My intervention

So, I was pretty ill prepared for the intervention. There was a massive operation going on in Tesco's and so there were layout changes, however this meant there were more managers around and one of them told I wasn't allowed to take pictures.

Nevertheless I did so secretly, however they were pretty poor because of my camera phone.

The thing I found most interesting was the pharmacy was still open and I believe it is open 24/7. The car park was quite eerie. Did speak to a few of the staff, the general consensus was that they get used to it and it was worth the extra pay. However they did all acknowledge that some nights were difficult and initially starting the job was very difficult.

Another note was the amount of self-service machines that were open, there were about 2 seperate areas of 6-8. Each area was operated by 1 member of staff. I find that this definitely was related to our project. The machines are always in use, have no need for a break and mean much higher levels of profits.

These are some of the photos I used.

I did leave some posters around on benches explaining what we were doing, however the next day while I was on the way to uni I checked if any were there and they were all gone.

On the assumption this would happen I did hand some out to people.

It was quite weird to be declined so many times. Nevertheless I handed some out at Tescos and some nearby in the train station. People were generally intrigued, however all seemed a bit too busy (the irony) to have a long conversation.

Intervention Report

First of all I'd like to apologise for not posting for a while and for not managing to do my final intervention as agreed, for reasons a bit outside of my control. Below I am posting my thoughts/pictures from the intervention/walk  we did jointly in Canary Wharf and which we agreed did not provide sufficient material for a poster. 

As I have mentioned in my email I am still not well, my antibiotics did not work that well and generally I did not feel I could physically manage spending a night without sleep, especially with the other essays providing extra stress.

My planned individual project was to take place in A&E of a hospital, but they have policies regarding visitors who have infections... also question posed itself: how will I justify my presence in a place which monitors its visitors? I will still attempt to do it at some point because I think it is an interesting experience. 

Looking at the other posts I am very impressed by the outcomes, it looks like in each of the situations that you've chosen required serious guts to complete. It seems pretty innocent in its description, but in reality our project had a political motive: it was not simply an  art project, or describing the world at night, or a history project, it had the objective of directly affecting the people who came in contact with the result of our work and as such it was political, or at least it offered the framework for political interaction.


I think for me our project was/is political not only because of the one interventions we did, but because we have worked continuously as a group and have developed a framework of communication/interaction with each other that is pretty powerful. 

If we were a group with an actual political ("revolutionary" or "subversive") aim and we wanted to involve others in it, we would probably use a similar method. 

Substitute our project leaflets/posters for ones that have a subversive/illegal message, substitute the observational practice used to make it, for actual  surveillance whilst trying to 'blend in' into the background, and we have a political cell/ group.

1) we have developed an egalitarian framework  of relating to each other and have worked closely to come up with an idea and a means of implementing it. We have met on average once a week, sometimes even twice. 

2) we have worked to create some kind of group cohesion/understanding/agreement.

3) we have implemented our project separately, but to a tight brief that was agreed on by the group, so we acted as a group, even if separately. 


4) I saw in some of the posts that during the implementation some of us  have felt the need to act in a clandestine manner, trying to be aware of our surroundings whilst also trying to appear inconspicuous (what does it say about our existence as citizens?).

It is quite clear that our project was not a 'social sciences project' in the sense that we did no try to just observe/record people for the sake of 'science', but for the sake of making a direct impact. 

If we were doing an overtly 'social-sciences'  project we'd have clipboards, we'd conduct interviews, and most of all we would not try to engage our 'subjects' in the result of our work. We'd also not feel that we were acting 'like a criminal'. 

I am reading currently about resistance organisations during communism in Poland, and there are numerous parallels with our group.

If we belonged to a group of resistance we'd do exactly what we did in our project.

1) convene quietly in private flats under the guise of intellectual engagements

2) agree on an objective

3) split

4) observe our surroundings carefully/ try to make sure we are safe.

5) implement the objective (distribute leaflets, posters inconspicuously), most likely at night. 

6) try to blend in and appear 'normal'.

So in my opinion apart from performing those external interventions we have also made an intervention into our lives and worked out a way to organise politically. 



Canary Wharf Intervention: 


When we planned to spend the night in Canary Wharf we have assumed that the activity taking place there at night will be more visible.

