Wednesday 12 January 2011

Thai Journalism Project

I got interviewed for some local newspaper in Scotland(?) about my time as a volunteer in Thailand. The full Q&A is up on the NGO's website here: http://www.kayavolunteer.com/testimonials/id/3

- Tell us about your experiences with Kaya (sign up process, preparation, etc)

I found it very straightforward and simple. The staff at Kaya were in regular communication with me and were very knowledgeable about Thailand's customs and culture. I felt very reassured by Kaya and able to put my trust in the fact that the whole process would be well organised and I would be well supported while I was out there.

The process of signing up was easy, and I had the freedom to book my own flights and have some flexibility with my arrival and departure dates, which was fantastic for me because I was on a round the world trip at the time.


- Tell us what made you choose that particular project/country?
I chose the journalism project in Chiang Mai, Thailand, because I am a freelance writer in my spare time back here in the UK. However, I still consider myself very much an amateur and wanted to get some proper journalistic experience, working for a news agency in a real newsroom, dealing with weighty subjects like drug trafficking in the Golden Triangle and Burmese politics. The fact that the project was in Thailand was great as I love Thailand and had visited before, but for me it was about the journalistic experience and I would have chosen to do that project regardless of where in the world it was based.


- Tell us about your experience in your accommodation (homestay)
I was a little bit apprehensive about the homestay. On the one hand I was really keen to have as authentic an experience as possible, but I was also anxious about whether they would like me and whether I'd like them. I like to have my own space when I'm at home and I was worried I might feel obliged to stand on ceremony. I also wasn't sure what to expect in terms of living standards - would there be a western style toilet? Could I have a hot shower? Etc...

As it turned out, all my fears were completely unfounded. My host family were lovely and very relaxed and laid back; which is truly the Thai way! Their house was very modern with flushing toilet (yay!), internet, TV, all the usual mod cons. Sharing their family life was a really enjoyable part of the experience. Despite being in a country where the culture is very different to the West, I found that there were many more similarities in our day-to-day lives than there were differences. We'd all eat together in the evening, sometimes I helped the daughters with their English homework, and then we'd watch terrible Thai soap operas on TV or head out to the mall or each do our separate things in our rooms. I felt very welcome and well looked after. Plus, my host mother was an amazing cook!


- Tell us about your role in your project.
At first I acted as a support to the English editor. She was a trainee journalist from Shan State in Burma and already had excellent written and spoken English, but was a little unsure about how to structure a story so that it had the biggest impact. I'd correct any spelling and grammatical errors and suggest ways we could structure the article so that it flowed better and was written in a simple enough way that laymen in the international community - who made up a large proportion of the readership - would be able to understand the very complex and arcane issues of Burmese politics.

During my time there I also slipped into a kind of consultative role. My background is in advertising and although I'd been viewing the trip as a career break, I ended up putting my advertising skills to use at the news agency, suggesting ways they could refresh their brand and communicate it through different digital and social networking channels so that it could build its presence as a media brand in the far east and the wider global community. We even went so far as to look at redesigning their logo! It was a lot of fun to be able to be so involved in all aspects of the agency.


- What were you most worried about before you came?
Apart from the apprehension about the homestay, I was worried that I might not have enough to do on my work placement - which proved to be far from the case. I was also a little worried about how I'd fill my free time; what would I do with myself at the weekends for example? But the project support staff on the ground were fantastic at organising weekend trips and activities with other volunteers, so I got to spend time with other people who were going through a similar experience and I found that was very helpful.


- What have you been surprised by during your stay?
I suppose by how at home I felt, how I managed to rise to the challenge in ways I didn't expect that I would, how similar we all are really despite the surface cultural differences.


- What has been the highlight of your trip?
It feels obvious to say it but there were so many highlights: getting to know my host family, building friendships with my colleagues, being able to haggle with tuk tuk drivers in pidgin Thai, getting up at 5.30am to go and give alms to the monks outside the temple... One thing that definitely stands out for me though was swimming with elephants at the Thai elephant home. That was really special.


- What has been a volunteer mean to you (versus just visiting as a tourist)?

Thailand's biggest industry is tourism so as a tourist a lot of what you experience will have been contrived to impress and entertain you. You'll still have a fantastic time but it won't be a truly authentic experience of the country and its people. What I liked about volunteering was being able to go behind the scenes as it were and meet people from different backgrounds and put myself in situations where I could get a taste of what it was like to really live and work in Thailand. As part of research for articles, I attended lectures on Burmese politics at Chiang Mai university - something I would NEVER have been able to do if I were just there as a tourist.

All of my colleagues in the newsroom had come over the border from Shan State and were living under a beaurocratic kind of limbo which meant they couldn't move freely around the country and had to stay in Chiang Mai. It was fascinating to get an insight into their community and to learn about their lives in Burma and hear first hand about the struggles of the ethnic people there.


