Urban Screens Raw Data

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This page was used for the Urban Screens group (Max and Greg) to organize and share some of data they collected in their project. Despite its vast size (currently 65 kb) it is far from comprehensive, more accurately representing a snapshot of some of the methods and sources used. As it was meant as a tool for interpreting data and not for presentation, it is possible that it will be taken down in the future.

Contents

Print media

Map from ranting architect: insufficient information available on source to include in evidence

"Zuidas: facts & figures" information pamphlet

    • Zuidas is the second largest new construction site in Amsterdam. Approximately 9,000 apartments are to be realized at this location.
    • Amsterdam's premiere business venue with an international flair. The entire programme calls for 1.1 million meters^s of office floor space.
    • 30,000 jobs, 35 nationalities
    • 405 companies
      • 50% international background
      • 29% financial institutions
      • 22% legal services
    • Zuidas offers many amenities to help make life comfortable. Special events take place on a regular basis, such as the Zuidas Run, Zuidance and open air concerts.
      • 28 cafes and restaurants
      • 2 hotels and 5 child care centers
      • 12 educational institutions
    • Zuidas facts and figures
      • easy to reach: all forms of public transport call at the Amsterdam Zuid railway station
      • surrounded by two large parks: Nieuwe Meer/Amsterdamse Bos and Amstelscheg
      • has total surface area of approx. 270 hectares (this is 1 square mile)
      • 65,000 travellers per day to Zuid railway station
      • 6 minutes to Schiphol
      • 38% to Zuidas through public transport
      • 30% car
      • 30% bike
      • 2,500 guarded bike racks
  • Zuidas Amsterdam: a world class location
    • "prime international residential and business location"
    • "a business centre that strengthens the Netherlands' international position"
    • "high-tech office" "arm's length away from the historical centre"
    • "the mixed character of the area"
    • "offices, residences, shops, leisure and other facilities will be built on top of the infrastructure"
    • 9,000 homes and almost 1 million m^2 of office space will be built
    • "The new station in Zuidas will be the hub of high-speed train, rail, road, metro, and Amsterdam Airport Schiphol routes"

Virtueel Museum Zuidas: Programma Kunst en Zuidas (arts program and Zuidas) information pamphlet. Note: all words in this source are translated from Dutch using Google Translate. Though we cannot assure that the exact wording will not be as precise were it translated by a native speaker, the general meaning and content we believe will remain.

    • Since 2007 is the video screen CASZuidas in the heart of the South Axis ...
    • This contemporary art form of presentation, an initiative of VMZ and SKOR, fits the model dynamic, metropolitan and futuristic nature of the South Axis.
    • Because of Melbourne to Seoul and from Istanbul to New York and Dubai urban screens are present, usually for advertising, the Zuidas naturally incorporated into a network of world cities.
    • External curator Schuijren January, along with the VMZ responsible for programming, geared to a broad and diverse audience. Up 20% of daily programming is available for cultural information and advertising blocks.
    • CASZuidas is also perfect for events. The screen was one used at the opening of the expat center in 2008, the [main?] reason people attend inauguration of President Obama in January 2009, the sculpture exhibition Art South in the summer of 2009 and major sporting events like the Olympics, the Giro d'Italia and the World Cup in South Africa in 2010, programmed with Zuidas Amsterdam.
    • Meanwhile, some 400 both young and established artists showing their work ...

Amsterdam Zuidas: European Space, by Willem Salet and Stan Majoor (eds)

    • “The regional economy has regrouped in logistic and transport specializations around Schiphol and the harbour, whereas office activities are concentrated along the city ring road and the creative economy is attached to the historical centre” (6).
    • “After all, the Zuidas is not only emerging as a business centre of international significance, its favorable position in the trafic and transport system provides it with optimum conditions for evolution into a varied urban-centre environment” (6).
    • “[The Zuidas] will become a mixed suburb, wit many visitors and a mixed population. There will be many people on the streets. It will not be a one-sided fashionable environment but one that is genuinely varied” (Klaas de Boer, interview, 44).
    • “It will become a new urban centre. I think that the notion of being a ‘hub’ could be reinforced, and it will largely depend on that transfer point. It will become the fourth largest station in the Netherlands. It will generate much human traffic, half of which will havea destination in the immediate surrondings while the rest will make use of connecting transport” (Pi de Bruijn, interview, 45)

Droog Event 2

Droog Event 2

  • inspired by Richard Florida's best-seller 'The Rise of the Creative Class', city councils nowadays propagate the 'creative city'. In doing so, they focus on inviting creative businesses and offering artists a facilitating infrastructure. (6-7)

Websites

Wikipedia: Rembrandtplein

Wikipedia: General info on Zuidplein

Zuidas website

    • The ambition of the South Axis is to excel as an urban center. A center of international stature, distinctive in that it reflects local qualities. A piece of Amsterdam with a future value, an enrichment of the city and strengthen the economic potential of the region. Overall a successful and sustainable urban triple A environment of international standing, with Amsterdam qualities.
    • Two topinstellingen in the field of education, science and care are central to this area: the Free University (VU) and VU University Medical Center (VUMC). The University of Amsterdam comes before the public by working with the VU's new faculty building for dentistry to achieve.
    • Gershwin was the first residential area of South Axis. The size of the area is similar to the example, Artis and KNSM island. The development of this new neighborhood is an important step in the overall development of the South Axis into a vibrant downtown. There are approximately 1,300 homes in various price ranges, exclusive apartments in Amsterdam Symphony to rent in the free sector Django Building. The new, 26.5 meters wide Boelegracht limits the houses right on the water and many homes in Gershwin have a great view over the city.
    • Zuidas head, an area full of possibilities. The area is easily accessible by public transport. Near the main entrance to the RAI station Europe Square North / South line built. In addition, the area a wide variety of amenities, homes and offices.
    • Features are the high quality of living of Ravel and the presence of exclusive shops. It is a pleasant place to be because a large part is because fietsluw car and parking of cars and bikes is almost entirely underground. This creates relaxing public areas. Besides residential and commercial property has this part of the South Axis offices, educational and other facilities.
    • RAI has now about 2 million annual visitors. To them in the future accommodation to offer, come to the RAI in the future hotel. The RAI is easily accessible by public transport. Near the main entrance to the RAI station Europe Square North / South line built. This is the last metro station to the South, where it is connected to the existing Public Transport network.
    • The area boasts a number of distinctive buildings Zuidas, such as the WTC and the Atrium. ... Strawinskylaan Zuidplein represents the WTC and the vibrant area access to one of the most important links of the Dutch Railways, namely Amsterdam Zuid. Live at Strawinskylaan is soon possible. 40% of the north side of the street is for housing. In the "skirting" of the newly built office space for all kinds of facilities.