Our hope was to take photos of people working at night and to make posters based on that and put them there during the day. 

It did not work for various reasons: 

The area was rather empty and vast. 

We have spoken to about 4 people who worked at that time: two of them in depth. 

One was a guy who worked in one of the banks as a manager for the cleaning team: he had an MBA qualification and his shift started around 4 and lasted till 7-8 I think. 

The second person we have spoken to was a security guard (one of a pair, but the second one was a bit more 'guarded': pun intended)
He had a lot to say about the state of the world, housing market and politics. 

Overall  we saw  a 2 or 3 more people there at the time: security guard in the shopping centre, bathroom cleaners, and so on, but taking photos of them, or writing a report about them would have been rather out of place. 

The people who spoke with us had a pretty private chat with us, with the understanding that we were students, I had the strong feeling that if we came back to the location, which was our initial plan, and have posted posters describing our conversation, it would have compromised their position with their employers. 

It made me bitterly aware how people are not free to engage with each other in all spaces equally, that some spaces are corporate and as such they ' have ears'. 

This is a slightly paranoid feeling which was very prominent in both Poland and Germany where I grew up as a child: 
people would not say certain things on the phone, or to each other in certain spaces, and the words would be used: 'walls have ears', meaning we can be overheard. 

The way some of us  have felt during the project shows that the fear of disciplinarian gaze is still with us, strong as ever. 



Photos: 

Oxford City Intervention

Firstly, I'm sorry this took a while. It was all done a couple of days ago but I had problems uploading the videos. OK, so my task was to see Oxford at night. I took photos and videos, as well as noted down a few words and observations. I visited the city centre, a supermarket car park, the BMW factory car park and took a little walk down a street at 2am. Most of it was unnecessary, I'll admit...

Oxford City Centre (weekday)

photographs (some used for poster) between 11pm and 2am approx

 I found the light in the college window a nice representation of capitalism itself- how it utilises light in dark places to draw us in. The cars at 2am, the taxis making the most of late night capitalism...people waiting for the bus home at 1am, a worker behind a bar calling out to us to come and spend money in the bar...'students, come on in!' he said... and two people walking a street during the early hours. They seemed to be talking about a friend of theirs...'but he said he'll be back by the end of next week, so we can get it sorted then.' They seemed very busy...something needed to be done, and they'd have to wait for someone else for that to happen. And then the way they were out so late, and not for drinks. They seemed to have, perhaps, just left a college, and my assumption was that they'd been doing work into the night. 


The poster: 

Putting them up was very awkward, and it definitely felt criminal! I put most of them in toilet cubicles- people have no other choice but to take a look then. I also put one out above the dryers. I also left some on a bench in an indoor centre to be taken as pleased, though I think they looked more like someone had unintentionally left them there as opposed to being there to take as people please. I returned the following day to find that my little children had vanished from the walls and bench- the cleaners, I imagine. I'm quite annoyed with myself for not making a better poster, however, but hopefully it made people think something at least. Most interesting was the lady who (after having looked at me funny) asked what I was 'campaigning for'. I told her about the project and she said that she wanted one (out of politeness mostly I think, but it was great that she took one). I then asked to take a photo of her hand as she took it, telling her that public interest was worth documenting. She seemed happy to do it but I was very reluctant to return to that centre just in case she'd reported me for acting shifty in public toilets. 

A video of the city centre...there is a clip of taxis waiting, open windows (they were having a sort of party up there but it doesn't really translate in the video), late-night orders, workers on a break, a bouncer and the streets in general. I apologize for some of the blur...also be aware of the laughing friend...can I also add that (if it is the same for you) I have no idea why those particular video suggestions appear at the end! I have never in my life watched vlogs on breastfeeding.

BMW Oxford

Just thought I'd visit the car parks etc at night...the video shows the cars of night shift workers, and the lights of the factory at work. I like the part at the end, where I pass the word 'years'...as if this will be going on for years, or has been going on for years. It sort of mentions the relations between time and capitalism. Also some of this video is silenced because the wind is too noisy. Again, the video quality isn't the greatest.