- How has this experience affected you?
On a personal level I'm really proud of myself for having done it because I was very, very nervous about it before I left and nearly chickened out loads of times. I'm also proud of the work I did at the news agency; the articles that were published and the branding and strategy document I produced for them. I've made some good friends whom I have remained in touch with and I feel now that Chiang Mai is a bit of a second home. Every now and again I'll think 'Oh I'll pop into that shop on the way home', or 'Maybe I'll go to that restaurant this weekend', and then I'll remember that I'm in the UK and that restaurant is about 8000 miles away! I feel like my homestay and the news agency are just up the road.


- Do you think this experience will influence you in your job back at home?
It's definitely helped improve my writing and I think the whole experience has been valuable in terms of my CV. I deliberately chose a project that was going have some application to my career. Tempting as it was to sign up to look after elephants, I felt like if I was going to go all that way and spend all that money and length of time staying there, I should get some useful practicable skills out of it.

Having said that, now that I've done the vocational thing, next time I am definitely signing up for the elephants!


- What would you say to to others thinking about taking part in a volunteer project?
Be prepared to work hard and choose a project that you think you will enjoy, not one you feel you 'ought' to do. Go into the experience with an open mind and remember that you're there to help so be proactive about getting involved. Do your research before you leave too. Understand the local customs, some aspects of your host country's cultural practises may be slightly at odds with your own norms and beliefs, so it's important you reconcile that before you go so that you aren't shocked or upset by anything while you're there. Be respectful.


- Do you think your work experience was useful to you on your project?
Do you mean was my work experience from my job in the UK useful to the project in Thailand? If so then, yes definitely. I'd written for different publications in the UK before, so I already had some knowledge about how to write a punchy headline and research a feature. I didn't expect that there would be any need for me to draw on my advertising background but in the end, that was the thing I ended up doing the most of!


- Any other comments

Hope my ramblings will be of some use :)

Saturday 8 January 2011

Drum and Bass cliches

This appeared on my blog on www.kmag.co.uk/blogs/rinse_and_repeat in April last year...

While everyone knows clichés become clichés because they're true, each scene has its own set of signs and signifiers that have become a shorthand way to describe what it's all about.

Better drum & bass's overuse of the colon and scientific label names, than trance's stupid hippy drug references. Did I say stupid? I guess I meant 'stuck in the 90s'. Whatever, I digress. See if you agree with the following and feel free to post your own suggestions below...

The Colon
OK, Soul:r get a pass because they got in there kind of early with this, but from now on can everyone please try and exercise a modicum of restraint when it comes to redundant punctuation marks? Thank:you.
See also: Exclamation marks on flyers.

Tiny Labels With Grandiose Pretentions
Really? You're calling your label Synesthetic Systems? Are you a neuro surgeon? Some kind of cult? A division of Microsoft? No, you're in your bedroom at your parents' house, using their BT Broadband connection. Good for you for having big ambitions but it takes more than a fancy name, kids. Richard Branson called his start-up label Virgin – not exactly a great endorsement of his prowess but it worked.
See also: Starting your own label because no one will release your tunes because they're not actually that good.

Rewinds
I actually like rewinds. It's kind of the DJ equivalent of that thing you do where you listen to your latest favourite tune on repeat for about a week until you are sick of it. Which is why just the one rewind is enough thanks.
See also: Teasing 'The Nine' over anything

Anyone Just Getting Into Drum & Bass For The First Time Believing That It's Only Been Good Since They Started Listening To It And Has Never Been That Good Before Nor Will It Be As Good In The Future
That, basically.
See also: Everything since 1998 being shit

Inside The Ride
If by 'Inside' you mean 'bored of' and by 'The Ride' you mean 'the same tired metaphor used to describe a DJ's set', then I am that.
See also: 'Keep it locked'

'Crews'
All from roughly the same part of the country? Check. All got lighters? Check. Whistles? Check. Ever going to see each other again after tonight...? Not really a crew then are you?
See also: Post suggestions for the proper collective noun for a bunch of whistle blowing, lighter-waving ravers in the comments below...

Hyperbolic Press Releases
"The very first time I:U:D's latest tune, 'Attic Conversion' was played out, everyone on the dance floor literally started orgasming. The bassline is so heavy that coma victims in a nearby Shrewsbury hospital woke up and started raving in their intensive care beds. Intense indeed...!"
See also: Misspelled adjectives

Making content out of forum posts
Could you be a bit more meta, please? Why don't you just hit 'print screen' and then photocopy it, take a photograph of the photocopy, scan it in, put the jpeg on flickr and then make a blog post about it? Content that's just an aggregation of other people's content isn't really content is it? And is it even a cliché? You might think not, but I was recently working on this TV ad where they wanted to use The Prodigy's 'Firestarter' as the backing track. The publisher wanted £987,654,321 to use it because there are 40 samples in it. 40 samples, people. Just sayin'...

