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Foucault, plastic and persecuted minorities

Three touches in the audio-visual waters online.




(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)

The web overflows with content. The very poor amount of content, the endless, is one of the basic characteristics of the medium. In particular, audiovisual content, ranging from journalistic-based television documentaries to more experimental, audiovisual essays, seems to be growing tremendously, which is why it can be particularly difficult to get a just-at-a-glance view. In this monthly text, we will try to curate a clue in the audiovisual content on platforms such as YouTube, Vimeo and similar services in hopes of giving our readers a place to start. With the hyperlink structure of the web, the works mentioned below are certainly just a starting point, and the text here is thus intended as inspiration, not as a forced recipe.

Foucault – the lost interview. There is little doubt that the French philosopher Michel Foucault still enjoys a high reputation in a wide range of university subjects. In particular, Foucault's work on the concept of power and the study of social institutions such as the prison system has had a huge impact on the humanities subjects. The vast majority of Foucault's works are also available in our languages, so why bother with a filmed interview from Dutch television in the 1970s? There are several reasons for this. Of course, a 15-minute interview can by no means present an unfolding analysis of Foucault's mindset, but it can do otherwise. Basically, it may be a more approachable introduction to Foucault, who may find that you subsequently fall in love with the philosophical writings, but more importantly, the filmed interview, the sound, and the image in concert, give a different impression of Foucault than the written word. To hear Foucault speak, to see him gesticulate, to experience some form of progressive wholeness – albeit in a partially fragmentary form – gives a different impression than reading the man's works. Perhaps there is also another kind of knowledge in this impression or at least another impetus to form knowledge of Foucault and his thinking. The media here is another way of thinking further.
In November 1971, Vincent Monnikendam filmed the interview conducted by the Dutch philosopher Fons Elders, and Monnikendam succeeded with a few tools such as the use of freeze frames and carefully selected archival material to form a relatively successful visual essay that paraphrases Foucault's thinking on several levels. We are presented with scattered thoughts, Foucault's understanding of structuralism, his hope of using language to free himself from the entrapment of thought and not least an apt description of the self-preoccupation of our modern times. Just because all times have preceded ours does not mean that we contain everything that has come before the point we are at today. That we are at the forefront does not mean that we contain all the foregoing.

Foucault – the lost interview, Vincent Monnikendam, 15 minutes.

Plasticman. This work, a mosaic almost, carries many of the characteristics of the amateur filmmaker. It seems unfocused, unplanned. The settings are sprinkled with what seems like a random hand. The image composition leaves a lot to be desired. The sound could be significantly better. Changing characters speak in what is not necessarily any logical context. And the work leaves the viewer with a number of questions. Nevertheless, is plastic man worth spending seven minutes of your life on. The work is actually a banal story about a group of volunteers who have joined forces to clear plastic waste away from a beach area near the fishing town of Labuan Bajo in Indonesia, but the amateur elements and filmmaker Siti Rahmah Hanifa's way of using these give the work an interesting fragmentary and open udtryk.

Hearing Foucault speak, seeing him gesture, gives a different impression than reading the man's works.

One of the strengths of places like YouTube and Vimeo is that you rarely know exactly what happens when you click on "play". Of course, there are definitely emerging YouTube genres and thus also genre conventions, but at the same time the medium is so new and so versatile that the unpredictable still plays a big role. That one can find a work like plastic man, which when I pressed «play» had only nine views, also says something about how the open, accessible and whole public perspective is still one of the strengths, despite the fact that the big platforms are owned by deeply commercial media mastodons.
plastic man is certainly a small story, but it is a story that evokes joy and hope at the sight of a number of people who take action and create a little bit of a better world. Is it useless? Måske. Is it just for the sake of profit and for the sake of more tourists in the area? Yes, probably, but can one blame these locals in it? It is a fascinating sight to see the plastic bottle's turn from the beach at the water's edge to being boiled over an interim flame, whereby – magically – a few drops of recyclable fuel are extracted.

plastic man, Siti Rahmah Hanifa, 7 minutes.

The Last Plight. A large number of images remain. The child's body lying in the gravel, wrapped in a small blanket, over which swarms the flies. The woman who looks into the camera and strictly asks questions to us; why she has to keep talking, why we always come and record, but that nothing ever happens. The strongest thing about The Last Plight is perhaps the unseen, the one that is not shown directly, but is simply hinted at or told about. Like the story of the father who has to throw his youngest child over a ravine in order to escape with the two older children who can run themselves.
The Last Plight is ten hard minutes. Ten minutes of testimony from ordinary people whose fates are all affected. Ten minutes of testimony about the world game went bankrupt when Mosul fell to ISIS in June 2014 and more than 600 people were driven to flee in a matter of days. It is the story of how an entire area, the Nineveh Plain, is cleared of people whose family history goes back more than 000 years. A conglomeration of minorities, Christians, Yazidis, Shabaks and Turks, are displaced from the area and have to find temporary homes in sheds and tents if they do not suffer death on the run or in the face of ISIS.
The film is probably heavily laden with bloated, emotionally charged music, and there will probably also be viewers for whom the smooth-polished, digital aesthetic, collides too much with the content, but Sargon Saadi nevertheless succeeds in finding a number of distinctive characters who speaks strongly and convincingly to the camera. The work in no way becomes a character-driven narrative, but rather a potpourri of testimonies that leave a strongly unpleasant impression.

The Last Plight, Sargon Saadi, 10 minutes.


Moestrup is a critic in Ny Tid.

Steffen Moestrup
Steffen Moestrup
Regular contributor to MODERN TIMES, and docent at Denmark's Medie- og Journalisthøjskole.

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