Peter Suchin
Painted Words

Marshall Anderson
People in a Landscape

David Harding
Maclovio Rojas

Ewan Morrison
Three Steps in the Demise of Deconstruction

Leigh French
Me, Myself and I

Ian Brotherhood
Tales of the Great Unwashed

Willam Clark
The Musa Anter Peace Train

Leigh French
When Figures Become Facts

Michelle McGuire
Divine Façades

Jane Kelly
Stephen Willats

Marshall Anderson
Limited Axis

Stefan Szczelkun
The Birthplace of British Democracy

Neil Mulholland
Why is there only one Monopolies Commission?

David Burrows
Assuming Positions

Robert H. King
Soundscape

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Painted Words
Shane Cullen's Fragmens Sur Les Institutions Republicaines IV
CCA Glasgow 6 September to 18 October 
Peter Suchin

Shane Cullen has filled ninety-six eight by four feet boards with approximately thirty-five thousand words of text, the wording meticulously copied from David Beresford's account of the 1981 Irish hunger strike, Ten Men Dead (Grafton, 1987).
Cullen's act of textual transcription focusses upon a series of letters produced by Republican prisoners during the period of their politically-motivated refusal of food whist being held in Long Kesh prison in 1981. These secret communications or "comms" were inscribed in minuscule script upon cigarette papers in order to avoid the texts' detection by the Long Kesh guards. Rolled or crushed into balls and wrapped in cellophane, these tiny pellets of compressed text were then smuggled out of the prison (hidden in the various orifices of the body) and delivered to the IRA leadership.
Since the late 1960's there has been an increase in the use of textual material within the visual arts. One could point to a whole subsection of artworks made entirely of text, including pieces by Ilya Kabakov, Tom Philips and Robert Smithson. In his book The Responsibility of Forms (Basil Blackwell, 1985) Roland Barthes suggests that from a certain perspective painting can be considered to be a kind of writing. Cullen offers an interesting reversal of this observation. Furthermore, it would be productive to compare Fragmens... to the visually inventive works of poets such as Mallarme and Apollinaire, rather than keeping one's comparisons strictly within the visual arts as conventionally defined.
Fragmens... should also be considered in relation to the increasingly popular gallery practice of installation, each individual painted panel being but one distinct part of a larger work designed to generate a single, coherent ambience rather than be seen as a series of discrete paintings. Around this production of multiple units hovers the ghost of Warhol's mechanically produced, serial works but also that of the 'dumb' copying of the jobbing signwriter.
Cullen claims Fragmens... is a piece of social research rather than a means of either celebrating or condemning those parties--of whatever political persuasion--involved in the 1981 hunger strike. One may look again to Barthes for a relevant observation. In his book Writing Degree Zero (Hill and Wang, 1967) he notes that "...a history of political modes of writing would...be the best of social phenomenologies." (p. 25). It should go without saying, however, that no work of art is, in the last analysis, politically neutral.
How are we to read Fragmens...? What is the relationship between the text employed as 'subject matter' and the surface of the support? Cullen has chosen to paint by hand ninety-six panels of text. The consequences of such a decision are in no way trivial for someone who is to actually take on this task. Nor should we, as viewers or readers, ignore this aspect of Cullen's practice. Cullen has committed himself to a not inconsiderable amount of labour by choosing to make these paintings by hand. Indeed, had Cullen instead decided to utilise methods conventionally employed in the reproduction of writing the resulting objects would not be paintings at all, but merely yet more printed text. What might be termed the 'slow intensity' implicit in Cullen's physical production of Fragmens... should be borne in mind when considering the piece. The painstaking manner of the work's production is of considerable importance with respect to its interpretation.
The "comms" were produced as private letters whose general status has, however, now been considerably altered, by their general publication but also through Cullen's decision to use them within his artistic practice. A double transformation has been enacted upon what were initially written and transmitted as a clandestine correspondence intended only for a select readership. When first published the "comms" became pieces of public information. No longer 'mere' private messages, they are now historical documents available for consultation by anyone with an inclination to check them out. Cullen's painted version of the texts gives their public presentation another twist. The artist would appear to be simply quoting an already available source (Beresford's book), since what is translated into painting is not the "comms" themselves but the version of them provided in Ten Men Dead. Not only has Cullen not quoted from the actual letters, but has also included within his transcription from the book Beresford's editorial insertions. The panels have been transcribed in the order that Beresford quotes the "comms" in his book. In both the book and upon the painted boards these additions are indicated through the use of square brackets. As Beresford comments in his "Author's Note": "An important foundation to the book as a whole is the huge volume of "comms" given in Ten Men Dead. Cullen is able to give only Beresford's selective rendition of the texts. In some sense, then, Fragmens... is concerned not so much with the 'first order' textual traces of ten Irish political prisoners but with the subsequent interpretation of a loaded historical moment. There is perhaps some intended commentary here--I mean on Cullen's part--concerning the apparent impossibility of gaining unmediated access to a specific historical event.
The utilisation of historically very 'heavy' textual material in Fragmens sur les Institutions Republicaines IV raises complex questions about politics, art, secrecy and censorship. I will end with a remark from Jacques Derrida's book The Post Card (University of Chicago Press, 1987, p. 194); it seems strangely pertinent to Cullen's work. "What cannot be said", writes Derrida, "above all must not be silenced but written."

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People in a Landscape
An analysis by Marshall Anderson

