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Human Behavior

Can We Share a World Beyond Representation? – Journal #106 February 2020 – E-Flux

Rootlessness, violence, the shattering and loss of all traditions, loneliness, mental decay, and illnessthis is the inheritance from modernity in the West and in Westernized territories throughout the globe. Hannah Arendts work reflects on these forms of modern alienation, which she poses as direct threats to the Lebenswelt: the world of common human experience and interpretation. The Lebenswelt, literally life-world, or world in common as Arendt defines it, is the framework from which both understanding and political judgment (from the point of view of the political actor and/or spectator) can arise.1 The world in common is where speech, thought, and action take place, thus possessing unquestionable meaningfulness, and enabling common existence. According to Arendt, modernity, propelled by the destruction of all tradition, is characterized by the irretrievable loss of the experience of shared meaning, which was previously created by talking to and making sense with one another. This loss is accompanied by the disappearance of a space for arguing, reasoning, argumentation: the space of politics, comprised of speech and action.2 As a result, men and women are deprived of their place in the world. As Gilles Deleuze put it, the link between man and the world has been broken. Modernity also means the replacement of society and community by mass society. For Arendt, mass society is characterized by isolation and a lack of normal social relationships; as a result, consciousness of a common interest is absent. Modern alienation has led to what Flix Guattari described in the 1980s as a crisis of relationality. In his view, this crisis is happening because

kinship networks tend to be reduced to a bare minimum; domestic life is being poisoned by the gangrene of mass-media consumption; family and married life are frequently ossified by a sort of standardization of behaviour; and neighbourhood relations are generally reduced to their meanest expression It is the relationship between subjectivity and its exterioritybe it social, animal,vegetable or Cosmicthat is compromised in this way, in a sort of general movement of implosion and regressive infantalization.3

Under globalization, absolute capitalism, and the digitalization of communication, the lack of a world in common has led to the pervasive feeling, as Franco Bifo Berardi recently wrote, that entropy is expanding, vision is blurring, and private meaning is clouding and obstructing any possible path of escape from the current crisis of relationality, debt, automation, mental illness, and environmental devastation.4 It is only now becoming evident that the systematic undoing of the social foundations of human relationships (or the world in common) occurs in parallel with the degradation of nervous cells, and that the destruction of the social tissue is inseparable from environmental damage. Climate change is in fact intimately tied to collective psychic collapse. In this context, politicization has also fallen prey to privatization: an array of disparate voices proliferates through the infosphere, each seeking recognition and issuing ethical demands not from the perspective of a world in common, but rather from the perspective of my world.

For Hannah Arendt, the expansion of authoritarianism in Europe in the twentieth century stemmed from the alienation and loneliness brought about by the degradation of the world in common. In the twenty-first century, the continuing loss of a world in common and the crisis of relationality help explain the resurgence of fascisms and fundamentalisms across the world. Nowadays, the main ruling instruments in neofascist states like the US, Brazil, and India are polarization, fear, and the mass sentiment that something (like our means of subsistence or the networks of safety materialized in the welfare state) has been taken away from useither by the 1 percent on the one hand (a historic left position), or immigrants on the other (a historic right position). The corporate state manages mass mood swings by immersing itself within the masses, wielding the totalitarian discourse of taking back what has been stolen from us (at any cost). In this neofascist (or in some places like Mexico, neopopulist) phase of neoliberalism, the power of capitalism works by selecting, excluding, and disseminating events that structure the present which each one of us perceives. For each user/citizen/consumer, the digital neoliberal capitalist order offers an individualized, tailor-made reality. This process occurs and repeats to the point that our normal now consists of living in a world in which we all have the right to retreat to our own private worlds of meaning, tailored by the algorithms of digital interfaces that constantly adapt to each users individual needs. The possibility of a world in common has been replaced by myriad niches for the private consumption of digitalized content. Clearly, representationthe dispositif that, via speech and action, enables appearance in the world in common, and also the human capacity for the creation and dissemination of shared meaning and traditionshas been hijacked by capitalism, authoritarianism, democracy, the internet, and spectacle.

In the nineteenth-century, when the modern political imagination first began to take shape, nations aimed to produce a representative form of social cohesion. They did this by constructing and disseminating a world of shared meaning that expressed the alleged essence of an imagined community: shared cultural history, iconography, language, food, and dress.5 In this context, art and critical thought were the utmost expression of a communitys values and had the avant-garde role of announcing a visionary and emancipatory future for all. Premised on a separation between action and appearance, avant-garde art operated in a separate realm than politics and action (enacting what we know as the autonomy of art). Artists adhered to the tradition of the revolutionary takeover as the primary path for universal emancipation. In their rebellion, avant-garde artists made a tactical, temporary, local, contrived, problematic, and idealistic alliance with the working class and the marginalized (Im thinking here of artists like Courbet, Dziga Vertov, and Tarsila do Amaral, among others). This attempted alliance was based on representativity: an invisible social contract in which artists imagined themselves to be mandated by humanity to address humanity in the name of universal values, grounded in a conflict between the individual (artist) and societal structures.6