The A-Z of Break Ups

I wrote this piece for Platform about a year ago but they never published it in the end, so I'm putting it here...


A is for Arguments.
Everyone has arguments, duh. Not every argument means your relationship is shitty as long as you make up afterwards and genuinely agree to put it behind you and never bring it up in anybody's face in the future. If you can't manage to do this then the argument is never really over.
Each time you fall out over something and then someone brings up something someone said during the previous fight, you are essentially having the same argument. Over and over again. It's good to clear the air, not pollute it with grudges. If you're breathing polluted air more than you're breathing clean air, then that is shitty.
See also: Anger issues, Anxiety

B is for Blame.
Everything your fault? Of course it is, you're in a shitty relationship.
See also: Beating you up, Blanking you

C is for Cheating.
I don't mean the obvious kind of cheating like sleeping with someone behind your back, which is indisputably shitty, but I mean cheating like breaking the rules. The rules, in case you're a bit hazy are: Not sleeping with other people; not continuing to sleep with someone if you don't want to go out with them any more; not leading people on and giving them false hope; not lying about your true feelings.
See also: Callousness, Crying, Cowardice

D is for Dignity.
A shitty relationship can rob you of yours so try and take as much with you when you leave. If you ever find yourself saying 'I'll do anything, just please don't go', then your relationship is already about 3 months past its sell-by date.
See also: Dumped

E is for Escalation.
Jesus Christ! Can you not just fold the plastic bag inside the cereal box over when you're done so that it doesn't go soggy? Can you not just make a perfectly reasonable request without it turning into a litany of every-fucking-thing that's wrong with you as a human being? No? Then welcome to shitty relationship-ville, population; you.
See also: Evasion, Eggshells (walking on).

F is for Fear.
If you are scared of your partner for any reason, whether it's that they're going to give you another black eye for getting home from work late, or that they're going to give you the silent treatment for three days if you put EastEnders on, it's time to get the hell out of dodge.
See also: Feigning interest, Fucking other people.

G is for Game Playing
I love you. I don't love you. I want to be with you. We'll never workout. I bought you a present. I care about you but don't want to see you. When can I see you? Don't ever speak to me again. How are you? I'm not seeing anyone else. I'm seeing someone else...
That is game playing, only in these games the players have NO balls.
See also: Grimacing when you hug them, Getting undressed in the dark.

H is for Hurt.
Physically hurting someone is dangerous and illegal. Unfortunately inflicting mental and emotional pain on another is not illegal and as a victim you have no redress other than to pick yourself up, dust yourself off, be strong and try and heal yourself as quickly as you can.
See also: Hating your friends.

I is for I Love You.
Haven't heard that in the past few months? It's probably because they don't any more.
See also: Intimacy (lack of), Irritability.

J is for Joking.
Joking is the ultimate defence mechanism. Humour, the perfect diversion tactic. Mirth the ideal mask. Of course things are ok as long as you two keep laughing, right? But wait... when was the last time either of you said anything meaningful? Does them pretending to do a poo in the kitchen drawer while you're on the phone to your dad count? Ummmm, no.
See also: Jealousy.

K is for Kissing.
They can swing you from the chandelier, grease you up, throw you round the bedroom six ways til Saturday but if they can't look you in the eye or kiss you, then you're not making love, you are getting screwed over.
See also: Kicking you out, Knocking your confidence.

L is for Lying.
Lying to you, lying to themselves, making you lie because you know that the truth, however innocuous, will spark a row... The truth is, there's no way back from a lie.
See also: Leaving you.

M is for Money.
In any relationship the issue of money is a ticking time bomb ready to go off. The only way to avoid any pecuniary rows is to split everything 50/50 or take turns paying for stuff. Unless you do that someone is always going to think they're getting shafted, even if they pay for all the dinners and you pay for all the holidays.
See also: Missing birthdays and anniversaries, Misery.

N is for Not Saying Sorry
If you never say sorry for anything, even if you know you are in the wrong, that is shitty. Witholding a 'sorry' is an attempt to hog power; it's like people who say 'this conversation is over' without explaining why. Saying sorry means that you are humble enough to acknowledge your fallibility and recognise when you're being an asshole. If you can't bring yourself to admit these universally human traits then what are you, a psychopath?
See also: Not caring, Neediness, Nicknames (demeaning or undermining)

O is for Other People
If you want to see other people, that's cool. Hey, it's a big sea out there with a lot of fish in it, just remember to finish your relationship first before you dive in. It's only polite.
See also: Orgasms (faking)

P is for Personal Attacks
Sure it's fine to ask someone to keep their mouth closed while they're eating or not fart or belch in front of you, but when you want them to change things about themselves that are out of their control, that's just cruel. So things like telling someone you don't like the size of their nose, or that you hate the way they laugh or how their teeth stick out a bit, is shitty. And you are a shitty person for saying those things and your relationship is shitty because of it.
See also: Promises (broken ones), Power games

