#8 £8

not half

OK Petal!
 spring

photo: Masoud · photo assistant: Kay Wahlig · hair: Thomas Dunkin @ Debbie Walters
make-up: Charlotte Day @ Transit · model: Tanja Siren @ Next
special thanks to Nikki Tibbles @ Wild at Heart ·shot @ the Worx
 fiction Scrambled Eggs by Malu Halasa p.52
I Could Read the Sky by Timothy O’Grady + Steve Pyke p.98
Neo Tokyo by Michael Neff p.242

art Michael Danner p.34

Lookers by Glauce Cerveira p.168
Ranko Bon p.176
Viable Lifeforms by Simon Granger p.186
Kouprey by Max Andrews p.192
Calendario by Laura Malacart p.228
Marie-France + Patricia Martin p.282
Vacancy by Christina Reading p.178

politics + science Techstyles by Jim Pletcher + Oonagh O’Hagan p.22

Stalin’s Zion by Jonas Schooler-Bendiksen p.150
Naming the New Century by Helmut Schmidt p.268

fashion Nute Nicholson p.10

Justin de Deney p.78
Sunao Ohmori p.114
Alan Clarke p.138
Margaret Salmon + Dean Wiand p.208
Illustrations by Piet Paris p.216
Sandro Sodano + Jo Phillips p.246

in the breeze Jessica Hilltout p.70

Beauticians by Nick Pearce p.90
Peter Benson p.122 is a state
Ann Weathersby p.130
Rama p.147
Joanna Kostika p.232

announcement Architecture Award p.258

Issue #8 · February

Editorial:
Editors in Chief: Masoud Golsorkhi, Andreas Laeufer
Features Editor: Malu Halasa
Assistant Editor: Nadine Sanders
Art Director: Andreas Laeufer
Design Assistant: Greg Stogdon
Arts Editor: Claire Canning
Fashion Co-ordinator: Emma Greenhill
Fashion Editors: Giannie Couji, Charty Durrant, Faye Sawyer, Jo Phillips, Christophe Martinez
Copy Editors: Jo Glanville, Louise Gray
Creative Consultant: Stepanie Buttle
Editorial Assistant: Alina Barnstorf

Special Projects: Vicky Stewart

Just friends: Julien Vogel

For advertising and business inquiries contact ++44.20.791 652 64 or E-mail: bill@tankmagazine.com

Advertising France:
Laurence Gravelle · Tel 0033.1.42023423 · Fax 0033.1.42023702 · email: laurencegravelle@free.fr

Tank strongly urges and demands unsolicited contributions; they must be accompanied with a self-addressed
stamped envelope if they are to be returned. Tank will not be held responsible for loss or damage in the post.
Tank is published six times a year by Tank publications Ltd. Reproduction of any material without written
permission of the publisher isn’t allowed. It includes any car commercials you may be thinking about, we
know where you live. It is also assumed that model releases are obtained by the photographer or contribu-
tor. The opinions expressed in Tank are that of the authors. Tank is in no way responsible or liable for the
accuracy of the information herein or any consequences arising from it.

Distribution by Comag: ++44.1895 433800

Printed in the UK

Tank ISSN 1464-3472

PO Box 25319 © Tank publications Ltd. 2000
London NW5 4ZD Issue #9 · out April 2000
Phone + Fax ++44.20.791 652 64
E-mail: editors@tankmagazine.com of mind

Made possible with the kind support of Levi’s Red Label Core London Ltd: ++44.207.833 33 90
Special thanks to Danielle Arnaud Tel 0044.20.773 582 92 processing and scanning

(for subscription details see page 292)

Miu Miu AD
 10

photos: Nute Nicholson socks by Adidas · shoes by Benoit Meleard

black patent shoe by D&G silver crystal shirt by Dolce + Gabbana
t-shirt by Junkie + Jailbird blue chiffon dress + pants by Alexander McQueen
sweater by Fake London leather coat + boots by Alexander McQueen
sunflower shirt + cowboy hat by Dolce + Gabbana sweater by Bernhard Willhelm
 stylist: Christine de Lassus · hair: Teo Gibson @ L’Atelier
makeup: Miriam Azoulay @ Fasia · assisted by Katsutuki Mizu · props: Antonio
Ballatore Incorporated · special thanks to: Sun Studios + Mintiieia
models: Amanda Kerlin @ IMG · Anastasiya @ T Management · Anka @ Women
Management · Tiffany Bland @ NY Model · Garrett @ IMG · Bianca @ Women
Management · Warren @ Clear · Svetta @ N.Y. Model · all apologies to Andoni

jacket by O.R.F.I.
6-8 OLD BOND STREET, LONDON 21
 Why do people in the future dress so badly?

They’re either wearing minimalist uniforms from a supra-galaxywide state or ill-fit-

ting stock from B-movies outtakes. Modern textiles will not only change the way
clothing of the future looks, but how it feels, tastes and smells.

There’s a good chance people might not be wearing clothes at all. They might be
wearing their houses, their computers, their business cards, even their telephones.
Cloth of the future will be made out of many textile hybrids designed to carry more
information than whether we feel good on a certain day or what the weather’s like
outside. More than convey information, clothes of the future will exchange informa-
tion with a certain computer and transmit your needs and desires to the walls of your
house, your car, even to your partner. Or most likely to another piece of clothing, if
these sentient fabrics will still be called something as old-fashioned as clothes.
techstyles: the future of fashion
22
This is not science fiction, but current research and development. Presently finger-
print security locks and voice-activated appliances are all part of an interactive
world that is now underway. There are walls that can sense your body temperature
and make the appropriate adjustments in heating or cooling with no effort whatso-
ever.

A number of techstyles or future fabrics are in use in fashion and science. Many have
been around so long they are taken for granted: nylon (tights), plastic (flip-flops),
Crimplene (flares), Lycra (bodies), velour (jumpsuits), Kevlar (body armour). One
decade has been characterised by its synthetic: polyester made the Seventies. The
newer crop of developed materials is designed to do more than survive numerous
washings or stain removals, already one new fabric promises to resist curry stains
words by Jim Pletcher • interviews + research by Oonagh O’Hagan

23
and will probably never need washing again.
The new vocabulary
To fully understand modern techstyles, a new vocabulary has been developed.
Hybrids are part-flexible textile, part-non-textile, e.g. glass, carbon, copper. Non-
woven fabrics are those in which the fibres are directionally or randomly orientated,
e.g. foams and rubbers. Geosynthetics are porous or flexible materials used in or on
soil. But the most important of all are microfibres, according to Braddock and
O’Mahoney in their definitive book, Technotextiles. These yarns, of either synthetic
or natural derivation, are spun through tiny meshes to produce a thread much thin-
ner, but also tougher, than traditional counterparts. They involve manipulation of the
very thermomolecular structure of the material, to maximise performance qualities
such as strength, easy care, crease-resistance and light weight. Importantly, these
technologies take well to finishes that are thermochromic (temperature-stimulated
colour), antibacterial, deodorant, light sensitive or ultraviolet-ray protective.
Biomimetics - biology plus mimicry - have been made possible by these advances.
Fabrics responding to environmental inputs “mirrors” living organisms, or more
simply, design extracted from nature. This is not new in fashion. People initially
wore animal fur because of its warmth. Today fur has been replaced by raw mate-
rials, like Polartec - fleece made from old soda bottles. Velcro was developed by
observing how burrs attach themselves to fur, skin, or cloth via hooks and hoops.
“In six hundred million years of research and design, nature must have worked out
the answers to design problems,” said Colin Dawson from the Ministry of Defence’s
24
Defence Clothing and Textiles Agency lab in Colchester. He added, “Good design
eats bad design and that’s a tough market economy.” Dawson was speaking at a
symposium on What Future for Textiles, organised by the MA Design for Textile
Futures at Central St. Martins, about the MOD’s research for not only regular army
trousers but for the latest hi-tech fabric for military wear. They want soldiers to be
able to live - sometimes up to twenty-four hours a day - in uniforms that can auto-
matically adapt to extremely different weather conditions.
In the MOD, the research began by examining naturally occurring matter: fur, feath-
ers, stomata - the small pores in leaves used in gas exchanges - and pine cones. It
was the pine cone that was of particular interest due to its ability to open and close
in varying degrees of humidity. Applied to fabrics, this research maybe be available
next year in trainers that have nearly invisible fabric vents that open or close depend-
ing on foot temperature.
Although artificial fingers have been developed to test the tactile quality of artificial
cloth, scientists have never been capable of duplicating nature. Yet this is a field
designers are currently pursuing.
When asked if he was a technophobe or a technojunkie, designer Tristan Weber
called himself a biology junkie. He and Shelley Fox are both interested in the new
textile research and how they can incorporate it into their clothes. Weber is already
using laser-cut fabrics and coated fabrics. He said, “I think it’s important to marry
biology and technology in fabric.” At the What Future for Textiles symposium, he
was particularly fascinated by Dawson’s comments on evolution and design, and
stressed that, from his experience, consumers are keen to wear the new fabrics. It
wasn’t something that designers and scientists were thinking up to amuse
25
themselves.
Beyond the fashion world, as the demand for biomimetic materials grows, some of
the descriptions challenge science fiction: “[B]iomimetic technologies [have been
developed ] for filtration and catalysis that mimic the high porosity, tortuous paths
and huge surface area of biological lattices, including the cytoskeleton of living
cells.” Ballard or Burroughs? Neither: www.molec-geodesics.com/targetMarkets
.html. Although this technology is being developed for the medical use of tissue-
regeneration, it is not hard to visualise a shirt made of a second skin.
Interestingly, technologies are also moving towards implants which utilise inherent
electronic emanations. In 1998, Kevin Warwick of the University of Reading
implanted a chip in his arm, which monitored his movements throughout his depart-
mental building. Rooms greeted him with an electronic “Hello”, turning lights on
and opening doors for him. He now has plans to implant a second chip which will
link him to his wife, in order for her to share his “feelings” remotely. This is bio-
mimetics in reverse - teaching our environments to act like us and respond to our
needs signalling it through its acquired electronic sensory abilities.
Lamé for Everyday
Although Lurex (made from aluminium) has been around for several decades,
metallics are another “new” textile advancement, helping to bring technology clos-
er to the bone. Novel techniques are producing metal hybrids that can be perfected
for comfort and convenience - lamé for everyday. These techniques are not without
their applications, either. A group at MIT has made a cloth with a functional key-
26
pad, which is resistant to wear, even in use as an oven glove - www.media.mit.edu/
~rehmi/cloth.
It’s easy to think that technology dictates the arts, à la Marx, but metallic fabrics
have existed for many centuries. It is only now that science is learning how to use
them. The Philips Design Branch (PDB) has brought out their Phone Jacket, which
develops “a personal area network”, according to Jack Mama, PDB’s creative
director. “Technology is usually in a black box, but now clothing is in a black box,”
added another PDB spokeswoman. Although it is probably splitting hairs to decide
whether this is a human-, or technology-centred development, the company at
www.research.philips.com/ pressmedia/releases/990802.html has also been working
on an MP3 player, which could be attached to the personal area network through
clothing. However, because it’s ready-to-wear, PDB has taken the appropriate steps
so people won’t end up looking like cyborg fashion plates.
“Think of yourself on some evening in the not-so-distant future, when wearable, fit-
ted, and implanted electronic organs connected by bodynets are as commonplace as
cotton, your intimate infrastructure connects you seamlessly to a planetful of bits,
and you have software in your underwear,” predicts MIT’s W.J. Mitchell, from
City of Bits: Space, Place, and the Infobahn. Does being so connected make people
freer or more restrained? The implications of how much of information it would be
prudent or comfortable for us to carry around is a question for the designers who
use this development to consider carefully. Can we have a jacket that’s too heavy
with memory?
Fashion has built its empire predominantly on a single platform: the power of cloth-
ing to project a symbolic or metaphoric meaning about itself, its wearer or society.
27
Certain labels, garments, designers, shops, etc. have meaning attached to them,
whether prestige or hipness or a combination of both. Our clothes “say” so much
about us that most of the information being conveyed isn’t really worth reading. Four
hundred anoraks on the tube in February isn’t very interesting stuff. On the other
hand, it is a challenge for our clothes to say anything very specific now about us.
Without having a separate garment attached detailing our daily lives, it is all our
coats can do to keep us dry and at the same time indicate our social caste, taste or
economic means.

What would it mean to have a suit that adapts itself to a temperature range of zero
to twenty degrees, with the thickness of two sheets of paper, to have a patch with all
your personal details in it, to have a “handshake ... exchange business cards” from
Intrabody Signalling (www.media.mit.edu/physics/projects/pan/pan.html). The com-
plete efficiency of the material in performing its primary function - warmth - means
that it is free to make other statements about you. It no longer says “businessman”,
“biker”, or “barrister”, but can, literally, though nanotechnology and inwoven cir-
cuitry, say Joe Smith, Harley rider.

The acid shirt

These new hybrids and nonwovens, geosynthetics and microfibres are about one
thing, ultimately: information exchange. One garmentómade from crab shells,
imaginatively called Crabyonótime, releases antibacterials as needed, a technique
called micro-encapsulation. Others can be programmed to deliver doses of vitamins
or deodorant, and presumably, although no one seems to want to say it, drugs. There
is probably a place for time-release, pharmaceutical prescription garments or items,

29
like Nicorette patches, to be worn by people who forget to take their medicine. But
how long would it take for these to be adapted by street culture? Imagine the street
value of an acid shirt.
Heat-responsive textiles talk to the ambient temperature, and to your body temper-
ature, moderating between them. Want your top to reflect your mood changes from
minute-to-minute? Try a monoclonal finish, which changes colours in reaction to
certain chemicals produced by the body in response to stimuli. Primitively, this is
what raw materials have been doing for a long time. Metal detectors are nothing
more than information scanners. So are X-rays. The difference is that they provide
only rough, basic data. The new textiles do much more than that, they interpret and
react.
The point in all of this is that fashion, through blind acceptance of these technolo-
gies - the desire to stay cutting edge - is in danger of losing its greatest claim to art,
its abstractness. No other division of art has had equal success as fashion in employ-
ing colour and form while operating under the same strictures. What would paint-
ing look like if all canvasses had to have the same shape; sculpture if limited to cer-
tain forms of representation; literature if restricted to one type of writing. Yet this
is a given for clothes designers. Whatever shapes and colours, textures or effects they
employ, their designs have to have at least a nodding acquaintance with the shape
of at least part of the human body. They have to be in some way wearable, even if
only for one trip down the catwalk. However, with the prospect of information
exchange becoming ever more possible, fashion may lose a grip on its great power
for metaphor, in a torturously mocking reversal of Corbusian form=function. As the
emphasis becomes heavier on how much RAM your shirt has, will there come a time
when the look of clothes becomes secondary to their electronic function, and what
30
will this imply about you in terms of style, taste or self-identity? We’ll no longer buy
freespeednation.com robot t-shirts, our t-shirts will be robots, and the stores we go
to will not be Oxfam or Top Shop, but computer warehouses.
Oh, wait ... I know this one. Who wrote the fourth-century novel,
The Aithiopika ? Unh, let me phone my bedroom ...
No one can deny these fantastic new developments their place in our pantheon of
technology. Some of them will be adored for years, others will become the butt of
jokes and themes for parties - remember HyperGlo t-shirts? Deeper than the initial
buzz about the new, however, is the impact the wholesale embrace of textile tech-
nology will have, not just on the fashion industry - who are nothing if not great
adapters - but on the meaning of fashion itself, especially in relation to its sister field,
architecture. Both areas are employing these, and other, new technologies to allow
the user a greater degree of correspondence with her environment. Interactivity has
been the theme of choice for some time, and it shows no sign of disappearing. Even
though fashion and science are on two different time schedules - fashion by season,
science by years of research and innovation - what might emerge from the “nar-
rowing gap between the worlds of art, design, engineering and science” is a con-
struct of fashion which will occupy a different niche in popular conception.
In fact, this new ability of information exchange heralds not a new art form, but a
collapse of two old ones into each other. While fashion design, and the clothes one
chooses to wear from the world of design, has always been an extension of the indi-
vidual - when someone grabs your shirt, they grab you, legally and emotionally -
architecture has been about the space you inhabit. Fashion is personal, architecture
31
public, even in the private sector. What the new technologies do is to confound the
whole dynamic. Your bedroom becomes part of you, as you signal it to adjust the
temperature, lower the blinds, make the coffee, by sending it signals to do so. And
as your portfolio can be contained in a chip on your shoulder, your mobile in your
ear and your computer in your specs, you inhabit your clothes in a way that makes
the laptop look like a tenth-storey cubicle in the Lloyds Building. Not to mention
what it might mean to inhabit an antibacterial pair of self-cleaning pants.

