Real Cinema

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“It’s a filmmaker’s responsibility to put together something as accurate as possible,” is the Broomfield manifesto. Following 2006’s acclaimed Ghosts, he’s taken his experiments with ‘real cinema’ to a new level with Battle for Haditha – digging as deeply into the principles of filmmaking as he does the universal issues surrounding this symbolic episode.

“It’s great fun to play around with style,” Broomfield tells me, citing Day for Night – François Truffaut’s much-lauded film about making a film – as a creative influence. Certainly since the journalistic frustrations of 1988’s aptly-titled Driving Me Crazy, he’s carved a name for himself as a figurehead for what pigeonhole enthusiasts call les nouvelles egotistes: a growing breed of doc-makers who are themselves central to the action, together with the likes of Louis Theroux, Michael Moore and Morgan Spurlock.

Given their deviation from this trademark approach, it’s all-too-tempting to pin up his two most recent films as the start of a new chapter in his work. Both are dramatic interpretations of controversial situations, with no bobbing boom or frantic chase in sight; unlike much of his personality-driven back-catalogue to-date, both stories pivot largely on a specific series of events and the complex repercussions for the many characters involved.

But like his intriguing Anglo-American drawl, or one of his elusive heckled interviewees of past films, Broomfield’s not that easy to box in: for him, both style and substance should remain organic. “I think about one project at a time; I never seem to have a problem finding my next film,” he insists. “I’m not one of these people with a list.”

The latest episode to pique his inquisitive instinct was the death of 24 Iraqi civilians in the small town of Haditha on 19 November 2005, in the aftermath of a blast from an improvised explosive device (IED) that killed a young marine riding in convoy. Whilst initial reports from the US military claimed that the deaths were a direct result of the blast and a subsequent gunfight with hostile insurgents, Iraqi witnesses told a very different story – five unarmed men in a taxi shot dead as they approached the scene, and 19 more killed in three nearby houses in an act of violent retribution over the following hours.

It was an amateur video clearly showing the bodies of women and children shot in their homes, passed to an Iraqi human-rights organisation and then to Time magazine, that laced the affair with doubt. It identified flaws in the marines’ statement, prompting a formal inquiry – although the initial conclusion was that it was collateral damage, things soon spiraled into a full criminal investigation, with several marines on trial for unpremeditated murder. For Broomfield, this was motivation enough to cement the blood-soaked incident as an example.

“I’ve researched lots of subjects that I haven’t followed through,” he admits. “When you’ve got to be with them for a year, a year-and-a-half, you might as well do something that is complicated enough, or has enough mystery to keep you going. I don’t like going into films knowing what the outcome will be: often it’s the discovery that’s exciting; changing your mind; meeting people with sides that you’d never imagined before. That’s what makes it worthwhile and fun.”

It’s a compelling approach: filmmaker both directing the action and being swept up in it. “It’s all to do with storytelling. Any way you can tell the story better so it’s more real, more entertaining, more contemporary, is great to play around with,” is Broomfield’s take. In the case of Battle for Haditha, this involved building a framework from what few indisputable facts were available – and letting the cast improvise the rest.

As with Ghosts – for which the painstaking research process including hiring Chinese students to pose as illegal immigrant workers, and posing as an Afrikaner worker himself to film the results with a hidden camera in his glasses – finding the right cast to carry the film was crucial. Not necessarily just for their acting skills, but for their genuine deep-rooted emotions, experiences and insider-knowledge that could steer both the general atmosphere and finer details more accurately than any stubborn director with a top-down vision.

Understandably, it feels like a documentary-maker’s approach to drama: letting the action unfold as naturalistically as possible. At first he considered going the full distance: tracking down the marines who had lived and breathed the sweat, smoke and blood of Haditha, and asking them to re-enact the events of 19th November 2005. But in the flesh, as he told The Times, they were “fucked up, much too jittery. Some couldn’t keep still when we were talking to them.”

One of the most shocking elements during this initial research period was the marines’ “distressing and vulgar” sense of humour; arguably a coping mechanism to detach them from the shocking things they’d seen and done, but something Broomfield had to fight through, alongside the jitters and the tranquilliser damage, to understand what they were really about.

Unable to work with those directly connected with Haditha – and with the trial just getting under way – the production favoured a more conventional call-out to casting agents with military connections, tapping into servicemen who had recently returned from active duty to keep that emotional resonance without jeopardising the whole project.

The highlight of their nine-month casting call was unearthing 22-year-old ex-marine and aspiring actor Elliot Ruiz, who at 17 had been the youngest solider deployed to Iraq, and had already had his personal story dramatised in a Pulitzer-nominated play. Corporal Ramirez wasn’t any easy first lead role for Ruiz: dredging up all manner of demons, it was a turbulent process that came to a head in an on-screen breakdown with an uncomfortable dose of realism. Iraqi civilians, many of whom had lost loved ones in the conflict, were also persuaded to lend their stories to the film as part of the predominantly amateur cast.

Despite responding to one symbolic episode, this fresh ammunition for the anti-war canon has an intentionally timeless quality. “Things like Haditha happen in any conflict, any war, anywhere,” reasons Broomfield. “The stuff that we filmed after the IED goes off is all based on reports: that’s all accurate, what happened in those houses. But I don’t want this to be seen as a forensic film. Haditha is a symbolic crime, but not such a rarity that it deserves to be looked at in isolation.”

While it may seem that the collective lens of the world’s media has been on Iraq since those first volleys were fired, it’s the other side’s perspective that has been conspicuously absent thus far: and this is the edge Haditha brings to the public debate.

“It’s a film about the language of war, and the common humanity that people share,” he declares. “In any conflict there are different points of view; it’s rarely good and evil. But most journalists have been stuck in the Green Zone throughout, and genuine Iraqi viewpoints are few and far between.”

Accordingly, the research also included flying to Aman to meet civilian survivors of the massacre – “who were there on the day, and knew the people who were killed” – plus spending a week with insurgents who had been directly involved with Haditha, and quizzing the journalist from Time magazine who first broke the story into public consciousness. The next step was securing government reports and witness statements to build as accurate a picture as possible, from multiple sides.

Iraqi witnesses and insiders in the marines told the same story: that the killings were indiscriminate as a knee-jerk reaction to their colleague’s death. Most shocking of all were the protocols he found through conversations with marines: “Their standard operating procedure rules are so fucking hardcore. If a house is described as ‘hostile’, then you just kill everyone in the house. It doesn’t matter if it contains two-year-olds or the elderly.”