People In a Landscape--The New Highlanders, published by Mainstream represents the final outcome, in soft-back book form, of an extravagant and excessively indulgent propagandist project staged as part of the first Highland Festival in 1996. This attractive package of photographs by Craig Mackay with an introductory text by Magnus Linklater and supported by interviews with the New Highlanders will, at a penny short of £10, sell well to the many fans of the Scottish Highlands from home and abroad. To understand the book, however, one must turn away from its alluring glossiness for a moment and turn back the pages of history.
It was the Rt. Hon William Ross who, in March 1965, on the occasion of moving the Highland Development Bill through Parliament, said: "For 200 years the Highlander has been the man on Scotland's conscience." The resulting Highlands and Islands Development Act, therefore, was some kind of delayed palliative for the acts of genocide perpetrated by the State in the aftermath of Culloden and the greed-driven desires condoned by the State to reap vast profits from the land by displacing people in favour of sheep. Guilt, however, was a limp excuse for the Highlands and Islands Development Board (HIDB) to initiate economic development on a massive scale throughout its lifespan from 1965 to '90.
In the 1960s the Highlands, with a population of 299,000 was perceived as a wilderness zone ripe for colonisation and exploitation. The continuing emigration of its indigenous people had to be replaced by an immigration policy and the apathetic remaining highlanders, psychologically bruised by 200 years of cultural battering, had to be shown how to improve and regenerate their valuable resources by entrepreneurial Englishmen and women who would be offered generous cash incentives to settle and develop industries. Between 1965 and 1988 an estimated total of £422,176 in financial assistance was handed out by HIDB creating thousands of new jobs. This figure, taken from the Highlands and Islands--A Generation of Progress, edited by Alistair Hetherington and published by "Aberdeen University Press" (1990) does not take into consideration concealed costs such as administration and further investments via other government agencies, nor does it take into account the alleged millions lost in such schemes as the aluminium smelter at Invergordon and the Wiggins Teape pulp mill at Corpach.
One of the more outspoken critics of Highland development is Iain Thomson whose comments in A Generation of Progress reveal the kind of philosophy and attitude that was prevalent at the time: "A labour force was also at hand--as one propaganda leaflet put it 'most locals are used to handling small boats.'" Thomson's "propaganda leaflets" were not so readily available on the home front. HIDB's advertising campaign concentrated south of Hadrian's Wall. Thomson continues with respect to fish farming: "Yet deep down some felt that another valuable resource had been plucked from under their noses by entrepreneurial outsiders enjoying privileged contacts and considerable support from the taxpayer." Any rancour was probably best swallowed and the tongue best clenched between angry teeth, for, as Hetherington says in his introductory essay: "The Highlands and Islands are providing food, holidays, timber and craft products for the whole of the UK, as well as strategic bases for offshore oil and the Royal Navy, Army and RAF." This statement is now out of date: instead of reading "the whole of the UK," it should read the whole of Europe.
With this in mind a further concentrated series of investments by various government agencies combined with detailed commissions, reports and feasibility studies focused on this region. Some of the ensuing schemes were, unfortunately, destined to become expensive failures as exemplified by Highland Craftpoint engineered by David Pirnie who had conducted a year-long feasibility study in 1978 endorsing the idea that training was required to raise standards within an industry that was turning over £500,000 per year. During 79/80 Highland Craftpoint gobbled £61,345 in funding from the Scottish Development Agency and £123,230 from HIDB. A gravy train had been set in motion that would continue to nourish a generation of bureaucrats. This level of funding (85/86 SDA--£147,600, HIDB--£533,187) was not sustainable and in an attempt to broaden its remit and spread its expenditure to the whole of Scotland the agency dropped its Highland tag in 87 becoming Craftpoint. Scotland's craftworkers were truly astonished when Ian Lang, then Secretary of State, pulled the plug on it in 1990, for Craftpoint had provided a valuable resource and training facility through well-equipped workshops and a specialist library. Craftpoint's closure indicated that governments are quite prepared to sacrifice investments on a disproportionate scale in order to drive yet another non-sustainable vision.
Ian Lang recognised the link between arts, crafts and tourism so he initiated the Scottish Tourism Co-ordinating Group who promised in their Development Strategy to meet "the prime objective of increasing arts tourism in Scotland" for it had been identified that: "Arts and cultural tourists spend more per trip than average tourists, partly because they stay longer." More, obviously, had to be done to encourage these big spenders to come and buy 'art product'. This philosophy has, in part, encouraged a culture of commercialism within the Highland and Islands arts community with the majority of artists working in traditional ways and aspiring to sell their work to a burgeoning middle-class home market, and tourists. Any commentary upon Highland life is accordingly historic--leading to Romantic imagery. There appears to be no radical polemic and no debate around the development of art and its conceptual language and how this may reflect upon current issues.
Against this backdrop of top heavy investment and a squandering of public resources condoned by a concentrated political will and strong-arm cultural muscle, the notion of an Inverness Festival was discussed at committee level and chaired by Lady Cowan, the wife of Sir Robert Cowan the fifth and final chairman of HIDB. Lady Cowan and her team of stalwarts representing various vested interests believed it was their duty to import Culture. In themselves the Festival Committee had little clout but the concept was taken up and driven forward on the crest of yet another feasibility study, commissioned this time from Burntisland-based Bonar Keenlyside Ltd. Surprisingly this document convinced no one for everyone was already convinced that such an event was more than possible. The feasibility study therefore further constituted a flagrant waste of public money.
A year long festival-cum-celebration called Hi Lite, marking the end of the HIDB appeared to have no real budget to mount events but did have a lot of cash to produce an extraordinary mountain of 1.5 million print units announcing events that would mostly have gone on regardless of its umbrella tactic to incorporate everything within its logo. In 1995 the first Highland Festival with Ian Ritchie in the post as Director trumpeted into view being propped up by £19,225 from the Scottish Arts Council and £10,000 from the Scottish Tourist Board.
There was a confusing array of philosophies and expectations at play with regard to the Festival itself and also underpinning the planning of its events. These are best illustrated by a 24 hour project which finally culminated in its quasi catalogue, People In A Landscape.
In order to establish itself, in part at least, as a people's festival a project based, I am told on a community photographic project in Glasgow, and called 24 Hours in the Life of the Highlands and Islands was planned to focus on Saturday 30th March 1996 with an intention "to involve everyone." "The entire population of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland irrespective of experience, skill, age or status" was described as the project's Client Group in a 6-page brief. The rhetoric herein was strongly advocating an open event: "To encourage anyone who has an interest in the arts to 'have a go' within the stated 24 hour period." It continued with the statement of intent: "To publish and promote selected fruits of the whole experience in a book" thereby contradicting its democratic language with a suggestion that elitist values would be maintained through a selection team of four chosen celebrities: Harriet Buchan, Richard Demarco, Archie Fisher and Magnus Linklater, the latter further contracted to write the introduction to the book/catalogue. From the outset then, this adventurous large scale endeavour was flawed as it sought to make an open gesture emphasising the notion that anyone could be an artist while maintaining an overriding belief in the principles of selection. With its top-heavy level of staffing and the inclusion of media personalities (including Robbie Coltrane whose job it was to set The Day in motion) the event was destined to become an over-extravagant waste of money, swallowing £92,000 of resources.
On the next day, Sunday, everyone who had made something was requested to deliver it to the nearest of 6 collection points. It was then felt necessary to helicopter the four judges plus Gordon Brown, the exhibition co-ordinator, round the places in one day to make their selection of which works they deemed good enough to be framed and exhibited in six entirely different venues throughout the Highlands and Islands. I was told they got a ridiculously cheap deal on the chopper--£600. But to date no figures are available to provide details on other costs such as individual fees and expenses, accommodation and the like. Gordon Brown, Director/owner of Brown's Gallery in Tain was awarded the contract to frame the works at a cost of £16,000. Such was the enormity of the task within the condensed 'time frame' that Brown farmed out some of the work to his close friend, Craig Macay's business, Pictili, up in Brora.
The gravy train mentality and an uncontrollable lust to spend money was evidently being perpetrated in an area where the precedent to do so had been so obviously set from the halcyon days of HIDB onwards. Fundamentally such extravagances stick in the gullets of ordinary Scots whose personal backgrounds are scarred by memories of stringent economies and poverty. Alastair MacDonald, the new Director of the Highland Festival, says he was "appalled" at the grossness of the 24 Hour Project's budget but qualified his sentiments by saying that the management team had done well to raise so much cash through sponsorship. Surely such a statement further endorses a habit of wastage. Money was spent for the sake of spending. MacDonald, however, decided to pull in the reins on a project he had inherited from his predecessor, Ian Ritchie, dismissed from the post for his unsympathetic performance. MacDonald cut the book's budget by 40% to £17,000 but was obliged to proceed with its planned outline.
Photographer, Craig Mackay, whose estimated fee for the work was £5,000, has produced a series of excellent portraits to accompany Marietta Little's short interviews with those Highland residents selected from the 24 Hour Project. There is another blatant contradiction here: if the people were selected to appear in the book on the strength of their artwork, much of it produced by semi-professional artists and obviously taking longer than 24 hours to make (hinting at disingenuous desires to muscle in on an exhibition opportunity), why is it the artwork has been reduced to such a small visual fragment permitting the photography to become the major illustrative component? Surely the cult of the personality and the photographer's ego have been allowed to overwhelm the original concept of the book, "highlighting the beauty, quality and diversity of talent and character of the whole area." Obviously the artwork in itself was not strong enough to endorse the project and not therefore strong enough to sell the Highlands and Islands, so personalities were called upon to do both. Consequently the book has become a showcase for the photographic mastery of Craig Mackay who has treated his task with a wide variety of techniques employing medium and large format cameras loaded with film stock donated by Fugi. This simple book has been spoilt, however, by over-indulgent designing. Photographic overlays have been done unnecessarily, again emphasising that money has been further wasted designing for the sake of designing.
Alastair MacDonald is of the opinion that People In A Landscape is informative because it shows what life is really like in the Highlands. The somewhat anodyne introductory text by Magnus Linklater typifies the viewpoint of an outsider who has been hired to give an uncontroversial impression supporting the State's ideal image which is fed to potential settlers, tourists and developers. The truth is underplayed and any opportunity to reveal what life is really like is lost. There are social ailments in the Highlands and Islands community, such as Anglophobia, that are taboo and not accorded space here. Linklater only hints at community unrest and ignores the kind of social problems that arise from the type of colonisation programme that continually gathers momentum throughout the region. Children not born into Highland and Islands communities have a hard time settling into schools where historically bullying has gone unchecked. As communities expand urban ills pervade. Alcohol and other drug use is more prevalent among the young and domestic theft, once unknown, is becoming more commonplace. Currently the Highlands and Islands are being sold on the quality of life, the scenery and the friendliness of the people, but the more the region becomes populated the more these alluring assets are tainted and eroded.
Linklater's text begins on a note of incredulity: "It is hard to put a finger on it, to explain just what has happened over the past 20 or 30 years to transform the picture", but as I have shown, and it is no secret, the investment since 1965 has been disproportionate per capita. The one-time editor of the Scotsman does go on to pull the kind of statistics out of his hat that he should have access to. He informs us that the current population is 373,000 and that the number "who were born in England has increased over the past decade from 9.5% to 11.9% of the total population while the proportion of Scots has dropped from 86.4% to 83.9%. That is an influx of nearly 11,000 English people." In order to allay fears and accusations that these "white settlers" are taking a livelihood out of the mouths of locals, Linklater informs us that "if anything, the incomers are creating work not grabbing other people's." This may be due to the following factors: incomers from the south have money to invest in the purchase and development of land and property thereby creating work in the building and tourism sectors. Many of these properties are small hotels, guest houses and B & Bs. When many of these amenities appear on the market they are invariably bought by the English who have similarly moved into the arts and crafts industry, opening galleries and shops which sell locally produced products to the rising population of middle-class New Highlanders and, of course, tourists. Linklater does not try to assess just when an incomer becomes recognised statistically as a native but if the New Highlanders are considered to be locals then it follows that if they employ themselves before employing more indigenous natives they cannot be accused of grabbing other people's work. If there is any discrimination in the jobs market Linklater ducks the question and continues on a more mundane level best suited to his current role as chairman of the Scottish Arts Council.
Linklater continues by making an assessment of the remarkable cultural renaissance throughout the Highlands and Islands saying: "The evidence suggests that this is essentially a native phenomenon from which everyone, including outsiders, have benefited." He states quite correctly that "the arts have thrived on the back of economic improvement, drawing on a deep well of tradition." The resurgence of interest in history and language is not just a native one for the New Highlanders have "acquired a genuine devotion to their adopted homeland." Having then laid the foundation Linklater proceeds by describing the tide of entries that flowed into the 24 Hour Project. Craig Mackay suggested to me that the greater majority came from incomers and this is borne out in People In A Landscape. Out of 39 profiles the majority are of new Highlanders. The "native phenomenon" may be a psychological response based on a perceived threat from the army of incomers which threatens to subsume the locals altogether. The majority of people working in the Highland and Islands service sector now speak with English accents. Only in the Gaidhealtachd, where Gaelic is the first language and where Gaelic is a prerequisite of any job, can the influx of foreign "white settlers" be checked and the local workforce protected fully. Linklater devotes a paragraph to the Feisean Movement, a purely Gaelic expression bent upon strengthening the true native culture. There is a sense that this door is closed to non-Gaelic speaking Highland and Islanders but is not entirely locked. Anyone can participate as long as they speak Gaelic and indeed many New Highlanders do endeavour to learn the native language. There is a suggestion in this book, however, that such open events as the 24 Hour Project and its follow-up attract the participation of new Highlanders while the truer native renaissance is more exclusive.
Through the 24 Hour Project the first Highland Festival had set a crude precedent that its second Director, Alastair MacDonald, a theatre designer, would have to follow. Vociferously critical of the 24 Hour Project and its extravagances, MacDonald gained the help of his brother-in-law, Gordon Davidson, whose personal photo-montage technique was applied on a grand scale to create the Big Picture/An Dealabh Mòr. The result of this £60,000 public relations exercise can be seen touring the Highlands and Islands later this year after the installation has appeared at the Edinburgh Festival. I doubt if it will have much impact outside of its area of origin for it comprises of 25 photo-montages from 14 separate areas where the community created paste-ups were over-seen by one, or sometimes two, locally-based artists. All of the colour photos used are pertinent to the localised human experience. The project's selling point is perhaps its scale: 8-foot high, free standing letters spelling out An MOR and The BIG were covered on one face with laser copies of the photo-montages, stood in a circle redolent of Neolithic stones. This was accompanied by "a specially commissioned soundscape by Andy Thornburn", a musician who lives in Eventon, Easter Ross.
The success of the 24 Hour Project and the Big Picture lies in the indelible mock-utopian Highland image that both large scale community actions offer to future (and present) settlers, tourists and developers alike. Developers, who are neither Highlanders nor Islanders, require the confidence that such a rosy community image instils. The improvements they provide to roads and public services, including shopping malls, are not for the indigenous population alone (who are left to pay the bill through taxes and tolls) but for the greater majority of incomers and tourists. This small paperback volume of People In A Landscape is, therefore, representative of a greater picture, and one that demands more incisive scrutiny.

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Maclovio Rojas
An Exercise In Social Sculpture
David Harding