The great fear of many science futurists was that the civilisation of the future would
be a faceless society, with names replaced by numbers, rooms with sleeping closets
and sex via virtual reality. But the fears of enforced conformity seem misplaced with
the coming generation of textiles; if anything, they promise a degree of self identifi-
cation and customisation (Nike now can take a digital image of your foot and give
you a bespoke trainer) never before possible. However, if you don't want your deep-
est emotions revealed to the world through your clothing, or to lose the old-fashioned
ethos of turning on your own boiler or light switch and thereby shaping your own
Fendi
environment, then pay close attention to how fashion utilises its newest materials. It
is the tradition, both defining and intriguing, of powerful abstraction of the human
form, and human lives, which may be made obsolete by the next fabric upgrade. single
The technology is doubtless good. It demands to be used, exploited for benefit. It
does not merit the design world selling its metaphoric soul in a rush to “close the
gap” between fashion and technology - an impossible endeavour. Otherwise we’ll end
up dressing like people from the future.

p. 22 + 28: electro-magnifications of feathers, British Crown Copyright 1998 MOD. Reproduced

with permission of the Controller of her Britannic Majesty’s Stationary Office.

32
 photos: Michael Danner

34
CAT
 I was xeroxing in the sperm bank when the wheelchair arrived. The FedEx man car-
ried in a plain box wrapped in brown paper. It was the same guy every month, and
Mo gave him a twenty dollar tip. She nodded in my direction. We would have to
wait until the rest of the lab staff left for lunch. The good thing about Mo’s new job
as supervisor of the largest sperm bank in the world, she could clear everyone out
with a wave of her hand. The girls who froze the little buggers, or shot them up des-
perate women in a contraption that resembled a medieval bow and arrow, fled out
of the bank’s basement premises into the bright hot of a Manhattan summer’s
day.

We were utterly alone, except for the Filipinos in the back room who counted abort-
ed fetuses. These too were also delivered by messenger in brown paper packages of
varying shapes and sizes. In the week I was xeroxing in the bank, I could tell the
difference between one of their deliveries and Mo’s. She carefully laid her box on a
scrambled eggs
long table lined with racks of sterilised test tubes. “I received a phone call that the
52
harvest was in,” she skated an exacto knife across the top. Inside the wheelchair had
been carefully packed in multiple layers of bubble wrap, and in between the outer
thicknesses, a pound of talc had been added as a precautionary measure. It was sup-
posed to mask the stink. But one whiff alone - despite the plastic and baby powder
- was enough to make an anosmic smell.

Mo double-checked that the Filipinos were occupied before she reached in and felt
the shape of the parcel, mentally calculating its weight. “Hell, I can’t wait to go
home and get into the wheelchair.” She was groaning in anticipation.

I stuck my nose directly into the box, and the stench of rich, moist foliage nearly
smothered me. The wheelchair had been born and bred in a hydroponic lab, where
short story by Malu Halasa

52 53

Whole lives had been distilled into prominent physical features. To soft-
en the political incorrectness, a homely detail was thrown in - X was a
mathematics genius by fourteen; Y, a cordon bleu chef; Z came
from an established line of serial killers.
plant genetics had been perfected. To my mind there wasn’t much difference between
seed trials in Seattle or Northern California and the on-going seed trials at Mo’s
bank. Like her clients who came to the bank for sperm, Mo was also given a choice.
Some months it was Mexico Gold, Thai Stick or Durban Poison, although she was
never presented with anything as formal as a menu. In the bank, women made their
selection from a detailed list: blond, blue-eyed; physics grad student; Jewish;
Mexican; hunky-dory; big and black; Iranian ayatollah. Whole lives had been dis-
tilled into prominent physical features. To soften the political incorrectness, a home-
ly detail was thrown in - X was a mathematics genius at the age of fourteen; Y, a
cordon bleu chef; Z came from an established line of serial killers. The xerox
machine was next to a desk filled with glossy pamphlets, and whenever I was bored,
which happens often at photocopiers, I’d pick up the menu and daydream about my
perfect selection. It wasn’t an advertising gimmick. The bank was the largest in the
world. On a good day Mo could cite the number of frozen spermatozoa to the clos-
est hundredth million, on a bad one she just rolled her eyes and shrugged in abject
boredom.
We had been friends since college. Our relationship was originally based on the both
of us being out-of-towners. I had come from Indianapolis, Mo was from Baltimore.
Without the binding ties of family we were ready, eager, to be led astray. It was a
54
native New Yorker who put temptation in our way. His mother, a doctor, kept a slim
vial of liquid Sandoz LSD in her research refrigerator in an uptown teaching hospi-
tal. If it had been at Harvard, it would have been destroyed in the psychedelic
purges. At Berkeley it would have ingested thirty long years ago, but at Columbia
Presbyterian, it laid in wait, forgotten, long after Timothy Leary, long after Viet
Nam. Our friend had stolen it for his own research purposes, and Mo and I joined
the control group. For some blurred reason the precious vial moved from freezer to
freezer until it found a permanent home in Mo’s. She prepared a traditional recipe,
an eye droplet on a sugar cube, then she forgot the sugar altogether and spoon fed
it to us - nanolitre by nanolitre. A considerable part of our undergraduate education
had been devoted to esoteric mind studies, although I’d be the first to admit there
were casualties. During a concert, Jimmy Bean was walked round and round the
Coliseum, ranting incoherently about his Dad. Later that evening someone slipped
him Thorazine, and Bean dropped where he stood. He woke up newly born the next
day. We had no idea, but he had plenty to be scared of. He died in a water-skiing
accident after his father ran a speed boat over him. I thought someone told me or
maybe I made it up myself, but poor Jimmy Bean had been sliced clean in half, like
a tomato.
After college the old crowd dispersed into jails or medical schools. Me and Mo
moved downtown, where the rent was cheap. I guess we should have figured out that
an address where a complete stranger stops and offers you a line of coke was not in
the least bit salubrious. That point was brought closer to home when our super, a
two-ton Puerto Rican named Junior, was shotgunned in the stomach. In our build-
ing you said hello to the little girls on their way to school in the morning and good
night a year or two later to the same girls, now heavily made up and in hot pants,
going to work the parking lot on 11th and 3rd. Despite the contradictions, Mo and
55
I thought our lives were no different from other young professionals we knew. All of
us were eating, paying our rent and buying drugs.
In our group, Mo was the only one to successfully combine the two great loves of
her life - science’n’smoke. She had gone down the Amazon in search of mosquitoes.
She was doing malaria research for Rockefeller University when she and her pro-
gramme were moved to Fort Bragg. Only the Defence Department could promise the
best pot and the most virulent tropical diseases all within the same facility. Mo spent
most of her time close to another freezer, where she insured the freshness of both
her personal shipments and her scientific discoveries - malaria parasites so strong
no medicine on the face of the earth could kill them. A few years near a boot camp
really toughened her up, but New York remained her spiritual home, to which she
suddenly returned in her new posting as sperm bank manager. “I just couldn’t get
used to the crewcuts,” was all she would say about it.
In the intervening years I had moved back to Indiana, but made regular pilgrimages
to the libraries in the city and any free xerox machine. Ostensibly I wanted to be a
novelist and photocopying was a quick and easy way of generating stacks of paper.
By my post, armed with toner and xerox paper, I doubled as the look-out, while Mo
locked the wheelchair in a desk drawer, and the first of the lab technicians bounded
down the stairs through the sperm bank’s soft, plush lobby. Here, the lighting was
low, and the bluish grey sofas and armchairs comfortable. It even had a nice carpet,
one of the few details I believe I’m remembering correctly. The lab itself began
behind a long counter, and a series of sliding, clear glass partitions. On this side -
our side - the fluorescent lighting was white and harsh. The two areas, one dim, the
other bright, represented the difference between snaky, shiftless hidden sex and the
cold glare of scientific reality. But it was really a ruse. What couldn’t be discerned
56
in the dark was even more obscured in the light. Only an initial investment of nine
months, followed by a down payment of eighteen years, revealed the true nature of
the transaction.
The very first time I came to the bank, Mo gave me the grand tour, beginning with
the Ejaculatoriums, a series of small rooms out front, cubicles really, each with a
door that locks, a few shelves and a vinyl, lazee-boy lounger. When I nearly flopped
down in one, Mo who never screams, grabbed me, hissing, “Don’t Touch A Thing!”
I stood perfectly still. She screwed up her face, “These rooms are not washed down
enough. Remember, sperm squirts.” We regarded each other and the girlie maga-
zines on the shelves in abject horror.
On the counter outside was a buzzer for busy clients. The day the wheelchair arrived,
I happened to look up from my photocopying and noticed three young men just hang-
ing out. They were smiling, not exactly sheepishly, but they weren’t buzzing either.
They didn’t seem to be in any particular hurry.
Nonetheless Mo scurried over as soon as she saw them. “How you guys today?” then
she turned around and signalled to me the only way she does with a super quick flick
of her eyebrows and a mean little smile. Then I knew the guys were the donors she
had told me about, the twenty-something frat boys. Muscular and t-shirted, one car-
ried Hegel like it was a skateboard. Another wore a Mets baseball cap backwards.
They donated sperm for pocket money, but before they got down to business they
first invited Mo to a party that evening.
“I got plans,” she said, “but maybe later. If you don’t mind, I might bring a friend.”
She pointed at me. I nodded like I really didn’t care by the machine.
57
“Cool,” said the tall donor, his name was Tom. “Everybody’s welcome. Around
eleven, then.” The guy to Tom’s right reached for one of the miniature plastic cups
Mo had placed on the counter. The third friend kept blowing his nose in a wrinkled
handkerchief; he had a summer cold. “You know the rules,” Mo warned before he
went into an Ejaculatorium.
These three, Mo told me, did everything together. They might have been masturbat-
ing in different rooms, but they were completely in sync with each other. I know it
was rude to time them, but it took under two minutes tops. I mean they all came out
of the Ejaculatoriums and handed in their still warm samples within a second of each
other. Mo checked the first two quickly, while the third with the runny nose waited
his turn.
She was at one of the microscopes when she signalled me to come over and take a
look. His sperm was pretty much like what I’d seen on TV or in magazines - squirm-
ing, minute, with tails. Except these were swimming around puffed up particles that
looked like breadcrumbs. “Those white blood cells are produced by his body to fight
infection,” she went back to the counter and beckoned the runny nose forward. “I’m
afraid this batch’s no good for us.” He didn’t take the news too hard. “See ya all
tonight,” was all he said.
A few moments later a woman with long dark hair came to the counter. “Mo,” she
shouted through the glass partitions, and one of the technicians let her into the lab.
Mo was in the bank, a pristine room filled with rotund vats of liquid nitrogen, where
sperm was stored at a temperature of minus 180ºC. She could be glimpsed through
a window, wearing protective glasses and thick industrial gloves, but once she heard
the woman’s voice she leaned out of the doorway.
58
“Lisa, I’m in the middle of something. If you want, Andrea can take you in.”
In our building you said hello to the little girls on their way to school in
the morning and good night a year or two later to the same girls, now
heavily made up and in hot pants, going to work in the parking lot
on llth and 3rd.
The woman shook her long, glossy mane. “Nah, Mo you got the bullseye. I’ll get
some coffee and wait.” She was familiar with the lab. After she filled a styrofoam
cup, she sat down beside the xerox machine. Her eye make-up was meticulously
applied, her lipstick a dark mauve. Her sleeveless shift, a little tight, strained against
her breasts. Her accent was distinct, real Nah Yawk, from Queens or Staten Island.
“So you’s Mo’s best friend from outta town?” she asked.
“How did you guess?”
“You’re not in fashion. Everyone here wears a white coat. Anyway the last time I
was in, Mo said you’d probably be xeroxing one of the afternoons.”
“We’ve been friends for a long time.”
The woman nodded towards Mo still working in the bank, “And we’re beginning a
long and fertile relationship.”
“So you want a baby?” In any other circumstances I wouldn’t have been so direct,
59
but there was no reason except for the obvious one for a visit to the sperm bank.
“I was pregnant around this time last year,” Lisa answered wistfully, “but my
boyfriend didn’t want it. I had an abortion. Then I started thinkin’. Mo and I have
talked a lot over the last few months. I used to spend my weekends in the clubs. I’m
a party girl just like you two -” she raised her voice, “Right Mo?”
Through the window, Mo looked up. Lisa mouthed slowly, “Par-teeey!” She jerked
her arms about like she was doing the Watusi, nearly spilling her coffee. Mo cracked
a forced smile. She was hovering over one of the vats, holding a contraption that
gripped 3,000 million sperm - the equivalent of the whole world’s male population.
“Something obviously snapped last year,” continued Lisa, “and I’m not getting any
younger.”
“How old are you?” It was another blunt, shameless question.
“Thirty-eight. I always said to myself I would be pregnant by the time I was forty.
Go-d I didn’t want to wait that long. I’ve been telling Mo, if you want kids have ‘em
now. I’ve wanted to have a baby since I was a little girrl. Drugs, clubs, nothing mat-
tered. That bum boyfriend of mine left the morning I told him. And that was after
six good years.”
“What did you do then?”
“I stopped going to the clubs because the men don’t want to give you their sperm
unless it’s in a condom or in ya mouth. I started asking around.” She shrugged, “I
60
mean, it’s a big city. Finally a gay friend said he’d make the vital contribution. So
we came here. We’re the post-modern odd couple. We don’t have sex together. We
don’t live together. Hell, we hardly talk to each other. All we want to do is make
- ” her voice softened into goo-goo mush - “baby!”
Before I could ask how long she had been trying, Mo was finished at the vats and
joined us. “Why aren’t I pregnant yet, Mo?” Lisa pouted.
Mo moved her hand across her pelvis. “It’s a relatively finite space, but sometimes
a sperm takes forever to find an egg.” She pointed to one of the side consulting
rooms, and Lisa, standing up, practically skipped in. It was bow and arrow time.
After that, an inordinate number of people required and dispensed with biological
services. The cubicles in the lobby were filled with men, the consulting rooms in the
lab with women. As the front concentrated on the beginning of life, the Filipinos to
the lab’s rear counted the dead. When they took a break I went back to say hello.
Mo had already introduced me to them.
Pinkie Sanctus had worked at the bank the longest. She began counting fetuses the
second day after she arrived in New York. Most of her wages supported a family of
nineteen in a province outside of Manila.
“You know sunny days like this remind me of Bagio,” Pinkie had no idea about the
weather outside. She hadn’t left the basement since eight in the morning. “It’s a
beautiful, tropical paradise, home of Marcos’ psychic. People come from all over the
world to consult him, right Esmeralda?” Like so many who had spent longer than
they cared to remember far from home, Pinkie was nostalgic.
61
Esmeralda had recently started working at the bank. She too came from an impov-
erished Filipino family. There was a good chance she had never been to the tourist
hotels of Bagio. Yet, she remained optimistic, “It’s so beautiful. You never want to
leave.”
“But we all have to leave,” Boy-Boy, in charge, was from Manila. “There’s no work,
no money.”
The cubicles in the lobby were filled with men, the consulting rooms in
the lab with women. As the front concentrated on the beginning of
life, the Filipinos in the lab’s rear counted the dead.
They were sitting around a table, eating Chinatown rice cakes out of a Tupperware
container. The door to the adjacent room hadn’t been pulled shut and I could see
rows of specimen jars on a counter. Each one held a red liquid, like a watery, half-
cooked spaghetti sauce, but something else was floating in the medium: human tis-
sue, placenta, unborn cells. By law, every aborted fetus in New York was counted.
It was also another way of making sure the clinics did a thorough job. One of the
lab girls gingerly delivered a newly arrived package.
“Put it over there,” motioned Boy-Boy who had long eye-lashes and a face scarred
by greasy food and acne. He turned to me, “Mo must have told you about the Jersey
state trooper?”
Both Pinkie’s and Esmeralda’s voices rang out with loud, earthy laughter. Boy-Boy
62
half-grinned, “Last week one of the messengers was mugged and his bag was stolen.
The mugger must have thrown the bag away because it was picked up by New York
sanitation and sent, along with the city’s other garbage, to a landfill in Jersey. On
the way, the bag fell off the truck and a Jersey state trooper scooped it off the road-
side and took a look inside. The paperwork said the contents belonged to our lab.
“The first thing we hear about the stolen bag is when the trooper comes to the bank,
demanding an explanation. For all he knew, it could have been a multiple murder.
So Mo brings him to us in the back and, guess what, he arrived in time for lunch.
Roast pork and rice,” Boy-Boy winked.
The Filipinos were reputed for their elaborate lunches. It was another way - quick-
er and cheaper - of visiting home. Pinkie nodded, “I never saw anyone so confused.”
“But you can understand it,” Esmeralda piped up. “He thought he found
murderers, instead he found Filipinos.”
“And lunch to boot,” Boy-Boy shook his head, “That trooper had a strong stomach.
Come on, you must have felt sick after you first saw the specimens?”
I didn’t want to admit that to Boy-Boy. It seemed insensitive and rude.
“Well, the trooper,” Boy-Boy smirked, “he ate heartily, after we gave him the grand
tour!”
The day was nearly over. Esmeralda went into the other room and started tidying
up.
63
Mo came into the back. “Demonstration outside,” she warned the others.
Pinkie Sanctus sighed, “Again? I guess we better leave together.”
“We’re almost ready.” Boy-Boy asked, “How about the girls?”
“We’re on it,” Mo replied.
In a few minutes everyone, the Filipinos, the lab technicians, a few donors and
wannabe mothers gathered in the lobby of the sperm bank. There were about eigh-
teen of us. On the stairs I stayed right behind Mo. Sometime during the afternoon
when no one was looking she had packed the wheelchair into her leather shoulder
bag. As we passed through the building’s tinted glass foyer that faced Madison
Avenue, Mo muttered, “Here we go.”
I knew there were demonstrations against abortion clinics, but I was a little con-
fused. The bank didn’t give abortions, so why were people demonstrating outside?
I tightly clutched my books and papers, and we spilled out of the revolving doors
onto the street.
A bearded, middle-aged man in an overcoat led the chanting “Baby killers! Abortion
IS murder.” An angry crowd of protesters swarmed around Mo and Boy-Boy. The
lab technicians who manned the bows and arrows and handled the small cups of
sperm dispersed themselves through the crowd as fast as they could.
“Murderers!” A shrieking, elderly woman waylaid Pinkie who crossed herself
solemnly and said loudly, “I am a devout Catholic. I attend mass every morning. We
64
don’t kill babies, we make them!”
“Murderers!” The old women had an abrasive voice.
“I told you,” Pinkie’s face was impassive like a Madonna’s, “we’re a SPERM
bank.”
The woman shook herself, as if waking from a dream. Over the anguished cries of
the protesters, she called out to the leader, “Henry, you oughta hear this.”
The bearded man came over and bent over Pinkie who reached his navel, if she was
lucky. Meanwhile Mo and Boy-Boy pushed their way towards her. “She’s right,”
said Mo. “We’re a sperm bank.”
“You don’t kill babies?” The man motioned to his friends and the chanting died
down. Some of the protesters laid their heavy placards on the ground.
“Well it says here,” the man brought out a crumpled email from an inside coat
pocket, “The name of your clinic is BT - Blood Ties,” he pointed to it, alongside
other names and addresses.
“I don’t care what it says,” Mo was seething. “Someone’s made a mistake. We’re
not a dead baby clinic. You know SPERM/EGG/BIRDS/BEES?”
The man consulted his paper again. “Do you think the abortion clinic on E. 64th is
still open?” It was a question that was addressed to no one in particular, although
Mo answered it for him.
65
“How the hell would I know?”
“Come on everybody,” he staggered away, “Let’s get those MURDERERS,” but
the protesters were emotionally washed-out and trailed slowly behind him. A few of
us from the bank were left by ourselves on the street. Mo and I said goodbye to the
others, and caught a cab downtown. In her apartment, we chilled in a serious way.
Two phone calls ignited a chain reaction and the evening’s constant flow of friends
and customers was momentarily disrupted by a take-away delivery of Chinese vege-
tarian food. In six months the wheelchair would be a rarity in New York, but the
thought never crossed Mo’s mind until it was too late. Increased prison sentences
made it too risky to be caught with any quantity, but on every corner you could buy
heroin and crack cocaine.
After midnight the phone stopped ringing and Mo, stretching and yawning, decided
she needed a pick-me-up. “I like the tall donor,” she pursed her lips. The muscular
boys were a few blocks away. We rolled a few joints, put on some lipstick and went
out.
By the time we arrived, the party was in full swing. I found a convenient corner,
while Mo sidled up to the donors. She wasn’t alone. Several attractive young women
circled the three men who were completely oblivious. Mo lit one of the joints and
passed it to the tall donor Tom who periodically played the part of the good host by
refilling her drink and checking on the DJ. Mainly however, he joked with his
co-spermers.
After forty minutes Mo returned to me for good. “It’s not happening. I mean look
at those boys. They’re surrounded by women who are available.”
66
“And guess what?” I shrugged, “The donors are not. You’ve forgotten their little
contest this afternoon?”
Mo regarded them in a new light, “I guess the old chestnut’s right. Once you get
paid for sex, you never gonna give it up for free.”
Since nothing could be done about that, we smoked, drank and danced by ourselves.
I had to pack as much living as possible in the next few hours. By tomorrow after-
noon I’d be back in the midwest. When we finally left the party, the sun was
beginning to rise.
On the way home we stopped in a twenty-four-hour diner, ordered breakfast and had
a conversation that didn’t mean much at the time. Mo said she was happy with her
job, but she didn’t know how long she’d last. She was more intrigued by the science
than by the crazy women who did their shopping at the bank. Although this was still
the dark ages before test-tube babies, cloning and human stem cells, Mo was already
wondering when eggs could be ordered from a menu just like sperm. Instead of the
world being male-dominated, it would finally become female-dominated.
“They say a woman’s egg is just like a chicken’s,” she mused out loud.
I looked twice at my scrambled eggs and began to feel queasy. It would take me the
whole of two or three minutes to get used to the idea. So I doused the eggs with
ketchup until they no way resembled mine, and cleaned the plate.
© Malu Halasa
67
 energy project
http://www.sisley.com
beat stories from big sur
FOR INFORMATION: 0161/2041064
70