But while he admits starting the project with some bias against the marines, meeting them in the flesh and realising that these were poverty-stricken kids with little or no education, thousands of miles from home in a conflict they didn’t understand, muddied the waters somewhat: “The deeper I dug into the whole story, the harder I realised it was to take a side. It was hard to condemn them out of hand as cold-blooded killers. I hope people will feel that judgment should be passed on the war itself, the architects of the war, and the future of the war. These are just poor bastards who got caught up in it.”

“Everyone has some kind of blinkered view, and it’s interesting that in some of the cinema discussions after the film, the two main camps realised just how blinkered they are. That’s what happens in war – but most traditional war films tend to be black and white, good and bad.”

Broomfield’s already made it clear that beyond the factual framework, the cast should make the piece their own, so I ask how he sees his own role in the production – particularly in still relatively unfamiliar dramatic territory.

“I enable people to deliver their performances in as relaxed a way as possible, and as real a way as possible,” he responds, after a short pause and a contemplative hmm. “It’s creating an environment that people can work in that makes them feel alright to be themselves, particularly if you’re working with non-actors. They shouldn’t be embarrassed: you want them for who they are.”

Of course, dramatic interpretation or not, Battle for Haditha has a grounding in fact – and was released while the trial was still in progress – so surely directorial control was crucial in places? “When dealing with specific milestones in the report, details from a legal document, we had to control people pretty tightly,” he confirms. “They couldn’t say whatever they wanted in those situations.”

“We worked from a pretty rigid structure of the story, but I was often steered by what they had to contribute: ‘We wouldn’t do it this way; we’d do it this way.’ I let them use their own language, being mindful that I didn’t want them acting being a marine: I wanted them being themselves. In a sense, they’re the experts – you don’t need one of those experts standing by.”

Given their deeply personal roots in the conflict, and intimate connections with its victims, surely the cast had their own agendas, even if the director endeavoured to avoid one of his own? “The film is all about agendas,” is the simple answer. “The marines, the insurgents, the people who get caught between those two forces, all have their own rationale for what they do. It’s about presenting those three agendas as accurately as possible, to an audience who probably has their own preconceptions.”

“Showing the film around, an Iraqi audience is very pro insurgents – would they even have taken money to do what they did? They see them as patriots. An American audience is always much more defensive about the marines.”

Three strands of narrative bind the film together, representing these three viewpoints: the pair of newly-recruited insurgents paid to plant the IED, the marines who seek revenge for its fatal detonation, and the civilians who are cut down indiscriminately as a result – several of whom see the bomb being planted in their quiet neighbourhood and choose to keep quiet.

While the brutality of the wider insurgency comes across, the two that plant the bomb are nervous and inexperienced, acting clumsily in the name of patriotism – but tellingly manage to flee the scene unharmed as gunfire erupts. The marines are brutal, dehumanised and reduced to killing machines by fear and rage, but ultimately emerge as pawns in a game much larger than themselves, endorsed by orders from above and crippled by remorse.

Iraqi civilian life is sketched out in various short episodes – a party to celebrate a circumcision, a boy playing with a goat, a family going to market – but this third group is finally crushed from both sides, with nowhere to turn. Crucially for Broomfield, all involved re-creating elements of their own lives, not acting several stages removed from it.

Some 15 years before Ghosts, his first venture into directing drama – 1989’s glossy Hollywood fare Diamond Skulls – he found overwhelming as a process, and readily admits to being embarrassed by the end result. Does mindless escapism and detachment from reality just not appeal?

“All forms of storytelling are interesting; I just happen to have grown up in a tradition of documentaries,” he reflects. “But I don’t like celebrity and all that goes with it: I enjoy getting to know normal people and their lives. For me, it’s about combining that with telling a structured story in an accessible way.”

Unlike that self-confessed blip on Broomfield’s CV, both Ghosts and Battle for Haditha shun the studio lights and contrived repetition of Hollywood to reveal something deeper about those involved.

“These are not pseudo actors; they’re real people who are being themselves,” he asserts. “That means you have to shoot in a different way; in real environments. You can’t shoot them on a set ’cause then they have to act, and they have no training in acting; they don’t know that the fuck they’re doing.”

Based in Jordan – Iraq was clearly too dangerous – the cast and crew lived as a community. “I had to create a barracks for the marines to live in, and the Iraqis were living in houses. If you’re shooting reverse angles, lighting the bejesus out of something and having hundreds of people standing around the set, you’ve got to have actors. It’s very, very difficult.”

By way of example, the bathroom in which Ruiz breaks down – purging himself of all those years of pent up anguish – doesn’t open up into a world of runners, tracks and dollies. It’s the actual bathroom used by the cast and crew. Maintaining the ‘real cinema’ approach are very long cuts. For the heart-rending mourning scene, the camera rolled for 40 minutes straight – no-one was going to ask the genuinely distressed women to go one more time for luck.

“I think the greatest thing that film has is the ability to describe real time,” argues Broomfield. “I don’t like lots of cuts: it’s really interesting to see a conversation, for example, or how long it takes for an argument to develop, rather than just cutting to an argument. We’re used to seeing things in real time, and cinema has the exciting ability to do that.”

“I grew up with anthropological, observational films, where the most interesting thing was seeing a long conversation between two guys in some weird language with subtitles. You get a sense of their rhythm, how they do things, what their humour’s like – no other art-form can do that.”

For Haditha he picked up countless tricks from special effects supervisor David Harris, including how to set up action shots to keep a lot of movement in the camera. “Certain things, particularly action, are also much more involving in real time than if you cut to the effect all the time,” he concludes. “It’s much more threatening if the human eye sees it as being real.”

© Nick Carson 2008. First published in Issue 9 of 4Talent magazine

A Third Way?

Would you pass up a juicy brief from the swoosh, the golden arches or any other glossy global with cash to spend but a somewhat chequered back-story? Is there room for conscience in our glitzy, soundbite world?

In his time, Jonathan Barnbrook has turned down Coca-Cola, Nike and a seemingly innocuous leisure company who, after some digging, turned out to be owned by a landmine manufacturer linked with the Korean War. And while he stresses that ranting for its own sake can be counterproductive, if the opportunity arises he’ll make it abundantly clear why that client has been crossed off the list.