Electricity was needed to operate an electric saw but there were no power points around, only the wires that ran along the ground at the edge of the dirt road pirating electricity from nearby power lines. To Marc Antonio it was no problem. He located a taped over junction, uncoupled it and attached the wires to the leads for the saw. Water was needed but there were no water pipes, taps or standpipes. A water truck was called and a barrel filled up. There were no paved roads, drains or sewage system. This is Maclovio Rojas, an illegal squatter settlement of almost 1,000 households on a dusty hillside surrounded by treeless, desert hills some seven miles from Tijuana, Mexico. This is not an unusual place--settlements like it are a well documented phenomena in Latin America. Barrios, favelas and colonias, built of the ubiquitous packing case, wooden pallets and corrugated iron, cluster around many cities as the poor, the unemployed and migrant workers strive to share in the scraps of urban consumer culture. Tijuana, one of the fastest growing Mexican cities situated, as it is, hard against the US border, has expanded explosively in the last ten years with numerous squatter settlements eventually becoming regulated suburban areas. Not so Maclovio where the government wants to clear the land so that the vast adjacent Hyundai container plant can expand. The elected leader of the community, Hortensia Mendoza, who has been imprisoned three times on account of her opposition to government action, says: "The only way I leave is dead."
The plight of the people of Maclovio has attracted much support from sympathetic organisations, trade unions, including university and teaching unions, across the border in San Diego; and funds have been gathered to enable things like a school and community centre to be built. One group, the Border Arts Workshop (BAW), has been organising art projects since 1984 addressing the biggest political issue in the area, that of the border itself. Every day at the US border-crossing bus-loads of illegal Mexican immigrants can be seen being deported. In 1993 the US government decided on a huge increase in the Border Patrol Service and to build a border fence. For this they used redundant metal landing strips from the Gulf War, placed on edge, and concreted into the ground. The fence goes 'Christo-like' right down the beach and into the Pacific Ocean. At this point it becomes a row of six-inch diameter steel columns set apart such that a child or thin adult can squeeze through. When I visited it the US side of the beach was deserted save for a 'legal' Mexican family picnicking up against the fence, with relatives on the other side. The US is experimenting with new fence constructions and with the aim of covering the whole 2,000 odd miles of the border.
BAW has gained international recognition for its work including exhibiting at recent Venice and Sydney Bienales. Last year, surfing on the Internet, writer, musician and member of the group, Manuel Mancillas, came across a reference to Maclovio Rojas. What interested him was that he knew of another place of the same name near San Quintin, in Baja California. It had taken the name of Maclovio from that of the 24 year-old leader of the farm workers union who had been killed on a contract allegedly issued by local farm bosses. BAW decided to make a visit to this other Maclovio Rojas. Along with artist Michael Schnorr, a founding member of BAW, a visit was paid to meet the leaders of the community. A protest march to Mexicali, the state capital 120 miles away, was to take place and BAW was invited to make a film of it. It was at this point that BAW decided to commit itself to working with the people of Maclovio.
IN-SITE 97 is a bi-national collaborative project of art institutions in Mexico and the USA "focused on artistic investigation and activation of public space in the transnational context of Tijuana/San Diego. The heart of IN-SITE 97 is a probing of places of meeting and interchange in this unique juncture of two cities and two nations...through an exhibition of approximately 40 new works created during residencies in the region by artists (from) throughout the Americas and a sustained rhythm of community engagement programs spearheaded by artists from San Diego and Tijuana." Laurie Anderson opened the projects with a performance entitled 'The Speed of Darkness' on September 26th and a programme of events will continue until the end of November. Other artists making work include Vito Acconci, David Avalos, Judith Barry, Helen Escobedo and Allan Sekula. BAW had exhibited in IN-SITE 94 and a submission, for their Maclovio proposal, was again selected for funding. The title of the project is 'Twin Plant: Forms of Resistance: Corridors of Power'. Under NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) multinationals can set up plants at the border as long as one is in the USA and one is in Mexico. In effect, while the US plant might employ 50 people the Mexican one employs several hundreds. With wages in Mexico for factory workers running at a tenth of those in the US, the economic advantages are obvious. Samsung and Coca Cola sit alongside Hyundai and the people of Maclovio, many of whom work in these plants, are also fighting for union recognition, improved health and safety conditions in the 'maquiladoras' (literally machine shops) and wage increases.
Householders across the USA, for security and convenience, are in the process of fitting automatic, aluminium, double garage doors replacing their old wooden ones which have, in turn, become a major item in the construction of squatter homes. In January of this year, on one day's trawl around builders' yards in San Diego, we picked up eleven of them. These and succeeding collections of garage doors, re-cycled play equipment and other goods have been taken across the border as 'art materials' under the aegis of IN-SITE 97 thus avoiding duty and the interest of an often difficult customs post. The garage doors, measuring 16' x 8' were to be at the core of the art project for they were to be used to construct buildings which, after the exhibitions, could be used by the community as it felt fit. As Josef Beuys would have described it, this was 'Social Sculpture' in action. Any contribution to community development, to expanding facilities and developing the infrastructure of Maclovio, might just help to prevent the forcible eviction of the people. 1997 is the tenth year of their occupation and, under the Mexican constitution, that would normally result in their ownership of the land. The government counters that this will not be the case, so the stand-off continues.
Manual's surfing not only revealed the existence of Maclovio, but also its links to the Zapatista National Liberation Army and its charismatic and mysterious leader Sub-Commandante Marcos. Many of the people who live in Maclovio are from the southern states, including Chiapas, the centre of the insurgent activity. The seventy year hegemony in Mexico of the ruling PRI party is beginning to show some cracks with the successes of the opposition, the PRD, in this year's elections including gaining the powerful mayorship of Mexico City. This has not been without a price. Four hundred members of the opposition party have been killed since 1989. Marcos conducts his rebellion on the Internet and by fax, as well as by military engagements, attempting to complete the revolution begun by Zapata and Pancho Villa. In Maclovio streets have been named after them and their photographs and painted images (along with that of Che Guevara) decorate the walls of the community centre. Marcos has exhorted every community in Mexico to build a cultural centre as a forum for democratic conventions "to discuss and agree on a civil, peaceful, popular and national organisation in the struggle for freedom and justice." He has called these meeting places 'Aguascalientes' (hot springs) after the Mexican city which hosted Zapata's first democratic convention. The construction of an 'Aguascalientes' became central to BAW's project in Maclovio.
Working with the elected leaders of the community a group of young people was formed to work on the planning and execution of the project. For this and other voluntary work in and for the community they would each receive, in return, a plot of land on which, in time, they could build their own houses. The project proposed to construct buildings to house exhibitions of installations, photography, video and audio work and to paint murals.
Unlike Britain, in Chicano and Afro-American neighbourhoods throughout the USA, political mural painting remains a thriving art practice. In my first visit to BAW, in 1984, I documented its work with the Chicano people of Barrio Logan in San Diego. The soaring Coronado Bridge had been built across the bay and the city council was planning to develop industrial sites on the land under the bridge. Many Chicano homes had been demolished to make way for the bridge but the people weren't having any of it. They simply occupied the land and eventually succeeded in turning it into a park. Now it is well-known as Chicano Park in which every bridge support is painted with murals of Chicano history, symbols and imagery.
This involvement in direct action/ political art has been a common characteristic of my visits to the USA. It may be the people and artists I mix with but I am soon deeply involved in politics in a way seldom equalled in my experience of life in Britain. I have often ruminated on why this should be so. On this visit my host, Michael Schnorr, had a pile of back issues of 'The Nation'. This is a high quality, left-leaning, literary magazine and reading through these I began, I think, to discern what could be the reasons for this. The US government, whether Democrat or Republican, is essentially conservative and is elected by a much smaller percentage of the population than is the case in Britain. The level of government corruption seems high compared with which our own disgraced politicians have been guilty of mere peccadilloes. Business corruption and organised crime emasculate large sectors of life and work. The CIA and the FBI are regularly shown to have seriously contravened the basic principles of human rights. The history of US intervention in Latin America and other ill-fated places across the world is strewn with tragic consequences. In the face of this what can liberal Americans do about it? Artists and writers do what they can do best--make critical art about it and write for magazines like 'The Nation'.
In Mexico mural painting remains, for obvious historical reasons, the main and most familiar public art form and one that can involve large groups of people in its execution. It was natural therefore that it should be one of the means whereby the people of Maclovio could become involved in contributing to the buildings to be constructed. BAW led painting workshops involving people of all ages, including the very young and old. A Women's Centre was built and murals were painted on the exterior walls. A dozen or so garage doors were painted using themes relating to the community's struggle for survival and were erected to form part of the boundary fence marking out the alfresco area of the 'Aguascalientes'. A large stage area with a backdrop was painted and, when I left, the main building was halfway to completion. This would house part of the exhibitions.
I visited Maclovio in January of this year with members of BAW and returned to work for five weeks during July and August. The other members of the group are three young Chicano women, Bernice Badillo and sisters Lorenza and Rebecca Rivero. Their commitment to the project was impressive. Whether it was digging holes in the iron-hard ground for posts, mixing concrete for foundations, moving heavy loads, priming surfaces or drawing and painting murals, for eight to ten hours a day, they just got on and did it. In temperatures sometimes reaching 100 degrees and little shelter from the searing heat and hot wind that constantly blew, the conditions were, to say the least, trying. Several other artists visited for short periods leading and directing parts of the mural painting. Among these were Ken Wolverton and Chrissie Orr who live in New Mexico. They were well-known in Scotland in the 70s and 80s for their work with Edinburgh Theatre Workshop, on Arran and in France and Germany.
Much of the kind of work that is going on in Maclovio is familiar to many artists who have worked in similar projects here. The difference, I suppose, lies in the direct political action that is at the heart of the Maclovio project. Here there is a chance that art practice could contribute to social and political change. Here the 'local' is pre-eminent. In her recent, excellent book, 'The Lure of the Local', Lucy Lippard writes: "The potential of an activist art practice that raises consciousness about land, history, culture and place and is a catalyst for social change cannot be underestimated, even though this promise has yet to be fulfilled." Here Lippard, whose writings often display an inspired optimism, is rightly cautious not to claim too much for activist art. No great, wide-ranging social or political change can be discerned from the activities of artists working in this field. However, at the point of the 'local,' change has and continues to take place. The very engagement of people in collaborative art practice changes the perceptions of individuals to such an extent that their life can become transformed. This is a well-attested fact. It is happening in Maclovio right now. Recently BAW received a letter from the 'US--Mexico Fund for Culture' stating that it had been awarded a grant of $18,000 to continue its work in Maclovio. 

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Three steps in the demise of deconstruction
Ewan Morrison