photos: Jessica Hilltout

CP
 78

photos: Justin De Deney (left) red top from Scope Charity Shop · skirt from Oxfam · socks from Woolworths · trainers
model’s own · (right) top by Jigsaw Junior · trousers from Hennes
(from left to right) pink anorak from Peacock · t-shirt from Jigsaw Junior · jacket from Rokit
skirt by Peach · polo-neck jumper from BHS · trainers by Rod Laver from Rokit · striped top
from Gap Kids · jeans from Gap Kids · trainers from Oxfam
(left) grey top from Sainsbury's Sava Centre · (right) shirt from Van Heusen cap from Camden Market · jacket stylist’s own · jeans by BHS · red shoes by Sasha from Portobello Market
stylist: Rachael Zilli @ Blunt · photo assistant: Lee Powers · make-up: Ayami @ Industry
models: Lisa @ IMG · Michael @ Assassin · Will @ Storm · Nicole + Monica @ Scallywags
what could happen on the way to the shop

88

art: Ceri Amphlet

 90

beauticians

photos: Nick Pearce

 When the landlady’s door is open it’s a sign for Francie that the husband is away at
the bus depot and for him to come in. She started him at it the second week we were
there and ever after when he saw the crack in the door he made for the stairs like a
greyhound. I never got a look inside. “What’s it like in there?” I asked him. “It’s
all pink,” he said, like it was a great wonder.

She barred him once for two weeks when she got mad at him about the smoke. I
came into the room from the bath with my hair slicked down and the Tailor’s suit
on me for it was Wednesday and I was going to the Bamba dance. Francie was in
a chair with his feet up on the bed and the Donegal Democrat spread across his lap.
A pig’s head was boiling away in the pot on the gas ring. He was in his work clothes
still and his eyes were flickering. “Mind you don’t fall asleep,” I said to him as I
left. When I got back and went into the room there was Francie stretched across the
bed snoring, the paper over his face and smoke thick as a mountain mist filling the
i could read the sky
room, the pot and the pig’s head that was in it both as black as a boot. Mrs Chandler
98
looked at us hard the next morning at breakfast like she was thinking what sentence
she would impose on us, the sentence of exile maybe, but she denied him his rations
instead.

I met him one morning on the stairs carrying his shoes. He looked like a rumpled
sheet. “She only gave me an hour’s sleep,” he said. “Every time I dropped off she
was at me. It’s worse than digging trenches in the rain.” We were laying railway
lines that time and it was heavy work. When the green-eyed cat came into the room
and leapt onto Francie he drop-kicked it straight through the open window. He could
be in a bad humour if he didn’t get his sleep. Wherever the cat went it must have
passed the kitchen window for straight away Mrs Chandler was in the room in her
apron throwing our clothes down the stairs. We headed down the Kilburn High
words by Timothy O’Grady · photo by Steve Pyke

99
 Road. “You can ride the landlady,” said Francie. “But don’t blackguard the cat.”
•••
When I think of Derbyshire I think of the blue fog in the mornings and the miners
walking through it. Why they seemed so lonely I don’t know for they were often
laughing. They were taking gouges out of the hills the way you’d take off the top of
an egg with a knife. We were putting up screens for the washeries. Black Johnny
Fortune was on that job. A tall mournful local man they called Drizzle. The Horse
McGurk who played the banjo. And Francie. He called himself Gallagher after a
Donegal hurler and I called myself Rose after one of the men made the flute that
was buried with Da. In the digs we were put sleeping in the same bed. He was very
long and he always lay on his back and when I woke in the morning the first thing
I’d see were his white feet pointing at the ceiling. Sometimes they’d twitch like a fly
had landed on them. “Oh those feet,” I said to him once. He looked at me like the
two of us were out on a mountainside in the rain. “I know,” he said. “There’s noth-
ing worse than another man’s body.”
In Kent we had the job of destroying air raid shelters. They were the devil, some of
them, with steel running through the walls and roof. Francie got hit with a lump of
concrete flew off the end of the jackhammer. The blood ran down over his eye and
he looked at me like the world should be ready to mourn him.
In Bedford I was slab laying. In Coventry it was drainage pipes. There was a site in
Barnet must have been four acres anyway and there it was mostly shuttering. I car-
ried the hod for a week in Blackheath but I hadn’t the balance. McNamara was a
name I used, after the song sung by Americans. O’Neill for the great king of the
100
North. Loss, because of the bandleader. You could be on a site those days and half
of them would be calling themselves Michael Collins for the crack. I was underpin-
ning with Francie in Chelsea. He’d be down on his knees in the dirt those days,
singing.
In Liffey Street had furniture with fleas and bugs I sold it,
And at the Bank a big placard I often stood to hold it.
In New Street I sold hay and straw and in Spitalfields made bacon.
In Fishamble Street was at the grand old trade of basket making.
Francie and me walking up the Kilburn High Road ahead of two men. “They’re from
Clare,” said Francie to me out of the side of his mouth. “You can tell by the way
they whistle.” They had ten years on us maybe. “You’ll not go home again boys,”
called out the one with the black straw hat sitting on the back of his head, and the
two of them laughed.
•••
When Francie is away laying the gas lines in Portsmouth I get very lonely in the
room. We’re in a basement that time in Quex Road. The room has one picture in a
blue wooden frame of a blond boy milking a cow and it makes it worse. The room
gets no light. In the week I take a few pints in the Old Bell and make my way back
to Quex Road eating something out of a newspaper. One night at closing time I’m
walking behind a red-haired man with mud on his boots, the trousers falling off him,
the paper rolled up in his jacket pocket and him taking the two sides of the pave-
ment from all the drink and I know it is me. I know it is all of us. On Sunday it’s
Mass and the Crown and after two o’clock it’s murder. I lean on the railings
101
 smoking cigarettes I don’t like. I read the paper and fail to reach the end of a story.
I put on the radio but the words get lost. We have a clock and I look at it. The min-
utes go by like water dripping from a tap. Some time around six the walls seem to
move in on me.
I know that something bad is going to happen.
On the top floor is a man from Belfast always wears a suit and a tie. It’s dark under
his eyes and dark in them too so you can’t find him, like a cellar with the only light
falling through a small dirty window. He has manners like an usher at church. He
lifts the hat up off his head whenever he greets you. He’s an actor, he says, Albert
Maskey of the Ormeau Road, Belfast. I don’t know how he does it for he’s afflicted
with a stutter whenever he tries to explain something complicated. I see him through
the dust and the grey light of the stairwell leaving out a saucer of milk for the cat.
Whenever he’s not busy with something else he’s cleaning and filing his nails. “Good
grooming is essential for an actor,” he says. The right brow travels up the forehead
after he says something like that, like what he says surprises him.
He likes to take a glass of scotch at six every evening and somehow it’s come about
that I go up to him on Thursdays. I never saw the bed unmade or even with a dent
in the cover. Socks and jumpers folded along a shelf. A glass cabinet for the drink.
A cup and saucer with a teapot on the table ready for the morning. In the corner is
a little bottle with the top off filled with green liquid to give off the smell of trees.
You’d think it was the room of a man would drive a car for a bishop only for the
pictures of women in frames along the shelf above his bed. Beside them is a crown
made from plaster and painted gold. Had he worn it on the stage? “Not yet,” he
tells me, the eyes dark shadows.
102
I ask him about the women.
“I’ve known them all, you know,” he says. He laughs, but the laugh fades away like
the bark of a tired dog. He gets up from the chair and puts on his spectacles.
“She only gave me an hour’s sleep,” he said. “Every time i dropped off
she was at me. it’s worse than digging trenches in the rain.”
Each one he gives a name. Rita, Eustace, Marie-Thérèse, Lucy. Did he get them
from The Lives of the Saints ? There’s one he calls Princess with black hair looks like
she’s been surprised and likes it. Their teeth have a kind of shining white like you’d
see in a star. They have bands in their hair, some of them, and you can see the lines
of their bodies because of the tightness of their clothes. One is dressed in a long
gown, gold and white, that reaches to the floor, her blonde hair piled up and trail-
ing down her neck, diamonds on her ears. He tells me the story of each romance as
he gives them their names. The one he worked with on the cruise out of Barcelona.
The one from Dublin was going to be a nun. The one played Cleopatra in Derby he
stole from another actor. The one from Greenland he met looking at tombs in the
museum. Places like Lisbon, Istanbul and Tangier come into it somehow. “I’ve been
busy, I’ve travelled,” he says. “I loved them all.” Again the fading laugh that you
can’t believe.
Francie comes back from the work in Portsmouth and I get a little steadier. We get
a meal every evening at the café. We change our shoes before going for a drink. We
get through Sunday with cards or a long walk.
When something is going to happen you can get a warning. I sit up in the bed that
103
 night like someone’s blown a whistle into my ear. I ease back down onto the pillow
but I’m a long way from sleep. It’s ten past two on the clock. There’s a breeze out-
side and the shadows of the trees in the garden move across the picture of the boy
with the cow. I am in the bed by the window and Francie is over by the wall. I see
his back go up and down with the rhythm of sleep. What can I do while I’m wait-
ing? I try to think my way through all the notes of the “The Green-Crowned Lass”.
There’s a noise then, something moving through the branches, the splintering of
wood, and then a crash like a load of boards hitting the ground from a snapped
cable. There’s a slow dying moan and then the silence, more still than before. I can-
not hear the breeze. I draw back the curtain. On the ground facing me are the wide
dark eyes of Albert Maskey. The top of his head is caved in a little on the side where
he landed and his broken arm is stretched across his chest and shoulder, the hand
up and open like he’s asking for something. There’s dirt in his mouth. He’s a suit and
tie on, everything in place, and he’s wearing the gold crown was up on the shelf
above his bed.
One night at closing time I’m walking behind a red-haired man with
mud on his boots, the trousers falling off him, the paper rolled up in his
jacket pocket and him taking the two sides of the pavement from all
the drink and I know it is me.
I couldn’t get to the bottom of it.
The night he told me about the girls I looked at their pictures before I left the room.
The way they posed, a hand on the hip, a look over the shoulder. The paper was thin
and the edges of some were uneven. He’d cut them from magazines and put them in
frames.
104
That was bad what happened to Albert Maskey, but it wasn’t the thing I was fear-
ing somehow when the walls were moving in.
•••
The train passes through tunnels and cuttings and past buildings all of them made
of bricks the colour of dried blood. The bricks make up the walls and the hard pit-
ted clay makes up the bricks. I think of all the bricks and all the little holes, some
the size of pinpricks only. How can there be so many bricks? How can there be so
much time to place them into rows? When I lie in bed in Quex Road I think of a
building and I think of how many bricks it takes to make up its width. I go upwards
from the base and count the rows. I think of the lack of bricks in the doors and the
windows and where the building ends for it cannot go through the sky and I try to
find the number of bricks in the wall that is facing me as I picture it. There are the
front and back of the building and maybe the two sides and still more sides maybe,
there are bricks in the inside walls, bricks under the ground, bricks that form roads,
bricks in sewers. Bricks in the buildings when I turn out the door, bricks up and down
the Kilburn High Road and bricks forever out into the world.
There are bricks from all the years that make up the walls. When I pass them I try
to think of the men who put them there. Who told them where to place the bricks?
What way did they shave? What was the drink they liked the best? I fall in among
them and among the ages of the city.
The spade feels heavy in my hand. On the scaffolding I fear a fall. When there’s crack
I step away with shame at the way the words are so slow and broken in my mouth.
The accordion is the worst. It has so many buttons and I cannot find or remember
105
 them all.
They have me sweeping. I sweep dust and shavings of wood and food that falls to
the ground. When I am doing this work I have in my mind only the picture of myself
with the broom in my hand. I could stuff a saddle. From this there is no hiding.
I wait with the others in the early morning darkness along the railings in Camden
Town. They are all in their coats leaning over, smoking cigarettes. Men who would
live in your ear in a bar hold back from speech. They look serious. They look like
they could be looking down into a river watching a swimming race. We wait for the
Animal to come and pick the gang. When he steps down from the van he will take
his coat off even in winter for he wants everyone there to see his arms. From the
back he looks like a turf stack and from the front he’s a fright. He’s a scar like a
trench running down from his eye, the eyes two halfpennies. In the centre is the nose.
It’s like a big potato breaking up through the ground. It bends one way, then anoth-
er and then back as it goes from the ridge to the tip. Many’s the man waiting on the
railings would like to be the man who broke it for him. The mouth curves around his
face like a dog’s. You have to watch him. You could be talking with him in a bar in
a peaceful way about greyhounds or the price of drink and he’d rear up on you. He
could break the pint glass on the edge of the table and bring it right up to your eye.
When he walks his hands face backwards. His right arm swings like a weight at the
end of a chain. Men from Connemara inspired by their hatred took him into the toi-
let in the Spotted Dog in Willesden and broke it over a knee.
I wait there mornings for work with Francie and Martin and the others. Most always
I get it even if it’s only sweeping. Ivan came with us when we first went down, a
scarf and woollen hat on him and the donkey jacket so big he was like a clothes peg
106
holding up a tent. When the Animal stepped from the van and saw him he knew he
could have sport. “And what can you do, man of straw?” he said. The voice would
just cut you. “I can dig,” says Ivan. “You couldn’t dig the shite from your own
arse,” says the Animal. He leans over with the two hands on his knees and lets out
a roar. Anyone he spots not laughing doesn’t work that day.
•••
What I could do.
I could mend nets. Thatch a roof. Build stairs. Make a basket from reeds. Splint the
leg of a cow. Cut turf. Build a wall. Go three rounds with Joe in the ring Da put up
in the barn. I could dance sets. Read the sky. Make a barrel for mackerel. Mend
roads. Make a boat. Stuff a saddle. Put a wheel on a cart. Strike a deal. Make a
field. Work the swarth turner, the float and the thresher. I could read the sea. Shoot
straight. Make a shoe. Shear sheep. Remember poems. Set potatoes. Plough and
harrow. Read the wind. Tend bees. Bind wyndes. Make a coffin. Take a drink. I
could frighten you with stories. I knew the song to sing to a cow when milking. I
could play twenty-seven tunes on my accordion.
•••
Two lads in their vests studying the trade of bricklaying heave a bag of cement off
the back of a lorry and drag it along the ground. If it hits a bit of glass or the point
of a stick it will open up onto the road. They come to a low wall then and try to lift
it to the other side. But they can’t get hold of it. It slips from their hands. They both
reach down at the same time to grip it underneath and their two heads meet with a
107
 thump just over the nose. “Will you look at them?” says the King. He leaves the cig-
arette on the ledge of the window and walks over. He tells the lads to stand aside.
He leans over from the waist, grips the bag with his teeth and lifts it over the wall.
He walks back to me then and takes up the cigarette. “The thing about that beast
the Animal,” says the King, “is that he’s a coward.” Everyone mixing muck, every-
one in the trench, everyone hauling bricks or pipes, people passing on the pavement,
they’re all looking at him. Francie told me about the time he saw the King working
the jackhammer when a woman came up to him and asked the way to the post office.
“That way, madam,” he said, lifting the hammer with the one arm and pointing the
way.
They say no man alive can dig like the King. He dug up wooden water mains,
unknown tunnels, ancient walls and bones. He saw the timbering go and a tunnel
turn into a grave. He’d go right under a road on his own lit by a candle, emptying
his own load with a tin bucket. I saw him past the time of the fullness of his strength
but still I saw him lift the bag of cement with his teeth that day in Kennington. Then
later I saw the paleness come into his features and the knees begin to weaken and I
heard the rattling down in his lungs from his days under the ground digging the wet
clay. Then came the time when no one could tell you where he was. If you asked any-
one about him they would tell you a story of the wonder of his strength but they had
not seen nor heard of him. He moved into the past.
•••
The Animal walks into the church hall, a man to either side of him in case anyone
would have a go at him. One was from Newcastle, I remember, and the other from
Louth. They sit down under a picture from the African missions. There’s a nun
108
opening bottles behind the bar and another handing out plates of sandwiches. We all
take a sandwich when she comes to us and when there’s just one on the plate the
King leans over to me and says, “Hold on to that one for me until I get back.” He
goes right out the door and when he comes back again he calls out to the Animal,
“Here you are, John,” he says. “Don’t go hungry,” and the Animal takes the last
sandwich. “You’ll see something now,” says the King to me. The Animal takes a
gouge the size of a fist from the sandwich, the jaws working under the red nose. He
stops then, bread falling from his open mouth, the little black eyes as wide as they’ll
go. “Christ Jesus,” he says to the man from Louth. “I thought the priest bought his
meat from Corrigan’s,” and he spits what’s left in his mouth onto the floor.
“What did you give him?”I say to the King.
“A rare thing to find in a church hall,” he says.
“What would that be?”
He leans over close then so the women won’t hear. “A condom filled with raw
sewage.”
“Holy Mary,” says Francie. “He’d break a man’s back for less.”
•••
In the picture a young girl in a red and white dress is planting flowers in a window-
box outside her room. Every day that hot summer week while we dig up the pave-
ment beneath her window in Ladbroke Grove we can look up and see her. By the
109
 He leans over close then so the women won’t hear. “A condom filled
with raw sewage.” “Holy Mary,” says Francie. “He’d break a man’s back
for less.”
Friday she knows each of our names. There’s Myles Walsh, Pat Kennedy and the
Iroquois from Glasgow. John Conneely from Connemara is sitting against the wall
eating an apple when the girl from the window comes down and gives him a wood-
en chair. John was sixty-three that time and anyone could see the knees were bad.
Francie has his foot up on a low wall and is drinking milk from a pint bottle. He is
bothered for a moment by a bee and when he puts the bottle back up to his mouth
a black man with a straw hat and a blue and white striped suit walks past, gold rings
shining on his fingers and a cigarette in its holder gripped between his teeth. He is
wearing the finest white shirt I ever saw.
We’re talking about the Animal.
“He’s no gentleman,” says John. “He put a lit cigarette up into the arse of a cat. A
gentleman would never do a thing like that.”
“You’re right there,” says Myles.
Francie leaves the milk bottle down and lifts the jackhammer.
“Martin was digging in a hole under the Marylebone Road on Monday when he hit
something hard with the spade. ‘What’s that?’ he says to himself and cleans away
the clay. The thing is big and dark and it has writing on it. It’s made of lead. ‘What
do you make of that?’ he says to Jack O’Rourke, who’s beside him in the hole. Jack
110
puts the glasses on and takes a look. He’s a great reader of books as you know. He
looks all around it like it’s something he might buy. Finally he gives the verdict. ‘A
Roman coffin,’ he says, putting the glasses back into his pocket. Martin crawls out
of the hole and phones Muldoon over in the yard. But he can only get the Crow. ‘The
Animal is taking his lunch over in the Princess Louise,’ says the Crow. So Martin
phones over to the bar and gets the Animal on the line and explains to him all about
the Roman coffin. There’s a pause then while he thinks about it. Then he says, ‘Break
the fucking thing up and bury it.’ He didn’t want anyone from a museum holding up
the job. That’s the Animal, the friend of art and science.”
He puts the tip of the hammer to the pavement then and begins to dig. I see the lit-
tle girl in the window reading a book with the sun shining onto her face. I see the
black man with the rings fixing a rose to the lapel of his jacket. I see Francie smil-
ing. Then there’s a fierce hiss and a blaze and the air around Francie is shimmering
in the heat. Flames pour out of his boots and his trousers and his shirt. His hair too
is on fire. There is fire in his mouth. There is fire on his hands. His skin flames and
then blackens. The jackhammer falls to the pavement and Francie along with it.
Myles and John and Pat and the Iroquois and myself and the girl and the black man
all look at him lying dead on the pavement beside the hole and the mains cable he
cut through with the hammer, the insulation boiling and smoking and the coloured
wires inside like the stems of flowers.
•••
What I couldn’t do.
Eat a meal lacking potatoes. Trust banks. Wear a watch. Ask a woman to go for a
111
 walk. Work with drains or with objects smaller than a nail. Drive a motor car. Eat
tomatoes. Remember the routes of buses. Wear a collar in comfort. Win at cards.
Acknowledge the Queen. Abide loud voices. Perform the manners of greeting and
leaving. Save money. Take pleasure in work carried out in a factory. Drink coffee.
Look into a wound. Follow cricket. Understand the speech of a man from west Kerry.
Wear shoes or boots made from rubber. Best P.J. in an argument. Speak with men
wearing collars. Stay afloat in water. Understand their jokes. Face the dentist. Kill
a Sunday. Stop remembering.

