UBERMORGEN.COM feat. JAMES POWDERLY: “TortureClassics”
“TortureClassics” – die Guantanamo-”Greatest Hits” (Download!) von UBERMORGEN.COM feat. JAMES POWDERLY – inkl. Live-Folter-Gala: “Music Torture has been officially and publicly confirmed by government officials, human rights organizations, prison guards and interrogators, as well as suspected terrorists who have been detained in military prisons and detention centers. The United Nations and the European Court of Human Rights have banned the use of loud music in interrogations.
The United States Department of Defense and Central Intelligence Agency has made extensive use of sonic interrogation techniques, ie. torture by music, in facilities like Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, Kandahar, Bagram Detention Center and numerous “black sites” scattered around the globe. Such Interrogation techniques, combined with sleep deprivation, hard treatment, water-boarding, air deprivation and other notorious forms of torture, has been legalized under special provision of the United States Department of Justice and the White House under both the Bush and Obama administrations and continues to be used today.
The actual music used in TORTURE CLASSICS has been reported by both prison guards and released inmates (Binyam Mohamed and Donald Vance, tortured with music for 76 days) and includes Top 40 hits, Metal, Hard Rock, Country and Western, TV theme-songs and commercial jingles, as well as original “mash-ups” created by CIA agents, prison administrators, guards and interrogators.
Anonymous: “The Barney Song has a sound that was designed to make children feel safe and loved. But it was used to torture people and to drive them to their emotional breaking point. Music publisher Jive Records changed Britney Spears song title from “Hit me Baby One More Time” to “… Baby One More Time” to get rid of the ambiguous undercurrent to the catchy pop smash hit”.
Sgt. Mark Hadsell: “If you play the same song for 24 hours, your brain and body functions start to slide, your train of thought slows down, and your will is broken. That’s when we come in and talk to them”.
Guantanamo Prisoner Ruhal Ahmed: “I can bear being beaten up, it’s not a problem. Once you accept that you’re going to go into the interrogation room and be beaten up, it’s fine. You can prepare yourself mentally. But when you’re being psychologically tortured, you can’t. From the end of 2003 they introduced the music, and it became even worse. Before that, you could try and focus on something else. It makes you feel like you are going mad. You lose the plot. And it’s very scary to think that you might go crazy because of all the music, because of the loud noise, and because after a while you don’t hear the lyrics at all, all you hear is heavy banging.” Via: Mail, thx!
How to Make Pizza... North Korea style
Never a dull post with the graduates from Platform 13, Design Products Department, Royal College of Art.
Hwang Kim (also the author of a spectacular CCTV Chandelier) was one of the superstars of the whole RCA exhibition for me.
He was showing a witty, wonderfully researched and tactful fake documentary aimed as a subtly subversive introduction for North Koreans into diverse aspects of western culture. The film also explores how design can contribute and impact on a social and cultural level, subtly challenging an ideological status quo.
North Korea is one of the most politically and culturally isolated countries in the world, any foreign influences is systematically rejected. The fact that the first pizzeria opened only last year in the capital Pyongyang, is quite symptomatic of how culturally controlled the country is. I was first tempted to compare the opening of the pizzeria to the one of the first McDonald’s fastfood in Moscow but that would be misguided. Only the leader Kim Jong-Il and a handful of wealthy people can afford a Margherita or a Quattro formaggi.
Scene from How to Pack a Suitcase
How to Make a Pizza
Filmed in South Korea and split into four episodes, Star Pizza introduces North Koreans to typical aspects of Western culture through the eyes of a fictional young couple.
The lovely couple is exposed to Western cuisine with the chapter on How to Make a Pizza; the possibility of going on holiday with the episode about How to Pack a Suitcase To Go Abroad; Western entertainment with How To Become A Trend Leader At Pop Dancing and finally learn How to celebrate Christmas Day.
Since there is no hope that Star Pizza would ever be shown on North Korean tv, Hwang Kim converted his film to 500 DVDs, managed to get in touch with people who smuggle over the North Korean borders from China, and had them distribute the film on the black markets of Pyongyang.
One of the smugglers asked the designer to send him some clothes and shoes for his wife and daughters as a price for this dangerous job.
