different geopolitical contexts. In the ensuing discussion also posted on the web-board, other participants of this web project speak of different memories in connection to the building of railways on their home soils. For Dragana Zarevac from former Yugoslavia, it is associated with Tito’s ideology of utilizing constructive force of enthusiastic youth to re-build the nation after World War II, and to construct a so-called “brotherhood and unity” among the Yugoslavian states. “Two famous rail-roads were built that way, mainly in Bosnia: Samac – Sarajevo and Brcko – Banovici. All the participants I’ve met talk about those actions as of the great experience of their life. Many mixed marriages (generation of my parents) have also started during those working days. The main road of Yugoslavia, which is also called “brotherhood and unity” road (Ljubljana – Skopje via Zagreb, Belgrade and Nis) was mainly constructed using ‘youth actions’ too.”[3] Whereas, for Nilofar Akmut, from Pakistan, building of railways as far as humanity is concerned, was far more destructive than constructive. Re-construction of railways started to take place around 1947 when the partition of the Indian subcontinent started to unfold. As many as 5 million refugees moved in both directions and much was witnessed on the railways – “My mother’s family was on one of those enumerable trains where the sleepers were removed in order to rape and murder the human cargo which was moving in either direction to carve out two Nations.”[4] And for people in South East Asia building of a railway is inscribed as a ‘road to death’. It is taught as such in school textbooks and refers to the Japanese army’s use of an array of prisoners of war during World War II. This is presented in the form of a drama in the 1957 film, “The Bridge on the River Kwai”.
“Engineering geographical connection” that has thus taken place with millions of human dramas, connected a Man’s Land to another Man’s Land, and a No Man’s Land to a Man’s Land. Before, it was railways, now it is airplanes, GPS, satellites, and the Internet that secure the geographical connection. So who are these new cowboys, anarchists, Indians and the state cavalry?
Take another intelligent experimental work, “Blood and Sand” by atelier thingsmatter. In this work, the horizon of the ‘electronic’ frontier becomes visible via mirage-like pigments, which start as abstract and blurry patches of colors and later appear as different scenes from different days of CNN’s news broadcasts featuring Christiane Amanpour. The scenes, of this well-known woman TV journalist, are reports about war zones from around the world and at the end of a short journey of tricking our perception, “Blood and Sand” creates a complex layering of the notion of No Man’s Land (while it works on “interrelated phenomena of human perception, communication design, cultural difference, gender roles, media politics, video technology, and fashion” according to the artists’ statement).
When the Texan cowboy, Ted Turner created CNN in 1980 it was seen as a total pioneering work by this leader of a new generation of visionaries. His was an American success story. The invention opened up borders and limits hence lifting up “the enforced condition of social and cultural separation”, and never ceasing to catch people’s imagination on “finding yet another undiscovered frontier”. Although, this role would ultimately make the inventor or an explorer an invader, as there is “always already” in some form at the opposite end, either as a physical or psychological phenomena.
Looking at the participating projects for the 5th Womanifesto, people interpret “No Man’s Land” in diverse ways, and the notions are roughly characterized as follows:
No Man’s Land as an allegory of an existing nation, a space between nations, or a political no man’s land: the Berlin Wall (John Hopkins, Karla Sachse, Susane Ahner); Burma-Thai border (Prevett and McArthur); Israeli-occupied territory in Palestine (Orly Dahan); Kashmir (Kash Gabriele Torsello); India (Tejal Shah), south bank of the Chang Jiang or Yangtze River (Jerome Ming); former Yugoslavia (Renata Poljak).
The situation of bare life: Estelle Cohenny-Vallier, Mona Burr, Irene Leung.
Finding No Man’s Land in a daily scene or a landscape. As Doris Hinzen-Roehrig states in the text related to her work, “What happens when suddenly we become aware of this other world, when we discover things, which always existed but which we never recognized as such before?”: Ana Bilankov, Andrew Burrell, Trupti Patel, Varsha Nair, Wen Yau, Patricia Reed, Sara Haq.
Animal kingdom, man-made animal kingdom or animal kingdom in the mind of humans: Manit Sriwanichpoom , Hsu Su-Chen.