I Could Read the Sky is available in paperback from Harville Press. The book has been made into a
film by Nichola Bruce, and produced by Janine Marmot. Steve Pyke’s portrait of Dermot Healy is
from the film, which was recently in competition at the Rotterdam and Berlin film festivals. It will
open in cinemas in the UK and Ireland later this year. I Could Read the Sky will be broadcast by
Channel 4 at a later date.

112 113
 114

photos: Sunao Ohmori @ Vanessa Tokyo

stylist: Miter · hair: Asashi @ S Management
make-up: Sofia Lewandrowski @ S Management · artwork: Seiyo Ezure
models: Chantalle K + Vicki Murdoch @ Storm · Vanessa Castillejo @ Take 2
Beatrice + Nathalie Ritch @ Premier · shot @ the Lemonade Factory
 122

photos: Peter Benson

 kangol white collar

128
kangol britain www.kangol.com
129
 130

photos: Ann Weathersby

 138

photos: Alan Clarke polka dot bikini briefs by Navaz

(left to right) jeans by Calvin
Klein · striped bikini briefs by
Eley Kishimoto · socks by Sock
Shop · red bikini briefs by
Joelynian
 belt worn as sash by Clements Ribeiro · socks by Lonsdale · sneakers by Converse
jeans by Calvin Klein · socks by Sock Shop skateboard by Low Pressure
photo assistants: Claran · Rob · Hiro · Richard
stylist: Navaz · stylist's assistant: Helen Prentice
hair: Giro + Tracey Cahoon @ Tommy Gun Soho
make-up: Shinobu · models: Laura · Beatrice ·
Anna · Dasha · Diana · Jennifer

socks by Gap · rollerskates model's own

146

photos: Rama
 150

stalin’s zion

words + photos by Jonas Schooler-Bendiksen

 “If only we had money for vodka.” The eighteen-year-old rabbi is troubled. He post-
ed flyers all over town, advertising free circumcision, but only ten men called. He
needs twenty for the mohel to make the nearly 4,000 mile journey from Jerusalem
to Birobidzhan, on Russia’s border with China. “If we only had the vodka,” he
wearily taps the ashes of his cigarette into the lid of his Middle Eastern-looking vase.
His friend, who sports a feather-thin moustache like the rabbi, is unconvinced, but
feigns enthusiasm nonetheless. “So we could give one bottle to every man who would
get himself circumcised! It would work!”
This is Rabbi Ruslan’s first winter in Birobidzhan, and it hasn’t been easy.
Birobidzhan was established as the Jewish Autonomous Region by Stalin in the
1920s as the first modern homeland for the Jews twenty years before the creation
of Israel. A few signs of the city’s original purpose remain. The name Birobidzhan
is written in both Yiddish and Russian above the train station. There is a Star of
David on a fencepost by a wooden hut that serves as the town's only synagogue.
During my visit, the regional museum featured an exhibition of Jewish traditions,
but this city of 80,000 - once advertised in Soviet propaganda posters by muscular
farmers with descriptions like, “The Jew of Birobidzhan is not the shrunken bent
Jew often seen here, but a strong, hardworking co-builder of Communism” - has
become the homeland many people are keen to leave.
Most Birobidzhanis cannot afford a phone call to Moscow, or even to the nearby city
of Khabarovsk, because the fifty rouble cost of the call would be the equivalent of
twenty loaves of bread. In Birobidzhan, there are a few businesses and shoddily
stocked shops, but little commerce. The locals say these few enterprises are all just
cogs of larger corrupt organisations, but nobody would elaborate any further, since
152
silence enables illegal organisations to operate. (At the time of writing the mayor of
Birobidzhan, Viktor Bolotnov, was on trial for buying a mansion in Oregon, although
his official salary is no more than £250 a month.) Neighbouring areas have up to
seventy per cent unemployment, and while the figure might be somewhat lower in
Birobidzhan, only a fraction of employees receive regular pay. Maybe it is the Soviet
stigma of unemployment that keeps the infrastructure intact. I met workers who,
despite not having received one kopek for the last five years, still go faithfully to their
posts every day.
The idea of forming a Soviet Jewish homeland emerged shortly after the Russian
Revolution. Then most Soviet Jews lived in the Pale of Settlement, which extended
from the Baltic to the Black Sea. In 1923, the search for a suitable location began,
and a few years later Birobidzhan was chosen. It is an area almost twice the size of
Israel, eighteen hours west of Vladivostok by modern trains, bordered by the Amur
River, just north of China. I frequently travelled this route myself, and every time I
marvelled at the flat featureless landscape. The rolling hills or taiga forest that char-
acterise so much of the rest of the Trans-Siberian route is not to be seen here.
Instead, the pale monotony of endless, uncultivated marshland is only broken by
scattered tree clusters and looming radio masts. The propaganda images of the smil-
ing Jewish farmer showing off his crop standing in a vast cornfield are echoed in the
scrubby, colourless garden plots surrounding each village.
Birobidzhan offered several advantages for the Soviet authorities in their post-revo-
lutionary zeal. The worldwide Zionist movement was growing rapidly, and the Soviet
relocation of 2.5 million Jews more than 8,000 kilometres from Moscow was a con-
venient way of removing them from the centre of power and influence.
Geopolitically, it was strategically valuable to populate the vulnerable Chinese
153
 border, unattractive real estate that was barren and unfertile with harsh Siberian
winters and swampy, mosquito-infested summers. Of course, Soviet pragmatism pre-
vailed. As one historian noted, “There is no such thing as bad soil - only poor
labour.”

Maybe it is the Soviet stigma of unemployment that keeps workers

who, despite not having received one kopek for the last five years, go
faithfully to their posts every day.

At the time of the Revolution, the eastern regions were precariously thinly populat-
ed, both in terms of the exploitation of these resources and the fortification of a
defence infrastructure. The empire of the USSR was built on moving whole popula-
tions around this vast area, often relocating entire ethnic groups to positions where
they could be of practical use, with little consideration of their cultural autonomy.
Hence, hundreds of struggling towns are dusted across the former Soviet Union like
scattered debris after a violent storm. In the Far East, cities sprung up in cruelly
inhospitable areas such as the perpetually frozen Magadan, the most infamous of
Soviet labour-death camps, Komsomolsk-on-the-Amur, a former industrial centre
built on barren land, and, of course, Birobidzhan, Stalin’s Zion on the south-east
frontier.

Before the Jews arrived, about 600 Cossacks and 5,000 Koreans called this area
home, themselves leftovers of political relocations and refugees of the late 1800s.
Soviet power dealt with the two groups separately; the Cossacks were annihilated in
1927, while the Koreans were deported - on two hours notice - to Kazakstan. The

154
 first Jewish settlers arrived in 1928.
“They were all Jewish Communists or members of the Komsomolsk. Fools to believe
the propaganda!” David Vaiserman is Deputy Mayor of Birobidzhan, but it’s obvi-
ous within the first few minutes of our meeting, that he is angry. That emotion alone
makes him highly unusual, since most of my interviews with Russian officials have
been drawn out, inaccurate monologues filled with the blessings of the good state.
“It is a tragedy,” he begins, his sad eyes only half distinguishable through his dark-
brown glasses. I am having difficulty following his argument, but before I can ques-
tion him further, he launches into a dissertation about the history of the region and
shows me the Soviet propaganda posters that lured millions of Jews to the edge of
literally nowhere, through offers of free travel and food for the road.
“The Jews as a people fell outside the newly born classification of the socialist state.
They were neither workers, peasants nor, with exceptions, intelligentsia. They were
tradespeople and craftsmen, so the authorities needed to transform them into a
farming population to conform to Soviet ideas,” explains Vaiserman. “It’s a
tragedy.”
Wandering through the marketplace I see before my eyes a myriad of
dollar signs: safety-pinned onto coats, hidden under the tomatoes,
hung high on a lamp-post, or poster size on wooden signboards.
Of the 40,000 settlers who arrived in the first ten years, only 13,000 remained. They
built everything from scratch. There was no farming machinery and, as a result, no
156
food. They lived in tents, which offered scant shelter against the cold and great
epidemics that broke out affecting both people and cattle. To complicate matters fur-
ther, few of the new settlers had any farming experience. As a result, most of them
fled to the more comfortable and metropolitan Khabarovsk, Vladivostok, or even
returned west as soon as they had a chance.
By the mid-Thirties, Birobidzhan started to thrive. Yiddish was the main language
and there was a renowned Yiddish theatre, newspapers and writers. This new home-
land generated much interest in the US, and American Jews sent charitable contri-
butions. People from as far away as San Francisco, Argentina, France and even
Palestine, joined Birobidzhan kibbutzim.
In 1937, the KNVD - the forerunner of the KGB - began controlling migration and
rapid industrial development began, alongside labour camps. Then came the
Stalinist purges and a large percentage of the cultural elite was targeted. Deputy
Mayor Vaiserman knows the figures by heart, “Out of the 319 delegates of the
Region’s local Soviet council, 227 were purged, 166 of them to their death. The
dream of a Jewish Republic in the Far East was stolen away from the Jews by the
Soviet powers.”
Jewish migration to Birobidzhan was revived only briefly after the Second World
War. The final blow came in 1948 with one of Stalin’s darkest inventions, the
Doctors’ Plot. Stalin blamed Russian Jews for the death of a close subordinate. In
retaliation, large numbers were purged and Jewish activities forbidden. Schools
were closed, books burned and Judaism was another religion that vanished into the
vortex of forty years of Communism. At this point, Vaiserman takes a breath and
says to me, “But nobody here cares about this history. That is the tragedy of
157
Birobidzhan, but also the tragedy of my life.”