Deconstruction has been around for a long time. It is the buzzword which encapsulates a legacy of shared opinions and assumptions about our culture. Nobody any longer needs to be told what it means, deconstruction is a daily activity, to ask what deconstruction is, as Derrida told us, is to make unreasonable demands of the deconstructive project, is to posit essence where there is deferral, to look for truth where there is a play of meanings.
Contemporary art practice is unimaginable without deconstruction. So called Neo-conceptualist art is a distillation of deconstructive method, and the status afforded neo-conceptualists within state institutions such as the Tate gallery is a testament to the growing status of deconstruction as a now recognised method. Artists who use deconstructive methods such as Douglas Gordon and Christine Borland, and their recognition through the Turner prize, point to the common acceptability of this practice.
Not only is its influence widespread within art practice but also within art education. Since the mid 80's its position has grown within the UK's art institutions, through the status afforded to it as the legitimate opposition to the dominant conservative hierarchies. Glasgow School of Art, The Slade and Goldsmiths are names synonymous with the 'infiltration' of deconstructive theory and indeed the high status of these institutions now is testament to certain victories in its history. Students who were the first generation to absorb deconstructive theory are now working within those institutions, Borland and Gordon now lecture and work on assessment periodically within the Glasgow School of Art. It is not an exaggeration to speak of a second generation of deconstructionists, and of deconstruction as a now institutionally recognised practice. One could even claim that it is impossible to make art in the 90's without a firm grasp of the basic tenets of deconstructive method. 
As the method reaches maturity, however, we are at a transitional point in time where deconstruction is no longer the opposition but the dominant practice. It is possible at this point to conceive of an entire generation of young artists who are engaged in deconstruction, without being aware of the theoretical concerns upon which their method is based. A generation for whom, deconstruction needs no justification or critique. The danger here is that deconstruction becomes a style, a routine or system, an unquestioning and self reflexive exercise: What is at stake is the redundancy of the method itself. It is at this point that we are forced to question what claims are being made in the name of deconstruction. A revision is due, or it would be, if only deconstruction could or would allow such a revision to take place. In many ways deconstructive practice has placed itself beyond criticism and as a result has become reduced to a set of formula and truisms which inevitably compromise or undermine its entire project. As such the need to chart possible grounds from which such a critique might occur is urgent.
The ubiquity of deconstructive method can be shown by looking at the common connections between a number of artists work. There could be said to be a basic model or schema which artists use which is both rigid and homogeneous--a "three step guide" to making a deconstructive artwork which is commonly used and accepted. The following discussion centres around three artworks by three artists, and is an attempt to, through their work, situate a critique of deconstruction.
Three artworks three artists
Christine Borland L'homme Double
Lisson Gallery, London
Jeremy Deller The Uses of Literacy
CCA, Glasgow
Kerri Scharlin Diary
Wooster Gardens, New York
These three artists have each been situated in previous writings within the frame of reference of deconstruction, and their work has been critiqued using the deconstructive vocabulary. Whether this influence is within the artists' work or within the reading of their work is of little consequence. The following model could equally well be applied to many of their contemporaries whose work exists through 'deconstructive readings'.
The schema or 'deconstructive equation' proposed here has been culled from a number of secondary sources most specifically Against Deconstruction by John. M.Ellis. As any supporters of deconstructive theory will know the following attempt to characterise a method for deconstructive practise in art, runs counter to, the spirit of deconstruction itself. The arguement being that deconstruction is 'descriptive and analytical, not prescriptive or programmatic' (1). I would argue however that the use of deconstruction in art has become programmatic, and at that this point it is necessary to clarify what the terms of that programme are. The following schema is intended, not to reduce each artists' work to a single reading, but to show the ways in which their work is already based upon an existant theoretical model.
The deconstructive equation: one method in three stages
Before a deconstructive project can be inititated 'the artist' (author) must be removed to divest the creative act of the illusion of authenticity, and to question the status of the artist as metaphysical originator of meaning. Any possibility of the artist 'making a statement' or of 'self expression' must be denied. The artists role is shifted then towards that of curator and fascilitator. Thus the use of other people to make the work on the behalf of the artist. The artist formulates the equation, and supervises its execution. The artwork is the gradual working through of the elements that the equation has set in motion and the presentation of the results.
The first step is to find a dominant term. This could be a respected tradition of representation, a concrete identity, a metaphysical assertion, or a claim to truth. e.g. The artist, objectivity, the original artefact.
The second step is to set it up against its opposite, e.g. the non-artist, subjectivity, the fake. Thus the traditional binary opposition between two terms has been set up: Good/evil, form/content, inside/outside, objectivity/subjectivity.
These first two steps are essentially the same as that used in traditional metaphysics however it is the third steps that characterises the deconstructive shift.
The third step is to swap the order of the terms, to reverse the supremacy of the first term with the second, to show that they are mutually dependent upon the other for their meaning. This is usually done by placing the second term within the same context as the first term, from which it is necessarily excluded. Thus in Glas, Derrida, set Hegel and Genet side by side and let the two texts infect and disrupt each other. And in Duchamp, the ready made is placed within the context of the gallery.
Thus the authority, and autonomy, of either opposite is deconstructed. The two terms are seen as being mutually dependent on each other for their self definition. The possibility of any 'originary' meaning, or of true presense is rendered 'problematic'. Everything becomes relative.
Within a successful work, the two terms will cancel each other out in a mutual self referencing. Thus all traditional oppositions are destabilised: good/bad, black/white, male/female, original/fake. The final outcome is a destabilised text (or work) which takes no sides in the equation which it has set up and which will ambiguously float between meanings. It will be 'undecided', 'unfixed'. The unfixing of these terms, it is claimed, is the unfixing of the metaphysics of opposition, the destabilising of heirarchy. The destabilising of hierarchy has been seen by many critics as being a politicised project, it follows then that work which uses deconstructive method has been variously described as: 'radical', 'subversive', 'strategic' and 'challenging'.
Applying the method: 3 Examples
1. Jeremy Deller The uses of literacy
The uses of literacy is a work by Deller which takes as its source the 'artwork' of fans of Manic Street Preachers. In the deconstructive schema he takes as his first term 'art' and his second term 'pop culture'. 
The work is a collation of drawings, poems, and dedications to the Manic Street Preachers which the artist has 'curated' and also includes documentation of the artist's correspondences to fans. The Manic Street Preachers are themselves of little importance to the artwork and are no more than a ruse, for Deller's highly effective deconstruction of 'personal expression'. Deller does not express himself, but sets the mechanism in motion that will deconstruct personal expression by itself. By choosing to curate the works of other 'amateur' artists he has already set up an opposition to the notion of the professional artist. and has reversed the hierarchical order of the terms by placing the amateur art within the gallery.
By showing amateur drawings and poems by fans of the band, Deller on the one hand deconstructs the idea of the authenticity of the professional artist. This device doubles back on itself when the 'authenticity' of the pop culture which is opposed to high art turns out to be little more than imitative: Most of the fans drawings are copies taken from the pages of magazines and fanzines. This act of copying undermines the authenticity of the sentiments expressed. This is cross referenced by the fact that the Manic Street Preachers are themselves the self proclaimed "fans band"--their own originality is placed in question. In the work all 'personal expression' refers back to something else, is rendered relative, and hence inauthentic. 
The bookshelf of one fan is also exhibited, showing a predictable assortment of the tomes of teenage enlightenment, Catcher in the Rye, Ecce Homo, Nausea. The angst of the suffering existential hero, is viewed in the light of adolescant hero worship. The philosophy of individualism is laid bare. The expressive is suddenly seen as being a fallacy. The artist, the human subject, is no more original than a posturing pop star. 
Through their art the fans yearning for real experience is apparent, but their reliance on copying reveals the poverty of their own imaginations and the impossibility of transcendence. Their idols are a copy, of a copy of a copy, and their acts of self expression are copies also. However while 'authenticity' may be discredited, the feelings aroused by the yearning for authenticity, cannot be discounted. Unlike many deconstructive artists there is the possibility that Deller appreciates the dilemma of his subjects.What Derrida termed:
"The saddened, nostalgic guilty response which dreams of deciphering a truth or an origin which escapes play and the order of the sign." (2)
Deller exhibits the fans longing for authentic experience without participating in it. A gesture which can be read as either one of empathy or of detached condesension. This is not however just a formal exercise in pure method, the sense of homage in the work by the fans and perhaps even by the artist imbues the deconstructive act with a sense of loss. An ironic nostalgia for the very things that the work itself undoes.
2. Kerri Scharlin
In Diary American artist Kerri Scharlin takes the persona of the artist as her first term and the celebrity as the second. As with Deller, Sharlin has employed other people to make the work for her. In this instance Hollywood scriptwriters have been hired to write a fictionalised account of a trip she made to LA, and professional actresses to act out the role of herself: 'the artist'. The scripts are exhibited, along with the video taped auditions by the actresses. 
Scharlin's work like Deller's sets up an opposition between the 'real' and the 'fake', between the individuality of the artist, and fabricated identity of the celebrity. The persona of the artist is split up into representations which have been transformed, misinterpreted and reinterpreted through an impersonal communications industry, (TV script writing, casting and acting). The original persona of the artist is lost, and we can only begin to doubt whether or not it ever existed.
The two terms, artist and celebrity, are reversed, both are thrown into question. This seems at once a critique of the status of artist as celebrity, and at the same time a complete undermining of any possibility of a true artistic statement. Traditionally we conceive of the integrity of the artist as being compromised by the media. Scharlin has reversed this hierarchy and so deliberately constructed an exercise in complicity which destroys any notion of true, original meaning, and hence of integrity. There can be no compromise because there is no authenticity. One can read the work as a critique of the commercialisation of contemprary art practice, only at one's own expense as Scharlin undermines the possibility of a valid artistic project or an un-mediated critical space. The ambivallence of the gesture sits uncomfortably as the difference between corporate media and contemporary art is abolished with so slick a slight of hand. If any irony is intended it is lost as Scharlin's use of deconstruction is so well honed that she undermines the possibility of any artistic project other than deconstruction itself.
Scharlin's deconstruction ends up lapsing into what Hal Foster termed "the duplicity of cynical reason" where a radical critique of the role of the artist is seen to be taking place, while the status of art is re-instated as "deconstructive art". With Scharlin there is no sense of the problem posed by deconstruction, the loss of critical perspective. Instead there is the proffessional illustration of deconstruction as a positive project in itself. Ambivallence as a message. Duplicity as the truth of our time.
3. Christine Borland
Christine Borland's L'Homme Double, is commonly perceived to be a deconstructive artwork. An Artwork which questions the nature of representation, truth and presense, an artwork which focuses on "the forms and machineries of interpretation themselves." (3) In L'Homme Double, Borland toohas contracted other 'professionals' to make the physical elements of the work for her. She employed six sculptors from different technical backgrounds to make portrait busts of Nazi scientist Josef Mengele, from a pair of photographs and a set of contradictory descriptions. The resulting sculptural busts were displayed alongside the documentation and letters of invitation.
Borland has used 'the original' as her first term, and taken 'the reconstruction' as her second. She has set the notion original and authentic identity against interpretation, and set expression through material in sculpture, against the notion of objective reconstruction. 
In deconstructive procedure the terms are reversible, thus we can also read from Borland's work the notion that objectivity cannot completely divest itself of creativity, that its objectivity is in fact infected with vestiges of creative interpretation, and is therefore flawed. The six busts do not and cannot show Mengele as he really was.
The form has resonances with the content as we find that the notion of 'copies from an original' has associations with cloning, and the scientific experiments which Mengele was involved in during his life. The fact that each copy is different, goes some way towards, poetically, disproving some of the so called 'scientific' theories upon which Mengele's experiments were based. Metaphorically, each bust is a failed clone. An injection of difference at the heat of a fascistic closed system. 
L'Homme Double throws up the heartening thought that although the author is dead, and there is no such thing as innate creativity or self expression, we are all in some way different--there is something which escapes systems of understanding--and herein lies our freedom. 
As the death of the author gave rise to the birth of the reader, so too the death of the artist gave rise to the birth of the viewer. That 'something' which escapes in this deconstruction of identity, is none other than the viewer's subjectivity--the possible multiplicity of interpretation, the sheer benevolent magnitude of pluralism. As Borland has said in interview, she hopes that the work "asks a million questions about the human condition."