“You have to take responsibility for what your clients do,” he shrugs. Consumers and commissioners are waking up to the power of visual communication as a prime shaper of our culture, but the transition from determination to disillusionment is all-too common. His Soho-based studio regularly receives correspondence from design graduates unsure of how to balance watertight morals with a half-decent living.

“I’m sure I’d be a lot richer if I agreed to work for large corporates, but I’d be unhappy,” is Jonathan’s take on the issue. “It’s an outdated idea to put over the client’s message and not think about what you’re doing. Working for a trendy sports manufacturer isn’t necessarily the ultimate job. I don’t see it as kudos – to me, kudos would be working for a charity. Money is an issue; you have to keep going. But I’m not starving. I can turn down work and still survive.”
 
So has he burnt his bridges with the agencies that came bearing accounts that for many designers would carve a reputation and top their folio with a crown, albeit a thorny one? “They’ve never been in touch again,” he’s prepared to admit. “But to be honest, we don’t want to be desperate to get work from these sorts of people.”

Jonathan’s close ties with the global underground scene inform his often politically-motivated design and typography. When the Coca-Cola brief landed on his desk, he immediately picked up the phone to Kalle Lasn, founder of Vancouver-based counter-culture organisation Adbusters, to work through the ethical dilemma.
 
Kalle himself is optimistic. “People are more aware now; creative people are starting to feel their responsibility,” he insists. “They had to bow low before corporate clients and kiss their arses – now the feeling is that it’s us, not the corporations, who are the cool-makers and the cool-breakers.”

Jonathan first crossed paths with Adbusters and their culture-jamming magazine back in 2000, when they set out their individualist stall in a manifesto entitled First Things First. “Too much design energy is being spent to promote pointless consumerism,” it read, “and too little to help people understand an increasingly complex and fragile world.”

It created “quite a ruckus,” Kalle recalls, with many ‘old-school’ designers protesting that client satisfaction must always be top of the list of priorities. Their argument boiled down to the scale of success: two hundred employees polishing the corporate crown are better than twenty who subvert it. But the ruckus was there, and many young design and advertising students signed up.

One of Adbusters’ central concerns, he explains, is that the culture many of us swear by is “spoon-fed to us” – filtered down from the top echelons of the multinationals as they scrabble over each other in a “quest to put a glow around brands. To create cool.”

In a world that is gradually fabricated around us, fashion and social acceptability are handed down ready-made: “Culture no longer grows from the bottom-up. We should be able to decide for ourselves what we like.”

Almost from birth, we’re told what is fashionable to eat, drink and wear – and it’s only through the ever-expanding mouthpiece of the media that this is made possible. So in a world so firmly under the control of the ‘creators of cool’, is the brand-polishing bandwagon the only way to make a name in the design industry?

“It’s the job of every human being to be proud of what they’re doing, and do it wholeheartedly,” he declares. “But visual communicators have become part of the marketing arm of corporations. It’s not the job of designers to give clients everything they want, but to try to be ethical whilst making the world a better place. They should have the courage and ethical guts to say no.”

But clearly it oversimplifies the situation to polarise all potential clients into good and bad, light and dark, ethical and unethical. I challenge Jonathan to draw a line in the sand. “Ethical clients are concerned about the impact they have, and will have in the future,” is his considered response. But while certain issues – such as worker exploitation, war profiteering or wanton destruction of the environment – will automatically warrant a firm refusal, there are inevitably grey areas.

“With some companies it’s more about what they represent,” he goes on. “We’ll always research around a company before making a decision, find out who they might be owned by and so on.” So after 17 years in the industry, has he felt any sense of disillusionment himself since the heady days of student activism?

“If anything our work has become more extreme; more confident,” he reflects. “Graphic designers are finally standing up and saying no. Of course it’s difficult if you work for someone else; if it’s not your choice. But then you can always use your talent to do something useful in your own time.”

Jonathan’s ethos sits at odds with much of the London design community, which he identifies as “very commercial, intensely competitive and very much about the money.” But Barnbrook Design has always kept an international outlook.

“There’s a lot of underground stuff in London, but nothing compared to New York or Berlin,” he observes. So why continue to be based in the Capital? “Our work is very British in style, particularly our typography,” he asserts. “We have lots of connections with Tokyo, and our British aesthetic is very different to what they’re used to.”

In an industry where smooth, clean-cut visuals can put a glossy sheen on a rotten core, Jonathan has touched on a buzzword that Kalle believes is an early signpost of change from the ground up. “The last couple of generations have seen a slick, commercial, corporate aesthetic,” he observes. “The big project of the next generation is to develop a new aesthetic not driven by big branding, that has a sustainable future.”

“Design anarchy is hard to predict, but I sense a bold move away from modernism and slickness,” Kalle goes on. “A ratty, organic feel that moves away from straight lines to reflect stalks of plants, perhaps. There’s a public feeling about slickness within the design community, an acceptance of uncoated paper as a medium and so on.”

“Grids and straight lines mark the archetypal designer of the past, sat in front of a computer with a template, dividing the page into little bits, creating slickness so it pops off the page and highlights the product.” A distancing effect, perhaps, that separates the consumer from the client with thick, shiny plate glass? “It’s boring,” is Kalle’s less complicated way of putting it. “And no-one has the guts to break the paradigm.”

If design is the language that shapes and reflects our culture, he argues, forcing a regimented structure of images and typography into a tight grid will inevitably cause a backlash; an overspill; an organic sprouting elsewhere.

“Designers have not realised what power they have. With power comes responsibility, and just by realising that, the designers of the future are making a step forward. The designers of the past by-and-large sold out – they were the foot-soldiers of consumer culture. But the black-and-white choice between corporate design and small non-profit creative projects is a false route. There’s a third way emerging that’s much more tantalising and lucrative.”

© Nick Carson 2007. First published in Issue 6 of TEN4 magazine

Graffiti in NYC

 

“New York is one of the ugliest cities in the world,” declares Hugo Martinez in the no-nonsense, self-assured drawl so characteristic of the Capital of the World. “It’s a cacophony of fourth-rate architecture, all mixed up. It doesn’t have any grand buildings. What gives the city character is the immense fight between the classes – you can’t picture NYC without graf in the background.”

