[Reader-list] John Thakara to Anthropologist in the "new war" and my response

[solomon benjamin]

Hi
Apologies for this rather long posting, but may be of
interest as a point of debate.
Solly
*****
Dear John,
Thank you for your letter and perhaps an opportunity
to open up a much needed debate on the increasingly
complex ways of corporate control and how we can
strive to maintain autonomy and a sharp political edge
in our work, as well as an open discussion space.
First, I did enjoy DOORs-8 very much, and for the
creative energies that it brought forth. I also very
much appreciate the hard work put in by: "..our
modestly paid staff colleagues worked 18 hour days for
weeks on end. Another success factor in our event was
the work, time and enthusiasm of dozens of unpaid
student volunteers from Indian colleges and
universities...". My posting in the SARAI list, as
well as this response does not in any way attempt to
de-value those efforts and commitments. I also
appreciate your attempt to keep corporate strings to a
minimum. 

I would still however, like to maintain the importance
of atleast two issues: First, as mentioned both in my
presentation and also in my Commons Law posting, the
effort to map in the 'new war'. The second issue
relates to increased and subtler forms of corporate
control. I suspect that what we witness today,
reflects increasingly centralized forms of capital and
as a way of shaping public opinion and in parallel
control new markets, their penetration in the arts,
media, and discourse on technological innovation.
There are several who focus on the nature of
contemporary capital in more effective ways (Chomsky,
Souras, Klein, and also Mic Moor), and several on the
way these are located in the globalized connections in
cities (Sassen). 

Let us consider what you may consider to be a useful
session event "Mapping Our Hidden Links" for the next
DOORs. The DOORs is terrific since it attracts a range
of highly creative individuals and groups involved in
cutting edge stuff. If so, can such a session focus
attention on the sort of 'hidden baggage' that
participants may be carrying with them, and explore to
what extent these are inter-connected. "Mapping Our
Hidden Links" is to map the relatively more hidden
financial linkages (institutions, circuits,
connections) that fund a particular installation,
cases of innovations, experiments, and even urban
design initiatives like the Times Square Alliance in
NYC. Let us have a group of participants, with the aid
of Internet access, 'google' their funders to open up
their own links into the wider world: A sort of 'whose
connected to whom' in un-packing corporate connections
(see for instance, a bibliography on works on
corporation
http://www.rrojasdatabank.org/tncsbibl.htm; or
http://www.theyrule.net/). Can the participants in
undertaking this task, also reflect on the issue of
'ownership' of products created, of patent regimes as
applied to them? Here, perhaps having a group of smart
(but also politicized) lawyers may be able to help
unpack how these subject the 'creative edge' to new
forms of control and ownership. I am sure in
undertaking such a mapping, we will also discover
counter-narratives, scams that are often hidden under
gloss and media hype. This is not just of the big
business, but also of its connections to government
too. Based on say an hour's exercise, we could use an
integrative mapping tool to place the various
individual maps to see cross linkages to show up
groups that gain and also those that loose out. Can we
take this even one step further? Based on such an
interactive exercise, can the participants think about
how they might re-frame their installations and
approaches to address the newer political realities
thy might have realized?    

Let me give you a concrete example based on a 5 minute
google search that I undertook while lounging in the
SARAI's 'contested commons' conference held in Delhi
in January 2005. The current head of NASSOM (ex-head
of Citi bank), India's main IT voice and pushing for
strong anti-piracy measures is also listed as 'one of
the ones who got away', and has his full page
photograph set in a wonderful book "The SCAM: Who won,
who lost, who got away' by Debasis Basu, and Sucheta
Dalal (Ken Source, 1993,1994, 2001). Incidentally, he
is also the nephew of the head of the country's most
well known IT firm, allegedly having bailed out that
firm for $200 million in when it faced financial
difficulties. On the IPR connection to NASSOM, it's
well known that the largest IT firms use IPR to shape
power relationships against their smaller competitors,
effectively control surpluses and capture markets. If
we look deeper into these connections, we will also
discover set within a very close circuit of these same
actors, funds to use GIS and E-Governance in
re-shaping property regimes that again target among
other things, the ability of small firms to innovate
and gain political autonomy (the topic of my
presentation at the DOORs-8 and also SARAI's Contested
Commons). Located in this financial circuits are
intuitions that fund media events, installations, and
also publishing on women's issues.    