A medium itself is No Man’s Land: Noor Effendy Ibrahim – theater, Lawan Jirasuradej – a 16 mm film.
Creating a mirrorscape to No Man’s Land: Man’s Land. In this Man’s Land a window opens with an elderly woman announcing, “A King is Born!” (Renata Poljak); via blinks (Marketa Bankova); and as a paradox about the use of women – women being conscripted in the army or for sexual slavery by the army (Yoshiko Shimada). In Dragana Zarevac’s “radar pieu”, a woman’s body becomes a radar that controls the air of a man’s land where a man’s obsession of machines overpowers daily necessities.
Limbo as No Man’s Land: Liliane Zumkemi. (Attention! The Vatican is mulling over prohibiting the notion of “limbo” from the Catholic Church. Hence in the future it can exist only in literature and art).
No Man’s Land in the religious sphere: Shane Solanki – the miraculous stage as a no man’s land, in this case, walking on water.
As for me, when I hear the word “No Man’s Land”, the first thing that comes to my mind is the sound sphere (the entering point to the No Man’s Land web project itself starts with a break down of the title into phonetics). In my essay “History Acoustic” written in 2000, I wrote about the various phenomena related to sound, and the potential of sound as “the constitution of space”.
In order to explain what today’s broadcasting is, Jody Berland notices that it is “like music, in part about the constitution of space.” * More specifically, “in establishing territoriality, there was sound long before there were fences.”
“They (*sound-related phenomena) all momentarily occupy the space, defining, re-defining and de-defining themselves. “The definite” definition cannot afford to be in. Supposedly receiver of information, a reader or a listener, is actually an active constructor of information. This can be called the constitution of space. The potential implication of constitution of space thus is enormous. It goes well beyond the sphere of sound but can be applied in philosophical, political and social spheres. Internet occupies the curious position in this case. It will serve as the field to exercise the constitution of space. The digital technology thus is neither answer nor solution to the eschatological question, but a maneuvering tool.”[5]
Two projects caught my attention in this light. “Patriotic Pups” by Katherine Olston and Sue Hajdu is a performance piece. The performers act as dogs wearing national flags, and go woof woof. “Winter”, by Terry Berkowitz shows only one everyday scene of winter in New York. In the background of the image is a building with the U.S. flag on top. Over this image we hear the artist and a child singing “God Bless America” in an extremely out-of-tune way. As the song proceeds the camera focuses more and more on the U.S. flag that becomes the center of the image in the end.
These two videos are in some way protest pieces. And the protest part is generated in a form of onomatopoeia in the dog performance, and in the out-of-tune singing in “Winter”. Creating or pronouncing onomatopoeia, a translation of sound into a human language and a human concept or a feeling into sound, is a curious human activity that requires one to be in a child-like mental stage and with the intelligence of an adult. One Linguistic theory regards this as the origin of language – onomatopoeia draws our primitive sense of expression and throws us back to the stage where words are not conceptually defined. By the same token, when a sound is out of tune it is in a unique situation. A tune is usually created to define human’s ability to perceive certain messages of a composer, and that means to have an ability to communicate. Therefore when sound is out of tune, the sound, which is not accepted by humans, flies around trying to find a place to go. This stage is like a limbo for sound. These territories that human beings haven’t managed really to examine and define yet offer tremendous potential in creative activities. In these two works, the artists have found them to be useful as powerful message-giving tools. The practice is both – a cultural challenge and bliss.
Discovering No Man’s Land, geographically or psychologically, pondering on how to use it for which purpose, and creating and engineering (geographical or psychological) connections between one No Man’s Land to another, is a task that artists and writers must continue to pursue even after this project. Otherwise, who else will collect these enormous amounts of human dramas that have come to rise when people have tried to find a connection to it?
[1] “Settlers, Indians, and the Cavalry, or: How to Subvert Electronic Identities”, Oliver Marchart, ZKP3@Metaforum 3
[2] Womanifesto webboard, 18/07/06
[3] Womanifesto webboard, 18/07/06
[4] Womanifesto webboard, 17/07/06
[5] “History Acoustic” first published in the exhibition catalogue “The End of the World?”2000, National Gallery Prague, and reprinted in “Konecna Krajina”, One Woman Press, 2004