In the 1960s (the era of high modernism), artists abandoned representation and dismissed representativity as totalitarian structures, as vehicles for a bland, sexist, and racist humanism and a trite universalism. Artists replaced the invisible social contract from early modernity that had enabled them to speak on behalf of all of humanity with a new one, in which they spoke from the point of view of their own gender, ethnic origin, political struggle, or sexual orientation, as colonized peoples, minorities, workers, etc. Paradoxically, in the 1980s and 90s, representativity came back with a vengeance through identity politics and consciousness-raising activism (specifically during the AIDS epidemic). Its return, however, was no longer as a concept subject to criticism and deconstruction, but rather as a positive, affirmative concept. A new, invisible social contract was drawn up in which individuals would now only speak on behalf of themselves as representatives of their own personal experiences of ethnic, political, or gendered specificities, with the mandate to address everyone and to secure recognition of my ordeal. Equality came to mean equal access to visibility through self-representation. As a result, a new kind of multicultural universalism flourished, one that celebrated difference even as it ignored real-world contradictions and conflictsfor instance, the unresolved and ongoing history of colonialism.

The return of representativity at the end of the twentieth century coincided with the rise of neoliberal globalization. Globalization meant the dismantling of the referential economy of political and aesthetic modernity and the exhaustion of the social contract that had assigned artists universal representativity. Under globalization, art is disseminated to a globalized mass society through an internationalized culture industry. Governments and corporations monopolize this culture industry for the purpose of managing the dissent and antagonism produced by the neoliberal order. In other words, states and corporations instrumentalize art as a showcase for global democracy; they point to art that expresses dissent as proof of how democratic and tolerant the neoliberal order is.

Along with being an index of democracy, art is also a lucrative niche for the global entertainment business. Art has thus become a form of consumable merchandise, destined to be used up. In this situation (diagnosed by Arendt and others in the 1960s7), artists have either embraced this quality of art as merchandise (Jeff Koons, Damien Hirst), or rejected it in the name of politicization and criticality (Hans Haacke, Andrea Fraser, Hito Steyerl). With globalization, critical artists have been summoned to become useful by surrendering arts (always partial) autonomy8 and taking up the task of restoring what has been broken by the system. So they denounce globalizations collateral damage and contemporary arts woeful conditions of production. They imagine a more just future, produce political imaginaries, disseminate counter-information, restore social links, gather and archive documents and traces for the duty of memory, etc. Perhaps, then, the prior role of the artist as a cultural vanguard has given way to a mandate to cultivate a feeling of political responsibility in spectators, in the name of self-representation and the representation of Enlightenment values.

The main problem with artworks that speak on behalf of the struggle of others, or that seek recognition for my private ordeal, is that they inhabit a moralizing realm of non-shared meaning. Such forms of address lead to a codependent politics of appearance based on a melancholic restoration of singular worlds, devoid of the possibility of speech and action and thus of common meaning (which, according to Arendt, is the condition for politics). The codependent politics of appearance demands a form of despotic empathy generated by situating oneself, or others on whose behalf one speaks, in the place of the martyr or scapegoat seeking recognition and visibility. Furthermore, the modern practice of looking at the pain of others has created a form of reified subjectivity that enables a spectacularized, uncommitted, and post-political position vis--vis the world. This means that from the perspective of reified subjectivity, as Anita Chari argues, the economy exists as a domain that is separate from human activity, blinding the subject to the extent of her involvement in the capitalist processes in which we are all complicit.9 As a pathology, reified subjectivity leaves room only for despotic empathy, which in turn forecloses the possibility of seeing actual power relations that divide the world between the wretched of the screen and spectators living in privileged enclaves with access to cultural commodities. In the late 1970s, Colombian filmmakers Carlos Ospina and Luis Mayolo articulated this problem as pornomiseria. They devised the term in the context of politicized films in Latin America that denounced the structural effects of colonialism on marginalized, non-modernized, underdeveloped populations throughout the continent.10

If we think about the codependent politics of appearance in Hannah Arendts terms, it means that the world of appearances is constituted by a moralizing Manichean perspective: that of communities formed around subjugation and worldlessness, versus communities of morally concerned spectators. This singular perspective is a sign of the disappearance of the common world and the domination of radical isolation, breeding conflict and polarization. Two consequences of being imprisoned in our own singular experiences are the mass inability to hear or see others, and the shaping of our reality by appearance alone, instead of by the kinds of actions, speech, and relationships that make up Arendts world in common.

When despotic forms of empathy prevail, action and speech are reduced to sheer appearance. Speech without actionsuch as speech that merely demands recognitionfails to disclose the position that the speaking human occupies in relation to others and the world, beyond simple identitarian or subjective categories. In the opposite casewhen we have gestures without speechthese gestures take the form of brute physical action without verbal accompaniment and are thus meaningless (like terrorist attacks or massacres in schools and public spaces). For Arendt, actions are only made relevant by the spoken word, which identifies the speaker as the actor announcing what she is doing, thereby giving meaning to her actions, but only in relation to others. In other words, no other human behavior is in greater need of speech than action. This being with is neither for or against others, but rather in sheer human togetherness.