Q is for Quoting Other People As Weaponry
It's never fair or constructive to tell people that other people have been saying bad things about them behind their back. Even if the criticism was justified, telling someone they're being talked about in a negative light won't correct their behaviour, it will just make them feel paranoid and insecure. Using other people's bitching as back-up during an argument is basically playground tactics, he said/she said bullying. Does your dad still give you pocket money too?
See also: Quiet on the phone

R is for Respect
You don't have to be in love with someone to show them respect. If you don't want to be in a relationship with somebody anymore that is not carte blanche to stop giving a shit about their feelings and only think about yourself.
See also: Reading your emails

S is for Sex
If you're not having any, you're pretty much done I reckon.
See also: Settling, Shitting on your doorstep (figuratively)

T is for Temper
There is no one more consistently, disappointingly predictable than a person with a short fuse. Seeing someone completely lose it is not a pretty sight. Calling people 'cunts', betraying latent racism while shouting at taxi drivers, and hanging up on call centre operators are all sure fire ways to undermine whatever point there might have been to your outburst and make you look totally insecure and out of control.
See also: Treating their friends like shit, Taking liberties

U is for Universe Revolving Around Them
When they talk about their plans for the future, do you feature at all? Do they even ask your opinion or what you want to do? Is it assumed that you'll either come along for their ride or fuck off out of the picture at some point? If so, you know what I'm going to say.
See also: Any positive adjective you can prefix with 'Un'.

V is for Verbal Abuse
Using language to belittle, humiliate, isolate, denegrate, undermine or threaten. That includes body snarking, setting impossibly unrealistic standards and enforcing unfair expectations. As well as outright shouting swear words.
See also: Victimisation, Villification

W is for Wasting time
By flogging a dead horse.
See also: Walking all over you.

X is for eX
If you've read this far and have been nodding your head all the way through then you need to make them this.
See also: XX, XY

Y is for Yesterday
Did all your troubles seem so far away? Are you hanging on because of that first year when everything was great, despite the fact that the intervening 6 years have been a catalogue of uncomfortable silences, strained conversations and platitudinous telephone calls in high pitched voices?
Stop living in the past. Today, your relationship is shitty.
See also: Yes meaning no.

Z is for Zero
What you're left with. When you add up all of the above.

The A-Z of Death

This piece was published by www.dontpaniconline.com back in September 2007 but I can't find the link so you'll have to take my word for it...


A IS FOR ALCOHOLISM
This is what killed my mum; liver failure. She drank herself to death over a period of almost 20 years and there was nothing she, or anyone else could do to stop her. If you're one of those people that think alcoholics bring it on themselves, or deserve to die, or shouldn't waste NHS money, or whatever; then you are pretty ignorant. You might as well go shout at a schizophrenic to snap out of it and stop hallucinating. Alcoholism is a mental illness – as is most addiction – and no one knows how to cure it. It is also a really efficient way of ruining lives and families. All in all, it's a proper barrel of laughs.

B IS FOR BREATHING
When my mum stopped breathing on her own and had to rely on the ventilator, we all pretty much knew it was game over. But I'm not talking about her breathing, I'm talking about mine. Since she died I haven't been able to breathe properly, and I can't take a full breath or yawn. The muscles in my chest feel really tight, like I'm so bunched up with nerves I can't relax enough to let my lungs fill with enough air. My GP says it's to do with anxiety, which is understandable, but I hope it stops soon; it's really annoying.

C IS FOR CRYING
I've done a lot of this over the past few weeks. When you're riding the crazy roller coaster of emotions that is the grieving process, it helps to have a big cry every now and then. It's like puking and getting all the bad stuff out, and you always feel a little bit better afterwards. I don't mean any of that silent weeping while staring out to the horizon bullshit either. I'm talking about on your hands and knees on the bathroom floor, heaving dry sobs while your heart feels like it's going to come out of your mouth. You need to drink lots of water too, to keep it up for any length of time.

D IS FOR DENIAL
Not only is denial the thing that ultimately killed my mum, it is also the thing that will fuck with your head the most. In the few days after she died, we had to keep reminding ourselves that it had actually happened. Like, our brains had taken in the information, filed it away in a box labelled 'Later', and drip-fed it into our consciousness at a slow pace, so that the realisation dawned on us gradually at a rate we could handle. Nice of the brain to be so considerate, but it really weirds you out when you're in the middle of brushing your teeth and suddenly you're all 'Whoa. I'm never going to hear her voice again'. That stuff can really spoil your day.

E IS FOR EMOTION
As if I need to spell it out.

F IS FOR FUTURE
It's really hard in the first few days after the death to imagine ever being interested in anything ever again. But in your more lucid moments, it helps to think about the future and try to mentally fast forward to a years' time, when all of it won't be so raw and shitty and we'll all be coping with things better. It gives you hope.