Thus the death of the author is conflated with a critique of hierarchical power structures. A typical deconstructive side shift which associates self expression and representation (metaphorically) with fascistic structures. All attempts at tying down meaning are seen as logocentric, and thus inherently hierarchical and oppressive. This destruction of the singular truth through the multiplicity of interpretation takes on political meaning in the context of the political persuasion of those who in this instance saught to enforce their truth.
L'Homme Double can be read as an anti-fascist work. According to deconstructive theory it could and should also be able to be read as a pro-fascist work: as both left and right and neither left nor right. But how can we interpret the role of deconstructive ambiguity in the context of an issue as important as fascism? In reading L'homme Double we can say that the work problematises a politics of binary opposition, or conversely that it is irresponsibly ambivalent in its politic. What could it possibly mean to say that both readings in this case are equally valid? Does Borland's work here not point to a problem within deconstructive theory? Borland's work is interesting here in that there is something questionable in her use of deconstructive method. In addressing such a loaded subjects as cloning and fascism, Borland has 'cheated' the ways in which the artwork can be interpreted. She has not allowed the deconstructive equation to operate unhindered. She has stacked the odds against a particular set of readings which she does not want viewers to make.
As has already been pointed out by David Barret (4) Borland has given her own game away in her letters to the invited sculptors by stating "this information and these photographs can be interpreted as freely as you wish". The work would have been more academically correct in deconstructive terms if 'objectivity' had been required: allowing the incongruous and contradictory interruption of multiple objectivities to deconstruct the notion of singular and universal objectivity.
Borland's attempts to rig the results are an attempt to smooth over the ethical issues which surround the work. She has made each of the sculptors come up with a different Mengele. In so doing they 'un-do' the presence of the real person, they disperse Mengele though representations of Mengele. The work shows that there is no such thing as 'real' or true identity, true identity is equated with fascism, with the search for the defining Aryan specimen. Instead of fixed identity, we have the free play of interpretations. The work, through its method, shows that deferral of identity can be used as a weapon against those who would define and confine meaning, enforce a single truth.
It is interesting here to speculate on Borland's intent in her 'cheated' use of deconstruction. Could it be that she never wanted to risk the possibility of her sculptors delivering similar busts and hence creating a singular objective representation of Mengele? If she had, as in previous work, employed exclusively forensic sculptors, this might have been the end result. She had instead stacked the odds in favour of multiple interpretations. Had she not done this the work would have had very different associations. The deconstructive equation could had yielded something approximating a single true image of Mengele. Thus identity would be fixed, Mengele's bust would become a representation of 'evil' and we would end up reading the man's ethics from his physiogamy. This is exactly what Mengele himself did. 
We can only assume that Borland was aware of the dangers of this posible outcome. Her 'cheating' is then understandable. This cheating with deconstructive method however throws up some very important questions about the assumptions that exponents of deconstructive practice hold on the implicit politics of deconstruction.
Deconstruction and the problem of value judgement
In his book, Against Deconstruction John.M. Ellis points out what he sees as the "heavy emphasis on moral terminology" in deconstructive discourse.
Deconstruction is described as "disturbing", "disruptive", it "unmasks", "subverts", "dismantles", "exposes" and "challenges". (5)
This observation seems at first seems inaccurate. Are not these words deliberately used within deconstructive discourse precisely to question the moral certainties of any one fixed position. Is not the whole deconstructive enterprise based upon throwing the certitude of the oppositions good/bad, right/wrong, into question, of rendering them 'problematic'? Are words such as 'subverts' and 'challenges' not used precisely because they are ambiguous enough to avoid being fixed to one position. 
But Ellis' point has validity. These particular words are both emotive and imply a politic, they have a history, a tone. It is undeniable that there is a set of value judgements behind the choice of these words. But where could this 'moral tone' possibly come from if there is no possible ground for 'moral codes' within deconstruction? From what ground is the 'subversion' or the 'challenge' coming from? Certainly not from the left or the right, or from a humanist base. 
"The main weight of Derrida's idea lies very much in their being an antidote to logocentrism. Its positive aspect derives from the thing that it sets itself up against." (6)
Deconstruction cannot claim to have a grounded position, however it is often assumed by its exponents that the hierarchies it undoes tend to be rigid right wing authoritative structures. There is an inference then that deconstruction is inherently radical and inherently of value to the left. In doing deconstruction one undoes the opponent through subjecting them to the destabilising influence of relativism, one un-does the right through being pluralist.
It is from this use of relativism, that the (implicit) moral tone that Ellis pinpointed arises. Deconstruction expounds the questioning of all fixed values. Multiplicity, ambiguity, and ambivallence, were initially used as tools, but when they soldify into a project and become self justifying exercises the project of deconstruction then inevitably becomes relativism for its own sake. 
There is however a name for relativism elevated to the status of a moral imperative. It is otherwise known as liberalism. It becomes apparent then that the 'subversive', 'challenging' nature of deconstruction arises from nothing more radical than liberal pluralism. 
The deconstructive dictum that all interpretation is misinterpretation, that meaning cannot be tied down, fits very comfortably with the liberal belief that 'every interpretation is valid'. The now commonly accepted claim that meaning is relative, and that there are 'as many interpretations of a work as their are viewers' inevitably results in a situation where value judgements become entirely relative, and tolerance of plurality, acceptance and encouragement of other readings, becomes elevated to the status of a moral imperative.
The danger here is that under the sheer magnitude of multiple interpretations, every reading becomes equally valid. Not only can no singular reading be seen as any more valid than any other, but any singular reading becomes criticised for its lack of pluralism, its 'closure'. Inevitably under such conditions any value judgement at all becomes impossible. This problem with deconstructive reading is the same contradiction which lies at the heart of liberalism. Liberalism expounds a moral relativism which:
"...gives a special support to toleration as a moral attitude to codes which diverge from one's own. Paradoxically however, if that were accepted as a universal (and universally morally approvable) attitude, it would contradict the relativism which disallows any authorative principles." (7)
Herein lies the contradiction which upsets deconstruction. There is an implicit agenda behind the use of the deconstructive vocabulary--an agenda which cannot admit to itself without undermining the entire deconstructive project. As soon as it can be shown that deconstruction operates from a fixed position, or requires grounded values, that cannot by definition be deconstructed then deconstruction collapses. Deconstruction then is caught in the same impasse as liberalism: The inability to tolerate any system that has fixed values, the inability to tolerate anything other than itself, the inability to confront its own groundlessness and its inevitable expounding of its groundlessness as its positive aspect.
Relativism can be useful as a tool for destabilising hierarchies and established power structures, but when it becomes a self-justifying project in itself, an end in itself, its lack of any founding values makes its operation questionable. Deconstruction, as we know, is not tied to a project, and can be used to undermine the left as well as the right. It is after all just as easy to deconstruct moral codes as it is oppressive hierarchical structures. 
By inference a leftist bias is read into L'Homme Double, simply by the fact that it sets itself up against the right. There is however no guarantee of this reading of the work, and as with all deconstructive method it could easily have doubled back on itself.
As an experiment in deconstruction, L'Homme Double could have gone terribly wrong. Without the request to the sculptors to interpret "as freely as you wish", we may have seen six heads of Mengele, which were horribly similar. Given the possibility of the sculptors doing their own research on a larger archive, we may have ended up with something approximating the real presence of a real person. If this had been the case then, the results would have been very different, and the 'uncommon handsomeness' of Mengele captured in sculptural form could have had disastrous implications. We could have had: the fetishism of pure (Aryan) form, the nostalgic longing for origin and essence read through national identity, worse still, the reading of individual character traits through facial structure ( a now condemned pseudo science once practised by Mengele himself). Even more questionable would be the opening up of a very specific moment of history, to a multiplicity of interpretations, in short to revisionism, with all of its attendant right wing connotations. Can we question that the Nazi's were wrong? What does it mean to deconstruct the opposition right/wrong in the context of fascism.
In rigging the results, Borland has exposed her own distrust of deconstructive method and revealled her own leftist agenda. As such she points out that there is something dangerously missing in deconstructive method proper.
Borland wants it both ways. She wants to give the impression of remaining open to interpretation, and at the same time she wants the moral certainty of ensuring that no-one reads the work as a valorisation of fascism. This contradiction is unresolvable. This is not to accuse Borland of misunderstanding deconstructive method. On the contrary her loading of the odds in favour of a particular reading pinpoints a need for 'correction' in deconstructive theory. A correction which nonetheless undermines the theory entirely. Her courage or foolhardiness in tackling such a loaded subject pinpoints the blind spot at which deconstruction ceases to function effectively. That blind spot is: its inability to deal with ethical questions.
It is around the issue of ethics that Deconstruction derails itself, or rather it is around the issue of ethics that deconstruction always retracts, backtracks and obfuscates its own movements. For, to acknowledge the existence of ethics at all would undermine the anti-ontological impulse of deconstruction. How can a set of grounded values possibly exist, if all values are in play. When we start to deconstruct question of ethics, we find ourselves really getting into trouble--A relativist ethics--how could this be possible? If we accept, and expound, relativism in ethics then we can draw the inevitable Nietzschean conclusion that moral values are determined by those with power and that this is both inevitable and acceptable. 
Attacks on deconstruction are usually dismissed as being either 'reductive' or 'distorting'. The accusation being that the critic has reduced deconstruction to an ontological statement, to a set of truisms or claims to truth. The common reaction being 'to ask what is...of deconstruction' is to perpetuate a system based upon the notion of presence. To attempt a critique from outside of the terrain of deconstruction leads immediately to the above accusations--deconstruction just does not recognise the legitimacy of conventional logic.
To attempt a critique of deconstruction from within, is equally impossible as any attempt to tie down meaning, to formulate a critical position is just not recognised as a legitimate practice.
There is however a third and ironic position, and that the irresponsible or 'cheated' use of deconstructive method, by artists can actually point to a weakness within deconstructive theory. That is that deconstructive theory is based upon certain criteria which it will not and cannot admit to. To do deconstruction, to cheat at it, to make the mechanisms too apparent, and the results too foregone, is to expose certain assumptions that we harbour about the implicit politics and ethics of deconstruction. 
Deller, Scharlin and Borland each seperately beg questions of deconstructive method. 
They here represent three very different interpretations of deconstructive method, which, respectively, could be termed playful, illustrative and ethical.
Deller's works pushes the playfulness of intertextuality to its limit, without making any grandiose claims to its own importance. As Derrida is often portrayed as a joker, so too Deller's work is challenging through its playfulness. This is both its success and its limit. Perhaps deconstructive practice can go no further than to admit to Deller's' form of tragi-comic humility. Deller's form of playful popular deconstruction carries with it the nostalgia for the myths of creativity that deconstruction itself tears down. By placing deconstruction within popular culture he shows the ways in which deconstruction is a negative force, a destroyer of cultural values, a leveller. His work in some way measures the human cost of what is lost when we deconstruct our own culure.
Scherlin's work is at the forefront of American deconstructive art, but is deconstruction gone text book. It seems consciously constructed to illustrate deconstructive method, to even teach the viewer 'how to do deconstruction'. Scherlin's work announces deconstruction as an art methodology which illustrates theory, and goes to great lengths to get it to get its message across (it is done professionally and expensively--all scriptwriters and actresses were paid for their work as 'makers' of her work). As such it is based upon a misreading; it does not take deconstruction as a tool to, but as a message to be expressed. As soon as deconstruction becomes 'the truth of our time' then it becomes redundant. Her work shows the degree to which artists and critics have come to accept deconstruction not as a tool, but as a set of truisms, almost a belief system. If this is the case then Scharlins' work signals the demise of decontruction as a critical tool, and the solidifying of deconstruction into a form of liberal pluralism.
In pushing deconstruction into direct confrontation with important ethical issues and 'cheating' with the viewer's reading of the work Christine Borland is forcing us to question, the appropriateness of deconstructive method in such contexts. It could be that by overstepping the mark, by going into terrain where 'openness to interpretation' is not enough, Borland has exposed the fact that there are certain boundaries which deconstruction cannot cross, certain issues which it cannot address, certain questions it cannot ask without completely undermining itself. Ethical deconstruction? A contradiction in terms.