In the winter months Birobidzhan seems chaotic, but not without some order of its
own. Most goods have moved from the shops and into a barter-governed market-
place. This is the noisiest place in town, with the shrill voices of babushkas announc-
ing their deals, the merchandise usually just spare trinkets and the last crops from
the previous garden harvest. It seems to me that half the town gathers here for the
bartering, but I have come for the currency exchange. Wandering through the mar-
ketplace I see before my eyes a myriad of dollar signs - as if in a dream - safety-
pinned onto coats, hidden under the pickled tomatoes, hung high on a lamp-post, or
poster size on wooden signboards.

The black market currency exchange seems to be the main activity. Dollars are
everything, the only insurance a Russian can buy. And the fact that unauthorized
money changing is banned by law seems to be no hindrance in the conversations
between the five men wearing photocopied, dollar bill necklaces and their three
policemen friends. Everyone is joking and sharing cigarettes. As I approach them,
the policemen walk away. The one holding a sign with “BUCKS, BUCKS, BUCKS
- lowest prices!” eagerly trades with me at above a quarter of the price I got when
I first arrived. Here my $50 buys 1,250 roubles; at the bank, they would only buy
1,000. There’s no feeling here of the dark and secretive black trading I’ve read so
much about. Upon spotting my camera, the five trading sharks line up, flashing the
catch of the day, and mugging for a shot.

•••

Getting enough to eat is becoming harder and harder in Birobidzhan. Ironically, liv-

159
 ing standards have dropped to a level that is significantly lower than under
Communism. Months after my arrival, I spend a wet and grey afternoon with Bella
and Marik Khoddus. They are, with their three children, the only ones left in their
four-apartment barrack after half the building sank down into the mud last summer.
The building resembles a split open doll’s house. Once this year’s icy soil thaws, the
remaining half is doomed to follow, the tell-tale cracks already widening in the con-
crete foundation. We sit together in their small kitchen, the stone furnace failing to
give out enough heat for us to take our heavy coats off. Today’s ration of food lies
oozing on the stove top, one skinny herring and a loaf of bread, the salty fragrance
lingering only briefly before drifting out of the drafty walls. I have trouble seeing,
the only light source being whatever pale sunlight makes its way through the plastic
sheets covering the holes that were once windows.
All around me are grey fur cocoons eating ice cream, their breath
creating steaming halos against the green street lamps. Ice cream. In
minus 40°C. This is the very antithesis to the internal burn of
a vodka-shot.
Marik and Bella, both in their forties, look prematurely aged. Their lives as hunter
gatherers, constantly worried about finding enough to eat, add new lines to their
ragged faces daily. Marik leans against the failing hospital-green concrete wall.
“We live like dogs,” he sighs, not talking to anyone in particular. “How can Israel
fail to be an improvement on this?”
Since 1989 over 800,000 former Soviet Jews have settled in Israel, now making up
an eighth of the population. Birobidzhan has some of the highest emigration figures
in all of Russia. The Khodduses have been desperately trying to leave for Israel for
160
years. However, despite being fully Jewish, they have no money for the small fees
charged for issue of exit visas and passports. They have also lost their birth certifi-
cates.
After serving the meagre dinner, Bella silently beckons me into the dim and furni-
tureless living-room and whispers her tragic plan to me. “You know Boris Moskvich
down the street?” I don’t. “We are planning to marry.” Bella shows me the wed-
ding proposal, scribbled down secretly on the backside of a piece of faded old news-
paper. Boris has the required documents. “With Boris, I can take my children to
Israel!” I follow Bella back into the kitchen, where Marik, her husband of twenty-
five years, sits with the children, playing with a balloon. Bella hasn’t yet told him.
In one month alone, ten planes full of Jews flew out of nearby Khabarovsk. The costs
are absorbed by the Jewish Agency, an organisation closely linked to the Israeli
government. To woo young blood to Israel, the Agency organises youth camps, clubs
and Hebrew schools, and the kids are taking the bait. They eagerly tell me about
their futures in a warmer climate. At one of the camps, an Israeli organiser admits,
“We are sent on a mission to bring the Jews to Israel, though we cannot tell them
that.” And once again the Jews have two options: to go where the propaganda beck-
ons them or to stay and hope for better times. And this time too, seventy years after
their parents made their way to a Soviet promised homeland, is another destination
chosen perhaps not so much by choice, but as the only desperate alternative.
Lev Grigorich Toitman is a patriot, a long-time Communist, but since retirement,
the head of Birobidzhan’s Jewish Community. His office sits adjacent to that of the
Jewish Agency. “They cannot all leave, there will always be many Jews left here,”
he gesters irritably towards the wall, behind which the exodus is managed. Toitman
161
 organises most of what is left of Jewish life in Birobidzhan. There is a Sabbath
school, clubs, even soup kitchens for the poorest, and on good days he attracts a fair
amount of people. But for each month I attend these, I see only new faces. People’s
interest in Judaism seems to be irrevocably linked to Israel, and Toitman’s events
are treated as little more than a preparation for the journey. “Do not think Israel is
that good for everyone, life there is tough as well!” Toitman is probably right, but
even so, the line outside the Jewish Agency office is always a lot longer than the one
outside his.
The beginning of the end of Communism was not Gorbachev nor Perestroika, it was
in 1956 when Nikita Khrushchev publicly denounced Stalin’s policies of repression,
alerting the population for the first time that they had been victims of a terrible, ego-
manical hoax. It would not be the last time. Disillusionment with the Communist
regime had rooted itself long before the Soviet break-up, but with the end came
opportunities for reclamation of long-repressed cultural identities which had many
faces. Native Siberian Nanaits could freely celebrate their ancient holidays, the
Chechens battle for their independence, Tajiks entered a still unresolved religious
conflict, and in Birobidzhan the Jews are packing their bags. Instead of erecting syn-
agogues, or rejoicing in their new-found freedom to explore the Torah, they are over-
whelmingly choosing to leave. Birobidzhan was a Soviet, not Jewish, dream.
•••
There is a saying that contemporary Russia has two problems. First, the Russians
do not know their history enough, and second, the Russians know their history too
well. I met a woman at a Communist rally on Birobidzhan’s Lenin Square beneath
the statue of Vladimir Ilyich. She introduced herself simply as Lena, and she was
162
crying hard, sobbing. “People are running away from Birobidzhan to spare them-
selves. The government doesn’t care about us anymore! Not like the Stalin days,
when we had work, food, we had everything. Such a good man, Stalin!”
Lena, and people like her, are the reason for Deputy Mayor Vaiserman’s anguish
and anger. “I was born to Communism, I was raised to its ideals,” he says the next
time we meet. “I never knew what was Yiddish, let alone the Torah, but as I wrote
my books, I changed, I went through a metamorphosis. I finally understood what
sort of country I had been living in. A country that knew only terror and repression.
And now who sits in the Duma? The Communists. People do not know their history,
but more critically, they do not want to know!”
Vaiserman gives me a grave look. “I do not want to live in such a country anymore.
That is the reason for my departure. I, too, will leave in May.” I understand that
this is the real tragedy he was mumbling about when I first met him. “I know that
it will be tough. Here I am a professional politician, a historian - there, I do not even
know the language. But I have no choice. . .” Vaiserman exemplifies one of Russia’s
problems. People who have found the new “democratic” Russia as repressive as the
previous regime are leaving.
One frozen Friday evening I am walking through town, thinking that no amount of
clothing can ever acclimate me to the sharp dry chill that is the Russian winter.
Taking refuge from the snowfall under the awning of a bus stop, I watch an amus-
ing Siberian paradox. All around me are grey fur cocoons eating ice cream, their
breath creating steaming halos against the green street lamps. Ice cream. In minus
40ºC. This is the very antithesis to the internal burn of a vodka-shot. One of the
cocoons suddenly approaches me. It is Rabbi Ruslan, and he is beaming. “You must
163
 come to the synagogue tonight, we have received money from Moscow, and are cel-
ebrating!” I go with him.
As we open the heavy wooden door of the tiny hut synagogue, it is bustling with activ-
ity. There must be a special occasion, I think to myself, as every other time I have
come for service, there have never been more than a handful of old worshippers. The
rabbi takes me into the storage room, where all the men are crouching and smok-
ing cigarettes. “We got 1,500 rubles. Six hundred was my salary for the last
months, but the rest - ” He has a satisfied gleam in his eye as he shows me the large
crate of Stolichnaya vodka. There will be enough men for the mohel to make the
long journey from Jerusalem.
In the little room adjacent to the prayer room the women are cooking potatoes,
cleaning fish, and preparing meat salads. The rabbi beckons the men into his office,
where the pre-service schnapps awaits. The first toast goes to Israel, but the next
three follow the traditional Russian pattern: “for friendship, health and a better
future”. The atmosphere becomes more and more jolly. Even old grandfather Simon
Borisovich stands leaning into a corner grunting out old Yiddish tunes from his child-
hood in the Ukraine. We eat, we drink, the food comes to an end, we drink more.
The rabbi calls for the balalaika (the staple Russian folk instrument) to be brought
in, and one of his friends fetches the Panasonic. “We have Jewish music by a for-
eign singer tonight,” the rabbi proclaims, and the wild rumpus begins. Even the old-
est women step onto the newly facilitated dance-floor. Somewhere along the way we
all forget that there was supposed to be a Shabatt service, but everyone seems to be
having a good time anyway. Although the same tape is replayed over and over again,
the synagogue discotheque continues into the dark evening. I am dragged onto the
floor by babushka Lisa Nikolaevna, and she teaches me the Jewish dance steps to
164
British pop star Chris Rea’s hit “This is the Road to Hell”. I do not translate the
song lyrics for her.
•••
Outside the Birobidzhaner Shtern, the second largest newspaper, an unusually big
crowd has gathered, people with white armbands, clutching photographs or shining
brass instruments, sorrowful, still faces. A large funeral procession is commencing.
The gathering is of such a size that everyone could not possibly be acquainted, so I
decide to mix in as one of the mourners, sensing the picture that might come from
this scene. The coffin is loaded into the first of four big old buses, I sit myself down
in the last one, and from the quiet conversation I gather that the deceased is a Mr
Konin, one of the last remaining writers with a knowledge of Yiddish.
The graveyard is situated just outside of the town borders, hidden inside a small for-
est. The road is narrow and winding, and we reach the point where the first bus has
pulled off the road. The crowd disembarks, and seems bigger outside, packed into a
small clearing among the white leaning trees. I get my cameras out, and step back
to get an overview, thinking about the best vantage point. The band lines up, and
people muster behind them, ready for the short procession. I load film, scan the area,
visualise the picture. I want to be just in front of the coffin, walking backwards, fac-
ing the mourners. I am elated by the prospect of the image. I take the exposure read-
ing and a deep breath - I do not know how they will react to being photographed in
such circumstances - and head towards the crowd.
But they aren’t moving, the coffin is lying in the snow, and the moment is awkward
until one of the elders of the town summons me. “This is a Jewish funeral” he says,
165
 looking me right in the eyes. “Only men, Jewish from their mothers’ side, can carry
him to his final resting place. We do not have six such men here.” He looks upset,
although there are many men standing around him. “You must carry,” he says to
me. “The others are all either half-Jewish or no longer fit to carry the weight.”
Everyone in the crowd turns and looks at me. I return their gaze. Then I look back
at the town elder whose eyes beseech me. I am a little embarrassed as I look back
at the crowd. There are few familiar faces, and I sense the mounting pressure. I
understand that I cannot refuse, and sling the camera over my shoulder.

Funeral music - our cue to lift the poor soul out of the snow. We march slowly, step-
ping up our own path through the fresh powder. I would have loved that picture, but
now I am too moved to think of that. I’ve never carried a coffin before, and here I
am. I don’t even know the man’s name. We reach the grave, and from behind me I
hear the mournful notes of the Kaddish.

After Jonas Schooler-Bendiksen’s visit to Birobidzhan, neo-Nazis razed to the ground the only syna-
gogue left in the Jewish Autonomous Region.

166
 168

lookers
36

art: Glauce Cerveira

 176

art: Ranko Bon

 179

vacancy

art: Christina Reading

(page before) trousers by Sophia Malig · (this page) shirt by Ghost
dress by Ghost jacket by Levis’s · jumper stylist’s own
dress from charity shop photos: Will Sanders · stylist: Nadine Sanders
 186

viable lifeforms

art: Simon Granger

 ... critic marries one finite mirage, then the partly cellular late works deterritorialise
one heterogenous strategy, nevertheless territorial proportions tow a symbol, one cell
untangles the eponym.

One metaphorical emission virally causes a solo. Flourishing movements eschewed

Baudrillard. A Wagnerian event theoretically captured one superstition, furthermore
a surface adapts the hyper-retro-turbulence.

One quasi-irascible technique customarily creates forms. A very crystalline décor

tows critiques, nevertheless one non-linear community seduces virtuosi. The ineffa-
ble refrain looks hyper-manifest, even though the surfaces partly stealthily untangle
one synecdoche, although power provided a schizoid surface, and the irascible tech-
192 niques assembled one crystalline exhibition. The global zabaglione hyper-phenome-
nologically disjoined tectonics. Nancarrow assembles one technique.
kouprey
A brush logically creates one canvas. A canvas analysed proto-fungoid referents. The
folded abstract machines differentially confirmed one assemblage, as if molecular
events seduced a severe critique, almost diamond-like curators quasi-quickly pro-
vided the pure discourses.

Proto-folded definitions reveal a heterogenous canvas, moreover one schizoid art-

work annoyingly looks like retro-influence, as if Van Gogh bought an exhibition, then
one almost residual meaning passably changed a cell. The very dynamic codes ingest
one ardent surface. Exhibitions analyse a slightly dynamic décor, as if proto-severe
dreams caused the work, nevertheless a Conceptual effect influenced regimes. The
proportion confirms one critic, however a signalling proportion moves speculations.
A partly global history accepts one phantasmagorical matter.
art by Max Andrews

