About Truths | FINAL RESISTANCE

UNIVERSITY OF JOHANNESBURG

GRADUATE SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE (#UNITSYSTEMAFRICA)

Project Name: Surveillance Prototypes

Project Location: Alexandria, Cairo - Egypt

Project range: limitless

Keywords: margin/edge, migrant architectures,

mythology, passages, spatial justice,

surveillance, thresholds, trade,

ways of looking

LEO DASILVA CHICWAMBI (M2)

MASTERS OF ARCHITECTURE (M8AT1Q)

UNIT 18 FRAMING STATEMENT

Unit 18 takes on the haunting presence of power through the Hyperreal Prototypes. In the age of the 4thIndustrial Revolution, things are moving faster than ever. Political dissent, wars and economic crashes rise and fall with the same planetary crunching of time and space, across media and image, as fast as a new hairstyle emerges from Beyonce. This post-modern, late-capitalist, post-colonial, and neo-colonial world represses and projects its ghosts and phantoms with similar intensities, if not entirely in the same forms as the older worlds did. We live with the horrors and nightmares of past-violences, struggles for liberation, dreams of freedom and hopes of future worlds yet to come (Gordon 2008). The hyperreal and supernatural is indistinguishable from the real and authentic. Artificial Intelligence has infiltrated every semblance of our life: we are all cyborgs, all part-human, all reliant on robotic and prosthetic parts (Haraway 1985).

In Egypt, Alexandria and Cairo, various forms of surveillance mediums such as those accessed through social media and screens available to us play a big role to communicate information to the general public. Such platforms inherently have the ability to construct meaningfully or, sometimes, destructively in the wrong hands. In about 3 cities in Egypt, we have seen protests spark from fake news aimed to take down the current President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. Mohammed Ali, an exiled Egyptian businessman, is known to have been at the forefront of sparking the protest through disseminating fake news on his social media platforms. Some people got lured into protesting because they couldn’t determine credibility from what was being told to them by Mohammed Ali. Certainly, the position from which a certain event is seen, and the context in which is received, are important spatial constructs to manipulate its meaning.

We can attempt to mitigate manipulations and truth censoring around events of spaces that are caused by individuals or governments for their own interests. This can be done by expanding certain viewpoints and perspectives through the aid of what Laura Kurgan projects as ‘digital data stream era’. Technologies such as surveillance tools are purely related to measurability, to resolution, to constructing reliable algorithms that interpret between reality and representation (Kurgan, 2013:13). These are the same tools that can be used to challenge conventional ways of using them to deconstruct spaces, especially through digital means. There's a need for prototypes that expand their limits to afford us the ability of reconstructing spaces more accurately.

The work positions itself in a type of practice of forensic architecture in the sense of reconstructing past events to aid in building truth commissions but different in the case that Surveillance Prototypes provide toolsets to understand spaces prior designing. Not only does it show how to understand spaces but also challenges conventional ways of understanding a site and addressing it. Looking at determinable evidence in spatial settings to reveal blind spots and clandestine operations. Works such as the Architecture of Violence by Eyal Weizman, Ways of Seeing by John Berger and the Arcades Project by Walter Benjamin attribute methodological prompts about image, record and analytical sense-making of past events in a particular spatial setting.

This project develops a toolkit that deconstructs events, occurrences and as a result, the essence of spaces using surveillance means. Attempting to expose historic events' truths within spatial constructs (or hold multiple truths apparent). The sites of enquiry used are spaces of transit, such as public squares, open thresholds, allies, entries; amongst others. Particularly focusing on Tahrir square as a site in Egypt (with a rich history because of the overlaid historic narratives and events that transpired). How may the ‘truths’ of the above mentioned nerratives, events and activities be augmented or shunted by surveillance gazes in turn reproducing untruthful representations of spaces? What are the methodologies that can be developed to keep unpacking, mapping and exposing the hidden phenomenon of these ‘truths’? How does surveillance of such spaces attribute to hyperreal versions of themselves? Due to this, the project argues for architecture that is concerned with de-construction rather than that of construction (Eyal Weizman: 2015, 2020).