As Hwang Kim explained me, North Koreans have almost no access to the internet. The only way they can watch films and soap operas from other country is to buy pirate DVD on the black markets of the capital.
Pyong Yang, North Korea, 2010. Photographed by Unknown
All the actors of Star Pizza are South Koreans, casting North Koreans refugees may have threaten their security. To give the illusion that the film was made in North Korea, North Korean refugees gave the actors a one week intensive accent training course. The refugees, living now in London and South Korea gave advice and feedback on all aspect of the film, throughout its production.
Star Pizza is accompanied by a series of specially designed political props that have been inserted into the four episodes and that were also exhibited at the RCA show.
For example, the prop in the second episode of the film is an “Exile Blanket”. The young couple is packing a suitcase for their holiday abroad. A Russian-style bed sheet embroidered with the portraits of famous political exiles can be seen in the back of their room. Images of exiles are not allowed to be shown in any kind of media in North Korea. Yet, exile is the only way for North Koreans to travel abroad. According to the UN HCR, over 300,000 North Koreans have already chosen this form of holiday.
The designer chose some of his own favourite exiles for the blanket. From left top, Karl Marx, Dea Joong Kim, Vladimir Lenin, Miklós Horthy, Napoleon Bonaparte, Alejo Carpentier, Aleksandr Danilovich Menshikov, Alfonso XII, Bob Powell, Edward VIII, Ferdinand Marcos, Francisco Goya, Haile Selassie, Sun Yat Sen and Manuel Azaña.
Another prop is the fan that doubles as a radio when you press the buttons in the correct order. Long distance, short wave radios are strictly forbidden in North Korea. In the film, a old fan is used as a vehicle to conceal this type of radio, enabling the protagonists to circumvent the regulations. It is a playful proposal for North Koreans on how to develop creative tools of cultural guerrilla.
From the same Platform: Nomadic Sound Systems.
From left: Mel Chin, SAFEHOUSE for Operation Paydirt & the Fundred Dollar Bill Project / The Blue House (Jeanne van Heeswijk, IJburg 2005-2009) Pump Up The Blue (Herve Paraponaris) with Recycloop (2012 Architecten) / Pablo Helguera at Frontera Corozal, Chiapas, 2006International Award for Participatory Art
The jury of the newly founded International Award for Participatory Art, consisting in Julia Draganovic, Rudolf Frieling, Alfredo Jaar, Bert Theis and, for the Legislative Assembly of the Region Emilia-Romagna, Luigi Benedetti, has selected the three finalists of the first edition of the prize. Read Full Article
A tree grows in Chile's national soccer stadium
New York–based, Chilean artist Sebastian Errazuriz’s Memorial of a Concentration Camp (2006):A 10-meter magnolia tree is planted in the center of Chile’s National Stadium where dictator Pinochet in 1973 imprisoned thousands of political prisoners who were tortured and killed. After planting the tree, the stadium doors are open to the public as a park; offering a space to stop, look again, and remember. An impossible, cathartic soccer match played before 20.000 people, closes the project after a week of activity.Via Rebel Art.
James Chance photographs Manila's cemetery dwellers
Image from James Chance’s “Living with the Dead,” used with permissionThe intersection of poverty and overcrowdedness means the world’s poorest are often pushed into unlikely and surprising living environments, from shantytowns and favelas to massive landfills like Jakarta’s Bantar Gebang (where children of ragpickers run a radio station) and Manila’s Smokey Mountain. In his recent series, photographer James Chance looks at another unexpected community, Manila’s North Cemetery, where more than 2,000 people live among the graves of presidents and paupers alike. Photo District News, which reports that 40 percent of Filipinos live below the poverty line, offers a stunning presentation of Chance’s “Living with the Dead” series.Update: As a winner of a $10,000 POYi Emerging Vision Incentive award, Chance will be continuing the project. He plans on focusing on individuals who live and work in the cemetery, including Rodolfo “Rody” Villenueva, the caretaker, and a squatter named Bobby.
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Curated by Régine Debatty
Régine Debatty writes about the intersection between art, design and technology on her blog we-make-money-not-art.com.
She also contributes to various design and art magazines, curates art shows and lectures internationally.