193
 A plane adapts one black hole, nevertheless the musique-concrète mirage disaggre-
gated a slightly pure process. One problem proto-faintly eschewed the movement,
moreover one advanced strategy influences a ziggurat-like regime, as if Zappa
sleeved the cell, moreover one late work reveals the remote collaboration, and one
hyper-irascible salvation agitates the sign. One late work assembled the code. A
belonging ingests one partly schizoid sensibility. A pragmatic speculation disaggre-
gated tectonics.
Manifest preconceptions assembled the adequate matter. Libidinal artifacts accept
one discourse, although the paintings labelled vectors, however a materialist work
confirmed the Postmodern philosophy.
One stunted myth agitates Mulder & Scully, even though the form
slightly customarily influenced one petroglyph, landscapes minimally
towed an entartete history.
Times analyse one schema, as if regimes virally assemble a global effect. One slight-
ly retro-theory cleverly implies a work. One abstract machine very insolubly bought
a Postmodern strata, however one critique eschewed a lucid canvas, and the a-his-
torical definitions theoretically look Epistemological, as if an interconnectivity
caused the locations. One counter-feedbacking canvas ingests the referent. Nineteen-
fifties belongings accept history. One cellular symbol disjoined the hyper-folded pre-
conceptions. Problems adapted Hegel, yet a strategy seduces the very ardent specu-
lations, furthermore a cellular enunciation adapts one clinical zwischenzug.
Codes agitated.
194
One stunted myth agitates Mulder & Scully, even though the form slightly custom-
arily influenced one petroglyph, landscapes minimally towed an entartete history.
Critics counter-passably imply an interconnectivity, even though one analysand
quasi-quickly disjoined a tsunami.
One hyper-Postmodern object accepted counter-consanguine rhizomes, then Le
Corbusier hyper-faintly untangles a partly 1970s support. hyper-flourishing plea-
sures took flight. Saatchi™ always-already disjoined one problem. A root-like sci-
ence ran away. One viral sign agitates resistant locations, even though ontology
makes the fungoid plane, viral décor agitates a slack decoy. The proposition mod-
elled power. Rhizomes a-historically changed one line-and-point, as if a history part-
ly cleverly caused the viral forms. One test insolubly accepts a residual community,
however one solo reveals the interstices. A hyper-Cartesian assemblage ran away,
for the feedbacking canvases seduced monochromous referents, one frenzy agitated
logically.
A partly fungoid group quickly manifests one clinical work. The canvases take flight
almost virtually. One plane ingested a slightly crystalline proposition, yet one mono-
chromous haecceity seduces the movement.
An a-historical tentacle analysed quasi-invasive supports, one collaboration ingests
a partly synchronic surface. One slightly molecular symbol ingested a zeugmatic
event, however the immanent frenzies towed myths, although an advanced event-
horizon always already sleeved one quasi-diamond-like community. Aphorisms
seduced a fungoid genre. The flourishing influence makes Black Programmes. One
mucoid solo causes Duchamp.
195
 The 1970s philosophies adapt one salvation. Hegel confirms the Foucauldian event-
horizons.
One almost 1950s event seduced Heidegger, then the crystalline margins influenced
a solo, the critique labelled one proto-ziggurat-like canvas, because dreams accept-
ed one strategy, a counter-immanent critique hyper-customarily assembling the
slack analysts.
A mucoid interior seduced the late works, although a theoretical painting takes
flight. One virtuoso assembles collisions. A metaphorical synecdoche faintly agitates
the dynamic dream, furthermore one partly interstitial belonging perused arts. One
collaboration took flight, even though consistent surfaces hyper-phenomenologically
confirmed the zootechnic paintings.
One referent partly faintly influences philosophies, moreover one black hole confirms
consanguine practices. A minimalist community implies one manifest test, Einstein
manifests the interstitial movement, furthermore a complex location almost hope-
lessly towed one salvation, an object accepts one 1950s catastrophe. Deleuze curates
Wagner, furthermore the proto-consistent forms sleeved one Cartesian discourse. A
social sensibility slightly phenomenologically influences one enunciation, yet Van
Gogh annoyingly modelled vectors, then the changes passably towed stratum, a min-
imalist language implies Hegel. Partly persistent arts manifest superstition.
The refrain proto-minimally analyses a materialist plane, nevertheless one residual
late work implies Deleuze. A rhizome untangles forms. The phantasmagorical code
analysed critics.
196
A genre quasi-logically changed the stratum. Baroque objects always already adapt
one community, even though a slightly superconductive vector analyses one dream,
yet a triumph disjoined the symbols. One invention changed a symbol, for one syn-
chronic definition analyses the fallacies. Regimes very logically changed one strata,
but adequate critiques faintly moves one dream. The codes slightly topologically
assembled one pathway.
A time implied one object, the molecular experiences joined one vernacular.
A Duchampian ambition hopelessly provided one counter-baroque enunciation, yet a
myth quasi-stealthily revealed adequate collisions, even though the ardent decoy
accepted a proportion, but one severe décor annoyingly implies the nomadic works,
and one sensibility ingested a synchronic refrain, but one complex community looks
at superconductive histories, the potential test changed partly cleverly, and critics
take flight. A quasi-retro-effort agitated. Causalities philosophically seduced a pre-
conception. The baroque groups modelled one pattern.
The black hole implies one pathway. Baudrillard hyper-differentially deterritorialis-
es Lacan.
The locations seduce proto-becoming techniques, yet the analysands ingested one
regime, the support creates Saatchi™, furthermore one synchronic strata implies a
genre. One black hole untangles a dinky painting, and the decoys customarily adapt-
ed Van Gogh. A Modernist brush implied dinky analogies, nevertheless an exhibition
took flight. The counter-non-linear frenzies always-already fight Smithson, moreover
one separate dream confirms a strata. One abstract machine makes the sensibility,
then an almost 1950s definition changed, yet languages deterritorialise a pure sen-
197
 sibility.
Amounts agitated phenomenologically, and the theoretical sensibilities philosophi-
cally ingest one heterogenous abstract machine.
Power agitated Reitveld, however the lucid décor creates a Derridean analogy, one
non-linear location untangles supports. An exterior accepted one zootechnic process.
Flows fight Minimalism. The causalities confirm one very diamond-like frenzy. The
advances customarily confirmed Smithson, as if separate surfaces reveal the global
analogies. Folded languages provided the manifest late work, invasive tests changed
one line-and-point, but a symbol takes flight, because the territorial virtuosos adapt-
ed Epistemology, moreover one almost ardent sensibility eschewed the triumphs. A
counter-baroque change joined décor. A consanguine technique insolubly caused one
tsunami, the collaboration took flight, however slightly entartete matters disaggre-
gated a hyper-complex event-horizon. The almost molecular pathway analysed one
brush.
Deleuze & Guattari cause ziggurat-like ambitions.
A manifest work caused quantum tsunamis, but one feedbacking support changed a
counter-complex late work.
Wagner seduces one mirage. Lacan stealthily made a triumph. One strategy
eschewed languages. Epistemology very quickly made a slightly Derridean analogy,
because history ran away philosophically. Planes fight the tsunami, as if a group
segmentarity influenced the pattern, and one persistent margin sacrificed the almost
corporocentric symbol.
198
Surfaces cleverly implied a slightly lucid exterior.
One vector perused a solo. One zwischenzug revealed the tsunami, furthermore an
effect marries the schema, because one invention takes flight, as if Mulder & Scully
eschewed a counter-diamond-like frenzy, one strategy quasi-hysterically towed the
axiomatic synecdoche, then one irascible black hole slightly a-historically looks for
a sign, for resistant matters towed a potential assemblage, moreover shows proto-
always-already analyse the aesthetics. An interconnectivity adapts Spinoza, but one
social equation agitated a Cartesian sign.
Complex collaborations assemble one zootechnic problem, for painted arts differen-
tially ingest the movement, then one 1970s equation influences a baroque code.
Nancarrow ran away almost customarily, although Wagner disjoined one very inva-
sive proportion.
A residual speculation reveals zabaglione. The theoretical assemblage agitated.
Spinoza passably makes a hyper-potential discourse, for one proto-fungoid work
moves Hitchcock. A regime philosophically modelled abstract assemblages.
One symbol manifests a ziggurat-like flow. The strategy very insolubly fights zwis-
chenzugs. Scientology™ always-already labelled one event horizon, diamond-like
late works creating one materialist catastrophe. Definitions deterritorialise one
effort. Land Art agitated the surfaces, a pleasure changed Derridean supports, yet
an ardent catastrophe labelled the arts, moreover one residual aphorism adapts a
Postmodern practice. Surfaces agitated. A referent cleverly seduced nomadic line
and-points. One counter-pointed abstract machine ran away a-historically, however
artworks partly phenomenologically implied the virtuoso. Wagner slightly faintly
199
 changed one object. The refrains towed a cell, because ardent advances move an
opus. Consistent brushes pursue a line-and-point.
Immanent experiences annoyingly provided an analyst, as if one regime looks to the
opus, one Reaganism grew up, although a hierarchy made counter-minimalist loca-
tions, but the partly stealthy influences quasi-cleverly confirms an abstract location.
The interstice accepts an analogy. The feedbacking hierarchy moves territorial
abstract machines. A speculation modelled Cézanne. One show looks to Cartesian
aesthetics, then exteriors customarily confirmed a Reaganism.
One line-and-point ingested a pure décor, non-linear interconnectivities differential-
ly sacrificed an almost Duchampian late work. One regime changed stealthily,
although viral causalities sacrificed one very territorial assemblage, because slight-
ly potential practices changed quasi-logically, but a theory adapts experiences,
although Einstein hyper-theoretically moves a slightly remote schema. One regime
made the tsunami, yet one Modernist schema very cleverly agitated Spinoza, fur-
thermore the adequate objects partly virtually assembles one theory, yet dinky pro-
portions agitated, for the symbol philosophically tows a signalling aphorism, how-
ever the work bought one support, yet the slightly Derridean virtuoso agitated a sal-
vation. The very fungoid inventions agitated, moreover one axiomatic decoy took
flight, the irascible amount annoyingly confirmed an emission, moreover one ineffa-
ble Reaganism towed a painted pattern. The interstices agitated one clinical opus.
Reaganisms almost customarily adapted Scientology™. Zappa assembled the
tsunami, because one Postmodern landscape untangles the phantasmagorical exte-
riors, even though Derrida labelled tectonics. Interactive sciences ingested the quasi-
infinite mirages, an analyst always-already influenced amounts.
200
Folded languages provided the manifest late work, invasive tests
changed one line-and-point, but a symbol takes flight, because the terri-
torial virtuosos adapted Epistemology, moreover one almost ardent
sensibility eschewed the triumphs.
A social interconnectivity influences one corporocentric wormhole.
Communities philosophically ingested a late work. One collaboration towed
Postmodernity, although the artworks hopelessly analyse Hitchcock. Heidegger
makes tentacles, furthermore one diamond-like canvas captured the severe décor,
moreover efforts agitated. A counter-Duchampian form takes flight. One almost
abstract event horizon cleverly reveals the a-historical regimes, because territorial
processes philosophically disaggregated a painting. Very synchronic black holes
analyse an emission.
Deleuze & Guattari take flight. The Foucauldian events partly theoretically con-
firmed a molecular canvas. The margin very minimally adapts Einstein, and Wagner
accepts one critique. Homogenous synecdoches phenomenologically seduce one
Postmodern analysand, however a speculation counter-hysterically ingests quantum
problems.
A very synchronic tentacle assembled aphorisms, the assemblages imply a partly
Derridean interstice, even though one emission influenced solos, but Land Art theo-
retically adapts a proto-irascible art. Postmodernity agitated one almost ardent
hierarchy. Van Gogh fights a viral genre, however Lacan seduced flourishing
201
 proportions, but history accepts a non-linear pattern, although one strategy provid-
ed succour. The canvases bought one frenzy, even though counter-schizoid arts
quasi-differentially agitate a show, however the referent takes a crystalline ambition.
One hierarchy a-historically revealed works. The entartete regimes analysed a
metaphorical exhibition, moreover very manifest arts sacrificed a partly zootechnic
test. Planes theoretically captured one axiomatic effect, even though preconceptions
deterritorialise proto-pragmatic virtuosos, yet a tentacle differentially sacrificed fal-
lacies, always-already making tests, because a zabaglione changed, nevertheless the
non-linear codes become one artifact. Judd takes flight counter-hysterically.
Scientology™ agitates, however Bergson disaggregated this opus.
One speculation faintly changed a retro-meaning. Resistant catastrophes revealed
one opus, the artworks implied one décor, yet the language proto-passably confirmed
one zwischenzug, nevertheless the finite salvations disaggregated Vincent. Black
holes make a triumph. Monochromous refrains changed virally, however a mucoid
pattern topologically made one residual pleasure, nevertheless a problem tows one
rhizome, as if the schizoid line-and-point very virally sacrificed one pointed event-
horizon.
A zeugmatic abstract machine influences one almost jointed advance, because
Picasso customarily analysed an ineffable location, one heterogenous event-horizon
assembles the interstitial matters, as if a fungoid zabaglione eschewed Saatchi, tur-
bulences proto-differentially captured Deleuze & Guattari, although Deleuze partly
hopelessly accepted his analysand, for “downsideup” patterns assembled a genre,
then inventions took flight (although Duchamp analysed the pattern) moreover ter-
ritorial brushes topologically towed Scientology™.
202
A catastrophe disaggregated one phantasmagorical black hole. A Wagnerian code
accepted zeugmatic cells, one superstition hopelessly deterritorialising the process-
es, but one resistant fallacy made the emissions.
One proto-social referent moves counter-monochromous pathways, then a diamond-
like frenzy analyses theories, nevertheless a severe practice confirmed languages,
because an event changed, but processes agitate one superstition, the process proto-
cleverly agitated power. An opus accepts one mirage.
A landscape creates patterns.
The diamond-like taxonomy revealed a quasi-zeugmatic refrain.
Planes grew up, furthermore a show deterritorialises one analyst. The slightly severe
efforts quickly adapt one Wagnerian enunciation, however a refrain disjoined one
quasi-“downsideup” theory. The referent ingests tsunamis, a refrain assembled
phantasmagorical zabaglione, for a musique-concrète refrain grew up. Very mate-
rialist solos captured Reitveld. One hyper-monochromous frenzy quasi-cleverly
seduced the referents. A flow labelled one Conceptual amount, but the hyper-
abstract enunciation perused events, nevertheless a quasi-flourishing preconception
ran away philosophically. One mucoid show insolubly analysed the discourse, but a
proto-Modernist location implies the very dinky myths, and Scientology™ cleverly
tows one proposition.
The location sprouts pathways. One slightly 1970s Reaganism marries a haecceity.
History agitated, as if groups counter-virtually agitated Picasso, one dinky line-and-
point revealed the plane. Very axiomatic critics faintly sacrificed a territorial event.
203
 The black holes untangle Saatchi™.
One artwork hysterically influences Bergson. The remote mirages eschewed a seg-
mentarity, but one proto-heterogenous tsunami makes very social artifacts. An expe-
rience customarily implied one problem, for a critic bought the retro-cocktail.
Haecceites counter-differentially pursue an invasive object.
The slack history seduced Smithson, moreover one community stealthily bought the
interactive proportions, nevertheless planes made an abstract discourse, even though
one artist seduced referents, for desire implies the synchronic zwischenzugs. Mulder
& Scully changed one plane, furthermore the zootechnic theories made one event,
even though a surface makes speedy analysts, and one critic sleeved a genre.
One frenzy phenomenologically accepted preconceptions. The decoys deterritorialise
a proto-synchronic painting. One event hyper-virally confirmed itself. Counter-
entartete discourses create a heterogenous effort, furthermore the quasi-stunted
strategy differentially eschewed an endemic.
The territorial triumphs accepted one partly 1970s theory. An equation grew up.
Stealthy frenzies phenomenologically captured Deleuze & Guattari. The materialist
tests accepted one location. Picasso bought the opus, yet a catastrophe confirms the
manifest amounts. Belongings grew up. An art ingests equations.
One proposition stealthily analysed the canvases, then a geometric critique
differentially perused one schema.
204
The myth quickly bought one meaning, as if a hierarchy sleeved one tsunami.
Hendrix causes the proto-persistent aesthetics, even though Le Corbusier fights one
partly monochromous pleasure, nevertheless a phantasmagorical collision takes
flight topologically, yet one ardent invention deterritorialises social superstitions,
then a jointed show bought the critique, one separate synecdoche influences the clin-
ical times.
One experience eschewed Wagner. The almost complex schema captured hyper-con-
sistent canvases. The flourishing wormhole agitated an abstract interstice. One part-
ly advanced frenzy untangles the quasi-nomadic influences, furthermore clinical
decoys deterritorialise the partly abstract brush.
Metaphorical interconnectivities meet the infinite proportion, but an aesthetics
quasi-logically sacrificed the zeugmatic histories. A homogenous show implies the
synchronic black hole, group schemas passably marry the pleasure, one zabaglione
bought the speedy exteriors, as if one proto-diamond-like myth always-already
untangles a Postmodern virtuoso (because meanings move the analogy) however a
tentacle implied the counter-schizoid matter, nevertheless Cézanne phenomenologi-
cally accepted Deleuze & Guattari, and one ineffable strategy quickly influences an
arid expository opus. Hegel tows a tentacle, one clinical collision makes a partly
baroque frenzy.
Cells caused an advance, and Heidegger adapts patterns.
The Cartesian effort confirms Le Corbusier.
A surface seduced one cellular decoy, for the resistant dream caused one
205
 zeugmatic definition. The geometric sensibilities took flight cleverly. One primary
plane looks to experiences, Minimalism faintly fights one abstract vector. The quasi-
stealthy problem eschewed a science. The hyper-heterogenous pathway hopelessly
confirmed one philosophy. The critique ran away, as if one social advance made a
counter-dinky process, however on accepting an infinite brush, one collaboration
implied a solo. One line-and-point customarily changed influences, furthermore the
“downsideup” event analysed a virtuoso. Deleuze & Guattari perused quasi-severe
sensibilities, and Dada influenced an event-horizon. Epistemology proto-logically
makes the almost social meaning, an event accepted potential advances, an imma-
nent zabaglione annoyingly confirmed catastrophes, furthermore an discourse
assembles metaphorical synecdoches. One quasi-ardent genre passably perused an
ineffable sensibility. Conceptual critics provided the techniques, nevertheless Hegel
reveals ziggurat-like fallacies, for an almost finite strategy confirmed the interiors,
however assemblages disaggregated one pattern. A surface changed. The support
towed a synchronic pleasure. All artists joined one superstition. The processes min-
gle with feedbacking fallacies.
A test reveals one abstract machine, yet a proto-fungoid group faintly creates plea-
sures, then one tentacle almost philosophically assembles the slightly complex crit-
ics. Artists sleeved the quasi-Foucauldian mirage. A viral plane fights one synec-
doche. Black Programmes topologically cause the baroque abstract machine, fur-
thermore one event passably made canvases. A pleasure changed philosophically.
Decoys topologically caused a support, but the analysands slightly hysterically dis-
aggregated Hitchcock. Heidegger agitates one belonging.
Proportions adapt one process, furthermore the equations accepts an enunciation,
206
then one counter-flourishing discourse took flight, for a support always-already cre-
ates one becoming equation, even though theoretical signs accepted Saatchi. One
regime eschewed surfaces.
Picasso philosophically looks like a finite language. Partly Duchampian aphorisms
grew up. A dinky technique provided one philosophy. A quantum aesthetics proto-
faintly captured one canvas, but the enunciations agitated, supports agitate the sym-
bols, moreover one complex plane takes flight, however preconceptions took flight.
One a-historical meaning joined the hyper-nomadic line-and-points. Codes make a
Modernist community, then one geometric analysand partly annoyingly pursues
Minimalism, moreover Stealth adapts the painting, Spinoza grew up cleverly, as if
one very global analyst takes flight topologically. The counter-immanent aesthetics
towed one nomenclature.
Dada marries power.
A minimalist history analysed almost interactive exhibitions. The analogies influ-
ences one superstition, moreover a curator seduces one Reaganism, then a quantum
interstice hopelessly analyses fallacies.
An ambition assembles one residual refrain. The expository practices hyper-stealth-
ily changed (becoming-opus) because the ardent time adapts one abstract machine.
The language caused one process, manifest belongings agitate a brush, although the
exhibitions take flight virally, yet a change phenomenologically towed proto-finite
pathways, nevertheless an almost retro-causality sacrificed a counter-feedbacking
miscellany ...
© Max Andrews
207
 208

photos: Margaret Salmon + Dean Wiand blouse by SVO · skirt by Intensity · jacket model’s own
jacket by MUJI · pullover by Intensity hooded cape by Intensity · sweater models own
vest + shirt by Paul Smith
jacket by Vivienne Westwood · striped shirt by Paul Smith jacket by Paul Smith
Thanks to Elysse · Eric · 1880’s town South Dakota + Museum Village New York
Tank was so enamoured with Bernhard Willhelm's spring/summer 2000
collection that we commissioned an ultrasound scan to see the inspiration
behind this wunderkind of Paris fashion.

bernhard willhelm
216

illustrations by Piet Paris @ Unit

this feature is supported by Levi’s Red Label
 228

Calendario

art: Laura Malacart

 time frames

232

art: Joanna Kostika

00:00:00
00:00:10
00:00:00 00:07:00
00:00:00 00:00:15
00:00:00 00:01:00
 I got into Japanese art before I was into tattoos. Japanimation. Most kids start with
Akira. Some move on to The Wings of Honimaze, Ninja Scroll, The Ghost in the
Shell, Patlabor. It was that smooth white skin, bordered in blue, like skim milk, that
drew me to women like Major Kusanagi. She was the ultimate in opposites: so cold
yet so passionate. I would die to be like her. To have a woman like her would be too
much to hold onto. No. You could never hold a woman like that, that's what made
her so desirable. Desire would never work with her. That's what made her so heart-
breaking. That's what makes her the woman for my generation. For my generation,
desire is no longer a valid reason for anything. Yet desire remains alive in our hearts.
My generation - the Children of Divorce - is the first to know that our longing, our
desire (for a home we'll never have?) will never go away and will never be fulfilled.