 

Contentious words guaranteed to strike a chord with some and a nerve with many, not least Lieutenant Mona of the dramatically-titled Anti-Graffiti Task Force. Spearheading the city’s zero-tolerance initiative – including a dedicated 311 graffiti-reporting hotline, although work in progress merits a 911 call – Mona’s official line is one of rigid condemnation. “I refer to them as vandals, because that is what they are. Make no mistake, they are not artists. Vandals are not interested in artistic expression, or social commentary, all they care about is getting their ‘ups’ all over the city.”

 

It’s statement that Martinez dismisses as “moronic” – although he doesn’t deny the core accusation. “Why can’t an artist be a vandal?” he counters. “I don’t trust art that’s legal. The world is fucked up – art is institutionalised if it’s legal. Art has to change something.” Dismissing the vast majority of the world’s graffiti as “bullshit”, Martinez argues that NYC remains the undisputed vanguard of the culture not only because the city gave birth to it, but because of the fiercely defiant attitude that still beats at its heart. He lists just four other cities worthy to share this kudos: Los Angeles, Rio, Sao Paulo and Mexico City.

 

Romanticising the situation a tad in favour of the underdog, it’s that age-old struggle between the trampled underprivileged and the ultra hard-line establishment – the former spraying their way back into public consciousness to re-appropriate a city that’s sold its soul to the high-rise fat cats; the latter scrubbing and scouring away their identities and clapping those “poor working-class schmucks” in the slammer.

 

But then battling the system’s no fun if the system rolls over and takes it. In January 2006, with the sale of aerosol paint to minors already prohibited – and merchants obliged to keep it locked away from potential shoplifters – Councilmember Peter Vallone, Jr. developed controversial legislation that would make it illegal for anyone under 21 to possess spray-paint or permanent markers. This sparked outrage from fashion mogul Marc Ecko, who sued Vallone and Mayor Bloomberg on behalf on art students everywhere. They backed down in May.

 

Bring it on, eggs Martinez. “Repression leads to aggression,” he asserts, exposing the core of any self-respecting class struggle. “Republicans are really good for graf – they believe in repression, and hard-line measures have made graffiti boom. Writers are inspired by being erased, and come up with quicker, more unusual ways to do it.”

 

“There are 11,000 train cars and 140,000 buildings in New York,” he goes on, clearly having done his research. And the advent of ‘the buff’ in the early ‘80s – a chemical wash that stripped the paint off trains every night – didn’t stamp out graf so much as fire it up further. “When they attacked the subway system and brought in graffiti-free trains, it moved onto the buildings,” he observes. “In the last twenty years, graf has blossomed again. Everyone’s killing the streets; they erase them much more often than the trains.”

 

Now in his mid-50s, Martinez has been immersed in the culture since his days as a philosophy student in 1972 – when he shuffled some Puerto Rican teenagers painting trains into a loose collective called United Graffiti Artists. Now, as part of his All City Project – the phrase ‘all city’ designating a writer with visible tags in all five boroughs – he’s invited an eclectic group of graf writers from teens to middle-age to spray their multicoloured mark all over the regulation décor of a low-income 1960s apartment.

 

And he has no qualms about sharing his views on the rest of the art world. “I didn’t want to turn it into a latrine for the wealthy, like every other gallery,” he scowls. “The art world is fifty people, and it represents their culture. Art’s a commodity.”

 

“There’s no such thing as a graf artist,” he continues, building up steam now. “That describes beautifying private property; figurative art. That’s not graffiti. It’s like Pat Boone is to rock ‘n’ roll – a dumbed-down version. A true graf writer will wait for a muralist, and then go over it. They have no love for private property – it’s more like punk rock. NYC is all about fighting and appropriation. Art doesn’t have to be legal – on some level, it’s all against one institution or another.”

 

© Nick Carson 2006. First published in Issue 5 of TEN4 magazine

 

Adsubverts

The backlash starts here. Activist media organisation Adbusters says the Advertising Industry has to take responsibility for the corrupting influence of brand culture on society. Nick Carson examines the subversion of ‘cool’.

“If anyone here is in advertising or marketing, kill yourself…”

Trust Bill Hicks to hit the crucifix in the spot that’s too close for comfort. There’s no escaping the ’swoosh’ sign, those golden arches or interlocked Cs – Nike, McDonalds and Chanel. So hands up those responsible for this sorry state of affairs?

Oi you! Yes you, the Advertising Industry: don’t try and slip away. There’s no point trying to sterilise your guilty conscience. Your hands may be glossy but they’re certainly not clean. That dirty bottom dollar embedded itself right in your nails. But you can cope with that as it’s all about ‘the sell’. Money talks.

Moral judgements

But a career in Advertising doesn’t have to be this way. In this glitzy, soundbite world of big-brand business, the price of success doesn’t necessarily mean that morality has to be sacrificed. If the industry starts taking responsibility for its actions, then a third way can be found.

Optimistic? Well nothing was achieved without hope. Without it Kalle Lasn (founder and director) wouldn’t have conceived Vancouver-based operation Adbusters in 1989. At the vanguard of the self-dubbed ‘counter-force’ to the corporate world, he advocates wriggling free of the brand-building convention and getting back to our cultural roots.

“Mind-fuck. Yeah, that’s the word they use. It’s a mind-fuck.”

A Matrix-like epiphany, halfway through a conversation about the ethics of advertising: we have no control over our lives. Multinational businesses fronted by shiny, big-name brands shape our world. They have, Kalle argues, ‘more control than civil society’.

Not so cool

One of Adbusters’ central concerns, Kalle explains, is that the culture many of us swear by is “spoon-fed to us” – filtered down from the top echelons of the multinationals as they scrabble over each other in a “quest to put a glow around brands. To create cool.”

In a world that is gradually fabricated around us, fashion and social acceptability are handed down ready-made. As Kalle opines: “Culture no longer grows from the bottom-up. We should be able to decide for ourselves what we like.”

Almost from birth, we’re told what is fashionable to eat, drink and wear – and it’s only through the ever-expanding mouthpiece of the media that this is made possible. So in a world so firmly under the control of the ‘creators of cool’, is the brand-polishing bandwagon the only way to stay afloat in the advertising industry?

Hang on to your principles

Over the last century, Advertising has sprouted from something that offered simple factual information about a product and its price into a $350 billion “worldwide juggernaut” that sets the official agenda for the population. In the industry today, Kalle insists, companies that break away from that are the true creators of cool.