Despotic empathy destroys the in-between of the world in common that enables and contains speech and action. The world we have in common is usually seen from an infinite number of different points of view. Through speech and action, we not only learn to understand each other as individual persons, but also to see the same world from one anothers (sometimes opposing) standpoints. In this context, universality means that while everyone sees and hears from a different position, some people have the capacity to multiply their own point of view.11 But from a decolonial standpoint, the acknowledgment of difference is not enough; one must also recognize positions of dominance and oppression, which are not based on differences, but are incommensurable.12 This is why it is incommensurability that must exist in between people. Acknowledging incommensurability means, for instance, listening and attempting to understand the indigenous demand for the repatriation of land, and learning where you yourself are situated with regards to this demand. Incommensurability also means, for example, acknowledging that while Europeans and descendants of Europeans in North America and in the Global South may not be on the receiving end of oppressive relations, colonial violence in fact impacts everyone insofar as privilege is hierarchical and racialized.13 Bringing incommensurability into the space in between humans would also mean acknowledging interdependence beyond detachment or codependent empathy.

Thus, to resist the present, I propose: First, to take up the urgent task of producing horizons of hope from the point of view of incommensurability by creating a new relationship between creativity and critique.14 Second, we must do away with representation, recognition, and difference and replace them with frames for relationality and reciprocity. Third, perhaps before we embark on this search for relationality we need to flee the infosphere. Lastly, we should not confuse the Lebenswelt or the world in common with the public sphere; nor should we confuse relationality with relational aesthetics. We need to put relationality before aesthetics (not as aesthetics). In relationality, alterity is encountered without mediation or instrumentalization. Reciprocity changes the focus from mediation to comprehending the concrete effects of our actions on others and the world. An emphasis on the relational rather than on the moral would enable transformative encounters defined by exposure, availability, and vulnerability. Relationality and reciprocity also mean acknowledging that our medium-term survival depends not on the help of strangers or foreign aid, but on mutual aid. This means rejecting individual self-interest for an enlarged concern with the well-being of a community, including ones territorial or nonhuman connections. We must embrace our duty to look after each other and ourselves. Instead of waiting for capitalism to fall apart around us, and in spite of us, we need to begin to act, taking our existence in our hands, inhabiting territories autonomously, but most of all: giving primacy to the power of togetherness. In this sense, we do not know yet what art made within a relational life-frame would look like: it has yet to be invented.

All images by Montserrat Pazos.

Irmgard Emmelhainz is an independent translator, writer, researcher, and lecturer based in Mexico City. Her writings on film, the Palestine Question, art, cinema, culture, and neoliberalism have been translated into several languages and presented at an array of international venues, including the Graduate School of Design at Harvard (2014); the Walter Benjamin in Palestine Conference (2015); the New School and the Americas Society (2016); SBC Gallery, Montreal (2016); the Curatorial Summit at the School of Visual Arts, New York (2017); and the Munch Museum, Oslo (2018). Her book Jean-Luc Godard's Political Filmmaking was published by Palgrave MacMillan in 2019.

2020 e-flux and the author

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Can We Share a World Beyond Representation? - Journal #106 February 2020 - E-Flux

Human Behavior

Michigan and Jim Harbaugh Are Riding a Concorde Right Into the Sun | Eleven Warriors – Eleven Warriors

When I was a kid, I always wanted to ride on the Concorde.

The Concorde, for those not familiar with it, was a supersonic badass Passenger Plane Of The Future tested and built in the 1960's and operated through the early 2000's. It had a cruising altitude nearly twice that of normal airliners, could complete long distance routes over twice as quickly as any other passenger jet on the planet, and hadthis sweet retro-futurist sci-fi pulpy look to it that wouldn't look out of place on a Fantastic Four cover from 1962.

It was cool and new and also an utterly stupid waste of time and money aggressively subsidized by the British and French governments for way, way too long.

The thing simply cost far too much money to operate; it turns out that flying half empty planes from New York to London once or twice a week wasn't a great business model, particularly when round trip tickets on the Concordewere three or four times more expensive than a comparable ticket on a normal flight. I'm sure that for a while there it was super dope for Pierre and Jeeves to take pictures on top of the Eiffel Tower after lunch and enjoy front row seats at Showtime at the Apollo a few hours later, but after a while dropping the 2020 equivalent of 15 grand round trip probably wore a little thin.

And as I mentioned, the same probably held true for the countries that propped it up via subsidies. France the United Kingdom spent the equivalent ofliterally tens of billions of 2020 dollars jointly developing the Concorde project, and you would think that once they realized the thing was a bust sometime in the early 1970's, they wouldn't continue throwing money at it for another three decades.

But they did!

Economists and other observers of human behavior sometimes call this mentality"sunk cost" or the "escalation of commitment."

It's a trick of psychologythat casinos and arcade games and shifty playing card scammers wearingfingerless gloves exploitto help them scam people into giving up all of the nickels in their piggy banks. It's simple to explain: people are often inclined to allocate increasing amounts of their own time or money into a hopeless cause because they feel the need to justify their current level of investment.

In other words, if you already spent five dollars trying to get that adorable Pitt the Elder plushie out of a crooked crane game at Cedar Point, what's another five bucks? After all, you have to get something out of it, right? And then, of course, 30 dollars later the guy working the counter feels bad for you and just opens up the machine and gives you one.

That generosity won't happen in Ann Arbor.

Jim Harbaugh will take as much money as Michigan will give him.