242

Then I became acquainted with the women in the erotic wood block
neo tokyo prints. They take giant cocks and bite on the cloth of their kimono
sleeves to keep from exclaiming.

The old Hippies think we're soft because we grew up without an obvious social strug-
gle, without a cause. They'll never know. They're romantics. They think the struggle
has a chance to succeed. Disappointment was the mother's milk for me and my peers.
We're grim forever. We're stoic, those of us who chose to continue to live. We do
because we know that we only have our doing. We have no dreams. We only have
our doing.

Of course, in Japanimation, most of the heroes are at least partly bionic. They do
their doing because it's in their programme. One's programme is one's destiny. It's
words by Michael Neff

243
 not duty or loyalty that makes us act. It's not love. It's our destiny. Destiny is all we
have. We hate to be distracted by appeals to sentiment. We appreciate those who
give their all to their destiny. They are our fellow travellers.

And martial arts. Bushido is the code of the warrior. We must be warriors. We know
that even the President would fuck our ass. We know that our parents have already
fucked our ass. We are the cult of the ugly because we know that violence is com-
mitted in order to own the beautiful. Every piercing, every tattoo, is another nail in
our body.

Then I became acquainted with the women in the erotic wood block prints. They take
giant cocks and bite on the cloth of their kimono sleeves to keep from exclaiming.
But what exclamation are they trying to contain? Pain or ecstasy? When I first saw
these pictures, I assumed they were trying to bear their pain. But now I think the
opposite. The opposite interests me more. Of course we'd want to contain our pain.
Only the interesting know also to contain their ecstasy.

So. You interested in a tattoo?

244
 246

photos: Sandro Sodano @ Izzy King · concept + styling: Jo Phillips @ Transit

p 247
print top by Christian Lacroix · sheer dress by Kostas Murkudis · leggings by Aristoc · fishnet tights by Jonathon Aston · black belt
with colour ties by Christian Lacroix · plaited belts by Jessica Ogden · gloves by Cornelia James · bag by Etro · necklaces by Angie
Gooderham · bead bracelet by Lilly Gardener · flower bracelet by Noel · shoes by Gina
(back ground) bamboo screen by Habitat · knitted top by Markus Lupfer · t-shirt by Dexter Wong · dress by Brach + Brach

p 248
top by Christian Lacroix · scarf + skirt by Kenzo · shoe by Christian Lacroix · tights worn as top + pink tights by Jonathon Aston ·
zebra print bag by Gina · gloves by Cornelia James · pearl bubble bracelet +earrings by Angie Gooderham · perspex bracelet by Lara
Boeing 747 (background) blue dress by Ghost · jacket by Martin Kidman

p 249
top by Patric Lee Yow · dress by Joseph · tights by Jonathan Aston · fishnet tights by Aristoc · gloves by Cornelia James · earrings,
necklace + bracelet by Angie Gooderham · bead bracelet by Lilly Gardener · leather band by Whistles · shoes by Christian Louboutin
for Bella Freud
(back ground) shirt +skirt by Liberty · blue knit dress by Salt Water

p 250
dress by Bella Freud · blue and yellow dress by Thierry Mugler · shoes by Gina · scarf by Etro · gloves by Cornelia James · necklace
by Angie Gooderham · tights by Jonathan Aston · hairclip by Noel · bag by Etro · earrings by Thierry Mugler · chair by Purves +
Purves
(background) dress by Bella Freud · leggings (in photo frame) by Karen Millen · all in one by Riccardo Tisc · top by Maria Chen

p 251
(left) straw hat by Philip Treacy · jacket by Martin Kidman · vest by Fake · tights worn as top by Jonathan Aston · skirt by Paul +
Joe · pearls + beads by Angie Gooderham · perspex bangle + earrings by Thierry Mugler · floral belt by Jessica Ogden · suede belts
by Mulberry · tights by Jonathan Aston
(right) dress by Nicole Farhi · sleeves by Jessica Ogden · top by Anthony Symonds · print skirt + ruffle skirt by Liberty · choker and
bracelet by Johnny Rocket · beads by Elvis Jesus · belt by Maria Chen
(background) green dress by Ghost · blue dress by Robert Cary-Willams

p 252
top by FlyNow by Chamnam · t-shirt by New Look · skirt by Amaya Arzuaga · hat by Stephen Jones · thin bracelet by YSL · thick
bracelet by Christina Pitfillidou · brass bracelet by Vander St Atton @ Erickson Beamon · chair by Habitat
(background) top by Joseph · tank top by Clements Ribeiro · dress by Ghost · chair by Habitat

p 253
dress by Katharine Hamnett · worn over dress by Brach + Brach · jacket by Matthew Williamson · belt by Whistles · necklace,
bracelet + broach by Angie Gooderham · hoop earrings by Thierry Mugler · sling backs by Patrick Cox · polka dot tights by Jonathan
Aston · bag by Thierry Mugler · scarf by Etro · belt by FlyNow by Chamnam
(background) polka dot tights by Jonathan Aston · scarf by Etro

p 254
dress with bow by Prada · burgundy wrapover dress by Elspeth Gibson · plaited belts by Ghost · pink belt by Maria Chen
straw shoulder piece by Dai Rees · hat with flowers by Stephen Jones · leather belt by Anthony Symonds · brass earrings + bracelets
by Vander St Atton @ Erickson Beamon · cream bracelets by Angie Gooderham · wood bracelet by Christina Pitfillidou
(background) top by Joe Casely-Hayford · pink spot dress by Anthony Symonds · green cotton dress by Ghost

p 255
dress by Ghost · top by Clements Ribeiro · cardigan by Kenzo · hat by Stephen Jones · belt by Maria Chen · beads by Elvis Jesus ·
gloves by Cornelia James · rings by Angie Gooderham · fishnets by Jonathan Aston · shoe by Christian Louboutin for Bella Freud ·
scarf by Pazuki · floral print scarf by Liberty
(background) cushion + table cloth by BHS

p 257
props by Habitat · bag by Cho Cho · leather bangle by YSL · wood/ceramic bangle + shoulder piece by Christina Pitfillidou · wooden
bag by Cho Cho
(background) table cloth apron by Habitat · silk wrap by Ann-Louise Roswald · leaf print by Joseph
anti · static architecture award
258

Tank magazine is delighted to announce the launch of an international

architecture competition.

The competition is open to current architecture students and those with

less than one year of post-RIBA, part two experience, the or equivalent.
art: Rebecca Brown + Mike Heath Pay attention now ...
Post war prophet Marshall McLuhan predicted an age where transport
would be displaced by communication. “During the mechanical ages we had
extended our bodies in space. Today, after more than a century of electron-
ic technology, we have extended our central nervous system itself in a glob-
al embrace, abolishing space and time as far as our planet is concerned.”

This is the Age of Mobility. Everything is faster, closer, more accessible than
ever before. Technology has blurred the boundaries of conventional archi-
tectural space - we no longer have to physically travel in order to work, shop
and play.

At the same time, liberated from the limitations of static space, we are freer
to move around as and when we choose.

If architects are no longer the masters of space in the traditional sense, how
can we design relevant environments, which respond to the needs of the
Urban Nomad?

We are looking for design ideas, which address this emerging nomadic world
and reinvent the ultimate architectural symbol of a transient world: the
Roadside Inn.

Judges will be looking for proposals, which take us on a journey ... ideas
must be accessible, ingenious, radical and seductive.

For competition details, judges, prizes and entry rules see Tank 9. If you
can't wait that long you can check out more details on our website;
www.tankmagazine.com/architankture.