City of Amsterdam Planning Department (translated from: Gemeente Amsterdam Dienst Ruimtelijke Ordening)

    • Lots more info on the redevelopment of the entire Zuid area, including the history of the cause for the development of the Zuidplein

Book on Berlage and the plan for Amsterdam Zuid; Unfortunately, probably in Dutch

Wikipedia: General info on Plan Zuid by Hendrik Berlage

SKOR

    • With art in public space the public by now familiar, but video art in public space is little used.
    • If a modern moving picture screen reinforces the next two to five years the dynamic atmosphere of the South Axis area.
    • Wants the opportunity to people in a different way to look at moving images
    • The special emphasis on integrating art into public spaces has the full support of the City of Amsterdam, developers and investors. They attach great importance to a cultural climate in the South Axis. This reinforces the attraction of companies and individuals to establish themselves on it and makes an essential contribution to the liveliness and (international) reputation of the area.

CASZuidas

    • combines working and living in a strategically chosen location of the city, in between Amsterdam city centre and the airport.
    • cultural services
    • Contemporary Art Screen Zuidas has been conceived as a stage for the moving image and presents a high quality selection of film and visual arts, showing video and film works on a 40m2 daylight video screen
    • Several set formats will be presented during the 18 hours each day, such as transitory exhibitions and artist in focus, with which an in-depth look into an artist’s oeuvre will be offered, accompanied by essays and other information on the dedicated CASZUIDAS website. This offers the possibility to address certain tendencies within contemporary visual arts and the moving image
    • From late 2008 on, three slots have been implemented during the rush hour times of the day (7 – 9 am, 12 – 2 pm and 5 – 7 pm), in which short 10-minute programs offer information on arts events in Amsterdam and around (exhibition announcements and overviews for example) and a select number of advertisements – only during these hours and with a maximum total of 90 minutes per day/18 hours. This way CASZUIDAS will clearly maintain the profile of exclusive visual arts stage in public space, and thus form part of the daily public life on Zuidplein, Zuidas, Amsterdam
    • mix and mingle with the public life on the Zuidplein, addressing an eclectic crowd of managers and office workers, students and scholars, and all other inhabitants and users of Zuidas.
    • The bars and restaurants on the ground floor of the Zuidplein buildings provide the perfect setting to be distracted from the everyday, with moving, inspiring images evoking a different perception of the surroundings.\
    • CASZUIDAS will also be hosting special events several times a year, specifically inviting audiences from outside the Zuidas district.
    • The LED screen originated from the concept ‘Het kunstwerk als podium’ (The art work as stage), a project that was developed in 2003 for the Zuidplein by Tom van Gestel (SKOR) and Henk de Vroom (Virtueel Museum Zuidas).
    • They departed from their original idea of a static work of public art and, instead, decided to conceive of the art work as a stage unto itself.\\
    • One of the Zuidas’ ambitions is to connect its business activities with more cultural offerings. From the outset of the project the aim has been to broadcast a provocative program that will attract local, national and international interest with the help of state-of-the-art LED technology
    • VIRTUEEL MUSEUM ZUIDAS is involved in promoting art and culture in the Zuidas and envisages the entire Zuidas area as a lively and continually changing museum.
  • Virtual Museum Zuidas
    • Moving images in public space? By now the public has become used to seeing art in public space, but video art in public space is still relatively unknown.
    • As a modern moving painting, the screen will enhance the dynamic atmosphere of the Zuidas area for the next two to five years.
    • CASZuidas ... is taking this opportunity to let people look at moving images in a different way.
    • First and foremost, the images must be such that you are free to watch or ignore them.
    • In the morning he shows short, light, more abstract images; in the afternoon there is more time for interest and perception and he shows short films that offer food for thought; in the evening he introduces the longer works, the art-house feature films and special music films.
    • CASZuidas also collaborates with cultural institutes in the Netherlands and abroad, such as Montevideo, the Filmbank, the Sandberg Institute, the Impakt Festival, Park4dtv and Argos Arts in Brussels and, as of next year, the Holland Festival.
    • The extraordinary attention given to integrating art in public space here has the complete support of the city of Amsterdam, developers and investors. They attach great importance to creating an atmosphere of culture in the Zuidas. It makes it more attractive for businesses and individuals to settle here and is an essential contribution to the liveliness and (international) reputation of the area.
    • (also, some info on the CASZuidas Urban Screen Festival)

Extremely important and useful section of Virtueel Museum website worth splitting up as a separate link: Vision of the Zuidas

    • the metamorphosis of Amsterdam’s Zuidas – at the time a neglected, undeveloped area between the Amstel and Schinkel rivers on the outskirts of the city – into a high-quality urban sector
    • The government (the city of Amsterdam and the Zuideramstel quarter) and private parties (developers and investors) involved in these talks placed great importance on ‘a high degree of function-mixing’ in the new district.
    • Zuidas was to become a leading international business centre, with an airport – Schiphol – right around the corner.
    • But besides being an office district it would also be an attractive extension of Amsterdam’s inner city, an area full of character in which living, working, recreation and amenities go hand in hand.
    • In this way the Zuidas would distinguish itself from the world’s other leading business centres: global and local, multifaceted and made for people.
    • From the very first, the visual arts have been allotted an essential place in the development of the Zuidas: to promote liveability and liveliness, to give the new district character and identity and to create an atmosphere that encourages people to become attached to the area.
    • What’s more, art and culture can increase the area’s national and international renown and visibility. By now the concept of the creative economy, as described in The Rise of the Creative Class (2002) by the American author Richard Florida, can also claim general recognition. Creativity and the economy are – certainly in Amsterdam – inseparably tied to one another. A creative cultural climate makes it more attractive for businesses and individuals to settle in the Zuidas.
    • But its main objective still remains firmly in place in the year 2007: a cultural climate which can attract people to the area is vitally important for the development of the Zuidas.
    • The goal of the ZVM programme is twofold. Its main activity is the incorporation of permanent artworks in urban design, architecture and public space. The ZVM calls this ‘co-constructing with the architecture’.
    • In order to bring about the desired art climate, the ZVM additionally focuses on a number of auxiliary programmes. These can be one-off or recurring projects. The ZVM also uses its knowledge and experience to support and facilitate the art and cultural initiatives of third parties.
    • A typical Amsterdam flavour, original, rooted in local and regional culture, self-willed, impossible to copy, enduring, experimental, innovative – that is the desired character of the area and its art applications.
    • Artists working in the Netherlands and abroad are invited to boost the visibility of the area, just as top architects are invited to erect eye-catching high-quality buildings.
    • The Zuidas Virtual Museum sets store by projects that do justice to contemporary art practice while speaking to the imagination of the general public.
    • In order to enliven the urban landscape, the architecture and public space, which at the moment are fairly neutral in tone, the ZVM has proclaimed colour as an overall connecting theme. This can be colour in the literal sense of the word, but also colour in the sense of light and projection, of new materials and of unexpected twists.
    • From the very start , the point of departure has been that art must be an inseparable part of the development of the Zuidas area. All too often, art in public space is the icing on the cake and artists are called in at such a late stage that they can only function as decorators. With the Zuidas, the idea is to integrate art in the urban planning, architecture and public space by means of structural interventions.
    • many more quotes and details can be found at the link above