I can't pretend to have a perfect bead on the inner workings of the brains of Michigan's administration, but I have to believe that at this point the chief reason why they're currently thinking about a long-term extension for Harbaugh's contract is that they're caught in the throes of a logical fallacy.

Jim Harbaugh's current contract looks like this (courtesy of MLive.com):

[In] December 2014, [Harbaugh] inked his original deal for a $500,000-a-year salary and $4.5 million in additional compensation.

Michigan tacked on an annual life-insurance policy in August 2016 that included a $2 million premium advance, to be paid to Harbaugh each year through the balance of his contract. Factor in a contract-stipulated 10 percent raise for Harbaugh in January 2018 and you arrive at the $7.5 million figure thats widely cited these days.

In 2020 that figure will be over $8 million, and the reason why there's more than a little hand-wringing in Ann Arbor is that Harbaugh's contract expires in 2021. This meansthat right about now is around the time when Michigan would potentially settle on an extension (or not) for their khaki-clad football man.

So will they?

I dunno! It depends on how comfortable Michigan fans are with having the third-highest paid coach in football win nine games every season but lose 75% of the tough ones, especially since the No. 1,2, and 4guys have all won national championships.

Seems like they're fairly comfortable! For all the crowing about "Harbaugh killing Dantonio" from the internet Michigan crowd the last few days, it says something that they've managed to hype themselves up over a 3-2 record versus Michigan State as opposed to their record against other traditional powersin the Big Ten (they're a combined 5-10 against Wisconsin, Penn State, and Ohio State since Harbaugh took over).

Add that to a 2-11 overall record against top 10 opponents and four straight bowl losses and suddenly a rational human being starts asking Wolfram Alpha how long it'd take to physically burn $8 million dollars.

But sports fans and sports administratorsare not always rational human beings. It's hard to cut bait on a coach that is demonstrably (if marginally) better than his predecessors, and it is especially hard to cut bait on a coach if you feel that the amount already invested in the guy demands you keep him on the hook.If Harbaugh is extended, and recent chatter suggests that he will be, Michigan will undoubtedly have to give him a contract of at least three more seasons at a minimum of $8 million per year.

To me, this whole process is fascinating in part because Ohio State doesn't have to engage in any of this psychic angst. Ryan Day is going to make $4.5 million dollars a year through 2023, and the only way that'll change is if his performances dictates it; if Day kicks ass and wins a natty or maybe another Big Ten title or two, Ohio State will be happy to renegotiate at a higher salary to keep him around longer. If he ends up being a one-season fluke, well, you can always either fire the guy or not renew his contract.

Either way, what Ohio State's coaching outlook is going forward will be decided by how well the team performs on the field, and Ryan Day has already set expectations sky-high.

Michigan doesn't have that luxury. Instead, they're stuck with a generally competent but not great coach who has set expectations so low that, among other barely-impressive accomplishments,winning three of five against a secondary rival is seen as reason enough to pay the dude $8 million dollars a year. And as long as Harbaugh can guarantee nine wins per season and gosh, I don't know, another Citrus Bowl win, U of M will pretty much have to pay him even more for even longer.

The Concorde finally shut down service in 2003after a fatal crash, the severe downturn of the aircraft industry after September 11th, and people getting sick of paying a premium price to get somewhere a few hours earlier. An experiment that spanned five decades and cost tens of billions of dollars in unreturned investment eventually amounted to nothing because the British and French governments just couldn't stop themselves from throwing money at an unsolvable problem.

From SI.com:

In the meantime, Michigan understands how important it is to set Harbaugh up for success both in the short term, with the 2021 class, and the long term, with the 2022-24 classes.

"Just think how bad it would look if he beats Ohio State this year and goes to the Big Ten title game and he has one year left on his contract about 10 days from a 2021 Signing Day and we're missing out on in-state kids because there was uncertainty about Jim's future here," one of the officials said.

Okay, sure, we can ask that: what if Harbaugh goes ahead and does both of those extremely improbablethings in one season that he hasn't been able to accomplish even once in five?

Or maybe this is a betterquestion:What's it going to take for Michigan to get rid of Jim Harbaugh?

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Michigan and Jim Harbaugh Are Riding a Concorde Right Into the Sun | Eleven Warriors - Eleven Warriors

Human Behavior

The humble mushroom provides a key to unlocking how humans might better their lives and the planet – The International Examiner

In 2015, U.C. Santa Cruz anthropology professor Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing wrote The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins. Not her first, nor to-be-sure her last book. To her credit she has also penned, among others: Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection (2004) and In the Realm of the Diamond Queen: Marginality in an Out-Of-The-Way Place (1993).

With a B.A. from Yale and M.A./Ph.D from Stanford, Tsings scholarly works have been highly lauded and lavished with numerous awards, including: a Guggenheim Fellowship (2010); the Society for Humanistic Anthropology Victor Turner Book Prize in Ethnographic Writing (2016); the Society for Cultural Anthropology Gregory Bateson Prize (2016) he, a former husband of cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead; the Royal Anthropological Institute Huxley Memorial Medal (2018); and the lollapalooza prize of all a Niels Bohr Professorship at Aarhus University in Aarhus, Denmark.