G IS FOR GOODBYE
I didn't want to stand at the bedside and watch my mum die, so I told my family I would go in to see her on my own and say what I wanted to say and then go outside until it had happened. For some reason they all wanted to be there, which I thought was unnecessarily morbid, but whatever, that's up to them. Anyway, I went in to see her and she was lying there with a tube down her throat and wires all over the place. It felt like I was someone else, like a character on Casualty. Honestly, the whole thing was so surreal, when I look back on it, I still can't believe it was actually me pressing my forehead against hers and whispering 'I love you I love you I love you' over and over again.

H IS FOR HOSPITAL
Mum was in hospital on average of once a year for at least the past 7 years. I have spent way too much time in them and I can safely say that they properly suck. Ill people are gross. Do I really need to see an octogenarian vomiting on himself at 11am on a Saturday morning? And hey, woman in the bed in the next ward, stop rattling phlegm round your larynx like an espresso machine with cancer. We get it, you're ill. Fuck those places are depressing.

I IS FOR INTENSIVE CARE
This is where mum died. All the patients here are too sick to make noises, so they lie there in comas like those people in the Matrix in the pods with those things plugged into their backs. The only sounds are bleeping machines and nurses' whispers, and it smells like gravy and piss.

J IS FOR JOKE
Like I said earlier, mum's death didn't feel like it had really happened. I half believed that someone was going to call and say that it had been a mistake. The idea that she was permanently gone was so absurd it was laughable. The night she died, we came back home and I was sitting on the sofa thinking about her dying and I wanted to laugh. In fact I had to leave the room because I was worried my dad would notice and get upset. So I decamped to the bathroom and began to laugh like a maniac on heroin. You know like you see in films when people are in shock? The laughter quickly subsided into hysterical sobs though, and I was soon back on my hands and knees on the floor watching my snot drip onto the lino.

K IS FOR KETONES
When the liver and kidneys can't flush out your blood properly, the toxins build up and you can smell them on the patient's breath. These toxins on the breath are called ketones, and they're gross. People on the Atkins diet get them too, because all the protein they eat overloads the kidneys making them unable to do their job properly. Ketones smell kind of like TCP and shit, I still get whiffs of it now, all these weeks later. To me they smell like death.

L IS FOR LIFE
When no one's died, the old life and death clichés can seem, well, clichéd. When your mum has died, you hold onto those clichés like a man dangling over a precipice holds onto the edge. Life goes on, life goes on, life goes on. You need to believe this, otherwise in a year's time you will still be sitting in your pyjamas at 4pm with the curtains drawn, watching the repeat of Jeremy Kyle on ITV2 that you already saw that morning (I actually did this for about a week after mum died before I finally pulled my shit together).

M IS FOR MOURNING
The word 'mourning' conjures up images of Victorian widows in black, leering at the gardener through their veils. It's kind of an archaic word, but it best describes the state we're all in at the moment. Not just an immediate state either, but rather a state of mind that we'll probably remain in forever, to a greater or lesser extent.

N IS FOR NOTHING
Literally. I can't think of anything for 'N'.

O IS FOR OPERATION
We were all like, 'If her liver's fucked, surely you can operate and she can have some of mine or something?', and the doctors were all 'Sorry, it doesn't work that way'. In a situation like that, you truly put all the power of the world in the hands of those doctors. They might as well be God at that moment in time. In fact, I'm switching 'Operation' for 'Omnipotence'.

P IS FOR PAIN
There is a pain in my chest where my heart is. I don't think it will ever go away, and I kind of don't want it to.

Q IS FOR QUICK
Once she'd started to go, it all happened really quickly. Like, hours. It was the best way really. I think I'd have lost my mind if it had dragged on into the following day. Then that would have been a euthanasia situation. Seriously.

R IS FOR RELATIVES
I love my family, but I don't spend an inordinate amount of time with them. I'm close to my dad and my brother, but as far as the extended family goes; we all live quite disparate lives and normally only see each other at Christmas and weddings. OH MY GOD have I seen a lot of them over the past few weeks. As soon as it happened, they all arrived en masse, closed ranks, and set up camp in my dad's living room. Relatives rule.

S IS FOR SPOOKY
Check this out. My mum had a mobile phone that she never learned how to use properly and she was forever ringing me from her handbag and leaving answer phone messages that was all background noise and bag jangling. On the second night after she died, I was getting ready for bed and my phone started ringing. I was pissed off because it was 1 in the morning, and even though time held little relevance at that point, it was still too late for people to be ringing me. Snatching up my phone in anger I looked at the screen and saw 'Mum' flashing away above her number. I was scared to answer it in case she might actually be on the other end, so I shouted for my dad and my brother who came running in and were stopped in their tracks when they saw she was calling me. So they went upstairs to find her mobile and switch it off. They weren't sure where it was until they heard a ringing coming from the drawer in her bedside table. Her phone had started ringing too. That's pretty fucking weird, right?