Newspaper archive of Virtueel Museum Zuidas

    • the art intended for public space will not be added afterwards, but will be included as part of the development process.

Henk de Vroom - http://www.lkpr.nl/index_en.php?page=publicaties&id=29

    • For among the buildings, streets, shops and theatres runs a ribbon of such oases, places of freedom and imagination, inextricably bound with the city.
    • considers the entire area-in-progress a living and constantly evolving museum
    • Art at the Zuidas, especially the public space designed by artists, is created to have a function as well. It coincides with the space in which people meet, stroll and find recreation and entertainment. At the same time it creates a free zone in which 'autonomous imagination', the work of the artist, defines appearances and which the spirit and passion of the artist inhabit. This turns this public space designed by artists, inextricably connected to its urban design and planning, into a mysterious and exciting world.
    • If art is to be taken seriously and claim its place for the long term, it must elicit the interest and command the respect of those who are in daily contact with it.
    • From the start, it was clear that the planners and builders, in order to make the Zuidas a fully fledged urban area, also had ambitions for a cultural climate. Art and culture would imbue the area with character and identity, improve its quality of life and create an informal atmosphere, which would allow people to form an attachment to it.
    • That cultural programme will be filled in with art and culture specifically tailored to the Zuidas, in order to avoid competing with existing activities in the rest of the city.
    • Too often, art in public space is merely the cherry on top of the cake, and artists are brought into planning at such a late stage that they can only serve as decorators and object makers, or they are expected to produce so called interactive art, as a palliative measure, to redirect failed social processes. At the Zuidas, on the contrary, the ambition is to connect art and culture, by means of structural interventions, to the urban design, the architecture and the public space.
    • The objective is two-fold: to enrich a newly constructed city with art that is an integral element of it as well as to contribute to the development of the artist, of art in general and of art in public space.
    • As previously mentioned, in 'participatory construction' the autonomous imagination of the artist is of paramount importance. Just as in a museum, art at the Zuidas should be a mirror held up to our civilization, in which values such as freedom, beauty, reflection and tolerance find expression
    • The Zuidas Amsterdam project manager is responsible for the progress of the total process. Final decisions are made by the Zuidas Amsterdam Board of Commissioners, which takes the recommendations of the urban design supervisor, public space supervisor and art supervisor into account.
    • The redesign of the Zuidplein, completed three years ago, was already a success, because the architects, in spite of the office blocks towering alongside and the adjacent train station and motorway, had managed to make the plaza an intimate place. People hang out here, reading a book or a newspaper on the rim of a tree container, strolling past terraces. The only thing it was missing to make it really welcoming, the object that most evokes a sense of home for modern man, was a television set. CASZuidas is intended as an escape from the whims of the day.
    • The financial foundation of all the projects is the budget of the Virtual Museum Zuidas, funded by the city .
    • Artists and project developers have differing objectives. Artists work on an artistic development, project developers on an economic one. But there are also shared motivations. Both groups want to create a beautiful city, one that exudes liveliness, is unique and attracts people. Art's contribution is vital, for it plays a part in ensuring the success of the project developer. On the other hand, if art is to contribute to a sustainable urban environment, to the level of civilization of the city and the country and to the development of art itself, this can only be achieved, in this ambitious construct, in areas where money is and where money is made. It becomes imperative to join forces and take advantage of opportunities. Money and financial profit seeking need not be a threat to pure art and artistic freedom, as Belgian sociologist Pascal Gielen argues. The 'melting pot of artistic and economic values' also offers advantages and opportunities, Gielen says - in this case the opportunity for art to go all out, to relate to its setting and to reach a broad audience.

PDFs

Society of the Spectacle Stuff

    • From the automobile to television, all the goods selected by the spectacular system are also its weapons for a constant reinforcement of the conditions of isolation of "lonely crowds." 28
    • The general time of human non-development also exists in the complementary form of consumable time which returns as pseudo-cyclical time to the daily life of the society based on this determined production. 148
    • But being the by-product of this time which aims to retard concrete daily life and to keep it retarded, it must be charged with pseudo-valuations and appear in a sequence of falsely individualized moments. 149
    • In the expanding economy of "services" and leisure, this gives rise to the formula of calculated payment in which "everything's included": spectacular environment, the collective pseudo-displacement of vacations, subscriptions to cultural consumption, and the sale of sociability itself in the form of "passionate conversations" and "meetings with personalities." 152
    • Tourism, human circulation considered as consumption, a by-product of the circulation of commodities, is fundamentally nothing more than the leisure of going to see what has become banal. The economic organization of visits to different places is already in itself the guarantee of their equivalence. The same modernization that removed time from the voyage also removed from it the reality of space. 168
    • Integration into the system requires that isolated individuals be recaptured and isolated together: factories and halls of culture, tourist resorts and housing developments are expressly organized to serve this pseudo-community that follows the isolated individual right into the family cell. 172
    • When art, become independent, depicts its world in dazzling colors, a moment of life has grown old and it cannot be rejuvenated with dazzling colors. It can only be evoked as a memory. The greatness of art begins to appear only at the dusk of life. 188
    • Furthermore, next to the simple proclamation of the sufficient beauty of the decay of the communicable, the most modern tendency of spectacular culture--and the one most closely linked to the repressive practice of the general organization of society--seeks to remake, by means of "team projects," a complex neo-artistic environment made up of decomposed elements: notably in urbanism's attempts to integrate artistic debris or esthetico- technical hybrids. This is an expression, on the level of spectacular pseudo-culture, of developed capitalism's general project, which aims to recapture the fragmented worker as a "personality well integrated in the group," a tendency described by American sociologists (Riesman, Whyte, etc.). It is the same project everywhere: a restructuring without community. 192
    • The contemplative side of the old materialism which conceives the world as representation and not as activity--and which ultimately idealizes matter--is fulfilled in the spectacle, where concrete things are automatically the masters of social life. Reciprocally, the dreamed activity of idealism is equally fulfilled in the spectacle, through the technical mediation of signs and signals-which ultimately materialize an abstract ideal. 216