Supermarket car park 

Again not the main intervention setting, but I'd already done the video weeks ago and it's still good to see life in a supermarket car park anyway (also served Boots, Sports Direct, Mothercare, Burger King and M&S, but mostly used by Tesco) It was 11pm at the time, so not necessarily late-late, but still reasonably so. 

An Almost Silent Night

This next video is just a short reminder that there's always someone out and about somewhere...the road was a very silent 3am (usually very busy during the day) but one single car just whizzed past. I know it's pretty normal, but it sort of shows maybe, in a way, why we need things going 24/7 (even though the traffic lights clearly aren't needed in most areas at night). I wondered where the person was going, and why they needed to be there. Maybe someone was sick, maybe they had work duties. Maybe they were off home after work, or a night out (hopefully within the limit!) Either way, I don't think there's such a thing as a silent night anywhere in the Western world any more, and this experience showed that for me.

My London Bridge Intervention..

"Et nous avons des nuits plus belles que vos jours" Jean Racine

First of all, i want to apologies to my comrades for my delay. I was meant to post my intervention on the blog days ago. The intervention was supposed to take place as a photographic essay that was supposed to provide the material for a poster. The very first night that I went to London Bridge I have realised that very few people pay attention to poster, sometimes I merely reckon new ads, despite all the effort by advertisers. I also realised that I am not a good photographer and that the best way for me to capture the essence of the 24/7 could be talking to, or better listening to, the people that take part of this form of ‘spectacle’. I have thus decided to go there for five nights, ask questions to workers there or even random people and take notes. The public aspect of my portion of intervention, rather than be the poster that could go unnoticed, would be the maieutic effect that I hope my questions have brought to those that I’ve talked to. I have taken notes of names, age, profession of the 24 persons interviewed and from these notes I hope to be able to deliver in this blog my analysis of the 24/7. I have decided not to report all the interviews to avoid repetitions and interviews that did not provide enough material to be discussed. On this blog post I will report my first day of interviews and another one whose interviews I’ve found particularly interesting. However, I will refer to more interviews in my conclusions. Not all the interviews were successful and I doubt that the maieutic effect of questioning the 24/7 has been brought to all those that I’ve talked with. Despite that I guess I can claim my intervention as successful considering that for a moment or two I’ve shifted someone’s conscience. What is always unconsciously left on the backside of our life has been brought to light. It is difficult to declare if this can pave the way for a much more conscious understanding of the conditions of someone’s life. 

The first night, Monday, around 5:30, I tried to hang around the Shard lower lever. The security guard told me that I wasn’t allowed to be there. I tried to ask him questions about night shifts and the constant light of London Bridge (a major point of the Jonathan Crary’s book). He refused to answer any questions. Then I moved outside the King’s Hospital. Three guys asked me for a lighter and we started to talk. John (23), Marco (20) and Kate (29) are baristas in one of the Nero Cafe. Two of them, Marco and Kate, are migrants. As I have asked their opinions about such early shifts, John said that he finds them “fine” now but the first two months of very early shifts were “devastating”. I asked their opinion about who was responsible for such early shift and Kate told me that it might be a strategy conceived by their employer to push its profits up. None of them saw the 24/7 life of London Bridge as the result of the bio-political effect of contemporary capitalism. As I timidly suggested that early shifts might be caused by our current economic structure, the two migrants told me that “people stay up all night everywhere in the world”. John did not add anything and they went to reach their work place. Then, I went outside London Bridge Station, on Tooley Street, and I met a couple of cops making their rounds. I approached them indirectly, I asked an information first (how to get to the Tower Bridge) and I hoped to be able to engage in a conversation but their behaviour was intimidating and I aborted the interview (I took notes of the interviews on my Moleskine and i thought that doing so was not advisable in front of cops but maybe that was a mistake). Then i went to a 24/7 off licence store. The guy, Amid 46, is a migrant from North Africa. I bought a bottle of milk and I asked him about his business. Was being open at 6 o’clock in the morning a rational decisions? How many customers roughly per night? I told me he did not own the store and if he could decide he would rather be closed at night to rest. As he told me, the middle of the night is not the best time to sell goods and often customers are drunk. He claims that this and other factors make his night shifts strongly stressful. I suggested that his store’s opening hours might be caused by the current economic structure and he did not deny this. As a matter of fact, he noticed that in his country the 24/7 concept does not exist. As he put it, “people sleep at night”. After this interview, I went back to London Bridge Station and I reached the queue of taxis outside the main exit of the station. I asked for a cigarette to one of the taxi drivers. He was reading a sport newspaper and he did not seemed bored   with my questions. I asked him if it was reasonable to wait at 6:15 for a customer in the middle of a closed station. He made me notice that taxis serve the hotels in the Shard as well. I asked him if his cycle of sleep was stressed. He said that it is not hard to “adjust” to such job. I noticed the verb adjust - the idea that the man should adapt himself to the working conditions and not the other way around - and I told him if he would rather have a job tailored on his natural cycle of sleep. He answered me mentioning his mortgage. After this last interview I decided that an hour walking around London Bridge Station was not enough to explore the 24/7 dimension and that it required further enquiries. 