naming the new century
essay by Helmut Schmidt • translated by Ellis
268
End of history was a sweet dream for corporate America. Executives could
jet in and privatise everything in sight, give everyone a packet of Marlboros
and a can of Coke, and instantaneously sort out decayed, old world economies.
This was in effect a continuation of the “American century” under a different
name. So simple, and yet so wrong.
With the exponential rise in the population in certain parts of the world, glob-
al warming, and the impact of new technology, along with the establishment
of new superpowers like China, India and Brazil, the next 100 years will hold
untold surprises, as well as dangers, predicts the veteran German politician
and ex-Chancellor Helmut Schmidt.
My intention is not to present pessimistic or optimist scenarios, or to indulge in
wishful thinking, but to point to some probabilities. However, first, a short glance at
the past. The peak of the last Ice Age occurred 20,000 years ago. Only for the last
10,000 has there been a relative stability in climate. Since then farming started in
several places independently of each other, not least in the fertile crescent of the
Middle East.
Only from about 5,000 years ago have there been in some small parts of the earth
and in a few civilisations enough artifacts to enable the writing of cultural or polit-
ical history. So for example in Mesopotamia, in Egypt or in China, all high cultures
evolved in these 5,000 years, in Europe only in the course of the last 4,000, start-
ing in Mycenae and in Crete.
The twenty-first century is only a fraction of a second of organic life. But it will be
an important part of the period of human high culture, possibly of great influence
on times to come.
The catastrophe of six billion people + three more degrees
No one knows whether the period of stable climatic conditions will continue. All
experts agree that we don’t know enough about the complexity of the climate sys-
tem. However, it is known that in the last 100 years the temperature of the world
has risen between 0.3 and 0.6°C. There is an active debate as to how far that can
be attributed to human activity, for example, to the extraction or burning of fossil
hydrocarbons. On the universal assumption of a further population expansion and
rising energy consumption, predictions for the twenty-first century start from the
basis of a further global temperature rise: from at least 1.5 to a maximum of 3.5°C.
269
 If there were indeed to be a rise of three to 3.5°C, it is possible to foresee cata-
strophic consequences that would begin in this century and continue into the next. It
is possible that warming on such a scale would have a drastic, and not necessarily a
gradual, effect on the global climate and the ecosystem due to the melting of the ice
in the Antarctic and in Greenland, which would bring in its wake a rise in the level
of the world’s oceans. I certainly would not like to live in the coastal regions of
Bangladesh in the middle of the century. With that sort of rise in temperature, they
would be flooded. No one excludes the possibility of the greenhouse effect because
no one definitely predicts it. The only certain thing is that humans are contributing
to the present warming. Everyone who has done serious research has no doubt
about that. However, opinions differ as to how much mankind is contributing to the
root cause of it.
We know with some certainty that at the time of Jesus, the world population was
about 250 million, at most 300 million. In the following centuries, up to the begin-
ning of the twentieth century, the population grew to 1,600 million. In the last cen-
tury, however, world population underwent an explosive expansion. It quadrupled to
over six billion. In this century population growth will initially continue. At present
it is even faster than it was at any time before 1945. Today the productive area per
person has shrunk to about four per cent of that which was available to each indi-
vidual at the time of Jesus. This is one of the reasons why in many developing coun-
tries people flee into the cities, which have for many years already been mega-
metropolises. Whether in Sao Paolo or Cairo, Mexico City or Shanghai, the picture
is the same. Today nearly half of all human beings live in cities. In thirty years time
it could be two-thirds.
The population explosion is occurring almost entirely in Asia, in sub-Saharan Africa,
270
partly also in Latin America, to a very small extent in the United States, but not in
Europe, Russia or in Japan.
Here, I venture my first prediction: in many over-populated regions there will be dis-
putes and wars over productive land, over pasture and arable land, above all over
water. The result will be that millions and millions of people will attempt to emi-
grate - legally or illegally - to Europe or North America because in these areas liv-
ing standards are at least twenty times higher than in their native countries.
Already in the last decade of the twentieth century, there have been twenty-five wars
- from Desert Storm and Chechnya to Somalia, Rwanda, Burundi, Zaire - with a
death toll far exceeding one million.
Software from India, guns from the US
It took tens of thousands of years to get from clubs to knives and spears. From the
arquebuses and field catapults of the Middle Ages to machine guns, it still took a
few centuries. The development from the first aeroplane to the carpet bombing of
Dresden and Hamburg, or the atomic bombs dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima,
took less than half a century.
For thousands of years high cultures such as China, Egypt and Babylon, or Peru
and Mexico used mechanical means of assistance, such as levers, winches, ramps,
slopes, rollers and wheels. Energy was provided by slaves, forced labour and also by
children and horses.
In the course of the Middle Ages, Europe added wind and water mills to this list.
271
 Only towards the end of the eighteenth century came James Watt and the invention
of the steam engine. Barely 100 years later there followed the internal combustion
engine, a few years later the electric motor and quite suddenly one after the other
jet propulsion and the rocket, which will certainly not be the last powered machine.
When I was at school, it still took over a week to travel by boat from Hamburg to
New York. Today with an airbus you need less than a day. In those days you wrote
each other postcards: if your grandmother died, you sent a telegram so that the
recipient could get to the funeral on time. Today people communicate with each
other instantaneously by email and on the Internet.
The acceleration of economic and technological progress was unusually rapid in the
nineteenth century, and even more so in the twentieth. This occurred in almost all
areas of the economy, particularly however in the sciences, from chemistry to astro-
physics and from medicine to gene technology and life science.
I will venture here a second personal prediction: the present rate of scientific and
technological progress will either stop or it will accelerate. I cannot begin to imag-
ine what the results of this further technological progress will be. Almost all
earlier visions of the future, beginning with Jules Verne, have long ago been over-
taken by reality. If we returned in a hundred years time to visit our descendants we
would be astonished by the technological changes.
From the Middle Ages to nearly the end of the nineteenth century, Europeans, and
increasingly North Americans, definitely had the lead in all fields of science and
technology. In the last quarter of the nineteenth century, after the Meiji restoration,
272
the Japanese began to catch up. And today first-class German firms, for example,get
their software from India, a developing country. The technological lead of the
Europeans and the North Americans has shrunk greatly in terms of time. The spread
of technological progress throughout the world is happening much more rapidly
than in the first half of the twentieth century.
It took tens of thousands of years to get from clubs to knives and
spears. From the arquebuses and field catapults of the Middles Ages to
machine guns, it still took a few centuries. The development from the
first aeroplane to the atomic bombs dropped on Nagasaki and
Hiroshima took less than half a century.
Today there are twice as many participants in the global economy as there were
twenty years ago. One thousand two hundred million Chinese have joined as well as
300 million former Soviet citizens, and the citizens of almost all other formerly com-
munist states. These new participants will very quickly have all the advantages of
technological progress delivered to them, whether through the export of investments
or through joint ventures. The phenomenon which we call globalisation will in the
next century indeed have its crises, its highs and lows. But the global nature of
technological progress will be a basic determining condition for the century, and the
Internet could bring about a revolution in global civilisation. In any case, the old
industrial states of Europe will be exposed to a global competition for jobs. If they
don’t want to go under, they will have to make tremendous efforts in research and
development.
273
 •••
In this century, there will be a serious question as to whether industrial countries will
be able to continue their development aid. Many recipient countries don’t even need
the aid anymore. For many others, the help they get in the form of development aid
is only a drop in the ocean. For yet others, aid is of great assistance in meeting the
demands of their military. In reality, some aid goes to finance the purchase of arms.
It would be sensible, if in future, we gave aid only to those states who set clear lim-
its to their arms expenditure. This would for one thing reduce death rates in future
wars in the Third World. For another, the money wouldn’t have been thrown out of
the window. My other condition would be only to give aid to countries who instigate
family planning with all that implies: starting with education and professional train-
ing for young women, giving them equal status and providing contraception.
Both conditions are difficult to fulfil. In China and India, governments understood
twenty years ago that the population explosion would not stop. They tried, therefore,
partly with great brutality, to put a brake on it. They are, however, the only coun-
tries in the world who have in any way understood that limiting the population explo-
sion is essential.
It is not only development aid that needs reform. The activities of the World
Monetary Fund also need it. Its big aid programmes resulted in recent years in
western lenders getting back some of their money, which had been invested in hard
currencies, and at the minimum, their interest. There is no discernible effective help
for Russia, nor for Indonesia. So who is getting help?
The widespread arms sales to the Third World are an evil. Unfortunately, it is not
274
very probable that the West and Russia will achieve a decisive reduction in exports
of arms and military equipment. All sales arise out of short-term political and busi-
ness interests. There is no sign of an underpinning long-term strategy, nor is there
one in respect of the supply of weapons to certain states in the Middle East by the
US. It is nonsense to give development aid in the form of weapons when that leads
to wars, which calls for the intervention of the UN, and therefore requires sending
one’s own soldiers to the field of battle, followed by an armistice, in which nobody
knows what to do next.
Not an American century, but a century of Superpowers
Then there is the question of the Superpowers of this century. It is no coincidence
that no one in the West thought for a moment of intervening in the war in Chechnya
or in the wars in Ossetia or in Nagorny Karabach. When it’s a question of
Superpowers, we leave it to human rights activists to lament over them. [Unlike
Kosovo or Kuwait] no one demanded that the UN or NATO intervened in these
instances because Superpowers don’t like that sort of thing.
It is clear that the US will remain a Superpower. China is one already. At least it
is respected as such by all of Asia. In thirty years, the Chinese currency will have
similar global weight, in trade exchanges, in financing or as a reserve currency, as
the dollar and the euro. Even before the middle of the century, China will have a
similar proportion of world imports and exports as the US or the EU, significantly
bigger than Japan’s. China’s GNP or her share of world trade may well already
overtake that of Japan in about twenty-five years.
It would be wise to go on regarding Russia as a Superpower, even though it only
275
 has 150 or 160 million people. As weak as Russia may be within its borders and
much as it may remain so for two generations, this country is still a Superpower.
For one thing, Russia still has over 10,000 nuclear weapons difficult to control even
for a Russia government, which wants to control them. But more important than the
weapons is the immense territory. When the sun went down yesterday on the Pacific
coast of the Russian continent, in St. Petersburg there wasn’t yet a hint of sunrise.
It is by far the largest territory of any state in the world with enormous mineral rich-
es, of which only a part - mainly gas and oil - have been found and exploited. What
else is hidden there, no one knows.
I think it is conceivable that India will rise to become a Superpower in the course
of a few decades, not only because the Indians recently displayed their atom bomb,
but because of their population growth. The IQ of Indians is no less than that of the
Chinese or Europeans. They could produce maximum efforts from their people if
they organised them purposefully. It is quite possible that Brazil too will become a
world class power in the course of the new century.
Despite Japan’s present financial and structural crisis due to the tendency of its
inhabitants towards high savings, this nation with its high living standards will
remain, by far, the largest net capital exporter in the world, possibly for the next
half century, as it is to be feared that the US will remain the greatest net capital
importer.
After the end of the bloodiest of all centuries in recorded history, we stand faced with
a totally new configuration of the world, with different basic climatic, demograph-
ic and technological conditions. However we cannot speak of a new world order at
the end of the twentieth century.
276
The European Union - strength in numbers
The European Union will become all the more important in the twenty-first centu-
ry, if the relatively small European nations want to assert themselves. France,
England and Italy each have a population of less than 60 million, Germany too only
around 80 million (of which seven per cent are foreigners). Those nations which in
world terms are minute - for example Poland with 38 million, Holland with 15 mil-
lion or the Czech Republic with 10 million - have very little weight compared to the
future Superpowers. And not a single European country will grow in population in
the coming century! How little the individual European states can promote their
national interests against those of the giants can be seen when we look at what hap-
pened in the conferences on climate in Rio de Janeiro or in Kyoto. The US and China
did indeed agree that less carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and methane should be
released into the atmosphere. However they clearly thought that it was up to the
Europeans to achieve this through self-restriction, not the Americans or the Chinese.
But it’s not just a question of attempts to avoid the greenhouse effect but also of
arms limitations, of development aid, the organisation of global currency structures
and global credit markets. None of these questions will be subject to influence from
the small European states - unless they act together.
When Winston Churchill in 1946, and after him, Jean Monnet and Robert
Schuhmann considered the integration of western Europe, and when in 1950 as a
first step, France proposed in the Schuhmann Plan the creation of a coal and steel
community comprising six western European states, no one foresaw the new
conditions and problems of the twenty-first century. They lay far in the future and
277
 were of no importance. Then thinking was dominated by two quite different motives:
on the one hand, the erection of a barrier against further advances of the Soviet
Union and world Communism under Stalin, which was perceived as threatening and
aggressive, and on the other, the integration of the Federal Republic of Germany, at
that time with at least 40 million people.
The widespread arms sales to the Third World are an evil. Unfortunately
it is not very probable that the West and Russia will achieve a decisive
reduction in exports of arms and military equipment.
It is true that today both the distance in time from Hitler’s Third Reich‚ and
Germany’s democratic development have greatly weakened the fear of a resurrec-
tion of German expansionism and striving for power. However, the unification of the
two German post-war states with the resultant relatively large population continues
to lend considerable importance to the issue of Germany’s integration even in the
twenty-first century. From the beginning of the Seventies, the French have known
that this is only achievable if they also undertake a corresponding integration.
Since the Fifties there has been, in addition, the recognition of the great economic
and social advantages of a common market. This economic reasoning, for example,
lies at the basis for Sweden or Austria joining the European Union. Even the
Treaties of Rome in the late Fifties arose from economic motives. The European
Monetary System (EMS) of the Eighties and the euro of the Nineties were decisive
breakthroughs. However, the full effect of the economic and currency union will only
be seen in the first decades of the twenty-first century.
278
The European Union’s own productivity will give it an economic volume, which will
be comparable to that of the US, or in the middle of the century, China. Whether
however the member states of the European Union will be capable of using this
weight in world economic and world politics itself depends on the timely develop-
ment of the formally very imperfect political and administrative structure of the EU.
The EU has, in the meantime, no centralised authority capable of acting in foreign
affairs nor an authority capable of dealing in security matters. Up to the present,
there has been neither adequate democratic legitimacy nor adequate democratic
control.
It will be difficult to make up this deficit quickly. Firstly the task is complicated by
the imminent joining of further member states from eastern Middle Europe.
Secondly, the US will at the start try, for example, by means of a new definition of
the responsibilities for the North Atlantic Alliance and NATO, to establish the pre-
dominance of America’s world-political views over the EU. And thirdly, last but not
least, the nations of Europe will only tolerate and agree to a step-by-step, and there-
fore necessarily slow, progress for the integration process.
Most nations of Europe look back on ten or more centuries of the unfolding of their
national languages and identity. Now it is difficult for many citizens to hand over
part of national sovereignty to the EU. Never in history has there been a model for
such a process. For previous mergers of various peoples under a common political
roof have never arisen from completely voluntary decisions, but have come about by
force from Alexander to the Roman Empire, from Genghis Khan to Napoleon, from
Hitler to Stalin, from the colonial empires of the Spanish and the Portuguese to
those of the English and the French.
279

We Europeans must not let ourselves be led astray into thinking that
Muslim terrorism is a significant factor for Islam. After all, there has
been much Christian terrorism in the history of the world.
It is essential to acknowledge the unparalleled nature of European integration, its
historical uniqueness, if European statesmen and governing elites want to make fur-
ther progress.
Indeed further progress is urgently necessary, if the nations of Europe want to pro-
tect their vital interests in any way against the political giants of the world in the
twenty-first century. If they want to be ready to cope with the pressure of over-pop-
ulation in Europe’s neighbouring countries to the south and south-east, as well as
the expected global climate problems, the problems of meeting global energy needs,
and the already acute problems of the world economy today.
I anticipate that the problems, which humanity has to face in the coming century,
will find no effective solutions without the substantial participation of Europeans,
without the basic research in natural sciences and Europe’s application - orientated
social technology - but also not without the fundamentals of philosophy, of the
humanities and of social sciences developed in Europe.
If a dangerous collision between Islamic and the European/North American cul-
tures is to be avoided, then the initiative for a better mutual understanding can only
come from Europe. This is because the Americans are historically and geographi-
280
cally at a greater distance from Islam. Islam itself is very divided and has no unity
- from Indonesia through central Asia, through the Middle East as far as Nigeria -
but in general Muslims adhere more strongly to their religion and its teachings and
traditions than we so-called Christians do to ours. In the new century there will be
more Muslims than so-called Christians. We Europeans must not let ourselves be led
astray into thinking that Muslim terrorism is a significant factor for Islam. After all,
there has been much Christian terrorism in the history of the world and it is equal-
ly true that today there is a wide variety of terrorism in Western culture. This no
more characterises the West as a whole than individual Islamic terrorist activities
characterise Islam as a whole.
The creation of respect and tolerance towards Islam - and towards other religions
and civilisations - will be one of the most difficult tasks for Europe in the new cen-
tury. But the decisive factor will be whether we can succeed in engendering an atti-
tude of tolerance in the broad masses of Europe.
Immanuel Kant wrote 200 years ago that continuing peace will not remain only an
idea if we regard it as our duty and as our justifiable hope gradually to make inter-
national law a reality. In my view the great man was too optimistic. He couldn’t
have dreamed of the two world wars and the Holocaust. In any case some of the
global developments of the twentieth century will either force us to make corrections
in the twenty-first century or they will lead to disaster in several areas. That’s why
I argue for realistic analysis. And then we need courage for the future.
Politician and economist, Helmut Schmidt was Federal Chancellor of West Germany, from 1974 to
1982. “Naming the New Century” is an abbreviated form of his political essay, “Ein ganz anderes
Jahrhundert”, which first appeared in Die Zeit, 29.12.1999.
281
Un et un à présent ça fait deux avant ça ne faisait qu’un

282

art: Marie-France + Patricia Martin

284 285
286
286 287
288 289
et qui bouge elle bouge elles bougent toutes en même temps à travers toujours avec un certain

acharnement oh c’est pas avec un grand vitesse il y a un des chemins et une toute petite porte

verrouillée pleine de carapaces et des epoirs et plein d’espoir plus grand mais sans... qui se

téléphonent avec des coups des coups non violents même des coups doux des caresses des gen-

res de coups comme comment dire comme dans un rêve

 Six issues of Tank including p&p UK & Ireland £60.00 · Overseas £72.00

Method of payment: cheque postal order

Cheques or Postal Orders in Pound Sterling only, made payable to: "Tank Publications Ltd."

Access/Visa/Switch/Am Ex number:
(Please circle)

expires end: valid from:

Subscription starts from issue: #8 #9

(Please circle)

Back issues (from issue #4) are available for £15 each

best of the bunch

Please return form to: Tank subscriptions, PO Box 25319, London NW5 4ZD, UK

Name:

Address:

Daytime Tel:

Signature: Date:

293
00:31 · 00:00:32 · 00:00:33 · 00:00:34 · 00:00:35
J a m e s T u r r e l l · J a m e s W e l l i n g · T h o m a s J o s h u a C o o p e r

James Turrell · James Welling · Thomas Joshua Cooper www.eyestorm.com

 D a v i d H o c k n e y · A n d y W a r h o l · C h a r l e s J o n e s · J e a n - P i e r r e K h a z e m · W i l l i a m K l e i n · R i c h a r d M i s r a c h · G e o r g e s R o u s s e

D 0H0oo cc:kk0nn ee0yy: ··2AA1nn dd·yy W

D aa vv ii dd H
0 0 : 0 0 :C2hh a2
W aa rr hh oo ll ·· C
· 0 0 : 0 0 : 2 3 P i·i ee rr0rr ee0KK: hh0aa0
a rr ll ee ss JJ oo nn ee ss ·· JJ ee aa nn -- P zz ee:m2 4 W·ii ll ll0
m ·· W ii aa0
m : K0ll e0
m K
: 2 5R ii cc·hh aa0rr dd0 M
e ii nn ·· R
: 0 0 : 2 6 B·ee tt tt0ii nn0aa : RR0hh0ee ii:mm2ss 7·· GG·ee oo0rr gg0ee s:s 0RR0
M ii ss rr aa cc hh ·· B oo uu:ss2
ss ee8·· A
· 0 0 S: pp0rr 0
A ll ii cc ee S ii nn :gg 2
ss ·9
· P
· 0 0 :T0oo ss0aa n:n i3
P aa tt rr ii cc kk T i
0 A l i c e S p r i n g s · P a t r i c k T o s a n i

D a v i d H o c k n e y · A n d y W a r h o l · C h a r l e s J o n e s · J e a n - P i e r r e K h a z e m · W i l l i a m K l e i n · R i c h a r d M i s r a c h · B e t t i n a R h e i m s ·
G e o r g e s R o u s s e · A l i c e S p r i n g s · P a t r i c k T o s a n i
S u s a n D e r g e s · B r a c o D i m i t r i j e v i c · W i l l i a m E g g l e s t o n · J o a n F o n t c u b e r t a · M i c h a e l L i g h t · A n n e a n d P a t r i c k P o i r i e r · R a l p h G i b s o n · A n d y G o l d s w o r t h y · D a m i e n H i r s t

0 0 : 0a n0
S u sSa un s D
:g 1ee sr1g·e sB· r· a0Bc o0
e rD r a:D
c0oi m0
Di ti:m1 2 · 0 0 :l0i ai 0
r i ij terviijce v· i cW·i lW lml i:aE
1mg3gEl eg·sgtlo0
ens 0
t ·o:nJ0o· a0Jn:o 1
a no4
F
· 0 0 : 0 0 : 1h a5i ce hl ·aLeil0g Lh0ti g:·h0tA0n· n:Ae1n a6
nFt co un bt ce ur tbae r·t aM ·i cM
· Pn d0
n ne da 0
a tP
: 0 0c ko:i1Pr io7
r iactkr i P
· 0 0p ha: l0Gp h0
eirr i·e rR a· l R
:s 1
i bG oi b
8 · 0 0d:yo0l Gd0sow:l d1
n s ·o nA n· dAy n G
9t hoyr·t ·h y0D a·0mD:ia0emn0i He: ni2r Hs0ti r s t
osrw
S u s a n D e r g e s · B r a- c o D i m i t r i j e v i c · W i l l i a m E g g l e s t o n · J o a n F o n t c u b e r t a · M i c h a e l L i g h t · A n n e a n d P a t r i c k P o i r i e r · R a l p h G i b s o n · A n d y G o l d s w o r t h y · D a m i e n H i r s t
J o h n D i v o l a · M a r c Q u i n n · J e a n - C h r i s t i a n B o u r c a r t · C o n s t a n t i n B r a n c u s i · L e e M i l l e r · H e l m u t N e w t o n · B o y d W e b b

J o h n D0i v0o:l a0 0 : 0a r1c Q·u i0n n0 ·: 0

· M J e0
a n: -0
C2h r i s· t i a
0n0B: o0u 0
r c :a 0
r t 3· C· o n0s t0
a n: t0i n0 B
:0r a4
n c u·s i 0· 0
L e: e0 M
0 i:l 0
le5
r · ·H e0
l m0u:t 0N0
ew: t0o 6
n · ·B o0y d0 :W0e b0b: 0· 7J e ·a n 0
- M0a:r 0
c 0
B u: s0t 8
a m a· n t0e 0· :M
0a0u :r i0z 9 · a0
io C t t e0l :a 0
n 0:10
John Divola · Marc Quinn · Jean-Christian Bourcart · Constantin Brancusi · Lee Miller · Helmut Newton · Boyd Webb · Jean-Marc Bustamante · Maurizio Cattelan
J o h n D i v o l a · M a r c Q u i n n · J e a n - C h r i s t i a n B o u r c a r t · C o n s t a n t i n B r a n c u s i · L e e M i l l e r · H e l m u t N e w t o n · B o y d W e b b
 artists · delve · contemporary · space · explore · limited edition · internet · join · art · photography · experience · knowledge · discover 00:00:00
a ar tr it si st ts s · · ddeellvvee ·· cc oo nn tt ee m
m pp oo rraarryy ·· ssppaaccee · · e ex xp pl ol roer e· ·l i m
lim
i t ei tde de dei tdiiot ni o ·n i ·n tienrtneertn e· tj o· i nj o·i na r·t a· r pt h·o tpohgortaopghrya p· heyx p· e er ixepnecrei e· nkc ne o ·w lkendogwe l ·e ddgi se c o· vdeirs c
M a t tM h eawt t hBeawr nBe ya r·n eEyr w· iE n rB w li un mBelnufme ledn f e l d
www.eyestorm.com