Urban Screen REader stuff

  • Huhtamo 15 - History of screens in public places
  • McQuire 45 - well written and looks highly useful
  • Broeckmann 109 - look at spectacle, memory etc.
  • Interview 121 - Interview with CEO of plaza area in Melbourne (seems to be a similar setup to the Zuidplein)
  • Interview with JAN SCHUIJREN 145 (we are going to be interviewing him on Friday!)
  • Nevarez 163 talk about spectacular screens in Times Square
  • Bounegru 199 - Cool article relating urban screens to situationism
  • Schieck 243 - Urban Screens and human interaction


Huhtamo 15
  • In spite of their growing prominence, public screens remain peripheral when it comes to media

scholarship. Cinema and television studies, as well as ‘new media’ research, have largely ignored them. 15

  • It began in the late fifteenth century in the wake of the Gutenbergian revolution. As

communities grew and the hold of capitalism became stronger, the role of public advertising gained more importance. Signboards also developed into vehicles for distinguishing between similar competing products and services. 16

  • Printed attractions in outdoor spaces became widespread in the early nineteenth century. 16
  • As an information interface, the definition of the screen should incorporate a

separation between hardware and software. It should function both as a frame and a gateway through which messages are transmitted and retrieved 17

  • Advertising space was rationally divided into framed ‘lots’,

and these were ‘cultivated’ by companies who had bought rights to use them. The newly organised ‘adscape’ was realised early at railway stations. 18

  • Gulliverisation operates at the divide between the public and the private. The urban environment,

with the skyscraper as its ultimate manifestation, became more and more ‘inhuman’, whereas the home provided a return to the anthropomorphic scale. 20

  • Soon after the incandescent bulb had been introduced

in the late 1870s, it was applied to advertising. 22

McQuire 45
  • The third major threshold, which is driving the recent rapid expansion of large screens, was

the maturation of LED (light emitting diode) technology as a video display format in the late 1990s. While LED screens are still relatively expensive, they have significantly lower operating and maintenance costs, are more versatile in terms of daylight display, and more flexible in terms integration into built structures. 46

  • Relational space emerges in the nexus of two trajectories. First, it pertains

to a social context in which social relations are no longer ‘given’, are no longer adopted ‘naturally’ on the basis of tradition and habitus, but instead have to be actively constructed in the absence of what Bauman calls ‘pre-allocated reference groups’. 48

  • For Debord, spectacle is not simply about the invention of new forms of imagery, but about the

extent to which social relationships are subjugated by commodity logic. 27 The flipside of extended commodification is increased passivity, as social interactions are channelled into predictable and potentially profitable forms. The conversion of practices such as bargaining, which once entailed mutual interaction between buyer and seller, to the constrained uniformity of the fixed-price department store – or later the shopping mall, which swallows the social space of the street itself and reproduces it as a highly surveilled, intensely commodified, pseudo-public space – stand as key indices of this shift. 54

  • For Sennett, the core value of public culture is cosmopolitanism.

By cosmopolitanism, he means not so much the ‘broadening’ effects of travel that was once largely to be restricted to the rich and powerful, but the ability to sustain civil relations to strangers in public. 56

  • In Sennett’s terms, living among strangers means that

human experience is inevitably subjected to multiple collisions or jolts: ‘these jolts are necessary to a human being to give him that sense of tentativeness about his own beliefs which every civilized person must have’. 32 56-57

  • Richard Sennett, The Fall of Public Man: On the Social Psychology of Capitalism, London: Penguin,

2002, p. 296.

  • Sennett argues that social rituals provide a vital means of coordinating

‘impersonal’ social relations (relations with strangers which don’t depend upon assumptions as to their personal qualities or character), while play is a key mechanism for testing and potentially reinventing social rules concerning appropriate modes of public behaviour. Aligning Sennett’s framework with the emphasis on anti-spectacular, user-configured culture drawn from Debord and Constant offers some useful markers for thinking how we might go about reinventing public space in the present. 57

  • Works like Body Movies and Underscan are notable for the delicate balance they construct

between personal participation and collective interaction, between active engagement and reflective contemplation. In this way, they are able to sustain playful encounters among groups of strangers who meet in public space and discover that, by enacting a collective choreography, they can alter its ambiance. For this to occur, it is important that the interfaces are capable of commanding immediate attention – that they are visually arresting – but also they are not immediately comprehensible. 59

  • Large screens clearly do not lend themselves

to the same sort of tactics based on mobility. The fixity of their location, coupled with planning and content restrictions and hierarchical forms of control, has led many to dismiss them as a potential civic resource. This response, while perhaps justified by the predominantly commercial history of large screens, seems premature. Given their prominent locations, the ‘occupation’ of large screens by specific groups is capable of creating powerful symbolic resonances. A significant example was the occasion of the national apology to the Stolen Generations issued by the Australian Federal Parliament on February 13, 2008. 37 59

  • This desire for the collective experience of shared viewing reintroduces a

performative role for members of the public in public culture. 59

  • If the dominant function of the new infrastructure is merely to display

advertising, large screens are likely to remain merely another channel of visual noise in an oversaturated environment. 61

  • Instead of being constrained by the immediate need to seize the attention of a

fast moving target, other rhythms can be explored. 61

  • Sassen also stresses the importance of empirical analysis of the particular

pathways along which the digital and the non-digital are intertwined – or to use Sassens’s word – ‘imbricated’. 43 Precincts such as Federation Square offer one of the most interesting ‘frontier zones’ for this type of research. They are media-dense spaces, comprising a variety of platforms such as large screens, LED signage, wireless networks, and a growing range of interactive capabilities. They are also the inheritors of the tradition of public space constituted by street life, city squares, cafes, and public cultural institutions. 61

Interview with McQuire and Jan
  • The Virtueel Museum Zuidas, is commissioned

as a project bureau by the City Council of Amsterdam and its aim is to intervene with artistic programming during the whole development period of Zuidas,

  • the urban screen should be the art project itself, meaning that the screen’s

content would be solely, a hundred percent, dedicated to visual arts.