On Thursday night, at 4:30 (I have tried different hours in different days to explore different layers of 24/7 population) it was hard to find someone around the station. It took me almost 30 minutes to see someone. I saw two guys delivering products at the big Tesco on Tooley street and I approached them. Seeing them busy with their job, I realised that only the excuse of a project for the university could help me to get their attention for few minutes. I always tried not to mention our project to get someone’s attention in order to avoid the cliques that we mentioned in our discussions - such as the middle-class student that approaches working-class people and sees them through an exotic gaze. However, the importance of my project was not able to obtain more than a couple of minutes with them. They were both in their late thirties (37 and 39). John and Nate, despite being almost the oldest I’ve interviewed and despite the fact that their were doing a job that require a lot of physical work, did not complain about their job. They did not particularly enjoy it but they did not see the disruption of their sleep cycle as damaging. After few minutes another truck delivered similar items to the Mark and Spencer’s store next to Tesco. I was surprised by the similarities and I approached the driver as two other men were delivering their stuff. As an excuse to approach him I asked him for the usual cigarette - maybe it is worth to mention that I don’t smoke - and that was enough to start a brief conversation. I was glad that I did not have to mention my university project. I guess people tend to give formal answers when are collocate within the boundaries of formal discussion. However, I told to the driver, Clag (34), that few minutes ago the same scene - a truck delivering goods to a store - has just happened and that the two scenes share so many resemblances. He answered me telling that we all part of the “rat race” and that he finds his job tiring. I asked if the fact that his job is fatiguing comes from the fact that it is repetitive or that it implies night shifts. He told me that working during the night does not bother him and that maybe it helps, in the sense that during the night the city sleeps and it is “beautiful”; it distracts him for the tediousness of his job. As usual I suggested him that his working conditions might be caused by our current economic system and that melting daytime and nighttime might be dangerous for him. He told me that people have always worked during the night. I did not replicate to this faux assumption and walked aways looking for another interview. I think it is worth to mention something that I thought after this interview. Despite the fact that the questions were meant to disruptive the 24/7 mode of life imposed over the truck driver, his reference to the beauty of the night made me think. Since our collective promenade in Canary Wharf days ago, I have been reflecting about something that I’ve found in 24/7, one of the texts that we’ve adopted for our project. The book, by Jonathan Crary, mentions the difference between sleep as the natural act and the sleep-mode, a term that refers to a low power mode for electronic devices in order to save electronic energy. What shocked me of our visit to Canary Wharf was the application of the sleep-mode over an entire area. Seeing the sleep-mode at its fullest surprised me. The strongest memories of the visit is the constant noise of the air conditioning system. The noise disrupts one of the key features of natural nighttime. Night-time has always had an oneiric aspect, that interlinks rest and our imagination, collective or singular that it might be. When the truck driver referred to the beauty of the sleeping city - not so sleeping as we acknowledged - I was surprised. His words are in contradiction with what I experienced in Canary Wharf. This contradiction goes further than differences in taste or architecture. The swarming life of the 24/7 city kills the oneiric moment where rest (a feature still present in the sleep-mode of contemporary urban spaces) meets our imagination. Hence, I reflected that maybe what the driver saw was just the city resting. In the era of commercialisation of everything, from culture to imagination (Bauman might provide some theoretical background about this process), I guess the general idea of sleep is just linked to resting. The element of imagination is removed in favour of ‘simply resting’. As Crary describes the tendencies of the US population - the average american sleep blabla hours less than previous generation but the market of drugs has exploded in recent years -, I think it is worth to mention the commodification of imagination to explore how sleep has changed in our contemporary age. After the interview with the  truck driver, I wandered around the London Bridge for 15 minutes thinking about this relation between sleep and dreaming. This time I was approached by an homeless woman, visibly drunk. I tried to interview here to see how the constant light - a feature that I feel I should have explored more - could damage the lives of those that sleep rough. Despite her state of drunkenness, she answered some of my questions. She suggested that the permanent lights of many stores and buildings did not damage her sleep. She also said that she likes the fact that the street are “always busy”. I guess she might have liked the distractions of people walking around here, but I am not sure. After this interview I saw a bus driver waiting to start her shift at one of the bus stop on the London Bridge. I asked her a simple information about a night bus and we started to chat. I asked her about her route, her job and how much damaging it was. She also mentioned the beauty of the city at night, in reference to the skyline and the absence of traffic. She, Celine, stressed that night shifts are stressful due to drunk people shouting while boarding but she did not see it a significant “problem”. She mentioned her status of single mother. According to her, being a single mother and working night shifts are not conciliable but she was doing her best to provide for her daughter. At this stage I advanced my usual suggestion that instead of blaming the management of TFL she could blame the current economic system, the real responsible for dissolution of night-time. She did not immediately agreed but in the end she convened that the economic system in power is accountable for the ubiquitous 24/7 problem. She also added that there are bankers that work late nigh shifts but they are paid more than her and they have all the means they need to live a happy life. She did not notice that bankers that are part of the 24/7 cycle are victims in a similar fashion to her.