Before turning up collective noses at this seemingly obscure educational institution and its lofty recognition for Tsings contribution to interdisciplinary work in the fields of humanities, natural sciences, social sciences and the arts, know this: Aarhus University (the second largest research university in Denmark) also anointed the 68-year-old scholar with the directorship of the universitys AURA (Aurus University Research on the Anthropocene) Project and presented her with an eye-popping sum of FIVE million dollars! Impressed, now? I was.

What in Samantha Hill (an equity opportunity exclamation) is going on here? Mushrooms? MUSHROOMS?!! Aside from their preordained place on steaks and in omelets, I draw a blinking blank with regard to their worth. So, sue me.

Legend has it that after the bombing of Hiroshima during WWII, the first living thing to emerge from the devastated land was a mushroom: the Matsutake (pine) mushroom, which grows in forests across the northern hemisphere. Considered a special delicacy, according to the American Mushroom Institute, Matsutake (rare and highly valued) is the third most expensive edible mushroom in the world, and can command, depending on size and condition, an astronomical $1,000 $2,000 per pound.

A mushroom is the reproductive organ of a fungus. Described by some as the most poorly understood and underappreciated kingdom of life on earth, it is also recognized, by those in-the-know, as indispensable to the health of the planet. What we have come to know as a mushroom is just the portion that appears above the ground in which it grows. But the majority of the fungal organism exists below ground in the form of mycelia white cobweb-like filaments (hyphae) that weave their way through the soil, creating a vast neurological network beneath the earth, interacting with the roots of trees, and forming combined structures of fungus and root called mycorrhiza. Mycorrhizal webs connect not just root and fungus, but also by way of fungal filaments unite trees with surrounding trees, creating immense forest entanglements. This seemingly boundless matrix links many species over enormous distances. So far-reaching is this system, that it forms the largest organism on earth. The Honey fungus mushrooms complex web, for example, is 2.4 miles wide.

Likened to a fungal iceberg, the mushrooms enormous subterranean structure, concealed within the earth, are largely ignored. Attention is given, instead, to its more visual stem, cap and gills, the parts of the mushroom that appear above ground. According to mycologists (mushroom scientists), much can be learned regarding continuing life on earth through judicious attention paid to the secretive undercover life of mushrooms. Unfortunately, more energy is paid on culinary examinations of the upper part of the mushroom, concentrating on how best to devour a fungal dish: roasted, grilled, baked or fried? Tsings probing study seeks to reverse this direction.

Fungal mycelia play a critical role on planet earth. By secreting enzymes into the soil around them, they digest organic material (including rocks), absorbing and releasing nutrients in the process. The discharged nutrients become available for trees and other plants, which are then used to produce more food for themselves and the network. The rampantly migrating web navigates maze-like territory in search of food. Not only does it feed and link trees in forests (root to root), but it also conveys information regarding environmental threats to the woodland trees.

Mycelia also play a critical role in forming soils, recycling organic matter, and keeping plants and animals in good health. Devoid of mushrooms, the earth would be, mycologists claim, a vast, uninhabitable waste heap of dead, undecomposed plants and animals.

Tsings ethnographic account of the Matsutakes complex commodity chain contributes to the field of anthropology in her study of multi-species collaborative interactions using a non-human subject to learn more about the Homo sapien world. In addition, her research relative to the field of ecology addresses the interrelationship of organisms and how their environment is re-shaped by human interference. Tsings monograph delivers a clear message that contrasts the mushrooms interactions within the earth synergetic, reciprocal and nurturing with those of humans on earth mindless destructive acts of pollution, ruination and exploitation.

Making worlds, states Tsing, is not limited to humans. The Mushroom at the End of the World is a treatise based on observations of the hidden underground life of the mushroom. From its little known but remarkable pattern of growth and beneficial contributions, to its global culinary commercial star power, the author advances theoretical ideas regarding how the biology and life of mushrooms can be used to revise our current adulation of a long-reigning socioeconomic industrial complex whose pursuit of its own capitalistic profit motives have led to the overall detriment of societal needs and the planet on which we live. Tsing postulates that the humble mushroom provides a key to unlocking how humans might better their lives and the planet by taking note of mushroom behavior and adopting some of its ways.

Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing will talk about the history of the matsutake mushroom and her book, The Mushroom at the End of the World when she delivers the Solomon Katz Distinguished Lecture on Feb. 25, 2020 at 7 PM at Kane Hall 220 on the Seattle campus of the University of Washington. Presented by the Simpson Center For The Humanities. For details, go to uwalum.com/golectures or call 206-543-0540.

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The humble mushroom provides a key to unlocking how humans might better their lives and the planet - The International Examiner

Human Behavior

In Honeyland, One of Europe’s Last Wild Beekeepers Fights Environmental and Economic Hardships – Hyperallergic

From Honeyland (all images courtesy Neon)

The documentary Honeyland premiered at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival, where it was the most awarded film, winning the Grand Jury Prize, Special Jury Award for Impact for Change, and the Special Jury Award for Cinematography in the World Cinema Documentary competition. Since then, directors Ljubomir Stefanov and Tamara Kotevska have taken the film around the world, from Europe to India to Siberia to the South Pacific. Theyve also flown their lead subject, Macedonian beekeeper Hatidze Muratova, to screenings, including one in New York City where she sang to a delighted audience. Originally commissioned by an environmental group, the film evolved into something entirely different when the directors discovered Muratova, who lived in a rural village that had been essentially abandoned by the government, lacking electricity or running water. They followed Muratova for three years, working two or three days at a time until their camera batteries ran out.