  • So the original idea was to integrate the screen into the new facade of this station.
  • A screen with artistic content has no place on such

a square. There’s no real reception of whatever you bring there because it’s just not something that can become a natural part of that space

  • In your

conference presentation you talked about the need to develop forms of familiarity for people, through repetition of programming, and a particular kind of temporal structure. You also talked about the desire to reflect local space and local events in some way. So

  • But here, the absence of advertising means

that people are staring primarily at new architecture, some of which is very beautiful, very inspiring and very alive, but also at some that is simply very dull, engendering a very sterile and somber image.

  • The fact that we have this ‘regular’ audience, so to speak, means that we have to work

for them.

  • My expectations are in fact that the negative critique

will increase, which is okay, because I also think that over time, the positive reactions will increase and will be more distinct in terms of what people think the programming contributes to their everyday life.

  • Because what we’re trying to do – what you try to

do with art in general I think – is not so much about the actual experience you have in the moment you are confronted with an artwork, but more about what the artwork leaves behind and what it evokes.

  • Maybe the people in the video that I showed [at Urban Screens

2008] who are now saying ‘well, I don’t know exactly what I’m seeing here’, or ‘what should I do with this? Should I take a long look at this? Is that expected of me?’ will, in six months from now, have a very different reaction because they will have seen one work that finally falls into place for them. And they will then also have a different reaction to the whole screen and everything as a whole. That is the kind of landmark that we’re aiming for.

  • Both of these are strategies that

aim to bring the audience, who might otherwise feel uncomfortable in relation to this screen or just see nothing in it for them, to the screen and then, once they’re at the table, give them that dish to eat, but another one as well.

  • But I will also never go as far as, for

example, the FACT initiative in Liverpool or what is being done here at Federation Square, where programming is partly catered to the community. CASZ is not meant to be, and will never be, a community screen – it has been conceived as an arts stage. And that’s a clear difference in our intention.

  • So that’s

not something that leaves something behind, that evokes something inside of you, or that you can do something with in on the long term.

  • And then the difference

in reactions, and the friction that can come out of that, will happen exactly there, between people who probably do not know each other. And it will create a discussion, a conversation, or maybe even a relationship, in any form.

Broeckmann 109
  • A cacophony of mediated messages we barely notice and learn to ignore, or that we eagerly look

out for – as signs and clues to find our way in the maze of itineraries, goods, and attractions. (110)

  • The specific interventions and inscriptions, and the way in which

urban space is structured and transformed by media surfaces, need to be analysed individually, and compared. (112)

  • the hypervisibility of the public screens

and media facades, in contrast, display an unquestioning affirmation of their messages. It is the role of artists to destabilise these dichotomies, to undermine the certainties and expectations about what is visible and what is invisible, and to pinpoint the visual regimes coded into the different display and media systems. (117)

  • This leaves us with the question – both urgent and difficult – which images the designers of

urban screens and screen content want us city dwellers to imagine; which of our memories they want to respond to, or embed; which dreams they want us to dream – and which of these dreams they want to help us transform into a history which we can take into our hands. (117)

Nevarez 163
  • Debord made us aware of the spectacle of capitalism’s consumer logic and most recently

Virilio among others, problematised the proliferation of screens from TV to public space assemblages as having socialised us into passive spectators, distant and disconnected. 7 The standardisation of vision, the normativity of how, and what we see is for Virilio, one of the conditions of contemporary mediatised society. This normativity is most evident in how places become marketed through branding as they represent the unique character of a place. (165)

  • Art and social contents also become part of the circulation of goods and commodities,

ideas and cultural forms that in this neo-liberal landscape conform to the milieu by which audiences are addressed. (168)

  • The global homogenisation of landscapes

through contemporary urban development initiatives such as branding is also a dominant trend. The standardisation of urban development, maintenance, surveillance and aesthetics are part of this formula for ‘successful’ public spaces (173)

Bounegru 199
  • The sociologist Georg Simmel, analysing the culture of mundane

interaction in modern cities, described the relation between individuals who share urban space as one of civil indifference. The ‘blaseÅL attitude’ became typical for the inhabitants of the modern city – their relations were reserved and they remained strangers to one another. 41Sennett described the individual behaviour in the modern city in a similar way whilst looking for its causation in the new conditions imposed by commodity capitalism: ‘silence in public became the only way one could experience public life … There grew up the notion that strangers had no right to speak to each other, that each man possessed as a public right an invisible shield, a right to be left alone’. 42 (210)

  • In relation to urban spaces, the Situationist International criticised the conditions that Western

capitalism imposed on the modern city. The rationalism and functionalism characterising modern architecture and design structured urban space in order to downplay spontaneous, imaginative and playful practices. (211)

Schieck 243
  • Architectural surfaces are transformed into moving images. A new

form of architectural space is emerging that is different from what we have known. (243)

  • known. A form that is different

from the spaces in the physical built environments for which our analytic tools were evolved, and hence we are ill-equipped to deal with and analyse. (248)

  • Mobility of the observer (people) and the observed (the screens) through time is another

aspect that should be taken into consideration. High-speed mobility changes the perception of static and dynamic; transforming images from two-dimensional to three-dimensional. (250)

  • I suggest that in order to

achieve integration on the urban level, the displayed content and output technologies need to be embedded in the architecture of the building and become part of the emergent space and perhaps space-defining elements themselves. (249)

  • Screens could be ambient, or they could provide an innovative outlet for culture and art.

The content could be user generated or self-generated. (257)

  • Understanding movement rhythm, for example, in the morning and evening

commute, when people aim to get to work or go home, is an important part in determining the choice of content for the urban screens. Although the ‘commute’ may appear obvious, the different role played by different urban locations during that period is less so. Some spaces become important meeting and interaction spots, where one buys the paper or coffee, while others are strictly ‘head down and move through’ spaces. Good local knowledge of these rhythms with respect to the spaces is key in determining appropriate content scheduling for screens in these places. 17 (258)

  • With the advent of pervasive mobile and media technologies as part of the urban space, we

need to achieve a better understanding of place and the role of context as an emergent situation – physical, digital, social and mental. (258)

  • Currently, there is no methodology for designing media screens as an

integral part of the urban built environment. (259)