The project finds newly uncovered ways of truth seeing and truth building. This affords us the ability to understand contexts truthfully and enables us to do the right decisions around acting accordingly to those contexts. In addition, the project becomes educational in showing us a manner in which complex set of issues could be understood and interpreted in a series of steps, in turn, deconstructing data found under the radar at different places.

Arguably, for an architect to design for these complex and catastrophic sites, systems and events, we need to understand how they work by having a platform of learning to see them. The project finds an opportunity to prototype tools to see them.

“The economic and political powers that make our cities and our architecture are enormous. We cannot block them but we can use another tactic, which I call the tactic of Judo, that is, to use the force of one’s opponent in order to defeat it and transform it into something else.”

- Tschumi, 1995. P.299 referenced by Fraser. M.

Alexandria operates as the largest strategic-port city in Egypt and occupies a critical role in maritime commerce, craft production and naval operations. It therefore plays a key economic and political role in the region. However, hidden between these strategic flows, considerable illicit activity has also been detected through its port. This is owing to several reasons, notably that it is the largest international free zone in Egypt (Portal: 2020). This aids in promoting trade given that no taxes or duties are levied in this so-called ‘Free Zone’. These illicit activities, including smuggling of goods and people, is understood as a form of crisis. Yet the project realizes that sometimes ‘free trade’ can be as damaging as illicit trade.

This research project, titled the Institute of Surveillance Prototypes is interested in areas of transit and in particular, practices of surveillance. Through a series of investigations into the port, borders, thresholds, entries and lobbies, focused on the Alexandria Port area, the project aims to develop a set of prototypes which engages with questions of bias, control and surveillance that operates in liminal threshold zones through architectural mechanisms. Through research into the particularities of this site and its conditions, and the remaking of these through architectural mechanisms (prototypes) and a series of ‘games’, the research both reveals problematic bias and suggests an alternative engagement with transit sites. This project therefore sits closely within the unit framing by using the act of replication as the basis for a set of prototypes (as games) that both mimic and question the truths that underlie surveillance mechanisms including racial and gendered biases (Ahmed 2007; 2012; Puwar 2004).

Central Research Question:

This research considers the following key questions:

In spaces of transit and liminal zones – particularly those which manage networks of moving goods and people, how may the ‘truths’ of their activities be augmented or shunted by surveillance gazes? And how might spatial deconstruction or record keeping in public media resources aid or subvert this, in turn pointing multiple possible truths?

Furthermore, what are the methodologies that can be developed to keep unpacking, mapping and exposing the hidden phenomenon of these supposed ‘truths’ through architectural mechanisms of visualizing and modelling? How does surveillance of such spaces attribute to hyperreal versions of truth or multiple truths?

Related Literature & Theoretical Framework:

The work positions itself in a practice of forensic architecture, looking at determinable evidence in spatial settings to reveal blind spots and clandestine operations. Works such as the Forensic Architecture: Violence on the Threshold of Detectability (2017) by Eyal Weizman, Ways of Seeing by John Berger (1990), Surveillant Witnessing by Andrew Herscher and the Arcades Project by Walter Benjamin (2002) attribute methodological and theoretical prompts about image, record and analytical sense-making of past events in a particular spatial setting.

The research is particularly interested in the problematic bias in representation and documentation of global catastrophes. Drawing from Herscher’s research, one example is the representation of disaster events in public and broadcast media which often display partially non-factual or untrue data for means of propaganda (Herscher, 2014). This in turn, one may argue, often contributes to the curation of political power. Because of this, borrowing the words of Weizman, the project argues for the value of spatial and architectural systems that deconstruct as much as those which construct (Weizman: 2011, 2017, 2007). Drawing from Weizman’s argument, this MDP project makes a case for systems which describe and make sense of things which already exist and reveal hidden knowledge, understood as similarly important to projects which create new things and spaces. The research also argues that the position from which a certain event is seen, and the context in which it is received, are important spatial constructs to manipulate its wider social and political meaning. John Berger articulates this using art as an example, stating that we situate ourselves in history when we see the art of the past. He further adds that while art might be understood as benign, art of the past is often retrospectively used to justify the ruling classes’ role and such justification should be questioned (Berger 2012:11). This project takes on the importance of imaging, by using footage from public and broadcast media in order to reconstruct sites.