To emphasize this point, some insights from Bangalore
and a recent visit to Bombay: In both cases, we see
their a much larger re-structuring of both economy and
politics that create new contestations over space.
What we also increasingly find, a congruence of
financial institutions and circuits that gain
substantial profits from access to cheap land, from
reframing regulations (planning, property regimes, and
IPR) against small firm clusters, and fund increasing
corporate control over basic services like water. The
use of IPR, forms of GIS and land titling, and
"e-governance" are central tools. Significantly, and
this is my main point, the same institutions also
deploy substantial 'un-tied' resources to promote 'art
and culture' events (often hiring 'PR firms" to help
feature these events in the 'page 3' type of glossy
journalism), funds for architects and urban planners
to undertake 'conservation', efforts to cultivate the
media, and the promotion of elite based 'civil society
initiatives'. Not surprisingly, we see, architects and
planners involved in protesting housing evictions,
also getting grants to do conservation that
effectively removes hawkers from the newly
beach-fronts, or then small innovative based firm
clusters. The media events, promotion of elite based
civil society is very effective in shaping public
opinion, and in a sense to 'manufacture consent'. If
so, than I suspect, that we will increasingly see
forums to discuss technological innovations, 'best
practice', have in attendance corporate groups to
scout out what's new, and 'fundable'. Art and media
has never been neutral, but to emphasize that unless
one specifically addresses the new forms of controls
that come with funding, and trace out the 'backward
and forward' linkages (in the language of economist)
one would hardly ever understand the way hidden levers
operate.

I hope this response to your open letter has been
convincing to point to larger issues of corporate
control (rather than any form of a personal attack).
The issues are too great of concern to be caught up in
triviality. I would very much look forward to more of
DOORs, but also as a way to take on this debate and
discussion further onto a more political terrain.
Specifically an opportunity to draw via a "Mapping Our
Hidden Links" the creative congruence of the
participants that I have mentioned above. I appreciate
your point that DOORs operates on the bare minimum of
corporate funding. My argument is that explicit
funding to an event is one aspect, but in today's 'new
war', it is the subtler forms that may be more all
pervasive. 
Cheers

Solly
************

Open letter to Dr Solomon Benjamin

Dear Solly,

My attention has been drawn to your post of 28 March
on the Sarai Commons-Law mailing list.

I am usually pretty relaxed about criticism. After
all, if our events failed to provoke discussion and
disagreement, they would be feeble events indeed. One
reason I was so happy to be introduced to your work,
and then to be able to ask you to come to speak, was
that you bring such clarity and sharpness to the
issues we set out to understand and discuss.

I am especially sympathetic to your pointed question
about "our attempt to constantly map our cities in a
un-questioning way". I raised similar questions
myself, before and after Doors 8 - but your doubts are
more sharply stated. You are right: we need to think
far more critically about the use of cartography and
mapping by designers in the context of research and
product development.

But one sentence in your posting is upsetting and,
frankly, demeaning. You write (about the programme)
that it contained "Little on improving corporate
accountability though, but then, the sponsors would
hardly approve of that topic as a session heading".
The clear implication is that our corporate sponsors
were able so to determine the agenda so that nothing
that might have discomifted them appeared.

The facts are as follows. First, I did not solicit the
approval of our sponsors, or their input, on any
aspect of the the programme. The agenda for the Doors
8 programme was determined by me personally according
to a policy that has applied very publicly to all
Doors events since 1993: corporate agendas (or those
of any special interest group, including designers)
shall not influence or impinge on the programme in any
way, period.

For Doors 8, we did discuss with several companies the
content of one pre-conference workshop on "Service
Design In Emerging Economies"; this was conceived and
executed as a special interest event about business
issues; it would have been strange (if not impossible)
to prepare it without involving business people. But
apart from that one workshop, which was one event
among nine days of events, the entire programme was
developed independently. Second, the total amount of
money contributed by commercial sponsors to Doors 8
was a rather small proportion of the total costs of
the event when the time of staff members is counted
in. We wish we had raised a lot more sponsorship. But
by far the largest part of the global budget for Doors
8 comprised time and resources donated by the two
organisers: the Doors of Perception Foundation, and
the Centre for Knowledge Societies. The suggestion of
improper corporate influence is especially damaging
considering that the event was only possible because
our modestly paid staff colleagues worked 18 hour days
for weeks on end. Another success factor in our event
was the work, time and enthusiasm of dozens of unpaid
student volunteers from Indian colleges and
universities.

I am writing to you publicly like this because your
comment follows a series of jibes that, until now, I
had decided to ignore. During the months before Doors
8, we heard continuous reports of ill-informed
chitchat to the effect that Doors was a "commercial"
event at the service of corporate interests. The fact
that such comments were, are are, totally untrue does
not stop them being damaging. They should stop. Hence
this letter.

For the record, I am as delighted now as I was a month
ago to have discovered your work. The energy and
insight you brought to the Doors conference was
something special, and helped to make it a fabulous
and memorable event. I look forward to inviting you to
another Doors event as soon as possible.

With warm regards,
John Thackara



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