Expert interviews

Matthijs

  • 4:00 problem of making the 4th wall interesting enough to get investment from commercial companies
  • 8:00 "we had our own objectives and... the objectives of the commissioning party"
  • "the subjective feeling of social safety" (9:05) discussion of getting a better feeling as crossing through an area
  • wanted to not have high-resolution content, because didn't want people to stop in the tunnel (11:00)
  • "need to do a quantitative" study before and during and after in order to see if have actually enhanced social safety (15:00)
  • did really well in getting attention online (15:35)
  • "very subjective because most of the people know we did it" [discussing when they spoke to people and got positive reactions to the project] (15:50)
  • treating the mood wall as a product that can be used for lots of different purposes (18:00)
  • INTEGRATION AND MAKING THE PRODUCT IMMEDIATELY UNDERSTANDABLE
  • "if my viewers don't understand the interaction or reaction then I lose them immediately and then you can see the image or project as light or image pollution" (19:00)
  • also should change the content in order to keep people interested (19:35)
  • that's the interesting thing about this new kind of digital skin" [that you can change the content] (19:45)
  • "should be a part of the skin of the city" in terms of content and materials (21:10)
  • "not keen of these kinds of lollipops" (22:00)
  • not sure if people pay attention, "but of course, that's always a question with art" (22:00)
  • "have tried to integrate it somewhere in the square or in the construction" (23:30)
  • ADVERTISEMENT ETC.
  • "the Zuidas is the most expensive business area in the country... is high profile" [so easier to get commercial revenue here] (25:00)
  • "they need good noncommercial content for them to be interested in their commercials" (27:00)
  • "people are getting used to" commercials (28:00)
  • "it will always be more expensive than print" (30:00)
  • "people also want the lights to be out" (30:00)
  • MISCELLANEIOUS ASDFASDF
  • combination of high and low resolution has a lot of potential. low resolution is basically just lights (30:30)
  • "they are expensive and there aren't very many" (33:00)
  • "the projects from scratch are the most fun" (37:00)
  • the amount of screen that does something with physical reaction... there are not so many projects that do something with that, which surprises me, because as a producer of images I think that is the only thing that will really work or will really make a sustainable model for these urban screens" (43:00)
  • "it looks nice. The aesthetics are positive" (43:20)
  • RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN GOALS AND SUCCESS
  • "you need to look at the reason why they are put there" "a lot of this comes from who is paying for it" [the different goals will determine whether or not successful...] (46:30)
  • "needs to be interesting enough and not disturbing too much" (47:00)
  • initially thought that would have to change the content every 30 minutes, but then changed this and now have the same program running "this works because it feels very random" (48:00)
  • very much based on whether walking past it or waiting at the train station
  • "everything depends on the location" (48:50)
  • hurts their goal if content makes people feel uncomfortable because can't get money as easily (51:25)
  • a screen is just a screen
  • projections made much more poetic and much more entertaining and much more, you know, I think people are much more enthusiastic about that kind of things than works of art on standard urban screens" (52:25)

Hans Ter Burg

  • the number of people "not just using them as advertising tools... are few" (1:40)
  • "the screens we have in Holland are mostly marketing tools" (2:10)
  • "commercially it's very hard to exploit it" [in reference to the Lelystad screen] (6:30)
  • people can send in their own user-generated content, started with schools (7:00)
  • conceived of the screen in Lelystad as a kind of town meeting place like back in villages [community screen] (10:30)
  • "there will be a need for both using these digital media, but also for getting back to the physical aspects of it" (11:15)
  • "behind your computer you can make little films that will be seen on this screen" (11:50)
  • "not with too much emphasis... you just kind of past by" (12:20)
  • "it's about connecting... it can connect people physically and socially right on the spot" (14:00)
  • "they think... that when we put commercials on the screen, that's what they are for" "they don't know they can do other things with it" (16:00)
  • people need to pay more attention to making screens less ugly. should integrate into the walls of a building in a nice way (27:45)
  • "if its interesting or at least entertaining... then it will be interesting for advertisers to use it because its a nice thing in your neighborhood" (31:20)
  • "if its part of the whole thing..." not like commercials interrupting the middle of movies, then people will be fine with the advertisers (31:30)
  • the key new thing is interactivity (32:00)
  • "there's only one other screen in Holland that has sound" (35:20)
  • "this sound is concentrated" (35:45)
  • "this also depends where the screen is" [about determining the balance of interactivity to one-way programming] (37:15)
  • "that's the only example I think, of a screen that's not commercial at all" and they might allow some commercials but only if they are artistically right (40:15)
  • "people should be surprised" "for a change you don't only see flying sports shoes..."
  • "it triggers something, whether its your curiosity"... news. gives example of taking photo of trash in the streets and uploading it and then its up on the screen (43:00)
  • "people are just seeing themselves... that's the most interesting content you could ever present" (43:30)
  • "they are able to do this because they are subsidized"
  • "they really don't know how to use it" the city government in Lelystad doesn't know how to use the screen (53:15)
  • "it's better to use them in a nice and interesting way rather than just for commercials" b/c the screens are inevitable anyway (54:45)
  • "they can make something and it will be on a screen of 25 square meters in their town" (56:50)
  • "it's like a public gallery, for instance" (58:40)
  • reach out to local art schools, for example (59:15)
  • "it should always have a local relevance" (1:00)
  • can do interesting things on the side of buildings (for example, can make parts high-resolution and other parts low resolution) (1:05:00)
  • "you can do more with it than just being a big public television" (1:07:30)

Jan Schuijren

Interview (Skype) with Jan Schuijren

  • City of Amsterdam initiated VMZ to ensure that art is intervening in the buildup of the Zuidas. They hope to create consciousness about the role of new artistic projects in the development of a new city, and bring art as an inspirational element into this new district. Contribute to a more comfortable living system, well-being of life in a new district.
  • They have a period of 10 years it is prohibited to show advertisements from third parties (no billboards; companies are only allowed to have their own logo on their own property).

VMZ was commissioned to intervene in public space. That’s why “virtual” - no anchorage or home in Zuidas - to have a dynamic flexible body that initiates actions -- permanent, semi-permanent, or even evaporatively (very short lived).