“There’s more and more talk about ethics in advertising,” he explains. “There’s a new breed of small businesses in North America run by people who do things their way, as a labour of love. I believe this is the future.”

Ethical guts

I put it to Kalle that if the ‘corporate glow’ marks the path to success, aren’t advertisers just doing their job? Surely to deny advertising its power to sell is to deny its very purpose?

“It’s the job of every human being to be proud of what they’re doing, and do it wholeheartedly,” he admits. “But visual communicators have become part of the marketing arm of corporations. It’s not the job of designers to give clients everything they want, but to try to be ethical while making the world a better place. They should have the courage and ethical guts to say no.”

Declaration of intent

For the torrent of students looking to enter the industry, it’s a choice between the well-trodden path to financial success and recognition – or something different.

When Adbusters set out their individualist principles in a design manifesto entitled First Things First in 2000, it stated: “Too much design energy is being spent to promote pointless consumerism, and too little to helping people understand an increasingly complex and fragile world.”

It created “quite a ruckus,” Kalle recalls, with many ‘old-school’ designers protesting that client satisfaction must always be top of the list of priorities.

Their argument boiled down to the scale of success: two hundred employees polishing the corporate crown are better than twenty who subvert it. But the ruckus was there, and many young design and advertising students signed up. The man behind it boils this down to ideology: “They want to join a profession that actually means something – it put the wind in the sails of many young people.”

Too ideological, or could small-scale be the face of the future?

Yes it could. Size, Kalle assures me, is not everything.

Culture jamming

In the business of bringing corporate cool down to earth, Adbusters’ global campaigns consist of subversive parodies of top businesses’advertising strategies. With an operating budget of $2 million against a $350 billion industry, the imbalance is clear, but Kalle insists: “If you’re smart about it, culture jamming does work. At the moment we’re just nibbling at the edges, but we’ve begun to flex our muscles and are learning how to use our power.”

Depicting ‘culture jamming’ on the Adbusters’ website as a movement that will define this zeitgeist like civil rights did in the Sixties, feminism in the Seventies and environmental activism in the Eighties, Adbusters believes this strategy will alter the way we live and think:

“It will change the way information flows, the way institutions wield power, the way TV stations are run, the way the food, fashion, automobile, sports, music and culture industries set their agendas. Above all, it will change the way meaning is produced in our society.”

Underdog success

One of their biggest successes is Buy Nothing Day, a global boycott that has reportedly had an impact on 60 countries worldwide. A ’support the underdog’ mentality could be at the root of the organisation’s successes against the Goliath-like world of fabricated coolness, but it must be in the minority: it cannot explain the widespread readiness to accept what we are told is cool. The power of advertising is enormous.

Cool activism

What marks Adbusters out from other anti-globalisation movements is that it turns the brand-building industry on its head – aiming its own rhetoric against it. The impact of graphic design is used for the opposite purpose: undermining reputations and stripping off the coolness that makes the big brands glow.

“Activism has become cool again,” Kalle informs me, reaching for that ubiquitous buzzword without a hint of irony. “And people have begun to question multinationals’ right to shape the world we live in.”

That fact that organisations such as Adbusters exist proves that things are already changing. Kalle predicts that in 5-10 years, the advertising industry will be dramatically different:

Mind pollution

“There’s a new breed of ‘mental environmentalists’ who argue that our minds are being polluted as well as the environment. The language they use is that ‘our souls have been sucked out’; ‘we’ve been mind-fucked’. These people are the pioneers of the future. They’ve shown that there is more to advertising than a catchy slogan and a memorable logo.”

© Nick Carson 2003. First published on Channel 4’s IDEASFACTORY

The Mighty Pen

Cocooned within the Western world, it’s easy to take for granted the virtues of a free press. But if forbidden from criticising your government outright, argues Jack Mapanje, you can always think more creatively and master that fine art of meaning without saying. He shares his irrepressible philosophy, and its consequences, with Nick Carson.

Discussing the subversive power of metaphor with one of Africa’s foremost writers makes for an intriguing blend of history and culture, and the smoky medieval pub in which it takes place only adds to the mix. We have an hour before Jack goes on stage to read from his works at the UK’s first Black Poetry Festival, organised by Coventry’s Heaventree Press.

To understand fully the lengths to which Jack Mapanje is prepared to go rather than compromise his writing, you have to look beyond the comparatively petty frustrations of our own ‘nanny state’ into the brutal totalitarianism under Malawi’s self-declared President for life, Hastings Kamuzu Banda.

Damning with twisted praise

Mapanje’s much-admired first volume of poetry, Of Chameleons and Gods, was published in 1981. It cast a critical eye on Banda’s twenty-year “frothful carnival” under the guise of the traditional praise form, a technique that echoes the heavily barbed poetry surrounding the English Civil War – when open treason would have had similar consequences.

Seemingly it took the Malawian government until 1985 to punch through the layers of meaning, and despite its growing international acclaim they banned the collection throughout the country. Two years later the poet who drew the world’s attention to the widespread poverty in the wake of Banda’s riches, “shocked by the tedium [of his] continuous palaver,” was thrown into the notorious Mikuyu Prison – where he remained until 1991.

No warrant required

When asked if he would be prepared to be imprisoned again rather than censor his work, Jack smiles; and with good reason. There was never a formal charge placed against him, and to suggest that it was his poetic mockery that fuelled the wrath of a dictator is pure speculation. “I wish someone had accused me of writing rude poems,” he admits. “I would be delighted to go back to jail if I was told why.”

“In a dictatorship, they don’t have to charge you with something; they just arrest you,” he points out. Pulled from the Gymkhana Club in September 1987 while enjoying a drink with a friend, Mapanje was soon stood before the assembled Commissioners of Police from across Malawi. But the tale that unfolded from there has a blackly comic edge to it, and the seasoned poet grins broadly as he tells it.

“The order for my arrest had come from Banda himself,” Jack explains. “If they investigated my case, it would appear that they didn’t trust him.” The beautifully surreal outcome was that his country’s senior police network was forced to ask him not only who he was, but why he felt they should arrest him.