Notes
(1) Just be yourself . Logocentrism and differance in performance theory. Philip Auslander. 
(2) Ibid.
(3) Against Deconstruction John.M.Ellis. (A text concerning the impact of deconstructive criticism on literary theory in the USA.)
(4) The woman in possession Make 76. June July 97.
(5) David Barret. Review. Christine Borland Lisson Gallery. Freize magazine. Issue 35. 
(6) Against Deconstruction John M. Ellis.

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Me, Myself and I
Leigh French

"Our general culture is... permeated with ideas about the individual nature of creativity, how genius will always overcome social obstacles, that art is an inexplicable, almost magical sphere to be venerated but not analysed. These myths are produced in ideologies of art history and are then dispersed throughout the channels of TV documentaries, popular art books, biographic romances about artists' lives..." 
Arts History and Hegemony, Jon Bird, Block, Issue 12, 1986/7, 
available in The Block Reader In Visual Culture (Routledge)

STOPSTOP is a Glasgow based publication of "contemporary art and writing" and as an artists' initiated project. It is being developed by Caroline Woodley and Chris Evans. It consists of work from 33 artists, some work specifically made for the context of the book, photo, text based works and the documentation of work existing elsewhere. The writing consists of 7 short pieces, including fiction, articles and an interview, predominantly from artist/writers. The artists -run/ membership-driven spaces: Transmission Gallery, Glasgow; the Collective Gallery, Edinburgh; Wilkes, Glasgow; Three Month Gallery, Liverpool, are either directly represented through this writing or associated via accreditation. A number of the artists and writers in the publication are, or were, directly involved in the curating and running of these spaces.
The book appears to be propelled out of the interest generated by the recent Live/Life exhibition at Musée d' Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, 1997, more particularly, the accompanying catalogues. The catalogues took the form of two books. They acted as both an index of UK based artists' run spaces and arts publications that participated in the show, and, through artists' pages, catalogued the spotlighted younger generation of artists individually invited to show by Live/Life's curators Laurence Bossé and Hans Ulrich Obrist. This overview of contemporary practice in the UK, while being well researched and inclusive of particular styles of artists' led/driven initiatives, had at its heart a specific curatorial focus most conspicuous through those individuals invited to exhibit. This exhibition was not an objective overview of artist led activity in the UK displayed in Paris, though it might have been presented as such, but more, part of a display of the internationalism of the market place, its stars and accompanying curators.
STOPSTOP is not a census of broad artistic activity. It is described in the introduction as "an exhibition in a book". It is produced by specific artists about and concerning themselves and their (self)interests. In some ways STOPSTOP documents activity and loose or temporary associations; in other ways it is the catalyst for activity and these associations. In this sense, while it may include the recording of artists' led activities outwith the book project itself, other artist run projects and spaces, thereby associating itself with such activity, it is predominantly engaged in circulating a specific set of values and meanings of and for itself.
The differences between the participants within STOPSTOP are displaced. As with other festivals, slack associations are formed in a pact of visibility. A neat simplicity of apparent interdependence and communication is constructed. This disinterested togetherness, however, is an illusion. Behind the benign facade paranoid careerism and information retention is epidemic in what passes, and is accepted as, an everyday condition of existence. Here a sense of identity is implicitly reinforced by the hidden agenda of macho self-reliance and aggression. This exists in, and is directly effected by, a false economy induced by a public funding system desiring an apparent market structure.
Not to place myself in a position outside of this activity but to acknowledge my participation within the field, my frustrations have been in encouraging the younger generation of Scottish based artists/writers to write on anything other than themselves. By themselves I don't mean any range of interests/concerns or the problematics of 'speaking for others', but anything apart from what may be perceived as directly benefiting their careers in the gaze of a particular market. However, what I see as being restrictive forms the very foundation stones of STOPSTOP.
The general difficulty here is for artists' groups to facilitate social potentially discursive communities while intrinsically operating via a competitive individualism. The resulting representative structure is reductive: which individual best expresses the gallery's, so-essential-to-public-funding, pluralism--that is, as being representative of a type or stand in for a group or movement. For these reasons I have to challenge both Angela Kingston's Artists Newsletter bubbly editorial of April 97, where she praised the artist/writer activity in Glasgow as being part of an administrative exercise in courting those-in-power, and the support structures that actually encourage sycophancy. I must stress this is not the case for all the texts in STOPSTOP, nor all the artist/writers.
STOPSTOP is but one in a line of recent artists' publications produced in Scotland. In Scotland, as Sarah Munro stresses in her article Go Left at the Lights, the number of contemporary showing spaces are limited for a younger generation of artists due to an excluding municipal gallery ideology. This has been compounded in recent years by the growth of the educational structure and the mythologising of Glasgow, (Angela Kingston's editorial being but one example) leading to an increase in the number of young resident practitioners. A great number of these artists often exhibit in artist-run galleries or self initiated projects in temporary spaces on little, if any, funding. Just as artistic practices have evolved which bypass an ongoing work-ethic-driven, studio-based practice (a legacy of conceptualism and prohibitive cost) to ones where work is made for the site or a specific opportunity/event, so now we see the artists' catalogue/book becoming a familiar site/cause of the work and a self-conscious form of display and international dissemination.
The artists' document has also to be viewed from a UK wide perspective where catalogues exist only for the professionals, produced to accompany shows in those public/commercial spaces sufficiently endowed to afford publications. The catalogue has a symbolic capital all of its own. For those who desire it, it is a marker of success, recognition and acceptance--inclusion. Compare this with Europe where catalogues are, perhaps banally, more often expected documentation of a show. Though this is not to say that the dynamics of the systems are necessarily any different.
Historically, many artists' publications have been tools of empowerment, engagements in the politics of representation, sites for the questioning of how historical narratives are constructed. In many cases the intentions of this recent rash of publications (often born of a full stop due to an encounter with Scotland's artistic glass ceiling, and wondering where to go next) are actually to cajole the market into recognition, operating as springboards into the sanctified waters. Rather than challenge the homogeneity of the circus of the exhibition circuit, the form is used to market oneself to those very institutions: An inflated CV operating at a base level of such distribution-equals-exposure with a desire for recognition from a few elevated sites. This often has little to do with the work; the work is at best an aside, and everything to do with maximum exposure of the personality, of the name. Implicitly, for many of these candidates-for-celebration there is an underlying desire for regulation of their production and their reputation from these institutions; a zeal for packaged stardom which John Beagles goes some way to questioning in his StopStop article I cannot be arsed to spend all my time and money on art, there are more important things. 
STOPSTOP, published by 1/L 83 Hill Street, Glasgow G3 6NZ, pb,138 pages, £4.50