  • He’s done a lot of film and video art, so they requested Jan to come and help.
  • Airplane screens are, in a certain way, urban screens.
  • The urban screen itself is the art project, in the hardware at least.
  • I was very enthusiastic, but once I started, I ran into many problems. You have to make very clear choices on the profile you want. You’re showing it for 16 hours a day, every day. (actually 18)
  • Except for CAS there is no other screen in the world that is dedicated to art and art only.
  • Even four or five years later, though many things are changing very fast, there is still only CAS as a purely art screen.
  • Jan’s goals: want to show and convince people that art is a necessity in life and in how we organize and build our society and how we look at things and do things and how we deal with eachother as people. That is his personal inner drive to do things. Not on an idealistic level. The last thing he’s been on the street’s to protest against was in the 80s against nuclear power - he would be ready to go on the streets again, given contemporary political situation - gvmnt saying that art is just a lefty hobby for people with too much time.
  • An urban screen has in principle, an enormous potential.
  • Moving image in publicn space is very powerful
  • It's impossible to divert your eye from a moving image
  • that’s why you can use itin so many ways -- so many bad ways too
  • in cas you have a medium in which you can preesent images that people have never looked at and would never look at
  • it might seem democratic, but it’s a one-way street -- television is far from a democratic medium, it is an authoritarian medium. perfect for dictatorships
  • would have never reacted enthusiastically for a project on rebramndtplein
  • uninteresting place b/c/ he would guess 80 - 90 percent are only there once
  • in an environment where you know that your potential audience is a very regular , returning crowd ... this is very important for artistic material. If you confront people who have never asked for it with video material, you have a certain responsibility to those people
  • you cannot help but build a relationship with those people ... it is possible to change the relationship with these people over time
  • which means you can change people’s perception of art, and how they validate art
  • also students from nearby academies and scholars from nearby schools ... more and more people are using zuidplein to enter the railway and the new residential districts
  • you have a very huge, mixed, and varied crowed that is your audience
  • you should provoke them ,evoke things in them, you should irritate them at times, you should distract them as much as possible from their everyday rhythm -- everything art can do. All the reasons you go to a museum. At least that’s why I go to a museum. I want to be distracted, touched, irritated, be brought to something where i have to find something about it.
  • What do I think of this, what does it do to me, why am i feling how i am, am i touched, why am I sad
  • choosing what to show is the hardest thing for him
  • contacting artists is the hardest part
  • everyone but one artist totally and immediately agreed to do it. even with such a low image quality
  • for an exhibition, he would get two pages of demands, but here everyone was just ok (this was for a streaming project online in ‘06)
  • he knows fora fact that at least 97 percent of the people do not think that they need or want art.
  • asked guy who sevs, beer there what he thoughts // said he liked the screen, but didn’t like the art
  • (using “home ktichen” psychology, determined what types of things people would like during different times of the day. no abstract things ion the monrning, short things (easily distracted, but easily distracted by other things)

show longer, more indepth, works that can grab your attention late. evening: longer more intesnes works, for a niche audience this is true, but in practice, after 9 months, he let go of it, - incuh a public sphere, the diversity of the crowd also makes it ... you could come upwith 10 or 20 other scenarios / programs that would fit different people just as well and just as not well. we often herd people , but we are also individuals, and it is very hard to control, because one thing works for some, and one thing works for others.

  • there’s a tradition in television about what’s appropriate for a certain part of a day
  • it seems impossible to change that. it seems like there is a certain time of the day in which television manipulates you into digesting a certain type of program
  • it was liberating to let loose of such a carefully-built-up structure. he quickly became convinced that that’s what this medium should be -- not democratic, should not give audience the ability to choose what they wattn to see- because people in general are afraid to make choices, ... even when presented with a huge variety of choies, they would choose the most familiar choice, “when the farmer doesn’t know it, he doesn’t eat it”
  • this is horrible for art, and art in public space, because you’re tryinhg tyo intergrate it into people’s everyday life

started to focus more and more on a healthy mix of eye-pleasing on one hand (need this at a certain time of day) ... first warm day in the year is skirts day ... some are pleasing to the eye, some are proving, some are contemplative. Tends to (not randomly, he’s a control freak) give the feel that it is put randomly together. You have to get used to the fact that not one single person will ever, ever look a the program schedule, choose something of his or her liking, get on his bike, and be there in time for his selection.

  • He really should do it randomly, just let the screen choose
  • on sound:
  • the sound is problematic: when you have sound in public space, you very much enter people’s private territory

when they asked me to program the screen , i told them that if the screen was around the corner of the street where he lived, he would not be programming it, he would be initiating a petition to get rid of it, and he still believes that one of the most important functions is that it would function without sound other criterion is that it would make very clear that you would need sound, and you can dial up the number in the Netherlands, there is some resistance against such sounds on public space, and he has to agree on that to be honest ... of course, he’ll do everything in how power to make sure that it will have sound one day, but as a personal issue he is opposed to it

  • I wouldn’t change a thing - it’s great, I think (about the Zuidplein). I think it’s great - maybe the best even. You can only judge background if you also judge content. If you look at purely aesthetically, we have the best content.With the business architecture, you have such an abstract background, it is clear to everyone what it is. People think they know what we’re seeing, it looses its specificness - it’s whole money thing is not graspable. You can allow yourself to only take the backdrop of the screen aesthetically. What you see there you don’t need to think. It’s business, it’s financial business. It’s abstract to everyone (except for the people who work there), so it makes a perfect backdrop for the screen.
  • The selection of the longer works are based on the idea that if you were to only see a fragment, it will still have an effect on you. If you like it, you can go home, look up the work, and find more about the artist.
  • So we have this art screen, with a poor he resolution, the images is nice if you’re far away, we don’t have sound let, you can dial a number but it doest all work , but if it does wok it’s crappy, we don’t have seating ... so would it be O.K. if we showed your work here? That is factually what i was asking them. And to my amazement, almost everybody said, but yes of course, i would love to show my work in the public sphere!
  • you don’t think it takes something out of the carefully built narrative in thirty minutes, the montage, the build up, the intention in images?
  • well yes, yes of course it does, but if someone finds it a nice 2 minutes to watch, and they find it interesting and it makes their day, well , then , I’m happy.
  • I’m not sure what to really think of this myself.
  • everyone agrees that it’s a new boring district, and it’s great that the screens’ there ... it’s so unusual that there isn’t advertisements, people experience the neighborhood as being boring because there’s no advertising there, it livens up the neighborhood, it adds to the quality of being here, the second thing more than 90% of people said, but the stuff they show, must be art, , it’s not for me, but without an exception everyone would spontaneous think of a certain work they had seen weeks ago that they could describe in every little detail, every little moment, how it progressed which means that they have seen the artwork in such detail ... or else you couldn’t describe it weeks later in such detaill ... which means, mission accomplished.
  • more kitchen psychology: maybe later they’ll get something in the mail about an art exhibition, and they think we’ll maybe I'm interested in it, and they don’t know yet why. Even if they thought the rest was arty farty shit and they just throughout about that one images for a few days.That’s what art does, it plants a seed. confront yourself with it, take your time to be with it. They don’t have to be able to explain it. there doesn’t have to be some sort of message with it.
  • Art is really there just to confront yourself with, not too be, per se, understood. At some point, the art that you let in, one moment or later, will have some kind of effect, it will all of a sudden if it in or makes sense or you’ll come across a situation that you’ll have to think about that you’ve spent time with. That’s something that CAS can do on a long term basis just by exposing people to art in public spaces.
  • Certain works have the quality, that if you do let yourself into it, then you that much more personify with the screen, and it becomes its own entity.
  • Can’t put the movies online because then no one would come to the screen. Of course, no one comes to the screen to look at a movie anyway, so there’s a logical flaw. It doesn’t make any sense. But still, it’s based on principles.