Honeyland is now nominated for two Academy Awards, Best Documentary Feature and Best International Feature (formerly Best Foreign Language Film). Documentaries have been nominated for Best International Feature only a handful of times before, and this is the first time ever that one film has been nominated for both these awards. We spoke with Stefanov, Kotevska, and Fejmi Daut, one of the films two cinematographers, the day after Honeyland was awarded Best Nonfiction Feature at the New York Film Critics Circle ceremony. This interview has been edited and condensed.

***

Hyperallergic: Your documentary premiered at Sundance last January. What has the year been like for you?

Tamara Kotevska: How can you plan for this? Its like were in the army.

Ljubomir Stefanov: Our main income this year is from festival awards. We share this money equally. We chose festivals because, for example, we wanted to see India. Sometimes we could combine flights, so we could go from a festival in St. Petersburg to one in Irkutsk.

TK: The festival in New Caledonia, thats the time we were both crying.

LS: It was in a village north of the islands main city. The screenings were in a sort of communal space where they all cook and eat together.

TK: The festival organizer, who was half-French and half-indigenous, was telling us how there are 28 local languages for every tribe, and in none of them is there the word I. Doesnt exist. They always speak with us or we. We heard that and turned to each other and were both crying. I think this is how they understood our film so well, because its about sharing and equal responsibilities.

LS: Traveling the world was one thing. Its different in America. Since July, weve been here six or seven times, and its exhausting because youre going from one screening to another all the time. We had a screening in Woodstock for one person.

TK: They took us in the morning in a big black limo, made that one voter happy.

H: Do people often ask why you didnt help Hatidze?

LS: Yes, a lot of questions like that. Our answer is: You need to make a decision. Are you going to be a humanitarian organization or a filmmaker? We decided to be filmmakers, but also help them later. We changed Hatidzes life.

H: Did she feel betrayed when Hussein and his family moved into the village? She tried to help them and they took advantage of her, in fact threatened her livelihood.

TK: Just now they are settling their conflict. They finally signed a contract that they will not hurt each other anymore.

LS: It was a contract of mutual respect. We helped them prepare it.

TK: If Hatidze and her neighboring family let you into their way of life, that means both are okay with the way they live. They dont feel bad about their lives. Whats fascinating is that you cant even explain to Hussein that what hes doing might be wrong. He will just laugh at you.

LS: The way the other family accepts life is very different from how people think here. You may have heard that on the day of our premiere at Sundance, the mother gave birth to her eighth child. Now there are rumors that shes pregnant again. But theyre not bad guys, its just their way of life. The audience is perceiving them as bad guys.

TK: In the US, standards for human behavior are different. For other nationalities, what happened to Hatidze might be easier to understand, because theyve seen similar behavior all around them.

LS: Were from the Balkans, and in my opinion, your sense of community is even stronger than ours.

TK: In the Balkans, everything is just Do it for me.

H: Whats it like facing so many question-and-answer sessions?

TK: Its great, because you can see the mindsets of different kinds of people. But when journalists ask questions, its like they want to make you look different from who you are. So we might seem like arrogant people to them.

LS: Because we dont want to talk. We dont give interviews. Especially in our country.

Fejmi Daut: The stupidest questions we got were in our own country. We had a screening in our film school, and the students couldnt come up with one question. The dean was trying to get them to ask something.

TK: My two favorite questions from Macedonia, one was from a film student. He said, Okay, I understand why other people, other festivals in the world, like this film. But I just dont understand. There are so many movies about bees. Why didnt you, for example, do a film about ants?

And there was a very, very, very old lady at another screening, sitting in the back. She had a battle with an old guy in the front, they were testing each other. She got up first and said, Its so good that you found Hatidze. But did you ever think about making a film about the last traditional Kosovo flute player?

LS: Because we won three awards at Sundance, we had to keep giving speeches. In one of them, our editor made a political point about the weather, about pollution and climate change. And so back in Macedonia, the first journalist says, You are sending a message about air pollution.

TK: Thats why they think were arrogant.

H: They must have wanted to know about how you shot it.

FD: It was very difficult for us. In Hatizdes house it was very tight, maybe from this table to the wall [about eight feet]. We didnt have much space for the camera, no electricity, so everything was natural light. We thought about using artificial light, but it would destroy the ambiance. Thats why we used candles.

H: Did it seem like you were competing against the same people and films at festivals last year?

TK: More or less. I wouldnt say competing, because the documentary community is very supportive. Everyone we met, they are very down to earth people, very devoted and very supportive. Because they know what weve been through. We learned a lot.

LS: For example, how to position yourself in terms of distribution.

H: Do you feel comfortable with that aspect of the industry?

TK: Its too early to say. Well know with our next films whether were being exploited.

LS: Things are definitely different now. Im preparing a long-term project. The wider context of the work is still unknown to me, there are many possible approaches I can take. Im also working on an animated feature. Tamara is working on a fiction feature.

FD: This year Ill be working in Nigeria with one of the directors of One Child Nation.