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Tales of the Great Unwashed
Ian Brotherhood

--This blessed shop lies on the bright side of the road, Da would say.
Right enough, The Great Unwashed does face South, but I could never fathom why this should be held as a promise of health and prosperity for his offspring. But I know that he was never happier than when the light came bright and morning-fresh upon the gantry, telling him that opening time was round again.
But to be able to smile all the time ? To offer warmth and welcome to those I knew he privately dismissed as 'bad lots' and 'shitehawks'? Any cynicism I might have harboured regarding his friendliness was swept away in the final years. Heavy smoking robbed him of both legs. He was getting used to the wheelchair when a whole regiment of cancers invaded what remained of him, reducing his once mighty arms to freckled stick-bags. But hospital was not for him, and he insisted on being taken into the shop every day, where he would lie in an old pram by the end of the bar and partake of his beloved stout via a three-foot long straw which was taped to a pint measure glued to the bar.
--Folk like to gather in the sun, he would also say.
That is surely true, but why we have had (all of us, patrons or otherwise) always to make do with second-hand daylight has also embittered me. Most hours of my working life have been spent in sobriety watching others making the most of a smokey, man-made purgatory. Good friends fallen on hard times have now to stay home with their bottles and cans--that they can no longer afford to enjoy the company of their peers has become intolerable, criminal. They get the best deal possible for a fiver, head home, replay the highlights of friendships, resuscitating jokes and conjure faces with only a flickering box or tinny tape to simulate company.
His passing hit me hard. For more than a year there was not a day passed when I didn't lock that office door and weep snottily into folded arms, and even now, the unexpected mention of him summons cold fingers which claw at my chest and nip at my eyes. It's all the worse because I know I'll never be him. Here are knuckles gnarled; eyebrows ridged and heavy scars all over to prove that I was never one to suffer the ignorant or the offensive in silence. I don't think Da ever raised a hand to anyone, but there is no debating who was the stronger, wiser man.

The Great Unwashed sits atop one of the city's drumlins. A drumlin is a glacier's jobby, and the pub is perched on one of the biggest. The road leading down to the city-centre is steep, and from the office I watch locals coming up the hill very slowly, others descending it at thrice the speed, knees buckling under their own momentum.
Being so close to the night-clubs and the exotic eating-houses which cater for the beer-addled of the night, the streets are always busy at dark, but few souls venture up the hill in sobriety without good reason. When they are drunk they get lost, and imagine they are taking short-cuts. They wander about the hill's orange streets, dropping food from greasy wrappers, or evacuating it in garish gushes along the gutter. In the early hours, before the sun has touched the horizon, great flocks of seagulls come swooping in from the coast to see what they can find. I've always liked to watch birds, but these gulls are a menace. They swarm threateningly above the pavements, crawking claims before dropping heavily onto pieces of pakora, fish-batter, filth-encrusted jumbo sausages, hardened vomit and whatever else they can find to cram into their steel-lined gullets. As I sit alone at the bar at the shift's end, I see their shadows reel upon the window, and curse them. Parasites. They invade even my sleep, and will not retreat until the city itself is up and about.
So I go to work this day, baggy-eyed and hateful. An audit is looming, the stock is bad, there has been pilferage of late, the new beers I brought in have not been shifting. And it is Autumn now, that point when, almost without warning, there will be a shifting of clock-hands and we must face another six months in the Twilight Zone. And those effing gulls will bolster their numbers as the sea roughens.
--A late night was it then, asks Joe 'Doghead' Ryan, but I ignore him.
I watch Frankie, the new barman, as he wipes down the sink-boards. Nice lad. Has he been passing twenties over the bar, or maybe leaving forty-gillers outside by the bins for friends to collect ? I can't see it, don't want to, but someone is at it and I'm right in the mood to catch them today.
A metallic clank from the cellar betrays the presence of Halfpint Fraser. He was a friend of the old man's, and is still on the books as cellar-man. He is in his late seventies. I'm still watching Frankie when the steely echo from downstairs becomes a sudden roaring gush beneath which Halfpint's screams can be faintly heard. I race to the head of the stairs. The cellar appears to be filling up with foam. In the midst of the dull kegs, Halfpint lies, bunnet still intact, surrounded by dozens of soaked bread rolls, an angry ejaculation of lager battering onto the ceiling from the keg beside him.
Ten minutes later, Halfpint stands in a puddle of warm lager in the office as I hand him his week's pay and tell him not to come back. A tear or two mingle with the sweet beer as he accepts the notes without a word, then turns sadly for the door. I quell the pang of regret. Business is business. Eighty pints or more lost. Truth be told, it was just the excuse I'd been waiting for.
And that is but the start. The afternoon is dull and unusually warm. We get busy for no reason I can see. There is a large crowd of lads doing a rehearsal for a stag-night, and they've clearly taken up where they left-off the night before. Frankie takes objection to the manner of one of them. Threats are exchanged. Joe helps me to escort the lads to the door. Then I get Frankie into the office and tear a strip off him. The customer comes first. You might be a Ned in your own time, but not in here. Da's stock phrases come from nowhere, but I can't say them with that same tone, that understanding. I warn him, and he is ashen when he gets behind the bar.
--You're run-down and that's a fact, says Joe.
--And you're a doctor now? I reply, still fuming.
Doghead thrusts stodgy fingers into his waistcoat pocket and draws out a small pinkish pellet.
--Get this down you, he says.
I take the pill from him. The coating crumbles slightly as I roll it between my fingers. There is a faint impression of the letter 'S' upon it.
--Supervitamin pill, and a mighty cure for the stress and the hangovers so it is, says Joe.
There seems no harm. I throw it down with a swally of watered lime juice. Maybe I do need a pick-me-up, but I've never been one for pills and that. I get back into the office and spend the mid-afternoon lull trying to get the papers ready for the accountant. They make no sense. Well, they don't really matter any more. In fact, by five or so they are as good as a joke book, and I leaf slowly through them, laughing aloud at VAT numbers and profit projections.
--So that's perked you up I see, says Joe.
He is well-gone now is Doghead, but I offer him my hand and shake his long and hard.
--Thanks Joe, you're a pal. There's one in the tap for you.
I watch Frankie battering away, pouring three pints at once, chatting to a regular. He hasn't had a break all day. I get behind the bar and help. I feel great. I get him at the till.
--Sorry about earlier son, I say. Go get some grub and take yourself a pint.
He eyes me suspiciously, as I was watching him that morning.
--We all have off-days lad. Don't be taking it personal.
I whistle 'Dirty Old Town' and stay behind the bar until the evening shift come on. I never normally work day-time but I feel strong, keen, even cheerful. Some of the regular boys ask me if my numbers have come up.
--This place is on the bright side of the road, I say, and those of them who don't remember Da look confused.
By seven I'm as happy as I've ever been. It's almost as if I can feel Da still in the place, the smell of him, the sound of his loaded breathing, the waft of his tobacco. I could never have worked anywhere else, my life could never have been any other way, and I wouldn't want it different anyroad. Every customer is a friend, and even those with stern faces and short manners are my bread and butter and I love them all. I get among them, shaking every hand within reach, embracing those I've known for years but never spoken to. It feels like New Year, the favourite child's eighteenth, a perfect wedding bash all rolled into one. But then there is a pang and I rush back to the office.
It takes but a second to locate Halfpint's phone number, but I have to organise myself before calling. I'm almost in tears as I ask him to come back tomorrow. He is quiet. I beg, apologise, cite Da as our common link. He grunts consent.
Midnight comes. I am not in The Great Unwashed. They can close up themselves, and even if they don't they'll take care of it no bother. I'm in the Spring, laughing so hard I can hardly breathe. There is Jacko the Wobbler I haven't seen for twenty years, Sammy the Biter, Mickoleen and sundry others. Someone has been married, they're all suited and well-oiled. It's a lock-in, and it's maybe two or three when I leave, shirt unbuttoned and tie lost.
A cab drops me. There are words with the driver, and I throw a handful of change at him. The chippie is closing, but they have some fritters left, and aye, put that pie in there as well.
I fall at some point going back up the hill to the work. Suddenly cold, I try to work out where my jacket is. I cannot raise my head from the pavement. I start to slide down the hill, back towards the main drag, where I can hear gigantic frogs slapping their way to the West End, and worms like drainpipes wrestling in the gutters. A smell bears down, and it is sheer foulness--burned garlic, bean-filled ash-trays and toenails made of old cheese. The smell becomes a wave of filthy air, and then I know that something is above me. I manage to raise myself and face the sky. A plane-sized gull is hovering high, eyeing me. I bury my face in my arms and cry out as I smell the bastard lower. It lands astride me with feet like deflated dingys. With its beak it flips me over. On the end of this beak there is a splintering of orange bony fingers. It ties my shoelaces together, hooks them over the lower bill, rises from the road and soon we are high above the city.
There is light rain falling as the thing flies backwards across the town. I am upside-down, limp and helpless as landmarks skite by above me. I retch and boak but nothing emerges. The screeching of the traffic on the motorway becomes the laugh of the bird as it drops towards the riverside by the old docks. It stands high above, watching me. It lowers the beak, lifts me up for a second, then lets me drop and tears off my legs with one great snap.
There is no pain. It swallows my legs, raises its head and cries to whatever giant may be about. And then it leaves, heading back to the sea.