Many other interviews took place but these two days, my realisation that this was the best way to disrupt someone’s passive acceptance of the 24/7 life and my reflection of the loss of the oneiric characteristic of nighttime, were the ones that particularly hit me. I do hope that the above-reported consideration might help yourselves to interrogate your notion of 24/7, both in terms of impact of the 24/7 on your life and in terms of strategies to resist. I guess wishing you a nap is the best thing one you could do. 

Robotics Article

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/apr/27/no-joke-robots-taking-over-replace-middle-classes-automatons

This piece links to a great video on new advances in technology. Another way in which the 24/7 society can thrive - robots don't get tired...

Just stumbled across this social project relating to invisibility and sleeping rough.



http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/23/make-them-visible-homeless-video_n_5200574.html?utm_hp_ref=mostpopular

Online gaming at 1am on a weeknight...

With the project in mind, I thought the online gaming world was definitely one that needed a little looking into-especially when the online gaming world definitely crosses the boundaries of sleep and capitalism. So what better excuse to stay up until 1am (I couldn't go any later, I swear!) and play online games? I also found it interesting that, when you enter a 'party' and look for an online game to join, there is a live version of the map that shows who is online and where.

I did a little research on the subject (so basically went into gamer forums and asked the average stats) and apparently 195K is a pretty good number for a game that is the second latest title- the game was Call of Duty Black Ops 2 (the latest game is Call of Duty Ghosts, but I don't have that). I took a little video of the number online at 1am and also of the 'globe' turning in the background. The little lights signify who is online, and where...

And if this video is sideways, I'm sorry but I really can't twist it round!

I could have played longer, and the Brits would have still been playing well into 2/3am. Interesting also is how a lot of Europe are ahead by a couple of hours, and a significant number are still online at those times.

As you can also see, alongside the United Kingdom, Europe and the USA, the rest of the world is all pretty much dark entirely. I understand that this is due to varied time zones mostly, but in some areas, such as South America, this can't be the case because they're only a few hours behind- West coast America is 8 hours behind, and they were just coming online. So I think it is a good example of the difference between Western society and the non-west when it comes to the online world- or at least, the online gaming world. It says some about societal differences. Now this does not mean that no one is playing in these countries (so I am told) but it usually means that there are not enough playing to actually show up significantly on the map. Interesting would have been a more recent game, or a different type of game, but COD is one of the most famous so I thought it'd be a good shot.

Now this all COULD be a server issue, but most people in these forums say that these maps are meant to represent everyone in real time. Who knows? Either way, it was a good excuse for a night of playing computer games.