TK: Still, I dont enjoy this life of festivals and screenings. We enjoy doing things for ourselves, preparing our own meals. When we got to go home for a month, it was the best time of the year.

LS: So things are more in our hands. Now its about finding the time.

Honeyland is available to stream on Hulu and other platforms.

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In Honeyland, One of Europe's Last Wild Beekeepers Fights Environmental and Economic Hardships - Hyperallergic

Human Behavior

Talking Connections: Intimacy and its impact on relationships – Iowa State Daily

Intimacy can be a big part of relationships, romantic and otherwise, and intimacy or the lack thereof can impact people in different ways. Aspects of a relationship like trust and communication can play into what that intimacy looks like.

Editors note: This is part two in our weekly relationship series Talking Connections. Sensitive content may follow.

Intimacy can be a big part of relationships, romantic and otherwise, and intimacy or the lack thereof can impact people in different ways.

David Wahl, graduate sociology student, studies human sexuality, sex and gender.

Intimacy means something different to everyone, Wahl said. To some people, intimacy is a sexual relationship, for some people, its another person that they know is always going to be there for them, that they can talk to about anything, it could be that platonic friendship between two people.

Intimacy can look different for various people and scenarios can vary with the type of relationship such as friendships, long-term and short-term romantic or sexual relationships.

Additionally, intimacy can be expressed in many ways, such as physically and emotionally. Emotionally, people can share personal information with their romantic partner or friend and allow themselves to be real and honest with them.

Some people may experience a fear or avoidance of being intimate with others and sometimes theres a specific instance that led them to have that fear and want to avoid it. People may also have a fear of intimacy because it gives them feelings of anxiety.

If two people trust one another and somewhere in the timeline of their relationship, that trust is broken, it can result in hard feelings and maybe even the end of the relationship.

This lack of emotional support, giving and receiving, can lead to less satisfying relationships, said Kristi Costabile, assistant professor of psychology. However, it is important to note that emotional support patterns develop as a result of our experiences, so having positive, trusting, supportive relationships can lead people to be more willing to seek and provide support; and having negative relationships characterized by mistrust can lead people to be less willing to seek out and provide support.

Being intimate with a romantic partner can be an intimidating thing. Components of the relationship like trust, length of relationship and more can go into how intimacy is expressed and progresses.

Either way its all about communication, everything is about communication when it comes to intimacy, Wahl said. But with a sexual partner, its about are you able to open yourself up fully to be satisfied the same way youre expecting your partner to be satisfied. Are you able to talk about what you want and what you dont want.

The sex education young people receive could also contribute into the lack of communication about intimate subjects. Wahl said in his research he found most people had abstinence based sex education.

I want to write a whole book on sex education in America, Wahl said. Its the single biggest problem because it feeds into this stigmatizing society that we have. It feeds into not talking when were talking about intimate issues. It feeds into all those things that are negative and it tells you to shut up about this stuff, its not appropriate talk. If the sex educators arent talking about it, then their students arent going to want to talk about it.

To effectively communicate, there needs to be some level of trust between partners, which can be difficult for those with trust issues. Another reason someone might refrain from opening up to their partner is the fear of rejection or being labeled as not normal.

Theres different reasons that people dont feel theyre able to open themselves up to another person, in this case sexually, because we live in a society of sexual scripts what you can and cannot do, what you should and should not do which builds into our sexual normativity, Wahl said. And people are judged harshly if they fall outside of what is considered appropriate sexual behavior, which leads to people being stigmatized, people being shamed, we have a problem with slut shaming.

These sexual norms can sometimes influence people to hold themselves to strict expectations. Todays society can be quick to judge someone based off of what they do with a sexual partner or how they dress and act.

Someone may feel uncomfortable with being intimate with a partner because theyre afraid of their partners reaction. It can be hard to know how someone will react to their partner telling them something personal like a fetish they may have, a sexual act theyre not interested in or their insecurities.

Wahl said the number one question he gets from those who seek his advice is Is this normal?

Theyre afraid to ask anyone because theyre afraid of being stigmatized because they find out oh, its not normal, Wahl said. And the answer is 100 percent of the time, yes it is normal. Youre not the only one that has this proclivity. But thats what most people worry about, Im feeling this way, is it normal to feel this way?

Those struggling with communicating and being intimate with a partner may want to seek some sort of counseling. Couples therapy is another resource that could potentially aid in opening up the conversation.

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Talking Connections: Intimacy and its impact on relationships - Iowa State Daily

Anatomy

Anatomy of Anthony Bouthier’s 95-yard wonder kick | Sport – The Times

The France full back Anthony Bouthier made a magnificent clearing kick on his debut against England last week. James Hook (Ospreys, 81 Wales caps) and Freddie Burns (Bath, 5 England caps) dissect the anatomy of the spiral kick.

Whats the secret of the spiral kick?Hook The key is to get the ball out in front of you and get all your weight transferred through the point of impact. You need to kick the ball slightly later and closer to the ground so it travels lower than an end-over-end kick.Burns The big difference is how you drop the ball on to your foot. Rather than kicking the bottom of it as with an end-over-end punt, you kick the flatter middle part for a spiral

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Anatomy of Anthony Bouthier's 95-yard wonder kick | Sport - The Times

Anatomy

The anatomy of a green safari – which camps are leading the way? – The Telegraph

I hadnt expected to see a green mamba on a behind-the-scenes tour of Chobe Game Lodge in Botswana. Thankfully, it wasnt one of Africas deadliest snakes, but a powerful machine that crushes cans and bottles given that name by Albert Ndereki, the lodges ecotourism manager, because it is so aggressive.