Interestingly, one may argue that the current era presents opportunities to reveal truths in greater and more accessible clarity than ever before, while simultaneously, truth becomes increasingly opaque in an era of fake-news, image-manipulation and government-curated censoring. The project creates a case that information obtained within catastrophic environments should not be purely controlled by the people who are in power, and that loopholes in ways of seeing may be fostered. Conventionally, it is the military and governments who have these powers. This sometimes allows for what Weizman describes as “the exact perpetration of violence against the evidence that identifies that violence” (Weizman: 2017). We can attempt to mitigate this through the aid of what Laura Kurgan projects as the ‘digital data stream era’. Technologies, such as highly advancing surveillance tools, are purely related to measurability, to resolution, or to constructing reliable algorithms that interpret between reality and representation – all deeply spatial constructs. Yet what is interesting is that despite the transition to these tools existing in virtual realms, this does not necessarily make them any less true sources (Kurgan, 2013:13),

Kurgan’s work looks particular at examples that showcase ways in which ‘blindspots’ or gaps have been occupied, reimagined and truths, in turn, reproduced. Amongst others, she uses a Washington Post article that was published during March 3, 2005 by Dana Priest, which disguised the presence of a secret CIA prison code-named Salt Pit, near Kabul Afghanistan, that was being hidden. After eight months, she reports that the Salt Pit has been part of an early “hidden global internment network”, a collection of apparent “black sites” in which terror suspects were housed and interrogated by the CIA (Kurgan, 2013:49) Her article was enough to prompt GlobalSecurity.org to go looking for earlier satellite imagery of the Salt Pit (Kurgan, 2013:49).

This MDP, the Institute of Surveillance Prototypes aims to construct various devices on a series of sites related to areas of transit, such as, ports, borders, thresholds, entries, lobbies; amongst others, as sites of enquiry. These sites are currently being identified through a process of secondary research using popular news media articles such as Al Jazeera and EgyptToday. Institution, are understood as an establishment of an ‘educational, interrogating organization’ set to address certain architectural related phenomenon through different forms of surveillance. The project will develop a set of ‘prototypes’ which mimic existing surveillance prototypes on the identified sites – each of these prototypes will align with a space of study (i.e. port, border, threshold etc.) to reveal how truth is manipulated and subverted.

Research Methods:

“Only through a certain intimacy with these technologies—an encounter with their opacities, their assumptions, their intended aims—can we begin to assess their full ethical and political stakes”.

- Kurgan (2013:14)

The project uses the screen and public media - as ways of looking and forensic investigation and drawing methods (types of sketches, lenses, alternative views, perspective and axonometric models) as the main drawing-research tools for constructing a series of sites (Blanchfield and Lotfi-Jam 2019). Model-making, various forms of drawing, digital and analogue, will be used to construct the actual surveillance prototypes.

Given that “we only see what we look at” (Berger 2012:7)”, the projects main responsibility will be to consistently investigate the ever-changing nature of the transit systems and ultimately find creative spatially-related ways, tactics, and tools of surveilling/looking at them. Its main objective is to learn from these processes of surveilling, in order to reveal and understand aspects of hidden truths and multiple truths (that are usually under the radar) and create new ways of seeing through experimental prototypical architectures that intercept, interpret and represent them. The research argues that for an architect to work with ideas of catastrophe and the spaces in which they take place, they need to understand them by learning to see them (McCluhan 1964). The project finds an opportunity to prototype tools to see them.