T IS FOR TIME
Time flies, travels and heals. I'm hoping it will be really effective at doing the latter.

U IS FOR UNDERTAKER
How do those guys do it? Seriously. It's got to be one of the most miserable jobs in the world. If I were an undertaker, I'd probably kill myself. And then I'd have to be buried by undertakers, and that thought is just so depressing I might have to stop writing this, get out of bed and go downstairs for a cigarette.

V IS FOR VERBOSITY
Wow, I have talked the most shit I have ever talked in my entire life over the past few weeks. Life, death, why, how, where, etc. Take this A-Z for example. I have uncontrollable verbal diaorrhea at the moment. I feel sorry for anyone who has to talk to me.

W IS FOR WAITING
You can't hurry grief up. There's no point where you're like 'OK, that's over, I'm done with that now!'. You just have to wait.

X IS FOR X-RAY
My mum had one of these when she was in hospital. It was either that or 'xylophone', which would have been totally irrelevant.

Y IS FOR YESTERDAY
Each day I get through without my mum is progress towards a time when I won't feel so shit. Wow, maybe I'll go and film myself crying in front of a mirror and put it on youtube (another ‘Y’).

Z IS FOR ZOOLOGY
My mum studied zoology as part of her degree. She always said she wanted to go and do conservation work in Africa, but she never made it out there. When I think of her now I picture her in Africa, surrounded by zebras, and she's beautiful, and happy.

Monday 3 January 2011

Noughties Nightlife

Back in September I interviewed the curator of the Noughties Nightlife photography exhibition. Here's the piece the appeared on Don't Panic:



This September, Shoreditch’s Rich Mix plays host to an exhibition of images curated by photographer, DJ and London College of Fashion lecturer, Antony Price. Noughtie Nightlife is a retrospective look at how the styles and culture of the underground have shaped the first decade of this new century; its history described in images taken by photographers who were there.

The show – featuring work by prominent club, trend and fashion photographers including Billa Baldwin, Ellis Scott, Matthew Brindle and Thom Will – was inspired by Price’s own students.

“I noticed my students were becoming interested in what photos had been put up on different nightlife websites after the weekend, and seeing who was where and what they were wearing”, he explains.

As a former DJ with a lifelong interest in music and clubbing, Price was the ideal person to curate the show, described as ‘encapsulating the feelings and creativity of the Noughties London club scene’. Those who were at Cashpoint, Trash, Nag Nag Nag every week experienced firsthand the excitement and creative energy that was bubbling up through the underground.

However, on a macro scale, the Noughties will likely be remembered as a bit of a cultural wasteland. After the electronic dance music explosion of the early 90s, followed by Britpop and then the phenomenon of girl power, the WAGs and manufactured karaoke stars of the most recent decade pale in comparison. Unlike the 90s, whatever was going on in club land somehow failed to translate.

Price disagrees: “I think a lot of good music came out of this decade. Bands like Bloc Party were big in the underground scene for a while before crossing over and becoming well known for example. Any decade has its own culture of celebrity, though. If anything, the fact that clubbing culture has stayed underground and not become mainstream is a good thing.

If underground culture has failed to connect upwards, the advent of social networking media has meant that it has been able to reach infinitely outwards. There are now a million different ways to share and disseminate images, which have changed the photographic medium massively.

“The technology has been great for helping youth culture to retain its freedom and autonomy but unfortunately the quality of the images being presented does suffer because there’s no editing going on”, says Price.

Which just reinforces the point that club photography is not as easy as it might seem. The ‘point and shoot and hope for the best’ technique, as evidenced on millions of facebook pages all over the world, is rarely put to flattering effect. When dealing with so many variables working against you – sweaty hair, bad lighting, gurning – what’s the trick to taking a good photograph in a club?

“Most importantly you have to understand your camera so you can work with the lighting”, says Price. “It also depends on the photographer’s style. Some like to use the light in a harsh way to show the grittiness and realism of the scene, others prefer to create slicker and more polished looking images.”

“But you see the worst results when people don’t get involved in what’s going on and set out purposely just to take photos. The thing is to not try too hard, get in the middle of it all and then have your camera ready for when that right moment happens. If you’re at a night as one of the crowd and having a good time, then your subjects are more likely to open up to you.”

Price sifted through over 100,000 images during what he describes a labour of love and hate, to put the show together. Its main purpose is to showcase the achievements in fashion and culture of the six London Colleges of Universities of the Arts. “But the secondary point to it”, says Price, “is that a lot of these images are just out there in the ether and only exist on the net. It’s important to archive them and present them in a cultural context so they can be looked at. It’s a chance to capture these images for future students but also a chance to show these images to a wider audience.”