Political friction

Many years later, Jack has two theories for what got the Secret Police onto his scent. The first is simple enough: With a respected PhD and three successful books, Banda thought his mocker was climbing too fast too quickly, and needed to have the rungs knocked out from under him. The second, more intricate version is featured in his upcoming prison memoirs: In his first venture into prose, he can at last say exactly what he means to say.

“Prince Charles came to Malawi with BBC journalist Kwabena Mensa, at a time when journalists were officially out-of-bounds,” he recalls. “The key issue was who would take over from Banda on his death, or retirement.” Although the ‘official’ word in Malawi was that it was impossible to tell, Mensa read in a Zambian newspaper that Banda’s concubine, Cecelia Kadzamira, was grooming herself to take over – and had placed her relatives in the country’s most influential positions.

Mensa’s report made its way onto the World Service. Immediately contacting the BBC to find its source, Banda was told it was the word on the street, even amongst distinguished circles at the University. Having judged a recent high-profile poetry competition for the World Service, Jack’s strong BBC connections lit him up like a lamp for a moth.

Violent retribution

Lending some weight to Mensa’s allegations, the Chairman of the University Council – John Tembo – was Cecilia’s uncle, and the Principal of the college where Jack lectured, Zimani Kadzamira, was her brother. The third, somewhat open-ended question asked of Mapanje on his arrest was ‘What have you been doing to each other in the University,’ which implied that Tembo and his nephew had bypassed the police force and reported directly to the top.

Prison was a horrible ordeal, but it could have been considerably worse. The journalist behind the original Zambian newspaper report, Mkwapatira Mhango, was an exiled member of MAFREMO, the Malawian freedom movement, and had already drawn Banda’s attention for allegedly leaking information to the foreign press. In 1989, he and his entire family of nine died in a tragic firebomb attack or, as Jack puts it, were “accidentalised.”

The pragmatic approach

With a PhD in Pragmatics, Mapanje has mastered “the art of meaning without saying,” as he describes his field of expertise. “In my prison memoirs there’s no need for metaphors; I can be direct, not abstract,” he admits. “But poetry is a lovely mode of expression. You can hide behind stories – even folk tales – and assume that people will see the symbols within. One of the best examples is Animal Farm; everyone knows what it truly represents.”

“At the time I knew it was dangerous to say anything directly, and our writers’ group tried to establish various ways of talking.” Yet in a cultural environment where poetry is declining as a popular form, can any ingrained political message reach the voting majority?

“Reading poetry to an audience gives you a presence; if you write it down, it depends how many people read it,” Jack remarks. He first read in his own country in 2002, five years after Banda’s death. Having been persuaded to hold Malawi’s first open election for thirty years in 1994, the life President finally lost his grip at the helm to his successor, Bakili Muluzi. “I finally discovered how much my poetry meant to people, and couldn’t believe it.”

Time will tell

Free press or not, some subjects in the West remain taboo until they’ve had a chance to heal. “I was at a conference in Canada when 9/11 had just happened,” Jack explains. “There were five people there from England, questioning the circumstances leading up to it: I joined in and said, ‘Why can’t you protest?’ But it was too fresh in their mind.”

“Time is a fascinating thing; it solves everything. Now the Americans are talking freely about what went wrong, but back then I think you might have been killed for satirising 9/11 even slightly.” But Mapanje remains adamant that creativity can thrive under even the most oppressive regime.

Back in 1986, the year before his arrest, he defiantly concurred with Polish novelist Tadeusz Konwicki’s sentiment that censorship “forces the writer to employ metaphors which raise the piece of writing to a higher level.” He may have spent over three years in prison for it, but ultimately his works are still on the shelves.

© Nick Carson 2004. First published on Channel 4’s IDEASFACTORY West Midlands

We must build ‘creative city’ reputation

How does a city become renowned for its creative output?

The glittering sprawl of the Bullring is heralded as a pinnacle of urban regeneration, and the role it’s played in challenging nationwide prejudice can’t be downplayed. But for those small, fiercely independent creative businesses operating within the city, there’s only so much a blue-and-silver hump can do to represent them. On a national scale, if that’s all that’s held up to counterbalance the stories of factory closure and gang violence, there’s a danger of those silver discs being perceived as a shiny covering for an empty shell.

The real question is whether – at this stage – widespread public perception should be our primary concern. Trying too hard can have a detrimental effect, and a top-down blanket marketing drive to assert that ‘Birmingham is creative – honest’ screams of desperation. The truth is, within individual creative niches – such as jewellery and bhangra music – the city’s reputation is already second to none. Our design community is flourishing, winning tenders for influential clients ahead of London rivals. Quality of work is speaking for itself where it matters.

Achieving an all-encompassing reputation for ‘creativity’ overnight is unrealistic. Step one is for creative industries to achieve recognition and respect within the city boundaries: first and foremost, to be seen as industries in the true, economically beneficial sense of the word.

It’s already started. This year’s Birmingham Young Professional of the Year – Ruth Ward, Director of Neon Communications – caters to the growing demand for championing creative businesses and activities. Neon has flourished, clients ranging from FILM Birmingham to New Art Birmingham – respectively heralding the ignition of a feature film industry and a major international modern art festival to start putting the second city on the map.

This is also the second year running that the overall BYPY Award winner has been a ‘creative’. In 2005 it was Stef Lewandowski of 3Form, who represents both the design community and the music industry through his international record label, Type. For Ruth and Stef to receive an award associated in the past with Birmingham’s more conventional business strengths – IT, Law and Accountancy – marks a significant turning point.

Crucially, it acknowledges that young creativity can go hand-in-hand with professionalism: a viable new resource to be tapped, taking the baton from manufacturing as a core strength for the city. Both of them sit on the recently-formed Creative Birmingham Businesses panel, tasked with addressing the problem of rich substance stifled beneath a ‘brand’ that simply doesn’t do it justice. Step one, both agree, is to encourage local companies to commission each other where possible, pulling together to build a critical mass.

Legitimisation from the wider business community helps. But before the rest of the UK will perceive Birmingham as a creative hub, Birmingham itself must believe it – at ground level. Manchester isn’t seen as a hotspot because faceless powers that be told us so – largely on the back of the heady Hacienda-fueled ‘90s and the swaggering pride of groups like Oasis, it pulsed out those vibes of its own accord. As Ruth points out, Birmingham has lacked such outspoken cultural figureheads to shout its potential from the rooftops.