Observations (excerpt)

  • movement of people
    • the path from the entrance to the station on the eastern side is the only path with a view of the screen. it appears to be utilized just as much if not more than the center paths and the western path. which path people travel down is largely determined by where their metro drops them off (and which staircase they subsequently take)
    • Timed movement across the Zuidplein for 20 people. They travelled from 1 of the 3 possible North entrances and entered the train station in the South. Their average time was 63 seconds. During our interview, Jan independently indicated that it took one minute to cross the Zuidplein.
    • bike lane running on western corridor (w/o good view of the screen) into bike escalator with the exit coming out past the view of the screen. lots of commuters going in on bike, parking, and then popping out the other or entering the WTC from underground. this prevents them from getting a good look at the screen during their entrance and exit to the WTC
    • bursts of movement through the Zuidplein as a result of arriving trains and metros
  • seating
    • chains around tables and chairs in the seating areas in the east (seems like a fairly imposing and controlled area)
    • didn't see anyone sitting at this place who hadn't purchased food or drinks from the stores on the ground floor of the WTC
    • employee at food court on ground floor says that the vast majority of her customers work at the WTC
    • a lot of people utilizing the plant boxes for seating. during lunch hours (12 to 14, roughly) a lot of suits cross from WTC to the albert and eat their food on the plantboxes
    • travelers seemed to sit exclusively on the plantboxes except if they had purchased food from the businesses within the food court (who control the formal seating)
    • the screen is only visible from the plant boxes on the eastern edge. anywhere else is blocked by trees
    • no seating in the train station besides at a burger king
  • environment
    • accordion player at the entrance to station Zuid. is audible at about 30-40 feet.
    • spoke with a magazine salesman about 10 feet away from the player about the accordian player. told me that he was playing there illegally, but that the police rarely if ever kicked him out. it was very much tolerated
  • content sample from Aug 10
    • 13:27: showing commuters in Japan on the train. screen in 4 quadrants. bright flowers interspersed in the quadrants. is very relaxing and thought-provoking to me. I am very pleased with this imagery. there are now fish on the screen
      • "Shot in Japan, and originally a four-channel video installation, the images in this single channel version present sequences that toggle between nature and saturated urban spaces. People are perceived as parts in a structured system, and an automated sequence of events is consolidated to a counter-rotating choreography."
    • 13:35: website indicates that this is a music video. features garage doors flapping. 2 guys
      • "The video shows garage doors in a row, on the street. The doors suddenly open and then close, and then open again to close again. These movements are being repeated so that the doors are suggesting a dynamic dance. The opening and closing are part of creating the visual energy"
    • 13:45 upside down guy. small changes over time. relaxing and interesting without being overpowering or distracting
      • "Shaun Gladwell’s spatial performances exemplify the potential in taking back and re-inhabiting the empty transit zones of urban space. Both Tangara and Woolloomooloo Night, as well as much of Gladwell’s oeuvre, are interventions in particular urban locations that are devoid of activity when not being occupied for very specific, time-limited purposes.

In Tangara, the artist uses the generally overlooked architecture of an empty train carriage as his support for a physically demanding performance. In Woolloomooloo Night, a desolate petrol station is inhabited by a capoiera dancer and a curious group of seagulls. Both of these locations are transformed by these acts of physical theatre and illustrate the potential inherent in all of us to rethink and affect our surroundings. Rather than urban rebels to be hauled away by the Cleanaway truck (a very fitting coincidental symbol in Woolloomooloo Night), Gladwell’s performers boldly assume a presence that equally threatens and liberates the public self we protectively shield from difference and disruption in urban communal space.(Angela Plohman, excerpt exhibition text LIVING THE CITY)"

    • 14:00 images of Bush shown composed of corporate logos (like McDonald's etc...)
      • "Digital image manipulation with logo’s of notorious multinationals that create a psychedelic and miss formed portrait of the even more notorious G.W. Bush."
    • 14:04 text in English. guy shown on sofa with a monologue that does not have subtitles
      • "A man is sitting on a couch in his living room, we’re looking at him from a frontal view. It appears as if the situation or recording has been manipulated, as his hands and legs seem unusually large. When the slow motion images show him standing up from the couch, one even gets convinced that this must be either a dollhouse setting or some kind of blue box technique… or is it real?"
    • 14:10 guy inside crazy box trampoline type situation. he bounces around, but his actual contact with the trampoline is always spliced out, creating an uncanny effect
      • "In a white cube, a half-naked body bounces tirelessly off the three partitions of the closed space. No escape seems possible. As the progressive slowing down of the video affects the movement, our understanding of the situation begins to shift. Somewhere beyond the violence of the spatial constraint, the body is experiencing its own unassailable liberty. Inside the same movement, an ambiguity remains."
    • 14:22 talking guy with English subtitles. zoomed in on his face. Says things like "Friendship is shitty!" or "May God break your hands" "Life...boring" "Everything is ugly!" is laughing and smiling throughout. repetition of words and themes
      • "“Peace. I don’t want it. Fairness. Why? Victory? Makes me sick! Love? What a pity. Freedom? Ugly! Friendship? My ass!”

“not a matter of it but when” was developed in 2005–06 in Damascus, Syria. This period of time was marked by momentous events: Rafiq Harriri, the former Prime Minister of Lebanon, was assassinated, the Syrians were pressured to withdraw from Lebanon after a 30-year occupation, the “Cedar Revolution” came and went, elections were held in Iraq and were followed by a descent into civil war, and Hezbollah strengthened its position in Southern Lebanon. These events reverberated in Syria and gave rise to widespread anxiety and anticipation around the potential for imminent change, regime change, internal reform, internal collapse, civil war and the increased power of fundamentalist Islam."

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