“I think the Noughties need a line drawing under them”, he says. “It was a decade that was very much about drawing influences from the decades before and mashing them up – a bit of 70s, a bit of 80s and some 90s. But I feel like we’ve run out of ideas and ways to rehash the past now. We need to look and appreciate at everything that’s happened during the past decade and then we need to move on.”

Noughtie Nightlife is showing at Rich Mix, London from the September 9 to October 2.

(URL to original article with pics: http://www.dontpaniconline.com/magazine/style/noughtie-nightlife)

Sunday 2 January 2011

Samuel Moaz - Director of 'Lebanon'

In May last year I interviewed the ex-soldier-turned-film-director, Samuel Moaz about his debut award-winning feature film, 'Lebanon'. For some reason I didn't link to it here at the time, but here it is now:

Wounded as a young soldier in the 1982 Lebanon War, writer and director Samuel Maoz dedicated himself to depicting his experiences as a 20 year-old tank gunman in his latest film, Lebanon.

Awarded the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, Lebanon is a very personal film for Maoz. In 2007 he began to write the script, basing it solely on his personal experiences and featuring one of the four central characters, Shmulik, as his younger self. Never having been involved in any kind of violence before, Maoz and the three other young men with whom he operated the tank found themselves thrown together in the midst of the chaos of war and, against their consciences, were forced to kill or risk being killed.


Deeply traumatized by the events he witnessed, Maoz says that it took 25 years for him to be able to even write the screenplay.

“In a way we were brainwashed”, he says. “When we came back, with all our limbs intact and without any serious injuries, I felt like I couldn’t complain, even though inside I felt very bad. Our teachers and parents would say ‘There’s nothing wrong with you, what is there to complain about? You have your life and your health’, so I just said nothing.”

“Many of our parents and teachers had lived through World War 2”, says Maoz. “I remember a teacher at my school who had the tattooed number on her arm from having been in a concentration camp. Because of their experiences, they were very pro us fighting for our country when the war happened.”

When Maoz finally did put pen to paper, his motivation came not from wanting to achieve catharsis, but from wanting to protect other young men from a similar fate.

“I was watching the news of the war in 2006 it made me think to myself that over 25 years nothing has changed. My experience and suffering hadn’t changed anything, it was happening again. Luckily I have daughters, but my friend’s son died in the fighting. When it’s just your own pain you can let it pass, but when it affects your children, it’s something else. So I wrote the script not to complain about myself but to save lives.”

The release of Lebanon is a timely one. Tensions in the Middle East between Israel and Palestine are currently more heightened than they have been for some time; and Kathryn Bigelow’s film about the Iraq war, The Hurt Locker, won the Oscar for Best Film at this year’s Academy Awards - amongst whose previous years’ nominees in the Foreign Film category were Israeli war films Waltz With Bashir and Beaufort. War and the Middle East clearly have currency in contemporary cinema.

On mention that Bigelow was criticised for not being overtly anti-war in her Oscar acceptance speech, Maoz interjects to point out that her critics were more vocal about her not mentioning James Cameron than her omission to denounce the war. He is joking of course, but he is also right. However, one wonders if there is a responsibility on filmmakers when working with this type of subject matter to take a position on war?

“Are you asking me why I didn’t make a political film?” asks Maoz. “To do a political film you have to be politically correct”, he says. “I wasn’t thinking about winning awards, I was just thinking about my little country.”

“You won’t change anything by talking to the heads of countries. How you will change is by speaking to people whose lives are directly affected by war – to the mothers. If you speak to someone’s head it’s easier to ignore, but if you speak to their inside, to their heart, then you can achieve something.”

For Moaz, to change the opinions of those older generations who would advocate sending young boys to war is to save lives, and in that regard Lebanon is as influential a piece of cinema as you’ll see.

The feeling of claustrophobia, sense of chaos and looming threat of death are described perfectly. All the action is seen from the point of view of those inside the tank. Any action that takes place outside is viewed from within through the cross hair of the gun turret, accompanied by the eerie hydraulic whine of its movement. This device gives the feeling of at once being part of the action and being a studied and separate observer of it – heightening the feeling of detachment one supposes is necessary in order to be able to pull the trigger when it counts.

Looking cramped, dark, dirty, smelly and terrifying, one assumes the shoot was a difficult one.

“There was no tank at all”, says Maoz. “That is the magic of cinema, I give you only 20% and the rest is in your head.”



What else, then, isn’t real? Since the character of Shmulik is based on Moaz is the story told during the film by Shmulik (played by Yoav Donat) about a sexual experience with his 11th grade teacher true? Moaz grins, hesitates and then with a mischievous glint says, “Yeah, sure it’s true”. Maybe he just wants us to think that.

There is now some understandable interest in Moaz from Hollywood and the director is keen to work on new projects – “I think I’d like to do a black comedy next”, he says wryly.