But now the city’s making noises from its core – and they’re getting louder. Vibrant and diverse programmes from the likes of Fierce! and ArtsFest play their part in taking creativity out of the offices and into the streets, Supersonic goes from strength to strength on the back of its growing international profile, and it’s now joined by last weekend’s Soundstation and the upcoming BASS Festival in June. More4’s asylum-seeker drama Almost Adult was shot entirely in the city earlier this year – and with FILM Birmingham keen to create a film-friendly environment, it promises to be the first of many.

There’s a long way to go before ‘Birmingham’ becomes a buzzword for young, creative dynamism in the way that ‘Milan’ – its industrial Italian counterpart – has become synonymous with design. But for a catch-all term like ‘creative city’ to mean anything, it should be a gradual accumulation of reputations on various levels – from design to music to film and beyond – and not an empty moniker slapped onto us from above.

This article was published in The Birmingham Post, Monday June 12th 2006

In the Hands of the Coyotes

 

“He has decided to come to America. And as a young, poor Honduran, he will come illegally. And I am going to help him.”

So reads the mission statement of S. Gonzalez, an American citizen who chose to help his brother – born in Honduras, and a stranger to the opportunities that he had enjoyed from birth – to jump the United States border earlier this year.

To offer a glimpse into the experiences, thoughts and emotions of an illegal immigrant and his family, he shared his story with Honduras This Week.

Illegal immigration to the States from Central America is an issue of growing concern: US Office of Immigration statistics show that, after Mexico, Honduras provides the country with the greatest number of ‘deportable aliens’ – around 17,000 in 2003; almost 5000 more than El Salvador and a sizeable 41% of the Central American total.

Setting out his reasons for swelling these statistics further, Gonzalez points out that he had a better quality of life than his brother only because of a “simple 8×10 piece of paper, my birth certificate.” Compared with the States, he argues, in Honduras “rights to assemble and free speech can be fragile at times.” And although his brother finished high school in his native country, “the public education he received was poor.”

On graduation, his family gave his brother the choice between continuing as he was, and leaving his home behind to seek a new life in America. Like so many thousands of others each year, he chose the latter.

“A nation has a right to make laws. The United States has the right to decide who may enter its land and who may not,” Gonzalez admits. “It is not unreasonable for a country to restrict immigration … We are under no moral, legal or contractual obligation to open our borders to all who wish to enter.”

But whilst maintaining that border patrols must do all they can to protect the country from terrorists and criminals, he draws attention to the many immigrants whose families are living in wretched poverty.

“I was given privileges of citizenship, an education and a social safety net that will all but ensure a prosperous life. I did nothing to earn or deserve this. I cannot stand in the way of others who merely wish to obtain the same freedoms and prosperity that I have by the grace of God.”

It’s certainly an attitude that costs the United States government. Back in 2000, Joe Banda – an INS Special Agent at the US Embassy in Tegucigalpa – told Latin American Press that it costs approximately $3000 to capture and deport one illegal Honduran migrant. By this estimate, the annual expenditure to deport 17,000 of them runs into millions of dollars for Honduras alone.

Banda was discussing Operation Disrupt, a five-year programme that saw US immigration officials intercepting potential migrants before they even reached the border.

During the eighth phase, known as Operation Forerunner, US authorities captured notorious Honduran coyote Jose Leon Castillo after he was re-routed to Los Angeles from Guatemala, instead of heading straight to Honduras.

The operation – run across Central America – came under fire for largely targeting the migrants themselves rather than the people smugglers who act as a catalyst. Commonly referred to as ‘coyotes’ or ‘polleros’, they are for many an unavoidable part of the process. But the thousands of dollars that change hands have never been any guarantee of safety, and the massive risks involved are well-known across the world.

A recent report in the Wall Street Journal stated that 36 people died in transit in Yuma County, Arizona last year alone. And given that a friend of their father’s had already drowned attempting to cross the Rio Grande, Gonzalez and his brother were only too aware of the potential dangers.

The first coyote they encountered passed on by word-of-mouth from a friend also planning to migrate, quoted $6000. When the first attempt to smuggle their friend, Pancho, failed, the pair sought another quote: $2000 down-payment for a total cost of $4000.

After this trip was delayed for several weeks they began to lose faith, but when a call from Pancho confirmed that he had made it to the States, they made the necessary arrangements to leave on 14th January with the original ‘pollero’. The trip would take two weeks.

“The coyote came to the house early in the morning. My brother took three changes of clothes and a toothbrush. He cried as he said goodbye to his mother. His mother told him to stop crying, that he had to be a man now.” That night Gonzalez received a call from Guatemala: The trip would be made by car. “Although they were packed in like sardines and only consumed tortillas, frijoles and water, he said that he hadn’t done any suffering yet,” he recalls.

Fears that the fee would be jacked up at every opportunity proved unfounded, despite frequent calls from the coyote’s personal cellular phone to the States and Honduras to update the family on progress. Another friend had been force to borrow thousands of dollars and work two full-time jobs for a year to pay off the swelling fees after her son was smuggled across the border, including a sizeable telephone bill, but these costs never materialized for Gonzalez.

A call from the coyote announced that they were about to cross the border and demanded the rest of the money, but after several days of silence – with the coyote’s number now ‘out of service’ – there was still no word. “At that time I did not ponder as I do now what it must be like for the families of those who don’t make it,” says Gonzalez. “I can only imagine the financial consequences of the death of a primary breadwinner. I cannot, however, imagine their grief.”

Eventually his brother made contact from a bus station in Laredo, Texas, having been abandoned by the coyote. “He didn’t have much time to talk. His phone card was running out. I didn’t have time to tell him to get as far away from the bus station as possible. The ‘pinche migra’ would surely pick him up there.” Indeed, according to the Office of Immigration, in 2003 over 70,000 ‘deportable aliens’ were intercepted by the border patrol in Laredo alone.

It didn’t take long. Less than an hour after he had tackled the Rio Grande in an inflatable raft, Gonzalez’s brother, who was carrying a Honduran passport and ID card, found himself in a holding cell with a cement floor, living on water and bologna sandwiches while the border patrol attempted to contact a fictitious Aunt.

After two days without sleep he was released with a record of his illegal entrance, apprehension and release and a summons to appear in a court in New York, where the Aunt supposedly lived. Once a set of false documents – ‘chuecos’ – have been produced, Gonzalez claims that he’ll be able to work at “almost any business that’s hiring.”