So I was released from the jail about mid-day. Charges might be brought. Drunk and Disorderly. Placing people in a state of fear and alarm. I threw up outside the station but there was nothing but bileish spit. A cab got me back to The Great Unwashed.
Joe was slumped in the corner by the juke-box, soaked in his own fluids and covered with empty crisp-bags. A dozen or so others, including Frankie, occupied the Snug in various states of slumber, only one being full awake.
--It's yourself, said Sippy Pat.
A far-off gull cried. The juke-box was playing Van the Man's Bright Side of the Road. I walked unsteadily over to the power point, ripped the plug from he socket, then went to the office and sobbed until the accountant arrived. 

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The Musa Anter Peace Train
William Clark

Joking about how we had just become multi-millionaires through changing our money, we stepped out of Istanbul's Ataturk Airport into the heat. Violently the centre of the crowd opened apart while a man seemed to dance and jerk horribly. Throwing himself with all his weight onto the jagged concrete he split open his head, ripping his eye with his broken glasses . He was having an epileptic fit. He was not breathing and his teeth were jammed tight shut and impossible to open. Blood was pouring from his mouth and pooling on the ground from his eye and head. Eventually we got him breathing and he lay on his side gurgling. Taking them away from his head my hands were scarlet with blood. The others looking after him put him in the rescue position. Welcome to Istanbul. After that things got worse.
When we got to the hotel MIM we turned on the TV in one of the bigger rooms. The channel was HBB, soon renamed fascist TV. They had footage of the airport, five or six camera crews had appeared instantly; they had been waiting for something to happen. Although HBB is complete propaganda it still affected us with its barking declarations that we were all 'terrorists' and that one of us, the man who had the epileptic fit, was 'drunk': and that it was obvious what happens when you let terrorists into the country--bloodshed, see that blood well there's going to be more of it if they try to go to Diyarbakir. And we sat there while they made other thinly veiled threats.
The Musa Anter Peace Train was an initiative by Hanover Appeal, a German human rights organisation. The largest immigrant population of Kurds live in Germany, where they contend with a similar oppression to that experienced in South East Turkey. The original idea was that a train would travel from Brussels through most of Europe and eventually end up in Diyarbakir in the heart of Kurdistan, where we would all attend a Peace Festival. The German government, seemingly on their own initiative, decided to ban it going through their territory and cancelled the railway contract, action which is possibly illegal on a number of points. They did this over the weekend--one or two days before the train was due to set off. The organisers decided to proceed, flying us from Brussels to Istanbul and then travelling by a convoy of buses to Diyarbakir, a journey taking well over 24 hours each way.
Most European countries were represented with around 150 people, including MPs, camera crews, human rights activists, journalists and just seemingly normal people of a range of ages from about 18 to 70. The British contingent was comparatively small, consisting of Joe Cooper and Paul Delahunty, from Liverpool, who planed to video the journey for a future TV film; Arti Dillon and Alan Brooke who are members of Socialist parties; Julia Guest who is a freelance photographer; Hüseyin Çakar who was our illustrious interpreter (and who bears an astonishing resemblance to Al Pachino) and Miranda Watson from the Kurdistan Information Centre in London. That was the kind of 'core group' but we were also invaluably joined for the journey by Andy Keefe (whom I would describe as a political activist--but was here as an interpreter/co-ordinator) and Francis D' Souza of Article XIX. Bruce Kent and Christine Blower (of the NUT) joined us briefly at the Hotel, Lord Rea I never laid eyes on.
It quickly became apparent that we should carefully follow whatever advice might be given us by HADEP the Kurdish organisation giving us assistance. They were very brave and kind people, but it was difficult to grasp their advice at all times, what with the fog of our own reactions, conflicting opinion and the general confusion of events and language. So (even at the worst of times) we only had an abstract notion of what was ahead: possibly a lot of people had not fully grasped how 'serious' the situation is in Kurdistan: I know I didn't.
Because of the change of plan we had a few extra days in Istanbul within which various visits, events and meetings were arranged, most of which I took no part in because of sudden severe illness. Julia suggested food poisoning, at the time I thought I was dying and lay for a day in a delirious soaking sweats having the most disgusting weird nightmares.
Around about midnight, after trying to get to sleep with the entire football supporting Turkish nation driving through the streets honking their horns (including the one that plays 'Dixie'), Miranda skulked up to our room. The plans had apparently been changed. The Hanover people had decided in the foyer that the main and over-riding objective was to arrive at Diyarbakir, thus, they determined, in an effort to reach that goal a small amount from each 'delegation' would fly there early tomorrow. The others would follow on by bus as planned. According to Miranda the situation in Diyarbakir would be a "heavy bitch". There seemed to be no plans for getting back--a minor point I stumbled on out of curiosity. As it stood it looked like Alan, Arti, Julia and myself were being offered the chance to go. Joe was at the meeting and according to Miranda seemed "worried about losing all their camera gear". The fact that Joe didn't like it struck me as somewhat backing up 'rule number one': that we should all stick together. Alan had joined us by this point, sheets over his head like a pretend messiah. We agreed to discuss it early in the morning, and we called it a night. The distinct impression that this was some late-night spontaneous meeting in the hotel foyer led by organisation junkies easily circulated round by throbbing brain amongst the other assorted hallucinations.
In the morning the plan turned to nothing. Only a couple of people from the German delegation had been actually pushing for it while the French and Swiss delegations had pressed heavily for the convoy sticking together: "Bang on!" I said. Joe, leaning over into my breakfast laughs with me into my ear: "Beware of Germans preaching Stalinism." We are more optimistic than we were after the paranoia of last night. We have very little on our side: solidarity--i.e. staying together and watching over each other; a message of 'peace'--i.e. non provocative action and organisation--i.e. listening to the people who know the territory. The future would rely on instinct, split second reactions in difficult irrational situations. Trying to pretend to be relaxed I have a word about the "decision making procedure" with Julia. "This is luxury, this is clockwork compared to some of the delegations I've been on. I just want to get on with my work."
Most of the delegations attended their respective Embassies to inform the consulates of what we planned to do. Press reports seemed to have mellowed slightly, as in this example from The Turkish Daily News, August 28th : "Foreign Minister, Sermet Atacanli... made it clear that the travellers who were going on to Diyarbakir would not meet with any difficulty and those who are not forbidden by law to enter Turkey would be met with tolerance." We asked Neil Frape, the Vice-Consul for Press and Public affairs, whom we would later become better acquainted with, what he thought of this and what his impression of the climate was. There was very little he could tell us. Owen Jenkins, another Embassy man, had reported the situation in Diyarbakir as being 'very tense', the 'State of Emergency' being of course very much in place. Mr. Frape provided us with a letter on Embassy note paper, which we imagined would somehow help us in a difficult situation. It did strike me as peculiar that a bunch of 'activists' like ourselves should go crawling to the State for help. Well, using the Civil Service for what it is intended--for any prospective advantage--seemed like a good idea at the time. The photographers amongst us were also worried about getting their material out of the country and were hoping for the old diplomatic bag. Mr. Frape seemed honestly sympathetic: it must be something of an insight into the smooth running of a democracy to work as a press officer in Turkey, where journalists go missing, papers are closed down in the night and lies and corruption go rampantly unchecked.
Earlier that day Joe and Paul had caught something of possible future significance when they filmed an interview with Mr. Imam Gassan Solomon, a South African ANC Member of Parliament (Justice and Foreign Affairs), this is worth quoting at length:
"We thank the Turkish Government and the Turkish people for their sympathy towards our struggle, but we would also like to offer our assistance to the Turkish Government and the Turkish people to assist in the problem which they have with the people of Kurdistan. And I might as well tell the Turkish people and maybe the rest of the World Community that President Mandela has given an indication that he is going to step down in 1999, that we have a very short time in order to make use of his good offices. And he will be available to assist, and I think he would be the best person to assist, to solve this problem peacefully in Kurdistan."
Still ill I didn't make it to the visit of The Mothers of The Disappeared the next day. It is some indication of our times that a term such as that will be understood by most readers without further explanation. They meet every Saturday (and are also known as the Saturday Mothers) and are treated with inhuman, disgusting, violent contempt by the police--constant harassment and beatings. This is a perfect indication of how far out of control the slide is in Turkey. The eventual repercussion of 'counter-insurgency' is that young men in uniform are made to turn on old women; women who could easily be their own mothers, who themselves are forced to go begging on the streets for information on other young men and women who could easily be the young cop wiping the blood off his truncheon. Another of the South African MPs put it quite well later on that evening, this was Mr. Ahmed Gara Ebrahim who said: "Attending the Saturday Mothers demonstration in Istanbul today reminded me of the anguish of the Mothers, Sisters, Brothers and Fathers went through in our own liberation struggle. One of the fundamentals of human rights is the right to live and the right to feel secure. As long as these Mothers, Sisters and Brothers do not know what happened to their relatives and loved ones, basic human rights in Turkey will remain violated."
At breakfast, on the morning we planed to set off, we were visited by top Istanbul secret policeman, who gave out some 'final warnings about any form of protest' to Miranda and Francis D' Souza, who had the stomach to listen to him. As we gathered to leave, the Italian barmy army1 of Communist Party MPs and members began to noisily sing their full repertoire of anti-fascist songs, eventually they are weakly told to shut up by one of the Hotel fat boys. Just two buses took us to our first stop. With all the crush I ended up at the big window at the front as we wove out of the vastness of Istanbul and its homicidal traffic. We gradually picked up a bit of a police escort but they knew were we were going: Kadaköy. On its outskirts the police presence grew to enormous proportions, armoured vehicles and the extensive apparatus of 'crowd control': they became too many to count. Halting in the middle of all this we got out and walked in more or less single file through the police lines and machine guns into an even more astonishing sight--a massive rally of thousands of Kurds who were risking life, limb and liberty to welcome us and see us off.
The organisers estimated that about 10,000 people who had tried to travel on every conceivable form of transport had been turned back. As we walked in we were hugged and kissed like long lost Sons and Daughters, we shook and held hands and just looked into the eyes of everyone we passed--so many people. In utter emotional dizziness we walked into the huge body of Kurds. Joe, Paul and Julia snapped into action with their cameras while I mumbled inanities into my tape recorder. Standing on a car bonnet when we lost someone I got to see the enormity of it: furious speeches were still being pounded out of the P.A. by Union leaders to be met with deafening responses from the crowd. One uncomfortable memory is accidentally looking up at our 'special guests' as Miranda kept calling them, who had climbed on top of a van which was acting as a platform for the speakers. They went up there presumably to be cheered. Seeing Bruce Kent's fat chubby face and cringing at what buffoons they seemed, taking all that applause with silly paper 'Peace Train' hats on their heads--far better, I thought, to be down here and try to talk to some people. But we had started to be directed towards the seven buses which would take us to Diyarbakir and we moved off through the waving crowd and extremely annoyed police.
What the hell was I doing in this country, what the hell did I understand about what it was like to live here? All anyone could do was look people in the eye and show them some respect: we would soon zoom off, but these people were staying; to soon be battered senseless for turning up. At least, I thought, with all its failings, the Peace Train might, in some small way, bring some international attention and recognition of the reality of the Kurdish situation. Undoubtedly the Kurds were more than happy to applaud our efforts. I could not help feeling that we imported something of the class system within the British contingent, which is our problem; but there is something peculiar about a member of an un-elected upper House of Lords, Lord Rea, lecturing a country like Turkey on 'Democracy'.
Up in the mountains, well out of Kadaköy, we were stopped at about six in the evening on the pretext of a passport check, although we hadn't left the country. At the checkpoint people began to get off--those with video cameras and so forth gathering round any potential disturbance, but we were only delayed for about two hours. Paul later let slip that he had been told by a soldier that if he didn't stop filming he would be shot.
The journey was long but our spirits were kept up by Yasmien--the Mother of the Bus--who would perfume us with rose water and at one point when the darkness outside was creeping in, actually went round kissing us all. She also led the singing. Kurdish songs are quite similar to Bulgarian folk songs with that open throat, which becomes so charged with emotion. We also had a Kurdish band on board one of the buses who would start up playing practically anywhere and at any time. Their pounding slapping drums and strange reed instruments sprung into action among the flashing blue lights in several God forsaken service stations, where one could obtain the worst food in the World. Food so bad in fact that Julia and I couldn't eat it for laughing about how we had jumped the massive queue, to get at it first.
I think most people were sleeping when we came into Kurdistan. High Mountains were to the left and right of us with a low mist filling the desert ground of the valley. Higher and higher into the mountains and about eight in the morning we were stopped at a military check point at Gazi Antep2, near the Syrian border. Previously we had heard of deportations from Diyarbakir including Musa Anter's widow and daughter, several HADEP party members and our 'special guests'. They had also stopped us entering Ankara and driven away the people who had gathered to meet us, so there was no telling how things would go: from here on in we were in the Emergency Zone, under Martial Law. At the checkpoint, the soldiers start to take off one of the 'Musa Anter Peace Train' banners and set fire to it in front of all our cameras and all of us, obviously in an effort to get some kind of reaction thus 'justifying' some bloodshed. Eventually after they have had their fun they let us proceed.
As the people along the way, in greater and greater numbers, wave us on with peace signs; we could also on occasion see them being harassed by the police. At about ten thirty we are escorted into a large and notorious military compound at Urfa and more or less held under arrest. The organisers and MPs and so forth start to negotiate with the Army while the rest of us wander around the compound trying to find shade from the radioactive sun. It is beginning to look like a dead end, but I arrange a bet with Francis D' Souza of 1,000,000 Turkish Lira that we get to Diyarbakir, just for the sheer hell of it. A few moments previously Francis told Joe she was going to find out if we were free to go out of the compound by slowly walking out the main entrance and seeing what happened. He agreed to film her. No sooner had she set one foot in the open space when the click of machine guns signalled that this was a bad move and she quickly turned back. Inadvertently Paul and I began talking to one of the Turkish soldiers, a huge guy obviously in Special forces or something: he is armed with about ten fragmentation grenades, a powerful machine gun with a grenade launcher attached. I notice a little Turkish flag on the butt of his automatic hand gun--nice to see a bit of individualism flourishing, but it turns out to be quite common. He looks down at us and quietly asks us why we have come to Turkey: "Why not Bosnia or Palestine or..." "Ireland," I interject. "Yes Ireland" he murmurs, "why don't you go there?" "I've been" I reply. "All we want is peace" Paul tells him, and gradually the conversation tails off. It is a bit tricky talking to man who is equipped to annihilate all of us without breaking into a sweat.
Mr Solomon informed us that what they were doing here was the oldest trick in the book, he had seen it many times in South Africa. The purpose of this stop was to enable them to set up men and machinery down the way. Eventually after two and a half hours we are let back on the buses and move slowly towards Diyarbakir An announcement on the bus tannoy tells us that "the Governor of Diyarbakir said the buses could not come in due to a public safety law. He advised the organising committee to turn back but will allow us to proceed into Diyarbakir Province." Joe and Paul are running out of film and batteries. Standing up and looking at the numbers of the Army, Paul turns to Joe : "Looks like we're going to need another two Scousers."
I don't know what time it was--I was asleep; possibly about four--but we abruptly stopped and an urgent call came out for all press to get up the front. The road to Diyarbakir is a mere two lonely lanes, and as far as the eye can see everything is wilderness and the odd animal skull. No cover, no nothing. Our bus was number five so we couldn't see very much till we got to the head of the convoy on foot. Two huge tanks blocked our path, a huge semi-circle of soldiers at a three metre spread surrounded us, fondling their machine guns. We can see what looks like Diyarbakir about a mile away in the distance but all that long way was lined by hundreds of soldiers and more tanks.3
Everyone is off the buses now sittingt down in front of them and in front of the tanks. Chanting and singing began with "Peace" in Kurdish accompanied by a furious hand clap. Two Kurdish women from within the circle of protesters made a passionate speech to the soldiers, until fraught with emotion one of them threw the bouquet of roses she was carrying up into the air and crashed to her knees weeping. I later found out she was the widow of an MP who was murdered--kicked to death--in Diyarbakir, the flowers were perhaps intended for his grave. People started singing the Kurdish National anthem (a frail but relentlessly determined song and no doubt illegal), and 'Ciao Bella' an old Italian anti-fascist Partisan song, together with chants of "Internationalé Solidarité!" The soldiers were beginning to look pretty edgy as people put some of the scattered flowers on the tanks.
There was some confusion as the organisers debated with the military what would be the next move. A huddle of press people developed around them, whatever was been decided was in Turkish and then in German, off to the side I eventually found a translator who was making an announcement in English, looking understandably dazed and confused he said: "you see we are stopped here, they don't let us to finish our peace ...eh...trip. So we decided to turn back here. Now we sit down here for a while and we sing some songs but now it's time to turn back. We are going to Sali Urfa and we'll have a rest there, then we'll speak about what we'll do and how we'll do it. Now please everybody get on the buses, thankyou." I knew there had been a bit more to it than that, from what I could pick up from everyone else but we all slowly drifted back towards the buses. The sun was on its way down as a military helicopter landed in the field and then took off again after instructions
I wandered past the Kurdish band who were out playing alongside their bus and tried to talk into my tape recorder while I gathered a handful of pebbles. I was still curious as to what was happening and bumped into Miranda, I still had the tape running as she tried to speak over the noise of the helicopter:
"There's been about 1,000 arrests [in Diyarbakir] because of us going in. HADEP, IHD--and the organisers of the Peace Train, just now in a coach meeting said that, well, it was suggested that the Europeans take some kind of action--because the worst that could happen was a detention or deportation or maybe a ban. That might cripple solidarity work in the future--with no return to the country; that's something to be considered. On the other hand for our Turkish and Kurdish friends: they said they're willing to die for they're political beliefs, so therefore any action we take, they take the consequences. Now the most serious thing which was suggested--and of course is not a possibility--is that everybody walks en masse to these barricades. There would be overhead firing, they'd fire into the crowd and then there would be mass arrests. That's not an option for anyone, also it would be damage to the whole process." The italics here express a tone which I think came into her voice due to the look of abject horror on my face. Miranda carried on: "Other suggestions are to go to Urfa and protest the arrests, then possibly just the Europeans go back here to the barricades. The problem is this area belongs to a Tribal Warlord. You know that car accident we talked about--the Beauty Queen was killed, an MP and a Police Chief and a Mafia guy wanted by Interpol? Well the one who survived has a Contra-guerrilla army and this is his territory, his jurisdiction. So the Germans think it enough to go back and have a 'something', the Italians want something more." I did not like the sound of what Miranda was saying, and started to imagine what this place would be like if we came back here in the middle of the night. The buses moved off.
It is becoming obvious, once we can judge the size of the police/military escort we are picking up, that we will not be allowed to stop. The convoy is travelling very fast and through red lights. As we pass various small towns the police and army in large numbers seem to be lining the route . When the buses stop at a junction or a roadblock, riot police immediately run alongside the bus. This is by no means over. We are told to keep our seats by Yasmien. We can barely travel one hundred yards without seeing massive groups of soldiers.
It is about seven thirty, and there is an announcement over the bus tannoy: "everyone who tries to enter Diyarbakir the way we went will probably be killed." To be honest I was quite happy to be run out of country, and I mention this to Andy who is sitting next to me. He tells me that the police escort will probably diminish once we have been put out of the Emergency Zone. Miranda is on the phone to the British Embassy trying to find out what happened to Bruce Kent and the others who flew into Diyarbakir; where--the latest news tells us--about 2,000 people have been arrested and they are using the schools as temporary prisons. At about 11 o'clock another announcement suggests that we try a sit down protest at the next stop: "The purpose of this association is to provide support for the mass of refugees--the mass that wants peace the most--they are the victims of the war and they want peace the most. In Turkey it's one of the most dangerous things to strive for: peace. Thankyou."
The confusion and paranoia reached a crescendo when they let us stop at a service station for petrol. As far as we knew we would be ran all the way to Istanbul and people were tired, hungry and thirsty, so there was something of a mad scramble. This was complicated by the organisers telling us not to buy anything because this was a fascist place. Somewhere in all this I heard that a Kurdish guy got his arm broke by the police for attempting to get on the bus, I think he was trying to join the convoy, we could also see some kind of disturbance at the Italian bus. Things almost get completely out of hand, but we manage somehow to get back on the road.
Most of the police escort must have left us at some time in the night as there are only two or three police cars, but we have also lost the rest of the convoy. We join up again at about ten o' clock. The headlines in the Turkish press are calling us "Peace Terrorists" which causes a bit of laughter on our part. As the day proceeds it looks like the authorities are trying to force us on to the road to Istanbul rather than Ankara, where we plan to hold a press conference and meet up with Embassy officials from each country. The buses are forcibly stopped at the Motorway turn-off for Ankara and we all get out and up front again.
A sit down protest in front of the buses in the middle of the Motorway is already in progress as we arrived with the press gathering. To one side of the buses it is a quiet little wood with birds chirping, on the other side the police are bringing up heavy reinforcements and redirecting the chaos of the traffic. Two water cannon tanks come rolling through all the police cars and a helicopter circles in the sky. A Military General and the First Secretary of the Police Section and the leader of the Jandarma are putting their heads together and barking out the orders, off at the back of the convoy I notice the riot squad vans pulling up and the men getting out with their shields, helmets and batons glistening in the sun. All the delegations get on their mobile phones to their Ambassadors in Ankara. The German Embassy "declined" to attend and told them to "piss off" in German, the Belgian said that "it was all their own fault and they shouldn't have come." One of the South African Ambassadors talked to one of the top Secret Policeman, protesting about being blocked access to his Embassy, the policeman replied that "he didn't care who he was". Things are beginning to look bleak, when our own Ambassador, John Benjamin arrives. He is not what we expected: long curly hair, about five foot two and obviously only wearing a black suit and tie for his job. He immediately asked us if we want to be evacuated out of the situation, an offer we decline. Once appraised of the situation he begins to talk with the Secret Policeman--who refused to give his name to anyone--apparently directing operations. I could see the exasperation on Benjamin's face as he tried to be 'diplomatic', but through his and the negotiations of the others the situation turned in our favour. I noticed the riot police get back in their vans and we return to our buses. Despite the precarious nature of the situation there is a little man out there who has turned up to sell Turkish doughnuts, and people are buying them.
Although the organisers agreed to abandon our plans to go to Ankara, and we are now proceeding (with our police escort) to Istanbul, this felt like a slight victory in that we had averted a beating and who knows what else. Yasmien makes an announcement to the bus: "We are always ready to welcome you here, even if Turkey isn't. One day we'll welcome you in Kurdistan." She then asks us if we will come back.
At another, uneventful stop later in the afternoon we are able to buy some of the Turkish press. The Interior Minister is stating that we never met with any disruption and that anybody could go anywhere in Turkey. According to him the Turkish Authorities "didn't tell us we could not go, it was [us] who didn't want to go." According to the Justice Minister: "nothing happened." And this little nugget: "Anybody who is for peace is able to drive over anybody who is against it." We will never know how many arrests were made in Diyarbakir, nor the horror each individual went through. To my knowledge, no 'International' press were in attendance, but we were very close and our information was good. And the many reprisals will go un-noticed: it took a potential 'international incident' to draw out Reuters and AP, who turned out for the Ankara turn-off. The Kurds would have held the festival in Diyarbakir anyway, it is difficult at this stage to assess what, if anything, we have achieved.
With Andy interpreting I spoke to a Kurdish man who is involved in an organisation which aids refugees, I asked him if he had anything to say to Kurds living in exile in the UK and Scotland in particular:
"We understood oppression would go on during International Peace Day--important for us--it could make a more important demonstration. I want you to come back. The importance of the delegations is that they put pressure on the state. Kurdistan is under fire, we're suffering under oppression. Wherever there are Kurds in th