Before anything else, though he’d like to go home.

“I’ve been travelling for 7 months all over the world promoting the film. I miss home. I live with my wife, daughters, sisters and nieces – 12 women! I’m not used to having to look after myself.”

But concerned again that he’s not seen to be complaining, he adds, “But this is the dream of every director. I didn’t set out to write the film to cleanse myself, but I earned that along the way. It was the best kind of treatment for me. This is the beginning of a new age and I am hungry and full of passion.”

URL to the original article on Don't Panic's site: Here.

Shooting Robert King

I interviewed the celebrated war photographer, Robert King, ahead of the release of the documentary following his life's work.

Shooting Robert King is a film about the celebrated war photographer’s aim to become the youngest ever Pulitzer Prize winner. It is also a film about the fine line separating madness and dedication, the extraordinary sacrifices journalists make to document the stories of those affected by war, and most of all it is a tribute to those members of the press who have lost their lives in that pursuit.

The film begins with the meeting of King and filmmakers Vaughan Smith and Richard Parry in Sarajevo and goes on to span the following 15 years of their working relationship. The opening titles describe the journalists’ hunger to experience their first war and King’s inexperience is betrayed as he is shown being told by a more experienced journalist not to wear his cargo pants out of the hotel in case he’s mistaken for a rebel.

The naiveté and macho recklessness lends a sense of parody to the opening sequence and at first it seems almost comical – like The Thick Of It of war journalism. Until you see the images...

There’s a scene when you’re in the car with Richard and he’s asking who are the key political figures in the Bosnian war, and you don’t know. What made you want to go and cover a war you knew nothing about?
In the beginning I just didn’t care, I was determined and reckless. I’d been given a travel grant from university to go to the mountains in northern Iraq, but security issues meant I couldn’t go. I met a Time journalist called Chris Morrison, who invited me to go to Sarajevo and I knew I wanted to be in that kind of profession, I wanted to be like him. I hadn’t had any formal journalistic training but for me the photographic medium felt intuitive. I’d bought all the equipment, the camera, the film stock. I had this grant. I couldn’t come back with nothing.

How big a part has luck played in the fact that you’re still alive today despite your occasionally obvious lack of field knowledge?
It’s all luck. I could have studied military manuals my whole life but it’s all luck. The more you expose yourself to combat situations the more you risk physical injury and the more important logistics become. But in Afghanistan we drove over a pressure mine hidden in the middle of the road. We were at the front of the convoy and for some reason it didn’t detonate underneath us, but it got the Humvee behind. It’s just luck.

Apart from the physical risk, what’s the mental impact of seeing the kind of atrocities you must confront in a war zone?
On some level it’s just a job. What gets you through is how you perceive war; realising that everything in life is war, it’s just the fight is more civilised. It’s hard for what we do to become accepted by the wider journalistic community. I don’t think I’m such damaged goods but if you go to the editor of a newspaper or magazine in the corporate world there is a sense that they don’t want to know, like ‘we don’t want someone like him around’ because of the stigma.

The scene where there’s an elderly man lying in a Chechen street with both legs blown off is particularly harrowing. What are your thoughts of the responsibility of the photographer in a situation like that?
That picture won a lot of awards; editors lapped it up like dogs. The photographer is still haunted. Could he have applied a tourniquet? Probably. Would it have made any difference? I doubt it. All his arteries were severed, the only reason he stayed alive so long was because it was so cold it took him a long time to bleed out. All he could do was comfort the man in his final hours. Those events are going to happen whether photographers are there or not and Chechnya was a unique situation because there was no aid. In Sarajevo if we arrived on the scene of an attack we would end up taking people to hospital because there were facilities nearby, and yeah we felt good about being able to do that. But our job is to document, not to save lives. If we wanted to save lives we would join a medical organisation.

Why turn the camera on yourself and make yourself the subject?
Richard and Vaughan had been commissioned to make a short film about freelance journalists, so when I met them in Sarajevo I didn’t know anyone and I was just pleased that other journalists wanted to talk to me! We got to working on stories together, then when Richard was in Chechnya he called me up and told me to get out there. The film just evolved through us being together in these different situations. At the time I never knew it would get this far which is why in the film you see my guard is down and I’m not being serious all the time. That’s partly to do with the vision of the film maker but also because it’s not really a film about me or my career but about the seven colleagues who are mentioned at the end of the film who have all died on front lines.

What are your hopes for the film?
That Richard and Vaughan become filthy rich! It’s their film; I’m just their victim!
None of us can control how it’s received; we can only put the information out there. I am very grateful to Richard’s commitment to our industry and Vaughan’s commitment to his, and of the film that’s resulted. I hope their vision and commitment to this project are given their proper dues.


URL to original article on Don't Panic's site here: http://www.dontpaniconline.com/magazine/film/shooting-robert-king