The green mamba is just one of many waste management projects that has earned the lodge and Albert accolades. In May, he won the Shape Africa Innovation Award at the We Are Africa show in Cape Town for his commitment to sustainable initiatives in one of the countrys oldest lodges.

Albert joined Chobe Game Lodge as a builder in 1971. Nearly 50 years on, he takes guests on behind-the-scenes tours like mine to see his inspiring initiatives. They include producing biogas from food waste and grass cuttings, burning rubbish in incinerators and using the ash as fertiliser, and making bricks out of crushed glass bottles. Theres solar power, too, and Chobe was one of the first lodges in Africa to offer silent safaris on electric vehicles and boats.

Alberts award reflects the significance now being placed on a greener safari experience, with the emphasis on protecting a fragile environment. Our clients love to see sustainable camps, and they object when they see poor practice, says Chris McIntyre, managing director of specialist tour operator Expert Africa.

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The anatomy of a green safari - which camps are leading the way? - The Telegraph

Anatomy

Primetime Ratings: Greys Leads ABC to Win – Broadcasting & Cable

ABC posted the top score in Thursday ratings, Greys Anatomy pacing the Alphabets to a 0.9 in viewers 18-49, per the Nielsen overnights, and a 5 share. CBS, Fox and NBC all rated a 0.6/3.

ABC had Station 19 down 10% at 0.9 and Greys at a level 1.1. A Million Little Things went up 17% to 0.7.

On CBS, Young Sheldon posted a flat 1.0 and The Unicorn grew 17% to 0.7. Mom got a flat 0.7 and Carols Second Act dropped 17% to 0.5. Cop drama Tommy premiered at 0.4. On that one, Edie Falco plays the first female chief of police for Los Angeles.

On Fox, Last Man Standing went up 14% to 0.8. Outmatched and Deputy were both a flat 0.6.

NBC had the season premiere of Brooklyn Nine Nine at 0.7 and a second episode at 0.5. Brooklyn Nine-Nine started on NBC a year ago at 1.2, after five seasons on Fox. Will & Grace scored a flat 0.5 and the series premiere of Indebted, with Fran Drescher, a 0.4. Law & Order: SVU got a flat 0.6.

Univision rated a 0.5/2 and Telemundo a 0.3/2. Ringo, Amor Eterno and Rubi all got a 0.5 on Univision, all level with last week.

On Telemundo, Exatlon Estados Unidos got a flat 0.4 and two hours of La Dona lost a tenth for a 0.3.

The CW did a 0.2/1. The series premiere of Katy Keene posted a 0.2 and Legacies lost a tenth for a 0.2. Keene is about four young artists making their way in New York.

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Primetime Ratings: Greys Leads ABC to Win - Broadcasting & Cable

Neuroscience

The Global Neuroscience Antibodies and Assays Market is expected to grow by USD 1.36 bn during 2020-2024, progressing at a CAGR of 8% during the…

NEW YORK, Feb. 3, 2020 /PRNewswire/ --

Global Neuroscience Antibodies and Assays Market 2020-2024 The analyst has been monitoring the global neuroscience antibodies and assays market and it is poised to grow by USD 1.36 bn during 2020-2024, progressing at a CAGR of 8% during the forecast period. Our reports on global neuroscience antibodies and assays market provides a holistic analysis, market size and forecast, trends, growth drivers, and challenges, as well as vendor analysis covering around 25 vendors.

Read the full report: https://www.reportlinker.com/p05843269/?utm_source=PRN

The report offers an up-to-date analysis regarding the current global market scenario, latest trends and drivers, and the overall market environment. The market is driven by technological advances. In addition, advances in neuroscience instruments is anticipated to boost the growth of the global neuroscience antibodies and assays market as well.

Market Segmentation The global neuroscience antibodies and assays market is segmented as below: Product Consumables Instruments

Geographic segmentation Asia Europe North America ROW

Key Trends for global neuroscience antibodies and assays market growth This study identifies advances in neuroscience instruments as the prime reasons driving the global neuroscience antibodies and assays market growth during the next few years. Prominent vendors in global neuroscience antibodies and assays market We provide a detailed analysis of around 25 vendors operating in the global neuroscience antibodies and assays market, including some of the vendors such as Abcam Plc, Bio-Rad Laboratories Inc., Cell Signaling Technology Inc., F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd., GenScript Biotech Corp., Merck KGaA, Rockland Immunochemicals Inc., Santa Cruz Biotechnology Inc., Tecan Group Ltd. and Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. The study was conducted using an objective combination of primary and secondary information including inputs from key participants in the industry. The report contains a comprehensive market and vendor landscape in addition to an analysis of the key vendors.

Read the full report: https://www.reportlinker.com/p05843269/?utm_source=PRN

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The Global Neuroscience Antibodies and Assays Market is expected to grow by USD 1.36 bn during 2020-2024, progressing at a CAGR of 8% during the...