The Institute of Surveillance Prototypes moves across scales of sovereignties, demographics, weak visual traces, various points of views and various image complexes. The research methodology proposes the marrying of factual representation, with speculative imaginaries, as tools for creating a way of building evidence files that are political, legal, truth commission or advocacy forms to existing overlooked phenomenon or events using architectural tools. The approach will draw on existing methods which will be mutated as required, including the use of interactive cartographies, 3D animation, film and image analysis and projections, architectural models and constructed games which unpack systems of entry, subversion, bypass and overcoming through a series of represented agents.

The research will be conducted from a distance using publically accessible photography and images, primarily drawn from open-access news sources. In the first instance, it will use different forms of news reports which mention particular crises as the basis to begin a drawing out of events and sites focused on transit zones. As an example, the first site adopts data from 4 different news articles from EgyptToday and Al Jazeera in order to construct a drawing. More specifically, it uses the articulated words used in the article to identify and narrate more information about what is being narrated using various forensic investigation methods. This way, it deconstructs the entire article to produce (through more meaningful formats such as location and ritual thumbnail drawings) other derivatives that identify and articulates more findings other than the stipulated within the realms of the news article. In turn, activating a kind of surveillance that is otherwise not present in the realms of an ‘electronic news report’.

As the research involves only secondary, desk-top research there is no direct interaction with human subjects. It therefore will not require a separate ethics approval process. The research will be conducted in line with UJ ethics policy at all times.

Key References:

Ahmed, S. 2007. A phenomenology of whiteness. Feminist Theory, 8(2):149-168.

Ahmed, S. 2012. On Being Included: Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life.

1st ed. ‎Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press Books.

Benjamin, W. 2002. The Arcades Project. 3rd ed. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press: An Imprint of Harvard University Press.

Berger, J. 1990. Ways of Seeing. 1st ed. London: Penguin Books.

Blanchfield, Caitlin and Farzin Lotfi-Jam. 2019. Modern Management Methods:

Architecture, Hisotrical Value, and the Electromagnetic Image. New York: Columbia University Press.

Bow-Wow, A. 2010. The Architectures of Atelier Bow-Wow: Behaviorology. 1st ed. New York: Rizzoli.

Deutinger, T. 2018. The Handbook of Tyranny. 1st ed. Zurich: Lars Muller Publishers.

Easterling, K. 2014. Extrastatecraft: The Power of Infrastructure Space. 1st ed. London: Verso.

Herscher, A. 2014. “Surveillant Witnessing: Satellite Imagery and the Visual Politics of Human Rights.” Public Culture, 26(3):469-50.

Gordon, A. 2008. Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Grange, A. l. 2005. Basic Critical Theory for Photographers. 1st ed. Oxford: Focal Press.

Hannavy, J. 2013. Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography. 1st ed. Abingdon: Routledge.

Kurgan, L. 2013. Close Up at a Distance: Mapping, Technology, and Politics. 1st ed. New York: Zone Books.

McCluhan, M. 1964. “The Medium is the Message” in Understanding Media. Boston: MIT Press, 1 - 18.

Puwar, N. 2004. Space Invaders: Race, Gender and Bodies Out of Place. 1st ed. Oxford: Berg Publishers.

Weizman, E. 2011. The Least of All Possible Evils: Humanitarian Violence from Arendt to Gaza. 1st ed. London: Verso.

Weizman, E. 2017. Forensic Architecture: Violence on the Threshold of Detectability. 1st ed. New York: Zone Books.

Weizman, E. 2007. Hollow Land: Israel’s Architecture of Occupation. London: Verso Books.

Appendix A

Key Definitions

ERASURE

noun: erasure; plural noun: erasures

the removal of writing, recorded material, or data.
the removal of all traces of something; obliteration.

SPECTACLE

/ˈspɛktək(ə)l/

noun: spectacle; plural noun: spectacles

a visually striking performance or display.
an event or scene regarded in terms of its visual impact.

Surveillance Prototypes:

Designing Truths

precedent for resistance

prototypes for continued resistance