“I’ve heard stories about illegal immigrants crawling under barbed wire, hiding in ravines with biting ants, driving from mud puddles and walking all day in 100 degree heat,” he says.

“The journey took a little over two weeks. [My brother] says that he suffered, but a couple of days in a holding cell with bologna sandwiches and an uncomfortable bed is a vacation compared to the experiences of many illegal immigrants. He got off easy.”

This article was published in Honduras This Week, Saturday April 16th 2005

Oiling the Wheels of Change

 

With Honduras still shouldering the highest gasoline prices in Central America, it could be time to consider a more ecologically and economically friendly alternative: Palm oil.

The price of diesel in Honduras continues to rise. The national average for March was $2.60, up fifteen percent from last year’s average. Recent protest strikes are just one example of the public dissatisfaction with the current state of affairs.

Of course, with no facilities for processing crude oil internally, all of Honduras’ gasoline is imported – around ten million barrels per year – with prices largely dependent on other countries’ export rates as well as the tax levied by the Honduran government.

But there is an alternative. Once converted through a simple process known as transesterification, the oil of the African palm – one of Honduras’ major existing natural resources – can make an efficient biofuel to run diesel engines without the need for any modifications. In fact Rudolph Diesel demonstrated over a century ago that the engine he had invented could run perfectly well on peanut oil.

Research in Malaysia in 2003 concluded that while it can be comparatively difficult to start a standard diesel engine on palm biodiesel owing to its high viscosity, once up and running there are no problems.

Crude palm oil, of which around 250 million kilos will be produced in Honduras this year, is thick and dark red. When it is refined the biodiesel produced is pale yellow, has no odor, smells like frying potatoes when it burns and creates very little smoke. And even more importantly for a country crippled by the price of its gasoline, it could prove up to ten percent cheaper than its non-renewable counterpart.

It’s also considerably better for the environment. “Burning diesel produces large amounts of carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and nitrogen dioxide,” says Omar Riera, a chemical engineer at Dinant Corporation owned by Miguel Facusse and located in Tegucigalpa. ”Biodiesel may not be 100 percent emission free, but there’s a reduction of up to 90 percent.”

With access to a supply of palm oil, methanol, and sodium or potassium hydroxide as a catalyst, basic transesterification is theoretically simple enough to be done at home.

A given quantity of crude palm oil will produce almost exactly the same quantity of biofuel, and the equivalent amount of methanol necessary for the reaction – roughly ten percent of the total – comes out as glycerin, a common ingredient in a wide variety of medicines and cosmetic products. “This is one of the most efficient of all chemical processes, and it can work with palm oil; coconut oil; vegetable oil, whatever,” adds Riera.

Malaysia and neighboring Indonesia currently produce 80 percent of the world’s palm oil between them, with two million hectares of agricultural land dedicated to the African oil palm in each country. In Europe, biofuel is produced primarily from the more prevalent oilseed rape and sunflower crops.

Resources in Latin America may seem modest when compared with their Asian counterparts. Honduras can boast the largest plantations in Central America with 70,000 hectares. In Brazil, where around 100,000 hectares are given to cultivating African Palm, it is already used to generate electricity in stationary diesel engines – another potentially influential factor in Honduras.

So despite having a population some thirty times that of Honduras, Brazil has little more palm oil at its disposal – but they are exploiting its potential. Per capita Honduras is at a massive advantage, with a valuable resource on our doorstep to fight the gasoline crisis internally rather than continuing to rely on foreign imports.

The Honduran oil palm industry has a somewhat checkered past. Back in 1923, United Fruit (UFCO) controversially laid waste to huge tracts of local agricultural land in order to set up vast plantations. By 1990 almost 20 million kilos of oil were produced annually, most of which was retained and used internally.

In 1999, after Hurricane Mitch had battered the banana industry, some 30 million kilos were exported as palm oil took over as one of the country’s major resources. In 2005, according to Dinant Corporation, approximately 250 million kilos of palm oil will be produced in Honduras.

It has been argued by the World Rainforest Movement that African palm plantations are ruinous for the environment as well as for local communities. A study by Ricardo Carrere in The Bitter Fruit of Oil Palm proposes that “the problem is not the tree itself, but the plantation model under which it is grown.”

In many cases, he claims, agricultural land is replaced by endless rows of identical palms for the profit of a select few multinationals while rainforests are cut back, leading to soil erosion and the destruction of local wildlife habitat.

But with the industry already established much of the damage has already been done, and it could be time to consider using the resulting natural asset to support the national economy, as well as preserving another aspect of the environment.

According to Omar Riera, research into the possibilities is already under way. “We already have some experience in making methyl ester [biofuel] from the African Palm raw material through transesterification.”

“We have the resource here, and actually is refined and then we use it in the home for cooking and so on. But if we could produce biodiesel in Central America, it could work out up to ten percent cheaper for the end user.”

In El Salvador, Riera points out, some vehicles already run on biodiesel: The practical solution, he argues, is to stop thinking nationally and start thinking continentally.

“For a single country like Honduras to set up our own refineries would not necessarily be beneficial. But for Central America to have shared facilities, bypassing the transport costs and high export rates, would be an incredible advantage.”

Argentina has governmental incentives in place to encourage biodiesel production, and have made it exempt from tax. “As yet we’ve heard nothing from the Honduran government, but hope they will follow. I’d like to see a target of ten percent biofuel use by 2006.”

Honduras currently imports just over 1.1 million tons of diesel fuel every year. Dinant Corporation statistics show that were all the palm oil from the 70,000 hectares in Honduras used to produce biodiesel, it would satisfy just over twenty percent of this national demand.

To replace diesel fuel entirely, by Riera’s calculations, would require over 300,000 hectares of African Palm. This would give Honduras by far the largest crop in the whole of Latin America, and also exceed commercial plantations in several countries in the tree’s native Africa. Riera maintains that it could be feasible if the demand was there, but of course the environmental impact of such a massive expansion could be dramatic.

Even if a small proportion of palm oil biofuel were mixed with the existing diesel supply harmful emissions would reduce significantly, but if Central America were to develop its own refining facilities the savings on transport costs alone would be considerable. It’s a proactive solution that many other countries around the world are beginning to consider; Honduras need not be left behind.

This article was published in Honduras This Week, Saturday April 23rd 2005